Levy watched over her as she slept. They spent two entire days at the inn before Makarov gave them the orders to leave. The innkeeper moved a cot into their room. All chances of privacy gone as they took it in turns, gritting their teeth while she screamed in her sleep. Nightmares. Terrible nightmares. Those two days neither Levy or Gajeel got a minute's rest.
It wasn't difficult to confirm that Matheson had indeed been burned by the contracted guilds. Makarov had simply asked. They had no problem ratting him out. One guild to another. With Mest present and recording the official proof that what Fairy Tail was claiming had more than a merit in truth. But by the time an investigation was opened, Matheson was gone.
The council's main concern at the moment wasn't the man himself, but rather the distinct possibility of co-conspirators. A hell of a lot of jewel and manpower had been fronted in his machinations, more money that he could have possibly gotten his hands on alone. An enormous deficit in official council coffers, access to which he didn't have.
Matheson had taken the book, but worse than that, having been put on a somewhat embarrassing backfoot, the council had revealed to Fairy Tail that Calus had also taken a souvenir on his assault at the fortress. Namely, Garron's black lacrima; to get around the seemingly innate inability to naturally harness the power of the well of souls to any large scale extent. A puzzle the dead warlord had already considered and had spent his later years trying to solve. The crystal could absorb and store its power. Instead of taking that dangerous energy into himself, he could use it instead.
Three main players. Three pieces required to open a door and draw out the energy of the well. But still little in the way of motivations so far.
From what they had discovered, Matheson was a stringent patriot. A loyalist. That he would betray and undermine the council he'd devoted his life to, was unthinkable to many that knew him. Fairy Tail had few friends on the council, and it was likely they didn't have all the information just yet. Clearly there was something they weren't being told. Something they didn't know.
Back at the guild, Porlyusica ran every manner of test, both physical and magical that she could think of. She scoured her books for any obscure potions, or information that might identify the problem with the seamstress but could find no reason for her state. She carried no lingering wounds. No poison. Nothing foreign that she may have been reacting too. She was suffering some mild magical deficiency but that seemed to be expected. She'd expended a lot of power healing herself over the previous week, on top of helping Gajeel. She lacked the stamina for the kind of effort she'd made in terms of magic use.
Bickslow was the only person that hadn't seemed overly worried by it. He could see it, all those tiny separate pieces were currently merging. A new singular entity forming in its place. Her mind would no doubt still be a jumble. The woman had the memories of a dozen simultaneous lives to contend with, try and organize, but she was using her new experiences to tie them all together. This was the final stage of what couldn't properly be completed in the void. Where she'd stitched and tied the separate fragments into a functional whole but full healing hadn't been possible.
The Seith mage hovered around her, maybe more so than Levy did, and the script mage had barely left her side in the days previous.
Bickslow was in a unique field of magic. Possibly in a few years, after the last Sieth vanished, his might even join the realms of lost magics. To witness something like this wasn't simply a once in a lifetime chance. It was doubtful that something like this would ever repeat itself.
"You don't have to stay," Levy said, startling the Seith mage from his groggy trance.
"No, I don't, little blue," He smiled tiredly.
Levy moved around the other side of the bed closer to him. As though proximity could help her see what he did.
"What does it look like?"
"Colours. Ones I can't even name. I don't think they even have names. Peoples souls usually give off a faint hue. Like an aura. Hers is changing colours. Forming new ones," He added.
"Why's it happening now?" She asked sleepily.
"Remember when I said that a soul needs a body to heal?" She nodded. "That's because you need a body to live. Experience and choice, the things that happen to us, that we do, the decisions that we make, they all shape who we are. I'd say she started reshaping herself the moment we started letting her make her own decisions. All those pieces she was holding together are almost gone. I'm looking at an almost complete soul," He grinned. Not mentioning the black piece. The darkest part. Unlike the rest, it wasn't merging. It stood out. A dark mark still tightly held in place with calming threads. Peace. Quiet. Sleep. The thoughts she pierced it with.
"I don't think we did the right thing letting her go with us," Levy admitted to him. It bothered her that they took advantage of someone who in truth was in a vulnerable situation. She may have been good in a fight, but with everything else going on they should have given her the time and space she needed.
On top of that, Gajeel had mentioned to her that the finger she bit off might have been completely deserved. The woman could heal herself at will. Levy had no idea what might have actually happened to her. There would be no physical marks.
Bickslow could read her like a book. See her soul flare with the guilt she was feeling. He looked to her questioningly. Encouraging her to voice her concerns.
"I think something might have happened to her. But I know she wouldn't say even if we asked," Levy winced. They took advantage of her. There was no denying the truth. She was convenient, skilled, willing and useful. But they should have known better. Been better.
"She's an adult, Blue," Bickslow picked up on her train of thought clear enough. "She can make her own choices," He said seriously. "If you're looking to know if something happened, I can find out for you?" He offered. In her current condition she wouldn't even be aware if he took a quick look at her recent memories. He could, easily enough. She was an open book right now. No defenses to speak of.
Levy thumped him on the arm, angrily.
"Yes, why don't we just go invading her privacy like that," The anger fading. "Let's try not to be assholes, shall we?" She reprimanded him.
He took it in his stride. Shrugging nonchalantly. He wouldn't admit it but he got a little bit of a thrill out of winding people up.
"Hey, it was just a suggestion," He said laughing.
Levy wilted.
"Its fine. I'm just tired. She went through hell. I guess we'll just need to trust she can deal with it. You'll call me if anything changes?" She asked, yawning. Needing sleep very badly.
Bickslow nodded and waved her out, settling back into his chair. Watching the colours swirl like water. Changing shape and hue by the second.
He didn't even feel his eyes closing. Falling asleep, chair tipped back against the wall.
The Seith found himself blinking stupidly as he came to awareness. No longer in the recovery ward at the guild. Instead he was outdoors, standing under a burning sun. His eyes were seared by the light. Shielding them with his hand his mouth dropped as his surroundings came into better focus as he adjusted.
Around him sandstone towers jutted up into a blinding sky. The heat was almost unbearable and his own homeland was no frozen tundra. He'd experienced heat. Lived in places that got truly hot. But this was different. He could feel the stone underfoot burning through his boots. The leather becoming almost painful to the touch in moments. He spun on his heel, looking around trying to get his bearings. Searching his mind for his last memories, he recalled the guild room. Sitting vigil over a bed.
The truth hit him like the lash of a whip. Lightning realization. This was a memory. But not one of his.
People walked by him on the street. They wore loose, long tunics, long hair. They moved by, completely unseeing, his presence should have been noticeable, after all, in comparison he stood out in his jeans and T-shirt like an acutely obvious sore thumb. But the people gathering in the marketplace, going about their daily business didn't notice him. Didn't look at him. As a foreigner to Fiore himself, Bickslow could boast to having travelled extensively. There were few places he hadn't been or seen, but this was somewhere new. The architecture was exotic. The smells; spices and nuts and strange, sweet fruits. He staggered round the dreamscape watching everything with eager, hungry eyes. Searching for the familiar.
A small pained squeak followed by laughter took his attention away from the market square and dragged his scorching feet toward a small alcove, nestled under a canopy of a shop. Crowded inside, muttering and giggling amongst themselves a group of boys had gathered round a reclining chair. The boy in it wipping tears from his eyes, laughing hysterically. Fingertips touching the new ring in his nose. Another of the children took his place while a man in a long ankle length robe pierced his in the same way. Their eyes tearing up uncontrollably. Like plucking a nose hair the reaction was an automatic one. When they were all done, the man in robes lowered his head and lifted his hands. A blessing while they all scurried away chattering in a language that Bickslow finally recognised.
"You shouldn't be here," The suddenness of the language change jarred him. His mind having already started to pick out phrases and words for translation. Then to be confused as the common tongue changed.
He turned to find the seamstress leaning against a wall, casually watching the boys run thought the crowd, pushing and teasing each other.
"Hey, I just fell asleep. This isn't my doing, sweetheart," Bickslow snapped back defensively.
She frowned in thought suddenly.
"Shit. Probably me then," She mumbled under her breath. " I'm gonna need to start sleeping with those fucking cuffs on," She grumbled.
Bickslow grinned, arching an eyebrow at the comment. There were a few points in his life he'd had exactly the same thought.
He watched her eyes follow one of the boys as he tumbled into the dirt, his tackle having been countered by his larger adversary.
"That's Jona. He was head of Garron's guards. He was never the biggest man so he made himself the quickest, the hardest to hit. Calus took the happiest memories he had, but he left these. The majority of life is just a hazy middle," She looked sad. "When I move, and you ask yourself if I'm a person or a snake, it's because of him," The scene warped, the sandy soil speeding under his feet and they were watching another man, he was holding two wooden swords and weaving between a half a dozen younger opponents with a grace that looked ridiculous for someone his size. Truthfully he must have been close to seven foot tall. A tower of lean muscle. Bickslow watched one of the young men rush him swinging wildly, only to have the man counter it, dodging to the side and driving his elbow into his ribs for the effort. The entire maneuver was effortless.
"When I pick up a sword, it's his doing I even know how to hold it," She laughed.
The man in the ring clipped the ankle of one of his trainees, sending him sailing onto his face. When he laughed it was the same laugh. Her laugh.
"I don't understand?" Bickslow had heard all the stories people would spread about Atla. Very few of them positive. But he was seeing something else. This was all so normal. These were people, living and breathing. Getting married. Having children. But rumours usually had some sort of basis in truth.
"Forced poverty. Mandatory military device for all boys. All the families that couldn't buy their way out of it. Religion," She said.
The Seith frowned.
"They purposefully keep the people poor?" He asked, uncertainly.
"Yes. And uneducated. If you keep people ignorant and impoverished you keep them dependent on you. The rulers have strong ties to the national religion and they keep the priests' pockets full. And they keep the people in line," She looked out passed the square where two women clad in leather armour were sparing with short blades. "They divided and debased the men, oppressed the women. There was a ten thousand year old legacy of female warriors in Atla. And in five hundred years they'd stripped that away. With so much poverty, their sons and daughters became the only guaranteed currency. Boys to war. And their girls to whoever's bed could pay the most."
Bickslow coughed, bile crawling up his throat at the next scene. The remembered smell of death so visceral it burned his nose. Turned his stomach.
Men and young boys scrambled over a mountain of bodies, the flesh of hundreds having been left to rot in the sun. Dried blood and flies, maggots and snakes crawling in them. Behind them soldiers in armour followed with whips. Driving them to climb through the carnage. Faces hidden behind bronze masks, shaped like predatory birds. The metal enchanted to reflect the heat of the sun.
The steel tips of the whips carved open wounds in the backs of the ones to fall behind.
He stared at her in horror. The level of barbarism was almost too much to take in. As he looked at her he saw her clothing change to rags, her face suddenly bloodied. Whip marks on virtually every free inch of skin, he turned away from it, unable to stomach the sight.
"You can see why so many choose to leave and why we're so broken," She muttered.
"You aren't broken," Bickslow said out loud. He'd only thought the words but no sooner than he did they'd come tumbling out like word vomit. Laxus had always joked you couldn't shut him up but this was ridiculous.
Words flowed so easily here. If he thought it, he spoke it. It wasn't possible to conceal anything in this place.
"You aren't these people," He muttered. "You don't have to be,"
She smiled. Bickslow felt a brush of something sinister in that expression of hers. Almost like a lingering threat.
"They're all I am," She narrowed her eyes, considering him. "You know what I see? I see a little boy far from his homeland, crying at the table of his new guildmaster. Forced to flee his own family because they believed his magic was evil." She intoned. "He's broken, too," She remarked coolly.
The realization that while he was here with her, she was also stumbling though his memories, left Bickslow reeling. So distracted by this dreamworld he hadn't realized how compromised he'd become.
"Simultaneously?" He said, flabbergasted. She was sifting through her own storehouse of memories, his too, while still here to talk to him.
"I've lived a dozen lives at once, I excel at multitasking," She sang.
He grit his teeth and sucked in a breath, drawing the walls up around himself. Hopefully shutting her out, but he could feel them now, those threads of hers buried deep. Doing Mavis knew what.
He fell to his knees, the effort of severing her costing him greatly.
"What do you want?" He demanded, angrily.
"I don't want anything," She said but he felt a tremor of something different. Different answers spilled into his mind. Souls couldn't lie. She wanted freedom. From her guilt. Her nightmares. She wanted to atone for her sins and the sins she carried. But words louder than anything else echoed in his mind sapping some of the anger he felt, and leaving him with a deep pity. 'I don't want to be alone'.
She'd brought him in here to begin with, hadn't she. Reaching out at her most vulnerable point.
He stilled his own thoughts and stood. It was possible to catch him off guard, he was only human after all, but he'd a lifetime of training behind him. He stretched out a hand and grabbed a hold of her wrist. Let his power wash over her. She stilled. Now that it had reformed into a single piece it was much easier for him to seize control of her. He could feel her panic at the sudden loss of power. She pulled away from the contact but he forced her to remain.
"I'm still stronger than you are, sweetpea. By a whole wide margin. And that's not changing any time soon. So don't think you get to go creeping your little strings about my soul without repercussions," He snarled.
He grinned and the world around them stopped moving. He was in control now and at a thought this facade was crumbling. It was time for him to go. If he was lucky, this would be nothing more than a dream to her waking mind.
"I'm sorry..." She whispered, vanishing into nothing. Her eyes held genuine remorse. They were the last thing to fade into thin air.
He felt more than a little stab of guilt. He knew now how terrifying his magic could be. What it felt like to have your body hijacked.
Fairy Tail was filled with good people, but they still did some shitty things. Levy's last comment had been not to be an asshole. Harder done than said.
The environment seemed to right itself. Normally Bickslow's world was a vision of colour but he could see now that hers was vibration. Even the inanimate had a resonance. And for a moment he saw it. Felt it. Something between sight and sound. An extra sense by which to view the world. She opened the fabric of existence with her music, just wide enough to twist her threads into it. Manipulate it. Necessity had given her experience with soul manipulation, but Bickslow saw capacity beyond that.
Sputtering he sat up in the chair, gasping for oxygen. The woman lying still in the bed. Her aura had settled to a sky blue, finally calmed. The rolling turmoil he'd seen before had faded. Even the black segment wasn't easily visible, buried deep. Contained.
The experience was difficult to retain after he woke up. Like smoke it wanted to drift away and the more he willed himself to remember the more it faded, but he was a Seith, and that came with some perks in dealing with these kinds of things. His dolls fluttered excitedly and he focused drawing the memories into his babies. Much easier to control when they weren't all rattling around inside in his own head.
He wasn't sure she'd remember their conversation. Even to him it felt muffled. Muddied. She'd apologised to him. When she woke up, he figured he might do the same.
Levy didn't even remember leaving the guild. She'd barely made it back downstairs to Gajeel she was so tired, stumbling along on heavy feet, clutching the walls for support. When she found Gajeel, the man was red faced, clutching a beer like a buoy as Erza shamelessly quizzed him on his family planning capabilities. When he saw her enter the room he looked pleadingly at her with a face that screamed 'save me'. He was a literal demon in bed, but in public he was a closed off individual. And oh by Mavis, Erza had turned the man's ears pink. The script mage genuinely heard Erza say 'clitoris' and Gajeel make a tiny meep, sweating profusely. She decided it was time to intervene.
Levy walked up and extended a hand to him. Erza turned to look at her with a knowing expression.
"I'm pretty tired. Can we go home?" She asked sweetly.
Gajeel jumped up from the table and hoisted Levy into his arms, while she giggled, before disappearing into the shadows. Barely a breath taken between. No goodbyes to Erza or anyone else at the guild. A mad dash out of the place.
The script mage was asleep before they even got home. The shadows and Gajeel's heartbeat lulling her into oblivion.
The next day, Levy was woken by the sun streaming onto the bed. She'd had good dreams. The first in a while. When she rolled over she found Gajeel awake and laying there, watching her with a grin on his face.
She'd barely had time to utter a word when he took her by the waist and rolled her over him. She could feel how much he was currently needing her. She giggled, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
"Have you been waiting long for me to wake up?" She asked him dubiously.
His eyes were red coals as he ran his hands up her chest over the T-shirt she certainly hadn't changed herself into the night before.
"Not long," He husked. Bringing a hand up to cup her face, his thumb brushing over her lips. She opened her mouth and kissed the tip of the digit before taking it between her teeth and biting down.
He hissed, but it wasn't on account of pain. She could feel him twitch underneath her. She gave him a sultry look.
"Did you undress me last night?" She purred to him and Gajeel flashed a fang with the sly smile he gave her.
"I was a total gentleman," He remarked.
Levy didn't doubt it. For one she'd have certainly woken up and two, Gajeel wasn't that kind of guy. She bent forward and kissed him, his hands traveling down her arms lightly making her shudder and gasp against his lips.
"Do I get a reward?" He jokingly asked her.
"Maybe," The word came out a mewl as the Dragon Slayer arched his hips off the bed, pressing against her. "But what about my reward, saving you from Erza?" She blinked innocently at him.
Gajeel growled flipping their positions in bed and she watched his tongue snake out, flick across her skin hotly as he pushed up her shirt and dragged it across her abdomen.
She whined with desire, not knowing when she became so sensitive, so reactive to touch. Where he was involved she was a bundle of raw emotion, of exposed nerves. He got under her skin. Passed any kind of defenses. One look from him was enough to turn her into a blushing, bookish, dork. Or a raging lunatic depending on the situation. Red faced and tripping over her own words. One touch was enough to send her spiraling out of focus.
Gajeel actually had the edge of her panties clenched between his teeth when Lily knocked on the door.
Levy actually ripped the pillow from behind her head and fired it at the door, moaning frustratedly into her hands. The sexual tension could have been cut with a knife. She wasn't a Dragon Slayer but even she could smell the heavy, potent arousal in the air. Almost suffocating the both of them.
Gajeel looked downright murderous for a moment before his expression hardened.
"We got company, Shrimp. Looks like Council are paying us a visit," He rasped.