Chapter 43: 41. Erza's Perspective
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Shattered.
Lost.
And betrayed.
All these emotions I carried with me for the past four years after I woke up on that beach after being cast out of the tower. That fall, that baptism from chains washed me of the burden of slavery and allowed me to see freedom once more, but new chains, forged and fastened from the bonds of betrayal choked out any joy I was allowed to feel for the first time in years.
Any air that I could suck into my lungs was dedicated to screaming into the night sky.
I had fought, and clawed out the chance for everyone to be free, rallying them all at the age of ten to take back our lives! But it had all been for nothing.
I didn't know what to do. So I just walked. I walked barefoot in tattered rags that barely qualified as a dress to the only place I could even think about.
My feet were numb, my heart was hollow, and the bit of feeling left in my body by the time I reached Fairy Tail was the constant stinging in my missing right eye caused by the sea salt. I had been fortunate enough to have been given a clean eyepatch for it, as well as a sack of food for the travelling by kind strangers, but that was all I had to my name.
I told Master Makarov, a short old man with a bushy moustache and an odd hat, everything. The extremely cheerful and grandfatherly demeanour that he maintains all the time faded as I did, being replaced with one of mourning and sadness.
He had taken me almost immediately afterwards to meet with Porlyusica, a pink-haired and cranky hermit who lived on her own in the woods near Magnolia.
She had managed to give me a new eye, and the operation and kindness had made me cry almost immediately upon seeing myself in the reflection. However, something became immediately obvious. I was only able to cry out of my actual eye.
Porlyusica had offered to remedy the problem and redo everything, but I wiped my tears and told her that I was fine, that I had already cried over half of my tears and that I was fine with crying the remaining half through one eye only.
But just because I was fine with how I was crying didn't mean I was ready to cry again.
I was distant, and still am for the most part, from almost everyone in the guild. I had taken up wearing armour all the time, only ever taking it off when I slept and bathed, just because I wanted to be able to fight should I never need to.
This desire to always be prepared expanded to my magic of choice, Requip.
Requip is a fairly common magic, but not one often utilised as a combative element. It allows you to store weapons and armour in a small pocket dimension that you can sort through with a small magic screen, and whenever you need to use something from that pocket dimension you can summon it and immediately make use of it.
My version of Requip in particular is Requip: The Knight, which allows me to immediately equip armour and clothing onto myself without the need to physically change into them.
I have dedicated everything to expanding the storage of my Requip as much as I could, and I have spent every Jewel I could earn to buy armour and weapons to fill it. The amount of armour and weapons I've bought has become so immense that I can't even store it all in Requip anymore, and have resorted to renting out two rooms from Fairy Hills just to store everything.
This need to protect myself even extended to how I've come to interact with others.
I started as the quiet girl who never talked to anyone until one day a boy named Gray caught me crying by the river. I grew closer to him and a few other kids our age, but since I was the eldest I took it upon myself to teach them correct behaviour. Anything that could be dangerous or incorrect I tried to correct, and this extended to adults and teens as well. This kept going until one day when a rather abrasive girl named Mirajane joined the guild with her siblings.
Any sense of control I could establish disappeared, as her age matched mine and her Satan Soul could consistently match with anything I could throw at her. We ended up butting heads over and over again and yet, before I knew it, I began to have fun despite my annoyance with her.
Gray, the ice-make wizard would always get into fights with Natsu, a boy who claims to have been raised and taught by a fire dragon with behaviour to match.
Cana would always read everybody's tarot, while Elfman would help out in the kitchen.
Lisanna and Happy, a talking blue cat with wings, would always hang out with Natsu in the woods or go out fishing.
Macao and Enno would always bring over their newborn son, Romeo, and Wakabe would try to play the part of the cool uncle much to everyone's amusement.
The entire guild had reintroduced colour into my life just as I had lost it all. I had begun to enjoy my freedom, but I could never feel that I could fully commit. There was a looming weight constantly hanging over my head like a swinging axe aimed at my neck, a reality that no matter what Master Makarov did he could never assuage.
I couldn't forget who I was forced to leave behind. I will never stop worrying about them. I will never stop thinking about them.
But still, this is my family now, as dysfunctional as it is. I take pride in being a Fairy Tail wizard, and I will do anything for them. I could be the weakest woman on Earthland, but so long as I had enough strength to protect all that I love I would be content. Maybe one day I'd be able to help those in the tower, but every day that goes by is another day that I lose hope in them even thinking of siding with me. Jellal's influence on the kids was already high, and I do not doubt that he convinced them all to hate me.
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Dec 20th, X779…
KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!
"Erza? Are you in there?"
"Just a second, Cana! Just got back with some presents and I'm trying to hide them from Levy before she can figure out what they are!"
"Well, I just came to let you know that someone is in the lobby waiting for you. She said her name is Lyssa if that means anything to you."
The box of belts I had bought for Gray thumped on the floor as Cana spoke a name I never thought I'd hear from again.
"O-Okay! I'll go see them in a second."
"Cool. I'll be in the office if you need me."
My hands started to sweat as I heard her walk away from the door. Not even a few seconds went by before I opened the door and started sprinting down the hallway and stairs, passing Cana in the process, before slowing down just before the foyer came into view.
'Why is she here?'
Worry about the random visit began to rise in the forefront of my mind, but desire, the want to see for myself pushed me through the fog of fear. Those worries felt unfounded as I walked onto the last flight of stairs.
The girl standing in the foyer was completely unfamiliar to me, but she was as nervous as her hair was bright. Her sun-kissed skin had a visible layer of sweat that caused the white hair to stick to her brow, and the heavy black boots she wore shifted the rug ever so slightly as she fidgeted.
Frankly, she reminded me a lot of Mirajane in terms of appearance, if slightly shorter. But those eyes, like pearlescent amethysts unlike any I've seen since, are unmistakably Lyssa's. They mirrored mine in the way they quivered with anxiety and nerves, and the poor attempt at a joke made it all the more obvious she was as afraid of this interaction as I was.
But hearing her ask something only the two of us would know about, hearing her ask about Grandpa Rob's stories told me that she wasn't here against her will. It told me that she wasn't a fake, a hallucination, or here with other motivations.
She was here to see me.
Grandpa Rob was the one who took care of all of us kids and entertained us when we were feeling down, but Lyssa and I were the only ones who truly paid attention to his stories. We weren't captivated just by the bravado and mysticism of them all, but also by the compassion he had for team Makarov.
Grandpa Rob and Goldmine were the older brother types that tried to help the rest of their friends, with Yajima and Bob usually being quite quiet while Porlyusica and Master Makarov were the most loud and temperamental. We were inspired by them all, and she reaffirmed that she still did, too.
After I brought her to my room, all we did was talk. Almost instantly the topic of Jellal was brought up, but I didn't admit to having actually met him myself. I framed it as Yajima having told me the information, but that wasn't true. And I'm thankful I did.
When she was talking about finally being able to fight back against the Tower, an almost manic look entered her eyes as the temperature in the room rose dramatically. Only after having managed to calm her down did I learn about how it did without any flames actually emerging.
She explained that it was a passive side effect of her Fire Devil Slayer magic, and how it came about through the constant presence of demonic energy through her body that makes her magic more rampant and harder to control, as well as explained that it was the reason her hair was white now.
It seemed to be similar to how Mirajane is part demon, but she seemed adamant that the hair colour part was something she couldn't explain.
It was pretty easy for me to digest, much to her surprise. She seemed worried about how I would react to her being part demon due to her magic, but I explained that we have someone in Fairy Tail who was practically part dragon because of his Dragon Slayer magic.
It seemed like there was more to it that she wanted to say, but whatever it was she choked down and seemed adamant that it was nothing.
But it confirmed to me that she was the devil slayer that's formed a rivalry with Mirajane, as well as being the one she fought with a year and a half ago. It also, sadly, meant that she was a member of Phantom Lord.
I tried to convince her to join Fairy Tail instead, but she refused.
"Maybe one day, but Phantom Lord is where my roots have set. I have friends there, and I can quickly make the trip south to visit in no more than an hour. But considering Jose is as thick as peanut butter I don't doubt that it will only be a matter of time before he sends Phantom on the path to becoming a dark guild," she said with a sigh.
"So it'll be a matter of when you join Fairy Tail not if."
"Yeah, but it won't be before I drag the face of every fool that follows Jose through the ashes and mud."
And that was how we concluded the day, just talking. Talking about how our lives have gone since we last saw each other. Talking about what hopes we have for the future. Before we knew it, hours had passed and I gave Lyssa as honest a hug as I could before we parted ways.
That night I had slept soundly, feeling like a small part of me had been healed…
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A/N: Apologies for not fulfilling the promise I had to upload a chapter each day of the week. Family and health stuff got in the way and I didn't have the state of mind to write. I can promise you two more chapters over the weekend, as well as a couple of joke/meme chapters before we make our way into Beestenbloed, a brief intermission, and then canon.
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