A/N: I uploaded this chapter yesterday but titled it Chapter Twenty Four -_-*. So if you've already read and got an update e-mail... I'm so sorry!
For the rest of you — happy reading!
Chapter Twenty Five
Wendy was running late. Natsu and Happy had been doing a bit at breakfast and she had been enjoying herself too much to notice the time. She rushed into the training room a minute after 9 o' clock and smiled apologetically at the Guardian.
"I do not appreciate being kept waiting, Ms. Marvell. We only have forty minutes every day. Do you not desire to maximise your capabilities?" The Guardian had decided to conduct a week of individual training sessions before they moved onto group work.
Wendy nodded nervously. The Guardian was intimidating. Their face showed only the barest hint of emotion and Wendy could never tell what they were thinking.
"You present a curious case," they said, pulling their curving cat-eye spectacles from their breast pocket. A pencil and notebook were similarly retrieved. The Guardian examined their notes. "I have been a-shod that the suppression enchantment on your comrade is of your doing – a hefty piece of magic – and yet your participation in battle is minimal. You prefer to turn your admittedly impressive skills to support magic instead of attack magic."
Wendy twiddled her thumbs nervously behind her back. Was there a question coming?
"Far be it for me to tell you how to use your skills, but it occurs to me that you will not always fight alongside someone else."
They were right. Wendy had rarely had to face a foe alone, but it had happened in the past. The chances were that it would happen again. "I do not like to do battle, but there are times that I have to fight for the sake of the guild." She took a deep breath, allowing the magic to ripple through her. Her twin ponytails turned pink and floated up into the air, fizzing with magical energy. "I have some tools to help protect my friends."
"Amazing," the Guardian marvelled. "A first-generation dragon slayer who can enter dragon force at will."
"My element is always freely available," Wendy replied sheepishly.
"There is no need to sell yourself short. Permit me to pose the question I have been saddling up for. What, Ms. Marvell, is your motivation?"
"My motivation?" The question had her puzzled.
"Why are you here?"
"My teammates are here. I had to come with them."
The Horse snorted. "No, you did not. Why are you really here?"
Wendy remembered Vega's words from the night they had taken the Quest. 'Examine carefully the reasons you have for undertaking the Quest.' She had not given it much thought since then. Why had she taken the Quest? "We're a team," she repeated weakly.
"Does the team do every mission together?"
Wendy shook her head. They had split up to take on smaller jobs on more than one occasion. The job, its reward, the location – all of these factored in. Yet, when she thought of the 100 Years Quest, she was unsure of why she had taken the job. It was the 100 Years Quest and Natsu-san had asked. Was that not reason enough to take it?
"I shall not nag you further. Think upon it and tell me your answer at the end of the session." They tapped a foot and a training framework emerged from the ground. The next thirty minutes were spent on Wendy learning to concentrate her magic into attack spells.
Wendy flipped from wooden dummy to wooden dummy, falling into a pattern of attacks. All the while, the question ran in the back of her mind. Why was she on the Quest? Why was she not home this moment with Cheria, watching silly videos on their Rockophones and giggling?
"Sky Dragon Wing Attack!" The final wooden enemy splintered and fell to the floor.
Sweat dripped down Wendy's forehead. That had been more taxing than she had expected. She could see from the Guardian's expression that the training would only get harder with each passing day. Good. There was a lot more she wanted to learn.
"I want to see the world," she said, replying to their question from earlier. "I want to learn things, learn more magic." Confidence suffused her voice. "My magic was a gift of love. I don't want to waste it.
"As for my team. The bonds I share with my nakama are strong. I won't allow a single one of them to walk into danger without being there to support them. That's why I'm here." Her lips curved into a tentative smile. "I think that's reason enough, ne?"
The Guardian's mouth twitched upwards for a fraction of a second. "Very well."
"Did I not tell you to leave our guests alone?" The Guardian asked, taking a sip of tea.
The woman lounging by the window made a petulant moue. "I'm curious."
"It is pre-sumpter-ous to think she has not noticed your interest."
She rolled her eyes at the weak pun. "Can you blame me? My brother loved her."
The china clinked as it was placed upon the table. The Guardian took hold of the woman's chin and tilted her face until her eyes met theirs. "Be that as it hay. You are not to go near her again until my appraisal is complete. There is too much riding on this."
"Pun intended?"
The Guardian cracked a half-smile for their old friend. "Pun never not intended."
"It's a job," Natsu shrugged, "We're a guild, we take missions."
The Horse inhaled to keep their nostrils from flaring. Was the dragon slayer being deliberately obtuse? "Why this job?"
Natsu hmmed as he considered the question. "I want to become stronger and fight awesome opponents."
"To what end?"
"I like to go from front to back or right to left, depends on how they're lined up."
A beat passed. The Horse coughed discreetly. "Allow me to re-graze the question. What is the point of becoming stronger?"
Natsu looked at them as though they were the one who was being obtuse. "It's fun. Isn't that kind of the point of life?" He cracked his knuckles. "Now are we going to gab all day or are we going to train?"
"You are impatient," the Horse noted, studying the wizard in front of them.
Natsu grinned. "Come on, fight me! I'm all fired up!"
"I'm afraid that is the problem at hand." They took heed of Natsu's creased brow and clarified, "You childishly believe that problems are something you punch your way through. It has worked for you thus far, however as you encounter stronger foes you will soon discover the limitations to this approach."
"Already have," he grumbled in an undertone.
The Horse tapped a foot and the floor collapsed before them. Natsu tumbled to the bottom of a pit. Another tap and its walls transformed to smooth marble. "This approach does not leave any g-room for the engagement of one's mental faculties. There are many advantages of using brain over bronco-rect?"
A pile of junk materialised before Natsu. "In this," they continued, "you will find the tools to help you escape this hole. Come join us for luncheon when you have found your way out. You may not use magic."
They turned to leave, satisfied that the dragon slayer would be occupied for a while. It was no easy feat to escape the marble trap.
"Oh!" Natsu crowed moments later. "That was fun!"
The Guardian jerked around in surprise to find Natsu sitting on the floor, his feet dangling over the edge of the pit. Next to him lay a half-empty bottle of jam, a pair of tweezers and an old shoe.
They stared at him for a moment, unwilling to voice the surprise that was charging through their brain. The dragon slayer was smarter than they had given him credit for.
"Now can we fight?" Natsu asked cheerfully.
The Horse suppressed the smile that was threatening to take over their face. What a curious group of wizards these were turning out to be. The Tiger had not done their oddities justice in her letters. This could be what they had been waiting for all these many long years.
A finger of doubt niggled at the back of their mind. No, they could not rejoice early. The assessment would have to continue as planned.
"I don't see why not," they replied, unleashing their magic.
"You look nice."
It was a peace offering of sorts. Practice that day had been a disaster. Gray had been exhausted both mentally and physically from his training with the Guardian. The Horse had been keen to test the limits of Gray's creativity. He had had to do over a hundred Ice-Makes in his forty-minute training session and Gray had wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of the day in bed. From the shadows he had noticed under Erza's eye, he could tell that she felt the same. Nevertheless, they had carried on with their training.
Erza had acquiesced and allowed Gray to be the steed and Gray had learned the hard way that muscle was deceptively heavy. Especially muscle encased in armour.
He had pushed through the show-jumping course with difficulty and then insisted on doing a lap of the cross-country terrain. Foolish pride. He would never forget Lucy's grin as she and Virgo thundered past.
Erza had stoically refrained from commenting upon that, which had only made the situation worse. He had tripped over the next four jumps, getting progressively worse and increasingly truculent at every turn. Finally, he had shied away from the most treacherous jump – the one across the river – and simply turned back towards the house. Erza had said nothing about that either, suggesting instead that they take it in turns to be the rider and take a decision on who would compete on the final day.
The words had been harmless enough, but he had sensed something off in her tone. The subtext of 'You kicked up a fuss yesterday for this?' seemed to scream in her silences. They had not fought again, but the atmosphere had turned fractious. The tension between them was a drought-afflicted willow in the height of an electrical storm. Any moment now the potential difference would be overcome, lightning would crash down, and they would both explode in flames.
"Thanks." Erza did not smile, but she inclined her head to show willing. "You look nice as well."
Gray looked down at the borrowed dress coat he was wearing and shrugged. "It's the same thing I was wearing yesterday."
"I know."
Gray decided to quit while he was ahead and took his seat. He had been placed diagonally across from her today. He laid his napkin across his lap and began to fiddle with his water glass, using it as an excuse to study her surreptitiously. He had not been lying when he had said she looked nice. Green suited her.
Sensing his interest, she turned toward him and quirked an eyebrow. Her hair shifted and he caught a glimpse of the green sequinned eyepatch she was wearing to match her dress. His lips stretched into a smile at that concession to vanity. Her expression softened. Gray gulped, suddenly uncomfortable and hurriedly took a sip of water.
The silence stretched in the unpeopled expanse of the dining room. He had come down to dinner early, hoping to sneakily move the place cards so that he sat as far away from Erza as possible. He had been sitting right across from her the day before, and it had been torture. So many times, he had felt Erza's eye on him, but he had found himself unable to look back. He had been trying to think of something to say to regain their usual dynamic, but his sense of humour had deserted him.
He wondered if Erza had had the same idea with the place cards when he had bumped into her at the bottom of the stairs. Anything to avoid another night of long silences and awkwardness. The tension that still lingered between them after the afternoon's disastrous practice session definitely would not help matters any.
"I wonder what is for dinner."
"I hope it's good. I'm starving," Gray replied. He could do this. He could carry on a conversation with Erza. Nothing had really changed between them.
"Training is hard work."
"And some days are harder than most."
Erza glanced up. "Are you trying to say something?"
What was with the hunted expression on her face? "Nothing. I didn't mean anything by it."
"Have I done something wrong?"
Gray tugged at his cufflinks. These damn formal clothes were too damn itchy, and they had way too many buttons. Stripping them off was too much even for his skills.
"You told me not to take over, so I did not. Even when-" Erza stopped herself mid-sentence, her lips clamping together in a heavy line.
"Even when? Go on, say it." He pulled off his cravat, the fabric crumpling hopelessly under his fingers.
"Even when it became clear that you were not up to the task."
He swore under his breath.
"It is nothing to be ashamed of, Gray. I am well aware of your strengths. Raw muscular power is not one of them."
"Drop it, Erza." His hand shook as he undid his shirt collar. Was she really that oblivious? Or did Erza take pleasure in shaming him like this?
"Do you think being a rider takes any less skill? It is the far more difficult job. The rider has to stay calm under pressure and more importantly, they have to guide the steed through the course using subtle gestures."
So that was what she had been doing when she had applied light pressure to either side of his shoulders. Not having to worry about the sharply curving path would have made it infinitely easier to focus on the jumps.
If only she had told him what she had been doing.
"If it's that hard, then why don't you do it? Why do you have to be the horse?"
"Because I am stronger than you. That is why."
Gray swore openly now and buried his face in his palm. Could this get any more humiliating?
"Help me understand," she insisted. "Why is that such a bad thing?"
"Because that's not how it's supposed to be. That's all."
Erza stared at him, baffled.
He clenched his fist under the table. How was he meant to explain this to her? That he was petty, pathetic and, he winced inwardly, jealous. Of her. Because he was supposed to be the stronger one. Frederick. Not Yanderica.
Suddenly he was fourteen years old again, taking on dangerous missions in an effort to convince Master Makarov that he was ready for the S-Class exams. Because Erza had become S-Class at fourteen. Because how could he hope to stand beside her if he could not catch up to her?
He scowled. How he hated this side of himself.
How he hated her for making him feel this way.
"If it means that much to you," Erza began, her strident tone halfway to placatory, "then maybe we can train harder. If we make use of the free time we have in the mornings we can definitely improve your stamin-"
"Stop. Just stop." His voice was too loud, but he could not help himself. "Stop talking!" Stop worrying about him. Stop looking down on him. Stop goddamn pitying him because he was not good enough or strong enough or capable enough to take care of her.
She stared at him, ashen. Her mouth opened and shut fruitlessly for a minute before anger coloured her cheeks. "No. I will not stop. Tell me what you want from me, Gray. Because you are acting like a child."
The insult stung all the more for its veracity. He glared at her. "I want you to leave me alone."
"I wish I could," Erza scowled, "but we are partners. As much as I do not wish to be near you right now, we are stuck together in this competition."
The firm set of his mouth belied the fury flashing in his eyes. "Then maybe we shouldn't spend time together outside of it."
The screech of his chair was too loud in the hush of the dining room. He flung his napkin on his plate, his voice dripping with sarcasm as he delivered his parting shot. How had things gone so wrong, so rapidly? "I'll see you tomorrow, partner."
He stormed from the room, shouldering past wide-eyed Lucy in the doorway, up the stairs, up, up to his room where he could slam the door and finally be alone.
Just him and his self-loathing.
Lucy sat cross-legged on her bed and tried to focus her mind. The Guardian had given her a lot to think about in their training session that day. She let go of her material worries, trying hard to find a single, shining thread in the swirl of magic around her. The conduit, the Horse had called it. It pulsed just out of reach, getting further the harder she tried. With a sigh she flopped back on her bed. Meditation was not easy, and her brain was too noisy for her to try. Maybe she would have better luck tomorrow.
She raised a hand to block out the light from the overhead lamp and studied the back of her hand. The Fairy Tail mark was only a few shades darker than her skin. It had been a long time since Natsu had roped her into joining the guild. A long time and several magnitudes of magical ability since he had rescued her from the slavers' ship and brought her home to Fairy Tail.
Natsu had tried to explain to her what he had meant by what he had said on Christmas and she got it. But she wanted to protect him too.
And that meant getting even stronger.
Not only getting stronger but showing him too. So that he would know that she was in this as much as he was. So that he knew he could count on her. She thought of Happy and how he had fallen asleep at dinner, his tiny triangular nose buried in his fish. He was working hard too.
They would do it. Happy and her. They would do it together. Keep Natsu safe and get him his full magic back. They were used to saving his life after all.
She exhaled a gusty sigh. She was exhausted. Summoning Virgo all afternoon after the Guardian's gruelling lesson had really taken it out of her. She needed a good night's sleep to recharge, but her thoughts were still racing, mentally planning and replanning the ways in which she could increase her power. The thought of the dragon slayer in the next room crossed her mind and her lips quirked slyly. There was one thing that was guaranteed to stop her from thinking.
With a determined smirk she hopped out of bed and flung open the door to her room. She marched across the corridor to Natsu's room but stopped short as Erza leapt out of her bedroom door. Her steel cuirass shone in the dim lamplight and Lucy shivered, suddenly feeling woefully underdressed in her flimsy nightie. She blushed and waved a timid hand at her armoured friend.
Erza stared at her and then at the doorknob Lucy's hand was on. The penny dropped, Erza's eye widening in slow-motion. She turned crimson, stuttered out some hand signals and hurriedly shut the door.
Lucy sweatdropped. That would make for an awkward encounter in the morning.
She slipped into Natsu's room and crept into his bed, happily scooching backwards to spoon against him.
"Why are you still up? It's late." Natsu burrowed into her hair, adjusting his position so he could pull her closer to him.
"I was doing some extra training," she whispered back airily.
"That's nice, Lucy." He yawned.
"I'm going to beat you at the Task, you know?" There was a hint of challenge in her voice.
"Oh yeah? I'm getting fired up," he mumbled sleepily.
Lucy laughed and turned her head to kiss him.
And kissed him again.
Then his tongue was slipping into her mouth and his hand was sliding her short nightgown up her hip, his calloused palms moving with steady intent. "Now I'm really getting fired up," Natsu whispered, suddenly wide awake.
Lucy smiled against his lips. "Want to sneak back to my room so that we don't have to worry about Happy?"
But Natsu was already out of bed and pulling her along.
They were smooching and giggling, fumbling their way out of his room, shutting the door and staggering to hers.
Bam!
Erza's door flew open and she leapt outside, brandishing her sword in the dark of the night. Her eye swivelled to them, hanging half out of Lucy's door, their lips frozen mid-kiss. Erza blushed profusely and began to apologise, stammering and bowing as she retreated back into her room.
Natsu and Lucy stared after her for a minute. "Is she OK?" he asked.
Lucy hummed and peered worriedly at the closed door. She would have to look into that.
Natsu's hand snaked out of her room and yanked her inside.
Tomorrow. She would look into that tomorrow. She had more urgent business to attend to right now.
The Snake folded another tuft of red into his pipe and relaxed into the velvet window seat. It was his time of day. The Giltenese days were stretching longer again, but never so long that he did not get a scrap of night-time. Was that not why he had moved south all those years ago?
The flare of a match reflected off cloudy glass. The stars in the brilliant heavens refracted through the window as fat, silver splodges. It was time to replace the windows again. Had it already been a hundred years? He would have to ask Hebiko. His other daughter had left to visit with her aunt a few days ago. Or had it been a week? He shook his head. Time lost all meaning down here.
He took a deep puff from the pipe, feeling the warmth of the smoke fill his lungs. He did not know if he wanted to return to the heavens or stay down here, wrapped in his own personal purgatory, a slave to his torment.
A gust of smoke drifted from the bowl of his pipe as another red tuffet was pushed in. It did not matter. It was not like he had a choice.
He sucked in another lungful of smoke, exhaling slowly through the nose. He looked up at the night sky dispassionately and wondered when the next Questers would come. Hopefully never. He had had enough of them. When Hebiko had reported that the last group had left the continent he had sank to his knees and wept. It had been too much, setting those wizards before him. Making him relive those memories. He stuffed his rapidly emptying pipe, his fingers trembling.
There was no doubt they had taken his Deals. They always did. He thought of the last Quester he had Dealt with. A man of incomparable magic and steadfast determination. He too had dismissed Guardians and collected Keys with a swift fury. Until Hebiko brought him to him. And he offered the man something he had not thought to imagine possible. A chance to see his mother alive.
The Rabbit had learned of his story on her travels and relayed it to him. He had seen, with the last glimpses of his life, his mother running in the street below. What a joke. Fate was unreasonably cruel. It had fulfilled the letter of the Deal, on its own terms, in its own way. Just as it always did. He wondered how the Deals would play out with the last set of Questers. He hoped events would unfold in an equally harsh manner. It was what they deserved. Especially him. The one who wore his sin around him with callous flamboyance.
He gave Questers what they desired so that they had no need for the Great Gift. If only he had thought of the tactic sooner. He could have prevented it all.
But he had been naïve and foolish and endlessly trusting.
He took a deep shuddery breath and shut his eyes as his mind began to play that same, awful film. The edges of the images had softened and yet it still managed to stab; the hurt it brought with each showing as fresh as the day it had occurred. Rematerializing on Earth. Journeying forth to the place they had made their home. Being met, instead, by the Tiger. The Tiger, unable to meet his eyes, wincing at his every question. And finally, being led to that place.
The tears leaked from under his closed eyelids as the sobs shook his body. He grasped unseeingly and filled his pipe again, choking back the smoke with increasing desperation. It was taking longer and longer to work these days. "Please." His voice cracked. The snakes upon his head began to hiss agitatedly as he ran shaky hands through his hair. "Please," he whimpered as he fell into bed, "grant unto me the oblivion of memory."
He could not sleep. The weariness had sunk into him, bone-deep; his muscles were aching, his joints groaning in protest against every movement, and yet his eyes remained open.
Gray pressed his fingers together, slowly drawing the ice out of the air, twisting and shaping it into a delicate filigree. He had used this method to calm himself ever since he was a little boy, too afraid to sleep because of the monster rampaging the countryside.
From his parents' house to Ur's cottage to the narrow bed in his studio above the florist in Magnolia, it had remained his constant. His first mission, the night they came back from Galuna Island, the S-class trials on Tenroujima, the day he had to face down Rufus at the Grand Magic Games, then later, after Tartaros, when the insomnia and grief would torment him into the wee hours and Juvia would watch him, silent and concerned – it was always the same, his ritual. The patterns changed, the ones he made nowadays far more finicky than the ones he used to make as a kid, but the intention and effect never varied. The calming coolness of the ice between his fingers, the delicate lace of its threads clear in his mind's eye even when the light around him was not enough to see by; it brought a stillness to his buzzing mind.
He wondered if Erza knew just how many of these icy designs had been dedicated to her. Carefully spun lattices that reflected the movement of her swords or the wings of her helm or the brush of her hair against his skin when, in the days of old, he would stand too close to her, longing to be near her even if she did not notice he was there.
The ice hissed as his fist closed around it, crushing the bright, silver strands into a cold, hard ball of white. That was the problem.
He was the same person he had always been.
If he looked back on the years with an objective eye, he could see the events that had passed, the things that had happened to him, things that appeared to have changed him in the most fundamental ways – but then why did he feel the same on the inside? Why was he the same with her? A little hot-tempered, a little arrogant. A lot cowardly. Still inadequate and unworthy.
And she still shone, brilliant and out of reach.
Deep beneath the thick layer of denial that lay cold at the pit of his stomach lurked the bitter truth. He was scared. If he was the same person that he had always been, if he had not changed, then how could this time be any different?
And why was Erza trying her damnedest, through her little looks and soft smiles, to cruelly convince him otherwise?
The childish dreams of his teenage years – the dreams he had dreamt before Erza's sobs had echoed through Worth Woodsea on the day they had destroyed Nirvana, the dreams he had dreamt before he knew exactly how far he was from her ideal – they danced before his shuttered eyelids.
He was too afraid to bring himself to want.
It was wrong of her to try and make him hope.
It was wrong of him to hope, anyway.
The balled-up lump of ice flew across the room, smashing against the wall, a feeble puff of magic breathing into the air as it splintered into millions of tiny fragments.
He drew the covers over his head and went to sleep.
A/N 2: Aha, bet you thought you'd seen the last of me. This fic is not on hiatus, y'all. This fic is 'sporadically updated.' Althouuuuggghhh, I have already written the next few chapters so for the next two months you will be getting fortnightly updates to this fic. Yay. It's not weekly because I am struggling to find the time to write and I want my buffer to last as long as possible. I am hoping I will manage to write a chapter every two weeks. Fingers crossed. The last thing I want to do is disappear for months again.
Thank you to everyone who sent me good wishes for my mum *heart emoji* You are all the best. I would really appreciate it if you could continue to keep her in your thoughts and prayers. (And if you need a little added incentive, the sooner she gets better the sooner I'll have time to devote to writing Quest-ioning Everything so ;) )
A/N 3: Thanks to everyone who faved/followed and reviewed! It was so nice to hear from you. I like to keep my FFN reviews on my phone and I reread them whenever I need a little pick me up. Please do leave a review this time if you feel like it. Hope you enjoy this update :). See you in two weeks!
