I hope everyone had a great Halloween! This one its late, but I hope you guys like it! I wrote this for "An all-fandoms multi-media flashworks" community at LJ. The challenge was Ghosts and Gores.
The M here is for death and gore-ishness. You've been warned.
Please review and let me know what you think!
Disclaimer: FT belongs to Mashima-sensei!
A Halloween Nightmare
Trembling, Levy begun to dress herself for Magnolia's Halloween celebration. On the 31th of October there was a huge festival on the town – since it was such an important day to the ones that dealt with magic.
She, however, hated the festival dearly since it was, for her, the personification of a nightmare. On Halloween nights, all the electric power lacryma were shut down so the fire lamps around town would be the only sources of light.
And there was nothing Levy McGarden was more scared of than darkness.
She only got out on Halloween because the streets were the most illuminated places. And saying they were the most illuminated didn't mean they were well illuminated.
Feeling cold inside, she looked at herself in the mirror. She was dressed as Red Riding Hood – a costume Lucy had chosen for her. She guessed she looked pretty in it, but she never really cared about how she would look, since she was going to stand next to the Fairy Tail's goddesses. It was simply impossible to stand out when you had to compete with Erza, Mirajane, Lucy and Cana.
Sighing, she placed the hood on her head and left the room, being extra careful not to trip on any of her books.
"Heading to the party, Levy?" Erza's voice invaded her ears.
Levy turned to her and her breath was caught on her throat. As usual, Erza was absolutely gorgeous – this year dresses as a sexy vampire.
"Is he going to make it tonight?" she asked, smiling as she saw the Titania blush with her question.
"He wasn't sure. I hope he can, though."
"Well, let's go so you can keep an eye on his arrival." Even to her own ears that enthusiasm sounded fake.
"It's going to be okay, Levy. We'll all be with you, okay?"
Levy nodded.
"Thank you, Erza."
Erza smiled reassuringly to her and they headed to the party.
The McGarden was quick to find Jet and Droy as Erza joined Natsu, Lucy, Gray and Juvia. Levy held on to her two best friends as if her life depended on it. Needless to say the two guys were just too glad to have her all to them.
She committed to try and have some fun and, for some time, she really did achieve such goal.
"Yo, book worm." Gajeel saluted her at a food stand.
"Gajeel". She was surprised to see him there.
He wasn't, of course, wearing any costume.
"What happened to your watching dogs?" he asked with a smirk.
Shocked, Levy looked around, looking for them. Her heart started to beat faster and her blood froze on her veins. Where were them?
"I… I…"
Gajeel raised an eyebrow.
"What's wrong?"
"They were just behind me." Her whole body was shaking in fear.
"Hey, no need to freak out."
"But, they were with me just now. They were!"
"Yo, shrimp, calm down. So what, you just lost yourselves for a while."
"I can't afford that! I need to find them. I need to stay with them."
"What's going on?" he asked starting to worry about her.
Levy felt like crying.
"I don't like the dark." She whispered so quietly Gajeel was only able to hear her because of his Dragon Slayer sensitive hearing.
He would have laughed, hadn't he seen the horror on her delicate eyes. Gajeel groaned in frustration. He wasn't able to make her feel secure, like those two did. And why would he after everything he did to her?
"I'll find them for you. Stay here and don't move."
She nodded, bracing herself as she watched him disappear among the small crowd. She didn't want to stay alone. She wanted her friends back. Why had she let Gajeel go? She was so freaked out she wasn't even thinking straight. Who better than Gajeel to help her through the night's darkness?
She felt tears running down her cheeks and she started to sob lightly. Suddenly, with no warns whatsoever, the fire lamps went all out at the same time. The whole world was swallowed by black. The sky had been cloudy, so the stars and the moon were carefully hidden behind them.
All light had disappeared. And Levy was left alone in it. Her tears fell down with more intensity, and she just couldn't just stay there. She was scared and alone.
"Gajeel…" she called, not daring to raise her voice too much. "Gajeel!"
She tripped, but got up and kept going forward. Sooner or later she was bound to run into someone… right?
"Levy…" the voice was hushed and she felt the hairs on her arms stand up.
"Hello?"
"Levy…"
She saw a white light heading away from her and she started to follow it, seeking for that miraculous point of illumination. But her hopes didn't last as long as she thought they would. When she thought she had reached the light, she fell hard into the ground.
"Ouch."
She put her hands on the ground for support, but it was wet and she slipped again.
"What's this?" she asked, staring at her soaked hands but not managing to see them.
The substance on her hands was too thick to be any ordinary beverage. Fearing what she would find out, she got her nose closer and inhaled deeply.
It was blood.
The fire lamps were lit again and she sighed in relief. Too soon. The scene around her was so awful she vomited immediately. She had tripped on a corpse. A headless corpse. Droy headless corpse. A few feet away was Jet, reaped in several pieces.
Her desperate scream reverberated through the town.
Gajeel regretted leaving her as soon as the fire lamps died.
"Shit." He cursed.
The town was so full of people it was hard to find her scent among all the others.
"Titania!" he called when he caught Erza's scent right in front of him.
"Gajeel? I'm sorry, I can't see you."
"That's okay. I need help finding Levy. I left her before the blackout. She is alone."
"Fuck!"
Gajeel had never heard her curse. Never. He knew she was strong, but she was also very delicately mannered. It was a real shock to hear the word in her voice.
"Is something wrong?"
"Mystogan made it here." She said, using Jellal's Fairy Tail code name to not alarm any unwanted attention towards him. "He was tracking a beast. A mage that went berserk because of an old dark spell."
"Fuck." He repeated the word as he turned around running to the direction he had left Levy.
He needed to find her, and he needed to find her quickly. Miraculously, the lights went on again, and that was when he heard her scream.
He didn't remember running so fast in his entire life.
"Levy!"
He found her on the floor, with the hands full of blood and surrounded by her two best friends. Her two merciless slaughtered best friends.
He quickly kneeled beside her and let her hug him as she cried in his chest. Gajeel gently picked her up from the floor.
"I can't- I can't leave them." She sobbed.
"We're just going to find Titania. Her boyfriend knows what did this to them."
"It's my fault. I let them out of my sight, if I was paying attention I would have-"
"Don't you dare saying it was your fault."
He just let her cry some more as they made their way to where the rest of the guild was.
"Jet and Droy are… dead?" Lucy asked in a shaking voice.
"Yeah." Gajeel answered, wishing Levy wouldn't have to go through that.
However, the girl was so absorbed in her grief she didn't even get her face away from his chest.
"I'll track the beast." Jellal announced. "Would you help me, Natsu?"
"Are you kidding me?" the Fire Dragon Slayer was furious. "We'll make this bastard suffer. No one messes with our family."
"Gajeel, just take her home, okay?" Erza whispered as Natsu made his emotions filled speech. "I will take care of everything. We'll bury them tomorrow."
He only nodded, afraid he could break the little girl in his arms with any sudden move, and made his way to Fairy Hills.
"Don't leave me alone, please." She begged.
"I can't enter your dorm." He stated in frustration. He didn't want to leave her alone, but what could he do?
"Please, Gajeel, just don't leave me alone."
"You're staying at my place, then."
Levy didn't even take in the details of his raw apartment as he walked in holding her in his arms. She just felt… lifeless.
He helped her cleaning the blood on her hands and lent her one of his t-shirts, which swallowed her entirely.
"Their ghosts came for me." She said suddenly, staring at nowhere at all. "They called me and took me to their… to their…"
"Don't think of it."
He hugged her again and let her cry some more. He never intended for that to happen. He had sworn to himself he would look after her so no one would ever see her tears again. However, Gajeel never expected Jet and Dory to be murdered in such a crude way. Not even he, in his Phantom Lord's days, would have been capable of such atrocity.
"I'll be here for you." He told her, trying anything he thought might help her.
She just nodded and didn't let him go.
Levy begun hearing muffled voices before she had even opened her eyes. There were people talking in the living room, she realized as she slowly drifted in to consciousness.
"We couldn't find the thing." Erza's voice said. "It just disappeared. Not even Natsu and Wendy were able to get its scent."
She heard Gajeel's groan.
"I want to reap that thing into a thousand pieces."
"Honestly, we all want, Gajeel. Mystogan will keep tracking it and keep us posted."
"Okay. I really hope he finds it."
"Thank you, Gajeel. For taking care of her." Levy could almost hear her soft smile.
Gajeel mumbled something she wasn't able to hear.
"Master is taking care of everything. The funeral will be later, at three o'clock. Let her know, okay?"
Then she heard the door open and then close again, before Gajeel was back in his room.
"Did you hear everything?" he asked as he saw she was awake.
"I don't know if it was everything."
He nodded and sat beside her.
"How are you feeling?"
"I… don't know. Seems like… There's no life for me anymore."
Gajeel could honestly say he knew exactly what she meant. When Metallicana disappeared, he simply didn't know what to do with his life.
"You'll figure it in time."
"Thank you, Gajeel. I don't know what I would have done without you last night. It's… quite different to see you so caring, but… I liked it. It's a very nice side of yours I'm really glad I was able to meet."
He opened a small smile.
"You don't need to be strong now, Levy. Everyone knows you are, you can just be weak now."
She wasn't faking. She was just… anesthetized. For a little while, at least.
"You want me to come with you to the funeral?"
She just nodded.
"Sleep a little more, I'll wake you up when it's time."
Pulling the covers up, she closed her eyes, trying to banish the images from her mind. Whoever did that to them should pay. She would make sure that beast would pay for murdering her best friends, her brothers.
She was ready to cry all over again when she felt Gajeel's arms embracing her.
"I swear I'll protect you better from now on."
She wanted to smile, but tears came instead.
"Please." She whispered.
He brought her closer to him, smashing her between his chest and arms.
"Rest assure."
She nodded and closed her eyes again, wishing that being with the one she loved the most would be enough to erase that nightmare from her mind.