Notes
For starters I'd like to thank my reviewers. I completely, utterly appreciate the fact that you took the time to spur me onward with this. Secondly, the next few chapters are going to be it for Between and will tie it into the Manga. My next Gajeel and Levy piece is going to cut out some of the latest in the manga and will be, I'm hoping anyway, a much longer single story arc.
This piece is going to take some liberties with what we currently know in the official story, so please brave with me.
Where'sTheFood - I honestly have no words but THANK YOU! Even though this little drabble fest is ending with the next few chapters I've another story in the works. Also GaLe. And will fall in the realms of AU but I was always going to catch up to manga eventually.
lilphoenixfeather - who's to say that when he's sober he wouldn't make a GREAT ballerina? lol thank you for the continuous support in this little endeavour of mine and much hugs. I'm happy you got a kick out of it.
deblovesdragon - This is the final few chapters I'm afraid for Between but I'm still going to continue writing. I think it'll take a long time for Gajeel and Levy to finally burn their way out of my blood at this rate.
iTanasha91 - If you liked this hopefully you'll like the next one coming. :)
Days like this were meant to be miserable. There should have been rain, wind. The sky should have been split in the fucking heavens with lightning; the ground shaken with thunder. The very earth beneath Gajeel's feet should have wept with the grief and the pain and the sheer fucking disbelief they were all feeling. But it didn't. For a late September the weather was unnaturally warm. Especially when the two weeks previous had been so cold. It just didn't feel right for it to be as welcoming as it was outdoors. There was something almost cruel about the beams of warm sunshine bathing the funeral procession. This was nothing to be happy about. This was a fucking tragedy. In more ways than one. Gajeel could feel the rage coiling in his stomach like a snake. He felt utterly venomous.
This was the fifth funeral in almost the same number of weeks that the Dragon Slayer had had to attend and in each instance the number of casualties increasing along with the utter gobsmacking level of destruction. Five ceremonies. Five brigades. Five Captains. Five incredible mages. And five jobs without a single survivor to report back. The more Gajeel heard about the circumstances of each disastrous mission the more he started wondering if there wasn't something more to it all. For fuck sake, they pulled Captain Morrow off an assignment to send him after a pirate when everyone and their uncle had heard stories about Giles' fear of the water. It was no secret and a running joke among his men that you could talk him into a pit of monsters with a blunt wooden stick and he'd clamber out victorious but good luck getting him into a bath. And they put him on a boat? They pulled him off another job, gave him no information about what he was going to be facing, and sent the guy with night terrors about drowning after a fucking pirate on a goddamn fucking boat. Gajeel had no doubt that there was more to it than that. The man wasn't exactly one to let his personal fears hinder him but it was almost like someone had purposefully set him for failure. He knew nothing about fighting at sea. It would be the same logic as sending Gajeel. It read like some sort of prank and it was all becoming more and more difficult to swallow. Someone cracked a joke last week about ranking members of the Rune Knights and Council being assassinated and after today Gajeel couldn't help but consider the farfetched idea that, yeah, maybe they fucking were. They were having a laugh with this, surely?
The more he thought about it the more it started making sense. And he couldn't even begin to explain in words how much that very concept worried him, because if it were true, if that was in fact the case it would mean that one or more of Fiore's ten wizard saints, the ten in fact that now comprised the wizarding council and had been assigning these very missions, was systematically killing their most powerful Knights.
That would also mean to include himself, Levy and Lily, sooner or later. He raked his nails over the back of his other hand as the phantom sensation of burning, stung him. Maybe they'd already tried. The thought didn't give him any single shred of comfort. They were going to need to tread carefully on this one. Gajeel felt a pang at the thought. Since Fairy Tail disbanded he'd found it hard to fill the hole it left in his life. For all he used to complain about them they eventually became the family he couldn't remember needing but quickly couldn't live without. With Levy and Lily and his current job he was beginning to feel like it might be possible to fill the void it left, someday. But he'd never felt like he had to watch his back from his guildmates. Makarov was a secretive old geezer but he would have literally given his right hand to spare any of them any amount of pain. As foreign a concept as it was to Gajeel, he was a figurative father to them all.
Levy was taking the funeral with more difficulty than most. Captain Giles Morrow had become a close friend to her over the last number of months. Both mages had a fondness for books and the quiet, studious demeanour of an elderly librarian in a monastery while they read. They frequently exchanged reading material and Gajeel had been introduced to the man himself through her; an older greying knight with a ruthless sword hand, a patient ear and thirst for knowledge. Levy had cried herself to sleep the day they broke it to the divisions. A notice coolly pinned on a board in the main hall. No fanfare. No more public displays of solidarity and grief. Twenty men who gave their lives to their jobs and the only record of them would be a closed file and a quiet letter. It wasn't right. Gajeel hadn't known how to comfort her. It had never been his strongest attribute. He did as he'd always done and simply been there. A physical rock for her to cling to. Knowing her strength he knew she would heal eventually, and until then he would do whatever it took to make it easier to bear. He knew her well enough to know that once the grief began to pass she would start coming to the same conclusions as him. That was if she hadn't already and was quietly sitting on her thoughts, carefully masked behind the pain of their friend's passing.
Lily wasn't due back for another week and Gajeel was counting down the days because he knew he needed the Exceed's advice on this.
Levy stood stoically at his side, her shoulders brushing his arms and a cold sliver of dread that he hadn't felt since facing Tartaros crept up his spine, held at bay only by the warmth of her fingers as they entwined in his. He knew this feeling well. He knew that the little world they'd been building was about to crumble down around them and there was nothing they could do about it.
