Day one - Magic

It was strange, she supposed, not being able to see that brat anymore. No longer feeling the tug on her Magic – on her whole being – that desperate tugging need, one that had driven the woman up the wall in insanity for millennia. It was gone. It was all gone now. And it was her own fault. "But I don't care." Those were the words she tried to console herself with every time she caught herself stuck in semi-depressive dream states, thinking on the times she had and the times she could never have.

She wouldn't lie to herself; she knew that wouldn't – couldn't – help.

She was proud, more so than she would every find herself admitting to. To see the brat wielding her Magic proudly, protecting all that was precious to the girl with strength that no one had known the girl had – it was a relief, she thought, to see the girl finally using some of the gifts that were granted by the girl's mother.

But she missed it. She knew she would. She loved the girl deeper than any other Master before, it was the heart and grit the girl had shown her over the years and the cowering respect she had been granted. She was allowed free domain over a world that had been lost to her so many, many years before.

But the silence was heavy, painful. There was no faint laughter in her ears, no glitter passing her eyes. No prayers, nor contemplative thoughts, passing through her soul from the girl who had thought her a mother. It rested in her soul, a lead weight and pitch thick, oozing pain and greed and want through her being as she walked – walked – aimlessly about. That was one thing she had not accounted to her Magic – her tail. That beautiful, glistening, sapphire tail she had been so proud of. There were legs in place of them, sickly and tan. She hated them. She wanted her tail.

She felt like a fish out of water.

She was not what she used to be. She had to walk places she had once only sped too; she sulked instead of gracefully slumping; she tired far too easy; too many things reminded her of death. She had lost her glory when she had lost her Magic – she was granted permission to stay only because of the position her Magic had previously given her. She no longer had bountiful, bouncing hair but dull, flat, lifeless hair that wisped about her limblessly. It brought her to tears on occasion, and sometimes she was alone with it all.

Though in times like that her boyfriend – boyfriend – would come to comfort her, weaving braids into her hair with absent hands, and a mouth that told her tales of his adventures with the girl. She couldn't be jealous; there was nothing there for her anymore. When he was not there for her, she would wait by the portal herself, on her own because no one wanted to be near the barren woman, and watched. Just watched.

She looked for signs, she knew what the other told her (only when she hunted them down) but she couldn't believe it to be true about the girl. She had to see for herself that the girl was still alive, that she was coping. Without her Magic she couldn't do that, it was hard for her to do anything but in her memories she had done such a good job at doing many different things – things she had never thought she would every have to do in her life.

It had hurt when her leader had taken her Magic from her, it had hurt when the brat had agreed to give her up. A twisting feeling inside her gut that left welts on her stomach, and rashes on her arms, and a pain in her heart that never left. Though, the stealing of her Magic had been nothing like the guilt and anger that had ridden the wave of her memories.

She had been so angry when she had heard that she would be passed on without a second thought, without a proper goodbye. Being passed on to some young, selfish brat. And oh God, that little girl had been painful ("You smell like Aed's fish."). She had looked so much like her mother that it hurt the desolate woman to think about it sometimes. It was her fault; it was her own fault for letting the mother die and she could not blame that on anyone else.

She would remember raising the child, all the ins and outs she had had to learn on her own – asking a maid for help at times because there was no way she would be able to do such a thing on her own. She had wished her boyfriend could have been with her at the time, but he had another Mistress (that cretin) who later forfeited him to the brat. She resented that time, but less so as she found herself remembering the times when the girl had been in awe ("It's so pretty! Let me touch it!") of her Magic.

Then there were the bath times – times when her Magic had been utilised for the entertainment of the small girl. The brat had clung to her naked, and cried and called her mother. The delicate, grubby hands clinging tight enough to have loosened some of her scales which the girl had tried to stick back on with soap – just like she had seen the flying boy ("Do you think he'd want to be my friend, mama?") do in the Lacrima film.

It had been a pain to raise the child away from her father; the girl had so much wanted to makes cakes just like the mother had always told her they would ("You're not supposed to break promises!"). It had been so hard to stick in the kitchen that long by her own power – because that brat was so weak – but she had lived through it rather than hurting the mother's child.

The countless times she had teased the girl ("My boyfriend!") about the little things. Complaining about how her Magic waned when the brat was tired ("Oh~ You getting old or somethin'?"). She really shouldn't have done it, but it made her feel better at the time because of the bitter nature of her Magic.

She had left her to face an executioner by herself, not really caring about what would happen to her even though the nature of the element at the time had been the core of her Magic. She had decided to let the girl face the man on her own, even when all hope and desperate pleas were pierced through her heart by commanding Magic. It was awful, painful but she had done it to her before. The girl had pulled through.

But at what cost?

Maybe it was spite for the things she had been forced to do over the years, such as pretending to be a fountain in a park, for the sake of another brat, one who sounded a lot like the girl when she had been younger ("Pretty mermaid!"). But those days were gone now, the brat was safer that she was gone – that she had forced the brat to destroy her.

She couldn't do any of that now.

Yes, Aquarius was useless – but she would remember her good times.

And sometimes she would see Lucy's face, smiling at something beyond the portal gates.

And she would think of her time with Layla, and feel her heart healing after her millennia of torture.

"No. I don't care at all."