2. And The Plot Thickens...
"The first time I saw her, I found her lying on the pile of the loot of the bandits that I had set out to subdue on my job, covered in a tattered blanket of sorts, sound asleep. I was quite shocked, to be honest, and completely at a loss of what to make of the situation.
"So once I had made sure that the brat's well fed and given all the medical attention it needed; because as it turns out bandits make for some quite negligent foster parents and the brat was not only starved but also running a high fever, I reported it to the local authorities. But no matter how many times they tried, they couldn't find a single missing child report with the brat's description.
"For days I wandered in the town carrying her with me all the time, sniffing around the local orphanages for some clues but the child could've materialized out of thin air for all the clue I acquired proving anything otherwise.
"And when I returned back to the local law enforcers they told me that the bandits had neither added nor made any amendment to their initial claim throughout the entire length of interrogation that they, the bandits, found the child on the steps of their hideout; the very same hideout that took me an entire day to locate.
"Weird, huh? What do you guys think?"
"So cuuuute~!" a crooning voice drifted in from a little distance away to the large table where Gray and a few of us were congregated to finally listen to his tale.
"Look at her wee little hands!" "it has such a round face." "it's cheeks look like they'll explode." "Ooh, look, she's awake!"
But most of the others seemed to have found some more interesting preoccupations.
"ARE YOU BASTARDS EVEN LISTENING? IT'S SERIOUS!" Gray hollered at the majority of the guild that was gathered around a small table atop which laid a small wooden basket, staring at its lone resident- a little baby not even ten months old, who had started to cry in the same shrill piping voice that had the entire guild spell bounded within minutes of its effect.
"Shut up, Gray." Gajeel said offhandedly, picking the earwax with his pinky and flopped in a chair around our table. "We heard you the first time, stop shouting like a housewife, geez."
Gray let the comment slip in order to collect the child off the basket, muttering darkly about waking the dragon up and slip into the ritual only he could perform: calming the baby down.
On any other normal day I would have advised leaving child care to someone experienced like Bisca, Alzac or Mira because let's face it, Gray's forte is demolishing things into oblivion not raising a delicate baby.
But here he is, defying his very nature, bouncing the baby in his arms who had began to calm the moment Gray had lifted her. An exasperated frown strained his features and a sort of smirk tugging at his lips that threatened to widen every time the baby chuckled with glee.
For a moment I slipped into the past, where a blond man replaced the raven, playing with a pudgy little girl in a beautiful garden on a bright sunlit morning.
"Lucy?" Erza's soft tone jolted me out of my reverie.
"Yes, Erza?"
Erza smiled warmly down at me and wordlessly reached to wipe a lone tear trailing down my cheek.
What? When did I…?
I hastily cleared any evidence of ever crying while Erza gracefully lowered besides me on the wooden bench.
She ate in silence her cake without making any move to discuss why I might've cried.
For moments we sat in silence and I basked in the reassurance it conveyed.
"It brought back a memory of how my father used to be before Mother passed away." I told her quietly in a way of explaining, looking at Gray changing the baby's diaper with absolute distaste on Mira's instructions amidst the mocking crowd of men.
"Watching them like this, I wondered if my dad used to look at me that way; half like I am a miracle which he cannot quite wrap his mind around and half like I am the most annoying thing that has ever walked the earth."
Erza chuckled and shifted her gaze to Gray but added nothing.
I fell silent to watch Gray struggle to wrap the excited baby after throwing the dirty diaper at the offending gaggle of cackling males.
"You know, all these years he hadn't believed for a single moment that I had died. Each year for past seven years, he sent me presents on my birthday, paid my rent believing that I was alive and would return someday. And to think that the last thing I said to him was that I never wanted to see him again…!"
I bit my lip to stop myself. The pain that I had shoved down in the darkest corners of my heart began to bleed out.
It had been the same ever since I heard about Father. I had been relentlessly keeping myself busy but now after days of fatigue piling up, my control was wavering.
We lapsed in another bout of silence. Erza continued to eat her cake in silence in the surrounding din that had started to sound hollow to my ears.
"I cannot tell you whether what you did in past was right or wrong; it's not my place to judge. But I can tell you this," Erza placed her plate on the table with light clink. "The guilt in your heart will cripple you if you didn't let it go. And the last thing your father would've wanted for you to suffer on his account. Do not think of your actions as right or wrong but as choices that you made to the best of your knowledge at that time. And if you feel dissatisfied, learn from your mistakes and move on. Wallowing in past won't help. This is a lesson we all learned the hard way." she elegantly rose and added "find a purpose to your life, dedicate yourselves to it. it will hard initially, but when it'll be over you'll find answers to all your questions and doubts and a little peace of mind." And with that she left me to wonder.
I didn't completely understand what Erza had said but i was grateful for her words and the guidance that I didn't realize how much in need of I was until that moment
Move on, she had said, find something to live for.
Meanwhile, all around the guild everyone had indulged in the sacred convention of beating the snot out of anything that had the misfortune of crossing their paths. The sound of the ensuing wreckage continued to reverberate.
"Alright Gray, you seem to have done good." On the other side of the table, Mira complimented Gray encouragingly who was leaning over the table heavily, exhausted and exasperated.
The baby on the table, however, seemed in a bright mood. She was emitting highly amused noises that sounded like gurgling half chuckles, unbothered by the surrounding chaos, as it played with the chain that dangled around Gray's neck with her small grubby hands.
"YOU'VE BECOME QUITE THE NANNY GRAY! WHAT'S NEXT? YOU GONNA TAKE SEWING CLASSES?" Natsu hollered from where he shared punches with Max.
"SHUT UP, YA MORON!" Gray hollered back.
"OR WHAT? YOU GONNA SING US TO SLEEP?"
"Gyahahhahah~! That a good one Natsu! "
"THAT DOES IT!" Gray stood up suddenly sending the chair crashing into poor Reedus.
Geez, just being near these guys is hazardous to health.
But before he could've joined the fray a gigantic shadow swallowed the rebellious mob, like an ill premonition to the large fist that slammed heavily down upon them.
Ouch!
"That's enough, you shitty brats!" the gianormous arm retreated to reveal a pile of twitching bodies and broken limbs, back to Master's side.
"Don't forget I am still here." Master ordered from his perch on the table.
He had been so quite this whole time that I almost forgot he was among us.
Actually, he was the one responsible for whatever degree of decorum currently observed inside the Guild, which is really peaceful compared to the pandemonium preceding his arrival.
It had been absolute hell before; the guild was in uproar concerning the identity of the child. Speculations ran high and somehow by the fifteenth minute of Erza's discovery the topic of debate had changed to whether Gray was actually a trans-sexual whore who was being accused of sleeping with almost everyone's ex.
And in midst of the ridiculous accusations and ever more ridiculous punishments Gray was screaming at the top of his lungs and was being deftly ignored.
Then entered Master.
He Stomped a few, kicked some others and the favored rest with the look that promised pain of hell if they even uttered a single sound, freezing them to their spots.
He, then, casually walked up to a table, the one we were currently gathered around and fished out a bottle of sake. He sat at the table and poured himself a cupful, took a large gulp and choked on it as, almost instantaneously, the baby began to wail again.
And one thing led to another and Gray got his golden chance to come clean.
Master had been growing steadily serious as Gray went into detail.
Well, it did sound a little fishy because really what kind of parent would hand over their child to Bandits. But despite the ridicule of such notion bandits held on to it even after going through torture. So either they were telling the truth or this is going to be one heck of a mystery to solve.
"Gray, continue!" the "Right Now" rang clearly in Master's serious tone.
Seeing the Master so serious Gray wordlessly returned to his seat beside Mira and continued solemnly,
"Well, as I told you, all I gathered in the town of discovery was that this child was abandoned by its biological parents at the steps of a bandit hideout. But that's all; I had no kind of record that might've served me as any sort of lead." He paused to lift the baby off the wooden surface as it began to sob in the fashion that I've learned she did when she was either hungry or tired, and fed her milk through one of those bottles manufactured especially for babies.
And as he did that, like mine several eyes rounded on him. Though he tried to appear unfazed, a light blush had crept up the tips of his ears.
How cute. If Juvia were present she would've hugged him to death.
"And if you think it's been weird so far" Gray started "then what happened next, you'd call it insane."
"I had moved my search to the adjacent towns and after exhausting all my options I was planning on putting the baby up for adoption when I was attacked, for lack of any better term I could think of then and now, by an army. And they were no pushovers either, each of them were trained assassin, experts of their arts, from what I could tell."
"Why did they attack you?" Levi asked, genuinely interested.
The rest of the Guild, too, had taken a hint from Master's tone and followed Gray's suit.
"Well that's the insane part; I have no idea. I was just returning after rejecting another family that had filed for adoption.
(And he still likes to pretend that he doesn't care about the "brat".)
"I was on my way back to the local inn I was staying at. The road was quiet for one moment and the next I was surrounded and was being pelted with fatal blows. I count myself lucky to escape with the brat's life as well mine's even with all these injuries."
He motioned at the deep gash on the side of his face and angry red cut across his now bare chest.
"Did you pause even for a moment to think they might've been some sorta allies of the bandits you beat?" Laxus' indulgence was cool and his face aloof as he asked this.
"That's entirely plausible. " Wendy commented nodding.
"Not when these sorta allies are of the caliber to hurt Gray to this extent, no." Erza seriously put in from Kana's side who was looking quite sober at the moment.
"Tired and exhausted; may I remind you that Gray had been taking care of the child and protecting her all the while. Given that I wouldn't be surprised if even Reedus could get a hit in." Mira countered.
('Hey!,' Reedus objected)
"No, they were definitely experts," Gray interjected.
("Sorry Reedus, I was simply making an analogy." Mira apologized, smiling "'S alright")
"And I did consider the possibility of their alliance with those thugs." he added with a light tilt of his head in Laxus's direction before taking the reins of the conversation again. "But why would an elite assassin group be related to a bunch of no name thugs? And why exactly they came after me? Revenge seemed too insubstantial an issue to deploy an entire army.
"The questions were many and their implications even more, but then it didn't matter who they were. I was injured, dehydrated and low on food and water and lord knows this thing eats, drinks and shits like there's no tomorrow."
"This thing" was snoring peacefully in Mira's lap. i had to squash the little, inexplicable jealousy I felt in that moment
"So I followed what I thought to be the best course of action and returned to the Guild. I took the brat with me because… well…, as you all have witnessed this… thing,"
He said "thing" with equal distaste that one would reserve for addressing "Bloody Blood Sucking Parasites".
So maybe I was wrong and Gray doesn't like the baby as much as the rest of us. Even Natsu seems to adore her (though the fact that Gray blames her for all his current miseries might've something to do with that.)
"has grown quite attached to me and I needed someone capable to take care of her." He said
"Quite attached" doesn't quite cover it.
The first time Levi tried to take baby away from Gray it had cried the whole guild down on our heads. And it was not the usual irritated or demanding cries as I had later learned to catalogue, but a wail of despair.
With all the strength her little arms could muster the baby held on to Gray, burying her little fist in whatever fabric of his clothing it could clench in them.
It was heart breaking, the way she had cried and clung onto Gray.
An unbridled image of me at Mother's funeral, unwilling to let go of the coffin, flashed past my eyes when I saw her reaching out for Gray
And no matter how Gray may've acted otherwise but then he had glared Levi and everyone else away and pulled the baby close to his chest.
The baby had sobbed for a whole minute before she fell asleep,not relinquishing her hold of him.
Nobody had asked why the baby reacted the way it did.
The baby might not concoct coherent sentence like us but it made abundantly clear, nonetheless, that that little soul had been through things terrible.
Her young mind and survival instincts, consequently, had branded every touch, every small, the entire world in general, as harm and hurt save for one- Gray.
How he had done it, it's hard to perceive. But he was the only person she trusted with everything.
What could possibly have been done to this innocent child that scarred her mind, the very thought made me tremble with molten fury.
So far, only Mira had been successful in managing the baby to open up to her and, surprisingly, Erza too, a little.
Though, everyone else was forbidden to even touch her, asleep or no, including me which is really regrettable.
More than regrettable, to be honest. For some reason the idea of Erza and Mira bonding to baby didn't quite sit well with me. But that's petty, the baby was not an object to be won. once she will get habitual to me she would start to open up to me as well.
"What do you think, Master?" Erza broke the silence as she consulted Master who had been sitting quietly and listening intently with his arms folded around the staff that rested against his left shoulder.
At that moment, he had been staring at Gray with sharp eyes and Gray had held them unblinking
"I think you made the right decision Gray. It was wise not to linger in hostile territory any longer than absolutely necessary." he replied mildly and rose to his feet with the help of his staff.
'What about the baby Master?" Mira asked with her characteristic politeness.
"What about her?" he asked, bouncing back to being jovial grandpa."Isn't it obvious that she's staying with us."
Cheers erupted all around the Guild-laughter, hoots and banging the table. Really. wasn't it obvious from the start? Master would never have left a helpless child at the mercy of the world when he could help it
"Well, Gray," Master jumped down the table and turned to Gray, "let's take a stroll down the streets, what do you say?"
His casual invitation was almost lost to the ambient noise but for a moment his sharp gaze returned. Gray looked a little surprised but held Master's eyes steadily. A moment later, the look of surprised was replaced by a knowing smirk as he complied, "Let's."
Wait, wait, wait. What just happened? What kind of understanding transpired between the two of them? They didn't even speak a word but I swear some kind of plot development had occurred. Hey, this is not fair!
When i looked around i realized that i wasn't alone in my observation, but the light frown that Mira, Erza and Laxus wore seemed to signify that they had a slight suspicion pertaining to the subject of the silent conversation held between Master and Gray.
Ah well, i guess it will reveal itself with time, wouldn't it?
so instead i turned to ask Gray a question that had been bugging me all day.
So much had happened today but I still have a question left, Gray.
"What's that?" Gray asked without looking up as he lifted the baby, sleeping inspite of the noise, from Mira's hands and placed her delicately in the wooden basket.
Do you know what's the baby's name is? Or do you have something in mind?
"Yeah, I've been wondering about that too." Wendy piped up.
Gray gave the basket one long look before looking at me.
"Call a demon what you will but it won't stop being a pain in the ass.", he replied with a shrug and resumed task at hand.
Now that's really becoming of you Gray, calling a little baby a demon.
"It's really strange, given how much she likes you, you're the only one in the Guild who's immune to her charms. " Levi informed Gray.
"That's because I've taken the vaccine course called "Child Care" " Gray replied "all my delusions of babies being cute and cuddly were washed by piss and poop and waking up to shrill cries at ungodly hours." Gray added dourly. "And besides I'm not alone; didn't you see the horrible faces Master made when he heard her crying?"
Wendy dissolved into a hapless heap of laughter at the mention of the Incident and Gray's antics. "You're funny Gray-san!"
He was making faces because he was surprised and was consequently choking on his sake.
"Not just surprised, he was shocked out his skin. The cries must've resurrected the memories of the horror that raising Laxus was. I can sympathize because I saw that in his eyes." Gray feigned a horrified face causing Wendy to gasp for breath and ducked under the lightning bolt aimed at his head.
"Hey there's a Baby here!" he hollered at Laxus.
"You're pathetic Gray!" Erza said, disdained.
"Shut the hell up!" he snapped back at her.
"What did you say?" she asked softly as she rose from her seat.
"Gyah." With an unmanly yelp Gray took off after Master out of the Guild.
I wonder what Master had planned for his "stroll".
"Hey Lucy," Natsu called after a moment "What do you say we make most of today and go out on a job together?"
Sure, sounds like a plan.
I got up to join Natsu who was already at the threshold calling over his shoulder, "Happy! Let's go!"
"Aye~!" The blue cat joined us as we began our journey
It was late in the afternoon and the Sun was hot and it seemed that as another lively day at Fairy Tail neared its conclusion, things seemed to be getting back to normal.
Gray had been acting a little whiny but lack of sleep is reported to have even more drastic effects than that.
He seemed to be coming around at end anyways, what with the stupid jokes he made, so I guess he's adapting to his new position as "Daddy Gray".
And now I am off at a job with my buddies, the pain of loss still present but much less dulled in their buoyant presence. And hopefully, with their help, I will be able to move on, just as Erza had suggested.
On the outskirts of the city over a pothole riddled road cast in the shadow of the woods that flanked it on one side, wandered two men. One of them was young, the other, not quite.
The late afternoon silence was tinged by the rustle of the foliage and crunching of the dead leaves littering the road as the men carried on their unhurried pace.
"It seemed to me," the old man began "that you left some things unsaid earlier in your account."
"Was it that obvious?" the young man asked with an indolent smirk, looking sideways at his companion.
"Not quite. But I understand my brats enough to know when they are being secretive." the old man answered easily.
Gray chuckled, "Fair enough."
"So," the old man said "Care to share them?"
The wooden basket bearing man held his silence a moment longer before answering,
"On my way back, I noticed a few very strange things that made me think. It might sound crazy, but I have a theory that I think might have a fair shot at the truth."
"I am all ears." the old man encouraged.
On the outskirts of the city through a pothole riddled road two men, deep in conversation, entered the woods
Their gait seemed casual but their steps had a snap of purpose to them.
Slowly they were nearing their destination and a discovery that would put the wheel of this tale truly in motion. And so the plot thickens...
tbc
I hope the chapter was entertaining.
Thanks for the reviews. Expect sooner updates.
Seeya guys later!
By the by guys, do you have any suggestion for names of the baby? I have one which will probably stick, but feel free to contribute.