Three of a Kind
By:
Mystwalker
A/N: Took a break from Unconditional to write this one-shot, because I needed to toss this idea out there. Hope you like it!
Note on Pairings: This fic has none. However, I personally support Gajeel/Levy and Natsu/Lucy, so if small hints of those come up in this fic and you don't support them, feel free to look past them. The storm scene is a tribute to Stormdancer, which was a really nice fic to read and inspired me to write this.
Disclaimer: I do not and will never own Fairy Tail.
XxXxX
It was a dreary day. One of those days where the clouds hung low in the sky, and he still had to double check to make sure that Juvia wasn't walking down the street behind him, even though it had been years since the curse or spell or whatever it was on her had been lifted. Gajeel sat in the alcove by the window, his booted foot resting flat on the cushions and his arm slung casually over his knee. Levy would have a fit over the damn cushions, he thought with a small snort as he glared at the fluffy dark blue things beneath his feet.
As if they couldn't just get more.
The sound of sandaled feet on wood made him look up, although he knew the Salamander was coming down the hallway long before that. The smell of smoke clung around him so thickly that Gajeel was surprised nobody had ever noticed it before. Although today it was different. There was salt on the other Dragon Slayer's vest, and a faint scent that reminded him of the smell of cold air.
His hand curled into a fist. The Salamander turned into the living room, his own eyes narrowed and a scowl on his face.
"The kid?" asked Gajeel, gruffly.
"Sleeping," said Natsu. "I put her in your bed. Hope Levy doesn't have a freak out."
"Feh. She'd probably write 'milk and cookies' or something stupid like that and watch some dumb flick with her where no one gets killed and everyone cries." He swung his leg off the cushion, bringing his foot down on the floor with a loud thud.
"Stay with her."
"Going out?" asked Natsu as Gajeel passed him.
"Yeah."
He caught Natsu's glare as he made his way out the door, and nodded once, understanding the silent message. The Salamander didn't want to leave it to Gajeel, but neither was he going to leave her alone. The look in his eye was pretty much universally understood at Fairy Tail.
"Give him hell from me."
Like he needed to be told twice. But it would be kinda hard getting even for the both of them. It wasn't like Gajeel could kill someone twice.
She could, if she had the guts to do it. She could hurt someone to the brink of death and bring them back over and over again. He felt a small shiver run up his spine, not for the first time, at the thought of how things might have turned out if their roles had been reversed. If he had been adopted by Grandine.
Damn it…he thought to himself as he slammed the door behind him and walked down the street. What the hell happened to me?
He hadn't really said much to her when she first showed up—barely exchanged two words with her. He had been vaguely interested finding out that she was a Dragon Slayer, but he had looked over her once and had seen a scrawny, insecure twelve-year-old kid, all hair and eyes and limbs that were way too long for her body, and he had dismissed her. What did it matter if she was some dragon's brat just like him?
She annoyed him too. They both did. Her and the Salamander, sitting around and talking about finding Igneel and Grandine and this and that, like those bastards really could be found that easily. Digging up false leads, getting into trouble, running around Fiore like lunatics talking 'dragon' this and 'dragon' that while Charle despaired about her not growing into a 'proper lady', whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. It wouldn't have been so bad if they didn't drag him into it whenever they got the chance, always nagging him about finding Metalicana.
Tch. As if.
But he found himself following them. Heading out to the mountains when he heard that dark guilds were hanging around there, blending into crowded cities, hiding behind corners like Juvia on one of her creeper days. He told himself that it was just to make sure the flame-brain didn't get the kid killed, since he could barely be trusted to take care of himself, let alone a freaking preteen. There was no way he was curious. No way any part of him, no matter how tiny, still hoped that Metalicana would come back and growl at him for running off when he had just gone to take a nap or whatever.
Like that would ever happen.
He remembered the conversation they had had on her thirteenth birthday, if he could even call it that. She had slipped off to his part of the guild while Natsu was in the process of burning the top layer of her birthday cake off trying to light the candles. He hadn't even noticed her standing there until she leaned against his table. The kid had a more subtle scent than most people. It was hard to pick it up in a crowded room. While Natsu smelled like stereotypical fire and brimstone, she always smelled the way the air smelled after a summer rain.
"Everyone's really excited, ne?" she had said, her hands clasped behind her back as she watched Titania slam the Salamander into the wall for destroying the cake.
"Whatever," he remembered himself saying. Then, grudgingly. "Happy birthday."
"It's not really my birthday," she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. "But I don't know when mine is."
He looked up, raising an eyebrow.
"Ano…Grandine didn't know. But she said I was born in the spring, because I was about half a year old when she found me in the winter. So I used to use the first day of spring to count my age. But Natsu-san said I could use the day I joined Fairy Tail, since that's in the spring…and that's what he did."
He grunted in reply, taking a screw from the pile of scrap metal in front of him and tossing it into his mouth.
"When's your birthday, Gajeel-san?" she asked.
He shrugged through a mouthful of metal. "No clue. That damn dragon bastard didn't know either."
"Sou ka…" she said. She looked at him, smiling brightly. All he remembered from that day was that smile, and vaguely, that she had grown a little bit taller but was still pretty scrawny.
"…And when did you join Fairy Tail?"
Against his better judgment, he told her. And when that day rolled around, he came up to the bar to find a small wrapped box on it. It was heavy, and he opened it to find a solid block of iron, with a note on it.
"Happy birthday."
He had called her an idiot for that. But he had eaten the iron anyway.
The day he stopped seeing her as some random kid came a few months later, when a storm blew into town. Everybody was told to stay inside, including Fairy Tail's famous mages. Which, unfortunately, had him sitting between Thing 1 and Thing 2, Levy's little fan club. The two of them hadn't been too happy about the fact that Levy had come to sit at his table, so the next thing he knew, he had one on either side of him, glaring at him.
That was when Charle started freaking out that she wasn't in the building.
In the confusion, he noticed the back door swinging open in the wind, so he left, walking out of it and into the storm. The wind and rain was pretty bad, but he had been out in worse, so it didn't really bother him. It was the lightning he remembered to watch out for. Storms were not the best weather to be out in when you happened to be a living lightning rod.
Then he saw her.
In the sky above the guild spinning around like a little kid splashing in a puddle, her body moving with an almost feral delight as she moved through the gales like they were nothing more than summer breezes. In that moment, he hadn't seen a scrawny thirteen-year-old kid. The image he had seen was so real to him that for a moment, he thought he saw it imprinted in the sky behind her, light glinting off blue scales and claws and wings outstretched.
He didn't see a kid.
He saw a dragon.
And when he went back to the guild empty-handed, he ignored all questions as to why he was soaked to the skin.
His downfall, though, was the day that Levy asked him for a favor. She was supposed to take the kid out on a mission, but something came up, some famous author showing up in Hargeon or whatever. Could he go with her instead? She had been alright with that, but when Natsu found out he was going to be dragging her halfway across the country (how the Salamander had phrased it, even though to this day he still thought it was the other way around), he had insisted on coming along. So there were the three of them walking into this small town in the middle of nowhere—the big scary guy, the hot-headed idiot, and the sweet little girl. Three people with absolutely nothing in common.
Except everything.
The mission was a freaking baby mission. Some kid's little sister had gone missing, and he needed wizards to find her. The three of them went out into the mountains, found the kidnappers, kicked their butts (with even her getting a few hits in). She had healed the missing brats and brought them back down into the city, where their parents were waiting. She stood there and watched as the kids and their families were reunited, and the client led his little sister away. Her hands were at her sides, her eyes fixed on them and a serious expression on her face.
It was a while until she spoke.
"It must be nice to have siblings…" she said.
"Keh," he remembered saying. "Looks like a pain in the ass."
"Well…I don't know," she said. "I mean…it's kind of like the three of us are siblings, don't you think?"
"What?" asked Gajeel and the Salamander at the same time. They pointed at each other. "There's no way I'm related to him!"
She giggled. "But our parents are all dragons, right? So what does that make other Dragon Slayers?"
"...Sometimes I think of you two as my brothers, you know?"
That stopped their argument cold, both of them looking up at her. The Salamander's hand was around Gajeel's neck, and Gajeel was holding him up by his vest. They paused for a moment.
"Whatever," said Gajeel as they walked away. "So long as I'm the older brother."
"Are you crazy?" asked Natsu. "I'm the big brother!"
"I'm older than you, flame-brain. So, shut up, little brother."
"No, YOU shut up, little brother."
It was an act they put on for her, because neither of them would ever call the other person a brother to their face. And she laughed.
"Natsu-nii. Gajeel-nii."
"Eh?" asked the two of them, looking up at her.
"Nothing," she said. "Just trying it out."
She called him that from that day on. After a while, he didn't even bother correcting her. He just let her call him whatever she wanted. If other people thought she was his little sister, that wasn't really his problem.
She didn't stay little for long, though.
Didn't stay scrawny either.
The years wore on, and she grew taller and got older, her body gradually growing into the shape her Edolas copy had been in, and it wasn't long until people started to take notice of the Sky Maiden. Fourteen, fifteen…
Sixteen when she started seeing him. And Gajeel would be the first to say it, no matter how cliché it sounded.
He never liked that boy.
He remembered the first time he had come to the guild hall to pick her up. He and the Salamander had both stood up at the same time from opposite ends of the room, sending him death glares that would have made any sane person run for the hills. But she had stood up as well, turning her head and giving them a slightly irritated look that practically begged them not to ruin this for her. So they had settled for growling at him and baring their Dragon Slayer fangs instead of punting him through a wall like Gajeel knew was going through Natsu's mind too.
After she left, Mirajane had teased them about having big brother complexes. Gajeel had told her, with all the subtlety of a brick, to shove it.
That was four months ago. But today, when she had turned up at the guild hall with tears streaming down her cheeks because she had caught him cheating on her, he and Natsu had almost destroyed the guild hall then and there, and screw whatever Mirajane had to say about it.
When she broke down though, they stopped. And when the both of them sensed the sudden wave of interest in the guild and started noticing the people nearest her start to run up to her and comfort her, they stood up, picked her up, and left, growling at the people to leave her alone.
The guild meant well, but the kid didn't need to be crowded.
And now here he was, walking down the streets looking for blood while the Salamander stood in his house watching over the kid in his bed. If someone had told him while he was in Phantom that he would one day be walking around town sniffing out some punk so he could teach him not to mess with a sixteen-year-old girl, he would have thrown them through a wall.
A stone wall.
That overlooked a cliff.
But that was then. They were rubbing off on him, he realized. Fairy Tail, with all their nakama nonsense. The kid, with all her talk about family. Natsu, with all of his talk about finding the dragons. They were changing him slowly.
It was only when he finally found the punk, sulking against the wall of some stupid shop downtown, only when he saw the blood on the kid's shirt, and the three identical gashes down his cheek that looked like claw marks, as if he had been slapped by a tiger, that Gajeel realized something else.
The rubbing off went in both directions.
And the kid—no, Wendy—had taught him a valuable life lesson, that he should have been happy he had survived to learn.
You don't fuck with a Dragon Slayer.
He decided that the punk had been punished enough, and didn't need Gajeel's vengeance on top of that.
But, unfortunately for the little piece of crap, he had promised Natsu…
And what kind of big brothers would they be if they just walked away?
