#also i hated 6s messy plot derailing for sudden exposition dump scenes that had no previous setup

[aicosu]

Lotura prompt: Victorian/Jane Eyre style courting. Also!! What did you think was garbage about S6?????

It starts with mineral from Caltraak. A custerfori gem on a chain. Pinks and golds, sliced into fractures.  A necklace.

She almost didn’t see it at first. It sits on the Castle’s left control, where her hand hovers over it as it glitters in the corner of her eye. A place only she would occupy.

Meant for her.

It's innocuous. Simple. No bigger than the top of her fingertip.

“You okay there, Allura?”

It’s Hunk who asks.

Her fingers scoop the gem into her hand, and she slides the thin jewelry into the lining of her collar.

“I’m fine.”

She tries not to think about what picking it up means, tries not to think too hard on what it means. And oddly, she knows what it means. She shouldn’t, not now, not hundreds and thousands of years later in a world where such a gesture doesn’t even matter anymore. And where a return gesture can’t even follow. (Altea is gone, her people are gone, she doesn’t even have a handmaiden to take down a poem, let alone deliver it.)

Her hands return to the controls, the panels flashing up like gems of their own.

She ignores it. She ignores the press at her throat or the cold tickle of the links and puts effort into not looking over at the viewport where Corran stands with his back turned, next to the only other Altean onboard.

Maybe it was nothing.

It was probably nothing.

When she returns from a meeting with Ryner and Pidge about perimeter defenses, it’s Pidge who points out the rubric probe before her quarter doors. “Is that--- Galra tech?” “Wait, Pidge--”

The paladin is quick to act though, and the race to the door fills Allura’s cheeks with a heat not related to sprinting.

“Are the Galra sending spies--” Pidge’s hand shoots out to apprehend the floating rubric, it’s activation light making her fingers glow purple. “Pidge wait--Don’t touch it, it’s just-- It’s--it’s for me!”She shouts the last part. Enough to stop the younger girl. She catches up, giving a frown, before outstretching her palms.

The rubric settles in her palm. And Pidge starts to ask her who the message is from, but duly accepted, the probe simply snaps open, light flaring in the hall as a binary melody plays six or seven notes.

It’s an Altean song. One her mother had played for her once. And any idea that the previous gift had been some coincidence or misunderstanding is squashed by the burned in textbook lessons from her days training in court manners and etiquette.

“A message? Is it… some kind of encryption in a music box?”The rubric goes silent. Pidge is staring at her. “It’s… not encrypted in the way you mean. It’s just… it’s an Altean practice for…”She’s not saying it. And she’s not sure if it’s because she’s too embarrassed or too ashamed. 

“It’s an… offer of engagement.”

“For war?” Her eyes snap to the girl in surprise, but then in understanding. What other reason would Pidge think anything but? With the daily troubles they have during the battles around them. War is their every concern. “For marriage.”

“Wait. What!?”“Please--” She urges, a hushed whisper to remind Pidge to be quiet. “It’s--it’s actually quite common among Altean culture to have tokens sent to the one your interested in for matrimony--”“Who is it? Who is proposing?”“We often go months exchanging gifts before anything is officially announced.”“Exchanging? Wait-- so you’re saying you and someone else have been talking about getting married for months? Through drones?”“N-No!” Her ears go hot, and her breast tickles with the necklace dangling beneath her suit. “This is only the second token and… I haven’t… I can’t respond.”Pidge adjusts her glasses with a look of discomfort. “Why not?”“Why not? I--I can’t deal with an engagement now! We’re so busy, and, it, I-I don’t even have time to craft the necessary response, I would need -- I would need an Altean menagerie to have enough variations of flowers in order to properly convey my feelings for him to properly understand.”“Altean engagement sounds complicated.”“That’s not even half of it! As of his first gift, we aren’t even to speak to each other until a lady in my waiting responds with my consent for more gifts or a rejection.”“So get someone to reject Lotor for you then.” “I--”

The name fills the space between them in the hall and suddenly she’s hot all over. And despite being so much taller then Pidge, Allura feels very small, and very young.

“How did you..?”Pidge looks at her with that gleam she gets when pointing out obvious mathematical errors. Her fingers even count out each of her points. “Galra tech, Altean custom. And we talked to Corran this morning. Not that he seems the type. He is kinda old.”Allura’s fingers roll on the rubric, as her jaw works her tongue in her mouth nervously. “Oh, this is… inconvenient.”

“Look… I wouldn’t… normally volunteer. This doesn’t really seem like my area of expertise, but honestly, it doesn’t seem like anybody elses either. Unless Corran.”“Oh no, please-- He’d be livid in my honor, I couldn’t--”“Then if you need a…. lady in waiting...?” Pidge shrugs, and this time it is her whose blushing, looking uncomfortable, but generous.

Allura hugs her.

--

It takes some time. And honestly, it’s not at all traditional. But his gifts had been… imitations of tradition as well. Not that she blamed him. Half Altean and half Galra, she was surprised he even knew the steps.

Surprise. She had put that in there too.

Attendance (but silence) is mandatory. So she and Pidge walk to the pod docks where they know he is.

Shiro is there too, sitting on a crate and helping Lotor rewire his cruiser. Just to make this even more humiliating.

Neither man hear them approach at first, the sautering tool in Shiro’s hand is too loud. So Pidge has to yell.

“Hey! Lotor!” Allura cringes beside her. The honorific is missing, and when the noise goes out and they get his attention, Pidge doesn’t bow.

But to his credit, the Galran Prince seems to know what’s happening immediately.

He goes to his knee.

The drop of his frame seems to sink her heart into her stomach as he does it, slow and calculated. He keeps his eyes on Pidge though, unwavering even as his knows flares.

Shiro’s sauter fumbles in his fingers. “UH--”

“Uh….” Pidge trails. Too.

The Paladins both look to Allura. She nods to Pidge, pointedly, trying not to shake.

This is not how she imagined her first courting to turn out. Not with such impropriety and lack of privacy. Nor did she imagine it would be in a docking bay.

“My… lady, requests you open, uh, this.” Pidge hands over the response token. It’s a palm holo projector.

At first, the confusion on Lotor’s brow worries her. (It’s not the right object, at all.) But he takes it all the same, thumb waving over the signal to turn the holo on.

An explosion of flowers happen digitally. A simulated bouquet unfurling with color and programmed free falling petals. It’s a bit overt. Pidge had gone all out.

“Whoa. What’s that?” Shiro asks.

Lotor’s expression doesn’t change at first, eyes scoping the colors quickly, meticulously.

Yellow is the most prominent. Surprise. Reds leaves for gratitude,  blue calla for trepidation, and orange glowdews, four of them, and a single purple snaptail.

It’s a mess of colors. (She’s a mess of responses.)

No white though.

Lotor stands, snapping the holo off and bowing low. The locks of his hair fall past his shoulder. “Right. Okay.” Pidge says, but turns to look at her confusedly. “We… we leave now.” Allura whispers. “Okay.” “What is happening?” Shiro asks again, standing from his crate and scratching his neck with his hand.

“Nothing!” Pidge answer, “Bye!” They leave them there, Lotor still bowing until they exit.

“Guys? Come on--!”

--

A Dalcycle goes by.

And really, it’s more worrisome than not.

At this point, they have yet to talk, and it’s actually been a bit of a problem. On one occasion, with a strategic meeting about Galran frontlines, they have to talk in 3rd person relating to each other, acting as if they weren’t simply standing side by side.

And, while it would be nice to say the Paladins didn’t notice, they certainly did.

After, Corran asks if the Prince had angered her. Shiro asks if they’re pulling a prank.

Pidge asks her why it’s still going on if she already rejected him.

The Prince himself has been nothing but respectful to the process. He avoids her gaze, and bows her head as she passes him in the lounge or on the bridge.

So after awhile, she wonders if perhaps, it had been a fluke all along.

And the he catches her.

Alone.

She had been headed back from the Olkarion epicenter, the sun dying into orange shafts and shadows, when she nearly walks into him on the Castle’s ramp. She means to apologize, but her lips snap shut.

He bows.

She thinks it’s just another awkward instance then, and means to walk past him, but his hand raises suddenly, and he’s standing straight now. Eyes almost orange in the light itself. “Accept my hand for a walk?” He asks.

And Allura suddenly realizes his voice has been sorely missed.

“Yes.”She places three fingers in his palm, and he leads her back toward the epicenter.

They are quiet for some time. Which is fine. It takes most of her focus to understand the texture of his palms, and the size of them in comparison to hers.

His nails nip at her skin as he releases her to stand quietly.

“Forgive me, Princess, for now I seem to be at an impasse.”“I… had the feeling… it might be so.” She acknowledged.

He smiles. It’s sharp, but his brows are drawn. He’s apologetic. “It’s at this point I would speak to your father.”“Yes.”

“And in Galran culture,” He begins tentatively, gaze flickering from her face to the sunset. “I would be expected to cut blood from my hand to show my acceptance of pain on your behalf.”“Oh, n-no, please, that's completely unnecessary.”

“And to you, most likely more an insult than flattery.” He chuckles. It’s low and heavy. It sneaks through his lips like a breeze. “So I find myself at a loss to continue in a fashion you would appreciate.”She steps toward him, enough that she has to look up. He is naturally tall. And she’s not sure if that is the Galra in him, or if he would be a tall Altean too. “But, I have appreciated it. Everything.”“Have you?”“I can’t be more appreciative. I haven’t… it’s been a long time since basking in any tradition of my people. Even if this particular process is more… intense than others.” She’s aware her face is burning. She blames it on the sun, creasing her eyes as she looks up to his face. “I know it must have taken you time and I… admire your attention to the details.”There’s a smile forming on his face, but he rids himself of it to say, “I only did so to portray my genuine affection.” Affection. The word is like swallowing anti-gravity firmware to hear. She feels like floating away, him saying it so plainly. “Affection.” She repeats. She has too, she can’t believe it. “Yes.”

Yes! Just like that he says it. “I would make it known that as political as all our actions inevitably are, Prince and Princess aside, I do not send tokens without affection in them.”Yes, she got that much but the choices of gifts he made. The music meant, well… it was more suited to an anniversary then a proposal, if that meant anything.“Just as… attraction came with yours?” It’s a question, but it’s said with a grin and Allura immediately regrets the orange glowdews. “I-I’m, I, I would, I am not… dishonest!” It’s all she can manage.

He laughs. She can almost feel the hum of it in her bones.

“And so here we are. At an impasse. I have no way to give you the final token.” He looks regretful and she’s thankful he seems to be sad to miss the opportunity to continue. “I suppose you need a blunt answer then. From me, since my father…”She trails and he steps forward this time, a hand gently cradling her elbow. “Yes. Unless you’d like me to bring you the head of a great beast, as Galrans do.”She shakes her head, smiling, thankful for his charm to lighten the mood. “No. I can… answer.”

His fingers tighten.

Her own hand rises, dips past her collar to release the chain lying secret under her suit. “I… am acknowledging your open admittance of interest in betrothal, with conclusion that I also, would be open to a planned enga--” The cristofori gleams pink in gold, specks of light fracturing off his shadow as his other hand pulls her close and he leans to kiss her.

Between heat and warmth, and the soft sound of his coat furling in wrinkles between her fisted palms, he whispers on her lips. “Forgive the impropriety, Princess, I am simply…. Overjoyed.”She gives him a shaky laugh. “You’re forgiven.”

He kisses her again.