The night wind on the roof was cold, tugging at Ultear's loose hair.
She acted as if she hadn't heard Shane's typically cutting comment. Her dark eyes were unfocused, fixed somewhere near a snow-laden branch not far away.
Same moon. Same snow.
The scene overlapped too easily with a memory she didn't want to revisit.
Shane took in her absent stare. He wasn't narcissistic enough to think her mood had anything to do with him.
He thought for a moment and remembered the name Gray had mentioned.
He moved to stand beside her, not sitting, just looking down at her profile outlined in silver by moonlight. "Thinking about your mother?"
"…Mm."
Her answer was unexpectedly calm, her tone completely flat.
That surprised him.
Based on every contact so far, simply brushing anything related to "Ur," "Ice-Make," or "Gray"—anything connected to her mother—made Ultear react like a cat whose tail had been stomped.
But that was her problem, not his.
She wasn't his acquaintance. He had no obligation to manage her emotional state.
In fact, after a full day of travel and the social energy required to survive Fairy Tail's chaos, fatigue was crashing over him in waves.
He was exhausted.
So unless this was truly important, he had no interest in standing around in the cold, watching the moon with her.
"You rattled the chain to call me out here. Don't tell me it's just to moon-gaze or talk about this," he said bluntly.
His flat response made Ultear, who had just worked up the courage to share something, catch her breath.
She drew in a deep lungful of icy air to smother the roiling in her chest.
Every time she talked to him, her emotions swung too hard; it was hard to stay composed.
"Actually…" She uncurled her arms from her knees and absently smoothed a strand of wind-tossed hair. "I was one of the children used in Brain's experiments at the Bureau of Magical Development."
"I see." Shane nodded.
It answered some of his earlier questions.
No wonder she hated Brain. Childhood scars like that never really healed.
But it raised a new one.
With hatred that deep between them, what person, or power, had managed to put the two of them on the same side—however temporarily?
Ultear seemed lost in the current of memory. Her eyes went distant as she continued, her tone still level. "That day, my mother abandoned me and left me at—"
Seeing she wasn't joking, Shane fell quiet and listened.
The wind swept over the tiles, carrying faint sounds of snow sliding from eaves.
She drew another breath, this time clearly to steady herself. "My mother abandoned me, sent me to Brain's bureau. I was treated as nothing but a test subject to increase mana—body and mind shredded by it."
"Mm," Shane answered softly.
He now understood a lot more about why she'd become so twisted and defensive.
Ultear's voice gained a cold edge. "Later, I escaped. I ran home as hard as I could, to find my mother. But when I got there, I saw her… smiling happily with another child."
"So that child was Gray," Shane said immediately, connecting the dots. "That's why you treat him like trash—because you're jealous?"
He raised an eyebrow. It did sound a lot like one of those melodramatic family dramas you heard drunk people telling in taverns.
Ultear's breath hitched; her ears flushed faintly in the moonlight.
She glared daggers at him and skipped over the parts that made her feel exposed. "Anyway, after that, I increased my power and destroyed the place that experimented on me. Then—"
She hesitated, choosing her words. "I met the one at the abyss of magic—the one who taught me Lost Magic: Arc of Time."
"You destroyed the bureau?" Shane couldn't help blurting out.
She flicked her eyes toward him, expression unchanged. "So what if I did?"
"…In that case, my opinion of you just went up a little," Shane said after a beat, meeting her gaze without flinching.
She didn't respond to that. Her eyes drifted distant again. "He saw my talent and offered me something I couldn't refuse.
"So I agreed to work for him. That's why, following his orders, I cooperated with Brain—for the time being."
"And your goal?" Shane pressed, frowning. "What are you after? Don't tell me he wants to use the R-System to resurrect Zeref too?"
"No."
She denied it and slowly turned her head, meeting his eyes directly for the first time. "There's no need to resurrect him. That 'most evil' black mage… never left this world."
She enunciated every word, as if hammering a nail into the night. "Zeref… is still alive."
"Zeref is alive?" Even Shane couldn't help breathing the words out, pupils contracting.
Zeref—the legendary name in history books, creator of countless demons, a bogeyman invoked to hush crying children—the peak of black magi… still alive?
The thought was so staggering it knocked his mind off-balance. "How… is that possible? Then what was the point of building the Tower of Heaven?"
"Using Brain's tower as a decoy. A big enough target to draw the Council's attention."
Ultear lowered her gaze. Her lashes cast faint, dark arcs on her cheeks. "As for our real goal—
—I can't say."
Last question.
Shane forced himself to set aside the explosive shock of "Zeref is alive" and focus. He locked his eyes on hers. "Why the sudden cooperation? Don't tell me these shackles on your leg changed your mind."
Ultear's eyes trailed up to the moon again. For some reason, the memory of Fairy Tail's chaotic warmth flickered through her mind.
After a moment, she said quietly, with some emotion he couldn't quite pin down, "I just realized something… in the end, people can only rely on themselves.
"If you place all your hopes and leverage on one person… and they fail, you lose everything."
Shane's eyes narrowed slightly. There was something unsaid in that. "So you mean…"
"Mm." She gave a small nod.
"Your Fairy Tail is strong. The master, a Wizard Saint. That lecher—" her lip curled, "Gildarts. And you, Shane—you're all strong."
She drew in a breath and made her decision. "So, I want to put… some of my eggs in your basket."
~~~
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