Sting knew from five blocks away that something was wrong, and ran the rest of the distance home. After two weeks of hiding Rogue, he'd become so high strung over the possibility of being found out that he felt he might snap, and smelling Natsu was the breaking point. Natsu had no business anywhere in their town aside from perhaps Sabertooth, and if he showed up there, Sting never caught any sign of him. For someone as loud and naturally flashy as Natsu, that was unsettling.

Natsu going to Sting's house made no sense. If he wanted to see Sting, then the guild was the obvious spot to find him, and Sabertooth's guild hall was the largest building in town. You didn't need to ask for directions to find it. The only reason Sting could think of for Natsu to go to his house was if he smelled Rogue.

The front door was still locked, but Sting could smell Natsu inside the building. A quick glance told him one of his windows was wide open, and he jumped through it rather than wasting time with his keys.

"What's gotten into you?" Lector asked, following Sting through the window. "You went into panic mode all of a sudden."

"Fro thinks so too."

"Upstairs. Both of you. There's an intruder," Sting ordered.

Lector needed no more explanation. He flew over to shut the window and grabbed Frosch's hand to lead her up to the second floor. Once they were gone, Sting stole himself and threw open the basement door.

Natsu smiled up at him and waved.

"Who let you in?" Sting demanded.

"Rogue."

"Rogue?"

Leaning forward so his face could be seen from the basement door, Rogue said, "I let him into the basement, and only because he figured out I was here. He broke into the house on his own."

That was only mildly comforting. Keeping someone close meant keeping them from running and squealing, and it was nice to know Rogue hadn't gone so stir crazy as to go upstairs and invite people inside. Although now that Sting thought of it, how exactly he planned to ensure Natsu's silence, he didn't know. He was acting on the assumption that Rogue wasn't in control of himself one way or the other when those people were killed, but both he and Rogue were fully alert now. That made it hard to back up anything Sting could think of that would physically stop Natsu from telling anyone where Rogue was.

Seeing the discomfort on Sting's face, Natsu said, "I'll keep it a secret. For now, at least. I promise."

Worried that it might look suspicious if he stood in front of an open door so long, Sting stepped down onto the stairs and shut the basement door before asking, "On what grounds, if it's only for now?"

"On the grounds that Rogue not let the shadows win," Natsu said. "If he doesn't turn into that other asshole, then he's still one of the good guys, right?"

Behind Natsu, Rogue shifted uncomfortably.

"You believe us then?" Sting asked. "What Rogue had to say about his shadow possessing him, you think that really happened?"

Natsu shrugged. "It matches up with what his other self said, and he seems like a good person. He was the only one who didn't think it was funny when your guildmate beat up Lucy."

"Oh. Right." Sting felt himself blush. He'd been the one to laugh the hardest at Minerva's cruelty. "That happened. Um… sorry?"

"I'm not the one you laughed at."

"R-right."

The last thing Sting wanted was to be blasted for past moral failings while counting on Natsu to not turn them in out of the goodness of his heart, and his mind raced a mile a minute searching for something to try and make up for his behavior during the games. Coming up with nothing that would seem sincere, he was relieved when Natsu changed the topic entirely without a thought.

"Is Rogue living down here forever?"

"Only until I have the guild set up for him," Sting said. "The basement there is larger, and I'm going to get it finished so it will look like an actual living space instead of, you know, a basement."

"It's still a basement," Natsu pointed out.

"It's a step up from this," Sting argued. "And Sabertooth's first floor windows are sealed off once the building closes for the day, so Rogue could come upstairs safely at night. Besides, it's temporary. Once the shadow is banished or sealed or whatever needs to happen to it to keep Rogue safe, there's no risk of him getting into trouble all over again in another country, and we can leave as soon as everyone stops wondering if I'll try and make contact with him."

"No one has come by the house," Rogue mentioned.

Sting, in response, gestured emphatically to Natsu, then added, "Council's sent their toads to come and inspect the guild three times since you broke out, and I got chewed out yesterday for being out visiting Lamia Scale when they showed up. Not to mention everyone from the guild constantly gauging how I react to any mention of you. I recruited Rufus to help with all the papers I keep falling behind on, and he won't shut up about what he thinks of all of my reactions.

"I don't like keeping Rogue down here. Even moving him to the guild basement I'm not thrilled about. We're gone the second I think we can safely get away without getting caught. In the meantime, he's wanted dead or alive, so forgive me for trying to play it safe."

Whatever Natsu intended to say, Rogue raised his voice to speak over the fire slayer and tell Sting, "I can't forgive you for something I don't blame you for. I'm grateful that you'd do so much for me, really. Besides… I'm the one who…"

Sting didn't need to guess how Rogue meant to finish that sentence, nor did he feel particularly inclined to force an answer out of him. As such, he was sincerely annoyed when Natsu asked, "Who what?"

Rogue bit his lip, looking away as he whispered, "Who killed everyone."

"Only twentyish people, and you were possessed," Sting said.

Natsu held up a hand. "No. Wait. I think it's important we not entirely brush that one off."

"We aren't. Rogue likes to feel guilty about everyone the dragons killed too."

"But he had no control over that."

"Yeah. Try convincing him," Sting said, jabbing a thumb in Rogue's direction.

"Past or future, I was the one who turned those dragons lose," Rogue said. "That I haven't tried yet doesn't change the fact that I have it in me to do that, and that your friends are dead as a result."

Sting expected Natsu—loudmouthed, easy going yet sometimes short-fused Natsu—to have an immediate response to that one. Instead, he recoiled and fell silent. Even though Sting had already gathered that Natsu wasn't going to rat him and Rogue out, he felt a sinking feeling in his stomach as he processed that reaction. Natsu had indeed lost a friend during the Eclipse incident. Whether it was a close friend or merely a guildmate who he got along with, Sting was afraid to ask.

"S-still," Natsu said finally, "It's the same as with the shadow. So long as you don't let things go wrong, they can't. It's not like someone is going to put a gun to your head and make you travel back in time to do all of that. No one even made you break out of jail."

"They put me in a cell that didn't block my magic, and by the time I ran for it, there hadn't been a single guard patrolling the hall in days, and it had been at least half a week since I'd been given food," Rogue said. "If either of you could agree that the whole thing was setup to encourage me to try and escape, I'd really appreciate it. That's one thing my shadow and I agreed on, and I don't like agreeing with it on the subject of breaking the law."

"That's a setup," Sting said automatically, then stopped to think about it and realized Rogue was right.

Having combed through all the legal precedents himself, Sting knew that the grounds to charge Rogue were shaky at best. The Council had no way to prove that Rogue had already developed intent to commit any crimes, given that his future self traveled back seven whole years. For all they knew, the idea to travel back and control an army of dragons came to him only a few hours before he acted on it.

The Council wanted to lock Rogue away for what happened during the Eclipse incident, and they couldn't legally justify doing so, but forcing Rogue to resist his detainment would give them solid grounds for an arrest. Refusing to cooperate with an arrest for a petty crime like shoplifting would only add another couple of weeks to your sentence, but for a major scandal that ended with the capitol in ruins and dozens dead, they could argue that Rogue needed to be put away for at least a decade. That would certainly keep him contained during the time where he was supposed to travel back through the gate.

With a horribly sickening realization, it occurred to Sting that beyond that, a Council that would starve someone who'd been denied a trial to egg them into breaking out of jail would likely be willing to have a prisoner mysteriously pass away in their sleep as well. If they could only lock Rogue away for, say, five years rather than for life, then Rogue might die four years into his sentence. Or a week in, if they didn't feel like wasting the resources.

All the more reason to keep Rogue hidden until the shadow was no more.

"If you move him to the guild, will he be alone at night?" Natsu asked.

"He'll have Frosch with him, and as guildmaster it wouldn't look too strange if I were in at any hour, so I could shift my schedule around to stay with him until late, or come and check in on him early. Getting food supplies to him would be as simple as swiping things from the guild kitchen, and I can always bring in extras for him and pass it off as wanting to make a special request from the cook."

Sting might not have been the best with going through all the red tape and paperwork that came with being guildmaster. He was, however, good at planning out long cons. Years of practice pulling pranks on an increasingly cautious Rogue were good for something. By the time Sting actually put to use a lot of the little concessions he planned for Rogue post-renovation, there would be no discernible difference in his outward behavior. Anyone who saw him making changes at present who decided to investigate would find nothing suspect, and would be well accustomed to the change be the time Sting made something of it.

Rogue, familiar with how long Sting could spend subtly setting up a scheme, gave him a meek smile. That alone was enough to make Sting's chest swell with pride. Despite Natsu's concerns, Rogue thought the plan would work. It was something Rogue could hope for, and for as hopeless as Rogue made everything out to be as of late, giving him anything was worth everything.

-o-

They dallied in the basement for some time, Rogue practically clinging to Natsu and making it hard for the fire slayer to excuse himself. Neither of them could blame Rogue for it. After all the ostracization and isolation he'd endured, it was only natural that he'd be eager to have the company of someone he hadn't seen in some time. Frosch and Lector were invited down, and the five of them stayed up late, Rogue laughing and smiling at Natsu's stories, and the other four doing their best to keep his spirits up.

Eventually, though, it got late enough that Natsu had to leave. He'd come without Happy, so it would be strange if he stayed the whole night away from home, and there were only so many trains that ran in the evening.

Sting planned to be courteous and offer to walk Natsu to the station, harboring an ulterior motive to recruit him in finding more people who could be trusted to visit Rogue without turning them in. Natsu beat him to it, saying as he stood to leave, "Sting, you have to show me how the heck to get home."

"Got it." Sting pushed himself to his feet and gave Sting a patronizing pat on the head. "I'll be back soon. You hide if anyone else comes by, okay? Be on alert. If it's Gajeel, you need to hear him before he hears you."

Natsu snorted. "Gajeel isn't about to go anywhere."

Rogue went pale, and Natsu had to hastily amend that. "He's alive. He's been in a bad mood since the Eclipse incident is all. Just… he didn't beat his dragon, you know."

"None of us did," Sting said. As a dragon slayer, it felt bitter to admit as much, and he didn't need any further explanation for why Gajeel might still be upset over it. Rogue seemed similarly satisfied with this explanation, which put no blame on him. Neither of them would have questioned Natsu any further.

So Sting was grateful that Natsu waited until they were several blocks from his house before deciding to give the full details. "Gajeel lost an arm in the fight. I thought Rogue might cut his own off as punishment if I told him."

"It's possible." Rogue practically worshiped Gajeel as a kid, and would no doubt blame himself for the mutilation. "But at least he's alive."

"Yeah…" Natsu's eyes dropped to the street, focusing on the cracks in the pavement that the two walked over. "At least he is."

The emphasis on 'he' was so slight that Sting wondered if he imagined it, but whether or not it was there, he couldn't beg for Natsu to help without asking.

"Who do you know that did die?"

A bitter, single note of laughter escaped Natsu's lips. "Everyone. Our guild… I don't know what it's like in yours anymore, but our guild is a family. I knew everyone, so everyone that died… Romeo doesn't have a dad anymore. His mom left town years ago, so Wakaba's looking after him for now. Gajeel's grieving for himself, and Jet's grieving for Droy, so Levy's all alone. She and Lucy go on jobs sometimes, but Lucy… she's fine, really. She bounced back alright from seeing her future self die. I don't think anything's wrong with her, but she has all these scars now, and she acts like they're the end of the world. Sometimes she still takes jobs with me too, but… our team kind of dissolved when Gray died." Natsu paused. "I think Erza's planning to leave the guild. Crime Sorciere lost a member, and she knows… well… she knows someone on the team really well. And since Fairy Tail is kind of… I mean… the way everyone acts right now, I don't blame her for wanting to get away from it all."

Out of respect, Sting let the next two blocks the walked pass in silence before springing his question. What he'd initially wanted to ask was about someone else from Fairy Tail who could be sympathetic to Rogue, but for as harsh of losses as their guild endured, that could wait. There was a more important gem in that mass of despair Natsu just confided of that Sting needed to seize while he had the chance.

"You have a contact with Crime Sorciere?"

Natsu glanced at Sting, mild surprise turning to confusion, which gave way to a grim understanding.

"They lost a member in the fight too."

"I know. Rogue and I saw it happen."

"You did?" Natsu planted his feet on the ground and looked straight at Rogue. "How? Ul… I mean… that man was crazy strong. And smart. He wouldn't have let a dragon catch him."

"It was a woman," Sting said. "Sorry. We thought her guild mark was Crime Sorciere's but maybe I'm remembering wrong."

"No. This guy really looked like a lady. Huge butt. Big tits. Long black hair. Girly perfume. Some sort of mint lavender combo."

"That was… him? Are you sure that was a guy?" Sting asked.

"No. You really saw him? What happened?"

"He… Uh… She attacked Rogue," Sting said. "I mean, that's what Rogue said. I was kinda busy trying not to get killed by the pincer-faced dragon while looking for Rogue, and I kept having to take detours through alleys to gain ground. When I finally saw him, that woman was attacking him, and he was just… taking it. It was weird. Like he didn't have it in him to try and survive. Then the dragon spun forward and skewered her, and she was dead. Just like that. I thought Rogue would be next and I started screaming, but the dragon stood over him and did nothing, and I forgot all about how Rogue reacted to that woman because the dragon leaving Rogue alone seemed even weirder. That other Rogue ordered the dragons to make sure he came out of the all that chaos intact, I guess."

It wasn't until Sting finished that he realized he'd talked more about Rogue than the dead Crime Sorciere member, but he'd answered Natsu's question all the same. Still, to look less like he had a one-track mind, Sting tried to show Rogue's would-be murderer a little consideration.

"I looked for her name when they put out a list of all the missing and dead, but everyone was claimed by a legal guild, or wasn't a wizard at all. I didn't see her face alongside all the others when they built the memorial either."

"You wouldn't have," Natsu said, so quiet that even with his sharp hearing, Sting had to strain to hear it. "The Council doesn't care a lot about the guild itself, since it's not officially registered. They don't look into it, so they don't know that it can't register. Before they made a mission of taking down dark guilds, all of the members used to belong to Balam Alliance guilds, or other criminal activity." He paused, looking sheepish. "Well, by all I mean two. They had three until a dragon killed Ultear. Calling them a guild in their own right is a bit of a stretch. They're more like a strike force."

A strike force comprised of people with bad legal records who were trying to do good. There was only one little hiccup that kept Crime Sorciere from being the perfect place for Rogue.

"I can't believe him!" Natsu said, back to an extremely outdoor voice, skin catching on fire in a startling blaze that Sting scampered back from. "He attacked Rogue? After everything I said, he attacked Rogue? Had the dragons even killed anyone at that point?"

"Hush!" Sting hissed. "It's the middle of the night!"

They were still a few hours shy of midnight, but it was dark out save for human bonfire fuming on the street. The October nights were cool enough that people would leave their windows shut, and Sting preferred being able to talk quietly with Natsu to being overheard by anyone he passed. Neither of them were loudly airing anything that could immediately implicate them in a crime, but it was still a subject matter that would draw unwanted attention. And Sting had the sense that Natsu's connection with a guild made entirely of criminals who turned over a new leaf but never went to trial went a little beyond knowing someone else who was in contact with them.

Seeing Sting's alarm, Natsu grumbled and extinguished his flames, but it was only after storming the next few blocks that Natsu slowed and explained the situation to Sting.

They knew it that Rogue was the one behind the Eclipse incident before it even happened, although they didn't know what exactly he was planning. They ran into his future self an hour or two before the gate opened. He'd claimed he was going to stop a dragon attack, not start one, telling Natsu the same lie he fed the princess. They knew not to trust him because he was the one who'd murdered Lucy's future self, a detail that Fairy Tail hadn't included in their official report of losses in the fight, and one that Sting planned not to share with Rogue. As far as they'd known, the future Lucy returned to her own time alive and well.

Ultear, as well as another Crime Sorciere member saved Natsu, and he confirmed their suspicions of a second time traveler. Apparently, their three man team had been doing a lot of behind the scenes investigating, and made contact with the future Lucy before anyone else. Ultear came up with the theory that the amount of time distortion the gate generated would allow them to erase Rogue's future self from existence and correct their timeline if Rogue could be killed in the present. Natsu, bless him, nixed the plan immediately. Whatever Rogue might potentially become, he was completely innocent at the time.

Ultear went ahead with it anyway. She tried to kill Rogue, set the tone in his mind that he was the one who needed to be punished for everything that went wrong, and then she got herself killed. Sting couldn't bring himself to feel too sympathetic to her for that.

But the other Crime Sorciere girl followed Natsu's orders not to hurt Rogue, and went to fight the dragons instead. She'd been with Natsu's teammate, Gray, when he died. And the third member, who Natsu similarly refrained from naming, hadn't known anything about Rogue's involvement until the Eclipse was over. He'd left to make sure the criminal dragon slayer, Cobra, was able to join the battle before anything regarding Rogue came to light. Natsu didn't know what he thought of the whole affair.

"But he's got as big a guilt complex as Rogue, if not bigger," Natsu said. "If you put them in a room together, they'd probably compete to see who regrets what they did more."

Crime Sorciere might have been the answer Sting needed after all. If he could get in contact with them and convince them to take Rogue on, Rogue could stay in the country and do whatever he could to alleviate his conscious by joining Crime Sorciere on their dark guild hunts. If nothing else, it would be a safer place to hide Rogue than Sting's basement. For both their sakes. Not to mention it was new faces for Rogue to see, and he'd no longer be so confined. Even if they couldn't get Crime Sorciere to take Rogue on indefinitely, they might let him tag along until while Sting did a thorough job preparing to flee the country, rather than rushing to get the bare minimum taken care of so Rogue could be out of the basement as soon as possible.

All he needed to do was figure out how to keep that stupid shadow under control.

-x-

STA: Friendly reminder that because Natsu saw Ultear first as Zalty and always noticed the scent of her perfume instead of a natural smell, he was convinced that she was a guy who liked to dress up as a woman.

I have this one story I've been meaning to rewrite for a while. Poltergeist. The premise is that Jellal passes away, tries to play guardian angel for Erza without her learning that he's dead, and accidentally ends up starting a romance with her anew as her anonymous ghost admirer. (I have another story in the works involving ghost!Lahar that isn't anywhere near the same, but the scenes where he interacts with not-ghost!Mest certainly remind me of that fic.) But the first chapter of Poltergeist–and this was written before the seven year time-skip–is the one where Jellal dies. The whole thing is set up to look like an accident in a contrived and way over the top sort of way, but in the next chapter Jellal overhears a discussion that clues him in to the fact that he was very deliberately murdered because his trial was dragging on and the Council was worried that people might start to question how much blame he really had in everything to do with the Tower of Heaven. Since that was the other story I wrote where Council prisoners were deliberately treated like shit to achieve something underhanded, it crossed my mind while writing this chapter. In case anyone's curious where Sting's concern about the possibility of Rogue dying midway through his sentence came from.

Hm... other chapter notes... Oh! So this was the chapter that I was stuck on for so long that I almost gave up on this fic without ever posting it. (Because I've gotta finish the first ten chapters before I let myself post something, to prove to myself I can see it through. And this is chapter 10.) But when I was reviewing a couple old chapters and noticed some small mention of Crime Sorciere, I was like "Well, damn. That might actually be a good bunch of characters to bring in." And just like that I actually had a good sense of how to continue on. I think I made some vague post on my blog about how I loved when little stuff I threw out at random turned into something that I could really work with later on.

The other experience I had like that around the same time (which would have been mentioned in the same post) was with an original story, where I randomly mentioned a glass knife as an important artifact because a glass knife sounded suitably absurd, then gave the villain an obsidian knife because that sounded badass and one of the heroes could manipulate metal with his mind, so a normal knife wouldn't work on him. Then I realized that another name for obsidian is "volcano glass" and my villain was running around with what was technically a functional glass knife, and suddenly I had a plot point about how the villain unwittingly had the artifact the hero needed to achieve the best possible outcome for both of them.

Can you tell I'm feeling chatty today? I don't usually write such long author's notes. Like, I used to in middle school, then I went through a phase where I abstained from author's notes at all. Then I started adding, like, a paragraph of commentary with each chapter. I feel like a motor mouth today, but no one's around to talk to, and I've just been practicing all these imaginary conversations in my head all morning because dammit I wanna converse.