I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. As my personal Christmas gift to all of you, I have updated every single one of my stories today. I hope this makes up for my hectic schedule of updates. I know it's not actually on the correct date like I wanted but I had such a busy couple of days with relatives that I couldn't wrap everything up and so maybe you can consider this as a late gift. Things are getting busy and I have exams after winter break (sigh). But I hope you enjoy all of my stories and if you're strictly reading only one of them, why not open up your surroundings and check them out if your interested. If not that's totally fine, I'm thrilled I'm already getting so much support but I always love hearing more. I wish you all happiness and jolliness and hope you enjoy the stories. And, as always, please review!

I am not worthy of claiming that I own Fairy Tail or any of the beautiful characters. That honor belongs to Hiro Mashima.

Juvia had been almost as completely distraught as Natsu. She had been the one to give Lily the letter, but she had no idea about what was inside. She had been crying when she threw the door open and rushed over to him; her knuckles turned even whiter as she grabbed the front of his tunic and balled it in her clenched fists.

"Gajeel! Tell Juvia it's not true; it can't be true!" she sobbed. He stared at her helplessly before she buried her head against his chest. He put his hands on both of her shoulders in an attempt to still her; he knew that ever since Juvia had started spying for Metalicana he had begun to treat her like a daughter in some regards, but he hadn't imagined she would be this upset.

Lily stood silently in the corner of the study, his hand rested on top of a sniffling Natsu's head. "I'm going to be trying to get a message to Magnolia for further information. If it is received successfully then we should have a response within two weeks." Gajeel nodded blankly in understanding, his jaw clenched as he grounded his teeth together angrily.

Damn them. Damn every last one of those bastards. He'd kill them. He'd send every last one of them to Hell. He would tear every last one of them apart with his bare hands until there wasn't anything left.

"What about them, those forces they were trying to defeat. They died too, right?" Natsu asked, tugging at Lily's arm to get his attention.

Lily shook his head. "I'm not sure, the letter only held details about your parents and other family. I can highly assume that they definitely suffered some major casualties, though. They would need a thousands of soldiers to have even a prayer of standing a chance against one dragon, and it's not possible to evacuate so many people in the middle of a war."

"So, until we hear back from Magnolia, what the hell are we supposed to do?" Gajeel growled, releasing Juvia now that she had calmed down slightly.

"We keep our heads, simple as that."

"So nothing," Gajeel snarled. "That's your plan!"

He had half a mind to head to Magnolia now instead of waiting for some shitty letter that may or may not even get there successfully. At least if he went he could get some straight answers about what the entire war had even been about.

"We don't have enough information as of right now to do much of anything else. If anyone outside of this room discovers what's happened to all of them it could mean chaos. It would be bad enough if the servants and guards find out but if this leaks out into the rest of the kingdom we could very well have our own war on our hands!"

"But isn't Gajeel next in line for the throne?" Juvia asked, wiping away the traces of a few of her stray tears. "Wouldn't the people be able to accept that there was an accident and now Gajeel has to take his father's place."

Lily sighed before pacing over to the desk and settling into the chair, one of his dark, leathery hands massaged his temple while he leaned over the desk's wooden surface. "It isn't that simple. If it were just Gajeel maybe it would work but we're talking half of the royal family here! They may be able to accept being ruled over by a young boy because they'll assume his older relatives will be there to guide him until he comes of age to resume the entire responsibility but to be ruled by a kingdom of children would easily spark a civil war and several uprisings. Not to mention it would be like an open door for the countries who have yet to make a claim to Kurogane. This may very well be the end of the kingdom if the find out that half of their monarchy has passed!"

"I miss my dad." Natsu whimpered before starting to cry once more. Juvia went over to comfort him by placing her hands near the crown of his head and holding him.

Gajeel hated this.

It was bad enough when Lily was right but it was even worse when he felt so helpless! He was a dragon, damn it! If he just went to Magnolia without a good reason it would be too suspicious, but if he didn't go then he wouldn't have any answers for weeks! When he had attacked Phantom Lord he'd at least had the assault on the village as a reason but Magnolia and Kurogane had hardly communicated before his father and uncle had left for war and were on decent terms. He could say he had business in Magnolia with their monarch but it was always his father's job when it came to handling other countries.

He crossed his arms, turning towards Lily. "So what? We just keep going on like there's nothing out of the ordinary and hope they respond before people can have a chance to think anything is up."

Lily sat up straighter in the chair and nodded. "As far as the servants know, King Metalicana and Lord Igneel have left to deal with a threat to Kurogane just as they have done countless times; nothing changes. And no matter what the situation becomes, it does not leave this room."

The two days that passed since then felt like months. Lily had suspected that they wouldn't hear anything for at least four weeks if all went well. They were all a nervous wreck: Juvia barely left her quarters, Lily's eyes had developed dark circles from lack of sleep, and Natsu's were always red from crying. And Gajeel himself had become so rigid with tension he thought his back would snap if he so much as stood up. His jaw was starting to get sore from grinding his teeth together, and he could feel anger and something else he couldn't describe building up inside and eating away at him.

He thought the next few days would allow him to calm down and try to focus on other things but, if anything, it made them even more hellish because instead of calming down he became more tense with each passing hour. He used to loathe the daily training that Lily and his father put him and Natsu through but now he felt like he desperately needed it. Anything to keep his mind off Magnolia and his family for even an hour. But Lily had told him the way he is now he could probably end up seriously injuring someone if he couldn't relax himself. He could feel it too, the strength that was pumping through his body; his hands continuously bawling themselves into fists. Metalicana once told him one of the most dangerous things was an angry dragon. Dragons were deadly alone but once a dragon had become consumed by rage or despair they became blind to any emotions but bloodlust and could only process the want to kill.

He had had a pretty shitty sleep; tossing and turning in an endless restlessness. He had ended up throwing his black tunic and leaving his chambers to make his way to the wall to wait out the last few hours of the night until the sun rose.

Leaning his weight against the side of the wall, he huffed a breath into the night; watching it roll from his mouth before evaporating within several seconds. Freezing wind blew strands of hair into his eyes, which he ignored while staring off over the walls of the courtyard adjacent from him. A thin scent of paper and ink drifted towards him before becoming lost in the wind; he instantly became aware of crunching snow underneath tiny feet as she shifted her weight.

"You're gonna catch your death out here," he leaned further against the wall. "You should go back inside."

"I could say the same to you."

He sighed, once again watching his breath disappear in front of him. The cold didn't bother him; in fact it was the only thing that was calming him down, but he wouldn't be surprised if the wind whisked such a tiny thing like her away. He listened to the soft sound of her approaching closer until she was just a few feet behind him.

"I-I'm really sorry about your father."

A shiver that was definitely not from the wind traveled down his back; how the hell did she know? Cold panic snuck into him, wrapping its icy fingers around his mind; had she overheard, had Juvia or Natsu let something slip. Whirling around, he grabbed each of her arms and hauled her closer to him, until there was barely any distance between them.

"What. The. Hell. Did. You. Hear?" he growled through his teeth. She whimpered and squirmed, turning her face away from his as she tried to tug her arms away. He could feel her delicate skin bruising under his fingers and he slightly loosened his grip on her.

"Answer me."

She stared up at him, and he was almost taken aback at the fearlessness in her golden eyes. "I-I overheard Lily outside this room, the door was open. I heard him say something about them being gone. I left after that, it wasn't any of my business. And earlier, I heard Natsu crying and talking to someone; it was his father, I guess, and I heard him mention yours too."

He searched her eyes for a moment, trying to decide whether or not she was lying about what she knew. There was nothing but truth in those golden orbs, slightly laced with pain. He released her arms before turning around, his hands clenched into fists and folded over his chest. "He was a pretty shitty father, anyways."

"But you still miss him," she finished for him. He wanted to tell her she was wrong, but really, she wasn't.

He missed all of them.

There. He admitted it.

No matter how pansy-assed it sounded in his mind, he felt sad that they were dead. Maybe that was the unknown feeling that had been eating away at him: sadness that he would never see them again. Heat flooded behind his eyes and the tips of his vision blurred. Damn, he wasn't about to cry; he couldn't remember the last time he had ever cried and he didn't want to start now. For him, crying was like the ultimate weakness. Anyone could lie through their mouth and act strong but through their eyes it was entirely different.

"What would you know about it, anyways?" was his only retort. He wanted to curse at the slight strain in his voice that developed. Taking a deep breath, he swallowed the the thickness in his throat and his vision cleared up.

"I know a lot about it, actually. I lost my parents, too, and my whole village with them," came her surprisingly steady reply. He glanced over his shoulder at her; one of her tiny hands held and rubbed the area on her other arm where he'd grabbed her. He'd almost forgotten about why she was there, even though he'd destroyed an entire legion because of what had happened to her and her home. It felt strange, even though he didn't see her incredibly often it was starting to feel normal knowing she was somewhere wandering around in the castle.

"I suppose you would know, then." He turned away, his back once again to her. He froze at the feeling of small, soft hands slipped under his folded arms and laced themselves together around his midsection.

"It's okay to miss them. Missing them just means that you love them, and there's nothing wrong with that…." she whispered against the back of his tunic.

A quiet snort escaped him. "You've got a lotta optimism for someone so tiny, Shorty." He couldn't get over how much she confused him: he had just gotten in her face and hurt her arms and now here she was, embracing him like she had a few days ago when he'd saved her. Not to mention basically seeing right through the wall he had always built around himself and practically reading his thoughts. There wasn't much of an end on how much this little girl, this tiny, fragile thing, intrigued him.

He felt her smile against him, "I know."

He turned his head to face the sky once more; at the edge of the horizon, barely visible through the line of trees, a golden orb cast violet streaks across the already graying sky. For the first time for what felt like years, he felt his mouth turn up in a small smile.

It was sunrise.