Juvia was always very pleased to receive a visit from Meredy Milkovich, but that day her friend was strange.
She sat at the table with an absent, almost pained expression, as if she wanted to make herself blind and deaf to the cheerful confusion that reigned in the Fairy Guild.
The rain girl watched as she idly picked at her potato stew, her spoon trembling in mid-air and her posture rigid.
"Is everything okay, Meredy?" she tried to ask, but she didn't answer, she just sighed heavily.
"Later… I'll tell you everything later." she had finally given up on whispering, so quickly and so softly that the blue-haired Fairy thought she had only imagined those words of hers.
Once the meal was finished, Meredy approached her dear friend, head down.
"Would you like to accompany me to Crocus?"
Juvia raised an eyebrow.
"Do you have a mission to complete?"
Juvia saw Meredy's face drop even more.
"I'd like you to accompany me to the local cemetery."
Intrigued, the girl gave her consent.
After four hours of train travel, the girls arrived at five in the afternoon in the large cemetery of Crocus, capital of Fiore.
It was June of the year X794, and there weren't many people around the tombs.
Meredy moved confidently, while Juvia would certainly get lost; there were so many tombs, so many family chapels!
"Come." the pink-haired girl told her, with a voice so hoarse that it didn't sound like hers in the slightest.
Juvia thus found herself in front of a tomb of very fine marble, veined with beige.
PRECHT GAEBOLG
01/18/X648 - 12/16/X784
The granddaughter remembers
Juvia's big blue eyes widened in surprise: it was Hades' tomb, there was even a photograph of him!
But she didn't understand: who was that granddaughter? Was it Meredy?
Before she could formulate that question, her friend moved trembling towards the nearby grave, black with gold writing:
ZANCROW GAEBOLG
14/08/X762 – 16/12/X784
The daughter lay
"Meredy… What does that mean?"
Finally, tears could begin to flow freely from Meredy's emerald eyes, so much that she was forced to take the lens case out of her bag and put away the colored contacts she loved to wear.
"When Tenrou Island resurfaced, Master Makarov allowed me to recover Zancrow's body and bury it here, in Crocus, away from curious eyes. I couldn't find Master Hades' body, so I had a memorial stone erected next to one of the adopted sons he raised, and to whom he gave his surname."
Juvia was stunned, but the twenty-two-year-old wasn't done yet:
"Zancrow initially didn't want me in the guild, yet over time he changed his attitude towards me: he would take my hand if we went on a mission together to prevent me from getting lost in the crowd, or he would hold me on his shoulders. Sometimes he, I and Ultear went around together, and when we sat at the tables of some restaurant we seemed like a family like many others, those in which the mother helps her daughter to cut the meat or the father removes the ice from the glass to avoid his little girl may have a stomach ache!"
Toward the end of that confession, Meredy's tender tone was broken by what Juvia took to be anger and pain.
She slammed the bouquet of flowers bought for the occasion on Zancrow's grave, and the black marble tombstone was covered with white petals.
Fiercely, she rummaged through her bag, and she took out the gold-winged headdress she had worn as a younger girl.
"He gave this to me for my tenth birthday, I only stopped wearing it when it became too tight, but it's always with me, it's my lucky charm. Why did he have nice gestures for me, if we then said goodbye in hatred?"
Juvia, even without her Maguilty, fully felt the other Mage's sense of sorrow in her heart.
Meredy continued to cry, and between one sob and another she vented to her friend, releasing words that had been held back for too long:
"Zancrow had a soft spot for my mother. He never told me clearly, but to me it was obvious. What she felt for him and whether anything ever happened between them, I don't know."
Meredy thought back with shame at her and Ultear's intention to abandon Grimoire Heart to start a new life with Zeref; Zancrow would NEVER have followed them, too loyal to the guild and the man who had taken him away from a drunken and nymphomaniac mother. Zancrow would remain with Hades, and Zeref would lead everyone to the new world, without exception. Ultear, however, had grown tired of that toxic family, she was tired of swallowing gall, she had done nothing else her whole life. She would also have abandoned Zancrow, that figure with whom she had had an ambiguous relationship since adolescence. And Meredy was heartbroken at the thought of seeing him so determined, so impregnable to any other alternative. They could have lived happily, the three of them, like a normal family, like the family they had the semblance of when they entered a restaurant or walked down the streets. But no. Zancrow had put up a wall.
And Ultear had turned her back on him, as she had turned her back on the entire guild. She would love Zeref and Zeref would love her, and he would love Meredy. A brand new family.
The pink-haired girl twisted her mouth into a disillusioned grimace. How many lies.
She still remembered the last time she had spoken to the blond, the last time he was seen alive:
"Meredy!"
She was carrying Zeref through Tenrou Island, and he stood in front of her:
"Zancrow?!"
"Where are you taking Zeref?!"
His anger would soon explode; Meredy felt every fiber of her body crumple in shame.
"I… I'm just…"
"I knew it! You and Ultear are betraying us, aren't you?!"
"No, I…"
There was nothing left to do, their relationship was dead at that moment.
"YOU ARE NO LONGER WORTHY OF GRIMOIRE HEART!"
Afterwards, it had been an inferno of black flames and ferocious accusations, with Meredy slumped on the ground made muddy by the rain, watching what by now would have been a stranger gloating with Zeref's robes clutched between his fingers. It would have been the Black Mage himself the one who killed him, separating his soul from his body with a single look, and regretting having taken another life, however dangerous, however harbinger of violence. In that instant, Meredy realized one thing: that blond young man with barbaric ways and an insatiable appetite for fighting would forever remain her father. Nothing could ever change this truth.
Meredy, who was twelve years old, could only observe Zancrow's eternally sleeping face for a few seconds, with that peaceful expression he had had very few times in his life. It was a goodbye, a goodbye that would never find relief.
Juvia looked down, then started to speak, in first person:
"I… I was orphaned at eleven years old, a very aggressive virus hit my parents while they were travelling. They never came home again, and I lived with my babysitter for a few years before joining Phantom Lord."
Meredy looked up; she didn't know that part of Juvia's story.
"But, you… You had a united family, it was fate that separated you, not misunderstandings and resentments. I know I should stay away from this place, that I shouldn't come crying at his grave every week, but how can I stop myself? He was my father, and no one can ever repair our relationship!"
The blue-haired girl approached her suffering friend and caressed her back.
"You know… I am convinced that in every family there is something left unsaid, or things that remain unresolved, something that everyone carries and does not reveal to anyone. This applies to you, but also to me. It's not always possible to have the family we want, and relationships with others don't always go as we would like. We can only… learn. Every blow of life is a lesson for tomorrow."
Meredy quickly wiped away the new tears before they wet her face.
"My father had two brothers, the other two adopted sons of Hades: Rustyrose and Azuma. They were loving uncles to me, and Rustyrose in particular had a reverence for Grimoire Heart. The death of his father and his adoptive brothers had a devastating impact on him, I saw him recently, he is unrecognizable..."
Gently, the young woman picked up the white petals scattered on Zancrow's grave and let them fly away in the wind.
"Sometimes I think Zancrow was scared of having raised me. After all, he was just ten years older than me, the same age as Ultear. I think he grew up too fast and badly, because he went from a careless mother to a demanding Master like Hades. Maybe that's also why in the end he crumbled and poured all his anger on me..."
"NOW STOP!"
Juvia's hug is lightning fast, unexpected but warm, scented with cornflowers.
"Why do you keep tormenting yourself like this?! It's not your fault if your father had a tormented life, if your mother made questionable choices, if your uncle is crushed by the weight of depression. I know it hurts, but you can't sacrifice your happiness for them! You can help Rustyrose even without canceling yourself, and pay homage to your other deceased loved ones without feeling guilty about what you said or did. You were a little girl, Meredy, a scared little girl and as much as you love them you can't justify the actions that got them where they are now. I told you before… You can only accept what has been and move on."
A last, silent tear rolled down Meredy's cheek. Finally… That terrible lump in her throat melted like snow under the sun.
She held Juvia tightly:
"Now you are my sister."
To those words, the blue-haired girl responded with a touching smile and a caress of Meredy's soft hair.
"Juvia was even before…"
There was no more time for tears.
Having released from their embrace, Meredy turned again towards the black tombstone, where Zancrow's cheeky smile observed her, motionless and unchanging.
The twenty-two-year-old caressed the stone, made barely warm by the afternoon sun:
"We could have been a better father and daughter, we could have been better people, better guildmates. I haven't been able to dissolve the anger you've carried inside since you were a child and I'm sorry for that. Know that I will always think of you, wherever you are."
Having said that, the two girls headed towards the exit of the cemetery, while Meredy thought about Neinhart's magic. It was no coincidence that her Historia of the Dead had brought back to life the very one for whom she felt a strong filial love.
"It's only six o'clock, would you like a walk around the city?" the Mage of Crime Sorcière then asked Juvia.
"Juvia would love to." she replied.