Chapter Text
As soon as he saw the Hidden Number caller ID on his screen, Shiro knew, without a doubt, that things would be going to shit.
They’d been going to shit for a while now. Arguably, for Shiro’s entire life. But since the divorce last year he’d thought that he would finally start picking himself up, moving on, becoming a normal member of society.
But now it was five AM on a Monday morning and there was a "hidden number" calling him. He already knew who was calling, but he picked up anyway.
“Takashi Shirogane speaking,” he said, infusing his voice with that military inflection he thought he’d left behind in a giant robot.
“Shiro. It’s Iverson,” the phone barked in his ear. Five in the fucking morning. “You doing well?”
“Well enough,” Shiro said. “As much as I enjoy our conversations, sir, I’m retired. Is there a reason why you’re calling me from an encrypted number?”
“I need a favor,” Iverson said, hesitating for some reason. “And, well. Brace yourself. It’s a bit of a shock.”
“Can’t be more of a shock than getting abducted by the Galra,” Shiro joked, already knowing Iverson wouldn’t laugh. “Hit me.”
“Yeah, well…speaking of Galra…” Iverson cleared his throat. “The Coalition’s got a bit of a situation on hand.”
“I can make a public appearance or two if it’s a diplomacy thing.”
“It isn’t. Not really. Shiro…I’m of the understanding you knew Prince – well, Emperor Lotor personally.”
Prince Lotor. Now that was a name Shiro hadn’t heard in years, a name that brought up memories of clever blue eyes, whispered words above an exchanged bayard, a sharp-toothed grin, a fluttering in his chest.
But no, those memories weren’t his. They belonged to that Shiro, and it felt…violating to access those memories now, like he was disturbing a grave. It was a grave – of two long-forgotten people chewed up by the universe and spat aside.
“I guess you could say that,” Shiro sufficed to say. He didn’t recall how much his team had told Iverson about the whole clone situation, and he didn’t want to give away more than he had to. “But Lotor’s dead. Died years ago.”
“Well. Recently we’ve discovered that’s not necessarily…true.” Iverson took a long breath on the other end of the line. “We found the Sincline mech crashed on Mars six months ago. He was still inside. Easy to mistake for dead, but…” Through his dawning horror, Shiro realized what Iverson was about to say. “He was alive. Lotor is alive, and he’s here in the Garrison.”
There was a long, long silence.
“Six months ago.”
“Yes.”
“Lotor, the former Emperor of the Galra, was found alive, six months ago, and nobody had a clue.”
“We're keeping it under wraps. It's a delicate situation. He’s in the maximum-security facility. You’re one of roughly a handful of people in the whole universe who know. It was too risky to let the word out. Controversial as he is.”
Shiro, after having sat up, lay back down. The world seemed to be spinning, spinning, spinning…
“You’re keeping him imprisoned?” Shiro said, and his voice felt like it was coming from someone else. “He- he was cleared of all charges post-mortem. You saw. It was a whole thing. The Coalition had to issue a formal apology.”
“To who, I don’t know,” Iverson grumbled. “But that doesn’t change who he is, Shiro. You know that.”
After years of having been branded a murderous dictator, some Alteans from the colonies had reached out and cleared Lotor of the accusations against him. It had been a misunderstanding. A big one. One that could have been avoided, if the situation hadn’t been so sensitive, if Bandor had had a little more time to explain, if Lotor hadn’t been backed into a corner… but there was no going back now.
Shiro had been there, three years ago, that day the Coalition had had to announce a formal apology and posthumous pardon. A terrible, painful day for everyone involved.
It was the last time he'd seen Keith in person.
“Legally, he’s the Coalition’s full responsibility. The medical teams have been working on him for the past six months, and he’s almost fully independent now.”
“And…mentally?” Shiro had not been present during Lotor’s infamous nervous breakdown, but he’d heard about it often enough. And now the guy they’d wrongfully murdered wasn’t even dead. They’d left him to rot alone in a rift for years.
“Well…” Iverson trailed off. “He’s coherent. Not screaming about mass murder. You can hold a conversation with him, if he’ll let you. In the beginning he was pretty volatile, but now he’s just…there. A real piece of work, but there.”
“So, what now? Will you release him?” Shiro asked.
Despite everything, he felt sympathy for Lotor – taken from everything he’d ever known, abandoned in a void, living on a completely new planet, unsure who to trust. Shiro had been there before.
“I said he’s coherent, not stable. He needs supervision. Institutional supervision.”
“So, what? You’ll give him over to the Altean government? Does he qualify for citizenship?”
“I discussed the matter with Chancellor Coran,” Iverson said. “Lotor does qualify for Altean citizenship. Arguably, he’s done great services to the Altean people through his archaeological work, and his…misguided attempts at administration. But the Chancellor is of the opinion that the Altean public isn’t ready for him to live among them yet, and everyone agrees. Even if he’s innocent, he’s still Zarkon and Honerva’s son. They’re a traumatized people. He’s unstable, prone to reckless behavior when he feels threatened. Rehabilitating him among them would be more trouble than it’s worth.”
“So not New Altea. New Daibazaal, then?”
“We thought of that. The Blades of Marmora even volunteered to supervise him. But...it's complicated, Shiro. Blood-purist supremacy is rearing its head over there, and the Blades of Marmora have their hands full preventing full-scale civil unrest. Lotor's a symbol of everything the Fires of Purification despise. If he lives there again...it wouldn't just be him in danger. It could provoke violence against all sorts of innocent part-Galra." Iverson sighed. "Besides, Lotor's psych team advised that he spend time away from other Galra for a while. It’s a…fresh wound. It’s best if he stays away from both planets, actually.Turns over a new page somewhere else.”
The bottom line: as usual, Lotor fit in with no one. Again, Shiro felt the sting of pity.
“So…what? You’re just going to release him into the universe and hope for the best?”
“Yes and no. That’s where you come in,” Iverson said. “We are going to release Lotor eventually. He can’t stay here forever, but he also needs to be easy to monitor. So what we’re going to do is assign him a supervisor. At least until he’s deemed fit enough to live alone. The supervisor lives with him. Keeps an eye on him. Makes sure he doesn’t do anything dangerous to himself or others. And, well. Lotor’s paranoid. Rightly so. Not just anyone can be assigned to this guy. It has to be someone he trusts.”
“Lotor doesn’t trust anyone,” Shiro said, almost automatically.
“True. But you’re the person he has the highest chance of trusting. I have it on good authority,” Iverson said.
“Whose authority? Coran’s?”
“That doesn’t matter. What I’m trying to say is that you two would get along fine. He could learn from you. Move past the war like you have.”
Shiro almost laughed. Move past the war like you have. Shiro hadn’t moved past it at all, and the divorce papers gathering dust on his dining table were proof enough of that.
“I – ” Shiro sighed. “Iverson, I’m the last person to help someone – heal, or whatever you have in mind – ”
“I’m not asking you to be his therapist. Think of it as a mentorship program. You did one of those back in the day, didn’t you?”
A million years ago. With another half-Galra who would only trust him. Shiro shuddered.
“I don’t know if I can keep doing this, Iverson,” Shiro finally said, sighing. “It’s been a lot. It should have been enough.”
“I know,” Iverson said. “And I wouldn’t ask this of you if there was anyone else. We could just give him another supervisor. But he’d freak out, and we’d end up right back where we started. You’re the last real chance this guy has of normally living out the rest of his life.” There was a heavy pause. “But this is a request, not a demand. It’s your call.”
Shiro closed his eyes. He remembered the abduction. The fighting pits. The hours in the lab, the loss of his arm. The war in his head. The death. Sendak’s echoing laughter. Excruciating pain in the astral plane. The struggle for the body. Everything. It had been so much. How had he come this far without cracking as Lotor had?
Maybe I’ll figure it out someday, he thought. All he knew was that there was a job to be done, and that somebody had to do it. Deep down, he could feel those old washed-out memories making their way back to the surface – the memories that the other Shiro had had, and with those, a drive to protect Lotor, help him. Shiro had always been disturbed by those feelings and memories, the way they’d probably been programmed into him by Haggar – or, even more disturbingly, how they could have just come about naturally.
He pushed those away. This was duty, nothing more.
“Count me in.”
Returning to the Garrison was a rush of memories. Not all of them were bad; there were nice ones, tinged bittersweet, and even some embarrassing ones where his marriage and subsequent divorce were concerned. Still, Shiro couldn’t help but feel the deep sense of unease settle over him and take root in his bones as he entered the familiar core building. In the distance, on the horizon, he could see the gigantic shape of the incomplete new robot – the one said to rival Atlas – being built. It made him feel nauseous.
Lots of people didn’t recognize him, now that he wore glasses and wasn’t clean-shaven anymore. A bunch of people had started getting Altean-style prosthetics recently, especially if they were associated with the Garrison, so his arm wasn’t even the giveaway that it used to be. The only thing that really set Shiro apart now was his refusal to wear his old uniform. When he’d officially retired, he’d burned it and hadn’t looked back. It was enough. He’d had enough.
Now he almost wished he hadn’t. The bureaucracy was endless; hours and hours of waiting rooms and clearances and badges, just to be able to meet Iverson. In the end, the man himself came down to meet him, flashing a special badge that bypassed all that Shiro had suffered so greatly to get through, and handing him a pass of his own.
“It’ll give you unlimited access to the area where…the subject is located,” Iverson said as the two of them walked briskly down corridor after corridor, his voice lowering upon encountering any military personnel. “He can’t be discharged just yet, but we’ve got a two-week window, more or less. I was thinking you could use that to help get him used to you.”
“I thought you said he trusted me,” Shiro said.
“As much as he can trust a person. But he’ll still be cagey. You haven’t seen each other for a while. It’s an adjustment.” Iverson swiped his badge through yet another checkpoint as Shiro followed suit. The corridors became sparser and sparser of people the further they went. “Keep in mind, Shiro…he’s nothing like the guy you might remember. Don’t forget that.”
For the next ten minutes, as they maneuvered an endless maze of restricted areas and corridors, Shiro thought about what he was about to see. What would Lotor look like? Would he be a copy of his mother in her later years, shriveled and ashen, with glowing yellow eyes? A fossilized shell of cruelty and violence like his father? Would he be hostile to him, try to attack him? Would he accuse him? All the while, Shiro resisted the memories of the other Shiro that kept picking at his thoughts of Lotor like starving animals.
He wondered who had told Iverson that Lotor trusted him.
It seemed to be an eternity until Iverson finally reached an area labeled HIGH SECURITY –BLUE CLEARANCE ONLY. Iverson swiped their cards through, and Shiro felt the all-too-familiar hum of quintessence as the doors swung open.
“You fortified this place with Altean tech?” Shiro asked.
“Yeah, well, our patient is a ten-thousand-year-old alchemical genius. We had to take precautions.”
The connecting hallway leading to a single, closed room at the end of the corridor. Shiro fought down the wave of anticipation that overtook him at the thought of the person he knew was waiting behind that door.
You don’t know him, Shiro told himself furiously. These memories – these feelings – they’re not yours!
Iverson stopped at the door, and Shiro took a deep, fortifying breath.
“Here goes,” Shiro said, with fake cheer, as Iverson gave him an appraising look.
“You can stop whenever you want,” Iverson said. “It’s no pressure, soldier.”
And some part of Shiro wanted desperately to run away, to leave behind this place that reminded him so vividly of the best and worst days of his life. But a stronger part of him told him that he had to do this. He had to step up to the responsibility, just one more time.
“No. Let’s go in.”
Iverson scanned their cards, pushed the door open, and they were in.
The first thing Shiro noticed was the smell – like burning ozone. Not unpleasant, just strange. It picked at his memory, until he remembered what it reminded him of – the witch, Haggar. It was the smell of pure, unfiltered quintessence, and this place was drenched in it. Shiro’s heart began to race.
The room was surprisingly bare. There were a few generic hospital paintings here and there, a depressing little side table with flowers that had wilted days ago, and an open window, unfortunately barred. On another side table, there was a tray with half-eaten food on it. There was the steady beeping of some sort of monitor.
Shiro finally brought himself to look at Lotor.
He was exactly what Shiro expected and nothing like Shiro expected. He stared directly at them, lamplike yellow eyes framed by the biggest bags Shiro had ever seen, but his gaze was wary and curious, not accusatory. He still had a regal, haughty look to the way he held himself, but his body was slightly slouched, like it was too much effort to fully hold it up. He’d dramatically lost weight, and now, without impressive armor of his, dressed in simply hospital clothing, he looked almost tiny in comparison to the Lotor Shiro remembered. His sickly lilac skin was crisscrossed with weird-looking scars, especially near his hands, curled in his lap.
But the biggest difference was his hair. Shiro didn’t know why, but this entire time, he’d imagined Lotor had kept his beautiful white hair exactly as pristine as always, mental breakdown and all. It just seemed so inherently him. But realistically, Shiro supposed, it would have suffered. It was cut haphazardly, as though with a kitchen knife in need of sharpening, hanging around his face in feathery strands, the longest locks near the back just past Lotor’s shoulders.
Shiro felt kind of sad about it, really.
The three people in the room were just there for a full five minutes, staring at each other. Of all people, Lotor was first to speak. His voice was slightly hoarse, not with the gravity Shiro remembered, but still that characteristic deep, soft tone.
“Alright, somebody better tell me what’s going on.” Even after everything, Lotor’s voice still commanded obedience.
“Top of the morning!” Iverson said, looking pleasantly surprised. “I see you’re familiar with our guest, Your Highness?”
“Don’t call me that,” Lotor muttered. He sized Shiro up, looking him up and down. He was putting on a show of nonchalance, but Shiro had seen his hands shaking before he’d crossed his arms defensively. “I’m not royalty anymore.” His eyes had not left Shiro once. “Well, well, well. The Black Paladin.”
“Don’t call me that,” Shiro found himself saying. “I’m not the Black Paladin anymore.”
“Whatever,” Lotor said, looking bitter. He finally looked at Iverson. “Why did you bring him here?”
“Remember when we talked about our compromise?” Iverson said. There was something a bit obnoxious in the fake cheeriness Iverson was going to great pains to inject in his voice. Knowing Lotor, Shiro suspected that was why he looked so sour. “Here it is!”
“Compromise?” Lotor said, looking confused, before a realization dawned on his face. “Wait. Shiro is going to supervise me?”
“You said you wanted to leave. This is how you leave.”
“I never said-”
“Take it or leave it.”
Lotor scowled. “I don’t need a minder.”
“Records show you do. Don’t worry. Shiro’s highly qualified to help you get back on your feet. You two are going to have a blast together.” Iverson gave Lotor a pointed look. “You could stand to be a little grateful, you know. He didn’t have to put his life on hold to do this.”
Shiro looked away.
In reality, there wasn’t much of a life to put on hold. After the retirement and divorce, Shiro’s days had mostly been consumed with online pencil-pushing for the Coalition, daily workouts, unsuccessful attempts at learning to cook, and taking his new bike – the same model as the one Keith had trashed while taking them to see the Blue Lion all those years ago – on rides around the desert.
In the beginning, after the terror of the war, the rush of rebuilding, the mundane simplicity had been comforting. He’d needed time alone, unpestered.
But now, the loneliness, the aimlessness, began to gnaw at him. Shiro couldn’t live alone, untethered. Everyone was off moving on with their lives. Lance was a renowned space flight instructor, raising a new generation of intergalactic pilots. Hunk was part of the Interplanetary Relations Council. Pidge and Matt were rotating between Earth, New Altea, and Olkarion, developing new tech. And Keith…
Barring the day of the public pardon - when they hadn't even been within ten meters of each other - the last time Shiro had seen Keith in person had been years ago, just before he’d set off on his long-term humanitarian missions with the Blades of Marmora. The conversation had been short, distant. Shiro had just promised Curtis a night out.
“Well, I’m off to the usual,” Keith had said, not meeting his eyes. “Poking my nose where it probably shouldn’t be.”
“Saving lives, you mean,” Shiro had corrected him.
“Whatever,” Keith had said. Shiro could sense that this was not his usual prickliness; there was genuine irritation underneath.
“You seem pretty unenthusiastic for someone about to lead a mission that he himself had proposed,” Shiro said.
“Maybe it’s because I’m going alone,” Keith said, in a voice so low Shiro almost didn’t hear it.
“You’re not going alone,” Shiro said. “You’ve got Krolia, Kolivan, Acxa. Ezor and Zethrid. All of the Blades.”
“Then let me rephrase that,” Keith said, suddenly looking Shiro straight in the eye. Now it was Shiro’s turn to look away, for whatever reason. “Maybe it’s because I’m not going with you.”
Shiro would later replay what he said, over and over, in his mind, late at night, as Curtis slept beside him. “Voltron is over, and my place is here. At some point, you have to realize that you’ve outgrown me, Keith. I can’t always be there. You know that. You’ve learned that.”
He didn’t know why he’d said that. It must have come from someplace genuine, right? But a flash of hurt cut through Keith’s eyes.
“All I've ever done was just for you to be there.” Keith took a step backwards, his face suddenly settling into neutrality. “But that’s not very heroic of me, isn’t it. Maybe you’re right. It’s time to grow up.”
“Keith-”
“Kolivan is ringing me through the network. I have to go.” Keith extended his arm, clasping Shiro’s prosthetic in a farewell. Shiro didn’t feel it. “Goodbye, Shiro.”
Shiro knew he had to say something, anything. He couldn’t let this be their last real conversation, not after everything they’d been through. But his tongue felt like lead. “Goodbye, Keith.”
He’d watched him walk away. Ever since, they’d exchanged brief, infrequent, impersonal emails, and Shiro justified it to himself by thinking that it was because Keith was in remote areas of the universe where connectivity was weak. That was it. It had to be.
Did Keith even know about the divorce? The retirement? This?
Shiro forced himself back to the present.
Lotor gave Iverson a long, unimpressed look. “Yes, yes, I should be so utterly grateful that the people of Earth have deigned to rescue and revive me, and I should be so deeply thankful for your exquisite generosity and forgiveness in the wake of my and my parents’ actions across the universe, and I should grovel at your feet for your sublime care for my ruined and emaciated body and mind. I know.”
He uncrossed his arms, but restlessly, like they needed something to do, his hands curled into fists at his sides. Watching them, Shiro realized there was a quintessence cuff around his right wrist, connecting Lotor to the bed that was bolted to the floor.
“You have him handcuffed?” Shiro said. “Come on, you don’t have to do that.”
“Oh, poor, noble Shiro. Of course they do,” Lotor said sarcastically.
“He keeps trying to escape,” Iverson said. With a dirty look at Lotor, who began to remarkably resemble a petulant teenager, he continued, “After the – what, sixteenth attempt? We began to negotiate his release, and we all consciously consented to this compromise. You agreed to this, Lotor.”
Lotor held his angry posture for a few moments more, before giving Shiro an unreadable look, and then relenting and fading into a sort of tired acceptance. Shiro got the distinct suspicion that Lotor was scheming. He didn’t know if it was his own prejudices, or if it was a familiarity borne of the other Shiro’s memories. “Alright.”
“Alright,” Iverson said. “Well, we won’t bother you anymore, Lotor. Two weeks and you’re out of here with Shiro. How does that sound?”
“Great,” Lotor said distantly, not looking at anyone. His eyes were fixed on somewhere outside the window.
“Great,” Iverson echoed. “Shiro’s going to be visiting you a lot these next couple of weeks. I can trust you to be civil?”
Lotor answered with a massive, bitter sigh, and went quiet. Shiro and Iverson shuffled out of the room and into the hallway, leaving the high-security area behind.
“He looked super thrilled,” Shiro said drily.
“Oh, he’ll warm up to you.”
“Like he’s warmed up to you?”
“I’m not his favorite person in the world,” Iverson admitted. “But it’ll be different for you.”
Shiro nodded slowly, not exactly sure why. “Besides the handcuffs, you seem to be treating him well,” he said. “It’s a good setup.”
“He’s not some kind of prisoner of war. We weren’t going to throw him in a dungeon and feed him gruel once a day,” Iverson blustered. “It’s, er, the least we could do.”
Shiro raised his eyebrow. “Does the Garrison owe Lotor something I’m not aware of?”
“Well, yes and no. See… the reason we’re investing so much in this little…endeavor is, well...” Iverson looked uncomfortable as he lowered his voice. “Voltron, in official terms, unlawfully executed Lotor without formal trial. Left him in a quintessence rift for several years, incurring severe mental and physical damage. He has a right to…reparations.”
“There is no Voltron anymore,” Shiro said. “The Coalition issued an official apology. That’s reparations.”
“There is no Voltron, and yes, the Coalition issued an apology. But legally, the remaining paladins of Voltron are members of the Garrison military,” Iverson said. “Not to mention Keith Kim’s affiliation with the Blades of Marmora. So any reparations would theoretically come from those two institutions.” Iverson looked deeply uncomfortable. “We’ve consulted with experts, and... Lotor still has a legal right to bring us all before the Intergalactic Criminal Court.”
Shiro processed that information, before suddenly feeling deep disgust. “And here I was thinking you were taking care of him because he had nowhere else to go. You're just covering your own ass.”
“Don’t give me that look, Shiro. There’s billions of people in the universe objectively more deserving of our resources than the son of the two people who fucked it all up in the first place. We can’t afford losing those to him suing us. It would set us incredibly far back, and more importantly, we’d lose credibility. It would be destabilizing.”
“I don’t think he’s the type to want your money.”
“He’s unpredictable, unemployed, unemployable, homeless – all as a direct result of our representatives’ actions - and we owe it to him. He’s lost everything he ever had. We can’t risk it.” Iverson scowled.
Shiro felt dirty, tainted, backing away. “I don’t want to be part of this. I never was. I wasn’t there when they made that decision – which I would have stopped had I been there, by the way. This…is unethical. Does he even know his legal rights?”
“Don’t think of it like that. Listen, reparations or not, he needs someone to help him get his second chance. Why not be that person? It’s the right thing to do. Leave the rest to us.” Iverson placed a hand on Shiro’s shoulder.
Shiro shrugged it off. “Don’t talk to me about the right thing to do.” He closed his eyes. “I respected you.”
“You’re a leader. You know that someone must make these tough calls. Don’t you dare judge me.”
Despite it all, Shiro saw the truth in Iverson’s words. It was a tough decision to be in. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Fantastic.”
“I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for him. It’s what we owe him. My team and I.” Shiro furrowed his brow as a new thought overtook him. “What about New Altea? Isn’t it legally liable too? Allura…Allura was pretty heavily involved.”
More than involved, Shiro had heard, but nobody liked to talk about it, especially now that Allura ...
“Lotor wouldn’t sue New Altea. Or the princess,” Iverson said gruffly.
“How do you know?”
“Sources. Doesn't matter. They say he just wouldn’t. Do you think he would?” Iverson challenged.
Shiro paused, for one short moment, and remembered a Sincline mech in front of the Rift, supposedly under Honerva’s command, yet somehow disobeying her orders, unable to attack the Blue Lion, as if being controlled by someone other than its mistress. “No. He wouldn’t.”
“Then that’s settled. I’ll have them work out a schedule for your visits over the next two weeks. Have a good evening, Shiro.” As he turned to briskly walk away, Shiro had one last thought.
“Wait,” Shiro called after him. “Does Lotor even know Allura’s gone?”
It had been years, and Shiro still couldn’t bring himself to use the word “dead”.
Iverson turned, gave him one last look full of dread, and then kept walking away.
Shit.