Disclaimer: I own no part of Fairy Tail
The little girl stretched her back as she woke; sleeping on the ground under a tree was not exactly restful.
Oh well... It's not like I haven't done it before. She thought.
She was still half in her dreams as she sat up and brushed the dirt and grass from her wavy brown hair. She sat under the tree for a while longer, letting her mind wander while watching the sun make its way into the sky. One of the advantages of sleeping outside is that you woke when the sun did, not only giving you a beautiful view of the sunrise, but an early start on the day as well.
"Good morning, Princess. Up early this morning, I see."
Her head jerked to the sound of her father's voice, though she knew he wasn't actually there. She was daydreaming about when he would greet her in the morning when she woke. These days, he was hardly home anymore, and her brain had been fabricating visions of him. She couldn't help it; over the past year, she watched as her parents grew more and more distant, not only from each other, but from her as well.
It's because of what happened when... She couldn't bring herself to finish the thought. It was too painful to dwell on the past, especially since this particular one was what had torn her family apart.
She shook the thoughts out of her head and put her black glasses on over her brilliant teal eyes, and watched as the world slowly came into focus.
I should probably get going. I've got to talk find Reiki today. Then maybe he'll help me find Papa...
xXXx
It was almost 11 o'clock in the morning when she found the guild of her former friend Reiki. She hadn't seen him in a little over a year, but her dad talked about him sometimes. Hesitantly, she opened the door to the guild and walked in.
It was a very calm establishment, from what she'd heard, but she was still unsure. She peeked in and was happy to find that there were several groups of people sitting and talking. She was very pleased- her home guild was loud and rowdy, and she hated it.
Seeing the peaceful scene of the guild settled her nerves, and she walked to the closest member of the guild and tapped him on the shoulder. He was quite large, she noticed.
"What?" He asked as he turned around. He had a buzz cut of what she guessed had been blue hair and small brown eyes.
"Umm... I'm looking for Reiki. Is he here?" She asked.
"Who?"
"Reiki. Reiki Woods? Isn't he in this guild...?" A sense of dread made its way to her bones as she thought about the possibility of entering the wrong building.
Then the man spoke again. "Oh! Woods! Yeah, we got 'im here!" Then he turned and bellowed, "REIKI! THERE'S A GIRL HERE FOR YOU!" Then he turned to the girl and asked her name.
"I-It's Hana." She said. She could feel herself getting flustered. Maybe I started talking to the wrong person...
"SHE SAYS HER NAME'S HANA!" He called out again. Then he turned to her. "That's a very beautiful name, by the way. Hana... like a flower."
Hana was saved from saying anything more as a green-haired teen came towards them and stood next to the man. Reiki noticed the embarrassed look on Hana's face and turned towards the man.
"Have you been hassling her, Ryuji? Goodness, look at her face! What did you say?"
"I didn't say anythin' rude, I don't think. Did I, Miss Hana?"
Hana could feel her face get redder when he called her "Miss". Reiki sighed and grabbed her hand without so much as a hello and led her away.
They sat down together at a booth near the back corner of the guild. That's when Reiki finally talked to her.
"Wow, Hana! Long time no see! How have you been?"
"...Alright, I guess." Then her stomach growled, quite loudly. Reiki just laughed and called for a waitress.
"Wait, Reiki. I don't have any money." She said.
"Then I guess I'm paying!" He responded cheerfully. She could tell that he didn't mind buying her lunch, and that made her even more happy to see her old friend. It had been too long.
Reiki and Hana had been friends since she had been born. Although he was five years older than her, they became best friends from the second their eyes met. The adults in their old guild used to joke about them maybe getting married someday, but they knew their relationship was more of a sister/brother one.
"So what've you been up to?" Reiki asked Hana.
"Oh, um... Just, stuff. I guess."
He scoffed. "What was that answer? I haven't seen you in a year and you only visit because I'm buying you food? Humph." Reiki twisted his face into a mock pout that made Hana laugh. He did that when they were kids, too.
"That's not it, Rei." She reassured him.
He turned his sapphire blue eyes to look into her teal ones, and she was struck by how beautiful he was. The color of his olive green hair matched with his eyes was perfect, like looking into a clear pond in the middle of a forest. She was about to continue her statement from earlier, but a waitress approached them at that moment.
"What can I get for you two?"
"Two cheeseburgers, no mustard on one of them, and two chocolate vanilla swirl milkshakes. Please." Reiki ordered without thinking.
"Whipped cream on the milkshakes?" The waitress asked.
"Yes, please. Thank you." Reiki smiled at the waitress- a woman with long red orange hair pulled away from her face and eyes that were the same shade as her hair. She smiled, told them that their food would be right out, and left.
Reiki turned to Hana. "You still don't like mustard, right?" He asked.
She was shocked that he remembered that, and she told him so. "I thought you would've forgotten by now."
"Of course not. It was kind of ingrained into my brain from the first time you tried it. You spit it out all over me, remember?"
They laughed fondly at the memory for a while, then began reminiscing about their days in their old guild. Before it all went wrong... She stopped herself right there. She was not going to think about gloomy things while she was with Reiki. He wasn't sitting across from her feeling sorry for himself, so she wouldn't either.
Hana was about to remind Reiki about the birthday party where they had escaped with his brother to climb the orchard trees, then got chewed out by his father. By some miracle, she remembered at the last second that they weren't supposed to talk about his brother, and she bit her tongue. Reiki noticed the way she stopped herself from talking and wanted to ask about it, but the food arrived, and she took the welcome distraction. After thanking the waitress for bringing the meal, she bit down into the burger- no mustard- and sighed. It tasted so good.
Reiki watched her take bite after bite of her food before he voiced his concern.
"So, what were you going to say just now?"
She momentarily froze, a bite of half-chewed food still in her mouth. She tried to play it off like it was no big deal, but he saw right through it.
Reiki sighed. He had told his current guild about what had happened to his family a little while after he joined, and he was used to people doing this.
"Hana. I know you were about to talk about Hiro."
Her blood ran cold hearing him speak the boy's name so casually. She gave up trying to pretend she didn't almost say it herself and apologized instead. "I'm sorry, Rei."
"Don't be. It's okay." He sipped his milkshake and took a bite of his burger again. He got serious after a few seconds, then dropped a bombshell.
"It was his birthday yesterday. Well, it would've been, anyway."
Hana, once again, froze. She'd had no idea it was Hiro's birthday, and she felt bad about not knowing. "How old would he have been?" She asked.
"Ten." He answered.
"Oh." Was her only response. He was weeks from turning nine when "the incident" happened, and she was weeks from eleven. Her heart was heavy. This trip down Memory Lane had taken a bad turn, and she could feel the sorrow in all of her bones.
Reiki cleared his throat, his way of changing the subject. "So, what're you doing down here? Don't you live, like, really far away? And why don't you have any money?"
She knew that now was the time to answer these questions, which he had undoubtedly been thinking since he saw her. "I don't have any money because I had to buy a train ticket." Then she took a deep breath, looked him in the eye...
And told him everything that had happened in the past year.
A month before "the incident"...
"...Happy birthday dear Daichi! Happy birthday to you!"
The entire Tiger Claw guild cheered as the black-haired boy blew out seven candles, his two front teeth missing.
The Tiger Claw guild had been celebrating Daichi's birthday all day, simply because they could. They did this every time a guild member had a birthday. Tiger Claw was a guild of modest size, with only a little over thirty people. Everybody that was in Tiger Claw had been born and raised there, and everybody was probably related in some way, though there was no way to be sure.
Attached to the guild was a small village where the members could stay with their families, and there was also a field about a half mile in the other direction from the guild hall, where they grew their own food.
Tiger Claw hadn't always been a guild hall. It was a farm before, but the family kept growing and growing until they had to remodel the house, and eventually, one of the family members was found to have magical abilities, and all her descendants inherited it from her. The family continued to grow until there were only magic-users in the house, and they decided to turn their farm into a full-fledged guild. The birthday parties were something that even their ancestors had done.
At this particular birthday party, there was a scheming 16-year-old and his almost-eleven-year-old best friend. They were both pretty introverted, and shared an equal hatred for parties with the 16-year-old's nine-year-old brother. They had all been planning to escape to the orchard fields after cake, but they just couldn't wait any longer. Given the confusion that was a birthday party, it wasn't too challenging to sneak out the guild doors.
"Dude," Said the 16-year-old, Reiki. "Dad's gonna kill us when he finds out we left. Right, Hiro?" The question was directed at the nine-year-old, but it was the girl who answered.
"Oh, please. You should hear my mom when she's angry."
"Yeah? Does she chew you out for hours and hours, Hana? 'Cuz that's what my dad does." Hiro said. Hiro and Reiki's dad was the guild master, and he had a strong sense of what should and should not be done- and abandoning the guild in the middle of a ceremony was a big "do not".
"Nah. But she yells in your face, and gets all huffy if you don't seem scared of her." The threesome sighed, knowing they were in for a real lecture when they got back.
They had made out to the orchards by now and had picked a tree to sit under. It was a shady afternoon, but it was still hot out.
"So, Hana. It's your birthday soon, right? How old are you turnin'?" Reiki asked, all the while picking up a pebble off the ground and fiddling with it in his hand.
"Eleven," Hana said, with great pride. "Papa said we could go out to the city this year. My whole family's going! Mama, Papa, Aunt Lily and Uncle Hibiki, everybody! I can't wait!" Hana talked for a while about the wonders that her father promised to show her in just a month's time. "But I'll have to miss most of Harvest, so that's too bad."
Harvest was the time that the whole guild pitched in and harvested all the food from their fields and orchards, hence the name. The members divided up the day into two "shifts", one in the morning and one in the afternoon, with a break for lunch in the middle. There were usually about ten days of Harvest, meaning twenty shifts. Mostly, a guild member would work two or three shifts, all spaced out as much as the guild could afford.
Reiki groaned. "I have first shift this season. That's the worst because you can't say you can't find anything in the trees because it's the first day, so of course, there's something! You're expected to work harder than the other shifts because they think it's easier. 'You don't have to strain yer eyes lookin' fer fruit, it's right in fronta you!' " Reiki sighed, mocking the older men in the guild. "And, as it first shift isn't bad enough, I have to harvest from the trees! I have to climb up onto the small limbs of some fruit tree and throw the fruit down to a guy with a basket. And I don't even get to eat any of it!"
Hiro giggled at his brother's frustration. "I don't have to help until sixth shift!"
Reiki's irritation quickly turned to a playful fighting mood. "You think that's funny, little man? Wanna switch and see how you like it when I tease you?" Reiki started chasing Hiro around the orchard, and Hana quickly joined in.
Eventually, they were out of breath and in the trees, racing to see who could climb to the top the fastest. Hiro was winning.
"It's just 'cuz you weigh next to nothing, you shrimp!" Hana playfully yelled at him, climbing higher in her tree.
"Yeah, right! You're just jealous because I'm faster than you!" Hiro called back in the same tone.
"Whatever, you guys. We all know I'm the fastest." Reiki called from his place on the ground. He hadn't figured out where he could put his hands to scale the trunk yet, and his confusion set Hana and Hiro into a fit of laughter. They climbed higher and higher into the sky, joking all the while and calling insults back and forth until the sun had set and they could hear Reiki's dad angrily shouting their names.
"Guess we've been found out," Hiro said.
They climbed out of their trees and ran back to the guild hall, enjoying the feeling of the wind racing through their hair as they raced each other. By then the stars were shining and the night was pitch black.
They were yelled at for somewhere around a half hour, and they had to apologise to Daichi, but they didn't care. Nothing could ruin the perfectness of their afternoon together.
Five days before "The Incident"...
"C'mon, Princess! It's time to go!" Hana's father called from the bottom of the porch steps through the open front door. "We have to go say goodbye to the guild!"
Hana was in her room, making sure that everything was clean and that she wasn't forgetting any of her bags. Once she was satisfied with her inspections, she made her way from her room to the front door, just in time to hear her name called again, this time by her mother.
"I'm right here, Mom," Hana mumbled. "We're meeting Auntie Lily and Uncle Hibiki at the station, right?"
"Yes, dear. We've got to hurry now, or we might miss the train." Her mother, Hiyori, responded. Hiyori was a woman of order, and she liked things to happen exactly as she planned them. Missing the train into the city was not part of today's schedule.
"Easy, Hiyori. She's probably just nervous." Hana's father winked at her and extended his arm in her direction. "Shall we go, Princess? Your carriage awaits."
xXXx
Hana was fascinated by how a person could go from excited to nervous in the span of five minutes. She was glad when the short car ride to the guild hall was over, if only so she could stretch her legs and breathe frest air.
There was a small crowd gathered outside of the Tiger Claw hall, and Hana knew she would be expected to say something pleasant to all of them before her family could go to the train station.
She hopped out of the car after it had barely stopped moving, heading towards the first person she saw. She didn't even register in her mind who it was, just answered questions that were the same with everybody she talked to.
"Are you excited?" "Yes."
"How old are you turning?" "Eleven."
"Do you know what you're going to see?" "Papa says it's a surprise."
"Make sure you have fun, you hear?" "I will, thank you."
After what seemed like an eternity of handshaking and fake-smiling, Hana finally found her nest friends, the Woods brothers.
Reiki was grinning from ear to ear as he pulled Hana into a tight embrace. "Don't grow up too much while you're away, you hear?"
Hana giggled. "It's only a week, Rei."
"Yeah, yeah. Whatever." The green-haired teen released Hana, who turned to Hiro and pulled him into a hug before he could react.
"I'll see you in a week, okay Hiro?" She said.
"Yeah. And I'll make you the best birthday card while you're away! That way when you come back, it'll be like it's still your birthday!" Hana laughed again, and brushed a lock of his brown hair out of his light green eyes.
"I'm going to miss you guys." Hana sighed.
Reiki smirked. "Don't. It's only a week, remember?" He mocked.
"Yeah. I guess."
Hana's mother's sharp voice cut into their conversation. "Hana? It's time to go, okay? Hana!"
"Coming, Mom!" She hollered over her shoulder. "See you guys in a week, okay?" The trio hugged one last time, and Hana receded into the crowd and got into her car.
She waved at the crowd as they drove to the station.
It's just a week... She reminded herself.
Two days after "The Incident"...
The car slowed down as the family took in the sight of their old home. It was in ruins, with mangled bodies strewn everywhere.
"...What happened here?" Lily asked. As if someone would answer.
One glance at the wreckage confirmed that nobody was alive, or would be for much longer. The horror finally set in, and the Burr family stepped out of the car and walked forward as one unit, approaching the guild hall they once called home.
Hibiki was the first to break down. It happened slowly.
He kicked something. He figured it was just a rock, and looked down. The "rock" was fleshy and shaped like a mangled hand. It was torn from the arm of its owner, who lay several feet away. The family watched as Hibiki's face drained of blood, his eyes fixed on the face of the child who'd hand he had kicked. Lily followed his gaze, and screamed as she too recognized the little girl.
It was Hibiki's twelve-year-old sister, Meiko. They had left her at the guild with her parents and grandparents.
Hibiki fell to his knees, sorrow weighing him down. If his sister was dead, his parents must be too. His whole family, the entire guild. Lily was sobbing, crouched next to her husband, to grief-ridden to help him to his feet.
Hana couldn't watch her aunt and uncle fall apart anymore, and she quickly turned away. Without thinking it through, she said, "I'm going to go look for survivors."
Nobody heard her over the sound of Lily's screaming sobs.
Hana wasn't expecting to find anybody alive. She just needed to get away before her family cold see her tears leak fom her eyes. She steeled her resolve.
I won't cry unless I find them... She thought. She was hoping against hope that she didn't come across the bodies of the boys she loved, but she knew that the possibility was very slim. She knew they were at the guild the whole time her family was gone, and she was shaking with the fear of finding their remains strewn amongst her guild mates.
Pretty soon, she came to the bulk of the rubble, where the guild hall had stood proud how many days ago? Did this happen yesterday? The day we left? What happened while we were gone?
She walked through the rubble, looking at the countless bodies she saw, relieved and horrified every time she identified one.
Sora. The little six-year-old boy that looked up to Hiro. They often told him to go away because having him around was just like babysitting.
Haruhi, who liked to sit at the craft table in the corner and draw. Her art was exceptional for a ten-year-old, and everybody was sure she had a future as an artist.
Sakura, the sixteen-year-old that had two younger brothers. She loved to cook, but was so bossy that nobody wanted her around in the kitchen.
Daichi... they just went to his birthday party. How could he be dead?
Mr. and Mrs. Fugimoto, who always had some kind of critter running around.
The old lady that everybody called "Grandma" even though nobody was sure who she was actually related to.
Little Himi, barely three years old, wrapped in her mother's arms.
And Kyo. He was engaged, set to marry in just a few weeks.
Mrs. Saki. She was five months pregnant. She died with her hands wrapped around her stomach, trying to protect her unborn son even in her last seconds of life.
Hana went around closing the eyes of everybody she came across.
She was almost going to give up, concluding that the Woods had been as brutally murdered as the bodies around her, when she saw a white sheet of paper out of the corner of her eye.
Seemingly on autopilot, she walked to the square of white that was thrown into the sea of gray and red and sorrow. She tried to pick it up, but something was holding it down.
A hand.
She refused to look at the face of another victim. Refused to gaze into the empty eyes of another one of her friends as she sealed them shut forever. Instead, she focused on the paper, folded in half. There was writing on the front.
It took her brain several minutes to sound out the letters into words and string the words into sentences. When she did, she almost lost it.
In very deliberate writing, the words "Happy Birthday Hana!" were printed on the front of the card.
Below the words, there was a person dancing and throwing confetti, while another figure blew out candles on a cake. One had green hair, the other brown.
Horrified, she removed the fingers that were clutching the paper one by one so that she ould read the inside of the card.
"Happy birthday Hana!" Was written again, this time smaller. "I told you I would make you an awesome card, didn't I? I hope you like it. I just wanted you to know that-"
And it stopped. There was no more writing, no final farewell from the writer. Just blank paper.
Hana already knew who had written the letter, but she looked up anyway. She started at the hand, then moved up the arm. His face was turned away from her, and she reached a shaking hand up to move it so she could see it better. It was painted with dried blood, but not marred like some of the others.
She could tell that he hasn't been hurt by the same monster as everybody else. He was probably crushed by the rubble, then unearthed again by wind and animals.
And through it all, he clutched the card he had made.
Hana reached up with her shaking hand to shut Hiro's green eyes, but she got lost in them instead.
She remembered all the times that those eyes had been full of life and amusement as they told her a joke, or relayed a story of a day when she was sick and missed something.
She remembered how many times he hugged her or called out a farewell at the end of the night over his shoulder, promising to see her the next day.
She remembered when they went on their first mission together after Reiki turned 15 and they all fought off a thief from the town. They later found out that the mission has been set up by her father, and they fumed about it for days afterward.
She looked into Hiro's eyes and knew with certainty that she would give anything to go back and freeze time so that she would never have lost him.
She reread the card before bursting into tears. The numbness that a person felt only after losing next to everything overtook Hana, and she could sense nothing but crippling sorrow.
She didn't feel it when her father laid a hand on her shoulder in condolences, she didn't comprehend that she was being carried to the car until she was already in it, and she didn't know she had fallen asleep until she was awake again.
The whole family was in a similar state.
Hiyori was in denial that she would never quite come out of, refusing to acknowledge that anything bad had happened, that she was even awake.
Lily was falling headfirst down a stairwell of depression. Eventually, she would climb back out, but not for several months.
Hibiki had it the worst. As soon as they got to a town, he went to a bar and fell deep into a bottle of hard liquor.
The only one who seemed to be able to keep it together was Ansel. He talked about how things would get better, tried to be optimistic as they tried to find a place to stay.
But even he fell into the abyss at night, when he was at his weakest.
Three months after "The Incident"...
"I'm sorry, sir. But if you can't pay your rent today, I'm going to have to ask you to leave." Said the landlord, Akira.
"Please," begged Ansel. "Just one more week. I'll have it all in one more week!"
The landlord let an apologetic sigh through his teeth. "I'm sorry. But I just can't give you another extension. It's not fair to the other tenants."
Ansel sighed. He knew the man was right. He was already a week and a half late with this month's rent as it was, and he knew asking for more time would be unfair.
"How long until we have to leave?" he asked, defeat creeping into every word.
Akira made another apologetic face. "I can let you stay until tomorrow." He said.
Ansel gave the man an understanding half-smile and closed the door.
Immediately he felt his anger flare.
"HIBIKI!" He yelled, making his way through the cramped apartment to the kitchen, where he knew he would find Hibiki burying his pain in a bottle of alcohol.
He grabbed Hibiki's bottle by the neck and got in his face. "Do you know why the landlord was just here?!"
Lily, having heard her brother yelling at her husband, came out of the room she shared with Hana and Hiyori.
"Ansel! Don't be so mean to him!" she pleaded. "He's suffering!"
"So are the rest of us! But we don't have to drink up all the money! We've all snapped out of it for the most part!"
Lily was seething. "You wouldn't ever yell at Hiyori like this, and we both know darn well that she hasn't snapped out of it. I'm sorry that you can't buy yourself whatever piece of crap you wanted, but it wasn't his fault!"
"Not his fault? He broke into the box of money I stashed away to pay rent with! He stole all of it! The landlord was here telling us we have to be out by tomorrow afternoon! You want to tell me again that it's 'not his fault'?!"
Lily was speechless. When she finally found her voice, she could barely squeak out a simple question. "Hibiki? Did you steal the rent money?"
Hibiki was just sober enough to understand the weight of what he'd done. "I didn't know it was the rent money." was all he could say.
Hana and Hiyori were standing in the kitchen now too.
"Papa? We have to move?" Hana asked.
"Yes, Princess." He said, addressing his daughter but looking at his brother-in-law. "We do. So start packing."
As his family started packing away all of their belongings in their bags, Ansel began the slow process of dumping all the alcohol down the drain, right in front of Hibiki.
xXXx
The Burrs said goodbye to their home one last time while Ansel walked to the landlord's building to hand him the keys to apartment 3B, which they had inhabited for the past several months.
Hana remembered when they first moved in. They had to sell their car to pay the first month's rent, but Ansel promised to save enough money to get another one after they got back on their feet. She wasn't dumb enough to believe him anymore.
It only took about a month and a half after moving in for Lily to straighten herself out again. She would never be the same as she was before the incident, but that was to be expected. What snapped her out of her depression was her husband. She knew he had a drinking problem, and she had to get herself together if only to help him get himself back on track as well.
It was simpler than she would have thought to transform herself into a sane person. It took weeks, but she forced herself to go grocery shopping, and to make meals with the ingredients she bought. She dressed herself every morning and took a shower every night. After she was sure she wouldn't fall down the spiraling stairwell of despair again, she addressed Hibiki's issue.
At first, she tried hiding all the liquor. When he asked where it was, nearly five hours later, she told him she threw it all away. "You need to stop. It's a serious issue, and-" She couldn't even finish her sentence before Hibiki roared and hit her. She was shocked. Not only because he had struck her, but because as far as she knew, he hadn't had any alcohol for most of the morning. The error in her plan hit her almost as hard as his palm.
Withdrawl...
After that day, she tried more subtle ways of cutting his alcohol consumption down. She would take a bottle out of the cupboard every few hours, hoping that he would think he had drunk it. That tactic also didn't work; he just went out and bought more beer, and they ended up with too much alcohol and not enough money.
While Lily and Hibiki's battles were going on, Hana was also fighting one of her own. She still had the card Hiro would've given her, and she often stared at it for several hours at a time, trying to find some clue as to what he wanted to tell her.
When she saw her Aunt making an effort to end her grieving, she decided that she would try as well. Her ways of handling it weren't as big as Lily's. Instead of getting out of the house and doing things more outwardly, Hana receded into herself further, determined to bury her sorrow and put her best face forward. She vowed to stay out of everybody's way, thinking that if she became more self-reliant, nobody would worry about her anymore and she could stop adding to the grief of her family.
She often went on walks around town, looking for anything that caught her interest and would keep her out of the house for longer.
Hiyori wasn't the same as the other two girls in the household. She seemed to be in a permanent state of denial, still refusing to believe she actually lived in this nightmare. She was convinced this whole thing was just a joke, and she was expected to play along until people popped up with streamers and a banner that said: "Just Kidding!"
That left Ansel. He had shorter, less permanent visits with the crippling sorrow that had overtaken the rest of his family. He was generally level-headed about life, and tried to be an optimist. But no matter what he did, he never slept more than a few hours. The little sleep he got was nightmare-ridden, and he often lay awake waiting for the murderer that killed his guild to come after him as well.
xXXx
"Where are we going to go, Papa?"
"I don't know, Princess."
It was getting dark out, and they hadn't found anywhere that would offer them shelter for the night.
"We might have to sleep in the park tonight..." He said, looking up at the sky. The sun was almost under the horizon, and he could see the sharp tips of stars as they poked through the fabric of the evening sky.
The family walked to one last hotel, asking if they would let them stay for the night. They were turned away again, but they weren't shocked.
Their legs seemed to be filled with lead as they made their way to the nearest park and settled under a large tree. It took hours for them to all finally fall asleep.
Hibiki, however, was awake all night. One part because of the withdrawal he could already feel setting in, and two parts because of bone-wracking guilt.
What have I done to my family?
xXXx
It was weeks later that Ansel rushed to the park where he left everybody that morning, bursting with news.
"I've found somewhere we can stay!"
The rest of the Burrs perked up. They had been staying in numerous parks, searching for some place that they would be welcomed.
"Where is it?!" Lily asked, excitement flooding her voice. They had been homeless for far too long now.
"It's a guild, actually. I met one of their members on the street, and we got to talking, and well... he says that his guild would be happy to have us there with them."
There was a range of noises from agreement to hesitancy. Lily thought it was a great idea; she was trying to start her life over, what better place to do it than surrounded by new people?
Hiyori disagreed. "Should we really join a new guild so soon?" She asked, voicing the inner thoughts of everybody else.
Hana, although the same thought had flickered through her mind, reassured her mother that it was the best thing to do. "We need to move on, Mom. We can't do that trapped under trees and on benches. I say we join."
Ansel waited to make sure that there was no more objections from his family, and was pleased that there was none. At least, not out loud.
"Great! Should we head over, then?"
Hana and Lily got to their feet, and Hiyori joined them, wary as she was. They all turned to Hibiki, realizing that he was still sitting down.
"Hibiki? Come on." Lily said.
He shook his head quickly, to clear the thoughts from it, and looked at his wife with a smile that seemed to practiced to be real.
"I've just got to get some water. I'll head down to the stream and refill the canteens while I'm at it."
"That's a great idea! I think I'll join you." Ansel said.
"Oh, no. You should stay here and help the ladies pack. I'll be back soon, okay?"
Ansel was hesitant to let Hibiki go off on his own, but he knew that with this man, there was no changing his mind. "Okay... Just to the stream and back, alright?" He clarified.
"Yeah. See you guys soon!" He kissed Lily goodbye and headed into the forest attached to the park, where he hoped there was a stream. He made sure to take the canteens with him, as well as the map of the park and a pencil so he could track his path in case he got lost.
When he was about halfway through the forest, he came across a fence that had several signs posted on it, reading "Do not pass. Beyond this point is no longer park property."
But Hibiki could see the river that he needed right across the fence, so he disregarded the warnings and climbed the chain-links anyway.
xXXx
Hana, Ansel, Hiyori, and Lily had finished packing about a half hour ago and were getting severely worried about Hibiki. He had yet to come back to the campsite, and there was no sign of him.
They approached an elderly couple that had just come out of the forest path, asking if they had seen anybody that matched Hibiki's description. When they said they hadn't seen anybody else on the trail, the Burrs began to panic. They raced into the forest, baggage forgotten.
It took them about ten minutes to come across a fence, where they could see a river across the way. They searched the bank for Hibiki, but couldn't find him.
It was Hana, however, that saw the pile of canteens lying next to the riverbank.
"Guys?" She raised a hand to point, and she could feel her bones fill with dread. "Look."
One glance was all it took to send the family over the short iron wall, to the canteens. Lily lifted one of them up. It was full, and under it was a note, scribbled on the back of a map. It said:
My dear family. I hope this letter finds you, and that it is untarnished when it does. I need to explain myself. I would've told you sooner, but I could never find a good time to do so. Let me first say, I'm sorry. I was the reason we were kicked out of the home you all worked so hard to obtain. It was because of me that we were homeless for so long, and I can never quite forgive myself for that. That's not the only reason for my actions today. I believe my future was set in stone the moment I saw my sister's dead body that day so many months ago. I could not save her. I couldn't save any of them. And I have hated myself for it every day.
My drinking problem. You must've thought it was because I was trying to chase away the memories? Really, I was trying to lose myself. I couldn't stand living in this worthless body any longer. I needed to separate my thoughts from my consciousness, and getting hopelessly drunk was the only way I knew how. I was hoping that one day I wouldn't wake up. Maybe that would've been less painful for you guys. I put myself through the horrible pain of hangovers every day because the memories brought on worst headaches than the drinking ever would. So in the end, I guess I was trying to push away memories.
Please don't misunderstand me. I love all of you with all my heart, and I stuck around long enough to make sure you were going to be okay, but I need to join my brothers and sisters now. There's nothing else for me here.
We're all fighting out battles with pain. But sometimes the pain wins, and this was one of those times.
Goodbye, my dearest family. I love you.
-Hibiki
Lily had to read it to herself several times for it to make sense, and when it did she could feel herself falling into the pit of despair she thought she had climbed out of. The pain she was feeling this time was nothing like the pain of the previous event. This was the death of several friends compared to the death of a single loved one, but it somehow seemed to hurt so much more.
Ansel took the letter from his sister and read it out loud, his voice breaking several times. After he was silent, the whole forest, no, the whole world, seemed to halt in its rotation. The only sound was Lily's quiet sobs, which were eventually joined by sirens.
The family was aware of the police finding them and leading them away, but they didn't feel it.
It was nearly midnight when they were identified as Hibiki's family and informed of what had happened. They already knew, but hearing it from an officer made it real.
"We got a call today from an elderly man, saying that he found a body floating in the river we found you by, downstream a bit. Scans of the body confirmed it to be Hibiki Abe. At first, we thought he fell in and drowned because of the current, but after reading the note we think he must've drowned himself. We offer you our deepest condolences."
The night was swallowed in sorrow, and the family found themselves crying in the police station about yet another lost family member.
xXXx
After about a week of signing papers at the police station, crying, and being on the news, the Burrs were finally asked if they had anywhere to stay.
Ansel answered, deciding that now would be the best time to take his family (minus one) to the guild he had found. He told the police the name of the guild, and they dropped his family at it's door.
They joined the guild that night and fell asleep in real rooms, given to them as a complimentary accommodation. Everybody in the guild was issued one room per family. The Burr's got two rooms, one for Ansel, Hana, and Hiyori, and the other for Lily.
The guild seemed to know not to disturb the new family. Everybody knew that they were the ones from the suicide case.
Several days later, after the Burrs had settled in and unpacked their belongings, they finally made their way down to the main guild hall, located down the street a little ways from the dorms. They had tried to get Lily to go with them, but they couldn't get her out of bed. They left her in her room after making her breakfast, and now they were making their way to the guild.
At the guild hall, they were met with yet another surprise. This time, it was a pleasant one.
"LEVI!?" Ansel called out. The man had several scars on his face and arms now, and his hair was longer, but he was without a doubt the same guild master they had known from before.
Relief flooded through them as they embraced the man from their old guild. Questions poured out of their mouths before they could even think them through.
"How are you here?"
"We saw everybody else and assumed the worst!"
"What happened to the guild? Were you there?"
"Did anybody else make it out?"
"How did you end up here?"
Levi laughed good-naturedly. "Easy, give yourselves time to breathe." He chuckled again and began answering their questions. "I got here about a month ago, after the guild was-" He stopped himself before he could say anything else, and looked at Hana. "I won't say what happened in front of the little one."
"Hey! I'm not little!" She protested.
"Hana, you're only eleven. I'll listen to what Levi tells me, and if it's fit for you to hear, I'll tell you." Ansel said.
Hana made a defiant grunt of agreement, and Levi carried on.
"I'm not the only one who made it out alive. There were several others, including myself and Reiki-"
"Reiki made it out?!" Hana almost screeched. She was already looking around the room for her green-haired friend, her hopes soaring higher as the seconds went by.
"Yes, he made it out... but we split ways before I came here."
Hana's hopes crashed down. "What?" She asked.
"He said that he couldn't look at me with out feeling awful about what had happened. Said he was leaving, and told me not to follow him. He may still be a boy in your eyes, but he has grown enough to make it on his own. He sends he letters sometimes, but not often."
"Oh." Hana said. She was disappointed, to say the least. Levi took in her expression and handed her a few bills. He pointed to the counter against the far wall and told her to buy whatever she liked. Hana knew why she was being gotten rid of. Levi was about to tell her father what had happened to Tiger Claw.
She went to the counter as she was told and ordered a milkshake with whipped cream.
As she drank it, the conversation of her parents and Levi shifted to a darker note, filled with rumors of a blue-haired murderer and revenge for their guild...
Eight months after "The Incident"...
Hana sat in the Ice Phoenix cafe, alone and isolated. Her father had been on jobs for what seemed like every day for the past four and a half months, her mother was off traveling somewhere, and her Aunt Lily was with some guy that she probably met yesterday. After her uncle Hibiki had drowned himself months ago, Lily gave up trying to feel okay again and found that the easiest way to fight off her sorrow was through the other men in the guild.
Lily's former husband had become drunk through alcohol, and she became drunk through the attention she received at the bat of an eyelash.
The sounds of the new guild partying floated up through the floor. It didn't matter to Hana how many times her dad called this place home, it would always feel cold and uninviting to her. The sounds of a drunken "Happy Birthday" song didn't help to brighten her mood; it only brought back memories of a happier birthday party, ages ago...
I wish we could go back to Ti- She cut her thoughts off right there. She couldn't afford to cry again. Not when somebody could walk in at any moment and see it. I just have to wait out the rest of the day. Once I get home... Despite how much Hana wanted to deny it, she knew she would be crying into her pillow tonight. Her dad used to come in and comfort her for the first few weeks, before the new guild transformed him into a cold shell of a man. Nowadays, if he saw her eyes red and puffy, he told her to grow up. "You can't fix the past, so stop crying about it." But she knew better.
There simply were not enough tears in eight months to wash away the memories of a destroyed home and lost friends. She couldn't help but wonder, how long will be enough? But deep down, she knew that even if she cried for years and years without stopping, the pain would never dull. Her whole life had been destroyed. How else was she supposed to react?
She had never been told what exactly had happened that day, but she knew Reiki's dad had told her father. She tried asking, but she just shook his head and said: "You're too young."
Her mom was no help either. She was so caught up in trying to chase away any memories of her past life that she often forgot where she was. She traveled around the world with her husband's money from jobs, and she bought herself fancy jewelry at every place she went, as if she needed something to remind her that she did something with her life now that everybody else's from before was over. Hana had her own things from when her mother took her traveling, which was not often.
Although her dad gave her anything and everything she asked for and more, the material objects he brought home for her could never satisfy the ache of homesickness that constantly nagged at her heart.
She was wallowing in her own pain and self-pity when there was a particularly loud door slam in the guild hall. She sat in silence for a while longer, wondering if the sound meant what she knew it meant.
Her suspicions were confirmed when a holler was thrown up the stairs.
"HANA! Yer dad's back!"
She would be lying if she said she wasn't somewhat happy to see him. After all, he was still her father. But he was just so distant. She couldn't talk to him like she used to anymore. Interacting with him had become more of a going-through-the-motions kind of thing.
Slowly, she raised herself from her chair, only because she knew that if she didn't make her way down the stairs soon, someone would come to get her, and she didn't think she could handle having to reassure whoever it was that she was okay.
When she was about halfway down the stairs, she could hear what her guild mates were saying.
"You find anything out?" They asked.
"We did, actually. Some guy in a bar knew who we were looking for. He said that he's in a real guild now, but couldn't remember which one." Answered her father.
Today he wasn't returning from a guild mission- the ones you got paid for. He was returning from a three-week journey to find information on the man he held accountable for the murder of his old guild. "You can't fix the past, but you can fix the future." Was his reasoning for tracking this man down.
She didn't have to look to know that Reiki's father was with her father, just down the stairs. They went on these search missions together, and everybody knew why.
Hana used to hope that one of these times Levi would walk in with Reiki by his side. She had stopped hoping for anything that miraculous about three months back, when she brought it up to her father.
"He's not coming back, Hana. Let him go." Was his response.
"Why can't you let go?" She fired back. "You spend all your time looking for clues that'll lead you doorstep of you so-called enemy, and you tell me I can't miss my friend?! How is that fair?"
"It's fair, Hana, because finding him is the only way I can cope with this! He killed our family! Wouldn't you like to see him meet the same fate?"
Hana had been shaking with rage by then. She couldn't believe the monster that her once-gentle father had become. "No, Papa. I wouldn't like to see him dead. Because there are people out there that care about him, and I don't want anybody to lose him and feel as helpless as I do. Why can't you see that, Papa?" She was crying now.
"Stop being such a child, Hana. Grow up. Some people deserve to suffer. I would think you were smart enough to understand at least that."
To his back, she whispered her last argument: "Nobody deserves to suffer like I have, Papa. Not even you."
They'd had several similar conversations through the months, and neither of them budged in their opinions. If anything, Ansel got more and more determined to find the man, if only to convince his daughter that he deserved to die.
Knowing that her father was one step closer to finding the man he planned to kill made her sick, and she knew she wouldn't be able to handle seeing him right now. Before anybody could sense her presence, she turned around and quietly ran back up the stairs. She went to the fire escape door in the corner of the cafe and followed the stairs to the back of the guild hall. From there, she ran home, tears in her eyes and an emptiness in her heart that would never be satisfied.
A year after "The Incident"...
"Goodbye, Hana. I'll see you in a few months, alright?"
"Please don't go, Papa. You should let the past-"
"Hana. We're not having this conversation again. Do you understand?"
Over the last four months, Ansel and Levi tracked the man they blamed for Tiger Claw's accident, and they finally knew where he was. Now they were going to find him and "end it, once and for all". They said the trip would take several months, and Ansel arranged for Hiyori to be sent to any exotic place of her choosing as an apology for his absence. That left Hana with Lily, who was never around anyway.
Hana just wanted her father to understand that she had already forgiven whoever was at fault for the accident. She just wanted him to look at her and see his Princess again, not some minor inconvenience that he could buy off with fake promises and half-hearted apologies.
But Levi had changed him. Ansel was now bent on revenge, convinced that it was the only solution. He claimed that it was a conclusion he came to on his own, but Hana knew that her father would never seek to hurt another human without having been seriously brainwashed prior to the decision.
And now her father was leaving. She knew that if he went through with this, he would never even have a chance of coming back from it. She would never be called Princess again, and her family would continue to lose itself in sorrow and loneliness.
And she knew with every fiber of her being that she couldn't let that happen. So she nodded her head when she was supposed to, and shook hands with Levi.
Her father seemed pleased that she was finally accepting his way of life, and hugged her. She was taken by surprise, and her arms were still in front of her when he squeezed her. She let herself enjoy the once-familiar gesture for a second before she moved.
Hana, seeing the opportunity, slid her hands into the pockets of his jacket and pulled a few dollars out, hiding them in her sleeve. Ansel thought her squirms were her trying to break free, so he let go and said his final goodbyes, walking out the door with Levi.
The duo didn't know that she was planning on leaving shortly after them.
xXXx
It had been almost an hour since her father and Levi left.
Now's the time. She thought. Lily had just taken off with another guy, leaving Hana nothing but a backward glance to make sure she hadn't found some way to harm herself. Hana stood up, walking to the bathrooms, where there was a little window she was fairly confident she could climb out of.
Nobody paid her any attention as she made her way down the hall and into the small room. She flipped the lock so nobody could barge in, and began scaling the wall.
It was no good. There were no grips on the wall, and the window was too high for her to reach on her own. She considered turning around and walking out through the front door, but she knew she would be questioned if she did that. And the cafe door was out for the same reason; it was unusually full upstairs today.
She was about to give up when she saw the garbage can in the corner. It wasn't a flimsy plastic bin, it was one of the metal mesh ones that looked like a pencil cup. She knew it was sturdy, and a glance inside confirmed that it had just been emptied.
She smiled at her piece of good fortune and flipped the garbage bin upside down under the window. Climbing on top of it, she swung the glass open and climbed out, unsure of her footing.
She was also frightened when she saw the drop.
It's just because your head is higher than your feet. She reminded herself. You're only about two feet up... Just jump!
She dropped for a split second before her feet made contact with the ground, and her knees buckled under the force.
She quickly picked herself up from the street and dusted herself off. Then she ran to the train station to buy a ticket for the next train to Magnolia. She was following her father, but first, she had a stop to make, a reunion with an old friend...
Present day...
Hana concluded her story, and an awkward silence fell over the two.
"So, you were in the same guild as my dad?" Reiki finally asked.
Hana nodded. At some point during their talk, they had gotten up and headed outside to take a walk "away from listening ears".
"He said you wrote letters to each other. Didn't he say anything about us?"
"No. I wrote to him, but he never wrote back. I had no idea." His eyebrows had furrowed now, and she could tell he had something to ask.
"You might as well say it, Rei." She said to the ground.
"Say what?" He decided that playing dumb was the best approach right now.
"I can tell there's something bothering you. You've got your eyebrow thing going on." She said.
He sighed, giving up. "It's just... the card from Hiro...? Did you ever find out what he was going to tell you?"
Hana's thoughts froze, and memories of staring at the card one October night came back to her. She finally had decided to try rubbing over the blank paper with a pencil to see if he had finished his message and then erased it. She didn't think it would actually work, but sure enough, there were words carved into the paper, only revealed with a light coating of a pencil. She read them and erased her markings. She didn't want anyone to know what the message was; it was far too personal. So she lied.
"No. He didn't ever finish the sentence." Her voice shook a bit, and she cleared her throat to cover it up. Thankfully, Reiki was too focused on his own thoughts to notice.
"Oh." He was clearly disappointed, but Hana made a vow to herself that night to never tell anybody what the card said, so she didn't speak up.
"So you're following my dad and your dad, then?" He asked, changing the subject.
"Yeah." She replied, happy to have something to talk about.
"And I'm guessing you want me to help you find them?"
She smiled sheepishly at him, hoping she wouldn't have to explain herself.
One glance at her face and he knew he would be diving headfirst into this crazy rescue mission with Hana. He sighed and smiled a little himself. "Yeah, I'll help you. I haven't seen my old man in a while. I'll need to pack some stuff though. Let's turn around." They started walking back to the guild.
"Do you know where they're going?" He asked.
She nodded. "Fairy Tail."
A/N: Holy COW this was a long chapter! (and it didn't help that I kept accidentally clicking on things from the side bar without saving, so like, two thousand words would be deleted and I'd have to rewrite them. ) (Yes, that actually happened more than once.) I considered splitting it into two chapters several times but decided that it was better like this. I hope you guys enjoyed reading this as much as I (kind of) enjoyed writing it :).
This chapter was a lot darker than the other ones (duh), but it had to be. I had to stop writing a few times because I had to seriously ponder what my imagination has been through in order to come up with some of the scenes in this chapter (trust me though, it could've gotten a lot worse. I deleted a lot of it to put into another chapter, and that got much more graphic).
This chapter also had none of the traditional FT characters, but again, it had to be like this. I promise you this information is important! (I didn't spend hours and days writing fluff! I hope...)
Another important note! School is starting up soon, so I won't be able to update as frequently anymore. Expect chapters maybe every other week? Maybe once a week, it I have time.
Anyway, please leave a review! Thank you for reading! :D
(And for those of you who are as obsessed with Hamilton as I am, yes. I did pull the last name "Burr" from "Aaron Burr". I have the soundtrack stuck in my head as I type.) (*music note* There's a million things I haven't done! Just you wa-ait! *music note again* We can all go stay with my father! There's a lake I knowwww, You and I can goooo when the night get's daaarrrrrrkkkkk! *music note again*) (Sorry that I'm so weird. But if you got that reference, thank you.) (Eliza is my fav. Who's yours?)
-K