notes: For chokecherries, who never deserved this.
The yin to my yang; the chuckle to my chortle; the fluff to my angst; the writer of a zombie!au far superior to this traumatic piece of shit.
*Please be aware of potentially triggering material. Warnings in the end notes.
too
far
gone
{ I }
.
.
Jellal
.
.
The only thing that can top a bad nightmare is a worse one. He didn't realise that until after the world went to shit, but the irony isn't lost on him.
You know when you wake up from a dream that you can't quite remember? It haunts you through the day, and you can deny it or try to ignore it — hell, it's not even too hard to forget about, but there is no doubt that the remnants of it feel like memories muddled with reality. And those semi-elusive flashbacks don't stop nagging at you, floating ahead of you just out of reach, until it gets to a point where you give up trying to catch smoke with your fingers. You give up and wait for the day to end, if only so you can sleep again and satisfy your curiosity. Re-visit the nightmare, so to speak. Get closure.
That's his approach to this here situation. It's fine, see; he'll fall asleep again soon anyway — or close enough — so it's not worth making a fuss over.
But if he could go back in time, and somehow tell himself a year ago that the hell his life was back then was as good as it was gonna get for him, right now, he'd probably be six feet under with a bullet in his rotting skull. But that's all just beggar's talk. The status quo changed, he went with it and adapted, and that's just how it is. That's how it's always been. Prison taught him that well enough.
Rolling a sharp-edged rock under the sole of his shoe, Jellal squints up at the skyline. "It's surreal that I'd prefer death row to this. Kind of like a dream, looking back."
"I've had better."
Meredy makes a rude noise from somewhere behind. "Yeah, Ultear. We know. We do share a room with you every night." He hears the gravel shift, followed by a muffled thud. "Ow! Did you just— did you just throw a pebble at me? Ultear! Hey, I'm talking to y— Ow, dammit." When he turns around, her scowl is laughably pronounced as she brushes dirt off her khaki jacket. "Could you not? Please? It's a nightmare trying to keep stuff clean."
Ultear mutters a derisive comment under her breath that Jellal didn't really need to hear, and stomps past him to scan the wreckage of cars scattered across the road.
.
.
Lucy
.
.
"Stay with me! Hey, hey, no, don't close your eyes— Look at me, keep your eyes on me!"
She blinks blearily. A shadow is blocking the glaring fluorescent light from up above. Her shoulder burns, and her shirt is sticky with blood. "M-My ma," she tries to say. "I need to save—" She wills strength into her heavy limbs, pushing her body up as far as it will go. Just the barest of movements makes her shoulder scream and leaves her head echoing with the pain.
"I know, but you're in no position to be saving anybody and you're gonna bleed out. You need to stay here." She's pushed down with what feels like the strength of ten men. "Just stay down, you gotta rest. We just need to find a way out of—" He cuts off with a curse. When he moves away from her, she's blinded by the light so suddenly that it leaves her reeling.
Fierce snarling deafens her, but she still hears his pants and gasps as he wrestles with the dead.
Lucy moves to get up, and grits her teeth against the scream that threatens to rip itself out of her throat. Tears streak her cheeks. She can't move her right arm at all, it's not responding, it's like it's not even there — but she doesn't let herself focus on that for too long, swallowing the budding panic, and forces herself into a sitting position.
It's now that Lucy realises she's gasping, shivering, struggling for strength. "Ma!" she screams, looking around wildly. She can't see her, she doesn't know where she's gone— "Ma!" She shakily scrambles to her feet. "Ma, where are you? Ma!"
But Lucy's voice is lost in the hell unfolding around her.
It was never meant to be like this — the prison was supposed to be safe, they weren't supposed to be able to get in here. The disarray around her, the stench of blood weighing down the air, the shrieks and shouts, the blinking lights, the flurry of feet and flesh and weapons — it feels like some freakish nightmare, something she should be able to wait out, a hell that should end with the morning's rising sun. Because this can't really be happening. This is home, this is safety, because they can't have gotten in here—
A chilling scream from her right breaks her thought process. When she looks, all she can see of the man is his writhing lower body as he's devoured by two biters. She gasps and her knees buckle beneath her. All she can do is stare as he shrieks and struggles, his legs kicking wildly before one of the biters grabs one and tears into his thigh. Its eyes are sunken into its skull, glazed with a milky film; skin like paper, blood like mud oozing sluggishly from a gaping hole in it's neck. The man screams like an animal as it rears back, ripping his flesh away as it does — Lucy sees arteries spurt and the wet gleam of exposed muscle tissue as the leg thrashes weakly.
The biter looks up and catches her eyes. Bloodied lips curl back as a guttural sound gurgles out of its mouth.
She whimpers, frozen to the spot. She can't look away, as if her eyes are glued to the horror of what she's seeing. It — she, Lucy realises — has started to move towards her, clambering clumsy over the leg of the victim. The man's screams have been replaced with high-pitched keening like some desperate whine of dying animal; he's stopped thrashing, but his fingers spasm, grabbing at nothing as the other biter twists its fingers in the mess of his gaping stomach.
"Oh, God." Lucy scrambles back on her hands and feet, yelping in pain as the movement jars her right arm. "No, no, no, please—" She sobs in terror as the biter advances. The soles of her boots slip on the blood-slick floor.
A hand, stiff and bloodless and curled like a claw, reaches for her as the biter looms over her, the light source once again blocked from her gaze. Rotting teeth gnash as blood spits from its mouth.
Lucy screams.
.
.
Natsu
.
.
Now that they're up here, Natsu can see that they made the right decision climbing to higher ground. It's the perfect vantage point — guarded, protected, with one hell of a view. It's even better than he was expecting, if he's honest with himself. Sure, he was hoping they would have complete view of the main street below, perhaps a decent scope across the roofs of shorter skyscrapers. But in reality, he has clear sights in every direction. It's even taller than it looked from down below, stretching high above all the neighbouring buildings.
He grins as a fierce breeze ruffles his air, breathing in deeply. The cold wind makes his eyes sting, and he loves it.
Happy squirms on his back, gently tightening his hold around his neck. "Natsu…"
"Sorry, Happy." He crouches down so the kid can clamber off his back. As soon as his feet touch the ground, Natsu turns back to lean down over the steep incline of the emergency stairs. "You okay, Wendy? Need a hand?"
A small grunt sound in reply.
He laughs, turns, and leans back against the shallow wall to wait for her. It's not a minute later that she's joining him, huffing from the exertion as Charle jumps daintily from her back.
"Well, it could have been worse," the latter decides, looking around scrutinisingly. "We certainly chose the right one to scale, even if it was a bit of a waste of energy."
"I bet you can see the whole city from here!" Happy crows, grinning from ear to ear. His scruffy blue hair shifts in the wind which is constantly ruffling the messy tufts covering his forehead. He runs to Natsu and leans forward to look down. Short for an eleven year old and over-eager to boot, Happy stands out like a sore thumb against the industrial backdrop. "We're miles up! Look, look! The cars and zombies look like ants."
Charle huffs. "Don't use that silly word, I can't take it seriously." But she, too, takes her place beside him and glances down apprehensively. And Natsu can't help but notice the flash of excitement reflected in her own eyes.
He shrugs away from the wall and moves towards Wendy, who's still crouching on the ground. "Quite the climb, huh?" he laughs, gentle pulling the straps of her backpack from her shoulders. She works to help him, manoeuvring her arms out of the straps — when she catches his eye, the girl's red-faced and grinning.
"Worth it though," she pants lightly. "How high up do you suppose we are?"
Natsu shrugs, uncapping the metal bottle he just dug out of the bag. "Dunno." He takes a swig of water before wiping his mouth and handing it to her. She takes it readily and gulps. "High enough. That's all that matters, I guess. We'll be safe for the night, and we have the whole day to set up for tomorrow. So unless a thunderstorm or some variance of said calamity hits—" he glances at the clear blue sky surreptitiously and smiles smug and wide "—it looks like we've won ourselves another quiet day."
Wendy wipes her forehead with the back of her hand before straightening up and stretching. Screwing her eyes shut and wrinkling her nose, she hums happily. "Finally~!"
For a second, the grime and scratches disappear, and Natsu catches a glimpse of the innocent sixteen year old girl underneath. Then the mask snaps back, and she's got the scarred face of a survivor. Moments like that give him emotional whiplash, but he can't find it in himself to wish they'd stop — if anything, he's thankful he can still remember a time before a good night's sleep entailed scaling skyscrapers.
"Don't say that so lightly or you'll jinx it," Charle grumbles, rejoining them and gladly accepting the bottle from her sister.
"We should probably get some sort of tarp up, get some shade from this sun," Wendy notes, airing out her sweat-soaked clothes and squinting up at the sky. "That fire-escape took hours. I wonder if it might not have been easier to just go through the building itself…" Pausing, she throws a furtive glance back at the door chained shut on the far side of the roof which no doubt leads down to the top floor. The look on her face speaks volumes: or maybe not.
Natsu just snorts and turns to rejoin Happy on the makeshift balcony. The kid's scouting out their new location, pointing out skyscrapers in the distance with an eager eye. And he was right. The biters look like tiny insects, darker spots on the dirty grey. From up here, they seem almost harmless, milling around slowly in an aimless wander. He can't even hear the gurgling snarls.
"Natsu, you don't think there might be other people on the other roofs, do you?"
Natsu purses his lips. "If there's anyone else surviving in Magnolia, Happy, they'll be hiding just like us. That's for sure." He glances back down at the dark mass of walkers a few streets down, one that they'd only managed to bypass through an alley after twenty minutes of haphazard planning and a genius stroke of luck. "The higher up you are around here, the safer. You don't want to be stuck on the ground with them in a city this big. The herd wouldn't leave you a chance."
"Unless you have walls," Happy points out, leaning forward for a better view. "Like Fairy Tail. Right, Wendy?"
She startles Natsu by suddenly swinging out over the railing to his left. Looking far across the skyscrapers, hair flying and eyes shining, she throws them an exuberant grin. "Right, Happy!"
"I just hope we can get back in one piece," Charle grumbles from somewhere behind them.
"We will," Wendy nods without a shred of doubt in her voice.
Natsu looks from it to back up at the clear sky. "Yeah." He nods. "We're getting there."
.
.
Mirajane
.
.
Mirajane wrinkles her nose at the smell her brother carries into the kitchen along with the stiff corpse of some half-starved dog. He slumps it on the table unceremoniously. Her exasperation at his dramatics takes on a dangerous edge at the sight of the mud he's dragged across the wooden floor — and then all but disappears when she sees his face. "Elfman? What—?"
Mira's almost scared to ask, but one look at her brother — her brother, who's just returned from a two day run to a nearby mart for supplies, who should be crowing with satisfaction like he usually is, giving her whatever unnecessary can of preserved fruit he managed to grab for her this time — tells her all she needs to know.
So smooth its as if its routine, she slides a knife out of the wooden block at the end of the aisle, and pulls the dog towards her. It's heavier than she was expecting, which is a pleasant surprise. After all, food is food, and the less time they have to spend gathering it, the better. Once she's sawed off the four paws and the head, she goes about skinning the hide while Elfman washes his hands in the sink. The stench in the kitchen is heavy — metallic, chokingly strong, disgustingly over-familiar. Blood. Fresh and bright and runny, trickling through her fingers; congealed and sticking to her brother's skin; a dark paint staining his shirt; or stringy like rubber, like silly string for children, under her knife.
Mirajane's well used to the sight of blood at this point — how could she not be? — but even she has to acknowledge the impressiveness of the sheer variety in her kitchen this morning.
Without turning from the tap, Elfman throws the window open, which lets in a much needed relief of fresh air from the suffocating stink.
Soon enough, she stops noticing the smell, and the blood on her hand dries, hardens, flakes and cracks from the creases of her hands as she works on the carcass. Soon enough, the dog is a log of tough, gamy meat on her kitchen table, and a pile of fur, viscera, a head and a tail. Soon enough, she's added the unwanted bones to the reject pile. Soon enough, her brother has switched off the tap and is rubbing his pruned, trembling hands together as if to warm them after their prolonged soak in the cold water.
"How many?" Mira eventually asks.
"Just one. Laki got bit, and Wakaba went and got himself ripped apart in the process of going back for her."
Mirajane swallows deeply. Suddenly, the memories of bar-tending, of wolf whistles and harmless flirting and 'just the usual?' have taken on a whole new importance. And with practice comes precision— efficiency. Mirajane prepares to lock the precious moments up in her mind alongside the laughter of her little sister without delving too deep into her treasure chest of mourning. "Wakaba and Laki."
Elfman shakes his head. "No. Wakaba, he… Before they grabbed him, he amputated her hand. Cut it off with a saw, would you believe. And Laki, she stayed conscious through the whole thing, ran out with us, the car, everything. She only passed out as we were passing through the gates here. Real brave. Took it like the best of men."
Mira puts down the knife. She lets the last rivulets of blood drip from her fingers onto the discarded pile of inedible dog before turning the tap and letting the water rinse the stains away. "And his body?"
Elfman shakes his head. "No body left. We didn't stick around."
"And?"
She rubs at the coagulated clots under her nails. He knows what she's asking, knows exactly the meaning behind the vague words and purposeful avoidance.
"Macao," Elfman says simply. "It was a nice, clean shot. Straight through the skull."
Mira smiles, her eyes dry and distant. "That's good at least," she murmurs, watching detachedly as the water runs red.
.
.
Erza
.
.
When Erza comes to, it doesn't take her long to realise that something is severely amiss. As her mind, clouded from blood loss, comes back into focus, she becomes aware of the shouting emanating from the front of the caravan.
The moving vehicle tosses her around like what feels like a rag doll as she hastily gets up from the lower part of the bunk bed and makes her way to Gray and Gajeel. She can see that Gray's still got his hands on the wheel and his foot on the accelerator, but his head and attention are turned towards Gajeel in the passenger seat.
The corner of one of the tables stuck to the walls jams into her hip as she jumps forward. Erza winces, rubbing at the tender spot — no doubt that's gonna be a bruise tomorrow. Their loud argument, the one that woke her up, is now contributing to a throbbing headache. Blood loss isn't new to her, but when you throw in a moving caravan and two loud angry men, it's no lie that she's woken up in better moods.
"Guys," she tries, but it's a pathetic attempt and seems to go unnoticed.
"I can't fucking believe— Turn back! Turn back now, or so God help me—"
"What, you gonna wrestle this wheel from me and take us back? Is that it? Drive us back into the swarm and get us out in one piece, you arrogant son of a bitch?"
"Not you. I'll damn well throw you to them, fucker, you can take my word for it!"
Gray barks out a laugh. "I'd like to see you try."
The man's a sight to be seen. His face, to Erza, looks pale as death. Eyes dark and furious and hands curled into threatening fists around the steering wheel. In stark contrast, a vein throbs in Gajeel's temple, blood colouring his cheeks as his whole body radiates tension. His biceps twitch, and like a vision of the future, Erza can see clear as day the image of Gajeel leaping across the seat and punching Gray in the face so hard he's knocked out cold. It doesn't take a lot of imagination, and it's by far enough to spur her into action.
"Stop it," she cuts in before Gajeel can hiss another retort Gray's way. "Stop it now. This isn't the place or time for you two to be doing this."
"The longer we leave this, the more fucking time we lose," Gajeel growls at her without missing a heartbeat.
She can see in his eyes that this isn't something he'll back down on — but when has Gajeel Redfox ever backed down from anything? The twenty-two year old is brash and impulsive and stubborn to a fault. And she's managed him so far, so damn well she'll do it again now.
But before she can get a word in, Gray interrupts her. "Going back is equivalent to signing a death warrant. Now, don't get me wrong, man, I'd jump at the chance of washing my hands of you once and for all, but quite fucking frankly—" he jolts the wheel right before the caravan careens off the road to the grassy ditch by the side "—I value my own life too much to waste it on a piece of shit like you. I value Erza's life, and Levy's life too much to let you waste them playing some fucking hero."
Erza purses her lips, irritated. While she wouldn't have put it exactly like that, it's pretty much the same point she wanted to make. However, Gray's tactless words do little to simmer Gajeel's temper.
"I'm gonna do you a favour and pretend those words didn't just come out of your mouth, Fullbuster, or you'd be a dead man," he grits out. And Erza's thinks she believes it — every word. She's seen what this man can do. That's exactly why the settlement took him in in the first place; it's exactly why he's out here on the most dangerous of runs, a trip into the city — because Gajeel's a survivor, and he'll do whatever it takes to keep it that way.
But so is Gray Fullbuster. And that's why she bites her tongue.
"Look," Gray said after a pause to take a deep breath in attempts to keep himself calm. "We need to be realistic. We need to be rational out here, okay, Gajeel? Or we'll get ourselves killed — and our death means Fairy Tail's death, you know that. We needed supplies. We couldn't get them. Now our job is to get back to Fairy Tail and and come up with another search plan—"
"Fuck that! Our job is to keep people alive, and what you did back there—"
"I did what I had to do—!"
"You left three people to DIE, Fullbuster!" Gajeel roars. "That is never the right thing to do!"
"It was the only thing we could do! It wasn't easy and it wasn't pleasant but we'd be dead right now if it weren't for that choice! Get that through your thick skull!"
Giving up any pretence of paying attention to the road, Gray slams his foot on the brke and brings the car to a shuddering halt. Erza grabs hold of his chair to keep from falling forward. She hears the shallow thuds of things falling to the ground behind her — pots and sacks of food and heavy guns and God knows what else.
The engine slowly grinds to a stop and they're left in an all-consuming silence. Utterly exposed.
Outside the caravan, nothing moves. The abandoned cars by the side of the road are stationary, eerily silent, laden with settled highway dirt. No birds, no crickets, no shouts of children or babble from vacationing families. A non-existent breeze tries and fails to rustle through the leaves of dried-out branches.
Erza is back in the silent summer.
It is Levy's pained groan from behind her that rouses her into motion.
"Listen to me," she says in an urgent tone to both men. "You guys don't get along — I get that. I don't care if you're at each others' throats from here 'til the day you kick the bucket. I couldn't care less. But right now, here, you need to cut this bullshit. Cut all of it the hell out."
Gajeel looks like he's about to interrupt her so she shoots up a warning hand to stop him before he can start. "No. Stop. Gajeel, I don't know if you're right or wrong, I'll admit it. 'Cause I don't know what we should have done, either—" because it's impossible for Erza to put the guilt in her gut into words "—but whatever that answer was, it's too late now. What's done is done. We can't do anything about it anymore, so we keep going, alright? We get to Fairy Tail, we explain the situation, and we stick together. You hear me, Gray? We survive by sticking together. You're both idiots who're going to get us killed unless you can accept that reality."
Erza finishes just as Levy moans again, more insistent this time, and the sound seems to wipe away any retorts Gajeel was thinking of making. He gets up without sparing a single glance for Gray or Erza, and makes his way to the back of the vehicle. Erza watches silently as he crouches beside Levy's curled up form on the padded table seats. She can't see his face, but she can imagine the glower on his face as he gently brushes hair away from her forehead. She hears her whine quietly, and turns back to the front.
Suddenly exhausted, Erza slumps into the empty passenger seat. Her head is thrumming like an angry bee hive, the headache insistent and loud and brutal. She sighs and gingerly rubs at the pressure point in her temple. "Step on it, Gray. Let's go."
Without saying a word, Gray starts up the engine and the caravan begins to move.
.
.
Cana
.
.
When she first sees it, Cana almost walks right on by the mess of guts and gore on the road. It's nothing new, not nowadays, and it's fresh enough to get her moving that little bit faster.
But it's that stupid cigar that does it. And when she looks back, she can't deny to herself that she recognises that ridiculous plume of hair.
"Well… shit."
She turns back and crouches by the body. "Agh, fucking hell. Stinks." She had half a mind to bury him, the poor guy, but now… He'd always been good to her, always looked out for her both in the settlement and before. And he'd taught her to look out for herself too, showed her all the different ways she had to protect herself, drilled into her the rules for surviving in this world.
That's what Cana chooses to honour, and that's why she walks out of town an hour later with a sack full of canned fruit, not having spared another single glance for the body. After eight months in the open, she's at least learnt to lock away her damned sentimentality like Wakaba had always been telling her to. And even in death, he's still guiding her, as ridiculously ironic as that is. The thought makes her crack a smile; replaces the image of the red splatter on the tarmac with the smiling middle-aged man she loved in childhood.
She's closer to Fairy Tail than she thought. She's close to home.
Eight months may have dimmed the memory, but the fire inside her — the fire that blazes just by the very mention of the home that kept her alive — is burning as strong as ever. She remembers the faces of her friends, the warmth of their arms. She remembers the walls that loomed tall and protective like the shoulders of God.
These eight months were good to her, taught her a lot — that she can't deny. But she knows it in her gut, just like she knew she had to leave all that time ago, that she's ready to go back home.
And this time, after all this time, Cana finally isn't returning alone.
.
.
Trigger warnings: violence and gore (graphic), meat preparation (graphic), corpses (mildly graphic), minor character death (off-screen).