#alluri

Allura wrapped her arms around Meri's waist, pressing flush against her back. Meri instantly tensed, every line of her like stone in Allura's embrace. Allura frowned, sneaking another look at Meri's face. Lit from beneath by the display screen, it looked even more gaunt than ever, her eyes dull and distant. "Why don't you step away for a while?" Allura asked, trying not to put any judgement into the question. "Come get some sleep, start fresh in the morning. I'll help?" Meri gave an awkward shrug, her eyes never leaving the screen. She reached out mechanically to navigate the menus, and Allura idly followed her progress. She wasn't doing anything any more involved than she'd said. Just cataloging distress calls, routing memos from the Accords and the paladins' allies, approving maintenance reports and other minutiae of castle upkeep. She did it all with that same stiff posture, remaining rigid in Allura's arms. Maybe it was just Allura imagining things, but she seemed to actually be leaning away from her touch. "Meri?" Allura asked. She hesitated, all her diplomatic training failing her as she found she had no idea how to ask what she wanted to. Meri preempted her by turning around, a smile softening her face. It was a convincing smile, too. It even reached her eyes to crinkle them at the corners in the way that was so utterly Meri. But they were close enough that Allura could sense the faint currents of Quintessence running beneath her skin. Meri had shifted her features to produce this smile. If she wanted to, Allura could have reached out and cut the strands of Quintessence, forcing Meri out of the shift. She held off, but it wasn't respect for Meri's privacy that stayed her hand so much as a fear of what she would find underneath the perfect smile. How broken was Meri, that she couldn't even force a smile on her own face? "Sorry, 'Lura," Meri said. "I really should get this done tonight. Don't feel like you need to wait up for me, though. I know you've got an early day tomorrow." It was a dismissal, clear as day, and it stung enough that Allura couldn't scrounge together a response. She just gaped at Meri, fighting against her hurt and indignation. This wasn't about her. She couldn't lose sight of that. This was about Meri, hurting and upset and ashamed of it all for some reason Allura couldn't fathom, except that she knew what Meri looked like when she was punishing herself. She'd looked very much like this in the aftermath of Allura's mother's death. Freshly bonded to Blue, she'd withdrawn, building up a facade of strength and indifference in an attempt to be what she thought everyone expected her to be. She hadn't known how to build shifts like this back then, but Allura thought she would have worn them if she could. She'd never wanted to add her baggage to other people's. Meri didn't wait for Allura to find her voice. She just turned back to her busy work, shutting Allura out entirely. Allura could have pressed, could have turned this into a fight, but that wasn't what she wanted. It wasn't what either of them wanted, she suspected. In Meri's eyes, she probably thought she was sparing Allura the worse pain. With a heavy heart and a tongue that felt like cotton in her mouth, Allura retreated. She would talk to Coran in the morning. He might have some advice for her on what to do to help.

Coran wished he could say he was surprised when Allura came to him about Meri, but of all the ways to describe how he felt about this complicated nest of emotions, shock was not one of them. He was, after all, adjunct to the Blue Lion. He'd felt Meri's torment since long before she returned to the castle. Allura had been waiting outside his room when he woke for his morning duties--an early call even for Allura, who had always hated wasting the day away by sleeping in. She'd been dancing on her toes, clearly battling herself over whether or not to knock on his door and risk rousing him early. One look at Allura told him all he needed to know, especially coupled with the groggy malaise he sensed from Meri's direction. She wasn't asleep, though he thought she might have been trying. For once. "It's going to take time," he told Allura once she'd finished pouring out all her concerns. He'd ushered her back into his room and sat her on the edge of his bed, sending off a quick message while he fetched the down comforter that had always been her favorite. Something had come up, he told the ranking officer on the bridge, and he would be late to his usual rounds. "I know you were hoping for a better answer, and I wish I had one to give you." Allura sighed, pulling the corners of the blanket tight at her throat and leaning on Coran's shoulder. "I just want to be able to help her. I know she's hurting. Why won't she let me see it?" That was a complicated question with a complicated answer, and Coran didn't think Allura needed him to say so. She knew as well as anyone how hard it could be to admit weakness, even to a loved one. How long had she carried her grief for her father close to her own heart before she let the other paladins see her mourning? And this situation with Meri was more complicated still. Coran had seen glimpses of it in Thace, and he'd felt whole volumes from Meri through the bond. Considering that this insight was somewhat ill-gotten gains--and especially considering she'd pushed him away as much as she pushed away everyone else, to the point that Coran hadn't been able to tell her properly what it meant for him to be her adjunct... Well, he wasn't about to go telling Allura everything he'd inferred. "She's been through a terrible ordeal," Coran said. "I don't know the full of it, but I know she probably needs time to process. All you can do is be there for her. Remind her that she's not alone anymore. Then when she's ready to talk, she'll know who to turn to." Allura's sigh said she'd already known what it was she had to do, but she didn't like the idea of sitting around waiting for something beyond her power. That was fair. Coran didn't like waiting, either.  So an hour later, after he'd coaxed Allura back to bed to catch up on the sleep she'd lost fretting over Meri, Coran himself went to find his insomniac paladin. She was down on the training deck, apparently haven given up on resting. She didn't notice him come in, and watching her sluggish movements as she took on a training bot--fairly low-leveled compared to her usual fare--Coran had to wonder just how much sleep she'd missed since her return last week. The shadows under her eyes were darker than he remembered from even just last night, her skin dry and waxen, her hair a limp mess. And she was moving slow, too. It wasn't the sluggishness of someone nearing the end of an intense workout. Meri quite simply couldn't track the training bot's movements, which meant that it kept catching her by surprise with its attacks. Coran winced as she took a blow to the ribs, staggering back with a soft grunt of pain. Her face screwed up in frustration and rage, and she launched herself at the gladiator, foregoing the staff she'd selected for this session in favor of a more... hands-on approach. Quintessence flared bright around her fingers, crackling in the air like a living thing and filling up the space between Coran and her. He couldn't read the currents to know her intent, but her hand sank into the gladiator's chest panel. The robot froze at once, its joints locking up, and an uncharacteristically vindictive smile flashed across Meri's face as she yanked her hand back and let the gladiator fall.

The crash of metal rang loud in the sudden silence, and Coran wasted no time in stepping forward. Better to announce himself than to have Meri notice and wonder if he'd been intentionally spying. "You're up early." She whirled toward him, horror dawning on her face for a brief moment before it was smoothed over--quite literally. If he hadn't seen the transformation, he never would have guessed that Meri had donned a shift, but there was nothing natural about the way the panic in her eyes glossed over to bland disinterest, or the way her skin and hair brightened minutely, lessening the appearance of neglect and exhaustion. Even the slump of her shoulders eased by way of a subtle shift in bone structure. Coran's stomach turned at the sight--or perhaps that was the coil of fear reaching him through the bond, stronger even than the shame and guilt twisting Meri's insides into knots. "Coran!" she said brightly. "Hey! Yeah. Figured I'd start the day off right. Haven't been able to keep up with my training lately, what with all the..." She trailed off, her manufactured smile dulling somewhat as anxiety wrapped around her throat. Coran felt it like it was his own emotion, and he had to swallow before he could speak. Even then, it came out strangled. "Of course. Let me know if you ever need a sparring partner." He grinned at her startled blink. "What? I'm not an old man just yet. And I need to be on my toes, what with the whole adjunct situation." She hummed, clearly too distracted to pick up on the hint Coran was trying to give her. He sighed, contemplating how else he might broach the subject of her emotional state. She was so on edge he knew she wouldn't respond well to a direct approach, and the last thing he wanted was to make her shut him down. She needed friends now more than anything. "Do you have plans for the rest of the day, then?" he asked instead, graciously bypassing her obvious exhausted stupor. She shrugged. "I finished the signoffs last night. Went through most of the backlog of Coalition memos, too. There's a few you or Allura will have to take a look at, but..." She trailed off, tightening her mouth around a yawn. Coran wished she would just admit how tired she was--or at least admit what it was that was keeping her from sleep. It felt wrong to ignore the yelmore in the room when he could have punctured her facade without much effort. But that wasn't what it meant to be the blue adjunct. He knew what his paladins needed, and what Meri needed right now wasn't more guilt on top of what she had already piled on herself. To have churned through so much work last night--Coran, better than anyone, knew just how much of a slog that would have been. He was amazed she hadn't fallen asleep at the console halfway through the fiftieth dull report from an ally somewhere. "Well," he said brightly, clapping his hands together. "Thank you for clearing that off my plate. If it's not too much to ask of you, perhaps I could get your help with a few more tasks?" A flush of pride briefly overtook Meri at Coran's thanks--far too much pride for such a simple thing, and it spoke to the depth of her self-loathing. Even more baffling was the staggering sense of relief that answered his request for help. Coran took a page from Meri's book and applied a touch of a shift to his face to conceal his alarm. He wasn't as practiced at it as Meri, and he was sure there were flaws in his shift--he'd never been the best at crafting new forms for himself, and he'd never attempted a partial shift like this before. Thankfully, Meri was too tired to scrutinize him too closely. She crossed the training room to retrieve her discarded staff, nearly toppling over in the attempt. She caught herself on the wall, freezing for a moment as a flood of heat washed through her. She was keenly aware of Coran's eyes on her; he could feel her self-consciousness and averted his eyes before he realized what he was doing, but even knowing its source, he couldn't make himself look directly at her until she'd stowed the staff in the weapons rack and joined him by the door. She wove a bit as she walked with him toward the elevator, fatigue written in every line of her body. She didn't offer any conversation, and he didn't try to tease it out of her. She looked like she might fall asleep standing up--and, in all honesty, Coran would have been glad of it. He didn't feel her exhaustion, exactly. It wasn't carried through the bond like true emotions. But there was a thick haze over her mood, dampening her emotions and heightening those few flashes that broke through the muddle, and trying to adjust himself to it all did give him a taste of what she must have been feeling. She didn't ask where they were going. If Coran had to guess, he would say she didn't care. It seemed to Coran she just wanted something to keep her moving. To keep her awake. He wondered if it was dreams that were bothering her. He reminded himself, again, that she didn't owe him answers, and let the silence swell as they neared their destination. He'd contemplated several options for the first step of what was sure to be a long journey to healing for Meri. She needed sleep, certainly, and he'd briefly entertained the idea of taking her up to the map room in the hopes that the low lighting and peaceful atmosphere might coax her into an involuntary nap. It seemed a little heavy-handed, especially as he couldn't be sure it would be worth the effort. He might well only succeed in stoking Meri's resentment before she stalked off to less lulling pursuits. So instead, he'd opted for a simpler deception. He'd asked Thace to join them in one of the equipment storage rooms for a routine systems check on the supply of BLIP-tech drones. It was a suitably voluminous task to justify having three people assigned to it, but straight-forward enough that it didn't require the attention of someone trained in the upkeep of complex machines. All that was really required was a visual inspection of the casing for damage or corrosion and a manual verification of the last self-check. Thace didn't know anything of the troubles Meri had been facing--at least, not more than he might have inferred because of his own history with espionage. Coran hadn't asked him to speak with Meri, nor had he told him that he had arranged for Zelka to call him away half an hour into the task. It didn't make this any less meddling, but at least he wasn't conspiring on top of that.

Besides, he couldn't very well have just asked Meri to go see Thace. Coran had long suspected she was deliberately avoiding Thace, and the way she stiffened when she saw him waiting inside the storage bay lent credence to that theory. Her steps slowed, her shift slipping momentarily as she visibly weighed the benefits of simply walking out of the room. She eventually decided to see it through, though her reluctance was strong enough to slow Coran's steps, too, and he shook himself, clapping his hands briskly as he entered the room. "Well!" he said, sending a silent apology to Thace, who had startled at the sudden noise. "Now that we're all here, let's get started, shall we?" It took only a few moments to demonstrate the checks, and then they were all off, working their way down separate rows at their own pace. Meri lagged behind the other two, moving on autopilot and struggling to stay awake, but Coran didn't call her on it. They were spread far enough apart that conversation was unnecessary and somewhat awkward, so they worked in companionable silence until Zelka called and Coran took his leave. He only prayed that Thace could help Meri where the rest of them couldn't.

Meri silently cursed Coran for leaving her alone with Thace, and then felt immediately guilty for the thought. There was nothing at all wrong with Thace. He was a good man, and the advice and resources he'd provided her with when she left on her ill-informed espionage mission had probably saved her life several times over. It had certainly enabled some of her more idiotic decisions, but that was hardly his fault. It also wasn't his fault being around him reminded her too much of her time in Haggar's inner circle. He had a way about him, a vigilance even soldiers like Shiro and Keith couldn't match. He was aware of his surroundings at all times, wary of potential threats, but he also watched with an eye that was well practiced at looking below the surface. He didn't have to stare for her to feel as though she were being picked apart. The only saving grace in this situation was that he was two rows over and Coran had promised to make this as quick as he could. With luck, he'd return from helping Zelka in ten or twenty minutes, and Meri could go back to shuffling along like a zombie and trying not to pass out in the middle of her inspection. Quiznak. She was so tired. She shook her head, though, shoving away her exhaustion, and kept moving. She finished ten drones, then twenty, and still Coran hadn't returned. Thirty drones on, she looked up to see Thace approaching down the next row. He was focused on his task, but his proximity raised an alarm in her bones. Someone was here. She couldn't let her guard down. She never had found a way to confirm whether or not her shifts held while she slept, and if he saw something he wasn't supposed to-- Meri caught herself following familiar old tracks of paranoid thought and stopped where she was, staring at her reflection in the polished shell of the BLIP-tech drone. What was she talking about? She wasn't on the Eryth anymore. She was among friends, and she didn't need to worry about someone seeing that she was an Altean. A purple cast had crept into her hand while she was drowning in pointless panic, and she banished that, too, mentally checking herself for any other Galra traits that might have slipped through. It had happened at least once a day since she'd returned--fangs, fur, purple pigmentation. Once she'd fully shifted her ears to the longer, floppier version she'd used as part of her Reza shift. Thace continued working as he drew near to Meri, not looking up from the screen in front of him. "Have you ever tried krebu?" Meri lifted her head to frown at Thace. Logic said he was talking to her. After all, there was no one else in the room. Still, her tired mind couldn't quite grasp the concept of conversation. "What?" she finally said, eloquently. Thace had enough tact not to comment on her mental state. "It's a tea," Thace said. "Old Galra recipe--though perhaps not as old as we like to pretend." Meri cracked a smile at that, the expression pulling at muscles that she swore she hadn't used in months. "I imagine a lot of things seem old until you meet someone from ten thousand years ago. It's good?" "A little bland for my taste, but I suppose that's the point." "The... point?" "It's a common remedy among civilian families. A lot of my men grew up with a parent or grandparent who liked to prescribe it for all sorts of ails. Nadezda swears by it. Personally, I find it hard to believe a few herbs can do all that people claim it can. It is good for insomnia, though. Better than anything else I've tried." Suspicion came roaring back in, popping Meri's bubble of complacency. She reinforced her placid partial shift on instinct before Thace's last statement clicked into place. "You too, huh?" she asked, well aware that she was admitting her own weakness. Well, a piece of it, at any rate. But Thace had a nonjudgmental air about him and, more importantly, there was just enough distance between them for it not to feel like a threat. It wasn't like with Allura and Coran, or even Lance and Rosa. She didn't-- Well, it wasn't that she didn't care what Thace thought of her. She just didn't think he'd known her long enough to have expectations for her to live up to. Thace smiled. "Ever since I left the Accords," he said softly. Something passed between them in those few words. An understanding, of sorts, that went beyond the insomnia. He'd been there. He'd done things to maintain his cover--awful, horrible things. Things that haunted him. Things he regretted, and had regretted from the moment he did them, but he'd done them all the same because the mission mattered more than one solitary person's conscience. The tears took her by surprise, as did most emotion these days. It snuck up on her, stealing her breath, and she turned back to her work before Thace could see her tearing up. She tried to breathe, but breathing only widened the cracks in her composure, so that left her holding her breath and squeezing her eyes shut, as though by forcing the tears out faster she could reach the end of this hysteria sooner. Hysteria. She almost had to laugh at the fact that this was the word her mind had conjured to describe herself, when she'd always hated the way it was so often slung to undermine someone's emotional turmoil. To cheapen it. But she'd impersonated a druid, participated in the interrogation and torture of Imperial prisoners, risked death on a daily basis, and now here she was, crying over tea. Maybe hysteria was an apt word, in this case. "How do you do it?" she asked, hating the way her voice shook but unable to stop the words pouring out of her mouth. Thace remained quiet, waiting for her to elaborate, and she waved her hand in the air, using the gesture as an excuse to wipe her cheeks. She still stared at the pod in front of her. "After everything we've seen, everything we've done, how are we supposed to go back to the way things were?" "Slowly," Thace said, frankly, "and with the support of people who are better than us." He shifted, and when Meri finally turned, she found he had given up all pretense of keeping busy and was watching her now--with sympathy, yes, but also with an ache she knew all too well. "Is it the memories?" "No." Meri hesitated. "...Yes and no. Not memories as such. Just..." She turned away, a lump rising in her throat. "It's like it's not my mind that's stuck back there so much as my body. I couldn't... I never slept through the night while I was there. I was too afraid someone would walk in and notice something off about my shift." Her voice wavered, and she cursed herself, wiping her eyes now with both hands. There was nothing subtle about it, but Thace was far too perceptive to have missed the signs of an impending breakdown, anyway, and she just didn't have the energy to keep pretending. "I don't have to worry about that now. I shouldn't-- I want to sleep, but every time I try I wake up an hour later in a panic. It was worse when I tried to sleep in Allura's bed. It was-- She was there, and there was a part of me that thought she was the enemy."

Remembering that moment, remembering the way she'd reached for a weapon, the way she'd come so close to lashing out, to attacking the one person who mattered more to her than anything else in the universe--

Meri choked on a sob, shaking her head to dislodge the what-ifs that had been haunting her ever since. "When I wake up like that, I can't just go back to sleep. I'm up for another eight hours or more, and the only thing I can do is try to go until I'm about to drop and hope the exhaustion buys me an extra twenty minutes or so before it all starts over again." Her vision had blurred so much by now that she could hardly make Thace out across the row of drones, but he approached slowly, telegraphing his moves. Meri hated that she was so fragile he felt he had to treat her like a wounded animal, but she couldn't pretend she wasn't scared of how she might have reacted otherwise. She didn't expect him to trust her when she couldn't even trust herself. Instead, though, she remained where she was as he approached, his arms spread in a silent invitation. Of all the people in the castle who might have offered her a hug, Thace was pretty far down on the list, but coming from him it didn't feel so much like pity. She teetered on the edge for a moment, then fell against him, turning all her focus toward her breathing in a desperate attempt not to fall apart completely in his arms. "I'm sorry," Meri whispered, turning her forehead into his shoulder. She wasn't sure what she was apologizing for--crying on the lapels of his uniform? Or having this breakdown on him, instead of literally anyone else? She had a whole castle full of people with more reasons than Thace to care about her bullshit. Thace only hummed, an echo of a melody in the sound. "You have nothing to apologize for. Your actions saved a great deal more people than they harmed. It will get easier to see that, with time." Meri scrunched her face up as the flow of tears increased. "I know," she said, not knowing if it was the truth. "I just wish I'd been better." "Be better now," Thace said. "That's all you can do. And remember, this team you have... They don't know the things we know. I pray they never have to learn. But they know a thing or two about healing a fractured spirit... Coran knows the weight of regret as well as us, in his own way." Meri snorted with a sudden realization, then felt immediately silly for not having seen it before now. Vrekt, she really was tired. "He didn't just 'get called away,' did he?" Thace hummed again, one hand rubbing circles on her back. "I very much doubt it. For what it's worth, I didn't figure it out until he got the call, either." "Well... It kind of worked out, in the end," Meri admitted. She lingered in Thace's embrace for another moment, then pulled back. "Thanks. And... I'm sorry. I don't want to burden you with all of my drama." "It's not a burden to offer a little sympathy every now and again," Thace said. "I'm sure Allura and Coran would say the same." "I don't know if I can talk about it with them. Not yet." Thace smiled. "Then tell them that. They'll understand. The wonderful thing about comfort is that it doesn't require exhaustive knowledge of the context. They already know you're hurting; that's enough to start. Tell them what you can, and tell them that you're not ready for the rest, and then just... go from there." Tell them what she could, huh? Meri wasn't sure what that was, but she was long past the point of having enough energy to keep running from the darkness of her own mind. She just wanted to feel safe in her own body again. "Okay," she said. "I'll try." She wiped her eyes again, and pulled back to stand beside the next BLIP-tech drone in the row. She hesitated before beginning her inspection, however, and opened her mouth to ask a question that never came. "Go on," Thace said. "I don't think you need to stay here any longer." He glanced sidelong at his own drone. "If Coran actually needs this to be done, I'm sure he can find someone else to help him." "Punishing him for tricking you?" Meri asked with a feeble smile. Thace chuckled. "If he asks, I'll tell him we figured out what he actually wanted us to do and came to the logical conclusion that nothing else was required of us." Meri shook her head, but she wasn't going to complain about getting the rest of the day off. Her little miniature breakdown had worn her out faster than three hours on the training deck. She might actually make it a full two hours before she woke this time. She nodded to Thace and took a single step toward the door, then stopped again. "Actually...." "Krebu?" Thace asked with a knowing smile. "I stole some while we were on homeworld. Would you care to join me for a cup?" Meri smiled, a weight lifting from her shoulders. "I'd like that very much."

Allura got another hour of sleep before giving up the effort. A very large part of her wanted to go find Meri--not that she knew what she would do after that point. Her conversation with Coran kept rattling around in her head. Be there for Meri, but don't push. It was a delicate balance to strike, especially for someone like Allura, who by her nature wanted to fix problems, not merely commiserate. Unfortunately, Coran was right. This wasn't a problem she could fix. There was no clever solution she could propose that would mend all of Meri's hurts, and until Meri reached a point where she was ready to ask for help, there was very little Allura could do. But she would commiserate until the end of time if that was what Meri needed. It would be better than trying to help and getting pushed away again. Apparently she had time to come to terms with the gentle approach, though, because Meri seemed to have finally gone in search of sleep--or at the very least, she wasn't in any of her usual haunts, new or old. No in any of her favorite places--the synthetic hot springs at the top of Blue Tower, the observation deck where they'd spent so many evenings watching the stars. She wasn't with Blue, either, and Lance hadn't seen her all morning. But she wasn't on the bridge or the training deck either. She may have been in her room, but if she was, Allura was loathe to disturb her. Allura stifled her disappointment and returned to the observation deck to think. It was good that Meri had allowed herself to take a break. She needed all the rest she could get. It did leave Allura feeling rather useless, however. Coran had told her to take the morning off, which meant she still had several hours before he expected her on the bridge. She supposed she could go find Shiro and see what else needed to be done today. She contemplated doing just that, but she'd already settled in on the cushioned bench beside the large, round window, a blanket draped over her lap and a mound of pillows behind her. It was a cozy little nest (not as cozy as it would have been with Meri beside her, but some things were outside of Allura's control), and she was reluctant to move. She wasn't sure how long she sat there, watching the slow drift of stars as the castle-ship drifted through space, but it was long enough that she'd begun to drift herself, her mind falling into that pleasant, weightless warmth right on the edge of sleep. The door hissing opened startled her awake, and she scrubbed at crusty eyes as she turned to see who had found her. Meri stood in the doorway, a sweater in the human style pulled over her rumpled uniform. She had a steaming mug in each hand, bags under her eyes, and a shy smile on her face. "Meri!" Allura stood, tripping over her blanket. She was wide awake now--wide awake and filled with directionless energy. She wanted to say something to Meri, but she didn't know what. Didn't know why Meri had come to find her, after spending the last week trying her best to avoid being alone together. Meri closed the distance between them first, holding out one of her mugs to Allura. "I brought you some cocoa," she said. "Rosa's recipe." "Oh," Allura said, staring dumbly at the mug. "Thank you." They stood there awkwardly for a few moments longer, Meri staring into her own mug, which looked more like tea than cocoa, Allura watching Meri for a sign of what she wanted Allura to do. She looked more vulnerable than she had last night, like she'd finally decided to let her guard down, but Allura didn't want to ruin that by asking probing questions. "Do you... Do you want to watch the stars with me?" Allura finally asked. Meri's answering smile lit a bonfire in Allura's chest, and they settled in together on the bench by the window, shoulders pressed together, the blanket spread over both their laps. The cocoa was delicious, and it spread the warmth throughout Allura's body, soothing some of her nerves. "I'm sorry I've been so distant," Meri said, both hands wrapped around her mug. She stared out at the stars, the soft blue glow of the room's emergency lighting catching in her hair, which was still damp from a recent shower. The light softened her, washing away the marks of her experiences in Haggar's circle. Allura laid a hand on her arm. "You don't need to apologize, Meri. You've been through a lot. You're allowed to take some time to adjust." Meri gave her a watery smile, laying her own hand atop Allura's. "Thanks. I... I know you want to help, and you deserve to know everything. I just... I don't know when I'll be ready to talk about it. It's all too fresh right now. Is it okay if we just... sit... for a while? I've missed you." "I missed you, too," Allura said, squeezing Meri's wrist. "We can do whatever you like. You know I'll always be here for you." Meri's face crumpled, and she gave a self-conscious laugh as Allura pulled her into a hug. "I'm sorry," she said, her voice hitching. "I just... You shouldn't promise things when you don't have all the information." Allura's throat constricted, and she carefully set aside their two mugs--her still mostly full, Meri's down to the dregs. She turned, cradling Meri's cheek in the palm of hand and gently turning her head until their eyes met. "You're right that I don't know everything you've done," she said, bringing up her other hand to curl around the back of meri's neck, her fingers tangling in the short, fine hairs at the base of her skull. "But I know you, and I know why you did what you did. That's enough for now. When you're ready to talk about what happened, I'll listen, but I already know nothing you say will change how I feel about you." Meri's eyes watered, and she pulled away from Allura's touch. "You can't know that." "Of course I can," Allura whispered. She leaned back into the mound of pillows, pulling Meri with her. "We're at war, Meri. We all face impossible decisions--some more horrific than others. Sometimes we regret our decisions. Sometimes we wish there had been another way." She paused, weighing her words. "You think I think less of Shiro for his past? Or Keith? Thace? I won't pretend that the decisions I've had to make are anything like what you've faced, but I'm not naive. I know the ugliness that exists in this universe." Meri wound tighter in Allura's arms for a moment, then slowly relaxed against her, her breathing evening out. "I guess we all do, by now."

"Unfortunately." Allura wove her fingers into Meri's hair, combing it back from her face. "But I also know that good people are still good, whatever ugliness they’ve faced, and that we can still carve out places to breathe for a moment, away from it all."

"Places like here?" Meri asked, turning so her chin rested on Allura's breastbone. A crooked smile had taken over her face, and it made Allura's heart melt.

"Places like here. Whatever ugliness is out there, I won't let it reach you while we're together. I swear it. So try to get some rest, all right?"

Meri's smile slipped. "I... I'll try. But, Allura, you need to know--sometimes, when I first wake up, I forget that I'm not back there. I don't--You don't need to worry about it. I'm dealing. I'm learning how to. But you should know, because I'm probably going to wake up in a couple hours, and there's a good chance I'll wake you up when I do."

Allura's chest tightened in sympathy, and she kissed Meri's forehead. "Thank you for telling me. Is there anything I can do to help if that happens? Or should I give you space?"

"Space," Meri said, after a moment's pause. "Just for a minute. Just until I figure out what's happening."

Smiling, Allura guided Meri's head down onto her chest. "I can do that. Now rest. I'll be here when you wake up."

"I love you, Allura."