With No Place to Go
After the destruction of Alfor's A.I., Coran and Allura must process what it means to be even more alone as the last of the Alteans. Set immediately after 1x11 "Crystal Venom" through just before 2x04 "Greening the Cube."
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He doesn’t expect it to hit him so hard. Allura breaks down almost immediately, though she keeps a good face on until Coran has shepherded the paladins out of the lounge and off to bed. It is too much to ask of anyone, Coran thinks, to lose a father twice.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do without him,” she says. She’s sitting on one of the couches, looking down at her hands. The hopelessness in her voice cuts him to the core, and he crosses the room quickly to sit beside her.
“Chin up, princess,” he begins gently, but he gets no further before she drops her face into her hands with a quiet sob. “Oh.” That’s where we are then, he thinks, and puts an arm around her instead of finishing his original thought. She pulls up her feet to curl into a ball and leans into his chest so he can wrap both arms around her in a circle. It’s a familiar position, the same way he would hold her when she was a little girl and scared that every time Alfor left was the time he wouldn’t come back.
He feels tears prick the back of his eyes at the memory of it, of murmuring her reassurances while she cried it out, of singing to her until he ran out of songs and then starting the whole repertoire over again, of telling her histories she would need to know eventually as queen anyway, of inventing game after game that they could play just the two of them, when Melenor was too occupied with the dozens of day-to-day decisions she needed to make alone in Alfor’s absence.
“Coran?” Her voice when she finally speaks is small and fragile, slightly more than a whisper.
“Yes, princess?” He’s glad he can still speak, that he can be here for her and not lose himself in his own memories.
“Can you tell me a story?" It's not what he’s expecting, and he breathes in sharply.
"Of course," he says, flipping rapidly through the possibilities and trying to find something suitable. "Did you have anything particular in mind?"
“Tell me one about him.” She hasn’t moved, but he can imagine her face, tearstained and filled with the anguish of having the most recent memories of her father those of a corrupted distortion. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, perhaps, that she would rather replace those thoughts with ones of happier times.
“Oh.” Coran swallows against a lump in his throat that he’s pretty sure wasn’t there before. Then he takes a deep breath and begins.
--
“Coran?” It’s just the two of them on the bridge the next morning; the paladins haven’t arrived yet. Coran’s not entirely sure how their sleep cycles work, but it seems they at least need more time in their quarters than he and Alllura.
“Yes?” he says, being careful to keep his tone neutral. He’s sure her mask is a fragile one, still.
“Why don’t you -- how -- I mean --” She’s struggling with the words, and Coran looks up from the helm to see her eyebrows deeply furrowed as she looks at the floor, lips pressed in a frown. Her hands are at her sides, but she’s moving them ceaselessly, curling and uncurling her fingers. He moves toward her, worry making his steps quick but silent. Allura looks up at his approach, and he sees her eyes are shining with tears that haven’t yet fallen. He reaches a hand out to rest it on her shoulder, and she opens her mouth hesitantly to continue.
“How are you at peace with this?” She throws a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob, takes a deep breath, closing her eyes against the tears as she steps into his arms for a hug. They only have at most ten dobashes, he figures, before the others show up, but a few dobashes of comfort is better than none, and if they can avoid worrying the paladins, all the better.
His throat has gone tight, and he can feel what should have been years of grief by now weighing behind his words when he does speak.
“I did my mourning, princess,” he says, as she buries her face in his shoulder. “I’ve done it every day since we woke up.” It’s not a lie, but it does avoid a piece of the truth -- that he’s not sure he is at peace with any of this. Coran tightens his arm around her quietly shaking shoulders. He keeps his voice steady, though his vision is starting to blur. “He was gone a long time ago.”
“It doesn’t feel like a long time ago,” she says, strong even though her voice is muffled. “It feels like --” she breaks off, and he nods over her hair.
“I know, princess,” he says, blinking away his own tears. “I know.”
By the time the paladins arrive on the bridge, they’re both back at their stations, calm and collected, as diplomatic representatives should be.
--
It's not the remembering that's bad; it's the forgetting. There are times Allura asks whether it was her father who insisted they have karlak in their spice rolls or whether he wore his hair short even before the part of her childhood she can remember. Most of the time Coran knows the answers, and he tells her, softly over breakfast, or loudly across the bridge with a joke attached about Alfor's fashion sense. Sometimes he realizes he's not sure, or that there's probably a deeper story there that he never asked Alfor about himself. Those are the worst times.
When she asks him which of the three of them it was who decided they should make juniberry tarts the season she started her diplomatic training, he hesitates.
“It seems likely to me it was your mother,” he says, but he’s surprised to find he’s not actually sure. He remembers the four of them collecting the berries as the sun shone around them in the meadow, savoring the last few movements before the dryouts would begin in earnest. He remembers the walk back to the kitchens, Allura giggling as she jogged ahead of the rest of them, only to giggle more as Alfor adjusted the broad-brimmed hat that had half-slipped off her head, telling her that in a proper diplomatic situation she would need to keep her appearance entirely dignified, but he would make some allowance for circumstances for today.
He can see Melenor painstakingly removing all the stems and leaves from the berries, can feel the dough he forms himself from yalmor fat and frinseed grain, can smell the tarts heating in the querlay as he and Alfor sit on the floor with Allura, quizzing her on the names of various ambassadors she’ll be meeting at her first formal event next movement. But he can’t for the life of him recall who it was who had first introduced the idea. It must have been Melenor, he decides, but the fact he doesn’t know nearly brings tears to his eyes. The warmth and joy of the memory must be more important, but all he can think is that he’s losing pieces of them both, even now.
--
There are plenty of pieces of them he doesn’t lose, however, and the edges of those memories become surprisingly soft and comforting over the coming movements. He wakes up one morning, the morning after they escape the wormhole time loop, with Alfor’s favorite song in his head. Part of him wonders if the time loop shook up his mind, moved different memories to the forefront -- but regardless, hearing a tune from so far across time brings a smile to his face even as it tugs at his heart, a quiet tight aching.
He remembers when the four of them listened to it on a quiet evening after an early diplomatic mission for Allura. It had gone well -- the Olkari were friendly to Alteans anyway, and the presentation of the daughter of the royals was merely a formality. Admittedly, even such a formality had to be handled well, and Allura had come through with flying colors. She had displayed such a clear combination of Alfor’s rapport, Melenor’s cleverness, and Coran’s warmth that she couldn’t help but be off to a fabulous start. Of course despite her best efforts, Allura was young enough that such a trial had tired her out, and Alfor was holding her up, curled against his chest as he swayed to the music.
Melenor and Coran sat on a couch against the wall of the small sitting room of their diplomatic vessel, her with her knees up and tucked into the corner, him with his legs stretched out, shoeless feet resting on the low table in front of them.
“You really never wish there were more of them?” he asked her quietly, though his eyes were still watching the king and their daughter fondly.
“Oh, sure, sometimes,” said Melenor, her sliver of a smile so small someone who knew her less would have missed it. “But I think we were right, really, the first time.” Coran hummed noncommittally at that. She was right, she meant. It was his opinion that every child should be raised with a veritable passel of siblings. Cousins, at the least, but Allura had never really taken to any of his nieces or nephews, and he had been busy in the Space Squad when she was young enough that Alfor and Melenor were still seriously considering siblings. By the time he was out and the three of them were together full time, they were at an impasse.
Melenor had always been fine with the idea of investing all their efforts in a single child; Alfor less so, especially as he would have loved to have other children to care for and spend time with in a way his parents never could. But then Alfor forged the lions, and once he was a paladin of Voltron, well -- the idea of introducing another tiny life they would be responsible for in addition to everything else going on was a bit too much. Even Coran -- with visions of a roomful of royal youngsters Allura could shepherd around the castle -- could see that. Even if it meant the entire future of Altea hinged on only her by the time she was barely an adolescent.
“It’s a lot on a small set of shoulders,” he said finally. Melenor nodded.
“It is,” she said. “But she can handle it.”
She can, he thinks now, sitting on his bed in his quarters. Her role in her own rescue, her strength handling the wormhole loop when he himself was reduced to a literal infant -- all her actions since they’ve woken up show she’s grown into someone who can. And he knows this as surely as he knows that he’s a lifetime away from quiet sleepy evenings listening to Alfor’s record chips, from long mornings spent in the diplomatic chambers discussing interplanetary happenings and too-short afternoons picking juniberries during the floodless, from his family -- apart from her.
Coran sighs deeply and stands up before he can get too lost in memory. There’s work to be done, after all. With the whole team recovered, having made it through a horrendously corrupted wormhole, they’ll need to give the castle a holistic checkup, and he’ll want to enlist the paladins in that effort. He’s stretching, considering how best to approach it with them, when there’s a quiet knock on the door to his quarters.
“Yes?” he says, gesturing the command for the door to slide open. Allura is standing there, shoulders slumped forward enough to make her look small and almost fragile. She’s been a bit rattled ever since Ulaz appeared, and that’s not been clearer than it is right now in the way she’s folded in on herself. He crosses to the door, concern clear in his quickened step and his frown. “What is it, princess?”
“He did trust Zarkon once, didn’t he.” It’s not really a question; he can hear that. He nods, holds out his hands, and she moves into the circle of his arms, burying her face in his chest. “I just don’t know what he would want us to do, Coran. And I can’t --” her voice breaks for a moment and he tightens his arms around her, whispering soft reassuring sounds as she continues. “I can’t ask him, just like I can’t -- I can’t ask him anything anymore. I can’t ask him how to change the smalters on a pod or what title to use for a taujeerian third class noble or whether we should trust a galra operative after the last time he did, Zarkon --” she breaks off into a sob, and her weight collapses against him. In a distant corner of his mind, Coran is grateful that his back hasn’t decided that today will be a bad day. He sighs, closes his eyes for a moment to gather his words before he speaks.
“I can’t pretend to know exactly what he would say,” he says finally. “I can’t pretend that losing him isn’t -- that it’s not an enormous loss, and one that will follow us for the rest of our conscious time, I imagine.” He takes a deep breath. “But I also think if he knew we would be here without him, without anything of him, I don’t think he’d be afraid.” Allura looks up at him, eyebrows drawn together, and opens her mouth as if to speak, but something in his face must stop her, because she closes it, and he goes on. “There’s a lot you still have to learn, Allura, and I certainly can’t teach you all of it -- I don’t know at least half of it myself.” This earns him a small shadow of a smile, which he returns “But I do know, princess, that he knew us, that he loved us, and that he was so incredibly proud of you.” He can feel his eyes filling with tears, and rushes to get the rest of the words out. “He would trust us -- he would trust you to make decisions, to make mistakes, and to learn from them. And I do, too.”
“I don’t want to lose him -- I don’t want to lose either of them,” she says, her voice soft and small. “It’s not fair.”
“It’s not,” he agrees. “But fair or not, it’s up to us to keep hope -- it’s a big, wide universe out there, and I think we can move things a little bit closer to the way Alfor always hoped they would be.”
“How’s that?” she asks. “How did he hope things would be?”
“Hm,” says Coran, and he takes a step back, noticing she’s standing a little taller, a little surer, on her own feet. “He hoped for peace, princess. Not just in the sense of an end to the war, I don’t think, but in the sense of repairing the ties that were torn. You asked if he trusted Zarkon; he did, and Zarkon broke that trust.” Allura nods, resolute.
“He made the Galra what they are,” she says. “Power-hungry, violent -- willing to sacrifice others for their own gain --”
“--but they need not stay that way, princess.” He can feel the intensity returning to his voice, can feel the sense of purpose he’s sometimes missing these days. “If anything, that shows that people can change -- that an entire culture can change, and rebuilding has to start with one spanner, as my aunt Inga always said. If we have one thread of connection, if we have one galra we can trust --”
“-- we can start to rebuild. We can try to make the universe my father -- well, that both of them wanted.”
“I understand it’s hard,” he says. “I know you’ve -- we’ve -- seen horrors visited on our own people and others by the galra time and time again, but we need to honor your father’s memory by keeping that hope alive.”
“I don’t want just hope, Coran,” she says, and he can see the tears well up in her eyes again. “I want to remember them.”
“When you want to remember them, come to me. And when you want to forget --”
“-- I don’t want to forget,” she says fiercely, and he smiles at the determination etched into every bit of her face.
“Neither do I, princess.”
