[Chapter Size: 2500 Words.]
Third Person POV
Aretuza.
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...
Madara remained silent as Isabella recounted, in a shy and hesitant tone, her life in Aretuza. He listened to her without interrupting, carefully observing the girl, who kept casting glances in his direction, searching for any sign of displeasure or disappointment from him. Even so, he maintained a neutral expression, merely listening without interrupting her.
He could easily read her mind with his Sharingan, but he did not do that with friends and allies; it was somewhat disrespectful on his part.
When she finished speaking, silence took over the room, while Madara continued to stare at her with the same expression, which made the girl shrink a little. Then, he finally broke the silence.
"I imagined that Aretuza would be more accommodating with this kind of treatment," Madara commented at the end. He knew a little about Yennefer from having passed through there, but she had not been judged as harshly as Isabella was being, even though both shared the same physical condition by comparison.
Perhaps back then, it had been better. Triss was just a classmate and, naturally kind and gentle, extended her hand to Yennefer. Isabella had not been so lucky. Not even Tissaia had become a maternal figure to Isabella, as she had to Yennefer. After all, she considered the witch with violet eyes as her own daughter, just as Yennefer considered Tissaia her mother in the end.
"I am a disappointment, aren't I?" the girl murmured. Despite speaking much better than at the first meeting Madara and she had in Kaedwen, the fear and shyness remained the same. She was the same girl he had seen being judged by all the villagers of that city without being able to retort the attacks or defend herself, and later, terrified upon hearing her brother die to the werewolf, the same brother who had tried to kill her and knew she would be next in that werewolf's fangs in the forest. Until Madara appeared.
Madara stared at her. "Are you giving up, is that it?" he asked, raising an eyebrow, causing Isabella to panic.
"No, that's not it," she argued quickly. "I'm just scared. I'm not good at what I do, I don't have friends here, the teachers hate me and are disgusted by me, I'm useless..." she murmured, following the thought that she might be disappointing the only hand that had ever been extended to her in her miserable life.
"If you give up, then everything I did for you was useless," Madara said. Those words were as if a sword had been driven into Isabella's heart. Even so, he continued. "However, I don't care if you struggle, as long as you keep getting back up. Life is not easy, Isabella, and it never will be fair. We must use everything we have within our reach to achieve our goals. But if we fail, it will not be because of defeats themselves, but because of giving up or death itself. Only in that case can you stop getting back up. As long as you continue, I will not be disappointed in you. I hope you achieve what you chose to pursue here," he said.
She took a few steps back, her body trembling at those words.
'He gave me the chance to change my life. He gave me the chance to become a sorceress, like Triss, Yennefer, Lady Tissaia, and all the others at the academy. A chance to become useful. A chance to become beautiful, and not the monster I currently am. A chance to change my life and not return to that hole where I lived, or to change how people look at me as if I were some kind of walking disease.', she thought internally. Still trembling, she lifted her gaze back to Madara, while her eyes welled with tears.
"I don't want to give up," she declared, her voice shaky and tearful. "I won't give up, even if it isn't easy. I'm already used to this kind of treatment. Still, I promise that I will become what you expect me to be," she said, lowering her head as she began to cry.
"That is good." Madara's voice sounded above her, at the moment Isabella felt his arms touch her deformed back, pulling her closer, which surprised her as she felt her face press against his clothes.
"You don't feel disgust toward me?" she stammered, in shock.
"You are in a condition that can be reversed. And if I didn't do this, my wife would scold me a lot; she considers you a friend, you know...?" he said, with a small smile.
Isabella looked at him, trembling and dazed, before lowering her gaze and beginning to cry even more. Madara had important matters to discuss with her, but first he let her expel all of her bitterness before continuing. She stayed there, crying in his embrace for a while, until he pulled away. Isabella was flushed as she looked at him with hesitation, unsure of what to do.
He did not care about his clothes being slightly wet from Isabella's tears, observing her with his usual analytical and neutral gaze.
"Well, since I'm here, I will help you," he declared.
She stared at him, looking somewhat uncertain. "What do you mean?" She knew that Madara could not appear at the academy; that would be a major problem, considering he was a notorious figure throughout the continent.
"First, we will change your physical condition," Madara said, making Isabella freeze.
"Hm?! What?", she stammered, not knowing what he intended.
"I learned a few things since our last meeting in Kaer Morhen. I have enough skill to restore you to someone normal."
"You can?", she almost couldn't speak, unable to believe his words.
"Of course. But are you willing to do this tonight? I will put you to sleep so you won't feel the pain, but I will cut you open all night to manually restore your spine. After all, I am still not a specialist in regeneration. I will have to perform surgery on you, but healing you will be easy. We can use this room." Madara said
"I want it!" she exclaimed simply. "Please, if you can do this, do whatever you have to do!" Isabella practically begged, staring at Madara with a glimmer of hope more intense than she had ever had.
Madara observed her in silence at the sight of that. "Very well. Take off your robe and your other clothes. I will clear the room," Madara asked, and she did not hesitate.
The first thing Madara did was create a few wood clones, take some scrolls, and begin storing all the furniture in that room, leaving the place completely empty. Isabella's few belongings disappeared quickly. Then, he used Wood Release, tossing a seed onto the floor. From it, without breaking the flooring, he began to create a surgical gurney and wooden tables.
Isabella stood to the side, covering her small breasts and trying to hide her deformed body in absolute shame. Madara, however, did not care and did not even cast a glance at her. He simply finished preparing the room and turned to the girl, looking directly into her eyes.
"You must lie down," he said.
There was a space for her to place her head with her back facing upward, since her back needed to be exposed for Madara to work. Isabella obeyed, settling herself with great nervousness.
Even so, she trusted Madara's words. If he could heal her, she would not hesitate to do anything he asked.
"I will begin applying some techniques. It will be a long night, and I will have to reform all of your bones. Do you have any idea how agonizing that can be, even with anesthesia?" he said, despite intending to spare her the pain; he only wanted to see how determined she was.
"Please, do it," she replied without hesitation, and Madara felt satisfied.
"You are lucky that I have a few tricks. I want you to look at me first," he said. When Isabella raised her head and looked at him with the red eyes of the three-tomoe Sharingan, in the next moment she was placed under a genjutsu. At least that way he would spare her the pain of tampering with her bones and nerves, which not even anesthetics could fully spare her from.
After that, he commanded the five clones he had created earlier, who positioned themselves around the girl's gurney, beginning to organize all the surgical tools, as if that room were a true medical ward.
One of the clones left the room to inform Tissaia of what he was about to do. He had not planned to carry this out on his first night in Aretuza, intending instead to spend time in the library, but due to what he had seen, he decided it would be better to give attention to Isabella, his protégée, and observe how she would fare in the coming days.
With everything ready, Madara, the original, picked up a scalpel and began to cut along the contour of her back. The flesh split open, and blood gushed from the incision.
It would be an operation that would leave the entire gurney soaked in blood. Even so, he had his Sharingan, allowing him to verify every part he worked on. Even with blood gushing everywhere, Madara also kept a clone solely to replace the blood she lost, accelerating the girl's own body production with healing chakra, not letting her die, using Wood Release to heal her.
Tissaia entered the room moments later, looking quite urgent upon learning what Madara was doing to Isabella. When she stepped inside, she stared in shock at the blood-covered bed, while several of Madara's clones moved around it, handing tools to the original who was operating, cleaning the excess blood, removing flesh and continuing to open the girl's back, while others used a green energy in the palms of their hands over the girl.
Curiosity took hold of Tissaia, and she stepped forward and began asking several questions, her expression completely perplexed. Certainly, she was hungry for knowledge, and seeing someone operating, attempting to change the condition of a girl deformed by the Chaos energy uncontained within her body, was something that captured her attention.
Many sorceresses with similar conditions, over the decades she had been alive, had met different fates. Some died, others survived.
Yennefer had had to go through a painful process. Others changed as Chaos was established within their bodies, restoring something close to normal. However, a minority ended up not changing, becoming eternally hunchbacked. These, in the end, could not endure the condition and took their own lives, because for a woman — even a sorceress — beauty was a weapon. Their condition only made them resemble witches whom no one wanted to approach. Sorceresses need connection, since they have their own ambitions by nature.
Meanwhile, Madara explained the process to Tissaia. He was trying to reach her bone while removing the flesh, tossing the deformed parts into a bucket he had placed to discard later, while continuing to regenerate the lost blood. After that, he would break her skeletal and nervous systems to rebuild them in a healthy way.
Tissaia could not leave after that and remained watching Madara's operation, fascinated, throughout the entire night. For the first time, she did not see only a boy who was a human weapon capable of destroying entire kingdoms, but someone who could do more than that.
His knowledge of human anatomy surprised even Tissaia. It left her fascinated. She felt as if she had returned to the days when she was just a young woman in search of magic, enthusiastic about asking her mentors questions, astonished by the knowledge Madara possessed in that field, greater even than her own.
It was about eight hours of surgery. As he had said, upon reaching the skeletal and nervous systems, he began to remove them, breaking the bones, while the girl remained under a genjutsu, her head resting in the opening of the gurney, spared from the pain her body would have been screaming in that moment.
Madara took so long because he needed to be extremely meticulous with that system. Her spinal column had been completely altered and, little by little, her body began to straighten and grow longer.
"Well, we managed to finish here. Now we will restore the flesh," Madara said as soon as he finished that stage, Isabella's back remaining completely open, with clones preserving the area, preventing any infection or contamination.
And so he began the reconstitution of the flesh, quickly closing everything without needing needles or any other instrument or magical spell. He simply used Wood Release chakra, and the flesh was reconstructed and regenerated little by little, until it was perfectly intact.
"You changed her structure, but what will you do about the rest of her deformed body?" Tissaia asked, curious. The spinal column had already been restored; the girl now looked upright, but her legs, hands, and face still remained deformed.
"Now that the spine, which was the part I needed to handle with the greatest precision, is restored, I only need to use healing chakra to regenerate the other parts," Madara replied calmly, bathing Isabella's body with green chakra, using more force than at any other moment, though this was nothing for the current Madara.
Tissaia watched curiously as she heard the sound of bones breaking. She could see Isabella's hands contort before beginning to be healed. Even a leg was broken under that energy and, shortly after, restored. Her face also began to adjust.
When the operation ended, Madara looked at Tissaia. "Can you clean the blood off her and the floor with magic?" he asked.
She nodded, casting a spell that cleaned all the blood from Isabella's body, as well as the floor of the room.
Madara then summoned Isabella's bed again, picked the girl up in his arms, placed her on the mattress, and covered her with a blanket he himself took from her belongings, since she had no blankets, which was strange.
After that, Madara made the gurney and everything he had created for the surgery shrink back into the form of a seed and began restoring the entire room, as if nothing had happened.
In the end, Madara turned to Tissaia.
"We need to talk. I don't like the treatment Aretuza is giving my protégée. I paid for this," Madara said in a serious tone. He did not need to hide that it was Yennefer who sponsored Isabella, and he would charge them as if it were for a little girl.
Tissaia nodded at those words as they left the room, even in the middle of the night.
Isabella remained sleeping peacefully in her bed at that moment. She felt no side effects, nor pain, thanks to Madara's healing, resting in peace, as if she had never gone through that, or rather, as if her body had never been deformed since she was five years old.
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