.

Fault Line

"Really?" Elfman asked, more puzzled than hostile now. "You aren't going to say that it will get better? That it's not my fault?" Gray paused and twisted around to search his face with solemn eyes. "Is that what you want me to say?"

Elfman stayed standing at attention long after everyone scattered like ravens fleeing the killing ground to shed their night-black feathers and fluff out the colorful ones hidden beneath. The knot of tension between his shoulder blades just wouldn't ease, and he couldn't imagine going back to the guild to laugh and joke like nothing had happened. Like things were okay. Like Lisanna wasn't gone.

"Please, Elfman," Mira croaked, her voice raspy and thick with tears. All her sharp edges had been filed off in the space of a heartbeat, leaving her the soft and vulnerable girl he had once known before the world tried to make her into a demon. "Let's go. I can't stay here any longer."

"You go," he mumbled. His tongue was thick and numb in his mouth, a deadweight that made each word taste strange and feel hollow. "I can't… I'll go back later."

He thought she would protest further—she'd stuck to his side like glue since he had killed Lisanna—but her footsteps rustled in the grass as she spun about. Her black skirts billowed about her heels like storm clouds as she rushed away. A choked sob caught in her throat and hung heavy in the air, the echo deafening in his ears long after her footsteps had faded.

He shifted and rocked a bare centimeter from foot to foot. He shouldn't send his sister away like that. Mira needed him now, and he had already let one sister down. He wanted to turn and call after her so they could huddle close and share their grief, but he also couldn't tear his gaze away from the memorial stone with Lisanna's name carved into it.

It was still covered with fresh flowers, as if a sprig of life could overcome her death. But they would die—like her. Cold comfort. The stone itself was a sham too. Her body didn't rest in the ground beneath it. He could still see her vanishing before his eyes like magic, bleeding from the wounds he'd inflicted in a mind-clouded rage. She wasn't even just dead, but gone. Elfman had obliterated her from existence entirely.

He didn't know how to live with that.

He stood there for a long time, frozen in the face of the gaping hole torn into his life. The jagged chasm cutting him off from Mira. The dramatic effect of an earthquake of his own making. The fault line separating him from the whole guild.

And from Lisanna, who had been caught in the middle and fallen deep into its depths, never to be seen again.

How could someone be smiling and wildly alive one moment and only a memory the next? How could she disappear so quickly? How could Elfman make her disappear?

He didn't know how to walk away, didn't know how to turn around and face Mira and the guild, so he just stood there and listened to the echoes of Lisanna's dying cries in his ears and wished things could be different.

He didn't move until the sun had started to set, trailing great swathes of orange and purple behind it as it dipped below the horizon. And only then because he couldn't stand the thought of Mira crying alone in the dark.

Finally, slowly, he turned on his heel. It wasn't like he was leaving Lisanna behind by abandoning her memorial—she wasn't even there. It was just an empty hole like all the rest.

He barely made it two steps before spotting Gray standing between the rows of graves behind him, dark hair and black funeral clothes silhouetted starkly against the brilliant orange sky. Elfman stopped short and stared. Had Gray really been standing here the whole time? Or had he come back? What did he want? Elfman had nothing against the guy, really, but they'd barely exchanged half a dozen words before and the last thing he needed right now was to make nice to a broody guildmate.

Gray said nothing, just stood there silently with his hands jammed into his pockets and watched Elfman with dark eyes that gleamed like onyx in the waning light. They stared at each other for a long minute, the seconds ticking by audibly in Elfman's head as he wondered what he was supposed to say.

Finally, Gray opened his mouth and uttered two words in a flat voice: "It sucks."

Really? That was it? Out of everything in the world, that was it? It was ridiculous. Offensive, even.

But as the sting of the shock wore off, Elfman almost wanted to laugh. Now that he thought about it, that was exactly how he felt about the situation. Everything was so complicated and muddy and painful, but at the core it boiled down to that one simple, blunt statement: it sucks.

"What do you want?" he asked.

Gray shrugged and dropped his gaze to rove over the neat-trimmed grass. "Nothing, really."

"Then why are you still here?"

Another shrug. "I don't know." His voice dropped a little. "You seemed very alone."

Now Elfman did bark out a grating, unamused laugh. "Because I wanted to be."

"Of course you didn't. Don't. You just can't have the person you want the most."

Elfman stared at Gray in disbelief. A storm of whirling emotions built up inside him, slowly at first and then faster and faster until it became a veritable maelstrom of pain and grief and anger. Gray just stood there, an impassive shadow amid the neat rows of tombstones jutting up from the ground like graying teeth, toeing idly at the grass. Who did he think he was? Who did he think he was to come in here, intrude on Elfman's sanctuary, and spout nonsense?

"What is your problem?" Elfman spat. The poison was a pleasant burn on his tongue. He had spent the past days in shock, in tears, in disbelief. He'd been numb and miserable and riddled with guilt. And now the fury seemed to burn it all away. Before, the enemy had been only himself, but now there was someone else to turn his pain on. "Just go."

"Okay." Gray seemed unruffled as he turned on his heel. "But it will always hurt just like that. Once you make a mistake, you have to live with the consequences."

He started back through the cemetery, boots carefully placed on the grassy pathways, and Elfman stared after him. The harsh words, even delivered in such a neutral tone, should only fan the flames of his rage, but instead they left him confused and uncertain. Off balance. These were not the words he was accustomed to hearing as of late.

"Really?" he asked, more puzzled than hostile. "You aren't going to say that it will get better? That it's not my fault?"

That was what everyone else said. They tried so hard to make him feel better with flimsy paper sentiments because they didn't—couldn't—know the right words to get through to him. They did not imply that it was his fault or say that it would always hurt. Those were not things most people thought to say to someone who was grieving.

Gray twisted around to cock his head and search Elfman's face with solemn eyes. "Is that what you want me to say?" he asked.

Elfman opened his mouth, closed it again. His anger drained away like sand through his fingers. Like time marching on even when it felt like the world was—or should be—standing still.

Maybe he had only been angry because underneath it all he was angry at himself, and it was easier to turn it on someone else. It was easier when the bad guy wasn't you. And maybe also because the words were the truth, and the truth wasn't always pretty.

"No," he said slowly. "No, it's not."

That was what everyone had been saying, and hearing it over and over again didn't make it ring any truer.

"I didn't think so," Gray said with another shrug. He slouched a little lower and frowned at the ground.

It was strange how such blunt honesty lifted a weight off Elfman's chest in a way that sugar-coated sentiments hadn't managed to. It didn't make him feel better, not by a long shot, but it felt more real. It made him feel a little more understood, like it was okay to talk about how things weren't okay instead of trying to put the best face on it. It was so different from the way everyone else tiptoed on eggshells around him, and he hadn't realized exactly how much he missed being treated like a normal person. There wasn't as much room for wallowing in self-pity that way.

"I don't know what to do now," he blurted out, balling his hands into fists at his sides. He didn't know what he was looking for and wasn't expecting an answer, but this was the first time he had felt like he could at least ask the question. "Where do I go from here?"

"That's simple," Gray said dismissively. "Not easy, but simple. You go forward. It's the only thing you can do. You can't rewind time. You don't get free re-dos. The world isn't going to stop turning for you—you can't stay frozen forever, even if you try for a while. So the only thing left to do is pick up the pieces and carry on. And maybe, someday, move on."

Elfman recoiled and eyed Gray like he was a snake ready to strike. The very idea of moving on was abhorrent to him. It felt wrong, like a betrayal.

"How can I just move on when Lisanna is gone?" he demanded. "How am I supposed to keep going like nothing happened when I…? When I'm the reason she's gone? She can't live her life anymore. She can't grow up or achieve her dreams. So why…?"

So why should I? he wanted to ask, but the words stuck in his throat. The guild wouldn't understand that. Mira wouldn't understand that. They were fighters through and through, and they'd always push on and live. It wasn't that he wanted to go cold in the ground, in the hole where Lisanna might have been buried if there was anything left of her to bury, but he didn't know how to just keep on living either and that wasn't something his friends would understand.

Gray looked up and met Elfman's gaze squarely. "It's a little late for that now, isn't it? If you were going to kill yourself or go out in a blaze of glory, you should have done it before it was too late for Lisanna. Maybe then it would have made a difference. What difference would it make now? I told you, the only way you can go is forward."

Gray's voice wasn't unkind, but even though it was laced with sympathy, his words pulled no punches. There was no awkward dancing around the point, no euphemism, no extra-careful delicacy. No one else would dare speak to Elfman this way now, maybe ever. Those just weren't things you said to a person, especially not someone who was grieving.

It was a little disconcerting, more than a little uncomfortable, but maybe it was what Elfman needed to snap him out of his haze of self-pity.

And because Gray was the only person who might give him an honest answer, Elfman blurted out the question that had been haunting him ever since that fateful day.

"Do you think it's my fault?" he asked.

Gray pursed his lips and looked down at the ground. He was silent for so long that the dying orange hues of sunset began fading to a dusky gray twilight.

Finally, he shook his head. A frown twisted his lips, and his gaze was distant as he spoke almost to himself.

"I think it was an accident," he murmured. "Maybe that makes it no one's fault, maybe everyone's, maybe yours. But I also don't think that it matters." He looked up and met Elfman's gaze squarely. There was a haunted look misting his eyes, but they stayed sharp and unyielding as steel. "It doesn't matter what I think or what anyone tells you or what the truth is. None of that will change how you think. What matters is if you think it's your fault.

"So you're asking the wrong person. If you're looking for forgiveness, you'll need to ask it of yourself."

Elman swallowed hard. He couldn't come up with a single thing to say to that, because it sounded uncomfortably like Gray had brushed aside all his obfuscation and deflection and seen right down to the heart of the matter. And that was a truth Elfman wasn't sure he was ready to face quite yet. He wasn't there, wasn't ready to face that tonight.

But he had the uncomfortable feeling that he would have to someday.

They stared across the gulf yawning wide between them, only a few feet but somehow lightyears across. And still, Gray felt uncomfortably close. But the earthquake that had shaken Elfman to his core and sent his world crashing down around him had dug a crack in the earth between him and the others. Maybe it really was a fault line, in the most literal sense. A very real divide separating the guilty from the bystanders. Because Elfman did very much think Lisanna's death was his fault. Whether or not forgiveness was in the cards was a question for the future. The future that he supposed he would have to reach sooner or later, since the only way out was forward, as Gray had so bluntly pointed out.

Tonight was not the night Elfman was ready to try crossing that chasm. Maybe Gray sensed that, because he turned and walked away without another word. Elfman watched until he became a silhouette against the night and disappeared.

He wondered what lay in Gray's past to give him eyes like that and such a fearsome understanding of grief and guilt, but he knew he would never get those answers from the notoriously close-mouthed ice mage and had no desire to go prying now. He had enough of his own troubles.

Night was falling quickly now, gray deepening to the shadowy fringes of black, and Elfman looked over his shoulder at Lisanna's memorial one last time before squaring his shoulders. He needed to get home before it was night in earnest. He needed to be with Mira, because she, too, seemed very alone.

He had already lost one sister. So had Mira. Neither of them could bear to lose the only family they had left.

He didn't know what he would latch on to, what goal or dream or reason could inspire him to grasp the future and move on with his life. That was something he would have to figure out, possibly one slow, painful step at a time. But for tonight, the thought of Mira crying alone in the dark was enough to spur him on. It was something to keep him going: the need to protect her like he had failed to protect Lisanna, the need to somehow make amends for what he had done. He didn't know what tomorrow held, or the day after. He didn't even know if he would make it that far, but he was making it through this moment and that would lead him to the next, and the next. It was a start.

He picked up his foot, angled for home, and took the first step forward forward.

Note: I don't know, I feel like Gray might've felt the whole Lisanna thing kind of strongly. I considered adding a coda after Galuna, but ruled against it. This was kind of inspired by that second part of "The Change" (if we even remember something that old anymore lol) and I ran with it.