Remember. There is no purpose without… Remember the variables. There is no purpose without… The variables. Remember.

o~o~o~o~o

"Allura, what are you doing out of bed? You should be resting. Again. Still."

Coran had come upon her perched on the steps, in her nightclothes, in front of the cryo pod that held Lotor. Healing him, she hoped. The rest of the castle was ghostly quiet. There were too many ghosts. The last thing these high-tech, magical halls needed was another haunt.

"I can't sleep, Coran. Not until he wakes up."

"You must, princess, because he very well may not."

"Hush. What if he hears you?"

"That's just it." Coran stepped to the diagnostics panel continuously measuring every known Galra and Altean health metric. He tapped a few screens to bring up the detailed views.

"Every test we've run shows that his wounds have healed completely over the last 23 vargas. Every test but one—neural activity. His brain is all but nonfunctional, aside from basic homeostatic responses."

"Meaning he can breathe on his own," she pointed out. "If he has that much, then he can get the rest back."

"That's a pretty big leap, Allura. Even for a glass-is-half-full kind of a guy like me."

Allura rose and touched the crystal barrier between herself and Lotor. She had tried to reach him telepathically. Briefly. Once. She told herself she was holding off until his external trauma had healed, because she didn't want to tax him too much. But that wasn't really why. She was afraid to find out that there was nothing left to reach out to.

She squared her shoulders, resolute. This was no time for indulging in fear. If he was still alive, there was still hope. She would bring him back by his hair if she had to.

"He has been in there long enough," she said. "Help me move him to my quarters."

"Didn't you hear me? He's gone."

"We don't know that," she said, quietly.

"The scans are pretty straightfor—"

"We don't know that!" Her voice rang through the empty halls like a battle cry.

Coran didn't flinch, but he looked sad. Allura immediately regretted yelling, so she softened her tone.

"If science can't bring him back, maybe magic can. Please help me get him to my quarters."

Coran still seemed doubtful, but he sighed, capitulating. "All right, Allura."

"Thank you, Coran," she said, heart heavy.

"It is a pleasure to serve, your highness."

o~o~o~o~o

Remember.

Lotor fisted his chubby hands into her hair. She was smiles. She was safety. She smelled good. He burbled happily, wet on his hand. She swept him up into her arms. He laughed.

The tooth and claw leapt to her shoulder, staring at him through slit eyes. He did not like the tooth and claw. It smelled wrong, like sick, like outrage. He started to cry.

There is no purpose…

"Drink it. It's good for you," she said, handing him his favorite cup, as if the wrapping would make him more amenable.

"I don't want to drink it, mother. It tastes foul."

"Drink," she said sternly. She was often stern, but she smiled, too. Less of late, but she was working so much that Lotor barely saw her.

"Did you finish your lessons?" she asked as he complied, pressing the cup to his lips and swallowing the thick liquid as quickly as he could.

"All but quantum physics," he admitted. "It's just, father got me a new sword, and—"

"You can train with your father when your lessons are complete."

Lotor sighed. "Yes, mother."

"Lotor, you are seven years old. You should be past quantum mechanics by now."

Lotor wriggled uncomfortably under her glare. He hated disappointing his parents.

"We shall have to intervene if you do not improve your performance substantially in the next few moon cycles."

"Yes, mother," he whispered, worried. The last intervention had not been pleasant.

"We must find a way to get through to you. You are Prince of Galra. You must excel beyond expectations."

"I will, mother."

"See that you do."

There is no purpose without…

"Prince Lotor."

"King Alfor?" Lotor said, confused. When the sentry had summoned him, he hadn't expected an off-world royal.

"I'm so sorry. It's about your parents."

"What about them?"

"The quintessence. It was too much. It consumed them. There was nothing we could do."

Lotor took this news without reacting. Reaction led to punishment. Besides, nineteen years as his parents' son had led him to expect anything and assume nothing.

King Alfor laid his hand on Lotor's shoulder. For a tick, Lotor expected a blow, but he stood stoically, waiting.

"I'm so sorry," the king said again, pain and sorrow suffusing his expression.

Lotor was confident his own expression betrayed nothing.

Remember.

o~o~o~o~o

"Listen, Prince of Galra. I know every bawdy verse of The High Priest Sailed to Xankrous, and I am not afraid to use them."

Allura pressed her chin into her palm, her elbow on the bed, just even with Lotor's shoulder. She had devolved from rational arguments to outright pleading to the nastiest threats she could think of. But Lotor was impervious to salacious lyrics, it appeared.

Telepathically, he wasn't answering. Calling him to her hadn't worked. He was there, lying in front of her, and her power knew enough not to duplicate his image.

She lifted his hand, strong and now undamaged. She examined it, rotating the wrist and forearm to see the palm as well as the knuckles. His purple skin was smooth and unlined, despite the passage of time and many battles. The cryo pod might have helped a little in that regard. It had a propensity to erase little nicks and scars.

After she'd examined every molecule of it, she raised his hand to her cheek, resting it there. Eyes closed, she imagined tentacles of her power reaching through his skin, through muscle and bone, down to his nervous system. It was a fact-finding mission, a test. She wouldn't change, just observe.

She saw synapses firing in his spinal cord, which gave her hope. But it was only a body process. It wasn't him.

She unclipped the juniberry from its place in her hair and placed it in his palm, curling his fingers around it, and then placing hers on top.

"Can you help me?" she asked the flower. But it did nothing in response. This knot was for Allura alone to untangle, and she could feel time slipping away from her. As if there were a limit, and it wasn't long.

"I'm looking for your consciousness," she said to Lotor. "Which, sadly, is impossible to pinpoint with science. I cannot find it with any of the six senses I possess. Not even magic can locate a spirit."

My spirit will find your spirit.

Allura's heartbeat quickened. The ancient Altean farewell.

"Of course," she whispered.

o~o~o~o~o

Remember.

Despite everything, Lotor had never wished his father dead until that moment. Oddly, it wasn't a fraught moment. In fact, his father wasn't doing anything particularly cruel. He was giving orders to his generals on the eve of battle with the thirty-sixth star system Zarkon had determined it was his right to conquer.

Lotor didn't have any partiality to the system. He hadn't so much as visited it until a few quintants ago when he was sent to covertly assess their defenses (light cannon, scattered infantry, a fleet comprised mostly of converted frigates). He also rarely felt much in the way of emotion, generally speaking, so it wasn't empathy that had spurred the patricidal thought.

Nor was it self-interest. Since Zarkon and Honerva's transformation at the gate, they seemed to have forgotten about Lotor altogether. It was the best his relationship had been with them since he was old enough to retain memory.

There was no justification at all for the feeling, just an understanding, a certainty, that the universe would be better off if his father had died with Daibazaal. And on the heels of that understanding, that Lotor himself wished that his father had perished.

The realization was such a simple, emotionless thing, like noticing a cloud that had obscured the sun had moved aside. A small, routine discovery. But now that the thought had finally penetrated through to his conscious mind, Lotor was faced with its ramifications.

Zarkon should have died as Alfor had believed he had. Now he was so powerful and held so much sway that he was virtually indestructible. Lotor had no idea how such a feat as destroying the monster his father had become could be accomplished. He only knew that it needed to be done.

And the only one with the access and the strength to do it was Lotor.

The variables.

It was supposed to be a routine inspection on a stable planet. Commander Throloc had been in charge for a decaphebe, at least, and the number of insurrections had died down from two or three a year to barely a skirmish on the occasional feast day.

Lotor didn't exactly enjoy the trappings of this part of the job. Parades were dull and the sycophantic fawning was an irritating reminder that he still had no plan for how to eliminate his father.

But parades and fawning were the last things on Throloc's mind, it appeared. Lotor and his subordinates touched down in the middle of a public execution. A Galra man and a Uulite woman were tied to pillars of rystanite—a bicarbonate so powerful that it burned through any organic material that touched it.

"Cut these people down at once," Lotor ordered, though he usually followed a strict non-involvement protocol with regards to issues of people management. "For what crime are they being punished?"

"For the crime of procreating outside their species," said Throloc, stepping down from the dais where he'd been observing the torture scene, pushing a much smaller being to the ground in front of him.

Lotor drew his sword. "There is no law forbidding interspecies families."

"It is natural law they offended," Throloc insisted, far from cowed by Lotor's status as prince.

Throloc was large and had clearly once been a soldier in fighting form. But Lotor could tell from the stoop to his shoulders, the sway in his stance, and his lack of weapon, that he had grown soft since switching to planetside work.

"Cut them down, or I will," Lotor said, his voice deadly calm.

Throloc smirked. "It is too late. The moment their skin touched the rystanite, they were dead."

The small being mewled pitifully at Throloc's feet.

Lotor knew this to be true, but he was not about to let the commander's disobedience stand. The square was full of people, Galra and Uulite, all witnesses to the scene unfolding.

Lotor considered his options with cool precision. He knew even the small force he'd brought with him could take the city. Very little upset him anymore, but this abuse was beyond the pale. Fear was not a sustainable nor profitable way to run a planet.

"You brought this on yourself," Lotor said coldly. "I relieve you of command, effective immediately."

"You and what ar—?"

Lotor sliced off the murderer's head with a single swing of his sword.

"I don't need an army," he hissed.

The small creature yelped as the ex-commander's body fell too near it, and it scuttled back into Lotor's shins.

Lotor reached down and lifted the creature to its feet by the nape of its neck. He captured its gaze with his.

"They are gone," he said, not softly, but not harshly either. "I will ensure they receive every honor in burial. In exchange, you will work for me. In time, you will learn to fight, to plan, to fly, and to kill. And when the time is right, you will exact your revenge in the way you see fit. Does that sound like an equitable arrangement?"

The creature nodded it's filthy, blood- and dirt-encrusted head.

"What is your name?"

"Acxa," she said with a squeak.

"Welcome to the void, Acxa."

There is no purpose without… The variables. Remember.

Allura, snow in her hair, laughing

Remember.

"I knew you would come for it," Honerva said, a stone the size of a boulder levitating from her palm. "Shall we talk terms?"

o~o~o~o~o

Allura crawled onto the bed next to Lotor, resting her head on his shoulder. She placed her hand on his chest over his heart. Then she closed her eyes.

She pictured a juniberry bud, closed and delicate. She watched it mature as her mind forwarded time, the petals peeled back, opening to an imaginary sun. Then she tilted the flower so she could gaze into its depths, letting her conscious mind drift and lose focus, accessing the deeper well of meaning inside the core of her being.

Then slowly, still drifting, she moved in a direction that felt right. Not up or down. Not port or starboard, aft or stern. Just…good.

Gradually, she felt another energy brushing up against hers. It felt almost like a humming, a broken humming, a burnt and sorrowful humming. But she knew it, and felt connection, affection, and something more that she couldn't name. She drifted closer, intentionally merging her edges with its edges. Closer was important. Closer. Until there were no more edges, no more division, only one energy where there had been two.

Then she opened her eyes. Still fuzzy around the edges of consciousness, her vision seemed clouded, as if she were looking at a memory of someone else's memory. She tried to avoid focusing, afraid that she'd sever the connection with too much analytical thought. She still wasn't positive that what she was doing would in any way help to bring Lotor back. But one thing was certain—she had at least found him. Because standing not more than a span from her in either direction were Lotor and Honerva.

A sword, flickering, appeared in Lotor's hand.

"Come now, Lotor," the Honerva apparition said. "There is no need for a weapon. It is disrespectful. Perhaps it is time for another intervention."

Honerva struck without warning, dark bolts of magical energy piercing his flight suit and leaving glowing streaks of damage across his body. He fell to his knees, sword flickering into nothingness.

"No!" Allura yelled, running to him…and passing right through. She had no corporeal presence in this reality, whatever it was.

"Is this really how it ends, Lotor? With you fulfilling your destiny as prince of the greatest empire that ever existed by serving as bait to catch a princess?"

Lotor began to laugh, a broken, wheezing laugh. "If that is your goal, I can save you the trouble. Her entire purpose is to kill you. She will do it, and in a way you least expect. But she will not in any way endanger that purpose for anyone, let alone me. You might as well kill me."

Honerva struck him again, this time with a network of smaller bolts that attacked points all over his body at once. He screamed.

"You are mistaken, my child. You have both revealed your feelings for each other too often and to too large an extent. The princess will come for you, and she will come alone."

Suddenly, Lotor whipped out a dagger, aiming it at his own throat.

Allura gasped, too stunned and sickened to move, but Honerva was much more used to the tactics of her torture victims and lazily knocked the knife out of his hands with her magic. Then she glided forward and slapped Lotor across the face. He fell to the floor.

"Did you really think it would be that easy?" she hissed down at him.

Allura ran to him again, circling her arms around him, begging him to see her, to feel her.

"I can feel you," he croaked. "Don't come for me. Tell Acxa. Mission first."

Then Honerva pelted him with magic again, and the room they were in started to fade away, like an echo losing strength, diminishing into silence.

"No!" Allura shouted. She was losing him. She had to do something to pull him out before the scene faded entirely.

"Listen to me, Lotor. Your mother is not here. But I am. I am real. We are real. This—" she gestured to the narrowing room "—is just a memory. I rescued you. Blue and I rescued you. And Pidge helped. You're in the castle with me. In my bed, actually."

"Mission first…Acxa," he mumbled.

"Yes!" Allura shouted, seizing the idea of something so important to him that it might draw his attention. "Your mission is in danger. Acxa said she can't complete it without you. You must come back with me, soldier, or all will be lost."

But it wasn't working. He was starting to fade now as well.

"Lotor! You quiznaking moron! How dare you doubt my ability to save your sorry—"

He made a sound then. Another wheezing chuckle, she thought. Hope lit in her chest as she bent low over his beautiful head and said,

"If you fade, then I will fade. We will die here together. Because I. Will. Not. Leave. You." Her voice shook with a depth of emotion she had never felt before. "And then I will spend the rest of eternity cursing at you until your ghost-ears bleed."

Then a sensation of severe vertigo took hold of her, turning her in a loop and then inside out. The next thing she knew, she was blinking her physical eyes, trying to reorient to the fact that she was back in her bedroom, lying next to Lotor, and that he was gazing back at her.

"All right, princess. I yield," he said, smiling fondly.

And suddenly it was all too much. She burst into tears and threw herself into his arms.

o~o~o~o~o

"It's all right, Allura." Lotor patted the princess's back awkwardly. He much preferred the swearing to the crying.

She pulled back quickly and punched him in the arm.

"Ow. What was that for?"

"You almost died!"

"Well, I was being attacked by a powerful witch at—"

"You tried to kill yourself!"

He sighed and sat up more fully in the bed. Oddly, his body didn't hurt. He felt completely fine. Better than fine. How long had he been out?

"Yes," he answered her. "And I would again if I thought it would save you."

"That is unacceptable. Never do that again. Besides, whatever happened to 'mission first'?"

He supposed she had a marginal point there. However.

"My mission shifted," he said, touching her hair where it spilled over his lap. "It's mostly the same but with a different reason at its heart." He paused, tracing the bruise on her cheek with his eyes. He couldn't get enough of just looking at her. "I would die for you, Allura of Altea."

She buried her head in his chest. "You will never get the opportunity," she said. "I will always save you."

He wrapped his arms around her, though he ached with the knowledge that it was only temporary. That she couldn't save him from what was coming, from the choice he would have to make.

"This fairy tale is not ours to live, princess."

"I know," she said, wrapping her arms under his to pull him closer. "But it doesn't change how I feel."

"You will change. The universe moves on."

"Not me. When Alteans form a bond, it is for life."

He smirked at her melodramatic tone. "This is true of all Alteans?"

"It is true of this Altean."

He laid his cheek against her head in defeat. "There is nothing in the universe that I could ask for myself that I would want more…"

A few ticks later, Allura said, "But…?"

"But we are the only hope for the universe."

She snorted. "The universe can rot for all I care."

Lotor chuckled, relishing the feel of her body against his, the smell of her hair, the sting in her voice as she parroted his words from that day on Sala back at him. It killed him that in a matter of vargas he would have to give this up. He hadn't felt this safe in ten thousand years.

Somehow, without him even noticing, Allura, strange princess of a dead world, had become his home.

o~o~o~o~o

Three vargas later, Allura watched with a horrible ripping sensation in her chest as the Sincline ship flew Lotor away from her.

"Well, you did it, Allura," Coran said, coming up behind her and putting his hand on her shoulder. "I should really stop being surprised at the number and manner of miracles you perform on a near daily basis."

"It was luck this time," she touched the juniberry clip in her hair absently. "Too much luck and too close a call."

"So are you together now?" Lance asked, slouching up from behind her to her other side.

"No," she said. "But neither are we alone."

One day, though, she projected to Lotor, packing every feeling and intention she could into the words.

One day.