A/N: Screw it. I give up. Thank you all so much for your patience and kind words. My life has been on a hellish roller coaster for the past couple months, and it doesn't look there's going to be any sort of significant improvement soon. I'm tired of watching this story gather dust while I slam my head against writer's block, so here, at long last, is a new chapter! (I'll go back and add in the promised Wendy and Jellal chapter at a later date.)

Chapter 17: Tearing Open the Wound

Erik leaned again a tree and was violently ill. Cubelios twisted around him and hissed soothingly.

He hadn't recognized their faces or their new names. Not after so many years. Back then they had all just been scared kids. It had been at least a decade since then, and their faces had long since dimmed and faded in his memory. But their voices. Erik remembered their voices. Erik always remembered people's voices.

"Well, if it isn't Cobra. Fancy meeting a traitor like you here."

Erik threw up again. He'd almost forgotten that the white-haired man used to call him that. The ugly scar on Erik's chest throbbed with phantom pain.

They had barely survived the attack. Erik had frozen up completely, unable to move. Sawyer had shattered Erza's arm with a well-placed kick while she had been distracted. Jellal was down from taking a spell from Brain head-on. Wendy had been taken for who knew what reason. They'd all been knocked down like dominos. If Jura's timing hadn't been perfect, they would all be dead. And Erik had been absolutely, completely useless.

Now everyone who could was pulling themselves to their feet to assess the damage and figure out what to do next. He couldn't focus on what anyone was saying. Something about Ichiya's painkiller parfum not being able to fix Erza's broken bones. Too much noise. He needed to calm down. Their voices wouldn't get out of his head. His ears strained to follow them as they got further and further away. He scrabbled for the noise canceling headphones around his neck, but his hands were shaking so badly that he dropped them. Cubelios let out a distressed hiss.

"Erik? What's wrong?" Simon's voice. Erik clung to it, tried to drag himself out of the past and back to reality with it. He was surrounded by a semicircle of worried and concerned faces.

"Yeah, man, what happened? Why were those creeps acting like they know you?" For once, Natsu's loud voice was comforting instead of grating.

"Because they do know me," Erik rasped. His eyes sought Simon, Erza and Jellal. "They- they were all on the Tower. They were experiments like me." Their eyes widened in horror. "Brain, he's the one who implanted the lacrima in my chest." He could barely force the words out. His brain was buzzing. He could feel the knife slicing into his skin again…. "I- I left them behind when I escaped. I thought Cubelios's bite had killed him!" Cubelios caught him before his knees could collapse.

There was some general swearing at these revelations from his fellow Fairy Tail wizards. The wizards from the other guilds just looked confused.

"The Tower?" asked Eve.

"The final tower of the R-System," Simon rumbled, not looking away from Erik. "They used slaves – mostly children – to build it. Some of the children were used for experimentation instead of labor."

"That's awful!" gasped Lucy.

"So the people we're fighting were all victims of this Tower, then?" asked Sherry.

"Yes," Erza confirmed, her voice grim. Even through his haze, Erik could still hear the slight edge of pain in her words. Not just physical pain. Erza had always felt responsible for every single person who had escaped the Tower. The knowledge that there had been other children like Erik who had slipped through the cracks probably hurt her more than her splintered bones.

His focus began slipping again as guilt tugged at him from all sides. He had abandoned them. He'd left the others alone with that monster. And now they were horrible twisted caricatures of the children they had once been.

Logically, Erik knew that there was nothing more that he could have done. He and Cubelios had barely made it out. It had mostly been pure luck. Brain had started to seize after Cubelios had managed to bite him, and Erik had just run without looking back. He'd spent months running, afraid that if he slowed down someone would drag him back to that awful place again. He'd had a taste of real freedom right after they'd escaped from the Tower, and he had wanted it again desperately. And he'd been able to hear the lies laced artfully in Brain's words.

"Erik. Erik." Erik grasped onto the present once more. Damn it, he'd zoned out again. Jellal was staring at him intensely, studying his face. "Are you with me again?"

"Yeah," Erik nodded, running his fingers over Cubelios's scales for comfort.

"Good. Can you focus well enough to fight?"

Erik stopped and really considered this question. The worst thing he could do during a life-or-death battle was get in the way.

"Not yet, but I will be. I'm fine for aerial reconnaissance, though."

"Alright. We need to find Wendy. Charle says that she should be able to fully heal Erza's arm. Then we need to locate Nirvana before the Oracion Seis does. Hibiki is going to use his archive magic to keep track of all of us, so you'll be able to relay any messages through him." Jellal rattled off all this information with quick efficiency.

"Eyes in the sky. Find Wendy. Find Nirvana. Relay through Blue Pegasus," Erik repeated back to show that he understood. Jellal nodded approvingly.

"When you're safe to, join the fight." He put a hand on Erik's shoulder and gave a light squeeze before standing up. "Ichiya said that he has a scent that can help with shock, so maybe get a whiff of that before you and Cubelios take off." Erik didn't mean to but he caught Jellal's stray thought as he turned away. Stay safe. I hope we find Wendy soon.

Ichiya's parfum smelled unpleasantly of lilacs, but it did help to clear Erik's head for the moment. It didn't do much for his morale though.

"Come on, Cubelios." Together they leapt of the edge of the cliff and soared up into the sky. From above, the endless stretch of green looked almost peaceful, except for a few darkened patches of corruption presumably caused by Nirvana. The cool air rushing passed his face cleared Erik's mind better than Ichiya's strange lilac-scented magic had.

He had a job to do. For now, he had to push his ghosts away and focus on the battle in front of him. He couldn't actually bleed out from a wound with no physical form, no matter what it felt like.

Erik crouched down on Cubelios's back, let his eyes scan the forest canopy below, and listened.

A/N: Brain still has nefarious plans for Wendy even without a Jellal that he needs resurrected. Thanks for reading!