Whoops, it's been a while since I posted, hasn't it? I still have a buffer of eight chapters, but I haven't really worked on writing more since I started posting this, whoops again ^_^'


"Gray, I need you to knock me out!"

"What!?" Gray responded in confusion.

"I need to get to Lucy! Just knock me out!"

"Natsu, can't you see I'm in the middle of something!?" Gray yelled as he and Ultear's swords hit and rang out.

"Yeah, yeah, just hurry up and punch me in the head!"

Gray groaned. "Shut up! I'm not gonna force you to black out!"

"Oh come on, the one time I want you to, you aren't gonna!?"

"Like I said, kinda in the middle of a fight here!?"

"I know, just-" and then Natsu collapsed after a blunt hit to the head. It hadn't been Gray, but Ultear who'd fulfilled Natsu's request to render him unconscious.

"Hey!"

"He was annoying me," was all Ultear said before going back at Gray full force. Gray smirked. He hadn't wanted to knock Natsu out and leave him vulnerable in the middle of a fight, but now that he had been, whatever Baram was planning to do at Lucy's manor would fail. With Natsu there to protect his "girlfriend" (he snickered at the inner teasing of his prince), they would never succeed in hurting Lucy. Ultear Milkovich had just signed for the death of the mission.

oOo

"Lucy!"

The girl darted up from the armchair she'd fallen asleep in, books flying off her lap and chest.

"Virgo, what's wrong!?"

"Princess, some Baramese soldiers have just arrived at the manor. They're looking for you." Lucy could guess why they were looking for her. "We need to get you hidden away. Taurus is fending them off as we speak." Lucy nodded. She hoped her bodyguard would be okay, however. He was strong, but he wasn't always the smartest or most strategic when it came to battling. Virgo grabbed Lucy's arm to lead her to safety.

"Where are you hiding me?"

"We're going to the servant's quarters. Gemini has an extra uniform for you to disguise yourself in, and she's willing to stand in for you if need be." Lucy groaned at that. In this case, 'stand in' could very well mean, 'get killed'. They kept hurrying, until Virgo cried out in painful surprise. Darting from the hall they had just passed was a blue-haired woman, and she'd immediately gone for Virgo with her scythe.

"Virgo!" Lucy cried. She looked to the new arrival. "Who are you!? Are you from Baram!?" Lucy asked frantically while trying to help her maid in some way.

"I am Juvia Lockser, and yes, I am from Baram. I've been sent to kill you, I'm sure you can imagine." The woman had a cold and lifeless gaze, but Lucy could sense that her heart wasn't as cold as her stature made it out to be.

"So why haven't you!? I was in your sights, so why didn't you just attack me right there and kill me instead of hurting Virgo!?"

"Because I don't want to kill you," Juvia answered, making Lucy's earlier guess seem to be true. "I don't see a need to kill you and shed blood, as you've done nothing wrong." Well, I did release some of your prisoners, Lucy replied in her head. "Especially so since you may know the information we're looking for. As long as you and your father cooperate, then you should come out of this mostly unharmed."

"Wha-" Lucy began to ask, but Virgo put an arm out in front of her.

"I will let you do nothing to Princess."

"Virgo, you're hurt! If I do what they ask, then I can stop you from getting worse and stop the rest of you from getting hurt as well!"

"Tell me something, Maid. Why do you call her 'Princess'? Is it just a title; a pet name you've chosen for your master? Or are you perhaps hiding something?"

"I know nothing," Virgo informed Juvia, with a fierce fire in her eyes that lead Juvia and Lucy to believe that there was, in fact, something she wasn't saying.

"It'll take a lot for you to relinquish anything, I see," Juvia sighed, then addressed the blonde. "To tell you the truth, Lady Heartfilia, your maid here is not the only servant of yours who's been hurt." Lucy stared at the woman with daggers in her eyes in order to force Juvia to reveal more. "A blue haired woman got in the way of my colleague, so he attacked her. She's currently being held by my ally and is probably suffering as we speak."

"Levy!" the girls both cried.

"She has nothing to do with anything!" Virgo urged. "Nothing to do with Celestia!"

"It's unfortunate to say this, but if you want to save her, you'll have to come with me." Juvia truly did feel regret that the girl had been hurt. This maid had been hurt as well, but it wasn't severe at all. That girl, however - Levy - had been at the mercy of her teammate, who was as sadistic as they came. And it was partially my fault, as well, Juvia recalled. It had been because she insisted that they try to gain information from the Heartfilias without killing the daughter that the black-haired man she was teamed with had decided to throw his attacks at the next person who got in the way.

"I'll come with you, but you have to allow our doctors to take care of Virgo and Levy."

Juvia nodded. Lady Heartfilia's demands were reasonable.

oOo

"Nngh!" Levy refused to cry out as this man had his way with her, attacking her with an iron club. Pain blossomed from every part of her body, but she would never give this man the satisfaction of her screams. He also had a huge iron sword, but he hadn't touched it at all, content with just beating her with his club.

"You're resilient," the man remarked. "It's annoying. And boring. When you don't scream, it's not as entertaining to beat you up." Which was exactly why Levy had stayed mostly silent. He hit her in the gut with his club, causing her to cough and hold hands to her stomach and mouth as she tried not to vomit. When she assessed that she would not, in fact, toss her cookies, Levy groaned and laid back on the ground, awaiting more beatings.

The man scoffed, however, and tossed his weapon aside. "Damn, this is boring. I hope that Heartfilia girl is more of a damn screamer. When is Juvia gonna get back here with her?"

"You-" Levy coughed. "You aren't going to hurt her," she continued in a croaky voice.

The man laughed. "And what, you're gonna stop me?"

"No. We're going to stop you. All of Lucy's servants."

"Keh. And why would you do that?"

"Because we love her. Lucy makes it so easy to love her, and she's got so many faithful friends looking out for her." The man just scoffed again as he began to polish his weaponry. "You know," Levy started again. "I've heard of you."

"And why would a random maid know anything about me?"

"I have my sources. You're Black Steel," she remarked with disdain.

"Yeah?" Gajeel said with a smirk. "Black Steel Gajeel at your service. What of it?"

Levy spat. "So Gajeel's your name. You were in the group that killed Lisanna."

"I don't even know who that is," Gajeel said with a grunt.

"Lady Lisanna Strauss! The sweetest and most caring girl I've ever had the pleasure of knowing! She was with her sister and brother when they encountered a Baram reconnaissance mission to Fiore a few years ago, which you were a part of! Mira and Elfman haven't been the same after that, and Mira even put her sword away until just recently! She thought she would never want to touch it again!"

Gajeel listened silently as the tiny girl went off on her tirade. He thought back to a few years ago, when she had indicated that mission was. Three siblings, two of whom were females. Gajeel could remember them now. The older girl had had a huge ass sword. The other one, though, the one who'd died... "Are you talking about that girl with the short white hair? She had a bunch of throwing knives and some brass knuckles?"

"So something jogged your memory?" Levy retorted with venom in her voice.

"She was sweet and caring? She seemed vicious. She had brass knuckles, for crying out loud! Gave Azuma a scar right across his chest!"

"Shut up! You didn't know her! You killed her before you got the chance to! Or, someone from your group did..."

"No, you're right. It was me who killed her. She was the first Fioran to die by my hands. And boy, did she scream. Beautiful screamer. She screamed for her siblings to run while I beat her bloody with one of her brother's maces."

"How..." Levy started, shaking in anger. "How can you speak so casually of it!? If you had any ability whatsoever in that cold, black heart of yours to care for someone other than yourself, then those screams wouldn't have been so beautiful. Lisanna and so many others would still be with us if it weren't for sadistic bastards like you! Entire kingdoms would still be alive if it weren't for people like you!"

Gajeel shrugged. "When you're raised to kill, not much can phase you." Levy was silent at his heavy comment. She hadn't ever thought of it like that. "God, I don't even know why I'm talking to you."

"Did it never occur to you that what you do causes pain to others!?"

"You think we were allowed to think so? I watched the other kids say 'no'. Any sign of remorse or inobedience or regret, and we got the same beating I just gave you."

"And yet, knowing how painful it was, you still did it to me. And tried to find it enjoyable. You really are just trying to save your own skin."

"Why wouldn't I? I don't owe this world or its people anything. I don't even care about this stupid war. I just did what I was told so I wouldn't get hurt. And then I became the sadistic bastard you see before you." Gajeel smirked at his reference to the tiny woman's words. It might've been a heavy topic, he might've mentioned his past, which he absolutely hated, and the girl might've been a beaten mess, but somehow he was finding this conversation... Somewhat enjoyable? Why?

"You may not owe anything to the world, but we all owe it to each other to not be assholes. We're all stuck in this mess of a world. Wouldn't it be less of one if we could all be decent human beings to each other?"

Gajeel snorted. "If you had my shithole of a childhood, you wouldn't be worried about that."

"Is that so?" Levy remarked with a sneer. Gajeel grunted, knowing full well at this point that she had a retort for anything he said. "Well, plenty of others have had a 'shithole' of a childhood. Children get abused and tons of crap like that, and most of them manage to have basic human decency, if not becoming even more empathetic. Also, I know several people who had a childhood at least starting similar to yours and one person specifically who shared a lot your story, at least for a while."

"Oh yeah? And what story is that?"

"The story of your home kingdom being invaded and destroyed, which a good chunk of citizens know the feeling of. You, however, didn't flee; you were captured. You were just a little boy, living in Koori, when suddenly Koori was no more and you had to start working as a tiny slave for your new country, called Baram. You were only five years old, but you can remember everything clearly. You saw blood come from everyone around you that tried to say that this wasn't right, and you did everything you could to protect yourself, which meant following every instruction you were given. Even if it meant someone was hurt, you listened to your leaders. You just didn't want to be the one getting hurt."

Levy continued. "Your leaders noticed your willingness to obey. They started giving you even more of the jobs that brought pain upon others. Since you had nothing else, you started enjoying the missions they gave you. You started enjoying shedding blood and hearing screams of pain. You started wanting to hear the gurgles of death, but you had never left Baram, and you weren't allowed to kill the precious resources that Baram found in its people. I can only imagine how excited you were to be sent into Fiore those years ago and how hopeful you were that you would run into Fiorans, because you would finally be allowed to take the life of another. And here you are today. You've probably taken several more lives at this point, and you're hoping that Lucy and Lord Jude are going to be uncooperative so that you can cause more death today. You probably wanted to kill me, too. You probably wanted to take that sword of yours over there and stab me over and over again until I was screaming for mercy, screaming for you to plunge it into my heart so I could have the sweet release of death. I'm not sure why not, but you obviously haven't killed me yet."

"Y-" Gajeel was wide-eyed. He didn't know how to respond to that and had his mouth open and gaping as he struggled for words. "How... Who... What kinda sources do you have!?"

Levy gave a small, cocky smile. She would've probably laughed too, but just feeling her chest tighten from the start of a chuckle, she abruptly stopped, sensing a great deal of pain wash over her from the injuries Gajeel'd given her. "That didn't come from my sources. It was easy enough to figure out."

Gajeel grumbled at that. He wasn't supposed to be so easy to read. He thought he'd shed anything to do with his past, but this girl had drug it back up and was seemingly tearing it down. All she'd said was the truth, nothing more, nothing even really opinionated, but something was feeling heavy -or maybe it felt lighter? He honestly couldn't tell- in his chest. Gajeel couldn't figure out what he was supposed to think, but this light -or heavy- thing he felt was... Scaring him. And looking at this woman and realizing that he was the one that marred her porcelain skin with the hideous black and blue bruises just made that feeling worse. He looked away from her body and his eyes fell on his weapons. The club made the weird pangs worse as well, and seeing the blood of other people staining the edge of his sword wasn't as bad, but it still affected him a bit. What had this girl done to him!?

He didn't think he wanted to know, so he shoved it back down from where she had brought it up from. He didn't want to deal with it, because he knew trying to would just bring up a whole mess of crap. He tried to change the subject, although it had still gone to the girl's words.

"How do you know I was captured from Koori? How do you know I'm not Celestian? And how'd you know I was five?"

"Okay, I admit I don't know that for sure, but you just seem more like a Kooran than a Celestian, and you look to be twenty-four, twenty-five, so you would've been five or six nineteen years ago."

"Has it been that long already?" Gajeel offhandedly commented.

"You didn't know?"

"I haven't exactly been counting the years."

"That makes sense."

There was a pause.

"You said..." Gajeel started. He gulped. "You said you knew someone that 'shared my story'?" Besides the random Kooran and Celestian escapees she might know, how did she know anyone with a past similar to his? A past full of psychological and physical torture at the hands of Baram? She couldn't have had any sort of acquaintance with a Baramese, and she definitely couldn't have one with a former Baramese, because those didn't even exist. Once Baram captured someone, there would be no escaping, or so he'd thought and been told.

"Erza," Levy responded. "Or, as you would probably know her, the Titania."

"What!?"

"Erza Scarlet, the Titania, is an escapee from Baram. She was enslaved as a child, just as you, but she managed to get out years ago, and she's been fighting here in Fiore for Baram's destruction ever since. I'm pretty certain she has friends that are still stuck in Baram, as well." Erza hadn't actually shared any of that with Levy, but being the intuitive and observational woman she was, she'd figured it out.

"I never knew... Titania had to be just a little girl then, and she escaped!?" His conversation partner hummed an affirmative. "I didn't think... Nobody gets out of Baram. I remember, once, it had to have been a year after all this shit started, something happened and some of the kids got out. But when we were told that everyone involved was 'taken care of'... I think that's when I kinda lost hope and started doing what I was told." Why am I telling her that!? I don't talk about myself! Much less my feelings! Gajeel shook his head to clear it. "But they must not have gotten all the escapees. Titania must've left during that mess. If only kid-me knew... I might not have become such a 'sadistic bastard'." He laughed again at his allusion to the shrimp's words. Gajeel heard a very short giggle, cut off by a round of coughing. "You okay?" Why did I just ask that? I never care if someone's 'okay'! And besides, of course she's not okay! I spent the better part of three minutes hitting her with a giant iron club! I don't even have the right to ask if she's 'okay'! Really, I shouldn't even have the right to talk to her!

"You know," Levy started in her post-cough croak, "it's kind of funny."

"Funny?" Was she talking about his dumb joke about being a bastard?

"Funny that just a couple minutes ago, you were attacking defenseless me with a club, and now we're just having a normal conversation. Well, almost normal. Not really normal at all. But you know what I mean." She coughed again, and Gajeel's gut twisted with that weird feeling from before.

"I..." Gajeel fell silent, once again at a loss for words.

However, he wouldn't have to figure out what to say next, because in the next moment, Juvia arrived with some pink haired maid clutching her shoulder and a person he had to assume was the Heartfilia girl.

"Levy! Oh my lord, are you okay!?"

So that was the tiny woman's name. Gajeel hadn't even realized he didn't know it. He watched as Levy nodded, but then struggled to stand up, even with help from the blonde. Gajeel noticed an urge to go and help her himself, but he somehow had the feeling that Heartfilia wouldn't be letting him anywhere near Levy until... Well, probably never, with the practically murderous look Heartfilia was giving him.

"You and Virgo are going to the doctor immediately," Lucy remarked, immediately met with protests.

"No, Princess. I'm not leaving you alone!"

"And neither am I!"

"Levy, don't even bother fighting me! You need a doctor before those injuries get worse! You're going! And Virgo, you'll be taking her and make sure your shoulder is taken care of, as well." She was met with more grumbles from them. "You know I don't like doing this, but if you won't listen, I have to. I order you two to leave me here and go to the medical room immediately." Neither girl could refuse a direct order from Lucy, so despite the fact that they continued protesting, they left.

"Now, Lady Heartfilia, is the time to ask for your information," Juvia pointed out.

Lucy already knew what they wanted to know, but as they weren't supposed to know that she had just been in Baram, Lucy acted as if she were oblivious. "What do you want to know? And why would I know it?"

"The Heartfilias are next in line to the throne after the current royal family. As such, your family is probably trusted with many of Fiore's secrets. We want you to tell us where the Celestian and Kooran heirs are."

Lucy continued to feign her surprise and confusion. "The heirs? I don't kno- KYAH!"

Gajeel had done it mostly out of habit. He'd helped interrogate people before, and had been trained to immediately 'remind' those who didn't know answers. Once Lucy had started to utter the phrase, Gajeel had hit her in the gut with his club, earning a scream he would've thought was beautiful just five minutes ago. But the moment his club had hit and the scream began to leave Lucy's lips, the voice of the tiny woman -Levy- invaded his mind

"If you had any ability whatsoever in that cold, black heart of yours to care for someone other than yourself, then those screams wouldn't have been so beautiful. Lisanna and so many others would still be with us if it weren't for sadistic bastards like you! Entire kingdoms would still be alive if it weren't for people like you!"

Gajeel suddenly came back to his senses. Heartfilia stared up at him with hate and clenched teeth, but a twinge of confusion while Juvia also looked at him in surprise and not understanding. He then realized that his hand felt awfully light for holding a giant iron weapon, which was when he noticed that it was light because it was empty. Looking around, he saw it rolling along the floor, feet in front of him and the opposite direction of its latest victim. He'd just thrown his club out of his hands.

"Tch." Gajeel crosses his arms. "Where's Snowy?"

"Lyon is talking to Lord Heartfilia."

"Well, let's go join him. Her father'll know more than the girl, anyways. It's why we were supposed to just kill her."

Juvia gave him an incredulous look, but nodded. She gave a worried glance towards Heartfilia, and Gajeel responded to her unvoiced question.

"We'll keep her locked in here in case she's still needed afterwards. Don't worry, we're not gonna kill ya." His last sentence was meant for Heartfilia.

And with that, Juvia nodded to her ally and they walked out the door of the chamber they currently resided in. Juvia turned and clicked the lock on the door.


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