30th: Greed
Summary: He was greedy. He wanted everything he believed to deserve but above all, he wanted love. She was guilty of the same crime.
She knew what he wanted: power, fame, glory and (perhaps more than anything else) to surpass her mother. She knew that he wanted those things because he believed that he deserved them more than anyone else did. In a way, she also knew that this was the reason why he courted her so feverishly. He wasn't all that interested in her. He was trying to claim any little reminder her mother had left in this world and hell, she happened to be her mother's splitting image with the main difference that her hair was a little bit longer.
She knew that he nearly used her and sometimes she wondered why she allowed herself to be used in such a petty fashion but when she noticed how her heart beat faster when he was around and how she sometimes even blushed, she knew why: she was tired of being lonely. She wanted to feel loved and even though she knew that this probably wasn't the way she wanted to be loved, she rather pretended that he meant what he said.
The first thing he had to realise was that she wasn't her mother. She wasn't Ur. She was Ur's beloved daughter – and since it was his goal to surpass Ur at any field, well, it was only fitting that he would love Ultear even more than Ur had. It was an ambitious goal and the change of succeeding was very small but he was trying. And so he tried to make her feel like she was the greatest person on this planet. (They both knew that she wasn't but he was still pretending.) Sometimes he wondered why she went for the second best, for him instead of Gray who had somehow managed to snatch away Juvia from him but then again, he wasn't sure if she really wanted to know the answer to this question – because deep down he knew that she liked Gray more than she liked him.
He knew that she wanted to be accepted as what she was and so he accepted her with all her strengths and faults, in her grumpy moods and when she found nearly everything around her hilarious. He sparred with her whenever she wanted to and he danced with her when Erza and Jellal finally got married.
But he still felt like he was the replacement for someone else, someone she couldn't have.
She knew who he really loved. She knew that all the kisses he gave her were meant for someone else, for a married woman with a child on the way. The kisses he gave her were the kisses he couldn't give Juvia. She was hurt, deep inside, but she was too desperate for any shred of love she could get to be truly bothered. She knew that he imagined touching Juvia when he touched her and she knew that he desired lively water instead of bitter ice. But ice was all she could give him – this was her blood and her heritage and she was proud of this. She knew that he wanted the lively, easily-flattered water mage who was so accepting because she had never been accepted but all Ultear had to give was magical prowess, highly advanced ice magic and the fact that she was his teacher's daughter. She knew that he wanted a third person self reference together with a confession but as long as she lived, she would never lower herself to this. She was too proud to copy Juvia in this aspect and furthermore, she refused to take this little shred of individuality the water mage had away from her because this would mean that she would compete openly against the blue-haired mage and this was the last thing she truly wanted.
And so she stayed silent and kept her confession locked up inside her frozen heart.
He watched in envy how she watched Gray and the pregnant Juvia with that stupid wistful expression on her face and he hated the expression of bitterness when they visited Gray, Juvia and baby Uriel. She failed pathetically to look happy for them and while she could trick Juvia and even an overly excited Meredy, she couldn't fool him as well. She desired an own child, a little baby she could cry her tear for, a baby that would be the proof of her life – and to see that Juvia had gotten not only the man but also the baby hurt her deep inside.
He held her after their visit for a long time, unable to say anything because in a way, Gray had taken the three of them away from him. First he had been Ur's favourite student, secondly he had managed to impress Juvia when they first met and lastly, he had even caught Ultear's heart but the only thing he did with it was crushing it slowly and causing her pain.
She didn't deserve this, he knew it. She didn't deserve anything of this current situation. She neither deserved the heartbreak Gray caused her nor the unspoken confession he carried in his heart. And while he couldn't do much about the first one, he would at least ease her pain about the second one.
The day little Uriel Fullbuster was presented to Fairy Tail and other friends was the day Lyon Vastia, S-class mage of Lamia Scale, made the decision to confess to his girlfriend of one year, eight months and twenty-three days.
She was relaxing close to the bar from where she watched Meredy flirting with Blue Pegasus' Eve while she sipped her own drink. She was on the best way to getting drunk when she saw Lyon appearing in front of her. He took her hand which was a little bit awkward because usually, he wasn't keen on touching her in public and dragged her out into the garden of Fairy Tail's guild building. She inwardly braced herself for what would come now. He had said that they had to talk and she knew what this meant – he was breaking up with her. It was strange how calm she felt as she waited for the heartbreak to arrive. She expected it to strike her like a lightening bolt – hell, Laxus Dreyar was close by after all.
But he said something entirely different. He didn't break up with her. He took both her hands and babbled the craziest things about knowing that she'd rather be with Gray than with him and that he understood and blah, blah, blah and that he wanted to outmatch her mother's love for her by loving her more than Ur had been able to love her.
The expression on her face was priceless as he spoke. It changed from complete and utter disbelief from confusion to a blush that faded into pure and honest joy. When he had finally gotten rid of the words he had longed to say since the moment he had spotted her on the first wedding they had both visited (Elfman Strauss and Evergreen) and wanted to leave because he didn't want to face her rejection of his honest feelings, she hugged him from behind, called him a fool and went into rambling how she had believed that he still loved Juvia of all people before she somehow managed to confess that she loved him too.
They were far more alike than he had originally assumed, he concluded as he hugged her tightly once more. Both of them were greedy and what they wanted the most was each other's love – something they had both had all along without knowing it.