juniberry blossom🌸

the coalition didn’t just need voltron, it needed these paladins. allura grew up thinking voltron was special because of it’s abilities when the lions were unified, but what made voltron so powerful were the pilots within. no one on this team could be replaced and shiro’s clone was proof of that. 

allura saw her words register in the tense of his shoulders and waver of his smile. like always he rearranged himself to keep his sadder emotions within, so that the fleeting dread across his features was a mere ripple across a pond. a stone’s drop, a reach outward, then only a smooth glassy surface. as though the crushing worry he’d exhibited had never truly existed at all.

              ❝ allura nothing is going to happen to you. ❞

when he said it with such certainty. she knew he must be right. the promise of moving mountains and planets to make it so. nothing was going to happen to her because he would not will it. lance protected all of them so fiercely, stretched himself so thin, that only a handful of miracles has kept him alive this long. 

she kept her gaze on his face when his hand raised, only fluttering her eyes shut when his fingertips brush her cheek. it was a mirror of allura’s last true moment with her father: his hand cupping her face with a glowing altean spell ( she hadn’t registered it then ) to lull her to sleep with caring quiet words — I love you Allura. 

without looking she brings her hand up to touch his, anchoring in the lightest rest on his wrist. she knows it will do no good to spend the rest of this journey to Earth full of what if’s. what if she can’t control her powers… or voltron isn’t strong enough… or something happens to her…. allura cannot let her failure when it came to judging lotor veil the rest of her life in what if. especially when they are so close to having the paladins home.

but there’s still one valid fear to have, “I don’t want anything to happen to you.” 

she frees the tears clinging to her lashes when she opens her eyes, half expecting to see her father in his last minute with her, than the concerned face of the young man holding her hand. “once was… it was already one too many time to lose you. lance”

            he watched in silence as Allura closed her eyes and reached up to take his hand. her grip light and loose at his wrist. he smiled again, a true smile, as he watched the emotions flutter around on her face. he liked it better when Allura didn’t have to strain herself with worry. he wanted none of them to have to suffer like that. he would take all their weight on his own shoulders if it meant his space family could be at peace and happy.             his expression saddened a little when Allura spoke again, his smile still there but becoming a tad more hollow than it had been. he hated to see tears on her face and reached up to brush them away with his thumb, shaking his head softly before casting his gaze a bit off to the side, his tone low when he spoke, knowing she wouldn’t like what he would say.

                                      『 ❝ I’ll die a thousand deaths if it means you and the                                              others are safe… you’re all so important… to me. ❞ 』

            he slowly lowered his hand from her face, dropping it back to his side before he turned a tad to the right, giving Allura more of a profile view of him rather than a frontal view.

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“Umm. Umm. Grandma can’t open the jar and I’m not strong enough. Can you?”

This squabbling felt too reminiscent of when they first became acquainted. He was right in calling her out on assumptions and lack of trust in his actions. Yet past maneuvers proved he had trouble separating emotions from duty. It was a double-edged trait: admirable to be so passionate, but distracting to what needed to be done. Keith served the Blade of Mamora; put his life on the line multiple times and it was as gallant as being a paladin. The core value of selflessness that led him to find Shiro was still intertwined in his life despite the passage of time. Her resentment stemmed from slight envy: Allura wasn’t able to leave her post as captain of the castle ship or Blue’s paladin to find her life’s meaning. She could barely put together the events of her people for the last ten thousand years — trapped with deceit in a colony devised by Lotor to drain them of quintessence. She was scraping by to fulfill her father’s purpose and wishes. Her title … her legacy … it bound her to this war the same way royal blood bound her to balmeran crystals.

Allura’s frustration dissipated immediately to be replaced with shock. She’d been so calculated in her actions and feelings lately, shutting out the notion of attachment in fear and judgement she’d fall into a situation she had with Lotor. A match lit in her mind – was Keith just playing with her nerves? With an ulterior motive as Lotor had? She snuffed the match out. He wouldn’t do that to someone; he was a good person. Her friend. 

 “That’s not…” Allura blinked quickly to force back a sudden well of tears, not because she was upset with him, but she didn’t want this for him. “… that’s not a good idea.” 

 She turned away slowly to sit on the couch in the common area of everyone’s shared quarters which they stood in. Hand rested in her lap, limp and without purpose to distract her. “People who care about me… they just end up getting hurt.” Lotor, with all his flawed ideology was trapped in the quintessence field. Her father was dead. Even Zarkon, when she was a baby, was happy to know her. He’d attended the gathering of friends to meet the new princess and brought a gift. She’d hurt Lance countless times, but his loyalty and sweet heart kept their friendship in tact. 

She didn’t feel regal. Slumped shoulders and a heavy heart, lack of the fluttering an expression of caring should provide. “I value you too much to place you on that path. You deserve better.”

“You’re right.” He replied, voice stern, not at all affected by the fact that she had basically collapsed in her shock, currently sitting and welling with tears. He was still on the defensive, still tense, trying to hold back his frustration and letting his Galra heritage overtake him for a moment, as it often could in suddenly tense situations. “I do deserve better. I absolutely do.” He knew that, he wasn’t blind. He wasn’t a fool. Especially when how Allura had been treating him for even daring to consider the possibility of love. 

“But, we don’t control our hearts, do we? You didn’t control yours with Lotor. You were vulnerable and fell for his tactics, his manipulation, but I don’t judge you for your feelings. Feelings are uncontrollable. Feelings are what make us living, breathing beings. Human, alien, it doesn’t matter. Our heart goes after what it wants, even if it doesn’t always make sense.” He wasn’t exactly a ‘love expert’ by any means, but he knew emotions were fueled by the heart, and were what made them, well, them. 

“Do you – ” this was going to sound unrelated and crazy, “ – do you remember on Janu when we all fell through that ice?” Janu was a moon composed of water not unlike a planet in this solar system, but the distance from its sun at the time had frozen Janu over with a sheet of unstable ice. When they’d been cleared to leave the medical wing it had still taken vargas for Pidge’s lips to stop being blue. “Even when our core temperatures stabilized none of us felt warm for several quintents.”

It was a lifetime ago, literal years for Keith, maybe he didn’t remember. Rather than speak to his shoulder blades she stepped to stand beside him. “This virus . . .” Allura pressed her hand over her Garrison jacket where the swirling crimson orb had absorbed, “it feels like that. I’m always cold. It’s pulled me away from all of you and made me so – so numb to everything. Even the good things.” She risked looking up at his profile to smile a little in indication he was the good.