Jellal, like always, was tired. He hadn't slept a wink since sending Natsu and Gray off on that mission, too anxious to even take a nap. He knew what he did was risky, but with all of Juvia's teammates away on missions there wasn't anyone he trusted enough to do the job properly. He hadn't wanted to turn to Gray and Natsu, but he knew they were capable enough to handle it with at least some grace. However, if anyone found out what he had done he more than likely would have been fired. Or maybe killed, if Makarov wanted it to happen that way.
His fingers holding his lighter trembled as he reached up to light the tail end of a cigarette. He inhaled on the filter, pulling the heat through the cigarette so it gained a slow burn. The smoke filled his mouth and he brought it in deeper until he felt the familiar sting in his throat down to his lungs. He blew out, removing the cigarette with his free hand, glancing around the parking lot of the hospital.
He was leaning against a pillar under a cement awning near the back of the hospital. A private entrance used mostly for staff. He had staff waiting on standby around him, stretchers and wheelchairs parked in front of them in case it was needed. The less public this whole ordeal was going to be, the better for him.
He glanced down at his wristwatch, the face reading 12:30, close to the time he expected the boys to arrive. He wasn't sure what van to be looking for, but he texted Gray where to meet him when he arrived at the hospital to set things up. He already wanted the day to be over, having already gotten yelled at by several of his employees and a few ambulance drivers for wasting their time sending them to the train station for no reason earlier that morning. It wasn't his fault the boys changed the fucking plan without telling him, and he refused to apologize for it.
He took another drag of his cigarette, letting the smoke sit in his lungs for longer this time before blowing out. He watched it leave his mouth, rising into the afternoon air and disappearing without a trace, leaving only the smell behind. As he watched it float up, he stared at the overcast sky, wondering if the rain was going to come back again. It had been raining on and off all morning, the air thick and full of moisture.
A few minutes went by before a large utility van pulled up at the curb. Jellal ordered everyone forward, nurses and paramedics rushing forward with their equipment. Someone threw open the back doors to the van, and in a flurry several girls were being lifted out and placed on wheelchairs and a few on the available stretchers. Jellal watched a few get wheeled past him into the hospital before turning to watch as Gray slipped out of the drivers side.
Jellal nodded to him as he approached, glancing at him up and down and raising an eyebrow at the much-too-large sweater that said Sal's Gas on the front.
"New wardrobe?" He asked, snorting.
"I call it On The Road Chic," Gray said, pulling at the front of the sweater loosely. "Can I have a smoke? I ran out last night."
Jellal wordlessly offered him one, lighting the end for him as Gray reached over. Jellal pocketed his things, watching Gray visibly relax as he inhaled the smoke. He wanted to ask for the full run down, but he knew he was going to have to wait for a more private time.
"Chief," Juvia said, rounding the opposite end of the van. He nodded at her and she nodded back, before they both turned to watch the rest of the girls get wheeled away.
"Juvia?" One of the girls said, a blonde who had been placed into a wheelchair. She looked nervous, reaching out for Juvia's hand.
"You'll be fine, they're going to take care of you," Juvia said softly, taking the girl's hand and squeezing it. "I'll come up to visit later after you've had some rest."
The girl nodded, turning to look into the back of the van and waving half heartedly at someone inside before she was carted away.
Jellal raised a brow and leant to the side to peer into the van. He saw Natsu slowly starting to rise, looking exhausted and green in the face. Jellal felt a little bad he had to spend so much time in a van, but he wasn't going to let Natsu know that. The stupid kid would just lord it over his head forever, and he really didn't need that right now.
After a few moments, Jellal was finally left alone with Gray, Natsu and Juvia. He looked over each one of them, both of the boys seeming to be favouring their right arms, though trying to play it off. They all looked tired, like they hadn't slept in days.
"Everything looks like it went well," Jellal said, sounding impressed. He wasn't surprised, but he expected them to be more hurt.
"Are you nuts?" Juvia rounded on him, all the exhaustion gone from her face as anger replaced it. She pointed a finger at him, her eyebrows drawn down and eyes full of fire. She lowered her voice to a whisper yell, so as not to be overheard. "What the hell were you thinking hiring these two?"
Jellal blinked at her, surprised that she would get angry at him like this. Juvia was usually known for being the most complacent of her team, and the kindest. He didn't think there was a time in all the years they had worked together that she had ever yelled at him. If anyone, she tended to save that tone of voice for Gajeel, but that was because they were partners and best friends.
"Well I was thinking that there was no one else available who was qualified for the situation," Jellal shrugged, lifting his cigarette to his lips.
"You almost started a war," she lowered her voice more at the last word, glancing around for anyone in the parking lot.
"But I didn't," he said, watching her with tired eyes.
She sighed, dropping her shoulders and running a hand down her face before regarding him more calmly. "But you could have. That's why I'm angry."
"Everything went fine," Natsu spoke up from where he stood next to Gray, watching the scene uncomfortably. "Gray and I aren't so stupid as to have walked in blind. We made sure no one saw us and those who did didn't make it out alive."
Juvia shook her head, pulling hair behind her ear after she was done. "That's not the point. I'm not mad at you guys, I'm mad at him."
"Juvia," Jellal's voice turned serious. "Your team was away in different parts of the continent. I had no one else here trained enough on discrete missions, and I had no time to brief them on how to do things properly. Your shithead partner called me yesterday morning to say he wasn't going to make it. I had no one else I could rely on doing the job properly, except these two. If they died it was one Twilight and a syndicate member. No one would have blinked."
She winced, and regret turned in his stomach.
"Sorry," he said quietly. "I didn't mean that."
"We know you would have missed us, Cupcake," Gray said teasingly, patting a hand on Jellal's shoulder.
"Is that what you want to call it?" Jellal asked sarcastically, shrugging off Gray's hand and taking another puff of his cigarette. They were all quiet for a moment, everyone visibly relaxing as the realization that the mission was over finally hit them.
"You should all get some rest," Jellal finally broke the silence, dropping the tail end of his cigarette to the ground and grinding it into the concrete with his shoe. "I've got everything from here. Juvia you can get started on your report tomorrow."
"I don't know what any of those girls are going to tell you," Juvia said after a moment, meeting Jellal's gaze with an emotionless stare. "But I was the one who killed Bora. That's what I'll be writing in my report."
He looked at her, trying to read the plains of her face and gauge any answers to the silent questions he was asking. He knew she was warning him ahead of time to not poke his nose where it didn't belong. She was protecting someone, a habit of hers that was either her strongest asset or biggest weakness. For the moment, he couldn't tell which.
He gave up, nodding with a sigh. The look she had given him was a silent 'trust me' and over the years he had learned to do just that. It didn't really matter to him who had killed that giant piece of shit, as long as it got done. However, if any of the higher ups had found out it was someone without a license to kill they could have been tried for murder, as unjust as that would have been. Jellal had his suspicions that it was one of the girls, and they had been through enough. As far as he was concerned they were asleep during the whole thing.
"You were the only one fighting," he said, staring at her and ignoring the two boys next to him. If she was covering for someone else, then she might as well cover for him, too. "Right?"
"Right," Juvia nodded, understanding what he was saying.
"Here," Jellal produced a single car key from the pocket of his pants, handing it to Juvia. "I brought my personal car with me. Drop these boys off wherever they need to go, and get yourself home. Take it to work tomorrow and I'll get it from there. I'm probably spending the night here to make sure everything goes smoothly."
"What's going to happen to those girls once this is all over?" Natsu spoke up, his voice quiet. Jellal looked at him in surprise, knowing Natsu tended to care about others but not usually when it came to missions. As long as he and Gray got their money and the job was complete, they turned a blind eye to whatever happened next. It was a way to protect themselves, as getting attached to others in their line of work usually turned out badly.
"Depends on the girl," Jellal shrugged. "If they have homes to go back to we'll escort them there. If they don't we'll put them in a women's shelter in town. What happens after that is entirely up to them. It's best not to worry yourself over it."
Natsu glared at the ground in response, looking like he wanted to argue but knowing there wasn't a point to it.
"Alright, we should head out before anyone sees us," Juvia said, glancing between the two syndicate members uneasily.
"See you later," Jellal said with a nod, and then flashed a quick grin at the group. "Good work you three. Under different circumstances I would say you make a good team."
The others said nothing, just waved their goodbyes and walked off to the parked car near the middle of the empty lot that belonged to Jellal. He watched them climb in, catching Natsu's uncomfortable expression and snorting under his breath at the younger boy. Juvia turned on the ignition and peeled out of the parking lot with ease just as the rain started to pick up.
Jellal walked towards the entrance to the building, digging into his pocket and retrieving his cellphone. He scrolled through his contacts and dialled the number for the clean up crew to get rid of the van Juvia had brought back. It was unmarked, and looked relatively indiscernible, but he wasn't going to take any chances. That thing needed to be stripped and broken down into parts, or, preferably, torched without hesitation.
Frankly, what happened to it after the clean up crew got it wasn't his problem anymore.
The rain pounded against the windows of Jellal's car as Juvia drove, the water sliding off the crisp tinted glass with ease and draining into the dirtied streets of Magnolia. Natsu lay curled up on the plush leather seat in the back of the sports car, absently wishing he had been in this vehicle instead of the hard metal floor of the van for the past near 7 hours. Preferably he wouldn't have been in any form of transportation for seven hours, but if he had a choice it would be the expensive fancy car he was in now.
Natsu remembered when Jellal had bought the thing two years prior. He had brought it to the slums of the western side of Magnolia, close to where Natsu lived to show it off. Natsu didn't like cars, but he could appreciate the way the beast looked. Sleek, shiny and it purred with a fine tuned engine. When Gray had seen it his eyes went as big as the moon, and he started drooling over the thing, begging for a chance to drive it.
Jellal had laughed, refusing to give Gray the key and bragging about how much it had cost. He had gotten a nice new bonus when he became chief, and he turned into a huge penny pincher in order to save up. Natsu and Gray teased him for the way he babied the thing, saying the car was the only thing Jellal truly loved in life.
That had pissed him off.
It was funny looking back on it, but the one thing that surprised Natsu was how easily Jellal had handed the key over to Juvia. She must have had a good track record with driving, or, at least he trusted her an unbelievable amount to let her borrow it unsupervised for a night. Thinking about it, Natsu was positive Gray was more than likely pissed off about that fact.
"Where am I taking you?" Juvia asked, trying to raise her voice above the pounding of the rain. The wipers slid furiously across the glass, but it was only providing enough clarity for a single moment.
"We need to go to the western slums," Gray answered, pointing off into the distance. "The back alleys between 34th and Harper Street. Do you know where that is?"
"Near Doctor Porlyusica, right?" Juvia asked, and Natsu sat up in surprise.
"You know her?" He asked, watching her face through the rear view mirror. She glanced up at him, meeting his gaze in the small mirror for a minute before returning her eyes to the road.
"Yeah, she's the only doctor in town who treats Twilights. She sort of made a name for herself, everyone knows who she is."
"That's fair," Gray shrugged his good arm before turning his head and staring out the window, watching the city of Magnolia pass by in an instant.
Oh yeah, Natsu thought with a sick sense of satisfaction, he's pissed.
"I can understand Natsu needing to go there," Juvia side eyed him quickly before returning her eyes to the road and making a left. "But why didn't you get treated at the hospital?"
"Porlyusica's the best in town," he said it like it was obvious, and to them it was, but to anyone else Natsu wasn't sure they would be aware of how talented she was. "I'd prefer her over a hospital any day."
Juvia hummed in thought, and that seemed to be the end of that conversation. Natsu would have kept it going under normal circumstances, but he was crashing hard and it was almost impossible to keep talking while trying to force himself not to be sick in Jellal's car. In fact, if he did throw up, he was positive Jellal would have killed him himself without any hesitation.
They rode in silence for twenty minutes, neither Gray nor Juvia reaching to turn on the radio. Natsu silently wished they would play something to help get his mind off of his internal struggle, but eventually resigned himself to listening to the rhythmic beating of the rain against the car.
Natsu kept his head leaning against the window for the full ride, watching the main streets of Magnolia pass him by without any sense of him being there. He was well hidden behind the tinted glass, his infamous appearance going unnoticed for one of the rare instances in his life. Any time he travelled the main streets he was met with contempt, disgust and anger. People really could be vicious to the things they didn't understand, and Natsu learned that at a very early age.
He watched the few people on the streets running for shelter from the rain, all dressed in relatively nice clothes meant for the middle class or higher, shiny jewels hanging from their ears or necks like badges of wealth. Fruit carts and stands housing food or wares lined the main streets, and neon signs for restaurants glowed brightly against the foggy air. There were clothes shops and businesses all squashed together in high rising buildings made of different coloured brick that brought a new life to this part of the city.
Absently, he wondered what the insides of those places all looked like. He knew that each one of those buildings had a very prominent sign on the front that said No Twilight's which prohibited him from entering. As a child, he fantasized about entering the nicest restaurant in town and ordering everything off the menu. Sometimes he still entertained the idea, but back then he still foolishly believed he had a chance in making that dream a reality.
Eventually they turned into the slums, travelling west towards the good doctors. They passed the brightly coloured penis they had seen only the morning before, still hanging proudly on the wall of a rundown building, and Natsu grinned faintly at it. A moment later they pulled up in front of the building that doubled as Porlyusica's home and her medical office. It was a brown brick building with three floors and looked almost as old as the doctor herself.
Juvia pulled into a parking space in front of the building and pulled the car into park. Natsu let out a sigh of relief when the motion of the car had stopped, and thus the world stopped spinning with it. He sat up straight and leant forward in the space between the two seats in front of him and grinned brightly at Juvia.
"Well, it's been fun," he said, breaking the silence. "This might sound weird, but I hope we get to meet again. On friendly terms, of course."
Juvia let out a small laugh, and she turned to look at him, a faint smile on her face. "Stay out of trouble and I'm sure we will."
He laughed, and saluted her. "Yes ma'am."
He flopped back into his seat and turned towards the door, getting ready to make his exit. He hesitated when he noticed Gray hadn't made any effort to even take off his seatbelt, and raised a brow at the back of his partner's head curiously. He wouldn't have been surprised if Gray was asleep, but Natsu could see his eyes open in the mirror off to Grays right.
"Be safe, yeah?" Juvia said quietly, watching Gray expectantly.
"Yeah," Gray nodded, clearing his throat awkwardly before turning to her and giving her a tight smile. "See you around, officer."
He unbuckled his seatbelt and slid out of the car before she could answer, and Natsu scrambled to crawl out of the car after him. He tried to chase after Gray in the rain, confused by how awkward the tension was in the car and wanting to ask about it.
"What the hell was that?" Natsu called over the rain, catching up to his friend and walking up the walkway to the front door to the clinic. They had barely walked twenty feet and they were already drenched from head to toe.
"Nothin'," Gray said, though he refused to look at his partner.
"You're just jealous she got to drive Jellal's car!" Natsu teased, shaking Grays good arm and laughing when Gray tried to brush him off.
They opened the door to the clinic without knocking, a small bell jingling overhead to alert any occupants in the building of their presence. The clinic stretched out before them, several curtained hospital beds lined up neatly on either side of the olive coloured walls. A fire was burning in a hearth at the end of the room, providing heat to the building and masking the smell of antiseptic with that of freshly burning wood. Doctor Porlyusica sat at her desk to the left, wheeling around in her chair to face the boys as they entered, crossing her arms and looking unimpressed.
"Good morning, Doc," Natsu greeted cheerily, hoping that if he played off the damage dealt to him he may have a chance at walking out of the clinic alive.
"Nothing good ever brings you to my home, Dragneel," Porlyusica growled at him, the lines on her face pulling down as she pursed her thin lips at him. "What trouble did you get yourself into this time?"
"Oh, nothing too extreme," Natsu shrugged and walked towards a vacant bed, sitting down on the plush fabric and bouncing out of boredom. He watched as Gray sat on the bed across from him, a pained expression on his face he was trying to hide as he gingerly held his hurt arm. "Where's Wendy?"
"She's out on a delivery run to the Compound," Porlyusica said, rising from her chair and walking over to stand in front of Natsu. She glared down at him over the bridge of her nose, her red eyes piercing and sending a chill down his spine. "You don't often make house calls just to chat, Natsu, so are you going to stop playing this game and tell me what happened?"
Natsu dropped his grin and sighed. He knew he couldn't keep up the charade that nothing was wrong forever, the doctor was too smart for that. He also knew the faster he got treated the faster he could sleep, and after the overdose he pulled yesterday he knew he needed at least a full day in bed to properly recuperate.
Lifting his hands to his shirt, he unclasped the multitude of sheaths he had attached to his body and laid them out on the bedside table to his right. Porlyusica watched him through her narrow eyes, waiting patiently for him to finish while she undoubtedly assessed his body language for any signs of fatigue or injury before he showed her the real damage. He eventually unbuttoned his shirt and pulled his arms free of the silk sleeves, exposing his few cuts from the stray bullets and knife wounds he had across his chest. He kept his eyes trained down while Porlyusica looked him over, baiting his breath while he waited for her to notice the break in his arm.
"You can never get out of anything easily, can you?" The Doctor eventually sighed, turning to walk away and collect the necessary instruments she would need.
"It could have been worse," Gray spoke up then, having switched from sitting on the bed to lying in it.
"I'm sure 'it' could have. Want to fill me in on what happened?" Porlyusica grumbled, setting up a tray with her things and taking a seat on a stool in front of Natsu. She attached the strap of a blood pressure monitor to his uninjured bicep and placed the ear pieces to a stethoscope in her ears. She placed the cold, round part of the stethoscope against his chest, sending a mild shock through his body due to the chill. She then began to press quickly on a ball of air connected to the blood pressure machine, while she listened to different areas of his body while he breathed.
She worked quickly and methodically, and there was something cathartic in watching her doing it. Natsu had spent most of his life in this clinic, having run into trouble more often than not and needing the doctor's assistance to get patched up. While he sat there, he breathed in the smell of antiseptic and the herbs she used for her homegrown remedies and was hit with an immediate sense of nostalgia. For as long as he could remember the clinic had smelled this way, and probably would for as long as it would continue to stand.
"Your blood pressure is obscenely high—what did you do?" Porlyusica glared at him again, her eyes and tone sharp and angry.
"Nothing—I swear!" He leaned away from her on instinct, feeling his stomach knot and a sense of dread settle in.
Porlyusica ripped off the blood pressure cuff and took away the stethoscope, making quick and jerky movements to show how pissed off she was. She could see through him like clean glass. It was easy for her to tell when he was lying, she had known him his whole life.
"Natsu Dragneel, I have warned you about the dangers of overdosing!" She threw her hands up in exasperation before rising from her seat and rushing towards the back of the clinic. She opened several cupboards and shuffled around them, her exact actions hidden to Natsu by the curtain pulled across the back of the bed.
She returned a moment later with a needle filled partway with an amber coloured liquid, undoubtedly something she had concocted herself. She grabbed his good arm in her iron clad grip (a feat that always surprised him, considering her age) and jabbed the needle into a vein in his elbow. She plunged the liquid in his system and removed the needle quickly, tossing it into a nearby hazard bucket.
"What was that?" Natsu asked, eyeing the bucket wearily. He had often found himself as the main guinea pig in one of her experiments while she created a new drug. They didn't always work out in the way she had hoped.
"A drug I created to help regulate your body. It should lower your blood pressure and calm your heart rate, as well as alleviate any weight in your lungs. You were breathing pretty laboriously, kid," she sat back down on her stool and set to work on properly sanitizing his open wounds with a rubbing alcohol soaked cotton ball, and covering them in gauze. "You need rest, and plenty of it."
"I am pretty tired," he admitted, his eyelids suddenly feeling like they weighed a tonne.
"I don't doubt it. I'm surprised your body has lasted this long, you absolute idiot," the doctor sighed, sounding more tired than angry at the moment. "Tell me about your adventure—was it scary?"
Natsu let out a short laugh, grinning cockily at her. "Do you really think there's anything out there that scares me?"
"There's something out there that scares everyone," she said quietly, not looking at him. "One day you'll find what scares you."
"You're talking to a brick wall, Doc," Gray spoke up, a loose grin on his face.
"Even brick walls can get torn down, boy," Porlyusica said sharply, slapping down a piece of gauze on Natsu's chest with more force than necessary.
They were silent for several moments while she worked. She patched up Natsu's cuts with ease, before standing up and walking off to find the materials for a proper splint for his arm. She grumbled the whole time, muttering to herself about how Natsu was 'going to get himself killed' and 'wouldn't last a day after she was gone'. He and Gray had shared a grin over that, knowing she was probably right.
She adjusted a splint to his arm and outfitted him with a sling before telling him to lie down and rest. He did as he was told, climbing under the covers of the bed and laying his head on the plush pillow. He closed his eyes, feeling instant relief wash over him as his muscles relaxed and his breathing regulated.
Before he realized it, he was asleep.
Lucy didn't like hospitals. She didn't like the big empty room she was put in, and she didn't like the machines hooked up to her and she didn't like the bed that felt too high off the ground like she was floating in the air. She especially hated the silence. It seemed to stretch on and ring too heavily in her ears, a constant reminder that she was alone and how much she desperately craved companionship.
It was the silence in Bora's house that terrified her the most. Silence was what bred hope. It gave her a false sense of security that she wouldn't be bothered or beaten or filled with drugs, and she could just be left alone with her thoughts. The silence at Bora's was like a safety net she fell back on, and each time she experienced it she was left disappointed. The net had failed her; it had dissolved away and let her tumble backwards into the darkest memories of her brain.
Hospitals were supposed to be a safe place—at least, that's what children were taught. Lucy was sure she was taught that as a child, taught that she shouldn't be afraid and she should accept the help that was offered to her. There were no monsters in hospitals. No bogeymen hiding at the end of the hall, waiting to carry her away into the night.
However, Lucy had learned that people were monsters. They were capable of horrific things, especially if it benefitted them. There was no single bogeyman, there were many and they came in the form of men willing to pay for her body, something that she never gave her consent to sell.
As she lay in the hospital bed, the room brightly lit even with the curtains pulled across the windows, she stared out at the room stretched out before her. She was in a private room, completely isolated from any of the other girls she had travelled here with. The only visitors she had had so far were nurses and doctors, who had hooked her up to the machines to her left and drew blood from her arm to run tests.
She stared at the two arm chairs placed at the end of the room, next to a fake potted plant and underneath a television. She imagined people sitting there, her parents, or what she assumed they looked like, waiting patiently for her to recover so they could take her home. They would smile warmly at her, and reassure her that she was safe—that they would take care of her. Her mother would offer to get her some tea, and her father would jokingly say he would let her pick whatever she wanted to watch on television, as long as it was a sports game. They would tell her they loved her, and missed her, and were searching for her.
When she blinked, the image was gone and she was alone again, the silence ringing out in her ears. She wondered if anyone was going to come, even though she knew she didn't even know her last name. She didn't know if she even had any parents anymore, for all she knew they could be dead. Even if they were alive, she had no way of contacting them. She didn't know who she was or where she came from, and any tearful reunion with her family would have to wait until her memory came back, if it ever did.
Lucy wasn't even entirely sure she wanted her memory back. She was definitely curious about who she was—desperate, even, to find out. However, there were plenty of memories she was positive she didn't want back. The months she spent with Bora were a blended haze at the moment, and to be able to remember each day with clarity made her feel sick.
Instead of dwelling over the return of her memories, Lucy decided to sit back and try to rest. Her body had ached all morning from the long ride in the van, as well as from the ghost pains of previous injuries. She needed to allow herself time to heal, as with her injuries she also was dehydrated and half-starved. Lucy wasn't sure of the last time she had a proper meal, or even a consecutive three in one day. Bora never made it a habit to make sure the girls were properly taken care of, most of them collapsing due to starvation. There were more than seven of them when Lucy was first brought in, a fact that she was unfortunately able to remember with horrifying clarity.
She settled back against the mountain of pillows behind her head and pulled the thin bed sheet and blanket close to her chest. She let her eyes flutter close and tried counting backwards from ten in her head. The counting had become a sort of mantra; a prayer of a sort that kept her sane through the all the horrible things she had experienced. If she could take the world ten seconds at a time, she could handle whatever life threw at her.
3...2...1… sleep took her then, gentle and sweet and faster than she had expected.
A/n: heyyyy everyone look I uploaded on time today :p. Anyway, this chapter was fun to write, I like Jellal's character. His pov isn't going to happen a lot after this mini-arc (I don't think) but I enjoy writing him regardless. A few new characters should show up next chapter, and I look forward to including them :). Thank you all so much for all the lovely reviews you guys sent in, they were fantastic. I'll be messaging those who were logged in to review shortly, and for the guest reviewers-thank you! I wish I could thank you personally. Also thanks to everyone who fav'd/followed, there are 134 followers now which blows my mind!
Also we didn't reach our reviewer goal theres no chapter preview. I actually don't think I'm going to do that little challenge anymore because that means I have to write the chapters in advance and I'm currently too busy to do that so we'll see if that comes back later or not hahahah. I just want to give a heads up that next weeks chapter is the last one for 3 weeks as I will be out of the country visiting friends and will be too busy to write/upload. At least, I have no current plans to update but if I magically have time to post a new chapter it more than likely won't be on any of the Mondays but at some random time. Idk yet, we'll see. But this story is not dead, and will remain active until I get back.
Thanks for understanding and please leave a review after you finish the chapter. Hope you all enjoy and thanks for sticking with me! :)
