Three

Allura

I handed of the the key of Blue Lion to Sven without an argument because the lion was his first. He was a part of the prophecy, the fifth of the five young men who would come to Arus in a great time of need. I handed over the key and I felt a crack form in my heart. No more uniform, no more training to defend myself in hand to hand combat, no more flight - I love being a pilot.

I've been told my entire life a woman shouldn't love such a thing. But I do, I feel alive in the air in ways that are indescribable. It's the one place where I have control of my life, I steer the Lion, I aim the weapons, I am in charge of life up there - and the lives of my people. I defend my planet and I have the back of four of my closest friends and great heros to my people.

It was taken away from me with Sven's return to Arus. I tried to be gracious. I tried to not complain, I tried to not miss it. I shouldn't miss battle. I shouldn't miss fighting and killing. I shouldn't miss something that I should not find fun... I fight in a war, in no way should I see or have found the amusing side of flight. But I did in training, I found that speed excites me, it flies through me and lifts me up from my soul first then my bones. I found I love learning the dance and grace that is martial arts, it's not a barbaric way of fighting, it's circles and prescision, it's about movement and countermovement. It's music and dance.

I love to dance.

I love to fly.

I love to fight.

I do not like to be covered with the blood of a man.

My uniform is ruined. The front from my chest to my stomach is stained irrevocably, it looks brown now that the blood has dried but it was crimson and dripping. My breasts and stomach were patched with rivulets of red when I finally agreed to leave the surgeons wing and take it off.

I couldn't slow the blood, stench it, or stop it. It was Lance's stomach, he'd already bled out too much when I got into Red Lion's cockpit and he was on the floor his breath and heartbeat thread thin and about to break away completely. I did all I could, all I knew until Keith and Hunk arrived.

Keith froze for the longest of seconds, I've never seen him freeze before. It may have scared me if I already wasn't past the point of terror because of Lance. Instead all it did was enrage me, as I tried to slow his bleeding, while Hunk started to breath into his mouth - I think, Arusian Gods, I... I think Lance may have stopped breathing. I don't want to contemplate it.

I screamed at Keith. I don't know what I yelled. I know I blamed him for Lance and I know I meant it. I can't take it back because of the truth of it but I wish I could take back the harshness of my words. I blamed Keith for it because I blamed him for Sven, I blamed him for not seeing how screwed up Sven was and something like this had been inevitable and now Lance could...

I didn't say what I was the most scared off, I still can't think it. Lance still hasn't woke up. I still don't understand how he was so hurt and we didn't know until Red Lion crashed into lake after we defeated the Robeast. The whole battle had been a catastrophe.

It started with Sven shooting Lance down. It ended with Lance in a bed, tubes and machines and me and Keith sitting vigil, not talking to each other. I can't talk to him, I don't know how. I can't take back what I said, even I wish I'd said with more tact.

I had given Sven my key without a fight. I had thought at first I was being jealous, unfair. After all, I was a Princess, a woman. I shouldn't like being a pilot, a killer, I shouldn't need to know how to protect myself. I had five brave men to protect me... These thoughts scrapped against my insides like sandpaper against the grain. It was all wrong, I was better off before, I should still be training with them, I thought as they went outside to do hand to hand. I should still be learning to fly Black Lion, and flying in Blue. I should be able to fly any of the lions, I thought watching from my bedroom one day.

Sven. I didn't know him well, I never had the change. He'd been injured and then missing, presumed dead before I'd been giving the chance. But I knew Lance and Keith, and I watched them with Sven and grew more confused. Lance was walking around the Castle, mouth closed, jacket pulled tight around him and every time he spoke with Sven I sensed and could hear in his voice an internal battle not to yell and scream at his is war scarred friend.

He lost twice, Sven would startle and then close off even more. I soon got the sense that Sven, though the quiet type, much like Keith hadn't been so closed off to them before. Lance saw it, Keith however... Keith kept acting like nothing was different with Sven at all but the more I watched the act, the more I saw Keith fighting to remain in character. He was pushing to remain the same as he'd always been with Sven. To be patient, to wait Sven's issues out.

Pidge and Hunk. I knew them too. They both knew Sven better than me, if not as well as Lance and Keith, and they both are such open and talkative, caring and compassionate souls. Hunk kept trying to bond with Sven; over food, over the Lion's mechanics, over anything he could think of that the two of them could talk about together. Nothing worked. Pidge kept trying to draw Sven out as well, over anything and everything but he also only would get monosylllabic answers.

My cousin Romelle is the only one he speaks with and she too is scarred. Lotor, I shudder when I think of the things my cousin has gone through at the hands of Lotor because we kept failing to save her. He raped her. I write it down here and know it's a horror. But I can't comprehend it's atrocity because no man has ever touched me against my will or even with my will. I can't imagine her pain. Yet she remains so strong and Sven he turns to her strength and I think the strength he still has is being solely given to my cousin.

I heard Lance tell Keith once to give it up and tell Sven he can go to Pollux. Keith walked away. I keep thinking about it now. I sit here in this room, waiting and waiting for Lance to wake up, feeling as if I still have his blood on my hands, wrists, face, neck, stomach and breasts. Sven and Romelle are fixing each other, they talk when they can, Romelle has had to stop travelling back and forth so often; it wasn't practical for her to keep going between the two planets.

Sven's been worse since then.

He shot Lance down.

I almost was killed when I ran out there to get to Blue Lion, to do what I could to help the others. Trying not to think about Lance, but he appeared out of nowhere and saved me, Sven and the Blue Lion from being destroyed by Lotor in his flagship. The Robeast keeping Keith and the others away.

How had Lance flown so injured?

None of us realized it until the end, then Red Lion crashed into the lake, a second after I landed the Lion and was wondering how to deal with Sven. I never did have to figure that out because I left them there, in the lion to swim to Red.

Climbed into a cockpit pooled with blood.

I'm going in circles.

I'm stopping now, I want to hold his hand.

Keith

Allura won't look me in the eyes. We are in the same room but we might as well not be. Lance isn't the only thing between us. Everything Lance has been saying to me whenever he got the chance, saw a moment, felt that I hadn't heard it often enough that week or that day...

Sven is going fall apart. He's not here. He's not ready. He's worse now that Romelle is not visiting. The subspace communications aren't enough, Keith. We aren't enough for him. He needs more than that damn therapist in the medical wing and whatever drugs she's given him. I'm not even sure she's helping him. Romelle and he, they bring out the strength in each other don't tell me you don't see it, Keith...

I didn't want to see it. I looked away, physically so I wouldn't see it. It was bad enough I didn't have Sven back as my good advisor. The rational one who could cut through the bull. The friend I could always go to talk to and rant about how crazy driving Lance is with his being well Lance.

I blamed myself for Sven being injured, I'm the commander. It should have been me. I should have fought harder for the team to go to Doom and look for him when we found out about the raid on Ebb and that people were taken from the hospital - Doom liked slaves with injuries, less likely to fight back. It disgusted me when I heard it, it disgusted me Sven was among them but I bought the lies that we were told. Maybe the Garrison hadn't lied, or thought they'd told me the truth. But in the end Sven had been on Doom for almost a year.

Going through a Hell I can't understand. Comprehend. But Princess Romelle does? Of course she does, the Hell she went through was is worse than even Sven's. He's gentle with her, kind, the gentleman I remember holding my hand at times when were young, stupid and innocent at the Academy. We'd walk on the beach, he'd hold my hand, and I'd marvel at the fact I was on a idyllic beach date with a handsome man with accent.

I try to keep my idealist romantic side in check, I always failed with Sven. I fail with Sven. I failed. Lance was right, he wasn't ready, and when Romelle stopped being able to visit every couple of weeks from Pollux, he got even more quiet.

An unsettled, loud quiet that was worse than the quiet that unsettled me before. I hadn't know it possible. He was holding it together with broken rubber bands, I suppose, I don't know. He's catatonic right now, he's been catatonic since Allura made her way to Blue Lion during the battle. Since he shot Lance down.

It was an accident of course. It was during my harder, newer formation. We'd been fine at in practice but we were putting it to use in battle for the first time. Going in fast on the Robeast, a huge pig faced, hoofed monstrous thing that was breathing out fire and had missiles blowing out of its ears. It'd been fine until Sven sped in early, firing his torpedoes and freeze guns blazing and shot Lance, because Lance was still in range.

I watched in horror as Red Lion dropped, head first without a peep from Lance into a Mountain cavern, I couldn't even see where he landed. I was starting after him, when two things happened simultaneously. Sven flew out of formation and landed by the lake, not in the lake but by the lake and the Robeast caught Pidge in some forcefield.

I couldn't leave Pidge and Hunk. Neither Sven or Lance were answering my calls. Coran at the control said he was doing his best to reach them, the he let out a shout. The Princess was outside, running for Blue Lion.

Allura's bravery has always been blind to the risk to herself. It's how it is with her I suppose. Lotor's flagship was barreling in on Blue Lion, and I couldn't get to her in time, no matter what I did at the point. I was terrified for Allura, scared for Sven because I didn't know what was going on his in his head and I was in denial about Lance.

I kept waiting for Lance's to be in my ear, smartass and crass, flying like the ace he is and coming back into play. I was expecting it, so when it happened I didn't even feel relief, I felt what I said to him on the comm. "About time, now you and Allura get up here so we can form Voltron."

My world didn't crash to pieces until I dived into the lake, Hunk right after me and then got into the cockpit of Red Lion after the battle. When for the second time in one day I watched Red Lion fall right out of the sky. Lance is white, he's always white, but he's not deathly white. He was deathly pale on the floor of the cockpit, Allura covered with his blood, her knees in a pool of it trying to keep some of it inside of him.

Hunk dropped to the floor, his hand went immediately to Lance's neck, then he started to perform CPR. Allura started raging at me after a second, a minute, I don't know how long all I could do was stare at Lance looking like a corpse on the floor of his lion and wonder what the fuck had happened.

Allura was telling me.

Sven wasn't healthy. He'd done this. He wasn't moving in Blue. Lance wouldn't stop bleeding. It was all my fault.

And it is.

Allura's holding Lance's hand. I wish I felt I had the right to hold the other. Allura may have been to the one to have gotten covered in Lance's blood but it's me that has his blood on my hands. I should check on Sven, but I can't move from Lance's side. I need to see him open his eyes; see the puppy dog expression of them. I want to hear him say I told you so in the crudest way possible.

I need Lance more than I knew.