"I called you brother," Alfor hisses. Betrayal renders his words sharp and aching. He shakes, he trembles with rage as the fury of the Red Paladin, of the Red Lion heats him up inside-out. Red whispers to him, goads him to clamp their teeth on Zarkon's throat and suffocate this traitorous pack-mate until he yields, until he surrenders, or perhaps, until he dies.
Zarkon stares back coolly, as if he has never committed atrocities or is not about to commit an atrocity. Even through the distance of a screen, Alfor can feel the magnetic pull of Zarkon's gaze.
It feels like an eternity before Zarkon deigns to reply. "And so did I. But surely if I," he smiles, a grotesque quirk to his mouth, "survived the loss of my brother long ago, then perhaps you can too." There is a strange fondness lining his words. It feels far too intimate, too inappropriate for their conversation.
"You are an only child, Zarkon," Alfor says flatly. It is all he can say without combusting, without burning up in a rage that hungers, that aches to consume.
A familiar hearty laugh resounds in Alfor's ears, reminiscent of long gone times, where they were brothers and stalwart defenders of each other and the universe. It feels like coming home, but Alfor knows that soon he will have no home. Home will soon be a foreign concept.
"Alfor," Zarkon intones gravely, "I am eternity. What can you, in your transient flesh and blood, know of eternity?"
You grandiose, power-hungry, quintessence-addled fool, Alfor thinks viciously.
It's been ten thousand years—ten thousand years of living. But Zarkon is mostly Galra; Honerva is entirely Altean; and these bodies were not built for eternity. This, Zarkon muses, is the true injustice of his existence (he had waited for so long to regain his former glory and yet he cannot help but feel like a shade, a wraith grasping desperately at tangibility).
Living feels wrong, so wrong that Zarkon cannot remember when living felt right.
There is a clawing hunger in them, a remnant of their time in the rift and their encounter with that creature, that made them Emperor and Druid. Zarkon, before he was Zarkon, had never experienced such hunger but he remembers the eons in which he was endless, massive and finds that the hunger of a mere ten thousand years is but a drop in an endless ocean. It does not control him, for all that it motivates him. Hunger is a natural part of everything mortal that lives, Zarkon has carefully learned.
But poor, weak Honerva could not survive the depths of this dark hunger. Honerva is dead; Haggar is alive. Yet Zarkon could never find it in himself to mourn this loss. His love for Honerva had cooled down from a heady, dizzying tornado into a flickering breeze upon regaining some semblance of eternity. He is fond of Haggar, inasmuch as he can be fond of anyone these days (these endless, unceasing days and it's funny the way he is so achingly aware of time).
"I have no interest in being empress," Honerva scowls. "I don't have the time for that. I'm doing actual useful research and making headway!" Zarkon is startled and amused by the implication that he, emperor of the Galra Empire, is useless. She brushes him off like a wayward insect and he cannot help but grow more infatuated with her blunt, passionate personality.
"Ah, yes, sorry, let me get back to my terribly plebeian job of ruling an empire." Honerva bristles under Zarkon's dry, indulgent tone. He gives her a helpless smile that she returns with the slightest quirk of her mouth, betraying her playful acerbity.
Ever since their first meeting (where he also met her tiny, fierce beast that he was never fearful of and no, not even that split second when he looked down and saw some slit-eyed creature unexpectedly gaze back), she has always left him feeling off-kilter. First he was so struck by her beauty and then her intelligence in that short initial meeting that he could not help but retreat, utterly flustered. Now, he is in awe of the depths of her soul, of her passion. There is a hunger in her that resonates within him.
Boundaries are nothing but guidelines for her. Her ambition, her hunger for knowledge energizes her into action, into diving headfirst in her research and barely ever resurfacing before jumping into the next hypothesis. There is a drive in her that entrances Zarkon. Her sense of purpose leaves Zarkon energized. He basks in her presence, in the same way that creature of hers cannot help but curl up in a patch of warm sunlight.
Honerva fans the embers of his core into a roaring blaze.
"I am sick, Zarkon… we are sick." An arm wraps protectively around her torso. Desperation leaves her frantic, a far cry from her usual composure.
"Honerva," he exhales, unbidden and unwilling. Why must these flames flicker so? So fragile, these flesh and blood beings.
Zarkon can vaguely remember that he was happy upon learning of Honerva's pregnancy (they had thought they were infertile). They were both happy. Joy had lit them up inside out. Their stoic faces were split by grins as they made plans for their future (our little prince; our little princess) and discussed names (they compromised on Lotor after learning the baby's gender, a name with meaning in both Altean and Galran).
Remembering that he was happy is easy but Zarkon discovers that recovering that emotion is a difficult endeavor. There is a disconnect between then and now.
He looks at this rift-touched, star-touched infant in a silence that could be mistaken for reverence. There is a quiet, a disquiet in him. All he can think is, "This boy will be trouble." There is a potential in him that no mortal should have. Something in Lotor resonates within Zarkon and he does not know precisely what. Will my boy be a star, or will my boy be a black hole? Will he build my coffin and stuff me inside? Will he usurp me? Will he be greater than me?
"You should not have been born," Zarkon whispers to this slumbering, white-haired infant. His hand engulfs the soft heat of a chubby lavender cheek. I could snap his…its neck right now, he thinks. This is a quiet thought as some remnant of him recalls Honerva's fierceness in the time before. And some primal part of him rebels against this thought. Emperor Zarkon attributes this to the instincts of this form (somewhere in his mind, there is a man, just a man, screaming in horror, screaming in grief at what has happened and what will happen).
When a star goes wrong or grows tired, their brethren throws them into the rift between worlds, realities, universes. They are the first defense against an incursion. It is their punishment and their reward because there cannot be eternity in a rift when oblivion is so close by (they slumber until the time comes to defend). There are starkillers in the in-between, all stars remember. They all remember the incursions of the Beginning.
And yet, Zarkon stays silent when Honerva reveals to Alfor the creature that has survived the passage through the rift. It is so small, Zarkon marvels. Too small to devour even a diminished star like himself. Perhaps that is why his brethren did not awaken.
There hasn't been an incursion for eons (there will always be curious civilizations and all things must come to an end), Zarkon knows and yet, clever, curious Honerva has lit a beacon, signaling here, I am here.
Make way for the star-killers.
Make way for the incursions of yore.
Zarkon may be Galra, flesh and blood, but he remembers the distant heat and cold of his former state. The long stretch of eons that he endured by being an it, a sentience not moved by passion. He cannot recall experiencing emotions exactly as those of flesh and blood do. If he were to water down his previous existence, he would say he felt a distant sense of curiosity for the universe around him, an awareness. A distant sense of affection for his brother, with whom he frequently communed on a level, on an intimacy that could not be replicated by those who were not stars.
With his brother, he never felt the loneliness that creeps up on him in the silence of the night. Were he still a star, he could never have been able to conceive of this aching feeling called loneliness. To be a star is to exist for eternity and he can see how his brethren could go wrong, trapped in these tiny forms.
Zarkon is chained and would it be so terrible of him to wish that he were unchained? What could be the harm in that? Regaining his rightful power would not disrupt the universe but rather right a wrong. And look, darling Honerva has rediscovered the quintessence from the rift, from the layer between realities.
She and Alfor marvel over this endless energy source, as though it is something entirely separate from them. Zarkon wants to say, you stumble around the universe and you hope that you can light the world with candlelight. You're liable to end up with a guttering flame or a blazing wildfire.
Longing stitches Zarkon's mouth shut in the face of Honerva's rift creature. A part of him whispers, who cares that this is dangerous! It would be worth it to be right, to finally slide into a form that doesn't feel so constricting, like a noose tightening incrementally on his neck until he doesn't realize he is dead, until he is finally flesh and blood (this body wants to snuff out his core). Who cares if it hastens the end for these mortals? And yet another part cries, no! This isn't worth it. It will end in flames until he is ash in the wind, drifting along in silence and loneliness. This is the part of Zarkon that knows of love—of a mother's love, of a father's love, of a brother-in-arms' love, of a lover's love, and so on and so forth as these relationships weave the tapestry of his new, foreign life.
Emperor Zelrok and Empress Ofyrid of the Galra Empire are infertile. It is a tragic fact for a couple so eager to experience life, and the creation thereof. How unfortunate, friends murmur with sympathy dripping viscous from their mouths. Zelrok and Ofyrid mourn the loss of this possibility of new life. They say to each other, it's alright. We can always adopt. The sentiment is an oft expressed one in the times thereafter. Adoption is a soothing balm on their stinging wound. It is a hastily applied bandage protecting their grief from their new and cruel reality.
Adoption soon strikes them like lightning, rapid and unexpected.
One day, heavy grey clouds roll in and shroud the sun from sight. There is a palpable weight to the air; a sharp scent permeates the air. Suddenly, there is a downpour of rain—a rapid, thudding pattern heralds its arrival. A jagged light streaks across the sky, illuminating the world entirely for a brief moment. In that moment, Ofyrid, who has been peering out the window into the garden for some time ("Oh, Zelrok, I could watch a thunderstorm for hours!"), spots a small, fluffy form ensconced in a flowering bush (my lightning-struck boy, she'll think of with fondness in the times that follow).
"A baby!" she gasps.
"A what?" Zelrok is befuddled, but you do not become emperor without learning when action is more suitable than deliberation.
They name him Zarkon.