starlogs | ( CLOSED ) find a place you trust. try trusting it for a while.

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( CLOSED ) find a place you trust. try trusting it for a while.

WHO: allura (

juniberries) and shiro (

bayarm)
WHERE: the castle of lions
WHEN: feb 5
WHAT: no one is happy about what happened on oros
WARNINGS: genocide, war, destruction, angst, sadness, maybe a hug

[ they've done all they could, but it wasn't nearly enough. one hundred lives saved, some trilk and some fek. one hundred of an entire planet. it's a bleak and hopeless thing and shiro is angry, but it's anger tempered by loss and exhaustion now. he has more questions than he can ask and a good idea already of the answers he'll be getting, namely none at all. he wants a shower, to sleep, for the last five days to never have happened, for a chance to go back and prevent the bombs from going off, to prevent the defense grid from being taken down, to prevent the loss of so many lives.

he can't do the latter, but the first two are on the agenda. not yet, though. first, he has to find allura, to make sure that she's okay. witnessing the loss of an entire planet and most of its population would hit anyone hard, but given her history, given her anger before, shiro is worried.

that, and maybe he needs someone to talk to, too. ]

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[She's on the main deck of the Castle-ship, still not changed out of her flightsuit which is covered in what now little remains of Oros. But she isn't standing attentive at the controls, rather, she's sitting on the elevated platform, knees up to her chest, staring out of one of the large, encompassing windows which overlooks the vast emptiness of space, part of the Eluvio visible some distance away.

It's hard, sorting through these thoughts and feelings, and a part of her feels like it's shutting down, flashing back to the entirely too recent memories burned red in her retina of her own burning planet, of the last touch she ever felt of her father before falling to a 10,000 year slumber.

Allura may not have admitted it to anyone, but having saved the Balmera and its denizens, it had helped. It had given her hope that no other planets would fall as long as she was around. And while this was not the Galra, the fact that the fleet that had taken her and so many others hostage was responsible for this..."mistake"-- it tears her up on the inside. Makes this almost somehow worse. It was an accident, but accidents should not cost others their homes and their lives.

She should probably change, she should probably bathe and let her hair down, but something feels wrong in wanting to do that when now there are nearly a hundred refugees of an obliterated planet now residing on the very ship responsible for their planet's demise. At the very least, she should seek out Shiro, to talk to him about the mission, but her comm is pointedly set to silent, and she remains on the main deck, looking out at the endlessness of space.

When Shiro does finally make it to the main deck, she turns her head to look at him, anguish clear on her face, even though she knows she has to play leader. She wishes Coran were here...]

[ she looks at him, and shiro reads so many things on her face, in her expression, that he thinks must be written all over his own, too. helplessness, anguish and anger, exhaustion —

how do they go on from here? it's clear that they'll have to, but it seems such an unthinkable thing to just shrug off the loss of an entire planet and move on, to do the ordinary and little things as though oros hadn't, didn't matter. for a moment, he doesn't step forward. he's exhausted and he can't make sense of his own emotions, but allura looks like she needs someone. the team isn't here, no one is but the two of them. if they can't talk to each other, who can they talk to?

so he closes the distance between them, long strides bringing him to her side where he sits down, close enough that their shoulders brush. he turns until he's looking into the endlessness of space, same as she was. voice rough, uselessly: ] Allura. [ just that. her name, not her title. an offer to talk, if she wants it, an opening or just a greeting. he doesn't have the words to make this better because no words can. ]

[She feels guilty, but in some part, thankful that the rest of the team is not here for this, to see her in such a state. To know that she has failed. It's different when it's just her and Coran, he is her trusted confidant, the one person who mutually understands. But with Shiro it's different. She trusts him, fully and completely, and while he is a friend, he is also someone who does look to her for guidance. At least, that what she thinks.

Both of them have been affected by the Galra, and she knows he's suffered a loss both physical and mental at their hands, but as Princess she also feels she needs to keep up her position as dignified leader, remain authoritative and strong. But when he sits near her, close enough for simple contact, she feels herself lean into him a bit, head hanging, eyes shut. He sounds just as tired as she feels, and she remains quiet for a moment. Is it wrong of her to lean on him in such a manner? But she's tired, and--

I wish my father were here--]

We...were not able to save them all. [Her own voice is haggard, and she looks up, first towards the Eluvio from the view of the Castle-ship, and then finally to Shiro.] We could have rescued more had they let me use the Castle. I cannot...shake that thought.

[She's not looking for answers, not from him at least. But talking to him feels right.]

[ shiro almost thinks it would be easier if the team would be here, to push this all down, to be strong just because he has to. he can try to be strong for allura, but it isn't the same. he's not responsible for her the way he feels responsible for the other paladins, though he sometimes feels like he should be. like he did when he lost her — but they'd gotten her back, and she's always been more than his equal. if this were still the military, she'd probably outrank him. as princess, she definitely does. and military structures aren't everything, and maybe it's healthier to deal with these things, but that doesn't make it easy.

she leans in, and shiro does the same, taking her weight and adding his own in return until their shoulders and upper arms are pressed together, until they're holding each other upward. ]

Even with the Castle, we couldn't have saved them all. [ but that isn't in any way a counter-argument to what she said. he wishes she could have used the castle. every life matters —

but one way or another, they wouldn't have been able to save them all. they'd probably still sit here, lost and sick to the bone, even if they could have saved more. ]

[There is something reassuring about the mutual weight, the physicality of it, knowing that there is a physical presence in the wake of all this loss. That she's not completely alone on this ship.

She knows he isn't arguing with her, but there is still a hardness to her voice that she doesn't try to mask. It is not towards him, but towards Eluvio's crew, the captain, those who reprimanded her for trying to take her own initiative with the rescue, those who caused the destruction in the first place.]

We may not have, but we would have saved more. Hundreds more. [But she knows the loss would still be the same, that there is no replacing a lost homeplanet, that not everyone would have been able to make it.

She also wonders if the outcome could have been different, had Voltron been here. Or had she tried to pour her quintessence into the planet though it was merely made of earth and not a living thing. Or had they been able to contain the nuclear explosions through some means--

There will always be a what-if. There's a small voice that echoes in her head that sounds like her father's voice, though she cannot be sure if he's ever said something like that.]

No relic could have been worth...this.

I know.

[ that's what it boils down to in the end, isn't it? that it all seems not only pointless but wrong, that they haven't been told any of the reasons why going down there and disabling the defense grid was even asked of them, of anyone. why the crew wants or needs the relic. it bothered shiro before; now with the consequences it had, he feels impossibly angry and utterly exhausted all at once. if he thought screaming would help, that's what he'd do, but he knows better. the pain of it is itching under his skin and settling in his bones, and he doesn't know how to get it out. maybe he'll just have to leave it there, let it seep into him until he learns to live with this, too.

he wishes he didn't have to. he wishes no one had to, that none of this had ever happened, but wishing doesn't make it so. shiro knows that all too well. so all he can do is sit here, mute for a long moment while he leans against allura and lets her lean against him in return. ]

Maybe we could have found a way to do more, if we'd had more information. [ there's bitterness in his tone, for all that it's quiet. now it's too late. ]

[She's quiet for a long while, the weariness settling further and further into her bones as she thinks of the Trilk and Fek on board the Eluvio, scared, sad, frightened. There's the desire to think 'well, at least we saved some,' but some can never replace the life they once had.

Plus she feels...incredibly guilty for having labeled the Trilk as brutes upon first impressions. And now the crew will look to her and the rest of her mission team as 'experts' on the Trilk, the one people will go to with questions or concerns. Someone who will mitigate any issues there may be trying to integrate these aliens among the crew. It gives her a sense of purpose, but it could have been prevented.

Still leaning against Shiro, holding his weight up just as he's holding hers, she rubs her forehead, looking down at the floor as she speaks. She catches the bitterness in his tone, a mirror of her own.]

We likely could have. But it is too late for that, and too late for Oros and its natives. It is-- [Like Altea all over again. But she won't say it out loud.

And then, there's the creeping edge, the suspicion.] For all we know, this could have been the intent of our captors.

[ at least they saved some — it's a bandaid across a gaping wound, nothing that can really remedy the loss of so many, of an entire planet and everything and everyone on it. again, shiro is reminded of the galra empire, of how they take what they want and destroy what they don't.

only this time, it wasn't the galra. it was the eluvio that made it possible, in the end. the thought of it makes him sick. he might not have planted those bombs himself, he might not have been the one who deactivated the defense grid or gave the orders, but he hadn't stopped any of it, either. he couldn't have; he hadn't known. it still feels awful. ]

Maybe.

[ captors implies they brought them here on purpose, too. it's a possibility shiro is still considering. ] I don't know if it was. I don't know anything about command here, and I don't trust them, either. Even if it wasn't their intent, they just took.

And made us the tools to do it.

[There's the desire to cry, or at the very least shed tears, but she won't allow herself to do it. Again, things would be different were this conversation with Coran, but Shiro is not him, so the desire to remain strong in the face of annihilation remains, even if it's the weight of his shoulder against hers that is ultimately holding her up.

She remains looking at the ground of the ship when he mentions the idea of them having been tools, and it mirrors just what she's been thinking. They had all gone along with this mission. There were those who infiltrated the Trilk's base to retrieve the relic. It was them who had set the bombs off, and it's a weight of responsibility to this destruction that even the logic of her having no way of being able to foresee this cannot change the facts.

Resting her head against Shiro's shoulder, Allura allows herself a moment of weariness.]

Perhaps...had I tried what I did on the Balmera, I might have been able to fix this.

[And then there is that usual edge to her voice, eyes opening, brows knitting together as she stares straight ahead.]

We must not allow this to happen again. Even if we are not in command, we must still try to do what is right.

[ shiro doesn't feel in any less lost, less pained, but his eyes remain as dry as his throat. he doesn't remember the last time he cried, though he thinks he must have, during captivity. either that, or the time there had just sucked him dry. he isn't sure which option is worse. ]

I don't think even you could have stopped nuclear bombs once they started going off, Allura. [ and he finds that he's glad she didn't try. he can't imagine what he would have done if he'd lost her, and when allura puts her head on his shoulder, he settles one arm around her shoulders, hand tight on her upper arm for a moment in a silent gesture of - solidarity? a reminder that he's here? shiro isn't so sure himself. ]

I know. We will. [ try, at least. ]

[Regardless of what he intended of that gesture, she does feel her body relaxing, again, grateful that she's not alone in this, that despite the circumstances she's glad Shiro is here. The first few days after being brought to the Eluvio, the mice had been a small comfort of solidarity.

And they too have come out of the woodwork to lay at her and Shiro's feet.]

I could have tried. [But she knows he's right. There's that stubbornness, though, to believe she could have done more. She remains quiet for a good minute or so, forgoing formalities to wrap her arms around him, giving him her own hug of solidarity before pulling back after a long moment, posture straightening as she gathers herself. Her hand remains at his shoulder, firm.] Are...you doing okay, Shiro?

[ allura's arms around him are a reminder how strong she is — stronger than him physically, and easily so, but strong not only in that sense of the word. the temptation to drop his head forward and just rest for a moment is strong, but shiro knows better. he can't put that on her, and besides, resting has been a difficult thing for him ever since he's escaped galra captivity. ]

I'm not great, but — [ he lifts his shoulders in a shrug, straightening up as well when she pulls back, both hands spreading out in a vague gesture meant to encompass that he isn't the one who suffered, he isn't the one who lost most of his species.

allura knows what that's like better than he does. ] I should be asking you that question.

[She knows what he's thinking, or at least, has an inkling of it. Looking away once more, she gathers herself.]

I am managing. But this was not Altea, and I know that the crew and the Trilk will be looking to me and the rest of the research team to help with survivors. That will help keep me focused on the here and now.

[Even if Altea's loss does sit heavy still in her heart.]

You were down on Oros as well, helping with survivors.

[ shiro nods, smiling a little. it's not a happy expression by any means, since there's nothing to be happy about, but it's — it's something. she'll be all right, he thinks, and so will he. they'll soldier on, at any rate, and these days, that's almost the same thing for shiro. ]

Let me know if you need any help, all right?

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( CLOSED ) find a place you trust. try trusting it for a while.

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