The smell of grilled fish, sea salt, and something vaguely resembling spices filled the night air, mingling with the cool coastal breeze.
The veranda of the guest house we had rented, from a very kind lady who was thoroughly terrified by the sheer number of mages, was far too small for the quantity of chaotic people we were attempting to cram into it. But, surprisingly, no one seemed to mind. Improvised tables had been assembled, which were really just wooden planks propped on empty fish barrels, and upon them sat an absolutely absurd quantity of food.
Fish. A great deal of fish. In every shape and form. Which, of course, made perfect sense, given that we were in a fishing village that had most likely never seen so many hungry people gathered in one place. But, to my relief, there were also fresh fruits, still-warm bread rolls, a few bottles of a liquid that smelled suspiciously and wonderfully alcoholic, and a slightly lopsided cake that Lucy had attempted to bake with local ingredients and that was, somehow, silently judging us all from its plate.
"A TOAST!" Natsu's voice rang out, as always, far louder than strictly necessary, sending a flock of startled seagulls into the sky. He raised his wooden cup so high and with such enthusiasm that he nearly clipped Happy, who was cheerfully flying along behind him. "TO OUR CRUSHING VICTORY!"
"WHAT VICTORY, YOU IDIOT?!" Gray, predictably, retorted from the other side of the table. "We nearly died! The whole tower blew up!"
"BUT WE DIDN'T DIE, DID WE?! SO THAT COUNTS AS A VICTORY IN MY BOOK!"
"...Technically," Sho's low, measured voice murmured somewhere near me, "he has a point."
"HEY! DID YOU HEAR THAT, YOU WALKING PAIR OF ICE BRIEFS?! EVEN THE NEW GUY AGREES WITH ME! LOGIC IS ON MY SIDE!"
"WHO ARE YOU CALLING ICE BRIEFS, YOU COAL-HEADED HALF-WIT WITH A HEARING PROBLEM?!"
And there they were. Again. Like a broken clock that only ever tells the time for arguments.
I watched the scene unfold from my relatively peaceful corner of the veranda, and, to my own surprise, a small and genuine smile was playing at my lips. My body, thankfully, no longer felt like a sack of overcooked pudding. Accelerated regeneration, one of the few genuine perks of having an ancient and stubborn soul, had its advantages. (My Qi Meridians, according to Eos's latest and most irritating update, were at perhaps 85% now. The Ethernano channels lagged a little behind. But I could already move without resembling a newborn fawn attempting to ice-skate. A tremendous step forward. Another day or two and I would be back to my full capacity, ready to cause problems in earnest.)
"You're smiling."
Erza's voice, soft and close, drew me out of my thoughts. She had approached at some point without my noticing, a cup of juice in her hand, her brown eyes reflecting the warm glow of the lanterns that lit the veranda.
"Am I?"
"Hmm." With a grace that contrasted sharply with the chaos around us, she sat down beside me on the wooden bench, her shoulder pressing lightly against mine. "It's a nice smile. A genuine one."
"Have I got other kinds, then?"
"Of course you have," she replied, with the gravity of someone conducting a serious academic analysis. "There's the 'I know something you don't and I am thoroughly enjoying your ignorance' smile. There's the 'I am planning something that will probably break several laws' smile. And then my personal favourite: the 'I am pretending to be perfectly fine, but I am actually so irritated I could reduce this entire town to rubble' smile."
I looked at her, genuinely and deeply impressed.
"You've... you've actually catalogued my smiles?"
And her cheeks, to my absolute delight, went faintly, adorably pink.
"I am a very observant person."
"Clearly."
On the other side of the improvised veranda, the pandemonium continued. Millianna was showing Lucy something on a scrap of paper, something that, judging by the enthusiasm of both of them and the high-pitched squeals, almost certainly involved something cute. Wally, in his extravagant fashion, had somehow gotten into a surprisingly animated argument with Gray about... weapons? Fashion? With the two of them, it was genuinely difficult to tell the difference. And Simon, the gentle giant, was conversing quietly with Happy, who, for some unfathomable reason, appeared to be explaining to him, with great passion, the extensive nutritional benefits of various and sundry types of fish.
It was... surprisingly pleasant. Chaotic, loud, utterly dysfunctional... and yet, somehow, pleasant.
"OI, AZRA'IL!" With all the subtlety of a charging rhinoceros, Natsu appeared suddenly in front of us, his face smeared with some variety of fish sauce. "Once you're finally better and not a feeble little old lady anymore, we can have a proper fight, right?! RIGHT?!"
"Natsu, for the twentieth and final time this evening, she has just come out of a four-day coma," Erza said, in that low and dangerous warning tone of hers.
"I KNOW! THAT'S WHY I SAID 'ONCE SHE'S BETTER'! See?! I'm being incredibly patient!"
"That's you being patient?" I asked, with genuine curiosity.
"YES!" he replied, with great pride.
"...I'm impressed."
"SO THAT'S A YES?! WE HAVE A FIGHT?!"
"Ask me again in a week. If I haven't killed you before then."
Natsu made a sound that was equal parts celebration and frustration, and then went charging off after Gray again, shouting something about proving that fire was, in fact, definitively superior to ice, a philosophical debate they appeared to have at least three times a day.
Erza sighed beside me.
"He never changes."
"And would you honestly want him to?"
She thought about it for a moment, watching Natsu attempt to shove Gray's head into a fish barrel.
"...No. I rather think not."
The evening continued in that rhythm of chaos and camaraderie.
At some point, Sho, emboldened by the suspicious alcohol he almost certainly should not have been drinking, began to tell a story from their days in the tower, something about a young Jellal attempting to appear intimidating and spectacularly tripping over his own feet in front of a group of guards. The whole table erupted in laughter. Even Erza, though I noticed there was something bittersweet in her smile, a faint shadow of sadness, lurking beneath it.
Wally, in an act of pure madness, challenged Natsu to a competition for who could eat the most fish the fastest. Natsu won, naturally, but came perilously close to choking to death at least three times in the process, requiring Simon's intervention in the form of several thoroughly ungentlemanly thumps on the back.
Lucy and Millianna had, as I had suspected, become instant best friends, united, apparently, by a shared love of cute things and the exchange of intelligence on clothing shops.
And I, for the most part, simply sat there in my corner, watching everything, feeling the warmth of Erza's shoulder pressed against mine, the sound of laughter and conversation filling the air.
And then, at some point, without either of us planning it, our fingers found each other beneath the table. Her hand, warm and strong, found mine. And she didn't pull away. She simply laced her fingers through mine, in a gesture that was quiet and simple, and yet said everything that needed to be said.
It was then that the thought struck me. An inconvenient, and rather adolescent, thought, arriving with the force of a well-placed punch.
(We had, technically, declared ourselves to each other. In a manner of speaking. In a very chaotic manner, full of explosions, but still. She had kissed me, just before the tower came down. I had promised her dinner. And she, for her part, had spent days watching over me like a lioness. But... what, exactly, were we now?)
It was ironic, if not outright pathetic. I, Azra'il, creature of a thousand lives and a thousand names. I had lived for countless millennia. I had had romantic entanglements in at least half of those lives. I had, across various incarnations, courted everyone from space pirates to queens of lost empires. I had seduced high-ranking demons purely for my own amusement. And, on one particularly memorable occasion, I had persuaded a goddess of fertility to give me her cosmic telephone number. That is a long story, and, honestly, don't ask.
And yet here I was, sitting beside a stubborn redhead with an enormous heart, without the faintest, most remote idea of whether I was permitted to officially call her my girlfriend.
(Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. Sukuna would be laughing himself sick at my expense right now if he were here.)
(Eos, is this normal? Me, of all people, feeling like an awkward teenager in the middle of her first and most baffling romance?)
[Given that you technically possess thousands of years of accumulated romantic, social, and carnal experience across your various lifetimes, I would say that your current hesitation is, from a statistical standpoint, highly abnormal. And, I confess, somewhat comical.]
(Thank you, Eos. A most helpful contribution. As always.)
[Ever at your service, Azra'il.]
The trouble was that, with Erza... everything was different. I had no desire to be the sort of person who assumes that a kiss in the middle of a crisis constitutes a marriage proposal, or that the mere act of holding hands amounts to an eternal and unbreakable commitment. Every world had its own social rules. Every person had their own pace.
And I, to my absolute horror, liked her. Genuinely. Enough that I had no desire whatsoever to make a mess of things and ruin everything.
Which was deeply inconvenient, because, let's be honest, "making a mess of things" accounted for roughly sixty percent of my personality.
(Eos, give me a risk assessment. What are the odds of me ruining everything if I simply ask her?)
[On the basis of which data would you like me to run this analysis? The laws of thermodynamics? String theory?]
(I don't know, Eos! Use your intuition! Your magic! Read an aura! Something!)
[Azra'il. I am an artificial intelligence. I do not possess intuition, I do not perform magic, and I do not read auras. As you are perfectly well aware.]
(Then you are completely and utterly useless to me right now.)
[And you are, quite clearly, stalling. Just ask her, you cowardly ancient being.]
(Right. Fine. I can do this. I have faced literal gods. I have created and destroyed entire worlds. I have just channelled enough energy to obliterate an entire kingdom. I can, with absolute certainty, manage one simple and stupid question to one woman.)
(...Why, in all the hells, are my hands sweating?)
Summoning a courage I did not remotely feel, I leaned towards Erza, bringing my lips close to her ear, close enough that only she could hear me above the noise of the party.
"Hey, little redhead," I murmured. "A quick question. Possibly poorly timed."
I felt her shiver slightly at the warmth of my breath.
"W-what is it?"
"So... can we consider ourselves officially girlfriends now? Or is there some sort of formal Fairy Tail courting ritual I need to complete first, like fighting a monster or something of that sort?"
And Erza, the great and mighty Titania, froze.
Completely. Like a scarlet statue carved from ice.
And I watched, in glorious slow motion, as the colour rose rapidly up her neck, across her cheeks, until it reached the very tips of her ears. Within seconds, she was very nearly the same exact shade as her own hair.
"I, you, but, we—" She choked on her own words, wholly incapable of forming a coherent sentence. "H-here?! You're actually asking me this here?!"
"Well, yes. Is there a more appropriate venue for it?"
"THERE SHOULD BE, I don't know, SOMEWHERE MORE—" She gestured frantically with her free hand, nearly knocking over her cup.
"More...?"
"ROMANTIC?! MORE PRIVATE?! LESS NOISY?! And, DEFINITELY, NOT IN THE MIDDLE OF A BANQUET WITH ALL OF OUR FRIENDS WATCHING?!"
"Ah." I considered this for a moment. "So... would you like me to ask again later, when we're alone?"
"NO! I mean, YES! I mean—" With a groan of pure frustration and mortification, she buried her face in her hands, her ears practically emitting steam. "You are absolutely impossible."
"I've been told that before. Several times. Just today."
"What's going on over there in the corner?"
Lucy's voice, ever curious, cut across our little scene. She was watching us with an expression of pure and undisguised interest, her large brown eyes moving from me to the hunched, scarlet figure of Erza, who was still hiding her face, and then back to me.
"Nothing," I said, with the most innocent expression I could produce.
"Erza is red as a ripe tomato."
"She's just a little warm."
"But it's a cool evening by the sea."
"She has a rare medical condition."
"What sort of condition?"
"A rare condition that causes her to go extremely red when she's very happy."
Lucy looked at me with an expression that said, quite clearly, 'I do not believe a single solitary word of what you are saying, but do carry on, this is most entertaining'.
"Azra'il."
"Lucy."
"What did you say to her?"
"Nothing much. I simply complimented your lopsided cake."
"That is absolutely a lie! Erza is literally hyperventilating behind those hands!"
"She, uh... she does that sometimes when she gets very emotional about cake compliments."
"No, she doesn't."
With a resigned sigh, Erza finally emerged from behind her hands. She was still deeply flushed, but, to her credit, had recovered a semblance of her commander's composure.
"Lucy," she said, in a voice that was strangely, and slightly alarmingly, controlled. "It is absolutely nothing."
"Erza, you're the colour of a chilli pepper."
"I am not—"
"I just asked whether we were officially dating," I said casually, taking a sip from my cup.
The silence that followed my announcement could have been cut with a knife. A very large knife.
Lucy, for her part, went wide-eyed. "You two, WHAT?!"
And Erza shot me a look that was equal parts pure betrayal and a promise of a slow and painful death.
"What?" I shrugged, with manufactured innocence. "She was going to find out sooner or later. Better to rip the plaster off in one go."
"YOU TWO ARE DATING AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME?! WAIT." And Lucy stopped mid-sentence, processing the information. Then her expression shifted from genuine shock to one of absolute and triumphant relief. "FINALLY! ABOUT BLOODY TIME!"
"...Finally?" Erza repeated, her voice barely a thread.
"FINALLY!" Lucy repeated, with even greater enthusiasm, planting her hands on her hips. "Do you two have ANY idea how utterly painful it was to watch you both? The looks, the barely disguised flirting, the 'Azra'il this, Azra'il that'..." She pointed an accusatory finger at me. "And you never DID anything!"
"Well, I—"
"AND YOU!" The accusatory finger swung ferociously towards Erza. "Going red as a beetroot every single time she came anywhere near you, and pretending it was nothing! NOTHING!"
"But, Lucy—"
"IT WAS ABSOLUTE TORTURE! I swear, I was one step away from sitting you both down, tying you to chairs, and asking 'so, when's the wedding?', because it was BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS to the entire universe that neither of you, with all your stubbornness and your pride, was ever going to do anything about it!"
"I think you might be exaggerating slightly, Lucy," I said.
"Am I really, Azra'il? Then tell me: how long did it take you to finally ask her if you were dating?"
"...That's beside the point. And, technically, I still haven't received a definitive answer."
And, as though they had been choreographed, every gaze on the veranda turned, in expectant silence, towards the poor and now thoroughly cornered Erza.
She, in that moment, appeared to wish with every fibre of her being that the veranda's wooden floor would simply open up and swallow her whole.
"Erza?" Lucy asked, her eyes gleaming with pure and delicious anticipation. "Is it true? Answer your... girlfriend's question."
For one long and agonising moment, Erza said absolutely nothing. She simply stood there, flushed and rooted to the spot, most likely wishing she possessed the ability to transform herself into a strawberry sponge cake. And then, almost like a sigh, as though the words were being dragged out of her against her will:
"...Yes. It's true. We are... we're dating."
And the shriek of pure joy that Lucy let out in that moment was, in all likelihood, audible in Magnolia. And possibly in several of the neighbouring kingdoms.
The chaos that followed that small and humble confession was... something to be studied.
Natsu, as was entirely to be expected, understood absolutely nothing of what was happening ("Hang on, dating like... actually dating, like in Lucy's books? What does that even change?"). Gray, with his characteristic indifference, simply shrugged and said "finally, it was obvious." And Happy, naturally, merely asked, with complete seriousness, whether this meant I would now have to bring more fish for Erza, as a courtship gift.
Millianna, for her part, was absolutely enchanted, clapping her hands and declaring how "sweet" and "romantic" it all was. Wally appeared visibly baffled. Sho, with his habitual gravity, seemed to be processing the information with the intensity of a philosopher. And Simon...
Simon simply smiled. A small, aching, but genuine smile. And from across the table, he quietly raised his cup in my direction, a silent toast. And I, with a small nod, returned the gesture.
Erza, for her part, to my own particular and immense delight, spent the next long twenty minutes being mercilessly peppered with a great many very detailed questions by Lucy and Millianna, whilst attempting, in vain, not to die of embarrassment.
And me? I simply sat in my corner, watching everything, with an amused smile on my lips. It was good. All of this. The family. The chaos. The friendship. It was very, very good.
Later, when the party had at last begun to settle and the conversations, once so loud, had grown quieter and more intimate, Simon rose to his feet with a sudden gravity.
"Erza," he said, and his voice, though calm, was serious. "We need to talk. All of us." And Sho, Wally, and Millianna, as though they had rehearsed it, drew closer, their expressions now a complex mixture of determination and something else, something harder to read.
With a nod, Erza stood. And before she went, she looked back at me, a silent question in her brown eyes.
"Go on," I said quietly, with a reassuring smile. "I'll be here waiting for you."
With a small squeeze of my hand, she moved away.
And I, in silence, watched as she rejoined her old childhood friends, her first family, in a darker and more secluded corner of the veranda, away from the curious ears of the others.
I couldn't quite make out all the words being exchanged, but I could read the expressions. Simon, speaking with calm, with gravity, with an innate gentleness. Sho, adding something, gesturing with his hands. Wally, nodding with a steadiness I hadn't expected from him. Millianna, holding Erza's hand with quiet affection. And Erza herself... simply listening. Attentively. Her face moving through a series of complex emotions: surprise, sadness, understanding, and, finally... acceptance.
She wasn't crying. But I knew, with the certainty of someone who knew her better than anyone, that she was close.
And when she finally returned to our corner, there was something different in her eyes.
"They're... they're leaving," she said softly, almost in a whisper, settling back down beside me.
"All of them? Together?"
"Yes." With a sigh, she looked down at her own hands in her lap. "They want to... they want to see the world. To live their own lives, on their own terms. They don't want to depend on me anymore, or live in the shadow of the Tower."
"And how... how do you feel about that, Erza?"
Erza was quiet for a long moment, watching the stars.
"Part of me, the selfish part, wants them to stay," she admitted, with an honesty that moved me. "Wants to keep them close, where I can be absolutely certain they're always safe. Where I can protect them. But..." With a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of years, she turned to look at me. "They're not the frightened children I knew in that tower anymore, Azra'il. They're adults now. And they, more than anyone, deserve the chance to discover who they truly are, away from that terrible shadow of the past."
"That's very wise of you, little redhead."
"I don't feel the least bit wise. I feel..." She searched for the right word. "I feel sad to see them go. But also... incredibly happy for them. It's... it's confusing."
"Welcome to the marvellous, confusing, and thoroughly illogical world of human emotions," I said gently. "They rarely make much sense, to the despair of all logic."
And Erza, for the first time since returning from that conversation, let out a small and watery laugh.
"I told them," she continued, her voice a little lighter, "that if they ever need anything at all, they need only seek out Fairy Tail. And that we... that we are and always will be their family. That nothing, no matter what happens, will ever change that."
With a movement that felt like the most natural thing in the world, I slipped my arm around her shoulders, drawing her closer in a sideways embrace. And she, to my surprise, leaned into me without the least resistance, as though she had always belonged there.
The following morning, with the sun still lazy on the horizon, we all gathered at the small, rustic pier of the village.
Simon, Sho, Wally, and Millianna stood there with small rucksacks on their backs, ready to set off on their own new adventures. A small fishing boat waited for them, rocking gently on the calm water, a boat that would carry them to the mainland, from where they would follow their own uncertain paths.
Natsu, as was entirely to be expected, was grumbling about having been made to wake up so early. Gray, for a change, was ignoring him entirely. And Lucy was trying, very hard, not to cry. Happy, for his part, had already given up on life and was sleeping soundly on Natsu's shoulder.
And Erza... my Erza... stood at the very end of the pier, before her old and dear childhood friends, with her usual straight, proud posture, and her eyes, though bright, were dry.
"Are you all absolutely certain about this?" she asked, one last, near-silent time.
"We are, Erza," Simon answered, with a calm and a confidence I hadn't seen in him before. "It's time for all of us to discover who we truly are, outside the shadow of that tower. You, more than anyone, understand that, don't you?"
"Yes... I do."
"But hey, this isn't a real goodbye," Millianna said, her voice a little unsteady, as she wrapped her arms around Erza with a force that nearly knocked her off her feet. "It's just a 'see you later'. We'll absolutely meet again, no question about it. And you'll have to tell us everything about your new adventures with your new girlfriend!" she whispered the last part, with a wink.
"Nee-san." Sho, who was trying very, very hard not to look emotional, stepped forward. "Thank you. For absolutely everything."
"Look after them for me, Simon," Erza said, looking up at the taller man, her oldest friend.
"I always will."
And Wally, in his extravagant fashion, adjusted his hat, attempting to look cool and unbothered, but failing miserably when his voice broke mid-sentence. "It was... it was very dandy. Having the chance to know you again, Erza. The real you. The brilliant you."
Erza, at last, smiled. A smile that was, all at once, sad and proud and impossibly beautiful. "All of you... you are my family," she said, her voice steady in spite of everything. "And no matter where you go, no matter how much time passes. If you need anything, anything at all, seek out Fairy Tail. And our door, I promise, will always be open to you."
And then, to my surprise and genuine emotion, she did something I hadn't expected. She raised her right hand, index finger pointing to the sky, thumb extended.
The sacred sign of Fairy Tail.
The four of them exchanged glances, surprised for a moment. And then, one by one, with smiles that were now a mixture of tears and hope, they returned the gesture.
The boat departed a few minutes later, in a silence full of unspoken promises.
And Erza remained there, standing at the end of the pier, watching until the small boat had disappeared entirely into the vast horizon, her hand still raised with quiet pride.
And I, in silence, stood beside her.
When the boat had finally and completely vanished from sight, she slowly lowered her hand and, with a sigh, turned to look at me.
"Let's go home, Azra'il," she said, in a voice that was, all at once, full of a fresh and aching solitude, and yet also full of a new and unshakeable strength.
And I, with a smile I kept only for her, took her hand.
"Let's go home."
------------
💬 Author's Note
------------
FINALLY.
After more than 120 chapters...
AZRA'IL AND ERZA ARE OFFICIALLY DATING.
🎉🎉🎉
Honestly, it was about time.
An elderly turtle with arthritis would have developed a relationship faster than these two.
Azra'il has faced gods, cosmic horrors, wars, explosions, and death itself more times than she can count.
But asking:
"So... are we officially dating?"
Apparently turned out to be the greatest challenge of her entire career.
And Erza wasn't much help either.
Because the woman capable of fighting armies, demons, and dark mages somehow completely stopped functioning after being asked a simple question.
Meanwhile, Lucy perfectly represented the readers when she shouted:
"FINALLY!"
Because let's be honest...
The entire Fairy Tail already knew.
The readers already knew.
The author already knew.
Even Happy probably already knew.
(He just thought dating involved exchanging fish.)
But anyway.
It took a little longer than expected.
Okay, a lot longer than expected.
But it finally happened.
They're officially together now.
Which means all the problems are over.
...HAHAHAHAHAHA.
No.
Now the entire Fairy Tail knows.
And that's probably much more dangerous.
See you in the next chapter. 😂