Retribution
Gajeel was often sorry that he had somehow tricked Levy McGarden into loving him.
Especially on those nights she slept naked between his sheets, curled up next to him with her wild blue hair unleashed across the pillow. Those nights when the white light of a streetlamp outside the window glared in at the scene through a gap in the curtains with condescending disapproval, illuminating those scars on Levy's slender body so that Gajeel could read and reread his mistakes on her manuscript skin. Some of them were invisible even to her, like that pale phantom surrounding her naval, but Gajeel could trace the outlines with his fingertips and see the crimson emblem as vividly as the day he drew it on her stomach with a sticky mixture of ink and her own blood.
Some nights she still had the dreams. Levy would always deny it, but Gajeel knew they were graphic depictions of their first encounter. Once he woke her and she tried to beat him away with her small, reluctant fists. They never talked about it—they weren't good at that, not when it came to Gajeel's days in Phantom Lord—but afterward he let her sleep through the nightmares. He knew it was selfish. Nothing more than a shake of her shoulder would release her from the terrors in her mind, but he couldn't bare for her to look at him with such little recognition, to watch fear fill in the whites of her eyes. Like a coward, he abandoned her to the monsters he had created rather than face them himself.
Back then he would have thought it ridiculous, but now Gajeel wished Levy had sought revenge along with the other two he had crucified on that tree. He remembered the time they followed him into an alley on his way home, those two scrawny figures anxious to reclaim the masculinity he had stripped from them, flanked by their tiny feminine motivation. Levy had endured more at Gajeel's hands than Jet and Droy combined, but she still pleaded for them to stop when they began to attack. At first, she was probably worried about their safety—after all, Gajeel had already proved he could easily overpower all three of them. But even when it became clear that Gajeel was not going to fight back, her condemnation rang through the alley like a bell. At one point, he heard her scream, "We're better than this!" For Levy, the idea of becoming like Gajeel was more terrifying than having the real thing work beside her. No doubt thoughts of violence had corrupted her daydreams, but Gajeel was baffled that she could withstand taking advantage of the opportunity to fulfill them. Until that moment, he had never passed up the opportunity for violence.
Gajeel marked that as the day things began to change. Before he realized his three victims were following him that evening, his only goal was to assimilate with the new guild. He knew he was lucky that Makarov had offered him an alternative to prison. It was in his best interest not to stir up trouble so early in his new career. Yet, rather than slip into the shadows when he heard the trio stalking him, Gajeel let Jet and Droy corner him in an alley. He could have easily avoided them forever, but they deserved justice. All they had tried to do the night he attacked was protect the girl they both loved. A girl whose value Gajeel had immediately sensed, a girl he had defeated, tormented, and humiliated beyond conceivable repair. He had never admitted it, but the pure sound of her voice punctuating every one of Jet and Droy's blows had almost sent him into a fury. Gajeel wanted her to punch him, to kick him, to spit in his face. He wanted her to hurt him, damn it, because at least that he could understand. He hated that she was too fucking righteous to succumb to her darker desires and cause him the pain he deserved.
No, Levy would not let his blood stain her virtuous soul. But she did, unwittingly, cause him unfathomable pain. By beating him, Jet and Droy had satiated their vengeance and allowed Gajeel to feel a little less morally inferior, but when confronting Levy he was still a worm. Even protecting her from Laxus wasn't enough to alleviate the crushing guilt he felt every time he saw her or heard her name. Gajeel knew it would drive him insane if he didn't do something.
So, he decided to help Levy.
He trained with her, he fought alongside her on the battlefield, he did everything he could to cultivate that iron strength he had witnessed firsthand the night he crucified her. Over what seemed like eons, he earned her trust. And one day, on the anniversary of that horrible night, he earned her clemency.
Gajeel was standing under the tree where it happened. The tree was massive now and dying from rot. There was talk in the town about cutting it down before any of the heavy branches could collapse and potentially injure someone. Gajeel would be relieved when they finally took an axe to the sick trunk. He hoped they would repurpose his sin by building something nice, like a library. He hoped they ground whatever they couldn't use for timber into paper pulp and printed hundreds and hundreds of books. He designated every inch of that tree to literature.
Levy's footsteps were soft on the grass. She stopped when she reached his side and looked up at the swollen marks where her limbs once hung almost lifelessly. Gajeel didn't say anything to her. He didn't know what to say. Every year he came here, but she never did.
"They're cutting it down," she told him.
Gajeel grunted.
"It's good," she continued, never taking her eyes off of the tree. "It's time, I think."
A breeze picked up from the woods, and the tree's leaves rustled in agreement. Levy shifted her bright, knowing gaze from the tree to Gajeel and smiled. He saw sadness there that would never disappear, but he also spotted the forgiveness for which he had worked so relentlessly.
Later, Gajeel was disappointed to learn that the tree was too rotted for any practical use. Most of it went up in smoke, the ashes spread over fields for fertilizer. He thought then that he finally earned his peace, now that the tree was gone.
But the next year, he went to the stump.
Though Gajeel thought Levy's forgiveness would ease the burden of atonement from his shoulders, the love that soon followed crushed him under its weight. He did everything he could to avoid it, to deny it, to push her far away, but his own tutelage backfired against him. She was patient and persistent. Levy, who had so long rejected her unsuitable suitors, was not going to take no for an answer now that she had finally fallen in love. She saw right through him, through all the feigned ignorance and rude behavior. Levy could see quite clearly that Gajeel loved her too, but she was blind to how twisted the whole thing was.
Gajeel's surrender should have been the end of it, the happy ending that concluded love stories. Yet no amount of happiness could let them escape the shadows they cast over each other. Gajeel quickly realized that loving Levy was the cruelest punishment he could ever endure, as he witnessed firsthand the lasting damage he caused her with every mistake he made. He could never figure out how to stop making mistakes.
When Gajeel wasn't making new mistakes, his old ones would resurface just when he thought he had buried the last of them. He tried to keep as much as he could from his friends, but he could never hide anything from her. Nosy, protective Levy always ended up in the fray. The white fabric of her soul soaked up every stain until it looked like one dark bruise.
That night was the worst of it. That night came back again and again like a tricky cancer, and it riddled them with holes every time. They were rotting from the inside out because of it, just like that tree. Nothing caused Gajeel more anger than those reminders that would appear from thin air. Sometimes all he would have to do is catch Levy in a certain light, at a certain angle, to bring the memory forward. A flashbulb of rage would usually wipe it out.
He knew Levy's reminders came to her in the thick fog of dreaming, and they would stick around, they would suffocate her. Once, when she woke up in a cold sweat, Gajeel asked her if she thought they were doing more harm to each other than good. He had long decided his answer to that question sometime between repentance and love.
"It doesn't matter," Levy said. "No one else understands."
Gajeel knew she was right. To leave her would be to amputate a limb doomed by gangrene without a tourniquet. Nevertheless, they were mostly happy without their happy ending. Levy had forgiven him, but by her presence would not let him forget.
And if forgetting meant losing her, Gajeel wasn't sure he wanted to.