Disclaimer: Hiro Mashima is my hero and I bow before his brilliance. However, I wish he'd use Loke more in the manga.
Engraved In His Heart
a Fairy Tail fanfic
by Rhov
She had scared him, then touched his heart. She had saved his life, then restored his trust in Humanity. To say "Lucy is my everything" sounded cheesy, trite, even cliché, yet to say she was not part of every thought, not present in every action, to say she was missing from anything at all in Loke's life would be lying.
She had saved his life, so her very essence was now engraved in the heart of the Lion.
He liked the love she showed him, but he wished it was different. Lucy loved all of her Spirits. It was what made her special. Still, he wished she loved him just a little more. He wanted to be more than just another Spirit to her. When he declared that he wanted to be her knight in shining armor, he meant it. He wanted to be her champion, her warrior...her everything. Just as she was his everything. It saddened him that she called on him so infrequently.
It was wrong, and he knew it. He laughed if she accused him of flirting only because it hid the pain he felt that he could never show her just how much he truly loved her. He kept wearing the blue shades so she would not see the longing in his gaze. He wanted her to smile back at him and blush. She did once, when they fought Bickslow.
That smile was engraved in his heart.
At Aquarius's suggestion, who was annoyed at his moping around, he went on a date with another Celestial Spirit. When he came back and Virgo told him Lucy had tried to call for him, he hated himself. He called the poor Spirit girl up and told her in a cheesy sort of way that she should just forget about him.
When Team Tenrou went missing, he tried to distract himself from the fear and uncertainty. Like his days of distracting himself from the guilt he felt with Karen, he resorted to dating girls from all around Fiore. Those dates always ended after dinner. He couldn't even bring himself to give them a goodnight kiss. After four years of this failure to fill the emptiness, Aries pointed out that all of his girlfriends had brown eyes.
He missed those eyes. He missed her infectious laugh. He missed the cute way she pouted in anger when he tried to flirt with her.
When she and the others came back, he had never felt such relief in his existence. He did everything in his power to convince the Spirit King to bring Lucy into the Celestial Spirit World for a visit. It was easy to convince the rest of her Spirits to join in the petition. All of them wanted to see her. Being Leo the Lion, he could have just opened his own gate to visit, but...he wanted to see those large brown eyes lit up by the stars.
One day, he decided to surprise her. He appeared in her apartment while she was gone and baked a cake for her. He hid in the kitchen waiting, giddy to jump out and yell happy birthday.
She surprised him...and not in a good way.
She stumbled in late that night, obviously drunk, Gray already half-naked, both of them locked in a kiss. Loke watched from around the corner of the kitchen door as they groped at one another, refusing to break their lips apart as they stumbled off to the bedroom.
He stopped coming out to tease her. He came only when she called, fought her enemies, and went back without protest. She noticed the difference in his attitude. When she asked him what was wrong, why had he stopped his silly flirtations, he said there was a girl he really liked, and he was really serious about her. She looked happy for him and teased that she might miss his flirtatious side.
It killed him a little inside. He had never wanted to lie to her.
Yet time marches on. He knew that well. One day, she called him out and hugged him tightly, sobbing into his chest. He listened to her cry about Gray leaving her, and he held her through her grief. He swore that day that he would never leave her, never betray her, and never break her heart.
He began coming out more. He flirted with her because it made her laugh. Pride be damned, he did anything to make her laugh these days. He even sabotaged Gray and Juvia's wedding with the help of Natsu, purely because he knew Lucy would take sadistic pleasure in seeing it.
More tears two years later when Natsu and Lisanna married, but she was also happy for them. She asked Loke to be her escort to the wedding. When they danced together, Lucy smiled up at Loke and blushed.
That smile...the one engraved in his heart!
He swore right then, he would make her smile like that every day of her life.
Now he stood facing her, blossoms blowing around them, friends from both worlds smiling at them, nothing but happiness everywhere. How she got the Spirit King to change the rules against Spirits marrying Humans, he never knew. Lucy was simply that sort of woman. When she became determined to do something, she would rewrite the laws of Heaven itself to get what she wanted.
Somewhere along the way, she decided she wanted him.
She was gorgeous that day. Breathtaking! Who would have thought she'd look so good wearing a white dress! Her brown eyes shined as she gazed up at him, and she smiled with a blush on her cheeks.
The Lion knew this entire day would be engraved in his heart...forever!
The End