Mercury's house was located on the outskirts of Magnolia - as far from the bay as possible while still remaining in the city. It was only accessible by alleyways as well as being located in one of the less desirable places in town, so for the most part, people avoided it; tourists never came this far out unless they were lost, and his guildmates had no real reason to follow him this far unless they were being pests, as a certain dragon slayer often did.
He'd had to fight Mira to let him get away from the guild for the evening. She didn't trust him to not injure himself further, apparently, even though the being in water (regardless of whether it had been made by his own magic or not) had healed all of his injuries. That was just the type of body that he had – it healed much more quickly than a human's, being sped up even further by direct contact with water.
… Even though he hadn't intended to touch water in several decades now. Just the thought of it made him feel nauseated, though that could have just been residual from the experience against Phantom Lord's guildmaster.
To Mercury, the feeling of water on his skin reminded him of only unpleasant things. The ocean was a difficult thing for him to even think of without becoming hopelessly paranoid; actually feeling it was even worse. It brought to mind some of the worst experiences of his life – the cold pressure pressing down at him from all angles as he fought to breathe through blood in his mouth, the way his body regenerated over and over again against wounds that were endlessly being caused…
Yeah.
He didn't like to think about it much.
The best thing for Mercury to do was to sleep the sensation off. He'd be nothing but a bother at the guild right now, especially now that people were going to be bothering him about what had happened.
Mother, he hoped Mira and Elfman didn't go telling anyone.
The house that Mercury finally arrived at was a little worse for wear, what with the way the paint was peeling and the lawn was messy and overgrown, but for the last several years, he'd called it something akin to "home".
(Not actually home; that was long gone by now.)
He staggered up to the door, tossing it open. Mercury never locked it because there was simply nothing it would bother him to lose inside.
His first instinct was to pass out in his bed for as long as his body would let him, but he knew he'd better clean himself up first. Though his wounds were healed, there was still dried blood caked to his stomach and on his back, where stones had dug into the soft skin as he'd been tossed around by Phantom Lord's Master. The coppery feel of it sent his stomach twirling. As usual, it brought to mind memories that he'd much rather have forgotten.
Mercury stepped into his bathroom, one of just three rooms in his tiny house. It was essentially bare, the only fixtures being the countertop and attached mirror, a toilet, and a bathtub. The room was so small that the bathtub took up nearly half of the total space, leaving only a tiny square area to walk in. Mercury didn't mind it. He rarely used the room other than to use the toilet because he rarely had the need to clean himself; he didn't go on jobs, so he didn't get dirty, and he never really sweat, either.
The clothes he'd been bestowed by the guild after showing up in little more than rags – to the intense discomfort of any and all female members, though that might have also just been because of how pale he looked – were stripped from his body without ceremony. He laid them on the countertop, then, after a second thought, he gave them a quick fold. They were Elfman's and he wasn't sure if he was expected to give them back.
Mercury twisted the faucet, but no water came out. He sighed; of course this would be an issue now, the one time he actually wanted it to work.
It figured that Magnolia's plumbing had been a casualty of the Phantom Lord fight, with all of the damage in the bay area. Even though the town had seemed mostly unscathed as his unfocused eyes headed home, there was still obvious damage to the surrounding areas. The shockwaves from the Jupiter Cannon were the most likely culprit to have caused most of them. Overall, the damage was rather minor when compared to what could have been if he and Erza hadn't been there. Apparently, that included the pipes.
Even if the plumbing had been working, though , he wasn't sure he could trust it – seawater might have gotten in, and that might have disastrous consequences for Merc in his weakened state.
(He hated rain, but his distaste for sea water went above that. Perhaps it wasn't even hatred, but fear that had him recoiling from it.)
(Mercury wasn't sure he'd be the same person if he touched the ocean again. Actually, he was certain he wouldn't be.)
Despite knowing it was a bad idea, Mercury used a bit of magic to fill the tub; it felt like trying to squeeze water out of a dry towel, his gut feeling the sensation of something twisting, maybe just nausea, but he managed to do it. His vision was tinged with black spots for a moment, forcing him to lean back on the countertop to avoid toppling over onto the floor like a marionette without strings.
It still would have been a better alternative than staining his 'precious' sheets with dried blood.
Merc lowered himself into the tub, which was only barely halfway filled. He cringed when the water touched his skin, but he was at least tired enough to not think about it too much. His head throbbed in a way that it hadn't in a long time, nearly running empty on magic entirely, so he could take his mind off the way the water made him tense.
It was cold. He could focus on that sensation and that sensation alone.
Even if that temperature reminded him the most of home.
He gently used the tub water to loosen the dirt that had piled up on his skin. First his shoulders, then as much of his back as he could reach with aching arms, and finally, his stomach…
It wouldn't have been a lie to say that he was glad that he'd been so caked with dry mud that his abdomen had been covered completely. He was so, so glad that Mira hadn't seen it. He wasn't ready to explain it – nor would he likely ever be. He couldn't imagine being able to talk about it, to voice the thoughts that constantly swam around his mind like a hurricane, without breaking down in either rage or sorrow.
Blood from José's attack had dried on his stomach in a spiral pattern. He lazily scrubbed it off, revealing more of that disgusting, hideous scar that stuck out from his abdominal even more egregious than the marking on his chest. The edges were tough, as though they'd been torn and re-torn over and over again, and reached from his sternum to the area where his hips met his legs. It was present on both his front and his back; he'd been pierced all the way through.
Mercury cringed once more, remembering.
His brothers brought him back to Mother like a fish on a harpoon – perhaps as a joke, or maybe just to be cruel. They'd dragged him into the water with it still in him. He could remember faintly the way that his blood had stained the white sand, watching as that little house on the beach was slowly dragged out of view, his head tugged underwater –
Suddenly, Mercury was overcome with the urge to vomit. His thoughts had gotten away from him once again; these things were things he'd chosen not to remember, he told himself.
Not right now. He couldn't think about it yet – he wouldn't. He had to finish his task. He had to wash himself before he fell asleep. Already, tiredness was dragging his eyelids down to the point that his vision was incredibly blurry – or maybe that was just the exhaustion getting ready to drag his consciousness away.
Robotically, his eyes seeing but not seeing, Mercury doused the rest of his body and scrubbed, nails digging into the skin as though that would make him any cleaner.
It didn't make him feel cleaner. His skin crawled.
Only when he was satisfied that no more blood was stuck to his skin did Mercury allow himself to shove himself out of the tub, draping his body over the edge and nearly falling over upon taking a step out. If he stayed much longer, he was sure he was going to fall asleep. His body dried almost immediately upon exiting, either a benefit of his unique constitution or due to his water magic – he wasn't sure, and had long since stopped caring.
His body was tired. Everything ached from haphazardly having to regenerate on the fly, cells screaming in protest as they had no more magic to feed upon to keep himself stable. He could feel it in his bones. They felt heavy, like they were swollen with water, to the point that it was all he could do to put on some underwear and toss himself into the bed, asleep before he could even register his head hitting the pillow.
His dreams were tortured. Brought back by the memories of Mother, images of his brothers, images of his wife flashed through his mind.
His wife. He had a wife. It was the thought of her that woke him up, her caressing fingers gently prodding him from a fractured, exhausting sleep.
Mercury's head still ached, but that was nothing new. His body was still showing pretty intense signs of magic deficiency, legs still shaking even when he was laying down and vision still spotty if he moved his head too sharply. He debated, briefly, laying it back down and closing his eyes, letting sleep take him once more.
Mother knew he needed it, but he slowly hoisted himself out of his makeshift bed anyway, careful not to do anything that might send him tumbling back down right away.
The guild… it needed him right now, right? There had to be something more he could do, something that would lift the guilt that told Mercury everything was his fault from his shoulders. If nothing else, he had to go check on Levy, Jet, and Droy; because he hadn't stopped Gajeel, they were his responsibilities.
His room was as barren as it had always been. He liked it this way; there was nothing to trip on, save for his bed, and tripping on top of it was what he did most of the time before sleep, anyway. The only room in his house that wasn't a bathroom or a kitchen was almost entirely taken up by the small mattress on the floor. Mercury had never bothered getting a frame for it, despite having lived here for more than a decade, because some part of him still thought that at any given time, he'd be forced to leave. No point in getting comfortable when you have no idea how long you'd be staying, right?
(He never allowed his thoughts to wander further than that. He could hardly think of a situation that would lead to him leaving, and anything that did come to mind had to do with either his death or him being discovered by his brothers, neither being a scenario he wanted to think about.)
A pile of blankets had been pushed off to the side, the summer too hot for him to have much use of them. At the very least, he had been goaded into buying a set of bedsheets by Evergreen several years ago, which was really the nicest thing that he owned, and the only reason he had bothered to scrub off grime the night previous; Laxus and the Thunder God Tribe had been the only guild members to have entered his house, and the sole female of the group had been absolutely floored – appalled – at the state of it.
In the corner stood a small cabinet, the only furniture in his room other than the mattress. It contained only a few sets of clothes, which, again, had been a purchase forced on him by Evergreen; his "lack of style and variation" had been quite a topic of debate between the two of them. Most of the clothes inside were variations of the same: several turtleneck tank tops and long sleeves of different dark colors (navy, black, and a dark gray, saved for when he was in an especially good mood), an odd pair of pants or two, and bundles of different socks that he'd barely been able to match.
Mercury internally groaned at the fact that his only jacket had been torn to shreds the day previous. He fumbled towards the wardrobe, remembering that he was still nearly naked and did, in fact, require clothes if he was going to go anywhere today - if he even ended up leaving the house. Closing his eyes and picking at random was good enough for him; his fingers found navy fabric, which he pulled over his head with only a minor struggle.
He felt the itch on his back and chest – and even some on his arms – that signified the growing in of new scales. His eyes searched for them, but he didn't have to look hard to find several clusters forming in the crook of his elbow and the back of his shoulder.
They itched.
The sleeves of his shirt weren't long enough to cover them. He'd have to pull them out. Mercury didn't want them, didn't want to see them, because all they did was remind him of the way his brothers looked. He saw scales, and he saw them, even if they were his own.
He braced his arm against the wall, picking out with his eyes the seven clusters on his left arm and five on his right. Each cluster was made of five or so scales, most of them still remaining mostly translucent because of how new they were. Given time, they'd thicken and darken into that ugly gray color that he almost despised, not because it reminded him of his siblings – no, they had different scale colors – but because they felt so obviously out of place.
He wasn't human, and he was fully aware of this, but that didn't mean that he had to parade it around like some sort of circus freak. Without giving himself too much time to think about it, he slipped his fingers underneath the first scale on his left arm and yanked upwards.
The pain wasn't that bad – definitely not very intense when compared to how it felt to get tossed around like a rag doll by the Phantom Lord guild master, at least. Having to do it for each individual scale was where he stuttered. Each subsequent one hurt a little bit more, and when Mercury finally pulled out the last one, his arms felt like they were absolutely raw, stinging with phantom pain now that the skin was exposed to air. He was just glad that the scales didn't grow back as fast as he regenerated, or this process would be much longer, much more painful.
With that done, he had no idea what to do with the rest of the day.
His thoughts wandered while he slowly brushed through the rat's nest that his hair had become after being tossed around in the whirlpool he called magic, deftly tugging at each clump until the hair was once again straight, flowing past his shoulder blades and down to his lower back.
Mercury was hesitant to return to the guild hall, despite wanting to see the full condition it was in. He thought about as much while finally tying his hair back – he'd originally left it down to hide his head wound, which was now fully healed, and hadn't had the time nor hair tie to pull it back up in the chaos following. The blue strands were silken to the touch, rejuvenated by the water they'd been soaked in the day previous; the hairs were almost too soft for him to get a good grip on them.
He didn't want to have to fend off questions about José, as he was sure that the younger guild members would pepper him with the moment that they saw him. He simply did not have the energy to deal with it right now, especially with how his arms groaned with the effort of doing a task as simple as brushing his own hair. He wasn't confident he could make it through all the questions without snapping at one of them. They didn't deserve to suffer for his almost self imposed grumpy attitude, because, surely, he could change his definitely-not-caused-by-trauma mood if he just thought about it hard enough.
It, hopefully, would be fine. Besides, upon thinking about it, he realized he had better reasons to stay away from the guild for the next couple of days.
The Magic Council would surely send out squadrons of their low ranking drones to come and survey the town for them now that the fighting was over. While they couldn't be relied on to provide support (or anything truly useful, for that matter), they sure as hell were good at showing up when things were calm and acting like they had done anything at all. They'd been involved in many of Fairy Tail's... 'incidents,' and this was, by far, the worst one in a long time.
Though the Magic Council held "control" over the Ten Wizard Saints, there was no actual way to control them. They were simply too powerful. The Magic Council was just lucky that the majority of them had some sort of sentimentality towards Fiore, because Mother knows what would have happened if they had decided to revolt or got ideas of power.
...Which was exactly what had just happened in the last week with José, albeit on a much smaller scale than what could have happened. They were lucky that the destruction was limited mostly to Magnolia's port. Two Wizard Saints fighting was bound to cause all sorts of trouble for everyone involved, but they had seemed to get off "lucky" this time with just damage to the harbor and both guild halls.
Regardless of their competence, or lack thereof, when the Magic Council stuck their nose in Fairy Tail's business, Merc was sure to be as far away as possible.
He'd had a couple of run-ins with them before, though not usually under the Fairy Tail name – once was before he'd joined the guild, and there had been several times while he was associated with Laxus's group – and the experience had never been pleasant. He'd never revealed that he was part of the guild to any of them, guild mark tucked safely away under the left side of his rib cage where it wouldn't be seen unless he had completely stripped. His distaste with them had only grown in the last couple of months. How they'd dealt with the Lullaby incident weighed on him heavily; they seemed to act only on their own interests and for appearance's sake, and even then, they clearly weren't trying that hard to maintain their reputation. Not with how they had put the very one who saved them on a faux trial to appease... Mother, Mercury didn't even know who they were trying to appease with that stunt, and even thinking about it caused a dryness in his mouth that he couldn't explain.
So, sure, Mercury might do the paperwork they required, but he always signed that as Makarov – the old man's signature looked more like a scribble than actual letters – so as far as he knew, the Magic Council wasn't even fully aware that he existed. He wasn't on the guild's registry, an easy feat accomplished by the previous guild master with only a small amount of pleading, and he hadn't taken on jobs in years - and the ones that he did solo were taken under "Yuri" rather than "Mercury" or "Merc." He was, after all, an undocumented person living in Fiore. For now, his anxiety about the Magic Council was just that – paranoia – and he hoped it would stay that way.
A soft knock sounded at Mercury's door.
What great timing, he mused. Just when he was thinking about being tracked, someone knocks on his door.
The knock was hesitant, as though unsure that the house they came to was the correct one. With his attentive ears, he heard the shuffling of papers from the door, and then a second, more confident knock.
Had the knocker checked the address to confirm? Who even had his address? The list of people who knew where he lived was mostly limited to people who wouldn't waste their time knocking and either kick down the door or find a way through an unlatched window or something. He doesn't doubt that this isn't the Magic Council though, because their goons always barged in or knocked so assuredly that one would think they owned the place - at least, that's how they acted in Fairy Tail's guild hall.
With uneasy steps, Mercury approached the door.
He was fortunate to have lived here for long enough that he knew which boards would squeak when he stepped on them. If the person was just a lost tourist, he'd rather pretend that he wasn't here. If it was someone looking for him, he'd have them come back later or seek him out when he returned to the guild.
If it was someone looking for a fight? He was annoyed just thinking about it.
With a feeling almost like hesitancy, Mercury placed his hand on the doorknob, hoisting it open quickly to catch the person in the act of going for a third knock.
To his immense surprise, it was a guildmate, though not one he'd ever expect – Romeo, the son of Macao, was standing at his door with a pile of papers tucked beneath his arm, hand outstretched to knock once more. The boy nearly jumped out of his skin in surprise. His eyes went wide, staring up at Mercury, who was so tall comparatively that the boy had to crane his neck to meet his eyes.
Mercury simply raised an eyebrow at the kid. How had he even gotten here in the first place?
The answer was revealed in the dark haired boy's right hand: a small scrap of paper with the numbers that comprised Merc's address. The handwriting on the scrap was so poor that the water mage almost couldn't make it out.
… Meaning that there was a large chance that it had come from Makarov.
Romeo shocked himself from his stupor. Mercury had no idea why the boy seemed to be so nervous; Mercury had known both him and his father for as long as the boy had been alive.
"Ah, uh, Master wanted me to give this to you!" the boy squeaked.
Mercury briefly wondered how old the boy was if he was allowed to - or even asked to - wander this far into the shady parts of town. He definitely wasn't older than ten, but aside from that, Mercury couldn't recall the boy's birth year.
Romeo quickly removed the stack of papers from under his arm, holding them out for Mercury to take. At first glance, the papers seemed to be just more forms for the Magic Council, a lot of them being related to previous incidents that he hadn't gotten around to completing, but tucked in between them were lists of items – materials, Mercury realized, and specifically those that would be good at, say, rebuilding a guild hall.
Ah, he realized Master's plan. It seemed that Mercury would be running errands today – not that he was complaining. It would be a welcome excuse to not show his face near those Magic Council lackeys, who would definitely be congregating around the hall in "damage (to reputation) mitigation" mode or "interrogate every guild member in an attempt to pretend they did something" mode.
It made sense that Mercury would be the one left up to this task; he'd voiced his concerns about the Magic Council to the Master before, so the Wizard Saint was definitely aware. Aside from that, though, Mercury was probably one of maybe three people in the guild who wouldn't misplace, gamble, forget, or spend the funds that Master was going to provide him once the orders were placed.
Because all four of those options had happened before with current guild members. Master had not been happy.
Mercury ruffled the younger boy's hair, thanking him for bringing the papers all the way to this seedy part of town and giving him a quick scolding to never come this far without an adult until he was much older. People did... things here that Macao would probably not want his son exposed to. Drugs, mostly, but a couple of gangs had made this their territory, too. They didn't bother the water mage much; he'd already shown them that he didn't care what they did, so long as he didn't see it. Mercury wouldn't be the one to take the blame for showing Romeo some of the harsher aspects of the world, even in a town as peaceful as Magnolia, and the boy didn't deserve to be told about it at this age, anyway.
That was the water mage's thinking, anyway. He actually had very little clue how a normal human society raised their young, as Romeo was really the only truly young person who hung around the guild regularly.
He ended up walking the boy about halfway to the guild, which was about as close as he felt was safe getting. Nobody bothered them with Mercury there; the water mage seemed to have a pretty scary reputation among the unsavory lurkers, and with how he'd stumbled in the night previous, well... they weren't too eager to get close enough to find out why he'd been so haggard.
(A lot of them knew he was a Fairy Tail mage, and with the chaos of the day previous, no one wanted to get in his way. Unbeknownst to Mercury, someone had seen his display of watery enchant magic and was spreading that information around.)
Thankfully, the Magic Council people who were loitering around would make sure the boy returned to the guild without incident. Mercury didn't want to seem associated with the guild at all if he could help it.
With that, the water mage moved to do his job – his duty, because if he wasn't going to be able to keep the guild hall in one piece, he may as well do his best to figure out how to fix it.