#lacxa

           “What is it you’re asking me?” she says to the paladin.

           He locks eyes with her. “Are all of you Galra?”

           The urge to push hair behind her ears itches under her skin. “At least as Galra as you.”

           “I’m half,” he says. Her eyebrows twitch up in surprise.

           They sit in silence. The paladins’ void-time took a few quintants for her to sync up to, but by now she has a feel for their shifts. It’s somewhere between second and third meal, a time the blue paladin keeps calling ‘afternoon’. Second sun, they’d say in her colony. In about a varga the wolf will zap into the cargo hold laden with whatever concoction the yellow paladin has come up with for them to eat.

           Acxa turns her gaze to the door. The other member of their party, the Blade agent, must be monitoring the cockpit. Acxa doubts she can actually fly the ship – what would the point of Voltron be if any pilot in the universe could settle down in its chair? – but she’ll be ready to fetch the team’s leader if an emergency rears up. That this quadrant is relatively barren means nothing.

           When Acxa looks back she’s unsettled to see he’s still staring at her. She sets her jaw.

           “You don’t look it,” she says.

           It takes him a moment to link her reply back to his comment, but she sees the connection in his eyes. He shifts, lifting his shoulders just to drop them again in an unconcerned shrug. “Neither does Ezor.”

           A fair enough counter. “Many Galra genes are more recessive than most other races’. With the exception of height.”

           He narrows his eyes at her, studying her face. He probably thinks she’s mocking him. She smiles, just a little. He huffs.

           “Almost every Galra I’ve ever met was some shade of blue or purple. I thought…” He lingers over that, then closes his mouth. Shakes his head just a bit.

           She wavers for a moment between speaking up and waiting him out, watching his thoughts shifting behind his eyes. Everything she knows speaks to the latter. Learn to read the room. Study their emotions before giving them any of yours, and curate yourself to the situation. But what she’s read has been that the paladins treat allies differently than the Galra do. If she’s really inventing herself to fit among them, then paradoxically she must stop inventing.

           Honesty for honesty’s sake tastes like weakness. But the fear of weakness smells like Lotor.

           “Ezor’s people are notoriously colorful. Half-breeds of her race are always bright. In general, though, skin, scale, and fur colors tend to be dominant for us, too.”

           From the way they interact, Acxa had thought that the Blade onboard was close with him. He could have asked her these sorts of questions himself, if they were really what was at the front of his mind.

           “Why are you asking about the Galra?”

           He sits up a little straighter, so perhaps she’s gotten to the real reason he’s here. “I was at the Kral Zera.”

           “I know.” The entire Empire knows the Blades bombed the sacred, ceremonial stairway while Voltron stood behind Lotor’s bid for emperor.

           He nods. “While we were coming in, I heard someone say something about Lotor being half-Altean. They didn’t sound very happy about it.”

           “Would you be happy? If the person trying to lead your people was born from a mother whose race you believe to be single handedly responsible for the destruction of your entire planet?” It comes out quick but even. Cold. She understands, of course, why the older Galra are wary to trust Alteans. And in the end, they were right to doubt Lotor. “But yes. The trauma the Galra went through ten thousand years ago means they… we have a millennia old history of racism. Any Galra with a non-Galra parent is cast out as part of the servant class. A servant class ruler is unheard of.”

           “Before Lotor.”

           She closes her eyes and pulls in a breath. Stares at the scar on his face as she speaks. “Yes. Before Lotor.”

           “But he didn’t care, right?” She flicks her gaze back to his eyes, questioning. “I mean, about the racism. He wasn’t racist. Or, he was, but not like the others.”

           “He… He fetishized Alteans, I think,” she says quietly. It’s a bitter truth. One she’d refused to swallow for so long, until it was too late.

           A strange look passes through the paladin’s eyes. He’s silent for a long while, so much so that she thinks the conversation’s over, until he says, “Did he… hate the Galra?”

           Acxa looks away. It’s an echo of something she’s been trying to make sense of for decaphoebs. He always spoke of unity, of equality. Insisted that the Empire should be employing partnership rather than subjugation in its colonial policies. We will be the change this empire needs. She’d been so ready to believe.

           And yet his actions spoke louder than his gentle words.

           “He said we were the new generation.”

           The paladin’s eyes are blank. It isn’t something she expects him to understand. She pulls her lips out of the frown that snuck in without permission, drawing them into a tight line instead.

           “Because you’re half-Galra?” He folds his hands between his knees and stares at them. She can’t get a read on what he’s thinking.

           “We,” she starts, then catches herself. Slowly closes her mouth. Turns away. It’s been decaphoebs, but the ache is still there, deep. Like a bruised rib, but higher. As though her trust were a physical thing, and the shrapnel from where he broke it has embedded itself in the muscles of her breast.

           She swallows against the sting in her eyes and looks back at him. Lifts her chin. Strong posture means strong image.

           “You weren’t raised Galra,” she says. It’s clear in the way he speaks, in his untempered curiosity. The lack of structure, the easy collaboration. He is the team leader, yet there’s hardly any hierarchy here. Always room to adjust. The Galra live by ultimatums; Voltron runs on flexibility.

           “I wasn’t,” he cedes. “I didn’t even know I was part-Galra, before we came out to space. But I know a little about racism. I mean, do you think it was easy, trying to lead people against the Galra when you’re Galra yourself?”

           “That’s different. You don’t know what it’s like in the Empire, you don’t know what it means – what being servant class means. How they treated us, the things we went through. The things I was told since before I could speak—”

           The crack of the k is sharp and splintering, like the bones of the fowl they ate a few quintants ago. She’s stuck staring, wide eyed, surprised at how easily she slipped. It’s clear from the way the paladin looks at her that he knows he hit her livewire nerves.

           The humiliation of it churns in her stomach and makes her mouth go dry. She feels sick from it, and from the heat she can’t stop from flooding her face. It’s too hard to keep eye contact. Her gaze slides around his face, drifting to the scar on his cheek, the odd, rounded curve of his ears, the curl of his hair against his neck.

           Holding a neutral face is a physical fight, and it doesn’t take long for her to lose. She bows her head and hides behind the curtain of her hair. Balls her hands into fists in her lap. Grits her teeth.

           The paladin gives her space in the form of silence. The hum of the ship’s air cycling system, usually too soft to notice, draws itself front and center as the only sound in the cargo hold.

           It’s the return of the paladins, of Voltron, that’s made her so vulnerable. In the aftermath of the battle that seemingly erased them all, she’d been fractured. Forced to face the things she’d known, deep down, but buried away. Forced to take responsibility for her place in all of it. If she’d said something sooner, if she’d left him in the witch’s hands, if she’d taken a stand before he killed Narti… Phoebs of guilt and grief tended to in the short reprieves between battles for basic survival. It was slow work, piecing herself together, and the finished product isn’t perfect. Seeing them now is like wedging a chisel into the cracks in her marble and then twisting and hammering at it. The hairline fractures crawl further along the stone, until the impact pops the seams of wounds she thought she’d already sealed.

           He’s still everywhere. Echoing in almost everything she does. Her battle form, her demeanor, her willpower. Everything she knows about the war, and the Empire, and the universe, comes from him. Sounds off as his voice when a thought plays in her head. It’s not something she can block out, just something she has to deal with. Rework. Take back for herself.

           “I’m sorry,” the paladin says, voice low.

           Acxa forces air out of her lungs. It still aches, but it also makes her angry. Lotor shouldn’t still own her like this.

           She hears the paladin shift. “I wasn’t trying to upset you. Or pry, or assume things. I was just wondering how you all ended up as his generals, since I didn’t think you were all full Galra.”

           She leans forward, crossing her arms on top of her legs. “Wondering why he chose us, or why we followed?” Of course, for her, the answer is one in the same.

           “We were listening to him too. He tricked us. Lied to and manipulated us. I don’t blame you or,” he pauses, struggling to find his words. She lifts her head to look at him as he gestures vaguely. “Or, or think less of you, because you believed him. We believed him too.”

           It’s hard to trust those words, when she blames herself for exactly that. But that’s her burden to carry.

           The paladin hunches his shoulders, shrugging and reclasping his hands between his knees. He looks away from her for tick, only to flick his gaze right back. Uneasy. Worried he offended her, most likely. She lets out a quiet sigh.

           “I know,” she says. He studies her for another tick, then nods, put somewhat at ease.

           “What I meant was, I was wondering how you ended up with him in the first place.”

           She muses on that, and on how to go about answering it. How to put into words everything Lotor did for her. Everything she thought he’d done for her. She knows where it started, how it built. When the climax was. But quantifying those memories is… difficult.

           The paladin keeps quiet. Either he’s waiting for her to find her words, or he thinks she doesn’t mean to answer. She could choose not to. It’s an invasively personal question – she’s never asked about the obvious bond between him and the black paladin, so why should he get an answer about her bond with the former emperor? But it’s obvious, even from the handful of quintants she’s spent traveling with Voltron, that secrets aren’t kept here.

           If she really is their ally, then they need to understand one another. Like it or not, Lotor holds a monopoly on her past.

           “He found me.” She speaks quietly, but sure. The red paladin waits for more. Acxa finds a fixed point on the wall behind him and stares at it as she speaks. “I grew up on a colonized planet. I had more rights than the indigenous peoples, of course, but I was still—am still servant class. The title is self-explanatory.

           “From essentially my birth, I was taught very strict rules for what I could do. I couldn’t enter a room of full Galra uninvited, wasn’t allowed to speak to one unless addressed first. I had to learn the indigenous language fluently in addition to the language of the Galra so that, in the event of a translator malfunction, I could interpret and ensure our leaders’ orders were obeyed. I wasn’t even allowed to continue my education as far as the full Galra children on our planet, and my career paths were very limited. Only direct service to the Galra.”

           Acxa risks a glance at the paladin to gauge his reaction. He’s watching her, bent over with his elbows digging into his thighs. He looks pensive, with a pinch in his brow that says he doesn’t like what he’s heard. It’s sympathy but not pity. Good.

           She finds her fixed point again and continues. “I didn’t want any of those jobs. I idolized my mother, a full Galra warrior who was assigned to help maintain order in the colony. I wanted to be a brave leader, like her. But out of my options, the closest thing I could have was a position as infantry in the Empire’s army. A frontline target. By the time I was old enough to sign my name, I’d already accepted that I was inferior.

           “I don’t know how much Lotor told you about his past, but he… made a name for himself. Of course, we were all aware of him as the son of Zarkon, the heir to the throne. Given the history and culture of our species, it was natural for him to join our military. But that’s where things changed. As a prince, he had private training since he was a young boy, and he entered the force as an advanced rank, already in charge of hundreds of soldiers. The Galra of course doubted him at first. Alteans are seen as one of the weakest willed races. We were all certain he’d retreat to the comfort of the imperial ship after a few phoebs. But he didn’t.”

           The paladin leans back and crosses his arms over his chest. “Did he take over planets himself?”

           She shakes her head. “Not quite. Just after I enlisted, but before the training began, there was an uprising in my solar system. Lotor was sent to stop it. The colony a few planets away from mine was one of the major sources of the metal the Galra use in building their fighter ships, and apparently the miners there had been hoarding materials for decaphoebs. Enough to secretly build their own fleet. The miners had been so docile for so long up until then that there weren’t many Galra stationed there, so they were easily overpowered and killed. Then the miners seized all Galra tech on the planet and started launching attacks on their neighbors.”

           She remembers ships, slick metal reflecting the light of the first setting sun, the sky a saturated orange and red. Standing in lines, armored, clutching a blaster to her chest and thinking her first taste of blood had come just a little too soon.

           The kick of the weapon bruised her arm every time she fired. She feels the phantom pain of it now, a ghost tucked on the inside of her bicep. The scenes of that quintant play out in front of her, phasing into one another with the fluidity of a dream. Desperate rebels more experienced than her falling like meaningless prey to the plasma of her commanding officers. Some of the other servant class cadets were armed with blades and told to make do. Full Galra officers marched over their bodies when they fell.

           “Acxa?”

           She blinks until the images fade back to the cool metal of the cargo hold. The paladin is watching her with wide eyes and plain concern. How embarrassing.

           “It was my first real fight,” she says briskly. “They called us out to be the frontlines – any servant class soldier or recruit. Those who had just signed on didn’t even have weapons issued yet, so they just passed out whatever was readily available, even if it was set aside for repairs. The blaster they gave me overheated every few rounds. I was lucky.”

           “That’s fucked up,” he mutters. She hums.

           “That’s how it is.”

           He twists his mouth and glares at her, but it’s not really at her. It’s at the situation, at the knowledge. There’s a spark of outrage in his eyes that’s so familiar it makes her wonder what he’d have been like, if he were raised in the empire. Would he have seen Lotor as a savior, too? A champion to emulate? Or would he let that fire carry him straight to an execution, when his defiance became too much of an annoyance to the superiors?

           “I thought the Galra would at least look after their own,” he says. “I get victory or death, knowledge or death, success or death. Hunk told me about palen-bol and vrepit sa and why they’re part of our culture, but. They didn’t even give you a chance.”

           He clenches his fists, and Acxa realizes he’d have been put in the gladiator rings. The fight in him is too enrapturing.

           She holds his gaze now as she speaks. “Servants aren’t given fair chances. There’s no discussing it – you do as you’re told even if your orders are to lay down your life, which they usually are. The full Galra don’t have an ounce of faith in us.

           “The rebels set up a stronghold in my region. Most of the servant class soldiers around me were already dead by the time we made it there, so the general grabbed me to translate their peace talks. He assumed I’d be able to understand them, since we were from the same solar system, and thought they’d be more likely to surrender to a native than a full Galra. He was wrong on both accounts.”

           She wraps an arm around herself, running her hand over the burn scar on her hip. If she focuses on it she can conjure the heat memory of the blast. “They open fired, killing several of our soldiers. I managed to dive behind cover after getting hit. After every rebel was dead, the Galra came to me.”

           Her mouth twists at the bitter memory. Echoes of an old outrage pulse through her veins.

           “They blamed you,” he assumes. She nods.

           “They accused me of telling the rebels to attack. They called me a traitor to the Empire. Obviously I hadn’t – none of the rebels even understood my language – and I told the general that, but my word didn’t matter. I was sentenced for a public execution.”

           She falls quiet, letting her presence here speak for itself. His eyes reflect the betrayed hatred she’d felt in those moments, sealed in a stone cell with her hands cuffed in front of her, counting down the doboshes to her end. What’s missing for him is the helplessness. The pathetic surety. It makes her cringe, now, to think how easily she’d accepted her fate, without even an attempt at a plan to escape. She’d have been just another brushed aside asteroid against the particle barrier of the empire. Unnoticed and routine.

           She’s different now. Stronger. She’ll brave her way through any and every dead end the universe pushes her into and carve her own path out. She’s been building her own road from the dead shards of Lotor’s ever since she broke free.

           “How’d you escape?” the paladin asks.

           “I didn’t.”

           “They didn’t kill you,” he says flatly. She nods, as though she has to confirm she lived. He’s staring with some impatience, but it’s hard to find the right order of words to explain. To ensure her meaning has the right weight.

           “They wanted to. They were scheduling my death to be just a few vargas after they arrested me, so they could be done with it. Normally localized executions aren’t big news, but we lost an important officer in that fight, so tensions were higher. People were angry enough to invite Lotor to bear witness to their ‘justice’, in part to prove to him that our sector took the empire’s laws seriously, and in part to pressure him. Show him how diplomacy ended.”

           “So you were an example of what happens when the Galra try to play nice.” It’s not a question. He makes a disgusted sound in the back of his throat and scowls, shifting in his makeshift seat.

           Acxa feels a pang of gratitude toward him for that, much like the feeling that drew her to him when they first met. His sense of justice is unparalleled and inspiring. Noble, though not in the naïve way that leads so many rebel leaders to their doom. He stands by his principles and makes them work.

           There are echoes of the leader Lotor could have been, in him. It makes it harder for her to condemn Lotor, when she admires those traits in the leader of Voltron.

           “Lotor didn’t appreciate the sentiment. Just a varga before my execution, my cell door opened, and there he was. I was terrified.” The paladin frowns, confusion folding his brow, and leans forward. “I thought he came to kill me, or worse. But he said, ‘Congratulations,’ and took my hands, undoing the restraints. ‘You’ve been promoted.’”

           The paladin straightens. “Just like that?”

           She nods. “I couldn’t believe it. He told me he’d seen me fighting, and that he’d heard my story from the various Galra after I was locked away – after he’d finished squashing the uprising. He was outraged at the injustice I faced, and wanted to pardon me, but he knew if he set me free on my planet, I’d just be hunted down when he left our system.”

           “So he…” the paladin trails. She looks up, hadn’t realized her gaze had shifted as she zoned back into memories, but he’s frowning at his feet. He looks… disturbed. She watches him carefully, sees him start to bite his lip, then stop and twist his frown deeper as he swallows. When he meets her gaze from under his lashes, his eyes are at once searching and sure. “He saved you.”

           She drops her gaze to her hands. Lotor taught her never to indebt herself to another person, told her it would make her vulnerable, and easy to manipulate. It gives them unnecessary leverage if you don’t repay the favor twice over before they can find a reason to use you. Somedays the warning seems ironic, a testament to how easily he blinded her. Other days she wonders if he even realized that was exactly what he was doing.

           “I,” the paladin says, but it crackles and fizzles out like a dying fire. She feels him watching her and sighs heavily.

           “He did,” she says quietly. The admission is like needles beneath her eyes, pricking and stinging unexpectedly. She curls her fingers into her palms and watches as she uncurls them again. “He taught me things. All of us. It wasn’t long before we picked up Zethrid, then Narti. Ezor came eventually, too. And he taught each of us not to take what we were given. He showed me how to stand up for myself, and more than that, how to make the universe stand down to me. Everything I know, I know because of him.”

           The paladin is silent in a heavy way. She can sense the weight of the quiet between them. Maybe she’s found the right way to say it, after all.

           “If it weren’t for him,” she finishes, “my life would have been a lot different.”

           He flinches. She looks up, and she hadn’t realized she started crying until she sees the liquid in the corners of his eyes as he looks back at her. The heartbreak on his face is heartbreaking.

           “I’m sorry,” he says. She isn’t going to ask which part of it he’s sorry for. “You trusted him.” His voice cracks with it. The reminder makes her feel numb, a spreading emptiness hollowing out her stomach. She did, and it’s not always easy to remember she doesn’t anymore. There’s an ice water fear inching through her veins that he’ll find a way back, just like Voltron did; he’ll turn up in front of her, and she’ll forget just why she left him.

           “Do you think… he was under her control?” He meets her gaze with a guarded anxiety that almost reads as guilt. Maybe it is guilt.

           She can’t let Lotor weave his hands through their minds like this. “No,” she says low and honestly. There’s still that part of her that wishes he were, but it’s a kernel of sickness she’s spent the last three decaphoebs trying to kill. “I think he let his trauma own him.” She rubs at her eyes and takes a few slow breaths to stave off any more tears laying in wait. “He thought the only way to prove his worth and earn the Galra’s respect was to outmatch their ruthless violence. If we made them bow to us, they’d have to acknowledge us as worthy. Zethrid and Ezor tried the same, though more direct.”

           She sighs again, and nearly misses him saying, “Hate only breeds hate.” There’s a measure to it that makes it sound rehearsed, as though he’s heard the same phrase parroted at him. Perhaps it’s a proverb where he comes from.

           “Domination isn’t the same thing as respect. He used to know that.” Her lungs feel heavy as she remembers watching Lotor’s colony destroyed in front of their eyes. He was never the same, after that. She’d just refused to see how deeply he’d changed, until it was too late.

           The paladin gives her a meaningful look and pauses to choose his words. “We’re going to free everyone.”

           She forces a smile. “I know.”

           “He might have shaped the path you took to get here, but… I spent a while on my own, after Shiro saved me. You can make your own way, if you’re willing to try.”

           The earnestness steals her words. He gives her a slow nod, somehow both reassuring and insisting. It’s the encouragement of a leader who knows how to inspire greatness in his men. Slowly, she nods back.

           “I’m going to help Voltron.” It’s a clumsy conveying of what she feels in the moment. Of what it means to have the trust of people she hurt thanks to a misguided loyalty built on shared suffering. To be given the chance to rebuild herself, and dismantle the Empire. She tries to put what’s missing from the words into her face, giving him earnest eyes and a firm lip.

           He smiles and nods again. “I know. I believe in you.”