A Denial So Denied...

The Galra Emperor smiled. The very idea of it seemed beyond comprehension even a few phoebs ago, yet there it was. There he stood. Trying to imagine his predecessor smiling still seemed impossible, at least within the last 10,000 years. To Allura's already tangled mind, swimming with the possibilities of this news, that smile seemed to very much belong upon his face. Lotor turned to her gaze, a look of mirth in his eyes.

"Allura." His tone was gentle and pleasing, "It is the map that deserves your attention, not I..." He closed his palm around the stone, around her hands, "We can study it later. We must after all be certain that there are no objections to this course of action..."

The Princess of lost Altea, holding in her palms a connection she had imagined lost forever to her heritage, her hands enveloped by the same impossible connection made flesh. His touch was so tender, more so than she had expected it would be. It surprised her to realise she had even wondered what his touch may feel like. "Indeed." She said firmly after a short pause, "I shall ensure that there are no objections. I will not be swayed from the path before us. Altea feels close to me again for the first time in...so very long..."

"It brings warmth to my heart to hear you say so, Princess..." He withdrew his hands slowly, reluctantly, "I must of course make my own arrangements, even a short time away for an Emperor is a difficult matter to contend with. If I do not wish to make any further enemies within my fractured empire, I must tread lightly."

Allura smiled, turning to leave the vast library of ancient artefacts and dark magic. She paused for a moment, "Lotor..." She asked softly, cautiously, "If you should find time for it, once your arrangements are in place... I would appreciate your company upon the Castle of Lions... We do after all have much to discuss and to plan... Perhaps you might also share more of the lore of Altea that you have gathered in your journeys...? It would be fascinating..."

A smile of such warmth and kindness again, it was almost unbelievable, "I look forward to it, Princess. I shall be there even if I must make an enemy of some inconsequential subordinate to do so..." He was only half joking.

Allura's smile brightened, glorious yet soft laughter as bright as a sunrise, "Then, I shall happily await you..." As she left, she began once again to gaze with wonder upon the relic that would lead them to a world of legend.

Once he was certain that Allura was gone, the Emperor's features darkened. With a churning sickness, he looked to a terminal that had already consumed much of his time. He stepped slowly, painfully towards it. His mother's exhaustive journals. There was so much knowledge here to be unpacked, to be verified, new paths that he had never imagined. Answers that Galra science had barely realised even had a question. Yet all of that was dwarfed by one piece of information that seemed utterly impossible to ignore. Honerva had been driven to madness, to insanity, to the paranoid ramblings of a damaged mind. She, like Zarkon, had been touched by the Quintessence between realities. He had been born to them some time after Zarkon had returned from what seemed like death. Zarkon had endured for millennia as a monstrous version of himself. And then, he had always told himself, Honerva had died, disappeared, escaped somehow. There was no possible way that her sickness had been cured as it had begun, no possibility that she too had arisen and endured as a monstrous shadow of her former self for millennia. He told himself this, even as he saw that another monster endured, always at his father's side. He told himself this, the same lie for as long as he could remember, as often as he could. He told this same lie to Allura. Some days, he even convinced himself he believed this lie.

"The Witch is not my Mother..." He whispered into the archive, trailing a despairing hand over the terminal, "The Witch is not my Mother..." His outstretched fingers balled into a quivering fist, "The Witch... Is not my Mother..." He seethed, spitting fury as his fist tightened painfully upon itself, "The Witch cannot be..." He read the excerpt on the screen again.

Life itself, a fleeting petty thing to shed, as I have shed myself... Only in the infinite Quintessence do we have true value, to overcome the limitation and frailty of mortality. To allow greatness into ourselves, in pursuit of power. Pursuit though implies a chance to flee, and none shall flee again, none shall plot, none shall threaten our future. Our infinite future, ruling forever over the stars, the only true solid beings of infinite light in a universe of fleeting shadows... They will thank us in time, or they will learn fear...

"As I...have shed myself..." He read aloud. There it was, as if it wasn't clear enough already. There was never any other explanation. No one else could possibly have maintained the position Haggar had done for so long. Nobody else made sense in the sequence of events. Even the shifting in her journals from perfect clarity to perfect insanity told the same tale. Honerva lived, if such an existence could even be called life. It could not be, it was impossible and yet it was true. Lotor fell to his knees hanging his head in defeat, "As I have shed... Myself..." He whispered. Clear as a bell, ringing across time and space. An admission written in her own words, back when she still remembered her old self. The Witch was his Mother.

Once, longer ago than he wished to admit, he was the merest and meekest spit of a lad. Gawky and awkward as teenagers the universe over very often were, at least in the stage before truly growing into themselves. His dual heritage had never made the process of doing so easy. He recalled with perfect clarity returning from his drills and training, the harsh upbringing that other species, even other Galra, would spend in education. Not so for the son of Zarkon. Every day must be a trial to destroy or be destroyed by. Each day he walked that razor edge. So, on this particular day when he had returned to his...home was perhaps not the right word for it... It was the place where he was raised and indeed the place where he was more often felled. After many years of it, he had come to accept the back of his father's hand as some might accept the gentle rain, but trying to stand again was always hard. It was supposed to be. The falling boot that pressed to his back, that came down, stayed down, so heavy upon his limbs and fingers that he felt each time they might explode beneath the weight. He cast aside his Father's care for the moment, in this memory it was still to come. He had found at 'home', hidden and forgotten, caked in centuries of filth a device, the sole purpose of it was to display captured memories. The small battery within had long since lost all charge, so he set to awaken the device, if only out of idle curiosity. A distraction for the moment.

When it returned to life, he had gazed in enraptured wonder at the unfamiliar figures captured in the frame. Bathed in the light of unfamiliar stars, on a bright and beautiful day, stood a handsome Galra, resplendent in highly polished ceremonial armour, a beautiful silken cloak caught in the breeze. Lifted boldly up in his arms, the most breathtaking face he had at that time ever looked upon. She was in the midst of being caught, her dress showed as it billowed in the draft of her fall. It was ornate, a tapestry of skilfully woven delicate purples, shining whites and lustrous golds. Her veil cascaded behind her. Upon her face and his alike, smiles so utterly pure and hopeful. So very much and so deeply in love... He browsed more and more, picture after picture. The happy couple sharing the first slice of their cake, the groom trying to remove the icing from his nose with his tongue. Laughter, warmth, even on the faces of so many he could not recognise. King Alfor stood among the guests, cheering, offering a glass in toast, delivering a speech that had the Galra blushing shamefully and the Altean at his side laughing so hard that tears had formed in her eyes. She was so beautiful, so pure and happy... The man beside her, he was long gone. Long lost to madness and to hatred... But she, at least in this device and in his young mind, remained forever that smiling Altean...

His memory of that day ended as so many other memories did. Fear, that he struggled to hide. Anger, that his Father did not hide. The slab of a hand to his face, knocking him to the floor in a heap. Sometimes his Father would strike a bruise that had not yet healed, just to make it hurt all the more. He remembered that today, the only mercy was that Zarkon had struck the unbruised side of his face. "Such meaningless sentimentality..." His voice still haunted Lotor from across time, "...it only breeds weakness." He had smashed the device beneath his heel, dragging Lotor's prone body over the remains. The same heel had come down harder than ever before, the front of his torso pressed hard against the floor. Sharp fragments pierced, larger pieces bruised. The air rushed from his lungs. "And weakness..." Zarkon snarled, "...must be crushed." Lotor had flailed, punched and hammered uselessly against his father's armoured shins, tried in vain to lift himself up, to crawl away, to roll free. He remembered losing consciousness, his Father's words the last thing that he could perceive before finally blacking out. "Pathetic..."

With a long outward breath, Lotor returned to the moment. His hands beneath him were balled tightly into fists. On the back of one, a liquid pool of his weakness. The heat of his weakness, running rivers on his face. The breath robbed from his lungs by such utter weakness. He had never escaped that boot-heel. He would always, always be nothing more than pathetic.

"Lotor...?" A delicate harmony of a voice blessed his ears. "Lotor...what is wrong...?"

He remained silent. A benefit of long hair is that it can also serve to hide weakness. He heard her stepping ever closer. Cautiously, fearfully, stepping closer. The fragrance of juniberries, so wonderfully delicate, so effortlessly beautiful a scent, so utterly her. He bristled, a breath of shock. Her hand rested gently upon his slouched shoulder.

"Speak to me..." She urged, "If there is to be trust between us, we must speak openly..."

"Why...?" His weakness warped his tone. With a frustrated breath, he controlled it, "Why have you returned, Princess...?"

"I wished to clarify something..." Allura's voice was edged with sorrow, "Though that hardly seems to matter now..."

"I fell." Lotor lied, "Thankfully you did not arrive sooner..." He tried to sound jovial, "You might have seen me flail and sprawl as my balance failed me... Even an Emperor falls, Princess. Even a Princess, must surely stumble from time to time? Do not concern yourself with my unexpected bout of clumsiness."

"And what of your tears...?" She was kneeling beside him now, brushing a curtain of his flowing hair aside, only for more to take it's place. She gently tucked it behind his almost Altean ears. "Even if I could not see them on your hands, I could surely hear you wrestle against them... You forget, I have far more acute hearing than any Galra. They, I suspect, are who you usually will hide this from..."

Lotor was silent.

"That we feel pain is a terrible certainty of life, Lotor..." Allura felt her heart ache, "I know this only too well. However, pain that we do not share with others... That shall twist and bind our spirit. To hide it may seem like strength... Though in truth it only makes us weaker, more vulnerable to the next pain we must endure..." She moved her hand from his shoulder and placed it gently upon his cheek, "Show me your strength, Lotor. Confide in me this pain you feel and let the sharing of it soothe you..."

His eyes looked to her briefly, before falling again to the floor. "I am..." He began unsteadily, "I am forced to re-evaluate a belief I once took to be truth. It will take time to adapt to it. That is all I require, time. Though your kindness humbles me, does me honour... It is not necessary." He cleared his throat, slowly standing to his feet and pulling away from her touch, "I would ask that you keep this between us." His tone was firm, "It would not do for me to appear to my subjects as...weak..."

Allura frowned. "I have no choice then. I shall leave you here."

"I beg your pardon...?" Lotor raised an eyebrow.

"If you will not confide in me, then how am I to trust you at your word...? Whilst I thank you, Emperor, for returning this to it's proper place among the Altean people..." She held the map aloft, "I regret to inform you, that I will no longer have need of your assistance henceforth..." Allura turned to leave.

"The Witch is my Mother..." Lotor sighed the words, "Or at least, she was... Whatever part of her that was once Honerva exists no longer. Of that much I am certain. Learning the truth of this has...wounded me. Will that suffice...?"

Allura turned back to him, blue eyes met blue eyes, her silence and sadness moved him to continue.

"That my Father was a monster, I have grown to accept." Lotor explained, "Though a part of me always knew it was a convenient lie, the belief that my Mother remained untarnished gave me hope. In my mind, Mother was a victim of Zarkon. Like I hadescaped his wrath or else found peace somewhere beyond this life. If Mother had remained uncorrupted, then I was at best only half born from a monster..." His expression darkened, "Now though, the truth is revealed to me in a way that is impossible to deny. Now I must come to accept that they were both monstrous beings. Even if I should lay waste to the creature that was once my Mother, slay her as I did my Father... The two of them will persist always, in me. Not a hybrid of purity and corruption as I had imagined myself, but the product of two corrupted beings. I am just another, newer, breed of monster..."

Allura shook her head, "No. We are not defined by the blood in our veins. We are not defined by the gifts of our heritage, or indeed the responsibilities or the manifold drawbacks. We are not to find our lives mapped in the inner spiralling helix that rests in every cell. We will not find our destiny, laid out in a path from which we cannot escape, writ large upon the stars... We are defined by the actions we take, the lives we touch, the choices we make. We are, I believe, always free to choose. Regardless of what you now know of your Mother, it does not change who you are, nor what you are, stood before me."

"Who and what then am I...?" Lotor asked, almost pleaded. "If not the son of a Witch and a Beast, what am I...?"

"You are Emperor of the Galra. Far sighted, working to a future where there need be no more war, no more strife. You are something that no Witch and no Beast might ever slay, nor cage nor extinguish." Allura smiled, "I look upon you, and I see hope for us all."

Lotor's expression was to most unreadable, though to one of Allura's royal upbringing, it was the well practised mask that every great head of state must don in public. Everything is ok and I am in charge it effortlessly said. All the while hiding every inner thought. Allura could see the truth behind it, a man touched, bewildered, struggling even to allow his own kindness to flourish, even, she realised, vulnerable. A strangely endearing vulnerability. Yet still, there was a truth in his posture, a strength was shining again in his eyes. Though his realisation troubled him still, of that there was no doubt, he could at least face the universe more easily now. That would have to be enough for now.

"If it is hope you see in me, Princess..." Lotor's facade cracked to a smile, "I suspect you observe yourself and I am but a mirror."

"Then let us both believe what we see, rather than doubt the source." Warmth in her chest radiated to her smile, "I am glad that we both do at least agree, that there is hope for us all."

"Indeed we do..." Lotor nodded, "I thank you Princess, for your counsel. Perhaps together, we may yet see that hope realised."

Allura found herself wondering their two paths ahead, the route they would carve out for themselves toward the future. How closely may the paths they choose yet entwine? How closely did she wish them to? For a fleeting moment, she wondered if in fact it was not two paths they would walk, but a single one that they would share at each other's side. "Nothing would please me more."

"For now though, I must, as I said before, make arrangements." He bowed politely, "If you will excuse me, Princess...?"

"You are excused. I will hope for the pleasure of your company later, Emperor Lotor."

"The Universe itself..." Lotor promised, "Will not stand in my way..."