"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.
"What?! I can't do that!" Lance exclaimed once he understood what Krolia wanted. The witch was bad, sure, but he still couldn't get himself to do it.
"You have to."
"But..." Lance looked down at her, lowering his weapon. The way that she looked so eerily Altean... it made an idea form in his mind. "What if... we could heal her? Alf-er, a friend told me that mers could get corrupted if they were exposed to too much quintessence. What if that was what happened to her?"
Krolia glanced down, deep in thought. It didn't seem impossible. And that name Lance had almost said— it sounded familiar, somehow.
Like it had been lost in time.
~ ♆ ~
Keith was beginning to lose hope.
"Shiro, it's gonna be okay," he assured his brother. They floated a few feet away from each other, as far away as the cramped cave would let them. "We just have to get back home. Adam's there, he'll be able to help." Shiro stood with his feet planted on the ground. His robotic arm made a fist as he spoke in a voice that wasn't his own.
"We.. are not going anywhere," he exclaimed as he ran forward, arm raised. His fist lit up in a pink light as he tried to land a hit on Keith, who ducked and swam out of the way.
"Shiro, please, stop this! You can fight it!" he exclaimed. Shiro looked down to his right hand and the next moment a sword made up of pink energy formed from the base of it. Sparks flew with each attack that Keith blocked and items fell from shelves when Shiro crashed into them.
Keith moved forward to punch Shiro with his free hand, but he twisted Keith's arm and used his real hand to punch Keith in the chin. He fell back, hand raised to his face in pain.
But he didn't have much time to orient himself. Shiro was on him again, using every miniscule chance of distraction to swipe at Keith with his sword. Frantically, the mer tried to get away.
I can't fight him, he realized. He's too strong. He's always been stronger than you, Keith.
He used his blade to block Shiro's attacks, but still wasn't able to get through to him. Now the only thing he could do was fight for his life, and hope his brother was still in there somewhere.
Keith's back hit the wall with a crack that worried him for a moment. He looked up to see Shiro running toward him. Keith ducked and the sword sliced into the stone wall. It crumbled with the crack, revealing the vast ocean beyond the cave. Keith swam through it, with Shiro chasing after him.
His heart pounded in his lungs. This was like his worst nightmare come true, except he could never have predicted what had become of his brother. He saw what was around him; the ocean. He was literally inside the thing he feared most. But, now that he saw it, the sun shining through the waves, the fish he could see above him, he realized that it wasn't at all like his nightmares had painted it. .
Strange, huh? How the things we fear most can turn out to be beautiful.
"OOF!" Keith had the air knocked out of him(err, well.. water) when Shiro tackled from behind. They bounced through the water until they crashed into something hard. Keith swam away quickly, Shiro having been the one who took the hit.
With no sense of gravity, Keith found that they had drifted a long ways away from the cave. It was an area filled with stones the size of mountains. They loomed over him with an eerie sense of power.
He noticed that Shiro was on the ground, but was about to get up. You need to take your chance, Keith. Or else he'll just keep getting hits on you.
With some unknown energy, he raised his arms and propelled himself at Shiro. His elbow collided with Shiro's gut, sending him back beyond the rocks. Keith swished his knife from arm to arm as he swam at Shiro with a strange fierceness he'd never felt before. Time seemed to stop when Shiro lifted his sword to block Keith's. The latter growled from deep in his throat. Something was off— and he blinked for a moment before his face softened.
"Shiro, I know you're in there. You made a promise once," He paused as his throat grew tighter. "You told me you'd never give up on me."
Shiro smiled, a smile that wasn't his own. Shiro's smile had always radiated warmth, and would assure young Keith that everything would be okay. This smile now, it was inhuman. It wasn't comforting at all.
He chuckled. "And I should have abandoned you, just like our parents did. They saw that you were— broken. Worthless. I should have seen it too."
Keith shook off Shiro's taunts. He knew it wasn't his brother speaking. I'm not leaving here without you.
Shiro's eyes widened and he pushed Keith away from him with a shout. He sank to the sand, clutching his prosthetic with a shaky arm.
"AAAAUGH!" Flashes of electricity emerged from the arm, and then a beam of light shot upward to the sky. It crashed into one of the rocks that loomed over them, sending pieces of stone to the ground.
Keith dove out of the way. When he looked up again, Shiro stood, facing him. His arm looked different— it was bigger and looked more dangerous, with a spike in the side and random flashes of red glows in the metal. Haggar must have done something, Keith thought.
Shiro then stepped toward him. Keith reached for his blade, but it wasn't there. He reached around him for it, but didn't know where it was, buried somewhere in the sand. He collapsed with a sigh.
No, I don't want to fight anymore. I'm tired.
Two feet landed next to him with a force that sent vibrations through Keith's body. He tensed, but didn't get up. He was too tired, from everything. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Shiro lift his arm-sword, and bring it down deliver the last hit.
In a final swift movement, Keith found his knife in the sand and brought it up to block Shiro's. Shiro grunted and Keith struggled to hold him back. He looked into his eyes, his pupils replaced with a glowing light. They weren't actually seeing him. They were like cameras— allowing for that witch to control Shiro no matter how far he went.
"Just let go Keith. You don't have to fight anymore." Keith's hand shook as Shiro spoke. It was getting increasingly harder to hold back the sword, and it was getting dangerously close to his face.
Shiro smiled, showing his teeth, and the two fangs sharper than any human's. It was the only trait he carried of his mer DNA. "By now, they're already gone. Haggar is more powerful than those two. And your friends on the surface? Lotor is dealing with them as we speak."
Keith searched his mind for something, anything, that could bring the real Shiro back, and get him out of his trance. He'd been back for a bit, in the cave before Haggar had controlled him again.
Then it clicked. There was only one thing that could maybe, possibly break the witch's control over him. I don't know if it'll work. It probably won't. But at this point it's my only hope.
"What about Adam?" Keith's voice was weak, his body didn't have enough energy to say much. But Shiro paused for the slightest bit of time. It wasn't much, but it was enough.
Keith screamed. He shouted at the top of his lungs, as loud as he possibly could in the water and with the little energy he had. Like it had before, his mom's knife turned into a larger blade, and with the force he got from his tail as well as Shiro's moment of surprise, it was, once again, enough.
By the time Keith's throat hurt and he swam upright in the water, Shiro had fallen to his knees. With fast and breaths Keith stared down at his brother.
His real hand clutched where the prosthetic was only moments before. The metal arm lay in the sand, a clean slice on the end where the arm met his shoulder.
Keith raised his blade, the handle pointed down.
I'm sorry, Shiro. I'll find a way to get you back.
Keith stumbled into the cave through the hole in the wall.
He could taste blood in his mouth. With further inspection he found that he, too, now had sharp teeth.
Lance swam up to him, a smile on his face. Krolia was behind him, and looked relieved when she saw him. Haggar was tied up next to her, unconscious. "Keith! You're okay! I was so worried for a second, I thought—" He paused and pointed to the body slung over Keith's shoulder. "How'd you manage that?"
Keith looked down at his brother. It was actually because of Shiro that Keith could beat Shiro. He'd always told him that "Patience yields focus." He only had to wait for the right moment.
So, Keith put on a smile, a real one, and turned to Lance.
"I got through with some help from my brother."
A/N:
An update! Finally! (that's probably what you guys are thinking, isn't it?)
I feel so bad that it's been over a month since the last update. I haven't had any motivation to write in such a long time, but I still love this story and don't want to abandon it. However, like I just said, I just don't have as much of a will to write than I used to.
I don't want to end this yet, though. I love this fic and with how much I've written for it I'm not just going to give up on it. It's not going to be over for awhile. No, there's not that many planned chapters left, but I'll probably take a lot longer to write the rest. I'm still going to write HM and will finish the story, but updates just might not be very frequent.
I hope you understand. I'll keep on hoping to get a sudden burst of inspiration like I did to finally write this chapter. :')
Wow, this was kind of a sad note. But don't worry! It might take awhile to write them, but the next few chapters aren't going to be as angsty! Finally, I can give Keith a break :D
Thank you for reading!
~Soni <3