Chapter Text
“We can’t give up hope!”
Allura’s voice, shrill with desperation, was almost lost to the howl of lasers against the castle-ship’s shields. Outside, Zarkon’s forces surrounded them. What little had remained of the Voltron Guard had been reduced to slag and atoms. The only people remaining in the once-bustling castle were Allura, Coran, King Alfor, and the paladins.
These four stood back as Allura and her father argued, and Coran couldn’t blame them. He saw it in their eyes: most of them agreed with Allura, that they should take their lions and fight. It showed a little different in each. The red paladin, Keturah, stood tense and trembling with a rage seldom found among Alteans. Rukka, the yellow paladin, was nearly as furious, but her anger had been simmering longer. She, like Zarkon, was a Galra, and she’d taken his betrayal personally.
Sa, in his green armor, was unreadable, and Meri—the newest of the paladins, who’d trained under Allura’s mother, Lealle, and taken up the mantle of blue paladin upon Lealle’s death—looked resolute despite her obvious fear. She was not as jaded as the others, not as used to battle, but Coran knew she would follow Allura into the maw of death itself.
But Alfor was their king, and Alfor had given the order for the paladins to remain in the castle. They might have turned the tide of battle, true, but they might also have been captured, and Alfor was unwilling to risk even a single Lion falling into Zarkon’s hands. They’d seen what he could do with that kind of power.
Coran tried to support Alfor’s decision, even as his heart ached for the lives that had been lost here today. The atmosphere on the bridge was frigid, and not even the klaxon of alarms could break the hush.
Alfor let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry, Allura,” he said with an air of finality. He left his station at the castle-ship’s controls to stand before his daughter, cupping her cheek in his hand. “If all goes well, I will see you again soon.”
Even from where he stood ten spans away, Coran could feel the sharp, icy current of Quintessence as it passed from father to daughter. Allura’s eyes widened fractionally as she swayed.
“Father…?”
She clung to Alfor with a rapidly weakening grip, but Alfor held her steady, supporting her as her legs gave out. He smiled, and it looked like a farewell.
“I love you,” he whispered. She sagged, and Alfor bowed his head over her. “Sleep well, my daughter.”
Reaching down, Alfor swept Allura up into his arms, cradling her as he had when she was a much smaller child, up too late past her bedtime chasing Coran around the castle—or being chased, as it were. She let out a sigh, as though of resignation, as Alfor turned around.
Coran and the others ranged around the bridge looked on in shock, mouths hanging open in unformed protests. Alfor had never silenced his daughter in such a way, had never been anything but calm and rational in an argument.
They were all realizing, again, how much had changed since Zarkon forsook his ideals.
Alfor’s eyes met Coran’s, more ancient and more weary than Coran had seen since Lealle died.
“You’re planning something,” Coran said. It wasn’t a question; he’d known Alfor for centuries, long enough to recognize that look of resignation. Of pure, drol-headed stubbornness.
Coran wasn’t worried until guilt crept into Alfor’s eyes.
Alfor turned to Keturah. “Get us out of here,” he said, and as soon as she nodded—after a moment of rigid surprise—Alfor turned toward the door, nodding for Coran to join him.
Coran followed, as he always did, and the sound of battle vanished as Keturah opened a wormhole and carried them through.
He wanted to ask why Alfor had put Allura to sleep—a difficult feat, even for Alfor. He and Keturah had trained under the same Pygnarat monk, learning to control their Quintessence in a way most Alteans could not. It had begun as a focusing exercise for Keturah—as hot-headed and prone to suicidal stunts as every red paladin before her—but Alfor had grown fond of Pygnar magic in his own right.
Still, magic like that took a toll.
And why now? Why in the middle of battle? Allura was mature enough to accept Alfor’s decisions, even when she disagreed. Alfor could have taken them away from battle without taking her out of commission.
When they stopped at the door of the cryo-replenisher chamber, Coran’s confusion only grew. But he followed Alfor inside and raised a pod at Alfor’s request. The door slid open with a hiss, and Alfor settled Allura within.
“Stasis?” Coran asked, shock stealing the force from his accusation.
Alfor turned to smile at him, mournful and apologetic. “Just until it’s safe once more.”
Coran thought of the war they fought—Zarkon, once the black paladin, wielding his power and influence like a battering ram and breaking down the walls of every safe haven Voltron had labored so long and hard to build. Alfor was rapidly running out of allies as people surrendered before Zarkon’s wrath, or were crushed. The support troops who had followed the Castle of Lions across the universe slowly dwindled, returning to defend their own homes—with Alfor’s blessing, usually, though some of the troops had out-and-out deserted.
They’d made a wise decision, it seemed. Those who had remained were all dead now.
“So… you’re going to pilot the Black Lion, then?” Coran asked, tentatively.
Alfor’s face twisted, and he punched the button to seal Allura and begin the stasis process. “No.”
Coran frowned. “We can’t stop him without Voltron.”
“And his bond with the Black Lion was far too strong to risk it.” Alfor watched Allura’s pod retract into the ground, then ran his hand over his face. “If we could find someone else, someone the Black Lion would accept as her new paladin, then I might risk it. But I will not deliver such a weapon directly into his hands.”
Rather than argue, Coran only grunted. They’d had this discussion many times before. Coran, like Keturah and Sa, thought the Black Lion must have severed her bond with Zarkon the moment he betrayed them—the moment he killed Lealle, certainly. None of the lions would stand beside a pilot who killed his own teammate.
But Alfor insisted the bond remained. Weakened, perhaps, but not so far that Zarkon couldn’t twist it to his own end. In theory.
In practice, they were fighting a losing battle, and they needed every weapon they could get.
“Alright, then,” Coran said bracingly. “If Voltron isn’t part of the plan, then… what is the plan?”
“A feint.” Alfor scratched at his neck, conspicuously avoiding Coran’s gaze. “We’ll make one final run on Zarkon’s fleet, stage our own defeat, make him believe the other lions have been destroyed so that we can secret them away.”
Coran frowned. “To what end?”
Rather than answer, Alfor pressed another button, and a second pod rose from the ground. Alfor turned to Coran, his blue eyes intent. “You and Allura will take the castle, and the Black Lion, and await a new generation of paladins. Once the other four lions have been awakened, and their paladins gathered in the castle, the Black Lion will be freed from her chamber to find her own new paladin.”
“Take the castle—Alfor, you can’t mean--”
Alfor closed his eyes, and it seemed more a death knell than any lasers. “Yes,” Alfor said softly. “It means this is goodbye, my friend.”
Coran never wanted children.
The realization had been a slow one. When he was a child himself, he’d been far too busy dragging Alfor into trouble to worry about what sort of a family he would have when he was grown. Alfor was his family. The only family he ever needed, or so he thought.
As a young man in love, he’d been even more convinced that a child would only be an unwanted burden. Back then he’d still held onto dreams of marrying Alfor, and he rather thought they would be the worst pair of parents a child could ever have, too wild and mischievous to be trusted with the molding of an impressionable young mind, too distracted by ambitions and duties to give a youngster the attention they deserved.
Then Lealle had come along, and Alfor had fallen—hard. Coran tried to resent her for it, but she had the cunning of a saleswoman, the charm of a diplomat, and a wicked sense of humor that filled a gap in Coran and Alfor’s friendship neither of them had quite known was there.
She was, in short, the perfect complement to Alfor’s growing solemnity and poise, and Coran couldn’t help but love her for it.
He was, however, a little bit wary when Lealle told him she was expecting a child.
“Oh,” Coran said, trying and failing to sound excited. “A child. How… unexpected.”
Lealle laughed, dancing around Alfor with a happy flush that made her deep blue glaes stand out like polished stones on her cheekbones. “Isn’t it?” She squealed a little, looking more like the adolescent Coran had met fifty years ago than the paladin and queen consort she had become.
But then, courtly manners had never been to Lealle’s taste. She could don the mask, but did so only rarely—and then with much complaint.
“You’ll be the third, of course,” Lealle said, coming to such an abrupt halt her short, dark curls snapped at her chin. “Won’t you?”
The third.
It was an incredible honor, to be asked to act as third to Alfor and Lealle’s child—to theirs, in particular, because the child would one day take command of the Castle of Lions and train a new generation of paladins. To be a third was to be family—to help raise the child, to be a confidante and a playmate and a babysitter and an instructor. To be there for the child, always, and to take them in if—Altea forbid—anything should happen to Alfor and Lealle.
People rarely used the old term—third parent—anymore, but Coran thought it summed up the job quite nicely.
Coran hesitated. He’d never wanted to be a father, but if it was hard to say no to the look of cautious hope in Alfor’s face, then it was downright impossible in the face of Lealle’s wide, honey-brown eyes.
“Alright,” Coran said, because he knew Alfor’s child would be a part of his life one way or another.
And anyway, a year was a long time to prepare.
(It was not, in fact, very much time at all.)
The day arrived far sooner than Coran would have liked, and when he heard the news he abandoned a half-written report on the castle’s stores to sprint up to the infirmary on the eighteenth floor.
He stopped outside the door, heart in his throat, until Alfor poked his head out and pulled Coran into a hug that was equal parts exhaustion and delight. Alfor’s energy swept Coran neatly off his feet and into the room, where Lealle lay holding an impossibly tiny bundle.
“Her name is Allura,” Lealle said. “Come here and hold her.”
Coran protested, but Alfor’s hand on his back was much too compelling, and Lealle wasted no time in arranging his arms and laying the tiny Allura in the crook of his elbow.
At once, Coran quieted. “Oh,” he said, and Allura cracked her eyes—beautiful blue eyes, like her father’s, with wispy silver-white hair to match—to peer up at the source of this new voice. Coran stiffened, expecting tears and a pitiful cry.
But Allura only turned her face into Coran’s chest, gurgling contentedly.
She was, Coran decided, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.