When the authorities arrived Yuki was taken to the hospital while Gren was arrested for assault and battery. Elkis was just stunned by the whole thing, she had never seen Gren lash out like that before. Nor did she ever seem him looking pained and having tears in his eyes. She assumed that Gren was the type to get real emotional or angry or sad. But now that she thought about, everyone was capable of getting angry or sad. Also during that beating she had heard him accuse Yuki of doing something terrible to someone. What was that about?

As soon as the cops left Gren alone in their car handcuffed while they checked the house for blood or any D.N.A samples, Elkis made her way over to the vehicle to see if she could get some answers.

"Are you alright?" She asked him.

"I've just been arrested. What do you think?" He replied.

"Sorry. I just want to know what just happened here."

"Whatever do you mean?"

"You know I mean. You brutally attacked Mr. Vastia. Maybe even tried to kill him."

"I was only tying to get justice."

"You have a funny definition of justice. Just what did Mr. Vastia do to deserve being beaten to the point of unconsciousness?"

"He stole."

"That reaction was about more than just taking a trinket from you. You said something about how he took someone away from you. A she? Mind telling me what that's about?"

"Actually I do."

"Gren did he hurt someone you know? Is somebody in trouble? Who is this person?"

Gren contemplating denying what he she was accusing him of but that would mean he would have to lie and that was one thing he would never do.

"Someone long gone." He said. "And the truly evil crime that Mr. Vastia committed can't ever be proven. Not here at least."

"I don't understand."

"Of course you don't. No one would." He said looking away from her. "You better leave Miss Scarlet. If the police see you talking with me they might suspect you were in on my little attack."

She would have protested but he had a point. So she moved away from the police car and headed back to her own vehicle.

"Oh and by the way." He called. "Nice to know that you still have that heroism in you."

"What?"

But before she could question him about what he meant by that the police had returned and taken him back to their station. Elkis drove back to Nakku's apartment but druing the whole drive she couldn't stop thinking about Gren's reaction and his last words to her.

"Nice to know that you still have that heroism in you."

What in the world did that mean? She had never done anything heroic in her life. Yes she stopped Gren from beating someone to death but that's about it and she wouldn't exactly call that heroic. She was just doing what any other sane person would do. Right?

...

When Gray located the nearest brook, he stopped the carriage and decided to travel the rest of the way on foot with Juvia who continued to try to convince him not to go through with his plan to kill Natsu.

"Please, see reason." She told him. "No harm has been done over the loss of just one book."

"How many times must we go over this." He said back to her. "He took that book so that he could learn my weakness and use it to destroy me."

"Are you really that paranoid or are you just being petty like with that rose?"

He flinched but still remained calm.

"What do you mean petty?" He asked her.

"You demanded a very high price from my former master just because he plucked one rose. Now I can understand your anger over it and wanting him to pay for his theft but paying for it with either his life or his entire fleet of ships, that sounds pretty petty to me."

"He had no right to steal from me."

"I understand that but it was just one simple flower. Was the loss of it really that great?"

"Yes!" He snapped. "That one simple flower along with all the others are more precious than gold to me! They're all I have left of..."

The rest of his sentence died on his lips and he once again had that look on his face as if he had said too much.

"All you left of what?" Juvia asked now interested.

He didn't answer. He only turned away from her and kept walking with her following after him.

"Now wait a minute what was that about?"

"Nevermind. It's not important."

"You know I can't really understand your way of thinking if you won't tell me why you think this way. Why are you so secretive? Why are you so paranoid? And why are roses so important to you?"

He didn't respond.

"Hey don't think that I'm going to give up on this just because you ignore me. I'm very determined."

"Oh be quiet, will you? Before I take your tongue just like I did with that old perv we met."

"You wouldn't dare."

"I think we both know I would."

Juvia wasn't entirely convinced but she wasn't going to swim in shark infested waters. So for the rest of the walk she kept silent until a small shack came into view. From a distance they saw Natsu arrive at the shack carrying the book he had stolen.

"There he is." Gray said with his wicked grin.

"I am not going to stand by and watch you kill a man." Juvia said.

"Well you're welcome to sit if you like but you are going to watch."

"I'll cry out. I'll warn him."

"You do that and I will not only slaughter him but I slaughter his partner two. Now do you wanna watch one person die today or two? Because I'm fine with either one."

She looked at him completely mortified.

"You really can't be this cold hearted! Don't you have an empathy or at least a conscience?"

"It's survival of the fittest my dear. He poses as a threat to my life so I must remove him. It's no different from a wolf slaying a hunter who targets him."

"There is a difference! Because you don't know for sure if he is a threat to you! You wouldn't even hear him out on why wanted the book! Can't you at least give him a chance to explain himself?"

"He'd probably only lie to me."

"If you're so sure of this then let's make a deal. If he really did take that book to use it as a way to destroy you then I'll let you kill him. I'll keep my mouth shut and I won't try to stop you. But if he took it for another reason then you have to let him live."

"I don't have to do anything."

"If he's not trying to destroy you then you have no real reason to kill him! Any other reason for doing that is just evil and maybe I'm crazy for thinking this but I don't believe you'd kill someone just to be cruel."

"You're right. You are crazy because I would do that. Now pipe down and wait here."

He snapped his fingers and suddenly Juvia found her feet unable to move.

"That should give you a good view and again if you cry out then you get to watch two people die today."

Poor Juvia. She so desperately wanted to warn Natsu of what was to come but she feared that if she did it would only make things worse. As Gray drew closer and closer to the young knight, she prayed that somehow the beastly man would have a change of heart and spare him.

Gray kept himself cleverly hidden in the shadows of the trees so Natsu wouldn't see him and he used a spell the covered his scent so Natsu wouldn't smell him either. During his stealthy walk toward his rival he began to think of how he would kill him. Quick and painless or slow and torturous. On one hand slow and torturous would really get the message that no one steals from the Shadow Beast and lives to talk about it. But on the other hand Natsu had technically already been tortured and he didn't want to make Juvia watch something more horrible than it needed to be.

His debate on murder tactics became interrupted when a blonde, spikey haired man came out of the shack and went to greet Natsu.

"Did you get the book?" He asked him.

"I went through a lot to get my hands on it but here it is." Natsu said holding it up.

"Oh thank God. Hurry, we haven't much time!"

The two men rushed inside of the shack. Gray watched them from the window and he still kept himself cloaked in the shadows. He saw that there was a third person inside that shack. A pretty maiden with short white hair lying in bed. Her entire body was sweaty, she looked as pale as death, and it was obvious she was with child.

"Must be the woman they stole from the old perv." Gray thought to himself.

"Do you think the book can really show what's wrong with her?" The blonde haired man asked Natsu.

"Positive Sting." Natsu said. "Trust me. If it didn't then I wouldn't have taken such a risk to steal it."

The man called Sting gently grasped the hand of the ailing woman.

"Just hold on Yukino." He told her lovingly. "Hold on."

Natsu opened the book and flipped through the pages rabidly. He stopped on one page and read the words on it carefully.

"Alright it says here she was poisoned by a potion called Maternal Death. It ensures that if a woman becomes pregnant then her body becomes weaker which each passing month and when the time comes for her to have the baby then she will die as soon as it's born."

"That bastard Jiemma!" Sting cursed. "I know he did this! That arrow he shot into her arm months ago was coated in something! He wanted to make her pay for eloping with me! Why can't the son of a bitch just accept that she never loved him?!"

"Don't worry Sting the cure for this poison is right in here. She needs to drink tea brewed from roots of the albino tree."

"There's one that grows just down a hill from here."

"I'll cut it down and get the roots. You stay with your wife."

Gray was at loss for thoughts at the moment. So Natsu didn't steal the book to learn his weakness and kill him. It was to help this Sting person save his wife. Still that didn't mean Natsu wouldn't try to use the book against him. He made a dagger appear in his hand and moved to stab Natsu fatally once he stepped out of the shack. However he wasn't the only one who knew of the knight's goal.

Juvia wasn't close enough to see the whole thing but she had heard every word spoken between Natsu and Sting. Her panic and desperation rose, her internal prayers became louder and louder. Then suddenly Gray could hear her voice. in his mind.

"Please God don't let him do this." He heard her say. "Please come into his heart and help him see how wrong this is."

He turned to look at her. She wasn't talking. Her eyes were begging and her head was shaking in protest but her mouth was silent. It was completely closed and making no movement yet for some reason he could still hear her voice talking to him.

"Please! Please Gray!" He heard her voice say when she looked at him pleadingly. "Natsu wasn't trying to do you any harm! All he wanted to do was save an innocent woman's life!"

How the hell was she doing that? How could she talk to him without actually moving her lips. Furthermore why did she sound like she was right next to him?

"You can't do this!" Her voice continued. "He was trying to prevent a man from losing his true love and a child from being motherless! Can you really kill someone for doing that? And if you kill him then that woman may die and that child will never know it's own mother! Are you so cold hearted that you would take a mother from her child?!"

It was those last two pleas that really got to him. Suddenly he was reminded of when his own mother was mercilessly stolen from him and how he had wished with all his heart that someone would have saved her when he couldn't. She was right, if he killed Natsu for this it would be like if someone killed his former neighbor Macao. True the man failed to help his mother but he tried and it cost his ability to walk. Or at least it did until Gray restored his crippled foot. Natsu risked his very life to keep that unborn child from suffering the same fate. Now Gray still hated Natsu with every fiber of his being but it wasn't enough to make him stoop this low.

So when Natsu stepped out of the shack Gray did nothing and just let leave to get roots from that tree. He walked back to Juvia.

"What happened?" She asked. "Are you still going to kill him?"

"No. I can't."

"Why?"

"We made a deal remember? If his reason for stealing the book wasn't to use it against me then I had to let him live and like or not I never break a deal."

"You mean you confirmed that deal? I didn't think you did. You didn't tell me you did."

"I confirmed it internally."

"Really?" She said skeptically. "Is that so?"

"Yes. Why else would I let someone who I hate live?"

"Maybe because deep down you have a good heart."

"Don't insult me. I have a heart but it's a heart of stone. One that doesn't empathize or sympathize."

"Hmm..."

"Hmm what?"

"Oh nothing it's just that I thought you didn't lie."

"I don't lie."

Well in a way he wasn't lying but at the same time he wasn't. He truly believed that he had only spared Natsu because he had some how internally made a deal with Juvia but that wasn't the case.

"Let's just go." He said. "I've wasted enough of my time already."

"As you wish." She said trying not to smile.

"By the way how the hell did you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Talk to me back there without moving your lips."

"I didn't talk to you."

"Yes you did. I heard you."

"But I didn't say anything."

"Look who's lying now? I remember exactly what you said. You were telling me not to kill him. That I shouldn't take a mother from her child."

"I never said that." She said in astonishment. "I thought it but I didn't say it. How did you know I was thinking that? Are you a mind reader?"

"No. I have many powers but that's no one of them. What about you? Do you have some sort of secret magic that you haven't told me about?"

"No. I'm just a human maid servant. Nothing special."

He looked at her suspiciously. Aside from her beauty there wasn't anything unusual about her. Appearance wise that is. She seemed completely human with no special abilities or powers. So why did he have the strangest feeling that she wasn't just a regular human woman?