After Christmas Special

"Character counts most when duty calls."

Before she did anything else, Serilda looked around for her hound. The wolf came trotting over to Serilda proudly with a gnarled, dead elf in her jaws around its neck. Her muzzle was coated with blood, but with the battle clearly over Xiuhcoatl only wagged her tail energetically like this had all been nothing more than a training simulation. Serilda coaxed the animal to drop the mangled corpse and checked her over for any injuries. Even as she did this, she felt a pulsation of magic as her wounds began to heal. A quick glance up told her it had been Markus who had provided the medical aid.

Once she was sure that Xiuh was fine -- and, of course, once she had softly adorned the animal with quiet words of affection and affirmation -- Serilda stood and faced the others. Despite the fact that the danger was over, she still carried herself for all the world like she was wearing clothing. It certainly wasn’t idea, and the proper young woman in her was screaming to get herself into some clothing, but it would not do for her to tremble and squirm about it. Doing so would besmirch her noble name much more than composed nudity would, so she masked her insecurities behind an even expression while listening to the two Slayers speak to one another.

“I am fine, thank you,” she told Markus kindly when he asked. He motioned toward the barrier that temporarily kept them out of view of the public, and Serilda noticed the pile of clothes that one of Nessa’s celestial creatures had brought. She nodded in affirmation, but before going over to the clothes she walked over to Mythal.

Standing close to him like she barely even noticed he was naked, Serilda’s blue eyes caught his crimson ones and searched them for a moment, her free hand reaching up and gently resting on his shoulder. “You okay?” she asked him quietly, though not necessarily so low that the other two wouldn’t be able to hear. Whatever that Slayer Force thing was, it had obviously been intense. As per her usual theme, she seemed far more interested in making sure that he and Xiuh were taken care of before seeing to her own needs.

Once she’d received an affirmation one way or another, she’d ultimately make her way over to the pile of garments that had been brought for them and pulled out a pair of pants, a top, and a pair of sandals that all appeared to be relatively her size. Setting down her holy scimitar, she calmly dressed herself. Serilda was quite thankful to have clothes on again, despite how cool her mannerisms seemed, so she turned to Nessa once she was clothed. “Thank you for these,” she told the other woman gratefully. “I’ll be sure to give them to Mythal later, so he can return them to you.”

When Nessa made to move them all inside, Serilda collected her sword and gave her friend another glance to make sure he’d gotten everything he needed before following them in. Xiuh trotted happily at her heels until they got to the bar, where she took a seat next to the other woman -- after a curious glance around the interior of the guildhall, of course. The wolf laid down comfortably on the ground by her feet. When the person attending the bar asked if she wanted anything, Serilda said, “Any kind of red wine you have would be wonderful, thank you. Might I also trouble you for some water and food for my hound..?”

"Character counts most when duty calls."

Somehow, Serilda was not surprised to see that Mythal had at least made himself at home enough in their guild to be able to just work behind the bar without the regular staff caring. As they all descended into the common area, he walked right into the back and nabbed a bottle off the top shelf, pouring its contents into a glass all the way to the top. Serilda raised a brow slightly but said nothing. This truly was the first time she’d ever see him pour a glass for himself outside of moderation -- and outside of battle, which was a totally different thing for him -- despite his claim that he was a drunk.

But frankly, he’d earned a tall drink… even if it was a very tall drink. He poured her some wine, already knowing that kinds she preferred, and then got drinks for the others. As he did, Mythal asked Markus about Slayer Force and Serilda listened with quiet interest to the explanation that followed. During this time, someone did kindly bring some water and food for Xiuh, who happily partook of both before laying back down -- closer to Hela, this time, so she could sniff the other wolf and further make her acquaintance.

Serilda, being one to look people in the eyes when talking with them, did not miss the quick glance Markus gave the two women. She had seen that look before in Mythal, who similarly did not enjoy talking about his magic to too many people. The only reason Serilda herself had found out about it was because he’d invoked a spell on one of their first jobs that actually used a more traditional verbal incantation and gave away his magic style.

It seemed that Markus used a similar magic, and because of that he was able to coach Mythal a bit on aspects of it that her friend wasn’t really aware of yet. Serilda didn’t show any signs of surprise through most of it, as she was already fully aware of how Mythal attained his powers, but she did listen with interest. It was a fairly simple explanation, one that didn’t really need too much expanding upon.

She hummed thoughtfully and sipped from the wine glass. “So it essentially puts your magic into overdrive.” Serilda pondered the implications for a moment, swirling the wine in the glass a bit to aerate it and let it breathe. “I can definitely see the convenience and usefulness of it, but it also sounds pretty risky if it eats through your reserves so quickly…”

The woman kept her voice discreetly low, knowing Mythal didn’t really enjoy talking about his magic and sensing that Markus was the same. She had no way of knowing, of course, that this conversation would wind up being more than a little relevant to herself one day soon -- otherwise she may have had more questions. For now she simply voiced her thoughts on it and left it there, curious to see what Mythal would make of it.

"Character counts most when duty calls."

Serilda smirked a little at Mythal’s sarcastic comment about the evening falling apart during one of the few times he’d actually tried to do something sociable. It was a cynical comment, but an amusing one -- which was generally the man’s humor. She’d grown used to it by now. Markus made his own reply following up with it, and Serilda honestly didn’t think much about it until Nessa spoke up.

The young woman had not been amused by the comments, which made Serilda wonder if she had taken them as cynical jokes when they weren’t intended to be such. Nessa chastised both men right then and there, barreling right past her Exceed’s attempt to calm her down. The noblewoman could only watch with controlled but wide eyed bewilderment at the display, getting the feeling that perhaps there had been more to Markus’ comment than she had originally read. Nessa had seemed to take it personally and wasn’t going to stand for the mentality.

Ultimately, Serilda tried to busy herself by looking just about anywhere but the three of them and awkwardly taking another sip or three from the glass of wine in her hand. She was a visitor here, and none of this was really her business, so she just tried her best not to get caught up in it. By the end of the chastising, Nessa instructed Mythal to pour each of them a shot of tequila. Serilda’s mouth was full of wine at the time and she quickly swallowed it in an attempt to decline the shot, since she didn’t really drink much hard liquor, but then the attention got turned back to her quicker than she was prepared for.

She choked a little on the drink in surprise, mostly covering it up though she wasn’t able to perfectly hide having been caught off guard by such a quick topic change after a rather uncomfortable moment. At the very least she suppressed her need to cough, calming her throat enough to at least swallow the wine with some dignity so she could answer.

“We know each other well enough, I suppose,” was the first comment that left her mouth. As soon as she said it she realized it was a bit of a vague comment that could be taken as a disinterest in the friendship, so she cleared it up in answering Nessa’s second question. “We’ve really only known one another for a couple months. We were hired by the same client to work a small job a while back, and then were assigned another job in Desierto together later by the Magic Council. They liked the results we got so they kept assigning us to the same jobs. Eventually we figured it was just easier to start doing other jobs together as well, since we already knew we could rely on one another.”

Serilda didn’t really get into the details of the fact that she and Mythal had not gotten along at all for their first few jobs, nor that their friendship had very nearly fallen apart not too long ago from a bad mixture of stress and miscommunication. If it came up later, or if Mythal brought it up, then that was fine but for now it didn’t really seem like an appropriate thing to mention. Nor was would it be appropriate to mention the methods the two of them had utilized to, erm… hash out their differences when they’d had them. So she left such comments out as well, making no indication with her tone or her body language to suggest that she and Mythal had slept together on numerous occasions already by this point.

“What about you?” she asked politely, turning the question back on the three of them. Or well, at least on Markus and Nessa, though Mythal might choose to speak up in response anyway. “I was a bit surprised when he invited me to come meet some of his guildmates. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if he had any other friends.” Serilda shot Mythal a slight, teasing smirk, a twinkle of mirth in her eyes. It wasn’t exactly a secret that he wasn’t the most social creature in the world, and honestly all three of them had probably been shocked at the proposal of this meeting. “How long have the two of you been with Fairy Tail?”

"Character counts most when duty calls."

Thankfully, the tension seemed to blow over pretty quickly.

There was a moment where Markus and Mythal just looked back and forth between one another and Nessa before Mythal finally burst into laughter. Given that the darkness slayer wasn’t exactly prone to such behavior, it meant a lot -- even if it was partially coming at her own expense. Both of the men teased the Fairy Tail treasurer, who pretended not to be offended but even Serilda could tell the woman’s heart wasn’t in it. Soon, Nessa was smiling again and everything seemed to have calmed down.

As Mythal poured the shots for everyone, he took the time to make sure that Serilda was going to drink hers. He knew her well enough by now to know that she didn’t drink hard liquor, and usually he respected that but today he wasn’t giving her the choice and she couldn’t exactly argue about it. She gave him the stink eye but there was a mild smirk on her face as she wrapped her fingers around the small glass and pulled it closer to her. Serilda didn’t drink it right away, rather waiting until everyone else had theirs and listening to Nessa in the meantime.

The other woman explained how she’d met Mythal when she’d been assigned as his mentor, though apparently that hadn’t really been much of an endeavor. The two had traveled together a bit and seemed more to have socialized during that time than necessarily work on any real jobs. At least, Serilda couldn’t exactly see how three days spent drinking in Midi could equate to a job, but she still smiled at the story. “That certainly sounds like it created some fond memories.”

Alas, it was at this point that poor Serilda thought the awkwardness of this encounter had finally died out for good and that she would be safe from here on out. Fate, or rather Markus, would not have it that way. As Nessa called the simple toast, everyone knocked back their drinks. Serilda had to take a slight breath before hers, staring at the tiny glass like she was working up the temporary stamina for it. Out of all the hard liquors she wasn’t a fan of, tequila was probably her least favorite -- but she wouldn’t complain about it. She was here to have a good time and to meet people who were important to Mythal, so she could easily step out of her comfort zone enough to take a shot or two in the interest of being social. Thus, she lifted the glass to her lips, pouring the liquid into her mouth where it splashed against the back of her throat, ready and waiting to swallow the burning alcohol down…

And that was when Markus made a very simple, but oh so very profound, observation out loud.

At the exact same time that Serilda was in the process of swallowing her drink, she attempted to also breathe. As a result, the tequila went straight down her air pipe and she immediately began choking and coughing loudly. Xiuhcoatl, who had been sitting quietly behind her chair trying to touch noses and play with Hela, immediately jumped to her feet in a panic and nervously paced around the chair, trying to get in Seri’s face to make sure she was okay. Serilda placed a gentle hand on the wolf’s head as she turned away from the group to try and calm the coughing fit.

By the time she turned back even slightly, her face was beet red. She wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole somewhere and die. Her blue eyes refused to meet anyone’s face, especially Mythal’s -- who was going to have to be the one to try and cover for them because she was entirely unable to speak in that moment. Anyone that wasn’t totally inept at reading social cues would have no doubt by this point that the two of them had actually slept together already. Having been completely unprepared for such a blatant assessment, she’d been equally as unprepared for responding to it in any cool sense that could have otherwise dissuaded such thoughts. Now it was all going to have to come down to somehow convincing them they were just friends.

She left this task in Mythal’s hands as she grabbed the nearest napkin and used it to wipe the tears off her face, trying to keep herself busy with doing anything other than commenting on Markus’ remark.

"Character counts most when duty calls."

This was just absolutely mortifying.

And the truth was, it wasn’t that Serilda was ashamed to admit that she’d slept with Mythal. It had nothing to do with him at all. As a noble, she had simply been raised with a more modest upbringing. Even when she had been married before Hugo died, Serilda had never talked about sex even with her other sisters after they’d gotten married. Hell, she’d hardly talked about sex with Hugo. Her family was very impersonal in that regard. Sex was just a topic you didn’t bring up unless it was to educate a child at the appropriate time. But making light of it, and openly discussing those exploits? That was so far beyond what Serilda was comfortable with that she couldn’t even say anything to defend herself.

Thankfully, Mythal was able to brush it off. Sort off. She was too busy trying to drown out the ringing in her ears from all the coughing to hear how strained and obvious his denial was, but even if she had she probably wouldn’t have cared. Anything to get them off that particular subject. By the time she had managed to get a hold of herself, Nessa was already defending the comment about fighting naked, advising that at the time they hadn’t exactly had much of a choice, given the circumstances. “There were far more important things to be concerned about at the time than nudity,” was the only comment Serilda would make, nodding in agreement to Nessa’s statement.

While she was still a bit red from the previous implications that Markus had made, both of the other Fairy Tail members would probably be able to pick up Serilda’s sincerity with the comment. She wasn’t about to go into an explanation that her honor as a noble and a wizard had deemed it more appropriate to continue fighting than to freak out at the time, nor her mindset that throwing a fit about being naked in public would be more detrimental to her reputation than simply being naked in public. Serilda wasn’t the type of noblewoman to talk about her titles and status unless it was specifically brought up. If the circumstances were different, she probably would have had a different reaction to what had happened, but with monsters actively pouring out to attack civilians… well, she’d needed to set her priorities and at the time clothing simply wasn’t the priority.

“Anyway, I think I may need to redo that shot,” she said, doing her best to brush off her panicked antics a moment ago. It would probably surprise Mythal, but she waved for him to give her another one because she definitely needed something to distract everyone away from the conversation. Presuming that Markus had gotten what he wanted out of the situation and didn’t press the matter further, the rest of the afternoon went relatively smoothly with the four of them all getting to know each other a little better -- or at least Serilda, Markus, and Nessa doing such, as Mythal already knew them all decently well. The noblewoman drank a little more than she’d originally planned to, not to the point of getting drunk but she definitely had a bit of a strong buzz going before cutting herself off. All things considered, it wound up being a rather pleasant interaction.

Several months later had brought a lot of changes.

Christmas had been a wonderful holiday this year, but with it had come a lot of stress. A number of things happened that had brought Mythal and Serilda together closer than ever before the darkness slayer realized where things were leading and panicked hard. A rift had begun to grow between them, unfortunately during a time when Serilda had really needed his support in her life. It was only after a series of events had lead the noblewoman to the lowest point in her life that Mythal had finally accepted his feelings and was willing to move forward, but before he could one last thing attempted to get in their way.

Somehow, everything had managed to turn out okay. After Serilda and Mythal had woken up in one of the many guest rooms Ruzatz and Agatha had at their guild, the newly made slayer was honestly shocked that she was still alive. That either of them were still alive. And despite the fact that they had only been gone for a few hours at most, time had passed more slowly in Kingdom Darkness than it had on Earthland. And entire week had gone by, which had completely shocked them. Thankfully, the Prime Sin of Lust was quickly able to explain the phenomenon as soon as they were rested and up. It was for that reason that Ruzatz, thankfully, had not reached out to Serilda’s family yet -- he knew they would be gone longer than they realized, so he knew there was no reason to assume they were dead until a longer span of time had passed.

Not that it had kept the odd couple from worrying, of course. Agatha had often checked her crystal ball for updates, but the connection to the realm wasn’t great. The gypsy could only get the odd snippet here and there as some kind of reassurance, but it was still mostly a toss up for them as to whether or not the pair of slayers would return alive. Once Mythal and Serilda were ready to be up, the demon lord and his wife wasted no time in making good on their promise for a celebratory feast.

It was during that time that Serilda learned about the letters Mythal had left for Nessa, Markus, and his guildmaster. The noblewoman insisted that Mythal needed to contact them and tell them he was fine, but he couldn’t find his iLac. Serilda took it upon herself to text Nessa, knowing the Starlight Maiden had probably been freaking out the last week wondering where he’d gone. I found him, she’d said in her message. He’s exhausted and a bit worse for wear, but alive. If you’ve been trying to message, neither of us had any phone service. We’ll meet at Fairy Tail in a few days, after we’ve rested. Will explain everything then. Please tell Markus, too.

While the noblewoman normally would have felt that the events from the last few days were nobody’s business but their own, there were absolutely a few exceptions. Ruzatz and Agatha were one; after all, if it weren’t for the two of them Serilda would be a wreck and Mythal would probably be dead. Nessa and Markus both were exceptions as well, particularly since Mythal had essentially sent them goodbye letters. Serilda could understand how much stress and anxiety that probably had put on his friends, and she insisted that he needed to meet up with them as soon as possible to apologize and explain what had happened -- everything.

Once they had taken enough time to recuperate, the two bid farewell to Ruzatz and Agatha and made their way to the Fairy Tail guildhall with Xiuhcoatl and Gren in tow. The older wolf had been doting on her younger brother nonstop since the return from Kingdom Darkness, constantly keeping him nearby and grooming him. Though the two humans were cleaned up and rested, there was a bit of age about them that spoke to the haunting experiences they had endured together. Serilda still looked and felt tired, and while her magic had mostly regenerated it was still building itself back up to full.

As they approached the building, she reached out and gave Mythal’s hand an encouraging squeeze. This likely was not going to be an easy conversation for either of them, but it needed to be done and she was going to be with him every step of the way.

"Character counts most when duty calls."

She could sense Mythal’s trepidation as they approached his former guild hall, though probably only because she knew him as well as she did. He stopped them just outside the building and Serilda turned to look up at him. Quietly, the man lamented to her about how much the people here really meant to him, and about how much he knew he’d screwed things up. It was difficult for Serilda to see him being so hard on himself, and more difficult for her to know what to say. Usually she said nothing at all as that always seemed to be the best go to response with him. Typically, Mythal just appreciated someone listening and acknowledging how he felt through silence. This time, however, she felt a bit of verbal encouragement was merited.

Reaching up with her free hand, she cupped his cheek and turned his face toward her. “You made a mistake,” the Voidwalker told him gently, “But it was with good intentions. Some of them may be angry with you, and may express so. I sure did. But greater than their anger is their relief that you’re still alive and they get to see you again. I promise.” He hadn’t lost everything, not even close. Serilda was convinced that they were going to walk in those doors and all Mythal was going to learn was that the relationships he’d formed here ran even deeper than he’d already realized.

When he indicated he was ready, Serilda would walk into the building with him. She was immediately met with the roar of chaos that seemed to be the constant state of the Fairy Tail guild hall. She winced a little at the noise, still getting used to her newly sensitive ears. Her nose was picking up nearly every scent in the room, all the different types of alcohol and food, the numerous distinctive smells of each individual present. Serilda recognized a fair number of faces, having visited this place countless times before now. She would smile and wave politely to anyone that caught her eye and greeted her, but didn’t linger to talk to anyone. Finding Markus and Nessa was most important right now.

The chaos mage was sitting at a table further back in the room with a glass in front of him. He appeared to be alone, so Nessa hadn’t shown up yet. Serilda knew she wouldn’t be long. The starlight maiden had been quite immediate with her reply text, so the Voidwalker knew she must have been glued to her phone for any news on the man.

The two of them made their way through the crowds to where Markus was sitting. Serilda gave him a small smile that was genuine in her happiness to see the man again, but also did nothing to try to cover up the tension or seriousness of the moment. “Hi, Markus…” she told him softly. Xiuhcoatl sat at her feet, wagging her tail lightly. The wolf wanted to greet the man as well, but she could sense Serilda’s emotions through their bond and knew that she would have to wait until after the humans were finished with their own greeting rituals this time.

For now, the noblewoman said nothing else. She was here to support Mythal, but he needed to be the one to take the lead in the interaction.