Notes

And the final bonus little chapter for Of Barren Design. I just want to thank everyone who read and reviewed or just read and secretly reread. It's been a long road but we made it to the end and I can't thank you all enough for the support.

Keep an eye out for my new Gajevy, Sick Heart. First chapters should be out in about two weeks. I plan to turn a few Fairy Tail tropes upside down and inside out. Sick Heart is probably going to wind up being another long one. I don't think I could write a short story if I tried.

What, you didn't think that was the end of me, did you?

Xxxxx

Moonbeam


If there was ever an indicator of the kind of agony a person experienced during childbirth, Laxus only needed to listen to Alma's screams, her curses, to know it was bad. He hadn't been around for Lucy's delivery, so he had nothing to compare it to, but if Natsu's pale face was anything to go by, this birth might not have been going as smoothly as Lucy's.

Alma's waters had broken in Laxus's kitchen as she'd been arguing with him over his measurements of coffee in the coffee maker. He'd been trying to point out she shouldn't have even been drinking it to begin with, while Bickslow urged him not to engage, knowing it could never be fated to end well. What argument with a nine month pregnant woman the size of a small house did? Then there was a sudden pause as she stopped talking mid sentence, zoning out, their confusion punctuated by a floodgate at their feet and forever immortalised by the words. "Definitely not gas..."

They knew things had gone wrong when Bickslow was ejected out of the delivery room by force. An unusually stern looking Wendy pushing the frantic man out; sweating, crying, there was blood on his hands.

"Keep him out here!" She said to Laxus with a growl. The Dragon Slayer nodded, feeling suddenly ill.

"Bix?" Laxus looked at Bickslow worriedly. The man was practically shaking.

"The baby's too big, he's stuck. They think if she pushes anymore they'll just end up hurting each other," He said with a horrified, haunted look in his eyes, putting his head in his hands, his cheeks smeared red. His son's shoulders were wider than Porylusica had gauged at the last check up and there were now a list of complications as long as his arm.

Alma had complained about not having the pelvis for childbirth, but her pelvis was just fine, it was his giant, abnormally strong offspring that was the problem. Ardan was quite literally killing her, Bickslow could feel it. She'd live so long as she could heal, but she couldn't heal without magic, and stamina for that. But after hours of labor that was something both of them now had precious little of. Wendy and the old crone were the only ones that could help her through this now.

It terrified him to discover that the best thing he could do was get out of the way. His panic was her panic, and that wasn't helping.

Another scream punctuated the silence that fell in the hallway.

"I need distracting. Come on, please distract me," Bickslow asked, desperate for something to wipe the worry out of his head.

Laxus looked toward Natsu. When he'd transported Alma and Bickslow to Porlyusica's home he'd found the Fire Dragon Slayer already there picking up some ointment for his son, the toddler now running round like his lunatic father and overly fond of jumping in poisonous foliage.

"How about how I tell you about the time I got your father drunk?" Laxus offered with a grin. Arman Pradesh was not a heavy drinker but Laxus could mix some very potent cocktails and who would guess that the man could hold a note.

"Vander told me that one," Bickslow replied to a very disappointed frown. It really was a great story.

"Or about my weekend with Xally?" Laxus narrowed his eyes. A part of him now looking to shock his friend.

"Oh, he told me that, too," Bickslow smirked.

"For a spy, your brother sure likes to talk," Natsu piped up.

"Yeah...don't I know it!" Bickslow laughed ruefully. It was a running joke at this point. The gossiping spy. Though he was now the gossiping bodyguard to the Ambassador's office in Josta and currently still seeing the city commander there. An early exit from his previous line of work had done him good. He was happy. His family had almost forgotten what that looked like.

Bickslow expected that at some point he'd be attending another wedding. Jera and Vander were inseparable... and nauseatingly affectionate to be around. If you left them alone for more than a minute at a time they'd be all over each other. They couldn't even manage to keep it together for the wedding. Gajeel had not been pleased to find out what they'd been up to in his house.

"Hey, Natsu ...Josta... fire temple, you never did tell us what actually happened in there," Bickslow spoke up, wincing seconds before another scream actually pierced the air. Acutely aware of his wife's suffering in a way that few soon-to-be fathers ever would be. They'd already agreed that one child was enough. Neither of them would be putting themselves through this again.

"It's kinda boring.." Natsu looked a little evasive which only piqued Bickslow's interest that little bit more. "There wasn't even a fight."

Laxus fixed him with an unimpressed glare.

"You literally destroyed the building, Natsu...and as I recall you blamed that on the fire priests," Laxus smelled a lie in there. If there was no fighting, what reason would Natsu have had to take the whole thing down?

Natsu looked at Laxus and went to stand.

"I should probably get back to Lucy..." A firm hand fell down on Natsu's shoulder and forced him back to his seat. Laxus glared unwaveringly at him.

"Oh...this I really need to hear!"


"Yali!"

"My name is Yal-eeee," The man enunciated again with deep irritation to Natsu, who still couldn't actually hear the difference between what he was calling the Atlan guard and the name the man kept growling back to him, unimpressed. Languages were not his forte.

"I was raised by a Dragon, you know, people languages aren't really my thing!"

"Surely you have ears?" The ludicrously tall guard bit back. Standing at least a few inches taller than Laxus and clad in traditional armour, Yalee looked about the same height as Elfman except with a more narrow, streamlined frame. The man quite literally towered over Natsu.

"I have great hearing...just not for words."

"Even Atlan children living on the streets learn the tongues of others...learn their customs," It was a foreign concept for the soldier; that someone would visit Atla of all places, spend weeks in the city and not even pick up a single word of the native language.

"Yeah, well the sounds people make when I punch them are all the same..." Natsu shrugged. "...so it's never actually been that much of a problem. Lucy does most of the talking. I do a lot of the hitting," Natsu cracked his knuckles.

The guard snorted behind his mask. The hollow sound rang in Natsu's ears a little like a bell.

"And in that, there is truth indeed," He remarked.

The city was bare of the living but not the dead. Bodies littered the lanes and streets and before the men could even assemble outside the temple gates, they had to devote a half hour to clearing the dead lest they end up standing on corpses. The stench of old, rancid dried and drying blood was enough to make Natsu's sensitive nose wrinkle in disgust. He'd fought and he'd killed, and he'd seen his fair share of the fallen, but he'd never witnessed the horrors he'd seen here. Every dead, bloated face that looked up at him from out of the dirt was one twisted in savagery or fear, madness and pain. They were innocent people trying to get on with their lives and they'd had their very sanity violated.

The sight of a dead toddler made him pause in his assessment and Natsu found he couldn't quite look away. The night sky was alight with the sight and sound of cannon fire as Laxus and the others took on Arlo's stolen airship. The flashes were strong enough to illuminate the streets and tiny, dead white eyes pierced Natsu in those moments of clarity; he found that in those fleeting seconds of troubling vision, it was his own son staring up at him, not the eyes of a stranger's child.

He'd been selfish in leaving on this stupid trip. An idiot to think that his own disappointment, depression gave him the right to get away from his responsibilities. His son came first. Lucy came first. He should have swallowed his resentment. His pride. Should have buried them and burned them. When he became a father, his life ceased to be his alone, a part of that belonged to his son, to Lucy. When Lucy suggested he get away for a while it should have been his wake up call to get a grip, instead he'd jumped at the chance to get away, only to spend every second of every day since, missing them.

He was a little grateful to Alma because he knew, knew she tried to help him when she was around. She wouldn't say it, probably die before admitting it, but the Dragon felt her magic, allowing it only because it brought him some semblance of peace. A tiny flicker of solace. She was a good person despite the need she had to convince everyone otherwise.

"Do not be troubled by the dead," The tall guard put his hand on Natsu's shoulder, shaking him from his thoughts and bringing him back to the moment at hand. "They are not troubled by anything, now, " His words offered only the briefest comfort.

"Death is like going home?" Natsu repeated from memory, he'd heard Alma say something similar to that, some time ago.

"For a soldier, yes!" The guard seemed pleased by the comment. Happy that Natsu had at least picked up on something during his stay. Though the sentiment was a sombre one. Yalee looked around the blood soaked dirt. "We do not fear death because to die is to forget fear. To lose all pain. Evil and suffering are the curses only the living bear. But...this? Our reputation is harsh, we... are a hard people, but we are not unfeeling monsters. The Atlan guard do not drink, we do not rape...we do not fight unless ordered to do so," He defended, glancing around him despondently. "When monsters have nightmares...I think they will dream of this," He said darkly. They were trained to follow all orders without question, no matter the demand, but Yalee had doubts that even his own men would have followed through on something like this. A part of him was comforted by that.

"There was a brothel in the lower quarter. They sold... raped kids. That was apparently legal here," Natsu snarled. Every breath before and after, an accusation. He'd watched the guards at the embassy stand and do nothing while people were murdered feet from them. He'd seen the dead slaves at the sky port. The burned bodies left on the pyres.

The guard grabbed a hold of his shoulder.

"We do not make the laws... and the ones ultimately responsible for them, and this... for the centuries old, outdated beliefs that judge children as adults, men as monsters and our women as property... hundreds of years of archaic laws and cruelty lie just beyond that gate. Ours for retribution, if we can get inside," The guard said. The man untroubled by Natsu's words but keen to point out where his venom should be directed.

Natsu considered that. What he'd come to see from the people of Atla weighed up to the man's words. Out of all the nobles that he'd run into in the Embassy, not one kept a single slave or treated their children as anything other than what they were. The Dragon Slayer turned away to stare at the wall circling the Temple; the great obstacle protected by magic, access only possibly through a single steel archway and gate.

"Leave that to me, Yali! All those times I accidentally levelled towns and got crap for it, who's laughing now, old man?" Natsu smirked, looking up to the sky, hoping somehow, somewhere in Magnolia, Makarov heard him.

"You really believe you have the power to destroy the wards protecting the Temple?" They'd held back mobs. Turned away armies. They were centuries old.

But they'd never stood against a pissed off Dragon Slayer.

The images of the dead floated through his mind again and he saw his son now among them. When Natsu turned and roared it was as if a hurricane of fire exploded out across the sands, hitting the barrier with a thunderous crack and shaking the earth under their feet. Natsu's throat burned and the supposedly fire proof cloth he wore smoked, not entirely able to compete with the flames.

The soldiers stepped back away from him, the temperature too much even for their armour. They watched as the fire rolled over him in waves of intense heat. The sand under his feet melting into glass.

Fueled by ambivalent emotion he couldn't possibly find the words to describe, the barrier shattered under the onslaught of his attack. Invisible runes high in the air were suddenly revealed as they caught fire, burning away in a chain reaction that seemed to spread beyond the gates he'd directly attacked.

There were mutters behind him and the tall guard came to stand at his side while a hundred foot segment of wall crumpled like paper, leaving the front gates of the temple grounds bent in, hanging from the cracked steel arch and smoking. Standing alone. The barrier gone.

"You... may name me whatever you wish," The guard breathed appreciatively.

Natsu rolled his shoulder.

"I always get in trouble for this kinda stuff...it's kinda nice to be appreciated," He smirked, surveying his handiwork. "And I'll just call you Yal."

The Atlan guard drew his sword and from the sound of ringing steel behind them, his men did the same.

"Yal?" He uttered with distain. "Very well ... I am a man of my word but if I hear you encouraging anyone else in using it, I'll part your head from your neck," He warned Natsu.

"Please... if Erza hasn't done it yet..."

"Erza?"

"The most terrifying warrior in my guild," Natsu explained with a laugh.

"I find the idea of any man strong enough to terrify a Dragon Slayer, utterly unsettling," Yal murmured. Having seen just what Natsu was capable of and knowing that there were stronger in his guild was difficult to wrap his mind around.

"Oh, she's definitely not a man," Natsu laughed.

"A woman?" Yal paused thoughtfully. "Well that makes far more sense," he spared a quiet, sad chuckle.

"I didn't think soldiers here had much time for women," Natsu enquired.

"We aren't eunuchs," Yal fired back. "There are no laws forbidding us from having relationships or starting families. Many simply chose not to... this life breaks the best of us."

"Do you have anyone?"

"I have a wife... it... I doubt she still resides with the living," He admitted. "I'm here to ensure her memory receives justice. That the dead find justice," He intoned.

The normal, standard thing to say would be an offering of sympathy. An apology. To tell this man how sorry Natsu felt that he'd lost someone... but looking around Natsu wagered every person not yet dead in Josta had been touched by one tragedy or another. His words of sympathy would be meaningless.

"I'm here to guarantee that that happens," He chose to say instead.

Yal turned to him, his head cocked quizzically in thought.

"Good."

Entering the gold decorated temple it was clear the poison never made it passed the barrier outside, because while there was evidence of destruction, there were no bodies that they could see. Pews had been overturned and moved, statues toppled and broken, but there were no dead.

"The temple looks like a stampede of boro ran through it..."

"Or a stampede of people?" Natsu offered. It was more likely that those fleeing the hell outside did this damage as they raced inside the walls.

"Then there is a chance that there could be hundreds of people still alive and unaware that the poison had been purged," The man fixed Natsu with an unmoving glare from behind his helmet and Natsu scoffed.

"Yeah, yeah, don't bring down the temple. You're not as scary as Erza but you're just as patronizing, you know," The Dragon Slayer wheezed unhappily. He had more control over himself than that.

Yal didn't answer him and Natsu heard it in the silence. The muttering of quiet voices. He smiled, feeling suddenly hungry.

When the stream of fire suddenly appeared heading their way, Natsu was already in its direct path, and within a half breath it was gone. Consumed by the smiling Dragon Slayer. The next stream went the same way. Disappearing down Natsu's gullet.

"Hey, not so much so fast. You don't want me to start belching!" He shouted into the darkness with an even darker grain on his face.

"Should I ask?" Yal turned to him, querying offhandedly.

"Should I demonstrate, might be the better question," Natsu thumped himself in the stomach and as well as a loud stinking burp, more flames than even the fire priests were able to conjure shot out of his mouth, scorching the walls of the corridor and earning him a series of petrified, pained shrieks.

"That's foul. And they tell me you married a refined beauty from a wealthy family? Can I assume she's both deaf ...and incapable of smell?"

"Whoever told you that, lied," Natsu coughed out a laugh, before he fumbled in his pockets for a moment and pulled put a small photograph. Despite the magic protecting it, it was scorched around the edges. "She works and drools and burps...just like everyone else," He presented the photo while guards pulled two priests out into the main hall, forcing them to their knees, chaining them and hammering the bolts into the floor so they couldn't escape.

"She... is beautiful," Yal said, rightly stunned that the crude Dragon slayer with a penchant for destruction could have wooed a woman like that. The picture of the golden haired, mud covered Lucy was taken while she was sitting in the sun on the wall over Magnolia bridge after a particularly messy job. It was striking to Yal, who found himself reminded of his own wife's bright, easy smile.

Natsu had taken the photo of Lucy right before Happy had accidentally knocked her into the tepid waters below. The next photo he'd snapped was not so cheery.

"Yeah, I'd just be glad if our kid grows up with her smarts," He laughed.

"She's given you children?"

Natsu didn't hear anything else over the pounding of his own heart at the mention of his son. He was a crappy father. A good friend, maybe, but a terrible parent. They hadn't planned for children, it wasn't exactly a happy discovery and he knew he'd sought to distance himself from the baby. Maybe in a stupid way trying to pretend the child wasn't now the single most important thing in his life. More than himself, his friends or his guild. It was hard to come to terms with how much change had been heaped on him. Natsu didn't handle change well, he never had.

He rubbed his forehead absently trying to take his mind off that. They couldn't afford the distraction right now. And to think he'd been angry at Igneel for leaving him, only to turn around and do the same thing years later with his own flesh and blood.

"If people outside came in here for protection. Where would they hold them? It'd have to be a large enough space for a few hundred people at least," Natsu redirected the uncomfortable topic of conversation.

"There's a large chamber under us. I'm led to believe its where they held their slaves. A temple this size often housed hundreds," Yal clarified. The priests very rarely allowed people access but the building had been there long before the priests and their religion.

"If there's innocent people still alive, we need to get them out," Natsu said with conviction. One that Yal clearly shared.

"Agreed. They should be our priority," He looked at Natsu, gesturing for the men to proceed. "Try not to bring the Temple down on our heads."

Natsu held up a fist, letting fire crawl along it, illuminating a wickedly fanged grin.

"I'll do my best!"


The passages down underground were too quiet for any of their liking. There were no people, fire priests or otherwise. It resembled a tomb more than a temple and the only evidence that there'd been anything living within the walls at all, was the trail of destruction the fleeing people had left in their wake; herded through the dim corridors like cattle.

Natsu's nose got it first, overwhelmed by the stench of burned flesh, charred leather. It was a smell so potent, so noxious it had seeped into the very stones of the building and it made his eyes and mouth water unpleasantly.

Yal halted his men at the mark of disgust on Natsu's features. Nose wrinkling and mouth twisting against it.

"You can smell them?"

"Yeah...some of it's old...but some is new. Very recent," He made his expression as dead as stone to hide the distress that very fact caused him. The people who ran from the horrors on the city streets may have walked into another kind of horror.

"I hope your nose is wrong," was all Yal said in reply. His tone dark.

They made it to a set of iron doors barred from the outside with several thick steel beams. Probably by the very men they'd captured in the corridors above.

"Whatever they burned is beyond that door," Natsu nodded towards it.

Yal pulled off his helmet and his gloves and put his hand against the cool surface of the entryway. Natsu got his first good look at the man's face and tsked to himself, drawing Yal's attention.

"Thought that thing was welded on or you'd s flesh eating skin disease or something," Natsu said with a grin. Yal's face twisting as he fought the urge to smile. The Dragon Slayer was competent and funny. Definitely not the worst companion on this mission.

All the soldiers seemed to have scars on their faces and Yal was no different, though, not many would know that the scar over the bridge of his broken nose, he'd actually received from his wife, who'd accidentally hit him with a cooking pan.

The man took a hold of one side of the first and lowest beam and Natsu's took the other as the rest of the men caught on and started removing the remaining barriers from the door. The steel groaning as the weight was lifted.

When they opened it finallly, the sight that greeted them had most pausing in their tracks.

There were people everywhere, silent terrified faces all around, staring up at them as though they were nothing more than figments of their imagination; hallucinations caused by dehydration and hunger. The stench of faeces and urine just barely detectable over the smell of burned flesh and smoke.

At the end of the enormous hall a large, dark glass structure greeted them like a mountain. The people pushing back away from it as though it were a beast about to strike or a cursed object.

"I am first lieutenant Yalee Doran, of the city guard, the streets have been made safe, we are here to help you," He announced. The sight of his bare face and hands made the people relax. If the guard had been there to kill them or harm them, they wouldn't have been showing their faces. At a word from Yal the others took off their helmets.

But Natsu's attention was focused on something else. Transfixed by the glass structure at the end of the hall; looking closer he saw dark shadows at the core of the blackening glass.

"What the hell is this?" Natsu's breathed absently, picking his way through the host of people and rapping his knuckles on it.

"Doran?" A shaky female voice spoke out. Unsure that they'd heard correctly but realising they had as Yal turned to them at the mention of his name. "Your wife was the glass maker?" Disbelief and dismay in her voice.

"Yes! Is she here?" Yal almost fumbled with his own tongue he was suddenly so hopeful but the old woman pointed to the glass.

"She saved us, brought up a hurricane of sand around them and the fire. Swallowed it all," The woman rasped, her throat dry and lips chapped. "Even while she burned..."

Yal put his bare hand against the smooth surface and whispered words Natsu couldn't understand. He'd accepted the possibility that she'd died, but actually knowing was clearly something else entirely.

"Get anyone who can walk on their feet and out of this temple. You will carry the rest. Leave the dead. Am I understood?" Yal shouted, his men beating their breasts with a thunderous clamour in response, acknowledging his order.

Slowly the hall emptied leaving Natsu and Yal behind in silence.

"I fear I haven't been completely truthful with you. For all your enthusiasm, I was ordered to save the temple if it was free of poison. If it could be saved, " His voice had strained considerably. Natsu saw emotion there. Could practically taste the pain. "But... I would rather see it fall," Yal admitted.

Natsu didn't question it. He just nodded. It was done, down here at least. There were now more survivors. The priests were dead. All that was left was being taken care of on that airship and he'd no doubt they would succeed.

The Dragon Slayer pulled back a flaming fist, taking aim at the glass but Yal caught his arm.

"Not it.." Yal petitioned him. Natsu narrowed his eyes but didn't say anything more about it. Instead of asking why, after all, it would break under the weight of the stone anyway he looked around the temple for the supports. It just so happened that he was very good at bringing down large structures.

"We've cleared the temple, lieutenant!" A young looking man interrupted the quiet moment between them. "It looks like they burned their slaves in a smaller chamber below. The carcases have been cold for days," He added with a nod. Natsu reckoned that was probably the soul hag's chamber they were talking about.

Natsu struck two of the pillars simultaneously with a single attack and as they fell the temple rocked around them.

"If anyone asks just say I tripped," Natsu announced nonchalantly as the lingering guards threw confused looks his way. Yal stood unmoving.

"If the dead don't feel pain, they probably don't feel the good stuff either, get moving, we need beers... And I don't wanna hear about drinking on duty," Natsu practically dragged him outside. A comical sight despite the height differences.

Outside they all gathered. The survivors led away, back to the palace where there was still infrastructure to care for them. The guards remained, knowledge of the lieutenant's wife's fate spreading between them.

Natsu's roar wasn't as powerful as the first but no sooner had the stream of flame disappeared through the now open temple doors than the entire building began to tremble. Stone and steel falling inward. In less than ten seconds the whole thing was nothing more than a dusty heap of rubble.

The destruction of Josta's temple, the first order the Atlan guard had ever disregarded.

The screams in the waiting room had died down as Natsu finished talking. His short tale enough to distract both Laxus and Bickslow from his wife's tricky delivery. They held a few moments of silence but the quiet was broken by a newborn wail bringing Bickslow to his feet and sending him barrelling back into the room, Laxus and Natsu rushing after him.

"We already agreed...but really, no more children..."A strikingly pale Alma said from her bed, holding the baby. There was blood everywhere. It looked like they'd to carve her open to free the infant.

Bickslow tripped over his own feet, in such a rush to get to her and fell onto the end of the bed, scrambling to recover.

"Holy crap, Bix, your kid's a monster!" Laxus whistled. "He's gotta be what, fourteen pounds?"

Alma's eyes narrowed at Bickslow, almost in accusation.

"I'd say twelve actuall..."

Her words were muffled by Bickslow's lips. He pulled back only to look down into the face of the baby in her arms. He was perfect... and Laxus wasn't wrong, he was possibly the biggest newborn Bickslow had ever seen. That a woman as small as his wife had carried him to term was almost ridiculous. Poor Levy was having twins. He blanched at the thought.

Porlyusica held back, washing her hands while Wendy lingered at the bedside. Bickslow only now noticing the Dragon Slayer's disheveled pigtails and red sweaty face. He took his son into his arms and cooed to the blood and mucus covered face peeking out from the blanket, eyes closed and unseeing.

Wendy stepped around the bed and held out her hands to him to take the baby. He'd need to be washed, officially weighed and checked out for any injuries. Bickslow looked to Alma first before handing their son over. She was odd when it came to stuff like that.

"Fine..." She ramped. "So long as I get him back!"

"Give it six months and you'll be begging people to take him off your hands, " Porlyusica grumbled, making Natsu snort. He certainly knew that feeling. Lucy and him both.

"Man, your family is gonna flip when they see how big he is. You sure you're the father?" Laxus winked teasingly at Bickslow.

"Are you kidding? Of course he is, he's too good looking to be anyone else's," Bickslow stuck his tongue out at them.