PLEASE READ: I will admit that my anxiety has been going into overdrive. I'm scared you guys aren't going to like where this is going, so you're going to leave. Please don't ditch this story. At least wait until Chapter 85 or so before you give up. Also, try to remember that this is a fix it fic which means EVERYTHING TURNS OUT ALRIGHT IN THE END. I do know what I'm doing.

After they finish recovering from this arc (there will be a little more angst 'cause trauma + recovery) then we will be back to love and fluffles for the most part, okay?

This is probably the worst it'll ever get, anyway.

So y'all can calm down.

And also some love and fluffles and angry = I hate you but in a good way because this story affects me so much = messages in the comments would be much appreciated, because my anxiety is acting up and my depression has been worse, lately.

I also expect much screaming.

Things need to get worse before they get better, after all.

But first:

*whispers* angst, angst, angst angst, angst angst, EVERYBODY!

Chapter Eighty - Ivan, Part Two

He liked to leave me hanging.

Ivan.

After a draining, sometimes he would leave me suspended by my wrists, hanging from the ceiling. It wasn't like how he used to whip me - my feet were still kinda on the ground when he did it before. Now, I was hanging a few feet off the floor.

After a few hours or so, he'd return, hurt me some more, and then finally let me collapse on the ground.

He especially seemed to like the collapsing part, especially since, after I've been hanging for a few hours and just been beaten, I can't exactly catch myself.

Which makes hitting the ground so much worse.

It doesn't help that my legs are useless, and constantly throbbing, and I need to angle myself awkwardly so I don't land on them and mess them up more - though pretty much everything I do with them hurts.

Which is another reason he likes to drop me like that. The first time, I wasn't able to right myself, and I landed on my broken legs.

I passed out from the pain.

After that, I woke up and they were at least wrapped up a bit, but they weren't in a splint or anything.

They aren't going to heal properly, which means that whenever I get out of here (if I get out of here), Porlyusica will have to break them again. Even if Phoenix was to do it, and help them heal; they'd still have to be re-broken so they could be set properly.

My meal was also cut down to every other day. Ivan would leave it by the front of the cell, and if I wanted to get it, I'd have to pull myself along the floor with my arms. Even if I so much as crawled the wrong way, my legs hurt. They bandages helped (and they were probably put there by whoever was helping me at night), but there wasn't much protection in them, as I said. In fact, they were barely wrapped up at all, which makes me think that whoever was doing this didn't know a lot of first aid.

Still, I was thankful for the small amount they did know.

I also have a feeling that someone has been mixing pain relief into my food, but I don't know who.

At least it means that I've had an ally since the beginning here; someone else who I should help escape.

I'd come back for them, even if I get out on my own. There's no way that I'd leave someone else to Ivan's sadistic tendencies, though I at least know that they're not hurt too badly – otherwise, they wouldn't be able to spend time cooking for me and giving me first aid.

As the fourth month (at least I think it was the fourth month) approached, my legs began to heal.

Not correctly. In fact, even looking at my legs for too long made me feel kinda sick, with how crooked they are.

But enough that in a few days, after waiting nearly two months since they'd been broken, I'd be able to walk. Maybe.

It'd be painful, and I'd have a horrible limp, but I could do it.

And so I waited.

Since I had tried to escape a second time, Brain had convinced Ivan to 'break' me.

Basically, it meant that he upped the torture.

But then he tried to go mental – mental torture.

It didn't work.

At least at first.

Probably because Ivan is a piece of shit, and I'm smarter than him.

He would try to describe things to me, so I'd start to wear down mentally, but it didn't really work because I didn't really care.

But then it changed.

Someone (Brain, probably, but maybe Hades), had given him a few suggestions, and then the mental torture started getting bad.

I wonder how he contacted them. Do they just have monthly Evil Dark Guild Master Meetings where they talk about things? Does he just complain about me all the time?

I wonder if Mard Geer shows up.

...Nah.

This is when he started with illusions.

I know that they were fake, but they looked so real.

He left Laxus alone, oddly enough, but other Fairy Tail members were fair game.

Juvia and Cana were the most prominent, probably because they both attacked him the day he was excommunicated because he was going to attack me.

At first, it was just them dying, which was horrible enough.

And then he changed it. So when they were dying, they were blaming me, saying things like, "Why didn't you save me, Elle?" and "Onee-chan, you promised!"

At first, they said things like, "This is all your fault, Elle!" and that's one thing that got me to hold on to reality. Even if they did blame me, they wouldn't out-rightly say it like that, and that's the one thing that let me stay strong.

Still, though, watching that hurt, so I would always try and make him angry – since he got angry so easily, I could easily get him to resort to violence.

I would rather lie there in pain, than think about such things.

The next time Ivan entered the dungeons, he wasn't alone.

There was someone beside him, but I was unable to see because of the lack of light and the odd angle I was suspended at.

It definitely wasn't Brain though – too small.

For the first time, he had left me hanging overnight. My shoulders were killing me from the odd angle, and my wrists felt like they were going to break off.

"How did you sleep, Eleanor-chan?" he said cheerily.

If I never heard the name 'Eleanor-chan' again, it would be too soon.

"Probably worse than you did," I admitted. "After all, I have a conscious, and human decency. Since you don't have any of that, I'm sure you sleep well at night despite your constant torture."

He gritted his teeth, and I continued. "Then again, you might not sleep well at all, because you aren't that good at torture, and you can't even break a thirteen-year-old girl. What does that say about you?"

His anger flared and he pulled the lever. My magic drained from my body, and I was unable to keep in the screams.

My body shook and glowed in the air, before he eventually turned the lever off.

I slumped back against my restraints, my wrist feeling even worse than before from my shaking.

"You think she'd learn by now," Ivan told the person next to him. "There's something called Operant Conditioning in Psychology, you know. What I'm doing is called Positive Reinforcement and by hurting her over and over again, she should have started to break from this."

"Actually, it's called Positive Punishment," I coughed out, my voice sore from screaming. "You are giving me something (the shock) because you want me to stop a behavior. Reinforcement is when you want the behavior to continue, stupid."

He sneered at me. "What do you know about Psychology?"

"More than you, apparently," I shot back.

He glared and pulled the lever, and my screams rang through the air again.

In a few moments, he turned it off again, and I slumped back down against the restraints.

And then he flipped on one of the lights in my cell.

It was only one (he probably doesn't want to ruin the mood, dramatic piece of shit), but it still blinded me by its suddenness, and I couldn't cover my eyes from the way the arms were suspended. I tried to blink away the shadows and black spots that appeared in my line of vision.

"What do you think?" he asked the shadow behind him, and the person in shadow stepped up next to Ivan, stepping into the light where I could see him.

I started laughing when I saw him.

"What's so funny?" Ivan asked.

"You're trying to trick me with Laxus of all people?" I laughed. "Please. It's not going to work!"

"What are you talking about?" Ivan asked.

"You've been continuously using Illusion Magic for the past few weeks," I couldn't stop laughing. "You're trying to trick me that…what, Laxus joined you? Please, you're not going to break me that way. Laxus would never join you!"

"Oh?" Ivan asked, smiling wickedly, and my unease returned. He grabbed Laxus's hair and moved his head around. "Seems real enough to me."

"Stop touching me," Laxus said flatly, batting away at Ivan's hand.

I snorted, ignoring him. "Then you're an illusion too. You're probably standing back, and watching all of this happen from beneath your illusion."

Ivan started to laugh. "Oh? What makes you say that?"

I glared at Ivan, staring directly in his eyes. "Laxus would never betray me, or Fairy Tail!"

Ivan smiled at me again, and I wanted to punch him in the face. "Oh? He just might; after all…he is my son."

For a second my faith flickered, and I remembered a particular scene from the anime, where Laxus was only a little older than he was now, yelling at Makarov and saying that he might leave Fairy Tail and join his father's guild.

But then I shook it off. This was my Laxus; that wasn't going to happen this time around.

"Laxus-chan, why don't you explain to Eleanor-chan why you joined us," Ivan smirked evilly.

Laxus rolled his eyes and indulged his father, scoffing at me. "I joined because you finally left."

My heart stopped.

What?

"Fairy Tail has turned into a joke! Collecting orphans, blowing shit up; that's not something I wanted to be a part of!"

And then he took a deep breath, collecting himself. "But I couldn't just up and leave…not with you there. You're close to my level, and if I did anything suspicious, it's likely you'd try to stop me, especially because you know the future. So I stayed! I stayed and played the little game with all of you, collecting what information I could."

He smiled maliciously, and I felt my heart breaking. "But now you're here! And I'm free! I don't need to stay with that trash any longer, I can be right where I need to be."

His eyes met mine, and I couldn't read them. "Here."

I looked down, away from him, the light casting my face in shadow.

It doesn't matter though; he was a dragon slayer.

He could still smell the tears I was trying to hide.

"Jeez, you should have joined a few months earlier," Ivan muttered. "You'd save me a lot of time, Laxus-chan."

Laxus snorted. "You're the one who wanted to hide out in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't exactly easy to find you, you know."

"Who knew she'd be so easy to break?" Ivan muttered, before smiling and laughing. "You hear that, Eleanor-chan? All your talk about staying strong, and you crack just like that."

"Shut up!" I didn't even recognize my own voice. My head snapped up and my eyes pinned them in place, because there was still no proof - the reason I was in tears was because just the thought of Laxus betraying me fucking hurt. But it still wasn't true. "There's no way you're really Laxus. Laxus is my best friend! He would never betray me. We promised each other! 'Side by side', so it doesn't matter what you think! I refuse to think that this Laxus is real, because the real Laxus would never join-"

I screamed as a large strike of electricity hit me, the pain radiating up and down my body before finally stopping.

I hung limply in the chains, and Laxus used his Lightning Body to pass through the bars, reforming right in front of me.

He stepped in front of me, gripping my chin and tilting my head so I could look him properly in the eyes.

Even hanging from the ceiling, I was only suspended a few inches above him. I met his eyes, and I knew, in that moment, that this was Laxus standing before me.

The world froze, and my heart shattered.

"DON'T presume that you know me!" he roared, sending another shock through my body, causing me to cry out again. "You know NOTHING."

He turned back into lightning and exited the cell, and I was left hanging, frozen as I tried to comprehend what was going on.

"One more thing, actually, Laxus-chan," Ivan said, and Laxus looked up at him with an expressionless face. "You see, Eleanor-chan here is naughty, naughty! She likes to try and run away." He pulled out the same sledgehammer from before, and my heart sunk even further.

So much for trying to escape, soon.

"But fairies can't fly away if their wings are broken!" he said happily, handing Laxus the sledgehammer.

Then he turned to the wall and hit a button, and the chain holding me up slackened, enough so that I fell on the floor, so tired and sore I could barely move.

Or maybe it was the heartbreak.

It hurt, falling, but I wasn't that surprised. As I mentioned before; Ivan likes doing it.

He unlocked the door and wandered in, Laxus moving behind him, clutching the sledgehammer.

Was he going to make Laxus do it?

He wouldn't. It was one thing to shock me, another thing to break my legs.

Ivan wandered closer to me, and I prepared myself.

It's hard to do it with my wrists cuffed together, but it's still possible.

I yanked my arms upwards, straight for his weakest point, and managed to hit it.

He squeaked and fell to the side, and I (since my legs were a little healed, even though it would hurt) jumped Laxus, pinning him down and wrapping my hands around his neck, awkward as it felt with my wrists chained together.

"I still don't believe you," I shouted in his face. "There's no way you're really Laxus! Laxus would never betray Fairy Tail!"

But that first part was a lie. Because…there was no way this person could be anyone other than Laxus.

His lifted his knee up between us and kicked my chest, slamming me off him and into the bars, which made a choked noise leave me.

The last time Ivan whipped me was three days ago, so it's not as bad as it would've been otherwise, but it still hurt.

"What did I say, Rigby?" he shouted, getting up, and somehow…calling me by my last name hurt more than anything else he had said or done so far. "DON'T PRESUME YOU KNOW ME."

Rigby.

It's a stupid name, I know. When I heard I was named about a song, I got a bit upset.

But I grew to like it. Yeah, it's silly, but it's mine. It's one reason I didn't change my name when I got a chance to start over.

But now, I hated it.

The way Laxus said it, full of loathing and hatred, made me freeze, and I felt my chest start to ache where my heart was, hurting more than any of the physical wounds I had.

Ivan grabbed me by the hair (again with the hair!) and picked me up, throwing me back against the wall. More than a few strands of hair stayed in his hand.

That's it, I'm cutting my hair when I get out of here.

If...if I get out of here.

He grabbed the chain attached to my connected cuffs and pulled it high into the air, yanking my wrists up and out of the way, before his foot squashed down on mine, and I bit my lip from the flare of pain down there.

"Well, Laxus-chan," Ivan said, slightly out of breath, and growling angrily. "Do it. Break her leg; we can't have that healing. She could escape."

Laxus nodded, inspecting my leg, before he pulled the sledgehammer back –

This is when the world stopped to me. My hyperactive mind saw a different future, one in which Laxus turned and used the sledgehammer to butt Ivan in the face, and take me away from this shit hole.

But that didn't happen.

Instead, his arms swung down and the sledgehammer slammed into my leg, shattering any healed bones and making my original injuries worse.

I couldn't hold in my screams as I saw white, and I didn't even notice that Ivan had already switched his foot to my other one before one of his Shikigami sliced my cheek.

"I want you conscious for this, Eleanor-chan," Ivan said. "So conscious you will be! Now, Laxus! Again!"

And the hammer came down once more.

...Still not apologizing.

I've had this planned out from the beginning, and you guys tend to actually like those arcs more, (depending on the angst level). But dealing with Deliora and the Tower of Heaven and the Oracion Seis + this arc has been planned since before I started writing Ripples, back when I was still daydreaming.

ALSO if you die or kill me you won't know what's going on.