his life is defined by hard lessons. lotor realizes there are consequences to not learning them the first time.
Everything is perilously calculated; bricks built on a heavy foundation: if there aren't strong walls they can't hold his body, his mind, hide the way fear makes him feel.
He makes a mistake, he learns, but every mistake must become smaller; grains of dust, for the mistakes are now a high-stakes game where a loss could cause a debt that would cost him his life.
It starts off weightless – starts without a hold to it, a tangibility, because there are no ultimatums – there are only the markers of pain, Dayak's slight incline to smile, the proud way he holds himself even as his body heaves – it is a controlled situation. It is the learning of mistakes before they are made and turn into scars; it is learning ways to avoid the pain.
( Dayak and Lotor bicker late into the night on the particulars of things – details that might've been missed, a history lesson off-kilter – later, he finds, that being right doesn't matter as much as the gravel of her voice and the snap to it.
"I ought to be the teacher then," Lotor says, a smirk to his lips, and it takes only seconds to recoil from the sting of pain, a throbbing but an otherwise ignorable thing that makes him laugh more than it makes him grimace.
"Don't be foolish, young prince," Dayak scolds, hard lines trying to hide the soft curve of her lips, and Lotor decides that is worth more than ten more lashes of pain. )
Lotor thinks maybe if he asks for something he'll get it – all pleasing, all polite, everything his father could want, but – there's something that rests in his breastbone, sharp in the intake of his breath when the rejection is less physical than it is all emotional, with Zarkon staying as far away from Lotor as possible, as if just a minor touch could become a stain.
Lesser than, as if the half of him that was all his father's surmounted to nothing, not enough, cancelled out by simply being. "Of course not," already decided, already debated, no room for the air to find its way in – an ultimatum – just like the way disgust is spittle on Zarkon's jaw, as unforgiving as the other Galra who find Lotor ugly for a part of him he doesn't know. "Never ask me of those things again."
"Of course, father."
Some lessons are bitterly learned without a teacher: Lotor learns to expect nothing from his blood, to an emperor who keeps him because he feels he has to not because he wants to, to a father who hides the truth of his mother because it's convenient; better to erase every part of him, blank, useless.
( There's blood on Lotor's lip but he still stands sturdy, grip on his sword tight and pointed sharp. "A 'dirty half breed'," he looks down at the way delinquent Galra shield themselves against him, battered on the ground, "beat you all senseless." He smiles as cold as the ice of his eyes, an expectation pregnant in the silence – victory or death – they all know it, know that defeat is as much a death sentence as it is the loss of one's honor.
Lotor's lips slip, "and this same half-breed will let you bear with the shame of it," he growls, watches the way the pale yellow of their eyes narrow, jaws of a beast clenched tight.
They mock him for his mercy but at the time his mercy is his only line in the sand – they always paint him as the other, so he embraces the otherness as way to brandish his fangs, shine with the lacquer of it, for the best way to hide the way his hand shakes with a sword in the cradle of his claws is if they can only see the blade of it, not the handle. )
They reject him at first, like everyone has, with time – but they are also the ones who show him that rejection can lead to acceptance. He's got the brand of an emperor, too galra for them, not galra enough for anyone else, but to this planet he's granted a hold of, they see him more as Lotor than lilac skin, fangs, and large stature; they see him more as a creature of logic than blood at the tips of his fingers.
"I don't want to see the destruction of this planet," Lotor says, fingering the vegetation around him, petals soft between the webbing of his fingers, "it ought to be preserved not ... drained of life, destroyed beyond irrepair." He can only see his father, expectant he be a mirror of other subordinates that rule over things with reckless abandon, who turn everything they touch to dust, so it surprises him when his company reaches out, places the pads of their fingertips to the knots of his brow (a pressure there he didn't realize until then) and it's an affection he does not shy away from. Instead, he leans into it, adoration like a crush speckling his cheeks.
"You won't," they say, their confidence a trademark of them being a leader – a leader, when peeking out from underneath the shadow of Zarkon, that teaches Lotor the responsibility of taking care of others, of making hard decisions that may not have clean black and white outcomes.
"You're right," Lotor says, gingerly taking their hand in his, "we are earnestly working on a solution. If quintessence is what Emperor Zarkon wants, then he should not mind if we find a way to acquire more of it, without the destruction of the planet."
He's confident in that it will work – confident as much as he is in brisk, inexperienced kisses and the quiet thunder of his heart.
( There is only one person he gets on his knees for, and it's the image of his father's back, a cut-out, dark against the bright colors of a place Lotor had started to call home.
There's no confidence in the shake of his jaw, the way the tips of his words tremble as if they could mask the pain at the backs of his eyes. "Don't -" is a word insurmountable, but even that isn't enough.
Lotor is rendered a child once again – pain a distant reminder of lessons no longer endorsed, only remembered. Take this pain, Lotor reopens his eyes to the reds and golds of a place he loved engulfed in flame, and learn to not make the same mistake. )
Exile is lonely and miserable, so he opens his heart twice:
Once, to the alteans who look to him with suspicion then reverence, ( his promise pale in their ghosts, engraved underneath the weight of his feet ) and twice, to a feisty man with scars tight on his skin, a crooked taste to his smile. "You're not ugly," he had said, pulling on the last dregs of rags he called clothes, "I mean look at you, playing Hero even though you're no better than the rest of us."
"But you like that I play Hero," Lotor says, languid in the morning sun, and he figures his fight can wait a few minutes, a few hours, if this man would stay and make his thoughts spool out empty, make tension blank; melting into the long pulling of his limbs.
"Me?" The man scoffs, but there's a playfulness to the shine of his eyes, "I would never support you for that."
To Lotor, the relationship is heated as it is breathless even though Lotor likes to run cold, and there's a simplicity to filling himself up with the ache of love to chase away his loneliness, ( for being loved, he realized, was all he had wanted ) but it comes short suddenly; full-stop: a reminder.
"You -" Lotor touches the throbbing of his temple and pulls his fingers away to see blood, "You are that Witch's agent? Why? Why?"
There's a crease at the corner of that man's eyes, a shrug, an easy-going nature that was at once comforting as it was now infuriating, "She wanted you distracted, and you see, I'm very good at distractions - haven't you noticed?"
( Lotor gets burned only a handful of many times more – Haggar places a pawn and she knows the way to crawl back into the curve of his forgiving heart, knows how to get him to dull his fangs, put up his sword, stop his fight just a moment because it's easier to be an exile than a hero.
He learns the lesson reluctantly, painfully, and too slowly, but eventually – for as Haggar brings him back before her, calculating and unkind, the stench of victory in the sharpness of her voice, Lotor decides that there's no such thing as freedom.
He doesn't know why she doesn't tell Zarkon his plans, doesn't care – but he encases his heart in resin, lets it harden over time until he's no longer surprised that the people he wants to trust will put a knife in his back, until trust is a luxury he's not willing to give.
"You don't have to like me," Lotor says to Axca the first time he meets her, face shuttered, unapproachable, "but I can show you I'm worth something." )
"Did you design our armor after your cat?" Axca says, and Kova looks up expectantly, Lotor's palm already stroking the side of the appreciative cat's head.
"Am I so transparent?" Lotor asks, an almost sheepish tone to his lips; embarrassed, he is, in this scrutiny, in this small act of honoring the years in which Kova was his silver threaded life-line.
"Yes," Axca says, trying not to laugh, and when Lotor looks back she's clearing her throat and trying to clean up the warmth to her face, a botched attempt at acting more professional, "but it's not a ... bag thing," she amends, "sir."
Lotor shakes his head, but he doesn't see the way she makes him smile.
( Later, he shoots down Narti and starts to feel the cracks of his relationship with his generals fracture without explanation.
If he told them the way the witch's interference could make their dream fall apart, maybe they would have listened. If he told them the way they unintentionally placed the heat of fire under his hardened heart, let the drips of it slip, unnoticeable, until they made a home in the holes of it, maybe their trust would have remained undeniable.
But lotor stays silent – a silence that teaches him a painful lesson, as if to say: if you opened up, you wouldn't have had to lay face down, solitary, once again, in the cut of their betrayal – but betrayal happened whether or not his heart was open, and he hoped that this time trust could be unquestionable.
He expected too much – asked for too much.
As much as it hurts he never blames them, for the witch is an overbearing presence, as much of a shadow as is his father, but while one wishes for his erasure the other tears down what little hope Lotor had in the honesty of other people, makes his mind tiresome in the way in trudges on, even when drowning. )
His generals become tools, given hasty explanations to buy back their loyalty temporarily – they are a facet to something that becomes all-encompassing, as grand as his dreams of growing up in a world he knew Alfor, knew Altea, knew his mother as she was not what she is.
Voltron. And later, with an aftertaste of bittersweet – Allura.
( He remembers the first time he meets Voltron he's disappointed – an ancient weapon at their fingertips, crafted by Alfor, and they are useless, powerless – he endeavors to steal it from them, to give it to hands who will use the weapon to achieve his previously unachievable dream.
She changes his mind. Blue and fierce, she bests him – and he amends, amends, amends, fixes the fraying seams of his over-confidence, happy to be proven wrong, just this once. Fine paladin, he thinks, you win this time, but she wins again and again, unintentional, free-willed, stubborn.
It's his respect that begins his undoing, in the end. )
He takes a chance: in her, he sees something akin to a fantasy – for as much as he clung to the idea of Altea, it was an Altea he saw as a bunch of exiles, of familiarity in the rejection of the world and all of them in it, a last desperate attempt to find connection in an Atlantis; the hollow bones of a civilization, forgotten.
To allura, Altea was fresh, burning, still at the edges of her gaze, like a painting that could be quickly filled in once again. To her, Altea was a kingdom that rises, that holds strong, that perseveres – not something to defend as Lotor did, for being Altean, for being a part of a destroyed, forgotten planet, was nothing to proud of.
She was proud and unabashedly, fiercely, and in his mouth he tasted the faint taste of bitterness.
( He's proud but not as proud as she is, and soon, she bleeds into him like the lights or the stars in the sky, her love for her home his love for a home he wish he had.
He is her prisoner, and he wants to show her he's worth something – later, he wants her to know she's not alone.
In another life, he thinks, gaze soft on her markings, I wish i had grown up in the Altea you remember, his fingers at her hand surprising her, surprising even himself.
Centuries and he's still out of practice, centuries and he should have learned his lesson, centuries and he finds there's nothing, no one else like her, and because of this his heart unfolds, open; a paper crane unfolding to creases of paper. He's unsure of himself, but, "stay," is as quiet and tentative as a child, hands tucked away, and she stays, and he's surprised again.
Stronger than anyone, stronger than him – is this what a bird's flight looks like without its wings clipped? )
It's an alliance.
He clears his throat, sweat starting to build at the nape of his neck. Princess Allura is an … ally, and, deserves better – deserves more than the relic of a castle for her home and paladins who don't see the toil and the toll on a woman who'll sacrifice blood, flesh, limb for their safety, for their happiness.
He says thank you to her once, and she's almost surprised, as if it is new, and he absolves to say it more, again, for meaningless, tiny things, that grow into meaningful tiny things.
She asks him how he is, he says, thank you, Princess, she details the thoughts of her plan, and he says thank you again, again, when she minds the space between them, allowing room for him to breathe, again, when she takes steps to understand the particulars of the Galra for their alliance, again, as if thank yous are his heartbeat, clamoring loud in his heart and his mind.
They go to Oriande and it's enough to be there – enough to see legend actualized, even in the face of his failure. "Thank you, Allura," he says, and wonders when the barrier of titles didn't seem to matter, when Princess became and transitioned to the roundness of her cheeks when she smiled, the ache to hear her laughter, the familiar and worrying thought of: let's stop the fight for a while, let time stop just for this moment.
Just this moment, with her lack of confidence peeling away to show the woman who really shined; sweet.
( She was his sun, and his warmth she became. )
That is why he asks in desperation –
Allura, i know i've done wrong, but –
( This world is so different from what you remember. I have no excuses, only ultimatums. I have only hard decisions, messy and terrible and unforgivable. I had to get energy, and they were my only source. I had to fight, because no one else was fighting.
I remember them, I remember them every day and they are my greatest shame, my greatest guilt, and as little as I tried to use, bodies build over time. A little sacrifice to save the rest of them, I would have saved them, you know Altea is everything to me.
I had to do it. There was no Voltron. There were no heroes.
Allura, I had to.
Allura, I'm sorry.
I was never worthy of you in the first place, but you saw the me i want to be, so won't you believe in me? Won't you?
Allura? )
He never meant to hurt her, never meant to twist what they had and he hopes for his redemption, as much as lessons have taught him that it is easy to cast him way, to leave him at the wayside, his punishment exile, loneliness, betrayal.
He opens his heart a last time, mind on the fringes, heart soaked in wax.
Allura sets him aflame, and he hates the world that rejects even the kindest parts of him and sees only a monster, doesn't see the lines he's had to redraw over and over in the sand.
He didn't need forgiveness, he just needed to be understood.
Just needed to be by her side, ally, enemy, or everything she thought he could be.
This is because he didn't learn his lesson.
( He doesn't get to see his dream, but the fact remains: Allura is strong enough to carry it out, and that's why he loves her.
That's enough.
That's enough.
That's enough. )
It's not enough.