I was asked yesterday via reiew when Keith would man up and go after his woman. The time is nearly here. Today, things begin to change for Keith as he questions his dream which became recurring. In this chapter, we see more of the changes to Allura's life. We see her mourn, we see her show amazing strength and we also see her broken.
Part of this chapter is actually the original chapter that I wrote for this story. I hope that you enjoy it.
The music that inspired the start of the is post was inspired by The Gael, the pipe theme from the Last of the Mohicans complete with their massed bands. You can pick one of the amazing orchestrations of this from youtube to listen to if you'd like, however the one that I think works the best of from Spirit of Scotland Essential Bagpipe Anthems, The Gael performed by The Pipes & Drums of Leanisch. It's available on Spotify. Make sure to remove the spaces from the link below if you'd like to hear it. Looping this through re-reading this chapter gave it the punch I think it needed.
[open . spotify track/ 0DAmDHrsivRJO8Kzoi2Dvw]
The journey to Arus is near! Luckily the ambassador is going to ensure Keith is ready to face the council. Can you say, "Fab Five" in kilts? YUS please! (poor pidge... he's so young he may look like a girl...). If anyone out there is artistically inclined and wants to sketch Keith in a kilt holding a sword over his shoulder, I would be forever grateful for the cover art :D
The Guardian
Chapter Nine: Hope and Death
The dream had started sweetly. Allura was dressed in a pair of light our scrubs, a pink scrub cab secured over her hair and scribbling something down on a data pad.
The small she was checking up on did not like to be fussed over and was drawing with his good hand. He couldn't make out what it was that the boy was drawing but he purposefully had squirmed to prevent Allura from checking all of his vitals until he stopped and sat back against the pillows.
"Okay, 'Lura, I'm ready now."
She forces a smile and sighed. "How are you feeling today Michael?"
"Nanna says I can't go outside anymore."
She watched him pout while she checked his bandages and stitches. Every little boy wanted robe on the surface and in the sunshine and this amazing little boy was no different.
"Nope, none of us can. Did Nanna tell you why?"
His lower lip trembled and tears filled his eye as he nodded.
"But I promise to try to not be sad. I have Nanna and she'll be my mom now."
Allura nodded. "She is sad that you needed a mother but is very happy to be your mother now."
"I wanted to get you flowers so I drew you some. Nanna said you're said like me for the same reason and I saw you cry."
She looked at the green and pink scribbles and took a few shallow breaths. They did look like flowers if she squinted her eyes and let them cross a little.
"Nanna says your mommy went away too. Maybe Nanna can be your mommy now and then you'll be my big sister."
His breath caught as he watched her sit down on the bed and pull the bandaged boy into her arms. "I would like that very much."
He watched them cry together and felt the need to pull them both into his arms but when he tried he passed through them. Despite not being able to feel them he could smell her shampoo and the clean crisp linens and antiseptic. "Allura," he whispered, please don't cry. "You're gone, I know you're gone. You shouldn't be hurting like this -"
He paused as she looked up, her eyes looking toward the place he was and blinking. I hear you, her voice whispered in his mind. Keith, I'm not gone. Jules was with Sacci. I don't know about the others but Coran says Roxxy's ship touched down in Helena last night.
"Your highness," a women dressed in black called gently from the doorway. "Minister Coran wanted me to inform you that it is time."
She squeezed her eyes closed for a moment before opening them. "Michael, Nanna and I will be back later. Misty will be in the nurse'a station if you need her and Yula will be down soon with your lunch."
He smiled up at her. "Do you like your flowers?"
She nodded. "They are the most beautiful flowers anyone has ever given me."
She kissed his forehead before slipping off the bed.
She watched him yawn and curl onto his side. If you were here I would have asked you if we could keep him, but I think Hys needs him just as much as he needs her.
He followed her through the corridor and into an office that had her name on it. It was cramped and filled with things he would have expected to be in her own quarters and was surprised to see blankets on pillows piled onto a couch with a cot near it.
Once the door shut behind her she pulled her scrub cap off her head and lifted the blue scrub blouse over her head. He winced. He knew she was said and that she was very upset, but she looked like she was loosing weight.
When she stepped out of the pants and kicked them aside he gasped. He never thought he would see her like this and despite the weight she'd lost she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
As though she felt him watching she blushed before turning toward the garment bag that hung on the back of her door. The gown and covering robe were both black as pitch and he hated to see her swallowed up by their folds.
Once the robe was in place she secured a silky sash over her shoulder. He recognized the woven tartan as the Remain family's. The lion pin that secured it to her was one he'd seen her father wearing in his dreams.
With her circlet upon her head she pulled on a pair of black gloves and slipped her mother and father's signet rings into her right hand before adjusting the vail and pinning it into her hair. The robes of the dowager queen hid her well. They were all they had time to prepare for her.
The knock at the door startled her. "Please don't wake up. I need you with me tonight."
He watched her open the door and nod to Coran. "We should move you to family quarters," he said as he offered her his arm. She shook her head. "Maybe after Michael is discharged. For now he needs his big sister and she needs him."
The older man nodded and Keith noted the dark circles under his eyes. "Did you want to stop by your father's tomb before -"
She shook her head no. "I'm not ready yet. I was there for the ceremony, but it will be some time before I can visit and not feel like I died with them. Today is -"
He nodded. "I understand. The weather is overcast and the survivors have gathered. Everything is ready and the council is waiting for you."
"I hope he doesn't wake up," she whispered.
"He's here?"
She nodded. "I know you and Hys will make sure I get through this, but I couldn't do this without him."
"I understand. Thank you for being here. I know that sleep walking such a distance is taxing."
Keith blinked. The old man was talking to him? His dreams were definitely getting the better of him.
He followed blindly until the reached a large cavern with a wall of steel at the other end. There were hundreds of people gathered. When she stepped out if dimly lit passage and into the torchlight they were announced.
"Her Royal Highness, Crowned Princess Allura Minuet Kogane. His Lordship Prime Minister Coran Raible." The man paused as a pair of women stepped into the light on the other side of him. "Her Majesty the Dowager Queen Orla Raiorie Remain, Her Ladyship Hys du Llyons."
The crowd which had been nearly silent before dipped into bows and curtseys. The pipers dipped their drones and the drums saluted. With the sea of endless faces lowered he could make out four carts carrying figures wrapped in white.
The moment he realized she saw them when he heard and felt her gasp. Her breath came in short pants and her cheeks puffed out for a moment as bile rose into her mouth before swallowing it down.
Nodding to an unseen guard the metal wall at the end of the cavern split in two and retracted into the wall. She moved forward with Coran supporting her and greeted each of the Clan Chieftains by name and offering words of support and encouragement until she stood between the masses and the carts.
Raising a hand, she signaled the pipe major who called his men and women to attention from beneath his towering, horned hat. He high stepped his way to the front of the massed band and lifted his staff over his head.
His staff jerked four times in the air. One-two, one-two. A single base drum thumped, one, two, three, pause. One, two, three, pause. The staff now parallel to the ground ten other staff carrying, kilted men and women high stepped their way forward and began moving in unison. Drummers, pipers, brass and winds all moved forward together.
With their pipes still dipped toward the ground, the procession stepped off together. Snares rolling, tams and base drums marking their pace.
When it was time to step forward, Hys and Coran pressed into the princess' sides, their arms reaching around her and nearly supporting her weight as her legs became weak.
Tears streaming from her eyes, her head bowed, they followed the bands and the carts out of the cavern and down into the forest.
They must have marched for nearly an hour, before they could see the precipice ahead of them.
To his surprise, they lifted the four silk wrapped bodies up onto the platforms.
Standing as tall as she could she stepped forward with her Aunt, whispering goodbyes to her brothers, her sister and her mother. When she finally stood and turned to face the masses she curtseyed to the masses gathered around her. A second curtsey to her aunt and then the pipe major and struck the gathered masses together and the sound of the pipes sobbed into the night sky.
Allura and her aunt stepped back away from the pyres. Dropping to their knees they both leaned into each other, their grief on display for those around them, but no one watched. They too fell to their knees. All but the massed bands dropped to the ground behind them as the pyres were lit.
Keith couldn't bear to see it anymore. He disappeared from the dream world as their ship touched down.
"Same dream," Lance asked, leaning against the bulkhead.
He nodded. "It's less real now, more like a memory and not like it was something that was actually happening. That and the new guard, he's not in it anymore. Other than that, nothing changed."
"You're certain she's gone," Lance asked. By the look on his face Keith knew that Lance was having one of those feelings again.
"We both watched," he answered softly before standing.
"Some deployment," Lance said, changing the subject as the others began to rouse. "Seven months out on the new frontier."
He sighed and to his surprise Pidge bounded into their traveling quarters. "Cap! You're not going to believe this! There's a welcoming party!"
Keith groaned and shouldered his sea bag, the others doing the same and following the youngest member of their team toward the ramp. Pidge was right. Waiting on the tarmac were several dozen people. One man, a graying fellow wearing a kilt that fell well passed his knobby knees paced.
"Maybe their expecting someone else today," Sven said before Hunk brightened up and asked, "Maybe that means there'll be some great food!"
Keith scowled. Leave it to Hunk to always be thinking of food.
He wiped the sleep from his eyes before stepping out into the waning sun.
"Keith, hey Keith! That's my dad and the Space Marshall."
Keith's eyes narrowed and realized that they were coming toward them, complete with the knobby kneed kilt wearing man.
"What's with the guy in a dress?" Pidge asked.
He sighed. "It's not a dress, it's a kilt."
"So it's a fancy type of dress?" Sven asked, trying to make light of the awkward situation.
"Not now," Keith hissed under his breath as Charles McClain singled him out.
The old man's eyes lit up and he raced forward. "Your Highness! Your Highness!"
Keith paled.
"We've been waiting for months, your Highness. You could have been injured. What if that happened?"
Keith, uncomfortable with the man's fussing found himself being pulled toward a waiting transport that quickly filled with his team, Mariah and Charles McClain, the strange old man and the Space Marshall.
"Your Highness -"
Keith held up a hand and groaned. "My name is Keith. You can call me Keith or Commander Kogane."
The man squeaked. "I can't do that your Highness. I'm your Ambassador to the Alliance and it would not do to call you by anything but your title."
Keith rolled his eyes and leaned back against the seat. "I thought the Embassy was evacuated?"
The old man nodded. "When the Jira reached Arus, it was decided by the Princess that my wife and I should return to Arus to ensure our people were still represented in the senate. When we arrived and found you deployed we demanded your immediate return, however your operation was classified and considered to be under communications silence."
The man fidgeted uncomfortably. "We have been back on Earth for nearly six months now. And it's been so long since the assassination of his Majesty. We've waited as patiently as we could -"
Graham silenced the babbling old man with a look that could have killed.
"This," the old man said, offering Ketih a paper wrapped book, "contains messages from her highness."
Keith's teeth ground together. "How can they contain messages when my wife died!"
"Keith, after you were deployed and the Ambassador returned, we found that the ship that was intercepted was not Allura's. Sacci left with one of her ladies whom he was engaged too," Graham said.
Mariah took her adopted son's free hand into her own. "Keith, all of her ladies serve as body doubles. The woman Zarkon murdered was a decoy. When the Ambassador left on his return journey she was very much alive."
He felt dizzy. "The dreams?"
"It is how you protect her. Most likely you see events in her life that occurred and then relive them because of the distance between you," the old man spoke.
"Your highness, there is much we must discuss. We need to - you need to see."
Keith groaned. He didn't want to see anything right now. "Do we know if she survived the invasion?"
Something in him was whispering that she had. There was nothing that would change that sudden belief that she was alive. He had to hold onto that.
"Not here. We'll be in a secured area soon."
Keith felt Lance clap him on the back. "I knew she wasn't dead!"
He glared at Lance, his anger beginning to boil over.
All he could do was wait while the transport pulled into an underground parking structure.
When they piled out of the vehicle, the old man finally introduced himself with a stiff bow. "Hyrum Cormac, of the Clan Cormac."
Keith nodded as the man fell into step behind him. "What they are going to show you will not be easy. Once it is seen, it cannot be unseen," he said.
Keith shrugged and simply followed and a short time later took a seat around a large oval table.
He noticed that Mariah was not allowed entry and scowled. If he ever needed a mother it was now.
The lights were brought down and a transmission began to play.
There she was, fumbling with a video transmitter, inputting the coordinates for Ebb and directing the transmission to him! But he never received the transmission, it had been intercepted because he was deployed.
The camera caught the name tag. The font was wrong but he saw his name, their name in capital letters as the camera moved up her body, panning over her uniform before settling on her face.
He the way she held the transmitter at arms length that it was almost like a bad selfie. The camera was shaking and her eyes were wet with unshed tears, in the distance he could hear music. Drums and bag pipes.
"Voltron has failed," she said softly, her voice barely a whisper. "Even now my father marchers to Zohar with my mother, my brothers and my sister to face the demon in a duel. We all know that Daibazaal Zarkon has no honor and that he will kill my parents."
"Allura hurry, the shields will be closing!"
She looked away for a moment before catching her lip between her teeth. "Zarkon believes he killed me and I have been entrusted with the well being of my people. Of our people."
She knelt down, tears catching in the sunlight as they fell. "It is not safe to come. We do not have the ability to protect ourselves above ground and Zarkon will annihilate anything that lives on the surface of our world. I've ordered the evacuation but there is no guarantee that my warnings, in the place of my father's will be heeded."
She looked up, her eyes widening as she pulled the cloak over her head, covering her hair, circlet and face. "I haven faith that one day Voltron will rise again to protect our people, but until that day, I will watch the stars for you. Do not come for me. Pray for us, for our world is slowly bleeding to death."
She touched her fingers to her lips and then pressed them to the lens before bolting into the trees, the cloak billing in her wake.
The image continued to record and transmit, even after the small device was found and carried off by a soldier only to be passed to the demons spawn, Lotor.
It continued recording the clash between Zarkon and Alfor, blow for blow until Zarkon cheated. Throwing sand into the face of his adversary he finally swung his sword and severed the Arusian King's head from his body before turning onto the pregnant Queen and his children in blood lust.
When it was over and Zarkon was shouting in victorym there was a panic. The people of Arus gathered in the valley with their king began to flee for their lives as transmitter was crushed beneath Lotor's boot.
"When did you receive this," he asked when he was finally able to compose himself.
"Four months ago," the Space Marshall provided. "Without direct communications array, the portable transmitters she took to the surface from the Jira take nearly as long to reach Ebb before the signal is boosted and transferred to head quarters for distribution.
"Why wasn't I immediately notified," he asked.
"The recording had to be vetted and there was guarantee that anyone who made it to the underground cities survived the raid."
"Why," Lance asked, "would you show us now?"
Charles McLain passed Keith the data pad he had left behind during the mission. "Because this arrived this morning."
In his inbox, a single message showed as as read. It had already been screened. His team gathered around him as the decrypted, grainy file played.
She looked exhausted, far too thin, but at the same time she appeared to be in far better shape than he would have expected.
"Once a year our planet aligns with Ebb and I am grateful that the sandstorm above will hide the fact anyone will be on the surface to send this message to you. While the number of captured slaves and dead number in the tens of millions, just over two million of our people were safely evacuated below ground. It has not been easy, but we live and live well thanks to the careful planning of my ancestors."
She offered a weak smile as she walked. "We have been digging and building tunnels to the lions that fell from the sky when Voltron was destroyed and we have finally Black Lion which is hidden within the statue outside of our empty castle of lions. I wanted to show you what we found. It was the same as each of the Lions."
She took a brief ride on a sled that sent her into cockpit. "They are ships! And there are keys!"
There were gasps of surprise. "This is the last of the five keys. I wanted you to see this."
There was excitement in her voice as she placed the key and the ship came to life around her. "Communications, telemetry, navigations, ballistics. And watch this!"
She moved the recorder so it could see the controls.
She spoke clearly as she moved the controls. "Activate interlocks, dynotherms connected, infracels up and mega thrusters are go."
The ship thrummed with power almost like the purr of a giant lion as a secondary console rose up before her. In the star diagram only one if the lights flashed and chimed. "We have a theory that if the ships are in flight together that somehow they may be able to come together again!"
Keith's jaw dropped and he watched as she returned the ship to it's original configuration and plucked the key from the console.
"Kurjishi," Pidge gasped. "I've seen this cockpit in my dreams!"
Keith hissed at his youngest teammate to silence him as he continues to watch. His heart was thundering inside his chest. For nearly a year he thought she was dead and dreamed about her. Now the things he had been dreaming had been revealed to him as actual events in his life. Did that mean she could see him too?
She touched the screen fondly and disabled communications. Around her the images of our other cockpits disappeared into static as did the sixth, which appeared to be a control room of sorts.
She paused, the tears in her eyes finally streaming down her cheeks.
"I don't know how long it will take for you to see this. I know I told you not to come. Travel into the Dark Nebula is treacherous and while Zarkon believes my world to be dead, he still keeps robot fighters in our air. It still isn't safe, but at least now I have something other than this crushing pain that threatens to suffocate me. I don't know how long it will take for all of the Lions to be operational much less find suitable pilots, but Keith, we have something now that we haven't had since my father and mother left for the Zohar valley."
She closed her yes and continued to speak. "We have hope. Please stay safe and know that I am with you always."
"Princess!"
Her eyes blinked open and she sighed, lifting a small comm from her belt.
"Go for Mockingbird."
Misty, her duty nurse began to speak, her voice full of urgency and they could barely make it out. "Get Bailey in there now. I'm on my way down. Make sure full scans are transmitted to my data pad, I need to know what I'm looking at before we go in."
She sighed. "Duty calls."
Just as she had before she pressed her fingers to her lips and then to the screen. This time the connection scrambled before completely cutting off.
His breaths were ragged as he reminded himself to breath. He didn't even move until the data pad hat had been passed to him cracked in his hands before he hurled the device across the room.
Invoices of concern greeted him as his team scrambled away from him. No one stopped him when approached the Space Marshall and fisted the taller hams collar in his hands. "Nothing we can do. We have no authority unless a representative of the crown recognizes me. My wife! My wife has been out there without me for nearly a year! My Wife!"
His voice rose to a roar before he even realized that the ambassador was speaking. "The Arusian Embassy and it's Senator recognize Commander Keith Kogane as the lawful and legal husband to her Royal Highness the Crowned Princess of Arus. Technically speaking, he is for all intents and purposes the King of my Planet the moment he sets foot on her sovereign ground."
He had never felt so much rage before in his life. He watched Zarkon publically murder the woman he thought was his wife. He watched Zarkon murder her family first from the broadcast he so thoughtfully shared and the via the emergency transmission she was some how able to initiate before she went underground. He watched as Zarkon gleefully incinerated cities and villages after scooping up slaves, but ultimately killing millions and all the while he sat on his ass out on the new frontier to infiltrate one of Hazaar's lazon mines.
He shoved the Marshall back down into his seat.
"The way I see it, they need five skilled pilots. You can shove the Explorer Vehicle Voltron command up your ass."
Lance squeaked and then pointed at Keith, he sputtered something unintelligible as Sven carefully approached m and put a hand on his shoulder. He'd never seen Keith use any sort of foul language before.
"Keith, we are with you, even if I have to resign my commission."
He flinched, and looked around the room. Steele, Graham's second in command seemed more than relieved that he was stepping away from the Space Marshall.
Hunk and Pidge were on their feet as well. "We're going too," they said together.
Lance shrugged. "I bet those lion ships are something else. You're going to need a big brother there to keep your head on strait."
The Ambassador smiled and nodded.
"Just one more thing," Keith hissed as he spun around his fist connecting with the Marshall's nose. The man stumbled back, clearly surprised and dazed.
Keith squared his shoulders and cracked his aching knuckles.
Stele was ordering that he be taken to the brig before the Ambassador stepped between them. "Officer or not, he is a dignitary from another world. I believe the words we are looking for are diplomatic immunity."