Sometimes in the dark of night he'll trail calloused fingers along pale white flesh, find the mottled bumps and lines that shouldn't be there, and release a heavy sigh.

"I'm sorry," comes, anguished and unbidden from his mouth, as his fingers trace along the scars he made, along the scars he cannot unmake.

"I'm sorry," comes, breathy and sorrowful, for every memorized second of perverse satisfaction he'd ever felt while proudly stringing her and her teammates up like puppets in a theater.

He moves down, lips pressing to the round, warm belly that now carries his children, and his body shudders uncontrollably.

"I'm sorry," comes, strangled and deep, from against the skin that no longer bears the mark he so carelessly joined, the mark he'd callously put there as both a mockery and a warning.

She does not say "it's alright," because it most certainly isn't.

She does not say "it's over now," because it will never be, not in their darkest, most terrible nightmares.

She does not say "I forgive you" again, because for the thousands of times she's said it, he's never quite believed her, and she'd never quite meant it.

Gentle fingers, far smaller than his but no less calloused – calloused in a different way, a better way, from years of holding a pen instead of a sword – run through his tousled black hair, pressing him impossibly closer to her middle, to the lives they created together when by all rights they should despise one another.

"I know," she says, simple and sweet and sad, and after everything they have been through – after magic and trials and hatred and death – after all of it, it should take more than just two words to make someone like him break down and weep.

It doesn't.


A/N: I wrote this at 2am, I have no excuse. Just thinking a lot about Gajeel wanting a future with Levy and then this kind of happened. Hope you enjoyed! Leave a review if you did, please!

~Persephone