The Blue Pheasant Flies On

Chapter 18: Truths

The only sign that Erza noticed Kuzan sit down next to her was the tightening of her already white-knuckled grip on her katana that made the leather creak in protest. Kuzan didn't say anything, he just stretched out and winced as his limbs and back made several popping noises. He was getting old. First the gray hairs now his joints. If he ended up needing dentures before he was seventy he was going to walk into the ocean. He may not be an anchor anymore but his inability to swim would let him drown all the same.

The silence between the two stretched on for almost a minute before Kuzan finally broke it.

"Jellal's from the tower, isn't he?"

Erza flinched at his question. She didn't want to talk about it—her recent attempt at stabbing the Jellal look-alike or her time spent in the Tower of Heaven. She knew that Master had relayed her barebones description of the time she had spent in that hellhole to Kuzan and Ur when she first joined the guild, and she couldn't express how much she appreciated it that none of them had ever tried to pry. Kuzan had let her know that if she ever wanted to talk about it she could come to him and that had been the last he had ever said on the subject. Ur had given her a similar offer during one of her "girls' nights" that she had started holding after the Strauss siblings had joined the guild. She had never taken either of them up on it and she still didn't want to now. The Tower of Heaven was a part of her life that she both hated and loved. So many horrible things had happened while she was a slave in that cursed structure. She had been tortured, worked to the bone, starved, beaten, degraded, and seen the same and worse happen to her friends and fellow slaves in that tower. It had stolen her eye, the closest thing she had had to a parent at the time, and her friends. But if it wasn't for the tower then she would have never met those same friends and Rob-jiisan. She would have never received the last name 'Scarlet'. Would have never learned that she had magic. Would have never wound up at Fairy Tail and gained her new life here. Her entire life would have been completely different if she had hidden herself in that crate instead of the little girl with the white ribbon back in Rosemary Village.

But she didn't regret that decision. Knowing that she had saved that little girl from such a horrible fate had brought her great comfort at some of her lowest points during her time in the tower.

That was all supposed to be behind her now. After Jellal had made it clear that if she ever said anything about the Tower of Heaven to anyone on the outside he would kill their friends, Erza had sworn that she would never bring it up again so that they would stay safe. She had bent that rule a few times since she had come to Fairy Tail, but she had always referred to it as "the tower" and had never said anything more about it than asked. Since Jellal hadn't appeared to taunt her about her friends' deaths at his hand she assumed that it had been enough for her former best friend to let slide. Still, ever since the incident with Black Octopus, Erza had been able to put the Tower of Heaven behind her. Using her Telekinesis didn't bring up memories of fighting for her life and the nightmares from her time there had mostly faded over the years. Everything had been going so well.

Then he had appeared.

The whole guild hadn't known what to do when Lisanna burst through the doors with Mira, Elfman, and Natsu on her back and a strange blue-haired teen being dragged behind her. Everything quickly devolved into chaos as everyone started talking at once and tried to find out what had happened. Seeing how badly they were injured just made things worse. Several mages started trying to help at once or call for someone more qualified to be fetched. Master had shouted for them all to shut up and took charge. Ur sent Jet to get Porlyusica while she and Makarov carried the injured mages to the infirmary—Makarov with Mira and Natsu resting in each of his giant hands and Ur with Elfman on an ice stretcher. Kuzan had narrowed in on Lisanna's prisoner and frozen his hands and feet together to make sure he wasn't going anywhere. Despite how banged up he looked from Lisanna's rough treatment; the older mage wasn't going to take any chances. He had then checked over Lisanna and made sure she was okay before he asked what happened and, most importantly, where Cana was.

While Lisanna relayed the story of the disastrous mission to subdue The Beast, the prisoner let out a pained groan that let them know he had regained consciousness before he lifted his head. With a look of disgust that twisted the youngest Strauss's normally angelic face into something that just looked ugly and wrong outside of one of Mira's demon forms, Lisanna had told them that Cana had disappeared and that it was the teen's fault. The entire guild had shifted to level hostile glares at the revealed teen's face except for Erza. She had frozen at the familiar face that the teen was wearing: blue hair, red tattoo over the right eye, and dark green eyes. The last time she had seen that face it had been twisted into a dark mockery of a smile as he sent her away from the Tower of Heaven. Jellal had followed Erza here, to Fairy Tail. Her home. Her family. And he had already taken one of them away.

This could not stand.

Erza didn't remember requipping Demon Blade Crimson Sakura into her hand or rushing through the crowd with no care for her guildmates being roughly knocked aside. All she knew was that she had to stop Jellal before anyone else got hurt because of her. The scarlet-haired swordswoman had screamed her best friend and most hated enemy's name at the top of her lungs in a mix of rage and desperation as she lunged forward to drive her glowing blade into his heart.

Kuzan had stopped her, catching the blade in a black-covered hand effortlessly and staring her down with cold eyes. She had flinched under his gaze back then, so cold with a promise of dire consequences if she didn't obey. But she couldn't. He didn't understand how dangerous the teen trapped in ice and lying on the floor was. She was sure that he was no match for Kuzan, Ur, or Makarov, but if they didn't put him down now then people would die. She knew how callous he was about taking lives; she had watched him do it to the guards that had been torturing him with a flick of his wrist and a smile on his face.

Before she could explain this to her teacher, the teen in question had spoken up. "Who are you?" Jellal had asked in confusion. And when Erza had looked into his eyes she couldn't see even the smallest flicker of recognition. That was what had made her stop. That Jellal—her Jellal—would have forgotten her was impossible. She had been his second-in-command, his confidant, his best friend, in the tower. He had given himself up for her. He had named her. Even after he had gone insane and stopped being the boy she knew he had still known who she was—still knew her name. That the bond between them, strained by his actions and the time that they had spent apart, had eroded so much that his sanity could have degraded to the point of not recognizing her was so foreign of a thought to her that Erza knew that the teen before her wasn't Jellal. He had his face and his voice, but he was just a fake.

Kuzan must have seen the hostility drain out of her face because he released his grip on her blade and let her stumble away from the teen. She had collapsed without realizing it, her legs too shaky to support herself. She, an S-Class mage of Fairy Tail, the 'Scarlet Knight' that slayed monsters and brought down dark mages all across Fiore with ease no matter how dangerous or powerful they were supposed to be, had pushed herself backwards on her butt to huddle against the wall with her knees to her chest and sword shakily pointed at the restrained Jellal in front of the entire guild. She couldn't bring herself to care about that at the moment, too focused on making sure that her eyes never left his. Even after Master had pulled him into his office with Porlyusica, Kuzan, and Ur, Erza still didn't move from her spot against the wall. She just brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped one arm around them while the other held her blade in a death grip; ready to use it at a moment's notice.

"Erza." Kuzan's voice broke her out of her memories and brought her back to the present. Kuzan repeated his question, "Was Jellal at the tower with you?"

"…yes," she finally answered. She noticed the way Kuzan's jaw clenched and the hardness that entered his eyes and was quick to clarify, "But not that Jellal."

Kuzan hummed in response but didn't seem surprised by her answer. That surprised Erza and made her wonder. What had happened in Makarov's office? What did Kuzan know about not-Jellal? She asked, but his answer was vague at best.

"It's not really my place to say. Master's still working some things out. I can say that you're right: that isn't the Jellal you would know."

Erza let out a breath she hadn't known she had been holding. It had been one thing to suspect that, but another entirely to have it confirmed by her teacher. She felt the tension drain out of her body and let her white-knuckled grip relax. She was still holding the katana, but now she wasn't doing her best to crush it into dust.

This didn't go unnoticed by the older mage. "What did Jellal do to you?" he asked himself in a low tone.

It wasn't low enough if the way Erza tensed right back up was any indication. Kuzan cursed himself in his head as he watched the emotions war across the redhead's face. He quickly rose to his feet and reached down to ruffle her hair in the way that he knew she pretended to hate but secretly loved. "Don't worry about it, kid. We'll figure this out. Why don't you go see how Levy's doing?"

"Sensei," Erza called out before he walked away. She looked up at him with a jaw set with determination and matching eyes that would occasionally allow a flicker of fear through. "I want to talk about the Tower of Heaven."

That made Kuzan pause. The Tower of Heaven. He could finally put a name to that godforsaken hellhole that had put Erza through so much. He wanted nothing more than to turn around and have Erza tell him everything right then and there so he knew where to go searching for that place so he could properly vent his wrath in a way that would make a Buster Call look like a sternly worded letter. But he knew better than that. Erza was being overwhelmed by emotions and memories that Jellal had dragged up. She wasn't in the best frame of mind and he didn't want her to do anything that she would regret later. He turned around and knelt down so that he could look his daughter in the eye.

"Are you sure?"

She nodded, but there was still uncertainty in her eyes. They darted around to look at something behind him and Kuzan didn't need his Haki to know that they were the guild's current center of attention. He pulled Erza to her feet and said, "Let's talk outside."

The crowd quickly parted under Kuzan's stern gaze, and the two left the guild. Kuzan picked Erza up and took the two of them away with a burst of Soru. They ended up outside of Magnolia in the same place Kuzan had taken her the day she joined Fairy Tail. At her questioning glance, Kuzan shrugged and said, "It seemed appropriate."

Erza nodded. It was. This was where Kuzan had stopped her from leaving Fairy Tail before she even got a chance to be part of it. The first place they had been alone together, back when she was just a scared little girl that was afraid of losing the haven she had been pinned all of her hopes on and he was just a giant stranger covered in burn scars. In some way, this was their place. This was where Kuzan had put her worries to rest years ago, it was time for her to return the favor. She sat down across from Kuzan just like she had before and began to tell him everything about the Tower of Heaven. She left nothing out. Her kidnapping, the time spent slaving away in the tower to build a structure capable of reviving Zeref, meeting Rob-jisan, Jellal, Milianna, Sho, Wally, and Simon, becoming their friends, Jellal giving her her last name, the punishment that ended with her losing an eye, Jellal being taken in her place, leading the rebellion, Rob-jisan dying, her magic awakening, the men she killed when that happened, and finding Jellal after he had been tortured. That had been the hardest part. Remembering the way he had looked at her, the way he had spoken to her, the insanity that hadn't been there the last time they had seen each other just a few hours earlier. She ended it with the boats being blown up behind her as she left, the only slave to escape the Tower of Heaven alive.

Through it all, Kuzan had stayed silent with a face that might as well have been carved out of ice for all the emotion it displayed. When she finished he didn't say anything. He wanted to reach out and place a reassuring hand on her shoulder or rub her hair to let her know it was okay, but he was shaking too badly. His jaw was clenched to keep his teeth from chattering, and he could feel his whole body vibrating worse than any tremors Whitebeard ever made. He wasn't sure if it was pure anger at the scum that had put his daughter through such a horrible ordeal, overwhelming fear that he couldn't do anything about what had happened or make it better, or a mix of both that was keeping him frozen in indecision. He wanted to go freeze the entire ocean and stalk it until he found the Tower of Heaven and tore it down brick by frozen brick. He wanted to grasp Erza in a tight hug and never let her go, to keep her safe from the world that had been so needlessly cruel to a child to rob her of her innocence. To actually save and protect the broken girl he found this time instead of leaving her to fend for herself. He knew that this world wasn't a perfect paradise, but he had once again tricked himself into not looking at the ugliness it contained, just like in his original world.

With a deep, steadying breath, Kuzan suppressed his emotions like a good Marine. There would be time to deal with this later. Right now, Erza needed support and reassurance not wrath and vengeance. He gently pulled her into a hug and quietly said, "Thank you. I know that couldn't have been easy to say and I want you to know how much it means to me that you trust me enough to tell me that." He felt her start to shake with silent sobs and knew that there would be tears running down half of her face, the other half unable to shed any since Porlyusica had given her the replacement eye. He stroked her back and let her cry as he whispered into her ear.

"I'm so proud of you."

Ur quietly slipped inside of the infirmary and reflexively curled her nose at the painfully strong smell of disinfectants that permeated the room. It reminded her of hospitals, and doctors that didn't know what was wrong, and the helpless desperation as things kept getting worse with no solution in sight, and—

Ur forced herself to take a calming breath through her nose and release the tension that had filled her entire body. This wasn't the time to let the ghosts of her past paralyze her. There were kids she could help here. They were all lined up around four beds containing their friends. Not even Porlyusica, for all her misanthropic bitching and horrid bedside manner, was heartless enough to keep them out after she had diagnosed and treated their wounds. Oh sure, she had bitched and yelled and threatened them all with a broom and reminded them that she hated humans, but there had been even less bite in her words than usual. She hadn't even twitched when the teens had snuck back into the infirmary before she had even taken ten steps towards Makarov's office. They hadn't left the room since.

Ur silently walked forward and looked over the assembled young mages. They all could have been mistaken for statues if she couldn't hear them breathing. Gray was standing next to Natsu's bed and was looking at his rival's heavily bandaged body in confusion, as if the sight of a beaten Natsu was incomprehensible if Gray didn't have an almost equal amount of injuries himself. Happy fitfully slept in the crock of Natsu's arm as his face twitched at a nightmare. Gray reached down and stroked the blue cat's fur without taking his eyes off of Natsu. Ur doubted that he even realized what he was doing. Jet and Droy were leaving Levy alone for once as they hovered near Elfman's bed and shot each other silent looks that conveyed entire conversations through nuanced facial movements in the way that only people who spent a lot of time together and trusted each other implicitly could. Ur didn't know what they were silently saying, but she didn't need to in order to see their shared worry over the white-haired teen that liked to encourage them to be manlier in his own loud and overbearing way. Levy herself was sitting next to Lisanna's bed with her brow furrowed in frustration over not being able to interrogate the healthiest members of the team that had come back from fighting The Beast. Ur watched her glance sadly between the empty bed next to Lisanna's and the empty space next to Mira's bed, wishing she could use her magic to conjure the brunette and redhead that should be there out of thin air.

Ur herself approached Mira's bed and felt her heart clench at the sight of a girl unconscious in a hospital bed. Porlyusica had cleaned the dirt and blood off of their faces and wrapped them all in fresh bandages, but she couldn't do anything about the purple bruises that littered any bit of unbandaged skin. Ur reached down with a feather touch to move a strand of hair from Mira's face and reveal an especially ugly bruise that was a lovely shade of yellowish green on her cheek. She looked so different with her hair down and the "fuck with me at your own risk" scowl that she usually wore missing—soft and relaxed in a way so not Mira that it was more concerning than any clinical assessment Porlyusica could give short of an autopsy. She felt like an intruder here. There should be a scruffy-faced walking disaster area with so little situational awareness that you could put it in a teaspoon and still have room left over standing here and watching over Mira instead of her. Or, at the very least, a redheaded girl with the fashion sense of a medieval knight crossed with an underwear model. Ur fucked up her chance to take care of a sick little girl bad enough that she wouldn't even think about considering putting someone else's daughter under her care. It was why she only took care of boys now. Mira needed someone more trustworthy than herself.

Speak of the devil. Erza had just opened the infirmary door and drawn everyone's attention. After a brief moment of hesitation, she strode through the room with a confidence that was painfully fake to anyone that knew where to look but good enough to fool the worried teens she was putting it on for. A wave of relief went through the room as they all started breathing easier with the return of the strongest member of the clique the eleven of them had formed that they would all deny to anyone that would listen with the insistence that there were two separate cliques and neither got along with the other. Erza ran a discerning eye over the injured mages as she passed each bed and their watchers before arriving next to Ur and silently looked down at Mira's sleeping form.

"She's going to be okay," Ur told her before she could ask. Erza had been close to catatonic in her corner when Porlyusica's diagnostic that the five mages had once again managed to miraculously not die, so the older mage doubted that she had heard the old healer's words. "They all are."

"Except Cana," Erza remorsefully whispered.

"Especially Cana," Ur corrected her. She forcefully pulled the younger girl into her chest for a one-armed hug. It was significantly softer than the ones the redhead herself gave out, lacking the usual metallic clang of a head on breastplate that made Ur wince every time she heard it. Poor Levy. Thank god she had the braincells to spare. "We're going to make sure we find her, come hell or high water. As soon as Gildarts gets back we'll—"

Whatever encouragement Ur was going to say went unfinished as Mira's eyes flew open and she tried to sit up with a gasp. "Gildarts!"

Everyone in the room immediately rushed to her side as Ur took hold of the struggling girl's shoulders and firmly, yet gently, forced her to lie back down. "It's okay, Mira. You're back at the guild. You're safe."

It took a few seconds, but Ur watched the teen calm down after her eyes darted around the familiar room and faces. The wild look left her eyes and the coiled muscles relaxed. Her breathing settled out and she managed to get out a proper sentence this time. "Where's Gildarts? I have to talk to him."

"He's on his way here," Ur reassured her. "It won't be much longer."

"I need to talk to him," Mira insisted. "I need to tell him about Cana. She's—"

"It's okay. He knows about Cana. We told him what happened, and he immediately started heading back. You don't have to worry. We'll find her."

"That's not it!" Mira desperately said. "Cana is— Gildarts is her—"

Ur managed to keep her surprise to a hissed intake of air before she cut Mira off from revealing something to everyone that was deeply private and would lead to a conversation behind locked doors with a very limited audience of people allowed in. If Mira was about to reveal what Ur thought she was about to reveal, then she needed to nip this in the bud. "Later, Mira," Ur said a tad more forcefully than intended. She made sure to lock eyes with the Take Over Mage and obviously glance around to the surrounding mages. "Get some rest. You can talk to Gildarts when he gets back. Just take it easy until then."

Thankfully, Mira seemed to get Ur's meaning and settled back into bed with a nod. She closed her eyes and while her breathing was still fast enough to signify that she was still awake, she at least pretended to nod back off. Ur motioned for everyone to give her some space and looked up to see Kuzan standing in the doorway with a questioning look. She told him that she'd explain later with her eyes and he accepted her answer in the same way. He then used a more obvious head jerk to let her know that Makarov wanted to talk to them in his office. Ur nodded and headed over with one last look back at the teens that were all holding it together for each other admirably despite them all looking like they were on the verge of falling apart.

With a shoulder squeeze of thanks to Wakaba and Macao, who were still standing guard, Ur and Kuzan headed into Makarov's office.

"What's the verdict?" Ur asked as soon as the door shut behind the Ice Mages.

The way the trio shared a quick look between themselves made Ur grit her teeth to hold back a shout of frustration. If it was just Jellal and Porlyusica then she probably wouldn't have bothered, but she respected Makarov too much to yell at him like that. He hid it behind his foolish old man persona and the overwhelming power he fought with, but the Wizard Saint liked to keep his cards close to his chest and only told people what he felt they needed to know. When he had first heard Jellal's claims he hadn't called him out for the ridiculousness of his story or tried to interrogate him further, he had declared that they'd wait for Porlyusica to finish taking care of the kids before continuing the questioning. That had surprised Ur and Kuzan, but there was a tone of finality in Makarov's voice and a look in his eye that said he wasn't going to accept a challenge to his authority. It was only through the slight hunch to his posture and the way he steadied his hands by gripping his staff until it creaked that showed how furious Fairy Tail's master was over the results of The Beast Job. Ur was sure that once this crisis was over there would be hell to pay down at the Magic Council—if Gildarts didn't crush the whole damn building down to the size of a pebble first.

"Jellal's telling the truth," Makarov stated. "He's from an alternate dimension to Earth Land called Edolas and is the counterpart to the Jellal that Erza knows."

"Is that so?" Kuzan asked. He didn't seem to be phased by such a ludicrous statement the second time any more than he had been the first. Ur thought that he had just been too distracted by Erza's freak-out before but that apparently wasn't the case. He just furrowed his brow a little and stared at Jellal with an intense look of… contemplation? Like if he stared at him long enough he'd be able to discern the secrets of this other dimension himself. Whatever it was, it seemed that her partner was too enthralled with the idea of exploring different realities to back her up on this. Ur was on her own.

Kuzan was into dimensional travel. Who knew?

"Alright," Ur said, pushing the ridiculousness of that statement to the side for a moment. They had more pressing concerns. "How do we get Cana back? Gildarts is on his way and if we don't have an answer for him then I don't want to be in the blast radius when he finds out."

Jellal spoke up for the first time, "You can't." The two Ice Mages turned to stare at him and to the teen's credit he didn't flinch. "The Anima can only be activated from Edolas."

Ur crossed her arms and made an impatient noise. "Then we'll just track down the next one and use it to go to Edolas, find Cana, and then use it to send us back. That's what you've been doing, isn't it?"

"You can't." Jellal repeated and was immediately chastised by the look Ur gave him. He hastily explained. "We're not like you Earth Landers, we can't cast magic in Edolas without using tools. There's no magic in the air for us to absorb."

"Then how the hell are you able to use Anima?"

"Magic is in crystals, like Lacrima. We use that to power but we're running out. That's why my father—the king—built the Anima Machine. He uses it to steal magic from here and turn it into magic crystals. I came here to try to stop him, but the Animas keep getting stronger and stronger." He looked away from their gazes. "They've never been strong enough to suck in a person before—at least, not ones that I managed to close."

"Speaking of that, what will happen to Cana since she's been sucked in by the Anima?" Kuzan asked. He had suspicions and they were going to make things a lot harder in the near future if he was right.

Jellal refused to meet anyone's eyes. "I don't know. If Anima's now powerful enough to bring over people my father may have found a way to convert them into magic crystals as well."

Three different magics spiked at the possibility and Ur was glad to see that Makarov was just as surprised at this news as they were. If he had been holding this information back she would've punched him.

"It's not for certain!" Jellal quickly said in an attempt to reduce their anger. "Like I said before: it only picked her up because of the state she was in. It's more likely that she was sent over unchanged."

That eased the tension in the office, if only slightly. They grilled Jellal over a few more things regarding his actions. How he was able to close the Anima? The staff he carried was specially made back in Edolas to force Anima to close. How he tracked down the Anima? Again, his staff let him sense it appear. What Edolas was like? Vastly different from Earth Land. Guilds were outlawed for one thing, but it seemed that he recognized some of the people in Fairy Tail from their wanted posters. Kuzan asked him several strange and seeming nonsensical background questions that he answered in a way that seemingly satisfied the man. Ur was going to have to make him explain what that was about later. In the end, they decided to have Jellal wait on the second floor while they discussed what to do with him. Makarov led him up there through a back staircase connected to his office and strongly advised him to stay out of sight until they made an official announcement to the guild.

"So, what are we going to do?" Ur asked after they had all settled around Makarov's desk.

The old man let out a heavy sigh. "There's not much we can do. If Jellal's understanding of the Anima Machine is correct then we'd have to defeat the strongest military of an entire dimension to take control of the machine, then we'd have to destroy the machine and all the information on it so they can't rebuild it again, and we'd have to do it all without magic." Makarov looked at the two mages in front of him with serious eyes. "I'm an old man." He stated it like the fact it was. "Back in my prime, I probably could take out an army if I used Fairy Law, but those days are behind me. Trying to do that now will kill me and I don't know if it would be enough to defeat the army, especially if it is larger than Fiore's. And that's with magic. I can't do it without magic." His eyes met first Ur's then Kuzan's before traveling down to the matching ice legs the pair stood on. The legs made and sustained with magic, "Could you?"

No. No she couldn't. Ur knew that she was in pretty good shape thanks to her spars with Kuzan and Gildarts, but she couldn't take on an entire army without magic. She could make a decent dent in them barehanded and a more sizeable one if she had a weapon, but that wouldn't be enough. Especially if she was only on one leg. Ur had never not had her prosthetic, one of the benefits to using a Molding Magic. Deliora had shot it off and she'd immediately replaced it. After that, making it was the first thing she did in the morning and dispelling it the last thing she did at night. She might as well have never lost her original leg with how smoothly she had transitioned.

Ur looked away from Makarov in defeat and turned to Kuzan. The tall mage seemed to be deep in thought over Makarov's question. She was surprised that he was even considering it. She knew that he focused on more physical attacks than she did, but did he seriously think that he could take an entire army? That was ridiculous! She watched as Kuzan dismissed his leg and stumbled slightly at the lack of balance. A grimace appeared on his face as he shifted his weight around to test his balance and Ur stared at him incredulously. It didn't take long for him to overcorrect and start to fall into her. She easily shifted under his arm and slung a hand around his waist to catch him. "Easy there, tough guy."

Kuzan thanked her before straightening and getting his leg back under him. His face twisted in annoyance before begrudgingly admitting, "No," before adding, "Not without my leg or time to get used to missing it."

Ur bumped her hip into Kuzan's leg to get his attention so he could watch her roll her eyes at his statement. Mister Macho over here thought he could take on an entire army with his fists. He was spending too much time with Gildarts.

Makarov gave a calculating look at Kuzan for a few seconds after his claim and Ur knew that he was focusing on what Kuzan hadn't said. The only thing that was keeping him from trying was that he didn't know how to fight on one leg. It wasn't like Porlyusica could just make them a normal prosthetic either. They put their bodies through too much stress for a basic prosthetic to handle and Ice Magic was especially detrimental to prosthetics, so they'd have to be tailored to their magic power. If they didn't then there was a chance it would get destroyed by the freezing temperatures she and Kuzan threw around. "Exactly," Makarov eventually said. "Based on what Jellal has told us, there's nothing we can do to save Cana at the moment."

"How do we know he's even telling the truth?" Ur asked, coming at the problem from another angle. Everyone seemed to be taking this alternate dimension thing in stride and accepting Jellal's expertise on the matter. Was she the only one that was skeptic of some random teen's story? It was alternate dimensions for fuck's sake. Magic could do a lot, but this seemed like a stretch. Even if it was true, the power it would take to cast something like that was obscene. They were talking about Etherion levels of power here. And he expected them to believe that a dimension where the humans couldn't innately cast and was supposed to be running out of magic had a way to do that? The kid's story didn't seem to add up.

Ur's answer came from the last person she expected, one who had remained silent with a pensive look on her face since she had left the infirmary. "Because I'm from Edolas, and I can confirm that he's not lying," Porlyusica said.

Ur stared at her in disbelief. "S-seriously?" she sputtered out. How were you supposed to respond to that? Makarov and Porlyusica's ease at accepting Jellal's story made a lot more sense now, they had known that this alternate dimension had existed for years. What about Kuzan? Did he know? A quick glance back to her side showed that Kuzan's eyes had widened in surprise at Porylusica's claim and he looked a little poleaxed. So, he hadn't known either. Then why did he accept Jellal's claim so easily?

Porlyusica began to answer Ur and she had to shelve her questions for later when they'd be alone. "Yes. My name was Grandeeney and in Edolas I was the Royal Physician. I was there when Faust first made his breakthrough with the Anima Machine. The court was thrilled that we would have a way to turn our finite magic into an infinite source, but Faust saw it as something more than an energy source. He began to plan to use the limitless magic that he could obtain to bolster his army and take over the surrounding countries and even overthrow the Exceeds."

"That's what Happy is, isn't it?" Kuzan doubled checked.

Porlyusica shot him a glare for interrupting her story before answering, "Yes. Exceeds are humanoid felines capable of speech and the only species in Edolas capable of naturally using magic, mostly for flight. They lived on floating islands above the surface and were seen as untouchable because of it. Some people even worship their queen as a goddess. Faust had always resented the Exceeds for their magic and influence and now he had a way to get back at them."

"Yeesh. What did they do to him?" Ur rhetorically asked. Porlyusica gave her anything but a rhetorical answer.

"Nothing!" she hissed out with a tone filled with far more malice than they had ever seen from her. "Only a few rare Exceeds are ever able to use more than Aera and none of them have ever done anything to the people of Edolas, no matter what the royal fearmongers like to spread. Something that the humans can't make the same claim to."

Makarov reached out to take Porlyusica's hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. She glared down at her friend before relaxing at his gentle expression. The harsh lines of hate on her face faded away to the normal wrinkles of old age and annoyance. She took a moment to collect herself. Ur and Kuzan shared a look but said nothing. There was a story there that would probably explain why she claimed to hate humans so much, but they weren't going to pry.

After she had calmed down, Porlyusica continued. "I was the only one in the royal court to raise an objection over Faust's plan. I tried to convince him that the Exceeds hadn't done anything wrong and that there was no reason to attack them. I thought I had gotten through to him, like the naïve idiot I was." Porlyusica closed her eyes as a pained expression crossed her face. She tightly clenched Makarov's hand, but the old man didn't react despite the discomfort it had to be causing. "That night, I was attacked in my room, bound, and brought before Faust in the Anima Chamber. He told me that if I wasn't going to support his plans in court then I could at least support the experiment. He opened the Anima and pushed me through it." A tear silently rolled down Porlyusica's face that no one commented on. "The last thing I saw of my home was that bastard's smile as his toadies—humans that I had thought were my friends—did nothing to help me when I called for them. They just sat back and fucking watched!" She took another deep breath. They could see that it was still painful for her to relive the memories all these years later and could understand. Betrayal was never an easy thing to experience. To be betrayed right before being thrown into a foreign land? That must have made it so much worse. "Makarov and his team found me. I changed my name and did my best to keep them from maiming or killing themselves despite their best efforts for several years."

Porlyusica glared at the two S-Class mages. "I'm telling you this so that you understand who you're dealing with. Faust is a cruel bastard that doesn't care about others if they don't benefit him. If you go to Edolas, you don't just have to beat Faust, you have to make sure that he'll never be able to reach Earth Land again. And you can't do that without magic."

Ur wanted to scream in frustration, something that was occurring too often the last two days. That didn't help them, it just made things worse! Now they really had to save Cana. They couldn't leave her injured and alone in a place run by a madman like that!

"Is there a way that we could use magic in Edolas?" Kuzan sensibly asked.

Porlyusica hummed in thought as the mages stared at her expectantly. "I might be able to come up with a way to adjust your magical containers to draw on the magic in Edolas the same way the Exceeds can," she finally said. "But that's a very large 'might'. I don't know if I can and it will certainly take a long time. Maybe even years."

Well that wasn't a very satisfying answer, but it was the best they had. The office went silent as they considered the implications. Cana was on her own and there was nothing they could do about it. It left a bitter taste in their mouths. What were they supposed to tell the guild? The kids? Gildarts? They were all expecting an answer and the best they had was 'We can't do anything for an unknown amount of time,'. That wasn't what they were looking to them for. They wanted to hear that everything was going to be okay. That they had a plan ready and were already working on how to save her.

Porlyusica was the first to break the silence. "I'm going to check up on the kids." She paused at the door and asked in an unusually tender tone, "Do you want me to let them know that you'll have an answer for them soon?"

"Yes."

She left and silence once again reigned in the office. Makarov got up and headed for the stairs in the back. "I'll let Jellal know that we've reached a decision. He can stay in Fairy Tail for now until Porlyusica creates a way for us to use magic in Edolas." A dark look crossed Makarov's face and the room was briefly filled with the suffocating presence of his magic. "Then all of Fairy Tail will march into Edolas and save Cana. No one hurts our family," he gravely declared.

Fierce grins flashed across Kuzan and Ur's faces in agreement. Faust didn't know it yet, but he had woken a sleeping giant and filled it with a terrible resolve.

"Gildarts isn't going to like this," Kuzan finally said after Makarov had left.

"I don't like this," Ur responded. "But it's what we have to work with."

"It's going to be fun trying to explain this to him."

Ur just grimaced in agreement.

They all felt Gildarts before they saw him.

To be fair, the entire town could feel him. His magic was saturating the atmosphere like an approaching storm, filled with enough fury to cow a dragon and pressing down on them all with an invisible weight. The mayor had preemptively engaged the Gildarts Shift at Makarov's request and the entire town was thankful as Gildarts's arrival wouldn't have given them enough time to activate it normally. He blew through the street like a hurricane, flattening everything in his path and saving the mayor's office several thousand jewels by evening out the bumps in the road. He also lowered it by two inches and turned it into a dirt road, but they figured it would be best to look on the bright side.

He didn't try to get a grip on his magic until he reached the guild. Everyone inside was doing their best to be unobtrusive and hide in the shadows as they felt Gildarts approach. They all winced at the sound of screeching metal as Fairy Tail's gates were warped and twisted out of place for the crime of being in Gildarts's way. They felt him pause outside of the doors and try to suppress his magic. Only Makarov, Porlyusica, Kuzan, and Ur weren't sweating nervously as Gildarts spent several minutes trying to reel himself in. They just stayed at the bar, outside the infirmary, and at their usual table respectively and acted as if there was nothing wrong. It seemed like he had managed a few times before his control slipped and his magic flared back up. Eventually, he managed to get a satisfactory enough grip on his magic and temper to trust himself to open the door.

It was instantly crushed in his grip, but it was the thought that counted.

"Gildarts," Makarov calmly greeted him with a raised tankard.

"Master."

"Your kids are in the infirmary."

Gildarts thanked him with a terse nod and turned to head into the infirmary. He paused outside to give a sidelong look to Porlyusica. "Are they… Will they be…" He couldn't finish his question, he just stood there gaping like a fish out of water.

Porlyusica gave him a cool look and what she saw made one pink eyebrow rise slightly. Gildarts had never been hurt badly enough at Fairy Tail to necessitate a visit to her place, but she had heard enough about him to know that what she was seeing in his eyes was out of place. Under the righteous fury and burning rage she could found a surprising emotion:

Fear.

The man before her that was capable of destroying the building they were standing in and all but a select few inside of it instantly was terrified. Terrified of what he would find when he walked through the door before him. Porlyusica had seen it before. Friends and relatives working themselves into an anxious fit because they had no idea how bad the person they cared about was injured behind the door, so their mind provided them with a thousand worse case scenarios that were far beyond the actual dilemma's seriousness. If his ragged and filthy appearance was anything to go off of, Gildarts must have run straight here for days with nothing on his mind other than worries over his kids—one of whom was missing. No wonder the man's control was shot. He wasn't a simmering volcano of anger looking for a target to erupt on, he was a bundle of nerves held together by his own will and a need to see his kids and make sure they were okay.

"They're fine," she reassured him. "Beaten, bruised, and scarred, but they'll live."

Gildarts voice came out in an unsteady whisper, "…thank you."

"Feh. Just don't break any of my stuff in there, human."

With a deep breath, Gildarts squared his shoulders and walked through the door.

As soon as he stepped into the room, Gildarts's eyes were drawn to the four beds lined up against the wall. Their occupants were sitting up and had been looking at the door expectantly for his entrance. He briefly wondered how they knew before remembering how much power he had been pumping out on his way home. He knew that when he looked back on his merry little path through half the country he would regret several of the things that he hadn't bothered skirting around, but now, with the sight of his kids covered in enough bandages to make a mummy feel underdressed and more bruises than a leopardman had spots, all Gildarts could think was that he should have ran through those things faster.

"Gildarts!"

Three strides carried him across the room to their waiting arms. Gildarts wanted nothing more than to sweep them all into his arms but was afraid to worsen their conditions. Instead, he moved between each of their beds as fast as he could and let them hug him. Hearing them, holding them, confirming for himself that they were there and alive. They were crying and Gildarts could feel the tears running down his own face. Their apologies for not doing better, for not being able to save Cana, for failing him mixed with his own apologies for not being there for them when they needed him most or training them enough sporadically interrupted with reassurances that they had done nothing wrong. It eventually dissolved into the five mages and one flying cat pushing the beds together and pulling each other into a massive group hug despite how much it hurt some of them to move.

Gildarts didn't know how long they stayed like that for, but eventually their sobbing died down and the tears dried up. They sniffled and wiped their faces on his cloak despite the tissues that Porlyusica had set aside for such an occurrence. The knot in his stomach loosened, Gildarts took the time to lean back and closely examine his kids.

They looked bad. It wasn't just the physical injuries either. They were emotionally and mentally drained as well. It was all over their body language, from the way they all slouched forward like there was a weight on their backs dragging them down to the haunted look in their eyes he only got glimpses of when they failed to hold his gaze for more than two seconds. They had to have been stewing in their own misery since they woke up. Left with too much time alone to commiserate over their failures together. Gildarts would be willing to bet his bottom jewel that any reassurances or support rang hollow when Cana's absence was so blatantly obvious.

"I'm sorry," Gildarts said again now that they weren't blubbering over each other. "I should've been here." What was he thinking taking so many jobs at once? He was supposed to be over that. There were people at the guild that cared for him now, he didn't need to distract himself with work. And what had he been doing when Kuzan had called him? Perving on a beach. The memory made him disgusted with himself.

Mira shook her head. "That wouldn't have changed anything, Gildarts. It's our fault. We should've been able to handle one monster."

"Yeah. There were six of us and only one of him. We should've kicked his ass," Natsu chimed in. "Instead we got our asses kicked and Cana…" he trailed off and stared down at his bandaged hands.

"It wasn't your fault!" Gildarts snapped, making them flinch. He cursed himself in his head while saying in a much softer tone, "It was no one's fault. You couldn't have known how strong The Beast was—no one did. You did better than okay; you beat The Beast—twice!" He smiled at them. "I can't tell you how proud I am."

Instead of reassuring them, his words just seemed to make them feel worse. Tears threatened to reappear as they all looked away. "We didn't win though," Elfman bitterly said. "The Beast tricked us then took me over and Cana disappeared because I couldn't hold him off. That wasn't very manly."

"You were able to beat him in the end though," Gildarts reminded him. "That's what matters." He got to his feet and swayed a little. Now that he didn't need his rage and worry-fueled adrenaline, Gildarts could feel the exertion from the last few days catching up to him. Maybe running for over seventy-two hours straight hadn't been the best idea he had ever had. He steadied himself on one of the beds and gave the kids one of his cocky smiles to get rid of the concern furrowing their brows. Wouldn't want their faces to get stuck like that. "You guys just focus on getting better. I'll go shake down this Jellal kid to figure out where he sent Cana then bring her back."

The five shared a nervous look before Mira spoke for them. "Gildarts, they already did that. Master said that they don't have a way to save Cana." She squeezed her eyes shut and balled her sheets as she repeated the soul-crushing news they had been given days ago. It physically pained her to say, "He said that it could take years before we can save her."

Well, hello there, crippling fear. Thought you had left already. You're back? And you brought your friends panic and adrenaline rush with you? Fantastic! The more the merrier! Don't forget to hold the door open for guilt!

Gildarts stumbled to the side and used an end table to support himself for a few seconds before he crushed it. Whoops. Porlyusica was going to be pissed. He staggered his way back to their beds—he would have better control around the kids; he'd never endanger them with his own magic—and put on the fakest smile he'd ever worn in his life. Gildarts swallowed his fear and said, "That's just because I wasn't here. I'm sure that there's something that Master overlooked. It's been a hectic few days. They just need a fresh mind to look things over. I'll find what they're missing."

"Gildarts, you're not fresh," Lisanna told him.

"Don't worry; I'm fine. I'll take care of everything."

He turned to leave, but Mira called out to him before he could walk away. "Gildarts wait!" When he turned back he found her visibly wrestling with what she was going to say. "There's something you need to know about Cana." Blue eyes met blue eyes and Gildarts's heart plummeted into his stomach when he realized what she was going to say. "Cana wanted to tell you when she became an S-Class mage, but you need to know now." Even as Gildarts willed her not to say it, Mira took a deep breath and said.

"Cana's your biological daughter."

The silence in the infirmary was deafening.

Gildarts stared at his kids and found that none of them were surprised. Nervous, yes, but not surprised. So, Cana had already trusted them with her secret. He closed his eyes in disappointment. Another failure on his part. How long had they been tiptoeing around each other to keep from revealing the secret that they all knew? He hadn't noticed. How much pain and secrecy could have been avoided if he had been able to swallow his fear of rejection and just asked if Cana knew? He'd never know. That ship had apparently sailed long ago. If Mira was telling him now, then they didn't think that there would be a way to save Cana anytime soon.

There was nothing he could do to save his daughter.

What a bitter pill to swallow. It made him want to break down from the exhaustion and stress of the last few days. He rushed back home as fast as he could just to learn that there was nothing he could do now that he was here. But he couldn't. Not until he assuaged their fears and let them know that everything was going to be okay. One of his daughters was beyond his reach, but he could help the sons and daughters that were still here.

"I know." There was the surprise he had been expecting. "I've known for a couple of years now."

"Then why didn't you say anything?" Mira demanded. There was clear confusion on her face, mixed with some resentment that she couldn't hide. Cana must have told her earlier than the others. It made sense, Mira and Cana were best friends and a younger Natsu wasn't someone you trusted with information you didn't want spread around. The Fire Dragon Slayer had gotten him in enough hot water with Ur when he was younger for Gildarts to be painfully aware of that.

"Because it doesn't change anything. I was already taking care of Cana when I found out and if she didn't want to tell me that was her business. When I found out I didn't treat any of you any different. You were all my kids at that point." Gildarts looked each of them in the eyes to convey how serious he was about this. "Family is more than blood. Fairy Tail is a family. We're a family. And nothing will change that."

There were tears in their eyes after his declaration, and Gildarts couldn't deny that his own were starting to feel a little moist. He turned around to leave the room. They would need time to process what he just said. There had probably been some jealously simmering under the surface that he had missed; every time he pulled Cana aside or specifically helped her thoughts of "Does he know?" and "Is she the favorite because they're related?" probably ran through their minds, even if they never consciously acknowledged it. He'd come back after he confirmed with Master that there really wasn't a way to rescue Cana. Then he'd answer their questions. "I'm going to see if there's anything I can do for your sister," he announced.

As Gildarts went to walk away, a hand reached out and grabbed his cloak. He could feel the tension on his shoulders as they immediately pulled it taught.

"Please don't leave," a voice full of fear and desperation asked him. "Not yet."

He didn't.

"Well, that went well," Ur sarcastically declared.

Kuzan grunted in agreement. The guild had apparently been holding out for Gildarts before accepting that there was no way to save Cana. Seeing the guild's ace accept defeat had really hammered home that Cana was gone. To say that the response to Jellal had been hostile was an understatement. If looks could kill the poor boy would be dead a million times over from the Fairy Tail mages. Even Makarov's announcement that once Porlyusica created a way from them to use magic in Edolas Jellal would be leading them there to save her hadn't been enough to lessen their rage. With no one else to blame, the blue-haired dimension traveler made for an easy scapegoat. Kuzan couldn't blame him for immediately taking a handful of jobs and leaving the guild to continue his self-appointed duty of hunting down Animas.

The pair had done their best to try to lift Gildarts's spirits, but they all knew it was a futile effort. The pain was too fresh, and the man just wanted to drown his misery, but wouldn't because he wouldn't leave his kids. That just left him to drink enough to be half buzzed, too sober to stop feeling but drunk enough to not care. He'd accept the pain under the mistaken belief that he deserved it and there was nothing they could do about it.

Ur had asked Kuzan to follow her out of the guild to talk about something. He had expected them to just go out to the gates, but Ur didn't stop there. She led him through the wide streets of the Gildarts's Shift up to the Kardia Cathedral. Kuzan knew where they were going and didn't like the knot it twisted his stomach in.

Sure enough, they ended up in front of a small memorial. It was a simple piece of white marble with a teardrop carved into it over "Urtear Milkovich, Beloved Daughter. X764-X769"

Ur stopped in front of her daughter's symbolic grave. She hadn't been given a body to bury and only had some of Urtear's old clothes to remember her by, but once she had settled down in Magnolia Town for good, Ur had decided that it was time to give her daughter a proper resting place. Kuzan had been with her when she bought the stone and had it installed next to the cathedral. Ur always made sure to come by twice a week to keep it clean and replace the flowers as long as she wasn't out on a job. Kuzan had volunteered to do it for her once, but she had decisively told him no. He hadn't offered again.

"Kuzan," Ur began, "I've never tried to pry too deeply into your past. It didn't matter to me before. You told me what you were comfortable with sharing and kept quiet about what you weren't. I was fine with that. But Jellal's story made me start thinking. Those questions you asked him, you've never answered them yourself. When Jellal first mentioned dimension travel you didn't think he was crazy like Gildarts and I did, you believed him. Just like Makarov and Porlyusica, who already knew about dimensional travel."

The knot in Kuzan's stomach tightened. Ur was a smart woman. He had always been careful about what he said about his past, but Jellal hadn't been. The parallels were there, especially if you knew him as well as Ur did. It was enough for her to put the pieces together.

She continued, "I didn't want to, but I couldn't get rid of these thoughts. Those questions you asked him were so specific and asinine, I couldn't figure out why you asked them at first, but then I realized; you were testing for holes in his story. That made me start to nitpick at inconsistencies in what you've said that I thought I had let go years ago. Things that had bothered me but I never looked deeper into. Dimensional travel seems like such a ridiculous concept, but it answers so many questions." She turned away from the memorial and faced Kuzan for the first time. "Kuzan, I'm sorry, but I can't let this go. With The Beast Job and Jellal and Cana's disappearance I've been having trouble sleeping at night. With these suspicions on top of it I don't know if I've gotten more than three hours of sleep in the last four days. I have to ask: where are you from?"

Kuzan let out a heavy sigh. He had always feared that this day would come. The day he'd have to admit to all his lies he'd been telling Ur since they'd first met. The day that his credibility and trust would be destroyed. Ur had actually set him up quite well. Bringing him out to the grave of her daughter, the place she was at her most vulnerable. If he denied her here it would wreck anything that was between them and he'd never be able to fix it. At the same time, it was a show of trust. Ur was putting her faith in him and their undefined relationship that what he would tell her wasn't going to destroy them worse than a rejection would. It was something Kuzan would have done back in the Marines, just with more physical coercion than emotional manipulation.

He finally broke the silence just as Ur was starting to believe that she had made a mistake to push the subject. "As I'm sure you've figured out, I'm not from around here."

"Another dimension?"

"Yes."

"Somewhere similar to Earth Land?"

"No. Nothing like Earth Land. There's no magic where I come from."

"No magic? Like Edolas?"

"No. Not running out of magic, no magic at all."

"But your Ice Magic?"

"Before you found me dying on that mountain and covered in lava burns I had never seen magic before. My powers came from a fruit I had eaten. The Chill-Chill Fruit."

Ur's hands moved to her hips and she raised an eyebrow before incredulously repeating his claim. "A fruit? You expect me to believe that you obtained your powers from a fucking fruit!?" She was furious with him. "That's your best excuse.? After all these years of lying, that's the best you can come up with!? I'm not an idiot, Kuzan, even if you've been playing me all these years."

This was clearly spiraling out of control, but Kuzan didn't know how to stop it. After saying it aloud, he realized how strange that sounded, even here in Earth Land. He opened his mouth to try and explain himself, but Ur wasn't having it.

"No! No more lies. I want the truth, Kuzan. About you, about your past, and about us. How long were you planning to lie for? Were you ever going to tell me the truth or did you just enjoy stringing me along with your stories and 'Marine wisdom' and then laughing at how easily I bought it?"

"No, Ur. I would never—"

"How would I know!? You've been lying this whole time." Exhaustion set in and Ur stopped yelling at him. She finally asked him the question she really wanted to know. "What are we, Kuzan? What happened to Cana and Gildarts's family; it made me reevaluate several things in my life. I came to a decision about what I thought I wanted and now I learn that my closest friend, the man I have a connection with that I've only felt once before, has been lying to me ever since we met. Now I don't know what to do. I don't know what to believe about you. How can I after this? How can I know what were lies and what you truly meant? So, tell me, Kuzan 'Frost Giant'. No lies, no half-truths, no avoiding the question. What. Are. We?"

Kuzan didn't know what to say. How was he supposed to answer her? She had just said that she didn't believe anything he was going to say. He wanted to let Ur know that he felt the same, he had felt the same for a while but had just been too much of a coward to tell her. The gap between them that was his web of lies had always kept her just out of reach and now that she had finally discovered it he was afraid that she always would be. There wasn't anything he could say to cross the distance, so he'd have to let his actions speak for him.

Kuzan pulled Ur in close and leaned down to kiss her. Their lips met and he was surprised at how soft they were. It had been so long since he had held someone like this. She tensed under his grip at first, but then relaxed and returned the kiss. It was so much better than he had imagined it would be. He should have done this years ago.

Kuzan broke the kiss apart but didn't let go of Ur. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry that I lied to you for all these years. I was afraid. Afraid to ruin the bond between us and afraid to admit to the horrible things from my past. It's filled with things that I deeply regret now. Fairy Tail showed me that. You showed me that. But I can't lose you. Not like this. Not because of my own indecision. That was how I did things in the past and I'm not that man anymore. I'll tell you everything you want to know." He hesitated for a moment. "That is, if you're still willing to believe me."

"You swear it's the truth?"

He nodded. "Nothing but the truth."

Ur backed away and Kuzan let her go without resistance. She created a bench for them to sit on and took a seat. It was purposefully long enough that there would be plenty of space between them. "Then talk."

Kuzan took a seat a little way down from Ur and finally told her his story. He elaborated on events that he had previously only described in broad strokes and left nothing out. From his youth spent wandering the Blues before he joined the Marines to his meteoric rise through the ranks after eating a logia devil fruit. The turbulent times he had lived through during the rise of the Pirate King and subsequent Golden Age of Piracy that rose from said pirate king's death. The Buster Call on Ohara and Sakazuki's Absolute Justice that left it razed to the ground with only one survivor. How he doomed that survivor, just a little girl, to a life of paranoia, betrayal, and being hunted by saving her. All because he wanted to honor the last wish of his friend, a giant, that he killed that day when he had tried to protect the girl's home. His reunion with that girl as an adult and how she had finally found a family that cared for her—one of the few good things that he had decided to do without being ordered. The War of the Best and death of a man called Whitebeard. He ended it with the deathmatch he lost against Sakazuki.

"…and then I woke up in your hut," he finished.

Ur had asked him several questions during his tale, mostly on how several things from his old world worked. He had done his best to explain them to her but found some things to be a challenge. He had never thought about them before, they just were. But that wasn't going to be enough for her. When he couldn't work his way through a process, he told her that he didn't know. When all he had was rumor and legend, he let her know that it wasn't confirmed. He wanted her to believe him, to regain her trust in him.

He needed her to.

Ur sighed and said, "Your story is crazy." Kuzan shut his eyes in disappointment. He had failed. She didn't believe him. They snapped back open and his hope was restored when she continued. "But so was Jellal's and he was telling the truth too."

"You believe me?" Kuzan asked, letting more desperation into his voice than he'd like.

"This time," Ur told him, a harsh reminded of how fragile that belief was. She got to her feet and walked in front of Kuzan. He made to get up, but Ur placed her hand on his chest and gently pushed him back down. She leaned forward to cup his face and kissed him briefly. When he tried to deepen it, Ur pulled back. "Not yet," she sadly told him. "I love you, Kuzan, and I believe you love me too."

"I do," he quickly confirmed. The comfort he felt around Ur, the sense of belonging and happiness. He had never cared about anyone this much before, not even his kids. He loved them, yes, but this, this was a different kind of love. A new kind of love. He had danced around these feelings for years; he wasn't going to back down now. "I love you, Ur." She smiled at him, but he could see the familiar sadness in that smile and knew that he wouldn't like what she said next.

"I'm glad. But I can't do this now. Not after I've learned that you lied to me for so long. Not here, in front of my daughter's grave. Not after I used her to make you tell me the truth. And especially not while the entire guild is still reeling from Cana's disappearance. It may have led to us admitting our feelings, but I don't want it to be the start of whatever this becomes," she told him while gesturing between them. "Just… just give me some time. I need to process everything, and the guild needs to go back to normal. Well, normal for Fairy Tail."

"I understand," Kuzan said. He truly did. What he had just revealed was a lot and it would take time for her to come to terms with it normally, not to mention with the tragedy they were dealing with it on top of it. He didn't like it, but he understood. "Take as long as you need, Ur. I'll wait for you."

"Thank you." Then she left him sitting there on the bench.

So, Kuzan waited for her. And when she approached him sixteen days, seven hours, and forty-seven minutes from then, he greeted her with open arms and happily embraced the woman he loved and that loved him back.

Omake: I Will Find You

Gildarts and his children were assembled in the house he had built for them. It was several weeks after their disastrous mission and they had all mostly healed by now. Gildarts was standing in the door while they stood in front of him and he said his goodbyes.

"I'm sorry, but I just can't leave Cana alone there. I don't know how long it'll take, but I will bring her home. I swear it," he told them.

Mira spoke for them all when she said, "We understand. That doesn't mean we have to like it though."

"It doesn't," Gildarts agreed. "Thank you for not trying to stop me." He wouldn't be able to go through with this if they asked him not to. He couldn't do that to them, not so soon after they had lost a sibling. It would eat him up inside, but he'd do it. For them. "Just so you know, this… I'd do this for any of you."

"We know," they all spoke in unison, making Gildarts smile and a little teary eyed.

"Heh. Look at you all. So mature. It feels like just yesterday that you were pulling each other's hair over who got the last donut." It had actually been three days ago and they had been a lot rougher than just pulling hair. "When did you all grow up?" he asked while rubbing the heads of Natsu and Mira—the two closest to him.

"Hey, don't get all nostalgic on us now, old man," Mira told him with a smirk. "If you think we're mature now, wait till you get back. We'll all be S-Class then."

Gildarts barked out a laugh. "Ha! Hopefully it won't take that long."

He went around to each of them to say his goodbyes. First was Elfman. He stopped in front of the large teen and couldn't help sneaking a glance at the scar across his right eye. Porlyusica had worked her medical magic and managed to reduce what should have been a thick gash of scar tissue into a thin stitched line from the middle of his forehead down to the bottom of his cheek. She had offered to replace the missing eye as well, but Elfman had turned her down. He wanted to keep it as a reminder of his "unmanliness", at least until he felt he had redeemed himself. Gildarts clasped his forearm tightly and grinned at him. "Take care, Elfman. When I get back I expect to see you with a matching pair of eyeballs."

"I won't let you down!"

He gave the white-haired teen a manly hug, complete with backslap, before moving on to Lisanna and Natsu. The older mage couldn't help but to smirk when he saw the way Lisanna was tightly holding Natsu's hand and how close together the two were standing. It looked like Kuzan and Ur weren't the only one that saw Cana's near-death as a wakeup call. At least something good came out of it. Not wanting to break up the new couple, Gildarts pulled them both into a hug. "You two be good, you hear me? Don't get carried away. I don't want to come back and find a bunch of grandkids running around."

"Gildarts!" the two embarrassedly shrieked in protest.

The man just laughed uproariously over the yelled protests of Lisanna's protective siblings. Those two were going to struggle to have enough quality alone time with them playing helicopter parent. Too bad he wouldn't be here to see it.

Gildarts reached up to scratch a flying Happy behind the ears, making him purr in pleasure. "Take care of these two for me, will ya, Happy."

"Aye, sir!"

Finally, it was Mira's turn. "You're in charge while I'm gone, Mira. Try to keep everyone from burning down too much of the country while I'm gone."

"No promises," she replied with a cocky grin that screamed of future destruction.

This poor world wasn't ready for the unsupervised hell that he was about to unleash upon it once he was gone. Gildarts was almost glad he wouldn't be here to see it. He pulled Mira in close and whispered low enough so that only she could hear him, "I'll bring her back home. I promise."

"You better," Mira whispered back with barely concealed emotions.

This wasn't the same promise he had given to them all earlier. It was a special one just for Mira. He wasn't sure what was between her and Cana, but he knew that her disappearance had cut deeper than she'd like to admit.

Gildarts straightened from the hug and headed for the door. He turned the knob and paused just before leaving to look back at his children. He didn't know how long this would take, so he was going to burn them into his memory for years to come. "I'll be back." And with that promise, he left.

Gildarts stood panting in slight exhaustion on a hill next to Jellal—now wearing a mask and cloak with a hood that covered his distinctive blue hair and going by the name Mystogan—and stared up at the swirling portal above him. "This it?"

"Yes," Mystogan confirmed, voice muffled enough by the mask that he wouldn't be recognized if someone knew this world's Jellal. He nervously glanced at the magically drained Gildarts. The older man had carved a brand-new valley to use up enough magic to avoid potentially turning into a magic crystal and the dimension traveler wasn't sure it would be enough. "You're sure about this?"

"More sure than I've been about anything in my life," he replied. Gildarts pulled a letter out of his cloak and handed it to Mystogan. "Give that to Master next time you're in the guild. It explains what I've been doing and gives him a story to tell the Magic Council for where I've gone."

Mystogan silently accepted the letter. He glanced up to the Anima and frowned underneath his mask. "It's now or never. I'm going to have to close it soon whether you make it through or not." And he didn't want to be stuck on an awkward road trip with a pissed off Gildarts. Traveling with him to find this Anima had been awkward enough with all the barely contained hostility the man had for him. He didn't want to know what it'd be like if he made the man wait to save his daughter.

Gildarts crouched down. "See you on the other side, kid," he said before launching himself up into the portal. He felt a strange force start to pull at the magic still left inside of him and used the last of it to launch himself even further into the portal. Gildarts felt the first force relinquish its pull as another took hold of him and pulled him into the portal.

When he exited the portal, Gildarts found himself falling through the sky over a forest. Expecting as much when he had been dragged through a portal in the sky, Gildarts reared his fist back to release a burst of magic only to be reminded that he couldn't do that here. On one hand, this meant that he had successfully traveled to Edolas without becoming a chunk of crystalized magic. On the other hand, he was now falling at terminal velocity with no way of stopping himself. On the metaphorical third hand, this was the first time since he had originally manifested his magic that he didn't have to keep at least half his attention on not crushing everything within five feet of him.

Gildarts didn't consider the fourth metaphorical hand because of his painful and leafy meeting with a tree.

After scraping himself off of the forest floor and the multitude of branches that had slowed his descent so that he didn't end up in a crater that wasn't made by his lack of control, Gildarts brushed off the leaves and twigs covering him and observed his surroundings. After taking the time to compare his position from where he had left Earth Land to where he had arrived in Edolas and calculating the sun's position in the sky, Gildarts determined that he had absolutely no fucking idea where he was and set off in a random direction.

It didn't matter that he was in a strange world with no magic and no clue where he was, he had a daughter to find. They'd be pissed at him when he got back to Fairy Tail, and he had probably earned more than a few slaps to the face, but there was no turning back now. He wasn't returning to Fairy Tail without Cana. He was going to find her, and he would crush anyone that got in his way.

A/N: Christ, this took forever. We're finally hitting canon territory next chapter. A big thanks to everyone that has helped make this story the most followed/favorited story in the Fairy Tail x One Piece crossover section. That's two of my goals down, only one left to go. Until next chapter, stay safe out there everyone. Later.