Little Blade

by lilflowerpot

Summary:

"Attention, Paladins of Voltron and rebel fighters; I know we've had our differences in the past, but I think it is time we had a discussion."
-
Considering everything that has happened to him since being summoned back to serve as Emperor pro tem, he hadn’t thought there was much left that even Voltron could do to catch him off-guard.
Lotor does so hate to be wrong.

Chapter 1: Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo

Understandably, they’re guarded—he would have thought them stupid had their attitude towards him been anything less—but as Lotor steps out of his ship, palms raised toward them in a lazy gesture of no ill intent, he notices something much more surprising about the fabled paladins of Voltron.

They are, all of them, frightfully young.

He supposes there’s no way to know for sure—he’s travelled all over the Empire, and yet their species is most certainly foreign to him—but outwardly, at least, they share some striking similarities to altean physiology. With this as his only baseline, there’s little else to be done but assume that the paladins, the pilots of the greatest weapon in the universe, are barely out of adolescence.

The smallest of them, armoured in green with eyes sharp enough to rival even Acxa’s most calculating glare, can’t be more than half-grown, and yet there’s no mistaking the weapon in that white-knuckle grip. Their bayard looks to remain rather compact even when activated, but Lotor knows that it’s no less deadly for its size. A paladin is a paladin, he supposes, even if they are fighting a war they look scarcely old enough to understand.

Rapidly, his eyes flick over the others gathered here, noting with interest that the blue paladin bears the red bayard, its form a blaster and its sight trained on him with a steady hand. More interesting still is that the red paladin themselves is nowhere to be found, replaced by a figure who boasts Voltron’s insignia instead marked in pink, and armed with the blue bayard; this one stands tall, removing her helmet, with the rest of the team immediately following suit, to reveal a stony visage and-

Ah.

“Princess Allura, I presume?” altean, no doubt about it, and if he recalls correctly the history books noted pink as being the colour of mourning on his mother’s homeworld. This explains the paladins’ disappointing level of skill—or, indeed, their complete lack thereof—in his first confrontation with them, at least. The previous red paladin must have been lost to them. A pity, really; his father’s defeat at Central Command being such a rare thing, Lotor should have liked to meet the one who had once confronted the Emperor so brazenly on the battlefield.

“Lotor.” She is not much one for mutual respect, it seems, his title being so bluntly discarded despite his near cordial use of her own. So much for an amicable discussion.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance, I’m sure.” Lotor takes another step towards her, intending only to close the distance between them and spare their voices from a stilted conversation across the cavernous landing bay, but this is clearly the wrong thing to do. Instantly, his father’s successor darts between them, right arm raised with a familiar violet hue that paints the chiselled lines of his face with ominous shadow.

“Not to devalue our own technological advancements, but your bayard would be the superior weapon choice,” Lotor eyes the rigidity of the man’s stance, the broad set of shoulders, the knotted web of scarring across his nose, “or have you become that reliant on the Empire’s gifts, Champion?”

The man snarls, actually snarls, and for a brief moment it’s clear to the prince without ever having seen Haggar’s pet project in the arena, that he’d never truly left, the bestial fight of it still rife behind steel-grey eyes.

“Why did you help us?” The altean princess speaks again, her demeanour unwavering but her sense of self so clearly shaken, betrayed by the unmistakable tremor of her own voice. “Why would you do that, after so long fighting against Voltron?”

“As I said before you so kindly allowed me to board your ship, I thought it high time we had a discussion.”

A discussion,” the champion’s tone is harsh, disbelieving, “and for that you blew apart one of your own, and with it a bomb that would have destroyed Voltron for good?”

“Not mine, unfortunately.” Lotor tries for a debonair smile, but it goes unseen beneath the darkened visor of his helmet. Perhaps that is for the best. The champion doesn’t seem much the sort to be taken in by pretty words, and Lotor severely doubts how far charisma will carry him here. “As I’m sure you’re aware, my father has risen once more, and with him the Witch, in all her malicious glory, is free to do as she pleases.”

“So Haggar tried to blow us up, what else is new? Gotta say, I’m more interested in why you stopped her.” The blue paladin’s tone is clipped, but at the very least to the point. Lotor finds himself almost grateful, even if such gratitude is dampened by the fact that he is still, very obviously, being held at gunpoint.

“My father’s resurrection is, I assure you, a shared nuisance; I thought you might welcome a chance to be rid of him… more permanently, this time.”

“And what, you’re just going to bibbidi-bobbidi-boo him?” The yellow paladin is the broadest in stature, yet seems to shrink as soon as Lotor’s attention is turned to him.

“I know no such incantation, nor its effects.”

The blue one snorts at this, but one withering glance is all it takes to silence him, the reedy creature more hiding behind his blaster than threatening to use it.

“Do my words amuse you?”

A tightening of the lips, a short shake of the head, and none of the others seemed inclined to expand upon their comrade’s behaviour.

So disappointing, the lot of them.

Just as it seems negotiations are going to be a series of long silences and tedium, the doors of the opposite wall hiss open, and the supposed defenders of the universe give a simultaneous start. At best it is amusing, at worst humiliating. These are the paladins who have been such a thorn in his side? All but one of them presumably the team responsible for having defeated his father, the ruler of an empire the likes of which the universe has never seen: one which encompasses billions of galaxies and has spanned for well over five imperial millennia. Yet this is what he had fallen to?

They are no better than cowardly arusian cubs.

Clad in galra stealthwear, the figures that enter the room are few in number, but their leader cuts an imposing figure. Lotor had heard the rumours, of course, but the Blade of Marmora are almost as much a myth as Voltron. His father, certainly, had always implied that their order had been annihilated an eternity ago, but upon glimpsing the luminescent crest which adorns each of their weapons, there is no mistaking it.

“Marmora, yes?” A curt nod of the head greets his observation, the individual’s holo-mask dissolving to reveal a face lined with both age and scars—due to what could only be a lifetime of war—and crowned with tsai agmt in the most striking shade of crimson. The face of a galra commander, no doubt.

“Prince Lotor.”

Even if the altean princess has misplaced her manners sometime between the fall of Altea and their current situation, it seems the same cannot be said of her allies. A good thing too: Lotor will sacrifice his pride for the sake of ambition if need be, but really, he’d rather not.

“Indeed.” He makes to turn his expression more agreeable once more, only to be again reminded of his helmet. “Forgive me, I’d unmask, but I fear to do so without warning may prompt the children into doing something… untoward.”

There is disgruntled noise from the group to his left, but he doesn’t bother to turn to find out which one of the paladins has taken offence. He hopes—and this is petty, it really is, but he hopes—that the answer is ‘all of them’.

“I’m sure that won’t be an issue. Please.”

Lotor accepts the invitation with all the grace it is due, fixing his eyes on Voltron’s princess before curling long fingers beneath the seam of his helmet—careful not to jostle his injured shoulder, lest his pain be mistaken for a weakness they might exploit—and ridding himself of it with perhaps a touch more flourish than strictly necessary.

It is worth it to see how her face crumples.

“You- You’re altean.”

“Oh I assure you, I’m galra,” he doesn’t miss how she winces at that, as if the very word is poison when spat from lips which almost exactly mirror her own, “born and raised. But yes, well observed, my mother’s blood is that of your kin.”

She gapes like a fish, horror and an agonised sort of longing waring over her features. In the end, it is not she who breaks the uneasy silence.

“You’re Honerva’s son.” It’s a quiet observation, subdued in its delivery, but it sets every nerve in Lotor’s body alight with adrenaline he thought he’d long since exhausted. The prince feels the sharp jump of his jaw muscle, and can only hope that the room’s occupants are too dull-witted to have noticed the strength of his reaction.

“I am.” Blue eyes quickly find the man who had spoken: another altean, that much is obvious, with an aged face set into a shock of obnoxious orange—and really, there must be more to him than this, because he’d somehow managed to completely evade Lotor’s notice until actively choosing to do otherwise, and that is no small thing.

“She was sickly during the pregnancy,” the man’s tone is sagely, “I wasn’t sure the babe had survived much beyond delivery, and, relations between our people being strained as they were, King Alfor thought it tactless to ask.”

There is a deep familiarity in that address, Lotor notes.

The altean seems to be waiting for an answer, but he will be waiting a long time. Lotor’s mother is no bargaining chip, and the prince will not be baited into allowing Voltron to use information about her as such. After a moment more of tense expectation and entirely false smiles, the room’s other occupants seem to realise this.

“Well!” The moustached man claps his hands together abruptly. “If you’ll kindly allow us to disarm you I’m sure we can move this discussion to somewhere more comfortable.”

“That would be preferable.” Lotor wastes no time in drawing his sword, tactfully pretending not to notice how easily the paladins scare, and offering it hilt-first to the champion, who… makes no move. Raising one delicate eyebrow prompts no further response, and Lotor has half a mind just to throw the damn thing to the floor (and he would do exactly that, if he could be assured that the blue one wouldn’t reflexively shoot him in the head).

Surprisingly, or perhaps not, the altean man is the one to step forward, despite being so obviously unarmed himself, and takes the blade smoothly.

“And the gun too, m’boy!”

Lotor isn’t sure which is more distasteful, the nickname or the cheery familiarity with which it is used. Either way, he bites his tongue and removes the compact pistol from its holster, carefully handing it over. He doesn’t miss the quick appraisal by pale eyes, nor does he allow his stance to falter when the man finds him to be satisfactory, failing to detect the concealed blades in his boots, or the small phial strapped to his inner thigh.

Decaphoebs of lying to his father had offered ample opportunity to perfect his poker face.

“Right this way!”

It’s only as he is being escorted out of the hanger that he notices it. Considering everything that has happened to him since being summoned back to serve as Emperor pro tem, he hadn’t thought there was much left that even Voltron could do to catch him off-guard.

Lotor does so hate to be wrong.

Hates it almost as much as the way his heart lurches as he is led past the marmoran operatives, only to find that among their number is one who catches his eye, otherwise indistinguishable from all the rest if not for their stature. This little Blade is just that: little, tiny, barely taller than the green paladin. But that one, at least, is of a species that appears to be more compact in form to begin with. For a galra to be so small…

He’s led so close that he could reach out and touch them. He doesn’t, of course, because if he is to die here it will not be for something so foolish as sentiment, but he’s more than near enough to see that the little Blade, even when standing to attention beside their siblings-in-arms, is more than a full head shorter than Lotor himself, not to mention half as broad.

He daren’t linger. If he does, he’ll inevitably have to face the injustice of it all, the vulgarity of team Voltron’s hypocritical rhetoric as Defenders of the Universe, and if that happens Marmora’s leader will have a few more scars to add to his collection.

Because the Blade apparently recruit children to fight their wars for them.

And Lotor could not be more disgusted.

 

---

 

Keith isn’t sure how long it takes him to pry apart his own white-knuckle grip on the ship’s controls, only that when he finally does so, his hands are slick with sweat and trembling uncontrollably. He slumps back into his seat with a shaken exhale.

It’s a lot to process.

Closing his eyes brings him back to that moment with startling clarity: the fraction of a tick in which he’d heard the explosion before he’d expected it, felt the heat on his face but not the all-encompassing scorching he’d been braced for, had snapped his eyes open on reflex and allowed his instincts to take over as the Empire’s super-weapon ignited in front of him, his body acting of its own accord and yanking the little fighter into a hasty roll so that it only clipped the very edges of the fire-storm which should have marked his grave.

Keith opens his eyes again and stares at the dulled console lights in front of him until his tear ducts are streaming in protest, and he had no choice but to blink rapidly to alleviate the burning aridity that has set in.

“Fuck.” His mother tongue is inherently more satisfying than the altean equivalent. There’s something to be said for the sharp simplicity of the curse, he thinks, that ‘quiznack’ simply doesn’t capture. “Fuck.”

When he eventually finds it in himself to stand on legs that don’t quite feel like his own and exit the galra fighter, Matt is waiting for him. Keith had expected this. He hadn’t anticipated Kolivan being here too, but he supposes that if Matt had to inform someone, then better the Blade’s commander than Shiro, whose “good work Keith” still echoes in prideful mockery.

The ferocity with which his teeth are biting into the inside of his cheek draws blood.

Matt looks braced to break his nose, whirling around from where he’d been pacing back and forth before a stoic Kolivan, but there must be something off in Keith’s expression if the way the human’s rage collapses in on itself is any indication.

“You scared the hell out of me, Kogane.”

Keith gives a slight shrug, not really trusting his own voice right now, and Matt does punch him for that—though it’s more a graze of his fist against Keith’s shoulder—before kind of manhandling him into a messy hug.

Not really knowing what to do with that, Keith lets himself be held, a little grateful for the time it gives him to gather his thoughts before whatever Kolivan is going to throw at him. It’s as Matt pulls away, sniffling and watery-eyed, that he murmurs: “I’m okay,” in reply to a question yet unasked.

He’s not sure whether it’s as an assurance for Matt, himself, or a statement to the universe in general, just to see if he’s somehow misunderstood the fact that he’s still alive.

“You’re the same reckless hothead that used to trail Shiro around like a lost puppy, that’s what you are.” Matt sniffles and it’s almost a laugh. “But yeah, you’re okay.”

“You can’t tell him.” Keith doesn’t care to refute the teasing, and has no idea to address the fact that someone else is crying for his sake, but this is important. “Matt, you have to swear you won’t mention any of this to Shiro.”

“Keith, you almost-”

“I know,” he sets his jaw, determined, “but I didn’t, alright? It didn’t come to that and- Jesus, Matt, you heard them over the comms. They didn’t realise, they don’t know, so-”

“So you should tell them.” Matt is frowning now. “You should tell them, Keith. They have to know.”

“Why?”

“You- What do you mean why?” Matt looks distraught.

“I mean there’s no point. I didn’t-” die, is something he finds he can’t quite bring himself to say, “Look, it never came to anything, so why bring it up?”

“Keith.”

His name is said as if it means something.

“Don’t tell them. Swear to me that you won’t.”

“Wouldn’t you want to know? If it had been one of them?”

Of course I would, goes unsaid. Keith deflects. It’s what he’s good at.

“There’s enough going on right now, they don’t need to start freaking out over something that didn’t even happen. Marmora lost people, the Rebels lost people, the Coalition lost people, and—hell—now we’ve got Lotor to deal with.”

And isn’t that a sobering thought.

Because Lotor has been toying with them for phoebs; hunting them down as if this was some cheap sci-fi horror film, taking back planets that had barely tasted a world outside of the Empire, out-manoeuvring Voltron and proving on several occasions how god-awful an idea it had been for Keith to play at being the black paladin. Lotor had come closer to killing the members of this rag-tag space family in a matter of movements than Zarkon had in almost a decaphoeb… and it had been Keith’s fault.

And now, of course, he’s on the Castleship.

Negotiating.

After having inadvertently saved Keith’s life.

The former paladin doesn’t want to think about that, he really doesn’t. Technically, Lotor saved the lives of everyone within ten galaxies of Naxzela, and so there isn’t really any reason for Keith in particular to feel… whatever it is he’s feeling. Except that there is. Because if Lotor hadn’t appeared when he did, the others would still have survived.

Keith would have made sure of it.

“Prince Lotor is set to dock in hanger Xi12,” Kolivan’s voice is level in tone, as if that were a perfectly mundane sentence, “Voltron is already waiting for him. We will join them immediately.”

He doesn’t say anything about Keith’s actions. Keith’s not entirely convinced that’s a good thing.

“Alright… Matt?”

“No, I need to see to the rest of the rebels.”

Keith may not be the best at reading people, but even he can recognise that, for Matt at least, this conversation isn’t over. But he also knows Matt, knows what he was like before Kerberos, and though they weren’t exactly friends, Keith knows how deeply he cares—just like Pidge, only less prickly, and it’s little wonder they’re siblings—so he’s almost certain that his actions will be kept a secret from the others for now, if only to spare them the trouble.

Offering a short nod, Keith activates his holo-mask and falls into step behind Kolivan, but before they’re more than ten paces away Matt calls out to him again.

“Oh, and Keith?”

He turns at his name, and isn’t sure what to do when met with something that looks a lot like affection.

“If that sonovabitch so much as looks at my sister the wrong way, do try and record the moment she guts him for me, yeah?”

Keith snorts at that, feeling a weak smile pull onto his features. “Sure thing.”

 

The make their way to meet Lotor in silence, only stopping to collect a few other members of the Blade. Keith wonders at how Kolivan knows who’s who when they all wear their masks. He wonders if it actually matters when the likelihood that any of them are going to live long enough to see a world free of the Empire is so slim to begin with. He also wonders, despite his best efforts, whether Marmora’s commander is going to reprimand him for almost kamikazeing himself.

He doesn’t.

It is decidedly not a good thing.

 

Their small party is marched into the hanger without hesitation, Kolivan at their head, and Keith has been a member of the Blade for long enough to recognise that their leader is still fully in the mindset of a soldier. The battle itself may have ceased, but this is still war, and an unexpected parley is no invitation to let their guard down.

Kolivan brings them to a halt slightly behind the scattered formation of team Voltron, but even before he does, Keith has his eyes locked on to the figure who can be none other than Lotor. It has to be Lotor, and yet… Keith will admit, he’d half been expecting Zarkon 2.0, but the Empire’s heir himself seems rather lithe in build: a good head taller than Shiro, yet no broader. For the galra, who have so obviously built their culture around military strength, Lotor certainly wouldn’t be considered as cutting an imposing figure. He’s definitely on the shorter end of the spectrum (though still of a height that towers over every human in the room), and Keith wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the prince is considered as lesser because of it. He’s all too familiar with the feeling himself, knows the insulting sting of it, and wonders if the Empire’s heir has been underestimated by his peers just as Keith had been back when he still wore the Garrison’s garish colours.

These thoughts are immediately shoved back into the darkest recesses of his mind, his attention snapping instead to the uncomfortably familiar tone of the man before him as he asks: “Marmora, yes?” in a voice that carries.

Keith daren’t tear his gaze from their enemy, but he notes a shift in the periphery of his vision, and hears the tell-tale dissolution of Kolivan’s mask.

“Prince Lotor.”

The simple affirmation with which this greeting is received reveals nothing, but Keith is left with the distinct impression that Lotor is somehow pleased. ‘Why?’ remains a mystery. It puts him on edge. Lotor is still talking, but people so rarely say what they mean that Keith has all but given up on verbal forms of communication, and so lets that voice wash over him. If he’s learnt one thing during his time with the Blade, it’s that galra body language is by far more honest than its verbal counterpart, and Lotor’s silver tongue doesn’t quite reflect the stiffness of his posture, or how the way in which he’s holding his shoulders seems unnaturally still.

It’s not until Lance makes an all-too-familiar noise of protest—and when Keith allows his gaze to waver momentarily, he almost laughs at the outright scandalized expression the other wears—that he tunes back in to the conversation, hearing Kolivan invite Lotor to… what, exactly?

Knowledge or Death rings in his ears, and he knows Marmora’s mantra has more than one truth to it. Lotor moves and Keith is on edge once more, grinding his teeth so as not to draw his knife on instinct, but it comes to naught. Zarkon’s spawn simply removes his helmet (and there’s something odd in the way he does so, the illusion of grace giving way to Keith’s better judgement) and-

Oh.

Oh.

“Altean,” Allura’s voice says, somewhere far away.

“Galra,” is Lotor’s reply, harsh, biting, and entirely unapologetic.

Keith’s ears fall to static.

Conversation continues around him, he can catch snatches of a voice that should be familiar, but the words are drowned out in favour of his own heartbeat: something heavy and deafening and too much to ignore.

Not for the first time, Keith is thankful for the mask of his marmoran armour. It hides the way his eyes have gone wide on the surprise of it, tongue glued to the roof of his mouth and like sandpaper besides.

Because Lotor is like him.

It’s a dangerous thought, made worse because it’s not the first comparison that he’s drawn between himself and Zarkon’s son, but it’s true.

True, and terrifying.

Terrifying because suddenly Keith wants. Wants in a way he hasn’t since the Trials of Marmora where he’d been promised answers as to who he was; and the Blade had delivered, yes, but in doing so raised twice as many questions. To make it worse, Kolivan can’t—or perhaps won’t—answer most of them, and it seems that when their leader decides upon something, the rest of the Blade follow suit.

But now Keith stands before a man—a monster, he reminds himself—who knows what it is to be torn between two worlds, and while Lotor might not be the first alien that they’ve met born of two entirely different species, he’s certainly the first who’s been half galra.

Or… no. Perhaps not. But at the time, or even after, Keith hadn’t thought to question the diversity of Lotor’s generals, simply chalking it up to another quirk of galra biology. It isn’t so much a stretch as one might think, not when he knows Blade members with tails like lizards, while others are crowned with ears of the vulpine persuasion, but now… Now he has to wonder.

And if they are, then that’s too much of a coincidence: five half-blooded galra working so closely together, when Keith isn’t sure he’s ever seen another save in the mirror? No, that speaks of something more, something-

A sharp smack of flesh brings him to his senses with a jolt, but Lotor is already drawing his sword as Keith comes back to the world around him, and the sight is enough to set him into motion before he can even recognise how the angle of Lotor’s wrist is all wrong for an offensive manoeuvre. Thankfully, Kolivan’s hand is there, the backs of his knuckles a firm weight against Keith’s abdomen as he surges forward, and that fire is quelled before it can wreak havoc.

Keith stills, watches as Lotor disarms, and then concedes to Kolivan’s judgement. The weight of the older galra’s hand disappears without comment.

Perhaps it’s because he’s watching so closely, though everybody is, that he notices it. Lotor’s movements really are off, and there’s something behind that flawless smile that reeks of danger. Keith doesn’t trust it.

Yet he can’t tear his eyes away.

Coran turns his back on the enemy like it’s nothing, leading Lotor almost merrily past the Blade and towards the doors.

As he follows, Lotor’s eyes flicker over the marmoran group with feigned disinterest, then a sudden intensity as his gaze locks onto Keith for a split second longer than leaves the former paladin entirely comfortable. It’s electric, in the energy behind it, but Keith can’t even begin to guess at what that look means before the rest of team Voltron are marching after Coran and out of sight.

Eventually, Keith remembers how to breathe.

The burning in his lungs doesn’t seem to alleviate any.

Notes:

Alright alright alright. So, usually I'd finish writing the entire thing before I upload any of it, but seeing as we now know that series five will be released at the beginning of March, I'm just going to dive right in. I love how beautifully the show's writers have captured Lotor's questionable morality, and I wanted to explore that as well as his similarities with Keith. I also ship the hell out of them because of all of the above, and since this is my fic I can do what I want, fight me.

So now may also be the time to mention that I'm a student, so I have a lot going on, but believe me when I say I want to finish writing this as much as (I hope) you want to finish reading it. Unfortunately my degree has to take precedence. So while updates may be somewhat sporadic, rest assured, they will happen. Eventually.

-

TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 2: Second Sight

Summary:

Previously: Lotor arrives on the Castle of Lions and is -of course- treated to the warmest of welcomes, the cherry on top being that the supposedly noble Blade of Marmora apparently have a child soldier among their number. Keith has to deal with the immediate aftermath of Naxzela, the fact that Kolivan & Matt were both waiting for him when he landed, and the world-shattering reality that Prince Lotor Son of Zarkon is a galra hybrid... like him.

Kolivan dismisses the other members of the Blade.

Keith knows this, not because he hears the dismissal itself, but rather sees its effects, watches as his comrades slip away without another word. He would have gone with them, had tried to do so, but Marmora’s leader has him pinned by the nape like some unruly kitten, one clawed hand easily large enough to cradle Keith’s skull and firmly tilt his head back to meet a golden-eyed glower.

The former paladin deactivates his mask and matches the sour expression with a scowl of his own, but this isn’t the first time he’s suffered through a scolding from the older galra, so he knows enough not to bother with what would only be futile resistance.

There are several ticks of silent appraisal before Kolivan is suddenly so close that Keith goes kind of cross-eyed trying to focus on him, all attempts at making sense of this situation proving to be for naught when Keith finds himself being nuzzled by a flat purple nose—the fur cropped, velveteen, and lightly ticklish as Kolivan’s downy cheek presses against his temple. It’s… a soft gesture, fond even, and absolutely the weirdest part of his day.

“Um,” articulating just about anything more seems a momentous task, “Kolivan?”

The man in question withdraws with a low rumble; not of displeasure—Keith’s more than familiar with that particular tone—but rather a warm sound that is definitively one of amusement. Blunt claws scratch lightly against Keith’s scalp, the sensation dulled only by the resilient armoured fabric of his hood, and the fact that as the recipient of this impromptu affection he is having a hard time processing much of anything right now.

Keith is pretty sure he’s dead.

He distinctly remembers questioning it earlier, but he’s never been more convinced that the universe is fucking with him than in this moment.

“The green paladin’s blood-kin informed me of your actions towards the battle’s end; it would have been a noble sacrifice. However,” Kolivan straightens fully, and the creasing of his eyes is, in his case, what passes for a smile, “I am glad it did not come to that. I do not relish the idea of losing you so soon, kit.”

“Right.” Keith voice comes out awkwardly high. “Um, thanks.”

Blessedly, this seems to be enough of an acknowledgement, and Kolivan nods, dropping his hand from Keith’s head before looking towards the hanger doors.

“We ought join the paladins. Prince Lotor is too promising an asset for the Blade to allow the altean princess’ personal history to hinder us.”

At this, dark eyes narrow under the weight of a glower.

“You think he can be trusted?”

“No,” Kolivan’s reply is immediate, relieving some of the tightness in Keith’s chest, “but I think that if we are to reform the Empire in the most painless manner possible, then he would be an invaluable ally.”

That… is a valid point.

They’d already felled Zarkon once, but even that had seemed merely an inconvenience to the imperial force they were up against. Yes, Voltron had been able to liberate several star-systems in that time, but Haggar’s quintessence harvesting hadn’t ceased, and soon enough the Empire was back on its feet, reclaiming those planets only briefly freed.

Though Naxzela is a significant strategic victory, Zarkon won’t take such a grave loss lying down, that much is obvious. Even if they do manage to defeat him again—and how are they supposed to do that, when the Emperor of the universe can apparently shrug death off like a momentary hiccup—what’s to stop another from taking his place and continuing what their predecessor had started?

The intentions of Marmora’s leader become clear with all the subtlety of a freight train.

“You’re actually considering it,” Keith takes a half step back, searching Kolivan’s face for answers, “supporting Lotor. You want him on the throne.”

“He is the heir presumptive, it is a possibility.”

“Christ.”

Keith staggers back further, running both hands roughly through his hair as he stares into that blank expression with disbelief. After everything Voltron have been through at the hands of Lotor, were they now expected to roll over and concede to his right to rule the Empire?

Hell no.

His refusal must have shown on his face.

“I am not saying it is the best course of action-”

“Because it’s not.”

“-but I think it important that we consider our options.” The Blade’s commander persists, his tone level and unyielding. “No one could have predicted this, and we must proceed with due caution, but it would not do to discard this opportunity solely because Princess Allura cannot see past her own prejudices.”

It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that Kolivan had suffered just as much of Allura’s wrath as Keith had, after the Trials. Perhaps because she’d known him before she learnt of his heritage, Keith felt more entitled to her trust, more hurt by her complete disregard for who he was other than galra, but Kolivan… he’d dedicated his entire life to this cause; to have someone who knew nothing of the horrors endured these past ten thousand decaphoebs turn around and question his honour must have been the highest form of insult.

The galra sense of pride is not to be trifled with, Keith knows that, had seen it in himself long before he knew who his mother was.

“I do not take this lightly, Keith.”

“I know.”

He holds Kolivan’s gaze, unblinking and resolute, until the Blade’s leader is satisfied.

“I should like to offer you a reprieve from your duties, but now is hardly the time, and I have little doubt you would refuse me regardless.” Kolivan returns his attention to where Coran had exited, Lotor and everyone else in tow, “You will instead be stationed here. Observe the prince’s behaviour and report what you learn back to me: his suitability for the task at hand will be at the mercy of your judgment.”

Keith hardly knows how to respond to that.

“I’m not exactly a neutral party.”

“Of course not, your friends have suffered at Prince Lotor’s whims.” Kolivan catches the questioning frown that this statement is met with. “That is why I know that you will not easily find him suitable. If you ultimately deem him so, then I could have no better assurance.”

It’s oddly touching, the certainty with which this is said.

After a moment’s hesitation, the intensity with which Lotor had looked at him still prickling at the forefront of his mind, Keith accepts.

 

When he and Kolivan eventually locate team Voltron—squirrelled away in distant corner of the castle, so far removed from everything else that it’s little wonder Keith is unfamiliar with the sprawling hallways—Lotor is nowhere to be seen. Before Keith can ask after this, Lance is tugging him into some sort of altean drawing room by one arm, his words tumbling over one another in their impatience to be heard.

“Keith Kogane, mulleted man of my heart, nearest and dearest purple space cat,” here he throws a short no offence Kolivan over his shoulder with not nearly so much casual charm as he’s evidently trying for, “please tell me you are here to talk some sense into Shiro. I mean, don’t get me wrong, ninety-nine percent of the time in Space Dad we trust, but this is crazy-talk.”

“Lance, what are you-”

“You cannot be serious.”

Keith automatically tenses at the sheer venom in Allura’s tone, and when he looks towards her she’s seething, but even more surprising is who her anger is directed towards.

“I will not grant such preposterous demands. Need I remind you who he is? What he’s done?”

“Princess,” Shiro sounds more exhausted than anyone under the age of eighty has any right to be, “granting him asylum here in exchange for information on the Empire’s internal affairs isn’t unreasonable. I know who he is, but it’s precisely because of that-”

“-that we can be sure the information he has is invaluable, yes, you’ve said.” She spits the words out with a snarl. “But how can we be sure it’s accurate? Or has any truth to it at all? For all we know he could bait us into an ambush to deliver Voltron straight into Zarkon’s clutches.”

“I still say we cryofreeze him and extract the information like we did with Sendak.” Pidge is perched on the arm of one sofa cross-legged, her face squished against the hand it’s resting on with an expression that tells Keith this conversation has been circling for quite some time without a foreseeable conclusion. “At least then he won’t be able to lie.”

“After what happened last time?” Hunk chuckles nervously. “Um, no thank you, I do not need to revisit that particular nightmare, I couldn’t trust the goo machine for like, a whole phoeb.”

“Seconded!” Lance draws everyone’s attention to where he’s stood with one arm still looped through one of Keith’s own. “Attack of the Killer Airlock does not need a sequel. Tell ‘em Keith.”

And suddenly all eyes are on him.

Not an ideal situation when Allura is already on edge, but he’ll have to make it work.

“We’re not risking another corruption of the Castle systems.” He pauses, eyes flicking tentatively over to where the black paladin is massaging his temple, then back to Allura, knowing full well that she’s going to hate him for the next sentence to leave his lips. “But I agree with Shiro.”

He’d been prepared for the princess’ backlash, but Lance’s snide “of course you do” and the abrupt loss of his touch leaves Keith feeling much colder than before. He takes solace in the relived nod of encouragement Shiro gives him.

“Keith. I thought you of all people would understand. Lotor is far too dangerous to be allowed to roam freely-”

He cuts her off immediately with an incredulous look. “Obviously. I’m not suggesting that we let him just wander about.”

“You might not be, but he did.” Pidge looks increasingly annoyed as she raises two fingers, counting them off as she speaks. “Lotor’s terms were as follows: one, asylum on board the Castle of Lions, and two, the freedom to navigate said Castle as he pleases.” Here she turns her accent to something clearly meant to emulate the prince: “With a guard of your choosing, of course. I have no doubt you’ll want my every move scrutinized, but you would do well to remember I am here of my own accord, and not a prisoner.”

“Here of my own accord as your gracious ally,” Lance adds in with an equally exaggerated accent, but none of his usual humour, “don’t forget how fucking arrogant he is about the fact that he knows he saved Voltron’s big metal butt.”

Here Lance dissolves into a slew of Spanish curses that the translator chip embedded behind Keith’s ear can’t quite keep up with, but the general sentiment would be hard to mistake. He sighs and looks towards Shiro again for reassurance, before glancing back at Kolivan who merely inclines his head.

“Alright. So we grant him asylum and monitor him 24/7-” he catches the incoming question before any of the conversation’s non-human participants can ask it, “-that’s an Earth thing for constantly. The fact is, Lotor helped us. I’m not convinced on the ‘why’ and I don’t trust jackshit that comes out his mouth, but none of that negates the fact that he has information we want.”

There’s a weighted pause.

“I’m with Keith on this one,” Pidge doesn’t look too happy about it, but when she looks up it’s with a weak smile in his direction, “like it or not, Lotor’s valuable, and I don’t know about anyone else but I’d much rather he’s here where we can keep an eye on him, than out there doing god-knows what.”

“Not to mention that ship.” Hunk looks deeply disturbed, and rightly so. “I had a quick look over the battle data and if the readings from that last blast are correct, then that thing is basically on par with a Lion.”

Keith thinks back to the ease with which Lotor had shredded through Haggar’s barrier, how quickly it had all ended—how quickly it could have ended, should have ended, the controls of the little fighter trembling under his grip or maybe it was the other way around-

“Hunk, my man, I hear you. But I’ve gotta side with Allura.”

Keith forces himself back to the present. Barely biting back mimicry of Lance’s earlier comment, his saving grace turns out to be a timely contribution from Shiro.

“Regardless, that’s four in favour.” Shiro heaves a great sigh, “so unless the Blade have any outstanding oppositions…?”

The tone he says this with desperately begs that they don’t, and Kolivan is quick to lay such concerns to rest with a stoic affirmation, followed by a meaningful look towards Keith who inclines his head in return, this exchange going unseen by Shiro.

“Great. Well then, let’s inform our guest,” the word is said with excessive distaste, “of our decision.”

“Wait,” Keith does a quick headcount to make sure he’s not just that exhausted, “where’s Coran?”

“With our new buddy Prince L'Oréal,” and somehow Lance manages to make ‘our’ sound a lot like ‘your’.

Keith blanches.

“Alone?”

“No man,” Hunk catches this budding panic because of course he does, eyes softening in a way that leaches the adrenaline from Keith’s veins, “we gathered a few of the Coalition soldiers on our way down here, but we just figured, y’know, what with Lotor being kind of altean, we might need another altean to match his strength.”

It’s sound logic, and though Coran isn’t much of a fighter, having him there in the event of Lotor deciding to go rogue (and there’s no reason for him to do so, not when he had come aboard of his own free will, but even that proved that Zarkon’s son is nothing if not unpredictable) makes a certain amount of sense.

Hunk claps his hand down on Keith’s shoulder and squeezes gently. The affectionate gesture is far more welcome than the icy stare Allura is giving him, so he leans into it and pretends not to notice her displeasure.

It’s only when Shiro moves, not to exit the room but rather go deeper, heading through a door in the opposite wall, that Keith realises this lounge is not that at all, but more a part of some luxurious altean suite. This later proves to be true, and after having scouted the surrounding area more thoroughly and finding that the ridiculous gravity-defying pool is only a few levels down, Keith deems this to be the castle’s recreational sector. There’s no command centre, no training deck, not even so much as a combat simulator, and when he finds an imposing set of double doors that he thinks might conceal a hanger, it is revealed instead to be a library—and not one filled with digital records either, but honest-to-god books. It makes sense that Allura would bring Lotor here, not as a kindness, but more likely as the one place she deemed far enough away from anything that could potentially be weaponised, should it fall into his hands.

For now, Keith activates his mask once more before following after Shiro and the others.

 

---

 

It’s childish, but he may as well be dealing with children, it seems, so Lotor sneers and scorns and undermines every stipulation they attempt to put him under just to see how the universe’s defenders handle it.

The answer, as it turns out, is poorly.

They don’t appear to have any idea how to conduct themselves, and clearly this is the first time team Voltron have had to negotiate with someone who doesn’t simply roll over and weep with joy at being indebted to them for having swooped in to conquer the big bad Empire.

Lotor is beholden to no one, and their uncertainty at how to tackle such a concept shows.

His terms are simple: no exiling him to some rebel outpost, and no shackles. He’s seen quite enough of the latter in recent quintants, and with regards to the former, anywhere other than within Voltron’s centre of operations is sure to end in disaster once his father catches wind of it. Both are perfectly reasonable demands considering the information he has to offer, and more yet that he knows how to obtain if only they take him to the appropriate colonies.

So really, there’s no reason for them to be taking so long discussing what to do with him.

“Are you sure you don’t want another dengiroff, m’boy?”

“Quite sure, yes.”

The logical conclusion is that this is some sick game to see what will get to him first: the company of one disturbingly hospitable altean—“The name’s Coran!”—or what apparently passes for sustenance on this ship. After his first, and decidedly last, appetizer, Lotor had questioned whether it had been poisoned. As time ticked on, he was forced to concede that no, in all likelihood not, but that poisoning may actually have been preferable.

For lack of anything better to do, other than ruminate on the nauseating twinge of his injured shoulder whenever he breathes too deeply, quick eyes scan over the room’s other occupants for the umpteenth time. A small collection of species from several different homeworlds: none of them trained soldiers—or if they are it’s a reasonably new development, judging by the uncertainty in their stances—and each and every one uncomfortable with his presence here.

Uncomfortable enough, he’d wager, that even if he were to move slowly and clearly narrate his intent, to so much as stand would see him shot to pieces.

Lotor remains seated.

Near ten dobashes more pass before finally—finally—team Voltron stalk back into the room, followed by Marmora’s commanding officer and, of everyone, the kit. Lotor grits his teeth, turns his attentions back to Princess Allura, and pretends this doesn’t bother him. Instead, he makes note of how tensions between each individual are clearly running high, and restrains himself from commenting on it.

“I assume you’ve made your decision.”

“We have,” is the altean princess’ response, though she doesn’t look all too happy about it, “we will agree to your terms.”

As expected. Lotor tries not to look too smug.

“However, I am making the executive decision that your movements will be restricted.”

The prince feels his expression sour, this reaction too immediate for him to even begin to control it.

“That is not what we discussed,” nor, by the looks of the other paladins’ expressions, was it the collective verdict that they had come to, “need I remind you that I am a guest.”

“And this is the guest wing of the Castle of Lions. I assure you, if you remain here you shall want for nothing.”

“And if I do not?”

The princess smiles, and it’s a dangerous thing.

Lotor allows for one beat of silence. Then two. His fingers drum slowly against the arm of the chair and he’s careful not to be the first to look away.

“Very well.” His acquiesce is more a hiss than true agreement, but two can play at this game. “In return for my cooperation, you will consult me on all future strategic measures involving both direct and indirect assaults on the Witch or her druids. If I find that you have been withholding information pertaining to such matters, I shall return your courtesies in kind.”

He can see her refusal coming in the way that her fine-boned features twist into something hateful, but before she can utter a word, another beats her to the punch.

“Haggar and her druids…”

This voice is not one he recognises, but Princess Allura clearly does and her head instantly snaps to the side, eyes narrowing to near slits. Lotor looks to the hooded figure as they step forward, and feels his heart clench uncomfortably.

“…but not Zarkon?”

They speak with a curious stoicism not yet mastered by the paladins. Even so, the one behind the mask must be younger than anticipated, because that voice is too smooth in its tone, with none of the guttural quality that their shared tongue is saturated in.

Lotor can hardly help but indulge this child with an answer.

“Frankly, you could mount my father’s head on a pike for use to mop every darkened corner of this ship, and I would not bat an eye, but with regards to the Witch you will keep me informed.”

“Done.”

The outcry to this response is immediate.

“You have no right-!”

Princess Allura’s voice is a distant thing, despite its shrill tone. Lotor doesn’t much care for it, every fibre of his being instead riveted on the marmorite who stands so still that they could be carved from stone. Though he cannot be certain—the little Blade’s expression quite literally masked from him—Lotor imagines that they’re just as fixated on him as he is them: feels it in the prickle of their attention raking over his form with an intensity he isn’t used to.

“With all due respect Allura, I don’t answer to you.” This response isn’t exactly cutting, but it is tinged with a blunt honesty that the altean princess clearly wasn’t prepared for, and it stops her in her tracks, mouth gaping.

Lotor notes, with an odd sort of satisfaction curling in his gut, that even as the kit addresses Voltron’s princess not once does their attention waver from where he’s sat. Regrettably, he cannot return such civilities. It’s harder than it should be, to tear his eyes away from the little Blade and address the princess directly, but dull as she is, her obstinance with regards to this matter is simply not something he can allow.

“My terms will be met. Is that perfectly clear?”

It takes several ticks of silent seething and a murmured prompt from the yellow paladin before a response is given, and even then it is only done so begrudgingly.

“Crystal.”

Lotor’s smirk is all teeth, and he can see how it ruins her mood further, but hardly cares to dwell on it when his eyes are again drawn back to the tiny, faceless galra.

He considers their diminutive stature with a heavy weight sitting low in his stomach. They have, by his estimate, seen three dozen imperial decaphoebs come to pass—perhaps a little more if they’ve been raised on rations, not that that’s an improvement in any sense of the word-

“Prince Lotor,” his foul musings are interrupted by Marmora’s leader, “the Blade will be assigning Keith to your personal guard, alongside whoever Voltron wish to nominate.”

Lotor makes to incline his head in acceptance of this. The name means nothing to him—he doesn’t know who this Keith is, and doesn’t much care—or not, at least, until this statement is met with outcry, all the paladins simultaneously up in arms at the prospect.

“Absolutely not.” The champion, who has been remarkably quiet up until this point, sets his jaw. “Kolivan, we never discussed this-”

Golden eyes do not so much as blink.

“Our internal assignments have never been Voltron’s business.”

The black paladin exhales a disbelieving breath, searching for something in the other’s face that he clearly doesn’t find before rounding on-

“Keith. No.”

-the little Blade does not so much as flinch, but Lotor is starting to think he’s gone half-mad.

Surely—surely—even despite Marmora’s apparent disregard for the safety of their own children, they would not assign one so young to him.

“This isn’t up for discussion, Shiro.”

Apparently so.

Lotor doesn’t know whether to be horrified that the Blade of Marmora hold such indifference toward their kit that they would assign them to guard the spawn of the Emperor, or insulted that they think so little of him that they do not see fit to assign one of their finest.

As he observes the champion argue with the little Blade, irritation bleeding into their posture as Voltron’s black paladin protests against Marmora’s decision, a third (admittedly preposterous) option presents itself.

Perhaps… the Blade have assigned one of their finest, in which case this child would be a very dangerous and very intriguing prospect indeed.

 

Somewhere between one controlled breath and the next, Lotor finds that the room has gone very quiet. Though he loathes to admit it, the pain in his shoulder is drawing too much of his focus, and when he looks up he finds the marmorite stationed by the door, the room otherwise empty.

It is not in Lotor’s nature to ask obvious questions. Clearly Voltron’s opposition to his choice of guard failed in the face of the Blade of Marmora. Equally obvious is that team Voltron and company have left, and as for ‘where’, well, there are only so many places they can be, even on a vessel this size.

So he remains silent, focuses on the subtle hum of the ship, and breathes.

“You’re injured.”

This observation is exhaled as if a relief: the answer to a question long pondered. Lotor’s gaze flicks back to the impassive purple glow of his companion’s mask, but their expression is indecipherable behind it, and as they make no further comment there’s nothing more to be said. Lotor doesn’t bother to deny that which has been already voiced.

Right shoulder burning, the prince continues to take slow, measured breaths so as to disturb it as little as possible. The pain had, admittedly, flared earlier when disarming himself, despite purposeful use of his left hand, and again when the altean man had heartily clapped him on the back during the second phase of negotiations. He is fully aware that the longer he leaves it, the worse the ligament damage will be, but relocating one’s own shoulder is no small task.

“It’s dislocated.” The little Blade doesn’t ask this as a question, but their head is tilted marginally to one side as if they’re trying to puzzle him out. “You need medical attention.”

“Regrettably, you’re not wrong.”

A pod is not offered, and he would not accept if it were, so really there’s only one course to pursue.

Lotor clenches his jaw, takes a sharp breath, and moves swiftly.

The angle is off.

He feels the bone grind against the socket, imagines he can taste the muted crunch of it in the back of his throat. When the prince releases his arm with a choking exhale, it swings sickeningly. His nerves are on fire.

“Let me.” That voice is much closer than before, and Lotor barely has time to recognise that the child is right there before lithe hands are on him, one bracing his shoulder while the other grips his injured arm without mercy, twisting and forcing it upwards in one smooth movement.

A quiet curse is hissed out as the joint pops back into place.

He counts his own heartbeats, trains his eyes on the knife strapped to the kit’s waist and mourns how easy it would be, with the little one’s guard lowered like this.

Leaning back against the cushions with a slow exhale, Lotor feels the loss of those nimble hands acutely.

“I appreciate the gesture,” the child is still standing far too close, snapping their neck would take a mere fraction of a tick, “but you really ought be more on your guard around a guest, little Blade.”

Though he’d been the one to insist upon such false pretences, Lotor isn’t naïve to the truth of his position here. Even so, better Voltron’s prisoner than his father’s.

Observing him coolly, the kit takes a pause before offering the verdict of their brief assessment.

“I could take you.”

It’s such an intrinsically galra confidence, that it brings a genuine smile to the prince’s features.

“Perhaps.”

He considers the child closely as they stalk back to their previous posting at the doorway; their gait is smooth, controlled, and they’re obviously more a soldier than the Coalition puppets that had lingered at the room’s edge as if the shadows might mask their timidity. Marmora have trained their child well, it seems, but that doesn’t negate the fact that the kit is far too young for a life such as this.

The room sinks into silence for a time more, and it isn’t until the echo of pain has all but faded from his shoulder, that Lotor sees fit to break it.

“Keith…” He lets the foreign syllables roll off his tongue, and watches for a reaction intently. They don’t flinch, not exactly, but the direct address is definitely unexpected. “It is not a particularly galra name.”

They seem to pause in consideration.

“Neither’s Lotor.”

“No,” and he can hardly help it, he’s smiling again, “I suppose not.”

Notes:

So the trailer for the new series hit me hard, and I disregarded my actual responsibilities to update this because I have exceedingly poor self-control. Also, Kolivan is a good dad and you can fight me on this but he cares for all his marmora kids so damn much okay? Okay.

Oh, and I'm making an effort to use Altean measurements of time (some of which are actually more difficult to remember than you'd think) so just in case you need a refresher:
Tick - Second
Dobash - Minute
Varga - Hour
Movement - Week
Phoeb - Month
Decaphoeb - Year (the assumption I'm making here is that Altea's planetary rotations were divided into ten rather than twelve)

-

TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 3: Of Glorsnoots, Zees, & Pidgeons

Summary:

Previously: GoodDad!Kolivan tasks his littlest Blade with monitoring Lotor to decide whether or not he would be a suitable candidate to replace Zarkon in the case of the Emperor's downfall. Lotor decides he does not like the overly-familiar Altean named Coran, negotiates the terms of his allying himself with Voltron, and is assigned a galra child as his guard.

Keith takes care to shadow the galra prince closely, if only for the tether his duty provides, binding him to the present when memories of sweat-slicked controls and Matt’s desperate screaming threaten to swallow him whole. There are others, rebels, assigned to Lotor’s watch besides him—partly because Shiro barely agreed to this arrangement at all, let alone as a solo mission, and partly because even Keith cannot stand guard without respite.

God knows he tries.

Nothing else consumes his focus like Lotor, nothing else occupies him so completely. He’d thought the gladiators might, had fought them until he was bloody and bruised and forced to end the simulation through staccato breaths as he struggled not to vomit from the strength of their abuse. It had hardly mattered. Even as his body fought with everything it had, his mind wouldn’t be silenced. All such fights achieved was tiring his body until inevitably his eyelids betrayed him, growing so heavy that he had no choice but to return to his room unless he wanted to sleep on the cold training room floor.

The truth of it is, Keith doesn’t want to sleep at all.

Sleeping means dreaming, and dreaming means waking with a start at odd hours, choking on his own heartbeat as he claws at the phantom blistering of his skin with no assurance that the walls aren’t going to implode at any second. It means scrambling for his knife and desperately trying to pull back from a collision that will never come, not knowing if that’s better or worse, only that he needs to get up- out- elsewhere-

And somehow, elsewhere always ends up being the same place.

It isn’t that Lotor feels safe—quite the opposite. Lotor scares him. The prince is a formidable opponent: powerful, intelligent, and deadly, yes, but Zarkon is all of those things, and yet the way Keith had felt when he’d faced the Emperor with Red, hardly compares to the prickling heat of adrenaline that sparks up his spine whenever he draws nearer to the prince’s location. Keith isn’t scared that Lotor will try to kill him; he’s scared that he won’t.

Lotor is dangerous for all the reasons Zarkon never will be, because Lotor’s nothing like Zarkon and everything like Keith.

Perhaps not on the surface, not with the prince being the silver-tongued wordsmith that he is, but it becomes apparent in the little things: mannerisms such as his meticulous observation of everything and everyone he comes into contact with, the way piercing eyes will—without fail—locate all possible exits as soon as he enters a room, and the subsequent, entirely strategic, placement of himself within every new environment.

And then he sits, waits, only moves on again after what had, at first, seemed to be a curiously undetermined length of time. This stands in stark contrast to everything else the prince has done since arriving in the Castle, and even before, so Keith takes special note of it. Almost sixteen quintants go by before he finds the pattern.

Lotor is systematically mapping the patrol routes of his guards. Never staying quite long enough in one location to arouse suspicion, and only returning to that same location after a few cycles have passed, he’s making his way through his assigned quarter in a rotation that only ever brings him back to place he’s been before at an alternate time, until he must have—at one point or another—amassed a full quintant in every major sub-sector. It’s… clever, Keith has to admit. So he tests it, quietly requesting that a rebel duo regularly scheduled to circuit one of the lower floors before spiralling upwards, instead start at the top and make their way down. To Lotor’s credit, his stride only falters for a fraction of a tick when their paths cross somewhere they shouldn’t, but it’s enough to confirm Keith’s theory.

He takes it upon himself to have words with the rebel commanders later, and ensure that they randomise patrols so as to keep the prince guessing.

He’s confident this will be enough to deter Lotor from trying anything for the time being, because it would him. Not now, maybe, not when he’s fully armed with prior knowledge of the Castleship’s layout and all its inner workings, but when Keith considers before—before the Blade, before Voltron, before they’d left Earth, before the Garrison, even—he remembers scuttling blindly through hallways with creaky floorboards and quickly learning that if you’re going to do something then you better be prepared to do it right, because the consequences for a scrappy foster kid without a penny to his name were never as kind as they should have been.

Lotor may be intergalactic royalty with a father who is all too alive, but the way he carries himself is disturbingly familiar.

 

The first time Lotor is kind to him, Keith can’t leave fast enough.

He’s trailing the prince, as usual, and were his target anyone else Keith would be bored out of his mind. Having quickly caught on to the change in patrol patterns—their sudden irregularity likely too obvious to someone who’d spent every waking moment memorizing them—Lotor has seemingly discarded that particular endeavour, though not without several vargas worth of evidently frustrated inactivity, all coming to head when the rhythmic drumming of claw-tipped fingers freezes without warning, his head turning to fix Keith with a very pointed look.

And if, for half a tick, Keith had thought there to be something almost proud in the narrowing of those eyes, then he’d disregarded it immediately.

So now, Lotor spends the vast majority of his time in the library. If Keith is reading the prince correctly (and he can’t be sure, Lotor demonstrating nothing but seamlessly calculated restraint at all times) then the presence of actual books is just as surprising to him as it had been for Keith himself when he first stumbled across it. Nonetheless, the prince seems inclined to spend his time flicking absently though ancient tomes, and it’s like this that Keith realises Lotor can read altean. Fluently, judging by the careless ease with which he scans over the text.

And so it happens.

It’s a type of normalcy, Keith supposes: the routine of looking to the library for his quarry before the series of rooms Lotor has dubbed to be his living quarters. It hardly matters when in the day-cycle it is, because Lotor sleeps almost as sporadically as Keith himself. It had put him on edge, at first, because Keith couldn’t imagine that Zarkon’s own flesh and blood waking up in a cold sweat every varga like clockwork, which had begged the question: what was he plotting? Now, he’s less concerned. Perhaps because the prince hasn’t tried anything yet, or perhaps because Keith’s eyelids are drooping beneath his mask and there seem more important things to spend the last vestiges of his energy on. Either way, there’s a certain sense of relief in the sound of Lotor closing his book and standing with a sigh in one fluid motion.

Keith doesn’t even realise that he’s slouched against the wall until he’s hurrying to right himself, his head dragging too far behind his body and causing him to totter forward in compensation with an embarrassing lack of motor skills. The hand that steadies him is large. Enough so, that when it curls around his shoulder, the thumb is braced firmly against his collarbone while fingertips are able to reach so far that they press lightly into the base of his neck.

Beyond that gentle grip, and the gentler still “careful, little Blade” that is murmured by a voice too close, Keith can’t ignore how there’s an obvious tension in the room, as if all the air had been simultaneously sucked out of everyone’s lungs and flattened into oblivion.

When he takes half a step back, Lotor releases him like it’s nothing, continuing on his way without another word.

It’s then that Keith sees how every rebel posted around the room is tentatively clutching at their weapons.

It’s then that Keith realises Lotor quite literally laid a hand on him, in full view of them all.

It’s then that Keith knows, if he were wearing anything other than distinctly galran uniform, they would have opened fire as soon as the prince had dared move towards one of their own.

But, of course, Keith isn’t one of their own, and while he knows the Blade of Marmora haven’t been met with a gracious reception on every planet they’ve liberated, it’s one thing to see the distrust in the eyes of a newly-freed victim when you share blood with their oppressors, and quite another to see how Voltron’s allies are willing to let Lotor close enough to snap their comrade’s neck providing said comrade is marked as galra.

The realisation leaves him sickened.

He later tells himself that ducking out the way he did—so obviously, like a spooked animal bolting at the first chance it gets—was stupid. Yet knowing that of everyone in that room, the greatest kindness he received had been from Lotor was… Keith can’t even begin to describe it. The prince’s gesture itself had been nothing more than absent-minded consideration, but that somehow makes it worse, because there is a great deal to be said for thoughtless decency—particularly when presented in stark contrast to allies who might have hesitated to save him for just long enough that there was nothing left of him to save.

 

Another couple of vargas spent in restless slumber do little good, and eventually Keith decides to cut his losses and sneak into the kitchen for leftovers. He’s been doing this since he returned, and Hunk has been just as accommodating as he ever was, always saving a plateful of whatever alien delicacies he’d served up earlier on. Sometimes he leaves little notes prompting Keith to maybe join them at a normal time tomorrow.

All of which have gone unanswered.

Eating together had been… easier, before. Weird at first, but almost fun by the time he’d left, and while with Marmora, Keith had missed the light-hearted camaraderie of mealtimes with the team. Now, when faced with the threat of Allura’s wrath, Lance’s scorn, and the increasingly furious terminator that is Matthew Holt on a mission, he daren’t risk it.

So, regularly scheduled midnight snacks it is.

The substance on the plate is sort of blue, and vaguely gloopy, but it looks like it might contain the extra-terrestrial equivalent of blackberries, and seeing as it’s accompanied by one of Hunk’s aforementioned notes (as well as an artfully scrawled doodle of Pidge in one corner, that a grinning Keith deems to be a self-portrait) he figures it’s a safer bet than anything he’d receive from the goo-dispenser. He blames the unexpected fizz of it on his tongue for taking so long to realise that he’s no longer alone.

Admittedly, Keith had known he couldn’t hide forever.

He’d just expected that, if not Matt, the one who finally cornered him would be Shiro.

As it turns out, it’s Coran who claps Keith on the back, his only warning a joyous exclamation of “Number four!” which definitely does not have Keith stifling a yelp as he leaps from where he’d been quite happily perched on the countertop, spinning on his heel and dropping into a defensive stance reflexively.

Of course, he’s not exactly armed—though he’s pretty sure he can make do with the altean spork in a pinch—and a black cotton shirt and boxer shorts are hardly a substitute for armour, but he would have improvised, had Coran posed any actual threat.

As it is, the older man just looks mildly bemused.

“You know, this may surprise you, but you’re not the first person to threaten me with a culinary utensil.”

“Really,” Keith deadpans.

Coran, being Coran, completely misses the sarcasm, and not for the first time Keith is left to wonder if the residents of Altea ever actually developed that particular brand of humour to begin with.

“Certainly! Why, when I was just a lad I used to work in these very kitchens…”

This is going to be a long one, Keith can tell by the melancholy fondness of the altean’s expression, so he sits himself back down and continues to eat as he listens—he has nowhere better to be, after all, and a part of him has actually missed Coran’s wistful sagas.

“One night I was a bit peckish, so I snuck down here and low-and-behold, there was a half-grown rapscallion pinching the very morsels I had saved for myself!” Here, he laughs, “Well, far be it from me to deny a kindred spirit: we split the food and made a pact all in the same varga! He and I were fast friends from that point on.”

They continue like this, Coran reliving the “heists and hijinks” of his youth, and Keith content to listen until his plate is scraped clean and there seems a slight change in the story’s tone.

“We were different in every way imaginable, but I loved him like a brother. You remind me of him, sometimes,” Coran’s eyes are on him now, heavy with sorrow, and Keith feels the weight of it in his very bones, “all heart and reckless passion; he had the makings of a red paladin long before the Lions were even a concept. Alfor would have died for the people he loved without a second thought… in the end, he did exactly that.”

All at once, Keith realises what this conversation is really about.

Coran knows.

“I won’t lie,” and it’s heartbreaking to hear that cheerful tone reduced to something so brittle, “you really scared me, number four.”

“Coran… I-”

“I know. Faced with those circumstances, he would have done the same.”

Decidedly, Keith would take ten angry Matts over one horrifically understanding Coran any day, but what can he say? He doesn’t regret what he’d almost done, he can’t regret it. Not when it was his life for Shiro’s, for Pidge’s, for Hunk’s... hell, even if Lance and Allura never look at him again, he’d still rather know that they’re at least alive to hate him.

“You won’t… you won’t tell them, right? I mean Matt he-” Keith huffs out something too sharp to be called a laugh, “he’s pissed but I don’t think he’ll say anything until he’s had a chance to at least try and convince me to do it.”

“Well that won’t do any good, will it?” Coran isn’t quite smiling, but it’s an attempt. “I like to think I know you well enough by now to know that if you could be convinced of that, then you wouldn’t be skipping meals only to sneak in here like a greasy glorsnoot.”

Keith won’t even pretend to know what that is, but he takes it at face value and doesn’t interrupt.

“It’s not mine to tell, number four, but I will say I agree with young Matthew. They should hear it from you.”

“I thought you said I couldn’t be convinced,” Keith mutters, and though the chuckle this elicits from his companion is subdued, it is, at least, genuine.

“Get some shut-eye,” Coran gives him a much milder, yet no less enthusiastic than before, pat on the back as he says this, “you look like you could use a few winks.”

Keith grimaces as the thought, and this doesn’t go unnoticed.

“Nightmares?”

It’s a simple enough question, and nothing too intrusive, which Keith is thankful for; it’s bad enough he has to relive the details when he’s unconscious, no need to drag them up deliberately. When all he offers is a curt nod, it’s received with a sympathetic sound, and no further probing.

“I have just the thing for that, hang on a tick.”

Coran darts from the kitchen without giving Keith anything more to go on, but considering that he’s likely not getting to sleep anyway, he stays put. He doesn’t have to wait long.

“Righto!” Coran appears at the doorway again. “This ought do the trick!”

It’s… a bottle of pills, not too different from the type found on Earth. Nothing is glowing, or changing colour, or—god forbid—moving independently. By the looks of things, they’re just small, perfectly round, if somewhat green-tinted, tablets. Keith takes the bottle gingerly, and holds them up to the light to see if he can find the catch. He can’t.

When he goes to take one, however, Coran near shrieks and reaches out to stop him. Now, Keith finds himself very, very afraid.

“Jesus Coran, are they poisoned or what?”

“No, no of course not!” The nervous laughter that accompanies this statement isn’t comforting in the slightest. “Only, when number one did that, he passed out in half a tick, so you might want to wait until you’re back in your room. They’re just a tad more potent when it comes to humans, apparently.”

The implications of this statement take a moment to sink in.

“Number one… Shiro?”

The guilt that flashes across Coran’s features at that apparent slip of the tongue is enough.

Keith had no idea, but he should have done. Of course Shiro had nightmares: he’d been a gladiator of the Empire for a year, they’d taken his arm for Christ’s sake, and done god-knows what else to him in those druid labs. Obviously, Takashi-fucking-Shirogane had nightmares, and was too much of a self-sacrificial moron to ever mention it to anyone, instead opting to shoulder the burden all by himself. As always.

Goddamn idiot.

Keith swallows his frustration—because he should have realised, he should have known—long enough to ask, “Does he… still have them?”

Is he still suffering alone?

It’s with a guilty sort of reluctance that Coran admits he’s unsure, and that while Shiro has asked for something to dull the occasional headache, since his return he’s not mentioned dreaming one way or another. This doesn’t exactly make it any easier, knowing that Shiro has been hurting with little more than alien drugs to help him through it, but the hope that the worst of it has passed does serve to pacify Keith for the time being.

“Anyway!” Coran admirably soldiers on, “you really should try to catch the Zees, as they say.”

‘They’ being Lance, Keith is sure, but he smiles weakly and accepts the butchered phrasing as the well-intended advice it is. As he reaches the door, however, he pauses, fighting his instinct to leave before he says something stupid, and turns back once more.

“Hey, er… Coran? Thanks.”

He’s not sure if the weight of feeling can really be understood through that one word, but the altean’s eyes soften, crinkling at the corners so deeply that blue markings are near lost to view, and Keith supposes that’s good enough.

“Any time, number four.”

 

Confrontational. It’s a word that has been used to describe him by every authority figure he’s ever come into contact with.

So when Keith takes it upon himself to actively seek out Matt, and marches into the green Lion’s hanger where his target is immersed in conversation with Pidge, he clings on to the word. Confrontational, he’s confrontational, always has been always will be.

When the Holt siblings realise he’s there, the younger lights up in welcome while the older locks on to his steady approach like a particularly pissed-off sniper, and Keith suddenly doesn’t feel quite so confrontational as his life leading up to this point might have led some to believe.

“Well look who it is,” and it’s freaky, how the two of them can speak in unison without missing a beat, even more so for how the inflection of tone makes all the difference.

Pidge shoots her brother an odd look, in equal parts amused and suspicious—and by this alone, Keith knows that she didn’t miss the clipped undercurrent of his voice—but refocuses her attention on Keith with something akin to relief.

“It was starting to feel like you were avoiding us.”

A smile accompanies this statement, but Keith feels the guilt like a punch to the gut. He and Pidge have known each other long enough by now that it would be hard to ignore how much she cares for her family, their existence having been the driving force behind nearly everything she’s done ever since Keith first met her, and it’s with a sinking feeling that he’s forced to admit that—for whatever reason—she’s decided to include him in that number.

“Things have been hectic.” It’s not an apology, but the soft brush of his knuckles against her shoulder when he reaches the duo is almost the same thing, and he knows Pidge accepts it as such by the lopsided curl to her lips.

“Yeah, sure, because organising the liberation and clean-up of an entire third of the known universe is a piece of cake compared to babysitting his royal pain-in-the-highn-ass.”

Keith winces at the reminder, but knows nothing is meant by it.

When he asks, “How’s that going?” to direct the conversation away from Lotor, Pidge’s expression sours.

“You know, you never really appreciate the thrill of fighting for the lives of billions until said billions are all up your ass about having disrupted the natural order of things. Looks like freedom’s all well and good in theory, but when it comes down to it, some people actually liked the stability of the Empire.”

“Stability?” Keith balks. “Meaning the systematic oppression of entire galaxies?”

Pidge is nodding sagely, “and the threat that if they don’t play ‘Zarkon says’ to the letter, their entire race will be wiped out like that, yeah. As it turns out, when tyranny is all you know, some people can get pretty attached.”

“It’s basically galactic Stockholm syndrome.” Matt rubs at his temple, but at least he looks a little less like he’s going to throttle Keith here and now. “There are practically no races that unanimously want to return to the Empire, but the problem is we’re negotiating with their monarchs, governments, and other reigning figures. I mean, up until now they held virtually no power, but all of a sudden they’ve found themselves at the top of the food chain and most of them have no idea what to do with it.”

“Matt and I were trying to work out what’s worse: negotiating with a leader who wants to hand the reigns back over the Zarkon and might be willing to betray Voltron to do so, or one who has had a taste of power and suddenly thinks they can tell the entire Coalition to go fuck itself because they totally know how to run a planet all on their own.”

When Pidge springs up and starts pacing, Keith has to take a step back.

“And seriously it’s like-! Who do they think they are? Most of them have been under the Empire’s thumb for thousands of years—their only claim to power is their bloodline, or the fact that they were born on the day of three moons, or they just so happen to have a culturally significant birthmark for fucks sake. They don’t know shit about running an economy or winning a war, they just like the idea of being all powerful. But obviously we can’t just demand that they shut up and sit down and let an altean princess tell them what to do next, because we’re trying to prove that we’re not just the same dictatorship under a different name, so they just-”

“Oooooookay, Pidgeon,” Matt grasps her shoulders and gently sits her down again, “while you have a completely valid point, I’m invoking my big brother rights to tell you to go the fuck to sleep.”

Pidge scowls and opens her mouth to protest, but Matt beats her to it with a series of nonsensical noises as he smushes his hand against her face. There’s a brief scuffle which has Keith looking on in bewilderment, as two perfectly proficient fighters slap at each other’s hands like children, before Pidge finally dissolves into frustrated giggles with Matt ruffling her hair so hard that she almost falls over.

“Fine! Fine, I’m going, but Keith?” Sharp eyes bore holes through his skull, “you better not disappear for another half-phoeb.”

Keith’s mouth twitches into a smile; he nods, replies “no promises,” and secretly hopes that his words are precisely that.

Then he’s left alone with Matt.

“Kogane.”

He sighs, “Holt.”

Matt still doesn’t look happy. Significantly less tense than he did when Keith had first walked into the room, possibly, and his hair is sticking up at all angles thanks to Pidge being as scrappy as she is, but ‘happy’ isn’t exactly the operative word here.

Keith allows for a few more ticks of silent appraisal before he cuts in.

“I wouldn’t have come down here if I was just going to run away again.”

“So you admit it! You have been avoiding us.”

Keith shrugs, “mostly you,” and Matt makes a wounded noise in response, clutching at his heart and staggering into Keith before slinging an arm around his neck, allowing his weight to drag them both down onto the floor in a tangle of limbs. It’s stupid, and melodramatic, and exactly the kind of bullshit Matt used to pull when they were both still at the Garrison.

They end up with Keith on his stomach, one arm twisted uncomfortably beneath him and Matt’s full mass draped across his back, the older man reclined with his fingers laced behind his head and, when Keith strains his neck to look at him, a ridiculously smug look on his features.

“You’re so dumb, oh my god,” and if this situation had been anything short of bizarrely affectionate, Keith wouldn’t have to be trying so hard to fight back startled laughter.

“Oh, I’m the dumb one. You sure about that, Keith gonna-fly-my-ship-into-the-barrier-then-not-tell-anyone-I-almost-died Kogane?”

Admittedly, Keith should have seen that one coming.

“You really want to have this conversation like this?” He doesn’t need to look at him to feel the raised eyebrow Matt greets that with.

“I mean, I’m pretty comfy,” he wriggles slightly as if to prove his point, and Keith grunts as he receives a bony elbow to the spine, “are you not?”

“Remind me why Shiro ever put up with you?”

“Excuse you, I’m loveable as fuck.”

Keith really does laugh at that, and it only takes a moment for Matt’s faux huff of insult to dissolve into the same thing.

“Alright. So,” and apparently they really are going to have this conversation on the floor, “you almost died.”

“Is this a reprimand or a therapy session?”

He feels Matt shrug. Mostly because, despite having significantly increased his muscle mass since they were at the Garrison, Matthew Holt is still a bony little shit, and his shoulder blades are no exception.

“Both, if you like. Look, Keith, what you did? It was insane.”

Keith wants to defend himself, wants to say this whole situation is insane; fighting a war when they’re barely even adults is insane, trying to overthrow an empire that’s reigned for ten thousand decaphoebs is insane, Voltron’s very existence as a superweapon made up of five sentient robot lions is insane. He wants to tell Matt that—of everything—sacrificing his life for the sake of the only people in the universe who have ever really given a damn about him is quite possibly the most rational decision he’s made since leaving Earth.

Instead, he settles for asking: “Your point?”

“Keith,” Matt murmurs his name like it’s painful to do so, “what were you thinking?”

I wasn’t, Keith wants to say, I wasn’t thinking at all. Because that has never been his strong suit, he’s never had Shiro’s patient forethought—though after the Kerberos mission went dark, he’d tried. A creature of habit, he’d once been called: all instinct, no consideration for the consequences, and consistent only in that he adamantly refuses to listen to reason. He’d never begrudged the description, and though he couldn’t remember who’d said it—one of his foster families, probably—he’s inclined to agree with them.

“I’d die for them, Matt.” It’s a whispered confession, and Keith knows he wouldn’t have had the courage to admit it aloud were the situation anything less than what it is. “If losing Shiro was bad, losing everyone would be a hell of a lot worse.”

The tension bleeds from Matt’s shoulders, Keith feels it, and the pressure on his back lifts away. They rise to sit side by side in silence.

“You’re really not going to tell them?”

“No.” He doesn’t even have to think about it. Doesn’t really want to.

“Ever?”

“Would it change anything? If they knew?”

Matt is forced to admit that it wouldn’t, and it’s obvious that he hates it because Keith does too.

“So what, you’re just going to pretend it never happened?”

Keith wishes it were that easy.

“Consider, just for a second, that someone has Pidge at gunpoint. You can stand there and watch it happen, or you can take the hit for her.” The question is implied.

“That- That’s not a choice.” And Matt’s smart, he knows where this is going.

“Exactly. Naxzela wasn’t a me or Pidge scenario, I was dead either way. The only decision to be made was whether I died with them, or for them.”

And put like that, it’s simple.

Keith knows he’ll never regret his decision, even if Coran’s medication stops working and the nightmares never cease. By the look Matt gives him, all soft and sorrowful, he knows it too.

“Alright,” Matt sounds so resigned, “so what, you swear me to secrecy and hope that everyone else who saw you flying that thing just conveniently doesn’t mention it?”

“They won’t.” Of this Keith is sure, but Matt looks sceptical. “I’m galra, Matt, the Coalition isn’t going to care. Plus, with Lotor turning up like he did, they’ve got bigger problems.”

Keith watches as his companion opens his mouth to argue, then closes it again with a frown.

“I… hate that you’re right. Logic doesn’t suit you, Kogane.”

Keith just shrugs, and they sit quietly for a while longer. Matt, decidedly, isn’t bad company. At the Garrison, he’d always been decent enough, and though it’d hardly meant much, Keith had liked him more than he’d liked anyone else there, bar Shiro. Since being found by Pidge, Matt hasn’t exactly had a lot of free time what with his responsibilities to the rebellion, and Keith has obviously been preoccupied with the Blade of Marmora. Still, during their shared moments of peace, few and far between though they’ve been, Keith has found Matt remarkably easy to be around. He’s a lot like Pidge, Keith thinks, if a little less feisty... Pidge if she actually had a regular sleep-cycle, and a more balanced ratio of blood to space-caffeine running through her veins.

“So,” Matt’s tone is damn near conspiratorial, and implies that Keith might have to immediately revaluate all previous conclusions about there being a saner Holt at all, “is prince L’Oréal behaving himself?”

“You’ve been talking to Lance.” Keith groans, and Matt laughs.

“Here and there, yeah, he’s a funny guy. But the name is catching on.”

“I dread to think what he’d do if he found out.”

Matt frowns, suddenly serious. “He’s violent? Should we assign more guards or-”

“No, no he’s not... violent.” It’s the wrong word. Violent implies a temper, and while Keith is certain Lotor has one—and not one to be taken lightly—he’s far too controlled for any sort of outburst. Lotor is more… “He’s quiet.”

“Quiet?”

Clearly it’s not what Matt had been expecting, and honestly it wasn’t what Keith had thought to prepare himself for either.

“Yeah…” Keith trails off. His chosen descriptor doesn’t quite carry his full meaning but he doesn’t know how to put it into words. Lotor is quiet, but it’s not the soft sort of quiet Keith used to find with Shiro when the two of them had been worked to the bone for weeks only to finally steal themselves away for an evening, just the two of them. That had always been warm, safe, something sincere and soothing.

Lotor is the kind of quiet that Keith remembers washing over the desert before a storm. It makes all the hairs on his nape stand at attention.

“I heard you changed the patrol routes,” Matt offers, and Keith latches onto the sound of his voice, dragging himself from his own reverie.

“He was tracking them.”

Matt makes a surprised noise, “By memory? There are almost sixty soldiers assigned to that sector.”

“He’s so clever Matt, it’s-” Keith cuts himself off. Scary, he’d almost said. Frightening. Terrifying. But there’d been something too close to admiration on his tongue; better that he bite it off. “He’s dangerous.”

Keith ignores the weight of that phantom hand on his shoulder.

It burns.

Notes:

First thing's first: Shiro is really important to Keith! This is canon, we know and cannot ignore the facts, and while this isn't going to be a Sheith fic (like, really, if I were writing Sheith it would be tagged as such) I do feel that to write for Keith without touching upon how deeply Shiro has impacted his life would be... reductive? Or at least difficult, for something long-form such as this. Their relationship will play an important (though secondary) role throughout the whole thing*. That is why it's tagged as "Keith & Shiro". Now, thus far, you guys have all been really lovely! I have received nothing but nice comments and honestly they make my day! But I've been a part of this fandom for long enough to know how aggressive it can get when it comes to certain pairings, and I want no part in that. So, as I was writing this, I realised that people may read into it one way or another, and I just thought it best to clarify. Personally, I like Sheith. I think their dynamic has a lot of potential. This fic, however, is Keitor, through and through.

*Though if Matt keeps worming his way into my heart and writing like this, then honestly I'm going to have to tag it with "Matt & Keith" as well, like really, their friendship comes so naturally to me and I love it.

Alright! Moving on: this entire chapter was Keith-centric because the poor boy has a lot going on in his head and I felt we needed to really delve into that to get a good grasp on his deep-seated issues... and if you think this means that the next chapter will be 100% Lotor then you would be 100% correct. I had hoped to get both these chapters out before series five dropped, but that is quite clearly not going to happen now. Even so, I'm ridiculously excited to watch it, and I assure you that I am fully expecting to have my heart broken by the end of it.

-

TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 4: A Lesson in Magnificence

Summary:

Previously: A traumatised Keith works himself to the bone so as not to allow his mind a spare second to think about Naxzela, recieves a small kindness from Zarkon's son and heir, and is eventually pinned down by Coran who offers him the answer to his sleeplessness in a bottle. Pidge is too small and stressed to be dealing with the coalition, and Matt is to Tired(tm) to be dealing with Keith's unparalleled stubbornness.

If Lotor recalls correctly, Altea—utopian metropolis though it once was—had paled in comparison to Daibazaal’s overwhelming scale, the former’s planetary rotations having consequentially been far swifter. The Castle of Lions is a product of such a planet, and while undoubtedly a technological marvel, a masterpiece of its time, the prince quickly learns that it functions on a twenty-varga cycle to simulate its homeworld.

The Empire’s ships, of course, cater to the sleep-cycles of what is almost exclusively a galra populace. Lotor grew up on such ships, spent decaphoebs of his life trusting in an internal clock that had perfectly aligned itself with the artificial ‘day’ and ‘night’ of whichever vessel he happened to be aboard. Even when exiled to the colonies, this had been a constant.

Adjusting to the cycle of a long dead and pitifully small planet is, therefore, maddening.

The prince strides through the labyrinthine halls with purpose. There absolutely must be a manual control room for basic amenities somewhere in this Sa-forsaken place: alteans had been well-known for their diplomacy, after all, and if they once hosted species from all across the known universe, then quarters built to accommodate such variety were practically obligated to have a simple light switch… and he would locate the damn thing if it were the last thing he did.

In an ideal world, he would simply ask his gracious hosts, and they would give him an answer. Problem solved. In this particular instance, however, his host is not so much gracious as a petty royal brat who seems intent on subjecting him to microaggressions rather than properly utilizing his intelligence against their common enemy.

Lotor doesn’t mean to gripe, even if he is only doing so inside his own head, but at this moment he’s both exhausted and without purpose. It’s proving to be a vexing combination.

The only—and he does mean only—comfort this whole debacle offers, is that the altean princess seems to be sabotaging half her own soldiers by way of the same issue. The rebel forces Lotor has observed thus far have been comprised of numerous peoples from across thousands of galaxies. Perhaps a handful of these species hail from planets with rotations which complement that of Altea. The rest, evidently, do not.

This offers Lotor ample opportunity to analyse his newly-trained and tragically sleep-deprived guards.

If Princess Allura truly thought that to keep him from all military discussions would be to keep him out of trouble, then she’s even more foolish than he had first thought. Having little else to do, Lotor has put his mind to tracking the patrol routes of his wardens. There are never less than four stationed outside of what he’s deemed his private quarters, at any given time, and the members of this little group appear to change every five vargas or so. When he leaves the suite to roam any other part of his assigned sector, they trail him at a distance, not unlike wary yupper pups. In addition to this, there are numerous patrol units stalking the halls in a regular pattern that he’s just about pinned down; another few quintants (or at least what counts as such here, because Sa forbid team Voltron use the same quantity of units as the Empire, even if it is universally standardised and blatantly the sensible choice) and he’ll have ascertained their routes. Double that, and he’ll have them memorised.

The single variable is Marmora’s kit.

Enviably, the child comes and goes as they please, staying for irregular periods of time, and often restless without cause. They are on constant alert, always fully armoured and seemingly expectant of some imminent betrayal, but unlike every other individual on this ship, they seem almost annoyed that Lotor has yet to live up to these expectations, their hands itching for a fight.

Lotor cannot shake the sensation of those same hands braced against his shoulder—neither cruel nor kind, only resolute in their mission—as they forced his arm back into its abandoned socket.

Keith, he thinks, is a curious creature.

When the patrols change without warning, suddenly erratic and impossible to track, Lotor stews in his own frustration. It hardly matters, he had no particular interest in the patrol routes aside from as a diversion from his own crushing boredom, but having this small thing taken from him after having dedicated so much time to it is exceptionally bothersome. It wouldn’t be, he knows, had he slept for more than six collective vargas in the last forty-two, but this only returns his thoughts back to his own infuriating inability to locate the sub-command centre.

He drums his fingers irritably on the arm of the chair, absently lamenting the inconvenience of it all. Perhaps the kit can provide him with answers: the child does seem familiar enough with the Castle layout, and the poor thing is so obviously suffering the same ill effects of an irregular sleeping pattern that they may very well be willing to humour him for their mutual benefit.

Abruptly, the rhythm of Lotor’s fingers cuts off.

Ever so slowly he turns his head to the right, fixing the child with a look that he’s sure is in equal parts accusatory and intrigued, because patrol routes don’t just change without reason, and the prince would bet his blade that the Coalition puppets haven’t the brain cells between them to figure out what he’d been up to.

Though that mask remains as impassive as ever, the marmorite juts their chin up fractionally, and it reads as a challenge and a promise all in one.

Not only a curious little thing, but clever too, this child—this Keith—with more of the galra spirit about them than an imperial officer thrice their age. So it’s like this that Lotor occupies his idle mind, seeing as Marmora have so carelessly thrown their kit to his mercy, and truly, it is an entertaining pastime to observe the little Blade. Lotor finds himself in the library, more often than not, the draw of heavy tomes that would have been considered a rarity when first shelved here, now ancient, and too much to ignore, with Keith dutifully pursuing him. Here, Lotor learns, his small-statured shadow is calmer, somehow. It might be that this room is more open: perhaps the child finds comfort in the viewing platform nestled away at the library’s far end, the transparent circle of its sunken floor occupied only by generously cushioned sofas which border the edge, making one feel as if to stand in its centre would be to encroach upon the void of space. Whatever their reason, the kit tends to relax, just fractionally, when here, and so Lotor deems it his primary haunt.

The little Blade hardly speaks, no matter how many subtle invitations Lotor provides, and Keith isn’t exactly expressive either—no, that’s not at all the right word for it—but the prince does discover, much to his own delight, that the kit’s entire physicality is startlingly earnest. The slight tilt of that hooded head bleeds suspicion, while the tightening of their stance as slim shoulders draw back speaks of nothing but a repressed intrigue, a quiet yearning for more, and Lotor cannot help but be somewhat endeared by it all.

He learns not to probe too deeply—an abundance of interest unsettles the child, and Lotor suspects that they’d leave if asked anything directly—but offhand comments under the guise of thinking aloud as he absently flicks through old altean scriptures allow Lotor the opportunity to observe the kit’s reactions out the corner of his eye. Between the marmorite, and the actual contents of the books found in this place, Lotor concedes that there are worse ways to spend one’s time.

The sole issue being, of course, that the prince has never considered himself an idle man.

It’s nearing the conclusion of his fourth movement of neglect at the hands of team Voltron, and he’s irritated. It’s hard to believe that they wouldn’t have benefitted from his knowledge of quintessence shipment routes at the very least, but he’s not seen a single member of their little colour coded club since first having set foot in the Castle. Their princess is suffering at the hands of her own prejudice, he’s sure, and while Lotor is practiced in mind-games such as this, he’s certain that by this point she must have come across something relating to the Witch or her people, and in doing so the paladins have broken the terms of their own agreement by not having informed him of it.

Alternatively, they truly do know nothing of Haggar’s latest activities, and that in itself is a far more disturbing prospect.

Lotor closes his book and stands with a sigh. If they do not summon him by the quintant after next, he shall be forced to make the first move, and that will undoubtedly start this alliance out on the wrong foot, which is something he should have liked to avoid.

His reverie is cut short when he looks up to find the kit near toppling forward, and it’s a matter of instinct to reach out and steady the child before they end up in a crumpled heap on the floor. There’s a beat of silence in which the prince feels the lean muscle beneath his hand fall lax, the kit sagging gratefully into the support for a brief moment, before their entire body draws rigid and Lotor can near taste the tension.

“Careful, little Blade,” are the words on his lips, murmured quietly so as not to provoke either the tiny warrior in his grasp, or any one of the armed guards posted about the room’s edge. With the former being so unpredictable—but clearly worked to the bone, and Lotor tries not to let his revulsion at Marmora’s blatant maltreatment show on his face—and the latter simply waiting for him to give them a reason, the prince knows that one wrong move could see him shot to pieces.

A move such as laying a hand on one of their number in plain view of everyone.

Lotor allows said hand to fall away, turns slowly enough that the motion cannot possibly be read as hostile, and walks on. He counts his footsteps as he goes, one after the other, a casual stride that reveals nothing. He doesn’t look back: not for Keith, not for his own peace of mind, and certainly not for the yupper scum that trail in his wake until he enters his personal quarters, only then leaving him to solitude once again.

A less disciplined man might have done more than simply hiss out a heated breath through his teeth, but Lotor has seen what rage does when one allows it to guide them, and he is not his father.

The bloodlust curling in his veins doesn’t abate any.

When he closes his eyes against the world, he can see the sheer scale of his hand against the tiniest suit of galran armour he’s ever known, in perfect clarity. The image seers itself into his mind with as great an intensity as the concealed knives which burn against his calves. It would be painfully easy, to just walk out those doors and butcher all four guardsmen. They’d deserve it, too, for allowing him to touch one so young so easily, and Lotor’s never found issue with someone for not having made an attempt on his life before now, but galra or no, the little Blade is a child and yet the Coalition’s bigotry apparently serves as reason enough to simply watch on from the sidelines and let what would be, be.

This cannot stand.

Lotor came here for allies, yes, and he knows Voltron are a necessary piece in this game, but beyond their present use to him, their days are decidedly numbered. By extension, the Coalition’s commanders will burn, he’ll see to it personally, and the Blade of Marmora will most certainly have to answer for their negligence.

He cannot, will not, rebuild the Empire on the backs of children.

 

For the first time since arriving in the Castle of Lions, Lotor goes a full quintant without seeing the kit once.

Wisely, every guardsman he comes across allows for a wide berth.

 

The prince is studying ancient star-charts, laying them out on the circle of transparent flooring so as to better compare what he thinks may be a historical record of the Castleship’s current location with the real thing, when muted footsteps pad towards him, the individual drawing far closer than all but one dare. A glance to his left affirms his suspicions, and it’s with a touch of amusement he notes that the kit seems reluctantly inquisitive as to what he’s doing.

“We’re drifting at the outskirts of the Rebulon zone, correct?”

By the way the child’s head snaps up from the charts, Lotor thinks it safe to assume so.

“I suppose your princess is disinclined to move too far from Naxzela so soon,” he muses on this, half turning his attention back to the altean diagrams at his feet while still keeping the kit in his sights, “it seems she does have some sense after all.”

The little Blade doesn’t seem inclined to reply, but they don’t back away either, so Lotor counts this interaction as a success.

He allows silence to wash over the room once more, slowly pacing around the star charts and noting how Keith keeps an even distance between the two of them at all times. Though wary, the kit is far from being openly hostile, and Lotor has observed over the past few movements that they seem only ever to withdraw at odd times, as if from an internal reminder that this alliance is all too new, and he himself still a potential threat.

If personal reminders are required, then perhaps there is hope for them yet.

This child is like Acxa, he thinks, particularly in the way that she’d behaved when they first met, as if she simultaneously wanted nothing and everything to do with him. It’s a thought that he stamps out immediately. Allies are one thing, but friends are a luxury he clearly cannot afford, not when the inevitable sting of betrayal is both too recent and too much to bear. Sentimentality, his father would say, breeds weakness.

Lotor stops mid stride, and hears the kit match him to a fraction of a tick. When he looks up, that impassive mask is looking straight back, and the suspicious head tilt has made its return.

He remembers a girl, small and scared and more than likely to rip Lotor’s throat out with her teeth if ever he’d insinuated as much, and thinks: I wonder…

Clasping his hands gently behind his back, he regards the child steadily, and offers one, long blink. It’s impossible to know whether the gesture is returned, unconsciously or otherwise, but Lotor knows he doesn’t imagine the easing of their stance into something less threatening.

No, not less threatening, but less threatened.

It’s an exchange the likes of which Lotor knows the Coalition yuppers will have missed, because it’s subtle in all the ways the Empire soldiers have had beaten out of them. There’s no delicacy in Zarkon’s inner circle, not anymore, and by extension such physical displays of emotion have been mercilessly torn from the universe his father has striven to build. The offspring of planets whose only interaction with the galra people will have been through the kiss of an iron fist, won’t have the first clue of how to read kindness in the lines of bodies too closely linked to their personal suffering. In contrast, a child of galra blood won’t need to spare a second thought to understand another’s intentions at a glance, and Lotor knows it must have been disconcerting to be faced with someone like him, someone who’d learnt to calculate every tilt of the head so as not to incur his father’s wrath.

You’re like a dead thing, Ezor had once told him, you’re so good at pretending not to feel that you almost believe it yourself.

When he’d asked her how she could be so sure of the contrary, she’d smiled and draped herself across him in the way that Kova did Narti.

Dead things don’t pick up strays.

So Lotor loosens his restraint. With no other galra here to judge him, the only one who stands to gain from this is the little Blade, and it works. When he invites them to sit—because they may appear steadier on their feet today, but he’d still far rather know that they’re not at risk of keeling over at a moment’s notice—they regard him in silence for a moment more before taking a hesitant step back to perch on the arm of one of the long sofas. They’re hardly the picture of relaxation, but considering the circumstances it’s what counts for progress, so Lotor seats himself on the floor without further preamble and returns to studying the stars.

 

A varga passes before the child sees fit to nestle themselves more comfortably on the sofa’s cushions.

 

It’s another two before they migrate from the sofa to the floor.

 

The silence is broken when they ask, “if you already know where we are, then what are you looking for?” and Lotor tries not to preen.

“This particular chart,” the prince taps it lightly, “was near a hundred millennia old before the Sa Tskept. At this point, there are a handful of planets and even some stars that quite simply no longer exist.” He risks a glance up and is pleased to note that the kit is leaning in, as if they can hardly help it.

“The Sa Tskept?”

It’s an innocent enough question, but one every galra child should know the answer to from the time they’re old enough to speak. The idea that Marmora haven’t even taught their kit this much sours Lotor’s mood immediately, and—oh, it seems now that he’s loosened his seamless self-restraint he can hardly hold himself back, because Keith withdraws so sharply that it’s a wonder they were ever there at all.

“My apologies,” Lotor had been doing so well, it would be such a shame to spoil it now, “I was simply… surprised, that your marmoran elders haven’t taught you of it.”

Though this doesn’t entice them back in, it does appear to placate them somewhat.

“Kolivan has more important things to do.”

Kolivan: the commander. Interesting that the child’s first thought is to him rather than their primary caregiver. Lotor files that information away to be pondered upon at a later date.

“I’m sure,” Lotor quells his own distaste with a huff of disbelief, “but no matter: the Sa Tskept is the formal name for the Day of Denouement.”

And, by Brodar’s name, the kit still seems clueless.

“Sa’s Reclamation?” Nothing. “The Fall of Ages?”

The poor child shifts uncomfortably, giving a slow shake of their head, and Lotor desperately wants to put them out of their misery.

“The destruction of Daibazaal by command of King Alfor.” This, crude an explanation as it may be, they at least seem to recognise, with a soft ah of understanding.

“I… didn’t know it had so many names.” They pause, and Lotor imagines their nose scrunching up in thought. It’s a dreadfully adorable concept. “Half of them didn’t even translate.”

“That would be due to Zaalkh having been a dead language since Vrig the Great’s reign.” Lotor sighs because he’s always considered this to be rather a pity, then goes to continue, but notes the return of hesitance to the child’s posture. He makes sure to level his tone before he speaks again. “You have not heard of Vrig the Great.”

The kit shakes their head.

“Have the Blade of Marmora taught you nothing but combat?”

“We’re fighting a war.”

Yes, but you shouldn’t be, Lotor barely bites back, deciding here and now that he holds a great distaste for all the kit’s superiors.

“Zaalkh is the dialect of our ancestors,” he begins, because this seems as good a place to start as any, and anger will get him nowhere, “it was the native tongue of Our First: Brodar, who united the people of Daibazaal under one banner, and conquered several planets in the galra name. To honour Brodar, Zaalkh became the linguistic hallmark of ceremonies and formality, but the common tongue is derived from a far simpler, informal dialect that evolved for everyday use.”

The child is so open in their curiosity, so blatantly enthralled by such basic knowledge of their history, that it’s a wonder any of Marmora’s people have been able to deny them.

“The Sa Tskept is, as I’ve said, the formal title given to the destruction of Daibazaal. Literally translated, it would be The Return to the Void,” Lotor frowns, “but that is why we use the old tongue, to prevent it from sounding so dreadfully inane.”

“The Sa Tskept,” Keith repeats, and the syllables curl around their tongue so naturally that Lotor has to fight back a smile, “Sa as in Vrepit Sa?”

“Indeed, though I’m sure I know what you’re going to ask next.”

There’s a pause in which the prince is given the distinct impression that the child wants to deny that, but they incline their head and don’t interrupt.

“Victory or Death, is another crass translation. Vrepit as Victory is passable, I suppose, but Sa… Sa is the Void, the gap between dimensions to which we shall all return once dust, and form the universe anew.”

He allows for this information to be considered, the kit clearly mulling it over quite seriously, and Lotor more than content to watch on in silence as the little Blade does so.

“So what you meant,” they finally say, “was just that the star-chart is really quiznaking old.”

Lotor lets out a startled burst of laughter, too honest a reaction for him to control it. He definitely hears at least one of his assigned guards drop their weapon, the rest scrambling to keep a better hold of their own, but he cannot bring himself to care.

“Truly,” he leans forward, resting an elbow on his knee and half hiding a smile behind long fingers, “that would be the essence of it. You have quite a way with words, little Blade.”

The noise Keith lets out is a soft snort, but Lotor is fairly certain that beneath their mask, they’re smiling too.

 

He’s so enraptured by this conversation, and at having uncovered such an inquisitive soul beneath all that armour, that Lotor completely forgets his plight against Princess Allura until he has bid little Keith farewell and retired for the evening.

 

Lotor is quietly contemplating how to best go about forcing Voltron to acknowledge his existence when Keith finds him in the library once more. The kit’s pace slows, draws to a halt, and Lotor can hear the ever so subtle shift of their weight from one foot to the other.

This tentative approach is oddly endearing.

Seated comfortably against the cushions, Lotor tilts his head back to look over his shoulder in such a way that it leaves the line of his throat clearly exposed. He can almost hear Zethrid’s raucous laughter at how uncharacteristically submissive his behaviour is, but of Zethrid’s many qualities, sensitivity never was one, and if some obnoxiously vulnerable body language is what it takes to put the marmorite at ease around him, then his pride will survive.

When he adds in an invitingly soft, “you won’t sit today?” for good measure, the child huffs out a breath and settles themselves on the far end of the sofa.

Lotor fixes his eyes on the stars beneath his feet and gives the little Blade ample time to relax back into whatever rare form of companionship it was they’d found the quintant prior. When several dobashes pass in silence, the prince looks up to find the kit’s posture screaming restless impatience, and has to restrain himself from commenting on it.

“Should you like to continue from where we left off?”

“Veiglar of the Black Sun,” and from the way the child breathes the title in a rush of relief, Lotor suspects that they’re grateful he relieved them of the burden of having to ask.

“Veiglar, indeed,” and Lotor tries not to sound too enthused, but this has always been one of his favoured tales, “she was the eighth of our people to claim the title of Emperor, and the seventh to formally do so through right of the Kral Zera. Incidentally, she was also of Brodar’s lineage, and some suspect her of having assassinated her predecessor for the purpose of reclaiming the throne back into her bloodline.”

“I thought Xiadca of Natrh was killed by a creature of his own making in the Arena?”

“His experimental beast, yes, well remembered.” Arrogant as he was mad, Xiadca had thought to prove his prowess in battle by creating a monstrous hybrid, only to kill it before his people. His plan had backfired spectacularly. “Records state, however, that Xiadca was still alive when carted out of the Arena; it is debated as to whether or not he could have survived the wounds, and if so, whether Veiglar had someone ensure that he did not.”

Lotor continues to recite the Daibazaal’s great history under Veiglar’s rule, adding in inconsequential facts that he knows most wouldn’t care for, and revelling in the way Keith laps it up, almost hungry for it. The child possesses a genuine enthusiasm for their shared culture beyond the battles won or the blood spilled, and the prince discovers that despite the information he’s supplying being unable to provide any sort of tactical advantage for the Blade of Marmora whatsoever, this doesn’t seem to matter to the kit.

As much as this delights him, Lotor finds himself deeply saddened by it, because it’s truly unthinkable, how little they know of their own culture, and he can’t help but recall being so young himself, so clueless to his own heritage outside of expectations of bloodshed.

“Ultimately, Veiglar fell to her sister’s sword.”

“The twin blade to her own?” The child sounds appropriately betrayed.

“The very same. It’s from her death that we gained the proverb ‘It is that with which you arm your allies that deals the greatest blow’,” something he himself ought to have remembered, “it’s a lesson in trust, little Blade. You’d do well to take note.”

When they speak, there’s a careful edge to their tone. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Simply what I said,” he thinks back to the brief glimpse of Acxa’s face he’d caught just before she took him out, “trust is a dangerous thing. You know full well that your enemies want to kill you, it’s your friends that you have to watch out for.”

The kit stands, clearly affronted by this insinuation, and storms several paces away from the prince as if to put distance between them would make a difference to the truth behind those words.

“Though in your case,” Lotor continues, unperturbed, “you may want to guard yourself against both.”

He holds the knife between his thumb and forefinger loosely, and when the little Blade turns to fix him with what he’s sure would be a ferocious scowl could he see it beneath their mask, they instead freeze up, all attention locked onto their stolen weapon.

Lotor means it as a lesson. The child really is too open—not trusting, exactly, but still somewhat naïve—and it’s a trait that will see them to an early grave.

“Mistakes will always be made, but you should ensure that yours don’t get you-” killed, he had intended to finish with.

Killed, he doesn’t say, because no sooner has Keith registered what it is that Lotor is holding, do they lunge for him like a wild thing, and by Brodar’s name this child is fast. Lotor sidesteps them on instinct, his footwork sloppy at having been so unprepared for such a violent reaction, and that split tick of being caught off-guard costs him dearly as the kit uses their own momentum to launch themselves off the back of the sofa and straight into Lotor with an alarming accuracy. The two of them grapple upon the starlit void of the floor for less than a dobash before Lotor manages to pin the child under him, his own mass more than enough to restrain their lithe form, even as the threat of their reclaimed knife points towards his jugular. It’s a valiant and quite frankly impressive attempt, but the weapon in their grasp is held too far away to pose any real danger.

Or, at least, it is until the blade glows, extends, and Lotor may have the kit pinned, but they have the promise of a swift death pressed against the hollow of his throat.

Several members of his assigned guard are yelling, several more drawing closer with their blasters trained on him, but Lotor doesn’t hear any of their demands in the face of the perfectly calm yet frightfully sharp request that he yield, issued from beneath him.

He concedes easily, too much in awe to come up with anything particularly witty, and slowly removes the pressure applied to slim wrists so as not to send that blade rocketing forward to bury itself in his neck.

He soon finds himself knelt on the floor, palms raised and eyes bright, as he beholds the little warrior who stands before him. When one of the guards in his peripheries snidely asks what he has to say for himself, Lotor keeps his gaze locked onto the marmorite and whispers “you truly are magnificent,” without even the slightest hint of deception.

“Try that again, and I’ll kill you.”

Lotor doesn’t doubt it.

Notes:

So in light of series 5 having dropped, this fic is going to be canon-divergent. I'd always known that was how it would play out - obviously - but let's just consider everything from series 1-through-4 as totally applicable to this story, and after that... Well, there were some things from the new series that really complimented the direction I'd already planned to take this in, so I'm definitely working those into the plot (hello, Kral Zera, what a gorgeous insight that was into Galran culture), but there were also elements that directly contradicted my own ideas (particularly with regards to key aspects of Lotor's childhood), so I'm just electing to ignore those. Lotor being a history nerd though! And wanting to be an explorer!! I'd already fully intended for him to be really cultured with regards to literature/history/art so all of that just tied in perfectly and I love it.

Please feel free to talk to me about how cute series 5 Lotor was though, like, that little "may I?" when he looked to Allura for permission to use her castle systems had me in tears, what an innocent soul.

IMPORTANT
So I may have only woken up an hour ago, but I can assure you that nothing else that happens to me today will be able to top the fact that one lovely individual has created so much art inspired by this fic!! It's all gorgeous and amazing and I implore you to take a look and send them all the love in the world!!

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TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 5: Ixnay on the Eithkay

Summary:

Previously: Lotor learns how little consideration the Coalition bigots have for the galra kit in their midst, and decides that if the Blade of Marmora care nothing for this child then they don't deserve them in the slightest. He is, however, completely unprepared to be bested by them when he takes his teasing just a step too far.

Keith knows what fucking up looks like.

It’s been a bad habit of his for as long as he can remember, and of the many things the Garrison officers had begrudgingly admitted to him having a talent for, none had outweighed his apparent gift for turning every good thing in his life into a shit show.

He doesn’t know if finally receiving answers about your alien heritage from the son of a universal dictator fits neatly into the category of “good things”, but it’s certainly closer than anything Kolivan had ever offered in the way of information.

So of course he fucks it up.

And it’s his own fault too, he knows, is sure of it as soon as he turns to find the prince isn’t just goading him with the threat of betrayal, but has actually managed to steal his knife. Keith’s hand almost goes to his waist on reflex to where he knows that familiar weight should be, but he doesn’t because it isn’t because he can see it right there, right in front of him, and Lotor is still speaking but Keith doesn’t hear a word of it before he throws himself at Zarkon’s son like a creature gone feral.

His first tackle fails, sending him rocketing into the empty space on the sofa, once galra-occupied and now void of life, but Keith doesn’t let that deter him, instead bracing his feet to launch his full weight backwards before he’s even twisted around. Blindly trusting his instincts is something the Blade of Marmora have tried to hammer out of him, because it’s reckless and stupid and everything they’re not, but seeing as Keith has clearly set a precedent for fucking up, he may as well commit to it.

And it works.

The ensuing brawl is brief: all blunt strikes to torsos while the depths of the universe span out beneath first him, then Lotor, then him again. They grapple with one another for a moment more, but Lotor may well have a touch of that altean strength to him, because in the end there’s no amount of struggling that can throw him off, and Keith finds himself pinned against the window of the floor, cool even through his armour, with the firm weight of his enemy against him. One arm is down by his side, rendered useless by Lotor’s hold, but the other—twisted up between the two of them with the prince’s long fingers curled firmly around his wrist—holds his reclaimed knife.

He looks Lotor dead in the eye as he wills the luxite to revert to its true form, the blade’s tip finding its victim’s throat and applying just enough pressure to dimple the skin without breaking it. Keith finds that, from so close, golden sclera are somehow less prominent, their luminescent quality giving way to the thin ring of colour surrounding dilated pupils.

Lotor’s eyes are a startling shade of blue.

“Yield.” He means to growl, but it comes out a little breathless.

Thankfully, he’s met with compliance, and Lotor carefully removes himself. Keith stands and steps back as soon as he is able, blade still in hand and grip so tight that he’s not sure anyone could to pry it from his fingers, even if they were to kill him first. The rebels are swarming around the two of them, but he has eyes only for the prince who kneels without shame, palms raised but smile sharp, and Keith thinks, I don’t understand you, because the fact that this man looks so pleased at an outcome which has him held at gunpoint is incomprehensible.

When one of the rebels takes it upon herself to gloat at the situation—revelling in having the heir to the Empire at her mercy, no doubt—Lotor doesn’t even spare her a glance. Instead he keeps his gaze fixed intently on Keith, and breathes out “magnificent” as if it’s some great secret to the universe.

The worst part isn’t that Keith thinks this praise might actually be sincere; the worst part is that when he responds to Lotor’s words with a death threat, there’s not a sliver of doubt in his mind that, should the need arise, he’ll follow through with it.

The worst part is that he doesn’t question whether he will, only if he’ll want to.

That thought alone is enough kindling for an all too familiar spark of rage: not at Lotor for being exactly what he is—what Keith should have known he is—but at himself for having been so stupid so as to think, even for a second, that the prince could be anything else. He’d allowed himself to be taken in by pretty words, and patient understanding, and—god—he’d wanted so badly for it to be true.

For a moment he’d believed it.

Magnificent.

Keith doesn’t feel particularly magnificent when he catches one of the rebels giving a status report over the comms, and remembers that he’s going to have to recount his failings to Kolivan. He feels even less so when he thinks of Matt: relatively high up the rebellion’s chain of command, at least of those within the castle, and all too likely to catch wind of this.

True to form, Keith is only allowed a few dobashes of self-loathing before the elder Holt bursts through the library doors at an alarming pace.

“Keith!”

Marmora’s armour is built for stealth, but it does little good when both he and Lotor are blatantly galra in the midst of a room which is anything but. He spares the prince a sidelong glance, finding clever eyes flicking back and forth across the rapidly closing space between Matt and himself with interest, the silent verdict something that, all things considered, Keith won’t even attempt to guess at.

Matt barely even pauses when he reaches them, just tugs Keith to one side by his forearm and barks orders at everyone else to return Lotor to his assigned chambers until further notice. Even as the prince is escorted out with twice his usual detail, his scrutiny still finds Keith at its centre, the intensity of it piercing through the armoured bodysuit and raising goosebumps on his flesh.

 

“Jesus Christ,” Matt waits until the room has emptied to tear his gaze from the doorway, “he looked like he wanted to eat you alive.”

Keith gives a half-hearted snort as he sheathes his knife and lowers his mask.

“I don’t think he eats people, Matt,” but then again, Lotor could be a tiny weblum in a flesh suit for how well Keith can apparently read him.

“Seriously though,” and Matt’s expression has dropped into a frown, “are you okay? I was briefed on my way down here but they’re saying that it was a Blade of Marmora who started it—and obviously that had to be you—but, Keith, I know you; you don’t just attack people without reason.”

“Iverson would disagree.”

“Keith.”

“Alright! It was-” and, shit, there’s really no good way to phrase this, “Lotor took my knife.”

Predictably, Matt’s response is to panic.

“He fucking what?”

If this situation has a bright side, it’s that Matt’s dismay proves the rest of the room’s occupants hadn’t seen the prince with a weapon in hand. Lotor arming himself isn’t the type of thing they would neglect to report, after all.

“I know I fucked up okay, but I got it back straight away and-”

“Literally how? You just said that he took-” Matt’s expression turns to horror in an instant, immediately finding the answer to his own question. “Oh god, Keith, please tell me you didn’t jump the spawn of Zarkon when he was armed and you weren’t.”

Keith fidgets, but can hardly defend himself against the truth.

“You jumped the spawn of Zarkon when he was armed and you weren’t.”

“Say it a bit louder; I don’t think the rest of the ship heard you.”

Matt has taken to pacing back and forth as he curses, and it would be funny how alike the Holt siblings are if circumstances were anything less. “You just- I can’t believe- no, actually, I can and that’s- I mean, you-”

Shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other, arms crossed as he glowers at the floor, Keith waits for Matt to properly gather his thoughts; the reprimand is inevitable, he knows, and worse yet he deserves it.

Keith had thought he was being careful, but he’d also thought that he could read Lotor and clearly that was bullshit, because he’d seen no hint of malintent, nothing to suggest that he’d find himself disarmed—though whether the true root of that was nimble hands or that charming smile was perhaps something to be pondered upon later—but the fact remained that the prince’s silver tongue had spun tales of ancestors that Keith had never let himself dream of, a rich history the likes of which he’d long since resigned himself to never knowing, and he’d practically lulled himself into a false sense of security.

He scowls at the window of the floor and imagines he can still see Lotor there, remarkably docile for a prisoner on his knees, the whispered approval on his lips less admiration and more a prayer for all the reverence it was spoken with. The furrow of Keith’s brow deepens.

It doesn’t make any sense. Even if he has been reading Lotor wrong this entire time, something about the prince’s actions don’t quite suit any scenario Keith can come up with, because whatever advantage Lotor might have stood to gain from acquiring a weapon was lost the moment he revealed it… and he did reveal it, Keith is sure: there had been nothing accidental in the way the knife had been displayed in Lotor’s hand.

Keith blinks. Narrows his eyes. Replays the memory with a frown.

He can picture it clearly in his mind’s eye: long purple fingers curled loosely around the weapon’s bound hilt as it was held out in front of the prince’s torso almost mockingly, extended arm too lax to pose any real threat, and grip all wrong for an offensive manoeuvre.

Though Keith can’t be sure at this point whether or not he can accurately read intent in the lines of Lotor’s body, he’s been fighting long enough to know what a threat looks like, and that wasn’t it.

“He wasn’t going to hurt me.”

When he raises wide eyes from the starry void of the floor, Matt is looking at him like he’s gone half mad, and Keith can’t really blame him.

“I’m serious. Lotor wasn’t going to hurt me, he was-” well, of that Keith’s not quite sure.

“He was…?” Matt seems torn between confusion and exasperation. “Keith, when a prisoner steals a weapon from their guard, things usually end up with someone getting hurt. Take it from me, I’ve been there.”

Keith knows that, he does, but something about this situation sits wrong in his gut. He gnaws on his lip, shakes his head, and struggles to put his instincts into words.

“It doesn’t make sense, Matt. He showed me the knife. I didn’t even know he’d taken it, and he deliberately brought it to my attention.”

“So he was mocking you.”

Keith shakes his head again. Mocking may be the term he’d privately used himself only moments before, but when said aloud it sounds far crueller than the reality. In Keith’s experience, people like that aren’t the type to sit around and regale others with dramatic historical conquests, or patiently explain the nuances of an ancient linguistic system.

It just doesn’t add up.

When a hand lands on his shoulder, Keith jolts back to the present to find Matt quickly retracting the touch and raising his palms in a placating gesture. Keith frowns at him blankly for a few ticks before opening his mouth, closing it again as he thinks better of it, before licking his lips tentatively and parting them once more.

“I think he-”

The hiss of the library doors interrupts him, and when he and Matt turn to look, Lance is standing there with his bayard activated, and uncharacteristically tousled hair. He seems surprised at the emptiness of the room, but when his eyes lock onto Keith in much the same way Matt’s did, he storms towards him.

The red Bayard reverts to its dormant form as Lance advances with the demand: “are you or are you not bleeding out?”

“Um,” Keith is slightly taken aback, can’t help but look down at himself as if having been stabbed was something he might have missed, “no?”

“Awesome,” and with that, Lance reaches the pair of them and, with his free hand, delivers so sharp a strike to Keith’s chest that the marmorite is forced to stagger back from the unexpected nature of the hit, nose scrunching up in a wince of indignation.

“The fuck Lance!?”

“Don’t you ‘the fuck Lance’ me!” He fixes Keith with an icy look which is matched tenfold, “I’m perfectly happy chatting up not one, but two lovely rebel ladies, when they both get an alert that there’s some sort of galra brawl going on between Lotor and his guard, who—news flash, mullet—I would know was you even if you weren’t the only Blade assigned to him. So I rush over here because he’s twice your size and could probably break you in half with one hand, and you have the audacity to be just-” Lance cuts himself off to gesture violently at the air around Keith, as if that concludes his point.

Keith feels the anger seeping from his bones. Though used to being unable to follow half of what comes out of Lance’s mouth, this is such a far cry from what Keith had expected to be faced with after their last confrontation, that he doesn’t really know how he’s supposed to respond. “You were… worried?”

Lance sags, all the fight seemingly drained out of him as he exhales disbelievingly.

“Christ, Keith. I thought I was going to come in here and find you drowning in a pool of your own blood.”

That’s not a no, Keith realises. He swallows whatever noise is trying to crawl its way up out of his throat, and substitutes it with a quiet, “sorry.”

“Dude,” Lance seems to be searching his face for something, and Keith absently wonders what he finds, “are you actively trying to get yourself killed?”

Violet eyes snap over to Matt in the same instant as the older Holt makes a strangled sound, too bitter to be called a laugh. He tries to project the core sentiment of ‘don’t you fucking dare’ without clueing Lance in to this unspoken dialogue, but Lance isn’t stupid (not matter how many jokes me makes to the contrary) and definitely catches something in the sudden tension between them.

“What am I missing here?” His puzzled frown switches between Keith and Matt with too much determination for the former to feel comfortable.

Thankfully, Matt bails him out with a smooth, “nothing, just I’ve been asking him the same thing for way too long and he never listens,” which successfully diverts Lance into taking a few gentle jabs at Keith’s expense before insisting that all three of them go for dinner.

There’s no point in resisting, not when it’s obvious that Matt would rather air the events of Naxzela than continue on as Keith’s reluctant accomplice. Dinner is a small concession. So Keith only fights his companions so far as convincing the duo to let him change out of his armour, before allowing himself to be dragged by arms looped through his own towards the dining hall; trying all the while to put Lotor’s motivations to the back of his mind.

 

---

 

Team Voltron are predictable.

It’s partially their inexperience that betrays them, and partially the ideals of their precious princess, whose responses can be easily anticipated so long as she insists upon letting her blatant bigotry against the galra race cloud her judgement.

As this does not seem something she is particularly inclined to change, Team Voltron will undoubtedly remain predictable, but they are so in all the ways that Keith is not.

The child’s volatile reaction to the realisation that their knife was no longer in their possession was… a miscalculation, on Lotor’s part. His personal defeat—and how rare a thing that was, though, granted, had he been actually trying to maim the kitling then they would never have found the opportunity to gain the upper hand in the first place—served to answer his earlier hypothesis: the Blade of Marmora may very well have assigned one of their finest if that little performance was anything to go by. This doesn’t remotely excuse their blatant disregard of the kit’s youth, of course, but Lotor can’t deny that the feisty little thing shows astounding promise.

It almost makes him want, in a way he hasn’t for quite some time, to take them under his wing: a dangerous game when Keith has already sworn their allegiance to Marmora, but perhaps not an endeavour doomed to fail, not if the little Blade’s genuine curiosity of their heritage is any indication.

Lotor mulls over the child’s growled threat with a private smile.

He shouldn’t, he knows this. Allies are one thing, but the allure of this kit is already far too strong considering that interactions between the two of them have been, up until the last few quintants, relatively limited.

All the same…

Lotor’s attention is forced back to the present as the altean princess sweeps into the room with all the delicacy of an irate klanmüirl, flanked by both the champion, and her aid: the three of them the apparent trifecta of power on this ship.

“Lotor!”

Perhaps, if she had at least made an effort at civility, he would have found it within himself to do the same. As it is, he turns from the wide expanse of space with his hands clasped firmly behind his back, claws biting into palms, and fixes her with a dazzling smile of feigned innocence before asking: “to what to I owe this pleasure?”

It has the desired effect, if not on the intended target.

The champion is the one who surges forward, right arm humming to life as if fully intending to demonstrate to Lotor how he earnt such a title, but Princess Allura holds him back firmly. Even with the strength her bloodline allows her, this seems a strain, though Lotor imagines this is more because she’s unsure of whether or not she really wants to stop her pet beast.

“You attacked him, you attacked Keith.”

Granted, Lotor had known this would be their primary motivator for coming to see him; it had been, after all, his intention to bait them into open confrontation by stealing the kit’s knife in the first place. What catches him off-guard is the very personal nature of the champion’s address. Thinking back, when Keith had first assigned themselves—or rather, himself, apparently—to the prince’s guard, the champion had displayed an unusually high level of distress on behalf of the Blade’s child.

It is a possibility, then, that the kit has two allies here: the black paladin, and that curious rebel boy who had burst into the library earlier, with little regard for how his concern for Keith was met with poorly concealed disdain from his colleagues.

The champion snarls in demand for an answer, and Lotor remembers himself.

“Surely this is more Marmora’s business than yours?”

Princess Allura bites out her retort between gritted teeth. “Kolivan is currently indisposed.”

Gone then, Lotor concludes, leaving behind the kit to fend for himself, unless there are other members of the Blade biding their time in the castle’s shadows. Somehow, he doubts that.

“You,” the champion hisses out, barely in control of himself, “broke the terms of our agreement. This alliance is over.”

Lotor barks out a laugh at that, and lounges more comfortably back against the window to create the illusion of nonchalance in a deliberate effort to infuriate. By the ugly contortion of the champion’s expression, he succeeds.

“This alliance has been a farce from the moment I stepped foot on this ship, and by no fault of my own.” He returns his stony smile to the princess. “I graciously complied with your ridiculous stipulations, and yet you have neither made use of the information I have given you nor asked me for further details. You may be content with cadging me here, but it is counterproductive to our cause.”

“Our cause?” She scoffs, “as if you don’t have a hidden agenda.”

It is an internal battle not to tell the altean brat exactly what he thinks of her.

“What you continuously and, dare I say, disappointingly fail to grasp, is that you and I find mutual vexation in the form of my father. Perhaps I do, as you put it, have a hidden agenda, and perhaps I do not.” Lotor exhales slowly through his nose. “However, you would have no way of knowing, seeing as you have resolved to prioritise your personal grievances over even the slightest attempt to properly benefit from this alliance.”

Princess Allura steps forward, just as fierce as the champion, if not more so, but is stopped by the room’s fourth occupant, who does little more than touch her elbow so that she looks at him. They exchange a silent conversation in less than a look, but it concludes with her withdrawal. Once again, Lotor is forced to question the quiet power that the altean man wields.

The princess purses her lips, takes a breath, and Lotor finds himself at the centre of her attentions once more.

“Prince Lotor,” he arches an eyebrow at the sudden acquiescence to his title, which is just slightly too cold to count as respectful, “I may have been… taciturn, in my attitude towards you, however, as I am sure you can understand, you have actively flown against us in the past.”

“I have,” he concedes, “though beyond our initial conflict which, I’ll admit, was largely by the fault of my own curiosity, I did nothing to seek you out. Magnum opus though it is, Voltron has never been my objective.”

“And yet your ship is built from a trans-reality comet, not at all unlike the one my father crafted the Lions from.”

Lotor barely suppresses a sigh.

“A scientific endeavour, the reasons behind which I would readily explain if you were only to ask.”

The altean princess seems taken aback by this, as if Lotor hadn’t been compliant in near everything she’d demanded of him since setting foot on her Sa-forsaken vessel. Just as it seems she is softening, the champion, meddlesome creature that he is, decides to interfere with a sour expression.

“You still attacked Keith.”

It’s a conscious effort to prevent his personal interest in the child from seeping into his tone. It would reveal too much.

“I provoked him, yes, but I assure you that the first move was not mine. I should have liked to garner your attention in a more diplomatic manner, but I did receive the distinct impression that you were making a particular effort to omit my presence here from your collective conscious.”

The black paladin grits his teeth, but Princess Allura, at the very least, has the decency to flush, even if the subdued, “I… apologise,” she offers seems to physically pain her.

“Apology accepted,” is said more as an underhanded gibe than a true assurance, but Lotor allows himself this snide triviality for all the trouble they’ve caused him. “Well, if that is all, then I think it best we start anew next quintant.”

“Indeed,” and she looks almost as relieved as Lotor feels.

“Hang on a tick, m’boy! Why don’t you join us for dinner? A gesture of good faith and all that, just as Zarkon and Alfor once did.”

Lotor finds he has a strong distaste for this man and his impertinent nicknames, but he smiles and, after a beat of silence in which the universe does not seem inclined to intervene on his behalf, gracefully accepts, biting his tongue and tactfully neglecting to mention what a superb ending that friendship had come to. His sole point of consolation is found in how utterly miserable the altean princess looks in the fraction of a tick before she schools her features.

In stark contrast, the champion bothers with no such façade, and openly glares at Lotor as their trio escort him beyond his assigned quarter for the first time since his arrival.

 

Lotor allows the altean’s (Coran, if his memories serve him rightly) senseless babble to fade into the background long before the four of them enter the dining hall, instead directing his attention to mentally cataloguing the path they take through the ship. He comes to the conclusion that either the altean architects responsible should be embarrassed by their own lack of practicality, or—and this seems by far the more likely option—he is being shepherded through the castle in what must be the most indirect route possible in a clumsy, if regrettably effective attempt to prevent him from learning his way around.

When they finally reach their destination, Lotor is spiteful enough to sweep his arm out in a grandiose gesture which indicates Princess Allura should enter before him, knowing full well that turning her back on her guest will make her impossibly uncomfortable. She tenses, he smiles, and the two of them stand in a stalemate of faux decorum until the champion guides her through the doorway, while non-too-subtly putting himself between his precious princess and Lotor.

When he follows them in, the excited chatter of the room’s occupants dies.

The prince counts five, other than himself and his escorts, all of whom seem to be of the same undocumented species, and Lotor idly wonders what distant corner of the universe they hail from, to have avoided the Empire for so long. He counts off the remaining paladins with ease, and then notes the scarred rebel from earlier who, now that he’s stood beside her, Lotor is certain must share blood with the green paladin.

In the midst of those he recognises, is one he does not.

He’s pretty, by all accounts. Lotor has no idea what standards of beauty the paladins subscribe to on their homeworld, but within the Empire, at least, the stark contrast provided by dusky eyes and such a fair complexion would see the creature before him considered a striking conquest. Dark hair borders high cheekbones, and falls in so haphazard a manner that it should seem an untameable mess, yet, somehow, the tips of wayward strands curl to perfectly frame a sharp jawline, as if such chaos were a deliberate work of art. Though a petite little thing, even in comparison to others of his species, the corded muscle of arms crossed over a lithe torso speak volumes of the man’s field of expertise. While he may not hold a candle to the champion’s build, there’s a cleverness in the way he’s returning Lotor’s scrutiny without shame, and the prince thinks—if Voltron do end up as just another regrettable casualty at the hands of his father—the Arena may well uncover a worthy challenger in this one.

Not that he’d be likely to find himself there, of course. Cannon fodder for the entertainment of the masses is easy enough to come by when thousands are enslaved every movement; the Empire’s generals may be bloodthirsty, but even they would be unlikely to discard such beauty in favour of making him another nameless gladiator. No, far more probable that the poor thing would be called upon to service whichever high-ranking officer first laid eyes upon him.

While he’d never be so crass as to claim another sentient being as a spoil of war, Lotor does quietly lament at not having encountered this handsome little warrior under more favourable circumstances.

In another life, perhaps.

As it is, Lotor tears his eyes away from the group at the room’s far end, and sits when directed to do so. Princess Allura seats herself at the head of the table, as physically far removed from him as she can possibly be, and her companions all quietly follow suit.

Dinner is a stilted affair.

It’s no secret that the paladins would have clearly preferred him to have taken his evening meal in solitude as he has done since his arrival, and on this particular point, Lotor is inclined to agree with them. His discomfort is only worth it because theirs is clearly greater, but the prince does catch his thoughts wandering towards the dangerously wistful territory of suppers taken in the company of his generals.

Zethrid usually devoured her food without regard for decorum, and while Ezor habitually laughed at the sight of it, Acxa—ever-exasperated by such antics—would never fail to make another futile attempt at having the unruly pair behave themselves. Lotor thinks fondly of how he would often shoot a sidelong glance at Narti across the table, and have her somehow return the look despite her lack of eyes.

He thinks of her heated breath on his cheek, how it had stuttered as he ran her through, and has to place down his cup with far more care than such a simple action should require.

Team Voltron and company have been talking quietly amongst themselves and doing a poor job of pretending that Lotor isn’t present, but it’s only when the blue-red paladin squawks obnoxiously, his eyes darting between the yellow one and Lotor himself, that the prince takes any notice of their conversation.

When the yellow one makes a confused noise in response, his eyes flicking towards Lotor before hurriedly returning to his loud-mouthed friend, he seems utterly bewildered.

“Hunk, my man, I think it’s better if we ixnay on the Eithkay.”

Lotor blinks.

Intercepted communications between the Lions during battle, as well as memories leeched from the champion and his original companions when they’d first been taken prisoner, had offered the Empire ample linguistic data on their species’ mother tongue. As a matter of principle, this new language had been a compulsory update to the translators of even the most low-ranking imperial grunts.

Whatever that was, however, had been left as foreign jargon.

“What, why?” The yellow one looks no less puzzled, but the implication of his question was that he had comprehended his smaller friend’s words, just not the reasoning behind them.

“You know how we learnt a certain something about a certain someone…?”

Though Lotor has a sneaking suspicion that he is the ‘someone’ in this scenario, this doesn’t seem to clarify anything for the other participant of this conversation, and the blue-red paladin’s shoulders sag with a huff.

“Alfhay alragay.”

The yellow one still doesn’t react beyond a baffled nod of assent, but the green child lights up, her eyes darting between Lotor and the table’s other occupants with a sense of horrified realisation that Lotor doesn’t like being ignorant to.

“Oh shit, you’re so right! Yeah, no, Hunk: definitely ixnay on the Eithkay.”

“Okay??”

It’s clear that the yellow one is still in the dark about this, but Lotor feels oddly pacified by the knowledge that he’s not the only one. Looking around the table, the only other occupant who actually does seem to be in on this coded language is the rebel, who hums with a furrowed brow before jerking his chin up in a none-too-discreet gesture, first at Lotor, and then the attractive soldier, all the while shooting a deliberate look towards the yellow paladin.

“Do you eesay the roblempay?”

The sudden manner in which thick eyebrows shoot up to the paladin’s hairline says that the message—whatever it may be—has been received. The blue-red one sighs in relief.

“Exactly. So maybe don’t do that, okay buddy? I mean, what are we supposed to do if Otorlay decides to add Eithkay to his aremhay?”

Both the green paladin and her rebel sibling choke on something that is in equal parts alarm and delight, while the yellow one looks like he might cry.

“Dude no! Don’t even joke about that!”

Lotor does not intend to sit here and be ridiculed by people who haven’t the nerve to do so in a tongue he comprehends, and so coughs very deliberately before pasting a sharp smile onto his features.

“You could simply ask me to leave.” He’s rewarded with a satisfying level of dread for his bluntness, and he sincerely hopes they think that he’s understood their little coded conversation. “As entertaining as you are with your rudimentary verbal cyphers, I would hate to think that my being here is an inconvenience, so I shall excuse myself.”

He stands, unsurprised when the champion immediately does the same with a firm insistence that he will “show Prince Lotor back to his rooms,” and makes his exit without another word.

Notes:

I have had deadlines and one hell of a migraine, but now that my life is starting to pull itself back together, you can have this hot mess <3

So what's a new chapter without a little self-loathing from Keith, right? Oh, and you know what else I love? (aside from Matt, because literally nobody can stop me from just forcing his character down your throat) ...Lotor waxing poetic over a face he has seen for all of two ticks. Sue me.

-

TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 6: Keith is an Innocent Pumpkin

Summary:

Previously: Keith has a minor panic over the fact that he actually allowed himself to be lulled into a false sense of security by Lotor (of all people), only to realise that things mightn't be quite so cut and dry. Matt & Lance are not so convinced. Lotor decides he is quite taken with Marmora's child, and the more Princess Allura and her Champion try to dissuade him, the greater his resolve. An unfortunate dinner ensues, but at least the company is pretty.

Keith likes his Earth-clothes. It’s an odd sort of attachment, and not one he ever thought he’d have to the ratty black jeans and faded tee that had once been the same colour, but he’s gained a new-found appreciation for this attire after so much time spent in armoured bodysuits that are designed to keep him alive above all else. Alive, he’d quickly learnt, was not at all synonymous with comfortable. So even if he hadn’t been allowed enough time to pull his jacket on—had barely tugged the soft cotton shirt over his head—before his bright-eyed companions looped their arms through his and marched him towards the dining hall, Keith finds that the simple act of wearing plain old civilian clothing leaves him feeling markedly more human than he has in phoebs.

Or, at least, as human as someone who is literally half alien can feel.

When the doors slide open, it’s the smell that hits him first; it’s not familiar, not even remotely, but it’s good and warm and, god, Keith has no idea what he did to deserve Hunk Garrett and his culinary skills, but it must have been pretty damn incredible for the universe to reward him like this.

By the absolutely obscene moan Lance lets loose as he releases Keith and bounces across the room, he’s clearly of much the same mind.

“Hunk, my man, that smells like heaven.”

Hunk laughs as he sets the last plateful of food down near where Pidge is seated with her legs propped up on the table, shooing her feet away with one hand while simultaneously beaming at Lance in greeting. When Matt cuts in with “McClain, please, no orgasmic noises around my baby sister,” it’s Pidge who reacts first: her middle finger raised and a deep breath which says she’s more than ready to reply with an exaggerated moan of her own, just to spite her sibling, until her glare lands on Keith and she practically falls out of her chair.

“Doth mine eyes deceive me? Or has our resident cryptid finally come to dinner?”

Before Keith can reply, Hunk’s head snaps up and his smile—impossibly—widens. It’s unclear whether Keith is shoved forward by Matt or simply grabbed by Hunk, but the end result is that he’s wrapped up in arms that are as strong as they are soft, and really can’t bring himself to complain.

Though his words are muffled against Hunk’s shoulder, Keith manages to breathe out: “s’good to see you too big guy.”

The yellow paladin sniffles, momentarily squeezes just a little tighter, and then steps back with a watery grin. Before he can say anything, however, Pidge is cutting in with a gentle jab to the ribs and beaming smile of her own, for which Keith is grateful because he’s not even remotely equipped to deal with the repercussions of making Hunk cry.

“And with that,” Lance is suddenly hooking one arm around Keith’s neck and the other around Hunk’s, which doesn’t really work because of the obvious height difference, but clearly doesn’t deter the paladin either, “the whole gang’s back together.”

“Iconic,” Matt intones, his chin resting on top of Pidge’s head as he valiantly ignores the way she’s swatting at him, “and all it took was one attempted stabbing.”

Keith sends him a scathing look, but the damage is already done.

“Oh my god Keith, what did you do?”

“Nothing!”

He winces at the way his own voice has pitched defensively high, and when Pidge simply deadpans his denial, as if to say ‘I don’t believe you’, he’s not at all surprised.

What does surprise him is the near flawless deflection Lance provides as he stretches out one long leg to poke the green paladin’s nose with the tip of his shoe, the sudden bulk of his weight dragging Hunk down and near buckling Keith, while the gesture itself immediately earns an exclamation of disgust from Pidge as she bats him away. Though this sends him toppling to the left, Lance, being Lance, doesn’t miss a beat, and slips his arm from Keith’s shoulders to spin around Hunk, turning what should have been an awkward staggering into some oddly graceful footwork.

Hands on his hips, Lance’s momentary surprise at his own recovery is turned into a kind of innocent delight as he shoots Keith a wink, before wagging one finger in Pidge’s direction.

“Nu-uh, we’re not doing this! Just because mullet’s finally joining us and pretending to be a civilised human being, does not mean he gets to be the centre of attention.”

Hunk begins to protest with something that sounds like “we’ve literally not seen him for months,” but is cut off by Lance thrusting his arms up in the air with an exclamation of, “besides! I have news!”

Keith can feel a smile tugging at his lips, and when he prompts the paladin to continue with a questioning noise, Lance shoots him a conspiratorial eyebrow wiggle which says he knows exactly what he’s doing, and that Keith is probably going to owe him one.

He finds, strangely, that he doesn’t much mind.

“Check this out,” Lance is holding the red bayard out proudly, and Keith isn’t quite sure what he’s supposed to be looking at—aside from a needling reminder that he’s no longer really a part of this team—until it morphs into neither Lance’s usual compact blaster or his secondary sniper rifle, but a sword.

“Holy shit.”

Keith isn’t the one who voices this sentiment, but his jaw has definitely dropped, and he agrees whole-heartedly.

The blade itself is gorgeous; everyone crowds around it and makes the appropriate cooing noises,—possibly more for Lance’s ego than the bayard itself—but it really is impressive, and Keith makes sure to say as much with all the sincerity he can muster. Lance preens under the praise: despite his posturing, it’s obvious that there’s a genuine pride there, and Keith is happy for him.

He thinks of the shrunken figure that had awkwardly sidled through his doorway one evening, mumbling some mathematical nonsense about too many wheels, and is really, sincerely happy for him.

Lance deserves this.

So Keith wrestles down the twisting in his gut, and listens to Lance’s babbled explanation of how he’d been training and it had “just kind of happened”: a blaster one moment, a blade the next. There are sound effects and wild gestures (though thankfully not with his sword-arm) that accompany this grand retelling, of course, and in the wake of his friend’s joy, Keith almost manages to convince himself that this turn of events truly doesn’t bother him.

“-and according to Allura, this is the same form the bayard took when Alfor was the red paladin which is obviously super cool. I mean, literally the same sword as King of the Space Elves. You cannot beat that.”

Keith is forced to agree.

For all Lance can be obnoxious, he’s unfailingly kind and loyal and good. Nobel. Red had seen these qualities in him and accepted him as her paladin—and, sure, she might have accepted Keith first, but he’d also thrown himself out into deep space without a tether, which hadn’t exactly been the best game plan, so there’s every possibility it had been more pity than anything.

Where Keith is reckless, Lance is strategic. Where Lance is charming, Keith is reserved.

Lance is suited to diplomacy just as Allura is: they’re both unfailingly charismatic—though in quite different ways—and people can’t help but flock to them. Keith has always had a habit of giving off the wrong sort of vibe without conscious effort, and while he’s never craved adoration in the same way Lance does, he’s never exactly been fond of the way liberated aliens would often make a particular effort to tiptoe around his immediate vicinity.

And that had been before they’d learnt he was galra.

His heritage isn’t exactly common knowledge, but it had been mutually agreed upon that to hide it would be to send the wrong message. The original hope had been that by gently introducing the Coalition leaders to the idea that a paladin of Voltron was also a Blade of Marmora, it would bridge the gap between the Coalition and their galran allies.

It hadn’t.

In the phoebs before they’d found Shiro, concerns at having a galra piloting Voltron had been voiced frequently—often directly to Allura as if Keith weren’t stood at her right hand—and after Shiro’s return their anxieties had only worsened.

You have the original back, so why are you still using the substitute?

Allura had patiently explained that Shiro was still recovering, and that Keith was perfectly capable. Not even a full movement later, and Keith had almost seen them all killed in the fight for the Teludav.

How can we rely on Voltron when one of your paladins shares blood with the enemy?

After a long-suffering sigh, Allura had reiterated Marmora’s involvement in their shared liberation efforts through gritted teeth, but Keith had been forced to wonder if her stilted reply were for the repeated questioning she found herself subjected to, or the scripted answer of unity she had little choice but to give.

What if history repeats itself?

Keith wasn’t supposed to have heard that one. That particular conversation had been the hushed whisper of a frightened thing, and when he’d peered around the corner, he’d seen Allura standing with her mouth agape, her companion the reigning sovereign of planet Nalquod.

“It won’t,” she’d told him, “Keith is a dear friend, and I trust him.”

“I’m sure your father thought the same of Zarkon.”

She’d balked at that, her whole being gone taut, but when she’d hissed out “how dare you-” the alien’s ear-like appendages had drooped sadly.

“It is a shared tragedy, Princess. Our Lord Blaytz fell to the same betrayal, and my people still suffer at galra hands, I simply do not wish to see you follow the esteemed paladins of old.”

“I trust him,” she’d repeated. Had the words not faltered on her lips, Keith might have believed her.

There was a danger to him being a paladin that even Shiro’s guidance had been unable to remedy; Keith knows that he’s still too thoughtless, too hot-headed, too obsessively single-minded upon that which is right in front of him to see the bigger picture.

Too galra.

The soft tap of altean steel against his calf, cool even through his jeans, startles Keith from his reverie, and he looks up from the bayard to find Lance with a particular glint in his eye that promises nothing but trouble.

“So I think we can all agree,” he purrs, leaning in with a sly smile as if about to impart some devilish wisdom, “mine’s bigger.”

Hunk immediately throws his hands up and walks away, only to turn around again with pain in his eyes as he awkwardly sidles over to where Pidge cackles next to Matt, who has hidden his face in his hands, as he shakes with laughter. Keith… doesn’t quite see what he’s missing.

“Obviously?” He tilts his head to the side as he scrutinises the blade again, trying to catch up with the world around him, “yours is clearly a broadsword, of course it’s going to be longer; it’s probably slightly thicker too.”

Lance chokes, and Keith thinks he must have swallowed wrong because he’s starting to go a little red in the face, but his concern is waved off with an amused, “never mind, I’d forgotten how dense you can be,” which is rude, because if the paladins are surprised by such simple facts then clearly Keith is the only one who knows anything about swords at all.

Before things can escalate further, Matt swoops in and pats Keith on the head in a way that is in equal parts affectionate and condescending, crooning about innocence and all the qualities his baby sister apparently doesn’t have, as she still struggles to breathe through her wheezy hysterics.

Keith is halfway through demanding an explanation as to what about his knowledge of melee weaponry is apparently so comical, when the doors hiss open to admit Allura and Shiro, both of whom have faces carved from stone. Keith’s heart jumps to his throat: he’d braced himself to be chewed out for his recklessness, expected it even, but they’re both positively livid.

When their eyes find him, there’s a moment of mutual panic—almost outright fear—which makes very little sense on their part, until Lotor steps in behind them with a smile that says he hasn’t quite decided whether he would rather kill everyone in the immediate vicinity, or just himself to get it over and done with. Keith has seen that look several times over the course of the past phoeb, and it’s such a particular brand of uncomfortable that he can’t help but be simultaneously amused and sympathetic every time he sees it.

By the deathly silence that falls over the room, Keith realises that the others may not share in this opinion.

Coran strides in behind the prince, the most relaxed by far until his eyes land of Keith, his face twisting to mirror the same complicated alarm that Shiro and Allura wear, and it’s like this, with a sudden swell of all-consuming dread, Keith realises that he probably isn’t supposed to be here.

It shouldn’t be surprising, not after having avoided them all for so long, but he’d thought—he’d assumed, what with Matt and Lance so insistent upon him joining them, and Hunk and Pidge’s warm reception—that he was still welcome at their table. Another quick glance at Allura’s expression suggests that this may not be the case.

So instead he looks to Lotor.

Lotor looks right back, eyes flicking over Keith in quick appraisal with a touch of liquid heat to it, and Keith—inexplicably—feels himself relax. There’s something dark behind that attention, but it’s less hostile, more inquisitive, and Keith can’t help but hear the echo of magnificent in the back of his mind, and so he returns this curiosity openly.

Because Lotor didn’t try to threaten him earlier—he just didn’t—and although Keith can’t put his reasoning into words, he’s never been so sure of another’s intentions as he is right now.

 

Dinner isn’t nearly so much fun as Keith remembers, and he’s not sure whether this is his fault or Lotor’s, but Shiro’s not subtle in the way he keeps looking between the two of them as if expecting a brawl to break out at any moment. Keith, for his part, keeps his head down and picks at Hunk’s alien concoction with notably less appetite than he’d had before.

When he sneaks a sidelong glance at Lotor, the prince’s posture is better than even Allura’s, and he eats quietly, without complaint. He’s also very far away, having been seated down the opposite end of the table, and though Keith doubts that stilted small-talk would help the situation any—particularly when that’s not at all his strong suit—he doesn’t like how sad Lotor seems.

It’s probably weird to feel sympathy for someone who, not two vargas prior, stole a family heirloom and then half threw you to the floor when you tried to retrieve it, but Keith can hardly help it, not when the line of Lotor’s mouth draws tight, his shoulders too, the prince’s façade of elegance betrayed by the all too careful return of his cup to the tabletop.

Keith frowns at clawed fingers as they curl into a fist, too slowly to conceal the tremors that have taken hold of them.

“Hey,” Hunk’s soft tone of concern draws Keith’s attention back to a conversation he’s barely heard a word of, “you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” must somehow be the wrong answer, because the yellow paladin’s brow furrows.

“You don’t have to stay, you know. You can leave?”

Keith blinks.

Then his stomach plummets. If even Hunk is trying to get rid of him, he really must have missed some social cue or another, and without thinking his eyes seek out Shiro—for comfort or guidance he doesn’t know, but no sooner has he looked to his oldest friend does he wish he hadn’t, because Shiro doesn’t really do anger, and yet right now he’s scowling at his plate as if it’s personally offended him.

So like that, Keith knows he’s fucked up.

He curls back into his seat, hurriedly trying to work out if leaving now would make things better or worse, and only barely hears Hunk say the first half of his name before Lance cuts him off with a squawk of protest.

“Hunk, my man,” and Lance’s voice is strained enough that Keith risks a look in his direction, relieved to find that Lance isn’t looking back, and so this outburst, at least, maybe isn’t his fault, “I think it’s better if we ixnay on the Eithkay.”

Hunk makes a confused noise, but his question is “why?” as opposed to Keith’s “what?”, and looking between the two of them, Keith chalks it up to another one of those Lance-and-Hunk things.

“You know how we learnt a certain something about a certain someone…?”

Lance’s words aren’t damning, not exactly, but Keith silently retracts his earlier hope that this could be something for which he isn’t to blame when broad shoulders slump with a huff, blue eyes flicking between him and Lotor, then back to Hunk, with something undecipherable behind them.

“Alfhay alragay.”

Pidge jolts at that, near launching herself from her chair and breathing out a curse, all before hurrying to affirm Lance’s cryptic nonsense with a pointed stare. Hunk remains as visibly confused as Keith feels, but agrees to whatever it is he’s being asked to do, and the tension in Lance’s shoulders alleviates some.

Keith’s instinct is to look once more to Shiro, but he daren’t, so instead his eyes find Matt. The elder Holt seems to be in agreement with whatever’s going on, but he spares Keith a weak smile which is somewhat reassuring, until he proceeds to jerk his chin in Lotor’s direction and then back towards Keith, all the while fixing Hunk with a meaningful frown.

“Do you eesay the roblempay?”

After barely a moment more, the yellow paladin’s confusion breaks into an expression torn between understanding and panic. Contrary to everything that expression seems to portray, Lance sighs in relief.

“Exactly. So maybe don’t do that, okay buddy? I mean, what are we supposed to do if Otorlay decides to add Eithkay to his aremhay?”

Much like earlier, there’s an abrupt burst of laughter from everyone around him, and Keith has somehow missed the joke. Before he can ask, however, there’s a pointed cough from the other end of the table, and all glee falls prey to the sharpness of Lotor’s smile.

“You could simply ask me to leave. As entertaining as you are with your rudimentary verbal cyphers, I would hate to think that my being here is an inconvenience, so I shall excuse myself.”

Without another word, Lotor stands—Shiro’s chair screeching back across the floor as he follows suit without hesitation—and does just that.

Keith watches them go, and thinks he finds something defensive in the prince’s gait even as the doors hiss shut behind him. Lotor’s smart, Keith knows that better than most, so it’s entirely possible that the prince saw something in the past few dobashes that Keith missed entirely, and if so, he didn’t like it at all.

Keith means to ask, but when he turns back around everyone’s looking at him like they’re expecting something, and his previous anxieties return with a vengeance, worsening further still when Allura springs to her feet and is upon him in an instant, surging forward even as Keith flinches back into his seat and-

She’s hugging him.

She’s hugging him, and Keith’s arms—half raised in his own defence—now hover awkwardly in the air around her as he blinks at the others owlishly, his view obscured by the quite frankly ridiculous volume of luminescent white hair. Were it anyone else, he might think the normal thing to do would be to return the hug, but he and Allura don’t exactly have a simple history, and seeing as the last time they spoke she’d been boring holes into the side of his head for opposing her decision with regards to the son of the man who massacred her entire civilisation… he’s understandably cautious.

She pulls back after what can’t have been more than a few ticks, but felt like an entire lifetime, and Keith becomes uncomfortably aware of the fact he has a lapful of altean princess and absolutely no idea of what to say to her.

Thankfully, Allura seems inclined to do most of the talking, though when she opens her mouth it’s a far cry from the reprimand Keith expects.

“Oh Keith I am so sorry. We would never have brought him here if we’d known; I mean, really I would rather not have brought him here at all-”

“That’s on me actually, number four,” Coran chips in, guiltily, tugging on his moustache with a frown, “I thought it might be a good way to smooth things over.”

“But of course we never imagined you’d join us today of all days—not that I’m not glad, of course!” Allura offers him a weak smile, “only I wish it could have been under better circumstances.”

She’s looking at him all doe-eyed and sorrowful, and Keith knows this is his cue to give an answer but he’s not really sure what to say, so he just nods dumbly and hopes that’s enough.

“I truly am sorry, Keith. I never meant for, well, this.” She waves her hand vaguely at nothing, and Keith nods again in an attempt to pretend that he knows why he’s being apologised to. Judging by the look on her face, he’s not very convincing.

“I mean it.”

Keith hesitates, before slowly nodding once more.

“I think he’s in shock,” Pidge seems to be fighting off a grin, and when Keith can only give yet another small nod in agreement, she gives up entirely and starts laughing.

“You’ve short-circuited his mullet brain and I can’t even make fun of him for it,” Lance looks thoroughly disappointed by this, but his words cause Allura to huff.

“Is it really so hard to believe that I would apologise?”

Lance snorts, “no more unbelievable than you throwing yourself at Keith when I am right here, but please, continue.”

Keith feels Allura go ridged against him and after a moment, ears turning ruddy and flicking like a cat’s, she bolts upright in a flurry of skirts with more flustered apologies on her lips.

“It’s fine,” he manages to croak out, standing with his palms raised to pacify her, “no, seriously, Allura, it’s fine, I just- I don’t know why you’re apologising?”

She pauses, eyes wide and mouth gaping.

“Because… because we brought Lotor here?”

“I mean, technically you voted against him being here, so that’s more my fault-” Keith starts, but she’s shaking her head with a frown.

“No, here. To the dining hall.”

“Yeah,” Keith stares at her blankly and she stares right back, “I noticed.”

They’re stuck in a stalemate of quiet disbelief until Matt cuts in with, “Jesus Christ Kogane, the guy tries to carve you up, and less than a varga later you’re cool with sitting down to dinner with him—what the fuck?”

Keith opens his mouth with a frown but Pidge gets there first, all mirth melting from her expression in an instant.

“He fucking what?”

“Lotor,” Matt explains, the line of his mouth pulled taught, “took Keith’s knife and tried to gut him.”

Keith sends a disgruntled noise in the elder Holt’s direction, but the damage is already done. Lance is looking at him in cold horror, and the echo of the paladin’s earlier concern—“I thought I was going to come in here and find you drowning in a pool of your own blood”—makes Keith wince guiltily, but before he can explain himself, or Lotor, for that matter, Hunk is upon him with gentle hands and frantic words as he hurriedly checks him over.

“Oh buddy please tell me you’re not bleeding; you’re not bleeding, right? Keith, seriously, if you’re bleeding you need to tell me right now because I know you’re all strong and silent but I cannot have you dying on me.”

“Hunk- Hunk,” Keith clasps one broad shoulder firmly, offering a weak smile, “I’m fine, it was nothing.”

“Nothing?” Allura hisses, and Keith finds himself taking half a step back because this is more in the vein of what he’d expected earlier. “Keith, all the reports I received agreed that there was a brawl between Prince Lotor and one of the Blade, and that it was resolved without incident, but if he managed to arm himself-”

“Allura, listen to me,” Keith makes sure she’s not going to interrupt before he starts, “Lotor isn’t what you think he is—no listen—he’s not. Hell, he’s not even close to what I expected, and I get that you’re freaked out by him being here, but you need to look past that and think about what use he can serve to Voltron.”

Lance scoffs, his eyes cold, “and yet you conveniently didn’t mention that he tried to stab you.”

“I…” Keith runs his hand through his hair roughly, hissing out an exhale through his teeth, “I really don’t think he did, Lance.”

There’s a moment of quiet in which Keith is sure Pidge mutters “bullshit” under her breath, but Lance is meeting his eyes dead on without blinking, as if genuinely considering this idea, which is more than Keith could have hoped for.

“Alright,” a muscle jumps beneath the tanned skin of his jaw, “then what happened?”

Keith frowns at nothing, and runs the memory through in his head one final time, scouring for the catch only to come up emptyhanded.

“I think,” he meets Lance’s steady gaze once more, encouraged by the patience he finds there, “I think he was trying to be kind.”

A couple of the others make sounds of disbelief, but Keith only has eyes for Lance, who slowly inclines his head.

“Right. Okay, you’re going to have to explain that one.”

And so Keith does.

He recites the sequence of events just as he later would in his report to Kolivan, and Lance listens without judgement even as the others are reluctant to do so. Keith tries to describe how it wasn’t just Lotor’s grip that was wrong, but his tone of voice, his movements, but he can’t quite put it into words; even so, Lance gets it.

“Alright mullet,” there’s a look shared between Lance and Hunk before the former continues, “but does he know you’re half galra?”

Keith pauses, surprised, and considers this for a moment. His instinct is to say no, but… “Lotor’s smart. He’s not seen me without my mask before, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s worked it out,” Keith knows he’s small for a galra, after all, so it wouldn’t be an impossible jump of logic.

“Let’s hope he hasn’t,” Allura’s expression is grim, “he’d only take advantage of it, if he knew.”

Keith inclines his head to her, earning what he thinks is supposed to be an encouraging smile, and doesn’t voice his doubts even as they sit heavily at the back of his mind.

Lotor using their similarities against him isn’t impossible—it’s not even improbable, given the things he’s done—and yet the concept is one Keith finds himself distinctly uncomfortable with.

 

Keith ducks beneath the gladiator as it swipes at him with its staff, his own weapon one to match and clumsy in its unfamiliarity, but similar enough to those he used to use during combat training at the Garrison that he is able to swipe the droid’s feet out from under it, and deliver a sharp blow to its head. His opponent freezes, chimes out a note of success, and is swallowed by the training room floor.

Straightening, Keith rolls his shoulders and tries to ignore how his paladin armour feels bulky and foreign after months spent with Marmora.

As he calls upon the next training level, Keith sinks into a defensive stance and attempts to centre himself as the program begins, pretending that he’s able to focus on something other than the dobashes trickling away before Team Voltron are scheduled to renegotiate terms with Lotor.

The droids—four of them—surge forward as one, and Keith slips between their towering forms with less fluidity than he’d like.

He hasn’t seen the prince since last night’s meal, and isn’t quite sure what to expect. Allura’s words have been bothering him, and the more he thinks about it the less certain he is of Lotor’s authenticity- and he’d hardly been confident of it before. If the prince knows who he is—what he is—then he’s not made it obvious, but it would be hard to deny that Lotor has taken a certain level of interest in him: to what end, however, Keith can’t rightly say.

He cripples one droid as it lunges for him, and briefly incapacitates another two, but the fourth comes for his blind spot and he just barely manages to roll out of its way in time, receiving a cuff to the bulky shoulder plate of his armour for his trouble. He growls, steps back from the remaining three droids as they advance on him, and adjusts his grip on the staff to ready it for a move that would have Kolivan’s ears flattening in disapproval.

As the closest droid moves to strike, Keith rams his weapon into the weak point beneath its arm, the joint giving way to the blunt butt of the staff, forcing his opponent down and into its nearest companion with fatal force, while launching himself upwards over the head of his final adversary only to twist in mid-air and wrap himself around its torso in a hold that sends them both toppling to the ground. By the time he hits the floor, the droid’s head is already wrenched all the way around, and Keith lets out a breathless laugh of satisfaction.

A slow and particularly deliberate round of applause draws his attention to the open doors of the training deck, where Lotor stands tall and unfailingly composed despite the flustered guards who hover behind him uncertainly, attempting to demand that he proceed to his intended destination and instead flitting about him as little more than an annoyance.

“Impressive,” Lotor’s voice is liquid gold, and Keith hates how the low praise has him preening without effort, because if Allura’s right and Lotor does know about him, then this is nothing more than a manipulation game.

As he stands, Keith eyes the prince carefully—his face a feigned mask of more composure than he’s ever possessed—and ends the training sequence with a murmured command so that he may instead advance on his seemingly enthralled audience.

The others had recommended that he do nothing to give himself away to Lotor, to try to avoid offering up anything that could connect the masked marmorite with the former paladin of Voltron, and Keith has taken their advice to heart, and so, as he makes his approach, he silently commits himself to saying nothing more than he has to.

Lotor, of course, holds no such qualms.

“You fight like a galra soldier.” he purrs, all smiles and intrigue.

“Funny,” Keith draws to a halt, and between one second and the next, completely forgets to bite his own tongue, “your father once told me the same thing.”

Lotor’s guard fall silent, deathly so, as the prince’s smile flashes dangerously.

“Did he now?”

Keith outwardly hums, and inwardly curses his own inability to just shut the fuck up, walking past Lotor and towards the bridge where he knows the others will be waiting. The Empire’s heir effortlessly falls into step beside him, his gait unperturbed even as his attention prickles across the back of Keith’s neck.

“High praise coming from him; and I would know.”

Keith glances at Lotor as they walk, and for the first time wonders what that was like, to grow up with Zarkon as a father. “I’m relatively sure he followed it up with a death threat.”

A scoff has never sounded so entertained.

“And yet it was praise, nonetheless. He values nothing more than military strength.”

Keith doesn’t want to respond to that, wouldn’t know how to even if he did, because he’d already known that Zarkon’s offhand compliment had been genuine, and at the time it had disturbed him deeply. The last thing he wanted was the approval of a genocidal tyrant.

Lotor lets out a humourless laugh, and Keith realises, with horror, that he’d voiced that final thought aloud.

“There was once a time where I craved it…” his tone trails off almost wistfully, “how amusing, that it would come to this.”

Unsure whether those words are for him or Lotor himself, Keith walks on in silence, too aware of his own footsteps as they echo in tandem with those of the galra prince.

Notes:

First of all a massive THANK YOU to everyone for having been so patient and lovely! You're all wonderful people, and your continued (and enthusiastic!) support has meant the world to me while fighting my way through this final month of university <3

Anyway, this chapter is such a beast that I've split it into two separate POV chapters again, so brace yourselves for Lotor being snarky next update, because I love him and every single snide thought he has. Speaking of updates, I will now be returning to my relatively regular, every 10 days (or thereabouts) schedule thing, because I love writing this and now - finally! - have the time to do so.

Pig Latin Translations (as promised)
Ixnay on the Eithkay
- Nix Keith
- "Nix" is the Latin for "Cancel" and is commonly used in pig latin to mean "stop talking about this thing"
Alfhay alragay
- Half galra
Do you eesay the oblempray?
- Do you see the problem?
What are we supposed to do if Otorlay decides to add Eithkay to his aremhay?”
- What are we supposed to do if Lotor decides to add Keith to his harem?

-

TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 7: Prince Lotor Likes to Pretend That he Doesn't Have Feelings But he Sits on a Throne of Lies

Summary:

Previously: Dinner from Keith's perspective is no less awkward than Lotor found it, but as it turns out his friends don't hate him so that's nice. He tries to explain to them that though Lotor stole his knife, the prince probably didn't actually try to kill him. The question of whether Lotor knows of Keith's galra heritage is raised. The next day, Lotor witnesses Keith on the training deck and informs him that his father perhaps actually meant that one "you fight like a galra soldier" comment as a compliment, which is a lot to digest.

Lotor isn’t one to be easily distracted, much less by something so frivolous as a pretty face.

That’s not to say that he hadn’t found a passing fancy in the anonymous soldier who’d shared Voltron’s table the night before—and, yes, perhaps said fancy could have passed a little faster, rather than lingering on the outskirts of his awareness as it had—but regardless, the prince had been fully committed to discarding such interest as the superficial, temporary thing that it was.

So when he finds himself being escorted past the open entryway to what must be the Castleship’s primary training deck, it is by complete coincidence that his eyes find the room’s sole occupant to be that same dark-haired little thing, darting between gladiator droids only to bring them to their knees with a flick of his wrist.

Between one step and the next, Lotor recognises the insignia borne across the young man’s breastplate, and it’s unexpected, to say the least.

When marked in vivid crimson, Voltron’s crest stands in stark contrast to the white armoured plating and black undersuit that sits beneath it, and though the staff the soldier wields is clearly no bayard, Lotor has little doubt that Princess Allura would sooner die than allow some nameless rebel ingrate to besmirch her father’s legacy.

Which can, of course, mean only one thing.

The red paladin—or, perhaps, the former red paladin, considering he makes six by Lotor’s count, and the prince highly doubts that there is a secret Lion squirrelled away in some dark corner of the Castle—goes from being outnumbered, to sailing over the heads of two abruptly dispatched droids and into his final opponent; it’s with striking flexibility that the paladin wrenches the gladiator’s head to the left in the same moment that they collide, limbs coiling around the droid and somehow twisting both it and himself further about until he lands in a crouch over what, in a true battle, would have been his enemy’s corpse.

It’s a vicious victory to behold, made more so by the pleased laughter that comes out unfairly soft considering the way violet eyes spark with adrenaline as the paladin looks down upon his conquest.

The thrill of the fight is electric, Lotor knows, and to see it so openly on another’s face even when suffocating in the midst of the Coalition’s posturing as holier-than-thou liberators, is refreshing.

Ignoring the pathetic demands from his guard that he continue being paraded around like a prize schleipnir, Lotor takes one step into the training room and claps his hands together in slow applause, immediately bringing himself to the centre of the paladin’s attention, and finding it to be no less pleasing than it had been the evening prior.

“Impressive,” he hears himself say, with a tone that possibly speaks too much of the low-grade attraction thrumming through his veins.

The paladin doesn’t respond (which is mildly disappointing) but he does rise to his feet—the fluidity of his movements seemingly effortless—and stalk towards Lotor with a predator’s gait (which is anything but). As he draws closer, the uncertainty behind his gaze becomes apparent, but it’s less doubtful and more a challenge, as if he knows exactly what Lotor is, and is waiting for the prince to prove him wrong; it’s all fight, and fire, and fury.

Almost galra.

So Lotor says as much—partly because he wants a reaction, and partly because it’s true—the words, “you fight like a galra soldier,” a sweet sentiment on his lips.

He’s vaguely aware that the paladin’s species is one that he’s seen exclusively fighting against the Empire, and that as such, his words might be perceived as more of an insult than anything else.

“Funny,” the smaller man stands before him now, his head tilted back to compensate for their difference in height, and his chin jutted out defiantly, “your father once told me the same thing.”

Lotor hadn’t really registered the continuous pestering of his guard until they abruptly cut themselves off as one, the paladin’s bold declaration reading as dangerous insolence even to the densest of creatures, it seems. Lotor allows his eyes to flicker momentarily over the red paladin’s form, and thinks, yes: this is him, it must be, because if anyone were to challenge the Emperor to single combat at the heart of his own empire and survive, then it would have to be a creature such as this.

“Did he now?” Lotor grins, feels his pulse quicken, and falls into step beside this enticing little thing as he makes his way towards what the prince can only assume to be their mutual destination, “high praise coming from him—and I would know.”

Those dark eyes look to him as they walk. It’s a foreign sort of scrutiny, and yet not a displeasing one.

“I’m relatively sure he followed it up with a death threat.”

Entirely likely, Lotor thinks, “And yet it was praise, nonetheless. He values nothing more than military strength.”

He sees the moment that the paladin’s expression becomes weighed down by a scowl, the words “Zarkon’s approval is the last thing I want,” muttered under his breath, and tearing biting laugher from Lotor’s lips.

“There was once a time where I craved it…” a time he’d rather forget, as cold and fruitless as it had been, “how amusing, that it would come to this.”

The prince thinks of that which could barely be called a childhood with long-worn detachment. What little he remembers is fragmented—repeatedly being woken to a world a little further removed from that which he’d known, always something more foreign and broken and wrong than the one preceding it, until the time he’d been born into might never have existed at all—and what he doesn’t is probably best left forgotten.

Voltron’s sixth paladin doesn’t speak again, but this offers Lotor ample time to consider the younger man in light of the new information their brief exchange has afforded him.

Though the altean princess wears the colour of mourning, it is apparently not, as he had originally assumed, for the sake of the red paladin, therefore leaving team Voltron’s reasoning behind the substitution of said paladin a perplexity in and of itself. Lotor glances to his companion again: not dead, clearly, and if that brief combat simulation is anything to go by then not severely injured either. Whatever their logic, evidently red has been replaced by blue, and blue by Princess Allura herself.

A horrible decision really.

If this one had, as he implied, spoken with Lotor’s father, then such a conversation almost certainly took place during Voltron’s assault on Central Command. Ergo, this must be the same red paladin that confronted the Emperor one-on-one and, miraculously, lived to tell the tale: something that should count as a victory in its own right. Meaning the paladins had—for some Sa-forsaken reason—replaced who Lotor can only assume to be their most proficient member, damning themselves to the incompetence the prince had witnessed first-hand upon his temporary ascension to the throne.

The unfathomable question is why?

Lotor is regrettably without time to ponder this, as he and the paladin enter the Castle’s centre of command, rebel escorts in tow, though they are quick to dismiss themselves with a nod from the last remnant of Altea’s monarchy.

“Prince Lotor,” is the warmest greeting he’s received from her yet, her use of his title without prompting an utterly astounding show of respect only when compared against her previous efforts to address him.

“Princess Allura.”

She nods in recognition of… well, their mutual attempt at civility, strained though it may be. While Lotor refuses to let his eyes wander, a small portion of his attention is helplessly drawn towards the former red paladin who has moved to stand by his successor (and really, how do they expect anyone to keep track of who flies what if they can’t even follow their own colour-coding?) who, for simplicity’s sake, Lotor elects to retitle as the blue paladin irrespective of which Lion he flies at present. Said blue paladin mumbles something too quiet to hear, before subtly shifting his weight to half stand between his red-clad counterpart, and Lotor’s line of sight, in what is clearly a defensive gesture.

How curious.

 

The meeting proceeds like this:

Princess Allura and her champion do most of the talking, hounding Lotor for answers at every turn and yet rarely asking questions of true importance. It’s more an interrogation than anything, with Team Voltron standing atop the raised dais at the room’s centre, and Lotor before them, his height enough to compensate for what seems to be some sort of childish power move on their part.

They question him on his ship, primarily. From subtext he gathers that the yellow paladin has been dissecting her, the heathen, in an effort to reverse engineer her schematics, all of which is a waste of energy because Lotor would have willingly handed over such information—had anyone bothered to ask him for it—if only to save his pet project the insult. As it is, he dreads to think what a state she must be in, but bites his tongue and explains with far more patience than the paladins have earnt that, yes, she’s the result a trans-reality comet just as the Lions are and, no, there’s only one other ship because the third had yet to be completed at the time of his exile.

“So where is it?” The champion is curt in tone, but at least doesn’t seem to require collaring today. “Where’s the other ship?”

“In the possession of my generals,” Lotor sighs, knowing this will function as a segue to a slew of questions that he would really rather avoid, “and before you ask: no. I haven’t the slightest idea of where they are or what plans they might have for the imminent future.”

“Convenient,” the green one mutters under her breath, and it’s an internal battle not to snap at her for making such ignorant remarks on things she hasn’t even the vaguest notion about.

“I assure you,” Lotor makes a particular effort to smile at her with enough teeth that the warning is implicit, “it is anything but.”

There’s an uncomfortable silence before anyone dares speak again, broken by the altean princess, although she seems almost reluctant to be the one to do so.

“If,” she begins carefully, as if aware that this is dangerous ground, “you were to make an educated guess, then. Where would they take it? To Zarkon?”

Lotor forces his shoulders to relax through sheer willpower.

“Unlikely.”

Ezor would rather die, he’s sure, but there is a brutality in Zethrid’s blood from both halves of her parentage, and if she were to return to his Father’s command, she would not be ill-suited for it. As for Acxa… She holds no fondness for the Empire, but she’s a survivor, above all else, and Lotor knows that she’ll do what she must.

That has always been her way.

“Ultimately, the decision will fall to Acxa. Whatever her verdict, Ezor and Zethrid will concede.”

The green paladin is tapping away at a data pad, and with a flick of her wrist several holographic images burst to life in the air above her head: hacked security footage, by the looks of it, and most of it recent. After a moment more, the smallest paladin has isolated the clearest shots of several familiar faces, and Lotor is left looking up into the flickering ghosts of his once-friends.

“That’s four,” she helpfully annotates, as if Lotor is incapable of counting, “we know Zethrid’s the big one-”

“-and Acxa’s the one from the weblum,” the yellow paladin adds in, more to his teammates than to Lotor—though these words are news in their own right because that was before the prince had been summoned to serve as Emperor pro tem, but Acxa had never mentioned a confrontation with Voltron upon returning with the scaultrite—and the green one nods, lips pinched.

“Which leaves the chameleon lady, and the druid. So which one’s Ezor, and which one are you not telling us about?”

Lotor doesn’t know what a chameleon is—the word failing to translate and leading him to believe that it’s something indigenous to the paladin’s homeworld—but his mild curiosity pales in comparison to this child’s misguided belief that he would ever associate with the religious sect while they remain under the Witch’s thumb.

“Ezor,” he inclines his head towards her likeness as it hovers in the air before him, before gesturing sharply towards the final hologram without looking at it, “Narti.”

“Right,” she nods, taps away at the pad, and doesn’t so much as glance in his direction, “so your druid is where exactly?”

“Narti,” he stresses the name, pained and seething, adamant that her memory will not be besmirched by a child’s ignorance, “was no druid, and I’d thank you to mind your tongue.”

To her credit, the green paladin does not cower under his quiet rage, but it’s a near thing.

“Prince Lotor,” the advisor draws his attention, “number five meant no offence. Your telepath exhibited some shared traits with-”

“She did, but she wasn’t.” His words are too terse, too revealing, but the subject matter is awfully personal and he hadn’t thought to prepare himself for it. Taking a measured breath, Lotor forces himself to relax. “Narti no longer poses a threat to Voltron, you need not concern yourself with her.”

“Yeah, can’t say I believe that.” The blue paladin glowers, “you’re claiming that—of all of them—it’s the one with the mind-control powers that we should just forget about and let do whatever bullshit you ordered her to do before coming here to play nice? Methinks not.”

“As I’ve said before, my generals staged a coup-”

“Allegedly.”

“-and Narti is gone to Sa.” Though he spits that last word out, the impertinent creature before him has the gall to crow in triumph.

“So you do know where she is you dirty little-”

“No, Lance.” The red paladin has his hand on his companion’s shoulder, his frown deep but voice soft as he murmurs: “she’s dead.”

Lotor—too angered, too hurt, too raw—is unable to garner satisfaction from how the obnoxious one’s jaw clicks shut. He simply nods towards the red paladin, though in acknowledgement of the truth spoken or as thanks for saving Lotor himself the pain of an explanation, the prince couldn’t say, and the paladin hesitates for only a moment before inclining his head in return.

Things progress quickly after that.

A handful of military bases and shipment routes that Lotor can recall off the top of his head, in exchange for a concerningly limited report on Haggar: supposedly returned to Central Command with her tail between her legs, which sounds like a naïve dream if ever Lotor heard one. When he brings their attention to this, he’s met with resistance, and their guileless response is staggeringly tragic.

“I am trying,” he patiently explains, “to help you.”

“Yeah, sure,” the blue paladin has continued to interject his opinion at every turn with such frequency that his voice now grates on Lotor’s nerves, “I’ll believe that when you stop wearing your armour like a second skin, and maybe put on something that doesn’t scream ‘I’m ready to kill you at any given moment’.”

The prince’s eyes snap to the loud-mouthed brat, having had quite enough of his thankless attitude.

“Ah yes, do forgive me, next time my father calls for my head I shall be sure to pack casual wear before attempting to outrun the entire imperial fleet, so as not to inconvenience your delicate sensibilities.”

Not for the first time this quintant, Team Voltron are collectively at a loss for words, and, Lotor realises with no small touch of hysteria, they genuinely had not considered that the only attire he had at his disposal was that in which he had arrived. The Empire may be cruel, but the Coalition is apparently stupid, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to decide whether he really needs to ally himself with people who see a threat in his clothing, of all things.

Ultimately, Lotor is relieved to be returned to his rooms, as glamourous a prison as they may be, because they are, at least, free of the ignorance he’s been subjected to for the past three vargas.

Finding a rather large pile of impeccably folded altean garments piled atop his bedsheets is, admittedly, unexpected.

Who had placed them there, not to mention when and why, is something to be puzzled upon at a later date, but for once Lotor allows himself to take what appears to be hospitality at face value, and peels himself from his undersuit. One perfunctory scrub later—because he’d be damned before soiling what must be authentic altean silk, simply because he couldn’t be bothered to bathe—Lotor allows himself to revel in the sensation of fresh cloth against his skin before slumber claims him.

So exhausted is he, that the prince falls asleep without questioning the red paladin’s effortless comprehension of the Old Tongue.

 

When he wakes, Lotor dresses in what he dimly recognises to be daywear from perhaps Altea’s southernmost reaches, and spends an unnecessary amount of time adjusting the tunic’s high collar. It’s form-fitting and sleeveless, the cloth’s lack of defensive properties more than compensated for by the range of motion it allows, and—in an indulgent moment of weakness—he binds the bare skin of his arms from deltoid to wrist, just as he’d seen done in his mother’s photographs.

He looks like her, Lotor realises, when he catches his reflection across the room and sees everything altean in his features amplified tenfold.

For a moment, he considers-

But of course, he doesn’t. Hasn’t dared to do so in decaphoebs.

With deft fingers, the galra prince slips his knives into the internal lining of boots that aren’t too different from his own, and the phial of liquid luminescence is tucked away inside one of the various pockets afforded by loose-fitting trousers. He stands with a slow exhale, avoids meeting his own eyes in the mirror, and exits the room.

He looks like her, but he’s not, and he cannot afford for the altean dilution of his blood to beget something so useless as sentiment.

Not now.

 

The kit, Lotor quickly realises, is keeping his distance.

It’s… not unexpected—or, at least, it shouldn’t be—but Lotor hadn’t considered the way they’d parted last to be necessarily damaging to the tentative camaraderie that recent quintants had seen fostered between the two of them.

Keith seems to disagree.

The marmorite is standing closer to the rebel guards than he is to the prince, and there’s no reason for that to be insulting, but it is, and even Lotor’s most charming attempts at encouraging the child to keep him company fall flat.

He vaguely recognises that he’s being somewhat immature about this whole situation.

He also, quite obstinately, refuses to care.

Lotor had thought that their little scuffle had been rather exhilarating, particularly when Keith had proven to be more than proficient in a fight, and though his intent had been to warn the kit of trusting too easily, he perhaps should have thought through the consequences a little more before executing his plan, because this is terribly irksome.

The worst of it is that Keith can’t seem to help but linger just outside Lotor’s scope of vision, radiating impatience, almost as if he wants to approach but needs reason enough to do so. Seeing as verbal invitations have proven ineffective, and Lotor is loath to repeat himself after having been so clearly acknowledged and refused, the prince resorts to subtle physical cues: a tilt of the head here, a relaxed roll of the shoulders there…

Nothing works.

Flicking through the pages of an altean text that he’s not absorbed even half of, Lotor represses the desire to look to where the kit shifts his weight restlessly from one foot to another, and swallows his personal irritation. This is, lamentably, his own fault. Lotor knows that. He took his games with the child too far when the companionship between the two of them was still too fresh, and though his intentions had been half a benign warning, and half a tactical play for Voltron’s attention, clearly the former had worked a little too well.

And in many ways, this is for the best.

No matter how much Lotor tells himself that the kit is a potential ally, it’s a fragile sort of truth. Keith is, undeniably, a fierce little warrior. He’s also a child. As such, Lotor knows that even if he were to somehow convince the kit to break from Marmora, his personal moral code wouldn’t allow for him to command that the little Blade bleed for his cause, even if the alternative is that he will inevitably bleed for Voltron’s.

That is exactly the kind of cruelty he’s trying to prevent.

It had taken several decaphoebs before he’d allowed Acxa to stand with the rest of them in battle, and even then she’d been younger than Lotor should have liked, but Keith has already promised to be—impossibly—more stubborn than she ever was.

He should let the kit simply sink back into the outskirts of his attentions, along with the rest of his guard, and pay him no mind. It’s the logical decision, and yet, for some ridiculous and vexingly emotional reason, an undesirable one.

Lotor silently wars with himself for the rest of the quintant, as well as all those ensuing, until a full movement has gone by without him being any closer to a satisfactory conclusion.

The prince is, selfishly, unwilling to give Keith up.

There’s little reason for it, not when he hardly knows the boy beyond their shared thirst for knowledge and a very galra tenacity, but the facts remain. Lotor thinks, perhaps, if Keith were a little more convincing in the distance he has engineered between them, then this would be a far easier pill to swallow; but of course, the kit is just as painfully curious as he’s ever been, and it almost seems that even if Keith were to turn his back completely, he might break his own neck in an attempt to meet Lotor head on.

Foolish, contrary, and appallingly endearing rhyahl.

Sweet little thing though he is, Keith’s internal strife really should come to an end, else Lotor thinks it might drive the both of them mad.

As luck would have it, when Lotor retires to his chambers that evening, the kit follows him in, brash and seemingly with a disregard for the most basic of societal rules: ones that even the Coalition yuppers adhere to. Had anyone else dared waltz into his personal rooms—glorified cell or otherwise—Lotor would have ascertained that it was not a mistake to ever be repeated. As it is, he seats himself in one of the high-backed armchairs facing out towards the depths of space, and lets the boy do what he will.

‘What he will’, Lotor discovers with no small amount of frustration, amounts to hovering awkwardly on the fringe of the prince’s line of sight in a way that is fast becoming habit, and achieving absolutely nothing in the way of proactivity.

Idly, Lotor picks at the wrappings of his arms, and tries for a tone that is gently cajoling when he says, “you know, were I inclined to bite you, I would have done so far before now.”

Eyeing the child carefully, Lotor notes how his posture’s gone rigid with the promise of fight or flight in the imminent future. Seeing as neither of these pose to be particularly desirable outcomes at this point, Lotor gives up his feigned nonchalance completely, elbow on the arm of the chair and chin resting on the palm of his hand as he looks towards the kit with a crease in his brow too soft to be called a frown.

“It was remiss of me,” Lotor hesitates, wishing not for the first time that Keith were without his mask so that he could better judge how his words might be received, “not to consider how my earlier actions could be perceived as… less than amiable.”

Several ticks of silence follow this admission.

Begrudgingly and seeing no better alternative, the prince is just about to resign himself to the idea that he may have to count this among his many losses when the kit speaks.

“Less than amiable,” a pause, a tilt of the head, a quiet breath that might well have been a laugh, “you took my knife.”

Lotor perks up at this, the promise of victory turning his tentative confession into a satisfied purr.

“You took it back.”

Keith, Lotor imagines, going by the awkward stutter of his stance, doesn’t much know what to say to that—the prince can easily picture eyes gone wide and ears flicking in surprise, and has to wonder if the kit has ever really been allowed to spar with his elders as a galra child should. Likely not, Lotor thinks, considering that Marmora are a military order above all else, and that should be the most sobering part of this conversation.

It should be, but it isn’t.

“It was my mother’s,” Keith says, his tone impassionate, unreadable, and Lotor feels the floor fall out from under him.

Eyes dropping to where the kit fingers the hilt of the knife, Lotor finds himself caught on the echo of “was” with a lump in his throat. When he looks back to that blank mask, it’s with anger and sorrow and a thousand other things because Keith is too young and yet… Kolivan has more important things to do, he’d said, during one of their earliest conversations, and Lotor remembers taking note of this replacement of a parent with the child’s commander.

He remembers, and yet still he’d been careless.

“I wouldn’t have taken it,” the prince murmurs, the line of his mouth drawn tight, “had I known.”

To call that an apology would be too self-indulgent, but to have remorse for his actions would be to regret what is past: a pointless waste of energy on all accounts, Lotor has found, and will change nothing besides.

Still, when Keith absorbs these words and seemingly accepts them—if the ebb of tension from his posture, and slow return to conversation is any such indication—Lotor feels the weight in his gut alleviate with something light, and golden, and not entirely unlike hope.

Notes:

I have a lot to say about series 6, but I don't want to talk about it here just in case people haven't watched it yet - but by all means, scream at me in the comments.

-

TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 8: This Chapter is a Beast But Down the Rabbit Hole We Go

Summary:

Previously: Lotor sees the nameless pretty-boy training in red armor and learns that Voltron's red paladin has not been slain, but replaced for some inexplicable reason, and then the both of them enjoy a lovely interrogation from Team Voltron that does not at all dredge up any repressed feelings regarding his dead General. Lotor fears his scared off the littlest Blade for good, but in fumbling his way through an apology he manages to make amends for stealing the kit's knife.

Keith won’t pretend that he understands Lotor to any significant degree; the prince is one hell of a puzzle, that’s for sure, but maybe one that Keith is starting to piece together. This understanding is still fragmented, of course, and the dissonance between the Lotor who’d toyed with Voltron on Thayserix, and the man who seemed content to pander to Keith’s curiosity of his galra heritage is still staggering, but there are certain aspects of his character that are making themselves known to Keith with crystalline clarity.

Lotor’s hatred for Haggar and her druids, for example, is not only very real, but dreadfully personal.

He doesn’t know how the others don’t see it, but as Keith watches Pidge hound Lotor for answers on the whereabouts of his generals, it becomes obvious. She’s not being nearly so terse as Shiro—something that is uncomfortable to witness in itself, Shiro’s diplomatic nature turned cold and unfamiliar in a way that doesn’t suit him—but Pidge is logical, direct, and while it’s something Keith has always appreciated about the smaller paladin, it won’t win her any favours like this.

When Pidge brings up the holograms of Lotor’s subordinates, his expression flickers from one of restrained insult to outright hurt, if only for a moment, but it’s enough for Keith to zero in on the line of shoulders gone tight beneath his armour.

But Pidge doesn’t react, she just keeps pushing, and no sooner has the word “druid” left her lips does Keith see the prince snap.

“Ezor. Narti.”

Even as he speaks her name, Lotor never looks to the second image, and Keith immediately knows that this conversation is going to go south too quickly for him to prevent it.

“Right,” Pidge nods, still oblivious, still pressing for answers, “so your druid is where exactly?”

“Narti, was no druid, and I’d thank you to mind your tongue.”

The hum of the ship is too much in the sudden quiet that follows, Lotor’s fury a sharp tang in the air, finally enough to make the others realise what perilous terrain they’re treading. Keith takes this all in quickly, attention skimming over his friends to see the conditioned defensive response that their time in space has forced upon them, each readying themselves for a fight that not a single one looks prepared for.

Even with Lotor disarmed and outnumbered, they’re afraid.

They’re afraid, and Keith doesn’t know what to tell them, because Lotor is dangerous, and now he’s angry in a way that none of them have ever seen.

Except… Keith has seen it.

He’s lived it.

His eyes find Shiro across the room: carved from stone and changed from what he once was, but still so much more than Keith will ever deserve.

“Prince Lotor,” Coran tentatively breeches the silence, “number five meant no offence. Your telepath exhibited some shared traits with-”

“She did, but she wasn’t.” Lotor’s words are finite.

Shiro is the one person who never gave up on me; I won’t give up on him.

“Narti no longer poses a threat to Voltron, you need not concern yourself with her.”

We don’t have Shiro anymore either, everyone seems to have forgotten that.

Lance scoffs at this answer, arms crossed, frown deep.

“Yeah, can’t say I believe that. You’re claiming that—of all of them—it’s the one with the mind-control powers that we should just forget about and let do whatever bullshit you ordered her to do before coming here to play nice? Methinks not.”

“As I’ve said before,” Lotor’s tone is tart, “my generals staged a coup-”

“Allegedly,” Lance interrupts, and Keith has half a mind to physically remove the idiot from the room before he can further run his mouth.

“-and Narti is gone to Sa.”

Keith hears the echo of himself in Lotor’s clipped admission—but nothing! Shiro is gone—like the ache of an old wound.

And like that, he gets it.

Lance makes a noise as if he’s won a game that Keith wasn’t even aware was being played, before stepping forward with the declaration; “so you do know where she is you dirty little-”

“No, Lance.” Keith’s hand is on the taller’s shoulder before he can say anything else, firm and unwavering, because there are some things that can’t be taken back no matter how much you regret them. “She’s dead.”

The paladin’s aggression falters, just as Keith had known it would, because Lance is a lot of things but cruel has never been one of them. Looking back to Lotor, Keith is greeted with a small nod, at odds with everything he’s seen from the prince for how brittle it seems, and, at a loss for words, he returns the gesture in kind.

The following varga drags on, and it’s a bizarre experience for Keith.

He watches the team question Lotor as if from somewhere very far away, and he doesn’t realise such a great distance has formed until their voices are echoing across a chasm that only he seems to have noticed. It’s weird. It’s a lot of other things too, but Keith can’t really put a name to them, so he settles on the strangeness of it all, because this isn’t what Voltron used to be. He thinks back to when he’d officially stepped down from his role as a paladin, and wonders how things can have possibly worsened when in doing so he should have removed the root of their problem. Keith had been so sure it was him; he was the one who’d rushed headfirst into things, proven difficult and standoffish, tried to go at it alone, made the wrong choices, nearly led everyone to their deaths… that was all him. Even with Shiro’s council, he’d struggled to be the leader the others deserved.

When he left, the flaw in their teamwork should have gone with him.

Looking around at the people he left behind, Keith is beginning to wonder if that was yet another mistake.

Lance’s behaviour is erratic, oscillating between a blatant hatred of Zarkon’s son, and a resigned quiet that doesn’t suit him; Shiro’s not much better, with tension bleeding from every pore and eyes absent of the warmth Keith had once thought to be an intrinsic part of his friend; Allura’s tentative, on edge, and Coran follows suit though he’s less afraid and more worn in a way that makes him appear far older than he should; Pidge and Hunk seem desperate for answers, but unwilling to trust those they’re given, and without anyone to rein in their blunt curiosity, they lack the diplomacy required to deal with someone like Lotor.

Ultimately, there’s a disconnect there, as if Voltron itself were made of all the right Lions in all the wrong places.

They’re threatening to fall apart.

When Lotor is told of Haggar’s subdued withdrawal, his immediate response is to deny the possibility outright. Shiro responds with a confidence that Keith wants to have faith in—wants to, but can’t, because this is Haggar of all people, and the prince’s concern is more than warranted when their opponent is Zarkon’s sinister right hand.

“I am trying,” the prince growls, through a long-suffering smile that strains at the seams, “to help you.”

Keith believes him.

Lance, apparently, does not.

Throwing a mistrustful glare at Lotor, Lance spirals into his seventh unnecessary accusation since this meeting started, this time needling the prince for wearing his armour. Lotor immediately fires back, his patience wearing thin and irritation seeping through in its place, and bites out that which Keith had taken as obvious: he doesn’t have a change of clothes.

When everyone else reacts with surprise to this, Keith shifts in his paladin armour—still big and bulky and foreign—and mourns the loss of the nano-technology that, during his time with the Blade, he’d quickly learnt was commonplace in galran attire, making it heavily armoured but sleek, and supple enough that it could be worn for extensive periods of time. Efficiency, after all, is paramount to the Empire, and even more so to Marmora who haven’t the funds to waste on unnecessary duplicates of high-grade military wear. So accustomed is Keith to seeing uniformed soldiers, that he’d simply taken Lotor’s apparel at face value, the prince’s choice of clothing not even close to being the most surprising thing about his appearance, not when Keith still finds the whisper of like me like me like me flitting about the dark recesses of his mind.

Lotor is escorted out soon after, and before Keith can turn to Coran, Allura beats him to it.

“We should…” she’s frowning at her hands, clenched in front of her tightly, “we should arrange for something. For him. To wear.”

Like Lance, she’s kind, she can’t help it, and despite the time it took them to get here, Keith is glad to see that her compassion has grown to extend to those of galra descent.

Coran smiles, nods, and with a look at Keith that says the older man knows what he’s thinking, he goes to do as he’s been bid.

Then Shiro heaves a despondent sigh, and Keith’s whole world turns on its axis.

“Lance,” the tone he’s using is one Keith became intimately familiar with in the phoebs preceding his transition from paladin to Blade, and though it’s not directed at him he flinches on reflex, “we’ve talked about this, you need to be more mature when representing Voltron.”

You need to grow up, is what it sounds like, but that’s too harsh a reprimand for Shiro to have made.

“I know.”

He’s standing with his back turned, so Keith can’t see his expression, but it’s an uncharacteristically submissive response considering how Lance usually leaps at any opportunity to fight—or, no, Keith thinks, perhaps that was only when he was the Head of Voltron. Lance respects Shiro. Everyone respects Shiro, it’s what makes him such a good leader, so Keith supposes it makes sense that Red’s new paladin would see value in advice given from someone like that over someone like him.

Besides, Keith thinks, his idea of advice always did tend to stray the wrong side of offensive.

“You’ll do better next time.”

Shiro breaks into a smile as he says this, clapping Lance on the shoulder with one hand as he walks by, and slinging the other around Keith to tuck the smaller man into his left side, guiding him out of the room as he talks, animated and beaming like he’s swallowed the sun. They discuss training, and Marmora, and that strange flowering plant Hunk found while Keith was gone, and for a while Keith can pretend that nothing’s changed from their Garrison days, because when he demonstrates the new combat style he’s learnt from Kolivan, he catches Shiro looking at him like he couldn’t be prouder.

They don’t talk about Lotor.

They don’t talk about Lance.

And yet, Keith can’t quite shake either from his mind.

 

It’s still bugging him the next day, and if it weren’t for the altean pills, Keith’s sure he wouldn’t have been able to sleep at all, nightmares or otherwise. Trying to shake the heavy fog that drags him into slumber night after night is becoming more difficult with each passing morning, but it by far outweighs the alternative, and so when Keith manages to stumble out of bed, it’s with enough presence of mind to check on Lance before heading to breakfast.

But Lance—never one to make things easy, least of all for Keith—isn’t in his room.

He’s not at breakfast either, and when asked Hunk just shrugs Keith’s query off with a benign smile and the vague assurance that “he’ll be around here somewhere,” which obviously Keith knows because they’re out in the middle of deep-space so there are only so many place Lance can be. It just… it strikes him as odd, is all. If their roles were reversed, then this situation would almost make sense, because Keith knows that he has a tendency to drop off the radar without warning, particularly when there’s something on his mind. He and Lance, however, have always been polar opposites, and if anything, Keith would have expected Red’s new paladin to seek company out after what had happened yesterday.

Though, if asked, Keith isn’t confident he could say what had happened yesterday.

All he knows is that something about how the meeting had concluded felt inherently off-kilter, and even if he can’t exactly explain why, Keith has long since learnt to trust his gut, and right now his gut says he needs to find Lance.

Despite that, Keith knows he has a job to do, and Kolivan will have his hide if the older is given any reason to believe that Keith has neglected his duties to Marmora.

Armor on and mask in place, Keith makes his way through the Castle, following the now-familiar route to what he’s dubbed Lotor’s Wing, and finding the prince in the library as per usual. It’s only as he steps into the room and catches the mistrustful stares thrown his way by the rebels, that Keith recalls he—or at least, this version of himself—hasn’t yet faced Lotor after their brief spar.

The strangest thing about it is that Lotor himself doesn’t seem even the slightest bit bothered, and greets Keith in his usual teasing manner.

Keith keeps a professional distance.

Ultimately, this is a mission. It doesn’t matter that Lotor is half galra, or that Keith is inclined to believe that the Empire’s heir truly means him no harm, he has to be certain: Knowledge or Death.

He repeats that mantra over and over in his mind, obstinately refusing to draw any nearer to Lotor than strictly necessary, despite everything in him screaming that he’s being invited to do so; that in itself is odd, because Lotor only explicitly asks for his company once, but Keith is sure—he’s sure—that Lotor wants his companionship almost as much as he himself wants to provide it.

The first quintant is spent in boredom, without a single anecdote of galra history.

The second is much the same.

The third, fourth, and fifth are each increasingly more frustrating, because Keith is convinced that Lotor is sulking and it’s bizarrely cute—a descriptor that Keith will never admit to having used in reference to the literal son of Zarkon—and worse yet he’s starting to believe that he might be behaving in much the same way.

It’s dumb.

It’s just really really dumb, and Keith knows it is, because the only person he’s ever been so strongly drawn to was Shiro back at the Garrison, and he remembers acting much the same way—rejecting all of Shiro’s attention while simultaneously craving it. Even more distinctly, he can recall loitering outside one of the training rooms (absolutely not because Shiro was in there) only to have one of Shiro’s peers hoot, to Keith’s utter humiliation, that “Shirogane’s stray” was back again. Shiro had been kind about it, of course, and had caught Keith before he could bolt, taking him to the side and away from the jeering, to offer to train with him after hours, if he’d like, because he knew what Keith could do and wanted to see it first-hand.

Scrappy, he’d called him with a smile.

Keith had said no—or, more specifically, he’d told Shiro to fuck off because he wasn’t a goddamn charity case—but somehow he’d ended up outside the same training room six hours later, a full forty-five minutes after Shiro had said to meet him, and fully prepared to be let down again by no one’s fault but his own.

Except Shiro had still been there, and when his eyes had found Keith he’d lit up like the sun, and Keith—fifteen and scrappy and with nothing but attitude to offer the Garrison’s Golden Boy—had been stuck in Takashi Shirogane’s orbit ever since.

Lotor isn’t Shiro, he isn’t soft or open or even particularly patient, but he is magnetic. He draws Keith in, Keith knows he does, and yet is powerless to resist it.

If Shiro is a star, bright and irresistible, then Lotor can’t be anything other than a black hole.

That, at least, would explain why Keith’s feet carry him after Lotor without conscious effort, following the prince beyond the boarder of his private chambers and into the grand series of rooms in which he retires for the evening.

Lotor doesn’t acknowledge this alteration to their unspoken script—which Keith is thankful for because he has no idea what he’s even doing in here—but the prince is obviously aware that Keith is here because he seats himself a little too deliberately, the chair he’s chosen one that allows for the illusion of looking out into space, while simultaneously providing him with a perfect view of the room’s interior via the window’s reflection.

Keith hovers awkwardly—unsure of what he’s supposed to say, only certain that if he doesn’t say anything this stilted silence between them will drive him mad—while Lotor pretends to occupy himself with the altean wrappings of his arms. It’s an obvious façade. No more so than Keith pretending that his only business here is his duty to the Blade, but still.

Then, without warning, Keith is addressed directly for the first time in five quintants, and it has him nearly jumping out of his skin.

“You know, were I inclined to bite you, I would have done so already.”

Framed by the window, Lotor’s reflection eyes him irritably, before the prince turns in his seat with a huff, and meets Keith dead-on.

“It was,” Lotor pauses, as if the words are foreign in his throat, “remiss of me. Not to consider how my earlier actions could be perceived as… less than amiable.”

That’s an apology, Keith realises. Or, at least, what counts for one by galra standards. Keith doesn’t need one, not when he has already come to terms with Lotor’s little act of theft, and certainly hadn’t expected one, but finds that the reality of it is oddly touching.

He also quickly comes to the realisation that Lotor is expecting an answer.

“Less than amiable,” he parrots, finding that this situation has a certain level of surrealism to it, “you took my knife.”

“You took it back,” Lotor purrs, immediately vitalised, and Keith is forced to recognise that Lotor really might have wanted this reconciliation just as much. The thought that Zarkon’s wayward son actually genuinely likes him near sends Keith reeling, so much so that the confession of truth leaves him without permission.

“It was my mother’s,” he hears himself say, and instantly regrets it.

There’s too much weight behind that, too much memory, too much of Keith. His knife is personal, it always has been, and even though Shiro had known it was important to him, Keith had never explicitly told his friend of the blade’s origins (so far as he’d known them at the time, at least).

But now here he is, blurting it out to Prince Lotor, of all people.

Prince Lotor, whose expression has crumpled, as he whispers, “I wouldn’t have taken it, had I known.”

Not for the first time—and, perhaps more terrifyingly, not for the last—Keith believes him.

 

This saga with Lotor having dragged out as it has, has somehow managed to distract Keith from Lance’s persisting absence, but now that the former issue has been resolved, the latter becomes all the more concerning in comparison.

He’s not seen or, even more troublingly, heard from Lance in an entire movement. Five full quintants. A solid one hundred vargas.

Keith is worried, dammit.

Coran hasn’t seen him, Allura either, and when Keith gingerly mentions Lance’s mysterious whereabouts to Shiro, he’s given a tired sigh and the response: “it’s Lance, you know what he’s like.”

Keith blinks at the black paladin, who offers him a half smile in return, and replies, “yeah,” because he does.

He knows exactly what Lance is like.

And it’s not this.

He’s on his way down to the hangers, hoping that Pidge will be able to provide a more satisfactory answer, when he feels it: a sudden crack at the back of his mind, like a log fire gone dull only to spit without warning, and Keith pulls up short as he feels that ember, that indescribable heat, and tentatively pushes back against it in hesitant greeting.

Red purrs in the back of his mind, their well-worn bond sparking to life all at once.

They’d rarely spoken after he’d been chosen by Black, and certainly not since he stepped down from being a paladin altogether, so it takes a moment for Keith to reorient himself with the particular way in which the Lions communicate; their thoughts tend to be direct, which Keith can appreciate, but clipped words and flashes of imagery can become somewhat jumbled in translation.

Like now, for example, as Red presses the idea of Lance on fire into Keith’s head, and it takes one awful moment to realise that she doesn’t mean it as a literal thing. Mine, she adds with a purr, gleeful, and Keith recognises the sentiment from when he was her paladin.

Keith tries to ask for specifics, “is he with you?” but Red, ancient and abstract as she is, doesn’t seem to comprehend the nuance of the question, only pressing that same image of Lance—perfectly calm amidst the flames—against Keith’s thoughts, his environment ever-changing. Mine, she insists, as Lance flickers between being stood in woodland, vast desert, half submerged in water, and out under the stars, always mine.

Always my paladin, she means, always with me no matter where he is, and to her there really is no difference. Keith lets out a huff of frustration, but thanks her nonetheless, because despite Red’s lack of true comprehension, she means well, and Lance must, at the very least, be okay, else she would be more distressed.

Original objective met, Keith hasn’t any reason to linger in this area of the Castle, but he figures that while he’s here he should drop by to see Pidge anyway.

She’s with Hunk, as it turns out, both huddled in the shadows of Lotor’s ship with their backs turned, the distinctly galra vessel looming over them as if a predator preparing to strike. Several luminous screens hover in the air about their closely huddled heads, displaying rows upon rows of incomprehensible data, interrupted only by graphs and diagrams that make very little sense to Keith.

“Found anything?” is an innocuous enough question, but it’s received with a startled yelp from both paladins as they whirl around to face him. He sees them each take a tick to register who he is, and when they do Hunk whines in relief, while Pidge points her finger towards him threateningly.

“Do not,” she scowls, “sneak up on us like that.”

Keith hadn’t really been sneaking, but he thinks she knows that by the way her shoulders sag as she turns back to the data, tugging him down by his sleeve to sit with them on the floor.

“Keith, look at this,” she gestures towards the screen to her left which, thankfully, displays a schematic of Lotor’s ship in gently fluctuating colour, rather than indecipherable code, “does anything about it strike you as weird?”

He lets his attention flick over the schematic curiously, but without a point of reference for exactly would count as ‘weird’, shakes his head.

Pidge nods thoughtfully and then turns to Hunk, “do the thing.”

“No,” the yellow paladin’s pallor has turned to match his title, “Pidge seriously, I do not want to do the thing. More importantly, I don’t think it wants me to do the thing.”

“Hunk, c’mon-”

“No! I did it last time, if you want a reaction so badly you do it!”

Keith looks between the bickering pair, bewildered. Though more outwardly collected than Hunk, Pidge seems just as reluctant to ‘do the thing’, so Keith asks the obvious question.

“What’s the thing?”

The paladins look at each other uneasily, and Keith’s frown deepens. It’s Hunk who speaks first.

“Okay, so, long story short, there’s this weird energy reading originating from the ship’s primary base component that at first I thought was flaring sporadically, and I figured it must be the result of some internal damage or something? But then when I started to tamper with the mechanics, I think I made it angry, and now whenever I try to do anything it gets mad.”

Unable to find the joke, Keith looks to Pidge only to have her hold his stare without blinking, and then turns back to Hunk who stands firm: “basically it’s cursed.”

“Cursed,” Keith echoes.

“I know it sounds like bullshit,” the green paladin scowls at the data, chewing on the inside of her cheek absently, “but Hunk’s right. There’s this… energy. We keep picking it up in the scans despite the fact that Hunk’s removed all the goddamn power cores-”

“-or what I thought were the power cores, but it’s still…” Hunk gestures towards the diagrams vaguely, “basically, no matter what I did it refused to stop being weird, so I called Pidge down here to help me go over the data and maybe find a reasonable explanation-”

“-except there isn’t one, so we came to the conclusion that Lotor probably used some crazy druid magic. Ergo, cursed.”

“Lotor hates the druids,” Keith says it as a fact, but even in light of yesterday’s negotiations the others shift uneasily, and Keith feels the need to insist, “he wasn’t lying.”

“I mean,” Pidge pauses, and looks at Keith strangely, “he’s Lotor.”

“Yeah,” Keith agrees. He doesn’t understand why that’s not reason enough to convince her.

Hunk’s eyes dart between the two of them before drawing their attention back to the data pad in his hands, “the point is, until I can identify and isolate the variables that are causing these freak energy fluxes, I can’t combat the ship’s attempts to literally murder me.”

“You seriously think that Lotor’s ship is trying to kill you?”

Hunk starts nodding fervently, and Pidge lets out a humourless laugh, biting out; “we know it is. When I first came down here, Hunk asked me to monitor the readings while he removed the last power core, then, out of nowhere, bam!” She slaps her hand down against her knee, harshly, “there’s this inexplicable surge of power that goes straight towards Hunk.”

“It tried to fry me.” Hunk sends a damming glare towards the ship, which, unsurprisingly, remains motionless.

Keith looks between two of the smartest people he knows, and realises that they’re dead serious. His disbelief must show on his face, because instantly the duo launch into further explanation of numbers and readings, and while Keith had taken all the compulsory engineering courses at the Garrison, he’d only really been interested in flying the ships, and Earth-tech is at least two millennia from achieving anything close to this anyway. So he listens patiently and tries to follow along, but his attention drifts to the sense of curiosity that winds its way around his seated form.

At first Keith thinks it’s Red, and presses back with another image of Lance, questioning, but he realises his mistake when the entity prods at the thought before batting it away without care, tearing all the oxygen from Keith’s lungs as he realises that the heat on the back of his neck is unfamiliar: molten and dark, and almost viscous in the way it seeps beneath his skin.

“Keith?” One large hand come down onto his shoulder, gentle, but firm. “Hey buddy, you okay?”

“I-” his throat feels like it’s on fire, “yeah. I’m fine.”

“These readings are insane,” Pidge has enlarged a holographic schematic of the ship that, as Keith watches, surges with erratic bursts of colour, and is bouncing around it with barely contained enthusiasm, though it’s impossible to tell whether she’s excited or mildly disturbed, “it’s like Christmas!”

“Cool cool cool, haunted galra Christmas, just what I always wanted,” Hunk murmurs, turning away from Keith to tap at one of the other screens, “but where is it coming from?”

When that heat prickles up the base of Keith’s spine, the obvious occurs to him.

“Lotor made his ship from a trans-reality comet, like the Lions.”

Pidge shoot him a look over her shoulder, “yeah?”

“Like the Lions,” he maintains, “she’s not just a superweapon, she’s conscious.”

There’s a moment of extreme quiet, before Hunk looks between Keith and the schematic, now pulsing vividly, and whispers; “it’s altean neuroimagery.”

Pidge nearly screams.

“Holy shit!”

The two of them scramble for a moment, discarding certain screens and hurriedly pulling up others in their place, before Hunk draws up short with a frown.

“Hang on, Keith, did you just say she?”

Keith hums lightly, occupied with reaching out for that liquid warmth and finding it bubbling curiously around his toes, “she’s a lot like Red, only...” not, he wants to finish with, but knows that will invite more questions than it answers.

Pidge waves them over with a manic grin.

“Guys, look at this,” beside the image of the Lotor’s ship is a similar schematic of the green Lion, only with far more layers of complexity to it, “I scanned Green ages ago, I wanted to know how she worked, obviously, and she was helping me understand a bunch of the altean science used to build her, but look. If I remove the primary readings and basic mechanical structure then I should be able to isolate-” Pidge lets out a whoop of victory, most of the detail melting away to leave the holographic replica of the green Lion with a familiar scattering of colour.

There’s an exclamation of “Team Punk!” as the paladins high-five, Green’s schematics now easily comparable to those of Lotor’s ship.

“Alright Keith, Keith,” Hunk settles into what Keith recognises as the yellow paladin’s more serious demeanour, “can you connect with it—or, er, her—like you can with the Lions?”

Keith takes a moment to reach out again, but when he does he only finds Red and Black, both lingering on the outskirts of his consciousness.

“It’s… different,” he tries again, searching through his mind for that feeling of otherness, “you know how the Lions are kind of inside your head?”

Both Pidge and Hunk nod their assent.

“Yeah, it’s nothing like that.”

“Helpful,” Pidge murmurs, but she’s smiling too.

Keith tries to put the memory of that consciousness into words, but it half seems impossible, and now that she’s withdrawn he isn’t able to call her back.

 

---

 

Lotor’s train of thought is interrupted when the thundering irritation in his gut abruptly clears to be replaced by a baffled sort of curiosity, and it’s only then that he realises the frustration he’s been subject to for the past movement or so hasn’t been solely his own.

Allowing her intrigue to bleed into his, Lotor tries to decipher the vague washes of feeling she greets him with.

There’s an amusement there, shortly followed by a startled fondness, as if she’d found a momentary diversion to be far more pleasing than anticipated; Lotor presses the question against her, less a thought and more a feeling, having quickly learnt upon building her that she responds far better to general sentiment than any sort of particularity.

Little star—she seems almost charmed—burns hot.

Oh? Lotor queries, but contrary beast that she is, Kra only hums in her happy little way before slinking back into the shadows of the prince’s awareness.

Lotor wonders at that, at what she’d found to have altered her mood so dramatically, but without her providing him with information, or any way of being able to see what state she’s in first hand, Lotor has no choice but to bide his time. At present, he is more than happy to do just that, because the content of his latest tome is the topic of altean alchemy: a lost art, so far as the Empire is concerned, but knowledge he knows that his father’s Witch would kill for.

Without warning, there’s an abrupt trill of glee strumming through the bond he shares with Kra, and Lotor finds that she’s being unusually evasive despite having deliberately brought his attention to her joy.

His unvoiced question is answered soon enough.

From where’s he’s seated on the second tier of the library, Lotor has a fine view of both the doorway, and the rebel guardsmen posted there. They can see him too, of course, but he’s found that the easier he makes it for them, the greater distance they are willing (if not eager) to leave between him and themselves. There’s a sudden murmur of excitement as two figures enter the room, and it takes Lotor only a moment to realise why.

The green and red paladins are, evidently, far more welcome guests to this place than he is, and the rebels are hardly shy in showing it; some of them even go so far as to bow—which Lotor thinks is frankly ridiculous—though, to his amusement, the paladins seem to be of much the same mind, the smallest one barely containing a snort of laughter, and her pretty companion projecting an air of clear discomfort.

It’s the most likable thing team Voltron have done yet.

It’s the red paladin who sees him first, dark eyes finding the prince almost as if he’d known where to look, and Lotor needs to do nothing more than arch one brow to have the fiery little thing striding towards the stairwell with determined purpose, his companion trotting at his heel.

As they approach the cluster of armchairs he’s settled himself in, Lotor sees the green paladin open her mouth to broach whatever topic it is they’ve come to discuss. He doesn’t exactly dislike her—has hardly seen enough of her to make a personal judgment, while that which he has witnessed forces him to recognise her intellect—but having no reason to forgive her disrespectful manner towards Narti he cuts her off with words meant to rile.

“Well if it isn’t the brains and beauty of Voltron,” he allows his eyes to linger on each of them in turn, and greatly enjoys how both paladins draw up short, “to deserve the honour of your company I must have done something truly remarkable.”

The red paladin recovers first with a soft snort of amusement, and though Lotor had intended to irritate rather than entertain, he’d be lying if he claimed such a reaction to be an entirely displeasing one. When the paladin drops into the seat opposite Lotor, arms crossed but posture relaxed, the prince isn’t quite sure what to make of it; neither, by the looks of things, is the green paladin, who hesitates before perching on the arm of her companion’s chair as she opens her mouth once more.

“We’re here because-”

“Manners, little paladin,” Lotor cuts her off with a blithe wave of his hand, and half admires how she’s audacious enough to show her contempt at his dismissal so openly, “You’ve been my gracious hosts for the better part of a phoeb, but you’ve yet to properly introduce yourselves. I would think it about time we rectify such a thing, if you’ve come for conversation.”

He smiles, and she scowls.

“Pidge.” Her tone is flat. “Now-”

Lotor ignores her, turning his attentions back to the red paladin, “and you?”

Out the corner of his eye, Lotor sees the green paladin bristle, and is pleased to know that his cool disregard antagonises her.

“You don’t need his name-” she interjects, defensive despite having easily given her own, and this brings to mind the blue paladin’s oddly protective stance from the day before. The prince thinks that perhaps Princess Allura’s little soldiers may not be quite so dim after all, if they have picked up on his personal interest in their former comrade, and if it weren’t so entertaining to watch them squirm he might rein himself back in.

“No,” Lotor speaks over her, his eyes never leaving the pretty face across from him as he presses a little more intrigue into his tone, “but I should very much like it.”

He’s vaguely aware of this Pidge looking between the two of them with a budding panic that betrays her youth, obviously aware that she’s lost control of the conversation before it’s even begun, but the better part of Lotor’s attention is caught on how the red paladin seems less flustered and more bemused by the obvious intent behind those words. After a moment’s pause, the pretty little thing leans forward in his seat, elbows coming to rest on knees as he juts that sharp chin up as if in defiance of everything Lotor is, the coquettish tilt of his head contradicted by lips curled into a snarl. When he speaks, it’s with a quiet growl that could bring entire civilisations to their knees.

“Earn it.”

Those words are a challenge and an invitation rolled into one.

Lotor would be the first to admit that it’s been a fair while since he’s taken another to his bed, but if he were to be perfectly honest, there were simply more important matters with which he’d needed to concern himself—and that was forgetting the fact that anyone he was observed to show more than a passing fancy in ran the risk of becoming the centre of the Witch’s more unsavoury attentions, if she thought they might serve purpose in keeping him in line. Lotor has never been so cruel as to subject someone to that for the sake of sating his carnal cravings, and the obvious solution had been to… abstain.

Up until now, he’d not believed that this decision would pose a problem.

Desire is a foreign thing in the prince’s gut, but it settles itself there with more ease than it’s earnt, sitting low and heavy and entirely inconvenient. Lotor looks to the brazen creature before him, sees how those violet eyes meet him without so much as blinking, and has to wrestle down the surge of want that thrums beneath his skin.

Sitting back with a heated breath, Lotor fails to keep the mirth from his tongue.

“You have a smart mouth, paladin,” one he’d very much like to kiss until it grows soft and pliant and all too eager, “but very well. Ask what you will, and I shall prove myself worthy of your introduction.”

The intonation is a deliberate tease, but the red paladin seems pleased all the same, and nudges his companion into motion from where she’s watched this brief exchange with a cleverness that Lotor isn’t certain he likes.

“Okay,” there’s a weight to her pause, and Lotor definitely doesn’t like that, “so we’ve been looking at your ship.”

It’s a statement, and an obvious one at that, so why she’s stopped as if expecting an answer Lotor really cannot say.

“I am aware.”

She hums, but it has a sharp edge to it, “and how exactly could you be aware when you’ve been under lock and key this entire time?”

Lotor can see what she’s getting at, had suspected Kra’s sentience of being revealed from the moment she perked up, but he just isn’t inclined to make this easy for the barbaric mutilators of his pet project.

“Your yellow paladin made as much obvious during that little inquisition of yours.”

The green paladin huffs, clearly not one for dancing around the subject, and gives up on her pretences.

“Look, we know your ship’s alive because she has an energy signature that’s almost identical to that of the Lions. We know what she’s capable of—particularly after Naxzela—and we know that your generals have the other one, along with enough ore to make a third.” She sighs, rubbing at her temple, before begrudgingly admitting: “what we don’t know is how the hell you managed to build what is essentially a second Voltron in the first place. If you managed it, then what’s to stop the Empire from making more?”

Lotor can hardly help but feel mildly insulted.

“Aside from the fact that the average imperial grunt hasn’t the brain cells to create so much as a bucket?” He catches the red paladin’s lips quirk upwards, and does his best not to preen too openly, “rather a lot I imagine. Materials, for one: I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of having you and your little friends fetch the trans-reality comet for me if it weren’t a vital component, after all.”

She grunts, no doubt uncaring for the reminder of Voltron’s past defeat.

“Sure, but the comet’s physical properties are only half the problem. If the Empire is capable of creating living weaponry, then-”

“You misunderstand, paladin.” Lotor drums his fingers lightly atop his still-open book. “While I’m flattered that you think me so capable, I’m not a god. I didn’t manufacture Kra’s sentience any more than Alfor did the Lions.”

The two paladins share a look, and Lotor realises that they truly don’t know.

“I would have thought your princess would have granted you access to her father’s research?” His question lingers in the air, but the expressions both paladins wear are answer enough.

“Coran thinks Alfor destroyed it,” the green paladin seems to personally mourn the loss, “to stop Zarkon from getting his hands on it.”

Lotor considers this to be a sensible enough conclusion, if a deeply regrettable one, but his eyes then fall to the open pages of altean wisdom in his lap with a frown; if Alfor had indeed destroyed everything relating to the Lions, all traces of the alchemy he had used to build Voltron’s beasts ought to have been destroyed along with it. The fact that this book is still here, betrays the former King.

After a moment’s consideration, Lotor holds his prize up so that the two paladins may see the cover.

“Do you know what this is?”

While the red paladin reacts as expected, with puzzlement and a small shake of the head, Pidge wears a different sort of frown.

“The Secrets of Oriande: Alchemy and its Roots.” She raises her eyes from the cover, ignorant to how she has just risen in Lotor’s estimation by her effortless comprehension of the written altean cursive. “What’s a book on altean voodoo got to do with the Lions?”

“This altean voodoo, was fundamental to Voltron’s creation,” it’s also the one piece of the puzzle Lotor himself is yet to solve—the one facet of knowledge that evades him, and therefore prevents his ships from ever truly becoming Voltron’s equal.

The green paladin still looks nonplussed.

“I don’t care how many altean fairytales you read, I draw the line at space magic.”

“Magic,” Lotor sighs, “has only ever been science that people fail to properly comprehend. Certainly this book was written as scarcely more than a children’s story, but there’s more truth to it than one would think. This, for example…”

He trails off, flicking back to an earlier chapter that illustrates creatures of the Other Realm latching onto the physical objects that passed through their world, “this is the origin of both your ships’ sentience, and mine.”

Though Pidge is still wary, the red paladin doesn’t hesitate to lean further forward as he examines the book in Lotor’s hands, allowing the prince ample time to admire how long lashes brush over refined cheekbones every time he blinks.

“But your ship, Kra?” Violet eyes flick up to meet Lotor’s gaze, questioning, and Lotor inclines his head in confirmation. “She feels different to Red—Black too, actually.”

“You spoke to her?” Lotor pauses, the implications of the pretty paladin’s words registering slowly, “or rather, you’ve piloted both the red and black Lions?”

The red paladin winces, but doesn’t deny it.

Not only the most temperamental Lion, who had refused every potential pilot the Empire offered up over the course of the four hundred imperial decaphoebs she’d been in their custody, but his father’s most coveted possession too? Lotor hardly knows what to make of that. He wants to ask—desperately so, the curiosity gnawing away at him with needle-like fangs—but something tells him that his prying into such a thing would not be well received, so he treads lightly around the topic.

“You might be the only person in the universe to have conversed with multiple denizens of Sa without having completely lost your mind.” Lotor lets the praise coat his tongue like sweetwine, his words whispered and smile genuine. “That’s what they are, you know, both my Sincline and your Voltron. They’re the hive-minded creatures of the void between worlds, tethered to the one physical material that can pass through their universe and back into our own.”

“That’s impossible,” Pidge interjects, reminding Lotor that she’s still with them, “Coran told us about the original paladins. The void creatures were corrupt. Dangerous. Alfor wanted to use Voltron to keep them out of our universe.”

“True,” Lotor concedes, “but is Voltron not dangerous? You have to combat like with like, after all, and the creatures found beyond the Rift were not so much evil as they were insatiable. Without physical form to contain them, their hunger cannot be quelled, and even then the corporeal body must be an adequate container, lest my father be the result.”

Corrupt, and ravenous for quintessence. A destroyer of worlds. A monster.

“That’s what they are?” The red paladin’s gaze is awed, searching, and then turns suddenly distant at the same moment that the whisper of Kra’s thoughts flicker to life in the air around them.

Yes.

There’s a chirrup of laughter, not cruel but cutting, and from the way the red paladin startles, he must hear it too.

Yes yes yes.

Notes:

An actual angel decended from the heavens with this gem and let me tell you that my heart is just about ready to BURST. Do you see Lotor's blushy face?? Do you???? He's precious, and I love everything about him.

Now this chapter could have easily gone on for another 2000 words?? I cut it, obviously, because a 10,000 word chapter sounded a little excessive and I'm trying to keep my chapter-length relatively consistent, but the next one will pretty much flow straight on from this. Anyway! More lore because I'm weak, and now you all get to share in my personal headcanon (and therefore my story's actual canon) that Voltron and Sincline are both rift-creatures in their own right: neither are inherently good or bad, because (as I'm sure I've said) I love grey-morality, particularly when it comes to what for all intents and purposes are Eldritch Beings of the Great Beyond. Kra, is a Galra name, and I've put a lot of thought into that too, because Alfor may be happy enough to name his Lions after their colour and be done with it, but Lotor is a pretentious hoe and goddammit he's going to give his ships Deep and Meaningful names.

Oh, also Lotor pining some more because he is a hopeless romantic #confirmed.

-

TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 9: Who am I Kidding, This is Basically Chapter Eight (Part II)

Summary:

Previously: After a somewhat stilted encounter with Shiro, Lance disappears and Keith makes it his personal mission to track the unusually absent paladin down. He also receives an apology from Lotor for the knife-stealing debacle, just in time for Pidge & Hunk to learn that the Prince's ship is not cursed, but alive, and also every-so slightly murderous. Lotor himself learns that Kra has made a new friend: none other than the stubbornly-nameless red paladin.

Following the revelation that Lotor’s ship is conscious, it had been decided that the best course of action would be to confront her creator. Hunk is reluctant to do so, opting to “hang back with the murder ship,” but Pidge practically bounces out of the hanger with bright eyes and a brighter smile, talking Keith’s ear off a mile a minute about the sheer genius it must have taken to replicate King Alfor’s research without actually having access to any of it.

“I mean on one hand it’s kind of terrifying, you know?” She’s walking at a ridiculous pace for someone with such little legs, “because if the Empire can manufacture sentience then they’re even more scientifically advanced that we thought, but on the other…”

Keith looks at Pidge as she trails off, and has to swallow down a laugh at the absolution of her awe.

“It’s pretty amazing,” he agrees, and turns down the corridor to his left.

“Isn’t it?”

The smallest paladin is still tripping over her own words, mind undoubtedly whirring too quickly for her tongue to keep up, when the pair of them arrive at their destination; the great double doors slide open with barely a whisper, Keith and Pidge entering the library to a greeting of startled silence, as one of the rebel guards—sallow-faced with four beady little eyes, the scrutiny of which Keith has been the unfortunate subject of on multiple occasions—fumbles with his weapon in fright, near shooting himself in the process.

Pidge sends Keith a look that is both disbelieving and disparaging, but now is neither the time nor place to tell her that, awkward as that particular rebel is, he’s far from the worst of them.

Not that that’s much of an achievement.

The silence quickly gives way to murmured excitement, and suddenly Keith finds himself surrounded by the very people who’ve been looking down their noses at him for the past phoeb, each one of them beaming at him as if he’d hung all the stars in the sky.

“Noble and most Gracious paladins!” The alien who speaks is engaged in a deep bow, blue and round with enough mouths that Keith gives up on working out which one its voice is coming from, “may we assist you with something?”

“Er,” Pidge’s expression is one that threatens to burst into laughter any second, “yeah. Sure. We’re here to speak to Lotor?”

“An interrogation is it?” He chortles, and it’s a harsh sound, “you need not bother yourself, most Esteemed and Honourable Deliverers, I would be more than happy to deal with the galra hellspawn on your behalf.”

I bet you would, Keith thinks sourly, looking between the rebels, all of whom are smiling at him with too many teeth and a sweetness he knows would turn deadly if they had even the slightest inkling of his heritage, and scanning his eyes across the library to the sunken circle of starlight. When he finds the sofas void of life, he looks up to the mezzanine, Lotor’s second favourite haunt, and immediately locks eyes with the prince.

Lotor raises one white brow, a faint smirk playing on his lips, and Keith wastes no time in ducking between the still babbling rebels towards the gently curving stairwell. He hears an exclamation of “Lord paladin!” from the blue alien behind him, and Pidge’s half-hearted acknowledgement of it—“Oh cool, found him, thanks!”—before she’s hot on his heels.

“Ditch me with a sycophantic prick like him again,” she hisses as they ascend, “and I’ll gut you, Kogane.”

“Noted,” is his mumbled reply, but the best part of his attention is dedicated to Lotor, who has draped himself over one of the armchairs in a deceptively careless sprawl that falls just the wrong side of casual.

Keith hears Pidge take a breath, undoubtedly eager to launch into a thousand rapid-fire questions, but Lotor beats her to it.

“Well if it isn’t the brains and beauty of Voltron.” The smile that accompanies these words is false, though not necessarily hostile, and when Lotor’s eyes linger on him with the same intrigued spark that had greeted him on the training deck, Keith finds himself suddenly uncertain. “To deserve the honour of your company I must have done something truly remarkable.”

There’s a curl to that word, remarkable, that Keith recognises: it’s not unlike magnificent, but less sincere, and with a snort Keith realises that, to put it kindly, Lotor is being a sarcastic little shit.

Dropping into the armchair opposite the prince, Keith levels his stare, and refuses to dignify him with a response. After a tick, Pidge hops up onto the arm of Keith’s chair, and lets her curiosity loose.

“We’re here because-”

Lotor cuts her off.

“Manners, little paladin. You’ve been my gracious-” and there it is again, that same mocking lilt, “-hosts for the better part of a phoeb, but you’ve yet to properly introduce yourselves. I would think it about time we rectify such a thing, if you’ve come for conversation.”

There’s a beat of silence in which the smile never drops from Lotor’s face.

“Pidge,” and Keith doesn’t have to turn his head to know that she’s trying to set Zarkon’s son on fire with her glower, “now-”

“And you?” Lotor’s eyes flicker back to Keith, looking in equal parts smug and entertained.

Pidge is growing restless, but Keith feels that to reassure her now would somehow be letting Lotor win whatever game this is, so he holds steadfast and silent as she says: “You don’t need his name-”

“No,” the prince’s focus on Keith is absolute, and in this light, the deep blue of his iris is offset by the soft luminescence of golden sclera, “but I should very much like it.”

Lotor knows.

Keith scans over that face, that smile, so self-assured and teasing, and it becomes obvious. Something in this interaction is different, heavier somehow, and though Keith can’t quite put his finger on when Lotor figured it out, the prince must know who Keith is—what he is—and he’s toying with the knowledge like a cat with a mouse. He’s not really asking for Keith’s name, he’s asking for confirmation of that which he’s fully aware, and while Keith can’t bring himself to agree with Allura’s assumptions that Lotor will use the truth of his blood against him (and maybe that’s naïve, but he just can’t), he also finds that, in seeing Lotor look so damn pleased with himself, the easily riled part of Keith just doesn’t want to give him the fucking satisfaction.

So he leans forward, elbows on his knees and chin jutted up so that he can look the prince dead in the eye as he growls, “earn it,” with a quiet sort of power thrumming beneath his skin.

Lotor’s eyes flash with the kind of danger that has always set Keith’s blood aflame, and when he sits back it’s with a hot breath that ruffles the tips of Keith’s hair and feels a lot like victory.

“You have a smart mouth paladin,” there’s a rumble in Lotor’s throat that turns the admonishment into admiration, “but very well. Ask what you will, and I shall prove myself worthy of your introduction.”

Keith has to fight a grin as he nudges Pidge into action.

“Okay,” she pauses, and the look she shoots Keith is indecipherable, “so we’ve been looking at your ship.”

“I am aware.”

When Lotor doesn’t seem inclined to elaborate beyond this, Keith can feel the tension rolling from Pidge in waves.

“And how exactly could you be aware when you’ve been under lock and key this entire time?”

Lotor doesn’t miss a beat.

“Your yellow paladin made as much obvious during that little inquisition of yours.”

His emphasis on inquisition is one of poorly concealed distaste, and Keith can hardly blame him. From the resigned huff Pidge offers, she seems to at least acknowledge that the events of the renegotiation could have gone smoother, and when Keith glances to his right he sees how the green paladin’s shoulders have slumped.

When she speaks again, it’s with her usual frankness.

“Look, we know your ship’s alive because she has an energy signature that’s almost identical to that of the Lions. We know what she’s capable of—particularly after Naxzela—and we know that your generals have the other one, along with enough ore to make a third. What we don’t know is how the hell you managed to build what is essentially a second Voltron in the first place. If you managed it, then what’s to stop the Empire from making more?”

“Aside from the fact that the average imperial grunt hasn’t the brain cells to create so much as a bucket?” Lotor makes a face and Keith has to bite the inside of his cheek to prevent himself from laughing at the utter disdain in that expression, “rather a lot I imagine. Materials, for one: I wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of having you and your little friends fetch the trans-reality comet for me if it weren’t a vital component, after all.”

Pidge grunts. “Sure, but the comet’s physical properties are only half the problem. If the Empire is capable of creating living weaponry, then-”

“You misunderstand, paladin. While I’m flattered that you think me so capable, I’m not a god.” Lotor drums his fingertips over the book in his lap lightly, an absent habit of his when he’s lost in thought, Keith has noticed. “I didn’t manufacture Kra’s sentience any more than Alfor did the Lions.”

Eyes immediately snapping to Pidge, Keith finds her looking back at him with much the same expression as he himself must wear. When he returns his attention to Lotor, the prince is eyeing the both of them curiously.

“I would have thought your princess would have granted you access to her father’s research?”

“Coran thinks Alfor destroyed it,” comes the green paladin’s reply, “to stop Zarkon from getting his hands on it.”

As Keith watches, Lotor considers this carefully, his gaze falling to the open pages of his current altean tome before he frowns, and then holds the cover up for them to see.

“Do you know what this is?”

Keith shakes his head, the altean characters of the title utter gibberish to him, but Pidge barely hesitates before reciting: “The Secrets of Oriande: Alchemy and its Roots.” She falters. “What’s a book on altean voodoo got to do with the Lions?”

“This altean voodoo,” Lotor seems torn between being impressed that she can read altean, and disappointed at her chosen descriptor, “was fundamental to Voltron’s creation.”

Pidge scoffs.

“I don’t care how many altean fairytales you read, I draw the line at space magic.”

Judging by Lotor’s expression, disappointment has won out.

“Magic has only ever been science that people fail to properly comprehend. Certainly this book was written as scarcely more than a children’s story, but there’s more truth to it than one would think. This, for example…” He trails off, flicking through the ancient pages with careless ease before turning the book so that Keith is faced with an illustration in faded colour, the deep purples of abstract beings bleeding into the delicately lined silvery blue of what is clearly intended to be an asteroid of some sort. “This is the origin of both your ships’ sentience, and mine.”

Keith examines the drawing with a critical eye, but can make neither heads nor tails of the dark, shadowy creatures depicted there.

“But your ship, Kra?” When he looks up, Lotor is watching him closely, “she feels different to Red—Black too actually.”

“You spoke to her?” Lotor blinks. “Or rather, you’ve piloted both the red and black Lions?”

Wincing, Keith prays that one day he’ll learn to keep his mouth shut, but for today the damage is already done.

“You might be the only person in the universe to have conversed with multiple denizens of Sa without having completely lost your mind.” Lotor sounds quietly awed, and when Keith risks looking up at him again he finds a smile—a real smile this time, small and genuine—unfurling across the prince’s features. “That’s what they are, you know: both my Sincline and your Voltron. They’re the hive-minded creatures of the void between worlds, tethered to the one physical material that can pass through their universe and back into our own.”

“That’s impossible,” Pidge’s voice slices the quiet in two, “Coran told us about the original paladins. The void creatures were corrupt. Dangerous. Alfor wanted to use Voltron to keep them out of our universe.”

As Lotor tears his eyes away, Keith thinks he sees a flicker of irritation behind them.

“True,” his tone is curt, “but is Voltron not dangerous? You have to combat like with like, after all, and the creatures found beyond the Rift were not so much evil as they were insatiable. Without physical form to contain them, their hunger cannot be quelled, and even then the corporeal body must be an adequate container, lest my father be the result.”

Keith turns this over in his mind; when Lotor had first spoken of Sa, he’d thought of it as more the galran afterlife than a tangible place—and maybe it once was—but from what the prince is saying now, it would seem that Sa and the Rift that had ultimately swallowed Daibazaal are one and the same.

What’s more, the Lions are from there.

“That’s what they are?” Keith asks, and without warning there’s an inhuman chirrup of laughter skipping silently through the air around him.

Yes.

Keith fixes his eyes on Lotor, who holds his gaze as that same voice sings to them and them alone.

Yes yes yes.

 

When they return to the hanger, Hunk is hunched over one of the engines, tinkering with its internal mechanics in an attempt to understand how it works. Still fully absorbed in what he’s doing, the yellow paladin starts speaking before actually looking up, and that’s his first mistake.

“Did Lotor tell you anything usefuCK-” Hunk fumbles with the components in his hands as he staggers back into the table piled high with galra parts, brown eyes wide and startled as he processes the tall figure accompanying his friends. There’s a moment of dead silence, in which Hunk sharply gestures to Lotor with the wrench-like tool in his left hand, his right clutching a quietly whirring mechanism over his heart.

“Ahhhh.” is the vague yet fitting noise of distress he settles on.

From behind Keith, Lotor mimics the sound in a flat and entirely unimpressed tone, “Ah, indeed,” which has a heavy frown settling across Hunk’s brow as he fixes his gaze on Keith and Pidge in turn.

“Why!?”

Keith looks back to Lotor, whose attention has drifted from Hunk to the towering mass of tech behind him, and before the yellow paladin can be given an answer, the prince’s eyes have narrowed to near slits and he’s hissing: “What did you do to my ship you barbarous cretin!”

He’s striding forward before anyone can stop him, and Hunk is quick to give him a wide berth, allowing what must be nearly seven feet of pure muscle and scarcely contained ire to storm over to the work table.

The yellow paladin sidles over to Pidge’s other side, and repeats his question in a low rasp: “Why?”

“Because,” she murmurs back, “he knows a hell of a lot more about the Lions than we do.”

At the look Hunk shoots her, Pidge shrugs with a feigned nonchalance, and Keith can see her curiosity warring with her obvious distrust of Lotor.

“Besides, I don’t fancy trying to put his ship back together again, but if he does it, and it kills him in the process, then that’s one less thing to worry about.”

Keith turns away.

From here he can see Lotor muttering to himself, lips moving near-soundlessly as his hands dart across the chaos of Hunk’s workspace, rearranging Kra’s innards according to some logic Keith isn’t privy to. Making up his mind, Keith leaves Pidge to update Hunk on what they’d learnt, and advances on Lotor who, it quickly becomes apparent, is speaking as much to his ship as to himself, whispers of “heathens,” and “what have they done to you,” striking Keith as painfully familiar. The prince may be scowling, but it’s not so much aggressive as dejected, and it becomes obvious that to Lotor, Kra is more than just a technological marvel. She’s a friend.

Quite possibly the only one he has left.

Sympathy twists in Keith’s gut at that—because he knows what it is to be alone in the universe, and better yet he knows how it feels to have your sole companion returned to you in pieces—so when he reaches Lotor’s side he leans back against the table, arms crossed and smile small.

Lotor starts, rapidly blinking at Keith in a manner that is almost affronted. Then his expression drops into the most unapproachable thing that he’s ever thrown Keith’s way.

“Can I help you?” His tone says that he’d rather not, and Keith’s smile wavers.

“I, er…” Keith suddenly finds Lotor impossible to read: cold and silent and dreadfully unreceptive. It near sends him reeling. “I guess that was my question?”

Lotor stares at him blankly, and Keith quickly ducks his head to scan across the alien materials beside him.

“Not that I really know how-” the terse greeting has thrown him off balance, it’s obvious, and this is usually the point where he’d withdraw into a corner and let someone else do the talking, but for some reason the words won’t stop, and he’s forced to wonder if this is how it feels to be Lance, “-Hunk’s way better at all this stuff, but since your ship has tried to kill him a couple of times now, I guess I’m the best you’re gonna get?”

When Lotor doesn’t reply, Keith risks a glance up through the longest strands of his fringe. Lotor’s still staring, but there’s a thoughtful crease to the corner of his eyes, and when he catches Keith’s eye, this time he’s the one to turn away.

“You want to help me.” The words are said slowly, as if foreign on his tongue.

Keith gives a short nod and then, realising that Lotor is now adamantly refusing to look at him, replies with a soft affirmative.

There’s another moment in which neither of them speak, but it’s broken by a wash of feeling-exasperation so strong that it nearly bowls Keith over. Lotor breathes out a harsh sound that can be nothing other than a galra curse, and there’s more of that same chirruping laughter ringing through the air like the chiming of little bells. Keith almost joins in, when he catches how disgruntled Lotor looks at her mirth, but thinks better of it.

“Does she always come on so strong?” he asks instead.

Though Lotor’s eyes never leave whatever it is he’s trying to reassemble, there’s a ghost of a smile on his lips as he answers, “yes,” and the last of that coldness leaves him.

They fall into another lull of silence after that, but it’s an easy sort of quiet, and though Keith doesn’t feel like he’s of much use, Lotor hasn’t told him to leave either, so he stands by and watches with interest as long fingers begin to effortlessly piece together the first of the dismantled engines. Several dobashes pass before Keith realises that this hush extends to Pidge and Hunk, and when he looks up it is to find the two of them watching Lotor with careful consideration.

Or… no. Not Lotor. Him.

Keith tilts his head in question, but Pidge merely shakes her’s in return, mouthing “later,” and seeming to exchange some sort of meaningful glance with Hunk whose shoulders sag before he makes a timid approach, the mechanism he’d been toying with still clutched in one large palm.

“Do you… need this?” Hunk is wary, his tone teetering on the precipice between fight and flight.

Lotor obstinately refuses to look away from what he’s doing.

“If it is something you have ripped from her corpse,” he blithely waves one hand towards his ship, “then I should imagine so.”

Hunk seems both scared and a little insulted.

“Right. Makes sense,” when he catches Keith’s eye, Keith offers an encouraging nod, “well I’ll just leave this here then?”

Lotor finally turns away from the table, raising up to his full height, and Hunk’s not a small guy but Keith supposes that—half galra or otherwise—anyone of Zarkon’s descent would be able to cut an imposing figure. When the prince’s eyes fall to the cluster of galra parts that Hunk it holding, they seem to flash with something Keith can’t identify.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen someone handling a Naalqua core with so little care,” he muses, almost lightly, “even something of that scale would be considered a liberal quantity for imploding a vessel of this size.”

This time, when Lotor gestures, it’s not to his ship, but to the Castle in general, and Hunk’s face turns to one of horror; this expression only worsens when Lotor plucks the core from the yellow paladin’s hands with deft fingers and a tight smile.

“Fortunate for you, then, that I was not fool enough to neglect treating it with its counter element before utilising it as a primary component in my vessel.”

There’s a beat of silence in which Lotor returns his attention to the engine as he affixes the power core at its heart. Hunk looks like he might pass out.

“Why would you do that?” Though this question is aimed at Lotor, those great brown eyes are fixed on Keith.

“Hard to say,” Lotor’s tone is dismissive, “however the fact that you believed me proves either that you’re stupid,” he spares a glance over his shoulder, and it seems to Keith a very unkind sort of look, “or you think I am.”

Before Lotor can turn away again, Keith has positioned himself between the two, brow furrowed. Hunk makes a noise as if to tell him not to make a big thing of it, but it’s Lotor that Keith’s focused on, and the prince is regarding him with a light sort of surprise.

“You’re being-” he scrambles for the right word for a moment, “mean.”

Lotor’s lips part on an absent breath.

“…Mean?”

“Yes. Mean.” It’s the only word that suits; not malicious enough to be cruel, but unnecessarily petty. While Keith has no idea of what Lotor’s past was like, he has very little doubt that it contained few good things, considering who his father is, so maybe it’s second nature for him to be callous and uncaring and mean, but Keith also knows that Lotor… Lotor is more than just that.

Though the prince may well be capable of meanness, he’d also steadied Keith when he’d almost passed out, when no one else had cared, and so the ex-paladin knows that he’s more than capable of kindness too.

“I get that you’re pissed because we took apart your ship, and I get that you don’t like being locked up, and I get that it’s frustrating,” he hisses out a breath between his teeth, “feeling like you’re sat around doing nothing when you know full well that the Empire’s doing anything but.”

He really does, he gets it, knows the feeling all too well.

“But being mean isn’t going to help anything. It’s not going to fix your ship, and it’s certainly not going to make this alliance any easier when we both know the Coalition is just begging for a reason to throw you out an airlock.”

He hesitates, searching Lotor’s face for something, but without knowing what it’s impossible to find.

“You’re better than this,” is the admission Keith settles on, and desperately wants Lotor to prove him right.

The only noise between them is the constant hum of the Castleship, and something that could be a whisper of thought from Kra, too distant to make out.

Lotor is gently gaping, his lips lax and eyes flitting over Keith’s face as if he’s seeing him for the first time. His head tilts, just slightly, and after a tick or two more, his mouth twists closed into something contemplative.

“Both the red and black Lions, you said.” It’s not a question. “Yes, I suppose I can see that.”

Lotor draws his shoulders back, standing tall once more, but this time it feels less like an intimidation tactic and reminds Keith more of Allura when she makes any sort of official statement. His eyes move from Keith to fix on a point just behind his shoulder.

“Hunk, was it?”

Keith turns just in time to catch Hunk flinching at the direct address.

“Mhm, yep, that would be me.” By the look on Hunk’s face, he’s trying to work out at what point he introduced himself by name.

“If you can give me your word that you will desist in dissecting my ship, then I will endeavour to supply you with any and all further knowledge you require on her construction.” He pauses, his attention flickering to Keith with faint amusement and something else, “I shall also restrain myself from any further… meanness.”

Keith grins.

 

---

 

They’ve desecrated her.

That’s all Lotor can think as he strides over to the chaotic mountain of tech that once served as the inner workings to the first weapon to rival Voltron’s Lions in all the history of the known universe. She was a beautiful and proud creature, and though he’d known they’d been taking her apart, the beastly little savages that call themselves paladins have practically reduced her to scrap.

Vile, philistinic, heathens.

Kra drapes herself about his shoulders with a sweet, crooning sort of agreement, adding her pique to his and serving only to bolster his temper.

“What have they done to you?” Lotor asks as he sorts across the various components of her primary engines and finds that, not only have the paladins dismantled each and every one, but they don’t appear to have even had the decency to have done so according to any logical system, instead leaving some of the finest mechanical works the Empire has ever produced strewn across the tabletop as if it were debris on a battlefield. Entire movements worth of work, unravelled so completely at the hands of Princess Allura’s little soldiers who are scarcely better than children if this is what they do when given free rein.

Naxzela would have done less damage than this.

Quiet as Kova, the red paladin has approached him, suddenly leant back against the worktable as if he belongs there, and Lotor hardly cares for the demure little smile the impudent creature gives him when it’s offset by the absolute desolation that surrounds them. Fond of their pretty compatriot he may be, but if the paladins think that Lotor will so easily forget their grievances against him for the wiles of dusk-dark irises set beneath full lashes, then they have mistaken him for a simple man.

“Can I help you?” Lotor doesn’t bother to conceal his aggravation, and that sweet smile falters.

“I, er… I guess that was my question?”

Lotor stares him down, hard and unforgiving, as he tries to decipher the truth behind those words. Did the paladins truly mean to bring him here, have him clean up their mess, and then beg forgiveness through seduction?

It is insulting.

The red paladin ducks his head—sweet and flustered and conceivably genuine—but Lotor feels disinclined to believe him, and scours for the chink in the façade.

“Not that I really know how-” the younger man fumbles over his words, and Lotor need only find one thing, just one, that reads as dishonest, but… “-Hunk’s way better at all this stuff, but since your ship has tried to kill him a couple of times now, I guess I’m the best you’re gonna get?”

Just one. He’d set the bar so low, and yet the red paladin is sincerity incarnate.

Those eyes peer up at him, shadowy soft through wild strands of hair, and Lotor finds himself turning away. It doesn’t help any. He stares at Kra’s fragmented innards and tries to recall some of that indignation that had sparked so hotly in his blood barely a dobash before, but the red paladin has bled it all out of him with little more than a look.

“You want to help me,” he clarifies.

Though it makes no sense, the paladin is quick to affirm this as truth, his tone earnest.

Lotor is forced to take a moment, and in doing so he finds that this new facet of Voltron’s sixth paladin, this soft honesty, effortlessly slips itself into the prince’s understanding of him. It seems like it shouldn’t, not when Lotor can recall with startling clarity the sight of that armoured body marked in vermillion, soaring over his opponent’s head only to wrench the droid’s neck to the side, but then he remembers the laughter that followed such a brutal victory, and how, even in that moment, he’d thought it a tender sound. Lotor thinks of “Earn it,” of the growled challenge in those words, of the fight and fire and fury, and wonders how even that holds roots in the cornerstone of truth—this paladin’s truth—something he seems to live and breathe in a manner that Lotor can’t even begin to comprehend.

He’s been silent for too long, or so Kra seems to decide, and her vexation comes in a wave so great that it steals all the breath from Lotor’s lungs, along with a rather unsavoury curse.

Little star—she insists, with a chagrined note at having to repeat herself—burns hot.

The understanding that hits Lotor is abrupt, all-consuming, and entirely obvious in hindsight; the red paladin had said he’d spoken to her, so really Lotor should have known. Kra laughs—silly—and he tries not to feel too insulted.

“Does she always come on so strong?” The paladin’s voice—a little bit overwhelmed but contented in a way that burns warmth into the pit of Lotor’s stomach—brings him back to the present.

“Yes.”

There’s little to say after that, but it’s a comfortable sort of silence, and Lotor finds that reassembling the first of Kra’s engines is soothing in that it settles some of the restless energy that’s been building up within him since he first arrived on the altean vessel. The red paladin may have offered his help, but Lotor hasn’t anything he needs him to do, and so the as-of-yet nameless man stands by wordlessly. It should be distracting to have another’s presence hovering without purpose, but, more than a little surprisingly, Lotor finds that he doesn’t mind the company.

In thinking as much, he seems to have invited the universe to ruin it, and soon one becomes two as the yellow paladin’s heavy footsteps draw nearer.

“Do you… need this?” His tone is tentative, perhaps a little afraid, and Lotor thinks he deserves it for having reduced Kra to such a state.

“If it’s something you have ripped from her corpse,” and he knows it must be, “then I should imagine so.”

“Right. Makes sense,” there’s a pause, and out the corner of his eye, Lotor sees the red paladin offer his comrade a nod of reassurance, “well I’ll just leave it here then?”

Lotor turns, draws himself up, and is vindictively pleased that the paladins’ species is one of such small stature. Height has not been an advantage often afforded to him, not among the galra, but here in his current company it is one of the few modicums of power he has left.

His eyes drop to the glowing object in the yellow paladin’s palm, and something small and spiteful worms its way into his tone.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever seen someone handling a Naalqua core with so little care,” he makes a show of pondering his own words, before adding: “even something of that scale would be considered a liberal quantity for imploding a vessel of this size.”

He waves his arm to indicate the Castle of Lions rather than Kra, and takes pleasure in the moment of terror his ship’s defiler suffers, before plucking the core from near-trembling fingertips and putting the poor fool out of his misery.

“Fortunate for you, then, that I was not fool enough to neglect treating it with its counter element before utilising it as a primary component in my vessel.”

Satisfied that the paladin has suffered his reprimand in full—and, considering the sheer quantity of work he’s unravelled, he is being let off lightly—Lotor turns back to the task at hand, seating the perfectly benign power core at the engine’s heart.

“Why would you do that?” The yellow paladin sounds upset, and Lotor is glad for it.

“Hard to say, however the fact that you believed me proves either that you’re stupid,” he shoots a frosty glance over his shoulder along with the insult, and lets the burn of it sink in, “or you think I am.”

Almost instantly, the red paladin takes it upon himself to become a physical barrier, standing protectively in front of his larger friend as if to shield him from Lotor—it would be to little effect, were it not for the ferocious scowl that mars his fine-boned features, giving Lotor pause.

“You’re being,” violet eyes have turned stormy and searching, “mean.”

It’s… certainly not what Lotor expected to hear. It makes his jaw drop.

“…Mean?”

“Yes. Mean,” he says, firmly, and what is that? Something so arbitrary, so infantile in its connotations; as if meanness holds any weight when they’re standing on the altean warship that is the central hub for rebellion in this intergalactic war.

“I get that you’re pissed because we took apart your ship, and I get that you don’t like being locked up, and I get that it’s frustrating feeling like you’re sat around doing nothing when you know full well that the Empire’s doing anything but.” There’s an understanding there, too much, perhaps, to be coming from an outsider’s perspective, and the red paladin’s words are spilling blunt and fast, “but being mean isn’t going to help anything. It’s not going to fix your ship, and it’s certainly not going to make this alliance any easier when we both know the Coalition is just begging for a reason to throw you out an airlock.”

Those eyes—those eyes—they seem almost desperate for answers that Lotor would offer up in a heartbeat if only he knew what they were.

“You’re better than this,” he says quietly, and Lotor thinks it might have been kinder for the red paladin to simply gut him then and there, because that’s not- how can he possibly- he sounds so certain-

It’s a confession, of a sort, and in the way he says it, a truth.

Lotor doesn’t know whether he can believe in such a thing, it sounds too much like a beautiful lie, but he knows he wants to. It’s a dangerous thought; Lotor hasn’t wanted to be anything for anyone in a very long time, and if history is doomed to repeat itself then this can only end in disaster.

Even so—Kra whispers, from some far off place—Even so.

Even so, Lotor agrees, the weight of the red paladin’s gaze doesn’t feel like expectation, but faith, and may Sa smite him if those eyes don’t make Lotor a believer.

“Both the red and black Lions, you said,” the mere concept is delicious, “yes, I suppose I can see that.”

The prince takes a breath, straightens his posture, and tears himself from that scorching scrutiny to find the green paladin across the room—too clever by half, in the way she’s watching this exchange and cataloguing every tick—then back to the yellow paladin, stood far closer.

“Hunk, was it?” He knows full well it is, having heard the name from both the red Lion’s former and current pilots.

Though obviously ill at ease, when the yellow paladin speaks his voice is clear, and Lotor can respect that.

“Mhm, yep, that would be me.”

“If you can give me your word that you will desist in dissecting my ship, then I will endeavour to supply you with any and all further knowledge you require on her construction.” Lotor allows himself to indulge in the heat of the red paladin’s attention once more, a smile curling, unbidden, onto his lips. “I shall also restrain myself from any further… meanness.”

The red paladin breaks into a sharp grin, and, in a moment of absolute clarity, Lotor knows that this is the beginning of the end.

Notes:

Can you believe that if I'd uploaded chapter 8 as one thing, it would have ended up being almost 14,000 words long? So much for consistency.

Just to let you know, I'll be out of the country for a couple of weeks, so the next chapter probably won't be up until mid-late August. I'll almost certainly write while I'm away, but the document in which I've been planning this fic has sort of... spiraled out of control. By which I mean it's a mess, and I need to reorganise the whole thing because literally none of the key events are in chronological order and it is, quite frankly, ridiculous (not to mention impossible to work with, and I wrote the damn thing).

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TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 10: A Time Hopity-Skipity-Jump (Including the Shenanigans of a Tiny Fluffy Terminator)

Summary:

Previously: In accompanying Pidge to speak with Lotor, Keith becomes quite convinced that the prince has figured out his dual-identity, and it becomes a game between them as to whole will admit to the truth of it first. Lotor, however, is extremely displeased to find that Hunk has taken his ship - Kra, apparently - apart, but Keith refuses to stand by and allow him to be unnecessarily mean.

Keith finds himself in a new routine: one of endless motion and company that sees him all over the castle, though most notably in Kra’s assigned hanger, or, if not there, in what is fast becoming known as her creator’s personal wing. Between sleepy mornings filled with historical galra conquests, and afternoons-turned-evenings of what Keith soon recognises as the most complicated engineering puzzle the universe has ever seen, the former paladin is without a spare tick to himself, and Lotor at the epicentre of it all.

If asked, Keith would say that he doesn’t much mind the strangely tumultuous routine that his life has fallen into.

The truth of it is that he likes it.

He likes it just as he likes this silly little game he and Lotor have silently agreed upon, of seeing who will give up first: Keith with his façade of dual identity, or the prince with his dancing about the issue. It’s dumb and childish and essentially meaningless, but Keith likes it all the same.

For the first time in a long time, he’s having fun.

It helps that he’s not isolating himself from the paladins, from his friends, Keith knows that—knows that for all his reputation as a lone wolf at the Garrison, he’s never really been all that fond of solitude. Being around Pidge does him good because she doesn’t bother him about things he doesn’t want to be bothered about, and Hunk’s company is simply a blessing in and of itself.

It goes like this:

They settle into the sort of dynamic that doesn’t make sense; four people, three humans, two galra, one altean—the kind of mathematical equation that is entirely wrong for the problem at hand, and yet gives the right answer despite it all. They sit around reassembling an alien warship, none of them in armour yet all of them armed (though, granted, while Lotor’s altean strength is a weapon in its own right, both Pidge and Hunk are distance fighters, and said strength won’t do much good if the prince can’t get close enough to use it), and Keith thinks there’s a surreal sort of camaraderie to be found here.

That’s not to say that Lotor and Hunk particularly like each other—they don’t—or that Lotor hasn’t adopted a healthy sort of caution around Pidge—he has—but the air of hanger Xi12 isn’t a hostile one, and at times, Keith thinks they might have stumbled upon a medium that works.

 

The first couple of quintants are a little strained, to say the least, and Keith ends up playing the mediator between his friends and their once-enemy, which, suffice to say, isn’t a job he’s particularly well-suited for.

“Rhyahl,” in lieu of his real name, Lotor has taken to addressing him by a galran one, which Keith wouldn’t otherwise mind were it not for the amused curl the word has every time it’s said, “pass me that, won’t you?”

‘That’, a casual wave of the hand indicates, is whatever galra contraption Hunk has been tinkering with for the past varga, only to have just now completed. ‘That’ sits in front of the yellow paladin who passes it to Keith—who, in turn, passes it to Lotor—with an apologetic grimace and a mouthed word of thanks. ‘That’ is given a perfunctory once-over by Lotor who, seemingly satisfied with Hunk’s work, affixes it to the hulking component beside him before hoisting the entire thing up onto one shoulder and striding over to Kra, as if doing so was no big deal.

Keith thinks it’s a very big deal.

He’s a lot of things, but he’s not blind, and apparently the way muscles ripple beneath the lavender skin of that exposed shoulder, framed between Lotor’s cloth-bound arm and sleeveless altean tunic, is a very very big deal.

It kind of pisses him off.

He doesn’t need this right now. Keith knows he has a job to do—not just that of reassembling Kra or helping team Voltron with the next step, but his duty to the Blade—he’s mid-mission right now, even if it feels like he’s not, and there’s watching Lotor, and then there’s… well. Watching Lotor.

The distinction is an important one.

Finished reattaching the component to the underneath of Kra’s left side and receiving the echo of an appreciative purr in return, Lotor rolls his shoulders as he rises to his full height.

Keith nearly bites through his damn tongue.

Nope, he thinks, Not doing this.

Knowing that Lotor’s strong is one thing, but seeing casual displays of strength when the prince is simply existing is entirely another, because he’s just... Doing his thing. Not at all trying to rile Keith up, and yet it works far better than his deliberate teasing or smirking taunts, and Keith is starting to think it might be the galra in him. Regris had once said that the urge to fight was in their blood—not the desire to hurt, he’d clarified, just fight. “Because we can,” he’d said, “because it’s fun.”

Keith’s been fighting for as long as he can remember, though not always for the right reasons, so he knows the adrenaline as well as he knows his own face, and he’d never deny that it’s a part of him. Learning that it was the galra part of him had been a whole experience in and of itself, but he’s over that. Mostly. Now it’s more the understanding that his need to fight can become more than just a vague sort of urge: it can become a person. Who, varies. James Griffin is the first one to come to mind, a hot-shot rich brat who’d never known how good he had it, but Keith hadn’t disliked him. Sure, Griffin had been a lot, sometimes too much, and they’d definitely had their fair share of brawls when they were kids, but Keith had admired him for his easy charisma and competitive spirit. He’d possibly admired him for a little more than that, but there were some things even a year fighting in a space war hadn’t prepared him to deal with.

Shiro’s the second, and though Keith had never wanted to fight Shiro in quite the same way as he had James, there was that same sense of admiration, that same desire to prove himself as better—not better than anyone, and certainly not better than Shiro, just better—and sparring had been a way for Keith to improve, to show Shiro that he could listen and learn and do more, to prove to the Garrison’s golden boy that he was worth it.

And now there’s Lotor.

Lotor who’s already pinned him once—pinned him but not beaten him—and who’s complimented him several times over: Lotor who’s strong and smart and more experienced than Keith, and who promises to be not just an interesting opponent, but a real challenge.

So Keith watches Lotor, feels the hot prickle of a fight beneath his skin, and has to force himself to look away.

 

“You looked like you were in pain,” Pidge tells him later, when it’s Hunk’s turn to escort Lotor back to his rooms, “like, you were glaring at him harder than Lance used to glare at you.”

Keith hesitates before admitting, “I wanted to punch him.”

Pidge laughs: “Same, honestly.”

But Keith’s not done.

“I really wanted to punch him. And I wanted-” him to punch me, he doesn’t say, because that makes no sense, “I wanted an even fight, I think. I wanted to win.”

“Most people don’t go into a fight wanting to lose,” she still sounds entertained.

“But he wasn’t even doing anything. I just… he was literally just fixing his ship and I wanted to bite him.” Vaguely, Keith realises Pidge isn’t laughing anymore, “and I know I’m not explaining this well but it’s- it’s not an aggressive thing. I didn’t want to hurt him, not without reason, I just...”

Keith huffs and glowers at the floor.

“You just wanted to bite him,” the green paladin gives him an odd look as she repeats Keith’s words back to him.

“Yes,” he’s hopelessly miserable in the way he says it, tacking on: “I think it’s a galra thing,” by way of explanation.

Pidge just hums.

 

Hunk snaps on the fifth quintant.

“Alright!” He plants his hands firmly on the table in front of Lotor, and the prince looks up in surprise. “I’m done with this, I’m done with dancing around you: are you tall, purple, and intimidating? Yeah, definitely, but I have gotta know what the deal is with your ship, and our Lions, and pretty much anything you can tell us about the trans-reality beings that are apparently possessing them, because this is, like, a whole thing, and I cannot take it anymore!”

As Keith watches, just as shocked as Lotor by this sudden outburst, Hunk stands a little straighter and nods decisively. There’s a moment’s silence in which Keith thinks—expects, really—Hunk to falter, but he just doesn’t, instead holding firm until Lotor leans back with an indecipherable expression, and concedes.

“Alright, what is it you wish to ask of me?”

“Er,” Hunk blinks, “just like that?”

“You would prefer I make this difficult?”

“No! Nope, definitely not, I just wasn’t expecting…” he makes a vague gesture and glances over his shoulder at Pidge who just shrugs, “you know what? It doesn’t matter what I was expecting, I super appreciate you being all cooperative and stuff, so that’s cool, let’s get to it.”

Lotor inclines his head, and Hunk sits opposite him, drumming his fingers across the tabletop rapidly.

“Soooo…” the vowel is drawn out and strained.

“So,” Lotor parrots, tone clipped and eyebrow raised in an obviously unimpressed expression.

Beneath the table, Keith kicks him.

He isn’t sure where the impulse comes from, but he’s already acted on it before his mind has had a chance to really think it through, and—oh fuck—Lotor’s looking at him with the most deeply insulted expression possible, and for a moment Keith thinks that voicing his craving for a fight to Pidge might have been baiting the universe to a dangerous degree.

Then Lotor’s expression softens to one of mild amusement, and turns back to Hunk who has watched this silent exchange with a slow terror unfolding across his features.

“Apologies,” the corner of his lips quirk as he says this, “it seems I have yet to shake my unnecessary meanness. Do continue.”

After a moment, Hunk does, but Keith’s attention is caught on Pidge who, on the outskirts of his vision, is trying to bore holes into the side of his head with her mind.

He adamantly ignores her, instead focusing on Hunk as he begins to speak.

“So Voltron and Sincline are the void-creatures, I get that—it’s freaky, but I get it—but what about the whole separate consciousness thing. I mean, they’re a hive mind, obviously, but the Lions are still different from one another. When we first became paladins Allura told us who would fly what, and it was all to do with our quintessence and junk,” Hunk pauses, uncertain, before finishing lamely, “so how does that, er, work?”

Lotor merely shrugs.

“The creatures of Sa are complex multifaceted beings of pure consciousness. Though I should like to tell you that I am an expert on the topic, the fact of the matter is that all anyone really knows is that they’re exceedingly old and exceedingly hungry.”

Keith glances at Hunk, who doesn’t look at all comforted by this knowledge.

“In sculpting Sincline’s vessels to her liking, I have come to suspect that just as Kra, Li, and Ept are three parts of a whole, she herself is merely a facet of something much greater.”

In less than a tick, Pidge is launching herself forward from where she had sat apart from the group, and now bounces on her toes excitedly.

“Hold up; you’re saying Voltron and Sincline and whatever the hell else those things call themselves are actually all just one massive social organism? So the Lions are a hive-mind within a hive-mind?”

“Precisely,” Lotor seems pleased by her enthusiasm for the concept, “or, at the very least, that is my working hypothesis. Without a greater pool of data I can neither confirm nor deny this idea, and I’m sure you understand how unlikely it is that I, or indeed, our entire universe, will ever have access to such a thing.”

“Right,” Pidge is mumbling, obviously speaking more to herself now than anyone else, “but theoretically…”

She trails off and drops into the seat beside Keith, her eyes flicking over facts and figures invisible to all but her, her mind obviously whirring.

“Why three?” Hunk is watching Lotor curiously, “you have—or had, sorry—four generals plus yourself. Why not make five ships?”

Keith sees how Lotor’s mouth twists into a thin line at the yellow paladin’s slip, but thankfully, the prince lets it pass without comment.

“What you need to understand about the denizens of Sa, is that they are quite sure of what they want. The decision to divide the comet into three was not mine, but hers. I am not, you understand, saying that a lesser mind could have achieved what I have, but Sincline knew what she wanted and I built the vessels to best accommodate those wants.”

Keith mulls this over.

“Kra, Li, Ept,” the names are familiar, Keith thinks, though he can’t for the life of him remember where he might have heard them before, “you named them?”

Lotor affirms this with a curling smile, setting his hand on his chin as he watches Keith intently. “You speak Zaalkh as if you were born to it.”

Keith feels Pidge stiffen beside him, her hand fisting into the hem of his shirt as a warning, though what from he doesn’t know. Lotor continues without noticing.

“Indeed Rhyahl, I named them. Kraliept tron Gamaar: Knowledge is of Three Parts. It’s a rather well-known proverb stemming from Empress Marmora’s reign.”

Keith starts.

“Yes,” the prince leans forward further, “your little allies could likely tell you far more about their founder than I, but so far as your question I’m sure my knowledge on the topic shall suffice… Although, if you’re interested, I’d be more than willing to give you a history lesson or two.”

Pidge’s grip tightens, but Keith’s attention is fully fixated on the man before him. Lotor’s grin is sharp, almost predatory in the way he’s watching Keith with hooded eyes, and Keith recalls the conversation they’d had the night before in the library—Lotor speaking to him as a Blade rather than a former paladin, recounting the many conquests of Emperor Zaghit, fourteenth to rule the Empire—and thinks, you smug little shit, with more fondness than the prince has earnt.

“Maybe I’ll take you up on that,” he deadpans, and gold-rimmed eyes flash with delight at having him play along, “but first you’re going to explain your ships to us.”

“As I’ve said,” Lotor doesn’t look even the slightest bit deterred, “Knowledge is of Three Parts: the word, Kraliept, is devised of three characters when written down.”

Here he pauses, holds his hand out expectantly, and when Keith just frowns at his open palm in confusion the galra prince gives a soft huff and gently gestures to gloved hands.

“May I?”

Struck dumb by such an odd request, Keith nods.

When he allows Lotor to take his wrist and tug him gently closer until Keith’s sat on the edge of his seat, only the corner of the table between them, several things happen at once.

First, and most noticeable, is Pidge’s grip on the hem of his shirt tightening to an almost painful degree, bunching the fabric in her fist and pulling it taught around Keith’s middle, only to abruptly release him altogether. The second is Hunk who, sat across the table, seems to have stopped breathing, and shares some sort of silent conversation with Pidge, communicating through nothing but a wide-eyed expression that Keith can’t put a name to. Third, is how large Lotor’s hand is. Abruptly, Keith is assaulted by the phantom sensation of that same hand holding him steady, firm and unyielding as he threatened to topple over, and then again immediately after reclaiming his knife, pinning him to the floor with that same irrefutable strength. Now, the difference in that grip strikes him, because Lotor isn’t holding him in an effort to prevent something—be that falling or fighting—he’s holding him simply to…

…to hold him?

It doesn’t make sense.

Things don’t get any clearer when Lotor turns Keith’s hand over, knuckles down, and drags the pad of his thumb across the glove shielding Keith’s palm until it’s settled in the crux of it, pressing gently into the supple leather to keep him in place. With his other hand, the prince traces the faint vein of blue beneath the bare skin of Keith’s wrist, the flats of dull claws cool and full of promise.

“Kra.” Lotor’s voice has turned low and soft, something almost reverent in that depth of tone, and his mindless tracing becomes purposeful, forming the same pattern over and over. “Flesh: that which one may see and touch and taste. It is the truth that can be acquired through conquest, and strength of will.”

“Li,” the pattern changes, but is again simple and repetitive. “Blood: a truth that runs deeper, an unseen bond, only to be ascertained by instinct, allowing one to know things as they are and not by the skin they wear to greet you.”

“Ept,” A third change; a third written character, Keith realises. “Bone: Mental fortitude enough that one may strip down deceit to uncover the essence of the thing, the truth at its core.”

There’s a brief pause, a moment’s silence. Though his grip is still light, Lotor doesn’t release Keith’s wrist, and when Keith looks up the prince’s attention is still firmly fixated on the pulse point beneath his fingertips.

“Empress Marmora,” he says quietly, “bastardised the imperial war cry for her own elite guard. It was not Victory she cared for, but the Truth. Ergo, Kraliept Sa.”

Oh, Keith thinks, that’s why it sounded familiar.

He lets his eyes fall back to his wrist as Lotor traces one final character.

“Knowledge or…” Lotor’s index finger darts swiftly across the pale skin, left to right, before half curling back in on itself, his thumb just beneath it drawing a crescent so tightly curved that it almost loops around to form a delicately scrawled circle, “Sa: death, the Void, the all-consuming netherworld; said to be the opposite of Truth, and yet it is no lie.”

Keith doesn’t know what to say. This feels important, intimate, soft and sorrowful in all the wrong ways.

He looks up at Lotor again, and this time the prince is looking right back and his eyes are endlessly blue, blue, blue, until they aren’t anymore, and Lotor has soothed his thumb over Keith’s wrist one final time before removing himself completely. He turns away, the picture of composure, and it’s as if the past few dobashes never happened.

“To return to your initial question, Hunk,” Lotor doesn’t so much as blink when Hunk starts at the sudden address, “while Sincline and Voltron both have egos and ids—though, I suspect, no explicit moral compass—I have come to learn that their personalities as we would understand them are, in part, crafted under the influence of their creator in the physical plane. In Sincline’s case, that would be me—not merely her aesthetics, but her values are also coloured by the imperial sensibilities I was raised with—and for Voltron the same could be said of Alfor.”

Keith gets the feeling that the yellow paladin is determined not to look his way.

“Yep, okay.” Hunk’s voice cracks, and he winces as it does so. “So you named your ships after some super deep galra proverb with lots of levels of meaning relating to different and kinda graphic viscera—very artsy, love it—and King Alfor colour-coded.”

“Evidently so.” Lotor’s face has fallen flat, as if this is his greatest disappointment in life.

Keith has to bite back a laugh.

 

Hunk catches him by the arm that evening after Lotor’s long gone, Pidge having returned from escorting the prince only to promptly fall asleep at her workspace.

“Hey Keith, buddy, do you think Lotor maybe… knows?”

Keith blinks, “About me being galra?”

“Yeah man, I mean he was really-” Hunk clearly had a word there, but thought better of it at the last second, pausing and watching carefully for a reaction in a way that Keith immediately recognises, “he was really intense, you know? With the whole ancient galra language thing.”

Keith absently scratches at his wrist; intense is definitely the word for it. “Mhm, he knows.”

“What!?” Pidge bolts upright, evidently not asleep at all, though Keith has no idea why she was pretending. “Are you sure?”

Shrugging, Keith answers honestly, “I think he figured it out before we starting bringing him here. He was acting like he knew in the library, remember?”

Pidge’s expression says she doesn’t. “Hold up, you think he’d already worked it out when we first questioned him on his ship? Why?”

So Keith explains.

It’s in the looks Lotor keeps giving him, in the way he’s given Keith a galra name, the teasing and taunting and dancing around everything that is their shared heritage. It’s too much, too deliberate.

“And then all that stuff earlier about Marmora and the Truth? He’s not even being subtle.”

“Yeah,” Pidge doesn’t seem convinced, and even Hunk is frowning a little, “well that much we can agree on.”

She doesn’t elaborate.

 

Keith walks into the hanger after Lotor’s already arrived, having waited to leave the library until the prince had first been escorted out so that he could exchange his marmoran stealthwear for his human clothes, and is met by the sight of Pidge, her hackles raised as she hisses like a cat.

“I’m not obligated to do anything! The galra took my brother and they still have my dad-”

“The Empire,” Lotor interrupts, with a tone that’s almost bored.

Pidge’s rant falters.

“What?”

“Not ‘the galra’ but ‘the Empire’, it’s a rather key differentiation.” When he places down his work, it’s to fix the green paladin with a look that’s… not sad, exactly, but weary. “If you must place blame on an entire group rather than the individuals responsible, then make it a societal structure rather than our race. People cannot help what they are born as, but the systems they serve and benefit from are of their own choosing. The Empire took your family from you, and that is regrettable, but I will not be burdened by guilt on behalf of blood I had no say in.”

His tone is finite, and though Keith knows that it isn’t said for his benefit, he feels a rush of gratitude towards Lotor regardless.

 

Eleven quintants. Eleven full quintants of radio silence, and then Lance McClain thinks he can just saunter on in like he has done no wrong. Keith is vindictively glad that Lotor’s presence catches the idiot off-guard.

“I heard you were looking for me KogaAH!” He’s gaping at the galra prince, who’s sat perfectly benignly, cross-legged on the floor beside Hunk as they go over some of Kra’s technical intricacies. “WHY?”

Lotor barely acknowledges him, offering only a disappointed sigh as he mutters: “Well now that’s familiar,” under his breath, which Keith half-heartedly scolds him for, earning himself a guiltless smile with a flash of teeth as he shoves a squawking Lance out the room.

“What the hell is he doing here!?”

“Helping,” and Lance looks like he has several opinions on the concept, so Keith doesn’t give him chance to voice even one of them, “forget that, where have you been?”

As if a switch were flicked the disbelief melts from Lance’s features, some of his usual smugness returning to him as he looks Keith up and down with an ominously unfolding smirk.

“Aw, were you worried about me Keithy? I didn’t know you cared.”

He’s batting his eyes stupidly, and Keith has to look away to some far-off point down the corridor before he can muster together enough honesty to mumble, “of course I care.”

Lance doesn’t respond and Keith daren’t look at him, instead shuffling awkwardly and pretending that he can’t feel Red’s current paladin gaping at him as if he’d just spat on his grandmother’s grave. Ten ticks turn into a hundred, and Keith risks peeking through the longest strands of his fringe to find that Lance’s mockery has gone soft on surprise, which both embarrasses and emboldens him.

“I haven’t seen you for over a week,” the words start tumbling from his tongue faster than he can control them, “you’re never in your room, you keep skipping mealtimes, and even though the others have seen you around, none of them can ever tell me where you keep disappearing to; I’ve been worried dammit.”

His ears are burning, he can feel it, but talking to people—being open with them, caring enough about them to even try—is still something too foreign for Keith to be fully comfortable.

“Oh,” Lance’s voice is small, and catches in his throat, “well that’s, er… thanks, Keith.”

Keith doesn’t know what he’s being thanked for, and Lance hasn’t actually answered any of his questions—though he supposes that, technically, he didn’t ask any—but the paladin isn’t laughing at him for being stupid, either, and some of the tightness in Keith chest has left along with his admission, so he just offers a curt nod.

“Yeah,” it comes out just as awkward as he feels. “Maybe just… say hi now and then?”

“I can- I can do that.” The one comfort is that Lance sounds equally uncertain as to how to deal with whatever moment they’re having.

Keith’s eyes widen.

When his head snaps up, looking Lance dead in the eye, the paladin almost stumbles back in surprise.

“Are we having another bonding moment?”

There’s a beat of silence.

Then, completely disregarding the sincerity this question is asked with, Lance bursts into a fit of giggles, near doubling over as he sinks back against the wall. Keith doesn’t see what’s so funny, but the tension is broken, and when Lance finally regains control of his diaphragm, his reply puts Keith at ease.

“Sure thing, mullet,” his grin is soft, “I’ll try not to forget this one.”

 

Lance doesn’t join them with Kra’s reassembly—had outright refused, actually, his nose scrunching up as if he’d smelt something foul as soon as Keith had suggested it. It’s probably for the best, Keith thinks, watching Pidge’s expression carefully as she explains the science behind her galra-tracker to Lotor, as if daring him to find fault with it. Lance had always had a talent for unnecessary escalation, and the air is tense enough without his help.

The green paladin has been more subdued around Lotor since his firm clarification of ‘Empire’ as opposed to ‘galra’. Keith still doesn’t know what started that argument—he’s not suicidal enough to ask Pidge directly, and Hunk won’t say a word—but if he knows anything about Katie Holt, it’s that her family means the world to her; she won’t forgive the Empire for taking them, and she’ll never give up until her dad’s returned to her, one way or another. Keith can relate: as many times as it takes, he’d said, and he’d meant it. He’d always mean it, no matter how much bullshit Zarkon throws at him, or Shiro, or anyone else in this rag-tag space squad.

So he gets it, he gets that Pidge is never going to give up on her family, and he wouldn’t ask her to, especially not when her reunion with Matt has only strengthened the belief that she’ll find her dad alive and well.

Keith hopes that’s true.

He also hopes—though, he knows, this is probably a waste of energy—that Lotor will stop toeing the line between infuriating and uncooperative for just long enough that he can convince Pidge that the prince is not, in fact, as much of a “devious quiznaker” as she’d been so adamantly insisting the evening before.

“You possess remarkable intellect for such a primitive species.”

The mildly damning praise, Keith thinks, is the furthest thing from helpful, even if Lotor does appear to mean it in sincerity.

“Gee,” Pidge scowls, “thanks.”

“You are welcome,” Lotor hums absently, as he scans over the holographic map. “This is a rather noteworthy achievement. Tell me, are these patterns predicted based upon the most statistically likely imperial flight routes, or…?”

“They’re live.”

He turns to her, eyes widened fractionally with what Keith recognises as genuine admiration. “You truly are an intelligent little beast, aren’t you?”

Pidge’s expression flattens further, and she casts a half-hearted glare at Keith.

“Can you deal with him?”

Keith is shaking his head with a snort, because Lotor isn’t about to let anyone give him orders and the very idea is laughable, but in the same moment that Lotor himself decides to purr, “by all means, do try,” which has Hunk muffling a horrified groan from where his head has abruptly dropped against the table.

“No,” the yellow paladin doesn’t move, but it’s obvious who he’s addressing, “please, just… No.”

Pidge is gaping in a way that seems mildly offended, Lotor not helping matters by smirking at her like he’s greatly enjoying the distress he’s caused, and Keith… has definitely missed something. Again.

He’s saved from having to try and understand it, when Lotor’s eyes fix on the map’s uppermost reaches, his amusement falling to a face of serious contemplation.

“There’s nothing in that sector,” he says, quietly.

Keith immediately looks to the map, at the area that’s caught Lotor’s attention, and frowns. The tracker indicates a small cargo ship, nothing extravagant let alone a threat to Voltron, drawing nearer to a minor imperial checkpoint on the far side of Naxzela, amidst a wayward asteroid cluster.

“Nothing?” Pidge sounds sceptical, but immediately turns to the hologram and starts bringing up what looks to Keith like the logs of past activity in that area. “That can’t be right, there’s a constant flow of movement through that singular point.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.” Pidge sounds prepared for a fight, but Lotor doesn’t seem to have any interest in doing so, and simply frowns at the map with increasing ferocity.

“Are the ships that pass through consistent in their origin, or their destination?”

 There’s a moment’s pause, while Pidge turns back to the logs.

“Origin.” Her expression wavers, “after they register at that checkpoint, their routes are… they make no sense. It’s-”

“Illogical.” Lotor finishes. “Meaning they’re supply ships, taken off-course and redistributed so as not to require legal registration of their little detour.”

“Is that common?” Hunk asks, and Lotor scowls.

“Only with regards to the Empire’s more unsavoury business. It’s more than likely a research facility, quite possibly one of the Witch’s outposts: she has several scattered across the universe for her personal experiments, and I promise you nothing good will come of it.”

Pidge looks like she doesn’t believe Lotor one bit. “Why would Haggar need a secret facility… Isn’t she Zarkon’s right hand?”

“Certainly.” Lotor’s arms are tightly crossed, and as Keith watches he sees claws pressing dangerously against the bound skin of his arms, threatening to break through. “And yet, there are things that even my father will not condone.”

Keith feels himself pale, and is certain the others do much the same; anything that crosses a line Zarkon has drawn—particularly considering the Robeasts he’d sent after them like bloodhounds—terrifies him.

“We’ll look into it,” Hunk promises.

 

They do: or try to, at least, because Allura’s reluctant to follow any lead given to them by Lotor without a thorough investigation first, which Keith can’t really fault her for. He may be inclined to rush head-first into things, but that’s just another item to add to the steadily growing list of reasons why Voltron are better off without him as a key member of the team.

Though it’s clearly no substitute for intelligence on Haggar—and Keith can see how the mere thought of Zarkon’s Witch sparks like a live-wire in Lotor’s every waking moment—Hunk provides food instead of information. When the prince accepts it he’s… not exactly eager, but appreciative at the very least, and that seems good enough for Hunk.

Keith bites into the proffered pastry with a muffled groan of delight: oddly florescent colouration aside, they’re crisp and light and melt in his mouth, easily jumping into his top ten things he’s eaten in space. Right below the soft blue meat on a stick, but above the thin sliver of translucent cake he’d been served at one of the celebratory banquets which—he’d later found out after a good varga or so of highly unpleasant stomach cramps—was mildly toxic to galra.

(It had decidedly been worth it.)

He finishes the little dessert just in time to catch the tail-end of a fierce glower from Pidge: not one directed at him but at Lotor, who, by the time Keith has turned to look, has his eyes fixed firmly on the treat in hand as he takes a small bite from it. He chews, swallows, thanks Hunk quietly, and were it not for the slight downward twitch of his ears and the way he’s adamantly refusing to look towards the green paladin, Keith would think he’d imagined the whole thing.

 

Lotor doesn’t go out of his way to avoid Pidge, not exactly, but over the next couple of quintants Keith can’t help but notice how there’s a different sort of tension between them. It’s not hostile, which confuses Keith more than it comforts him, and once or twice he actually catches the tail-end of Pidge’s Boy Have I Got Dirt On You smirk as she watches Lotor smugly from across the hanger.

Whatever it is she knows, Lotor clearly knows that she knows, and he hates it.

 

When it happens, Keith is helping Hunk ferry a late supper from the kitchen back to the hanger.

Kra’s reassembly is almost complete, and for the past few cycles the four of them have unanimously decided to disregarded sleep for the sake of seeing this project through. Lotor doesn’t seem to need much rest anyway, and Keith is more than happy to match him in that regard—not sleeping being the only alternative to the altean medication that can keep his nightmares at bay—while Pidge and Hunk survive through a mildly terrifying combination of space-caffeine and sheer willpower.

Keith doesn’t recognise the feeling for what it is at first, something heavy and warm that bubbles across his shoulders, but when Kra starts laughing, really laughing, he shoves his share of the plates onto a startled Hunk, and breaks into a sprint.

They’re all tired and overworked and not really thinking, but they’d left Pidge alone with Lotor, and despite everything Keith wants to believe, the prince has killed before, they all know that, and now Kra’s laughing as if it’s the best joke in the world and-

-and Pidge is laughing too, when Keith bursts into the hanger, half expecting a bloodbath for his carelessness; she’s curled up in a ball on the floor, hysterical, actual tears streaking down her face as Lotor… swats at something small and fuzzy and pastel pink as it scuttles through the air around his head, a look of utter mortification painted across his features.

“Gal-Galileo! Galileo stop!” Pidge’s voice is breathy and insincere, so it’s little wonder that the space-caterpillar ignores her.

Lotor—Prince Lotor, the literal spawn of Zarkon, and six foot-something of raw physical power—whines out a noise of disgust.

“Do you m-” he cuts himself off when the creature dives for him in a burst of excited energy, stumbling back against Kra’s dark panelling and pressing himself against her as if he might melt out of existence. “Do you mind?”

Like a tiny fluffy terminator, Galileo’s determination seems unshaken.

Pidge is still cackling from her place on the floor, her grin broad as she watches this chaos unfold. “Not-” she wheezes, “not particularly, no.”

Kra starts laughing again, and without daring to take his eyes off the steadily approaching creature, Lotor slaps her side with a muttered curse.

Keith takes pity on him.

It doesn’t take much effort to redirect the trash-floof’s affection, and no sooner has Keith tugged it out of the air does it nuzzle into his palm with a contented little hum.

Pidge makes a disappointed noise, though when he looks she’s still beaming manically.

“Spoil-sport.”

He ignores her.

Scratching Galileo absently beneath its little glowing cheeks, Keith casts an amused glance towards Lotor who is stood warily at his shoulder, looking down at the chirruping creature with his nose wrinkled in disgust.

“You don’t like them?”

Lotor looks at him disbelievingly, “you do?”

“Sure.” Shrugging, Keith turns his attention back to the wriggling creature in his hand. They’re undeniably cuddly, and he doesn’t really see what Lotor’s problem is.

“They’re vermin.”

“Hey!” Pidge points an accusatory finger towards the prince, though her anger is half-hearted, “don’t be rude, they’re cute as fuck!”

The hesitation rolls off Lotor in waves, and his eyes flicker to Keith for just a moment before very hurriedly and firmly turning away, the tips of his ears struggling to remain stationary. It’s as Hunk staggers in, arms piled high with food, that Lotor tentatively asks: “You find their aesthetic to be comparable to… intercourse?”

Pidge howls.

“What did I just walk in on?” Hunk’s voice is weak, and Keith really doesn’t know what to tell him.

“I swear that’s not-” Pidge gasps for breath, impossible to control but evidently set on defending her fluff-creatures, “that is not what I said! Well, it kind of is, but- anyway, they’re adorable and I will not sit here and let you talk shit about-”

“I never mentioned excrement,” Lotor cuts in, firm and maybe insulted, yet obviously flustered, and it hits Keith for the first time that despite his self-assuredness, the prince really doesn’t seem all that much older than the rest of them.

“NO. Oh my god, right, we’re fixing your translator this is ridiculous. My point,” she staggers to her feet and bounces over to take Galileo from where he’s trying to clamber up the inside of Keith’s sleeve, “is that they’re not vermin, they’re tiny and soft and I love them.”

Another chirrup sounds from her collar, and sure enough several more colourful balls of fur scurry out from under Pidge’s shirt to greet their sibling.

“I’ll introduce you,” she says, and when Keith turns to look, Lotor’s expression says that he’d really rather be dead.

“Galileo you’ve met, but this is Archimedes, Nikola, and Aristotle.” The blue, yellow, and green puffs sound off in turn, and Lotor grimaces.

 

“We collected enough data to ensure that intercepted communications could be interpreted,” Lotor explains half a varga later, when Keith’s apologised profusely to Hunk for ditching him, and they’ve all settled down to eat in a circle on the floor, “but evidently the nuances of your mother-tongue’s colloquialisms have… evaded us.”

Hunk smiles into his soup; “it’s still impressive though. I mean, even back home we have idioms that don’t carry over from one language to another, so it’s not exactly surprising. Out here I kind of forget we’re not speaking all speaking the same thing.”

“Your homeworld,” Lotor seems tentatively curious, as if he’s not sure how much he’s allowed to ask, “has yet to decide on a united tongue?”

Hunk tenses, looks to Keith as if to ask how much he should be saying, then relaxes again without waiting for a real answer.

“Yep,” he pops the ‘p’, but doesn’t elaborate.

Lotor takes the hint, nodding without probing further.

They settle into a comfortable sort of silence as they eat, but it doesn’t take long for the caterpillars to grow restless, scuttling over to Lotor again and almost receiving a hot shower of projectile soup for their trouble.

“Little pests.” Lotor hisses, and Keith chuckles into his bowl, receiving a look that’s something foul, until one of the creatures—Archimedes, he thinks—starts shaking like a leaf, purring, as it rubs itself up against Lotor’s outstretched palm as he desperately tries to keep it at arm’s length. He immediately recoils with a noise in the back of his throat that’s high pitched and horrified, and Keith huffs out another laugh as he plucks it out of the air and sends it spiralling towards Hunk with a happy little trill of glee.

Forcibly biting down on his grin, Keith tilts his head up to meet Lotor’s gaze (and he’s pouting again, good god) and asks, “better, your highness?”

Lotor’s eyes turn dark at the teasing.

“Careful Rhyahl,” his quiet tone twists something up in Keith’s gut, and he doesn’t know what to make of it, “I may be fond of you, but even that has its limitations.”

“But this isn’t one of them.” The words don’t even hesitate on Keith’s lips, and when Lotor receives them it’s with a surprised blink that quickly morphs into a smile. Opening his mouth to reply, he’s immediately interrupted by a deliberate cough from Pidge.

Lotor looks up at her with a flash of teeth, only to move to sit back half a tick later, leaving Keith with a rush of cool air and a much greater space around him.

He struggles to remember when they became so close to begin with.

 

Sometime deep into the night cycle, Keith overhears Pidge as she whispers an apology.

“I’m sorry for what I said about your dru-” she catches herself, “about your telepath friend.”

Lotor looks up, eyes wide but guarded.

“We were on opposite sides of this war, and quite frankly the things she could do?” Pidge shivers despite the regulated temperature of the ship. “She scared the hell out of me, so I won’t pretend I’d prefer it if she were alive. I didn’t know her, and I can’t say I liked what I saw, but she obviously mattered to you so… I’m sorry.”

“Narti-” Lotor takes a shuddering breath, “Narti was not felled by your hand.”

He looks full of regret, Keith thinks; the kind that swallows you whole.

“No, but I’m still sorry.”

“I cannot comprehend your sentiment. Her blood is neither on your conscience, nor those of your allies-”

Keith draws up short and shares a look with Hunk who, though obviously listening to this conversation just as he is, seems equally clueless as to who would kill Lotor’s general if they weren’t on Voltron’s side.

“-and it is not the galra way to mourn on another’s behalf, especially if the deceased was your enemy.” A beat passes between them. “But I appreciate it, nonetheless.”

Pidge nods curtly, and they settle into silence once more.

 

Kra is completed the next morning.

Her presence is light: wispy and floaty and golden, even though Keith can’t actually see anything so that doesn’t really make sense, but she thanks him profusely and seems to prod him into telling Hunk and Pidge that she’s grateful for their help.

Well, it’s more along the lines of I am glad I did not kill them after all, but Keith thinks his version will be better received.

Lotor runs one hand along a sleek metal claw with a contented sigh. He seems perfectly satisfied until he quite abruptly doesn’t, turning away from his ship with a resigned exhale as his expression becomes closed-off and drained.

“I suppose I ought be returned to my quarters.”

Returned, he says, and it hits Keith how like cattle he must feel, to be escorted from one confined space to another with no regard for personal feelings on the matter.

“Yeah,” it’s Hunk who answers, though he doesn’t sound happy about it, “yeah I… I guess so.”

Lotor nods.

Keith… hadn’t expected him to fight it, not really; Lotor hasn’t fought much of anything he’s been subjected to since arriving here, but seeing him so resigned to this fate of being treated like a prisoner, even if he did half sign himself up for it, just feels wrong.

“We’ll talk to Allura.” It’s Pidge who says it, and Lotor looks just as surprised as Keith feels. “Not saying I like you, and quite frankly your aesthetic principles are fucked if you seriously don’t see how adorable my trash-floofs are-”

The corner of Lotor’s mouth quirks upwards.

“-but you didn’t have to help us out at Naxzela, and you didn’t have to surrender yourself over to us and just sit around quietly while we try and sort out the Coalition, and you definitely didn’t have to teach us about all the sciencey rift stuff that you have, so... I guess I respect that. One genius to another.”

Lotor smiles fully this time.

“It has been a pleasure, Paladin Pidge.” Lotor offers her a half-bow, which is only gently mocking, and then repeats the motion in Hunk’s direction with a similar sentiment.

Then he turns to Keith, and it might just be the light but his smile seems to soften into something a little different.

“Paladin…?”

An invitation for his name, Keith realises, but even now he doesn’t want to let this one go.

“I told you;” he steps towards Lotor until they’re nearly toe-to-toe, tilts his head back and sets his jaw, “earn it.”

“Oh?” Lotor’s tone is low and soft and lightly amused, “and if I have yet to do so, then when will I?”

“I’m pretty sure you’ll find a way.” He steps back and to the side, and as the prince takes his cue to walk towards Hunk, stood by the hanger doors, Keith says, “see you later, Lotor.”

Though he’d spoken at normal volume, his words echo.

 

Lotor goes quietly, and when he has, Keith asks, “Did you mean it?”

“Mean what?” Pidge’s nose is scrunched up in confusion.

“What you said about talking to Allura.”

“Yeah,” she’s chewing on the inside of her cheek absently, but there’s determination written into the furrow of her brow, “yeah I meant it. If we’re going to be allies, then we have to start acting like it.”

There’s a moment’s quiet, and then: “besides, you trust him, and I trust you.”

Maybe you shouldn’t, Keith thinks, what if I’m wrong, what if I fuck this up, what if I get you all killed?

Instead he says, “thanks Pidgeon,” and ruffles her hair like he’s seen Matt do.

She squawks, laughs, hits him, and Keith feels a hundred times lighter.

Notes:

So yeah, sure, this was 100% a filler chapter / time-is-moving-forward-and-my-kids-are-growing-closer chapter, but this opens the gateway for me to finally (finally!) get to the good stuff. As per usual, of course, next chapter will open with Lotor's perspective on a little of what occurred here, but for the most part you will finally be getting into The Plot. Which, granted, should never have taken ten chapters of set-up, but REGARDLESS it seems to have been set-up that you guys have enjoyed (and I love nothing more than the enthusiasm you have for all my galra culture headcanons so, seriously, I cannot thank you enough for that).

Oh and series 07???? Let's talk about series 07. More importantly, let's talk about how my tragic bisexual arse was UNPREPARED for both James 'now-that's-a-damn-glow-up' Griffin, and Veronica 'I-would-let-her-step-on-me' McClain because wow.

Update: Perspectives Chapter 1 slots in here!

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TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 11: Consistent Word Count? I Don't Know Her.

Summary:

Previously: Keith's perspective on a month spent fixing Kra with Pidge, Hunk, and a surprisingly good-tempered Prince Lotor. Also, Lance saunters back into his life like he was never gone to begin with.

Lotor wouldn’t say he’s enjoying himself (he absolutely is, only admitting it would feel a lot like conceding defeat) but finally finding purpose in his time spent as a glorified prisoner of war is more of a relief than he would previously have thought possible. It helps that the paladins aren’t quite so incompetent as he’d first been led to believe; young, certainly—though the alteans had, historically, been notorious for recruiting their children for combat long before any galra would so much as consider such a thing, so Lotor supposes he shouldn’t be too surprised at Princess Allura’s willingness to blood her paladins early—and naïve enough to the workings of the universe that Lotor has to wonder at what manner of a life they could have been living up until now… but incompetence is decidedly a descriptor far better suited to the rebel yuppers, rather than the oh-so-exalted paladins of Voltron.

Despite the fact that their gracious allowance that he may rectify the mess they’ve made of Kra is one more for their own benefit than his, Lotor is begrudgingly thankful for the opportunity. It not only allows him to sate the restless itch beneath his skin, but offers ample time to better observe his little allies.

The small one, Pidge, is smart. Too smart, if Lotor’s honest, and worse yet she knows it. Intellectually she’s not his equal, but given time she could be, and this prospect is as fascinating as it is concerning.

The broad one, Hunk, is well-built for his species, and yet timid as a cowed beast. Unlike his green counterpart, he doesn’t seem to think the information Lotor has to offer reason enough to allow such liberties with regards to Kra, and his discomfort is palpable. Justified, perhaps, but obvious enough that the spiteful voice in the back of the prince’s mind can’t help but whisper suggestions of how to best toy with the poor creature.

To do so, of course, would be mean.

Kra latches onto his fixation with this descriptor almost immediately, probing at the foreign twist in his gut every time he thinks it, as if trying to puzzle out what it is about such an arbitrary sentiment that has captured Lotor’s attention so completely.

Your little star, Lotor thinks, as he lies awake that evening, is quite the specimen.

Her crooning agreement is immediate, but it’s obvious that she still doesn’t see the connection between the red paladin and Lotor’s newfound obsession with meanness, all the explanation he can offer coming to naught when she boils his intrigue down to desire, and presses the frightfully real sensation of a lithe body against his back, a sweet smile behind his ear, heat- sweat- want- until Lotor firmly shoves her away with a sharp mental reprimand.

If Kra could scowl, she would.

You want him.

Not like that, he thinks back, and her insult at being lied to is immediate: a foul metallic tang in his throat. Well, like that too, but not that alone.

She doesn’t understand.

He hadn’t expected her to.

Like the paladins, she’s naïve: too new to this universe to comprehend its deeper workings and yet old enough that she is sure she knows everything. ‘Everything’ Lotor supposes, might not seem quite so much when the plane of reality she’s found herself in is probably younger than she is, but the technicalities of existence are very different to its actuality, and Kra has yet to grasp the nuance of it all.

Besides, it seems a lot to ask of her when he’s yet to truly come to terms with it himself.

 

“Keith,” he greets the child as soon as he breeches his immediate vicinity, far enough away from the rebel ingrates that the two of them may speak in peace.

Returning the greeting in kind, the little Blade hops up onto the balcony railing to sit with his legs hanging out over the void of space below. Keith, Lotor’s noticed, no longer hesitates to turn his back to him, though he is adamant in sitting so that his knife’s hilt is on the side furthest from the prince’s reach.

“Tonight ought be… Our fourteenth, Emperor Zaghit, correct?”

Keith hums in agreement, casting what—despite his dispassionate mask—feels like a smile over his shoulder.

And so they begin.

“Zaghit,” Lotor recites from memory, “was one of the few whose reign was regarded as one of prosperity, rather than one of expanse.”

When Keith shifts slightly, his head tilting in an endearing fashion, Lotor explains.

“As I’m sure you’ve observed, our people are conquerors. ‘Expanse’ is the kinder word for the decaphoebs spent at war, and ‘prosperity’ for those rare few who prevailed at the Kral Zera only to allow the rest of the Universe some respite.”

“How kind,” Keith’s tone is light, dispassionate, and coolly sarcastic in a way that has Lotor laughing.

“Isn’t it just? Though, in Zaghit’s case, he was less concerned with the rest of the universe, and more with how his new standing as Emperor opened up a wealth of opportunities that a Dox could not have dreamt of, particularly not at that time-”

“Dox?” Keith cuts him off, and Lotor has to take a moment to decipher the implicit question.

In doing so, he is confronted with a familiar wave of nausea.

“Dox,” he repeats himself slowly, because perhaps Keith misheard, because he must have done, because even Marmora cannot have failed their kit to this extent, “by which I mean the fourth categorisation of the galra sub-species.”

Keith inclines his head in a way that says he understands, but implies the opposite, and Lotor scrubs his hand over his jaw roughly. He won’t lose his temper here; not now, so soon after Voltron have allowed him enough free rein that he might remedy the damage to his ship, and certainly not at the kit who is, in all of this, a victim of negligence.

“Come here,” he says instead, his voice quiet, tired, as he gently tugs Keith to sit beside him as close as the boy will allow. When he’s settled, Lotor begins; “our people have four distinct phenotypes—that is to say our physical characteristics manifest with notable diversity—dependent on where on Daibazaal our ancestors originated from.”

Keith shifts forward with an encouraging noise, and so the prince continues.

“For the sake of brevity, you need only know that great swathes of Daibazaal were nothing more than desert wasteland, but within that there were mountainous areas, and pockets of dense jungle. As I said before, our people are conquerors, even if that which we need to conquer is nature itself, and it resulted in a caste system, of sorts. At its top, Aalk, who hailed from the mountains and are physically superior, by all accounts, but their agility suffers for their sheer scale. Not to mention that their intellectual capabilities were—quite unkindly—considered…” Lotor mulls it over in his mind before speaking, “shall we say limited? Frequent bouts of aggression coupled with exceptional endurance meant that in their own terrain, it didn’t much matter, but elsewhere their heated nature often saw them bested by opponents that better kept their wits about them. In the present, the imperial military is still heavily weighted in their favour, though not where positions of command are concerned.”

Lotor himself has a fair bit of Aalk blood in him, though he likes to think that if anything good came of his mother’s lineage then it would be a counter for his ancestral single-mindedness.

“Byal and Kyx both hail from the sand wastes, and have always existed in the greatest numbers, ergo they are the face of our people even today. Not roughly scaled like Aalk, but furred—Byal to a much more significant degree—and far more agile. Kyx are of a smaller stature but faster still, and historically would have traversed the desert during daylight hours, whereas the thick coat of a Byal allowed them to move by night, despite the cold.”

“Kolivan-” Keith shuffles closer, “-would Kolivan be…?”

He trails off, as if afraid to overstep.

“Marmora’s leader would most certainly be of Byal decent, yes, the ears betray him. Kyx typically display their vulpine characteristics to a lesser extent: a finer coat, smaller ears… and so far as I recall, Kyx haven’t the dormant gene for a tail, though, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, so few of us develop them anymore regardless.”

Lotor eyes the kit with an unvoiced curiosity; he’s Kyx, almost certainly, judging by stature and the sheer speed he’d demonstrated during their brief scuffle.

“And Dox?” Keith asks.

“Be it far from me to discriminate against someone for their blood,” Lotor offers a humourless smile, “but the Dox do have a particular reputation for being more… flexible, when it comes to the Imperial code of honour. They hailed from Daibazaal’s dense jungle areas and, unlike most galra, are well suited to humidity—small and furless, you see. Not to mention they possess an excellent constitution against all manner of toxins, but due to having no significant offensive capabilities, many of them choose not to fight on the open field, but rather find alternative methods of achieving their ends.”

“So they’re not exactly seen as valuable within the Empire then?”

Lotor snorts. “Certainly not under my Father’s rule, no. He has always favoured strength; if the Dox interbred as the rest of our people have done, they might have had some of that strength afforded to their children by right of mixed blood, but the majority believe themselves above such things, and so their numbers have dwindled.”

Lotor thinks of Throk, spiteful tragedy of a creature that he was, and voices as much to Keith.

“Immediately after being summoned to serve as Emperor pro tem, I was challenged by an officer of Dox descent; well, I say challenged, but it was more I that challenged him, after he attempted to stir insurrection at the earliest opportunity. His reputation was that of a man who didn’t much like being told what to do by those of mixed galra heritage, so I imagine my rise to command must have been considered a great insult.”

“What happened?”

Lotor turns to fix Keith with a careful look as he realises that this is the first piece of information he’s freely offered up about his past.

“I defeated him soundly, and relieved him of his position.” Even despite the mask, Lotor knows what sort of a face the kit must be pulling. “I didn’t kill him, little one. There was no need; he was not a threat to me, and doing so merely to prove a point would have won me no favours, not when I already had my altean blood to contend with.”

Keith makes a confused little noise, and Lotor’s heart melts.

“If you think your princess despises me for my galra half, then you are fortunate enough not to know what a deep abhorrence our people hold for blood which is not their own.”

“But you’re Zarkon’s son?”

Lotor’s lips thin at the reminder. “I am. Perhaps if my father held any fondness for me that would count in my favour, but alas,” he gestures to himself blithely, “here we are.”

Wordlessly, Keith shuffles a little closer without uncrossing his legs, resulting in an adorably awkward little wiggle, and only halts when his knee rests against Lotor’s.

“Here we are,” he agrees, without pity or judgement, and then: “tell me about Emperor Zaghit.”

Lotor does so.

 

He doesn’t see his little Blade again the next morning before he’s whisked away to work with the paladins, and though it’s a pity, the concession is a small one when the prince is rewarded with a rather striking alternative.

He looks to the red paladin, seated to his left and still stubbornly nameless—and even that is somehow charming—to find the younger man puzzling over one of the cooling systems. He’s no mechanic, that much is obvious after several quintants spent in one another’s company, but given enough time he is adept enough to work out the logical progression of internal parts, providing Lotor offers him a nudge in the right direction every now and then. In all honesty, the soft furrow of his brow and pout of his lips makes for a rather appealing working environment.

Or, at least, it does until the yellow paladin decides to shatter the silence with the slap of his palms against the tabletop, an exclamation of finality, and a determined if somewhat rambled request of any information Lotor can provide on their Lions.

Lotor stares him down for a tick, and is begrudgingly impressed when the paladin refuses to buckle.

Five quintants… He really had thought it would take twice that amount, but, he supposes, a deal’s a deal.

“Alright,” he concedes easily enough, “what is it you wish to ask of me?”

“Er, just like that?” The yellow paladin’s unexpected bout of ferocity wanes into something akin to shock, and Lotor has to bite back a sigh.

“You would prefer I make this difficult?”

“No! Nope, definitely not, I just wasn’t expecting…” a brief glance is shared with the green paladin, “you know what? It doesn’t matter what I was expecting, I super appreciate you being all cooperative and stuff, so that’s cool, let’s get to it.”

Lotor offers a simple incline of his head, an obvious invitation to continue, but vexingly the one called Hunk remains at a loss for words of any real importance.

“Soooo…”

Lotor expects this to be followed up by something—anything—but said expectations fall flat and, really, why Voltron remerged after all this time with a boy like this as one of its core elements, Lotor cannot even begin to guess.

“So,” he makes no move to hide his boundless enthusiasm, and by the look on Hunk’s face, it stings.

Perhaps, he later thinks, this is why the red paladin decides to kick him.

It’s unexpected more than it is painful, but Brodar knows that despite everything he’s been through, Lotor has never been kicked as if he were some unruly whelp, and it sends a hot bolt of indignation straight up his spine. He blinks at the red paladin several times over, as if that might offer some clarity on what just occurred; it doesn’t, unsurprisingly, but it does allow for Lotor to witness the slow dawning of the paladin’s own actions on his face, until the sweet little thing looks as if he might well have swallowed his own tongue. He looks guilty, though not at all sorry, as if his regret is only for his brashness of action rather than the action itself.

Exasperation is too harsh a word, when one look at the younger man sends a small pool of warmth burning low in Lotor’s stomach, but he’s already treading dangerous ground, so to call it anything else might be to tempt forces unseen.

Wordlessly, Lotor turns back to Hunk, swallows the laughter that threatens when he sees horror painted thickly across the larger paladin’s face, and manages to compose himself.

“Apologies,” he doesn’t allow himself a smile, but it’s a near thing, “it seems I have yet to shake my unnecessary meanness. Do continue.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he does, and Lotor answers the expected questions as concisely as he is able considering the vast amount of knowledge a fully detailed report would encompass. The green paladin, who usually sits apart from the others—though Lotor suspects that this is only so she may better observe him—launches herself forward at the mention of Voltron and Sincline’s hive-minded conscious, and seems just as enthused by the prospect as Lotor is himself.

His mood immediately sours, however, at the brief mention of his generals, accidental though it may be, but he is quickly (perhaps embarrassingly so) revitalised when the red paladin interjects for the first time: asking after the names of Sincline’s separate vessels and pronouncing them as if Daibazaal’s long-dead language were his mother tongue.

“Kra, Li, Ept,” the ancient language rolls naturally from the paladin’s lips, as though he’s savouring each word, and it has Lotor almost shamefully distracted, “you named them?”

“You speak Zaalkh as if you were born to it,” from the corner of his eye, he sees Pidge’s hand dart forward as if to physically restrain the red paladin, and Lotor makes a silent note of it, “indeed Rhyahl, I named them. Kraliept tron Gamaar—Knowledge is of Three Parts—it’s a rather well-known proverb stemming from Empress Marmora’s reign.”

Startled and doe-eyed, the paladin’s attention turns searching.

“Yes,” Lotor can hardly help himself as he leans a little closer, turning his voice overtly sultry in a way that—he knows—will infuriate the green paladin further, whose ferocious grip on her pretty friend has not yet abated, and—he hopes—entice the nameless man himself into perhaps deeming Lotor worthy of his introduction. “Your little allies could likely tell you far more about their founder than I, but so far as your question I’m sure my knowledge on the topic shall suffice… Although, if you’re interested, I’d be more than willing to give you a history lesson or two.”

He’s laying it on thick, perhaps obnoxiously so, but it’s just so entertaining to see how tense the smallest paladin has become, and how anxious her yellow counterpart. The red paladin, however, is looking at him with an element of mirth that Lotor can’t quite place, and for a moment he thinks he might have overdone it.

That is until the feisty little thing—his little Rhyahl—flattens his expression into one of cool ennui, the words, “maybe I’ll take you up on that,” a honeyed promise on his tongue.

The mouth on him.

It’s not what he says, but how he says it: a challenge written into every syllable, and Sa knows Lotor is but a mortal man.

“But first you’re going to explain your ships to us.”

The prince finds himself more than happy to comply.

“As I’ve said, ‘Knowledge is of Three Parts’: the word, Kraliept, is devised of three characters when written down.” Lotor holds his hand out expectantly, but perhaps the paladins’ species do not have the same understanding of the gesture, because the young man just frowns at the open palm as if expecting it to do something unusual.

Lotor huffs a too-fond laugh, and gestures to the red paladin’s hand.

“May I?”

A small nod of consent is all the invitation he requires, and no sooner has he received as much does Lotor curl his fingers around the paladin’s slim wrist—almost dainty, by galra standards—and coax him forward to sit as close as the table will allow.

The room’s other two occupants, much to Lotor’s amusement, exchange a look of panic at this development, but it’s all background noise in comparison to the red paladin’s pulse, which remains steady despite his companions’ concern. In a moment of personal weakness, Lotor allows his touch to linger more than it should, turning the hand in his grasp over carefully, as if it were that of a fair nobleman rather than a warrior, and dragging the pad of his thumb from wrist to palm, allowing himself all the time in the world. Said palm is shielded behind soft, dark leather that leaves pale fingers exposed and armoured instead by callouses—doubtlessly from frequent swordplay—and Lotor finds himself more than a little distracted by the easy give of flesh beneath his thumb.

He really did have a point to all of this.

Bringing his other hand up to trace claws over the faint blush of blue at the paladin’s inner wrist, Lotor begins.

“Kra. Flesh: that which one may see and touch and taste.” Kra herself croons at that, once again toying with the phantom sensation of her little star against Lotor’s back, this time with toned arms around the prince’s waist and lips mouthing kisses against his neck. It’s a distraction, certainly, but with the real thing beneath his fingertips as he carves out the familiar character, Lotor is able to centre himself without much trouble. “It is the truth that can be acquired through conquest, and strength of will.”

He pauses, takes a breath, and begins the next symbol; the lines of it are more fluid, liquid, almost. “Li. Blood: a truth that runs deeper, an unseen bond, only to be ascertained by instinct, allowing one to know things as they are and not by the skin they wear to greet you.”

Narti’s face flashes behind closed lids when he blinks.

He should have realised it sooner.

He should have known.

“Ept. Bone: Mental fortitude enough that one may strip down deceit to uncover the essence of the thing, the truth at its core.”

He leaves off the third character with no small touch of melancholy, and Kra echoes this sentiment for her sister. It is ironic, truly, that Ept was the last to be sculpted, considering the manner in which Lotor’s abrupt removal from the project came about.

“Empress Marmora,” he speaks her name quietly, “bastardised the imperial war cry for her own elite guard. It was not Victory she cared for, but the Truth. Ergo, Kraliept Sa.”

Lotor’s forefinger is tracing a fourth, final character before his mind has properly processed it.

“Knowledge or… Sa: death, the Void, the all-consuming netherworld; said to be the opposite of Truth, and yet it is no lie.”

When he is able to tear his eyes from that thin sliver of blue beneath pale skin, the red paladin in still fixated on the wrist in Lotor’s hold. Rather than release the younger man, Lotor waits. He waits until the paladin’s eyes meet his own, until the darkness of a thousand galaxies greet him with all the beauty of them too. There’s a sadness there, a sympathy that Lotor knows he doesn’t deserve.

It scares him a little.

With one final stroke of his thumb over blue veins under too-soft skin, he forces himself away.

“To return to your initial question, Hunk,” Lotor feels off-balance, and can only hope it doesn’t show in his voice, “while Sincline and Voltron both have egos and ids—though, I suspect, no explicit moral compass—I have come to learn that their personalities as we would understand them are, in part, crafted under the influence of their creator in the physical plane. In Sincline’s case, that would be me—not merely her aesthetics, but her values are also coloured by the imperial sensibilities I was raised with—and for Voltron the same could be said of Alfor.”

“Yep, okay,” the younger man’s voice is fractured in two by his own nerves, and, though lightly amusing, Lotor is left to ponder upon whether the paladins’ species are particularly adverse to physical contact, “so you named your ships after some super deep galra proverb with lots of levels of meaning relating to different and kinda graphic viscera—very artsy, love it—and King Alfor colour coded.”

It is an internal battle not to allow his shoulders to sag, because therein lies the greatest disenchantment of his early childhood.

“Evidently so.”

Though he can’t be sure, the paladin having schooled his features too quickly for Lotor to tell, he thinks his little Rhyahl may have near laughed.

 

That night, his dreams are coloured blue: thick and sticky sweet as they pour from where his sword is embedded in leathery flesh. It’s stuck, he realises, after several frantic heartbeats, and when he tries to release the hilt he can’t let go. He has to press it deeper—he has no choice—his friend’s corpse giving way with a hot squelch as he rends her clean in two.

Kova wails, and the prince wakes in a cold sweat.

 

Lotor wouldn’t say he cares for the green paladin, particularly, but he does care a great deal for the quality of her work so far as Kra is concerned, ergo it would be irresponsible to ignore how the deep bruising beneath her eyes has a direct negative correlation with her productivity. By the steadily growing debris around her, and the pile of blankets that appeared in the far corner of the hanger a few quintants ago, he would hazard a guess that she’s been working herself to her limits.

Not for his ship’s sake, he’s certain, because no notable progress has been made outside of the vargas he spends here, and Kra would never let the child-paladin touch her besides, which leaves Lotor more curious than he’d like.

The mystery is resolved when he sees her scouring imperial prisoner logs with eyes glazed over.

A pointless endeavour, he thinks, whoever they are, they’ll be one among billions: impossible to find unless you know their assigned identification.

It’s only when she near falls off her stool, startling awake at the last second to a panicked shout from Hunk across the room, that Lotor, keeping his eyes on his work so as to appear as unthreatening as possible, speaks.

“You owe it to your teammates to take better care of yourself.” He can feel her scowl as it burns into the side of his skull, but the prince continues, unperturbed; “as a paladin, you have an obligation to do right by the universe.”

She snaps immediately, as he’d suspected she might, and springs to her feet.

“I’m not obligated to do anything!” She’s spitting fire and fury and hatred in a manner that’s tragically familiar across hundreds of galaxies, so Lotor is unsurprised when she says: “The galra took my brother and they still have my dad-”

“The Empire.”

It’s an automatic correction, long-suffering but absolute.

“What?”

Lotor hates how young she sounds in that moment, all the fight drained out of her as quickly as it had come on; he hasn’t the time for sympathy on such a personal scale. It is inefficient enough to have taken it upon himself to worry for the kit, he cannot waste any more energy on compassion, of all things.

To leave her like this, however, would be negligent.

“Not ‘the galra’ but ‘the Empire’, it’s a rather key differentiation.” He can hardly help but look to Pidge with a resigned sort of pity. “If you must place blame on an entire group rather than the individuals responsible, then make it a societal structure rather than our race. People cannot help what they are born as, but the systems they serve and benefit from are of their own choosing. The Empire took your family from you, and that is regrettable, but I will not be burdened by guilt on behalf of blood I had no say in.”

She seems… appropriately crowed, though still too stubborn a creature to admit it.

Lotor tells himself he doesn’t care.

 

The no-longer-blue paladin is, Lotor is thoroughly convinced, aggravation personified.

He parades himself into the hanger, his voice more grating than the yowl of a schragberr in heat, and worse still when his eyes find Lotor and whatever nonsense he was spewing turns into an incomprehensible screech.

Even the yellow paladin looks pained by the volume of it.

“WHY?” is the question settled upon, after he’s had his fill of gaping.

Lotor can hardly help himself, the sarcasm slipping from his tongue in a chagrined whisper of: “well now that’s familiar,” only to have the red paladin scold him with a soft pout that does absolutely nothing to discourage such mockery. It might—Lotor thinks, as he watches said paladin rise from where he had been seated beside the prince on the floor to haul his successor out of the room with minimum effort, which definitely has the prince feeling some kind of way—be doing quite the opposite.

There’s a pointed cough from behind him, and Lotor finds the Hunk promising, in a way that seems quite outside of the prince’s understanding of his character, murder with his eyes.

“Do not.”

Interesting. He’d revelled in how it made the paladins uncomfortable, but he hadn’t thought either of them—though especially not yellow—would actually call him out on his near-shameless flirtations. Lotor considers playing innocent, but a quick appraisal of the yellow paladin, within whom he seems to have roused a fiercely protective streak, only encourages Lotor to press further: and perhaps that’s mean, but unfortunately for the paladins, there’s not presently anyone in the room for whose opinion Lotor especially cares.

“Are you implying that I cannot even look. That would be a great tragedy.”

“I’m not implying anything,” his voice is taut, “I’m telling you that whatever it is you want from him you’re not-”

“Oh I think we’re all perfectly clear on what I want, paladin, no need to dance around the topic.”

It’s a bold declaration, he knows, and in actuality Lotor has no intention of bedding his Rhyahl with so little consideration, as if he were some common harlot. The paladins, however, do not need to know that.

And really, it’s awfully entertaining to see Pidge—subdued ever since their slight confrontation the other quintant—quietly scoff in disgust, while Hunk bolts to his feet, face twisting up with great distaste.

“If you think we’re going to let your purple ass so much as touch him-”

“It’s rather sweet how you think your opinion on the topic matters,” Lotor eyes him coolly, still seated on the floor, “but I assure you, I’d never lay a hand on your friend without his full and enthusiastic consent.”

It’s genuinely insulting, the mistrust this statement is met with, as if Hunk truly believes him to be so morally compromised that he’d take someone against their will; the offence of it has Lotor narrowing his eyes to near slits, rising until he’s stood toe to toe with the yellow paladin and towering over him. The prince presses more venom into his next words: each one hissed and low and full of spite.

“When I have it,” he leans towards the smaller man until the two of them are nose to nose, and in a whisper that is sickeningly saccharine, promises: “I’ll be sure to make him scream.”

The yellow paladin is a distance fighter, at best, and at worst not really a fighter at all, so Lotor isn’t even remotely hesitant in turning his back to the boy, stepping away with an amused smile on his lips.

“You quiznaking-”

“Hunk,” Pidge seems to have finally taken it upon herself to intervene, “you know he’s just trying to wind you up-”

“Yeah? Well it’s working.”

“Hunk.”

The yellow paladin falls quiet at his smaller friend’s insistence.

When Lotor looks to her, she’s peering at him over round-rimmed spectacles with a twist to her lips that is more consideration than discomfort. He doesn’t like it.

Pidge looks at him, long and hard. “What do you want?”

Lotor raises one eyebrow, unimpressed.

“I thought I’d made myself rather obvious.”

“Yeah, you have,” she settles back in her chair, arms crossed, still considering him, “too obvious.”

Finding himself abruptly unsettled, Lotor smothers any remnant of it from his face, and gestures that she should continue with an indifferent wave of his hand.

The crease of her brow deepens a little.

“Lotor isn’t what you think he is,” she says, and by the way she says it Lotor knows she’s imitating the red paladin, “that’s what he told us. I didn’t get it at first, but I think I’m starting to.”

It’s hard to say what concerns him more: the threat of understanding in her voice, or the way that the echo of his Rhyahl’s words spark a sort of warmth beneath Lotor’s skin. Though it’s not just her, but the yellow paladin too, who, when Lotor glances his way, has allowed his hostility to melt into something far more pensive, and in this scenario, it leaves Lotor exposed

“Do enlighten me,” he bears his teeth, hopes it masks the half-sincere lilt to his next question, “if I am not what you think I am, then what exactly do you suppose me to be?”

She opens her mouth, only to close it again.

There’s a long, strained silence, before, finally: “Kind of a dick, to be honest.”

Lotor blinks.

Kra huffs a laugh.

Even Hunk has to stifle a snort.

“C’mere,” Pidge waves him over to where she’s sat, as if to insult him so openly is not at all out of the norm, “Matt said you’d memorized the patrol routes of your guards, which means you must know at least some of the Empire’s routine fleet movements. So how about you make yourself useful and-”

Lotor is hardly listening, caught on Pidge’s use of ‘the Empire’, rather than ‘the galra’. All of a sudden, he finds himself feeling markedly more agreeable.

The red paladin returns a little while later. Lotor doesn’t allow this reappearance to turn his attention away from where Pidge is explaining her digital reconstruction of imperial flight routes—which are live, she reveals, and Lotor can’t pretend he’s not impressed by that—but it doesn’t seem to matter because he can still feel the prickle of attention from the yellow paladin, who seems to have taken Pidge’s hypothesis of behaviour to heart. It’s no longer hostile, but it is dangerously close to toeing a line Lotor had thought better left untouched by Team Voltron’s attentions, even if he’s been walking it himself for quite some time.

That’s why, when the smallest paladin begs that her pretty compatriot deal with him, Lotor takes full advantage of the distraction it offers, purring “by all means, do try,” less for the red paladin’s benefit, and more for his own.

Predictably, Hunk reacts with severe discomfort, his head dropping against the table he’d moved to sit at with a loud thunk.

“No,” and he does sound truly miserable, “please, just… No.”

Lotor smirks, this expression only widening when he catches Pidge’s insult at how he’s still dramatizing his attraction to such an obnoxious degree, until his eyes catch on an irregularity in the map’s upper corner.

“There’s nothing in that sector,” he tells them, because it’s true.

“Nothing?” Pidge asks, doubtful. “That can’t be right, there’s a constant flow of movement through that singular point.”

Lotor feels his blood run cold.

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.”

She sounds insulted by his reservation, but Lotor has no idea how to convey the wave of nausea that rocks through him if the alternative is proven correct.

“Are the ships that pass through consistent in their origin, or destination?”

He prays it’s the latter.

It isn’t.

“After they register at that checkpoint their routes are…” she trails off, her uncertainty betraying her, “it makes no sense. It’s-”

“Illogical.” Lotor finishes for her, the truth of the situation a bitter sting in his throat. “Meaning they’re supply ships, taken off-course and redistributed so as not to require legal registration of their little detour.”

“Is that common?” It’s Hunk who speaks up.

“Only with regards to the Empire’s more unsavoury business. It’s more than likely a research facility,” his heart stutters at the term, bile rising in his throat, “quite possibly one of the Witch’s outposts: she has several scattered across the universe for her personal experiments, and I promise you nothing good will come from it”

He’d tried to warn them, he really had, but their darling princess just hadn’t wanted to listen.

“Why would Haggar need a secret facility…” Pidge’s expression is flat: still cautious, still untrusting. “Isn’t she Zarkon’s right hand?”

“Certainly,” Lotor can feel the bite of his own claws, unsheathing unbidden, as they threaten to puncture the altean silk bound around his forearms, “and yet, there are things that even my Father will not condone.”

Things he tries not to think about.

Things he can’t help but think about.

“We’ll look into it,” is the yellow paladin’s promise, but Lotor barely hears it over the thundering pulse of his own blood.

 

When he next sees the kit, Lotor is overcome with a bizarre wave of gratitude for the Coalition’s bigotry and subsequent ignorance of galra physicality, because little Keith’s immediate reaction to seeing him tells Lotor exactly how worn he must look. If the rebels knew, if they had even the slightest inkling of his weakness… he dreads to think.

Keith doesn’t ask if he’s okay, and Lotor appreciates that almost as much as he appreciates the press of a warm arm against his own, the marmorite near nestled up at his side as he sits, not on the railing or the table or the arm of the chair, but right beside Lotor. It’s only then that the prince realises he’s a little starved of it—of companionship, of touch—and allows himself to sag into that point of contact minutely.

“Tell me about our nineteenth.”

It’s a demand, but a quiet one, and Lotor welcomes the distraction.

 

He believes the paladins when they inform him that they’ve asked after answers; not only because they have no reason to lie, but because he doesn’t think that any of them are good enough liars to falsify how their princess’s reluctance to act is a shared frustration. They’re not angered by it—not like he is when he knows exactly how dangerous Haggar can be if left unchecked—but Lotor can see how they’re more inclined to believe in the threat, believe in him, so far as the Witch is concerned.

When Hunk breaks the news—“Allura’s running it by the rebels posted in that area, so we should hear back in a movement or so,”—he does so with food, in a non-too-subtle attempt to soften the blow. To the yellow paladin’s credit, the pastry is good.

The noise the red paladin makes is better.

Lotor is fortunate enough to have looked up at just the right moment, his eyes catching on the red paladin’s lips as they close around the tartlet, its outer shell crumbling, falling apart, and leaving a light dusting of power when the paladin pulls it away. It looks delicious. He sounds delicious.

It’s less a moan and more a sigh, breathy and contented, that has Lotor’s stomach tying itself in knots around something small and new and alive that flutters within.

Oh, there have been warning signs, plenty of them, but Lotor has been adamantly ignoring each and every one in the name of lust, desire, infatuation-

That too he’d told Kra, but not that alone.

It’s not that he didn’t know.

It’s that he didn’t want to acknowledge it.

Because it’s in his blood—this cursed blood: damnable and contaminated and toxic in every way—to fall hard and fast; to grow to care too much for too little. The red paladin is pretty, yes, and fierce and kind and delusional enough to believe that Lotor can be something better than what he is. He’s all of those things, and the prince had taken it in stride. He’d enjoyed himself, he’d enjoyed his Rhyahl, and he’d even begun to enjoy his time here, in Voltron’s hanger, cleaning up the children’s mess.

But this- this is too far.

Because Lotor looks at the red paladin, hears his sweet little noises of satisfaction, and doesn’t think I want to taste, but rather, I want to touch; and perhaps that in itself would be forgivable were those thoughts akin to Kra’s reimaginings of desire, but they’re not, they’re worse, somehow more intrusive than thoughts pressed into his mind by a consciousness that’s not his own.

Mind over matter has never been such a struggle for Lotor as it is now, because the matter at hand is that he wants to touch the red paladin more gently than he has anything in his life. He wants to swipe the sweetness from those lips: not with his tongue but with his fingertips. He wants to press them against that plump flesh until it parts, and perhaps his Rhyahl will lick him—perhaps he’ll bite—but Lotor would do nothing more than drag his knuckles across the flush of high cheekbones with a laugh.

He wants to touch, and provide, and ply his ferocious little paladin with as many pastries as he desires, if only to see him so soft and contented as he is now.

Such… sentiments, can only end one way.

So Lotor forces his attentions elsewhere, and immediately meets the too-clever eyes of one Paladin Pidge.

There are several galra curses, in several different dialects, that would aptly encompass Lotor’s feelings in this moment, yet he finds himself unable to choose a single one. He can feel how his eyes must have softened at the corners, because all the muscles in his face immediately tense up, shut down, and try to create the illusion of nonchalance.

It’s too little too late.

She’s glaring, which is nothing new, but brown eyes are frantic, searching, flicking over his visage as if to confirm that which she already knows—Lotor is all too familiar with that look: it’s the look of a scientist who has just solved a long-pondered equation.

It’s the look of a paladin who knows too much.

Lotor feels immediately exposed, and looks to his own pastry—in hand, but forgotten until this point—as some form of distraction. It’s good, but his enjoyment is mechanical. He finds himself unable to look at her, and perhaps that’s foolish, perhaps he should say something witty or make a lewd comment to throw her off-balance, but somehow he knows any such thing would be utterly futile.

She knows, and there’s not a damn thing he can do about it.

 

The green paladin takes to wordlessly smirking at him across the hanger.

Lotor decidedly hates her.

 

The end is in sight, and it has the prince lulled into a false sense of security.

Kra is almost completed, almost just as beautiful as she’d been the first time he’d unleashed her into battle, but consequentially the four of them—and Lotor doesn’t know when he and the paladins became a ‘them’ in his mind, but it is apparently so—forgoing sleep so as to see her once more in all her glory. Their dedication to this endeavour means that they eat- breathe- live- the air of hanger Xi12, which is, so far as Lotor’s concerned, a significant improvement on being observed by his guardsmen as if he had found himself returned to some juvenile recreation of Haggar’s lab.

It’s when red and yellow go to retrieve dinner, that Lotor’s personal hellscape makes itself known.

“So…” the vowel is drawn out in a way that promises nothing good, “Rhyahl, huh?”

The green paladin’s quite frankly disastrous imitation of the galra tongue does nothing to obscure her meaning, not when Lotor’s been dreading this exact conversation ever since what he had privately termed ‘the incident’. He’s dedicated varga upon varga to damage control, but now, upon forcing himself to turn from his work and meet Pidge’s gaze dead-on, he knows it’s all for naught.

She’s smirking.

“Rhyahl,” he echoes, correcting her butchered phrasing. It’s a petty last resort, but undermining her pronunciation is all he has left.

She doesn’t seem even remotely perturbed.

“I researched it. It took a while: digging it out from the Castle’s database when I can’t read galran and wouldn’t know how to spell it besides, but I’ve been told I can be pretty stubborn.”

“How shocking.”

Her smirk doesn’t falter, the horrid little beast leaning forward to rest elbows on knees, steepling her fingers and peering at Lotor over the tops of them.

“I’ll admit, I was expecting some sort of petname, not an actual animal, but I kind of see it, you know? I mean, it has that whole ‘pretty but deadly’ thing going on—kind of a galra femme fatal?” she tacks this on as more of a note to herself than to him, which is just as well because the term is a foreign one, “but with how hardcore you went on naming your ships, I figured there had to be more to it than that.”

Lotor lets her monologue. In this situation, there’s little else he can do.

“And then,” she hops up from her seat, and meanders towards him with her hands behind her back, that ridiculously self-satisfied grin pasted on her features, “I read up on its religious significance.”

Pidge looks up at him—and really, she is tiny: Lotor’s half ashamed of how much of his attention she’s commanding despite it.

“It’s sacred,” she sounds in equal parts smug and fascinated, “born of the great sand wastes as Sa incarnate? Worshiped by the druids? Your people made sacrifices to the rhyahl right up to the day of Daibazaal’s destruction—that’s not the kind of name you just throw around.”

She’s infuriatingly correct, of course.

“You have proven yourself capable of properly utilising a dictionary, how astounding.”

The green paladin has the audacity to laugh.

“Yeah,” she hops backwards, a spring in her step, “I figured you’d blow it off with something like that, but I’m right aren’t I? The smiles, the touching, the teasing… at first I thought you were just trying to get a rise out of us; no, at first I think you were, but that changed, didn’t it? The arm-drawing-thing you did was weird, reverent, but I still didn’t quite get it until last movement.”

Ah. The incident.

Pidge isn’t smirking anymore, but she’s not hostile either. Just intrigued.

“You genuinely like him.”

There would be no dignity in denial.

“He is a remarkable creature, only a fool would find themselves without a certain fondness for him.”

She hums, head tilting.

“Sure,” and then, “but you like him.”

“I do.” He takes in her surprise at such easy acquiesce, and makes sure to hold her attention so that she does not miss the truth of his next words: “yet if this alliance fails and we come to blows, I would cut him down just the same.”

Pidge’s face does something complicated—almost disappointed—before she nods.

“Fair enough.”

When she sighs, resigned, there’s a chirrup from the high collar of her shirt. A baffled Lotor frowns at it, until the paladin reaches in to absently scratch at the source of the noise, her voice turning pouty and petulant.

“I know buddy,” she murmurs into her collar. It chirps in reply, and Lotor… Lotor knows that noise. But it cannot be-

It is.

From Pidge’s collar, up her neck, crawls the fattest, hairiest fygllari he’s ever seen.

It’s… it’s huge.

It’s vile.

Worse yet, it’s not alone. Though he can’t see how many, there’s more movement in the shadow of the paladin’s shirt, and Lotor doesn’t even want to think about how many there might be just… lurking under her clothing. The one that has made itself known, flesh bulging beneath its thick coat of pastel pink hair, has scuttled up Pidge’s face to sit on her cheek, its chubby little legs wiggling as it squirms about.

Lotor must make some sort of noise, because the paladin’s eyes turn back to him, as do those of the fygllari: dewy and bulbous and repulsive.

“Why,” it is a great effort to keep his tone level, “are you keeping that thing on your person?”

She blinks.

“They get cold,” is her reply, as if it were the most natural thing it the world.

Then, with a terrible chattering of its mandibles, the fygllari begins to scuttle through the air of the hanger and directly towards Lotor.

“No,” he states this command firmly, but it doesn’t seem to matter, “do not-”

Lotor retreats, ducks, dodges—all without taking his eyes off his assailant even once—to the sounds of the green paladin’s steadily growing hysteria.

She’s insane, he thinks, when he attempts to verbally deter the creature only for it to dive at him,—to the green paladin’s utter delight—missing because Lotor stumbles back and into the side of his ship at the last second, she is certifiably insane.

Kra, the traitor, seems equally amused by his misfortune.

When mercy comes, it does so in the form of the red paladin, returned when Lotor’s attention was otherwise occupied, who plucks the little beast from the air and coos over it as if its kind weren’t the scourge of the universe.

“Spoil-sport,” calls a maniacally grinning Pidge, at having had her fun apparently ruined by her friend’s compassion.

The red paladin ignores her, instead raising an eyebrow at Lotor with an entertained smirk, and the lightness of his expression somehow serves to soothe the sting of embarrassment that the prince suffers at being seen in such an unbecoming state.

“You don’t like them?”

Lotor doesn’t gape, but it’s a near thing.

“You do?” When the red paladin shrugs with a small affirmation, turning his gentle attentions to the pest in hand, Lotor can’t help but clarify. “They’re vermin.”

“Hey!” Pidge interrupts, sounding affronted despite her expression still being that of endless glee, “don’t be rude, they’re cute as fuck!”

There’s a very notable pause in which Lotor can only assume she’s expecting some sort of reciprocation of her repartee, but he is at a loss. Two hypotheses present themselves simultaneously: either the paladin’s species have a very different understanding of the universe’s aesthetic principles, or procreation between members of said species takes a markedly different form to that which Lotor would have assumed, judging by their apparent physiological make-up, which... would be a great pity, he thinks, eyes flicking to his little Rhyahl for a moment before firmly turning away, and making a particular effort not to follow that simultaneously explicit and disturbing train of thought.

Regardless, it would be impossible not to ask.

“You find their aesthetic to be comparable to… intercourse?”

The green paladin makes a noise akin to a wounded animal: obnoxiously loud, and insulting in the way she immediately dissolves into another fit of howling laughter at Lotor’s own expense.

“What did I just walk in on?” The yellow paladin makes his presence known, though is evidently just as uncomfortable as Lotor feels.

“I swear that’s not-” she seems to be having trouble breathing through her hysterics, “that is not what I said! Well, it kind of is, but- anyway, they’re adorable and I will not sit here and let you talk shit about-”

“I never mentioned excrement,” agitation squirms in Lotor’s gut, this conversation having so quickly dissolved into something over which he has lost control, and he hates it.

“NO,” she squawks, “oh my god, right, we’re fixing your translator this is ridiculous. My point is that they’re not vermin, they’re tiny and soft and I love them.”

Lotor wants to correct her, but she’s already bounced over to take the pink pest from where it’s attempting to burrow into the red paladin’s sleeve, and now, scarcely a dozen rak away from him, Lotor can see no less than an additional three fygllari wriggling out from the collar of her shirt.

“I’ll introduce you,” she says, innocently cheerful, as if this really isn’t some sort of twisted revenge being enacted upon Lotor as penance for having admitted his attraction to her comrade, “Galileo you’ve met, but this is Archimedes, Nikola, and Aristotle.”

Each creature sounds off as she calls its name, and it’s an internal battle for the prince not to shiver.

 

To Lotor’s absolute horror, the green paladin’s army of vermin seem to have taken a liking to him, the blue one going so far as to nuzzle against his palm when, during dinner, he tries to keep it at a distance; it forces him to instantly recoil with a whine that, in imperial company, would have seen him ostracised for cowardice. Here, miraculously, it earns him reward rather than punishment, because the red paladin is laughing without spite, plucking the fygllari from the air and tossing it towards Hunk.

When he looks back to Lotor, there’s no trace of displeasure, only a soft darkness beneath his lashes and a purr in his throat as his leans towards the prince and asks: “better, your highness?”

Oh.

The ways he would wreck this man.

“Careful Rhyahl,” he murmurs instead, because Kra has perked up at the familiarity of that possessive want as an emotion she can comprehend, “I may be fond of you, but even that has its limitations.”

“But this isn’t one of them.”

Lotor cannot hide his surprise—not when those words are so simple, so certain—and it tears a smile from him to mirror that of the red paladin’s own. The prince leans a little closer, but a deliberate cough from his left distracts him enough that Lotor’s next words die in his throat.

Pidge does nothing more than raise an eyebrow at him, but her warning is clear: while Lotor’s infatuation is no longer a secret between them, apparently she would prefer he not parade it about, either.

He shoots her a sharp grin that promises nothing, but concedes for now.

 

The apology comes from nowhere.

“I’m sorry for what I said about your dru- about your telepath friend.”

When Lotor looks at her, it’s to find the green paladin with a determined expression fixed on her work, and yet he’s certain he didn’t mishear her.

“We were on opposite sides of this war, and quite frankly the things she could do?” The littlest paladin shivers. “She scared the hell out of me, so I won’t pretend I’d prefer it if she were alive. I didn’t know her, and I can’t say I liked what I saw, but she obviously mattered to you so… I’m sorry.”

Lotor looks at her, sees how she curls into herself with a guilt that is not hers to bear, and can’t even begin to understand it.

“Narti-” it hurts to speak her name, “Narti was not felled by your hand.”

“No,” she agrees, “but I’m still sorry.”

Lotor wants to ask why, wants to understand what sort of sympathies could drive a paladin of Voltron to look so broken on behalf of their enemy, wants to stop feeling the ghost of hot viscera scorching his knuckles every time he makes a fist.

“I cannot comprehend your sentiment. Her blood is neither on your conscience, nor those of your allies, and it is not the galra way to mourn on another’s behalf,” the mere concept is ludicrous, “especially if the deceased was your enemy.”

Lotor frowns. Sets his jaw.

“But I appreciate it, nonetheless.”

With nothing more than a small nod of acknowledgement from Pidge, the conversation is over.

 

Smoothing his hand over Kra’s completed claw, Lotor is able to feel the thrum of power beneath his fingertips, and within that the beat of her quintessence, and sighs. She’s complete once again, even the damages sustained by flying along a star’s surface no more than a memory, and her consciousness glows with it.

With a resigned exhale, he turns away.

“I suppose I ought be returned to my quarters.” In taking charge of this unavoidable fate, he may, at least, feign some vague sort of autonomy.

“Yeah,” Hunk sounds reluctant as he frowns at the floor, “yeah I… I guess so.”

Lotor simply inclines his head.

“We’ll talk to Allura,” is the concession he’s not expecting, least of all from Pidge. “Not saying I like you, and quite frankly your aesthetic principles are fucked if you seriously don’t see how adorable my trash-floofs are-”

Her lewd alien terminology has Lotor’s mouth quirking into the beginnings of a smile.

“-but you didn’t have to help us out at Naxzela, and you didn’t have to surrender yourself over to us and just sit around quietly while we try and sort out the Coalition, and you definitely didn’t have to teach us about all the sciencey rift stuff that you have so… I guess I respect that. One genius to another.”

The smile takes over.

“It has been a pleasure, Paladin Pidge,” though the bow he accompanies this with is meant to tease, Lotor finds the sentiment on his lips to be a true one, “Paladin Hunk.”

He turns to the final member of their little group.

“Paladin…?”

Pretty violet eyes blink up at him as if startled, then turn soft on consideration, before finally settling into something heated that has Lotor preening.

“I told you;” the nameless man steps resolutely forward until he’s so close that, little thing that he is, he has to tilt his head almost ridiculously far back just to retain eye-contact, “earn it.”

Those words have the same growl, the same challenge, as when he’d first spoken them, but this time the red paladin’s voice is a whisper, as if his bold declaration is a secret just between the two of them. Lotor doesn’t mind in the slightest.

“Oh? And if I have yet to do so, then when will I?”

“I’m pretty sure you’ll find a way,” and like that, he’s gone, stepping cleanly back until he’s out of arm’s reach.

With the yellow paladin as his escort, the prince makes to exit the hanger only for the red paladin to speak once more, “see you later, Lotor,” a strangely personal address that leaves the prince pathetically aware of his own infatuation.

Notes:

I think I had things to say about this, but I'm very tired so I'll probably come back to it in the morning. My point is that I'm very not dead, and still 100% committed to this fic, and also Lotor is a Gay Disaster™.

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TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 12: As The Clock Strikes

Summary:

Previously: Lotor's perspective on a month spent fixing Kra with Pidge, Hunk, and his not-quite-so-nameless Rhyahl. There's also a horribly unfortunate incident concerning the vermin scourge of the universe that - for some Sa-forsaken reason - live beneath the green Paladin's clothing.

Lotor isn’t unaccustomed to disappointment, quite the opposite, but when his return to monotony drags on—quintant after quintant spent in a quagmire of tedium, until memories of Kra’s hanger and the tentative camaraderie he’d found there could, arguably, have been a particularly lucid hallucination—his optimistic faith in the paladins of Voltron begins to falter. It’s not that he thinks they lied to him, only that the promises of children are so easily broken, and in the paladins’ eyes the plight of an old enemy might be all too easily cast aside when said plight has an entire universe of suffering to contend with.

The prince considers reaching out to Kra, if only for a companion to whom he may vent his frustration, but with her temperament being what it is, there’s every chance that such pitiful self-indulgence would end with a dead paladin. Such a tragedy so soon after they have allowed him the liberty of fixing his ship would be a poor, though entirely coincidental, reflection of his character.

Privately, Lotor admits that if Pidge or Hunk were to meet their ends in such a manner, he might find himself with some element of personal remorse, and as for his Rhyahl… well, Lotor doesn’t truly believe that Kra would lash out at her little star, the younger man being a shared soft-spot for the both of them, but he would prefer not to tempt fate.

“See you later, Lotor,” he’d said—promised, really, though perhaps to think of it as such is sweetly naïve, as since then the prince has seen neither hide nor hair of the red paladin.

It’s a great pity.

With a heaving sigh, Lotor rises from the sofa, projecting his intentions with enough exaggeration that none of his guardsmen feel the need to shoot him, and sets about swanning between the towering ivory bookshelves in the library’s far corner. The universe is quiet here, and the rebels no longer care enough to follow him about the room, so long as he isn’t absent from their sight for too long, which means Lotor has time enough to allow his shoulders to sag as he slumps back against the shelves with a heavy exhalation, one hand coming up to rub fiercely over the weight of his own brow.

This life is an arduous one.

When the moment passes, Lotor’s attention falls to the several pairs of small, beady eyes clustered on the opposite shelf.

He blinks.

So do they.

There’s a cacophony of squeaking as Lotor’s voyeurs make a break for it, scattering across shelves and between books. It’s graceless, what happens next, but Lotor finds himself lunging for the slowest of them on instinct, half-stumbling into the shelf as he does so and very nearly sending all of its contents toppling to the floor in what would have unavoidably seen him as the centre of the rebels’ attention once again. By some small miracle, this doesn’t come to pass, and instead Lotor sinks to the floor with something soft and warm, squirming within the cage of purple fingers.

The poor thing seems to concede defeat easily enough, understanding a hopeless situation when it sees one, and futile struggling gives way to limp resignation as it sags into Lotor’s palm, its little heartbeat hammering copious times per tick.

“Easy,” Lotor whispers, shuffling to sit more comfortably as he brings his hands up to eye level, opening his fingers a crack to better allow himself a glimpse of a lime-tinted pelt, “easy now, little one.”

There’s a mournful, hiccupping sort of a sound, and Lotor shifts his grip, gentling it so as not to hurt the tiny animal, but not so much that it might escape him. From the newly created loop of his thumb and forefinger appears a round, furred head, crowned with velvety ears the size of its skull.

“Well look at you,” Lotor keeps his voice low, smoothing his thumb ever-so-gently over the trembling creature and scratching lightly behind on ears until it calms, “aren’t you a wonder.”

It’s a rodent, of a sort, and though Lotor doesn’t know its species in particular, he remembers enough of the decaphoebs spent pouring over tales of his maternal heritage to recognise a species indigenous to Altea when he sees one. Murmuring mindless comforts, Lotor continues to pet pale green fur until the mouse is a half-melted ball of heat, rolling contentedly the crux of Lotor’s palm, apparently without any lingering desire to escape his attentions.

Unlike the native fauna of Daibazaal, samples of which had been evacuated before the planet’s destruction so as to prevent the mass extinction of so many sentient beings, Altea’s wildlife had not been offered the courtesy of rehabilitation. The beast that had been reborn in Sa and walked free of that netherworld in Zarkon’s skin, hadn’t cared for the lives of six billion altean innocents, let alone those of mere animals. For Lotor to be, quite literally, holding such a life in the palm of his hands, therefore, is nothing short of a marvel.

An inquisitive squeak by his left ear has Lotor turning to see another of the mice returned, peering warily at him from between the spines of musty books, the shelf at eye-level, meaning that this smaller, rose-toned creature is easily within arm’s reach.

Lotor doesn’t grab at this one, simply continues petting its friend gently until the mouse totters further into view and offers a questioning noise to which its chubby companion responds. Rather than Lotor’s captive making any move to free itself, the second mouse skitters lightly along the shelf’s edge until it is able to hop onto the prince’s shoulder, scurry down his arm, and join its companion; they tussle briefly, until the pink mouse has wriggled its way between the bulk of its friend and Lotor’s fingertips, seemingly commandeering Lotor’s doting attentions.

It is obscenely adorable.

“How in Brodar’s name did you come to be here?” Lotor’s question is rhetorical, of course, because mice cannot speak and it would be ridiculous to expect otherwise, but when both heads wriggle away from the ministrations of Lotor’s fingers to regard him with purpose before releasing a unified squeak, for a moment he feels like they might have given him answer.

A ludicrous thought.

But then the green mouse is tugging at his finger with its little paws, and quite purposefully guiding Lotor to resume scratching it between its ears, and he has to question whether his mother’s data pads had perhaps neglected to mention the higher brain functions of Altea’s minor mammals. All the while, the pink one is still looking at him.

“Do you have something you would like to say?” He asks it, resolutely ignoring the whisper of stupidity that his own words bring upon him, because it’s a mouse and mice don’t-

It squeaks at him several times over, cocks its head, and squeaks once more.

Lotor pauses. “Pardon?”

The mouse squeaks again and the pattern of sound is inarguably deliberate, an exact—if slower—repetition of its first answer but this time accented with… gestures.

And what is one to say when confronted with a talking altean mouse that apparently understands the galra common tongue? Unless, of course, it’s been fitted with a translator chip, which is only slightly less ridiculous than a mouse having the cognitive capabilities to correctly comprehend and utilise language.

A siren pierces through Lotor’s train of thought, Princess Allura’s voice suddenly panicked and all-consuming as she takes command: “A rogue galra fleet has been isolated and is making moves to engage. Paladins, to your Lions! Rebel fighters, please report to your stations!”

There’s a clamouring of movement from elsewhere in the library—a sudden realisation by the yupper guards that their charge is nowhere in sight, it seems—and within half a dobash Lotor’s keepers have appeared, two at either end of the lines of shelves that he is tucked away between. Unthinkingly, the prince cradles the mice closer to his chest as he rises from the floor, which immediately sees several blasters trained upon him.

One of his guardsmen, willowy and with a voice that trembles (whether with anger or fear it’s impossible to say, but Lotor imagines that it doesn’t much matter) takes one look at his clasped hands and demands that he relinquish his weapons.

“I am unarmed,” so far as they know, at least, but that’s all that really counts. Slowly he opens his palms and reveals the mice, who squeak in alarm at the sight of armed hostiles, immediately leaping to the floor and scurrying out of sight.

The rebels’ confused hesitation is obvious, but a fifth appears, coming up behind Lotor and jabbing the barrel of their weapon into his lower back unnecessarily, as they bark demands that he remain still and order at their comrades to “secure the prisoner”. Lotor allows himself to be cuffed more roughly than he deserves, and shunted forward through the lines of shelves, across the starlit floor, and out into the otherwise empty hallway. As they lead him to his quarters in silence, an abrupt wave of pressure rocks the entire ship, sending Lotor himself stumbling to his knees as the five rebels surrounding him scatter; the harsh jarring of bone against flooring is not nearly so uncomfortable as the prickling sensation on the back of his neck as all his hair stands on end, several shots firing off too-close for comfort and leaving behind the stench of ozone, ripe in the air. There are panicked cries, a yelp of pain, and Lotor grunts as the willowy rebel stumbles back against his shoulder, breaths short and eyes wide as she stares at nothing and proclaims, “you shot me,” with little more than distant whisper.

“No,” is a child’s denial, but when Lotor looks up the fighter that has stepped forward is young, and scared enough that perhaps calling it as much is the truth. They sink to their comrade’s side, “no—no I didn’t mean- my finger slipped, I-!”

They try pulling her upright, which is stupid, because she cries out in pain immediately. The distance this allows between them means that Lotor gets a good view of her thigh: flesh raw and still smouldering as the exposed tendons leak a viscous fluid.

It’s a largely superficial wound, but not a painless one.

Lotor remains where he is, on his knees and watching silently as the lot of them do nothing but stare at their injured comrade, and tries to repress pity for these fools who play at war.

He fails.

She crying out, poor thing, grasping at her assailant and begging him to “help me, help me please,” because she’s scared and in pain and clearly has no concept of what a mortal wound looks like if she thinks that this is it.

“Bind it, if you can, and get to the medical bay,” her eyes turn to him, confused and scared, and Lotor doesn’t look away, “you will not lose your leg—with the technology available on this ship, you are unlikely to so much as scar.”

He keeps his voice as level as he can, but just as it seems that she’s calming, one of the other rebels—face blue and drooping and filled with hate—has to go and ruin it with accusations of deception, which Lotor can ignore, and ignorance, which he cannot.

“What would you know of-”

“More than you, child,” Lotor hisses, and doesn’t let the threat of the blaster deter him, “I have been fighting since long before you were born, and if this little display is anything to go by, I will be doing so long after you’re dead, too.”

The butt of the gun is pressed against his temple, and it forces Lotor to bite his tongue. Tensions are running high, and blood hot, but he hadn’t thought that the Coalition’s chosen guard would truly stoop so low as to execute him on his knees in the midst of an external assault. This is his penance for blind faith, it seems.

If he is to die here, Lotor thinks, he will do so with his eyes wide open, and so he returns the hateful glower of his executioner tenfold, which earns him a sneer from every single one of his assailant’s numerous mouths. Pure loathing is not something Lotor is unaccustomed to, but he hadn’t thought he’d die a traitor’s death at the hands of someone other than his father, someone he genuinely hasn’t betrayed, and there’s a certain indignity to it all.

“Galra scum,” the rebel hisses, his tongues slightly out of time and creating the impression of several people speaking as one, “if I were to end you now, Voltron would thank me.”

He seems deaf to the conflicted cries of the hall’s other occupants, adamantly ignoring them in favour of dragging the tip of his blaster down Lotor’s face to shove it roughly under his jaw so that the prince’s head snaps back, his gaze unable to fall anywhere other than the corridor’s high ceiling.

“The paladins are magnanimous,” the rebel breathes the word like a prayer, and Sa knows religious zealots have always been among Lotor’s least favourite people, “but do not think that I am unwilling to do what they cannot.”

Enduring the slew of abuse as it continues to pour fourth, Lotor turns the bulk of his attention elsewhere.

With one rebel injured and another seemingly too traumatised at having caused said injury to so much as look at his weapon, let alone fire it again, they’re unlikely to pose an issue. A third seems reluctant to partake in this show of power, but reluctant to stand against it too, while the fourth is stood out of Lotor’s range of vision, temperament impossible to gauge one way or another. The fifth is still monologuing.

“-they would thank me, they would honour me-”

Lotor allows a certain looseness to overtake his muscles, the languid flame of fresh blood licking its way up his spine, and Kra trills her excitement.

He’s going to have to kill them.

The one who talks, followed by the one who stands by silently, and then the one who hides so far out of sight that Lotor can’t aptly judge him, just to be on the safe side. So long as the others don’t resist, he’ll leave them be. It’s not what he wants, nothing close to ideal, but Lotor knows Voltron—morally virtuous as they are—won’t take kindly to him having murdered three of their allies, irrespective of his reasoning, so it’s in his best interest to leave witnesses to his plight—better yet, ones to whom he has gifted mercy.

“Stand down.”

It’s a growled command, and one that immediately disarms Lotor for the fact that he’s yet to actually make a move. His intentions have never been so easily read-

The instruction was not for him.

In one fluid movement, swift and artful, little Keith towers over Lotor’s would-be executioner, the rebel neutralised and firmly pinned, face unsightly and pressed up against the unforgiving floor. This attack upon Lotor’s assailant having happened so quickly, the prince doesn’t quite know when or how the littlest marmorite’s sword ended up with its tip embedded deep in the Castleship’s wall, but it is inarguably impressive how precise a throw it must have been, for Keith to have lanced the weapon that held Lotor at its mercy with such accuracy. When several mouths begin to protest at the rough treatment of having been wrestled to the floor, Lotor’s little Blade rams the heel of his palm against a blue temple, knocking the man out cold, and the fierce savagery of the action is inarguably galra.

“B-Blade-” one of the others tries, but they’re immediately cut-off.

“Get her to the med-bay,” is the command issued, a masked chin jutting towards the injured rebel, “and then report to your stations.”

There’s a beat of silence in which Lotor imagines the glint of fangs in a snarl, the narrowing of golden eyes beneath the cold impassiveness of the boy’s mask, and the ambiguity of Keith’s expression provides the necessary undercurrent of intimidation that his diminutive stature does not.

“Now.”

They go, quick and quiet, only the willowy one daring to look back towards Lotor as she’s carried off by her companions.

 

No sooner are they out of sight is Lotor’s little Blade cursing under his breath and dipping behind the prince to release the cuffs; as they click open, the only thing Lotor can think to say that won’t sound petulant and childish as a result of having been virtually ignored for the past movement, is: “Perhaps they restrained me for a reason.”

An amused huff rolls over the back of his neck, soft and warm but a little too strained to be completely casual.

“Or because they’re scared and stupid.”

“Or that,” he agrees with a roll of the shoulders, turning as he stands to find the marmorite regarding him openly. He doesn’t know what to make of it. The feeling is apparently mutual, however, because after moment of silence, little Keith awkwardly ducks his head and returns to the side of the unconscious rebel, binding him with efficiency and a touch more strength than is strictly necessary. Lotor can’t bring himself to comment on it, because he doesn’t quite know what it’s supposed to mean, or if it even means anything at all.

“You were going to kill him,” Keith states, as he rises from the floor, and Lotor feels the weight of that knowledge heavy in the child’s gaze.

“Yes,” and then, because that sounds far too blunt a truth, “I am glad you arrived before it came to that.”

Keith’s muscles tense into something that’s a full-body frown, and if he had a tail Lotor’s sure it would be lashing in agitation, but before he can say anything more the Castleship is rocked by another blast, sending the both of them reeling, and Lotor’s hand shoots out to steady his little Blade without conscious thought. In the same instant, the gesture is reciprocated, and when the ship has stabilised it leaves Lotor with a warm body tucked up against him, the marmorite with a firm grip on Lotor’s waist, and the two of them looking at one another with mirrored surprise.

Lotor recovers first with a tentative smile, and can’t help the teasing murmur of “How very gallant of you,” that slips from his tongue.

Keith stares up at him, and even despite his mask, the way light surprise twists into a bemused pout is betrayed by the bleeding of tension from armoured shoulders and the soft tilt of his head. The boy exhales on a huff.

“I just don’t get you,” he blurts out, his expression undoubtedly one of frustration and curiosity in equal parts, “what do you want?”

It’s not the first time this question has been posed to him.

Lotor’s gaze flickers over the boy momentarily, and then away, to the thought of fine-boned features under pale skin, dusky eyes, dark hair, a sharp smile, and the prince can hardly help the way his voice dips into something rich and full of promise as he whispers: “I can think of a few things,” the words dripping private amusement, before dedicating his full attention to a matter less vested in personal interest, “but as I’m sure I’ve said, little one, at present my goals align with those of Voltron: to rid the universe of my father.”

And this, somehow, seems the wrong thing to say.

“If my earlier intentions concern you,” Lotor tries, because perhaps his prior admission of guilt was not enough to soothe Voltron’s youngest and most impressionable ally, when three of his rebel comrades were (unbeknownst to them) mere ticks from death, “I would not have killed them had I not believed my life to be in immediate danger. However their blind bigotry is hardly worth my tactical value to the Coalition, ergo I made the choice-”

“No,” the frustration is a growl in the Blade’s throat, and Lotor’s expression falls to one of genuine surprise, “I mean, that’s definitely something we’re going to have to deal with later, but that’s not-” he hisses a breath through his teeth, “what do you want? Not your vision for the Empire or whatever, but you. Outside of all this.”

Another wave of energy rattles the ship, not nearly so strong as the last though still enough that Lotor has to brace himself against it, and this sees the arm around Keith’s shoulders holding him closer still. They’re nearly nose to nose like this, or they would be were the boy a half-dozen rak taller, but Keith’s stubborn determination has turned the set of his shoulders hard, and he shows no signs of wavering, unbothered by both their physical proximity and the oddly personal turn this conversation has taken.

Lotor’s throat feels suddenly parched.

“Surely it stands to reason that I solely crave imperial power,” like my father, he doesn’t say, but the marmorite seems to hear it regardless, and responds with a soft shake of the head.

“No,” it’s a more gentle denial this time, but no less firm, “I really don’t think you do.”

There’s a quiet that falls over them then: one in which Lotor doesn’t know what to say, and Keith doesn’t seem inclined to say anything at all. When the hand at Lotor’s hip turns into a palm against his abdomen, the prince concedes to the firm pressure as it gently enforces him to step back, his arm lingering only for a moment around the child’s torso before dropping away altogether.

“I’m, er…” his little Blade coughs, words caught on something that is endearingly awkward, as if he’d only now realised how close the two of them had been standing, “I’m supposed to make sure you’re secure.”

Not causing trouble, he means, and even that would be a kind way of putting it. Still, Lotor stands by placidly as Keith yanks his sword from the wall, sending the blaster clattering to the floor and leaking a putrid fluid as it does so; when the marmorite toes it gingerly, Lotor feels himself melt at the innocent curiosity of the action. He then has to bite back a startled laugh at the not-so-innocent jab of those same toes against the rebel’s fleshy underside, earning a groan from the unconscious lump, to which Keith responds with a begrudgingly satisfied grunt, before turning to leave.

With that, Lotor allows himself to be led back to the familiar confines of his guest suite, the question of his own ambition still ringing in his ears.

 

---

 

If Keith has to sit through one more accusation of having been manipulated by Lotor, he’s going to hit something.

They’ve been at this for at least two vargas now, and that’s after an entire movement of careful planning—courtesy of Hunk—as to how to most tactfully approach the topic with Allura; not when she was alone, they’d decided, because making her feel cornered was perhaps not a conductive solution, but not with anyone who might further escalate her fury in the immediate vicinity either. Coran had been the obvious choice—cheerful but practical, and the only person Keith had ever witnessed execute a successful defusal of Allura’s temper once ignited—but at this point, Keith thinks, it seems that tact doesn’t count for much of anything, and he watches blankly with a needling pain behind his eyes as Allura insists that Lotor has some sort of ulterior motive.

“All I’m saying,” Hunk has his hands raised peacefully, but his expression is strained, “is that it might be time we cut the guy some slack? I’m not telling you he’s a good person necessarily-”

Keith bristles at that, because he and Hunk still have a slight difference in opinion when it comes to Lotor, but he knows enough to recognise that the yellow paladin is not the enemy here, and he should maybe keep his mouth shut.

“-but I do think he’s serious about wanting to help Voltron?”

“Hunk,” Allura sounds as exasperated as Keith feels, “Lotor is only acting as our ally for now because it benefits him-”

“So what!” Pidge jumps to her feet, irritation carved into the deep lines of her brow, and Keith is thankful that it’s her who snaps first, “that’s how alliances work, Allura: groups of people trade off useful shit with other groups of people. Half the Coalition doesn’t really give a damn about the universe, they just want Voltron to protect them and their own from the Empire!”

Keith nods decisively, “and god knows Lotor’s been a hell of a lot more useful than the collective population of entire planets we’ve liberated.”

Allura turns to him, expression sour, but it’s Coran who cuts in, cautiously tugging on his moustache.

“If I may, we’re not saving planets because they’re useful, number four, we’re saving them because it’s the right thing to do?” The inflection of those words turn a statement into a question, but one that feels more like an accusation. It’s made worse by the fact that, rather than anger, the older altean looks deeply concerned.

Keith crosses his arms more tightly, nails digging into biceps as he breathes.

“I know that, but the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Naxzela was a strategic victory, but we need to focus our efforts on the planets that can best help the Coalition, or the whole thing’ll fall apart,” he glances at Hunk who offers him a weak smile of encouragement, “more than half the rebels stationed here have no official military training: they’re inexperienced, and scared, and worse than that they’re all still caught on viewing the entire galra race as their enemy. It’s only a matter of time before it all turns sour.”

Allura’s laugh is bitter, “the galra are our enemy,” and Keith is only able to pretend that those words don’t sting due to the unified whisper of ‘the Empire’ from Pidge and Hunk.

“It’s not what’s in your blood, but who you are that counts,” he echoes, those words the ghost of a friendship he wants to believe in, and sees the recognition of their shared memory spark behind the princess’ eyes, “if that’s true for me, Allura, then the least you can do is give Lotor the opportunity to prove himself.”

She looks stricken.

“It’s not his galra heritage that I have a problem with-”

“Isn’t it?” Keith asks, the words dark even as his throat closes up around them.

The room falls into a deathly quiet.

“Too far, number four.” It’s Coran who steps forward, brow heavy, disappointed, and Keith is suddenly glad to be wearing his Marmora armour—in uniform due to an earlier debriefing with Kolivan who, even when several galaxies away, does not appreciate Keith making his reports in casual wear—as it allows him the illusion of security despite the present threat being an emotional one. Even as he tries to remain stoic and unfazed, Keith can feel his shoulders hunching in on themselves.

“Was it, though?” Hunk voice is subdued, his teeth gnawing at his lip with a ferocity that leaves Keith concerned. “I mean, Allura, don’t get me wrong, I don’t trust Lotor, but I do trust Keith.”

Pidge jumps in with a fervent nod of assent.

“He’s spent more time around tall dark and purple than the rest of the Coalition combined: ignoring everything pre-Naxzela, it kind of does look like you’re hating on Lotor for being galra more than anything else, and that’s not right.”

“We cannot simply ignore the things he did before his convenient change of heart,” the line of Allura’s mouth has gone tight, “right now the narrative that best suits him is that of our ally, but the moment that changes-”

There’s a hissed curse from Pidge as she balls her fists, and Keith is very distinctly relieved to have the green paladin fighting his corner.

“The moment that changes we deal with him! But for now he’s giving us everything we ask him for, so maybe not being a dick for like, two ticks, would be a good option?”

Allura opens her mouth with a scowl, but she’s not given the chance to speak; the Castleship’s automatic defence systems trigger a blaring alarm, the holo-screens overhead bursting into life with the image of a small fleet of imperial ships, and the sight launches everyone into immediate action.

Tapping into the comms, Allura declares: “A rogue galra fleet has been isolated and is making moves to engage. Paladins, to your Lions! Rebel fighters, please report to your stations!”

She pulls away from the central dais as Pidge and Hunk dart for their respective entry points, and grabs Keith by the arm, guilt warring with some other emotion that he can’t put a name to.

“Secure Prince Lotor,” she commands as princess, and then, in a far less impersonal tone, “and Keith… we’ll talk about this later.”

With a light squeeze to his elbow, she’s gone.

 

When he finds Lotor, it’s to the sound of the blue sycophantic alien whose name Keith never cared to remember, delighting in having the prince of the Galra Empire on his knees and at his mercy. He plans to kill him, Keith thinks, but with a trill of near-euphoria from Kra he realises that it’s far more likely Lotor will kill all five of them first.

So Keith cuts in before anyone has to die, taking down the ringleader to the beat of the blood roaring in his ears, and barking orders at those still-standing until it’s just him, Lotor, and the unconscious lump at their feet. Keith lets himself run on autopilot for the next few dobashes, his mind replaying the raw loathing he’d seen in the rebel’s eyes as he’d lorded Lotor’s own life over his head. It scares him, how easily the rebels hate, and while he’d thought it something manageable when directed towards himself, seeing Lotor nearly suffer mortal consequences simply for the crime of a lineage he never chose has shaken Keith to his core.

Lotor, apparently, isn’t even mildly disturbed.

“How very gallant of you,” he says, after the ship rocks so violently that the two of them end up half coiled together in a mutual effort to keep one another upright. The prince’s tone is light-hearted and playful and completely at odds with the fact that someone had nearly killed him only moments before, let alone that he’d been mere ticks away from killing them in return.

Keith is at a loss of what to make of it.

“I just don’t get you,” the words tumble out without permission, blunt and unfiltered, “what do you want?”

Lotor seems not to understand the question at first, and when Keith clarifies, he seems not to want to answer it.

“Surely it stands to reason that I solely crave imperial power,” are the words he settles on, and Keith can hear the like my father, lingering in the space between them, so he shakes his head with a frown.

“No,” because coming face to face with Zarkon when seated within the red Lion was more than enough nightmare fuel to last a lifetime, and yet with Lotor it’s almost effortless to disregard personal space altogether, “I really don’t think you do.”

 

Lotor goes easily to his assigned suite, and Keith follows him in and over to the great window on the main room’s far side; from here the two of them have a clear view of the Castle’s particle barrier, flickering under the prior abuse of rogue enemy fire, but still holding strong, and beyond that, Voltron: colossal and unparalleled and carving through imperial battleships like a hot knife through butter. It’s a strange sight for Keith to behold. After having left Voltron he’d received reports of his friends’ movements—largely second-hand through Kolivan, and therefore as succinct facts rather than full, detailed accounts of their progress as a team—but he’d never seen them in action. Even at Naxzela, they were half a galaxy away from one another. So this: standing here and seeing, for the first time, Voltron as the weapon it was created to be… this is his first true inkling of what it is that their enemies are up against.

“King Alfor truly outdid himself,” Lotor murmurs.

When Keith looks, the prince isn’t addressing him, but watching in terrible awe as the battle rages on in the distance. Sinking to seat himself on the sill, long legs draped carelessly across it, Lotor traces Voltron’s path against the glass with a single finger, eyes never leaving the desolation that rages beyond.

“You almost sound like you admire him.”

Lotor turns to fix Keith with a quirked eyebrow and the beginnings of a smile.

“Perhaps I do,” he inclines his head in such a way that Keith feels he’s being invited to sit, so he does so on the opposite end of the window ledge, and only then does Lotor continue, “having never met the man myself, I am hardly qualified to make a personal judgement, but his work, at the very least, I would be hard pressed not to hold in high regard.”

There’s a flash of light as Voltron tears through the last of the rogue galra fleet, and the ship explodes into a graveyard of scrap metal.

“It is a monstrous thing.”

Monstrous. It’s not a word Keith has ever heard used to describe Voltron, but then, he supposes, the only opinions he’s encountered thus far are those of the people they’ve been fighting to protect. The Empire’s narrative must be something else entirely.

He almost asks Lotor how many people are stationed on ships like the ones now drifting, fragmented, through the cold battlefield of deep-space. Not sentries, but real flesh-and-blood people. How many prisoners, like Shiro and Matt, who’ve been abducted for no reason and forced to fight for their lives. How many galra, enrolled in the military which is, Keith knows, such a significant pillar of imperial culture.

People, all of them, with thoughts and feelings and families of their own. Families that they’ll never return to.

He can’t bring himself to do it.

“I’d never seen it in person until Thayserix,” Lotor’s tone is one of hushed wonder, “by the time of my birth, relations between my father and the other paladins were strained, and Voltron did not form on Daibazaal or anywhere else. As a child I thought it a great pity.”

Keith absorbs the implications of this.

“You…” the thought dawns on him slowly, “you grew up on Daibazaal?”

There’s an immediate rigidity that takes hold of the prince’s posture, and Keith has half a mind to retract the question altogether, but before he can Lotor is tapping out an uneven beat with his fingertips, his own words tripping over the rhythm of it.

“I- yes. In a manner of speaking, anyway, it was-” he swallows, scowls at nothing in a way that Keith is all too familiar with, unwanted memories doubtlessly playing out in the space between them, “I was born on-planet, and spent my formative years there before the Sa Tskept came to pass.”

Keith recalls the term from their first conversation.

“You were there when Alfor evacuated everyone?”

“Evacuated,” Lotor scoffs, “now there’s a word for it.”

When blue eyes flick upwards to look at him, Keith is very thankful for his Marmora mask; he has no idea what sort of a face he’s making right now, and it’s probably for the best that Lotor doesn’t either, because the prince’s expression is quiet, somehow. Empty.

“The story of what occurred that day has become obscured over time, as everything inevitably does. My father would have the official account be one of annihilation and betrayal as is best suited to his favoured narrative of retribution, but that…” Lotor trails off, sighs, forces himself to continue with what looks like great effort, “as I said, I never met King Alfor personally, but an act of mindless cruelty, such as unjustified planetary annihilation, would stand far outside my understanding of his character. At the very least, it is an act ill-suited to the general altean disposition.”

Keith hesitates.

“You don’t think Alfor destroyed Daibazaal?” He can’t see why anyone would believe otherwise, even Allura having admitted to the truth of the extreme actions her father took for the betterment of the universe, but Lotor is shaking his head with a sad sort of smile.

“That’s not what I meant, little Blade. I do not doubt that he did it, only that the imperial line with regards to the intent behind said actions—claiming that the altean king was a malicious man and therefore the subsequent destruction of Altea was justice in its purest form—is false.” A beat of mournful silence. “It’s important that you understand, I was… sickly, as a child.”

Keith tilts his head at the admission, confused as to its relevance until Lotor continues, his voice strained and rasping.

“My mother was an exceptional woman. She was handpicked by King Alfor himself to study the rift created by the comet that would later be known as Voltron, ergo her understanding of quintessence and its origin was near-unparalleled. Working so closely to that much raw energy, however, began to take its toll, and by the time she birthed me she was…” another steadying breath, “neither she nor I were long for this world. Being what I am, it was unlikely I would survive past infancy regardless, but having spent the entirety of my gestation in close proximity to that much raw quintessence…”

Being what I am, brings questions to Keith’s mind, but before he can ask them Lotor is shrugging, nonchalant, as if the topic at hand is of little consequence.

“She never gave up on me. Despite her own ill-health she persisted, determined to cure me of my genetic inevitability despite King Alfor’s demands that she cease her meddling and close the rift. Alfor warned both her and my father that if they continued down this path, Sa would swallow the entirety of Daibazaal, and he was right,” there’s a grim softness to Lotor that Keith couldn’t describe if he tried, “but outsiders will never understand how deeply our love—the galra sense of devotion—runs.”

Lotor drags a clawed hand through his hair, absently.

“I do often not speak fondly of my father,” the obvious reasons for which go unsaid, but Keith has a sneaking suspicion that there are less obvious ones too, “but that night he came to me, enraged by Alfor’s words, and I can quite vividly recall the ferocity with which he grabbed me by the scruff of my neck.”

There’s an awful melancholy to the prince’s tone as he rubs at his nape, as if the sensation never left him.

“He told me what had happened, told me of Alfor’s concerns, and then,” a bitter laugh, “told me that if the whole damn universe had to burn for my sake, and the sake of my mother, then he’d set each and every planet aflame with his own hand.”

“He loved you,” Keith hears himself say, and can hardly reconcile this image of Zarkon as a devoted father, with the tyrant he’s become.

“Yes,” Lotor agrees, softly, “he did. He loved me, and he loved my mother, and the entire universe paid the price.”

There isn’t anything Keith can say to that.

“Little by little,” Lotor continues, “my health began to improve. My mother’s alchemy was a success, but it was also tailored to the specific needs of a child of dual lineage—both galra and altean—meaning that when she took an abrupt turn for the worse, the two-dozen decaphoebs of research that she’d dedicated to me were entirely useless in curing her.”

Two-dozen. Keith doesn’t know the precise equivalent of galra decaphoebs as opposed to altean ones, or how much either of those equate to in Earth years, but he does recall Kolivan’s begrudging acceptance of the Blade’s collective determination to celebrate his two hundredth cycle; in comparison to that, twenty-four decaphoebs is a mere fraction of a life.

“So Zarkon asked Alfor for his help,” Keith fills in what he knows slowly, “and took Honerva into the rift to try and save her.”

Lotor heaves a great sigh, his breath fogging against the window full of stars.

“Indeed. But before that I, much like Princess Allura, was put into cryostasis by my own father. He was not certain as to what the ramifications of his actions would be, after all, and did not wish to risk a sudden relapse in my health while he was otherwise indisposed. So he left me in the care of my mother’s closest confidants—members of Daibazaal’s druidic sect who had worked with raw quintessence long before the alteans dared touch it, and all half corrupted by Sa’s denizens already—and left.”

Lotor doesn’t offer the rest of the story, and Keith doesn’t ask for it. For the most part, it’s self-explanatory: Zarkon dies with Honerva, their bodies are brought back from the other side of the rift, their people mourn them, Alfor seals the rift the only way he knows how, and zombie-Zarkon rises from the dead to avenge his planet’s destruction and conquer the known universe piece by piece over a period of several millennia.

“What about you?” Keith asks, instead, “if you were put into stasis as a kid, when did they wake you up?”

Lotor grimaces.

“It is… complicated. My parents were claimed by Sa, there is no doubt about that. The creature you call Zarkon may wear my father’s skin, it may speak with his voice, and it may even possess his memories, but that monster is not the man who sired me.” Lotor sets his jaw. “When I was first awoken by my father’s witch, Daibazaal had been gone for centuries.”

There’s a silence then: one in which Keith has no words to express what he wants to say. He’d seen Allura and Coran discover the destruction of their planet and people, seen how they’d fallen apart in the wake of it, and while the galra race hadn’t been wiped out Keith can’t begin to imagine a child coming face to face with such a life-changing reality.

“After that,” Lotor is tracing symbols into the fog of his breath, and Keith watches him with a pang of familiarity for the empty sense of loss written into his features, “I was taken in and out of stasis intermittently, as and when it pleased her. At first I was naïve enough to believe in her good intentions, but… that is not Haggar’s way.”

“She tortured you?” The words fall out of Keith’s mouth, and he regrets them instantly.

There’s a beat of silence, thick and viscous.

“I do not think,” Lotor says, finally, his finger frozen against the glass, eyes glazed over and cold, “that you want me to delve into such things. My childhood is not what it ought to have been, little Blade, let us leave it at that.”

Keith concedes, with a quiet sort of “okay,” that isn’t really enough.

Lotor accepts it regardless.

They sit in silence for a while more, Lotor returning to his mindless pattern-tracing, and Keith tucking his knees up to rest his chin upon them. They stay that way until the prince asks, “you said the knife belonged to your mother,” in a way that’s less a question and more an invitation.

“Yeah,” Keith knows he could leave it at that and Lotor wouldn’t press him, but… “She was a Blade of Marmora.”

The prince glances at him with a weak, if teasing smile, “I assumed as much.”

“I never knew her,” Keith blurts, because he’s not good with words and subtlety and apparently has no fucking idea how to regulate a conversation.

As Lotor’s face falls, Keith turns his eyes back to the stars to avoid seeing pity—or worse, understanding—in the other’s features.

“Kolivan might know who she was, but he refuses to give me a straight answer, so…” he shrugs without anything more to say, and lets his eyes drift from star to star in imagined constellations.

“Marmora’s commander is your,” there’s a pause as Lotor searches for the right terminology, “primary caregiver?”

Almost choking the idea of Kolivan having raised him—though he’s not sure whether the tightness in his chest is from horror at the inevitable train wreck that would have been, or a sort of wistfulness for the idea of having been brought up by a family, covert military organisation though they may be—Keith shakes his head.

“I didn’t grow up on Marmora’s base,” he shifts, arms hugging his knees and head resting upon them. “Until Voltron, I lived on Earth.”

“That is a planet?”

Keith nods in affirmation.

“Your birth planet was named… Earth.”                                                                                                      

Keith confirms this with a hum, but there’s something familiar about the hesitation in the prince’s posture which he can’t quite place until Lotor’s curiosity clearly gets the better of him and he asks, almost indignant: “Who names a planet Earth?”

Memories of hanger Xi12 and Pidge’s hysterics at the failure of Lotor’s translator come back to him, and beneath his mask, Keith quirks a smile.

Daibazaal is a distinctive word without an English equivalent, but Earth, Keith thinks, must translate differently. If so, Lotor’s reaction is likely one to Keith telling him that he’d grown up on a planet called Ground, or Dirt, which—while not technically wrong—is probably underwhelming, at best. He wonders if Allura and Coran have encountered the same issue, only to be too polite to say anything, and laughs, which leaves Lotor’s nose scrunching up with irritation.

“Turn your translator off,” and Keith knows that his words come out thick with amusement, but he can hardly help his own smile, “it probably sounds dumb in the common tongue.”

Rather than doing as he’s asked—which, really, Keith should have expected—Lotor’s ire turns soft on a frown of confusion.

“I was under the impression that we were both speaking the common tongue.”

Keith pauses.

“I speak English, same as the others.” Aside from Lance, on occasion, when he slips back into Spanish.

“English,” Lotor rolls the syllables around his mouth curiously, almost as if he’s savouring them, but the sulky downturn of his lips doesn’t alleviate any, “what manner of backwater dialect is that? And for the love of Brodar, why do Marmora use such a thing?”

Keith cocks his head, and fixes Lotor with a long hard look.

He can’t be serious.

He can’t be, but… but sincerity is written into every line of the prince’s brow: eyebrows drawn and furrowed, mouth pressed into a tight line, and ears pricked fractionally upward, as if he’s genuinely waiting for a response. Keith had been absolutely certain, had been operating within the parameters of this assumption for an entire phoeb, but if he had somehow got it wrong-

Then Lotor must think…

“I meant the other paladins,” allowing his mask to dissolve, Keith watches the prince’s expression fall from one of deep-rooted confusion to unparalleled astonishment. With his next question a breathless laugh, Keith knows that the smile tugging at his own lips is out of control: “I thought you knew?”

The look on Lotor’s face says he did not.

“It was my understanding,” the prince eventually forces out, with a hard swallow, “that every Blade was galra,” and Keith sees how his eyes are wide and unblinking and honest in all the ways no one else seems to believe Zarkon’s son can be.

With a silent apology to Allura, Keith gives a half shrug, bites his lip, and forces himself not to look away from those endlessly blue eyes as he admits, “we are,” in a voice too soft to be his own.

Notes:

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm cutting it there on what is probably the cruelest cliffhanger I could, because Keith's little Cinderella moment from Lotor's perspective is just the perfect opener for next chapter, so... yeah.
You're welcome :)

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TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 13: Tragedy, Thy Name is Lotor

Summary:

Previously: Forsaken by his pretty paladin, Lotor makes new friends (supposedly long-extinct altean mice), only to almost immediately get shot by a deluded zealot, but his gallant little Blade intervenes before anyone (read: other than Lotor) gets hurt. Keith's intervention is followed by an interesting conversation that paints Voltron in quite a different light, learns a little about Lotor's childhood, and then discovers that somehow Lotor hasn't known about his dual identity this entire time, which is so ridiculous that Keith simply tells the prince himself.

Lotor doesn’t mean to delve into the darker elements of his past, but Marmora’s kit seems to have something of a knack for loosening the prince’s tongue. Were it some deliberate form of subterfuge Lotor is certain he would be able to resist it, but as it stands Keith is the embodiment of innocent curiosity, and it proves near impossible to say no to him. Some may argue that there is neutral territory between tight-lipped refusal, and the emotional suicide of reliving his early childhood, but apparently that is not to be Lotor’s battleground this evening. If it were, he thinks, this fight would be a far simpler one.

When the question of torture leaves Keith’s lips, Lotor is thrown back into a world on fire.

“I do not think,” he chokes out, his veneer of composure dangerously thin, “that you want me to delve into such things. My childhood was not what it ought to have been, little Blade, let us leave it at that.”

Those words are a near-laughable understatement, and Keith must know that if the soft solemnity of his acquiesce is any indication, but that little “okay,” draws from Lotor an overwhelming swell of gratitude which has his breath catching in his throat.

“You said the knife belonged to your mother,” are the next words the prince hears—and in his own voice, no less—breaching the blanket of quiet that threatens to smother him.

“Yeah,” shifting where he’s perched on the opposite end of the window ledge, the kit seems cautious, but not uncomfortable, “she was a Blade of Marmora.”

Lotor feels the corners of his lips quirk upwards.

That much is obvious, he doesn’t say, because Keith is, impossibly, more guarded than Lotor himself, and the last thing the prince wants is to discourage the rapport that he has been so carefully fostering between them.

The decided upon, “I assumed as much,” is of far more amicable wording.

It’s a balancing act: keeping this child of the Blade on side as an ally when Lotor knows that—in all the universe—he himself hasn’t one true friend remaining, while simultaneously mediating his personal investment in the poor thing, courtesy of his own ridiculous sentimentalities.

“I never knew her,” is the reply that tumbles from Keith’s tongue, seemingly unbidden if the sudden tension that takes rigorous hold of him is any indication, and Lotor silently curses his own bleeding heart for the pang of sympathy this elicits. “Kolivan might know who she was, but he refuses to give me a straight answer, so…” trailing off with a shrug, the littlest Blade falsifies indifference, and Lotor is forced to resign himself to his altean weakness of spirit because this story is as loathsome as it is familiar: a mother taken before her time, a father who must be absent at best, if the kit thinks of his commanding officer before his own sire, and the resultant child set adrift in the universe.

Melancholy sets in with a bone-deep chill.

“Marmora’s commander is your,” the correct phrasing eludes him, “primary caregiver?”

Keith makes a noise as if he’s had the breath punched out of him, and he shakes his head rapidly, as though the very idea of such a thing is unfathomable.

“I didn’t grow up on Marmora’s base,” he sounds wistful, curling in upon himself, limbs drawn in tightly and blank mask softly lit when set against the backdrop of a star-sprinkled battlefield, and it would be impossible to ignore how little a thing he is. “Until Voltron, I lived on Earth.”

Earth. The way he says it implies a place, but there are no imperial territories entitled something so… inane.

“That is a planet?”

Keith gives a small nod, attention still steadfastly fixated on the desolation that the so-called Defender of the Universe has left behind.

“Your birth planet was named… Earth.” The confirmation Lotor seeks is freely given in the form of an absent hum of assent, suggesting the kit doesn’t realise how utterly ridiculous a name that is. “Who names a planet Earth.”

There is a beat of quiet as Keith tears his attention from the window, and back to Lotor.

A second beat as he tilts his head, the gesture both considering and dreadfully adorable.

A third.

A fourth.

Then, laughter: startled and unabashed and ringing through the echoing room to drown out the ever present hum of the Castleship altogether. Lotor knows his expression must do something complicated because he can feel the muscles of his face twitch, torn between the automatic insult of being subject to another’s ridicule, and an undeniable fondness that Marmora’s child has kindled within him.

“Turn your translator off,” Keith orders, lightly, as if demanding things of the Emperor’s son is something that people just do, “it probably sounds dumb in the common tongue.”

And that… huh.

Because the obvious implication therein would be-

“I was under the impression that we were both speaking the common tongue.”

There’s a stillness that overtakes Keith then—not one of tension, necessarily, but confusion—and Lotor thinks it might have touched upon him too, because the room is suddenly much quieter than it had been barely a tick before.

“I speak English, same as the others.”

“English,” Lotor curls his tongue about the syllables, and there’s something distinctly foreign about the ungainly way they sit in his mouth: clumsy and graceless. Particularly ingalra. “What manner of backwater dialect is that? And for the love of Brodar, why do Marmora use such a thing?”

The little Blade cocks his head, the rest of his form remaining subject to that disquieting stillness.

Then he’s bringing his fingers up to brush over his own collarbone, his neck, the hinge of his jaw, hesitation not only palpable in the air between them, but so thick that Lotor near misses the warning of: “I meant the other paladins,” which is hardly a warning at all and more a mockery of Lotor’s own arrogance because apparently—apparently—he himself is the most ignorant fool in the whole universe.

Keith’s mask dissolves in a shattering of light.

And the red paladin replaces him, wearing distinctly galran armour and a smile that could raze entire planets.

“I thought you knew?” he asks, and Lotor can taste the curl of those lips.

He wants to be furious.

I thought you knew?

He wants to feel scorned or derided or anything other than completely off-kilter at this cataclysmic truth that, until this very moment, had remained unspoken between them despite the blatant insinuation that this is only so by pure coincidence.

I thought you knew?

Those words echo, and their lilt of tone is genuine because not once has Keith—the red paladin—been anything less, and yet somehow Lotor didn’t know.

“It was my understanding,” the prince hears himself speak as if he were listening from over a great distance, “that every Blade was galra.”

The words don’t quite ring true until he hears himself say them, but they are. Lotor had only taken the kit’s—not a kit, not a kit at all—heritage as fact because he had no reason to believe it would be otherwise. Historical records, limited though they are on the topic, have always penned the Blade of Marmora as more than their namesake’s elite guard: they were said to be her oath-sworn, her blood-bonded, her Li Naacht. Perhaps he had assumed too much based off of too little, but Lotor’s initial assessment of Kolivan had not seen the Blade’s commander as the kind of man to negate tradition for a singular foot soldier, paladin or otherwise.

Said paladin—Keith—shrugs minutely, good humour wavering in favour of something a little vulnerable, a little unsure, and yet adamantly refuses to look away as he peers out from the shadows of his hood and makes a confession that has Lotor’s lungs seizing in his chest.

Said confession is a whispered: “We are.”

I’m galra, Lotor hears, from the mouth of a paladin who very obviously isn’t.

The silence swallows everything whole, until-

“No.”

Granted, it’s not the most eloquent response, but it’s the only one the prince’s brain is supplying.

The red paladin’s face—Keith’s face—scrunches up, and it’s obscenely adorable just as Lotor had imagined it would be—had known it was, without knowing that he knew—if significantly less purple or furred or galra in any discernible way.

“No?” Keith sounds… not offended, but it’s a near thing. “What do you mean no? You can’t just-”

“No.” Lotor repeats, with a firm nod, as if that solves everything even though he is fully aware that it doesn’t, and without further explanation he’s standing, his legs carrying him across the expansive altean suite in long strides.

“Hey!” This exclamation is torn between confusion and laughter, “Lotor!”

And oh, oh, the sound of his own name is simultaneously so much better and so much worse than it should be. Is this the first time Keith has addressed him with such familiarity? Lotor thinks it might be. It is certainly the first time that the red paladin and his little Blade have called for him in tandem, though seeing as that is a by-product of their being the same person, perhaps such things don’t count for much of anything at all, no matter how sweetly it rings. Lotor wants to hate it.

Suffice to say, he does not.

Light footsteps encroach on what, the prince has to admit, may be a minor internal meltdown, and he abruptly abandons his retreat in favour of whirling around to fix the intruder with a hard look. Evidently, it is an unimpressive attempt, because for all Keith stumbles to a sudden halt, his smile is still wide and sincere and perfectly awful.

“Your face,” the prince tries, his throat raw and words unfiltered, because his eyes have caught on the sharpness of those fine-boned features with the newfound knowledge of who they belong to, and in this moment his wit seems to be lagging behind somewhat, “why is it…?”

His gesturing is vague, Lotor knows, and his words even more so, but when Keith’s smile falls to incomprehension, gingerly touching one gloved hand to his pale furless cheek, the prince loathes the flicker of insecurity his own words have caused, and hurries to correct himself.

“I do not mean to say- it is a very nice face,” very nice, a voice in the back of his mind agrees, and despite the fact that this is perhaps the worst compliment Lotor has paid the red paladin yet—either side of the mask—Keith ducks his head to conceal a snort, before returning his attention to Lotor with a mirthful glint in his eye, “only, it is not a galra face.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Keith huffs, the overt amusement of his words tainted sour in the way he delivers them, “I never looked much like my pop, so ‘used to figure I looked like my mom, but… I guess not.”

Lotor blames the surprise of it all for having not drawn the obvious conclusion sooner, but as Keith says this, blue eyes fall to the knife strapped at the paladin’s waist, and all of Lotor’s attention focuses in on that single point.

It’s luxite, he knows that much, having been perhaps a little too up-close and personal with it. Empress Marmora’s luxite which, if the legends hold true, only responds to the bloodlines of her Li Naacht, ergo Keith must be of their descent, ergo he really is galra, on his mother’s side at least because that blade was his mother’s, he’d said as much, ergo-

“Your mother was a Blade,” Lotor murmurs, dragging his eyes back up to Keith’s face in time to catch the nod of affirmation this statement is greeted with, “but your father wasn’t.”

Keith shakes his head.

“Your father was of Earth,” Lotor hardly cares for the planet’s clumsy designation, not when Keith’s reply is a quiet epiphany in its own right.

“Yes.”

“You’re-” half galra, he might have said, but Keith beats him to it.

“Like you,” and for the blunt truth of it to be blurted out so earnestly is damn near apocalyptic, “yeah.”

Lotor drags his palm over his lower jaw roughly, wide eyes fixed on Keith with such magnetism that it’ll be a wonder if he’s ever able to look at anything else.

“Like me indeed,” he exhales in a rush, and as Keith’s shoulders relax into the sound Lotor thinks it’s ludicrous that he didn’t see the galra in the lines of the unmasked paladin sooner, because he is so unabashed with his displays of emotion; even so, Lotor is hardly at fault for having assumed-

Assumptions are a dangerous thing when it comes to Keith, or so it seems, and the prince has toed the line of wilful ignorance for long enough.

“I used to wonder why Dad’d never talk about her,” Keith mumbles, absently tugging on one of the longer strands of hair that curls around to frame sharp cheekbones, and Lotor notes how that same bitterness as before has returned to his tone, “or why he never had any real proof that she existed at all, besides me and her knife, but then Voltron happened and-”

Keith ends offering only a shrug and a wry smile by way of explanation, but it’s more than enough.

“Your father neglected to inform you of your maternal origins.” Though Lotor doesn’t mean it as a question, Keith treats it as such.

“If you’re trying to ask whether I knew that the woman who gave birth to me was a seven foot tall, purple assassin from outer space, then no,” he scoffs, “somehow he forgot to mention that part.”

Lotor’s mind screeches to a jarring halt.

He had thought only that Keith was alluding to his mother’s role as a one of Marmora’s number, not-

Never-

His voice, when he is able to muster it from his sandpaper throat, is hushed and horrified: “You did not even know you were galra?”

Granted, he doesn’t at all look it, but to have been kept completely ignorant of his birthright...

“Technically,” Keith shifts his weight with an air of faux nonchalance, arms crossed, head ducked low, “I didn’t know I was any sort of alien at all. Earth’s pre-contact: I mean, logically, the likelihood of humans being alone in the universe was obviously infinitesimal, but there wasn’t any official proof until the Kerberos mission, and the Garrison refused to recognise the truth of what happened there, so…”

He trails off, catching Lotor’s slack-jawed horror through the shadow of long eyelashes.

“What?”

Lotor doesn’t answer, tucking away the words Kerberos and Garrison to be asked about later, and instead stepping carefully around the marmorite who makes a terribly endearing noise of confusion at the prince’s sudden perusal; Lotor, still biting his own tongue, circles the boy—man?—in careful observation before giving in to his own gnawing curiosity.

“How many decaphoebs have you seen?”

Violet eyes blink up at him.

“Er,” he tilts his head, leaving the soft underside of his neck exposed, and how can Lotor be blamed for jumping to the conclusion of kit when Keith is so very small and so very open, “I’m not really sure how Earth years translate? But I’m almost a quarter of the way through an average human lifespan.”

A quarter.

A quarter.

Lotor would have given him far less when masked, and perhaps a little more outside of it if only for the way he carries himself. A quarter, in the vast majority of species, speaks of adulthood. A quarter is a far cry from Marmora’s kitling being raised as a child-soldier.

A quarter, some treacherous voice in the back of the prince’s mind whispers, is of courtable age.

And that in itself is more than enough to see Lotor careening through his own mindscape once again, because his dangerous fondness for the red paladin and all his sharp edges, is amplified tenfold when combined with the sweet affection fostered for his little Blade.

Yours.

If Kra understood the concept of smugness, then she would be embodying everything it entails in this moment, and Lotor sends the equivalent of a sharp mental scolding her way because she knew.

She doesn’t seem to comprehend his snappish rebuke.

Little star, she insists, greeting the image of Keith—both masked and unmasked—with a possessive sort of fondness, and Lotor supposes he shouldn’t be surprised; he’d never asked, so she’d never told him, and for a being who, so far as he understands it, deals in quintessence rather than physical form, a synthetic disguise is arbitrary at best, and at worst completely inconsequential.

“Lotor?”

He must have been silent for too long, because Keith has stepped daringly closer, and yet it’s not daring at all because, unwittingly or otherwise, Lotor knows he’s invited his little masked guard far nearer than this, and so Keith mustn’t think anything of it.

But, oh, in retrospect…

Towards the beginning of their unlikely acquaintanceship, Lotor had bared his throat in an—albeit successful—attempt to entice Keith to his side. Keith may be young, yes, but not nearly so much as the prince had assumed; small for his paternal heritage, and not for his age; naïve to galra culture for all the same reasons. All the signs had been right there, yet Lotor had missed each and every one, and now it was all coming back to bite him, because what had been gently demure in his manner when aimed towards a kit, becomes embarrassingly coquettish when the recipient is old enough to have perceived such behaviour as an utterly shameless act of romantic pursual.

Not to mention, he really is dreadfully pretty.

The scandal of Lotor’s own actions dawns upon him in a single instant, and everything he is draws in upon himself, ears flickering downwards in humiliation.

Keith catches the movement.

Worse yet, he does so with a frown of comprehension.

“You… you’re embarrassed,” he says, quietly awed, and Lotor cannot bring himself to look, nor waste what little dignity he has left of unseemly denial, which leaves him at a loss of what to do other than carefully ignore the prickling of his skin where Keith’s scrupulous assessment rakes over him, and again allow his legs to carry him quite firmly away with distracted purpose.

Keith—damn his tenacity—follows.

“You are.” It’s said with a laugh, and the heat that trickles down Lotor’s spine isn’t, he’s forced to admit, entirely awful.

“I had mistakenly assumed,” he growls out, as with lack of any better distraction he returns his attention to the desolation outside the window, and can’t really pretend that this is enough to draw his focus completely, “that you were far younger.”

“Younger?”

Lotor’s eyes, helpless to resist, are drawn back to him, and the prince can’t even muster up the energy to be surprised at how sincere his little Blade’s confusion seems to be.

“I thought you were a child, Keith. Barely a kit out of its cradle,” his tone is one of raw exasperation as he runs one hand roughly through long white hair, uncaring that this likely leaves him dishevelled and unsightly. “You are so small! How was I to know- why are you so small? The champion is not nearly so small as you and if you have galra blood you really should be far larger and-” he huffs out a disbelieving laugh, a light touch of hysteria catching up with him, “I thought you were a baby.”

The red paladin gapes.

Then: “No.”

Like me, truly is a funny thing.

“No, but you-” his nose is scrunching up again, and coupled with the furrow of his brow Keith truly is an irresistible creature, “back up, you thought I was a kid?”

“A kit of Marmora, yes,” Lotor affirms, and then—half because this doesn’t seem to achieve much in the way of pacifying Keith, and half because his mind seems tangled up in the fact—he tacks on with another huff of disbelieving laughter, “you really are very small.”

“Oh sure, that’s easy for you to say!” Were it not for the way pink lips quirk upwards at the corners, Lotor might think that Keith is truly affronted. “Just because you’re ridiculously tall-”

Lotor really does laugh at that.

“Were I born of two galra parents, I would be considered stunted, at best.”

Keith makes a noise of disbelief, and then, when Lotor doesn’t waver, this morphs into a short grunt of consideration, and something under his breath which sounds like an offended echo of “stunted,” before he refocuses himself.

“Fine, whatever, I’m small by galra standards,” and, dear Brodar, he’s pouting, “but I still don’t see how you didn’t know?”

The prince opens his mouth to explain himself, but Keith’s spurs onwards, his next statement pointed.

“When Pidge and I came to question you about Kra, you asked for my name.”

The way in which this is said, implies something that Lotor is clearly missing.

“Yes?” Arms loosely crossed, Lotor leans his weight against the window, the chill of the endless darkness beyond seeping into his forearm where it is pressed into the glass, and regards Keith curiously. “Is it uncustomary, on your planet of dirt, to prelude conversation with an introduction?”

“Well no, but…” Keith’s bow furrows further, “I figured you were messing with me? Pretending to the others that you didn’t know just so that I’d have to admit it first-”

And, granted, that does sound very much like the kind of game Lotor is wont to play.

“-then you gave me a galra name-”

The prince blanches.

Ah. Yes. Well, there is that.

Because his little Rhyahl, fierce and deadly and divine in every way, is also soft, sincere, and yet equally ferocious as Marmora’s littlest Blade, and somehow that makes him all the more deserving of the title.

“-plus you offered to give me galra history lessons which, obviously, you’d already been teaching me about-”

Oh dear.

Well this is all terribly humiliating.

“-and then with everything you said about Marmora and the Truth, I guess I just assumed-”

“I see your point,” Lotor cuts in, dragging his palm over his face and half hiding behind it, “I evidently—though unwittingly—made certain comments that led you to believe I knew of your dual identity. You acted accordingly. The both of us should perhaps hold off making any further assumptions because clearly neither you nor I are quite so well-informed as we previously believed ourselves to be.”

When he dares to peek through the bars of his fingers, Lotor catches Keith’s eye, his lopsided smile, the foreign shape of an “oops,” leaving his lips only to be transformed by Lotor’s translator into a comprehensible tongue, and thinks: I am damned.

Yet damnation brings with it the sweet taste of sin, and Lotor cannot find it in himself to complain.

 

---

 

Keith isn’t really sure where to begin—it’s undeniable that he has a lot of questions—but, for comfort’s sake, he and Lotor end up migrating to a large collection of altean pillows piled in one corner of the room on top of what Keith identifies as something between an obnoxiously oversized armchair and a pointlessly undersized sofa. It’s comfortable, either way, so perhaps the specifics of what exactly it is don’t matter, but it does prove difficult to remain seated upright when no matter how Keith positions himself the cushions seem determined to devour him whole. From barely two feet away, where he’s lounging with an easy sort of grace, Lotor smothers a chuckle.

The circular blue pillow to Keith’s left makes for an excellent projectile.

It’s intercepted before it collides with its target, and to Keith’s immediate regret Lotor’s smirk has widened so that he’s baring his fangs to reveal the poorly-cadged laughter behind them. Scowling does very little to dampen the prince’s apparent good humour.

“Your effortless charm astounds me.”

“Gee,” Keith grunts as he struggles to right himself, his attempt failing spectacularly, “thanks.”

“You are most welcome,” the worst part is that Lotor sounds so sincere.

Resigning himself with a huff to being half drowned in soft fabrics, the former paladin sags into the quagmire of silks and silently admits that there are far worse ways to go.

“Are you quite done?”

“Apparently,” is his begrudging admission, and he doesn’t miss how it causes the corners of the prince’s eyes to dimple.

“Then may I ask you something?”

Keith raises an eyebrow.

Lotor’s question is… earnest. The prince has drawn himself upright—somehow—and is watching Keith carefully, as if scouring him for even the slightest indication of discomfort that Lotor’s own curiosity might have caused. His consideration is appreciated, but unnecessary.

“I guess I’d prefer you ask instead of assuming anything else,” Keith grins at the way Lotor’s expression falls flat in immediate response to his teasing.

“My assumption was well-founded-”

“I don’t think my height is solid evidence.”

Lotor scoffs.

“I beg to differ; when coupled with your emotional physicality, your height served only to reinforce my hypothesis.”

With a tilt of his head and a curious furrow to his brow, Keith, queries: “My emotional what now?” curious, and only made more so by the utter look of devastation that paints Lotor’s features when he does.

“I mean precisely that,” the prince huffs out on a laugh, “while your linguistic expression is reticent, as fitting of one of Marmora’s elite, your control over its physical counterpart—if you’ll forgive me for saying so—possesses a transparency befitted only to a kit.”

There’s an amused smile playing on Lotor’s lips as, for further clarification, he adds: “You’re rather animated.”

“Animated,” Keith parrots, the word sitting awkwardly on his tongue as a form of self-characterisation, and it’s a confusing contrast to the descriptors people usually attach to him. “I’m not- is the translator playing up again?”

With a small, considering noise, Lotor begins reeling off synonyms one after another—“frank, candid, emotionally demonstrative,”—and then, with a sharp, yet maliceless smile; “It is terribly endearing.”

“Oh,” and there’s the unmistakable threat of heat flooding to his cheeks that Keith knows would be impossible to hide.

“You do not agree?”

The former paladin chews absently on his lower lip, teeth abusing the flesh, and gives a half-hearted shrug. “I know people who wouldn’t.”

From the corner of his eye, he sees Lotor falter.

“People have always thought I’m kind of,” he gestures to himself vaguely, “standoffish? Broody. The weird kid sulking in a corner somewhere.”

Lotor is quiet for a long time, and with a lurching in his stomach, Keith fears he’s overstepped—said too much, been too much—and that Lotor’s come to the same realisation as a hundred before him. But when Keith tears his eyes from where they’d fallen to his lap, he’s not met with disinterest or distaste. It’s nothing like Shiro’s sympathies from the early stages of their friendship, either, which probably for the best, because Keith never did respond well to pity.

Instead, Lotor just looks… resigned.

Keith doesn’t know what to make of this, and so doesn’t react when Lotor reaches out to gently knock his hood back off his head, the armoured fabric falling to sit heavily around Keith’s shoulders as the backs of the prince’s knuckles trace idly down the side of Keith’s face.

“The galra people—our people—are of a higher breed,” there’s a prideful certainty to his voice that Keith recognises from the Blade: even despite their cool reception from the Coalition, Keith has never seen a single member of Marmora question their own worth, only the inclinations of their allies, “though you may not think it, limited as your interactions with imperial culture have been, the sensibilities of galra society were, are, and always will be, inclined towards subtlety.”

Clawed fingertips tilt Keith’s chin up, and he has to wrestle down the urge to swallow at the sudden dryness of his mouth.

“For you and I, in particular, these delicate social instincts are even more complex; there’s a lot of power in being a hybrid, and while your ingalran upbringing may, at times, contradict your higher nature, I swear to you Keith, it’s not a warring thing.” Lotor’s voice is low, silk-spun, “it’s two wonderful things coming together to make you… and though the people of either half may not understand it now—or, perhaps, ever—you need to embrace that, and come to peace with it.”

When Lotor’s hand drops from his jaw, Keith feels the loss acutely.

“Besides, in my experience, those who would dismiss someone for not immediately opening their heart to them are, generally speaking, of great quantity and yet astoundingly poor quality.” The prince leans back, sclera near luminescent under lowered lids. “I, on the other hand, am a man of exceptional taste, and I stand by what I said: you truly are a magnificent creature. Even more so than I first realised.”

Keith’s face is on fire.

Though Lotor is regarding his flushed features with a certain level of curiosity, he neglects to ask, which Keith is silently thankful for.

“Anyhow, I do believe you rather derailed my train of thought,” Lotor says, with the air of someone who truly could not care less, “may I ask my question now?”

Sinking impossibly further into the cushions, Keith tries, and fails, to repress the redness of his cheeks. “Go ahead.”

Lotor nods his acquiesce, but there’s an uncharacteristic level of uncertainty to the following pause, as if he’s cautious of how to best breach his intended topic.

“I… should like to enquire after your health.”

Keith frowns.

“My health?” It’s not what he’d expected.

“Yes,” Lotor seems a contradictory combination of determined and hesitant, “are you quite well?”

Cocking his head to the side with an odd sort of look, Keith opens his mouth to answer but is cut off by the untimely hiss of the suite’s main doors opening to admit the slightly intimidating duo of a bedraggled Allura and Lance, both suited up in full paladin armour, their hairlines beaded with sweat and a familiar fatigue in the set of their shoulders.

Everyone freezes in place.

Distantly, Keith realises that this—this, being him sitting unmasked and obviously comfortable beside Prince Lotor of the Galra Empire—probably raises a lot of questions.

“Dios mio,” it’s unsurprising that Lance is the first to recover, and even less so that he’s the first to speak “did we slip into another reality when I wasn’t paying attention, or has mullet completely lost his mind.”

The former paladin sags into himself, and curses quietly.

“Keith,” Allura’s tone is knife sharp, “a word. Now.”

Rolling his weight to slip sideways off the bed of pillows seems the most dignified way to make his exit, and as he does so, Keith catches Lotor’s eye. The prince hasn’t moved, but his lounging is suddenly a thin veneer; Keith can practically feel the tension that bleeds from beneath it, and yet he instinctually feels more at ease. Lotor’s energy is less a threat, more a support, and he’s impossibly grateful for it.

“We’ll talk later,” Lotor promises quietly, and then, in a tone that is meant to be heard loud and clear, “my schedule is dreadfully busy, but I’ll be sure to pencil you in.”

It’s a terrible joke, and the deadpan delivery makes it more so, but it’s still a battle for Keith to swallow down his laughter.

He doubts that Allura would appreciate it.

Smothering the upturn of his lips, Keith makes to leave, but Lotor is smoothly rising to his feet and fixing Allura with a cool stare.

“If I could make a request?” It’s bold, the tone he uses, leaving no room for denial despite the fact that Lotor cannot be naïve to how foul a mood Allura seems to be in, “I should like access to your medical facilities.”

“Would you now?” she bites out, “are you injured?”

“Not at all,” Lotor doesn’t even try to feign a smile, and that’s more cause for concern than his cutting tone, “but I should like to examine Keith.”

At the sound of his own name, Keith falters, mid-step, and blinks up at the prince whose gaze gentles when it lands upon him.

Allura and Lance speak in tandem:

“I beg your pardon?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely not.”

But they are both ignored quite completely by Lotor, whose eyes, Keith finds, are fully fixated on him.

“Only with your permission, of course,” the prince inclines his head carefully, “but in light of that which we have discussed, I should like to be sure that you are… physically sound.”

“Oh I bet you would,” Lance hisses.

Lotor turns on him with a sharp bite of ferocity, ears flattening and teeth bared.

“Keep your base musings to yourself, paladin, I have no need of them.” When he returns his attention to Keith, he does so with a soft sincerity that would be impossible to ignore, and the abruptness of his switching between moods leaves an uneasy tension in the air. “I have a modest background as a geneticist, my particular field of study being the rather niche subject area of galra hybridisation which, I’m sure you can appreciate, may be of particular use to you. Seeing as you are evidently on the cusp of adulthood, I would hazard a guess that you are without any health defects that put your life at immediate risk, but as such things commonly plague those of mixed heritage, I should like to be sure.”

Lotor pauses, eyes searching, and Keith doesn’t know what to make of it.

The implication of health defects sits like a stone in the pit of his stomach.

“I assume,” Lotor has turned his attention back to Allura, eyeing her with poorly concealed distaste, “that eliminating the possibility of an undisclosed threat to his wellbeing would be in your best interests as well?”

Allura’s stare is hard, cold, and Keith actually sees the physical effort it takes her to unclench her jaw so that she may speak.

“If you would excuse us, Prince Lotor, I should like to speak to my paladins.” There’s a note to her voice that speaks volumes of a possessive claim.

Lotor doesn’t react for a tick too long.

“Of course.”

 

The second the door closes behind them, Lance is in his face.

“¡Maldito idiota, Keith!” He speaks so fast that the translator can’t keep up, but the general sentiment carries, “What were you doing? What were you thinking?”

Keith takes a half step back, his shoulders hunching up and arms crossing defensively.

“I figured he knew anyway-” and, sure, he’d been wrong, but “-what does it matter if he knows I’m half galra? If we’re going to be allies then transparency over the little things is key, right?”

“Ohhhh boy, Keith, seriously? Lotor’s in there wanting to play doctor and you just-” Lance groans, looking to Allura helplessly, “What does it matter? he says. ‘Lura help me out here.”

“Keith,” she starts, and Keith loathes that tone: it’s one of forced softness, strained and worn, the one that people use when they’re trying not to set off his temper, but has only ever achieved exactly that, “won’t you at least entertain the possibility that Lotor might use your shared heritage against you?”

Keith swallows down a growl, “and how exactly do you think he’d going to do that?”

Face flooding with misguided relief, Allura hurries to explain herself.

“By drawing parallels between the two of you, or- or playing off a shared experience, as if he’s the only one who understands you. Having you distance yourself from the people who care about you, from us-”

Keith’s laugh is short and sharp and entirely false.

“You want to talk about distance? What damage could Lotor possibly do that leaving Voltron to spend two phoebs of isolation, stationed several galaxies away, didn’t?” He regrets the words as soon as he says them, the acidic tang thinning his lips. “I didn’t- I didn’t mean that.”

Allura has drawn into herself, mouth falling open into a perfect little ‘o’, and Lance… Keith can’t even look at Lance.

“You chose to leave,” the princess eventually whispers, “you said that you needed to be on that infiltration mission-”

“I did,” Keith cuts her off, “I did and you’re right, it was my choice. I shouldn’t have brought it up; I don’t even know why I did, I-”

Lance’s hand lands on his shoulder, and Keith chokes on whatever else he was going to say.

“What happened to leaving the math to Pidge?” The question is flat in its delivery, somehow both accusatory and hurt, and when Keith is unable to answer straight away, Lance’s fingertips press more firmly into the meat of his deltoid, “Keith.”

“You’re the one who said it wasn’t a participation game, and you were right,” he shrugs Lance’s hand off, and the paladin lets it happen, “I was never meant to pilot the black Lion, but even before that I wasn’t exactly a team player. You work better without me.”

“Keith,” he’s not sure who says his name, only that they make it sound so pained.

“And that’s okay.” It is. It has to be. “It’s okay because it means that I can work with Lotor without giving him direct access to Voltron. So if you’re right and he is manipulating me, then the rest of you can make that call and take me down without losing a paladin. Everybody wins.”

There’s a beat of dead silence.

“So what, you have a fucking martyr complex now?” Keith can’t help but look up at that, because they don’t even know the half of it, and he does so to find Lance’s face uncharacteristically dark. “I don’t know what bullshit Marmora have been feeding you, but you’re not expendable, Kogane. What Ulaz did for us was very commendable, and I know you were there with that Thace guy just before he blew himself to hell, but that’s not going to be you.”

He sounds so certain.

He sounds so certain and Keith just… doesn’t know how to handle it.

“That’s not important right now,” Lance opens his mouth to protest, but Keith doesn’t give him the chance, “you think Lotor’s going to use our similarities against the team, but what if the opposite’s true? What if this is how we get him to work with us?”

Lance doesn’t look even remotely convinced, but when Keith looks to Allura she seems, mercifully, to be giving the idea some serious consideration, and he latches onto this, adding, “all four of his closest confidants were galra hybrids,” in the hopes that this will be enough to convince her.

It is, but not quite in the way that he wants.

She looks him dead in the eye, says, “We can use that,” and Keith feels faintly nauseous.

“Yeah.” He doesn’t like the idea of ‘using’ the heritage he shares with the prince as a method of control, but if the idea of it is the price of Allura taking a serious step in the right direction with this alliance, then he’s willing to keep his mouth shut. “Give him the chance to prove that he’s serious about helping us, Allura… and if it turns out he’s not, then I’ll take care of it.”

She bites her lip, juts her chin up, and concedes.

“Alright,” her acquiesce is a breath of fresh air, “if you’re sure.”

Keith offers a weak smile which she returns, and then looks to Red’s paladin.

“Lance?”

“Does it matter what I think?”

Keith frowns, “of course it matters,” and this successfully leaches some of the tension from the set of Lance’s shoulders.

“Right,” Lance shifts his weight, brow furrowed, “look, I’m just worried that he seems to have a special interest in you. I don’t wanna see you get hurt, man.”

Keith feels himself soften.

“Isn’t that why I keep you around?” He bumps his arm gently against Lance’s, “both a sharpshooter and a swordsman—Lotor won’t know what hit him.”

This coaxes a real smile from the taller, his frown disappearing to be replaced by a genuine shine to his eyes.

“Yeah, well, someone has to stick around to save your dumb ass.”

“Boys, please,” Allura scolds, but Keith catches the tail-end of a grin before it fades into her more serious, diplomatic persona, “Keith, there’s something else.”

He tilts his head, and waits.

“During the battle just now, Lance and I infiltrated one of the cruisers because it had some... particularly curious energy signatures. It’s why we came down here.” She shares a look of unease with Lance, who scratches the back of his neck, lips pursed and brow furrowed.

“What?” Keith asks, “What did you find?”

Lance sighs, “The facility Lotor wanted us to look into,” and Keith’s entire being tenses up, “the ship’s main logs didn’t have any information about it, but the Captain’s private logs said that it was the last known docking point.”

“Okay,” violet eyes flick between the two paladins, “and?”

“We don’t exactly know,” concern sits heavily across Allura’s crown, “only that the Captain is frantic in her records, until… until she isn’t.”

Lance catches Keith’s confusion.

“It was like a vlog, dude. Except one minute she’s talking about the druids, and then next it’s like—outta nowhere—she completely loses her train of thought. Poof,” a gesture of fluttering fingertips accompanies this, “completely gone without any memory of what she was talking about.”

“You have the recordings?”

Lance nods with a thoughtful hum, “we took the whole file—don’t know how much is relevant, but we hardly had time to handpick the bits we needed.”

“And the energy signature?”

“The ship itself,” Allura says, “not any kind of cargo, but the actual body of the ship, as if it had been exposed to massive quantities of raw, untampered, quintessence.”

Keith takes a moment to absorb this.

A secret facility that shouldn’t exist, lost memories, and impossible quintessence readings certainly sound like Haggar’s playground.

So Lotor was right.

Keith’s not sure whether he’s glad that this should help the prince’s case in terms of providing trustworthy information, or terrified for what the truth of this scenario could mean.

 

Wasting no more time, Allura leads them back into Lotor’s suite, where Lotor himself has returned to deceptively idle stargazing that does not fool Keith for a second, and announces: “Seeing as Keith is amenable, I am willing to allow you supervised access to our medical facilities for the next couple of vargas.”

Lotor’s face betrays his genuine surprise. “Now?”

“Unless you have somewhere to be?” It’s a dry sort of humour—unexpected, coming from Allura—and though Lotor masks it well, Keith can tell that he’s entertained by it.

“Nowhere that cannot wait, I assure you,” he shoots her a dazzling smile, “lead the way.”

She does so, and it’s several dobashes into a strained and uncomfortable quiet, when the four of them are only a couple of paces from rounding the next corner, that Keith remembers something terribly important.

“Um, Allura?”

She hums, glances at him, then stops dead in her tracks.

Keith dreads to think what she sees in his face that halts her so completely.

“I think I should, er, warn you-”

“Keith,” her tone is wary, so much so that Keith daren’t look at Lotor lest she interpret it the wrong way.

“Remember what I said earlier about the rebels stationed here being… prejudiced?” It’s the nicest way he can think to use for the violent hatred that some of them harbour, “well there was an, er, incident.”

At his left, he hears Lotor make a small noise of understanding, apparently realising what is being eluded to while simultaneously giving Keith the distinct impression that his own near-execution had somehow slipped his mind.

“Keith,” and, oh god, he can tell she’s fighting to stay calm, “define ‘incident’.”

Lance, with far less tact and far more candour, asks, “If I walk around that corner, whose corpse am I going to find?”

Keith hesitates, and this does nothing to help his case, Lance’s eyes widening almost comically as he realises that his sarcasm is toeing too close to the line of reality.

“Dios mio Keith, whose corpse am I going to find?”

“Nobody’s!” His voice pitches with denial, and Lotor, quite unhelpfully, decides that this is the most opportune moment to interject.

“By definition, a corpse is a dead body.” He bares his teeth in Lance’s direction, “you’ll be ecstatic to learn that, thanks to Keith’s most gallant intervention, the individual that you will find around that corner is still very much alive.”

“Great,” Lance summons his bayard, invoking its melee form, and points it towards Lotor, who seems to be quite enjoying himself, “wonderful, truly fantastic. That didn’t sound like you’d been planning on killing someone at all.”

“Is it really a plan if it came to me on impulse?”

Lance makes a noise—high pitched and horrified—as if he can’t believe that the prince would admit to the contemplation of murder, completely missing the obvious joy being derived from his distress. Allura, ignoring all of this, has turned on her heel and is marching towards the corridor’s next intersection, apparently needing to see the damage for herself but trusting Keith enough that she doesn’t expect him to run her through the second she looks away, which he appreciates.

This, however, has the unfortunate side effect of leaving Keith to mediate between two of the most dramatic men he’s ever met.

“Lotor,” he groans, because he thinks that the older galra will, at least, not decline him on principle, “please don’t.”

The prince, for his part, looks delighted.

“Well,” he’s looking smugly between Keith and Lance, eventually settling his gaze on the former with a purr in his throat that Keith is starting to associate exclusively with Lotor’s chaotic streak, “seeing as you asked me nicely.”

Keith can’t put his finger on why this riles Lance up, but it does, and judging by Lotor’s poorly concealed mirth, he had intended for it to do so.

Like the angel she is, Allura choses this moment to return, the blue rebel like a great, unwieldly sack of potatoes where he’s slung over her shoulders, his bulk near doubling her height, and all without the princess looking so much as strained.

“He’s unconscious, but fundamentally unharmed,” she sends Keith a pointed look, and he wilts under it, “you can explain the details of this so-called ‘incident’ later.”

Keith concedes with a guilty incline of the head, and Allura accepts this, marching onward without further delay. Lance spares one last glare for Lotor before falling into step beside her, but the prince himself delays a moment longer, and it’s with a private smile that he drags his knuckles down Keith’s spine to linger on the small of his back.

“After you.”

Notes:

First off, I'm going to stop cursing myself by saying "I should have this done by 'x' date" because that is a surefire way of preventing such a thing from ever happening. Secondly, I couldn't quite put my finger on why the more recent chapters have taken longer to write, until I realised that they've gone from being c.5000 words to c.7,500 and that is, as I'm sure you can imagine, quite the difference. So, on that note, I'm just going to put it out there: updates will happen! The 'when' is a little up in the air, but it will be with some vague form of regularity, and I think we can safely say that it won't be sooner than two weeks, but will more likely be closer to a month. The upside to this is that it allows me to write longer (and better? hopefully??) chapters!

And hey, wow, guys. All the comments you've been leaving me? Amazing. Heart stopping. I am in love with each and every one of you, because you're all absolute angels, and you genuinely bring me so much joy, it is indescribable. So I want to thank you for that, because I really can't do so enough; it's ironic for someone who enjoys writing as much as I do, I know, but I am truly without words. Sometimes I feel like I end up repeating myself when I respond to you (quite possibly because I do, but when comments geared towards particular chapters pick up on the same key scenes, it's a little difficult not to) but I really do love each and every one so damn much, so... Thank you!

note 01: last chapter someone left me a great potential chapter title, and though I haven't used it for this one, I may use something similar in the future. But it got me thinking: chapter titles are really fun, and I'm quite proud of some of them (*cough* chapter seven *cough*), but I'm totally up for renaming others if you have any truly inspired suggestions, so by all means, let me know!
note 02: This fic is now officially longer than Philosophers Stone... and yes I will, in fact, keep judging how much I've written in relation to Harry Potter Books. You cannot convince me to do otherwise.

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TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 14: Does The Author Have A Secret Passion For Genetics? No, But Damn If She Won’t Be Screaming About Autosarcophagy For The Next Twelve Years jfc

Summary:

Previously: Lotor learns that Marmora's littlest, Keith, is in fact none other than the red Paladin himself... oh, and he's a galra hybrid. This leads to a particularly smug Kra who (of course) knew all along, a not-at-all pleased princess when she and her blue paladin interrupt Keith & Lotor looking a little too cozy, and a trip to the medical bay to ensure that Keith's galra half isn't quietly eating him alive.

Notes:

Aaaaaand immediately one update makes this fic longer than Chamber of Secrets... incredible.

It doesn’t take too long to get to the medical wing, and while the walk there does garner their group some particularly startled looks, it’s impossible to say whether this is for the altean princess who carries four times her own weight as if it’s nothing, or the galra prince who swans after her with perfect candour.

Keith is as amused by this as Lance is annoyed.

“He knows what he’s doing, right?” the paladin drops back to hiss in Keith’s ear, gesturing sharply at Lotor who has his hands clasped behind his back as he walks, the picture of perfect innocence, “like, this is totally intentional.”

“He only does it because it winds you up,” is clearly the wrong thing to say, tearing from Lance a noise of pure indignation before he squares his shoulders into something that Keith recognises as the hallmark of unnecessary conflict, and so hurries to add, “just give him a chance?”

The laugh Lance barks out is loud enough to have both Lotor and Allura glancing back, though thankfully not halt them, and Keith is able to wave off their curiosity without too much trouble.

“Look, obviously you don’t like him-”

“Gee mullet, I wonder why?”

“But,” Keith soldiers on, “if the logs you and Allura found are significant then they’re also proof that Lotor’s intel is valid; he said that Haggar could be up to something, and by the sounds of it she is.”

“When is she not?”

“Lance,” he’s being deliberately stubborn, but Keith knows that he himself can be doubly so, “Lotor genuinely does want to help.”

The paladin grunts, low and frustrated.

“I’m not sure his particular brand of ‘help’ is what you’re looking for,” Lance must catch the small frown Keith greets this statement with, because his expression falls flat, “dude, you do see how he looks at you, right?”

Keith gives a noncommittal half-shrug, eyes sliding over to where Lotor strides a few paces ahead of them, gait fluid but ears a little too still to be natural. He sees a lot, when it comes to the prince; it’s making sense of it all that’s the tricky part.

Lance follows his gaze, tilting his head towards Keith and further lowering his tone.

“Or maybe you don’t… somehow,” his voice is a confusing mix of flat and fond, “but whatever man, either way, I’ve got your back.”

A smile tugs at the corner of Keith’s mouth, a fluttery sort of warmth budding in his chest as he replies, “I know you do,” which earns him an arm around his shoulders in a half-hug that makes keeping pace with Allura more difficult than it should be. Still, Keith can’t find it in himself to shrug Lance off, and his lack of resistance seems only to encourage the paladin who grins widely and opens his mouth to say something that would doubtlessly have been an affectionate jibe were it not for their timely arrival at the medical bay.

The doors hiss open, and the clamour of activity from beyond seems to stutter.

“An altean princess, a furry assassin, a boy from Cuba, and Zarkon’s son walk into a bar-” Lance starts under his breath, with a dry sort of humour, but Keith is only half listening, caught on the sudden realisation that he’d never reactivated his mask.

He hadn’t been hiding it, he reminds himself, fighting what is less an urge and more a need to make a swift exit, discomfort uncoiling in the pit of his stomach. It’s no secret that he’s galra, and Keith’s not exactly ashamed of what he is, but walking into a room seeped in the metallic stench of fresh blood—blood spilled by people not unlike him—while wearing galran armour and a paladin’s face… it feels wrong.

And judging by the attention their little party is attracting, it doesn’t look great either.

The injured rebels’ attention could be drawn by Allura, Keith reminds himself, as she strides through their midst with purpose and deposits her unconscious quarry onto a vacant medical station without so much as breaking a sweat. Or, even more likely, it’s for Lotor who has the audacity to wiggle his fingers at those who gawk with a particular lack of subtlety, waving, his demeanour light and airy and nothing less than deliberately provocative.

But there are whispers of confusion mingling with the aftermath of battle, and Keith can feel the prickle of their attention acutely.

He knows what it is to be unwanted.

A welcome shock of orange hair bobs and weaves through the scattered crowd, until Coran is beaming at their little group, an unspoken question concealed in the creases of his smile.

“Nobody’s injured, I hope?”

“No,” Allura assures him, the tense set of her posture softening at his concern, “Prince Lotor simply thinks it best that we examine Keith… as a precaution.”

Coran’s eyes slide from the princess to appraise Keith, as if the altean could identify any genetic abnormalities—or whatever exactly it is that Lotor thinks might be wrong with him—with only a look. Keith can only offer a half shrug and a weak smile in return, which he doesn’t think passes for comfort in any sense of the word, but at the very least this earns him an understanding smile from Coran.

“Righto!”

The medical wing is constructed in such a way that the large central room with its dais of pods for the most serious cases is surrounded by smaller pocket-rooms, each offering the illusion of privacy. It’s into one of these rooms that Coran ushers them, and though not completely unoccupied—the recent battle apparently more ferocious than Keith had first realised—it is, at the very least, quieter.

The other occupants seem more concerned with their own injuries than they do Keith, so he’ll take what he can get.

Coran bustles about the room with both Lotor and Allura in tow, running over the fundamentals of the altean medical equipment he has on hand and accompanying all of his explanations with wild gesturing that, so far as Keith can see, is a moderate threat to anyone within arm’s reach of him. Lotor handles all of this with grace, though Keith can see the physical strain it takes on him not to be snide when Coran finishes up his briefing by heartily clapping the prince’s shoulder and announcing that they “best hop to it!” and he has to bite down on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from laughing at Lotor’s expense.

When he and Lance are waved over, Coran offers up another dazzling smile as he explains “the best way to do this would be to run a full scan in the pods, but unfortunately the rebels took quite the beating, so they’re currently occupied, meaning we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.”

Keith nods, sharing a quick look with Lance that says they both know “the old fashioned way” is likely still centuries ahead of present-day Earth technology.

They are immediately proven correct.

Lotor is fussing over a translucent screen hanging in the air before him, Allura stationed at his right in silent vigil, scrutinising his every move; he pays her no mind, of course, the prince steadfastly ignoring her disapproving presence in favour of… well, the details of what he’s doing are sort of lost on Keith, but it looks clever.

Very scientific.

Still, he can’t help but feel a little like an experiment as opposed to a person when Lotor doesn’t even deign to look at him, simply gesturing to the bare countertop on his left and demanding that Keith “sit,” as if he were a dog. Keith, of course, refuses to move on principle, arms crossed and eyebrows raised, and so it’s only when the prince pulls his attention away from the console that it seems to dawn upon him that short commands will achieve nothing.

Keith’s never responded well to curt instruction—too resentful of people treating him like a wild animal to be tamed, rather than as an actual human being—but the reception his defiance usually garners is anything from frustration to outright anger; in this instance, and for reasons beyond comprehension, Lotor’s face falls into something unreasonably fond, his lips quirking and head half flopping to the side as he tacks on a quasi-sincere “please,” with no small dose of amusement.

Still, it’s good enough to earn Keith’s compliance and, feeling his own stubbornness melt away in favour of something soft and pliant—a kind of amenability reserved only for Shiro—he hops up onto the altean countertop without resisting further. The cool surface is high enough that like this, even with Keith’s posture relaxed as he rests elbows upon knees with his legs crossed beneath him, he and Lotor are almost eye to eye.

“Comfortable?” The older galra is obviously smothering a sharp-toothed smile, and though Keith glares at him for it, that repressed delight remains. “Excellent. Then if you would-?”

Lotor indicates Keith’s torso with a nod and an air of expectation, only Keith isn’t quite sure what said expectation is. When he raises his eyes to meet Lotor’s patient gaze, the unspoken question hangs in the air between them.

“I shan’t pretend to know how medical examinations are executed on your planet of earth, but within the Empire we usually find that full-body armour is not particularly conductive to such procedures, so please,” the word rolls off Lotor’s tongue as a delighted taunt, “strip.”

Outside of Keith’s line of sight, Lance makes some sort of horrid wheezing sound, as if Lotor had torn out his windpipe and stepped on it, while Allura makes a point of training her eyes firmly on the console in front of her even as her ears turn ruddy and tremble with the effort of remaining stationary.

“Oh,” Keith hears himself say, a creeping heat prickling up the back of his neck, “right.”

It’s not that there’s anything particularly untoward about Lotor’s… request. It’s sound logic. Keith’s Marmora wear is a battle suit designed to withstand both monumental pressure, and the vacuum of deep space, so it’s probably not particularly conductive to getting a clear read on his biology, even with altean medical tech. It’s not that Keith’s embarrassed of his body either—truthfully he’s never given much thought to his appearance beyond what was practical for everyday life and, more recently, combat—but there’s something in Lotor’s bluntness of tone that has him immediately reassessing his stance on being ordered around.

Though he can’t quite put his finger on it, Keith is struck by a sudden bolt of awkward vulnerability burning low in his gut.

Lance is still choking like a fish out of water, while Allura mutters something under her breath about “tactless galran immodesty,” neither of which are particularly helpful, but Coran seems unbothered, and if the room’s other occupants are listening in them they haven’t reacted one way or another, so Keith shakes off his hesitation and deactivates the series of locks at the nape of his neck until his suit peels itself apart down his spine.

And so it is that he ends up sitting in front of Prince Lotor, son of Zarkon, potential heir to an intergalactic empire, with his armour pooling around his hips, torso and all the very important internal organs it contains completely exposed to the crisp air.

It’s a weird position to be in, Keith decides.

Lotor, for his part, seems oblivious to the range of discomfort everyone around him is experiencing, and instead pokes and prods at Keith with an intrigued crease to his brow. “You have a deceptively dense muscle structure,” is the first thing he says after running several scans, shortly followed by “and a highly oxygenated vascular system,” when he takes a small blood sample, the process of which leaves Keith morbidly fascinated as he watches the tube steadily fill with crimson fluid without the insertion of any sort of a needle, the flat end of the cylinder merely pressed against the crux of his elbow with a muted hum.

As Lotor goes about running scan after scan, Allura takes the opportunity to initiate the interrogation Keith knew was coming.

“So,” she starts, with a tone that has Keith flinching, though thankfully his reaction is taken as one to the sudden cold of whatever instrument it is that Lotor holds firmly against his tricep, “would you like to recount to me the particulars of whatever incident resulted in one of our allies being cuffed and left, unconscious, on the floor?”

Not really, no, doesn’t seem like a true option, so Keith huffs out a breath and tries to come up with the least damming way to summarise: Lotor nearly killed someone, but only because they tried to kill him first.

He settles on: “you know how I told you that it was only a matter of time until things with the rebels went south?”

Allura pauses, and he can see her turning the terminology over in her head before the human idiom makes sense to her, but when it does she gives him a nod of affirmation.

“Well, it went south,” and then, because this doesn’t exactly encompass the full gravity of the situation, “You told me to secure Lotor, but when I got there he was on his knees and maybe ten ticks away from getting his brains blown out.”

Or possibly blowing someone else’s brains out. Either way.

Quite unhelpfully, Lotor seems to take offence at this.

“I’ll have you know,” he pulls the cool metal thing from Keith’s arm, and taps it lightly a couple of times before looking up with what Keith is hesitant to call a pout, but… “it wasn’t quite so dramatic as all that.”

Keith glares at him.

“He was going to assassinate you.”

“As someone who has survived no less than thirteen professional assassination attempts, I can confidently say that my earlier altercation was nothing so elegant.” Lotor smiles, and it’s all teeth. “I’m actually rather insulted that he thought I would be such an easy kill.”

From behind Keith, Lance mutters, “Jesus fucking Christ,” under his breath.

“You sustain then, that one of our allies made an attempt on your life?” Allura poses her question to Lotor, and he receives it without amusement.

“Though I take no pleasure in it, yes.”

Allura goes quiet then, staring Lotor down with a deep furrow in her brow, and Keith realises that she’s trying to ferret out the lie.

“Allura, I was there. I saw it.”

“Did you?” She turns on him, “did you see the full ordeal? Or did you catch the tail end of a confrontation of which your perception has been manipulated into-”

Keith growls.

He actually growls, he can feel the shape of it in his throat, a rumble like thunder catching on frustration and slipping out between his teeth even as he clenches his jaw around it. Allura stiffens as if he’d struck her, or worse, and from the corner of his eye Keith sees Lance take a half step back with his hands coming up in a pacifying gesture, while even Coran, hovering in the background of this conversation, seems startled by his strength of reaction.

Out of everyone else’s line of sight, Lotor’s fingertips press lightly into the divot between Keith’s shoulder blades, flesh against flesh, and it’s not much, it really isn’t, but Keith finds himself half melting into the touch.

As the fight drains out of him, the shame begins to trickle in.

“There were four others on rotation,” he tells her, rather than the apology she probably deserves, “and one of them was injured—from the Qaathi belt, I think—so she should be here. If you want the full story, ask her.”

With that, the topic comes to a temporary close.

 

It takes a full twenty dobashes more before Lotor is content to let Keith redress, but even then the prince doesn’t seem entirely happy.

“So?” Allura probes, glancing towards Keith before hurriedly snapping her attention back to Lotor when he catches her eye, “should we be concerned?”

The noise Lotor makes is as committal as it is comforting—which is to say, not at all.

“Paladin,” Lotor turns not to Keith, but Lance, “blue or red, whatever you prefer to call yourself now, you are solely human, correct?”

Lance’s eyes narrow to near slits, “Yeah?”

“And you have been injured before, I presume?”

Narrowed eyes narrow further, “Why?”

Lotor hums, turns back to the console’s display, and then, in a flurry of movement, pulls up what looks like a series of medical logs and scrolls through them until he apparently finds what he’s looking for.

“Lance McClain,” Lotor murmurs under his breath, and Keith realises that he’s scanning over the records stored by the healing pods, “sixty-nine rak in height, weighing one hundred and thirty-seven kol… Yes, you’ll do.”

Lance lets out a sharp exclamation as he realises what’s happening.

“Whoa whoa whoa buddy, I did not consent to you getting all up in my business! You’re supposed to be making sure Keith’s not gonna keel over any second-”

“I am,” Lotor exhales and, very slowly and pointedly, looks Lance up and down. “So far as I am aware, you are the most physically comparable subject of—what do you call yourselves, human?—of human descent. It’s not an exact science, but by utilising you as the control, I can extrapolate your data to approximate which of Keith’s traits are human, which are galra, and which are potentially malignant abnormalities that may threaten his life.”

That last bit rings into silence.

As Keith watches, Lance’s jaw clicks shut, something tense and subdued making a home in his expression.

“I presume,” Lotor continues, coolly, “that you are amenable to me doing so?”

Lance wilts. Scuffs the toe of one boot against the heel of his other. Flicks guilty eyes in Keith direction before returning them to Lotor, and then the floor.

“Yeah,” an uneasy shrug as he picks at his sleeve, and another stolen glance in Keith’s direction, “‘course.”

It’s too easy, Keith thinks. Lance usually puts up more of a fight—or at least, the pretence of one—and it’s not the first time something about the paladin’s behaviour has rung false since Keith’s return to the Castleship.

He’s not given time to linger on it.

“So far as I can tell, you are in perfect health,” Lotor is saying, and though the words alleviate some of the weight in Keith’s gut, the tone in which they’re said imply something more.

“Is that truly so unusual?” Allura cuts in, “until you raised the possibility of it being otherwise, I had assumed Keith’s galra heritage would be something of a physical boon. Your kind are rather resilient, after all.”

It’s difficult for Keith to tell whether she means that as a compliment or not, and if the twist to Lotor’s mouth is anything to go by, he feels much the same way.

“Were he fully galra that would be the case, yes.”

That said, Lotor turns away from Allura, away from the data displayed, and fixes his full attention on Keith with a small furrow to his brow.

“Some species are remarkably adaptable in terms of their genetics: alteans, for example, whose biological plasticity allowed not only for the manipulation of their genetic structure at will, but also for ease of interbreeding, if they so choose to enter intimate relations with another species.” Keith’s eyes fall to where Lotor’s arms have crossed, his fingers rapidly tapping out a nonsensical rhythm. “Galra DNA, however, is much the opposite, and is notorious for a unique genetic hostility when it comes to cross-species relations: even if a compatible parent species is found and successful conception occurs, the foetus often commits autosarcophagy as a sort of innate defence mechanism to eliminate that which is deems to be foreign genetic material.”

Allura pales dramatically at that, but Lotor must catch Keith’s blank look because he offers a weak sort of smile before clarifying: “that is to say it consumes itself.”

A hushed whisper of “holy shit,” from Lance is a sentiment with which Keith wholeheartedly agrees, and apparently Lotor does too.

“Indeed,” he inclines his head to the horrified paladin before returning golden eyes to Keith. “If it survives the gestation period, the child born is often of ill health, and more than likely to experience a significantly reduced lifespan due to what—in short—manifests as an accelerated aging process. Ergo, the Empire’s cultural evolution to… shall we say discourage the interbreeding of species.”

Right.

Okay.

I was sickly as a child, Lotor had said, it was unlikely I would survive past infancy.

Keith, with a horrible feeling that he’s just found out the reason why—why Lotor almost died in his crib, why Honerva went to such lengths, why Zarkon became the monster that he did—takes a steadying breath.

“So,” he tastes bile in the back of his throat and swallows it down in favour of a question he’s not entirely sure he wants the answer to, “so am I dying, or aren’t I?”

Lotor’s hand twitches, and for a moment Keith thinks the prince is going to reach for him, but long fingers curl into themselves at the last moment.

“Your life is not in immediate danger, however,” his voice gentles deliberately, and he sounds almost pained, “judging by the current age of your cellular regression, I would gauge that you will be unlikely to survive much beyond another seventy decaphoebs.”

“Please,” Coran whispers, and the quiet politeness of his tone scares Keith more than anything else, “tell me you are speaking in imperial units.”

Lotor nods minutely, and that must be something of a comfort, for though Allura still lacks colour in her cheeks, when she forces herself to look up at Keith it’s with a renewed fortitude, despite the dewy shine to her eyes.

“That’s more than one hundred and thirty altean decaphoebs,” she tells him, as if Keith understands that any better, “that gives us time! We could- We could look into quintessence treatments, or-”

Her voice cracks, and her jaw snaps shut immediately as if to smother the brittle sound of it.

She’s trying not to cry, Keith realises.

Lance hasn’t said anything, and when Keith turns to him he sees blue eyes turned downward to a screen of dimly lit orange in his palm. Then, without warning, frantic taping gives way to wide-eyed disbelief, shortly followed by a burst of startled laughter.

“Carajo,” his head shoots up to fix Keith with a smile of giddy relief, “for a moment I thought we were gonna lose you!”

Keith finds himself with Lance slumping into his side with one arm looping him closer by the waist, bulky armour jabbing into him uncomfortably, but warmth welcome, as what Keith now recognises as a Garrison-issue phone is shoved in front of his nose.

“I had Pidge trick it out with a converter for altean time so that I could keep track of how long we’d been out here, but dude, look,” Lance laughs, light and free, “a hundred and thirty-whatever decaphoebs is, like, another eighty years. You’re fine!”

Keith blinks at the little numerical display in front of him, the digits marked out clearly in ghostly white. His breath hitches, catching in his lungs and then releasing all at once as if he were deflating, and Keith sags gratefully into Lance, who squeezes him fractionally tighter and quietly repeats: “you’re fine.”

He’s fine.

Allura echoes Lance’s words back at him, a note of distant horror ringing clearly in her voice.

“Fine? Galra typically live for at least five altean centuries and you’re content with not even seeing two?”

She’s truly stricken, Keith realises, looking at her; fine eyebrows drawn together into something weighty and troubled, lashes dewy, eyes flicking from him to Lance and back to him again. Her hands are clutching at each other as if to provide some sort of comfort, and everything in her posture is drawn tense and small—smaller still when compared against Lotor who stands silently at her side.

Coran tilts his head in question.

“Number four,” he’s not usually so tentative, “how long do humans normally live?”

“Er, eighty years is pretty average, I guess? And I’m already eighteen—or nineteen by now, probably, I haven’t been keeping track—so to say I’m expected to live another eighty is… like a really old human?”

Lance offers a hum of agreement in his ear, but it’s Allura who draws Keith’s attention; she’s taken a half step back in a sort of guilty retreat, no less distressed than she was a moment before.

“Allura?”

“How… how many decaphoebs does nineteen years equate to?”

Keith looks to Lance, who mirrors his expression of warring hesitation, before tapping at the screen of his phone slowly and answering her with a careful undertone to his voice: “thirty-one.”

Allura looks as if she might be sick.

 

---

 

“Thirty-one,” the blue paladin says, hesitantly, and when Princess Allura takes on a deathly pallor, he hurries to add, “and a half!” as if such a negligible amount makes any difference in the grand scheme of things.

Thirty one altean Decaphoebs. Lotor is quick to do the maths in his head: it amounts to a little under seventeen imperial units, and when combined with the aforementioned seventy or so, leaves Keith with a lifespan of less than ninety decaphoebs in total. It’s not even a third of what a pure-blooded galra could expect, and yet more than so many of Lotor’s ilk receive.

Acxa will see less.

The prince looks at Keith and sees a tragedy worthy of Daibazaal’s artisans of old; beautiful and fierce and fleeting. As lovely as starlight, and yet just as impossible to capture.

“You’re so young,” whispers Princess Allura, her eyes flitting between Keith still perched on the tabletop, and Lance, stood close by his side, as heartbroken as she is horrified. She wears the look of a woman who is forlorn and furious all at once, as if the universe itself had rendered her in two only for her soul to burn hot with indignation that it would so much as dare to do her paladins such a great disservice.

She’s right, of course. To be born so long before Keith’s first breath and yet still be cursed to die after his last, Lotor thinks, is a wicked thing indeed.

Wicked, and yet…

“It is not uncommon,” all eyes turn to him, “I suffer from the same ailment, as do my gen- as do my former generals.”

It hurts to say so, for all sorts of reasons, but Keith is looking at him, eyes big and beseeching, and Lotor knows it would be impossible for him to deny his little Blade anything, least of all this small comfort. Even if he is fortunate enough to not differ too drastically from his paternal kind, he needs to hear this.

He needs to know that he is not alone.

“You were born not all that long after I was,” the princess watches him warily, hugging herself close in an impossible attempt at self-comfort, “Zarkon has been alive for over ten thousand decaphoebs, and now you say that you’re dying?”

It’s unclear whether or not that is an accusation, and so Lotor is careful in correcting her.

“I am not dying, per se, I am aging at approximately twice the rate I ought. Negligible though it may be, there is a difference.” He sees the incoming question, and answers it before she asks: “I spent a disproportionate amount of time in cryostasis, as you did, and am at present fifty imperial decaphoebs in age,” or so he thinks. It’s the closest estimate he has, considering how fragmented an experience his time in Haggar’s lab was.

Lotor watches the horror unfurl on Princess Allura’s face, and can pinpoint the exact moment that she understands what it means to be a hybrid of galra blood. Were he full-blooded altean, he would scarcely have progressed past infancy.

“How?”

It’s not quite clear whether she’s asking after his shortness of lifespan in comparison to his father’s or his mother’s, but either way Lotor is overcome with the distinct tang of quintessence on his tongue- down his throat- inside his very core- how it burned and boiled and bled him until his body hardly felt like his own, and the only sound was that of his own voice, young and pained, begging the witch to “please- just kill me- please, please!”

“Does it matter?”

He draws himself up. Fixes her with a look he knows he inherited from his father and silently pleads that the little altean princess will remember what he is, what he’s done.

“No,” the speed with which she answers betrays her own sentimentality, “I suppose not.”

She is called away then, a patient in the main room apparently kicking up a fuss and demanding to speak to a paladin of Voltron, and though evidently shaken, when duty calls she goes. Her adviser accompanies her and, after what appears to be a silent conversation between Keith and the blue paladin, wherein said paladin shoots some rather disdainful looks in Lotor’s direction and some deeply concerned ones after the princess, Lance follows the alteans.

Lotor receives the distinct impression that that one is not terribly fond of him.

When he turns his attention from the doors to Keith, the little Blade is rolling his eyes with a fond sort of exasperation that Lotor is quite familiar with, recognising it from his own interactions with not only Ezor, but Zethrid too.

“You care for them a great deal.”

Keith turns to look at him. Blinks.

“Of course I do.”

“And they care for you just as much.”

There’s a moment in which Keith’s face half falls, and this time his answer is not nearly so simple a truth.

“Yeah.”

It’s strange, Lotor thinks, that it’s this that causes Keith to stumble. Certainly, when Lotor had thought his little Blade a child, it had seemed a very different sort of story, and there is still the matter of Keith having been replaced as a paladin to contend with, but Lotor prides himself on being able to read people rather well, and Princess Allura’s affection for her former red paladin is no less than that for the one who replaced him.

And yet Keith doesn’t seem quite convinced that this is the case.

Lotor thinks he himself may be at the root of the problem.

“Princess Allura seems to believe that I am manipulating you,” he gauges Keith’s reaction with great care, not wishing to overstep, “that I am using our similarities to skewer your judgement.”

“That’s part of it,” dusk-darkened eyes slide back to the doorway and Keith gives a small sigh, the smile tugging at his lips an ugly, twisted thing, “they can’t trust me.”

Not don’t. Can’t.

That distinction speaks volumes of a story Lotor has yet to put together, and he absorbs it with a quiet hum.

“Do you think I’m manipulating you?”

The former paladin falls momentarily still.

“I think,” he eventually concedes, huffing out a noise that’s half laughter, half resignation, “that you’re smart enough that if you were manipulating me, I’d have no idea.”

It’s not quite the answer that either of them want to hear, and the prince feels his lungs draw tight with something too difficult to conceive, let alone name.

“For what it’s worth,” Lotor murmurs, after a great stretch of quiet, “I’m not.”

He could.

He’s certainly capable of it.

And yet the mere concept—the idea of twisting Keith up until he draws taut, snaps, crumples to the floor—is an abhorrent one.

I would not do that to you, Lotor wants to tell him, you have my word; but no sooner has he thought as much does Lotor realise that such a sentiment may be worth very little to Keith, who has served as a paladin and serves still as one of Marmora’s blood-sworn, both roles determinedly set against the Empire and everything it has come to represent.

Short a stint as it had been, in serving as that Empire’s figurehead Lotor knows that he and it have become irrefutably linked.

“I know,” is the soft confession that comes to coax Lotor from his thoughts, and had his entire being not been so helplessly caught on this man since the very beginning, the prince thinks he might have missed this whispered truth.

But of course he is, so he doesn’t, and it brings to mind a million questions all at once.

“You cannot possibly know,” Lotor snaps, because such a sweet and simple thing stands too far outside of his experience of the universe. It would be a mistake, to allow himself to hope for it.

“Are you…” and Keith’s attention has been turned back to him, expression clouded with his lips turned down into a pretty pout of bewilderment, “are you mad at me for believing you?”

“Of course not,” Lotor scoffs.

But even as he says so, the prince knows that’s not quite true. Keith must know it too, because the crease of his brow deepens, his eyes narrow, and with a short inhale that says he’s about to probe further he opens his mouth and-

Lotor turns his head.

It’s not so much a delicate dismissal as Keith deserves, but once again the prince finds himself at a loss of how to handle the little Blade who seems to be able to slip between his ribs with as much ease as the moniker suggests.

With a slow sort of oozing, the silence sets in.

As does a small, needling sort of guilt.

Lotor can’t find it in himself to apologise, and might not know how to besides. Instead, he deflects.

“You have all the genetic markers of a Kyx,” the prince forces out into the air between them, and is relieved to note that Keith’s head shoots up from where he’s taken to meticulously picking at his own fingers, armour be damned, “I had suspected as much before, but now I am certain.”

“So my mother,” the ex-paladin is quite for a moment more, dark eyes turned searching, “you think she was Kyx?”

“I am sure of it.”

Lotor had hoped that this small thing would please Keith—he seems to know so little of his mother, and yet crave so much—but there is a soft sort of awe that Lotor couldn’t possibly have predicted unfurling on his little Blade’s features, gentling all the sharpness of his expression and smoothing out his edges.

He’s beautiful.

So much so that the prince can hardly help himself from reaching out, intending only to tuck the strands of dark hair that have gone astray behind one charmingly rounded ear, and instead finding the pads of his fingers being grazed by blunt fangs as Keith nips at him, unthinking. The both of them recoil in shock; Lotor’s eyes are wide, mouth gently gaping, the corners of his lips perking up into what, he knows, would be described as an awful smile worn only at another’s expense.

Though he ducks his head, Keith is too late to conceal the flaring heat of his cheeks.

“I don’t-” his voice comes out in a rush of breathless humiliation, “I don’t know why I did that.”

He doesn’t seem to be able to bring himself to look up, and the poor thing’s embarrassment is enough to shake Lotor from his startled stupor; with a laugh as Keith’s only warning, Lotor’s fingers find the hinge of the smaller man’s jaw, hooking beneath it and prompting his little Rhyahl to look up at him so that he may tease the threat of his fangs against the tip of Keith’s nose, withdrawing just as quickly with a fond rumble in the back of his throat.

“Perhaps,” he purrs, savouring the wide-eyed attention that is fixed solely on him, “because you’re more galra than you look.”

Immediately, Keith brightens.

“It’s a galra-thing?” All at once, a great weight seems to slip from his shoulders, “I thought so, but when I mentioned wanting to bite you to Pidge she looked at me like I was crazy-”

“Oh?” Lotor feels his stomach twisting itself up delightfully—the sentiment is undeniably a flattering one—and he can’t resist teasing the young galra, so his next words come out low and dark and full of mirth. “Do you want to bite me, Keith?”

“I-” Keith seems to choke on his own voice, the relief that had coloured his expression mere ticks before, fading back into that curious rouge as a festering insecurity takes root in the crease of his brow, his tone one again subdued when he tentatively asks: “is that not… normal?”

The smile slips from Lotor’s face as his heart breaks for the younger galra, and he’s quick to offer assurance.

“It is not abnormal,” the weight of upsetting Keith when he’s still so new to his heritage is too much to bear, “merely… affectionate.”

It’s only a half lie.

Keith takes his time in absorbing this, and as he does so Lotor is quick to exploit the opportunity to observe his Rhyahl, unmasked and lost in thought, in light of all he has learnt over the past few vargas. In truth, it’s rather a lot to process. Lotor knows he’ll be turning the concept of Keith as both Blade and paladin over in his head for a while yet—not least of all because two points of personal fascination have become one, but also due to his lineage as a galra hybrid of all things—yet more pressing is the issue of how to conduct himself from here on out. Though he may have toyed with the idea of stealing the kitling away, in learning that Keith is not so young as Lotor had first thought, nor so much a victim as an important player in this great game of war, the prince knows that enticing to his side a man whose loyalties are tangled up in both Marmora and Voltron is… nigh impossible.

And yet in that same vein, for all those same reasons, Lotor wants like he hasn’t in an age.

He wants Keith.

Is it a foolhardy and reckless desire, all things considered? Of course. He has plans, after all, plans that have been thrown completely off-kilter by his generals’ betrayal and current circumstances, but plans nonetheless. Good ones, if he does say so himself, and while his current situation may not be optimal for the initial execution of said plans, being provided access to Voltron’s innermost circle has opened up a wealth of opportunity that Lotor will not allow himself to waste.

Looking to his Rhyahl with a private smile, the heat of anticipation bubbling happily beneath his skin, Lotor thinks he may have found an answer to the question Keith had earlier posed.

“You asked after my personal desires,” he says, loud enough that Keith might hear him over the bustle of the other patients, but not so loud that they might feel inclined to eavesdrop, “irrespective of the Empire and its future.”

Keith hops down from the table, straightens, stands as tall as his petite stature will allow.

“I did,” his nod of assent is as earnest as it is disarming, and Lotor cannot fight the smile it brings to his lips.

“Very well then.”

Stepping forward until they are toe to toe forces Keith to tilt his head back so that he may retain eye contact and yet, to Lotor’s great joy, he does not move to put distance between them.

“What I want,” the prince continues, lowering his tone into a dangerous sort of croon, “is quite simple.”

Violet eyes flicker between his own, searching, and Lotor allows himself a moment to revel in having Keith’s absolute and undivided attention.

“That deepening of colouration whenever your paternal species grow flustered,” he taps one clawed fingertip against the apple of Keith’s rouged cheek, and grins without restraint when his victim gives a start before narrowing his pretty eyes, face reddening. “I want to know what you call that.”

“Blushing,” Keith growls out, and when he makes to move away Lotor laughs, charmed, and catches the smaller man’s jaw gently enough that breaking free would be a mere trifle.

His little Blade makes no such attempt, and this only warms Lotor further.

“Blushing,” Lotor savours the word on his tongue, encouraging Keith’s gaze to meet his, which the former paladin does with less reluctance than he likes to pretend, “it is delightful.”

With a rush of air, Keith is stepping away across the room and sending a half-hearted scowl back over his shoulder.

“Alteans blush too, you know.”

White eyebrows rise fractionally higher.

“Is that so?” It is not a trait he personally inherited, and his mother had never been one to become easily ruffled so he’s unsurprised to find himself ignorant of this particular quirk of altean biology. “I dare say it looks better on you than it would me.”

“You-” Keith chokes on a scandalised laugh, his blush extending from his cheeks to the tip of the ear that pokes out from dark hair, “you’re such an ass.”

Lotor laughs again, “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who has insulted me with quite so much candour as you,” and doesn’t care to hide his appreciation for having Keith so sweet and flustered and completely undone by his own hand.

Small a thing as it may be, it feels like quite the achievement.

A polite cough interrupts them.

Even as he turns his attention to this meddlesome presence, Lotor sees from the corner of his eye how Keith does the same, his shoulders drawing up towards his ears as he registers the identity of the interloper.

“I apologise if I’m… interrupting,” she’s tall, thin of face, and it takes Lotor a moment to place her as the rebel who had become the victim of friendly fire, “I was told I could find you here.”

‘You’ is accompanied by a hesitant nod in Lotor’s direction, but her eyes seem continually drawn back to Keith in a way that so obviously leaves the little Blade ill at ease.

“Evidently you have succeeded in locating me,” Lotor knows how to command attention, and he uses the tenor of his voice to snap the rebel’s straying gaze back to him, “do you require something?”

As he speaks, Lotor wanders with a falsified nonchalance that leaves him to stand half shielding Keith from sight.

“I,” she seems to struggle with her words for a moment, “I came to thank you.”

Lotor freezes.

“…whatever for?”

The line of her mouth thins and her eyes almost flicker to Keith again, before fixing Lotor with a long, hard look.

“The galra have tormented my people for several hundred turns,” she says it as if this is be news to Lotor, as if this same narrative is not shared by half the universe, “I thought you all monsters.”

It sounds like a weak sort of challenge, one with the underlying expectation of Lotor’s defiance, but when these words elicit no reaction from him, she deflates.

“I was… wrong,” and this admission does surprise him, “the things your people have done are horrific, and I cannot forgive them for it, but you were-”

Her mouth is little more than a tight line now.

“-kind,” she forces out, “to me. When I was injured. You had no reason to be, but you were, and Driig almost killed you for it, and I- I just wanted to apologise.”

She goes quiet then, and nods, clearly satisfied that their business is concluded, abruptly spinning on her heel; the hesitation doesn’t leave her stride, however, and after a step or two she’s half turning back, eyes on Keith again.

“Lord paladin…?”

It’s unclear why her address is a question until Lotor catches the awkward shift in weight as Keith rubs at the back of his neck, the look in his eyes almost as guilty as it is defensive, and inclines his head that she should continue.

“The rumours were true then. You’re galra.”

Keith winces at her coolness of tone, and it takes everything that Lotor has not to audibly grind his teeth.

“Yeah.”

He sounds so defeated.

For a long moment, she just stands there, looking at him, and even Lotor can’t even begin to guess at the thoughts cycling through her mind.

“Alright,” she says this quietly, more a sigh than a word, as if she’s made her peace with some internal conflict that has been raging for far longer than it should have. Then, with a weak smile, she forms a fist with her right hand and presses it beneath her collarbone in what Lotor—to his great surprise—recognises as a sloppy imitation of the imperial salute. “Lord paladin… Prince Lotor.”

And with that, she’s gone.

Notes:

You know how I said I'm bad at keeping to a regular time frame? Or update schedule?? Yeah, well, case in point.

Despite my ridiculously long absence (sorry!) I am back and completely fine - to those of you who sent some mildly concerned messages I really appreciate them! I'm going to go through the thirty or so comments I've yet to reply to right now, because I'm really behind but you guys are so lovely and I really didn't mean to leave you hanging for so long! What with both Christmas and Voltron's final series happening in the same time-frame, there was just a lot going on, and before I knew it I hadn't updated in far longer than I'd ever planned to leave you without an update.

Speaking of the final series, I'm more than happy to talk to you all about it! I had... a lot of feelings, some good, some not so good, about the whole thing, but ultimately I'm just accepting it for what it was and focusing on the parts I loved: those parts being, and I'm sure this surprises absolutely nobody, the snippets of Lotor's past. As with pretty much every series that's come out post series 4, I'll be picking out the threads that suit my narrative, and completely disregarding anything that doesn't, but I'm sure all of you are fully aware that this fic is an AU so really series 8 had very little impact on where I'm planning to take it. Even though Voltron is canonically over, I do hope you guys will still stick with me for the duration of this fic because I'm still having a lot of fun exploring Lotor's character and what could have been had he only been given the opportunity.

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UPDATE!!
I've finalised my makeshift calculator for Human/Altean/Galran time units, so if any of you guys are interested in knowing the exact conversion quantities I've decided upon with regards to Years-to-Decaphoebs, then please feel free to take a look (and let me know if it works for people who aren't me! I think it should, if opened with google sheets, but I'm not entirely sure?)

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TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 15: In Which Lotor is Almost a Nice Person Only to Not at the Last Second

Summary:

Previously: Lotor is granted special dispensation to use the Castleship's medical facilities, and finds that his little Blade's expected lifespan - though more than healthy for a human - is fleeting in the grand scheme of things. Keith & Lance are as relieved as Allura & Coran are distraught. Lotor silently processes all he has learnt in the past few vargas, and sets his heart on the only other galra hybrid in sight.

Princess Allura sweeps through the doors leading from the main area of the medical bay, and deigns only to announce that Voltron will be convening with the Coalition in a varga—and that Lotor is to join them—before having the prince immediately marched off by the blue paladin, a lightly disgruntled Keith prevented from accompanying them by her viper’s grip. Lotor is sure to cage a growl behind his teeth as he bids his little Blade a harried farewell, trying not to focus on how the princess’s nails bite into Keith’s arm with greater ferocity than the poor thing deserves.

This now leaves the heir to the Empire in the begrudging company of one human Lance Mcclain, who does not seem at all pleased to be serving as his sole escort.

After having dragged Lotor halfway across the ship with a suffocating air as the third member of their party, Lance’s apparent oath of silence is broken by a grunt of “conference room,” as he slows to a halt and slaps his hand down on the interactive panel with more force than is strictly necessary to activate the great arched door. It opens with a hiss, and Lotor steps through under the scrutinous eye of his chaperone.

It’s less a room and more an auditorium, Lotor thinks, taking in the great tiered crescent before him, peppered with what must be upwards of one or two thousand holographic pads, all pulsating with a dim blue glow, and positioned to offer a clear view of the podium at the room’s blunted end from which he and the paladin have entered. Everything is of that same stark white that the altean architects of times long since passed apparently favoured, and from where the prince has stopped in the centre of the raised dais, it’s near blinding.

Lotor drops to seat himself at the podium’s edge with a long-suffering sigh; it seems he will be standing trial before the Voltron Coalition after all.

How wonderful.

Though aware of the blue paladin watching him, Lotor pays him no mind, returning his attention to the tablet he’d swiped from the medical bay and combing over the data with a critical eye.

“Um?” There’s something in that voice that is pitched high in scandal. “When the hell did you steal that?”

Slitted pupils slide to the left, finding the paladin stood there with something simultaneously confused and offended painted sloppily over his features. Lotor forces out an irritated exhalation.

“Do I truly strike you as one for petty theft?”

Lance shifts, one foot to the other, and though he doesn’t activate his bayard his fingers twitch as if they’d very much like to do just that.

“Okay first off,” he raises his one finger, “that’s not a no, and secondly,” his middle finger joins his index, “you’re literally holding an altean tablet in your hand. Right there. I can see it.”

Lotor sweeps his gaze over this Paladin Lance once, taking in the determined set of his shoulders even as it contrasts the awkward twist to his lips; there seems an internal battle between his hesitance and determination, as if he knows what he sees and yet doubts his own eyes anyway.

How very odd.

“I assure you,” Lotor decides upon, not wishing to tempt fate and find himself held at gunpoint yet again, “I exited your medical facilities with it plainly in hand. Had anyone made a move to stop me and retrieve it, I would not have resisted.”

“But… no one did.” Armoured shoulders sag with a resigned weight.

Obviously, Lotor does not say, and, fangs sharp and displayed all too proudly, opts instead for: “No one dared.”

As it seems the paladin has no intention of rectifying his own negligence—or, indeed, that of his allies—with regards to this matter, Lotor turns back to the tablet and scans through the readings concerning Keith’s heartrate and blood pressure. It all seems… normal. Good, even. The strangest thing of all is that despite his genetic markers clearly indicating a galra parent, Keith himself doesn’t seem to have inherited any physical characteristics of his maternal half, bar perhaps a generous muscular density.

Clicking his tongue in frustration brings with it the unfortunate side effect of inviting the blue paladin closer, his garish armour drawing Lotor’s eye despite the prince’s best efforts as the boy hovers at his shoulder.

“So… Keith’s definitely good right? Apart from the whole, dying-but-not-really thing.”

For a moment, brief and cruel, Lotor considers being deliberately ambiguous in affirming this as a childish form of revenge for how irksome the blue paladin has proven to be, but… he cares for Keith, that much is obvious, and perhaps more importantly Keith cares for him.

It would not do to be mean.                          

“Aside from the accelerated deterioration of his cellular structure, yes, as previously stated, I would have to conclude that he’s in perfect health.” More to himself than to his companion, Lotor continues: “What escapes me is the reasoning behind how completely his paternal half seems to have manifested itself.”

There’s an unconcerned noise then, which the prince takes to be the verbal equivalent of a shrug.

“I guess his human genes are just dominant.”

The casual air with which this is said gives Lotor pause, and he stares at the data blankly.

“You… do not seem to grasp what a rarity that is.”

With deft fingers, Lotor pulls up the medical records of not just Lance, but Pidge, Hunk, and the champion too, arranging them around Keith’s scans so as to best appraise them. The green paladin’s information he dismisses first, the anatomy of human females proving different enough that it’s easier to disregard than utilise as a point of comparison, but the other candidates demonstrate that Keith’s organ placement, oxygen intake, circulatory system, everything, is plainly within the acceptable margins for a member of his paternal species. He really does seem, for all intents and purposes, human.

Though this soothes Lotor’s pride somewhat with regards to having not clocked Keith as galra, it also piques his curiosity, and he can feel the intrigue bubbling low in his gut.

Some of it must show on his face, or perhaps he has simply been too quiet for too long, because the blue paladin inhales as if preparing to probe him for answers; to prevent a slew of ambiguous and potentially ignorant questions that will doubtlessly frustrate Lotor more than they’ll benefit his cognitive process, the prince volunteers his thoughts without prompting.

“Your friend is galra, his genetic constitution leaves no question of that, but he has no physical characteristics that would betray the truth of his blood which is... virtually unheard of. Typically, the more prominent an individual’s non-galra half, the higher their mortality rate due to their galra cells perceiving a greater threat and reacting accordingly.” Lotor himself, is proof of that—the adaptability of his altean DNA and its attempt to accommodate his father’s blood rather than submit to it, damn near killing him in his cradle, “and yet Keith not only survived, but seems to be the pinnacle of health. Though records of hybrid galra are few and far between, the vast majority of successful births are of offspring that have overwhelmingly inherited the traits of their galra-parent—statistically speaking, he should have been stillborn at best.”

So intently is he pondering upon this, that Lotor almost forgets he is actually speaking to someone until the paladin pipes up: “Okay, but it’s not impossible. Your invisible lizard lady doesn’t exactly follow the genetic dress-code.”

Ezor.

Lotor’s heart aches.

“No she does not, but Ezor has always been something of a special case. She was born thickly furred, like her father, however her maternal people were of a particular disposition that saw them shed their skin every twelve decaphoebs or so; suffice to say, her second flesh was not so galra as her first.”

“Oh.”

He sounds faintly disturbed, and Lotor is kind enough to bite back a sarcastic echo of the paladin’s dismay.

“Acxa however, outwardly appears about as galra as I do, and Zethrid near full-blooded.” It hurts to talk about them, his friends, but there’s a part of Lotor that wants nothing more. “She cannibalised her mother—her galra parent—rather than herself; eating her way out of the womb and into the awaiting arms of her grandparents.”

Zethrid would have found great joy in the noise of distress this statement is greeted with, Lotor thinks, and the thought of it is almost a fond one.

“They were morbidly pleased, or so she once told me. Theirs was one of the old houses, you see, and their daughter had found love with an outworlder; in breeding with him, she had shamed the entire family, and they were only at her bedside so that they may hide the child away the moment it was born. Of course, in tearing her way into the world Zethrid proved herself more galra than her traitorous mother, and was welcomed into the fold despite her weakness of blood.”

“That’s… so fucked up.”

Human terminology is dreadfully crude, but Lotor cannot pretend that he does not derive a certain level of enjoyment from the blue paladin’s horror.

From somewhere far away, Kra gives a delighted little hum of assent.

“So… what?” The blue paladin continues, gnawing at his lower lip so hard that Lotor is sure it will bleed. “If she hadn’t eaten her mother they would have gotten rid of her? Just like that?”

By the way he says it, Lotor knows that he means to imply infanticide, and wonders at how humans treat their young for such barbarity to occur to the paladin as a natural course of action.

“I’ll forgive your thinking so, considering what limited exposure your species have had to true imperial culture, but it is not like that at all.” It feels important that Lotor make the paladin understand. “Children are precious to the galra. Perhaps a mercy killing would have been kinder, had Zethrid not been so vivacious, but no sane member of my people would so much as entertain the thought of harming a kit, tainted blood be damned. The low status of hybrids within the Empire stems more from the fact that encouraging the copulation of two people destined to lose their offspring young—an offspring that would be unlikely to ever open its eyes in the first place, let alone have any quality of life—seems unusually cruel, wouldn’t you say?”

“I guess so,” Lance concedes, and then, “but like you said, Keith’s not sick. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him catch so much as a cold—even when we all came down with space-flu last decaphoeb.”

Disregarding the fact that ‘space-flu’ is nothing close to an actual ailment, Lotor explains: “Impure half-breeds we may be, but weak we are most certainly not.” It’s a cold sort of pride. “If a compatible secondary parent species is found, and the offspring survives, we do ultimately possess a rather particular resilience. I’m sure we simultaneously disgusted and fascinated the Witch.”

Perhaps there’s something in his tone that reads the wrong side of wistful, because the blue paladin half leaps backwards, his sudden scowl a ferocious thing.

“Whoa there bud, whatever you’re thinking: forget it. I am not letting you dissect him.”

Incredulously, all the prince can do is stare; in finding that the boy seems serious, the line of Lotor’s mouth draws tight.

“…and I haven’t the slightest intention of doing anything of the sort. I am not my father,” it comes out as a dangerous growl.

As if Lotor would ever partake in such savagery—though he would, admittedly, be more than happy to take the prettiest of Voltron’s number apart in an entirely different sense. “I’d simply be intrigued to learn what it is in Keith’s gene-pool that allows for his non-galra half to dominate so completely.”

Lance’s hard look gives way to something akin to relief.

“Oh. Well that’s… fair.”

There’s a beat of silence in which Lotor thinks he might finally be left to go over the data. He is mistaken.

“For the record,” Lance pipes up, his nonchalance in broaching further conversation barely believable. “I don’t like you, but-”

“I assure you, the sentiment is quite mutual.” Lotor mutters, and the paladin has the gall to look offended by that.

“I said but! At least let a guy finish what he’s saying!” Lance has spread his arms wide and seems appropriately slighted. “Istilldon’tlikeyou but thanks for checking out Keith, I guess.”

Lotor isn’t given chance to respond, the paladin’s face falling of its own accord as he tacks on: “Well, actually, you could maybe check him out a little less because really it’s kind of obnoxious-”

It’s here, before Lance is able to finish that thought or Lotor refute it—because really, if either of them is to be called obnoxious it should most certainly not be him—that their conversation comes to a close. Or rather, it is abruptly cut off as the green paladin bounds into the room, a restless energy in her footsteps.

“Prince Lotor!” sees his title called out with the tongue of someone who means to mock him, but when Lotor’s narrowed eyes fix the smallest paladin’s bouncing form with a sharp look, the expression she greets him with is not a malicious one.

She’s young, so he lets the borderline disrespect pass without comment.

“Paladin Pidge.”

She comes to a halt beside her blue-clad friend, shooting the boy a grin which he only half returns as he looks between her and Lotor with conflicted surprise at their near cordial exchange. She shrugs at him, still smiling, before turning back to Lotor and launching straight into her purpose without preamble, which the prince appreciates far more than he would any attempt at making needless niceties.

“So it’s not quite finished but Coran just briefed me on what went down with the rebels and if we’re finally talking to the Coalition I figure this’ll be as good an opportunity for you to test it out as any-”

Her thoughts seem to be running at a furious pace, and a quick glance to the blue paladin proves that he is just as clueless to the focus of Pidge’s enthusiasm as Lotor is.

“-so here!” She waves a handheld device in his face, and for the first time Lotor registers something beneath her excitement: a thread of nervous energy that raises his guard. “This is a new and improved version of the English language as approved by the green Lion herself, complete with all the curse words I could think of!”

Her enthusiasm is genuine. Her explanation is not.

There’s something she’s not telling him.

“You wish to update my translator chip so that I may better comprehend the nuance of your mother-tongue’s expletives,” Lotor raises one fine white brow, feigning amusement so that she might not catch on to his awareness of her hidden motives.

If the draining of tension from her shoulders is any indication, he appears to have succeeded.

“Yep! It works on the basis of context clues,” she’s bouncing on her toes, a prideful little smile playing across her lips, “see, when we first met Allura and Coran we could understand them straight away—which totally made no sense because we can’t speak altean and they can’t speak English, so I figured out that the blue Lion must’ve tapped into our translators to update us on all the languages she’d been exposed to and—because she was in Lance’s head—she took both English and Spanish and applied them to Allura and Coran’s translator chips too.”

Lotor inclines his head, only half listening as he privately searches for the inconsistency in her intentions.

“But because the Lions don’t deal in language, but ideas, there’s no confusion between words that sound the same, or even ones that are the same but mean different things in different contexts. There’s a delay sometimes, but even if we don’t always get the specifics of Coran’s idioms I can kind of understand the meaning behind them, and I’m pretty sure it’s because the Lion’s update takes context clues into account. So with this,” she waves the device in her hand towards him again, “you should be able to tell the difference between me talking shit, and talking about shit.”

It sounds the same, that last bit, and it has him wincing at the vulgarity of it all, but Lotor has to assume that this is precisely her point.

“Damn Pidge,” Lance’s tone is awed, “that’s so cool.”

“I know.” She grins up at her friend, and he grins back, punching her shoulder fondly. Then, turning back to Lotor, she asks: “So? What d’you think?”

The prince gives a low hum of contemplation. Her zeal is too sincere for this to be a complete ruse, and as such Lotor is inclined to believe in her good intentions, at least so far as furthering his understanding of their human tongues.

“Very well then.”

Mind still racing, but unable to decline lest he raise the paladins’ suspicions that he knows all is not as it seems, Lotor combs the hair at his nape to one side and placidly allows Voltron’s smallest member to press her curious device over the raised white line behind his ear.

Informing him: “this should only take a dobash or two,” is her second slip. A minor translator update such as this should take a matter of ticks at most, even with the altean tech they’re using practically classifying as an antique. Lotor knows she must be embedding something else—several lines of new code seems the most likely candidate—and he lets her rambling wash over him as he attempts to puzzle out what its purpose could be.

Over the phoeb that they’d worked alongside one another, Lotor had observed little Pidge’s constitution to be far better than Hunk’s, so her nerves are unlikely to be caused by something inconsequential. Ergo, whatever it is she’s installing into his neck is most certainly something she believes he would disapprove of.

“-and when we spoke to Allura earlier she, well, she wasn’t exactly receptive but if you give us another couple of quintants I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to convince her that keeping you under lock and key is less conductive than she wants to believe.”

Lance makes a series of squeaking noises at that, protesting against a decrease in Lotor’s security detail as “no bueno, Pidgita!” but the prince himself receives this news with a wave of understanding.

It’s a tracker.

Lotor has to hand it to her, though he’s not exactly thrilled by it, the compromise is not an unreasonable one: increased freedom of movement at the cost of his precise location whensoever team Voltron so desire it. If he proves himself to be trustworthy, it becomes a moot point, and if the alternative is true then they can locate and neutralise him at a moment’s notice... and all under the guise of a friendly gesture.

How delightfully underhanded.

Even if Princess Allura hasn’t the mind for war games, the same can apparently not be said of the green paladin.

“All done!” With a slight spark of static, the pressure on Lotor’s neck releases, and Pidge steps back. “The others probably won’t turn up until the Coalition are all ready to go, but I guess I’ll hang out here with you guys ‘til then because—believe me—the last thing I want is to get between whatever’s going down with Keith and Allura.”

And that’s when it occurs to him.

“So what, we’re just hanging out with Prince Lotor now?” Lance is saying—or, whining really—but the subject of his petty displeasure hardly hears him, his world narrowing instead to a single truth.

“Oh you little beast,” Lotor shoots abruptly upright to tower over them, green and blue paladins both, with his lips tightly pursed, and vindictively he revels in the startled jump they give in unison, “you were aware of his identity the entire time. That is why you were so insistent on his committing to anonymity.”

Pidge blinks wide brown eyes up at him owlishly, before an evil grin creeps across her features.

“Duh.” For all her determination in keeping Keith’s identity a secret, she doesn’t seem even mildly concerned at the truth of the matter having been revealed. “I can’t believe we managed to keep it under wraps for an entire phoeb working together on your ship, but then he goes and blows the whole thing after being left to his own devices for less than a varga.”

Lance scoffs quietly, “of course he did: this is Keith we’re talking about,” and Lotor feels a prickle of offence on his little Blade’s behalf.

Pidge must see something in his expression, because she’s sniggering as she hops up onto the podium to seat herself quite happily, legs swinging in the air before her and regarding Lotor with particular interest. “What gave it away, in the end?”

The prince decidedly does not wish to humour her intrigue.

“Perhaps I charmed it out of him,” he tells her instead, and Pidge barks out a laugh.

“You expect me to believe that you figured out Marmora-Keith and paladin-Keith are the same person, but not how damn clueless he is to all your,” she waves her hand towards him in a vague gesture, “charms.”

It’s a fair statement, Lotor supposes, and knowing that his Rhyahl is also the Blade’s kitling, he cannot rightly deny how sweetly naïve Keith is to Lotor’s own flirtations—though whether this is a blessing or a curse has yet to be decided—but even so…

“A little oblivious, it’s true,” he concedes, with a purr, “but you oughtn’t mistake that for unwillingness, paladin. I have found him to be quite… receptive.”

Her air of entertainment sours at the insinuation, and Lotor preens.

“But you needn’t take my word for it: when your companion found myself and Keith earlier, we were more than a little comfortable in one another’s company,” his gaze slides to the Lance, “were we not?”

The blue paladin’s expression is foul.

“Hands off, L'Oréal.” Lance has the audacity to jab his finger at Lotor’s chest with a glare, “he’s not up for grabs.”

“No?” Feigning innocence, Lotor meanders across the room to trail fingers along the lowest of the spectator’s platforms, throwing a smile back over his shoulder that is more sharpness than true amusement. “Then pray tell, why cast him aside in favour of your little princess, hm?”

Faces falling flat, both the green and blue paladins grow suddenly stiff.

“Oh dear,” Lotor feels a cold smirk pulling at his lips, “I seem to have struck a nerve.”

“You don’t know shit about why he left.”

Lotor taps his neck lightly over where his translator lies, sending Pidge an appreciative smile, the sincerity of which, he knows, must be jarring. “It works splendidly,” and then, returning to the topic at hand, “but you’re correct. I am not aware of the particulars of his… change in occupation.”

He lets them absorb this for just long enough that some of the tension begins to leak from their posture.

“Should I guess?”

The return of rigidity to their forms says he should not.

This, of course, seems the perfect opportunity to voice the needling suspicion in his gut.

“Allow me to tell you what I know,” Lotor begins. “I know that Keith has served as paladin of both the red and black Lions. I know that he is a competent warrior as a Blade of Marmora. I know that there is a dissonance between you and him, one which he appears to blame himself for, though so far as I have observed it the fault lies with Voltron.”

They wince at that in unison, but neither attempt to deny it.

“And now,” Lotor draws a breath, attempts to quell his rising anger, “I know that he is galra. Tell me, when coupled with the bigotry that almost saw me dead earlier today, what conclusions might I have drawn from such a sequence of data?”

“The wrong ones,” Lance bites back, but there’s a tremor to his voice that betrays him.

“Is that so…” Observing him coolly, Lotor lowers his tone to something unkind yet sweetly crooning. “Then whyever do you appear to be weighed down by such a dreadfully guilty conscience, blue paladin- or, is it red now?”

“That’s enough.” Pidge’s voice holds the same danger as a cornered animal baring its teeth. “You’ve said enough.”

Yielding in the face of the vehemence Voltron’s smallest spits at him, the prince raises his hands in easy submission. “Apologies; I ought know better than to pry.”

“Yes,” she growls, “you ought.”

He should stop there, Lotor knows he should, but there’s a certain stirring in his blood that begs he press them just a little further—just to make them notice, just to make them see what a mistake they have made—because Keith is better than this.

Keith deserves better than this, and the paladins’ dawning realisation that Lotor might be willing to provide such a thing is delicious.

“You know full well what I think of him,” he watches Pidge for a reaction, and finds one in the balling of her fists, “and therefore it should be no great leap of logic to surmise how he has risen yet further in my esteem for being of galra blood. We are the same, he and I, and it seems plain to me that as you and yours have seen such a man so easily discarded, you do not deserve the pleasure of his company.”

“And what,” Lance hisses, all the colour drained from his cheeks by a white-hot fury, “you do?”

Lotor merely smiles.

 

---

 

As Lance harries Lotor from the room and out of sight, Keith submits to his fate.

Fate, as it turns out, has one hell of a hold on his arm.

“The patient causing a ruckus,” the princess sighs, her voice level yet her grasp unyielding, “it was the rebel officer you… neutralised.”

Ah.

“He…” she trails off, mouth twisting as if the admission she must make is distasteful, “He confirmed everything Lotor said—though, in his words, it was less an execution and more an act of sacrifice on Voltron’s behalf. Either way, he maintains that Lotor did not resist, and that his own assailant was an agent of Marmora.”

Privately, Keith can’t help but note that she sounds almost disappointed in Lotor’s proven innocence.

Though he doesn’t know what sort of an expression he pulls then, it sees Allura’s death-grip softening to something that’s more of a firm hand than a shackle, her fingers relaxing into the crux of Keith’s elbow.

“Walk with me?”

It’s not really a question, but Keith nods anyway, obediently allowing the altean princess to haul him across the medical bay with a purpose to her stride that says anyone who so much as considers interrupting them would be wise to think again. They pass Pidge on their way out, honeyed eyes widening at a glance, whatever she perceives in Allura’s face causing her to sidestep without comment, and when Keith looks back at her almost mournfully the smallest paladin offers nothing more than a half-sincere salute before ducking out of sight. Alone with Allura once again, Keith lets himself be guided into one of the lesser-known hallways down which the princess marches him, her arm now looped through his, until they come to a disused observation deck at the corridor’s intersection and she sees fit to break the silence that has settled between them.

“When I was a little girl,” Allura begins, and this isn’t even remotely the topic Keith had thought to prepare himself for, “I wanted nothing more than to explore the stars as my father so often did.”

Her sigh is a wistful one.

“He was forever flying off to distant worlds only to return home with increasingly fantastical stories, and I desperately wished to go with him, to experience these beautiful places and their people for myself. I met plenty of diplomats from our allied planets, of course, but they always came to us, never the other way around, and so I begged him-”

When she laughs, it’s a small, quiet thing. Keith hadn’t known that such a gentle sound could be so painful.

“-I begged him to take me off-planet—wherever he liked, I didn’t mind so long as I got to see it for myself—and eventually he agreed. I was… perhaps ninety decaphoebs at the time?” She laughs again. “I scarcely remember it, young as I was, but the look on my father’s face as he held me in his arms and showed me the stars, now that I shan’t ever forget.”

Oh god, Keith thinks, this is one of those conversations, and, in a panic, blurts out: “Full disclosure, I’m not good at this.”

Tearing her eyes from a distant galaxy that bleeds a rainbow into the cosmos, Allura tilts her face towards his with a neat little furrow making its home between her brows.

“This?”

“This.” Keith gestures first at himself and then her with his free hand, a little desperate. “Talking about important things. Family.”

Then, with a crack to his voice that falls the wrong side of vulnerability, confesses: “I mess it up.”

Allura blinks up at him, so close that Keith can pick out all the individual flecks of candyfloss-pink amongst the baby-blue.

“Oh Keith,” she whispers, “is that what you think?”

Choking on his own tongue, Keith resolutely focuses his eyes back on the swirling colours beyond the glass. Allura’s kind enough to let him avoid the question—though, for a horrible moment, he thinks she won’t—and instead rests her head on his shoulder as they stand there amongst the stars.

“You’re family,” she breathes, as if too sacred a truth to risk the stars overhearing, “you, and Lance, and Pidge, and Hunk, and Shiro—and Coran, of course—the six of you are my family; if ever I’ve made you doubt that- no, I know I did, when I first found out that you were galra…”

There’s hesitation on her tongue when she tells him: “I want to apologise.”

“You already did,” Keith reminds her, “and I already forgave you.”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t have done.”

He finds Allura watching him in their reflection, and can do nothing but look back wordlessly.

“Why did you leave?” She asks. “Truly?”

It’s a loaded question, more so than she likely realises, and one to which Keith has simultaneously too many answers and yet none that quiet fit. The one he settles on is far from ideal.

“I was never meant to be the black paladin,” perhaps not any paladin.

“It was a steep learning curve for all of us-” the princess tries, but Keith’s only response is to spit out a laugh, sharp and bitter.

“I was a disaster, Allura, and you know it.” Her uneasy silence is answer enough, and he wilts under the confirmation. “It’s fine. I don’t blame you- any of you.” How could he, when the fault lay with him and him alone? “It was better that I left.”

Safer, he doesn’t say.

She makes no attempt to refute him, instead dancing around the sharpness of truth. “The team hasn’t been the same without you.”

“No?” Smiling has never been so painful. “Last I heard you were all doing pretty well for yourselves before I came back; more time spent helping people and less on a wild goose-chase around a gas-planet after an enemy we knew nothing about.”

He’d kept track.

“Keith-”

“Allura.” A level stare is all it takes to silence her. “It’s fine. Good, even,” and the next words fall out of his mouth without conscious thought: “the best thing I ever did for the team was step down.”

His words echo—in the space around them or inside his own mind, Keith can’t be sure—and Allura’s hand drops away altogether; for a moment nothing’s real, nothing, until her hand returns, the gentle warmth of slim fingers tangling with his own.

“You truly believe that?”

He looks past their reflections that stand with fingers interlaced, and out into the darkness beyond them.

“You don’t?”

“Not for a tick.” She tightens her hold on his hand as if she’s frightened of letting go. “It doesn’t matter to me that you’re galra, because you’re Keith, you’re not like them-”

It’s a simple misstep, but a shattering one.

Keith yanks his arm away, jaw set and eyes dark, finding Allura staring at him in shock; her hand hovers in their air between them, reaching out towards him as if she’s not sure she’s allowed to do so.

Actually, Keith decides, she’s not.

“That’s just it Allura, you think I’m the exception to the rule but you’re wrong. I’m not one of the good galra, I’m just galra. That’s all.”

Her hand retreats.

“I only meant that they’re-”

“There is no them.” Keith doesn’t shout, but the words tumble out on a breath of furious exasperation that cuts through the air between them with a sharp hiss. “Can being galra and being terrible overlap? Of course. But it’s not a correlation, and if you’re using that to try and make the casualties Voltron leaves behind okay then I’m sorry but I can’t let you do that!”

“That is not what I’m doing!” Rage replaces reluctance, and vindictively—selfishly—Keith is glad of it.

“That’s exactly what you’re doing! You’re projecting Zarkon’s face onto an entire race of people-”

“They’re hardly innocent!” She spins on her heel and takes several paces away from where Keith’s stood, only to whirl back around with fire in her footsteps. “The galra follow Zarkon; yes, he’s their Emperor and holds a great deal of responsibility for the state of the universe, but even he is not wholly to blame! Without the compliance of his people he would not have wrought nearly so much death and destruction!”

“Fine!” Keith sags back against the window, rubbing the heels of his palms into his eye sockets with more force than he should. “Fine. So the imperial military is full of killers. Show me a military that isn’t.”

Allura’s halting silence is an answer in itself, and Keith lets his arms drop to his sides as he looks at her.

“The galra have been following Zarkon for thousands of decaphoebs; to us, yeah, he’s an immortal monster, but to them he’s a god. Don’t tell me you can’t see that.”

Keith watches for the slow draining of tension from her posture, even as the princess crosses her arms as if to shield herself.

“Strength, victory, that’s everything to them. They lost their planet too, Allura, and I know,” he raises his hands to pacify her, “I know what happened to Altea was unforgivable, and I know that your father had a good reason for doing what he did, but that’s not how it’s been recorded in the imperial history books.”

Finally assured that she’s not going to start yelling at him again, Keith returns his eyes to the stars.

“Lotor’s been teaching me about my galra half, and he’s explained the Empire’s side of the war to me. He lived it, Allura—in pieces, maybe, but next to Zarkon and Haggar, he’s the only one who knows both the truth of what happened then, and the inner workings of what’s happening now.”

A breath.

“And he’s trying to change it.” Dusk-dark eyes find midwinter blue. “I seriously think he’s trying to change the Empire for the better.”

The silence stretches between them then, ticks turning into dobashes and dobashes into near a varga. It’s time she needs, Keith thinks, to process, and while he can give it to her he will.

“It’s not fair.”

She sounds so like a child when she says it, her voice the very essence of frailty where she herself is anything but.

“I know.” Keith tells her.

Another silence ensues, but this time it’s not nearly such a long one.

“You are very wise for your age, Keith Kogane,” the admission is pained, and yet almost said with a smile, “at thirty one decaphoebs I knew only a handful of words, and I believe most of them were confectionary.”

“You had a sweet tooth?” Perhaps it’s the release of tension, but for some reason the thought strikes the former paladin as unreasonably funny, and he can’t help but fixate on it.

“I still do.” Allura closes the distance between them with a devilish grin on her lips, her next words hushed as if an awful secret. “A terrible one. Coran thinks it quite unforgivable, you know; it’s the only thing he’s ever defied me on.”

They laugh then, quietly but in unison, and for a moment it feels as if Keith could forget that the two of them are more soldiers than people.

It doesn’t last.

When reality sinks back into their bones with a heavy chill, all laughter dies. Allowing Allura to take one of his hands in both of hers, Keith watches the smile fade from her features and age her a decade—though, in light of recent revelations, that’s not nearly so much time to her as it is to him—and they stand in silence for a while more.

“I’ll do better,” she promises, gaze never leaving the crease of his palm where her fingers dance against armoured skin, “I know now that I must seem terribly old to you, and that perhaps if I’ve yet to learn my lesson it may be too late, but I will do better.”

Her eyes rise to meet his.

“I was born to be Altea’s queen, but I was never intended to rule alone. Altea may be gone, along with all my advisors bar one, but I have you and the other paladins now, and I swear to you, Keith-” Allura clasps his hand over her heart with a determined set to her shoulders, “I swear that I want to do right by the universe, galra and all.”

Keith inclines his head, all too aware of the hesitant downturn at the corner of her lips. In her own time, Allura voices this uncertainty.

“Do you truly believe that Lotor wants the same?”

“I…” Does he? Keith certainly wants to believe it, but that’s not quite enough. “…I’m starting to.”

For now, that will have to do.

 

The walk to the conference room is long, but not unpleasant. Allura shares with him little anecdotes of her childhood—snippets of infiltration missions into diplomatic dinners she had no place at, or impossibly mischievous tales of her younger self gallivanting about the castle. Keith devours it all. She speaks fondly of both her father and her mother—the latter of whom Keith has never before heard her mention, and learns now that this is because Queen Melenor passed quiet suddenly when Allura was young—and Keith returns these stories in kind, as well as he is able, with comparable ones of his own. The dramatic retelling of Allura’s first Jiior hunt that, Keith learns, only occurs once every blue moon (by which Allura really does mean that Altea’s largest moon would glow a startling cerulean), is met with his own vague recollections of camping trips with his dad where they’d stay up all night telling ghost stories and eating smores—which, once Keith explains the concept, the princess seems to set both her heart and stomach on with great vigour.

Allura tells him of the former paladins, too. Of Blaytz, her earliest recollection of whom features him bathing in the memorial fountain of her great Grandmother, and had subsequently seen her set the guards on, assuming him to be an intruder. Of Gyrgan, who would take her juniberry picking in the warm seasons, and let her ride on his shoulders during the cooler ones. Of Trigel, who taught her both how to best her father in what Keith assumes is the altean equivalent of chess, and the most effective ways to catch Alfor off-guard with pranks of the most ingenious variety.

She doesn’t breathe a word of Zarkon.

She doesn’t, but Keith hears it regardless, because there are gaping holes in the stories of Allura’s childhood that can only be filled by a great shadow—one that is powerful and disciplined and her uncle by everything but blood. Somehow, Keith never thought to connect Zarkon’s past as Alfor’s dearest friend to Allura in any way.

It seems like an obvious oversight.

“What of you?” She asks, as they ascend a tightly wound staircase. “Who did you have, aside from your father?”

“No one, really.” Keith shrugs off the wounded noise this statement is greeted with. “Not until Shiro. He was scouting kids for the Garrison and, I mean, I’ve always loved space but I figured that a military organisation wasn’t really for me, so I nearly didn’t give the simulator a go. Seemed like a waste of time.”

A half-smile tugs at his lips.

“But then he asked me to,” asked, not demanded, and maybe that’s why Keith said yes, “and I was good. ‘Course, I was still a discipline case, so it wasn’t exactly a surprise when the principle told him not to bother with me.”

Allura makes a sound that’s half sympathy, half indignation, but Keith just shakes his head.

“I heard that kind of shit all the time, it was nothing new, but… the thing was, if—even when I was good at something—they called me that, then why try at all, you know? So I, er… I stole his car.”

There’s a pause, and then Allura lets out a startled burst of laughter.

“You stole Shiro’s car? How old were you?”

“Fourteen.” Keith can feel how his own smile softens, “just another brat with nothing to offer, but for some reason the Garrison’s golden boy looked at me and saw something worth… well, I don’t know what. He bailed me out and gave me a second chance, which was more than anyone else had done for me in a long time.”

Allura hums, and though she’s still smiling there’s something in that sound that rings a little melancholy.

“You’ve known him a while, then.” The former paladin nods, and she continues: “Do you mind if I ask you something?”

In Keith’s experience, when people feel the need to prelude a question with a question, it brings with it nothing good, but Allura’s looking at him with so much concern that he begrudgingly consents.

“Are you and Shiro… alright?”

“We’re fine,” he tells her, because it’s true.

Perhaps he answers a little too quickly though, and it leaves Allura with doubt written into her features.

“You seem different, is all. When you first became paladins, the two of you were thick as thieves, but as of late I’ve thought…” she doesn’t finish her musings, only trails off into an awful sort of silence that sends Keith’s stomach plummeting. Sure, he and Shiro aren’t what they used to be, but Shiro’s been through a lot, they both have, and Keith… he’d let Shiro down, he knows, because Shiro had trusted him to take care of things in his absence, and he’d failed. He’d tried to fix it, tried to step back and allow Shiro to lead the team like only he can, like Keith knows he’d never be able to, and it had worked—even if the necessary price had been Keith removing himself from Voltron altogether.

“We’re fine,” he finds himself repeating, despite Allura not really having asked anything else.

Her brow knits itself together in a very delicate, royal sort of way.

“You don’t seem as close as you used to be,” and though she whispers these words, they ring inside Keith’s skull with an awful clamouring. It’s the one thing he’s been afraid of, and yet desperately tried to ignore.

“We’ve been busy.” It might be more an assurance to himself, than to her. “Shiro’s just got a lot to worry about as the black paladin, you know that, and I’ve been-” secretly working for Kolivan on a covert mission to decide whether or not Marmora will support Lotor’s claim to the throne at the Kral Zera that will inevitably be held as soon as we take Zarkon down, “-y’know… around.”

It’s a weak excuse, even for him, but Allura just looks sad.

“I worry, is all—about him, about you.”

Keith sees the aching truth of it in her face.

“We’re okay,” those words taste like a lie, “but I can check in with him, if you want?”

Relief floods the princess’s features.

“See to it that you do. Now, hurry-” she stops walking and firmly pushes Keith towards a door—the door to his own room, he belatedly realises—with the look of a leader about her, “the Coalition will be ready any moment now, and it won’t do to keep them waiting.”

“Allura, what-”

“Your armour,” she insists. “I think it important you attend this as my paladin rather than a Blade.”

Keith hesitates.

“Trust me?” She asks him, and though her smile is small and uncertain, it’s enough to have Keith ducking into his room with a firm nod of assent.

Notes:

She's here, she's queer, and she has a newly made tumblr that some of you managed to find before this announcement! There are already a whole lot of posts on there (over 100??) including the art that a few lovely people have created for this fic, my personal headcanons regarding Galra Culture within this AU, and an incredible amount of answers to asks that were ridiculously fun to answer, so please please please head on over there if you'd like to completely immerse yourself in my self-indulgence.

Thank you so much to everyone who's been lovely and supportive and patient with me! Some of you know that my health's been not so great (again, there's a little post about that on my tumblr) but I love this fic and I love all of you, so while updates will come as frequently as I am able, I'm no longer going to commit to a specific time schedule, because honestly? That hasn't worked out great for me thus far. Rest assured, I will not drop this fic. It is my baby, and I have so much more story to tell that I could never consider leaving it uncompleted, I just have a lot of other things going on in my life right now that need attention.

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TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 16: Wherein Pidge Calls Someone a Prissy Bitch and By Some Miracle It Isn’t Lotor

Summary:

Previously: Due to Lotor's near-assassination at the hands of a coalition zealot, an emergency meeting is called between Team Voltron and their allies. In the meantime, Lotor is content to comb through Keith's medical files to be sure he hasn't missed anything, while Allura and Keith himself have a difficult conversation.

The paladins leave him be after that, no longer inclined to make idle conversation in the face of so blunt a truth as their own disregard for Keith, especially not with Lotor being so unashamedly forthright in his intentions. It aggravates them, as the prince had known it would, and this is satisfying enough that he leaves the children to their anxious ruminations without pressing further, returning his attention instead to the tablet still in hand.

Dobashes of cold silence stretch into near a varga, and it’s only then that, one by one, the figureheads of the Coalition begin to trickle into the conference room by way of the holographic pads; their ghostly forms blink into existence in relatively quick succession, and eventually there are enough dignitaries staring down at him that even Lotor cannot fight the prickle of intimidation that seeps beneath his skin. He stands soundless and steadfast under their scrutiny, eyes never leaving his work as he allows the paladins to do what they must to keep the ever-rising tide of questions at bay. While Pidge and Lance are, admittedly, making a valiant attempt to pacify their allies, the Coalition mob does not cease in their demands to know on what grounds it is that they have been so abruptly summoned—or not, at least, until the champion strides into the room, both the yellow paladin and altean advisor in tow, and sees the lot of them fall abruptly quiet.

“Settle down.” He doesn’t shout, but his voice carries, exuding a certain authority that commands the attention of all who hear it. “I understand that you want answers, and you’ll get them, but not before Princess Allura arrives.”

“Respectfully, Black Paladin,” a voice calls out, gruff and grating despite the petite alien who wields it, “we should, at the very least, like an explanation for him.”

Refusing to flinch under the collective weight of the Coalition’s attention, Lotor smoothly deactivates the tablet and relinquishes it to Hunk with a smile, introducing himself before the champion—who, by the displeasure on his scarred face, Lotor has to assume would have painted him in a less than flattering light—has the opportunity to do so.

“Prince Lotor of the Galra Empire,” rather than the imperial salute, which he feels may not be well-received, Lotor opts instead for a sweeping bow.

“We know who you are,” a second voice interjects from the room’s right side, “it’s what you want that we’ve yet to ascertain.”

“Why, the same as you, I imagine: to put an end to my Father’s tyranny.”

This sends a ripple of turmoil out across the crowd, the disbelieving derision of some mingling with the halting hesitation of others, and beneath that something else, something Lotor is not given time enough to query before Princess Allura makes her entrance, Keith on her arm. The Marmora armour that Keith had donned when Lotor saw him last has been exchanged—quite purposefully, it seems—for that bearing Voltron’s insignia. It’s a deliberately provocative proclamation, he thinks, of ownership by the princess: no different than if she had stormed into the room and declared to all in attendance that Keith is hers.

By the look in her eye as she strides to the central podium, this was precisely her intention.

It’s a paltry sort of play, truly it is, but worse than this is the fact that it works, and Lotor’s own susceptibility to such trivial tactics is as irksome as it is embarrassing. He ought be above such things.

In opening with an apology for her delay, Princess Allura invites insincerity, and the room is suddenly awash with exactly that, all the Coalition’s prior impatience transformed into the assurances of a hundred different smiles.

Lotor does not trust a single one.

The exception to the rule, as is becoming concerningly commonplace, is Keith. The marmorite makes no particular attempt at subtlety, simply steps back from the princess’ side as she continues her address, and comes to stand instead by Lotor, a little quirk to his lips that likely goes unseen by everyone else in the room.

“You look tense,” he murmurs, and Lotor finds such blunt candour as delightful as ever.

“Oh dear,” though he daren’t take his eyes off the crowd for more than a tick, the prince inclines his head in Keith’s direction in a way he knows the smaller galra will pick up on, and keeps his voice low, “I had intended for it to come across as nonchalance.”

There’s a little huff of air—a snort, Lotor realises, and finds himself distinctly pleased—but before Keith is able to quip back anything clever or unfailing charming, the inquisition begins.

“Friends,” Princess Allura’s voice echoes throughout the cavernous room, seemingly without the need to raise her tone, “I should have liked to not to have need of gathering you all on such short notice, but this is rather an urgent matter: one that, it has become abundantly clear, cannot wait a tick longer unless I wish for Voltron’s allies to cut one another down within the walls of my very own home.”

Lotor is begrudgingly impressed at how easily she’s able to draw their attention, and he has to imagine that—given time—she would have made a decent queen.

“Scarcely three vargas prior to this meeting, one of your people,” she casts her frosty gaze out over the crowd, eyes not stopping for long enough upon any particular individual for the others to safely assume that they have escaped her condemnation, “made an attempt upon the life of a man who came to Voltron seeking asylum from Zarkon, as so many have, and offering in exchange invaluable insight with regards to the inner workings of the Empire.”

She turns, and Lotor follows her eyeline to find the translucent form of an alien mass with too many mouths.

“Councillor Fedij, during an external assault on Voltron, perpetrated by a rogue imperial fleet, an officer hailing from your system disregarded protocol and acted—of his own accord and far outside the realms of my desires—to assassinate Prince Lotor.”

Though the princess seemingly ignores the sudden commotion that floods forth as the Coalition leaders understand who the victim of the crime is, Lotor finds himself at the heart of their collective disdain, all eyes turned on him, and is given little choice but to withstand their accusatory stares without allowing himself to so much as flinch.

Princess Allura simply raises one hand to quiet them, her mouth pinched tight. “Prince Lotor has been granted asylum here as our ally, and as such is under my protection and the protection of my paladins. For one of your people to make an attempt on his life, strikes me as a personal affront.”

She’s an excellent diplomat, Lotor thinks, and a terrible liar. Fortunately for them all, the planetary leader she’s addressing is too flustered to notice.

“Therefore I ask only this: should I take recent events as your people’s declaration that you will be withdrawing from the Voltron Coalition?”

The room falls to a deathly quiet.

Then, from the bowels of this silence, a spluttering “No-!” that sounds as if the man named Fedij might choke at any moment.

“No?” The princess scarcely blinks. “Am I to believe, then, that this is how you treat your allies? Should I be anticipating a knife in my back sometime within the next movement?”

“Princess Allura, please, be reasonable-” if amorphic blue beings could sweat, then Lotor is sure that this one would be dripping buckets, “-whatever the individual responsible did, it was no fault of mine, but even if it were, that- I mean… he’s galra.”

It’s whispered as if a dirty word, and it’s an internal battle for Lotor not to recoil from the apparent distaste that has chased him all his life, albeit never for this half of his parentage.

At his side, the littlest Blade stiffens.

Though impossible for her to have seen this movement, Princess Allura directs a brief glance back over her shoulder towards Lotor—to whom she maintains a cool indifference—and then her paladin marked in crimson. It’s a fleeting thing, but the prince catches the warmth in her eyes, the affection, and beneath all of that, the guilt.

“As is Keith.” Her tone invites challenge, yet simultaneously says that to do so would be akin to signing one’s own death warrant. “Though he wears the red armour, you may know him better as the man who served as black paladin when we liberated your planet. Would you have his head too?”

The councilman flounders.

Conflict wars upon not only his face, but the faces of his peers. Some wear a startled revulsion that has stripped them of their thin political veneer in one fell swoop, while others seem to have been more well-informed as to Keith’s maternal half: their composure remains near untouched, betrayed only by the flaring of nostrils, as if collectively assaulted by an unpleasant smell that all would sooner disregard than address, the source of which they do not take kindly to being forcibly reminded of. Not a secret, then, Lotor concludes, but Keith’s galra heritage is hardly common knowledge either. What captures the prince’s attention, however, is not their bigotry—with that he is well acquainted—but rather the perplexing few scattered among the spectral crowd who he finds to be regarding Keith, unmasked in more ways than one, not with contempt but… intrigue.

In spite of the displeasure that surges and swells around her, Princess Allura remains resolute.

“I have been… advised,” here she shoots a second glance back towards the red paladin, and Lotor has to wonder at what words the two of them exchanged during Keith’s brief separation from his side, “that my personal conduct up until this point may have been somewhat misleading. Allow me to rectify this now: Voltron serves to defend the universe and its people. All its people. This is the purpose for which my father intended it, and therefore this is what I shall do to honour his legacy.”

As Lotor watches, the princess’ hands tighten near imperceptibly where they are clutched into white-knuckled fists behind her back.

“The Galra Empire will burn, but I do not intend to turn all its people to kindling. Not if there is a better way.”

The outcry is immediate.

Hatred, hostility, horror: these things come crashing down upon the princess as a tidal wave of emotion with which the room is suddenly awash, and it’s all Lotor can do not to spit the foul tang of it from his mouth. “After everything they’ve done-” writhes alongside “-they would never offer us the same courtesy!” and it’s a cacophony of seething betrayal.

“That is enough.”

Lotor has never considered himself particularly sensitive to quintessence, but the tenor of the altean princess’ voice sends an indescribable ripple out across the room that has the fine hairs on his nape standing at attention. By the way Keith has drawn taut beside him, arms firmly crossed but eyes wide and bright, Lotor knows he must feel it too.

“At the very least,” she begins, and claws or no, Lotor with be surprised if her hands are not bleeding by the time this meeting is adjourned, “you must recognise that the Blade of Marmora—an exclusively galran order—have assisted in the liberation of the homeworlds of many of you gathered here, and even before that worked covertly to undermine Zarkon. They are our trusted allies-”

It seems the wrong thing to say.

“The Blade of Marmora,” another councilmember barks, his face haggard and expression hard even despite the soft light it is cast in, and Lotor thinks the man vaguely familiar, “are galra who have betrayed their own: worse than even their savage blood would make them.”

Several of the paladins make exclamatory objections, even the champion looking ruffled with a heavy frown upon his brow, but beneath it all sounds a growl, a ferocious little noise that escapes despite its source’s fight to smother it with sheer willpower, and Lotor is hardly surprised when Keith takes a half-step forward with his patience clearly all but worn away.

“Marmora’s people are good people. They’ve fought for you—died for you—we’re not your enemy!”

“We.” the bearded dignitary echoes with a snide look at his peers, as if Keith’s self-identification in so noble an order as Marmora’s Li Naacht were akin to an admission of guilt. There’s a scattering of sound, scoffs and snarls all cast in the littlest Blade’s direction, and when the instigator of this bigotry makes to deal the final blow, Lotor cannot help but think that the individual’s ugly little horns might be all too easily ripped from his crown. “All galra are our enemy.”

Keith recoils, and Lotor snaps.

“If that is the tack you take,” the prince hisses, short-tempered and tight-lipped, “then the Empire will eat you alive.”

He steps forward with an easy sort of grace, passing Keith without looking at him and yet helpless to refrain from dragging knuckles over the jut of the red paladin’s hip as he does so. It’s a paltry comfort, but the most that Lotor can, at present, supply without drawing their audience’s attention where it would be best not to stray. All long strides and quiet power, he drops from the dais where team Voltron remain frozen, and meanders forward to trail his claws along the rim of the first tiered crescent, so lightly that the metal seems to sing; as he does so, those stood nearest to him recoil, seemingly for fear that he might reach out and drag them, screaming, from their holographic perches. Such a thing is not possible, of course, but Lotor revels in the knowledge that the security granted to them by virtue of being physically absent is not enough to quell their fright.

“You use lies and fearmongering to justify your own prejudices,” he muses, not even deigning turn his head as he stalks with languid resolution around the room’s edge, “it is unsightly.”

Withdrawing his claws with a sharp, swift movement, slices through the silence in a way that is deeply satisfying, and even more so for how it seems to petrify the Coalition representatives where they stand.

“The Blade of Marmora have always been of a noble disposition, and if you were worth the air you breathe then you would know full-well that the reason they—as you so elegantly termed it—betrayed their own, was that they openly defied the Empire’s most notorious sovereign in light of the atrocities she committed, declaring her actions as ones of injustice and senseless violence without honour: a declaration for which she demanded their heads.” Narrowed eyes sweep the room and find the Puigian bigot—ah, Puig, that’s why he knows him—with his horrid little face all scrunched up. “You do not mistrust the Blade for any reason other than their ancestry, and to pretend otherwise is a pathetic waste of your time and—far more crucially—mine.”

“You- you should not even be here!” the man throws back, “You enslaved my people when we were newly freed! You imprisoned them! You made me summon-!”

“Yes,” Lotor cuts in, tired of suffering slander to his face, “I made you summon Voltron for my own ends. I had my telepath manipulate your simple little brain and call your allies to your aid, after which, I released you and your people—unharmed, might I add—so that you may stand here and make accusations as if I am some sort of an abhorrent monster.”

They’re so dreadfully tiresome, the lot of them. Such short-sighted whiny little creatures.

“Do you think any imperial soldier of significant rank would have been so kind? If I had wanted Puig, I would have taken it. As it was I utilised only my personal battlecruiser and my generals in the siege—if you could even call it such. I did not so much as deploy the drones.” It had been pathetically easy. “Of course, had my aim been to hold the planet longer than was necessary merely to draw out Voltron, it would have required at least a little forethought, but as it was? Your pitiful little planet fell to a mere fraction of the Empire’s strength, and all in under a varga.”

Lotor turns his back on the aggrieved Puigian, striding towards Princess Allura with purpose ingrained in his very footsteps.

“Your so-called allies haven’t the weapons, the training, or the defences necessary to withstand a true imperial assault. They would turn away assistance from those best equipped to help them purely for their race, and cast disdain upon a man to whom—as you yourself said, Princess—they and their ilk owe a great deal.” He pauses, a damning sort of scorn painting his features. “Your mistake is believing that you are winning imperial territories through anything other than my father’s own indifference.”

That sparks a reaction.

Behind him, the Voltron Coalition erupts, but it’s Princess Allura who holds Lotor’s attention. With her still standing tall on the room’s central podium, and Lotor himself having vacated it to make his point, the two of them are now eye-to-eye and barely a dozen rak apart. Though she makes a valiant attempt to control her expression, the princess’ ears are angled downwards in agitation, and eyes smouldering with a ferocity befitting of Voltron’s lioness.

Yet, when she unclenches her jaw to address Lotor in a lowered tone, it is not to refute him.

“You lack delicacy,” she grits out, and the prince can hardly find it in himself to deny that when, in this moment, delicacy is the least of his concerns.

“My good graces must be earnt, I’m afraid. I shan’t pander to a bigot merely to win their favour, especially not one from so useless a planet as Puig.”

“Useless?” It’s exhaled on a breath, and when Lotor looks to the princess’ left the champion is there, the tight line of his mouth telling of his stance on the subject. “They’re people.”

“They are,” the nod Lotor offers him is curt, “a tactically inconsequential people with very little to offer other than more mouths to feed and bodies to protect. If you focus your time and resources on planets like that, you will lose this war.”

And by the looks on their faces, they know it too.

“If I might be granted a moment of the collective’s time?” A new voice cuts in above the clamour, the commotion waning slightly as all heads turn to towards the source.

Princess Allura waves her hand in a sweeping gesture, a relief to her features that suggests she who speaks is one the altean favours, “by all means, Lady Aej, the floor is yours.”

She’s one of the curious few who had caught Lotor’s attention earlier, and with a jolt that the prince is sure to smother, he now realises why. This woman is of planet Hs’iir. There’s no mistaking that silhouette for anything else: the long arc of her snout distinctive enough alone, but doubly so when paired with the sleek, obsidian-tipped ears that fall from her crown to drape over the breadth of scarred shoulders. She and her ilk are a warrior people, a people who have reaped the benefits of the Empire for millennia, and it was remiss of him not to recognise a Hs’ii noble sooner.

“Though it seems that the personal values of the collective may not align, I believe I speak for all of us when I say that we shall honour your judgement on the… issue at hand.” She bares her teeth without looking in Lotor’s direction. “If you say Prince Lotor is our ally then I, for one, should be delighted to consider his highness as such.”

For scarcely a tick, Lotor finds himself the subject of unfathomable eyes.

No sooner has she met his gaze does her attention flit away, but there’s something in this, in both her actions and address, in the false warmth on her tongue, that strikes the prince as peculiar.

“After all,” she continues without blinking, “the foe of my foe would be my fellow.”

As she says this, her lithe little tail flickers as if with a mind of its own, but the movement points Lotor’s eyes in the way of a second alien dignitary—Rygnirthian: another familiar face within imperial circles—just as the man curls stout fingers up to adjust the fastening of his collar. Or… that’s what it is meant to look like, at a glance, but the awkward set of his hand is too deliberate, the angle of his arm inefficient for the menial task he apparently attempts, and it’s like this that everything clicks into place.

Oh, Lotor thinks, his focus centred on the Rygnirthian lord who watches for a reaction a little too intently, his covert salute falling away when he is sure the message has been received, oh you pretty little fool. You’ve liberated the enemy.

Princess Allura is unwittingly asking after any further objections from her allies—none of whom dare voice such a thing when to do so seemingly risks her wrath—completely ignorant to the subterfuge taking place right beneath her nose; both Hs’iir and Rygnirath have been imperial territories for an age, thus, in triumphing at Naxzela and sequestering their systems from the Empire, Voltron’s maiden monarch has invited treachery into her bed.

 

---

 

As the prince prowls about the room’s edge—all quiet power and bated breath, wielding his words like a weapon and with them carving his prey to pieces—Keith’s eyes are for him and him alone.

It’s brutal really, but not undeserved, and Keith hears all his own frustrations vocalised with more coherency than he himself would ever have been able to. This, Keith thinks, is Lotor in his element; he’s a formidable opponent in every sense, but it’s his mind that makes him so, and witnessing first-hand how easily undone Voltron’s allies are with only a handful of choice insults is staggering.

When the Empire’s heir looks Allura dead in the eye and highlights Zarkon’s indifference as the sole reason for her sequence of victories, Keith feels the sting of it acutely. But beneath that is a certain wash of relief because it’s true, and perhaps like this, coming from Lotor without the pantomime of invincibility everyone else seems to attribute to Voltron, she’ll finally listen.

Though Keith can’t hear what’s being said, Lotor having lowered his tone to exchange words—hushed and heated—with both Allura and Shiro, the tight expressions worn by all three are telling, and it sets him on edge. It’s only when a new voice interjects from the gallery of outraged allies, slicing through the din and silencing them all, that the princess’ face falls to one of gratitude akin to Keith’s own, and this relief is only doubled when the alien dignitary who takes the floor speaks in favour of respecting Allura’s judgment and laying the matter to rest.

It’s like this that Lotor’s near-assassination is settled—Allura intimidating the Coalition into submission by way of falsely implying that Voltron might abandon an entire planet of innocents for the transgressions of one individual—and it is arranged that the culprit be made an example of: he is to be shipped back to his homeworld within the next quintant alongside all those who seemed happy to stand by and let him play at executioner. To the senior members of the rebel faction, several of whom are present, Allura demands that they screen their enlistees for extremists as best as they are able, and not arm their newest members until they have sufficiently trained them. When one woman tries to protest against this, citing limited time and resources, the princess snaps back: “We shall win this war with soldiers, not canon-fodder. I would sooner cut our forces in half than I would send untrained civilians into Zarkon’s line of fire.”

After that, all further objections wither away.

That’s not to say the majority are entirely happy about it, and even less so in relation to the scolding they’d received for the attempt on Lotor’s life, but at the very least the Coalition seem to have resigned themselves to little more than shooting poisonous looks in the prince’s direction. When Lotor returns to the podium once more, it is to stand beside Allura rather than removed from her.

From here on, it’s a matter of explaining Voltron’s recent findings, and it’s to this end that Hunk now projects the footage of the imperial logs large enough for the whole Coalition to bear witness.

Keith watches with a deep furrow to his brow. Just as Lance had earlier described, the galra captain is frantic in her ramblings, panic bleeding into hysteria as she fumbles through a fragmented recount of a facility of some sort—the particulars of which seem unclear even to her—wherein scientists work under the watchful eyes of druids, all without an imperial sentry in sight.

“Is that significant?” Keith directs the question towards Lotor, whose mouth had thinned into a tight line of agitation upon first mention of the druids, and now stands still and silent, absorbing the contents of the logs with a critical eye.

“It is entirely probable.” The prince’s attention never leaves the face of the captain even as her incoherence falls into a disquieting nothingness, golden eyes glazed and vacant. “All imperial facilities, military or otherwise, are manned with sentries as a matter of course. Haggar alone refuses them as labourers, and so far as I recall she has never allowed machines not of her own making anywhere near her labs; technology may be tampered with by outside forces in a way the organic mind is immune to, and my father’s witch has always favoured discretion so far as her more… experimental work is concerned.”

The galra captain’s image blinks, frowns, and goes to end the recording with confusion written into the lines of her face.

“That in particular,” Lotor scowls, “reeks of druidic influence.”

“With your intimate knowledge of the Empire’s ongoings,” another Coalition diplomat calls out, and Keith has to bite his tongue at the scorn on theirs, “what would you, Prince Lotor, recommend we do about it?”

Though Lotor doesn’t so much as turn to look at the individual that addresses him, choosing instead to speak to Pidge as if it were she who had posed the question, Keith’s eyes are drawn to the jump of a muscle in his jaw, the flex of the tendons in his neck, and thinks it’s a very good thing that all these lords, ladies, chancellors, and whatever the hell else they call themselves, are a million miles away rather than within stabbing distance.

“I presume you can triangulate the approximate origin of the vessel and clear that sector of your allies?”

“I can.” Pidge’s mouth twists. “But we’ve tangled with Haggar and her druids before—if this place is what you think it is then I don’t like our odds if we just go in guns blazing.”

The ‘even with Voltron’ goes unsaid, but Keith sees it in the set of Pidge’s shoulders, and knows the only reason she hadn’t spoken it aloud was to avoid panicking the Coalition unnecessarily. Naxzela is still too fresh for all of them, the particulars of that near-catastrophe have been contained to those who were there rather than spreading the word that Haggar has the ability to turn an entire planet into a bomb, and Keith is a strong believer that the majority being kept in the dark is for the best.

In more ways than one.

Though he tries not to linger on it, his fingers are blistering, a terrible boil of heat beneath waxen skin that threatens to turn his bones to ash. Eyes falling downwards, Keith finds his own hand visually unassuming—still armoured in the black of his undersuit, and without the weight of a ship’s controls in its grasp—but he feels it: the searing agony of everything he is, a merciless writhing thing, quickening his breath and dragging him down to-

“Keith?”

There’s a sudden weight on his left shoulder, too firm to be the bite of shrapnel but Keith starts all the same, his hand darting out to grasp at a metal-plated forearm and only barely recognising it as such in time to stop himself from wrenching it from his person and tossing his assailant—Shiro, it’s Shiro, not an enemy and never a threat—halfway across the room.

“Keith?” Hearing his name a second time, the words strung together by a whisper of concern, is enough to puncture the bubble of muted sound that surrounds him and let the Coalition’s ongoing clamour return to the world. “Looked like we’d lost you for a second there.”

Shiro’s wearing a half smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and Keith wonders, not for the first time, if that’s his fault or the Empire’s.

Wonders if there’s a difference.

“M’okay,” he forces out on a breath, locking on to the security of Shiro’s fingertips as they press down firmly against his shoulder-plate, rather than the scorched stumps of his own, “just zoned out for a moment.”

It must seem like a weak excuse when, of all of them, Keith has the least reason to be unfocused—not battle-weary like the rest—but regardless, Shiro’s expression turns soft on sympathy as he withdraws his touch.

In turning his eyes back to the matter at hand, Keith is relieved to note that his mental lapse has gone unnoticed by the rest of team Voltron, their attention consumed by the evacuation of their allies and subsequent investigation of the facility suspected of being under Haggar’s jurisdiction, with Lotor, too, seeming similarly engrossed.

It’s just as well, Keith thinks; his issues are his own, the last thing the others need is to have to deal with his shit on top of everything else.

 

Allura finishes her business with the Coalition as swiftly as she is able, and when she dismisses them, they go gracefully. As the last of their holographic forms blink out of existence, her shoulders sag and she heaves a great sigh of relief.

“That,” the princess breathes, “was a great deal more trying than it ought have been.”

“Diplomacy at its finest,” Lotor grumbles, a sarcastic curl to his words.

Although she’s quick to cover it up with a cough, Allura can’t quite conceal the snort of laughter that this sardonic tone tears from her, and judging by the indignant little noise that Lance makes at the back of his throat, Keith’s not the only one to have noticed.

“Once that sector is cleared,” she powers onward, a little too determined to pretend that she hadn’t found amusement in Lotor’s sour mood, despite Keith knowing for a fact that she hates dealing with uncooperative envois just as much, “we shall have to move quickly. Whether Haggar is there personally or not, the sudden absence of movement in the surrounding area will not go unnoticed, and I would prefer we not give them opportunity to go on the offensive.”

There’s a murmur of agreement all around. Then Shiro steps forward, eyeing the prince with what seems to Keith an unusually calculating sort of look.

“Tactically, I would have expected you to recommend that we move in without the exodus. Like this we’re putting ourselves at a disadvantage.”

“Tactically, that would be the better play,” Lotor inclines his head, the air around him newly charged, “and I certainly maintain that our chances of success would be optimised were you to refrain from such an obvious preparation of assault, but as you have made perfectly clear, that is not how Voltron operates.”

“It’s not.” Shiro affirms with steel in his voice, at the same time as Lance echoes a hiss of “our?” through clenched teeth, earning himself a reproachful look from the black paladin.

“Well then,” flicking a stray forelock of platinum hair from his face, Lotor looks down his nose at Shiro in such a way that Keith feels his own hackles rise, “be glad I spared you the bother of proposing it.”

There’s a second—more of a beat, really—wherein Keith sees the dark of prosthetic fingers flex as if to form a fist, and thinks Lotor might soon find himself with a black eye, which is… ludicrous, really. Shiro wouldn’t hit someone, not like that, not outside of battle, and certainly not for so a minor transgression as speaking out of turn, even if the galra prince is being deliberately provocative. Shiro’s not like that. Shiro would never.

Still, Keith finds himself placing a steadying hand on the seam of metal and flesh, and feels markedly better when the tension surrounding them fizzles away to nothing.

“Forget what might’ve been tactically better; this is what we’re doing, so this is what we’ve got to work with.” Violet eyes skip between Shiro and Lotor, fixing the latter with a firm look as if to transmit the non-verbal equivalent of ‘behave’, and then to the green paladin who is, as always, a careful observer. “Pidge, did you ever get around to applying your cloaking tech to the other Lions?”

“Oh, yeah!”

Her eyes light up with pure, unadulterated joy.

“God, I’d forgotten you weren’t here for that! It works like a charm on Red, but it turns out that whatever the hell the trans-reality comets are made from is dense as shit, and there’s a direct correlation between- you know what?” She wafts at the air as if physically clearing her thoughts. “I can explain the particulars later. Long story short: Green and Red, yes; Blue and Yellow, sort of, but it’s temperamental because of their increased mass; and Black’s a prissy bitch who won’t let me touch her until I’ve perfected it on the others.”

To his left, Keith hears Shiro sigh out a long-suffering reprimand of “language,” that goes completely ignored, and can’t help but fight a smile, amused to know that this tone has about as much effect on Pidge as it did him when he was still a cadet.

“So we leave the Castleship somewhere they can’t pick it up on their sensors, and take Red and Green,” he reaffirms, “that give us the best shot of getting in undetected without leaving us completely open; if we need Voltron, you and Lance can hold out until the other Lions get to our location, but otherwise we get in, get as much info as we can without engaging, and get out.”

Pidge nods decisively, but it’s Shiro who speaks, a certain dullness to his tongue.

“You’re coming with us?”

Keith’s blood runs cold.

“I- yeah?” Though he turns as if to face Shiro, his vision has centred on one of the vacant holo-pads somewhere past his friend’s ear, and Keith can’t bring himself to look anywhere else, can’t bear to see listless disapproval painted in shades of soft grey, not now, not again. “This is exactly the kind of thing the Blade trained me for. I can- I mean, unless you don’t… want me to?”

There’s a silence then, one that simultaneously lasts a lifetime and yet is over in an instant.

“Don’t be daft,” Allura chimes, with a sweet kindness to her features, and like that the pressure on Keith’s chest is alleviated, “you are one of a select few to whom I would trust my life entirely. It would be a pleasure to have you serve by my side once more, Paladin Keith Kogane.”

She drops into what Keith vaguely recognises as an altean curtsey—her hands clasped before her sternum in a very particular sort of way—but there’s laughter in her eyes, a smile on her lips, and while Keith would be hard-pressed to ignore the regality of the gesture, there’s a teasing affection to it too.

Almost smiling, Keith opens his mouth to reply only for Shiro’s touch to return to his person, this time a shock of ice beneath the collar of his armour, tearing the words from the former paladin’s throat and replacing them with his own.

“It’s good to have you back.”

He says this with a warmth that trickles from the crux of his metal palm and straight down Keith’s spine, but what the younger man might once have likened to liquid sunlight could now be mistaken for hot tar, as jarring as it is familiar.

“It’s good to be back,” the words are second nature, a script that has served as the foundation of their friendship for years now, and everyone smiles at the sound of them.

Everyone but Lotor.

The prince is very still, Keith thinks—or maybe that’s him, maybe it’s both of them?—and though his expression reveals nothing of what thoughts might be running through that impossible mind, Lotor’s pupils have narrowed to scandalised slits, near swallowed by the surrounding blue, and magnetised to the hand at Keith’s nape.

Oblivious to this, Shiro has picked up the thread of dialogue, organising the assault on Haggar’s base with a charismatic authority that makes it easy to follow his direction. Their plan of assault is this: with Lance and Pidge providing support and extraction, the rest of them will infiltrate in two teams to cover as much ground as possible.

“With Keith and I in separate groups,” Shiro’s metal fingers squeeze briefly, cold and biting against Keith’s skin, “we’ll be able to interact with the galra tech without the risk of tripping any alarms by hacking into anything we shouldn’t.”

“That was one time and I almost had it,” Pidge mutters, but doesn’t otherwise protest.

“We’ll know more once we actually locate the lab, but assuming it follows the architectural basics we’ve come to expect from their scientific facilities, Lance, you’ll take Keith and Hunk to an entry point on the portside, and Pidge’ll drop Allura and I on the starboard.”

And it’s here that Lotor—feline eyes snapping from the black paladin’s hand to his face—chooses to interject.

“I will also be accompanying you.”

A sudden rigidity shocks through the hold on Keith’s nape, releasing the tension from his neck and the air from his lungs all at once, immediately followed by Shiro’s hand falling away altogether. The loss is so sudden that Keith feels abruptly adrift, untethered, almost as if he might fade away at any moment.

“We’re not walking you into a galra base.”

Lotor’s eyes harden.

“It was not a request, Champion, but even if it were my skillset would be invaluable to you in there and you would be a fool to turn me away.”

“Blind trust is pretty foolish too,” is what Lance immediately fires back in Shiro’s defence, “and I know which I’d prefer to take a chance on.”

Gritting his teeth into a facsimile of a smile, the prince makes what Keith can only describe as an admirable effort not to physically lash out. “The terms of this alliance included my involvement in all matters pertaining to Haggar, which this very much appears to do, so I would thank you not to-“

Allura cuts him off.

“The terms of our alliance were to consult you on all strategic measures concerning Haggar, and we have done so, but having you accompany us into enemy territory was never part of our arrangement.”

“Respectfully,” Lotor grits out, “I disagree. Even in the best-case scenario you will have to contend with a facility full of hostiles, at least some of whom will be of druidic descent. Taking that into consideration, it would be in your best interests not to confine me to my rooms like a wayward child, but rather utilise me as you should have been doing from the very start.”

“We have tangled with the druids before without your help. Thank you for your most generous offer, Prince Lotor, but we do not presently require your brawn.”

“My brains, then,” he quips without missing a beat, “Language is not a stagnant creature: you may have known the common tongue once, but I assure you that it, along with the rest of the universe, is somewhat evolved from what you were taught as a girl. Though I doubt you would be incapable of reading it, your comprehension will likely lack the fluidity that a swift infiltration would best benefit from.”

Before Allura can launch into something that, judging by the glower that is beginning to strain at her temple, the prince would undoubtedly take as an assault on his character, Coran claps his hands together with a sharp smack, causing Keith to nearly jump out of his skin.

“If I may?” The altean’s broad smile is as out of place as it is unapologetic. “When your fathers would have little tiffs over the best course of action, they’d leave it to a good old fashioned vote!”

Keith has to admire Coran for that—for bringing up Zarkon and Alfor’s former friendship so candidly—but his admiration is tinged with a healthy dose of alarm for the older man’s fearlessness too.

“A… vote?”

It’s Allura who asks this, always willing to humour Coran, but tentative even so. At the same time, Lotor breathes, “little tiffs,” as if he can’t quite believe his ears.

“Yes, a vote!” Tugging at his moustache thoughtfully, Coran elaborates: “if two of Voltron’s number disagreed, the remaining three would make the decision for them by way of majority. In our case, there are five of you remaining, but the key principle still carries.”

“…Fine,” Lance is, unsurprisingly, the first to adapt, moving his palms through the air in what Keith can only describe as a slicing motion, “then I’m a hard no. I’d prefer to take my chances with the druids, thanks.”

“Well that’s dumb,” Pidge rolls her eyes at Lance’s high-pitched noise of protest, turning instead to eye Lotor critically. “If any of us stand a chance against a druid it’s you, and I’d rather nobody dies today just because we left a perfectly good galtean super-soldier behind where he can’t be any use to anyone.”

Keith sees how Lotor frowns at ‘galtean’, as if unsure whether or not it’s meant as an insult, but ultimately he inclines his head to Pidge in silent thanks.

Huffing, Lance turns narrowed eyes to Keith, his expression frustrated but not malicious, and gestures at him with a frown.

“Go on mullet, say it. I know you’re going to.”

“I-” It’s only as Lance says this that Keith realises that despite being an additional member to the party himself, he too gets a vote. “I… yeah. Yeah I agree with Pidge, Lotor should come with us.”

Though the prince is careful to keep his expression neutral, Keith catches the smile in his eyes and isn’t quite sure how to feel about his own vote having been so apparently predictable.

All eyes turn to Hunk.

“I’m, er, I’m actually with Lance on this one.” One large hand comes up to rub uneasily at the back of his own head as he addresses Lotor directly. “Not that I’m saying working with you on your ship wasn’t great and everything, but there’s that and then there’s trusting you to have my back in the field and man I just… I just don’t feel like we’re there yet, y’know? Rome wasn’t built in a day and all that.”

“Things don’t just happen overnight,” Pidge chips in, when the room’s non-human occupants are silent for a beat too long, and then, more to herself than anyone else: “Damnit, the update should’ve caught that one; if it’s the linguistic relationship to nouns then I’m going to have to reconfigure-”

“That’s two for, two against.” Allura’s lips twist unhappily. “Shiro? It’s your call.”

The man in question is silent for a long time, steel eyes fixed on Lotor, and so still that Keith half questions whether he’s even breathing.

Pinching the scarred bridge of his nose, Shiro hisses out a sigh.

“You should all get in some rest, if you can; we leave in T-minus eight vargas.” He eyes the prince without blinking. “I’ll see to it that your things are returned to you before then.”

 

When, after a fitful attempt at sleep, Keith brings Lotor’s weapons and armour to his assigned quarters, the galra prince practically bounces across the room, an anticipatory spring in his step.

“Haggar or no,” he says, taking the proffered sword with a sort of relief behind his smile, “I cannot tell you how glad I am to be able to finally do something. I half feared I might waste away in this Sa-forsaken place.”

Keith can’t bring himself to return this apparent good humour. Grasping Lotor’s arm with a severity that, judging by his expression, he wasn’t remotely prepared for, Keith tugs the taller man so close that white hair falls like a silken curtain between the two of them and the rest of the universe. Sure that he has the galra prince’s undivided attention, he says: “Don’t make me regret this.”

Blue eyes crinkle at the corners.

“Now would I do a thing like that?”

“I’m serious, Lotor,” the tenor of his voice sees that roguishly lopsided grin melt away, “I meant what I said before: I will kill you if I have to.”

Lotor is silent for the length of a heartbeat, his hand coming up to lay over Keith’s own where it bites into violet flesh.

“I don’t doubt it,” he breathes, “but lay your worries to rest, little Blade: though it would be an honour to die by your hand, I shan’t squander my life. There is still much I must do before Sa may claim my soul, and I do not intend to leave this world as anything less than victorious.”

Notes:

This chapter was so political good god, but Lotor is finally going to get back in the field and he's almost as excited by the prospect as I am. As always, thank you for being patient with me - I truly appreciate it! Also, SevenOfSevens made a Discord for this fic which is really exciting (even though I know next to nothing about discord), so if you're interested in that please do join!

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TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 17: Megalovina Plays in the Distance

Summary:

Previously: The coalition meeting commences, Lotor is privy to a discreet declaration of loyalty, and Allura makes her position regarding the Prince clear to their allies. After all this is concluded, Lotor witnesses something he doesn't much like, and a difficult decision is reached allowing him to accompany Team Voltron into a recently uncovered Druidic Lab.

It’s in the hanger of the green Lion that Team Voltron have gathered themselves, and so it’s to the hanger of the green Lion that Lotor is escorted, Keith forging ahead with his shoulders set into something stiff and serious. There remain several things unspoken between them: the champion’s barbarism for one—though this Lotor is reluctant to challenge while the black paladin’s good favour is, at present, the difference between being permitted to accompany Voltron on this mission, and not—and Keith’s declaration of violent intent to name another. Despite the note of reluctance to it, the threat had been voiced in no uncertain terms, and Lotor would be flattering himself to think that any fondness Keith holds for him would take precedence over his loyalty to those he evidently considers family.

He is, after all, galra to a fault.

And so it is that the green Lion of Voltron comes to loom over the both of them, daunting as she is inviting, and a true leviathan of divinity. Lotor has seen her before, of course, amidst the vast swathes of emptiness that span between one celestial body and the next, but in the heat of battle when the prince had hardly the time to admire her, and she was not even the largest foe he faced, Lotor hadn’t thought what it would be to stand before this creature of legend without a great metal beast of his own.

Now he knows.

Because the hanger in which she makes her home is large enough to house her and nothing else, so no sooner have the doors opened than does Lotor find himself at her flank, neck craning back in an attempt to receive her full visage, and… she is a thing of beauty, that he will not deny, even if the garish hue Alfor chose to render her in is a tad too brash for Lotor’s personal taste; a lion’s likeness, boundless power shaped into feline grace, and between her two great forepaws, each easily the height of a man twice over, huddle the paladins themselves.

“Very well,” it’s Princess Allura who’s speaking, anticipatory adrenaline for the battle ahead already apparent in her posture, but otherwise comfortable among friends, and seemingly oblivious to Lotor’s entrance, “then Matthew, if you wouldn’t mind making up the numbers?”

“Of course!”

The shaggy-haired rebel drops into a sweeping bow with a wink in the princess’ direction. There’s a cheek to him that his sibling does not possess, but brief as their previous encounters have been Lotor has had ample time to recognise that same cleverness about him that the green paladin is steeped in, and knows he’d do well not to take it lightly.

When this ‘Matthew’ looks up to find Lotor with a precision as sharp as it is startling (though his attention isn’t so hostile as Lotor might have expected from the guarded posture he wears) there’s a shrewd intellect there that isn’t unlike that with which Pidge had first greeted him.

Yes, he’d do well not to underestimate that one.

“Kogane, Mcclain, Garrett! You’re with me!” This pointed address is evidently intended as a surreptitious alert for his companions as to Lotor’s arrival—he is, after all, Keith’s assigned quarry, and with one’s appearance inevitably comes the other—in a somewhat more tactful manner than it is ultimately allowed to be, the black paladin whipping his head around as a predator might at first blood.

The urge calling for Lotor to bare his teeth and dissuade these attentions from their oblivious prey is a powerful one.

To do so would reveal too much, of course, and as little Pidge—separate from the group as she perches atop her Lion’s paw, ever the careful observer—already knows full well that Lotor holds a candle for her friend, it wouldn’t do to betray just how brightly it burns. It wouldn’t, but then the champion is stepping forward with too much intent in his posture and all Lotor can think is how brutish the Witch’s pet had proven himself to be mere vargas before.

“Shall we?” he interjects with his words and body alike, stepping smoothly between the black paladin and his intended quarry, a cordial nod serving to falsify enough nonchalance as if to make this seem pure coincidence. “I should rather not give the druids more time to counter this assault than they’ve already had.”

The champion falters, gait stuttering as his eyeline is interrupted and his gaze has no choice but to land on Lotor; though it’s for scarcely a tick it sends a shot of ice through the prince’s veins, because behind the gunmetal of haunted eyes there’s nothing, absolute absence, and in some distantly disturbing way, this strikes Lotor as familiar.

As quickly as this thought appears, so too does it slip from the forefront of the prince’s concerns as his attention is otherwise commandeered.

“Behave,” comes the lowly grumbled reminder from behind him, Keith’s voice that of someone fondly exasperated rather than aware of the monster in their midst. In casting his eye back over his shoulder, Lotor meets that that sullen smile—brow heavy and yet without any real heat behind it—with one of his own, more a comfort than a promise.

Still, when Keith steps out from behind the prince, the softness granted to him by virtue of Lotor’s shadow melts away under the harsh artificial light.

“Kolivan came through,” he announces to the room, “there wasn’t much he could find out on such short notice, but apparently one of our operatives has encountered a couple of facilities like this one; even the low security zones need a passcode just to go from one to the next—a galra handprint isn’t enough—and the higher levels’ll require a quintessence signature.”

“Do we have that?” Hunk asks, “the passcode, I mean, not a quintessence signature, obviously.”

Arms crossed and red-clad shoulders drawn tight with tension, Keith makes a noncommittal noise.

“Yes and no. Apparently Haggar’s passcodes are standardised because she keeps her people on a regular rotation between labs, so no one but her really knows too much about anything, but because of that they’re changed regularly: more regularly than our inside man is in contact.”

Lotor receives all this with a certain level of quiet disbelief—not for the Witch’s misdeeds, no, of those he has little doubt, but the only people in Haggar’s inner circle are druids, after all, so for the Blade of Marmora to have access to such information would imply-

He says as much, and the voice that answers him is without physical form.

Perky and distinctly altean in tone, the words: “yes, I questioned that too!” ring out not only from the integrated comms of team Voltron’s armor, but from that of Lotor’s own, damn near making him jump out of his skin in what would have been an unsightly show of weakness.

Thankfully, he holds himself together, though not, by the look in the green paladin’s beady little eyes, wholly without notice.

The princess’ advisor is wittering on about   some previous mission of Voltron’s from before Lotor faced them as Emperor pro tem, or had much of an interest in their oh-so-noble dealings at all, but eventually Coran circles back around to: “so at the time of course I had to wonder at the Blade’s entanglement with the Druidic Church, and Kolivan was quite gracious in humouring my curiosity!”

He makes such a great show over clearing his own throat, that despite him being elsewhere on the ship—the bridge, presumably, as an altean vessel would be hard-pressed to fly without an altean pilot at the helm—Lotor can vividly see the man straightening up and tugging at his moustache with a zest that hardly suits the slaughterhouse they are willingly walking themselves into.

“A great many bloodlines,” the altean man starts, his voice unnaturally gravelled in a way that is clearly meant to emulate the Blade’s commander, “are pledged to Marmora’s legacy.”

So distracted is Lotor by the way that Keith, upon recognising the impression as he who it was clearly intended, snorts out a sharp burst of air only to clamp his jaw tightly around the sound of it, a sharp and unfailingly charming grin being smothered as best as the littlest Blade is able before it transforms into outright laughter, that the weight of Coran’s words hit him a little late.

“It’s all strictly hush-hush, of course, Marmora being such a secretive lot, and when I probed further—purely for curiosity’s sake, you understand—he clammed up tighter than a duhloum in a solar storm!”

Hush-hush indeed, Lotor thinks to himself, but one thing stands in stark contrast to all else.

The Blade of Marmora have a druid.

It’s inconceivable, really, but between their divine duty as a servant of Sa, and their ancestral loyalty to Marmora herself… whoever the Blade’s operative is, they are uniquely positioned as someone who poses a true threat to Haggar.

And, therefore, someone that Lotor should most certainly like to know better.

“Anyway!” this segue is punctuated by what sounds like a perfunctory clap of the altean’s hands, “I can’t take you a jot closer without risking detection, so you best be off,” and then, with the voice of one who guards a mountain of worries and yet tries very hard not to bother anyone else with a single one: “do take care, paladins.”

The comms give a crackle of static, and fall to silence.

Sliding his eyes up the white metal of the Lion’s left paw to where Pidge is still seated apart from the others, Lotor finds her watching him with an eyebrow raised in expectation.

“Your doing, I suppose?” He taps the blunt edge of a claw against the collar of his suit to be sure to convey his meaning, but he needn’t have bothered.

“Yup,” she’s smirking before Lotor has even finished his question, “I tinkered with the communication functions a bit and tapped in to our primary frequency.”

Of course she did.

“So on the off chance that we are separated, we ought be able to find one another easily enough.”

It’s an offhand comment, stemming from a sort of fond pride on the clever little paladin’s behalf, and careless because of it. It’s easy, too easy, really, to forget that the paladins are not his-

…are merely allies of convenience.

Determined to remind him of this truth, Princess Allura has jumped on the offensive, her tone accusatory when she asks: “and why would we get separated? Is there something you wish to attend to without our knowledge?”

Yes, Lotor thinks, sourly, but holds his tongue, replying instead with; “I merely think it a wise choice on Pidge’s part to prepare for all eventualities.”

“That’s fair!” The yellow paladin jumps in, ever the mediator, with the tone of someone who is trying to be covertly apologetic for his princess’s cold demeanour, “right, Allura? Staying in contact, being prepared… that’s fair.”

Princess Allura remains blatantly unconvinced.

 

With time running short and Matthew encouraging them on their way, half of Voltron’s number troop obediently out of the hanger, Keith among them, leaving Lotor in what is inarguably less than stellar company.

“Alrighty,” from where she’s perched atop her Lion’s paw, Pidge rolls her shoulders with a small noise of regret that indicates they’re somewhat stiff—no wonder, under such ungainly armor, and with Lotor knowing that the littlest paladin’s posture is appalling besides—before dropping down with a hard thud that she scarcely seems to feel, “Green?”

There’s a slight pause then, just long enough for Lotor to know that its presence there is an abnormality, before Pidge is half turning to face their gathering with a very peculiar sort of look.

“Is something wrong?” The black paladin’s brows have drawn together in a heavy line, but Pidge shakes off his concern with a thoughtful hum.

“Nah, we’re good.”

Further attempts at questioning this momentary lapse are waved away, and Lotor has to wonder at that, at the lack of structure or rank in the paladin’s dynamic. Though not impossible that each member of Team Voltron are nobility in their own right, Lotor has seen nothing in their manner to indicate as much, and so in all likelihood Princess Allura outranks each and every one, and yet Pidge now defies and dismisses both her and the black paladin without care—not cruelly, of course, only in so far that they are all clearly established as equals rather than operating within the structured hierarchy Lotor would have expected.

In some ways, but not others, they remind Lotor of himself and his generals, and he cannot help but wonder which side of the line it was that he overstepped.

Then, there’s a surge of movement, a great rush of air—not noise, some distant part of the prince recognises, dimly, not the grinding of gears nor the screeching of metal—and the green Lion of Voltron has lowered her head, seeming, briefly, to regard the mortal gathering at her forepaws with interest, before unhinging her great jaw. The paladins may be used to this, no hesitation in their footsteps as they stride surely into the belly of the beast, but Lotor himself feels almost reverent as he steps into the cavern of her maw and beyond, up the sloping ramp of her tongue and through the shadow-soft corridor of her throat, humility landing as a physical weight upon his shoulders.

Settling into the cockpit with less ease than they’d like to pretend, even with Lotor doing them the courtesy of pressing himself into the farthest corner so as not to crowd the somewhat modest space, the paladins ready themselves for the task ahead. Though Princess Allura stands tall at Pidge’s side, the champion’s placement—with his bulk firmly between the pilot’s chair, and Lotor himself—is quite a deliberate one. Still, as this Lion and her crimson counterpart burst forth from their castle, Lotor finds himself content enough to make peace with solitude as a requisite of this undertaking.

“Engaging cloaking subroutine now,” Pidge flicks several switches out of the prince’s line of vision, but there’s an unmistakable hum of static that charges the space around them, “Lance?”

A noise of assent over the comms, and the space where the red Lion flies alongside them ripples, before seeming to consume the crimson beast altogether.

“Stealth mode is go.”

There are several complimentary murmurs from various members of Voltron, but the terribly fixated and vexingly sentimental part of Lotor cannot help but notice that Keith remains the only member of their party, aside from himself, who refrains from contributing to the frivolous chatter that ensures.

It is vaguely unsettling.

In tuning out the quiet thread of communication between the two leonine vessels as they fly themselves into Haggar’s clutches, Lotor finds himself helpless but to be admiring of Alfor’s craftsmanship, even if the deceased King’s tastes do not align with his own, because this is Voltron—a Lion, a legend—and here he stands within her hallowed halls, free to touch her in a way that few others could claim the privilege. So enraptured is he by the history of which he now finds himself a footnote, Lotor does not notice the low trickle of quintessence in the air until the brush of his knuckles against her internal wall is greeted by a sudden thrum of energy. In the pilot’s chair, Pidge startles as if it were her he’d touched, and cranes her head back with something bright and bewildered behind her eyes; her companions draw up with the same rapidity—not so certain of the surge’s root as the green paladin is, but aware of it all the same—and when they realise where it is Pidge’s attention has fallen, both the princess and her champion glare daggers.

Stubbornly, Lotor refuses to remove his hand.

“Er, everything okay over there?” comes Lance’s voice over the comms, tentative and unsure, and then, when he is not granted an immediate response: “Guys? We all felt that, what’s going on?”

The black paladin sends what is both an affirmative and a dismissal back in reply, while Princess Allura opens her mouth—undoubtedly to issue some sort of demand as to what Lotor is plotting, despite him a having not truly done anything at all—but Pidge gets there first.

“She says you’re familiar,” and then, after staring at him for a very long time with a glazed look as if she’s listening to a voice no one else is privy to, “that you remind her of someone from a long time ago.”

Lotor sets his jaw, well acquainted with this song and dance, yet helpless but to be strung along by that same awful melody.

“I am not my father.”

He says it as calmly as he is able, and yet despite his best efforts the princess looks as if she has something to say to the contrary, Lotor’s sole saving grace turning out to be a growl of derision—aching and bone-deep—that tears through the four of them as the dry westernly winds once did Daibazaal’s most ancient jungles, sending all the vine-bound boughs creaking.

“Not him,” Pidge says, clearly translating her Lion’s thoughts for the benefit of the group, but there’s little point to it: for a moment, brief and bruising, Lotor sees what is both his hand and not, the fingers long and claw-tipped but painted in dark ochre, scarlet flora blooming from his veins, set against the stark white of the green Lion’s internal wall.

Honerva, a voice he does not know rumbles with a fondness he cannot place, and for all the stars in the cosmos Lotor couldn’t possibly say whether this comparison is better or worse.

 

They come in low and quiet over the laboratory—or, at least, where it should be—and at first it seems as if there’s nothing here other than a celestial body that is, in all honesty, extraordinary only in that it is not: a great shard of ice, jagged and crystalline and large enough that Lotor imagines it might have developed its own atmosphere, perhaps even a rudimentary ecosystem, and ringed in pieces of its own shattered self, likely cleaved from the whole by some inconceivable seismic event millennia ago. These fragments refract the nearest star’s light in such a way that the whole thing has a ghostly lustre to it, pretty, but otherwise without significant merit, and precisely the kind of inconsequential place Haggar is wont to hide her illicit affairs away from imperial notice.

It’s the blue paladin who spots it first.

“There,” if Lotor’s assessment of his general character is correct, then Lance’s tone is oddly severe, “ice halo, ten o’clock, behind the one that’s kinda shaped like… er, what was Nyma’s little robo-buddy called?”

“Beezer,” Pidge chips in with a wry smile, “which you’d know if you’d spent literally any time not making eyes at her,” and this seems to be some form of shared amusement amongst the paladins at their friend’s expense, as even the champion cracks a stiff smile, though it falls almost immediately, his expression turning troubled even as Pidge responds: “but yeah, I see it.”

It is a repurposed battlecruiser, Lotor notes when their target drifts into view from behind the apparently ‘beezer-shaped’ mass—or it was, once, the model one that he estimates to have been taken out of circulation half a century ago: old enough to raise a few eyebrows, certainly, but unlikely to be deemed worthy of writing home about if seen drifting through a backwater system such as this.

Particularly not if those who come into contact with it conveniently lose their memories of the encounter soon after.

“I was here.”

Lotor’s attention snaps to fix that broad silhouette with a piercing look.

“This is where I-” the champion croaks out, his tone dipping low, “this is where they kept me. The second time.”

There’s a sharp little intake of breath that Lotor knows is Keith—rough and wounded—and all the paladins seem to reach for their leader as one, even those in the other vessel. Whispers of “Shiro,” overlap with several queries as to whether they should call the whole thing off, but the black paladin merely rubs at his temple with a grimace.

“No,” he mummers, tension rife in the set of his jaw, “we stick to the plan. Pidge, how long would it take you to map the place out?”

“All of that?” Her tone begs that he’s joking, but the slump of petite shoulders knows that he’s not. “Considering it’s the size of a damn city, a couple of vargas at least; we don’t have that kind of time.”

“Start with the power grid,” her brother’s voice is clipped, and Lotor is glad to know that someone recognises the severity of that which they’re walking themselves into, “you should be able to plot that easily enough, and from there we can pinpoint the major energy outlets.”

A grunt of assent, a brief interlude of silence, and then:

“Jesus,” this exclamation is hissed out through gritted teeth, “how much power does one ship need?”

Though he cannot see what it is that has the littlest paladin all twisted up, Lotor is more than capable of making an educated guess by the way Princess Allura’s eyes have gone wide and her voice fretful.

“It’s little wonder the ship we encountered was practically bleeding quintessence; this is like nothing I’ve ever seen… whatever could they want with so much raw energy?”

Unseen by his companions, Lotor allows himself a moment to bemoan his own aptitude for predicting Haggar’s misdeeds, before composing himself. Brodar help them. More importantly, Brodar help him, because if the paladins, or, worse yet, the princess discover-

No. Nevermind ifs. Lotor had known this was a possibility and made certain to be here because of it; he’d accounted for this, and though far from ideal, his presence here does, at the very least, make the situation workable.

“It looks like the energy signature is concentrated in the lower stern, here,” the champion is leaning forward and tapping at the screen in front of him, “so that’s where we’re headed. Lance, if you dip in portside under the wing you should be able to drop off the others with a straight shot to the bridge.”

“Rodger that el capitán.”

There’s a murmur of conversation on the red Lion’s end that Lotor cannot hope to decipher before the yellow paladin comes in loud and clear.

“Er, quick question: how are we getting in there? Because stealth mode’s great and all, but if we go and park a couple of giant robo-cats on the side of that thing, I’m pretty sure they’re going to notice.”

“Yeah…” Pidge draws of the word with a strain that has her brother strangling a less-than-hopeful noise in the back of his throat, “so here’s the thing: good news, I can definitely overload their generator for a couple of dobashes while stalling the backup, which gives us our in.”

“And?” Hunk prompts, after an uneasy silence. “The bad news?”

“It’ll require a manual override.”

Several of the paladins groan in response, but it’s Matthew who clarifies: “manual, as in, one of us is going to have to traverse a good half-league of empty space, sans Lion and completely without a tether, to plug themselves in and allow you to-”

“Aaaaaand Keith’s gone,” interrupts Lance, sounding decidedly resigned.

Lotor blinks in surprise.

There are several curses from the other occupants of the red Lion, and several more from the cockpit in which Lotor is stood, but of all of them it is the prince—fighting upturned quirk of his lips—who first contributes something that constitutes as even vaguely constructive.

“Reckless little thing.” Despite his best efforts the words come out dreadfully fond, too glad of knowing that Keith is, at least, engaging with action despite having thus far been unwilling to do so with words. If the sudden silence of team Voltron is any indicator, the warmth on his tongue is not subtle. “If I cannot dissuade you-“

“You can’t,” the rogue paladin cuts in, but there’s no bite to it.

“-then might I suggest aiming for the underside of the primary thruster? You’ll find an access point allowing for a hard reboot of all major systems in case of extenuating circumstances.”

Lotor watches intently as, in the distance, a starkly painted figure slips from the red Lion’s invisible maw to brace feet against what must be her muzzle, his profile tiny and half swallowed by the seemingly empty void around him, and yet crouched as a predator might, face turned towards his intended prey, as intent on this is he is on ignoring the petering objections of his friends.

“Keith, this isn’t wise-“

“Somebody has to do it.” he snaps, and then, almost apologetic: “They hurt you, Shiro. They took you away again, they hurt you again, so like hell am I letting Haggar or whatever else she’s got in there go without a fight.” He finishes on a heated breath that seems to terminate any further objections before they begin, and when his voice sounds once more, it’s heavy with determination. “Alright, Lance, you’re gonna have to throw me.”

“Wait, what!?”

“Just swing Red around and-”

“No I heard you,” the blue paladin splutters, “I just think it’s a shitty idea that’s going to end with a Keith-pancake or—I don’t know—me missing the target altogether and chucking you into deep-space?”

His tone pitches at the end, caught on concern, but when Keith responds it’s with a rumble of amusement low in his throat that, when fed through his communicator and out by his ear, Lotor finds quite disarming.

“Then don’t miss, sharpshooter.”

There’s a beat of silence, and the red Lion must move because Keith moves with it, drawn around as if her head has reared back in preparation to-

“Sweet-talking asshole,” Lance grumbles, and like that the little Blade is launched towards the imperial vessel at a velocity that is frankly alarming.

 

When Keith collides with the ship—and it is a collision, judging by the frantic profanities that immediately precede it, quickly followed by the activation of his jetpack, the harsh thud of an armoured body on metal, and a choked exhalation—he congratulates the blue paladin on his aim with a dry sort of affection that is received in kind. Another dobash or so later, a new screen appears on the green Lion’s interface and her paladin cheers.

“Goodbye power grid,” with a touch of mania to her grin, Pidge runs a brief sequence of alien characters which see the battlecruiser surge with power before both the lights and engines cut completely, leaving it dead in the water, “and hello Voltron.”

From there the Lions split off from one another, gravitating towards their respective entry points, and Lotor has to admit that the efficiency with which the green paladin disconnects and disposes of an evacuation pod, affixing her Lion’s jaw in its place, is… impressive. It’s a clean transition, made easier for the fact that—emergency airlocks aside, which operate on an isolated circuit to allow exit and, in this case, entry without need of the main power grid—the ship’s primary systems remain dark through the process, and will be none the wiser of the switch when they come back online.

The passcode Marmora supplied is, fortunately, still in use, and so despite the princess taking the lead with a brisk march more befitting of a raid than an infiltration, or the champion following at her heel with a stiffness to his gait that makes each footstep echo twice as loudly as it should, it proves easy enough for their trio to sneak, unchallenged, into the bowels of the laboratory.

It’s this ability to slip in without undue notice that serves as the first warning sign.

Lotor knows Haggar—is far more intimately acquainted with her proclivities than any sentient being deserves—which is to say that he feels more than qualified to caution his companions to be on their guard, because: “either they’re expecting us, or something is deeply wrong.”

The quiet is not only oppressive, Lotor thinks, but unequivocally ominous. Though the Witch may not tolerate the presence of imperial sentries in her labs, typically the security detail required for a facility of this scale would be compensated for by soldiers of the organic persuasion, loyalists to the Church, suitable for combat and grunt-work alike; instead, hallway after vacant hallway is haunted by a mere handful of robed scientists—“deacons,” he informs the champion, when he draws up short with a curse on his tongue and violence in his posture, “vassals of faith, but without druidic ability; they are of little consequence,”—all of whom drift about in that spectral way members of the Church are so disturbingly fond of, and each blessedly ignorant to the insurgents lurking in the shadows.

Though this too, it seems, is cause for concern.

“They’re-” Princess Allura seems torn between pressing herself further into the security granted by the corridor’s shadows, and craning her neck to watch the fourth deacon to pass them by dither at an open doorway before disappearing into it. “They feel- Their quintessence, it’s…”

She trails off without completing a single thought.

“Princess?” The champion’s prompting is received with a gentle shake of the head.

“I don’t know, I haven’t the words for it, they’re just… wrong somehow. I can’t describe it.” Teeth worry at her lower lip ferociously. “It’s not dissimilar to what I felt when Lance and I infiltrated that cruiser, but more- or rather… less?”

For the first time Lotor finds himself a little glad of not having inherited much of his mother’s altean abilities, because they seem to be causing Princess Allura a great deal of strain.

“There’s so much,” she continues, anxious to convey the feeling despite the appropriate language eluding her, “and yet they possess a great absence too. As if they’re-”

The comms crackle, and when Keith supplies the term “leaking,” from some distant sector of the ship, Lotor cannot even enjoy his tone for the severity of it, his voice transformed into something eerie and echoing.

“Yes,” the princess practically exhales the words on a great sigh of relief, “yes exactly that,” and then: “I did not realise humans were quintessence sensitive.”

There’s a noncommittal noise from Keith’s end, muffled by Matthew’s contemplative “are we?” but only Hunk offers anything in the way of scientific reasoning.

“S’pose it’s possible? I mean, quintessence is considered a hypothetical substance by human physicists, but since it’s—y’know—an actual proven thing, I guess we could apply the concept of our ‘sixth sense’ to it?” The comms go quiet for a moment as the yellow paladin mulls this over, before adding, “back on Earth Keith sensed the blue Lion’s energy before we even knew there was a blue Lion, so I guess that counts, right?”

“Fascinating as this is,” cuts in the blue paladin’s voice, with that same out-of-place stoicism to it as earlier, “shouldn’t the power be back online by now? Or their back-up should have kicked in, or something.”

With an icy douse of awareness, Lotor realises that the paladin is regrettably correct.

“It should be,” Pidge mumbles, as much to herself as anyone else, “the last thing we need is them scanning the ship for abnormalities. An EMP’s one thing, but I’ve no idea how my cloaking will hold up against the druids’ voodoo.”

It won’t, Lotor could tell her, in no uncertain terms, but doing so runs the risk of raising unwanted questions with regards to his knowledge of druidic practices, and so he keeps his mouth shut.

“You don’t think you’ve fried their systems completely, do you?” comes Matthew’s contribution, and he’s right to pose such a query: if the green paladin has killed the power more permanently than she intended, then Keith’s team haven’t much hope of extracting anything useful—or, indeed, anything at all—from the data banks.

Not that Lotor is entirely opposed to that outcome.

“No? Or I shouldn’t‘ve anyway—I’ve run that sequence a thousand times. Granted, never on anything of this scale…” she pauses, and Lotor can hear the frown in her voice, “but if anything it should have been less effective, not more.”

Matthew is saying something else, his response peppered with contributions from Hunk, but there’s a sudden tone—pure and piercing—that slices through their conversation and has Lotor’s body responding faster than his mind, grabbing both the princess and the champion to haul them into the shadows before they can be discovered.

By the sounds of it, there’s a similar scuffle from the other team, and then-

“What the quiznack do you think you’re doing!?”

Lotor shushes the princess sharply as he tries to locate the source, because it’s nearby but seemingly on all sides, and he cannot place it.

“Keith, bud, what’s happening?” The yellow paladin’s confusion mutes the noise somewhat, because it’s sounding not from the prince’s surroundings, but his communicator.

“You don’t hear that?” Distress is palpable in Keith’s throat, and it’s like this that Lotor knows the tone is stirring up the same visceral response in the littlest Blade as it is him.

“No?”

“I do,” the prince interjects, brusquely.

Keith sounds as if he’s working his jaw in an attempt to bite at that wretched pitch and rip it from the air around him. “It’s fuckin’ awful.”

And it truly is a horrid sound: something in its frequency making a home in Lotor’s molars and burrowing its way into the bowels of his skull, leaving in its wake a need—an ache—something instinctual that begs him to leave this place as swiftly as he is able.

Without ceremony, that singular screeching note ebbs out of existence, and the whole facility falls to silence.

This too, possesses an inherent wrongness about it.

“It stopped,” sighs the champion, sagging with unparalleled relief against the wall, and it’s here that Lotor realises the black paladin hadn’t once fought against his manhandling. Withdrawing one step, then another, Lotor observes him carefully.

“You could hear that?” It’s the princess who asks it, too obviously reassured at having this brief interlude confirmed as something other than an attempt at trickery on Lotor’s part.

“Unfortunately,” comes the grunted reply, grey eyes turning on the galra prince in silent question.

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” but he doesn’t, so he can’t. “Had Keith and I been the only two to hear it, I would have attributed it to our shared heritage, but as it stands-”

“Me too,” this shaken contribution is uttered over the comms in the voice of the blue paladin, his tongue slack and mouth dry. “S’like something was screaming. Dying.”

Human. galra. altean.

There appears no obvious common thread between those who heard it, nor a line differentiating them from those who did not.

Lotor finds himself at a loss.

“I mean, we’ll obviously keep an eye out for whatever it was, but I guess it’s gone? For now, at least.” The blasé nature of Hunk’s tone is one afforded to him by virtue of evidently not having been forced to endure that sickening sound, and Lotor cannot help but resent him for it, just a little.

Keith makes a soft little noise in the back of his throat—though not one of assent, it’s hardly disagreeable either—and, heedless of potential danger, team Voltron resolves themselves to soldier on, with Lotor grudgingly in tow.

 

The prince is still turning over the implications of the ‘leaking’ quintessence and the vile shrieking that followed soon after, when the imminent culmination of Pidge’s directions dawn upon him.

“Take a left,” the green paladin is murmuring, keeping her voice low despite the fact that she—of all of them—is hardly at the greatest risk of exposure, “then it should be a straight shot to the end of the hall, third door on your right.”

“And you’re certain this room contains the source of whatever signature it is you’re picking up?” The princess clarifies, and Lotor knows what Pidge’s answer will be before it comes.

“Positive.”

…Which means Lotor himself has approximately forty dobashes to decide precisely what spin to put on the contents of said room, if it is what he, with an awful churning in his gut, very much dreads it might be.

The trick is to feign a vague sort of awareness. Not complete ignorance, no—though she may be naïve Princess Allura would never believe that—but the sort of half-truth that Voltron may be able to accept of his position as imperial prince, without betraying the severity of his entanglement; though Lotor is loath to present himself as the oblivious fool, it wins out against the role of Haggar’s depraved puppet, as that would surely see him crucified without trial.

Still stealing furtive glances behind them as if their enemy might materialise out of thin air—which, in fairness, the druids are oftentimes known to do—their little party slips into the room that the green paladin has directed them towards, and Lotor prepares himself for the unsightly show ahead.

He needn’t have bothered.

In many ways, it is as he’d pictured it to be: the room itself is evidently one meant to house the facility’s primary power core as, at its centre, sits a great cradle swaddled in hefty cables that spill out across every surface before burrowing their way into the walls, ceiling, floor, and away to their various termini. The cradle itself, however, has been mauled to pieces, its glass front half shattered and what remains turned to fractals in a way that’s oddly beautiful, dripping with a concoction of viscous fluids that Lotor both could and yet would rather not name. Converse to the apparent carnage perpetrated here, this sight allows the prince to breathe a private sigh of relief.

It is a damning scene, but not nearly so much as he’d feared.

“A pod?” The champion’s voice is uncomprehending as he surveys the remnants of whatever past brutality transpired, trying to make sense of it, “but then why is it-”

“It’s a converter,” Lotor supplies; better to control the truth they know rather than allow them free reign to discover that which they do not. “Haggar has spent several lifetimes over experimenting with raw quintessence energy and the conductive properties of organic matter. I would suspect that this chamber was used for something of the same vein.”

“Organic matter,” over the comms, sounding intrigued and sceptical in equal parts, Pidge parrots his wording, “so you’re—what—saying they were using some sort of creature to power the whole ship?”

Well, some sort of creature isn’t entirely accurate, but offering up the particulars would raise too many inconvenient questions, and considering Lotor’s current company, to answer them would be remarkably unwise.

“Precisely,” he murmurs instead, but as he does so his attention becomes newly caught on the sheer quantity of glass shards that have fallen inside the pod.

Mindless to this budding realisation, or the fact that her shrillness of tone is not in the least bit conductive to it, Princess Allura tears her eyes from the cradle with horror dawning on her features.

“But that- that’s madness…”

An ethical debate with Altea’s princess, sheltered little creature that she is, will benefit no one, and so Lotor clamps his lips into a fine line.

“More than that,” she continues, attention turned cold and unforgiving, “it’s slaughter.”

“Yes,” a muscle jumps in the prince’s jaw as he cages personal opinions behind sharp teeth, “I will not deny that it is rather macabre.”

“And you knew of it,” an accusation, “you knew Haggar was using living beings as conductors, and yet you said nothing!”

To whom, Lotor thinks, bitterly, would you have suggested I complain about such a thing when she outranks all but my father? And to what possible end?

Instead, he tries: “Haggar’s research has found quintessence conversion via a live subject to be incomparably more efficient than the Empire’s present methodology by way of druidic transmutation.” True. “I knew of it,” also true, though a criminal understatement, “but until this moment remained unaware that she had ventured beyond the use of the subject as a metamorphic vessel, into the realms of having it perform as a battery of its own accord, as there are certain… complications.”

With regards to the subject, she’ll take that to mean, and perhaps it’s better this way.

“You sound like you’re defending her,” comes the black paladin’s voice from across the room, his tone dangerously low, and when Lotor looks towards him, the champion’s visage appears splintered through the pod’s damaged front, and his expression unreadable because of it.

“Better this than the Komar,” the prince spits back, equally severe. “My plan from the start has been to find a way to harvest quintessence without resorting to such acts of barbarism; extracting it from entire planets at the cost of every living thing? I think not. The Empire is, at present, sustainable only on a technicality. The sheer quantity of quintessence required to fuel it is staggering; with our current methods of conversion into a viable fuel source being so crude, and my father’s appetite for expanse having not abated in the slightest, the galra people will soon be operating vastly outside of our means.”

“And your initial solution was to send Voltron to do your dirty work.” Allura supplies, lips drawn tight.

Broken glass crunching underfoot, Lotor turns to face her disapproval head-on, steeling himself against the inevitable.

“Only Voltron could retrieve the trans-reality comet required for Sincline’s construction, and I hardly thought you amenable to my will were I simply to ask nicely. So yes, I'm afraid I had to be a bit duplicitous in effecting its retrieval.”

“But if the paladins were killed,” the champion’s form shifts, coming back around the pod to shadow his princess, “that would be fine for you, too.

Delicacy is required here, Lotor thinks.

“It was a calculated risk, I admit that, but I had every confidence that you would come through without a scratch.” Team Voltron had long-since proven themselves to be remarkably resilient, after all. “Once I’d recovered the comet, I harboured no intentions towards your little rebellion beyond staying out of your way providing you stayed out of mine: how was I to know our paths would cross in the Ulippa System?”

Princess Allura remains so obviously unconvinced, that Lotor cannot help how the prickle of insult speaks heat across his nape.

“What could I possibly have gained by fighting you? I hardly crafted Sincline with the mind to play at being a hero as you so evidently wish to.” These words hit a nerve, it’s made obvious by how she flinches from them, and despite the low warning of his name issued from his communicator, Lotor finds himself vindictively glad of it. Petty a victory though it may be, it is a victory, nonetheless. “The Galra Empire is entirely reliant on quintessence; serve that need peacefully, and you have a complete paradigm shift—a new dawn for the old Empire—and so my sole focus was, and is, finding a way to enter the zone between realities-”

“It sounds to me,” she cuts him off, voice coolly observant, “that the green Lion was mistaken.”

The implication is not one she tries to hide.

How dare she.

Self-righteous little beast.

“How many times will you have me repeat myself? I am not my father!” Lotor snarls, the promise of violence buried so deeply in his throat that its roots creep out to make instead a home of his lungs, turning every breath to one of ashes: gritty and scalding. “This isn't a zero-sum game! Meeting the needs of the Empire means bringing peace to the universe; that is the future enlightenment brings us, one of prosperity for all!”

“Lotor.”

The red paladin’s second growled entreaty does as little to smother the sparking flame of the prince’s indignation as the first.

“I saved your lives and the lives of all your comrades. I have given you target after target of tactical significance. I have assisted you at every turn with very little to show for it,” when he steps forward, Alfor’s daughter holds her ground, if only by a thread, “and yet still you dare liken me to-”

When he cuts himself off with an empty laugh, it’s too sharp too loud too similar.

“Lotor!”

“What?” He snaps, tearing himself from the princess and her pet to address the little Blade’s persistence, and, as he does so, catches the nauseating yellow of his own reflection’s eye, the shattered crystal near distorting it beyond recognition.

“Enough.”

It’s the simplicity of it, or, perhaps, the certainty that Lotor will quietly do as he is bid and allow Princess Allura’s cruel accusations to pass without retribution. It’s the sharp firmness of that tongue on the honeyed sweetness of lips: the command and the comfort. The decree and the desire.

It is enticing.

It is insulting.

“I may enjoy you, Rhyahl,” the prince’s voice has adopted a dangerous edge, “but do not presume to order anything of me. I have warned you against the limitations of my fondness before, and I will not have you treat me as a yupper to instruct as you please without a word to the contrary.”

“That’s not-” Keith bites his own tongue with a frustrated noise, one so particular—so galra—that it calls to Lotor’s mind the precise furrow of the red paladin’s brow with startling clarity. “I just meant that now’s maybe not a great time for you to defend the ethics of Haggar’s work.”

“Do not put words in my mouth.”

“But you are,” Keith insists, determined as he is disagreeable, “you believe that Haggar’s in the right—at least in this.”

And it’s this—too simply put for such a complex issue—that incites a slow trickle fury down Lotor’s nape.

“I believe,” he grits out, “that this method is the lesser of two evils when the Komar remains the sole viable alternative. But, by all means,” a bark of something that is not quite laughter, “impress upon me the idealistic idiocy of Voltron, and let us see precisely how many lives it saves when the Empire exhausts its quintessence supplies and devolves into chaos.”

“Oh for fuck’s sake Lotor-”

“I am Prince Lotor,” he hisses, wrath swarming beneath his skin, “son of Zarkon, and I demand respe-“

“You’re prince of jack-shit, son of who-the-fuck-cares!” Keith ruptures the last shred of civility between them without so much as a second thought. In this same instant, there sound several sharp intakes of breath over the comms—an unwelcome reminder that such disrespect is being paraded about before the entirety of team Voltron—and several more panicked pleas of Keith’s name in a bid for him to ceasefire, but it seems too little too late as the little Blade’s temper flares hot. “If you want respect, then earn it. You don’t get to just invoke Zarkon’s name like it means something! Plot-fucking-twist: it doesn’t!”

These words strike Lotor as if a physical blow, and his blood runs cold.

“I have been willing to set aside my ego for the sake of seeing this alliance to fruition, but I will not sacrifice my dignity,” he snarls, and it’s a chilling sort of sound, “especially not for the opinions of someone so ill-tempered and blatantly ignorant to both the politics and delicate intricacies of war, of which I haven’t the time nor the presence of mind to-”

Keith spits out a galra profanity, and a rather crude on at that, certainly not something Lotor had used, and so it must have been learnt it from one of Marmora’s number. “You can’t expect anyone to follow you blindly just because you supposedly know better, that’s such bullshit! If you seriously think-”

"If I didn't, I wouldn't do so!" Lotor bites back, and for a moment he thinks he’s won.

His words are cutting, he knows, realises as soon as they're out there—less for what is said than how—and over the comms, Keith falls silent; the prince imagines he seems a little chastised, and loathes how easily the guilt pools in his gut to war against his own smarting pride. He almost forces out an apology, or something akin to one: you are young, he thinks, you've yet to see even a fraction of the horrors this universe has to offer, but any such sentimentality withers away before it can breach the column of his throat.

A heartbeat passes.

Two.

Then, Keith curses on an exhalation—a little high, a little scared—and beyond his hitching breaths, something truly terrible begins to scream.

Notes:

Would you believe I'm back from the dead after a far longer hiatus than I ever intended? I honestly don't think there's much to say other than thank you to each and every one of you for having been so patient with me, and also something along the lines of "what in god's name was I thinking when I decided to have an infiltration mission involving eight - yes, eight! - characters, because it's really hard to ensure that you're not forgetting anyone and dialogue between that many people is hard."

-

TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 18: Lotor’s Being a Little Bitch But Keith Has Bigger Problems

Summary:

Previously: The paladins prepare to set out to Haggar's lab (Lotor in tow) and due to intel provided by the Blade, Lotor learns that Marmora have a druid in their ranks. Lotor shares a brief moment of connection with the green Lion of Voltron, before silently bemoaning the fact that the vessel they're about to board is confirmed to almost certainly contain that which he'd quite sincerely hoped it didn't. Keith is thrown through the endless void of space, everyone infiltrates the Lab, half the group are privy to a truly terrible sound that the other half cannot hear at all, team voltron learn of the conversion pods, and this devolves into a furious argument between first Allura and Lotor, then Lotor and Keith, until the unthinkable occurs.

Notes:

NB: I've bumped the rating up!! This fic was formerly a T, now an M (for violence, primarily) and if that's not your cup of tea then consider yourself warned so that you may make an informed decision. The vast majority of this fic will be not at all dissimilar to what it was before, but in the interest of being a responsible author, and considering the fact that this chapter contains graphic and intimately written violence (as will several future ones), I thought it best to err on the side of caution.

Agony is too weak a word.

Keith struggles to breathe around the lump in his throat, impossible to swallow, and the blood that once thundered through his veins is turned to acid, the pulse of it a roiling, writhing thing, that deafens him to all but the barely-there tremor of Shiro’s admission that this is where he was kept.

Kept, like a beast- a pet- a worthless little creature to be taunted and toyed with at Haggar’s leisure.

The others, when they realise both that Keith is gone from the red Lion’s cockpit and why, make a show of attempting to dissuade him between curse words, but seem aware that their best attempts will fall on deaf ears before they’ve really even tried. Of all of them it’s Lotor—with something entertained on his tongue—who actually deigns to help, guiding the ex-paladin’s reckless intent towards the Cruiser’s manual access point, and though Keith doesn’t explicitly thank the prince, he is grateful for the direction.

Only, right now, as Red’s artificial gravity releases him to the weightless void beyond her maw, he feels all-consumed by a sickening sort of fury that makes it difficult to spare a thought for anything else.

“Keith,” Shiro’s voice is, as ever, the exception to the rule, “this isn’t wise-”

“Somebody has to do it,” he barks back, no different than a wounded animal might, but this is Shiro and of all of them—of everyone in the whole damn universe—Shiro is the last person who deserves to suffer Keith’s wrath, and so he takes pains to soften his tone. “They hurt you, Shiro. They took you away again, they hurt you again, so like hell am I letting Haggar or whatever the hell else she’s got in there go without a fight.”

Because there has to be some justice in the world, there has to, and if Keith can’t find any then he’ll make it himself.

Lance is, for whatever reason, reluctant to throw Keith at the imperial ship, but he’s convinced with something that toes the line between the type of goading that formed the foundation of their friendship, and an encouragement that is still new to it, so it’s like this that Keith gets his wish to be flung through the vast nothingness of space at a dangerous velocity.

The collision jars every bone in his body, and reality with it.

He thinks he might have hit his head, just a little, because the next thing he knows his reflection is staring up at him—ashen and distorted by the curved front of his helmet—and for a horrible awful suffocating moment, Keith finds his throat seizing up around an icy sort of absence, as he tries and fails and tries again to draw oxygen into his lungs until- until he blinks and he’s inside a darkened hall of the battlecruiser, Hunk clapping him on the shoulder with a fond shake of the head, and Matt tampering with the helmet Keith still has in hand.

“Allllllright,” as he steps back with a nod the singular eye of Matt’s mask catches what little light there is around him, and when set against the almost bruising palette of the cruiser’s interior, its orange sheen irritates Keith as much as it draws his attention, “so while the A-team’ll be using the alpha-channel, we’ll operate on the beta to stop Lotor from knowing more than strictly necessary. Lance can keep an ear out for anything on the others’ end that needs our attention, and we can switch over if we have to, but other than that…” he ends his explanation with a shrug that apparently concludes everything he wants to say, gesturing for Keith to put his helmet back on, which, despite the slight sting of insult he feels on Lotor’s behalf at the prince being so mistrusted with so little to warrant it, he does without complaint.

“You hear me, samurai?”

A grunted affirmative has Lance snorting out a laugh.

“Good, then let’s agree that that derring-do fulfilled your daily quota, so you’re not gonna pull another stupidly reckless stunt for the rest of the mission, yeah?”

Shaking off the last of his disorientation, the former paladin openly neglects to promise anything of the sort, and tries not to smile too obviously at Lance’s expense.

 

There is approximately nothing Keith likes about this place.

It’s too dark, too quiet, too clean, and even though his paladin armor has detected no toxins in the air, and would filter them out besides, there’s a sort of alkaline tang to it all that has him determined not to breathe too deeply.

The smell only worsens when they breach the first level of security.

The access code Kolivan had provided works like a dream and Keith sends a silent word of thanks to the agent who had procured it, but his relief at having bested this first hurdle lasts no longer than it takes for the locked doors to slide open and expose their trio to an assault of the highest degree: a revolting stench like nothing Keith has ever had to suffer through. He gags on it immediately, the muscles of his throat working at a near-painful rate as his eyes begin to stream, and by the sudden full-body recoiling of his companions, he has to imagine that neither Matt nor Hunk are faring any better.

“Oh quiznack,” it’s a rare thing to hear the yellow paladin swear so wholeheartedly, even if it is in an alien tongue, “what is that?”

Lance is quick to question what’s going on, and Matt fills him in with a choked assessment of the smell as “something chemical,” which sounds to Keith a gross understatement of whatever god-awful compound it is that’s presently worming its way into every fibre of his being, whether he wants it to or not. There’s something else though—something beneath that foul odour that strikes him as faintly familiar and yet so obscured that it might as well not be there at all—and this he instinctually likes far less.

Steeling his stomach, Keith does his best to breathe through gritted teeth as he forges onwards, this time, if not prepared for, then at the very least expecting the imminent assault on his senses. The first thing to strike him as abnormal—even when considering that this is a druidic lab, and so abnormality kind of comes with the territory—is the manner in which the full length of the room is lined with frosted pillars, two-dozen at least, spaced at even intervals between the door he’d entered through to its perfect copy on the far wall. These columns are all identical at a glance, each twice as broad as Hunk and three times as tall, fixed into the floor with a base that seems to Keith almost hand-like, with five skeletal fingers holding the cylinder steady, and as he steps out fully from the faux-security the open doorway offers him, it becomes apparent that the pillars themselves are not white, but their contents: the full volume of each container flooded with a thick milky substance while everything beyond its surface is left to formless obscurity. Approach tentative, Keith strays from the room’s central path and draws up just short of the nearest chamber, close as he dares, peering into its murky depths to make out what he can which admittedly… isn’t much. The next tank is much the same story, as is the one after that, each containing nothing more substantial than a cluster of nondescript shapes, all reasonably similar in size, though what exactly they are might well be impossible to pin down. Given what he knows of the Druids and their proclivities, Keith thinks it likely that ignorance is indeed bliss—but even if it weren’t, even if his life depended on the answer, he really couldn’t say what exactly it is he’s looking at.

Apparently, Hunk can.

“I think it’s some kind of solvent.” His voice sounds slightly nasal, as if he’s refusing to breathe through his nose, and by the sour expression he wears he’d be pinching it shut if doing so didn’t require him to remove his helmet altogether. “My best guess? We—and this is really gross—are inhaling the sweet scent of accelerated decay, courtesy of some sort of super aggressive alien microbe as it chows down on whatever they had in there.”

“Or whoever,” Matt adds, darkly, and Keith’s jaw clenches at the thought of this having been Shiro’s fate, had he not escaped this hell hole.

“I’d take a sample, but…”

“But there’s every chance it’d eat through whatever you collected it in, and half your suit with it,” Matt finishes on the yellow paladin’s behalf, tentatively tapping at the glass only to flinch back with a start when it bubbles angrily in his direction, “nasty stuff.”

“So no samples then,” is the conclusion Keith comes to, scowling into the tank’s depths at the last remnants of what- or, indeed, whoever it used to harbour, the silhouette of the unfortunate it once contained diminishing before his eyes. He thinks of pointing out that Lotor had warned against this—against the fact that in evacuating the nearby Coalition forces they would be broadcasting their intent and practically inviting the Druids to rid themselves of anything they would rather was not brought to light—but thinks better of it; if this is a result of Voltron’s well-intentioned carelessness, then in all likelihood Haggar’s underlings know they’re here, and therefore Keith may at this very moment be walking two of the best people he’s ever known straight into a trap.

He takes a shallow breath with the intention of hurrying his companions onwards, but in this same instant catches movement over the reflection of his shoulder; as if time itself has slowed to a trickle simply because it has been so willed, there appears a ripple in the fabric of the universe, a swelling undulation of all the room’s shadows, ominously languid, and stepping from their depths a lean spectral figure that is unmistakable as anything other than what it is.

A Druid.

A full-body twist sends Keith darting between Matt and Hunk with a warning cry, the black bayard jumping from its holster to his fingertips in an instinctive beam of light. Though he’d been initially reluctant to take it when pressed into his palm by a firm hand and a firmer word, Keith finds himself abruptly glad of Shiro’s earlier insistence, because the altean katar’s reach is half as much again as his luxite blade, and this additional length proves vital as the sword’s tip crests its sweeping arc to only barely graze his assailant’s mask, marring its porcelain surface with wicked mockery of Shiro’s own scar. Keith lunges again, but this time the Druid moves with him, its—their?—footsteps light enough that they barely make a sound even as they lead the former paladin in a merry little dance across the room, weaving in and out of the columns, before they vanish without ceremony.

Then, there’s a yelp of horror from behind him, a flash of blinding light, and Keith whirls around to see that Matt has wrestled Hunk to the ground; the cylinder beside them bears a dark scorch mark, sizzling with blaster residue, ozone, and a fissure that spiderwebs out from the centre of it all, a jagged threat that the whole thing might give way at a moment’s notice.

“If you shoot a tank open we’re all fucked!” overlaps with, “I know- I’m sorry- I panicked okay!? It was right there!” but Keith’s attention is stuck on the truth of Matt’s assessment: if one of the chambers ruptures, they are all fucked… bar, of course, the Druid who can disappear into some untouchable netherworld on a whim.

Which begs the question, why haven’t they done just that?

Not disappear, but destroy one—or even all—of the chambers. Tactically it would make sense, and seeing as empathy isn’t typically Haggar’s M.O. Keith is struggling to see why one of her elite wouldn’t just do away with any threat to the secrets of this place when it could, in this moment, be so easily done.

Not to mention the Druid’s quintessence... it’s a weighty, dragging thing that seems to follow them as if at a delayed pace, a ghost image that trails several ticks after the original, never quite catching up, but other than that Keith can’t sense them, they have no presence, and that in itself brings all the little hairs on his neck to attention.

“Hunk, defend. Matt, stay with him. Lance,” he murmurs through his comm, voice steady but eyes still sharp and scanning the room, expectant at any moment for their assailant to make a resurgence from the darkness, “can you get a read on quintessence signatures in our immediate vicinity? I need to know what I’m looking at.”

“On it,” even as he complies, the blue paladin sounds tense, “Keith, bud, please don’t do whatever dumb thing it is you’re thinking of doing.”

“If you don’t even know what I’m thinking, how do you know it’s dumb?”

The noise Lance offers in response is the non-verbal equivalent of is that a real question you are asking me right now? Which is rude, but… fair. Taking a cautionary step towards the furthest door with his back securely against the wall yields no obvious repercussions, and so Keith chances one more, then another, until he is slowly creeping around the room’s perimeter with his heart in his throat.

It’s so quiet.

Upon being formally initiated into the Blade and granted permission to function as a marmoran operative, Keith had learnt two things in very quick succession, the first being: ‘do not engage in combat unless strictly necessary,’ and the second: ‘do not engage with members of the Church at all.’

This is not the first time that Keith has been forced to break rule two.

The Church itself isn’t really the issue—not their beliefs or their practices or even their followers, unsettling as they are—it’s what they’d become under Haggar’s hand, Kolivan had once explained, it was what she’d seen in them, in their blood, their abilities, and what she’d thought to shape that potential into. Her station as High Priestess was one granted to her by Zarkon, which hadn’t surprised Keith in the least, but learning that she was only one of many, and that it was Zarkon’s favour alone that put her at the Church’s head (rather than one who Kolivan called ‘the Archivist’ with a reverence Keith had never heard from him before or since) was… startling.

When his next step brings him around the last of the room’s great misted cylinders, the youngest Blade finds himself at a momentary loss because the Druid isn’t here and yet… and yet he knows their eyes are on him, their gaze a hot prickling thing on his nape, and it’s this instinctual knowledge that draws his attention back the way he’d come from and up, over the heads of both Matt and Hunk who remain alert and the room’s far end and-

Ah.

There’s a viewing platform behind a great glass pane, set into the wall directly above the door their party had entered through, so it’s little wonder Keith had remained ignorant to it: behind the window lingers his target, head tilted curiously, as if a vulture waiting to see what he will do next.

Rather than warn his companions who are too busy scouring shadows to notice where his attention has fallen, Keith takes a risk, and stills his hand.

He’s learnt enough about the Druidic Church in recent phoebs to know what to look for in their regalia so that he may judge precisely how much of a threat they pose. The presence of that mask is a bad sign, its bone-white cast clearly visible from this angle as its beak dips out from the shadow of the Druid’s hood; a mask means more than faith, it means blood, which in itself means the ability to wield quintessence into something no one can outrun. There’s embroidery on the trim of their robe too, but at this distance it’s difficult to make it out as the simple pattern of a Priest, or something more intricate, indicative of Haggar’s rank, and before Keith has a chance to puzzle it out there are long fingers closing around his elbow and yanking him backwards and out of sight with such ferocity that the former paladin very nearly guts his assailant: would have done, too, had he not belatedly recognised Hunk as the perpetrator, Matt behind him and gesturing furiously as he hisses, “what the fuck Keith?” clearly having caught on to the druid’s whereabouts and Keith’s dangerous interest with it as he stood plainly in the line of fire.

The marmorite isn’t really given chance to defend himself.

Lance pipes up with “results are in: there’s a sort of general quintessence buzz—like static, I guess?—but you three are the only clear signatures. Do you think it’s gone?”

“Oh, it’s not gone,” Hunk hisses, fingers twitching for his bayard even as he hangs back, “but somehow the fact that tall dark and creepy is playing games instead of just killing us quickly is so much worse.”

“Shit—well, what’s it doing now?”

“I don’t know, not attacking, just-” Matt’s toe is strained, clearly uncomfortable with not having all the information, “watching us?”

“Watching Keith,” Hunk corrects, and as it turns out, that’s true.

Slipping from the yellow paladin’s grasp, Keith darts across the valley between one column and its perfect twin on the room’s far side, finding that the Druid seems almost to perk up at the action, swooping from one end of the viewing platform to the other as if to match him.

He does it again, this time diagonally across the room until he’s halved the distance between them and-

-and the Druid spirits theirself away, vanishing from their perch, leaving no trace of themselves behind until suddenly they’re right there, returned to the laboratory floor and mirroring Keith’s movements perfectly even down to stooping so that their eyeline is at a level with his own.

There’s a shout—from Matt or Hunk, Keith doesn’t know, isn’t really listening—and he raises his hand in their direction to halt any interference, because there’s something…

…a tightness in his chest and a thickness in his throat, Keith moves to lead his shadow back and forth as if a playground game, tuning out both Matt’s alarm, and Hunk’s frantic narration for Lance’s benefit, and trying all the while to hone his instincts in on their enemy across the room only to find that he can’t. Keith circles them, and they match his pace, step for step, but still it feels as if they’re not really there at all.

“So, bad time probably, but Allura’s stressing out over other weird Druids so if yours isn’t, like, an immediate problem-?”

“Gotcha.” Hunk is still on edge, which Keith can hardly blame him for, all things considered, but he and Matt have both emerged from behind the columns to watch the Druid with as much faltering caution as Keith himself. “Switching to alpha channel now.”

Still keeping the bulk of his attention focused on his druidic companion and prepared to engage—mindful of every soundless footstep, every slight shift in posture—Keith wordlessly follows suit, flicking his communicator over to the primary feed.

“-issimilar to what I felt when Lance and I infiltrated that cruiser, but more- or rather… less?” Allura is murmuring, uncharacteristically hesitant in her assessment of whatever ‘weird’ druidic behaviours she’s been exposed to, and Keith wants to care, he really does, but if she, Shiro and Lotor aren’t in immediate danger, then his priority is working out what on Earth is going on with their current seven-foot-something masked problem. This time he steps forward, towards the Druid directly, and after a moment’s pause they respond in kind. Another step, another dithering hesitation that Keith can’t quite understand before they ultimately parrot his movements, and beneath it all something else: something slow and weighted and sticky almost, that seems to flutter as if a failing heartbeat.

“There’s just so much,” Allura is still speaking but Keith’s attention remains caught on the Druid as they proceed, step by step, across the room towards him, their slinking gait a thick, weighty drag. “And yet,” Allura continues, as unbeknownst to her Keith tenses, his hand on the black bayard, expectant of that frightful, faceless mask to surge forth from nothing and begin its assault. “They possess a great absence too. As if they’re-”

“Leaking.”

The word is on his lips before his mind has even thought it. Leaking, like an old, festering wound, a newly-picked scab, a violent viscous thing. Leaking, like it’s a truth he’d learnt as a child, no different than ‘the sky is blue,’ or ‘your mother’s gone,’ or ‘your father’s dead.’

Leaking. Simple and unfettered and unknowable in a way that leaves Keith frightened.

“Yes,” Allura sounds so blissfully relieved, “yes exactly that.”

And it’s this that steels Keith’s resolve.

Gesturing for Matt and Hunk’s unanimous committal to silence, and not moving until he’s absolutely sure he has it (their joint suspicion as to why he’s asking for such a thing is obvious in their faces, but he can’t risk them letting slip what he’s about to do to the others, Shiro especially) Keith is quick to close the distance between himself and the Druid. He daren’t pause, neither to think too hard on what it is he’s doing, or give the others chance to stop him, until that great sweeping figure looms over him, fierce and foreboding and-

Fascinated.

Keith waits a heartbeat, then two, and once it’s abundantly clear that the masked figure means no harm beyond a moderately concerning level of intense observation, he turns back to his friends with his arms outstretched and a wry smile on his lips, jutting his chin up as if to say: all in one piece, see?

He’s almost gleeful when Matt makes an obscene gesture at his perceived recklessness, though poor Hunk is white as a sheet, but all three of them are quick to tense when two great hands come up from behind Keith, circling around him to trail claws against the soft underside of his jaw, tilting his head carefully back until he’s looking up at that featureless mask as it peers down upon him. Cold palms cup either side of his helmet, sapping the warmth from him even through the altean metal and slowly thumbing cheekbones over his visor, but that is all they do, the sharp threat of danger sitting blithely on the armouring of Keith’s cheek, and, if anything at all, the former paladin finds the Druid arched over him passively curious.

All it takes is for him to take skeletal wrists in hand and gently encourage those long fingers down, enabling himself to turn in in the loose loop of their arms, and when he coaxes their face nearer to his the rest of their body follows easily.

In removing their mask, Keith understands why.

Golden eyes sit sunken and dull in a leathery face—dox, he thinks idly—weathered but young, and there’s no presence here, no passion or drive or even awareness, this Druid—this person—half dead on their feet with little more than the quickly fading remnants of who they once were keeping them conscious.

If anyone could even call it that.

He’s not really listening when Allura poses the question of humans being quintessence sensitive, too caught up in quietly untangling himself from the Druid’s wandering hands, and continually discouraging those inquisitive fingertips as they return to stroke along his visor again and again, as if stubbornly determined to touch him.

Thankfully, Matt takes the reigns.

“Are we?” Hazel eyes have narrowed into something considering as he looks himself over, as if the answer might jump out at him, then turns to Hunk, who shrugs.

“S’ppose it’s possible?” The yellow paladin’s tone has turned contemplative in a way that’s not false, but strained, and Keith doesn’t miss how his thumb is worrying the knuckle of his forefinger as it shakes with adrenaline from their too-close encounter. “I mean, quintessence is considered a hypothetical substance by human physicists, but since it’s—y’know—an actual proven thing, I guess we could apply the concept of our ‘sixth sense’ to it?”

Quintessence sensitive. Hunk turns his rambled theorising to the blue Lion at the same time Keith’s thoughts make the same jump; he’s never been able to speak to Blue, not the way he can with Black and certainly nothing close to his relationship with Red, but he’d known her, all the same. Known of her. Still does, really, Green and Yellow too, though he’s never told the others, because... well, it’s obvious they can’t. Don’t. And it feels strangely unfair, especially when Lance had wanted so badly to be the black paladin, and Allura so desperately to follow in King Alfor’s footsteps, and Keith-

-Keith hadn’t really wanted either of those things.

He’d loved Red from the start because of course he had—she’s everything he is and more—every impulsive thought and hot-headed decision and biting comment and burning desire. Black had been more difficult, and he hadn’t truly wanted anything she’d been willing to give, not at first, because she was Shiro’s and so was he, but in the end it was exactly that that drew them together.

And tore them apart, too.

Keith’s palms prickle with a dreadful heat—bubbling, boiling—and if it weren’t for his suit’s armoured gloves he’s sure he would have drawn blood with how tightly his fingers have curled to fists.

“Fascinating as this is,” and Lance has never had better timing, his voice—even frayed with nerves as it is—serving as a lifeline to reel Keith back to reality as he remembers how to breathe through the squirming lump in his throat, “shouldn’t the power be back online by now? Or their back-up should have kicked in, or something?”

The truth of these words turn Keith’s spine to a sparking live-wire, and he immediately curses himself for not having noticed something so obviously amiss far sooner.

Knowledge or Death.

As Pidge and Matt discuss sequences and statistical likelihoods, Keith turns his attention inwards. How long have they been here? Fifteen dobashes? Twenty? Too long, in any case, for the power-outage to be written off as an inexplicable surge, and just long enough for Haggar to be sure that her secret lab is not nearly so secret as before.

So he has to assume they’ve been compromised.

Like clockwork, the hour strikes and the bell chimes—or rather, it screams, a haunting, howling sound that hollows Keith out to his very core and leaves behind a nauseating absence, the like of which he’s never known.

The world seems to glitch then, and between one strangled breath and the next, the former paladin finds that he’s ducked away from the Druid’s attentions and shoved his companions back into the shadows with a ferocity that sees them both shout by the jarring force of it. In this same moment, Allura’s voice sounds over the comms—positively livid as she cusses Lotor out—but it’s Hunk’s panicked concern that serves to re-centre Keith’s thoughts, allowing him to calm enough that the heat of his own frantic breaths no longer fog the visor of his helmet.

“You don’t hear that?” His voice has turned to a raw, scraping thing, unwilling to crawl out from his throat, and barely audible over the din.

Hunk is gentle in his denial, but it’s denial nonetheless. Before Keith can think himself mad, Lotor is providing curt reassurance over the comms, voice low and troubled as he growls: “I do.”

There are words in Keith’s mouth—descriptors that might properly convey every violent urge that swells within him as the wailing carves a place for itself in his darkest thoughts—but they’re fat, ungainly things, and he can’t quite work his jaw around the shape of them.

“It’s fuckin’ awful,” he says instead, as if that somehow amounts to the same.

The universe must take pity on him, because all at once that harrowing note is plucked from existence, and time with it; Keith sags with relief, but he’s the only one who does so, Hunk and Matt and everyone else too quiet, too still, and then a familiar feline fury is sparking in the back of his mind, white-hot and wild, but the moment he latches onto it, the heat of that little flame turns scorching from the inside out, flooding Keith’s lungs with smoke and tar.

He comes back to the world around him in pieces.

“S’like something was screaming.” Lance’s voice, as torn up as Keith feels. “Dying.”

“I mean, we’ll obviously keep an eye out for whatever it was, but I guess it’s gone?” Hunk’s hands, solid and warm as he gently pries Keith’s fingers from where they’re curled under the plates of his armor. “For now, at least.”

The noise in the back of Keith’s throat is released in tandem with his death-grip, and then Matt’s switching his communicator back of to the beta channel for him while Hunk soothes little circles into the backs of his palms.

“You’re white as a sheet,” Matt says, and at the same time Hunk turns his attention to Lance, asking, “you doing okay buddy?” and like that Keith begins to pull himself back together.

“Lance,” and jesus his throat feels raw, “Lance you heard it too.”

“Unfortunately.”

“And Lotor-”

“And Shiro, yes Keith, we all heard it,” the paladin snaps, and Keith knows he doesn’t mean anything by it, knows that Lance must be feeling worn beyond measure because he too feels as if that blood-curdling sound had picked him apart at the seams, and yet despite that—because of it—he can’t help his temper.

“We didn’t all fucking hear it, Lance. Hunk didn’t hear it. Matt didn’t hear it. Neither did Pidge, or Allura, so unless you can tell me exactly what ‘it’ was and why half of us are fucked to high-heaven while the others are just peachy-”

“Rhyahl.”

The cold blankets Keith in a slow wave, draping itself across his shoulders and swamping him until a cool, scaled cheek is nuzzled up against his helmet as if it might phase through it given enough time.

“Rhyahl,” their voice—unexpectedly soft, like old leather falling apart at the seams—repeats that name over and over, as if a child with their first word, “Rhyahl, Rhyahl, Rhyahl-” and Keith doesn’t know what to make of it, not of this sudden affection nor the fact that the Druid somehow knows that name, but Hunk and Matt are exchanging a look, so-

So…

So apparently the galra name Lotor had given him over a phoeb ago wasn’t a name at all, but a creature, which is only marginally more comforting than Keith’s initial assumption that his druidic companion had somehow taken the word from his memories. They won’t—or perhaps can’t—say anything else, and when Keith tries to engage the poor vacant thing in conversation they simply return to their prior attempts to touch his face through his helmet, which is as weird as it is unhelpful. Matt, however, has apparently discussed this particular topic with Pidge in great detail, and is sharing what he knows about Daibazaal’s long-extinct apex predator as their party of four continues into the bowels of the laboratory, Druid in tow and content to be led by the hand so that they may be used as a key for the bio-locks. This means that the previously inaccessible high-security zones are now fair game, which may not have been part of the original plan, but even Lance had agreed that to not take full advantage of their druidic boon would be a waste.

Gift horses and all that.

“Right,” Keith absorbs Matt’s summary with a crease to his brow, “and Lotor chose to call me a six-legged lizard-fox because…?”

“No clue man,” Hunk jumps in too quickly.

“The why doesn’t really matter,” in forcing out a strained laugh, Matt only solidifies the fact that he and Hunk are hiding something, “what’s important is that we know what it is, and so can try to work out what said quintessence-eating beastie has to do with everything that’s going on here, and why Erik decided that’s the only word in their vocabulary.”

Keith is loath to ask, but… “Erik?”

“You know: Erik.”

When this clarifies approximately nothing, the elder Holt gives a great put-upon sigh.

“Title role of the Phantom of the Opera? Wears a scary mask? Swoops about in the shadows?” He gestures to the Druid on Keith’s arm, and when he turns to look at them they make a faint little chirruping noise in the back of their throat that Keith adamantly refuses to acknowledge as, of all things, cute. “Ergo, Erik!”

Hunk gives a nervous little giggle that is something between entertained and terrified. “Can we name them? I mean, I know we’re physically capable of it, but ethically are we allowed to just… name the scary alien priest?”

“The alternative would be to walk around calling them ‘scary alien priest’ the entire time, so,” Matt shrugs, “yeah? Besides, you don’t mind, do you Erik?”

When Keith glances back a second time to gauge their reaction, Erik’s ears prick up slightly and they click their tongue with a fluttering trill that neither Matt nor Hunk seem to hear, and it’s so… it’s so sad, not just the sound but all of it, as if in bearing witness to this leaking vessel’s ethereal gait turned slurred and stumbling, Keith himself has been burdened by a hollow ache in his chest, because whoever this Druid was before—whatever terrible things they might have done in the name of Haggar or the Empire or even Sa itself—they simply aren’t anymore.

They just don’t exist.

Keith’s stomach takes a swooping, sickening swan-dive as the full force of what it means for a living being to suffer such a monumental loss of quintessence hits him; this Druid isn’t simply ‘leaking’ in the abstract, but rather comatose, and haunting their own corpse.

Returning his attention to navigating the twists and turns that are presently leading their small party through several rooms set up as operating theatres, all of which Keith would really rather spend no more time in than he has to, he concedes that their druidic companion won’t much care one way or the other.

“Erik it is.”

 

Finally their party of four come to the druidic command centre, and with a hand to guide them, a great purple palm is pressed against the access pad, and the door slides open; the trill Erik lets out as they do so is harsh, shrill, and without warning they disappear into nothingness, the desperate rush of air which floods the vacuum left behind hitting like a punch to the gut when stood so close. Instantly, Keith is on high alert, Matt and Hunk too, because the room is too quiet, too empty, and the former paladin is struck by a jarring wave of déjà vu as he scans the room’s shadows for something—anything—amiss, but… but the room is just as uninhabited as the rest of the vessel.

And that in itself is… odd, when he thinks about it, and he should have thought about it, should have registered far sooner than they’ve seen scarcely a soul in all their wanderings, neither Druid nor subject, and this simply doesn’t make sense.

For a moment the room is writhing, restless, and then Keith blinks himself back to reality.

“-eith?” comes Matt’s voice, too close to his ear, and almost receiving a black eye for it. “Whoa! Easy spitfire!”

“Jesus fuck,” Keith snaps his head around to find Matt looking as startled as he feels, “what did we-” and then, “when did we-?”

Because they’re no longer stood tentatively in the doorway, but on the bridge proper, they must be, such is the imperial grandeur of the great glass front that surveys the jagged shards of ice the ship drifts between, that Keith cannot imagine it to be anything else. He and Matt are… apparently keeping watch, the yellow paladin kneeling behind them and up to his elbows in cables at the room’s primary dais as he tries to rewire the circuits, dead systems be damned, so that they can access the information they came here for.

“Pidge really did a number on this place,” Hunk mumbles, more to himself than anyone else, and then turns from his work to fix Keith with a heavy furrow between his brows. “Bud, you sure you’re okay? You’ve been really out of it since-” his words turn into a garbled mangled mess of static between Keith’s ears, “-and I’m worried man.”

“I’m… fine.” Keith hears someone reply in his voice.

It’s not a question, but it should be.

In scanning the room, violet eyes narrow to near-slits. The layout is not unlike that of the Castleship, but busier, a maze of cluttered shelves built around and even into the secondary stations that skirt the room’s edge, each shrouded in shadow and crammed with all manner of oddities, the nearest of which includes a little cluster of quietly luminescent flowers that strike Keith as somehow more real than reality itself. There’s a sudden pop in the back of his mind, an unknowable release of pressure, and he finds himself assaulted by a sudden flood of memory—nothing crucial, just the missing dobashes that took him from point A to B, the door to the centre—but this is the exact opposite of a comfort. It’s almost as if-

“Can’t believe I’m saying this,” Lance cuts in, sounding as skeptical as he does strained, “but Keith, I think they need you over on the alpha channel for damage control.”

Half sincere, Keith asks: “Have you met me?” which earns him a laugh from both Matt and Hunk, but the blue paladin isn’t deterred.

“Dude I’m serious, it’s getting kind of heated and—dios mio—just switch!”

He does.

“-knew Haggar was using living beings as conductors,” oh, Allura sounds sincerely pissed, “and yet you said nothing!”

“Haggar’s research has found quintessence conversion via a live subject to be incomparably more efficient than the Empire’s present methodology by way of druidic transmutation.” Lotor explains patiently, though Keith instantly recognises how thin said patience is wearing by the long-suffering strain between one word and the next, “I knew of it, but until this moment remained unaware that she had ventured beyond the use of the subject as a metamorphic vessel, into the realms of having it perform as a battery of its own accord, as there are certain… complications.”

Though struggling to pick up the thread of conversation—feeling as if he’s missed some of the context key to this budding conflict, and knowing he’s not particularly scientifically-minded besides—the words ‘Haggar’ and ‘subject’ in such quick succession give Keith a pretty solid starting point, and not one that he likes.

Then Shiro chips in, voice low, tone dark: “You sound like you’re defending her.”

Does he?

Keith… isn’t so sure.

“Better this than the Komar,” the prince spits back, his tongue colouring each word with that particular sort of loathing he seems to have reserved for Zarkon’s witch alone. “My plan from the start has been to find a way to harvest quintessence without resorting to such acts of barbarism; extracting it from entire planets at the cost of every living thing? I think not. The Empire is, at present, sustainable only on a technicality. The sheer quantity of quintessence required to fuel it is staggering; with our current methods of conversion into a viable fuel source being so crude, and my father’s appetite for expanse having not abated in the slightest, the galra people will soon be operating vastly outside of our means.”

Oh, Keith thinks, with a start, oh this about the blue quintessence.

He’d thought Lotor to be at the heart of it all—and perhaps he is, perhaps even now the prince’s carefully-worded explanations are some sort of clever ruse—but in his time working exclusively with Marmora Keith had been tracking that particular quintessence signature across half the universe to no avail, so to have answers so readily supplied now of all times-

Shiro and Allura are both interrogating Lotor with a sharpness that will only anger him, and Hunk must have realised this too if the desperation with which he mouths do something from across the room is any indication; Keith waves him off with an almost frantic air. Not now, not yet, not when he might finally learn something more than what the Blade already know—about both the quintessence and Lotor—because as much as he loves his friends, in this moment Lotor isn’t a threat, and priority one is, unbeknownst to team Voltron, Marmora’s mission. His mission.

Regris had died for this intel.

“It was a calculated risk,” Lotor says, and Keith believes that because everything Zarkon’s son does is painfully deliberate, “I admit that, but I had every confidence that you would come through without a scratch. Once I’d recovered the comet, I harboured no intentions towards your little rebellion beyond staying out of your way providing you stayed out of mine: how was I to know our paths would cross in the Ulippa System?”

The comms crackle with a suspicious silence, and Keith physically feels Lotor’s mood shift.

Okay, now he needs to intervene.

“What could I possibly have gained by fighting you?” Scorn sharpens Lotor’s tongue in a way that Keith recognises as dangerous, if only for the fact that they cannot afford to be fighting one another when Daibazaal’s apex predator may or may not be stalking the halls as they speak. “I hardly crafted Sincline with the mind to play at being a hero as you so evidently wish to.”

“Lotor,” he tries, carefully, but if the prince hears him then he is refusing to acknowledge it.

“The Galra Empire is completely reliant on quintessence; serve that need peacefully, and you have a complete paradigm shift—a new dawn for the old Empire—and so my sole focus was, and is, finding a way to enter the zone between realities-”

“It sounds to me,” Allura’s tone says that she’s not about to do anyone any favours, “that the green Lion was mistaken.”

It’s a struggle to puzzle out the relevance of that. The green Lion, Keith thinks, something had happened with the green Lion earlier, but conjuring up the memory feels not unlike burying his head in the desert until his ears are full of sand, gritty and irritating. When clarification is offered—“How many times will you have me repeat myself? I am not my father!”—it is both in Lotor’s voice and not, something uncharacteristically fragile stuttering between each ragged breath, and it strikes Keith with an abrupt certainty that there is a yet-unspoken precipice here that, if approached blindly, Allura risks stumbling straight over.

The fall would almost certainly shatter both her and Lotor to pieces, he just knows it, and any semblance of this alliance along with them.

“This isn't a zero-sum game!” the prince continues, furious, frantic, “meeting the needs of the Empire means bringing peace to the universe; that is the future enlightenment brings us, one of prosperity for all!”

And it’s not that Keith doesn’t see the logic in it, he does, but- “Lotor.”

“I saved your lives and the lives of all your comrades. I have given you target after target of tactical significance. I have assisted you at every turn with very little to show for it, and yet still you dare liken me to-”

The prince is brittle and broken and laughing, and Keith knows he has to put an end to this now.

“Lotor!”

“What?”

The rapidity with which borderline-hysteria gives way to snappish rebuke is alarming, more so for the fact that Keith has little choice but to judge Lotor’s mood by sound alone, and it has him flinching even as he sets his jaw.

“Enough.”

The tone he’s taken is one part Allura: diplomatic, but no-nonsense, and one part Lotor himself: a softly growled warning pressed into the spaces between each letter with a vibrato that only galra seem to hear, and underlaying it all a concern for the prince that Keith hopes will settle him.

It does not.

“I may enjoy you, Rhyahl, but do not presume to order anything of me.” There’s a snarl on Lotor’s tongue that speaks of danger, of a line too closely trodden, and angering him further is the last thing Keith wanted. “I have warned you against the limitations of my fondness before, and I will not have you treat me as a yupper to instruct as you please without a word to the contrary.”

“That’s not-” Matt is frantically slicing his hand across his own throat—as if Keith doesn’t know he’s fucking this up—but if there’s one thing he gets right today it’s going to be this. Frustration a grating thing in the depths of his throat, Keith turns his eyes to the window, to the stars, and rephrases. “I just meant that now’s maybe not a great time for you to defend the ethics of Haggar’s work.”

“Do not put words in my mouth.”

“But you are,” and it’s not even a criticism, just a statement, just a fact, “you believe that Haggar’s in the right—at least in this.”

Lotor goes quiet.

Lotor goes quiet and Keith knows he’s said the wrong thing.

“I believe,” are the words eventually grits out, his tone so tenuously controlled that Keith is certain the older galra must be bearing his fangs, and hopes to god that neither Shiro nor Allura decide to kill him for it, “that this method is the lesser of two evils, when the Komar remains the sole viable alternative. But, by all means,” and jesus, there’s that laughter again, cold and cruel, “impress upon me the idealistic idiocy of Voltron, and let us see precisely how many lives it saves when the Empire exhausts its quintessence supplies and devolves into chaos.”

He’s not listening.

“Oh for fuck’s sake Lotor-”

“I am Prince Lotor,” he hisses, invoking his title with more weight than it’s due, “son of Zarkon, and I demand respe-”

“You’re prince of jack-shit, son of who-the-fuck-cares!” Keith’s temper spits, sparks, scorches. Hunk has dropped the heavy cables he was tinkering with in favour of gaping, Lance is wheezing out a high, horrified noise, and Matt makes to grab at Keith’s arm as if he might be able to physically restrain him from digging this hole any deeper… Well fuck them, because Lotor’s being a little bitch, and if Keith doesn’t say it nobody will, so he sidesteps Matt and strides across the bridge and towards the all-consuming darkness of space in a futile attempt to burn off some of the restless tension that runs rife in his veins. “If you want respect, then earn it. You don’t get to just invoke Zarkon’s name like it means something!”

Dimly, he hears someone—maybe several someones—curse on a whisper.

“Plot-fucking-twist: it doesn’t!”

Red roars, so does Green, but Lotor is spitting furious indignance over them both. “I have been willing to set aside my ego for the sake of seeing this alliance to fruition, but I will not sacrifice my dignity-”

Little fractals of frost creep up the window’s exterior, blossoming into something pretty and pale that obscures Keith’s view of everything beyond it.

“-especially not for the opinions of someone so ill-tempered and selfishly motivated as to abandon his friends for blood shared with the enemy!”

Marmora can go on without you—Allura’s voice echoes as if from over a great distance, soft and sorrowful—they have for thousands of years; Voltron cannot. We cannot.

Keith’s heart aches.

“And yet you left them, all the same,” says Lotor, replying to something Keith never said, and the truth of it is excruciating, tearing a choked denial from the Blade’s lips, weak in both sound and substance.

“Oh sweet little thing,” the prince croons, “did you think me unaware? They begged that you not to pursue me on Thayserix, but you did. They pleaded that you desist in your obsessive desire to see the universe rid of me, but you did not. And when it became clear to you that they would not pander to your personal wants? When they would not obey?”

Keith’s head is pounding, his palms clammy, throat tight.

“How similar you are, paladin, to he who came before you. If only I had let you die for them,” muses Lotor, his voice melting away the world around Keith until there’s nothing left of it but a festering guilt, “rather than live to see them destroyed by your own hand.”

And all at once Keith is thrown back into a world on fire: the blood in his veins, the sweat on his nape, Matt’s voice in his ear screaming his name while the controls strain against him as if the little fighter itself knows what he intends, and is desperate to avoid such a fate. The heat the hurt the name-

The noise.

A singular note, pure and startling white—if white could be a sound—like sugar on his tongue or snow in his lashes or dandelion seeds swept away by a breath.

S’like something was screaming—says Lance, so close that the words are a physical blow—Dying.

 

Keith wakes up.

Keith wakes up, and he remembers.

Keith wakes up, and he remembers that agony is too weak a word.

 

Keith wakes up, and everything fucking hurts.

There’s an unforgiving pressure clamped around his cheeks- temple- skull- blunt and boiling and of all things damp, exuding a viscous, meaty fluid that, when Keith snaps his eyes open to a world of cloying heat, sends tears streaking his cheeks to become muddied with sweat and something incomparably worse: a heady humidity that slicks his fringe to his face and leaves him strangled, smothered, his throat convulsing around the thick, wet, squirming intrusion that worms its way deeper even as he gags around it. A full-body spasm rakes his form and is met by an awful crooning sort of sound that vibrates all around him, through him, and it’s like this—with stinging tears and sodden lashes—that Keith’s mind registers the pulsating darkness before him as flesh: slimy, sickening, and saturated with saliva.

He chokes again, struggling uselessly against the creature’s hold as trembling hands fumble blindly for his- Shiro’s bayard, the familiar weight of its hilt an immediate comfort as he brings it up with a vengeance and plunges it into the soft underside of his assailant’s throat, twisting his wrist and activating the blade in the same moment. The altean tech’s wicked edge pierces through the darkness to barely an inch from Keith’s nose, and then it’s gone, or rather, he is—tossed backwards across the room and into the command centre’s glass front, before crumpling to the ground as if a puppet with its strings cut, bones aching and lungs burning as he dry heaves against the sudden ice that is a renewed flood of oxygen to his lungs.

There’s an anguished screech of pain from the beast that, to Keith’s sincere regret, sounds a lot more alive than he wants it to be.

Head pounding and limbs sluggish, he forces himself up—he has to get up—off the dangerously inviting floor to exchange the blinking lights that dance across his vision for the slow trickle of memory, a soft, soggy thing that seems unable to sit quite right in his mind.

Thrown through space by Red: true.

Room of dissolving experiments: true.

Encounter with a druid: true.

Argument with Lotor: tru- no. Half-true, almost true, but it hadn’t ended like that, not quite, not really, because it couldn’t have done, because Lotor doesn’t know about the niggling insecurities that eat away at the darkest recesses of Keith’s subconscious, can’t have any idea of how many nights he’s lain awake wondering if he’d done the right thing when he’d removed himself from the equation that is Voltron, because the risk—the danger he posed them—was arguably greater than the Empire itself.

Though… though if anyone did know, if anyone could possibly understand his reasoning, it would be Lotor.

Forcing his thoughts back to the present through sheer strength of will, Keith drags himself from the floor with ribs protesting so ardently that if he hasn’t broken at least two of them, it’ll be a miracle. Before him flails a grotesque, patchwork thing, staggering about on six limbs, none of which seem able to retrieve his katar from where it’s buried hilt deep in the creature’s throat, painting its lolling jowls with blood, black and bubbling. He’d describe it as reptilian, if he had to, but its shimmering armor is comprised of scales so fine that they might well be feathers—a wine-dark plumage that ripples and swells almost hypnotically with each flex of the muscles beneath.

Wounded and wetted with its own fluids, the creature swings its head about to fix him with its full attention, and Keith, half hypnotised by the convulsing mass of putrid tongues that spill forth form the creature’s gaping maw, realises three things in very quick succession.

One: knelt by the creature’s right flank is Hunk, and beyond him, Matt. Neither of them seem conscious, which is to say that they’re upright and breathing but not at all in touch with the world around them, eyes glazed over and trapped within whatever dream-state it is that this beast uses to ensnare its victims. They are, however, still wearing their helmets, which is more than Keith can say for himself, and so presumably have not yet fallen prey to the violation he had been subject to when he woke.

Two: said helmet is across the room—the crown of it split almost clean in two, though Keith doesn’t remember a thing about that—and by the faintly panicked buzz of chatter that emits from its general direction the abrupt termination of contact between their two teams has been sufficient cause for concern, which means the others are more than likely on their way here.

Three: when his vision smears as if the world around him has been painted in watercolour on a rainy day, Keith instinctually knows that he too is leaking, and in a no more suitable state to fight this creature—this Rhyahl—than the macabre collection of druidic corpses that lie mangled and limp on the floor, halfway between Keith and the beast itself.

The chest cavity of the one closest is caved in, but to Keith’s horror their half-deflated body still wheezes with futile breath.

I am not, Keith decides, dying here. Not now, and not like that.

So he runs.

Sprinting towards the Rhyahl and beneath its left flank, close enough that his fingers can brush the black bayard’s hilt—which, were it any other weapon, wouldn’t be enough to retrieve it, but altean tech is a goddamn miracle—and the blade jumps from its bloodied sheath of muscle and sinew to Keith’s palm in an arc of violet light. This tears both a chunk of flesh and a shriek from the creature, chilling him to the bone, but he daren’t pause, not for a tick, and when he lurches to one side to avoid the hulking paw slams down upon the spot he’d just vacated, Keith is resoundingly glad of his choice, because the metal flooring buckles.

Okay. Okay so it’s freakishly strong too. Fantastic.

He scrambles up and away from his assailant, putting as much distance between him and it as he is able before the creature rounds on him, its tail thrashing sharply back and forth, whipping dangerously close to Hunk who doesn’t even flinch, completely unaware of the destruction being wrought around him. It becomes abundantly clear to Keith that unless he wants to get his friends caught in the crossfire, he needs to get this thing out of here and as far away from them as possible, and his best hope of doing that is by making a break for the door, in the hope that he’s pissed Haggar’s beastie off enough that it refuses to leave him be.

This plan… does not go as well as it could’ve done.

His legs are unsteady, liquid, trembling things beneath his own weight, and apparently insistent upon carrying him several degrees wrong of any given direction he aims for; this leaves Keith bolting from the bridge in a crashing zig-zag down the hallway, a literal collision course that sees him bruised and battered at every turn. His sole saving grace is that although the howling beast gallops after him in great loping bounds, it remains slick with its own blood to the point of disrupting its own lumbering gait as its claws fumble furiously to retain its footing.

Keith makes sure to take each corner as sharply as he is able.

But even like this, even grievously injured and drenched in its own bodily fluids, the creature is not nearly so disadvantaged as Keith would have expected from something that had just had half its throat gouged out, whereas he himself feels drained, depleted, a mass of protesting muscle and pain—god he hurts—as the shadows swim around him and beg that he let himself rest.

He cannot let himself rest.

Lungs burning, eyes streaming, he pushes onwards, heartbeat thudding in time with his footsteps as he thunders through the darkness and darts around yet another corner, his pursuer scarcely ten paces behind, and prays that he’s remembered his way correctly.

Because if he hasn’t, he’s royally fucked.

Third door on the right, come on come on come on-

Metal screams, high and piercing, as the monster at his heel scrabbles for purchase, and Keith swears he can feel the wet heat of its panting breaths against his nape, sticky and eager and-

-and he bursts into the room of pillars with mere inches between himself and the creature, launching his bayard at the tank Hunk had shot at while blindly throwing himself in the opposite direction, as far as his is physically able, and just… hoping for the best. His bayard doesn’t quite shatter the damaged tank, not with the pervasive weakness of Keith’s limbs as he leaks quintessence from wounds unseen, but the clattering weight of the rhyahl as it crashes its ungainly bulk into scorched glass? Yeah, that does it.

The cylinder shatters to pieces, and the creature howls.

Wails- seethes- spits with such vehemence that Keith daren’t even look from where he’s curled up against the wall until everything has fallen quiet and still, the acidic stench of melting flesh so thick in the air that he can taste it, so overpowering that even the foul reek of fetid matter that had saturated the room earlier seems to pale in comparison.

“Honestly,” Keith greedily sucks in a shallow, shuddering gulp of air—raw throat and rancid stench be damned—and remains folded into himself, every inch soaked through with alien viscera, “fuck Haggar.”

 

Red’s interior walls prove an invaluable support as each dredging step Keith forces himself to take seems determined to be impossibly harder than the last, but eventually his ascension of her sloped throat (and was it always this steep?) is complete, and he’s able to limp towards the frantic chatter of familiar voices to the cockpit.

“-y’ve not found a body’s a good thing. You know it is.” Lance is saying, and even though his back’s to him, Keith can tell he must be chewing his lower lip to hell in that way he does when he’s trying not to panic, because broad shoulders are rife with tension, one leg bouncing a mile a minute.

“It’s better than a dead body, at least,” comes Pidge’s voice, and as Keith drags his aching form further into the cockpit he can see her on the holo-screen, seated in the green Lion’s chair with a furrowed brow and limbs drawn close around herself, a tight little ball of a person, as if she needs to physically hold herself together. “I mean, it’s Keith. He’ll be fine… right?”

“Of course he will!” Lance forces a laugh, too obviously strained, scared, and it’s here that Keith—mind sluggish and dizzy as it is—begins to catch up. “If mister ninja-space-cat-best-pilot-of-his-generation went out like this, I’d never forgive him. In fact, I bet you any moment now he’ll just come waltzing in through that door all ‘tada~’ like it’s no big d-”

Lance turns as he says it, arm spread wide in a grand gesture as he indicates the door Keith has, indeed, just entered through.

In the face of the paladins’ shared shock, he gives a feeble wave.

“…Tada.”

Notes:

Alternative chapter title: "How many times can I allude to the fact that the Rhyahl is big and scary and feeding off Keith's quintessence as he relives his memories without being really obnoxious about it?"

Also this chapter crested the 10,000 mark which was not quite my intention BUT serves my purposes well, because (good news!) I will be participating in Keitor Month in January which I am //so freaking excited about// but (bad news) this means that I will absolutely not have time to write another chapter of LB while also writing for 31 prompts.... realistically, that's just not happening. So, I'm doing the logical thing and telling you all ahead of time that this is the last update of 2019 in favour of 2020 starting out with a glorious flood of keitor content - and, of course, because I'm me, I've already started plotting out several of the prompts and I realise that they will not be short. Because why make it easy for myself?

But Keitor Month! Let's talk about that please because I am absolutely thrilled (and honestly Satan, Sylla, Cucu, I cannot thank you three enough ♡) and I sincerely hope that anyone who's interested in participating does so! Even if you can't make the full commitment, there are some truly inspired prompts on the list that might spark your creativity, and if not then I just hope you'll all enjoy and support the content other creators put out there when the time comes!

-

TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 19: Talk About Social Distancing

Summary:

Previously: Keith has a lovely little frolic around a druidic lab with Matt & Hunk, wherein the three of them find pillars filled with decaying matter, and make a new friend :) Oh, and then he argues with Lotor, wakes up from a distorted reality to find his head in a monster's mouth and it's tongue squirming down his throat, and almost dies in about six different ways. Thrilling.

Lotor has always valued his privacy, but this?

This is maddening.

Whether by virtue of Pidge’s tracker that he absolutely-does-not-know-about, or the fact that Team Voltron clearly have no idea as to which of their so-called allies can be trusted not to assassinate him on a whim, the prince hasn’t a clue, but the end result is the same: bar the altean mice who scurry about as they please, he finds himself completely and utterly alone. Though the paladins have graciously allowed him access to the scant intel they managed to extract from the druidic laboratory, perhaps hopeful that Lotor will see something they do not, this can only occupy so much of his time, and so here he is with an overabundance of it once more. With his rebel guard having been retired, private quarters have become a private wing, more or less, and while Lotor is not certain as to the precise length of his proverbial leash, given the circumstances he’s neither eager nor stupid enough to test Princess Allura’s apparent good will.

The circumstances being, of course, Keith’s present… state.

Lotor wouldn’t call himself a stranger to insubordination—not when respect has always been something he’s had to fight for tooth and nail, clawing its shredded remains from the lips of imperial officers who would just as soon spit obscenities at him as they would blood from a broken jaw—but Keith’s blatant disregard of everything Lotor is, everything his title represents was-

Unexpected?

No.

Keith may be galra down to his very core, but he wasn’t raised as such, and it shows. The blood of an Emperor means something to everyone but him: even Marmora’s ilk, who have so solidly cemented themselves as Zarkon’s enemy, showed Lotor the respect he was owed by blood, but Keith… Keith simply didn’t.

Doesn’t.

To so much as think in the past tense might be to tempt fate, and though he is not a superstitious man Lotor cannot—will not—risk it.

Risk Keith.

He’s turned over their quarrel a thousand times in his mind. His assessment of Keith’s character flaws was callous and frankly unkind, but no matter how frequently Lotor explores each and every avenue for a harsh word that might have remained unsung, not a single iteration ends with anything other than that sweetly horrified breath tearing the prince’s world to pieces.

The mission’s devolution into chaos had been a swift one: scant ticks separated the curse Keith uttered with tremulous lips, from that soulless, shrieking thing… scant ticks, but time enough to see Lotor’s blood running cold in his veins as the severity of his little Blade’s predicament dawned upon him, without a single thing he could do to prevent it. There had been a scuffle on Keith’s end—not a fight, not really, too fiercely outmatched by the creature that stalked those ravenous halls—but the ensuing silence, Lotor thinks now, might haunt him for the rest of his life. The blue paladin had held himself together admirably during his repeated yet failed attempts to contact his teammates. Their comms were still active, he had informed the princess, but non-responsive, and it had been then that there was a resounding crack as if one of said comms—and indeed, the helmet it resided within—had been viciously whipped against an unyielding surface.

“Keith’s gone dark,” Lance had said.

The details are a little hazy after that.

Leading the charge with a wildness in him that was almost animal, had been the champion, tearing through the halls in pursuit of a battle they never found, because upon arrival on the bridge their trio was greeted by a scene awash with nothing short of carnage.

Bodies- or fragments of bodies- or mutilated lumps of flesh that were not quite bodies anymore, if ever they were-

To his left, face hard but eyes glistening, the princess had whispered an altean bid for mercy under her breath before, with a yell, she’d spotted Hunk and the green paladin’s brother across the room, kneeling as if in unanswered prayer. Keith had not been with them, but his helmet had: split clean in two across the crown, no good to anybody, and, indeed, without any body to pair it with. When trembling hands had retrieved it from the floor, Lotor’s fingers had near touched around it.

The prince has thought many things of Keith, but until that moment fragile had been far removed from the list.

“May I sit?”

Lotor is torn from his reverie with his heart in his throat to find Princess Allura standing a respectful distance away, hands neatly clasped but lips a tight line as she frowns pointedly at the arm of the chair his claws have apparently shredded in his sudden alarm.

Well, Lotor thinks, she ought have known better than to sneak up on him. She’s fortunate it was not her throat, for how on edge he feels.

“By all means,” waving blithely to the vacant seat across from him—the very same in which Keith had enthroned himself as he challenged Lotor to earn the privilege of his name—the prince steadfastly does not acknowledge the massacred upholstery. “It is your ship, after all.”

This is new.

Princess Allura has been keeping tabs on him, certainly, but a personal visit—particularly a solitary one—is unprecedented.

All the same, the princess primly sits herself down, and offers Lotor the same cool regard he greets her with tenfold. When it becomes apparent that this might well continue beyond that which the prince cares enough to endure, he resigns himself to making the first move.

“How fares Pidge?”

“Pidge?”

She’s evidently startled, though by his concern or the unlikely subject of it, Lotor can’t rightly say.

“She seemed… perturbed. By how events unfolded, and the part she played in their execution.” The events themselves, he means, not the people subject to them, though in hindsight it is near the same thing: the creature (and the paladins insist upon calling it rhyahl even though, from the distorted footage Lotor has seen of that patchwork monstrosity, he can categorically say it was not) had nothing short of ravaged the laboratory, along with all who had resided within.

“She blames herself,” the princess admits quietly, still so careful with how much she says when in Lotor’s presence, “for what happened to those druids,” and then, “for what happened to Keith.”

She’s not wrong to do so, Lotor privately concludes. The druidic logs indicate that the creature’s escape was a direct consequence of the youngest paladin’s tampering; in overloading the laboratory’s circuits to secure Voltron’s undetected access, the beast had been released, free to do as it pleased and with only a skeleton crew to hold it at bay. Not that she could have known, of course, not that anyone could have expected her to, but still. The facts are what they are.

“Lotor?” It’s a strangely personal address, soft and subdued, and perhaps this is why it captures his attention so completely. “Would you indulge me?”

“In what regard?”

“I should like you to explain it to me again, now that we are no longer in so hostile an environment,” and Lotor thinks that is rather dependent on where one is sitting, but- “the pod we saw, the purpose Haggar intended it for, all of it, I- I wish to understand. Or try to, at least.”

And that… is promising. More so than Lotor has come to expect, all things considered.

“And if I deign to do so,” Lotor begins, uncaring of the former pretence between them, and words shrewd because of it, “will you judge me by my actions rather than your preconceptions of my race?”

Princess Allura is, at least, aware of her own faults, if the wounded, defensive cast of her posture is any indication—to allow her to silently shirk the issue at this stage, however, would be kinder than she deserves, and so Lotor sharpens his tongue: “Or, if that is beyond you, then perhaps you should simply finish me and get it over with. Clearly, Princess, you are not ready to end this war.”

And that does incite a reaction.

“I promised Keith I would do better,” she forces out, knuckles white and fists fierce, “with regard to- well, not just you. Everything. This past decaphoeb since I woke,” her eyes do not quite meet his considering gaze, “has been a difficult one, and I confess I have not truly reconciled myself with what happened to my planet, let alone my people. Truthfully, I do not know if ever I will.”

And he does pity her that.

“However,” she soldiers admirably on, “as a leader, as Altea’s would-be queen, I have a responsibility to the universe and all its people—galra included—and I think you will agree,” she shoots him a wry smile, “I have allowed my judgment to remain clouded for long enough.”

Lotor eyes her carefully.

Voltron’s lioness, he thinks, is a remarkably complicated woman.

“Very well, Princess,” is his concession, “but I must first ask something of you.” Fingers laced together in his lap, Lotor catches the brief scrunching of her brow before she smooths it out with practiced grace.

Her resultant: “oh?” rings high and strained into the space between them.

“Tell me, how do you propose that one goes about ensuring an empire that’s known naught but violence for thousands of decaphoebs puts down its weapons?”

She opens her mouth too quickly, only to close it again. The result is a very pretty mimicry of a fish.

“Voltron is a weapon, not a solution,” he tells her, in absence of an answer, “unless, of course, you wish to become that which you so abhor, and subjugate the galra people-”

“Of course not!” she snaps, seeming truly shaken by the insinuation. “I am not Zarkon.”

They stare at one another for what feels an age.

“No,” Lotor quietly agrees at last, “nor am I.”

Although dark ears flick with irritation, she does, at the very least, have the decency to look chastised.

Reaching for her, taking her hand in his, Lotor is keenly aware of how the princess flinches, attention zeroing in on where their fingers are just shy of entangled. She does not, however, recoil, and instead looks him dead in the eye.

“You are neither a genocidal tyrant, nor a product of the Rift, but we both know that there are realities in which you are worse,” that does disturb her, more intimately than anticipated, but if Lotor allows avoidance of the issue now, she might never offer him the opportunity to explain himself again, “so you and I must be better. It is perhaps unfair, to ask so much of us when the universe has given so little, but we’ve no choice.”

A breath, and with it the chance to really drive the issue home.

“We must be better than my father’s cruelty would see us.”

“Then why attempt to tread the same path?” she bites, still cold and mistrustful. “Why build Sincline at all?”

And isn’t that the crux of the matter.

“The conversion pods first, I think.” Allowing her fingers to slip from his, Lotor reclines with faux dispassion, even as his heart draws tight and small. “You think of them as barbaric for the lives they take, but spare not a thought for the lives they save when their sole viable alternative is the Komar.”

“The lesser of two evils is still evil.”

“How painfully reductive,” Lotor’s fingers drum up an aggravated rhythm under her royal highness’ lofty glower, “evil is a construct to let the simple man sleep at night—in truth, there is no such thing; the universe is far too complex to be boiled down to so inane a framework as a moral dichotomy. Sometimes, terrible choices must be made for the sake of preserving that which might be preserved, rather than wasting valuable time on that which cannot. Unsightly choices. Excruciating choices. Impossible choices. Your father understood that, and hateful as his decision to condemn my people’s sacred creature to death may have been, I respect his reasoning, and indeed him.”

“The rhyahl.” Her jaw sets into something pained. “In light of recent events, surely even you cannot call my father’s choice hateful.”

It had been, though. The exodus preceding the Sa Tskept had seen specimens of every species indigenous to Daibazaal carefully retrieved and rehabilitated, so long as they could be so without catastrophic damage to their designated new world: every species, that was, except the rhyahl. Every species, except the mortal god of Lotor’s kin.

He observes Alfor’s daughter carefully, and graciously sidesteps her ignorance.

“Your father knew that though others may, and indeed did, condemn him for it, to unleash the rhyahl on another ecosystem? Another planet? It could not be done. The good of the many must come before the good of the few.”

Though she clearly recognises this as the advice it is intended to be, Princess Allura does not receive it well, her tone turning sharp and defensive.

“I know that.”

She’s not lying, Lotor realises, but sheltered little thing that she is, her truth is simply incapable of being the truth.

“Let us agree, at least, that the Komar is the worse of two undesirables.”

After a moment’s hesitation—though gods know there is nothing to hesitate about—this is received with a taught nod, and while Lotor is near suffocating in the air between them, it is… something.

“The Empire is flawed, Princess, I’ll admit to that, but it is not inherently evil. My intention has always been to reform it, starting with altering its current method of quintessence extraction: as it stands now, it is not sustainable.”

“Ergo the Komar, and… that,” she murmurs, finally catching on, “but as you said in the lab, imperial quintessence yields are too low to sustain the Empire as it is, let alone in a decaphoeb’s time, if Zarkon continues to conquer new worlds.”

“Precisely.”

“Which-” oh she is on a roll. Lotor is almost proud. “-is why you built Sincline... it’s never been Voltron’s offensive properties that interest you.”

With a deep, warbling hum, Lotor inclines his head.

“Not even remotely. Where Voltron is a sword, Sincline was always intended to be more of a scalpel; to establish a quintessence pipeline directly from the source would be to eradicate the Empire’s primary motivator in this war. I want this to end, Princess, no different from you.”

Well, a little different, he suspects, but one really ought let sleeping yuppers lie.

But then Allura is looking at him, really looking at him, and Lotor feels quite suddenly exposed.

“Ignoring the obvious ramifications of reopening the Rift, you sincerely believe that to provide ample quintessence would be to abate your people’s bloodlust?” She stands so swiftly that the prince almost takes it to be an offensive manoeuvre, but her eyes have gone distant and flickering, her mind clearly racing with the prospect.

“A starving khujr will bite until its belly is full,” he recites, unduly gratified by the near-smile that the altean proverb earns him as the princess’ eyes light up in recognition, even if she does force herself to conceal this response just as quickly. “There will be an element, yes, who desire blood for blood’s sake, but in truth? My people are tired,” and then, because it seems prudent to remind her, “no one is born a soldier.”

She stands before him for a long time after that, wringing her hands as she thinks in silence, and Lotor does not interrupt her. Princess Allura, he is realising quite quickly, must come to her own conclusions—to attempt to otherwise persuade her is nothing short of counterproductive.

“I still-” slowly, she sinks to her seat, brow furrowed and lip caught between her teeth, “-I still cannot condone the use of living creatures as batteries.”

Lotor bows his head once more.

“You are a noble heart, bleeding though it may be, and truthfully I admire that. Though,” here the prince hesitates, and wonders if he should bite his tongue, before ultimately deciding against it, “if we’re being perfectly candid, then I do not like you very much, but personal feelings aside you are a formidable woman. Look at all you have achieved: so much in so little time, and all against what was until very recently universally agreed to be an unmatched force.”

Allura blinks, big blue eyes for once without guard, and then shakes her head, a huffed breath one of obvious disbelief even if she smiles through it.

“Likewise.”

And that, Lotor suspects, is as close to a compliment as he will ever receive from her, which is to say it is hardly one at all.

“If everything you say is true,” she begins again, picking at the delicate embroidery of her sleeve, “then why oppose Voltron at all? Why fight us on Thayserix- why even take Puig to begin with?”

“Are you sincerely suggesting, Princess,” Lotor’s face falls flat as, with a raised eyebrow, he drawls: “that I, when serving as Emperor pro-tem, ought have publically reached out to the people directly responsible for felling my own father and- what? Called for a ceasefire? Would you have even agreed?”

He’s sees in her face that she would not, but that goes hand in hand with the flagrant mistrust between them.

Lotor sighs.

“Is it so hard to believe that I wish to return the Galra Empire to a bygone era of peace? I would be a fool to ask after your friendship,” Lotor presses these words from his tongue with as much dignity as he is able, and this time, when he reaches for her hand, she does not flinch, “and there may be little love lost between you and I, but is there not hope?”

“I…” just when Lotor thinks he’s won her, a pained sort of longing flitting across her features, Princess Allura abruptly withdraws, clutching at her own fingers as if scorched. “Thank you for indulging me, Prince Lotor. I will take council on everything we have discussed.”

And like that, in a great swirl of skirts, she’s halfway across the library floor before Lotor can so much as blink.

“Princess,” he calls after her, and though she lingers in the doorway, she does not look back, “if this alliance is to bear fruit, I will, at the very least, require some modicum of respect.”

The only answer she gives is the soft click of the library door as it shuts behind her.

 

---

 

Keith only realises he’s falling after it’s stopped, the cold alkaline wash of altean antiseptic giving way in favour of a spiced heat, simultaneously familiar and foreign, that his addled brain is finding it impossible to place. It’s nice, either way, and he sags into it without protest, burrowing his face against the solid warmth that is quick to embrace him.

“It’s good to have you back,” are the words Keith feels more than hears, a fond rumble of baritone that reverberates straight through him.

“S’good t’be back.”

His tongue is dry and clumsy, so the words don’t come out quite right, but Shiro just cradles his noodle-limbed body closer with an indulgent huff of laughter. Keith feels himself be half-carried across the room and carefully lowered onto a medical cot, where his oldest friend props him up before withdrawing with a wavering smile.

“How’re you feeling?”

Keith smacks his lips a few times, blinks, and finds a nutrition pouch being gently foistered upon him: it’s no hardship to guzzle the whole thing down before answering.

“M’good,” and then, when Shiro gives him a look that he knows all too well, “tired, thirsty, alive. S’pretty good in my book.”

The black paladin remains blatantly unconvinced.

“You almost died Keith.”

“Almost,” he hears himself agreeing, amiably.

This, apparently, is not quite the right thing to say, because it has Shiro hissing an obscenity under his breath, which isn’t nearly so funny as Keith finds it, but his head still feels stuffed full of cotton, his vision is speckled with dark spots, and his quintessence-

“You’ve been out for nine quintants,” hands—one warm and calloused, the other cold and demanding—cup his face, the expression that accompanies them a stern scowl, “you scared the hell out of us.”

The first part of that, Keith’s foggy drugged-up brain tells him, is concerning. The second is terrifying. By us Shiro means the paladins, who are his friends, who were there with him when that creature-

The memories tear through him with all the delicacy of a freight train.

Keith promptly launches himself forward until he’s practically folded over the unforgiving line of Shiro’s bionic arm, and vomits. Other than the nutrition pouch, the contents of his stomach are unsurprisingly sparse, so for the most part he spends the next few dobashes burning from the inside out, spluttering and retching and gasping for breath around that phantom thing in his throat, until the spasms that wrack his form eventually—mercifully—give way.

Shiro makes consoling noises through it all, carefully combing back his hair and holding him steady.

“Better?”

“No.” Keith spits, bitterly. “Fuck.”

He drags the back of his hand across his mouth, forces himself to swallow the stinging bile that sticks like a threat between his teeth, and asks: “Matt ‘n Hunk, are they-?”

“They’re okay,” tucking wayward strands of hair behind Keith’s ear, Shiro scratches gently over his scalp and manages a wry smile, “everyone’s okay, Keith, we were just waiting on you.”

“That’s good,” by god does everything ache, his body heavy and slow and prickling with unease, “I feel like shit.”

And Shiro, damn him, has the audacity to laugh.

“What happened to good?”

“I lied,” he croaks out, but despite it all, the smile that begins to work its way over cracked lips is undeniable, even as he drops his forehead against Shiro’s shoulder, “I’m tried, and thirsty, and half dead on my feet, so laugh it up Shirogane: I feel. Like. Shit.”

 

The nauseated feeling that sits like a stone in the pit of his stomach hasn’t abated any by the time Coran arrives, summoned by Shiro to look Keith over, even though they must be vargas into the night cycle because- well, that’s not quite clear. Yes, the churning in Keith’s gut is… less than ideal, but it’s late and the pods have never failed them before, and he doesn’t want to be any trouble, surely it can wait until morning-?

Shiro denies him with a firm, “no, Keith,” and they leave it at that.

“Good to see you up and at ’em number four!” Is the first thing Coran greets him with, almost immediately followed by: “or it would be if you were—er—either up or at ‘em.”

The fact that one look at his huddled form is enough for the altean’s broad smile to flicker, is all Keith needs to know.

“That bad?”

“Well,” the false comfort of the expression Coran pastes onto his face as he pats Keith’s head all too gently is the most unsettling thing the marmorite has seen yet, “I could have better news for you, I admit, but considering the precise nature of the ordeal you went through we anticipated just such a fallout, so I come prepared!”

From his pocket (or at least Keith thinks it’s a pocket… it could be a sleeve? altean pyjamas really are unduly complicated) Coran produces a small phial of-

“Quintessence?” A glance back towards Shiro, who sits glued to Keith’s side with a face of stony stoicism, confirms his assessment. “Isn’t that kind of…”

“Dangerous?” Shiro’s tone is flat, his hand at Keith’s shoulder squeezing him a little tighter even as his eyes never leave the luminous liquid in Coran’s palm. “Yes, it is.”

Coran’s attention flits between Shiro and Keith before finally settling on the latter, shoulders sagging and eyes remorseful.

“Keith,” the use of his name rather than designated number is jarring, to say the least, “you need to understand, you were in quite the sorry state when you finally turned up in the red Lion.”

Tugging anxiously at his moustache, Coran continues to recite an almost impressive catalogue of injuries that Keith only half remembers—broken ribs, a fractured collarbone, torn ligaments in both legs, and an almost grotesquely twisted elbow—all of which is to say nothing of the concussion he apparently sustained, nor the severity of it.

“It’s the boon of your human half that saved you, I think: despite their apparent fragility, in truth your people are remarkably resilient!” though he smiles through it, Coran’s enthusiasm is too obviously dampened by concern, “It really is quite the marvel.”

“Okay,” the word is spoken slowly by a tentative tongue, “but the pod should have fixed all that, right?”

“It did,” Shiro cuts in, still cold, still squeezing the smaller man’s shoulder just shy of too-tight, “but whatever that creature did to you wasn’t just physical… Keith,” steel-grey eyes melt with concern, “your quintessence levels were dangerously low—they still are—it half drained you.”

“I believe number three likened you to a ‘cap-ree-sun’?” pipes Coran, evidently trying very hard to be helpful as he pronounces each foreign syllable with great care, oblivious to the exasperation that lines Shiro’s brow.

Keith, however can’t help but snort, which the altean apparently takes as an encouragement.

“I shan’t bore you with the details, but medical science on Altea really was entering a new age under Alfor: providing one could gain access to a pod before irreparable damage was done, almost no injury—no matter how severe—proved fatal!” Coran’s brightened smile dims a little. “The one little niggle that had yet to be ironed out was quintessence-based injuries: even our brightest minds had yet to unravel the precise nature of those, and due to the obvious they were ultimately deprived the opportunity.”

“So,” dark brows knot themselves together as Keith mulls this over, “I’m missing some of my quintessence, and the pods can’t give it back?”

“Worse than that, I’m afraid. If it were only a matter of replenishing your quintessence, your body would do so naturally, given enough time, but in your case it’s more… Think of yourself as holey bucket,” Coran tries, and Keith supposes it isn’t the worst thing he’s ever been called. “While submerged in the river—that is to say the healing pod—you’re theoretically full, but the moment you leave it, the water will begin to leak out until the bucket is,” Coran falters, “empty.”

Ah.

Keith sinks a little further into the heat of the muscled arm around him.

“And that’s bad.”

The expression Cora wears is too grave for a man so accustomed to smiling. “It’s certainly not good.”

“So?” Keith searches the altean’s lined face for answers he doesn’t find, “How do we fix the damn bucket?”

“We don’t precisely know just yet,” gnarled fingers twine themselves together, each knuckle riddled with anxiety, “we’re presently en-route to Olkarion in the hopes that what with their recent advancements and general understanding of the universe, they might be able to shed some light on the situation, but for the time being you have two options: either you can receive periodic transfusions from Princess Allura-”

“Or,” Shiro presses gently, with an intent that makes his stance on the topic perfectly clear, “you can go back into stasis to maintain your present quintessence levels until we can work out how to patch you up.”

Keith… frowns.

“And how long’ll that take?” The answer is obvious as soon as he asks. “Shiro, I’ve already lost over a movement, and you want me back in there for god-knows how long?”

“Just until we find a cure-”

“Which’ll take, what, phoebs? Longer? I’d be useless-”

“You’d be safe!”

“I’d be in a medically induced coma on a warship at the heart of an intergalactic rebellion, that’s hardly what I’d call out the line of fire. No-!” he snaps, when he sees how Shiro’s features have set into a scowl, the black paladin clearly ready to fight him over what Keith already considers a moot point. “If I’m going to die out here, it’s going to be with my eyes wide fucking open, so thank you Coran,” Keith growls in Shiro’s direction, before turning to the older man who has been watching this back and forth with an anxious rigidity to his posture, “I’ll be taking the damn quintessence.”

After a beat of silence, Shiro sets his jaw but does not protest further.

Coran administers the quintessence like a paste rather than the injection Keith had been expecting, and in a matter of ticks it’s absorbed into his skin as what feels like liquid starlight spills throughout every cell of his body, lighting him up from the inside out with a furious ache.

The universe comes into focus piece by piece.

Lights brighten, shadows sharpen, the pods across the room swell in a crescendo of mechanical clattering before settling down just as quickly to their usual hum: something Keith hadn’t even realised he should have been able to hear until the sound returned to him of its own accord. The air tastes of iron and salt and that bitter cleaning agent that Coran is so fond of, the one that once made a home for itself in Keith’s sinuses for phoebs after he’d helped Coran ‘keep the old gal running’, and strangest thing of all is the lily-white sweetness of Allura’s hair, so distinct that it’s almost stranger not to find her suddenly materialised beside him than the obvious alternative.

“Keith?” calloused fingers are climbing the knobs of Keith’s spine to settle at the base of his neck with a familiar pressure, “how’d you feel?”

“Good,” he whispers, voice hoarse and eyes bright, rolling forward and up onto the balls of his feet to spring from the cot and Shiro both with newfound energy, “alive.”

Tapping curiously at some small altean device in hand, Coran waves it this way and that, circling Keith as he scans him, remarking: “I thought there might be a little resistance in introducing foreign quintessence, but your body seems extraordinarily receptive… congratulations number four! I’ll be sure to look these over in the morning, but for the time being I should think it safe for you to resume your routine.”

Keith grins, and Shiro grimaces.

“Not your routine.” He’s quick to correct with a knowing sort of look. “No training deck, for one-”

Immediately, Keith’s mood dampens.

“-and no Blade duties for another; not until we’ve treated the heart of the issue rather than the symptom.”

No Lotor, he means.

Keith surprises himself with how immediately defensive that has him.

“That’s Kolivan’s call to make,” and then, with a swooping, wide-eyed dread as he looks frantically between Shiro and Coran, “oh god, please tell me someone informed Kolivan of what’s going on.”

 

Someone had not, in fact, informed Kolivan of much anything at all.

This leaves Keith in the deeply regrettable position of having missed his very compulsory and not remotely elective movemental check-in with his commanding officer by almost three altean quintants; or what amounts to a marginally preferable two imperial units. Either way, Kolivan has a whole thing about punctuality, which leaves Keith in the not-at-all enviable position of having to throw himself on the proverbial blade, and pray to whatever deity—human or galra—that’ll listen, that Marmora’s leader will at the very least hear his reasons out before the inevitable tirade to follow.

Making his excuses to Shiro and Coran before bidding the both of them a harried goodnight, Keith squirrels himself away in some secluded corner of the castle rather than his room—no sense in waking everyone up with the fallout of his mistake—and makes the call.

The holographic screen jumps to life on the second ring.

“Kit.”

It’s less a name and more a damnation in the way he says it, that sole syllable rumbling through the air almost too low to hear, a strained, thunderous thing. Suffice to say, Keith’s absence has been noted.

“Icanexplain!” he blurts as if a single word, shoulders hunching as he slumps back into the shadows and hopes it’s dark enough on his end that Kolivan doesn’t notice his lack of uniform: just one more black mark to the ever-growing list of Keith’s many indiscretions. “We infiltrated that lab you gave us the codes for, but then things turned sour pretty quickly and none of the others thought to update you while I was out- not that I’m- I take full responsibility, and I can give my report once I’ve been over the intel, but I only just got out of the pod and-”

“Enough.” It’s a stern command, one that has Keith’s jaw snapping shut without hesitation, so quickly that he almost bites his tongue. “Calm yourself, kitling.”

Nostrils flaring with a low warbling huff, Kolivan shifts in his seat to rub firmly at the bridge of his nose; with anyone else, Keith would think they weren’t getting enough sleep, but in Kolivan’s line of work that’s the norm, so he can’t even begin to guess at what must be weighing so heavily on the older Blade’s shoulders.

“Given the target and your penchant for trouble, when you missed your check-in I surmised that you sustained some degree of injury, but thought it unlikely that Voltron would have neglected to inform me of a fatality,” he grumbles. “Am I to assume that you are therefore healed, at least, if not unscathed?” and then, when Keith evidently fails to compose his expression fast enough: “Keith.”

“Mostly?” his voice cracks on the half-truth, and Kolivan’s ears flatten at the sound.

“It was my understanding that the medical technology of Princess Allura’s time, ancient as it is, still holds its own against current imperial standards.” Golden eyes narrow fractionally. “Is this not the case?”

“It does! It is!” Ludicrously, Keith is struck by the thought that Kolivan might order him back to base if it was deemed anything less. “It’s just… complicated.”

Marmora’s commander fixes him with a long, hard look.

“Complicated…” he eventually settles upon, “It is a testament to your character that this does not surprise me,” and Keith isn’t certain whether it’s the softening of his posture or the ghost of a crease in the corner of his eye, but the marmorite could swear Kolivan is almost smiling.

“Are you-” he starts, stops, can’t help himself, “are you making a joke?”

This assessment is met merely with a blink, slow and languid, that has disbelieving laughter bubbling on Keith’s lips.

“You make jokes now?”

“I am known to,” the best-worst part of it all is how deadpan his delivery is, “on occasion.”

Keith really does laugh at that, a breathless barking thing that he chokes on immediately, because in the same instance Kolivan’s features are overtaken by a ferocious yawn. The sight of it can be described as nothing less than a great unhinging of his maw to reveal fangs as long as Keith’s thumb and just as thick, but paradoxically it’s not the sight of the older galra’s teeth, but the unfurling of his tongue that grips Keith with a sudden visceral terror, his throat closing up around a weak hiccupping sound as his eyes zero in on that spiny, squirming muscle.

Just as quickly as it appeared, Kolivan’s tongue is concealed behind the strong cut of his jaw, and Keith remembers how to breathe.

“You’re tired,” he hears himself force out in the hope that Kolivan won’t sense anything amiss, “what time is it, there?”

“Late.” The grunted reply is shortly followed by another chuffing exhalation at the guilt that flits across Keith’s features. “Do not concern yourself, kit. I am awake, and I wish to hear your report.”

“But I haven’t-”

“So you said.” Kolivan’s eyes are sharp, and his mind sharper; one does not become the leader of a covert military organisation by chance, after all. “We will go through the intel you gathered now, and you may write up your official account later.”

His tone leaves no room for argument, but there’s a kindness behind it, and Keith feels himself soften, if only for the fact that he’s not entirely sure he wants to be left alone.

He thinks Kolivan might’ve noticed that before he did himself.

It takes a little prompting—the Blade’s commander won’t reveal much, even on a secure line such as this, because Marmora’s namesake has not survived this long for lack of caution—but when Keith asks after the success of his comrades with regards to Lotor’s intel, Kolivan notes that it’s consistently checked out. On Keith’s end things prove… less fruitful. Pidge has a system for everything—colour-coded, of course—so it doesn’t take much time at all to dig out the files Hunk managed to extract before everything went to hell, and even less for the fact that said files are… lacking. It’s been noted that the team had arrived in time to catch only the end of an outgoing stream of data—all of which was being deleted as fast as exported—and that which Hunk had manged to salvage is at best encrypted, and at worst corrupted beyond any hope of recovery. All the same, Keith methodically combs through the information and offers Kolivan what he can: project names, mostly, though they mean little out of context, words like ‘Glyhaar’ and ‘Tsiibak’ and ‘Kuron’ completely foreign to them both.

“Most of the projects were,” Keith glances over the official terminology with a frown, “quote: ‘terminated ad Rhya’maar’. I don’t- is that Zaalkh?”

Great furred ears pricking up, Kolivan watches at him curiously through the screen, and asks: “You know of our ancient tongue?”

“Er, yeah,” Keith hums his acquiescence, still scanning the data distractedly, “Lotor’s been teaching me.”

It’s said without thought because it’s true, because Keith has nothing to hide from Kolivan, or anyone for that matter, but by the way the Blade’s leader is staring him down he’s beginning to feel as if that may not be entirely accurate.

“Prince Lotor,” Kolivan begins slowly, as if his mouth is thick with treacle, “has taken it upon himself to teach you linguistics in his spare time.”

“I mean,” shifting with unease, Keith gives a hesitant nod, “he has a lot of time.”

All the phoebs spent serving as an agent of Marmora have provided Keith with ample opportunity to compile a substantial catalogue of Kolivan’s various expressions, understated though they may be. Exasperation, he’s familiar with. Anger, too, and grief, but this?

Whatever face the Blade’s commander is wearing right now, is an unfamiliar one.

“Rhya’maar,” Kolivan coughs deliberately, without blinking, “is an old religious term: fragment of the Destroyer. As of late, it has been used in reference to only one thing.”

The answer is an obvious one.

“Voltron.”

“They knew you were coming. They were ready for you.”

Kolivan’s tone is disapproving, but Keith knows him to have long-since resigned himself to Allura’s modus operandi being vastly different to his own, so when he explains that “the rebels were instructed to withdraw any troops in the immediate vicinity,” the older Blade only sighs.

“It is no wonder, then, that they terminated their experiments and left so little for you,” clawed fingers pinch at the wrinkled bridge of his nose, “did you acquire anything substantial, other than battlescars?”

Keith’s eyes flit over the files, or what he can read of them, at a harried pace.

“It was… definitely a genetics lab. Everything is biological—all DNA and gene-splicing—but even the stuff that’s not encrypted is next to impossible to understand without context.” He exhales through clenched teeth. “I mean, subjects Y0XT01-thorough-46 are all marked as expired, bar Y0XT39, which has apparently entered stage three successfully? Then there’s all this junk about N-RT8 which I think might be a quintessence weapon of some kind, but this seems to be saying it ate a druid-”

Keith cuts himself off.

“Oh shit,” he hisses under his breath, “that’s the thing I fought. That’s the rhyahl.”

It’s less a report and more an interrogation after that, because, as Keith quickly learns, so far as the rest of the universe is concerned King Alfor ensured that Daibazaal’s apex predator died along with its homeworld… and quite possibly for good reason. Kolivan, therefore, does not take the specifics of Keith’s altercation with Frankenstein’s monster particularly well.

“I should have been informed immediately.” he growls, so lowly that Keith can barely make words out of the sound, “To be injured in the line of duty is one thing, but to have sustained such a perilous loss of quintessence-” another rumbling snarl, “I am withdrawing you from frontlines.”

Keith huffs: “I’ve already been benched, Shiro won’t even let me on the training deck,” but Kolivan’s ears have drawn flat to his skull.

“No, kitling, I would have you ho-” and then, not quickly enough to cover the slip, “-returned to base.”

Home, Keith hears, and it’s a sweet sort of pain.

“I will make the necessary preparations.”

“Kolivan.”

“It will require an emergency extraction-”

“Kolivan,” he tries again, but is steadfastly ignored.

“-but for you she will come-”

“Kolivan, I’m not returning to base.” and it’s this that finally grabs the galra’s attention.

“Without proper treatment,” great vulpine ears remain tight and still, “this will kill you. We have an agent in our ranks with the necessary skillset to combat such an ailment, Voltron does not.”

Thumbing over his own knuckles, Keith steels himself.

“Would this be the same agent who provided the code for the lab?” Kolivan’s silence is answer enough, and the weight this knowledge carries half sends Keith reeling, his words tumbling over themselves to become something that is as much a whisper as it is a shout. “If we have a druid on side, then extracting her would put both her life and, what? Phoebs or even decaphoebs of work in jeopardy; you’re the one who taught me the mission is more important than the individual!”

It’s funny, really, how quickly exasperation can turn to something else entirely, but at the sight of Kolivan’s suddenly crestfallen expression, Keith feels himself shed the former as quickly as a snake might its skin.

For the first time, he notices how worn the older galra seems.

“To serve in Marmora’s name is an honour, and a privilege,” Kolivan tries, half obscured by shadow, “but it has so often come at the price of losing those who serve alongside me. It is rare that I am offered the liberty of choice, and now that I am, you would rather I stand by and do nothing.”

Keith is… undeniably touched.

“I’ll be okay,” he says, voice small and tired, “I’ve already had a quintessence transfusion from Allura, and we’re heading to Olkarion to see what they can do, and, I mean, failing that, there’s always Slav-” who’s a certified genius, though, granted, his eccentricities do not fill Keith with confidence, “-so between him and Lotor, I’m pretty sure I’m in good hands.”

Golden eyes regard him with something in equal parts curious and calculating.

“That,” Kolivan murmurs, “is the second time you have referred to the prince sans-title,” and this assessment is something Keith is hard-pressed to respond to.

“I mean- It’s not like I use Allura’s title either.”

“She is not galra,” Kolivan says, as if that explains everything, “I find it hard to believe that Prince Lotor would stand for such flagrant disrespect.”

Keith’s instinct is to deny that, to tell Kolivan that Lotor has never particularly cared for such things and so Keith has never bothered with them, but then he recalls how much weight the prince had put on his lineage in their final confrontation, and has to reconsider.

“We did-” he begins, “we did have a small altercation on the mission. Me and Lo- Prince Lotor.”

“…Regarding?”

Dark eyes dip away from Kolivan’s cool resignation back to the datapad.

“I still need to run it by Shiro and Allura, it kind of centred around their end of things, but it’s probably here somewhere-”

“Kit. What did you do?”

Keith wilts.

“Haggar’s developed a new method of quintessence conversion. I think it’s the same stuff we were tracking with-” Regris “-before.”

With a dry swallow, violet eyes finally land on the relevant information, and he forges ahead.

“The methodology is pretty grey-moral: raw quintessence is transmuted via living organic matter which, quote: ‘erodes the subject at an accelerated pace,’ but… it’s efficient. I’ll give it that much.” Reciting the facts and figures (courtesy of Matt, he has to assume by the tone they’re recorded in) earns Kolivan’s undisguised intrigue. “Lotor knew about it beforehand—might know more than he let on, too—but Allura didn’t exactly respond well and things started to get heated so I… intervened?”

“Which led to a small altercation,” Kolivan parrots, dully.

Though Keith sets his jaw with a sharp nod, weathering that unforgiving golden-eyed glower proves impossible, and he finds himself blurting: “he started it!” before realising how childish that sounds, and correcting himself. “It wasn’t like I intended to argue with him, but diplomacy isn’t exactly my strong suit! I may not like the process, but that doesn’t mean this new form of quintessence isn’t the obviously preferable alternative to genocide—and it’s not like Lotor likes it either: from everything he said, this is only a temporary measure while he figures out how to meet the Empire’s needs peacefully—or that’s the point he was trying to make, but then Allura implied he was no different than his father, and- Lotor didn’t take it well,” a derisive snort, “obviously.”

Kolivan… seems to turn this information over in his mind with more care than Keith thinks it’s due.

“Curious…” and then, when he catches the puzzlement that paints the littlest Blade’s features: “Prince Lotor is tron Zarkonli—blood of Zarkon’s blood—to possess the lineage of an imperial monarch is a thing of great pride, irrespective of the ideology said monarch subscribes to. To take offence at any such comparison being drawn is… distinctly ingalra.”

“…Oh. Well that explains-” Keith fumbles, “-I may have called him a hypocrite-” and really, that had been the least of it, “-for pulling the ‘Zarkon’s son’ card so soon after getting pissed at Allura for what kind of amounted to the same thing?”

Kolivan goes very still.

Pinches the bridge of his nose.

Sighs.

“For the time being,” he annunciates very slowly, as if disciplining a particularly difficult child, “you would do well to give Prince Lotor a wide berth until proper amends can be made for… that.”

Bristling against this not-quite-reprimand, Keith almost misses the next question posed to him.

“Even so, do you believe he speaks the truth?” Kolivan’s head is fractionally tilted, eyes narrowed and ears cocked. “with regard to his intentions for meeting imperial quintessence requirements without bloodshed.”

“I-” swallowing the impulse to leap to the prince’s defence, despite everything yet unresolved between them, Keith changes tac, “Lotor doesn’t lie—it’s a point of pride for him, I think—but I’m also pretty sure there’s a lot he’s not saying.”

There’s a thoughtful grumble in the back of Kolivan’s throat that resonates through the shadows.

“Still,” he inclines his head minutely. “it is promising.”

Promising.

Promising in that Kolivan—and by extension the Blade as a whole—might consider backing Lotor at the Kral Zera, if ever Zarkon deigns to stay dead, and isn’t that a thought: Lotor on the imperial throne, Lotor as the first new Emperor in millennia, Lotor who never did give a straight answer when asked what it was that he wanted for himself.

Keith feels the weight of the decision he must make acutely.

“I have kept you too long,” Kolivan murmurs, and when violet eyes blink up at him it becomes obvious that the grizzled galra has been watching him remain lost in his own thoughts for several dobashes. “Rest now, kitling.”

The threat of solitude has Keith’s heart leaping to his throat.

“Kolivan!?” he blurts, before the communication is cut, scrabbling for something—anything—that might postpone the inevitable for a moment more, “Did you know that Lotor was a hybrid? Before we saw him, I mean.”

The Blade’s commander stills.

“…Yes.” he begrudgingly admits, “The prince’s lineage has long since been a popular point of gossip within imperial circles; it is considered by some to be the singular black spot on Emperor Zarkon’s reign.”

“And that’s why you assigned me to him.”

Kolivan’s ears twist minutely backwards into an approximation of guilt, and he’s hesitant when he makes to explain himself.

“I will not deny that it was a factor. It is known that Prince Lotor possesses a particular fondness for those with whom he shares his rather unique circumstances of birth, and I had suspected that your similarities might offer you a foothold where no other agent of Marmora would find one.”

It’s something of a struggle not to feel… used, but Keith sees the logic in it—had used much the same line of thought to win Allura over not so long ago.

“And you think my being half-galra will make him, what? Trust me?”

“Perhaps not. However,” carefully, and with his tone dropped to a treasonous whisper, as if he dare not hope, Kolivan says: “in preparation for a change in imperial leadership, we require a viable candidate for the Kral Zera: someone with the right claim—it doesn’t have to be of blood, though that would help—without being too polarising. Emperor Zarkon has ruled for millennia, not a single galra alive has ever known anyone else, ergo it is imperative that we select the right person so as not to incite civil war.”

“What was your plan before Lotor?” Keith asks, because there must have been one, and it has Kolivan’s mouth tightening into a pained little line.

“I had an agent of the right temperament and bloodline establish himself in central command,” the words are barely a whisper, “he was well liked, respected, and would have been eligible to stand at the Kral Zera, when the time was right.”

Had.

The use of the past tense speaks volumes.

“Thace?” Keith asks, tentatively, thinking of the man he’d met so briefly before his sacrifice.

“Yes… He was a good man,” and, after a heartbeat’s hesitation, “a good friend.”

Keith doesn’t know if Lotor is that—suspects he might be the former, wants to believe he’s the latter, but doesn’t know—and without that knowledge, Marmora’s creed leaves only one alternative.

Kolivan must read as much on his face.

“Emotions are a luxury we cannot afford, kitling,” he murmurs, not unkindly, “do not let them blind you.”

I won’t, Keith might’ve said, but Kolivan doesn’t give him the chance.

When the call ends, Keith finds himself plunged into the silence of solitude once more.

Notes:

Yes it's May, yes I took my sweet time with this one, and yes I absolutely will be answering all those comments and asks and messages over the next few days; I am so sorry! I don't really know what happened (????) 2020's been a wild ride for all of us, but I sincerely hope you and your loved ones are safe, and I shall absolutely endeavour to be more active (or at least consistent) from here on out ♡

Stay tuned on tumblr for like... a whole mess of activity.

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TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 20: UPDATE: We're Making a Little Blade Podfic!!

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...And by "we" I in truth mean that a group of very lovely and talented people have gathered together on the LB Discord to make this happen, while I excitedly float about in the ether lending a hand as/when I can. Currently, said lovely and talented people are looking to add to their number, and therefore we are on the hunt for voice actors, so if you are at all interested in involving yourself in this project (it'll be great fun, I promise!) then please fill out this form before the end of July to let us know which character(s) you'd potentially like to voice!! I did post about this on my tumblr a few days ago, but it occurred to me today that there are a fair few of you who aren't active over there / do not want to find yourself constantly bombarded by my worldbuilding for this fic, so in the interest of making sure that everyone who wants to gets a fair shot at being a part of this endeavour, I thought it best to put something up here too ♡

((and don't you worry your pretty little heads, I am very nearly almost done with the next chapter - Keith & Lotor will be reunited soon enough! - I've just got to go about the pesky business of packing up my childhood home first because our moving date is looming upon the horizon and yet we still seem to have half an attic full of memories to get through))

Notes:

TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 21: Kiss (With a Fist) and Make Up

Summary:

Previously: Lotor is guiltily obsessing over his last (heated) words exchanged with Keith, before Keith promptly got his quintessence drained by Haggar's patchwork horror, and needed to be put in a medically induced coma. Allura has a proper conversation with Lotor about his motives and goals, which goes neither well no badly, so that's an improvement. Keith wakes up and has all the gritty details of what the fuck just happened explained to him by a concerned Shiro & Coran, but is horried to learn that nobody thought to keep Kolivan informed so he completely missed his check-in oh god-

By the time the Castle of Lions sinks into Olkarion’s atmosphere, skirting beneath the colossal mountain range that bisects the planet and slipping into its shadowy southern jungles, Keith is at his wit’s end; no Lotor, no training, no peace thanks to Shiro’s excessive mother-henning these past quintants since the marmorite woke, and if he has to spend a single tick more pretending that Killbot Phantasm I is in any way a substantial balm for the restlessness that plagues his every waking varga, Keith is going to crawl out of his skin.

It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate the lengths to which Lance is apparently willing to go to in the name of keeping him occupied (despite their avatars having died countless times over thanks to Keith’s impatience getting the better of him, the paladin has maintained a truly astounding level of good humour), and it’s not that he isn’t admittedly reaping the benefits of the situation in the form of Hunk’s delicious but frankly excessive quantity of stress-baked-goods, only… Keith has considered himself self-sufficient for far longer than not, and having everyone look at him as if every footstep runs the risk of shattering his entire leg is making it hard to breathe.

More than hard.

When he’d learnt that the others had found his helmet split clean in two, his instinct had been to apologise for it; it had been Alfor’s, after all, and one of the few things Allura had left of her father, but when he’d tried to do so she’d only shaken her head with teary eyes and a disbelieving laugh as she embraced him.

“Better the helmet than your head, you ridiculous man.”

And though such severe damage is without an easy fix—the material the armor had been crafted from now an altean rarity, and so in short supply—they leave it at that.

Or… they almost do, except the helmet is apparently far less an issue than the fact that Keith’s head had been inside it, and while he’s not delicate, dammit, it seems his newfound status as a quintessence-leaking invalid is a strong indicator to the contrary. No matter how he tries to explain that, if anything, he feels stronger with Allura’s quintessence running through his veins than he ever did before, the others don’t seem particularly inclined to believe him: “The galra doth protest too much, methinks,” Matt had helpfully chimed, Keith’s clumsy attempts to justify his sneaking into a rebel training session useless to dissuade the older Holt, who’d shooed him off the training deck like a disobedient cat, and absolutely nothing he has to say about the matter bears any weight at all.

Which is why, if Keith has to submit himself to the olkari physicians for the sake of soothing the well-meant yet stifling concern of his friends, then he’s all too happy to do exactly that.

Olkarion’s capital is not what it was when Keith saw it last. The once-desolate metropolis now flourishes, abuzz with light and life and laughter, the thriving heart of these people, their culture blossoming in a womb of lush, sprawling vegetation that stretches on for as far as the eye can see. No sooner has the Castle of Lions settled just beyond the city’s outer edge is Keith wrangled into playing nice with the welcoming party lead by Cadryn, Ryner’s sweet-tempered but over-eager aide, who the rest of the paladins greet with a warm familiarity.

Cadryn speaks with their hands almost as much as they do their voice, animatedly explaining the inner workings of the transport vessel as it carves through the thicket, nimble as a sailboat, while Keith nods along politely and tries not to look too sullen as he stares into the fast thinning undergrowth. The thing is, he’s spent more of his life in the desert than not, and has long since grown too used to the dry heat of it, so while the others might be eager to exchange the Castleship’s recycled air for something less stale and stagnant, in truth there are few things Keith likes less than this cloying humidity—so warm, and wet, and sticky that it sets dark hair clinging to his scalp while the sweat that beads beneath it trickles down his nape in a repulsive crawl.

This is just for a movement- a quintant- a varga. A moment more.

He just needs to breathe.

The heat really is oppressive, and drags at his every breath as if he were trudging through thick silt rather than gliding over oil-slicked leaves the size of a Lion’s paw, but still Keith stands firm and allows Cadryn’s mindless chatter to wash over him: the sound spills into the world to mingle with the crunch of dried roots, the creaking of gnarled branches, the rustling of a thousand vines, and-

-and a fingertip’s endless caress on a wineglass’s lip.

It’s a lovely song.

Then: a second wave of heat, but different than before, heavy and lazy and undeniable as it flops over his shoulders in a possessive embrace. Not yet, she rumbles, not yet. So despite the muggy air, despite the miserable reason for his being here, despite the lump in his throat that he hasn’t been able to swallow since he spilled his guts all over the med-bay floor, Keith grits his teeth against that perfect note, and endures.

 

Cadryn’s unfailing diplomacy extends, somehow, to Slav, who since Zarkon’s resurrection has refused to step outside the walls of one very particular building that sits a perfect thirty-one-point-two deca-paces due east of the fourth oldest temple in the city… apparently.

“We have done our best to accommodate his needs,” Cadryn says as they guide Keith, Allura, and Pidge through the airy hallways of Slav’s commandeered laboratory, “unconventional though they may be.”

The others had split off to formally greet their hosts near immediately upon arrival in the city’s bustling heart, though in Shiro’s case it took some convincing, with Keith having to reaffirm three times over that the risk of him spontaneously falling apart at the seams if not under constant vigil is next to non-existent; even then, Keith is almost certain he only won that fight due to Slav being the black paladin’s personal Achilles’ heel, and for a tick, his heart swells with gratitude for the brief liberty this grants him.

The guilt that follows is gutting.

Smothering though his attentions may be, Shiro is worried for him, and god knows that Keith has been on the other end of that near-loss enough times that he shouldn’t begrudge his friend the right to be concerned, of all things.

Scowling at his own selfishness, Keith doesn’t realise they’ve arrived until Cadryn coughs politely, waving four reedy fingers towards an open door.

“I have been instructed that it is vital we enter in order of ascending height,” they smile benignly, “so as not to deliver calamity unto your entire purpose here.”

From Keith’s elbow comes a disgruntled scoff before Pidge—who’s been uncharacteristically quiet for vargas now, yet adamantly insisted that she’d rather accompany them here than greet Ryner with the others—marches in, Allura stepping gracefully after her, though not without indulging in a deep and deliberate inhalation first. Under Cadryn’s expectant eye, Keith takes his cue.

Slav’s workroom is… frankly, immaculate. Keith hadn’t realised he had any particular expectations until they were turned on their head, but rather than the chaos and clutter he sees surrounding Pidge more often than not, here every curiosity and tool appears to be meticulously placed in accordance with some unspoken rulebook. The lighting too sets this room apart from the olkari norm, their people’s typical verdant green having been replaced by a wash of pale blue for what Keith is sure must be—in Slav’s mind, at least—a perfectly good reason rooted in some sort of catastrophe-averting butterfly effect.

“Not another step!” All four of them freeze, though when Keith glances back it is to see Cadryn’s practised smile strain a little at the corners as they greet the centipedel alien who seems currently engaged in playing an incredibly practiced game of ‘the floor is lava’ as he hops towards them across the furniture, “one foot out of place could result in either a global famine, or worse yet: a very unpleasantly painful stubbed-toe!”

“Slav,” Allura inclines her head, and tactfully avoids mentioning that one of those outcomes sounds like a markedly greater issue than the other, “always a pleasure.”

“Only if you get out of this with all appendages intact! Now, if you would be so kind as to pass me my-” stubby fingers outstretched and wiggling desperately, he strains towards a shelf that’s quite obviously out of reach from where he’s perched atop a precariously stacked helix of books, until Allura passes the discoid object his grabby little hands are gesturing for, “-yes! Brilliant!”

Bounding back across the room, Slav places the little disc with great precision upon his desk, and heaves out a worn sigh.

“There. Now you may move.”

When they do so the world continues on, and Slav settles into a hovering desk chair with weighty relief that turns grim as he surveys them.

“Black or blue?” Little fingers steeple themselves together to rest beneath his beak, which clicks in irritation when none of them answer him quickly enough. “Cadryn skipped breakfast this morning meaning it cannot have been yellow, so which one of them was it, the black, or blue paladin?”

“Red,” Pidge frowns, jerking her thumb in Keith’s direction, “Keith’s the one who faced off against Haggar’s beastie.”

Slav blinks very slowly, looks Keith up and down, and then turns back to face the green paladin as he annunciates very deliberately: “Not that, that’ll work itself out, I am asking which one is no longer among the living.”

Keith’s heart stutters, but it’s Allura who mutters an exasperated altean curse under her breath before fixing the so-called brightest mind in the universe with a very pointed look as she says: “Slav, we discussed this phoebs ago. None of the paladins fell due to the gravity generator’s failure, we survived, we found Shiro, nobody is dead, please stop wishing ill upon your allies.”

“Pah!” His third left hand waves her off dismissively, turning the princess’s diplomatic air frosty, “wishing is illogical, I am simply trying to ascertain which reality this is so that I may best help you not to meet a most horrible end, but,” he sniffs in such a way that Keith thinks he might be genuinely offended, “if you really want to delude yourselves into thinking that everything you think to be true is true-” another sniff, more exaggerated than the last, “-then by all means, continue wearing polka dotted socks. See what happens.”

“I am not wearing-” Allura tries, but another of Slav’s hands, one not preoccupied with dabbing away his crocodile tears, points an accusatory finger towards Pidge, whose shoulders sag even as she sets her jaw.

“If I take them off, will you fix Keith?”

“What good will that do?”

“I’ll put them on inside out then!” Pidge snaps back, and Slav’s eyes widen as he scrambles up his chair to perch atop its back, nodding furiously at her.

“Finally! A good idea!”

Keith thinks he might prefer to bleed out his quintessence in peace.

 

After Pidge’s socks have been rearranged to Slav’s satisfaction the universe’s greatest mind becomes much more amenable, though no more conventional, as he proceeds to poke and prod Keith in such a way that the marmorite doesn’t see how it could possibly clarify anything, but seems to be of great interest to the eccentric alien regardless. Cadryn has taken up with the green paladin in a far corner of the room and is updating her on the latest technological advances their people have achieved with Slav’s assistance, which only makes it all the stranger that the zealous olkari can’t seem to keep Pidge’s attention, hazel eyes continuously drifting back across the room to Keith before snapping away again when he catches her looking.

“Ish Pije ohay?” He mumbles to Allura, around the insistent fingers that are prodding at his incisors, while another set of hands makes note of whatever it is about them Slav deems important enough to jot down.

“She’s-” Allura hesitates, which is usually means ‘no’, “-worried for you, we all are. At least I feel I have something to offer in the way of my quintessence, but Pidge… this is one problem she can’t fix. She’s not used to feeling so powerless, I think.”

Keith smacks his lips a few times as Slav withdraws his hand, “s’not her fault,” and almost misses the derisive huff of air from across the room, hushed and hateful.

When he turns Pidge isn’t looking at him, and Cadryn doesn’t seem to have noticed anything is amiss at all, still excitedly babbling on about the city’s newly repaired irrigation systems, but Keith could swear that there’s something off about the scene, and stubbornly resolves himself to find out what.

Allura’s hand falls gently onto his shoulder.

“Be gentle with her,” comes the princess’s whisper, “she half tortured herself with comparing the Castle’s records of the rhyahl to Haggar’s perversion, and wondering what it did to you. What it would have done had you been unable to fight it off.”

“I did fight it off.” Keith says firmly, half for Pidge’s benefit and half for his own.

Which is of course where Slav decides to interject.

“In this reality, yes! But I’ve already acquainted myself with the data you managed to gather on that creature, and so I can soundly say that your surviving it was unprecedented! It really is quite ingenious how Haggar managed to replicate the mutation that allowed for the original rhyahl to ensnare its prey: did you know that its ultrasonic cry was rumoured to induce a hallucinogenic state of paralysis that allowed it to slowly consume its victims alive? I don’t suppose you could confirm that, could you?”

Slav turns his dewy eyes on Keith with a wide-eyed excitement that makes him feel vaguely nauseous, but he’s saved from having to answer by Allura’s hiss of horror, the alien wriggling with a disgruntled click of his beak.

“You are right, I am getting distracted. My point is that there are plenty of realities in which you died a most excruciating death!”

Keith could punch him for how pale Pidge has turned.

“Gee,” he growls instead, the sound thick and dark, “thanks Slav.”

“You are most welcome!”

He somehow manages to smile without lips, or even the slightest trace of irony, and it’s only the sudden wash of Allura’s perfume as her hand slips into Keith’s to soothe the tension from white knuckles, that grounds him enough that he’s able to restrain his temper.

“What is that?” he asks the princess, determinedly turning his head towards her rather than listen to Slav’s senseless babbling as he busies himself with things Keith neither understands nor particularly wants to. “Juniberry?”

It’s sweet and spicy all at once, and though he has no real frame of reference for what fragrance the altean flower might have once carried, from the fond mentions Allura has made in the past he’s always imagined it might be something like this.

But she just looks confused, delicately sniffing at the air, and when Keith offers the clarification of, “your perfume,” it seems only to baffle her further.

“I don’t wear perfume?”

“Sure you do.”

Unthinking, Keith raises the hand still tangled with his until he can inhale deeply at her wrist, nipping lightly at the fluttering blush of her pulse beneath russet skin when that familiar saccharine scent wafts forth, a note of startled delight to it… then blanches as he sees how Allura’s eyes have gone wide and unblinking, dropping her hand as if burnt.

“I- shit, sorry, that’s a galra thing isn’t it?” He remembers Lotor saying as much, and the guilt that hits him does so with ferocity. “I shouldn’t have-”

An airy laugh interrupts his spiralling apology, as Allura thumbs over his flushing cheek with a warm, indulgent smile.

“Well it’s certainly not a human thing, else I’m quite sure Lance would have done something similar by now, though-” Keith braces himself against the inevitable, “-I can’t say I expected it, considering how beastly I was to you about it all. I certainly don’t deserve it.”

The corners of her eyes tighten as she looks into his, and Keith doesn’t want to know what she sees.

“Keith, it’s alright. Truthfully I’m flattered.”

“I don’t even know what it is,” he admits, on something too quiet to be called a whine, “just… sometimes I want-”

“It’s affection,” Allura says simply—kindly, “a telltale sign that you regard me as an equal, a friend,” and then, eying him with a thoughtful sort of mirth, she tacks on: “Perhaps even a romantic prospect, depending on the context.”

Keith chokes.

“Allura, I-” The feeling of his brain stalling is a physical sensation. “I mean you’re lovely, obviously! But I definitely didn’t mean-”

This time when Allura laughs, it’s less elegant and airy, and more a snort so sudden that she almost chokes on it, and when she slaps her hands over her mouth the sudden violence of the movement sends Slav toppling onto the floor with a yelp and flailing limbs, a sight which, in turn, strikes Keith as so unexpectedly hysterical that he has to bite into the meat of his palm if only to preserve the pretence that he has some degree of concern for the colourfully-cursing creature at their feet.

“I’m so-” Allura’s ears are bright red, and trembling with effort, her hand still determinedly braced over giggling lips, “I’m so sorry Slav, are you quite alright?”

From where he lies on his back, Slav glares up at the two of them, and it’s almost enough to make Keith feel bad.

Almost.

Instead he makes the mistake of glancing in the princess’ direction just as twinkling blue eyes flick towards him, and that instant of eye contact is all it takes for the two of them to burst into ferocious peals of laughter once more: uncontrollable, wild, and leaving Keith’s heart lighter than it’s felt in… decaphoebs, maybe.

“What has gotten into you two?” Pidge seems torn between amusement and concern, and poor Cadryn is regarding the unfolding hysteria from over the green paladin’s shoulder with complete bewilderment.

“I do-on’t know,” Allura tries to say, her breathing now ragged, while Keith silently wheezes beside her, sides burning. “It just- it just struck me.”

From the corner of his eye, vision now beginning to blur with tears even as he tries—sincerely tries—to collect himself, Keith sees Slav stiffen, then bolt upright with a triumphant yell.

“Oh! We’re in one of those realities!”

 

Acute Empathetic Feedback, Slav informs them when they’ve calmed enough to listen, is apparently a condition experienced by a select handful of species across the universe, all of whom are uniquely attuned to quintessence; though alteans weren’t historically considered one of them, Allura’s bloodline in particular might toe the line closely enough that in sharing her quintessence with Keith, the two of them forged a temporary bond of sorts. For the most part it means very little, other than a heightened awareness of one another, but apparently some echo of shared emotion is to be expected, and in this case resulted in the two of them giggling like children.

“I really am sorry.” The princess is biting at her lip in a failed attempt to suppress her smile and instead look chastised, but Slav just waves her off, far more interested in the implications of it all than her apologies.

“Your minds are already open to each other thanks to having formed Voltron in the past,” he says, running some sort of calculation on a datapad as he does so, “so when your quintessence attuned itself to his system, it stabilised by mimicking the connection between you and the Voltron Lions—albeit to a lesser extent—but it wouldn’t have been able to do that at all had mister red-black paladin not exhibited such a promising receptiveness to quintessence to begin with.”

“Meaning?” Allura prompts. “Can you heal him?”

The fact that Slav’s only response is to scoff, dismissing the question as if it were a foolish one, does not fill Keith with confidence.

“Your teeny-tiny minds are never looking at the big picture!” Bounding about the room, apparently no longer so particular about when he steps, Slav grins. “The ultimate outcome of this reality is most likely to be excellent! Or catastrophic! One of the two!”

“And that’s…” Keith raises his eyebrows in a despairing Pidge’s direction, who returns the expression tenfold, “a good thing?”

“Oh yes! Either we all live and prosper for a very long time, or every version of reality blinks out of existence so fast that it’ll be as if we never existed at all! It is the least painful way to die!”

From the back of their little group, Cadryn whispers, “that does not sound like a good thing,” and Keith really wishes he had something comforting to say to the contrary.

With an grumbled noise at the back of his throat, as if frustrated that his boundless excitement is not automatically shared by the slow-witted creatures surrounding him, Slav swings around to clasp Keith’s cheeks between his chubby little hands, and explain very slowly: “When Voltron came into this reality it changed everything, and now the other one is here too; if they come to blows you will quite literally rip the fabric of this universe and every other apart. It is imperative that you do not let that happen.”

The room turns to a strained sort of quiet, one that bears down upon the room with irreparable magnitude.

“The other one,” Keith frowns at him, “you mean Sincline.”

“No, I was referring to the other eldritch horror that has been fashioned into a war machin- yes I mean Sincline!” Slav slaps at Keith’s cheeks repeatedly in short stinging blows that leave him wincing. “And still you are not listening. You are thinking that without all three ships there is no Sincline, and if there is no Sincline then there is no clash and so there can be no problem, but you are wrong: you are only here because you fought Haggar’s creature, and you were only there because Prince Lotor saved your life-”

Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Slav isn’t just some eccentric alien centipede—he sees things that other people don’t, patterns in the universe that nobody else could possibly predict—and right now, with those sharp little eyes boring into his own, Keith is abundantly aware that Slav does not mean to use ‘your’ in the collective sense.

He knows.

“Sincline in its entirety would increase the Coalition’s chances of success to sixty-three-point-eight percent! Yes, that is set against the thirty-five-point-seven percent chance of complete and utter annihilation of this reality and every other, and only a zero-point-five percent chance of a third, unprecedented outcome that even I cannot foresee, but before today our chances have never looked this good!”

In a rare moment of sincerity, Slav’s grip gentles and pats Keith’s sore cheeks more sympathetically this time, before releasing him altogether.

“We need Sincline.” and then: “As for your condition, the olkari doctors will not be able help you, but Cadryn is a deft hand at acupressure. Try that.”

 

They do, and it’s gruelling.

By no fault of Cadryn’s, Keith is… resistant to the process, to touch, to the intrusion of long fingers pressing far beyond skin and sinew to the tangle of a soul beneath, needling into the very essence of Keith’s being with piercing precision.

Though slow going, it hadn’t been so bad at first. After Slav’s dismissal, Cadryn had meandered through the halls until they located another room a few floors down, quiet and comfortable with space enough for the four of them; once Keith had settled himself and removed his shoes as instructed, they had proceeded to work small circles into the arch of his foot with their thumbs, making mindless conversation all the while.

Or, it was mindless, at least.

When deft fingers had travelled from foot to ankle to calf, some deep-rooted instinct of Keith’s had become suddenly aware of Cadryn’s quintessence as it prickles its way through his veins, and lashed out. They’d jolted, releasing him immediately as if on the receiving end of a static shock—not pained, but startled—cocking their head as they regarded Keith’s leg with wide eyes.

“Is everything quite alright?”

“Yes,” they had replied to Allura without hesitation, “only it is late, and I have forgotten myself. You and Paladin Pidge ought meet with your companions for dinner, Princess. Paladin Keith and I-” large eyes flick up to meet the marmorite’s slight frown, “-might be a while yet.”

They don’t go easily, Pidge the more silently stubborn of the two though Allura’s not far behind, and it’s only Keith’s attempt to mentally nudge the princess as he once did Red when she was being particularly difficult that serves to convince her; she squeaks at the feeling, then laughs when she realises what it must have been and returns the sensation with an odd sort of feathery tickle across the back of Keith’s skull that… okay so it’s weird, definitely not as strong as the Lions, but as accidental psychic connections go he has to admit that Allura isn’t a bad person to be paired up with.

Lance would have driven him mad.

It’s only after another olkari escort has ushered both Pidge and the princess away, that Cadryn had addressed what had happened.

“Do I frighten you, paladin?” and then, when Keith had replied with a baffled, of course not: “You have a resistance within you, a great anxiety; you must allow me to release the pressure lest it blister and burst of its own accord.”

Which, in theory, Keith had ardently agreed to, seeing as the sole alternative promised to be deeply unpleasant.

But in practice?

The further up Keith’s legs Cadryn had progressed, the worse it’d felt until they’d reached his lower spine, and each inch thereafter had Keith bristling and burning and bearing his teeth. Now, with his every breath turned to one of shrapnel, his jaw clenched around the pieces of it, Keith feels as if he might have become an endless creature of sweat and straining muscle, the geometric pattern of the upholstery beneath his trembling hands newly seared into his retina.

“You did well,” Cadryn insists, voice horse and heaving.

The platitude falls flat.

Between sweat-slicked strands of hair, hanging low and heavy over his brow, Keith sees how weary they are as they kneel beside him, and pities them for it.

“I didn’t,” there’s blood in his mouth, and everything aches, “but thanks for trying.”

Cadryn shakes their head gingerly.

“We are not yet done-” and in this moment, that is a strong contender for the worst thing Keith’s ever heard, “-you will need several sessions more to truly begin working it from your system, and even then…”

Keith blanches, and in a moment of weakness asks: “Do we have to?”

Their smile is a sympathetic one, tinged with weary humour.

“I do not envy you paladins. I admire you, certainly, but the paths you tread are not for tender feet.” Heaving a great sigh, Cadryn forces theirself to rise unsteadily from the floor, offering Keith their hand in assistance.

After a moment’s hesitation, he accepts, and finds both his fingers and their own clammy and trembling.

“Perhaps it is the creature you fought—not the injury that brought you here, but the beast itself—or perhaps it is an older wound, of which I am sure you have several.” Learned eyes trace the veins of Keith’s arms, prominent thanks to heat and exertion, from wrist to marred shoulder as if they can see far beyond the ropey scar tissue that the Blade’s trial left him with. “All I know, paladin, is that these things have a way of creeping inside of us and making a home where they are not wanted; if you do not oust it now, it will only spoil and fester until it rots you from the inside out.”

 

Soul-scorched and sweltering, Keith requests sleep without supper, and finds himself stumbling into the olkari equivalent of a bed—a great seedpod-esque structure that sprouts up through the centre of the floor and continues on into the ceiling, as if the pyramid that houses it had been built around a colossal tree—without so much as kicking off his shoes.

The oblivion that claims him is instantaneous.

The spindly hands that drag him back to wakefulness are not.

It starts with a fine-boned finger, its curling caress turned into a fishhook through his throat, windpipe wheezing as he spits and spasms and splutters around nothing- nothing- there’s nothing there at all when he claws at his neck, but sweat and skin and blood under blunt nails. Nothing but fire and fear.

The air is thick with it.

In a flurry of graceless flailing, Keith untangles his limbs from the great swathes of olkari cotton that have ensnared him, and strips—shirt, shoes, socks—only faltering at his jeans because quivering fingers are shaking so badly that he can’t work the button, the denim having sealed itself to him as if a second skin. He gasps desperately for oxygen, but the humidity has impossibly worsened since he surrendered to sleep, making each breath thick and cloying, and when stinging eyes look to the balcony and beyond it is to see a starless night, the cloud cover so endless that it blots out everything other than the ringing in Keith’s ears.

The shadows stick between his teeth-

Breathe.

-slide down his throat-

Just breathe.

-settle slick and stagnant in his lungs-

Why can’t he breathe?

-and send Keith staggering out into the darkness.

 

---

 

While the cut of olkari cloth is not, in Lotor’s opinion, the most flattering thing, it’s a damn sight better than altean wear designed for a far more clement climate, or—Sa forbid—imperial armor, the internal temperature regulator of which is good, but not nearly enough to combat… this.

This being a stifling, smothering suffocation.

The only thing he has to compare it to are hazy memories of Daibazaal’s monsoon season, when the scorched desert heat would give way to the wet south-westernly winds that hailed from the planet’s tropical jungles, bringing with them a humidity so thick that it felt as if one might drown in it. Then, though, he had been surrounded by a people of whom half were thickly furred, and so had shaped the world around them to counterbalance that miserable heat for which they were so ill-suited.

But here? Now?

Having evolved to not only live, but thrive in so oppressive a climate, the olkari’s technological prowess has apparently been invested in everything but developing a decent air conditioning system, and so here Lotor is: hair twisted up off his sticky nape, and body half draped, half melting over the balcony rail as he tries and fails to find some semblance of a non-existent breeze, groggily gazing out across the sleeping city, yet cursed to never join them in their slumber.

Even so.

It is resplendent.

The pyramidic structures so favoured by this planet’s people are striking, especially like this, with the verdant veins of light that adorn them being near the only thing that betray their shape in the darkness of night, their smooth metallic faces melting into obscurity, each a palace of pitch. Lotor hasn’t been on-planet—not with time enough to enjoy being on-planet—in… a very long time. It’s the underlying heartbeat of it all that he finds truly arresting. The peace and prosperity these people have reclaimed for themselves so recently after having suffered imperial conquest. The liberty.

She would have liked it here, he thinks.

And then: would Keith?

Swallowing the sudden lump in his throat, Lotor makes to wipe the beading sweat from his neck and freezes. He couldn’t put a name to the prickling wash of something that comes over him if he tried, but instinct has him turning toward it regardless, his attention drawn over his shoulder and up. The stern, sloping walls of the pyramid are riddled with that pulsing green light, and the prince follows the beat of it ever higher until sharp geometry gives way to the elegant curve of a crescent-moon spine, bare shoulders broad yet tightly drawn, and a face cast so perfectly still that were Lotor not already well acquainted with its features he might have mistaken it for the sculpted ruminations of a pining heart.

Through the shadow and viscous heat of Olkarion’s midsummer night, dark eyes spark violet.

Crouched like a gargoyle—one carved as a predatory homage to some savage ancient, every fibre of its being coiled tight as if readying to strike down its unwitting prey—is the very subject of his guilt-ridden infatuation. Lotor daren’t breathe. His little Blade looks… flushed. Fevered. Somewhat startled too, though not nearly so much as Lotor is to see him, but this falls as quickly as his heavy brow into something ferocious, perhaps even feral, a trick of the light casting blunt little fangs into a razor’s point, almost like those of a trueborn galra. Nimble and feline, the marmorite slips from his perch atop that ledge and slides down the pyramid’s sheer outer wall to drop soundlessly onto the prince’s balcony, and, utterly entranced, Lotor allows himself to be herded backwards into his room without a word, a hundred thoughts tumbling through his mind at the sight of the restless, wild thing barely contained beneath Keith’s skin, as it rises from the floor to prowl towards him. He knows by a look that every clever little quip he might have imagined himself to offer the younger galra upon seeing him again has been rendered useless, and so each and every one dies on his tongue. Here is a creature impossible to contain. Keith hasn’t spoken, hasn’t so much as breathed, but there’s a fight written into his very bones, and if not pretty words then Lotor has only one thing to offer: slowly, he sinks into a defensive stance to cock his head and raise a singular white brow.

Keith growls at the deliberate taunt, thunderous in the quiet of this smothering night, but all Lotor hears is the pounding of his own heartbeat as everything he is recognises the beautiful beast before him as alive alive alive- a furious fiery thing that could rip the world asunder.

The first blow is a brutal one.                                              

There’s no etiquette in it, no real finesse either, Keith simply strikes with serpentine grace and all the violence of an oncoming storm. It catches the prince across the cheek in a stinging slice even as he moves to avoid it, and by the way the flesh smarts Lotor knows he ought be thankful of those base, blunted claws being as human as they are.

The shock of it steals breathy laughter from his lips, rolling into an all-too-honest purr of delight.

“Insolent little thing.”

If Keith wants to play dirty, then so be it. After all, who is Lotor to deny him anything?

The olkari don’t seem to be particularly concerned with décor beyond the necessities, Lotor’s assigned quarters sparsely furnished bar the cocoon-like bed at its heart which, though not to his personal taste, does now work in his favour. Stepping carefully backwards, he draws his little Blade deeper into the room and around, circling that central pillar of twining branches to grant himself time enough that he may assess his opponent, and be assessed in turn. Though poorly matched in terms of strength—Lotor’s altean heritage weighing the odds heavily in his favour—Keith has that ruthless agility, and the prince would be a fool to underestimate it. Raw power means nothing if never quick enough to land a blow, after all.

Then there’s that look in his eye to consider: fiercely frightened.

Not of Lotor, no, this is something else, the kind of fear that worms its way inside the mind to niggle and gnaw at things unseen. The kind of fear that people either know intimately, or not at all.

It does not suit him.

“Come now darling,” the taunt is softly spoken, and all the more goading for it, “don’t keep me waiting.”

He doesn’t.

Between one heartbeat to the next Keith has crossed the floor with barely a whisper of a footstep and is upon him, a veritable firestorm. Fists fly, striking swift and true, and while Lotor is able to deflect most of the blows—seeing them glance off his forearms as he dips and ducks and dances around the room—he’s stunned to find himself solidly on the back foot, retreating across the floor as Keith pursues him with single-minded determination.

“Don’t-” Keith hisses, the first word to pass his lips, “fucking-” his voice comes out raw and ragged, “patronise me!”

The insinuation hits Lotor harder than any physical blow, and he isn’t sure which stings more: that the marmorite believes he would dishonour a fellow galra in such a manner, or that his performance thus far has been so much a disappointment that the only explanation that makes any sense to Keith at all is that Lotor isn’t truly trying.

This cannot stand.

No matter how lovely his opponent, the prince’s pride simply won’t allow it.

He’s not often the slowest in a fight, but nor does he commonly find himself the larger and so Lotor presses his advantage, feinting high only to change course at the last tick, swooping beneath the elbow Keith raises in counter and sending the heel of his palm ramming into his little Blade’s stomach with no small amount of force. He gasps, gags, goes down- but not in weakness. Rather, a clever ankle hooks behind Lotor’s own as bruising knuckles slam against his sternum, toppling the prince without remorse and sending his entire body crashing to the floor shoulder-first, the impact a jarring bone-deep grind that rings straight through his teeth.

Lashing out in an instinctive swipe sees Keith caught around the middle, and falling just as hard.

They grapple on the ground—more animals than soldiers, more savagery than technique—and it’s hard to tell what it is that sets Lotor’s blood to boil: the night air thick with an ozonic tang, or Keith: scratching and squirming and snarling so brightly that it could almost be mistaken for a smile.

Small and supple, the marmorite makes to twine himself around Lotor in an attempt to drive an elbow between his shoulder blades with shattering accuracy, but the prince sees it coming, catches the twist of Keith’s hips, the keen light in his eyes, and bears down upon him from behind, forearm firm across his spine—ribs to scarred shoulder—as he shoves that sweat-smeared torso into unforgiving marble and pins his little spitfire beneath him, legs tangled and chests heaving.

Despite the ferocity with which Keith thrashes, it’s all for naught.

“Yield,” Lotor hisses, grin giddy and grazing Keith’s cheek as the hot little thing under him squirms uselessly against his hold with a furious trill.

Unsurprisingly, Keith does not surrender easily, and actually manages to worm one hand free before Lotor catches him by the wrist and slams it back down, grip bruising but endlessly pleased as he repeats his growled demand for the younger galra’s submission, and is this time granted it. Though Keith’s limbs have evidently tired and fallen lax at the realisation of how completely his prince has him beat, there’s still an undercurrent of tremulous anticipation to him as he cranes his neck back and around, heavy breaths coming to fall hot and ragged over one pointed ear.

Lotor—foolish and infatuated and completely undone by the man beneath him—indulgently inclines his head so that sweet lips may ghost over the sensitive, purpling helix that flutters under the attention.

“Vrepit sa.” Keith whispers, and bites.

His fangs are as blunt as his nails, which is to say they’re still sharp enough to have Lotor yelp out a curse as cartilage punctures and bleeds; his grip releases reflexively, buying Keith just enough time to wriggle himself out from under the prince, a swift kick against Lotor’s abdomen used to propel himself backwards and into a roll so that he may spring to his feet once more, smile bloodied and blinding.

Hair half undone and wounded ear weeping, Lotor spits out a winded exclamation of “minx,” as he readies himself to resume their tussle with fevered zeal, only- only Keith has softened with confusion, staring not at Lotor, but the back of the hand he’s just wiped across his messy jaw.

“Blue blood.” He mumbles, a disbelieving quirk taking hold at the corner of his mouth, “of course you have blue blood.”

Then, he starts laughing.

By the undercurrent of strain, it’s at least one part hysteria and two parts exhaustion, but Lotor can’t help but feel a little put out all the same.

“I fail to see what amuses you so.”

“Don’t sulk,” Keith’s huffs on a shuddering exhalation, and though tight and tired, the sound is tinged with an echo of good humour, and that, at least, is a relief, “it’s a human thing. On Earth, someone with blue blood is supposed to be a noble, or royalty. It just seems fitting is all, your highness.”

The title is said to tease, and admittedly does serve to placate Lotor’s pride—though he has not sulked since he was a kitling thank you very much—the prince finding the faint sting of irritation at being made to feel as if he were the butt of Keith’s private joke melting away in favour of curiosity.

“Your species’ social hierarchy is formed on blood type?”

“No we- humans have red blood, the blue thing is just a… saying? It stems from the appearance of some people’s veins beneath the skin or something. No one actually has blue blood.”

How curious.

“Then what of you?” Lotor prompts, all too aware of how Keith’s good humour is fading fast, shadows swarming his face from every angle. “Were you considered of noble birthright on your homeworld?”

The blunt bark of laughter Keith responds to this with would suggest not, even if the marmorite weren’t ardently shaking his head.

“And yet you have this appearance of blue blood.” Lotor’s eyes slide down the liberal expanse of muscle on display until his gaze settles upon the rapidly darkening kiss of his own hand, a mottled mess of blues that cradle the sharp jut of Keith’s hip.

When Keith’s fingers rise to brush lightly over that bruising brand, his palm looks very small in comparison.

“That’s just what happens when you throw people to the floor.”

Though his words are dry, he doesn’t sound upset.

“You wanted me to.”

And it’s this that causes Keith to falter, the hesitation rolling off him in waves, breath stuttering in his lungs and lashes dipping low with something akin to shame as he admits: “Yes.”

Not once has Lotor thought his little Blade a shrinking violet, and he certainly isn’t going to start now, but there’s an air about him in this moment that speaks volumes of some hidden facet of his character that the prince has yet to unravel, some rhyme or reason to Keith’s artless tirade-turned-timidity, and Lotor hasn’t the faintest idea of what it could be. He thinks the answer might be lie more in what hasn’t been said than what has.

Without warning, lightning cleaves the horizon in two, vicious and violent, and Keith’s head whips toward the sudden spark of it as if struck directly, but all Lotor sees is the evanescent reflection in violet eyes as the heavens rumble their displeasure.

There’s a breathless beauty to him.

It cracks the prince’s chest wide open.

“Keith,” he murmurs, the name honeyed and thick, sticking to Lotor’s lips like he can’t bear to part with it, “I am proud, and ill-tempered, and- and admittedly not a man practiced in confessing to my faults.” As must be obvious, if the expression his little Blade turns to face him with is any indication, all wide eyes and guileless surprise in such a way that sees the prince stumbling over his own heartstrings. “And I was… wrong, to say the things I did. Princess Allura riled me, yes, but that was neither the time nor the place, and you certainly did not deserve to bear the brunt of it.”

Keith is just… looking at him, and Lotor isn’t proficient enough in apologies to know whether or not that’s a good thing.

“My bloodline- my relationship with my father- it is a complicated matter rooted in decaphoebs of tradition and-”

“I know.” Keith interrupts quietly, gaze averted. “I didn’t, when I said-” he cuts himself off, gnawing at his lower lip as he half-hides behind his fringe, and Lotor finds himself desperately compelled to embrace him. “Kolivan explained the whole cultural galra blood thing... sorta. I get that I shouldn’t have-”

“And yet it was rather refreshing to hear you speak of it so,” his silver tongue trips over the truth of it, but this time when Keith’s eyes dart to his, Lotor chances a small smile, “albeit under less than ideal circumstances.”

A second flash of lightning—closer, brighter—catches in the upturned corner of those lips, pinked from Keith’s anxious attentions.

“I’ve never met anyone quite like you,” the prince admits, rising slowly from his knees, and stepping tentatively forward, intent on closing the distance between them. “Though I was resentful of being bid to heel like a yupper, I will admit the fault was mine, ergo please allow me to apologise for my earlier behav-”

“You were right.”

It’s the last thing he could have expected, and it blindsides him.

“I… beg your pardon?”

Keith sighs, folding his arms more tightly across his chest and curling back into himself in a way that breaks Lotor’s heart.

“You were right, when you called me ignorant-”

And he has to disagree with that, lips parting with a frown as he makes to do so, but Keith’s brow turns dark and scowling in an instant.

“Oh my god Lotor, do you ever shut up?”

The prince’s jaw clicks closed so quickly that he near bites his own tongue.

“Just let me apologise, okay?” Keith sets his jaw with a scowl, and repeats: “You were right. I am ignorant to the ‘intricacies of war’ or whatever. I don’t really know that much about the Empire, none of us do; one day I’m in the desert trying to prove that Kerberos wasn’t pilot error, the next Shiro’s back from the dead telling me that he was abducted by aliens and forced to fight as a gladiator for a year, and then we’re jetting off in a warship shaped like a cat, made by different aliens, and basically instructed to find the other cats to make a giant robot man that’s the universe’s only hope? I mean,” Keith drags trembling hands roughly through his hair to leave it sticking up at odd angles, before making some sort of dismayed gesture, “it was such bullshit. But all of a sudden we’re fighting in a universal war that we had no idea even existed, and I went along with it because these were the people who hurt Shiro, but honestly? None of us really knew what we were signing up for until it was too late! And it’s hardly an ‘opt out’ kind of scenario when the Lions won’t let anyone else pilot them, so you’re stuck!” His voice pitches, cracks, crumbles. “And—Jesus—then I started to figure out I was maybe half galra but I couldn’t exactly tell anyone, and it was all just fucking insane-”

“Keith,” Lotor tries again, aching to touch, to comfort, and the first brush of dark knuckles against the taut expanse of that tantalisingly bare shoulder sends a small shock jolting through them both as Keith whirls on him.

“My point,” he forces out, swallowing heavily, “my point is that piloting Voltron is so… much. You’re in the middle of everything, but far away from it all too; the Lions don’t feel things the way we do, and when you spend so much time in the same headspace as them they sort of swallow you up so you forget-” He chokes. Turns quiet. “You forget what war is… what it really is. What it costs.”

Perhaps that’s kinder, Lotor thinks, but Keith holds his gaze—distraught, desperate—shaking his head as if he’d heard it.

“So you were right. I know that, I’ve seen it.” On the ground with Marmora’s ilk, he means, and of that the prince has no doubt. “But don’t talk down to me. I get that I’m not as smart as you, especially not when it comes to tactics or whatever, but I can learn. Teach me.”

And Lotor…

Tongue clumsy and throat tight, he finds himself stricken.

“It was never my intention to have you think I consider you anything less than my equal,” he hears himself confess, and only when that sweet little mouth falls open, soundless and stunned, does Lotor realise that might have been somewhat too honest.

“Ergo,” he soldiers on, bloodied ear trembling, “I should still like to apologise-”

Exasperation palpable, his little Blade huffs: “Did you listen to anything I just said?” but purple fingers dart swiftly to those pursed lips and press lightly against them, serving to both silence the former red paladin and have him live up to his namesake.

“It is precisely because I listened that I am certain I owe it to you.” That, and a hundred other reasons, not least among them the phantom of that broken helmet in his hand which he now feels acutely, as his fingertips ghost across the sharp cut of that handsome jaw. “You are a remarkable man, Keith, and I… I fear that my tendency to take action without proper clarification—my own arrogance with regards to the blind faith of others—may have cost me dearly in the past, and it is not a mistake I am desirous of repeating, least of all with-” you, “-Voltron. Yet it is their way—your way—to choose the moral thing, and I cannot in good conscience claim to have always done the same.”

To be touching Keith so gently suddenly feels like sacrilege, and Lotor’s fingers retreat into the curl of his fist, dropping away of their own accord.

For a moment, he half images the marmorite to have swayed after his touch.

“I do not-” he continues on a steadying inhalation, “-cannot regret them, because those choices were necessary evils, but I fear that even if I were to explain myself, your princess would see only the harm I have done, and none of the good... and I fear you would agree with her.”

Keith is quiet for what feels like an age, eyes narrowed and searching.

“What haven’t you told us, Lotor?”

“Many things,” he smiles without any of his usual fallacy, “some of which are unforgivable, of that I am well aware, and I know that I would be condemned for the actions I have taken to ensure- well, that I cannot say.”

Keith’s next whisper is the one that ends him.

“I need you to trust us.”

And the cruel irony of it all is that he wants to. He wants to trust in the pretty words of a prettier man; to trust that, if he were to reveal the truth of it all, the marmorite would not turn his back on him; to trust that if he himself is indeed the monster his father so willed him to become, then at the very least he is such for the right reasons, if not good ones.

But Lotor cannot ask so much of the universe- of Keith. He will not.

It would be undeniably selfish of him to do so.

“Lotor-”

“Trust goes both ways, little Blade,” he watches his companion closely through the heat-haze, “so if I am to trust you, then you must trust in turn that this secret is one I keep for the sake of the universe.”

For a moment he thinks Keith is going to defy him, and can hardly blame him for it, but when the marmorite opens his mouth with a weary weight behind his words, it is to murmur, “fair enough,” and then, palm raised and jaw set; “so… friends?”

He says it so easily, as if asking after the friendship of your unlikely ally who just openly admitted to harbouring undesirable secrets is something one simply does.

Lotor’s mouth works before his mind.

“The last people I considered friends shot me in an attempt to sell me back to my father so that they might save their own skin,” not that he can blame them, “so forgive me if I am ill at ease with the concept.”

When dark brows shoot up, Keith’s pro-offered hand faltering a moment, the prince cringes at his own tactless candour, but he’s somehow saved from having to explain it all away by a fierce determination that sparks within eyes of shadowy violet.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, Zarkon and I aren’t exactly on great terms, so I’d say the chances of that happening again are pretty slim.”

He cracks a smile as he says it, small and lopsided, and Lotor’s heart ties itself in knots.

“I suppose that is something of a comfort.”

And with that he’s gripping at Keith’s forearm, the littlest Blade only hesitating for half a tick before returning the hold with vigour.

This time, when the lightning strikes with a thunderous cry that reverberates right through Lotor’s very core, it shatters that dreadful heat to pieces, and turns all the world to one of sweet-scented rainfall.

Notes:

I have been working on the Olkarion arc for the longest time and realised very quickly that it was simply not going to fit into one chapter, and quite possibly not even two.. so this is part one of m a y b e three in a Very Important Turning Point in the keitor dynamic because, yes! You heard it here first folks! We have officially entered the "friends" portion of this stupidly slowburn "enemies-to-friends-to-lovers" monstrosity. It only took me 140k and like 31 months to get here. You're welcome.

-

TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 22: Prince of Lies

Summary:

Previously: Team Voltron & co arrived on Olkarion (complete with that oh so desirable humidity) to talk to Slav who was helpful in his own unique way, and then Keith started physiotherapy which was no fun at all, ultimately triggering his nightmares and leaving him in something of A State. Lotor was having a sad anime moment as he stared out over the sleeping city, only for the love of his life to descend from above and- fight him like a feral animal I guess? Once Keith was feeling a little more himself, the emotionally stunted disaster gays did their best to talk through their issues, and the storm broke (literally and figuratively) with the foundation of their newly established friendship.

Even the rain is warm.

Not scaldingly so, sure, but tepid enough that any hope Keith might have harboured of this midnight storm ridding Olkarion of its wretched humidity is quickly turned to nothing more than a pipe-dream, the planet persisting in its incessant efforts to keep him sour, sweltering, and stranded.

Stranded, because one look at the rain-lashed wall of the pyramid’s exterior is all Keith needs to know that he won’t be returning to his room the same way he left it, even if he weren’t tired and aching and drained to his core, that architectural slope steep enough to begin with, but now shiny and slick in a manner he hadn’t thought to consider. Combing the sodden tangle of his fringe back from eyes that squint up through the torrential downpour at the vague shadow of his balcony, he’s forced to concede defeat.

When he turns, it’s to find Lotor watching him with a lazy pleasure to his posture, like the cat that got the cream.

“Fine,” Keith huffs, “you were right.”

“As is so often the case.”

Flicking water at the smug bastard would do no good—the archway in which he shelters having been fitted with some sort of moisture-repellent tech that preserves the dry sanctuary of the room beyond without need for a tangible door—and so Keith settles for flipping him off with such obvious intent that the prince must understand it in spirit, if not in gesture, by the entertained laugh it steals from him.

“Imagine the scandal,” Lotor muses aloud, making no attempt to hide his mirth, “I can see the headlines now: ‘Marmoran Paladin Sighted Slinking Out Of Exiled Prince’s Chambers In The Dead Of Night.’ …what would people say?” and then, when Keith continues to adamantly ignore him in favour of one last-ditch effort at scouring the smooth stone for some sort of imperfection or ridge he might use to his advantage; “You’re soaked to the bone. Come inside, Rhyahl.”

It’s that that does it.

Rhyahl.

Keith flinches, tremulous fingertips coming up to rub absently at his throat as he finds himself suddenly struggling to swallow.

“Yeah, about that,” he croaks, unable to look at the wall or Lotor or anything other than the phantom of a monster now dead, “why the fuck would you name me after that thing?”

For a beat, the only sound between them is that of rainfall and the storm’s own thunderous displeasure, but Keith doesn’t need to turn his head to know that Lotor is eyeing him in that too-clever way of his.

“Come inside,” the prince bids again, a newfound softness to his tongue, “and I’ll tell you.”

 

The worst of the water is stripped from him with an electric prickle as he steps under the archway’s shadow, but that which isn’t finds itself foiled by a great swathe of fabric—silk, or something like it—being gently draped across bare shoulders the moment he’s inside. The perpetrator lingers, long, calloused fingers pausing at the knotted scar tissue of Marmora’s Trials in such a way that Keith feels the old ache of it acutely, before tucking it out of sight and releasing him all together.

The marmorite finds himself caught on the line of Lotor’s throat, unwilling—perhaps unable—to bear raising his eyes a fraction further.

“Thanks.”

“We wouldn’t want you dripping all over the place, now would we?”

The faux selfishness of this sentiment falls flat for the triviality of it—Lotor’s hardly the sort to care for a bit of rainwater when he himself still has blood oozing from his wounded ear, and Keith’s witnessed him elbow-deep in Kra’s inner workings besides—but the Blade lets it slide, intent instead on only one thing.

“Tell me why, Lotor.”

It comes out as a demand: something too loud in the quiet around them, too large for the space between them, and too heavy by far for the fragility of Keith’s own voice.

But he has to know.

“The creature you fought,” the prince begins, “was a gross perversion of everything our people once knew by that name, though I can understand why you mightn’t be fond of the association, all things considered.”

“Yeah,” violet eyes remain firmly fixated on the soft underside of Lotor’s jaw as he speaks, “not really.”

“Our ancestors believed that anything in its purest form denotes an element of true terror.” he continues, in that roundabout way of his, “Though somewhat archaic, the philosophical concept of palan-bol was that through pain one might find enlightenment, ergo enlightenment itself became synonymous with suffering and, ultimately, war.” Here the prince trails off, lowering his tone as if hesitant to continue. “Though rife with terror, I would personally make the somewhat ingalran argument that war and purity are rather diametrically opposed, and as such cannot coexist no matter what one might be fighting for.”

Not even in Voltron’s case, goes unsaid.

“But for things such as truth? Beauty? Love?” Lotor swallows, and Keith’s lashes dip low, eyes following the movement of the prince’s throat without conscious thought. “In all their absolution, what else could they be but terrifying?”

There’s something between them then, unspoken and unyielding. Something Keith could never hope to name. Something he mightn’t want to, even if he could.

“The true rhyahl,” Lotor whispers, “was terror incarnate. And when I first bore witness to you…”

In his mind’s eye, Keith sees Zarkon’s son framed in the training deck’s doorway, all smiles and sharpened wit. He hears the pride on his lips and the purr on his tongue. He thinks: oh.

“It was never my intention to offend,” comes the apologetic murmur, but Keith just shakes his head, dislodging the last remnants of the ongoing storm from where it had tucked itself away in the thickness of his hair.

“You didn’t.” Keith feels parched, raw, and he raises one hand to gently massage over the prickled skin of his nape, while the other tugs the blanket more tightly around his own shoulders as if to shield against a non-existent chill. “It’s just- after everything that happened-”

He hasn’t the words.

He hasn’t, but Lotor does.

“You do not much care for the reminder,” the prince supplies with a gentle whisper, and the rueful nod of Keith’s reply is a small, subdued thing.

“Not if I can help it.”

“Forgive me, little Blade. I should have thought.”

A stray droplet of moisture, beading at the tip of Keith’s fringe, chooses this moment to fall. It’s caught in that same instant by the clawed fingertips that ghost up the former paladin’s nose and over his brow to push dark hair back from darker eyes until it sticks, damp and undoubtedly disastrous, atop his head. He does look then, is helpless to do otherwise, and finds himself blinking up into a grin as guileless as it is wicked.

“What ought I call you instead?”

Keith’s nose crinkles.

“What’s wrong with my name?”

Nothing at all,” Lotor assures him, contemplative and sly, “it is a perfectly lovely name for an equally lovely face-”

And though the marmorite feels his ears warm, it’s absolutely down to the unbearable climate, and nothing more.

“-but I don’t share well: names or people.”

With a choked scoff, Keith swats at the prince with the draping corner of his blanket, earning himself a winning smile as Lotor steps smoothly out of reach without missing a beat.

“Besides, I do so enjoy tormenting your friends.”

“You’re an ass,” Keith tells him, amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth.

He’s paid little mind.

“Maar tron liirah.” Seemingly content to ignore the insult, the prince muses upon the foreign words with a poor semblance of solemnity. “No, that is somewhat verbose, I think.”

This term doesn’t mean a thing to Keith—which Lotor must know full well—but the way the words curl in the air between them is recognisable enough for the marmorite to pin them down as Zaalkh.

“L’vaanu would be suitable,” that thoughtful tone grows touched with rumbling laughter, “though it perhaps fails to encapsulate your ferocity, which won’t do at all.”

“Of course not,” Keith plays along, Lotor’s nonsense a welcome balm for all his frayed edges, “because obviously that means…?”

Saccharine smile creeping ever wider, the prince rolls his head to the side and eyes Keith from beneath pale lashes, whispering: “One who is adored above all others.”

“Liar.”

“I’m hurt that you’d so much as entertain the idea.”

And if there were even a hint of the prince’s usual ire lacing those words, Keith might have believed him, but as it stands…

No, Lotor looks nothing short of dreadfully delighted.

“All the same,” he continues, lids slipping closed with molten indolence, “it is lacking that personal touch, I’ll admit. Perhaps… b’aakhitah?

“Now you’re just being facetious.”

The Prince’s eyes snap open at this, bright and entertained.

“Oh I am, am I? Such a big word for so little a Blade!”

This taunt is accompanied by a playful glint of fangs, almost a snarl and yet too close to a smile to possess any true thread of intimidation. Keith attempts to respond in kind with a growl to match, but his stomach outdoes him: releasing a great grumble into the night as if to surpass the thunder itself, and following in its wake an undeniable heat streaking his cheeks. In this same moment, Lotor marks that rising colour with twinkling eyes and, the perfect picture of fond indulgence, the prince stalks across the room to pluck a near untouched platter of food from atop a modest chest of drawers before seating himself on the floor, just shy of the balcony’s invisible boarder.

“Shall we?”

Keith’s eager stomach is answer enough.

They dine together in relative quiet, and it’s comfortable. Well, perhaps not physically—though Olkarion’s dreadful heat has finally abated some under the storm’s persistence, the bruising kiss of the galra prince’s hand over Keith’s hip is unlikely to let itself be forgotten so soon: a dull throbbing that thrums with every breath—but in his own mind, at least, the marmorite finds the peace that has been so expertly evading him since he first woke near a full movement prior.

Briefly, anyway.

It’s a piece of fruit, of all things, that does it. Something like mango, but softer, stickier too, and where it lies across Keith’s tongue his tastebuds begin to prickle with a contradictory sweet-sour tang. It’s only when he tries to swallow that he recognises the wrongness of it all, but it’s too little too late; the first touch of that sticky slice to the back of his throat has his chest seizing tight. Discreetly as he’s able, Keith spits the foul fruit into his trembling palm, and distantly hears Lotor make some teasing question of it not being to his taste, but the prince’s words are drowned out by the hammering of Keith’s own heartbeat, louder than the rain or the thunder or his own pounding footsteps as he flees through endless halls with death’s ravenous whisper a hair’s-breadth from his nape-

There’s fire at his fingers and a monster on his heels and Matt is screaming- pleading- begging-

A singular note: white and waning.

“-scape them I had little choice but to fly across the surface of the nearest star,” someone is saying, their voice even as it cuts through the ringing in his ears, “Kra has yet to truly forgive me for it, though she fared far better than our pursuers, I assure you.”

The world is quiet, and smells of salt.

“All the same,” that voice continues, faintly familiar as it rumbles through Keith’s scattered mind, thoughts settling in its wake, “I wasn’t entirely certain that she could withstand such temperatures, even if it was only a red giant… but my options were regrettably limited.”

There’s a rhythmic pulse beating beneath his ear, slow and soothing, and long fingers carding through his hair in a similar fashion.

“After all, it was that or face my father’s wrath, and believe you me, I’d rather take my chances with a star twice as hot.”

Keith shifts, ever so slightly, and finds his nose tucked up against a bobbing throat.

“…Keith?”

There’s a moment’s stillness, broken only by a concerned frown is tipping into sight, moonlit tresses spilling across the marmorite’s field of vision and bringing with them eyes of dusk-dipped blue.

Lotor.

Though he hadn’t spoken aloud—voice having failed him and tongue not following through besides—and hardly feels able to raise himself from the hollow of the broad shoulder upon which he rests, Keith does manage to shift his heavy head in an approximation of a nod.

For the sheer relief that breaks across that handsome face, Lotor might well have mistaken this small triumph for a miracle.

“There you are,” the prince croons sweetly, “take a breath for me?”

Obediently, Keith does so, only to realise that his lungs are half burning for it and so greedily takes another, much to his companion’s apparent pleasure.

“And again,” Lotor commands, guiding him to sit upright. It’s only in doing so that Keith realises how completely he had been curled against the older galra’s chest, his body a tight little ball, rigid and trembling. With Lotor’s quiet guidance, he’s able to unfold each leaden limb, revealing fists that clutch the collar of olkari cloth so fiercely that their knuckles—his knuckles—have gone bone-pale. It’s a monumental effort, to pry away one finger at a time, but when he is finally able to do so, the hands that receive his own are quick to cradle each palm, tracing upon them a character of familiar script as if in prayer.

“Still with me?”

Violet eyes flick upward as Keith inhales again, shaken but controlled, exhaling just as pointedly.

This, some vague and hazy part of him is pleased to note, earns him Lotor’s murmured approval, the prince’s lips quirking with a glimmer of true humour even as he persists in his rhythmic ministrations. Ministrations which, the marmorite realises, have fallen in time with his own breathing.

Or- no. It’s the other way around.

With each caress across the apex of his palm, Keith’s lungs fill, only loosing their precious cargo when Lotor draws his thumb back upon the path he’d just carved for himself and around in a tightly curled crescent.

“Death,” his voice hardly sounds like his own, weak and rasping even as he continues to breathe in time with the drag of clawed fingertips, “is that supposed to be comforting?”

A noncommittal hum.

“As I’m sure I’ve said, death is a crass translation.” the tracing does not slow even as blue eyes cast their attention upon him once more. “Sa is less an end and more an eternity. She is a known assurance among our people—a promise that, come what may, we shall continue to be.”

Keith cannot find it in himself to make his throat work.

His companion speaks again so that he does not have to.

“I will not pretend to know where She takes you,” the prince begins, and though his wording is innocuous enough, Keith feels his whole being shutter at the yet unspoken question, “nor will I presume to ask-”

“Sorry-” he fumbles out, as the embarrassment begins to creep in, “I was just- it’s nothing- I-”

But Lotor is shaking his head with a soft little furrow to his brow, never ceasing in the continued ebb and flow of that ancient character upon a pale palm, and whispering, “You needn’t apologise Keith. Not to me. Not for this.” and then, with knuckles gently grazing beneath the marmorite’s chin: “Just come back to me.”

And he tries. God does he try, but the only noise he can make is something high pitched and brittle, and Lotor's expression seems to crumple in response.

“You saved my life,” is the blurted admission that floods out in a rush, though whether in gratitude or accusation Keith himself couldn’t say, “at Naxzela.” and he doesn't know why he admits this, doesn't know what he could possibly want from Lotor beyond that which is already done, but it's out there now: true and terrifying. “I never properly thanked you for it.”

With a look of tentative confusion, the prince inclines his head.

“Neither did anyone else, so I wouldn’t worry.” His voice is touched with sardonic humour. “In fairness, the witch's bomb would have taken several galaxies worth of lives with it, my own included. My actions were as much in my own interest as they were Voltron’s.”

He doesn’t know.

Lotor doesn't know, Keith realises—that which had almost happened, that which he’d almost done—and who could possibly expect him to? It’s a secret upon Keith’s own insistence, after all.

The truth scratches and scrabbles at the back of his throat.

He swallows it down.

“You-” the prince starts at Keith’s troubled silence, but then seems to think better of it, saying instead: “I couldn’t see it before- the common thread, I mean. Only half our party heard that creature’s cry, and though it was no true rhyahl, I suppose it must have been rhyahl enough to possess Sa’s tongue… Sa Kyl, the druids call it: the Song of the Void. While named for the catatonic state induced by that creature which once walked Daibazaal’s scorched earth, the term was extended to include those unseen battles fought by warriors from all walks of life; though the particulars of that which one fights may vary, the aftereffects are not dissimilar.” These murmurations are spoken so closely, that Lotor’s breath kisses the crest of Keith’s cheek with every word. “The ancients believed that once Sa has had a taste of you, she never quite forgets.”

Sa Kyl, Keith thinks, numbly.

Though the name is unfamiliar, the notion is not.

His own reasons are obvious enough—he’d have to be an idiot not to know them, when Naxzela’s ghostly promise of what could have- would have- should have been haunts his every breath—and from what little Lotor has mentioned of his past, Keith holds no doubt that the meagre misfortunes he himself has suffered must pale in comparison to a life under Haggar’s thumb. It’s little wonder Shiro heard it too, considering all he’d endured even before Voltron entered the picture; and of all the paladins remaining it was Lance—stupid, selfless, sacrificial Lance—who had sustained the first truly traumatic injury of them all, during Sendak’s assault on Arus all those phoebs ago.

God, Keith thinks to himself, a bitter tang between his teeth, this has really fucked us up.

Not privy to these miserable musings, Lotor probes a little further.

“Seeing as she sings to you as she does me-”

Though his brow is creased in thought and lips parted around a yet-unuttered question, the prince must find something telling in Keith’s expression, because he abruptly stays his own tongue and instead casts the unsung query from his own mind with a forceful shake of the head.

“…It is of little consequence. I admit that can hardly deny my own curiosity,” and those blue eyes are so wonderfully terribly clever; Keith feels flayed wide open, “but I do not wish to overstep.”

Voice less than a murmur, the former paladin protests: “It’s nothing important.”

An obvious lie.

Lotor must know it too.

“Perhaps,” a scrutinous cock of the head, “and perhaps not. Even a lone dune beetle can pose quite the problem if it makes a nest for itself where it is not welcome.”

“This is war.” Keith bites back, even though he doesn’t mean to. Even though he doesn’t want to. “Everyone’s got shit they’d rather not think about.”

For the finality with which it is said, Lotor concedes, but the deep inhalation he follows it with has the marmorite bracing for the inevitable fallout, and hating himself for being the undeniable catalyst when instead he could have said- could have explained-

Contrary to every expectation, the galra prince leases not a reprimanding sigh, but sorrow-stung one, his eyes dropping to Keith’s still-captured palms and drawing them fractionally closer, as if he might find the answers to all his unsung questions there.

“At the very least,” he murmurs, “you ought know that there is no shame in it.”

Voice hoarse with false certainty, the words “I know that,” find their way into the space between them.

Keith’s hands are returned to him.

It feels like a loss.

Worse yet, to have those eyes fixed so intently upon him is a special kind of torture, and perhaps this is why he blurts out: “Did you say you flew into a star?” without warning or fanfare, in what is an undoubtedly clumsy attempt at a segue.

But Lotor, ever gracious, allows it with a weary roll of the shoulders.

“Not quite into it, but… not far off.”

“Do you ever-” think about it? “I mean, does it-?” hound you? Haunt you?

The question of it must be written all over his face, because despite the absence of a smile, blue eyes crinkle at the corners.

“Among other things,” comes the whisper of a man half drowning.

Keith aches.

And just like that, the prince is blinking that unspoken loss away as if no more than rainwater in his lashes, turning his tongue to one steeped in pride and honey: “But tell me, do my feats of daring impress?”

It strikes Keith then, that that—that sudden composure, that falsehood, that easy fiction of face—that is as terrible a talent as it is enviable. That is a knife honed out of necessity, or not at all.

He would know.

“Sure,” the marmorite exhales on a shaken smile, “if that’s what you want to believe.”

Faux injury takes hold of Lotor’s features as he clutches one hand to his heart, smile all teeth.

“You wound me, b’aakhitah.”

“You’re really committing to that?” Testing the shape of those foreign syllables sees them rolling from his lips like a cresting wave. “Go on then, what does that one mean?”

“Greedy little thing,” Lotor purrs in lieu of an answer, the sound twisting low in Keith’s belly, “I’ve spoilt you terribly; if you want to know that then perhaps I should make you work for it.”

Ignoring the sudden uptick in his pulse is no easy task, but Keith has always been stubborn.

“Fine, keep your secrets,” and then, attention drifting to that still-bloodied ear, “I suppose I owe you one for that, anyway.”

“For this?” When long fingers come up to touch the weeping wound they do so gingerly, but Lotor’s expression is more perplexed than pained. “I hardly see why.”

“It was underhanded,” comes the guilty admission on a huff… but far from agreeing with him, Lotor releases a sharp bark of laughter.

“It was brilliant. You identified your opponent’s weakness and used it against them without hesitation; the fault is mine for succumbing to such a thing, but I suppose my pride will recover.”

Keith gapes.

“I bit you.”

“I could always return the favour,” the prince offers, fangs flashing with something fiendish that threatens to have Keith flushing again, before falling to a softer, truer smile. “Am I to suppose that this stems from some ridiculous human notion of sparring etiquette? Some races have such silly rules.”

‘Don’t bite people’ sounds to Keith more common sense than silly, but his interest is piqued.

“What’s galra sparring etiquette then?”

Abruptly, Lotor seems torn between annoyance and exasperation, and for a moment Keith fears he’s misstepped somehow, but then-

But then, Zarkon’s son and heir flops backwards onto the floor in a great huff of temper, eyes tightly shut and fingers rubbing at his brow.

“The Blade’s commander hasn’t even taught you that?” and then, under his breath, with words that Keith is perhaps not intended to hear; “you truly are wasted on them.”

This sentiment only deepens the colour staining Keith’s cheeks, and he’s distinctly glad that Lotor is too irate to take note.

“Kolivan gave me a crash course,” he supplies, “but it was more the practical stuff than anything else. I never had much of a chance to spar with the others- not properly anyway.”

One hand still occupied with pinching at his sinuses as if to ward off an impending headache, Lotor uses the other to blindly pat at the floor beside him, the silent command of a tantrumming child. This thought has Keith fiercely biting at his own tongue as he wrestles down his laughter: it is not, he imagines, a comparison that its subject would greatly appreciate.

Doing as he’s bid (if only to conceal his own amusement), Keith finds the floor pleasantly cool as he lies upon it—a balm to the bruise that continues to bloom beneath aching ribs—and pillows his head upon the now-bundled blanket in his arms, all the while keenly aware of how intently he is watched.

“So dramatic,” he teases once settled, much to Lotor’s apparent dismay, “go on then.”

Swallowing some sort of disgruntled scoff, the prince complies.

“When it comes to combat our people have rather a lot to contribute, as I’m sure you well know, but so far as etiquette goes it’s really rather simple.” Lotor raises one long finger. “The first blow ought never be struck from behind, as that is a coward’s way,” a second finger joins the first, “and though one might yield to a fellow child of Sa, one may never flee.”

When the prince falls silent, Keith realises he’s done.

“That’s it? No other rules, or regulations, or-” Keith gestures vaguely to nothing and everything, “-victory-or-death ultimatums?”

“In a friendly spar against one of your own?” Lotor’s mouth quirks at the corner, “If that were the case, the Imperial military would have eaten itself alive a long time ago. No, between… friends,” he eyes Keith carefully as he says it, speaking the word into existence as if it’s something delicate, something precious, and the marmorite warms to think that their newfound friendship might mean as much to Lotor as it does to him, “the mantra is Vrepit Naachtron.”

One dark brow rises. Waits.

With a snort, the inevitable admission follows: “Victory on Pain of Submission—and that’s a kind translation.”

“One day you’re going to tell me a fact about the Empire that isn’t centred around victory, or death, or pain, or blood, or- or anything.” Keith scrunches his nose. “Do you have any anecdotes about… I don’t know, flowers or something?”

He’s expecting Lotor to roll his eyes.

Laugh, maybe.

“Vaekrys Honerva,” the prince murmurs instead, sweetly wistful. “It was named for my mother.”

Keith doesn’t need to ask by whom.

“It’s not poisonous?” He probes gently, immeasurably relieved when those melancholic shadows lift from Lotor’s face to be replaced by a fond smile.

“It is not.”

“Carnivorous?”

“No.”

“Used in some sort of… druidic blood ritual?”

“By Brodar’s name-!” the curse loses its potency for the laughter that accompanies it, “It is a perfectly inane blossom that now flowers only upon the western slopes of the Katriios mountain range on Feyiv. It is orange as a dying star, glows faintly in the late vargas, and kitlings often paint themselves with its nectar and pretend-”

Lotor cuts himself off.

Blinks.

Presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and groans.

A sharp grin steals over Keith’s features.

“They pretend it’s war paint, don’t they.” It’s not a question, and so Lotor apparently does not see fit to dignify it with a response, but at this rate, the prince’s pride really isn’t going to survive ‘til morning, and so Keith swallows his own amusement and grants his companion mercy.

“Sparring etiquette aside, m’still sorry. About your ear.”

At this, Lotor rolls onto his side, propping his head upon one hand in such a way that the muted glow of the alien city behind him catches faintly along his cheekbones, and sets his mussed hair alight with ethereal splendour.

“Don’t be,” he chuckles, a rich, dark sound, and when blue eyes fall to where the damning handprint blossoms in the crux of Keith’s waist, bright and brutal, the marmorite could almost mistake that look for an admiring one, “I’m certainly not.”

Before he can even begin to answer that, there’s a terse rapping at the room’s far end.

Startled, Keith turns his head towards the angular olkari door as if it might explain itself. It doesn’t, of course, this task falling instead to the individual concealed beyond.

“Prince Lotor, I’m here to collect you, as promised.” comes the voice of one particularly unenthused Matthew Holt.

Shit.

Keith turns wide eyes on Lotor who, far from sharing his sudden overwhelming panic at the inevitable fallout of Matt finding him here, just looks moderately put-out.

“It’s 0800 vargas,” Matt tries again, after a beat of silence.

Shit shit sHIT-

Ignoring his protesting muscles Keith scrabbles to his feet, assessing his exit-routes, of which there are only two—one rain-lashed and the other evidently occupied—to no avail, and adamantly ignoring Lotor who simply hauls himself to sit upright with all the idle grace of a feline predator, remarking “how time flies,” under his breath without the slightest hint of repentance.

“Prince Lotor?” calls Matt, one final time, and then, when Lotor doesn’t answer (too busy entertaining himself with Keith’s desperate floundering as he attempts to somehow avert the inevitable, the bastard), “I’m coming in.”

And so he does.

Instantly, Keith knows by the look on Matt’s face that there is no good explanation for this.

He knows by the look on Lotor’s, that if he lets the prince take the reins he’ll only make matters worse.

And so he opens his mouth. Closes it. Contemplates waving but doesn’t see what good that would do, if any, so quickly scraps that poor excuse for an idea and mentally scrambles for something- anything else that could possibly explain his presence here in a way that is not going to sound, as Lotor might so eloquently term it, utterly scandalous.

He fails.

“It’s 0800 vargas,” Matt repeats, this time with a pitched and vaguely airy sort of detachment to his tone as, with growing horror, hazel eyes catalogue the vast array of scrapes and bruises that both he and Lotor wear: that damning handprint at Keith’s hip most of all.

Oh this is… this is bad.

“So you said.” Lotor replies with a smile that Keith can hear, and that’s undoubtedly worse.

Managing to tear his eyes from Matt, who stands stock still and thunderstruck, Keith glance to his side to find the prince rising from the floor and to his full height with little more than a nonchalant wave of his hand. “You must forgive me Matthew, the time escaped me. As you can see I appear to be without a clock.”

“But not,” Matt’s voice is strained, “without a Keith. Apparently.”

With a brief and entirely casual glance back over his shoulder that betrays absolutely nothing of how obviously the prince is enjoying himself, this observation is received with a thoughtful nod, and then, tone dry but eyes bright, Lotor replies: “So it would seem.”

Keith really needs to find his tongue.

Wilting under the elder Holt’s expectantancy, he mumbles; “The pyramids have… er- they have sloping walls,” and lets Matt’s brain—shrewd as it is, and fully acquainted with Keith’s penchant for trouble—do the rest.

It doesn’t take long.

“Holy hell… Holy fucking hell! Keith Kogane, you are in no condition to-!”

Abruptly as he’d begun, Matt cuts himself off. Pales. Flicks his eyes to Lotor for less than a tick, but too long by far for the prince not to have noticed.

“Right.” the older Holt looks between him and Lotor with an expression that Keith hasn’t the words to describe, before something in him sharpens, “Right. You,” he jabs a finger pointedly at Lotor, who Keith can feel frozen at his side, attention a sudden and physical weight, “I’ll be back for in a minute- dobash- whatever. You,” this time Keith is the subject of his stiffly delivered command, “outside, now.”

Keith carries the burden of those eyes every dredging step until he is over the threshold, and out of sight.

 

Matt’s reprimand is brutal.

He marches Keith past an olkari duo who flank the end of the long hallway of which Lotor’s door is a solitary one—guard-duty, the marmorite assumes, and undoubtedly bewildered as to how he could have possibly circumvented their vigilance—and a good twenty paces or so around the corner and out of sight, before beginning his furious rebuke.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” he hisses, tugging Keith into the stairwell and away from prying eyes. “The fall alone could have killed you, let alone him.”

Keith makes to protest, once again, that Lotor wouldn’t truly hurt him—he’s surer of that now than ever before—but Matt clearly doesn’t want to hear it, turning on him the instant he opens his mouth.

“This isn’t healthy, Keith!” his hands flail wildly in the air between them, “Whatever weird, self-flagellating bullshit this is, it stops. Now.”

A heavy frown overtakes Keith’s brow, shoulders hunching defensively.

“You think I’m using Lotor to- what? Punish myself?”

In lieu of verbal confirmation, Matt makes a jabbing gesture to Keith’s battered torso, eyes wide and mouth gaping as if it ought to be self-explanatory, and- yeah, okay, so he supposes that’s a fair enough assumption given the state he’s in, but before he can explain that this isn’t that, Matt is rubbing a hand furiously over the faint stubble of his jaw as he releases a shuddering breath.

“Listen, I don’t- I don’t mean to yell, I’m just… I’m worried about you. No, actually, not worried, I’m fucking scared Keith. Not only are you refusing to talk about Naxzela,” Matt begins counting things off on trembling fingers, “you’re actively hiding it from the others, you’re throwing yourself through the infinite vacuum of space and directly into the path of Haggar’s patchwork horror, and now you’re getting into secret fistfights with our local galtean frenemy?”

“I’ve always been reckless-” Keith protests, but Matt is having none of it.

“Reckless, yes, but-” Matt’s voice drops to little more than a whisper, “-suicidal? This is beyond the pale Keith, you need to let us help you.”

Jaw set and hackles raised, the marmorite grits his teeth.

“Isn’t that the whole damn point of being here? I went to see Slav and Cadryn yesterday didn’t I!?”

“Yeah,” Matt concedes with a frown, “and then missed dinner entirely only for me to find you the next morning with bruises the size of aubergines and damn near the colour to match. Not exactly what I’d call progress.”

Keith can’t stop himself. He laughs.

He laughs, and it’s the sound of knuckles through drywall, of bloodied lips and broken jaws, of a cornered animal with nowhere to hide.

“Fuck you Matt.”

“Hey-”

“No,” Keith spits, “it’s your turn to fucking listen. If I have to spend one more tick being coddled by you or Shiro or anyone, I am going to lose my damn mind- hell! I feel like I already have!” He bares his teeth. “We’re fighting on the frontlines of an intergalactic war, but I’ve spent the last movement sitting on my ass doing fuck all because no one will let me so much as look at the training deck, let alone set foot on it!”

“Because your quintessence-!”

“I know, Matt! It’s my damn quintessence!” His voice echoes around them. “But I’m not a diplomat or a strategist, so how the fuck am I supposed to be of any use to anyone if I can’t even pick up a sword?”

Hazel eyes stare at him, silent and searching.

“You won’t be of any use to anyone if you’re dead either,” Matt says, as if that isn’t the biggest lie of all.

Muted and mulish, Keith bites back: “Depends on what I end up dying for.”

 

It’s only after he storms back into his room, having left Matt in the stairwell with that sour sentiment as his only parting gift, that Keith realises he’s still clutching the bundled olkari cloth in one white-knuckled fist.

Sinking back against his door, shaken and seething, he brings the blanket to his face and screams.

And screams-

-and screams-

-and screams.

Keith screams until there’s nothing left in him but a manic exhaustion with nowhere to go, and then he screams once more, just for good measure, muffling everything he is in swathes of soft silk and the vague realisation that, although the blanket can be from nowhere other than Lotor’s bed, the only scent it carries is that of crisp olkari tree sap.

If he’d had enough presence of mind left to care, Keith might have flushed to realise that this disappoints him.

 

He wakes from a dreamless sleep to stiffened joints and a tentative rapping at his back.

“Paladin Keith?”

Cadryn.

When Keith looks to his balcony and the sky beyond, he finds it clear of clouds, the sky golden and the sun fierce.

Shit.

He’s quick to open the door to them, and quicker still to apologise for being late to his second appointment, but this apology falls on deaf ears; no sooner has Cadryn been welcomed over the threshold do their bulbous eyes grow impossibly larger as they take in the myriad of colourful bruising that Keith—too used to the ache of a good spar—had all but forgotten.

“Did I do this?” they whisper, horrified, and it takes Keith’s brain a moment to catch up.

“What- no! God no, this is…” he trails off, suddenly torn between assuaging their guilt at something they had no part in, and concealing his ill-advised rendezvous with the exiled galra prince.

Readily attuned to his discomfort, Cadryn offers a hesitant smile even as their eyes are repeatedly drawn back to all the war-torn skin on display.

“Rest assured, Paladin, anything you share with me will be held in the highest confidence.”

“It’s not that I doubt that,” weight shifting uneasily from foot to foot, Keith scrambles for an explanation, “I just- I mean I’d really rather the other paladins- I don’t want to worry them, is all, and if you know it might put you in an awkward position so I-”

“You are most thoughtful,” Cadryn seems touched by his clumsy efforts, “but while my people’s debt to Voltron can never be repaid, my oath as a physician is sacred. I am bound by a strict code of patient confidentiality and as such I would feel no guilt withholding anything you choose to share with me in these sessions from even Princess Allura herself; I am quite certain she would understand.”

Keith is quite certain she bloody wouldn’t—not when Lotor is at the crux of the issue—but the strength of their conviction is reassuring nonetheless.

“That’s… right, okay, so this is-” like ripping out a thorn, “I sort of duelled it out with Lotor. Last night.”

Cadryn blinks at him.

“You sparred with-” their mind seems to stumble over the concept, and the tension is palpable, “with Prince Lotor… Emperor Zarkon’s son and heir, Lotor?”

“…That would be the Lotor, yes.”

When Cadryn blinks again, they do so several times over, and Keith braces himself for the inevitable backlash, but then-

“Did you… win?”

The question catches him off-guard, stealing a noise of great consideration and little conviction from the back of his throat.

“Well,” his mind revels in the impossible weight of Lotor at his back, the ferocity of the prince’s grip as he ground the bones of Keith’s wrist together, his unshakable confidence—arrogance—at assuming he had the marmorite dead to rights only for Keith to turn the tables at the last second, mouth thick with the taste of copper and stolen victory. “I didn’t lose.”

Circling Keith with a critical eye as if a particularly mild-mannered shark corralling its prey—which is more than a little disconcerting—the olkari aide seems to find this answer satisfactory, though they do insist upon logging each individual injury along with its origin for the sake of assuring that their own ministrations hadn’t caused any harmful aftereffects. This process, however, comes with its own unexpected by-product: Lotor’s hands lingering like a ghost’s with every mark they left behind, Keith’s torso the brutalised canvas of a phantom artisan.

And—god—he kind of likes it.

Maybe Matt was right.

Cadryn’s brow knits at the tender ring of shadow that encircles one wrist, their breath audibly hitching at the discolouration that slants across Keith’s spine, and when they take a closer look at his branded hip, they outright shudder at the severity of the shade.

“And these?” Their eyeline catches below Keith’s jaw, “Can they be attributed to his highness as well?” and now that they mention it, his neck does sting a little.

It’s only when he touches the tender skin—razed and raw—that Keith remembers clawing at his own throat for an assailant that didn’t exist.

Not anymore, anyway.

The truth of it must be written all over his face.

“So these were not Prince Lotor.”

“No,” his voice is hoarse, “this is- I had a- Coran gave me these altean pills, to help me sleep, but after yesterday’s session I was so exhausted that I forgot-”

“Altean pills?” they cut him off, looking more than a little alarmed, “From where?”

And that’s… a good question, Keith realises. One that he’d never really thought to ask.

“I guess he just… had them?”

Cadryn’s distress increases tenfold.

“With all due respect, Paladin Keith, do you mean to tell me that you took medication designed for an extraordinarily hardy species of which you are not, from a—and forgive me for saying this—from a truly incredibly peculiar Altean, that he presumably found on a ship that has been hidden away in some distant corner of the universe for many millennia.”

Ah.

Well when they put it like that-

The agitated tirade that follows is, Keith supposes, deserved—though if Cadryn gets their hands on Coran, they might actually throttle him—and ultimately culminates in the conclusion that he’s incredibly fortunate that the pills expired several thousand decaphoebs before he was born and as such their potency is likely a fraction of what it was. He is also forced, several times over, to promise that he will no longer accept convenient prescriptions from well-intentioned driikhls, whatever that means.

“And please,” Cadryn implores him, “do the universe a favour and dispose of those pills as soon as you are able.”

Therein lies the problem.

“I need them,” is the quiet admission that follows, with a clenched jaw and white knuckles, “I can’t sleep otherwise, not without-”

Dreaming, he almost says, but that’s too reductive by far.

Drowning is more like it.

“Words are difficult for you.” Their observation is a gentle one, and it’s all Keith can do to clumsily nod the affirmative.

“In that case, I will talk. You need only listen.”

And so they do.

“We Olkari believe in the principles of-” here, they make a series of rapid clicking noises that sit so far in the back of their throat that no human could hope to emulate them, “-the Two Aspects that govern all things: the body, and the mind. My people are almost exclusively inclined towards the latter. As creatures of the mind, we can often become… I believe paladin Pidge once described it as being ‘bogged down’ by our physical aspect; the senses become too loud- grating, even, and it can be very distressing to find ourselves so overwhelmed by the outer world when we would so much prefer to engage with our inner one.”

When they look to him, Keith just gives a stilted nod, not quite sure where this is going or what he is supposed to say in contribution.

“Having given this a great deal of thought last night, however, I came to the conclusion that in your case it is quite the opposite. I think you revel in your physical aspect,” they cock their head in scrutiny, “and I think that all you have endured has forced you so deeply into its mental counterpart that it has left you feeling…”

Their sentence trails off, as they struggle for the correct term.

Keith doesn’t even have to try.

“Untethered.”

The way his voice cracks has them softening with sympathy.

“An apt analogy. As such, your resistance to my methodology is unsurprising, though would that I had realised this far sooner: in our previous session, I was aiming to relieve that which ails you from within, but I think now that you must do so from without.”

…Whatever that’s supposed to mean.

“May I?” Cadryn asks, their hand extended towards Keith’s bruise-shackled wrist, and then, when he allows them to walk their three leathery fingers across tender skin: “Interesting.”

They repeat this process with the welts at his hip and across his back, but other than the deep-settled ache of a good spar, Keith feels nothing.

His throat is a different story.

The very second Cadryn touches him, there’s a shock of something hot and sharp under his skin, and Keith recoils with a wounded hiss- a noise Cadryn matches in the same instant, quickly cradling their hand to their chest and flexing their fingers with a grimace.

 “Very interesting.”

The only thing it is, Keith thinks, is very fucking sore, but he bites his tongue.

“If you could, Paladin, tell me exactly what transpired after we parted ways last eve.”

“Like I said, I was exhausted, passed out pretty much immediately after I got back to my room, then I-” drowned, “-woke up, felt like I could crawl out my own skin so I went to get some air, ran into Lotor, and…” he gestures vaguely to the bruises on display. “The rest is history.”

He doesn’t mention falling apart over a midnight snack. Wouldn’t know where to begin with being held by Zarkon’s son as he learnt to put himself together again. So when, despite his silence, a bewildered Cadryn mumbles “Prince Lotor tethers you,” as if they can’t imagine anything stranger, it feels like an accusation.

“I do not mean to cast judgement,” they add, when pale shoulders hitch high and rigid, “I mightn’t know quite what to think of the methodology, unconventional as it is, but I cannot argue with the results.”

“It helps,” Keith fixes his eyes on the far corner of the room, the words forced from his tongue like a dirty secret, “the pain. The physicality of it.” Lotor. “It feels- it makes me feel-” the words stick behind his teeth like tar, “it reminds me that I’m here.”

Real, he doesn’t say.

Alive.

"...That's messed up, isn't it?"

"It is… perhaps not the healthiest coping mechanism you might have adopted, no."

Keith wilts.

“That being said, I do not believe sparring with Prince Lotor to be ill-advised.”

“What?”

Wide-eyed surprise has Cadryn offering up a nonchalant shrug as they rummage through the various pockets of their robe.

“The bruising may not be pretty, but that’s all it is: bruising. There appears to be no deeper damage to your tissue, and with this,” a little jar of salve is produced with a small noise of triumph, and pressed into Keith’s palm, “the worst of it should heal up well enough within a quintant or two.”

When Keith remains still, caught and confused by the lack of outrage his antics have earnt him, the olkari takes pity on him, folding calloused fingers over the remedy in hand with their own, and patting his knuckles gently.

“If you require a sleeping draft, I can have something tailored to your unique biology, but as to a long term solution… You are a physical being. A warrior. Your body knows this, but your mind forgets; while pain may be an effective reminder, as a medical practitioner I would never endorse such a thing,” their smile is kind, if a little wry, “but short of you throwing the fight with the active intent of being abused by your opponent-”

Though his lips immediately thin, Keith isn’t given the chance to protest.

“-which I firmly believe would compromise your personal code, and so you are not guilty of,” they give him a knowing look, “the act of sparring itself requires you to be present in your body and react to external stimuli in real-time. That, I thoroughly endorse.”

Notes:

To quote the great james acaster; “Started making it, had a breakdown, bon appétit.”
In other words, betcha though you'd seen the last of me because it's been over a //year// since I actually updated this baby, to which all I can really do is.... gesture vaguely at the cluster fuck that was 2021? Yeah. Either way, I'm back, the Olkarion arc is now looking like it's going to stretch a further two chapters (( w h o l e lotta feelings and therapy to be had here my darlings)), and I hope it was at least somewhat worth the wait ♡
And as always, I will be responding to the many, many, MANY comments that have been left unattended on the previous chapter (I'm so sorry but I really do love you all and the steady trickle of kindness from those comments has honestly been my sole motivation to get back into writing again), and if you want to be kept very slightly more in the know about this fic, my tumblr is your friend.

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TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 23: In Which the Author Demonstrates Godly Restraint

Summary:

Previously: Realising that he cannot leave Lotor's olkari room the way he entered it due to heavy rainfall, Keith is enticed to stay a while by Lotor. In lieu of Rhyahl, which reminds Keith of things he'd rather forget, Lotor gives him a new nickname in the Old Tongue (refusing to explain what it means). Keith has a panic attack, Lotor helps him out of it, and the both of them are enjoying their romantic rendezvous until Matthew Holt interrupts it all. Keith is marched back to his rooms, where he later meets Cadryn who finds all his new scrapes and bruises (courtesy of Lotor) somewhat alarming, but rather than discourage Keith sparring with the Prince, they believe it might instead be beneficial.

Young Matthew looks nothing short of haggard when he returns from… wherever exactly it is that he’d marched Keith off to.

In an ill-fated attempt to distract himself from those two dreadful words that still resound throughout his skull like the macabre tolling of a great bell, Lotor had taken the liberty of making himself presentable for that which had quite slipped his mind: a meeting with the olkari people’s leader. Matthew had briefed him on his schedule the evening prior, as the somewhat unenthused rebel had escorted the prince from his glorified altean prison cell, to a glorified olkari one, but what with Keith’s breathtaking reappearance and all that came after, any thoughts of diplomacy or the potential to gain an invaluable advantage here had all but abandoned him.

And yet, it was a reappearance that Keith was apparently in no condition to have made.

He could ask, of course, but given how furious the elder Holt had looked- given how quickly he’d whisked Keith away- given the faint echoes of frustration that had travelled back down the hall to grace Lotor’s sensitive ear… the prince thinks that to do so would be strategically unwise.

Not that this alters how much he wants.

So now, distracting himself as best he can with the intricacies of the balustrade’s workmanship as he is harried down an endless stairwell—resolutely thinking of anything other than Keith’s condition and all the unspoken horrors such a thing could entail—Lotor keeps pace with his irate escort and his olkari entourage until they breach the airy, rain-washed sanctuary at the pyramid’s foot.

“Ah,” though only one figure speaks, at least a dozen pairs of bulbous eyes alight upon the prince the moment he steps forth at Matthew’s stony behest, “our unlikely guest approaches.”

As if at an unspoken command, the olkari assembly disperses between the vine-wrapped obelisks that litter these gardens with foreign murmurations that Lotor cannot make out, though their deference toward the one who had spoken is clear, leaving only a singular individual to receive him. Intriguingly, despite the grandeur—near opulence, really—of that which Lotor thinks it safe to assume is this city’s palatial structure, the olkari who stands before him and introduces themselves as Ryner is practically indistinguishable from their kinsfolk, their only indication of elevated rank appearing to be a humble smear of pigment upon their forehead: a mark which, with one gnarled forefinger, they touch reverently before turning their palm to the still-drizzling sky, smiling at Lotor’s approach as if he is an old friend rather than the spawn of their would-be subjugator.

“The heavens weep for your arrival,” they tell him, offering forth their wrinkled palm so that rainwater may pool within it, “and so we welcome you.”

That… sounds like an endorsement, of a sort, and so, with hands clasped neatly behind his back and adamantly ignoring the grim skyscape that promises to see him soon soaked to the bone, Lotor inclines his head.

“I thank you for your hospitality.” Such that it is, with his every footstep so closely shadowed.

As if aware of—and, far more bafflingly, inclined to care for—his discontent, Ryner indicates that the guards should give them a little space with a subtle gesture. Less subtle is the hesitation with which this order is received, and further still the vaguely strangled noise that Matthew stifles in his throat.

“It is quite alright,” Ryner insists, ever serene, their watchful patience unwavering until their subjects have retreated far enough to offer the illusion of privacy, taking a reluctant Matthew with them.

Their attention is returned to Lotor with an easy smile.

“They mean well,” is the following admission, quietly fond, “but I have quickly learnt that even the best of intentions can be stifling.”

“Some might call you bold, to dismiss your guard so easily.” Not that Lotor truly minds; it might even be nice, were it not so easy to interpret such a thing as an insult to his own capabilities.

“I do not doubt your proficiency, Prince.” they say, forcing Lotor to question whether telepathy is among the Olkari people’s many talents. A disconcerting thought. “Quite the opposite, in fact: I am certain that, were the mood to strike you, I would meet my end before my kinsfolk could lift so much as a finger, and I very much doubt that such an outcome could be altered by young Matthew being stood two paces behind us rather than twenty.” Ryner’s eyes crease at the corners in an expression that Lotor isn’t sure how to interpret. “But by your conduct at Princess Allura’s impromptu hearing last phoeb, I feel secure in the knowledge that you are far too intelligent to cast aside an alliance with Voltron over so inconsequential a life as mine.”

Inconsequential. Lotor rather doubts that, given that Ryner clearly commands their people’s respect and loyalty in equal measure. Their vengeance too, he’d wager, were they to be slain in cold blood as they so idly suggest.

All the same, there’s no need to press the issue for his pride’s sake, and so he defers.

“As you say, your majesty.”

When they chuckle, it is not an unkind sound, and yet Lotor—the line of his mouth turned tight and thin—fears he is being taken for a fool all the same.

“Do I misspeak?”

“Not at all.” They eye him with the look of someone who is neither ignorant to, nor concerned by, his tenuous mood. “But please, call me Ryner; I am no such prestigious personage, and even if I were, our people have since outgrown the birthright of sovereigns.”

“Forgive me,” Lotor is quick to temper his distaste for finding himself wrong-footed, “It seems I am ill-informed.”

“I very much doubt that, Prince.”

“And yet, I thought Olkarion a monarchist state.”

“We were,” they nod sagely, “until eight moons past.” and though their smile has not abated, it is newly tinged with something akin to betrayal, “Walk with me, Prince, and I shall tell you of the Fall of Lubos. I think it is a tale you will quite enjoy.”

 

As it so happens, Lotor does enjoy it. He enjoys it immensely.

The thought of Keith holding the Olkari’s treacherous monarch at swordpoint is certainly a delight; both for the fact that to betray one’s own people merely to preserve one’s own hide is sacrilege so far as Lotor is concerned, and also that the notion of Princess Allura’s expression when faced with one of her oh-so-righteous paladins taking a hostage, of all things, is undeniably entertaining.

The rest of Ryner’s story, however, brings to mind several questions at once.

Because according to them, Olkarion’s occupation by Imperial forces was led by a commander of the name Branko—a name Lotor recognises in passing, but not someone he is remotely acquainted with due to said commander having been removed from the main fleet long before Lotor’s own exile was rescinded. Despite its scale, Ryner reveals Olkarion’s population to be comparatively few in number, the overwhelming majority of whom live in or around the metropolis within which they now stand, and so, of course, Branko’s primary assault had focused on securing the city’s perimeter and sequestering its citizens within.

Except.

Except Ryner speaks of leading a modest exodus amidst the chaos of conquest, and recites with great relief how they managed to steal the children from right under Branko’s nose.

All of them.

Every last one.

They call it a miracle, speak with reverence of how it took half a moon to smuggle the younglings out in their entirety, night after night, and how their ancestors must have smiled upon them to offer such mercy in their moment of greatest need.

The only miracle Lotor’s ever known turned his father into an immortal monster, and his mother a hollow husk. Suffice to say, he no longer believes in such things.

“If you’ll forgive my curiosity, your planet was occupied for… how long, precisely?”

“Eleven quarters, or near enough. We were fortunate that Voltron intervened when they did; had we been forced to endure a twelfth, I fear our dwindling supplies would not have outlasted the monsoon season.”

Little under three decaphoebs, then, Lotor surmises, or what counts for such here. Given what he’d glimpsed of the planet’s scale before landing, he’d estimate that Imperial units wouldn’t deviate too drastically from Olkari ones, meaning…

“And in all that time, your encampment was never found?”

“As I said, we were fortunate.”

Fortune, he suspects, has very little to do with it.

“If you’ll forgive my curiosity,” echoes Ryner, “might I ask why this strikes you so?”

Very observant, this Olkari.

“Imperial protocol necessitates total subjugation: you submit, or you die.” The hard truth is quick to part from Lotor’s lips, uninterested as he is in playing games when the reality of the matter is more stimulating by far. “I will not deny that your technological prowess astounds, but how well would that technology have concealed your location if Branko had stormed the jungles? Burnt them to ash? No, you did not escape,” and he sees the truth of his words reflected in their withered visage, “he let you go.”

Their modest party draws to a halt amidst towering pillars draped with a thicket of alien flora, and Lotor is content to make a show of admiring this natural splendour while keeping his ears pricked for any sudden change of heart their armed entourage might have, if their not-monarch’s response to this revelation were to give them cause.

“If,” Ryner begins once more, and Lotor supposes he can hardly hold their scepticism against them, considering he scarcely believes it himself, “that is true… what possible reason could there be behind it? Commander Branko was not a kind man.”

No, Lotor supposes not. Kind is not a descriptor one would soon apply to their subjugator—it would be frightfully crass of him to suggest otherwise—but mercy wears all manner of masks, and war complicates them all.

“Your king betrayed you, and yet they should never have had the opportunity. Their character as you have described it does not speak of a strong will: breaking them would have been easy.” And yet. “Why make a turncoat of them?” Claws trace the delicate, speckled head of a rain-heavy blossom. “Why go to the effort of keeping them complacent and happy, when shackles would have been no less compelling for so wretched a creature?” He thumbs a silken petal idly between his fingertips. Contemplates plucking it. “Why bother with the ruse of it all when such liberties might have afforded them the possibility of a rousing escape to boost your people’s morale, and inspire you to fight back?”

Why, why, why indeed.

But by the tight expression that knots Ryner’s features, they have no answers for him.

“Apologies,” releasing the flower, Lotor clasps his hands neatly behind himself once more, humbly lowering his eyes, “I have allowed my curiosities to run away with me.”

“You are curious indeed, Prince,” comes their quiet reply, though by the way they say it Lotor suspects they mightn’t mean his temperament at all.

It’s this that prompts him to bluntness.

“Why did you request to speak with me? Not to spin tales of a paladin’s valour in the face of your spineless king, surely?”

“Indeed not.”

“Well then.” From beneath pale lashes, he watches.

Waits.

“As I said, I witnessed your conduct last phoeb.” gnarled fingers steeple in thought, and the rain runs down them in rivers, “When you spoke of Puig’s downfall, I found myself disturbed by how simple it was for you to take an entire planet. Yes, the Empire’s might is indeed something to be feared, a fact my people know all too well, but beyond that you spoke of how little lasting damage you and your generals inflicted upon the puigian people and their homeworld both.”

Ryner turns their face to the skies as the first of the sunlight begins to bleed through.

“I am full of rage, Prince,” they whisper, “because only after hearing you speak did it occur to me that despite being occupied by Commander Branko’s forces for several decaphoebs, the losses we incurred were staggeringly few. I confess, I had half hoped that if I told you of our plight, you would draw a different conclusion to my own, but as it stands…”

Not observant, Lotor corrects his earlier assessment, calculating.

“You wanted me to confirm that which you already knew,” he breathes, impressed by them. Aggrieved for them.

“I am full of rage,” comes Ryner’s repeated admission, “because my people laboured to create a weapon of our king’s own design, while said king grew drunk on Imperial liquor. I am full of rage because Commander Branko could have turned that weapon on our city rather than Voltron, and seen a hundred thousand souls become ash. He could have turned it on our forests, and done the same to our children.”

Children he knew were there. Children he had all but guided out himself.

Children he had spared.

“I am full of rage,” they close their eyes against it all, as if this might relieve them of the painful truth, “because we received greater kindness from our subjugator than our own king, and I do not know how to bear so perverse a world as this.”

And to that, Lotor has no reply.

 

Ryner dallies with him for several vargas more—seemingly content to make idle conversation, despite the agonised burden they bear—guiding Lotor through not just the ornamental gardens in which they’d first greeted him, but out into the beating heart of their fair city: an orderly web of sun-dappled boulevards that thrum with the hubbub of civilian life, stretching so far into the distance it’s as if these avenues might spill quite completely over the horizon. As they wander, the olkari leader speaks of their people with an obvious affection, of their achievements with a glowing pride, and, when prompted by Lotor’s own intrigue, happily elaborates on the details of the hydrophobic fittings that contour the many paneless windows that their architecture so favours.

“There are a great many Imperial territories that suffer monsoons,” the prince tells them, when they ask after his particular interest, “including Feyiv. Such technology would be a valuable asset to my people. To repel torrential rain without stripping organic matter of its fluids is a fine balance indeed, and not one we have yet perfected.”

This, it seems, gives Ryner a moment’s pause.

“It possesses little military advantage.”

Lotor blinks at them.

“I did not suppose otherwise.”

…The conversation moves on.

Their party attracts attention as they roam about, certainly—the fact remains that Lotor’s a good head taller than any given olkari they encounter, and the majority of the interplanetary refugees who have taken up residence alongside them, too—but bizarrely he seems to the masses little more than a passing oddity: perhaps worth a mention to their friends, but nothing to write home about.

Their indifference is oddly refreshing.

While they meander amongst their people, Ryner is assessing him, Lotor knows, talking around any and every particular issue as if to gauge his general disposition beyond the court-tempered veneer he’s so carefully crafted with a lifetime of Imperial politics breathing down his neck. If they can see beyond it, well, any knowledge they gain would be hard-won and well-earnt, but in this Lotor is quite confident that he is without weakness to exploit.

If it were otherwise, Haggar would surely have gotten there first.

Despite this, their presence is companionable, if not downright pleasant; but as all good things must come to an end, that dreadful humidity returns to climb with the fast-emerging sun, and by the time the latter has burnt all the cloud-cover to mere wisps of their former glory, Lotor’s nape is once again slick with baleful regret.

It is at this point that Ryner sees fit to excuse themselves.

“I have allowed our conversation to run away with me.” their smile is almost believable as an authentic one, “You must forgive my departure, Prince, but diverting as your company is, I have other matters to attend to.”

A diplomat’s farewell. Very elegant.

“Of course.” Lotor considers bowing, but thinks that might be a little much, and opts instead to mirror the olkari’s earlier gesture of good faith by touching clawed fingertips to his own brow before turning his palm to the skies. “May the sands you tread be soft and steady.”

If they know the sentiment for a galra one, they do not resent it, Ryner’s smiling eyes slipping closed as they lay fingers against their pigmented forehead and raise their palm in return.

“Perhaps you would indulge me again, Prince. There is still much I should like to discuss with you, and I am certain we can find some time together before Voltron must return to the stars once more.”

“It would be my pleasure,” Lotor inclines his head, in part to conceal his surprise at how genuinely enthused he is at the idea of a second bout spent in their company. Perhaps, he thinks to himself, it is the aching familiarity of their countenance in profile, the clement timbre to their voice that echoes an age long since passed, or simply their genteel demeanour, all of which he cannot help but find sweetly reminiscent of-

Ah, but that wound is an old one.

“I’m afraid I must also steal Matthew from your company,” their gaze slides to where the green paladin’s brother is undoubtedly still glaring daggers at Lotor’s back, “if you can forgive that too?”

Forgive? The galra prince feels inclined to thank them on his knees for granting such generous respite.

Instead he settles for a much more diplomatic wave of the hand as he steps aside and tries not to smirk too openly over their shoulder at Matthew’s rigidity, as the rebel realises that he cannot, in fact, spend the rest of his day haunting Lotor’s shadow.

“Ryner, I’m not sure-”

“My people are perfectly capable of escorting Prince Lotor anywhere he should like, but your particular skillset is otherwise required, Matthew,” they insist, ushering him on his way firmly enough that they leave no room for refusal.

And then, with one last farewell in Lotor’s direction, the pair of them are swallowed up by the civilian throng.

Lotor allows himself to bask in the moment. All around him, pedestrians swan between overgrown market-stalls that brim with foreign delicacies, avian scavengers swoop from their overhead perches to feast upon fallen morsels, and laughter—it’s the laughter that seizes him most of all—spills light and free from smiling mouths despite the faces in which they sit being lined with the ravages of war.

Freedom—or as close to it as he’s known in quite some time—sits bittersweet on Lotor’s tongue.

But by Brodar, it’s worth fighting for.

“Prince?” questions one of Ryner’s people to whom his care has been left, when he stands quiet and yearning for what must be too long, “Is there anywhere in particular you should like to go?”

It’s an honest question, and without distaste for who- or even what he is.

Perhaps this is why Lotor finds himself able to speak only an honest answer.

 

(In hindsight, he should perhaps have thought to clarify to which red paladin he meant for them to escort him.)

 

At first, Lotor doesn’t realise where they are—with little to no intimate knowledge of Olkari architecture, one pyramidal structure looks an awful lot like the next—but upon entering the building into which he is directed, the prince finds himself awash with the distant chatter of a hundred youthful voices all babbling at once. His ears must prick so swiftly that it draws his guards’ attention because they are, all of them, smiling, as one among their number offers: “This place was established after Lubos’ fall from grace, as a sanctuary for those left without family or home; the paladins make sure to indulge the children whenever they visit us.” as an explanation.

Wards of Hiidyl, then. Though Lotor knows some would argue that the tsai of orphaned children cares little for ingalran offspring, he sees no reason for the patronage of a divine to be curbed by mortal race, and so offers up a silent prayer on the olkari’s behalf.

Drawing to a halt outside a great, arched door, riddled with the same luminescent green that creeps across so much of this planet’s engineering, Lotor steels himself to ask after the awful truth of Keith’s condition from the man himself, and is unsure whether he is more unsettled at the potential answers this may leave him with, or the idea that Keith—so obviously disquieted as he was by Matthew’s slip in Lotor’s own presence—will not answer him at all. When he passes beyond the heavy entryway, however, Lotor finds himself at one end of a cavernous dining hall that rings bright and fierce with the numerous voices he had heard from afar.

And this is where he realises his fatal error.

The only meagre consolation is that Keith’s successor looks just as blindsided to see him.

“Who’s that?” comes the non-too-subtle whisper of the olkari child that clings to the blue—blue, not red, and this whole misunderstanding could have been avoided had team Voltron simply committed to their own gauche method of identification—paladin’s leg, their eyes startled and shining.

“That,” comes the paladin’s reply, vocal chords thinly strung, “is Prince Lotor.” and then, voice raised but posture unnaturally stiff, he announces to the room; “Hey guys, Prince Lotor’s here, isn’t that nice.”

Prince Lotor ardently disagrees, and is quite tempted to says as much, but then there comes the tugging of two tiny hands wrapping all their stubby little fingers around a mere one of his own, and drawing Lotor’s attention down to where a second—impossibly smaller—child stands no higher than his knee, peering guilelessly up at him from beneath the floppy appendages that sprout from their brow.

“Are you galra?”

As ever, the candour of children is truly an inescapable constant of the universe, and it tugs at the corner of Lotor’s mouth even as the blue paladin muffles a strangled noise in the back of his throat.

“I am.” Though he’s careful to watch for an adverse reaction, the prince finds none. “Does that not frighten you?”

They shake their little head, leaf-like brows flopping about with the zeal of it.

“Keet is galra!” they tell him, with clear delight at being the one to impart such valuable knowledge. “He is galra, and he is a pal-din, and he- and he-”

“And!” the other pipes up, from where they have half stepped out from behind the blue paladin’s leg, no longer clinging to it quite so tightly, “And he slew the false king!”

“No one was slain,” Lance tries to correct, but it falls on deaf ears.

“He is the slayer of Lubos!” the first insists, bright-eyed and gleeful, “and he can fly two of the lions—!”

“I can fly two of the lions!”

“—And not only is he is very, very, very brave,” their grip on Lotor’s hand tightens as they take a great big breath, as if preparing to divulge their most important piece of information yet, “but he’s also a sword!”

“He’s not a sword,” the taller of the two—now having fully renouncing their hiding place—gives their companion the look of someone they consider to be particularly stupid, and Lotor has to bite back a smile, “how could a person be a sword?”

There is a certain set of the jaw that galra children get when they are quite stubbornly committed to fighting their corner: this specific expression, Lotor now realises, might be yet another universal constant, and if so then he thinks it best he intervene before these ferocious younglings come to blows.

“He’s a Blade,” the prince amends gently, kneeling to their level as two bulbous sets of eyes turn upon him at once, “a Blade of Marmora.”

The smaller makes a triumphant noise and, vindicated, scrambles up onto Lotor’s knee without pomp or circumstance, seating themselves upon him quite happily as if to do so is their birthright; their artless clambering culminates in one of those tiny hands grabbing—none too tenderly—a fistful of hair for stability, and this in turn sees them immediately cooing with delight, enthralled with the apparent novelty of its texture and petting at the prince’s head as if he were a domestic yupper.

Undignified though this may be, it’s also terribly endearing.

“Forgive them, Prince, they are but a hatchling-” stutters one of Lotor’s guards, but he’s quick to wave off their concern as he hoists the child to sit upon his forearm so that he may stand unencumbered.

“It’s quite alright,” he insists, even as the now-giggling child in his arms tugs white hair loose from its binding so that they may pile it atop their own head and pull faces at their friends scattered about the room, the attention of whom has been attracted by a combination of Lotor’s height and the blue paladin’s earlier declaration. “I hardly mind.”

This, it seems, reads as an open invitation.

Finding himself quite abruptly waist-deep in round green faces, Lotor does his best to wade through the masses while answering question after question after question, many of which pertain to his hair. The children’s fascination, it seems, stems from the fact that they themselves grow none, and so to meet someone who not only has hair, but does so in abundance, is an exhilarating prospect indeed.

“What is it made of?”

“But how do you grow it?”

“Must you water it?”

“Why does it sprout from your head?”

“Was it very difficult to grow so long?”

“¡Ay! So many questions!” Though the blue paladin is helpful in ushering the children out from underfoot, Lotor doubts very much that this is even remotely intended to be for his sake. “But I’m sure Prince Lotor is extremely busy and definitely has somewhere else to be!” And then, with a rather pointed look: “Anywhere else.”

This, of course, is where one among his olkari guard helpfully chimes in with an assurance that, no, Lotor has in fact concluded his business with Ryner, and upon doing so had specifically asked after the red paladin’s whereabouts.

At least—Lotor thinks, exhaling slowly through his nose—they meant well by it.

“Oh did he now? Well,” and here, Lance flashes a brilliant smile that does absolutely nothing to disguise his immediate and entirely unhappy understanding of who it was that Lotor had truly sought after, “I would not want to disappoint his imperial highness after he went out of his way to be here, now would I?”

“How gracious,” Lotor drawls in return, “but I wouldn’t want to put you out; seeing as you are so clearly otherwise occupied I shall take my leave-”

A tiny, heartbroken gasp in his ear forces him to draw up short.

“But,” little fists tighten their grip, tugging at the prince’s scalp pleadingly, and when he turns his head as he is being quite firmly bid, it is to have a flat little nose press against his, as the eyes accompanying it turn wide and imploring, “but you just got here.”

Prince or no, Lotor is but a mortal man.

Though Lance maintains his overt display of displeasure, far more amenable to Lotor’s presence here is Hunk—who appears from the adjacent kitchen not long after the prince’s will has crumbled to the children’s earnest persuasion, offering a platter of freshly concocted delights that Lotor’s stomach is more than a little thrilled to receive before the yellow paladin is hauled off to one side by his distinctly blue-not-red companion—and Pidge. She’s no less surprised to see Lotor than her friends, but rather than scurry away to whisper without subtlety, the green paladin takes one look at the small cluster of children that have eager hands combing and twisting and braiding white locks, and nods knowingly.

“Ah,” she flicks one of several tightly woven plaits that adorn the wild nest she calls hair, “they got you too, huh?”

“Indeed.”

He would say more—perhaps a clever quip of some sort—but before he can do so, her attention drifts to one side, soft brown eyes affixing their gaze on newly punctured cartilage and flicking through several unreadable emotions at once, before settling on a slow shake of the head, in equal parts incredulous and amused.

“Unbelievable.” She drops to the floor beside Lotor without further elaboration, indulgently allowing the attentions of the one child who exchanges silken white hair for tangled russet, “I’m going to do you a favour and not ask when or how, but Hunk loves gossip even more than Lance so you might want to tuck that out of sight.”

Flustered beyond witticism, Lotor does so.

“How is he?” she asks, lowering her eyes and voice both, as she absently picks at quick-bitten nails, “really?”

“Why should I know more than you?” and then, when she gives him a look framed beneath a sceptical brow: “I did not even know he was awake until last night. Even less that his condition-” the mere word is vicious viscosity on his tongue, “-remained unstable, until your brother let as much slip this morning.”

If the reminder of this nebulous threat to Keith’s health nauseates Lotor, then it’s damn near ruinous for Pidge, her expression crumpling to something pale, and wretched, and devastated beyond all belief.

She blames herself, echoes the recollection of Princess Allura’s sombre tone, for what happened to those druids- for what happened to Keith, and doesn’t that just leave Lotor feeling like a perfect ass.

Mindful of the little ears that surround them, the prince swallows down his embittered frustration at having been left in the dark with regard to Keith, because for all her bravado Pidge is young—even by human standards—and he’d be a fool not to recognise the guilt in her features when he himself is all too familiar with how so similar a burden near cripples the very crux of his soul.

In lieu of an apology—ill-rehearsed in those as he is—Lotor turns his attention back to the littlest paladin’s question.

The admission of: “Keith is well,” snaps her red-rimmed eyes to meet his. “And well enough to get the better of me, at that; more than once.” Lotor’s not so proud that he can’t confess to it. “Though if you’re concerned, I rather think him to be the authority on the matter, don’t you?”

It’s the wrong thing to say, clearly, as the furrow of Pidge’s forehead is immediate and self-deprecating.

“I- I can’t.”

It’s not a complete answer, not really, and so rather than fill the silence Lotor waits patiently as the theatre of the green paladin’s tumultuous mind plays out across her features.

“It’s all my fault,” is the eventual admittance, hushed and horrified. “Keith, Matt, Hunk- and all those people-“

“The druids?”

“They were still people,” she spits, trembling, and though Lotor hadn’t been implying otherwise, he doesn’t interrupt again. “Living, breathing people, with families and friends and entire lives that they won’t ever- that they can’t- and it’s all my fault! That…thing would never have got out if I hadn’t overloaded their systems-”

She’s spiralling.

Quietly, and with a restraint far beyond her decaphoebs, but she is.

Though his instinct is to reach for her, Lotor cannot be sure of how such a thing would be received and so restrains himself, appealing instead to the logical bedrock of her being that so closely echoes his own.

“You’ll frighten the children,” he tells her, voice lowered to a rumble that he hopes will sink beneath her panic as it had done Keith’s the night just passed. “Breathe, dynah, and listen closely. You made the best decision you could with the information available to you; if you are determined to blame yourself for the outcome, then you must too blame the druids who created such a perversion, and in turn Haggar who instructed them to do so.”

“But I-”

“While you’re at it,” he soldiers forth, “it is my father’s fault that Haggar is as she is, though he in turn would not be such a monstrosity had Voltron not granted him the ability to enter the rift in the first place, so perhaps we ought solidly place the blame on Alfor-”

“That’s entirely irrational-”

“It is, isn’t it?” This ease of acquiesce brings her up short, as Lotor knew it would. “Perhaps tracing back causation will breed only culpability and heartbreak. Perhaps the both of us are intelligent enough to recognise that nothing good will come of it.”

The dawning of his point is a creeping light in honey-dark eyes.

“And perhaps,” he murmurs gently, inclining his head towards her even as the olkari younglings—happily ignorant to the difficulties of their playthings—pull at his scalp, “you would do well to recognise that Keith is not one to hold his predicaments against another; least of all you, I think.”

Watching her unravel her inner turmoil is a curious thing, humans being as expressive as they are. Though not arrogant enough to assume he has cured her of all her ails, Lotor—perhaps selfishly—hopes that in this he might have provided some small comfort.

“Hold the lives you have taken close to your heart, Pidge,” some wisdoms are hard-won, and so this one the prince offers as he should have liked it to have been offered to him, long ago, “but do not allow them to devour it.”

Pidge gnaws at her inner cheek.

Picks at the dirt beneath her fingernails.

Nods—just once, and with ample hesitation, but Lotor’s been fighting long enough that he knows to take his modest triumphs where he can.

Quiet and guilt-riddled, the concession—“We should have told you,”—stumbles gracelessly from the littlest paladin’s lips and into the yawning gulf between them. “About Keith, I mean.”

“Why would you?” Lotor bemoans, only a little bitter. “We are allies in only the most tenuous of senses, and I am not fool enough to suppose that it is any priority of Voltron’s to keep me informed of his condition—particularly considering our little spat in the facility—I should not have reasonably expected otherwise.”

“No, Lotor, we should have told you.” She grits out, eyes affixed to the white-knuckle fists clutched fiercely in her lap. “Me or Hunk, if no one else, and if not the details then—god—at least when he woke up,” a shuddering breath, “you deserved to know. Maybe not politically, but as a friend-”

The murmuration of “I’m not your friend,” remains a simple fact between them.

And yet, it’s not the green paladin’s heart that is so weak-willed as to require a reminder.

“Maybe not,” when she shrugs, it’s a small, subdued thing, “but you’re his.”

No two words have ever rung so true.

 

Though the day is long and without an entirely satisfactory conclusion, Lotor cannot begrudge idling amongst the youngest of Olkarion’s population; the children had found in him a devoted audience as they shared their stories of Voltron—as much fiction as they were fact, though the finer points would have been near impossible to distinguish from one another had it not been for the Pidge’s well-worn interjections—and to their utmost glee, Lotor had ensured that he demonstrated the appropriate level of awe for each and every tale.

They’d enjoyed him so much, it seemed, that they’d been rather disinclined to let him leave, and it had ended up being only Hunk’s clever compromise—allowing the children to claim a small victory in ‘convincing’ Lotor to take dinner in their company—that stood between the prince, and being eternally beholden to the whims of some ten-dozen olkari hatchlings.

His rooms are dreadfully quiet in comparison.

Though Lotor thinks it unlikely that he will be fortunate enough to have his pretty companion descend from the heavens two evenings on the trot, his feet carry him across the room and out to greet the heady night, finding it warm and whispering.

Keith’s balcony is empty.

It’s foolish, for this small thing to sit like a stone in the pit of the prince’s stomach, particularly when he’d known to expect it, but-

-but just as Lotor is about to retreat back into his room, there comes the distant hiss of an olkari door, and Keith’s chamber bursts into golden splendour.

Though he is seldom thoughtless, and heedlessly destructive even less, Lotor unpicks a button from its stitching with a swift slice of his claw, and tosses it into the newly lit maw of the balcony above.

It skitters off stone, somewhere above his head.

Silence.

And then—a sweet frown shadowing his features as he scours his surroundings—Keith.

“I wouldn’t have disturbed you,” Lotor calls, only barely loud enough to be heard and yet his little Blade’s head snaps toward him as if shot, “only, I saw the light.”

Nevermind that he’d been looking for it.

“Lotor,” raw-bitten lips curl into a smile around his name, an intimacy the prince didn’t know he craved, “you survived Matt then.”

“You doubted me?”

“Never.”

It’s the simplicity of it that staggers him, or perhaps the surety, a faith of which the prince is most certainly undeserving.

“Though clearly I missed something,” Keith continues, raising a brow, the slant of his mouth distinctly playful as he tugs at his fringe and pointedly asks: “how many kids did he set on you?”

With a fond huff of understanding—and a small dose of embarrassment at Keith, of all people, having seen him in such a sorry state—Lotor takes the teasing hit to his pride with grace.

“I’ll have you know, I walked into this-” he flicks at one sloppy braid where it lays looped over his shoulder, “-quite independently of Matthew’s wrath.”

“And they still got to you?” his mischievous grin creeps ever-wider, “Why Prince Lotor, I think you might be slipping.”

“Should you have rathered I play the villain? Deny all those doleful little eyes—and when they so direly need the practice no less?”

Keith’s chuckle is shadow-soft, all the rigid suspicion he’d worn when breaching the balcony having melted under the moonlight, and the elegant line of his shoulders turned sweetly sloping as he half folds himself over the rail, drawn towards Lotor as Lotor is him.

“Matt’d kill me,” smile dampening, his tone turns regretful—though one might almost mistake it for yearning, “if I- y’know.”

The prince does indeed know, Matthew having made his disapproval quite clear, but Lotor is nothing if not selfish—increasingly so, when it comes to the man before him—and so it is with a roll of the shoulders and a murmured warning of “Well in that case you’d best stand back,” that he takes in the distance between himself and Keith with a critical eye.

“What are you-”

A running jump and a well-braced foot against the pyramid’s outer wall sees Lotor launching himself upwards with enough force that he’s able to catch the outcropping of Keith’s balcony with one hand, allowing the momentum to swing his body around its corner and up until he’s rolling over the lip of it and back onto his feet once more. This feat of daring lands him mere heartbeats from his target, stealing from Keith a delighted breath of laughter even as calloused fingers curl around the crux of Lotor’s elbow to steady him, before tugging the prince safely into the cradle of the balcony proper, inadvertently backing himself up against the wall in the process.

Though a far cry from needing assistance—his footing perfectly steady and his stunt flawlessly executed besides—Lotor moonily allows himself to be fussed over.

“You're going to get us both in trouble if anyone sees you!” is a sentiment too easily rebuffed, both for the devilish grin Keith whispers it with and the fact that he’d had very few qualms when their positions were so recently reversed.

Lotor means to say something to this effect, but to be so closely wrapped up in Keith’s presence—his little Blade hale and healthy, despite the dread that has plagued Lotor’s mind for the long vargas they’ve been apart—turns his tongue to so diabolical a thing that the words which roll from it become steeped in shadowed sensuality.

“Oh come now,” he watches, enraptured, as Keith’s pupils dilate, “I'd have thought you rather like trouble.”

“I should throw you off this balcony.” and although his words are sweetly spoken, the fingers that linger around Lotor’s bicep flex with sudden bite, as if intending to do just that.

Rather than deter him, the threat thrills.

“Do it then,” he urges, breathless.

And Keith-

For half a horrified, humiliating tick, the prince believes himself to have fatally misread the tension between them, as it seems Keith truly does intend to cast him directly into Sa’s embrace; the grip on his arm turns bruising in the same instant that the marmorite’s free hand seizes at the ample excess of olkari cloth directly over Lotor’s heart—the irony of which, even in the heat of the moment, is not lost on him—to twist the both of them on their heels and shove the taller galra back against the steep external slope of unforgiving stone with enough force to thoroughly wind him.

“Forgive me for the late varga, I- paladin Keith?”

Dazed as he is, it takes Lotor a moment to register that, not only are he and Keith no longer alone, but that this unannounced interloper is likely the catalyst of his little blade’s abrupt desire to manhandle him.

Not that Lotor especially minds being manhandled, when the man handling him is so lovely a creature, but that, he supposes, is something of a separate issue entirely.

“Cadryn!” In an apparent effort to ensure that Lotor stays put, the fist braced against his sternum retains a firm grip on the prince’s lapel, even though this means that the attached arm becomes awkwardly extended as Keith exchanges their intimate shadow-folded corner for artificial light, side-stepping into view of the unexpected visitor in his room. “Hi, I- um, yes that’s- that’s no problem, really, er… what’s up?”

“…I did knock?” says the voice, hesitant in the face of Keith’s obvious agitation. “Apologies, I thought I heard you bid me entry. If I’m…interrupting?”

Though, clearly, they cannot imagine what they might be interrupting when Keith is—from where they’re stood—so apparently alone.

“I was just-” Brodar preserve him, he’s a dreadful liar under pressure, “-getting some air. Do the olkari do that?”

“Do we… get air?”

Keith in profile is a striking thing, even flustered and floundering as he attempts to conceal the empire’s sole prince like a dirty little secret. The flat bridge of his nose is quick to turn a rather fetching shade of red, the colour creeping from the height of sharp cheekbones and back across charming little ears, to spill down the pale length of his neck—exposed to the air he supposedly so craves and Lotor’s wandering eye both, due to dark hair being messily trussed up and out of the way. Covetous and captivated, the prince’s languid attentions slide down that enticing stretch of unmarked skin between Keith’s bound mane and drooping collar, counting the subtle knobs of his spine before they dip out of sight, and failing to think of anything other than chasing the sinuous line of it with his lips.

In spite of Lotor having all but tuned out the olkari stranger’s polite humouring of the paladin’s inelegance, when they make mention of an earlier conversation to which he was not privy, concerning none other than him, he finds himself wholly intrigued.

“I made our request of Ryner before coming here—without disclosing the particulars, naturally, only that in my professional opinion I thought it beneficial—and it seems our timing was most fortuitous! Given the success of their earlier meeting with him, they saw no reason to deny us; providing his highness is amiable, of course.”

The premise of Keith having discussed him is titillating, to say the least; made more so by the fact that—despite its enigmatic nature to Lotor’s ear—this outcome is an apparently favourable one, judging by how it leeches a little of the tension from Keith’s shoulders and earns his guest a relieved smile.

“That’s really great, Cadryn, thank you.”

“Of course,” the warmth of their tone softens Keith further, but this respite is short-lived, “in that case, I should best introduce myself to the prince, and see if we can’t come to some sort of arrangement for tomorrow-”

“No!”

Though Lotor is—through no small force of will—able to smother all sounds of his laughter, he’s helpless against the silent shaking of it through his entire body. This, Keith evidently feels, and while his expression remains admirably inscrutable, the hand he has fisted in Lotor’s tunic shoves the prince a little more firmly against the outer wall, the paladin adjusting his stance as if he were merely leaning against the doorframe.

“I just mean-” Keith fumbles, remembering himself, “it’s late. Lotor- Prince Lotor is probably sleeping, so you wouldn’t want to- I mean really you shouldn’t-”

Lotor laughs harder.

The juvenility of this—of sneaking around with Keith in the dead of night, right under the noses of their olkari hosts—strikes him as the most enjoyable nonsense he’s partaken in in… decaphoebs, maybe. Giddy with it, the prince can’t help but push his luck—and Keith’s, for that matter—and so while the frantic marmorite babbles on, he takes a deep and deliberate breath before blowing ever so lightly across the bare flesh of his little blade’s neck.

The hand at his heart spasms, Keith coughing and spluttering with ardour to cover what Lotor is almost certain was a squeak, and the smooth expanse of that pale nape finds itself immediately awash with tiny pinpricks that see every fine hair standing on end.

“Are you quite alright!?”

So alarmed are they at Keith’s sudden fit, that this Cadryn character has closed the distance between them to offer their assistance in the form of soothing hands on the paladin’s shoulders. Lotor knows this because he can see them, or their forearms at least, meaning that were they to take a mere half-step further, the prince would be utterly exposed.

His smile is wide and wild and wicked.

The fumbling assurances Keith offers are accompanied by a great deal of fervent nodding and blatantly falsified nonchalance—none of which is believable in the slightest—and yet still this befuddled olkari takes it all in stride.

“As you wish, paladin.” by the rustle of cloth, Lotor suspects that they are offering Keith that same genteel salute that Ryner had him, “I should be available to supervise any time after noon, so please do not hesitate to call on me. Oh! And I almost forgot-” more unseen rustling, before a modest phial is pressed into Keith’s unoccupied palm, “-the draught you requested. Two drops under the tongue should be plenty, but you may indulge in a third if required. Sleep well, Keith.”

A croakily echoed “you too,” precedes footsteps, the mechanical whirring of a distant door, and finally a bout of poorly smothered laughter that Lotor can no longer suppress.

The marmorite whirls on him.

“You’re a terror,” he hisses, the effect rather nullified by his own half-crazed smile, “a fucking terror, Lotor, and we only got away with it because Cadryn’s too nice to say anything and- would you stop laughing!”

In lieu of a verbal response he is not presently composed enough to give, Lotor unpeels Keith’s fist from his shirt and brings it to his lips, threatening madly grinning fangs against bruise-raw knuckles in something that can’t quite be accused of being a kiss.

(And can’t quite be accused of being anything else, either.)

“Apologies,” sounds not in the least apologetic, and yet too obviously enamoured for his own good, “though you might consider it recompense for having me momentarily convinced that you truly meant to send me straight over the rail.”

Violet eyes turn wide and winsome.

“I wasn’t-!” Keith splutters, “I wouldn’t! I just heard the door and I panicked okay! If they’d caught you here-”

“Yes, it does seem that you and I are fated never to have a private conversation,” muses the prince with good humour, “not without untimely interruption, at least.”

That being said…

“I don’t mean to pry-” and by how quickly Keith’s hand falls from his, he must have known their conversation would turn to this sooner or later, “-if you should rather I stray no further regarding the topic then you need only say the word, but before Matthew marched you off this morning, he implied…”

Though the marmorite closes his eyes against Lotor’s words, he doesn’t move away.

“I... I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to treat me like I’m-” Keith’s mouth twists into something ugly, spitting: “-fragile.”

Lotor turns the word over in his mind, witnesses how it sticks and splinters against the very essence of the man before him; everything he is; everything he could become. Though beyond deserving of a kind word, a gentle hand, of an embrace that yearns to hold him together even as everything he is threatens to fall apart… if Marmora’s sworn had wanted tenderness he wouldn’t have descended from the heavens to set upon his enemy’s son like retribution in the night. So when claws trail, feather-light, into Keith’s hairline, the way in which they comb through that dark mop is intended from the first to be a sweet lie, exposed all at once when Lotor takes a firm fistful and yanks so roughly that his little blade—startled and snarling—has no choice but to meet him head-on.

“Fragile?” Lotor coos, nose brushing over the tip of Keith’s, their hot breaths mingling, “oh darling, I’ll never think you that again.”

“Again.” and of course it’s this that the contrary little thing latches onto, “Meaning you did.”

“I feared you might be,” comes his admission, tone low and crooning, “for one brief and terrible moment.” though in the face of Rhya’ahl’s own flesh and blood, how could a mortal being be anything else? “Yet here you stand.”

He gentles his grip to cradle rather than command, and, when his quarry makes no move to create distance between them, tips his brow forward to rest against Keith’s own.

“Your skill is without question, b’aakhitah.” and though this whispered truth earns him nothing more than a scoff as Keith averts his gaze, Lotor thinks it more abashed than scornful, “Won’t you forgive my being frightened for you? You did fight a god, after all—or Haggar’s perversion of one, for which it can only have been all the more lethal.”

The marmorite rubs at his throat, absently.

“Certainly did an ungodly amount of damage.”

Long fingers drop from hair to back so that Lotor may soothe idle circles into the tension he finds there. “Battles beget scars. It is the way of things.”

“Scars I can handle.” When violet eyes slide out across the olkari cityscape, they do so with weary resignation, before Keith confesses: “I’m leaking quintessence.”

He says it like a death sentence.

Lotor ardently disagrees.

While quintessence injuries are certainly not to be taken lightly, Keith doesn’t move like someone grievously wounded—certainly didn’t fight like it in their recent bout—and isn’t so much as slurring his words. Having read the accounts given by Hunk & Matthew regarding their encounter with the ‘leaking’ druid, the prince feels confident in saying that the marmorite’s present state is evidently a far cry from that, even if he does use the same descriptor.

“Allura’s giving me transfusions but that’s only really a temporary solution;” the paladin mutters into the scant space between them, when the silence lingers too long, “the hope had been that the olkari could fix me, but no such luck, and Slav’s been no help at all but he’s Slav so I shouldn’t really be surprised-”

“Slav?” this interjection a startled one, “The Slav. The same Slav that Voltron abducted from Beta Traz? He’s here?”

A little of the gloom that had settled upon striking features is dispelled with a wry smile.

“You wouldn’t be this excited if you’d met him—and we didn’t abduct him, the Empire had him imprisoned.”

“…For grand larceny.” and then, when Keith’s jaw quite literally drops, “You do know that he single-handedly embezzled almost two million GAC when employed by the Imperial Military’s scientific sector? Not to mention the smuggling of no less than thirty-one identified Alpha Class illegal materials for his personal projects, and the unlawful ‘acquisition’ of several high-priority Imperial assets.”

Haggar had been livid.

“Oh my god,” the marmorite seems torn between humour and horror, “oh my god—are you telling me that Slav is an actual criminal?”

“He was incarcerated in a maximum security prison designed specifically to hold him, what did you expect?”

“I figured he’d refused to build some sort of superweapon for the Empire or something, not- not that!”

Unparalleled genius that he is widely known for, Lotor supposes that this might well have been the case had Slav not been so independently keen to put the Empire’s resources and generous funding to good use.

“It was quite the scandal.” but back to the issue at hand: “Did it honestly occur to you to ask an infamous felon for assistance before, oh, I don’t know-” Lotor draws back just enough that he’s able to gesture to himself with a grandiose sweeping motion, but not so far that he must relinquish his little blade altogether, “-a hybrid geneticist and spawn of the two foremost experts on quintessence in all the known universe?”

“I assumed someone already had.” dark brows begin to knit themselves together, “Shiro and Coran said- well they implied-” not even bothering to finish his own sentence, his shoulders sag, “No one asked you? Seriously?”

“Not a peep, I’m afraid.”

Stormy irritation stealing across him, Keith drops his forehead against the breadth of the prince’s chest with a huff.

“For fucks sake.” and then, more to himself than Lotor, though given their proximity it’s a meaningless distinction: “I thought we were making progress.”

Seeing him so disheartened is, well, disheartening.

“Princess Allura did visit while you were… incapacitated—only once mind you—” it wouldn’t do to speak of her too favourably, “we had what one might almost mistake for a productive discussion; though I’ve yet to learn what conclusions she drew from our little chat, I dare say it was a step in the right direction, and she credited her newfound willingness to open a dialogue to a promise she made you. I’d consider that progress.”

Keith grunts.

“Oh dear thing,” his sullen temper is as endearing as the rest of him, “it’s hardly so dire as all that—not my circumstances nor yours.” Speaking of- “Though my alchemical abilities no doubt pale in comparison to those of your princess, they should serve me well enough to infer the severity of your so-called ‘leak’: if you’ll allow, of course.”

“Cadryn’s already poked around a bit.” lowly growled, the prince feels these words as much as hears them, “It’s not comfortable.”

“I’m not going to ‘poke around,’” though if the olkari method is even half as indelicate as it sounds, it’s little wonder that the prospect of an encore leaves Keith unenthused, “have a little faith, won’t you?”

No sooner has he said it does Lotor regret his brazen heart, for what could he possibly expect in return? Not a declaration of devotion, surely—desirous as he is of Keith’s loyalty, he’s not blind to where it unquestionably lies—and if not that, then even the gentlest of disillusionments is bound to carry a sting.

He needn’t have worried.

The paladin’s response, however cutting or kind it may have been, is lost to Keith’s tongue and Lotor’s ear both, for although his face is once more upturned and subject to the prince’s sight, dusk-dipped attention is caught fractionally lower—though whether upon cheek or lips or throat, it’s too dark to tell.

Lotor’s heart pounds.

“Keith?”

As if flint or flare or falling star, the man in Lotor’s arms sparks to life all at once, only to step free of him just as quickly.

“We should-” a hard swallow, a breathless laugh, “-It’s really late.”

“So it is.” Though not entirely clear on what just happened—something had, something must have, but he cannot for the life of him figure out what—Lotor knows well enough a dismissal when he hears one. “Forgive me, I did not mean to overstay my welcome.”

“It’s not that,” he says, and yet provides no alternative.

“Well then,” unsure of how to proceed, Lotor instead turns their conversation back a tick, “Think on my offer,” and then, when Keith’s blankness of expression betrays him, “…to assess your quintessence?”

Perhaps his condition is more severe than first thought.

But then Keith is shaking himself to rightness—“Oh right! Yeah, I- have at it, I guess.”—and offering himself up right then and there.

“Tomorrow,” the prince promises, warmth on his tongue, “I for one have had quite enough excitement for the evening, and besides, I have it on good authority that my favourite paladin of Voltron intends to make a special request of me in the morning. If you were to persuade me of it ahead of time he shall think me too easily won, which wouldn’t do at all."

Completely skipping over the teasing undercurrent, Keith breathes: “I’m your favourite?” as if there were ever any doubt.

“You know you are, b’aakhitah.”

And then, before he can think better of it, Lotor chances his heart. Stepping into the littlest blade’s space to graze knuckles beneath the underside of that handsome jaw, the prince drags his nose against Keith’s unguarded temple and whispers; “goodnight,” into the dizzying scent he finds there, before slipping swiftly over the balcony’s edge and into the darkness below.

Notes:

Sometimes, as a writer, it almost feels as if the characters are telling you to fuck the pacing and let them make out against the wall of an Olkari pyramid, and I'm not sure whether you should be proud or disappointed that I did not let them convince me of this.

Special thank you to Sylla who kindly beta'd this one for me (!!!) because I felt sorely out of practice—six months will do that to you—and honestly lost all ability to accurately judge whether or not this chapter was complete nonsense rip

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TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Chapter 24: I Fear Our Fairytale, My Love, For I Know Not How It Ends

Summary:

Previously: Lotor suffers under Matt's evil eye, and has an enlightening (dare he say pleasant) conversation with Olkarion's reigning not-monarch regarding their atypical occupation by Branko's forces. In requesting to be escorted to the red Paladin, Lotor receives an unfortunate reminder that team voltron have commitment issues regarding their own colour-coding, but the day is saved by many a tiny Olkari child, and, better yet, a late night rendezvous with one charmingly small Blade of Marmora; said rendezvous is interrupted by Cadryn, but this perhaps does not ruin things so much as make them all the more exciting. Gratuitous flirting ensues, and Lotor learns of Keith's leaking quintessence.

He’s like something out of a fairytale, Keith thinks, when the exiled prince of the Empire steals onto his balcony in the dead of night, all star-spun hair and roguish smiles; though, in the stories Keith pored over as a child, the heroes were never so sharp nor wicked nor thrilling as Lotor is—

—and the villains not half so gentle.

With an olkari wall at his back and Zarkon’s son under his hands, the magnetism between them is undeniable. A black hole, he’d once likened the prince to, in the privacy of his own mind, and that analogy rings truer now than ever before, though the marmorite harbours a creeping suspicion that this parallel might be of greater significance than he’d known when initially drawing it; Lotor’s attention bears an unimaginable pressure, the heady weight of it crushing Keith’s chest- heart- lungs- expelling all the breath from his body with little more than a whisper—“I'd have thought you rather like trouble”—and making it impossible to breathe.

Dangerous.

When speaking with Cadryn, Keith is clumsy and fumbling, failing miserably at answering their rising concern as if ignorant to the prince’s tortuous attentions that idle upon his cheek, dawdle behind his ear, and ghost lazily down the exposed length of his neck in an indulgent and entirely distracting caress.

This is dangerous.

Blue eyes turn to blistering breath, branding Keith’s nape and near buckling his knees with a sudden bolt of something, so severe that for a moment everything he is reduces to the war drum of a foreign heartbeat thundering beneath his white-knuckled fist.

Lotor is dangerous.

Yet when he’s held in place by his hair, scalp smarting and throat bared as the Empire’s heir looks at him—sees him—in a way that he’s not sure anyone else ever really has, Keith can’t help but revel in the perverse pleasure of it all.

Their conversation turns first to Slav’s surprisingly shadowed past, then the rest of team Voltron—of whom it seems, though Lotor is loath to admit it, the greatest effort at cordiality has come from Allura herself—until finally the prince offers to assess Keith’s quintessence personally.

And it’s here that things get… weird.

Because in raising his head from where it had fallen, disgruntled and despairing, against the prince’s sternum, Keith’s eyeline catches on the elegant bow of clever lips—and perhaps it’s this in tandem with the prospect of having Lotor’s hands upon him once more, this time lingering as Cadryn’s had rather than in the swift strikes of combat, but there’s a coiling curling heat settling low in his belly and-

Oh, he realises.

Oh no.

“Keith?”

And like that, the spell is broken.

Every inch of him burning—though with embarrassment or something far, far worse, Keith neither knows nor dares to guess—the flustered marmorite attempts to blush and blunder and backpedal his way through a mortified farewell only for Lotor to effortlessly soothe the sting of shame with a debonair smile, a teasing profession of fondness, and an intimate goodnight so closely murmured that pale skin might never forget the shape of it.

The night seems colder without him.

None too eager to dwell upon revelations that are best left unspoken, Keith hurries himself to bed. Where Coran’s nightly concoction had plunged its victim into senseless oblivion, its olkari counterpart is of a more forgiving blend: two drops, sweet as honey, under the tongue just as Cadryn had instructed, see Keith’s eyelids growing heavy in a matter of heartbeats, the slumber itself a creeping, crooning thing that crawls into the back of his mind as if it had been there all along.

His dreams come in waves.

There’s still fire, still fear, still the looming promise of an imminent implosion that no one but him would truly hear- but it’s a distant thing. Known, but not encompassing, and playing out in hazy snapshots of what might have been, rather than an all-consuming truth.

The tide ebbs—

-a screeching, scrabbling, scrambling thing, pursuing him with relentless fury and blood-soaked jowls, all writhing tongues and blistering breath that threatens-

—and flows—

-blistering breath that threatens terrible wonderful things, searing each and every one into the tender underside of his throat with relentless lips- teeth- tongue- even as Keith writhes, desperate and breathless and wanting in a way he’s never been, blunt nails scrabbling uselessly against the bare breadth of rippling shoulders-

—and recedes altogether.

 

The guards at Lotor’s door are not, Keith is reasonably certain, the same pair that Matt had marched him past the morning before—or if they are, they don’t give any indication of as much when he strides down the long hallway towards them, merely allowing him past their faithful watch with cordial greetings and benign smiles.

Neither so innocently cordial nor benign is Lotor, perched casually on his balcony’s sun-drizzled lip as he sips at a steaming alien brew, whose mischievous eyes become fixed on Keith the very moment he breeches the threshold.

“Paladin,” the title is damn-near savoured on the tongue of the one who speaks it, “to what do I owe this pleasure?”

“Prince,” Keith quips back, as the door slides shut behind him, though not before he catches the guards exchanging a look at the non-too-subtle intonation of their charge’s greeting, setting his cheeks aflame, “I’m starting to think you enjoy causing problems for me.”

“And if I do?” summer-sky eyes turn playful under the mid-morning light, glittering and gleeful, “How might you persuade me otherwise, I wonder?”

Keith’s fingers twitch with the ghost of a dream he only half remembers.

To occupy them, he strides across the room and plucks the lidded pitcher from its precarious position beside Lotor’s ankle, sniffing at the liquid within to find it curiously—though not unpleasantly—spiced.

“What’s this?”

“Tea,” a second cup is produced without need to ask for it, the prince relieving him of the pitcher’s weight and pouring liberally, “though what kind I couldn’t say. Still, it’s rather good.”

Keith takes a tentative sip, then a deeper one, and pretends he can’t feel Lotor’s eyes follow the movement of his throat.

“So,” he says instead, attention firmly fixed on the skyline as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world, “how’d you find Ryner?”

Lotor must be feeling generous this morning, because this non-too-subtle change of subject is, blessedly, greeted with a low noise of consideration rather than pointed acknowledgement.

“Remarkably civil, given how recently their planet was-” the prince waves his hand in a nebulous gesture as he searches for a tactful turn of phrase, “-occupied. Modest, despite their apparent position of power, and refreshingly cunning I must admit.”

Cunning draws Keith up short, half for the fact that it’s far from the first word to spring to mind regarding the olkari’s elected leader, and half for how distinctly complimentary it sounds when passing Lotor’s lips.

“They’re good people,” he says, in neither confirmation nor rebuke, “all the olkari are, really, or at least everyone I’ve met.”

Zarkon’s son hums deeply, the sound curling around a sly smile that he makes no attempt to conceal.

“No doubt they make a particular effort for the slayer of Lubos.”

The laugh this punches out of Keith is so sudden, that he near spits out his tea.

“Where did you hear that?”

“Oh, only from a good dozen or so hatchlings, each retelling more grandiose than the last; it seems you’re quite the fan favourite.”

“I didn’t slay Lubos,” Keith corrects, still grinning even as he shakes his head, “I just figured if the Empire cared enough to keep them spoilt rotten, they might be a decent bargaining chip.”

“And were they?”

“God no,” even now he can recall the hulking galra commander’s expression with perfect clarity; a little startled, at first, to see his quarry taken hostage by the very people who’d broken in to rescue them, but then- “if anything, I think Branko wanted me to do it. Which was weird, because…”

Trailing off, he thinks back to that moment: to Lance’s exclamation, Shiro’s incredulous stutter, and, most of all, the faux flippancy in Branko’s voice as he bid Keith to do as he pleased, even as that singular golden eye had glinted with something almost hungry for retribution.

“Because?” Lotor prompts, and when Keith looks to him it’s to find his expression distinctly eager.

“Because I’d get indifference,” he confesses, “Lubos had served their purpose, but there was never any need to have made a deal with them in the first place? If everything the rest of the olkari believed—that their king had been taken hostage, and would be tortured if they didn’t comply—had been true, it would have achieved the same result, so why not just… do that?” Keith catches himself with a wince. “Not that I want Lubos to have been tortured! Coward or not, torture’s still- I just don’t get it, y’know? Why’d Branko bother playing nice—especially when he so obviously didn’t even like Lubos.” Not that anyone could really begrudge him that. Still… “It’s not protocol.”

Keith knows because he’s studied it. The very first task Kolivan had set him as Marmora’s newest initiate had been extensive reading of Imperial strategy, and he’d found it to be disciplined, methodical, and quite cleanly devoid of mercy.

Making deals with the planet’s leadership is… not that.

“Clever little thing,” the prince purrs, and the immediacy with which colour floods Keith’s face is damning as it is embarrassing, “yours are more or less the very questions Ryner posed to me. Branko. Broke. Protocol.” A sharp claw rings thrice against the rim of Lotor’s cup as he says so, Lotor himself lost deep within its contents. “The question is why?”

After a beat of silent deliberation, white lashes blink the prince back to the world around him.

“A question for another time, perhaps. Did you not come here to ask a favour of me—” and at this Keith’s stomach swoops with a sudden wash of nerves, “—one to which your little olkari friend hopes I shall be amiable, yes? The anticipation is killing me.”

Though the invitation is a playful one, Keith can’t quite bring himself to accept it, a needling nervousness stitching his throat neatly shut. What if Lotor refuses him? Thinks him foolish, and his proposed solution laughable-

“Look at me, b’aakhitah.”

Turning his head has never been such a trial, Keith is sure he only manages it for the fact that his fringe still has him half concealed from that discerning gaze, but even this false security is stolen from him when a clawed fingertip parts that thick curtain of hair.

“It’s only me,” murmurs the heir to an empire that spans galaxies, “and I greatly doubt that anything you would ask is so terrible as all that.”

“S’not terrible,” Keith huffs, averting his eyes only to catch himself a tick later and resent the ridiculous shyness of the gesture, “it’s just- I’m-” steeling his nerves, he forces himself to meet the prince head-on. “Sparring with you was good. For me, I mean—well, also just in general—but it- I- Cadryn thinks it would be beneficial if we were to spar more, because it settled my quintessence and helped tether me-”

You tether me, he daren’t say, for what might Lotor take that to mean?

What does it mean?

“-and it was fun and real and I would like to do it again. Please.” And then, when the prince remains unblinking and unreadable for a beat too long, Keith adds: “But you don’t have to, obviously, I just thought-”

“Keith.”

His jaw snaps shut so quickly that his teeth clack together painfully. Loudly, too, by the twitch of Lotor’s ear and the immediacy with which he breeches Keith’s space, large hand coming up to cradle pale jaw as he half laughs, half coos, and wholly steals the marmorite’s breath away.

“It would be my honour and privilege,” the prince smiles, his easy assurance unravelling the knot of anxiety in Keith’s belly, “though I’m admittedly surprised your princess has lengthened the leash so.”

A twinge of guilt.

“She, er, doesn’t exactly know?” Nor anyone else, for that matter.

At this revelation, Lotor’s smile turns downright devious.

“Oh I see; so it shall be our second scandal in as many quintants. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were drumming up trouble just for the thrill of it.”

Without suitable reply—because while he might not be doing this for the thrill, he’d be lying if he said it wasn’t one—Keith downs the dregs of his tea before batting at the leering, laughing, menace of a man beside him away as he crosses the floor once again to open the door and-

-give the olkari guards the fright of their lives, apparently, the two of them fumbling to stagger upright as the both of them make to pretend—entirely too late—that they weren’t eavesdropping with their heads pressed right up against the door before it abandoned them all-too swiftly.

Keith just… stares at them.

“Can- can we help you, paladin?” says the taller, their tone so carefully neutral that it wouldn’t pass for innocent even if they hadn’t just been caught red-handed.

“Perhaps that ought be our question,” sounds a distinctly less neutral and entirely unimpressed voice, from over Keith’s shoulder.

The olkari pair do, at the very least, have the decency to appear chastised, shoulders stiff and eyes dipped low as they mumble weak apologies in tandem.

“Could you just-” Keith tries to push past the awkwardness with his best approximation of Allura’s authoritative air, “Get a message to Cadryn—Ryner’s aide. Tell them Prince Lotor has agreed to our request so- so we’ll meet them whenever they’re ready.”

No sooner than they’re given leave, do not one but both of them turn on their heels and flee, wilted antennae flapping in their wake.

“How rude,” in turning back toward Lotor as the door slides shut once more, Keith finds the prince with his arms folded looking distinctly huffy. “If they’re going to snoop, the very least they could do is be discreet.”

Though he hardly thinks that’s the main issue, Keith is too bewildered to protest.

 

Cadryn is kind enough to send not only sparring tunics for the two of them to change into, but also one of the sailed transport-vessels to ferry them across the city to their destination, which Keith is grateful for given that said destination is half nestled in the treeline at the metropolis’ farthest cusp: a grassy clearing bordered by a seamless blend of clean-cut olkari ramparts, and knotted roots thicker than Hunk’s torso.

“I thought you might appreciate the privacy,” they say before Keith has even thought to ask, “I have no desire to make a spectacle of you, but your being a paladin does undeniably attract attention.”

Their kindly gaze slides from Keith, to the man by his side.

“As does being a prince, I suspect. Greetings, your highness, I am Cadryn.”

“Cadryn,” when Lotor speaks their name, they lower their eyes respectfully, touching fingers to forehead, and this gives the prince just enough time to flash Keith a look that promises only problems, before—with a great air of innocence—he asks: “forgive me, have we met? Your voice strikes me as awfully familiar.”

Smug, scheming, bastard.

“I’m afraid not, prince… although-” and here, Keith braces himself to be found out and thoroughly humiliated, “-you did speak with my podmate, La-Sai: they escorted you to meet the hatchlings, yesterquintant. It was good of you to indulge them as you did; I’ve been told they were most fond of you.”

“Ah, perhaps that is it,” he says, with the tone of a man who knows it is most assuredly not.

Keith cuts in before he can get them both in trouble.

“So what’s the plan? Do we just…” he gestures vaguely, “go at it?”

“Though the method is unorthodox, I should still ask you consider this a medical exercise, paladin, rather than a brawl.” they chide, something both amused and exasperated on their tongue, before presenting Keith with four rings of woven bark—two the size of saucers, the others large as a dinner plates—the numerous notches of which are riddled with a dim, pulsating light, “If you’ll indulge me by wearing these, I should be able to monitor your biorhythms while you-” the corner of their mouth twitches, “-go at it.”

There’s warmth at Keith’s side as Lotor peers over his shoulder.

“And how exactly are such quaint little trinkets supposed to help you do that?”

Though the question is directed at Cadryn, Keith gets there first.

“The olkari managed to figure out how to get nanocellulose to respond to the electrical impulses from neural pathways,” he remembers Ryner explaining, when they’d first responded to the distress spores, “Pidge’s the only one of us who’s any good at it though. Something about having to think in binary?”

Lotor’s entire face lights up with a childlike euphoria, and it’s an infectious sort of delight that has Keith grinning ear-to-ear.

“Oh that’s quite ingenious.” plucking one of the larger rings from Cadryn’s palm, he fixes it with a critical eye, “For our purposes, the formulation of deliberate binary commands shouldn’t be a component, given you’re the subject, but even so…”

“That one’s for me,” Cadryn gently extracts the ring from clawed fingertips, “it will allow me to keep a close eye on the paladin’s physical state to ensure that we are not causing further detriment to his quintessence—I am assuming you have been briefed of the situation, of course.”

“I have.” when Lotor steals a glance, Keith catches his eye, and almost imagines that pale lashes flutter before the prince refocuses his attention. “Which brings me to my next question: would you be so kind as to demonstrate your method of quintessence manipulation for me?” and though this has Keith setting his jaw in preparation to be poked and prodded once more, Lotor is already rolling the sleeve of his own tunic to present his arm.

“On you, prince?”

“I’d rather save Keith the discomfort,” he confesses easily, as if the candour of this sentiment—as if it’s obvious, as if it’s foolish to suggest such a thing was ever up for deliberation—doesn’t cause Keith’s heart to flutter, “besides, it will be easier to understand your methodology if I experience it first-hand.”

“As you wish.”

With Lotor having offered himself so freely, Cadryn now walking their leathery fingertips up the liberal expanse of exposed flesh, and little else to do, Keith feels at liberty to look.

And look he does.

Even like this, lax and at rest, Lotor’s forearm is lean and tightly corded; the tendons of his wrist flex momentarily, drawing Keith’s eye to the prince’s pulse point where blue veins coalesce before running up the length of his arm in rivers—pronounced, but not to the point of obscenity—until they crest that thick hill of muscle and their seamless path becomes abruptly peppered with the ghostly remnants of needle-like punctures, neatly arranged in a triple-banked arc, as if an alien creature with entirely too many teeth had decided to take a bite out of him.

Keith’s jaw aches.

Upon wrinkled fingers making contact with this speckled scar-tissue, both parties abruptly recoil from one another in perfect synchrony, Lotor retrieving his hand with a dull, cracking roll of the wrist, and nodding with newfound comprehension.

“That will do, Cadryn, thank you.”

“Are you okay?”

“P’tui bite,” Lotor explains, shrugging even as his nose crinkles at mere mention of it, “nasty little critter with a rather potent hallucinogenic venom; it’s far from my fondest memory.”

Far from his worst too, of that Keith has no doubt.

“I’ll admit, I do see how the olkari method could be useful, certainly, but I’d be lying to say it’s not… intrusive.” he idly rubs over the bite as he speaks, “May I?”

Ah.

So it is his turn after all.

“You look as if you’re setting out to battle,” the prince teases, softly, “I shan’t hurt you, Keith.”

Heart in his throat, Keith believes him—wants to- daren’t- shouldn’t believe him… but does all the same.

“Here,” the prince’s tone is sweet and low, like he’s soothing some cornered wild thing, and it’s maddening how little Keith minds it, “take my hand.”

The marmorite does as instructed.

He does as instructed—without resistance or resentment—and in doing so finds himself acutely aware of how petite he is, in comparison to Lotor: absurdly, with the prince’s palm in his, Keith thinks his hand almost dainty.

“Show me where exactly you’ve been experiencing- well, with quintessence injuries it can vary—nausea, burning, localised pain—but you’re the only one who will be able to pinpoint the source beyond the symptoms.”

All of which is very good in theory.

Except Keith is newly aware that he’s standing in a field, holding hands with the very painfully attractive and horribly attentive son of Zarkon, who is—though unwittingly—waiting for Keith to place his very large hand around his throat, and they have an audience, and despite this all being quite innocent it’s just-

It’s a lot.

At some point during this minor internal crisis, Lotor has gone very still, and when the prince next speaks his voice is thick with hesitation.

“Do you… not want me to touch you?”

Drawn from his spiralling, Keith looks up at the prince—likely with the remnants of his inner turmoil written all over his face—just in time to see the handsome furrow of his brow give way to a gnawing sort of guilt as he begins to withdraw.

Unthinkingly Keith’s hand darts out to tangle their fingers together.

“No!” and of course this has Lotor’s—gentle, kind, considerate Lotor—frown deepening, and Keith hurries to correct himself. “I mean, no I don’t- I don’t not want you to-” touch me sounds mortifyingly intimate, and Keith feels his cheeks flood with colour, “I don’t… mind. I’m just- last time was-”

“This is more my fault than yours, Prince,” Cadryn interjects, a guilty undercurrent to their words, “I fear I may have forced the issue too far with the wrong methodology-”

“For god’s sake,” Keith hisses, more at himself than anyone else, because making Cadryn feel bad is like kicking a puppy, “I’m just getting in my own head about it—here, alright?”

And before he can regret it, tips his jaw back and presses Lotor’s palm across the breadth of his throat.

It’s certainly… different.

Given certain late-night revelations, Keith had expected the immediate uptick in his heartbeat. What he hadn’t expected was to be able to feel Lotor’s, or, maybe the afterimage of it? Like the thrumming vibration that travels the length of an instrument’s string once plucked, or the way lightening carves its shape into a night sky for several moments after it’s struck.

When he’s finally able to drag himself back from this all-consuming wave of feeling—neither good nor bad, but a thing of such vibrant intensity that it leaves him quite dizzy—Keith finds blue eyes heavy-lidded and hazy as they look far beyond- or perhaps deep within him, to a place he cannot follow.

After a moment more the prince’s hand falls lax, but not quite away, and Keith looses the breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding.

“There,” Lotor murmurs, thumb idling over the hollow of Keith’s throat, and looking himself faintly staggered, “that wasn’t too dreadful I hope?”

Replying: “Don’t be an ass,” without missing a beat, earns the marmorite a brief flex of fingers and a fiendish flash of fangs, both of which excite in a way he daren’t dissect.

Cadryn gives a polite cough.

“As a courtesy, prince,” they say, eyes pointedly fixed on Lotor’s hand until the prince removes it from Keith’s person, “I should inform you that though I am more healer than soldier, I am fully authorised to neutralise you if, for any reason, I deem you an imminent threat to the paladin’s life.”

Keith jaw drops—“Cadryn!”—but despite their words, their expression remains as placid as ever. As for Lotor-

“That might just be the politest way anyone’s ever gone about threatening me,” head titled and brows raised, the prince seems more intrigued than insulted, “consider it noted.”

 

Once Keith has the olkari circlet nestled amongst dark hair, and the bracelets affixed to each wrist, Lotor, quite unexpectedly, asks him: “I don’t suppose you’re familiar with tahk’ta?”

Keith, in fact, is very much familiar with tahk’ta—something Lotor seems pleasantly surprised by—the old galra sparring game a favourite among many of Marmora’s number as it capitalises on speed and clever tactics rather than brute strength. Regris had been the one to introduce him to it, having found Keith training alone, silent and stalwart, not four quintants after his first fuck-up as Black’s paladin; though ‘introduce’ is perhaps too generous a phrasing for the way the reptilian—dox, he now knows—galra had slyly swanned across the room to flick the tip of his paste-covered tail against Keith’s unguarded forehead, leaving a stinging chalky smear right between dark brows, and declaring himself to be the reigning tahk’ta champion—unless of course, the “new blood” cared to challenge him for the title.

The previous day’s heavy rain having served to thoroughly saturate Olkarion’s soil, he and Lotor coat their hands until they’re dark and heavy with a thick, clay-like paste.

“One to the skull, two to the torso, or all four limbs,” Lotor confirms, and Keith grins to remember how Regris had stolen what should have been his first win right out from under him—literally—with a sweep of his tail, insisting that it was hardly his fault if Keith hadn’t accounted for the fact that his opponent had not four limbs, but five.

Asshole.

Keith misses him dreadfully.

“D’you want to make it interesting?” he volunteers, rather than dwelling on the hollow cavity in his chest, “Every takh’ta earns a question: anything you want.”

The prince eyes him with intrigue.

“Anything is a dangerous offer,” but evidently a tempting one, by the way those too-sharp eyes are flitting back and forth, “what if the question is one that cannot be answered?”

His necessary evils, he means, those things he admits to concealing without the slightest intention of jeopardising their secrecy.

But that’s fine; Keith will work with what he’s allowed.

“Two questions,” he shrugs, “for every one forfeited. Fair?”

“…Fair.”

With one last check to ensure that the mud isn’t disrupting Cadryn’s readings, they begin.

 

Keith may, it seems, have overestimated himself.

He’d known he’d caught Lotor off-guard in their initial confrontation—both when he’d first launched himself across the library, and again after having been wrestled down to the floor when his blade’s transformative properties served to turn a crushing defeat into a sharp-edged triumph—but he’d thought their recent bout to have been more evenly matched, the both of them having landed several good hits to the point that though Keith’s body still groans with visceral reminders, Lotor too had not walked away unscathed.

Like this, however, in broad daylight with the prince twice acquainted with his skillset, it becomes rapidly clear that decaphoebs of Imperial training leave him more than a little outclassed.

“Drawing this out is to your detriment, Keith,” what could otherwise be mistaken for advice is sung with a taunting tongue, “I think we both know I’ve the greater stamina between us.”

He’s right, of course. Keith’s a smaller target, a swifter opponent, but Lotor had anticipated that from the start and so has made a game of utilising long limbs and the superior reach they afford him to his advantage: it’s been enough to keep Keith at a distance, and if they continue like this—dipping forth only to veer away at the last second lest he take a hit rather than deliver one—he’ll only tire himself out to the point of exhaustion, and then the win will unequivocally be Lotor’s.

But Regris, too, had been all limbs.

Lotor’s weak point, Keith thinks, is much the same as his own: he doesn’t like to lose. This in mind, the smaller galra ducks forward and braces himself against the expected hit as his right elbow rises to accept it, hiding a smile behind his forearm as he redirects the force of the assault and turns a precise blow into a glancing one to leave the prince’s arm fully extended; Keith twists to dance beneath it, striking the heel of his palm into Lotor’s ribs before pushing, sending his opponent stumbling forward with his own momentum and creating a safe distance between them once more.

“Underestimating me is to your detriment, Lotor,” he crows, victorious, and the face the prince makes at having his own taunt thrown back at him almost makes Keith’s subsequent loss—barely a dobosh later, with mud in his eyelashes and a smarting cheekbone—worth it.

“Tahk’ta,” the prince declares, smug and scarcely short of breath, “though I’ll admit that was impressive.”

Though he thinks very little is impressive about being struck across the cheek by a left-hook he should have seen coming, Keith wipes the mud from his face as best he’s able, laughs—“Go on, the question is yours.”—and is entirely unprepared when Lotor says-

“Kerberos,” head snapping up so quickly that Keith half feels he’s been struck again, he stares at the prince, eyes wide, tongue wordless, and it’s obvious that Lotor is cataloguing the strength of his reaction with carefully contained intrigue, “you’ve mentioned it twice before, and it is clearly of significant emotional import to you, but I hadn’t the opportunity to ask.”

“That’s-” Keith wets his lips, having found them abruptly dry, “that’s not a question.”

“Alright…” clever eyes are quick to take him in, and the marmorite becomes abundantly aware of the mulish set of his own jaw. He thinks Lotor might be considering offering him an out—half wants him to, and half hates the idea that he’d take it—but then- “What is Kerberos?”

“A moon,” and Keith knows he’s being pedantic, but he also knows that though this might be Lotor’s first win of the day, it certainly won’t be his last, so if the prince wants information—particularly of this nature—he’s damn well going to have to work for it, “orbiting a dwarf planet on the outer edge of our—humanity’s—solar system.” and then, because he feels a little like he’s robbing Lotor of his rightful win, and knows it’s the kind of detail the prince will appreciate even if not the information he truly wants: “The planet’s called Pluto, after a god of the dead, so its moons are named after figures linked to that god; Kerberos is his three-headed hound, and a guardian of the underworld.”

Lotor makes to ask something else, but Cadryn’s hurried approach interrupts him.

“Are you alright, paladin? Your quintessence just spiked.”

Lotor seems immediately alert—“Concerningly?”—but the olkari is quick to refute him.

“No, it was distinct, but settled almost immediately.” and then, turning back to Keith, “Your readings during the fight itself were exemplary. As suspected, physical exertion seems to have very little bearing on your rate of quintessential degradation; though it will require a longer period of observation to be sure, if anything supplying you with an outward focus appears to be stemming the flow somewhat.”

Keith hums, thumbing at the bracelet where it lies over his pulse point, and figures—fuck it—the quicker they can fix him the better, so he may as well test his theory.

“Are you still receiving readings right now?”

Cadryn gives a small nod, though their brow is faintly creased beneath the circlet they wear—the twin to Keith’s own.

Picking at some of the mud that has begun to dry beneath his nail, Keith thinks ‘Kerberos’, and dredges up as much of the pain- the loneliness- the grief- as he can bear.

“Oh!” they startle, “you just did it again.”

Well.

That settles it then.

No one’s explicitly said the T-word, but Keith’s not stupid. As a ‘troubled youth’ he’d been assigned to enough councillors that he knows what trauma is, and if they’d thought him fucked-up at twelve, they wouldn’t have a clue what to do with him now: nineteen and soon to breech his third decaphoeb of intergalactic warfare.

In a deeply perverse sort of way, Kerberos has become the least of it.

“B’aakhitah-”

“I’m fine.” he bites, only to immediately soften under brow-furrowed scrutiny, “Really, Lotor, I’m okay.” Rubbing over the back of his neck to forcibly soften the tension that resides there, Keith takes a grounding breath, before turning his determination to a demand. “Let’s go again.”

The prince doesn’t ask him if he’s sure—doesn’t look to Cadryn for confirmation, or an opinion that might override Keith’s own—he simply hums without judgement, rolls his shoulders, and loudly declares: “Then you’d best prepare to further sate my curiosity, little Blade. I shan’t be going easy on you.”

And, god, Keith wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

“Why is this particular moon of your death-god’s planet important to you?” comes Lotor’s second question, chin resting in his palm as he crouches beside his victim—who lies curled and wheezing upon a bed of broken grass—after having delivered two painfully precise blows to the sternum in quick succession.

“I-It’s—fucking hell, Lotor—it’s where Sendak found Shiro.” Keith gasps, chest heaving and thoroughly winded as he pants into the rain-drenched earth, “Abducted him and threw him in the arena. He took Matt and Commander Holt too, but they were sent elsewhere.”

 

“So Pidge’s initial stake in this war was for her blood’s sake, and yours for the Champion—”

“Don’t call him that.”

“—the Black Paladin, then,” Lotor sighs, hot breath ruffling those few stands of Keith’s fringe that aren’t slick with dirt, or sweat, or both,

But none of this is a question, and so Keith waits, laid out beneath the prince’s bulk as all that lithe power bears down upon him, and tries very hard not to catalogue the countless ways in which their breathless bodies are entwined.

He refocuses himself instead on not only how long it takes the prince to find his words, but more-so by what those words are, for when the query finds form it’s spoken quietly, tenderly, something sad and soft and almost broken in the way Lotor asks: “You love him?”

“I-” it’s far from anything Keith had thought to prepare himself for, “Of course I do. After my dad died, I- I didn’t have anybody, really. Not ‘til Shiro.”

Lotor’s expression does something complicated—confused and torn and impossible to decipher through the voluminous white hair that’s fallen from the prince’s shoulder to right on top of Keith’s face.

“What of your family unit?”

“That’s-” trying to rid his face of hair that’s not his own results only in an entire mouthful, “-two quethtionth.”

 

Keith’s laughter is a full-bodied thing—deep and gleeful and entirely without restraint—when he smears what is, admittedly, an over-indulgent quantity of mud into his prince’s once-pristine mane with his free hand; the other remains tightly hooked around the crux of an elbow to keep the prince from disentangling himself, the snare of Keith’s thighs—ribs to shoulder with ankles neatly crossed—remaining tightly locked even as his opponent makes a throaty sort of whine.

“Tahk’ta!” he cackles, scratching his nails against Lotor’s muddied scalp for good measure, before releasing the prince to flop back into the long grass, exhausted. “Fucking finally.”

Lotor rolls over beside him, breathing ragged but underlaid with a chuckle, and arms strewn across his face, guarding it from view.

“Well played,” he pants, “though my hair might never recover.”

Still grinning like a mad-thing, Keith rolls his head to the side, idly studying the prince as he thinks of his question, only for his attention to snag on the tips of elegant ears that, beyond their mud-speckled veneer, have turned quite distinctly-

“Prince Lotor,” Keith’s smile turns his words to honeyed delight, “are you blushing?”

Lotor peers out from beneath his arm, bright-eyed and bewildered.

“I- don’t believe myself capable?” and though it’s true that no hint of colour touches high cheekbones, in this moment he sounds distinctly uncertain.

“You sure about that?” pale fingers reach out of their own accord, thumbing over darkened cartilage to find it hot and fluttering, “Your ears are bright blue.”

To witness the sole prince of the galra empire bolt so abruptly upright with hands slapped firmly over his own ears—as if that disproves anything—is, Keith thinks through renewed laughter, more than worth the wasted question.

 

“What of your domestic unit?” Lotor asks once more, having snatched victory from the jaws of defeat only because Keith hadn’t been paying enough attention to their terrain, turning what should have been a clean pivot into a very messy, very muddy fall, and dropping both the smaller galra and his stolen triumph quite literally into the prince’s lap. “Blood or otherwise, how could you ever have been alone?”

He says it like it’s unfathomable, and given how family-oriented Keith knows the galra to be, maybe it is.

”Humans don’t exactly… work like that. We’re less communal. I ended up in the system-” he catches Lotor’s confusion in the way pointed ears flicker as he half-tilts his head, “-it’s like, well, kids without parents or any blood relatives willing to take them in kind of get shunted from home to home, one family after another, until someone adopts them officially. I ended up with the kids nobody wants—I caused too many problems, I guess—and it was like that for… a long time.”

Though the prince’s expression darkens, Keith shakes his head minutely, tipping his face up to the balmy breeze with a soft smile working its way across his features.

“It wasn’t all bad. One day, this representative for the Garrison showed up at school, a real white-collar kinda guy, and had us all try out a flight sim. I wasn’t really planning to give it a go—even then I knew I wasn’t military material—but he… he asked me to. And I don’t know why, maybe it was the way he grinned at me when he said it, but I figured ‘why not?’ y’know?” Keith warms at the memory, hears the pride bleed into his own voice when he says: “and I was good. Even heard him telling the headmistress that I was about ready to fly the real thing, but she shut him down straight away, told him what a little shit I was, and I figured that was that. No one wants a discipline case, after all.” A weary shrug. A wry smile. “So I stole his car.”

Lotor blanches with a startled bark of laughter. “Truly?”

“Yup. He was the idiot who’d left the keys in the ignition, so it wasn’t like it was hard, but Shiro’s always been stupidly trusting like that. So I stole his car and took it for a joyride ‘til I got pulled over and taken to the police station; when he showed up to collect it, I figured I was done for, but… he bailed me out,” Keith knows his voice has turned soft and syrupy at the memory, “said everyone deserves a second chance. I applied to the Garrison, aced the entrance exams with enough to earn myself a scholarship, and started training to become a pilot. Got in trouble a few too many times, but Shiro never gave up on me. So when Kerberos—”

Over the slant of a broad shoulder, he sees Cadryn—seated a short distance away at the clearing’s cusp, an unobtrusive observer, almost meditative in their presence and posture—sit up a little straighter. When they catch his expectant eye, however, they must realise the sudden spike in his quintessence was, again, anticipated, and so settle back against the shadowed roots of their perch once more.

“—when Kerberos happened- when they tried to blame it all on pilot error- tried to tell the world that it was his fault… I called bullshit. They didn’t like that. Even if Shiro had still been there, I don’t think he could’ve talked them out of booting me after I assaulted a superior officer. So I ended up in the desert for a year, trying to find out what really happened out there—if I couldn’t bring him back the very least I could do was clear his name—and tracking this weird energy signature that eventually turned out to be the blue Lion.” he shrugs again, “The rest is history

Lotor takes a moment to absorb it all, and like this—hair inconsolable, mud flaking from his skin, contemplative and calm in the light of the setting sun—Keith thinks him beautiful.

He’s always beautiful, really.

“May I ask why you assaulted him? The officer.”

The marmorite feels his expression sour in an instant, and doesn’t even begrudge Lotor the second question.

“He wouldn’t shut up; kept saying that Shiro was dead because he wouldn’t listen to his betters, and the ‘real tragedy’ was that he took down two good men with him. Said he should have at least done the decent thing and died alone.”

Piece of shit.

“So I punched him. Fractured the fucker’s orbital bone so badly that he went blind in that eye… I didn’t-” Keith feels a pinprick of guilt amidst the well-worn rage, “-I didn’t actually mean to do that much damage. I just wanted him to stop and next thing I know Iverson’s face is swollen up like a balloon and I’m being dragged backwards by at least three guys all twice my size.”

“So they expelled you for besting your superior in unarmed single combat?” the prince’s tone is newly drenched in morbid fascination. “In the imperial army you’d be lashed for insubordination, of course, but more than likely such a confrontation would see you promoted too.”

“For breaking someone’s eye?”

“For exceptional skill. Any commander worth his quintessence would be able to subdue a mere cadet with ease, especially one so small as you.” The amused lilt Lotor says this with fades in favour of something sweet and deeply saddened. “As for the rest of it—the neglect you suffered as a child—that would never have happened had you been raised galra. Even if we are half-breed whelps, our value is in our blood: it is an irrefutable part of us.” blue eyes turn baleful, “The Empire, for all its faults, would not have forsaken you.”

And isn’t that a thought.

 

It’s their final bout of the day that brings the question Keith has been dreading.

“Would it be terribly offensive of me to ask,” hesitance runs rife on that silver tongue, “why you no longer serve as paladin?”

Keith’s eyes flicker to the side and take in the stillness of his companion as they lie beside one another, bruised and breathless in the long grass. Lotor wears gentle curiosity without expectation, and Keith realises that if he denies the prince an answer, he would not attempt to pursue it by some other avenue but simply relinquish the thread altogether. Though said question hurts to hear, just a little, Keith appreciates the bluntness of honest enquiry far more than he would any attempt to soften the blow by dancing around the truth of it.

“There are only five Lions,”—true—“and six paladins,”—true—“so somebody had to step down, and it might as well have been me.”

“I don’t quite follow,” Lotor murmurs, after a moment’s quiet. “So far as I have observed it, you are the best of them.”

It’s indisputable, in the way he says it, as if the words come as naturally to him as breathing, but Keith chokes out a bitter laugh.

“You remember Thayserix?”

“Thayserix?” he echoes, “But of course.” It’s only when he turns his head from the cloudless sky to look at Keith dead on, one eyebrow raised, that the truth seems to dawn upon him without any further explanation. “That was you.”

“Yeah,” Keith confirms on a guilt-ridden breath, “that was me.”

His startled expression gives way to a soft sort of frown as the prince pieces the puzzle together.

“You were the black paladin then, but new to it,” Keith makes a noise of affirmation, “and you chased me into the storm.” a fond quirk of the lips, “You were quite persistent in your pursual of me; I’m flattered.”

“My team kept advising me against it, but I was too stubborn… I refused to listen to reason.”

Lotor seems to sincerely consider this.

“You saw an opportunity to deal a crippling blow to your enemy by stripping them of their leader. Your execution may have left something to be desired—owing to your inexperience in command, I’d wager—but the plan itself was not a poor one.”

“I wasn’t-” it’s a shameful thing, to admit to, “I wasn’t in control.”

And the prince must—he must—hear the guilt in Keith’s voice, or else think this confession disgraceful in its own right. So why is it that when he speaks again, there’s nothing sharp on his tongue, nothing admonishing, only—

“I shan’t deny I noticed a dissonance there, between the Black Lion and its pilot: I did suspect that at least one of you had been felled alongside my father… and yet, ultimately, you were able to form Voltron, incapacitate a fair number of my associates, and make a tactical withdrawal.”

Keith waits for the proverbial other shoe.

It doesn’t come.

“Your tenacity was really quite admirable” Lotor tells him instead, “if somewhat meddlesome, when one has an Empire to run.”

The world sighs, long grass rippling in its wake.

“I thought I could end the war.” It’s so obviously a childish belief, in hindsight, but at the time… “I thought with Zarkon out of the picture, all we had to do was take you down and then-” Keith scoffs at his own naïvety, and voices as much; “It was stupid, really. Naïve. But Shiro was just—” his throat closes up around the mere mention of it, “—just gone, and I wasn’t- I couldn’t-”

“You needed someone to blame.” A wave of understanding washes over the prince’s features, before he whispers: “You were grieving.”

“Yeah,” this admission crests and crumbles, “I guess I was. Besides, a galra as the black Lion’s paladin?” his mouth twists up into something too hateful to be called a smile, “that story only ends one way, and the universe is living it.”

Lotor is quiet for a long time, and so there they lie: side by side in the wet earth and swaying grass and looming night, simply looking at one another.

“You’re afraid of being likened to Zarkon.”

“No,” Keith croaks, his tongue burning with what he’s about to say: the horrid, ugly, unholy truth of it that he’s never spoken aloud, never dared for fear of what giving this thought form might do—but if anyone could know, if anyone could possibly understand, it would be Lotor. “I’m afraid of becoming Zarkon.”

Clawed fingertips bridge the chasm between them, touching reverently beneath Keith’s lower lashes as if to catch a tear he hasn’t shed; this gentle hand soothes over Keith’s cheek and nose and furrowed brow, smoothing out the tension there before encouraging him to meet the prince’s melancholic gaze.

“Do you think I do not fear the same?” these words are weak and wilting, and Keith grasps at them with everything he is, “Every move I make, every strategy and action, I ask myself if it is what he would have done. Sometimes, it is—”

His inhale catches, his exhale shudders.

“—and that terrifies me: to think that I may be walking myself blindly down the path that he trod before me; that, despite my best efforts, perhaps history is damned to repeat itself. But Keith—”

Lotor’s lips fold the shape of his name into prayer.

 “—whatever else he became, there was a time when my father was just a man.” bruised knuckles drag lightly across muddied crown, “And not just any man, but a good one. A Paladin of Voltron, and everything that represents.”

It’s a beautiful sentiment; so lovely in its simplicity, that Keith can scarcely believe it.

“It’s two sides of the same coin.” he whispers, “You told me yourself, Lotor: that Zarkon loved Honerva, loved you, and would have burnt the universe to ash for your sake. I think-” and—ah—there’s that unshed tear, “I think I might have done that—done anything—to get Shiro back. And then we did and he was safe and so obviously the better choice to lead Voltron-” and now the truth has begun flooding out of him, it’s laughable that he ever thought the damn would hold, “and I couldn’t un-realise how tempting it might have been, to go to the lengths your father did, for the people I care about, so in the end what choice did I have? It was so much safer for me to stay with Marmora—”

A laugh, thinly strung.

“—I figured, if my galra blood was a threat to Voltron, then better that I embraced it and left altogether.”

Better that—better anything—than a universe on fire.

But Lotor is smiling.

“Then there’s your difference, noble heart.” he cups Keith’s cheek, catches that agonised tear on his thumb, “In the face of all that power, you chose to walk away.”

“Is that enough?” the question scrapes ragged and ruinous against the silence that surrounds them.

“Truthfully,” the prince admits, “I do not know.” and, with a start, Keith realises that summer-sky eyes are near as glassy as his own, “Though, if anything is to be your downfall, would you not rather it be love?”

Notes:

Happy five-years-of-writing-this-goddamn-monstrosity to me!! As a gift to myself, I apparently decided to break my unspoken formula and have a third single pov chapter in a row. "Why" you ask? Well that is because this was fully intended to be the first half of a dual-pov chapter, except it is over 8,300 words long and the second half would //definitely// have doubled that number so... we're saving Lotor for next time lads (also this allows for a d i s g u s t i n g l y romantic ending, so you're welcome). As per usual, I shall be responding to all those comments I have left for a shamefully long time (I'm sorry—please know I appreciate you more than words can express, and I have in fact read each and every one) in the near future, so please be patient with me!

Also, I just want to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to each and every one of you who leaves comments/kudos, or literally just reads this fic and thinks fondly of it from time to time, because ily a lot and the lot of you have been nothing but sweet to me, so thank you!! Here's to hoping I shall have finished this beast of a fic before another five years pass me by ♡

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TUMBLR | KEITOR MONTH 2020 | DISCORD | SPOTIFY

Notes:

~Artistic Gifts From Talented Beans~
• a truly stunning collection of moments from chapters 1-3
• a SECOND and equally lovely collection of moments, this time from chapters 1-4
• Sylla's au version of chapter 6 where the identity reveal happens earlier but Lotor is just as s h o o k
• Keith being obliviously hot as hell in chapter 8 while Lotor suffers™ like the gay disaster he is oh my godddd
• my unfailingly innocent SON from chapter 10
• quality homegrown memes from chapter 10 & 11
• chapter 11's chaotic-bastard Lotor is the best Lotor lmao
• the most Tender™ expressions (ft. the scourge of the universe as seen in chapter 11)
• the heart-stopping revelation for which Lotor was unprepared from chapters 12 & 13
• Lance & Allura witnessing keitor for the first time in chapter 13
• chapter 21's final beat before Keith mauls Lotor's poor ear
• thunder and lightning (very very frightening) when Lotor has a Moment™ in chapter 21
• a collection of charming sketches from chapters 4/21/22 featuring a Prince who only realised he fucked up a fraction of a second too late (rip)
• chapter 24's stupid muddy boys flirting in the dirt
• 'Kraliept' needlework or stitching or something!! I actually don't know what the right terminology is but it's //so cool//
• Lotor scooping Keith up like a baby because Keith is, in fact, baby ♡ (not canon LB-verse but a blessing nonetheless)
• smoltor embarrassing his future self in front of an enamoured yet oblivious Keith (also not canon LB-verse, but still wonderful)
• fellas.. is it gay to gaze into the eyes of your former-enemy with whom you are rapidly forging a deep and inexplicable bond?
• pretty fluffy-haired boyyyyyys

((if I've missed something that you've created for this fic, then please let me know! I wish to shower my undying love upon each and every one of you!))

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Half-Galra Disaster Gays™ Do Their Best While Dealing With Trauma & the Universe's Worst Daddy Issues