Not Gonna Die (A Skybrine Fanfic)

|Chapter 17| Cure or Curse?

          He wasn't sure how long he had been awake before he realised it. Every part of him ached and he felt weak, vulnerable, helpless. The pain was still there, thudding in time with his heartbeat in the back of his head, but it felt slightly different. It was muted, as if it was the bass beat in a song that he was hearing and feeling from behind a wall of rubber. He felt his body shaking weakly despite something warm resting on his forehead. He heard distant footsteps on stone and the soft creek of something metallic, but his exhausted mind couldn't process anything more than that, even though the distance of the pain made it easier to think.

          "So this is where you've been," a female voice said. It took Adam a moment to process that the voice belonged to Anne and briefly wondered why she was there and where he was, although he couldn't summon the energy to continue his train of thought or to respond to her. She was silent for a few moments. "He looks relaxed. Less in pain."

          "I'm holding it back," a male voice said. "It's the least I can do for him."

          "Then you found something," Anne asked. "A cure. But...?"

          There was a sigh. "I did," the male voice hesitated. "But... Honestly, I'm asking myself whether it's a cure or a curse."

          Distantly, Adam heard Anne asking why, and what happened, but he missed the man's response. He was tired and his body forced him to drift back off to sleep.

          A frown flickered across Adam face as he drifted off. Herobrine was sitting beside him, one leg crossed on the floor and the other bent with an arm resting on it while his other hand was on Adam's head. He glanced down briefly at Adam's frown and made sure that the pain hadn't returned before meeting Anne's gaze again. She was leaning against the inside of the bars, arms loosely crossed across her chest, her brown hair falling like a waterfall over her shoulder. It almost seemed that Hero had stolen her jumper from her, due to the fact that she wasn't wearing it over her light blue shirt. The cell was very dim, lit only by a few torches outside of the cell and the slow glow coming from Herobrine's eyes.

          "I searched everywhere," he started saying in response to her question. "I checked the royal library, the sorcerer's library, every city and village, heck, I even snuck into Notch's hideout and looked in his library, but not once was there any reference to anything like this. And I looked through hundreds of books."

         "But you found something," Anne said quietly.

         "It was in a book collection in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere," Hero said. "And it was a tiny chapter in an old, small book. It called this a 'Brine', which I am both honoured and offended by. All of the symptoms that it described matches what he has. It... It said that it can be removed so that it doesn't affect the person, but that it can't be removed completely. So, I can separate it so that it doesn't hurt him and so he can't use the magic, but it will stay inside him."

          "What's wrong with that?" Anne asked.

          "I'm worried," Hero admitted, not meeting Anne's eyes. "If the magic is separate from him and yet is still in his body, I'm worried that his body will treat it like a virus and attack it."

          "And if that happens...?"

          "Two things might happen. Either he'll become a ticking time bomb that will self-combust at any moment due to the constant pressure of his body attacking the magic, or it will act like a virus and will take over his functioning systems."

          "You're worried it could control him," Anne said quietly.

          "But we can't just do nothing," Hero told her, looking up. "His body is not made to be able to handle magic because he wasn't born with it, especially magic this powerful. If we just leave him, he'll die."

          "But you're thinking that he'll die either way."

          Hero sighed, running a hand through his hair. Anne watched him for a few moments.

          "So what are we going to do about it?" she asked him.

          Her husband looked up at her, smiling a little at her use of the word 'we'. "Usually I would ask his parents to make a decision but I have no idea who or where they are and I'm not going to spend a month looking around for them because Adam doesn't have that time. So I was thinking of asking his friends. Just because... well..."

          Anne smiled gently. There was a time when Hero wouldn't have cared whether someone lived or died, whether they were healthy or in pain. She had known him way back then and had seen his gradual change, and knew how much of a struggle he had gone through. But (although she would never say this aloud) she much prefered the way he was now. He was happier, less at war with himself, although it had come at a cost for both of them.

          "Come on," she said gently, walking forward and taking his hand. "Delaying it will just make everything worse."

          Herobrine stood up as she gently pulled on his arm. As his hand left Adam, the protective barrier he had put up fell and the pain returned in full force, making the man visibly flinch and his expression twist. Hero glanced back at him as the two left.

          "I've always hated that cell," Hero muttered quietly.

          Anne smiled a little. "He wasn't very nice, was he?"

          "He was horrible," Hero said, his tone a mixture of hate and humour. "I've still got the scars."

          "You don't scar."

          Hero grinned. "Mental scars then."