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He didn’t want to be king.
He never wanted it. And he always thought that by being from a mixed lineage, his life would end before he could abide his responsibilities.
But he had to accept his reality when his mother disappeared and he had to take the lead.
And even when he did all his obligations as an emperor, causing fear to his servants, gaining respect from his subjects, doing everything he had to do and more to bring order to his kingdom, the sour sensation in his stomach of knowing he didn’t belong there, of knowing everything that had happened for he to be standing there, made him want to run and disappear forever. He didn’t want to carry the phantom weight that was attached to the crown. He didn’t want to stain his head with the spilled blood from those royalty victims that came out from the steel. He didn’t want to be followed by the metallic and rotten odor always present in the throne placed over the fallen knights’ corpses, over the innocent ones trapped in the battle, over all those that lost their lives thanks to the cruelty from previous kings and queens.
And he was about to lose his sanity from having to maintain it in front of the eyes of the people, where he had to act as if the vain death of an innocent didn’t affect him, as if he didn’t care of the lives of the people living under his power, and his objective was the conquer and destruction of more planets, as if he didn’t feel the enormous emptiness in his chest where his heart used to beat.
Because all the reasons he supported it now looked stupid, because he now remembered clearly how his mother cried every night after leaving the damned crown and title of queen beside the bed and she became one more galra in Daibazaal that didn’t want to keep doing that.
‘You have to be strong,’ she used to tell him when he tried to comfort her and wipe her tears, ‘You have to be strong and never show weakness out there, Keith.’
She wasn’t someone cruel, his mother, she was always kind and loving. But when she put on the crown, just as if she was bewitched, all her personality changed to abide her part as ruler.
And he wanted to be strong for her, he wanted to demonstrate that he didn’t needed to be despicable to be able to rule the empire, he wanted to, little by little, show that even him could show mercy when cruelty wasn’t necessary.
But everything was so difficult and there was no way he would keep going with it.
Or that’s what he thought, until a reason fell dying to his feet, the steel from the chains sounding against the floor like a sentence.
The guard had talked with rage, blaming him for a robbery and wounds to citizens that he was sure he didn’t do. The young man thrown in the ground, bleeding out slowly and tearing himself apart in sobs, had caused a tight and painful twist to his heart. He was altean, the little blue marks beneath his eyelashes blinking with every whine that came out of his mouth, and he had to contain the urge to run to him and protect him from all the hurt he had suffered.
After asking for privacy with him and having to assure and promise that he won’t hurt him, he had a conversation with him, learning from his low, shaky voice that he was incriminated, that he was wounded when he refused to take the guilt, that he was lost in the universe because all his family had disappeared and he was a mixed race.
He felt the air escape his lungs, remembering his own lineage and how his mother had talked with so much joy about how his father was when she met him. About how he taught her about what patience and love was, forgetting about the roughness her parents had raised her and treated her with until she escaped from Daibazaal and fell without path on Earth.
“Stay with me,” he had blurted out without thinking, and the young man, Lance, had flinched, coming back to a fearful expression but being kind of different as the one he fell in front of him pleading for his life.
But he didn’t ask for reasons, nodding after he explained he would cure his wounds, that he would feed him, and that he would be his companion all the time, protecting him from everyone that dared to hurt him.
At first it was strange, Lance always conserving the limits, even when they were alone, and he himself had to explain why he kept him by his side, the why sometimes he seemed like a completely different person from the one that seated on the throne and gave orders.
At his comprehension, he started to approach him as someone in trust, showing that he was kind and calm in spite of his title as emperor. That he had feelings and weakness as everybody had. That he needed a rest from how exhausted he was from pretending.
Little by little he opened up to him, with all his fears and all his insecurities, with his past and possible future. He turned into his confident, and while he protected him from all the dangers in the castle, Lance protected him from the cruelty that he had to wear every day, when he put on that crown.
He remembers how in a certain night everything changed, until then Lance always keeping his distance and answering when it was strictly necessary. But he had arrived to his room spent and stunned, Lance waiting for him in his desk when he closed the door and he fell to the floor, crying nonstop.
Lance took a moment to react, confused at seeing him in that state because he had always kept up his composure when they had their sessions. But that day, the one in he had seen an entire family being torn apart because of a supposedly treason to the crown had torn apart his heart the same way.
His sobs weren’t interrupted when he found himself being wrapped in his arms carefully, his hair being threaded and letting the crown that condemned him to that life without sense fall to the floor, the steady but shivering voice from his confident comforting him to the point he fell asleep in his hug.
And by crying in his arms, by feeling him hug with love, by being comforted and regain the part of humanity that both had, he ended up falling in love with his smile.
But he couldn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t abuse the trust they had built. He couldn’t destroy it believing it was mutual. He couldn’t force him with his authority, especially because Lance was the only one that knew him as Keith and not as the emperor.
And it was good, he thought, that Lance had wit and not fear. That his only hope to be sane was that one whom could talk to him with normality and not shiver in dread every time he moved. That his only reason to use that bloodied crown was protect him.