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The ground below Krolia’s feet is dusty. More than the desert has any right to be. It feels old, crumbling.
This was her home once, but now it’s dried-out soil.
Where is the house that stood here? It’s like an invisible hand dropped from the sky and plucked it clean from the ground. It’s sturdy in Krolia’s memory, but all that’s left in reality is the shack that used to sit in its shadow.
The lifelessness of the place chills Krolia. It’s evidence towards her theory that she will not find what she’s looking for. Those she’s left behind have moved on or worse... are gone in the most final sense.
Silently, she approaches the shack. The old door swings open easily, not stiffened from disuse as she would’ve expected.
One glance tells her someone had been living here.
One step inside and her baser instincts tell her someone is here right now.
She reaches for her blade...
*******
A creek of the floorboards wakes Colleen. For a foolish moment, she mistakes it as Sam coming to bed. She shifts to make room and finds her back is pressed up against something. It’s the smell of must that reminds her, with a sickening shock, that she's on a dank futon (that she was too drunk to fold down) alone in a shack in the desert.
… So why does she still hear movement?
As carefully as she can, Colleen searches around her for the blaster she’s taken to sleeping with. When her palm takes that familiar grip, finger on the trigger, she moves, swinging her blaster towards the intruder.
She sees a purple glow before she fires. A moment later, the blaster is knocked from her hand. Colleen whips head to see a glowing dagger sunk into the wall.
“Fuck!” Where did her blaster land?
Colleen pushes off the couch, cursing her drunken, sluggish body for its inability to move with any kind of stealth. She barely gets the bent over to search the ground for her blaster amongst the empty bottles when the intruder grabs hold of her.
They are a streak of a purple light in the darkness. Colleen can’t believe how impossibly fast they move.
She fights, fights for her life. Kicking and spitting. She’s the last of her fucking family, and she won’t go down like this!
Until she does go down. Actually, she’s flipped over before her back crashes
down
onto the coffee table. The wood is too thick to break so Colleen’s spine does instead. Or at least that’s what it feels like. She definitely hears a crack.
The attacker’s hands are still on her, holding her down. Colleen’s eyes can’t adjust, not with the streaks of purple light above her.
“Who are you?!” demands the intruder. Her voice is female.
Colleen's heart is pounding out of her chest. She’s not afraid though. She’s angry.
“Where the hell is my daughter?!” Colleen yells back.
No answer comes. Instead she’s dragged. Dragged off the coffee table as she kicks and fights back. She’s placed back on the couch. Her wrists are captured by this woman’s hands, wrenched to the side. Something is snapped on them, compressing quickly to their shape and attaching her to the metal armrest.
They’re handcuffs, but a tech she’s never encountered before. Her curiosity would be peaked, if she weren’t in imminent danger.
Her attacker sits down on the other end of the couch, almost casual now that Colleen has been restrained. “For one with so little strength, you fight as if you were a large being.”
Colleen is about to say something smart (or rude, she hadn’t settled on which), but she loses the ability to speak when the woman leans forward into the moonlight and she finally gets a real look at her.
“You are the first human woman I’ve ever met,” says the woman with purple skin and liquid yellow eyes. “So assuming your daughter is human, I do not know where she is. Now that we’ve cleared that up, explain to me why you are trespassing on my property.”
“What are…?” Colleen shakes her head and mumbles to herself, “Fuck, if Katie was right about the whole alien thing…”
“Answer me or I inflict further pain,” states what must be an alien. “Why are you squatting in my property?”
“Your property?” repeats Colleen.
The alien scowls. “It’s in the family. It’s also in the middle of nowhere so explain why you are here.”
“My husband and my son are astronauts… Were, astronauts.” She corrects herself. “They were killed on mission, but my daughter, Katie, never believed they were dead. She ran away from home. I think she wanted to find proof they were alive. She enrolled in a school not too far from here without my knowledge, but…” Colleen takes a breath. Whether by the power of adrenaline or alcohol, she will get through this without crying.
“I guess she didn’t get the answer she wanted because she ran away from there too. Her cell phone pinged off a nearby tower the day after she left school. This is her last known location. That research,” Colleen nods to the wall covered in corkboard, “I believe it’s hers. Though it’s not colour-coded, which is strange.”
The alien stands to inspect the wall. She studies it for a long time, silent, then she turns back to Colleen. She walks towards her and Colleen braces for another attack, fearing her answers didn’t satisfy and ‘further pain’ is on its way. Instead, the alien leans down to place a palm to the hand cuffs. They release, instantly.
“Why did you— ?”
“I believe you,” says the alien. Catlike eyes meet Colleen’s own. “What do you go by?”
“Colleen Holt.”
“My name is Krolia,” says the alien. “As you may have guessed, I am not from Earth, but I lived here once.” She looks away, taking in the small space. There’s something almost wistful in her eyes.
“Here?” asks Colleen, trying not to pull a face. The shack was pretty sad even before Colleen decorated it with empty liquor bottles; the couch, already stained before she stained it with tears.
“There was a house,” says Krolia, “a home. One I shared with my son and his father. I came back to see if they were still here.”
Colleen’s heart aches in her chest. She knows this exact pain all too well.
“They were guarding something,” continues Krolia, staring off into space as she speaks. “A ship. I heard rumours it was no longer on Earth. I needed to know if it was them who discovered how to free it and fly it or if someone else killed them to take it.”
“Oh Krolia…,” says Colleen. She leans forward, placing a hand on Krolia’s wrist. Krolia looks at her strangely and they both pull back their hands at once.
Krolia’s voice takes on a more confident tone. “I can only assume by their absence that one of them has become the Paladin of the Blue Lion.” Colleen is confused until Krolia says, “Ah, that’s right… Earthings do not know of Voltron.”
“Wait…,” says Colleen, having a thought. “Your son, how old would he be?”
“Nearly an adult by now,” says Krolia, then she thinks and says, “Eighteen Earth years.”
Colleen reaches for the pocket of her jacket, but suddenly that knife is out of the wall and at her throat. Colleen raises up her hands and says, “I’m just getting my phone.”
Krolia sits back, but her dagger stays loose in her grasp.
Colleen takes out her phone and opens up her photos. “Two boys disappeared along with my daughter. Here...” She holds out her phone and swipes away from the photo of Katie’s missing poster to the next one of Hunk Garrett, then the next of Lance McClain.
Krolia shakes her head. “I do not believe so. I do not recognize mine or his father’s features in these boys.”
“It’s not one of them then,” says Colleen. She tucks her phone away, hope draining from her gut. If Katie were with this half-alien boy on an alien ship, that would be the first positive lead she’d had since she walked into Katie’s bedroom that morning and found it empty. “You’ll recognize your kid when you see them. There’s a bond there. You’ll just know.”
There’s silence as Colleen lets her eyes fall shut. She almost had hope. It’s the most she’s felt in months. The next thing she hears is the soft scrap of a lid being screwed off and a slosh of liquid.
She opens her eyes and looks to see Krolia has found her half drunk bottle of whisky and is drinking it like it’s water.
“Um, that’s not what you think it is.”
“I know what whisky is,” says Krolia, bluntly. She twists the cap back on and tosses it to Colleen who catches it.
Colleen twists off the lid. As she lifts the bottle to her lips, she mutters to herself, “So we’re doing this now…”
They pass the bottle back and forth, sharing it. Colleen is so curious about this tall, mysterious alien woman sitting beside her. While they drink, she asks Krolia more questions as they come to her. Krolia isn’t forthcoming with answers, not at first, so instead Colleen studies her appearance, the pointed ears, the purple and pink hair, twin marks on her cheeks, the alien suit she wears, the weapon she carries…
Colleen wants to know about it all and eventually, Krolia does start talking, but only about her life on Earth. Colleen learns about the man who saved her life, who she fell in love with soon after. With shiny yellow and purple eyes she speaks of her son, who she left as an infant. She imagines what he might be like now.
Colleen feels this sense of peace as she listens to Krolia speak. In the past year, she’s lost both halves of her family one after the other. She’s felt completely alone in the universe, but here this stranger has come down from the stars and
feels.
Feels the same sense of loss, the same sense of longing, the same loneliness.
It’s a comfort. Like a tiny stitch in her torn-open heart. She never thought she’d been seen like this or that anyone living would know her,
truly know her,
ever again.
It’s a small step towards feeling alive again.
The bottle empties as it’s shared, the space it travels when it’s passed narrows as they shift closer. It’s cold in this shack at night, so Colleens welcomes the heat from Krolia’s suit when their knees press together.
Colleen feels a tickle and realizes one of Krolia’s long strands of hair that stick out the back of her head, keeps brushing against her neck.
“I wonder,” says Colleen, the filter between her mouth and brain completely dissolved by the booze at this point, “if they met, our kids. Katie was here and if your son had a way to leave Earth…”
Krolia nods, her hair tickling Colleen’s ear.
“She really believed by some miracle Sam and Matt are still out there, alive. If there was a way for her to travel to space, she would’ve found it.”
Krolia makes a humming sound. “Katie must be fiery like her mother.”
Colleen laughs. “Twice my fire and half my sense,” she leans in to meet Krolia’s eye as she says, “and I never had much sense.”
“I’ve always ranked sense second,” says Krolia, her bright eyes so close now, “to instinct.”
Colleen drops the empty bottle on the floor so she has both hands free to pull Krolia down into a kiss, because, hey, her instinct told her to kiss the big, sexy alien woman.
Colleen feels a small moment of doubt that aliens even kiss, when Krolia doesn’t immediately smooch her back.
Then again, lady got a kid!
Of course, the creation of which doesn’t necessarily involve swapping spit.
Colleen loosens her arms that are wrapped around Krolia’s neck and slowly retreats from the unreturned kiss.
“Sorry,” she mumbles, dropping her back against the couch. “I’m just a drunk old woman. I didn’t mean to misread signals.”
“Your assessment of the situation was accurate,” says Krolia. Despite Colleen having dropped away from the moment, Krolia hasn’t moved. She’s still turned to Colleen and hunched down. Just as Colleen left it. “My hesitation is not from lack of desire.”
“Oh?”
Krolia sighs, which is an oddly adorable sound coming out of an alien in a rubber suit. When she speaks, it’s more of a mutter to herself, “Everytime I come to this planet, the very first person I meet…”
Colleen smirks. “Sparks?” she offers. Colleen shifts forward again, getting her face nice and close to Krolia’s once more. “You know the common factor is you, Purple Mama.”
“Which makes me either irresistible or lucky,” hums Krolia, tipping her forehead a tiny bit closer.
“Both,” says Colleen, inching closer once more, but not daring to be the one to kiss fir—
Krolia kisses her first. Colleen is so filled with joy, she has to kiss closed-lip to keep from laughing. But then Krolia pulls her into her lap and things are not funny anymore.
“You are so tiny,” says Krolia, her voice delighted
“And your arms are so strong. All the better to be thrown around with, my dear,” says Colleen, and with that, she is gently tossed onto her back by Krolia
“Did you know,” begins Krolia, hovering over, the weight of her body bringing Colleen comfort and excitement, “this particular sofa flattens into a bed?”
Instead of informing Krolia that, yes, she knows what a futon is (but isn’t strong enough to unfold it on her own or she would’ve been sleeping on it that way anyway), she pulls Krolia’s face down to hers to kiss her once more.
**********
Sunlight wakes Colleen up. Her hangover greets her with a pounding migraine and sore muscles. Wait…
Her body is sore because she tumbled with an alien last night and that was
after
Krolia slammed her down on a coffee table.
“Krolia…”
Colleen rolls over to wake her companion, only to find she's alone. For a sickening second, she fears it was all a booze-induced dream.
Her new found sense of hope slipping away is worse than the feeling that she’s truly hit rock bottom.
But then again… the futon is folded down and she’s never been able to get the rusty thing to work on her own.
Colleen sits up, clutching the thin fleece blanket to her bosom. So last night was real and she spent it with an alien, but the catch is Krolia left before she woke up?
Wham! Bam! Thank you, purple ma'am?
Did she take her ship and go? Is she flying among the stars right now?
That’s when Colleen notices rubbery, dark suit strewn across a printer in the corner of the shack.
“She’s still here…,” mutters Colleen.
And she’s naked.
**********
Krolia hugs herself, holding in warmth against the chill of the desert morning. She’s been wearing a Galra uniform for so long, she’s forgotten what it’s like to not have her body temperature regulated.
It’s welcome. The vulnerability.
Her hands rub the arms of the white button up she’d found in a cardboard box.
It still smells like him…
“Watching the sunrise?”
Krolia looks back over her shoulder and smiles at Colleen. She’s lovely in the low yellow light of the sunrise. She’s also not wearing pants.
Krolia looks back to the glowing horizon and says, “I’ve been to a thousand planets and seen a thousand wonders across this universe, and there is no sight that compares to a sunrise over this desert.”
“I’ve been waking up here a lot lately,” says Colleen, coming to stand beside Krolia. “I’ve never seen it as beautiful.” She then leans her head against Krolia’s bicep and adds, “Until now.”
Krolia scoops her arm around Colleen’s waist. When she’d woken up early beside her, she had begun thinking about how long it had been since she’d had someone to talk to freely.
More than that even, when was the last time she had someone to touch?
Krolia pulls Colleen’s small frame against her side. She leans down to plant a kiss on the top of her head.
Krolia is a strong believer that Galra and humans aren’t so different in nature, but their upbringing and cultures vary so much. There’s a warmth to humans that seems to come from how they are raised. It makes them so open to connection. This is part of why she wanted her son raised on Earth.
“What are you thinking about?” asks Colleen. Krolia has been quiet for quite some time, unlike the night before, when she seemed unable to keep her thoughts to herself (or her hands).
“I need to find them,” says Krolia, her gaze turning up to the sky. “My family.”
“I know,” says Colleen. “I want you to take me with you.”
This woman is full of surprises. Krolia looks down at Colleen in awe.
“I need to follow my daughter’s path. I need to look for all three of them.”
“I thought you believed your husband and son dead.”
“I said it would be a miracle if they were still alive. You made me believe in miracles last night.”
If only it were still last night, when Krolia could lose herself in a moment. Today, action calls her and protecting the ones she loves is what she does best.
“Colleen…,” begins Krolia. From her face, she knows this clever woman already knows what she’s going to say. “It is not possible for you to come with me.”
“I won’t be turned down so easily,” warns Colleen.
“My cruiser is meant for one.”
“I’m small,” says Colleen, tipping onto her toes like a child, as if to illustrate this.
“It is a three month journey to the Galra base where I’ve been assigned an undercover mission,” explains Krolia, feeling she’s giving away classified information simply because this human has a bottom lip that protrudes in a guilt-inducing manner.
“Just drop me off somewhere central,” says Colleen.
“There is nowhere central on my way,” reasons Krolia. “I was not permitted to take this side trip in the first place.”
“Then drop me off on a space rock,” says Colleen, her voice raising in volume. “I’m resourceful. I can make my own way!”
“If you are sober, I do not doubt that,” says Krolia.
“Hey now,” says Colleen, swatting Krolia.
“I can see there’s no changing your mind.”
“Nope,” says Colleen, confidently.
Krolia lets her arm drop from Colleen as she twists back to look at the shack where they’d spent the night or, as Colleen affectionately called it, ‘the love shack.’ Colleen turns too and Krolia wraps her other arm around her.
“I’m happy I found you here,” says Krolia, “and I hope you take no offense when I say, I still would have loved to see my son here when I returned to Earth.”
“Hmmm,” hums Colleen.
“Having someone waiting when you return from a journey— ”
“Okay, you’re laying it on too thick now,” says Colleen, ducking out from underneath Krolia’s arm. “I understand…” She looks up at the sky and with a sigh says, “I should be here waiting for when they get back. Leave the light on, as it were.”
“In that case,” says Krolia, “I’ll have someone to return to as well.”
Colleen’s eyes shine with emotion. They are still for just a moment, then Colleen moves to hold her. Krolia does her one better, lifting her up so she must wrap her legs around Krolia’s waist. She’s so tiny…
“You’re so tall,” says Colleen, paralleling her pleasure at their size difference.
Krolia tips her head down and captures Colleen’s lips. The golden light of the sunrise is warm, glowing through Krolia’s eyelids. This is a magical place. It’s not as lifeless as Krolia first thought. It’s a home still, it just needs humans to bring life to it.
The sun is higher in the sky by the time they finish their embrace and Krolia lowers Colleen to stand on her own two feet.
“I hope you find them,” says Colleen. Her hand is warm inside hers as they walk back to the shack to get dressed.
“Thank you,” says Krolia. “I hope your family returns.”
“When they do, my kids are grounded for the rest of their lives. Literally. No more space for them.”
*******
This isn’t the first spaceship Colleen has watched takeoff. Far from it. Her lovers always leave her this way.
“Next time I’m getting on the fucking ship,” mutters Colleen. She turns back to look at the shack.
There’s a lot she’ll need to process in the coming days. One thing she’s decided for sure, the Galaxy Garrison hasn’t heard the last of Colleen Holt.