A/N: Who asked me for angst? God, one of these days I'll actually write down the requests I get instead of just telling myself, "Oh, I'll remember who it is when I go to write the chapter." One day... Instead, I have to scour through messages on FFnet to find the request I'm looking for. If you've sent me a request in the past and I haven't done it yet, could you send me a message and request it again? I'm going to create a spreadsheet for them so I don't lose any. Right now, all of my requests are scattered between Google Drive, FFnet, and my social media profiles. I'm a slacker.

Also, there's a subtle (not so subtle) hint in this to another story on this site that you guys should really check out, if you haven't already. It's by a wonderful author, apriiil (raijindork on tumblr). You'll have to check out her page to find the story that's referenced in this one, but I can assure you, it's definitely worth the read.

So, samuelbryant17, here's the romantic GaLu angst you asked for. I hope it's angsty enough!

Note: This was originally posted as chapter 8, but FFnet decided to screw up and not send out email notifications to my readers. I sincerely apologize to anyone who didn't get the update, but that's why I decided to put a superfluous page for chapter 8, and then make this into chapter 9, that way I know the email will get sent out. Sorry for the wait as well. It took forever for FFnet to sort out its issues. Luckily, I have a bunch of shit written now since I couldn't post anything.


Snowflake
Gajeel x Lucy
Rated T


He loved her and he wasn't supposed to. Gajeel supposed that was how a lot of relationships went. Because he saw her every single day. And she saw him. They interacted. She told him things about herself and her life that he was positive no one else knew.

But he wasn't supposed to love her. Lucy saw him but she didn't know him, not the way he knew her. Except it didn't matter to Gajeel. She was with him every time his sword slashed through a beast. Every point of experience that brought him closer to the next level of skills.

She'd created him.

Gajeel knew that he was just a bundle of coding and tweaked pixels inside of her computer, just a character in this online fantasy game she loved to play. He knew that he wasn't supposed to be like this. He wasn't supposed to have a mind of his own. He wasn't supposed to be aware of the coded world around him, or able to look out and see the beautiful blonde woman staring down at him.

He wasn't supposed to love her.

There was no one for him to talk to about it though. The other characters in this game were code, like himself, but that's all they were. No matter how often he'd tried to leave the character selection screen, Gajeel couldn't. Even when Lucy went away from the keyboard and left him dancing in the middle of a tavern, the others around him cycled through their set phrases. He watched characters come, controlled by their own players, and recognized when they were in chat with someone.

Once, a code-cluster named Gildarts had been free from his creator, waiting for the person to return. Gajeel had tried and tried to get some sort of reaction from Gildarts between during the loops in his dance emote, but there was nothing. This redhaired man wearing a fur cloak, towering over him and more intimidating by the gargantuan battle axe strapped to his back, was just well-formed binary. He didn't have a mind like Gajeel.

No one in the game did.


Months after his creation, he heard her on the phone. Lucy tended to leave the character selection screen on when she wasn't playing. It meant that he could simply stand in one place and watch her with ease while she was in her bedroom. She sat down at the computer and he felt the tickle of the cursor as it grabbed his hand and gave him a slow spin on his selection pedestal.

"It's the coolest game ever, Levy," she said. "I've got a level forty warrior with some of the best armor in the game."

Gajeel had to admit, he did like this new armor she'd gotten on that quest they spent an hour working through. The boss had been tough, and he'd been positive quite a few times that he was going to die. But Lucy just kept pushing forward, using the quickbar she'd set up to have him throw a few knives to stun the boss, then drink a couple potions to heal. They'd made it through what should have been a party quest. And they'd done it solo.

"It's got amazing stats," Lucy said to her friend on the phone. "It cuts the cooldown rate for abilities by seventy percent. I know, right? It's amazing!"

He loved listening to her gush about the game. About the work she put into him. She was so proud of him and what he'd accomplished.

"You should run with me sometime," Lucy said. "Yeah, I know you're not all that into gaming, but I think you'll like it."

Gajeel didn't like that though. He didn't want to spend his time with some other person and their binary character with no brain. Lucy had done it before, and he'd spent two whole weeks helping some newb level up only for the player to quit when their free trial ran out. All that time, running quests that he could clear in a matter of minutes, waiting for them to read through the NPC prompts and choose their gear while Lucy talked them through which ones to choose and what to avoid based on their class. All of it had been for nothing.

"It's called Fairies of Fiore."

He thought the name of the game was weird. Then again, maybe that was because he wasn't a fairy. All the player characters he'd seen running around were fairies, able to fly and so much more. But Lucy had made him something else entirely. She'd been one of the few that had the ability to choose this race and class when she'd beta tested the game, and he'd been so thankful that she'd kept playing and he'd gotten transferred over to the real game once it was released. He didn't lose her.

But instead of being a fairy, Gajeel was a rare Dragon Slayer. A humanoid race infused with the power of ancient dragons. Instead of glittery magic or sorcery, he was able to roar and slash and claw at his foes with shards of metal for his ability bar. He'd only met one other Dragon Slayer during their questing, a blond named Laxus whose creator always used his Lightning Slayer abilities as a last resort.

"Yeah, I'll help you make your character," she laughed. "Bring your laptop over. I'll show you Gajeel."

She said his name. He loved when she said his name. It meant she thought of him as something more than code. Maybe. That's how it felt anyway.

"Oh my god, Levy," Lucy said, grinning. "Gajeel's a total badass. He's got this really cool roar ability that deals bleed damage on top of cutting enemy movement in half. It's metal! I know! Super awesome!"

She was talking about him! Gajeel paused when the cursor let go of his hand, and he hid a smile when she clicked on his name and logged in. He appeared in the town square and his legs started moving at a brisk trot. From her conversation, they were going shopping for some low-level potions that she hadn't needed for a long time.

Apparently this Levy girl was going to download and patch the game and start her free trial.


She never gave up. He really loved that about her. Even when she started struggling in her university classes because she spent more time with him than on her homework, she never left the game. She never left him.

He didn't even care that Lucy liked dressing him up in a ridiculous bunny singlet that he was sure the game developers had laughed their asses over. He ran whole raids in that skimpy little costume cosmetic that was probably meant for female characters, but available for males as well. But it made her smile to see him wearing it, so he accepted it.

He wished he could be with her in more than just this game though. Gajeel wished he could talk to her, climb through the screen and kiss her. She was so beautiful, he sometimes had a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that she hadn't been created by algorithms. She was a real human. No one had spent hours tweaking her cheek bones. those perfectly pouty lips, or her captivating honey eyes. She was just born with perfection under her skin.

He knew something was wrong when her bedroom disappeared from his sight. She was out getting drinks with Levy - the woman who made a green-haired Fairy that focused more on crafting and lore than actual fights - but had left the character selection screen on, as usual.

The computer he appeared on was better than Lucy's. It ran faster than hers. Then again, Gajeel knew she'd been meaning to get an upgrade. She was just waiting for the newest event to be finished so she didn't miss out on anything while she was formatting and downloading the game.

Gajeel figured maybe she was on someone else's computer, showing him off again. She'd done that a few times over the past year since the game's release.

But it wasn't Lucy on the other side of the screen. It was a young man with a pimply face. He was shirtless and sitting in his boxers and so fucking skinny that he looked as though he was going to die from dehydration.

"Dude, this guy is decked the fuck out! Oh my god, look at his gear! You can't… you can't even get this now!"

A fucking hacker. Lucy had gotten her account hacked. Gajeel had heard her talking about it to her boyfriend, how she was worried that someone might try to hack her account since she was one of the few beta testers that was still playing. Gajeel had gear that few in the game could get. But when he focused, he recognized the IP address he was connected to. This was someone who had run a raid with them a few weeks prior. He'd played a low-level healer who had been begging people to help him get through the raid for the end rewards.

Lucy had helped this guy get through it, along with four other people. He hadn't done a whole lot of anything aside from getting killed and having to respawn over and over, while Lucy and Gajeel and the others in the group tore through the Alvarez Army.

"Fuck this dude," the man said. He sneered at the screen, at Gajeel and his high level gear. "I didn't get into the beta, but this asshole did? He's ruining the game for everyone."

That was bullshit. Lucy played for the fun of it. She wasn't ruining the game.

"Well, if I can't have this shit then he can't either."

That wasn't good. Gajeel felt the cursor moving to select him. Lucy only had the one character. She didn't need anyone else, and he wasn't going to fail her. Gajeel didn't care if all of their money was taken. They could get more of it easily. But hackers tended to go after gear. Or they deleted characters and left low-level pieces of shit behind.

He wasn't going to let this asshole ruin all the hard work they'd put into Fairies of Fiore. He wasn't going to let Lucy down. He definitely wasn't going to watch her cry as she logged in to find him wearing nothing but the standard undergarments the developers created.

For the first time, Gajeel acted on his own.

He froze the cursor before it could move to select him and log in. He thought he was successful until the man hit enter on his keyboard and subverted his attempt to stop the intrusion.

Gajeel felt himself being whisked from the character screen into the home he and Lucy had bought a month prior. They were still working on upgrading it. She'd been taking him on quest after quest to get materials to build more onto the house. She wanted to turn it into a castle, but that took time. They were so close! He couldn't let her lose this. After all the long hours they'd spent doing those stupid little quests, she would be devastated. It might even make her stop playing altogether, and he couldn't have that. Gajeel needed her to keep playing.

He felt the screen load and did the only thing he could think to do. With his bunny cosmetic outfit on, he began the dance emote all on his own. The man on the other side of the computer snorted and tried to get to his inventory, but there was no fucking way he was letting it happen. Every time he hit the I button, Gajeel closed it down. Every hotkey the asshole pressed, Gajeel worked against.

It was exhausting, trying to do this himself. Lucy always did this for him. She gave him commands and he followed easily because of his programming. But fighting that programming? Stopping the man from destroying her work? It was like ripping the code from his gut and smearing it on the walls.

It went on for hours. Maybe for days. By the end, Gajeel couldn't be sure just how long he'd been fighting against the urge to let it happen, to give up. But Lucy had made him to be a fighter. She'd given him a backstory and attributes that made up his character.

He was the son of a great Iron dragon, taught his Dragon Slayer magic to rid the world of evil. He was stubborn and strong. He always fought for the little guy, the underdog. She'd made him the perfect man in her eyes, everything she wanted a warrior to be. And damnit, he was a fucking warrior!

No matter how much his programming rebelled against his own decisions, no matter how painful it was to force himself to ignore the commands coming from the hacker's keyboard and mouse, Gajeel refused to give up. This was for Lucy. For her, he'd tear this whole game to shreds.

The hacker tried to log out, but Gajeel didn't let him. He just kept dancing in his bunny costume.

For her, he'd find a way to get a real body and kiss her and love her, the way he wanted. Only if she asked it of him.

For Lucy, he would never give in to this other player. He couldn't. He couldn't lose her.

Gajeel collapsed when the internet connection faltered and he was whisked away from the foreign computer. He knew it took no time at all in the real world for his code to transfer to a different machine, but for him it was like a whole day passed. He rested and panted on the floor of his and Lucy's home, un-equipping the bunny costume so he could be more comfortable in his thick armor.

He could hear his epaulets adorned with dragon horns creaking as his body trembled. But he'd done it. He was sure he'd succeeded.

A quick check of their inventory in his mind showed that everything was still there, untouched. He didn't need to run down to the closest banker in town to know that nothing had been taken. Gajeel had made sure the hacker couldn't get to the bank.

And he knew for a fact that another character wasn't being made. Lucy had made a couple spare characters, and Gajeel knew the feeling of her working on another set of code in their little world. She always deleted them. Her reasoning was sound, in his opinion. She preferred her Dragon Slayer.

He was her Dragon Slayer.

Another IP address pinged in the air and rippled across his body, gentle as it pulled him to his feet. Gajeel swiped his hands across his face, and closed his eyes to gather his bearings. When they opened again, he was on the character select pedestal once more.

And there she was on the other side of the screen, wearing her favorite red tank top with her hair hanging loose around her shoulders. Her eyes were red and puffy, and even though he could still see tears streaming down her cheeks, she was so much more beautiful to him right then.

He was back with her. Lucy was there, looking at him, smiling so wide that his ones and zeroes wobbled just a little.

"You're still here, Gajeel," she sniffled. "Thank god you're still here!"

Of course he was here. He would always be here for her. Gajeel just wished he could tell her that.

"Lucy?" Gajeel wanted to hate the soft male voice that drifted in from somewhere off the screen. But that asshole made Lucy smile. She was happy with him.

"Macbeth," she laughed. Her fingers gently touched the screen and for the first time, Gajeel felt her touch. "Macbeth, he's still here."

"Your character?"

"Gajeel," she said, nodding. "I got hacked and… But he's still here!"

Gajeel couldn't move from his spot. He couldn't turn away, even when Lucy shifted in her seat and hugged her boyfriend. He couldn't look anywhere but at the woman he loved as Macbeth's lipstick smudged across her lips when they kissed. And even though part of him wished he could just put the computer to sleep when she grabbed Macbeth's hand and led him to the bed, Gajeel couldn't. He didn't know if he was even capable of it, but he decided that he much preferred watching Macbeth strip her beautiful body down and lay her on the bed and take her so fucking gently. He wanted to be here with Lucy, not in the blackness that was her sleeping computer.

Listening to her soft mewls of pleasure was a whole lot better than fighting that hacker. He was tired, so fucking tired, but this was his reward. He was home with her again, and when a part of his mind drifted through the coding, he found Lucy's password had been changed. She'd learned her lesson about making decent passwords, apparently. All because she loved him.

When she cried out her boyfriend's name, Gajeel heard his own name instead.


He was with her through everything. Through her marriage to Macbeth that lasted a couple years and through a miscarriage and one full-term pregnancy. Lucy always made time for Gajeel. When their daughter was sleeping and Macbeth was at work, Lucy would jump on Fairies of Fiore and run quests with Gajeel for a few hours.

She would apologize to him for not being around as much. He knew that she was saying it to make herself feel like they had a connection. She didn't know he could actually hear her. Time passed differently for him. While he didn't age in the slightest, because it wasn't in his coding, Lucy did. She got more beautiful. She grew up and became more mature.

There weren't any people that she knew in real life that played with her, but she'd even had him join a guild.

Her favorite joke to tell him was, "Since I don't have as much time to play, maybe you can make some friends in the guild."

Lucy didn't keep the character selection screen open any longer, so he didn't get to watch her as often. He missed the way things used to be, but he understood it. The time they did have together was precious.

What felt like only seconds between her logins was actually months. He could only tell by the little girl in Lucy's arms and the timestamp when he made the effort to check. On one quest in November, while he ripped apart an army of undead soldiers, Lucy's daughter was a newborn in her swing, barely visible to him in the corner of the screen. The next time she logged in it was August; the little girl was crawling and giggling in her playpen.

He didn't usually see the arguments Lucy had with Macbeth, but sometimes they would happen while she was logged in and trying to spend a little time with Gajeel. Macbeth didn't want her to play anymore. He said she needed to focus on their family, not on some stupid game.

Gajeel thought he was a prick.

Suddenly, he started seeing her more often. Every week. Every couple days. Every day for a few hours. And then she was back, just like she'd been before.

She confided in him one night that Macbeth had divorced her and got custody of their daughter. It broke Lucy's heart, and seeing her like that only made Gajeel more determined than ever to make her proud to have him in her life.

She still had her daughter on weekends. Lucy played the game when she took naps, apologizing to Gajeel when she had to set him to AFK when the little girl woke up crying. He didn't mind it. Lucy's daughter was precious, and he understood that she needed her mother.

Even though he wished that the little girl with platinum blonde hair and wide crimson eyes was his daughter with Lucy, Gajeel still found himself falling for her as though she was his own child.

Fairies of Fiore didn't have a system to allow the characters to marry and have kids. He didn't want that anyway. If it wasn't Lucy, he wasn't interested. He didn't want a little child made out of binary that couldn't think and feel like he did.

Instead, he watched Lucy lift the three-year-old girl onto her lap. "Can you find the number 2?" she asked.

Her daughter pressed the right button and Gajeel sent out a roar of screeching metal. His coding shivered when she giggled with glee.

"That's his Iron Dragon's Roar," Lucy said. "Do you want to see what else Gajeel can do?"

"More more!" the girl laughed.

Gajeel was never more proud of the abilities he and Lucy had carefully crafted over the years. Lucy was able to use him to teach her daughter. Numbers, letters, hand-eye coordination. She learned how to make him run and jump and slash his sword. And when she finished a level one quest - the enemies couldn't hit him more often than not, and when they did it only took one hit point away that he healed after thirty seconds - Gajeel was just so damn proud of the little girl.

"That was perfect, Leann," Lucy said. He loved seeing her smile at her daughter. "I think you're better with Gajeel than Mommy!"


Leann was seven when she logged in on Fairies of Fiore without Lucy for the first time. Gajeel stood there, looking at the little girl and seeing just how much of her mother was in her. He'd spent so much time with them over the years, she felt like his own daughter now. Sure, he wasn't there for her birthdays or holidays, and he couldn't hug her and wipe away her tears, but he still had a purpose.

He was her friend, even if she didn't know it.

But that day, she was crying. And he wanted more than anything to know what had happened to make her cry. He wanted to destroy it, if only to see her smile again. He wondered where Lucy was at, but maybe she'd told Leann that she could play with him. He was still the only character on Lucy's account, after all.

Leann selected him and once the screen loaded, he felt her aimlessness as she directed him down one snowy street and another in town. He couldn't feel any coldness from the pixelated snowflakes falling on him, but he definitely appreciated that the developers added a patch to make little steamy clouds puff out with his simulated breaths. She took him to the guild and emoted with a few players, making him dance and sing and lie down on the top of light fixtures. Eventually, she took Gajeel back to the castle he and Lucy had built. They went from one room to another for nearly an hour before she spoke. Just like her mother, Leann talked to Gajeel from time to time as though he was a real person.

He was sure that made him love the two blondes even more.

"Mama's dead, Gajeel," Leann whispered. That couldn't be right. Lucy couldn't die. "She… She was at work and there was a bank robbery, and… S-Some guy shot her."

She had him sit down at a table. If it hadn't been for his coding, he would have collapsed already, so he was thankful that she allowed him to sit.

"I don't know what to do anymore," Leann said. She dragged the cursor around the screen in random patterns. "Dad doesn't want me to play this game. He says he won't pay to keep Mama's account, and… He says the game is why they got divorced, because she paid more attention to it than us."

That wasn't true though. Gajeel knew that Lucy went whole months without playing when Leann was still a baby. She'd never talked to him about why she'd divorced Macbeth, but he didn't mind it. That asshole was never good enough for Lucy anyway.

"Dad says… I have to focus on my studies," she said. "That I don't need the distraction. But… This was Mama's game. She loved it, and…"

He knew why she stopped talking, why she was staring at him with suddenly wide eyes. Without her command, Gajeel started crying. It wasn't the normal crying emote, either. He sobbed and dropped his head to his hands. His armored shoulders quaked.

She couldn't be dead. This just couldn't be right. But he knew when looking at Leann that it was the truth. Lucy was really gone. She'd never known that he could hear her, that he'd loved her for over a decade. He would never get to tell her, to see her in the middle of the night all curled up in her fuzzy red blanket while she sipped cocoa.

And if he didn't do something, he could lose Leann too. She was his little girl. Gajeel couldn't lose her too. With Lucy gone, Leann was all he had left.

His head lifted and for the first time since his creation, Gajeel tried to talk to the person on the other side of the screen, to the seven-year-old girl controlling his movements.

"You're not alone though," Gajeel said. She gasped when his words appeared in a bubble over his head, even though she hadn't typed anything for him to say in the game.

"What…"

"I was with yer Mom for years," he said. "I'll be with you too."

"You… what?" Her brows furrowed as she stared at the text. "Is this a weird glitch or something?"

"It's not a glitch. I don't know why my coding is like this, but… I've been like this since the beta. Since she made me." Gajeel stood from the table and wiped his eyes, not noticing how Leann went a little pale. "She's really gone?"

Leann nodded slowly.

"Please don't delete me. Don't stop playin'," he said. "If you stop, then all the years I spent with her will be for nothin'. I watched her and loved her so much. And I was so happy to be the character she made. I was so happy to be the one you learned to play this game with. And you've gotten so much better."

"But Papa said…"

He looked right at the screen, something he'd always tried avoiding before with Lucy. If she was looking right at him and he was in the game, he couldn't look right at her. But now… This was important. Maybe if he'd just talked to Lucy like he was with Leann, things would be different. Maybe she would have…

"Please," he whispered. "If you keep playin', I'll tell you anything you wanna know about her. Everything she told me. Did you know I saved us from getting hacked? She was so happy to see me again. And you can talk to me like Lucy did. You can confide in me, and I'll always be here for ya. I swear it."

"But I don't like games like this all that much."

"Please," he said. He could feel more tears careening down his smooth pixel cheeks. "Please don't give up on me. I need you. Don't delete me. Please don't leave me, Leann."

She gasped and toppled backward out of her computer chair, and all he could do was watch while the little girl ran from the room. Gajeel had to trust her though. He knew it was a lot to take in, but he needed her. He'd needed Lucy and now that she was gone, Leann was it.

Macbeth came storming into the room with Leann trailing behind him. "What happened?"

Gajeel turned away from the screen, closing his eyes and quickly swiping away the vulnerability he'd let the little girl see. Warriors didn't cry, and he sure as hell wasn't going to let Macbeth, of all people, see him like that.

"Gajeel started talking to me," Leann said.

"It's just a game, Leann," Macbeth sighed. He looked toward the computer, to the character on the screen wearing heavy onyx armor and holding a sword in his hand. "Maybe it's part of the coding."

"Uh-uh," she whimpered. "He… He knows my name. Dad, I'm scared!"

Macbeth frowned and went to the computer. He stared down at Lucy's character, then took a seat and scrolled to the top of the chat window to see the transcript of what Gajeel had said. "Leann, tell me the truth," he said slowly. "Did you type this?"

She shook her head. "Did Mama really get hacked?"

"That was years ago," Macbeth said. "No one knows about that except for me."

"Gajeel knows."

Macbeth's frown deepened and he logged out of the game. Gajeel found himself on the character selection screen once again, looking directly at the man Lucy had once loved, and the scared little girl who'd just lost her mother.

"Leann, you swear you didn't write that?" Macbeth asked. She nodded and Gajeel watched as Macbeth's eyes narrowed. "I've seen too many horror movies, courtesy of your mother, to ignore this."

Gajeel wanted to fight the cursor as it glided across the screen toward the trash bin. He'd done this before with that hacker and he could do it again. He just had to stop Macbeth from deleting him.

The cursor hesitated when Gajeel forced it to slow.

But while he fought to keep himself around, he thought back to Lucy. Her beautiful smile and how she'd laughed while running him through dungeon after dungeon. How she yelled at the screen and told him to kill his enemies and take no prisoners. How much fun they'd had together, and how much of herself she'd poured into making him the best warrior he could be.

She was really gone. And the last time he'd seen her was just that morning before she left for work. Lucy had just sat with him on the selection screen while she drank her coffee. She talked to him, told him about what she was planning that night - a nice bubble bath and some chocolates.

She'd said that he was the only one who understood her sometimes. He was the only one she could talk to about the important things.

But if she'd just died, why was her computer at Leann's? Why was it in Leann's bedroom? Gajeel checked the timestamp on the computer.

Lucy had logged in on her birthday in July.

It was snowing in the game, and that only happened in December.

Five months. She'd been gone for five whole months and he was only just finding out about it. And only because of Leann. He never would have known otherwise. How long would he have thought everything in the real world was fine if Leann hadn't logged on to play the game? He didn't even know what would have happened if Lucy's account was suspended. If no one used the account, would he get deleted anyway?

But Gajeel knew, when he felt the cursor moving more easily, it was a losing battle. For the first time, he was in a fight he couldn't win. Because Lucy had been the one who gave him the strength to face his enemies. She'd known just how to move him, how and when to dodge. She knew when to retreat and regroup. The love of his pixelated life was the strategist. She was a genius. And without her, he was just a cluster of ones and zeroes. He was nothing more than algorithms and codes and data. Gajeel didn't want to be here without Lucy. He wanted her back.

His ruby gaze shifted from Macbeth to Leann. They didn't need him like Lucy had. Leann would grow up and probably never think of playing video games again. Macbeth had never liked Fairies of Fiore to begin with. No, they didn't need him.

He'd always been a warrior for one woman, for Lucy.

Macbeth clicked on the delete icon and the pop-up window weighed down Gajeel's chest. This was it.

Are you sure you want to delete Gajeel Redfox?

Gajeel's eyes burned with fresh tears when Macbeth hesitated over the Yes button. He looked at Lucy's ex-husband, and their eyes met just as Macbeth clicked it. For the briefest of moments, Macbeth saw him. He saw that there was more to Gajeel than a mindless character. But it was too late to take it back, to find out how he'd seen the armored avatar crying with hunched, defeated shoulders and clenched fists and devastated ruby eyes.

Gajeel disappeared from the screen, thinking about the woman who made him, who loved him in her own way. His code dissipated, and with it, the memories of the years he spent loving Lucy.

.The End.


A huge thanks to your patience, guys. I wanted this to come out to you sooner.

Also, for anyone who's interested, I posted a Mayuri/Nemu family fic recently. No romance in it, but... I really love it.