Chapter 10: Kouria
(by Pacifique)
WARNING: violence and themes that may shock. This chapter is the main cause of the M rating. Good luck...
I only own the translation. "Sick", Johan and Robert belong to Pacifique. Fairy Tail belongs to Mashima.
X_x
Levy stayed alone in the dark for hours. Her tears had eventually stopped rolling on her cheeks, and seized by the cold, she'd curled under the blankets. She knew the door was locked and she was glad it was. She heard laughter, shouts. She didn't want those people to come to her.
She didn't understand. Gajeel promised the rats pit for her, and yet she still wanted to help him, she was unable to hate him. She wasn't angry either. After all, she didn't remember having already felt something alike. Anger. Did she really ignore what it was? Deep inside she did. Deep down she better not. All she could see was the terrible sadness that leaded to do bad things. She knew nothing besides compassion. Hatred was unknown to her. If it was the cause of her weakness, so she wanted to remain weak.
The Dragon Slayer came back later in the night. He staggered like a living statue, unsteady on his feet for a moment in the half-light, before he collapsed on his bed, without a word. He must have drunk with the others she heard loudly in the wet corridor. There was no hope anymore and yet she wasn't angry, neither resigned. She was just sad, sad for him as if nothing could happen to him.
She didn't slept well, shivering into the wetness. She was awaken by the loud knocks against the iron door. Gajeel stood almost immediately. And without looking at her, without saying anything, he grabbed the rope trailing on a shelf, and he tied her hands, her feet and placed her on her bed, as if she was lighter than a feather.
"Where do you want me to go? You know very well I can't escape." She begged. But his eyes never met hers. He didn't answer. He tightened the rope pretty hard and she felt tears prickle her eyes. Near her, he set the pile of books, so that if she contorted herself, she could grabbed a few ones. He left in silence.
She'd have wanted to see the expression on his face, see something she could still save. She remained unmoving for an instant, still rejecting the evidence for a few moments. While she was here, watching the ceiling, Gajeel was currently spreading blood on his hands. When he'd pass this door again, he'd be different. As always when she thought the situation escaped her she plunged frenetically on the nearest volume, she managed to place it on her knees so she could turn the pages with her tied hands.
"If you can't bandage the narcissistic wound by inviting the patient to revise the infantile inside him, act on the environment." The first passage her eyes met said. "Indeed, you mustn't forget the degeneration intervenes because of a mental default, which can have two possible causes. Either the patient hasn't enough cognitive resources and it makes all tentative of investigation by the language impossible. Or the origins of the illness are too deep, too traumatic or too ancient so the patient can't confront it as a first step. Either way, it is imperative to act fast, or else the illness itself will become in turn a traumatic element impossible to represent mentally. The more this process will be advanced, the more it will be difficult for the patient to face what he wasn't able to integrate, and to reconstitute it in the light of the present.
If the therapeutic work is impossible as a first step, create a reassuring environment which could allow a slowdown, or even a stabilization of the illness. On one hand, it allows to restore the basal security that was touched by the pain from the multiple crisis. On the other hand if the patient feels safe, if he isn't judged, or if he stops to strike a blow at his 'Moi-peau'* or his own content, it may seem less risky to re-examine the thoughts and emotions he couldn't contemplate until then."
*(The "Moi-peau" designates a fantasized reality that a child uses during its early development to represent itself as "me", based on its experience of the body surface. Information found on NCBI site)
Levy sighed, fighting the tears. The theory was clever, but Mara was anyway the worst place to stay for them, for anyone, and they weren't about to leave. She pushed the book which fell on the wet ground and opened randomly the next one, without any conviction.
"Prognosis List." The top of the page said. The mage thought wrongly she could find an ounce of hope.
"Encouraging factors:
The illness is recent.
The events that leaded to it are dating from the after teenage-hood.
The subject had in his early childhood a stable affective environment."
Considering what she heard when she had hypnotized Gajeel, she doubted Metalicana gave him a stable affective environment.
"The subject has currently a high quality social network."
Who was concerned about Gajeel, without counting her… nobody.
"The subject is conscious that his illness is due to psychological factors and accepts it fully."
Here a bad point again.
"The subject is used to express emotions, doubts, fears and can easily ask help from the others to face the problem spontaneously."
That was the perfect opposite. Levy sighed and looked up. Maybe there was in the following list something worse than what she knew now, a proposition proving the situation could be worse than it already was. She was tied in an ancient dispensary, in the middle of a lawless zone where nobody could save her. She should have doubted this hope was vain and closed the book immediately.
"Bad prognosis factors:
"The patient is/was confronted to a chaotic life, marked by the ruptures."
"He has tends in violence, comes to blow easily."
"Criminal antecedents are involved."
"When you try to hypnotize the patient (description in the chapter 1), he is submersed by irrepressible memories preventing all work. These memories concern parental failures during the childhood or scenes of violence." In his case, both.
"The subject's narcissistic wound worsen until the self-hatred, but he thinks it is impossible to change or heal."
"The first traumatic events intervened early and/or are repeating during the patient's story."
"Some events in the present echo with the recurrent wounds."
The page was soon disturbed by a tear. No, things couldn't be worse. The book added that if more than five factors were reunited, you had to divide life expectancy by two, which left Gajeel a few months. The next page was describing the end-stage of the illness, it was terrible, disgusting, horrible. As neutral as ever the book was explaining that after the crisis the patient would throw blood, his life would escape literally by his mouth, replaced little by little by the uncontrolled magic. It was like a cancer, killing the body little by little.
Levy closed the book and with her soaked hands, she wanted to throw it away, but it fell on her trembling belly, horrified by her weakness she struggled, and the volume dropped softly on the floor. It was the first time books were failing her. The very first time she found no cure against her fears. Little by little she realized she would definitely end in the rats pit. She didn't know why, she was sure Gajeel couldn't do it himself. But if he'd die in Mara, so Johan and Robert would want her to become their thing. In that case, she'd throw herself in it willingly.
She was curled up into a fetal position, unable to shed a single tear anymore but full of grief, when she heard a heart-rending cry. Gajeel. For the first time, she trashed to loosen her bonds.
X_x
They'd arrived at Kouria very early as the whole town was still asleep. Robert had known where to search immediately. They'd found a few minions they tied at the crawler until their ripped bodies burned by snow finally talked under Johan's menace. The headquarters was destroyed, finely chopped by Gajeel's hand while the others acclaimed him. They didn't know why, but there were a few children, very young recruit, fresh prostitutes, pregnant women. It was the way they increased the ranks at Kouria. Everything looking like a woman, from distance or close up, was raped as the Dragon Slayer was watching, his teeth clenched, never attempting to stop them.
Then they climbed at the first floor without resistance, and they were all killed until the last. Meanwhile Gajeel had the impression not to live, to be in a kind of rushed nightmare. His body was killing faster than his mind could understand, spread more blood than he could see. It seemed it only lasted a few minutes while it was actually the afternoon when they left, taking with them feminine hostages. He remembered he'd laughed, mocking those who'd attempted to flee at his sight. For a moment the world was turning into a vast machine, empty of any reason. Nothing nor no one was alive. But he'd heard children cries, cries he'd already heard, long time ago. When had the machine turned back into the living world? When had this mattered so much? After all, a body you slash was nothing but a piece of meat. But he heard screams which had nothing to do with the present. Why now?
He came out of this trance when he was in the purring track that leaded them back to Mara. The first thing he saw was his hands. Under the sticky purple, they'd turned iron again and it hurt him, as if they were plunged into the acid. He bit his lip to chock a scream, he had invoked his armor. Like the last time. He was stuck inside. His left leg wasn't answering. And the world was living again, retrieving this sense so special again, screaming at him what he'd just done in his face, like a shrilling and continuous sound, as the aftermath of an explosion.
"You're hurt?" Johan asked tonelessly. And in a reflex he shook his head. The children cries were still ringing, covering the terrorized whimpers from the futures prostitutes of his clan. His clan, it was his only clan now.
"Hey Gajeel, remove your armor, will you? You have a scary face, you scare me." Robert stated with a strange laughter. He was only interest in the money in the bag set on the seat beside him.
Without thinking Gajeel tried but not to avail. Stuck, he was stuck inside.
"Considering your recent attitude." Robert added with another hearty laugh "I'll start to believe you're gay."
But he didn't hear it. He tried again with his whole will to turn back into flesh and skin. And he was struck by a sort of bout of claustrophobia, he broke the window of the vehicle in a quick motion and the flakes rushed inside. He couldn't escape his carcass. And all of a sudden he couldn't breath anymore. The pain took him by his sides this time, instead of his hands and feet, and he burst out the vehicle, bending the sheet metal, and he collapsed into the snow in a roar of pain.
And then the white desert became red, and everything seemed so immense. Disturbing the redoubtable blue sky, Igneel was facing him. At the bottom of the crater the lava was boiling.
"Who are you? Brat!" The great dragon thundered. A pink maned little boy was hidden behind its large front paw, and his little hands couldn't make a complete circle around it.
"I will kill you in Metalicana's name!" Gajeel roared with his childish voice.
Then everything clouded over and there was only pain and sorrow, the sky lightened in flames that ravaged the ground, and he was drowned in the middle of this fire. Both child and adult version of him screamed in horror together and he had the feeling to free-fall, this sensation he knew too well. Then he dove into the lava. Igneel had chased him with a single whirlwind of flames.
But only the incredulity from the fall was still preserving him from the horror.
The crater swallowed him like a monster in a sickening slack sound. After that he didn't hear anymore, and only thought to fight into the flames, the carapace was melting on his body, burning his skin, he had the feeling it filled his lungs. The blue sky seemed like screaming, Igneel was gone and the little pink haired boy too. He thought he was going to die here, while the sky disappeared, devoured by the burning substance. The increasing warmth pushed for a moment his body toward the surface, as if to extend his agony.
A shadow covered him for a moment, Metalicana's black head. The great Dragon took the time to speak his whole speech before the lava dragged him at the bottom again. And he regretted to be so strong, if only he hadn't learned to fight the pain so much, he'd have never be able to hear those words.
"You failed."
"Save me." Gajeel cried as his carapace on his back was crumbling little by little.
"What for? You are useless to me. You were never useful. Raising you was an error, you shouldn't have been born. Die. That's the best you can ever do."
"Wait!" The little Dragon Slayer screamed but his body was feeling the burn again and his master was leaving him to his fate. So he closed his eyes, stopped to fight, and let himself dive. Indeed, the adult Gajeel thought as he twisted into the snow, he should have died, everything could have been easier.
But Igneel had come back and had seized his hand stretched above the surface with his claws, and he had left him into the shadow of a rock. He didn't remember that. After that he'd fled the warmth, the sun, the rays, the steams, as far as he could. He had disappeared toward the Great North where the only burn possible was the whiteness of the snow, where the only bright light was coming from the stars… it had taken a few years… to reach the safest place in the world: Mara.
Gajeel opened his eyes, he thought once again that the lava had brought him to the surface, he felt again this same burn. But the rusty ceiling of the dispensary was there, instead of the blue and untarnished screen. However the pain wasn't gone. Neither were the screams.
"Untie me! Untie me!" A feminine voice was screaming somewhere.
"Untie her." He panted through his pain. He couldn't stand this voice anymore. The only thing he desired, silence, after the racket of the lava that dwindled little by little in his mind. Icy hands set over him, and he sighed as the pain retreated o so slowly. It seemed that hours passed before his mind could find its clarity. Around him, people were talking, exchanging a swirl of sentences he couldn't understand.
X_x
Levy had struggled. As soon as she had heard his voice she had. She wouldn't leave without him. She couldn't and didn't want to. Robert and Johan had entered the dispensary, holding as best as they could his trembling body while he screamed, his eyes empty and his mouth foamy. It was the last step no doubt. If this crisis didn't kill him, the blood loss would.
"Untie me!" She'd screamed. By dint of fighting she only managed to fall from her bed. But she couldn't stand to see him suffer like this, it was as if she was suffering with him, she never had stood the tears or the screams. She knew it was simple to put an end over his pains if only she hadn't that damn rope around her wrists. Robert had placed Gajeel on his bed but he was struggling so much… and they remained here arms dangling without doing anything, watching him die as if it was the most trivial thing in the world. They possessed a terrifying level of insensitivity.
"No we won't untie you. You could take your chance to flee." Robert eventually stated affably.
"But where do you want me to flee!" Levy begged, "I can't survive more than five minutes outside! Untie me I know what to do, that's why Gajeel kidnapped me!"
"No." Johan answered seeming somehow amused by the situation.
But Levy didn't stop screaming, because she couldn't be silent while he was screaming in suffering, she couldn't stand it.
And finally he said it.
"Untie her". She rushed at him, submersing his body with tears, not knowing where she should begin with her trembling hands, realizing little by little that their clothes were covered in blood, and she was staining her own hands. Johan and Robert watched her incredulous.
"Leave us alone." Levy begged again as she felt their gazes weighting on her and Gajeel. He stopped struggling, but he was still groaning, his teeth clenched, his eyes white, staring at the ceiling. But little by little his breath became easier, less difficult.
"Leave us." He ordered in turn in a voice both shaking and hard. They left and Levy's hands trembled slightly less.
"What's happening to you?" She whimpered through her uncontrollable sobs. But he didn't answer. He stood, pushing her against the wall with his big awkward hand, staggered forward and knelt before the washbasin. A complete noiseless silence filled the room. And suddenly he threw up, as she feared a purple liquid, dark, disgusting and charged in pieces of flesh escaped his mouth. Helplessly, she put a hand over his shoulder as he struggled to breath again, as if he was drowning himself.
"Breath, calm down." She whispered, unable to chase her own panic. "The sooner you'll calm down and the sooner it'll pass. It's over, it's over, keep your eyes open, keep them open." He did the opposite because his eyes were prickling, and under his eyelids the blue sky appeared. He collapsed on the wet ground, a hand over his stomach, staring at the ceiling, while Levy curled in horror into a corner, was crying softly. His chest ached, and his breath was difficult. The metallic carapace was gone.
X_x
Phew, poor Gajeel! TT_TT
If you were able to stand this chapter, you've passed the worst, congratulation! Things will turn a little better soon.
G: I think I will die in the end. '-_-Y
L: Don't say that! I'll save you!
Me: THAT'S pure love!
L: o/O
Please review! Tell me if this chapter was horrible enough (in a good way of course ^^). After all, it was the main goal.
