A/N- I know that I should probably be working on ANY of my chapter stories… but I just really wanted to work on this… so, here we go!
This OC, along with another mentioned OC, were created by me for Akira Amber's story Midnight Moon. But one day I was sitting around thinking about the characters I had created (mostly Reyna), and wondering, "But what is it truly like inside her head?"
So I asked for Akira's permission – who so graciously granted it – to write this story. And now I feel like I know Reyna. And I like that feeling.
This is my first real attempt not only to live inside a character's head, but to truly let them speak through me. But this is Reyna, and this is who she is. This is also my very first attempt at first person.
I know that the writing is very… circle-y for lack of a better word. But Reyna's thoughts travel around in circles, and she's not very good at keeping her thoughts on the track she originally assigned them to. But, here you go!
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the fic!
Disclaimer- I don't own Fairy Tail. I'm pretty sure that I own Reyna jointly with Akira, since I came up with the idea for her fic… But anyway.
I barely remember my mother. I know that I look nothing like her. Whenever I think of her, there is this… image, but it's not really an image. Like when someone laughs deep in their chest. You can't really hear it. It's more like you feel the vibrations made by their laughter, you know?
But the image… it's this riot of colors surrounded by this… really dull gray. But she was all dark colors, except for her skin, which was a smear of ivory in a world of browns and blacks.
I don't really like thinking about her, or really talking about her. Because overlaying the image is the sense of… disappointment? No, I guess that's not quite right… in order for her to be disappointed in me, she would have had to care at some point. Indifference? That's not quite right, either. Because the feeling is slightly too angry for that. Resentment?
Yes. That's the word. Resentment. She resented me.
I've never really been sure, because we've never really… talked. I mean, sure, we've had conversations, but we've never really… talked.
But I think it's because I took her youth from her. She was only fifteen when she had me. But you see, I've never really understood why she resented me. I mean, did I make her have sex with my father? No. I wasn't even alive. I was just the result of her bad choices.
"…just the result of my bad choices."
You know, that's what she called me… whenever she got angry. Never in my life did she tell me she loved me. The closest she ever got was when she looked at me when she came to my grandparents' house, and I tried to show her the pot that I had made with my grandmother, and she said, "Oh? That's great. Don't talk to me."
Huh. That's not really very close, is it? Maybe that's why I'm not very good with feelings. I don't really understand them. Everybody says that love is what you're mother feels for you, but my mother never loved me.
In fact, I barely knew her. She was never around. The reason I barely remember her is because she left me with my grandparents as soon as she could. And when I say 'as soon as she could', I don't mean as soon as it was safe for me to be without my mother, I mean as soon as she could travel to my grandparents' home. My grandfather said that I was only two months old when she left.
The last time I talked to her, I asked her why. And do you know what she said?
"I left that early because I couldn't wait to get rid of you."
And I wondered… how would she have felt if I had died? When I asked her… I wished I hadn't…
"I wouldn't have cared."
Sometimes, I wonder how my life would have been different if she had cared. And then I laugh, because there was nothing I could do to make her care for me except make my father love her. But how do I do that? I've never met him. In fact, the only person who met my father was my mother. I don't even know what he looked like.
Well, I suppose I do. If I look nothing like my mother, I guess I have to look like my father.
Me and my mother… we're opposites. She's short. I'm tall. She's curvy; I'm 'willowy' as my grandmother likes to put it. Her hair is curly, mine is straight. She always has this pinched look on her face, like she really needs to fart, and everybody always said that my face is structured 'like an angel'.
What the fuck does that even mean, by the way? Structured like an angel? Are you saying my face looks innocent? Sweet? Naïve? Pure? Because I'm none of those things. You can't be, living the life I lived.
But back to my mother.
Her skin is pale, pale as starlight, pale as the moon. In my opinion, it's the most beautiful thing about her. That silky soft skin, that makes her look like a forest sprite right out of a fairy tale – you know… she never read those to me… I read them to myself – and when the moonlight shone on her… holy shit, did she shine. When I was a little kid, I thought she was one of the Moon Priestesses my grandmother told me about.
Me, I've always had skin 'like burnished gold' as my grandmother said, or 'like a pale copper' like my grandfather liked to say. Me, I like to say that my skin looks like that tan you get after you get a sunburn. You know the one I'm talking about? It's that really strange tan. You're really not sure what to call it.
My mother had these dark, dark brown eyes, almost black, really. And my eyes were this strange, mossy green. Like… undiluted green. Green in its purest form can't compare to how green my eyes are.
My mother's hair was this… mass of blue black curls that always looked perfectly wind blown. My hair is straight as a stick, and it's ridiculously pale. Almost as pale as my mother's skin… but not quite.
And when I say straight, I mean straight. Like 'if I want my hair to have volume, I better not brush out the tangles' straight. It always really… annoyed me.
But even if my mother never loved me, I think… I think that deep down… I'm pretty sure I love her… maybe. But I'll never really know. I guess if I knew what love is, I would be able to tell if I love my mother. But then again, in order for me to know what love is, my mother would have had to love me, and if she loved me, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I've always known that my mother was beautiful. So I've always associated beauty with being a bad person. But a lot of questions arise with that… child-like mentality.
If my mother and I are opposites, does that mean I'm ugly?
Some people say that I'm beautiful. Does that mean I'm a bad person?
So even though I know that there are holes in my logic, every time I'm forced to trust someone beautiful, my skin crawls, and I just want to run and hide.
Growing up, I just wanted my mother's attention. I just wanted my mother to look at me just one time and… well, I didn't want her to say that she was proud of me, or that she loved me. That was too high a goal for me.
I just wanted her to look at me without that… trace of disgust and shame in her eyes. Why was I so disgusting to her? Was there something wrong with me?
Even though my mother ruined any chance I had of ever being normal from the very moment I was born, I truly believe that I could have been close if I had been allowed to stay with my grandparents all of the time.
But the courts wouldn't allow it. They said that my grandparents were 'unfit as permanent guardians'. To this day, I'm not really sure why.
I got shuffled around a lot. For a while, I would live with a relative, and I would try to make friends. But after about six months… they would get sick of me, or something. They just… decided that they couldn't deal with me anymore, and they would send me to my grandparents house until the court found some other unsuspecting relative to send me to, like a bad present.
And for a long time, I was – while not okay with this – able to deal with it. They didn't want me in their lives? Fine, whatever. I didn't need them, either. I'm not the one that said we should live together. And for a long time, wherever I went, I made friends. Other kids just liked me. It was probably because I was willing to change to become whatever kind of friend they wanted.
If I couldn't get my mother to love me, I would try to get other kids to love me. Maybe they could fill the empty place that I assumed was where my heart was supposed to be.
That was my mentality. For a while, it worked, although the fledgling self inside of me was drowning in all the fake me's I showed people. But people loved me.
I grew up, though. And as kids grow up, they stop trusting – and loving – outsiders.
I was about eight when I stopped trying. I stopped trying to make friends; I stopped trying to do well in school. I stopped trying to make my guardians like me. I stopped trying to stay in one place.
I stopped trying to earn my mother's love.
I guess I grew up fast. I mean, by the time I was ten, I was already in my teenage rebellion stage. I started dressing differently. I wore tank tops and leggings all the time, even though my mother yelled at me on the very few occasions that she saw me, because she wanted me to wear dresses. I didn't wear 'girly shoes'. I wore boxing shoes.
For the next two years, my mother paid more attention to me then she had for the entirety of my previous life. Sure, all of our communication was arguments, and they were about once a year, but she looked at me. She talked to me. For me, it was like getting all of the things I thought I wanted.
But it wasn't. It was nothing like I thought it would be. But maybe that's because she wasn't looking at me because she wanted to, she was looking at me so that she could re-sculpt me in her own image. But for her, I wasn't willing to bend.
It was just before my twelfth birthday when my magic finally arrived. Unlike some people's magic, mine didn't explode out of me into a massive tangle of blood and tears. Then again, my magic has never been like that.
I just woke up one night, and there was this… reservoir that I had never felt before. I wasn't scared of it though, because where it was… located, I guess, in my brain I had always known was a locked door. Right there, where the reservoir was, I had never been allowed to go before. But now… the door was open. And the choice was mine. Did I want to use it? Or did I want to let it die?
Even then, I was too attached to my magic. I know that my magic isn't a person, and it doesn't have feelings. But I felt like it was the first thing in my life that had never, ever wished I was gone. Because I suspected that my grandparents occasionally wished I hadn't been dropped on their doorstep.
On my twelfth birthday, I got into an argument with my grandparents. I had told them about my magic, and that I wanted to leave, find a guild, find somewhere that I truly belonged.
They didn't want me to go.
Our argument was long. So, so long. It was the longest three days of my life.
I knew, on the third day, that I needed to leave. That it was time for me to go. I needed to find out who 'me' was. All I knew was that she used magic, even if I didn't know what kind.
I also knew that if I didn't leave soon, I never would. I would listen to what my grandparents were saying, that it was too dangerous for a twelve year old girl, that I couldn't go alone, that I didn't even have a plan, that winter would be there soon.
But I didn't care about any of those things at that point. At that point, I felt like I was starting to suffocate. I was slowly dying on the inside, not sure who I was.
I snuck out in the middle of the night, like a thief or a murderer.
In the town I chose – I still don't know its name, you know… how strange… – the most striking thing about me was my eyes. It was common there to have tan skin and pale hair. And since – of course – my grandparents had told the police that I had run away, I started wearing a veil. But just a veil was too obvious.
Those little hats, though – you know, the tiny ones you wear at a 'jaunty' angle – were very popular there. Everybody was wearing one. And if I added a veil to mine? I was just being 'fashionable'. As if I cared what the fashion was.
Since I've always been thin, a lot of the local… deviants, I guess, decided that they could 'take me'. But I've got natural instincts for fighting. I may not like it, but I'm good at hand to hand combat.
But since I didn't like fighting, I looked at all the 'scariest' kids in town, and I found the trend.
Every single one of those kids was a boy. And every single one wore a leather jacket and fingerless gloves.
As a little homeless kid that barely earned enough money to eat, I didn't have money to splurge on things to make me look scarier.
So I decided on which 'scary' kid was the weakest, and I took his from him.
What I didn't know was that all the 'scary' kids were friends. And this really pissed them off.
I took on the scary kids, one by one, until I was the scariest kid in town. All the other town deviants listened to me. They were scared of me.
It didn't fill the hole, though. And for almost a year, I thought nothing would.
That was when he came, though. Lorcan Jeagar.
He was five years older then me, eighteen to my thirteen. He took one look at me, though, and it was like… he saw me. For the very first time in my life, I felt like someone was looking at me, the me way deep down inside, not just the shell that I live in.
He had skin was darkened by the sun to a warm brown. His hair was almost the same shade of brown as his skin, with faintly lighter parts, bleached by the sun. His hair was shaggy – he needed a haircut badly – and he had stubble growing on his face – although it never seemed to get any longer. His clothes were camouflage in shades of brown close to his hair and skin so that he could hide in the wilderness. The only thing that saved him from being monochrome was his eyes. They were blue. Pure, unadulterated blue. The purest blue there ever was. His eyes were like mine, except a different color.
He was a member of the guild Midnight Moon. For the next three weeks, he stayed in town, and he would talk to me. To this day, he won't tell me why.
Well… mostly, I talked. I told him everything. I told him that I didn't know what love was, and that my mother never loved me. I told him my whole life story.
And he… accepted me? No, that's not right. Liked me? That's not right, either. I mean, they're both right, but they're not the word I'm looking for. Why am I so bad with words? Sympathized with me? Ah, there it is. Sympathized.
He gave me some pointers on understanding my magic, and on how to use it once I knew what it was. He was the very first person in my life who found me worthwhile. Including my grandparents. Because while I don't doubt that they love me, I do doubt that.
I wanted to always be worthwhile to him. So when he had finally finished whatever he was in town doing, I left town, too. I went off as a freelance wizard, hoping to make my name, so that he could hear it with pride, knowing that he had made me what I was.
And after two years, when I thought I was strong enough, I traveled to Midnight Moon, hoping to see him, but he was gone on a quest, and he would be for a while. The Master let me join, and I accepted gladly. I mean, if I was there, I was more likely to see him, right?
I went to Midnight Moon looking for Lorcan. But I found what I originally left home for. I left home looking for somewhere that I could look around at all the people there and say, "These people are my nakama."
And here at Midnight Moon, I can say that.
It's been nearly five years, and I still don't know what I feel about Lorcan, though. Do I love him? I don't really know. I know that he's far easier to stand then anyone else in the guild, and I don't recall ever wanting to use my Silence curse on him – unlike literally every other guild member, including the Master.
But do I love him?
I don't know.
Like I've said before, I don't know what love is. Maybe if my mother loved me, I would know whether I love Lorcan. But – as I've said before – if my mother loved me, I would have loved her, and we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we?
But you know what I haven't said? This entire time, all I've talked about is how much my childhood screwed me up. But me – the me I've grown up to be – screwed up, angry, twisted, confused, scared, little me, who may or may not be in love with Lorcan Jeagar… if my mother had loved me, this isn't the me I would have become. I would still be Reyna Theron, but I don't think I would be this Reyna Theron.
And do I like this Reyna Theron? Yes. Yes, I do.
Why do I like this Reyna Theron? Because I think that maybe – just maybe – Lorcan loves her.
And while I may not know for sure what love is… I know that that idea makes me very, very happy.
So do I love Lorcan Jeagar? I think that the answer to that is… yes.
And maybe… just maybe… one day, I'll tell him.