Disclaimer: I (unfortunately) do NOT own Fairy Tail or any of the characters. I only am responsible for the (albeit poorly written and devised) plot.
Okay guys! Shit, I know that I totally haven't updated in forever but it totally slipped my mind! Anyway so thank you to everyone that follows/favorited/reviewed this story of my other Fairy Tail Fic, Stronger:
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There was nothing but empty silence in her head. It was deafening, and strange, how utterly crushing and devastating since could be. It left her mind blank, like that of a zombies. She was cold. So, so cold, from the tips of her fingertips and to her bare feet.
And then she had only one thought, no, a need, a burning desire to run. Adrenaline was pumping through her, and all feeling was overpowered by her desire to just escape. She didn't feel the throbbing of her ankle, of the soreness of her fingers. Just her broken heart, in which the hole was getting bigger with each passing second she stayed in that hallway.
So she ran like a bat out of enough for her to go lightheaded and for the edges of her vision to blur and fast enough for it to really fucking hurt when she hurled herself down the stairs and plummeted two stories.
"Yukino?" Asked a bewildered voice from her left. "Yukino are you- Yukino! You're crying! Are you okay?" The small Dragon Slayer asked, eyebrows furrowing together with worry. Wendy.
"I sprained by ankle," Yukino gasped through the pain. "And my fingers. I broke my fingers. My shoulder might be dislocated," Yukino said, through gritted teeth. "Oh god Wendy, please help me," Yukino pleaded, half exhausted and half desperate. "Wendy I-"
"Shh," Wendy shushed her softly. "I'm going to take you to my room, okay? Just, here," Wendy said as she offered a hand to the older distressed girl. Yukino made a noise in the back of her throat in agreement. She slung an arm around Wendy's shoulder, and was surprised at the deceptive strength that this little girl had. Then Wendy was swearing under her breath, realizing her room was four floors up and there was no way to get her there.
"D'you need help with that?" Came a gruff voice behind them. Wendy nearly sagged with relief.
"Yes! Oh thank you! Laxus, can we take her to you room?" Wendy asked, already knowing the menacing Dragon Slayer would of course, help them. (He might have seemed like a big scary guy, but really, he was a huge softie when it came to the little Sky Dragon Slayer.)
Though Yukino couldn't see it, her head lolling to the side, Laxus nodded.
"Give her to me."
Suddenly Yukino was lifted into the strong arms of the Lightning Dragon Slayer, who was carefully making his way to his room.
"Yukino? Yukino stay with me," Wendy said calmly though concerned, as she'd done this dozens of times. She'd slipped into 'doctor mode,' as everyone else had dubbed it, without even might have found it almost amusing if he weren't so concerned about the other Dragon Slayer's Mate. She tapped her face lightly, and Yukino's eyes rolled into the back of her head. Though she couldn't see it, Wendy and Laxus exchanged worried glances.
"Yukino? Yukino? Yukino just focus on my voice okay?" Wendy said worridely, as Laxus was lowering her onto his bed. "Yukino I need you to open your eyes for me, can you do that? Yukino look at me," Wendy order once again. Yukino, mustering all of her strength, cracked an eyelid open. Wendy nodded, exhaling.
"Looks like you need to be healed and rest, okay? You've put your body under too much stress," Wendy said, her hands suddenly glowing with a spell on her lips.
Opening her mouth to protest, Yukino was about to interject, to argue that really, she was fine and she just needed help getting up. But Wendy had already laid her hands on Yukino's forehead, and suddenly she was drifting, floating. Dreaming. Wendy was speaking low, too low for any human ear to catch, and Laxus was nodding, with a contemplative look on his face. Then he nodded, agreeing with her.
"Sleep," Wendy murmured, already starting to work on her hand. The bones were realigning, healing nicely. Then taking a look at her ankle, which was only swelling more, Wendy lookout at Laxus. He nodded again, then left to get ice, though not before ruffling her hair.
"Get better for us Yukino. Rest. Mavis knows, you need it."
Sting wasn't sure how long they'd been sitting there, right on their asses, staring after the door she'd left through.
Long enough for the whole room to go cold. Long enough for the sun, which had still been peeking out over the horizon, to disappear completely. Long enough for the constellations of the Spirits Yukino loved so much, to have appeared in the sky. They'd gone into some sort of shock and were just now dazedly becoming aware of what what happening.
Hours.
He'd been sitting on his ass, nursing his broken heart, for hours. And Rogue? Well, he was still recovering from the more un-Yukino thing he'd ever seen. Not to mention that's brother would now be alone for the rest of his life. Sting would never have anyone to share his life with, no one to grow old with him and have a family with him.
No one but him.
Rogue's mind was whirring, as her last words to him were finally being processed and replayed and dissected and-
He needed to see her. It wasn't some burning desire, it was a need. A necessity. And then the words escaped his lips.
"Wait, what?!"
Sting, with his whole body numb and his foot uncomfortably asleep, moved slowly to hug his brother. Clearly, he was falling deeper and deeper into shock. But Rogue was pushing him off, eyes wildly desperate and scared. Almost... Hopeful?
"Take care of her for me!" Rogue repeated, shaking his brother. "Sting! Sting! Where did she go?" He suddenly asked, dragging his brother outside their room. With his head, whipping back and forth, Rogue was sure he'd give himself whiplash.
And then he caught her scent, and they were now going to the left side of the hall.
The two disheveled idiots parading around the stairwell (well, one was several discombobulated, and the other serioulsy wondering how his poor life choices had led to this moment) did not go unnoticed. Not by the cleaning staff, not by the newly-wed couple whose public display of affection would have made Sting slightly sick/wishful any other day, or... by Gajeel Redfox, whose brow was quirked in curiosity.
"What on earth is-" Gajeel began, until he saw Sting's empty expression. He'd seen a look like that before. Only once, and only a look that devastated happened when it involved-
"She rejected me." Sting said, his voice hollow. Gajeel held his breath, hoping, no, praying that he was wrong about what he thought had happened.
"She told me she hated me," Sting deadpanned. "She told me she hated me and never wanted to see me again because she didn't know if she could be around me anymore knowing that," Sting choked out, feeling his eyes sting (ha ha, I get it) uncomfortably. Gajeel, went stiff, his shoulders rigid.
"Oh." He breathed, remorse washing over him. "Sting I- I'm so sorry," Gajeel said, his offered condolences sounding strange, though not unwelcome, in his gruff voice. "How are you holding up?" He asked lamely, though he already knew. It was a stupid question, Mates were almost like the hole that made the Dragon Slayers complete. Without their Mates, they were left to wander for the rest of their existence with a void inside of them.
Something Sting was actively trying to wrap his head around. And failing at.
The prospect of being alone for the rest of his life, knowing that there was no one else out there for him was... terrifying. It was a path of solidarity, of loneliness and just existence that Sting would have to walk alone from now on. One without Rogue, because it was inevitable that he would find his mate some day, and the chances of them rejecting him were less than slim.
"She's said 'she' Sting! She!" Rogue babbled, tugging his strangely corpse-resembling brother behind him. Gajeel followed, still offering apologies quietly under his breath.
"Just let me go to the room!" Sting whined. He yanked his hand back, pulling away. "Rogue, please. I don't- I don't even know what she said after 'I can't be around you anymore' and honestly, right now, all I want to do is just curl up and die. So please, Rogue just-"
"Nope."
"You didn't even let me fini-"
"Yep. Now come on!" Rogue yelled at his brother, catching the other remorseful Dragon Slayer by the wrist. Gajeel yelped, in a very un-Gajeel-like manner, and was swept away with the steadily growing current of mate-less Dragon Slayers.
The second Lucy's eyes opened, Natsu was all over her.
"Lucy! Lucy, are you alright?" Natsu said, fretting about her like a mother hen. (The very image alone, of Natsu as a giant feminine bird made Lucy chuckle to herself.)
"Yes," Lucy said, sitting up slowly. "I- yeah, I'm fine. Sorry," she shook her head, her thoughts muddled. "What... why are we here?" she said, sitting up. Rolling her shoulders and wincing, Lucy looked around. "Virgo," she said, eyeing her ex-maid. "What happened?" Virgo, with her steady hand never faltering as she reached to grab Lucy's wrist.
"Princess, you remember what happened almost happened to Loke, right?"
"No..." Lucy trailed off, incredulously. She raised an eyebrow when Virgo didn't respond. "You mean... But Loke waited years before he-"
"Almost faded from existence completely," Virgo finished.
"Right. That." Lucy said awkwardly fidgeting in her seated position. "Almost forgot about that."
When a shirtless, sweaty Laxus answers the door, absolutely reeking of Yukino, Rogue almost loses it completely.
He doesn't even register the fact that he's doing that eye-glare thing that he hasn't done unintentionally in years (because let's face it; him having no friends as a child definitely had a lot to do with his habit of slipping into an 'I hate the world and everything in it' look that made him seem... well, unapproachable at the very least), and that he's totally shoved Laxus back until he hears a slightly taken aback Gajeel yelling at him for it.
Because it's not often that Rogue totally loses his cool, but when his brother's heart is on the line it's damn well sure gonna happen. One moment he's gaping at the Lightning Dragon Slayer (yet another one of the seven who knows who their mate is, but can't get the courage to just frickin' talk to them) and the next he's gone all crazy shadow-dragon mode.
"Oi! Rogue!" Gajeel barked. In the few seconds Rogue has blacked out and just acted on pure, brotherly instinct, he has somehow caught Laxus by the neck, and left Wendy warily staring at him from the corner. (Being around Gray and Natsu had desensitized her in these sort of situations over the years, and the only worry she usually has is that they don't break anything of too much value.)
"Bastard," Rogue snarled, his canines bared. Laxus, on probably any other occasion, would have backhanded him hard and thrown him back ten feet. But there was a code of honor among Slayers, and misunderstandings their respective Mates, anyone's mates for that matter, needed to be worked out calmly.
Calmly, and in a nonviolent fashion.
So Laxus did that inhale/exhale exercise that Mirajane had taught him (his own unknowing mate probably had no idea that just the thought of her made him relax, even without the breathing technique) and rolled his neck. Tiredly, he jabbed his thumb to his bed behind him.
"She's over there. Don't wake her," he said shortly, pressing himself to the wall to make space so they could enter. "Wendy took care of her; I think she's all good and fine now."
Sting dug his heels into the floor, unwilling to budge.
"No- no Rogue just, just let me go!" Sting exploded. Rogue slapped his brother upside the head.
"No," he said flatly, then turned back to Gajeel. They shared a look, and then Gajeel nodded. Then he proceeded to chop Sting in the back of the neck, earning an irritated 'Ow! What the hell?! What- no, Gajeel, Gajeel dammit let me down!' and then throwing the irritated blonde over his shoulder like a sack of flour. Satisfied, Gajeel smiled at Rogue.
"I got him," Gajeel said a little too happily. Sting writhed around, like a fish out of water, but Gajeel's iron-grip (ha ha I'm so funny) wasn't going to let him free any time soon. Of course, until Sting's possessive instincts slammed into him like a brick wall, seeing Yukino laid out on Laxus' bed like that. He was ripping Gajeel's arms off of him
"Laxus, ya dumbass, what the hell were you thinkin'?" Gajeel growled under his breath. "Layin' her all across your bed, all unconscious and crying and shit, you know it makes it look pretty bad," Gajeel said, glancing at Sting out of the corner of his eye warily. "Kinda like, you know, you took advantage?" Gajeel said, stressing he last three words. Laxus' eyes widened, as the implications hit him.
"Shit," he breathed. "Ah, crap, I didn't even think about that," he said, groaning. Rogue interrupted the conversation, putting both their worries at ease.
"Don't worry about it. Sting knows Yukino well enough to know that she wouldn't do that," Rogue said without concern. "And Sting knows more than anyone (okay maybe not more than Natsu) that even when you think your mate is unattainable, you don't go around sleeping with other people if you think that you still have a shot. So yeah, trust me, that's not really why he got all worked up."
At their inquiring looks, Rogue sighed.
"She rejected him. I think he's gonna try and just... y'know say his goodbyes before she wakes up," Rogue finished with a wince.
"...this whole thing is some sort of sick joke, isn't it?" Laxus said, his eyes softening. "She- she's not really rejecting him, right?"
"I- I don't know," Rogue admitted quietly after a moment of thinking. "I- Well I dragged him all the way down here, but I feel like maybe I was doing that more for me than for her. I know- I know that I can't even imagine the pain of losing a mate and just thinking of Sting having to bear that burden every day of his life. Walking around, roaming just... knowing that he's going to die alone is... something I'd rather not think about."
"Right."
Sting, while this was going on around him, heard not a word of their concerned conversation. Instead, he just stared down at Yukino, eyes brimming with tears that he didn't bother to hide from anyone.
Whatever he mumbled under his breath then, as he stared down at his whole universe, fell deaf to the ears of the bystanders of his last goodbye. After this... well, Sting wasn't quite sure where he'd go, whether or not he'd stick around to fulfill his selfish desire to see Yukino, or to roam Magnolia alone.
Whatever his decision would be, he knew that things with him and Yukino would never be the same again, and he had to accept the painful truth.
She knew. And she was disgusted. By him, his affections.
He knew they could smell the tears on his cheeks. And he was thankful for them not saying anything.
He was even more thankful when Laxus cleared his throat, and they all filed out so he could say goodbye. He deserved whatever privacy they could give him. Rogue looked back at him over his shoulder on the way out, giving his brother's shaking shoulders one last look before closing the door.
Sting was well aware that his life would be nothing short of a dark, dreary hell from now on, so he did the last selfish thing he'd ever do by her.
He bent down and pressed his lips to her forehead, inhaling her scent one last time. This moment, this smell that was bound to fade fast; too fast, and his precious memories of her, were going to be the things that kept him on his feet. For a while, anyway.
Defeated, as he pulled away, he allowed the realization to wash over him. His life was going to be meaningless, and he would spent it growing old and alone until he'd die of loneliness. He'd never faced this possibility head-on, and now that it looked like it was his future...
And then she woke up.
When her eyes flashed open, all Sting could hear was the resounding shit shit shit shit repeating in his mind.
She leapt out of bed faster than he'd ever seen her move, and in his favorite shirt, no pants, clutching the thin hotel blanket to her like a shield, with her chest heaving he was pretty sure she was not feeling too great about him right now.
Oh, and yeah, she'd told him she hated him not even an hour ago.
He swallowed roughly. Though he knew he had no right, he acted on his instinct to soothe her as he had before, and he reached out to brush the tears somehow already streaking down her cheeks.
"Don't touch me!" She shrieked, flinching back.
Sting's eyes flashed with unmistakable hurt, as he drew his hand back. Both just stared down, Yukino at Sting's shirt, and Sting at the hand he'd stretched out to her, which was starting to tremble.
"Stop this," she said shakily after a minute of her labored breathing. "Stop doing this to me," she said through gritted teeth again, snapping her head up to look up at him furiously. She fought the urge to claw away at the shirt, the shirt that was drowning her in his scent. She fought the urge to cry, and she wasn't sure how much longer she'd be able to keep both of the two at bay.
"You're only making this harder for me, you don't you see that?" She cried, throwing her hands up, blanket forgotten. "I'm trying so damn hard Sting, but you're only making it impossible!" She nearly screamed, the tremor in her voice unmistakable.
"Well I'm sorry I can't control my own damn feelings!" Sting roared back, adrenaline shooting through him. "I'm sorry that I don't have the liberty of being a normal person and just throwing my heart away at anything that walks by!" He snapped. He knew he'd crossed some line just then, but now he couldn't bring himself to care.
"I'm sorry that I can't be like you, I'm sorry that I have to be the way I am, and I would change it if I could but I'm not and I'm sorry!" He exploded. "But I can't change being a Dragon Slayer and I can't change everything that comes along with that. This... this is me, and I can't fix any of it," he said weakly, gesturing down at himself.
"Well why hang around then, huh?" Yukino challenged. "Why even stick around if you know how I feel about it huh? Don't you have anything better to do than to mess with my life?" She demanded, moving closer so he was staring directly down at her. "This is my life Sting, and you can't just waltz in and fuck it all up for your own amusement because poor little Yukino is fun to screw with," she spat.
Speechless, Sting just looked at her, fury building up behind his own eyes.
"Is that what you think this is? You think I can help it? You know what, I'm sorry that you're so disgusted by me and my love life, but Mates are something that I have no control over. I'm not fucking with you on purpose, Yukino."
Yukino threw her head back, her laughter just on the edge of hysteria.
"Oh, aren't you? Well what about friends then?" Yukino retorted. "You can control that, can't you? You can control who you chose to be your friend and who you chose to be around, can't you?"
"Well I want to be around you!" He screamed, enraged. "And I'm sorry if the very idea of me falling in love with someone freaks you out so much, but I'm trying to just be your friend, Yukino, and if that's what I have to do to be able to be with you at all, then I'll make the sacrifice. I'm sorry that I can't control it, I'm sorry that it makes you so uncomfortable, but I swear I'll try hard to make things better between us. Please, Yukino?" he asked, having calmed down a considerable amount since the beginning of his rant.
"...do you think she'll forgive me?" Yukino asked weakly, after thinking of the very idea of not having Sting in her life at all. She'd endure it, she'd endure the pain of watching them everyday of her life if she had to if it meant keeping Sting in her life.
"...what?"
"Your mate."
"Come again?" He asked, brows furrowed.
"Forgive me."
"Who now and for what now?" He said again, clearly not following.
"Will she be mad at me? Your mate?" Yukino asked, closing her eyes slowly, just feeling the agony wash over her at the idea of becoming friends with the woman Sting would spend the rest of his life with. Her heartbeat slowed, as all the energy was drained from her. "Do you think I'll be forgiven?"
"Forgiven for what?"
"For falling in love with you," she stated simply, as if telling him her favorite color.
She turned to him, tears in her eyes and a sad smile on her face.
"Can you forgive me for falling in love with you?"
I am so sorry this took so long. I am so, so sorry. I PROMISE I'll try harder but man, high school is sucky. (I know, I know, I'm only a freshman so I can't really say that and be taken seriously.) Anyway, I hope you guys liked it and I'll try not to take as long this time with the new chapter!
-Pyro