Fairy Tail belongs to Hiro Mashima
Rated M for sexual content and mature themes.
The Colour Red
One-thousand and ninety-five. That's how many days it had been since Fairy Tail went missing on Tenrou Island. Ultear would never have counted. She would never have bothered. Jellal did, though. He had a tally that he kept on one of his leather gauntlets. Every morning before the sun rose, Ultear would watch him carve one bone-straight line into the soft leather. He'd wipe away the curl of leather that would get carved out with his knife's tip and then he'd take a little bit of grease from the bottom of the cast-iron pan they used before it got cleaned and put away and he'd work the natural sealant into the leather so the lines never degraded.
She knew those lines intimately and knew what the deepest one meant. The day he'd carved his sevenhundredth line was the day he walked into a town on the border of Alvarez and hired a woman with hair red like copper. Ultear left him to his devices. She knew it wasn't going to be the same; Jellal would realize it soon enough, as well.
Three days after that, she caught him staring into a beauty shop on the street corner of some dingy little town, looking at a wig as bright as summer sunsets. She didn't judge him then, either, though she did come to his side that night around the fire and tuck one strand of escaping scarlet hair deep into his travel pouch.
"Meredy will ask questions. Be more careful," is what she said. Jellal's neck was bright after that. He still hired someone the next evening, though. Ultear didn't ask if he made her wear the wig but it was gone out of his pack.
He fell into a routine that escalated. Once biweekly wasn't enough. He'd travel far at night just to get some satisfaction. Or some illusion thereof.
Day seven hundred and ninety-four found him away from town centers and all of the outlets he'd come to rely upon. Lying on his back as the sun set and staring at the colour of the sky, Ultear could feel the desperation. His hand was in his pack and the tendrils of false hair were wrapped around his fingers.
Ultear came to his side. Things were easier now between them but he was still very, very guarded when she took his hand and unclenched his fingers from around the wig. He was even more taken aback when she opened his pack and took out the source of his self-perpetuating hell.
"It'd be easier if you didn't do this."
"My business is my own."
"It effects all of us," she said gently.
Jellal had never gotten rid of Siegrain; Ultear could see the other in his eyes then. When she tied back her hair and donned the wig, she figured she was either going to be stabbed through the belly or he would leave her there. She was surprised when he just looked at her. Looked and looked. Things were wrong: her cheekbones were too sharp, her nose was too thin, her eyes not the right colour of brown, too dark to pass for the honey that belonged to the other. Still, though, when he looked at her then, she knew he wasn't seeing Ultear Milkovich.
She leaned in and he did nothing. She kissed him and his breath came out in relief-tinged resignation. He didn't ask, 'What are you doing?' He didn't shy away or even wonder where Meredy was. He was so far gone. Ultear had the answers to all those questions and more. Meredy was hunting; Ultear was gunning down a demon before it could be born. She'd never needed anything the way he seemed to need the colour red.
She had to do everything at first. Undo the clasp of his cloak, pull the shirt over his head, get his pants undone, too. She left his gauntlets where they were in case he needed to remember why. When he was as nude as she cared for him to be, she undid her own clothing. Her shirt was gone and her tights were down around her knees before he came alive. It wasn't to lay kisses upon her mouth. It was to stand. He had her in positions where he couldn't easily see her face. She took the shun and felt almost no sting of hurt. He wasn't paying her to be impartial like those other girls, but Ultear could compartmentalize. She could be as cold as winter. She could be practical, too.
He came in her mouth and she did not know him more intimately. He had her from behind, too, and he might as well have been a stranger. He called her a name that didn't belong to her; she spoke back to him and it was almost like a game. She didn't know Jellal better like this but she might have known herself. The Ultear before what she'd come to think of as The Fall. The Ultear that lived for games.
It was perfect. To be that person again, she only had to be someone else. She only had to don the colour red.