Now, before I warp you to a seemingly random point in the story, let me get something straight.
I was one hell of an idiot for swapping Horologium's Key for Sagittarius'. I freely admit that. Will I tell Lucy she was right, though?

Ha. No. Not a chance.

But yeah, you have my confession: I'm a self-sacrificial idiot who thought her whittle sis needed the clock spirit's protection more than I did. So it stands to reason that karma would bite me in the ass for what I thought had been a good deed, and boy, did karma sink her teeth into it.

"I feel violated."

"No more than I do, I assure you..."

"Candor. Oh God. Ew. We were like, fused together. That is some nasty shit right there, the kind I wouldn't touch with a ten foot stick."

"Quit your whining," Gajeel growled, shoving past Candor and I so that he could make his way towards the gigantic lacrima set rather audaciously in the middle of the street. "Be grateful I was here to save your asses."

I shot Candor a sober look, which he returned with one of his own, and we had an accord. 

We could bitch and moan about the matter of us being together later; right now, we had bigger problems on our hands. Which, being mages of Fairy Tail, shouldn't have come as any big surprise. 

After (subtly - I'm classy like that) flipping off Gajeel's back, I turned my attention to the bottle the iron-headed dragon slayer had pressed into my hands before I'd even really regained consciousness. I squinted at its contents, some dark-colored liquid that sloshed against its glass confines every time I tilted the bottle. Drink it, Gajeel had ordered (he apparently didn't remember how poorly I did with authority), then pointed to Candor, I'd guess to say he should have a swallow too. 

Candor didn't take too well to the show of authority, and my hand clasping around the tail of his manly-man jacket was the only thing that saved Gajeel from falling prey to this psychopathic child's dark and devilish whims (given that the iron-scaled behemoth didn't think much of the brat at the best of times, something told me he might've been just a little caught off guard by lawnhead's surprisingly impactful magic). Rolling my eyes, I eyed the unknown contents of the bottle one more time, before throwing whatever caution I somehow still possessed to the wind and downing a mouthful. I screwed up my face in disgust as it slithered down my throat; bleh was not even remotely adequate in describing the downright horrendous taste that flooded my tongue right then. 

Candor, of course, couldn't suppress a nasty little smirk at my expense. But I flashed one of my own when I dangled the bottle in front of his catty green eyes, my fingernails tinkling against the glass as I waited for him to snatch it from me and take a sip for himself. 

If I was going to suffer, then I was dragging him to hell with me.

He'd basically said the same thing to me before, more or less (and through Gray), so I felt it was a fitting sentiment.

So. As promised, I brought you in with minimal backstory and showed off my stupidity in classic Winter fashion. Now, I'll backtrack just enough to clarify a few things, then we'll get rolling right along once again, because I have a hell of a lot of shit to tell you guys.

Candor can attest to this when I say that we honestly never saw it coming.

The it I'm referring to is how we ended up in Edolas - the "other" world that was parallel to ours, which in Edolas-speak was known as Earthland. The name wasn't great - hell, after hearing Lucy preach about the sacred nature of originality for the past seventeen years, anything that laughably simple wasn't going to cut it for me. Granted, I doubt they really put much thought into the strange world they rarely ever accessed, but it was shoddy naming, and I just wasn't going to approve of it. 

According to Mystogan (who apparently informed Gajeel about the proper way to free helpless mages from their lacrima prisons before skedaddling off to God knew where), magic here was scarce. And I'm talking practically nonexistent, on the verge of extinction scarce. The situation had gotten so desperate that people were required to charge up magic-imbued items that they used in place of natural magic, and how did they power these splendid little trinkets? With lacrima. And said lacrima were produced from converting the magical energy of Earthland mages into hunks of purple crystal.

Yeah, when I said before that Candor and I had spent some quality time fused together, I hadn't been exaggerating in any sense of the word.

God, I'm still trying to get the sensation of being attached to him out of my head...

Well, anyway, I had Gajeel to thank for getting us out of that mess, though he didn't seem to give a damn one way or the other. I don't think either of us had really gotten over that whole business where Phantom sorta kidnapped and tortured me. I mean, it wasn't as though as I was a petty person who liked to throw my fist into the back of Gajeel's head every time a saw him out of sheer spite--

"Ow! Goddammit! Goddamn you and your goddamn iron skull!"

Gajeel smirked at me over his shoulder while I hopped back, cradling my throbbing fist against my chest, hissing out a slow breath from between clenched teeth. Candor watched on, likely muttering something uncomplimentary under his breath as I shook out my hand and mentally debated whether or not I could get away with a roundhouse kick to the raven-haired bastard's face. In the end, common sense won out (what a shocker, I know), and I spun on my heel to rejoin Candor.

But I wouldn't be me if I didn't have the last word, would I?

"Gajeel!"

He paused but didn't turn to face me. That was just fine by me; seeing his red eyes made me see red most of the time.

"You're going after that massive lacrima, aren't you? The one Mystogan said had most of our guild locked in it?"

He turned his head slightly, cocking it back to allow our gazes to meet, if only just.
The determination burning behind his crimson eyes left me speechless for half a heartbeat, not gonna lie. I didn't peg him as the type to be all that attached to his fellow guild members; he'd never seemed that heartbroken over having to leave everyone in Phantom after it disbanded, anyway. 

But I mustered a grin after a moment. 

Snaking an arm around Candor's neck (and ignoring his violent protests), I dragged him to my side and flashed Gajeel a thumbs-up, my lips stretched wide in a self-assured grin.

"Then don't worry about us. We'll poke around the city, see if can dig up anything useful. Might even take a stab at the castle, even though you already sent Gray and Erza over there."

His lips curled back in a sneer, but I wasn't fooled in the slightest. I was amusing to this guy, and if that was the extent of our relationship - a rage-a-holic fool and the bastard who tolerated her because she got a laugh out of him occasionally - then I was fine with that. At least we weren't at each others' throats all the time. I had enough of that with Candor.

"Don't go and die on me, then," Gajeel warned us, the tips of his exposed canines glinting in the afternoon sunlight. He turned right back around, lifting a hand over his shoulder in farewell as he continued walking towards the small lacrima that was holed up at the end of the street. "I'm not taking the wrap for you two idiots if you wind up dead at the end of all this."

"He's charming," Candor quipped, flicking a strand strand of hair from his eyes.

"'Bout as cuddly as you are, brat."

"I'd say my intellectual prowess more than makes up for my crass nature; I can't say the same for that dragon slayer."

"Ah, gotta agree with ya there, shrimp. Well, whatever. Let's get going."

"And where, pray tell, are we travelling to?"

I shot Candor an incredulous look, one which he was supposedly immune to, based on how infrequently it ever got a rise out of him. But I persisted, because that's what stubborn bitches do, and I just really, really wanted to get under his skin the way he got under mine. It was bullshit that he was so good at manipulating people while I struggled just to do more than earn a muffled curse from my enemies (or frenemies, as the case may be). 

"Was I speaking French just now?" I asked, waving at hand at where Gajeel had stood a moment ago. "We're gonna raise some hell!"

Unimpressed, Candor lifted a challenging brow.

"Why not just go with Gajeel, then? Undoubtedly he'll have to raise hell himself if he wants to locate that unnaturally large lacrima in order to rescue the others. Wouldn't our efforts be better spent assisting him?"

"Probably," I admitted, grinning a little too chipperly for the situation at hand. But hey, I felt I was entitled to it with all the chaos I had to deal with on a daily basis; insanity was practically part of the job description at this point. "But it's not like he needs us. Much as it absolutely pains me to say this, I'm nowhere near Gajeel's strength yet, and neither are you, puppetmaster. So why don't we try to work some magic in our own way?"

Now, I could never be sure, but I thought maybe Candor saw through my ruse right then. Maybe he noticed the twitchiness of my demeanor, the tapping of my fingers against my collection of Keys; maybe he saw the falsehood of my grin. He had a knack for reading me like a goddamn book, so I wouldn't have been surprised at all if he called me out on my hidden agenda; but no, he refrained from commenting, merely dipped his head in a show of surrender and raked back his shaggy hair with one careful hair, hooded eyes scouring the streets for any sign of danger.

It was the consideration that went into his selective silence that really threw me for a loop.

But I wasn't about to argue with him now that he'd agreed to do things my way for the time being, and I started down the nearest adjacent street, waving for him to hurry up and yelling that he'd be ditched accordingly if he chose not to heed my advice.

That earned me quite the scathing reply, but I elected to ignore it, just this once. Again, we had more important things to freak out over than a childish retort.

Speaking of those important things, I'd been serious about taking a crack at infiltrating the castle we could see towering over the rooftops of this eclectic city. Gray and Erza had charged in, guns a-blazing, not too long ago, according to what Gajeel had told us while we were shaking the numbness from our recently spliced limbs, but they could always use back-up. I'd learned the hard way that even my idol, Titania, Queen of the Fairies, wasn't invincible; and I'd seen Gray fall in battle more times than I cared to count. They weren't immortal - they could die like anyone else. I mean, so could we, but Candor and I weren't the ones currently (probably) in an all-out war with a bunch of Edolas soldiers we knew next to zilch about. 

And then there was Lucy to worry over.

Gajeel had said that Mystogan had brought my sister along on this hellish ride once he found out she'd been somehow missed by the net that scooped up the rest of Magnolia (which didn't sit right with me at all; I woulda preferred that Lucy sit this one out, if I coulda helped it). She'd been given the same questionable liquid that we had, which meant she had full use of her magic here. But... well, full disclosure? Our Spirits weren't the most dependable bunch out there. Sure, they'd gotten us out of plenty of pinches in the past, but we'd been abandoned just as many times. Loke was the worst at "forgetting to call in sick," too. If I had a jewel for every time he blew off a summoning to go out shopping with Aries...

Point being, I didn't trust Lucy to survive here with only her admittedly lacking skill set alone. So yeah, I wanted to find her as quickly as possible and get her ass to safety. Call me overprotective all you like; being there for Lucy was my full-time job, and since I couldn't be sure that she'd met up with Natsu or Wendy, I was going to fulfill my duty as her (marginally) older sister any way I could.

And I would have done just that had Candor not thrown out an arm to bar my way, leading to me nearly face-planting in the cobblestones when I only just saved myself from vaulting over his twiggy appendage. Regaining my balance, I moved to clap a hand to the back of his head to properly show my thanks for his lack of a warning, but he caught my wrist, staying me.

Still keeping a tight hold of my arm, he raised a finger to his lips, signalling for quiet, then pointed to his ear, flicking me a glance before looking out at another branching path.

My heart dropped into my stomach when I caught sight of what he was so distracted by.

"Well, shit," I muttered, my tense muscles relaxing in Candor's moderate grip. "And I thought today couldn't get any better..."  

Shitty writing, shitty writing, shitting writing - and, oh look, more shitting writing!

Ugh. Sorry guys. It's been so long since I've updated and this is all I have to show for it... My only excuse is that my writing has not been cooperating with me at all in the past... well, it's been a while, in any case. The chapter as a whole is bad, and Winter and Candor feel so off to me, it's not even funny...

I'll try to get back into the swing of things with the next chapter, but... I'm sorry in advance if you just get more of the same.