Chapter 66:

Experts in their craft develop something of a sixth sense to impart on them critical information that will often times go completely missed by beginners. It was in this same fashion that Laxus was aware something was wrong with the hunched figure in front of them long before Davian reached out a hand to stop his forward movement. He'd confronted desperados of drama who waited like Bond villains with their backs to him as he advanced, hearts frantic and grins peeling their faces open as they awaited the perfect moment to turn and reveal themselves to him. He'd happened upon rogues caught in the act, frozen by terror or minds in hysterics to think of a way of escape as Laxus approached in his thunderous glory. And even an ambush would bring with it a tense sort of weight in the air, the feeling of a group of bodies lying in wait for their unsuspecting victim, weapons drawn and fiendish eyes glittering in the shadows. This kneeling creature felt nothing like a decoy nor a thief caught red-handed. The unbalance of the situation had Laxus wrenching his hand free of Davian's grasp as he walked brazenly forward, lightning skittering across his skin in his agitation.

"You there!" Laxus barked, shattering the silence like fragmented glass around them. He heard a hiss from Davian as he stepped to his side, a pointed glare aimed for his throat at his nonexistent subtlety.

Laxus wasn't deterred. His eyes were trained on the figure, slowly making out matted, auburn hair that curled at the nape of a craned neck. The person didn't move, even as Laxus was close enough to clearly make out the creases of his brown jacket. It was there, just a few paces away that dread slunk like a stalking weasel into his gut. It was the horrendous odor that made bile rise in his stomach which first made him stop, or rather the realization that it didn't just permeate the room but originated from the slumped form before them. Then, it was the skittering of something along his back, large and black with tiny claws that grappled fabric and left tracks of brown where it stepped. It was the puddle of liquid that seeped into the limestone, brownish-red in color, thick, shimmering, and as viscous as motor oil. Finally, it was the fact that from the moment they'd entered the cavern until Laxus had stopped just a few meters away those hunched shoulders had never moved, not even an inch. Not to fidget. Not to sigh. Not even to breathe.

Davian stepped around first, giving the body a wide berth as he picked his way with obvious trepidation. As soon as his eyes fell on the face, he stumbled back, hand fisting at his mouth as horror stuck him.

"Oros above… it's… it's Kahli…"

Laxus thought he could prepare himself for the sight that was about to greet him but was proven immediately, abysmally wrong. Whatever the person looked like before death, there was no way he could know because the first thing his gaze gravitated to was the massive, empty sockets gauged into the man's face. The flesh around his eyes was in ribbons, caked with dried blood as trails of it had seeped down his cheeks and throat. His mouth was wide, baring carnivorous teeth in an agonized scream forever pulling his dry, cracked lips apart. His hands were curled on his lap, covered in the dry rust color of blood, black claws chipped and broken. The backs of his hands had massive, purple bruises on them and his legs had swollen. His clothes were soaked and his skin held a sickly sheen. Here and there movement gripped his attention as cave roaches and crickets feasted, and then the spiders in turn feasted on them. One engorged moved its eight limbs sluggishly, massive and black hairy things picking their way past Laxus's boot away from the buffet. Laxus didn't know how long he watched it, but the entire time he felt his ears were filling with that brown, oily fluid. He felt sick and his brain was fried.

"Guess we know why he never came back for the peaches."

Laxus felt feverish. He was sweating, the cool slick of it making his neck and palms damp. His skin itched and crawled. Twice, no, three times he brushed at his arms to rid himself of roaches that didn't exist. He scratched at his hairline, at the prickling that waded through his blonde locks and made him sure a spider must have descended from the ceiling and landed there. His stomach pitched and rolled and he felt a hand grab harshly his bicep and direct him backwards. Davian was pushing him back and he let him, watching how the Major had pointedly turned his back on the body. Laxus took little comfort in the knowledge that even a seasoned vet had difficulties stomaching the sight.

When they were several feet away, Laxus was finally able to focus on something other than his own body trying to expel his stomach's contents and took the time to study Davian. The haunted look in his eyes spoke volumes and he kept his back to what Laxus had to assume was another half-brother. With only the slightest of tremors in his hands he was popping pills, crunching them in his teeth instead of swallowing them. His teeth were sharp, eyes wide and unnatural. His breathing was quick and agitated.

Two siblings dead before his eyes… Laxus couldn't understand how he was keeping it together.

"Kahli…?" Laxus swallowed past the sickness in his throat, clenched his fists as he felt like he was swallowing down the rot and death stench along with it, "Brother…?"

"Yes," Davian muttered, his arms crossed so tightly that the silver buttons on his chest were fighting to contain him, "Kahli was the name Father gave him. His mother called him Adrien… I hadn't spoken to him in years…"

His tongue lashed out and back in. His hand was resting at his throat, pressing gently into his high collar with each breath he took. Laxus didn't know what to say, could barely do much more than watch the man wrest his emotions back under control. When he spoke again his voice was tense and quiet.

"I have to investigate."

"Should you call somebody? Get help?" Laxus spoke numbly and Davian's reply seemed equally hollow.

"We don't exist Laxus… and I can't jeopardize myself anymore by meddling in investigations," he took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again. His face was stoic and his tone cold, "I can be impartial. I just didn't expect…"

"Right," Laxus growled, dredging his eyes back up to the body, to Kahli, just as Davian turned his head back to gaze on him as well, "I… I'll help."

"You nearly passed out."

"I'm fine," Laxus hissed, "Just fucking talk to me… or something. Hell, I don't know."

"Well…" Davian huffed dismally, thumbing at the hilt of his blade and Laxus realized he'd not seen him sheath it, "Shall we?"

"I'm starting to hate that fucking phrase."

They walked quietly back to the corpse and Davian's tongue snaked out between his teeth as he grimaced. He made a gesture with his hands, touching the side of his hand to his face in a similar fashion to when they had been in the train, and muttering something in his language before he got too close. He knelt down slightly, nearly eye-to-… well… eye socket, with him. Laxus kept his gaze trained on Davian, tried to ignore the bugs and smell and screaming open mouth. He suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

"The state of decay indicates he couldn't be dead more than a few days..." he reached forward, gently taking a wrist and turning it over, "The body is no longer in rigor mortis. There's bloating in the legs and… and stomach but… three, four days maybe. Not more than five."

Laxus nodded to the face, "How… can you tell how he…?"

Davian shook his head, waiving his hand up and down as he gestured at the body, "There are no defensive wounds… no scratches or bruising on the arms or hands. It's clear the damage to his claws are from when he mutilated himself."

"What could do something like that? Make someone claw their own eyes out?"

Davian shook his head again as he thought, "Hysterics? An extremely vivid hallucination? Possibly a psychotic break? Drugs or poison that could have exacerbated some preexisting condition? Without a proper autopsy it's impossible to tell…"

Davian's words trailed off and his head cocked to the side slightly. Laxus followed his gaze, eyeing the bulbous, swollen neck that was tipped back.

"What is it?"

"It just occurred to me… this is a position of prayer…" at first Laxus thought Davian was starting to lose it. His eyes were distant and slowly, he scooted himself over to kneel at his brother's side. Laxus reached out but his hand never connected, just sort of wavered in the air in a pathetic motion to stop him. Davian craned back his neck, mirroring perfectly his brother's position, and his eyes were staring into the void. It was unnerving to see him like that and Laxus's skin crawled all the more to watch it. Davian's brow furrowed. He blinked rapidly, the gears of his mind clicking and grinding as he thought. He sucked in a breath and motioned at Laxus, "Stand… stand right here."

Laxus grimaced, "What? No."

"Just do it," he snapped and Laxus snarled but complied, coming to stand directly in front of the corpse, the perfect height to stare straight into the empty pits of his skull. He clenched his fists and looked at Davian.

"Now what?"

"Are you at the room's center?"

Laxus scowled, "What does that matter?"

Davian licked his lips, his voice more fervent, "Just answer the question."

Laxus looked around, turning slowly in a circle. He was, in fact, in the direct center of the room. Actually, now that he was paying attention, there was something odd in the fact that there were no stalagmites in the cavern. And, as he looked closer, he started to make out an outline, a line that circled the room. At the far end of the cavern was yet another exit, another tunnel that receded deeper into the darkness.

Damn he was sick of the darkness…

"Are we… are we in a Magic Circle?" he murmured and Davian's eyes widened. His head turned slowly to regard his brother's corpse. Something quiet settled in him, something insipid that made the air stale when he spoke.

"What did you do, Kahli?"

"You know what killed him."

Davian nodded numbly, his eyes tracing the confines of the cavern. Laxus followed his gaze, noted for the first time gashes in the walls and white scars on the floor. He heard brushing, looked over as Davian pushed himself up to stand and stepped on unsure feet. Laxus clenched his jaw as the glittering gold he'd come to recognize lighted his eyes. The air became dense, like the oxygen was rapidly being used up. Lines in the floor suddenly filled with molten, golden light as the Ritual Circle was activated. Laxus recognized the symbols and even the order. It was the same circle that was in Davian's skin and Laxus was sure that beneath the thick black shirt he was wearing it was responding to his call.

"A Ritual Circle…?"

"Father was here," Davian's voice was quiet and surprisingly his own. Laxus didn't hear the whispers or feel the presence he usually felt when Davian activated his power. But he was itching at his wrist again and Laxus noticed his gloves were pointed at the tips as his claws fought to break through.

"…Why? Why would he do this?"

Davian's words were icy and thick, ghosting from his lips like the humid warmth of a breath on a frigid winter morning, "It works as It sees fit."

Laxus's lip curled and he recoiled from him, horror-struck. Lightning flared up his arms, his back, curled like a vice around his neck and surged out into the glowing gold surrounding them.

"It works as It sees fit?" Laxus spat, "He killedyour brother."

"Father doesn't reprimand Its children without good reason."

Laxus's mind went blank, his thoughts shuddering to a halt as he fought to process what Davian had just said, "What was his crime? What did he do that deserved this?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know? How can you just not know?"

"Did I ever claim to know Father's motives?" Davian's voice had an unsettling quiet lurking in its tone. His yellow eyes weren't trained to Laxus, guarded and ready at a moment's notice to subdue to the anguished mage. No, they were resting on the corpse, "You forget that I walked into this this place with the same ignorance as you."

"How can you be ok with this? Your father killed your brotherin cold blood! This is your family!"

"It has Its reasons."

"What if he doesn't?" Laxus persisted, refusing to let up but also disturbed with the eerie serenity that clung to the Major.

"Father protects us…" his voice sounded strangely weak, almost broken, "If Father saw it fit to punish Kahli in this way, then he must have done something to jeopardize the rest of us."

Laxus opened his mouth to speak again but his fire suddenly died. The gold light was fading from the ground and Davian's eyes. The body, once cast in that beautiful, ethereal glow was again covered in shadow. Those agonized, pitted eyes stared at him, spoke of haunting pain and damnation. Slowly, he brought his gaze back to Davian, to the thin line of his lips where he pursed them so tightly they nearly vanished from his face entirely. It was a damningly slow understanding that reached Laxus when his gaze rested on the pallid color of Davian's face, the diffident and wretched look of horror captured in his eyes, the exact look of a man who was watching the hanging rope swing before him as he was led up the gallows.

"Will he come after you?"

The question was simple and yet Laxus thought he could see Davian's heart shudder in his chest at it being uttered aloud, giving life to his quiet horror. He dropped his gaze away from the corpse. The sound of his boot scuffing the floor bounced off of the ceiling and walls around them.

"Of course not…" he began but never ended. The silence brought with it more severity than any words really could.

"Why are you helping me, Davian?" Laxus set his jaw, not understanding and even more angered by it. Davian fumbled over his words, off-handedly checked his watch, trying desperately not to make eye-contact with him as he replied. He flipped his hand back and forth but the motion was jaded and callow, senseless in the way it attempted to dismiss the question.

"You forced my hand! Or do you not remember threatening me outside the warehouse?" the excuse was weak and Laxus's eyed him cautiously. Davian clicked his teeth, "Your concern for my wellbeing is unwarranted."

"Is it, Davian? Because I don't think so." Laxus pressed and Davian let out a drawn out, almost defeated sigh.

"Does it matter? We are here now, Laxus… we've seen what we've seen," he forced eyes to meet Laxus's and they were cold and stoic again as he gathered himself together becoming the man Laxus was familiar with, the callous and level-headed Major, "I cannot turn my back on this case, not after getting my superiors involved. So, we can continue to try and find this lacrima or we return empty handed."

Laxus scoffed, deactivating his magic and turning away from him. Returning empty-handed… it wasn't an option to him. Davian knew this and had perfectly deflected him with it. It pissed him off and worried him but what truly could he do? Davian was right. For better or for worse here they were. He couldn't face Gajeel with nothing.

His eyes rested on the darkness, the hall that continued back. He pushed his hands into his pockets, settling only the slightest as he did so.

"We should probably check his pockets… for the lacrima."

Davian nodded, his mind absent as he set about to do just as Laxus had said. The weight of the silence was heavy, baring down on them as if to smother them along with the bile-inducing odor. Davian straightened with little more than soiled gloves to show for his efforts. Laxus's mood somehow became even more sour.

"How much further are you willing to go?" Davian asked and Laxus growled, turning towards the darkened hall.

"To the end."

"Of course," the response was devoid of emotion, strict and precise. They were walking to the tunnel with breaths weak and shoulders tense.

"Be honest with me," Laxus started and almost immediately garnered the full attention of the man at his side, "is Father still here?"

"Believe you me, if It was you wouldn't be asking such a question."

"It's like that, huh?" Laxus muttered and Davian nodded, shining his light into the cavern ahead.

"If it's any consolation, you wouldn't be on the menu."

Laxus barked out a caustic laugh, "That right?"

"There is a strict rule against consuming mages… and it is enforced by Father directly."

Laxus opened his mouth to make a derisive comment and turned to look at Davian, partially expecting to see a smirk, a wrinkle of the nose, something to say he was joking, but he saw nothing and so his nose wrinkled instead, a somewhat disgusted look curling his features. Davian's focus was ahead of him and when he noticed Laxus was staring at him he paused.

"You're serious?"

"Quite."

"Then why target Gajeel?"

Davian's voice was distant and he was looking at the ceiling of the cave, eyeing some crystal-like formation above them, "Knowing Father's motives would help you to get to the root of the issue, wouldn't it?"

Laxus watched him closely, "You mean… this is more than just revenge?"

"Did I say that?" he muttered, seemingly more to himself than Laxus. His eyes darted over to him and he seemed cautious, "I believe in a roundabout way I confessed to not knowing."

"What doyou know, Davian?" Laxus growled and Davian merely shrugged.

"A vast many things… or did you specifically mean that which you don't? Either way, the list is quite long," he stated coolly and Laxus's blood began to heat up in his veins, "A discussion for another time, perhaps?"

"Why not now?" Laxus's anger was beginning to bubble over again but Davian's candid expression made him reign himself back in.

"Because it would seem we've reached the end."

True to his words, they had reached the end, and the end was far different from what Laxus had been expecting. Up until this point, the horrors had been surmounting, hopelessness and dread palpable, and so what they entered into was starkly out of place.

Laxus lighted the darkness, for the first time without fear of what could be sleeping in the shadows, and revealed to both men what was nothing more than the fragments of a workshop. A few collapsible tables had been erected, blisteringly white and mostly barren. At a quick glance, there were merely a few binders and what looked to be equipment from a darkroom, a camera, and littered about were piles of papers. Photos, Laxus realized.

Despite the innocuous nature of the place, Laxus found he couldn't quell the prickle that worked its way up the back of his neck. To say he approached with caution would be an understatement. He stalked forward, eyes running over the stacks of pictures scattered about. Davian was at his side, tilting his head as he scrutinized a blurred photograph. It looked to be leaves, fogged as it must have been very close to the lens when the camera was focused on something much, much farther away. A corner of a house, Laxus could see, but nothing more. Davian flipped it over, revealing another distorted picture. This one had a massive red splotch in the center from some error during the development process. The one below that was completely black save for two circles, a reflection of eyes perhaps, when the flash went off. All of them seemed that way, out of focus, making little or no sense. Sometimes Laxus thought that maybe he recognized a piece of a building or patch of pathway, but he shook off the familiarity that brought trickles of ice slithering down his spine. Truly, one couldn't tell anything from the pictures. They must have been discarded for that reason.

Davian's brows furrowed deeply and his face twisted into one of speculative concern.

"Ah… I don't like this…" he breathed and Laxus quirked an eyebrow at him. A retort waited on the tip of his tongue, something about how he shouldn't have like anything they'd run into up to this point, but he stayed it, choosing instead to reach for one of the binders that was sitting as if it had been thrown to the table hastily rather than placed like the others. He opened the first page and it took a very, very long moment to process what was in front of him. Like a cup placed in a half-filled sink, flooding with water so that it drifted slowly, slowly down until the light tap of porcelain hitting porcelain, Laxus felt his heart sink down into the pit of his stomach. The book was suddenly too heavy to hold properly and he rested it on the edge of the table, unable to feel it truly connect.

"What is it?" Davian's voice was distant, barely scratching through to his fogged brain.

The mind sometimes thinks it knows what it is scared of, what it abhors and detests and loathes. Sometimes it pictures that thing late at night, believing to itself that this is truly the worst imagination could conjure and turns the stomach it reigns over to sickness and wets the hands with sweat. And then there's horror realized, and Laxus realized it truly, that his mind was far, far too limited in even its darkest places; that hearing and thinking and contemplating over things was one matter but actually seeing it, touchingit, was quite another entirely. Laxus, by this point, had thought he'd seen most ghastly and horrible things that the world could throw at him, but the image he gazed upon seared into him the reality that horror, true horror, had waited quietly here on an agonizingly sterile, white table.

It was a picture of Gajeel, the likes of which he had never seen nor had he ever desired to see, but quietly thought he caught the ghost of pouring out from ruby eyes when nightmares woke him in the middle of the night. He was strapped down, eyes rolled back and hair splayed, damp and tangled, spilling off the end of a silvery table. His mouth was parted, incisors glittering like the threat of a knife and face screwed up in anguish and delirium. The photograph ended at his torso but it didn't save Laxus from the truth that he'd been stripped naked. There were words beneath it, strict and cold and broken in pieces. Laxus couldn't read the language but he wasn't a fool either, he'd seen the same format, after all, on the pages of autopsy reports he'd read from Gajeel's case. Height. Weight. Age. No name, of course, because what had these people cared of his identity? He was a test subject to them, an animal to be experimented on, and truly because of them he had become just that.

Laxus turned the page and was greeted with more images, more writing. The notes were in a fluid handwriting in some sections and in others striking, slanted, and quick. Two different people had used this binder and Laxus knew almost immediately who the first had been and a suspicion in the back of his mind surfaced as to the other. Because they had come to the realization that three bodies were missing and now three bodies had been found, and maybe it was bigotry on his part, but he had little trouble in deciding Kahli was the person who'd helped Bianca. In consequence to this determination, he felt something black, viscous, and abhorrently ugly in his chest eat away the shock of finding his corpse, something that decided for him – without his explicit knowledge – that maybe he deserved to die just as Bianca had and regretted ever speaking against Father's just sentence. The tiniest part, the optimist maybe, or maybe just the side that demanded justice for Gajeel's torment, wanted to believe that maybe Father had acted to punish them that were involved in such atrocities. But of course he already knew the nature of that beast was not so righteous, and so squashed that thought before it could take hold of anything aside from the vapors that drifted from his fried nerves.

He turned the page. There were pictures tucked between the pages along with the ones attached to the scribbled-on pages, pictures that shook Laxus straight to his core and set ablaze his chest like the searing tendrils of lightning as it turns sand to glass on a storm-stricken beach. Gajeel's teeth were bared in these and his hands and shoulders were blurred from where he'd thrashed as the shutter had closed.

"What does it say?" Laxus demanded quietly, feeling Davian at his side, the heat that fell off of him in waves, the shivering of the air as he breathed beside him, and then the way he shrank back at his words.

"It's not… not um… I don't think… I… most of this means nothing to me. Honestly, I don't-"

He stuttered over himself, trying to say what Laxus already knew. Golden eyes swept to him. Laxus didn't know what Davian saw resting there, and if Davian had been asked to explain it he would have been at a loss for words himself. All he knew was that Laxus was a fearsome sight when angry and maybe that had never bothered him because he'd dealt with criminals and the dying and even the horrors of his own family, but the utter darknessthat had settled the blonde's otherwise bright eyes was something to be reserved for only the most furious of creatures, those that know no true bounds to their anger but are oh so close to testing how far they can go; the trapped, the dying, the desperate. And Davian knew from years of experience what desperate men could do. And so, instead of press his point that there may be things Laxus was better off not knowing, he cleared his throat nervously and peeked over the edge of the binder with a firm jaw and strict detachment.

"Read it, Davian. Out loud."

Davian took a steadying breath and he was as cold in tone as the cave, as the white tables, as the fluid, feminine writing on the page, and the lilt of his tone was familiar.

"The subject continues to resist attempts from staff to extract samples. The body metabolizes Hemlock, Mandrake, Opium, and Henbane faster than projected. Orotrushit to provide stronger sedatives. The subject has strong skin, possibly an effect of the Dragon Slayer magic of his body. Platinum needles required of larger gage... more on accelerated metabolisms and the implications on different drugs… and something about samples that degrade rapidly when exposed to oxygen… Didn't Mr. Redfox mention in his last statement something regarding this…?"

He glanced tentatively in Laxus's direction, the later who was studying the picture laid before him, clenching his jaw as he turned the page There was blood, so much blood, and a clean wound deep into tanned skin that Laxus recognized, had brushed gently, kissed, and muttered sweetly to. Something hot bubbled in Laxus's chest, scalding enough to burn.

Davian unclipped the pictures delicately, an eye always on Laxus, watching just to be sure he didn't lose it as the Major got close. He revealed behind it the wound as it mended and Davian's brow furrowed as he read.

"This seems to be a annotation on his healing processes… I don't believe there's much of note to be had here."

Laxus turned the page once more and the visage Gajeel here was haunting. His color was gone, tinted with ash and the silken look of a corpse. His teeth weren't bared, his shoulders and head still. But his eyes… his eyes toreinto Laxus as if he somehow knewLaxus would be here, looking down on him in the past, and in his eyes there was something Laxus was intimately familiar with. It was the same glare Gajeel had pierced Bianca with before he'd sliced her throat, the same one he'd aimed at Unaven before he had decided murder wouldn't bring him the peace he craved. It was a look of hatred, of unadulterated loathing, the likes of which makes one shake off moral inhibitions for favor of a terminal end. Those eyes. Those eyes held defiance and vigor and lethal promise. I will be free. I will have blood.

Every page was writing after that, no more dreadful photographs, and the information Davian retrieved from them spun Laxus a broken tale of torture he could hardly bare to hear. And this… this was just the surface. This was the objective lens from minds that didn't care. Words were devoid of emotion and it was easy to read it with the same indifference. They spoke of Gajeel's reactions to a stimulus. They didn't retell the fetid feeling of the Heat that had seared Gajeel's flesh for nearly two weeks, only the madness. They didn't speak of him being lashed to a table when Unaven had crept into his cell, only the wounds afflicted. They didn't speak of Bianca approaching him in the darkness under the guise of being Laxus, only the paranoia, the violent outbursts, the scratching at walls and floors.

But still Laxus knew. He didn't know much, mind you. There were things mentioned he couldn't tie to events confessed by red-eyes widened with the horror of memory. There were still holes and dark spaces that couldn't be filled. But he knew enough. He knew enough that the hot thing, the burning thing, the black, dark, ugly thing that had fitted itself to his chest could come alive and consume. Like a parasite it trickled across his ribs, seared his lungs and diaphragm, ripped like a scarlet blade through his heart and filled his ventricles with vile, hungry smoke. It called for retribution of the most animalistic nature. But from whom could he demand penance? Bianca was dead. Kahli was dead. The doctors and hired help were dead. There was no one to make suffer, no one with which there was explicit fault, anyway.

No one except him.

After all, he could have kept this from happening. If he hadn't been such a coward. If he hadn't run. Run. Run. Laxus didn't run. Laxus wasn't afraid. And yet he had. He'd run from Gajeel from fear of what could happen if he stayed, from fear of the unknown, from fear of what he didn't want to confront. He'd run. Like a child. Like a child lost in the city at night. He ran from shadow that didn't exist.

There had been consequences.

And they had been steep.

The black thing oozed through his heart and down into his veins. It wasn't hot anymore but cold, blisteringly,frigidlycold. Very suddenly, Laxus felt numb. Like a volcano which erupts in a frozen sea his fire was doused before it could lay waste to what was around it. It crept up his throat and pitted there, forced his jaw to clench and his eyes to burn. His right eye throbbed and he scratched at his scar, at the imperfection. He scratched hard because he couldn't feel his fingers or his face, because at this point numbness was just too much for him to bare, and moreover he scratched because pain felt right. Deserved. Welcome.

He could hear Davian again and briefly wondered how he was still there; so lost was he in his drowning that he'd forgotten there was a body beside him. The words didn't make sense at first and Laxus didn't have a desire to focus on them. He was too busy imploding, allowing the guilt to assuage him and gnaw piece and piece and disgustingly black piece from his bones like rats on a rotting carcass. He was ready to be nothing left, to be bones buried in miserably cursed grave dirt. And then he was touched gently on the arm with a bare hand.

"Laxus…"

"Davian," Laxus stopped him, eyes unmoving as he gently closed the binder, "When you touch people… do you feel what they feel?"

He hesitated, "A little… if I'm honest."

"Then whatever you're going to say, you'd better say it carefully."

His hand slipped off of him, a ghostly thing, the feel of a specter passing through and leaving only the memory of something there that was regretful and weighted. Davian grabbed another binder from the stack and took a deep inhale, eyes fluttering closed as if in prayer or possibly to settle himself, and he opened it. It was more of the same stock as what Laxus had seen except that the people depicted weren't Gajeel. Actually, these were of a different variety entirely and the confusion and then morbid realization was all but written on Davian's features.

Lizardfolk. Pages and pages of them. There had to have been a dozen, possibly two, studied although none as extensively catalogued as Gajeel had been. Occasionally, Davian would recite names in reverent disgust and awe, here and there commenting on the last he'd seen them. Each picture had red marked at the bottom and Laxus knew just at a glance what it meant. Deceased. He flipped faster and faster, and on one picture he breathed that they were a halfblood. Then there was another and another after that. And finally the last page fell open and they were both frozen.

It was a picture taken from far away in a crowd, but the center of focus clear. A table outdoors was covered by an ivory tablecloth. The restaurant was covered in green ivy. A waiter was filling two glasses with brilliant red wine and a woman with deep brown, corded braids falling over her was speaking animatedly to the man across from her. A man in the uniform of a Rune Knight.

"You were next," the words fouled the air like tobacco smoke and Davian's bronzed complexion seemed devoid of life.

"So it would seem."

There was a long moment where neither one of them wanted to continue. It was Davian who moved first, mechanically and practiced as with shaky hands he uncorked the cap of his pill bottle once more. He shook one out and took it greedily before he quite literally shivered off what was holding him back and reached for another binder.

This one was far smaller by comparison and seemed more of a photo album than a binder. True too, the first thing they were greeted with was three pictures that had been slid into a sheath. The first was a figure cloaked in black, the back of which was leaving was must have been a liquor store. The other two were taken at the same place and time but all were blurred and poorly developed. Laxus couldn't rightly make out what it was although in red ink there was written on each panel the word June. He turned the page and this time the picture was clearer, though not by much, and the figure he could see was achingly familiar. Although again with back to the viewer and quick pace in his steps, all he could really make out was the dark smudge that could be black hair, or a hood, or a vast many other things. Accept, the longer he stared the more he noticed colors and patterns, and just as when he'd gazed at the first discarded image when they'd approached the table the ache of dreadful familiarity began to sink in.

The next page made it clear, so achingly, dreadfully clear he felt stupid for not knowing the from the first. It was the picture of a shoddy house on a shoddy street on the bad side of Magnolia. The door was open and a figure was in the doorway, bottle in hand as he retreated to the sanctity of his home. Lily was there, hopping along after him with mouth open and face full of disapproval.

Laxus's heart was pounding as he turned the page.

Gajeel was standing on the porch with a cigarette in hand, eyes bleary and distant, thin, distressinglythin, dear gods how hadn't Laxus realized how thin he'd become? He was in a leather jacket, maroon shirt and navy vest. In the second picture he was without a cigarette and in the third Laxus could see his own back to the camera and a sordid smile on Gajeel's face.

Again he turned the page and his heart beat harder, faster at the sight of Gajeel walking out of his house in running clothes, face tilted back as he spoke to who was behind him. More pages, more events. Pictures of Gajeel moving boxes, of their house together, of trips to the liquor store and the guildhall. And then there were pictures of them boarding a train, of Edelweiss and the spring. Of a figure leaving the hotel in the middle of the late-autumn night, of Gajeel entering Hajime's tavern and the blinds being pulled shut.

And that last bit stuck out to him as he turned the page and his heart damn near made his entire body throb with its uneven rhythm, because in the next few pictures Laxus was there only his face was obscured in every one. Somehow, someway, there was something in the way. A well-placed corner, his attention grabbed elsewhere while Gajeel stood facing forward with an easy grin, or even once when Gajeel had pulled him close to him inexplicably. And he remembered that moment as one he'd thought strange at the time but had brushed off as nerves or Gajeel just being in a quirky mood. But it wasn't until the last few pages before it really sunk in, when looks of ease turned into nonchalance and, finally, hostility.

And then there was the last page, three pictures taken in the middle of the night, late, around two or three in the morning. The month said January and Gajeel stood on their front porch with cigarette in hand in the glow of the porchlight, staring into the darkness absently. In the second picture, a smile played at his lips as he took a deep breath of his cigarette. In the third, blood-filled eyes were gazing straight into the camera and he'd opened his mouth, running a wicked tongue across his pointed teeth. Smoke curled from his mouth, poisoning the air. He looked every bit of the bloodthirsty dragon he claimed to be, with menace in his mouth, on his hands, and glistening in his eyes.

Even at the distance there was no mistaking it. Gajeel knew. Had known that someone was there, watching, waiting, and Laxus had been horridly, blissfully unaware. Gajeel's words rang eerily in Laxus's head and he nearly lost what was left of his nerves right there as he stared into Gajeel's immortalized gaze: "Nothin' scares people like a stranger knowing all their habits. That's the best way to get in people's heads…"

"He knew…" Laxus said dumbly, and chaos began to bubble up maliciously in his throat, "He knew. He knew and he didn't tell me."

He was outraged and hurt and nervous and suddenly panicked. He'd been there, Kahli – or Mavis's sakes it had betterhave been Kahli and not someone else slinking in the shadows around his house – he'd been there when they'd gone on their first date, when Gajeel had sought to take his own life, when they'd grown close. The inn, their home, everything. He'd seen it all. There was no sanctity. There was no safe. There was only someone stalking from a distance and ruining all those pure memories.

"Surely there was a reason," Davian said as pragmatically as he could muster, attempting to stop the rage as it surmounted in the room with them.

"Goddammit!" the lightning scorched him from the inside out, or maybe it was the heat of his distress, "A reasonbut not a fucking good one!"

"Perhaps he didn't want you to panic?" Davian tried but Laxus was slamming the book to the table, making it shudder and threaten to break. He was pacing, eyes wild as static crackled around him.

"Like I would fucking panic! I'd've fucking stopped it!"

Davian stepped back from the stray bolt that threatened him, bringing arms up to shield himself, "Could that have been the point? To not put a stop to it?"

Laxus stopped his procession, turned eyes to Davian, "What? Why in the ever-loving hell…!"

"Laxus, think clearly for just a moment. I know this is taxing, its scary, even, but you must calm down!" Davian hissed, dropping pretense as he guarded against more lighting. Laxus only reigned himself in just enough to stop the static in the air and Davian blazed on, "Did you not see what he was doing? The… the mind games he was playing?"

Laxus blinked at him suspiciously and Davian huffed as he flipped through the pages, "Here, don't you see? He knew he was being followed and he kept you from being photographed. He knew that whomever was after him didn't have a connection to you and he kept it that way. Months, Laxus, this was in the making. He'd spotted his tail and messed with him until-" he flipped to the last page as if it explained everything and Laxus just frowned, "This was planned. He did this with the intent to make a point."

"But why," Laxus growled and Davian puffed, exasperated and tired and nearly as horrified as he was.

"What happened just daysafter this picture, Laxus?"

"You fucking hauled him off to jail!" Laxus accused and Davian gestured at him, waving his hands dramatically.

"Precisely!" Davian hissed at him and his tongue slipped out of his mouth as he spoke, "This only reiterates what I'd said earlier."

"Fucking what, Davian!"

"He's keeping you safe!" the way he said it was almost an accusation and Laxus stilled.

"I don't need-"

"Yes, yes, you don't need to be kept safe and yet he does. Whoever this was being reported to, Laxus, you're not involved. You're not in the case file. You're not in his statement. You're not in the pictures. Laxus, if someone would to attempt to use someone against him, it can't be you because they don't know who you are."

Laxus just stared at him, blinking and not understanding what he was saying, and Davian actually whinedin his frustration, took a step back from him and rubbed his palm over his forehead, muttering, "By Oros's teeth, how can one be clever and yet so obstinately dense. Be thankful," he snapped, staring Laxus straight in the eyes now, "that he can recognize when his own wellbeing is in jeopardy but still have the wherewithal to save you from the same fate."

"I'm not a fucking damsel in distress, Davian. What makes you think I can't fix this?"

"Why are you so offended by someone keeping you safe? Do you know how what I would doto have even an ounceof the same?"

The two fell silent then, Laxus fighting down the range of emotions in his gut. He crossed his arm, kicked his boot against the slick cave ground, and faintly craved alcohol. He wanted to forget today, forget everything about coming back to Bianca's lair, and Davian was gathering what was on the tables, balancing binders and folders of photographs and grabbing the camera. Laxus didn't offer a hand, partly because Davian didn't seem to be having an issue carrying everything and partly because he just didn't have it in him. They'd have to walk past Kahli again, past the corpses, and past where Bianca's body rested.

Dammit, he needed a drink.

It was while Davian was gathering things that something heavy clanged to the ground and rolled. It hit against Laxus's boot with a light thud. Laxus picked it up and raised a brow at it, a silver in color, metal ball covered in an array of markings. He stepped up to Davian and held it aloft for him to see. Recognition twisted across his features and he took it in his hand, rolling it around in his palm.

"Strange… it's a puzzle sphere," Davian muttered, using his fingers to turn into in his hands.

"A puzzle sphere?"

"Yes. Father used to give me these as a boy… he'd leave things inside…" he fumbled with it in his hand, twisted it and pushed it in a few places so that with a final clickthe thing opened. Laxus plucked out what was inside and pinched it between his middle finger and thumb, flipping it around in the limited light.

"A feather?"

"We can examine it further outside. Currently, I'm quite ready to leave," Davian replied tersely and Laxus put it back, closing the little sphere back up and dropping it into Davian's pocket for him. As they turned to leave, a noise suddenly pierced the silence, something shrill and that subsided just in the same instant it had started. They both jumped and Laxus's chest suddenly ached from where his heart had stopped when the noise sounded again. This time, Laxus realized it was the lacrima in his pocket and he fumbled it out, catching it right as he would have dropped it on the ground. It was glittering and activated, awaiting him to accept the incoming call.

"Ah… fuck. It's Gajeel," Laxus muttered, staring down at it. Davian let out a heavy breath, quietly calming his own start.

"Well… best not keep him waiting."