Twas his assumption that the cold breeze awoke her, slowly with the bite of its sharp sensation to bring her back within consciousness. Laxus observed as she woke. He leant silent against the tree, with his gaze strayed downwards towards the pinkette woman as her muscles twitched, and his instincts began to resurface. It took a moment for her to come into conscious understanding, though when she did Natsu's eyes snapped open, to dance around the unfamiliar landscape, he might've disturbed her comfortable waking. On instinctual action and much familiar movement;Natsu leapt to an urgent attention, examining anything that may be a threat. Laxus noted; it was an animalistic, even aggressive action taken by a rather kind-minded, soft-hearted girl, though easily recognizable and familiar. However, when her blackened, grey eyes caught onto his own, Laxus felt his chest constrict with the gaze. As Natsu let out a casual sigh of relaxation under recognition. His own eyes moved away, it was not a stare he wished to maintain, given history, and his muscles twitched under the scrutiny.

The lightning mage doubted his own ability to relay recent events, as he knew the girl before him since childhood, he could and would make a large bet that he would find himself under the consequence of a enflamed fist once more in blame should he attempt to summarize. The pinket was calm for now though, looking about without a disturbed expression crossing her visage and the overall aura of ease, perhaps comfort, if Laxus could put himself to say such a thing. Whilst he himself sat slouched against a tree in waiting for the stone to drop, for remembrance to hit the other mage square on the forehead and any happiness and relaxation to dissipate, just as it had for himself.

It did with the same clarity as it had for himself, he watched it occur: Watched as wide eyelids opened just that fraction wider, as her jaw became lax, as fearful irises turned to him. And Laxus forced himself to keep calm as Natsu began to tremble before him."Laxus?" The question was a quiet one, unexpected, and unusual for one so commonly loud and though something that would have been welcome in a normal circumstance: Laxus found himself wishing for the brazen, voluminous voice of the Natsu he had known. Not the hesitance of the one before him, not the fear.

"Yeah." He answered simplistically, because he didn't have an explanation on hand. Though he had thought up many when Natsu had been in a deep slumber beside him; he had none that would properly convey anything proper now, no reasoning that wouldn't hurt more.

Candour was something he'd prided himself upon for many years, candour, stoicism, perhaps morale if he thought about it hard enough. However, contrasting that, the ability for comfort or raw kindness he had never found himself particularly capable within: In simplicity, he had always been left unknowing when it had been necessary for him to show sympathy, always uncertain and too blunt in his answers or attempts to soothe anyone.

So now as it was; he sat in silence with his hands hanging off the updrawn perches of his knees, watching as Natsu on shaking legs stood to look around her in a dazed confusion he -personally- doubted he could properly comprehend. Watched, as his own coat fell off of the slim and tensed shoulders to the dirt as pink hair swayed slightly in one direction and then the next, looking for something. Watching, Laxus kept his mouth firmly shut as Natsu turned to look at him once more, this time with eyes turned downwards, a confusion already deeply engraved into her black irises, while her small nose frantically twitched desperately to find a scent of someone else, her fists were already formed as was her typical hot-anger began to spread throughout the fire-mage's mind and body. Laxus found that familiar as well.

"Where is everyone?" Again, Laxus didn't know how to answer, comfort, kindness, and support didn't come easily unto him; they fled away and hid everytime he attempted from what he knew. His grandfather's blood or not, none of those inherit had learnt his skill for empathy or sympathy.

Sighing, he stood himself, ignoring his own shaking knees, and unintentionally making Natsu look up towards him as he grabbed his coat, shook the dirt, and slung it around his right arm as he crossed both of them over his chest. Knowing himself, he looked down to the kid beneath him -now looking up at him with a fire burning in curiosity inside,- and the lightning mage acknowledged he had to say something. Or else it would turn into a brawl for no reason, there would be no answers and Natsu would merely be fighting him for the sake of ebbing away her own concern.

"They're gone." Was all his lips brought forth, and he cursed himself the stoic nature within that had made it sound so harsh. However, something did clench alongside inside him as the words were belayed; and although his tears had yet to shed at the knowledge he had forced himself to acknowledge, an emotion had still managed to settle deeply inside him at the understanding that part of the family and friends he had known his entire life, were dead. The burden made his own shoulders tense and the thick familiar weight of his coat seem all too heavy. It was unfathomably similar to another comprehensive feeling he'd had as a teenager, whence his father had purposefully decided to leave Fiore after banishment from the guild, without a care for his own sons wellbeing. Laxus despised that he could draw comparison from such an event.

In front of him, Natsu was quiet, and they both stood that way, neither of them did anything to ease the frothing tension. Laxus distinctly hoped that the girl in front of him was not actually in denial yet still of her own father's departure. But bile rose through his throat at the thought that he might -actually be right, and that Natsu's father was too much alike his own; an absent father without a care for his child, some part of the lightning mage hoped that Igneel was indeed a dragon just as that who had attacked them had been.

Eventually however, the mounted silence broke with Laxus's voice and hesitantly spoken words. An attempted explanation he had come up with previously, with a bland voice and shuttering- periodic words as his chest heaved to force them through his clogged throat. "I tried to get us all out of there, teleport us using my lightning magic… I guess it was too much. I watched while teleporting us, I watched a light, the blast, just… consume them." Intense black eyes shot forwards, their gaze firmly affixed to his own, and Laxus found himself captured by the cold they produced without a word spoken, the stabbing comprehension belayed through them was more then he could bare, and he flickered his own away before he crumbled beneath the frost he saw within.

"I remember, you were holding my hand in the circle." Fire fists clenched, and a hardened scowl formed on chipped, dried lips. It did not take long for a wetness to draw itself into the grey eyes, and the tears to fell freely down plush cheeks, yet the hardened visage did not leave. Natsu adverted herself from the glare she'd cast, and Laxus watched her once more, looking down, as his own arms tightened around his chest and something began to dampen at his own lids. He didn't recognize the expression Natsu had formed, he had never seen it, and he hadn't involved himself so deeply into Natsu's life that he could recognize expression from mood. But it was different from the demeanor of the girl he knew.

He waited for a response, for an action. Instead he got a gaze staring intent into his own. "We don't know if that 'light' killed them!" The yell shattered his hesitation, as the sudden brashness of the old Natsu appeared before his eyes in full extroversion. "I say we wait! And if they don't show up in a few days then we get everyone in the guild and go find them!" Laxus had nothing to say against the demand, there was not a word in his vocabulary that wouldn't sound cruel.

He sat within his apartment for the most part, basked in silence and not particularly confronting the situation surrounding him. Even being independent, focused, and self reliant the simple task of making dinner came upon him as a challenge. His mentality knew it to be a ridiculous consideration, even so, he held the pan in his hand and stared unto it, not moving, as he had done so many times before. The stove remained on, and he didn't quite understand his own actions.

Mentally, he told himself in an affirmed voice, loud and knowing, that his actions were stupid. Because he had been a grown man for many years, living on his own and caring for himself nearly as long, longer; yet, the feelings within him were uprising and reminding him bitterly that he had once been cared for by a man now gone, someone whom he might never see once more, and the sour thought was inflicting how he moved, he couldn't move the pan for dinner in that understanding, knowing his grandfather had once done the same action once before in order to make his meals.

A sting came unto his chest, one which he had felt previous, but never under the same comprehension. He abandoned his attempt. Turning to an action that bore no reminder of how he had been raised, moving to his nightstand and taking out the knitting he kept far from anyone he'd known. It was a comforting secret action, his father had near taken from him in his attempt at child-rearing. Once opening the dresser, his attention however, was drawn to the picture resting upon it. Standing hidden underneath a rejected cloth he had not bothered to be rid of, the scowl which flickered onto his face in glimpsing at the frame standing in his vision was automatic and drawn through a past remembrance that brought bad memories cascading unto him: his biological family staring blankly at him inside the wooden frame. Even so, Laxus sighed as opposed to grasping onto his hidden habit he grabbed the phone card beside, and forced his fingers to type the name he'd made them to ignore.

He sat on the edge of the bed and ran his free hand through his standing blond hair. Waiting, and partially wondering if the man would take to answering the call. Wanting in the meantime to simply ignore the necessity put upon him as he did so.

"What do you want boy?" The voice came though much as Laxus had come to expect it. He slouched at the familiar greeting, though he hadn't expected a difference in the years, he still found himself snorting at the predictability, at the frigidity. "I'm busy, and you're interrupting, my time isn't free." Again, he snorted, this time in the direction of himself as he wondered how he could have considered such a tone as one of care as a child and teen.

"Whatever Pops, you can relax, this isn't a goddamn social call. I'm just letting you know-" he paused, finding the wording difficult, but forcing the sentence with a drawn-out sigh. "-gramps passed away recently." His hand clenched inside his hair wondering if he should listen to Natsu's belief and add an 'i think' onto the end, he didn't. He pult at his hair, hand freezing mid-motion as his lungs took a pause from breathing for a moment. He didn't know if his father would even react at the news, knowing the man's true nature, he doubted it.

"I see." It wasn't a cheer shouted into his ear, but it wasn't a crying sob echoing the space around him either. And if he were honest onto himself -which in despite of his own candid nature, he had never been good with- it was not one of the expected responses he'd readied himself for, but he heard a stutter -as if a trembling of breath likened to his own, before the call was disconnected there without his own action bringing it's close, and he looked to the card at the unexpected dispatch from his ear for a moment.

He stood, ignoring it, and instead grabbed the yarn and needles he had wanted to have in his hands by now. Allowing the familiar repetition to vacate his thoughts away for him for a while.

It worked for a prolonged time, until the knock on his door sounded, loudly banging and automatically irritating to sensitive ears. The glare he cast to the front of his apartment and by logic it did nothing to cease the sound. So he rose from his seat as it continued, with a ragied loud sigh following as he forced himself to move, his mood which was already disjointed now becoming something heightened into a want to punch his disrupter.

Opening the wooden blockade gave him an unexpected sight, as stood before him was the image of a pink-haired dragonslayer staring up at him. Natsu was near naked as it were, dressed only in a covering rag and brown filth, Laxus blinked. It was not uncommon to see the her disheveled, yet he could not say he had ever had a glimpse of her in such a state himself, for under appearance, Natsu looked to be dealing with their comrade's deaths far worse then he himself was.

"Uh, hi Laxus, look, I was just hoping- wondering, if you might wanna fight or do something? You know, to take your mind off of everything?" It was the first time the lightning man had seen the girl before him ever be hesitant towards anything, her eyes were cast down and though she wasn't clutching herself or twisting her foot with nerves, she was quite obviously tense.

"Do something?" As automatic, his arms crossed, and though small, an amusement came forth at the unexpected and strange request. He gained a forceful, almost glare for the question. Even so, Laxus found his eyes narrowing at the lack of anger present in the action.

"Yeah! I don't care what- just something distracting." The tense posture dropped, and Natsu scratched at the back of her neck, a shallow sigh even escaping her. "My house is just real empty without Happy, and then when I think about Happy, I think about Carla, and then Wendy, and then Lisanna, Mira, Elfman- just, I wouldn't normally come to you obviously, but no one else really gets it." The explanation was quiet, almost desolate. And he understood it well enough, without any thought over the matter, the knowledge inside was something he knew well enough.

"Alright, sure." He didn't have much else to say over the matter, he just grabbed his coat from the hanger it rested on and stepped outside to join the -now- smiling dragonslayer in front of him. -He doubted Natsu capable of anything half-way between a smile or a frown, her face just never seemed to twist that way.- Even as a child, she had always behath a gay express unless truely serious.

The night wasn't cold, but the wind held a chill with it in a near taunt to their circumstance it seemed. But as it were, his muscles were unstrained by the burden he hiddenly held, and his goal remained not to detangle his own work in getting them to relax so much, so a brawl was outside acceptable.

He turnt down his gaze to the girl beside him, nary skipping beside with a type of jumping leep after she swayed her legs up, it was peculiar to witness. He felt, rather then directed the simper that came unto his face at the sight of such pleasant, comforting, joy. He doubted he himself appeared such an eager party in comparison to the pinket near bouncing beside him. He was walking with a firm stride, and had his hands were stuffed into his pockets, it felt somewhat strange, and the comparison he could draw was one he would rather not consider; that being his first date as an awkward pubescent.

It was a ridiculous comparison, Laxus could smack himself firmly without regret for thinking of it, as they were merely walking away from Magnolia to do something as distraction from their shared bane; not an actual date, still his face inflamed with the possibility.

They were at the outskirts of the town, when he came up with something suitable to distract battle-prone wizards such as himself and Natsu. He grasped the freely swinging elbow by him and tugged the other towards a site that had stood within the town since his father had been a child, since his grandfather's first marriage if he recalled correctly. It wasn't a wrestling locale or anything similar, but rather a field, a place for Fiore's national sport to showcase itself in pride. In specifics, the one he'd turned them onto was used back when his grandfather was a teen to host the national competition, something that occurred every year in great celebration and joy for the common civilian. Cities had entire teams to represent themselves, and though Laxus had never understood the sport, he did know how to play at least.

Naturally, it would just be the two of them, so the game would need to change, but it had occurred that the sport was calm enough to keep him relaxed and fun enough to keep Natsu -and himself- distracted from their continual bane. Though in deeper thought, he did somewhat laugh at the thought of Natsu being any good with a bow-and-arrow, but it was possible enough that Laxus looked forward to the challenge.

"Laxus?" He shoved them both into the field and picked at the scattered equipment in the -previously locked- lockers. "The hell are you planning you jerk?!" Perhaps it was the familiar atmosphere that a caused a chuckle to escape him, or something else, he did not know, and he didn't think on it as he passed the grumbling pinket a bow.

"Bet you know how to use one of these right?" It was a slight mockery, because if Natsu was secretly a posh torry who'd lived a life of luxury as her old companion had, then she wouldn't know anything about hunting instincts or the dynamics of archery. The rich simply did not accept archery as a sport in Fiore, but if she were a woman of the wild then she would certainly know how to hunt and likely, how to use an arrow. By the glare he received, and how it was snatched fiercely from his hand, Laxus would make a bet on the latter.

It was an odd wonderance to cross his mind as Laxus watched her shoot each target near as accurate as Bisca with a sniping scope: But Laxus found himself wondering if any of the guild even remembered she was a woman at all, given that the girl regularly showed off her near absent tits and never wore makeup or perfume, he doubted they did.

Embarrassingly enough, with an enflamed face of much to emboldened red, Laxus wondered that if whence she was out of her teens Natsu would actually gain mass to the previously mentioned breasts she showcased, he doubted he'd see if she did regardless.

He focused his orange gaze to the targets she shot, and rather avidly avoided the consideration, and strayed his gaze quite purposefully away from the girl in front of him, and her chest.

To be mild, it was a slow day.

Rather, it had been a slow couple of weeks, and many members had been taking to whispering among each other about finding a new guild for work. As Fairy Tail became less dependable with the disappearance of their more powerful -and known- members, the townsfolk began to put their faith within the more impressionable wizard guilds that had started to crop up within Magnolia. Three months since Tenrou Island had been irradicated and the status of the once most powerful Wizard Guild of Fiore had decreased drastically. Hardly retaining a ranking as their most prominent members had been in a state of mourning for near as long, only just beginning to force themselves into taking requests once more, indeed most of them were strategists not combat focused.

Laxus had been hesitantly allowed to aid the guild, under his own request, with no small amount of suspicion and detesting stares thrown his way in the process. Laxus knew he had only been accepted because of the difficulty faced financially by the guild, and by that same route the well known power as a wizard which would attract requests unto the guild. Laxus knew he was being used mainly to draw in money, as bait. Yet, under the circumstance of his own failure, the disgraced man couldn't say he minded the unintended blow to his pride; in his eyes he hardly had any left anymore.

As it was he kept to himself while under the company of his 'former guildmates.' Uncomfortable with their familiar company as it were. Thus, his gaze was usually drawn to the battered table he choose for the day or at the mug of ale he bought each afternoon. Mainly sitting under a frequent contemplation, and a self maintained shame, wondering; what exactly his personality priour to the events of the Harvest Festival would've thought of the current situation: he then took a sip of his drink everytime it crossed his mind, acknowledging the ragid the truth of his own personality.

It was only two months within this continual state of depression that Natsu came back, appearing less strained after whatever long job she'd taken. Still, she didn't shout out her return, or challenge someone to a brawl, she plastered on a small grin, threw her gaze over to where Laxus sat, and marched in the lightning mage's direction with intent. Then, as only normal the fire mage slammed her hands down on the tableside directly opposed to the former S-class, and leaned her torso over the wood just a little and stared.

Laxus noticed, up close from his peripheral vision, and with a snort bellowing out his own nose at the oblivious realization -all the while maintaining his own stare, in challenge.- Natsu's hands were shaking; just as they had been since the dragonslayer had heard about her friends deaths, still shaking two months later -just as his own were. Muscles were twitching in her arms as well, making it appear as the fire mage were preparing for a fight or, as if she was with holding a hard held restraint of a violent action she knew was wrong, Laxus couldn't name it himself; but he could empathize, feeling as his coat shifted once more around his shoulders.

"What'cha want?" He asked, not mentioning the barely quaking hands in front of him; knowing it'd only retain him a punch to the cheek in denial, a hit he'd rather avoid while grieving. Even so, his voice came out less irate then it had under similar situations in the past, he hardly came to notice it however.

"Ya' wanna go on a job?" Being under Natsu's particular accent, the question came out as a demand rather then a request.

"Didn't you just get back from one?" He got a glare and a finger nearly on his nose.

"So?! It was boring! And going alone is-" With a yell, Natsu's hands threw up into the air and her foot loudly crashed into the ground in a stomp almost echoing around the hall. "-Annoying!" Grey eyes -in the light- snapped into orange ones, the balled fists of the fire dragonslayer fell to her sides, near lax.

Laxus stared at the girl before him, his own gaze sharpening in frustration as understanding befell him, he sighed. He empathized -somehow- with Natsu, he knew that the pinkett had never properly dealt with such cascading, conflicting, emotions before. She had, but Natsu was refusing to take refuge with Igneel's memory. So even while his own protests rang in his head; he picked his head up from the sigh stumbling through his throat and crossed his arms over the wood of the table.

"Fine, pick a job." She would just continue to demand if he didn't concede, not a thing he was in mood to deal with.