A/N: This is an RP archive and as such a quick note should be made before we start: Sula is not my character and is written by a friend. As the grammar and capitalization she uses are a stylistic choice, I have not edited any of what she has written.

"Stop! Stop, stop, stop..." Curran gasped out as he fell forward, hands braced on his knees. His body was covered in sweat, but he felt cold, clammy and sick—so very, very sick—to his stomach. "I need a break. Gimme... just gimme a minute." A shudder raced through him and it took almost everything he had not to vomit on the unfinished wood floor.

More than a bit deliriously, he thought Sula really wouldn't appreciate it if he did puke. Not that the witch appreciated much of anything he did up here. Since she started helping him, he had made zero progress—zip, zilch, nada, nothing. At least in the area he was supposed to be working on. Their sessions had given him plenty of practice in healing, but he had yet to as much as cause a bruise with his magic.

The only one getting sick in the last two months was him. Curran couldn't count the number of times he had puked coming out of one of Ursula's illusions. Just the thought of what she had just put him through had him swallowing in an effort not to lose what little was left in his stomach.

"Maybe this is pointless," he said when he had half a breath. It wasn't the first time he had thought it, but it was the first time he had spoke of the doubt. "Maybe my healing can't be turned. Maybe the Fairy Godmother is wrong." The thought used to fill him with relief—he wouldn't have to use his magic to hurt people—but now it just frustrated him. What was the point of having done all of this, if his magic couldn't be turned?

sula held the illusion just a moment longer, tempted to really make the little shit suffer as punishment, before letting it go.

teeth clenched, she growled and aimed a curse strike at the wall right behind him.

plaster and brick pieces flew out in every direction, leaving a gouge deeper and newer but matching the rest of the damage to the room. the attic was in disrepair, scheduled for a remodel that was currently postponed due to some hinky bits of something or other—not sula's concern.

what was her concern was the huffing, sweaty mess of a guy opposite her who was just seconds close to being on the receiving end of one of her damned curses if he didn't get this shit right!

for a rogue, sula had an exorbitant amount of patience, but curran, prince of corona, was wearing it down to the last thin thread.

"for fucks SAKE, curly! it's not that HARD! instead of feeding life, take it. fuck!"

sula let off another strike, this time splitting off a chunk of a pillar. if she kept this up the ceiling was going to collapse on them—or would, had she not had put in her own magical reinforcements about a week ago when she realized she was losing her cool.

but seriously... "who the FUCK saves the asshole trying to kill you?" she asked and spun on curly. "seriously?"

Curly was pretty used to Sula's tendency to fire off curses at their surroundings when she was frustrated with him by now—he didn't as much as flinch at either blast, even when bits of debris peppered him.

Her yelling didn't get much of a reaction out of him either. She'd said damn near the exact same thing dozens, if not hundreds, of times by now. Instead of giving, take. Instead of healing, harm. Do exactly what he usually did, just do it in reverse! Only, it didn't work. Nothing she said, nothing either of them did, seemed to work any better in getting the concept through his skull and into his magic. He just... couldn't do it.

"I'm not like you, Sula," he said, still too out of it to give the words the heat he wished he could, though he wasn't sure why it mattered. They had been over his limitations time and time again. "I'm a healer. It's what I've been for my entire life. You can't expect me to just fucking get over my whole identity!" Even if she wasn't really trying to get him to change who he was—just a little paradigm shift, that was all they needed. Something to get him from 'I can't do this' to 'I can do this if this happens'.

They needed a fucking 'A-ha' moment and Curly just wasn't having it. No matter what Sula threw at him. If her illusions had been reality, he would have been dead a dozen times over. He had healed his parents, his grandparents, his friends, even his fucking animals time and time again. Like she had just asked about, he had even healed the people she created that sought to hurt and/or end him—more than once.

On one level, he could understand and ever share in Sula's nearly-homicidal frustration with him. He didn't know why it just wouldn't click. Why he couldn't hit on whatever emotional response that would make him turn his gift. Why nothing worked. No nightmare situation she threw him into, no life-or-death scenario; nothing shifted his way of thinking enough to get him over the threshold.

"Maybe I just can't do this."

sula rolled her eyes at the perceived insult.

not like her. no he certainly WASN'T like her because SHE knew how to use her powers. SHE made sure she knew learned everything she COULD about her magic. and SHE was still learning. still WILLING to learn.

"crutch!" she interjected, countering his reference, his excuse of identity for what it really was, what it had become.

how many times had curly claimed she was trying to change him? ugh.

how many times did she have to argue the fact that changing him through a documented use of his ability was NOT, in fact, CHANGING him but expanding his view of himself. like going from standard definition to high definition.

what she REALLY was getting tired of was the whole defeatist attitude. there was only so many times as girl could hear a guy say 'i can't do this' before she was certain he'd lost his ball sack along the way and was, in fact, a eunuch.

sula snarled at him in response and slowly started to pace in front of him.

what was she doing wrong?

for weeks they had been working on his powers. first learning the ins and outs of how it worked. then learning about curly himself. what drove him to heal. why he healed etc.

when it came to actually producing the desired outcome, sula first tried convincing, drawing up a cognitive argument that could appeal to his way of thinking. FAIL.

so she tried coaxing him using his ability the other way around via request from a patient who WANTED to die peacefully. FAIL.

now she had moved on to forcing him.

using illusion she was able to put curly, mentally, in situations where his life was at stake, where the only way he could survive or get away if by using the power he had to protect himself.

but even THAT was a fail.

no matter how BAD she made things for him—and let's face it, sula was a whole lot of bad and extremely creative when motivated so curly was truly suffering in there, so much so that were it not for his healing ability, there was no doubt the guy would be suffering some sort of mental break in their true reality—he was STILL REFUSING TO WORK!

sula didn't realize she was growling until the echo reached her ears.

she stopped pacing and faced curran.

okay. so what hadn't she tried.

she was a stubborn, hard-headed bitch, and there was no fucking way she was letting him make her a failure.

seriously, when she'd agreed to help him, she had thought it was going to be easy.

WRONG.

and sula HATED being wrong.

...

what

the FUCK

hadn't she TRIED yet?

sula's ring made a tap tap tapping sound against her bracelet as she thought. the sound not only showed her irritation, but also focused her mind.

she stared at him. taking him all in.

curly was actually much tougher than she gave him credit for.

tap tap tap.

despite being an irritating jackass and refusing to cooperate.

tap tap tap.

his healing was equally as impulsive and instinctual as it was controlled and rational.

tap tap tap.

but even in a severe and intense scenario he still had enough control over himself not to harm.

tap tap tap tap.

but what else made him impulsive? what other instinct did he respond to?

tap

tap

as an idea formed, sula's eyes focused back on the healer before her and her lips pulled up into a wicked looking smirk.

Curly didn't bother responding. She had been on him since the first day about how he wasn't willing, how he wasn't trying. He had stopped arguing after the first month.

It didn't matter to her that he was trying, that he wanted to make this work, or that he had asked her for help in the first place. His lack of progress was all she saw. Sometimes, it was all he saw. But he knew that he really was trying—he was trying to use his magic to harm, something that was so against his nature that even thinking about it made him want to vomit. He was deliberately trying to turn a piece of his soul dark, and it was like she expected that to be easy.

Maybe it was for some people. But not Curran Fitzherbert. Not when his magic and his soul shone with literal sunlight. Sula acted as if any healer should be able to do this, but Curly wasn't any healer. His magic didn't come from the same source as other people's. What he could do was because of a magic flower that his grandmother ate while pregnant with his mother. His power came from the source of all life on the planet. How could he use it to harm?

And he knew, because Sula was quick to point it out, that the sun could do just as much damage as it could good. That didn't seem to make a difference. Even thinking about it while trying to use his magic to hurt someone (even the illusionary someones Sula conjured up) hadn't helped. Every time he poured his energy into another being, it was healing.

Curly knew he could fight. He could fight for his life, he could fight for his friends and family. Hell, that was how the Fairy Godmother had convinced him to take Magical Defense in the first place—by tapping into his protectiveness of his loved ones. But that was something different than using his gift, his healing touch, to hurt, to maim, or the worst thing he could think of to do with his magic, to kill. It wasn't meant to be used that way. It resisted being used that way.

Sula refused to see that, no matter what Curly said. She saw any explanation he tried to offer as an excuse, said it was all in his head, but it wasn't—it was in his magic. It didn't want to be used to hurt people. She didn't believe it though.

Somehow, he had wound up sitting on the floor, breathing deeply and staring down at his own crossed legs. The fact that Sula had stopped pacing slowly penetrated and Curly raised his head to look at her. Dread coiled in his stomach at the expression on her face.

"I'm not going to like this," he said, not a question, but a resigned statement of fact. Every illusion Sula cast could be considered a personal hell for the prince, but he had asked for her help. He may hate her methods, but until he was absolutely sure there was no hope in this, he would keep going.

Either they would break whatever barrier kept him from turning his magic to harm, or he would break.

rather than answer, sula began weaving.

weaving the illusion that came to mind, that grabbed hold of the idea, their last chance at getting this right, and made it real.

first in her mind.

then in his.

the amulet around her neck that charged and aided in the focus of her spell, that gave it that extra kick, glowed a soft purple as her eyes went white.

and then,

she simply let herself fade from his awareness.

as invasive and powerful as her illusion and her magic were on curly, making, forcing him to see and experience exactly what she wanted him to, there was nothing (and this was EXACTLY why they were still AT THIS) she could DO about changing his feelings, his beliefs, and how he would react to anything she had him living.

curly had absolute control over his actions.

she had control over everything else.

for the weeks she and curly had been working on this... dilemma of his, sula had tried a number of things.

she had tried persuasion and reasoning.

before they'd even gotten to her use of magic, sula had actually tried to talk him into using his powers they way they wanted him to.

when that alone didn't work used a little bit of magic to tilt scales and magically reinterpret his manner of thinking.

she didn't just focus on his control, but how he said his power worked. there was one very bad day when she'd actually blocked his healing magic from healing in order to force him to use it for destroying. its horrible turn-out stopped her from further pursuing magical ways to influence his magic directly.

that was a no no.

like a deadly kind of no no.

after that she had focused solely on curly's control—seriously. the dude was like the fucking MAGNUM of control.

no matter what she did to fuck him up, mess with him etc, curly continuously HEALED.

NOT what she wanted.

sula literally TORTURED the guy. and he still wouldn't give.

hell she was almost prepared to admit that he might be right about how his magic functioned because no matter what she threw at him, his healing never changed.

and the guy wasn't PASSIVE either.

she'd gotten him to actually physically FIGHT in some of her illusions. but there wasn't a single scenario she put together, whether it was a mental test or a physical one, that would get the guy to do what she wanted.

so this one.

this illusion, this idea she was weaving into his brain was her last idea.

her very. last.

and she put EVERYTHING she had into it.

alone in the dark chamber, the very air was saturated in fear, dread, and an anticipation for something... undefined.

something was coming.

something wrong.

something bad.

listen curly, the voice whispered. can you hear them?

there.

across the room.

at the farthest corner.

there is something there...

a shuffling

a whimper

who groaned?

sconces on the wall lit.

and then there was the answer to the noises.

two figures knelt on the hard floor. but even in the light of the wall they were hard to make out.

look harder, the voice said. who are they?

then their forms shaped a little more.

their heads were bowed.

their clothes were dirty, torn. they were the last things they'd been wearing, the voice said. remember? that dorky striped shirt. that nerdy tie. look at them... who are they, curly?

one, usually coiffed and blonde, was a ratted mess, darkened and matted with crusted dirt and blood.

which one is he? what about the other one?

the other, head of short, buzzed brown that looked cleaner if only because of it's length. or at least it would have had it not been for the open sores that still bled.

sores? blood? what happened to them, curly? what is going on? tell me, curly. who are they?

As with the first time Sula had woven an illusion around his mind, and every time she had done it since, Curly recognized what was happening. Unlike that first time or many of the subsequent ones, he suppressed his mind's natural inclination to fight the illusion. He let it steal over him, let the awareness that this was not real slip away from him, until, like a dreamer, the only thing he knew was the situation he was in.

Dark and chilling, the chamber stretched out around him, so full of nameless fear that his heart pounded and he struggled to breathe in that abysmal air. Out. He needed to get out of there, before the thing that could cause such awfulness came.

But.

No, he couldn't leave. There was someone else here, someone important, and that knowledge filled him with dread far worse than that in the atmosphere. He could hear them, but no matter how he peered into the dark, he couldn't see, could not tell who was there.

Then, suddenly, there was light—flickering fire along the walls—momentarily blinding, but he squinted through it, trying to pick out familiar features on the two figures. They were close together, turned toward each other, as if each tried to protect and comfort their companion, and Curly didn't need to see their faces in order to know who they were. The knowledge was there, hitting him like a punch to the gut, leaving him breathless.

"Larry," he whispered, his voice hoarse and barely loud enough to leave his throat. "Moe."

How long had they been down here? How long had he been unable to get to them? How long had he been trying to save them? Trying, and failing. They were hurting, they were being punished, because of him. This was his fault. It was his fault, because he kept failing. He was failing them, and they were suffering because of him.

He had to save them. He had to succeed this time. He couldn't fail again, not now, because if he failed now… this was his last chance. He had to do it this time. He had to succeed.

a mental nudge of agreement, confirmation of his fears.

larry and moe

tweak of guilt. a dash of fear.

too long, curly. you just keep failing them. look at what you've done. what you've let them go through.

the injuries, every single one, sharpened into focus. there was not a detail missed. the dirt. the blood. the smell of infection. the weight of pain. the crawling disgust of piss and vomit. and death. death in its doom and darkness loomed over everything, threatening. promising.

how could you let him do that to them? how could you? watching. pleading like a pathetic fool! refusing to HELP them!

a dark shadow, a silhouette, undefined but known. deep down in the soul, known to be the evil. the one. the him.

a loud crack and a cry. larry doubled over. moe, tears streaming, cried out in protest. another crack and larry screamed. moe tried to cover his friend but the shadow covered both and thumps and grunts resounded.

dread soaked into the ground.

a mental collar tightened on curly's throat, always there. always tight and unforgiving.

just like moe's bloody gaze. look at him curly. he knows you've let them down. Failed them. KILLED them.

A part of him wanted to look away. To close his eyes and shut out the sight of his friends suffering. It was a small part, like that easily-brushed-aside sense of self-preservation, and Curly ignored it as he always did, keeping his gaze locked on his friends, his very best friends in the whole world, the brothers he hadn't been born with but the ones he had found. Not a single bruise, cut, scrape, or weeping sore escaped him. It was his fault, and he wouldn't look away.

The shadow moved in, that silent, horrible figure, the source of all the pain, the orchestrator of every wound, mental and physical. Their tormentor, their jailor, and the thing they would have to go through—that Curly would have to go through—in order to be free.

When it fell on them, on Larry and Moe, the prince surged forward, brought up short by the collar at his throat, as much a magical restraint as a physical one. He didn't shout, didn't call out as he had done in the past. There was no pleading, no bargaining, no offering himself up in the place of his dearest friends—nothing moved the creature torturing them, killing the three by inches.

Healer's instinct told Curran that his friends would not survive this beating, not this time, not if he could not reach them and pour his magic into them. Larry and Moe would die if he did not get free of the collar and deal with the shadow. How, he did not know, but he had to do both if there was to be any hope of saving his friends.

And so Curly strained, fingers—magic and flesh—clawing at the restraint, seeking any weakness in the magic, the cold metal binding his throat and mind to the cold stones beneath him. There was no room for guilt, no room for doubt or fear or grief—only determination and will. He would succeed this time, he would free his friends and destroy the shadowed evil that hurt them.

One of his friends screamed, the sound cut off abruptly in a gurgle, and he knew, knew, what that gurgle meant. He cried out, rage and pain, throwing himself at the shadow, determined that this time, this time he would reach it and end its torture of his friends forever.

All at once, the collar crumbled away to dust with the softest of sighs and the prince stumbled forward, hands barely keeping his face from hitting the floor. Momentarily stunned, he raised his hand to his neck, the feel of his own skin sending a jolt through him. A sound, like the shifting of dry leaves over the ground, brought his head up, and he saw the shadow rise, away from his friends, turning toward him. Curly caught a glimpse of Moe cradling a too-still Larry before the shadow moved again, blocking his view.

This was it, the healer knew. He would have to go through the shadow to reach his friends, destroy it so that they could escape, and in order to do that... he had to get his hands on it.

The shadow surged forward and Curly threw himself to meet it, hands outstretched. Undefined, he half expected the creature to shatter around him, engulfing him like smoke and strangling him with its magic. Instead, his hands met solid flesh and living bone and grasped onto it. His magic's awareness surged through his mind in a way he had never felt before. The beating heart, the expanding lungs, and the pulsing sense of life at the core of the being were nothing new—nor the floodgate within his own body that he could open and pour out the healing light of the sun.

What was new was the tiny crack within his magic, the dark thread that spooled within. Thread Curly instinctive threw out, wrapping it around the core of the being under his hands. In his mind, it sank tiny, greedy thorns into the life-force he had directed it to, and once they were attached, the prince began to pull. It was wrong, the pulling—he should be pushing, and the light of the sun fought him all the way, but he didn't stop, couldn't stop because if he stopped they were all dead.

at first, sula didn't know what was happening.

she understood that things were changing for curly. she could see it. feel it. but... she, at first, had no idea what was happening to her. she didn't know what anything was. even as annoyance stirred at the effort it was taking to maintain her illusion. how difficult it was becoming. but sula was a stubborn woman; she fought with all her strength to keep things in place, after all, it was working, right?

curly was angry and afraid and vengeful. he wanted blood. she could feel it. so she struggled on, harder and harder against the ever-growing weight, the difficulty, the pain. he could buy her ice cream later.

sula had specifically tailored the nightmare for curly.

there was a general theory that a person born with magic to heal also had the magic to hurt. the ways in which both were done was either not documented or there were too many individual variations that were just as varied as the individuals who had such power that no one even bothered.

with a little more effort on her part, she was able to figure that MOST—though not all—people with such abilities worked both parts in the same but opposite way.

for example, she read of one individual who pulling patient's' injuries into themselves and healed themselves over time, so, to hurt, he was likely to push an injury he had—self inflicted or otherwise—into a victim he wished to harm.

in curly's case, the stooge had confessed to pushing his 'need' to heal into another. sula hadn't been sure she was completely able to understand how it worked for him, but she thought that, like opposites, if he pushed, then a pull would be required for the harming ability.

pulling what, though, was not something she figured out.

which made her doing this at all a stupid endeavor.

not knowing how to defend herself from POSSIBLE (read as VERY FUCKING LIKELY) harm, left her wide open.

oh yeah. she went through and cast a shit ton of spells, wore plenty of relics and charms, not to MENTION rune-tattoos a plenty, magically burned beneath her skin. but what she didn't understand, truly, was that while magic was magic, there were too many types of magic out there, she couldn't have possibly covered it all.

sula first felt the trouble she was in when her heart heaved. and by then, the illusion she had set was completely gone, she was a waif against her friend, her skin shriveled and sunken and gray.

she felt the pain deep into her bones and yet she couldn't feel them at all.

when was the last time she'd taken a breath?

a painful glow made her close her eyes, her lids paper thin.

who was she?

what was she?

where?

what was happening to her? her mind wasn't working. forgotten was her name, her life. her power. she didn't know who or what or where. dead. alive. what were things? and to think at all.

she was barely registering her soul and body. she knew once they were one. but now she was feeling them separate and she was afraid. but wasn't sure why.

somehow her eyes were open again, or else she had never closed them. or were her eyelids gone too? like her bones.

and she looked on a face she didn't know.

and did.

but she was too tired to ask. too tired to know. she didn't want to look at the light anymore.

the dark was whispering her name.

what was her name?

With every pull, every sickening pulse of the twisted thorns, the magic's resistance faded, the life flowing out of the shadow faster and faster, the black vines thick with it. The light his power was sunk into grew dimmer and dimmer and as it did, the sense of wrongness increased exponentially.

This wasn't right, this was wrong, so wrong, why was he doing this, he was killing this creature, stealing its life as easily as his father had once picked pockets, this was WRONG. He needed to STOP. But he couldn't stop, if he stopped they would die, it would kill them, he'd already failed so many times…

But… who were they? What would kill them? What had he failed at so…

All at once, the illusion lost hold of Curly's mind and his eyes snapped open, horror filling him at the sight of the person in his arms.

Sula's skin was shriveled, sunken and grey, bones, too sharp, seeming about to jut through; her dark hair was white and brittle. Her eyes were rheumy, grey and yellow, staring, fixed and sightless. He couldn't feel her breathing or heartbeat.

If not for the flickering life he still held in his mind's eye, Curly would have been sure she was dead. Panic joined the horror as he scrambled to detach the thorns and pull back the magic sucking at Sula's life force even now because he didn't know how to stop.

He tried to yank them out, but the magic resisted, latching onto the guttering light and tightening. Another yank only served to pull more of his friend's life out of her. Immediately he stopped pulling, and the flow slowed to a trickle. But it didn't stop.

"No, no, no, no, no," the healer breathed, reaching instead to what was inside him, pushing the sunlight that made up the core of him into Sula. At first, it resisted, anathema to the darkness latched onto the force it was meant to heal, but Curly pushed harder, shoving his magic down familiar pathways until finally it went, pouring into the sea witch like dawn breaking.

A shiver passed through the black and thorny vines as Curly's healing magic touched them. A moment later, they began to glow with a faint light of their own, relaxing their grip as the life he had stolen moved back into its rightful body.

Eyes open once more; he watched with worried relief as color and life returned to Sula's decimated body, felt her heart kick start and lungs fill with air, eyes clearing.

Even when everything he had taken was returned, Curly kept his magic open and flowing into her, giving her energy he really should have kept for himself.

"Sula?"

She looked up at him, eyes briefly focusing, before her gaze slid off his face and she giggled, which scared Curly almost as much as the sight of her emaciated body had.

"Oh shit," he whispered. "We've got to get you to the infirmary. C'mon, up you go, c'mon, Sula." It wasn't easy-she kept wanting to slide back down to the floor-but eventually he got her up and moving toward the infirmary, the witch giggling all the way.