Been a year already? Mavis, where does the time go? Sorry I haven't been here in so long, but things came up, and I won't bother you telling you about them, so there were things to do and I didn't have time to keep the story going at the same time. But here I am, and I plan on finishing this and my other PJ&O drabble story. They both don't have much left in them, I don't think. So forgive me! I'm gonna finish this, I swear it! And MAN it feels good to be back! :D

"Okay, so…don't freak out."

"Freak out? Why would I freak out?"

Sitting on the couch with a magazine in her lap, blue hair tugged back in a loose ponytail, Wendy narrowed her eyes at Romeo with growing suspicion. Under that gaze he fidgeted, and suddenly he felt like he was seven again and Mirajane was trying to make him admit he'd taken a finger to her newly-iced cake. In other words, Wendy had really nailed the "mom" look after four years.

"Why would I freak out?" she asked again when he hesitated. She had closed her magazine.

"Because I…well, I, um…maybe possibly could have…"

"Romeo. Spit it out."

"…I think I left the kids at the guild."

There was a pause. "Alone?"

He nodded.

"Who was there?"

"Um…" He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. "Well, there was Mira-nee…Cana…Lucy and Levy…"

"You left them alone with the guys, didn't you?"

"Yeah." At her wide-eyed look, he quickly added, "But like I said, the girls were there, so they'll keep them—"

But Wendy had already bolted out of the room. With a sigh, Romeo followed her.

Wendy had always been a worrier. She worried about her weight, she worried about money, she worried about Romeo and the rest of the guild…but most of all she worried about her kids.

Especially leaving them with her guildmates.

Even though she wouldn't regret her childhood at the guild ever, she had come to the conclusion that the atmosphere there was much too inappropriate for children. Gray was always either in his underwear or without a stitch of clothing—despite having a seven-year-old himself now with Juvia—and Cana was always drinking beer and everyone was always punching the daylights out of each other. Lately she'd become gripped with the paranoia that one day her sweet little Haru would come running in with bruises because he got in a fight, or Mai would start losing her clothes…

So she'd vowed to never leave her kids in the guild unsupervised (meaning without her or Romeo). Yet Romeo didn't seem to have a problem with this fear at all (expect maybe the losing-of-their-clothes part). He seemed content to let them wander about the chaos of the guild for some reason Wendy had yet to discover, and now he went and just left them there despite what she'd told him…

She burst through the guild doors, yelling, "Mai! Haru—"

And Wendy froze.

"Faster, Natsu-nii!" Mai giggled from the Dragon Slayer's back, and Natsu grinned back at her.

"All right…ready, set—"

"Go!" shouted Mai, and Natsu spun around in circles with the four-year-old clinging to his shoulders, laughing happily. Behind them, Haru was sitting at the table with Masaru, Gray's boy, as the ice mage himself created little toys of ice in the palm of his hand and set them down on the table for the boys to play with…and at least he had his boxers on.

No one was fighting. The kids were laughing.

Wendy felt the paranoia slip away, and she smiled. She loosened her stance of flight and leaned into the doorway to watch her twins play. Arms wrapped around her waist, and she looked up at Romeo's smiling face. "What did I tell you?" he said. "They'll be fine here."

"Why did I ever worry?" she wondered aloud.

"I honestly don't know. I mean, we grew up here. Look how we turned out."

And they watched their kids laugh.