(Standard disclaimers apply) The usual warnings for
disturbing scenes and Lina-torture. *pats Lina on
the head* There there, sweetie. ;)
*Part 2*
He had thought it would be impossible for him to sleep, but he must have
dozed for a few minutes, because he woke with a start as Lina launched
herself upright in the bed, shouting incoherently. The towels covering her
had slipped down to her waist, but it was the emptiness in her eyes that
held him.
"Lina!" Gourry exclaimed, faltering as she didn't respond. She regarded him
blankly, then slowly her crimson eyes began to fill with rage.
"Fireb-!"
Reacting on instinct, Gourry seized her in his arms, covering her mouth
before she could complete the casting. Lina howled, sounds muffled against
his palm as she tried to bite him. Struggling in his grasp, she pummelled
the hapless swordsman again and again with small, yet surprisingly effective
fists. Gourry experienced momentary confusion. While this might be
classified as normal behaviour for her, usually she actually shouted words
he could understand while she tried to pound him into the ground.
"Lina," Gourry lowered his voice, and spoke softly, as if to a frightened
animal, "it's me. Come on, Lina, snap out of it, please? You're safe now,
safe..."
The barrage of blows continued, but slowly her wordless screams dissolved
into broken sobs, and gradually she also stopped fighting him. Tears boiled
from her eyes to run scalding over the back of his hand.
"I am so sorry..." Gourry whispered. Helplessness choked in his throat,
preventing him from saying more.
"...not your fault." Lina's voice was so soft, and so unusually gravelly
that he almost didn't hear - especially with his hand still plastered over
her mouth.
Gourry took his hand away in surprise. "Lina?"
Though her eyes were bloodshot and swimming when they lifted to his, they
showed a clarity of thought previously absent. "I said that it's not your
fault," she repeated hoarsely, clearing her throat.
"Here, have some water..." The swordsman poured a cup from the jug on the
nightstand and Lina took it, gulping thirstily as she appeared to take in
her surroundings and her state of undress for the first time.
Her crimson eyes widened for a moment and Gourry prepared himself for the
worst. After all, the situation, innocent or not, still looked a lot more
compromising than the last time she had been in his arms for any length of
time. Still, Lina had never been one for predictability, and her reaction
was decidedly non-plussed.
"Ummm... Gourry?" Lina sounded nasal from within her drinking glass as she
finished the last drops.
/Here it comes./ He tried to cross his legs protectively, which was just
slightly impossible with her petite form still settled in his lap. "Yes?"
She set down the empty glass on the nightstand again with a hand that
trembled faintly. "Ummmm..." she said again, "why am I naked?"
The swordsman's dark gold brows knit for a moment as he searched his inner
reserves for a diplomacy he didn't possess. "You do you remember what
happened, don't you?"
Lina's answer was to freeze in his arms for a long moment, then she nodded
stiffly.
"Well... then you know I couldn't leave you like that.... I just couldn't. I
don't care what you do to me now." Gourry let his shoulders slump, prepared
to accept defeat from this small creature in his arms as he would from no
one else.
The sorceress made no reply, simply lifted her chin sharply, averting her
face from his as though unable to bear looking at him.
He wasn't prepared for what she did next. A punch in the stomach, a kick
somewhere unpleasant, those were what he feared, but he would never have
expected the 'retribution' he did receive as Lina twisted in his grasp to
squeeze him so hard he thought his ribs would crack. But even that did not
content her and she burrowed closer still, mashing her face against the
front of his shirt as though she could somehow force herself straight into
his chest, crawl inside him, right where his heart had begun pounding in
rapid confusion.
"Thank you..." she sniffled.
...and pigs were flying, and Zelgadis frolicked through flower meadows
merrily as a schoolboy, and Amelia was falling down drunk in a tavern
arm-wrestling an old lady for her last gold piece, and Xellos was singing
love songs, and the whole world as Gourry knew it came crashing down around
the mostly empty space between his ears...
Lina didn't make another sound, not for a long while, but Gourry felt his
shirt growing damp where her face rested.
If her embrace and her gratitude had shocked him before, her next words,
when she finally said them, were utterly paralysing.
"I'm so scared..."
His brain completely ceased what remained of its higher functions. Lina did
not get scared. She did not. It was like a glacier bursting into flames - it
simply did not happen.
"It's alright," the blonde swordsman patted her awkwardly, speaking the
words as much for his comfort as for hers.
"No it's not," Lina spoke, forcing words deliberately through a voice
clogged with tears. "Don't you see, Jellyfish? They knew... they knew what
would get me. They didn't fight fair. They came in the dark, when I was
alone and asleep, and they tied me up, gagged me so I couldn't fight back.
And then they put *them* on me, not spiders, not snakes, not even roaches or
worms, but s... sl... They knew, they knew what would get me more than
anything else..."
"But how? How did they find out?"
"How?" Lina echoed tremulously. "How should I know? I mean, I haven't told a
lot of people, but it wasn't exactly a secret either. I just didn't know
anyone could hate me enough to use it against me."
Gourry thought about that for a moment, then sighed. "But Lina, you're the
bandit killer, the dragon spooker, the enemy of all who live..."
The small sorceress' fragile control snapped easily, and she started crying
again in noisy, ugly sobs.
"...you've destroyed several small towns, even a small kingdom... blew up
Sairaag... and part of Seyruun City..." Lina sobbed more loudly still as
he cluelessly continued enumerating her somewhat depressing curriculum vitae.
To his credit, the implications of Lina's increasing volume finally sank in,
and Gourry cut himself off in embarrassment.
"Hey!" Lina blubbered, slapping him weakly, "Sairaag wasn't me - that was
Copy Rezo!"
"Oh, right..."
Lina hit him again, half-heartedly. "You're supposed to be making me feel
better here, not worse... But I guess you're right, I did do all that
stuff... everyone hates me!"
"Amelia doesn't hate you, or Zelgadis, or Sylphiel, or Filia - I don't know
how Xellos feels, but he doesn't fight with you the way he does with Filia.
Martina is too busy with Zangulus to hate you now. Even little Valgaav
doesn't hate you anymore."
"He threw up on me the last time we visited Filia!"
"I think Filia said babies do that, Lina."
"That's irrelevant."
"Irr - wha...?" Gourry tilted his head, trying to recall the meaning of the
word.
"It means I don't care, okay!?" Lina snapped, chin trembling.
"Lina..."
"Don't you 'Lina' me." She tugged her wad of towels up protectively against
her, but made no move to escape him. "You don't know, you just don't..." She
signed, drawing up her knees to lean her pointed chin on them. "What about
you, Gourry?"
"Huh?"
"Do you hate me too?" Her voice lost some of its strident edge, softening
until he could barely hear it. "I haven't exactly been the nicest person to
you either."
Gourry felt his own expression soften in response. Funny, Lina could be so,
so... exasperating sometimes, but then, just when he was ready to run away
screaming she changed, she changed everything. "Lina... How could you ask
that? I know I'm not too smart, but I'm not dumb enough to promise to spend
my whole life protecting someone I hate either."
"You really mean that?" Lina sniffled.
"Sure I do!" Gourry agreed, with a wide smile that quickly faded as he
recalled his failure again. "Even though I didn't do such a good job
protecting you this time." He clenched his fist. "But they won't get past me
again, whoever they are! Er," the swordsman scratched his head, "do we know
who they are?"
"I'm sure it isn't anything serious." Abruptly Lina was all business,
scooting from his arms as though she had never been there in the first
place. She pulled her drooping towels more tightly around her slender body.
"Now, how about some breakfast?"
"I heard the bells a while back, before you woke up - it's past noon,"
Gourry pointed out automatically, taken aback by her sudden change. Left
behind again. He shook his head. Really he should be used to her by now.
"Lunch - whatever!" Lina made a vague gesture with one arm as she climbed
from the bed. "Wait, we're in your room?"
"It seemed easier at the - "
"Let me just go back to my room and get my stuff on," Lina interrupted
brightly, hurrying away.
"Okay Lina," Gourry agreed to the suddenly empty room, "if that's what you
want..."
Moments later Lina came stomping back in, still clad in her towel. "The door
is locked," she growled, showing just a hint of white incisor.
"Well, Lina, you probably locked it when you went to bed - "
"Which means they came in through the window and got me that way."
"Lina..."
"Dammit!" Lina shouted, her eyes taking on a dangerous wildness as she shook
with more than her usual temper.
"But Lina..."
Balling her fist, she bashed Gourry's own door, sending it flying back on
its hinges. "I don't care, okay, I just don't care. I want my stuff, it's my
stuff and I want it, and if that door doesn't know what's good for it, then
in five seconds it's going to be kindling for my fireball! D'ya hear me?
Kindling! *Little* *smoking* *bits* of *dust*... Like they should have
been - like they would have been if they hadn't, if they... they..."
"Lina, relax, why don't I just ask the innkeeper for a spare key, alright?"
She stared up at him with a very odd expression on her face. "Ummm... okay?"
Taking advantage of her distraction, he hurried from the room before she
changed her mind and destroyed something.
Lina watched the door shut behind the swordsman as the red haze of anger
slowly dissipated from behind her eyes. She hoped he would hurry back
Her thoughts were in a whirl, caught up in a primal tornado inside of her.
Confusion, violation, fear, vulnerability, loneliness... Where was Gourry?
Where was that key? She couldn't wait to be alone.
Could she?
Alone. That was how she had been last night, how they had found her. Caught
her.
She remembered them in the dark - she couldn't see them, but their scent
alone had been a tangible presence, a magnitude of stench. Their soft,
vulgar laughter, their clutching hands all over her like dirty spiders...
she had begged them not to... remembering Luna's dim cautions about the
things unscrupulous men could do to women when they were alone.
No they had not done that, but they had found another way to violate her,
dug through the darkness of her soul and drowned her in it... Part of her
recoiled at her weakness, bad enough when she was among friends, but now, so
cruelly exploited...
"We have company for you, witch." She could hear the derisive sneer in the
voice of the ringleader, even from the depths of the well. "You may not like
them now, but a time will soon come when you will dream of how gentle this
night was and wish you were back here..."
Sure, how bad was a night down a well, really? Lina had snorted, would have
asked them if this was the best they could come up with, if she hadn't been
gagged. Either that or fireballed them - probably both.
But either way, the point was moot and the answer to her unspoken question
came to her soon enough as *things* poured down on her, wet, slimy, *live
things* dropping wetly on her skin like rain. Some continued past her,
falling away into the water below, but most had caught, clinging to her for
dear life. So many... where had they found them all?
She could still feel them, like vile, slimy demon tongues, their cold,
sliding touch lapping her flesh... their slow progress charting the
territory of her trembling body, finding sanctuary in her ears, on her arms,
in her hair, and ...elsewhere... no, not there, not... their slickness, an
unwanted balm across her dry lips.
Lost in a world of horror she did not hear the sadistic laughter of her
tormentors as they lingered only briefly to watch, to hear her muffled
screams as she failed to summon help. After a while the human riffraff had
gone, but the invertebrates remained, burning impressions onto her recoiling
brain until she could count each individual violation of her person and her
sanity, know where each unwelcome creature rested...
Wasn't this the time when Gourry showed up to save her? Wasn't this the
moment when he would get up for a drink of water and decide to look in on
her, knock on her door to make sure she was safe? Even better, wasn't this
the moment when she would wake up in his arms to find this had been all just
a bad dream? She looked forward to being able to release her fear and
frustration by getting a few good blows in on him for being 'fresh'... He
would accept it, as he always did... Gourry was funny that way, he could
always take as good as she could give... not many people could... she had
always... respected that about him.
But she had not woken up, because it had not been a dream, and Gourry had
not come. And somewhere in the night, after she had nearly choked on her own
vomit more times than she could count... somewhere she had stopped fighting
enough to achieve some distance from her pest-ridden body. For a brief
instant she, Lina Inverse, had given up hope utterly and accepted defeat,
and in that moment a merciful darkness had shrouded her troubled mind at
last.
disturbing scenes and Lina-torture. *pats Lina on
the head* There there, sweetie. ;)
*Part 2*
He had thought it would be impossible for him to sleep, but he must have
dozed for a few minutes, because he woke with a start as Lina launched
herself upright in the bed, shouting incoherently. The towels covering her
had slipped down to her waist, but it was the emptiness in her eyes that
held him.
"Lina!" Gourry exclaimed, faltering as she didn't respond. She regarded him
blankly, then slowly her crimson eyes began to fill with rage.
"Fireb-!"
Reacting on instinct, Gourry seized her in his arms, covering her mouth
before she could complete the casting. Lina howled, sounds muffled against
his palm as she tried to bite him. Struggling in his grasp, she pummelled
the hapless swordsman again and again with small, yet surprisingly effective
fists. Gourry experienced momentary confusion. While this might be
classified as normal behaviour for her, usually she actually shouted words
he could understand while she tried to pound him into the ground.
"Lina," Gourry lowered his voice, and spoke softly, as if to a frightened
animal, "it's me. Come on, Lina, snap out of it, please? You're safe now,
safe..."
The barrage of blows continued, but slowly her wordless screams dissolved
into broken sobs, and gradually she also stopped fighting him. Tears boiled
from her eyes to run scalding over the back of his hand.
"I am so sorry..." Gourry whispered. Helplessness choked in his throat,
preventing him from saying more.
"...not your fault." Lina's voice was so soft, and so unusually gravelly
that he almost didn't hear - especially with his hand still plastered over
her mouth.
Gourry took his hand away in surprise. "Lina?"
Though her eyes were bloodshot and swimming when they lifted to his, they
showed a clarity of thought previously absent. "I said that it's not your
fault," she repeated hoarsely, clearing her throat.
"Here, have some water..." The swordsman poured a cup from the jug on the
nightstand and Lina took it, gulping thirstily as she appeared to take in
her surroundings and her state of undress for the first time.
Her crimson eyes widened for a moment and Gourry prepared himself for the
worst. After all, the situation, innocent or not, still looked a lot more
compromising than the last time she had been in his arms for any length of
time. Still, Lina had never been one for predictability, and her reaction
was decidedly non-plussed.
"Ummm... Gourry?" Lina sounded nasal from within her drinking glass as she
finished the last drops.
/Here it comes./ He tried to cross his legs protectively, which was just
slightly impossible with her petite form still settled in his lap. "Yes?"
She set down the empty glass on the nightstand again with a hand that
trembled faintly. "Ummmm..." she said again, "why am I naked?"
The swordsman's dark gold brows knit for a moment as he searched his inner
reserves for a diplomacy he didn't possess. "You do you remember what
happened, don't you?"
Lina's answer was to freeze in his arms for a long moment, then she nodded
stiffly.
"Well... then you know I couldn't leave you like that.... I just couldn't. I
don't care what you do to me now." Gourry let his shoulders slump, prepared
to accept defeat from this small creature in his arms as he would from no
one else.
The sorceress made no reply, simply lifted her chin sharply, averting her
face from his as though unable to bear looking at him.
He wasn't prepared for what she did next. A punch in the stomach, a kick
somewhere unpleasant, those were what he feared, but he would never have
expected the 'retribution' he did receive as Lina twisted in his grasp to
squeeze him so hard he thought his ribs would crack. But even that did not
content her and she burrowed closer still, mashing her face against the
front of his shirt as though she could somehow force herself straight into
his chest, crawl inside him, right where his heart had begun pounding in
rapid confusion.
"Thank you..." she sniffled.
...and pigs were flying, and Zelgadis frolicked through flower meadows
merrily as a schoolboy, and Amelia was falling down drunk in a tavern
arm-wrestling an old lady for her last gold piece, and Xellos was singing
love songs, and the whole world as Gourry knew it came crashing down around
the mostly empty space between his ears...
Lina didn't make another sound, not for a long while, but Gourry felt his
shirt growing damp where her face rested.
If her embrace and her gratitude had shocked him before, her next words,
when she finally said them, were utterly paralysing.
"I'm so scared..."
His brain completely ceased what remained of its higher functions. Lina did
not get scared. She did not. It was like a glacier bursting into flames - it
simply did not happen.
"It's alright," the blonde swordsman patted her awkwardly, speaking the
words as much for his comfort as for hers.
"No it's not," Lina spoke, forcing words deliberately through a voice
clogged with tears. "Don't you see, Jellyfish? They knew... they knew what
would get me. They didn't fight fair. They came in the dark, when I was
alone and asleep, and they tied me up, gagged me so I couldn't fight back.
And then they put *them* on me, not spiders, not snakes, not even roaches or
worms, but s... sl... They knew, they knew what would get me more than
anything else..."
"But how? How did they find out?"
"How?" Lina echoed tremulously. "How should I know? I mean, I haven't told a
lot of people, but it wasn't exactly a secret either. I just didn't know
anyone could hate me enough to use it against me."
Gourry thought about that for a moment, then sighed. "But Lina, you're the
bandit killer, the dragon spooker, the enemy of all who live..."
The small sorceress' fragile control snapped easily, and she started crying
again in noisy, ugly sobs.
"...you've destroyed several small towns, even a small kingdom... blew up
Sairaag... and part of Seyruun City..." Lina sobbed more loudly still as
he cluelessly continued enumerating her somewhat depressing curriculum vitae.
To his credit, the implications of Lina's increasing volume finally sank in,
and Gourry cut himself off in embarrassment.
"Hey!" Lina blubbered, slapping him weakly, "Sairaag wasn't me - that was
Copy Rezo!"
"Oh, right..."
Lina hit him again, half-heartedly. "You're supposed to be making me feel
better here, not worse... But I guess you're right, I did do all that
stuff... everyone hates me!"
"Amelia doesn't hate you, or Zelgadis, or Sylphiel, or Filia - I don't know
how Xellos feels, but he doesn't fight with you the way he does with Filia.
Martina is too busy with Zangulus to hate you now. Even little Valgaav
doesn't hate you anymore."
"He threw up on me the last time we visited Filia!"
"I think Filia said babies do that, Lina."
"That's irrelevant."
"Irr - wha...?" Gourry tilted his head, trying to recall the meaning of the
word.
"It means I don't care, okay!?" Lina snapped, chin trembling.
"Lina..."
"Don't you 'Lina' me." She tugged her wad of towels up protectively against
her, but made no move to escape him. "You don't know, you just don't..." She
signed, drawing up her knees to lean her pointed chin on them. "What about
you, Gourry?"
"Huh?"
"Do you hate me too?" Her voice lost some of its strident edge, softening
until he could barely hear it. "I haven't exactly been the nicest person to
you either."
Gourry felt his own expression soften in response. Funny, Lina could be so,
so... exasperating sometimes, but then, just when he was ready to run away
screaming she changed, she changed everything. "Lina... How could you ask
that? I know I'm not too smart, but I'm not dumb enough to promise to spend
my whole life protecting someone I hate either."
"You really mean that?" Lina sniffled.
"Sure I do!" Gourry agreed, with a wide smile that quickly faded as he
recalled his failure again. "Even though I didn't do such a good job
protecting you this time." He clenched his fist. "But they won't get past me
again, whoever they are! Er," the swordsman scratched his head, "do we know
who they are?"
"I'm sure it isn't anything serious." Abruptly Lina was all business,
scooting from his arms as though she had never been there in the first
place. She pulled her drooping towels more tightly around her slender body.
"Now, how about some breakfast?"
"I heard the bells a while back, before you woke up - it's past noon,"
Gourry pointed out automatically, taken aback by her sudden change. Left
behind again. He shook his head. Really he should be used to her by now.
"Lunch - whatever!" Lina made a vague gesture with one arm as she climbed
from the bed. "Wait, we're in your room?"
"It seemed easier at the - "
"Let me just go back to my room and get my stuff on," Lina interrupted
brightly, hurrying away.
"Okay Lina," Gourry agreed to the suddenly empty room, "if that's what you
want..."
Moments later Lina came stomping back in, still clad in her towel. "The door
is locked," she growled, showing just a hint of white incisor.
"Well, Lina, you probably locked it when you went to bed - "
"Which means they came in through the window and got me that way."
"Lina..."
"Dammit!" Lina shouted, her eyes taking on a dangerous wildness as she shook
with more than her usual temper.
"But Lina..."
Balling her fist, she bashed Gourry's own door, sending it flying back on
its hinges. "I don't care, okay, I just don't care. I want my stuff, it's my
stuff and I want it, and if that door doesn't know what's good for it, then
in five seconds it's going to be kindling for my fireball! D'ya hear me?
Kindling! *Little* *smoking* *bits* of *dust*... Like they should have
been - like they would have been if they hadn't, if they... they..."
"Lina, relax, why don't I just ask the innkeeper for a spare key, alright?"
She stared up at him with a very odd expression on her face. "Ummm... okay?"
Taking advantage of her distraction, he hurried from the room before she
changed her mind and destroyed something.
Lina watched the door shut behind the swordsman as the red haze of anger
slowly dissipated from behind her eyes. She hoped he would hurry back
Her thoughts were in a whirl, caught up in a primal tornado inside of her.
Confusion, violation, fear, vulnerability, loneliness... Where was Gourry?
Where was that key? She couldn't wait to be alone.
Could she?
Alone. That was how she had been last night, how they had found her. Caught
her.
She remembered them in the dark - she couldn't see them, but their scent
alone had been a tangible presence, a magnitude of stench. Their soft,
vulgar laughter, their clutching hands all over her like dirty spiders...
she had begged them not to... remembering Luna's dim cautions about the
things unscrupulous men could do to women when they were alone.
No they had not done that, but they had found another way to violate her,
dug through the darkness of her soul and drowned her in it... Part of her
recoiled at her weakness, bad enough when she was among friends, but now, so
cruelly exploited...
"We have company for you, witch." She could hear the derisive sneer in the
voice of the ringleader, even from the depths of the well. "You may not like
them now, but a time will soon come when you will dream of how gentle this
night was and wish you were back here..."
Sure, how bad was a night down a well, really? Lina had snorted, would have
asked them if this was the best they could come up with, if she hadn't been
gagged. Either that or fireballed them - probably both.
But either way, the point was moot and the answer to her unspoken question
came to her soon enough as *things* poured down on her, wet, slimy, *live
things* dropping wetly on her skin like rain. Some continued past her,
falling away into the water below, but most had caught, clinging to her for
dear life. So many... where had they found them all?
She could still feel them, like vile, slimy demon tongues, their cold,
sliding touch lapping her flesh... their slow progress charting the
territory of her trembling body, finding sanctuary in her ears, on her arms,
in her hair, and ...elsewhere... no, not there, not... their slickness, an
unwanted balm across her dry lips.
Lost in a world of horror she did not hear the sadistic laughter of her
tormentors as they lingered only briefly to watch, to hear her muffled
screams as she failed to summon help. After a while the human riffraff had
gone, but the invertebrates remained, burning impressions onto her recoiling
brain until she could count each individual violation of her person and her
sanity, know where each unwelcome creature rested...
Wasn't this the time when Gourry showed up to save her? Wasn't this the
moment when he would get up for a drink of water and decide to look in on
her, knock on her door to make sure she was safe? Even better, wasn't this
the moment when she would wake up in his arms to find this had been all just
a bad dream? She looked forward to being able to release her fear and
frustration by getting a few good blows in on him for being 'fresh'... He
would accept it, as he always did... Gourry was funny that way, he could
always take as good as she could give... not many people could... she had
always... respected that about him.
But she had not woken up, because it had not been a dream, and Gourry had
not come. And somewhere in the night, after she had nearly choked on her own
vomit more times than she could count... somewhere she had stopped fighting
enough to achieve some distance from her pest-ridden body. For a brief
instant she, Lina Inverse, had given up hope utterly and accepted defeat,
and in that moment a merciful darkness had shrouded her troubled mind at
last.