The shack is not suited to the cold. No matter how many runes he poorly splices together, no matter how many layers he dons, his bones are cold and the walls are even colder.
He can go to Fairy Tail, this he knows, but the trek there is more risky than the outcome is worth, so he stubbornly throws more scrap papers into the fire before him and delves deeper into one of the books from the basement. It's a terrible distraction from the numbness settling into his skin, but it's a distraction nonetheless; he's managed to make sense of three sentences on the page thus far, all about keeping someone named Mavis in the once tall amber to preserve her corpse for reanimation.
(they walk with their heads so high but they don't know a lick of their own sordid history do they)
There's a rumble behind him and then Laxus is wrestling him into his oversized fur coat, hissing, "Mirajane was right. God, you're fucking stupid, freezing to death-"
"T-too c-cold t-t-to lea-v-v-ve," Mard stutters, much to own horror. Mard Geer Tartaros does not stutter.
"I live up the road, you could have called if nothing else, you idiot," Laxus snarls as he teleports them to his house - Mard is privately rather glad he doesn't have the energy to feel ill at the sudden motion.
"We're a team," Laxus snaps, shoving him onto the sofa and pointing to the soup before him. "I look after my own. We all do."
Mard glances down at the book still in his clawed grip.
(you don't know how rightwrongright you are)
A/N: it's fucking cold enough to freeze a tit off out there stay warm you lot if I find out any of you aren't bundling up I will manifest in your room at 3 am and turn you into a cocoon with your blankets.
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-eien