Jellal's body was weakened after being unconscious for several weeks. He wasn't sure what was holding him together. But his mind was remarkably clear.
He remembered the last ten years in the Tower of Heaven. He remembered how he had betrayed Erza and hurt his friends. How he had been willing, even eager, to sacrifice her for the sake of reviving Zeref.
Recalling all this gave him a dim sense of guilt, but there was also a clear fact resonating throughout it all, spoken in the voice of a child.
It wasn't your fault.
None of it was you.
They used your body, name and face to do terrible things, but it was never your choice.He remembered...a certain calmness. A certainty that he wouldn't ever open his eyes again. A desire to not do so, just to stop causing pain to others by existing.
Death is not an apology. And even if it were, you aren't that person anymore. You're free. You're changed. You are a kind boy who thought that no one should be without a name. You're a brave soul who lived in hell and still found a reason to smile.
You're Jellal again. The real Jellal.
Everything he had done-
None of it was you.
He had roused through a combination of his mind finding new truths to hold onto, and the strength being fed back into him.
As he looked around, he saw that he was being treated by two young girls. One face he recognized from the Ten Wizard Saints meetings. It wasn't everyday that a wizard with natural healing magic emerged. Wendy Marvell of Cait Shelter was his attendant.
The other face was equally familiar, but her he had seen in person.
Faerun's eyes were distant and blank. There was an emptiness in her that stabbed at his recently returned conscious. You...should never look like that. The child who Erza, fierce, relentless Erza Scarlet, had laid down her arms for and surrendered, was nowhere to be seen in those empty blue eyes. And he knew exactly why.
A new stab of guilt plagued him.
Again, the soft whisper in Faerun's voice.
It's not your fault.
Then he looked around properly for the first time. He was in a cave somewhere...? And who was that standing in the back- Brain. If he was here, there was only one thing to do:
Run.
So Jellal had grabbed both of the children and sped away from Brain and the rest of the Oracion Seis as quickly as he could. He was confident that he could face them, even just the absence of Brain would have made him more willing to stand and fight. But he had two children to protect, and he would not start this new life by allowing them to come to harm. Not when he owed them his mind and health.
The blue haired girl seemed to know him, but her concern was for the younger child. Jellal had put Wendy down, but retained his hold on Fae, who lay unresponsive in his grasp, eyes unblinking. The healer laid her hands on her temples and focused.
"She's not hurt, but there's something wrong." Wendy said hesitantly. "She's not acting like herself, and she feels like she's far away."
"I know." Jellal said heavily, brushing hair from her face and carefully sliding her eyes closed. She complied with no resistance. "And I know why." Wendy's large dark eyes focused on him hopefully.
"You know? What is it? What's wrong with her? What can I do to help?"
Jellal cast about for a moment, trying to find some kind of shelter.
"We can talk about it under cover. I don't trust Brain not to send someone out after us, and I can't protect you two from all sides." Wendy gnawed on her lower lip. Then she straightened, took a deep breath through her nose, then nodded.
"I know where we are. I know a place."
"You know this forest?"
"It's my guild's territory. I grew up here." She pointed into the darkened trees. "There's an old fossilized Geshu tree system about half a mile that way. The sap is old, but it still smells strong enough to confuse our scent."
"The snake will still be able to track us through the air." Steel flashed briefly in the girl's eyes.
"Maybe. But it won't be as easy as they think." She cupped her hands together. "Wind Magic: Scatter Trail!" She inhaled and then blew over the tops of her palms.
A brisk wind swirled around Jellal, pulling at his clothes, before moving to Fae and then Wendy. The wind gained hints of blue and green, then swirled together into a sphere of air before splitting in half repeatedly. Once there were 16 much smaller spheres dancing around them, Wendy sent them off with a flick of her wrists, looking tired but satisfied.
"Now when they come here, there will be 17 different ways we could have gone."
"Very clever." Jellal congratulated. "But best we hurry. We'll be faster if I carry you. Let's go to that forest of yours."
-vVv-
Lyon had always admired his fellow pupil in Ice Make Magic. Gray's creativity and head for strategy made him a formidable opponent. He'd demonstrated both of those traits plus impressive power in their cooperative defeat of Racer. But right now...
Gray was looming over a man who was outright cowering before the elemental wrath he was emitting. His magic curled up his arms like pale blue frost on his skin, and his expression was murderous as he regarded the man currently trapped up to his neck in ice. Said prisoner's lips were starting to turn blue.
"W-W-we were paid to grab the girl and deliver her to a member of the Oracion Seis-" Gray flexed his fingers, the ice encasing him grew up in sharp points, pressing around his neck in a subtle threat.
"You weren't listening. All of them already told me that. I want something more."
"What...!?" His voice squeaked up an octave as the ice rose a little higher.
"I want to know how they contacted you. I want to know the drop point." With each sentence, Gray's fingers twitched a little closer to a closed fist and the crystalline prison tightened a little more. The air around him started to steam as intense cold radiated from his body. Lyon wasn't bothered by the change in temperature, but he knew that someone standing too close to Gray would be subjected to the sub zero temperatures of a master class Ice Wizard.
"I want to know what they offered as a reward. I want to know what kind of soulless scumbag would think it was ok to rip a little girl away from her home and family. But mostly? I want to know where Fae is. And if I don't start getting answers, then you're going to get a nasty case of frostbite." Gray's hands shifted. The pillar of ice shifted in answer, leaving enough to entrap the now terrified and shivering wizard and creating the enormous jaws of a bear trap, ready to snap shut and snap his neck like a twig.
Lyon made sure his expression matched Gray's as the prisoner glanced at him, desperate for some way out.
Ur once said: Your passion and your magic are meant to work together. You are learning Maker magic, something meant to create. And without control, and deliberation, you will only succeed in destruction.
The sight before him made Lyon all the more certain that of the two of them, Gray had internalized their master's teachings better. The whole scene was set up to squeeze the information they wanted from the enemy wizards.
The frigid air, completely unseasonable even for autumn.
The chill set those not immune to cold on edge, made them instinctively hunch down for warmth and comfort, allowing those standing, as he and Gray were, to have the appearance of superiority.
The rapid, nervous breaths of their prisoners filling the air with white mist.
The cold air was enough to make their breath steam, but Gray was catching it and maintaining it. The haze surrounding them moved and shifted, casting an uncertain light over the scene. It was thickened in some places to completely isolate their prisoners, who had all been gagged by freezing their lips together. It made for quite a menacing picture when coupled with the occasional whimpers.
The blades of brittle grass coated in frost strong enough to turn them into needles.
The area was made uncomfortable. Even if they were only questioning one prisoner at a time, the others were never left in peace, or in the right mindset to confer with one another, too focused on their own pain and terror.
Gray had produced all of this with a handful of gestures and murmurs. His focus: Find Celeste D Faerun.
The guild mark of their prisoners identified them as members of Grey Chimera, the guild Blue Pegasus had indicated as the one who kidnapped the girl attached to Fairy Tail. Lyon was standing guard over the other three who were still conscious.
"You heard me ask your friends all these questions. You got anything else to say that they haven't already told me?"
The look in Gray's eyes made Lyon bite his tongue. There was a little girl depending on them right now, and their communications network had gone down moments earlier. The Pegasus airship, Christina, had been brought down by a devastating blast of malicious magical power from the ground. He and Gray had hurried to the spot, using the magicycles left from their combat with Racer, and there they had found a dozen members of Gray Chimera both dead and alive.
The man's teeth were chattering, whether in cold or fear, Lyon couldn't quite tell. But he began to talk, terror driving him.
"Master Angelo was coming to talk to Brain about another project,"
"Your guild master is here?"
"He was! He's dead, Brain slaughtered him like a sheep! We found him, he was unconscious and we started to try and revive him when all of a sudden, he woke up! He asked us what had been happening. Angelo caught him up, and as soon as he told him, Brain killed him! He fired on the airship, stole Angelo's teleport token, and vanished!"
"Brain, the guild master of the Oracion Seis was the one who paid you off to kidnap the girl?" Lyon affirmed.
The man nodded, trying to watch both of them and the jaws of the trap that he was situated in.
"Why?" Gray asked flatly. "Why Fae? What did you know about her?" Lyon thought it was far more relevant that Brain had been capable of speaking calmly to his former allies one second, and then been brutally attacking them the next. But Gray's priorities weren't about to shift, so he said nothing.
"I-I don't-" The trap's jaws twitched warningly. "I don't know! Brain, he seemed to know a lot about her, he told us everything! What guild she was with, how to restrain her until he got to her. He had everything planned out!"
Lyon considered this new information.
From what he knew about Celeste D Faerun, she had been a ward of Fairy Tail for several years now, and was very close to Gray and his group of friends in particular. He had gotten the story that the loud mouthed fire eater, Natsu, was the one who brought her into the guild. Before that, her life was a complete mystery. No name, no traceable identity, and brand new magic in a girl with no idea how to control it. A nobody. A perfect blank slate.
The ward system was meant to protect young children from threats like Brain. So if he had managed to keep track of her, then that had to mean that he somehow knew who had retrieved her and where they had taken her. While it was possible he had used spies in the Light Guilds, Lyon had a gut feeling that there was something more to this.
"Have you taken anyone else for him? Any other children?" He asked, following a hunch, eyes narrowed. Gray's dark eyes met his and for an instant, the same thought flashed across them both.
"Just...in the last few years." The man said, flinching as his lips and fingers started to turn blue. "He used other guilds before we came into his employ."
"So you're child traffickers." Gray said in a tone that might have been thoughtful if it weren't disgusted and outraged. "Allying with any member of the Balaam Alliance is already going to get you at least 20 years behind bars but you're not even going to last a month. I've heard some stories about how people like you are treated in the prison system. It'd honestly be nicer of me to kill you right now." Gray leaned forward slightly, turning his wrist slightly and flexing his fingers to bring the sharp teeth of his trap to rest just under the helpless man's jaw.
"But...I'm not going to be nice." He then relaxed his grip, releasing the magic that was keeping the ice sharp and unnaturally strong. They had information, now they just needed a course of action.
"Ice Make: Concussion." Lyon produced a hammer and quickly knocked their prisoner unconscious, pulling out a beacon and setting it down. Since their original objective was to capture the Oracion Seis and their satellite guilds, they had been given bags of lacrima tags from the Rune Knights that would send out a signal for a team to come and collect their unconscious prisoners, allowing them to continue their work without hindrance.
Gray didn't protest Lyon's actions. He seemed tense, brow furrowed as he surveyed the area. It was still white with the magical ice they had employed to capture the mages.
"Gray, we have to keep moving. We're blind here, and anyone we find in this forest will be a better source of information than these."
"Can you see it?" The question made Lyon huff in exasperation.
"Now is not the time for you dramatics, Gray. Just spit out what you want to say."
"Look under the ice. This clearing used to be half the size that it is now. It's been burned open recently. Natsu fought Brain right here, not even an hour ago."
"And?"
"How could he be able to move after losing to a pissed off Natsu? Not even a former Ten Wizard Saint got up after a throw down like that. So why could he?" Gray put his hands together, shifting his stance. "We need eyes, and need to get back to the Christina and get her back in the air. Brain stole a teleportation spell from these morons. He could literally be anywhere right now."
-vVv-
Wendy was tired.
Seriously, she had never called on her Sky Dragon magic as much as she had today. Even the small amount of pure Wind Magic she had picked up was drained by laying down their cover trails to allow her and Jellal to make good their escape and hide. All she wanted to do was lay down and sleep.
I will find what did this to you! She snapped internally, pushing her limits as much as she dared and then going a step further. Her hands were laid on either side of Fae's head and she was scanning for some sign of the head injury that changed Fae's personality so much. It had to be that, instead of her being some kind of long term double agent...
She couldn't believe that this walking, silent, soulless being was who Fae was really meant to be.
But that belief was becoming more real the longer she went without finding any sign of a traumatic injury.
Charla would have forced her to stop and rest long ago, but Wendy gritted her teeth and performed another scan of Fae's head.
"I know you're still in there...!" She hissed. "I promised your friends I'd help bring you back to them. And this isn't you!"
Blank, expressionless eyes looked back at her.
"Any change?" Jellal's voice made Wendy lose her concentration and the diagnostic spell faded out as her energy flagged without her determination to keep it up.
"No..." She said, her voice sounding very small. "She's perfectly healthy, her magic has recovered from the suppression cuffs, but she still hasn't responded to anything I've said." Jellal's face hardened into a grim line.
"You've called her by name." What else would I call her by? Wendy looked at him askance.
"You said you'd tell me what was wrong." Jellal sighed, settling down on a fallen tree limb.
"Everything. Everything is wrong. The only good way to explain what is happening to Faerun right now would be to say that Brain has been in the business of taking children and raising them to suit his purposes for a very long time now. Faerun is far from the first he has gotten hold of."
"So he did this to her."
"Yes, and to others...You've heard about what transpired at the Tower of Heaven." The girl fidgeted slightly with her hands. This was a subject she was nervous about discussing with her former protector, especially since while he seemed to know and recognize her, the personal relationship was absent.
"Yeah. They're saying it was all your fault." Jellal flinched, slight but noticeable. "I'm sorry!" Wendy said quickly, guilt poking her conscious.
"It's alright, you can't know the whole story...The tower was funded and fueled by the Balam Alliance. All the money and materials came from their profits as well as the manpower used to build it. The satellites guilds were capturing were bringing in new people every day. But some were specifically assigned to go capture children. The stress filled life they would be subjected to provided the ideal ground to spark their magic into activating and allowing them to potentially become wizards. That is what happened to me, and many others. This was not the case with Faerun, though that is not what she was called."
Wendy simply sat, spellbound, and listened.
-vVv-
I was floating, unable to move and only able to watch.
Brain had said something, a series of words that didn't make any sense, but that made me so afraid that my mental shield couldn't stand up to it. A thousand and one feelings were pouring through me, mostly dark and bitter. And once that rush was over, there was resignation.
"G2.0, go to Jellal and rewrite his memories of what occurred at the Tower of Heaven. It will trigger his recall, and allow the plan to unleash Nirvana to progress." I wanted to yell at Brain to go to hell. That I was a prisoner, but not his slave.
My legs, my hands, my everything, refused to obey me. With horror and numb shock, I watched my hands reach out and place themselves on either side of Jellal's head.
I had toyed with the idea, the possibility of rewriting someone's memories in order to change a story. It had always given me a strange, sick, awed feeling. As though I wondered if I could do it, and at the same time, didn't wish to do it.
Brain was still speaking.
"You will write that Jellal was a willing member of the Balam Alliance, and that all that transpired was his plan."
He wanted me to write a story into Jellal's mind that would make him believe he was the bad guy almost everyone thought he was. He wanted me to lie, and take advantage of my gifts and Jellal's vulnerability to turn him into a pawn for this man.
Rebellion fluttered impotently inside my chest, screams of denial and pleading echoed in my mind as I fought the commands that I couldn't find it in myself to resist. Something inside of me was responding to Brain and forcing me to obey him.
Sinking my magic into Jellal's mind deeply enough to do what I was being ordered to would take some time. And during that time, my mind, which was still free, was directing all other parts of my magic elsewhere.
Why was I listening to this monster like some kind of soulless robot? How had he gotten this kind of power over me?
There were no answers.
So I settled for struggling and fighting with all the mental strength I possessed. Brain was not my master, I was a person, and a free woman at that! He did not get to tell me what to do, and I was not going to let him turn Jellal into some kind of soulless monster!
I stood, my shoulders cramping as I used my subconscious to try and fight free. Muscles were twitching madly in my arms, and legs.
"G2.0. You will do as you are told." Not like I have a choice in the matter! I raged at him, wishing for Simon's gift of telepathy to let Brain know exactly what I was thinking. I could probably have cursed him in at least a dozen different languages.
I could see Cobra, Eric, out of the corner of my eye. Cubellious was hissing, shifting her coils over the ground in obvious agitation, but the man was watching me with grief.
"Cobra, verify G2.0's thoughts. Is the reset complete?" Could he hear me now? Would he tell Brain that somehow, he had my body but didn't have my mind? That I was still stuck inside this useless sack of flesh, blood and bones?
My eyes met his for a second.
I saw resolve blossom in them for a split second before it was gone again. Did I imagine it?
"Ain't nothing out of the ordinary that I can hear." He said with a perfectly straight face and a natural tone of voice.
He lies. He can hear you.
The voice of my magic was slow, sluggish in a way that it never had been before.
Thank you, Eric. I thought deliberately. Then I turned my thoughts back to trying to find a way to reclaim my body.
"Likely a lingering effect of her time spent among other wizards. She developed a strong personality in order to integrate among them effectively and her body is still affected by it..." Brain sounded as though he were musing this to himself. An observation on a long term experiment. The Poison Dragon Slayer wasn't looking at me, but at his guild master and foster father. The flash of resolve came again before it was swept away by idle curiosity.
He wants to help you.
"How come you didn't make more kids like her? It seems like she's a resounding success." This question rang as out of character of Eric. He normally stayed as quiet and invisible as possible while around Brain. But there was still a touch of the monologuing spell I had put on Brain earlier.
The question caught, and Brain started to talk.
A surge of fierce gratitude blurred through my thoughts, and I suddenly had to consciously fight back the tears that wanted to form. They were indicative of emotion, and Brain wouldn't have wanted emotion in a tool. And that seemed like who he was seeing me as right now. A well made tool he had handed off to a middle man to polish and sharpen before stealing it back once it was finished.
I had gotten a very good idea of the kind of life Eric had led at Brain's hands. Even if he wasn't gearing up and fighting for me, the fact that he was willing to do even this much for a stranger meant a great deal.
You helped answer his prayer.
"Not all of them were young enough when the conditioning was begun to make it take. G2.0 was with us from two years old, there was plenty of to imprint the triggers needed to have her be useful. Then, of course, children at that age are so fragile that most of her batch didn't survive the lacrima implantation. All of those that did didn't have magic compatible to the lacrima they were given. It was a calculated chance that one or two of the group would survive in a useful state."
There were originally 20.
And none of them had died in peaceful ways. And even after they were dead, there was no rest for them. I wanted to throw up, but not even my gag reflex would respond. While it did help me keep my secret, I hated it in this instance. It was yet another thing that I didn't have control over.
It's not me. I told myself. I'm not G2.0. I'm Fae. Not the same person. I am a Fairy Tail wizard. I am not a pawn! This is not my life!
The realization flashed through my mind like a lightning bolt.
I couldn't read my own past. Now I knew why. I always tried to read the past of Celeste D. Faerun, but that was the wrong story. She, I, only existed in my time with Fairy Tail. That was my life. I couldn't read anything from before that because there was nothing to see for me. I had never seen anything because I had been looking for the wrong person. I hadn't known what name to look for, and the identity I had made, Celeste D Faerun, belonged only in the here and now.
Before I had been reborn as Fae, I had had a name, or some kind of designation. I simply hadn't known what it was, and had never thought to look for it. The connection was there, I could track people through an identity change like I had with Loke. But I had simply never tried to look...because I was happy as Fae and ultimately, that was enough for me to not sweat the details of where I came from originally.
But now I needed to know to try and work out how to get out of this mess. So, I started looking at G2.0. At how she had begun, and what had brought her to where she met Natsu and I was born.
It came in short, fitful spurts. G2.0's purpose may have been to gather information, but it wasn't to retain, or respond to it beyond that. A living, walking camera, but nothing to process the meaning of what she saw
I saw a small family in a coastal town. There were a few children and a baby. And I knew the baby was G2.0. The parents' faces were blurred, but they gave off a sense of love for their youngest daughter and her older siblings. There was another face that passed through her life, but his features gave an unmistakable sense of sinister consequences.
There was horror, and cries of pain and confusion. The family was gathered with the father doing his best to protect them all. I watched with a distant sense of sadness as the children, all under the age of ten, were separated from their parents. But the young girl, now a toddler, was singled out.
I tasted her fear as if it was my own as she looked up at the unfamiliar faces, clinging to the comfort of her sister's arms and trying to not cry. One man whose face was literally draped in darkness frightened her more than anything.
Then they took her sister away and she was alone.
They called her G2.0, and not by her name. They claimed she had been born to the dark faced man. That he was her father. They said she was supposed to help them free the world from the illusion of civilization. And after so long of hearing these stories, with a mind that could do nothing but remember, she started to believe it. It was easier to believe that they were good people, that they were helping her, and that she had the potential to help them. It was better to believe that, than to recall the truth that they were the reason she no longer had a family. That they had made her alone, and that they were destroying her and remaking her into something she wasn't.
Her story ended the same way it had begun: With violence.
The group of captives was being herded together. News had come about a powerful wizard in the area and they were gathering their strength to relocate out of sight. The newer adult captives were resisting, but G2.0 moved without protest to where she was told by her father. No one had put chains on her in years. They simply ordered, and she obeyed if they used the phrase she had been told by father that meant they were allies.
The impassioned cry of one captive, an older man who had somehow survived a full year.
"Girl, this is not who you are!"
Yes it is.
Being a crying, broken child hurt. G2.0 didn't feel pain. G2.0 didn't cry. G2.0 didn't disobey.
"Run, girl! Run! Get away and be free from this place!"
I...I can?
G2.0 broke.
Somewhere, underneath the years of conditioning and training, there had been a small, fragile thread of self that refused to vanish. It had been buried for a long time, she had buried it herself to try and keep herself from being hurt. But the call woke something in her. It wasn't an explicit command, but it was one that she actually wanted to follow for once. So, she took the excuse. It was an order, and she followed orders.
He isn't father, or one of the allies. We cannot obey him!
One voice protested in her mind. But a new voice suggested:
Why not?
Now there were two people, two little girls in the same body. G2.0 was seven with a harsh life behind her, and this new girl, young and innocent from her long stay in the darkness, was the equivalent of a newborn with a far more developed mind than she ought to have. That lasted only for a few seconds. Then she saw what lay in G2.0's past and recoiled from it with abject horror.
I refuse to have that be my life!
Armed with a power that could only come from desperation, she started to run for freedom. She wove through a crowd of people, then a forest of trees. She ran, and ran until she could run no further. She tripped, and fell, cracking her head against a stone when she tried to tumble back to her feet.
In pain, vision blurring, and struggling to keep her recently unlocked emotions in check, G2.0 reasserted her control, guiding the exhausted body they shared to a deadfall to take shelter.
-vVv-
We should go back. Father will want to see us.
He's not my father. And he's not yours either.
How would you know? You weren't even born an hour ago.
I...I just know. That place was not good. We need to find a new place. New people. Somewhere where they will take care of us.
There is no one who can be trusted. Only Father knows who can be trusted, and if we are not with him, we will not know either.
He's not my father! He's a horrible person who killed your family and destroyed your life, and you've been with him for so long that you believe he saved you when he did that!
A nameless little girl clutched her bleeding head, quaking as she fought the older, more disciplined force that wanted to retrace their steps and go back.
I'm not going back! You can't make me go back!
Her desperation was enough to let her lock her body down into motionlessness. Neither fleeing, nor returning. She stayed like that for hours.
Darkness fell, the night chill set in. Sheltered under the bulk of an old tree in the late spring, she passed an uncomfortable night, jerking in and out of sleep. Whenever she would drift off, the other force would come in and try to make her body walk back to captivity like a sheep to the slaughter.
They kept up their argument.
The older voice reasoned that the life they knew was superior to the uncertainty they faced alone. The newborn identity insisted they needed to find someone new and that just about anyone would be better than who they had been with before. Neither side was willing to concede.
It was approaching the daybreak when they heard someone coming. They didn't move, but in spite of that, they were discovered.
A boy with a curious expression and salmon colored hair lifted the massive hollow tree trunk they had been hiding under.
"A kid? I thought I smelled something. Watcha doing under here?"
"Hiding." The young voice managed to make the lips move, the throat to vocalize and the tongue to shape the sound properly.
"Pretty well too. If I couldn't smell you, I'd never have guessed you were there. Come on out." He braced the log with one hand, beckoning her forward. "We're not gonna hurt you. I'm Natsu, and this is Happy." The girl then realized there was a blue cat like creature hovering by the boy, Natsu's side, on white wings.
They will be better. Let's go with them.
No. Too much uncertainty. We don't know them, we don't know what they might do to us!
She tried to crawl out, but managed only a fitful twitch before her head rang with pain like a church bell.
"Oh no, that looks bad." The cat, Happy, observed, flitting around her. "Here, come on, I got you." With Natsu holding their escape route open, and Happy assisting her unwilling limbs in moving, the girl managed to get into the open. She wanted to talk, but G2.0's unwillingness to trust them kept her silent even as Natsu cleaned and bandaged her injuries.
"We're gonna need to get you to a doctor to look at that." He told her, hands surprisingly gentle as he tucked the wrap in place. Her shoulders tightened and she hunched down slightly. "Relax, I'm gonna take you somewhere safe. You'll be ok, I promise."
Should I believe him?
It would be great if I had some way of knowing if he really wanted to help me...And if going back was the right thing to do or not. I just...I want to know what's true. What actually happened, and what it means.
I just want to know...I-
It felt like glass shattering. Like a window in a cold basement just blew open and something warm and alive flooded her. G2.0 tried to close the window, but the way was made. She was forever changed.
They were walking down the cobbled street, Natsu carrying her in his arms. They had departed the train station and Natsu had picked her up as soon as he had recovered.
"Are you going to help me?" She asked in a small voice, uncertain of what answer she would receive.
Natsu looked down at her with a smile.
"Yeah. I promised you, you're gonna be fine. I'm gonna look after you."
Etherious Natsu Dragneel never goes back on his word. The voice had changed. He means it...
Clarity flooded both halves of the divided mind.
Their previous life had been hell. They had been less that a slave, they had been an experiment that resulted in a useful tool. They had had no identity or value beyond their ability to retain information. And if they collected that information, 'Father' would use it to hurt people. Good people like the one who had just promised, sincerely, that he would help them. The first person in the world that they could remember having done so.
'Father' was a man of ambition who had seen her as a tool to bring about his own selfish designs of power.
Every step Natsu took, a new piece of information drifted into her mind.
He taught Happy how to fish.
He loves eating briquets while they are on fire.
He misses his father.
He wants to help you and see you safe.
I can trust him...The girl's relief was inexpressible.
But G2.0's was even greater. She could see clearly what her life had been like. And it wasn't good. But this...looked like it was taking a turn for the better.
I do not know what to call you. But you are new. You are...inexperienced in the world. And you don't need to have my burdens weighing you down as you go forward.
Like mist evaporating in the sun, the nameless child watched her memories start to fade.
The beach, the family, the pain, the darkness.
It all disappeared.
I will guide you, but this is your life.
Write your own story. My part is over.
Now it's your turn.
-vVv-
A blue haired girl and man both started as Celeste D Faerun opened her eyes.