Allura strolled through the gardens of the Castle of Lions aimlessly. She had been going over some reading materials for the new policies she hoped to bring before her Privy Council but she decided to take a short break after realizing that she had been staring at the same page for several minutes without understanding anything.

She wandered around, greeting the gardeners she met with a smile and a few words, until she came to a small rose garden completely surrounded by high hedges. This tiny area was all that was left of what had once been an extensive labyrinth.

It was an extraordinarily peaceful scene and it called to her – not only because it was a quiet place where she could sit and be alone with her thoughts but also because it reminded her of the places she and her mother would sit, talking about what it meant to be a Princess of Arus and a Daughter of Cador.

She found a stone bench under a blossom-covered arbor and sank down on it, grateful for the shade. She closed her eyes and tried to let the music of the bird songs and the gentle splashing of the fountain in the center of the garden soothe her strained nerves.

It had been one hell of a day. After fending off an early morning ro-beast attack with the rest of the Force, she had had an eight o'clock breakfast with the village elders at Dyab followed by a personal appearance at the children's ward of the hospital in Juwna. Those personal appearances were followed by a luncheon with representatives of various health care groups and a particularly trying meeting with her Privy Council.

She muttered a particularly vile epithet under her breath and looked around guiltily, half-expecting Nanny to be hovering nearby ready to pounce on her for her un-princesslike behavior.

Seeing that she was alone, she allowed her shoulders to slump. There were so many things that she wanted to do, but state resources were limited. Perhaps if the Privy Council had joined her during those meetings, they would understand how many problems the current Arussian health care program had.

The things she learned during her visits with children crippled in the course of Zarkon's attacks and her talks with underprivileged villagers without access to basic health services broke her heart.

While she was personally doing what she could to assist these people, she could not help but feel that the state needed to do more for these marginalized groups, a position that the Privy Council did not seem to understand.

She hated disappointing the people that she had come to care for, but it seemed that it was all that she was capable of doing.

Although she knew that her parents loved her deeply, she had felt their disappointment because of her lack of magical talent. To compensate, she tried to excel in her studies and become the daughter that they wanted.

It didn't work.

She often caught them watching her with a strange look in their eyes when she was growing up. It was the same look she often saw in the eyes of her Prime Minister and Royal Governess, just before they began to lecture her about her duty to her people, as a Princess of Arus and a Daughter of Cador.

As much as she tried, she couldn't be the person that they wanted her to be. She buried her face in her hands and gave into her desire to weep. Was she a disappointment to her parents, to Coran and to everyone else who depended on her?

Keith wandered through the gardens, enjoying the peace and privacy that they offered. He often came at this time of the day, when the gardeners had finished their chores, and he could be alone, save for the butterflies and birds seemed to have taken up permanent residence in the area.

He came here often to seek refuge and escape from the pressures of the world and, if he was totally honest with himself, the pressure he placed on himself ever since he entered the service.

It wasn't easy being the grandson of a Space Marshall, he mused. Even if he knew that he had managed to achieve everything on his own, without his grandfather's help, there were some who whispered that he would not have gotten to where he was without family connections easing his way.

One of the first things he had learned as a cadet was that he had to show more merit, more skill, and more dedication than anyone. Life in the Space Academy had been difficult enough to begin with, and constantly being singled out by people who either wanted to suck up to or get even with his grandfather just made everything even harder.

The career track he chose after graduation was a deliberate attempt to move away from his grandfather's sphere of influence. By specializing in operations in the far universe, he earned himself endless commendations from the officers he served under and dozens of decorations for courage under fire.

Even though some people thought him too severe, too single minded in his obsession with duty, his qualifications alone secured him his position as Commander of the Voltron Force, even after the death of his grandfather.

But with everything that had happened after being assigned to Arus, instead of being the simple expeditionary mission commander that he had expected to be, he was the ranking Garrison officer in the quadrant, responsible for the peace and safety of millions of innocent civilians.

As such, his duties spanned a wide range of services, from those that he had been trained intensively in – such as piloting and space exploration – to areas that he had had little if any exposure to in the course of his career.

His schedule was a constant game of catch-up. His regular duties occupied the days and left him the nights for further study. With all that he had to do and all that he had to learn, he had very little—if any—time for himself.

He ran his fingers through his already unruly hair, wishing that he could magically make his jumbled thoughts clear. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, Keith reminded himself mechanically, remembering how his grandfather had loved the wisdom and simplicity of quotations.

Duty and service were everything to him. He was doing what he had been trained to do and he was making a difference in the process. But why did he feel as though what he was doing wasn't enough? Recently, he had been feeling an uncharacteristic confusion, a quiet emptiness that made him doubt the principles by which he lived his life.

Taking a deep breath, he mentally walled up his concerns and reasserted his legendary control over himself. He couldn't give in to the luxury of having emotions. Battles had been lost and wars had been decided because of emotional command decisions...

You can try, Keith, but you'll never be able to shut yourself off totally... A quiet inner voice that sounded much like his grandfather's reminded him. He swore quietly and increased his pace, turning the corner.

He stopped in his tracks when he found Allura sitting on a bench, half-hidden in the shadowy arbor. Even at his distance, he could see from her stance that she wanted to be left alone, but before he knew it, he had taken an involuntary step towards her.

"Be careful, Princess."

Allura jumped as Keith's voice startled her out of her reverie.

"The wind might change… Back on Earth, it's said that you should be careful when you frown outdoors. If you're frowning when the wind changes, you'll end up frowning forever." Keith explained.

For a brief moment, she thought about ignoring him but years of Nanny's training, and well, respect for the man himself would not allow her to do so. She rose to her feet and stepped into the sunlight, retreating to the fountain in the center of the garden.

"Oh, I always wondered you meant by that," she replied blithely. "I've heard Lance say that about Hunk's face many times. I knew it probably wasn't something very nice so I never asked what it meant."

Wincing inwardly at how idiotic she sounded, she watched the way that the droplets of water danced across the surface of the fountain. Even with her face averted, she could feel his eyes studying her back.

"What are you doing here, Princess?" Keith finally asked. "Weren't you supposed to be going over some policies with Coran? I was told that it would be more convenient for you if we scheduled Lion practice after dinner today."

Allura sat down on the edge of the fountain and avoided meeting his eyes. She quickly blinked away the tears, unwilling to let anyone—particularly the Commander she looked up to— see the evidence of her vulnerability.

"Nothing really," she said, with an uncertain smile. "I'm just being a silly girl… I was just thinking about how different life was before… all this Zarkon happened. When I had to learn things because I'd need to know about them someday, instead of having to learn things because my people need me to make decisions for them."

"I know what you mean," Keith nodded. "When I was a kid, I would work extra hard on my lessons because my grandfather used to tell me that the Galaxy Alliance would only let kids on the honor roll become Space Explorers."

"Did you always want to be a Space Explorer?"

"Only since I was around six years old… My grandfather took me down to Garrison HQ one day and asked a friend of his to take me up on a ship." Keith smiled at the memory, remembering the breathless exhilaration he felt when he saw the stars up close for the first time. "What do you want to do when you were little?"

"A musketeer," Allura said, with a small smile, even though her eyes were cloudy with memories. "The All-For-One-And-One-For-All kind that Alexandre Dumas used to write about."

"So I suppose you pestered your father for fencing lessons?" Keith asked.

"I didn't need to. My father made sure that I learned. He said that he needed someone to spar with and that he wanted us to do something together," Allura said, her voice suddenly small and very far away, "He told me then that he was proud of me… of how fast I learned… I wonder if he would say that now."

"I think so. You're doing the best you can," he said quietly, recognizing in her eyes the same uncertainty that he often felt himself. "There's only so much a single person can do. You can't be everything for everyone, you know."

For a moment, Allura felt as though she lost her footing. The world beneath her seemed to slip away. Keith could see though her shields in a way that no one else had been able to before. "You have just as much responsibility on your shoulders, Keith. How do you handle it?"

"Me?" He raised an eyebrow and took a seat on the edge of the fountain. "I won't pretend it doesn't affect me — there are times when I stay awake thinking about what I should have done. But one of the things I learned early on is that there's no point in crying over spilt milk. All I can do is learn from my mistakes and do better in the future."

Allura digested his words silently.

"Which is why Lance thinks that I'm a heartless, unfeeling bastard," he continued wryly.

Allura burst into laughter at the discovery that Keith's serious mien hid a lively sense of humor. "So you would have us believe. But you don't fool any of us, you know."

Keith flashed her a quicksilver smile, "And your pretence of invulnerability has never fooled any of us, either."

She acknowledged his point with a slight quirk of her lips. "It's just that... everyone expects so much of me," she confessed hesitantly, "and I can't seem to live up to their expectations."

Keith nodded wisely, "Someday, Highness, you'll learn the same lesson that I did when I was in the academy. Expectations are flickering lights, but in the end, you cast your own shadows."

Allura frowned quizzically. "Coran used to make me read a lot of philosophy, but I don't remember ever coming across that quotation. Is that from a Terran philosopher?"

Keith nodded. "Yeah. Blackwell, Keith Alexander," he smiled briefly at her. "Look, I just wanted you to know that I understand what you're going through." He shrugged his shoulders self-consciously, uncomfortable talking about feelings.

"My parents died when I was just a kid, so I was raised by my grandfather until I entered the academy. It was a pretty normal situation, except for one thing – my grandfather was Space Marshal Graham's predecessor."

Allura's eyes widened with surprise.

"As you can imagine, I got a lot of flack when I entered the academy because of my family name. A lot of the officers and cadets thought the only reason I was admitted to the Academy was because of my grandfather's influence, even though he had already retired by then."

"From what I heard, you did more than prove them wrong. Your marks in some simulators were the highest ever recorded," Allura said quietly. "And Pidge told me that your overall record stands until now."

Keith's mouth quirked upwards. "Don't believe everything you hear, Princess. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not Superman, you know. I can't jump over tall buildings with a single bound."

"Superman?"

"A comic book legend back on Terra. He was actually from the Planet Krypton, but his parents sent him to Terra as a baby when their planet exploded. Now the thing is, when he got to Terra, our yellow sun gave him super powers like flight, invulnerability, super strength and x-ray vision."

"I'm sorry, what galaxy was Krypton in again?" Allura asked, a puzzled look on her face.

"It wasn't a real planet," Keith explained with a wry grin, "And Superman was really just a story written centuries ago. It was one of the books that my grandfather made me read when I was growing up."

"Oh, Coran did that to me too!" Allura laughed, settling into a more comfortable position on the fountain's edge. "He used to assign me a new book every week which I would have to discuss with him and my parents over tea."

"Was Coran's book club how you discovered Alexandre Dumas?"

"Monsieur Dumas was my father's favorite Terran author. He loved the intrigue, adventure and romance of the Three Musketeers," Allura said. "He surprised me one time with a Musketeer uniform that I could wear during my fencing lessons with him."

"I can imagine how Nanny reacted to that," Keith said, watching her out of the corner of his eye, idly appreciating the picture she made. As always, being with the Princess always lifted his spirits. In some indefinable way, she calmed him and made him remember all that he was fighting for.

"Well, let us just say that she and my mother were not pleased," Allura smiled. "Daughters of Cador are supposed to be the epitome of propriety and decorum. Fencing is not the kind of thing that we were supposed to do."

A butterfly landed on Allura's hand and claimed her attention. The silence that settled comfortably between them was punctuated only by the trills and warbles of the birds examining the contents of the bird feeder nestled in between the arches of the trellis.

She glanced up and caught him watching her. He flushed guiltily and rose to his feet. "So, how long has it been since you last used a sword?"

She stared at him bemusedly, caught off-guard by his sudden change in topic. His expression did not give any clue to what he was thinking. He looked as calm and composed as ever.

Her answering smile was a tentative one. "Excluding the time that I flew the Black Lion and had to form the Blazing Sword? Oh quite some time. I don't think I've been able to spar with anyone since you boys arrive here on Arus."

"Well then, Your Highness," Keith smiled as he got to his feet and offered her his best courtly bow. "If you have nothing better to do before the dinner, perhaps I can challenge you to a duel? May the best man win."