The bleeding stopped, and they went away.. something with golden wings drove them back before they could swallow her, and then she was safe again, back in the gold. The Lord of Nightmares, she had thought at first and then realized...
With a stretch and a sigh, the dream ended and she tried to sit up, surprised at how weak and sore she felt. Tired. Worn out. Old... Closed eyes opened in sleepy surprise, and she rolled over. A moan jarred her lips and she felt a comforting hand stroke her curls, soothing her, and bloodied eyes opened again. For the first time in forever...
"Gourry..?" She whispered in a dried out, thin little voice. Her eyes had a hard time focusing.. What had happened? Why was dream and reality so hard to distinguish? All she could taste was loss and all she could see was circles...
Gourry slept on."You've been away, little sister." Said a soft, amused voice.
"..Luna?!" Wide awake and slightly fearful now, seeing people that had not been there when her memory had last functioned correctly, and wondering what had brought her.. home?
"Was there ever any doubt, m'dear?" Lina's brow wrinkled and she looked from Gourry to Luna and back to Gourry again, each eyeful startling and horrifying her more. He was so thin..
"Luna.. what's happened to him..? What's wrong with Gourry?! Gourry??" She began to tap lightly at his face, and brush back his bangs. His hair was so limp and thin.. like he was thin.. he was too big for this kind of emaciation. It gave him the appearance of a sleeping skeleton and that wasn't right.. Gourry was...
-- golden wings --
Gourry was...
-- tall blackness with a sliver of the soul's mirror --
And then her sister's smiling face her golden eyes outward for the world to see. Something had happened. Something that made her skin crawl and a sickly shade of purple flash across her eyelids. Oh God.. what had Gourry done..?
"Luna.. what has happened..? Where have we been?"
"And why do your eyelids see things that should not exist?"
"Yes." Luna's smile reversed and she contemplated her folded arms for a moment in deep reflection"
"Are Zel and Amelia..?" Her weak voice tried to crack a bit as fear for her friends welled.
"They're fine. Sleeping on each other in the other room, actually. They found you and brought you home, hun. This is quite the group you've assembled, Lina. And that one.." She nodded at the sleeping swordsman, then shook her head. Lina's own head was spinning now and she just grew more confused.
"My darling baby sister. Do I have a tale for you."
Gourry awoke some time later, his body's need for food finally breaking his need for coma. In Lina everything was blurry confusion, but in him the remembrance always came first. Did he believe or had he just dreamt? If it was a dream, what was real then? How much of his life was a sleeping occupation. Oh, his head hurt and so did his arms.
His arms...
"Gourry..?" Her voice..
His eyes opened to color and a concerned sorceress crouching, kitty-like on the foot of the large bed. He just looked at her, the blur of her vivid coloring too much for his head to handle in one large swallow; he had to keep looking at her and keep looking at her, letting her sink in in small doses.... He frowned. "Are you real?"
Lina could only stare and fight to keep her throat from choking her to death. What had happened to him? Where had Gourry been? And where had she been, for that matter..? That thought disturbed her and she chose not to dwell upon it, gooseflesh running along her body as eerie sounds whispered in her ears where no one spoke.
"Gourry..." her voice just a murmur and the tears started in her eyes as she looked at his body, the robust frame and strength drained for something else. Something stronger....?
"Luna.. told me. What she knew, I mean."
"Lina..." His flat eyes seemed to deepen as she looked into them, fighting her confusion as her head's recollection showed only through the cotton her memory seemed to be packed in.
"I'm real Gourry. See?" And she touched his cheek gently, the heat of her flesh an inferno to melt the ice he felt he'd been packed into.
And then his tears started and hers joined in, and she couldn't breathe because he was hugging her to his chest, the thumping of his heart sounding painfully loud against her, and she had to smile and kiss back and run her fingers through his hair.
"I missed you so much.." he sobbed, not saying anymore as the force of his tears and saying goodbye to his loss were finally let go, the reality of her in his arms such a balm to his broken heart, and he could feel it mending, mending, the bonds loosening somewhat so he could finally breathe again, the oxygen and color coming back into his life with the return of the one person he loved above all others, and for one such as Gourry, that love was a heady, indestructible thing. He would rather it kill him then live without it. His sobs were soundless in the noise of pain, and she just stroked his head and cried her tears herself for what this person who was her friend and lover had put himself through. For her.
"I'm-I'm sorry, Gourry!!!" Her words were small and unstable as he just held her closer and closer to him, kissing wherever his lips fell. Lina kissed him back as best she could, feeling the heat of his exhausted tears running down her neck to soak into her clothes, and for just a moment she saw blood soaked into fabric, and instead of fear felt desperate love for every tiny spill of red, each touch precious. Her hands slid down his thin arms, wincing at the wasted musculature, wanting to feel him sleek, healthy, and strong, the way Gourry always was, and the only way he is.
Notches in his flesh violated the smooth slide, and she frowned, as identity escaped her. Gourry had his scars, but she had never felt these before... she pulled his arms into her lap and turned the undersides to the light, wincing at the bruised, pale flesh. On each arm, in surgical precision, lay three long white strips. Strips that indicated the repair of previously unbreached musculature and skin....
"What are these, Gourry....?"
The dawning horror in her voice gave his sore heart another twist, the worry over the past and gone real sight into who Lina Inverse really was.
"It's nothing, Lina. They've.. healed."
"Like HELL this is nothing!!! Where did you get these Gourry?! They look deep... Who did this to you?!" Blood flared in the promise of singed retribution, and raked flesh for that torn from her lover. He looked at her and smiled, unknown to Lina that this was only one of less than a handful in forever now.. It was sweet and small and his eyes were clear as a sky. They were still gray and cloudy, but there was promise of a clear horizon eventually. "I did it to me, Lina."
Words can be said and not necessarily heard. The opposite is true as well; words heard that you don't want, not matter their relevance, but they still seem to burrow and bury themselves deeply into your brain in a red hot press. She just stared, concern and shock having a fight in her head that left her feeling dizzy and nauseous. "Y-You did...?"
"Yeah." His voice was soft and sweet, and he gently touched her hair, small pats everywhere, a reminder and a comforter that she was really there and this wasn't going to end, leaving him with an armful of razor sharp wakefulness.
"Gourry! You idiot!!!! WHY?! Do you know the damage that could have happened?!!! What it would have done to your hands?! You're a swordsman, for the love of -- Didn't you think?" The look on her face was wide eyes narrowed in a hurt face, and her small mouth twisted as she sought to reach through the cotton she always screamed he had packed between his ears to acually reach him.
His smile turned into the firm line of mouth, never wavering, that it had been since he had been consumed in the flame of Lina's destruction. "Yes. All I did was ..think. And think. And think. Until my head hurt to match my chest."
"Then why, Gourry? Explain it to me!!"
"Because I'm a swordsman, Lina. I'm you protector. You needed me wherever you were, see?"
"You tried to -- to -- kill yourself?!!"
"I did what needed to be done, Lina."
"MAIMING?!"
"No. What needed to be done." His voice was not hard; it was never hard with Lina. But the resolution echoed in a depth of his soul that Lina had always known he possessed, but had not been forced to acknowledge yet. It scared her, but.. how could you not fall into hands that wanted to catch you and help you? Gourry would never hurt her. And she was very much afraid she could not promise the same thing to him. And that hurt her, stinging and welting her soul until salt was exacted from her eyes in payment.
"G-Gourry.." and Gourry Gabriev found that heaven is often what you make of it. And in small arms next to a slight frame there lurked the beat of an angel's wings, and he still heard empty words, still warm somehow, that told him Time was always Time, and always personal to each. His time had not yet come, and he had been sent home.
"I found you, Lina," he whispered, pulling her close into a hug where heartbeats found each other and were reassured. "There, next to my heart, I found you."
There was quiet next, and peace, and sometimes that's all you want more than anything.
"There is no room in my body for anything but you. My arms love you, my knees shake with blind affection. My mind begs you to ask it something so it can obey."
-- Buttercup from The Princess Bride by William Goldman