I do not own Fairy Tail.
Love in the Time of War
In the night, though we are apart,
There's a ghost of you within my haunted heart.
.
She had been loving once. Kind, bright, light-hearted and full of joy, even with the war constantly showing her how gruesome life could be. Now, she was just a shell, a hollow projection of her past self. Everywhere she looked there were vestiges of him and the love she would never get back. And yet there she was, sitting on the same stool every night, a bottle of cheap whisky and a pack of cigarettes by her side, singing his favorite songs.
The combination of alcohol and tobacco felt bitter on her mouth but always helped her remember his taste, so she took another sip of liquor between verses. The smoke from the ashtray nearby was bringing tears to her eyes – or at least she wanted to believe that was the reason for her uninterrupted crying –, streaming down her face like a waterfall and blurring the scenario of people drinking and sitting on the tables in front of her.
Keep singing.
Entertaining the crowd didn't matter to her anymore as his chair would remain empty forever, but for him she would carry on regardless of the circumstances. It always helped her being transported to another night, years ago, when she was being kissed on that very same stage. On that night, no piano melody was accompanying the words of her song.
He was all military muscle and repressed rage back then and she was too busy with both of her jobs, waitress in a small cafe on daytime and singer at a bar at night, so she could afford a good education for her siblings. She had never thought she would be able to fall in love with someone like him, with acid words and overbearing attitude, but fate had a nonsensical sense of humor and love worked in mysterious ways.
Curiosity was its fuel as something about him never felt right to her. Between songs she could notice even if it was just for a second that his usually frowning expression turned into a soft one and the thunderstorm within his eyes slowly diminished, making her wonder why he looked so fragile and lost while watching her onstage. As soon as her repertoire ended, however, he would revert back to his old self and shut anyone out, leaving her only to speculate about his temporary change of heart.
Her questions were finally answered on a particular night – that night –, when he bought her a drink. It had been a tiresome day and she was so on edge that the words were coming out of her mouth in a quivering manner. No one seemed to notice, though. No one but him.
He didn't try to approach her nor even looked back when the bartender delivered her the small glass filled with yellow liquid after the show. She swallowed it all at once, gladly welcoming the feeling of her throat burning with the sour flavor of whisky, and mumbled him a 'thank you' before ordering a second shot.
They remained sat beside each other in a pleasant silence for a long time, drinking their thoughts away.
"I have trouble sleeping." He finally said, fixing his gaze at the bottle in front of him, and she didn't feel surprised for hearing that. The war had the ability of ruining every living creature on the planet, no exceptions made, and insomnia was not the worst thing that could happen to soldiers. Through the years of conflict, she witnessed countless men being driven to insanity to the point of hurting those who loved them most, and the mere thought of his brother being the next to suffer its consequences left her with a sinking feeling on her stomach.
She could sense he was struggling to say something more as his jaw clenched tightly and the muscles of his shoulders tensed, so she moved her stool closer to his in the corner of the bar and put her hand gently in his forearm as an encouragement for him to go ahead.
"These last years have already been too hard for us civilians, I can't imagine what it must feel like for those in the front." She sadly replied, thinking once again about his younger brother, who could be summoned by the army at any time soon.
"Your voice, it-" He closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh before continuing. "It calms me down, for some reason."
His words made something inside of her twist and suddenly she started to look at him with another perspective. All that anger and erratic behavior was only a defense barrier against the horrors he must have seen in those doomed battlefields. If she felt like being in an endless nightmare sometimes, then his life must have been nothing less than constant hell since the conflict started. She fought the tightening of her throat and squeezed his arm softly once more.
"I'm glad to know I can be somehow helpful to you, Sergeant Dreyar."
"Mirajane." He lifted his head and stared directly at her for the first time that night. The anguish she saw deep in his eyes made her heart stop beating for a second and she swallowed hard, trying not to cry. "Would you sing a bit more for me?"
"…Sure." She answered his unexpected request with a weak smile, holding his hand between hers before starting to sing her favorite childhood lullaby, one that her mother used to sing to her before putting the children to sleep.
He closed his eyes once more when the words flowed away from her lips and let his shoulders drop slightly in relaxation. It was the first time she had ever seen him in peace and she would do anything to appease his suffering, even if it was just for a bit. She threaded her fingers between his, caressing them softly as time passed and most people had already left the bar.
"Keep singing." He whispered at her and stood up all of a sudden, leading her to the center of the stage where she previously performed that night. She did as she was told, stumbling on the words when large arms embraced her by the waist.
"Keep singing." He repeated after leaning his forehead against hers. She could smell alcohol, nicotine and something else she wasn't quite able to identify on him, but the blend of odors felt unexpectedly pleasant. Her arms unconsciously slid up from his chest to the back of his neck, closing the gap between their bodies as they moved slowly without really leaving their spot, and she let herself be carried away by the moment, intoning the lyrics against the skin of his jaw. It didn't take long for him to tilt his head only slightly enough for their lips to connect.
Keep singing.
The sound of applauses dragged her back to reality and she downed the rest of her drink before standing up to leave the stage. A low noise of metal clashing against the floor made her halt and look down to the object that fell unnoticed from her lap. She bent down in order to pick the small dog tag with his name engraved on it, tears still rolling from her eyes. All that was left of him now was that dog tag, a bottle of cheap whisky, a pack of cigarettes… and a broken promise.
"I will come back for you." He never did.
She headed to the farthest corner of the bar, ordering her usual. Getting drunk was the only way she was able to fall asleep without dreaming of him nowadays. The ghost of his presence seemed to chase her everywhere, even inside her head, and she was tired of it. It would be better if she just forgot everything about him, the smile he showed only for her, the feeling of his lips against her skin, the way he held onto her after another nightmare. Everything.
Yet there she was, sitting on the same stool every night, a bottle of cheap whisky and a pack of cigarettes by her side, singing his favorite songs.
"When I come back, we are getting married." They never would.
And the only thing she could do was keep singing.
.
Haunted heart won't let me be,
Dreams repeat a sweet but lonely song to me.
.
Chaos was everywhere.
A man approached him and started to explain something he couldn't properly hear, as the sound of Gatling guns working was overlapping any other ones, making his head throb so insistently he thought he was going to pass out any time soon. He kneeled down beside the corpses of long lost comrades and tried the radio again, asking for aerial backup, but the equipment was dead and he was getting no response from the air force unit.
"Love." A distant voice echoed.
They were going to lose that battle, but at least he could try to save as many lives as possible before the enemy battalion had the chance to descend upon them and finish off the few survivors that were left in his side of the battlefield. He shouted orders to retreat but, before anyone could do anything else, a missile landed on their most advanced trench. The force of the explosion launched him a few meters back and he fell hard on the cold floor, immediately feeling the painful sting of his ribs cracking.
"It's just a dream." The voice insisted, but he was too dizzy to pay attention to it.
There was blood on his face and a loud, buzzing noise in his ears. He moved his head with difficulty and managed to open his eyes only to instantly regret it when he stared directly at the motionless body of his best friend. The world around him began to spin wildly as he tried to stand up, but then something collapsed above him, hitting his head heavily, and he could feel nothing else.
"Love, wake up."
He rose abruptly, with beads of sweat covering the whole extension of his body and soaking his shirt. Staring down at his own hands, he realized his shaking fingers were still clenching tightly the bed sheets and had some trouble releasing his grasp on them. He laid his head back on the pillow and shut his eyes tightly, panting heavily. Several minutes passed until he could regain his breath, then he slowly stood up and went to the bathroom, bending in front of the sink to splash some water on his face.
He had been having the same nightmare for several months now, which was frustrating his expectations of finding out something other than the fact he had been a soldier during the war. He couldn't recollect any memory before the day he woke up at a strange hospital wearing some oddly ragged clothes. Nobody was able to tell him how he got there or who he was, not even his name, and no matter how hard he tried to remember something, anything, it seemed like his memories were locked somewhere inside his head way too far for him to reach. His dreams were the only clue he had, but even those revolved only around battlefronts, war tanks and people dying horrible deaths.
There was an exception, though, a pair of deep blue eyes and a song – a children's lullaby to be precise. He didn't know to whom those eyes belonged or where he heard that song, but he felt strangely comforted when thinking about them. It felt like home. The possibility that someone would be waiting for him to come back was the only reason why he kept searching for information about his past.
Raising his head, he looked at his reflection on the mirror. His ribs were completely healed, but the huge scar covering the right side of his face would forever be there to remind him that his night terrors were actually very real. The doctor said it was by a miracle he didn't lose his eye, but he thought the mere fact he was still breathing was already a miracle itself because he was sure everyone else was dead.
He walked back to the bedroom and read the content written in a small piece of paper on his desk. It was the location of a military base, one of the many he could have been part of.
It took him a long time to obtain that kind of information. When he left the hospital, he had nowhere to go so he had to get a job first in order to survive. Then, he rented a room in a cheap motel and waited until the war was over because he didn't know in which side of the conflict he fought.
In his search for records of the battles that occurred nearby the hospital attendance area, he found some old newspapers at a local museum and cross-referenced the dates of the conflicts with the day of his admission to the hospital. There had been many direct confrontation events on that period, but one of the sides was clearly winning back then, so at least he could conclude which one he belonged to as he was left at the hospital's door without his uniform. The person who found him probably changed his clothes to prevent the enemy army that controlled the territory at the time from arresting or killing him. Whoever it was that saved him, he would be eternally grateful.
After that, he spent month after month working twice as hard in order to save money and travel to the country he believed was his birth place. After a long exhausting journey, he went directly to the closest military base he could find, asking about the battalions that were active on the period he had been found. Since then, he have been travelling across the cities, visiting every base that was listed as a possible match and hoping someone would recognize him.
He got dressed and left for his temporary job, waiting until his shift was over so he could look for the address that was recently given to him. It was already evening when he was finally able to initiate his search, checking the name of every street he passed by to keep himself in the right track.
He was sure he was getting close to his destination when a strange feeling made him stop as he spotted a small bar in the other side of the street. He looked at the sign above the entrance and didn't recognize the name on it, but a pair of blue eyes flashed in his mind and he suddenly felt the urge to get in, as if there was something – no, someone – really important there. He moved forward eagerly, but an unexpected surge of fear made him hesitate by the door.
What if he had been long forgotten by the ones that once knew him? What if there wasn't a place for him in other people's lives anymore? What if he would forever remain as a ghost to them, condemned to spending the rest of his existence alone?
The sound of a piano echoed from inside the bar and a melodious voice reached his ears, making his chest tighten. His instincts told him to close his eyes and breathe deeply, so he let himself be carried away by the calming sensation that possessed the entirety of his body and soul as he listened to the melancholic song. He felt like he was been washed away and put together over and over again, until all the pieces that formed him finally fell back into place.
He couldn't waste any more second outside that bar. He left Mira waiting for too long and now she would be probably thinking that he was dead when he still had a promise to keep. Opening his eyes, he got inside, never looking back.
He was finally home.
.
Haunted Heart – Frank Sinatra
A/N: This is my last piece for Miraxus Week, so I'd like to thank everyone that left a review for me in this period. You're the reason I keep trying to improve. I wish you all a happy New Year with lots of miraxus! :3