☀ || DULCET

“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” lisanna started softly, kicking the dirt in front of her feet. she wasn’t entirely confident that porlyusica would share if there was something severely wrong - but lisanna trusted her instincts enough to feel like she’d pick up on that kind of atmosphere. 

“It’s just that you’re such a sneak when anything is wrong!” she accused, a touch playful, a touch reproaching. “How am I ever going to know anything besides ‘it’s fine, lisanna’ if I don’t pester you relentlessly.” 

she could sense his growing frustration, see the tension in the line of his back when the subject was brought up. she’d seen the relentless way mirajane prodded at him when she found out, fearless & fearful all at once. so lisanna extended her arms, hanging off his shoulders from behind in a way she was very aware was too reminiscent of their childhoods for him to get too upset with her. 

“As a little sister, relentlessly pestering people is one of my most valued strengths, Laxus.” she muttered into his shoulder. it was probably a bit too much to say, i’m worried about you. or so many people I’ve loved I’ve lost please don’t be one of them or even in edolas I saw a pictures of a man with your face && had to hear about how he died. 

“ you  can  say that bob and goldmine aren’t throwing children into situations where they die because it  is  the truth, no? ” porlyusica said, perhaps not tactful, but there was no need to tiptoe around this. her loyalty towards makarov had died a long time ago, before he had excommunicated their son, before his choices had gone from odd to dangerous. and porlyusica was many things, but one thing she was for certain was impatient. walking in circles around the fact that makarov had perhaps not personally killed lisanna, all those years ago, but had set up the situation that  had  killed her would not get them anywhere.

she did not want to be someone who blamed others for tragic accidents, but she had to say that makarov had never halted to consider if maybe, his policies were a problem was a problem. after all, before leona had departed on the fateful quest, ivan had argued that it was a bad idea. and he had been right. of course, it had been an accident, a tragedy. but another guild master might have revised his policies, afterwards. porlyusica might be fighting with ooba, in her own way, but the other woman had reformed her guild’s rules after that one fire mage had died.

( lisanna, a child, had died and makarov had not done the same. )

a sigh, a raised eyebrow at lisanna’s next question and — “ he was not elected. ”

a short, crisp statement — but it did not make the girl’s point any less valid. master precht had chosen makarov, all those years ago. perhaps because he had been another founder’s son, perhaps because at the time, he had been still a good man. hot-headed, rough around the edges but still: good. and troubling as this thought was, porlyusica did not even doubt that makarov had always loved the guild. that had never been the problem. the problem was that his way of loving the guild had shattered it.

tucking back her bangs, the healer managed a tiny smile. “ in edolas, he probably would have had to be, but here, master precht — i guess you’d know him as master hades — chose him, ” she said with a quiet shrug. “ makarov had seniority, his father was a founder so most protest was quiet and i think nepotism was a bigger concern than makarov’s temper. ”

lisanna bit her lip, the feelings of dread she had come here to address rising. she’d hoped, of course, that they would be dissuaded & she could bury them along with the rest of her ‘paranoia’s from the war’ mementos. instead, she had his ex-wife sitting across from her with not a true kind word to say about who makarov had become. 

“ I've never really spoke with goldmine or bob, so I don’t really know them either way. but I’ve never heard of any bad decisions on their part,”  lisanna said haltingly. considering how little anyone outside of fairy tail knew about her own... incident, she tried not to hold guild masters (or really, any authority )  to a high standard of transparency. 

trying not to show how much it surprised her to hear there was no group decision in the next guild master ( that’s how she’d always seen it done, in edolas, when fairy tail was being rebuilt after makarov vanished... ) lisanna frowned. “So master precht, he just said makarov was the master now, without caring about how other people felt about it? Or staying long enough to give him, like, advice the first couple years?” 

she knew that precht, or hades, or whatever he wanted to go by went on to contribute to brutal && horrible things. grimoire heart responsible for mass attacks, child enslavement, government manipulation &&& had even worse plans for the future. so he couldn’t have been a saint, she supposed, but it was strange to hear how irresponsibly he’d treated fairy tail. 

( in edolas, the guild masters hadn’t had the chance to consult their replacement, considering that the position only ever seemed to open up when they had died. but everyone was imparted with a sense of responsibility & leadership as a result. ) 

I.    THE  FAIRY.    chipped  nail  polish  .   glitter  highlight .   tall  trees  with  smooth  bark .   tangled hair  .  the taste of cinnamon sugar .   talking  too  loud  and  too  fast .   overgrown  flowers  in  your  hair  .   crumbling  buildings  reclaimed  by  nature  . flirting .    walking  home  at  3am  with  no  coat  .    platonic  hand - holding .    blowing  smoke  out  of  your  nose  .    dragonfly  wings  .   chaotic  good .   freckles  .   fairy  rings  .   secret  meetings .  gender  nonconformity  .    leather  .    smudged  eyeliner .   forbidden  fruit .

II.    THE  REAPER.    computer  errors  .   a  shiver  down  your  spine  .   haunting  beauty .    hard  liquor  .crowns  of  thorns  .   shadowed  alleyways .   decaying  plant  matter  .   shattered  mirrors  and  broken  glass  .    corrupted  memories  .    stopped  clocks  .    the  scent  of  stale  cigarettes  .    tattered  black  hoodies .   walking  your  friends  home  .   the  crescent  moon  .   the  sea .    a  graveyard  on  a  foggy  day .  cold  rings  on  cold  fingers .  absolution  .  looking  out  the  window  of  an  airplane  . soft  kisses .

III.    THE  WITCH.   graffiti  .   pretending  to  know  what  you ’ re  doing  .   worn  paperback  books  . growing  up  too  fast .   parsley  ,    sage  ,    rosemary  ,    and  thyme  .    lace  and  combat  boots  .    moth  wings  .   candles  on  every  surface .   a  weathered  deck  of  cards  .   turning  the  music  up  .    fireflies  in  jars  .    calloused  fingers  .   drawing  on  your  skin .    sunlight  filtering  through  clouds  .   petrichor .   a  dying  rose  in  a  jar .   wearing  a  crystal  pendant  .   illusions  and  spells  .   black  cats .    mint  gum  .  chapped  lips  .   dirt  under  your  fingernails  .   the  cycle  of  life  and  death  .

IV.    THE  WOLF.   murders  of  crows  .   frost-bitten  leaves  .   wolves  howling  at  midnight  .    knocking  on  your  door  .   leaving  food  out  for  stray  animals  .   the  twang  of  an  acoustic  guitar  .   honey .   tiny  red  buds  on  trees .    claw  marks  on  the  walls  .   golden  eyes  .    slightly  too  long  stubble  .    sharp  canines  .  soft  ,     thick  fur  .    hunger  .   a  small  cottage  in  the  middle  of  the  woods  .    knitted  fingerless  gloves  .    sleeping  on  the  forest  floor  .    always  finding  your  way  back  home .

“ they all left at their own pace, for their own reasons. ”

she fell quiet, for a moment. lisanna might have told her that she did not want to drag bad memories to the surface, but the truth was that not only porlyusica would have to confront them, at some point, but also that the past had never not bled into the present. despite never having been a nostalgic person, the healer had always lived in the past and the present at the same time because the former had built the latter and its influence was still obvious to her, was still in plain sight. she could not separate the one from the other, not after all that had happened. when makarov had built the guild’s present, its ripcage had been the past.

the past was a blade with many edges. one edge was the knowledge that for a time, porlyusica herself had looked at makarov and believed in what he was doing. though truthfully, this had been before he had been named guild master, before he had started to make increasingly bewildering decisions. another edge was that sometimes, she wondered if she, if anyone could have done something to stop makarov before things had escalated to the point where she had had to treat the injuries of children who had been injured on quests meant for adults.

there, in those anger-filled hours, was the reason for her distaste for so many others. her pity with the children who had been drawn into makarov’s vision had become harder and harder to bear when they had grown older and instead of turning their back on the guild, they had stayed, their injuries getting worse and worse. to her, loyalty matter and held immense value, but … not this much.  never this much.

“ i wish i could say that they all simply left before their personal goals led them away or that they retired, but that would be false, ” she continued, lining them all up in her mind and having to knock them down, one by one. “ and as you may guess, not just bob and goldmine left the guild. ”

in what she would  always  consider to have been the guild’s prime, in days when precht had been master and had led the guild with confidence and a firm hand, most mages had been in their late twenties or older. the guild had been what a guild was  supposed  to be, a place for  adults  to find work instead of the branch of an orphanage that  happened  to send out mages on quests. of course, this had been before all the humanitarian disasters that had left the country with countless orphans, some with magic and some without, and no place to properly take care of them all. lowering the age requirement had been the desperate solution for a complicated problem, but she still thought that it had been the easiest way out. instead of letting guilds take in often traumatized children, there should have been orphanages where people who had experience in handling mage children should have worked.

( and even so, other guilds had managed what fairy tail had not: taking proper care of the children and keeping them safe in mind and body. )

folding her hands in her lap, she sighed once more. “ makarov being named guild master was, for many, the beginning of the end so many left and joined other guilds. goldmine and makarov had always clashed, so he left because of that … i think in the end, it was best for him, ” she added, her voice growing softer and warmer for a moment, she had been fond of goldmine, had appreciated his blunt nature. and so, she had stayed out of all fights, preferring not to pick a side. in retrospective, maybe she should have sided with goldmine. maybe that would have woken makarov up before all had gone to hell. but then, probably not. instead, he would have been angry with her, perhaps even jealous.

“ bob … i think he preferred a guild compromised of adults over one overrun by children. as did his suits, i suppose. rob and i … we stayed. my son was in the guild. and for all my frustrations, i did not take them out on ivan by … abandoning him. rob, i sometimes think, stayed for me instead of makarov. ”

lisanna remembered the day erza joined the guild faintly - she’d never been particularly close with the scarlet-haired woman. erza & mira’s rivalry saw to that with the gentle ease of children avoiding each other. && now.... well, she certainly wasn’t close with erza scarlet. 

but lisanna does recall rob in the faintest of ways, a whispered kind of memory. he was the reason erza came to fairy tail, they’d met in that awful tower &&& something had happened to him. 

really, any knowledge she has on the older members is paper thin at best. even makarov. carefully, so as not to hesitate too long, she takes all that she can & stores it away for future thought. “I see... I’ll admit I kind of expected it was something like that for goldmine and bob. the guilds they’re leading are pretty different.” 

tactfully, though lisanna isn’t sure if it’s more for her sake or porlyusica’s, she chooses not to comment on the theory of why rob had stayed. lisanna had always been able to feel where the ice would give way to something deeper. 

so it had come to this, so this was what lisanna’s visit was about. a part of porlyusica wished she could feel surprised, wished she would not feel like a puzzle piece was finally falling into place. but this was how she felt. this, and a rare sliver of — gladness, maybe even genuine happiness, that despite everything she had done to distance herself from the guild, she was still someone people looked to when they were searching for the truth about the guild. because lisanna was  right  — porlyusica had been around long enough to see three masters come and go, she had seen the guild change and she had quietly kept watching.

sometimes, she wondered if makarov even realised that she was still watching, that she had not averted her gaze the moment the guild mark had vanished from her body. and gods, she had not liked what she had seen. she had disagreed with makarov when he had first considered to open the doors of the guild for children, had told him a thousand times that it was a terrible idea, that their guild was not a place where children could grow up safely. their fight had been a terrible one, but she had not changed her mind. and later, much later, the injuries that had those who put the guild above all else brought to her doorstep had proved her right.

“ that faust did not wind up the king his parents wished him to be … doesn’t come as a surprise, ” she said carefully, leaning back in her chair. “ and i did hear … enough. mystogan used to tell me about these things. so … i know. i’d have liked to remember edolas as a happy, peaceful country, but i know it’s not. there’s no need to sugarcoat the truth for me when we both know i won’t do the same for you. ”

red eyes flickered over to the door that had led to the guest bedroom. she would — miss the boy, she supposed, but he was needed elsewhere, now, and she was not the selfish sort. and it would have been selfish to want to keep the boy away from his destiny. gods, she was sounding dramatic, even to herself.

“ my side of the story … hm, i was young, not much older than you are, when i first came to earthland, ” she started, the echo of a smile ghosting across her face. “ i met makarov and his team — rob, goldmine and bob — not long after and understanding that i knew little of this place, they brought me to magnolia. that was when master precht still led the guild, when there were rules and … consequences for those breaking them. precht was interested in lacrima studies, something that was much further advanced in edolas than it was in earthland, and … i was good at that. still am. knowledge was the currency i used to buy my life in magnolia. ”

she would skip, she decided, over her role as precht’s research assistant — it had nothing to do with the story. it had also nothing to do with why for a reason she could still not comprehend, precht had thought that makarov was a smart pick for the role of his successor. rob had thought that maybe, towards the end of his tenure, precht had simply no longer cared about the guild, but porlyusica found this hard to believe. precht had been a founding member, had been with the guild for such a long time.

clearing her throat and taking a sip of her tea, she sighed and continued, hoping that if she spilled the truth fast enough, it would not taste too much like bitterness and pain. “ i grew close to makarov and his team, eventually, ” she admitted as her fingernails dug harshly into her own palms, nearly drawing blood. “ i fell in love, we married. he was made guild master, master precht left us. we had a son, and things … started to go wrong. ”

under different circumstances, she would not have brought this up. the failing of her marriage was personal like few other things were, but the way it had failed had too much to do with the kind of guild master makarov had been and still was for her to show  him  the mercy of glossing over it, of making it sound like they had merely drifted apart, the way people sometimes did.

“ he spent so much time building his  perfect found family  that … he neglected… ” she trailed of, unsure which word was most suited to be the last one.  us  was a strong contender, but she had taken her frustrations and hidden in her research.  me  was an option, too, but she did not think that she had still cared enough at this point. perhaps the best word would be her son’s name, but ivan had become a man even lisanna would struggle to empathise with. perhaps it was best to leave the blank unfilled, to leave it to lisanna to fill it.

“ when master precht was around, one had to be of age to join. makarov abolished this and … i still don’t think it was the right decision, especially not when i see certain injuries. ”

lisanna couldn’t help the past from bubbling up. the image of mirajane, barely twelve years old with a demon screaming in her mind & leaving their marks on her skin. mirajane who used to knock down trees with the force of her episodes. she thinks of the villagers who came to their home, pitchforks && torches in hand screaming louder than the demon they were afraid of.

it’d been so hard, then. being orphaned was one thing, but mirajane scared everyone that looked upon her &&& with their fear came hate, came violence. it’d been everything they could do to survive & mira had been forced to protect them far too many times. back then, in the beginning, hopelessness swarmed upon them like locusts for there had been no end in sight. 

there was no where to go, for a cursed child like mirajane. no way to settle down anywhere when the fear of the locals finding out the truth hang over every second. lisanna was young, but she’d been scared. mirajane tried, they all did, but no one had any plans. 

coming across fairy tail was more than they’d ever dreamed of. a place where mirajane was embraced, rather than rejected. she’d still struggled, still buckled under the severity of her power, but it got better after fairy tail. when she had a name for what she could do, had people who weren’t afraid to help her. 

it was the nature of their magic that had meant lisanna’s siblings were always more dangerous than she was, more out of control. while she had the souls of animals, mira && elfman held monsters in their bodies. fairy tail had helped them, grounded them when lisanna was fighting a war in another world &&& lisanna couldn’t regret that. 

but she also remembered mirajane turning a mountain to rumble in her rage when she’d lost the s-class competition to erza, she remembered the new additions mira made to her pool of demons to catch up & the new nightmares it brought. lisanna remembered her sweet, doting older brother crushing her to death on a mission fairy tail sent them on.  

it’s... complicated. nothing is ever without it’s flaws. 

HEADCANONS 

a part of her had expected this visit. ever since she had heard where lisanna had been, a part of her — small and confused — had known that one day, the takeover mage would be sitting on her couch. she had not know what sort of face she would be wearing, but she had known that she would wait for her to ask a question so  important  to her that she would brave the storm and visit porlyusica’s cottage in the woods.

maybe, she should lecture her on common sense — it was not without risk to be outside, right now, with the storm raging outside, but … the healer remembered what it was like when a question was burning inside and when waiting was not an option. she, too, had been young, once upon a time. she only did not yet see why  this  question was so important to lisanna.

“ prince faust? ” she echoed, then she corrected herself with a sigh as she poured tea into two cups and sat. “ king  faust, now. i suppose. i  did  know him. even met him, a few times. what about him? ”

@koibitoaii

lisanna smiled at the elderly woman & did everything in her power to keep it bright. it was... difficult for her. thinking about the family she'd left behind in edolas, the life she'd stepped into && abandoned.

she didn't talk about edolas &&& there were a million reasons she could give, but at it's core, the memories were just so painful to recall. recounting them here, in a world that hadn’t seen the war she’d lived, it was more than lisanna cared to bear. 

"I don't know how much you know of what...happened." lisanna began, hesitant. edolas was Porlyusica’s homeland & she didn't know what the elders politics looked like. facts were facts though, && it’s easiest to start with those. "But, Faust was a tyrant. I can’t say what he was like when you knew him, but I knew him as an executioner. He tore the country apart however he could. In edolas, Fairy Tail was less of a guild & more of a rebel group. "

"It's kind of a sad story," she concluded, having said enough to plant the conversational seed she wanted. there was no need to tarnish Porlyusica’s image of edolas anymore, so she ignores the way her mouth tastes like the blood of her own unhealed wounds and continues with a practiced cheer, "But I was thinking, last night, that I know more about the history of edolas' fairy tail than this one, and that just seems wrong? To me, at least?"

lisanna paused, swallowing down all the things she didn't say. she didn't say, in edolas makarov was exiled by fairy tail for being a traitor, and killed by the country for the same. she didn't say that sometimes when villagers see my guild mark they stop looking relieved. she didn't say that makarov's stories sometimes feel convenient in a way that slides off my skin like slime. she didn't say, tell me I'm wrong about this, please. but what she did say was "I mean, I don't even really know how makarov became the guild master in the first place!" && laughed like she found it silly, rather than scary.