Chapter Text
Van sat opposite Danielle and nervously chewed on his lip.
“I'm fine,” he said slowly, looking pointedly at the wall behind her rather than her piercingly green eyes or his hands. His blood-covered hands. “I haven't hurt anyone else when having a flashback.” He still had them, even though he'd told both Cobra and the other therapist he didn't. He just made sure to keep to the shadows when he did. There he couldn't… No one else could find him there, so no one risked getting harmed. “I'm fine.”
"Van, it's okay to open up and discuss what's bothering you," she told him gently. "I won't judge you. I just want to help. It's okay to talk about the flashbacks and your hands."
He moved his hands from his lap to behind his back, staring down at his feet. “I almost killed him,” he whispered lowly, closing his fists. “There was so much blood. And Cana and Erik both… They say I didn't. But I did. I know I did. Erik got harmed because of me. I felt his heartbeat, and I know what a dying heart sounds like. And the blood… So much blood.”
"There was," she agreed gently. "But the important thing to remember is that you were not in control of your actions. Yes, something absolutely horrible happened. But you were not in control. And I understand how that can also be a problem that you need help with." She reached over gently and squeezed his thigh lightly. "I can help you. There's an easy way and a hard way. It's not a one for one choice. And you can change your mind whenever you want. There are pros and cons to each decision. But I can help you make the flashbacks go away. I promise."
“It's fine,” he said while looking at her hand. “I mean… I can hold it back until I'm alone and able to go kill shades until it passes.” He shook his head and chewed on his lip, thinking it over. Because if he told her he'd also sell out Bix and Cris. And he didn't want that. “I don't want to talk about my trauma. Or for you to see it. It's not just my trauma, and it's not just my story to tell.”
"Van, let me explain something very carefully to you about doctor-patient confidentiality. You can tell me anything you want. Anything at all. I cannot repeat it outside of our sessions. Period. There are only two instances where I can. And that's if I feel you are a danger to yourself or others. That's it. If you tell me something about Cana or Cobra that does not make me feel like you are a danger to yourself and others, I cannot repeat it outside these sessions. I may decide to check in with them and touch base. But I can't tell them that you were the one who told me anything." She gave him another gentle and caring smile, her eyes giving him a loving look. "It may be others' trauma, but it's still yours. And you have a right to get help for it."
“But my brothers aren't your patients, and they'd know I told you if you approached them.” He gave her a stiff smile, trying to ignore the feeling of sticky, warm blood on his hands. He knew there was nothing there, but he felt it, saw it… Could even smell it at times. “And no offense Danielle, but you'd want to approach them if you knew.” He shook his head and chewed his lip again. “You're too good at your job not to.”
"Your point? You're allowed to get help for your trauma. If they get mad at you because they manage to figure out that I was tipped off because of something you said while you were getting help, then that's on them and something they need to figure out. Right now, you're all stunting yourself from receiving actual help because you're afraid of selling each other out." She shook her head. "That's not good Van. You can give them a head's up that you're receiving help, but by continuing to not receive help to try and protect them, you're only making things worse for yourself. Burying it down is a trigger for flashbacks. What if it had been Cana instead of Cobra who walked through that door?"
He was silent for a long while after that, staring down at his feet as he thought it through. Minutes went by and he didn't speak. When he did, it was a whisper.
“Kurino was obsessed with Farron. She tried everything to get him back, everything. She… Thought that if she threatened his family… So she did. Bix and Cris and me.” His hands were shaking now, and he dug his claws into the palms of his hands to try and stop it. “Bix always took the worst of it. Tried to protect Cris and me. Big brothers you know… But then he was exiled. And Cris… He took Bix's place. But Kurino was a sadistic, psychotic, rapist bitch. And from the very beginning… She figured out the shadows inside me make it impossible to harm me with things such as blades.
“But that didn't stop her from forcing me to teach her. And I knew. I knew that she used everything I taught her to hurt Bix and Cris.” He hissed and switched over to Boscan before continuing, unable to properly express it in Fiorian. “She drowned me. Over and over again. And every time, just before I lost consciousness, she pulled me up just below the surface, so I could see her face properly. Then, when I woke up I'd either be drowning again, or she was on top of me. And it burned. The water burned my throat and I couldn't cry because there wasn't enough air and…”
"Deep breath," Danielle whispered in Boscan, the language somehow sounding right in her mouth. He'd never heard her speak Boscan before and sometimes he forgot that she was Boscan. But there was something there in maybe her dialect or the way her voice immediately took on the proper accent… He couldn't place it, but it felt like home. It felt safe.
Right. That thing he knew about but couldn't remember.
"I'm going to give you the same choice I always give everyone," she continued, moving her hand down to his knee and squeezing gently before leaning back. "There is an easy option and a hard option. The hard option is what Twinkletoes and Cobra chose. That's where we have sessions, just like this. I give you proper medication that helps. We talk for about an hour, once a week. It's a long and hard road, but eventually it will get easier. When you slip, I'm always a call away to help pull you back up. Then there's the easy option. And that's what Rawr X.D. and Rogue chose. That's where I go in your head and change things around. I compel you to act in a healthy manner. It is exactly what it sounds like. I would be forcing you to act a certain way with different triggers. I would also make the memories seem less intrusive, not as… Larger than life. I wouldn't remove them, but I would lower the intensity. You'd be able to look at Rino's face and not immediately think of drowning, for instance. I do not touch anything you don't want me to. I don't look at anything you don't want me to.
"Either one you choose, know that you always have the option to change your mind. Rawr X.D. chose the hard option first before changing her mind and deciding to take the easy route. If you chose the hard option, you can always decide to go easy. And if you go easy, you can always change your mind and go hard. I would remove all compulsion on your mind if you chose to go the hard route from the easy. Slowly, as not to shock your mind. And I always have my 'yes' first. Understand?"
Van hissed out a breath and wiped his hands against his pants, again and again. The blood was warm. And sticky. And smelled both sweet and coppery. And he couldn't breathe.
She leaned forward and took his hands in hers, giving him a small smile as her magic swept over his hands and healed them. "In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Five counts." Her hand swept over his palms and she… Literally drew the blood off and sent it into the trashcan. "Look at your hands. They're clean."
“No,” he whimpered, shaking his head. “N-no. Don't touch me. I can't… I can't breathe.” He was drowning again, he couldn't breath and everything was too bright and too loud and his lungs were burning. He drew back and curled up on himself, whimpering softly as he fought the urge to just slip into the shadows. He was safe in the shadows. No one could touch him and he couldn't harm anyone.
And nothing mattered anymore because the world was a sea of colors and light and warmth that he was floating in. If he focused really hard, he could just barely make out Danielle holding the sides of his head and pushing her healing magic into him.
Van whimpered and closed his eyes. “You said you wouldn't do anything unless I said yes,” he murmured. “I didn't.”
"This is different," she promised him softly, easing more healing magic into him. "This is just basic healing of the different chemicals in your brain. I don't need your consent with this. Like how I keep dragons from snapping or heal a nearly snapped dragon. I don't need the consent." She gave him a smile. "I'm not messing with your mind at all, just healing."
“I'm not nearly snapped,” he objected.
"No, but it's the same process. Just healing magic, nothing more."
Van curled his fingers and waited for it to stop. It felt uncomfortable, like… Her presence pushed his shadows away. And he couldn't remember a time before his shadows manifested inside him. He didn't like it, it made him feel naked.
"There." She leaned back and rose a brow at him. "Look at your hands."
He did so and flinched. They were clean. And he firmly closed his eyes and whimpered. “You took my punishment away.”
"Yes, I did. Because it's a ridiculous punishment. You don't need to be punishing yourself for this, Van."
“No one else will, so yes. Yes I do.” He shook his head and slowly opened his eyes again, then he looked down at his now clean hands and fisted them. “Erik and Cana are just telling me over and over again how it was Erik's fault that he got hurt. But it wasn't. It was my fault. It wasn't he who thrust himself at my knife, I fucking stabbed him! Fourteen fucking times! I stabbed him and then I stabbed him again, so many times. I even stabbed him through the eye because all I could see when he looked at me was her eyes and I just needed him to stop looking at me!”
"Alright. Let's go through it step by step then." She gave him a patient smile. "The hard route. Tell me what happened, as much as your comfortable telling."
So he did. He told her about the meeting with Kurino, about slipping into the shadows for a few hours. Then he told her about returning home and falling asleep in Cobra's arms. And finally about waking up, drowning. He told her about how stabbing things, or people, always brought him an inner peace. So he'd stabbed the pillow. And then he'd stabbed Cobra.
She didn't say much in response or he didn't hear it. He wasn't sure. Then he left. He was standing in the busy guildhall of Sabertooth, unsure of what to do. He didn't feel like joining Andrew and Andrea at the bar and he wasn't sure if he could carry a conversation with Sting, Rogue, and Angel. Cobra hadn't been able to stay after the dinner the day before last, and Cana had been pulled away on a mission with Partner-In-Crime. So he was alone. And while he didn't feel like being particularly social he felt even less like being alone. So he chewed his lip and went over to sit down next to Rogue.
"Something interesting about the shadows," Rogue noted once he sat down. "They feel comforting, even knowing how deadly they can be." He slid Van a drink and gave him a small smile. "Her sessions have a way of feeling raw afterwards. But they do help. Love says they feel like she's digging out an infection bit by bit each time. But she says it also gets better and easier each time."
“Maybe I like being filled with pus and necrotic tissue,” Van muttered while accepting the drink. He didn't look at his hands, both due to it having become a habit and because they looked too clean. “Maybe it's a personality trait.”
"Yeah, I tried that method. She told me to suck a dick." Rogue made a face before leaning back. "Oh, I learned something interesting from Emz. Well, from Sting who learned it from Emz. So by proxy, Emz."
“Well, I like sucking dick so I don't see the problem.” Van finished of his drink and sighed, he missed Mira's booze. He missed Mira. “And what? She finally fucked Natsu?”
"No. Hasn't done that yet. But, there's a very decent chance that my original magic was Shadowquip." Rogue spun the shadows around his hand. "Apparently the Rogue of #1250 didn't become the Shadow Dragon Slayer until he was like… Fifteen or something. So his original magic manifested before then. And he was originally a Shadowquip."
Van hummed, that was interesting. “Easy enough to test,” he said holding his hand out. Then he slowly molded the shadows together, forging them into a small, black marble. “Repeat that.”
Rogue shrugged and did so, tossing the marble in the air. "I always figured this aspect was Shadow Dragon Slayer shit. Explains why Skiadrum chose me as his kiddo."
“Definitely Shadowquip.” Van smirked. Then he pulled a knife out of the shadows and put his hand flat against the table. Then he stabbed himself, hard.
Rogue chuckled and spun the shadows into a knife as well, ignoring Andrea's rolled eyes when he followed suit and stabbed his own hand. "Interesting." Then he sent the knife away and shrugged. "Again, I always figured it was a Shadow Dragon Slayer thing. Didn't really question why I couldn't be hurt with blades. Considering claws hurt like hell."
Van hummed and let his blade sink back into the shadows as well. “I was five when my magic manifested. I killed my whole clan because I couldn't hold the shadows back.” He shrugged. “They were my only company for two years after that before dad took me in.”
"I feel it." Rogue nudged Van gently and gave him a sad smile. "After coming through the gate, I was alone. I thought I killed my dad for so long. And I was all alone for years with just the shadows. Wasn't until I was ten when Phantom Lord took me in." He took a long drink and sighed. "Then after Phantom Lord was disbanded, I was alone again until Sting found me."
“It's okay,” Van said with another small shrug. “I mean, so what that I turned out to be a psycho killer and you turned out to be volatile as fuck? We're fine.”
"Perfectly fine," Rogue agreed, tapping his glass against Van's. "We're perfectly normal and stable members of society. And if anyone tried to take our mates, we'd burn the worlds to the ground and cover them in blood. Perfectly stable."
“Exactly.” Van grinned brightly and finished off his drink. Then he sighed and looked at his hands. “I almost killed Erik.”
"But you didn't. So we take those wins." He shrugged and sent some shadows to curl around Van's hand, squeezing gently. "I've once almost killed Lucy."
He nodded and curled his fingers around the shadows, squeezing them back. “He got promoted. He's a Brigadier General now. And commander over the Palace guards.”
"Nifty." Rogue grinned and nodded. "Hisui recently made Lucy the royal tactician. She got a shiny medal and everything. Has to report to Crocus once a week, but Andrew doesn't mind playing shuttle."
"Only because she promised to name her first son after me!" Andrew shouted from across the guild.
"Which I low-key hate her for," Rogue acknowledged.
“I haven't seen Partner-In-Crime in months,” Van shrugged. “And not Starry Eyes either. In fact, I haven't seen anyone in ages. Stupid Farron, can't take a fucking joke.”
"Well, if you hang around for love to get back from the mission she dragged Cana on, I'm certain she's going to just love showering you in glitter. Speaking of, I'm supposed to give you something."
Van eyed him suspiciously. “And what, exactly, would that be?”
He snorted and tossed glitter over him from his pocket. "And I'm supposed to say, 'Friendship magical unicorn powers, activate.'"
Van grinned and patted Rogue on the back with a laugh, then he quickly stood up, and brushing himself off he payed for his drinks. “Well I think I'm going to go lock myself in my room now. See ya!”
Then he ran, before Rogue noticed the glitter stickers he gorilla glued to his back. They were really pretty, and spelled out “Goth Boy”—what was not to love?
~ ~ ~
Cobra waited—not very patiently—for Van and Cana to return. They'd called two days ago, letting him know they were leaving for the Celestial Realm. So they should be here soon. Today. Tonight. Tomorrow at its latest.
But the Celestial Realm space-time distortion bullshit was ridiculous so they could also be gone for another week and a half.
He snarled and kicked the stupid bucket over. It was stupid. They were going to laugh at him.
He turned to glare at the emo princess, who was silently snickering at him. “Shut up or I'll cut your feather boa into pieces.”
'You do that and I'll make a new one from all the damn chickens,' Macbeth answered while tossing his hair over his shoulder. 'And speaking off, why are they still at the estate? They're annoying.'
“Because, you absolute arsehole, Cana doesn't want a chicken coop in our garden. And the land around the estate is more than enough to home it,” Cobra hissed, still glaring viciously at him. “Especially since Ever moved out and stopped taking over half of it for her own shit.”
At that, a fan hit him in the back of his head and then it moved to smack the emo princess as well. Both of them winced and turned to face the fairy mage.
“Get back to work or I'm going home,” Evergreen hissed, looking at them with a stern expression. “If you both idiots think for one second that I wouldn't rather be home with Presca—who for once is home—than here, doing this stupid shit, you're sorely mistaken.”
“Yes ma'am,” Cobra muttered before going back to digging. “Should have ordered a random Earth Make mage to do the dirty work…”
'I could just make an illusion of it, you know?' Macbeth offered. 'Evergreen is even scarier than Sorano.'
“That she is,” Cobra snickered in return. “But no. I want this to be real. Cana wants the big shit. So I'm doing the big shit.”
“All you're doing is digging holes,” Ever muttered, slapping her handheld fan against her palm. “I'm the one actually doing shit here. Now, hurry up and finish boys, I'm going home by sundown whether or not you're done.
'Slave driver...'
Cobra snorted and grinned at Macbeth.
It'd been years since Peregrande. And out of all of them Zen, Jellal, and Macbeth were the ones who had struggled the most. Which was understandable, because Sorano was a heartless bitch, Laxus was there for all of two weeks, and Cobra was… Cobra.
But he'd missed his friend and the fact that Macbeth was now slowly piecing himself together, accepting the loss of his tongue ad even learning sign language, was something Cobra was fucking grateful for. He even learned sign language himself, even if he didn't fucking need it.
“What was that, beauty queen?” Evergreen whispered with a wicked grin as she walked up to Macbeth. “If you have something to say, you should tell the whole class.”
He slowly signed the words he'd mentally told Cobra, only for Ever to huff and slap him across the back of his head with her fan again.
“Get back to work you cretins.”
So they did. And once they were done Evergreen did her part.
Cobra had to try it to see that it actually worked. It did. Then he grinned brightly and wiped his dirty hands on his pants before turning to the two mages who were both looking at him with a smirk. So he flipped them off and dragged them both through the house before kicking them out. “Thanks for the help. Now fuck off!”
“Yeah, yeah… As if I'd want to stay here anyway. You both reek.” Ever snorted before activating her fairy dust wings and taking off.
'You'll let me know how it goes, alright? I'll text you when they appear at the guild.'
“As long as you don't fall asleep in a corner somewhere, you fucking narcoleptic,” Cobra said while flicking the emo princess' forehead. “And remember, don't let anything on. Just wave lazily to them if they see you. Or pretend to be asleep.”
Macbeth snorted and flipped him off before leaving.
Cobra grinned and then went back inside. He still had shit to do. And he wanted to be prepared. Because they should be here today. Or tonight. Or tomorrow. And he only got the one shot at making this fucking perfect.
He had all the papers in order. Several bottles of both champagne and stronger shit coming straight from Magnolia. The rings were already in his coat pocket. But he needed to shower. And place the note. And come up with a plan of how to stall in case they arrived before sunset. Fuck. What if they arrived before sunset? He hoped they didn't.
He hustled around, trying to get everything in order. It had to be perfect. Cana deserved that. Van wouldn't care one way or another, he could just fucking toss a ring at him and tell him to meet him at the guild the next day and Van would still be jumping up and down with excitement.
But Cana wanted the romance. She wanted—needed—to know that she was appreciated. That she was loved. And she was, so he'd give her all the fucking romance he could. Except for a suit. He wasn't going to wear a fucking suit. There had to be some limits.
He showered. He prepped the alcohol. He wrote the note. Several of them in fact, placing them on odd surfaces because his mates were fucking insane and would probably look under the bathroom sink for him before checking the bed or the study. Fucking crazies. But they were his crazies and when his lacrima buzzed with a message from Macbeth telling him they just arrived at the guild he checked the sun. Sunset. Good. It'd take them a few minutes to report back to Kaleb before Van could drag them back home.
So he went to the back of the garden and waited for them.
And once they made it out into the garden, he smiled, because as they walked down the stone path to the back of it to greet him hundreds and hundreds of orchids started to sprout and rapidly grew into full bloom all over the garden, all of them gently luminescent in the dark of dusk. As they got closer Cobra pulled the little box he'd gotten back from Kaleb yesterday out of his coat pocket and opened it. Two rings. One in black steel and one in red gold, the latter with a finely cut diamond. He held the box out and met Cana's gaze.
“Will you, Cana Alberona, and Vander Pradesh, marry me?”
* * *