Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Lotor had met many Alteans, and he’d received a variety of reactions from them. There’d been the few he’d met before his exile, who were rightfully extremely wary of him but were fortunately willing to help him and show him the truth about the war between the Alteans and the Galra. Then there’d been the ones he’d met after going into exile, after he had, in essence, become one of them: another Altean on the run, hiding from the Empire. Nearly all of them were scared at first, but most soon warmed up to him after he told them his story and explained his intentions.

Now that he had finally finished setting up the new safe haven for them beyond the Quantum Abyss, he was meeting even more Alteans than before. Many small groups of Alteans had means of contacting other groups to request help or spread warnings, and they were using those means of contact now to help Lotor find these other groups and get them to safety as well. The new safe haven was not perfect yet – it needed more infrastructure and clearer leadership, since Lotor really could not personally oversee its governance – but it was already far safer than any other hiding place in the universe.

It was strange, really, how Lotor felt both a sense of kinship with these fellow Alteans and yet felt so foreign, so alien and out of place when he was among them. They treated him very well, showing him great respect and much gratitude, but he was always other. Some saw him as a leader, a helper, perhaps even a savior sent by the gods of Oriande themselves, but he was always separate from them. Their reverence made him untouchable in their eyes, and that meant he could not be embraced as one of them.

Not that he minded, of course. Reverence was still quite a new experience for him, and it was one he was savoring greatly. Even on the colony he managed, the respect he had gained had still been somewhat begrudging – they had liked him for a Galra, they had been grateful that he was gentle compared to other Galra – so this unconditional thanks was honestly quite touching. He already felt far more appreciated than he had ever been in his entire life.

That was enough, wasn't it?

~*~*~*~

Lotor landed his ship in a copse of trees on a lightly inhabited area of a non-imperial planet. He'd been given this location by one of the other small groups of Alteans he had rescued, and he knew they had sent a message to inform this group, so this would hopefully be easier than usual. It was sometimes quite difficult to persuade Alteans in hiding of his pure intentions and genuine offer of safety.

As he started to approach the exact location coordinates he'd been given, he noticed that they led into the middle of a small hill. It took him a moment to spot a little concealed cave entrance. He'd only taken a few more steps toward it before someone appearing to be Olkari stepped out. With a hood hiding the top and back of their head from view, their visible features looked almost right for a young Olkari adult around Lotor's own age. A closer look, however, revealed dark green markings on their cheeks that betrayed their mixed heritage and Lotor couldn't help but smile. He extended a hand toward them. "Hello there. I am Lotor."

They eyed his hand critically for a moment before accepting it. "I'm Arsai." Their voice was androgynous, perhaps leaning toward masculine. "We've been expecting you. Is it true what they say, that you're half Altean?"

"It is indeed." He smiled more warmly. "It seems you are as well?" This wasn't the first hybrid he'd found in his search for Alteans in hiding, but they were still quite uncommon.

Arsai returned his smile. "Yes. Come on inside. Everyone's waiting to meet you and hear your offer."

Lotor followed them inside, where comfortable living quarters had been built into the side of the hill. All the walls and floors were smooth and covered in standard building materials, so from the inside, the dwelling didn't look or feel like a cave. It was very quaint and cozy. Arsai led Lotor through a small front room and into a larger room, where a group of Alteans were gathered together. With Arsai taking their spot in the group, Lotor counted 12 people total, making this quite moderately sized compared to the other groups he’d found.

In the center of the group was an older woman who radiated authority. She appeared elderly, with mostly-white hair and deep lines etched on her face, but she sat straight and proud. Around the room, there were three middle-aged adults – one female, two male – who shared her light-brown skin tone and some of her other features, so Lotor presumed those three were her children.

There were two more middle-aged women, and it was easy to deduce that they were the partners of two of the matriarch’s children, leaving one male unpartnered. Judging by the two young adults sitting next to him, it seemed likely that he had a partner at one time who was no longer with him.

Another young adult sat near the other male adult child of the matriarch, and Lotor noticed with interest that Arsai had settled in next to him like they were partners as well. The woman who must have been that young man’s mother sat nearby with two identical young girls on either side of her.

Since all the young adults and the two small children were accounted for, Lotor deduced that the matriarch’s female adult child and her female partner had no children, at least not any who were present. With a second glance at the female partner in question, Lotor noticed that her skin tone was too pink for a natural Altean color, and her pink irises and pale orange sclera seemed to indicate a mixed heritage, perhaps half or a quarter non-Altean.

All these observations took Lotor only a moment. He was used to having to quickly deduce important information, and the skill had proved quite useful in helping him to determine how best to persuade the Alteans he found to come to the safety he could offer them. Already, he was quite certain that the one he really needed to convince was the older woman, the clear matriarch of the family. If he could persuade her, everyone else was likely to follow.

Addressing the whole room, he began, “As I’m sure you know already, I am Lotor. It’s a pleasure to meet you all, and I thank you for accepting my request to speak with you.”

The matriarch nodded to him. “We’ve heard much from our contacts, and we were very curious indeed.” She stood and extended a hand to him. “My name is Junethea. The pleasure is ours.”

Lotor accepted her hand in greeting for a moment. Then, as she resumed her seat, he drew in a breath, preparing to start some variation of his usual speech about the benefits of the safe haven he was working to create.

“Tell me, child,” Junethea said before Lotor could give his speech, surprising him, “is it true that you are the son of Zarkon?”

Lotor tensed instinctively, expecting suspicion and hatred, but the woman looked… curious. Wistful. Sad. There was nothing in her expression or voice that suggested hostility.

Cautiously, Lotor gave an honest answer. “It is. The Galra blood in my veins is from him, though he gave me nothing else except hostility and anguish. Now, he has permanently exiled me and I am all the happier for it. I would never go back to him and his ways, even if I were given the choice.”

Junethea nodded thoughtfully. “And… forgive me, child, but I must know…” Her honey-colored eyes met Lotor’s with such intensity and sincerity that Lotor momentarily froze. “Do you know who your mother was?”

The question was one Lotor had heard before, though it had never been asked with this much gravitas. He could tell intuitively that the answer to the question meant far more to this woman than to anyone else who had asked. Of course, that was no reason for him to lie, and he’d already told enough people the truth regardless. “She was an Altean scientist, and she officially became my father’s consort before the war. Her name was–”

“Honerva.” Junethea said the name in unison with Lotor.

“How did you–?” Lotor stopped himself. Of course someone as old as this woman would remember the royal wedding. From what few surviving accounts he could find, it was a very big deal at the time.

And yet, there was a sorrow in her eyes that suggested far more than remembering a news event from decaphoebs before. She stood again, and the others in the room watched in silence as she once more closed the distance between herself and Lotor, looking up into his face with an intense gaze. “You even look like her,” she said softly. “You have her face, except for your stronger jawline – you got that from your grandfather.”

Lotor couldn’t breathe. His grandfather? Who? And how did this woman know?

“The color of your eyes, too,” she continued. “The shape of your pupils and those yellow sclera must be from your father’s side, but your irises are the exact same color of indigo blue that my husband had.”

Her husband. His grandfather. Stunned as he was, Lotor knew what that meant. “You… are Honerva’s mother?”

Junethea smiled sadly, and her eyes held depths of grief. “Yes, dear child. Honerva was my daughter, which means that you must be my grandson.”

Lotor stood frozen, staring without really seeing as he tried to process what that really meant. He’d had practice concealing shock before, and it was only that experience that kept him from going faint or giving himself over to some kind of emotional outburst. He hardly knew what he even felt at this point. Happy to have found this woman? Angry that he hadn’t met her sooner? Relieved that someone was alive who knew his mother and could tell him about her? There were so many emotions swirling through his head that he couldn’t make sense of them all.

Mercifully, the room stayed quiet. When Lotor had gotten ahold of his own thoughts, he looked around to find that no one else seemed surprised by this development. Clearly, they must have already suspected this was the case based on hearing that Lotor was the half-Altean son of Zarkon, and they must have already discussed it before Lotor had arrived. The looks they gave him were sympathetic and curious, perhaps a little cautious and wary, but not at all surprised or disgusted.

“Are you alright?” Junethea’s voice was soft, but it was enough to bring Lotor out of his musings.

“Ah, yes, quite.” Lotor forced a smile. “It’s simply… I supposed I hadn’t dared to hope that any of my mother’s family might still live. I didn’t even know whether she had any family to speak of. And now…”

“Now you’re looking at her family,” Junethea finished for him. “Or, more to the point, your family, if you will accept us.”

Family. Hadn’t Lotor longed for that since he was a child? He’d long since given up the notion, but now that it was within his reach, that old desire surged up again with a fierceness that made his heart ache.

Still, ever cautious, he found himself answering in a more neutral way, “I suppose it will take me some time to get used to the concept. And, naturally, I’d like to get to know you all better.”

One of the other women stood up, the one who appeared to be Junthea’s biological daughter. “Of course nobody expects you to warm up to us all at once. It’s fine if it takes you a while to get used to the idea.”

“As you’ve probably guessed,” one of the men added, “we’ve been talking about this ever since we found out about you. We’ve had more time to adjust to the idea.”

“But we all agreed that we would accept you, if you’d have us,” another person chimed in, and by now Lotor was so rapidly losing track of the group that he couldn’t even tell who said it.

He nodded a little absently. There were too many people, too much information… “Excuse me, if you please. I should check to ensure my ship finished its shutdown sequence properly.”

After receiving a general nod of assent from the group, Lotor ducked out, careful to not move too quickly. He didn’t want to look like he was running away, but he simply had to get some fresh air and a moment to process all of this new information. He was used to absorbing a lot of data at once, but it was always just that: pure data without any emotional repercussions. This was different.

He found a large few rocks and sat down on one of them. His head felt almost like it was spinning from the new information. Family. People who had known his mother. It was… it was everything his younger self had wanted, yet something he had let go of long enough ago he hardly dared to take hold of that desire again.

After a few long moments of quiet in which he tried to sort out his thoughts, he heard the door open. Junethea stepped outside, carrying two cups, and held one out to him. “It’s a calming tea,” she explained. “The plant is native here, and it’s not toxic to either Alteans or Galra.”

Lotor accepted it with a faint smile. “Thank you.” He sipped it lightly and found that it was fairly pleasant, if a little bitter in the aftertaste.

Junethea settled onto a rock next to his and silently sipped her own tea, looking off into the surrounding forest. Lotor waited for her to speak, but doboshes of silence went by as she looked out into the wooded area around them, observing small animals running about.

Finally, as Lotor’s nerves settled, he found his words and broke the silence first, still looking out into the trees. “I apologize for running off. This is all a little overwhelming for me.”

“Of course it is.” Junethea’s voice was blunt, but not unkind. “You just found a bunch of strangers who are now telling you we’re your family. I’d be suspicious if you weren’t a little shocked.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” Lotor chuckled lightly, then sobered again. “I remember as I was growing up, I wanted nothing more than to find out more about my mother. Once I became an adult, I managed to find the records of who she was, and I thought that was it. And now…”

Junethea nodded. “We can tell you about her, answer any questions you like, but it’s hard to summarize a person with nothing more than memories and stories. And, as I’m sure you can imagine, we have a lot of questions of our own.”

Lotor glanced over at her now. “What kinds of questions?”

There was a beat of silence as Junethea took a sip of her tea. Her expression was grave. “You said you found the records. To tell you the truth, we never knew the full story of what happened, of why Zarkon suddenly turned on us. To think that such an honorable young man would just…”

The words hit Lotor like a physical blow. “Honor– Junethea, did you know him? Before…?”

Junethea huffed a laugh that wasn’t really a laugh. “He was my son-in-law. Of course I knew him. There were others who knew him better – Alfor, of course – but I had enough holidays and feast dinners with him to get to know him fairly well, I’d say.”

Suddenly, the vague curiosity Lotor had felt about his mother was replaced with a burning need to know more about his father. He couldn’t reconcile the idea of some honorable young king who celebrated holidays and feast days with his in-laws with the severe and untouchable emperor that Lotor had grown up under the thumb of. “What was he like?”

“He was quite a serious man,” Junethea said thoughtfully. “He believed strongly in manners and honor and tradition. Despite our vast difference in status, he would always bow his head to me when I came in the room, insisting that it was only proper for him to do so, since I was, by the standards of family honor, his mother. He always insisted that I call him by his name without any title at all, saying that it was improper for family members to have to use titles with one another.”

She paused to take a sip of her tea, and there was a faint smile on her lips when she pulled her cup away. “He was quite gentlemanly and kind. He always treated us well and, more importantly, he treated Honerva like she was the most precious person in the universe. There was always such love in his eyes when he looked at her. And when the two of them started to talk about having a family…”

Lotor’s eyes started to sting and blur with tears, and he blinked them back furiously. “They… he… wanted a family?”

Junethea finally met his gaze, and her eyes looked misty with tears as well. “More than anything. They both assured me that they would love any child, but they especially wanted a son.”

The tears Lotor had blinked back suddenly resurfaced and began to fall. Wanted. He’d never thought… he’d… “I always thought my father had never wanted a child at all. That I’d been an… inconvenient accident.”

“Nothing could be farther from the truth.” Junethea’s voice was serious and sincere, and she reached out a hand to rest it lightly on Lotor’s shoulder. “They tried for decaphoebs to have a child. Your mother… I don’t know how many miscarriages she had, but it was many. She kept working with Galra and Altean doctors alike to try to find a way for her to carry a child to term. She broke down one evening and explained her frustrations to me. It was easy enough to create embryos that appeared healthy and viable, but none lasted for longer than a couple of phoebs after implantation. She kept trying and trying…”

Lotor shook his head and wiped away the tears. “Then how–?”

Junethea withdrew her hand and pressed her lips together for a moment. She then sighed and answered, “I really can’t say. I know she stopped working with Altean doctors, focusing more and more on her own research with Quintessence and only working with Galra doctors and scientists. When she finally told me about her… well, about you, she was nearly to term. She apologized for keeping the pregnancy a secret, but she told the family that she didn’t want to break our hearts with news of another miscarriage, so she waited until the baby was far enough along that miscarriage would be unlikely. She never explained how she managed to do it, but I suspect it had something to do with her Quintessence research. She was keeping quiet about that as well. Even Alfor expressed concerns to me about her secretive behavior with that.”

Lotor considered that for a moment. “That makes sense with what I know,” he told her. “I personally have a unique relationship with Quintessence. I’d long since suspected some form of experimentation either before or soon after my birth.”

“She always was a woman of science,” Junethea mused. “I’m not at all surprised.”

They fell back into silence, sipping their tea. Lotor was grateful for the quiet moment as he let his mind rest and as he tried to sift through his emotions. He still felt too many things at once to determine some distinct reaction to the revelation of this entire family he’d never known, but on the whole, he felt more positive about this development than negative. He certainly felt a very distinct sense of curiosity about these people and what he could learn from them.

As he mentally replayed some of the conversation in his mind, he came across something else that he wanted to ask about, something less intimidating than the larger questions about his mother. “You referred to King Alfor by name without a title,” he remarked, looking over at Junethea curiously. “Why is that?”

Junethea chuckled a little. “He’s been just ‘Alfor’ to this family since before he was ever a king.” There was a nostalgic smile on her face. “He and Honerva became best friends in their early adolescence. At first, we were all a little stunned that our little Honey was on a first-name basis with the prince of Altea, but she started bringing him around for dinner whenever he was feeling stifled by palace life, and soon all of us dropped the title. He was just like any of her other friends, really.”

“I hadn’t known that Honerva and King Alfor were such good friends.” Lotor wondered at that, wondered why that wasn’t in any records. He supposed it was perhaps not the most historically relevant fact, but it seemed like something worth knowing.

“Indeed they were.” Junethea took another sip of her tea. “When his mother passed, he started spending even more time at our house. He opened up to me; I think perhaps he saw me as a second mother figure and as a comfort in his grief. He also came to me when his father died unexpectedly and he had to take over the kingship suddenly and at such a young age, barely an adult.”

Lotor leaned forward, listening to every detail and soaking up the new information like a sponge soaks up water.

“We knew a little about Zarkon through him before Honerva ever met him,” Junethea continued. “Alfor and Zarkon were good friends, and although Alfor didn’t have as much time to spare by that point, he made the time to have dinner with our family once in a while, and he told us stories about his new alliance and his fellow paladins. It came as a bit of a surprise when Honerva told us that he had begun courting her and that she was accepting his courtship, but we were not entirely shocked, especially after giving some thought to it.

“When we had the chance to meet Zarkon in person, the match made even more sense to us. They were both very serious people, but they were also both generally optimistic and altruistic. Honerva believed in science while Zarkon believed in diplomacy and top-down social change, but both wanted a better future for Alteans and Galra alike, as well as the other allied peoples.”

Zarkon? Believed in diplomacy? Lotor would have thought this was a cruel joke, but he could see that Junethea was being completely serious. “I… must admit, I am rather…” He couldn’t find the right words.

Junethea offered her hand to him, and he took it. She looked at him with absolute seriousness as she said, “I may not know you very well yet, but from I’ve heard about what you’ve done, I believe that my daughter and son-in-law would have been proud of you, and they would have been very pleased to call you their son.”

The tears Lotor had brushed away earlier returned suddenly, and he had to use his free hand to wipe his eyes just to be able to see. He felt ashamed to be breaking down in front of this woman he barely knew, but Junethea— but his grandmother simply held his hand and quietly waited for him to finish.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I’m—”

“Don’t be.” Junethea’s voice was gentle. “It’s natural. I would guess that it’s been too long since you’ve let yourself cry, hasn’t it?”

She was right. He hadn’t even cried after the loss of his colony, hadn’t let himself mourn the near-billion lives lost, hadn’t let himself cry for his own pitiable state of exile, hadn’t… He just hadn’t wanted to cry alone, finding the idea just too pitiful and low, so he had held it all back. And now, just a little kindness, just a few words he had always wanted to hear but thought he never would…

As if she could read his thoughts, Junethea added, “You aren’t alone anymore, my child.”

The words brought a fresh wave of tears and Lotor’s breaths shook with small sobs he couldn’t quite contain. It took him several moments to calm down but Junethea never hurried him or tried to make him calm sooner. She simply held his hand and stayed there, a calming presence that felt more familiar already than nearly anyone else Lotor had ever had in his life.

Finally, Lotor’s breathing evened out, and he wiped the last of the tears away. Junethea still looked at him with patient understanding, and when he gave her a shaky smile, she mirrored it with a gentle one of her own. “Thank you,” Lotor whispered.

“You are most welcome, my child.” Junethea squeezed his hand once more before letting go of it and picking up her tea again. “We are going to be here for you from now on, I promise you that. No one should be without a family, and you don’t have to be anymore.”

Lotor’s smile grew a little brighter, the most sincere one he’d smiled in a long time. “I’d like that.”