Water exploded from the center of the magic circle so hard that it nearly tore a hole in the ceiling.

Mercury almost wished that it had – he wouldn't have minded being buried in the rubble of Phantom Lord's mysterious mobile guild hall if it meant that José would go down with him, but that was hardly more than a fantasy. A Wizard Saint was stronger than to be taken out by falling rock.

And Mercury was, too.

In mere seconds, the water was up to both of their knees. It hit the top of the room, spraying the two men with salt water so hard that it pushed José into Mercury's chest, and the water mage could hardly do more than let that happen.

He was just so tired.

Water magic was hard. Even if it was as natural to him as breathing, it wasn't as though he could just break the laws of physics with magic. Mass was neither created nor destroyed, even when magic was called into play. It had to already exist in some other form for it to change shape.

Magic was just said conduit.

Magic – ethernano – came from the body of mages to perform their magical feats that even seemed to break the rules of nature, but experienced mages knew very well the cost to use their own magic. Lightning was energy that came from magic. Pictures came to life through magic. Gates could be opened and closed through magic, mass transporting from one area to another. And water was created solely through the transfer of magic to mass.

Mercury's body provided the magic power to create the three tons of water that was quickly filling the room.

He slumped to the wall. There was still energy in that thin body of his, but it was draining faster than he'd expected.

The water mage ignored the sensation of water soaking through his thighs, somehow, shoving José off of him and into the rising tide. Phantom Lord's master was already deciding what to do – should he take out Mercury and cancel the spell, or simply leave the man who already appeared to be on his last legs.

José quickly chose the former option; Mercury would pass out soon anyway.

Still, the man wasn't going to let him just leave. His "distraction" still wasn't done yet, and the moment that the ungodly amount of water rose up to Mercury's stomach, he felt free.

Yeah.

It had always been like this, right?

Water was his blood. The ocean was his life. And this liquid he was creating – wasn't it both?

Mercury laughed even as it rose to his neck, dropping his jacket and ripping down any fabric covering his neck to reveal what was underneath – the very secret that José had been on the verge of revealing.

His neck was still deeply bruised, but that didn't matter. Nothing did anymore.

Mercury was free. HIs gills flared as they took in the water, and he could finally – finally – breathe again.

It had been so long since he'd been able to use them. Of course, Mercury had a mouth, and could just as easily breathe through it; the sensation was just nowhere near as liberating as doing it with the gills on his neck. He took in so much more air with them, lungs flaring to just breathe for a second as his body started to float through the water.

Floating through the water was normal. He'd always done it. It was his home.

But no, wait, that wasn't true – he hadn't touched the water that was his home in over five decades. It made his skin crawl. It was torture on his body. He hated it.

Yet he loved it.

For a moment, Mercury couldn't even remember where he was, too mixed up with the memories of his past to even see the man in front of him who was struggling to slog through the water to get to one of the four blocked exits.

Yes, right, José was his goal. Focus on that – nothing else.

The water was already above Mercury's head, but that, too, didn't matter. He could move as freely as he could on the surface, or perhaps even more so – the water seemed to part as he took a step forward, pushing forward on all the right parts of his body so that he could move almost twice as fast while unconsciously dragging at parts of José's limbs.

It was the first time since engaging José that Mercury felt like he was at a distinct advantage – so he wondered why he hadn't done this before? What had been stopping him?

There had to have been some reason, though it certainly didn't matter at all anymore, not when his prey was mere steps in front of him and dragging itself forward as quickly as possible.

He simply could no longer recall anything but what was in front of him.

José felt that Mercury was quickly upon him, whirling around to glare at the man. His arms were alight with more of his shade magic, and he launched several spheres of it through the water.

As though he could sense what was happening in the water, he felt the spheres. The magic was still putrid. Even being this close to it had Mercury's body tensing once more as it reacted with what was still lingering in his own body, sharp stabs of pain running through any part of himself that he moved.

That was fine. It wasn't as though Mercury would be able to keep himself conscious for much longer, anyway.

It was a good thing that he could sense Erza's approach. By the same way that he could feel José's magic resonating with his own – perhaps because Mercury was completely entrenched in water made of his own magic that it was functioning as some sort of conduit – he could feel the way that she was racing through the hallways he'd already come through. Actually, she was already quite close.

Though, to where, Mercury was entirely unsure. Where was "here?" The room? The water? The guild? While his body had never felt more at peace, surrounded by so much water that it felt entirely at home, his brain screamed that this wasn't supposed to be happening.

Erza Scarlet would have to hurry; he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold onto whatever he had left of his sanity.

José's eyes were alight with anger. Of course, Mercury had likely ruined the man's clothes – much like his own were now both torn to shreds and soaked with salt – and that would be expensive. Next was to ruin his plans of destruction.

Fairy Tail would not be destroyed on Mercury's watch.

At the very least, the sheer volume of water was enough of a distraction that José would not be able to maintain his shades outside the building so easily. Three tons of water was heavy, and the pressure was nothing to sneeze at, either. It would make it harder for José to move as well as forcing the man to focus on his own self more.

Because, again, Mercury was the one with gills here. José could not breathe.

He knew it was entirely possible to substitute the need for things like oxygen with magic power; one could control all sorts of things within their body by sheer force of will. They could force blood to flow, maintain their internal temperature – that kind of thing. Oxygen, too, fell under this rule.

Mercury knew Laxus could do it to some degree, which meant José could definitely do it, but it wouldn't be easy.

The water mage called the water to him; it was swirling in the room so quickly and tightly that a whirlpool-like shape had formed, pressing outwards to the walls and causing them to quickly break down, but Mercury needed the shape of the room to keep the water contained. He couldn't create much more.

The flow halted. For a moment, all was calm. José stared down at him, cheeks puffed up as he chewed on the last breath he'd been able to take before being submerged – Mother, he was finally unable to talk – before attempting to flood the room with his own shade magic.

It would have been the correct thing to do if the water that took up all the space wasn't so dense. Nothing could get through it, nothing could push it away.

Yes, Mercury wondered to himself, why hadn't he done this ealier?

José was unable to do much more than shoot at him from afar, unless Mercury got in close. The upper hand belonged to Mercury.

So, why?

The water mage forced the flow of water to rush towards José, slamming him up against the wall with the force of a river ramming a dam. It cracked beneath the current, heavy with the guildmaster's body.

José released his own blades of magic as a counter. He hadn't done anything like that before – while fighting on dry land, his magic had been blunt, round, good for nothing more than bruising and breaking, but now, they were sharp. They could pierce, and they were fast.

Truthfully, Mercury didn't even bother moving. Most were off target, veering to the left – ah, he could see what the man was going for; he was trying to break through the wall into the hallway – though some did aim straight for their target. Most slammed into him with the force of a feather, cutting through the first layer of skin and nothing more. His stomach took the brunt, some slashing at his arms and upper chest.

A small trail of blood rose up into the water, crimson among blue and black.

He paid it no mind.

Slowly, Mercury approached José, entangled in chains of water within chains of water. His face was an ashy gray – how did he feel, now that it was him unable to breathe? It didn't matter. The hatred in his eyes felt so good.

Mercury's body vibrated and pulsed with the sound of his own heartbeat, the organ beating so hard that he feared it might damage his ribcage. His head pulsed with each pump, throbbed. It was all he could hear – even when Erza Scarlet burst into the room, slamming through one of the rocky barriers he'd so easily made.

The water, he so distantly noticed, was beautiful.

José's magic power exploded once more, finally aware that he might need to start taking the fight in front of him seriously. Spears of black magic rose from the floor, and this time, Mercury did need to dodge – but everything was slow, as though he was moving through cement.

Everything began to hurt as though the weight of the water had suddenly slammed on top of him, compressing him into nothing more than a figment of his own imagination. The water, once calming, became knives on his skin, a spear in his gut that would be pulled and reinserted until his body could heal no more. It was the distant crying of someone – someone close to him that Mercury was so far he couldn't even remember.

He could feel it; this was his limit. He was going to go insane if he stayed in this room any longer.

The water mage felt so violently ill that he could hardly move his body. It did bring him a moment of clarity, though – he fought to keep the remaining water holding José in place as much as possible so that Erza could easily slash at the man, even though it felt like he was trying to hold the weight of the sky in place with just his hands. Water began flowing through the doorway that the crimson-haired woman had just recreated, and he knew his magic was gone.

Any of the control he had faltered. Sound returned to the underwater room, still muted by the water but clear enough that he could just barely make out the sound of metal meeting magic over the sound of his blood pounding.

Erza now took up the fight against José. She was dressed in her Sea Empress armor, so she still at least held a little bit of the advantage – one that was fading as quickly as the water poured out of the room and down the stairs she'd just come from.

Mercury had made it. Just barely. Erza was here, and she didn't look too damaged, certainly less than he felt, despite the feeling of his regeneration being kicked into overdrive by his body's confusion.

Yeah, he knew why he hadn't gone into battle straight away with flooding the room: Mercury felt worse than shit.

The water hadn't even finished draining before he had fully passed out on the floor like some kind of dead fish. Hopefully, Erza wouldn't let him get annihilated; José was certainly going to be pissed that his clothes had been ruined by salt water, let alone that the man laying on the ground had managed to hold him off long enough for the remaining Fairy Tail mages to take out his forbidden spell set on destroying the town and his dragon slayer and take his hostage back.

Mercury was too spent to care about any of that. In fact, he wasn't even sure he was breathing as his vision faded into a hazy, uncomfortable gray and all sounds faded entirely.

Mercury awoke to a pulsating sensation in his chest, but it was unlike anything he'd experienced before.

He'd had near death experiences before – way too often, in fact, and usually as a result of one of Laxus's famously stupid plans. They usually left him fairly weak for a bit, though he'd regain his strength within the day. Nothing permanent, obviously. His chest would hurt, except it wasn't exactly his chest – it was something inside his chest. Not his heart, not his lungs. Something else, something that was so unknown that he felt it was out of place.

Here, though, it was different.

Something was pressing into his chest.

With a jolt, Mercury shot upwards, forcing out a cough of whatever was stuck in his throat – salt water. Of course.

"Fuck, Elfman, I'm awake," he said around thick, wet gags. The words came out wrong; his tongue felt swollen, but the man seemed to understand what was said, and leaned back.

The sight that had greeted him when Mercury forcefully opened his eyes was Elfman, the big, white-haired man leaning over him and pressing his entire weight into Mercury's chest. He'd slammed down once, and that was when Mercury had woken up.

Mother, his ribs were definitely broken. At the very least, they were cracked.

Whatever the man had been trying to do – CPR, probably, based on how there still felt like there was water sloshing around in Mercury's lungs when he sat up – halted. Elfman merely rubbed a hand on Mercury's back as he hacked up whatever was left behind.

Where the hell was he?

It was a hallway. Not a particularly familiar one, but the shoddiness of it made Mercury think that they were likely still in Phantom Lord's guild hall. The torches had been knocked out of their holders. One was laying a few inches from Mercury's right hand, and it wasn't even warm in the slightest – it hadn't been lit for a while.

Which was fortunate, because if it had, the whole building would have been engulfed in flames.

Staring down at Mercury was Elfman, and, peeking from behind the man's large shoulder, was an even more surprising person – Mira.

How had she gotten here? In fact, where the hell was "here?" The last thing Mercury remembered was fighting José in that church-like room, where he'd gotten smacked around and eventually flooded it –

Oh, right.

Mercury's illness at remembering the sensation of the water returned, and Elfman must have noticed that he looked a little green under the gills – ha, literally – because he took a step back. Just in time, too, because the water mage violently vomited a combination of water and bile right onto the carpet.

"Oh, goodness! Merc, are you alright?"

His mouth burned too much to answer. It was a good thing he had no sense of taste. Just the sensation of his own stomach acid on his tongue was enough for him to be ready to throw up again, though he forced himself to swallow it down.

And the movement aggravated the rib that Elfman had broken in his attempts to resuscitate him.

More than that, however, was something else that burned – it felt worse than even when José was torturing him by flooding his system with his vulgar magic, worse than the way his head throbbed like he'd gone insane under the water pressure.

Quite literally, it might have been the worst feeling he'd ever felt in his life.

Mercury flipped from his back to his stomach, bracing himself on the ground. Everything felt like it was spinning. His fingers dug into the carpet for any semblance of stability.

Distantly, Elfman was defending himself for breaking Mercury's rib; he thought that was the issue. Mira was quietly asking him if he was alright, and even that sound felt like it was miles away, echoing in the dark tunnel that was his mind.

He was not alright.

His head was pounding – that was Magic Deficiency, probably. It certainly felt like he was empty enough that he could barely move a muscle, and he felt sore in places he hadn't thought possible.

On the other hand, that something in his chest that should not have been there but wasn't his heart seared.

Blood roared in his ears, singing to him a song that only he could hear, that only he could understand – come home, come home, come home. It sang to him in the voice of the ocean, his blood becoming waves that swirled around in his head and whispered that phrase until he thought he might have gone mad.

Mercury wasn't going back. He'd rather die – and so he gripped at his chest, where the sensation was strongest, and dug into it with his nails as though to pull whatever it was out. If that was his heart, he'd remove it. If it was something else, he planned to claw it out of himself; if it was meant to be there, surely it wouldn't be hurting so damn much –

Mira pushed him back over on his back.

"Elfman, help me!"

"Got it!"

Suddenly, there were two sets of hands holding him down, pulling his arm away from himself. The sensation of skin on skin was disgusting, made him want to throw up again, but it successfully pulled his attention away from the throbbing over his lungs to something else.

Mercury's breaths came in short gasps. None felt deep enough to actually reach his lungs, and once again, he felt like he was choking on dry air.

He was sick of it.

It took a couple of moments for him to realize that he was merely trying to breathe through two different methods at the same time, and that was why it wasn't working. The unconscious part of his brain had mingled with the conscious one – both his gills and mouth were huffing, but only one would work at a time.

Consciously, he forced the slits on his neck to stop, and laid for a moment with his mouth open.

When it finally felt like Mercury could breathe, he said, "G-give me a sec, okay? I'm okay? Just give me a second."

Oh, how his voice waved and threatened to break. Everything just hurt so much that he would cry if he wasn't careful, and that was the absolute last thing he wanted to do – especially in front of Mira and Elfman.

Only the younger brother removed his hands after Mercury spoke. Mira kept hers firmly planted on his wrists, even though he could easily overpower her if he could just get his strength flowing back into his limbs.

Hers alone didn't feel too bad.

Slowly but surely, sensation began to creep back into his fingers, and the aching sensation in his chest slowed until it was a dull throb again.

Mercury would be fine. Eventually.

Sensing that he had calmed, Mira asked if was okay one last time, and it was only slightly a lie when he nodded.

The two siblings stared down at him curiously.

Of course they would. Mercury would be too, if it was someone else laying on the floor looking up as though the world itself had changed colors.

Instead of addressing what had happened — yeah, he wouldn't be doing that for a while — Mercury slowly let himself sit up with some assistance from the wall and asked, "What happened?"

Elfman was the one to answer. Mira was too busy staring.

"Master Makarov is fighting with José right now. He told us to get you out of the way. Erza went to make sure Natsu didn't get his ass kicked."

Well… that certainly was a lot of loose ends tied up.

Makarov was apparently fine, which was a relief, and Erza hadn't been killed by José. The man had said that he wasn't going to do as much, anyway, and would have rather "played" with the red-haired woman.

"Elf, don't just ignore him," Mira said to her younger brother when Mercury didn't say anything.

"What? I just answered his question," Elfman defended.

Mira sighed as though irritated with her brother. Why was she here, anyway? She should have been down below with the remainder of the guild who were now, hopefully, entirely out of harm's way and waiting for the Phantom Lord guild hall to be destroyed.

"You're going to call that fine, Elf?"

This time, Mercury broke in – "I am fine, Mira."

"Merc," she said, "you weren't breathing for almost ten minutes."

He paused.

It didn't really matter whether or not he was breathing, because he had woken up, and he was fine. He could tell, though, that his logic wasn't going to be enough to soothe the woman. If anything, explaining himself like that would get her more worried. If he had opened his mouth to say such a thing, Mira would have said that he simply didn't value his own life – and sometimes he didn't, but this wasn't one of those times.

"I don't want to have this conversation right now. Can we get out of here already?" He said instead.

The white-haired woman was having none of it.

"When are we going to have this conversation then? I know you a lot better than you think, Merc. You're just going to run off as soon as my back is turned."

Well, she had him there.

"It's not a big deal. Actually, it's pretty normal," he explained.

Mira looked about ready to throttle him. She probably would have, too, if he wasn't still struggling to get his limbs about him to stand up without Elfman's shoulder to lean on.

"You call that 'not a big deal?'" She asked incredulously. Mira gestured to the floor where a pile of vomit was still staining the carpet.

The vomit itself was normal. Normal-ish. At least, he had done it before somewhat in her presence – actually, that had been less than a day ago, right? Mercury's sense of time was so incredibly messed up.

It was what had come after that that was the "abnormal" part.

He couldn't give a good explanation because there wasn't a good one. Not without explaining a lot, and they certainly didn't have enough time to go through the entirety of childhood and upbringing – the whole building was actively shaking, and Mercury wasn't sure how much longer it would last.

"Do you know how worried I was – we all were when Erza said you'd gone to face José on your own?" Mira asked when Mercury didn't immediately answer. "We all heard some of what was going on. I just want to make sure you're alright."

Shit. Of course it was Mira's earnestness that made him want to go out and spill the whole truth.

"Mira…." Elfman mumbled to himself as he allowed Mercury to put his hand on the man's shoulder for extra stability. The room had stopped spinning, but he wouldn't put it past himself to completely collapse while he was trying to look less like a weak baby.

The pair took a couple of steps. It was slow.

"Okay," Mercury said finally. "I'll tell you that the cause of that wasn't José."

A few more steps passed. As Mercury found strength in his legs, each step got longer, the stride stiffer.

The three of them were in a completely different hallway than he'd seen before, so it wasn't one of the few he'd raced through. It casually sloped downwards. They were getting closer to the surface once more.

"It's an old wound. Kind of. Never healed, probably never will."

And that was as close to the truth as he could get without having to explain everything. But, despite his original inhibitions, Mercury found some tiny corner of himself wanting to explain, wanting to tell someone who and what he was.

Because the guild knew him, but very few, if any, knew about him.

So, Mercury lifted up what remained of his shirt. Thick scratches had been torn through it, courtesy of José, and it was barely strung together anymore, held by nothing more than threads. It was surprising that the lower parts remained intact at all.

Though he had been outright with the fact that he wasn't human, it wasn't as though he went around flaunting the features that outed him as such. The gills, for one, remained tucked away underneath his turtleneck most of the time, though the fabric remained lower than usual for once so they wouldn't catch on the still-sopping neckline of his top.

Beneath them, closer to his collarbone, were rough gray patches that clumped together. Through the torn sections of his shirt, the two siblings could probably see even more fairly clearly. Even though the hallway was dim enough that neither could see properly – Mercury was the only one that could see well – the way that they shone as the light of the very few lights that remained working was obvious. Each patch was metallic – not discolored skin, but scales.

Those were one thing that Mercury usually kept hidden. He hated seeing them. Even a glimpse of them in the mirror sometimes put him in a rather foul mood, because if he had his way, they'd be gone entirely. It wasn't enough to merely pluck them out as he so often did – Mercury's body used to be covered in them, stretching from his wrists and ankles to his chest, but they grew back too quickly. By the time the next morning came, even more would be filling in. Parts of his body didn't like being exposed to water because he would automatically start growing in things like scales again as a result.

Tomorrow, for reasons completely unrelated to the guild, was going to suck.

But the most obvious part of himself that was "wrong" remained hidden even deeper.

Mercury's skin was pale. It always had been, and probably always would be unless he took an impromptu trip to Bosco's deserts. Living in the ocean, so deep that light couldn't reach, was the most likely cause of this, but the whiteness just made the jarring black mark that lay just over the right side of his chest pop out so much more clearly.

It was seemingly marred by something as black as ink. The skin there looked… dead. Rotting. Disgusting. Rather than something alive, it looked like something that belonged to a corpse, and the way the edges were so defined against the bright white skin gave it the appearance of having been grafted onto his skin. The areas surrounding it looked more red, the veins heavily protruding as though it was spreading.

Streaks of bright red surrounded it, no doubt from Mercury's attempt to claw it off earlier.

Even now, it still throbbed – festered. It was a wound that would never heal, or so he had imagined. Maybe if he returned home, revitalized by the ocean, it would simply fade as though it had never been there in the first place, but he would never be returning. Not even if he was on his deathbed and people begged him.

Fortunately, the wound – if it could even be called that – was limited to the space just above Mercury's heart. It hadn't spread since he'd gotten it.

… No matter what, he promised himself he wouldn't get into that story with Mira and Elfman. Maybe some other time. Just… not now.

"Just got a little aggravated when it got wet. Sorry for worrying you guys. It really is nothing."

It was clear that Mira didn't fully believe him, but that was as much context as either of them were going to get at the moment. Mercury was much too tired to get into it. Honestly, he felt like he might just up and pass out before they even got back to the guild hall – he might not even make it all the way to his own house before collapsing.

"You…"

"Sis, I think that's enough. He's barely even standing, and it's been a long day," Elfman cut his sister off.

Maybe he just felt bad for breaking Mercury's ribs. Or maybe he was just seeing their own family's situation in all of this. Regardless, the water mage was appreciative of it, especially when Mira sighed deeply in return.

"We're going to have this conversation later, even if it means I have to tie you up," she said. If Mercury was facing her, he'd have seen that she'd even cracked a small smile.

His face, however, was not smiling.

The story was a long one. It was painful to recount. Even he would rather have left it behind when he had left the ocean, and yet it was still coming back to haunt him; Mercury had no idea that this would have been the reaction he had to something as small as water. The cause wasn't even an open wound. The worst damage he had received from Phantom's guildmaster were a couple of cracked bones, and those weren't as bad as the ones he'd gotten from Elfman mere minutes ago.

All of it was much too complicated. He didn't want to think about it at all, because whatever conclusion he came to, Mercury knew it wouldn't be a good one.