23rd: Crying on the inside

Summary: No one could see her bitter tears but she still cried – on the inside.

No one saw her white knuckles as she finally let go of the edge of the table. Everyone was too busy with admiring the Strauss-siblings who had just returned from another S-class job they had taken together. The young card mage gritted her teeth as she downed another bottle of wine. It wasn't enough to numb down the feeling of being too weak though and for a moment, she considered leaving the guildhall to pick up a bottle of stronger stuff.

Her jaw clenched as she fought the urge to cry as she saw Mirajane's smug smirk. The white-haired girl had broken Cana's arm during their fight at the S-class exam and the white cast shone through the long sleeve of Cana's jacket.

The card mage felt another headache coming as she ignored the demon takeover mage and glared at the picture of the whole guild at the wall, wishing for the awesome ability to shot fire from her eyes so that she could erase all of this. But the only thing that burned inside her eyes was her unshed tears – tears her pride didn't allow her to shed. She was sick of crying all the time. She was sick of crying over the failed exam. She was sick of crying over the scar on Laxus' face. She was sick of crying over being unable to tell Gildarts.

She felt sick – like she was dying from all the pain she kept locked up inside of her heart.

Sometimes she wondered what she did to deserve such a life. She had always been a good girl, obeying her mother, doing her homework and practicing her magic. She had wanted to make her mother proud and so she wondered what Cornelia thought of her after she had failed the S-class exam the third time. She tried to calm herself down a little bit. Her mother had failed five times before she had finally passed but Cana felt like she had had enough of this madness. She kept running in circles because she was always thinking too much when she should relax but maybe this was because she had never gotten the chance to say goodbye to her mother before Cornelia had died on a job.

Gray always said that she was too serious when she was sober. Well, she thought that he was too annoying for her to deal with while being sober.

"You drank too much," Erza said with a sigh.

"I didn't," the card mage snapped. "The room isn't spinning yet, alright?"

"Rough day, huh?" Laxus said with crossed arms as he towered behind the redhead.

"Yeah," the brunette said as she grabbed a new bottle.

"We all had shitty days," Gray said. "But you are taking it too far, Cana."

She glared at him. "I think that my life is a little bit too short for wasting my time like this," she snapped as she got up and slammed the table against Laxus' chest. "I have enough of this, don't you get it? I've enough of being always the centre of your worries. I can take care of myself … and I will keep going alone if necessary."

"Tsk," Laxus sighed as he rubbed his chest. "You simply want to be a kid again … you want to go back to a time when everything was easy…"

She shook her head as she closed the buttons of her coat. "I would miss all the awesome fights we have in this guild," she admitted. "But seriously, I mean it when I say that there is nothing left inside of me that anyone could burn."

They never saw through her. They only saw the whiskey and the battles she fought. They knew about her ways to trick everyone into believing that she was fine while she hadn't slept properly in weeks. This was Cana – a well-dressed, pretty little thing who danced and fought alone, belonging to the guild without sharing her secrets with anyone. She laughed and she got drunk along with the others but she never said anything about herself.

No one saw the tears that dwelled behind her bangs as she stormed away and she wanted to keep it this way because she was sick of false pity. She wasn't sure if she would be able to manage with it all over again.

This had been the reason why she hadn't joined her mother's old guild. Those people knew how Cornelia had died – on an S-class job. Most people in Fairy Tail believed that her mother had died because she had been sick. She hadn't lied but she had never corrected this wrong assumption either.

Because she was Cana and Cana did as she pleased … whatever she wanted because this was the only way how she could live without feeling caged. One day, she knew, everything she was running from would catch up with her and she would have to pay for her sins but for now, she was safer than anyone else could be. Hiding her tears and running from herself, drowning her problems in alcohol … this wasn't what she had wanted to be but this was who she had become because she had been unable to deal with the pain inside on her own and she couldn't tolerate being pitied for something no one could change.