After he had slept for a few hours, Zelgadis began to wake up. He could feel a heat source close to him. It seemed to be wrapped in his arms somehow. It was soft, and it seemed to be moving up and down with a slow rhythm almost like... As the sensations reached his brain he abruptly became completely awake to the realisation that Lina was snuggled up against him and he was HOLDING her! Moving very slowly and carefully so as not to chance waking her, he slipped his arm out from under her body and backed off to sit up.
"How in Cepheed's name did THAT happen?" he wondered out loud, blushing a bright crimson as he thought about just what the two of them might have looked like to an outsider.
Zel could see that Lina was in a great deal of pain. 'It must be almost exactly two days.' he thought.
The pain's gotten worse again. Lina realised, Zel must be awake. She clenched her fists as more and more of the burning pain began to seep into her protective dreamstate.
She looked up to see that Zelgadis was back inside the dreamstate with her.
"Oh! You're back again! Good to see you!" she smiled and tried not to let him see how bad the pain had gotten. It didn't fool Zel, though.
"It's gotten a lot worse, hasn't it." he asked adroitly.
Lina hung her head. "Very much." she admitted. "I know this is kindof an odd request, Zel, and you're free to refuse, but it hurts a lot less when we touch," Lina looked down at her hands, which she was trying not to wring with nervousness, "and I was wondering..." she hissed as the pain went up another notch.
"Alright, I will." Zel said and blinked back to his own body. Blushing as red as his grandfather's robes, he gathered the deceptively limp body of Lina Inverse onto his lap, and wrapped his arms around her. Is it my imagination, or has she gotten heavier? he wondered.
It was much harder for him to calm his mind with such a distraction as a beautiful and appealing girl in his arms, especially since certain...parts of her anatomy...pressed up against his chest.
Gourry is an idiot saying she has no chest. he thought. No! Come on now, CONCENTRATE! he remanded himself.
When he was back with Lina on the Astral Plane, she was actually smiling a bit.
"Thanks." she said, "I know you don't like to touch people..."
"It's okay." he assured her, blushing slightly, "You were in so much pain, anything I could do to help relieve it..." he trailed off, not wanting to reveal how good it had made him feel to hold her.
"Lina." he started, changing the subject, "If you don't want to tell me exactly what you were looking for, what CAN you tell me about all this?"
"Well, for one thing, whoever set this curse is pretty sadistic."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, at first it felt as though someone was smashing all my bones with a sledgehammer and putting them back together wrong; then all my insides started tying themselves in knots. Now it feels like my skin is on fire, and..."
Zelgadis took her by both shoulders and looked at her with an expression of desperate fear.
"What was it?" he demanded, "What were you looking for?!"
"I told you, it's private." Lina mumbled.
"Lina, that pain sounds like something I know; I REALLY need to know what you were hoping to gain at the temple!"
"The temple was Ura no Shinden, 'The Temple of Reversal', if you wanted to know." Lina steadfastly refused to meet Zelgadis's eyes, "And it's a moot point anyway, the pain has stopped, so whatever was going to happen has probably happened by now."
"I guess we'd better wake up, then, and assess the situation." Zel said reluctantly.
"I guess we'd better." Lina agreed, just as reluctantly.