Disclaimer: The characters belongs to Hiro Mashima
Written for the When We Take Different Paths event on Tumblr.
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Memories
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Memories were usually seen as a huge part of every human being. They defined what you became or what you definitely didn't want to be. They could be allies or enemies, sweet and soft or hard to swallow, like sand and dust. Memories created paths for us to follow whether we chose to take them or not. They held our past and therefore the basis of our future, whatever we want it to be. Memories were a lot trickier for him.
It was hard, most of the time, to discern what was truly a memory and what wasn't anything but a made up lie to cover some tracks. It was easier to ignore when he had a clear goal, a clear course of action to follow with no need to ask himself if what he was doing was actually something he wanted to do or something he tricked himself into believing he wanted to do. It was all fine and good when he didn't need to think by himself, when he didn't have to worry about staying true to himself. It was a lot harder on quiet days, those days when he was free to do whatever he pleased. At this moment, he wasn't sure if he really had liked something at any point of his life. He guessed he should have, since he must have been a whole person once, instead of this shell full of shattered memories and unfulfilled wishes. There must have been a time when he knew exactly who he was, what he wanted and what he held dear.
Things were a lot blurrier now. Now, he only felt like a traitor. A traitor both to his guild and to the council because he sent one of them to die and was unable to save the other one. He was weak and all of his world died, twice, leaving him with nothing but a void inside and ashes and corpses to bury. And maybe he shouldn't feel like he failed the council because he was never actually part of them, but after so many years spent at its quarters it was hard to separate himself from his other part. The fake one, the lie.
Sometimes he wished he were still under his own spell, still unable to remember that he had actually been an spy instead of a loyal Rune Knight. At least then he thought he was following his life's dream, fighting evil and helping to make the world a better place. Even if it had been a lie, it had been a kind one, one meant to ease his mind while also tricking everyone else into thinking he was perfect. It had been so good he had even fooled him. He didn't want to think about him.
Some days, when he was feeling weaker, he thought about maybe deleting all his memories related to the Rune Knights. He played with the idea on his mind, thinking of the right spell and the easiest way to do it. It was a bit more difficult than what he did when he became a spy, since that time he was just hiding the guild and his comrades, bending what he knew about them into so many folds they became a miniscule space on his mind, a part so tiny that it was easily overlooked and ignored but ready to come back when the right magic touched them. Deleting everything would be harder and maybe even painful. Some days, he thought the pain would be almost worth it. He never did it, anyway. It would mean giving up something he wasn't ready to lose. And even when that may also be a lie, it was a lie he wanted to keep. At least for now.
He also both wanted and not to think about it. It was a complicated topic to say the least. In fact, complicated was running short to express what he felt when he thought about that particular situation. His relationship with the Rune Knight's captain thrived through the shared years, good and bad, but it was always under the assumption he was one of is loyal subordinates. At that time, it had seemed like an insuperable distance, the cold wall of responsibility between them. It had slowly broken and melted, day by day, until they got to the nice stage of friendship. Even that had seemed inappropriate by Council's laws, barely tolerable as long as it didn't affect missions or reports. However, being friends fell short for them not so long after and then things got a bit uncomfortable. There was an obvious line they shouldn't cross and yet… Yet he took the first step ahead and he wasn't disappointed. Sometimes he wondered if it had been part of his role, if seducing the Rune Knight's Captain had seemed like a great way to get information about the Council and its movements. It surely had been, he now knew. He learned a lot of things thanks to sharing a bed, sometimes, with Lahar. The problem was, he wasn't sure if it was all behind it.
That was, he guessed, the bigger problem there. He was a horrible human being, that's for sure, and just the thought of himself playing with the other man's feelings made him sick on the stomach everytime. It made him think he didn't deserve anything but loneliness and pain. It made him wish he had never agreed to the master's mission. It made him wish he had never met him. It made him search for spells and words to delete all his memories and make him an empty but new man. And yet he didn't. He didn't because he couldn't stop thinking how there was something else. A small part of him refused to believe everything that he had felt once was just a well constructed lie. He couldn't accept it, since nothing else had ever felt so strong as all the love, admiration and respect he still hoarded for the other man.
Not even before all this mess, the old times that were, supposedly, his real life. Nothing had ever felt so real as the fake love he lived with a fake name. A feeling he had twisted and tainted with the shades of treason he carried everywhere. And he didn't want to let it go. He would pay whatever price for keeping that tiny flame alive. If he had to spend his whole future feeling guilty just so he could still remember that they had once held hands, so let it be. At least then, he could bask in the old feeling of being loved. He had been loved. Once. He wasn't anymore, not by his guild and not by Lahar, but he had been once. And it was enough. It had to be enough.