83) 'Sole Duty' (Fairy Tail fic)

Summary: What is called a reason for living is also a reason for dying. Now if they could all just remember that.

Genre: Tragedy, Friendship, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Drama;

Chars: Gray F; Mavis;

Rating: T

Beta: LovelyWeather

Sole Duty

Chapter 1

The silence pressed heavily on his ears. Bearable, but unwelcome. Chin resting on the table, Gray Fullbuster stared at the glass filled to the brim. The coppery color of beer and the rift of bubbles held his attention.

"... such a waste," he muttered. The hard surface of the table was uncomfortably firm against his jaw's movements. He moved his eyes a fraction to the side to look at the person occupying the opposite side of the table. A head of chocolate brown hair was snuggled in between two skinny arms. Only dark puffy eyes were exposed, staring at something well beyond the glass and bubbles.

His eyebrows narrowed in annoyance. "You do know you're letting a perfectly good beer go to waste?" He said giving a weak snarl before straightening up, elbows firmly resting on the table now. "It's meant for drinking, not staring." Despite the almost motherly-like scolding, Cana Alberona had yet to show any signs of desire to do so. Forget drinking it, she outright displayed zero interest in anything but staring through the glass in front of her.

Gray leaned his cheek against his fist and disinterestedly turned his head to the side. His eyes stopped on the far-off lit candle, placed on a small round table and surrounded by picture frames. His expression, irked and sharp as it was, subtly melted into something sad, then painful and, finally, numb.

"...I'd drink it," he mumbled after a while, shifting his shoulders just enough to glance at Cana, who was still in the same position as before: hunched over the table, staring and unseeing. Her eyes were glossy again. It made him angry.

"For fuck's sake, Cana!" Gray snapped, slamming both his fists on the table, growling. "Just drink the stupid thing and go home already! You're pissing me off! I thought that-" He stopped mid-sentence, biting back the words he unjustly wanted to say as hard as he bit his bottom lip. His fist trembled. "Shit..." he breathed out. Running his fingers through his hair in frustration, he laced them together at the back of his head and tiredly slumped forward, his forehead pressing against the table and his arms shielding his head like a child. "Shit."

Silence engulfed them again. It blurred the lines between seconds, minutes and hours, holding them captive in an illusion that time was frozen.

"... -ease."

His voice awkwardly slipped unexpectedly, cracking like thin ice in all the wrong places. He didn't care. Worrying his bottom lip, he repeated, "...please... please, Cana." His fingers, which were already woven into the strands of his black hair, tightened and held on. "J-Just..."

Pressure built up in his throat. Unsorted words and emotions knotted up into a clog he didn't know how to sort out. "Just... just go home already." And that was all it took. He could feel himself starting to slip. "Drink it. Dump it. I don't care anymore, just do something, you damn hypocrite."

He was met with no response. Silence held its note long and steady around them. He could feel the first jabs of guilt start to settle in. "No- that's not right... I'm sorry..." The Ice-alchemist sighed and looked up straight at her. Her eyes glimmered in the candle's light, warm and gentle, like dying ember. He couldn't remember if he had ever complimented them. Slowly, Gray shifted until he mirrored her pose, fancying her eyes in silence as they remained snuggled in between shadows and the gentle candle-glow.

Hard lines rimmed her eyes. Chapped and dry lips. Limp and slightly greasy locks fell down her face. There was the unexpected tilt of a small smile in the corner of his lips. "You look like a wreck," he muttered, his face going softer and more relaxed like it always did when he was with one of his dearest and longest friends.

"Simply awful," he commented, smile lingering and giving a good-natured chuckle just like he always would when she came into the guild-hall with a hangover. He'd tease how drunk her dates must have been before they took her out and she'd reply with that slightly bitchy smirk and flip him the fing-

"-Cana?"

Dark brown eyes snapped up and out of their daze. A silhouette with long platinum blond hair stood in front of the vacant guild's bar. A dull pink blanket-like scarf was draped over her shoulders and a matching colored purse was held in front of her in both her hands.

"I'm locking up," Mirajane said with an apologetic tilt of her head. Her face was void of its usual smile, but not of the gentleness it always held.

Suddenly realizing she was mentally miles away, the Card mage took in the absence of light, the eerie atmosphere of the hall which was rid of its usual people and sound, the empty tables surrounding her, the untouched glass of beer in front of her- the only companion she had for the night.

Again. A guilty grimace flashed across her face. She bit her lip before sighing, rubbing her eyes with her thumb and index finger. "I'm sorry."

The bartender stepped up to her, her hair swaying as she shook her head gently. "Don't be," she said, gently placing a hand upon her shoulder. "Do you want me to put it away?"

"No," she breathed out, subtly escaping the girl's hand. "I got it." The brown-haired woman took the glass by its handle and brought it to her lips. She hesitated for the briefest of moments. Then, with a single synchronized movement of her head and hand, the copper concoction was gone down her throat. The burn and bite of alcohol were dull on her tongue, weak and sour. And that left a different type of foul aftertaste inside her mouth.

"Are we trying a different brand?" Cana wiped the corners of her lips with the back of her hand. Somehow, she suspected she already knew answer to that question.

"No," the other replied. "Some old one."

"I see... "

"I'll be back in a minute."

A slow nod of her head was her only answer while Mirajane tended to the last glass for the night.

Leaning her head into her hand, Cana took a long look around the guild-hall. Her eyes lingered in the direction of the candle, her indifferent face crumbling a bit before moving on. Passing over the empty seats and tables, the mission-board littered with jobs very few took now, the tapestries and recognitions the guild received in the past hanging off the walls, Cana couldn't help but think the atmosphere surrounding her now was far better than the one during daytime.

~~ ( O ) ~~

Click.

The old lock on the wooden double doors of Fairy Tail snapped closed. Giving the doors a gentle nudge out of habit, the S-ranked mage noted they were securely shut, marking another day officially over.

Placing the keys into her purse, Mirajane stepped away and turned to her companion. "Thank you for waiting for me."

"It would have been rude of me not to." The Card Mage shrugged before rubbing her hands up and down her upper-arms. "Shit, it's cold..." she commented offhandedly, putting on and zipping up her jacket. Her breath came out in thin white puffs of air. They were comforting to look at. She wondered if the alcohol was finally kicking in.

Mira carefully watched her, anxiety and worry urging her to speak. Her hand squeezed the strap of her purse. "Cana..."

The gentle way her name was spoken had the said mage straightening up, yawning and pretending like she hadn't heard the echo of a distant memory. "What is it?"

Pressing her lips together, the blond looked her straight in the eyes, trying to establish a connection with the woman that was well beyond words and false fronts. "... if you want to talk... I'm here. Okay?"

Closing her brown eyes, a slow, practised smile spread across her lips. "Thanks," she said and looked into Mira's eyes. It felt wrong. "... but I'm fine."

Turning her back to girl, she adjusted the strap of her own bag. "You should worry more about the rest of them." Heaven knows they have it worse than me.

For a moment, repulsing as it was, she hoped that it was true.

"Goodnight Mira," she said, urging herself to keep a slow pace towards her home and not count the seconds it would take her to hide from prying eyes. "See you tomorrow."

"Yeah..." Mira mumbled, failing to keep the troubled tone of her voice from surfacing. "Tomorrow."

~~ ( O ) ~~

He watched the doors close, he waited for the soft click of the lock, and then with a sigh he let his head fall face-down onto the table. "Fucking great."

In the absence of the two wizards, the hush of the evening finally settled upon the guild. True, both girls had been quiet in their own way, but their presents kept the full-blown sense of solitude away. Turning his head, the alchemist absentmindedly noted that the candle was left lit. If there was a way to find comfort in that fact, he didn't see it. He didn't want to.

Silence was nudging at him, and like a reflex to avoid the unpleasant feeling of acknowledging it, he began re-running the one-sided conversation he had had with Cana. Between the loneliness and the self-loathing, strangely enough the later seemed like lesser of two evils. He had snapped at her. He shouldn't have. He had no right. And as if the shame Gray was feeling wasn't enough, he was becoming more and more aware that he was slipping. Slipping and not really caring. Scary.

The warning he was given echoed in the back of his mind. He had taken it for granted. He had underestimated it. Or, maybe it was more in the lines of: he had overestimated himself. And that... that was a really, really shitty feeling.

He was considering trying to hit his head against the desk repeatedly, for the sake of chasing away the quiet, when a familiar voice startled him. "Hello."

Involuntary the muscles in his back tensed. It took him a full moment to come to terms who had spoken to him.

Oh, GOD, not again.

He took it back. He wanted the silence. Seriously. He'd take that over this no questions asked. He wasn't sure how much more could he (or his sanity for that matter) be able to take: all the smiles and rainbows and fucking sparkles raining down on him like bullshit.

Maybe if he ignored her for once, she'd get the hint and-

"Heeeeeeellooooooo?" A finger poked his head.

Wishful thinking. He cringed. The poking continued. With a sigh, he resigned to his fate, obnoxious as it was.

"Hello." His monotone voice earned him a childish giggle. Grey was not amused in the slightest.

"I see you're getting more and more pleasant with each greeting."

"What can I say?" He replied, sarcasm heavy on his tongue. "You choose all the right moments to show up."

He was met with another giggle. He could almost feel that perpetual smile on her lips. It annoyed the hell out of him. "Hehehe, it's kind of hard to pick a right moment when you're brooding all the time."

"I am not brooding," he defended himself, eyes narrowed and snapping up to look into deep green ones.

Sitting in front of him, with her fingers intertwined, the little girl watched him with wide energized eyes. Golden locks framed her chubby and youthful face with a softness that no commercial or product in Sorcerer-weekly could compare. Wing-like hairpins decorated the crown on her head- they suited her frilly dress and overall childlike look.

Grey frowned at her. "Why are you here anyway?"

"Well," Mavis said innocently. "This is my home." She smiled at him and Gray swore he saw glitter suspend in the air around her. He had no idea how the hell she was doing it and figured it must have been some saint or first-guild-master-I'm-so-magical shit. He really didn't care but it was making his eyes bleed.

"And," she continued, tilting her head to the side and bringing one of her hands up to the neck-line of her dress to finger the lace there. "I thought you'd like some company."

He felt his muscles tense again and warning bells going off in his head. Of course that's why she'd suddenly appear, he couldn't help but think bitterly.

"You seem like you could use some." Her eyes beckoned him with a gentleness that put him on edge and his instincts urged him to outright deny it. So he did exactly that.

Before she could interject with anything else, Gray maneuvered himself up. He had no interest in going down that road again. "Sorry to disappoint," he bit out, staring at her with hard eyes. "But I was just on my way out."

He held her gaze intensely, as if daring her to call him out on such a blatant lie. In return she only stared back, the smile still lingering on her lips, but her eyes going softer. "I see." She closed them for a brief moment and rested her cheek on her palm. "That's a shame."

She could feel the scowl aimed at her, and the torrent of emotions once again stirring under a calm exterior. By the time she opened her forest-green eyes again he'd already left and she was sitting alone in the guild-hall. She could already see him. Out in the streets, walking around pointlessly with his hands in his pocket and head low, rebuilding and reassembling the forts of his mind that started collapsing in on themselves.

Mavis turned her head towards the candle and observed the gentle dance of its flame. "He has a good heart," she said gently. "Many of you weren't all that much different, if I recall correctly." A fond smile graced her lips as she hopped to her bare feet. "And you know I can't do that."

Padding her way to the little round table, she linked her hands behind her back. "You keep forgetting," she said to the room. "We're not saints... We're just good people." Stopping right in front of the table, her eyes lingered on the candle for a while, its flicker reflecting perfectly in them. "They're just good people."

"They strive," she untangled her fingers, and gently held herself. "Fight for what they believe in. Relish in living," she said affectionately. Proudly. And then her voice gained a sadder note. "But that's the problem, isn't it?"

She stood still for a few moments, and then the blond spirit looked up to the empty guild-hall. "You wanna do it?" She was met with silence.

"Okay," she said, tucking a stray blond lock of hair behind her ear and bending down until the candle's flame reached her mouth. Mavis pursed her lips as gently and lovingly as a mother placing a kiss upon a sleeping child would.

"Rest in piece..." she whispered and blew out the candle.

The picture of a young man faded into the darkness.

"… Gray Fullbuster."

So here I am, indulging one of my recent obsessions, Gray Fullbuster and Fairy Tail. Interesting how instead of doing one of the million story ideas I have, I choose the AU which deals with his death.

Want to share: an opinion, favorite part, quote, character? You know where to click.

xMF