*Violet's POV*

Despite August's request, I did wait up for him, just not where he could see. Curled up in my bed, tucked carefully under the warm covers, I refused to close my eyes until I heard him return.

And eventually he did, though all I could hear was the front door opening and closing, I felt him relax and pictured him lending against it to take in a deep breath before departing to his bed room.

I told my body that this meant that I could sleep, but it took the rest of me a long time to get with the program. Despite how tired I was, how much my body wanted it, I could never quite seem to reach the inky blackness that I knew I needed. Everytime i thought I was close to passing out, my body would jerk awake again, as if knowing what was waiting for me in dreams. But in the end fatigue won out, and I found myself drifting in the dark water of my own subconscious.

This time I dreamed I was standing in the guild hall. The fact that I was anywhere but the woods should have been reassuring, but instead I felt a looming dread. Perhaps it was the juxtaposition of it all. The guild hall was safe. The guild hall was home. But now I could sense that the natural inviting aura of it had turned sour.

A grim reminder….this home wasn't built with people like me in mind.

All around me were the fairies, sitting in their usual spots, and appearing to be talking together in the loud obnoxious way that I was still growing used to. But the only sound that reached me was the rush of my own fear tainted blood pumping through my head.

And there was something else too. Another presence that shouldn't have been there. I realized then that just as I was cut off from the sound of the guild hall, so too were the emotions that surrounded it lost to me.

The creeping malice that I felt was coming from an intruder. I stood and ran between the tables, doing my best not to trip over the fairies' outstretched legs as chased after the bad feeling, getting closer and closer until my heart felt like it would burst.

And then I saw her, and everything froze.

It was me...but not me. She turned to look my way as I halted a few feet in front of her. She was wearing the same sneak suit that I had used in my battle with Natsu, but it had yet to be destroyed. Her long brown hair fell even and unsigned around her shoulders. She gripped a sword, and behind her were splayed a pair of wings, moving forward and backward absently as I had sometimes seen Happy's do.

"I-" I swallowed, "I don't understand."

The other me smiled, tilting her head mockingly. "Don't you?" she asked, "I think you know exactly who I am."

I glanced back to her wings. The silver sword in her hands.

"That's right," she said, "I'm a Justice Valkyrie."

I took a step back, for a moment expecting my tight to bump into the table furniture in the room at all, and all of the guild members were standing where their chairs had been, still talking as if nothing had happened.

"What did you do?" I asked, my fear slowly sliding into anger.

"I didn't do anything." Not me said, "things are happening just the way you want them to. The way we want them to."

"No." I said, and all of the fairies turned to look at me, the room seemed to become even more silent even though I knew nothing had really changed. "No, that's not true I don't want this."

"But you do."

They all started moving in closer, crowding around me in the perfect circle, soon they overtook my copy, drowning her in a pile of emotionless bodies. Five fairies had taken the lead. The ones that had been on the kill list. In front of me Natsu smiled, but the expression was flat, his eyes still burning with the same fire I had seen in the woods.

I closed my eyes…

And they were gone. I was alone in an empty guild hall, blood that wasn't mine dripping down from the wings on my back and the sword in my hand.

I woke with a start to find cold floor pressed against my cheek. I realized I must have fallen out of my bed in the night. A childhood habit that Justice Valkyrie had tried and failed to beat out of me. I shivered, and not just from the cold.

I sat up slowly, untangling myself from the blanket and throwing it back on the bed before wading off to the bathroom. August's bedroom door was open, and I could hear shifting clothes from inside, a rhythmic scraping, the sound of a hair brush perhaps. I caught just enough of his aura to realize that he hadn't done much sleeping the night before either.

Looks like both of us are in for a fantastic day. I thought.

I was itching to ask him how it had gone with Laxus the night before, but since I figured he would have already told me if he had been seriously maimed, I decided there where more pressing matters to attend to, like getting the pile of itchy unbrushed hair away from my tingling neck.

I tried not to think about the fact that I was preparing to return to the guild hall, where Natsu and the others would be waiting. I swallowed hard as I finished my business and returned to my room to change. I carefully re-wrapped the bandage around my left bicep, hiding the mark that claimed me as a member of Justice Valkyrie. It seemed to burn under its covering, as if forcing me to pay attention to it even when it was out of sight.

There was a light tap at my door.

"Yeah?"

August opened the door gently. "Ready to go?" he asked.

"As I'll ever be."

He nodded and disappeared from view. I took a deep breath before following him out the door to the apartment and down to the street.

"Looks like Laxus didn't kill you too much." I said, "that's always a plus."

August laughed on instinct, but it wasn't as light as I'd hoped. "He didn't kill me." he agreed.

"Do you wanna tell me what he did do?" I already knew the answer. But I knew it was polite to ask.

"Not just yet." August said, "I'm still working out what it all means myself."

It didn't seem like a conventional answer, but I didn't press him. I could tell he was teeming with anticipation, a mix of good and bad. Whatever he and Laxus had discussed, it changed how he saw things going forward. I hoped it was for the better.

In no time at all, the guild hall appeared over the horizon, silhouetted in golden light. I turned my eyes to the cobblestone beneath my feet, telling myself it was to avoid the sun.

I had a horrible feeling, that somehow, we would open the doors, and the guild would appear as it had in my dream, all the tables disappeared, and the members waiting in ominous circles, their mouths moving wordlessly.

A glance had my hands told me they were free of blood, but could my conscience say the same? Still my feet propelled me to the place that contained my greatest fears, and I let them drag me along, trying to convince my heart to slow as August placed his hand on the door and pulled.