Moonlight clings to blades of grass like frost. Erza breathes deeply, shallowly, deeply again, caught somewhere in the web between rational thinking and the hot wash of fury that comes just before a kill.
The dry blades crinkle beneath her boots as she slinks through construction debris on Meadow Crescent, toward house number twelve. Gold embossing beams by the streetlight. Getting spotted might be easy if she were anyone else, but years in the Tower of Heaven learning how to be small, quiet, unnoticed, benefit her now. When she does not want to be seen, she is a ghost, when she does not want to be heard—
"Another murder, murderess?"
Erza spins, a dagger already in her hand, aimed for a throat. She's too committed to stop the motion.
Eileen doesn't need her to pull back. She's ready for her daughter's volatile attack and catches the razor-sharp blade with one clawed hand. Steel grinds against scales, nails, nicking her, but that is all.
Eileen releases the blade, confident Erza won't regroup and cut her down or disbelieving that she even can, and flattens her tongue against her palm, cleaning up the dribble of blood. The smell of it makes Erza's stomach tighten. It sickens her to crave it, but she wants to be surrounded by its iron smell, wet with it, hot and then cold.
"Continue on," Eileen says with her red tongue. Some blood has stained the corner of her lip, too. She looks feral, the kind of woman that could be a dragon. Is that what I look like? Erza wonders.
Eileen motions to number twelve, sitting on a corner plot in the glow of a streetlamp, the doors and windows closed, a light on in its living room. "I came to watch you work. If you please."
Begging her mother to go away has never worked in the past. Demanding?
She does neither, spinning from her mother and watching the night like a cat, crouched low, spotting mice amongst the refuge, men, moving across the street and into their homes after a long day of work, families bustling in front of windows.
"I thought you'd be more decisive."
She knows her mother is still behind her but tenses anyway at the sound of her voice. "This is careful work." Careful work ensures she'll never be caught. She needs to be more careful now that Eros is on her trail.
"This is the woman who handpicked children from the Tower of Heaven deemed too useless to work on the tower," Eileen says. Her voice is idle, but there are barbs behind it, pushing into Erza's skin, making her twitch, bleed. "Too useless to work on the tower but still viable for bed warming. To keep the secret, they would kill them afterward. They considered taking Simon, did you know? After his accident."
Erza keeps her eyes fixed on the house.
"That woman in there, she touched his broad frame, assessing him like cattle. He broke her wrist for it. That was when she decided with a bit of time to recover, he'd be more useful back in the tower."
He was too strong to be used in such ways. He would have always fought. Everything she says is plausible. He had never said anything, though, and Eileen Belserion has been known to lie to get her way, forcing Erza to ask, "How do you know it happened?"
"When you're a god, you know all," Eileen says. "This is boring. Should I kill her for you?"
"Don't you dare," Erza snarls. Sharp teeth poke her bottom lip, makes it bleed. The blood dribbles over her chin, her chest, drops to the ground where it soaks in amongst the dying grass.
Her mother laughs. The sound is too loud, jarring Erza and the sleepy street. A dog that wanders the road looking for scraps lifts its head and sniffs the air warily as if in search of a predator.
From behind, Eileen pushes her cheek almost against Erza's. She smells of metal, scales, murder. "I wouldn't, my love, not tonight. Every time you kill, you come closer and closer to who you're meant to be, and that is a beautiful thing."
Erza tells herself to drop her blade, return to Jellal, beg him to help her stop this madness, whether that means they wander into the icy waters of the ocean together or they go to the council, wrists bared, confessions thought out. But she sees movement from inside Monique's home, and she cannot, the gods help her, she cannot.
Erza leaves her mother amongst the building debris and chooses the back door to go through. It is sliding glass and opens quietly.
A lacrima cube is playing in the living room, a reporter nattering on about the murders, detailing the newest. Erza can almost see Wolfheim's coffin in the council chambers, lain out, waiting to be sunken into the ground.
The house smells of salad dressing and wine, paint. It is brand new, after all.
Laughter travels out of the living room and Erza is transported to a dark room eight years in her past. Has such little time passed? She can still see the grey walls, smell the antiseptic and sadness. Feel Monique's fingers on her ankle as she turned the swollen bulb this way and that, examining it in lacrima light.
'You're lucky it's only sprained, Erza,' she said then. 'You're too pretty.'
Her words hadn't made much sense then. They fit jaggedly in a puzzle now that Erza has had her own belongings, clothing, flowers, jewellery. It's such a shame when pretty things get ruined. Such a shame.
Magic trickles over her like sandy water, pricking her toughening skin, the scales that seem to be an ever-increasing element in her life. Soon, she won't be able to hide.
The laughter stops abruptly. Erza clenches her daggers, breathes, readying for an assault.
She's still standing there when a narrow shaft of magic slams through her shoulder, as real as any arrow. She doesn't even feel pain, it happens so fast. The edges of her skin are burned, her blood is leaking all over the floor. It has an odd purple hue to it like it's not truly hers, part dragon, part girl.
The next magical attack hits Erza's dagger when she lifts it, bends around her, and shatters the glass door. Nighttime air whooshes into the house, bringing with it the wail of an alarm. The cold truth hits Erza hard: Monique has been waiting for her.
"This is an interesting turn of events." Monique's voice hasn't changed at all. Unlike her features, when she steps out of the living room, still holding her glass of wine. She is willow thin and grey now, one of her eyes are dead. Erza supposes her profession of choice has been riddled with dangers, unhappy children, and unhappy clients.
"I don't suppose the Council knows its newest dog is astray? Of course not." She tsks, shakes her head. "Clever, though, hiding beneath their noses. And such a lauded mage, too. Erza Scarlet. Erza Scarlet. I never thought we'd meet again. Definitely not like this. This will be an interesting tale to tell."
Erza is shaken. Her targets don't usually know her. And she has never been injured by them before. Her shoulder is a dull throb. She clenches her teeth. "The dead don't tell tales."
Monique's smile remains wry, unconcerned. The alarm still wails. Erza finds its lacrima on the kitchen ceiling, red and white, flashing. She summons a sword and commands it to shatter it as though it were nothing more substantial than a heart. Fragments of crystal sprinkle around them, almost like snow. Now the air smells burned.
And it is silent now. Pregnant silence, horrible silence.
Monique's eyes are quick, taking in Erza's changing body, her tight and dangerous grip on her weapons. "I thought Eros was paranoid when he suggested someone has been targeting Tower of Heaven staff. But I'm prudent. I'm careful. So I prepared. And here, I've caught a… what are you, exactly?"
I am a god.
"Your executioner."
It's been days since she's felt her blade slip into soft skin. Held it in her hand while the skin parted around the wound, felt someone's blood slip over her knuckles, wrists, and forearms. Eros doesn't count, though she wishes he did. She threw her last blade at him, watched him bleed from afar. Monique. Monique.
Even without her armours, Erza is fast. It's her mother's blood. It's her desire to unburden this world of one more horrid soul. When she decides to move and Monique attacks again, throwing magical projectiles at her, she cannot be hit. The house explodes around her as Monique tries, a coffee cup bursts into a million fine pieces, cabinets break off their hinges, floor tiles crack, and yet, Erza remains, an arrow, fast and true, seeking a heart to home in.
She digs her elbow into the soft place between Monique's ribs and sends her backwards with the force of a wrecking ball. She falls to the floor, breathless, ghastly white, grey hairs strewn around her face. She cannot move, save her eyes, which roll in her head like a scared horse's. Gone is her confidence. Here is the worm.
Erza sinks down over top of her, her legs on either side of the woman's body and her twin daggers hovering over Monique's heart. Wings unfurl unburdened from Erza's back, spread, the colour of rotten apples, black and off-yellow, shot through with streaks of red, bony, papery, but powerful, and she must look like a demon, she must look like a god, she must look like a reckoning, because Monique isn't smiling any longer. She's pale, she's sick, she's ready to die.
"Eight years ago, you had the opportunity to take children from the Tower of Heaven and give them a new life," Erza manages. Everyone must hear their sins before they die. If they do not, what is the point? "Instead, you made a choice to condemn them to lives of hell. I'm here to cleanse the world of your sins."
Monique looks up at her and for an instant, Erza sees not pity or fear in her gaze, but anger, and she knows the woman is wishing she did take Erza that day, put her in the arms of someone who would use her and then destroy the evidence. Perhaps they would have thrown her off one of the tower's many balconies, into the deep, frothing sea, or maybe they would encase her body in concrete, never to be found again. This woman wishes it. Wishes it with all her might. There will be no repenting for her.
Erza flexes her hands, her wings, her legs, and drives the blades home, pushing them through her chest so hard, they sink into the floor. There is a wet squelch, the scrape of dagger on bone, and then a weak breath of air.
Erza stands as the light leaves Monique's eyes.
"Sins are scars, Erza, darling," her mother says. She's cast herself in the reflection of the closet mirror. How long has she been watching for? "You can destroy the blade that made them, but you will never repair the skin."
Erza doesn't look at her with her arms crossed over her chest, smile crooked, she stares at herself. She is a wilding. She is a dragon. She used to be a girl but now that girl is gone. There is only the beast. And she is ugly. She is wicked. She is not out for Justice. She is out for Blood.
"I want to be me again," Erza whispers. "Make me me again." She's never asked her mother for anything, but for this, this one thing, she will beg. "Please."
Something softens in Eileen's eyes, but even as she waves her hand and Erza's skin turns pink, soft, her wings disappear, she says, "This isn't who you truly are."
Erza stumbles through the construction debris, out of sorts, injured, on the verge of tears but also riding the high of the kill. She is strung between the two, pulled in either direction and does not know which feeling she should slave to if she should laugh or sink to her knees here and sob.
Then she hears it, and both feelings evaporate. Her blood runs cold.
"It's this way."
"Slow down, Natsu."
He won't listen to Lucy. He never does.
It is no use hiding. She doesn't have to look so guilty, though. Erza requips into her favourite armour, spins on her heel and looks at number twelve Meadow Crescent as though she has not seen it before, so when Natsu barrels around the corner as he is prone to doing, and collides with her headlong, it looks as though she's just arrived.
They go down, limbs tangled, Erza biting back a pained scream when her shoulder jars, and Natsu cursing first out of annoyance. He realizes what he's done, and who he's done it to, and his curses turn to apologies. 'Sorry, Erza! Didn't see you there! Let me help you up!'
"Gods, Natsu. Don't touch her, I'll help her up," Lucy scolds, coming around the corner.
Natsu obediently makes room for Lucy at Erza's side. Her breath clouds in front of her reddened face as she bends to help Erza up, taking her by her uninjured arm, thankfully. "Did you hear the alarm, too, Erza? I was watching Tweed when he flew out of his house cursing about how rough Crocus has become. He lives in a big city, I tried to explain that to him, it could be anything, but he insisted I come to check it out. I met this meathead on the way." She rolls her eyes in Natsu's direction.
"I heard the alarm, too," Natsu says defensively. "I wanted to make sure none of you guys were in trouble. He dusts Erza off like he might a blanket and her armour hides her blood, her injury, but Natsu's nose is keen and he smells the iron on her.
He sobers, mouth flattening in the light of the streetlamp, his body language changing, turning protective, aggressive. "You're hurt."
She wants to tell him she's fine but now she must lie. "I did hear the alarm. When I arrived a moment ago, I was attacked."
"By who?" Lucy scours the area like she might find her attacker amongst the garbage. Erza's first reaction is to placate her. She cannot.
"I didn't see them."
Natsu is uneasy. He doesn't like the idea of people getting a jump on Erza. He doesn't know many people that can. "I'm going to look around a bit," he decides.
Erza must bite her cheek to keep from calling out to him and begging him to return to his post. They're not supposed to leave the council unattended; she thinks furiously at him. She's not telepathic and Natsu is too single-minded to think about things like post abandonment when he lifts his nose and sniffs more blood on the air.
He's gone, shot through the night, barreling through the construction toward Monique's home, through her broken back door, into the mess Erza has left, to the body she ruined.
Erza makes a small noise, protest, and denial all in one; she cannot help it.
"Are you scared?" Lucy asks. She reaches for Erza's hand, laces their fingers together. There is no blade in it now, but Erza can feel the ghost of her dagger pressing into her palm, and its slide into Monique's chest through Lucy's grip. It feels like a perversion of something pure. "You don't have to be. We're together."
How can she tell her she's not afraid of mundane things like attackers? But instead, what Natsu will find?