If there were a hundred things Laxus did to annoy his grandfather, there were a hundred things he did to humor the old man. There really wasn't anyone who loved him more than Makarov or had invested more patience or effort into his life. Sometimes Laxus didn't understand why he did any of it, but the old man's love was always without comprehension.

Even then, Makarov still cared about Ivan and seemed to believe he was somehow still redeemable.

Honestly, there wasn't a lot he wouldn't do for his grandfather. If going out on this date with whomever was going to make Makarov happy, he'd do it.

When he came downstairs, Gildarts was at their house, talking quietly with his grandfather in the living room.

The red-headed ace of Fairy Tail looked up at him and asked, "You're wearing a tie. Who died?"

"Laxus is going on a date. Doesn't he look dashing?"

"Ah, I guess so. He's charming until he opens his mouth," Gildarts chuckled.

Laxus shrugged. "I feel like the structural integrity of your body makes laughing a hazard. So keep doing it, you might die."

"You're never going to get laid with that attitude."

"I'm leaving. I'm going to eat. Then I'm going to come home."

He walked to the restaurant, hands in his pockets and slightly forlorn that while he was lonely, he didn't want to cooperate with this process. If the funk he was in was caused by a lack of woman in his life, it wasn't just that he was awkward. Laxus legitimately hadn't ever felt drawn enough to one woman in his entire life, leading to an extended period where he doubted his sexuality.

The restaurant looked expensive and when he arrived, he gave them his name and was taken to a dimly lit corner where Mirajane was waiting in a little blue dress and heels, her hair curled. On a terrible day, she was still one of the most beautiful women to ever grace the pages of Sorcerer's Weekly, so when she was intentionally dressed up, she was unquestionably beautiful.

"Laxus?"

"Mirajane."

She smiled and said, "You look nice."

"You're hotter than the sun, as always. You want wine?"

"Sure, thank you."

They didn't say much for a while, but both were equally sure this was a well-meant but futile gesture.

Laxus said, "You can just tell the old man you're with Freed. Everyone is going to find out eventually."

"It's nice to have secrets sometimes. Once the guild finds out, we'll be bombarded with what everyone thinks. Until that happens, we're free to just be ourselves. You know how it is. There's a critical lack of privacy and an abundance of gossip and opinions."

"So I'm buying an expensive dinner for Freed's girl? I can live with it."

Mirajane said, "It's all for Master's sake. And for good food. I eat a lot, you know."

"Of course I know."

This was the anomaly, Laxus Dreyar: hell bent on causing chaos in some moments and perfectly at ease in others.

"Erza was looking for you earlier."

"I knew she would be."

Mirajane sipped her wine and said, "I heard you were being a bad influence, coercing Wendy into cursing at an old woman. She's going to punish you."

Laxus feigned confusion. "What was it she said, 'queen slut bag?' Oh, that was how Erza referred to you at that age, or did I forget?"

She giggled. "Do you ever miss those days? There was a time when we were growing up but before Lisanna disappeared where the sky seemed so clear. We didn't know how hard the future was going to be. We were just a bunch of kids, and we didn't know the hell we'd have to go through, over and over."

"No. That was the more difficult time for me. Don't you ever miss jobs?"

"Not at all. A lot of people think Lisanna's death made me stop being a wizard, but what it really did was show me my own heart and what mattered to me. I love being at home in the guild and doing what I can to help others. The trauma of how I thought she died just made me afraid of takeover magic. Same with Elfman."

"I was happy to see her alive on Tenrou. I screwed up in the fight with Hades because I picked up the scent of her blood on the air and it startled me."

"That's actually sweet."

"I almost died, Mira."

Mirajane just smiled. "You're actually quite sweet, you know. I think Master is right about you needing a special someone. I've been trying to think of someone who might work for you. Lucy might get along well enough. She seems excitable and I think you'd enjoy making her angry all the time."

"She's got a thing with Natsu, right? I went to her apartment once with a note from the old man and it smelled like he lives and sleeps there with her."

"I think it's platonic sleeping together? I think Lucy and Natsu have great chemistry as friends and teammates, but she needs someone with other common interests. She loves books and culture and that's just not Natsu. But I'm biased. You know I'm holding out for Lisanna and Natsu."

Laxus said, "It seems…triangular. Maybe I need someone calmer. Lucy's got a mean kick on her. Lisanna is cute."

"Yeah, for Natsu. Make a move and I will end you."

"I'm joking. I don't really think of anyone like that. I don't know that I'll ever love a person more than I love magic. That makes me more of a Gildarts than a Makarov, if you catch my drift. Not everyone is fit for it. If that's true, I'd rather not go to all the trouble of screwing up someone else's life."

A decade before, they were wild and young, and never could have had a peaceful discussion. Time had smoothed all things, and Mirajane was one of the few people he considered a close friend. He trusted her and trusted that she always had the guild and its wizards' best interest at heart.

"You don't mind helping Gramps while I'm gone?"

"No, I like spending time with him. We don't get trashed and yell at the neighbors."

Laxus said, "Just so it's not too easy for him, I just want you to know Gramps said you looked like a 'fertile myrtle,' whatever the hell that is."

Her face darkened. "Did he?"

"He did."

Laxus asked for the check, and after it arrived, left bills on the table to cover cost and stood when she did. "You need me to walk you home?"

"I'll be fine. I've heard a demon walks these streets at night."

"Take care and take care of Freed. He seems happy. The old geezer will be happy for you when you tell him."

He headed home, where Gildarts and Makarov were still drinking.

Kicking off his shoes, he made his way into the living room and scowled at both. "You'd both be in better shape if you didn't get shitfaced every single night. Give it a rest already."

Gildarts laughed, "You want to rumble, sparky?"

"Going to pass on guaranteed obliteration by a one-legged drunk and go to bed early."

"Forget that, how was your hot date?"

Laxus turned. "No good. I'm not into her. Not my type. I think I know what to do now."

He said this to keep his grandfather out of his business but was still essentially in the same place he'd been before the talk. Feeling loneliness due to lack of intimate relationship didn't mean it was necessarily time for him to go out and find one.

"You're leaving on your job tomorrow?"

He nodded and paused on the steps. "Wendy is going with us. I assume that means her exceed will as well. We're leaving at seven. Mira will come by at around eight, probably to kick your ass and then drag you to work."

-###-

The job was up north, in the mountains.

The two days of travel to get there were pleasant if one wasn't a dragonslayer, then fate shifted gears and conditions became favorable for the dragon-blooded wizards once they arrived at the base of the mountain.

"This is unrelated, but that mountain," Freed said, pointing to the neighboring mountain, "Is Mt. Zonia, where Gildarts crossed paths with Acnologia. This area is said to draw magical creatures to it. This is an S-Class mission not because our job is hard, but because this area tends to be an epicenter of violence among magical creatures. Be careful and keep watch."

Evergreen asked, "Is Wendy good to move like we usually do?"

"She's qualified to be here, with or without her exceed," Freed answered.

Bixlow rose up on his dolls. "What's the first rule of the Thunder Legion, babies?"

"Air superiority!" his dolls chanted in unison.

Laxus nodded. "Our team maintains tactical superiority by using the sky as our playground. Most wizards are bound to the earth, and if they can't fly, they can't do it well. We're expert who have trained for countless hours. You seem like the most valuable asset for us, since you basically own the sky."

"I need Charle to stay in the air," she timidly said.

"I'm sure you don't. You're the sky dragon slayer. The sky is yours. You need to have confidence in how you use it. Every dragonslayer can change some of the properties of the element they use."

They flew up the side of the mountain rather than climbing it, which saved hours and a lot of energy. Well, for everyone except Wendy, who went a little slower as she pushed herself up with bursts of air. The motion was jagged and inconsistent, like jumping in air, and she'd start to fall if she didn't time them well.

"Just let me take you. This is how it's always been, Wendy," Charle said as she hovered next to Wendy's ear.

Wendy said, "I want to get better. That's why I came."

The winds that whipped around the mountains were powerful and the higher she climbed, the thinner the air was and the colder it became. This only made the task harder and at some point about halfway down, she had an epiphany.

If the air becoming thinner made it harder to climb, if she used her magic to make it thicker, it would be easier. And more importantly, if she created pressure under her to offset the density of her body versus the air under it, she would hover when she wasn't climbing.

Manipulating the qualities of the air in addition to using it as a force against her mass would allow her to remain in the air without using massive amounts of magic energy.

Wendy levelled off and hovered in the air, enveloped in an air bubble roughly the shape of her body, she felt at rest. The amount of magic required to maintain this spell was less than the amount she gained by the sky magic she reabsorbed while breathing, so in theory, it was something she could maintain indefinitely while conscious.

The dragonslayer dragged her fingers through the air and turned, grabbing the current as it whipped by and pulling it around her, and another with her other hand. She twisted them as she turned her body, once, twice, and then furiously.

While waiting for her at the top the rest of the Thunder Legion watched her difficult progress up. A mountain was both the best and worst place to test flight skills, but even if Charle hadn't been there, the rest of the Thunder Legion knew Laxus could move a lot faster than a human could fall if something went wrong.

Bixlow reached out to snatch his dolls as they were suddenly jerked outward.

"Oh noes! A tornado!" they chanted.

Wendy landed on the flat top of the mountain, out of breath.

The mountain had an ancient temple that had subfloors and caves that went deep underground. It was an area off-limit to civilians because the ruins were dangerous. There was dense fog at the top, but they could make out the details of the old columns as they walked across worn old stone bricks with runes.

"The runes are sealing runes. The magic has long expired. This is old magic that went out of popular use before the formation of the Midian Empire during the Hericlean Era," Freed said.

Evergreen replied, "Pre-Zeref then."

"By centuries at least."

The Thunder Legion went ahead, and Wendy hung back so she could quietly whisper, "Charle."

"What is it?"

"I still need you. I'll always need you, okay?"

"I'm here for you, Wendy. No matter what. We made that promise, remember?"

Wendy nodded.

Their job seemed simple enough; priests that visited the site twice a year reported rumbling from inside the mountain, which meant some creature had likely taken up residence in the subterranean part of the temple.

Laxus stared down at the ground. "I don't sense anything. No scents, no signs anything is alive. It's possible the sounds they heard were the underground structures collapsing, right?"

"These old Hericlean temples are so indestructible that it's hard to get rid of them when you want to. There's probably magic and physical reinforcement all over the place. Like that temple we found in the desert a few years ago," Freed said.

Evergreen pulled her coat tighter around herself. "Wasn't that place a prison for some monster?"

Laxus said, "We'll go in the proper way, but any sign the place isn't sturdy and we're going to come in from the side."

The mountain suddenly started to shake, and a growling sound erupted from it.

Wendy said, "That's not an animal. The vibration was strange. Like something in the mountain is shaking and it's making the mountain shake. It would have been different if it was just something caving in, right?"

"You can hear the tiny modulations in sounds also?" Laxus asked.

She nodded. "I also notice this mountain is colder than any of the ones around it. The snow cap is over two hundred feet lower even though it faces the warmest winds and is on the outside of the ridge. The air isn't cold…it's the mountain. That sound, it kind of reminded me of Gray's ice breaking, just bigger."

It hit Bixlow first, which was actually a rarity. "Hey, you know that spell Gray knows? The one where you can seal a creature in ice?"

Freed gasped. "That's right. That's a very old spell. The lost version is from the same era. Most of these temples were designed to be prisons. If the most powerful wizard in the whole world cast Lost Iced Shell on an enemy, it would wittle the enemy's life force down until the caster's lifeforce finally expired. The exchange would be incredible—Iced Shell amplifies the magic of the caster tens of thousands of times, but acts slowly, storing that energy as ice. If you put something inside that was strong enough to survive that, it would eventually break free."

The ground rumbled again, and a huge crack appeared in the stones they were standing on.

A missing piece of a puzzle they hadn't bothered to put together fell into place as a distinct, unmistakable scent filled the air.

Acnologia ran into Gildarts in this area because he'd been looking something, and Acnologia only cared about one thing.

The entire top of the mountain suddenly exploded from within, sending wizards flying in every direction as a dragon clawed its way out.

It was transparent, and almost looked like it was made from crystal, but there was an overwhelming wave of cold that left even the dragonslayers shivering as they struggled to gain their bearings and change course mid-air.

"An ice dragon!" Wendy said, gasping, "This can't be real."

The dragon stopped to scrape the remains of the iced shell off one of its legs and roared so loud the entire mountain range shook violently.

Acnologia had missed this dragon during his purge because it was sealed away and its magic was undetectable.

Charle grabbed Wendy mid-air and pulled her to where the Thunder Legion was floating at the side of the mountain.

The dragon seemed a little disoriented, which gave them a moment to consider their path.

"The dragon has probably been weakened by the ice shell," Freed said.

Laxus shook his head. "It's an ice dragon. Iced shell wouldn't have forced him into dormancy. He used it to hide from Acnologia, and now that Acnologia is dead, it decided to come out."

"Do we fight?" Wendy asked.

He said, "I want everyone else to retreat. Worst case scenario, your magic won't work anyway. Wendy. We're going to go down there and figure out if this is an enemy or friend. Follow my lead and don't show even a hint of weakness. If things go poorly, jump and figure out what to do after that."

Charle grabbed her shirt. "I'm going."

"It will make her look weak."

Wendy said, "I'm ready."

Her heart was pounding so hard he could hear it as they waited for the others to gain some distance.

"Are you afraid?" he asked.

"Aren't you?"

"I'm terrified. Just breathe."

Wendy entered dragon force, stilled her breathing, and followed him to where he stopped above the dragon's head.

In close proximity, the dragon took note of them, staring at first before speaking in frosted breath. "Dragonslayers…"

Laxus said, "We are dragonslayers who put Acnologia in his grave."

The ice dragon replied, "Acnologia was done in by the dragonslayers and not Zeref?"

"Our guild destroyed both."

The dragon replied, "That's unfortunate for your guild, although I never planned on facing Grandine and Fulguros again. Of Igneel's forces, they were among the strongest. Devouring their power will give me the power I need."

Laxus knew Grandine was Wendy's matron dragon, but it was the first time he'd ever heard the other name.

When the dragon flashed its teeth and snapped in the air so fast it very nearly bit Wendy in half.

Wendy was snatched out of the way just in time by Charle, who started to fly when the dragon let out a roar that send a blast of subzero hair filled with razorsharp ice spikes at her.

One went through her side, and suddenly, she was falling. There was blood in the air that wasn't hers and she turned in the air and used everything she knew how to do, but the attack hadn't really been aimed at her, but the ice dragon hadn't aimed the attack at her.

By the time she took hold of Charle, it was too late.

She was falling toward the ground, and Charle was gone and she wasn't going to come back.

The dragon chased her, but was stopped when it was struck by a huge burst of lightning magic and Laxus attacked it with enough force a patch of its ice scales shattered and went flying everywhere.

It pulled back because its huge body was hurtling toward the ground, and Laxus kept going, grabbing Wendy and bringing her down to a narrow pass and into a cave he'd noticed when they were getting ready to ascend the mountain.

Wendy was stopped holding Charle, as she had a huge ice spike through the middle of her chest. All she could think about was that Charle wasn't supposed to be there. The exceed had come back for her, and if she hadn't, Wendy would be the one who was gone.

Laxus was shouting her name, but it sounded like dull background noise. Even though he was saying something to her and it was probably important, she couldn't hear him. When she looked down, there was a spike sticking out of her too, all the way through her side.

She felt so cold.

Then she only felt pain as he gripped the ice spike and pulled it out. As loud as she could scream, it wasn't enough, and that didn't even compare to how it felt when used lightning to stop the bleeding, burning a hole through her to cauterize the path the spike had traveled.

It was Laxus fault that she was in this position, but this job was supposed to be something normal. Maybe there was an ogre or some low-class demon hanging out in the temple, that's always how it went.

The dragon was set on eating them to consume their dragon magic, and while the ice dragon was nowhere near as powerful as Acnologia, he was more powerful than it needed to be to kill them without any problem and he was much faster than Acnologia.

When Wendy's ears stopped ringing, Laxus was sitting there next to her.

The look on his face was indescribably grim.

"Did we do wrong, talking to it?" she finally whispered.

Laxus leaned his head back, holding his hand over a bleeding gash on his arm. "It didn't change anything. It was going to eat us anyway. If we hadn't said anything to it and tried to run from the first moment, we'd probably be in exactly this position, just a little farther away."

"It's my fault, I froze, and Charle…"

"It's not your fault. Charle was a proud member of Fairy Tail, just like you. She died in battle because she chose to fight."

Wendy put her hand on her side. "It doesn't hurt at all."

Laxus said, "I'm sorry for bringing you here."

"Where's are the others?"

"I trained my team well. They know not to throw their lives away. Freed will do the right thing."

Wendy asked, "Can you move fast enough to get away from it?

"No. Even if I tried, if he used his roar, he'd cut my body to pieces. I wouldn't leave anyway."

"Can you fight?"

"Extreme cold has a dampening effect on lightning, so I'm not that effective."

After considering all this, she numbly said, "We're going to die here?"

"I think so. That spike lacerated your liver, so I only stopped you from bleeding out. I can't stop you from bleeding in. It's a moral wound, Wendy," he said.

Laxus felt a weight on his chest he couldn't even internally sort out when he considered that Wendy was going to die because of decisions he made. She was young, and she was supposed to have a big, bright future. Instead, she was either going to be eaten by a monster or bleed to death.

The lightning wizard said, "I'm sorry."

Wendy replied, "Can we keep it from using our powers?"

"We probably could but it wouldn't be pretty. I could overload my lacrima and that would destroy our bodies."

"I'm scared," she whispered.

Laxus held out a hand but noticed that he had a patch of scales on his palm where he'd been cut by the sharp scales of the dragon. "Have you ever healed someone with your blood? I had a huge gash on my hand and now I don't. My hand actually feels strangely stronger than it usually does?"

"Nothing like that's ever happened before."

He pointed to her abdomen. "You have a little patch of scales too."

Laxus pulled a utility knife from his boot and cut his other palm open, and then let the blood drip on her wound.

While they watched, the area healed up and scaled over.

It was like pure life, every drop healing and invigorating Wendy. There was an argument to be made that maybe her blood contained healing properties because she was a healer, but zero reason to think Laxus' would have the same ability.

Dragonslayer brawls were incredibly bloody by their very nature and there had been mixing of blood—torn knuckles on busted eyes and the like. This interaction was extremely powerful and completely undocumented.

In mere minutes, while the dragon waited for its victims to emerge, Wendy's mortal wound became nothing at all except patches of scales that crackled with lightning. Even stranger, helping Wendy's energy seemed to increase Laxus' magic power.

Wendy said, "This doesn't make any sense."

"Nothing ever does. I've bled on other people before. They usually just complain. I feel very in tune with the air right now."

The younger dragonslayer said, "I can feel the lightning in the clouds."

Laxus grabbed her hand. "This seems to be an interaction derived from the dragons whose magic we use. They were able to heal one another, share powers, and increase the abilities of the other. Exploiting this is going to be our best bet for surviving." He made a cut on her palm. "Let's fight."

"Fight?"

"The dragon's body is brittle and cold, and his attacks weaken mine. You could use powerful jets of air to keep him from hitting us with enough power? Probably even keep the cold streams from hurting my attacks and force him to crash into mountains. Speed and cold and his spiked breath attack are what he's got, but we're dragonslayers."

Laxus was a far more powerful and advanced wizard, so his magic container held more than hers did, and since he needed her to do most of the work, she felt his magic rush into her body when their bleeding palms met.

Wendy didn't really know what was going on, but she was sure that what they were doing was probably bad and wrong and broke a lot of rules that didn't know about. She could begin to guess why two dragons would have these abilities with one another, and suspected Laxus wasn't without suspicion either.

It was what they had to survive.

Laxus felt a strange sensation of fullness, and then, as Wendy's magic transferred to him, the lacrima in his body shattered and the lightning dragon magic, unbound, flooded his body in an insane frenzy that caused his first, true dragon force. In some chain reaction, Wendy was forced into the same state, but high on all Laxus' power and the hidden magic they'd tapped, she felt like she was literally the queen of the sky.

Whatever had happened, they would sort it out later. They erupted from the cave, and when the dragon came at them, Wendy threw it into an adjacent mountain so hard it caused a mudslide.

She could see the air streams, the way it moved and how strong it was, what made it and how dense it was. More importantly she felt like she had the power to command it in whatever way she wanted.

Laxus slammed into the dragon with a massive attack when it hit the mountain, and when it tried to use its breath attack, another gust of wind sent the spikes to the ground and safely out of the way.

When it went for her, Laxus pounded it, concentrating on an area of its neck where he was cracking the scales off. Their efforts in the cave left him with strange spatial awareness not only of Wendy but of her magic and how she was using it to the point he almost felt like he realized he somehow knew what she was about to do before she did it.

It was terrifying, overpowering, and the most intense rush either had ever experienced as a wizard.

Wendy created her second-ever tornado and swept the dragon up in it only to change its direction and hurl it into the ground with so much force one of its ice-armored wings snapped in half.

Once it was stuck on the ground, Laxus absolutely pummeled it nearly to death with lightning attack after lightning attack after lightning attack, relying on Wendy to keep him safe from enemy attack. Sometimes she did this by redirecting the enemy's attack, and sometimes she did it by pushing him out of the way with her magic.

When it was lingering near death, Laxus came to her side and held up his hand. Wendy took it with a shaking hand, knowing there was going to be that strange synergistic reaction.

"Ultimate Dragon Technique…" he started.

"Hellstorm," Wendy finished.

A sky magic vortex of lightning picked up and absolutely decimated the dragon, which exploded into what seemed to be powdered ice.

They fell to the ground together, as a light blue stone fell to the ground and rolled down a bare, muddy hill toward them.

As Wendy lay on her back, she played back the battle and realized the dragon had been talking to them throughout the battle and she just hadn't listened. The weird magic was deafening and strange, far more powerful than anything she'd known. When the harsh reality of what happened before that came to her, tears streamed down her face.

After resting for a few minutes, he stood up, picked up the ice dragon lacrima, and peered at it.

He'd always wondered how they were made and why there was such a finite number of them in the world, but this wasn't the answer he'd hoped for.

It was all his fault, everything that happened. He'd snatched the job ahead of recent S-Class inductee Levy, and ironically, if Team Shadowgear had taken it, they might have all been okay. Laxus was sure the dragon hastened his escape from the iced shell because there was dragon magic for him to consume. Even if the dragon had broken out at the same moment, it had no interest in ordinary humans and probably just would have ignored them.

Taking the job was his decision, and bringing Wendy was also his decision.

If Charle hadn't grabbed her, the dragon would have bitten her in half and her life would have ended in terror and gore.

When Wendy ran out of tears, she sat up and found Laxus leaning against a rock.

Tears were streaming down his face as he stood there with crossed arms.

"You're that sad about Charle?"

"It's not that. I feel like shit, and I'm sorry all this happened. I think your feelings are spilling over into me and I don't seem to be able to end whatever we started. I don't understand what happened at all."

He wiped his face with the sleeve of his coat.

Wendy stood from the ground and wiped her face with her hands, following him in trying to put herself back together. Her mind was reeling as she sorted through distant memories from her childhood for hints about what they'd discovered.

She stared at her hands, "I'm not sure either. I've never heard anything about anything like this. I felt so powerful…but we exchanged blood. That's taboo."

"Blood rituals are forbidden because they're incredibly powerful and have extreme consequences. We did what we had to do, but there's going to be a price for his," he said, holding up his scaled hand.

Wendy covered her mouth. "Will we be cursed, like Mavis?!"

"It wasn't that kind of bad. I'm going to assume we're safe from something like that. Let's keep this a secret for now. Don't tell anyone, not even the old man. We'll say we fought and won and not mention the rest. No one needs to know about this, and especially not about the lacrima. There's a lot of dangerous information here that could put the guild at risk. Secrets like this are powerful, and every time you tell someone else, they become less valuable and more dangerous."

Wendy was inclined to go along with this, both because she was devastated and because she was afraid to tell anyone she'd taken part in a forbidden magic spell. And honestly, she just didn't feel like talking about it at all—not about how it felt to hold Charle's body, or the fear from being impaled, or the emotions that came with acknowledging inescapable death.

They had escaped, and if they did something wrong in the process, did it even matter?

When the others joined them, Wendy fell straight back to pieces when she tried to saw Charle had died, and Laxus vanished while the Thunder Legion recovered her body and wrapped her in a blanket. When she calmed down again, he returned, and said almost nothing about the battle itself outside of its final outcome. They'd won, and there was a casualty.

-###-

Back home, shock, grieving, and a funeral.

It came with the realization that it was possible other dragons had survived by hiding themselves by magical means and might reenter the post-Acnologia world, which made the presence of dragonslayers more important than ever.

Of the dragon's slaying itself, there was basically no information.

Wendy was talkative, and tended to explain things in detail, but Laxus was succinct, and never said one more word than was necessary when it came to important matters.

At home, after things started to settle down, Laxus joined his grandfather for their first late night drink in a while.

Makarov asked, "Are you and Wendy purposefully withholding information about the fight up north?"

"Yes. I told her not to discuss what happened with anyone. I need you to trust us and leave it alone."

"Very well. I'll defer to your judgement, with the condition that you're responsible for making sure Wendy is okay in the wake of everything that happened. You dragged that girl through hell. I know it wasn't your intention. It happened. She lost the best friend she had in the world."

Laxus nodded. "I feel like shit."

Makarov didn't doubt this, but Laxus' processing of the events was not congruent with the normal way he handled things. He'd been exceptionally moody, quiet, and grieved like the loss of the exceed was mor personal to him than it actually was. There was a distinct difference between the sorrows of responsibility and those of loss and he seemed to be experiencing the latter in a disproportionate way.

Laxus knew his grandfather knew something was wrong, but he was trying very hard to hide the fact that even two weeks after the fight on the mountain, Wendy's feelings infected him like a disease.

At the same time, Wendy seemed exceptionally stalwart as she faced the tragedy.

Makarov saw a glint in the moonlight and saw his grandson was wearing a ring on the middle finger of his left hand. "An enchantment?"

"This? I've decided to be a more spiritual person, that's all."

The old man asked, "Would I be angry if I knew the secret you're keeping?"

"You would be furious. Probably bewildered. Magic is strange."

"Maybe you should schedule a night out with someone, get your mind off everything."

Laxus shook his head. "I'm happy on my own. I'm not interested in anything like that right now."

They drank, and drank, and then drank some more.

The dragonslayer went in for another beer, and then after slumping back down, popped the top off. "This doesn't seem to be doing much for me."

And then…

"Oops." The dragonslayer stared at his beer, and said, "I need to go check something. I'll be back."

Laxus disappeared in a streak of lightning but ended up only getting as far as the tree outside the girl's dormitory. Violating the laws of magic was a lesser offense than one of the guild males stepping foot inside, and there was no escaping Erza, but Erza was out on a job.

So he decided to break into the dorm, and opened the third-floor window where Wendy's room was and perched on the windowsill, a dragonslayer technique known as 'the Natsu.'

Wendy was face-down on the bed.

She started to get up but tripped and fell flat on her face. "I'm sick…something is wrong. I feel sick to my stomach, and I'm so dizzy. Help…"

Laxus didn't move from his perch on the windowsill. "You're drunk."

"I've never even had a drink."

"I've been trying to get drunk for hours."

Wendy broke down into tears, because she and Laxus were very irritated and tired of their apparently permanent connection. They were very different people at very different places in life and it was impossible to stop the emotional bleed-over. In most cases, the line was so blurred she wasn't sure what was coming from her own mind and what she was soaking up from him.

The stood up, wobbled over to the bed, and sat down.

"Are you just going to sit there on the windowsill?"

Laxus said, "Do you as a fifteen-year-old girl want a grown man in your bedroom where you sleep?"

"It's just you."

"The answer should be no. Sheesh. Don't be naïve. The world is filled with creeps. I am not one."

Wendy said, "Anyway, about what happened, it's permanent, I'm sure of it."

He answered, "Whatever this is, it's rooted in dragon magic, so human magic is going to do fuck-all for us. If we can break the link, I don't think it's going to be easy. I still don't have any understanding at all what magical mechanism enabled any of that to happen."

With a nod, Wendy said, "I know what happened. I figured it out, but I didn't want to say anything in case it was just temporary. It was what the ice dragon said, when he named Fulguros.

"When I was little, I used to fear thunderstorms, and I would snuggle up to Grandine. She told me she liked thunder, it reminded me of her mate who had passed away a long time before. His name was Fulguros. He must have been killed by a dragonslayer, and his magic eventually made its way to you. Grandine's magic is in me.

"Dragons were powerful and magical creatures. We tapped into the power they shared together. If you think about it, it's beautiful and sad. Hundreds of years ago, two creatures loved each so much that the power of their connection was imprinted into their very magical essence. They both died and it lived on, hidden in us. It reawakened when our lifeblood came into contact."

From an outsider's perspective, that was quite a tale, and Laxus' more grim speculation about the matter led him to believe something like this was probably true before Wendy confirmed it.

Laxus thought for a long while, and said, "If that's true, it's probably unlikely we'll ever be able to break the link unless one of us gives up their magic or dies."

"Grandine's magic is all I have left of her. That's not something I would ever do. It wouldn't make sense for you to give up your magic either. The guild would suffer."

He answered, "If we both keep our magic, I think I'll go back to Blue Pegasus for a while."

"Why?"

"Back to the part where I am grown and you are not, this is problematic."

Wendy asked, "Why does that even matter?"

"To be incredibly blunt, the idea of a fifteen-year-old girl knowing when I'm horny makes me want to crawl out of my own skin and take an acid bath. I got this enchantment to stop that from happening, but I have a more mature mindset and a much more forceful personality. Even if I avoid the most heinous problems, you're still going to be under my influence."

She said, "You'll be under mine too, right?"

"Do you think those are equal forces?"

Wendy seemed more dismissive of this concern. "I think I can probably avoid turning into you. I don't even understand how you turned into you."

"See? You're usually too timid to say anything rude."

"Standing up for myself doesn't make me more like you, it makes me more like me."

Laxus decided maybe she was right; she'd lost her best friend. Besides, she was at the crossroads that led to adulthood and that came with needing to be more confident and assertive.

The situation they were in felt like such a muddled mess, and it was costly.

"Maybe we just keep our distance then and do the best we can," he said.

The younger dragonslayer replied, "Why don't we take advantage of it?"

"You mean keep exploiting forbidden magic to overpower enemies? I don't really give a shit about rules, and if we're just going to ignore all this weirdness because we're screwed and can't get out of it, I suppose it's a winning idea. The consequences aren't going to change for us either way."

Wendy said, "We might need that power to help our friends. We've already paid the price for it, right?"

The lightning wizard actually felt when it came to their perilous magic entanglement, Wendy had a deeper understanding of how it worked and wasn't as fearful and anxious about it as he was. His instinct was to avoid her like the plague, but hers was to try embrace the power.

The far-reaching consequences of their mind-link meant Laxus became Wendy's weak point and vice versa. This was more a problem for Wendy than it was for Laxus, as the lightning wizard didn't necessarily believe Wendy had a long list of enemies.

Laxus did, and Wendy's instinct to trust combined with her young age meant if his enemies ever found out, they'd target her. She was strong, but it would be easier to overcome her than him.

"We still need to keep this a secret?"

"Wendy, you absolutely cannot tell anyone you have a deep mental connection with a grown man. No one will understand, everyone will gossip, and someone will probably try to stone me to death. Let the record show, I'm not a creep."

Wendy said, "You said that already. I'll explain it completely. You got me drunk and came to my room and told me not to tell anyone."

He leaned forward and stared intensely at her. "Gildarts would beat me into a paste. Don't fuck with me, Wendy. I'll eat nothing but sour plums for a week."

They'd discovered on their third day back he loved sour plums and the sheer potency of their taste caused Wendy to experience it too. Laxus actually loved him, but if he ate them she launched vociferous complaints and he didn't love that.

Overall, even though the situation was objectively terrible for them, making peace with it improved their outlook. It was what it was, and they couldn't change the fact they'd established a connection they had no power to end. These were their new living conditions, and their new future.

After talking out the terms of their arrangement, they laid down some rules. Most of them were restrictions to keep them from inadvertently causing injury or distraction to the other party.

Laxus could honestly live with not being able to get horny because of the enchantment a lot easier than he could live with not drinking, but it was theoretically impossible for him to get a good buzz without also trashing Wendy. Wendy obviously had no interest in this and was upset he'd even done it once without realizing it would happen.

Wendy took careful notes, and he got the distinct impression it was mainly so she could bring it back to his remembrance in the future.

"Is that everything?" she asked.

"I think so."

She said, "Am I going to feel bad tomorrow?"

"Definitely."

She sighed. "Never again, please. How can I have a hangover before my first drink?"

"Magic?"

Laxus dug into his pocket. "If we're going to go the 'terrible and frightening secret powers' route, we might as well go all the way." He held out the ice dragon lacrima. "Candy?"

"I know you've said you're not a creep a lot of times recently, but coming to my room and offering me candy is…"

"Good point. I'm obviously still not a creep."

"You just break into girls rooms, offer them candy, get them drunk, and offer mutual exchange of fluids. But you're not a creep, just a non-creep who does a lot of creepy things."

Wendy would never, ever talk like this to anyone else. It was bizarre to hear her give him attitude, but he knew it was some combination of the fact she was drunk and she was also just really annoyed. Feelings-sharing with someone who was vastly different was mainly an intimately irritating experience. At the same time, she needed that confidence.

Above all, she wanted to be strong. He could see it in her, feel it the way she did.

Was it wrong to take it?

After performing a forbidden ritual to escape death, she'd spent a lot of time during her grieving period wondering what right and wrong really were. Doing something wrong to live seemed right; the alternative of not doing the wrong thing and dying didn't seem noble or okay.

"Maybe someone else would benefit from it more."

Laxus argued, "We paid dearly for this. Strength to strength. If we gave this power to someone who less powerful, it would cheapen it."

"You could take it."

"It wouldn't mesh well with my lightning. It would get along better with your magic."

Wendy held out her hand and the lacrima rolled into her palm. "Is it wrong to take power that will help me protect my friends?"

"Of course not."

"Still, these seems reckless."

Laxus said, "You lose all the bets you don't make."

Wendy replied, "Is that how betting works?"

"No, of course not."

"I'm going to do this. For Charle. I think if she was here, she'd be telling me not to do this, and that my magic is enough, but I can't bear the idea that she died because I wasn't strong enough. Never again."

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