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Though consciousness swamped her, she kept her eyes closed, pretending that for now, there was nothing waiting for her. Everything inside of her hurt, felt as if she had made the mistake to let Bisca decide on the workout again. This was worse than the time when she had let Cana talk her into an evening out on the town and she had woken up on the bench in the guild’s garden the next morning, hurting all over and feeling seasick despite being not out on the ocean but rather in the middle of Magnolia. Moving her left arm, a groan escaped her and the sound made her head feel as if it was about to burst. Even without opening her eyes, she could see the dancing lights and the nausea that was bubbling just beneath her solar plexus was very different from the nausea that came hand-in-hand with flowers . Ugh, this had to be the absolutely worst time to get a migraine.
“Fucking hell ,” she cursed.
“Oh, you’re up,” a voice said, a way too chipper, far too helpful voice — Erza . This realisation alone made her want to curse again, but she instead focused on piecing together what had landed her on the floor, what was making her head hurt so much. The Knight’s presence was not making this easier to figure out, but it was her who was leaning over her and whose hair was almost in her mouth.
Reaching around for her glasses and feeling only dry grass and stones, Evergreen groaned again. “Can you be less — in my space ?” she asked, rubbing her forehead. If there was any consolation in this mess, it was that this was neither her apartment back home nor Erza’s room in Fairy Hills . Small mercies. “And . . . perhaps more quiet? I’m getting a migraine.”
“I apologise,” the redhead stage-whispered and for a moment, Evergreen contemplated to just turn over to her other side and try to fall back asleep, no matter where she was and how she had gotten there. It was what Bixlow would do, but he was maybe not the best example. Though this thought shook something loose inside her head and she sat up, almost colliding with Erza who barely managed to evade her.
Bixlow. Freed . They had been — together, right? On a ship? No matter where she was, they should be here as well. Resolve strengthened her as she forced herself to stand, her legs a bit wobbly under her weight but functional enough. She could stand so she could walk and look for the rest of her team.
She managed three steps before Erza caught her arm and made her sit down on a rock. “You’re in no state to run around, not with how out of it you seem,” she said as she poked and prodded at bruises and gashes. “And you don’t have to worry — Freed and Laxus are talking to Master, and Bixlow’s looking for food.” Her prodding ceased but now she was bandaging wounds as she continued to talk, though Evergreen’s confusion did not abate. “And you—”
“Erza.” Cana’s voice was a sigh and behind her, Gray was rolling his eyes. He was perhaps not the last person she wanted to see, but her shoulder still hurt from when he had frozen it and unlike Cana, he did not offer anything helpful . “Look at how frazzled she looks, let her rest some more,” the card mage went on as she rummaged through her bag. “I got something, wait a sec—”
The redhead scoffed softly as she toyed around with the bandage she was apparently not going to wrap around any injuries. “Aren’t you forbidden from using sleep magic outside of combat?” she asked, her perfect student voice every bit as annoying as it had been when they had been a decade younger.
“ Mystogan knocked us out each time he came to the guild,” Cana said as she traced the pattern on the back of the card, “and compared to that, this is far more controlled. And it’s not like I need your permission, hm?”
“I think that’s my decision to make, Erza, and I decide that I need sleep,” Evergreen said firmly as she nodded at the card mage. Technically, the Knight was right — sleep magic was not among the approved remedies, but right now, the legalities did not matter at all. Plus, it had always been kind of annoying how much Mystogan had gotten away with in comparison to everyone else. And either way, it was with no small measure of relief and gratitude that Evergreen looked at the Sleep card the Cana showed her.
*
This time, her head did not hurt as she opened her eyes and instead of Erza, it was Laxus who was crouched down in front of her, his hand on her shoulder. To her, it was an infinitely more comforting sight and she smiled. “I’m so glad to see you alive and well, Laxus,” she muttered as she sat up, brows furrowed. “I’m still piecing things together but — there was a dragon, right?”
“I’m making an effort not to die, Ever,” he said as he handed her a water glass, his hand against her back as she lifted it to take a few sips. This was familiar, this was safe . “And yeah, there was a dragon. The dragon that snacked on Gildarts a bit ago came back for seconds. You got a hit to the head so that’s probably why you’re a bit . . . behind on recent events,” he added before he pulled a bowl out of his coat like some kind of magician. “I may have told Freed that we have very important things to discuss — a bunch of us got pretty flower-puke-y after waking up and I figured you’d prefer for—”
She barely managed to rasp a yes before the sickness took hold of her. She hated this, she hated to be ill, to be vulnerable. At the same time, she was choking on both petals and laughter as Laxus had started to very badly sing a childhood song to cover up the noise she was making. There were many things that made Laxus a better leader than most other fairies would give him credit for, and she had always counted his ability to keep a secret chief among them. She had not told him who it was to have planted chamomile and other herbs in her lungs, but even so: her secret was safe with him.
Wiping the blood and the tiny white petals off her face, she sighed deeply. None of this was pleasant, it was a rather dreadful thing, all things considered, but she could not do more about it than all the other people who became afflicted by this curse. “Can’t wait to get over this and be able to breathe again,” she said with the faux cheerfulness that had so often been a thin veneer on her worst barbs. “Maybe I should’ve offered my heart to that — experimental mage all these years ago. My lungs would thank me, Laxus. They’d elect me as their leader.”
He did not laugh, but he snorted as he shook his head at her. “I think this is the most annoyed you’ve ever been about a crush,” he teased as he handed her the glass again after refilling it. “At least about a crush you had — which is why I’m so curious .”
Evergreen could think of at least four dignified replies to this, but none could quite match the eloquence of tapping her middle finger against Laxus’ forehead. “It’s not happening,” she said, a grin in her voice and on her face. “So . . . what bad news do you have for me?”
He scowled as he cleared his throat, only to rub his temples and look away from her. “We missed seven years — Fairy Sphere was cast and you know how it works,” he then said. For a moment, she could not breathe, could not think. She did not doubt what he was saying, she did know the theory of Fairy Sphere by heart but — seven years . Seven years had passed between the moment the dragon’s shadow had cast them into darkness and the moment she had woken up. Had anyone else told her, she would have thought they were trying to pull a prank on her, but she knew Laxus and he did not joke about these things.
“Fucking hell,” she cursed as she buried her head in her hands. “Glad you were with us.”
He laughed as he patted her shoulder. “Bixlow said you guys should’ve come with me and we could’ve started our own guild,” he said and for a moment, she could picture it. It was not a new joke, Bixlow had made it in all kinds of varieties along the years.
“He did always make a convincing case for us to become a seafaring guild.” She sighed. The weight of the situation had not yet hit her fully; she was still swaying on the edge — the fall would come and it would rattle her, but that would be later. “You do realise that if the old man doesn’t let you stay, we’ll go with you.”
It was with something akin to fondness that Laxus rolled his eyes at her. “I brought you some tea that’ll keep you from puking your guts out,” he said as he patted her head. “Can’t remember a single time you didn’t hate airship travel.”
Grabbing the cup, she scoffed softly. “Luckily, I’m no dragon slayer or this would be much worse,” she said cheerily as she clinked her cup against his water bottle. “To our guild ship?”
“To our guild ship. May Bix pick its name.”
*
It felt good to have solid ground under her feet again, and so she purposefully did not listen when their guildmaster told them not to stray too far from Blue Pegasus’ guild building and instead stretched her legs. As she walked, she briefly thought of Laxus and Freed who had gotten roped into another meeting while Bixlow had accidentally volunteered for chef duty. It would be nicer to have them (or just one of them) with her, but she had not been invited to the meeting and bad things tended to happen when she assisted Bixlow in the kitchen. They might have been accused of making a mess out of things on purpose. She preferred to think of it as an inevitable result, much like leaving certain guild members to their own devices would always cause some kind of violence.
“I could swear that I heard Makarov say something about ‘stay close’,” a voice said calmly and she flinched as she sharply turned on her heel. It was not often that she had dealt with the master of Quatro Cerberus in the past, though she had always liked him better than other old Fairy Tail members. He did not look a day older than he had when she had last seen him. He was still wearing a hat and his sunglasses were perched high on his nose, making it impossible to gauge his mood from the looks of his eyes. In front of him, there was a chessboard, the game begun yet nowhere close to completion. How she could have missed him was beyond her, but then — she had been lost in thought.
Folding her hands in front of her body, she tried a smile, but she had never been good at this. Too many sharp edges, a too abrasive personality. Still, she could try. “Did he?” she asked sweetly. “I must’ve missed that.”
The probably old man — it was difficult to guess his age, unlike her guildmaster who had been his teammate once upon a time, he had aged ridiculously well — laughed softly as he propped his chin up on his palm. “I assure you, you aren’t the only one who had trouble hearing that particular instruction,” he said jovially as he mentioned for her to sit down. “I was going to play with Bob, but he’s busy being a good host. Do you play?”
She shook her head as she leaned against one of the pillars, arms crossed tightly. “I never had the opportunity to learn, and I’m more of a trivia game girl,” she said calmly as she tapped her hand against the pillar. Marble, huh? Blue Pegasus’ coffers had to be deep though that did not really come as a surprise. “I think he plays, however,” she added as she jerked her head into the general direction of Gray as he wandered into view.
“Young man,” the guildmaster said as he beckoned the ice mage to approach, his mirth barely hidden by his sunglasses, “have a seat. What can we do for you?”
With the grace of a drunk pigeon, Gray came over to the gazebo and let himself fall into the empty chair, his eyebrows almost touching his hairline as he regarded the chessboard. “I’d love to get in on this,” he muttered before he lifted his head to look at the guildmaster. “Um, I was looking for Evergreen, actually. To ask what we’re gonna do about our unfinished fight.”
“Spectacular,” the fairy sighed as she rolled her eyes. “I’m not conceding and I’d wager that you aren’t either . . . so I presume we will have to finish it later on? Once we are all cleared.”
The face he made was hardly one of great joy, but neither was joy what she felt as she stared back at him. “Should’ve figured that you wouldn’t give up,” he grumbled as he moved a chess piece. “Your turn.”
On the other side of the table, Quatro Cerberus’ guild master smiled broadly.