So I've written a dozen fics and none of them are what I was supposed to be writing HEHEHEHE OOOOOPPPPSSS.
So now you get a bunch of Coran and what might have been his past. I guess the family I made up for him are OC's but like, I don't even give them names.
Also the timeline here is really messed up? SO like, sorry if that bothers you...
I dunno man. Voltron has entered my bloodforce.
... I DON'T KNOW WHY I WROTE THIS BUT IT IS SAD AND I AM NOT OKAY.
*Hugs Coran and cries*
...
Coran had children once.
They were beautiful children, bright and happy and wonderful. His little boy had his red hair, still a child and already determined to join his Dad's side in the military, advisor to the King and master technician. His boy had his mother's eyes, though, brilliant and violet and bright, and Coran used to smile and count the stars hidden in their chromatic expanse.
Lance is sitting, alone and lost , and Coran can't help but see another young man there, eyes troubled and weary. His heart aches, but he hides, offers advice and comfort in the only way he can. He makes jokes, smiles, and pretends that the thought of Altea does not make him want to burst into tears.
He had said never again. He had said that he would take care of all this. Take care of him, of his son. But he hadn't.
He hadn't.
He can't.
His eldest daughter's hair had taken after her mother's, pale cream and thick and curly, falling like a waterfall down her back. She used to sit still and let him braid it for her, even though he never could get the ends right. She would laugh at him, call him silly and tug his moustache, and he would grin at her, laughing as well. She was young, younger than the princess, even- before the fighting began, the two were fast friends, his little girl staring up at the Altean royalty as if she had breathed the world itself to life- but also maturing. She had been so beautiful. So strong.
And she was gone.
"What will we do?"
That is Allura, and Coran has never heard her sound so helpless. So hopeless. So broken.
"They're all dead Coran, all of them. Your family- Oh Coran, your family- I hadn't- I'm so sorry-"
He looks her in the eyes. He has been apart of this young Altean's life since almost the beginning, has watched her learn and grow and strengthen with every passing year. He has lost his family, but they are not alone. There remnants are in the youth before him and her shining multi colored eyes, and Coran gazes at them and half expects to see the stars and thick waterfall curls, but he does not.
But he tries to smile anyways, and he holds her, and buries his head in her hair- pretends for just a moment that it is another - before breathing and trying to let go.
That is all Coran has ever done, he sometimes feels like. All he has ever done is let go and let go and let go, and he wonders when the moment will come where he lets go of too much and he himself will disappear, stardust lost in the glares of space.
He wonders if this loss will be the one to do it. His family-
But he also knows it will not. That he cannot. That he has a promise to keep, and that that promise is held right here in his arms.
He has to try and let go.
"We will grieve and mourn, and we will move on and rebuild, Allura, just as we always have."
He holds her tighter, and tries to believe his own words as her sobs echo in soundless vibrations against his chest.
He tries to let go, but he cannot, and the weight, it drowns him far more thoroughly than even his tears ever could.
His youngest daughter was a small one, and was mischievous and smart. She kept her red hair short and it curled in tight around her ears and formed heavy bangs in front of her violet star filled eyes. She would jump on him from random high up spaces and give him minor heart attacks, and was prone to pranks and dangerous situations. But she was also kind and stubborn and brave, and Coran would never forget the day she came home from the park one day with a swirling bruise forming just above her temple, her violet orbs fierce and bright, claiming that she had done nothing wrong because if people were going to be bad, she was going to stop them.
After getting the full story out of her, it was agreed upon that she would be let go with nothing more than a stern talk, and that night the two of them had stayed up late, talking of her latest project and rough housing on the kitchen floor.
Coran had looked at her and sworn that he would be the same sort of protector as she was, that he would stop the bad guys. That he would stop them all.
But he had not.
But he had not, and that was where his sorrow lay, a broken promise that he carries shattered in his chest, never able to quite release the broken pieces from his heart.
The smallest one is too much like her.
This small fact hits Coran three days in, and he actually physically stops upon realizing it, hand no longer moving to dish dinner. He stays still long enough that they send Hunk to check up on him, but he laughs and says nonsense, and he pushes the concern away.
But his mind does not stop thinking on it. Not for a minute.
Pidge. Her name is Pidge. And she is too much like his dead daughter.
He tries to distance himself after that. Calls her the smallest one in his mind and Number Five out loud, and he tries and he tries because the whole thing hurts and he can't seem to let it go.
And Pidge somehow manages to worm her way into his heart anyways.
(She's like his daughter. Of course she manages to worm her way in.)
He doesn't realize she has, though, until too late, because the castle is under attack and she's inside it, alone and fighting highly trained Galra, and Coran is away, Coran cannot help her- he wasn't able to help her either- and he only just resists the urge to bow his head and plead to the universe for this not to happen again.
Because it can't happen again. Coran can't stand it. He can't take it. He's not strong enough.
He can't lose his family again.
Not again.
Never again.
He's already done it twice, lost his wife and children young and lost his parents younger.
And he can't do it again.
(It doesn't happen again, but it's already happened two times too many and there's no way to cure such a thing, not with all the medical advancements in the world.)
His wife… was one of a kind. Everyone always called the Queen one of the fairest Alteans to have ever been born, but even she could never compare in Coran's eyes to his beloved. Violet orbs like the massiveness of space, just as ethereal and breathtaking. Hair like the waterfalls that he grew up with, foaming and creamy and curling in fluffy masses. Smile like the most powerful weapon in the world, except it wasn't a weapon, but a cure.
She was his everything. He had been so in love with her.
He still is so in love with her. He can't seem to stop, even though it hurts. It hurts so much.
She would laugh and fight and play. She was fierce and strong and brave and wicked intelligent. She was a councilwoman, a strategist, a mother, a saint.
She was his wife.
She had made him promise that he would come back to her.
He hadn't.
Hunk reminds him of her, in some ways.
She used to love to cook, taught Coran everything he knows. They would spend hours in the kitchen, and every time there would be a mess, and she would laugh and they would cea it up.
And she was stern a lot of the time, didn't like socializing. But if you put her in front of something she was passionate about she would break free of her shell like a bird from a cage, and her flight always was the most gorgeous thing Coran had ever seen.
But, then again, Keith reminds him of her, too. They're both so stubborn. So passionate. She had a fierce temper, his wife, and sometimes Coran watches Keith's eyes as they narrow and his back as it straightens, and he wonders if this is what that term meant, the one the Paladins had tried to explain: deja vu.
He wonders, and his heart, it hurts.
He should have gone back to her. He promised he would go back to her.
He didn't go back to her.
He can't go back to her.
Never again.
Altea had been beautiful.
Nothing like it. He never saw anything like it in all of his thousands of years, and just the thought of it brings something soft and jarring and bittersweet into his chest.
A thousand terrains all rolled in one, a thousand million people all calling it home. Beautiful architecture and delicious foods, fiery rain falling from the heavens and sweet fluff blossoming from the ground. Waterfalls, thousands of meters high, and small quiet hills that one could explore for hours and hours and still find new nooks and crannies throughout.
Home. It had been home, plain and simple. The place where he was born, the place where he was raised, the place where he met his beloved, the place where he raised his kids, and the place he would always return to whenever missions and political endeavors were over.
And it was gone. And he could never return to it.
Shiro looks up at him, and there's sweat on his brow and his eyes are wide, wide, wide, and Coran can tell he's not fully there even before he begins to speak:
Shiro in his right mind would never say such thoughts out loud.
The young man- and really, Coran looks at him and it still feels like looking at a boy, too few years and too lost, still testing the boundaries of the world and experience and still unsure as to how he fits- is staring up at him, and his metallic arm is clenching and unclenching, clenching and unclenching, and sweat is dripping from his brow.
"It's- Coran- It;s so frustrating . My memories, everytime I feel like it's in my grasp, they vanish into thin air, and they're gone, like dust, and I feel lost- like, like apart of who I am has vanished into the void and I've gone with it. I don't- I can't- I'm not whole, Coran. I can't feel whole."
Coran thinks of tall trees and singing winds, of laughing neighbors and rushing water, he thinks of home, and he almost tells the young man sitting before him that he feels the same way.
But he does not, and simply sits besides him instead.
They sit a long time, in the quiet dark, and even after Shiro drops off into slumber Coran remains, staring unseeing at the grey walls before him, and wonders in his memories.
Shiro says he feels he cannot be whole.
Coran knows he is not.
The King came to him, that day, and his face was grim.
His face was always grim, in those last battles. Coran used to look at it and wish for the King of old, one happier and kinder and less torn down by the universe, and he used to look away again, knowing it was something he could not have.
He became resigned to grim faces. Perhaps, if he had not, he would have run.
But he had not run.
So the King came to him that day, and he told him his plan, and asked him to to go under. To stay with his daughter, to be there for her, just in case.
Always just in case.
Perhaps Coran should have said no. Perhaps Coran should have left and gone home.
But Allura was just as much his family now as the ones he had left back on Altea, and the war plan might just work and it might just not, and he had a duty to his people and to his King, and so he had said yes.
He had asked if he could go back and say goodbye, even though he had known that he could not. They were too far away. Their resources stretched too thin.
The King had looked at him, his eyes mournful, and had said they could not- Coran had known they could not, but that didn't stop the pain or disappointment clenching in his chest- but had allowed a call.
Coran had called.
He explained to his wife, to his kids, everything. How he was going into suspended animation with the princess for what would hopefully be just a few days- a few weeks at most- as a just in case scenario. That the war was to be over soon, that he would be coming home soon.
His wife had never wanted him to leave in the first place, but they had both known he would go. He was too loyal to his nation, too loyal to his King, to ever not.
She didn't want him to do this either, had begged for him to just come home. His son had cried and yelled, and his daughters had cried and yelled, and his wife had cried and yelled, and he had cried and yelled.
And then they had stood together and thousands of miles apart, linked by a single thready connection and staring at each other's red blotched faces.
"This isn't goodbye," he had said, "I'm not leaving you. I'm coming back."
His wife had stared at him, and even through the screen he could count the stars in her eyes.
"Promise? Do you promise to come home to us?"
Coran had promised.
This isn't goodbye, he had told himself again. And he believed it.
He thought he believed it. He wanted to believe it.
It isn't.
But that didn't stop him from just standing there, drinking in the sight of his family's faces, or them from standing there, drinking in the sight of his own.
They had stood there for a long time, breathing, crying, regaling tales of old and updating him on events that had come to past more recently, the ones he had missed.
Together and apart, in those last few moments. They were together and apart.
And then it had been time, and they were all crying again even though they all said out loud that they would see each other soon, and they clicked the line shut trying to smile at each other through the tears.
It isn't goodbye, was the last thought that filtered through his mind before he went under, and he grabbed onto that faith and held on with everything he had.
But it was.
It was goodbye.
And somehow that belief that it wasn't made the fact that it was so much worse.
They're suiting up again.
The Paladins, they are suiting up again, and with every piece of armour Coran feels like he's losing a piece of them, a piece of their will and their innocence and their brightness, that shine that had struck him so hard upon first greeting them however many months before. As if building up their protection was breaking down their souls.
They are war hardened now, still good, but more tired, and Coran's heart breaks for them.
But he does not let them know. He smiles, bright, because that is his job. To smile when no one else can. To keep the spirits up.
He is the one being left behind now, he knows. He wonders if this was how his family felt, every day, every hour, this constant worry worry worry that grips at his gut and tears him apart from the inside out.
He wonders, if that was the case, how they survived.
Pidge cracks a joke, but the bruise on her temple- too much like his youngest daughter, too much, too much- makes her smiling face ever so slightly gruesome. Lance laughs anyways, and Keith rolls his eyes, and they march onwards to their Lions as if bordering armed weapons of mass destruction and power was an everyday occurrence.
Except that it is an everyday occurrence, and Coran is being left behind.
He is always left behind.
But being left behind doesn't mean safety.
He's learned that the hard way.
They were suppose to be safe. They were supposed to live long happy lives and grow old and have kids. He was supposed to go home to his beautiful planet and his beautiful wife and watch them do so. He was supposed to to be with his loved ones. They were supposed to be happy.
They were supposed to make it, even if he did not.
Hunk walks past him and offers him a smile, and Shiro follows with a quiet nod.
Allura comes to stand besides him, and together they watch as the children board their Lions and head off to space.
They vanish into the stars, and Coran almost believes he can see his wife's eyes reflecting back at him from the vast expanse of darkness.
Allura will head to the battle station soon, and he will follow. He always follows.
He can't take being left behind again. He can't.
The thought crosses his mind every time the children leave. Everytime his children leave, his children that he swore not to love but ended up loving anyway, his children who are not his children but are his children just the same.
He thinks of his home, of his wife and his children of old, with cream waterfalls and starry eyes, red hair and and the fierce brightness of all their spirits, and he closes his eyes.
He had promised he would come home to them.
He can never come home to them.
He wonders what they would think of his new home, this strange family he has strung up around him with delicate threads too slight to see. His youngest daughter would love Pidge. His son would adore Shiro. His wife would coo over Hunk and his eldest would probably somehow manage to have both Lance and Keith as her minions by dinner.
They could cook together and roughhouse all over the castle. They could laugh and braid each other's hair, and Coran could show them all how to stop the engine room from leaking.
Except they can't. They can never come together like that, old and new, because new things only come as old things wash away.
He blinks, and the stars blink back.
Coran had children, once.
He still does, just not the ones he started children only exist within his memories, and in the reflections of the stars in his bright blue orbs.
Coran sighs, closes his eyes, and lets go.
It will be silence, where am I?
I don't know, I'll never know:
In the silence you don't know.
You must go on.
I can't go on.
I'll go on.
- Samuel Beckett
...