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Kolivan had been born into war.
Kolivan had been born six millennia after the fall of Daibazaal and its sister planets, reached adulthood after a few centuries, and then quietly began the Blade of Marmora and started doing what he could to slow the expansion and damages of the Galra Empire.
Kolivan had spent the better part of four thousand years on this war. He was not yet an old man, but he felt the age. He felt the broken-healed-broken-healed bones and torn-fixed-not-enough-but-there’s-a-war-to-fight tendons and the too-tight-too-painful scar tissue. His good days were painful and his bad days required medication, and there were injuries he had that he would never be able to make up for.
Kolivan had dedicated his life to ending the Empire, and had thought that his fight, while not over, was nearing an end.
Kolivan had thought he could rest.
“You did what?”
His eyes tracked from one paladin to the next, from Krolia to Coran to the little Altean woman with the yellow hair.
“We won the fight, but Lotor was left behind in the rift,” Allura said. “We didn’t have time to go back for him, not safely. We barely managed to solve the expanding rifts that his ship left.”
“Princess,” Kolivan said, speaking very slowly and trying not to explode, emotionally. “Are you attempting to tell me that you killed Lotor?”
“I didn’t kill him!” Allura exclaimed, and then immediately shrank back down. “We just… couldn’t afford to save him.”
“From a situation you incited,” Kolivan said.
“Excuse me?” Allura demanded. Most of the paladins bristled at that, and even Krolia’s eyes widened.
Kolivan didn’t move. “From what you’ve said, you confronted him. Later, when he attempted to speak with you and parlay, you shot first, and then pressed the issue until he began shooting back. Am I wrong?”
“He said he was going to kill all the Galra,” Krolia said, her voice flat. “In case you missed that part.”
“A claim I’d be more willing to take seriously if you hadn’t suggested that he’d suffered some form of mental break,” Kolivan said. “Maybe he was. But you still directly caused the death of your most important political ally.”
“He was a monster,” Pidge insisted.
“He was useful,” Kolivan said, and kept himself from slamming a fist down onto the console. He had control. He did. He had to. “With him gone, the entire empire falls to Sendak. You’ve lost your Castle, lost your most important ally, and the empire is once again whole and aimed against you.”
“And what if he’d done to Galra exactly what he did to my people?” Romelle demanded.
“And what, exactly, did he do?” Kolivan asked. Calm. He had to stay calm. Yes, they’d ruined everything, but they were children, for the most part. Krolia and Coran still had a lot of explaining to do. Nonetheless, Voltron was the cornerstone of the rebellion. “How much do you actually know?”
“He killed hundreds of Alteans!” the young Altean woman (Romelle? Yes, that had been her name) shouted. “My brother and parents and so many others, all dead!”
“So you found corpses and graves of…how many people were there originally?” Kolivan held up a hand to forestall them. “How many of your people, as a percentage? You found corpses, yes? How many compared to your original population?”
“Seriously?” Lance asked, looking horrified. “Ratios? That’s your thing? The fact that he did it at all is a problem!”
“I have a point, paladin,” Kolivan said. “If you would give me more information to have a larger picture, I would be happy to reach it.”
Lance’s mouth snapped shut, but there was an anger in his eyes that was going to take time and effort to quell.
“We’re not…” Krolia said, and then faltered. She looked a little sick. “We can’t confirm that they were corpses.”
Kolivan stared at her for a very, very long moment. “Repeat that.”
“…we had difficulty analyzing the tubes. They appeared dead, and we didn’t see any signs of energy going through the pods, and they’d seemed to be unmoving, even breathing. Given the lack of obvious life-support and life signs, we made the call that they were most likely dead, not simply comatose or in stasis.”
“You didn’t know?” Kolivan demanded.
“When my brother—”
“No,” Kolivan said, cutting her off. “Enough. My question from earlier, the percentage. Now.”
Krolia put a hand on Romelle’s shoulder, ignoring the way the girl, barely an adult, if that, looked up at her. Krolia met Kolivan’s eyes instead, through the screens and light years. Krolia’s hand squeezed, a subtle motion that Kolivan only caught because he’d spent years, so many years, on—
“Romelle,” Krolia said, her voice quiet and with a hint of dread. “I think it’s best if you answer his question.”
“But you—”
“Romelle.”
The girl frowned, her lips pursing and brow furrowing as she thought. “Fifteen percent? Maybe twenty?”
“I see,” Kolivan said. He stared up at them, fighting to control the roiling rage in his chest. They’d thrown it all away. Millennia, so close, and they’d thrown it all away. “How many Galra do you think die in Zarkon’s armies? In the long-term, what portion of the species was conscripted to the army, and died in service?”
“Most volunteered,” Krolia said. It was rote. She was arguing, but her heart wasn’t in it. “Most were proud to serve.”
“You and I both know how much of that was a symptom of the cultural brainwashing,” Kolivan said. He shook his head. “The answer is 47%, as high as 56% in some generations. We live for long enough that most who join the army die.”
He paused, breathed, and said, “The Blade of Marmora’s rate of death in battle is 82%.”
Krolia closed her eyes. Keith wrinkled his nose and looked away, just for a moment, and then seemed to steel himself. He looked at Kolivan again. “Fine, so Zarkon was doing to Galra what Lotor was doing to Alteans. So what?”
“How many, more recently, do you believe died under Lotor’s orders, fighting Sendak?” Kolivan asked. His fingers dug into his arms, claws pricking. He couldn’t say it, not yet, he had to make them understand…
“The Galra started this war!” Allura snapped.
“And they will continue it!” Kolivan shot back.
He paused.
Breathed.
“With Lotor gone, Sendak will take the helm. The war will continue as if Zarkon was never killed, and you’ve lost your base of operations. You alienated one of your strongest allies, almost certainly killed him in the ensuing fight, and left the empire to someone who does believe in the philosophy that almost destroyed your entire species, rather than saving it and then causing a dent,” Kolivan said. He took another breath. Released it. He couldn’t yell, not now. He hadn’t been this tempted to lose his temper in decaphoebs. “Lotor could be swayed. He could be convinced, debated, argued with. Lesser evils, child. There were two obvious options for the throne, and you cleared the route for the worse of them.”
“…shit,” Krolia whispered.
(It was a word she’d picked up on Earth, one that Kolivan hadn’t heard before her return, but had heard since.)
“He—”
“Did you think it through?” Kolivan asked, cutting off Pidge. “Before you chose to confront him, and chose the way you’d do so, did you consider the possible ramifications, or did you only think to play judge, jury, and executioner?”
“What he did was inexcusable,” Allura said, clearly doing her level best to maintain her own temper.
“Yes, and in your quest to get revenge for several hundred, you’ve doomed what may be trillions of sapient lives, and untold numbers of sentients besides,” Kolivan said. He fixed her with a stare. She needed to understand this. They all did. “Why did Lotor kill those Alteans?”
Allura pursed her lips and stared him down. “From what we understand, he was harvesting their quintessence, most likely to fuel his attempts to reach the quintessence field.”
Kolivan closed his eyes. “The quintessence field that he claimed could be used to solve the energy crisis.”
“What energy crisis?” Romelle asked.
Kolivan opened his eyes. He met hers, and then shook his head. If anyone was an innocent here, this girl was it. So be it.
“For the past ten thousand years, the Galra empire has been spreading across the cosmos. With them, they brought technology that was more advanced than the local, or found technology that was more advanced than theirs, absorbed it, and proceeded to distribute it. Invariably, the technology ran on quintessence. Transportation, entertainment, agricultural technology, hospitals, communications, it’s almost all fueled by quintessence. Some planets have their own energy sources, something that runs local technology independently, but they are rare. For a time, this energy could be provided by harvesting from Balmera and other natural quintessence-producing creatures, but the empire is too large now. Even if all military expenditures were suspended, there would continue to be a shortage.”
He looked Allura in the eyes. “This is not a secret problem. Everyone is aware of it. Lotor was not lying.”
“I know that,” Allura said. She seemed frustrated. “But what he did was—”
“Haggar’s solution was sacrifice entire planets.”
Silence.
“What?” Keith asked, after the lack of noise had started to grow heavier than the tension. “What do you mean?”
“The Blade has had people inside all branches of the Galra army, collecting information. Much like Krolia, some were or are still collecting information from inside factions other than Lotor’s,” Kolivan said. “Some worked for Haggar, and saw her do this. Zarkon delegated the energy crisis to Haggar. She chose to drain entire planets of their quintessence, killing everyone and everything there, for what would run the Empire for… well, for a foeb, if used sparingly. This was, of course, after using up every Balmera they could track down.”
The paladins looked ready to throw up.
Kolivan continued. “Zarkon and Haggar manufactured an energy crisis that they could not manage without this process. Lotor inherited the crisis and, from what you’re saying, has spent the past several centuries attempting to solve it in a way that did not involve sacrificing billions for a temporary fix.”
“I am aware,” Kolivan said, overriding the protests that tried to rise up. “That what he did was wrong. That is not what I am arguing.”
“It was a temporary fix as well!” Allura insisted. She didn’t quail when Kolivan looked at her, unimpressed and tired and so very ready to start yelling. “The fight we had, it tore the fabric of reality to the point we had to sacrifice the Castle to stop it from destroying the universe, and it was because of all the times Lotor entered and exited the rift!”
“This was, of course, after you destroyed the portal he’d developed with your help,” Kolivan said, fighting to keep his voice dry instead of angry. “Which, presumably, had something to do with forging a safe path to the quintessence field and back, seeing as you said he used it to go there with you, despite the ship later proving to be capable of jumping there and back with ease.”
The princess was trembling.
“You could have broken off the friendships you’d forged while retaining him as an ally,” Kolivan said. “You could have discussed things. You could have, if he proved unreasonable, waited until there was a way to peacefully transfer power to a more reasonable candidate, and then assassinated him. You chose the option that would, in the long and short term, cause the most deaths.”
Those might have been tears.
“I have been fighting against Zarkon’s empire for four thousand years,” Kolivan said. “I know how much deaths can hurt, even those of people you’ve never met, and especially those of family. There is a reason I urge my Blades to put aside their emotions on missions and when making decisions; by acting on your emotions here, you may have very well doomed the universe.”
“Several hundred Alteans in a universe which has not had a full planet of them in ten thousand years are a loss, but I cannot believe that avenging their deaths, which you have admitted may not have even occurred yet, is worth the countless dead that are to follow as Sendak takes the Empire, as the energy crisis climbs to the point of claiming lives when hospitals lose power and deliveries to remote outposts cannot be made, as Haggar continues to destroy entire planets to patch a fix and feed her own pet projects.” Kolivan unclenched his hands from where they’d been tight around his biceps, and lowered them. “I will contact Olkarion. Someone will find a way to urge you home. I hope that, the next time I contact you, you will have a plan for how to handle the fallout of Lotor’s loss.”
He met Krolia’s eyes one last time, lips pursed.
“I expect a full report on your own involvement, sister.”
He shut the communicator, breathed in, and collapsed back into the nearest chair.
Kolivan buried his face in his hands and fought the urge to break something.
Four thousand years.
Four thousand years.
He’d been so close to making a real change.
And they’d ruined it.
He gave himself some time to stop trembling.
Antok, Ulaz, Thace, Regris, and so many, many more of his Blades had been sacrificed to help Voltron.
They’d thrown that away in favor of emotion.
They’d thrown so many lives, so much help, away.
To avenge people who would never even be around to thank them.
How many were going to die, now?
He couldn’t… he couldn’t trust them to make the plans. Not anymore. Not now. Perhaps not ever.
He couldn’t let them know that, not while those damned emotional responses were still running high.
(Teenagers. Adolescents. This had been a terrible idea from the start.)
He got to his feet, brought up the number for Olkarion, and set about contacting Ryner.
In the back of his head, lists began forming themselves. Planets at high risk of being cut off from the quintessence deliveries as Haggar gained control over the full empire again, common supply routes for military ships, the ones that could be reached, and how, by ship now that there was not a Castle of Lions with a convenient teludav to utilize.
(Had the little green one remembered that dozens of prisoners that had worked alongside her father had only been found and freed on Lotor’s information?)
(Had the princess forgotten the conversations Kolivan had personally had with her about how severe the energy crisis was, and just who was the most likely to be affected first if it remained unsolved?)
(Had they—)
No, no time for sentiment.
The grief reared its head, as it always did, and Kolivan shoved it down once more. No. He had a universe to pick up the scraps of. There’d be others, yes, but he had people and power, and that meant duty. Responsibility. Obligation, even.
He needed to find a candidate for the throne, didn’t he?
Needed to contact the Balmeras to tell them they’d be high-priority targets again, tell the rebellions that Voltron was no longer able to come to their aid, consider the—
“Kolivan?”
He looked up to see Ryner. She seemed confused, but as pleasant as ever. He knew the grief and rage and disappointment wouldn’t show, not on his face, but he wasn’t planning on keeping this secret. Ryner was too central to the Coalition to be kept in the dark.
“I have grave news.”
(He would, he reminded himself, need to contact Krolia to express just how furious he was with her. The children were children. She and Coran should have known better.)
(Kolivan should have known better.)