The gavel fell with a resounding clatter, and Makarov watched with unflinching eyes as a gaunt-looking Jose was taken away in magic-restraining cuffs. It was exactly as he had expected. Miyako had made a strong case. She'd been so confident in the Council's decision, she'd left yesterday before the sentence could officially be handed down. He imagined she was sick of seeing Jose's face.

Makarov had felt bound to stay. Part of him still expected the Council would turn around and call for his trial next, but the subpoena never arrived.

"Macky."

With the proceedings finally finished, Yajima had stepped down from the judge's bench and was now standing before him as an old friend. Makarov got to his feet and followed him outside the courtroom. It was beautiful outside, and Yajima led him to a nearby sitting area.

"Phantom Lord has been disbanded and Jose is stripped of his title of Wizard Saint," Makarov said, as though they had not both just been there for the sentencing. "That is exactly as I expected, but for Fairy Tail to not even need a trial…"

"You should be grateful, Macky," Yajima murmured. "Your Miyako is very clever, calling the rune knights and getting the story straight before anyone could accuse Fairy Tail of wrongdoing. She must be well versed in our laws to have pulled this off."

Makarov grunted in agreement. A year and change of being involved in the guild master meetings had not been wasted.

"We're no longer young," Yajima said leadingly. "You haven't forgotten, yes?

"About what?"

"Rob."

Makarov tipped his head back and looked up at the blue sky. "Rob, huh?"

"Me and you and Porlyusica. And Rob too… we were all so young. We overdid it, but every day sure was fun."

"Then Rob quit Fairy Tail," he recalled. "Erza tells me stories every once in a while."

His friend stared out straight ahead. "Lately many people are of the opinion that Fairy Tail has gone too far too often. You might have gotten off on a technicality this time, but Michello and Org have requested that you be disbanded. At this rate, you will be facing serious punishment, Macky. Dead, you're no good to anyone. Like Rob…" he sighed. "Macky, hurry up and retire. For the sake of your health."

The earnest entreaty lodged in the back of his head and stayed there, buzzing until he could no longer ignore it that evening as he sat under stars, the bones of Fairy Tail being reconstructed all around him.

Makarov was aware of his age, but what could he do? Pass the guild to Laxus? Laxus who couldn't be bothered to defend his home when it mattered? Who hurt those he was supposed to protect with his sharp tongue and inaction? And Miyako… as smart as she was, she was just barely getting started learning how to be a teammate. No, he couldn't possibly heap the responsibilities of being guild master on her young shoulders. The road of isolation that would set her down was not what he wanted for her.

"Master!"

He leaned over the edge of the wall and peered down at Mirajane. She was smiling at him brightly, holding a stack of paper in the air.

"It looks like they've gone and done it again!" Mirajana called. "It seems like Miya-chan and her team destroyed half a city while on the job! The Council has requested you submit a written explanation immediately!"

Makarov barely felt his tankard of beer slip through his numb fingers as he processed Mirajane's words. "Retire!?" he shouted at the moon. "No frickin' way!"

-O-

Earlier that day…

"Everyone!" Mirajane's voice rang out in the tented area. She was standing behind the newly constructed bar, beaming away. "You can all take jobs again starting today! It's just a temporary counter, but do all the jobs you can!"

A resounding cheer went through the tent and Lucy idly watched the job board get swallowed up in a swarm of her guildmates. "What's up with them? Usually they're just hanging around not taking jobs." Mirajane giggled behind the bar and Lucy narrowed her eyes, searching the streaming crown for a glimpse of ginger hair. "I haven't seen Loke around," she commented.

"I see you've finally fallen for Loke's magic touch, Lucy," Mirajane teased.

"That's not it!" Lucy said defensively. "I just heard that he found my keys, and I wanted to thank him."

Mirajane smiled. "Sure, I'll tell him if I see him around. By the way, weren't your spirits angry? About you dropping your keys?"

Fighting to keep her voice even, she replied, "Oh, it wasn't anything for them to get mad about…" Lucy felt her bottom heat up from the mere memory of the thrashing Aquairius had given her. She dropped her head onto the table and murmured, "Just remembering makes my butt sting."

"Oh my," Mirajane said.

"I can chill it for you," Gray's voice offered from behind her. She didn't even have to look to know his hand was already frosted and ready.

Lucy's jaw ticked."I don't need innuendo-style sexual harassment."

"Lucy!" Happy sing-songed, "Let me see your bright red butt!"

"I don't need overt sexual harassment either!"

Natsu cackled. "I wonder what she'll look like if I make it sting even more!"

"And you're just the devil!" she cried out.

An annoyed huff caught Lucy's attention and she turned and smiled as Miyako took the seat next to her. "Natsu-kun, cut that out," she said in a deceptively calm tone. Natsu immediately squeaked and his flaming fist sputtered out. Miyako turned to Lucy. "You should consider asking Erza to teach you the basics of requip magic. It might be a safer way of storing your keys, all things considered."

Lucy's mouth popped open, "Wow, I'd never even-"

As she was speaking, Miyako's head cocked to the side like she was listening to something far away, though Lucy could barely pick out a distinct conversation from the blend of all their guildmates excited chatter. Miyako suddenly stood up, cutting Lucy off. Her face was as dark as a storm cloud when she snarled out, "Say that again."

Miyako did not raise her voice, and she did not have to. The raucous noise immediately died down at the spike of irate magic and a nervous energy filled the air as Lucy, and everyone else, tried to figure out who the guildmaster's granddaughter was speaking to in such an uncharacteristically caustic tone.

Across the guildhall someone chuckled darkly, and Lucy's hackles raised. It was Laxus. He turned around, but didn't bother to get to his feet. "I said, we don't need weaklings in this guild." He looked over his shoulder to Jet and Droy, disgust written in every line of his face. "You two are pitiful. Getting humiliated by Phantom like that… wait, I don't even know your names." His dark gaze landed on her next, and Lucy's blood turned to ice in her veins. "And you, there, the main culprit. The debutant Celestial Spirit user… it was your fault."

Miyako slammed her hand down on the bar so hard the wood splintered. "How dare you?" She stalked right up to her brother and jabbed him hard in the chest with her pointer. "You couldn't even be bothered to show up and fight. You have no right, Laxus."

Laxus stood up, towering over his younger sister. "I told you, it had nothing to do with me!" He cackled madly. "Although, if I had been there, you wouldn't have had all the trouble."

"Hold it right there!"

"Natsu!"

Natsu lunged for Laxus, despite Erza's warning, but before his flames could even get close to Laxus, the man's body disappeared in a strike of lightning, reappearing a foot behind the enraged dragon slayer, completely unscathed. "Laxus, fight me!" Natsu shouted.

"What kind of fight would it be when you can't even catch me?" he taunted. "When I inherit the guild, I'll get rid of all the weaklings and anyone who stands against me. I'll make the ultimate guild! The strongest guild in history that no one could look down upon!"

Laxus laughed again before finally vanishing in another burst of lightning.

"Miya-chan…" Mirajane murmured, and Lucy jerked back around.

The young researcher's head had dropped forward so that her hair curtained her face. Her shoulders were trembling and Lucy's heart broke for her.

"Everyone, return to your business!" Erza suddenly snapped.

The crowd, which had been frozen during the confrontation and openly gawking at Miyako as she dealt with the aftermath, hastily turned away. The noise level gradually picked up again, but Lucy still saw most casting glances in their direction. Gray and Natsu immediately came up behind Miyako, standing shoulder to shoulder to shield her from the looks with their bodies.

"He was just being a jerk," Gray murmured. "Brothers are like that. He didn't mean it."

Miyako dropped back down into her seat and pressed her forehead to the counter. "I'm open to forgiveness, I'm open to forgiveness, I'm open to forgiveness," Lucy thought she heard the younger blonde muttering to herself.

She shared a glance with her friends, but they looked as lost as she did. "I have an idea," Erza finally spoke up. "Let's make our team official, and go on a job. All of us together."

A warm feeling spread throughout Lucy's body. It was true they'd been calling each other teammates the past couple of months, but poor timing meant they'd not managed to go on a proper job all together, either Erza or Miyako having been absent on missions of their own. Speaking of Miyako, she'd picked her head up, looking tentatively intrigued at the mention of a team job.

"But, do you really want someone like me?" Lucy couldn't help but ask. Erza and Miyako were S-Class wizards, and Natsu and Gray were both super powerful in their own right. Lucy was just…

"Not someone like you. Someone that is you, Lucy!" Natsu spoke up, grinning in a way that made her heart skip a beat. "Without you, things just wouldn't fit right, you know?"

Lucy beamed, almost overwhelmed with gratitude that she'd run into Natsu and Happy that day in Hargeon.

"It's settled," Erza declared. "We'll take down the magic sect operating in the shadows of the castle town of Lupinus. Let's go!"

-O-

A couple of weeks had passed since their semi-disastrous first job in Lupinus. Team Natsu had been on a few more jobs in that time, each one racking up a hefty stack of paperwork for jīchan and denting their reward with reparations for the destruction they wrought. Natsu and Erza were a cataclysmic combination. Gray knew he wasn't completely innocent himself, but he could at least be trusted to practice restraint when it counted. He thought between himself, Lucy, and Miyako they'd be able to wrangle their other two teammates, but Miyako could hardly be considered sangfroid recently.

"Well, that took less time than I thought," Erza said. Fort Term was smoking in the hills behind her, but at least they weren't fiscally responsible for the bad guy's hideouts.

"I didn't get to go nuts enough!" Natsu complained. He had that crazy look in his eye and Gray expected they'd end up fighting again sooner rather than later with how much excess energy the man-toddler still possessed.

Gray rolled his eyes. "You were plenty nuts back there, buddy."

"No, I agree. They were entirely too incompetent to pose a proper challenge," Miyako said. Her shoulders were almost as tense as Natsu's, and Gray side-eyed her nervously.

Miyako was the type to bottle things up. Gray knew he wouldn't be getting any awards for sharing his feelings, but Miyako was on another level of suppressing her emotions. She'd only been five when he'd joined Fairy Tail, and even back then he couldn't remember her throwing fits the way he knew he used to when he didn't get his way at the same age. She'd been teetering on the edge of an unprecedented breakdown since her encounter with Laxus, and he was sure he didn't want to be on the receiving end of it when she finally tipped over.

"And they call themselves a dark guild. Honestly," she said.

"Exactly!" Natsu shouted. "They were defeated before I was even warmed up!"

"Isn't that Loke over there?" Happy asked, unintentionally diffusing the building tension. The blue cat pointed into the distance.

Gray turned and squinted into the sun. Sure enough, he spotted Loke's signature green coat and copper colored hair glinting in the light. Natsu was already heading down the road. "What a coincidence!" the dragon slayer crowed in delight. "You had a job around here?"

"Yeah, you too?" Gray heard Loke say as he got closer with the girls and Happy at his heels. Loke's gaze drifted over his shoulder and he sucked in a sharp breath. He stumbled back a couple steps and stuttered out in horror, "Lucy?!"

"This is perfect!" Lucy said, smiling brightly. "I wanted to thank you for-"

She couldn't even finish her sentence before Loke booked it down the road. "Sorry I'm in the middle of a job!" he screamed over his shoulder.

Lucy watched him go with tremendous irritation at his reception of her. She angrily ground out, "What is with him?"

"What did you do to him?" Gray couldn't help but wonder.

Natsu nodded aggressively. Even the dragon slayer, with his reprehensible social skills and inability to read a room, couldn't miss the awkward tension between Loke and Lucy. "He is totally avoiding you."

"I didn't do anything!" Lucy shrieked. She took a composing breath. "Hey, since we actually finished a job early for once, why don't we head to a spa and take it easy?"

"Lucy…" Erza said, and her tone was just ambiguous enough that Gray felt his shoulders tense. "That's a great idea!"

As it turned out, Hosenka, one of the more popular spa towns in Magnolia, was on their way back to the guild, and they were able to secure passes for the day and a room for the night. The room was a bit garish, but then again, so was the entire town. So long as the sleeping accommodations were comfortable, Gray honestly couldn't say he cared.

He rolled out his mat, basking in how silent the room was and just knowing it wouldn't last. Natsu and Happy were still terrifying the onsen, and Erza and Lucy hadn't come back yet either. For now, it was just him and Miyako. The younger girl had chosen to forgo bathing, and had instead showered before curling up with one of her journals. Her pen had been stalled on the page for several minutes, though, and Gray judged it permissible to speak.

"Personal research or another book?"

"...personal," she said after a moment. A sigh escaped her lips and she snapped the journal shut, tucking her pen absently behind her ear. "How was the onsen?"

"Fine. Can't say I'm overly fond of hot baths though," he admitted with a shrug.

"No, I wouldn't imagine you would be."

Gray tapped his fingers against the bamboo floor, considering where he wanted to direct their conversation, or if he even wanted to direct it at all. It wasn't often he felt as though he had to look out for Miyako. When she was young that had always been Laxus's job, and now that she was grown, she was usually more than capable of taking care of herself. There'd yet to be a job Miyako couldn't overcome with some combination of smarts and grit.

But this wasn't a job. This was her brother. What was she supposed to do when the person who had spent her entire childhood protecting her was now the cause of her pain?

Gray started, "Miya-"

"Do you believe in fate?" she interrupted.

For a moment he was so caught off guard he could only blink at her. "Fate?" he repeated dumbly.

"Sorry, that was incredibly vague. I mean, do you believe in a predetermined future or do you believe the choices we make can impact who we become and what happens to us? Are there some things that are meant to be, that are always going to happen no matter what we do, or are we the sole orchestrators of our own destiny?"

Gray's mouth opened and then shut several times in succession as his brain struggled to process the direction this conversation had gone in. It was his confusion that probably led him to insensitively stutter out, "I- wait, hang on, does this have to do with Laxus?"

"No," she said. Her brow furrowed. "Maybe. Answer the question, please."

"I-" Gray turned his gaze to the veranda, away from her piercing eyes. "I have to believe that we're always in control of ourselves. Whether or not the things that happen to us are fate or destiny or whatever, we still control how we respond to them."

He dared to look back. Miyako was nodding slowly.

The door slammed open. "It begins!" Natsu barrelled into the room, the inn's robe draped over his shoulders, several pillows tucked beneath his arms, and a manic look in his eyes.

"Upa!" Happy shrieked.

Gray's jaw ticked. "Natsu, some of us are trying to rest."

"Hey, look around you! We're at an inn. Nighttime at hotels means pillow fists!"

"You mean pillow fights?"

Erza and Lucy entered behind him. Erza too, had somehow acquired an arsenal of pillows. "All the pillows of merit in the room are already under my control," she stated.

"Of merit?" Lucy questioned.

Predictably, Natsu took that as a challenge. "I will defeat Erza!"

As the dragon slayer drew back his arm, preparing to chuck a pillow with all his strength, Gray glanced at Miyako. "What are we going to do with these people?" he asked, reluctantly amused. He only caught a glimpse of her wide eyes before the pillow intended for Ezra slammed into her shocked expression and knocked her over.

Natsu squawked when he realized what he'd done. The room was silent as Miyako lay on her back, processing what had just happened.

"Miya-chan?" Natsu called nervously.

Calmly, Miyako sat up."Natsu-kun," she said, and Natsu went rigid. "I'm afraid you've started a fight you cannot hope to finish." Gray yelped as Miyako snatched the pillow he'd been leaning on from under him and launched it at Natsu. "You're next, Erza!"

Natsu was laughing until Miyako's pillow made an impact and sent him flying into the inn's table. For one moment, Gray deigned to concern himself with thoughts of collateral damage, but then Natsu nailed him with a pillow and all rational thought flew out of his head.

-O-

"What were you doing getting so worked up about a pillow fight anyways?!"

"I give everything a hundred percent!"

"And yet you lost!"

"What?! It was you who lost!"

Natsu and Gray's bickering went back and forth, ratcheting up in intensity until both of them turned toward Lucy, sitting mulishly at the bar eating a late lunch, and simultaneously demanded, "Lucy, I'm the one who won, right?!"

In response, Lucy furiously whipped around and snapped, "Shut up," with such ferocity, both boys cringed and immediately apologised.

Miyako sighed in relief as Natsu and Gray sulked off to some other part of the guild. Their fighting had been bothering her more than usual. She looked at Lucy out of the corner of her eye, and raised her brow when the older blonde aggressively speared a cube of melon on her plate. She chewed it with just as much ferocity, never losing the pinched quality of her expression.

"Lucy, you've been in a bad mood," Happy observed.

"Oh?" Lucy said. "I'm totally normal."

Happy's head tilted to the side. "Are you still mad at me for tricking you?"

"No, I'm not that petty," she denied instantly. The angry tilt of her brow softened into something more thoughtful. She sighed. "Sorry, I just have a lot to think about."

"You can always talk to me!" Happy offered.

"No, but thanks anyway."

Lucy had been off since she'd returned from wherever she'd gone during their pillow fight at the spa. She'd been a bit more reserved than usual, and the anger had built slowly over their journey the next day as she turned whatever was bothering her over in her head. By the time they'd made it back to the guild, she'd been seething in a palpably bitter silence. Of course, Miyako was curious as to what had triggered the unusual turn in mood for the older girl, but she was not proficient at talking about feelings–a trait she shared with Laxus. The best she'd been able to offer was some quiet company as Lucy ate.

"Hey, is Loke here?"

Several women approached the bar, and Miyako sighed into her cup of tea. She was prepared to ignore Loke's band of lust-struck sycophants until one of them wailed out, "He tried to break up all of a sudden last night!"

The rest chorused in agreement, and Miyako set down her cup of tea, reluctantly intrigued by this development.

"Lucy! Save me!" Mirajane whined.

Lucy went rigid as the collective ire of each and every one of Loke's many newly ex-girlfriends turned on her. "Don't put me in such a sticky situation, Mirajane!" Lucy cried out as she abandoned her meal and ran away from the bar.

A wise choice. Lack of magic be damned–those girls filed their nails to a fine point with intent to seduce men or gouge the competition's flesh, and Mirajane was fresh out of seducible men behind the bar. The girls lamented for several minutes longer, becoming increasingly teary-eyed as Loke failed to appear before they finally left, presumably to continue their search. It was odd that Loke had cut ties with all of them at once, and a pang of worry hit Miyako. Either Loke had turned over a new leaf or… "Happy," she said. "Where did you and Lucy disappear to last night anyway?"

"We ran into Loke and Lucy invited him out on a date!" Happy said.

"A date?" Miyako repeated, raising her brow.

"They like each other," Happy said conspiratorially, rolling the word around in his mouth for much longer than necessary. He had the same mischievous smile he wore when he was tricking people into thinking Miyako was a ghost, so she took this tidbit of gossip with a grain of salt. "We went to a sushi bar and I ate a lot of fish with Plue. A lot of fish. But then Loke said something and Lucy got so angry she dragged us away before I could finish my dessert!"

"Do you know what Loke said that upset Lucy?"

Happy nodded sagely. "He told her that he didn't have long to live and then started laughing. He was playing a trick, but it wasn't a nice one. Not like the one I played on Lucy! My trick was really funny."

The blue cat began describing the prank he'd pulled on Lucy, and Miyako nodded along absently, though she was already lost in thought.

Loke was not a Fairy Tail member she'd spent a lot of time around. She knew he and Gray would often partner on jobs, though they'd never been an official team. She knew he was a holder-type mage, and had a fairly standard set of rings which he used to great effect. According to Gray, he was also very skilled in melee fighting. She knew he was an incorrigible flirt with a severe allergy to any form of serious romantic relationship. She knew he had an aversion to celestial summoners due to an undisclosed, presumably negative, encounter with one.

The list was short and didn't amount to much in the end, but something about it bothered her because there was one other thing she knew about Loke. A thing that she wasn't sure she was supposed to know.

Loke was sick.

She didn't know how he was sick, just that he was. She'd known for a long time. It was back when she'd first created her mage glasses with Freed's help. Miyako had worn them around the guild all day trying to devise a standard for how to measure magic. What did it look like when caster-type mages output magic versus holder-type? What did it look like when mages recovered magic from the natural ethernano around them? These were the types of questions she'd set out to answer.

It had been obvious from the outset that there was something different about Loke, though she hadn't known what. She still wasn't quite sure. Two years she'd been using her glasses to aid her research and she'd never seen anything like Loke's magic in all that time. It was wholly different from all other magic she'd seen within a wide variety of mages, artefacts, even the ethernano around them, which was, Miyako believed, the root of the problem.

Magic was like a fingerprint. It was incredibly personal–she could learn a lot about a mage by studying their magic, and had eventually come to the conclusion it was best practice to ask permission before doing so because of what she could accidentally discover. Every mage had a unique way of filtering raw ethernano and converting it into viable magic; even two mages who used the same type of magic had unique signatures. No mage could use raw ethernano to cast, but every mage's body was compatible with it. They had to be in order to use it.

Loke wasn't.

Not only did his body seem to reject naturally occurring ethernano, but it had looked as if his magic was seeping out of his body just by existing. It was normal for a mage to lose a steady stream of magic when casting. It was not normal for a mage to hemorrhage magic while doing absolutely nothing.

For weeks she had quietly watched him from the second floor, unsure if she should mention her observation to jīchan, Porlyusica, or anyone else. If Loke was suffering from Magic Deficiency Disease she would have said something. Magic deficiency was fatal–often expeditiously so–and she would not have stood idly by as a guildmate died. Only, Loke did not present as a classic case of Magic Deficiency Disease. He did not even present as an obscure one. He simply continued to live his life exactly as he always had, seemingly without even noticing his magic was waging war with the universe and losing ground every day. He laughed, went on jobs, flirted relentlessly with any girl in a short enough skirt. After a while, Miyako had talked herself into believing she'd been mistaken and had nearly forgotten altogether.

Until now.

Miyako bit her lip. She was likely being paranoid. Surely nothing was wrong and Loke had just been using one of his dumb pick-up lines on Lucy… but it wouldn't hurt to check on him anyway.

"I'll be back, Happy," she said, standing up from the bar.

It was easy to slip into jīchan's office and find Loke's address. She was standing on his front step and knocking on his door fifteen minutes later. No one answered and a pit opened up in Miyako's stomach. So he's not home, she thought to herself. So what? That doesn't mean something is wrong. So… then why was she breaking into his home?

She'd forced the door open before she realized what she was doing. "Loke? It's Miyako Dreyar," she called, on the off chance that he was home and had just been ignoring her knock.

Everything was still. Miyako quickly shut the door behind her. A cursory glance revealed that Loke's apartment was tidy and missing any personal touches. There was no coat on the hook, no shoes in the boot tray, but his keys were in the little dish on the table in the entryway. Miyako's brow puckered. Had he simply forgotten them on his way out? A crisp, white note perched on the coffee table in the living area caught her eye next. She opened it, eyes scanning the words almost faster than she could process, but once her brain caught up, Miyako's heart fell.

"Leaving Fairy Tail?" she repeated in horror.

He told her that he didn't have long to live.

Miyako's hands shook. It hadn't been a pick-up line. For whatever reason, Loke had chosen Lucy to reach out to, only he'd clearly changed his mind at the last second and tried to play it off as a joke. Miyako stuffed the note in her pocket and ran the entire way back to the guild. She burst through the new doors with all the tact of Natsu returning from a job.

"Jīchan!"

Her grandfather was perched at the bar enjoying a beer. The smile slid off his face when he saw her expression. "Miyako, my child, what's wrong?"

She thrust the note in his direction and began babbling. "I snuck into your office and found Loke's address and then I broke into his apartment and I found this note and I think something is really wrong. I think Loke is in danger."

Jīchan's brow rose. Miyako was aware that she was speaking uncharacteristically fast, but she couldn't control her own tongue. The guild hall had fallen silent when she'd entered so abruptly and everyone waited with baited breath as Jīchan read the note. "This is troubling," he said at last. "Miyako, I have to ask, why do you believe Loke is in danger and not choosing to leave the guild of his own volition?"

The guild was sent whispering at the news. Miyako bowed her head. She took a deep breath and forced herself to speak slowly. "Loke bleeds magic, even when he's not actively using it, and he isn't capable of replenishing it. For whatever reason, his body is not compatible with Earthland's ethernano. I've never seen anything like it. But he was never sick or had any symptoms of Magical Deficiency Disease, so I didn't feel it was my place to say anything. Earlier today, I learned that Loke had told Lucy he didn't have long to live and then tried to play it off like a joke. I had a bad feeling when those girls came to the guild and said he had broken up with them."

The diminutive guildmaster nodded and stood up on top of the bar. "Children," he said loudly, addressing the rest of the guildhall. "One of our own is in trouble. We must find Loke. Spread out and search the city."

"Hang on." Gray's voice was frozen over with contempt and Miyako was shocked when she turned and found he was speaking to her. "You knew something was wrong with Loke and you never said anything?"

"Well, I-" Hearing it put quite like that sounded bad and for a moment she lost all rational thought. "I didn't know anything. But I suspected-"

"You were just going to let a guildmate get sick and die?" he demanded forcefully.

Miyako blinked in shock. "No!" she said loudly. "I didn't know he was dying! I just-"

"You just thought he was really sick. Did it ever occur to you that maybe you could have helped? That instead of hiding away in your study, writing down your little observations, you could have actually done something?"

Tears welled up in Miyako's eyes. She didn't understand why they were fighting. She never fought with Gray. She never fought with anyone, really. Not with Laxus growing up, never with her guildmates. Not with anyone she wasn't paid to fight for a job. "He didn't tell me anything. I wasn't supposed to know-"

"It doesn't matter what you were supposed to know or not know, you did know and you did nothing!" Gray shouted. "Loke could be anywhere by now!"

Miyako's heart was pounding in her chest, adrenaline rushing through her veins as if this was about to turn into a physical altercation. The angrier Gray got with her, the more he refused to listen to her reasoning, the louder her heartbeat became in her ears until Miyako realised she was angry too. Her eyes narrowed, forcing the tears to stream down her cheeks, but crying didn't change the fact that she was mad.

"There's a reason I don't use my charmspeak to get whatever I want whenever I want it," she said. Gray opened his mouth but she pressed on, voice rising to an octave it had never been before. "There's a reason I ask people for their permission now before I study their magic. There are some things I just see as violations of people's free will and privacy and Loke did not consent for me to know he was sick!" she snapped.

"That doesn't-!"

"Enough!" came jīchan's angry voice. Miyako fell silent immediately and watched Gray's teeth gnash, furiously snapping shut around whatever he was about to shout at her. "This is a selfish argument to be indulging in when a member of this family is still in trouble. Pack it away. Now."

Gray turned on his heel and stormed out of the guild. As the door swung shut behind him, Miyako could hear him shouting Loke's name into the early twilight. Her knees wobbled and then hit the ground as the adrenaline fled her body. The beer-soaked floor was a blur beyond her tears, now flowing in earnest, and Miyako gasped out a ragged breath.

"Miyako."

Miyako barely heard her name being called. She bent forward until her forehead was resting on the floor and wrapped her arms around her stomach, desperately trying to hold herself together as she shook apart. Her mind was spinning off into outer space. Was Gray was right? She had known something. She should have said something to someone. Maybe… was it possible Loke hadn't known all those years ago he was sick? Could something have been done? Was it her fault that Loke was dying?

"Miyako."

A pair of warm hands grabbed her shoulders and hauled her up until she was looking into Natsu's dark eyes. "I'm sorry," she whispered, not even sure what she was apologizing for. All she knew was that a sick feeling of guilt was crushing her heart in its grip and making it hard to breathe.

She didn't see Natsu raise his hand, but she certainly felt it land across her cheek. Miyako's head snapped to the side and for a blissful moment the thoughts stopped. All she could feel was the sharp sting and there was silence. She inhaled deeply and the breath didn't get caught in her throat. Miyako brought her fingers to her cheek. Her skin was hot to the touch and she was certain she had a mark. She swallowed. "Thank you," she heard herself say.

"No problem." Natsu held out his hand and pulled her back to her feet when she took it. "Now let's go find Loke."

That was right. Miyako could cry on her own time. She nodded slowly and mutely followed Natsu out of the guild and into the night.