A.N. : Hello again and thank you for reading, first a thank you to xLeTal for their review and a shout out to Keiid for allowing me to be inspired by her art.

Well I had to write this chapter sooner or later, let's hope it all goes well.

Hurt

Everything hurt

Why was this happening? Why was he doing this? Father?

And then, it was over.

One minute all of his senses were screaming in agony, then he felt the engulfing embrace of dark magic. A few moments later Rakheid opened his eyes.

He was no longer in fairy tail, he reached out with his senses for the magic power of any of his comrades but this place was so empty he doubted he was even still in Fiore.

The sky above him was bright, blue and cloudless, he shifted his hands to the ground and felt a soft cushioned surface, with not as much effort as he thought it would have taken he sat up and looked at his surroundings, he was in an open field, not one of grass but golden wheat, there was a breeze coming from somewhere that sent ripples across the surface, making it look like it was shimmering.

Rakheid looked down at himself, that his injuries were gone was the first thing he noticed, his robes were clean of their tears and his blood. It was like the war had never happened.

But it had.

He had been defeated. He had failed his empire. He'd failed his father. His father...

Oh.

Now he remembered.

His body felt lighter than he could ever remember it being, but he still felt so very tired in that moment.

"What are you doing?"

The voice was young and feminine, he twisted around to see its source. Standing behind him was a brown haired girl in an orange dress, she didn't look any older than thirteen. She stood a few feet behind him was a relaxed posture, her hands clasped behind her back. Her coffee coloured eyes watched him with some emotion he didn't recognise.

"Given my circumstances I think I have much more of a right to ask you that question." He said to her, he was to tired and confused by his surroundings to try and sound intimidating, so he just turned around fully and crossed his legs into a lotus position so that they were both looking at each other.

The girl drew her lips into a tight line, and a hot shade of red began crawling up her cheeks. She began to shake on the spot, like she was trying to hold in an explosive force.

Rakheid arched an eyebrow at her "Are you okay?"

At that a squeak of embarrassment escaped her lips and she spun around quickly crouching down onto her knees and covering her face in her hands.

"I'm sorry! I'm just not good around new people!" She sobbed.

Rakheid had no words for this, he took another look around, trying to see if the girl had some near by parents, or friends, or psychiatrist he could return her too. But in every direction there were just fields of gold. So this was his life now huh?

Sighing out a deep breath, Rakheid adjusted his posture and resigned himself to his current situation.

"If you're so uncomfortable with people," he asked in a measured tone "then why did you come over here?"

He didn't bother asking where she had come from or if she knew where they were, but he figured he was going to have to take it slowly with this one.

Hearing his question she stopped her panic attack and peeked a glance at him over her shoulder, apparently deeming him non threatening she shifted into a sitting position facing him, she pulled her legs close to her chest, looping her arms under her thighs and resting her chin on her knees. The red blush remained covering the lower half of her face but was a considerably subdued shade.

"I-I thought it might be different with you." She admitted,

"And why is that?"

"You..." she buried her face a little further behind her knees. "You remind me of someone I used to know." She spoke in the same voice as if she were confiding a precious memory.

Rakheid softened in that moment, the slight waver in the girls voice was familiar to him, he had heard it come from himself as a child, when he had weakly repeated a servants words that his father had disappeared from the country again without saying anything to him.

Rakheid looked over the girl again with new eyes, the way she held herself close, the way she had stood apart from him when they first met, how she said that she wasn't 'good around people'. Rakheid's childhood had been a far cry from what he wished it had been, lacking any kind of real connections, leaving him starved for the feeling of being loved and affection, but when he looked back on it as an adult he supposed it could have been worse. He'd had a roof over his head and food on his plate, and while he'd never truly been able to shake the sensation of loneliness and rejection that rang hollow through his bones, there had always been people around him, there had been Brandish. And even though he knew what he knew now he knew now, he couldn't help but feel that he would go through it all again for love of his father, even though his father...

But this girl. She had been completely alone. Isolated, abandoned kind of alone. Maybe his sense of empathy wasn't as dead as he thought it was because he felt a tugging in his gut, an instinctive urge to offer comfort.

"This person I remind you of," he began, "the two of you were very close?"

She made a humming noise before answering, "We were. Both of us lost our families when we were young, so for a long time all we had was each other. We grew up together in an isolated place, but one day we met people who offered to take us on an adventure," she laughed a little "she always loved adventure stories. We went out into the world with them and we saw amazing things... but in the end..."

Choosing to skip over the fact that this girl seemed to think he was reminiscent of a woman, he asked the first thing that came to mind, "Did she die?"

The girl shook her head vehemently, "No! No, we just... had to go separate ways." Her mouth turned up into a small smile, and her eyes gained a nostalgic shine. "But I'm happy for her, she got to go on so many adventures, and I left her with some good people, some good friends."

"But you still miss her."

She let go of her legs and let them fall on the ground, she set one hand on the earth beside her and the other ran a single finger along the hem of her dress.

"It's just-" she cut herself off as if she felt guilty for what she was about to say, she cut her eyes up to him and he held her gaze for a minute. He didn't know why but Rakheid felt the faintest thread of a connection to this brown haired stranger, like she was a face he hadn't seen in years, or a relative he'd never met.

She finished her confession in a whisper "Sometimes I wish we could have gone searching for fairies."

If he'd had the emotional energy, Rakheid was fairly sure he would have broken into laughter at that last word. In stories fairies were small, pretty, unimportant creatures, but it felt like they, or rather their name, had been haunting him. The mother he had never seen had lived her life in tune with the song of the fairies, and built a home for wayward souls and those children became her fairies, the guild named after an unanswered question, where everything had started, where his life had-

Was that why both of them were here together? Two souls lamenting the life they hadn't been allowed to lead. If that was the case what did he do with this information? Where did they go from here?

"If it's any consolation," he offered with a little uncertainty "I think I have a good idea how you feel."

Her expression calmed down and gained a more sere look.

"I know you do," she replied "I can see it in your eyes."

Maybe it was the way she was looking at him, or the tenderness in how she spoke but Rakheid felt shaken by this little girl, by the fact that she seemed genuinely concerned about him, which needless to say wasn't a feeling he was used to.

"We're both just a little unfinished I think." The girl continued, she inched closer to him until they were nearly face to face. "We didn't get all the pieces that everyone else got. But maybe... it could be enough that we don't have to be alone anymore."

She got to her feet and looked down at him with a warm smile, she waited for him to return it but he felt a little too shocked to move his muscles. She held out her hand to him in offering, and in that one gesture he swore she was using some kind of peace induction magic, because Rakheid felt his mind empty of all the thoughts that usually occupied it, for a master of light magic that manipulated the desires of others he had never had that many of his own, he'd had a few unreachable goals and his loyalty to Alvarez, but if that was all gone now then all he had left was what was in front of him.

He didn't reach for her hand. He got to his feet looked down at her,

"And where are you suggesting we go from here?"

Her face gained a thoughtful expression, she turned around and walked a few steps in front of her, she clasped her hands together and craned her head back to look at the sky.

"You thought to yourself that we were similar in our sadness," she said without looking back at him, before he could ask her how she knew what he had been thinking she looked back at him over her shoulder. "So how about we go searching for some happiness of our own?"

Happiness of his own.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. For the first time in his life the only person he had to think about was himself, for the first time ever he had the chance to be his own person.

Rakheid copied the girls earlier action and held his hand out to her.

"I am Rakheid Dragn-. I am Rakheid."

He prepared himself for a handshake at best before she told him her name, but instead her smile just grew wide and open mouthed as laughter poured from her throat, she grabbed his hand (or tried to at least) in her smaller one and pulled him after her as she began to run.

They ran towards the summit of a hill, their combined footfalls and the ringing of her laughter the only sounds to fill up the air. Before he could ask her what had been on his mind since he'd seen her, she tossed one of her pig tails over her shoulder, exposing her face.

"I'm Zera!" Called out the fairy to the White Dragneel.

End Note: The idea for this chapter party came from a thought I had of Zera being the fairy in Rakheid's heart like she was for Mavis, and partly because I headcannon that if larcana had a kid she would look like Zera.

I'm a little tempted to just end the story here as it feels like a natural place to stop, I have a couple other ideas but they verge a little more into something that probably should be it's own story.

If this is the end for now thank you all for coming this far with me and please leave your thoughts in a review as feedback is always appreciated, maybe if something happens in the manga later I could fit in some more content so for now don't forget to follow, favourite and review, have a lovely evening.