Author's Note: I must apologize for the lateness of updates. Sometimes real life can drain out all the inspiration someone has to write… but we're trucking on through to the final third of this story! I hope you enjoy the conclusion! What will happen next?

Seas of Change

Chapter 17: Frozen Banshee

When Gray pulled himself atop the wheel deck, Lyon met his angry gaze with one of no remorse. The asshole had played his cards to come in and be the hero of his own ship, and for what? To prove to Gray that he needed him and his questionable objectives? That if it weren't for him, Juvia would have been lost to Oracion Seis that night she had escaped in Torenju and that he had to save her for Gray a second time?

Would this man, his brother, never cease to antagonize him? Could he trust him now?

Lyon's white cape blew elegantly in the seaward winds and he stood tall, patient, and strong. All the things Gray had not been just moments ago.

"Your crew is drastically loyal." Lyon remarked, glancing along the main deck. "Can you call them off mine?"

"They won't kill them."

He scoffed, folding his arms. "I know that, but they can't finish their mission."

"Can we trust you?"

"Is Juvia still breathing, Gray?"

Fisting his hand about the hilt of his jeweled sword, Gray remained silent. He knew that behind him the Reitei Vengence's crew stood at a standstill as Natsu and Gajeel's crews rounded them into the center of the deck for visibility. He knew they were waiting for his direction, knew that Loke had safely stored Juvia away in their cabins to tend to her wounds, and that in this moment he needed to prove why his crew was unshaking in their devotion.

They wouldn't lay a hand on Lyon's men unless Gray told them too. It all depended on how he and Lyon proceeded from this point.

Lyon had sacrificed everything for this rescue. He was now a traitor to the Balam and a target for their anger. That made him a threat to their ship. It also made him an ally, who had protected the things most dear to Gray's heart at the risk of his own crew's lives. Those who had set off the explosions on the Tartaros, Avatar, Phantom Lord and Oracion Seis were surely gone, and yet here Lyon stood with a pride Gray rivaled, unshakeable and sure.

The kind of captain he had failed to be that day, and the one he would continue to fail to be. Emotions had no place in the frigid ice fields of the northern waters, but they drew Gray toward Lyon and they drew his arms about his back, pulling him tight.

"Thank you." Gray muttered the words against the sting in his eyes. "You're still a bastard, but I owe you everything."

Lyon made a noise somewhere between a laugh and an emotional crack, returning Gray's embrace. "Ur told us it was okay to fight. She knew that brothers fight to make each other stronger, crybaby Fullbuster."

"It's not as bad as it looks." Juvia assured Loke as he removed his glasses to get a closer look at the jagged wound across her neck.

He leaned back on his knees to reach for the decorative canister at her feet. "You try to be strong, my lady, but this is going to scar."

"Juvia does not care. She would do it again."

He smirked. "I know. We all would."

Palming the salve from the container, Loke placed it along the heat of her wound. Juvia held back a hiss; Loke worked slow and gentle until his fingers came back without blood and instead with a thick white paste. Sealed to his satisfaction, he drew the cloth bandages about her neck and tucked the edges behind Juvia's blue coils until they laid snug.

"Finish the tonic for your head."

"It's just rum."

"It's a tonic, love." Loke winked. "Rum heals all wounds. You'll want it in your system before I set your shoulder."

Juvia cradled the looseness of her dislocated arm to her stomach, eyeing the tankard of rum Loke had poured from Gray's liquor cabinet. It's spiciness and strength wafted to her nose, drawing memories of her captain's hands drawing slivers from her palm on the night she first came to board this ship that had become her home. That night she had nothing but scathing words and resentment for the crew who had destroyed her passenger ship, but tonight she had fought by their side for the man she'd sworn she'd never love.

Her heart could burst. One night that turned her from finding families for orphans to finding one of her own.

It had started with a battle, nursing her wounds and rum.

Loke held the mug to her lips and Juvia sipped heartily, letting the warm slide down her throat and fill her body with its lack of care. Alcohol and battles and comradery and love. The mug was replaced with a large wad of cloth that he instructed her to bite down on.

He took hold of her arm, moving it fluidly about her to lift the bone and muscle back into place. A quick jerk and a snap, the tightness of her mouth over the fabric as it stifled her cry, and all that was left was the ache of broken attachments reformed. She pulled the gag from her mouth, panting as Loke took a seat across of her her.

"I think that was just as bad for me." He remarked.

Juvia glanced toward him, sitting straight in the chair as he cleaned the battle off his lenses and replaced them about his nose with a resolute push. "Juvia is sure it was terrible for you."

"I hate hurting beautiful women."

"Juvia is sure you've wounded many."

"Occupational hazard."

"Why do you help Juvia, Loke? You have always helped Juvia."

Silence fell between them, her eyes focused on his downcast face. He was thinking, formulating an appropriate answer—another flirtatious response, no doubt. This was the man who had teased her mercilessly and yet offered her his rooms in the most respectable of manners. He had promised to help her win Gray over, and although she knew not what his influence had been she couldn't deny that it had worked. Despite the moments Juvia had questioned if his intentions had been for her to fall for him, Loke had remained true to his word.

"The Captain needs you." He answered honestly.

"Gray-sama needs no one."

"He needs you. We've never seen him this alive. He protects and guides this crew, but he was cold until you came. I have known him to lay with women at port but never make attachment, like many of us have done, but you were the one he couldn't let go. It was as much for him as it was for you."

Juvia felt as if she should be jealous of the other women who had enjoyed Gray's company the way she had, but the emotion refused to rise. She knew the love making they had was not a passing fancy, and born witness to the condemning power of Gray's feelings, and had come out as the victor. There was no reason to hate the nameless faces she would never know and he would never share. She was confident in the reality that she was his.

Reaching for his hat atop her head, Juvia twisted it nervously.

"That, and you are sinfully cute when you blush." Loke responded.

"The calm won't last long." Lyon warned.

"You crippled their crews, Lyon. How can they continue fighting?" it was Erza's voice, filtered through the red lacrima on the ships wheel.

Gray pressed the yellow, blue and silver, connecting them through to the Thunder God, Sabertooth and Lamia Scale. The other captains grunted their greetings and shared the status of their ships and crew; they had lost Blue Pegasus to the north of the battlefield but recovered the crew. Crime Sorceire had yet to make it to the point of battle. Grimoire Heart had yet to be spotted among the debris that littered Gray's iceberg fortress.

"Where are they?" Laxus's voice gave no quarter, his lack of trust in Lyon filtering through the communication lacrima like fire.

"They will be here soon." He answered. "The fact that Tartaros has not moved is proof enough that while we managed to create a distraction, Minerva is still alive and they still believe they can win."

"The territory mage?"

Eying Lyon, Gray could see the weight of what he had done cracking through the creases about his eyes. Lyon had sent part of his crew to slaughter. He had known it, and so had they, but the reality that part of their last had failed settled over him like a ghost.

"Grimoire Heart was sent to secure a dangerous allegiance with the Royal Navy. They have an entire army at their disposal. She is biding her time to summon them all to the grounds at once."

The uproar that came across from the ship wheel was near deafening. Lyon had risked everything to protect Gray, but he had also placed himself in the line of fire to keep all of the Fiore Seas Alliance alive. He had been hunting the navy that had destroyed their lives. He had proof of their corruption.

He hadn't been able to stop them.

"We fight." Gray's voice broke up the arguments the truth had alighted. "Lyon may have been a threat, but he isn't now. If we fight down to the last man, then that's what we do."

"They're not here yet. How much power must she amass before they can be summoned?" Jura questioned.

Sting responded first. "We've heard a lot about her. She's powerful, so it could be at any moment."

"If we can't stop her, then we've lost."

Lyon glanced toward the horizon where Tartaros remained, central in the three remaining ships that surrounded them. They had yet to take an offensive maneuver and smoke continued to billow through their sails, but the threat they presented was still alive. Gray listened to the banter between the rest of the alliance as they debated on the best course of action to take with a growing determination taking root in his stomach.

"We can die on their terms or we can die on ours; we live by the sea, and we'll die by it too. Whether that's today or tomorrow doesn't matter. We won't be taken by them to die in cells or hanged in the courtyards of their cities, but we'll put up a fight they'll sing about in legends. We'll take as many of them with us as we can." His voice rose in power the more he spoke. "We're wasting time arguing, the only decision is if you will fight alongside us."

Catching Lyon's gaze in the corner of his eye, Gray saw him nod in approval. They were the bouys in the center of this battle; they wouldn't escape without a fight. If it would just be the two of them and their battered crews and damaged ships then they would charge forward without regret. They had no time for chatter or strategy.

They were pirates. There were no rules on the sea.

"Titania is charging."

"Sabertooth will take the left flank."

"Lamia Scale will handle the rear."

"Thunder God is in position."

Gray withdrew his sword and lifted it high, a rush of power returning to the battle weary muscles and igniting in his heart. He had a crew to lead. They may all die. Juvia would be caught in the center of it all.

This was a future he knew would catch up to them all someday, his band of misfits and unjust orphans. It was why they fought at all.

"The first ships are appearing." Lyon warned. "What will you do?"

Gray's crew lifted their swords and chanted. Lyon's followed suit.

"No one dies until they've taken twenty lives or I'll drag you back from hell myself! We fight until the ice is drenched in our blood and becomes a field of red instead of white! These are the men who murdered your families, the people who steal from the children of your cities, the ones who hunt you in the hopes of achieving glory! What do we do to those who hurt us?"

"Send them to bottom of the sea!"

Gray glanced toward Lyon. "We give them more hell than their ready for. That's what we do."

The commotion on deck drew Loke out from the cabin with direct instructions that Juvia stay where she was seated and finish her rum. She hadn't missed the tense way he lifted his sword from the wall or the proud way he marched out the door to do as he was bade. The ship rocked as it lifted anchor and took hold of the wind once more, creaking through the deadly ice fields that were her haven.

Hadn't they already won? The ships previously hidden in the fog were smoldering when she'd been led down the stairwell. Was it possible that Lyon…?

No. She knew better than that. Juvia set the mug of rum down and reached for her sword. She had made a vow, and no one would stop her from protecting what she'd come to love so dearly. They'd all protected her, from the blankets they brought to the dresses they bought to the captain who had taken her to his bed and held her captive and hunted her down in a city of pirates to claim her as his.

Juvia would never sit trapped behind a door while they fought again.

Despite the pain in her body, she pressed through the door and onto the deck.

The chill of the wind stung her eyes, forcing her to blink. The view outside the Frozen Banshee must have been a trick of the light and wind mixing with the water in her eyes. What should have been the azure shimmer of water was instead an inky blackness of ships. Hundreds of them, all heavily armed. They were heading directly toward the mass at a breakneck speed.

To starboard, the Reitei Vengence barreled forward along with them, like sheep to slaughter.

Twisting her fingers about the leather wrap of her sword, Juvia glanced once in Gray's direction. His eyes were narrowed on the sea before him. He didn't know she was out on the deck, not that it would change the outcome. What had she hoped for, one final look before they drowned together in the frozen sea?

Even Gray couldn't quell the pounding in her chest.

"Juvia! I told you to stay—"

Everything happened in quick succession; Loke's voice broke through Juvia's concentration. His face contorted with frustration and then surprise. The barrage of bullets from one of the naval ships gattling guns pounded into the hull of the ship and then the bannisters, slamming into the men on the ship. Gray yelled for them to shift the sails. The ship jerked.

Loke turned to share the direction and shield her. His body twisted from the force of the bullets meant for Juvia, jerking around with the force of each that imbedded itself within his tissue. The life left his eyes long before his body fell at her feet and the sound of the gun died out.

Juvia dropped her sword and tore at her hair. The guns had stopped to soon; the armada before them meant to warn them. It was a message.

Her scream ripped through the roaring in her ears, tore across the deck in peals that shook her to the core. Her family. Her friends. Her love. Everything was going to disappear and she could do nothing about it. They were being toyed with. Loke's prone form stared toward her as a promise of what was to come for all of them. Juvia's vision went black as she screeched toward the heavens.

She didn't feel the rain begin to pour like daggers.

She didn't feel the ship begin to rock back and forth.

Juvia didn't hear the rushing of waves that built from either side of the Frozen Banshee like blankets meant for the stars, tall and frighteningly deadly. She didn't see the icebergs break away and roll along the sea foam into the ships around them.

All Juvia knew was the desperation in her heart to do something, anything, to change this fate. To save what she could. To destroy what meant to destroy her.

Gray heard Juvia's terrified scream and lost hold of the ship wheel at the same time as the vessel jerked as if he had run directly into one of the icebergs he had maneuvered through so many times before. The ship rocked back and forth as he fought to regain his footing. The crew was in an uproar, and Juvia's screaming had not died out but become more rhymthic and constant. Louder.

Powerful.

When his ship righted, Gray stood to survey the damage around him. The ocean had roared to life, tearing out in all directions from below the Frozen Banshee; it pushed naval ships into each other, flipping and rolling and drowning beneath unforgiving waves. The further they retreated the higher the tsunamis grew, depositing ice mountains onto their decks and ripping through their hulls.

Magic. Someone was producing a magic far more frightening than Minerva's territory or Ultear's time. It didn't take Gray long to realize who it was.

Juvia's voice had not softened. At each banshee-like shriek, the ocean rumbled with whirlpools and forces that sucked ships out of formation and below the surface in gulps. They were pebbles to the water, lost before they could react. Gray forced himself out of awe of her power and toward the stairwell.

He found her heaped into a corner with Loke, covered in blood and glowing with the force of a power she channeled but did not control. It would save them now, but how long would until she forced the same calamity upon them all? Gray knelt to close Loke's eyes then turned his full attention to the screaming woman in front of him.

Gray took hold of her by the arms, and still she screamed. The waves came in rapid succession, and the ship began to creak. She radiated a chill that burned through his hands and hit into the bone.

"Juvia!"