"... Juvenile shadow dragons may have difficulty melding with shadows and may mistakenly pop in and out of tangible form until they physically mature." ~ Dragon Historia, pg. 150

Chapter Twenty-six: In Your Shadow

Ryos sat across from him at the kitchen table. Gajeel figured it was only right to get him out of the rain before they said much else to each other; it was the least he could do for the younger dragon.

Still a little on the petite side, Ryos wore comfortable-looking gray cargo shorts and a black hoodie; the clothes he wore were well-fitted to him, obviously hand-made from the cut. No longer rocking a too-close buzz cut, his inky hair was growing back and stuck up in several places unevenly.

The fact that Ryos's hair was growing back and wasn't matted, coupled with the decent clothes, told Gajeel somebody out there was taking care of the kid. That, at least, took some pressure off the sudden, growing guilt that he now found himself saddled with.

Though he was otherwise dressed, Ryos was barefoot - his feet and calves covered in mud and sore-looking scrapes as if he had run a long distance just to be there. Whether it was on purpose or not, the fact that the kid had no shoes did not go unnoticed; neither did the fact that Ryos's hands never left the pocket of his dark hoodie, which bulged as if he were cradling a large potato... A large, wiggly potato that the kid had to fiddle with every few seconds.

"What're you doing here, Ryos?" Gajeel finally asked him, causing Ryos to jump in his chair. Deciding that came off a little too accusatory, he followed it up with: "It's been six months , Ryos. Where've you been?"

Ryos, realizing that Gajeel was in fact speaking to him directly, practically retreated into the safety of his hoodie as he curled into himself, averting his eyes. "… Shirotsume."

Shirotsume. Why's that sound familiar...? Gajeel wracked his brain for why that tiny burg meant anything; the name had come up after something important, he was sure of that.

Gajeel folded his arms loosely across his chest. "Shirotsume's a little far from Oak Town, isn't it?"

"Magnolia's a little far from Oak Town," Ryos muttered, almost inaudibly, pressing himself rigidly against the back of the chair.

That bitter mumbling didn't escape Gajeel and he eyed the whelp. "Yeah. That's kinda the point, kid."

"I had nowhere else to go after you- you left," the shadow dragon spat. Ryos turned his head away, deliberately avoiding looking at Gajeel. His upper lip twitched, but he did not bare his fangs or growl, like Gajeel did so often at that age; to his credit, after his little assertion, he didn't hiss and flee for the shadows. He fiddled with whatever creature he had tucked away in his pocket, petting it seemed to settle him. "I tried following you, but I got lost."

"'Lost'? It's been six months and I haven't seen a hair on yer head!"

Little red eyes looked up at him, damp at the corners. "Six months you didn't even notice I was gone..."

A growl edged its way out of Gajeel's throat. Who did this little shit think he was, coming outta nowhere to murder him with all this guilt?! It wasn't as if he had meant to forget a whole-ass child!

A fuckton of stuff had happened to Gajeel in those six months! The Guild War, slipping up in a fight with another dragon and losing said Guild War, getting kicked out of Oak Town, changing guilds, that Fantasia shitfest where Laxus had gone on a rampage and nearly killed him, fighting with Cobra, sleeping with Cobra, getting stomped on by a giant mech in another dimension, performing his first Unison Raid, Cobra and him becoming mates... (Actually, now that Gajeel thought on it, he'd spent a good amount of time getting his ass kicked lately. That and getting laid. Yet, until this Phantom Lord II nonsense reared its stupid head, he'd never been more content. Hell, sometimes he even looked forward to waking up in the morning. If there was some kind of cosmic-bullshit life lesson woven into the madness that had been the past half-year, he was in no mood to decipher whatever meaning it had.)

Somehow - somehow! - he'd been slowly piecing together his life; trying to forge a new, better life. A life he now was slowly starting to share with others. It was the kinda life he deserved from the start, dammit! But... that would be harder now, with all these old guilds and sibling negligence coming back to haunt him.

Inhaling and exhaling sharply, Gajeel scratched idly at his cheek, his mouth pulling into a sideways frown. It was his turn to look away. "I'm sorry."

Ryos perked up, skittishly unsure whether he had heard Gajeel right.

The iron dragon still held some reservations about whether or not the shadow dragon was telling the truth; that they were kin - brothers, at that. Ryos barely looked or acted half as wild as Gajeel did when he was a whelp, but the same red eyes, maybe a shade darker than his own, stared back at him like freshly-cut garnets.

"I'm sorry, a lotta stuff's been happenin'. But that's no excuse." He ran his hand down his face. "You're still just a kid. I shoulda been lookin' out fer you."

His apologetic admission was met with bewilderment -the young shadow dragon looked at the iron dragon as if he'd grown three heads and called himself a hydra.

"What." Gajeel sneered before finally deciphering the meaning of that look. "I ain't goin' soft!" He bristled, before snorting through his nose and settling back into his seat, his arms folded stubbornly across his chest. "I'm getting older, it's called growing up . Now are you gonna take the damn apology or not?"

Ryos's eyes flicked downwards as he again coaxed the restless creature in his pocket. "Ya wu'f kipai." Though it was said with a small glimmer of a smile, it was anything but a happy answer. "I-I didn't come here looking for an apology. It's true that I came looking for you, nagurru. But… until I heard you say my name from the shadows, I didn't know where in Magnolia you lived." Ryos frowned softly and his shoulders tensed. "I came here because I need your help."

Finally, the shadow dragon revealed what was in his hoodie pocket: a green kitten, with big dark eyes. Not just any kitten - this creature had stubby wings and an intelligent glint to its eye. There was no mistaking it: it was a freshly-hatched Exceed .

"There's an Exceed colony outside of Shirotsume. That's where I've been staying…"

The Exceed that had immigrated from Edolas: that was why Shirotsume had sounded so familiar! Gajeel had more pressing matters crystalizing in his arms after their return to Earthland, but, once his mate had been tended to and Gajeel's house gained another occupant, he recalled briefly overhearing that the winged cats had set up near Shirotsume... There was something about the winds around the mountains being just right for their wings and the giant-ass trees outside of town making good nests, or whatever.

"That so?" Gajeel leaned over the table to peek at the kitten further. So the cats were taking care of the kid all this time. It was a strange relief, until he remembered that, unlike the other First Gen Dragonslayers he knew, he, himself, did not have a cat - and here was his supposed baby brother with a magic feline fresh out of the egg! "Why'd you just have this thing shoved in your pocket like that?!" Gajeel blurted, his eyes wide.

Ryos only blinked at him, the older dragon's outburst catching him off guard. "Uh, I-I mean… Exceed are tougher than they look." He placed the small, squishy green jellybean of a feline on the table. "This is Frosch. They're still teething, if they didn't like being picked up or put in my pocket, they'd probably bite me."

The world's tiniest kitty-yawn was enough to keep Gajeel enthralled with the kitten for a few seconds longer. When Ryos's original reason for finding him finally sunk through, he shook his head to clear his thoughts. "Wait. You said that you came looking for me, what do the Exceed got to do with that? Did something happen to the colony?"

The shadow dragon once again broke eye contact, his fingers stroking the grain of the table as he attempted to prevent his own claws surfacing. "A dark guild attacked the colony. It was night time and I was asleep and- and they kicked in the door to my room. I didn't- I only had enough time to grab Frosch and leave..." He blinked back tears. "They captured all the Exceed and took them someplace. I couldn't stop them, I- … there were too many."

Gajeel's eyes flicked to the cuts and scrapes on Ryos's bare feet. "Ryos. Did you run all the way here from Shirotsume?"

Ryos nodded, and his mouth screwed into a scared, miserable little line.

"Why come ta me about this, though?"

Ryos shook his head; the small gesture made it clear that he had no one else that he felt safe turning to.

Right. That was one thing Gajeel understood: being a young Dragonslayer with no home, no family… he'd barely had anyone he trusted when he was Ryos's age. Hell, he still could count the people he fully trusted on one hand. If Ryos had tried to follow Gajeel, then it was given the kid was probably watching when the Magic Council threw Gajeel out of Oak Town - he couldn't blame the kid for not trusting them , either.

"Ryos, didja see what their guild mark looked like...?"

Walking home, Cobra knew it was going to be a long night even before he could pick out the strum of guitar in the distance.

It wasn't that Gajeel was bad at playing instruments - in fact, he was more than decent on drums - but his favorite instrument was by far the guitar and his element had a certain effect on the instrument. Even if he didn't have formal musical instruction, the iron dragon knew his notes and arpeggios, but all musicians poured themselves into songs - especially those with magical abilities - and between the metal strings and his magic being metal-based, whatever chord he struck on guitar sounded… well, metallic . Scratchy, even, if he didn't finger a change right. It was an effect that didn't go well with most songs, but the song tonight - in the key of E - fit it well.

He could hear that his boyfriend wanted a beer, maybe a whole keg of beer to stave off the whirl that had been that day, however the need to remain alert and unfortunately sober was the reason that Gajeel was frustratedly fiddling with his guitar. Likewise, their bond hummed with the iron dragon's annoyance and a dull sense of warning.

Cobra only paused momentarily before opening the front door. His ears told him that they had a guest upstairs; the guitar and Gajeel's inner unease had almost drowned the child out. If Cobra had to guess - and he really didn't have to - it was the mystery boy that had insulted him in the guild library.

"I got your message," Cobra said, placing the shoulder bag he had been carrying down on the kitchen table. The boxy shapes within rested on the flat surface as he reached inside and withdrew a book with a violet color and gold lettering. He silently strode into the living room, where he found Gajeel right where he knew he'd be on the couch. "I'm going to assume it's related to the twelve year old and tiny cat in the bathtub upstairs?"

"My brother ," Gajeel gruffly explained, pausing his song. His shoulders bunched and his jaw tightened, the familial word a little clunky in his mouth. "He knows. About… us. Sniffed it out not even ten minutes after I invited the little shit in. But he knows to keep his mouth shut about it."

Well that answered one question, though prompted many more. Though, from a distance, Cobra could see how the two could be related; the first thing either brother had done was insult him, after all. It also put the tone the kid had used into perspective: he probably wasn't expecting to find out his brother had a mate - not that Cobra could fault the kid for that, exactly...

The redhead considered his wording, cocking his head to the side slightly. "Which one, the kid or the cat?"

Gajeel blinked at his mate's sudden humor, a crack of a smile coming to him a second after. His grip on the guitar became a little less white-knuckled. "His name's Ryos n' the cat is Frosch. Honestly I'm thinkin' 'bout trading him in for the cat," he joked. "You find out anything at the guild?"

"Only that I was right. It wasn't just you and Juvia that were having trouble," Cobra said with a small nod. "It's a memory spell called Mind Shade, it's supposed to trap your consciousness in an altered memory. Everyone being targeted has participated in the Guild War."

"That's a long-ass list of people," Gajeel grunted in acknowledgement. He plucked at the D string on his guitar in thought. "If it was just Jose, I think he would've killed me by now."

Cobra thought back to the few times Gajeel had mentioned his former Master, and what he could hear from the few Fairies who had fought the man. The former Phantom Lord Guildmaster was very two-faced, from what Cobra could gather.

He was very rehearsed for the cameras and for interviews, but rumors of his temper ruined real attempts at good PR. While he was a powerful mage, Jose Porla was a Wizard Saint through mud-slinging, shady politics alone - barely scraping into the bottom rung as the least-powerful Saint, before he'd had that title stripped from him after the Fairy-Phantom War.

Porla had made a lot of enemies trying to get the title he'd eventually lose, but he couldn't openly take care of problems in his preferred manner. From what Cobra could guess, that was where Gajeel and the other Element Four had come into play.

Despite what Gajeel liked to say, he did care what other people thought of him and was almost eager to please if it meant being acknowledged or praised - especially if it was over someone else. But that kind of pressure, to keep your hands messy and to constantly fight, could wear someone down until they were nothing but bone and muscle and tension - ready to be wound up and set off on the next unsuspecting victim.

Even Brain wasn't stupid like that.

Brain, the literally two-faced jackass, was far more a scientist and less of a politician. Data and results-driven. He kept Oracion Seis efficient. Sure, there was the expectation to never lose or majorly fuck up, that was part of the "efficiency". But he knew that to avoid malfunction, a machine shouldn't be running 24/7; a machine needed fuel and maintenance. Because if something broke he'd have to toss out the whole thing and start over. And that would have been just so fucking inconvenient for the old bastard-

Cobra shook his head, bringing himself back to focus on the topic at hand.

This… isn't about me.

"The old man is checking with Blackgate Prison, just to make sure that Jose Porla hasn't gotten out and Fairy Tail wasn't told about it." He sat down next to Gajeel on the couch, placing the book he'd taken on the cushion on the opposite side. "The Council doesn't always share what they need to when they need to, so he's gone to oversee the cell check in person. Titania's in charge until he gets back."

"Bah. If we get more answers, then I guess I can stand her barking orders for five minutes," the iron dragon huffed. "That cold iron bein' on the same train as me, the shitty dream, attacking the kid. I think," he exposed his fangs, gripping the guitar's neck as it creaked, "That somebody's trying to get my attention, even if it ain't Jose." He exhaled sharply out of his nose. "And it's seriously pissing me off."

"You're right," Cobra agreed, leaning back and crossing his leg over his other knee. His ears perked under his hood as red eyes flicked to look at him, listening as his partner's mind recalled what had happened to the cats and the shadow dragon. "The colony at Shirotsume definitely seems like a trap someone set for you."

"No shit." Gajeel cracked his jaw, relieving both his physical tension as well as the tightness on his end of their bond. Finally he set down his guitar, resting it on the floor against the arm of the couch. "But it's the best lead we've got."

"Just be careful," Cobra sighed in resignation. His features then immediately turned more smug. "I won't be there to hold your hand if you have another nightmare this time."

Gajeel pulled him close and clicked his fangs at his mate, grinning slyly. "That won't be the only reason I'll miss havin' ya next to me."

"Lodahi," a small voice hissed. Both the older dragons looked to see a small, damp shape in dirty cargo shorts at the top of the stairs. Ryos visibly gagged at their display.

"Yeah, yeah, make a face all you want," Gajeel waved dismissively at Ryos. "Wait 'til you grow up and get a mate."

The little shadow dragon shook his head rapidly, water droplets spraying from his short, messy locks. "Not going to happen. Not ever!"

"Hm," Cobra hummed, feigning a troublesome tone. "You know... On second thought, I think I might come with you two."

Gajeel caught on to his game quickly. "Yeah? We'll go on a little flight hunt, all us together?"

"Ugh. Stop it!"

A/N: Hey all, it's been a bit! I've been busy with some real life things; I moved to a new place and that took up a lot of my time and energy for a while. ^.^' Things are getting a little more settled now, so hopefully I should be able to update again soon.

The song/notes that I imagined Gajeel angstplaying were the opening notes to the acoustic version of Wrong Side of Heaven by 5FDP.

-Emelogian/Dragon Translations-
Nagurru = brother
Ya wu'f kipai = I don't know (apologetic)
Lodahi = showing affection (derogatory)