VERiTY (Fairy Tail Fanfic)

33. By His Side

He can't think right now.

All he wants is to get out of the rain and hide.

The lights inside the arena are bright, the brick walls are a muted gray. But there's colour-- a stark shade of blue and green and red, festival shades lining up with the tournament taking place.

(Ah, right.)

He's in a tournament right now.

"Eir!"

-

Jura found him first. The participant stand was not far from the waiting rooms, so he caught Eir two doors before he'd made it

"Eir," he took him by the shoulders, and tried not to flinch when the teen glanced over.

Eir's eyes were wide but empty, his face pale even against his drenched bangs. He'd frozen at the touch, his eyes clouded over with a sense of disarray Jura had never seen in him before. Not angry, not irritated, not even tired-- they were fearful.

"...Eir?"

Jura had called out experimentally, and that seemed to work. Eir blinked slowly-- and finally-- finally his head lifted, and his eyes turned from the ground to meet Jura's.

"Oh," he whispered, his voice shaky, a little hoarse. He had screamed too, after all-- the pain was still in his veins, barely recovered. "Jura."

(Who else could it have been?)

"Yeah," Jura muttered, hesitant. "Are you okay?"

Eir's hand reached over to his side, settling a hand on the hilt of his katana.

"Ah, yes," he said.

Rather than a response, it sounded like something a person would say on instinct toward that question. Jura could tell that there was no emotion or honesty in the words-- and that unsettled him deeply.

Eir was the epitome of blunt honesty when it came to himself. Even when he was admitting his own weaknesses, he did so with irritation or fierce denial.

Now he was speaking, and his answers were empty.

Jura set a hand on Eir's forehead, disappointed to learn that he wasn't running a fever. Eir's eyes narrowed at his action, which was a relief.

"What?" Eir said snappily, stepping back and batting the hand away gently.

Jura tucked his hand back into his sleeves.

"What did you do back there?" he asked, not bothering to spin around the topic. "That wasn't your usual Wind Magic, was it?"

Eir looked up, as if in surprise-- then looked away.

"Yeah..." his left hand came up to his right elbow, and he shuffled his feet uncomfortably. 

His face was slowly growing a little blue, like one would at the crest of catching a cold. His eyes darted about haphazardly, like it couldn't decide where it wanted to land.

Jura's gaze narrowed. "And what was it?"

(Whatever it was, it looked cruel. Something that can cause invisible pain directly to another individual-- it's not illegal, but it certainly is frowned upon.)

"Ah," Eir said, swallowing his words. "Well..." he looked in every direction, nervously flickering his gaze-- and Jura had never seen him so distressed before. "...well, but Aria's magic was Drain magic."