Lotor was the enemy, she was sure of it, this little alliance between them was just a means to their own ends. Neither of them was fooled. But there was something she couldn't ignore when they had their meetings and they had their peace talks, and he looked down at her from his insufferaable height and she looked back up at him with her head held high, and they saw into each other's eyes. There was something old there, familiar. Ancient.
Timeless.
The glorious castles of their fathers crumbled to dust within blue irises, the unfeeling wind sweeping up what remained in a flurry that should have taken them too.
oOo
Ten thousand decaphoebs was a long time.
In the rare times of calm during the war, the spontaneous little placid notes that felt stolen from a time she had not truly lived, Allura pondered it, that terribly, terribly long time. It was hardly fathomable. Both to think that she had lived that long and to think that while she had, she had not. To think that she is ten thousand decaphoebs and yet without anything to show for it.
Nothing to prove it besides a hollow memory that shrinks further and further away, just fades and fades, the more she tries to recall it.
It's to the point, now, where she's afraid to even try to remember her father's face or her mother's gentle touch. Coran is a bright spot in her memories she could not wash away if she tried, but she supposes that is because of her consistent contact with him after being frozen. The thought makes her fear that she will actually forget her father. Forget her mother. Forget Altea. She fears that all that will be left of Altea is Coran, timeless, old Coran, because she failed to recall all that she had learned and lived before cryostasis.
The worrying and the forgetting never got better. In fact, they may have gotten worse.
Then she met the wayward prince of the Galra, the mysterious exiled Son, and the worrying and the forgetting most certainly got worse.
She recognized something in him quickly. The moment their gazes met. Birds of a feather, they were: ancient souls, yet so, so young. When at first meeting him, Allura didn't want to even consider that they had anything in common, but it was undeniable that when she looked at him, she could see the ages in his eyes. And there was no doubt in her mind that he could see them in hers as well.
They could see the fear of forgetting all that time, of holes punched in pictures that were once so vivid-- so clear-- the fear of having lived those unfathomable ten thousand decaphoebs for no reason, of losing what they'd gained, what they'd had, so there was nothing to show, the fear of failing where their fathers failed and being purposeless and useless, of not being able to rest alive.
There was the fear of becoming a husk. Of becoming the relics that they truly were. And there was the understanding that, come what may, they would always be incomplete. Time hadn't healed this festering wound, the hole Altea left, the hole Daibazaal left, the holes their fathers and mothers left. They had lived longer than they were meant to, and only one thing could fix them now. It wasn't peace.
Perhaps that is why they sought each other out, despite their clear intentions for the alliance.
Allura wasn't delusional: she didn't think, not for a second, that their age was the same. By all technicality, she was decades older than him, but in truth Lotor had lived so much when she had not. He was not ten thousand with nothing to show for it. He knew every crack and crevice of his boundless empire, knew every face, scent, and name, accrued a peerless repetoire of skills, wore the culture of his every civilization on his back, no doubt knew horrors she could not even fathom, and so on and so on. He was the embodiment of age, as it were, despite his physical state. She was quite his opposite.
Alive, alive, alive, but not living. Not experiencing. Not learning. Not feeling. Not thinking. Not even breathing. But alive. Always, always alive. Preserved, preserved, perserved, but not fresh. Not anymore. Now that she was out of her pod, she could feel time again. And though she looked young, she wasn't young. She could feel the thousands of decaphoebs she'd been preserved through weighing on her bones. She was graceful and gentle when she needed, but her soul had been birthed ten thousand decaphoebs ago and she was old, no matter what Coran said. And there was no way to know besides that ache in her hip, and that pinch in her shoulder, and that sharp pain in her neck.
There was no way to know except for the unseen, the intangible, the non-transferrable. And thus, it did not exist. And yet it did.
It hurt her mind to think about most cycles. She could see that in his eyes too-- Lotor. The pain of it all, of thinking about its insanity too much. The bitterness in his frown was tinged with many things, half of which she could not hope to name, but she knew that this pain resided there.
So it was the torture of it, of ten thousand decaphoebs, that they shared. It was different, but nothing could ever hope to truly be the same.
Though when it wasn't jarring or saddening, it was quite the intriguing thing. Often, Allura found herself just staring at his eyes-- when he was looking and when he was not-- and pondering deeply about miniscule, useless things like how blue they were or how much shadow she could find in them. Other times she wondered just what his indigo eyes had seen, what he had experienced. She did so openly, conspicuously, without feeling conscientious. It was to the point where, after a few months of seamless collaboration, her Paladins actually confronted her about what they thought was a lingering suspicion of the Galra emperor.
"I think he's proven by now that he can be trusted," Shiro explained softly, his eyes holding a gentle and weathered look that was too similar to Coran's, "I know it's hard, after what his father did to you. But Lotor has shown that he isn't Zarkon."
She knew that. She probably knew that better than any of them, better than even Lotor was willing to consider. But she didn't say that, because that would be both incriminating and uncomfortable. Allura wasn't exactly sure why, but their little similarity. . . it felt like a private thing. Almost intimate, special. Not to be shared, necessarily.
The feeling explained their newfound camaraderie-- or their camaraderie explained the feeling, rather. It wasn't intentional, but mortals were mortals, and mortals desired comfort and security in that which they identified with. Lotor talked with her regularly, after a time. Most conversation was related to the war effort, regrettably, but that was just another of many things Allura sluggishly tacked onto her mental wall of regrettable things. A sort of unavoidable collateral damage.
Friendship with him was an interesting thing. They had many similarities outside of their age and heritage, they found. A love for voyaging and starfaring and mapping and learning-- Ancients' love, grasping steadfast onto new things tangible and not was a true pleasure for them both. Allura enjoyed learning more of the Galra culture she had just begun to delve into when Zarkon perished, and Lotor, laden as he was with knowledge of Altea already, seemed unable to be sated no matter how much she offered. Tiny things, mindless every-cycle things, became the topic of conversation on more than one occassion, after they had already told each other so much.
Sometimes Lotor made jokes that would have her covering her mouth for fear of disrupting whatever proceedings were taking place-- he always chose the most inopportune times! It was unbearable, honestly. He had a dangerously sharp wit and a way with language that was sinful. Allura tried to make him laugh too, but it was work. Mirth did not come to him easily, she found, and he seemed to prefer a more wry humor Allura was inexperienced with. Most of the times she'd made him laugh were accidents, personal disgruntled musings that had perhaps a little too much sarcasm. Nevertheless, she succeeded on purpose at times. It was enjoyable to watch Lotor pretend to cough with a small smile only she could see hidden behind his large fist, breaking his stoicism when others failed, knowing it was her doing. It was a pleasure, talking to one another. Satisfying.
Soon, though-- certainly without meaning to-- they ran out of things to say.
It wasn't that things were not happening or that they could not conjure something random from another memory or dream or experience. They simply. . . lapsed. Meaningfully. Talking was good, but it was oddly not enough. An intimacy had been forged between them, unspoken, unnamed, and now subtle touches and long, lingering glances were their communication. If the others noticed, they didn't indicate it.
Allura was grateful for that. Because if they asked her what was going on between them, how they regarded each other, she wouldn't know what to tell them. Lotor was priceless, if she had to choose a word. A priceless relic. And she valued him highly in that respect, as one would their heirlooms and one-of-a-kind trinkets. But what that actually meant. . . she could not put it into any other words. All that came to mind was the impossible blue of his eyes and the shadows that guarded them when she tried.
Those shadows reminded her of hidden things; ruins eclipsed by towering sands, treasures buried in dark land, creatures protected by the black of midnight. She knew he was hiding something from her, from all of them. In spite of their progress, their newfound closeness, their understanding, there apparently happened to be a lack of trust on his end. Not that she could convict him. In spite of her fits of giggles and soft touches and hushed praises, she didn't trust him either. At least not fully.
It was the age, she knew; there was far too much that had happened in their ten thousand decaphoebs, and far too little. There was no telling what atrocities he may have committed in his fight against his awful father, and there was no telling how far Allura had managed to come in her redemption of the Galra in her heart. Not when he was all alone, peerless, not when she was unable to feel or change. It was shaky-- unnameable, unspeakable-- this connection they both wanted to share.
They could hope for love, but it was doomed to fail if they found it. And yet she thought she did love him, and that Lotor loved her too. So they were at an impasse, it seemed. They decided silently to keep their secrets, and ignore the future consequences, and indulge themselves in this moment of something that would heal them, make them whole for but as long as they touched. And when the time came for the secrets to come out and the anger at the betrayal (at themselves because they knew, they knew, they knew it wouldn't end well-- why couldn't they have just stayed away from each other?) to boil over, they took their hundred thousand phoebs and carelessly tossed them, one by one, into hysteria, into emotion, into the void.
The sands of time and dust of stars seared bright holes in their souls. Flecks of light speckled the black around them. The universe inverted.
Lotor was the winner. He got to die, got to let go of his ten thousand and embrace nothing. At least Allura hoped so. She was heartbroken and truly upset, but she wished him the best. She wished him the best.
Besides, it wasn't too long before she, too, got her ten thousand handed to her and she joined him and their ancient fathers in the afterlife she constructed.