Fairy Tail: Next Generation - Volume IV

Chapter 24: The White Dwarf

Ezzie sat on the edge of the bed, gripping the fabric of her pants as Elwin wrapped her head with gauze. "This is the gauze rap, a rap about gauze━" 

"Elwin." 

"Right, sorry," Elwin, as he continued to wrap Ezzie's wound, continued to sing his rap under his breath. "First you take the gauze, you wrap around the head, you wrap around til the patients dead."

"Elwin, as much as I love songs from Yodanna and the Cat's rap album, I'm not really in the mood." 

"Right━okay," Elwin nodded, but couldn't help but hum the song anyway. 

Ezzie didn't exactly want Elwin to be the one treating her wound, but Wendy was with Jude. The two were in separate rooms, and she had no idea how Jude was doing. The last thing she remembered was being dragged away from Jude as she finally began to snap out of her trance. 

Elwin was the one to offer to properly treat Ezzie's wound, which was nothing more than a cut on the forehead. It was deep enough to scar, but Ezzie wasn't thinking about that. 

"It's okay, Ezzie," Elwin assured her, tucking the gauze into its previous fold, "he'll be okay. Everyone knows you would never hurt him for real." 

"But I did hurt him," Ezzie sighed, shaking her head, "I promised him I'd keep him safe and I was the danger━"

"Hey━hey," Elwin squatted down to meet Ezzie's gaze, "no thinking that stuff in here, Liz is the one who did that, okay? And when I get my hands on her, I'm gonna turn into a really big dog and sit on her." 

Ezzie's expression twisted, "What?" 

"Remember when I did that when we were kids?" Elwin said, "It was the first animal I could do take over for, and I just sat on Liz all the time and everyone would lay on top of me and it got to the point where whenever Liz sat down somewhere, someone would run over and sit on her so she would just stand around the guildhall. Oh━and we started to call her Chair because she was always getting sat on━why did we ever stop doing that?"

"I don't remember any of that." 

Elwin shrugged, "Well, it happened." 

Sitting on the bed across from Ezzie, Elwin stared intently, unsure of what to do to calm her nerves. He fiddled with his thumbs as she sat in silence, waiting for her to say something.

"How bad was it?" 

"Bad? It was hardly anything! He'll be fine." 

"Can you check?"

Elwin was silent, remembering the specific order he was given not to leave the room. Of course, he also wanted to lift Ezzie's spirit, letting her know that he was specifically asked to guard her would only make her feel worse.

"Sure," Elwin said impulsively. "I just need to...stick my head out the door, while keeping the rest of my body in the room for completely normal reasons." Elwin did just this, cracking the door slightly to stick his head out. "Oh hey, there he is━hey Jude, oh, look at you doing all great and walking around and stuff━" 

"Elwin," Ezzie sighed, "are you not allowed to leave me alone?" 

Crossing his arms, Elwin avoided eye contact with Ezzie as he hummed out a doubtful, "No..."

Ezzie sighed, pulling her legs onto the bed as she laid down. "Just tell me when we can go back to the inn, okay?" 

In spite of Elwin being terribly unqualified to watch over Ezzie, he felt some kind of responsibility to make her feel better. So Elwin sat on the edge of Ezzie's bed and started to talk. "Did I ever tell you about that time I ran out of money while on the road? And I ended up almost selling my teeth to an owl?"