I don't own Voltron
The evening before – part one
Till then it had been an evening like many others: one of those relaxing evenings that the team every now and then was able to carve out, and in which time the boys, while sipping a cup of hot tea or chocolate, entertained themselves telling each other amusing anecdotes dating back to the times of the Academy, or daydreaming about what each of them would have done once the war ended.
It was in evenings like that that Allura had the opportunity to learn more about her friends, to discover their flaws, but also to appreciate even more their merits. In evenings like that she had started to smile again, after long years of retirement and seclusion in the caves underneath the ruined castle, during the darkest time of the war; moreover, it was in evenings like that that she had begun to believe that she had a family once again. For what she was concerned, she would have like to those evenings to continue throughout the night ...
For some strange reason those meetings ended every time in the same way: as for a tacit agreement, Hunk, Pidge and Lance were always the first to retire and leave the company, adducing each time a new and improbable excuse, and she would find herself alone in the rec-room... with him.
Indeed, that situation quite suited her... Somehow, she came to wait for those moments of solitude with him with joyful anticipation mixed with a certain amount of anxiety. She didn't understand why, but his closeness caused her always an incredible set of contradictory feelings. She was happy, and yet scared... By what, though, she couldn't well understand: after all, next to him she had always felt in the safer place in the world; by his side she knew that no harm would ever befall her. Yet, whenever he was near, she felt a deep and strange pang in her heart and stomach. She had never felt a pain so intense, and, at the same time, so... sweet. It was so pleasant that she had come to the point to almost obsessively want to feel that sensation, because it made her feel so incredibly alive...
What was happening to her? She was not sure of the answer...
In those moments that she spent with him it didn't happen anything particularly strange or exciting. Usually they kept talking about this and that, or remained in a comfortable silence, abandoning themselves to the mere pleasure of each other's company. Sometimes they indulged in sipping a glass of wine, that Keith poured from a bottle ordinarily kept carefully out of the sight of the young Pidge, and, leaning on the parapet of the observation deck that was directly accessible from the room, they enjoyed the view of the night landscape of planet Arus dimly lit by the moon.
But the thing that she more enjoyed doing with him was... laughing. Before those evenings, she had never realized how funny and full of bright sense of humor he was. She discovered that that was a talent saved only for his closest friends and only for those rare moments when he allowed himself to relax. And their evenings were always like that: serene and full of warm smiles.
Her companion had never been a very talkative guy, but he possessed the rare gift of listening, so most of the time she would talk and he was silent. And his silence never simply sprang from an awkward lack of topics: the sensation she felt, when she spoke with him, resembled what she felt when she turned to the starry sky: so mysterious, deep and incredibly wise, she felt that he understood her like no one else in the world. It was as though he possessed an old soul, able to read the mysteries of the universe.
Nevertheless in those evenings something was always missing: it was like he was not able to open up to her like she was able to. She wanted to get into his heart, know more about him, and find out what made him happy or sad, but often she was faced with a wall. As clearly as she felt that he loved to spend those hours alone with her, and that he appreciated her company, however, she also felt that that wall lain between them had been built by him himself. But in defense from what? What was he afraid of?
But sometimes, even if with difficulty, she could find a crack in that wall, a weak point. It had been almost a year since she officially joined the Voltron Force and they became teammates; and from that moment on their level of confidence and intimacy had greatly deepened. In their night-time conversations every now and then she could get out from him a thought or a memory of his past, so much so that she had come to know about him, in a year, what her companions were barely able to found out in five years of Academy. The other boys made fun of the commander, saying that their cold and granitic Captain had softened, and that he had found the only person able to make him loosen up, able to discover his weaknesses. In some ways they were right, but it would be more correct to say that SHE was his weak point. And Allura knew... and was pleased about it. After all this meant that she, somehow, was special to him. And this heartened her, because... in many ways... HE was special to her.
Allura didn't know when she started to realize that what she felt for her commander was not only friendship. In her heart surely there was friendship too, and she thought that he was her closest friend and confidant, but there was also infinitely more. Many times she wondered how she would have felt once the war ended, and once the boys, her friends, had been forced to return to Earth to be reassigned to another mission. At such moments her heart filled with an immense sadness, knowing that the separation from them would be the most difficult challenge to overcome. But the thought of being forced to stay away from him ... it was simply unbearable. The very idea made her heart fall to pieces, so she avoided thinking about it and tried to enjoy every little moment she could share with him.
In this mood, Allura got ready to spend the night...