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Coran couldn't help the strange sort of jealousy that came over him when he first saw Commander Sam Holt standing in the Castle's kitchen. No, Coran's kitchen (that he sometimes permitted Hunk to use). Curious and wary, he watched Pidge eagerly demonstrate the goo dispensing system as she poured a generous helping into a plate.
Commander Holt's face was drawn and pale, gray stubble coating his chin in patches. There were deep bags under his eyes, and his hairline receded back quite a bit, but his gaze was still soft, his smile still fond, when he looked at his daughter.
Coran tightened his hands into fists and spun on his heel, leaving the kitchen before either Pidge or her father could catch sight of him watching. Jealous? He snorted, his mustache disturbed by the puff of air. Well, of course, but he couldn't tell you why, exactly, he was jealous.
Jealous of Sam Holt, another father figure to the Paladins that Coran came to love like his own children? Or jealous of Pidge, for finding her family when Coran's was long dead?
So focused on his thoughts and tumultuous emotions was he that he didn't realize he'd run headlong into someone else until he landed on his rump, a sticky liquid coating his shirt. "Quiznak!" he said, prying his damp shirt away from his chest.
"I'm so sorry, Coran!" said Matt Holt. He was still on his feet, but he now held an empty glass, the milkshake that must've been inside it soaking into his and Coran's shirts. He set the glass aside and offered him a hand.
Coran accepted, and Matt helped him to his feet.
"Were you just in the kitchen with Pidge and my dad?" Matt asked, eyes bright.
"Yes," Coran said in a voice he knew was curter than the other deserved.
Matt didn't seem bothered by it though, instead wondering, "What were they doing?"
"I believe Number Five was giving your father a tour of the Castle," he said. "Or feeding him; he does look like he needs some meat on his bones."
Matt's face fell almost as quickly as it had brightened. "Yeah, yeah he does," he said. "Thanks, Coran."
"No worries, Number Two-and-a-Half," said Coran.
Matt offered him a smile - one that looked strained - and patted him on the shoulder as he walked past towards the kitchen.
Coran watched him until he disappeared around the corner before he carried on to the bridge, where Allura might've required his assistance.
He found himself alone with Commander Holt for the first time in the middle of the Castle's night cycle.
Coran, despite the exhaustion that came with making sure all the Castle's myriad operations ran smoothly, spent another sleepless night updating the records on the Castle's system, archiving information that was no longer useful after ten thousand years and adding knowledge acquired within the last few years of travel and building of the Coalition.
Sam Holt ventured into the records room, staring around with a wide-eyed curiosity Coran often saw on his children's faces, but from the way he held himself - relaxed rather than stiff - he likely hadn't spotted him combing through the systems on a console in the corner.
After debating for a few tics whether it was appropriate to call attention to himself, Coran, keeping his voice low, said, "Good evening, Commander Holt."
Sam jumped, startled, and the stiffness in his posture returned when he caught sight of him. "Ah, Coran," he said, smiling sheepishly. "I didn't see you there."
Yes, obviously. "Easy to get lost in one's thoughts when we should be dreaming," Coran observed with a slight smile of his own. Really, he liked Sam and wanted to get along with him, but the way the Paladins - and not just his own children - gravitated towards him, like satellites that went without a planet for so long, set him on edge and filled him with an unfamiliar envy.
I've been looking after them all this time, Coran thought. Even Shiro needed my support; still needs my support.
"Yes, it is," Sam agreed, approaching him. "What is this room? Katie never brought me here."
Katie? Oh, Number Five. "It's the library," Coran told him, gesturing towards the consoles set up in a row, with bulbs that projected holographic screens attached. "Or the records room, I suppose. From here anyone can access every non-confidential file uploaded into the Castle's systems. Everything from Altean botany to Taujeerian ark blueprints to transcripts from King Groggery the Terrible's diplomatic meetings." And how terrible they were, Coran thought, chuckling at his own joke.
Sam blinked at him, momentarily looking overwhelmed, but he smiled as he stepped up to a console. He tentatively touched a screen, and when a blue projection appeared before him with a query written in Altean, he laughed, looking and sounding happier than Coran had ever seen him in their short acquaintance.
"This is amazing!" he said. He started typing at random, though Coran thought it unlikely he could read - or spell in - Altean.
Though now that he thought about it... "I believe Number Five programmed an English keyboard into the Castle's computers," Coran said, his mouth clumsy around the still-unfamiliar word.
"Number Five?" Sam asked, glancing at him.
"Your daughter," said Coran. Oh, he could've kicked himself for a fool; of course Commander Holt wouldn't call his own daughter 'Number Five'.
(Number Two, perhaps, but not Number Five.)
"Interesting naming system you have," Sam commented wryly. He tapped once more on the keyboard, then smiled beseechingly at Coran. "Do you mind changing the keyboard then?"
Coran did, until the script was completely unreadable to him. Honestly, English looked more like clanmuirl-scratch than a proper alphabet, but he supposed it couldn't be expected that Earth's languages would be as advanced as Altean considering the state of their technology.
Sam grinned and typed something. "I can't believe she's adjusted so well to being around aliens," he said. The holoscreen displayed an image of the Green Lion, and Sam waved a hand, rotating it. "She, and Matt, and her friends..." His levity disappeared even quicker than it came, and he dismissed the image, the projector bulb dimming. He buried his face in his arm, a broken cry muffled in the sleeve of his robe.
Alarmed, Coran watched the strongest man he'd ever met - a father, a kindred spirit - break down.
Sam crouched in front of the console. "Th-they were children," he said, stuttering. "Matt was barely out of school, and Shiro not much older. And Katie--oh, and Katie!" His shoulders shook with almost silent sobs.
With a heavy sigh, Coran sat beside him. His hand hovered, uncertain, over his back, but he got over any doubts quickly and patted him consolingly. Always the comforter, never the comforted, he thought with wry amusement.
"It's all right," he said, though the words sounded empty to his own ears. "You're safe now, Commander."
"Commander," Sam spat with surprising venom. "What good is that title when I couldn't even keep my two men safe? And one of them was my son." He lifted his head and looked straight at Coran, eyes red but still shining with ferocity. "You, Coran, have done much better than me, keeping my children safe. Keeping all of them safe." He wiped his face with his sleeve, nose wrinkling in disgust. "And dammit why are there all these advanced alien civilizations, but no one can be bothered to set out tissues?"
Coran reached into his pocket and pulled out the handkerchief he still kept there more out of habit than out of any real expectation of function. He passed it to Sam, who nodded to him in mute gratitude.
"Yes, being a Paladin of Voltron has always been dangerous," Coran agreed. "Even before Zarkon expanded his Empire, there was never a guarantee that all five Paladins would live to see the end of a battle."
Sam snorted into the handkerchief. "I know," he said, "but God, if I knew this would happen when I told Katie that..." He laughed humorlessly. "I would've kept my damn mouth shut. Tempting fate and all."
Coran didn't know what he was talking about, but he knew a thing or two about past conversations returning to haunt him.
"Do Alteans believe in fate, Coran?" Sam wondered.
"Hmm, we did," Coran said cautiously. "And I do. I think Princess Allura still does as well, but we've been too busy to discuss philosophy or theology since we awoke from the cryopods."
"Yes, well," said Sam thoughtfully, and no longer sounding so broken and distressed, "I never did, but now..."
"But now?" Coran prompted when he trailed off.
"I always thought of myself as a man of science," said Sam, wringing the soiled handkerchief between his hands. "And men of science, we forge our own paths."
"But sometimes it spirals out of your control," Coran said, nodding along. Questions he had once, in his youth, when his grandfather still lived.
"Yes," Sam agreed, eyes sharpening and lucidity returning to his gaze.
"Well, with all due respect, Commander," Coran said, "I always thought that was foolish. Why is not the path we set our feet on also our fate?"
Sam scratched at the stubble growing on his chin. "I...suppose I never thought of it that way," he conceded.
"Consider it, Commander," continued Coran. "Our choices determine our fates, like King Alfor choosing to forge the comet rather than find some way to destroy it brought about Voltron." And who knows how many other problems it wrought? he thought regretfully.
"You're right, Coran," Sam said, patting him on the knee. "It's so simple to blame myself for things out of my control, just like it's easy to blame the universe for what I can help." He chuckled, eyes crinkling in a genuine smile. "I worry for them, but I'm so proud of them too. But why can't they be safe? God, what would Colleen think if she knew?" He rubbed his face, and Coran rested a hand on his shoulder.
"I do not know your wife like you and your children do," Coran said, "but I think she would be proud and worried, just like you are."
Sam nodded, his shoulders shaking anew, and Coran felt his own flash of pride, his own stomach-churning regret, for what was and what might have been.
No, Coran realized, he and Sam Holt weren't so different after all.