A/N: Finally... got a new chapter out... i haven't had a lot of time to write lately, with applying for scholarships and anxiously awaiting universities to let me know if i was accepted or not- i was accepted into a university i want to attend and am on a full scholarship for my first year, however! i love happy endings
Laxus' fingers brushed against her back, delicate and light. "How's it feel?"
"Doesn't hurt so bad," Ever responded.
Light filtered in through the curtains, dotting the floor with delicate patterns. A pan of searing rabbit simmered in the kitchen area and the scent of cooking herbs wafted throughout the room. A knitting project sat unfinished in the corner, abandoned by its owner upon the arrival of her guest.
"I'm going to press harder," he warned her, and he dug the tips of his fingers against her shoulder blade.
The wound there burned and stung and she hissed, rolling her shoulder away from him. It was stiff and unforgiving, and she wished she was back at the castle where all manner of clerics could heal her with magic. Herbs and flowers worked well to prevent infection and close wounds, but they did little to ease pain and shock, especially when she had to apply them herself on an unreachable part of her body.
"It's not opening," he asserted and sat back on the bed. "How'd you get this again?"
A chill had settled over her bare back, but she chased it away with a shawl. She listened to the popping of oil on the stove and stayed silent. She couldn't tell Laxus about Elfman. He would be concerned. Worried that the oaf would blab and the kingdom would find her. She couldn't cause him any unnecessary worry, and, besides, she wanted to keep Elfman out of the entire situation.
He was cute, after all.
"A band of thieves," she said slowly. She'd tell the truth- just not the entirety of it. "I found them lurking around the forest while I was gathering. They tried to mug me, but-"
"Dead?"
"I may have gotten carried away."
He sighed and stood up, pacing around the small house. His fineries, the symbols of a High Knight and prince, had all been abandoned back at the castle. He'd snuck out to see her in plain clothing- slacks, muddy boots, and a collared shirt with a brown hunting coat tossed over his shoulders. Anyone could have mistaken him for the average townsman and worker. The only nice things on him were a pair of leather hunting gloves, which he discarded and left on the table.
The pan began to hiss threateningly. Ever stood and brushed past the prince, grabbing a wooden spoon and tossing the meat inside the pan briskly. It smelled tempting and her mouth watered at the prospect of eating it.
"Ivan still isn't awake."
She froze mid-stir and focused on a particular strand of herb in the pan- long, thin, wilting.
"He used some pretty deep-reaching sleep magic on himself. But the clerics are working relentlessly on him, so he should be awake soon."
The meat had a dark brown crust on every side. She slid it onto two plates, scraping the herbs off the bottom. Laxus whisked it away the second she set a fork down next to his serving and began to devour it with the appetite of a beast.
Evergreen looked at him from the corner of her eye and gripped a bowl of greens tight in her hands. "What's going to happen when he wakes up?"
He chewed slower, pulling an empty herb stalk off his plate and tossing it. "He'll testify against you. That you murdered the priest will become fact, not just common speculation."
She slammed the bowl down on the counter. A glass jumped and rolled off the counter, shattering against the ground next to Laxus' feet. "But I didn't! I gave up that life to be with you! I don't kill good people anymore!"
He stopped eating and they remained silent for a long while. Evergreen counted the bits of glass shards on the ground while she thought of what to say, a course of action, anything that could help her. But nothing would. She knew that, very deep down. She was a street rat, a scamp that Laxus had picked up off the side of the road, and one with a very dotted past. Her word and honor over that of a crown prince was a laughable concept.
"Freed misses you." Laxus reached over and fingered the fine cloth of one of the curtains between his forefinger and his thumb. "Bickslow misses having someone to mess with that gives the kind of reaction that you do."
Ever crouched down and began to pick up the glass shards. They were cold and rough- the glass hadn't been crafted by a master and its surface was coarse. "What about-"
"Your damn griffon is fine," he interrupted. "Don't know why you care about the nasty thing."
"Don't call her nasty!" she defended. "She's soft and cute, and she's saved my life countless times."
He continued to tug at the curtains. "If only she was there to eat Ivan, I'd be happy with the damn beast."
Her fingers kept picking at the tiniest shards of glass on the floor. Her meal was probably getting cold, but her stomach was churning and the scent wasn't so appealing anymore. Laxus set down his plate and wandered the room, and he meandered over to the corner, where the trash and dirty laundry sat. She didn't think anything of it, until-
"Evergreen, what's with all these bandages?"
Her heart jumped and she grabbed a piece of glass too hard. Her soft flesh burned and bled, but she stood up and rushed over. A long strand of bandages, the ones she had taken off Elfman just two days ago, hung from his hand as he observed them. She snatched at them, but he held them out of reach and scrutinized them closer.
"These aren't yours," he confirmed. "They're for an arm wound."
"I- I hurt my arm the other day," she bluffed.
He looked at her skeptically. "Really."
"Yes!" she insisted.
"So much that you needed this many? And I didn't see any wounds on your arm when I was checking you."
"They healed."
"Oh?"
"Yes."
"Last time I was here was just over a week ago. You tellin' me that you scratched up your arm bad enough to need this many bandages, tended to it, and healed it perfectly in just that amount of time?"
Her cheeks burned. It was a terrible lie. A really awful one, and he was going to figure it out soon enough. That she had brought someone into her sanctuary, the place she was supposed to be isolated. She had betrayed his trust to the extreme and he was going to be so disappointed in her.
He let them slip from his fingers back onto the ground, she squeezed her eyes shut and prepared for a verbal beating ("How could you do that? Why? We're trying to keep you safe!"), and he uttered a soft "Huh" from the corner of his mouth, and she listened as he walked past her back towards the kitchen. She kept her eyes screwed up for just another second while her heart pounded against her ribs before blinking them open, shocked that she had not been scolded in the end.
"Brought you something to keep you busy," he said and she turned towards him, bewildered still. Out of the bag he'd brought with him came a long strip of elegant and wispy gray fabric and a set of embroidery floss. "That window in the back still needs a curtain, so I brought you more fabric."
Hesitantly, like a dog approaching a stranger with food, she walked towards him. She reached out her fingers and touched the fabric- it was soft. Very high quality. Laxus had scarcely ever spoiled her with such lavish presents before, save for a trinket or two on her birthdays, but Ever supposed that that was what happened when you were framed for murder by his insane father.
Maybe being persecuted had its benefits.
Mirajane twittered over him, her face scrunched in concern while she brushed at his shoulder and picked at every little speck of dirt that so much landed on his clothes. "Elfman, is your hand okay? Is it still bothering you? You seem very out of it."
Lisanna stopped reading a paper and looked at them. The cat in her lap stretched and pressed its claws out against her lap, but she didn't seem to care that much. "He's probably fine, big sister."
Her fingers continued to travel over his hand, searching for any sign of blood or further injury, and Elfman fought against annoyance. She had burst into horrible tears when he'd walked back into the estate, Lisanna had cried and clung to him, and he felt so bad that he was willing to let them pester and hover over him for as long as they wanted. For Lisanna, it had been just a couple of days until she felt reassured, but it had now been a week and Mirajane was still concerned whenever a speck of dust landed on him.
"I'm fine," he insisted. "Don't you have something better to do, sis?"
She looked offended and put her hands to her mouth in an exaggerated gesture meant to guilt him, her wide sleeves frolicking through the air as she did so. "Better than take care of my little brother? Of course not!"
Lisanna's cat fled when she turned over in the hammock, taking refuge on Elfman's lap and glaring back at her. It ached a little when it pawed around and curled up on his healing thigh, but he wasn't about to indicate any sort of discomfort. He'd be confined to the infirmary with Porlyusica for another day and she would yell and prod at him like she'd been doing since he was a kid.
Mirajane did eventually leave him alone and leaned against an arch, playing with a flower growing there before leaving to go inside, and Lisanna sighed as she continued reading the paper, which was probably official and not fun at all. The shade of the manor leaned over them, keeping them from the hot sun, and Elfman did his best not to move from his sitting spot for the sake of the cat that had taken refuge on his leg. He leaned forward and focused on getting a particular scrape polished out of his ax.
"She's right, though," Lisanna spoke suddenly.
"Right about what?" Elfman asked.
"You do seem out of it."
"I'm perfectly in it. I'm as manly as can be."
She swung her legs through the air as she observed him, a fingertip on her lips as she thought. "Are you? I don't think so."
"You're thinking wrong."
"Nope. I'm right. You've been focused on something else."
Elfman swiped the polishing stone over the surface of the ax. The cat seemed bothered by the sound, but it only swiveled its ears back and readjusted itself.
"Are you thinking about someone?"
He dug too hard into the metal and a horrible scraping sound echoed through the courtyard. Thoroughly alarmed, the cat hissed, puffed out, and fled into the manor where Mirajane had vanished to.
"What happened to you in the forest?" Lisanna wondered. "Maybe a forest spirit was the one who found you and healed you! Maybe you can't stop thinking about how cute that forest spirit was."
The image of messy brown hair crossed his mind, but he waved it away and glowered at his younger sister. "No."
She puffed out her cheeks and put her cheeks in her palms, staring out into the trees as she thought. "Maybe it is our imagination, then. Maybe you really are fine."
"Fine as can be," he confirmed.
No, Elfman was not distracted at all.
"What are you doing here?"
Ever leaned over the fence of her house. A batch of laundry flowed in the wind behind her and slabs of meat were drying on a rock next to it. Elfman glared at her, feeling rather cheap with coming back, but she looked nice enough with her hair fluttering in the wind and her confused face that he justified to himself that coming back was fine.
"I-" He reached for an excuse to tell her. He could justify it to himself, sure, but to her was another thing. "I was worried."
She reached up a hand to tug a curl out of her face. "Worried?"
"About you," he grumbled.
Ever hummed and traced her hand over the wood of the fence, looking at him with, as usual, an unreadable expression. But Elfman had learned a few things about her expressions in the while they'd been together, and he judged that based on the curve of her lips and the scrunch of her nose, she wasn't angry, but she wasn't all too happy. Was there even some worry of her own lurking in that expression?
"Are you doing fine?" he asked, desperate to fill in the silence between them.
She stood from her spot against the fence and headed over to the laundry, yanking a dress down from its spot in the wind to fold. "I'm the same as I was a week ago."
She looked lovely. Very lovely, in her gray dress and white sweater with her hair free in the wind, and he felt that he could sit there, right outside her fenced yard, for a very long time and simply watch her. But that was creepy. Creepy was unmanly. The strap of the bag he had slid down his shoulder and he became aware of his load.
"A-are you hungry?" he blurted out.
After stripping the laundry line free of its last load, she turned to him again. "Hungry?"
"I-I know there isn't a variety of things to eat out here, so I cooked something and brought it," he rushed. "My sister taught me how to cook. I think I'm pretty good at it. I promise I'm not trying to poison you, so-!'
The squeak of the opening fence stopped him in his tracks. She didn't look at him, but she she held the gate open. His heart lunged upwards and he had to stop a massive grin as he was allowed to walk through.
The small house smelled familiar and comforting, like warm wood. Everything was just as it had been when he left, except there was a new sewing project on the table. Gray fabric scrunched on the table and a roll of embroidery floss teetered dangerously on the edge, threatening to fall. Another smell caught his attention a second later and he sniffed and looked towards the kitchen where Ever was leaning down and staring at the oven.
"I have a cake almost done in here," she said. "If you want to eat it, that is."
"Yes!" he said, much too loudly, and she jumped nearly a foot in the air.
"Keep your voice down, you oaf!" she hissed, clutching the counter with a death-grip. "You almost scared me."
His face turned a deep shade of red, and so he focused on clearing the table of its contents. He was gentle with the fabric, which was soft and smooth and had a name that was just on the tip of his tongue, and set it down on her bed. Ever was pulling the cake out of the oven when he turned around, waving a towel above it in a feeble attempt to get it to cool down faster- something that Levy did frequently when she was cooking.
The pot in his bag clanged together when he picked it up- had the contents spilled at all when he'd been travelling? He'd stumbled over a log once or twice (or three times), and he'd had a run-in with a curious raccoon, so he had to wonder. The sauce would be hard to clean out of his bag if it had spilled, that was for sure. When he checked inside, though, he found the ceramic pot safe, sound, and undisturbed, and he felt smug when he pulled it out and went to put it on the table.
A pair of leather gloves sat right where the silver fabric had been, tossed carelessly. They were worn, a dark brown, and much too big and square for Ever's hands, which as he knew from very personal experience, were long and slender and too soft for material so hard. Elfman set aside the pot, absentmindedly, and picked up the gloves. Maybe it was an invasion of privacy, but courtesy had slipped his mind.
Yes, they definitely belonged to a man, one maybe almost as big as Elfman. They were just a bit too small for him, and his stomach churned with… with what? Confusion? Sadness? Jealously? Another man had been in here, one who was comfortable enough taking off his clothes to relax, and it rubbed Elfman the wrong way, very much so.
"I'll take those, thank you." Ever plucked them from his hands, holding them almost reverently in her own. The comparison of the sizes was almost funny- her skin was barely visible under the lump of cloth which she stroked gently, pulling out any crease, and he couldn't help but wonder just how small her hands would be against his own.
"Thank you for finding these," she said softly. "I'm sure he'll come back looking for them soon."
Elfman gripped a chair and leaned against it, swallowing. "Who is 'he?'"
The herbalist looked at him suspiciously, slipping the gloves into her apron's pocket. "A friend. He visits me often."
He cleared his throat, coughing against his fist, and looked up to the ceiling. "Boyfriend?"
"Friend." She turned to the table and grabbed his pot. "I owe him everything."
No no, that didn't sound romantic to Elfman at all. Except it did. And his blood was boiling, just a little bit. Only a little bit.
"Whaaaaaaat do you two do when he's here?" he drawled. He was trying too hard to be casual. He didn't do subtle, he really didn't, but he had to do his best.
"My personal life is none of your concern," she quipped. "Now, do you want to eat, or not? I can't sit around with you all day, answering your unimportant questions. I have more laundry to do."
He sat down quickly, barely wincing at the creak of the chair underneath his weight. His stomach was still flipping around.
"Boss, why're we heading down here?"
Their sound of their footsteps in the somber hall hung heavy in the air. It was so quiet, even with the scurry of forlorn nurses and doctors, that Laxus could even hear the swish of his cape with every step he took. Bickslow lagged behind him, looking suspiciously left and right at everything he saw, and Freed held his hands clenched behind his back like a perfect soldier, but his sword strapped at his side belied his calm. They were anxious. All of them were. When Ivan woke up, was one of them next? Or was Evergreen his only victim?
"I'm paying Father a visit," Laxus responded lightly. A nurse looked at him pityingly as she passed and he almost vomited. Playing the Worried Son card was starting to do some serious damage on his intestines.
The doctor let them in without any hesitation, the clerics abandoned their positions next to Ivan, and even the guard left them when Laxus asked in his most distressed voice. Freed and Bickslow stood next to the door out of a bodyguard habit, but the corners of Bickslow's lips curled down when he looked at Ivan, and Freed was holding the hilt of his sword so hard that his knuckles were white.
His skin was grayer than usual, giving it a muddy complexion. When Laxus leaned in close, he could see every bit of crust that had formed under his sleeping eyes and every little crow's foot that stretched out to his hairline. His hair was particularly greasy after having not been washed in weeks, and his beard was in no better condition. He vaguely smelled and the prince recoiled, scrunching up his nose in anger and disgust.
"How long is this going to keep up, old man?" he spat. Freed and Bickslow shifted on their feet, but Ivan gave no response. "I'll wring your neck when you finally crack open your slimy little eyes."
No response. Laxus' head was pounding. He slammed his hands against a nightstand next to the bed, gritting his teeth hard. "You targeted her for such obvious reasons, it's almost funny. Sick son of a bitch. You couldn't come to me directly, so you murdered an innocent man and blamed the most likely suspect in this damn castle for it."
Freed cleared his throat and looked at the ground. His knuckles were still white.
"You think this'll break me?" he hissed, leaning close enough to his father that he could barely smell his sour breath. "That I'll back down in the competition for the throne and let you have this country, just like that?"
The thought of Evergreen, her hands bloodied and shaking, almost broke him. Almost broke his heart. But more than anything, it made him feel stronger than ever.
"I won't let you dirty her name like this. I'll prove that you're a good-for-nothing coward with nothin' but foul tricks up his greasy sleeve, and then I'll bring her home and get rid of you for good."
Freed once more cleared his throat and spoke up. "I hear footsteps. I believe the clerics will be returning shortly. Wrap it up. Maybe throw some tears into the mix of it all to make it convincing."
Laxus scowled and gripped the bedsheets, seriously wondering if he could slit Ivan's throat right there, but the pressure of Bickslow's warning gaze changed his mind. Instead, he drew himself back up and fixed the collar of his coat and glared down at his father once more.
"Just remember, 'Dad.' I could love Evergreen in a day more than I could love you in a lifetime."
The trees bowed to the wind in her dream.
The wind was deafening, screaming desperately, and it carried away every sound to make itself heard. Dark gray clouds covered the sky, so dark that they were almost black, and a chill wracked Evergreen's bones so deep that she felt she could never be warm again.
A scream, so inhuman, tore through the wind, and a massive blur dropped from the sky to the ground. When it landed, a statue in the gardens fell over and shattered. The blur spread its wings, flapping them and felling trees, and it regarded her with a tilted head. Her stomach dropped and she threw her arms in front of her, desperate to protect herself. Its eyes were so terribly red, redder than the priest's blood, and she felt so sick.
If she screamed when the creature charged her, the sound of it was lost to the screeching wind, and her vision went even as red as the monster's eyes as it lunged.
She woke with a start in her bed a second later, a cold sweat starting on her cheeks, and she huffed, clutching the bedsheets in her shaking fingers. The wind outside was loud, and it was raining, but it was nowhere near as dark and deafening as it had been in her vision. She was in her cottage, a single candle was lit on the other side of the room, and there was no horrible monster bird coming for her with its blinding scarlet eyes.
Evergreen grumbled and slapped her palms over her eyes, scrubbing at her face and wiping away the sweat. She was accustomed to night terrors, so much so that while they still scared her, they rarely left her inconsolable, but this had been oddly different. It had been real. She had been in the castle courtyard, wearing her armor and holding her lance again, and everything had been so familiar.
It had been real. The bird had been real. The chill it let off. Its blood lust. The pierce of its eyes. The sheen of its black feathers.
Had it been a premonition? Or just a nightmare?
She turned in the bed, trying to get comfortable again. Her eyes landed on the table, where Elfman's pot from earlier sat washed and sparkling after lunch. He'd been stupider than usual, and she'd laughed at him like she didn't have a care in the world. Ivan had disappeared from her mind. The thought of all she'd left back in the capital city, back in the castle, had slipped away until he had left, and it had been refreshing.
She sighed and pressed deeper into the mattress. Her hands gripped the edge of the blanket and she tugged it up to her chin and closed her eyes. The wind outside slowed down and rattled tree branches against her window, and she found it soothing.
The bird and blood had just been a nightmare, she was sure.