Hidden Messages [Klance AU]

28: I've Got You, Brother

"Keith, why are you a fish?"

The human's question lingered in the air, a silence filling the room that made Lance shiver. Keith stared at the human. His eyes were wide and eyebrows furrowed. His chest rose and fell quicker with each passing second.

"Sh-Sh-" He stammered, "Shiro?"  It can't be. He moved the equivalent of a step forward, a little clumsily as he was not yet used to having a tail instead of legs. I thought you were... Before he could get closer Krolia pulled him and Lance back and shielded the younger mers with her body.

"Get back!"

"W-what? Krolia—" Keith asked, upset, and was about to shout back at her when another mer sat up next to Shiro. It was the witch, but she was different now. Her cloak was torn to reveal her full face— one that was clearly Altean but still looked Galran too. Two red marks on her cheeks trailed down her face as if they had been melted. Her eyes glowed a bright yellow, letting off sparks of light each time she moved.

And she laughed.

She laughed a laugh that wasn't joyful, no. Not in the slightest.

Her laugh was filled with poison. It was the kind of laugh that would make a wise person run as far away as they could from it.

"Well, that wasn't a very good idea, was it?" She stared directly at Lance as she spoke. He shivered again.

The witch abruptly turned to Shiro, who tried to back away, but wasn't fast enough. She pressed something on his robotic arm and he froze. A second later he opened his eyes. They gave off the same purple glow as before, his pupils gone. He glared at the three mers across the room.

"Ahh, perfect," the witch said, moving her white hair out of her face, "You should know that adding more quintessence did nothing to help you."

Lance gripped Keith's hand tighter, prepared to protect him, but Keith only stared at his brother.

"You're really alive..." Keith whispered. "It... wasn't a dream then." He remembered the moment before he was knocked unconscious, when he cut Shiro in the thigh with his knife. He was happy, but at the same time a sadness filled him. His brother was alive, sure, but was also being controlled by this merwoman. He wasn't sure how to fix that. And then there was Krolia. He was still angry at her, and didn't understand many things about what she had told him. It was overwhelming.

Keith noticed his knife on the floor near him. The witch must have kept it, and it fell in the blast. He pulled Lance with him to pick it up.

"A little help?" Krolia shouted over her shoulder at them, then, "Shit!" Haggar raised a weapon to her, what resembled a gun but more modern, as she instructed Shiro to deal with Lance and Keith.

The controlled human ran at the two mers, glowing arm raised above him ready to hit its target. They jumped away in opposite directions as the arm crashed down. Keith ran into the wall, disoriented for a second from the impact.

"Lance, help Krolia! I've got this," he said as he swished his tail and got up. In a flash(of light, literally) the knife he held became a larger one, made from a dark metal that had a purple stripe down one side of the blade. Lance nodded before grabbing another laser gun off of a shelf on the wall. He wasn't sure why the witch had so many of them.

He aimed it and blasted the gun out of her hand. It landed on the ground in multiple pieces. Lance smiled at the small victory. He'd always been good with a blaster.

Krolia took this opportunity to tackle her, and the next moment Haggar was on the floor, with Krolia holding her hands behind her back so she couldn't move. She titled her head to Lance and then back to Haggar in a suggestive glance.