disclaimer: i do not own Fairy Tail.
author's note: mhm.
other: i kind of liked my previous prompt so i decided to link the two together, and maybe i'll add the third prompt onto it as well.
prompt: tattoo (ii)
02. onward to wonderland
by levy mcgardens
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{you're my wonderland}
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It was hard to fathom that Lucy's life had changed in a mere few hours.
One minute, she'd been running for her life, her bare feet padding against the shafts of grass as the monstrous Gatekeeper pursued her, hot on her heels. The next, she'd encountered a dashing stranger who'd not only saved her life, but had also offered to bring her along for the adventure of a lifetime. Sure, Lucy knew it was gospel that one shouldn't trust strangers, but was she one to listen to fate anyway?
Certainly not.
With these thoughts wandering about her mind, Lucy skipped along the trail, footsteps ethereal and blissful. Crisp autumn leaves bedded the forest path, once sun-baked and worn down over the years by wagon crossings and travelers on horseback. Slightly behind her, sauntering, Gray laid a hand on his bow and arrow, senses piqued. Sparing the girl a fond glance, he couldn't help but notice how every time she set a foot down, not a single leaf was cracked or bent.
How awesome the sight was, he couldn't explain with words.
Everywhere, the forest teemed with life. They had long since lost the Gatekeeper's trail, thank the heavens, and had now set off on a more easygoing pace.
Lucy, sensing Gray's watchful gaze, skipped to a halt and turned around, her tresses and the breezy folds of her dress scattering about her gracefully like ripples on a pond. Eyes wide, she ebulliently reached toward a nearby tree branch and held out her finger toward a resting bluebird, which promptly flitted to her hand.
Gray stopped in front of her with a half-smile and a raised brow. In response, the blonde daintily held the bird up for Gray to see in her cupped hands. Smiling, she hummed, "The forest is filled with life I never even dreamed of." She tickled the bluebird's feathered abdomen playfully.
"Mhm," Gray replied wordlessly. A ghost of a smile passed over his face as he continued watching her.
"Say," Lucy replaced the bird and clasped her hands behind her back in earnest, "how long will the trip take?" In the distance, the moon hung low above the horizon, bathing the forest and mountain about them in an otherworldly glow, and illuminated her hair so it looked like a halo.
"Ah," Gray's breath caught in his throat momentarily. "Probably a few more days, at most," he responded, feigning a cough to shield his burning cheeks.
"Is that so?" Lucy's expression made his heart skip a beat. Clapping vivaciously, she twirled around on the balls of her feet and skipped back on ahead, leaving the aroma of freshly picked flowers and strawberries in her wake.
Hiding a smirk, Gray followed.
"I guess we'll set up camp here for tonight." Gray scratched the back of his neck, eyeing the rocky slope they were on. He and Lucy had paused halfway up the mountain trail on a promontory overlooking the landscape below. Even at night, the forest seemed to emanate a bucolic warmth he had never known as a monster hunter.
The mountain trail wasn't the easiest path one could take, but it was relatively safer than the others, and Gray didn't want Lucy to fall to harm in any way.
Ever the effervescent, Lucy tiptoed precariously along the ledge beside him as they scaled the path. The brunet directed a concerned look her way, frowning in case she should fall, but continued on wordlessly. As they rounded the labyrinthine path, wallowing in comfortable silence, he slipped her a clandestine look. The blonde was striding along the edge, bathed in blissful insouciance, without a care in the world. Subconsciously, he released a deep sigh, pulling the blonde out of her reverie.
"Hm? Gray, are you alright?"
She swiveled her head around good-naturedly, only to miss a step. Before either of them could react, she let out an abrupt exclamation of surprise as she began tipping backwards. Eyes widening, Gray lunged forward and reached towards her. Instantly, he wrapped an arm around her waist and clasped her hand with his other tightly, internally panicking. Small debris plunged from where Lucy teetered to the lonesome paths and trees below.
"Lucy—!"
For a moment the two remained in that position, frozen, and time seemed to slow. A summery, patient breeze began to blow, billowing the folds of Lucy's gossamer dress about Gray's abdomen and brushing through her curtain of golden hair. Breathless, Gray could only stare at her in stunned silence when the evanescent moment passed and her expression shifted to that of joy.
Laughing, Lucy wrapped her two arms around Gray's neck, seemingly completely unaware that she was on the verge of possible death, tilting off the edge of a mountain slope by some-to-ninety degrees. Warmly, she smiled and brushed his bangs out of his forehead.
"I'm fine, Gray." The wind whistled past them. An even brighter smile. The blonde rested her forehead lightly against his. "Are you alright?"
Torn from his wandering musings, Gray's cheeks flushed red, and for once he was glad he was facing away from the moonlight. He carefully spun her around so she was back on her two feet, away from harm's grasp, but couldn't bring himself to unravel himself from her completely.
"Yeah," he said, dazed. Lucy's eyes twinkled like the stars hanging above them in the sky, and she unlatched herself from his grasp and clasped his hand instead. She skipped ahead of him to the flattened face of the cliff, and let go, pirouetting on the spot.
"So, you said we were supposed to camp here tonight?"
The embers of the hearth glowed a rustic red, illuminating the small perimeter about their temporary camping abode.
Crouching on a crisp wooden log with her knees drawn up to her chest, Lucy serenely spread her palms out in front of the flames, marveling almost incredulously at how fire didn't always exist to harm or kill, but could coexist also as a source of radiant, comforting warmth. Sitting a little ways away with his back to the flames, Gray occupied himself with sharpening his sword. Even so, he found himself sneaking a glance the blonde's way more often than he would have wished.
"Gray, Gray!" Lucy exclaimed with childish glee, prancing about the hearth. "I never knew fire could be so beautiful!"
Said person smirked and instead focused on the penumbra he cast upon his blade.
"Mhm," he grunted, and rolled up his sleeves to resume his work, when behind him Lucy gasped. Gray raised a brow, but only turned his head. "You alright?"
"Your—your arm!" She gestured to his demon slayer tattoo, settling beside him and laying running her fingers over the mark. Her eyes were wide with wonder, and as she glanced up at Gray it seemed that the efflorescence of flames seemed to bloom in her irises.
"Ah," Gray sheathed his sword and stood up; Lucy mimicked the action, still entranced by the intricate design inked on his arm, and seated herself on the ground beside him as he sauntered to the fireplace. "Yeah, this..." he trailed off, deep in thought. Lucy was ensnared by the nostalgic expression on his face, and her grip on his forearm tightened marginally.
"Will you tell me of its origin, Gray?" she prompted, her voice dulcet as always, and Gray replaced himself onto the ground beside her. The warm umber light cast dancing shadows upon their faces, and seemed to curl up and down his arm as he spoke.
"Alright." He brought a knee up to his chest and rested his elbow upon it, eyes glued to the fire. "You've heard of Zeref, right?"
"Briefly, I have," Lucy admitted.
"Well, uh, I don't know if I've told you this, but as one of the countless monster hunters out there, my job is to seek out and obliterate all and any of the paranormal. Fiore is one of the main lands in our world that holds the cleft between the monster world and the human world, but it's one of the weakest: that's why our continent is basically filled with monsters and humans alike.
"When I was a kid, one of Zeref's demons, Deliora, began ravaging villages and razing cities to the ground. He attacked the town I was living in and killed both of my parents, and almost me, but I was saved by an ice wizard called Ur. She took me in and I became her disciple, until I made a couple of damn rash decisions and tried to face Deliora head on with a spell Ur had hidden in her books, Iced Shell." Gray sucked in a breath, intently glaring at the fire.
He continued after a tense pause. "Instead, Ur took the brunt of it all for me and used it instead to defeat Deliora, encasing him in ice for eternity. I felt so useless, you know? I couldn't do anything and that cost me the lives of everyone dear to me. I wandered about, alone, for a while, until Fairy Tail reached out its hand and took me in. So when I joined, I knew I craved vengeance for all Deliora's kind: the monsters. That's how I became a monster hunter.
"A year ago, Fairy Tail was pitted against a demon alliance called the Baram Alliance, and we had to fight the most powerful guild, Tartarus. Apparently, one of those sick bastards was a necromancer who specialized in experiments and raising the dead, and one of his puppets was—was my father." Gray clenched his jaw at the memory, the images twisting and churning in the pit of his stomach.
"But my old man tried to infiltrate their guild under the guise of that, as a demon slayer. After we fought, and the necromancer was killed, he began to disappear... As his last gift, he gave me this tattoo, the mark and power of the demon slayer. It's become my ultimate objective, to fight and conquer the demon king, rumored to be called END," Gray finally trailed off, and exhaled deeply, like a weight had been lifted off his chest and alleviated the pressure of the burden.
A forlorn air settled over him, and it seemed as if his usual stoic mask had shed off, revealing instead the heartrending pain he shielded away from the world. Overcome with a rush of empathy, Lucy leaned forward on her knees towards him. Lifting a hand, her fingers fluttered against his cheek, brushing through his hair. Gray slowly, hesitantly rested his own palm over hers.
Finally, he turned to the blonde, whose face burned an undetectable red in the light of the campfire, and an affectionate smirk slipped onto his face. Lucy barely took into account how the heat from his cheeks emanated about her palm.
"I guess I'm feeling a lot better now." He broke the silence, and Lucy blinked.
The girl smiled. "It has a lot of meaning," she interjected, her other hand trailed over the tattoo. "It's breathtakingly beautiful, a last legacy left behind."
"I guess so," Gray agreed.
The dewy hope in her eyes lightened his heart as her expression shifted to one less somber. "Fairy Tail seems like a heaven on earth, the way you describe it." The fire had begun to wither out. Embers glowed a becoming auburn in the ashes. Above their heads, the phantasmagoric light of fireflies began paving their way about them.
The brunet ran a hand through his hair languidly and leaned back. "It kind of is," he muttered, still watching her as she looked over the edge of the plateau, admiring the world majestically spread out below them, and her fingers reached up as if to touch the fireflies. A few weaved between her fingers and blonde tresses.
Quietly, Gray laid a hand on the small of her back. "Get some sleep, alright? We have a long way to go tomorrow."
Stretching out her cupped hands and turning back to him, Lucy opened them to reveal a single firefly, illuminating her palm with its neon glow. It flitted about out of her hand, drifting by Gray's eyes in a desultory manner.
"Okay," she whispered in fatigue, eyes raw with affection and other unreadable emotions, and her eyelids fluttered shut right on the spot. With lissome posture, Lucy turned to lie on her side, rested her head against her arms, and curled in on herself, and was asleep in an instant.
For a while, Gray remained inert, listening to the soft rise and fall of her chest. Swiveling his head around, he watched her rest in tranquil slumber, her features free of any tire and wear, before gathering her up in his arms and setting her down a blanket he had spread out earlier in the evening. Stifling a fond smile, he brushed aside an errant strand of hair that had fallen across her face.
As he got up and made to rest near the hearth in solitude, a few feet away, Gray ruefully gazed at the moon, ever-brightening in the sky like a gem, and recalled their conversation.
"Fairy Tail seems like a heaven on earth, the way you describe it." Her voice reverberated through his brain.
"I guess so." But he was wrong, and he knew it.
Fairy Tail could be his safe haven, that was true, but Gray decided that in reality, she was his heaven on earth, his wonderland.
endnote: hope you enjoyed it! au's really make me happy. if anyone wishes, i can extend one of these into a whole new story.
