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Allura has seen death before. It’d taken the form of a white lion, the keeper of the mystical secrets of Oriande. She'd welcomed it, knowing it's what her ancestors would have done and that doing so could save Voltron and the galaxies they were sworn to protect. Now, standing at the edge of the void where all realities converge, she faces death again. Her Altean instincts beckon her to follow Honerva into the white light, the stirring in her chest reminiscent of her call to Oriande. But the part of her that loves her friends—Shiro, Keith, Hunk, Pidge, and Lance—keeps her frozen in her tracks. No amount of alchemical knowledge could ever prepare her for this.
The paladins stand despondent and teary-eyed as Allura gives her final goodbyes. Her heart yearns to be with them on Earth, that beautiful planet where she’ll never get to explore the canyons and beaches that she’d only gotten a taste of. Now, she’s here at the precipice between life and death where her father waits on the other side. Allura braces herself and walks into the curling tendrils of light, heartbroken yet determined to mend the chaos that Honerva had unleashed on the universe. All the galaxies are destroyed, planets laid to waste—it will take all the magic Allura could summon to revive them. She turns back to her friends and gives them a sad, reassuring smile. Allura’s strong, but she doesn’t feel like a hero. Not here. Her purposeful stride belies her fear of never seeing them again.
As she enters the void, she feels her body grow light. A voice in her head begs her to turn back, back to where she could be a normal girl who’s still trying to find herself. But her connection with the dark Entity is stronger, a lure that pulls her into the light to where her father stands.
“Allura,” Alfor says, pulling her into his arms, the only solace in this lonely vastness.
“Father,” Allura chokes, burying her head in his shoulder. He feels as real as when they reunited on the plane outside Honerva’s consciousness; his touch, however, is cold and lifeless, as if she’s hugging the hologram that used to comfort her on the castle ship. That was the nature of the void: in exchange for restoring life and balance to the planets, you had to give up a vital part of yourself.
“My sweet girl...” he murmurs into her hair. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Allura pulls herself away, struck by his hypocrisy. “You would’ve done the same,” she says, but inside she knows he’s right.
A spine-chilling whisper permeates her consciousness: “It’s time, Allura.”
The Entity. The corrupt creature is nothing like the roaring beast of Oriande; it feeds off of her alchemic magic, helping it gain strength.
“Where are we going?” she demands, hands locked with her father’s. “I want to be with my father!” To Alfor, it looks as though she’s talking to the air.
“You can see your father when the time comes. Right now, we have work to do.”
We ...There’s no turning back now. Allura had accepted the consequences of their symbiotic relationship when she became its host. She needed its magic to find Honerva, who had let its darkness consume her. Now, it thrived in every cell of Allura’s body, her thoughts, and her alchemic magic. A creature of raw quintessence, it elevates Allura’s magical capabilities, anchoring her to this realm and gaining power from her. As much as she tried to resist it, tried to find her own voice, they were inextricably linked.
Before she could take one last look at her father, pitch darkness envelops her.
//
Breathe...Breathe...Breathe... Allura mentally recites the words like a mantra as she concentrates on repairing the fabric of time and space. Like her work on the Balmera, she channels endless levels of quintessence—her magic flowing from her body to the rift and back—to bring entire galaxies back to life. A born healer, she brings planets back into rotation, night and day driving the rhythm of life. The work is fulfilling but physically exhausting, sapping her energy until she feels like she might collapse.
Breathe...Breathe...Breathe... At one point, Allura begins to hear hushed conversations, whispers brushing past her ear telling the story of how Princess Allura sacrificed herself to save the universe. She wakes up to the faint smell of morning dew and fresh soil one morning, half-expecting to be surrounded by lush flowers and trees.
Breathe...Breathe...Breathe... The myriad of conversations grow louder: raucous laughter; arguments and apologies; and sometimes, Coran and her friends sharing fond memories of her. She eventually tunes out the latter because it’s too painful. In a swift but momentous occasion, she catches the sweet perfume of juniberries, Altea’s native flower, her heart bursting with joy and hope. She hopes her father can smell them too.
Occasionally, she can hear her mice’s simple chatter—their telepathic connection spanning space-time—and tries to reach them, sometimes managing a few words: “Here” or “Happy.” She can sense that they’re listening but hears no response. These days of comfort, however, are rare. One day, she feels so physically and emotionally drained that she can’t concentrate, her thoughts floating elsewhere. The Entity senses this and seeks to revitalize her; it cannot survive if she doesn’t have the energy to.
“What is it you seek?” the Entity asks. The question takes her aback. Wanting things was not part of the deal she’d made with her dark companion. She knows that whatever she gets will be temporary, which is why seeing the Entity’s fabrication of her friends would be too painful. Instead, she simply states, “I want to see the ocean again.”
She feels the air twist around her and shields her head with her arms. The wind stops abruptly, and all she sees is a stretch of glittering blue. She sits on the sandy shore, the fresh ocean air clearing her senses. Although it’s an illusion, she can feel the warm, gritty particles beneath her hands and feet. She’d seen the ocean only once, when her blue lion was thrown into it by the force of Sendak’s laser that nearly destroyed Earth. Allura smiles grimly. Once again, she wishes she were here under better circumstances.
She curls her toes into the sand, her mind at peace for the first time in a long time. She hears the bubbly laughter of children playing and looks around at the beach. Seagulls fly above searching for scraps of food while parents chastise their children for going too far into the water. Young women sunbathe for a summer glow, and Allura beams, wishing she could join them. Earth is so beautiful, so rich with life and laughter and love. She can’t stop smiling—so wide, her mouth twitches—as she soaks up everything to remember forever.
She closes her eyes and imagines her friends there with her, all the laughter they’d share. A familiar voice emerges from the recesses of her memory: Tu sonrisa es más hermosa que el océano . Her chest tightens, tears streaming down her face. She wants to go back to Earth so badly it hurts. She wants to join Coran and Romelle who keep Altea alive. She wants to join her friends who helped her find a new home. She takes one last look at the beach. The sight of it all fills her with a renewed sense of purpose, and she knows what she has to do.
//
Allura comes to gasping for air, as if emerging from the deep ocean waters. She’s back to the pristine, unsettling whiteness of the void. She stands unsteadily, her knees shaking.
“You’re back. Good,” says the Entity. “Now, let us continue.”
“I saw people,” Allura says, her voice trembling. She inhales slowly, remembering the crisp smell of sea salt. “ I felt them. Laughing. Living . My friends...I know they’re out there waiting for me.” Since stepping into the void, she’s felt closer to them every day, hearing their laughter, seeing them unite the planets freed from war and destruction.
“Your friends have moved on, Allura. You know you can’t go back.”
She clenches her fist, her jaw set tight in anger. “I—I’ve given up so much since I woke up from ten thousand years of sleep. My father...He once said that Alteans are life givers, that we are born with the power to create.”
She stands up straighter. “I choose life. This is the path I forge for myself. The work we’ve—The work I’ve done is complete, and you know this, don’t you?” She could sense it more and more each day: the cacophony of voices, the medley of smells that fill her lungs...they’re real outside this realm of solitude. The ground begins to shake violently, and Allura can feel the Entity loosening its grip.
“Allura of Altea, our connection has given you more knowledge that your ancestors could ever hope to achieve in Oriande. Why would you relinquish this power?”
“I don’t need you,” she asserts. “I have Altean magic within me. I was born with it, and it will always be a part of me.”
Her words spread like thin cracks on a stressed rock, her resolve manifesting itself as a quake in the rift itself. This is her world now. She closes her eyes and inhales sharply through her nose in an attempt to regain composure. The mist that surrounds her dissipates and the ground becomes still.
“Please, let me go,” Allura says, her voice soft but firm.
A sharp pain pierces her chest as she doubles over. As she rises, she sees the dark, pulsating orb that seduced both her and Honerva loom above her. Useless without a host, it devolves slowly into the light. Gone. Allura clutches her chest, her heart beating hard and fast—something she hadn’t experienced since entering this liminal space.
Free of the Entity, she closes her eyes and pours all her concentration into reaching her mice. This time, her message is urgent: “Find. Lance.”
//
In his dream, Lance is walking on the beach.
He drags his feet through the damp shoreline, watching small crabs bury themselves in the wet sand. He closes his eyes, inhaling the sea breeze and listening to the sharp cries of seagulls. Something scuffles at his feet, then up his leg. He looks down expecting to see some sort of crustacean but nothing’s there. Lance jolts awake, feeling slightly unsettled, but the scuffling doesn’t stop.
“What the—” he cries, kicking off his blanket. One by one, Allura’s mice scamper to Lance’s stomach, the cause of his skin-crawling panic.
“Can’t you guys let me rest for just one second?” Lance groans, letting his head fall back on the pillow. It was the two-year anniversary of Allura’s dea—of Allura’s absence, and the paladins reunited in New Altea to celebrate her memory. “Celebrate” was the wrong word for it. Her absence was palpable during their reunion dinners, an emptiness that pervaded the room as they shared old and new stories around the table.
His eyes flit to the photograph on his nightstand: him in his Sunday best, Allura in her light pink dress. He can’t bring himself to tuck the photo away in the drawer, as if putting it out of sight would make him forget.
The mice pile on his stomach, four pairs of beady eyes looking at him almost expectantly.
“Do you miss her too?” he asks softly. They squeak in affirmation.
The blue mouse twirls around the pink one and crawls up his headboard, leaping and landing on the nightstand and sitting firmly by the photograph. Lance shakes his head in confusion. The remaining three crawl up to his chest, squeaking loudly. The pink mouse crawls up higher, just above his heart.
“What are you trying to tell me, little guys?” Lance asks curiously, scooping them into his hands. Two years ago he never thought he’d be talking to the mice again. It’s strange, them seeking him out now, but his gut tells him this is not a coincidence. They were Allura’s, knew her thoughts and her words, and now they’re trying to tell him something. He knows it’s bizarre but so was finding a ten thousand-year-old princess on a faraway planet.
“I should get Coran. Maybe he can help you,” he says, partly for them and partly for himself who started believing in the impossible when Allura brought the paladins together.
Lance gets out of bed and sets the mice down. His eyes linger on the picture for a minute, more than he allowed himself to since returning here. He steps out of the room, allowing the mice to run ahead of him as if signaling him to follow.
//
Allura wakes up in a cryopod, the door shimmering away before her. She blinks rapidly to adjust to the harsh fluorescent lighting and stumbles forward. Her head feels light as she adjusts to the whiplash of traveling from the nexus of realities to the pod bay of the rebuilt Castle of Lions. She touches her face, her skin warm and slightly damp, and examines her entire body. She did it, she really did it.
The pod bay door swishes open, and she watches as her friends—her dear family—pour in to greet her. She’s surrounded by warm bodies, faces pressing against her neck and shoulders, their voices breaking with sobs and laughter. One of these faces—one she thought she’d never see again—welcomes her back with a familiar kiss, a kiss she returns in full.
“Your cheeks!” she says, touching the blue crescent markings that she’d given him before entering the void.
“Yeah?” Lance says with a cheeky grin.
“I like them,” she whispers, feeling a little selfish for leaving them there in the first place but also pleased. She has every right to indulge herself, ancients be damned.
Allura steps away and takes in her family: Coran, Shiro, Keith, Hunk, Pidge, Lance. The ocean she’d seen in her vision was breathtaking, but their smiles are real . And even more beautiful. She feels a surge of gratitude and belief in the impossible wash over her. She was right—she could bring herself back, her real self, flesh and blood and magic that keeps their universe in balance. She closes her eyes and breathes in for a second, chest free of pain and darkness. It’s a moment she’ll never forget.
//
“Mother, can I sit up front?”
Allura’s youngest is trying to reach for the controls of the red lion. She brought him here to teach him about her work as a paladin, and her father’s before.
Years have passed since her return. Allura helped restore New Altea to its former glory, tearing down her shrine because it was too painful a reminder of her sacrificial death (plus, it was way too flashy for her taste). Instead, she built a memorial garden for the Alteans who lost their lives in the galactic fight against the Galra. She wanted to honor their memory by being a just queen, one who would use her diplomatic skills—with a little bit of alchemic magic, of course—to unite the planets. The coalition was still weak but growing stronger every day.
“Of course you can. Here, let’s have you sit here.” Allura props him on her lap so that his small hands could grab the controls.
He turns to look at her, face glowing in excitement. “I’m going to protect the universe,” he declares, eyes narrowed in determination.
Allura chuckles and kisses his head. He will one day. Just like his mother, father, and grandfather. Allura feels the faint but unmistakable buzz of the lion’s energy around them and smiles knowingly. This time, life chooses him.