They had saved the day yet again. Somehow. And Mercury had hardly needed to do anything at all himself; if anything, he was just on damage mitigation duty, though he could count on one hand the number of times he'd thought Natsu, Gajeel or Wendy (or just Wendy, really; the other two could take some serious thrashings) were in actual trouble.

It was a victory of asspull proportions, Mercury realized as he was sucked up through the reversed Anima, hopefully back into Earthland.

Natsu was not one for politics, but for once, he hadn't been completely stupid about it. Just moderately so. Having received the message from a little black cat – Exceed, Mercury corrected himself, now that he knew – the group of Fairy Tail mages had found out about Mystogan's plans to reverse the anima and take responsibility for the actions of his father with his own life, in the process making Pantherlily the new 'hero' of Edolas.

Not that his plan would have worked, even if he had been able to go through with it, because Pantherlily was being sucked up through Anima right beside Mercury.

The dragon slayers had put a stop to Mystogan's foolish plan, however, by pretending to be the wicked "Demon Lords" who had caused everything, from the loss of magic to the castle that was practically in smoking ruins after Natsu had run through it. They did the usual (cause chaos), ran around for a bit destroying things, and then gave the new king of Edolas his Fairy Tail sendoff.

Mystogan had been outwitted by the guild mages for once, and was watching those above him with forlorn eyes as though to thank them for everything that they'd done.

Mercury knew that his time floating upwards was limited. He enjoyed the sensation of weightlessness – it reminded him of home without the crushing pressure of thousands of tons of water – but couldn't close his eyes and enjoy it. His eyes searched desperately for that familiar shade of blue hair, wherever it may be.

Finally, he spotted her, just as he was about to pass through the portal.

They locked eyes, the gaze shared between them filled with so much emotion yet so unfulfilling; there was so much more that Mercury wanted to say, but their time was nearly up before it even started.

Marissa's eyes were sad. She was so far away that he could barely make out the finer details of her face, but he was absolutely certain that the looks on their faces were exact mirrors of each other. After a moment of hesitancy, Mercury gave a small wave, the movement shaking his whole body in its weightlessness before she gave one in return.

The water mage was glad he was one of the last people through Anima, because his whole body stopped when he saw the red-haired woman standing next to Marissa.

Chloe was just as beautiful as he remembered, even if she had clearly aged in Edolas. Her crimson hair, dyed a red-gray with age, was dark in the evening sun, a shade that not even Erza's could compare to, and her eyes, despite being far away from Mercury, were filled with just the kindness he remembered.

It was a good thing that Anima had already been reversed and the water mage had no choice in the matter of returning home; seeing Chloe and having to leave her behind right after, his heart broke into little pieces.

But… that's just how things were. Things in Edolas had to stay in Edolas, and things that were from Earthland had to remain in Earthland. The two worlds were not intended to be intertwined, just as Mercury's life was not supposed to be entangled with the life of a woman from another world; his Chloe was gone, just as Chloe's Mercury was, and there was nothing they could do to change that.

It was a farewell before he'd ever even said hello. Her name thrummed on his mind.

His last look at Edolas was reserved entirely for her, eyes unable to leave her red hair until he had completely passed through the portal to Earthland.

This time, there was no sensation of falling. Mercury was merely spat out a couple of feet from the ground, and he much preferred it that way – he'd fallen enough for a lifetime when he went to Edolas, and nearly snapped his spine in the process.

In fact, why the hell had he been sent out so far away from everyone else? Mercury supposed it tried to latch onto his magic, but that somehow failed because things relating to his own magic always did, and it just threw him out into the world. How coincidental was it that he just happened to end up near the house belonging to his parallel self?

The sword that Marissa had lent him clattered with him, spilling itself onto the ground into soaking wet rain – this was definitely not where he'd left from, he realized as soon as he was instantly soaked to the bone with water and mud. It was still pouring like the ocean had replaced the sky.

The sensation felt worse than normal. Even the air seemed to thrum, latent with the magic power that Edolas had lacked; Mercury involuntarily shivered. Nausea rose in his throat. It wasn't from the water this time.

The high of Dorma Amin apparently hadn't worn off though, which was the only thing that didn't have him curling up into a little ball right then and there to protect his stomach from the feeling of being wet. Mercury forced himself up as soon as his back touched the mud, afraid to get his other self's clothes irreparably muddy. He moved with more grace and energy than he had in months and did a quick headcount – Erza, Gray, the dragon slayers (now a single unit in his mind, because apparently when one was involved, they all were) and Lucy (he hadn't even fully been aware of the fact she was there) were all in various shapes and states of disarray in the mud, all suffering the same damp fate as himself.

At least they were suffering from the cold and mud together, he supposed.

"Everyone alright?" Asked Erza, who was very, very beat up. Mercury could easily guess who the source was, because Erza Scarlet did not require magic to be able to fight, and her counterpart was likely the same.

She was standing, though. That was enough to know she'd be fine.

Mercury gave a breathless, "Yes," before it felt like everything in the air – the ethernano and magic not present in Edolas – slammed into his system like maggots to a rotting carcass.

Immediately after, his face met the mud

He should have said no.

It was warm when he woke up. Too warm. Uncomfortable. His fingers felt fuzzy, his arms and legs aching even though he hadn't even tried to move yet.

His chest stung.

The sun had already set, the window outside revealing nothing but darkness, though the putrid rain had left without a trace. Mercury could feel the clear sky just being the curtain, even though he couldn't see it. It wasn't his window, though – Mercury's house didn't have any windows, so he struggled to get out of the bed, forcing aside heavy blankets to see what was going in.

He didn't remember passing out, or the sensation of disorientation that usually preceded it.

"Not yet, boy," Porlyisica snapped, elbowing Mercury in the stomach at the same time. He felt his stomach roll; if he'd had anything in it, he might have thrown up right then and there – but his stomach was empty. It had been almost a full day since he'd eaten, and…

Wow, the events in Edolas had been shorter than he had thought.

Was it really only earlier that morning that Mercury had been cornering – or being cornered by – the Edolas version Lucy and asking for information? So much had happened in that span of time. Traveling to the capital, trekking through a castle, hijacking a robot dragon…

And yet the past two days had also been full of so little happening, because, for once, Mercury was not at the center of the incident. If anything, he'd been a bystander…

… Or so he had thought. Bystanders didn't pass out without warning right after the events of the day. If that's what actually happened, because Mercury had the feeling he was forgetting something, oversimplifying it.

There was still mud caked on his cheeks. From that, he could at least gather that he wasn't here by choice.

Accepting that there might have been a reason that he was there didn't mean he was going to just roll over and let Porlyusica bully him, though. Mercury groaned loudly and clasped at where she'd slammed her elbow. The woman had surprising strength for her age. Mercury hardly believed that someone with that much power was the same age as Makarov.

Or himself, really.

He fought the sensation of his stomach swirling, and he hoped it wasn't bile – if Mercury threw up right there, there was no way the healing woman would ever treat him again, at least not without him accepting a beating first. When she was satisfied that Mercury wasn't going to move around, she turned back to her work, busying herself with what sounded like a mortar and pestle.

It took a couple of moments after that for the room to stop spinning. It was like the roof above him was clear and in focus, but the fringes of his vision were blurry and far away, which didn't help the post-unconsciousness nausea at all.

Neither did his throbbing head.

When his stomach settled, however long that had taken, Mercury relaxed into the bed. It wasn't comfortable by any means, but it was soft enough that he could almost lull himself back to sleep – until he recalled once more that he didn't remember passing out, and that was never a good sign. A concussion? No, he hadn't gotten hit in the head. At least, not that he could remember.

And therein laid the issue.

The last thing he recalled was speaking to Erza just after landing back in Magnolia. Had something happened after that?

Maybe it had something to do with how awful he felt. Mercury's head was fuzzy, far off, as though there were cotton balls stuck in his ears. The front of his head pounded fiercely, and his skin remained clammy. Feverish. His skin prickled with pain and heat, though he didn't quite feel like he was ill.

Snuggled underneath painfully hot blankets, Mercury carefully asked Porlyusica what happened.

He didn't expect the woman to respond. She was an expert at ignoring – or beating – the things she disliked, so when she said nothing, the water mage prepared for his question to be rejected entirely. He'd find out soon enough, though waiting certainly wouldn't make him feel any better. Something else began swirling in his stomach, and it had happened enough while in Edolas for him to know it was anxiety.

Because something was clearly wrong.

Apparently, it was impossible for him to get through a major Fairy Tail incident without ending up injured in some way. Both Phantom Lord's attack and Laxus's shitty excuse for a coup d'etat had ended in Mercury passing out, and despite his "bystander" role in this incident, he'd still passed out.

What the hell? It was unfair. The dragon slayers and Erza got to just keep hauling ass and beating people up while Mercury was stuck acting like a porcelain doll.

But then Porlyusica did answer. "You have somehow given yourself both Magic Deficiency and Magic Hypersensitivity," she explained. Her tone was unusually gruff, even for her.

He sat there for a moment, chewing on the words. They didn't make sense.

Mercury knew about the former. He'd told Laxus as much, though it hadn't really changed anything. There was still magic thrumming in his veins, even after having to keep it so tightly clamped somewhere within his gut in Edolas. If anything, it felt… too full. Like his limbs were thick with it. The flow was slower than it used to be, but there had to be a meaning if it still felt like he had plenty of magic.

Besides, his little joyride on Dorma Anim had felt great. That thing was saturated with so much magic that it had flowed into Mercury even if he hadn't tried to grasp it, and it was dragon slayer magic. If anything, the type of magic was the problem; magic systems were selective and wouldn't take just anything.

Magic Hypersensitivity, on the other hand, was something Mercury had never heard of. He could put together what it meant just from the name; hypersensitivity to magic, leading to a negative effect. It sounded like the opposite of Magic Deficiency – if his body was lacking in magic, how could it be hypersensitive? There was nothing to be hypersensitive to.

It hadn't felt like Dorma Anim had been forcing the magic into Mercury's body. He couldn't pin that down as the source of his discomfort.

Porlyusica quickly grew tired of watching him try to puzzle it out. She sighed deeply, as though speaking to a young child who kept getting into trouble despite her warnings.

"When you returned from that accursed world, the exposure to magic in the air sent you into cardiac arrest. Your unique constitution restarted it immediately, which was the only reason that there was even any life left in your body for your little guildmates to bring to me," she said, emphasizing 'unique.'

Ah.

"That doesn't sound good."

Actually, that sounded terrible.

Mercury had a sturdy body, even barring his regenerative abilities; he could keep moving even through wounds that would have dropped the toughest of men, as used to pain and as hardened as he was. His heart, though, was another story. He recalled what had happened in the Phantom Lord incident, where it had hurt so bad that he could have literally torn the beating organ out of his heart right then and there and still felt a sense of relief – but even then, it had still been beating. There had only been two instances where he'd ever felt his heart physically stop, and they'd both been within half an hour of each other. Once, when fighting Laxus, when the electricity had forced it to stop – the same as it would have been to any normal human – and once shortly after, in the wake of Fairy Law.

Oh.

Fairy Law. A great magic that was capable of destroying anything that the user saw as an enemy. The spell was extremely powerful and potent; the only limits to it were certainly the caster's own magic power – which Laxus had been pushing to the very limit. You got as much out of it as you put into it. It was a spell that had limitless potential.

And when Laxus had cast it, Fairy Law had spread from the dragon slayer to the air around him, then through Mercury and the rest of the town.

This had happened before.

Porlyusica slammed her pestle into the top of Mercury's head, unsatisfied with his response. "You're a fool. Have you not realized it yet?"

No, he had. That's why Mercury sat there in shock, unsure what to think.

"Your heart is no longer made of organic tissue anymore."

Or maybe he hadn't quite realized "it".

"What?" The water mage hissed, staring up at Porlyusica with wide eyes; of all the things she could have said, that had been the most surprising. It came completely out of left field; the words didn't even make sense.

Sure, there was something funky going on with his chest. That had been known, and even if it hadn't, the reactions of Laxus and Mira when they'd seen it had confirmed that having random black spots on your chest wasn't normal. Hell, it hadn't even been "normal" for Mercury; the damn thing had only appeared after his retreat from the ocean, so he had assumed it was a result of whatever the fuck Mother had done to him. A curse, maybe – maybe the source of that ever-persistent whispering in his head telling him to return home.

But to say his heart was entirely inorganic? What did that mean? Was it made out of stone or something?

Porlyusica read his denial and sighed once more.

No, that was wrong – something was wrong with Porlyusica. She should have scolded him, should have berated him, anything to show she was annoyed that Mercury hadn't accepted her words. She was supposed to berate him for being foolish, or an idiot, or whatever her choice of insult would be. She shouldn't sigh like that, like this was a conversation she had been preparing for.

"I checked while you were unconscious." In her hands, a scalpel.

"You cut me open?"

"I'm not a surgeon, brat. I tried to pry some of the material off your chest, but none of it came free. It's certainly not skin any longer."

Mercury had to confirm. His fingers found the bottom of the shirt he was wearing, slipping underneath to grab at the skin on his chest; it hadn't been so long ago that his reaction to the pain resonating from it had been to try to pry it off, but back then, it had still been skin.

His fingers scaped something hard.

She was right. It no longer felt like it was something that could be called "skin."

The water mage didn't care that Porlyusica was watching. He fully ripped his shirt off, staring down at what should have been a fist-size patch of purple-black skin. What was there seamlessly melded from actual skin to the black spot, but Mercury could confirm with the scratching of his fingers that it was hard like rock, and there was no lip to it, nothing to dig his fingers under; there was no way he could pry it off. Nothing even came off when he scratched at it, hoping to shave pieces away. The formerly black patch had become like a sheet of glass, entirely smooth to his touch. There was no texture.

And it was bigger. It had gone from the size of one fist to two, now taking up the majority of his left pectoral.

Fuck.

It had spread that much in the span of what, two and a half days?

Mercury sat there shirtless, staring at his hand as though there was something wrong with it rather than him.

Porlyusica didn't snap at him for stripping himself. Instead, she simply stared at him, a distant look in her eyes.

"When you went to Edolas, your natural reaction was to pull your magic tight to yourself, correct? But it wasn't to your heart."

He nodded, recalling. "It was in my stomach." In his gut, right up against the scar there – the most vulnerable spot on his body.

"In doing so, you pulled your cycling magic away from your heart, accelerating the spread," the woman explained. "That magic flow is what is keeping you alive, by the way. In case you were idiotic enough to not notice, that's what's keeping your blood flowing now that your heart is like that. When it is disrupted, you'll go into cardiac arrest until it resumes."

That's what had to have happened when Mercury returned from Edolas. He came back, the incoming magic shocked his system due to the newfound-hypersensitivity, and he had a heart attack.

Damn it.

He sat there in silence. It was so much worse than he had imagined; Magic Deficiency was one thing, but now that he had to deal with Hypersensitivity as well, it was actually a threat – and then there was the issue of it spreading.

Mercury was scared to ask what would happen when it spread too far.

Would his whole body become like that? Like rock? Unable to move, unable to feel, unable to even think? What would even be left of the water mage?

Would he have to exist like that, or would he simply die?

"Don't look so sad, boy," Porlyusica snapped. "It's pathetic. Your kind in Edolas died because there was no magic at all for them to consume – but there remains a potential source here, should you need to use it."

The ocean. He could always use that – he could return to it. Being by it simply wasn't enough, and it never had been. It was like using a pipette to fill up a bathtub, so incredibly slow, dripping into his system drop by drop, and yet being away from it was somehow even worse.

It was a useless thought, though. He'd never return to the waters. Mercury had already promised himself that – he'd promised Mother that. He had told her that he would rather die than return, and maybe his foolish wish had actually come true; he might die if he didn't.

(Oh, fuck, what was he going to say to Laxus?)

"Boy," Porlyusica snapped, tapping her pestle onto the side of the bed rather than his head to break Mercury from his shocked state. "It's not like you're going to die tomorrow. You have plenty of time yet, as long as you refrain from doing anything foolish."

But even when he didn't go out of his way to do something foolish, the foolishness seemed to follow him.

Mercury clenched his fists. She was right; he wasn't going to die tomorrow. That little spot on his chest was still small, and it hadn't even made it onto his back. It would only spread if he kept using magic without waiting for it to recover.

But… wouldn't that mean he wasn't even a mage anymore? Would he even be able to remain a part of Fairy Tail?

"Yes," he mumbled. It was an empty answer. His head was far away, lost in thought.

How funny would it be for Laxus to return from his journey to find that Mercury himself wasn't even a part of the guild anymore?

He forced himself to snap out of that train of thought. Mercury wasn't going to just leave. The guild would have to drag him kicking and screaming out that damn door that had been rebuilt so many times if they wanted him gone, and he could count the people willing to do so on one hand.

Even if he – even if he couldn't use magic, Fairy Tail could and would always be his home. Yeah, it would be fine. For as long as he could, he'd stay.

They wouldn't kick him out just because he wouldn't be using magic anymore; he'd hardly done so in the last three or so years anyway, so it wasn't like that was going to change.

(But the lingering fear that they might thrummed in the back of Mercury's brain.)

Then it occurred to him – how did Porlyusica even know those things? The name Edolas might have come up when the other guild members had brought him to her, but 'his kind' shouldn't have. Hell, even the lack of magic probably wouldn't have any reason to be mentioned; none of them knew he was magic deficient.

'After returning from that forsaken world,' she had said.

"Porlyusica, are you from Edolas?" Mercury asked.

He was not particularly expecting his answer to be dead on, but it was either that or she'd met other people from the foreign land, and that was equally as unlikely. Mercury actually had briefly known her in the time before he returned to the guild, back when Makarov was still young and Precht was still guildmaster. She didn't seem like the type to willingly talk to other people, let alone figure out they were from a parallel universe.

When she didn't answer, he knew he'd hit the nail right on the head. She turned away, grumbling about how she hated perceptive humans that were perceptive the most out of all of them.

Mercury didn't even bother to correct her. That was why he was in this whole mess, wasn't it? Because she and he were different.

"How the hell did you get over here? It had to have been at least sixty years ago, right? That bastard king has been opening Anima portals for that long?" He asked.

Porlyusica either didn't know which question to answer, or she didn't want to answer any of them; she gripped the pestle in her hand and threw it right at Mercury – right into his forehead.

It would leave an angry red mark for about a minute before healing, but he was too curious to dwell on it.

"Do you wish you could go back?"

He certainly wished he could, if only to speak with Chloe…

No, even Mercury wasn't delusional enough to think he had the self-control to only have a conversation and not try to stay there.

"Unlike you, I have no reason to return there. Those two worlds were kept apart for a reason, and they shouldn't have been connected again in the first place."

"That's… true."

She was right; this world was his world, and it was his only world.

They sat in silence for a minute longer before Mercury wrestled his shirt back on. It had gone entirely forgotten in his hopelessness, and now his chest was cold – a stark contrast to how his limbs still felt uncomfortably hot.

"In that world," Porlyusica said as soon as he'd gotten it over his head. It was damp from the rain. "The king led an extermination against all non-humans, and only the Exceeds survived. Many of your kind died out before it got that far, though."

"The Typhonnes?"

She nodded shallowly. "If you've heard that name, then I presume you've spoken to the king of that world… He erased the names of all demi-humans right after finishing his foolish plan."

Mercury didn't miss how she seemed to have personally known the king, but didn't pry; if she wasn't willing to elaborate, it meant she wanted to keep it hidden, and he of all people had no right to ask about hidden secrets.

"You said many of them died before the king got around to exterminating them. Why?" He asked – no, wait. The thought struck him right after he'd finished speaking. Mercury knew exactly why they'd died. "They died like I'm – of Magic Deficiency?"

(He couldn't finish the original sentence; he was not dying, not as it was, and this conversation was certainly not meant to keep his mind from dwelling on it.)

Porlyusica nodded. Her eyes were incredibly somber, more somber than she would have been at a mere loss of life. Mercury got the feeling that she had known some of them personally in Edolas before coming here.

"It was only the young ones at first. Their bodies hadn't accumulated enough magic to survive for long, so it wasn't too long after the magic in that world started fading and the king outlawed its use that they weren't able to stay alive. After that, it was easier to track down the adults; they were quite the tight knit family there, and the loss of their children made it hard for them to continue on."

They had simply lost the will to keep fighting.

But that was enough for Mercury to know. The Typhonnes of Edolas were entirely different from the ones of Earthland.

The ones of Earthland, the ones he'd been forced to grow up with, never had any sort of familial relationships outside of child and mother; there were no fathers, and everyone was a sibling regardless of how closely related they were…

Wait, how closely related were all of them? It occurred to Mercury that he actually had no idea how the children of the sea were produced. Sure, he'd had his own kid – after leaving. He knew how humans reproduced, but he had been the youngest at the time of his leaving, and so the secrets of conception had not been passed on to him.

That mystery would surely need to be solved if he wanted to unravel the secrets of Mother, however long in the future that might be from now.

(Mercury was just glad that Marissa wasn't suffering the same way those Edolas children had. The only thing she had seemed to inherit was his parallel self's longevity, and not any of… this mess.)

"Your body could probably keep going as long as it has magic power," Porlyusica said moments after finishing her statement about the young Typhonnes. It seemed she wanted to move the conversation away from that. "But, whether by evolution or some over oversight, the less magic power you have, the more you will require."

Which only partially made sense.

The black hardness – the brand, as Mercury originally called it – would spread if there was no magic. One could say that it was magic power that was keeping his skin fresh and supple and not like charcoal; when that was removed, it became like what was on his chest.

But what happened when he needed those parts to live?

Mercury's heart didn't function because it couldn't. The organ simply didn't work anymore – and how could it? In all likelihood, his heart was in a similar state to the skin above it, and so it required magic power to function. Magic power had also replaced its function; if that spread further, like to his lungs, or his muscles, it would take more magic power to maintain themselves.

In other words, it was a positive feedback loop. Less magic led to more need for magic; if he wasn't careful, things would start degrading faster.

Great.

"The Magical Hypersensitivity is likely caused because you're used to having so much more magic than you already have. When you were severely lacking, it tried to pull in magic from the air – magic that is toxic for your body, forcing it into shock."

"... Which is why I passed out earlier."

"Correct. If only there were some way to get a sample of your heart… Then I might be able to analyze it further."

On one hand, Porlyusica offering to do anything for Mercury was unheard of. She never did anything for anyone (unless their name was Makarov Dreyar), at least without a heap of complaining piled on top of it. On the other hand…

"A sample? Won't that just kill me?" Mercury had taken a lot of injuries in his life, but his heart had always remained firmly intact, thank you very much.

She scoffed. "Hardly. It will regenerate, and the sample will disappear shortly after. I wouldn't recommend attempting to test it."

'Because that will speed up the degeneration' went unsaid.

"So, if my arm got cut off, the limb would disappear?"

"Yes. You'd have to be stupid to lose an arm," she said, "though I already don't expect much from a fool like you."

And there was that familiar harshness returning.

Their conversation after that was over. Mercury had a lot to think about, but she was easily ready to kick him out as soon as she was sure he wasn't going to take two steps and faceplant into the mud.

Even with her stern nature, the water mage could tell that she cared, at least by some meaning of the word, and that alone was enough to scare him; the woman was never nice to anyone, not even Makarov, yet she'd gone over five minutes without insulting Mercury.

Perhaps she had just been close to someone in the other world who was a lot like him.

Regardless, it was soon time for him to leave. The sun was still down, and Porlyusica assured him that it hadn't been so for long; it was probably close to midnight.

"Thank you," Mercury said, stepping out from her small hut. Maybe as an actual show of thanks, he could – nah, she'd hate anything done by hands that looked like a human's. If anything, the best way to thank her would be to not need her at all.

"If you're thankful," she said, "never need to come back here again. You may be a fool, but I'm sure you can keep track of how far it's progressing on your own."

But you can come to the Western Forest for help if you need it.

Mercury was getting better at reading her undertones, which meant that she was right – he shouldn't need to come back there again. He'd already been much too often for both of their liking.

Mercury returned to the guild with little fanfare. The healing woman had been right; it was barely midnight when he snuck in, and the guild had already entered its "sleepy drunk" phase where almost everyone was already either dead asleep or so drunk they could hardly move. That was fine, though, because it meant only a couple of people bothered to look up when the water mage entered.

The water mage was hardly in the mood for any attention.

The sword he received from Marissa was resting against the bar counter, and the bag that contained his clothes rested on top. He was glad someone grabbed it; he may never get the chance to return it now, but he wasn't going to just throw away something he'd received from his one and only daughter.

(For the last fucking time, she's not your – oh, whatever.)

A sleepy Macao was the only one who came to pester him. Wakaba, usually tied to the Purple Flare mage, was missing; no one knew where he was, and no one particularly cared to find out. From the dry conversation with Macao – in which the man could hardly string together a coherent sentence – Mercury learned that Lisanna, the real Lisanna, had returned with the Edolas group.

Mercury tried to keep the bitter look off his face, he really did. Fortunately, Macao was himself about ready to pass out, looking almost as tired as Mercury felt, so he was easily shooed away when the water mage brought up that Romeo was likely waiting for him at home.

But the feeling in his chest was something he couldn't squash right away. He just had to try to force the feeling away so it wouldn't take root; Mother knew he already had a lot of other feelings to sort out, and Lisanna was hardly a person deserving of the sensation of acid in his heart. So, for now, all he could do was shove it away into the darkest confines of his mind to deal with later, when he wasn't still reeling from the shock that he was dying.

Lisanna…

Mercury knew her. Had known her. The incident itself had only taken place two years ago, and he'd already considered himself to be a member of the guild when she'd joined, too. He was among the members of the guild that mourned after her death. It was another young life taken too soon, and Lisanna was truly a light among the chaos of Fairy Tail.

The water mage remembered just how scared he had been for Mira and Elfman following it. He was terrified that they, like himself, would turn away from the tragedy, try to hide it with all of their might. They could have run from it. They could have desperately covered their eyes and ears, and disappeared into themselves.

He remembered worrying they would turn out like he had been those years ago: scared, alone, and tragically suicidal.

But they hadn't been. The Strauss family had grown from what they'd lost – grown as people, grown, later, as mages, now that the two remaining siblings had their magic back.

If anyone deserved to get their family back, it was those two.

(Not Mercury.)

Try as he might, he couldn't shake off the negative feeling that the knowledge of her return brought with it, which drove even more hate for himself into his chest.

It might have been time for Mercury to take a break. Just a small one – things needed to fall into place in his head before he could even consider trying to pretend to be happy again.

So, he headed to his usual place of comfort – the bar.

Erza remained as one of the only mostly-sober mages in the guild, injuries from the fight against her Edolas self wrapped tightly and securely. Mercury wondered how, if at all, they'd explained things to the guild; had people even noticed their absence? Had they noticed that Mercury had simply disappeared from the second floor, and was teleported halfway across another continent?

Probably not.

The knight's face was tinged with a light blush from a glass of alcohol, but she wasn't swaying, so Mercury took it as a good sign. Erza took a lot to get drunk, despite her rather slim build.

"Merc, you're okay," she called as soon as he swung to the back side of the bar. No one was there to serve anymore, the waitresses having left after it got dark and Mira gone to spend some deserved time with her younger brother and sister.

Erza wasn't quite smiling.

Mercury acknowledged her with a small hum. He knew he would struggle to keep his voice calm, having been hit with not one, but two knowledge bombs that had shaken the foundations of his being. The stress was piled high on his shoulders tonight.

"I just came back to grab my things. Are you the one who grabbed them for me?"

"No," she replied, "that was Happy. Everyone else was… a little distracted."

Between himself passing out and the miraculous recovery of Lisanna, Mercury couldn't really fault them. He had to imagine that Happy had definitely snooped, though.

Not that it mattered. All that was in the bag was his old clothes and a water bottle.

"Guess I'll have to thank him," he hummed. "Did everyone else head back home?"

Erza nodded, scowling slightly, "Lucy went home and Natsu followed her, and I'm not sure where Gajeel went off to, but the rest went back to Fairy Hills. What are you going to do? I'm not certain it's safe for you to walk that far across town on your own."

"Porlyusica gave me a clean bill of health."

"Could have fooled me. You look ill."

He felt ill, but that was neither here nor there. Mercury smiled.

"Mercury," she said quietly, "if you're hiding something –"

"I just don't want to talk about it. I really am fine, but I do appreciate the worry."

Erza leaned back as though to scan his body, eyes searching him up and down. After a moment, she seemed appeased, though her shoulders remained tight and stressed.

"You really are awful at keeping secrets, you know that?"

"I'm great at keeping secrets, actually," he proclaimed

She gave him an even stare. He was not helping his case.

"It's not that I won't say anything," Mercury said finally, uncomfortable under her stare, "because I promised Laxus to try to keep fewer secrets… I just want to think about it on my own for a little bit."

"As long as it's not something serious, then I suppose I can allow it. But," Erza said, her glare returning, "if it's going to have an effect on the guild, we will have to know sooner or later. There are… more people than you would expect who care for you."

"And you're one of them…?"

Erza looked at him as though to say, 'Is that even a question?'

"Right, well –"

"It's foolish to keep acting like you're not part of the guild, Merc," she interrupted, "I have seen it far too many times… pushing people away so that nobody can come to terms with their feelings and point out the flaws in them."

Was she referring to Jellal…?

Erza was right, though. If anyone knew that Mercury's feelings were flawed, it was himself. Astoundingly astute as always.

"I understand," he said after a moment. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Please do. For your own sake and the guild's.

It was not a request.

"I just need to… reevaluate my priorities right now, I think," Mercury explained. "That world was pretty alarming."

"Did you see something you didn't want to see?"

"No," he took a breath, "I saw something I wanted to see more than anything in the world."

There was a deep understanding in her eyes, more than Mercury thought he deserved. Perhaps it would have been better if she'd pried for more details, tried to get what he didn't want to say to fall out, but Erza didn't, simply taking another drink.

"There are times like that for all of us," she sounded like she was wizened beyond her years. "But I, for one, like to keep what's achievable close to me."

Edolas was not achievable.

There was nothing Mercury could do to take those two people back with him, and he shouldn't want to, either. Shouldn't need to. What was gone was gone; he just had to keep moving forward.

Just keep swimming.

"Am I really getting lectured by someone who isn't even thirty?" Mercury asked aloud, trying to shift the conversation.

It was a clumsy attempt, but Erza accepted it, "Perhaps if you were to stop acting like an edgy teenager, I wouldn't need to. I could always attempt to beat you out of it, but –"

"No, I'm good. Thanks for the offer though."

Erza laughed; Mercury did not. He knew she was entirely serious, even if she was mostly correct.

It was time for him to grow up. He had to stop doing things by himself – both because he wasn't certain how much longer he could do that for, and because there were people who wanted him to rely on him. Erza, the Thunder God Tribe, Mira… Hell, even the kids were probably frustrated seeing him bite off more than he could chew.

Maybe it was time to stop living in the past. Mercury couldn't let that hold him back any longer, couldn't keep getting angry at himself for running away from things. Who knew how much time he had left to think like that?

He sighed, grabbing the bag that Happy had left on the counter. The bottom of it was muddy, the top still damp from the rain; for all he'd tried to keep it safe, the damn thing had still ended up looking like it belonged to a primary school kid rather than an adult.

"I'm going to think things through," Mercury declared, "and you all will be the second ones to know. Promise."

"Are we really lower on your rankings than Laxus these days? I thought you two were mortal enemies."

Erza had him pegged dead to rights.

"Well," he said with a smile, "I guess beating the shit out of him hit a factory reset somewhere up here." Mercury tapped the side of his head. "I think he's going to figure himself out soon, and then he'll… Well, I don't know what he'll do, but it can't be any worse than what he's already done."

The knight rolled her eyes dramatically. "Can't you just say you're friends again? The way you put it is…"

"We're friends again."

"There we go," she finally smiled. "Now, I have to wonder where you picked up an interest in using a sword." Her gaze had fallen on the piece of metal at the end of the bar, equally as muddy as the bag.

"Oh, I, uh, couldn't use magic in Edolas, so it was either that or run around defenseless," he explained.

"Do you know how to use it?"

"No."

"Would you like to learn?"

Was she – was Erza Scarlet offering to teach him how to use a weapon? The Erza Scarlet, who could probably master any weapon she touched, offering to teach a deadbeat like him how to do that, too?

Well…

If Mercury couldn't rely on magic anymore, he may as well still be in Edolas, right? And it wasn't like he was planning to run around willy-nilly and get himself into trouble, but, well, it was definitely true that Fairy Tail seemed to draw in troublesome situations.

"... Would that be alright? You can't take it back now."

"Certainly. I should actually be asking you that – learning isn't easy, you know? Especially under me."

It wasn't like his life had ever been easy.

"Then I'm in your care, Teacher."

A/N I reread some of the beginning chapters... I couldn't make it past one or two. Holy cow they need an update, so I'll probably be doing that but since this is mostly prewritten for the next 20 or so chapters there shouldn't be a delay (aka if I'm late it's bc I forgot or got distracted)