#/ i'll try again later dhsabdhbsahbd

[lachalaine]

Fairy Tail Verse // Dark Guild Tenebris Caligo

It’s an encounter she doesn’t mean to happen. 

It’s a mistake she doesn’t mean to make. 

But sometimes fate works in only the worst of ways. And she was one of its casualties. 

----- she meets him at age eighteen

In a den. 

A bandits den, to be more precise. One of her more regular odd jobs, taken from a local town that had been... less then receptive to her initial presence. A casualty of a rumor that’d been going around since a few weeks prior, when she’d gotten caught up in another ‘incident’. A job gone wrong, the large mass of another forest being scorched away, with her as the only culprit. 

Technically, they weren’t wrong. She was the main miscreant in that little debacle, though it’d been for a good reason. The thugs had been harder to wrangle this time, and things had gotten quickly out of hand as their magic quickly doubled up with her own. An accumulation of an alchemical fusion that’d torched even a good half of the nearby city district, earning her the ire of one too many city officials, and then some. Enough to put her on a watch list. Enough to make the Magic Council’s Rune Knights take notice. 

Enough to piss off one very angry General. 

She is warned. Once. And then sent away. 

It is not her first encounter with them. 

A string of mistakes only fans the flames, and yet she somehow manages to escape, after paying her dues, after fixing the mostly inconsequential damage she’s wrought. Her work to the few locals who defend her is more invaluable in action then it is in prison, so they say, and so she is pardoned. Once, twice, three and four times. 

But there is a limit. 

One that she doesn’t quite yet hit exactly, when the next she travels to another town further in the north - where she is... rejected, so to speak. Treated coldly, almost unfairly you could say, as the news of her exploits create a rumor so severe that the people grow wary of her. A walking time bomb, as they hear, with the potential to turn the whole town into nothing but a charred memory. 

They are not wrong. But they aren’t necessarily right either. 

Regardless, they send her on her way, without allowing her to stock up on supplies. 

She is traipsing through the mud come exactly an hour later, through cold and humid rain of which she has no cover from. 

It is perhaps... only the beginning. 

Somehow, with every town that she comes upon next, and as her stock of supplies gets lower and lower - the rumor evolves. From walking time bomb to demon, to ravager and demolisher. There is much to be said for a girl who wanders and ruins and wrecks. There is much more to be said when they see her familiars at her side, beasts made of fire and fury with eyes gleaming crimson red; no matter that they do not attack ---- regardless, there is much to be said. 

( it helps of course, that such townsfolk would only listen to an aggravated General, irritated by the errant young woman who constantly slips through his laws, listening to a man who must, must, must have only their best interests in order --

it helps, truly. ) 

They will not give her shelter. They will not give her supplies. They will not give her jobs. And it is when she reaches her fifth town, after having walked miles over the span of a month, on her absolute last leg and just wanting - please, please, please - just one night in a warm inn, just one night with warm food, just one night of rest ----

That she is turned away again. 

Jackie remains in her tent on the outskirts that evening, shivering through the cold and holding her familiars against her chest, yet not even their heated touch could aid the sustained cold that’d appeared to have settled beneath her skin. 

It is not enough. 

She stays for only three days, as far from the town as possible and wracked by delirium with a fever that nearly refuses to settle, and yet her continued presence ( no matter how solitary ) sets the townsfolk on edge. The fever breaks only on the morning of the third day, as her illness having been assisted by her spirits, she is awakened back to radiant sunshine after weeks and weeks of insistent rain. 

She is greeted at her tent by the Mayor of the town. 

A rough and skeevy old man, that provides her with a job. Fairly difficult, and with very little compensation, but should she accept, they would allow her to purchase what she would need and grant her that one night at the inn, provided she take care of a mass of bandits for them. 

A mass of bandits, that they know, would far outweigh the strength of one teenage girl. 

Kill two birds with one stone, right?

In her desperation ( for warmth and acceptance and just one chance to make things right ) --- she accepts. 

---- she never cashes in on her reward from that job. 

Because perhaps they were right. Maybe she was a walking time bomb. An eruption waiting to happen. An inferno meant to turn any plot of land as far as the eyes can see into a desolate wasteland. 

Maybe they were right. Because regardless of their intentions for her, regardless of their expectations on the potentials of what could a sick girl possibly do?? --- she succeeds. But at a terrible cost. 

Because there in that bandits den, is where she meets the one man that would ruin her life. That would change her. That would make everything just so, so much Worse. 

Garry. 

It is there that her future dies. And it is there when she helps him, a stranger, a prisoner held captive, a man she’d only meant to help escape, that he turns around and subsequently provides her with a dead end herself. 

She’d been meant to bring the bandits back alive. 

Instead, they are all dead. And not a single one of them by her hand. 

She had controlled the inferno, but only just. But that’s not what the witnesses see. They see puddles of blood and the flicker of a shadow drenched in black. They see pillars of flame and a lone woman standing right in the midst of it. 

They see the fires quickly settling outwards and towards the town, because the damn girl couldn’t get her sudden shock in order. 

The Magic Council is there - that bastard General is there - before she can get a handle on damage control.  

And it is the most damage she has ever caused. The wreckage to the surrounding forest is too great, and with her fluctuating emotions getting out of hand and with the string of bodies left in her wake ( there are other prisoners, other innocents, he’d left no one spared ), it is the last straw. 

They order her to stand down. And before she can --- before she can even wrap her head around anything, enough to even think to do it --- 

A flicker. 

And she is gone. 

She is stolen away, literally. By Garry. 

And to the Rune Knights, such thievery of her very being can only amount to one thing -- 

A fugitive on the run. 

--- but he does not let her go. For despite her anger and despite her rage when she comes back to herself, she is weak. Tired. Exhausted. Unable to even stand as the backlash of her illness quickly catches up to her, and as he carries her to safety, he tells her he’ll take care of her, just like she took care of him. Just like she’d saved him. He’ll keep her warm and safe and everything will be okay. 

She’ll never have to worry about the cold again. 

When she wakes up, hours and hours and even just a few days later -- she is underground. Tucked into a warm bed, and with warm food greeting her at her bedside. The girl is kept safe, and kept clothed, and taken very well care of. 

And he is there, greeting her with a smile. 

It is her first sense of genuine warmth felt in weeks, and she is weak to it. To him. Even if she hates it. 

Because he is a murderer, but he is warm and gentle and takes care of her. He appreciates her, even if he understands her rage. 

Yet he kisses her, just once, and somehow it fades. 

She is a stupid girl that day. A stupid, and most hopeless girl -- angry and frustrated and on the cusp of young love ---

And he would keep her 

s a f e . 

( such lies are so easily spun, when you find a girl who wants to hear it said )

And at least with him, he’d whispered, as hands laced with her own tugged her through the darkened corridors, towards the others she would soon call comrades 

She would never need to control herself, ever. 

‘ You could burn anything. Anyone. You could reach your potential with us. ‘ 

Because she was meant for something --- more. 

Right? 

Right. But of course. 

No one else would ever understand. 

But he would. He’d promise her that. Always. 

He s w o r e .

He l i e s.

Tenebris Caligo takes her in, and she becomes everything those rumors told her to be. Devastator. Ruiner. Monster. The resident fire starter, the resident ticking time bomb. She is the loose canon and the terror, the one woman army that can and will unleash hellfire on the world if she so much as wishes for it. 

She makes him so proud. And in such pride, and in such infatuation and in such falsities of love --- 

she loses herself. 

. 

..

...

( and yet maybe not. ) 

For even in her wildest rage, for even as her fire burns burns burns ( to the endless heartache of her spirits, to who she would not listen ), there remains perhaps within her --- 

A glimpse of rationality. Of humanity. 

Of --- 

Jackie. 

Somehow, by some luck, she retains herself. But only just enough.

Garry’s hold on her isn’t all that steady. 

For in the months that follow, there are deaths by her hand, undoubtedly. Gruesome deaths, wrought on those of men that were cruel, of who’d stepped too far out of line for the guilds liking, even though they should have known otherwise. Their guilds reign is of terror, the whispers of them are of horror. They are monsters and thieves and pillagers that the Magic Council cannot restrain, too intelligent and too strong to keep contained, and so they continue. For months, for a year, for almost two. 

And then in the midst of those screams, there comes -- an utterance, ushered so terribly softly that not even her comrades could ever hope to hear them. 

For there is a savior --- in one. 

They do not know of which one, only that that they would come quietly. In the night, and when the prisoners are left for dead. The innocents would be set free, cared for and ushered on their way, before their supposed ‘carcasses’ were disposed of by other means. It feels like a fairy tale, almost, but there are those who would swear by such mercy, men and women and children. They would swear on their hopes and lives on it. 

The savior is real, but they cannot speak of them. They will not. 

For if nothing else, they would owe her that much. 

Soon enough, though the rumors remain unnoticed by those that’d mattered, it reaches the ears of one man. An undercover mage from the Council, having settled into the townsfolk to try his hand at acquiring information, in attempts to try to take out the guild. 

He hears of the rumor, and almost doesn’t believe it. But the whispers are too strong, and the strength and hope of those who utter of it is steadfast, and perhaps -- there must some truth to the rumors, just maybe. 

He finds out when he is taken. 

He finds her when he is saved.

Perhaps he arrives just when she would need him. 

For she is tired, and disenchanted, and the past year has ruined her in more ways then one could count. Her relationship is in shambles, her worth to the guild is based off the chaos only she could create, there is more blood on her hands then she could ever hope to erase. 

She has no one to rely on except for herself, yet she knows that any sense of escape would be - if anything - absolutely futile. 

She has no where else to go. 

But then there is a man whispering to her from his now open cell, waiting for her to take his hand as he tells her of all the rumors he’s heard, of all the things she’s done, of all those that she’d saved --- because it must be her, it must --- 

‘ You don’t want to be here, do you? You don’t want to do this, right? I can have them grant you pardon. I can give that to you. ‘

She does not respond. 

Just hoping to give her a way out.

‘ I can keep you safe. ‘

Her eyes narrow at those words. She remains quiet. 

Jackie turns around, and she leaves. She does not look back. 

...when she comes around again in a weeks time, it is to her surprise. 

For the man is still there. Waiting in his cell, bloody and bruised and aching, but waiting. 

For her. 

He refuses to leave, he says, until she comes with him. 

She opens his cell again, calls him a moron, and leaves. 

And when she returns, he is still there. 

--- her comrades start getting suspicious. For they are used to burned corpses and cadavers. Not a man with a smart mouth that she hasn’t yet taken care of. They jest and they laugh, they wonder if perhaps she’s taken a shine to the man. 

( she doesn’t even know his name ) 

But it makes Garry of all people, very curious. And despite the pervasive frigidness between them, as what’s left of their relationship shrivels into an already endless abyss, he can’t help but wonder. 

Perhaps it is his sudden interest in her again, after so many months of ignorance, that it suddenly snaps the woman back to herself. 

Things were getting --- dangerous. 

It is on the fourth week, upon which the man has relentlessly stayed despite her promise of escape otherwise, that she arrives at just an hour before daybreak, carrying a lone candle and opening his cell for one last time. 

And she offers him her hand. 

At the age of twenty, the man takes her and steals her away into the darkness, upon which her comrades awaken to find her gone - upon which they awaken to find their entire lair burning to the ground. 

They awaken just in time for the bombs to go off. 

They awaken just in time to die. 

This time, she is taken away, and this time -- she is kept safe. Brought before the Council and the Queen in chains, yet requested for pardon by those of which she’d saved, her honor upheld by those who’d been the stalwart proof of her mercy. The mage is kept restrained and tightly guarded until her sentence can be decided, and though the General makes an appearance, there is little that can be done in his efforts to have her permanently incarcerated. 

The man of who she’d saved ( Theo, he’d told her his name was ) was of higher rank then the General himself could ever hope to be, and his judgement of her makes all the difference. 

In the end, she is imprisoned, but only for half a year, as her merits are taken into consideration. On good behavior, she is let out on parole, and despite being constantly watched by the Council and their guards, she accepts the terms, if only so that she may taste her freedom once again. 

She restarts her life, one more time. 

And in two years time, after traveling on her own and trying to prove herself once again ( if only to herself, so that might come to terms with her own past, who she’s become, and perhaps with her future --- ) 

Fairy Tail comes together once again. And with Theo’s encouragement, and with faltering uncertainty beating in her chest, she arrives in Magnolia at daybreak, in the hopes that perhaps -- maybe ---

She’d find her place here.