"Laxus?"
Evergreen stood in the doorway, her face holding the usual mixture of worry and annoyance she had not gotten rid of in the last few years. The female mage had taken Cana's disappearance not as good as most people would have guessed. While they had never been friends, they had had a certain kind of disbelieving respect for each other – something that had made them work together quite well in times of need.
"Evergreen," he said tiredly as he looked up from the book he had been reading.
She approached him slowly. "We … the Thundergod Tribe, we understand," she said. "We can relate to what you are going through right now. We are just asking you to join those who are still looking for her for a trip or two. The responsibility for the guild is heavy on your shoulders, yes, but … you deserve to ease your mind a little … maybe even find closure."
He sighed deeply. "Evergreen," he said. "Tell me, how am I supposed to find a woman who ran away from me … possibly out of fear to be called a traitor by her supposed friends?"
She shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "But … this does not sound like her at all."
He nodded. "Cana has many faces," he said slowly and sad yet stating a simple fact. "Her best days – judging for her magical abilities – are those when a snowstorm would seem warm compared to her … Erza knows a thing or two about picking only fights she can win … Mira knows about gaining strength from suppressed parts of her own personality … but Cana is the only one willed to sacrifice others to reach her goals."
"You have known this for a long time though, Laxus."
"And I thought that I could deal with it, yes," he admitted. "However, she won that gamble too. She always wins after all … even when I really, really tried to win…"
"I somehow have a hard time to follow you," Evergreen complained. "So, what did happen? Did she turn you down? Did she say that you were not her type or something like that?"
"Cana … she is, as she has proven many times, just as rational as some people here are emotional. She is a trickster, someone who always finds a way out of every mess … that explains why she has not left a message or something … she does not want to be found … at least not yet."
Evergreen frowned once more. "Self-imposed exile?" she asked slowly.
"Most likely, yes. We are alike in many aspects."
"In that case, I can understand why you rather don't go looking for her … there is something you did not mention, a secret you have kept all along … you know something no one else knows."
"Rather, I can imagine what might be her reason though I don't know for sure either … but … dealing with her for twelve years gave me a feeling for what she would do and what she would never even consider," he said. "Cana is a rational, nearly cold woman. But she isn't a bad one. She is a Fairy Tail mage and takes pride in it. If she disappeared, she is rather protecting someone else than herself … and I guess that she might be going through hell already – without us adding to her plight. We cannot pick all our fellow members battles, Ever."
"Did you consider … well, moving on?" she asked as she looked around in the messy room.
"You cannot move on from a vague dream," he replied. "Funnily, it never worked out properly for us … there was always something in our way … like, we had the option of doing something and then, something happened. Sometimes I feel like she cheated me by disappearing without a word but then I remember, she cheated herself just as much as me."
"It does sound rather strange … the idea that she might have been in love with you," Evergreen muttered, another frown appearing on her forehead.
"Well, that's rather insulting, don't you think so, Ever?"
She rolled her eyes. "For as long as I can remember sleepovers, Cana never voiced a statement that might have made it realistic for her to be a romantic – or even someone interested in love. She was rather saying that it was only a sham, something that always ended very painful," she said. "Mirajane, Erza – they are the true romantics. Juvia is solely focused on Fullbuster and Levy is too much of a realist to truly bother herself with thoughts about love."
"Not all of us can have a major crush on Elfman," he said, trying to ease the mood a little.
She glared at him from behind her glasses. "Well, if she was in love with you," she started, "then maybe she got afraid and left because of this. You are a lot like Gildarts after all … and Cana's mother died waiting for him to come home."
"Just … why?"
The question held so many different meanings that Cana was silent for a moment. It was not only an inquiry on her reasons for leaving. Wendy also demanded to know why she had been abandoned again by someone who had sworn to never abandon her. In a way, the card mage did feel guilty for telling no one that she was leaving, for claiming to leave for a job. She had planned this and for the first time in a very long time, her plan had not been disturbed.
For a very long moment, Cana was simply silent. She looked at the walls of the room like she saw them for the very first time before she sighed deeply. "The reason is connected to that job we screwed up ever so wonderfully," she said slowly. "Laxus and I, I mean. Technically, we succeeded, that's why you hear of this failure the first time. We solved the mystery, arrested the criminal and technically, there was nothing left for us to do – only did I complain that the reward was a little too low for our efforts. Laxus agreed. That was when it went downhill."
Wendy raised her eyebrow. "What did happen?" she asked softly.
"We decided to waste no money on the train and walk back instead – it was not that far and we were both completely uninjured. On our way, we passed a casino and he had the brilliant idea of gambling a little to increase our gain," she went on. "Here goes a piece of advice: Laxus sucks at poker. This is a card game. I use cards. It would have been my field of experience but no, he rather wanted to try it himself. And that was when everything went to hell. Laxus would not win at poker if it was the only way to save his life – and he is too proud to admit it." She snorted. "So if you ever need some jewels, challenge him. He sucks so badly that no one can lose to him."
"So, uh, he lost all the money you had gotten for the job?" Wendy asked.
"Exactly, yes," Cana confirmed, pouring tea into two cups. "So we were stuck away from the guild, without any money, tired and hungry … at midnight. And even Laxus was not crazy enough to suggest walking home at that time."
"But you had no money," the girl said with wide eyes. "So, what did you do?"
"I still had a little money – ten jewel or something like that. And unlike him, I have better nerves and can take risks a little better. So I played with the little money I still had and won enough cash for us to rent a room in an inn, get some food and a train ticket home."
The sky sorceress merely raised her eyebrows. She knew of Cana's gambling skill and when she said that she had started out with ten jewel, it was likely that she had won multiple thousand jewels. Card games came easy to her after all and she was more than calm enough to risk everything but the basics. Wendy had once seen how Cana had doubled a meek reward within three hours and to be honest, she had wondered whether the card mage had been cheating.
"I don't understand how this made you leave," Wendy admitted after a moment.
Cana sighed deeply, wrapping one strand of her black hair – obviously dyed in an attempt to be less likely to be recognised. "I majorly screwed up," she said, resting her chin on her palm. "I made a mistake I have sworn I would never make: I fell in love with the wrong person."
"There is a right and wrong in love? Are you serious?"
"If a relationship hurts, it is wrong. Love is not supposed to make you go sick with self-hatred and worry," the card mage said darkly. "I do remember how my mother faded away, slowly but steadily. It was like every day, another piece of her vanished. I hated to watch this … I hated how sorrow and sadness drained her until she finally died."
"And so you ran away because you are scared of ending the same way she ended?"
"Close enough," Cana said. "You have to know that once upon a time, I was a good friend of Laxus … but at some point, we started to drift apart. I hung out with Macao and Gray and he had his attitude change – and afterwards, I pretty much hated it to be in the same room as him because it was just painful to see what he became as time passed."
"So, uh, Laxus?"
The idea was rather strange as Wendy first considered it but then, it slowly started to make sense. Laxus and Cana were similar on terms of never sharing their ambitions openly. While Cana was one of the most popular members of the guild and while Laxus usually spoke about how much he wanted to be master one day, they never said what they truly thought about something. And the similarities did not end there. They were also the only ones but Master Makarov who could pull of the great spells of Fairy Tail.
"It was not my best decision but yes," Cana said. "That evening in the casino, after I won, we sat by the bar and had a few drinks. It was … nice, like in old times – before he started to think only about power. It was like meeting an old friend after a few years. Anyway, I am not the only one to make questionable decisions when drunk out of my mind."
Wendy wondered whether she really wanted to hear the entire story but she knew that there was no way of stopping Cana now because no matter how private the brunette was sometimes, she sometimes spilled out everything that burdened her to breathe easier again.
"I was … tired," the card mage mused. "Tired of being alone, tired of having no one who really listens to me when I have to rant about something … he listened. That was strange because, well, it was still Laxus and I didn't expect it from Sparky to stay and hear me rant."
She remembered just too well. Back in her childhood, back when they had been the only children in the guild, he had been her definition of home and that evening, it had felt like back then again. Maybe this had been the reason why she had not drunken as much as usual – maybe because she had wanted to remember everything without the alcohol sugar-coating everything. For a woman who permanently tried to outrun reality, she sometimes swore off alcohol at the strangest times. She had not wanted to be the resident drunk for once – or as he had called her after a few glasses of wine had been emptied – a whiskey princess. And even though she had not drunken much, at some point, her memory had simply surrendered her.
Cana and Laxus had been very much one and the same at this point, three years ago – they had both needed a friend, someone who would listen and who would not judge. She had always been good and reliable when it came to secrets so Laxus had – for this standards – opened up to her and ranted on and on for hours. They had talked about loneliness – too far away from home to care that usually, they did not speak much these days. They had talked about how frustrating it was to watch how everyone seemed to be dating someone else these days while they – the most seasoned members of their generation – still were alone.
She remembered that Laxus had smelled of a summer day at the beach that day and not like the usual mixture of thunderstorms and peppermint. She did not remember what music they had listened to as they had sat on the bed of the room her gambling skill had secured them. She also had no recollection of who had been the first to lean in for a kiss or who had first undone the other's top. She did not remember because it did not matter.
Wendy's face showed understanding as the young girl bit her lip. "So, uh, there were … consequences?" she asked, obviously rather uncomfortable with the topic.
"Yes," Cana nodded. "I screwed up – majorly. I was careless … for the first time in my life and of course, fate was there to punish me for that little mistake I made."
Wendy was speechless for a moment. She sat there and stared at the cup of tea in front of her. She had heard rumours in the guildhall, speculations on why Cana had left without a single word, without leaving a letter. Someone – she did no longer remember who – had suggested that she might have gotten pregnant and flown the premises to avoid a confrontation with Gildarts. No one had really believed in this theory, however, because this would have been a very un-Cana-like thing to do – especially since she frequently stood up to Gildarts anyway.
"A pregnancy is hard to conceal," she said after a moment before she looked up.
"Yes," Cana nodded. "That's exactly right."