#the certitude with which he folds his arms at the end | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

terresdebrumestories · 7 years

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With what we have

✗ TECHNICAL DETAILS

FANDOM: Voltron: Legendary defenders RATING: Teen & Up WORDCOUNT: 14 823 words PAIRING(S): - CHARACTER(S): Takashi Shirogane, Keith Kogane, Lance McClain, Hunk Garett, Pidge Gunderson/Katie Holt, Allura, Coran, Ulaz. GENRE: Character exploration. TRIGGER WARNING(S): Canon level discussions of genocide, war and violence. Shiro comes close to a panic attack at one point, but the rest is more hinted at than outright described. SUMMARY: In which Ulaz doesn’t die, and some conversations happen sooner than they would have as a result. NOTE: I This fic takes place right after the end of Shiro’s escape. Everything up to that point happened the same as in canon, except for the bit where the Blade of Marmora uses code names because really, it’s basic spy stuff.

“He’s...gone.”

The words ring hollow in Shiro’s chest, purple void tugging at his ribs a little harder with every heartbeat, and it takes effort to stay upright even as the reality of the loss strikes him at the knees. Doc wasn’t much: he didn’t have all the answers or a ready-made solution for the team’s troubles, but he was something. If nothing else, he was a spark of hope, and that alone is hard to lose.

Behind him, Shiro hears Keith’s jacket creak as he shuffles from one foot to the other, and the wish to turn around and reassure the kid burns like fire against his spine. Shiro wants to smile and say he’ll be fine, to go back to his team and be the leader they need. He wants to tell them all he trusts Coran and Allura’s judgment and mean it.

Then again, he also wants his right arm back and his hair black and his face scar free.

“I’m sorry we doubted him,” Keith manages at last, the catch in his voice almost unbearable in its vulnerability, “he saved all our lives.”

The hole in the xanthorium cluster is still here. It floats by at a lazy pace, tearing into Shiro’s hopes like a knife in paper and bringing the red and purple light of Galra ships into the edge of his vision. Even the Galra hand hangs at his side, limp, heavy and useless. There are shards of glass in his throat when he swallows.

“I still have so many questions….”

Galra machinery is too precise to click as the fingers curl into a fist. He pretends he can hear it anyway, the sound easier to deal with than a pained yelp, a gasp, and the hiss of terror in his own voice as he tries to get one last word in, fingers digging into his shoulders—

“Do you think Zarkon is really tracking us?”

Shiro blinks the world back into focus just as the translator on his left ear beeps to announce one of the Alteans is about to speak.

“We cannot know for sure,” Allura says as she walks up to her spot at the helm of the ship, “only ‘Doc’ knew our whereabouts.”

Shiro turns too fast to remember moving. His left palm hurts.

“You don’t really think he gave us up? After he sacrificed himself?”

“Yeah,” Keith adds, “Maybe Zarkon found this place on his own. He’s probably been searching for the Blade of Marmora.”

Shiro glances at the set of Keith’s shoulders, the rigidity of his stance where he planted himself between him and Allura, and he wishes he could feel grateful for it. Instead of that, he’s almost swept off his feet by the urge to leave, lock himself in his room and forget everyone exists for a moment...just the one. Just a minute where there are no Lions of Voltron, no Paladins, no friends of his going through who knows what kind of horrors in the darkest recesses of the universe.

That would help, maybe, and he’s on the verge of giving up on this argument and call it quits when Allura steps into her pod, face set, and says:

“It’s clear the loss of this ‘Doc’ has caused you great concern but—”

“He’s still alive!” Pidge’s voice bursts through the emergency speakers.

Somewhere, very far in the back of his mind, Shiro thinks he hears Coran protest against tinkering with the emergency communication lines. There’s an air of shocked surprise around him, too, but he’s in the corridors before he can process it in full, helmet slipping in place with the ease of practice.

“I’m on my way to the Black Lion,” he announces, echoes of his voice bouncing back at him through the empty halls, “send me what you’ve got.”

“You got it,” Pidge says with a familiar shiver in her tone, “he must have found a way to delay the space pocket and evacuated his ship—his readings are really weak, Shiro.”

“Just make sure there’s a recovery tank and a stretcher ready when I come back, I’ll take care of the rest.”

Getting Doc back in the castle takes a thousand years and no time at all. One second Shiro’s in the elevator to get Black, the next he’s watching the recovery tank close over Doc’s prone form and trying not to remember the sound of a body folding metal.

After that, there’s nothing left to do but wait.

***

For three days, Shiro moves from one place to the other with no memory of walking. He must keep up with his chores, somehow, because no one complains about late laundry and there’s no trace of settling dust over the Black Lion, but there’s no memory to it, no real sensation of having done any of it. Chores vanish into thin air with a faint smell of detergent and meals pass by in the blink of an eye, leaving a vague aftertaste of goo and not much else.

The rest of it leaves his memory without a trace, the same way his year in the Galra empire left him with nothing but phantom pains in his right arm and a purple haze to light the shapeless terrors of his nights. There are flashes, sometimes. Pidge, sitting next to him, talking...about her family, maybe. Coran fretting over the tank, Hunk with a plate of food. Keith, quiet and worried somewhere nearby. Lance, as far as Shiro can retain the memory, stays silent.

Allura remains in Command and the associated level.

Shiro, he’s fairly sure, doesn’t look for her.

***

Shiro’s translator beeps off and back on again with grating regularity, struggling to keep up with Pidge and Coran’s rapid-fire debate over the recovery tank, like the two of them are so in sync they don’t even need to rely on actual language anymore. It’s probably a good thing, in itself, because the translators may have done a wonderful job of picking up English in the past few months but there are still times when they’re not quite up to par with actually learning a language.

There are times when Shiro’s fizzles out entirely, stumbling over a word no one’s used in English yet, and he has to ask for clarifications until he can make an educated guess on the missing item. Those are the easy gaps. Other times, it’s a problem in concept: an object or an unspoken space rule science-fiction didn’t prepare the Terrans for, and then they have to sit around the table and talk around if for hours on end before they can decide which English words to mash together and wrestle into something entirely new.

(Shiro suspects Coran and Allura have the same difficulties, sometimes, but at least there’s only two of them. The debates are probably less heated in their linguistic corner.)

And of course, there’s no preventing those moments when both party hear the same words but don’t quite give them the same meaning. It’s not an exclusive feature of Altean-Terran communication, really, the difficulties they’ve all had in getting used to one another’s habits is proof enough of that, but the difference in language doesn’t help any of it, and they’ve had more than one close call where Shiro found himself smoothing down far more feathers than he’d ever have anticipated.

All of that in a group explicitly made of friend and allies. What’s it going to be like once Doc walks among them? It’s not like Shiro will be in much of a state to help anyone wind down, after all, and at least one member of Team Voltron is pretty dead set in hating the man no matter what. If he can’t find a way to keep things down somehow….

“You know it’s gonna be fine, right?”

Shiro doesn’t jump at Hunk’s words, but it’s a close call. For someone his size, the kid can certainly move unnoticed which, really, should teach Shiro a lesson about his expectations of fat people and their physical abilities. Right now though, he tries to focus on Hunk’s sympathetic smile over the sound of Coran’s clicking Altean and the occasional burst of Pidge’s colorful Italian vocabulary.

“I know,” he tells Hunk, even though it’s more of a hope than a certitude, “but I’d like to try and avoid the bumps in the road, and I don’t know if that’s going to be possible.”

Hunk taps at his translator with a definite air of commiseration, and Shiro swallows around the worried grimace he wishes he could share with someone. He doesn’t have a problem with the team per se. They’re all driven, well-meaning, and disciplined enough to rally together when the time calls for it...it’s just that, with Coran’s exception, they’re also all teenagers, with Allura’s nineteen years making her the oldest one.

Sometimes it’s hard not to miss the company of Terran adults, especially when the ones Shiro needs to see the most are currently painfully unavailable.

“If it makes anything better,” Hunk offers with a contrite expression, “you know you’ve got at least three of us on your side.”

“Three?”

Pidge and Keith will definitely try and welcome Doc into the ranks, Shiro has no doubt of that. He’s their best lead to Matt and Samuel’s whereabouts, and Keith has already said he regretted doubting the man. Shiro isn’t nearly modest enough to pretend it has nothing to do with Keith’s intense brand of loyalty, but it still means he’ll make effort and that, in itself, is a relief.

Hunk’s support, while appreciated, is more of a surprise.

“Allura hates his guts,” Hunk elaborates with an uncomfortable shrug, “I get why but I’m not sure it’ll help making the cohabitation easier. I’m not promising to be like, buddy-buddies with him, but I’ll be polite, at least. I just hope the translators have enough vocabulary to understand things that aren’t mostly war-related.”

“Oh, don’t you worry your little mind, Number Four!” Coran pipes up as the healing tank beeps to announce the end of a cycle, “if it comes down to it, words won’t be necessary to get informations out of him.”

“Hey, are you talking about sticking him in a pod to steal his memories?” Lance asks from where he’s sitting nearby. “‘Cause the last time we tried that I almost got vented out the airlock!”

“An inconvenient development,” Coran concedes with a nod, “but Number Five and I have since rearranged the pods in a closed circuits, we’ll just have to scan for viruses and—”

“No one is getting in a memory pod,” Shiro interrupts through the roar of blood in his ears and the rushing of his heart, “Doc cooperated with us up until now. If there’s a misunderstanding we’ll solve it.”

They should never have done it in the first place. There are many things to say about tearing information directly out of somebody’s brain and none of them are pretty. Matt, if he’d been here, would have had a lot of Italian for them when they suggested the idea, and Matt’s Italian generally doesn’t come out for nice things.

Plus, if Shiro never sees anyone sent out to a slow, suffocating death because he was too weak not to freak out again, it’ll be too soon. No pod is most definitely a better idea.

“Alright,” Coran agrees, surprising the rest of them with his easy shrug.

He’s about to say something else, Shiro thinks, when the healing tank finally swishes open. The Galra hand’s fingertips click against its palm when they move too fast and, to Shiro’s right, a quiet shuffle of boots signals Allura’s presence with more impact than a shout would.

He doesn’t feel guilty enough about feeding the distance in their rank not to put himself between her and a slowly blinking Galra, just in case.

Doc’s confused frown doesn’t even last a second, if that, but it’s more than enough for Shiro’s heart rate to pick up and a sheen of sweat break out all over his body. Shiro steels his spine against the urge to flee and makes himself look the man in the eyes, greet him with as even a voice as he can possibly manage.

“I must confess,” Doc breathes out as he takes his tank-appropriate garments in, “I did not actually expect to wake up.”

The silk soft tones of Galra drift through the air and into Shiro’s ear, weaving themselves in the more familiar mechanics of the translator’s artificial words. It brushes against his soul like spider net in the middle of the woods, catches him by surprise and makes Shiro wish he could just stuff his ears and be done with it, but he can’t.

He and Pidge are the only ones who actively want Doc in the ranks, and it wouldn’t do for a leader to leave at that delicate a time anyway. Besides, as bad as it may sound, he doesn’t really trust Coran to herd a group of teenagers on the right path...meaning he’s stuck here, making conversation.

Oh well. It’s hardly the first time he does something he’d rather not be doing.

He waits until Doc accepts a spare translator from Pidge and fits it over his left ear with a dubious expression before he says:

“In all honesty, we weren’t sure you’d wake up either, but Pidge and Coran can work miracles with the tanks.”

“Well, I’d give my life for our cause any day, but I can’t say I am disappointed to live longer.”

Behind him, Shiro feels Allura tense at the words, and he thanks the princess’ diplomatic training for her silence even as he hurries to steer Doc toward the room their prepared for him.

It’s under surveillance, it’s true. Allura insisted on it and Coran, as usual, took her side without question. Aside from that, though, it’s mostly the same as the Paladins’: a bed and a wardrobe to the left, a desk and a wide bookshelf to the right. Shiro has no idea who got the three parchment rolls out of the library, but he’s glad for it. At least someone made a bit of an effort.

“My room’s next door,” he tells Doc once the man’s had time to take the space in, “in case you need anything. Or you can ask the others, of course, we’re all—”

“Not to sound ungrateful,” Doc interrupts with a small smirk, “but it seems to me like ‘all’ isn’t quite the right word here.”

Shiro’s lips pinch together out of reflex more than anything else, but Doc doesn’t seem to mind too much. It’s a good thing, too, because Shiro may disapprove of Allura’s attitude but she’s his teammate and his leader. If he’s forced to chose between her and Doc, he know where his loyalties lie.

There’s a short pause, and then Doc asks:

“Does my voice bother you?”

Shiro blinks, flinches in a way that doesn’t have enough to do with surprise for his taste, and stands there without quite knowing what to say.

“It seems to me like it does.”

It takes effort not to step back when Doc steps forward with an appraising gaze, the Galra hand twitching into a defensive posture before Shiro realizes what’s going on. To the left, his own arm seems mostly lifeless, and there are razor blade in his throat when he manages:

“It’s not you, it’s—the words.”

They glide out of Doc’s mouth like water, trickling down Shiro’s spine no matter how hard he tries not to hear them. They’re softer than any language he knows, full of vowels and wind-like whispers, and they settle over his heart like poison, always a beat ahead of the translators’ droning tones.

Of all the things he’s forgotten in the past year-and-some, this is is the part he dreads the most.

“Of course,” Doc replies, lowering his voice like it’s going to help with Shiro’s problem, “I assumed your crew had removed it, but I suppose they don’t know enough about your anatomy to operate safely.”

Somehow, Shiro manages to blink through the ice in his veins.

“What do you mean? What’s there to remove?”

Doc frowns again, the movement enough to make the Galra hand twitch, but it’s gone just as soon and he doesn’t sound disturbed at all when he says:

“Zarkon’s empire cares little for those who do not speak Daibazeel, and new slaves are generally fitted with neuronal implants that allows them to bypass the learning phase. You had no difficulty using the language when we first met.”

There must be some kind of airlock in Shiro’s lungs, a trap of some kind that’s stuck open because between one second and the next it’s like he can’t get enough oxygen inside, blood withdrawing from his fingers until they tingle, and it takes Doc’s hand between his shoulder blades for him to realize he’s bent over and seconds away from feeling sick.

“Deep breathing,” Doc reminds him, “it’ll come back, just keep breathing.”

There’s nothing to do but comply here, and at least the early attention makes it easier for Shiro to get back into a normal breathing, but the attack still leaves him as worn out as an intense marathon session, with far more questions floating in his head than before. Zarkon’s doctors took his arm and tinkered with his brain, what else did they do? It’s not like ethics stop them—what if Shiro lost even more of himself than he thought? What if he’s condemned to spend the rest of his life finding new things to miss, new reasons to mourn and—

“Shiro, you are panicking again,” Doc warns.

Shiro squeezes his eyes shut, and tries to remember the breathing exercises he learned from Sam. ‘Just because you don’t see the problem about flying in a sardine box doesn’t mean they can’t be useful to you one day’ he said when he first suggested sharing his knowledge. Ha. If they’d only known.

“I’m fine,” he says once he’s done and back in control of his own body. Then, because Doc doesn’t seem convinced: “I’m functional. Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t too happy about the implant either, and the Blade had warned me about it.”

“Wait,” Shiro starts, latching on the new topic like his life depends on it, “you mean you were in contact with the Blade of Marmora before you joined Zarkon’s army?”

“Of course. Nothing else could have gotten me to work for that man otherwise.”

A moment passes where Shiro tries to reconcile what he just learned with his image of Galras...it’s not an easy feat. Allura is more open and aggressive about her issues than he is, but he’s still aware enough to realize he’s not very fond of Galras in general. Heaven knows the sight of purple fur is enough to get his heart racing, and if he’s really honest with himself he can admit that, up until now, he’s mostly pictured the Galras as unanimously falling in line with their leader until a small minority of them realized the error of their ways and started fighting back.

It’s stupid, really, to think this way when faced with a ten thousand years old empire that spans about ninety-five percent of the known universe, but then it’s not like human brains are incapable of irrationality.

“Sorry,” Shiro says when it becomes clear Doc guessed where his surprised came from, “I—”

“Oh, you’re hardly the only one,” Doc replies with a shrug, “and you do a very acceptable job of moving past that...but perhaps this is a conversation best postponed until we can calibrate your translators to accommodate my birth language and spare you the sounds of Daibazeel.”

***

“What am I looking for again?” Pidge asks, fingers flying over the keyboard with incredible speed.

Between the glasses and the haircut, she looks almost exactly like Matt, although knowing him he’d probably make a point of highlighting their height difference. Still, if it weren’t for the voice, Shiro could almost confuse them, and the sight of Pidge in that state of intense concentration hollows something in his chest...or reveals it, rather. Like a manhole you forget and fail to notice until the beam of your flashlight brushes over it and suddenly the void is all you can think about.

Shiro looks away before Matt’s voice can crawl back into his ears.

“A translator calibration form,” Doc repeats from a few feet away, just far enough to let Hunk see he’s not trying to spy, “I’m not sure what shape it’ll take, given how ancient the technology around here is—”

“Hey, that castle got us out of more than one scrap with Zarkon!” Hunk protests, a protective hand resting on the wall next to him, “Don’t trash-talk it!”

“I was not trying to ‘trash talk’,” Doc says, hesitating on the English words, “this castle is as old as Zarkon’s empire. It is a miracle you haven’t been defeated yet.”

“Let’s not fight about that,” Shiro intervenes when it looks like Hunk is going to try and keep defending the castle’s honor, “we’re trying to accomplish something here.”

“Right,” Doc agrees while Hunk flushes crimson and mumbles apologies, “if the forms look like what we use on Naquod, they should be interactive files with text in High Daibazeel and support audio recordings.”

Shiro watches Pidge squint at the screen and mutter indistinct words of Italian under her breath as she searches for something that’d match Doc’s description. If she’s anything like her brother, it’s probably just as well they can’t translate what she’s saying. It’d make Hunk’s look of surprise even worse, and Shiro would probably end up laughing in the poor guy’s face.

“Do you do that often?” Hunk asks after a moment, his own project set aside as he looks Doc up and down in open curiosity, “Calibrating translators, I mean?”

“Not recently, but I used to work with refugees before the Blade of Marmora assigned me to my post in Zarkon’s fleet. I mostly gave out signs-to-words devices, but the principles are the same.”

“Guys, I think I’ve got something,” Pidge says as she pulls a file onto her screen.

It’s Galra alphabet alright. Shiro hasn’t seen much of it since he woke up on Earth, but he must have gotten more than familiar enough with it during his captivity because the mere sight of it is enough to clamp his stomach tight. Doc looks the document over and nods in approval, prompting Pidge to ask:

“What happens now?”

“Well, all the languages we want to use are words-based so the process is rather straightforward,” Doc explains, Hunk leaning over his work to try and catch a glimpse of the form. “The form is a list of the most used words in High Daibazeel. I’ll read them out loud individually, then translate a number of prompted sentences and let the software work out the grammar rules from there. After that it’ll only be a matter of waiting for everything to load in the processors. We’re lucky these things still have a free slot or two. I doubt I would have been able to erase a language from their system.”

To Shiro’s surprise, it’s Hunk that asks about the slots rather than Pidge. Doc is in the process of explaining the ear translators ‘of old’ only had room for about half a dozen of languages each when Shiro’s endurance gives out and he barely bothers trying to look calm when he flees the room.

He almost runs into Keith when he reaches the corridor, heart skipping a beat at the unexpected encounter. It’s far too intense a reaction for something that happens a million times in a life, he knows. Then again, with the week he’s had, he feels like he’s kind of entitled to a little bit of a freak out, thank you very much.

“Are you all right?” Keith asks, concern carved into a line between his eyebrows.

Shiro hasn’t been anything even approaching all right for well over a year now. He was taken from one side of the universe to the other, enslaved, forced to harm one of his closest friends, amputated, shoved at the head of a team of teenagers with as much cohesion as a pile of dry sand, and told to save the universe because no one else was there to do it. And that’s putting it nicely. At this point, ‘all right’ is so far beyond his grasp he’s starting to question whether he’ll ever even be okay again.

He could, possibly, tell Keith all of that. It’s not like the kid ever asked for a sugar coated version of the story, after all, quicker to look at a problem and try to figure out a solution than offer reassurance...but the thing is, he’s just a kid. Yes, okay, he’s an eighteen year old soldier-in-training with more stubbornness in his little toe than the average human possesses in their entire body and yes, he would most definitely figure out a way to grab the moon if he felt it was required.

He still looks at Shiro like a little boy, though. Wide eyes and deep frown, and the shine of something pleading at the corner of his eyes, because he needs to know there’s at least one person in this solar system he can lean on. It’s fading lately, the budding team spirit of their group rubbing away at it in steady bits but it’s still there.

Keith wants the truth and so do Lance, Hunk, Pidge and Allura, but all still need Shiro to be okay, too. They need to know their commanding officer, or the closest approximation of it they could find, will be the good man in a storm and hold his stuff together long enough for them to get over their own terror and get back on track.

Shiro would do his best to meet those needs even if it weren’t the only thing holding him vaguely upright these days.

“I’m tired,” he admits anyway. There’s no hiding that much, not this close to dinner time, and it’ll make the next sentence more believable: “I’ll be okay though. Don’t worry.”

“Are you sure?” Keith insists with a twitch of his right arm and a hint of doubt at the crease of his mouth, “with Allura….”

“She’ll come around,” Shiro tells him with a little more conviction than he actually feels, “don’t worry too much about it.”

“She’ll have to,” Keith says, more of a promise than a statement, “you were right about him. She has to see that.”

Shiro allows himself to give Keith a grateful smile before he makes his way down to the training room.

***

Dinner is a tense, if not entirely stiff affair. Shiro has to divide his time and attention between Doc and Allura, occasionally getting sympathetic-slash-apologetic glance from Coran. It’s not even a surprise, it’s been clear from the beginning that Coran is here for the the princess more than the kids, and he’s been on Allura’s side more than theirs from day one. Given Allura’s current position, it’s a good thing that she has that kind of unwavering support.

It’s just that in situations like these, it’d be great for Shiro if he could have a little help in trying to make her see things from a different angle.

Fortunately, the most notable effects of that frankly unsuccessful dinner are that everyone goes back to their own thing instead of hanging out together like Shiro’s tried to get them to do about once a week, and it takes Pidge three times to catch his attention when he rounds the corridor.

She looks worried when he finally turns back to her, her gaze searching his face a little longer than he’s comfortable with before she looks at the ground and fiddles with her glasses.

“Doc kind of let slip why he wanted to calibrate the translators for Naquodi,” she says, one foot scratching at the ground, “and I just—I’m sorry I didn’t realize. What Daibazeel did to you, I mean. If I’d known I—”

“You’d have politely asked Zarkon to keep his minions quiet?”

The Galra arm hides behind the rest of him when Shiro gives Pidge a reassuring smile. Okay, so maybe it’s a little bit of an embarrassed smile because Matt’s comfort techniques aren’t the ones he’s naturally comfortable with. Time to get back to the things he actually know how to do.

“I’m sorry,” he says, reaching out to bump Pidge’s shoulder with his hand, “that was ridiculous. My point stands though. You couldn’t have done anything about it on your own. Not before you learned to read Coran and Allura’s alphabet, anyway.”

Besides, how could Pidge even have thought of that? Shiro’s year in Zarkon’s custody is still a complete mystery. Who would have guessed he’d come out of it with issues about a language he couldn’t remember? He certainly didn’t.

Pidge looks small, though, smaller than she normally does, and much too young. She’s blinking an awful lot, too, so Shiro catches both her shoulders and waits until she’s looking at him before he promises he’ll be okay.

“Besides, this thing with the translators will help. More than you know. See? You’re already doing everything you can. There’s nothing to feel guilty about.”

Pidge nods, trying to mask a sniffle by scratching her sneakers together, and Shiro sort of wants to scream. She’s just fifteen, for heaven’s sake, fifteen! She’s practically a child, still, what was the Garrison thinking? What was Allura thinking for that matter?

Well, alright, Allura was mainly thinking about an intergalactic war she had no one to fight with and a giant enemy ship en route to annihilating planet Aurus and the seven of them along the way. It’s not like Allura herself is much older than the rest of Shiro’s teammates anyway, and unless there’s a much wider cultural gap between Altean royals and Earth, she probably did the best she could with a truly dismal situation.

That doesn’t make anything any less terrible though and, not for the first time, Shiro promises himself that if there is a God somewhere, he’s definitely getting punched at one point or another.

“Sorry,” Pidge mutters again before rubbing at her eyes, “it’s just—sometimes I forget there’s a war out there. There’s all this cool tech and all these things to learn and Lance always talks like it’s a movie and I just—I forget, okay? But then someone gets hurt or we’re attacked or I think about my family and I—”

She cuts herself off with a hoarse, frustrated shout, and Shiro’s heart breaks when he realizes she’s already beyond saving. It’s not even a surprise, really, but it doesn’t hurt any less, because Pidge’s childhood is over.

It’d be too dramatic to say Katie Holt is dead, especially when it’s so easy to find her behind that strange Matt costume she built for herself, but she’ll never be the same again. Even if everything stopped now, if they could go back to Earth and forget Zarkon, forget Voltron, forget space altogether and never look at the sky again, the war would follow her home.

There’s nothing Shiro can do about that but try and do some damage control where he can.

“I’m fine,” Pidge protests when Shiro tries to pull her into a hug, “I mean, obviously I’m not, but I can handle it on my own.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt it,” Shiro promises with utmost sincerity, “but the good part about being on a team is that you don’t have to.”

He’s relieved when Pidge accepts a hug the second time around, and not just because he needed one too.

***

“I’m not the only one who thinks it’s kind of sad,” Lance whispers, almost too low to be heard over the quiet swish of a closing door, “right?”

Shiro doesn’t quite get it, at first, but then he takes a look around the room and finally spots Allura on the opposite corner of the recreation room, with ridiculously large headphones and a thick tome of Altean literature in her hands. She’s curled up into a tight ball, every line of her body tense and displaying a very clear ‘don’t talk to me’ vibe, and the sight of it shakes something loose in Shiro’s stomach.

“Pidge said the translators won’t be reading until lunch, at best,” Lance continues, still trying to pretend he’s not staring at Allura out of the corner of his eyes, “I don’t know what I’ll do if she keeps looking like a clam all day. It’s getting ridiculous.”

Ridiculous isn’t exactly the word Shiro would use. They’re roughly halfway through the first half of the day cycle, which means they’d usually be gathered in the rec room to talk about their mornings and the things they’ve been up to until now. Occasionally, Pidge gets a cat nap in those moments, but they’re generally a time filled with innocent conversations and too many voices trying to talk at the same time.

With the translators gone, however….

“D’you think it’ll still be that awkward when the translators come back?”

Shiro blushes a little when Lance catches him staring, but honestly he’s too surprised to care. Out of all the words he’d use to describe Lance, perceptive isn’t exactly at the top of the list. Probably wouldn’t even make it to the top ten, actually. He wouldn’t have thought Lance capable of thinking that far ahead, or at the very least not willing to.

Apparently he was wrong with that. Worse, judging by his lack of reaction, Lance expected him to be.

“I know I’m stupid,” he says with a stiff little shrug, “but even I can tell this is probably not about the book.”

“Probably not,” Shiro agrees.

They used to speak Russian between themselves in the beginning. Mastering the language is a requirement to enter the Garrison, a tradition that dates back to the very first days of humankind in space, and there are things that are easier to say in Russian, or at least more of a reflex, for some...not to mention that, in space, Keith wouldn’t have been allowed to use English at all. It’s easy enough for them to switch from one language to the other between one sentence and the next, and they didn’t think anything of it until the Lions told them they were messing with the translator software.

Now, they can either speak English or leave Coran and Allura in the dust, the only two speakers of their language left in the universe. No one else understands the rise and fall of Altean, the clicking sound of its consonants that sound like a fight in Shiro’s ears, or the shortness of its vowels that might as well not be there. Lance is right: this is probably not about the book.

Which goes to prove….

“You’re not stupid, though,” he tells Lance. Then, before the kid can protest: “You have terrible timing, and you need to sort through your priorities, alright? But someone stupid wouldn’t have noticed that.”

“I—don’t think Pidge would agree with you on that,” Lance manages at last, face red and eyes carefully kept away from Shiro’s.

Well, that one, at least, will be easy to deal with.

“Pidge’s brother was selected for a history-making mission at the tender age of twenty two and she called him an idiot all the time.”

It was all siblings’ teasing, and Shiro really hopes Lance will know better than to try and discuss that with Pidge right now, but he’s still heard Matt complain about it enough to last him for a lifetime, thank you very much. Besides, it’s not good for anyone to use the Holt family as a base for how smart they should be. It’s really just setting oneself up for disappointment.

“Was he?” Lance asks, “Before he—I mean—”

“Yes,” Shiro replies, even though the word hurts a little, stings at his throat and eyes in a way he has yet to get used to, “he is. It’s completely possible to be an idiot and a genius at the same time.”

Lance’s grin is the kind that announces a bad joke in the very near future, but the proverbial bell comes to Shiro’s rescue in the form of Coran, who all but dances into the room and over to Allura, barely waiting until she looks at him before he presents her a translator like it’s a royal crown. He’s babbling about something or another and looking disturbingly serious about it when Lance decides to repeat the words he just said.

Coran and Allura stare at him like he’s just grown a second head for a second, before Coran asks a question with a suspicious raise of his eyebrow. Lance parrots that, too,throwing an imitation of Coran’s stance into the mix, and grinning harder when it only prompts Coran to look even more flustered. By the third time this happens, Coran is about ready to pop a vein, and Shiro would tell Lance to stop if Allura weren’t trying to hide her giggle into her hand.

Pleasantly surprised at the turn of events, Shiro makes a note to praise Lance for it later on, and to pay more attention to the boy’s talents. It’s easy to feel inadequate compared to people like Hunk and Pidge who really know their stuff, and it won’t do to have one or their team members develop an inferiority complex. Besides, apparently Shiro himself could stand to learn not to judge people on one single criteria.

***

“It’s a good thing you finished calibrating the translator this fast, Pidge,” Allura comments while the teams settles down at the lunch table, “we never know what’s going to happen, and being unable to communicate for too long is strategically unsound.”

“Yeah, it’s a good thing Doc knows his way around these things,” Pidge agrees, “it’d have been a lot longer otherwise.”

Shiro, separated from Allura by Coran’s silhouette on his right, can’t clearly see her features, but the pinched silence that follows Pidge’s statement can hardly be interpreted as anything positive. Shiro bites on a sigh and, when the door opens to let the last guest in, he gestures for Doc to sit on the opposite side of the table, one seat removed from Pidge so he won’t take Hunk’s chair. It’s not that he wants to emulate old fashioned ideas about who sits where, precisely. No one realized that’s what was happening until Coran marveled that they’d finally learned to take their proper places at the table.

With the present situation, though, taking that kind of detail into consideration can’t hurt.

“Honestly,” Lance says when it’s clear no one else is going to break the awkward silence, “I think we should do that more often. Coran and I had a super interesting conversation in Altean earlier—”

“You are learning Altean?”

“Oh, yeah,” Lance replies, only glancing at Doc before he turns back to the Alteans of the team: “isn’t that right? It’s like Coran says: ‘Stop being so obnoxious!’”

Shiro’s translator beeps off, the electronic voice an odd addition to Lance’s words, and for a moment everyone looks kind of at a loss for words. Ironically enough, the joke worked much better without the translators, which is a first...Shiro is kind of considering where to go from there, when Pidge says:

“I’m impressed you pronounced that well enough for the machine to get it.”

“And I only heard it once, too,” Lance replies with a noticeable puff of his chest, “I guess I’m a language genius or something.”

“Probably,” Pidge agrees with a little too much enthusiasm to be sincere, “can you say ‘sono un ragazzo infantile’?”

Shiro, who has enough experience with Matt’s use of Italian to dread the worst, half expects Lance to trap himself by trying to keep the joke going. Instead, the kid’s face goes from boastful to offended as he yells:

“¡Hey! ¡No soy infantil!”

“Ma sei un ragazzo?” Pidge replies with the cheekiest grin Shiro has ever seen on anyone.

“Do you understand that?” Coran fake-whispers.

Shiro shakes his head while Pidge and Lance continue their slightly-stilted argument.

“I didn’t know Lance spoke Italian.”

“It’s not Italian, it’s Spanish!” Both Lance and Pidge protest in accidental but somewhat amusing unison.

Hunk comes comes bearing food before anything more can be said, but at least when Shiro glances toward Allura, he finds her a little less tense than before, which he’s willing to take as progress. He goes as far as giving Lance a discreet thumb up, guilt blossoming in his chest when the kid all but glows in response.

The peace, fragile as it may be, lasts until Hunk is done serving everyone and Doc winces as soon as his spoon enters his mouth, all put spitting the thing back into his plate.

“Is the food that bad?” Hunk asks with a puzzled look down at the serving dish, “No one’s complained about the taste so far….”

“Not at all,” Doc explains after a long drag of water, face scrunched up in distaste as he gestures at his spoon: “metal tastes extremely unpleasant to my species, but I assume you do not face the same problem.”

“No, we don’t,” Keith answers with a frown, knuckles oddly white around his own cutlery, “what do you generally use, then?”

“At home, I eat with my fingers, like everyone else. Zarkon uses stone cutlery.”

“Well we’re sorry we don’t have Zarkon’s silverware.”

Allura keeps her voice low enough that Shiro almost misses the words, and by the time he turns to try and catch her gaze she’s already flushing and looking down at the table, Coran’s eyebrows drawn together while he looks at her. It’s a relief to realize neither Doc nor the rest of the Paladins seem to have heard any of that.

It’s still enough to make the Galra arm twitch with the urge to punch the table and tell everyone to start behaving like reasonable adults, thank you very much.

“For a second there I thought I’d poisoned you,” Hunk’s saying by the time Shiro goes back to the conversation, but it makes Doc chuckle:

“Not at all. I’ve always been fond of Altean cuisine.”

“How would you know Altean cuisine?”

This time Allura doesn’t disguise her voice and. Well.

She has plenty of reasons to act the way she does. She’s young, stuck in a terrible situation with little to no adequate support system. She’s lost her family, her planet and any chance at what she’d probably consider a normal life in what felt like the blink of an eye, and she’s been at war with Zarkon’s empire ever since.

She’s seen Zarkon’s soldiers hurt countless of people, kidnap her, injure Lance and Shiro to the point where their survival was not a guarantee. And then, between all of this, she’s also had to listen to countless stories of the Galra army’s cruelty. It’s no wonder she has a hard time moving on...heck, for that matter, so does Shiro!

Really, it’s almost over the top when you look at it: he’s never going to be able to look at anything purple the same way again, his opinions on facial hair have drastically evolved since he was last on earth, and even the language makes him want to run out of the room and crawl into bed...and that’s before you even get to the piece of Galra tech he never wanted but probably wouldn’t have survived without. If there’s anyone on this team other than Coran and Allura who knows what the Galra can do, it’s definitely Shiro.

He’s trying to move past it though! It’s tiring and grueling and sometimes it leaves him shaky and on the edge of collapse but he keeps going because that’s what must be done! And yes, okay, maybe it’ selfish to want others to do the same. Maybe he should just do his job quietly without expecting literal kids to reason like the trained adult he is. He’s probably being unbearably entitled just for thinking this.

He still sort of wants to grab Allura by the shoulders and shake her until she stops thinking with her wounds.

“I was born on Naquod,” Doc explains with a stiff shrug, one claw tapping at the edge of his plate, “it’s hasn’t been economically significant for a long time now, but it is quite close to both Daibazaal and Altea’s former positions. When those two planets were destroyed, the Naquol welcomed Galra and Altean refugees alike.”

It makes sense, really. Whenever there’s a huge displacement of population, there’s always at least one party willing to provide a place to stay, but knowing that doesn’t leave Shiro any less surprised.

Judging by her face, Allura wasn’t expecting that, either.

“You mean we—there are other Alteans alive?”

“I...don’t think it would be fair of me to say yes, Princess,” Doc replies, picking his words with undisguised caution, “it has been several thousands of years since the Migration, and things have had quite the time to change. There are Naquodi of Altean heritage, but your people as you know it is well and truly lost.”

“Why would Naquod take refugees from both planets?” Lance asks with a frown, “Wouldn’t it put them at risk of a civil war?”

The rest of the table stares at him.

“What? I’m Cuban! You think we don’t learn what civil wars are like in school?”

Shiro mostly thinks the lot of them need to stop underestimating Lance, but that’s neither here nor there.

“I don’t think that would have been the refugees’ first idea,” he points out, “no matter what destroyed Daibazaal, the Galra who landed on Naquod would have just lost their planet, their roots, their homes—”

“There was that,” Doc agrees, “all the histories I’ve heard say the mourning ceremonies lasted for at least ten years...and besides, the Naquol hid the Alteans. Our two people didn’t make unsupervised contact until about three thousand years ago, when the Altean Naquodi started venturing to the surface more often.”

“You mean the Naquol kept these people hidden for seven thousand years? Why?”

“Zarkon, of course,” Doc shrugs. “My knowledge of other planets’ is widely informed by his school and therefore untrustworthy, but there are numerous accounts of Daibazeel assaults on Naquodi settlements, especially in the early centuries. They were looking for Alteans.”

“What for?” Hunk asks, but it kind of looks like he’s already figured the answer out.

“Extermination. I don’t know why the Alteans didn’t fight back—”

“There were outnumbered,” Allura scoffs, fists so tight Shiro can almost pretend he sees the blood recede from her fingertips, “Zarkon had just destroyed their planet.”

“Yes, our histories agree with you there. They do also state that an Altean fleet destroyed Daibazaal first, though.”

“That was different!”

The silence that follows presses against Shiro’s ears until they start whistling, heavy and harsh against his ribs. Across the table, Pidge, Hunk and Lance stare between Coran and Allura with identical gaping mouth, and Keith’s fingers cling to Shiro’s wrist tight enough to hurt.

None of that holds a candle to the burning shine of Allura’s eyes as she glares daggers at Doc, half raised out of her chair as if to jump at the Galra’s throat. She’s shivering too, and Shiro can see her shoulders rise and fall with each of her heavy breaths, but before he can make a move to try and deescalate the situation, Coran says:

“From your father’s perspective, maybe. I am not sure the Galras would have been quite so ready to agree.”

Allura, when she falls back into her seat, looks like a distressed rag doll. The room has fallen silent enough that Shiro wouldn’t even be surprised to hear a pin drop, and even Doc looks kind of uncomfortable with the sudden shift of events.

To Shiro’s right, Coran stares straight though Lance at something long gone. There are lines around his mouth Shiro never noticed before, and when he blinks back to the present and tilts his head forward, the usual extravagance of his demeanor vanishes under the weight of age.

“I believe it is time we had a conversation about this war and how it started,” Coran says. He follows it with a sigh and concludes: “We should have talked about this a long time ago, but I was not ready to face that particular disaster, and I used your inexperience as an excuse to indulge my sensitivity and pride...for that, I am sorry.”

Shiro kicks Keith in the ankle before he can voice what looks like a rather annoyed recrimination. They can argue about the past later, if they ever have that kind of time and energy to waste. Right now, though, Shiro agrees with Coran. It’s high time they learned how this mess started.

Before he can start talking, though, Allura turns to Doc and tells him:

“I think we would rather have this conversation in private.”

“No.”

Coran pauses to make sure no one moves but honestly, it’s entirely superfluous. He’s discussed some of Allura’s orders in the past, yes, but he’s never disobeyed them, let alone encourage someone to do the same. It’s more than enough to keep the Paladins riveted to their seats and their mouths shut.

“Doc trusted us with the existence of Altean survivors which, considering Zarkon’s genocidal intentions, would put them and any who allies with them in great danger. It seems natural to trust him with this...Zarkon knows what happened then better than I do, anyway.”

Allura’s wide, wide eyes turn to Shiro as if to ask for help understanding what’s going on, and he can’t do anything but offer a helpless shrug. He’d love to help here, yes, but he’s not responsible for Coran’s abrupt change in attitude, and he does want to know what’s going on. Besides, if Zarkon was at the heart of it from the beginning, there really is no reason to keep any of what they know a secret from a spy who’s been working against him for longer than he’s been in his army.

“Zarkon was the first Black Paladin of Voltron,” Coran tells Doc with a somber air.

The Galra takes the news with more stoicism than Shiro and the rest of the team first displayed, but then again he did spend who knows how long surrounded by faithful followers of Zarkon. He’s got some practice in controlling his face.

“He was already king of Daibazaal when Prince Alfor visited him as an envoy for his mother, Queen Aleen. I hadn’t entered royal service yet, and King Alfor never shared the details of their acquaintance with me, but I do know that it did not take long before their relationship progressed beyond professional necessity. Together, they forged solid bonds of diplomatic collaboration between Daibazaal and Altea before they moved on to negotiating treaties with other neighboring planets...three rulers in particular proved to be most cooperative, and rapidly became King Alfor and Zarkon’s friends.”

“Who were these people?”

Pidge’s leaning forward on the table, eyebrows drawn together like she’s afraid Coran will stop talking if they stop paying sufficient attention. That would be disastrous, both from a strategical standpoint and with regard to their still-tenuous team spirit, but Shiro almost wishes he would. After all, they already know the end of the story.

They know nothing good is coming.

“Gyrgan, Grand Councilman of Rygnirath,” Coran recites, eyes closing as he speaks, “Elected Princess Trigel of the Dalterion Belt, and—”

“Blaytz the Giant.”

Doc flinches a little when they all turn to look at him, but Shiro suspects him of doing that on purpose, to put them at ease.

“He’s a prominent part of our pantheon,” he explains with the slightest shrug. “According to our founding myth, the Galras were stolen from the mother planet by a fleet of creatures dressed in white. Blaytz saw this and gathered them all in sea foam. He brought them to Nalquod, plucked asteroids from the sky to make them habitable lands, and told them they were were free to stay on the planet until it adopted them. That’s what Naquodi means: the adopted people.”

“Well, ‘giant’ isn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe Blaytz, although he was rather tall even for a Naquol,” Coran says with a nostalgic chuckle, “but Naquol ships relied on magic more than achievable science to make their way through space, and one of their more remarkable features was the spherical, transparent force fields that made them look like giant bubbles. And of course, knowing him, he would have enjoyed the idea of being mistaken for a trickster god immensely.”

Coran, Shiro’s sure, doesn’t mean for them to see the wistful smile that settles on his face at the memory, but it’s impossible to miss nonetheless. It’s a sharp reminder that they know almost nothing about him, except that he is deeply devoted to Allura.

The rest of his life up until the Paladins eventually woke him up in the Castle of Lions is a complete mystery.

“Did you know him well?” Hunk asks, then blinks when Coran chuckles.

“I did, yes. I dare say I knew him better than I ever had time to know King Alfor. Blaytz got me a post in the palace, but I didn’t enter the King’s personal service for several years after that. Ah, the things that can happen when the right people think you’re funny.”

Coran’s face in that moment kind of reminds Shiro of his older instructors at the Garrison, the ones who’ve been doing this job long enough that they’ve lost all reserve about sharing their most outrageous pranks with the cadets. There’s always a certain sense of nostalgia hovering somewhere around their lips when they do.

Generally speaking, it does to them the same thing it’s currently doing for Coran: it makes them look more human. Or, well. More like a real person.

“Anyway, enough about me.”

“Yeah, let’s get talking about Voltron!” Lance exclaims, and grunts when Pidge knocks him in the ribs.

“It didn’t start with Voltron,” Coran corrects, “it started with a comet. It crashed on Daibazaal a couple of years before Princess Allura’s birth. No one had ever seen the metal that composed it, so when Zarkon declared his scientists too busy trying to save an already dying Daibazaal to study this new phenomenon, King Alfor reacted in true alchemist fashion and more or less begged Zarkon to let him dispatch a team to Daibazaal.”

“My father didn’t beg,” Allura protests—softly, yes, but with no less feeling for it.

“These are the words your father used when he told shared this story with me, Princess,” Coran tells her in a gentle voice, “‘A metal no one’s ever seen before and a dimensional disruption in one place!’ he said, ‘of course I begged Zarkon to let me study it’.”

“Alright, let’s pause,” Lance interrupts with furrowed eyebrows, “what’s a dimensional disruption?”

“I must admit an explanation would be useful to me, too,” Doc adds.

Truthfully, Shiro could use one as well. He’s fairly sure Matt’s explained something like that before, but it’s been a while and a lot of things happened since then. A little refreshing can’t hurt.

“We have a similar theory on Earth,” Pidge says before Coran can reply, “though we haven’t managed to confirm it for ourselves yet. Anyway, the idea is that the reality we live in isn’t the only one; that there is an infinity of realities coexisting next to one another without ever meeting.”

“What, you mean like parallel universes?”

“Yes, Lance, exactly like that.”

Sometimes, when Pidge starts explaining science to the others, she sounds so much like her brother Shiro wonders how anyone at the Garrison could possibly miss the relation. Evidently, Earth needs to strengthen its defenses if it wants to stand a chance against aliens.

“Isn’t the keyword in this theory ‘parallel’ though?” Keith asks from his spot next to Shiro. “How does a comet crashing punch a hole between two of them? Because if all we gotta do is dig, the universe had better start worrying.”

“Things aren’t quite that simple,” Allura says, rubbing at her temples with the tip of her fingers, “from what Pidge told me, your earth scientists discount magic in their research, right?”

“Discount magic?” Doc says with an air of deep puzzlement, “How does anyone discount magic?”

For the first time since they met the Galra, Coran and Allura seem to share a certain feeling of commiseration with him. Shiro isn’t sure how he should take the fact that they’re bonding over what seems to be a sizable amount of disappointment with Earth’s techniques.

“It is a rather foolish endeavor,” Coran agrees, “but most civilizations go through that phase in their primitive stages. To be fair,” he adds when he realizes the Terrans in the room aren’t too pleased with his assessment of their planet, “magic couldn’t fully explain what the comet was or how exactly it created the Rift. It did, however, allow King Alfor’s lead scientist, Honerva, to come up with a new source of fuel which King Alfor later used to power the vessels he’d built with the comet’s metal.”

“The Lions.”

“Yes, Hunk,” Coran confirms, “the Lions were, indeed, built with the metal found in that comet, and powered with the quintessence Head Researcher Honerva found in the Rift.”

Allura, when Shiro looks at her, looks small and wide-eyed, like a child in a crisis too big for them to grasp. She knew that Zarkon was Black’s first Paladin, she made that clear enough, but if her reaction is anything to go by, she wasn’t privy to all the details until now.

Shiro, selfishly enough, is kind of glad he isn’t in her shoes.

“Alright, so there was a big dimensional hole in the middle of Daibazaal, and Alfor made a bunch of kinda magic robots,” Hunk sums up with slightly more efficiency than eloquence, “I still don’t see how that equals conquering the entire universe and trying to wipe an entire planet’s worth of species out of existence.”

“You heard Coran,” Pidge says with a displeased twist to her mouth, “Daibazaal was already dying before the comet crashed there. The impact itself won’t have helped the planet’s structural integrity—”

“But the gravity variations surrounding a dimensional distortions would only have accelerated the process,” Hunk realizes with a gasp of horror.

“So, wait,” Shiro asks, “is this what caused Daibazaal’s destruction? The Rift compromised the integrity of that planet so much it couldn’t hold it?”

“But then it wouldn’t make sense for Zarkon to go to war over it,” Lance points out. “The planet was already dying, anyway. And even if the Rift made it faster, he couldn’t blame Alfor for the comet falling there, right?”

“But that reasoning is only valid if the Rift really was the reason Daibazaal exploded,” Doc remarks. “Altean Naquodi tell stories about a great Abyss poised to engulf the galaxy, and a fleet of heroes setting out to close it.”

“You know Altean legends?” Allura asks, visibly too exhausted to put much energy into the question, “How?”

“My great grandfather was one of them.”

The room erupts in a cacophony of protests, ranging from from ‘your species were from different planets’ to ‘do you really expect us to believe that’, and for a second there Shiro has to resist the urge to just get up and leave the room. He doesn’t of course, that would be completely irresponsible, but he does think about it, and wishes Matt were here to share a Look with him over all of this.

In the end, the responsible thing to do wins out, and he ends up getting to his feet to shout at everyone to stop.

“We all need to know what went down, and we need to hear it now, not in three weeks,” he reminds the crew with the sternest voice he can muster, “so everyone sit on your debates and let Coran finish.”

For a moment there, he’s afraid people are just going to keep staring at him and forget the important thing again. Fortunately, Coran is quick to recover once Shiro sits down, and he ventures:

“There’s… actually not much left to tell? The Naquodi stories, while they obviously took on some legendary qualities as time went on, align with what King Alfor told me. According to him, something did come out of the Rift, but Zarkon and Honerva refused to close it, even when the planet’s integrity was compromised beyond repair. Even after the creatures came back, Zarkon tried to trick the other Paladins into keeping the Rift open. In the end, he and Honerva fell in and perished. King Alfor ordered an emergency evacuation of Daibazaal, which the population was neither prepared for nor warned about. According to Princess Trigel, some of them had to be dragged out of their home by force.”

“Well that certainly explains why Doc’s people think the Galra were stolen from their planet,” Keith mutters, “what was Zarkon thinking?”

“Evidently, nothing good,” Allura states, steadier than she’s been so far but harder, too.

It’s not necessarily a reassuring sight, but Shiro can’t exactly find it in himself to disagree, not when Doc himself doesn’t have anything to say against it. It’s hard to form a definite judgment, of course: Coran’s story isn’t nearly complete or exhaustive enough to allow for that, but it does give the beginning of an explanation as to why the Galras agreed to follow Zarkon’s quest for Altean blood.

Earth, after all, has seen genocides that started for reasons far smaller than the seemingly-arbitrary destruction of a planet.

“As for his death, as you can imagine, it was only faked. My father and the other Paladins organized official funerals for Zarkon and Honerva, but when Councilman Gyrgan’s retinue went to retrieve their bodies, they were gone.”

“And yet,” Coran says in a subdued tone, the fingers of his left hand twirling at his mustache, “your father personally confirmed their deaths, and with magic to boot. If they faked their demise, they used magic techniques I’d never heard of before...if anything, if that was all part of their plans to go on and destroy Altea, they missed a great opportunity by leaving before their funerals.”

“Oooh, yeah!” Lance exclaims with a hearty chuckle, “can you imagine that? Suddenly, the king’s back from the dead! He could have just pretended to be a god or something and wham, people would have just flocked to his side to do his bidding.”

“This is no laughing matter, Lance!” Allura protests, “Zarkon attacked Altea three days after his supposed death—our people barely had time to flee! Do you have any idea how horrified we all were?”

Lance blanches, then flushes, and he stammers around apologies he doesn’t quite seem to know how to form. He didn’t mean anything by it, Shiro is sure, but he does need to learn how to think before he speaks. He can’t just go around putting his foot in his mouth like that all the time.

“Okay, Lance is a dunce,” Keith sighs in a familiar ‘duh’ tone, “but he’s got a point. Pretending to come back to life during his funerals would have been a great way to get people to do what he said and believe in him.”

“You are not seriously suggesting we assume he was genuinely killed then resurrected?” Doc asks, medical indignation written in all the lines of his body, “not even magic can do that. There has to be a rational explanation.”

“Well,” Shiro says, shrugging to soften the blow, “we do have a thing on Earth called Lazarus syndrome. I don’t remember the medical reasons behind it, but the main thing about it is that the victims of it appear dead even after extended testing, and then they ‘come back’ after a while. Zarkon and Honerva could have gone through the Galra equivalent of that.”

“Besides,” Pidge points out with a pained-looking cringe, “Zarkon has apparently managed to survive for ten thousands of Altean years. Unless you tell me that’s a normal life cycle for a Galra, it makes resurrection a lot more plausible than it normally would.”

For once, Shiro doesn’t have any reservation about joining in the collective groan of despair. As if their situation wasn’t bad enough! First they were a ragtag team faced with an army powerful enough to get the universe on lock down, then it turned out the enemy was the former Black Paladin, and now the guy is immortal as well as eternal? What the heck is wrong with their collective luck, seriously?

Really, though, having hope until now was hard enough as it was. It’s been an uphill battle for the start for Shiro. Yeah, okay, the kids have been doing pretty good, all things considered, but they’re just that: kids. They may not all have had the easiest life, but while losing family members hurts like nothing else, it’s still not adequate preparation for war, let alone in these conditions!

The weight of realization sinks into Shiro’s shoulders faster than he thought possible, drags him down toward the table, and the only thing preventing him from face planting right into the metal is the Galra hand that slots itself under his forehead, the metal surprisingly cool against his skin.

Around him, the room falls silent. He glances at the other side of the table under the fingers. At Pidge and the subtle shiver of her lips. At Hunk and the way he sways from one side to the other. At Lance, and the open mouthed gap of shock on his face.

Right, no. He can’t collapse. Not here, not now. If he needs to sit down and have a good cry, he’s going to have to wait until he’s alone for that because right now, his team is counting on its commanding officer to lead the way, and he’s not about to drag them down to the ground with him.

“Well, this is wasn’t nearly as encouraging as I’d hoped,” he says, knowing better than to try and pretend he’s alright after that poorly thought-out display of weakness, “and I really hope we get better news next time, but at least now we’re better prepared.”

“Really?” Hunk squeaks, “Because from where I’m standing all of this just sounded like one terrible piece of news after another.”

“We know how the war started. We know Zarkon was obsessed with the Dimensional Rift, and that it’s where he got the formula for his fuel from.” Shiro releases a breath for a while, relieved to realize exactly how useful Coran’s story might prove to be in the long run, “We know the Lions have only been in effective use for, what, nineteen, twenty years?”

“Twenty-one,” Coran supplies, his relief and hopefulness mirrored on the others’ faces.

“Twenty one years,” Shiro repeats. “It’s nothing. Completely insignificant compared to how long they’ve existed, and they’re magical semi-sentient robots. They may have evolved in all that time. Even if they haven’t, they may well have powers Zarkon isn’t aware of.”

“And if he doesn’t know about them, he won’t know how to counter them!” Keith grins beside him.

“Which means we’ll have an advantage over him!” Lance continues.

“We also know Honerva might still be alive,” Pidge adds with a wide grin, “maybe she can help us—”

“Honerva was Zarkon’s wife,” Coran cautions, “If she’s still alive, she might very well still be helping him.”

“If that’s the case, we know we can cripple Zarkon’s machine by taking her out,” Shiro counters, “that’s not something to be forgotten about.”

“We might also have the beginning of an explanation for Zarkon’s lifespan.”

Shiro, like the others, turns to stare at Doc like he’s grown a second head, but he barely even has to run a hand over his mostly-shaved skull before he takes it all in stride. If Shiro’s being honest, he’s more than a little envious about that.

“I told you earlier that I had Altean blood,” Doc explains with a little frown, “I understand your instinctive denial. It makes little sense for species coming from different planet to be reproductively compatible, especially when Altean Naquodi have adapted to their life underwater, but it is no less a reality, and more and more of our children have mixed ancestry with every cycle that passes. In fact, in my experience, Galras can reproduce with just about anything.”

“What do you mean, anything?” Shiro asks, trying to give himself time to process the news more than anything else, “How broad a range of species does that encompass?”

“Any species whose babies could conceivably fit inside a Galra’s body. So long as the mother is Galra, everything takes...and by everything I mean I once helped a Galra soldier give birth to a green octopus.”

“I’d never heard Galras were capable of that,” Coran remarks.

Judging by her expression, neither had Allura, but then that might just be a consequence of Alteans’ approach to sex and reproduction. It’s not like Shiro knows about these things, after all.

“Well that’s the thing,” Doc replies, one claw tapping at the edge of his plate, “I do not believe it to be a normal evolutionary quality. As you pointed out, it makes no scientific sense for a species to be somehow able to produce offspring with any and all occupant of the universe, let alone for said offspring to be just as capable of reproduction….”

“So you think it’s magic,” Hunk deduces, far calmer than Shiro would have expected him to be, “right?”

“Yes. I’m not a druid,” Doc continues with a tight pinch to his lips, “which is why I could never fully confirm this theory on my own, but if what Coran said about Daibazaal’s Rift is exact, and if it is indeed the source of Zarkon’s life span, then it is possible that its presence on the planet may have affected the Galras in deeper ways than anyone realized.”

“Okay but no one’s got proof for that, do they?” Lance points out, “I mean, isn’t proof supposed to be the basis of science or something?”

“Yeah but you gotta have a theory first, before you can prove it,” Hunk replies with a shrug, “so now we think that’s what might have happened, we can try and look for proof.”

“Where?” Allura cuts in with a sharp tone, “None of this sounds...entirely implausible...but we can’t exactly ask Zarkon about it can we?”

“But Zarkon isn’t the only Galra in the universe,” Shiro mutters, more to himself than anything else, “Coran, do you know where the rest of Daibazaal’s refugees were taken? Maybe they’ll have some kind of record we could get our hands on, see if they reveal anything interesting.”

Keith stiffens on Shiro’s left, a palpable aura of tension shrouding him in a way that makes Shiro’s hair stand up at the back of his neck. He makes a note to ask Keith about this at some point, see if he can understand where this sudden sensitivity to the Galras came from, but for now he pretends he hasn’t noticed. They’ve all got their hang ups, but they can’t afford to let them interfere with their mission, not matter what.

No matter how much it may cost them.

“As far as I know the refugees were taken in by the Paladins at first,” Coran states, vivacity coming back to him and making him look like the slightly bizarre man Shiro’s grown used to. “I have no doubt there will still be a number of Galra colonies in the Deltarion Belt... Rygnirath, on the other hand, may have sought to dispatch their charges to other systems, and there’s no telling what would happen to them or their records after that.”

“At least now we know to look for them,” Pidge says with a strained smile, “on top of all the other things we need to do and look for.”

Shiro, fully aware that she’s most likely thinking about Matt right now, sends her a sympathetic look. She doesn’t look like she buys it, exactly, but how could Shiro blame her? Just because he has to put his personal quests aside to make sure the team’s needs are still met doesn’t mean she’s forced to do the same.

It’s not like Shiro himself doesn’t wish he could just drop everything and go looking for Sam and Matt, after all.

“It’ll be slow work,” Coran tells them after a beat, “we don’t want to clue Zarkon in on our intentions, and if the Blade of Marmora is as efficient as Doc seems to believe we’ll have to rely on them to take any sort of of decisive action...but I do believe we may have the beginning of a plan to defeat him and dismantle his empire.”

“And we all know what that means, right?” Lance exclaims with a wide grin and something that comes pretty close to a clap, “right?”

“Lance—”

“IT’S PARTY TIME!” Lance yells before Hunk can finish his sentence, grabbing at the other kid’s arm and tugging him to his feet, “Come on, we’ve only got ‘til dinner to get it all ready, get a’cooking man!”

“You’ve still got chores to do!” Keith protests, but Coran’s laughter cuts him off before he can really get launched on his tirade.

“Let them be, Number Four, we may have figured out how to take Zarkon’s empire down. It is a cause for celebration.”

“But we still don’t know how to get rid of Zarkon himself!”

“We’ll have to do both anyway, won’t we?”

Pidge’s eyes are on the table when Shiro looks at her, but she doesn’t sound scared so much as weary in advance, and he finds himself echoing the sentiment with surprising intensity. They’re going to try and dismantle an empire that spans the entire known universe with eight people and more bravado than anything else...who wouldn’t be tired just thinking of it?

“I’ve felt it coming for a while,” Pidge continues, “I mean...it makes sense, right? It’s not like Galra soldiers are going to drop down on the spot when we kill Zarkon.”

“Pidge is right,” Doc agrees with a look at Coran, “you encourage them to celebrate, but they do not seem to realize the enormity of the task they have ahead of them. They react like children, and you do not discipline them for it.”

“That,” Coran says with a tired, sad smile, “would be because they are children. Puzzling things in any species, I agree, but there is something to be said about letting them act their age once in a while.”

“...The fate of the entire universe rests on the shoulders of a bunch of untrained children?”

Well. To Doc’s credit, he’s taking it with a lot more composure than Shiro would be able to muster in his position.

“We’re not children,” Keith tells the Galra, but there’s no heat behind it, “and we’ll learn. Unless you’ve got someone better to suggest as Paladins….”

No one takes him up on the challenge, but Shiro doesn’t miss the way Coran seems to jolt a little at the words, or Doc’s sharp glance at Allura. He’s pretty sure what that glance means, too. He’s been wondering about the selection process for Paladins ever since Allura assigned him to the Black Lion, and finding out about Zarkon’s history with the giant bot didn’t exactly help either.

There’s nothing to do about that right now though. If they meet someone who’s clearly better suited than them as a Paladin, they’ll do what they have to do. In the meantime, asking too many questions can be just as bad as asking too few, and Shiro has no desire to get on that path.

“In any case,” Coran concludes, a little too low to be sure he meant for Shiro and the others to hear, “none of them will be children by the time all of this is finished.”

He visibly shakes himself before declaring it time for a break, and Shiro has to agree. The past week has been even more exhausting than usual anyway, and today’s conversation may have been long overdue but that didn’t make it any less of a grueling process, intellectually and emotionally. Even Coran wasn’t left unaffected: he sits up straight, still, but his face is drawn and his shoulders sag, like he’s forgotten how to lift them up somehow.

Shiro himself would kill for a nap right about now but, barring that, he does need the war talk to stop for a while. It’s not like they can go hop around Galra colonies before they figure out how Zarkon tracked them to Doc’s base anyway, and even then it’s certainly not going to be a one day trip. Might as well rest get some rest while it’s still possible.

The others must have reached the same, independent conclusion, because Doc rises to his feet with a sigh and asks for directions to the library.

“The scrolls on thermoreactive Nidhesti camouflage were interesting,” he says with a slight smirk, “but I’m curious to see if the Altean texts will yield anything about medicine.”

He leaves the room at a sedate pace and, after a few seconds and some noise about wanting to use the training room, Keith follows him out of the door. For a moment there, Pidge looks like she’s going to stick around and try to continue the discussion, but her mouth falls shut with a little click, and she sighs.

“Well, there’s nothing much we can do just now,” she says with the tone of someone who’s trying to convince herself more than others, “I think I’m gonna go fiddle with the computers.”

It’s probably code for going over what little they have on Matt’s whereabouts once again, and Shiro wishes she could find something else to busy her mind with, but he doesn’t dissuade her. Anything’s better than aimless brooding, after all.

Coran is the next one to get up, back ramrod straight despite the clear signs of fatigue in his expression. Shiro expects him to just go do whatever it is he does in this free time, but instead the man gives him a solemn look, clicks his heels in front of Shiro, and bows deep enough to show off the top of his head.

“Please accept my renewed apologies for failing to discuss this matter with you any sooner,” Coran tells Shiro with stiff resignation. “We have no way to measure the time my neglect cost us, but—”

“Coran, please,” Allura cuts in, more anguish on her face than Shiro remembers seeing before, “stop. You kept quiet on my orders.”

A look of deep unease passes over Coran’s features, something sad weighed at the corner of his eyes, but he doesn’t protest. He turns to Allura instead, letting her know he’ll be in command central running a couple of routine maintenance protocols before he leaves without any of his usual flourishes.

Shiro resists the urge to ask for all of a few seconds before he caves in.

“You told him to keep all of that from us?”

“I was hoping to protect you from this mess,” Allura says, the tone of her voice indicating she’s fully aware she’s already used that argument. “How naive of me, wasn't it? I’ll send children to war but I won’t tell them friendships can break. What a magnificent leader I make.”

“It’s okay, Allura, you—”

“How can you tell me it’s okay?” Allura protests, pushing away from the table in a painful scrape of chair against the floor. “I’m the one who chose you! I threw you at the Lions, I pushed you all through entirely inappropriate training exercises…I’ve asked you all to put your lives on the line again and again without consideration for your ages, your lack of experience, or your legitimate wishes to get back to your planet and your families! Again and again, I ask you to sacrifice everything for a cause that wasn’t even yours—”

“Zarkon conquered most of the known universe,” Shiro points out, using Allura’s words from that fateful first day right back at her, “sooner or later he’d have stumbled on Earth and we’d have been involved in all this whether you were with us or not. Fighting with Voltron is hardly a walk in the park, but I assure you we’re far safer here than we would be if Galra forces suddenly invaded our homes.”

“Even so,” Allura counters, clearly unconvinced, “if not for me, you would all be with your families.”

“Not me,” Shiro point out, getting to his feet so he can stand in front of Allura and get his point across more easily, “If it hadn’t been for the Blue Lion and your help I’d be back on a Galra ship right now. I don’t remember a lot from my first time there but it’s enough to know I’m better off here. Pidge would be no closer to finding Matt and Sam.”

Shiro has to bite on a sigh when Allura looks up at him like she’s five and hurt and hoping for a magic band-aid. She may be worried about the children she sent to war, but she’s not that much older herself, and it’s not like she’s spared her own efforts.

“Look, I’m not going to pretend the situation isn’t terrible,” Shiro tells her with the serious, honest tone he’s found works best when he’s trying to comfort someone, “and it’s true you messed up in the beginning, but that happens to everybody. You had no resources, no support, no way of knowing what was going to happen and not only did you get all the Lions back, you got us out of there alive and with enough team spirit to form Voltron. You did great.”

“They’re too young to fight a war,” Allura sighs after a beat of silence.

Shiro smiles and squeezes her shoulder, relieved to see it eases something in her expression. She’s not settled by any stretch of the imagination, not yet at least, but she’s definitely calmer than she was a minute ago. At this point, Shiro is literally ready to accept any kind of progress.

“You’re too young to be a commander in a war,” he tells the princess, “none of this is fair for anyone, least of all you, but you’re still doing great.”

“I’m just doing my best,” Allura mutters, cheeks darkening with a flush.

Shiro’s laughter catches him by surprise, but he’s certainly not about to complain about it.

“If it makes you feel better, this is exactly what I’m doing. We’re all doing the best we can with what we have.”

Allura’s eyes close and hear breathing hitches a little, but then her shoulder unwinds under Shiro’s fingers, and the smile she gives him is wobbly but sincere.

“Thank you for your support.”

“It’s only normal,” Shiro replies with a little shrug, “what kind of captain would I be if my team couldn’t rely on me?”

“You’re right,” Allura agrees, though the beat that passes before she speaks leaves Shiro a little perplexed, “but I wasn’t only talking about just now. I know you disapprove of my attitude toward the Galra spy.”

She gives a bitter smile while Shiro tries to figure out what to do with his face. On the one hand he doesn’t want to use the same blank face he’s served to the handful of truly insufferable officers in the Garrison. On the other, he’s not sure he wants to let his feelings on the matter be too obvious just now.

“I know you want us to get along,” Allura adds, sitting back down with a sigh, “but I fear you may never have your wish. His people destroyed my planet.”

“His ancestors did that.”

“Where’s the difference?” Allura asks, without heat this time.

In fact, she mostly just sounds as tired as Shiro feels, and he’s not as graceful as he could be when he sits down in the chair next to her and asks:

“Did you have countries on Altea?”

“Countries?” Allura repeats, the English word a little clipped in her mouth, “the translator isn’t working.”

“They’re like...a surface of land with a certain name where people live. Sometimes they’ve got different languages and flags. Sometimes they go to war with one another.”

“Oh—yes. Yes, we had those. Why do you ask?”

“A little over three centuries ago, Keith’s country and mine were at war. Keith’s country sent bombs to mine—the most powerful weapon the Earth had ever seen. It scared people so much, no one’s used it again since. They killed many of my ancestors that day. At the same time, Keith’s country also rounded up some of its citizens and kept them in prisoners camps because they or their families had once come from my country. Do you think I should blame Keith for that?”

“I—why would anyone do that?” Allura asks, obviously disturbed by the very idea, but Shiro doesn’t allow himself to fall for the change of topic.

“Do you think I should blame Keith for what his ancestors did?”

Allura lowers her eyes. There’s no doubt she knows exactly what Shiro is getting at, but anger and fear and resentment are hard things to let go of, especially when one’s used them as reasons to keep going for a while now. Shiro doesn’t want to presume too much of Allura’s motives, but then he does notice she doesn’t answer his question.

“Around the same time period,” he adds, softening his voice to show he’s trying to educate rather than blame, “my country invaded several of its neighbors. People were massacred, kept under my ancestors’ domination, and mistreated for any sign of dissent. Do you think I should be blamed for that?”

He nearly misses it when Allura shakes her head, but what matters is the gesture, not its scope.

Honestly, Shiro doesn’t even blame her. Maybe he’s just biased, but he can’t bring himself to resent someone who was most likely trying to make sense of the world in a way that allowed her to move forward… and things always seem to make more sense when they’re clear cut.

Besides, it’s not even like Shiro doesn’t wish things truly were that simple, sometimes. His life would certainly give him less migraines if he could just know to shoot every Galra he comes across and know he’d made the right choice, at any rate. It’s never been how life worked, though, and trying to pretend it is only leads to people getting hurt for no good reason.

“I get it,” he tells Allura, because there’s really no denying that, “I really do. But people are complicated, and unpredictable. If we start assuming we know them based on what species they are, we’re no better than Zarkon. So you and I, we need to learn to look a Galra in the eye and see who they are beyond the shadow of those who hurt us.”

Allura sighs and runs her hands over her face before he manages a shaky:

“You’re right. If I’m going to advocate for unity and freedom, I cannot turn around and point fingers at an entire species...or at the very least, I cannot do that and refuse to be judged by the same token.”

“What do you mean?”

“Honerva.”

Ah. Yes, that makes sense. They have no indication that she’s still alive, let alone where she is if that’s the case, but she did marry Zarkon and appear to follow him in the beginning of his crusade. If she’s still by his side, that makes her complicit not only in the attempted eradication of the Altean species, but also in the oppression of a solid nine tenths of the known universe, the destruction of at least one planet, and mass incarceration and slave trade on a scale too vast for the human brain to process. Should Allura be judged on that basis, she wouldn’t last five minute in any corner of space.

“Well, the good news is, if she’s helping Zarkon, you definitely have the moral high ground.”

Allura’s giggle is out of the ordinary, but it is no less welcome for the way it devolves into nervous, perhaps slightly hysterical laughter. Their position still isn’t ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s mostly okay.

They’ll just have to do their best.

#Voltron #VLD Fic #Takashi Shirogane #Shiro #vld shiro #Fanfiction

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bcnovels · 4 years

Text

Murder is Only a Word Away

Down

36. A certainty in life (5)

London, Wednesday, October 10. 12:15 PM

The sprawling Sunday Times editorial office was, as usual, bustling with activity and a slight distraction to his train of thought. Smooth (8), silky (5), century (7) width 16 cm, depth 10 cm, height 8 cm, mystified (9), perplexed (9), flummoxed (9), solvable (8). Around him, journalists, researchers, and editors rushed to make their deadline in the 30m wide 60m deep, dry, poorly regulated air-conditioned room. At least it was not filled with smoke as it was thirty years ago when he first began. However, the blue nicotine hue that once hung over the cigarette smoking staff was now replaced by wafts of men’s aftershave competing against female perfume, which, at times, seemed like all-out chemical warfare. Maybe smoke was a healthier option, he thought, as he made his way across the floor to his own quiet, odour free domain.

These days, George did not recognise many of the younger faces; few were employed at the newspaper as long as he.

A young female intern, early twenties, with short-cropped purple hair, stared as he walked past her desk. "Who’s that?" she asked her colleague, sitting opposite in her strong Liverpudlian accent.

Ten years her senior, fashion editor Beverley Grange glanced up with tired eyes over the top of her reading glasses at the man, early sixties, carefully weaving his way through the rows of desks, across the floor, avoiding eye contact with other staff. His non-distinctive, slightly ill-fitting dark brown pinstriped suit, with an overcoat folded over his left arm, and a full-length black gentlemen’s brolly hanging from his wrist, looked very much from another era.

"Oh," Beverley replied, finally realising who exactly the intern was commenting on, the unimposing man heading for the far corner of the office. "Oh, that's George," she sighed, then went back to preparing her copy for publication.

The young female nodded and tapped her lips with her Bic pen. "I've seen him before. Floats in and out without a word to anyone. Looks a bit of a nutter. What does he do?"

"Compiles the crossword puzzles," Beverley replied, uninterested.

"Really? I’ve never seen him at any of the editorial meetings. You mean those cryptic puzzles and all that sort of thing? He does them? Wow. My dad used to crack his brain on them every Sunday afternoon. Drove my mum mad, that did. Dead hard they are. I could never solve them."

"Me neither." Beverley said, dropping her pen and abandoning her text. She removed her reading glasses, rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger, and glanced around the room. "In fact, I don't think anyone in the office has ever completed them twice in a row. He always comes up with brain crunchers."

"Brain crushers you mean. So, he is a nutter," she sneered.

Patina (6), finish (6), lustre (6), perfection (10)

No one knew how George managed to avoid the compulsory editorial meetings, annual Christmas parties, receptions of expired, retired, or job-changing colleagues, but he did. The tedium of shaking hands and explaining his work to someone new, or listening to drunken co-workers talking about their latest exploits with bad breath bathed in a vapour of alcohol and vomit, was all too much for him to bear. After his first years of employment he developed an art for avoiding nearly all forms of contact with anyone in the office not connected to his work.

There was only one person of course, and that was enough.

Unmindful to the general noise of people talking, chatting on phones and typing on keyboards, he strolled unobtrusively towards his own tiny office in the corner.

A treasured luxury in an age of desk sharing and cutbacks, he had successfully negotiated an irreversible clause into his contract when he first joined the newspaper; a guaranteed private office. However, the actual metered space had significantly diminished over the years. Now there was just enough room for a small desk and a chair, and no more. During the last downsizing, his own hat and coat stand was made redundant. The tall late-Victorian, dark-brown mahogany stand now resided in his house just inside the front door, next to the near identical stand inherited from his parents after they died.

The moment his door closed and the noise outside became muted – tranquillity returned.

Calm (4), peace, (5), tranquillity (12), equilibrium (11), work (4)

George, unaware he was being observed through the opaque glass window of his office by another female in her early 50's, settled into his chair.

Immediately, she came into action, going through motions that had long turned into routine. She opened a locked drawer under her desk, and removed a small box filled with envelopes, all cleanly cut open, together with folded emails lodged between, ready for inspection.

As always, she knocked gently on the door and waited for permission to enter.

"Come in," George said, his voice scarcely audible.

Holding the box firmly, she opened the door just enough to step in.

"Good afternoon George," she said, cheerfully. "We've got a healthy batch this week. It should keep you busy for a while."

George gave a short but shy smile. For less than a second, he glanced up at the middle-aged woman and made eye contact as she placed the box in the middle of his small century-old, patina rich desk.

"I'll drop around later to see if you've picked any winners. Quite a few this week, I’m sure."

"Thank you Matilda," his soft voice answered, as he gazed at the overflowing box in front of him.

She lingered, as if wanting to ask something. George never noticed, his mind was elsewhere.

Winner (6), cinch (5), facile (6), sorted (6), systematise (11)

He reached out and pulled the box of letters and emails towards him.

"Right," she sighed, with an air of finality, "I’ll leave you to it." Matilda closed the door and returned to her desk.

Turning his attention to the box, George ran his hand along the edge of the letters and emails. At least two hundred, he thought. Finding a winner would be quick. The cryptic crossword last week was one of the easiest he had published in months, possibly years.

He had to give them hope.

Matilda could have picked out a winner, but that was not the way things worked in his tiny department governed by time and tradition. George was head of his own one-man operation devising the cryptic and quick crossword puzzles that appeared in all the Times newspapers. Each would normally take about thirty minutes to work out, except Sunday. The cryptic crossword puzzle for the Sunday Times was meant to be difficult. If it did not crack brains, its reputation would flounder. Created by his predecessors in the early part of the twentieth century, standards were set, and had to be upheld, no matter what.

He gently took hold of the first bunch of letters and emails. Matilda had sorted them in the usual manner. The first to arrive were at the front and last at the rear. Sense of pride that everything was fair and square for those who took the time and effort to solve the puzzles, was utmost paramount.

The prize – a rolled gold fountain pen worth two hundred pounds. Very generous, he thought. Not that he agreed to this altruistic prize depicted by senior management. He could remember the day when printing the winners name in the newspaper was more than enough accolade.

As usual, and according to his instructions, the cut-out puzzle solution remained inside the envelope, concealed. He knew of secretaries and assistant editors in rival newspapers who removed the solved puzzle and pinned it to the outer envelope for the editor to check, all for convenience. To George, it represented a violation. Years of working in intelligence during the Cold War had ingrained a strong compulsion for privacy and confidentiality. Even the most facile answers to crossword puzzles should not be exposed with a paperclip for all to see. Matilda had strict instructions to keep the box in the small locked drawer under her desk, which she dutifully did.

He could trust Matilda.

Confidence (10), certitude (9), guardian (8), cerberus (8)

A brief smile of inner merriment rose within him for a couple of seconds, but he quickly quelled it. Within ten minutes he found a winner and was in the process of writing down the name and address when his telephone rang.

"Hello?" He answered, then recognised the caller at the other end. "Ahh, Benton old friend," he said, in a mild uplifting voice. "How are you? Haven’t they pensioned you off yet?"

"Oh no, I’m still here," Benton replied, "but in general I spend most of my time in the garden, except for the last couple of weeks. Things have been getting a trifle hectic."

"Well at least you’re happy I’m sure. To what do I owe the honour of your call?"

"I have a small job to do and I'd like to use your services, if you don't mind, that is?"

"Of course, you never stop working for Queen and Country, do you?"

"Or retire," Benton replied. They both chuckled.

"I'd be happy to do a placement for you. When?"

"If it could go out next Sunday, then that would be wonderful."

George glanced up at the mundane calendar pinned to the grey wall next to his desk. "You will have to be quick. The deadline is still Friday, as usual."

"I was going to bring them around myself, but I could give them to you now, if that's all right with you?"

"Yes of course. I’d be happy to do that, no problem whatsoever."

George wrote down the words Benton dictated. "Very good. I’ve got that. I should be able to think of questions that will match. Anything else?"

"How about dinner sometime soon?"

"Now that would be nice," George replied. "It's been a while."

"Not this week, too busy. Let me give you a call when the time is right."

"That’s fine, Benton. I’ll speak to you soon."

George looked down at the words on the note pad. From a locked drawer he removed a separate folder containing special blank crossword templates for the Sunday edition. He checked the week number on the calendar, then pulled out the corresponding template. Benton had an exact copy.

Three hours later, George opened the gate to the small garden of his early twentieth-century terraced house in the quiet Wimbledon suburb. The leaves on the few shrubs had turned yellow and fallen.

Deciduous (9), evanescent (10), fugacious (9)

An autumn chill hung in the air. Time to sweep the path and remove the dead leaves tomorrow, and that would be enough gardening until spring. From his jacket pocket he removed a small bunch of keys and inserted one into the Yale lock he had known his entire life.

Home (4), safety (6), warmth (6), seclusion (9)

Inside the darkened hallway, a ray of sunlight deflected through the blue, red, and yellow arched stained-glass windows onto the rustic brown and white diamond shaped floor tiles in the hallway that carried on through to the small kitchen at the back. Two small paintings with unassuming scenes of the English countryside hung randomly on both walls, left and right. Above them, small, hand sized Japanese puzzle boxes sporadically decorating the remaining free space, rested on little dark-brown wooden ledges.

George hung his dark tweed overcoat and placed his brolly in the mahogany hat and coat stand that had previously resided in his office. Next to it stood his parents near identical stand. A gentlemen’s brolly and a woman’s umbrella rested upright in the umbrella well, as they had done for the last twenty-five years.

George headed for his very private comfort zone.

Reserved (7), non-public (9), solitary (8), sequester (9)

With less light than the hallway, the front sitting room curtains were always drawn, with just a small gap not to warrant use of the early fifties floral ceiling lamp in the middle of the room. The scent of soft, sweet wood with a hint of furniture polish greeted him. Visitors who came to the house were brought into the dining room at the rear. His front sitting room was special. No more than one other person had entered this hallowed sanctuary within the last twenty years.

George poured himself a Drambuie from a small drinks cabinet and sat down in the worn leather armchair once governed by his father. Many years ago it was turned towards the fireplace, now it faced outward, the most ideal position for concentration, as well as the best view. After taking a sip, his eyes fell on to a small box that lay on the rosewood side table next to the armchair. Unlike the petite, hand-sized boxes in the hallway, this was twice as large.

George took it in his hands and ran his fingers gently over the wood.

Masterful (9) artistry (8), adroit (6), cryptic (7), hermetical (10), obscure (7)

It felt smooth, old, silk like, with fine lines carved into the wood which gave the impression of little drawers.

He raised it to eye-level and studied it closely.

From the moment he left the house that morning, the ornate box had occupied his mind. Benton’s telephone call had briefly disrupted his train of thought, but now, feeling refreshed and energised, he was once again engrossed in his most recent puzzle. The person who sold it claimed it was a doll’s house cabinet. He knew better but did not say. To George, it had puzzle written all over it.

Cylinder (8), mortise (7), fastening (9), conundrum (9), mystifyier (10), enigma (6)

Carefully, he placed his fingers on each side of the box and pressed. A small drawer opened, empty. This he had already done many times before, but knew there had to be more to it. The finely carved lines were just that, lines, but he had his doubts. George turned the box over and tried to peer inside. With nothing obvious to see, he was about to give up, then had an idea.

His fingers slid into the open slot, and moved them from left to right, it was certainly empty. Feeling slightly defeated, he gently shoved his hand in deeper. The fleeting idea of getting stuck worried him, and the notion of damaging the box began to seriously play on his mind. Carefully rooting as deep as he dared, he felt something – a lever.

This was new.

Joy (3), Glee (4), wonder (6), rapture (7)

Never had he come across anything like this before. A brief smile crept to the corners of his mouth. A tempered rush of excitement heightened his senses; this was the thrill. Tenderly, not wanting to damage the lever, he pushed against it and heard a click. A second drawer, directly beneath the first, sprung open.

Surprise (8), revelation (10), amazement (9), eureka (6)

The open top drawer obscured any view of the one beneath it. While attempting to close the top drawer, the bottom began to close in unison. Twice he tried to close the top drawer separately and twice the bottom drawer moved with it. They were connected, but how? Why? The puzzle had deepened. George couldn't believe the excitement.

Reaching for his glass of Drambuie, he paused to concentrate.

Relax (5), concentrate (11), ruminate (8), ponder (5)

Two minutes later, he tried to pull the bottom drawer out completely, it proved fruitless. Repeating the first procedure, he pushed the bottom drawer back in; it clicked into place. Once again, he inserted his fingers into the top drawer, pushed the lever, and the bottom drawer sprung open. Leaning back in the armchair, he took another sip of Drambuie. For the next ten minutes he stared at the box in near absolute silence – the only sound being the faint ticking of the early-thirties mantelpiece clock on top of the fireplace.

The solution was somewhere, but where?

Scrutinise (10), inspect (7), analyse (7)

George shifted in his armchair, then sat upright. He turned the box around, the drawers faced outward, and slowly ran his fingers over the smooth wood at each end. Unnoticed before, he felt two dull points. Both slightly protruding, no more than a half a millimetre on either side, and hardly detectable. Shoddy workmanship or water damage may have caused the wood to expand ever so slightly, but George knew better. A box so expertly crafted as this would have no craftsmanship flaws. Water damage so precise – affecting nothing else, was impossible. There had to be more.

He had a thought.

Turning the box around with the drawers now facing towards him, he placed each index finger over the bumps and pressed hard. Using both thumbs, he pushed against the top drawer; it slid in with a gentle smooth glide. The bottom drawer finally remained open. George gasped an air of success.

The rush of achievement in solving the puzzle was highlighted even more when he noticed a small, cream-coloured parchment lay rolled inside the compartment. Covered in Peony petals, a Chinese flower normally associated with wealth and aristocracy in ancient times. Familiar since he used the name of the flower in his cryptic crosswords once or twice; a clue only one or two people could solve.

Mystery, (7), puzzlement (10), apocryphal (10)

He smiled briefly, then carefully removed the petals and parchment, opened it out to reveal small Chinese characters. He had no idea what they meant, but he knew someone who did. George reached for the old seventies black telephone next to him and punched in a number.

"Hello, Benton? Yes, it's me, George. I found something you might be interested in. A Chinese silk parchment, eleventh century, I think. At least the box may be, the parchment could be later. I thought you might want to have a crack at unravelling it."

"Really? It sounds like a piece of Chih. Expensive in those times. Where did you get it?"

"A little present I discovered in a puzzle box I recently acquired. I must say, it does look very authentic."

Benton sounded excited. "And very rare indeed, I can imagine."

"I'll bring it with me when I see you next time."

"That's very kind of you George, I would love to see it."

"The markings are very clear."

"Really? A real challenge."

"Yes, for both of us."

"Talking about challenges, did the work for Sunday go okay?"

"Yes, it’s in."

"Excellent. Thank you very much, George, you're a real crypto master. I’ll get back to you on the dinner, it’s impossible to pin a date at the moment."

"No rush Benton, you always know where to find me."

"Yes, you are not one for change, are you?" Benton chuckled. "Speak to you soon, old friend," and hung up.

George leaned back in his armchair and took another sip of Drambuie. He acquired the box about a month ago for more money than he wished to part with. Now that he had discovered the hidden parchment, its worth had increased astronomically.

Since the purchase, little else had occupied his mind. The beauty of the seemingly simple box fascinated him. He could not help but wonder about its secrets. The contents were indeed interesting, but, to George, the mystery of the box itself was the real prize. Rarely had he seen such an unpretentious work, yet so complicated. Other than the few carved lines, there were no markings on the outside whatsoever. It resembled a block of wood, but he realised from the moment he first saw it, too beautiful and simply crafted to be just that.

Boxes like these did not really exist before the nineteenth-century. Was the parchment original? What did it mean? Benton should be able to decipher the ancient markings; it was after all, his hobby. The puzzle would be partially solved. He was not sure he would ever get to the bottom of it. Time had buried many secrets. Selling it on could be very beneficial. Especially now that anything old and Chinese was selling well at the prestigious auction houses. It could even secure him a very nice pension for the next thirty years. But would he sell it? Never.

Feeling relieved and proud of his little conquest, he took another sip and stared up at the walls of his small living room.

Small Chinese and Japanese puzzles and boxes rested on their individual handmade shelves, spaced evenly throughout the room.

Children (8), family (6), progeny (7), treasured (9)

Only a fraction of his collection, he began when he was ten years of age. His uncle, who had worked with the Americans after the surrender of the Japanese after World War II, gave him a puzzle box he picked up in Tokyo when he realised his nephew's passion for puzzles as a young boy. The collection grew until it filled every inch of his bedroom then extend it to the garage in his late teens. It was not long before he began to construct his own little puzzles and intricate boxes, including the wooden plinths they stood on. After his parents died, they gradually filled every room in the house. Each with its own private pedestal – the beauty of it fascinated him. It was probably also the reason why he never married. Any girl of interest back in his youthful years never shared his fascination. Only his parents were his true fans, and they were long gone. These days he isolated himself from everyone, except Benton, who seemed to be the only person who understood his mind and accepted his peculiar interests.

#murder puzzle crime London spy

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