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Blog for my allurance drabbles

[ethereance]

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 ‘future’ knowledge isn’t quite so handy after all.

[ethereance]

[ethereance]

@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 I’d 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, her’s to guide, her’s to mend, but never again her’s 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.

“You’re grieving,” Honerva notes, voice like shotgun fire through the soundless abyss.

“It is hard not to, remembering all those who let me into their lives.”

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.

(“—want to be your family—”

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 head—)

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.

“Run free,” Honerva says, careful, gentle, and it’s hard—terribly so—to consolidate this woman and the vengeful being she’d once been as one and the same, “This is my burden. A self-inflicted curse, not yours.”

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 can’t run. Not from what she is duty bound.

“Take to the universe,” Honerva continues to say, Allura’s hesitance falling on deaf ears, like she won’t have it, won’t take more from Allura than she already has, “Run back. Run home. You have your life to live. Alfor would not have wanted you kept here.”

And Allura—

—She 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 they’re 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 his—his!—arms, firm grasp holding her steady.

It’s all terribly, terribly familiar. Allura does her best not to cry.

***

She’s back.

Allura knows the part she has to play, knows her lines. For now she’ll stick to them, glaze over this as if she hasn’t 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. She’d been numb, those years ago. There’s a scab there now. Healing, but not without its scars. It’s on old wound.

She’s not the same girl who fell from the crypod. Coran has his questions. She’ll 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. Pidge’s glasses have a slight dent from when she dropped a textbook on them, and they’re not quite as round as she remembers. A patch of differently coloured fur on one of the mice she doesn’t remember being there. Her dress is a slightly different shade and it might not be the lighting. Coran walking different, Lance’s laughter is just. Off. In a way that’s difficult to put into words. Maybe she’s just missing what she knew, maybe being back at the start doesn’t compare. She’s alive. She’s alive and she didn’t even think she would have that.

It’s a second chance. She’s honoured to have it. Whilst the why surely needs investigating—she 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 them—there 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 herself—the domino effect of not tackling lance? No, that’s nonsensical—she 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 here—). 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 it’s 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, it’s a mistake.

‘Who are you?’ 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 cough—an Earth thing called a cold—Pidge hates peanut butter with a passion, Coran’s accent is slightly off. Shiro’s other arm is robotic. Pidge only answers to Katie.

Her mother is the only AI in this castle.

She doesn’t know what is going on.

***

She wakes up. In the cryopod again.

It’s Hunk who catches her this time, asking if she’s okay, who she is.

They’re not even on Arus.

***

Coran doesn’t even have a moustache. The paladins’ clothes are different.

The Allura of this reality wouldn’t 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.

Allura—or Alloran here—is a quick learner.

***

The way Allura surmises this is that she’s stuck in some other accursed loop. She doesn’t see a time limit—Coran’s life is not under the threat of becoming nonexistent, at least, to her current understanding—but she doesn’t 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. She’s 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 it’s all so. So strange.

The blue lion calls out to her. And their journey into space begins.

They arrive at the castle, a miracle wormhole—the lions became so much more than even her father, the greatest alchemist she ever knew—could 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. He’s altean. A prince too.

(That crown. In her reality that would have only been possible if they—)

Of course his first instinct is to flirt first, ask questions later. That hasn’t 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 is—)

And then Lance picks their lions.

***

Allura does not miss this cryopod.

Coming back here is never foreseen. There’s no indicator. No hint. Her eyes simply open up and she is here again, falling. Back at the beginning.

She’s 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 she’ll 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 father’s embrace feels like everything that had been slipping so far away from Allura. It’s grounding. Dependable. She sobs into his arms and refuses to let go.

‘I am not your daughter,’ she admits, though it pains her, it pains her, ‘This reality is not mine. And this body, it’s—’

Allura cannot take what was never hers. It is an act that would shred the universe asunder.

‘My sweet Allura. No matter where you come from, who you are, or who you become, you will always be my daughter.’ A warm hand swipes a tear from her cheek. ‘You are the universe’s most precious gift.’

(Parting with this reality will be filled with future heartache. She compartmentalises it. Another time.)

‘Who are you? And what are you doing here?’ a voice asks in her slumber.

This is a first.

Allura spins, finding herself confronted with herself, a doppelgänger 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? Lance’s exact laugh, Coran’s smile, Shiro’s hair tuft—it’s foggy.

When did it all begin to slip?)

‘I’m you,’ she says, ‘I’m sorry for intruding. It wasn’t my intention. I… I won’t be staying long.’

She never does.

[lanlura]

Time Travel

There’s a knock at Allura’s door.

It’s enough to startle her, almost out of a trance, and she blinks, baffled as to when consciousness began to slip. Exhaustion had a tighter grip on Allura than she’d realised.

The knock comes again, in quicker succession this time. A little more forceful, a little more desperate.

So Allura slips from her bed, getting to her feet. She doesn’t know who could be on the other side of that door, not when so many of the ship’s crew should be gone by now, enjoying the clear day festivities. But it seems important. It sounds important.

“Lance?” she says as the door pulls back, and his head whips up, but there’s something off, something strange. Something. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to the carnival.”

Allura had told him to enjoy himself. That she would be fine, here. That missing out on this, for her sake, when he so clearly wanted to go was not something that she could very well let happen.

And yet, here Lance is. Back. Back and—

Hugging her?

She’s nearly knocked off her feet by the sheer force of it, only saved by decaphoebs of training and excellent composure. It’s not like any of their other hugs, the ones where they curl up in bed and he presses stardust kisses to her cheeks in a constellation of love and tenderness, or anything post battle, of which they have had their fair share, where he holds her like a support beam, and she leans too, into his touch, into his trust. Or when he’s afraid to lose her, afraid for her, afraid that one more self-sacrificial act will be it for them. But those have never scared her like this.

Not when Lance holds her like he’s already lost her.

Allura can feel it in his touch, in how he holds her, like letting go would be letting go of everything. It’s frenzied desperate, it’s longing, it’s heartbreak in a hug.

It takes a good few ticks for her to lose rigidity, and relax into his hold, letting this moment just be.

He needs this. Allura doesn’t know why, but she knows this much.

Something happened.

“Lance,” she says softly, coaxing. She rubs circles up his back, though stops, quickly, when she finds a maze in what she thought she could map out. Is it just her, or has Lance got taller? “Talk to me. Whatever is the matter?”

“You were gone, Allura,” he says through muffled sobs, and her heart seizes, the words lost on her, but the grief certainly not. She does not know what he has seen, what trick has been played upon him, but Lance and his selfless, loving heart have been hurt deeply. And she’s at the centre of it. “You were gone and I thought I was never gonna see you again. But now, but now—”

Lance pulls slightly out of the hug, still in her arms, still enveloped by her touch, but enough to look her in the eye, begging, pleading, his words hoarse and broken:

“Please don’t accept that entity.”

Allura blinks. “What are you…?”

And then she looks at him, actually looks at him, and sees those eyes, ones usually so joyous, bright with the light of a thousand dreams, mirthful with that slight gleam she’s grown to love, she sees those sparks dulled, murky with a grief she knows all too well. 

But the determination sticks, like mud, steadfast and determined.

It’s one of the few things that have remained the same. So quick was he to race into her comfort, Allura missed that Lance isn’t the same at all. It’s as if, in their short time apart, he’s swung by the quantum abyss, a little older, a little taller, more downtrodden in ways she hadn’t thought possible for his spring board personality, always uplifting with a crooked smile, or a sprinkled in joke.

There are flecks of white in his hair now, paling as Shiro’s had done before it had turned sheet white upon revival. Quintessence over-exposure.

And then, there, most noticeably, are markings like hers that shadow his cheeks in grieving light.

“Where did you get those?” she asks, horror and awe both bleeding with curiosity as she traces them with her thumbs. They seem to shimmer under her touch, like they’re reacting to her, bonded to the spark of something that dwells within her very being.

It’s in this that has her trust. Allura has been fooled by clones and pretty words, but this? Right here, somehow, this is the man she loves with all her heart. Not that she has put this into words yet, but she trusts the feeling.

She trusts Lance.

But oh, does she have her questions.

Lance’s expression is bittersweet. “From you. A few quintants from now.”

It sounds impossible. And yet, everything they do, every battle they face, it seems full of the impossible.

“You’re talking about messing with the structure of time.”

Lance nods.

“How?” Allura says aghast. “Why? Did we lose against Haggar? Does this mean we lost the war?”

Lance looks at her a long while.

“Yes,” he says at last. “Because even though we beat them, it was never a win without you.”

[lanlura]

I just wanted to say I miss allurance so much and your drabbles make me so happy 🥺 thank you for your service 🫡🩷💙

Sammmeeee I’m unreasonably attached to them even after all this time. As long as Allurance don’t let me live in peace (they won’t), there will be more drabbles to come. Happy to be of service 🫡

[ethereance]

S3, set some time after the lion swap. Lance finds himself exposed to a mysterious plant, leaving the rest of the paladins fawning over him (much to their later embarrassment). Except…

Allura remains unaffected.

“What? You feel nothing? Not the faintest blush? Urge to kiss me?”

“No, I can’t say I feel any different.”

A pause. “But are you sure?”

“Lance.”

“Okay, got it. You’re immune to my charms. But what do we do about them?”

He’s talking about his team-mates-turned-love-zombies. The attention would be flattering if it weren’t so completely and utterly bizarre. Keith doesn’t leave his side. Like. At all. Pidge thinks the way to his heart is through punning—crow no, not the puns—and Hunk. Well. The baking has been nice. Even if those cupcakes look like Valentine’s Day come early.

Hopefully no one will be requiring Voltron in the next however-the-quiznack-long this will last.

[ethereance]

𝒮𝓉𝒶𝓎 𝒮𝒶𝒻𝑒

Allura thinks of him—the boy she met so long ago and yet not so much, time a deceptive thing—and remembers the arms she fell into, unfamiliar at the time, as were those ears—strange, utterly so—and she thinks of pickup lines, how there must have been an entire part of his brain dedicated to them with often they fell from his lips.

She thinks of agitation, nights spent wondering if these paladins really could achieve what her father set out to, bringing peace to the universe, when most were immature, the blue one especially, so close in age, and worlds apart with everything else.

She thinks of Lance, of everything that he was back then, the face he wore—obnoxious, carefree—and wonders just when this feeling entered her heart, when mild distaste gave way to admiration and affection, something childish and spirited creeping there as if she had time to find someone to fancy, a teenager in a school, and not the soldier princess she is, caught in a war that is more than her own wants.

Wonders when his presence became one she sought out, dear to her this teammate, this friend, this confidant, this Lance who has become everything that fondness can provide.

Wonders when it became something she might call love, so strong in Allura’s heart she cannot deny it, not when it is so obvious now, every beat so clamorous she’s sure everyone can hear it, her feelings stuck on a loudspeaker. Love—she has that in abundance with him, glad to have Lance in her life, to have people like the paladins, to be family where she had lost it. But there’s something different with him, an intensity to it, one that invites risk, in jumping into open space for a life that isn’t your own. Allura has sacrificed, has done so, but the loss of him brought her a terror not even she can quite express, his life something else, cherished in a way that plants buds in her heart.

She wonders, but there is nothing to pinpoint, nothing at all. Just a gradual descent. Allura did not trip and fall as when Lotor had ensnared her with his charms, but walked, walked and oh—how blissful that walk had been, to look around and realise that she wanted him as her destination, hands entwined in a union as one. Because this is Lance, and there is something so genuine to him, his loyalty and kindness such strengths in a universe battered and bruised, and what a gift it is to see that, to experience that, his support a pillar she can lean upon. Allura sees greatness there, and wishes, not for the first time, there could be a way for her father to see him, to realise that that spark is continued in him, a pilot of the same lion who tries and tries and tries to do what’s right.

Allura loves him, values him, adores him, but there is no place for that daydream, not here in the thick of bloodshed. Not now when Earth is hanging in the balance, when Lance could lose the very home that she had lost. Not now when they have a mission.

It comes first.

But maybe theirs is a future that could be fought for, maybe one quintant if what the mice said still holds true there will be time for them, and that dream in her heart can come true. Peace, with him. It sounds delightful.

So—

“I wanted to say, stay safe out there,” she says up to him, face aflame, and hopes with everything in her heart he does.

[lanlura]

AU

“Told you I thought you looked like a princess,” says Lance to Allura, only that isn’t their Lance, and the Allura he’s talking to isn’t her. 

They had encountered these strange lookalikes upon responding to a distress signal, leading, quite mysteriously, to an old altean ship, long thought missing, and long void of life. So who had sent out the signal? Allura couldn’t say. But what she could say was that the ship was sat inside a bizarre looking wormhole—a rift as per Coran’s deduction—and it was of the utmost importance they inspected it closer.

Of course there was the chance this was an elaborate trap—it had all the makings of one, Hunk was quick to caution them—but there was also the chance it wasn’t. That somewhere, here, someone genuinely needed them—and Allura wasn’t about to fail that. 

So they took Voltron through, into the unknown, unsure of what to expect.

Shiro—their leader in black, mysteriously gone, presumed dead by every one of them but Keith who held onto hope like a suffocating man, stuck in the void of space, and needing, relying on that hope to breathe, and Allura understood, she did—he was there. Alive.

And utterly perplexed they thought he was dead.

“I don’t understand,” said Shiro, like he hadn’t been gone all of this time. Like keith—who’d latched onto Shiro with a hug so tight only a relapse of Coran’s slipperiness would be able to pry him off if it wasn’t of his own accord—was the one they should be worried about. Though perhaps they should be. In his armour that really can’t be comfortable. “Not that I’m one to turn down a hug from Keith, but I saw all of you a moment ago.”

Allura stepped forwards. “A moment for you, yes, but phoebs for the rest of us.”

And then Shiro looked at her, really looked, somehow managing to become even more confused—and was it the new pink paladin armour? Allura couldn’t imagine why he’d look at her like—

“Who are you?”

Like he was struggling to make out who she was.

She blinked, stunned. “Sorry?”

“Err, are you feeling okay? That’s Allura,” said Lance, waving an arm in her general vicinity with an air of panic. “You know, our badass space princess? Saved our lives a bunch, lets us live in her castle? She’s a paladin now, but it’s just a costume change.”

“Allura?!” Shiro echoed, eyes searching. “But she’s not… and you’re… who are you?”

“Aww man,” said Lance, scratching his neck, dejected. “Me too? You remembered Keith just fine.”

“That’s because he’s Keith,” said Pidge.

“Of course I remember Keith,” added Shiro. “You too, Pidge. I remember everyone but not—ah, Hunk? What are you doing?”

“I need you to tell me how many fingers I’m holding up,” said Hunk, waving four in Shiro’s face. 

Pidge decided to do Shiro’s personal space a favour and pulled Hunk back. “He’s amnesiac, not concussed. That won’t help.”

“Hold on, I’m not amnesiac,” Shiro assured. Given the evidence, Allura was doubtful. “But something is going on here.” He addressed Lance, “Who did you say you were?”

“Oh, I’m Lance.”

Shiro stared. And stared some more. He was giving him the same look he had just given Allura, like he was looking for anything, anything at all, that could light the spark of recognition. “Prince Lance?”

“Come again?” said Lance, who had never had such a title to his name. It rang in Allura’s ears, not an unpleasant sound, but an unconventional one. Its dissonance, never conjoined before, could have been a tune on its own. One she would not be repulsed to hear again. 

But its use was sobering enough to shake Keith out of his limpet hold around Shiro. “Yeah, what do mean by that? How badly did Zarkon fry your brain to make you think Lance is a prince?”

“I can be princely,” Lance rebutted with a pout. 

“And I’m a galactic overlord,” Pidge snarked as Hunk clapped a hand over Lance’s shoulder, a pitying gesture. 

“Shiro,” said Allura, her concern tough and brittle. “Lance is not a prince. Not that I would know of. Are you well?”

Shiro took a step back, something in his expression shifting, changing. In mere ticks, he had fortified an entire artillery of defence in his stance. 

“I’m fine,” he said, and then, over his comms which did not come through on theirs he requested the location of his teammates. And then for them to come quick because he was surrounded by lookalikes. 

They all shared a look, baffled, unsure. Pidge appeared to be wrestling with theories, but the truth had to stand in front of their faces before they could all quite believe it. 

You see, the problem with flying through mystery rifts in space is that you often end up in mysterious places. Like alternate realities. And upon the arrival of her other self, summoned over by the comms call, that had become increasingly apparent. The blue armour she wore was the least of their differences. Her markings? Gone. Her hair? Brown. Her ears—though a sight she has grown accustomed to on her paladins, not quite hideous but still out of the ordinary—were uncomfortably, confoundingly round. Human.

“Oh,” other human her said, a strange lilt to her accent. It reminded her of her paladins, each now doubled up as the doppelgängers had burst in, given the exception of two. “I see what you mean, Shiro. You really are… me.”

“It would seem so,” Allura agreed.

Human her blinked. “Huh. You sound so regal. Sort of like... hmm. If you’re a princess here, then does that mean… the prince?”

Shiro nodded an affirmative and gestured to Lance. “From Earth like us.”

There was a playful twitch to her lip as other her regarded Lance. “Oh he’s going to love this.”

In an effort to decide what to do with the rift in space, in a way that may or may not have also been about giving them extra time to bond with their alternate selves, they had been lead back to the castleship. Another castleship, an echo of everything Allura had known. Every time she almost convinced herself she was back in her own reality, a difference would jut out, jarring her present predicament back into her. 

And it was there, in that uncomfortably unfamiliar command deck, that she met him. Standing next to a Coran that was not her own, was Lance in a way she had never seen him before. 

Before her stood a prince. An altean prince. 

His eyes danced not with mirth, but with flecks of light, alien to humans, alien on him, but stunningly beautiful to her people. It was as if someone had taken her palette, and reapplied it onto the boy she’d known. Not only was it his eyes, but his hair. White as the silk of her pillow and bedsheets, which she assumed was just as soft. Atop that head was a circlet, her circlet, the crown of her birthright, nothing more than an opulent trinket these days. 

And then were his ears and markings, blue as his eyes. Heat blistered Allura’s cheeks. It was a strange, horrifying thought, but Lance made a rather fetching altean. She wondered if this was how he looked in human standards, and then was promptly embrassed to have ever wondered that at all. 

He regarded her with immediate interest upon arrival, sizing Allura up as she did him. His eyes only strayed as Allura’s counterpart filed in. 

Which takes Allura to now, her peculiar present, with duplicates strange and familiar, her and Lance’s stranger still. 

Of all the changes. Of all the ways reality could take shape. To find herself at its centre with him—it holds too much inflated self importance. Why them? Why him?

Of all the paladins, why show him in her shoes?

“Told you I thought you looked like a princess,” says Prince Lance to other Allura as her counterpart rolls her eyes—human but still blue. Even as a prince, perhaps even more so as a prince, a Lance will be a flirt. The accent surprises her, though. It shouldn’t have. She knows her other self speaks another dialect, doesn’t enunciate as an altean does, but it’s Lance. 

She has heard him make a good Coran impression—which is as impressive as it is unnerving—but this one? This one talks like a prince. 

The prince then makes his way to her, and stops, dipping his head in respect, and—much to her surprise—presses his lips to her hand. Distantly, Allura hears an uproar. 

“Princess,” he says, with all the respect she thought she had lost. “It is an honour. These halls haven’t seen a princess of Altea in quite some time.”

There’s something in the way he says that, something that makes her stop for grief. There’s a twin of it nestled in her heart, aching for a kingdom, aching as a daughter. She thinks of the faces Lance had projected during synchrony training in those early quintants, and knows, should they exist here, they wouldn’t have for quite some time. 

It’s not just a title he’s taken, but her tragedy too. 

“Prince,” she returns in kind. “What an… interesting reality you have.”

“I could say the same about yours,” says Prince Lance. 

Coran—not hers, not hers—nods. “Interesting is one way to put it. The last time I saw double like this, the queen had invited those speedsters, the velox, to stay for dinner. I’ve never seen so much zipping around. It was like they were in two places at once!”

Allura remembers them. So many nobles her father had invited for talks of diplomacy, she had often been left with their children. Some would fancy themselves suitors, but what she was after were friends. She remembers two siblings, lightning on their feet as she gave chase, and thinks that time could have been close. 

“Veloxians are never ones for taking things slow,” Allura agrees. “Those dinners never lasted long.”

There’s a sparkle in the prince’s eyes, and it’s not just from their natural, altean look. “No,” he muses, “they didn’t.”

A throat clears, as subtle as a clamour. Lance, her Lance, gives his duplicate a look of distrust Allura would reserve for Zarkon, or any one of the sort. Not as hostile, but the rest of her paladins’ eyes are on him too, each with varying degrees of disbelief. Hunk hasn’t stopped mouthing “altean Lance’’ since they got here.

“Oh!” Prince Lance delights. “You’re other me!”

“Yep. Other you,” says Lance, his eyes still darting between herself and the prince, like he’s half expecting him to take her hand once more and press to it another kiss. 

“And Blue chose you.” Awe swirls in droves, almost drowned out the stir of envy, but it remains as sediment, the foundations to his wide eyes. Allura recognises that look well. From the beginning, she had longed to be a paladin, and if she had to pick, then red. Nostalgia and admiration and fuelled her want. And here came these earthlings from nowhere, barely any training, barely any cooperation, and the lions declared them theirs for her war. It hadn’t felt fair. 

No more does it feel fair to have the position at the cost of a teammate. 

“Er, Red now,” Lance amends. “Not gonna lie man, we haven’t kept up with the colour coding.”

“We do look good in blue,” says the prince with a grin—it’s more practiced and refined than his human self’s, but it contains an edge to it that she can only describe as Lance. He offers his counterpart a hand he does not kiss, but shakes. “It’s nice to meet you. I never expected to meet myself as a human—tell me, do you know how to operate Pidge’s games machines? Oh! And there’s some phrases the other paladins use that—”

As Prince Lance pulls his counterpart aside to grill him on all things human, her human self comes to stand next to her, and starts up her own private conversation. 

“If we didn’t have to get you back to your reality, he’d probably question him for hours. Big fan of Earth, that one. I describe it once and suddenly he’s besotted,” says other Allura with a certain level of fondness she’s only starting to come to terms with on her own. It’s strange to see it so plainly. 

“Hours?”

“Doboshes? Err, sorry. Vargas.”

“Oh. Well, I can’t blame him. I have many questions I want to ask you as well.”

“Yeah? Me too, Princess. I mean, what’s it like being altean?”

“What’s it like being human?” she fires back. 

“Touché,” says her counterpart, something her translator has to temporarily switch language settings for. “It’s just… I never thought I’d meet myself as a space princess. You’re me, but you’re just so different. And then there’s him.”

Her gaze follows her counterpart’s. She sees a royal, desperate to connect, to belong, but still light deca-phoebs behind in a time period called home. 

But she sees no mirror. 

“And then there’s him,” she agrees.

“You know, the first time we met, he thought I was a princess,” human Allura says. 

“He is a flirt.”

“It was the most sincere thing I ever heard from him. At least, at the start. Until we sat down and talked.”

“… Oh.”

“He had so many walls built up of bluster and ego, I didn’t know where the real Lance started. I wonder, if I met him back then, all those deca-phoebs ago, if he would have been anything like yours.”

Less burdened.

“Perhaps,” says Allura, “though a little more princely.”

Her counterpart gives her a look that makes her feel all too seen. “Oh, I think your Lance has his own sort of charm to him.”

“I don’t see it.”

“Somehow I don’t believe you,” other her teases with a levity in herself she has missed. 

Maybe strange, maybe human, but there is something in this girl that resided in her once, not even a deca-phoeb ago. She has questions to ask, about her past, about the fate of her family. And she will ask them, before they must part ways, most likely never to meet again. Not unless reality shatters, and how likely is that?

But for now she finds comfort in connection, and smiles back at a friend she cannot keep. 

[ethereance]

𝓐𝓵𝓵 𝓖𝓸𝓸𝓭 𝓣𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼 𝓒𝓸𝓶𝓮 𝓘𝓷 𝓣𝓱𝓻𝓮𝓮𝓼

Lance has loved thrice.

***

Lance’s first love was the ocean. Days he could spend clambering over rock pools on the beach near his childhood home, searching for crabs that had no patience for his grabby hands, and pocketing as much sea glass as he could get his hands on. It was always a competition against his siblings, seeing who could add the best finds to their treasure trove, reaping the beach like a merry band of pirates. The ocean was their playground. Lance would wade out far enough until he was swimming, knowing that the sting in his eyes would be worth it to see the bountiful bed of coral that rested beneath that blue, and it was almost like diving into another world beyond his own.

His second love was the stars. When night fell, and the ocean was still enough, the water would glisten like starlight, a whole galaxy contained in those depths. They were a marvel, and suddenly Lance’s eyes were tilted towards the sky, at constellations and comets, and what could lay beyond. His father pulled out his old telescope for him, and Lance became transfixed, daring to dream. The stars pulled him upwards, but his feet were always set firmly on the ground. On his ninth birthday, he’d wish for wings, begging the universe for a chance to fly.

His third was her. Allura. The universe gave Lance wings, in the form of a lion who loved the ocean as much as him, and it took him to her, a girl beyond the stars. Love may not have struck him at first sight, not before he truly saw her for her, but there was no shortage of blood rushing to his cheeks, the fledgling signs of what the heart had to offer, awe, fondness, admiration.

Third time’s the charm, and Lance was completely and utterly charmed by Allura.

[lanlura]

Stars

The call of the stars has forever been a strong one, Lance’s heart enchanted, and dreams forged in their direction. Every exam, every test, every up, every down, it was worth it to get into that seat—to sit a pilot, a paladin, soaring through the very stars that had beckoned him to follow, and into the castle that lay beyond.

To her.

Lance finds with Allura not destiny, but belonging, home for the homesick—for he misses home with its ache in his chest, salt encrusted, perpetual, as does she, out of time in a world that knows only her home as ancient history. But Allura, Allura, he has to wonder when her name could conjure the same warmth of such a place, when home became synonymous with the sparkle of her eyes, or the sight of her smile, fleeting sights in the thick of war.

They find their moments, few and far between. But they find them. Hope. A beacon in the dark.

Of all the stars, Allura shines brightest. With a light she does not let dull from her eyes, always ambitious, always determined. Allura sees a future.

Maybe it could be one with him.

But no one wrote Lance’s story in the stars, no one named him a hero before his time. The stars are full of aspirations, dreams, but they do not dictate wishes out of dust. He has to make it so, to decide the type of person he wants to be amongst this, inspired by stars, her shining north.

There is direction to be found, she offers it, but it must be earned. Lance will not be a paladin in name only. He won’t be a seventh wheel. He will do more than fake it, he will make it.

Because she inspires him.

He, once seven years old and with a telescope pointed upwards, now seventeen, with a lion his sky roaming chariot. He, who thought the stars called, but there is no sound in space.

They never wanted anything. They shine for everyone should you look up.

She inspires him.

Allura who lost everything. Allura who fights to persevere. Allura, who took what she had, and hunted for good.

There is no call to greatness.

Just a war. A war they stumbled into. A war where Allura found herself at its centre, the weapon for its end in her hands, and she asked them to hold each of its keys. It’s everyone’s fight.

For a future. For tomorrow. So everyone may look up at those same stars and see their own dreams, their own opportunities reflected in light. So that they may be free to wish.

And Lance?

He’s a paladin of Voltron. He’ll fight for that tomorrow. He’ll fight to be someone who can.

Because though there is no call to greatness, there is hope. And there are dreams.

And there is Allura—the star that called.

[lanlura]

Insecurities/Assurance

Allura wonders how Lance has the words to say—when she sees failure, her own judgement fractured by broken trust, he still believes in her guidance, her leadership, in her, despite everything that has amounted to. Her mistakes have lost them the castleship, it’s teleduv, it’s charging station—and as a result Voltron itself. At a time when hope is needed most, their symbol, their strength is gone. 

Allura wonders what there is left in her to trust.

And yet—

“All you can do now is get up and try to make it right.”

“You can’t doubt yourself now.”

For all her doubts, for all she has second guessed herself to infinity, she knows she can trust in him.

Allura will make this right.