Living life as a half-galra was hard, and Lotor knew this all too well.
The fact that he had been born with foreign blood had spiked distaste in the Galra Empire, maybe even distaste for their Emperor and his Altean wife. The piercing stares and the snide remarks would never go away, even if he was a prince.
Not that it actually mattered. After all, at the end of the day, he was still higher than all of them. At the end of the day, he'd still be the heir to the Empire. Or, well, ex-heir, now that he's Public Enemy Number One.
But somehow, Lotor kept thinking about a childhood - a childhood that was robbed of him. A childhood that he could have had if his father had realised that his wife was going to tear everything apart. If his father had ceased their merciless hunger for unlimited power. And from that childhood stemmed an even worse later life.
He decided that tragedy was laced into a half-galra's blood. Narti, Acxa, Ezor, Zethrid - they were no exceptions either. All of them had some sob story to tell. But one was distinct; Lotor knew that whatever misfortune had struck upon the former paladin was something else. Keith had nothing in the beginning, picked up a few things during his story, but lost them anyway.
Things could have turned out differently. In another reality, he wouldn't be looking into purple eyes and thinking on as to why he so desperately wanted to connect. In another reality, he wouldn't spend a second on thinking why his thoughts made no sense when he spots a mop of dark black hair in the room. No, in another reality, they would connect, and Lotor wouldn't have to tear himself apart over it. He wouldn't have to tear himself apart on whether or not they actually had a connection.
Maybe Lotor was overthinking this. They were together, so surely, they had some sort of connection, right?
The parallels between them were uncanny. It caused Lotor distress but at the same time, it gave him an unending feeling of longing. He looked down on the figure beside him in the bed, meeting those striking purple eyes, carefully calculating every second of the moment. Keith stroked Lotor's hair, studying his face. "Come back."
"I didn't go anywhere," said Lotor. "I'm right here."
"We both know that's not true."
They were silent for a moment as Lotor held Keith closer to him. His heart was in a frenzy; overthinking wasn't something that came to the prince so often. All his actions were precise, calculated-
"I love you."
Well, perhaps except for that.
"I love you, and I spend so much of my time being scared of that," words poured from the Prince's mouth; a confession that had finally been said. I'm not good at it, and I feel that you'll be taken from me, like all good things have."
Keith kept his silence as he reached out and twined their fingers. Lotor gripped harder. "I'm terrified, God, I'm nothing but," whispered Keith. "We're in a bloody, lawless war, and everyday I'm afraid that I'll lose someone I care about. But, you'll be doing this with me, so I guess it isn't so bad."
Lotor let out a dry chuckle. "For someone's who's bad at love, that seemed to be on point."
"You're terrible at this too," pointed out Keith, before releasing a sigh. "I love you."
"I know," was Lotor's quiet reply.
notes;
thank you for reading ; comments are very welcome. also posted on ao3: /works/12571648
dialogue insp: the-modern-typewriter ; post/166673113893/i-love-you-i-know-they-said-oh-so
tumblr: legendofaang
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