This chapter is dedicated to Cryptic_Eyes, the NaLu writer, and one of the most brilliant Fairy Tail fanfic writers on Wattpad, because I adore their work and their awe-inspiring originality!

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Winter's POV

Trusting Levy to keep an eye on Loke, I lunged for Candor the first moment he turned away from the scene, absently flicking a hand behind him like a signal for his zombies.

My fingers scraped his cloak before two arms locked up around my waist, dragging me back roughly with brute force. I kicked madly, writhing like a goddamn bucking horse, until my foot connected to my attacker's kneecap with a sickening snap.

I landed gracefully on the ground, poised to lunge again after Candor's retreating form, which I could only identify by the swishing tail of his cloak at this point, he was so immersed in his crowd of puppets. "Get back here, you ass!" I growled vehemently to his back.

Explosions of light erupted all around the street; the work of Levy's LIGHTs no doubt, trying to momentarily stun the citizens. We weren't in to causing needless broken limbs, so she was doing the best she could. I had to force her and Loke to the back of my mind so that I could focus on the task at hand: Whooping Candor's baby ass.

A sea of hands reached for me as I tried to dive after Candor, snagging fistfuls of my clothes or hair; one even successfully twisted into my goggles' strap, nearly choking me before I managed to wrench my head away and push deeper into the seemingly endless crowd of bodies.

Neon-green cat eyes popped up everywhere; the same marks Levy told me I'd been wearing until only just recently. Some bore them on their arms, others their necks, and even fewer had them pressed to the center of their foreheads. Levy had said they'd return to normal if someone only "magically" brushed the mark away; I didn't know what she meant by that, but I knew that an average citizen wouldn't be able to remove it by themselves.

Which explained why practically the entire sleep town of Somnia was trying to kill me at this moment in time.

"Gah! Dammit!" Another pair of arms caught me round the waist again. Before I could kick myself free again, an arm slid around my neck like a noose, tightening the pressure of their forearm at my throat until little black specks invaded my red-veiled vision, which slowly bled into a gray, colorless landscape as I continually failed to unhook their arm from myself. The tension pooled in my muscles eased, my body melting into involuntary relaxation.

For the love of God, I was losing consciousness entirely too much lately. During this job especially, but there were too many times before now too. Something really needed to be done about that.

I'd resorted to clawing feebly at the restricting arm when only shallow breaths passed through my nose, barely swelling my chest with enough oxygen to keep going. Damn. Goddammit. I still had a bastardy lawn-head to catch!

Then, all at once, the weight against my back disappeared; all arms dropped away from me and I tumbled to my hands and knees, sucking in sweet, sweet air like the commodity was going out of style.

Lost in my own euphoria, I didn't immediately take note of the gale-force winds shrieking through the streets. That is, until one flattened me onto my stomach, making my chin connect painfully with the coarse stone beneath me. I tasted metal.

Lovely. I'd bitten my tongue.

Wait. Wind. That was important.

I flipped around onto my back, letting out a sort of soundless gasp at the sight of Loke, disheveled and looking just a little worse-for-wear, standing just in front of Levy, who I guessed he'd shoved behind him, like he'd done to me on our last big job. His chest heaved with each strangled breath he took; the hand placed over his ring trembled, as did his knees. A blue-purple bruise on his cheek (that I winced at the vague memory of inflicting) was starting to swell, puffing up the skin around his eye and all but forcing it closed.

But his eyes were bright and clear, full of determination and strange pride it took me a moment to place.

All around us were the limp bodies of the civilians, out cold or well on their way to the same dismal place. I blinked. Loke, ruffled and debilitated as he was, managed to take about two hundred people out of commission in one go.

Hey, he might've been a shameless flirt, but he was damn reliable in a fight. And to me, that's all that really mattered. 

Loke was dependable. Huh. I wondered if his many girlfriends thought so too.

"Loke--"

"Go."

"Huh?"

His smile radiated fatigue, something the observant Levy jumped to attention at. She gently guided Loke to the ground, letting him sink gracelessly to his knees, then instructing him to stretch out his legs. He sighed - whether in contentment or misery, I didn't know. "Go," he repeated, more forcefully than before. "Get Candor. I'll help Levy make sure these guys don't cause you any more trouble."

"But--" I tried to protest, knowing he wasn't in any condition to keep up defence for that long.

"I've got it covered, Winter." Something in his voice had me nodding, quite against my permission; but he took it in stride and conjured up a slightly less depressing smile. "It's not like I can chase after him like this. So let me do what I can, because it's what I'll always do for my friends. A knight's shamed if he's too weak to help his princess, right?"

My cheeks colored at the mention of my being a princess (to his knight); did he have to go there? Really. His lines were just consistently cheesy.

But no less meaningful, I guess.

"You'd be more useful helping Levy scrub away these marks." I made a motion that encompassed the whole of the street - and its very unfortunate occupants. "Leave the fighting up to me. Levy, " I added, catching the bluenette's eye, "do not, under any circumstances, let him do unnecessary shit. Got it?"

"Got it," she confirmed, a soft giggle following her response. I frowned; now was hardly the time for giggling. But Loke was cracking yet another smile, a quiet chuckle rumbling in his chest. So I caved. Whatever was so funny, I just waved, shot a stern look in Levy's direction and turned on my heel to hurry in Candor's latest direction, sidestepping bodies where they crossed my path.

"Be careful!" I heard Loke call just before I left their view, darting down a side street that I had an inkling about. I paused, my foot hovering a few inches above the path. He didn't even sound worried. It took a moment, but my deadened brain finally picked up on the fact that for Loke to not worry about my safety, he'd have to consider me capable enough to handle myself. And that swelled my chest with a distinct ego-inflating emotion I couldn't help but grin crookedly at. 

I had more than one reason to kick Candor's bony ass now.

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Candor found me before I had the absolute pleasure of finding him.

I spun instictively, ducking under the leg aimed at the back of my head. In a role-reversal from earlier, I grinned cheekily and rammed my shoulder into Candor's unprotected gut, knocking him flat on the cobblestones. 

So it wasn't an exact replication of what happened before, but hey, I liked to improvise.

I had him by the clasp of his cloak, a foot off the ground, my snarling face no more than two inches from his own passive one. "Ready to beg for mercy?" I growled.

"Not particularly."

My grip tightened, cinching the neckline of his cloak around his throat. A faint feeling of unease came over me, seeing the almost imperceptible widening of his cat-like eyes. This was a kid. A kid, Winter. Just what the hell were you doing, bullying a kid so much scrawnier than you?

Getting revenge, of course.

Was that justifiable, though? Sure, I was still seething with rage over what had happened to Loke, over what this kid had done to me. I could have wrung his skinny little neck then and there and probably saved myself a lot of headaches, but my hand paused, instead tangling in the fabric of his cloak that gathered in front of his chest. 

"Listen, brat." 

"I'm listening."

My fingers twitched, eager to curl into a fist so that that smart mouth of his could be beaten into submission. Mercy was a much harder concept than I thought.

"You hurt my friends, made me hurt my friends. Fairies don't take it lightly when their nakama are hurt. You'll pay for it, one way or the other, Candor." I bit out each word clearly, swallowing my fury so that I sounded somewhat literate and not like a yowling puppy. 

Candor's complacent look remained unchanged; it deepened, actually, if that was even possible. The corner of his mouth lifted in what I thought might have been a smirk.

"You should learn to watch your back more, Miss Winter."

Faster than I could react, an arm snaked around my neck, the other wrapping around my waist, dragging me back from Candor, who dropped from my hold with as much grace as the feline he personified. 

But seriously, I was getting ambushed way too much. Was this "Let's Kill Winter Day!" or something?

Candor calmly inspected himself for dirt or debris or whatever could've gotten onto his clothes during our scuffle, then raised his head, flopping bangs parting to allow me another glimpse of his calculating eyes. 

"If you're thinking this is just another faceless civilian for you to mercilessly beat down in order to corner me, I suggest you take into account the fact that this one has a face. A very innocent one, at that."

A jolt went through me, straightening my spine and freezing the elbow I'd been in the process of throwing back. A tuft of black hair, swept up by the cliche breeze whispering across the street, flitted in front of my eyes. 

The arms holding me in place felt fragile, like they'd never seen a day of work in their life and were ignorant as to what a weight was. A feverish heat was radiating from behind me, filled with the nervous tension I'd taken note of during our first encounter. I could imagine those gorgeous emerald eyes staring at me blankly, locked on the back of my head, filled with only the obediance of a lemming.

"Ayah." My tongue, too big for my mouth, barely formed the name. Candor's condescending smile just confirmed what I'd already figured out.

So Lorenzo had been bullied into after all. His only daughter - probably the only woman in the house - was stuck under Candor's thumb, existing to only do his stupid bidding when called on. Hell, if he'd had Luce, I'd do anything he said.

...Well, until another Fairy came along and rearranged his face, anyway.

"I'm not an idiot, Winter," Candor said, circling me with his eyes narrowed in appraisal. "You won't hurt someone you think to be innocent. Well, as long as you have some sort of connection to them you won't. Did you really think charming Mr. Black was free of my vice?"

"I beg to differ," I mumbled carelessly, referring to when he denied his stupidity. He flicked a hand at me, resulting in Ayah suddenly having a blade in her hand and digging it a good quater-inch into my side.

I winced, biting back my sharp gasp that practically begged to jump outta my mouth. That charm bracelet was officially off my wish list. Dammit. Mutilating my finger with it hadn't really been enough for me to escape its allure, but this, this did it no sweat.

"I would love to know what kinda mother you have to turn out like this much of an asshole," I ground out through clenched teeth.

Oddly enough, Candor came to a halt. His fingers flexed, fighting back to the urge to curl into a fist, it looked like. His eyes cut to my face, raging behind his evergreen bangs. "She was wonderful, really." My eyes widened at the chill coating his words. Worse than Gray's Ice-Make antics. Like he'd locked up all traces of warm emotions and relished in the desolate ones. "Devoted, loving, witty and brilliant, even without a job to show for it. My father, on the other hand, was the opposite. Oh how I loathed that bitter smell of his, a mix of stale alcohol and sweat." His eyes narrowed to slits, just an inkling of darkened green beneath heavy black lashes. His already gaunt features pulled tauter when the ghost of a grimace shadowed his face. 

"I'm only free of that odor when there are a hundred cities between us."

A glimmer of sympathy cracked through my knot of fury that had settled in my stomach. Just a flimsy little crack. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

Oh, don't let me become the cliche heroine who forgives the bastard in the end!

"Just cause you had a shitty childhood doesn't give you any right to make people into your puppet army," I snarled. I'd gone completely still, no more writhing, nor more twisting, no more half-baked ideas of escape. I didn't have the energy to summon a Spirit even when my Keys were in reach. If I made a move to try any Solid Scipt Ayah's knife would make a very undesired reappearance, probably going for a place a lot more vital than my hip. Speaking of, the warm dampness that had exploded from the initial wound had already spread around to both my front and back, inching closer to the waistline of my pants. 

This was heaven. Really. It was.

Damn, Gray was right; I drown in sarcasm when I'm upset. Good to know for future reference, I guess.

"Oh I know." There was Candor's candor again. "It makes up for absolutely none of my past actions, this included. And yet, I don't care. Excuses are for the uncertain."

"So... you should really be making excuses then, huh."

His glare could have curdled milk, I swear to God. 

I bit from tongue to keep from making any more sarcastic remarks as he walked around to my other side; Ayah's knife had moved to just beneath my chin at this point, so I couldn't keep track of Candor except to strain my eyes at the corners, which was pointless as he kept just out of sight, knowing my limits.

"If not for your tongue, you really would have been the perfect toy." Candor's bony finger prodded my arm; a growl vibrated in the back of my throat but didn't make it any further. I was at his mercy, much as I hated to admit it, and angering him any more than I had didn't really seem like a smart idea. Granted, I wasn't known for my smart ideas in situations such as this, but even I had enough sense to know when one had to save their own skin through (begrudging) silence. "Although, that problem would have been sold had you remained under my control. I'm still impressed with the strength of your will, but I would have much preferred you be my plaything over Ayah here, doll-like though she may be."

Ayah's hand - unaccompanied by the blade this time - nudged my chin around forcefully, turning my head to face Candor. The green-haired teen had his eyes on Ayah. But the look he was giving her... it wasn't one of malice or anything, or even smug satisfaction at having her under his control. It was softer, more vulnerable, a look full of an emotion I couldn't quite place. 

The moment he realized I was studying his unprecedented reaction, the look hardened into a glower and my head wrenched back around as he stepped in front of me again.

We lapsed into silence, neither willing to speak, no sound to prompt a response.

This kid is messed up. My mouth threatened to twitch into a scowl at the thought. I'd been thrust into this more-than-just-a-little ridiculous situation because he'd been bored. And now, after all the drama, all the pain and fury he'd caused, here we were, standing around, not solving a goddamn thing. The red flush of anger in my cheeks deepened, blistering my skin. Just do something, dammit!

"Get on with whatever your plan it," I snapped; Candor's head shot up, his clouded eyes refocusing. What had he been thinking about, so completely that even his precious plaything escaped his notice? "I'm sick of playing the waiting game, so hurry the hell up!"

Candor's lips curved into a smirk. "As you wish." He waved a hand - the cold serrated metal lightly brushed my skin, tracing a thin line across my throat. I resisted the urge to swallow. "You're useless now that you've broken free, I'm afraid. And I can't have your friends spoiling my fun, so the moment I'm rid of you, I'll have Little Ayah 'betray' them. Does that sound pleasant, Winter?"

It sounded like this boy was a sadist and needed possibly the first proper time-out he'd ever experienced. It's not like he was waiting for me to say something, though, seeing as how - with another absent wave - the knife bit into my skin and began another unwilling smile into my throat.

It was agonizingly slow - white-hot pain traced a path at a snail's pace, the hot blood sliding down to my collarbone, spilling over and staining my already sweat-ridden shirt. 

I had another sudden wish for rain.

And then: "Ayah!" 

Everything happened in a split-second.

The grip on the knife slackened - Puppet-Ayah's brief moment of recognition - I mumbled a rushed (and vaguely insincere) apology to Ayah, threw my elbow into her abdomen and tore the charm bracelet from her wrist as she doubled over. Slipping on the bracelet, I lunged at a wide-eyed Candor (who couldn't seem to comprehend the arrival of Lorenzo), the knife materializing in my hand as we tumbled to the ground in a mess of tangled limbs and torn clothing. 

I had the knife poised at his throat, the perfect opportunity to end things. Candor was defenseless; Ayah was his only doll in the area, and she was being restrained by Lorenzo, who held her crumpled form to his chest, rocking her back and forth and whispering muffled words of apology and comfort. 

"It's finished, brat," I breathed.

Only stony silence met my ears, dulled as they were to the sob-inducing scene going on behind me.

"Tch."

Seconds ticked by, stretching on into a minute. Candor's stare was unblinking, unwavering; my hand was shaking. 

This wasn't happening. I couldn't do it. My brain refused to connect, to send the message that yeah, it's better to just end this guy here because it felt wrong. Looking into this kid's eyes, seeing an emotion I knew better than the joy I often expressed, seeing my past, my memories, myself.... I couldn't do it. 

No matter how far Lucy and I travelled, how much distance we put between us and our home, how many new memories me made, how many friends came into our lives and made us smile and laugh, there was the lingering ache in my chest, the familiar ghost of lonliness that I would never be rid of. A memory of anger and hatred and a deep, bitter sadness. 

His eyes, no matter what kind of twisted film tried to hide them, were my eyes before I came to Fairy Tail with Lucy. Before I met Natsu, and Gray and Levy and Loke and... everyone. 

"...Fairies don't kill."

The knife clattered to the ground, restoring sound and time to our little patch of hell. I placed my hands on either side of Candor's head, pushing myself to my knees. 

He blinked. 

"What?"

"We don't kill; don't make me say it again, brat." 

As I was trying to ignore the nagging voice in my head that kept screaming at me for being an absolute moron, my eyes landed on Candor's smirk. "You're still a coward, then. A coward who can't even finish off an enemy after they'd done so much to them--"

"She died, didn't she?"

He opened his mouth, some retort on his lips, but it snapped closed a moment later when no sound came out. His eyes darkened, the green disappearing as he forced them shut and wrenched his head around, gritting his teeth.

He'd finally lost his composure, huh?

"She died," I repeated, my voice nothing more than a hoarse whisper, "I get it. I get it way more than I'd like to. Your amazing, wonderful, angelic mom died, and she left with you a bastard of a dad who didn't give a shit about what happened to you, right? That ring any bells, Candor?" He said nothing, didn't turn to look at me and accept what I was saying, so I just forged ahead. "You're lonely. A lonely little kid who just happened to be good at magic and took some astonishingly god-awful turns. I get it. But you're an ass, you know that, for doing all this shit because you've had a rough life? People aren't toys."

I shut my eyes, taking a few breaths before adding, "You're just lucky I'm one of those guys who think people can change."

"....." I still wasn't getting any sort of reaction from Candor, apart from a disbelieving glint in his half-hooded eyes, which he kept depressingly on the ground beside us. He tight lips were bugging me, so I sighed and heaved myself to my feet, careful to accidentally jam my heel into his stomach. While he was groaning in what must have been complete agony, folded over like a used tissue, I wiped the blood from my neck, really only succeeding in smearing it into a horror show of a mess. I frowned, annoyed, at the red stain left on my palm, but shrugged and held out my clean hand for Candor.

"So, in order to help you on your journey to change, ya wanna join Fairy Tail?"