I guess you all already know all about Rusty Rose. Defeated during the Tenrou invasion, disappeared for a while, got the shit scared out of him by Kyouka during that whole Tartarus mess, then the wits scared out of him by Oracion Seis and Jellal. Now-a-days, you may think of him as a drunk. A crazy old man with only nothing left to live for. Trampled by taxes, laughed at by the youth, and a really, really shit dad.
To fill in the gaps, Rusty Rose was shattered. After the confrontation with Jellal and Oracion Seis, he managed to find his way to a dead beat town just south of nowhere and just east of misery. Known for its forestry business, Remu is a town for those who have nothing else to live for. Rusty Rose fell in love with another lass almost as broken as he, and managed to make a sparse living with her. A small town girl, she couldn't handle his magic. He gave it up, valuing their love over what he saw as the cause for the hammer that shattered him. He worked as a maintenance man, using his imagination to fix things in the most unlikely way possible. He got a decent pay, not as much as he could've been earning, but pretty good for the town he was in. Focussing on his love, anything was worth the sacrifice to keep her with him. And later, he gained another reason to live; a child. Me.
"Sounds great!" You might say. "A job, a wife, a home, many have done worse with their life," and it was. Rusty Rose had a home; he worked off the mortgage; had a budding family; made some friends as hopeless as him; he could finally forget and forgive his past sins. But when Alvaraz invaded Ishgar, Zeref's army trampled the humble town of Remu. I was barely a year old and would have certainly perished, but I got lucky. Rusty Rose had been taking me for a walk, exploring the closest forest when it happened. Men were shot dead in front of their most cherished. Women and children were raped and enslaved. By the time we got back they were dining on the villages' food, lounging on the furniture and laughing at the corpses of everyone Rusty Rose had come to know.
I think you can guess what happened next. Rusty Rose went crazy. The glue beginning to piece his fragments back together melted in the fires of his fury. The arc of embodiment erupted, spewing hatred at his foes. The bodies of the villagers, too, caught fire and the whole town was soon just smoke. Those bastards burned for what they did to my mother. The arc of embodiment protected both my father and I from the physical flames, but as what he had come to accept and love turned into a charred memory tarnished by the crime he committed, Rusty Rose too was mere ashes compared to his original form.
The arc of embodiment became useless to him. He had no strength or imagination to fuel the magic. Moving to a just as shitty town that had hidden from Zeref's army, he palmed me off to anyone willing and nurtured his sorrows in alcohol. This village didn't like magic too much. There was a total count of one mage, who ran the library and could make words in a book form images. He told great stories, but that was the total extent of his magic. As soon as my magic appeared, the family housing me gave up. Already a difficult child, my arc of embodiment pushed them past their breaking point. Being the only other in the village with working magic, the librarian took me in. His limited knowledge of magic taught me a semblance of control, and books did the rest. I would venture out into the forest that saved my life and practice until I could barely crawl back. I inhaled any knowledge of magic, forced my life story from the drunken Rusty Rose and interrogated the rare visitors about the world outside my village.
At the age of twelve I lost control. I got angry. I'm not going to talk about it, but I think you can guess what happened. I ran out of the village, stumbled my way to a train station and swore to never use my magic again.