Ash and Blood

"People are puppets held together with string,
There's a beautiful sadness that runs through him,
As he asks me to pray to the god he doesn't believe in...

- A Sadness Runs Through Him- The Hoosiers

The altean's lips twisted into a cruel smile as she watched the uncertainty on the paladins' faces, the blanches of horror, the gut-twisting guilt so clear in their eyes- she revelled in her suffering and with every venomous word she saw their fear grow.
How pathetic.
How amusing.

Their hands trembled at their sides like they weren't quite sure whether to reach for their bayards and attack or remain still. They kept glancing over her shoulder, shifting nervously. They were unprepared. They weren't ready for this.
They had never watched as desperate eyes turned glassy, as strong limbs fell limp from their own doing. They were too merciful, too innocent. They were children playing soldiers and now… Now she had come to deliver them back to reality.
Her hand slipped behind her back.
Purple light flickered around it, spitting sparks of white and silver.
She felt the power swirl and churn within her, the quiet rushing of the quintessence in her veins building to a deafening roar-!

-PHOOMPH-!

A gun fired.

Honerva staggered forwards, a gasp of pain slipping through her teeth.
Allura half kneeled, instinctively going to aid the woman in need even after all she'd done-
But the witch whirled around to glare behind her and Allura remembered.
She stepped back.

"How dare you-!" Honerva hissed.
She glared up at the figure slumped in the throne, his countenance contorted in pain, resting his shaking arm on the throne.
He dropped the gun.
It clattered as it fell, bouncing once- twice- before coming to rest at his feet.

"I was going to let her live, you know…" Honerva breathed. "But now…? I think I'm inclined to teach you a lesson."
The man smiled weakly.
Allura would go down fighting- she'd fight to the last breath if you put so much as a scratch on them. She wouldn't live as the last one.
He had no regrets.

Honerva rose slowly, magic spiralling up her arms, making her markings burn with the fire of a thousand suns.
The figure tensed. He knew what was coming.
He still cried out as he felt it grasp him, sinking its claws of fire and ash into his very soul.
His ears were ringing and he heard screaming, such awful, choked screaming echoing all around him-

"You can do the job yourself."

His eyes filled with tears and he fell from the throne, crashing down onto his knees.
The gun.
He had to get it away, get it away before he could hurt anyone else, anyone he cared about.
As his blood turned to acid he desperately forced himself to focus, to find shape in the blur.

The gun-
He writhed and thrashed as another wave of fire swept through him, and he spat strands of
silver hair from cracked lips. Honerva's sneer sharpened into a mocking smile.
"Why are you fighting? Are you not broken enough?"

His claws scraped against the metal floor with a god-awful shriek as the fire burned hotter still and as he twisted again, his foot finally made contact with something.
It skittered an inch away.
It was the gun, the gun he'd fired with-!

He blinked the tears from his eyes and kicked the gun as hard as he could, muscles screaming from the simple action of betraying the commands Honerva- HAGGAR- was branding into his soul.
He glanced up and as if Fate herself had arranged it, his eyes met Hers.
Such deep swirling pools of wisdom, of pain.
Cerulean. The colour of an endless sea.

A thousand words seemed to pass between them in that brief, brief moment.
Apologies, memories, pleas for forgiveness.
Regret, understanding, fear.
Words they never got to say.

He stared deeply into those windows to the ocean and committed them to memory as if he hadn't done so a hundred times before.
A soft smile flickered across his face.
He closed his eyes.
Then he let the magma come rushing in.

It tore through his body with all the might of the alchemists of Oriande and the druids of the Galra, setting his entire being aflame with power as the last dregs of his resistance faded…
It forced his limbs into submission.

Allura dived for the gun, tears glittering in her eyes.

And when the man's own blue eyes opened again they were rubies.
His smile was twisted…
And his heart was cold.

The shell that was once Lotor unsheathed his sword-

And Allura fired the gun.

Sorry about the issue before, everyone! And thank you so much to the reviewers who informed me! :o

'Turns out that when I copied this over from my AO3 account it kinda died :')