I went back and fixed chapter 3, because I only just now realized that I used "Mest" instead of "Doranbolt." It's correct now, thank god. That was mortifying to discover. This is why you shouldn't post fic the same day you write it... or write while sleep deprived.

That being said, this was written and posted same day, while sleep deprived, but I was a little more careful with the names. I promise.

Day 5: Throne

The next time Lucy Heartfilia's name crossed Lahar's desk, was in a report that Lahar himself was penning: in a list of the missing, presumed dead.

It was the most difficult report that Lahar had ever had to write. Every time he tried to put the horror he'd witnessed into words, the memories would flood his mind and his hand would shake too hard to even attempt the endeavor. He knew he needed to get himself checked out, but he felt deep in his soul that he needed to accomplish this, first. If only to give himself a way to reason through the whole ordeal.

How had it gone so wrong? Lahar had only intended to knock Fairy Tail off their throne, not be witness to their demise.

Ships under the command of the Magic Council still combed the waters and the ports, looking for survivors, but that was only because none of the Magic Council members had been there. They hadn't seen the black dragon bearing down on the island. They hadn't seen the gargantuan breath attack, or how the sea swallowed what little remained of the obliterated land. There was no surviving that. There was no coming back from something like that. Looking for them now, almost a week later, was a formality, nothing more.

Doranbolt was inconsolable.

The man that Lahar had always relied on for his efficacy and cool head under pressure, had cracked completely. Lahar couldn't really blame him, though. Fairy Tail and its members had a certain… abrasive charm to them. And although they were rule breakers, Lahar couldn't think of them as evil. And there had been a child, amongst them. A child that Doranbolt was directly responsible for bringing to the island. The spy had believed it relatively safe (and the little dragon slayer was a more than capable mage in her own right), but that was going to weigh heavily on his conscious for a long, long time. Lahar wouldn't be surprised if Doranbolt resigned entirely.

Fairy Tail didn't deserve what had happened to them. To successfully fight off one of the most powerful dark guilds on the continent with only a fraction of their strength, and then to have to face Acnologia immediately afterward? Fate had dealt them a hand of certain death.

Lahar's own culpability in the whole thing sat in his gut like a lead stone. Once again, he'd made the wrong call. He should have tried to do something about getting the Fairy Tail mages off that island, even if they'd had their own ship. There must have been something he could have done to save them, to warn them, instead of just seeing to his own men's safety. There had to have been.

This was twice now that Lucy Heartfilia had faced the terrible consequences of Lahar's ill-fated decisions. And once again, he had nothing to offer but that he'd do better going forward. That he'd make better choices, and improve things for others.

But Lahar knew that he'd be seeing her accusing face in his dreams for a long, long time… if not for the rest of his life.