Told you I would continue.
SSS
"Hey."
A gentle hand shakes Levy awake, and she blinks, eyes still clouded with sleep.
"Mira?"
Mirajane smiles gently, though the expression doesn't reach her eyes.
"Lily's here, sweetie; you should go get some rest."
Levy nods, still bleary, and watches as Mira retreats.
"...Where…?" she mumbles, brushing hair out of her face and blinking to clear her eyes.
It takes her a moment to remember. She's at the hospital. Slowly, she glances down at the man lying in the bed beside her chair.
"Gajeel." she bites her lip, tears welling like they do every day. The dragonslayer hasn't so much as twitched a finger or made a sound in three months. A thin grey miasma hovers over him, evidence of the last spell inflicted on him. A spell that has kept him comatose, and…
Levy's hand slides through his hair, down his face, and finds a fresh bandage under his jaw. A new wound that wasn't there when she fell asleep. That won't be there when they go to change the bandages. Everyday, there are more. Some of them have resembled claw or bite marks; others look as though they were inflicted by human weapons, and still others appear as magic burns. More than once, they've nearly lost him to blood loss when more than one wound opens at the same time. They patch him up, and when they look again the wounds are gone as if they never were.
She's searched for hours and hours, and she still doesn't know what kind of spell it is, let alone how to break it.
All she knows is that, however slowly, Gajeel is dying. The spell is taking his life one wound and one day at a time.
Pantherlily pads softly up beside her chair, eyes flicking from her, to Gajeel, back to her, then to Gajeel again, where they stay. Neither of them speaks. The only thing that moves in the room is the spell, shifting around the dragonslayer's prone form.
He doesn't have much time left.
