Trigger warning for depression and attempted suicide.
Other than that, enjoy!
The boy felt like a sheet of ice, standing there, waiting to shatter. Alive, yet waiting for death. Ice never lasts long.
It began when his parents died. The boy, no older than eight, stood wide-eyed as the vacant eyes of his family gazed back. He truly idolised his parents; they were strong and brave, with the generosity of a saint. He, on the other hand, was frail and cowardly. After the calamity came along, the boy was left alone, staring down at his parents' twitching bodies. They were dead.
Dead.
DEAD.
And what did he do? Absolutely nothing. The boy was ridged, limbs locked in place. He asked himself why did this happen, what did we do to deserve this, and the claw of the demon slammed into his tiny body. He thought then it would all be over, that his parents would be stood waiting for him in a land of eternal happiness. When the boy woke to a blinding agony crawling through his muscles, he knew that he must have gone to hell.
The boy felt like an abyss. A miserable chasm of darkness that he was falling through, with no end in sight.
It got worse when Ur died. The boy was so grateful the woman had come into his life. She guided him through hell and tried to shine a light on his darkened world. Her only wish was to see a smile on his face, a smile that had been lost long ago. With each passing day he spent with her, the boy began to notice the light at the end of the tunnel. But lo and behold, that light was but an illusion. His moment had come to prove to his parents that he could be strong; he could be brave just like them. How naïve he was. That night, he was met again by the calamity and he realised he could never be strong. He was weak, and always would be. He could fool himself into believing he could be brave, but no matter what he told himself, he was still that scared little boy that hid behind his parents' legacy. Ur had shown up to rescue her disciple, only to sacrifice herself for the sake of his future. More weight bore down upon the boy's shoulders; yet another death to mourn. But he couldn't play the victim this time, Ur's death was his fault. There was no denying it. He killed Ur. Lyon agreed with him. The final words he heard from his peer were, 'this is all your fault.' And the boy was left to wallow in his own guilt and regret, while Lyon walked away. He shouldn't be here; Ur should have left him to his fate. But Ur had wanted him to live, to walk out into the future and be the strong wizard she believed he would become. So that's what he did. And despite the crushing pain the crippled his soul, he held Ur's final moments close and gave her a silent promise that her sacrifice wouldn't be in vain. It was easy to say that, but it never lessened the pain.
The boy felt like a sunset. Calm and content, yet he could feel the darkness of night closing in, consuming the small light he carried.
It didn't get any better when he joined the guild. Though his life was full of new beginnings, new opportunities, new friends, the lingering sensation of death never left. Every day the boy was surrounded with the cheery faces of his guildmates and, as much as he wanted to smile and laugh along with them, it was becoming far too difficult to maintain his façade. The pain was unbearable, and during Father's Day of year X781, the boy attempted suicide. He was sat in his guildhall, listening to his rival boast about his almighty dragon parent. People had approached the boy and asked him to share stories of his own father. He just forced a smile and claimed he could no longer remember. As the attention moved away from him, the boy slipped out of the guild and hid deep inside the Eastern Forest. Approaching the stream, the boy called upon his magic and created an icy dagger. The sharp point hovered over his heart and he thought back on his life. The boy honestly couldn't remember the last time he had been legitimately happy. He pulled his shaky hand back, ready to plunge the dagger into his chest until a voice from behind caught him by surprise.
'Death won't change anything, you know.'
'What do you want, Gildarts?'
'I want you to take a moment and think things through.' The man took a step forward.
'Don't come near me!'
'Okay, okay. I'll stay right here, but please listen to me.'
'Nothing you can say will change my mind.'
'You can't give up like this, kiddo. Ur gave her life so you could have a future. What would she say if she were here right now?'
'Shut up! Ur is dead.'
'She died so you could live. Don't pass up on this opportunity you've been given.'
'You don't understand. I-I can't take this anymore.' Tears flooded down the boy's face.
'I do understand. Life has not been kind to you; you've been in a constant struggle for the past seven years. You think you have nothing left in this world and death seems like the only logical way out. You just want the pain to go away, right?'
The boy remained in silence, his arms shaking.
'How do you think your guildmates would react if you did this? What would Natsu do without his rival? Who would Cana and Loke go on jobs with? Loss is always a hard thing to handle, but you still have people in this life who care about you. Death is not the answer.'
The boy's knees buckled, and he fell down onto the dampened grass. The frozen dagger slipped out of his fingertips. Would his friends feel like he did if he were to die? The boy didn't want them to suffer. He knew how crippling the pain was; he didn't want to be the cause of that for the few people he still cared for. Even in death, the boy could not escape the crushing guilt. He had no choice but to endure it.
The boy felt like a river. A constant flow of anguish, never running out.
It became even more unbearable when he was dragged along on the S-Class job. Not only was he forced to come face to face with the demon that haunted him, but he also reunited with his former peer, Lyon Vastia. The memories he'd locked away had burst free and now his new family were being dragged down with him. All the boy could think was to send them as far away as possible and take the brute force of Lyon's wrath alone, but his rival was just too persistent. After his humiliating defeat, the boy's mind was trapped in a loop of Ur's sacrifice, and Lyon was about to take that all away. He was determined to do whatever it took to keep Ur's legacy intact, and if that meant making the ultimate sacrifice, then so be it. When he encountered his peer for the second time, the boy moved into the deadly stance the two ice wizards knew all too well. They would remain frozen together for the rest of eternity, it was almost poetic the two would meet their end this way. Moments before their fates were sealed in ice, the boy's rival punched him square in the face. Idiot, didn't he know that he was prepared to die for this?
'So, you're gonna end this by dying, huh? Stop running away!'
The boy was rendered speechless. His rival had never outwardly shown any signs of caring for him. They were rivals, they hated each other, that's how it always worked. A sudden tremor distracted them from their stare down. The calamity would be revived any minute now. His rival took a mad dash after one of Lyon's followers, leaving the boy to a rematch against his peer. He didn't want to fight, of course he didn't. There was no denying that Lyon was the more experienced of the two. If the older wizard were to use two hands in casting, the boy was certain that it would be impossible to win. He could, however, attempt to reason with him. It was time to tell Lyon the truth.
That's when he felt it.
A sword plunging through his abdomen.
Blood spurted out as his peer twisted and tugged the sword free. The boy collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath and fighting back tears. He squinted through blurred eyes at Lyon's sadistic grin smiling down upon him. This was not the same person he'd grown up with. Struggling back to his feet, the boy clutched his open wound with one hand and punched his peer with the other. Lyon stumbled back a few paces, his grin morphing into a menacing scowl. They charged at one another; the boy was determined to win. He would not let his guild down again; he would not let his peer destroy Ur's legacy. Ever since he received the mark of his guild, he had never lost to the same opponent twice. He would win this.
The boy felt like an ocean. So vast, yet so empty.
Things were going great for a while. The boy had been chosen for the S-Class trials. Finally, he could make his family proud. He could prove to everyone that he was strong. There was no way he would allow his rival to get the glorious title before him. The boy endured a harsh week of training with his partner, and now he was ready. This was his moment… Or it would have been if it weren't yet another enemy getting in the way of things. This time it was Grimoire Heart, the strongest dark guild in the Baram Alliance. The boy knew that this would be a tough fight, but Fairy Tail would prevail as always. He'd split off from his friends and searched for the enemy alone. He'd never have been able to predict he'd meet with Ultear, Ur's supposedly deceased daughter. She was hauling Zeref along the beaten path toward their ship. Ultear sounded sincere, but the boy couldn't believe her lies. The next time he'd seen Ultear, she was swinging her sword down at one of his friends. The boy reacted instantly and pulled Juvia away before the blade could make contact. Why would Ultear do this? What made her become this way? The boy knew he had to fight, but every swing he made was hesitant. He couldn't bring himself to harm Ultear knowing her mother was watching. He couldn't do this, but she didn't give him a choice.
The boy felt like hail. You never know when the pain will come crashing down.
The boy and his friends had high spirits as they travelled back to their guild. They had won the Grand Magic Games! Not only that, but they had also won the battle against Future Rogue and his army of dragons. What worried the boy was the vision he and his friends witnessed during the battle. He had watched as his own body was mutilated by the dragon hatchlings; he'd felt it too. Not the pain, but the sensation of death. He'd felt that before, too many times to count. The boy listened to his friends' conversations, laughing along with them as his rival complained about the motion. Things were great until he'd noticed an elderly woman smiling at their cart from afar. At first, the boy thought nothing of it. That was until he took a closer look at her eyes. The boy could never forget those eyes. The same eyes that had glared at him seven years ago during the S-Class trials. This wasn't happening again; this couldn't happen again. The realisation struck him like a bullet. It was Ultear. She did it. She saved him in exchange for her time. Like mother, like daughter is what some people would say. The boy couldn't stop the flow of tears as they washed down his face. His friends gave him worried glances, but he'd shut out the rest of the world. He hated it. He hated everything. How could people expect him to keep going when death followed him everywhere? The remainder of their journey home was silent. A silence that crushed the boy until his could no longer cope with being around another living being.
The boy felt nothing. He was no longer happy, no longer sad. He felt nothing.
He'd done it. He'd just killed his own father. Ripped a hole through his chest with a metal ball, so wide you could fit a fist through it without touching the severed skin and muscle. He watched as his father crumpled to the ground, listened as he told him the truth, cried as his father begged him to kill him. Silver rose to his feet and pulled him into an embrace for one last time. The boy wished that it could never end. He wished that his father could take him to the afterlife, and they could remain there in eternal happiness. Of course, the boy never got what he wished, and his father ascended into the sky to join his mother. Before the departure, Silver had passed down his magic to the boy. He was now an Ice Devil Slayer. With a newfound drive to kill E.N.D. and avenge his fallen loved ones, the boy left the tainted battlefield behind him and set out to assist his comrades in their battle. The sadness he carried was gone, along with any other emotion that he'd once known. The sensation of death still lingered, but the boy no longer cared. He welcomed the feeling, his only feeling.
The boy felt like ice, shattered and broken. The fragments of his being scattered across the battlefield, slowly melting away in the setting sun, waiting for death.
Ice never lasts long.
First uploaded: 16/12/2015
Updated: 18/05/2019