Hey guys! This is the revamped version of my old fic, Days We Hold Precious. I'm working on getting the story rebooted- I have new ideas and have updated some things, since I first published it when I was maybe 14/15-ish? In any case, sorry for those of you who were sad that the old story was taken down, but I hope that this new and improved version will also please you! If you want something to entertain you while between updates, I recommend my 20s AU, Little Talks, or my ElfEver fic, What the Flowers Whispered. (I have a weakness for AUs...) Hopefully I'll get more content up soon!
We were walking side by side, just a single step away
I wish I could recall what had made us laugh at all
How I miss the magic of those ordinary days
- Amanda Lee, Medley
A fire.
That was what had taken them away from Freed. Hot, smothering fire, licking at him, leaving behind trails of flaming red on his flesh, its smoke filling his lungs and dusting his green hair with hot soot. A fire had ripped through the mansion when he was only nine, its causes unknown. It was most likely an accident, officials told a shaken, alone little boy.
An accident.
That was what had taken them away from Freed?
Something so simple as maybe a butler leaving on the stove had ripped his parents away, and all his servants, his family?
He remembered them when he closed his eyes. His mother, a petite, beautiful woman. Her dress was always long and always simple, beautiful, but not made for a woman of her rank. Freed buried his face in her beautiful blonde locks when she read to him. His father, a tall, sturdy man, always dressed in nice pants and a button-up shirt, his green hair trimmed short and neat. He could remember the language lessons given to him, the clap on the back he received from his father as he improved after each and every session.
The mansion was filled to the brim with books of every sort- cook books, language books, magic books. His parents were collectors of fine things, and books were amongst their favorite to buy off of traveling merchants. Freed spent most of his days in the library until his mother had to remind him it was time to eat, bathe, or have his lessons, but she tended to also become enraptured by whatever he was reading and would hide in there with him until his father came to look for them and also became promptly interested.
That's what they had been doing that morning, hiding from the staff in the library with armloads of books and pens and papers, researching everything and nothing to their heart's content. A maid had given up on ever getting them out and had left sandwiches and tea on the table, a huffy expression on her face, but also a look of fondness in her eyes.
It was hard to stay mad at the Justines. They were a charming people.
The day was so normal: The books, the laughter, the exasperated staff, the tall mansion. All of it was so normal, all of it he took for granted. He remembered every detail of the library, down to the way it smelled, like ink and dust. He remembered the way the hallways looked, lit up with chandeliers and set with long and foreign rugs. He remembered his own room, big and, surprise, filled with books and paper and whatever else he loved or wanted.
The smell of smoke in particular was strong in his memory. He'd fallen asleep while reading a book on the history of taming wyverns and was woken up by the uncomfortable scent in his nostrils. It was putrid, dank, and burned.
It was fire, and when he ran out into the hallway, the flames reached for him like demons crawling up from hell and forced him down the other hall, where more greeted him. It was hot, so painfully hot, and his skin was drying out at a rapid pace. It was peeling back and revealing burning red flesh that stung even more whenever a flame approached him.
The air was thick with smoke that hurt to breath in. It muffled the sounds of people throughout the estate who were wailing and screaming and begging for a god, any god at all, to save them. He heard lots of people as he stumbled through: the maid, the cook, the librarian, their gardener, but he did not hear his parents, and he did not know where to look for them or if he even could, the way things were going. His eyes were burning uncontrollably, he was running out of oxygen, and the flames were spreading more rapidly and verging on the last way he had to escape. Everywhere else was filled with flames. This hallways was the last one.
Freed had a choice: He could either head down the path he was on and look for his parents in the library, or he could escape.
It was an unbearable choice.
Time slowed as he reasoned with himself: If he hadn't heard or seen them at this point, they were probably outside. They were his parents- they couldn't die. That wasn't how it worked. They had to be outside. Yes, that was right- they'd gone for a walk in the gardens when he'd run off to his room to read. They would've escaped easily. Now it was up to him to get out on his own and find them.
But that wasn't what happened.
The army men pulled him up as soon as he came out of the mansion and collapsed; he hacked, coughed, and finally vomited up saliva and ash and they took him away, right to the edge of the courtyard, where he could completely see the red blaze and the building crumble into bits of brick and wood that smoldered and caught the ground on fire, too.
Freed didn't see his parents. He didn't see anyone familiar. There were only bustling people in army uniforms running around, yelling, and mages sending bursts of water towards the manor and extinguishing what they could. He didn't see his mother's long golden hair or his father's stiff and unyielding stature. At least, he didn't see them immediately.
He saw them later, saw their burned bodies as the army dragged them out of the mansion. They were unrecognizable. Chunks of flesh gone from their bright red arms. Their hair incinerated. Eyes, oh their eyes, melting out of their heads.
He didn't realize he was screaming until his throat was raw and broken.
An army advisor had covered his eyes with her hand, whispering in the sobbing boy's ear. Freed felt her wrap a warm, thick, white coat around him and taking his hand, then saying:
Would you like to come with me?
Freed barely muttered an affirmative, his throat still wrecked, and she took his hand and guided him away from the smoldering mansion.
Her name was Adilah, and she was the most incredible thing Freed had ever seen. Tall and dark, broad-shouldered and muscular, beautiful amber eyes, and oh so very smart. Her specialty in the army, he learned soon after going with her, was making runes. She was one of the generals in the rune mage unit of the imperial army.
Everyone loved Adilah. Her subordinates frequently came to her house in Crocus after work to give her reports and listen to her speak. Soon after Freed began living with her, they took a liking to him, too. They let him sit in and listen while they talked about strategy and mission reports and politics.
The squad was consisted of nine other people- four men and five other women. All of them were young for their stations- prodigies, the older knights called them. Even their superiors looked up to their skill and talent, and they were expected to go far. Freed had to say that he also admired them. They were strong, unyielding, and intelligent and everything he wanted to be.
Crocus was good. There were lots of people to talk to when he went shopping, good schools, a castle he could look at every night before he went to bed, and best of all, there was his foster mother with her books and her knights and sword.
After a few years had passed, his foster mother asked if he wanted to take a government exam for runes, seeing as he had a talent for the little spells she showed him. If he passed, he could easily become a Rune Knight like her when he reached the minimum age. His writing was precise, clean, and he had the mind of a professional. Her squad speculated that he would someday surpass them, particularly a tall man with slick purple hair- Carver. He always told Freed that one day he would surpass Adilah, and that he eagerly awaited the day it would happen.
Every day was studying. Even when Adilah was at work and he had the freedom to do whatever he wanted under no supervision, he studied. Long-handed runes, short-handed ones, everything from the most complex to simple. Her personal library was overflowing with books on word magic and he didn't stop until he'd memorized every last bit.
Runes were control. They were firm and strict and abided by the rules, just as everything should. They did what you wanted, only when you wanted it, and had so many uses: Destruction, protection, preservation, power. Freed loved them. He loved rules, and he loved control.
Adilah was a merciless teacher- she drilled him every second she was home, even while they cooked dinner together. She made worksheets and tests of every kind and brought him into work to watch recruits train, struggle, and sweat. They all said he would be a great rune knight, one of the best the country had ever seen, much like his foster mother herself.
He didn't shrivel and collapse under the expectations- he thrived under them.
The first exam on long-handed runes rolled around and, at almost-thirteen, he was the youngest in the exam hall. The older examiners looked at him with sneers and jabbed their thumbs at him when they thought he wasn't looking, and some even asked him where his mother was in taunting voices. The proctors didn't take him seriously and made a big show of handing him his test and asking him if all his pencils were sharpened. Freed desperately wanted to punch them all where it hurt.
His overwhelming victory was much more satisfying than their physical pain, however. The looks on their faces when the proctors, tight-jawed and sweating, announced that he had received the highest score in years, and by a landslide at that, was sweet and refreshing.
In the physical test, his runes were stronger than anyone else's and lasted the longest. The others muttered and glared at him, and some even swallowed their pride and asked him what his secret was, while the proctors whispered that he was a prodigy unseen since Adilah herself, and when they told her this when she came to pick him up, she ruffled his hair and laughed loudly.
The next exam was three months after his birthday. The physical portion of the short-handed test was a lot more consuming, the squad told him as they gathered for their weekly dinner at their house. While long-handed took longer to set up, you had the time to set them up properly and ensure that they were quality, but in short-handed runes, you had to write the spells as fast as possible. You had to contain staged explosions, contain raging beasts, amongst a many other things. This exam would take less bookwork and more experience.
Every day he practiced, drawing in the air with his finger as fast as possible, but the runes came out sloppy and fell apart easily without a firm stroke to guide them. But he still had three more months. He could do it. The squad would help him whenever they came after work, and sometimes he and Adilah would stay up late into the night catching fireflies in small rune containers as "practice."
The day came much too fast; Freed felt like he had a whole horde of bees trying to wiggle their way up his throat and out of his stomach. Short-hand was much harder than long-hand, despite all the practice he'd had. Still, all he had to do was pass, right? He'd already proven he was a prodigy in the last exam. Then again, that set up high expectations for him from both his fellow examinees and the proctors. Maybe they would laugh at him if he got a low score.
A mission came in the morning of the exam- Adilah dropped him off on the steps of the exam building, gave him a tight hug and a kiss on the forehead, and was off after telling him she'd be there when he got out at the end of the day and they would do something special. She vanished into the bustling Crocus crowd, gone into the crowds of people carrying flowers and playing music and shopping. He watched until the very tip of her knight's coat and sword scabbard were gone, turned on his heel, and walked stiffly up the stairs and into the building.
He almost lost his eyebrows when he had to contain an explosion caused by a fire mage, and the tiger he had to restrain almost took a chunk out of his hand. His runes held strong, however, and he held his own against whatever was thrown against him. He thought about Adilah- had she been so nervous in her exams? Or had she, as a prodigy, had such great confidence that nothing phased her?
Well, he was a prodigy, too.
The scores came back at the end of the day when every test-taker was sweaty, covered in dirt, and sleeping in the hallways. A sorry few did not pass the examination at all, while some breathed heavy-sighs of relief at their just-passing scores. Freed swallowed and crossed his fingers when they began to read of the top three. There was a Dana Fox with the third-highest score, a Mako Yukimaru with the second, and so-!
Freed had passed with flying colors. The people cheered and shook him around in excitement until even his bones hurt, and all he could think about was how Adilah was waiting outside and would be ecstatic to hear that every second of hard work had paid off.
But she wasn't outside waiting for him, so he sat down on the steps, holding his certification, and waited for her. Her mission was going on for a really long time for something that was just in the forests outside of the capital.
He waited fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, forty, fifty, an hour, and then an hour-and-a-half, and that's when he started to worry. When he saw one of the Council's large lizard henchmen heading towards his direction, he convinced himself that they were going to go take a left, but when they didn't, he assured himself that certainly they were just heading for the exam building, and then his heart stopped when the lizard stopped in front of him and looked down at him with a quizzical and almost sad look.
Adilah was not going to come home.
The mission had been a setup, created by a member of her squad, nonetheless. Carver. It had been him, the Carver who ate at his house once a week, the Carver who helped him with his studying, the man who ruffled his hair and laughed at everyone's jokes. He had stabbed her in the back, literally and metaphorically, and left the others to a dark guild to die.
They never found him, but they found the bodies of the other nine, freshly dead and bleeding with their swords and knives still clutched firmly in their hands up until the end. They brought Freed back her shining white coat, it's only blemish the thin rip where the blade had gone in and the smears of blood around it.
The prospect of becoming a Rune Knight had soured. He put away his certifications somewhere deep into his bags when he packed them up. He refused to stay in the home where his mother's murderer had walked. Not two, but three parents he had lost, and it stung just as bad as when the first two had left him.
He made way for a guild in a town only a week away, if he went on foot. Fairy Tail was what it was called. He remembered Adilah going on about it, how she thought the guild was outstanding, but that rowdy new members were joining it recently and creating trouble for the Council. It seemed like a good option. The Master there accepted the solemn boy readily, even picked out some jobs that would suit him upon seeing the credentials from the Council that he presented upon arriving. They were very kind there, and their library had so many books that he could potentially spend days on end sitting in an arm chair and not leaving the room.
His daily routine was boring. The sleepy town of Magnolia was nothing like Crocus. You woke up, went to the guild, checked for work, read, and then went to bed. He longed for those Crocus days where they played games and studied together and laughed. Those days were starting to feel like a daydream, one that taught him that people weren't trustworthy. They stabbed each other in the back when presented the opportunity. Did they even need a reason? Eventually his only companions were his books.
Humans became good again the day he met him.