The sun is cresting the sky when Natsu finally comes out of Monique's home. He is pale and there is a smear of grime on his cheek. He must have touched something. He shouldn't have.
Erza searches his eyes, ready to be contrite, to confess. But Natsu doesn't say anything to her. His eyes are on Lucy. He holds out his hand, and she goes, communication lacrima barred. They move in such an easy fashion, converse in ways most cannot.
Erza listens dully as Natsu makes the call to Chairman Tweed, explains about Monique, and Tweed curses, swears, threatens. It's all fear. He has nothing to be afraid of, though. He is not a target. He is nothing. A means to an end, and that is all.
The call ends. Erza is shivering. Shock, she thinks. She's bleeding. She's bleeding a lot. Natsu goes to her, pulls at the armour plate on her chest. She realizes he's talking and she's not listening. She hasn't been for quite some time, Tweed's voice melding in with the night, and then with the silence, Natsu's voice a drone, Lucy's, as high-pitched and as unrecognizable as a cardinal's.
The seconds tick by and as they go, both Natsu and Lucy start flitting around her. Their eyes shine with concern. Erza lets them poke and prod at her. She's tired. She's hollow.
The cool morning air hits her skin. She shivers like mad.
"—stop the bleeding," Lucy says.
Fire blazes across Natsu's fingers. His face is drawn in concentration. Erza realizes what he means to do, yanks away from him, out of his grip, and Lucy's, stumbles back.
Strong arms wrap around her body and hold her as tight as any lover might. She thinks Jellal, but when she turns her face up, it's Eros.
She recoils, scrabbles, fights, screams, she thinks because everything is gauzy and soft and horrible. He will not let her go. He is a rock of a man and she is soft talc, the life being crushed out of her before she's had the chance to complete her task.
"Stop! You're hurting her." Lucy's voice again breaks through the fog. She reaches for Erza, wrests her away from Eros and to the ground. Natsu reappears over her, except he's looking at Eros. His mouth moves, spitting furious words. Erza can see a flash of incisors. She feels the holes in her lip where her own teeth cut in.
Another face takes up residence at Erza's side. She blinks, not understanding why Gray might be there. Why he might have left his post. Why can no one in her team just obey an order?
He lays his hand on Erza's forehead. He's cold. She's hot. "She's burning up."
They start talking at once. The concern in their voices is like little needles, jabbing Erza each time. She opens her mouth to assure them she's fine but can't seem to find the words.
Suddenly, Natsu is shoved back, Lucy, Gray, too. There's the pink morning sky above Erza, and then Eros. His face is cruelly beautiful. He crouches at her side, presses a lacrima into her hand. She wants to drop it but can feel the heat pulse out of it, spread throughout her body, and eat at the cobwebs in her mind. It's a healing lacrima, she understands.
"You cannot die yet," Eros quietly says, mouth in a smile. "We have business, I understand." He pats her uninjured shoulder, stands, shouts orders to what must be a small force of soldiers he's brought with him. Their feet shake the ground as they move to carry out his command.
They move out of sight, into Monique's home, Erza is sure. She can still hear them, distantly, the way someone inside a house might hear a cart on a path.
"Erza?" Lucy is the first to dare touch her. She lays her hand on Erza's forehead, much as Gray had, and peels back the clothing soggy with blood from her shoulder.
"I'm better," Erza manages. Though her pride is hurt. How could she let the wound get so bad? Possessed, she thinks. When she catches the scent of the Tower of Heaven, nothing else seems to matter. Careful work, she told her mother, but she only must be so careful before the kill because during, her thoughts turn off, and she can see nothing else but justice. But the monster in the mirror.
She closes her eyes against the memory, afraid summoning it will summon the dragon.
"We'll bring you back to the hotel," Gray decides.
Erza works some saliva into her dry mouth. "I'll need to report to Chairman Tweed." She cannot fail to appear in front of him twice for injury. She has a reputation to uphold. Besides, she feels better now. Part of her wishes she didn't. She doesn't want to be in Eros' dept, not for anything. He has one thing right, though. They do have unfinished business.
"Are you sure?" Lucy asks even as Natsu crouches beside her and slings her arm over his shoulder. He, with Gray's help, lifts her up. She feels insubstantial for a moment, a piece of dandelion fluff, caught in this mortal coil, unable to fall to the ground, rot, grow something new.
"I'll be fine." Erza looks back over her shoulder to where Eros is examining Monique's home. Their eyes meet across the distance. His hands curl on the doorframe. She sees a promise in his eyes. He suspects her part in all this but will not speak out against her because he wants to see what she'll do.
His curiosity will be what destroys him.
It's midday and Erza is exhausted and yet, she cannot sleep, though she knows night will fall and the council will expect her and her team to return to guard them.
She sits on the flat roof outside her window, watching clouds ramble by in the cool breeze. Her hair is pulled from its loose ponytail, flutters around her shoulders. It should be peaceful, but she is a tumult of emotions.
Tweed threatened to fire them (she doesn't think he will—he's too afraid of what lies in the dark), but Monique is dead. She writes it in the rooftop gravel—dead—looks at it. Smiles. It fits poorly on her face. She doesn't love what she does. She only must do it.
She wipes the word away as her window opens and another joins her on the rooftop.
She expects Jellal—hopes for him—but gets Natsu.
She gets still as he comes to sit beside her, close, like family. He reaches out, touches her chin. Erza lets it happen. Natsu doesn't touch her, typically, and she's too stunned to move away.
He looks at her lip where her fangs dug into her skin, ruined it, and then he looks at her shoulder where Monique's shaft of magical light punctured her skin. His face is unreadable.
"There was no damage to your armour," is Natsu's first words. He releases her, faces out toward the city. He looks out of place in it. Natsu belongs in his cottage at the edge of Magnolia. Crocus is no place for a dragon. Erza feels it, too, the way she fits poorly into the city streets.
"I changed my armour."
"Why?"
The muscles are still sore when Erza leans forward and locks her arms around her knees. She wishes for Wendy. Her healing magic is far superior to any lacrima. "I didn't want to worry you."
Natsu mimics her, wrapping his arms around his legs. "We're family. I'm going to worry anyway."
Erza sighs.
"And that Enforcement guy."
She imagines Eros kneeling at her side, his hand folding around hers.
Natsu, sharing similar thoughts, simmers with his rage. He likes Eros almost as much as Erza does. "We should take care of him."
Before he takes care of them.
Erza nestles her cheek on her knee and looks at Natsu from the corner of her eye. Sometimes, her hair slides in front of her vision, painting him in red. He's divided. Rage and uncontested levity. She doesn't know how he swings between the two and still manages to keep his head.
But of course, Natsu's never been very good at that. He has Happy and Lucy to ground him when things get dark.
She and Natsu would make a very bad team, left to their own devices. Erza smiles, thinking of the destruction.
"Leave Eros. He'll expose himself soon."
Natsu clamps his teeth around his protest and manages to swallow it back. Lucy has been doing good work with him; he's not quite as high strung as he used to be.
They absorb the sound of the day for a while, birds chirruping, carts moving through the city. Erza waits for Natsu to grow tired, return inside, sleep, and when he doesn't, just fiddles with the button on his coat, it becomes obvious he's working himself up to a confrontation.
"What's on your mind?" (She doesn't want to know. Never wants to know anymore.)
He draws in a breath and says it all at once, as though if he doesn't, he'll never get the words out. "Last night. That woman's house was ruined."
I know, she thinks.
"And your scent was all throughout it."
Her heart trips, falls, before it can pick itself up and start again. "I was inside." She wills Natsu to see the confession for what it is; she doesn't think she can go on like this anymore.
Natsu turns his dark eyes on her. She feels like an ant beneath a focused beam of sunlight, burning to nothing. "Were you able to see what the killer looked like?"
She sees herself in the mirror, wings of yellow and gold and black, knives for fingers, a heaving chest and wickedness. "A monster."
Natsu waits for her to add to her declaration. She cannot.
"We'll fix it," he says, like Jellal. We'll fix it. Everyone in her life is always trying to fix things. What if they cannot be fixed, she asks silently, what if she doesn't want them to be fixed?
"They won't get away with it forever," he says, and she realizes he doesn't see the truth. Cannot. Cannot imagine she could be that kind of creature. Erza tries to laugh but it sounds more like a strangled sob instead.
Natsu presses his shoulder against hers. She won't look at him. What must he think? That she feels like a failure for missing the opportunity to catch the killer? That she mourns the loss of those Officials? That almost pushes her to confession again. But he doesn't say anything and neither does she.
Eventually, he returns to the hotel. Erza stays out on the roof until she feels her skin starting to burn and her eyes drooping. She climbs back through the window, leaving it open for Jellal, and falls into bed, where she thinks of Eros pressing the lacrima into her hand.
Unfinished business, indeed.
A strained silence clings to the council building like mould.
A memorial has been erected for the council members that have lost their lives. Jellal counts six in all. There is more than need to suffer, though.
"Tragic, isn't it?" Councilwoman Verity sidles up beside him, settles in like they're old friends, and looks at the pictures of the victims strewn around the memorial.
"Monique had a history of human trafficking," Jellal says before he can stop himself.
Verity pauses, looks at him. Her expression is inscrutable. "I wasn't aware."
"This council has secrets in spades," says a new voice.
Jellal turns with a smile primed. "Captain Eros."
"Councilman Fernandez." Eros nods his head politely. Jellal imagines hitting him with Pleiades, watching him pop and burst and then turn to nothing. Not even ash would be left. The council building would again be destroyed by his hand, and maybe the nightmare will be over.
But then Erza won't get her revenge.
"Councilwoman Verity, a word, if I may?" Eros asks, turning his attention to the older woman.
"Pardon me, Councilman." Verity touches Jellal's arm as she goes by, following Eros into one of the meeting rooms. The door closes. Jellal starts to cast a listening spell and is interrupted by Councilman Tweed.
"We're a force divided." Tweed settles his bulk against the wall, leaning back, reminding Jellal of a hippo coming to rest at a pond's edge.
"How do you mean, Councilman?" Jellal asks.
"Those that remember the council from your days of Councilman do not trust you. They are few and far between, but their voices are loud," Tweed explains. "Verity is of the new era, and does not, as Wolfheim expressed, appreciate the damages you've caused."
"I'm a new man," Jellal hears himself say the lie, feels it may be true, if he tries, but cannot bring himself to say it with such conviction.
"If I had doubts, you wouldn't be standing here," Tweed agrees, as though he is unable to see the apathy that fills Jellal's stance. "Have you gotten any closer to discerning the killer's motives, or their next target?"
Jellal finds himself in a trap. He wants to play a game. He loves games. Lives for them. He cannot stop himself, though he knows it is unwise. "There are a few. A guard in your Enforcement Unit, Wilson Burnaby. A mage that goes simply by, Nadim, and a clerk, Grendel Melrose."
Tweed looks at him like he's gone mad. "They are nobodies."
"Are they? They all have ties to the council, and all have sealed records. Each has been blacked out. Like Monique. Like Councilman Shar."
Tweed's eyes dance with fury. There is nothing he hates more than a lack of control. "Very well. The question remains, though, which will they target?"
And here is the game: "My best estimation is Wilson Burnaby." Jellal lists the reasons: beating one of his charges to death after they surrendered, sexually assaulting the young men he takes into custody, a long, colourful history of sexualized violence. He doesn't mention the Tower of Heaven. That is for Tweed to discover. But he won't. He's lazy. He wants to trust the wolf at his door and so he will.
"How sure are you he will be next?" Tweed looks around the council chambers as he speaks, voice cast low as though their killer might be listening.
"As reasonably as I can be, Chairman," Jellal answers. "This is research and guesswork." This is profiling and choosing his victims.
Tweed turns his watery eyes on Jellal. "If you were the killer, this is where you would strike?"
Jellal feels a smile pulling at his mouth. He quashes it. "Your killer has a righteous angle. If they were looking for horrible people to snuff out, they wouldn't be wanting with Burnaby. His transgressions far outweigh the others I listed."
"I hate to protect someone so deplorable." Tweed shuffles, looks disgusted, like he might be sick. He has faults, it's true, but deep down, he is a good man worthy of the Chairman's seat. "But if we have another dead, we could have a riot. We'll assign Burnaby a protection unit, guards he can hand-pick himself, and a mage of Fairy Tail's choosing. The rest we'll put with the council again in case Burnaby isn't the target."
The stakes rise. Jellal's pulse gallops in his ear. This is the thrill he's missed. Taking out dark guilds is honest and purposeful work. There isn't much finesse required, though. He need not fear the repercussions of his actions because they're sanctioned.
He considers there is something loose in his mind to crave this madness, this new challenge he's created for himself. He loves it though.
"Shall I pass the news on?"
Tweed nods. "Thank you, Councilman Fernandez."
He frills with pride. Councilman. Hearing the title never grows old. "Be well, Chairman."
Erza is brushing her hair in front of the mirror when Jellal enters her room. Her eyes are dark-rimmed and tired and light up only slightly when she sees him. He goes to her, wraps his arms around her waist, holds her tight to his body where he can kiss the skin just beneath her ear and feel her shiver with pleasure. He can smell the exhaustion on her. The old fear: she will tire of this game long before he's ready.
Before that, though, he must tell her his plan, and how it will exonerate her in the eyes of the council, how once again, he will be her shadow wielding her sword while she stands shining in the light.
A/N:
I forgot about Wendy. The shame.
Anyway. Eleeka. Enjoy! This is her Patre on story. You may request your own, too, should you like. Find me on Patre on. Kaitlin Corvus :D