Notes

I'd like to thank my reviewers, deblovesdragon and lilpheonixfeather. Your reviews really do mean a lot. :D

Just a quick warning, folks. This chapter is long and filled with unpleasantness.

"Yeah, well, taking lives changes a person, Shrimp," He rested his hand on her shoulder. The limb a heavier than usual burden. "Ain't important whether it's justified or not. You're still not the same," Gajeel's voice wavered slightly. "Yeh lose a part of yourself every time. Eventually it becomes second nature to you. You attack to kill. And the worst thing about it is how little you notice. And when you finally do?" His red eyes pierced her. "Then you don't care."

She hadn't known why the council had wanted her and Gajeel to bring in this mage. She'd protested, vigorously when they'd sent the request. She didn't understand it; why they'd specifically asked for them when there were dozens of other candidates that would have been closer and more than happy to oblige. It had taken them over a week to even get here but now that she was here she understood why. Understood because out of all the mages working for the council they'd had the most hands on experience with curse magic; they'd seen their share of monsters. It might have been nice to have had some warning first but this new council kept things close to their chests. In this case 'capture dark mage' fell short. It fell so, unbelievably short.

She ducked behind a small crumbling rock wall as the now familiar splash and sizzle sound rang out, punctuated by the screams of the men unlucky enough to have been caught in the cross-hairs of the wizard who'd, by her count, taken down over a dozen men with his magic; their bodies dissolved away by streams of acid that cut through the barriers she'd cast up around them and almost instantly reduced a line of council soldiers into puddles of flesh, screaming for mercy. Their deaths were on her hands and it made her more than desperate to protect the rest. As sunlight started spilling through the corroded holes in the stone wall the mage stood and tried not to gag. The smells made her retch and unwittingly her eyes locked with the eyes of Jonah, one of the men who'd accompanied them, his screaming face burned it's way into her memory as slime and entrails poured out of the hole now steaming in his abdomen. She had no doubt that she would see him echoing in her mind till the day she died. Open mouthed and screaming.

When she did pull her eyes from the now corpse she found Gajeel on his hands and knees to the far right of the group. An arm over his face covering his mouth and nose. Even from this distance she could see the raw red ringing his eyes. He'd been too close to the initial attack and must have inhaled some of the vapor. Iron lungs could only do so much and she watched in worry as his skin started shifting from iron back to much less durable skin and muscle.

She took a solid stance, a deep breath and the word 'NEUTRALIZE' appeared between the mage and her and Gajeel's remaining men. The stream of acid passed right through the word as though it were nothing more than cloud but when hit them it had as much effect as water. A substantial number of relieved faces mirrored her own. Still in a little shock that it worked Levy's eyes fell on the dark wizard. His black, soulless eyes were wild...but he was now smiling. She froze. Eyes locking on his. Her entire body was paralyzed. She couldn't even breathe. She swallowed and felt moisture gather at her eyes. Tears that had nothing to do with the toxic air assaulting them fell down her stained cheeks. What is this? She was screaming internally now. Her body felt release suddenly and she fell to her knees. The dark mage had been so fixated on her that he missed the iron pole that shot out from the crowd and struck him across the temple with a sickening crunch. His body fell limply to the ground in a tangle of limbs, smile still present on his deranged face. He didn't move and for that she was grateful. Willing her feet to work she approached him cautiously before she realised just how hard that blow had been. The council had wanted him taken alive.

"The council wanted...we didn't have to..." She began half-heartedly, words lost amid the horror surrounding them but she was quickly interrupted.

"Well I don't give a damn what the council wanted this guy for." The dragon slayer rubbed a hand across his burned eyes trying to get a better view of the carnage. "There's fourteen men who won't be going home today," He growled at her now vacant expression before grabbing her by the arm and pulling her off to the side out of direct earshot of the remaining men. "Levy," He spoke softly, watching her pause at the use of her actual name. "There was no taking that guy back alive. You saw him. We don't have any cuffs that work on curses," He sighed. "Had to take him out." She couldn't answer him. Still trying to get to grips with everything, Team Shadowgear had never taken jobs this violent. They'd never been forced to kill. There was a tight feeling in her chest that refused to go away. As though she'd swallowed a lump. He mistook her silence as disapproval. "Don't be naive, Levy."

The words bit her. In the deepest recesses of her mind she knew he was right. He did the sensible thing, more than likely saving all their lives in the process but Levy was angry. Angry that her barriers had failed to save so many men, angry that even after defeating Mard Greer and Tartarus two months ago there were still mages experimenting with curse magic; still people trying to turn themselves into monsters. Most of all though, she was angry that Gajeel was absolutely right and she was wrong on this.

"Yeah, well maybe some of us don't want to be murderers," She clutched her hand to her mouth, horror written on her face at the words that came out and the piercing anguish that blanketed his. She reached out to grab his arm but he pulled it back. His expression icy. "I didn't mean that. I'm so sorry...I didn't..."

Gajeel had already turned away from her.

The following three days on the road back to Lily and the main force were steeped in uncomfortable silence. Gajeel hadn't said a word to her. He'd even had one of the men hand her the incident report instead of giving it to her himself. Levy had cried herself to sleep every night since before being greeted with the expected nightmares. Except in these dreams, she was the dark mage. Her hands stained with blood as she found herself looking down into Gajeel's dead hate-filled eyes. When she woke she'd be sitting up, face contorted in a silent scream. The worse part about the nightmare was how in reality she hadn't done all that better. She loved Gajeel. More than anything. More than living. That was if she would ever get around to telling him the extent of those feelings. She would have died for him but she had hurt him in a way she was positive few ever had because her words mattered to him. Her opinion was important. Anyone else had said that to him and he would have laughed in their face, but she shook him to the bones; her words held power. As a script mage the power of words should have been clear to her but she'd really, really messed up. The woman's gaze wandered to the scrunched up report peaking out of the corner of her side satchel. Gajeel had never even bothered writing reports before. She put her face in her hands and scrubbed hard.

"I need to fix this, I have to fix this," She murmured to no one in particular.

They walked from dawn to dusk on the fourth day until the main camp was barely a half a nights walk from their current position. Levy gave the remaining mages a choice to either make camp or continue on and take the wagon with what corpses they had to Lily's forces. Understandably the troops chose to keep marching. No one had been sleeping the last few nights and they were all eager to be debriefed and get home to their families. Gajeel hadn't said anything about her proclamation. When he'd turned to go with the wagon she'd stopped him.

"We're going to make camp here tonight. There's a few things we've to discuss and a little more paperwork to fill out. We should catch up about noon tomorrow," She announced in her most authoritative voice. The men were aware they were a dating couple, although they kept things on a strictly professional level on most big jobs, so they didn't spare a thought to the decision.

Gajeel however, openly glared at her. In combat, he gave the orders, but Levy's tactical position gave her the ability to make these stupid kinds of decisions. His mouth pulled into a scowl. He waited till the men were out of sight before rounding on her.

"So what, yer pullin' rank now?" He asked, distaste evident on his features. When the woman didn't immediately respond he turned away to leave. In a moment she'd crossed the distance between them and had a hold of his wrist.

"You were right Gajeel," Her face was pained. "And I knew you were right." She swallowed the lump in her throat. "I don't know what happened. I was terrified and I was angry and when he looked at me and smiled like I was an accomplice in all this...and..." Tears slipped out unbidden and she wiped them away with a stained sleeve. "I remember what you told me once about killing. I didn't mean what I said. I wasn't angry at you," His features softened and she was interrupted by a pair of arms crushing her to him. His breath on her head made her knees almost like jelly but he held her up.

"I'm sorry," He mumbled before pulling back from her. "And I didn't hit him intending to kill him, Shorty," He ran a hand over her head messing up her hair a little. "It wasn't intentional. To be honest, it wasn't even that hard, whatever it looked like he was into was killing him. Looked like he'd have been dead in a week if we hadn't have found him first. I don't want things to go back to how they were before," I don't want to be the man capable of hurting you like I did were the unspoken words. His voice was hard. He gave her a half smile. "The whole world can think I'm a monster but I couldn't deal with it if you did," He admitted.

"I don't," She whispered.

They stayed in that embrace for what seemed like an eternity before Gajeel spoke again.

"I don't know about you but I ain't slept in an actual bed in a week and really don't feel like pitching camp out here till morning," He grinned softly at her. "How about we catch up to the men?"

Levy slung her bag over her shoulder but Gajeel plucked it out of her hands. A supply bag over each shoulder now as he picked up the pace in the direction of the wagon. The blue haired mage felt the most enormous weight lifted from her chest as she took off at a light jog to catch up to him.

The pair had been walking for about a half an hour when Levy stopped in her tracks.

"Gajeel, the wagon wasn't moving that fast, we should have caught up with them by now," A two horse wagon and five men wouldn't have been easy to miss. "Can you smell anything?"

He sniffed the air and promptly regretted it.

"Nothing. Nose is all messed up from the fumes." He snorted.

She held her hand in front of her, palm up and whispered "Light," just loud enough for Gajeel to hear, tracing her fingers quickly through the air. A small lacrima looking orb appeared, glowing with a soft white radiance that illuminated the the surrounding area.

Looking down at their feet Gajeel noticed it first.

"No tracks. Don't know how but we passed them." His eyes narrowed cursing his lack of smell.

The pair doubled back and finally found the tracks they were looking for, maybe about a mile from where they'd separated. In the faint light they noticed the odd scattering of items in the road. A dagger here, a crossbow bolt there. The set of locks from the wagon doors; the mechanism melted into an unrecognizable shape. But no wagon and no bodies. That meant there was some hope they'd still be alive. Levy kept her fingers at the ready for a neutralizing spell just in case. The tracks veered left suddenly, disappearing off the main road and into the woods. Levy and Gajeel followed at a crawl, hyper vigilant of the area around them. They made it about fifty yards in that direction before Levy choked back a scream, staggering backwards. Gajeel wrapped an arm around her waist and spun her away from the sight.

"NO!" She cried out.

The iron dragon slayer felt his stomach heave as she shook against him. He was glad that his enhanced smell had been taken out of commission because he was sure that at this point he would be vomiting.

From the pile of steaming gelatinous flesh Gajeel could only assume they were already dead when they'd been placed with the horses and hit with the acid. Atop the mound some of the skulls were still recognizable; patches of skin dripping around open mouths, frozen in now decrepit expressions of terror.

"You okay, Shrimp?" He asked her quietly, unable to keep the quiver from his voice completely, already his skin had hardened to iron scales. He felt her slow nod, looking around them, examining the area for any signs of a trap. The wagon was no where to be seen. He became vaguely aware of a fog billowing around their feet.

"Actually...I feel a little..." Levy sputtered before she threw up. Her body becoming limp in Gajeels grip. He gave her a brisk shake.

"Shorty! Levy!"

There was no response. He was beginning to question why it was that she'd fainted when his own stomach started heaving. The world coming in waves of rippling darkness and moving trees before he blacked out completely.

When Levy woke next it was to the biting cold of chains around her wrists and ankles and the taste of bile in her mouth. The first thing that struck her after that was the smell, the fumes making her eyes burn and water. As she grew more accustomed to the darkness came the realisation that she was currently in a cavern; cold jagged stone scrapping her back and the soles of her now bare feet. She could hear the steady drip of water in the background and the sound of laboured breathing.

"Gajeel!" She all but screeched. "Gajeel?!"

"Lev...?" The voice seemed to come from above but no matter how hard she tried to see she couldn't make him out.

There was a bright flash and unseen torches in the blackness sprung to life with a brilliant flare. She squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden light and when she opened them an involuntary scream fled her mouth. Gajeel hung, suspended from the ceiling about fifteen feet in the air by his bloody hands. The steady drip she'd been listening to wasn't water, but his blood, falling to collect in a glistening crimson pool under his feet. One of his eyes had swollen shut; deep looking cuts raking his arms and torso, a deep bleeding wound in his side. The cuffs around his wrists were the ones they'd brought themselves with the wagon to seal the mage's magic so they could take him into custody. All this before they'd discovered that they'd be completely useless. She pulled frantically at her own limbs tears falling down her face as she recognized the same adorning her hands and feet. Looking around the cavern it looked like the expanse had been literally dissolved out of the rock. The quartz deposits in the sandstone jagged and untouched, almost beautiful protruding from the floor and walls.

Her struggle was broken by laughter.

"Pull all you want but it won't do you any gooooooood," The dark mage mocked.

"What do you want?" Her voice sounded foreign to her own ears. The sudden hate in it was so unfamiliar.

The figure came into view. The man's grey and slowly blackening skin was stretched taught over his skull. Tears tricking from his completely black eyes. His body almost skeletal now. So undeniably frail. He was having difficulty walking as he lumbered out of the shadow into view. The side of his head where Gajeel had struck was oozing a tar like substance she could only assume was old blood. She'd sworn he was dead when they'd loaded him into the wagon four days ago. They'd clearly not been too far from the truth.

"I just want you to read me a story, word mage," He licked his lips and what passed as his tongue made Levy want to retch. The wizard was decomposing from the inside.

Reaching under his robes he withdrew a book that Levy didn't immediately recognize but even with the effects of the cuffs she felt the power from it. It was one of the Tartarus tomes.

The man raised an eyebrow at her.

"Have we reached the part where you tell me you won't do anything I ask..." He chuckled and extended a hand, rotating it in a repetitive motion. "...and then I threaten big black and useless hanging here, and then teary eyes and you give me what I want?" He smiled and Levy wanted nothing more than to punch him.

"Yeah." She bit her lip and focused on the pain rather than think about Gajeel hanging there. Judging by the blood and his colour he didn't have long. Dragon slayers healed fast and were pretty resilient but without his magic he was in need of medical care. She knew this mage would never let them go alive but she could only hope to play along and wait for an opportunity.

"Oh, that's splendid," He clasped long fingers together and smiled that wide eyed smile again. From the floor in front of her rose a pedestal and the mage place the book on it and selected a particular page. "I want you to push some power into these words. I want you to read them and I want you make them flesh," Levy gave him a look, one eyebrow raised.

"My magic can't do that," She spat.

The smile grew wider and images of the wizard melting in his own acid bubbled up to the fore of Levy's mind. "Oh, but the book can. It just needs a more compatible mage to use it. Written script, spoken, it's all just power and words isn't it," He laughed.

Levy yanked on the cuffs and felt herself snarling.

"You're going to have to take these off then," She hissed.

The smile remained which infuriated her.

"Actually I don't," He rested a finger on the book and Levy felt a painful pull behind her eyes. "I linked it to you days ago when I realised they'd sent me a script mage, I'd almost given up when I saw you. A gift from Zeref himself." Levy renewed her struggle against the chains but they held. "Don't bother with those, the only magic you can wield now is in this book because you know very well those cuffs don't work against demonic power," He traced a finger down her cheek and she recoiled.

He pointed at the pool of blood underneath Gajeel's feet and it started to bubble, fumes rising from it's surface before the ground beneath the dragon slayers feet caved down to become a pit of acid. Gajeel gagged, even in his semi-conscious state. The man waved a hand at the chain suspending the dragon slayer and Levy heard rather than saw the chain be hit; the audible sizzling and smoke billowing from it left no illusion. She had even less time than she'd originally thought. She could hear her heart beat in her chest, pounding against her ribs. She ground her teeth and in that instance she imagined wrapping her hands around the mage's neck and snapping it. She felt a trill of a response at the distant edges of her mind. She glared at the pages of the book trying to understand the words she seemed to be able to instinctively read. If she opened her mouth she could make the corresponding sounds but she didn't know what they meant. The dark mage smiled again at her, glancing up at Gajeel's chain. "Hurry now, you've only got about a minute," She sobbed. She could feel it; she could feel it invading her thoughts. Whispering to her. But her mind was in a panic. "READ THE WORDS. READ THEM NOW!" She heard someone yell but she couldn't be sure if it was the mage or the book shouting at her in her mind. There was too much happening. Gajeel was going to die. She could see it. She could hear him screaming, his screams morphing into her own. A rage filled her. Anger. Pain. Fear. Hatred. I love you!

The chain snapped and he fell and her voice carried out. She didn't hear the word she screamed. The word that her deepest mind drew in her thoughts and forced onto the pages of the book. Her voice rang out with the single word 'TITANIUM', her power leached from her and now made reality by sheer force of will.

She heard the splash as her stomach rolled and the dark mage took some hasty steps back. She wept in silence. Her breaths the only ragged sound above the bubbling from the pool. She begged to some deity to hear her and relief let her sag against the rock as a silver white figure crawled out of the pit. Fumes rising from blistered but whole limbs. An expression on his face Levy had never seen before. One that might have terrified her had she seen it directed at anyone but this man. A sick chill of pleasure swarmed inside her as she watched the dark mage cower from him. The dragon slayer's fist shot out and a long iron pole collided with the wall behind the man's head; stone falling from the ceiling and the room shaking with the force. The wizard was pleading for mercy now. garbled words that made no sense between the sobs. An altogether pitiful attempt considering the horrors they'd witnessed him commit first hand. As he pressed himself flush against the wall she saw rifts of skin opening up on his face, bone and black blood visible in the torchlight. He was growing frailer by the moment. Whatever he'd wanted her to weave into reality, she'd wager had been to restore him. She watched the last of the cuffs melt from Gajeel's wrists and there was a sudden power saturating the air the likes of which few mages would ever really experience. She looked at his face and realized that Gajeel was going to kill him. Not in self defense. Not an impassive execution. He was going to kill him. Painfully. Slowly. While the man begged. She couldn't blame him. This man needed to die.

But somewhere inside her she knew that Gajeel couldn't be the one to do it. A thought that was given authority by the forces contained in the book. Voices that whispered to her 'retribution', 'vengeance' and 'justice'. This was all her fault after all. It wasn't Gajeel's failure that had cost those men their lives. It wasn't his decision to split up. It shouldn't be him that has to do this. One more sin to weigh him down in life. The images of the dead scrolled across her vision Levy heard the words 'Punish him!,' explode in her mind. What magic she had she screamed to the book.

"BREAK!"

The dark mage collapsed screaming and thrashing. The noise of over two hundred bones simultaneously breaking rang out in the silence of the cavern amid high pitched wails. Shards of bone tearing into flesh. Limbs bent at wrong angles. The most pitiable weeping. Gajeel was broken from his advance, snapped from the seemingly unstoppable need to rip the man in front of him apart. Eyes now drawn to Levy, his face paling at her appearance. Black tendrils had begun to spread across her temples into her eyes. Her lips pulled back into a snarl. A look on her face that drained all the rage from him in moments. He saw it before she said it.

Don't!" He pleaded.

"DIE!" She just about whispered before her eyes closed and the last of her power fell away; the link to the book severing. But it was enough. The dark mage stopped thrashing, his ribs ripped outward from his body leaving his organs exposed. As Gajeel watched in horror the body began to disintegrate. He looked away. Levy now hung forward, limp and un-moving but he could see the raspy rise and fall of her chest.

Gajeel ripped the book from it's pedestal and threw it into the vat of acid. The pool solidifying as the book disappeared to nothing. As the last pages vanished his skin resumed his more natural colour, with the tome destroyed, the link to her magic disappeared.

He ripped her chains away and held her to him for a moment. Just to reassure himself that she was still alive. That she was okay.

"Hey...you..." Levy's voice sounded so small crushed against his chest but it meant everything and more to him. She blinked and he watched as the woman's eyes widened as she caught sight of the remains, slumped against the wall, recalling bits and pieces of the last few minutes. "...what did I do?" She was paler now than she'd ever been. "It couldn't have been me...I'd never...what did I do?" She struggled in his arms but her motions lacked any real strength. Sobs of despair shook her body but no tears came with them.

"You saved my life." He whispered to her as she stilled.

Gajeel continued to hold her until she lost consciousness and carried her outside into the cold air. The cavern wasn't far from where they'd been taken. The mound of corpses still visible if he looked closely between the trees. He sat down with Levy cradled in his lap waiting for the sun to come up. The first tint of oranges and red were already visible on the horizon. The wind was biting into the open wounds on his side. He wasn't going to make it back to camp carrying her even though it was only a few miles away and there was no way he would ever be leaving her side again. He didn't want to have to signal for help; the camp was so close that when the sun came up he wagered he'd be able to see it but there was no choice now.

Taking out a small lacrima flare he hurled it skyward and watched it explode above them. A giant blue arrow made of cloud pointing down at their location. It was one of Levy's. Gajeel laughed bitterly. He had been worried that the signal would be missed. She shivered in her sleep and he planted a light kiss on her head, cradling her close.

"Help'll be here soon. Don't worry, Shrimp. Gonna be okay," He whispered to her.

The words felt like lies.