Juggling Memories

"How'd you pick their names?"

Bickslow only laid there, on his stomach, his head lifted as he sat up on his arms slightly, so that he could paint his dolls.

"I was, like, nine, Lisanna," he told his girlfriend, who was laying across from him, though she was on her back and staring at him upside down. Sometimes. The rest of the time she was staring up at the ceiling. "I thought they were cool names."

She giggled. "How about now?"

"They're my babies," he told her as he continued to paint one of their bodies. Pippi to be exact. "I can't change their names or nothing like that."

Currently, the souls were over in their old bodies that were, as Bickslow put it, dingy, dormant for the time being. Lisanna wouldn't say that they were sleeping, really, but they just kinda turned off at times. Until Bickslow said something. That usually arose them.

In the center of the living room though, Lisanna and Bickslow laid, as he worked on getting his babies some new bodies. She offered to help, but he shut that down rather quickly. As he put it, she'd only screw it up.

Not that she was offended. He took his babies very seriously. She didn't want to ruin them or anything.

"Are we doing anything fun today?" Lisanna asked him then, rolling so that she was on her stomach. Folding her arms under her, she stared at him with bright eyes. He really liked them. Her eyes. They were real clear.

'You ain't having fun?"

"This is better than being down at the guild, helping Mira out, but no, not really."

"Poor Lissy." He only stuck his tongue out of his mouth as he worked on the doll with more meticulousness than he used with anything else in his life. "We can do whatever you want, kid, after I finish this. Daddy needs to get his babies their bodies."

"Can we go to lunch?"

"If you wanna," he said. "What time is it?"

"I dunno. But I want…I want something greasy."

"Good. That sounds cheap. We can get some with extra grease if you want! Anything for Mama, eh, guys?" Then he frowned and glanced over at his dormant dolls. "I hate when they're not up.'

Giggling, Lisanna kicked her feet up into the air, still only watching him. "You don't have anything else to do today? Do you? Like training or anything?"

"Nope," he said with a shake of his head. "I'm going to spend all day with you, kid."

"And we don't have to go to the guildhall at all?"

"Not if you don't wanna."

"Good."

He only grinned then, finished finally with the last body.

"Now we just have to sit here and let them dry," he told her as he slowly pushed up. Lisanna followed suit, watching as he glanced over at the current bodies of his souls before back at her.

Winking, he said, "Think they'll be fine for, oh, a few hours?"

"Hours? You really do have high expectations of yourself."

"I'm an optimist, kid," he told her as she giggled and let him take her hand, following along as he led her to the bedroom.

Hours was, of course, an overstatement to the highest degree, but it had been nice. And as they laid there after, Bickslow still grinning and Lisanna giggling a little, she found that she didn't want to get the dolls up just yet. And Bickslow made no move to do so, only laid there on his back, the small window in his room allowing little streaks of light in as the partially closed blinds kept back the rest.

"Bickslow?" she whispered at one point, staring up at him as she curled on her side. She could see the dust floating around in the room, visible from the sunlight streaming in and it made her smile a little.

"Hmmm?"

She only moved to rest her head against his chest. "You know all Mira wanted to talk about yesterday?"

"What?"

She shut her eyes. "Our parents. The whole day. I dunno why."

Taking to closing his eyes, he asked, "It upset you or something?"

"No," she told him. "I don't know. Sometimes. She's just so… You know Mira. She just says things and then fixates on them the whole day."

One of his hands came up to stroke her hair. "You remember your parents?"

"Of course," she said softly before turning her eyes up to look at his face. "Sort of. Don't you remember yours?"

Honestly, it wasn't until that moment that Lisanna realized that in the year or so of dating Bickslow, she'd never really discussed anything of the sort with him. He never made any mention of family outside of his babies and she never brought it up. Really, they'd never discussed her past either. She assumed that he knew it, if only secondhand, as he'd shown up at the guild before her, if she remembered correctly. Maybe not.

Still though, she couldn't remember ever hearing anything about his. That had more to do with the fact that he was older than her, she was sure, by five years at least. Not to mention, she recalled that he wasn't too social back then. He most stuck around with Laxus, who was out of the guild as frequently as possible. The only member of the Thunder Legion that she remembered joining the guild was Evergreen and that was because she'd been in her early teens when that happened, a year or two before she technically died.

Bickslow's eyes opened again then and he tilted his head so he could look down at her. Then he whispered, "Yeah, I do. Very well."

She only continued to stare at him though, his eyes hypnotizing with or without his special magic.

"You never talk about them."

His head fell back again. "You never talk about yours."

"Do you want me to?"

He shrugged as best he could on his back with her curled against him. "Don't care none. It's whatever you want."

"Well, I want you to tell me about yours," she said slowly, softly. She had a feeling it would never come up again and that would bother her, never knowing.

"Lissy-"

"You don't have to, Bickslow. I was just curious. That's all."

He leaned down and brushed a kiss against her head then before getting to his feet. "I'm gonna shower. Join?"

She only shook her head. "I'll lay here for a bit."

Shrugging, he headed off, leaving her behind. And she let it go for the time being, honestly not thinking it would ever come up again.

But it did. That same day. And honestly, she hadn't even been trying to make it.

It was after they'd gone out to lunch, the babies coming with them, going shopping right after. They ended up back at his apartment not soon after, him carrying a box of the only thing they'd purchased.

"I cannot believe that you've never shown me this before."

"I can't believe you don't believe me," he remarked as they walked into his place, her shutting the door after the babies were safely inside. "I mean, you saw me juggling fruit before. Why the heck do I need actual juggling pins?"

"I dunno. I just saw them and figured that it'd be harder to juggle those than fruit. If you really do know how-"

"I most certainly do," he said, dropping the box on the living room floor.

"-then those would prove it to me."

"I think you just like spending my money. Don't she, babies?"

"Spend Papa's money," they all agreed as Lisanna giggled and went to help him open the box. They'd found it in a resell shop while they were walking around the town and she knew they needed them the second she saw them.

"Truth for a truth?" she asked.

"'kay," he agreed as he began pulling the pins out of the box. "You're the best fuck I've ever had."

"Bickslow-"

"It's true." He nodded at her. "Now you."

She only rolled her eyes. "I just think it's, you know…hot to watch you do stuff like that."

"Oh yeah?" He was wearing his helmet then and reached up to knock it off his head so that he could wag his eyebrows at her. "Want me to strip for you before I start juggling?"

"Uh, no thanks," she said, frowning slightly.

"No thanks," the babies agreed as they all found somewhere to rest, Pappa taking to Lisanna's head.

He only winked though before testing the weight of one of the pins, as if examining them. They were white mostly, but the ends were either red or blue. There were eight in total, but he only picked up three, holding two in one hand.

"Now, Lissy," he began as he tossed one in the air before beginning. "When I say, you toss another at me, alright? Real big arc, huh?"

She rushed to go grab one of them. "Alright."

They had to have spent at least an hour doing that. It tickled her so much, watching him juggle. And of course she immediately asked for him to teach her, though that led to more touching him and kissing than actual learning. Somehow they eventually found themselves stretched out on the floor of the living room, the babies going dormant once more as Bickslow had turned off the lights and not spoken directly to them in some times.

As they laid therein the dark, they spent most of the time making out, the rest giggling or just cuddling. She found that he was rather snuggly when he was in a good mood.

"How'd you learn to juggle?" she asked softly at one point, lying on her back while he was leaning over her from his position on his side. That made him remove his head from the crook of her neck to stare at her. "Or any of that cool stuff you do?"

"Cool stuff?"

"You know. You're real good at, like, acrobatic stuff," she told him with a grin. "You can balance upside down, Bickslow. And walk on wires. You climb buildings by jumping between two of them, you-"

"Alright, alright, I know a few cool things. I just…practice a lot, huh?"

"I felt like those past twenty minutes of trying to juggle were a lot," she told him. He only grinned before leaning down to kiss her again.

"You're so cute."

"I wanna learn some of your acrobatics," she told him. "I think it would really help me, you know?"

"Help you what?"

"You know, fight."

Her head got a kiss that time. "Kid, it's not just something I can teach you. Number one, I'm not a great teacher. Number two, I learned when I was a kid, so I-"

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Did someone in Fairy Tail teach you?"

He paused then before staring down into her eyes as he rested on his side. "No. My mom did."

She blinked, finding it overly odd that a topic that never came up before would rear its head twice in one day, but then figured that just meant they were supposed to talk about it. What else could it mean?

"Really?"

"Yeah." He moved to rest his head against her neck again. "She did."

Then, after a moment, she asked, "Where is she?"

"Dead," was the response that got breathed against her flesh.

"O-Oh. I didn't…I mean, I assumed, but-"

"She worked in a circus, yeah? Since she was a kid. Grew up there." He lifted his head then. "Till she met Papa. And he took her away from there, when she got pregnant with me."

She only stared up at him. "You don't have to tell me."

He only shrugged. His face was void and his tongue stayed perfectly in his mouth for once. He was numb.

"She was real nice," he told her, though from the tone of his voice, you'd think otherwise. "And real pretty. I remember that. And she liked to teach me things. She could do everything, I swear. Everything. Until…you know, till she got sick."

"When was that?"

"I dunno. When I was five. Six." He was glaring down at her then, but she didn't think it was really directed towards her. And it was so dark in there with the lights off that she couldn't be for sure. "And Papa, he wasn't too nice then. Before. He'd always made her stay locked up, you know? So ain't nobody else could have her, I guess.

"But when she got sick, he just got meaner. He'd always worked in the graveyard. Hard work. Real hard. So he was just…disappointed with himself, huh? He dug, you know, graves."

"A gravedigger."

"Yeah, I guess. It was real hard work, you know? So you couldn't be too mad at him. And it was only the three of us." He swallowed. "But it was when she died that he started drinking so much. And he got worse, about training me."

"Training you?"

"Yeah. He was a mage too," he told her. "Not too good, I don't remember, but still knew a lot about it. His father had been a real good one, I think."

"He was a seith?"

"Yeah," he sighed.

"Then how come he didn't join a guild or-"

"Ain't you listening?" His tone took that of annoyance. "I said he wasn't good at nothing. At all. But he wanted me to be. Thought that I should be good. My mother was the only one that made him go easy on me, but after her…"

"What happened to him?" she asked after he fell into silence. Bickslow only moved to nuzzle her neck.

"I said he used to drink, huh? A lot. Those few years we's together after she died, it was nearly every day. And eventually he didn't show up to work much. So he got fired. But he said that was fine. Even when we got kicked out of our apartment. It's fine, he'd say and hit me in the head when I complained that we didn't have nowhere to go. He said we'd go stay with family. We just had to get to them first.

"I don't know how long we walked or where we were headed. It all blurs in my mind, but I think it was a few months at least. Seemed like. I don't think he rightly knew where we were going. Just kept talking about family that probably didn't exist. I dunno."

"So you never made it?"

He shook his head slightly. "No."

"How come? You found somewhere to stay?"

After a pause, he said, "We was walking like usual. And I was real annoying that day, I bet, 'cause he hit me a lot. I remember. And I was real mad at him. That he kept hitting me. And I was hungry. And we didn't have any food. And we were in a forest and he kept yelling at me. If you're hungry, find some damn fruit, kid, he'd yell. And I tell him that, Papa, it's winter. There isn't any fruit. There weren't even that many leaves on the trees. But that'd make him mad.

"And we were arguing, I remember, when we ran into the men. They were real scary looking, I'm sure, but now…now I can't rightly remember what they looked like it's been so long. Thieves, they were. And they had these big knives, right? Blades. And…and I got scared. Real scared. So I…I ran. And left him. And…and I didn't stay, because…"

She felt it then as he started crying against her neck and she wanted to turn to hold him, but knew that would only embarrass him. He was real serious about never showing weakness and that would be the ultimate weakness to him, she was sure. So she just let him cry for a minute before he found his voice again.

"I climbed a tree to hide from 'em. But I knew they'd see my footprints, huh, if they came after me? So I jumped from tree to tree, getting further and further away from the first one I'd climbed. Like my mother taught me," he added, as if as an afterthought. "I heard Papa too, when he screamed. I didn't know what they did to him till that next morning."

"Morning?"

"Yeah," he said softly. "I stayed up in those trees all night. I was scared, you know? That they'd get me? Especially in the dark, all alone."

"That sounds horrible."

He was done crying then and only shrugged. "So when the sun came up, I figured I should go find Papa. To see what they took from us. But when I got back to him, I saw that they…they… He was cut open and animals had gotten to him and I just…

"So I was alone, yeah? Then. For awhile. Till I got to Fairy Tail. So that's it, alright?" He lifted his head from her neck then, shifting so that he was sitting up. As he pulled his knees to his chest, he also began wiping at his eyes. "Don't fucking ask again."

She only moved to lay on her side then, watching him. "I'm sorry."

Another shrug. "You were curious, kid. So what? You know now. Alright?"

"Okay."

He rested his head against his knees for a moment. "He wasn't that bad though. Or whatever. He was just…he was just sad. That Mom died. Papa was really a good guy. So don't think otherwise!"

"I won't."

"And I'm a good one too, huh? To my babies?"

"A great one."

"And I don't… I don't hit 'em or nothing. Or you. But that's only 'cause they ain't as annoying as me. And you don't talk back, huh? So that's all. Okay?"

"Alright."

When he looked down at her, she only stared right back at him, not knowing where to go from there. Eventually, he shifted to let his knees fall so that she could come to rest her head in his lap. Easily his hand found its way into her hair as he stroked her head.

"They're dead anyway, so who cares? Their souls got to go on. Unlike my babies. And you ain't dead. So that's just what I should focus on." He sniffled, but she knew he'd just say his nose was a little stuffy. "I think about…if you had died back when…and then I would have never had this. You know?"

"But I didn't. And you do."

"Yeah." Another sniffle. "I do."

For a while, they just laid there, in the dark. Then, out of nowhere, Pappa and Peppe became active again and came over to them to rest closer to them. Soon enough, the other three came over as well.

"You're my family now, kid," he told her softly. Lisanna was starting to drift off in his lap, honestly. "And if you want me to teach you anything, even acrobatics, that's fine. I'll help you best I can."

"Mmmm."

"You just gotta promise to be their mama, huh? And don't die on us. We just… We wouldn't be able to deal with that."

"Promise."

"I just… They love you so much, you know?"

"Love 'em too," she whispered. He was still playing with her hair and it was really soothing. "Babies."

"Love Mama," they all responded, as if on command.

"And I love you," he added quietly. She only smiled though, softly.

"I love you too, Bickslow," she assured him. "Always."

When she felt a very wet tear drop splash against her cheek, she forgot all about letting him feign strength and shifted to lay back down on the ground, pulling him with her. And as he cried against her chest, mumbling something again about how his father wasn't that bad, just sad, that was all, she only stroked his head, effectively ruining his Mohawk.

But she just held him and he let her. The babies were concerned, laying real close to them and making these horrible sounds. Lisanna only stroked their papa's head though and told him it would be alright. Because in the end, everything turned out alright.

Always.

Was Bickslow ever given a back-story? If so, then I just don't remember it. I think he's such a background character that there isn't one so…I gave him one.