Chapter Text
Serafina Justine gasped when she saw her twin brother in the stands at the Grand Magic Games.
Fina and her younger siblings had always hoped they’d see Freed again. Maybe at the Games under the banner of some resplendent and refined guild– not Fairy Tail, but maybe Blue Pegasus, maybe a similar guild that would play to Freed’s natural elegance and poise.
Not Fairy Tail, not with their reputation, but surely any guild is better than none.
Truthfully, it had been seven years since Fairy Tail had been in the public eye, since over a dozen of their members went mysteriously missing– including their previous master. But there Freed is, under Fairy Tail’s banner, clustered amongst a crowded box seat of mages so varied and powerful Serafina can taste the fizzle of their magic on the tip of her tongue through the screen.
Fina’s gathered in the uppermost drawing room with her younger brother and sister, all three of them glued to the broadcast lacrima in front of them. They haven’t moved, haven’t even drawn breath, since Freed appeared, as if even a second away will make Freed disappear forever. Fina remains glued to her seat out of fear Freed is just a trick of the light, after over a decade of wishful thinking and hoping so hard her chest aches with it, the same way a hollow den scratched out in the spaces between tree roots where a mother fox used to nurse her kits does.
Sofia, twenty-four and content to be a spinster all her life if it means she gets more time with her instruments and her music, shreds apart a kerchief between her cellist’s fingers. Sofia sits so close to Fina their knees knock together between the thick petticoats of their dresses, the two of them almost too big now to fit in the manner the upper crust considers befitting of polite society on the embroidered loveseat.
Safir, twenty, just catty-corner from their loveseat and still close enough to nearly keep his nose pressed to the screen— was he ever even old enough to remember Freed, back when he was a teenager and still in their lives?
No, that isn’t quite right. Freed had never stopped being a part of Fina’s life, just a much more one-sided one, her silent passenger in all she did. She carried him like a lost little ghost, that little boy who never grew up past sixteen wandering along at her side, holding onto her dress skirts like he used to (and would vehemently deny ever having done so) do to their mother when they were young little things, still allowed and afforded the comparative leniencies of childhood before the Justine legacy came falling down like a heavy yoke on their necks.
But Safir must have remembered Freed, for the way he’s absolutely enraptured with the screen, that funny little crease falling in the center of his mouth Fina knew to be a product of his disappointment and frustration. She’d seen it grace his mouth many times, especially when Freed came up as a subject in private conversation— always private, for if their parents knew he was still alive there’s no telling the kind of veritable Hell they’d put him through. Dalliance was not tolerated, something to besmirch the family name so even less so, and the plot to fool them for the past decade even less.
(Their parents had always been harsher on Freed, if Fina was being honest. There were times when she herself could do no wrong in their eyes, but ever since Freed had been gone, she has been the one to carry that weight. She carried his old name, now, if not his identity, if not ever his personality.
What kind of parents would fail to notice the distinct personalities of their children changing? Did they chalk it up to a product of Serafina’s grief, rattled, not only from losing the person closest to her in the world but witnessing his demise at that?
How much did they care, to accept that their child had died in a freak magic accident, knowing how skilled both their elder children were with such a craft?)
Freed’s voice came loud and exuberant through the lacrima’s crackling speakers as the camera pans past Fairy Tail’s banner, the three siblings having had to procure the worst of the lacrimae available so as to watch the Games in secret.
Freed was on his feet and cheering, both cheeks flushed pink and looking almost just the same as the day Fina had left him, though with many more scars and all the more weathered for what little of his skin is visible past his coat and hair. A large man in dark colors laughed and pulled Freed back down to sit. A woman in clear forest greens tapped him on the cheek with her folded fan, grinning. Sofia chuckled under her breath, and Safir’s held breath left him in a deflating rush. Fina’s fingers tightened in the silk of her dress.
—
(Seven years has left their little cottage incredibly overgrown, is the first thought Freed has upon properly arriving home.
Well, “home”, given that home is actually Fairy Tail, but in the seven years— seven years, his brain and his demon echo every time he thinks it— since they’ve been gone the guild has all but deteriorated.
The building itself is ramshackle, they’re at something of a quarter of their former strength, and Macao has been busting his ass to the bone trying to pull through as the master of a dying guild. The guild in general carried with it an air of depression– at least, until they’d come bursting through those flimsy doors.
It was like a ray of light had come shining directly onto the bedraggled faces of those who had remained loyal to Fairy Tail despite so many of the members going missing, and for almost a decade at that.
Freed could swear Wakaba had shed a few tears.
Freed had asked the rest of his team to stay back from the sagging front stoop of their shared home, at least long enough for him to clear the enchantments he had left seven years previous. Wards, guard runes, a few contingency traps should all else fail. Runes of that caliber weren’t meant to be left alone, untempered, for so long, like inflating a balloon nearly to the point of popping and expecting it not to burst.
Ever since he had first started learning his Jutsu Shiki and Dark Écriture, Freed had had it drilled into him to never leave wards or traps alone for too long, as refreshing them would both keep the wards up to date and prevent them from souring.
Vines and thick-growing kudzu, hanks of scraggly weeds and patches of moss, grew up and around the front stoop. Freed sliced through them easily with his rapier, still razor-sharp, only for his own runes to bounce sharply back at him, glaring purple like bruises.
Freed inhaled deeply and dove in.
The mailbox was similarly out of sorts, front flap starting to rust and fall off, revealing the mess of letters stuffed inside. Evergreen frowned.
Any bills should’ve been cut off or rerouted to the guild (and what a fun time Makarov was going to have upon being reinstated as master, sorting through all of the bureaucratic bullshit they’d accumulated) upon Magnolia city council finding out they seemingly weren’t going to come back. All that could remain were personal letters, especially being sent with such consistency as to accumulate so in their mailbox.
Evergreen wedged a few of the most recent envelopes out, having been exposed to the elements and any identifying details being left to run in the rain. But the stationary was all the same, even the ink stains on the backs were the same color.
Evergreen’s brow furrowed, snagging another, untouched, envelope further back with her long nails— nails that had been chipping since Tenrou and were horribly overdue for a fresh manicure.
“Bickslow, dear,” she called.
Bickslow perked up, wandering over with hands in his pockets. Laxus had assigned himself the mission of checking the perimeter of their cottage’s exterior for damage, possessive over his territory like a true dragon, while Freed made certain none of them would be exploded for setting foot inside. At least, if any of them did it would be him, which was a whole other set of concerns.
“Do you recognize any of these?” Evergreen asked, turning a few envelopes over in her palms. Aside from being faded with age, they were all intact, a wax seal in front and a return address in back. Where a recipient address would be were simply the initials F.J. Another letter, another F.J.
Bickslow’s face fell slack past his visor. “Uh, Ever—“
Evergreen grabbed another handful of the letters, flipping them over. Same seal, same return address. Same set of initials: F.J., F.J., F.J.
“Who the hell is ‘F.J.’—“ she remarked, looking up to meet Bickslow’s gaze through his visor, past his broad shoulder, all the way up to a flash of green and the swish of a long red coat disappearing into their dark and dilapidated home.
Bickslow caught Evergreen’s gaze as she turned back, realization dawning, his visor lifted in a rare, full display of his dark, concerned eyes and his normally playful expression drawn tight.
“Ever, we gotta talk. All of us.”)
—
“What’re you all doing in this dusty room?”
The drawing room door banged open with the hiss of unsealed alarm runes.
All three siblings whipped their heads around, equally unprepared.
A sudden, chilling sense of panic crawled down Fina’s skin from her scalp, like beads of ice-cold water poured down her person from the crown of her head. Given enough time the cold flood would begin to pick her skirts up from the floor and carry her away on a tidal wave of fear.
Esmerelda Justine was the first born daughter of seven siblings, and it showed in every aspect of her. Her husband, Solomon, was the last born son of ten, and his wife never let him forget it.
The Justines were a matrilineal family, so though Esmerelda had an older brother, the title of matriarch was immediately passed onto her when she married, and she immediately began producing children. Her siblings, all stripped of their rights and titles but with enough money to keep them quiet in the countryside for the rest of their lives, had none.
(Solomon was the youngest of ten, fighting for every scrap of pride and attention that drifted his way. Esmerelda had been a blessing in disguise, a way for his foolish parents to marry off the cast-off son. Esmerelda was second born, they reasoned, they wouldn’t be losing anything. The title would immediately fall from her parents to her elder brother.
Solomon made a fine Duke, the day he and Esmerelda were married).
(He loved her, surely. He must have. He wasn’t sure how he felt about the money and power she had funneled into his lap otherwise. Surely, it was love.
Surely, surely, it was love).
Duchess Esmerelda Justine, fifty-five-years-old, mother of three adult children with honors and accolades to their names, stood in the doorway of one of the many drawing rooms in her fine home. She held a silk kerchief over her nose to protect from the fine layer of dust in the air, too much for her sensitive allergies.
She was not an imposing woman, though she did demand respect, but her children stared at her as if she were a ghoul.
“Really, it is not good for you to be around so many allergens, my loves.” Esmerelda said, swiping a single gloved finger across the surface of a nearby bookshelf. It came away with the slightest of gray tints in an unsightly smear. She scowled and rubbed the offending substance away from the pads of her fingers. “And what is all that racket in here? Are you calling the Lobsters again?”
The lacrima’s tinny speakers gave a valiant shout. “And an excellent parry from Fairy Tail’s own Laxus Dreyar!”
Fina jumped on her place on the loveseat, many layers of silk and crinoline crinkling beneath her like an exquisite pillow.
Esmerelda stepped closer, with the kind of soundless predator movement she’d had as long as any of the siblings could remember. She peered over the back of her daughters’ seat.
The following sequence seemed to fall in slow motion.
Fina’s eyes flicked to the lacrima. Esmerelda’s followed.
The screen panned away from the action to show Fairy Tail’s section in the stands. A green haired mage rose, tears of joy in his eyes, a darkly dressed man and a brunette woman in clear greens beside him.
Esmerelda’s eyes widened. Her kerchief fell to the floor.
“Is that….”
Safir flicked the lacrima off. Sofia tensed, gripping her older sister’s hand.
“…It can’t be Siegfreed, can it?”
—
(“I have a twin sister named Serafina.” is what the other members of the Thunder Legion were able to eek out of their captain, once they’d sat him down on their dusty red couch and begged.
“That’s it?” Bickslow cried. His babies flew around his head in an agitated swarm, Bickslow's hands thrown up in the air in disbelief. ( “That’s it! That’s it!” )
“That’s all you need to know.” Freed ground out.
Bickslow had never felt intimidated by his captain, his Freed, his oldest friend. But with a single piercingly blue eye directed at him, pinned exactly where he knew the other knew his eyes to be behind the visor, face tipped low and cast in shadow, Bickslow was very suddenly reminded that Freed was known most commonly across Fiore as “Freed the Dark”.
Bickslow knew his best friend well. He had met him during the darkest time of his life, arguably the darkest time of Bickslow’s own life as well. Freed had been the one to free Bickslow from his servitude under his old ringmaster, release the White magic that had been holding him hostage.
Freed had been the one to draw the original three of them together, a scrawny kid covered in scabs and bruises and wearing a stolen red coat several sizes far too big for him. He had helped Evergreen with her seizures, Bickslow with his psychosis, Laxus with his trauma.
Freed had been the one Makarov originally singled out, assigning him the mission to watch over Laxus that the three of them still carried to this day, Freed the most valiantly of all. Freed was a knight, a captain, a hero in shining armor on wings of violet runes who came in to save the day every time without fail.
Bickslow was struck with the very sudden realization that he didn’t really know his best friend.)
—
“It’s not—“ Fina began.
A hand whipped out to grab her by the chin, lifting her crystalline, glacier blue gaze to meet her mother’s own cold cobalt.
Esmerelda’s fingers were short and slim, practiced in the art of writing runes. Her lacquered nails dug into the soft skin of Fina’s cheek.
“Do not lie to me, girl.” Esmerelda hissed between clenched teeth. She gently, tenderly brushed Fina’s bangs out of her eye, revealing both eyes in a rare show of her eldest daughter’s full expression.
The corner of Esmerelda’s mouth tucked down sourly, wrinkles at the corners of her eyes deepening. It distantly occurred to Fina her mother’s frown lines were deeper than those of a smile.
“I’ve always hated the way you style your hair.” Esmerelda stated, still holding her daughter’s face. “It hides those beautiful eyes of yours. A husband would want to see those.”
Esmerelda craned her neck to call into the hall through the still open door. “Solomon?”
“Yes?” the patriarch of the Justine family came calling back immediately, his heavier footfalls descending down the hall.
Esmerelda scowled. “Safir. Turn that thing back on.”
His mother pointed flippantly at the lacrima, still holding Safir’s older sister by the face with her other hand.
Safir cut his eyes between his sisters, a visible bead of tension forming on his brow. Sofia nodded sagely, slumped in defeat in the crisp lines of her smart dress, which hung in place like a starched funeral suit.
Solomon came to stand over his wife’s shoulder, peering down. His mustache, thick and shiny, twitched with his expression, thick brows drawn low over (surprisingly) light eyes. Wrinkles sat heavy around his eyes and mouth. “Are these the Grand Magic Games? I didn’t know the children watched these.”
“Quiet, Solomon.” Esmerelda released Fina’s face, finally, to swat at her husband’s chest, motioning at the screen with her other hand. She looked away, as if the sight pained her. Her voice was thick, as if the words pained her, too.
“Siegfreed is on the lacrima.”
“Siegfreed—… Siegfreed is on the lacrima?” Solomon’s brows drew sharply upward in surprise. He leaned over the back of the loveseat, peering intently at the screen.
True to his wife’s word, the screen panned over the stands again and there was Siegfreed, sitting between his fellows (who Fina surmised must have been part of his guild-assigned team).
Solomon withdrew a pocket square from his suit, daubing at his forehead. He gripped his wife by the forearm, as though one or both of them would’ve fallen down in shock without the support. “I hadn’t the slightest he was alive!”
“Yes, Serafina was so insistent about his demise….” Esmerelda agreed, forehead to her husband’s chest, so caught up in the pageantry of her rescinded grief.
Solomon’s grip tightened, fabric straining between his fingers. His heavy gaze leveled on the eldest Justine child.
Fina felt herself pinned down to her seat, unable to move, creeping chill still sliding down her skin all the way to the bottoms of her feet. She drew a shaking breath, face fully exposed, Sofia gripping her hand so hard both their knuckles turned white with it.
“Serafina.” Solomon began. “You are going to explain everything.”
—
(“Why do I even need to tell you lot any of this?” Freed groaned, collapsing backwards on the couch with a puff of dust, his sentence muffled toward the end as he dragged his hands down his face. He coughed feebly.
Because we love you! Laxus wanted to shout. He wanted to stand up and take his captain by the shoulders and shake him until the sentiment got through his thick stubborn head. Because you’re our Freed and we care about you! We want to know you! All of you!
But Laxus couldn’t say that yet, nowhere near close.
So Laxus sat, and crossed his arms, and silently glared at Freed and hoped that was enough. Laxus’s skin burned from the inside out with the force of his conviction and the effort it took to withhold it, instead of shouting it directly in the face of one of the people he cared about most in the world.
Laxus knew, in that moment, he would lay his life down, no hesitation, no questions asked, for exactly four people, and three of them were in that room with him. It was like the density and the energy of the sun had been packed into his chest and he was being asked to contain it with a mortal vessel alone.
Bickslow and Evergreen were busy having a completely silent conversation through facial expressions and gestures, as they were prone to doing, so engrossed in their own silent conversation they almost missed when Freed spoke next.
“…I have three siblings.” their captain slowly admitted, still leaning back against the couch but now with his gaze cast down at his hands where they sat knit together in his lap. His red coat was spattered with dust on the elbows and shoulders, and undoubtedly even more was clinging to his long silken hair.
Bickslow and Ever snapped out of their conversation, focused in on Freed like the pair of hawks they were.
“How many?” Ever asked, leaning forward on her hands.
Freed rolled his eyes, but acquiesced. He had never been able to deny the three of his teammates anything for long.
“Three. One of them is my twin.” he exhaled, sighing like the breath had been forcibly dragged out of him. “It goes: myself and Serafina, then Sofia, then Safir. My full first name is actually Siegfreed, but I’ll thank you to never call me by it. Fina and I have called each other by our shortened names since we were old enough to understand what a nickname is.”
Bickslow nodded, like he’d known at least part of this.
Laxus grunted. Bastard, keeping it to himself.
“What about your parents?” Ever asked, with the kind of hopeful note someone who was raised unkindly has for a friend whose past they don’t yet fully know.
Freed smiled at her, sour and sad. “Not good. The Justine family is headed by the matriarch Esmerelda, and her husband Solomon, who married in. They are… Duke and Duchess of the Justine house.”
“So you’re royalty!” Bickslow exclaimed. Freed silenced him with an icy glare.
“I am not! I have rejected my birth rite since I ran away at sixteen.” Freed growled.
“So what made you run away, and leave your sister?” Laxus asked.
From the way his teammates cringed Laxus knew it was harsh, but there wasn’t any other way he could think to ask such an essential question. There was something far deeper than the three of them could understand from their friend and teammate’s past, and such heavy secrets would sink them like a poorly constructed ship on deep water sooner rather than later.
“I still don’t fully understand it,” Freed admitted, taking his long hair down to run his shaking fingers through it. “But I also wasn’t fully… cognizant, at the time. I was mad at my sister, some runes were rewritten by accident, and I’ve had a demon in me ever since.”
It took the three of them a few beats to process the new information. Evergreen cleared her throat.
“Pardon?”
“That’s really all there is to it?” Bickslow asked, arms crossed. Freed shrugged.
“I’ve lived with this presence inside me for, Hell, five years now, not counting the time we spent….” he made a vague motion with his hand.
All four of them cringed inwardly, like a practiced dance, every time any mention of Tenrou and their years lost came up.
Freed’s hand fell limply to the couch. “I haven’t the faintest whether it’s a real demon or just a malignant magical presence or what, but going by past experiences it’s more than just a presence.
“The thing is, if my parents found out, I cannot begin to detail the horrors I would face for daring to besmirch the family name— and more importantly, their public image— as such.”
Freed leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees once again. “The family line is matrilineal. If Fina ran away with me as well, the duties of our family would’ve immediately fallen to Sofia. Neither of us would be able to do that to her. So, Fina took the fall and decided the collar would be around her neck, and let me escape.
“We switched, when I ‘died’.” Freed raised his fingers to make quotes. “I had been born under her name and gender, and she under mine, so we switched to the proper ones and I ran away. No one besides our younger siblings— and now, the three of you— has known ever since.”
He leveled them all with a sharp glare, a force like iron pinning the other Fairies back. “If anyone finds out, I will surely die, and I cannot imagine what they will do to Fina for holding the secret so long. You cannot tell anyone.”
“You should put a rune on us, so we can’t squeal.” Laxus immediately piped up.
Bickslow and Evergreen looked at him as though they agreed but hadn’t thought of such as fast— Ever looked a little miffed, actually. She’d always been so competitive.
“I couldn’t.” Freed said, tone final. He spread his hands. “What would I even write? ‘If you spill my secret, die immediately’?”
“Yes.” the other three members of his team said in chorus. Freed rolled his eyes, but a fond note had taken up residence in his expression even so).