A/N: I just finished Voltron and my heart is in pieces??? It's a little spoilers so if you're not to season 6 and don't want to be spoiled then maybe don't read, don't say I didn't warn you! Also sorry about the format, first time uploading from my phone so not sure how well this is going to work!
The whole thing was crazy.
This cat and mouse game they were playing- well really it was just himself. He had second guessed himself at every turn and this was no different.
She was radiant and it hurt his eyes to look at her sometimes, but if that were how he was to go blind then it didn't matter. Not one bit.
She had saved the universe- his universe. And compared to Allura he felt like a flickering candle in her constant lamp glow.
He was broken, a shell of the man he had once thought himself to be. He had transformed, floundered, adapted, died, and then was reborn again and reshaped into something new. If it weren't for the mirror in his stark room he wasn't sure he would recognize himself. He had died; he remembered it, living- if one could really call what he was doing there living, he didn't know- in that in between space of the Black Lion's controls.
Time had stopped there and at the same time it ran even faster. He was sure the Alteans had a word for it- their time was different and whether it was a tic or a quiznart or a- a- a whatever, maybe she would know.
She has saved him after all, had brought him back, cradled his mind from his gleaming black lion back into his body. He remembered the moment he reconnected with his body- how there was no pain in the swirling plain he had dwelled on, only a chilling distant wind that he could never quite really feel. And then there was pain and ache, heartbreak, and then... elation.
He was home again, back with his pieced together family and he was warm and he could feel again. He didn't have to remember the ache that he felt because it never really went away, but he also didn't have to remember the warmth that hid just behind the cage that his bones had made in his chest. Because it was still there.
His hands formed fists at his sides as he struggled to contain himself. He had been gone for so long, had been able to do nothing while his friends had fought with an imposter beside them. While he got to share those moments, while he gained their trust. And he had only been able to sit on the sidelines. He had lived a soldier, died a soldier, and then he was nothing and they didn't even know.
Shiro wanted to scream, to throw something, to punch something. Useless- he had been useless and it ate away at him bit by bit.
A soft knock at the door brought him back to reality and he let out a breathe he hadn't realized he'd been holding. His knuckles ached from holding his fists so tightly, and he flexed them- feeling the tendons in his human hand stretch and relax.
"Come in." He called using the strongest voice he could muster, he didn't bother looking to the door. The other paladins often stopped by his room, sometimes to check on him, sometimes to purposefully annoy him. In the end Shiro didn't mind, because it was his paladins and his memories.
"I am sorry to bother you so late in the evening, Shiro, but I must speak to you." Allura said behind him, surprising him. He hadn't expected her, she almost never visited. Lately they saw little of eachother, something that bothered him more than he would like to admit.
He turned to face her and once again felt like he had been slapped. She was beautiful as always, every time he saw her it was like seeing her for the first time all over again. But she was always beautiful in different ways, most days it was a steady calm sea, others it was like the sun rising on a misty spring day- it felt like he was chipping away at something slowly, revealing what was underneath the surface. But tonight her beauty was sad, like she didn't know that just looking at her made his heart skip a beat.
She wore black leggings, a color she rarely wore around the others, and a black T-shirt. Compared to her usual pastels she looked as if she were dressed for a funeral. Shiro thought that if maybe he squinted enough she could pass as a human.
"Of course, Princess," he was using it again, his leader voice, the one he'd honed perfectly. Her face fell just a little more. There were no tables or chairs in his room so he motioned to sit on the bed, as he was doing now. She sat beside him, wringing her hands together in her lap. Tonight she didn't look like the dignified princess he had come to know, tonight she looked like a frightened girl.
"We haven't had much time to talk, you and I, between the relief efforts and rebuilding everything. I just wanted-" she broke off then restarted, gaining more confidence as she spoke, but the sadness never left her undertone, "I just wanted to say how happy we are that you're back with us. How happy I am. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't come back to us." He watched he in silence as she continued. "You are so good with the others, sometimes I feel as if maybe I don't fit in with them, but you, Shiro, you are so good to them. I fit, but not the way you do, Shiro, you have something special."
He opened his mouth to speak but shut it as she powered through. "You always seem to know what to do and you always know what to say." She didn't know how often he wondered if what he was doing was the right thing. Every light casts shadow, Shiro sometimes questioned if they would swallow him whole. "So many times I've looked up to you. You have no magic, you're only a human- that is what I thought when I first met you, but I was wrong. You bring something out in others that I don't know if I'll ever be able to accomplish- you make people want to be better. The others follow me, I'm truly thankful for them and consider them all my family, but you're are so much more."
She was trembling, her hands shaking in her lap. This was so unfamiliar to her. He edged closer to her, taking her hands in his own. She could feel the coolness of his Galra hand against her own, but it did not make her want to shrink back. "Allura I-"
"I came to ask if you would think of perhaps staying by my side, I- I am unsure of your plans now that the Galra Empire has fallen, but I would very much like it if you were here with me. Not as a leader or a commander, but as a friend, an ally, something more if you wished it." She wasn't looking at him but if she had been she would have seen the shock that was painted clear as day on his face.
She thinks she's going to lose me, he thought to himself, she thinks I'm going to leave. The thoughts tumbled one after another and he thinks maybe he waited too long at answer because she starts to rise and mutter sniffling apologies under her breath- something about overstepping boundaries and assuming things. He grabbed her wrist as she's about to make her hasty exit and pulled her down to him, almost into his lap.
"Allura, there is no where else I'd rather be than beside you. Like you said, I may not have magic and I may only be a human," she starts to fuss at him, "but I'm not an idiot." She gives him an odd look, the line between her pale brows deepening. "Every universe revolves around a singular star- that we know is true. You are our star- you are the light of all lights. I would never be able to escape your pull even if I wanted to. I will stay with you, Allura, when we finish rebuilding, I will stay with you to see the end of this war, and I will stay with you to enjoy what comes after."
Allura threw her arms around him, Shiro realizes she smells a little like lavenders. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wonders when his candle had stopped flickering, and when the heat of her light had turned him into a torch instead. He is burning and he wished on ever god in every universe that he always would be.