The arrival of Wendy Marvel in Fairy Tail heralded something that Mercury had previously thought impossible: a dragon slayer that might not increase the guild's ever-rising property damage debt. She was small, timid, and cute in the way that baby animals were, so Mercury had high hopes that, despite her magic type, she wouldn't be adding onto his paperwork any time soon. He almost wanted to wrest her away from the fire dragon slayer before she took up any of his habits, but that would have been almost impossible; Natsu had already taken her in as one of his own, and even Makarov wouldn't have been able to pull her away from him.
Welp. There went that dream.
Wendy's appearance did add one more mystery to the pile, though: the dragon that she learned her magic from had also disappeared on July 7th, X777, adding yet another dragon disappearance to the growing list. They already had two, and Mercury was almost certain that if they somehow found another dragon slayer, they'd find the same mystery. Twice was a coincidence, but three times? No way.
There was just something odd about the dragon slayers. Back during the parade, Mercury had come to the conclusion that they were however old they claimed they were, but they'd been born much earlier than predicted – something that he still hadn't managed to wrap his mind around. How could their bodies be a different age than the year they were born in?
It wouldn't have been possible without time travel…. But that wasn't feasible. The concept of time travel was much better suited to the novels that Fried so often found himself engrossed in. There was simply no way for it to have been possible, even ignoring the ridiculous amount of power that it would take.
… Right?
Mercury had half a mind to ask Fried to check their newest addition's birth year, just to see if the irregularity applied to Wendy, too, but chose not to in favor of just letting the guild enjoy the enormous party they'd declared a celebration of the wind dragon slayer's arrival.
(Not that they needed an excuse; the guild had been partying all week because a letter from Gildarts had arrived, foreshadowing his return to the guild.)
Wendy looked a bit out of her element, surrounded by half-drunk adults that could barely string a coherent sentence together. Like Juvia, her hair was a familiar shade of blue, but Mercury had learned his lesson. He wouldn't comment on it, lest the guild start dragging more stories from him; the water mage wasn't very good at turning them down when they were drunk, or, more accurately, they weren't very good at taking a hint when they really just want to savor their alcohol.
Mercury watched Wendy freak out when she accidentally stepped on someone else's toes, leading to a round of laughter from everyone nearby – and then someone stepped back, bumping into someone else's beer, and the rest was history. The guild was involved in another brawl. For once, though, the younger members weren't the main participants (except for Cana, who had been angered at the loss of good alcohol).
At least the wind dragon slayer had the overprotective Natsu and Lucy by her side. The two could have passed as the girl's older siblings with how they were hovering by her side, snapping – metaphorically in Lucy's case and literally in Natsu's case – at anyone who got too close.
It was rather cute to see.
Mercury wondered when the two would admit they liked each other on a level stronger than just "friends." They were already acting like parents to the young (?) dragon slayer, so surely they couldn't be too far off.
Well, on the other hand, Natsu was an idiot, so perhaps it wouldn't happen anytime soon.
(Mother, who would give the fire dragon slayer The Talk?)
Gajeel, as the other resident dragon slayer, hadn't gone with the "Allied Forces", instead, remaining within Magnolia to go on with his other jobs. Or, more accurately, he hadn't been asked to go with, and had apparently taken offense to this, if his "subtle" alcoholic ranting had been anything to go off of; regardless, his meeting with the newest dragon slayer had been like watching two dogs introduce themselves to each other. The two had stared at each other for a moment, nostrils flaring as they used enhanced senses to smell each other out.
It was incredibly weird and entertaining to watch. The dragon slayers seemed to be more in tune with their instinctual side, or perhaps that was simply how the dragons who raised them had taught them to introduce themselves to other dragon slayers.
Maybe dragon slayers had a distinctive way to identify each other? Mercury added that to the list of things to ask Laxus the next time he managed to get the lightning dragon slayer drunk – assuming his senses worked similarly, that was. Who knew if an artificial dragon slayer had the same sort of inner-workings as "real" dragon slayers.
(Which made it all the more odd when Wendy did the same to Mercury the first time they met; he had offered her his hand, and she paused before taking it, and he could easily make out the way her head tilted as she smelled him.
"You smell like Grandeeney… but also… not…")
Now, Mercury sat next to a face-down Gajeel at the bar. The iron dragon slayer had a half-finished glass of whiskey (exactly the drink that Mercury had pegged the man for) in his hand while sobbing about something. Literal tears dripped down his face, puddling on the bar counter under his face.
Mercury and Mira shared a look about how ridiculous it was, though the former was much more amused than the latter.
Gajeel was drunk.
Was he even old enough to drink? Mercury had his doubts.
Suddenly, the dragon slayer sat up as though possessed, face twisted in extreme sadness, before grasping Mercury's arms and shaking him back and forth as though trying to rouse him, all the while wailing.
Mercury slapped the man's hands off his shoulders; "You taking a page out of Aria's book or something?" he asked, even though he didn't particularly care for the answer.
The black-haired man's face was flushed; clearly he was drunk enough to not be thinking clearly, especially considering Gajeel hadn't spent more than three minutes alone with Mercury since his outburst during Fantasia. The water mage would have thought that someone with a constitution akin to iron would have a slightly higher alcohol tolerance, but, then again, the only dragon slayer Mercury'd ever seen drink was Laxus, and that man was large.
"It just doesn't make sense," Gajeel sobbed, ignoring Mercury's question. "Why am I the only one without a cat?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Mercury asked, pushing him away with a pointed finger. Gajeel's shoulders fell backwards as though his body was made of jelly instead of skin and bones.
"All of the dragon slayers have one except for me!"
The water mage squinted at Gajeel's face, searching for any hint of a joke; he couldn't tell if the iron dragon slayer was being serious or taking the piss.
Who the hell would even want a cat? The guild already had two of them, and Mercury didn't particularly care for either one. Happy was sweet, if a bit dumb, but he made the stupidest comments and the stupidest times. In other words, he was the perfect companion for Natsu. The two seemed to share a single brain cell on the best of days, and on the worst days, neither one appeared to have it.
Carla, on the other hand, from Mercury's short time knowing her, was rather arrogant. She believed herself to be more important than her blue compatriot, even going so far as to snap at him when Happy was just trying to be kind. While Mercury agreed with most of what she said – mostly regarding her opinion of Happy and how the people around Wendy should behave – she needed to work on her delivery.
Not that Mercury was generally any better, though.
"There's plenty of cats outside. Just go grab a stray from the street. The city would probably thank you for it," he suggested blandly. There were too many strays hanging around the harbor, initially brought by the alluring scent of fresh fish from the harbor and staying because the dumb tourists thought they were too cute to not feed.
(They were too cute to not feed.)
"You don't understand," Gajeel slurred. "My cat is gonna be the most badass one ever!"
This kid cannot be fucking serious. He was practically shouting at Mercury despite being less than a foot away; he hoped that Mira would cut him off after this, hopefully forever.
But, despite his silent pleas, the silver-haired bartender was simply watching the two males in front of her, trying and failing to hide her laughter as she ignored Mercury's side eye.
"Listen, between you and me," Mercury said, mentally adding, 'so you'll leave me alone.' "You're not the only dragon slayer who doesn't have a cat. There's one more."
Gajeel's eyes went as wide as saucers.
"Another one? Who?! You –"
Mercury cut him off with a glare. "You've literally fought with me before, asshole. It's not me."
"Then… who?"
If Mercury was going to have to suffer through a drunk Gajeel, he'd at least make it entertaining for himself – and if that meant Laxus had to suffer a bit if he ever got the chance to return to the guild, that made it even better.
"It's a secret," the water mage said, coming in close to Gajeel's face as though no one else was allowed to hear. "But Laxus is also a dragon slayer."
It, of course, wasn't actually a secret. The whole guild knew. It was kind of hard to keep that kind of thing a secret when Laxus and Mercury had basically brawled in front of the whole guild right before Laxus became S-Class, though, somehow, Natsu had not been made aware.
"That guy? No way. I'd have known right away!"
"You don't have to believe me, but you can ask pretty much anyone here and they'd tell you. I'm keeping it a secret from Natsu, though, so make sure you don't tell him!"
(Because Mercury could probably manipulate the fire dragon slayer into having the exact same reaction as Gajeel, and things were always funnier the second time around.)
"I – yes, okay, yes. What element?"
While Mercury never took Gajeel for an analytical type, he was still awestruck at the man's inability to not use his brain in the least.
"You've seen him use magic. Are you an idiot?"
"What – lightning?"
Mercury nodded.
"I've never met a lightning dragon… I wonder if he disappeared, too."
"Maybe," Mercury said noncommittally, even though he knew Laxus never had a dragon companion like the other three dragon slayers had. Laxus was a fake when compared to the real deal that was sitting in front of him; it was a lacrima that gave him the ability to use that magic, not a dragon, and that story wasn't his to tell. "Have you met other dragons?"
"Maybe. Once. When I was real little, I think I met another one. Metallicanna didn't like him much."
The fact that there were enough dragons for two to meet despite no one in the modern world having seen even one was a shock, but not quite as shocking as it might have felt before Mercury had met Natsu.
Who knew – maybe it was one of the other two dragon slayer's dragons. Or maybe it was the dragon that Laxus's father had managed to get the dragon slayer lacrima from.
Or it was some other dragon entirely
They might never have a way of knowing until they found Metallicanna, and that didn't seem like it was going to happen any time soon.
With the conversation lulled, Gajeel put his head back down on the countertop, appearing sleepy. Oh, the wonders of alcohol; the dragon slayer went from sad to hyper to sleepy. Just before pushing his eyes closed, he mumbled, "I never got to punch that asshole."
Mercury did not have to be a genius to know he was talking about Laxus.
Within the week of Wendy's arrival, the air started shifting from Magnolia's fall to Magnolia's winter. They weren't particularly different as far as seasons went – the latter was just a bit chillier, sometimes gracing them with a light snow, but more often than not just bringing frigid winds with it.
Gildarts had finally arrived, causing the usual stir. The town was still not back to normal. He still tripped over nothing and destroyed rows of houses as easily as breathing – no, even more easily than that, because at least breathing could be done manually. To Gildarts, breaking things was second nature.
… Fortunately, the "Gildarts mode" that they'd installed in the town prevented most of the casualties, even though it was entirely absurd.
The S-Class mage had been caught up to speed on everything that had happened both within the guild and outside of it. It had been a long time since he was in Magnolia. He was as far behind on the recent happenings as someone who'd never been to Magnolia in the first place.
It took several nights of drinking for him to be fully caught up (and several more after that, because Gildarts always drank himself into oblivion, forgetting the night previous). Team Natsu's antics made him laugh, as always, and he grew slightly more angry when news of the Magic Council's dubious deeds made themselves known. He was introduced to the newest members of the guild (Natsu growled at Gildarts the moment his eyes caught on Lucy) and the latest development was told in an entirely theatrical manner, with the guild all chirping in to describe who'd they'd taken down and how, leading to more brawls as the losers aimed to defend their pride.
In the minds of Fairy Tail, Fantasia had become exactly what Laxus desired – a way to prove their strength. How ironic that it had only become so once the thunder dragon slayer had been excommunicated.
Gildarts seemed incredibly surprised that Makarov had actually followed through with excommunicating the man, though he was a lot more understanding after Mercury had briefly explained what went down. He was a rational man at heart, despite being powerful enough to defy reason entirely.
("So, you boys fought without destroying the entire guildhall this time?" Gildarts asked, and with a wry grin that couldn't fully encapsulate the entirety of his thoughts on the matter, Mercury replied, "It was just a cathedral this time.")
(Even Gildarts hadn't destroyed a historic landmark in quite a while – at least, not one in Fiore.)
Gildarts let Master Makarov know that he'd abandoned his job, leaving Mercury to handle the paperwork, but the water mage found he didn't mind much this time. He saw the state Gildart's body was in. There were bandages wrapped around the majority of his body, and he had obvious limp when he walked. Paperwork aside, abandoning the quest was a much better alternative to getting killed.
If Gildarts couldn't complete that quest, Mercury doubted it was possible for anyone. They'd be better off simply removing the listing entirely and tossing it in the trash, if you asked him, but job requests didn't work that way.
The end of a hazy fall signaled the slow shift into winter, an unsuspecting frigid breeze coming down from the mountains to tear through Magnolia on a regular basis. Even the tourists were no longer stupid enough to walk around Magnolia in T-shirts and shorts as they'd done all through the fall.
Even Mercury's own outfits had changed from a high-necked tank-top and jacket to an almost identical high-necked long-sleeved shirt and a much thicker jacket, now lined with synthetic fur to keep him warm.
Because Mercury absolutely abhorred the cold.
Something about it… was just disconcerting. It reminded him of living in the ocean, even though Magnolia winters weren't particularly harsh, and more than that, he was just tired during them. Either the weather put him in a poor mood, or he'd wake up to realize that half of the day was already gone and he was too tired to get out of bed for the rest.
On days like the former, he tried his best to stay away from the guild (Mother forbid he act like Laxus had, stinking of the guild with his magic when it pleased him), leading to more days like the latter. His house was too boring to do much else than sleep.
Today was… a strange mixture of the two.
Mercury couldn't quite put his finger on it, but something in the air felt heavier than normal. Oppressive, almost. "Just that wintery feel" couldn't quite describe it.
It was raining, which was only semi-unusual, though it certainly didn't help his poor mood. He would rather it snow than rain, because at least the snow was pretty to look at. It should have been cold enough to snow, though today, the air held a weighty humidity that grated on the nerves. Thick thunderclouds blanketed the town, and Mercury knew those were usual. Thunder was normally a spring thing in Magnolia; in winter, it was almost unheard of.
The air itself felt charged, somehow, though it was much different than the static electricity the water mage was so familiar with from Laxus. It was as though the air was constantly being sucked away from Mercury, making it increasingly hard to move freely. His fingers felt as cold as ice no matter how much he tried to warn them.
Mercury wrote it off as the winter "ick," or maybe just another "symptom" of Magic Deficiency.
Clearly, though he hadn't been the only one to notice the uncomfortable feeling. Mercury didn't think anyone was in a particularly good mood today; nobody liked the current weather, especially not with the choking feeling it provided. The guild was uncharacteristically subdued, though still slightly noisy. People were mostly keeping to themselves; Levy and Lucy were huddled together in the corner, Macao and Wakaba alternated between playing cards and ogling waitresses, and Erza sat at the bar enjoying a slice of cake.
(The last one actually was fairly unusual, but Mercury thought it was cute to see the normally scowling face of Erza light up in a childish grin. He sometimes forgot she wasn't much older than Natsu and Gray.)
Rain pounded outside, and it was coming down so hard that Mercury could hear it even above the shallow din of the guild with the doors closed, banging away at the roof like a drum.
The water mage didn't like the rain. He didn't like being wet. Most people knew that about him, because he was awfully talkative about it; anything to distract himself from the gross feeling of it. Pellets of water that should have just been uncomfortable became so much more, feeling like bugs crawling into his skin to burrow underneath whatever scales might still be there. Usually, he was fine so long as he wiped it off quickly enough, but sometimes it just made things worse.
He wouldn't be exaggerating if he called the feeling he got with damp skin something akin to PTSD. Not that anyone could blame him, though. To call what he'd gone through "traumatic" would be putting it extremely likely.
… Though, Mercury still hadn't gotten around to telling too many more people. He'd only briefly mentioned it to Fried and Evergreen, and he hadn't managed to get Bixlow away from the guild far enough that his babies wouldn't chant his trauma to the whole guild.
That would be a problem for another day. For now, Mercury was trapped in the guild, waiting out the rain.
He was curled up on the second floor with a steaming hot cup of coffee. As usual, it tasted like nothing, but the stimulant was good for two reasons – it warmed him up, the steam curling into his face as he leaned over to read a book, and the caffeine in it helped to keep his mind focused on a day as dreary as this one was.
The book in front of him felt especially thick today, but it at least had the benefit of being interesting. Mercury had decided to take a short break from learning about magic; he'd already gotten a decent grasp on the more complex concepts of rune magic (at least, enough to consider himself adept at it), though he'd only tried them out a couple times, and had decided to foray into solid script magic at Levy's suggestion.
Today, however, the book on the table in front of him was about fishermen's tales – the kind that were passed down through oral tradition in distant coastal cities. So, in other words, nothing solid.
They seemed a bit childish and fantastical, yet he pressed on. Mercury leafed through the pages, not giving any specific creature detailed with more than a little bit of attention, because the majority of them seemed to come in the shape of a woman. He may have been a lot of things, but he was not a woman.
(Mercury's face flushed, remembering the time he'd pretended to be one for a job. Awful experience. He did not recommend it.)
It wasn't that he was curious about himself – Mercury didn't really care what he was, so long as he wasn't the same type of creature as Mother; he wasn't sure he could stand the thought of being the same as her. Though she'd only ever appeared as little more than the shape of the waves, he was sure that she had to have some sort of physical body. He remembered, vaguely, being in great pain when he returned to the ocean, and then the soft touch of someone's hands on his chest, imbued with enough magic to make his chest burn.
The only reason that he was interested in figuring out what Mother was was because Mercury had to know what she was before he could kill her. Or maim her. Or, really, just get her to promise to stay out his life and leave him alone.
(Just in case those brothers of his took it upon themselves to try to "return" him again.)
None of the stories seemed to resonate with Mercury, though.
He sighed heavily, coffee now lukewarm. He'd ask for a new cup if his body wasn't already so jittery, both from gross feeling in the air and the cup of coffee he'd had before this one.
Ah, whatever. Perhaps it was a sign for him to take a break and move on to something else. He was still a long way off from being able to go back to that place, anyway, so it wasn't like he needed to rush to figure everything out.
… Which brought his mind to much darker thoughts.
How much time did he have left? What even was Mercury's normal lifespan? Two hundred years old was considered to be an "adult," so if he applied the same logic as humans did when eighteen was adulthood and the maximum lifespan was around a hundred years old, that would make his own lifespan, like, one thousand years? Assuming he didn't die of some more natural cause in the meantime, that was.
(What would happen when that slowly growing drain in his magic core finally consumed everything left there?)
It was something he'd rather not worry about. At least, for now, he was going to be fine so long as he limited himself and, if he did use magic, took some walks near the ocean… Even if that was a bit painful these days.
But, like worrying about Mother, there was no point in stressing about it now. The likelihood of Mercury needed to use excessive magic wasn't very high, even if Fairy Tail remained as chaotic as ever.
The water mage finally got up to return his coffee cup to the bar, which, for once, was absent of its usual white-haired bartender. She'd had it rough the last couple of days with the anniversary of Lisanna's death quickly approaching, so the least Mercury could do was wash out the mug, along with whatever dirty dishes lay next to the sink.
Or, at least, that was his plan before the world seemed to flip on its axis.
At first, he thought that he had suddenly been overcome with another fit of dizziness, worse than any of the ones he'd ever experienced before. He gripped the cup in his hand tightly as he waited for the spell to pass, but as soon as his stomach felt like it was in his throat, he knew it wasn't mere dizziness. It wasn't even him.
Mercury's stomach bottomed out, and he was hit with the distinct feeling of falling, even though his feet should have been planted firmly on the floor.
But his head suddenly appeared to be lower than his feet.
Interesting,wasn't it?
Mercury had no time to think about it, as overcome with shock as he was; any friction his shoes had been providing him on the wooden floor disappeared instantly and he felt the moment he sank through it.
His first coherent thought was, "What the hell is going on?" It was soon replaced with nauseating fear as the whole world flashed white; he saw the guild below him slowly fade into nothingness, people trapped within a paused second as their bodies disappeared into thin air.
Mercury tried to call out for them, only for his voice to cut out. His throat felt like it was closed completely, head spinning violently as the sensation of magic, pure, pure magic rushed around him.
The sky became green.
Mercury had no time to ponder the fact that he had just been inside the moment previous, or that the rain had disappeared as quickly as his guildmates had; he was too busy coming to terms with the fact that he'd gone from solidly on the floor to freefalling from a hundred feet in the air.
"What the fu –"
He couldn't even curse. Didn't have time to, before the first branch of a tall three slapped him on the back – or, rather, he slapped it, and the branch collapsed under the combined force of his weight and momentum.
Fuck, fuck, fuck –
He hit at least two more on the way down, and each one made him feel like his spine was going to snap. Fortunately – or perhaps unfortunately – Mercury could still feel his toes when he finally slammed into the ground with all the grace of a brick being dropped from the top of a very, very tall tower.
He lay on the ground, dizzy. Nothing felt real. The world above him spun for a moment as he blinked black stars out of his eyes, stunned by the impact and head throbbing like something was trying to crawl out of it.
Mercury stared up at the sky, and for the first time in a long time, found himself scared.
The sky was green. Where were the thunderclouds that had been there moments ago? Where was the rain, pounding down and digging into his skin like knives? He'd have preferred that to whatever the hell this was.
Because what stretched above him wasn't the ceiling of the guild hall, or even Magnolia.
Where the fuck was he?
Trees seemed to stretch seemingly endlessly into the atmosphere, and none were familiar; the unfamiliar call of birds tweeted overhead, seemingly unbothered by his sudden appearance.
Had he been… transported somewhere? By whom? And by what method? He'd never seen these trees before, not even in the Western forest, and the birds were strikingly different than anything he'd heard before, whistling in low tones rather than the high ones common in Fairy Tail's hometown. One even flittered by, coming to land near his head, either completely unaware of his presence or realizing that Mercury couldn't even get up if he wanted to.
He couldn't shoo it away as it approached his face; his body was immobile, either by whatever magic had transported him there – unlikely – or because it was simply shutting down.
What else could it do? His body ran on magic, and the air here – wherever that was – didn't have a speck of it.
(And for the first time in his life, the ocean screaming in his head was frighteningly silent.)
The moment Mercury realized he couldn't move, or perhaps the moment he started to get his wits about him, pain seared through his chest like his heart had just exploded. It was similar to the feeling he got in the wake of the Phantom Lord fight, except this time, he couldn't find a cause for it. Back then, he assumed it was a "rebound" of sorts from being in the water, but he was clearly not in the water now. Water was not green. Water did not have birds. Water did not make him feel like he was choking.
Mercury was overcome with the urge to cry out, but all that forced its way out of his mouth was a small groan. His muscles refused to move even as he begged them to let him curl into a little ball so he could wait out the pain thundering in his chest.
What was this, a heart attack, or something?
At first, it was similar to the sensation of breathing in dry air, except that as the moments went on, it wasn't his lungs that felt like a desert. No, his whole body started to throb as whatever magic he had in it seemed to ebb away. At least in Magnolia, he could make do with the ocean spray, the omnipresent body of water calling out to him, urging him to return; here, though?
Breathing became hard. Manual. He had to force his body to inhale before he passed out, even though he was clearly well on his way there. He wasn't entirely certain his heart was even beating; the throbbing headache that had become so constant was finally gone, and with it, the constant reminder that he had blood pumping in his veins.
In some last ditch effort, Mercury gathered what magic he could towards his stomach, trying to draw what little he had left in before it fluttered away on the forest breeze.
That was the last thing he managed to do before falling asleep entirely – and in his peripherals, all he could see was a terrifying shade of blue, so he hoped to whatever the hell had turned the whole world inside out that it wasn't a wild animal coming to eat him.
What a terrible way to die that would be.