AN: Grace is such a joy to work with, and I'm so glad to have been given the chance to hear her headcanons for this 'verse and then to write about them. I hope you enjoy the second part of our collective effort; the next round of art will be posted on her tumblr, so keep a lookout!

part 2: salvager

Levy knew humanoids.

Though it wasn't so much knowing as it was a sense of sorts – she'd had a knack for machinery since she'd first picked up a spanner, and no one had been surprised she'd chosen her path to walk amongst the rubble of war and mechs, to salvage broken parts to put them back together.

She was good at that – putting things back together.

She wasn't a Creator – she'd never made something of her own, never built a humanoid from scratch and put her name to it as proof of her skill. No, Levy McGarden was a Salvager, and proud of it – cheerfully unashamed of an occupation many had trouble distinguishing from scavenging, like she was some common Mech Pirate out for a dirty job and easy cash. She'd never done it for the money, but then she'd always been uncomfortable with the practice of creating and selling humanoids like cattle. There was life there, amidst the machinery and the wires. There'd been life in him. But he'd given it away.

For her.

"Levy. Levy."

She didn't look up at the voice as she set to digging, gloved hands tugging futilely at too-large slabs of concrete, her anger welling up to a sob pressing at the back of her throat, until she couldn't breathe.

A hand on her shoulder, mechanical fingers curling around the curved joint, drew her back, and she forced air back into her lungs, past the lump that seemed to have taken up permanent residence. Tugging off her glove, she wiped at her eyes, and offered a thoroughly unconvincing "I'm fine" before she pulled it back on and got back to work.

Lily's sigh bore the weight of words he didn't speak, but he didn't stop her or pull her back, and then the hand was gone from her shoulders, before they replaced her own to lift away the slab with ease. Still he said nothing, and she didn't offer her thanks, her grief too raw and her gratitude too fragile to shape into words. Her assurances were empty and she was a terrible liar on a good day, but she persisted anyway, lying to him and to herself, claiming she was fine she was alright she'd be better everything would be better.

Her breath hitched in her throat as her eyes caught sight of something gleaming amidst the rubble, and she shoved her goggles up to her forehead as she dove for the object, lodged between two large pieces of the wall that had once stood there–

–Lily no, put me down! Put me down, I can't–" But the words were lost in the wail that escaped her as the explosion shook the complex, the light blinding her eyes and her ears rang with the keening sound of a burst eardrum. There were hands over her head, tucking her face away, and she couldn't tell up from down as they moved along the uneven ground. Lily's breathing was a rasp at the edge of her hearing, and she caught a muttered word, sharp and explosive and vicious – a lament and a curse, torn and broken like the ravaged land around them.

Something thick and heavy coiled in her stomach, mingling with the smell in her nose – fire and concrete and the sting of molten metal sharp like a knife, and tears stung her eyes as she found herself carried away, out of the building and down a slope and into the sparse greenery. Out a hole that hadn't been there, into a freedom she didn't deserve.

Her voice was hoarse from the smoke and her tears, but no matter how much she clawed at the arms pinning her in place, they wouldn't budge. But she'd wiggled enough to press her eyes open, catching a glimpse of the burning rubble of the building they'd been trapped in, caged like prey until–

"Gajeel!"

Lily's hands were there to aid her then, mismatched fingers prying the concrete away for her to rescue the part – a part of him a part of him there's a part of him and if there's a part she can find another and put them back together. But her joy was short-lived as she realized she wasn't holding a crucial part of his interface, but what remained of an arm – cut off at the elbow-joint, plates missing and wires all tangled; a hand with a few missing fingers–

–like this. Look." She carefully wound their fingers together, metal and skin and joints of bone and titanium, a wicker-work of their differences. He stared at it intently, eyes focused on the back of his hand, and she watched him curiously.

"Do you like it?"

He glanced up, then back at their interwoven hands. "It's a name," he said at length, as though that explained everything.

Levy smiled. "It's your name," she said. "If you don't like it, that's okay – you can change it. It could be anything you want."

He tugged at his hand suddenly, an odd reflex, as though to keep her from touching it, and seemed to have forgotten her fingers twined with his own. It was a strangely protective thing, and she had to hide her growing smile.

"No," he said. "'S fine. The name."

She curled her fingers, squeezing, the gesture one of assurance though by the surprised look on his face not once he recognized. And her laughter was a trill in her chest, her mirth a wild, bright thing as he tried to tug his hand away again. Levy only curled her fingers tighter, a promise at the tip of her tongue that she wouldn't let go. But she kept the words to herself, and vowed to teach him the names of gestures and looks, until he could read her affection on her face, and in the gentle grip of her hand.

The name was still there, carved into the metal like she remembered. The one she'd given him on a whim, because she'd never heard of a humanoid without a name and he'd never had one to call his own. She remembered taking his hand and etching the letters into the metal, a little piece of her, but a gift rather than a mark of ownership.

She didn't remember signing her own name, but there it was, looking up at her below the one she'd written, in a hand so neat and orderly it could only be a humanoid's.

"Levy?"

The metal was cold under her fingertips – odd, the thought came, a detached thing amidst the surge in her ears. She'd always imagined him warm, a trick of her own mind, perhaps, but it was strange holding a part of him in her hands, still and cold like any other piece of machinery she'd gathered at a dig, and nothing like one of the hands she'd taught the value of hard labour and safekeeping.

"This is better than fighting, right?"

Balancing on her toes, tongue caught between her teeth, she tried to push the box onto the shelf, but it sat just out of her reach. A sudden pressure at her waist was all the warning she got before she was suddenly lifted up, and a yelp escaped her as her feet left the ground, before she was hovering before the shelf, the box clutched to her chest.

"Gajeel!"

He raised a brow – a quirk she'd bet all the books in her library he'd picked up from Lily. "Looked like you needed a hand."

She tried to stifle the blush, and turned her face away as she slid the box onto the shelf. "Yes, well," she coughed. "A word of warning would have been nice," she murmured.

He didn't move, and she glanced down. "Gajeel? You –uh, you can put me down, now."

The hands slid up her sides, but she held back any sound as she was placed back on her feet, cheeks aflame and suddenly his presence was undeniable where he loomed behind her. She spun around, a hand at her ear, to push her hair behind it. It was a nervous gesture she'd had for as long as she could remember, and she saw his eyes flicker to the side of her face, before they were back on hers.

"You're nervous."

She startled, hand halting at her ear. "N-no I'm not."

There was that raised brow again, and she swore she'd loosen every screw in Lily's mech arm for teaching him that. "You don't make me nervous, Gajeel," she stressed, but jumped when his hand was suddenly at her ear, fingers brushing against her hair.

"You're not scared?"

She relaxed a little, gaze softening. "Is that what you think?"

He only looked at her, and she smiled, and watched his brows furrow at the sight. "There are...different kinds of nervousness," she said then, pulling her gaze from his. "Not, uh, all of them are...bad. This – this is a good feeling."

"Feeling?" he asked.

She nodded, a grin blooming along her mouth. "Yeah. It tells you you're alive. Like this," she said, placing a hand against his chest, behind which the core of his circuitry rested, almost like a human heart. She could feel the gentle whirr of the machinery behind the plating, a surge running through the metal beneath the skin of her palm like a tingle.

"Do you feel it?...Gajeel?"

He was looking at her, an odd light in his eyes, sharp gaze focused on her hand where it rested against his chest.

"Do you feel it?"

There was a hand on her shoulder, but she couldn't feel it, heart numb and cold but living still, pumping blood and keeping her alive though she'd never once felt so devoid of life. "Levy? It's getting late, and we should be heading back. It's not safe here."

Fingers curling around the part, she nodded, drawing breath like drawing strength, to make her body respond to her commands. Mechanical – that's what she felt like, her actions automatic, like responses already programmed for her to follow.

She'd taught him to live, but she hadn't thought he'd done the same to her, that without him she'd feel empty – a shell of her living self, moving, breathing, talking, sleeping by rote. Almost like, like–

Like a machine.

Rising to her feet stiffly, Levy held the arm out before her. A broken piece, but of something she couldn't fix. Not this time. Because for all the plating that had held him together, and the coil of the wires she'd come to know by heart, Gajeel hadn't been a machine. She could have fixed a machine.

But there'd been life in him, and though she could tighten screws and oil rusted joints and put broken pieces back together, Levy McGarden, mechanical whiz-kid and Magnolia's foremost professor in humanoid technology, couldn't fix death.

She glanced up at Lily, still standing at her side. A soft patter of rain peppered his short-cropped hair, making the strands cling to his forehead, the droplets like tiny diamonds on his skin and his mechanical arm. He said nothing, and Levy drew breath – strength – and pushed onwards.

She smiled, made the corners of her mouth curve upwards as she pressed the arm close. The rain was creating clean tracks amongst the dirt and dust, water gathering in the furrows of the names carved in the metal.

"Let's go home."

The hurt lingered still – an ache behind her ribs. A part to be changed, but not yet. She'd let it rest a while longer, to remind herself. To feel. Because to feel was to be alive, and his memory deserved nothing less than her life, raw and true and burning bright, her sorrow only the first step on a long road without him beside her. But she'd walk it, regardless, with laughter in her throat and her chin held high with all her living grace.

AN: There will be an epilogue.