Tears of the Furies
When Wendy cried...
Loss was a normal part of life. She could either accept that and try her best to keep living or get bogged down in grief and not be able to do anything at all.
Wendy Marvell had first known was loss was when she was only 4 years old.
Grandeey had been all that she knew. All she could remember. The Sky Dragon's soft feathers and gentle voice had meant she was safe, loved and treasured above all else. Then she had woken up one day to find that Grandeeny was simply gone.
For a time, she had wondered if she had left her there, but she had always come back to the certainty that Grandeeny wouldn't have just abandoned her. That meant malice. And you couldn't use Sky magic if you had malice or cruelty in your heart.
So Wendy had struggled on living. She had been with Jellal for a time, or Mystogan as she knew he preferred to be called now. That had been good. She had imprinted on him strongly and he had been nothing but good to her. He had even seen to her care when he determined that travelling with him was too dangerous for a child. She had naturally been upset again, but Cait Shelter and Carla had proved to her that she was capable of not being alone. It wasn't some curse that followed her. It was just bad luck.
Not sure if I'd still call it that now.
Wendy pressed a pad of gauze to a deep wound with blackness in the edges and slow bleeding. His hands were bleeding as well from the nails. It looked like he had been reduced to fighting barehanded. Oddly enough, he had scratches all over his own face as well. Had he been fighting someone else in the same condition? He was still trying to thrash. He would only hurt himself more if she let him. Wendy pinned his hands to his sided, grabbing his wrists and setting her elbows on his shoulders to keep most of him down.
The angles are wrong for them to come from someone else unless they happened to be shorter and coming at him from behind, in which case, there are better places to hit if you want a lethal injury. The man had been clawing at his own face. Hallucinations. She didn't smell anything chemical however, so-.
"Fae, curse!" Her sky magic was holding it at bay. Negative enchantments were something she had some experience with after all. But it would take an expert to truly neutralize and Wendy had to conserve her magic to heal. The younger girl hurried over, moving with the grace born from long practice. She spun a lacrima tipped pen in her hand and with a gesture, amber lines of script were securing the patient to the operating table.
"I got this." There were only minor injuries on him other than the gouges from his own hands that had gotten dangerous close to his eyes. Fae didn't touch him, but she just looked at him deeply... Something bloomed in the air, the spell driving his behavior reacting to Fae's subtle tests. Wendy saw her eyes dart here and there as faint wisps of magic, colored an odd pink, filled the air.
"Ooh are you a nasty one." Fae muttered, amber letters starting to pour from her magical tool as she set about unravelling whatever spell was on the man. He was still pulling against the magical restraints Fae had conjured. He didn't make a sound, but his mouth was open. The poor man had screamed himself hoarse.
"Let me know if you need help." The Rune Wizard merely nodded distractedly, brow furrowed as she tackled the new challenge that lay before her.
Wendy focused on her own work, her senses alive as she examined her patient. Heartbeat, elevated with pain, breathing labored with the same. Scent, no sour infection smell on the injury, it was too fresh. Blood...significant amounts of it. But that was normal.
You especially have to be alert for anything that looks, smells or sounds wrong. Acclimating yourself to a variety of common injuries will give you enough experience to diagnose and treat even the unusual substances or reactions you might come across.
Porliyusica's lessons had often left her with splitting headaches from the sheer variety of substances. Some had been subtle, others had been nearly overpowering and she had needed to bear down on her own body to not let her senses overwhelm her and still function normally.
She more or less had it down now. The clinic and the work that they did there had let her gain still more experience.
"I need more A Positive!" Wendy called to the orderlies that she had hired. A trio of people who had been leery of working with a young girl, but had quickly come to trust her.
"Coming!" Greta was an older, but very experienced and still spry nurse. She hung up a new bag of blood and went about setting it up to benefit their patient. Wendy felt something tickling her senses and she sneezed, turning away from her operating table.
Fae shifted so the small burst of wind didn't blow anything over her patient. She threw a grin back her way but went back to her work. Her now oldest, and closest friend had a habit of mouthing off in high pressure situations to keep herself calm. But she curbed herself when she was assisting Wendy out of respect for her working space.
It was one of the many things Wendy appreciated about her.
"Wendy, this wound-" Greta said, paling as she looked down at their current patient. One of the wizards from Lamia Scale. Lyon. Gray's foster brother.
The Sky Dragon Slayer looked back and felt her gut churn.
What she had thought was just a minor cut seemed to have tripled in the instance that turned her attention elsewhere. There was so much blood...
"Suction!" She barked at Greta who held the narrow end of a tube into the injury for that same reason. But it didn't seem to help, more and more bood just kept pouring out. Trying to get a hold of the injury with her magic was useless. It felt so slippery. Then amid the scent of blood and bile, she heard another sound.
"Got another one coming in!" A familiar scent.
Wendy managed to get a hold of the wound on Lyon and seal it up. Then she turned her attention towards the newcomer.
"Kagura!" The girl was unconscious, missing most of an arm in a massive attack. Wendy had had no idea that this fight, meant to be little more than a skirmish against a Dark Guild that had hired a few gangs of highway bandits.
"We're losing her!"
No. Another sound drew Wendy's horrified eyes over to Fae who was bleeding from her neck as she grappled with a curse that appeared to be peeling the skin from her arms.
No!
Not them. Not them too!
Nestmates. Siblings. Fae had only recently brought that lesson back to her memory. Grandeeny had told her that siblings were a treasure to have. Something to protect as they would do the same for you.
Who did she go to first? Kagura was losing too much blood from her missing arm, but the curse Fae was fighting appeared to be trying to go for the jugular.
Choose who you will lose.
It's an inevitability that you will only continue to lose. You've lost everyone else in your life you cared about you.
Wendy didn't realize she was screaming until the next inhale, ignoring the pungent odors of the med station, brought in a surge of new magic power as her body converted the air into ethernano for her to use. She could hear people calling her. Felt phantom touches on her skin. But all she could feel, and see were her friends fading into light before her eyes. Catch a glimpse of them smiling reassuringly at her as they joined together to face a monster that she was supposed to be able to fight one day.
Acnologia.
We never talked about it, Fae. Kagura. But I always assumed that when we all knew we were strong enough...that we'd find the dragon that took our family and make him pay for what he did to us by taking them away for so long. That we would make sure no one else would ever lose their family to him like we lost ours.
Kagura and Fae would not die so easily as long as Fairy Tail was not whole.
And Wendy would not lose anyone like this ever again.
"That's it Wendy. Fight it." Unlike the sinister whisper that had taunted her, this voice was familiar. Simon was using telepathy to contact her. "It's just a curse, Wendy. Keep breathing, you're already clearing it out of your system." And Simon would know the difference between a living nightmare and a magically induced one.
The next inhale was done purposefully, tasting every scrap of pain that was in the air. The fear, the desperation, the heady rush of battle.
The sick pleasure of a sadist.
Wendy's eyes, wet with tears, gleamed with power as she swallowed more and more air.
More.
She consumed the fears she felt. The quiet seed of doubt that wondered if she was doomed to lose everyone she ever risked caring about.
More.
She consumed the sadness of losing Grandeeny. Cait Shelter. The Tenrou group. Family that had taken her in when no one else wanted her. Who had fought to protect her to their last breath.
More.
The guilt of leaving Natsu and Gajeel and the others to face the dragon as it bore down on them. She was supposed to be a Dragon Slayer. Fighting that was supposed to be her job. Wondering, deep down, if she had stayed and helped them, would it have been like fighting Dorma Anim in Edolas? Could they have succeeded? Would they all be together now?
More.
Carla. Carla had always done everything in her power to look after Wendy, seeming to view her as a responsibility. Wendy always felt slightly like a kitten when she spoke to the white Exceed. Young and naive in the face of a deep rooted innate wisdom that seemed to spring naturally from the cat. Carla had stayed so Wendy wouldn't have to.
Carla had faced death in the form of a dragon. All her friends had. To keep her alive.
Wendy snapped her teeth shut around the last dregs of her anger, tears burning in her eyes as a fiery rose color overtook her irises. Her wrists and ankles itched, as did her back.
I will find you someday, Acnologia. I doubt you know or care what you took from me. But I will teach you exactly what you did. And you will pay for it. One way or the other.
She scented on the harmful enchantment that had tried to prey on her fears and vulnerabilities. That had tried to take advantage of her weakest moments and darkest fears.
Tried to hurt her friends.
"Fae." She barely recognized her own voice. "What kind of curse is that that he has on him?" The man's injuries had been self-inflicted, she had seen that.
"Exponential fear. Whatever you are most worried about in a given situation, it will give you the worst possible outcome. The more something matters to you, the worse things you see happening to it." Wendy seethed, a hiss rippling through her air. She looked down at her hands, seeing white feather like scales emerging from her wrists. Seeing them would have brought her comfort at the sweet memory of Grandeeny normally. But right now they were just more reminders of loss and pain.
Pain that she had always tried to handle and process in a quiet and unobtrusive way.
Right now...she did not want to be be quiet.
Wendy felt every current of air on her skin. Felt everyone around her for...a certain stretch of space. Processing the exact detail of distance and units of measurement wasn't in the forefront of her mind right now.
Wendy tensed her legs and called on her magic, springing into the sky with a roar that shook the air. But this was nothing like the roars she had heard her fellow dragons give. They were males. They would naturally have a deeper tone to their cries.
A shriek, rapidly rising in pitch and volume, made the air tremble as she cut through the sky. Her entire being was focused on the man that had sent that curse. He was not responsible for her pain, but a dragon wouldn't care. Right now, he was a threat to the few remaining friends that Wendy had left.
After that encounter, people remembered that while Wendy was by the far the nicest and most approachable Dragon Slayer...she was still someone a dragon had taught. People remembered that Wendy was a doctor, and knew all the ways to put a human body together, which also meant she knew intimately how to take it apart as well.
When Wendy cried, it was in defiance of her worst fear.
-vVv-
When Kagura cried...
She didn't express a lot of emotion. And that was fine. Her brother knew how to read her well enough. Her roommates did too. They always had.
But the truth was Kagura felt everything intensely. Her anger was an avalanche. Her grief, a downpour. Her joy was as freeing as flying through an open sky...
But her fear was something very different.
Kagura had come back from a job that she had not liked.
She had needed to enter an orphanage, nothing like the place she had considered home in the years since her parents had died, and see the bleak conditions. The children were all clothed, but in obviously old garments. They were all thin and had regarded the food she handed them with incredible care like it was everything they had ever dreamed of being pressed into their hands.
Fae had tracked this lead down. She had been furious as well, but this was her busy season when she went around renewing the wards on the various properties Fairy Tail sponsored or were sponsored by. Some noble she had worked with had presented the concern, after hosting a charity event for this orphanage, that the place was being grossly mismanaged.
Kagura had taken the lead. But she hadn't expected to feel like this afterwards.
It was a small closet, made for towels. Some Rune Knights, doing their job and working with Fairy Tail for a change, were leading the guilty parties away in cuffs that Kagura hoped were too tight on their wrists.
One of the boys tugged at Kagura's hand and she tried to soften her features into something less frightening as she looked down at him.
"What is it?"
"Micah didn't come out." He told her, eyes wide and green and innocent. And worried.
You're too young to feel that kind of worry.
"The nag didn't like how he talked. So she took him away somewhere all the time. He's not here!"
"I'll go find him." Kagura assured the youngster, moving carefully to pat his head. "Stay out here with the other children. Alright? I'll bring Micah to you." She didn't know if there was any relation between the two, but in many respects it didn't matter. She knew well the kinds of bonds that could flourish between children in a house like this. Whether it was a good place to live or a bad one.
It wasn't that Micah had been hard to find. It was where she found him.
The former matron had shoved him inside a footlocker and locked it.
Kagura, hearing his calls from within, hadn't let herself freeze up at the sight. Micah was cursing the woman, swearing defiance and continued resistance to her mistreatment.
She crushed the lock and tore it off with a bit more force than necessary. Micah's face was wide eyed and surprised when he saw the older girl looking down at him. She couldn't have formed words if she tried. Kagura merely motioned that he follow her and led him outside to where the other children greeted him with joy and relief.
Then Kagura removed herself from the proceedings, went a little ways off to a secluded place...and let the shakes overtake her and the memories that came with them.
Kagura's emotions were big and bold. All except her fear.
Her fear was a box. Something that felt small and enclosing. And with it came a feeling of helplessness. That same feeling had been what led to her desperate attempt to find Simon to try and buy her home back from Dusk Gnoll. Who had made her feel powerless, even though she had enough raw strength to topple a cliff.
I am safe. I am not trapped.
The mantra helped her lower her heart rate. It had been years since she had been placed in the chest for her own protection. Erza had not done so maliciously. The furthest thing from it actually. But spending two days in a trunk terrified of even the slightest sound that came into her shelter, left its mark on her even now.
Most of the time, it was manageable.
Kagura finished the job and boarded a train home.
She ignored the feeling of the compartment walls closing in. She mentally grappled with them, forcing them to stay where they were. A nice, spacious train compartment. Not a box, not a prison. She was not trapped.
She focused instead on the passing countryside. Wendy said closing her eyes not ignoring the outside helped her with her motion sickness. But Kagura prefered to watch the world hurtling by. It made her feel like she was in freefall. Like she was using magic. Like she was in control...
In that state, she managed to get through the train ride home without losing her grip on her magic. She even managed to go to the market to buy some groceries, and set something cooking for dinner in a pot Fae had enchanted to speed cook time. There had been a long excited ramble about pressure, steam, the chance of it becoming a pipe bomb if she wrote the runes incorrectly... Kagura had rarely seen her friend so happy about such a mundane thing and decided to quietly support it by testing the device for her. Her friends were creators and healers. Kagura had privately vowed to take on as much of the danger of combat as she could to ensure that they could stay like that.
It always snuck up on her. When it was all too much.
She was getting out of the shower, when she tried to open the door and it wouldn't move. The heat and steam from her shower had made the wood swell up.
It didn't open.
She was trapped.
Her pulse started to gallop. She was breathing too fast and felt breathless all at the same time. The room seemed to go dark, she could feel walls close all around her.
Nononono. She was back in the box. She was caught between the Dusk Gnoll members that were leering down at her. Trapped. Helpless. Anyone could come into the apartment and she would be a sitting duck. Fae's pressurized pot could crack like an egg and explode.
Kagura gripped the edges of the door, staring blankly at the floor, something other than the four walls around her.
Stop it. It's irrational thinking. Get it together...!
When she felt like that, her magic got wild. And when her magic got wild, people got hurt. She wasn't trapped in the ruins of her home wondering if someone would try and pull her out of her hiding place. She wasn't surrounded by enemies like with Dusk Gnoll. She was in her home. There were so many good memories here, memories she didn't want to destroy.
Already those good times felt far away and slipping further away. Her magic roiled beneath her skin. On the verge of overflowing. The fixtures in the bathroom rattled as her magic tried to pull them against the world's natural order.
It doesn't matter how. Just get out.
So Kagura braced her hands against the door...and pushed.
She had barely managed to settle herself on their roof, in clothes she hadn't looked at, when a streak of silver blurred through the air. Fae's owl Patronus settled before her, lighter than air. And with it, there came a wash of warm, soothing feelings that always accompanied the apparitions. She let out a long shaky breath, reaching out a shaking hand to the bright feathers. She barely felt a tickle of magic on her skin, but the comforting feelings and thoughts of happiness. Driving away the dark.
"Nothing to say?" It was rare that Fae sent a patronus with something to pass along.
The dark silver eyes of the owl blinked at her, conveying the same kindness that her friend always did.
"Simon's on his way."
Kagura put her head down on her knees. And didn't move beyond her sobs until her brother came up onto the roof to sit beside her. He would later help her clean up the splintered remains of the door she had destroyed. Macao would be by the next day with a replacement he bartered from a carpenter. He would be useless in hanging it however until Fae came back from Iceberg to do it properly.
She never fully closed the bathroom door again.
When Kagura cried, it was when it all became too much.
-vVv-
When Fae cried...
Stairs.
All I saw were stairs. Some were going up, but I was focused on running down them. The walls looked like the Tower of Heaven. Someone was waiting for me at the bottom. I had to get to the bottom.
I ignored everyone I ran past, they didn't seem to notice me either. I was focused on my goal and they were focused on...something else I couldn't see.
Another flight, another flight. I called for someone. But the words garbled in my ears. Everything seemed to be getting darker.
Then I heard someone call my name.
Light came back and I ran faster still, leaping down the final flight of stairs into Natsu's arms.
He smelt like smoke. The rough scale knit pattern of his scarf was familiar against my cheek. He was warm. He was here.
He laughed and then there was Erza, the widest smile I had ever seen on her face. For someone with such a reputation of combat prowess and danger, she looked remarkably angelic right in this instance.
Gray was next. He had lost both his shirt and his pants somewhere, but I couldn't bring myself to even make a joke about it. I was too happy.
Lucy, with Loke beside her, grabbed me next. (The Celestial Spirit Realm was unbalanced right now. With Lucy holding so many of the keys and them being dormant, the heavens were having some trouble of their own maintaining their connection with Fiore. There was another active Celestial Spirit Mage with some of the few Golden Keys that Lucy hadn't been gifted, or otherwise acquired.)
Gildarts and Cana. Laxus and Freed. Mira, Lisanna and Elfman. Gajeel and Levy. The exceed. All the faces that I had been missing were there. They were home.
The last set of arms I was taken into was someone with blue hair and a red birthmark like tattoo streaking down one side of his face.
And he wasn't skinny enough to be Jellal. Mystogan had not had magic to hone, so he had trained his body to give himself every possible advantage in combat...
Mystogan...
I pulled back abruptly, looking up at him, around at all the faces and people I had missed. Juvia fangirling over Gray as he and Natsu got into some kind of argument. Happy stuffing his face with a fish while Pantherlily talked with Elfman. Jellal and Master were both smiling at me from where they were discussing something. And no matter how much I focused on them...I couldn't hear a word they said. Just that they occasionally said my name.
All the joy I had been feeling escaped me like air from a punctured balloon.
This couldn't be real. Mystogan was in Edolas.
"You're not here. None of you are." I said aloud, looking around at their faces, all so real and just as I remembered them...
"I'm just dreaming."
-vVv-
...I'm sorry Fae. I couldn't hold this one back.
I woke up with a gasp, unable to stop the sobs from tearing out of me. Morgana hovered like a mother hen in the back of my mind, but I didn't want to talk to her right then. I just listened to her thoughts, mirrors of my own, as they wound through the various channels of our shared mindspace.
Morgana had taken on the role of safeguarding my wellbeing. All aspects of it, including emotional. So she had been holding back similar dreams for years. I likely would have had similar experiences every few weeks instead of one years after the fact. Which...comparatively was a good thing. I just couldn't muster the will to be grateful for the lack right now. Every thought I had all led me to the same place.
I miss them...
I just curled on my side and cried.
For that moment when I saw them again, when I got to hug them again, I felt like a child again. I felt like the part of home that had been missing for so long was finally restored...
"Fae, what's wrong?" Wendy, kind patient Wendy, had woken first. She had probably smelt my tears even if she hadn't heard me wake up crying.
"They were there. They were home." My voice was thick, partially muffled by the blankets and sheets that I pulled up over my head. But there was no mistaking my tone, or the way I was shaking.
I heard Wendy's breath catch and felt her slide onto the bed beside me, stroking my back and shushing me quietly. Kagura flicked on a light, her voice blurring in my ears as I continued to cry.
I don't know how long I stayed like that. Long enough that I cried myself to sleep and when I woke up, it was Frosch cuddled under my arm and a very twitchy Shadow Dragon Slayer sitting vigil over me.
"You are giving me a complex." He told me flatly.
What he means is he is trying not to kill whoever made you cry and by this point, he'll take a surrogate.
I let out a hoarse laugh. Kagura was in the kitchen. She was the best cook of the three of us, having grown up feeding a crowd of other children in the orphanage.
His face softened then, red eyes earnestly asking for something to do. Something to focus on other than his raging protective instincts.
"What happened?" What made you cry like this? They were worried enough to tell me about it. And because he and Sting were joined at the hip thanks to their positions in their guild these days, Sting had heard the same news too. He was pacing outside the apartment building right now.
Oddly considerate of him to not just walk in.
Of course he wouldn't when you were like this. He feels much the same as Rogue does.
Why would he care? We're not friends.
And he doesn't want to be.
Then why doesn't he just leave me alone?
But Rogue's question, as innocent as it was, banished every peaceful feeling that I had gained from sleeping. My eyes still felt red and itchy and even though I had just woken, I still felt tired and like I wanted to do nothing more than roll over and go back to sleep. I would deal with my delayed grieving process later. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on Frosch's purring as I answered Rogue's question...
When Fae cried, it was because she woke up.
A/N
...
Tears were shed. That's all I will say. Welcome back with about 4.5k words of pure angst!