The snow was falling outside, slow and lazy, with the indifference of a bored god who had already seen the same winter trick a million times. It was as if the sky itself had finally given up trying to impress anyone and accepted the fact that no one in Magnolia would take winter seriously as long as there was a guild whose unofficial tradition was to blow up its own facade on every national, municipal, or, frankly, any particularly dull Tuesday. The world outside was painted a silent, cold white, but in here, in the female fortress known as Fairy Hills, the usual chaos of warmth, noise, and colours so garish they made my eyes ache in an almost... festive way, was bubbling.
The tree in the centre of the living room looked like a small, ongoing, post-celebration battlefield; magical seals that Levy had enchanted were popping randomly, releasing small clouds of enchanted snow and making Cana jump, nearly spilling her precious drink. Ribbons were unspooling themselves in chaotic spirals across the floor, and bits of shiny paper flew through the air as if they had developed lives of their own. And, considering that the adorable and somewhat hyperactive Lisanna was nearby, animating the decorations with her Animal Soul magic and turning ornaments into little shimmering birds that flew in circles, perhaps they had.
The room was filled with laughter that echoed off the walls, the glorious and almost criminal smell of gingerbread biscuits baking in the kitchen, a temptation that assaulted my legendary self-control with the subtlety of an anvil falling off a cliff, and by a light cloud of golden glitter that hung in the air like a sparkling, festive plague.
No one knew where it came from, but Cana, between a deep and reverent swig from her tankard, had already developed a convincing theory (at least to her) that it was a side effect of an ancient curse activated by poor-quality ale and impure thoughts. (I, with my superior logic and my experience in countless realities, strongly suspected Cana herself. She had the look of someone who sneezes glitter when she's particularly happy or very drunk. Probably both).
As was customary at high-emotional-risk social events such as this, I positioned myself strategically near the tree, in a corner with a comforting shadow and, more importantly, with quick and easy access to the snack table. It was the ideal observation point to witness the chaos unfold with my standard smile of 'I am an antisocial entity with hermit-like tendencies, but I tolerate your existence enough not to disappear in a cloud of smoke, indifference, and silent judgement'. It was my disguise. My distorted version of socialising.
All of my presents, small sacrifices to the altar of human social conventions that I was still trying to understand (and, most of the time, avoid), were there, mixed in the chaotic pile under the tree, wrapped in ridiculously expensive midnight-blue paper and a thick layer of reluctance and denial. Except one. The small, heavy, wine-red velvet box. That fragment of my soul, turned into a gift, still waited patiently in my pocket for the right moment, for the right recipient.
The first to break the childish anxiety of the gift exchange was, of course, Erza. Our Titania always had an almost military sense of duty, an innate need for order, even for trivial activities like giving and receiving little treats. With the solemnity of one bestowing a legendary sword forged in the heart of a falling star upon a worthy king, she extended a rectangular package to Mirajane. There was a mischievous and dangerously competitive glint in her brown eyes.
"Here. I chose it specifically with you in mind, Mira."
"Oh, I'm scared. What is it? A personalised voucher for a telling-off?" Mira replied with that demon-disguised-as-an-angel elegance of hers that, as much as I tried, never failed to irritate me just a little. But she tore the paper with the surgical precision of someone dismembering an enemy with a smile on her face. Her blue eyes widened for an instant. And then... she laughed. Loudly, a laugh of pure disbelief and amusement that made a few heads turn. "Erza... you mad, weapon-obsessed redhead... this is a professional maintenance kit for two-handed swords. The best quality there is."
"Exactly," said Erza, with the pride of a weapon master who has just gifted their most promising student (or their most stubborn rival). "It comes with an enchanted sharpener, a salamander-skin polishing cloth, and a special oil with a rose essence for a perfect glide."
Mira stared at her, with a smile that was pure sweet poison. "I don't even use a sword, you complete and adorable lunatic."
"I know," Erza replied, not losing her composure. "But you should. It would be a shame to waste that strength of yours on mere demonic punches."
"Is that a threat or an invitation for a particularly well-lubricated duel in the future, Titania?"
"An encouragement," Erza retorted, with a smirk of superiority that, to my horror and secret amusement, she was, undeniably, learning from me. "For when you get tired of just using magic and decide to fight for real."
Mira clutched the kit in her hands. "...You know what? As passive-aggressive and terribly intimidating a gift as this is, I feel menacingly flattered. Thank you, Erza."
(Those two,) I thought, grabbing a biscuit from the table. (Are going to end up either killing each other or kissing one day. Or both at the same time. The statistics are still inconclusive, but Eos is certainly enjoying the data collection.)
While the two of them engaged in this armed and rather peculiar flirtation that was their dynamic, Cana, with the discretion of an elephant in a china shop, handed Levy a package with a wax seal she had crudely drawn herself: a barrel of ale with a skull and the warning 'Danger: Fragile and Possibly Illegal'. Levy opened it with the caution of one handling temperamental grimoires that tend to bite, and found a simple but beautiful pen. The body was of a dark, varnished wood with copper details, and a crooked, clearly hand-carved inscription read: "To write daft things faster. – With love (and ale), Cana 🍻".
Levy blinked, her large brown eyes reading the inscription. Then she laughed, that muffled, adorable laugh of hers, her shoulders shaking. "What did you carve this with? A cheese knife or a bottle opener?"
"With a broken fingernail, a strengthening spell I learned by accident, and a lot, a lot of alcohol-induced willpower," Cana replied, already taking a generous gulp from her tankard. "It's a tool for recording our future bad decisions more efficiently, my little scribe of chaos."
Levy clutched the pen, the smile lighting up her small, intelligent face. Sometimes, the best presents were the simplest ones, those that understood your soul or, in her case, the need to pour knowledge (and, occasionally, piping-hot guild gossip) onto paper with the speed of a hurricane.
Lisanna, always a ray of sunshine in girl form, offered an enchanted, magical picture frame to her older sister, which glowed softly with a silver light at a touch. "It... it glows brighter when you're really missing someone," she explained, a little shyly. Mirajane's blue eyes, which moments before had been shining with malice, instantly filled with tears. "Oh my god, I'm going to cry and ruin my half-hour's worth of eyeliner, you perfect creature. Lisanna, you're too perfect, stop it immediately." She hugged her younger sister tightly.
The chaos of presents and emotions continued, until the girls started to notice the discreet packages, wrapped in midnight-blue paper with no frills, save for a small, silver wax seal with the image of a wolf howling at a crescent moon. My presents.
"Uh... Azra'il?" Levy asked, holding her rectangular package with the same caution she would use for a cursed artefact. "Is it safe to open?"
"They don't explode," I promised, with the most sincere expression of innocence I could muster, which probably only made them more suspicious. "I swear. Not this time, at least. I had to remove the proximity alarm spell and the gentle disintegration rune after... the 'incident' last year with the cleaning automaton."
Lisanna, always the bravest (or the most naive), went first. Inside the box, she found a delicate necklace with a cherry blossom-shaped pendant, made of a magical glass that subtly changed colour with the light, shifting from a pale pink to a pearly white. Her eyes widened, welling up with emotion. "It... it smells exactly like the flowers from the Rainbow Sakura Tree we used to see!" she whispered, amazed, bringing the necklace to her nose. "How did you...?"
"I have my methods," I muttered, trying to look casual. (Methods which involved two hours of meticulous work with arcane glassblowing, a scent-capturing-and-encapsulating spell that nearly went terribly wrong, and a considerable amount of whispered swearing so as not to blow up the makeshift workshop in my room. A feat, frankly, that deserved a medal. Or, at the very least, a biscuit.)
Levy, encouraged by the lack of explosions from Lisanna's present, opened hers and let out a high-pitched squeak that probably scared a few mice in the walls and made Eos issue a brief sonic-peak alert in my mind.
"A RUNE NOTEBOOK THAT SELF-TRANSLATES?! IT CATALOGUES, ORGANISES RUNES BY AGE AND LINGUISTIC FAMILY, AND EVEN GLOWS A GOLDEN SHADE WHEN A RUNE IS PARTICULARLY RARE OR POWERFUL?! AZRA'IL WEISS! THIS IS... THIS IS BETTER THAN A BOYFRIEND!"
"Certainly," I commented, with a satisfied smile. "It requires considerably less maintenance, doesn't complain when you stay up reading late into the night, and most importantly, won't try to use your rarest and most dangerous runes to light the barbecue at the weekend." She hugged the notebook as if it were a lost cub of a rare species of holy book, her eyes shining with pure, nerdy happiness.
Cana found a dark wooden tankard, with subtle, almost invisible ice runes carved around the base. "Azra'il... hold on... this tankard... does it keep the drink cold... forever?" There was a reverence in her voice that she usually only reserved for aged oak barrels.
"Forever," I confirmed. "And it never spills. Not even if you trip and fall flat on your face in the middle of one of your famous and dangerous table-dances. The liquid magically stays inside. It's pocket-dimension physics, with a touch of magic for clumsy drunks."
She didn't hesitate for a second. She filled the tankard to the brim with the contents of her old one and, with a cry of scientific defiance, turned it completely upside down over her head. Not a single drop fell. Her eyes widened with an almost religious joy, as if she had just witnessed the second coming of the god of wine.
"...I love you," she said, her voice thick with pure emotion. "Will you marry me? I swear on this miracle, I'll share the ale."
Bisca, who had approached, tore open her wrapping with the impatience of a hunter. "ENCHANTED. SHOOTING. GLOVES?!" she exclaimed, almost in a war cry.
"Thunder-beast leather," I explained, with the air of a luxury arms dealer to an elite clientele. "Thermal lining, resistance to medium-sized explosions, and enchanted for a perfect fit and to reduce recoil. And, yes, they have a faint smell of power and ozone. I thought it suited you."
She slid the gloves onto her hands with the reverence of one who has just received a holy weapon directly from the hands of a deity. They moulded perfectly to her fingers. "I am completely in love. If Alzack ever messes up, I know who'll be consoling me and sponsoring my ammunition for target practice therapy." She winked at me, and I just smiled back.
Mirajane, finally, opening her small box with a delicacy that contrasted with her nature, found the hair ornament, an intricate silver work resembling intertwined branches, with a single, pale, iridescent stone in the centre that glowed with a soft internal light.
"This is... it's beautiful, Azra'il..." she whispered, her gaze fixed on me, surprised and perhaps a little confused.
"It took thirty-seven sighs of pure frustration, two superficial cuts to my index finger, and a particularly stubborn enchantment spell that nearly gave me a headache for three days," I commented, casually, as if describing the weather.
"You... you made this... with your own hands?"
"Yes."
"Your... the same hands...?"
"The same hands that applied a much-needed and intensive course of humility therapy to Laxus. Yes. I am, as they say, surprisingly multi-talented."
She laughed, a low, hoarse laugh that was just for me. "I'm as confused as I am charmed. Thank you, my strange and talented Christmas wolf." She placed it gently in her silver hair, and the jewel looked as if it belonged there.
"Just out of curiosity," I added, with a smirk, "the stone changes colour depending on your emotion. Blue for calm, green for happiness... and a vibrant red if you're feeling... well, let's just say... particularly agitated or experiencing strong emotions." I gave her a look that said, without words, 'we know exactly what I'm talking about, she-devil'.
Mira blushed slightly, a rare feat that I noted for future reference. "Delicate, useful, and dangerously revealing. It's so me. And a challenge," she said, before pulling me into a quick, surprisingly warm hug that left me momentarily breathless. (I allowed it, of course. For the Christmas spirit. Or for some other reason I adamantly refused to analyse at that moment.)
While the party's chaos continued around me, a small box remained closed in my pocket. Small. Wine-red velvet. The only present I had yet to give. The cheerful music played, more biscuits mysteriously disappeared from the table (I suspected Cana and Lisanna), but my eyes... ah, my eyes were on her.
Erza.
Sitting on the sofa, in her adorable and, frankly, dangerously cool reindeer dress, she was smiling at the others, but there was something there. A silence amidst her smile, a stillness that, coming from her, was louder, more revealing than any of Natsu's explosions. She hadn't asked me about my present. Hadn't prodded or demanded. She was... waiting. For me. And, more importantly, for my present.
(Red, Red, you can't hide it, can you? You try to be so strong, so controlled, but your heart is as transparent as that magical glass I gave to Lisanna. It's almost cute. Almost. And dangerously captivating,) I thought, feeling an uncomfortable warmth spread through my chest.
I took a deep breath, the liquid courage from the mulled wine Cana had forced on me finally taking effect. I took the small box that now felt like it was burning in my pocket, and approached her, moving through the mess of wrapping paper and ribbons. She looked up as she felt my presence, and the raw, naked hope in her brown eyes was such a fragile and dangerous thing it almost made me retreat. I leaned in, my voice a whisper just for her, my lips brushing the tip of her ear and causing a visible shiver to run down her spine.
"Your present is being kept safe. I'll give it to you later. When all this... noisy mess is over. Upstairs. In my room."
The glint in her eyes intensified, making them almost golden in the warm light of the room. The air between us became electric, crackling with a tension that was more powerful than any of Laxus's spells. "Oh..." she murmured, her voice a little breathless, a faint smile spreading across her lips and a delicate blush blooming on her cheeks. "I see."
Of course she saw. Underneath all those armours, she was, without a doubt, the most intelligent and dangerous woman in that room. And, at that moment, the most beautiful too. I moved away, trying to pretend my own heart wasn't performing a series of risky and entirely unauthorised acrobatics in my chest. The small box in my pocket felt heavier than a neutron star.
The party, like all good (and noisy) things, finally turned to magical dust in the air. Cana was snoring softly on the floor, using a present as a pillow. Mirajane and Lisanna had already gone up, arm in arm. Slowly, I climbed the wooden steps of the staircase, the memory of the mulled wine and Erza's gaze warming me more than any fireplace. And, behind me, I heard footsteps. Rhythmic, precise, almost silent. The sound of high heels on wood. The unmistakable scent of strawberries and steel. Erza. She stopped at her bedroom door, which was conveniently opposite mine.
"Erza," I called, my voice a little lower than normal, before the moment, and my courage, slipped through my fingers like fine sand.
She turned. "Hm?"
I took a deep breath. "Do you... want to come in for a moment? To get your present."
Her eyes widened with genuine surprise, but she nodded, a small, almost shy smile on her lips.
I opened the door to my room. A soft scent of camomile tea and a hint of cinnamon greeted her, a contrast to the festive mess downstairs. The room was simple, almost spartan, with books piled in every corner, but the small magical lights I had conjured, which floated lazily near the ceiling, gave it a touch of... magic. Or of decorative boredom, I hadn't yet decided. She entered slowly, with the hesitation of one stepping on hallowed ground. Or a minefield. With me, it was always a dangerous combination of the two.
I closed the door behind us, and the muffled sound of the dying party downstairs disappeared, leaving us in our own small, silent universe. The little velvet box felt like it was burning in my hand, heavy with the weight of unsaid emotions. "I wanted... to give this to you when we were... alone. It's for you."
She took the present from my hands, her fingers brushing against mine with a delicacy that made my heart stumble. She didn't tear the wrapping. She slid the black satin ribbon off with an almost reverent care. She sat beside me, on the edge of my bed, and her proximity was a silent, delicious agony, a torture I secretly craved. The warm, soft light of the room reflected in her brown eyes as she finally lifted the lid of the box.
Inside, resting on a bed of black velvet, lay a small music box. It was made of pearlescent ivory, with fine, delicate details carved in gold. With a soft and careful gesture, she lifted the lid. And it was only then that the melody began to play. On top, a tiny ballerina, carved with painful precision, twirled slowly to the sound of the music.
The ballerina had long, loose scarlet hair that seemed to dance with the movement, and she wore a simple white dress that twirled gracefully. The melody was soft, ethereal, a lullaby for a warrior's soul, a tune I had composed on sleepless nights while watching her train alone in the Fairy Hills courtyard, the moonlight bathing her solitary figure, a silent ache tightening in my chest.
"She..." Erza whispered, her voice thick, her fingers delicately tracing the small ivory figure. "...she looks like me."
"I know," I replied, my own chest tightening with an emotion I couldn't name. I moved a little closer, until our shoulders touched. "Not as you are now, the Titania, the warrior. But as maybe... maybe you would have been. If the world, in its infinite cruelty, had given you a single chance to be just... a girl."
Her eyes were fixed on the small figure, mesmerised. "This little girl... she's dancing. Alone. But... she hasn't forgotten how to dream. She still believes in fairy tales."
A trembling sigh escaped her lips. She closed her eyes for an instant, as if to store that image, that feeling, in her heart. And, for the first time in many years, since we fled that damned Tower, I saw her cry. A single, quick tear, almost ashamed, escaped and ran down her face, tracing a shining path on her skin.
I remained silent. I gave her the space, the comfort of my silence, something I myself rarely received and rarely offered.
She wiped the tear away with the back of her hand, quickly, as if angry at her own vulnerability. "Thank you, Azra'il. It's... it's the most beautiful present I've ever received." Her voice was just a breath, a whisper laden with a raw emotion.
"Happy Christmas, Erza."
The ballerina continued to spin, her silent, lonely dance. Erza watched her, a small, sad smile on her lips. "This melody... it's so beautiful and so... sad. Where did you find it?"
I blinked, searching for the right words amidst the whirlwind of my own feelings. "I... I composed it. For you."
She turned to me then, and her eyes, now moist and shining, were wide with surprise and... and something else, something that made the air in my lungs refuse to leave. And then, silently, without warning, she moved closer. And rested her head on my shoulder, her scarlet hair brushing against my neck, soft and smelling faintly of strawberries.
My entire body froze for an instant, my instincts screaming at me to pull away, to flee from this dangerous intimacy. But, for the first time in a long while, I ignored my instincts. And I let her warmth spread through me. My arm, as if of its own accord, moved and wrapped around her waist, pulling her closer. It was like touching a hot coal, knowing I could get burnt, knowing the pain of loss, if it ever came, would be unbearable. And yet, choosing to feel the warmth anyway.
"It has lyrics too," I murmured, my voice a little hoarser than normal, my chin brushing against her soft hair. "But... I'll only sing it to you... when we're both ready." I sighed, a sound that contained centuries of loneliness. "When whatever exists between us... is ready too."
She didn't answer. She just remained there, nestled against me. No promises were spoken. But, somehow, they were all felt. The music from the box faded, note by note. The little ballerina stopped her dance. But we... we remained there, in that shared silence. She yawned quietly, a sleepy, adorable sound, and looked up at me, her brown eyes heavy with sleep and emotion. "Can I... can I stay here tonight? Just for tonight?"
My heart, that millennial traitor, did a triple somersault and probably won a gold medal.
"You can," I replied, with a calmness I was very, very far from feeling.
We lay down slowly on the bed. She snuggled into my chest, her arms wrapping around my waist with a trust that scared and charmed me, as if I were the safest harbour in all the universes. And I hugged her back. Carefully. With a reverence I didn't know I possessed. With an absurd, irrational fear of losing something I didn't even know I had found. My nose got lost in the scent of strawberries and steel that was uniquely hers, and my body, after centuries of constant vigilance and cold loneliness, seemed... to relax. Finally.
There, in the silence of Christmas night, in my room at Fairy Hills, we fell asleep. Two tired souls, two warriors with many scars, who, for one single, precious night, needed no armour. Just each other.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE
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The song I used as a reference for the music box is "Every Time You Kissed Me" from the anime Pandora Hearts. I'll leave a link to the lyrics and the speaker melody.
Every time you kissed me - music
Melody
I uploaded the image of the music box in the drive in case you want to see it.
Images