Erm. A lot has happened in my life lately, leading to this being posted so much later than I wanted. I got clubbed with the twin boulders of Life and Tax Season. I also struggled a great deal with making this chapter everything I wanted it to be. I plan to get back to posting regularly once my life calms down a bit. In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy this chapter.

There was a corpse in Fairy Tail's basement.

Mystogan shot upright, and immediately regretted it as pain lanced through his skull. Dark spots like fireworks bloomed before his vision, obscuring his sight almost completely. Wincing at the eruption of pain, he held up a hand to his head. Bandages met his exploratory fingers. They were wrapped tight, and where the pain was sharpest, somewhat damp. Bringing his hand back to his face, he dimly saw his fingertips stained red.

Blood. Not surprising, given how he'd fallen down the stairs to the basement. Gods above. The basement. Nausea bit at the back of his throat and his head throbbed and even as it slowly returned his vision spun. It was hard to hold onto his thoughts.

But try as he might, he couldn't recall applying these bandages. So who had…?

Wait.

His face.

Touching his cheek with his clean hand, skin met skin, and his fears were confirmed.

His face was bare.

But compared to the knowledge of what lay beneath the guild, it wasn't as pressing a concern as it would have been just a day prior. …Assuming only a day had passed, that is.

He took stock of his surroundings as his world swam back into a hazy focus. For the second time in as many weeks, Mystogan found himself awakening in a place he did not remember arriving at. But unlike the guild infirmary, this place was a much more familiar one to him. The smell of woodsmoke and drying herbs was thick in the air, and the sound of birdsong outside the window unchanged despite the generations that had passed since he had last been here. The sheets on his body were clean, and smelled of pine needles and the sunlight they'd dried in.

Porlyusica's cabin.

A far cry from the basement horror, the familiarity of his current surroundings eased back the panic swelling in his chest and chased away the cobwebbed memories of what lay below the guild like a fleeting nightmare.

Speaking of the old woman though, he didn't see her as he glanced around her home. The cauldron occupying the center was bubbling, so she probably wasn't too far away. She didn't like leaving it nor patients unattended for very long. …Then again, she had once gone on a three day herb collection trip and left him behind with a broken arm and instructions to keep the cauldron stirred at regular intervals. No matter how many years passed, Mystogan didn't think he'd ever be able to fully grasp just where her compassion began and ended. But she did tend to remain somewhat consistent. At least when it came to not burning her house down via unattended cauldron. So she was, again, probably not too distant.

Mystogan wasn't able to soak in the nostalgic comfort for very long however, before the much heavier reality came crashing down on his head like a brick once more.

There was a corpse in Fairy Tail's basement.

A naked corpse.

Of a very young girl.

There was a dead, naked minor in Fairy Tail's basement .

Any single one of those things would be great cause for concern on their own, but all of them at once?

Mystogan shifted in the bed - Porlyusica's own, he belatedly noted. Not the cot her patients (and he himself while growing up) were usually relegated to. Despite the pain in his skull threatening to end him with every slight movement, he had to get back to the guild and confirm what he'd seen. Although he had no clue what he would do once he had done so. Still… he needed to be sure that it wasn't a dream brought on by a fresh concussion, or some twisted prank one of the guild members or even Makarov had thought up as a fun party game. Mystogan wouldn't put such a thing past Laxus either, as a sort of hazing for taking the guild master position from the temperamental lightning mage.

Peeling back the covers, Mystogan swung his legs over the edge of the bed, placing his bare feet on the cool wooden floor. The bandages wrapped around his limbs were fresh, and smelled strongly of ointment. Porlyusica must have replaced them while he was unconscious. He touched the ones around his torso and midriff. They, too, were fresh. So were the ones wrapped around his arms and legs.

Gods, did his head hurt.

Mystogan held his throbbing head in the welcoming darkness of his hands. He suppressed another wince as a painful twinge shot up his left arm. Great, he'd done something to that as well. A sprain, maybe?

"Stop clenching your jaw," a harsh voice scolded him. "If you shatter your teeth, I'm not putting them back."

Slowly, Mystogan raised his head to find Porlyusica glaring down at him, and he obediently relaxed his jaw. It ached. Over the rush of blood in his ears, he hadn't heard her come in. Yet the twitter of the birds outside was clear and sent fresh needles of pain through them with every sharp trill.

She clicked her tongue at him. "Not even a word of thanks for patching you up yet again? Typical human." Before he could even muster up the wherewithal to formulate a response, she gestured to the open door she'd left. "You have a visitor."

A familiar grizzled face popped up in the doorway. "Hello!"

Mystogan felt something inside of him snap.

"What a terrifying expression," Makarov commented mildly, his grin undiminished. Stepping up and into the cabin, he pointed a wrinkled, knobby finger at Mystogan. "But why are you imitating Gray?"

Following the old man's finger with his gaze, Mystogan looked down… and hurriedly pulled the blanket over his lower half. "Why am I naked?!" he hissed, the pressure and heat in his skull skyrocketing.

Porlyusica snorted in clear derision, and lifted the handle of her stirring stick from the cauldron. Soaked cloth hung from the end of the round, polished piece of wood, dripping for a moment before sliding off the end and back into the liquid with a wet plop. "Your clothes were disgusting and I had to take them off of you to replace your bandages. When was the last time you washed them?" the old woman chided.

When she paused and looked at him expectantly, Mystogan started to mentally calculate. If he had been guild master for only a week, and the last time it had rained was…

"If you have to think about it, then it's been too long!" she snapped at him. "They disintegrated as soon as the soap touched them! I thought to repurpose them for cleaning rags, but…" She dropped the stirrer back into the slurry of clothes and soap. "This is the third wash they've gone through and there's barely anything useful left of them. I should count it lucky that the water is no longer turning to mud the second they hit it."

Mystogan wilted under her judgemental stare, but she was by no means finished with him.

"For that matter, you hadn't taken a bath in just as long, had you?" came her next accusation. "You smelled just as disgusting as these clothes."

Throwing up his hands to halt his old friend, Makarov implored, "Stop, Porly! The poor boy is already as red as Erza's hair!"

The old woman huffed indignantly and clicked her tongue at him. "I won't keep my tongue just because you find scolding the youngsters uncomfortable."

Makarov shook his head at her. "So what if he smells a little ripe!" he continued, ignoring the (somewhat accurate) jab at himself. "Everyone in Fairy Tail smells bad this time of year! You know how it is! Natsu may have complained a little, but who cares what that little pyromaniac thinks about it. He causes enough trouble, he can deal with a little bit of stink from his guild master."

Makarov was not helping! Mystogan had thought for a moment that he was sticking up for him, but the more he heard, the more he realized that Makarov was insulting him too! But unable to defend himself (since he… really couldn't remember the last time he'd washed and he did recall seeing Mirajane make a face once or twice), Mystogan just lowered his head into his hands and tried to hide in them.

"You see?!" Makarov squawked. "Look at the poor boy! He's dying!"

"He may very well die!" the old woman snapped back at him. "This is his second concussion in a week! How do you think I feel, being woken up in the middle of the night to seeing this boy brought to me once again, bleeding from his head and soaked in his own piss and vomit?! What have you been doing over there?!"

A pang of guilt rang in Mystogan's heart. He hadn't wanted Porlyusica to worry. He hadn't wanted any of this.

…That was right. He hadn't wanted any of this.

He raised his gaze to Makarov, who at least had the good sense to finally look contrite. "We need to talk, Makarov ." Gone was the urge to still call the old man Master. Gone was any sense of security he felt in his presence. Mystogan had questions for him that needed answers, and the former guild master was not going to wriggle out of his grasp this time.

The stress on his name did not go unnoticed, and Makarov sighed. "Porlyusica, can you please give us some privacy? Maybe an hour or so, if that's not too much to ask?"

She crinkled her nose in obvious disgust at being asked to vacate her own home, and cast a glance at Mystogan. "I have an herb garden out back to weed. Second that's done, I'm coming back in. Call if you need anything." Then she leaned over Mystogan and pulled the drapes closed, merciful dimness suffusing the cabin and easing some of the pain in Mystogan's head. Porlyusica cast another measured look at him, searching for something in her fellow outsider to Earthland, before turning towards the door. "Don't push it too far," she warned in parting. "He will need rest."

The door closed softly, and her footsteps on the dirt path faded quickly.

Makarov pulled a stool close to the bed. "So, my boy," he began slowly. "Since we don't have much time, I'll get straight to the point."

The old man peered into Mystogan's eyes. "You found Fairy Tail's heart, didn't you?"

Heart?

Heart?!

"What part of that is a heart?! " Mystogan accused, his voice low.

Makarov smiled, but it wasn't the grin to which Mystogan and the rest of the guild were familiar with. This one was full of sorrow, and it made Makarov look... old.

"Her name is Mavis. And she was the first Guild Master of Fairy Tail."