Rock Bottom

“So.. what do you think we should do about it?”

Saffron was currently sitting on the couch in her room at Fairy Tail with her phone pressed to her ear. It had been about a month since her trip to Iceberg with Cedric where she had been surprised with a reunion with her mother… as well as the reveal that the man she’d always thought was her father was not even related to her at all. The trip hadn’t been entirely a loss, and thankfully Cedric had been there to help curb her stress and keep her grounded. If nothing else, her mother and father had seemed genuine enough in their desire to reunite with their daughters and in their reasons for waiting as long as they had to show themselves.

But the matter of Mitchel – or Alrik, as his real name appeared to be – was another matter entirely. Saffron had gone home with a burning passion, determined to overturn every rock and disturb every nook and cranny to get the truth. But by the time she’d actually gotten home, the blonde had put the task off, afraid to unveil the truth and confirm that her entire life had been a lie. There were so few things that she’d ever been certain of, that had kept her grounded and given her a reason to fight. Her sister and the man that had spent the last over two decades as her father had been Saffron’s entire world. Now, all of that had been thrown into chaos.

It had taken her some time to find the gumption to look into the matter and work on acquiring any proof she could. Knowing that something like that would require a deep dive of covert work, Saffron had made the obvious choice to go to the best spy and hacker she knew: Mercury. The Queen Apparent was all too happy to lend her services, and it hadn’t taken more than a day or two before she was able to get her hands on copies of the paperwork from when Alrik had defected to Bosco with the two girls in tow. While they had birth certificates and citizenship cards that reflected they were born in the technologically savvy country, the date those files were created matched up with the timeline that Katla and Viggo had given of their kidnapping. Mercury had also been able to run a DNA test with some samples that the two Iser had agreed to provide, both of which came back resoundingly positive that they were Saffron’s true blood parents.

It was then, and only then, that Saffron had finally reached out to Senna to tell her everything. She hated having to interrupt the younger woman while she was studying at university, but knew it wasn’t right to keep the truth from her little sister. And while she wanted nothing more than to go storming to Bosco to demand answers, Senna deserved to have her own time to process everything ahead of time, rather than Saffron thrusting it upon her and Mitchel both at the same time. Not that she should have been too worried; Senna had always been better at handling her emotions than Saffron had.

“Go get a straight answer from him, of course. What else would we do?” The course of action had seemed obvious to the Fairy Tail mage, whose ire and frustration over the matter had been stoked once more now that she was finally getting the ball rolling on the issue.

There was a sigh on the other side of the phone. “Yes, I agree. But your idea of confronting an issue and my approach are typically two completely different things.”

“Sen, this isn’t a therapy session we’re talking about here. The man kidnapped us and hid us from our real parents. He’s spent our entire lives lying to us. Doesn’t that make you even a little angry?”

“It’s certainly upsetting…”

“Is it? Because you really don’t sound very upset.”

“I think it’s more accurate to say that I’m not surprised.”

Saffron frowned. “Why not?”

There was a long pause on the other end. “Well.. I’ve had a suspicion for a long time that he has been hiding something from us. When we were really young, I got up in the middle of the night once to get a drink of water. I can’t have been older than… I don’t know, seven or eight? He didn’t hear me get up, but… I stopped because I overheard him talking to someone on the phone. His tone was angry, and he was speaking in a language I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t old enough at the time to guess what was happening, but looking back at it now, he was probably talking in Iser.”

“You never told me about that…”

“I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was a child. I barely understood enough to comprehend it, let alone question it. As I got older the memory stuck with me, and I thought about it from time to time, but… I don’t know, I guess I just assumed that if he was keeping something from us, it was probably for our own good. So… yes, I’m certainly hurt and I have a lot of questions, but I’m not shocked. If anything, it explains a few things. But there is a lot of it that doesn’t make sense, too, the most important being his reason for doing what he did.”

“And that’s what I want to find out.” The mage flopped onto her back, draping one of her legs over the back of the seat and resting her free arm over her forehead wearily.

“Right, but we don’t have to go in guns blazing–”

“Don’t we? He kidnapped us, Sen! We were children! Hell, you were practically an infant! What excuse could he possibly have that makes that okay?!”

“I… suppose you are right.” Senna’s voice on the other end was quiet, accepting of her sister’s point if a bit saddened by it. At the end of the day, facts were facts, and no matter how devoted of a father figure Mitchel had been, it was still kidnapping. There were very few, if any, reasons he could give for doing what he did that would be considered acceptable. “It’s just a lot to take in, you know?”

“Yeah, I know… Sorry, I didn’t mean to jump down your throat. I’ve just… been having a rough go of things lately. I’m tired of all these stupid surprises, and of people lying to me.”

“It’s okay. I know you weren’t trying to take it out on me.” There was silence between them for a few beats before Senna spoke again. “So.. how are you holding up..?”

Saffron scowled, knowing full well what her sister was asking about. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I understand that, but you should. You can’t just… bottle it up like you always do. You know how that goes. Even if you don’t talk to me about it, you should talk with someone…”

The Fairy Tail mage sighed. “It is what it is. I don’t know what you want me to say. I put myself out there and it bit me in the ass.”

“I know… I’m sorry, Saff. It seemed like he really cared about you. That doesn’t excuse what he did, of course, but…”

“Yeah. Everyone keeps trying to tell me that, but it doesn’t change anything. It’s over, and that’s all there is to it.” Xavier wasn’t a subject she was interested in discussing any longer. He was in jail, rightfully so, and frankly he was lucky that Cedric hadn’t killed him on sight. Saffron knew it had to be awfully tempting to the former Dread Master, who probably wanted nothing more than to bury the man that had broken her heart. A part of her felt similar, though not as much of her as she would boast. “I don’t want to talk about this, okay? Can we please just focus on dad- Mitchel.. Whatever the fuck we’re supposed to call him, now?”

“Alright. We should confront him, but I would like to hear what he has to say. If nothing else because we both deserve to hear the truth.”

“If we can even trust anything that comes out of his mouth,” Saffron muttered. She wasn’t always envious of Mythal and Mercury for having a few cheat codes to spot people in a lie, but abilities like theirs sounded mighty handy right now. “When?”

“I would like some time to think everything over so I can go into it with a clear head. How about during my winter break in a few weeks?”

“Yeah, okay. That works for me. Text me the dates and I’ll make sure to meet you at home.”

“Will do.”

“Hey. You okay..?”

“I… am not entirely sure. It’s still a little fresh. I’ll have to let it sit for a bit and see how I feel, I think.”

“Yeah, I get you. I know I can be a bit hot headed, but I’m always here if you need me.”

“I know. If nothing else, we’ll help each other through this, okay?”

“Of course.”

“Alright, well.. I need to go decompress for a bit so I can focus on my assignments. Let me know if you hear anything else.”

“Will do. Love you, sis.”

“I love you, too, Saff. See you soon.”

A few weeks after the two sisters had discussed what to do about their predicament, Saffron found herself on the road to Bosco. It had been a difficult time trying to keep her mind off of everything, though her various trainings helped. Between wrestling and everything that had unraveled itself recently with Ryori, the blonde had plenty to keep her occupied and busy.

At the very least she was finally getting some answers on the strange events that had taken place during her and Cedric’s last fight with Seberg. Ryori had been able to confirm pretty quickly that Saffron had channeled the Weave in her effort to tap into Energy Monarch, using it to control the rogue Raegarian, and the wings and such that Saffron had sprouted was a side effect from doing so. She was also able to confirm that the bad feeling she’d had when Xavier had been attacking Vandrad had been the Weave calling out to her, trying to warn her of a “disturbance” as Ryori called it. While neither of them knew just yet if Saffron would ever be able to fully control the Weave like Ryori did, the older woman was confident that she could at least impart a few worthwhile skills to not just Saffron, but also Vandrad and Cedric.

Unfortunately, part of the reason that no one had been able to make headway on their own was because their idea of training was physical; lots of sparring and working out, honing their combat skills. All things the Omen deemed important, but failed to exercise their minds. If they wanted to control any portions of the Weave, they needed to learn how to sense it and communicate it. So far, that had involved an awful lot of meditation, a task that was frustrating for all of them but most of all for Saffron and Vandrad, who had very little patience for sitting around and doing nothing. The number of times that Ryori had chastised her for fidgeting was already lost on the blonde. Yet no matter how irritable she became, the Omen – while not exactly the nicest person in the world, and seemingly without a sense of humor – had yet to be offended or put off by a harsh word of snippy remark.

Before Saffron knew it, it was time to head home to find out once and for all why Alrik had done what he’d done. Her bike roared through the familiar streets of her hometown in Bosco. Enough time had passed since her discharge from the military that she wasn’t swarmed with people trying to talk to her, but a few people did recognize her as she drove past, many of them waving or pointing at her. She just kept on her way without slowing down until she got to her old neighborhood. By now, Senna would have been home since the day prior, the younger sister comfortable enough to have spent a night in the house without acting like anything was wrong or bringing up anything that would make the man suspicious. Between the two of them, Senna had always been the more patient and level headed.

As she pulled into the driveway, the Fairy Tail mage could feel her body shaking from a mixture of anger and anxiety. Saffron wanted nothing more than to just… turn around and go back to Fiore, leave all this behind and run away without addressing it in the hopes that her life wouldn’t become an utter shamble in the fall out. But, she knew she couldn’t. For Senna’s sake, if not her own. Lowering the kickstand to her bike, she forced herself to dismount the vehicle, making her way to the front door before she could talk herself out of anything.

Letting herself in, she stepped inside her childhood home, feeling like an intruder. A sound from the living room told her that someone was watching the lacrivision in the other room. “Hello..?” she called as she made her way through the house.

She practically ran face first into Mitchel, who had been investigating the sound of Saffron’s entrance. Both of their eyes went wide in surprise, Saffron’s at nearly colliding with the man, and Mitchel’s because he had not been expecting to see her. He looked as he always had: slightly taller than her, with bright blonde hair that nearly matched hers and Senna’s, and a little bit of scruff around his chin. He wore a working man’s clothing, having just gotten home from his job not long before her arrival. “Saff?” The Iser blinked once before reality caught up with him, and then he was beaming like any proud parent that was elated to see a long lost child.

With a laugh, he wrapped his arms around her in a tight bear hug that Saffron hadn’t quite been as prepared for as she would have liked. Oh, she’d rehearsed this moment in her head dozens if not hundreds of times, envisioning herself sternly telling him to keep his distance and jumping down his throat from the start. But when push came to shove she found herself more paralyzed than anything else, torn between her anger and her heartbreak. Mitchel lifted her off her feet for a moment. “Saff, you didn’t tell me you were coming home! Ah, I’ve missed you so much, kiddo!” He was so excited he didn’t seem to realize that Saffron hadn’t returned his hug or his greeting.

Senna wandered in from the other room as Mitchel was setting Saffron down. “Sen, look who’s here! And just in time for dinner! Let’s go out. Family night. My treat. What d’ya think?” He turned to smile at Senna… and then his expression faltered as he realized that she wasn’t very surprised to see her older sister. In fact, there was a bit of an expectant look on her face. Confused he glanced back at Saffron who was just as stoic, albeit with a more obvious scowl. “What’s going on? Is everything okay, girls..?”

“Listen… dad. We need to talk to you.”

“Yeah, of course. You know you can talk to me about anyth–”

“We want answers… Alrik.”

“Answers…?” His confusion quickly washed away as the name Saffron called him sank in. A panicked expression clawed at his eyes as he glanced between the two girls. The silence in the room was thick enough to cut with a knife. They could see it in his eyes; he knew his time lying had come to an end. And finally, his shoulder drooped in realization and understanding. “Your mother got to you.”

“And our father.”

“I… I see…” All the life and color had drained from his face. “I… guess it was only a matter of time.”

“That’s all you have to fucking say for yourself?” Saffron snapped.

“N-no. No, Saff, I just… This is all happening really fast, and-”

“Is it? Is it happening really fast? Because I feel like you’ve had plenty of fucking time to tell us the truth! So go on. Let’s hear it.”

Like he was in a trance, Mitchel managed to pry his feet from the ground and walked slowly back into the living room where he slunk into the nearest couch. He couldn't meet their eyes, staring at a space on the floor, slumped forward with his arms braced on his knees. Finally, he took a steadying breath. “I’m not your father.” His voice was quiet and timid as he voiced the admission, full of shame that wasn’t lost on either woman, though Saffron didn’t seem to care much about that for the moment.

“No shit. I gathered as much when I unknowingly walked into a surprise reunion in Iceberg.”

“You went to Haukrsvik?” he asked with a start, his native accent slipping out in the way he pronounced the name of his home town. “When? How..?”

“Two months ago, under the pretense that I was being hired for a job.”

He was looking up at Saffron in seeming horror. “Saff… Listen to me. I know… I know this looks bad – is bad, but… Whatever she told you, you can’t trust her-”

Saffron’s eyes flared a bright crimson and she drew herself up in rage, causing Alrik to falter. “I can’t trust her?! You LIED to us… you KIDNAPPED us..! In what fucking world do you think you have any right to talk about trust?!”

Senna reached out and put a calming hand on her sister’s shoulder, not so much a silent request for Saffron to relax as much as it was to let the younger sibling tag in until Saffron could talk without losing her temper. Saffron’s enraged gaze never left the man sitting before them, but she did draw in a sharp breath and at least made an attempt to reign herself in. Meanwhile, Senna turned her focus back to Alrik with an unreadable, if stern, look. “Why can’t we trust her? Why did you take us from Iceberg..?”

“Your mother.. She’s not a good person. The two of you were in danger – a lot of it. You two weren’t old enough to understand what was happening. I know… I know what I did wasn’t great, and it doesn’t paint me in the best light… but I did what I did to protect both of you. To keep you both safe. You don’t know what she’d like, the kind of life she leads…”

“She is a crime boss, and an Iser war chief, correct..?”

Alrik blinked in surprise, like he hadn’t expected Katla to have admitted to that. “Well… Yes, but it’s more than that. You don’t understand how dangerous she is, even to her own daughters. She’s a snake, who will do or say whatever she has to in order to get what she wants. She’s a master manipulator.”

Saffron scoffed in indignation. “Oh, that’s rich coming from you.”

“I know, I know how it looks. And I’m sorry, but if you’ll just let me expla–”

“You had years to explain! We tried asking about her so many times. And you know what you did? You told us that she abandoned us. We spent our entire lives thinking that our own mother wanted nothing to do with us, and that couldn’t have been further from the truth!”

Alrik was digging himself further into the hole of his sins, and he seemed to understand that. Tears were beginning to drip down his cheeks, his body shaking. “I didn’t mean for any of this to… please… I just wanted to keep you both safe…”

Saffron shook her head in fury and disgust, fighting back tears of her own through a tight jawed scowl. Senna was more pensive, if a bit sorrowful. “Is there anything else you want to tell us..?” she asked gently, almost like she was hoping for something more concrete to explain his actions, giving him one last chance to speak in defense of himself. Surely there was more to it than his simply trying to protect them from a life of crime. Criminals were a dime a dozen in Iceberg, and he seemed to be hinting that there was more, that there was a deeper reason behind his fear of Katla to drive him to kidnapping two young girls.

But he merely sat there, at a complete and utter loss for words as his lies crumbled down around him.

Ultimately, Senna sighed. “I think I’m going to spend the rest of my break back on campus.” With one last glance at Alrik, she left to head to her room to collect her suitcase. It didn’t take long, and only a minute or two later she emerged with her things. Saffron moved to follow, to escort her to her car.

“Saff, I-”

“My name… is Valkyrie,” she told him dangerously. “And I don’t ever want to hear from you again. Stay away from me and my sister.”

Senna looked like she wanted to say something more, but in the end she merely shook her head sadly and led the way outside. The two women exchanged a tight hug, and then Senna was in her car and driving back toward her school. Saffron watched her go, feeling angry and abused, and like she’d lost yet another part of herself. She needed to get out of here, get out of this neighborhood before she exploded. With tears streaming down her face, she threw herself on her bike and practically peeled out into the street.

She wasn’t consciously aware of where she was headed until she found herself pulling into a beaten dirt path in the woods just outside the city. It wasn’t a road so much as a place where animals frequented, a spot that she had stumbled across in her teenage years that had become a place of solitude and peace when she’d needed to clear her head. Parking the bike, she walked down the rest of the path until she came to the small, familiar pond. Dropping to her ass, she finally let everything loose, burying her face in her knees and openly weeping for a long, long time.

How long she actually sat there crying was anyone’s guess. Her head was swimming with so many thoughts and feelings that she could barely keep track of them. Alrik, her parents, Xavier… everything looming over them with Seberg. The dam had finally broken and her anxiety was through the roof as she wondered how her life had come to this point, what she had done to deserve all of this pain and heartache and bullshit. A large part of her wanted to call Cedric, to beg him to find her so she wouldn’t have to be alone… but guilt threatened to suffocate her. No matter how much he claimed it didn’t bother him, it wasn’t fair for her to keep putting all this on him, not after everything with Xavier. Cedric didn’t deserve to be treated the way she had treated him. He deserved so much better than the selfishness and thoughtlessness she brought to the table. She wasn’t good enough for him. All she would do is wind up hurting him…

“...Saff..?”

A familiar voice both startled her and set her almost immediately on edge as she whirled around and found someone she had honestly thought she’d never see again. Adamina was dress in her preferred kimono-esque garb, the Joyan sporting a combination of black and red. Two small horns reminiscent of a bull protruded from long flowing locks of red hair. She stood several feet back as if hesitant to approach, but after a moment reached up and gently removed the mask over her eyes, revealing one bright blue orb and another that had been scarred beyond all repair by a harsh burn. She looked at Saffron with a concerned expression. “Are you alright..?”[/color]

“What the hell are you doing here, Addy?”

“I… saw you. You zipped past me on the road, back in town. I had a feeling I’d find you here.”

Saffron sniffed, doing her best to shove her emotions down and bury them deep. “Yeah, well, you shouldn’t be here.”

“The restraining order, I know. It’s just… you looked distraught and I…” Her voice trailed off for a moment before she sighed. “If you want me to leave, I’ll leave. I just wanted to make sure you were okay… and honestly, you don’t look like you are.”

“Yeah, well…. I’m not.”

After a couple beats, Addy cautiously approached. “Is there anyone I can call for you? Your sister, or your dad?”

Saffron scoffed, a bitter laugh. “No… but thank you. I’m better off alone.”

“I think we both know that’s not true.” The Joyan crouched down beside the blonde. “Look, I’m sure I’m the last person you want to see. But something happened, and you’re clearly distressed. We don’t have to talk if you don’t want to but.. Can I at least buy you a coffee or something? Give you some company until you’re feeling better…?”

The Fairy Tail mage didn’t answer right away. The obvious answer was no. Hell no, even. Addy and put Saffron through plenty of hell, and many of those wounds that she’d thought healed had been recently reopened with everything that had happened with Xavier. But Saffron knew that she was dangerous when left alone with her own thoughts, and she simply didn’t have the heart to dump yet more of her drama and pain on Cedric.

Her shoulders drooped a bit and she sighed. “Fine. One drink, and then we go our separate ways. Got it?”

Addy nodded, but offered a small smile. “One drink. That’s all.” She held a hand out to help Saffron stand. The blonde looked at it warily, but ultimately accepted, allowing her ex to pull her to her feet so they could make their way to the nearest coffee shop.