In the time it took for Jellal to process the man's words, he had already left the room, slamming and locking the door behind him.
I… killed his son? No… there's no way.
His thoughts went to his own son, Simon. Jellal loved his children more than anything in the world, and he couldn't think up a world where he would intentionally harm someone so innocent and small, much less kill a child.
There's absolutely no way that I could've done that. I haven't even seen that man before now. How could I have done anything to his family?
Jellal's gaze was still on the entrance to the room, although his mind was elsewhere. However, when the door creaked open, Jellal snapped back to reality.
In the doorway stood a blond man with teal eyes.
"Hello, Jellal." He said.
Jellal was still too shocked to respond.
"I see you've met Levi, then." The man said, with a note of humor. "Don't mind him. He says things he doesn't always mean. He certainly loves overdramatizing things. What is it, that he said to you? You seem… ah, what's the word?" The blond man was just rambling at this point, Jellal could tell.
"Oh, how rude of me. I'm Ansel. As I already know your name, I won't expect an introduction from you. But I am curious. What did my friend say to you?" Ansel asked this question with a chilling edge of pleasantness, as if he thought Jellal was incapable of understanding what he could've meant by the sentence. By now, he had also settled on the bed, making it clear that he wasn't leaving anytime soon.
After a few false starts, Jellal was finally able to form a logical sentence.
"He said that I… I asked about his son, and he said I… that I…" The look on the blue-haired man was one of complex sorrow and confusion. "He must have the wrong person… I would never-"
"'Never' is a strong word, wouldn't you agree?" Ansel asked, still perched on the mattress. But now his face was twisted in hatred, an exact replica of the expression from Levi minutes earlier. "You'd be surprised. Not only at the evil that others are capable of. More so of the evil that you yourself can set in motion, with just a flick of your wrist."
"I'm not sure what you mean. You don't mean that I actually did kill his son, do you? You don't think I would..."
This time, Ansel stood up before he spoke, crossing the room to join Jellal by the bookshelf, just as Levi had done.
"You were a member of a guild that went by the name 'Crime Sorciere', yes?" Jellal almost answered, but Ansel kept talking before he had a chance to. "Let me call to memory a mission you went on. In fact, it was the very last one you ever went on with that guild. A demon slaying mission, yes?"
One and a half years earlier...
"Jellal! Watch out!" Meredy's scream came from across the wide expanse of land that they were currently on. They had gotten a demon hunting call earlier that week, but they hadn't been told how big the demon really was. They would've asked for help from other magic users, but they were pretty far out in the middle of nowhere. However, they knew there was a guild not too much farther away thanks to the caller.
Jellal jumped out of the way just in time, barely dodging the sharp talons of the monster's hand. "Keep running, guys!" He called out.
The plan was to lure the demon to the other guild by foot, because the demon was pretty determined to chase them, and the guild was on the edge of a cliff. Occasionally, someone would strike it with a semi-powerful spell to make sure it wasn't getting distracted. But they had forbidden Jellal from using any of his power until they were at the actual cliff. There, he would hit the demon with a powerful spell and hopefully knock it backward off the edge.
They were pretty close to the cliff face now, Jellal could see it, and he relayed this information to the girls, who were too preoccupied to notice their surroundings.
It took several more minutes of spell-casting and shouting for the guild of three to reach the ledge of Earth, and when they did, their entire mood shifted, became more determined. They positioned themselves so that it would be easier for them to defend themselves while attacking, and Jellal wasted no time in casting his spell.
Before the demon could fight back, seven brilliant beams of light shot from the sky, striking the demon in several places. One hit his eyes, two collided with his chest, another struck his foot, two more hit his neck, which caused a stream of thick blood to pour from the beast, and the last beam went straight through his wrist, causing his hand to fly off and land somewhere that Jellal couldn't see.
In the chaos, Meredy and Ultear cast spells of their own to aide Jellal, and when the dust settled they could see the last of the demon disappearing over the edge of the cliff.
The trio let the silence fill their ears for a few moments longer, but it was soon replaced with congratulatory whoops and howls of relieved laughter.
When they turned around, a middle-aged man with dark green hair and welcoming brown eyes was watching them, a smile decorating his face. "You must be the guild that was taking care of the demon-slaying, correct?" he asked.
"Yes," Jellal answered. "We're Crime Sorcier. Nice to meet you."
"The pleasure's all mine." The man responded. "I'm the master of the guild down the way." He extended his hand, finger pointing towards a small collection of cottages in the distance. "Those are our resident homes. The actual guild hall is past them a little way. Would you like to come see it? You probably need somewhere to spend the night, and we'd be happy to have you." He offered.
"Thank you, sir. That's very kind of you." Meredy said, matching the man's smile.
"You can call me Levi." He smiled. "Come with me, I'll show you to my guild- Tiger Claw."
"...I've met you." Jellal said. Now that the memory had been brought back up, he could remember everything that had happened that night; they went back to Levi's guild, and a large party had been thrown to celebrate. At one point, Jellal could remember children running around. Closer to the end of the night, there were two kids, maybe seven and fifteen, following Levi.
Those were his sons. Jellal realized. And now... one of them's dead? And he blames me for it?
Ansel was watching Jellal process all the information, and he could see the exact moment he remembered the Tiger Claw Guild.
"I... I don't understand." Jellal said. "I only met you guys when we were at that party. I couldn't have... killed... anybody."
"That's where you're wrong. You may have only been around that day, but the damage you set in motion stayed around for much longer. You may not've been personally present for the destruction of our guild, but it was you that caused it."
"I still don't understand."
This time, it was Levi who spoke. He had been standing in the doorway for a little while now, listening. "The demon that you slew? You didn't kill it. Not all of it, anyway."
One year earlier...
"First shift! Let's go!" The guild master called. He was intent on getting Harvest started, oblivious to the events outside of the guild hall. A small crowd of teens and adults gathered in front of him, including his eldest son. They had all been assigned the first shift, and they needed to start the day early. "Everybody knows their assignments?"He clarified.
Everybody nodded their head in a "Sir, yes sir!" kind of way, which made the harsh-looking guild master smile. "Then let's get to work!" He shouted, and led the group out to the fields.
Unknown to them, a great evil was taking root somewhere off by the guild village. Nobody noticed it, and even if they somehow did, it was far too late to stop it.
xXXx
Hours later, somewhere around noontime, there was a shriek from the guild. It was followed by several more, and everybody working in the fields knew that something had to have been going horribly wrong at the guild in order for such an awful sound to reach their ears, almost a mile away.
There were shouts of confusion and worry going through all the workers on the ground, but Reiki was frozen where he was. From his vantage point high in the tree, he could see a long way off, and the guild hall was in his direct field of vision.
There was a shadow looming over the guild, swiping its paws through the building. Most of their guild hall was in ruins already, from what he could see. He continued to stare at his home as the monster overtook it. Horror was not a strong enough word for what he was feeling. He was witnessing the death of his family, his cousins and grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends, and he could not tear his eyes away. Not once did he call down to his partner about what he was seeing; part because he couldn't make his lips move, the other part because he didn't want anybody to know about the awful things that were happening.
The other tree climbers, who had the same view as Reiki, had other ideas. They were giving vivid descriptions of what their guild hall looked like, but only supplied vague answers when asked about the well-being of the people. There were small figures scattering, but there were not near enough. The number of people escaping was not even half of the people still trapped in the hall, the remainder likely being either crushed by rubble or clawed to death by the monster.
Reiki finally found his voice, but it was not a loud roar like his guildmate's. It was somewhere between a whisper and a choking sound. "They're dying." Once he got his lips moving, he couldn't stop them. He repeated himself several times, getting louder and louder until he was screaming his two-word sentence louder than anybody else in the fields.
He was already out of his tree by now, his limbs having moved on their own to carry him down the trunk. He found himself sprinting in the direction of his father, still screaming, although by now he wasn't sure how understandable he was.
When he got to the green-haired man that looked almost exactly like him, Reiki found him slowly guiding everybody in an evacuation, towards the city. "Get help! Take your children and go as far from here as you can!" He told them.
"Papa! Papa, they're dying! They're dying! I was in the tree and I saw them and-"
"Slow down, son. You saw the people at the guild hall?"
Reiki could only nod his head.
"They're dying, you say?" Another nod, followed by some colorful language from the guild master. When he took off in the direction of the guild, Reiki was baffled and began running after him.
"No, son! Go help the other's escape!"
"No, Papa! They already know what to do! I need to save them! Mom would-" Oh God. Mom. Mom was in the guild hall. And Hiro. Oh, please no! Reiki's bone-chilling revelation pushed him faster, until he was side by side with his father, who had realized the same thing as his son at the same time.
They were at the guild in less than five minutes. Reiki was shocked by how bad it was. There were bodies everywhere, strewn around the rubble that was once their home, bloodied and mangled beyond recognition. There were some mages still alive, using all their magic power to fend off a dark shadow; the monster.
Reiki's father rushed into the fray, helping to weaken the monster by creating duplicates of himself to attack from more angles than just the front. It did little damage on the demon, but it did throw it off for a second.
Once the demon realized what was going on, it only got more violent. Its attacks were more fervent than before, a newfound passion behind every thrash of its claws or deafening roar. Reiki watched in silent horror, frozen with terror, unable to do anything but stand and watch more of his family die right before him.
When the demon's claws struck his father, he snapped out of it.
"Father!" He screamed, rushing into the battle at last. He didn't have the courage or the strength to do anything but grab his father and run away. The green-haired man's face and arms were torn apart, and Reiki knew they would scar.
The guild master was trying to yell at his son to turn back and save the others, but he was incoherent, trying to talk through the mess of blood that flooded into his mouth, and Reiki was in no state of mind to think about the well-being of anybody but himself and his father.
He ran until he was past the orchards, halfway to town. Images of his family in the guild hall flooded his mind.
Climbing the orchard trees with Hana and Hiro. The first Harvest that all three of them had the same shift. When his brother was born. Every birthday party his guild had thrown that he pretended to hate much more than he actually did. The days that the guild would get together and play games all day because everybody was home and nobody had a job to go do. All of it, every single person from his memories, dead. He could never run around in the fields of Tiger Claw throwing a football with his dad and brother. Never bake a cake with his mom and the other cooks. Never open an abundance of gifts on his birthday or Christmas, the whole guild watching him tear the wrapping paper apart.
They're all dead. The thought pounded harder and harder in his mind until he had a massive headache, and he noticed his legs giving out under him.
He collapsed from exhaustion the second he realized he was actually moving. He dropped his father, and blacked out.
Townspeople found them lying there quite some time later and carried them both to the hospital.
It wasn't for several days that Reiki woke up, and with his waking, there was an overwhelming feeling of regret and sorrow that accompanies the loss of one's whole world.
A/N: Alright. Gonna end there. What'd you think? Lots of flashbacks, and not a lot of action, but this was mostly just a character development chapter. And you have more information now. The next chapter will focus more on the Fairy Tail guild. I'm thinking that there's only gonna be about three or four more chapters, but knowing me, I'll think of some plot twist that strays from the storyline, and I'll write a million and a half chapters on it.
Also, I need your help. I'm going to write an epilogue after the story ends, and I need baby names (boy or girl) for as many ships as you can think of. As many names as you want for any ship that you want. If I like it, I'll use it (You'll get credit for it in the author's note of the chapter it's used in, of course). You can PM me about it, or just put it directly in the comments. Thank you in advance!
-K