A/N: Oh shit, she back. Please take a second to read this A/N before jumping into the fic! This is a side-story (backstory?) to my other fanfic, Chaos Theory. As I was writing Wendy's scenes I realized while her characterization in that fic made sense to me, they would make more sense to you all if you had some kind of...backstory on her work? You don't have to read CT to understand this, and you don't have to read CT to understand this. If you like Wendy, this is a fic for you.

But, you know, shameless Chaos Theory plug.

And for those of you who are familiar with me and my writing, don't fret or roll your eyes, I actually wrote this fic in its entirety before deciding to drop it. It will be three chapters, and the next update is next week Wednesday. I have the whole thing written out, it just needs to be edited. Same deal with CT, I've written out the next ~15 chapters and once I'm done done the fic, I'll be uploading all of them in one go, 'cause I've kept you all waiting long enough.

Anyway, couple warnings ahead of time for this one: Wendy is an unreliable narrator. This is the most important point I want you all to keep in mind while reading this. She's going through it and hopefully you all will, too. Also, this fic takes place in a hospital. There will be gore and detailed general nastiness. Proceed at your own risk. There is a distinct lack of Exceeds in this fic. I will explain why in the final chapter.

Disclaimer: I don't own FT, Hiro Mashima does.

"I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,

but just coming to the end of his triumph."

-Jack Gilbert

Wendy is thirteen the first time she pieces together a human being.

An exaggeration, yes, but that's what it feels like. Her magic seeps through Laxus's massive form and hooks into the edges of his worst injuries, begging them to heal. The Runes Freed erected around them for their flight to Magnolia General hold steady against the elements, but every so often there's a sudden jerk of turbulence that rips at her concentration, drawing fresh blood from somewhere she didn't even think to look before.

Her shaking hands press against his chest, mechanically forcing his lungs to contract and expand. The more magic she pumps into him the harder it is to see the jagged injuries in her mind's eye. She cuts off her supply quickly, focusing just on the lungs. Contract, expand. In, out.

Breathe, breathe.

Wendy breathes and sends a trickle of magic through his system.

The biggest she can find is an oozing wound on his liver – a blade? A through-and-through. The external wounds have been healed already; she doesn't need to worry about that. The liver, though, the liver needs attention. It's the primary detoxification center, there's good glucose stores, there's lots of metabolites to manipulate here…simple facts, things to cling on to. 'What goes forward can be reversed,' Granny Porly likes to say. She can reverse this. She can fix this.

And so, she does. One hand remains attached to his side, knitting together frayed hepatic cells and gently coaxing life back into them, and the other sends thrums of magic into his heart, following the path of blood throughout his body and tagging onto where the clotting traits are thickest. It's easy to keep track of the injuries this way: find one, amplify the factors just enough to form a seal, find the next tag. Rinse, lather, repeat.

By the time they've burst through the hospital doors, Laxus is breathing on his own, no longer bleeding, and Wendy thinks she's done an okay job.

The doctors waiting for them look at her like she's a god.

(It will be many years down the line that she realizes that being a god and being feared are the same side of the coin.)

"She's the perfect fit," Lucas Wheeler argues a week later, "Porlyusica, it's absolutely insane that you haven't sent her over sooner. I've never seen such exceptional healing in my life, what were you thinking?"

Granny Porly scowls, the lines of her face somehow deeper than they've ever been. "The brat is too young to be working in a hospital, Wheeler. I don't care how good she is, it's not good enough."

Next to a heavily drugged Laxus, Wendy fights to hide her flinch.

Not good enough.

She fixed Laxus, didn't she? All by herself, up in the air, half-depleted and running on a prayer. The doctors were all surprised and awed and this one, Wheeler, even told her he had a place for her on his team.

She's good enough. She has to be to have done all that.

Not good enough.

She has to be.

"She's perfect," Wheeler stresses, looking between Granny Porly and an equally pensive Master Makarov. "This kind of talent needs to be honed early, and no offense, Porlyusica, but you are godawful at teaching. We can't afford to let her skills waste away!"

"Wendy is thirteen," Master Makarov says slowly, weighing his words as he exchanges a significant look with Granny Porly. Something passes between them and he sighs, continuing, "At Fairy Tail-"

"A Guild, and she has the stamp! Meaning she's old enough to take missions within the scope of her - you know what? I'm making this a mission," Wheeler says. He crosses the room quickly, almost tripping over his feet, and grasps her shoulders tightly. A squeak dies on her lips under his intense, dark gaze. Her lungs are frozen in space.

"Do you accept? The mission. I'm giving you a mission, long-term, salaried. You work on my team in the ER and the OR, and I'll make you the best doctor on Earthland." His fingers are so long they dig into her shoulder-sockets as they tighten. "Do you? I promise you, you won't regret this, Wendy. You'll become a legend, I'll make sure of it! We-"

"That's enough," Laxus grumbles, pushing him back a few feet. The second his hands are gone, Wendy sucks in a deep, frenzied breath that has her chest seizing. What was that, what was that?

Wheeler blinks. "Oh, god, I'm so sorry. I just...you have to understand, this is a one in a lifetime opportunity for the both of us. I'm sorry, really."

Wendy relaxes. That makes sense, he's anxious. Anxiety does weird things to people: Natsu goes catatonic, Lucy blabbers until she cries, Erza stress-eats, Gray chain-smokes until he's out of money, and Laxus...she spares a curious glance at her companion. She doesn't know what he does. Maybe that's what those SoundPods of his are for? He drowns the world out.

The Lightning Dragon Slayer looks down briefly. "You good?"

"Yes, thank you!" Wendy nods furiously, blushing bright red under all the eyes in the room. Mortified, she keeps her eyes fixed on the scuff marks of her shoes and hopes her hair does a good job of covering her face. Wheeler probably thinks she's a loser now. How is she supposed to handle a hospital when she needs Laxus to fight her battles for her? He'll never take her on now.

The thought panics her more than it should, and she jumps up, yelling, "I'll do it!"

They stare at her blankly, and she adds, more subdued, "T-the mission. I'll do the mission."

"You will? You will!" Wheeler says with a cheery little dance, "Oh, you're going to love the hospital! I'll get you all set up tomorrow. You're going to save so many lives, Wendy. You were born for this."

You were born for this.

She sinks into her birthright with open arms, nearly missing the displeased frown on Laxus's face at her joy.

"We decided to ease you in today, so you'll just be following me and observing. We'll be in the ER, mostly, and you'll get a break after a few hours. You can find the schedule here, and for now you just look for my name. Once we get you all trained up, I'll unleash you on the hospital all on your own. Now, if you look at the schedule closely, you'll see…"

Wheeler practically vibrates with joy as he points out every detail of the hospital. There's a lot to know and Wendy soaks it up like a sponge. Battle strategy washes over her like water over oil, but this is a spark she can tell will burn until she's a beacon for all to see. She memorizes the little things: the fact that her scrubs are dark blue with a thick yellow stripe on the collar that denotes her as a student, that the nurses use green marker and the doctors use red, and that, including herself and Wheeler, there are only four people capable of magical healing in this hospital.

She's special. She can do things to help that others can't. She can help.

"You ready?" Wheeler asks. Wendy straightens up and nods. She's ready. She has to be.

"Excellent. I'll be quizzing you every day, just so you stay on your toes. Let's start with something simple. What are the derivatives of phenylalanine, in order, and what are two conditions in which either phenylalanine or its derivatives are implicated?"

"Tyrosine, L-Dopa, dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine, and, um, PKU and Parkinson's."

"Good. Let's suppose we have a PKU patient…"

"How was your first day at the hospital, Wendy?" Erza asks, munching away at her strawberry shortcake serenely, as if Natsu and Gray aren't trying to break each others' necks right beside her. Wendy eyes them warily before shaking her head and smiling at Erza.

"I loved it. Dr Wheeler was so nice and the quizzes were hard, but I have a lot to review before tomorrow! And I got to set a broken bone today, it was amazing. He said he'd never seen a remodelling pattern like mine before and we could work to refine it together!"

"That's great, Wendy!" Lucy chirps, patting her head gently. Wendy flushes, bowing her head. It's so embarrassing to be word-vomiting like this, but she's never felt so high in her life, not even when Carla carries her in the skies. She wants to tell them everything, like the way the patient cried when she told him he was fine and could leave the next day, or that Wheeler said she was a prodigy, and that she's making fast friends with the nurses, who are the absolute coolest - even cooler than Natsu, she has to admit. He's strong and powerful and she will always aspire to have his drive and courage, but the nurses are steadfast and so smart they run her in circles with their knowledge.

"Aw, man, those hospital assholes are gonna keep you away from us forever!" Natsu wails, ducking under Gray's arm to pout at her. "You gotta promise you'll join us on missions! We'd be shot to shit without you providing support."

Wendy's smile fades a little. Support. Right, she's support. Her strongest magic is her defensive magic, after all. Vernier, Arms, and Armour are her signature moves.

Your strongest magic is healing. Venier is nothing. You're good enough.

"I think I'm going to go to the library," Wendy announces, stuffing a chunk of pie into her mouth to keep herself from frowning too obviously. "Work!"

"Gross, have fun," Gray laughs, kicking Natsu's feet out from under him.

"I'll come with, if that's okay? I need to check out a couple books for research," Lucy says, rising to follow her. Wendy nods, waving goodbye to the rest of the team and following her chatty friend out the doors.

Above them, Laxus watches with a carefully bored eye.

"What's this for?" Wendy asks one day in the doctor's lounge. She isn't supposed to be here because she's still a student, but Wheeler promises to have an access card made for her anyway. Her heart still flutters every time she thinks about it - her, Wendy Marvell, so special she gets a key card (the key card) before anybody else in her cohort.

Wheeler looks up from the blood reports before him and says, "I see you found our leaderboard! We keep track of who's run the most hours per month, and then the board next to the one you're looking at are the legacy scores. We erase it at the end of the year just to make it fair for the newbies, but the information is kept in a permanent file somewhere in the cabinets. I imagine you'll be up on there soon enough if I have anything to say about it!"

They're coming up on the end of April, and the highest score for the month is four-hundred and fifty hours run by Wheeler himself. Wendy runs through some quick math, blinking in surprise.

"Um, I thought the hospital said no more than eighty hours run a week by a physician? This is almost a hundred and twelve a week!"

A group of doctors huddled around a table playing Snap burst into laughter at that. Wheeler rolls his eyes at them. "Be nice, she's new."

"Yeah, what hospital admin says is more to cover their asses legally. Really, most people wind up shooting for about a hundred a week depending on how fucked staffing is," one of them, with fiery red hair she keeps pinned up in a painfully tight looking bun, says.

"And staffing will frequently be fucked," her opponent adds, adjusting his thick-rimmed glasses. "These bastards will do anything to cut corners. Did you get a load of their budget proposal at the meeting last week? At this rate we'll be running on one syringe of morphine for the whole hospital…"

"Implying we ever got more than that? These days I'm lucky if I can get my hands on some damn acetaminophen and I'm a fuckin' anaesthesiologist! The fuck do you expect me to knock these people out with, my fists?"

Wendy tunes out what appears to be an age old argument and focused on the board with cold determination. A hundred hours a week. She can do that. That'll put her in the top twenty easily, and then she can start adding hours and make it to the top ten, five, three, one. She will be number one.

Five months. I can do this in five months

Working on cadavers is paradoxically easier and harder than working on a living human. On the one hand, there's no moaning patient, no beeping of hospital equipment, no pressure to keep someone alive.

On the other hand, Wendy has never seen a dead body before let alone been wrist-deep in one. Team Natsu has done an exceptional job thus far of keeping her as far away as possible from any real carnage, and even though she's caught glimpses out of the corner of the eye, nothing could have ever prepared her for how much life there still is in someone so clearly dead.

Wheeler's presence at her side doesn't make it any easier to focus on the task at hand, but she tries anyway. The entire right thigh has been split open and pulled apart to reveal the cracked femur she's been ordered to mend. Bile dances at the back of her throat, threatening to come up with every brush of her fingers against cold, dry flesh. It feels so wrong. It's supposed to be warm and slippery with blood that makes it difficult to pick out landmarks, but everything has been so neatly cleaned by the pathologist that Wendy can pick out individual layers and tissues with her sight alone.

It's fine, it's fine, this is the same for everyone. We all look like this underneath it all, it's fine, it's natural…

Her pinky catches tendon, and she almost knocks over an instrument tray backing up.

"Are you alright?" Wheeler asks. Wendy nods shakily, forcing down all the nausea and wishing she was the body on the table, with no functional body systems to betray her panic and make her look like an idiot in front of the one person whose approval means life or death.

"Yes! Sorry, I just...my senses are, um, more sensitive than most because of the Dragon Slayer thing, and, um...well, it just feels weird trying this on a dead body, I'm not sure what to do…" Just enough of the truth to hide the lie. Mystogan taught her well.

Wheeler nods sympathetically. "I get it. Although, I would like to test how those senses fare in the ER...imagine being able to diagnose fatal arrhythmias with your hearing alone! Or being able to smell certain diseases! You're a beacon of potential, kid...but back to the basics, we're getting ahead of ourselves."

Not ahead enough. Grandeeny only ever briefly touched on the potential for her senses to be used like this before she disappeared, leaving Wendy with half-answers to questions she was too young to ever formulate. Now that she's got the potential to answer those and more within grasp, later on is too far away.

If sticking her hands in dead bodies means she gets there quicker, she'll figure out a way to reanimate him if that's what Wheeler wants.

"You have very good control over your magic, Wendy. You're using a little too much, though. Watch." Wheeler places his hand above one of the fractures on the femur, summoning magic tinged with ozone that seeps into the bone and knits it together with cold precision. "Run a diagnostic now. You should be able to feel the traces of my magic there, and I want you to tell me why I did it right."

Wendy obliges, willing her magic to her fingertips and picking up where he left off. Lightning arcs up through her arm, slicing through the delicate layers of air she presses into the bone. She frowns, making a mental note to look into this later on, and continues to probe the site. Under her fingers, the bone is perfectly smoothed over, no trace of a break to begin with. Under her magic, though, Wendy can feel the difference; the newer bone is far bouncier than the old one. Walking will likely harden it up to normal, but for now he's perfectly fine.

Well, if he were alive he would be fine, but the point remains.

"You healed it to the point where it feels sort of...cartilaginous. It's not, um, fully remodelled. It's very controlled and limited," she reports, peeking up at him. Wheeler's approving nod is a hard cap to the raging ball of anxiety in her stomach, forcing it down. He approves. He thinks she's doing good. She is doing good.

"Very good! Yes, you don't want to put in too much magic, or it doesn't set right. Just enough that the body can kick in and fix up the rest on its own. You use way too much magic, making it difficult to control and also heal. If you do it a lot slower and in smaller doses, you'll see that it's easier," Wheeler explains, checking the clock by the doors. "It's getting a bit late, we should pick up again tomorrow-"

"No!" Wendy says fiercely, positioning her hands over the next break. "I'm staying until I figure this out. I can do it."

Wheeler grins, ruffling her hair. "I knew it. You are a mini-me! Alright, kid, until Stiles comes back from his break or you run out of magic, whichever comes first!"

(Stiles returns to his morgue an hour later to find them elbow deep in the body's thoracic cavity working on broken ribs and chases them out with a 16-gauge needle.

Half-falling over herself running up the stairs, Wendy has never felt so at home.)

Laxus shows up at the hospital for a check-up the day Wheeler is showing her the ropes in the non-emergency clinic.

"Ah, Mr Dreyar! I see you're back for your check-up, right on time this time! Would you mind if Wendy does it this time? For practice, of course. I'll be here to supervise-" Wheeler is cut off by the red-head from the lounge, who Wendy learns is named Geneva, barging in and doubling over.

"Myxoma," Geneva says breathlessly, and Wheeler's eyes almost bulge out of their sockets. He lurches forward, ready to grab her and bolt, but he stops and turns around reluctantly.

"Wendy, I...this is a really serious condition. I need to scrub in and deal with it quick, and I can't waste time waiting for you to prep, so do you think you can handle this while we…?"

"Of course! I'll wait here until you're done?"

"Take the day off or something. See ya!"

Waste time. Day off. Not good enough, not yet. If I'd been good enough to start, they'd have let me in with them…

Wendy shakes her head and smiles up at Laxus. "I'll just run a diagnostic on you, if that's okay?"

"Sure."

She's practiced this so often under Wheeler's careful eye that it's second nature to her now. There's the familiar zap of his ozone against her wind that she's learned to handle with a practiced ease - start small, let it zap, overpower and tamper it down - and then it's just flesh, bone, and the most mind-bogglingly massive magic stores she's ever felt in her short life. Not even Erza's are this giant and she's got enough to power Wendy ten times over and then some.

This is what it means to be a Dragon Slayer. Not whatever slivers Wendy can offer.

As she assesses the healed injuries, her mind wanders. Does Wheeler think she doesn't deserve to be in the OR because of her mix-up with the heart valves during his quiz last week? A myxoma is a heart tumour, maybe he thinks she's too stupid for this and he'll let her in for the next one. But what if she makes a mistake later on during another quiz and he refuses to let her in to see patients because she can't be trusted with them? Physicians can't afford to make mistakes. This is punishment for messing up, she has to be perfect.

Wendy doesn't realize how powerful the burst of panic in her chest is until Laxus flinches away from her hands. "You good?"

Another mistake, another one!

"Yeah! Sorry, I got a bit too into it," Wendy lies, grabbing the chart off the bed beside him and flipping through it to a random page. She holds it up to her face, absorbed in an x-ray report that's just blurred lines, fighting back the sting in her eyes and the tightness ravaging her throat with every breath.

It's really no use, Laxus can smell the tears even if they don't fall. He's polite enough to give her a few seconds to compose herself so she can plaster on a clinical smile and say, "Everything seems fine to me. You know where to find me if something starts to act up!"

Laxus nods and slides off the bed, adjusting his coat over his shoulders. Wendy takes a few steps back, suddenly way too claustrophobic in a room twice the size of the one she sleeps in. Forget his magic, how has she never noticed how overwhelming his sheer presence is? Wendy's tiny, stick-thin, made of magic so soft it's designed to make her melt into the background of whoever she's supporting.

No good as a doctor or a Slayer.

"You coming?" Laxus asks.

"E-excuse me?"

"The guy said take the day off. You coming?" he repeats, waiting for her by the door awkwardly. Wendy can't remember if she's ever seen him use one of those. Normally he just...appears.

"I still have work to do, so I'll just-"

"You're supposed to take the day off."

"Y-yes, but I have hours to-"

"You ever had frozen yoghurt?" Laxus interrupts, scratching the back of his head. He pointedly avoids eye-contact and Wendy realizes this is as close as he's getting to asking her to ask out as friends. She's made enough stupid calls today to last her a lifetime, so she quickly shoves the chart into an 'outbox' in the room and nods furiously.

"Yes! I mean, no to the frozen yoghurt, but yes to the off day! I-I mean, only if-"

"Which way is Hyde Park from here?"

"Oh, um...I don't...actually know…"

It turns out Laxus is so used to using his teleportation magic to get around that, on foot, he's somehow the most directionally challenged person in the Guild - which is saying something, because Wendy is on a team with Natsu and Gray. Between her affinity for scents and his sixth sense for sweets, they manage to follow the sugar to a little pop-up shop at the entrance of Hyde Park in a little less than forty minutes.

Laxus loads up on all the toppings, dumping spoonfuls of things in her sparse container when he thinks she'll like it. Wendy hopes mango fish eggs aren't actual fish eggs. She also hopes Laxus has been saving his mission pay over the years, because their frozen yoghurt costs a week's worth of groceries. He pays for both of them despite her insistence to fork over her half, and then leads her over to one of the benches by the pond.

"This is so expensive," she murmurs for the tenth time, toying with the proportions on the spoon. Should she eat the little chocolate shavings with the yoghurt, or add in one of those fish eggs things for flavour? Or is that too much? Is there frozen yoghurt etiquette she's never received?

Laxus pops a spoonful with all the fixings and shrugs. "Good quality means high price."

Chocolate shavings and fish eggs it is.

"Yeah, but still...not that I'm not grateful! I am! Thank you! I know you're very busy and this is probably taking up a lot of your time, but you're probably on a break from all the work which is good because everyone needs breaks, and I'm also super grateful you're spending your break with me even though we don't talk much and you could be with the rest of the Guild relaxing and-"

"Breathe. Eat," Laxus orders. Wendy dutifully pops a spoonful in her mouth, eyes widening at the burst of flavour. Mango juice.

"So it's not actual fish eggs!" she cheers. Laxus furrows his brows, bewildered, opening and closing his mouth a few times in succession. He eventually settles for a slow, confused, "Why would you think these were fish eggs?"

"That's what the label said! And Carla's been trying to get me to eat more diverse foods recently, and on top of that, I've seen Natsu eat some weird stuff before, so I wouldn't be surprised if mango flavoured fish eggs actually existed, so I just...assumed...never mind, dumb thought," she laughs it off, scooping a much smaller bite into her mouth. It tastes a bit acrid on her tongue now, overpowering and doesn't mix together well. If she toys with it a little more it'll melt into a goop and she can dispose of it without anyone judging her. Then again, that's a waste of his money…Wendy forces down another spoonful, ignoring the way she can feel it refuse to settle in her stomach.

"You forget I grew up with him. I've seen him eat charcoal before, fish eggs don't surprise me."

Right, they all grew up together. They all know each other and made each other stronger. Two Dragon Slayers in the same Guild growing up...no wonder they're both so strong. Master Roubaul did what he could, but with nobody to practice offense with, Wendy's enchantments and healing prowess are her strongest suits. Maybe if she'd grown up with them people would look at her with the same kind of envy and awe as they do Natsu or Laxus, instead of the rare glance of acknowledgement that her magic grants her. That she is Wendy Marvell is always ignored in favour of the fact that she is the Sky Dragon Slayer.

"Did you and Natsu train together a lot growing up? Because you're both Slayers?" Wendy blurts out suddenly.

"I only got my Lacrima when I was about ten, a few years before he showed up. I didn't tell anyone I was a Slayer until I was twenty-three, so this year. Or seven years ago, I guess," Laxus replies, running the little plastic spoon over his teeth idly.

"You kept it hidden for that long? How? Didn't...I mean, you were a super famous mage before, right? So didn't...people didn't idolize you because you were a Dragon Slayer?"

"I made S-Class pretty quick and I'm good at fighting. That's all people care about."

"It must've been nice," Wendy says softly, "To be so renowned. Your reputation always preceded you, you know?"

"Depends on who you ask. People who don't know me think I'm a god, people who know me think I'm a person who can sometimes level mountains. Mostly I'm just a person," Laxus says, as if it's as simple as being.

But he doesn't get it. He will never get it, because Laxus Dreyar has never just been. He's a primordial beast whose existence is so deeply entrenched into this world that even Wendy, residing in the farthest edges of the mountains, knew him by name. One day Laxus Dreyar will die and be buried six feet under like the rest of them, but the difference is he won't ever actually die because people will remember him. He'll go down in history as the next Guild Master, or the Lightning Slayer, or the guy that defeated a Wizard Saint, or just Laxus Dreyar, and that in and of itself is something. They'll remember him and his being will become the Fairies, like the First is.

When Wendy Marvell will die, she'll fade into the vast expanse of the sky and carve out a layer to call her own. She will just be.

"You should come by the Guild more often. I know long-terms can take up a lot of time, but everybody misses you."

Then why are you the only person to have reached out to me?

"I know, I feel so bad...I'm learning a lot, though, it's just hard to find a balance," Wendy forces out, scraping the melting chocolate shavings against the cup walls. She's long since given up trying to finish it, price be damned.

"It's a rush at first, finding your niche. Let yourself love it, but remember not to become your niche," Laxus advises, plucking her cup out of her hands and rising. He stands right in front of the sun, so she doesn't have to squint when she looks up at him. The late-afternoon rays catch the highlights of his hair and draw shadows over his face that remind her of murals devoted to ancient guardians; there's a softness to him in spite of it, humility caught in the calm ocean of his eyes. Something earned, not given.

"C'mon, I think Mira's got sashimi as the special for tonight. If we hurry we can beat the cats to it."

"Sorry about this, Wendy," Lucy apologizes again, "Normally I'd just let them suffer but they were vomiting a little too much, you know?"

"Lucy's mean…" Natsu moans, rolling on his side and hiking a leg up. Wendy sighs and pushes him flat on his back again, adjusting the IVs once more. He tries to roll the other way, but takes one look at Erza sharpening her sword and freezes. "I hate this…"

"Who asked you two to eat those damn berries?" Lucy scolds, adding triple knots to Gray's hospital gown. She looks up to glare at Natsu and completely misses the way Gray begins to undo the ties.

"Gray!"

"Fuck you!"

"I won."

"No you didn't. I did."

"I threw up first!"

"We were on a train!"

"Still won!"

"Wanna go, flame brain?"

"First one to the back-"

"If any of you move and disrupt Wendy's attempts to heal you, I will use you as target practice for the next week," Erza threatens, although coming from her that's less a threat and more a promise.

Predictably, they go quiet; Wendy mouths a 'thank you' to the red-head and continues to press her magic into Natsu's stomach, probing for a clue. All they've managed to tell her is that they saw a patch of berries and decided to see who could finish the most in one go, and that they were red and bitter, which does nothing to help her narrow it down.

"What do you have so far?" Wheeler asks as he enters the room, two files in hand. Wendy doesn't look up, focused on remaining careful in her scanning. If she wavers from the output she's at, her head starts to spin and her lips grow cold.

"Red berries, bitter. Nausea, muscle weakness," she reports, "I'm feeling something, um, weird. Bittersweet? Mostly sweet, but not the good kind."

Wheeler flips through one of the files and raises a brow, eyeing Natsu and Gray with newfound interest. "You two really are...something. Alright, tell me what you feel besides that."

"If I use too much magic it sort of feels like I'm feeling what they are. I can...taste it? I think, it's very dizzying and makes it hard to concentrate."

Natsu lifts a hand to point at her, but it flops and dangles off the bed weakly. "That. Yes. Same."

"Same," Gray echoes, hissing as Lucy re-ties his gown using some convoluted knot she probably picked up from Virgo.

"What kind of poison do you know can do all that?"

"...most of them?" Wendy hazards, backtracking as his face morphs into vague disapproval. Not good, not good, stupid answer. Her tongue runs dry, hands clammy as she stretches her mind back to Master Roubaul's early lessons on poisons, but all there is is a jumble of herbal antidotes she's sure she's mixing up. She can't think, can't see past the fog descending and thickening with every second that ticks by.

Think, think, think, red, bitter, sweet, breathing, hard to breathe, weak…

"Cyanide!" she gasps finally, "It's cyanide!"

Wheeler's approving nod slices through the confusion, giving way to annoyance - at herself. It's so basic, how could she forget? She's known these things since she was old enough to walk, how could she forget now of all times?

Pathetic.

"Cyanide?" Lucy shrieks, whacking Gray across the head and whipping her shoe at Natsu's head for good measure. "You dumbasses!"

"Treatment plan?" Wheeler ignores the screeching, peering over Wendy's shoulder to assess her healing. Now that she knows it's cyanide, her main concern is the lungs, although they seem to be in decent shape.

"It's not too severe, so I won't crack out the cyanide kit. Supplemental oxygen, just to be sure. And then...activated charcoal," Wendy winces. Natsu brightens up at that.

"Hey! I've eaten charcoal before, it wasn't that bad!"

"You forget I grew up with him. I've seen him eat charcoal before, fish eggs don't surprise me."

"I know," Wendy replies vaguely, "But, um, this…"

"You're going to throw up," Lucy says bluntly, "Like, a lot."

"How do you-?"

"I knew it!" Erza crows, "You and Erik have been hanging out!"

Wendy, predictably, squeaks.

With the sleepy haze of summer comes an influx of patients, and Wendy finds herself spending so much time in the hospital that the sofa in the resident's lounge has a permanent dent where she sleeps - when she can, that is. She catches a cumulative six hours a day, but the key word is cumulative. The longest she's gone while napping is four hours uninterrupted, and the other two are often in twenty minute increments. She no longer counts her days in numbers, but rather by cases and shifts and rotations.

Days spent in the ICU melt into hours healing shattered bones in the ER, and those blur together with the careful knitting of gashes and hacked off limbs - because she can do that now, and it only takes three shifts worth of training on corpses in the morgue (Stiles slides her a key that joins the resident's lounge, Wheeler's office, the on-call room, and pathology) - and then there are the times in pulmonology, where they treat her with a reverence she's only just learned is attainable for people like her.

It feels good to be needed like this. To have people run to her first because she can stabilize the problems the quickest, that she's got the most accurate diagnostic abilities, her bedside manner is unparalleled, she can see things others can't. A million things she never recognized as special make her the star of the hospital. They make her Wendy Marvell.

For once, that by itself is enough.

"Yo," Laxus greets, startling her out of her skin. When had he-? Never mind.

"Hi! Sorry, one sec." She crouches down to pick up the fallen folders. Laxus bends over to help but she swats him away gently. "Patient confidentiality!"

"Oh, right," he mutters, "We've always been treated by Poorly, who doesn't...well, you know."

"That I do. Whoa!" Laxus grabs her by the elbow as she sways on her feet. It takes a few seconds for her head to feel like it's where it belongs and not by her kneecaps, and she stays still just until her vision clears. "Got a bit dizzy, my bad. Thank you!"

"You good? When was the last time you slept?"

"Um. A shift ago?"

"And before that?"

"...two shifts ago?" Wendy says weakly, shrinking under his intense gaze. "O-or maybe just one before, there was a mage that got brought in with a shattered spine that took a long time to heal-" Laxus somehow looks even more upset with this, so she backtracks quickly, "But I did it! I healed him and he should be okay, just a lot of little bones to touch, which...um, I did…"

"Do you know what today is?" he asks finally. Wendy pauses, wracking her brains for the answer. Last she checked a calendar it was Saturday, and with the spine, the saddle embolism, the one case with the amputated calf, plus all the miscellaneous healings…

"Tuesday?" she guesses.

"The full date."

"Tuesday, June...eleventh?"

"It's the fourteenth, Wendy," Laxus says, a lull before the storm. "Your birthday."

Oh. The fourteenth. Today, she's fourteen years old.

She waits for her cheeks to burn, the warm flush through her body that carries exultation and joy to the edges of her nerves.

There's nothing.

Today is the fourteenth, and she's scheduled to repair a PDA in two hours.

"I guess I lost track of time," she murmurs, looking anywhere but him. She counts twenty beeps of a heart rate monitor before he speaks again.

"C'mon, Guild's throwing you a party."

Her head snaps up. "I have work-!"

"Fuck work, fuck Wheeler. It's your birthday, celebrate it." Laxus's shoulders bunch up, though his grip on her arm stays gentle. She can wiggle out of it if she wants, but she's frozen in place, witness to the storm flashing through his eyes. "It's important. To celebrate it with people who...just people."

"Okay," she says, "Okay, just...I need to get somebody to cover for me. Let's go to Wheeler?"

Her de facto Guild Master nods, following her down the hall to the resident's lounge where she hopes he's busy prepping. They pass by students, doctors, nurses, and patients, and Wendy is inexplicably pleased to note that they look at her first, acknowledge her, before they see Laxus and do a double-take.

"Hey, Wendy! Congrats, kid, you made it!" Wheeler waves her in, shooting Laxus a two-fingered salute. "Dreyar, nice to see you again."

"She needs the next week off," Laxus says brusquely.

"No I don't! Just today! And - wait, where did I make it?"

"It's her birthday today. You've not given her a mandated off since she started. One week."

"It's your birthday? Happy birthday! How come you didn't tell us?" Wheeler asks, all too calm in the face of Laxus's booming voice. She supposed it's something that comes with years of experience dealing with patients - something she really ought to get good at soon.

"I forgot," Wendy says shortly, "Where did I make it?"

Hope is blooming in her chest, fingers growing numb with giddiness. It can't - there's no way. There is a way, but there's still no way. She doesn't want to think about it because if it's not true then she'll cry but what if, what if, what if-!

"Nineteen!" Geneva shouts. Alvarado smiles a crinkly smile that has his glasses slipping down his nose. "Nice going, kid! You knocked Nishino down a spot."

Her head almost rolls off her head in her haste to look at the board and there she is. Nineteen. Nineteen. She made it.

Eighteen more to go.

"See this is how you know you've made it as a physician. You forget your own birthday," Wheeler sniffs dramatically, clutching his heart and wiping under his eye. "She's all grown up, guys."

"One week," Laxus snaps. Oh, shit, right. He's still here.

"Sure, sure. Take a week."

"I'll get one of my interns to cover your PDA, kid!" Alvarado calls, then mutters in an undertone, "Fuckin' hope those idiots know what that is…"

"It's okay, they can't all be Wendy," Geneva soothes.

Wendy leaves the hospital grinning.

Mira doesn't hold back in her party preparations. Decorations drip from the ceiling to the floor, cover every table and loop around all the banisters. Reedus enchants a massive portrait of her to float above the bar with a sizable banner underneath reading 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY WENDY' in curly, glittery script. There's a six tier cake guarded by a fierce-looking Erza, decked out in her Adamantine Armour, swinging a spiked club at anybody who gets too close.

All in all, it's absolute chaos and Wendy is taken aback by how much she misses this.

"We miss you!" Lucy wails, hanging off her heavily. Wendy yelps, grabbing onto Laxus's arm to stay upright.

"I miss you too! I'm sorry, I got really busy and…this is all very sweet of you!" Wendy drops his arm to hug her back, drowning in the smell of strawberries and sunshine.

"It's your champagne birthday! We gotta get a little champagne in you~!" Cana sings, stumbling over with a barrel tucked under each arm. Unimpressed, Laxus pokes her forehead, sighing when she falls down.

"She's fourteen, Cana."

"We both started around then, too, bud."

"We are not good metrics for success, believe it or not."

Wendy scoffs internally. Not good metrics of success coming from the only two people in the Guild capable of using the Three Great Magics. Yeah, right.

"C'mon, people wanna say hi!" Lucy just about throws her over her shoulder in her haste to get her to the table Natsu, Gray, and Gajeel have commandeered. Natsu pauses in his attempt to beat an imprint of Gray's face into the table (using Gray's face, of course), waving cheerily. "Ay, Wendy! You made it!"

"Happy fourteenth, Wendy." It's only by the grace of her enhanced hearing that she's even able to make out what Gray's saying with his face smooshed into the wood.

"Thanks, you guys. What're you-?"

"He lost a bet," Gajeel snorts, toying with a chunk of metal that might have once been part of a functional tire rim. He twists the pieces around delicately, holding it out to Natsu every so often so the Fire Dragon Slayer can heat it up red-hot and then Gajeel twists it even more, eyeing her every so often. Eventually he holds up a delicate tiara whose swirling cloud designs she's only able to catch a glimpse of before he settles it on her head.

"A'ight, that's our gift. Think Gray was supposed to add crystals, but…" Gajeel waves at the duo. "When he's not concussed. But I hear you can fix all that now."

"Thank you for this." Wendy touches the tiara with trembling fingers, unable to discern what it is that's raging in her chest. Joy, yes, love, certainly, but there's the metallic taste of anger on her tongue because where was this earlier? She can't remember the last time she spoke to Gajeel, or even saw him for that matter. Whatever happened to toughing it out together? To being her family? Just like always, she's-

Wendy pinches herself when she's sure nobody's looking. What the hell? Where did that come from?

"I don't think this is working," Natsu announces, loosening his grip on Gray's hair with a pout. "We only cracked the wood 'n Mira's gonna get pissed."

"Wendy, do you mind…?" Gray trails off, prodding his beat up face. It only takes her a few minutes and a surprisingly small amount of magic to heal up the cosmetic injuries, and then about that long to make sure he's not actually concussed.

"You're getting good at this," Gray compliments, ruffling her hair in thanks. "Next thing you know you'll be in the middle of the battlefield healing and kicking ass at the same time."

"Not if we kick all the ass first!" Natsu shouts. Her smile slips, not enough to be noticed, but enough that she finds her excuse to leave them in the form of Mira looking for her by the cake.

Of course they'll kick ass first. She'll beat all of them in the hospital, but they'll still beat her in the real world. They have the edge that's been digging into her since day one and she's so numb to it she can't find it in her to get upset anymore. All she can do is adjust the tiara, plaster on a bright smile, and count the days until the week is over.

It turns out Mira wants her to stand in front of the cake while the whole Guild sings her 'happy birthday'. The next thirty seconds are the most horrifying of her life and she wants to sink into the floor with every strum of the guitar somebody forgot to hide from Gajeel. There are some who are clearly enjoying this - Team Natsu, Shadow Gear, Juvia - and then there are those that are only mumbling the lyrics because Mira is walking around with the air of the devil about her.

After that is the cutting of the cake, an activity made much more complicated by the fact that Erza offers her a sword twice the size of her body to use as a knife. "It is a Fairy Tail tradition!"

"Literally you are the only person to do this, Erza!" Bixlow yells, his floating babies chanting, "Only, only, only!"

"Dude, somebody just get her a normal knife. The fuck is Doranbolt when you need him?"

"Isn't his name Mest?"

"I thought Mest was his fake name?"

"No, Doranbolt was his fake name, then he lied about being Mest, but he was really lying about that to be Doranbolt, which is the real lie."

"Dude, what the fuck."

"God, I know…"

Wendy is so distracted by the mention of her best friend's name she winds up allowing Erza to 'assist' her in cutting off a piece of cake that promptly gets smashed into her face. Wendy blinks, wiping frosting off her eyes and mouth, and with a flick of the wrist (and a little bit of wind magic, who's she kidding), catches Erza in the back.

"She's lived fourteen good years, rest in peace," Cana says with a solemn salute.

"Cake fight!" Natsu screeches, and then it all goes to hell.

"Hey, Jet, you mentioned Mest. Is he here?" Wendy dodges a stray chunk of cake, accepting the damp towel Droy offers her.

Jet shrugs. "Yeah, he stopped by earlier to drop off your gift, then said somethin' bout an emergency and zapped off."

"Your gifts are on the second floor, by the way," Droy adds kindly. "I don't think anybody would mind if you dipped up for a minute, yeah?"

If they notice she's gone, that'll be the real gift. She makes her way upstairs, using her magic to deflect stray objects, making sure they hit the floor and not another person. She's never been to this part of the second floor before because it's off-limits to non-S-Class, so really the only person who uses it is Laxus - lo and behold, he's seated by the railing, watching the war below with amusement.

"Not going to join in?" Wendy takes a seat across from him.

"You have any idea how much this coat costs, kid? No, they can sort themselves out," he snorts. Wendy has no doubt it has more to do with the fact that if she joins in any semblance of a fair fight will go out the window and he'll emerge victorious.

They settle into a comfortable silence, punctuated only by the rustle of gifts as Wendy sorts through them looking for Mest's. It stings that he can't be here but she gets it. He's busy dealing with split loyalties to institutions that have shattered his psyche, leaving her to slip between the cracks of his mind. Some days are better than others, but isn't that just the truth of it for all of them? Some days she's the wind skittering through and breathing life into everyone, leaving little bits of herself in the people she surrounds herself with, and others she's hiding up in the rafters where the only person she has to answer to is herself.

(But answering to herself is terrifying because half the time she doesn't even know what the question is.)

Mest's gift turns out to be a set of hair-clips the colour of sunset, smooth as water-worn stone.

"I think it's time I cut my hair," Wendy says suddenly, toying with the clips. They'll hold her bangs back nicely.

"Big change."

"A good one, I think. It'll make it easier to work in the hospital if I don't have to keep adjusting my hair ties."

When Laxus finally looks at her, there's nothing but a sad sort of understanding in his dark eyes. "Change is good, but too much too quickly and you might regret it later on. I know I did."

"She's up at five," Geneva sings, slinging her arms around Wendy's neck in a tight hug. "Look at you go, girl!"

Alvarado claps Wheeler on the shoulder. "Speaking of up, is that your name I see shortlisted for Dean of Medicine, man?"

"Ah, yeah. Stella's retiring in a couple months," Wheeler says abashedly. A couple people hoot and whistle - one person shouts "You looking to shortlist a wife, too?" - and Wendy claps politely along with the others.

"If I knew all it took was training a little genius to get the attention of the higher-ups, I would've done this a lot sooner," Alvarado says with a heavy sigh, cuffing him around the neck and drawing him close. "Instead I'm stuck with a couple of dumb-fuck interns and medical students who can't tell their ass from their mouth if you gave them an interactive map…"

"Oh, hey, speaking of higher-ups, Porlyusica's been looking for you, kid," Geneva says. "Want me to let her know when you're free?"

Porlyusica. Wendy's mouth runs dry as she thinks about her former mentor. The last time they'd even sat down in the same room was when Wheeler hired her the first time around. A lifetime ago, the thought of the great healer seeking her out specifically would have made her day - even just being able to help restock her medical supplies and listening to her criticize her every move, that was the sort of thing that used to be able to keep her up at night with a smile on her face.

Now she's just pissed. Where the hell does she get off trying to look for her now when Porlyusica's been perfectly capable of sending her here for special training all these years? Was this all part of some deranged joke meant to keep her behind her peers? Or was Porlyusica just that greedy that she wanted to be the best and leave Wendy in the dust? She wouldn't put it past her at this point.

Grandeeney wouldn't have done this. Grandeeney would have had her working with patients and training to be a powerful Slayer and healer at the same time, because no child of hers would fall short of one of Igneel's or Metalicana's.

"You can always take a break and hang out with her," Wheeler suggests with a warm smile. "Seriously, we get it if you want to-"

"No," Wendy says quickly, "No, I like it better here."

There's nothing warm about his eyes as he responds. "Good."

At first, there's silence. In a hospital, silence is never good. Wendy thinks nothing of it, initially. She barely notices the difference, caught up in charting and running through notes that have long been burned into memory. It can't hurt to study them a little more, just to be sure, in the same way that it's okay to stay a little longer practicing stitches until her fingers go numb, or doing one last round. Just a little more, just a little longer, just one last thing, and maybe she can finally break from five to four.

Wheeler is anxious, and that makes her anxious. He rubs his hands together until they turn red, then runs them through his brown hair, tugging it sharply, before drawing them down over his face and starting all over again.

"It's kinda q-"

"Alvarado, I swear to fucking god, if you finish that sentence I'm gonna give you an alcohol enema."

"But am I wrong?" Alvarado challenges, pointing to their table. "Even Wheeler's getting antsy!"

"Don't jinx us," Wheeler says absently, scrawling his signature on papers he's not fully reading. Wendy notes which files those are so she can go back and fix them later.

The door opens and one of Alvarado's interns walks in whistling. "Hey guys! Geez, it's kinda quiet out there, eh?"

Every pager in the room starts blaring. Alvarado pins his intern with a look so cold it curdles her blood and she's not even on the receiving end. "After this, I'm getting you reassigned to psych, you fuck."

Psych's sort of a hellscape from what Wendy's heard, so she offers the terrified intern a half-smile as she speed-walks down the hall to the ER. Her muscles cramp up, breath quickening, as she fights the urge to bolt down the hallway. There is no running in a hospital, only speed-walking, no matter how sick the adrenaline is making her.

The ER is in chaos.

Beds are full of blood and moaning bodies, and more are being wheeled in by field medics. Those not in immediate danger are being hurried away to sit against the walls, and nurses and doctors trip over outstretched limbs and their own tangible panic as they try to figure out what the hell is going on and who is doing what.

Wendy's foot catches on a patient curled up on the floor. She drops to a crouch, magic in her palms before she can think to do it consciously, and presses them to his chest. "Sir? Are you-"

No heartbeat.

"VSA!" Wendy shouts, shrill and barely comprehensible. "VSA! I need-"

Wheeler slaps a hand to the man's head, shaking his head. "Internal decap, they moved him too quick."

"But-"

"His fucking spinal column has been severed for at least ten minutes, Wendy, he's fucking dead. Find your next patient," Wheeler snarls, ripping a penlight off a passing doctor's coat and heading off to a teen nearby clutching one side of his face.

He's fractured his cheekbone. Natsu holds himself exactly like that when he does.

She can fix that.

Wendy ignores the man whose gushing femoral artery is clearer to her ears than his anguished screams. Alvarado can handle the woman slowly turning cyanotic - a pneumothorax, the breathing quality spells it all.

It takes two minutes to fix the boy's cheekbone. Another minute to find the intracranial bleeding. Ten to fix that, or conserve her magic and let the others handle it?

Somebody is choking on their crushed windpipe nearby. The two medical students attending don't know what to do.

Sky magic slips through his skull, looking for the bleed.

He's asleep when she finishes. Numbly, she checks his vitals. They're within normal limits, so she needs to flag down a nurse or a doctor to take over. There's nothing else she can do.

All around her, the seamless teamwork and brilliance of her peers falls apart. There's no order, not a single free hand to help and people are dying, there are so many dying. The decay dances on her skin, testing, testing, testing the gag reflex she thought she longer had.

Four floors above her, there is a baby being born. There is a preemie being taken out of the NICU to go home. A child has been cured of cancer. Somebody is finding out they are pregnant.

Three feet in front of her, somebody chokes on their own blood, grey as the tiles they're curled up on.

What the hell is she supposed to do?

The next person. Find the next person.

There will always be another person.

"Listen up!" Wendy shouts, channeling every ounce of a person she doesn't know - but she does, she does know. She is Laxus, Natsu, Gajeel, she is Grandeeny's chosen one, she is Wendy Marvell. The medical students freeze, but the others carry on, half an ear on her.

"First years partner with your upperclassmen! Teams of two or three, then start triage! Tag green, yellow, red! Greens move to the third floor, oncology! Yellows go to the left and then the overflow! Reds go to the right and stay here for immediate stabilization before being moved to ICU or whatever unit they need!" There's a second of hesitation, one that sends a cold lance through her abdomen - shit, is she doing this right? Or is she making a fool out of herself? Fuck, she probably is, isn't she, goddamit-!

"You heard her! Let's go!" Wheeler barks, and then there's life and the tightness in her lungs eases up. Okay. Okay, she can do this. She's doing this.

"Geneva, call the OR, all hands on deck and I want every surgeon who's off to get back on!"

One, two, three, easy, easy, easy. Just like the books say, just like you read. You've been training for this, you've been waiting for this moment. You know what to do.

"Alvarado, run point with the medical students, if they need anything, tell me!"

You're doing this, you're fine, it's another day, it's just another day, one person at a time, just one, just one. This is your birthright, this is where you shine.

"Wheeler! Where are the other two magical healers? Get them here to look after the red tags!"

Another day at Fairy Tail, Natsu's fighting with Gray, they got Laxus involved, what do you do, what do you do.

Wendy snaps on her gloves and finds the biggest bleeder in the room, hands steady as she presses into the wound.

I am Wendy goddamn Marvell, and this is my battlefield.

A/N: Suspend your disbelief about the ER a bit. It's chaos, but controlled chaos. Kind of. I can't explain it but if you've worked in emerg, you get it. I hope.

Laxus is giving off big brother vibes. Laxus is getting ~cryptic~ any guesses as to why?

Please drop a review, I know FT is dead but there has to be a few people still reading...right?

-Eien