#the technobabble is probably gonna hurt Lily's head

[braincoins]

I want to see Shiro meeting Allura’s family. You can chose the au/magic to make that happen :)

((My first thought was to go through my various AUs and I’m realizing how rarely Allura gets to keep her family. >_> There’s one, but it stems from a smut ficlet, so... maybe not.))

He groaned as he came to. “What... happened?” He blinked his eyes open and then stared. “That... that can’t be...”

The last thing he remembered was being in battle against a new Galra battle-mech, this one uploaded with a portion of Zarkon’s consciousness (or, at least, that had been Pidge’s best guess, given that there were no life signs in the thing but Shiro was definitely fighting off more of Zarkon’s attempts to take over the Black Lion again). He’d activated Black’s ultimate - as he couldn’t help thinking of it - and then everything went dark.

Until now, and he was staring at... 

He double-checked his instrumentation. No, this was right, this was exactly the coordinates that he’d often see Princess Allura staring at in the Castle’s star map. But in the star map, it was dark, a reflection of where something had been. Past tense. 

He’d seen what it had looked like, once. She’d shown it to him in what had been the A.I. chamber, back when King Alfor’s A.I. was still with them. And the coordinates confirmed it for him, even if his own memories doubted:

This was Altea.

He shook his head. “It’s not possible.”

That was when his screen lit up. “Lion Fighter, identify yourself,” demanded an Altean guard.

“I’m...” Could he really say he was the Black Paladin of Voltron? Would they think he was in cahoots with Zarkon? He had no idea what was going on here. “I’m Takashi Shirogane, from planet Earth. I mean no harm. I’m... honestly not even sure how I got here. My, uh, lion fighter seems to have malfunctioned.”

Black growled at him in his mind. It wasn’t her fault, and she didn’t like being blamed. 

“If you need repairs, stardock 5 is open. All who come in peace are welcome.” And a flight path to stardock 5, he assumed, came up on his screen, replacing the Altean guard. 

“W-wait! Who’s in charge?”

“In charge?” the guard asked, voice only now. “Of the stardock?”

“Of the planet.”

“That would be King Alfor and Queen Menelor.”

Holy effing quiznak, I went back in time. “I... I know they must be busy, but I’d like to meet them if I could?”

The guard snorted. “I will pass your request along,” he said in a tone of voice that let Shiro know he shouldn’t hold his breath. 

“Uh, thanks. Approaching stardock 5 then.” He set course and let Black handle it, despite her grumpy insistence that she was fine, something had happened to them both. He did his best to reassure her as his brain ran things over and over.

I teleported through time some how and now I’m here and how the quiznak do I get back to my own time? 

Black settled into the stardock and lowered herself immediately. The chair yanked itself backwards without warning. “Okay, okay, Miss Grumpy Butt,” he told her. 

She growled at him.

“I had to say something.” But he got up and left the cockpit, pulling his helmet off as he walked out of his lion and into the hangar bay.

An Altean with green eye marks came up to him. “Need repairs or you doing ‘em yourself?”

“Uh... at least for the moment, I’d like to see if I can figure out what went wrong. I might need help later.”

“Fair enough. Just go easy on the tools.” The Altean left him. 

Shiro leaned against one of Black’s massive paws and thought over what had happened. Maybe Haggar and her accursed magic had intervened again. Maybe Black had unlocked a new ability - though that didn’t seem likely, because she wouldn’t be so defensive about it now if it were something she’d done. 

“How are we going to get home?” he asked out loud. Well, if nothing else, he had an assortment of tools close to hand and he at least knew how to do maintenance. Might as well take advantage of it. 

He was elbow deep in colloidal nanocrystals when he heard a door open. Not the main hangar gate but the doors into the rest of the stardock. He pulled his head out of Black’s guts and glanced in that direction. 

He nearly dropped the spanner when he saw who it was. Who it had to be. Because he hadn’t looked like that before. His A.I. hadn’t. This was a much, much younger King Alfor, and the woman with him could only be Allura’s mother. The resemblance was unmistakable. 

We went really far back in time.

Shiro grabbed a towel as he dropped to one knee. “Your Majesties.” 

“Bold enough to ask for an audience, but polite enough to kneel,” Alfor murmured thoughtfully. “I’m even more intrigued.”

“Rise,” the queen said, before adding, “slowly.”

“Menelor,” he chided her gently.

“You trust too easily and too much,” she told him.

“Forgive me, King Alfor, but your queen is right,” he said as he stood. “Not about me, specifically, for I mean you no harm. But I can understand how the situation might look. I’m honestly surprised you showed up.”

“Well, you asked,” the king replied, sounding amused. “Which most people... don’t. Unless something important is going on.”

“Oh. Uh... well, it’s important to me, but not to you or Altea. I shouldn’t have... I guess I just... I’m honestly not sure why I asked.”

Alfor laughed. “I’m glad you did; I was able to use you as an excuse to get out of a particularly boring meeting.” He looked over at the Black Lion and whistled. “Very interesting fighter you have here. I’ve never seen one shaped like a lion before.”

Not yet, anyway. It occurred to him he might be mucking with the timeline. I have to be very, very careful. “She’s a fantastic vessel. I’m lucky to have her. Even if we’ve wound up somewhere... far from home.”

“Yes, we’ve never heard of Earth,” the queen observed, staying close to her husband as he inspected the lion.

“Probably not much going on of interest there right now.” Because it was starting to hit home just how far back this really was. 

“If your people can build magnificent fighters like this, I’d very much like to visit,” Alfor said.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but I’m not even sure how you’d get there. That is, I don’t know how to tell you the way. Something happened and I wound up here, at Al-... your planet. I’m not sure what happened or why or how I’ll get back.”

Queen Menelor frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is there any way we can help?”

“Not that I know of. Although... you’re an alchemist, are you not, King Alfor?”

The king looked to him. “I am, though far from the most powerful. Do you also have alchemy on your planet?”

Not that kind and not yet anyway. “No, but I’ve... I think someone used some sort of alchemy on my lion fighter. And that’s what brought me here.”

“Interesting. Do you know what they were trying to accomplish?”

“Uh... probably nothing good,” he admitted. “I was in a battle against an enemy. The one I was fighting didn’t have alchemy, as far as I know, but an ally of his does. Very powerful alchemy. They also know everything my fighter is capable of, and they were probably trying to stop it from executing one of its more powerful actions.”

“Hrm. I know of a few different ways to accomplish that sort of thing. But I don’t know how to send you to a specific place, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“You don’t have to send me back to Earth. Let me worry about my... trajectory, I suppose.”

“I think you’d better explain more fully,” the queen told him. “For clarity’s sake. We are glad to help, but right now...”

He sighed. “The fighter can... teleport, very briefly. It can move through solid objects by shifting into some sort of alternate space and then coming back into ours. At least, that’s the best way I can describe it. I was attempting to activate this ability, last I remember. I’ve done it before, successfully, but this time, I wound up here.”

“The enemy alchemist is aware of this?” Queen Menelor asked.

He nodded. “Yes.”

“So presumably they were trying to stop you from activating this teleportation ability,” King Alfor mused. “Yes, I think I know something that could work. Not as complicated an activation, so it can be used quickly, and it would freeze you in time, effectively.”

“Perhaps I could try to activate my lion’s ability and you could try to prevent me and that might send me home again?” he asked. “If it’s not too much trouble. I don’t know what I could offer in return, but...”

The queen snorted. “He needs the practice anyway; it’ll be good for him.”

The king ignored that comment. “We’re glad to help. And you seem anxious to return.”

Shiro smiled, unable to help himself. “I left the love of my life back there.” The daughter you two may not even have had yet. 

“Oooh, ‘the love of your life’, is it?” Menelor smiled. “That’s worth hurrying home to. I thought perhaps it was only duty that was motivating you.”

“Well, that, too,” he agreed. “They need me almost as much as I need her.”

“Take notes,” the queen told her husband. “This is the sort of ‘romantic gibberish’ that women like to hear.” She looked back to Shiro. “If you can help my husband learn how to be romantic, that’d be repayment enough in my book.”

“I’m not that bad, am I?” he asked.

“You have your moments,” was the only answer he got.

He chuckled. “I can try.”

King Alfor came over and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure out how to get you back to your love.”

“Thank you, sir. I’m beyond grateful.”

“You’re welcome... Takashi Shirogane, was it?” 

He nodded. “Yes, sir. But most people call me Shiro.”

((And this is why Alfor made the ships from the comet look like Lions in the first place!))