Thanks to reviewers laxgoal31, tcat75, pomplamouse, wwlego, shadowblade546, Citizen of Fantasy at Heart (x4), Castaway5, rgplmr-whats a space bar? (x2), sarah, november21, Alot Like Gregor, and The One Called Demetra.
Bum Bum Bum!!!!!!! I'm pretty sure you guys all saw that coming but oh, well. Got some bad news for yeah. Won't be finding out exactly what the Viceroy did for a while. See the Historian's Note below, and please don't kill me. Here's Part 4, and rejoice in the knowledge that we are now halfway through this story and finally seeing some of its real colors. Chapter 24 for you to Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't even own this computer I'm on...
PART 4
MENDING SOUL
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Historian's Note: The entirety of Part 4 takes place simultaneously with the final two chapters of Part 3, although the five days during which you are given no explanation of Luxa's actions are explored through Gregor here. This part picks up exactly after Gregor departs from Luxa's quarters after Chapter 21: And Hope To Die.
24
For The Lost
His life was over.
He couldn't go on.
Nothing had ever caused him so much pain as what he had just done. Not Ripred's death, not his mother's violation, not hearing Luxa's possible fate while sitting on the grimy floor of a New York alley. Nothing had ever taken as much effort from him as it took for him to take the steps away from Luxa and out of her door.
He had learned something new: his heart really had survived those five years of hell.
Except now he had killed it again.
With deliberate, anxious, heavy strides, Gregor fled the wing, willing himself to put as much distance between his agonizing soul and its cause as quick as he possibly could. His mind and pain were both overflowing his muscles, telling everything to shut down and grieve, but he pressed himself hard not to allow it, trying to get away from everything before he became a creature of his warring and deadly feelings.
Life sucked.
He had cleared three separate wings of the castle and abruptly found himself in a strange, open storage house that was silently empty. After confirming this, Gregor cautiously threw himself into the nearest wall and let his emotions slide into their full anger and grief.
What was he now?
Weak, powerless. He thought maybe tears would come to him, now that he was completely alone. His chest felt like it was being ripped apart from the inside, as his heart made a desperate attempt to leave its host. If he could have, he would have let it. He didn't desire to live any longer. Still, he would never be stupid enough to take his own life away. To him, suicide was a last resort of cowards and runners away from lives where they knew nothing of the world around them. He may have been a failure, but Gregor knew he was no coward.
It was always at times like this, when he felt bad enough to consider doing things he would never even begin to wonder about actually thinking about under the most normal circumstances. Thoughts always seemed to pop into his head now that wouldn't even make sense to his good side.
But above all, now, even through his depression and agony and heart-wrenching destruction, a single and mortifying thought came into his head.
What now?
He had told Luxa he had matters to finish before he ran away from everything below the ground. It hadn't completely been a lie. He had people he wanted to say goodbye to, individually, where he would take his time to make sure everything he wanted was to be said. He wanted to visit certain places of importance in Regalia, as he would almost certainly never be setting foot there again. He wanted to feel the things he would never get the chance to experience one more time as he looked at the simple living, the hard enemies, the primitive beauty.
He didn't want to do any of that anymore, though. His goodbyes were said, not spoken but felt by all around. Even to himself, he was already gone, no longer conscious to the world surrounding him. He didn't have enough self to see even his friends of the Underland anymore.
So what reason did he have to stay any longer?
A promise. He had told Luxa he would at least try to make it to her wedding. Her wedding where she would be wedded to someone not himself. A different someone. Someone else. Not him.
Why did he say that? It was the last thing he wanted.
Because it was Luxa who asked.
Duh. That made sense. He couldn't refuse her anything, except in the case where the "anything" was him. Then he had to make an exception to his feelings, and deny her what they both wanted more than the world itself, Over, Under, and whatever the hell laid in between.
All in all, Gregor was confused, disoriented, and utterly hellified. He also added pathetic in his own mind. He was a rager, a creature born to fight to the death to protect those he loved and what he believed was good... and here he was, sobs beginning to enter his actions as he leaned hard against the cold wall from his uncomfortable slouch on the ground. Love was supposed to make you strong, keep you on your feet and fighting, not reduce you to convulsions of guilt and agony in a useless heap cowering behind dull shelves and appliances. It was supposed to hold you together, the glue of life.
So then just why the hell was it tearing him apart instead?
Nothing was supposed to beat love. Ironically, Gregor chose that instant to think of Ripred, and an ancient quote popped to mind of a guest traveled long ago. Mutual need is a strong bond. Stronger than hatred. Stronger than love.
Gregor didn't question the words. He just wondered if they were there because they were true or because the facts they rose from couldn't be explained through any more means than that which they were already utilized through. Ripred had been wise, but even he had never said anything Gregor had ever taken as so true. Hatred and love had always seemed to run a short line with the rat, and many times Gregor had found himself wondering which side of that line his mentor was toeing at that particular moment in time.
Remembering the quote, Gregor instantly turned to remember the exact, short conversation that had followed it, starting with a question spawned from his deep subconscious belief in all-powerful love.
Do rats love?
Oh, yes, we love ourselves very much.
Gregor had found himself contemplating those words several times over the next several years, even moving into time after he had seen Ripred interacting affectionately with Lizzie. He had never really understood the rat's emotions, but he had never believed that love was completely absent from the great rager other than arrogance. Wisdom came with many things, but ignorance of emotions was rarely one of them. Gregor had always believed that deep down, on some level unknown to everyone around him, Ripred loved the same way he felt pain. And, deeper, on his own level he refused to even imagine speaking aloud to someone, Gregor had formed an image of himself through the rat's eyes, and came out with a startling idea that he was regarded in a strange light as a distant, favorite son.
Not that he believed it entirely. And now that Ripred was gone, it didn't matter anymore. Which brought his thoughts right back to where they began, with a solemn question that he had no answer to.
Why am I still here?
And still he came up with no answer. Goodbyes were said, his love was lost, and pain was victorious once more. He was sitting in a storeroom trying to arrange his devastated thoughts into coherence with as much dignity as was possible, which also so happened to be a very little amount.
He quickly searched all his emotions for any explanation. Pain: penultimate, devastating, not the answer. Love: grieving, destruction, lost, not the answer. Happiness: Out of the question completely. Loyalty: lasting, agonizing, plausible...
Loyalty.
Loyalty. Loyalty to what? Everything he had ever known in the Underland was either gone, changing, or evil, and nothing would seem to be able to ever change that. He was alone, without the allies of Howard or Mareth or even Vikus that he once had. He didn't have Ripred anymore, and the only one he had ever truly felt utterly inferior to was the rat, the one who could best him and who he respected with nothing but the most revered silence and attention.
Ripred.
Ripred.
He was bound by Ripred's memory. His only friend who had died beneath an honorable fight as opposed to rapid stupidity or sufferable arrogance. The comrade who he had believed would survive until the Overland above would choose to come crashing to the Underland below and destroy all.
And the duty the rat had left with Gregor when he died.
Immediately, instantly, Gregor's mind woke up to blaring sirens and screaming klaxons of imaginary oblivion, and intelligent contemplation returned with a rush into his fragile and overworked mind with a fierce intensity.
A traitor inside Regalia, Ripred had said. Someone who was smart. Most likely someone who was smarter than he or she looked, or else the acute rager senses of the rat would have been able to pick up on the treachery before his death came around. Gregor instantly began to compile data, his promise to Ripred nearly forgotten in the pain that was his passing onto the next world, wherever that rested, high or low in the world around.
Suspects jumped to mind, clues and observations began to loop in and around each other faster than Gregor could organize inside his head, and ideas both preposterous and plausible jumped here and there as explanation after explanation begged to be acknowledged.
At the same time he was realizing how much data was needed for investigation, Gregor came around to see that he remained alive in his soul for only one more reason: to see Ripred's unfinished mission to the end, and to see justice brought upon the evil person who had assisted in Luxa's abduction and subsequent torture.
And who ever it was, when Gregor got his hands on them, they would pay for their actions in the most agonizing way he would be able to find. Through the wrath of two ragers, one who would be issuing and one who would never again be able to make attendance.
His conscience was clearly appalled by his lack of ethics, but Gregor had long ago defied himself and his rules to protect his family and life, and with the most precious thing in his world threatened now, he wouldn't hesitate to do so again. His actions would not be justified, but he wouldn't be deterred from them by any means. He had come too far and would go a lot farther before that was every forced upon him.
Names began to pop into his head. Theories, possibilities, anything that Ripred had ever told him of anything before he descended once more into the Underland for the last time. In the space of a few seconds, he ran his mind over ever conscious memory he had since making the journey, throwing everything quickly together in a jumbled mess, choosing to file now and organize later, anxious to pull out any flaws or hints before he made any sense of anything. Nothing could be missed. Nothing could go wrong, or off, or there would be the chance of it happening again, and Gregor refused to allow the possibility of that to happen.
A terrified part of his mind urged him to run back to Luxa's quarters at that very moment, insistent upon her being under constant protection at every moment. A moment later, though, he knew that he couldn't. Any action on his part that seemed suspicious would only anger Luxa more, and it might even tip off the assailant inside that he was on to them. The very need for secrecy was the only reason Ripred had told no one of his distrusting ideas before his death. In a strange way, even, it had been what had ended up killing him.
No, he had to act on his own, in the dark. Or, if he absolutely had to gain assistance, it had to be subtle, almost nonexistent, or at the very least extensively never-happened type of help, where only he and his certain allies knew of his attempts. Even that would be risky, though. He had been gone from the Underland for five years. Anyone who he would have trusted half a decade ago could well be on the other side by now.
Names flashed into his head. Could be anyone... York, Miravet, Athena, Stellovet, Temp, Nike, Nerissa, Vikus, Mareth, Aurora, the Viceroy, Howard, Hazard...
He had no one to trust. He could do nothing. He could eliminate a few, but only on speculation. He suddenly felt like it was a battle he was already losing, even before he knew he was fighting one or even preceding the battle itself. The possibilities were nearly endless. It might be someone less important, a simple servant or cook. A flier who procured access into the palace nonchalantly. An ambassador of a non-ally species who was cunning enough to be gifted in the arts of stealth and deception.
His work appeared endless, and he knew that it would only grow greater as he went. Things were never what they appeared, and even there he could go on suspicion alone.
And he would be battling through emotions, desperate to free himself of any agony he would experience. Never before had he launched himself into anything of such consequence, something so big it would affect so much more than just his own being. No matter how he felt of someone, until proven otherwise they were all equal suspects, and nothing would be able to convince him elsewhere until he was assured of it by his own reasoning.
What he would do when he found the cutters' accomplice didn't bother him at the moment, and not even nearly what it should have. He was confident he had enough anger to deal with it when the moment chose to arise.
He had little to go on. Practically nothing. And so he would start with the simple clues and move on from there. Only time and truth would tell, and as of yet he only had limited of one and none of the other, and so he would have to commence for them both before he ran out of the one.
He wouldn't leave until he was finished. He wouldn't leave the problem behind.
He could. It would be easy; to just walk away and leave the Underland and never worry a moment more of its affairs.
But he knew that he would never forget, and he would never forgive himself for giving Luxa back to the possible evils that wronged her the first go-around. He couldn't let that happen. So he would stay until the job was finished, one way or another.
Evil would be stopped, whether he was on his own or he was backed by Regalia. He was a rager. A warrior. Maybe not a hero, but probably something more. A protector, of all. And he would hold himself to that. Indefinitely. Indivisibly. Permanently.
So, with a resolve that would have made even Ripred take a step back in awe, Gregor hoisted himself off the cold, lonely ground and up to his feet. With a perfectly straight face that betrayed no sign of his inner fight, he brushed off the dust and dirt that had accumulated on his pants.
Finally, after making sure he was ready to face anything the world was about to throw at him, Gregor turned and left the storeroom, not looking back to the dark room of bottled despair.
His road was one way, and he refused to go back.