Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

AN: This came about after a conversation with someone on discord - I am 100% sure this will end up AU/AR, but be warned - Major Character Death occurs in here.

Lotor came to with a groan, his ribs protesting each shuddering breath that he struggled to take. His vision was bleary when he finally managed to open his eyes; he could see a deep crack arcing along the periphery of his visor and he could feel warm blood trickling down his scalp from the same area. He remembered going through the rift gate, elated that with Allura's help, his plan was finally working. His delight had been short lived however when his arrival to the space between realities caught something's attention. Distantly, he could hear the roar of the creature that had followed him back through the rift gate as it struggled against Voltron.

His ship was listing in space; the control panels in front of him were powered, blinking an array of warnings but the lights were dim, as if there was just enough energy to keep them operational. Lotor had been around enough malignant energies in his life to recognize one when he saw it and after discovering that the creature's polymorphic form simply parted around the blasts from his cannon, he had fled back through the gate. Even with his engines on full power he could see the creature catching up to him on his scans and, just before he hit the gate back to his reality, he had been able to see its dark edges swarming up to try and close around his ship.

"Watch out!" he had shouted over re-established communication lines as soon as he had burst through the gate, catching a brief glimpse of the Voltron Lions and the Castle before something slammed into his ship with enough force to send it careening towards the surrounding cliffs. He had tried to correct it, twisting the thrusters to counteract the momentum. While it hadn't been enough to stop the collision, it is most likely what kept him from exploding on impact. As it was…

Lotor could see that the front and left side of his ship had sustained most of the damage; the nosecone was crumpled and the left stabilizer wing was completely gone. It was just as well he realized, gritting his teeth as pain rocketed up his left arm when he tried to lift it. He wouldn't have been able to control it anyway. He dragged his right hand across the command console, forcing it to bring up the status of all systems. The engines were completely offline and while the charging system for the cannon was operational, without the nosecone there was no way for the energy to focus and discharge. His navigation systems were offline, but without the engines it did not matter. Lotor realized that his communications were also down but that seemed to be due to an overall lack of sufficient power, so he began to shut down non-essential systems and redirecting the ship's energy.

As he did this, his ship continued to slowly spin, eventually bringing him around so that he could actually see the fight between the creature and Voltron. The dark being had taken on a vaguely arachnid form, the main trunk of its "body" centralized over the hole that contained the gate, limbs branching out to anchor itself along the cliff ridges. Somehow, he realized, looking beyond the entity's form, it had managed to ensnare Voltron's limbs and was attempting to drag the robot to itself even as all the Lions fired their boosters to keep from being pulled in. Coran was trying to distract the beast by firing on it with the Castle, however the Castle's weaponry seemed to be just as ineffective as his own had been.

Lotor stared in horror as the Blue Lion's thrusters shuddered for a moment before coming back on again.

"Come on!" he roared at the controls, diverting more power to the communication system, dread filling him as concern for Allura pervaded his thoughts. His ship continued to spin as he continued to try and re-establish his connection with the Paladins. A new alert startled him from his focus however, the pulsing warning on the screen to his right catching his attention. Lotor stared at the monitor as it suddenly detected an astronomical amount of quintessence, and the amount continued to rise with every tick.

Looking up Lotor realized that because of his ship's rotations, the sensor was currently pointed directly at the gate.

"Why…" he muttered to himself, "Why is so much leaking through?"

He had a sudden, horrible thought.

Wrenching his head around as much as he could to get a good look at the Rift creature; it took him a few ticks to confirm his suspicions, but then he saw it. As more time went by, he could see the creature growing larger, only marginally but still expanding. And it was getting stronger – each tick giving it more power to pull Voltron towards itself. It was pulling quintessence through the gate, feeding off of it.

Lotor stared at the gate, realizing what he had to do.

With a grunt he reached across his body with his right arm, bringing up the controls for the small orbital thrusters that could be used to control the orientation of his ship. After firing a select few of them in brief pulses as to not draw the creature's attention, the ship ceased to spin, which, coupled with his head injury gave Lotor a brutal sense of vertigo. Swallowing bile, Lotor fired another set of the small thrusters and felt the ship lurch, albeit minutely, as it began to drift towards the gate. Plan now firmly in his mind, Lotor returned his attention to the communications; having given up on both audio and visual feeds, he focused solely on funneling every bit of extra power in the ship into the audio.

Finally, with a loud crack, the comms came to life; he could hear them yelling at each other, trying to figure out a way to break free.

"Paladins…" he rasped, coughing as the action caused broken ribs to jab into softer tissue.

"Hey, he's alive!" Someone, he was sure who, called out.

"Oh thank the stars! Are you alright?" Lotor swallowed hard at the sound of Allura's voice over the comms.

"This thing just keeps feeding off the quintessence it's pulling from the rift. I'm going to destroy the gateway, closing it off from additional power. At that point, you all should be able to stand more of a chance against it."

"How exactly are you planning to do what? Your ship is wrecked!" The Green Paladin grunted as the creature ensnared more of her Lion.

"It cannon fly, you are correct. However I can still control the orbital thrusters and I'm currently drifting slowly back towards the gate. I can also still charge the cannon, even though I can't fire it."

Allura caught on first, like he knew she would.

"What are you saying?" He could hear a tremor in her voice.

"If I charge the cannon, without any way for it to discharge, the energy will back up into the systems of the ship." Lotor would have been proud, if he had taken the time to think about it, at how steadily he announced that he was going to destroy the two things that had taken him over a century to design and build.

"Dude…you're talking about turning your ship into a bomb." The Yellow Paladin pointed out, as if he hadn't already realized that himself.

"Essentially, yes." He answered absently as he reached around again to fire the orbital thrusters once more, adjusting his trajectory.

"Will you have enough time to get clear of the explosion after you eject?" Allura demanded, asking the question he had been dreading.

"I…won't be ejecting." He winced, "My visor is cracked; it is only holding up while I am in my ship because the cockpit is shielding me from the worst of the pressure from space's vacuum. Not to mention that most of my left side feels like it's broken-"

"Lotor, no! This is not…not an option!" He could hear the panic in Allura's voice and it tore at him like nothing he had ever felt. "Pidge, you have to have a better idea!"

"A-Allura, maybe if I had some time but…" the younger Paladin got out before Allura cut her off,

"Hunk? Lance? Anyone? Someone has to have another idea!"

The ensuing silence was unbroken for a moment before,

"How can we help?" The Black Paladin asked, sounding more subdued that Lotor had ever heard him.

"Shiro, no!" Allura cried out, anger and despair making her voice hoarse.

"I need you all to try and keep its attentions off of me as best you can. I can't avoid another direct attack." And with that, Lotor shut down all of his communications, except for one.

"Allura," he beckoned softly.

"Lotor, please," she was sobbing. "Please don't do this."

He wished that his video feeds were working…he wanted to see her one last time.

"This is my fault; I am the one that was so blinded by the idea of an "easy" way to get quintessence that I insisted on the gate being opened." He chuckled dryly, bitterly. "A comet opened the rift the first time and my parents widened it, it's only fitting that part of different comet and their child close it for good."

"I can't just watch you die!" she screamed at him; he could hear her banging her fists against the controls in her Lion.

"Allura," he closed his eyes, picturing her in his mind, striving to remember every detail. "Allura please, I just need you to listen to me. My entire life, my people have been at war and striving for glory and conquest; that is all I had known. Until I met you. And because of you, I was able to know peace…even if it was just for a short period of time."

He could just hear her crying and he wanted to see her, to hold her, to kiss and brush her tears away and promise that everything was going to be alright.

But he could do none of those things.

"I know that you and I had…hopes and plans for when all of this was finished." He could feel tears burning down the sides of his face. "And I hope that one day, you'll find it in your heart to forgive me for this. I would give everything I have to stay here…with you. But you and I both know that the alchemy of the universe does not work that way. To gain something, something must be given. And more than I want to stay, I want you to live. A life for a life."

They were both weeping now.

"When I destroy the gate, you'll need to power up Voltron like you did on Naxzela." He told her as his ship finally came close enough for him to fire a tethering cable at the gate. The hook stuck and, with a reluctant groan, the attached winch began to pull his ship flush against the surface of the gate's inner ring. "If Voltron was able to break free of the gravitational trap there, then it should be able to break out of the creature's grip."

"It's too much!" she cried out as the creature tightened its grip on the Lions, trying to envelope more of Voltron's form.

"Allura! You are the strongest, bravest, most caring person I have ever known in 10,000 years. There is no one else in the universe that could do this. But I know that you can; Oriande chose you for a reason Allura." He declared, striving to convey every bit of conviction and confidence he had in her over thin waves of sound.

"Lotor," She sounded so broken and he hated himself for being the reason for it. "Lotor, please don't…"

Lotor lifted his head, staring through the space between them at where the Blue Lion struggled against the creature's dark tendrils.

"I love you Allura." He swallowed thickly, "And I'm sorry."

He turned off the communication system completely before she could plead with him once again, broken ribs and his emotions crushing his chest as he diverted all energy to the cannon, his breathes coming out in pained gasps. As he shut down every other operating system and began to charge the cannon, its electrical whine filling the cabin, he felt his ragged breathing slow, a strange sort of calmness creeping over him. Throughout most of his life, his plans had revolved around staying alive but here, faced with the certainty of his death, he didn't feel any panic. Perhaps because it wasn't about his life…it was about hers.

An errant thought drew his mind back to what felt like a lifetime ago, back to Oriande; to the statues of the Sages that had lined that dark hall, the Life Givers.

Lotor flinched when he felt a bizarre tingling sensation just below his eyes. Blinking he brought a hand up to brush at his cheek, only to touch where his helmet hid them. It was then that he realized he could see a faint purple glow in the dim reflection on the inside of his visor. His marks…

"Ah," he sighed, a small weary smile tugging at his lips as the whine grew to a screaming pitch around him, ringing in his ears. "Of course I wouldn't understand things until the very end."

He saw the creature's head whip towards the gate in realization, an "eye" forming and lighting up as it seemed to prepare to fire on him. 'Too late.'He thought with grim satisfaction as, beyond it, Lotor could see Voltron begin to glow with a brilliant blue-white aura.

He briefly heard the roar of the explosion before light flooded his vision.

He wasn't entirely sure when the ringing had stopped.

Or the pain.

One moment there had been nothing and then…

He opened his eyes.

He was floating in what appeared to be an odd version of space; he could see stars and galaxies gently twirling in the distance, but the colors were wrong. Everything had strange, opal-like hues of pink and purple and green. And it was warm…if Lotor closed his eyes again he could have easily imagined that he was floating in some tropical ocean.

Drifting…anywhere.

"So, you have returned." A gentle, female voice echoed around him, but the sudden sound failed to startle him.

"I've never been here." He responded calmly, as if talking to disembodied voices was something that he did frequently.

"No, you have not been exactly here before. But you did come close." If possible, there was a slight teasing cadence to the voice.

Lotor swung upright, his fingers flying up to brush against his cheekbone.

"Oriande…" he whispered.

"Yes." The voice confirmed.

"But how…I failed your test." He questioned, perplexed.

"You failed a test. You were chosen just as Allura was and I do not make mistakes. You simply were not ready at the time."

Lotor looked around, spinning in a slow circle.

"Who are you?" He asked, curiosity getting the better of him.

"I have been called many things over the years." It answered cryptically.

Lotor wracked his memories, trying to gather his scattered thoughts and all his research.

"The Lion Goddess?" He supplied, embarrassed at the only title he had been able to come up with.

"I have been known as that, yes." It, she, definitely sounded amused at him now. He frowned, then inquired,

"What do I mean by saying that I was not ready?"

"There was one fundamental principle in which you lacked understanding. It lead to your failure during the test."

"So I had to die to understand?" he couldn't help the slight bitterness, even if it was directed solely at himself.

"Some do." The Goddess responded imperially, "And some never do, even in death. Like your mother."

Lotor winced at the reminder of Haggar's demise.

"So tell me young Emperor." She continued, "What did it take death for you come to understand?"

"The Sages of Oriande…The "Life Givers" they are called. I had always assumed the title inferred that they bestowed life, but that wasn't it." He paused, testing the words before he spoke them. "They gave up their own lives, didn't they? Putting others before themselves, no matter the cost."

"You do understand." The deity sounded pleased with his comprehension.

They were both quiet for a moment, then,

He spun slowly to look behind him, back the way he had metaphorically come from, one thing on his mind.

"She will arrive here as well, when it is her time." The Goddess answered his unspoken question.

"What happens now?" he asked with a quiet sigh; for once in his long existence, he found that he was not afraid of what potentially lay ahead of him.

"Now…we welcome you to a place you have never been."

Lotor's eyes slid shut again as he felt warmth, comfort and belonging seep into him.

"Welcome Home."

For Lotor it passed a blink, though he knew, somehow, that it had been centuries. Perhaps longer.

One moment he had been resting, enjoying the warmth and a gentle breeze tugging at the ends of his hair and the next…

Long fingers brushed against his cheeks, against the marks that he now bore permanently and he felt a forehead come to rest against his. Opening his eyes, Lotor looked up into a familiar blue and purple gaze that was quickly filling with tears. He breathed her name as he tilted his head to brush his lips against hers.

"Allura."

He held her as she cried.

He kissed and brushed away her tears.

He told her that everything was going to be alright.

Because they were finally home.

AN: I am...so sorry?

I blame the Lotura discord server I'm on for this - even though I had already had the thought, conversations with them really got it going.

Comments and Kudos feed my writing soul! So if you liked it, please let me know. You can find my other Lotura (Lotor/Allura) fanfiction on my Ao3 account, including some explicit fics if you are so inclined (and of age).