Au where post canon Allura gets sent back in time to s1. Or so she thinks at first. But because she has no body in her own reality, her quintessence latches onto the closest alternative the second she can return to the universe. The differences are subtle. But as time progresses they grow more apparent. Her âfutureâ knowledge isnât quite so handy after all.
@empty-blog-for-lurking
Thank you!!!!! Love these tags, yes yes yes. The horror of watching someone else lives your life whilst you cannot lift a muscle. They seem to know more about the situation, more experienced, but other Allura is just. So confused. And alone in her thoughts. Not a great place to be when she just lost everything. Focusing on Voltron was a distraction she needed but now⊠These tags have fuelled me, prepare for more allurangst:
(Figured Iâd put a bit of the pre-written part here too. Everything after the *** is new. Was meant to be notes. But uh.)
Blinding lights. A void of endless white. On and on it stretches, as far as the eye can see, and Allura realises, somewhat bitterly, that this is it for her. The last sight she will ever gaze upon.
Reality is no longer for her, herâs to guide, herâs to mend, but never again herâs to enjoy. Allura exists outside of it, now, existing but not really, drifting in the in-between, her life given for its continued survival. Fractures, cracks are all renewed under her touch. Damaged to mended, non-existent there with a mere thought.
She sees it all, knows it all, and yet feels all the more powerless for it. Her inability to interact with those who matter most. She aches, longing rattling her bones, felt head to toe, every ounce of her lost to suppressed grief.
Allura ploughs on. This is the life she has chosen, these the realities she must tend to, and she cannot afford to falter in her work. The past is the past, untouchable though she craves it. Another family of hers is gone for good.
âYouâre grieving,â Honerva notes, voice like shotgun fire through the soundless abyss.
âIt is hard not to, remembering all those who let me into their lives.â
When her birth family ascended to the afterlife, the paladins let her into their lives instead. A family, however ragtag, however stitched together, is still a family.
(ââwant to be your familyââ
She wishes it could have been so, with him, but that dream feels so far away now, a life so distant it leaves room to wonder, sometimes, if this plane of existence is messing with her headâ)
Allura grieves the what could have beens, the endless possibilities that stretch out before her. Any one of those, any variant of Allura, they could have been her.
But she is she, and they are they. Allura persists, still. Back turned, hands busy, she makes haste with her work. Another, another.
A prick of the neck. The eyes on her, they have yet to wander.
âRun free,â Honerva says, careful, gentle, and itâs hardâterribly soâto consolidate this woman and the vengeful being sheâd once been as one and the same, âThis is my burden. A self-inflicted curse, not yours.â
A fragment of her wants to be mad, wants to force resentment to bubble to the surface, like hellfire in the cook pot, feels it should be so when Allura being in this state is the doing of this very woman before her, the woman who broke the universe.
But she cannot bring herself to hate her. Cannot bring herself to leave her behind.
Allura, she canât run. Not from what she is duty bound.
âTake to the universe,â Honerva continues to say, Alluraâs hesitance falling on deaf ears, like she wonât have it, wonât take more from Allura than she already has, âRun back. Run home. You have your life to live. Alfor would not have wanted you kept here.â
And Alluraâ
âShe falls.
When she wakes, its as if from a dream. A nightmare. If she pretends with enough force, perhaps she can will herself to believe it was just that. The lights are blinding, but theyâre not that white, the white that sticks and clings to her eyes, an afterimage burnt into her with every blink.
Figures, people, hands. She remembers falling, now finds herself in hisâhis!âarms, firm grasp holding her steady.
Itâs all terribly, terribly familiar. Allura does her best not to cry.
***
Sheâs back.
Allura knows the part she has to play, knows her lines. For now sheâll stick to them, glaze over this as if she hasnât strayed from them, changes small until right. To her, then, the grief was fresh, a wound yet to sink in, yet to deepen so far as to sting, too much all at once, shock a strong antiseptic. Sheâd been numb, those years ago. Thereâs a scab there now. Healing, but not without its scars. Itâs on old wound.
Sheâs not the same girl who fell from the crypod. Coran has his questions. Sheâll tell him when the opportunity arises.
***
It starts as uncanny. Changes slight, enough to shrug off, albeit still unsettled, enough for Allura to dismiss until it builds up. Pidgeâs glasses have a slight dent from when she dropped a textbook on them, and theyâre not quite as round as she remembers. A patch of differently coloured fur on one of the mice she doesnât remember being there. Her dress is a slightly different shade and it might not be the lighting. Coran walking different, Lanceâs laughter is just. Off. In a way thatâs difficult to put into words. Maybe sheâs just missing what she knew, maybe being back at the start doesnât compare. Sheâs alive. Sheâs alive and she didnât even think she would have that.
Itâs a second chance. Sheâs honoured to have it. Whilst the why surely needs investigatingâshe is still incredibly thrown about being in the cryopod, waking up held by a Lance who sees her as a pretty stranger, to the other paladins still in awe about a castle which last she checked was destroyed, the largest remaining part of her home gone now back, and Coran not knowing themâthere must be an explanation. She last remembers the nexus of realities, a barren expanse. She gave her life. Honerva told her to be free. But.
Perhaps it is not over.
Is this how the universe wants her to fix reality? By going back to where this all began? So the universe was never destroyed to begin with? Is this the only way?
Allura had hoped the war was behind them. That, from her sacrifice, they could all find peace. But they must go again, find another way.
She hopes this time will have more lives saved than destroyed. So many gave themselves to the cause. Now she has knowledge of a future soon to happen, and if she uses this wisely, there will be hope.
The Arusians have a different chief. Meeting them felt like a world away, but even so. She was so sure. But how could this have changed? She has yet to make too many alternations herselfâthe domino effect of not tackling lance? No, thatâs nonsensicalâshe does not have too long to dwell on this. The Galra attack tonight. She must set the plan in motion, to keep both the Arusians safe and the castle (her father still resides here as an AI. She bid him goodbye and now he is hereâ). It will only become more difficult from here.
They manage to keep Rover this time. Pidge keeps her friend.
The Balmera is the biggest clue itâs all off. Entirely different one. Entirely different set of balmerans. No Shay.
This is not her reality. The future is not one she knows. Any gamble on that is dangerous. Her presence here, itâs a mistake.
âWho are you?â she asks the mirror. There is no reply.
***
She wakes up. In the cryopod again.
It starts as uncanny. Changes slight, enough to shrug off, albeit still unsettled, enough for Allura to dismiss until it builds up. Hunk seems to have this coughâan Earth thing called a coldâPidge hates peanut butter with a passion, Coranâs accent is slightly off. Shiroâs other arm is robotic. Pidge only answers to Katie.
Her mother is the only AI in this castle.
She doesnât know what is going on.
***
She wakes up. In the cryopod again.
Itâs Hunk who catches her this time, asking if sheâs okay, who she is.
Theyâre not even on Arus.
***
Coran doesnât even have a moustache. The paladinsâ clothes are different.
The Allura of this reality wouldnât have been able to colour match them to their lions.
***
This Keith is bright purple. Apparently his Galran genes are stronger here. Far more difficult to hide.
***
Matt pilots the green lion, on a quest for his sister.
***
Admittedly, all of the subsequent name changes from all of these gender swaps throw her. Momentarily.
Alluraâor Alloran hereâis a quick learner.
***
The way Allura surmises this is that sheâs stuck in some other accursed loop. She doesnât see a time limitâCoranâs life is not under the threat of becoming nonexistent, at least, to her current understandingâbut she doesnât see an end either.
***
They seek out Slav much sooner.
Allura needs his expertise. Reality travel. Cause and effect. She needs to steer herself to her own reality.
And anchor herself down.
They conversation, though enlightening in many ways, offers up little solution for her situation.
***
The furthest she has yet to get to is saving the Balmera. Thought it was an odd one. Lotor made an appearance much, much sooner than expected, approximately when they should have met Rolo instead.
Then it. Starts to get weirder.
The next time, unlike all the others before it, she awakens not in a cryopod. But a garrison bed, her hair far darker than she remembers, eyes much less sparkly, and ears far far more rounder. Sheâs in a class with a younger Shiro and Hunk. A slightly older Keith falls from the sky in a galran escape pod, they meet up with Pidge and she takes them back to a shack she owns. And itâs all so. So strange.
The blue lion calls out to her. And their journey into space begins.
They arrive at the castle, a miracle wormholeâthe lions became so much more than even her father, the greatest alchemist she ever knewâcould have foreseen. Then they reach the cryopods. And out comes tumbling a silver haired, pointy eared Lance, two blue markings resting under his eyes. And oh quiznack. Heâs altean. A prince too.
(That crown. In her reality that would have only been possible if theyâ)
Of course his first instinct is to flirt first, ask questions later. That hasnât seemed to have changed. (Though this one is more arrogant than she remembers. He clings to a crown and a title over nothing. Privately aches for a home he cannot return to. A family lost. She knows that look well. She never wished her life upon him.)
Romelle is in the secondary pod where Coran should have been (was he human like her??? In the colony where Romelle should have been??? She needs him, where isâ)
And then Lance picks their lions.
***
Allura does not miss this cryopod.
Coming back here is never foreseen. Thereâs no indicator. No hint. Her eyes simply open up and she is here again, falling. Back at the beginning.
Sheâs a Galran princess in this reality. Zarkon, a twisted altean king. The paladins, on the whole, are the same as she remembers, colour co-ordinated and all. Though, as sheâll soon find, this Keith has concealed markings beneath his eyes.
***
Make it stop, she begs the universe.
Take me home.
It does not listen.
***
She cannot tell if this is cruel, or if this is kind.
Altea still stands. Her parents still live. This is the home she had to let go.
Her fatherâs embrace feels like everything that had been slipping so far away from Allura. Itâs grounding. Dependable. She sobs into his arms and refuses to let go.
âI am not your daughter,â she admits, though it pains her, it pains her, âThis reality is not mine. And this body, itâsââ
Allura cannot take what was never hers. It is an act that would shred the universe asunder.
âMy sweet Allura. No matter where you come from, who you are, or who you become, you will always be my daughter.â A warm hand swipes a tear from her cheek. âYou are the universeâs most precious gift.â
(Parting with this reality will be filled with future heartache. She compartmentalises it. Another time.)
âWho are you? And what are you doing here?â a voice asks in her slumber.
This is a first.
Allura spins, finding herself confronted with herself, a doppelgÀnger from head to foot, though younger in the eyes. How long has she been stuck in this abysmal loop, every connection reset back to zero?
She misses home.
(But what is home? Where did she begin? Lanceâs exact laugh, Coranâs smile, Shiroâs hair tuftâitâs foggy.
When did it all begin to slip?)
âIâm you,â she says, âIâm sorry for intruding. It wasnât my intention. I⊠I wonât be staying long.â
She never does.












