A/N - Fairy Tail is owned by Hiro Mashima

By the time she made it back to Fairy Hills she had willed herself to stop the tears falling from her eyes. There was still tracks down her cheeks, but she hoped that if anyone stopped her she could always blame it on the injury. She briefly bumped into Cana as she was leaving her room, but she was far too drunk to even register the tears, and plus from the low chuckling emanating from her room Levy guessed she had male company. Oh well, she guessed once both Gildarts and Erza were away, the Cana would definitely play. The drunk woman simply waved a bottle at Levy, smiled and hiccoughed before heading out for more supplies. If Levy's guess was right, the person hidden behind the door was the only person who she had ever seen out drink Cana.

Once she was safely hidden behind her closed door, Levy's willpower broke and tears started to flow freely again. She pulled off her clothes and threw them in the washing basket before going through the motions of getting ready for bed, despite the fact it was still light outside. She didn't feel like doing anything else with her life right now. She stood in her bath tub, carefully washing herself down as to not get her bandage wet. She stood over her sink, bent over to wash the dirt from the day out of her hair. She wrapped a towel round her head and another around her body before she walked out to her kitchen to try and scavenge some food. She usually ate at the guild, but she really didn't feel up to that today. After rejecting the ten year old packet of instant noodles (which would have been far out of date even without her seven lost years) and some slightly squishy strawberries which Erza had left, she resigned herself to a simple cup of green tea. She tapped her fingers on he table as she waited for the water to boil, staring at a pile of books which she hadn't even started to translate yet, before pouring her tea into a large mug, with runes inscribed on the edges to maintain the heat. Cradling it to warm up her hands, she made her way back out through her maze of bookshelves to perch on her bed. She placed her cup on the bedside table, and looked around for something to wear to bed. After a few minutes, she gave up and retrieved Gajeel's shirt from the laundry and slipped it over hear head. She was immediately enveloped by his smell, and she instinctively snuggled into it before getting under her duvet to get ready to sleep.

She started reading her latest book, Of Dragons and Dragonslayers, but it just made sobs escape from her throat and her tears more frequent. She placed her bookmark back between the pages before finishing her tea and burrowing down into her blankets.

Fairy Hills was oddly quiet. Every resident except Cana was out on a mission (it was coming up to the end of the month so everyone was trying to catch up with their rents. Levy had the monopoly on translating jobs which made her monthly rent relatively easy, and she was sure that Cana made the entirety of her income from betting in the polls) and Cana was on her mission to find more alcohol. She never knew that she would miss the occasional shouts and bangs which erupted from the other girls rooms throughout the night. It made her feeling of loneliness multiply.

She had thought she was getting somewhere with Gajeel, she really did. She had plucked up the courage to ask for his help training and spent every spare moment looking up new spells in order to impress him. And when he leaned towards her earlier, she thought all her effort had paid off. But all of her hopes were for nothing, and now he probably knew that she was interested in him and was disgusted that someone as small, as bookwormy, as her thought that she had even a sliver of a chance with him. She could imagine him now, sat on his sofa with Pantherlily, laughing at her idiocy as Pantherlily agreed that, yes, Gajeel was too far out of her league.

She buried her face in her pillow as her snivels turned into sobs which wracked her entire body. Why did she have to fall for someone so out of her league? Why couldn't she develop feelings for Jet or Droy? She had tried so hard in the past, but she just couldn't force her heart to do it. She never even felt anything for any other guy in the guild until Gajeel came along. He had awoken her heart before unceremoniously smashing it on the ground.

Gajeel heard the door click closed, and immediately all of his muscles relaxed. He threw the dish cloth into the sink, and his knees gave out underneath him. As he sank to the floor, back against the cupboards, he let out a shaky breath. What had he done? All these months of building up their relationship, getting her to trust him, and he blew it all in one moment of misjudgment. It was just the way her breasts wobbled slightly with each tug he made on the thread, and each wobble sent a fresh wave of her scent mixed with silver to his nose. Between that and seeing her topless, on his sofa, she had slowly torn down his restraint and he just had to do it. The way her hair fell over her face, stuck to the sweat on her brow, and her lips parted slightly made him wanted her to see her in that state every single night.

But the look of pure terror on her face afterwards forced him to lie, put on that look of utter indifference which he had practiced throughout his life, and informed her what metal she had pierced into her body. As if she didn't already know.

He didn't know how long he sat there, trying to get his heart to calm and get his brain in order. He had done something wrong, he knew that. He had probably ruined the second best friendship he has ever had. And with how close the Fairy Tail family was, she would probably report it to the others and he would be ostracised all over again. Which was worse, beating and nailing her to a tree or practically assaulting her while he was supposed to be fixing her up, he didn't know. He banged his head against the cabinet behind him. How could he have been so fucking stupid? How could he have ruined something so beautiful?

He wiped something away from his eye, it was not a tear because Gajeel did not cry before pulling himself up to his feet. He wandered around the house for a while, trying to think of something to keep him occupied, to take his mind off everything that happened but he just could not think of anything that could tear his thoughts away. He made his way up to his bedroom, wincing as her scent still lingered in the air, violently dragging his thoughts back to the blood which had tainted her abdomen. Blood that was there because of something he had done. Again. Her blood had her own wonderful scent mixed heavily with iron. His two favourite things rolled into one, but the only time he could experience it was when she was in pain.

Gajeel sat down at his desk, and unlocked his draw. He pulled out a notepad and a pen and reviewed his previous notes. He pulled the open book on his desk closer to him, and silently prayed that Levy hadn't seen it's focus. He could tell that she hadn't been over by the desk, but he didn't trust her not to know every book in the guilds library by the colour and thickness alone. He sighed as he glanced at the last chapter he had been working on. This book had taken him three months already, and he was only on the fourth chapter. He didn't know how the Shrimp did this day in, day out without going insane. This was the simplest book he could find on the subject, and it was still confusing him. But he was Gajeel, the Iron Shadow Dragon Slayer, and he would never be defeated.

Two hours later, he was seriously doubting this sentiment. Maybe, just maybe, Gajeel could be defeated by a book. Somehow, it just made Gajeel fall in love with her even more. If she could sit and read through ten of these things per hour, the hell she deserved her S-Class candidate status. Not that she wasn't strong enough for other reasons as well. She was getting harder to beat in training, although he would never tell her that. He couldn't do with her getting complacent. At least, he would tell himself that was the reason, while a little voice at the back of his head reminded him that the truth was so she didn't realise that she no longer needed him. He was most of the way there to making her big.

He grunted loudly and threw his stationary back in the drawer. He wasn't in the mood to study any further tonight. Instead, he pulled out his latest metal working project and continued. It was a small sculpture of Tenrou Island which had been his most intricate piece so far. But even after a few minutes he realised what he really wanted to be doing, and started a brand new project.

Pantherlily entered the house, and immediately knew something was wrong. At this time of night, there was usually the smell of something cooking and the sound of Gajeel singing as he made them both food. But today it was silent, and the only smell was the lingering smell of disinfectant.

"Gajeel! Are you home?"

He didn't get a response, but the sounds of shuffling upstairs answered his question for him.

"Do you want some food?"

Silence again. Lily sighed, he thought that Gajeel had gotten over his occasional moods but obviously he was wrong. He simply padded into the kitchen and transformed into his battle mode to obtain the kiwis that they always kept stocked. Grabbing three in each hand, he made his way upstairs to his room, eating them as he went. He could hear the distinct sounds of Gajeel tinkering in his room, and dared to peek inside.

"Still working on tiny Tenrou?"

Gajeel simply grunted, not looking up from his work.

"How did training go?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

Lily sighed. There was no way he was going to get any sense out of Gajeel this evening. He padded his way over to the training room, throwing the last kiwi into his mouth as he went. There was no point even attempting with Gajeel anymore.

A/N - Thanks everyone for all of their support. I wasn't going to upload another chapter today, but everyone was just so lovely that I just had to get this chapter written and uploaded.

I have forgotten to put it in the last two chapters - but this is set after the Grand Magic Games and it goes off on a tangent from there, it will not be canon at all.

Please carry on reviewing, tell me anything you would like me to improve!