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Lyon hears rumors first.
He’s on a job around the outskirts of Tuly Village when he hears the first murmur of confusion. He, Sherry, Toby and Yuka are crowded around a small tavern table when a kid runs into the building and starts to yell about a series of ‘incredible waves’ off the coast.
“Dad says that they were ten feet tall!” He calls, eyes wide, dramatic. He had everybody's attention at the first yell, at the first mention that they took out a few boats in the Hargeon harbour. “They were huge! And there was all this rubble in them, like trees and rocks and branches and stuff just floating in the water-”
Lyon looks at his guildmates as they watch the boy speak. Yuka looks indifferent, eyebrows raised in only slight interest. Toby’s only half paying attention, with one eye on his plate in front of him and the other looking at the boy. Sherry looks more interested than the other two, with her head tilted lightly to the side and her eyebrows furrowed in slight concern. Hargeon isn’t known for very violent waves, nor is it known for debris in the water and boats that can be easily destroyed.
“Surely it’s an exaggeration,” he says. He says it quietly, quietly enough that his voice is confined to the table. Simultaneously, they all turn to glance at him. “Hargeon doesn’t get waves like that. It’s part of the bay, not the main coastline.”
“Hargeon did get some interesting waves when that tower on the outskirts of the bay fell,” Sherry hums, glancing at him, then back at the boy. “And after Galuna, remember?”
Yuka makes a noise, and turns back to the rest of them.
“That was practically the collapse of an entire island. Tsunami-sized waves in Hargeon of all places couldn’t have happened without something of a similar proportion occurring.” He says, and Lyon feels his lips twitch downwards.
He isn’t sure why, but he feels something in his stomach tighten. He takes a breath and shakes his head.
“Strange things happen down there every day,” He shrugs, and turns his attention to his plate of food. “It’s rather close to Magnolia so I wouldn’t be surprised if Team Property Damage has something to do with it. If it’s an issue, I’m sure we’ll find out when we return to the guild tomorrow.”
Yuka nods, and turns his attention to his meal. Sherry hesitates for a moment, but quickly does the same.
The feeling in Lyon’s stomach doesn’t fade. It doesn’t fade when he’s finished his plate, when the four of them head up to their room for the night. It doesn’t fade when they wake up the next morning to blue skies and a bright sun. It doesn’t fade when they get back on the road to Lamia Scale, in fact, when they come in view of the city it only grows sharper, more prominent. He thinks that part of why it doesn’t fade is because they keep hearing rumors, murmurs, whispers.
Something blew up in the ocean.
There are these massive tree branches that keep washing up on the south coast.
Rivers are flooding.
He’s pretty sure the reason the feeling sharpens so much when they arrive at Margret is because of the last point; the canals are fuller than usual, dirtier, with grey-brown water lapping at the footpaths. There are sticks, leaves and twigs floating down the channels. Lyon can only ever remember the Margret canals being shiny and clean.
It’s when they get back to the guild that the feeling in his gut sharpens to a point, because the moment they open the doors a flurry of heads turns to look at them and Lyon realises that something is very, very wrong. Half the guild isn’t even there, and the people that are all look stressed, upset, concerned. Faces are contorted into grimaces, fingers wring at shirt hems and eyes stare at them as they walk past the tables; most of those eyes are looking at him in particular. Most of them look worried.
The feeling is so sharp that it almost hurts, so he beelines for the table Jura and Ooba are sharing next to the bar.
“Where is everybody?” He frowns, sidling up to the two of them and glancing between them with fervor. Something in his stomach is swirling, something in his blood is buzzing. “Does this have anything to do with what we’ve heard about large waves in Hargeon? Incredible branches washing up on the coast?”
Master Ooba’s eyebrows are furrowed, worry wrinkles pronounced around her forehead and hands clasped together, knuckles white. Her eyes seem darker than usual, too, and Lyon feels the thing in his stomach start to churn faster as he looks at Jura. Jura looks much the same, but to Lyon’s mounting fear, the moment he looks at him the concern in his eyes flashes with something akin to pity, something akin to sadness. Neither Jura nor the guild master look surprised to see him. They don’t seem surprised at his tone, either, and they take a glance at each other before Jura clears his throat, and locks eyes with him.
“Tenrou Island, an island off the south coast of Fiore, exploded two days ago.” He says, voice grave, rough. Lyon can’t help the way his eyes grow wide, can’t help the way his heart skips a beat in his chest. An island blowing up is news in itself, but Tenrou… something about the name strikes a chord in him, something about the name is so familiar. Then Jura’s face grows impossibly sadder. “The Fairytail guild was holding their S-Class trials there at the time of the explosion. The search parties haven’t managed to locate anybody.”
Sherry gasps, and even though he isn't looking at her, Lyon can imagine the way she clasps her hands over her mouth. He can imagine the horrified look on her expression, the shock sitting in her brows, the tears pooling in her eyes. She’s always so emotional like that, always the first to cry, always the first to react. They all think that it’s sweet, all try so hard to comfort her when the tears start to drip down her cheeks. He hears Toby yelp, hears him start to babble in confusion as Yuka makes an astounded, horrified noise.
“You don’t- Surely, not all of them were on the island.” He manages to spit out, voice cracking in the middle of his sentence. He doesn’t know what else to say, because he’s not really thinking about all of them. He’s thinking about one person in particular, and when Jura’s lips twitch downwards even more, Lyon feels his hands start to shake.
“About a third of the members were participating in the S-Class trials at the time. Guildmaster Makarov, S-Class wizards Gildarts Clive, Erza Scarlet, Mirajane Strauss.” He pauses, for only a moment, before he breathes out. “Prominant wizards, too. Natsu Dragneel, Lucy Heartfilia, Gajeel Redfox… And Gray Fullbuster.”
Lyon feels something in the world change, irreversibly.
—
The first search party he joins, they find nothing.
They find nothing on the second either, or the third, or the fourth, or the fifth.
Two months after the explosion, the Magic Council orders surrounding guilds to halt their searches. They start sending smaller and smaller parties out to the Island’s location, and eventually, as the months go by, they taper off completely. Tenrou Island is officially wiped off the map; all that remains is a piece of shallow sea where a slab of stone sits just under the surface.
—
For the first year, Lyon puts himself to work.
He doesn’t know what else to do. He’s never been the type of man to sit down and wallow, not the kind of man who’ll sit down and let himself experience his emotions. He didn’t do so after Deliora attacked his city, he didn’t do so after Ur sacrificed herself to imprison the demon forever. He didn't let himself wallow in self-pity and self-hatred after Gray foiled his plan to fight Deliora once and for all, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let himself stop moving now.
That might be because part of him thinks that if he stops moving, he’ll fall apart. But to everyone else, he says that he wants to keep himself busy.
So when he’s ripped away from the search parties, he starts taking any job he can get his hands on. He drags Team Lyon all the way to Clover Town for a badly paying gardening gig. And when they get home and Yuka refuses to go out again until they’ve had dinner and a rest, Lyon takes a job by himself and runs up to Crocus. It’s neverending, a stream of work and jewel and his guildmates treating him like he’s going mad. They don’t quite tiptoe around him, but after an intervention from Sherry ends with her in tears and Lyon on a two week-long job, walls go up in ways they haven’t in a while.
But it’s not like he’s isolating himself or anything. He knows that that’s a stupid idea. He takes his guildmates on jobs with him all the time, he just… He doesn’t wait for them to be ready. He takes whoever’s on hand. In some ways it’s beneficial; he gets to know more of his guildmates, he takes some of the younger members on jobs they otherwise wouldn’t be allowed to go on, he makes plenty of money.
But in other ways… Well. He sleeps on trains, he misses guild events, he doesn’t go to the Fairytail memorial service.
And he doesn’t let himself think about Gray, because if he does, he knows that he’ll stop moving. If he stops moving, he won’t be able to start again.
It works for a while.
But then it doesn’t.
A year and a few months pass before he finds himself at the base of Mt. Hakobe. It’s the middle of Winter, so the snow has spread down to the base of the mountain and coats everything in a blanket of white. Lyon’s never been to Mt. Hakobe before, probably because most of the Mt. Hakobe jobs were advertised in guilds closer to the mountain; like Fairytail. But it was the only job on the board that seemed like it could entertain him for more than a day and a half, so Lyon had snatched it up and strode out of the guild hall as fast as his legs could carry him. He didn’t have the time to stop, plus, the snowy mountains are like home to him. They’re familiar, they’re welcoming.
It isn’t until he’s halfway up the mountain, hidden, isolated in a small cave on the side of a cliff, that he realises why he’s never taken a Hakobe job before.
Gray used to love Hakobe.
In the few months between their battle with Oraceion Seis and Fairytail’s disappearance on Tenrou Island, Lyon and Gray had talked. They talked… a lot. More than either of them would ever admit. They would get a drink when they were in each other's cities, they would send rushed, scribbled letters whenever one of them had news. Lyon was happening across Magnolia when Gray told him about Hakobe, about how the snow reminded him of Isvan. He said that specifically, it had the same chill as the snow around Ur’s village, the same kind of bite that he didn’t often find in Fiore.
The week after Gray disappeared, there had been a Hakobe job on the Lamia Scale request board. Lyon had taken one look at it and snatched the closest job that didn’t remind him of Gray Fullbuster.
Subconsciously, he’s avoided Mt. Hakobe since. But he wasn’t paying attention to the specifics the day before, and the amount of time and energy he thought it would take to track down and subdue a blizzardvern had overridden his common sense; He knew that Hakobe was a typical Gray haunt, but he had been so focused on getting another job that would make him tired enough to sleep without dreaming, that he hadn’t been paying attention.
And that was a mistake.
It was a mistake, because Lyon can feel Gray in the air. He can feel Gray’s magic, wisps of artificial ice, of magic circles, of two-handed spells. He can feel whispers of him, in the biting cold that reminds him of Isvan, in the dark, swirling sky, in the harsh whistling of the blizzard outside the cave. It’s all so reminiscent of him, of Gray, and it makes Lyon feel so, so ill. Every time the wind settles against his neck, every time the snow brushes past the back of his hands, it feels like the touch of Gray’s skin; It feels like his magic, his impossibly cold ice.
Gray was right. The snow on Mt. Hakobe reminds him of the ice back in Isvan. It makes him think of Deliora, of home, of the months sleeping on the floor together in Ur’s warm hut. And thinking of Ur makes him think of Gray, and thinking of Gray makes Lyon feel like he’s about to throw up.
He can’t leave the cave; the wind is so harsh and the snow is too thick. He would get blown off the side of a cliff before he made it more than a hundred meters further. He has nothing to distract himself with, and the job he had been on only a few hours ago hadn’t exhausted him to the point of a dreamless sleep.
He’s fucked.
For the first time since Gray disappeared with Tenrou island, Lyon cries. He doesn’t just cry, he fucking loses it. He screams, he yells, he sobs. He doesn’t have any choice, because he’s stuck here and every little thing reminds him of Gray. The wind, the snow, the cold, all of it is so familiar that it’s sickening. He has no choice but to sit there and face it.
His brother is dead.
He’s really gone.
He abandons the job and goes back to Lamia Scale the next day.
—
“It’s okay, you’re alright, Lyon. We’re all just glad you came home.” Sherry says, and Yuka makes an affirming noise.
Lyon hasn’t been able to see clearly in three days, because his vision has been constantly blurred with tears. He’s much more sober than he’d like to be, but when he arrived back at the guild hall with trembling hands and tears streaming down his face, his friends hadn’t left him alone for a minute. They haven’t given him a drink, either, despite how desperately he was crying for one.
He hasn’t been able to hold back the tears since Mt. Hakobe, and sitting on the carpeted floor of his dark, dusty apartment isn’t any different.
“I didn’t go to the memorial,” He says, voice croaking, hiccuping. His head hurts, his body hurts, his eyes hurt. “I didn’t- My brother.”
Yuka and Sherry look at each other, eyes wide, lips pressed firm. Lyon had never called Gray his brother before, had only ever called him by his first name or a typical expletive. Neither of them had ever seen Lyon cry this much either; he had been antsy, upset after Galuna Island, but he hadn’t cried, not the way he was crying now.
“There’s nothing you can do; you did everything you could to look for him, all you can do now is… Cry,” Yuka murmurs. He hopes that his tone is warm enough that it discounts how inarticulate the words really are, and judging by the way Lyon’s shoulders drop when he places a comforting hand on his back, it seems to work. “You don’t have to be ashamed of feeling or acting like this, Lamia Scale is here for you, no matter what’s happening with you.”
“Lamia Scale, and us, Lyon.” Sherry corrects, and Yuka hums his affirmation.
They let him cry. They let him cry for hours, rubbing circles into his back and muttering kind, affirming words into his ears. Lyon eats half a sandwich that Toby brings him from the kitchen. Eventually, he calms down when Jura comes round and begins to talk. He doesn’t talk about anything in particular, but listening to him talk has made Lyon calm down in the past. It works this time, too, because when Jura’s one hour into a long-winded lecture on sustainable electric power, Lyon starts to drift off.
He gets the most sleep he’s gotten in a month.
—
His breakdown isn’t acknowledged after it happens, but things definitely change.
He stops taking as many jobs, starts letting himself stop moving and breathe. He lets himself linger around the guild hall again, leaning against the bar and lounging around tables. He chooses his work methodically. He does it under the watchful eyes of his guildmates, because even though they don’t talk about what happened, they all know; they all know that the Lyon that’s been running around, that’s been absent for months, was a Lyon so sick with grief that he didn’t know what else to do. Keeping himself going until collapse was the only thing he could do. Because of his year of hard work, of self-inflicted psychological warfare, Lyon has enough cash saved that he can afford to take it easy for a while.
And truly, he loves being around the guild: He loves Sherry and her weekly confessions of love. He loves Yuka and the sarcastic, yet fond way he rolls his eyes at their friends. He loves Toby and his obliviousness. He loves Jura and his mindfulness, he loves Master Ooba and her spinning.
So he’s not surprised that he starts to feel lighter.
It's a combination of everything, he thinks; of the reduced workload, of the presence of his guild, of his newfound acceptance. They don’t make him feel better, per se, because he wasn’t sure that he ever felt bad before. But he feels the weight gradually lift off his shoulders, feels the way it dissipates in his stomach and the way it leaves his lungs. He starts to notice the way the breeze tumbles and laughs through his hair, the way the chill in the morning air feels refreshing rather than biting. He opens his eyes to the light filtering through the guild windows, to smiling friends, to Margret’s rippling canals. He starts noticing the smell of warm meals, of Spring flowers. He starts noticing the sound of laughter again.
He begins to really feel again, too. He feels warmth, he feels joy, he feels grief. He feels a lot of grief, so much sometimes that it’s insurmountable, all consuming. But he feels it now, at least, and his friends are with him. They hold him, they talk to him, they’re there for him.
On the second anniversary of Fairytails’ disappearance, Lyon visits the memorial site.
He goes alone—even though his friends offer—and he only manages to get himself to Magnolia on the last train at night. The thought of going makes him nauseous, but the thought of not going makes him feel even worse; his brother died two years ago, and he hasn’t been to see his grave yet.
So he forces his guts to stay inside him when he gets on the train, forces his feet forward when he reaches the Magnolia platform, and forces himself to keep it together as he trudges up the hill and towards the guild hall. He doesn’t think that he’s going to cry yet, but his hands shake with such a fervor that he thinks he might be dying; he has to keep it together until he sees the grave, at least. Until he puts his flowers on the memorial, until he tells Gray that he’s sorry he hasn’t swung by. Until he sees it with his own eyes, he can’t run. He can flee back to Margaret afterwards, in the morning when the trains start running again.
Magnolia seems possessed when he walks through it, not only because of the cloud of melancholy hanging around him. Everybody he passes seems just as upset as him, just as beaten by sadness and just as rough with wear and tear. Most of them ignore him as he strides past, but some of them look at him with wide eyes, with recognition. He’s pretty sure that they recognise him from the newspapers, as a wizard from Lamia Scale. Maybe they recognise him as a wizard who knew the late members of the Fairy tail guild, come to pay his respects.
He can’t blame them for looking when that’s exactly what he’s doing.
The guild hall looks more run-down than he remembers it being, but there are lights strung up around the entrance and there are hundreds of flowers leaned up against the building. Something in his heart twangs, and he has to take a deep, deep breath before he pushes open the doors to the hall.
He is instantly struck by the idea that this might be the wrong decision.
The moment he opens the doors, a dozen sets of eyes turn to stare at him. They’re all huddled together around the same three tables, with a few outliers hunched over the bar or standing, isolated, a few feet away. Their eyes are all tired, confused, surprised to see him, and there are a few moments of heavy silence before Lyon takes a few hesitant steps forward. With every step, he feels his stomach drop further, and the weight on his shoulders grows heavier. He gets halfway across the guild hall before a man stands from one of the tables, and looks at him.
Lyon freezes.
“You’re Lyon Vastia, from Lamia Scale.” He says, voice gravelly, hesitant. Lyon can’t move as he starts to walk towards him, and he forces himself to look him in the eye as he lessens the gap. His hair is dark, messy. He looks exhausted, ragged, and tired. He looks grief-stricken.
“Yes, I am. I’m sorry that I missed the official memorial service, but…” He hesitates, and the man doesn’t break eye contact. He feels his hands start to shake even more. “The job I was on took longer to complete than I expected.”
It’s a lie, a lie bad enough that he’s sure the man in front of him can see through him completely. He’s sure that every single person in the guild hall can see through him, because so many eyes are pointed in his direction that he can’t sound convincing for the life of him. A thin man with orange hair is watching, eyes wide. So is the man next to him, with dark hair and a somber expression. A young boy, maybe seven or eight, is staring. He isn’t even watching, he’s staring, so intently that it makes Lyon feel even sicker.
The man looks him up and down, slowly, languidly. His eyes are deep-set, hostile, and he bares his teeth as he looks back up at his face.
“You haven’t been ‘round here yet,” he says, and his voice is so surprisingly harsh that it makes Lyon wince. It makes his eyes blow wide, so big that he can see everything, and he takes an instinctive step back as the man points his finger and glares. “It’s been two years. The rest of your guild’s been here but you-”
“I know.” He croaks.
“You-”
“Dad, that’s Gray's brother.” The young boy interrupts, and Lyon feels something in the world shift for the second time in two years.
The man’s mouth clicks shut. If anybody wasn’t looking at him before, they definitely are now.
The little boy's eyes are wide, so impossibly huge as he stares up at him. In the silence, he’s made his way over to them, to his father, and his little hands are clasped onto the man's white coat and tugging and tugging in an attempt to get his attention. His hair is so black, brushing against the back of his neck and falling into his eyes. The clothes he’s wearing—A black vest, a scarf—remind him of Natsu Dragneel. The determination in his eyes reminds him of Natsu, too. He suddenly realises that he’s heard of this boy before; he’s Romeo, a guild-kid Gray told him about a few weeks after the defeat of the Oracion Seis.
Gray said that Natsu called him his little brother.
“That’s Lyon, dad. He also uses Ice-Make magic, right? It’s Gray’s brother, Lyon-” He continues, and realisation starts to dawn on his fathers face. The mention of Gray seems to crack something in his facade, and he reaches down to cradle the side of his son’s head.
Lyon remembers how Ur used to hold his head like that; back when the snow was too cold for him and when he was sad about his parents. She used to do it to Gray, too. When she was upset about her daughter, she would pull the two of them into the crook of her waist and rest her palms against the sides of their heads. She would huddle the two of them together on the couch. She would make her hands cold and cradle them when they had a fever. He watches Romeo and he remembers; he remembers being so young and so little. He remembers Gray.
The recognition on the man's face melts into sympathy, pity, solidarity.
“I’m Macao, this is my boy, Romeo.” He says, and glances down at his son. Romeo’s eyes are still locked onto him, wide and determined. “I’m sorry… for your loss.”
“And I for yours.” He replies, and his voice cracks. He can’t help it, and when it trembles, the look on Macao’s face melts even further. “I would… I would appreciate it if you would let me visit the memorial. I know it’s late.”
There isn’t even a moment of silence, of consideration, before Romeo launches himself forward. It almost snaps Lyon out of his melancholy stupor, because he jumps with so much vigour and hope, that it shocks him. He pulls away from his father to stand in front of him, and finally rips his eyes away from Lyon to look pleadingly back at Macao.
“I can take him there! Please, dad, I can show him where it is.” He asks, and Lyon feels something in his stomach flip again. He looks so hopeful, so expectant.
Unlike Romeo, Macao does hesitate. He looks down at his boy, at the pleading, wide eyes, and back up at Lyon. He seems pessimistic, and though his expression doesn’t harden again at the sight of him, Lyon understands that he’s worried. Not for him – Lyon is grown, can handle himself. He’s worried for his son. Is he worried that Lyon will hurt him in some way? Or is he worried about Romeo visiting the grave again? Lyon can’t tell, can’t see through his own haze of melancholic stress for long enough to see. But after a suspenseful, hesitant moment, Macao rolls his shoulders back, and nods.
“Yeah little man, If he’s alright with you tagging along then of course.” He says, and his tone is warm, parental. It’s the same way that Ur used to talk to Lyon and Gray.
Romeo grins, genuinely, brightly, like he’s forgotten where he’s about to lead him, and whips his head back around to look up at him. At the sight of his expression, his excitement falters, but the smile doesn’t disappear completely.
“Is it alright if I tag along?” He says, emulating his father. He looks so… hopeful.
And Lyon nods, because his throat is tight and standing in the guild hall feels like slow suffocation. He doesn’t want to cry in front of this kid, but he knows that if he says no then somebody else will have to take him there, or he’ll have to say something else. He knows that he can’t open his mouth without bursting into tears. He remembers when he and Gray were that old, when they were bothering and pestering Ur like it was yesterday. He thinks, if he squints, he might be able to see some of that youthful carelessness in Romeo’s eyes, some of Gray’s humility wrapped in Natsu’s arrogance.
Romeo doesn’t speak while they walk. He leads Lyon out of the guild hall, through a back entrance behind the bar and through an old storage cupboard. When Romeo pushes open a heavy door to a grassy, almost-enclosed space behind the guild hall, Lyons first thought is oh, I could have just come around from the front. I didn’t need to go inside. Lyon’s second thought is drowned out by a wave of deep and incredible sickness, because in front of him is what he can only presume is a gravestone.
More specifically, one large, ornamental gravestone, flanked on either side by a dozen smaller pieces of carved rock.
For a few seconds, Lyon can’t breathe. The makeshift graveyard is enclosed by plants, tall hedges and magnolia trees wrapping everything tightly, intimately. There’s grass beneath his feet, but the entire area is covered in flowers; flowers, stuffed animals, cakes and little carved statues. There are small, thin pathways leading up to each ornamental headstone, but besides where he stands, the rest of the ground is covered. It’s covered by love, he thinks, by appreciation, by mourning citizens of Magnolia and the surrounding towns.
When he does breathe, all he can smell is florals.
“I’m learning fire magic. Just like Natsu.”
Romeo’s voice cuts through Lyon’s contemplation, and he tears his eyes away from the graves to look down at him. He isn’t looking at him, he’s staring, eyes alight, determined, at the tall headstone in the middle of the flurry. He’s staring, and his hands are clenched into fists at his side. Lyon feels his stomach drop.
“Fire magic? Really?”
“Uh huh! So I can be just as strong as him when I'm older.”
Subconsciously, Lyon flicks his eyes back to the graves, and he finds the one he wants in less than a second.
The name Gray Fullbuster stands stocky and bold on one of the smaller headstones. It’s carved, prettily and intricately, with small snowflakes around the title; Lyon thinks that if he squints, they might start to drift downward, fall onto the ground and blanket the grass around the grave in a thin layer of snow. Underneath the name, a small plaque reads: A loyal friend, an incredible wizard. There are flowers surrounding it, in a dozen shades of blue. There are multiple pairs of underwear there, too. Lyon isn’t sure if they’re an expression of attraction or a tribute to his unconscious stripping habit.
He breathes in, he breathes out.
“He’ll be proud of you. If you train, then there’s nothing you can’t achieve.” His voice feels hollow in his throat, feels sick, feels stuck, but he glances back down at Romeo and notices that the fire in his eyes only grows. He realises, subconsciously, that maybe he needs to conjure some of that fire for himself.
He swirls his hands, both of them, and feels the cold bite of ice in his palms. He takes a few steps, and places, gently, the bouquet of frozen flowers in front of Gray's headstone.
—
The flowers don’t melt.
The rest of them do, they wilt under the heat of Magnolia sun and get shovelled into compost. They get moved away, they get fed to worms. But Lyon’s bouquet stays stock still in front of Gray’s headstone. It doesn’t melt for days, for weeks, for months.
—
Three years after Fairytail’s disappearance, the Magic Council holds the Grand Magic Games.
Something inside Lyon twitches when he realises he doesn’t recognise any of the Fairytail contestants; part of him expects Erza Scarlet to strut out and blow half the competition away, for Natsu to make a dramatic entrance or for Gray’s ice to descend on the stadium like a fog. It doesn’t happen, and Fairytail gets annihilated. They settle into last place by the second challenge and Lyon has to pretend that something in his gut doesn’t flip when he sees the anguished look on the Fairytail mages’ faces.
He knows that they aren’t thinking about the loss. They’re not worried about pride, about status, about recognition. They’re thinking about the guildmates who would have relished the chance to compete, the ones buried deep in the middle of the sea.
Lamia Scale comes in second, a narrow defeat against Fiore's new strongest: Sabertooth.
He isn’t sure how he feels about Sabertooth.
He likes their no-nonsense attitude, how they seem to know what they want and go straight for it rather than mucking around like Fairytail did. He doesn’t like the muttering he hears about how it’s time Fiore had a new powerhouse guild. He’s indifferent to how unfriendly the members are. He doesn’t like their arrogance, so staggering that they don’t look the other guilds in the eyes. He doesn’t like how ruthless they are, how they fight to incapacitation rather than surrender. He doesn’t like the way they sneer. He doesn’t like the way they seem to care little about each other. He doesn’t like the dragonslayers.
He tells his friends that he’s indifferent to them, that he doesn’t care about the new powerhouse guild taking over the Fiore tabloids. But he’s lying, and he freely admits it to himself one night while he’s staring out over the Margaret Canals.
The street is empty, the lamps are flickering. He’s free to talk to himself out loud without others thinking he’s losing his marbles. It’s a habit he’s developed since visiting the memorial site.
“Sorcerer Weekly has been calling them the new Fairytail,” he says to himself, letting his voice carry out across the water. It’s cold tonight, enough that clouds of hot air escape his lips with every breath. He can barely feel it. “But they don’t have the heart, the camaraderie. I haven’t seen half of the members speak to each other.”
The water doesn’t respond. Neither does the night, the sky, or the streetlamps.
“They couldn’t be the new Fairytail if they tried. Sure, they have a couple of dragon slayers, but so did Cait shelter, so did Phantom Lord. They can’t pretend to have a soul like you did.”
He cringes at himself when he says the word you. He’s been slipping like this lately, talking to somebody rather than himself. He knows that the somebody is Gray, that he’s subconsciously trying to reach him in the same way he knows he can reach Ur; by talking to the water, by pretending that she’s still out there, somewhere, watching him. He doesn’t think that Gray’s doing the same, but the part of him that speaks to himself hopes.
“Nobody can.” He finishes.
The water ripples. The night carries on.
A few months later, Sherry adopts her little cousin Shelia. She’s shy at first, distraught that her mother didn’t want to take her across the continent where she needed to move; but as the weeks go by and she starts spending more and more time at the guild, she blossoms like a flower. She’s a delight, so enthusiastic and bright that sometimes it hurts to look at her. She and Sherry share the same pink hair, the same meek smile, the same passion for love and romance. It doesn’t take long for Shelia to start making jabs at Sherry’s love life like the rest of them, it doesn't take long at all for her to settle in as a proper Lamia Scale member.
Her presence is so bright, so warming, that some of the grief in Lyon’s heart starts to melt.
He has less time to think about Gray because so many of his days get filled with looking after Shelia. Sherry thinks that he’s responsible, that he could use something to focus on, so he places him in charge of looking after her while she’s out; when she’s on jobs, when she’s on dates. The spare bedroom in his apartment turns into a makeshift room for her, and every second morning he walks her to the guildhall before she runs off with a few friends her own age.
And truly, Sherry’s right when she says he needs something to focus on, because he starts to love Shelia like she’s his own cousin.
He takes it upon himself to train her, to teach her how to harness the magic power under the surface layer of bubbling energy. He teaches her how to meditate, how to breathe, how to cast miscellaneous Ice-make spells. He teaches her how to cook pasta, because she doesn’t know how. It’s like Shelia spends more time with him than with Sherry, because soon he’s the person she’s coming to when she wants something; one Friday evening, she asks him if he and Sherry will take her to the beach the next day. She asks him, and something inside him starts to calm.
He breathes in, he breathes out, and he says yes.
The days go on like this, weeks and months passing by while Lyon’s head grows clearer. The grief in his heart, in his stomach, in his hands, stays ever-present and haunting, but it feels lighter when Toby and Yuka crash into him during a light-hearted brawl. It feels lighter when Shelia gives him delighted hugs in the mornings. It feels lighter when he hears laughter, when he feels the cool Margaret air brushing through his hair and against his cheeks.
The grief feels lighter, and he feels lighter.
—
On the third year anniversary of Fairytail’s disappearance, Lyon had visited the guildhall slightly earlier. The sun had been setting in the sky, almost sunk completely beneath the horizon by the time he managed to walk through the front door; he had become a familiar face by then, dropping by at strange hours and un-significant dates to sit and stare at Gray Fullbusters headstone. He knew the guild had been expecting him, but he hadn’t been as prepared as he thought to see the stricken looks on their faces. He hadn’t prepared himself for fresh grief, for deep sadness and gritted teeth. He felt it himself, but he hadn’t prepared to see it in others.
On the fourth year anniversary of Fairytail’s disappearance, he visits the guild in the daylight. The crowd isn’t as large as it had been the years prior, but he lets them watch as he puts another bouquet of frozen flowers on Gray’s headstone. He doesn’t linger this time. He says hello to Romeo, who looks so much bigger than he had two years ago. He says hello to all of the guild members, but doesn’t meet any of their eyes.
He feels lighter than he ever has in Magnolia when he heads back towards the train station.
On the fifth year, he does the same thing. He’s there under the late afternoon sun, under the brief shade of the magnolia trees. He sees the light reflecting off the headstone and he feels the most accepting, understanding grief he’s ever felt.
He doesn’t feel good, not in the slightest. But he feels better, like he understands something now that he hadn’t before. He meets the guild members eyes this time, holds himself with grace, with acceptance. He notices that they’re holding themselves much the same.
And then, just before the sixth anniversary of Fairytail’s disappearance, Lyon meets Ultear.
She knocks on the door of his apartment when the sun has finished setting beneath the horizon. Shelia’s out househunting with Toby and Yuka, helping them pick an apartment because they’re both blind to aesthetics. Sherry’s on a date. Lyon is alone in his house, about to start making himself dinner when he hears the quick rapping on his door. He thinks that it must be Sherry, come to see him after her date went terribly; though her knock is usually accompanied by her voice, with a song, with an announcement that it’s her.
And because he thinks it’s Sherry, he doesn’t look through the peep-hole before he swings the hinges open.
Instead of curled pink ringlets, his eyes fall upon hair that's black and pin-straight. Instead of wide, trusting eyes and the pool of tears he expects, he sees narrowed pupils, suspicion, hope. Instead of an older version of Shelia, he sees a younger version of Ur.
He feels something in the world shift, for the third time since Gray disappeared.
“Lyon Vastia.” The woman says, voice low, calm, hesitant. “You trained under my mother, Ur, when you were a child. With Gray Fullbuster?”
There's a momentary, suffocating silence.
“Yes, I did,” He replies, voice tight. He can barely breathe when he speaks, and he watches some of the tension in the woman's shoulders lessen as he nods. The confirmation that he is who she thinks seems to calm her, and she takes a small, affirming step forward as Lyon sucks in a sharp breath. “You’re- How are you- Ur said that…”
“Ur believed that I was dead. I wasn’t.”
“I-”
“Come get a drink with me. I would like to talk, if you’re amenable.”
“About what?” He forces out, and the woman’s eyes soften.
She has Ur’s eyes. The same suspicious resting expression, the same creased skin and the same caring pupils. Her irises are the same. Her hair is the same, albeit longer. She has the same build, the same shoulders, the same hips; she’s a carbon copy, no doubt the daughter of the woman he considers his mother. And something about her — Probably the similarity, how close she looks to something and someone he considers safe. His relation to Ur, his relation to Gray, maybe — makes him want to agree without hesitation. He wants to go with her.
“About everything.” She says, and Lyon feels his shoulders drop, in defeat, in relief, he doesn’t know. “About you, about me, about Ur, about… Gray.”
She hesitates before saying his name. Lyon barely hesitates before saying yes.
—
They spend all night in the bar by Lyon’s apartment, and Lyon learns that Ultear is filled with guilt.
There are other things, of course, but they’re all overshadowed by guilt. The grief she feels, for her own mother, for Gray, for everything, is drowned in the guilt she feels over the part she played. Lyon learns that she was on Galuna Island, that Zalty was a disguise she created in her mission to revive Deliora. She clasps at Lyons hands and bows her head and lets the guilt spill from her lips, from her eyes. She tells him that she can’t apologise enough for trying to do something that would harm so many people, that would harm him.
Lyon tells her that he was only trying to do the same thing. Ultear shakes her head and tells him that it wasn’t the same at all.
Then she tells him that she was on Tenrou Island, too.
“We wanted to find Zeref, free him from the island.” She says, eyes dry, but voice cracking. Her hands are still clasped in his, glass of whisky forgotten on the bar beside them. “We wanted to unseal him and use him to create the ultimate magic world. We didn’t plan for Fairytail to be on the island when we made our move.”
Lyon doesn’t move his hands, but his eyes go wide as he lets her speak.
“I had faith that Grimore Heart would be able to defeat them, but obviously my belief was based in arrogance. Fairytail was strong, so much stronger than I believed, and when I got word that some of our members had been defeated, I had planned to put Meredy, Zeref and I on a row-boat and find our way back to the mainland. I didn’t- We didn’t anticipate the dragon.”
Lyon freezes, colder than his own magic.
“What?”
Ultear’s eyes cast downwards, and she nods.
“That was the other reason I came here. I wanted to tell you the truth about how Tenrou Island disappeared.”
Ultear tells him about Achnologia. She tells him about how she and Meredy held each other when the island disappeared in a burst of light. She tells him about how large he was, how he seemed bigger than the sacred tree standing tall. She tells him about the waves, about the fear, about the silence in the wake of what seemed like a deeply powerful magic spell. She tells him about the magic council boats in the distance, about the rippling water, about the feeling of their mother when she dipped her fingers in the ocean.
Then she tells him about Gray, about how they fought just before the island went down. She tells him that she lied in Ur’s name, that she was trying to convince Gray to cast Iced Shell, to kill himself so he’d be out of the way. She tells him that after she was defeated, Gray took pity on her. About how she tied his shirt around her waist and told her to look into herself, to try and be the person that she wants to be rather than the person she believed she should be; vengeful, angry, hateful. She tells him that there was so much love in his eyes, that the realisation that she was Ur’s child seemed to ease him, seemed to make him feel more than he let on.
She tells him that Gray looked at him like a brother.
He learns that Crime Sorciere is a guild made from guilt, too. Jellal Fernandes and her daughter, Meredy, are all consumed by it, by the shame they feel, by the atrocities they’ve committed. Jellal is recovering from the Tower of Heaven and the summoning of the Oraceion Seis. Meredy has nowhere else to go, and looks at Ulltear like a mother.
Lyon tells Ultear about his grief, about the year he spent on his toes, about every distraction he’s used to cope with the death of his brother. When he talks about Gray like a brother, tears prick at the corner of Ultear’s eyes. They don’t fall, don’t become more than little pricks, little stars. But the emotion is there, and it stays until the sun rises, until Margaret is bathed in morning glow and filled with the smell of sea-salt.
They only leave the bar because Ultear’s friends come to find her; Jellal and Meredy poke their heads in through the bar doorway, and Lyon nods towards them as Ultear breathes, in and out.
“Would you like to meet them? Meet Meredy?” She says, and Lyon casts his eyes towards the two lingering in the doorway.
He’s seen Jellal before, on the Lacrima’s, when Seigrain was a member of the magic council. But he's never met Meredy; she’s short, mature-looking. Her hair is pink, lighter than Sherry’s but just as curly. Her eyes are pink, too, and he feels the same pang of melancholy he felt the first time he met Romeo Conbolt.
“I would love to.” He says, and Ultear doesn’t hesitate before she leads him over.
—
There’s a part of Lyon that thinks he’s foolish.
There’s a part of him that wants to weigh the years of knowing Gray Fullbuster against the years of not knowing him. He had a brother for a year and a half under Ur’s training, but after she sealed herself in ice, Lyon didn’t consider Gray anything other than the enemy. Even after the fall of Deliora, Lyon’s feelings towards Gray were complicated, ashamed. Was he still family then? Were they only really brothers — unspoken, he thinks — after Lyon was almost killed by Racer from the Oracein Seis?
Sometimes he thinks that he’s silly for feeling this kind of familial grief.
But the feeling of stupidity has grown less over the last six years. Lyon knows that they’ve been brothers since the moment Ur pulled Gray out of the wreckage in his small Isvan town; since they brought him home to Ur’s modest hut. It doesn’t matter how long they were apart, how much he hated him.
Lyon thinks he figures out how to live again in the sixth year of Fairytail’s absence.
The feeling lingers sometimes, flutters to the front of his head when the moon is high and the stars hang over his head. It tells him that he’s taken too long, that Gray isn’t really his brother, that he doesn’t deserve to mourn him like family. But on those nights, when the air is so cold he feels a twitch in his fingers, he takes a breath and looks into the Margaret canals and shakes his head.
Lyon feels better, he feels good. He’s reckoned with the loss and he’s understood it. He’s cried every tear that his eyes can muster, he’s strained every muscle, he’s drunk himself silly and he’s drunk himself half-dead. He’s tried every coping mechanism, he’s fallen down every hole. He’s spent hours speaking into the night and hoping for a response, and he’s never gotten one.
He accepted it a long time ago, but now he thinks that he understands it.
And then something happens.
Something shifts, back to the way it was before.
—
Lyon hears rumors first.
He’s on a job in Tuly Village again, a small one with Sherry, Yuka, and Toby involving the removal of dangerous pests along the border of the town. The murmurs of confusion creep through the fields and plains towards them, the quiet mutterings spreading from person to person. Lyon hears whispers as they walk towards the centre of the town, work done for the night. He sees confused looks, disbelieving expressions.
“-Sprung up out of nowhere!” He hears a man say, arms cast into the air as he bounces between his feet. His shoes clack against the cobblestone. The air around them is cool, and the clouds that permeated the sky all day are being brushed away by the wind. “It’s like it wasn’t there, and now it just is!”
“Don’t be foolish.” Someone else says.
“It’s been gone for seven years, it can’t be back.”
“If it came back, does that mean that they came back with it?”
“Is there any other news?”
The more Lyon hears, the more electric the atmosphere feels. With every mutter of the phrase seven years, with every whisper of the word island, something in his gut tightens, and the feeling of white-hot confusion grows. The air seems to crackle with rumor, with the hum of gossip; Lyon’s fingers start to shake.
His guildmates hear it too, and he knows that the same thought is striking them. With every new mutter Toby’s eyes twitch, and with every whisper, Sherry bounces on the balls of her heels. None of them say anything about it, simply continuing their conversation about the day’s work with a calm, nonchalant tone in their voices. Yuka babbles on about the pests, about how he’s afraid they’ll spread to the neighboring towns if they’re not warned. His voice only trails off when they pass someone particularly loud; when they pass someone gossiping over the very thing they’re all thinking about.
They manage not to say anything until they reach the inn they’re staying at. It’s old, but it has beds, and they’re staying for free due to the job being commissioned by the mayor of the village.
The moment they walk through the door to the front restaurant, Lyon beelines for the bar.
“What’s happened?” He says, voice almost breaking as he leans incessantly towards the barkeep. “What’s everybody whispering about in the town centre?”
The barkeep looks up from the glass she’s drying. Her eyes are wide, quizzical, obviously skeptical about being questioned by a stranger about town gossip. But she raises an eyebrow like she’s the one confused, and sets the glass onto the counter.
“Didn’t you hear?” She says, and Lyon’s ears start to ring. “That island that disappeared all those years ago, the ah… what’s it called? Mate, what's the island called?”
A man halfway down the bar glaces over.
“Tenrou Island, ma’am.”
“Right. Tenrou Island, the one that disappeared about seven years ago: it’s come back.” She shrugs, and the ringing in Lyon’s ears gets louder, and louder, and so loud that he can barely hear the gasps of his friends around him. He’s about to open his mouth and speak, and ask if she knows anything else — anything about the people on the island, when she speaks again like she’s forgotten something. “And you know the wizards that were on the island when it disappeared? Yeah, well, apparently they’re back too; someone saw them in the harbour a few hours ago.”
The ringing drowns out the sound of the barkeep's voice. It drowns out the sound of his friends, drowns out the feeling of their hands clasping at his shoulders and the tingling in his palms. It drowns out the chill creeping up his spine, the violent cold spreading from the tips of his fingers and travelling up his spine.
The Fairytail wizards are alive.
Which means that Gray Fullbuster is alive.
Which means that his brother is alive.
Lyon turns around and starts to run. He can barely think, but he feels the brush of Sherry’s hand against his and he watches Yuka dart out into the street and stop a carriage. The driver hesitates, takes a glance at Lyons face, and gestures for them to climb aboard. Lyon doesn’t think before he gets in. His heart is hammering in his chest, and he can feel his hands starting to shake as Yuka and Sherry’s hands curl around them, comfortingly.
Part of him thinks that it has to be a trick, some sort of cruel game that Tuly Village is playing just for him. But it can’t be, it can’t be, because the idea that Gray Fullbuster is alive again, docking in Hargeon and making his way back to Magnolia, makes his stomach so tight he’s scared he’s going to spill his guts.
He wants to believe it’s true. He really, really wants to believe it, but he can’t until he sees it with his own eyes.
—
Jura’s already waiting for them when they get back to the guildhall.
He has a bag slung over his shoulder, furrowed eyebrows and an expression of deep, deep patience on his face. He must have gotten prepared the moment he heard the rumors himself, because they don’t even have to walk through the door completely before he’s striding towards them.
“We can make the next train.” He says, and places a hand comfortingly on Lyon’s shoulder.
Lyon’s hands are still shaking, but at the comforting touch he feels them steady, if only slightly.
—
Lyon calms down on the train ride to Magnolia. He manages to take a couple of deep breaths, lets his lungs fill with hope and his head stops spinning. The ringing in his ears subsides, and he decides, once they finally step onto the Magnolia train platform, that he isn’t going to lose his shit.
It doesn’t matter if the rumors are true or not; Lyon Vastia will not lose his shit in the middle of the Fairytail guild hall. He won’t break down in tears if Gray’s alive, and he won’t break down in tears if he isn’t. He’ll stay cool, calm and collected like ice. He’ll let Jura open the doors, let him catch the first glimpse of the very people — person — whose disappearance turned his life on its head, and he’ll follow behind with enough confidence to keep himself together.
He will stay calm.
But staying calm is harder than he thinks, because the air in Magnolia is different than it was before.
There’s something lighter about it, something happier, more jovial than the atmosphere Lyon remembers from his visits over the last few years. The smell of spring flowers blows with the breeze, and the bubbling sounds of the canal dance and sing, like it’s celebrating. Everybody they pass as they walk through the town is happy; there are grins on every face, there’s light in every eye, there’s excitement in every step. The Twilight Ogre guildhall stands tall and ugly in the city centre, but it feels unnatural in a way that it hadn’t before. As they walk, as the cobbled path turns to familiar dirt under his shoes, the delighted, romantic feeling that Lyon is drawing in only grows.
It’s overwhelming, so much so that Lyon doesn’t need to wait for Jura to swing open the doors to the tiny, derelict guild hall, to know that the whispers weren't lying to him.
The Fairy tail guild hall is filled with people, with at least twenty faces that Lyon hasn’t seen in seven years.
“So I guess the rumors are true.” He says with a feigned grin, loudly enough that the attention of the whole room turns to them. “Fairytail’s back.”
There’s Erza Scarlet, standing tall and assertive in the centre of the hall. Her eyes are narrowed and defensive, but the moment she realises that it’s Lamia Scale, they soften. There’s Lucy Heartfilia, a grin on her face and blonde hair falling over her eyes; she’s standing next to Wendy, whose eyes are just as wide and whose grin is just as big. There’s Natsu, with teeth bared and fire crackling at his hands. He seems elated to see them, positively glowing in the brilliant light of the Magnolia evening. He’s standing with Romeo, and has one of his hands resting on top of his head.
And then his eyes find Gray. He doesn’t see him at first, because the chair he’s leaning back on is half-obscured by a girl with curling brown hair. But the moment he leans around her to get a better look at who’s crashing open the guild doors, Lyon meets his eyes.
He looks the same as he did the last time Lyon saw him, with the same length hair and the same melancholic, wandering eyes. He’s still as tall as he was, still has the same youthful twinge to his skin that Lyon’s lost over the years.
He looks young. Lyon realises that he must look older.
But the moment Gray sees him, he grins. He beams, actually, hoists himself out of the chair and jogs across the small room to meet them, just like Natsu and Lucy do. Lyon remembers the promise he made to himself on the train; he will not start to cry in the middle of the Fairytail guild hall.
And he manages to, for a while. He gets through a cocky, arrogant introduction and answers a couple of questions about Sabertooth and Blue Pegasus. But the moment the Lamia Scale members start to drift apart — When Sherry dances away with Lucy and Jura goes to talk to Makarov — Gray saunters up to him, and raises his hand in greeting.
He holds it there, like he’s expecting Lyon to clasp it and grin at him.
Lyon realises that he is expecting it, because it’s how they would greet each other before Tenrou Island disappeared. So Lyon, instinctively, raises his own hand.
“Sup man, you miss me much?” Gray’s voice is drawling, casual.
Lyon breaks the promise. He starts to cry.
—
They talk for hours. Really, Lyon talks for hours, and Gray interrupts, listens, laughs. He tells him about the last seven years like they've missed a decade together, because they almost have. Gray cringes when Lyon talks about his first year of work, grimaces when he talks about his breakdown on Mt Hakobe. He tells him about getting even closer with his guildmates, about the first year of the Grand Magic Games and the disappointment he knows the other Fairy tail members felt. He tells him about visiting the graves, about his interactions with Romeo Conbolt.
When he talks about Romeo, about how he’s seen him grow so much over the last seven years, something wistful enters Gray’s eyes. He looks him up and down, seems to stop listening for a moment and instead examines his face, his skin, his pores.
He’s older, he realises. He’s seven years older than how Gray remembers him.
He tells him about Shelia, about the adoption of her into both the guild and his own life. Gray tells him that she seems the same age as Wendy. He tells him about her room in his house, about her first solo job. He tells Gray about Ultear, and he watches recognition, sadness, regret fill his expression. He realises that Gray cares a lot about Ultear, no matter how briefly they met. She’s the daughter of Ur, almost their sister in a way. But despite the regret, Gray looks almost relieved that she came to see him. That they connected.
Eventually, Lyon trails off.
He runs out of things to say, emotions to describe, when they’re sitting on the roof of the Fairytail guild hall. The sun is setting in the west over Fiore, the continent of Ishgar bathing in the evening light. Gray is just below him, staring up at the sky with wide, almost sad eyes. His lips are pressed into a line when he glances back at Lyon, and says:
“This is fucked.”
Lyon tilts his head, and lets out a breath. He can hear birds singing, the sound of people drinking and chattering and laughing swirling in the air. The guild is higher up in the hills than it used to be, so the smell of fresh, green grass permeates. Trees are rustling, clouds are drifting.
“Yeah.” He says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. Evidently, Gray does, because the word barely leaves his mouth before Gray starts talking again.
“No, seriously.” He says, and Lyon has to bite the inside of his cheek. Gray looks upset, genuinely upset, like someone has wronged him. His eyes are wide and wet, his tone is angry, mournful. “It’s fucked that… That you had to grieve for someone else — for me — after everything else you’ve had to fuckin’ grieve for.”
“Yeah, well, it isn’t your fault that the world's largest dragon chose to attack an entire island while you were on it.”
Lyon tries for sarcastic, friendly, but it lands flatter than he meant it to. Gray gives a half-hearted snort.
“Hah.” He starts, and closes his mouth before he opens it again. “Still, I'm sorry man.”
Lyon doesn’t need an apology from him. He doesn’t want one, either. All he really wants is for Gray to stay here, on the roof with him, until it gets dark. He wants to drink in the company for as long as possible, until Jura gathers the rest of the guild and tells them that it’s time to go home. He doesn’t want to leave Gray here though, because if he does, he might disappear again. He lets the quiet swallow them up, a comfortable absence of words.
The guild hall shakes underneath them. Someone’s thrown a punch, and the walls and roof rattle with brawl and laughter, Lyon can imagine the spilling of drinks, can imagine Yuka inside trying to stop Toby from getting involved. He lets a smile twitch onto his face.
A few minutes go by; the two of them on the roof, listening.
“I mourned you too, y’know.” Gray says, voice rough, quiet. The tone isn’t jarring enough to shatter the peace, but the words almost are. Lyon looks at him.
“What?”
“After Ur… After Ur cast the spell, and after Galuna,” He says nonchalantly, like what he’s saying doesn’t fill Lyon’s heart with something heavy. “Mostly I was just thinking about how I killed my master, ruined the only home and hope I had left. But I was thinking about you, too. About how I ruined your home, about how after losing Ur, I also lost the little fuckin’ twerp I hated… The little twerp I didn’t really hate, I guess.”
Lyon can’t see his face, but he can hear the quirk of a smile as he trails off.
“I hated you then,” Lyon replies, and Gray shakes his head and lets out a snort. “I can’t really say the same.”
“I know.” He sniffs, voice lighter, reminiscent. He obviously knows; he has the scars to prove it. But Lyon feels the need to keep talking, so he coughs, and drops his shoulders.
“But I don’t hate you now. Not in the same way, at least.” He says. He tries to keep his voice light, and it seems to work, because Gray doesn’t droop. His shoulders don’t fall, but he glances back at him and Lyon sees a smile on his face. It’s light, filled with a melancholic twinge, but it’s a smile nonetheless.
“Yeah, nah, totally. Not in the same way. You cried when I died and everything.”
Lyon snorts. The phrase cried when I died makes his stomach flip, but Gray looks amused, succeeding in his attempt at being funny. Maybe it’s not an attempt. Maybe he’s being genuine.
“Maybe, but it took me a while.” He sniffs. Gray rolls his eyes.
“Whatever, dickhead.” His voice is light, but it gets heavier as he continues. Gravel fills his throat, and his shoulders fall as his eyes wander, like he’s thinking. “But after Galuna, too. I felt like I was grieving it all over again, like it was a fresh scar. Grieving my master, grieving my…”
He trails off. A silence hangs heavy in the sky.
“...Brother.” Lyon finishes for him.
Something in Gray’s expression changes when Lyon says the word brother. It’s like something akin to floodgates, except instead of tears, he’s met with realisation, with relief. Suddenly, Lyon realises that the word brother might mean something different to Gray, something more intimate, something closer to his chest after what happened to his family. He isn’t sure if Gray had a brother back in his village. Maybe it means more that he’s chosen Lyon; maybe it means more that Lyon has chosen him.
The word lingers in the air like the silence, hanging and dancing with the clouds. Gray’s eyes stop wandering, and they fix on him again. Dark and wide and surprised.
“Did you start calling me your brother while I was gone?” Gray asks, and Lyon thinks that the question might be less of a question, and more-so Gray saying the words out loud, maybe to comfort himself.
“Perhaps.” He says, and Gray’s lips twitch up again.
“Jesus. Dude, were you seriously calling me your dead brother? Motherfucker-”
Lyon snorts, a proper bark of a laugh as Gray leans towards him incredulously. He wasn’t intentionally calling Gray his dead brother, but the words coming out of his mouth are filled with so much poorly-feigned offence that he can’t help but laugh.
“Fuck off, I wish you never came back.” He grins, and swipes at Gray’s shoulder. There’s no heart to it, and Gray deflects it with a half-hearted lean. Then he beams, and shuffles further up the roof towards him, coming to a stop at his shoulder and sitting down again with a laugh.
“No, you don’t. You’re glad that I’m back to fuck with you again. You missed me while I was gone-”
“Ugh. Get away from me.”
“You don’t want me to get away,” he sniffs, still grinning. Lyon can’t find it in himself to shove him away. His skin radiates cold, just like him; It reminds him of Mt Hakobe. “That’s why you’re still here, man. You can jump down any time, but you won’t, because no matter what you say we both know that you missed me.”
He scoffs, but he doesn’t deny it. He hasn’t gotten into the habit of lying since Gray disappeared.
“I did.” He admits with a sigh, and somehow, Gray’s grin widens. He rocks to the side, bumping their shoulders together momentarily. Then a thought strikes him; the word ‘brother’ spinning through his head. “But I didn’t know you told the guild I was your brother, either.”
Gray doesn’t quite falter. The rocking slows for a brief moment, but the grin on his face doesn’t disappear as he turns to look at him. His teeth are yellowed from his smoking habit, and his lips are cracked, chapped. He raises an eyebrow.
“How do you know about that?” He asks, and Lyon hums.
“When I came to visit the memorial for the first time,” he says. Gray’s lips twitch. They turn downwards for a split second, like he had forgotten he had been gone for seven years. Lyon doesn’t blame him; seven years is a long time. “They recognised me as a Lamia Scale wizard, but they didn’t realise who I was until the boy, Romeo Conbolt, told them that I must be Gray's brother.”
Realisation flashes across Gray’s features.
“Ah.” He says, and it’s Lyon’s turn to quirk an eyebrow.
“You talk about me?”
He must say it too curiously, too hopeful at the thought that yes, maybe Gray spoke about him as much as he spoke about Gray over these last seven years.
“Ugh. Yeah, man.” He sniffs, and he turns his eyes up to the sky. Lyon isn’t sure whether he looks up to think, or to avoid making eye contact with him. As he speaks, he decides that it’s probably a combination of both. “I used to tell everyone that I had a big falling out with my brother when we were little. After Galuna Island, Natsu and Erza figured out that it was probably you. And I didn’t correct them because they were right, I guess.”
“Oh.”
“And then after we defeated the Oracein Seis, I… talked about you more, told ‘em I was going out drinking with you. Said you were my brother, whatever.”
“...Really?” He says, and he feels something in his stomach tighten. He’s watching Gray intently, almost staring as he watches the clouds drift through the sky.
“Yeah.” Gray hums, voice lower, croaking. “You know, because you are.”
“I’m what?” He asks. He knows what Gray means, but he wants to hear him say it. He wants the admittance.
Gray looks away from the sky so he can glance at him. He rolls his eyes, and scoffs. But it’s friendly, a few beats away from kind. There’s no heat or hatred behind it.
“You’re my brother, man. Jeez, keep up.” He says, voice mocking, amused, before he looks away again.
The tightness in his stomach starts to travel. It goes up, swimming from the bottom of his lungs to the tips of his ribs. It clenches at his heart, squeezing as it travels through the muscle to his esophagus. It settles in the middle of his throat, a lump in the middle of his airway that he can’t find in himself to breathe around. It makes his face hot, makes his eyes sting with something like relief, and he can feel tears pooling around his eyelashes. He can feel them sitting, waiting, and when he blinks, Lyon can feel them start to fall, start to trickle out the corners of his eyes and tumble lazily down his cheeks. They feel cold, freezing droplets against his warm face.
Gray only looks back at him when he sniffs, a sound he can’t manage to cover up despite how desperately he wants to. His eyes widen, and fill with fear and horror and guilt and sadness and confusion as he shoots his hands up and waves them in front of his face.
“C’mon! Don’t cry, man!” He splutters, and the desperation in his voice makes Lyon sob. He sounds incredulous, like he can’t believe Lyon is really bursting into tears again. A smile twitches onto his face, and Lyon can’t help but grin as he tries frantically to wipe the tears away. “You already burst into tears in the middle of the guild hall!”
“I’m not, I’m not, fuck off-” He half-sobs, half-laughs as Gray reaches out and places his hands on his shoulders. Then his cheeks, then his knees, then his head. It’s like he doesn’t know what to do, and it’s all Lyon can do to start laughing harder.
“I’m- Lyon, seriously.” He stresses, and he laughs back, delightedly, as he grips onto him. “I’m not- I’m not going fuckin’ anywhere again, I promise.”
Lyon reaches out, and clasps Gray’s wrists in his own hands. They’re cold, freezing, just like his own.
Lyon believes him. He’ll believe in his brother through anything.