Chapter Text
“Dr. Wright,” says Lotor, his brows drawn together and his back pressed uncomfortably to a chair, “while I appreciate your concern, I’m nearly 10,000 years old. I’m more than capable of handling my—”
Dr. Wright scoffs. “10,000 years or not,” she says, red in the face, “you look 26. At most .”
Lotor, desperate, looks to Allura for some semblance of an Altean-to-Earthling translation, but all she does is smile helplessly from where she sits.
“And regardless of your age,” continues Dr. Wright, “I will not have my patients running amok without express permission . Your health is my top priority, and you put yourself in harm’s way by wandering around without alerting anyone beforehand. Until your vitals are in top shape, until you stop having these wild spells of yours—”
Lotor’s attention narrows in on her word choice.
“—and until you are discharged, you may not leave this premises, let alone this room, without my knowledge.”
Lotor swallows, unable to retort. Something had been bothering him since he’d come to know Dr. Wright. She’d reminded him of someone, and it isn’t until now that he’s able to put his finger on who. Palen-bol!
“I apologize,” he says, his pride taking a heavy blow as he’s reprimanded in front of a full room. He reminds himself that this wouldn’t be the first time—his father had been fond of the practice—but it’s a new experience for the paladins. From the way some of them grin, he thinks they might be enjoying it.
He focuses again on Dr. Wright, who searches his gaze for any dishonesty. Then, once satisfied, she stands straight with an indignant huff. She turns her attention to the monitor that’s hooked to him through small, wireless probes, one in each palm, one over his heart, and one on either of his temples. Lotor looks, too, grimacing when he notices how his heart rate has grown, unsurprisingly, faster.
There’s a few minutes that pass quietly, noted only by the ticking of a clock and the beeping of the monitor, the paladins either watching him or playing with handheld devices. Ayden lingers, pale-faced. He too had been chastised for letting Lotor slip out, though that was hardly his fault. Lotor mouths an apology to him, which Ayden shrugs off with a smile like that of Allura’s: helpless.
Then Dr. Wright makes a note of his vitals before she waves to Ayden, a silent command to remove the probes, which Ayden does dutifully. Lotor watches Dr. Wright close the holoscreen and adjust both her glasses and her coat, eyeing Lotor carefully. Lotor attempts to weather her gaze, but feels small beneath it, as a child might. He looks away.
“No leaving,” she says firmly.
He frowns. “Even with permission?”
“Just—” She heaves an exasperated sigh. “Give it a few more days. Your condition has been steady, but I’d hate for something to happen should you…”
Trailing off, which is unlike her, she leans her chin into her palm. She looks at Allura, who shakes her head in return. Lotor’s attention darts between them, a brow quirked, unaware of the meaning behind their looks. He wonders what conversation they might be having.
“Should you fall ill again,” Dr. Wright finishes. “Well. I’ll leave you to your conference.”
The room chimes with goodbyes as she leaves, and the tension in Lotor’s shoulders releases. He has to stop himself from slumping in his chair or leaning bodily into the table before him. Ayden leaves next, clutching a clipboard to his chest and offering a bashful wave as he goes. Lotor returns it.
A hand—Shiro’s—clasps Lotor’s shoulder. Their eyes meet; Shiro smiles, similarly weary.
“She does that because she cares,” he says. “Trust me. I’ve been in your position several times before.”
“‘Capable of handling myself’?” mutters Pidge, reciting Lotor’s earlier words with a bemused scoff. “We found you lost in a hallway .”
Lotor’s eyes narrow. “How is your stomach?”
Pidge’s eyes flicker briefly with surprise, but then she’s leaning back in her chair with her arms crossed, a cocky smile curling onto her mouth. “Capable of taking another beating,” she says.
Glancing her over, Lotor can’t help but think she’s a bit too confident and a bit too talkative for someone of her small stature, but bites the comment back and ignores the obvious challenge she’s posing. He folds his hands in his lap and turns his chin up, indicating their conversation is done. Indignant, she disregards him, too, and the air shifts from heavy to heavier.
They sit in a circle—himself, the paladins, and Coran—around a single foldable table made from an old plastic. Its age is discernible by nicks and stains in its surface, unattended at the time and left to scar the piece. Upon it rests a device that displays an orange holoscreen. It faces Shiro, who expands the screen with a floating touch until both Keith and Allura, who sit on either side of him, can read its contents. Lotor, sitting next to Allura, catches a glimpse of a long list of topics. He grimaces.
Four years pales in comparison to his lifespan, but he’s not one to doubt how much can change in so little time.
The three venerated leaders talk amongst themselves in hushed tones. Lotor doesn’t bother to listen in on them. Whatever it is that they wish to say, they will, and he will know all before long. He thinks to grab one of his books, which sit in a stack just a few feet away on the window’s ledge, to read until they’re done, but decides against it. He doesn’t think he has the patience for reading right now, not when his morning has been wrought with trial already. He doesn’t need Earth’s troubled history to add onto it.
He lets his attention wander to the rest, his eye first catching the one who sits across from him. There’s a moment where Lotor cannot recall Lance’s name. This was a paladin whose presence had never much registered for Lotor—save for the overt and rather uncalled for animosity Lance had often displayed towards him.
It seems as though not much has changed. Lance, who doesn’t notice Lotor staring, looks unhappy to be here. His thin brows are drawn together and the lines of his mouth are pressed even thinner. He has one leg thrown over the other; both of his hands are stuffed into his pockets. His disgruntled expression is interrupted by an exaggerated yawn. Lotor supposes it is rather early to be awake and present at such a paramount meeting. He eyes Lance’s collar and how it’s considerably ruffled, especially in comparison to Keith’s, who sits between Lance and Shiro.
Lotor’s gaze travels from Keith’s perfectly arranged collar upwards, and feels his pulse startle. Keith stares directly at him, his brows knitted and his eyes hard. He’s frowning. Lotor looks away quickly, sweat beading on the back of his neck. Eventually Keith turns back to Shiro so that he may give his input when asked for it.
Lotor’s never had the honor of one-on-one time with Keith, but there’s no doubt that he’s as intense as the rest had once described him. He’s disciplined and direct—which are traits necessary for a Black Paladin. To be firm is to be a leader.
Though it makes Lotor wonder how Shiro is faring in his “retirement”. Lotor knows little—only that Shiro is no longer the Black Paladin—but can tell that, whatever Shiro has been through, it’s somehow resulted in a new hairstyle and an Altean-powered arm. It’s a fine and unique prosthetic, floating at his side. He stares for a moment too long, however, and looks up to find Shiro watching him from the corner of his eye.
Lotor nods, stiffly, as his hands twist into the fabric of his pants. His and Shiro’s last few encounters have been… unpleasant. He’d turned Shiro away when he came to his bedside; Shiro had held him down during a panic attack and Lotor had thought of ripping out his throat. Before those, Lotor can remember the vice grip Shiro had held him in, as well as the ensuing sickness he’d felt when he’d thought that Shiro had betrayed him to Haggar.
He’s not sure what’s changed since then.
The conversation ends and the room falls silent. There’s an air of uncertainty, no one sure of where to begin, or how. Lotor can see that they’re all tense—himself included—and the paladins exchange worried glances that they must think Lotor doesn’t catch. But he does, and he impatiently clears his throat.
“Dr. Wright mentioned ‘wild spells’ that I’ve apparently been enduring as of late.” He sees the alarm that crosses each of their faces and knows they hadn’t intended to start with this. He continues, “I don’t doubt her expertise, but I have no recollection of these ‘spells’, aside from when I first woke here. Perhaps this is something you all can enlighten me on.”
Silence. Lotor frowns. Underneath the table, he taps a finger against his knee, his mind idly following a rhythm that’s helped him pass time in more extreme situations. He waits, reciting the ancient verse in his head, but as the silence stretches on, he knows they’re stalling. What irritates him is that he doesn’t possess the authority to coax whatever they withhold out.
He sits as still and silent as the rest of them, his brows pulled together. His temple begins to pound, but he doesn’t attempt to ease the building pain. As though playing a game, he tries to catch their eyes and fails each time. Prior experience has taught him that the paladins are, at times, hesitant in their dealings, but if they’ve bothered to drag him all the way to Earth, it’s only fair that they offer some explanation.
Hunk speaks. “Your marks are, uh, cool.”
“The floor is empty,” says Lotor. “Am I the only patient on it?”
Keith answers, “Yes.”
Lotor looks off to the side and the rest of them turn their heads in tandem. Through the window, the distant city is within view, nearly decimated but still in tact. Lotor sees the markings of Galran occupation: relentless destruction void of remorse; ion cannon burns scorched into ruined steel. A massacre happened here, perhaps all over the planet, though he hasn’t been able to divulge that information yet.
He hasn’t bothered to ask, either. He’s been on the offending side before and knows all the tricks. Whoever did this did it by the book, following methodically in Zarkon’s footsteps. They’d been trained, and trained well, depending on who you asked.
The silence of his company has changed into something somber. When he looks to them again, he sees the mourning they’ve endured, but the bitter part of him can’t help but think them lucky. Their home planet still thrived, even when it had been in its death throes. Allura, Coran, the generations of Alteans Lotor had known, and the innocents of destroyed planets hadn’t been so fortunate.
He’d never known home himself. The closest thing had been Allura’s touch, and now that, too, is unreachable.
“Your people have been through it, have they not?” He cocks his head. “War came to your home. I’m unaware of how long ago it ended, but surely there are still those in need of treatment. Why has this floor been sectioned off for me alone?”
When there’s no response, Lotor grits his teeth, his frown deepset. Ridiculous , he thinks.
“We cannot dally here all day. If the severity of the situation is so—”
“You were trapped,” says Hunk, distressed and pressured. “Well, no, I mean— Not trapped? You were, but then—” He speaks so fast he might bite his tongue. Unable to explain, he looks to the rest desperately.
Allura takes the torch. “After our fight,” she says, “we left you in the quintessence field. Do you remember that?”
He’d rather forget. He crosses his arms and raises a brow at them, arrogant, knowing that silence is answer enough. Their heads bow, but Lotor isn’t sure they’re ashamed.
“We left you there,” Allura repeats, quietly, “and Honerva got you out.”
A deep, untouched part of him twists painfully as his breath catches in his throat. The grip he has on his own arm tightens, his claws digging into the fabric until he thinks it might tear. He feels a bead of sweat form at his temple; it’s cold.
The light that he remembers—the only thing he remembers— He thinks that he’d rather not have known, but that isn’t true. What angers him is that he hadn’t already guessed himself, because now that he hears it, it makes sense in a way he doesn’t want to admit. The rift is a dangerous place, something he’s always been aware of, but never had he let that halt his research. It was a necessary risk, even when that risk was his health, his life, the lives of others.
But he’d never anticipated being left there to simmer in its light and overwhelming energy, vulnerable and alone and open to exploitation by whatever may reside within. It had been warm there, and there had been no pain, but no life, either. He thinks. He cannot recall feeling anything, he cannot recall begging for help, and he doubts he’d even tried. The rest of the universe is a cold and empty void. He knows it well, so why return?
He barely remembers anything following his fight with the paladins; it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the rift causes memory loss. It’s happened before, in Honerva’s case, though he has little knowledge of the event.
And then something in him moves and flickers, alight with new anger not only towards Honerva, but towards the paladins as well. He swallows anything he wishes to say—and he wishes to say a lot —and regards them instead, eyes narrowed, mouth pursed. They gaze back at him and Lotor searches for any guilt among them.
“Honerva,” he echoes, the name a bitter taste. The answer he’s received—he wasn’t prepared for it. Part of him feels numb, but as shock begins to fade, he thinks that it’s to be expected. The witch—Haggar, not Honerva, not Honerva—has always been keen on intruding on situations she has no place in.
But she’s also the only one who could have conceivably gotten him out, too. She knows the rift better than him, better than anyone, the paladins especially.
“Yeah,” says Lance, “your crazy mom.”
Lotor feels himself react, his brows arching and the numb part of him turning cold. Several pairs of eyes turn on Lance all at once. He shrinks down in his seat, defiant yet meek.
He says, “Hey, it’s the truth, isn’t it?”
Lotor frowns and clears his throat. “I’m surprised you’re all… aware of this unfortunate…” He struggles, casting his gaze elsewhere. “Fact.” It takes great effort for him to force the words out and hopes his distaste isn’t too obvious. “But know this. Though the witch and I are related by blood, I do not claim her as family. She is not the Honerva that lived abundantly.”
This is uncomfortable, and it reflects in all of their expressions, Coran’s in particular. Lotor doesn’t retract his statement. He refuses to be associated with Haggar, no matter the circumstances, and have what little good his name retains dragged through the mud.
“Okay,” says Pidge, carefully, “that’s nice and all, but she definitely claims you , so maybe that’s something to think on.”
Lotor looks to Allura, hesitancy in his tone. “Did you tell them?”
Allura, however, is aggravated, her posture rigid and her voice pitched. “ You denied Haggar being Honerva. I went along with what you said because you seemed so sure of it—and surely you knew more than I did, but now you tell me that you’ve known all along?”
“Do you think it’s something I enjoy discussing? I’m not proud of it. Yes, I’ve known, but there’s— It’s different .” Then, “Did you tell them?”
They gaze at each other, both unyielding. “How long have you known?” says Allura.
“Nearly my entire life. You came to the conclusion about as quickly as I did. Did you tell them ?”
“—No. Other sources informed us.”
They both lean forward in their seats, as though posed to fight. Lotor cannot understand Allura’s anger—his relation to the witch is certainly not something he’d brag about, knowing well the shame she and his father have brought to their family.
Keith interrupts, “Is this really that important right now? We have other stuff we need to talk about.”
“It is important,” Lotor says, whipping his head towards Keith, who startles a bit. “I understand that you feel no empathy for me, but these are things I have a right to know. This is my life we’re discussing.”
They watch each other carefully, Keith considering Lotor, before Keith says, quietly, “I do empathize with you.”
Lotor disregards Keith and addresses the rest of them, not noticing how his breathing has become labored. “You say that Haggar was the one to remove me from the rift. Have you any answers as to why? And why can I not recall any of this? How long have I been kept in her captivity?”
For the first time, Coran speaks, his voice softer than Lotor has ever heard it—and yet it’s edged, a similar edge to Coran’s gaze and the set of his shoulders. “You’re lucky,” he says, “that you can remember your own name.”
“Do not take me for her ,” Lotor bites back. “Perhaps she lost herself, but I’m not so—”
He stops and realizes how fast he’s been talking—and how loud. He takes a moment and draws in a breath, reining in any anger or remorse. This is neither the time nor the place for him to lose himself. If he expects cooperation, he must play the good prisoner.
“What,” he says, “was Haggar’s purpose?”
Shiro says, “We don’t much know, ourselves. All we know is that you…” There’s a pause where Shiro considers his next words. They come awkwardly, as though unsure. “You weren’t yourself.”
“Not myself.”
“The rift,” says Allura, having also quelled her anger, “changed you. How you were during our fight was, I believe, only the beginning.”
Lotor holds his tongue, well aware of the things he’d said during battle. Pretty ideas of how Voltron would meet its end with no legacy to remember; a new Altean empire; the genocide of the Galra. They think he’d been in the wrong state of mind—and he supposes that, to an extent, he was—but he cannot deny that such thoughts had crossed his mind before, absurd as they may be.
It’s information best withheld from the paladins.
Allura speaks. “You were… Crazed. Wild. Unlike anything I’d ever seen before.” She wrings her hands with her gaze down. Lotor cannot see her expression. She says, quietly, “A monster.”
He watches her with a new pain in his chest, a burgeoning feeling that becomes unbearable. He stands and moves towards the windows, clasping his hands behind his back, still as he gazes out over the expansive desert. He can feel the rest watching him, but doesn’t acknowledge it, instead struggling to remember anything from these four years past.
He remembers suspension.
Nothing more.
Lotor breathes a sigh and pinches the area between his eyes, his temple pounding yet again, worse this time. Warmth and suspension, but nothing of Haggar, nothing of imprisonment. What he does recall, however, were words Allura spoke to him in moments of panic and betrayal, before the onslaught occurred: ‘You’re more like Zarkon than I could have ever imagined!’
“She used me,” says Lotor, his voice so quiet that it’s more of a personal thought, “for her own gain.” He turns back to the paladins and approaches slowly. “She used me,” he says again. “That is the only reason she would have… rescued me —” Bitterly. “—from the rift. Another tool to her. Just as my father was. Just as he’d always been.”
Silence falls heavy again. He knows intimately that they’d all been content not remembering Zarkon and his tyranny, how he’d met his fate at the hands of his own son. Perhaps it was cause for celebration among many, but to those who had witnessed the downfall, it was not a warm discussion, but rather a bottomless trench no one wanted to fall into.
And that was the reason it had hardly been brought up since, mentioned only in passing amidst necessary discussion. It was also why Lotor had never mentioned that it had been something he’d dreamt of for millennia—dreams of how grand that day might be, when he’d saved the universe and brought peace with a single death. Innocent and naive thoughts.
Instead it became the source of his nightmares in the days and weeks that followed.
Standing over Zarkon’s dead or dying body is the last Lotor remembers of the fight, too weak to process pain, his fainting, or how he’d been dragged back aboard the Castle of Lions, the paladins shoving him into a healing pod and expecting him to live, but perhaps hoping he wouldn’t.
He’d woken to Shiro as his company and, after collapsing into Shiro’s arms, asked of his father’s condition, his voice tinged with worried panic, before he fell asleep again.
To this day he still isn’t sure what became of his father’s corpse; ceremony dictates that no funeral be held for a slain emperor, one who had been too weak to preserve even his own life. It was likely that anything that remained of him had rotted away by now, unmourned.
But there had been mourning. Brief, yes, hidden behind a facade of necessity that told him there were other matters to attend to—other matters that were far more crucial than remembrance for a murderer.
And Allura had seen past that mask and, as best as she could, consoled him. She seemed to have a knack for it, getting through to others. In his grief her kind words had saved his sanity.
“What for?” says Lotor to himself. “What piece was I in her scheme?”
“We don’t know,” Shiro answers. “You were just… You did her bidding. Whatever she told you—”
He laughs, though it’s barely even a breath. “The rift rendered me nothing more than a puppet .” His voice is edged and quiet. His hands fist at his sides. “No better than Sendak. How pathetic.” Then, “So what of you? Your reasons for— Saving me, isn’t it? Bringing me here? I would give you my thanks, but I’d rather know if I serve a use to you all—or was it pity that guided your hand?”
Allura says, “Lotor, that’s not—”
“It was pity,” say Hunk and Pidge in unison.
“Also you were like, wicked dangerous,” adds Lance.
Lotor looks briefly at Lance before addressing the rest. “And you thought I deserved it? Your good graces?”
Again, Lance. “No,” he says, “but Dayak thought you did.”
Anger and shame give way to shock, and then, for the first time in a long while, relief. He doesn’t intend to doubt Dayak’s prowess; she has survived well over 10,000 years, but the confirmation that she’s alive out there nearly brings him to his knees. He steadies himself on the back of his chair and bites his tongue, forcing himself straight again, but they’ve already seen the change in his demeanor. Allura smiles, which dazzles Lotor momentarily.
“I apologize,” she says. “Had we known you’d be this happy, we would have told you sooner that she’s well.” And then Allura’s brows raise high on her elegant and crownless forehead. “Though I faintly recall… Was it embarrassment? On your end, when we first met her.”
Lotor flushes. “Our relationship is… precarious, at best.” But he’s smiling, too, unaware of the way he looks at Allura. “Thank you,” he says eventually, “for letting me know.”
But now he finds himself riddled with more questions than before. He doesn’t wish to overwhelm them or talk for hours on end—and it’s as Keith said, there are other matters to discuss—but curiosity courts him.
“What… did she tell you, exactly?”
Allura’s good mood goes. Lotor almost thinks she won’t answer. When he decides it’s better not to push his luck, she starts, slowly.
“That Honerva had… She’d been with child—with you—when her and Zarkon entered the rift. When they—” Allura stops and swallows thickly, reluctant, though Lotor knows with rising dread what comes next. He almost tells her stop, but his voice unwillingly catches. She says, “When they died.”
There are several implications, several facets, that have sweat beading at the nape of his neck. He tries not to react and does a good job of it until he unconsciously clutches the fabric covering his aching stomach. He’s acutely aware of his own breathing and how it seems to echo off the walls. It’s ragged and disjointed—and he’s standing too still and not saying anything when he should be. He should be denying this claim or waving it off as though it were inconsequential or just a funny little rumor, but he can’t. He doesn’t.
Allura says no more. He’s glad for it.
He’d known the story, of course. It had become something of a fairy tale throughout the empire, grim as it was, that their grand emperor had survived death’s kiss in an attempt to save his ailing wife, the exalted empress with a mind blessed by the gods themselves, but that she had perished in an untimely manner, leaving him with only a son she had birthed before death. Zarkon, however, the hero— He had denied a fate so foul and had risen from the grave, leading their people towards glory and towards vengeance for a dead wife and a planet left decimated by the wretched Alteans.
But Honerva hadn’t survived, and that had been the mistake that left her name disgraced and eventually erased from the texts altogether, an embarrassment to her husband’s legacy. Common citizens of generations that had come later didn’t possess the privilege of knowing their emperor’s wife had been Altean, nor that his son, their dishonorable prince, was one himself. Only those of rank—those who had the intelligence fitted to their rank—seemed to know the truth, at least vaguely.
To think he’d believed the fairy tale once makes him ill. He’d always been aware of his heritage; Zarkon didn’t allow him to forget, but he never bothered to explain the shame behind Lotor’s ancestry, only that it was there. His mother’s name was something he’d learned from Dayak. It was only when he was older that she’d allowed him access to a library of data thought destroyed, encrypted and sometimes corrupted code hidden behind walls.
It was text written by ancient Galra who were long dead at that point, bitterly detailing Daibazaal’s failing state and, in some cases, disregarding law and laying blame to the empress. They had been present at its destruction, their survival credited to the Paladins of Old—to King Alfor himself, a revered figure now despised and scoffed at. His evacuation of Daibazaal had saved not only the Galra race, but the solar system itself. Their logs had ended there; Lotor presumed those Galra had perished alongside the Alteans, their names lost to history.
And he thinks of a wonder he’d had then. ‘Why did Alfor not save his own people instead?’
Any questions he’d had were forgotten with the later discovery of Honerva’s science logs, nestled alongside codes that once belonged to Alfor and his alchemists. Restless nights spent studying were the reason he hadn’t delved deeper into the circumstances of his birth, content with assuming that it had been before Daibazaal’s destruction, a time where an infant’s memory could not reach.
But there were times where he’d been unable to sleep, gazing up at the silky canopy that curtained his oversized bed, its red the same as the rest of the room. The questions had come then, silent thoughts never spoken but lingering at the back of his mind. When had it happened? Was there celebration among the people? Had there been a holiday dedicated to him as there had been for the now deceased Altean princess? Had Zarkon and Honerva—had they loved him, once, amongst the chaos?
His life has been spent in ignorance, which he supposes is something he’s always been vaguely aware of, but it becomes too real too suddenly as Allura continues. She speaks of the rift again and how, following it, there had been complications in his birth—something he remembers Dayak mentioning in passing, which he’d never taken to heart. He’d been born with eyes that glowed gold and hair as shockingly white as Honerva’s.
And just like his parents, the rift and its quintessence had seeped into his very being.
“Dayak said she assumed you weren’t as affected as Zarkon and Honerva,” says Allura. “But she told us that you’d been stewing in a pool of quintessence even before birth, and—”
“I died.” It’s the first thing he’s able to say, and it’s spoken quietly, his throat tight. He sits again, staring at his lap with unfocused eyes. “I died.”
“—Yes.”
It’s hard to grasp. His mind swims with a headache that cannot be relieved. Dwelling on this isn’t good for him, he knows that. “And the quintessence field only worsened this… this…”
He struggles for a word that Allura finds for him.
“Corruption.”
“And the ‘wild spells’ Dr. Wright mentioned?”
Allura nods, gravely.
Lotor breathes and shuts his eyes, head bowing. His hair falls over his shoulders and frames his face. He can’t bring himself to look at the rest, aware of how the mood has changed yet again. He thinks he should keep a counter.
“Lotor,” says Allura, softly. She reaches a hand out only to draw it back when he flinches away. There’s a flicker of hurt in her eyes, but she doesn’t mention it. “Something dangerous lives inside of the rift. Something that cannot be explained by science alone, and whatever it is, it hurt Zarkon, it hurt Honerva, and it… It hurt you, too.” She lowers her gaze and barely hides how tears begin to pool at the corners of her eyes, which both moves and irritates Lotor. “I hate saying it—”
Then don’t.
“—but Zarkon had been a good man before his death, and Father… He had always sung praise for Honerva. The rift changed them.”
But that change had been by their design. They’d made the choice to go into the rift—to even research it in the first place, putting themselves and their people and their unborn baby in harm’s way. They’d been selfish. They’d been cruel.
They hurt the universe and they hurt Lotor. It didn’t matter if something in the rift had changed them, because it hadn’t changed much, apparently. They were to blame. This was their fault.
But Lotor does not say this because he knows how hypocritical it is. He’s the one who continued Honerva’s research. Perhaps he’s at fault as much as they are.
And children have died because of him. He doesn’t forget their faces—so small and innocent and devoid of color and life.
His stomach churns and he inhales, slowly, before gazing at Allura.
She’s trying to be kind, he knows that. These are words she doesn’t have to speak, and yet she does, her voice tight, her eyes wet. She’s a gracious soul, one who doesn’t deserve the misery that has plagued her. He knows that he’s contributed to that misery, however, so he doesn’t make move to comfort her. It isn’t within his rights.
Moments such as these make him hate how everchanging the universe is. There had been a time where he’d been ready to give Allura his entirety, but now—now he was left with nothing to offer.
It’s a minute later when Allura gathers herself—a trained trait—and continues. “Knowing what we knew, we decided that just leaving you to Honerva’s will wasn’t right. It took several encounters before we were able to retrieve you, and you put up a fight. I have the scar to prove it.”
Lotor’s blood runs cold.
“But I was able to subdue you. Barely. Since then, I’ve been healing you over intervals while you sleep. It’s when you put up the least resistance.”
Lotor thinks of his first time waking here. He’d been manic. Allura’s touch had saved him, returning him to reality.
“Eventually you did come to, but you had bouts over the course of several weeks where you’d lose yourself again.”
He remembers how, in those brief moments of consciousness, he’d ached terribly. Migraines had left him nearly blinded.
“It’s been a slow process, one that’s succeeding, yes, but… I haven’t been able to draw it all out. It hurts us both when I try, and I’ve exhausted what I’ve learned from Oriande, and I can’t re—” She pauses and deliberately changes course. “I fear that the corruption runs deeper than thought.”
Allura forces herself to look at him, though all he sees in her is remorse and guilt and, beneath those, terror.
“I fear that it’s all that’s keeping you alive .”
“Alive,” he echoes. The word is hollow and bitter and tainted. As far as any cosmic force is concerned, as far as his father was concerned, his life had been a mistake. He knows now that, perhaps, Zarkon had been right. It makes him sick. “I shouldn’t be alive.”
It hurts to think about—to think he might never have been here. Something in him screams to forget, repress, move on, but he can’t, and he doubts that anyone will let him. Knowing that his life has never truly been his own is a stab to his pride. He flexes his fingers, stares at his palm, and then raises a hand to his chest, seeking out his heartbeat and breathing with the familiar skips.
He’s here. Barely.
His hand falls back to his thigh and grips the fabric there, then relaxes. Repress. A thought hounds him. It’s a distant and gravelly and oddly familiar voice that says, ‘You weren’t worth saving.’
There are several moments where he lets this thought consume him. He doesn’t immediately notice Allura touching his shoulder, her brows drawn together worriedly. “Lotor,” she says, “what matters is that you are alive. You’re here now. And you’re safe.”
When he looks at Allura, the room—the world itself—falls away, and he wonders why anything was ever deemed worthy to exist in the same space as her. She’s pristine, the very picture of beauty with clear open eyes and the perfect curve of a smile, a pillar of strength, a woman destined for greatness. To know that he lives in her presence is an honor and a privilege, and something that he ruined for himself, four years ago. What good was a pauper to a princess?
Lotor breathes and feels himself begin to relax, taut muscles unwinding, a lazy smile curling onto his mouth. “I’m here because of you,” he says softly, as though it is a private mantra he recites only for her. “I owe you my life, Princess.”
He does what he can to cherish that fleeting moment, for Allura draws her hand back, her smile now playful. “You owe me a castle.”
And Lotor laughs despite himself. “Give it a century and I’m sure I can drag something from the depths of space—”
And then he stops. Everything stops. A new panic rises in his throat as he flexes his fingers again. Another memory reaches him—one of aching hands and tense muscles and holding on for dear life for, what, weeks, months, perhaps even years?
It’s not only the castle that’s been lost.
“Where,” he asks, “is Sincline?”
Keith says, evenly, “With Haggar.”
It’s an answer he’d expected and yet it hits him like a blow to his face. He knows well just how far Haggar’s greed extends. He knows he shouldn’t be surprised. He weathers Keith’s reply. Lotor leans his forehead into his hand.
This isn’t the first time Haggar has taken from him just to benefit her own wicked yearnings, and, as he’s learning, it won’t be the last either.
He wonders when this game began, but it’s a list so long that he can’t pinpoint a single first instance, only knowing that there’s been so, so many. Narti comes to mind—a recent case, a case he’d promptly disposed of himself, though regret had run deep when the first bloom of red appeared on her stomach. He remembers how his blood had chilled and how there hadn’t been time to dwell after, not until he was stowed away in a pathetic prison cell within the Castle of Lions.
It’s been nearly five years years since then, and four since he’d last seen Ezor, Zethrid—and Acxa. There’s a certain bitterness that taints his thoughts of them, and yet, in the deepest recesses of his heart, he worries. They’re capable—it’s part of the reason he’d taken them on as his generals—but not knowing seeded fear for their well-being.
He’ll ask later.
The paladins discuss something and he hasn’t been listening, but he interrupts, vexed, “You say the ships are with Haggar, and yet you are not mobilizing an entire fleet to retrieve them? I nearly killed you with those ships—yet you’ve left them to the will of a witch seeking power than can cross gods themselves?”
Several moments pass until Pidge says, under her breath, “Yeah, thanks for reminding us.”
Lotor stands suddenly and leans his hands on the table, feeling it tremble beneath his weight. “The Sincline ships were designed using what I could find of King Alfor’s schematics for Voltron. They’re enhanced weaponry with abilities I’m not yet aware of myself. You were able to retrieve me—so why not them?”
“Retrieving you,” says Keith, similarly aggressive, “was already a big task as it was. Don’t think you can just stand there and act like we didn’t consider all our options.”
Lotor feels the beginning of a laugh nearly bubble out of him. You haven’t before , he thinks, but bites his tongue and spits back, “With those ships at her disposal, Haggar could easily take a large fraction of the universe.”
“Hey.” A chair rattles as Lance stands, too, his brows drawn. He’s not menacing whatsoever, even when he leans across the table to intrude on Lotor’s space. “Give us a break, okay? You should be happy we even bothered going after you!”
“ Lance ,” hisses Allura.
“Oh, come on,” says Lance, his voice pitched, “we’re all thinking it! Pity is one thing, acting on it is totally different.”
There’s more sound as Hunk jumps up and puts a hand on Lance’s shoulder, as though trying to mollify him, but Lance shrugs him off. Hunk’s eyes dart between the two, and then he groans as Keith stands, any caution forgotten in pursuit of petty pride.
“Lance, Keith, come on—” tries Hunk.
Lotor, equally intense and apparently far more concerned than the rest, gazes hard at Lance. There’s a head’s difference in height between them—which shouldn’t make Lotor feel like he’s won, and yet.
“I don’t recall asking for your pity,” says Lotor through his teeth.
Lance scoffs. “Yeah, well, you sure seem happy about it now, don’t ya? Considering you’re totally fine with cozying up to Allura—”
Another hand—Shiro’s—slams on the table, which nearly gives under the force. Silence falls suddenly. Lance has jumped back. Hunk sits obediently and immediately. Keith, seemingly guilty, sits after a moment, too. Shiro stands, however, regarding them.
“That’s enough ,” he commands. “We’re here to work together, not tear at each other’s throats. I know this is a tense situation, but if we’re going to make this happen, then we have to discuss these matters calmly.” He looks pointedly at Lance for a moment. Lance swallows and sits back down. “And without accusations.”
And then Shiro looks at Lotor the same way, but Lotor has seen worse. Still, he leans back, shuttering any anger. It’s not his place to question authority, let alone Shiro’s, who is obviously of rank in this facility. Squabbling “cadets” don’t seem out of Shiro’s realm of expertise, though Lotor thinks he himself hardly qualifies as a mere cadet.
But he wears the uniform, and so there’s no arguing with officials. He knows better than to let himself go off like that. It only brings trouble. It had been the same at Central Command, too, where no one spare himself had bothered to argue Zarkon’s incessantly mad demands.
Lotor had been verbally whipped afterwards, and then literally whipped by Dayak.
When the mood starts returning to normal and the only noise is that of a clock, Shiro, pleased, settles back into his seat. The firm line of his jaw sets. “Alright,” he says, gesturing for Lotor to sit as well, but Lotor doesn’t, “now that we’ve put all our thoughts and feelings out there—”
“I’ve known the witch,” murmurs Lotor, “far longer than the rest of you. And I know you’ve all been victim to her dealings—” He looks at Shiro and Allura as he says this. “—but you haven’t witnessed them firsthand as many times as I. Watching planets fall to ruin just because it might be a fun experiment for her, it’s… difficult. Horrifying.” He crosses his arms and worries his lower lip. “And her having those ships is a greater risk than you seem to realize.”
“Lotor,” says Allura after a beat passes, “we know the risk. The ships weren’t our first priority.”
“They should have been.”
It’s not his intention to seem ungrateful; it’s just that fear plagues him. Haggar isn’t the type to go down without taking someone with her, and with the power she now possesses, there’s no telling how many may meet their demise by her hands. He’d almost been a victim to his mother, himself. He doesn’t want to watch the same thing happen to anyone else. Not again.
The paladins say nothing in objection. They’re grimly aware of what they’ve left to her, and should anything happen, they’re the ones who would be blamed first. They carry that burden now.
To Lotor, Keith says, reluctantly, “It’s not just you and your ships.”
“What do you mean?”
“What he means,” says Shiro, “is that she’s amassed an army.” He hesitates and looks to Allura who, with a shuttered expression, nods. Shiro says, “An army of Alteans.”
Lotor’s breath hitches. Shiro and Allura gauge his reaction before Shiro pulls up a screen from his device that displays pictures of a disassembled robot, white in color, lean, and nearly destroyed. It looks like scrap, but had it been untouched, it would be an undoubtable beauty. But Lotor does not dwell on its craftsmanship or the fine details. He doesn’t need to.
“This,” says Shiro, “is a mech that attacked Earth over a year ago. It possessed abilities similar to the Komar—which we now know is because of Honer—”
“Haggar,” says Lotor, distractedly.
“...Because of Haggar’s effect on it. And it was powered by—” Shiro changes the picture to that of a redheaded girl, young and slim, her appearance undeniably familiar. She’s attached to several monitors, asleep and unaware. “—an Altean.”
Lotor approaches Shiro and numbly takes the device from him, browsing the several photos available. They range in subject. There are barely any of the young Altean—who Lotor recognizes as a daughter of the colony—just a few for reference. To Lotor’s shock, she seems—healthy.
But she shouldn’t be. She shouldn’t.
The rest are images of the mech itself, from different angles. Interrupting those are personal shots of sceneries that must have been categorized incorrectly.
Lotor is silent for what feels like a long while, staring, the dim orange glow of the screen highlighting him. He feels his eyes begin to itch and ache.
“When she woke,” says Allura, watching Lotor carefully, “we questioned her, but she was delusional. It took several weeks for her memory of the event to return, and then she outright refused to answer our questions. Even if she’d wanted to, I doubt she could have. The mech had her drained.”
“Drained,” echoes Lotor.
“Yes. She— She asked about you.”
There’s an ache in the hollow of Lotor’s throat; the pain in his eyes worsens and becomes almost unbearable. He draws in a breath, but it shudders. Something wet fogs his vision. No one seems to notice.
Pidge continues, “But because of the mech’s druid-like abilities, it didn’t take long for us to figure out that Haggar was behind this. We asked the Altean about her, but she didn’t answer us. She’s really stubborn. But we were able to pull coordinates from her flight suit after—” She grimaces, looking to Hunk. “After many, many nights.”
“Oh,” Hunk groans, “those stunk.”
Lotor listens to their tale, dazed, entranced. He doesn’t know how this has happened.
“Upon following the coordinates,” says Allura, “we found a facility. We thought we might find more Alteans, or maybe find some answers as to what Haggar’s plans are, but… there were no other Alteans there. Just y—”
“You said the mechs had the same ability as the Komar,” Lotor interrupts, the pressure in his head finding a rhythmic tempo that throbs in his ears. It spreads from his temple and into his neck and then down his spine, his skin rising with several small bumps. He’s cold.
He shuts his eyes, briefly, before addressing the room. The paladins stare at him and he sees their caution. They don’t want to give away too much, or perhaps are unaware of how much is too much. Lotor frowns and waits.
“—Yes,” Keith answers after a moment. “And we would know. The Komar has drained us before.”
“I’m aware.” Lotor sets the device down on the table and braces himself against it, sweat dampening the back of his neck. His limbs feel weak and it must show, because Allura stands to support him on one side. Lotor draws his mouth into a fine line. “It shouldn’t have those abilities.”
A charge sparks through the air. Keith stands, too, with hands clenched at his side. There’s a hint of danger in his tone—and everyone is on edge. Lotor feels how Allura has gone rigid beside him, though she still has hold of his arm.
Keith asks, “How would you know?”
“I know,” says Lotor, “because I designed it.”