Chapter 5: A Sea of Stars

Bickslow had always been able to see souls to some extent. They glowed and glittered beneath people's skin like stars. It had taken years to realize that not everyone could see souls, or even that it was souls that he was seeing. He couldn't see much at first – just a gentle glow that meant a person was alive. More details had come as he got older.

He wasn't sure if he'd inherited the ability or not. Only the vaguest of memories of his parents remained. They'd died in a high wire accident when he was very young. All he really remembered was that they both glowed brightest when they were together.

The circus took care of their own. Bickslow certainly wasn't their first orphan. It wasn't an easy life, in fact it could be downright brutal at times, but the circus was a close-knit, if rather odd, family. Bickslow had always had fast reflexes and been tall for his age. By the time he was seven, he was part of the trapeze act and could fill in for the knife thrower when she was sick. He spent two years flying through the air above amazed crowds. Then everything had gone wrong.

There was an accident with the lion cages, and Nyal, the sword swallower's son, froze. His feet stuck to the ground, unable to flee the danger – get to safer ground. Then Bickslow caught his eye, the world tinted green, and Bickslow had made him move. Like a puppet. It was almost terrifyingly easy. There had been a lot of screaming and panicking after that. Especially since a navy blue stick man had appeared in the middle of his face like a brand, and nobody knew why. No one else in the circus had any magic. They'd put down all his talk of souls to a child's vivid imagination and that all circus folk were a little odd. They had no idea what to do.

Then men in official looking robes had arrived. They said that they were from the Bureau of Magical Development. They said that they specialized in helping children like Bickslow. They said that they could fix him. Bickslow hadn't understood why he needed to be fixed – he wasn't broken. He'd been sent away with the official looking men anyway.

As it turned out, they had said they would fix him, because they intended to break him first. Only, all they ever did was break him – they never got around to the fixing part. There were needles and scalpels and wires and the horrifying, disfigured face of a sun. His arms became a mutilated mass of scars. At some point his mind cracked but didn't quite shatter. When they had started, his figure eyes only ever activated when he wanted them to. By the time they were done, he could still activate them when he needed, but when he was tired or not concentrating or sometimes for no reason at all, the world would tint green against his will.

Sometimes he heard the voices of other children. He only ever caught a glimpse of another child once. She was on the small side with chin length black hair, and her cracking soul was tinged blue with ice magic. He didn't have time to get a better look before she was yanked around a corner, but he remembered her wide, scared eyes.

Children died. Bickslow knew because he saw their souls pass through the walls as they left. They didn't all leave. Five in particular took to following Bickslow when he was dragged out of his room and to floating above his bed when he slept. They had been dead long enough that they'd lost all semblance of human shape and merely looked like floating orbs. Bickslow talked to them when he was alone in his room, because the silence was, quite literally, driving him mad – the circus had been many things, but it had never been silent. Bickslow's mind was starting to go by that point, and he decided that the letter P was an excellent letter for naming souls with. They seemed to appreciate the way that popped his P's when he spoke. It made them glow a little brighter. Thus they were dubbed Pappa, Peppe, Pippi, Puppu, and Poppo. On the really bad nights, they would huddle over him, and it made him feel warmer. They were kind of like ducklings. Little baby soul ducklings.

It wasn't long after that that the masked people started to dose him with tranquilizers. They assumed he was talking to the walls.

And then it happened. One day the door opened, but it wasn't the usual people in masks. Bickslow stared at them. The only human face he'd seen since he'd arrived had been that little girl's. They had bright, clean souls, not all smudgy and dark like those of the masked people. What were they doing here? They didn't look very happy, but one of them was trying to smile.

"It's alright. You can come out. You're safe now. We're not going to hurt you."

Bickslow crept cautiously out of the room, keeping a wary eye on these strange, new adults. He'd learned his lesson. He wasn't about to trust them so easily. His soul babies followed him.

There were other children in the hallway, all wide-eyed and traumatized, but not as many as might be expected. Bickslow wasn't surprised. There had been a lot of souls leaving lately. He didn't see the girl with ice magic anywhere in the crowd. There were other unmasked adults in official robes. Some of them were comforting the children. Others were carrying stacks of files. Promises were made about help and finding parents and going home. Bickslow wasn't inclined to believe them. The first people had said they would help, too, and the circus wouldn't take him back now. The adults seemed to be giving him a wider birth than the other children.

He could hear them talking softly,

"Is that mark-?"

"Seith magic. With human souls."

"But I thought the Council had banned it."

"Can't stop the ones who are born with it. The mark would be crimson if it was secondary magic."

"What'll we do? He's just a kid."

"That's up to the Council to decide."

Bickslow was young and slightly crazy – not stupid. He knew they were talking about him. It looked like he wasn't safe with these people either, and he wasn't about to let himself be locked up in another prison. These people had kinder souls, but they weren't to be trusted.

All the children were piled into carts and told that it would be a two or three day ride to their destination. That night, once the carts had passed from desert into densely treed forest, Bickslow slipped out of the cart and away into the darkness. No one saw him go.

A note was made in the Magic Council's records to keep an eye out for a boy using natural seith magic – he could be dangerous.

Laxus was fifteen and being able to go on solo jobs was still kind of novel. He liked travelling by himself. Sometimes Freed and Evergreen came with him, but they were still a bit young to be doing jobs more than a day's travel from Magnolia, and Laxus preferred to travel on foot when he could get away with it. Trains had always made him feel rather ill. Besides, you got to see more of the world if you travelled a bit slower.

At the moment, Laxus was walking through the small village of Greenwillow and trying to decide if he was going to catch the train at the next town he got to. Unfortunately, he would probably have to. He'd promised that he would help with the setup for the Fantasia Parade this year. It usually took at least a week to get everything ready, and Mirajane had already sworn to murder him if he didn't make it back on time, and Ultear had said that she would help her. Individually, Laxus didn't think they'd have a hope in hell of taking him, but together? Well, he wasn't going to risk it this time. Those two were vicious and creative. Ugh, train it was.

Where the hell was everybody anyway? This place was practically deserted.

A terrified scream ripped through the air. Laxus's head shot up. That had sounded like it was coming from the center of the village. He started to run.

So that's where all the people had gone.

Laxus shouldered his way through the dense crowd. People were muttering quietly to each other, and the air all but oozed with tension.

"Did you hear what he did?"

"Must be a demon."

"Maybe a Zeref worshipper?"

What the ever loving hell was going on here? He could hear someone crying – it sounded like the same person who had been screaming.

And then Laxus finally broke free of the crowd and gaped in horror.

At the center of the village square was a massive pile of wood and a stake. Tied to the stake was a boy in ragged clothing with shaggy blue hair. He was blindfolded and struggling. His right arm was wrapped in a crudely made splint. A locked wooden box also sat atop the wood pile by his feet. It bumped and jostled occasionally, seemingly of its own accord.

They were burning some poor kid at the stake?! Seriously? Had they completely lost their minds?! But there was a guy with a fire lacrima preparing to light the bonfire.

It took actual effort to hit the ground just in front of fire lacrima guy with the lightning bolt instead of just frying him with it. The man screamed and scrabbled back. Laxus could feel the electricity sparking off the spikes on his headphones.

"What is wrong with you people?!" he bellowed. For once, his voice didn't crack in the middle. Thank you, puberty. He actually sounded fairly impressive.

"Another demon?" one of the on-lookers moaned.

Laxus growled at the idiot. Some people were just incredibly stupid.

"I'm not a demon – I'm a guild wizard from Fairy Tail!" He pulled up his shirt to show the black guild mark on his chest. Murmurs of surprise rippled through the crowd.

"He can get rid of the demon!" someone shouted.

"Please, help us!"

"Get rid of the demon!"

Demon? Laxus glanced at the blindfolded boy. Underfed, needed a bath, rags for clothes. Poor kid was probably an orphan with unusual magic. Definitely not a demon. It was hard to believe backwards places like this still existed in Fiore. He couldn't let them kill the kid. Laxus thought fast and then drew himself up, doing his best to sound authoritative and knowledgeable,

"Everybody knows you can't kill demons with fire," he sneered. "You'd have just made it stronger." This was complete and utter bullshit, but the crowd seemed to be buying it. "Getting rid of a demon requires a powerful exorcism done by at least five S-class wizards." Laxus paused dramatically. Nobody was looking suspicious, yet. It would be easier if he could pull this off without any property damage.

"We'd never be able to afford something like that!" moaned a man, whose clothes implied that he was probably the mayor.

"Well…," Laxus put on a long suffering tone. "I suppose, since I'm already here, it's my civic duty to help you. Can't have demons running around the countryside. I guess I could take it back to the guild with me to be exorcised… free of charge. Just this once, you understand," Laxus grimaced as though the thought gave him pain.

"Oh, would you, please?" the probably mayor begged. "We'd be forever in your debt!"

Laxus let out a long sigh.

"I am on my way back. I might as well."

"Oh, thank you! Thank you!"

Laxus resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Some people were so damn gullible.

"I need everybody to go inside while I bind it and stay there until I've left the village. This could get dangerous."

"Of course! Of course! Anything you say!"

The quickly dispersing mob practically ran for the safety of their houses as Laxus awkwardly climbed up the woodpile. The boy had gone still and aimed a vicious kick in Laxus's direction.

"Hey, watch it!" he yelped. All the villagers were gone now. "Calm down – I'm trying to help you. I'm a wizard, too. Stay still so I can get that blindfold off."

The boy froze. He didn't even twitch as Laxus pulled the cloth away. Oh, no wonder the villagers had freaked out. That was one hell of a magical mark. Odd red eyes stared at Laxus suspiciously. Then they flared an eerie green. Laxus felt his entire body freeze up and begin to move of its own accord. The boy slammed his eyes shut, and the awful sensation stopped.

"Sorry! Sorry! It's a bad day, and they took my helmet!"

"Hey, it's okay. My magic would probably go haywire if some backwater lunatics tried to burn me at the stake, too." He carefully picked apart the knotted ropes around the boy's wrists. His arms were scarred up something awful, but the scars mostly looked old and faded.

"Probably could have gotten away if my arm wasn't broken. Can't shimmy a pole backwards with a broken arm. I tried. Didn't work. You're all zappy around the edges but extra glowy in the middle – I haven't seen that before." The boy paused as his wrists came free and opened his eyes. He experimentally twisted his left hand back and forth and then turned his attention to the twitching box that had been left next to him. Laxus noted that he was careful not to look him in the eye again. "Can you break locks?"

"Sure." Breaking things and acting as a lightning rod were kind of Laxus's specialties at the moment. He hit the padlock on the box with a small bolt of lightning, and it turned into metallic sludge. "You know, you're awfully trusting considering what just nearly happened to you."

"You're extra glowy in the middle," the boy shrugged as if that explained everything. He flipped open the lid of the box. Five crudely craved pieces of wood popped out like corks and hovered in the air. "Babies! You're okay!"

"Okay! Okay!" …chorused the pieces of wood.

Weird. But still not quite as weird as that time Natsu had decided to nap in the middle of the Fantasia bonfire.

The flying pieces of wood crowded around the boy's head as he pulled something else out of the box.

"Aw, man! They were going to burn my helmet?" He was holding an old Fiore military helmet – the kind with the slatted visor that hadn't been part of the uniform in years. This one was badly dented and had started to rust around the edges. Someone had obviously thrown it out. The boy plonked it on his head. "Pretty cool, huh?" The boy grinned, but it looked forced, "So, uh, thanks for the help, but I should probably get going before somebody realizes that you were lying."

"Have you got anywhere to go to?"

"Um," the boy hesitated, his shoulders tensing.

"Because if you don't, you could always come back to Fairy Tail with me."

"Fairy Tail? Is that a branch of the Council?"

Laxus actually burst out laughing.

"God, no! The Magic Council hates us! Fairy Tail is a wizard guild."

"My magic uses souls." Then the boy added quickly, "But only if they let me! The babies like me, or they wouldn't stick around! I wouldn't force them."

"There's a girl in our guild who can turn you into stone with a glance. Nobody'd be bothered. If you're really worried, I can put in a good word for you with the guild master." Laxus stuck out a hand. "I'm Laxus Dreyar, by the way."

The boy stared at the hand for a moment and then patted it.

"Bickslow."

"No last name?"

"Who needs a last name?"

There was the sound of a door opening.

"Hey! He's just letting the demon go!"

"Oh, hell," muttered Laxus.

And then Laxus and Bickslow were pelting down the street out of town, being chased by a mob of angry villagers. Some of them were waving pitchforks. Bickslow and his babies were laughing madly by the time they lost the villagers in the woods.

It took them another five days to make it back to Magnolia – because Bickslow flatly refused to go into any towns –, and it was evening by the time they were standing in front of the guild doors. Bickslow was trying to use Laxus as a shield.

"Are you sure it's going to be alright?" Bickslow asked, peering over Laxus's shoulder.

"Yup." He pushed open the massive double doors.

Bickslow made a soft noise of surprise, and Laxus heard him mumble,

"An entire ocean of starlight."

Yeah, it was definitely going to be alright.

A/N: From here on out, the updates are going to slow down - after all, I need to have some time to write new chapters! And speaking of new chapters, please feel free to ask questions and speculate - I might just end up writing a chapter based on or around something you ask or comment on! Also, there are only four pairings set in stone - the three listed in the story summary plus one other - so I am also open to what other side pairings people might like to see.

Thank you for reading! And also, thank you for your review, Singular Red! It really made my day, but the site seems to have eaten it, so I can't respond to you directly.