Before I begin, just quickly wanted to throw out that I'm actually really surprised that there's any following of this story at all! This is sorta on the crack end of Fairy Tail and totally unpopular, so I appreciate the support! Love you, my dear readers!
This one's a Meredy-centered character drabble. Sort of a character analysis, if you will.
seven years alive
Ever since the loss of her mother and father, Meredy didn't know what it meant to feel.
The world is small and simple, made of cause and effect:
Someone killed her father, and so he died. Someone killed her mother, and so she died.
Someone didn't kill her, and so she is alive.
And as someone that is alive, she has a purpose. She exterminates and annihilates everyone that assigned to her without question, and her only rationale is that she was simply told to do these things.
She produces no emotions of her own, and so her Lost Magic is the most ironic of the Seven Kin of Purgatory.
Even more so than Zoldeo, who occupies the spirit of a celestial animal with his power to manipulate mankind, even more so than Rustyrose, who lives to destroy the magic that sets him apart from the commoners he hated, and even more so than Ultear, who destroys her humanity to the best of her ability in order to regain it all back later.
The very power of her magic is within emotions, and she cannot tap into her own.
Perhaps that is why she is taught Maguilty Magic, because if it were anyone else, they would have already taken over the world.
…
In many ways, she likes her magic. She has never been able to understand irrationality, and because her sensory magic goes both ways, she takes the opportunity to learn about what it means to be human from the people she would soon take the life away from.
Meredy learns the elements of many emotions, but she wonders how emotions can feel so different when they invoke the same sensations. How does something as different as angry share the same heated blush as embarrassment? How does crying constitute for same tears of both happiness and sadness? How do people understand what they are feeling when there is no rational way to analyze the differences?
She asks her peers these questions and they can never give her a straightforward answer.
She figures they do not want her to understand.
So sometimes she tries to reflect emotions back to her victims, to experiment and see if she can recreate the same twisted expressions on the face before her as the one that she had just killed.
She can never do it, however, and Meredy does not understand why she cannot just simply replicate these mundane and simplistic brain behaviors.
She kills her victims before they have a chance to mock her for trying.
She figures no one wants her to understand.
…
Meredy follows Ultear, because following is the only thing she has ever known.
Following allows her to move without thinking for herself, but to still move with a purpose. She can't think for herself. It is too difficult. She chooses to follow and not to choose because she doesn't know how to tap into her own mind.
She doesn't want to.
She is scared of what is created there.
After all, she hears that mental pain is often worse than physical pain.
And Meredy knew very well the many kinds of physical pain there were.
She inflicts them on herself in order to hurt others, and only every now and then she realizes that she hurts herself more.
At times, her victims tease her with mental agony through the Sensory Link that she has bound between the two of them.
She kills them before it takes over her.
…
The first time Meredy thinks she feels is when she sees Ultear driving a knife in her own body.
Up until this point, Ultear was only someone to follow. But Meredy realizes that with Ultear gone, she would have no one to tell her what to do, what to think, what to believe in—
Ultear is more than someone to follow, Ultear is Meredy's purpose in life. Ultear gives Meredy direction and assignment. Without Ultear, Meredy is an empty box without use.
And so Meredy ensures that Ultear will not go. She convinces Ultear to live on.
Then Ultear tells her that she was the one that killed her mother and father.
The world is small and simple, made of cause and effect:
Ultear killed her father, and so he died. Ultear killed her mother, and so she died.
Ultear didn't kill her, and so she is alive.
Meredy does not kill Ultear. She hugs her and tells Ultear that it is okay, because Meredy does not like when Ultear is crying—she would look too much like Meredy's victims.
Meredy wonders if this is what love is.
…
After Grimoire Heart disintegrates, Meredy finds that she has nowhere to be.
She has the entire world open to do what she pleased with it, and she could think of nothing to do.
Perhaps out of habit, or perhaps out of what she thinks love is, Meredy follows Ultear.
She decides for herself to follow Ultear. She decides for herself to follow Jellal.
She decides that she will turn a new page in her book. She decides that she try to feel.
And as her newfound guild atones for the sins they had done in the past, she takes the opportunity to regain the humanity that she had never let herself have. She allows herself to feel freely, and she enjoys the fact that there are things in the world too complex for her to understand.
She believes that her time for wisdom will come.
For right now, she is still learning.
When Jellal and Ultear notice that Meredy's Sensory Link is activated around her own wrist and no one else's, they smile to themselves and don't try to understand.
Meredy doesn't try to explain.
She keeps the pink magic around her wrist to ensure she feels her own emotions when they come.
It's how she knows that she's alive, and how she thanks the world for being so rich.
I'm not really sure where this one went. I think it's always been interesting to see how Meredy has changed so much in personality since we first met her. Anyway, this story certainly ended up longer than I expected, and as short and quip it was relative to my other longer pieces, took two sittings to complete. I sorta knew where I wanted to end but…this is what happened. So…whatcha think?
thir13enth