This is partly a gift for my buddy im ur misconception. She requested this pairing from me like… three years ago, but I didn't ship it at the time. Then suddenly it hit me a couple of days ago that these two had one fantastic thing in common, and now suddenly I ship it. I wonder about my brain sometimes.

Also, I had the hardest time figuring out if the ship name would be Racy or Sawcy.

Sawyer couldn't help but resent the girl, a bit.

It wasn't that the blonde celestial mage had done anything to him, in particular. And he didn't despise her as Sorano and Macbeth did, their hate burning brilliantly like miniature suns inside of them. Erik didn't care about anything except Cubelios these days, and Erigor's mind was so broken that there was no point in trying with him. Richard might have had an opinion on the girl, but he wasn't around to ask. Klodoa wasn't even worth considering.

No, Sawyer was alone in his opinion on the girl they were planning on sacrificing. It almost seemed a pity, really, to go through all of this effort against someone with whom he only carried a mild, petty resentment for. But then, someone had to be sacrificed for this undertaking to work, and it would sit worse in him to sacrifice Sorano to the Infinity Clock. The group was in this together, or not at all.

So he said nothing as Macbeth schemed and the preparations began.

It wasn't as if Sawyer didn't understand. Not at all. He understood the root of Macbeth and Sorano's anger a little too well, in fact.

Sorano despised her for her humiliating defeat – the betrayal of her spirits for the much less talented girl. Sawyer sympathized, his own defeat at the hands of her friends a wound that never quite healed completely either.

He'd said nothing as she chose a path that shaved off her life, forming her parasitic contracts with beings who could not betray her because they were incapable of caring in the first place.

Macbeth hated her for her father, and for his. He'd given his up in exchange for his newfound power, after all – had sacrificed any possibility of a relationship that went beyond that of "tool".

Sawyer said nothing when Macbeth planted the seeds that would eventually drive Jude Heartfilia into an early grave, denying the girl a future with her father in it.

His own resentment was that of a sputtering candle to their fevered light. In truth, he felt they were at their cores very similar people.

Because Lucy Heartfilia was, like Sawyer, a runner.

They'd both tried to outrun those people that made them suffer growing up.

What he resented was the fact that she alone had succeeded.

Sawyer hadn't been able to run from the Tower of Heaven on its secluded island, far from civilization and help far out of reach. When Brain had taken them, he'd marked all of them with his seal against Zero – a seal that would enable Brain to find Sawyer no matter where he might run to. Even without chains, he'd found himself hemmed in once more. Even when he'd tried to end it all with a bomb, to flee everything once and for all, the chance had been stolen from him, and instead had found himself in a cold, dark, and cramped prison cell.

He had never been able to outrun anything at all.

If he were being truly honest with himself, the bulk of his resentment wasn't towards the girl, but towards himself and his failures. But even in acknowledging that, he couldn't ignore the strength of Macbeth and Sorano's feelings towards her. She had wronged them, and that was ultimately enough for Sawyer to stand against her. What he himself stood to gain also hung tantalizingly within reach. If Macbeth's plan succeeded… what Sawyer had wished for, all those years ago, would finally be within his grasp.

Speaking up against this was impossible from the start.

Sawyer still had things to run from, after all.

And he wasn't above stealing someone else's freedom to get there.