"You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else." -Albert Einstein.

"Often the difference between a successful man and a failure is not one's better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on his ideas, to take a calculated risk, and to act." – Maxwell Maltz.

The opposite sides of a dice cube always add up to seven

The original name for the butterfly was the 'flutterby'

Chapter 10

The first problem had been standing up. Natsu offered to carry me, but I automatically declined.It seemed wrong to accept help, like I had cheated. Instead, I slowly pushed myself off of the bed as my body screamed internal curses the whole time. I leaned on Natsu as my body trembled under me. I could have given out any second, just given up and lay back down, but I glanced at my friends with tears that ran down their faces.

That was what propelled me to move forward.

I still gripped that golden key in my hand and, one step at a time, I moved forward.A lot of my weight was on Natsu, but at least I moved with my own two feet.

As we made slow but steady progress out of the room, Natsu continued to glance back to Erza, Gray, and Wendy. He was confused, plain as that. I would have explained it, I probably should have, but I did not have enough strength to tell the story that many times.

I also needed Natsu to stay calm to help me down the stairs.

Right before we were out of the room, I saw Erza look up. She tried to wipe her eyes, yet could not erase the slight puffiness around her eyes. The look on her face had lost some of that blind depression. Instead it seemed to radiate bittersweet mourning.

The walk down the stairs took forever. A couple members of Fairy Tail passed, but I had only briefly registered them amidst the shooting pain.

Natsu tried to talk to me a few times. His voice was blocked out easily, though. My mind could not take conversation. The world had started to become too intense for me. The smells too strong, the colors so vivid they blurred.

Yet I walked.

Eventually, the end came.

Someone got me a chair; various other people asked if I was okay. My brain and my mouth were not connected as I collapsed onto the chair and breathed for a moment. The pain that raged slowly cleared up and I was able to comprehend again.

A swarm of people surrounded me, most likely every single person in Fairy Tail.

I blinked, startled, as I doubted my ability to actually do this.

Makarov pushed his way through the crowd, and stood in front of me. His age showed on his face and in his body. The way his body hunched over, the way his eyes seemed moist already. It seemed like he already knew I was about to tell a lie.

"Lucy, I know this is hard. I hate to do this to you, my child. You've been through a lot. You're in pain. You're hurt," Makarov's voice was apologetic, as if he was the one about to lie to his guild. "So much has happened, and you have so much to recover from that just thinking may hurt, but, I must ask one thing of you. Will you tell me what happened to Loki? Loki, my child that did not come home?"

I still held the golden key.

Squeezing it tightly, I told the lie. It flowed smoothly, and sounded exactly like the lie I had told Erza, Gray, and Wendy. The words were perfect, and, while the story was flawed, there was no one to contradict me. No one believed that I would lie. No one would know I lied unless I told them. I had even talked about how the body had disintegrated. Each word killed me a little more.

When I finished the lie, the entire guild was silent. They had been that way through the entire lie as well. I stared at their faces neutrally, all out of tears to cry and sadness to show.

I only felt guilt.

I could not move.

I was enveloped by guilt. It squeezed my lungs and punctured my skin. I could not breathe. Everything was so tight, too close, so densely packed together. I was going to explode. I panicked. It was overtaking me.

"We should not cry."

The voice came from right behind me. Female. Strong. Bittersweet.

Every single eye turned to Erza. She floated to my side and placed a hand on my shoulder

Our eyes met.

It saved me. The panic was not gone, simply shoved to the side, but it was enough. I could breathe again.

The golden key was warm against my palm.

Erza continued, and her voice spread through the whole guild like a warm blanket, "Every single on of us knew Loki. He wasn't weak. He was family. He laughed and fought and lived alongside every single one of us. Shouldn't we know him a little better than this? Loki didn't like tears. The guy was a player, not a sap. A pervert, too, if I'm telling the truth." This got a couple of dry chuckles.

"Since when did Loki ever let us worry over him, let alone cry for him? I bet he is looking down at all of us, right now, from heaven and shaking his head. He probably also has a couple of girls under his arms, and thinking about how many dates he is going to have for the rest of eternity, if I know him well enough. So, why do you cry when he is so much happier now than he would have been alive?

"Crying won't bring Loki back. All we can do is to remember him. Remember the things he has done and never forget. Now forgetting Loki is something to cry over. But we are Fairy Tail, and we won't ever forget family." Erza's strong voice bounced off of the walls of the guild.

They were magical words. They did not wipe away the sadness, despair, or desolate emptiness that had consumed the guild. They did not evaporate my guilt or wounds. They certainly did not bring anyone back from the dead.

They simply made you a little more hopeful. Hopeful in the way that says today may be horrible, but tomorrow will definitely be better.

No one started smiling, laughing, and screaming. A jug of beer was not brought out and there was not a party, but instead a silence where everyone just seemed alive. It lasted about a minute, because large crowds in general do not stay quiet for long. People started to shuffle their feet and do that thing where they cough to pass the time.

A solemn Master wormed his way next to me. He squeezed my shoulder in a way that can only be called fatherly. "Thank you for coming home."

After that, the crowd started to break apart. My body was dead out of energy, and despite my claims that I was alright, Makarov made Natsu carry me up to the room again. The whole ordeal was met with weary shakes and nods of my head from me, and a poor Natsu trying to lighten everyone's mood that was still damp with shock.

Time began to pass. This was not odd, I guess. It was time for time to start passing normally. Everything beforehand had gone impossibly slow, so to balance it out, things passed in a blur.

Days merged together and became weeks. I was confined to the bed rather harshly. I got bored rather often, even though I got visitors every day, most of that was in large packs of people at once. Those times made me weary, but I got through it because the rest of the day was my thoughts, my secrets, and I.

There was a funeral for Loki, but I do not remember it too well. Wendy had gotten me so high on painkillers that I was pretty dopey. If I recall, there had been a pretty cherry blossom tree, and a lot of speeches that basically called Loki a pervert.

I was on the mend. Actually, I was practically healed, but Wendy would not let me out of the bed until I felt better that I had ever felt in my life. She claimed it was because she did not know what my 'wings' would do if they were stressed before they were healed. It took a lot of willpower for me to not correct her and say they were called alae.

The alae themselves had raised some questions. During a mass visit from the guild, I had gotten grilled on why I had them.

"They're so huge!" Natsu had exclaimed, "And you can fly! ZOOOOMMMM! We could kick some serious ass with those, Luce. You and Happy could tag team and pick 'em off like flies. Why wouldn't you have shown us before? We could've pulled some of the greatest pranks ever!"

"Well, uh…" I had nervously picked at the blanket and avoided Natsu's eyes as he listed off pranks with Happy, who suggested fish in each one. "You see, I just….thought they were weird."

Everyone that had visited me just stared.

And blinked.

And laughed. They laughed so with such vigor and carefree spirit that it was contagious.

From the crowd, Cana had yelled, "Lucy, you're a riot! Obviously you've never looked around you before. I mean, just look at us. Look at Natsu over there, plotting your next near death adventure."

I giggled as I asked, "What? What did I say? Come on, tell me."

Erza had been the first one to calm down, although she still grinned when she said, "Lucy, if you think wings are weird, you still have a lot to learn about Fairy Tail."

The alae topic had been dropped since then save for a few questions from Natsu. Erza had been right. There was a lot I had known, and a lot I still needed to know. The most important thing was probably about the jobs. I had no idea about the jobs request board, until Gray had explained it to me one day. He also said that when I got better, we definitely had to go on a job together.

I had agreed to that -mostly because I had no money- but the prospect worried me. I could definitely not pull out ignis anymore, and my mage magic was scratchy at best. Every day from the time I could start standing again, I would get out of bed when I was sure no one was coming to visit me. From there, I practiced mage magic with varying results.

Most of those results were complete failure. For the majority of the time, I could not summon any spirit. There were a few occasions on which I summoned Cancer, but sending him back was a big fiasco as well.

I had to pick a job where I could only use my whip.

I needed to get better soon, though. People kept spending jewels on me, bringing me food on the house everyday, letting me use their clothes, and basically getting me everything I needed free of charge. It would have been nice if I did not still feel so guilty.

Finally the day came, even though I had thought it never would.

Wendy had come into the room like normal to check my vitals. I was restless, and in between the entire "how are you questions," Wendy commented on how jumpy I was. When she finished, I thought she was just going to leave the room.

Instead, Wendy stood up, dusted off her dress, and said, "You're free."

I sat there dumbly for a second, waiting for Wendy to say "Never mind," or "Just kidding."

She did not.

A grin had crept its way across my face, and I stepped out of the bed in slow motion.

One toe, another toe, all of my toes, my foot, my leg, my other leg, my thighs, my hips, my torso, and my chest had all swept their way out of the bed. I had stood, on my own, and I did not have to lie back down until I chose to. No more solitary hours in boredom and no more maid service, which was both a plus and a minus.

"Thanks for everything, Wendy. I am grateful, honestly. You will never-"

"Just go down and see the rest of the guild," Wendy laughed as she waved me off and cut my thank-you speech short.

I flashed another grin and laced my voice with honesty. "Thank you."

Then I was out of the room. I jogged down the stairs as my stomach bubbled with emotions. Excitement -tinted with anxious coloring and the ever present dash of guilt- spread its way through my bloodstream. The smell of alcohol and spicy flames sneaked into my nose before I was even down the stairs.

"Lucy, you are finally free!" Cana yelled as she took a break from emptying her beer jug. That single yell caused every single head in the guild to look my way.

So I did that awkward wave thing you do when you cannot bring yourself to form words, but feel like you have to do something.

Disorganized mobbing occurred. Shouts and laughs and friendly pats on the back all happened at once until it seemed like everyone in the guild had said something to me. Gray had given me a weird man-hug, which squished my breasts awkwardly into my own ribcage. The mass crowd should have been expected, maybe even prepared for, but I could not deny that it was nice to have so many people surrounding me that cared so much.

It made my alae flutter ever so slightly.

"Now we have to go on a job, right?" Gray said. He grabbed my hand and gently tugged it towards the job request board. "There is one I picked out, and I think it'll be a good one. Flame Pee wants to come with, so we'll have to sneak out the back door."

Erza interfered sharply, "Gray, stand down! You're going to overwhelm her. Have some patience."

Gray listened, albeit clearly unhappy with even the idea of it. I squeezed the hand that was still intertwined with mine and shrugged my shoulders to say Do-not-worry-I-will-go-with-you-soon. Our hands broke apart.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Natsu starting to break his way through the crowd that had started to return to their previous activities. His pink hair stood out like a bruise, while Happy lounged on his shoulder.

As soon as Natsu had cleared most of the crowd, his face glowed with a smile as he raced up to me and started chattering. "Let's go on a job, Lucy! I know you said you'd go on one with Ice Hedgehog but it can wait! It'll be so fun for us to go on a job, with Happy of course! We should leave right now. Food money will be our hands before you know it!"

I tried to reply to Natsu, but it was hard to do when you only got to bask in your full recovery for a few minutes before life gets tough again.

SLAM!

The guild doors busted open, hitting the walls. A stray wind blew in, carrying with it the smell of the outdoors and something else.

Something familiar.

The cause of the busted doors stood in the door frame, looking left and right in a search for something. I could barely make out the shape besides the vague description of it being human.

With hesitance, the shape stepped into the light of Fairy Tail.

"Levy!" I screamed, recognizing her instantly. I pushed and shoved my way through guild mates as politely as I could. My movements were fueled by what felt like shots of caffeine coursing through my veins. It could have been a trick, especially because Levy said she did not want to leave the Phoenix Court all that time ago, but I wanted it to be real.

How did she get here?

Did something happen?

Does The Regina know?

Is Levy okay?

Oh, this is amazing.

I had never thought I would see Levy again but, as I finally reached her and encased her in a hug, I realized how much I had missed her. My mind had avoided it all this time, thinking it was too hurtful to think about a past that was left behind. It was, just the littlest bit, but there was so much content joy in me that those things had temporarily ceased to matter.

"I missed you, Levy! This is wonderful, amazing! I never thought I would see you again. How did you get here? Are you okay? Did anything happen? Why are you here?" I questioned endlessly in between telling Levy how much I missed her and burying my face into her shoulder.

Levy let out a sweet laugh, "I missed you too! We so need to catch up. There is so much for you to tell me, and a lot for you to hear. At least tracking you down was easy." Levy squeezed me a little tighter and set a smile onto her face.

I turned towards the guild, who had watched on in the sort of silence that was actually pretty loud, and said, "Hello everyone! This is a good friend of mine, Levy, and she…" I broke off. I did not know what Levy was to me in the past that I had fabricated for Fairy Tail.

"She is… uh… Well you see, Levy… is a girl, who has al… wings just like me… And she-"

"Hey Fairy Tail. I am Levy McGarden, Lucy's friend! I have to steal her from you for a little while. Sorry for the interruptions! Please expect us back soon. We will come back, so do not worry," Levy cheerfully greeted as she grabbed my wrist.

My body stood stationary, confused, with a blank stare directed at Levy. All of the urgent sugar rush feelings had gotten in the way of proper thought. It was like I was unable to sort words and their meanings. In the end, it did not matter because Levy tugged my wrist a little harder. My legs staggered uncertainly as the rest of my body lurched forwards in the general direction of Levy.

Before I knew it, Levy, who had a plastered smile on her face, had dragged me out of Fairy Tail and into the street.

The two of us stared at each other. A couple people passed by us, all of whom spared us brief glances. Everything in my head took its time to slowly turn from a muddled mess into a clear picture. When everything made sense again, I grabbed Levy by the shoulders and hugged her once again. Both of us giggled, but I also felt another sensation between us. The sensation seemed to be delight, which diffused in waves.

"This is all fine and dandy," Levy said as she stepped backwards, "but we should probably get out of the street. There are too many…people," her face scrunched up to show her discomfort before she masked it again. "Let's find a small restaurant or something." I was about to agree before I remembered. "That is a good idea and all, but I do not have any money. There has been too much going on, which I will have to tell you all about." I found Levy's hand with mine and began to look for a bench.

Levy untwined our hands and reached into a pocket of a pair of worse-for-wear brown capris, the exact ones worn in The Phoenix Court Charm Inscriber. In her hand she held a bag of money. By the looks of it, I assumed there was enough money for some drinks and a possible snack.

"This should be enough, right?" Levy shook the bag and began to saunter down the street in the direction that had the least amount of people.

I had to do a mini jog to catch Levy's head start. After I had caught up with her, I asked, "Where did you get all the money from?"

There was a quite big shrug on Levy's part. "Around. I did a few odd jobs on my way over here, if that is what you wanted to know. They paid well."

I let it drop and continued in silence. It was not a hard, awkward silence between two almost strangers that are both trying to say something but cannot think of anything. It was the silence of two old friends who wanted to revel in the other's company before they ate and started talking.

Levy stopped in her tracks and stared at a sign on a store.

"Are you sure we want to go in here?" I asked.

Levy nodded with finality. Behind her eyes, there was a small blimp of strong emotion that was implacable and most likely her will to go into the store. With a somewhat urgent voice, Levy tried to convince me to go in. "See how empty it is in there? It is the perfect place to go. It looks new as well, so, there is no reason why not. Trying different places is good, right? Plus, I could use some coffee." The last statement was tacked onto the end and resembled a completely different thought.

"When I had been with Marsha, she had said that an empty restaurant was empty for a reason," I threw that thought out there.

"When you were with Marsha, did you ever go to a coffee shop?" I shook my head, "There you go, then. Let's get a move on. If this is just because you do not want coffee, get a hot chocolate."

With a sigh, I filed behind Levy into the shop.

The aroma of coffee beans hit my nose like a brick wall. I jerked in surprise of the strong smell and tried to take smaller breaths.

Levy immediately made her way up to the register to place her order, beckoning me along with another strange amount of urgency. She gave of a feeling like she was on edge, but I wrote it off as a lot of excitement and went up to the counter as well.

It did not help that the man stood there was itching his back.

"Going to order?" The man asked. I was momentarily startled by his voice. I thought I had heard it before. Somewhere. That was not possible. The only place that could have been was the Phoenix Court and, even though I itched to know how Levy got out, I did not think this guy would have been able to find me.

That is, if he was looked for me, which was doubtable as well.

Levy fidgeted uncomfortably and met the man's eyes for a second. She shivered and took a hurried glance at the menu before ordering, "A medium vanilla espresso, no whip please." From there, Levy stepped away from the counter, probably farther than necessary.

The man scribbled this down on a piece of paper in silence.

I took another look at the menu before I said, "Just a hot chocolate, sir."

The man scowled and wrote it down before he turned his back to me. I decided it was my dismissal and went over to an area where Levy had taken a seat at a table. I thought it was strange that the man did not ask for any money. I had only ever paid upfront for something, so I assumed this was another weird thing about coffee shops.

I sat in the chair across from Levy, who tried to discreetly keep her eye on the man that had taken our orders. I would have said this was because she was infatuated with him, but her expression was too guarded for that. When I asked her why the man did not want money upfront, her body jumped in surprise, like she had not expected me to speak.

When Levy regained her guarded composure, she shrugged, "Strange, maybe it is on the house. That is fine with me."

The two of us watched the man make our drinks and, to be honest, it was comical.

Levy watched the man walk away vigilantly while I took a sip of my hot chocolate.

I immediately scrunched my face up in disgust and pushed the drink to the side.

Never drinking that again.

Levy, on the other hand, had taken a few sips and seemed content with it. I waited for her to swallow a sip before I got down to business.

"Now, you need to tell me your whole story," I leaned forward, practically lying on the table.

And so, Levy told me her story.

A/N this chapter is short….and late. I'm glad that you guys are bearing with me. Christmas is on its way. If you celebrate Hanukah, that's going on too. I hope you're having a good holiday. Everyone's talking about the Connecticut shooting. It's heartbreaking to hear about, so keep the families of the children in your prayers.