Forgotten but not Lost
Voltron: Legendary Defender Fanfiction
Prologue: A New Life
A/N: I do not own Voltron: Legendary Defender.
I just own Ziera, Colran, Sephiras, Janze and any other OCs mentioned in this fic that isn't canon.
WARNING: Contains violence, death, implications of sexual acts, Lance's flirting, and other things that may cause some readers discomfort.
I finally created the prologue for this story, with the commissions I've had to do, and BHBL, I never got time to start it, but now that I have, I'll be sure to post as much as I can!
This fic is set in an alternate reality where Allura and Lotor became best friends rather than love interests, Lance and Allura never happen and the entirety of seasons seven and eight are rewritten.
This is a canonxoc fic centered around Lotor, if that's not your cup of tea, feel free to click off. I don't want to waste your time, I just love these kinds of stories.
Well, I hope you enjoy!
In life, everything had a balance, the water and the earth, the wind and the leaves, the joy and the sadness. You could not have one without the other, even peace had its equal...Chaos, and that is what a young woman from another world would soon come to realize. When she finally awoke from a crash landing on Olkarion, light-years from her beloved home and family.
The story began when two sentries were chatting on the edge of the forest, having just finished their shifts for the evening, and were now waiting for their replacements to show up and take over for the night. Neither of them expected to catch a glimpse of a glow in the distance and look up to see a ball of metal and flames barrel towards them with no signs of slowing down or stopping, like a meteor falling from the sky.
Luckily the two were quick on their feet in their panic and managed to run far enough away that the impact of the metal ship against the ground did not affect them. Sadly, the forest floor did not have that luxury. Around the strange vehicle towered a deep crater that held the purple and red, angular escape pod.
"Wh-what do we do, Colren?" The female sentry, a noseless woman with blue scelra and green eyes asked, looking at the male sentry beside her with pale yellow skin, green scelra and red eyes. Neither of them knew what to do in this situation and just stood there dumbfounded, when two other sentries, their replacements, finally arrived.
"What's going on?" A strong male sentry with pale red skin, green scelra and brown eyes asked, physically fitter than the others as he looked from the two confused guards to the crater. "Are we under attack?!" He then turned to the smallest of the group with muted green skin, yellow scelra and black eyes, who jumped slightly in surprise. "Find Ryner, tell her to come quickly, she'll know what to do."
The smallest nodded and spun, quickly sprinting off to get their beloved leader.
"I-I don't think so, Melrak...Why would someone attack us in such a self-destructive way?" Colren asked softly, staring at the pod in the crater. "This escape pod just appeared out of the sky and crashed right where we were standing. There are far better ways to do battle than diving head-first into enemy territory, just to cause yourself harm."
He was right, the pod was in a terrible state, burnt, bent and broken in places, the glass covering the seat the pilot occupied broken in some areas from the hard landing. There was someone inside, as far as they could see, but said being was not moving an inch. They were most likely unconscious from the dreadful crash.
Melrak, the largest of the three remaining sentries, stepped forward to enter the crater, despite the female sentry begging for him to do otherwise. He stopped and looked over at her. "Sephiras, I'll be fine. I've faced an army of Galra in the past, one crashed pilot won't be enough to take me down." His words were comforting, but Sephiras frowned with concern.
"Th-then I'm coming to!" Colren stammered, being the most timid of the four. He stepped forward and held onto his spear like it was the only thing keeping him alive. Melrak and Sephiras shared a look and arched their brows, before the female stepped forward and drew her gun, which looked suspiciously like a flower.
"And me. I'm not about to let you boys take all the glory here~!"
The three smirked bravely and went to the edge of the crater, Melrak assisted Colren into the steep hole, then helped Sephiras, who was caught by the timid Olkari. "Thanks Colren." She said with a sweet smile as she was put down by the blushing man, who mumbled 'no problem' timidly. Melrak jumped down and landed behind them with a heavy thump, startling the pair of them.
"Flirt later, we've got to get this pod open and restrain whoever's inside." The beefy alien told them simply, hearing embarrassed complaints from his two friends as he went over to the pod and felt the glass casing for a way to open it from the outside. When he found a switch, he tried pressing it, but growled irritably when nothing happened.
It was broken.
"Fine." He sneered, grabbing both sides of the glass. "You want to be like that, then I've got no problem ripping you off with my bear hands!" And true to his word, with a few heavy tugs and strained grunts, he tore the door of the pod clean off and tossed it to the side, where the fragile glass shattered.
Just as that happened, the fourth sentry, who was known as Janze, arrived with Ryner, a grey skinned Olkari with the same head and neck appendages as Sephiras only her's were wilted, red eyes with blue/green scelra and a beautiful red gem embedded into her forehead. The elder woman and rightful leader of the forest dwelling Olkari, stepped towards the crater as Janze looked around for his friends, concerned they may have been obliterated by whoever had tresspassed onto their land.
When Ryner reached the edge of the stable dirt and looked inside, she called Janze over. "Melrak, Sephiras and Colren are over here, Janze." She stated, and smiled slightly when the thinner, most intelligent of the four, sighed with relief and ran over, stopping at their leader's side.
"Ma'am." Melrak started, getting her attention as he placed his hand on the top of the pod and stared at the person inside, while Sephiras was checking for life signs. "According to Colren and Sephiras, this pod crashed before them as if it had no control of its trajectory."
"Y-yes." Colren continued, nervously gripping his spear with a flustered expression. "A-and when examining the pod, we noticed the pilot had yet to make any movements, sh-she didn't even open the pod door, or scan for life, or anything..."
Ryner frowned and stared at the woman inside the pod, she had muted cyan blue hair, burnt sienna skin, orange cat-like markings with various other markings on the bridge of her nose, around her eyes and on her cheeks, the latter looking like thick whiskers. She did not appear healthy, her eyes had bags beneath them and injuries littered her skin.
What stuck out the most, was her Galra armor, though damaged, it was intact enough to understand the insignia on the side. However the armor she wore did not match the usual Galra colours. Instead of the reds, yellows and blacks, she adorned blues, greys, blacks and oranges. It was an odd combination to see.
Sephiras made a slight noise, and got both the males' attention, and Ryner's as well. "She's alive, though barely! With how she's breathing, I'd say the reason she collapsed wasn't because of the crash, but because of oxygen starvation!"
"Oxygen starvation?" Janze repeated, stroking his chin while Sephiras and Colren worked together to remove the unconscious woman from the wreckage. "Well, that's not surprising, these escape pods were made for short space travel and nothing more...She must have come from a nearby planet, otherwise she'd have died before she crashed."
"She did." Ryner stated, as the woman was laid down on a flat part of the crater's floor. "This woman is a Tylyrion, a neighbouring planet-dwelling species, they used to frequent our world often back when we had control of the city. Like us they are an engineering society, yet they also have promise as warriors as well."
"If they're our friends, why is this one working with the Galra?" Melrak asked, glaring suspiciously at the weakened stranger.
""We shouldn't assume anything." Colren said, as Sephiras kept checking the woman's vital signs to ensure she stayed with them. "There could be a reasonable explanation for all of this."
"Like what? She must have openly accepted wearing their armor, unless they force dressed her!" Melrak countered, making a good point.
"Hmmm, but why would a Galra soldier use their own escape pod? We haven't heard of a battle resulting in a destroyed Cruiser."
"That doesn't mean there wasn't some kind of confrontation! I say we leave her here for her 'allies' to find."
Ryner spoke up before Colran could argue back, having stood to do just that. "Enough." She said it with enough force to silence all debates. "It's just like Colran says...We will not let someone suffer, whether they're wearing Galra armor or not, without the full story. If we allow her to die without just reasoning, we may as well be as bad as those who enslaved our king!"
Melrak went silent, gritting his teeth as he looked away with a click of the tongue. She had a point, they weren't brutal murderers, after all. Every life held meaning. "Fine, but can we at least take precautions, if we assist her, and it turns out she is the enemy, I'll never forgive myself for not restraining her when we had the chance!"
Ryner nodded. "Don't worry, Melrak, I had no intentions of letting her roam free without understanding the situation first." She turned her attention to the other female in their little group. "Sephiras, can you ensure our 'guest's' survival until we can craft a healing pod?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"Good, Colran, can you create some simple handcuffs for her?"
"Y-yes!"
"Melrak, can you carry her back to camp, since you far exceed any of us in strength?"
"...Fine..."
"And Janze, could you create a fast-recovery healing pod when we return? We must be swift if we want to ensure her survival."
"...Hm, me?! Uh, sure I can, ma'am!"
Ryner smiled at her small group of sentries. "Good, thank you for all your hard work. If we play our cards correctly, we may gain some valuable information about Galra operations. Let's make haste, we haven't the time to waste here."
The four sentries bowed with respect. "Yes, ma'am!"
~FbnL~
Everything felt strange, like she was stuck in deep space, just floating along, weightless and unable to move by choice. The world around her was pitch black and the only sounds she could hear were the dull, muffled voices of people she could not see. She just wanted to sleep off this aching pain throbbing in her battered skull, but those sounds, that conversation, kept pulling her towards a light in the distance.
'I don't want to wake up...' She thought sluggishly, but could do nothing to alter her course and avoid it, therefore she was engulfed by the bright light, without any say otherwise.
Slowly, her vision cleared and instead of being stuck in a black abyss, she was contained in a human-sized cylindrical pod of sorts, behind a glass screen that had leaves sticking out on the outside. Wait...Was this a pod, made of wood?!
Janze looked up from the control panel to see her staring at him, only to look back down and do a double take when he realized she was awake. "M-ma'am! She's awake! The prisoner is awake!"
Prisoner?
In a split second, an older alien woman came into her field of vision, and stared at her confused features for a second before she turned to Janze. "Open the pod." He nodded skittishly and pressed a button, watching as the wooden pod hissed, and the vine-locked door lifted into the air. How was a wooden door airtight?!
Nervously, the woman regained her footing and stepped down from the ledge in the pod, groaning when her aching soles made contact with the ground. She looked down and froze in surprise at the sight of the itchy wooden handcuffs around her wrists.
Wait, what?!
"Wh-where am I?" The nervous stranger asked, looking around at the different aliens in the room. "What happened? What am I doing here?!"
"Calm down." Ryner said, raising a hand waving it up and down, gesturing for her to do just that. "You're on the planet Olkari, in our small village. We found you on the outskirts of the forest in a Galra escape pod, you were badly injured and needed urgent medical attention."
"W-wait, I was in an escape pod?" This got her some strange looks, and yet another suspicious glare from Melrak. "No, I...I can't..." Her eyes darted back and forth as she began to panic, trying to process what little information she could and understand the situation. "I can't remember! I-I don't remember anything!"
Ryner's eyes narrowed, she was not going to believe a stranger so easily. "There's no need to hide your intentions or reasons behind being in that pod. Why were you there, what reason do you have for coming here, and are you associated to the Galra in any way?"
"Please listen to me!" The stranger stepped forward as tears pricked at her ombre coloured eyes, which went from red at the top, to blue at the bottom. "I honestly can't remember anything! I don't know who I am, or why I'm here. I-I'm so scared, I don't know anything!"
The conviction behind those words, and the genuine fear in her eyes made the forest-dwelling leader hesitate in surprise. However she knew better than to believe words alone, and her expression hardened. "Well, until you regain your senses, you will remain in custody here. Melrak and Colran will keep an eye on you."
"But-"
Ryner turned to the two men, one being noble and loyal, while the other shook in slight fear of being the one to guard the now conscious woman. "If anything is amiss, report to me immediately. I must make preparations to remove the pod before the Galra grow curious and wander too far into our territory."
"Yes, ma'am!" Both men said, bowing again as Sephiras, Ryner and Janze left and stranger just stared down at the ground with wide, disturbed eyes. Colran could tell something was amiss, but said nothing, and Melrak still distrusted her.
Until they got some information out of her, she would be seen as the enemy and remain in custody, and neither would say otherwise.
~FbnL~
Several weeks passed since the crash, and the stranger sat on her bed silently. She was staring off into space as she kept trying to remember things from her past, but with little to no success. She only remembered one thing, and that was that she had been captured and imprisoned before, and her captors had been a species with purple skin and glowing yellow eyes, assuming the image of the guard in her memories was correct.
Of course, she never spoke of this fact, after all, she couldn't confirm if it was true or not, and with little knowledge of herself or anything else, she could not even trust her own judgement. Right now, she was alone...
The sentries were heard talking outside the room and the door opened, Ryner stepping inside with Sephiras and Colran following behind. Once inside the door was closed behind them by the other guards. "It has been a full phoeb since you awoke, yet you refuse to give us any information at all...We do not like keeping you locked up like this, but for the safety of my people, we cannot trust you without knowing anything about you."
"I was telling you the truth from the start." The woman said honestly, sitting up and looking down at her handcuffs. "I honestly can't remember anything about myself or why I crashed, and if I did, I'd have told you by now!" She felt those same tears prick at her eyes again. "I don't have an identity, or a place to call my own, and since waking up, the only thing I've been able to remember is being captured before..."
"You were captured before?" Colran asked as Sephiras went over to her and mumbled for the woman to stare into a small light on the end of a stick. Since she was used to these small check-ups, she complied without resistance.
"Mmhm, by people with purple skin and glowing yellow eyes. Well, if the memory is accurate, I mean." The woman stated, and the three Olkari went silent in thought, Sephiras pausing her examination to ponder her words. "Please believe me...I know it must be hard, assuming the armor and ship I arrived in belonged to your enemy, the...Galra, right? But I am not one of them...I think."
She sighed and looked away, her chin trembling as she felt the frustration of not knowing anything about herself hit her like a brick wall. Not only was she no one, but she wasn't even worth trusting. "I don't want to be in this situation, I don't know who I am, or why I came here, or what I was trying to escape from, but please...Please believe me!" She choked out those last words and lifted her cuffed hands, covering her face with them as she sobbed.
Despite knowing it was a dangerous move, Ryner could n longer deny the sincerity in her words, no one was that good an actress, and the stress of the situation must have been building up for so long, that she just felt hopeless. "I...Will choose to believe your words." She stated, surprising the other two Olkari in the room. "And no one must live without an identity...Do you know where you're from?"
"No..."
Ryner sighed. "Then I'll inform you...You are a Tylyrion from the neighbouring planet Tylyrio, renowned for your engineer-" However just as Ryner started explaining what she was and where she was from, the stranger doubled over with a pained cry and gripped her skull with her clawed fingers.
"What is it?!" Sephiras asked, quickly looking her over for any signs of injury. "Where is the pain originating from, can you tell me?!"
Of course, it was then that the strange, sudden agony receded and the woman sat there, breathing heavily with wide eyes as she straightened up slightly and looked at Ryner like she had cured her of a terminal illness. "I...I saw Tylyrio in my head! I was in the pod, but I didn't want to be in there...It's such a beautiful planet! The mountains reached the clouds and the forests covered most of the surface area, except where there were rivers! I-I have a home!"
"Do you remember what happened next?"
"N-no...I'm sorry, that's all I saw, it was only for a second."
Ryner shook her head, she understood what was going on now. "You have nothing to apologize for...I believe you have Retrograde Amnesia, a type that erases past memories and can only be regained using certain triggers that pertain to that person. You must have taken a rather serious blow to the head when you crash-landed, and that's most likely where this issue has stemmed from, considering you remember everything after you awoke, but nothing from before."
The woman looked relatively hopeful, but confused as well. "So...I'll get my memories back?"
Ryner frowned. "I'm not sure...It is a very difficult thing to predict, some people regain them in a few days, though some don't regain them throughout their lifetimes..."
"Oh..." She looked down with a solemn twist of the lips. "I guess I need to be patient then."
"Did you remember your name, anything about yourself in that second?" Sephiras asked, her medical curiosity peaking at the idea of studying someone with a complicated mental block.
"I don't think so...It was just an image, and I didn't really notice anything else."
"If you were wearing a nametag when we found you, this would be far easier to figure out." The young female Olkari joked, and this pulled a joyless laugh from the strange woman's throat. "But you can't just walk around without a name while you're here."
"Sephiras has a point..." Colran mumbled sheepishly, playing with his spear as per usual. "Y-you need to have some kind of title, even if it's not your r-real one."
The woman's expression only darkened in her growing frustration and she sighed, pinching the bridge of her patterned nose. "I can't think of anything, without my memories or any idea what kind of person I was before, giving myself a name is difficult...It's really hard to concentrate on anything, actually."
"Then allow me to assist you." Ryner walked over to her and placed her finger on the wooden material of the handcuffs. "There's an old Olkari fable about a traveller from another world seeking solace here and creating the technology we use today, it's nothing but fiction, of course! But the name of that traveller was Ziera. Does that seem like a name you may enjoy?"
The woman watched in awe as the handcuffs opened when there was no mechanism to do so before Ryner touched them, then as she stroked her sore wrists, she mulled over the name suggested to her, before she gave them the first grin they had ever seen from her, bold and full of joyous energy. "That's perfect! Ziera...I love it, thank you!"
The elder smiled down at her guest who bound up, startling poor Colran into raising his spear, which forced Ryner to raise her hand to stop him before he hurt anyone. "Ziera, while you recover, will you assist us in protecting this planet from the Galra threat facing the universe?"
Ziera rubbed the back of her neck as her fangs gleamed in the light of the setting sun. "It would be my honor, Miss Ryner. Thank you for giving me a chance to prove myself."
"Excellent, then we must return your things and create some new, comfortable clothing for you to wear during your time here...Your armor is not fit to wear any longer." Ryner chuckled at her energy, it seemed all she needed was a little trust and a name, and she felt better. "But please, Ryner is enough, there is no need for formalities with me."
"Okay! I'm excited to see this village and the amazing technology you have, it looks fascinating!"
What a strange and unique woman...Whatever the reasons for her sudden crash, it was apparent that the Olkari had gained an interesting ally at least.
Only time would tell if they would regret it or not.
A/N: Thank you for reading! Please review, I want to improve as a writer, and any comments or criticism will really help me towards that!
I'll see you in the next chapter!
Voltron Time
Month = Phoeb