A/N- Really, what good is the information that Layla Heartfilia gave up her life so that the dragon slayers could come forward in time if I'm not going to do awful, awful things with that knowledge? ^_^
Many thanks to ProMa and Howl, who looked over this for me!
July 8th, Year X777
The house is too quiet.
Lucy is used to silence. It is, after all, a very, very big mansion, and even with the servants who dote on her nearly as much as her parents do, every room cannot be filled with noise and people. But this is a different kind of silence, a creeping hush that she can taste in the air by the time Spetto has helped her pick out a dress.
"Is Mama back from her trip?" she asks the maidservant.
Spetto's eyes go dim. "She… she is, young mistress."
Despite the worry that's starting to form like thick smoke in her belly, Lucy's mood immediately improves. "Can I see her?" she asks eagerly. Her mother only left on her trip north the day before yesterday, but she was so anxious and busy in the weeks prior with all kinds of wandering visitors who came and left after staying only a few hours, that Lucy feels she hasn't seen her mother, really seen her, in a month.
But Spetto bites her lip, staring at Lucy without seeming to really see her, and shakes her head slowly. "I don't think that would be a good idea, Miss Lucy. Your mother is very— she's very tired after her journey."
"But she wasn't even gone three whole days!" Lucy protests.
"It's best to just let her get her rest," Spetto says, a little more firmly.
Lucy frowns, but admits to herself that perhaps Spetto has a point. Her mother is sick a lot and has to stay in bed for days sometimes; maybe she got another one of her headaches on her trip. "Okay," she says meekly, and Spetto's smile is a little strained, but it makes Lucy feel like she's done the right thing.
She sits still and behaves herself long enough for Spetto to brush her hair and tie it up with two little bows, and as soon as she's presentable, she's sent out of her room with an orange and instructions to meet Bero in the library after breakfast for her daily lessons.
"Oh, and Miss Lucy?" Spetto calls after her, almost as an afterthought.
"Yes?"
"Your father asked me to tell you to stay out of the south wing today. The, uh, the painters have come and he says you're not to get in their way." She gives Lucy her sternest look, one which would be far more intimidating if Lucy, at barely ten years old (and a petite ten at that), weren't already taller than her.
"I understand," Lucy says.
Lucy goes directly to the south wing.
She won't be missed at breakfast. Her father is never around in for the morning meal (or dinner, usually) and with her mother sick, it would just be her at the big table anyway. She has her orange, which she peels as she walks the long hallways of the Heartfilia mansion, and a burning curiosity to find out why she has been banned from a whole section of the house. She knows for a fact that it's the east wing that the painters have been called for and they're not supposed to arrive until next week. And since she didn't actually agree not to go to the south wing, she's not breaking any promises.
Promises are very important to Lucy. One of the things her mother has taught her since she was big enough to understand is to always keep her word, especially if she wants to be a proper celestial wizard. But she hasn't made any promises this time, and it's not like she's going to do anything bad. She's just going to go and see, and then she'll go right to Bero for her lessons.
The south wing is quiet, too, but it feels like a different kind of quiet than the rest of the house. It feels like the kind of quiet that settles in her head the moment before she opens Lyra's gate, the quiet of wakeful magic. Or maybe it's just Lucy's imagination.
She doesn't think so, though.
All the curtains in the hallway are closed, probably to keep the bright July sun from fading the carpets, but it lends an eerie feeling to a part of the house that isn't used much anyway. Her skin prickles and she walks a little softer.
Far down the hall and around a corner, she hears the creak of a door and freezes. She's not sure why she's suddenly afraid— after all, she's in her own house!— but something strange is happening today and she's felt nervous from the moment she woke up. Heart beating hard enough to make her dizzy, she creeps down the corridor, staying to the middle of the hall so she can stay on the carpet and not risk her shoes making noise on the marble. Careful, careful she peeps around the corner, and finds to her relief that the hallway in that direction is empty as well.
But… there's a door open. About halfway down the hall, it swings inward just a few inches. That must be the source of the noise she heard. She approaches with as much stealth as a ten year old girl can reasonably be expected to achieve, taking deep breaths to calm herself, and peers through the crack in the door.
The south wing is mostly guest rooms, and this is a little sitting parlor or perhaps a tea room, but Lucy can't see much because the curtains are drawn and there's very little light. A chill runs down her spine, though, because she thinks she can see movement inside, a half-visible figure shifting in a strange, shaky manner, like a ghost—
"Whatcha doing?"
The voice is right by her ear, and Lucy shrieks and jumps backwards, colliding with the speaker and sending them both tumbling to the floor. She rolls off her attacker and scrambles to her feet, reaching for her keys— but no, she left her keys in her room today, and anyway neither Lyra nor Pyxis would be much help in a fight, and it—
It probably doesn't matter, she realizes, as she gets a good look at the person. He's a boy who appears to be around her age, though as he stands up she discovers he's a bit shorter than her, so maybe he's younger? He has a mop of wild pink hair sticking out in every direction as though it hasn't been brushed for a month, and he's barefoot, with trousers that look too big for him tied with a rope for a belt to keep them up. He flashes her a broad grin as he gets to his feet.
"What'd ya do that for?" he asks.
"You scared me," she says, glaring at him in accusation.
"Sorry about that. Didn't realize you'd be so jumpy!"
She sort of wants to kick him for startling her like that. "That's why you don't sneak up behind people in the dark, stupid! What are you doing in my house, anyway?"
He tilts his head curiously. "Your house? But Miss Layla said this was her house." A thoughtful little pout of confusion crosses his face. "But then, it is a really big house…"
"You know my Mama?"
"Do you mean Miss Layla?" he asks.
She nods.
"Yep, I met her yesterday," he says brightly. "She brought us here this morning."
That doesn't make sense at all, for a lot of reasons, but Lucy is more worried about another part of his statement. "Wait, 'us?' Who else is with you?"
He grins again and walks past her to push open the door Lucy was investigating before he surprised her. "Oi, Wendy! Are you in there?"
With more light shining into the room, the dark shape Lucy saw earlier is revealed to be a young girl who can't possibly be older than five. She has short cobalt hair and her nut-brown eyes are wide and nervous. "I'm sorry, Natsu," she says. "Gajeel isn't here, either. I think we've really lost him." She sounds on the verge of tears and Lucy's has to squash the urge to go and hug the poor thing.
"It's okay!" the boy (Natsu?) says cheerfully, reaching out and ruffling up the little girl's hair. "We'll find him. He can't have gone too far!"
"But this house is so big and dark," she says, looking around fearfully, and then she catches sight of Lucy. "W-who are you?" she asks.
"I'm Lucy," she says. "Lucy Heartfilia."
The girl still looks wary, but some of the fear fades from her expression. "Are you related to Miss Anna and Miss Layla?" she asks.
Lucy is very, very confused. "I don't know anyone named Anna except for one of the cooks, but my mama's name is Layla."
Wendy offers her a tiny little smile at that. "Miss Layla is nice. She was really tired when we met her, but she was… she was really nice," she says. Her expression falls suddenly and tears well up in her eyes. "I can't find my mama but Miss Layla says we can stay here and we'll be safe. You— you're not going to make us leave, are you?" She looks terrified at the thought.
"No! If my mama says you can stay here, then you can stay!" Lucy says hurriedly. She's not sure why her mama would have brought strangers here, but she always seems to know best, so if she says they can stay, then that must be what's right to do.
Wendy looks relieved.
Lucy thinks maybe a change of subject might be in order. "Were you looking for somebody?" she asks.
"We're trying to find Gajeel," Natsu pipes up. "He got mad and left, but Ryos is crying and we can't get him to stop so we need Gajeel to talk to him."
Lucy has to work hard to keep from rolling her eyes. "You must be pretty bad at making people feel better!"
"Am not!" Natsu protests. "It's just that I don't understand him!"
"Well, leaving someone all alone when he's crying is a pretty bad start," Lucy says.
Wendy gives a shy little bob of her head and says, almost too quiet to hear, "We didn't leave him alone, Miss Lucy. Sting stayed with him."
Sting? What kind of name is Sting? For that matter, what kind of name is Natsu? Gajeel and Ryos she can at least place, but Sting is a ridiculous name. What kind of mama and father would pick out such funny names? And really, what are they doing here? She's never met any of these people before, and now they're living in her house, at least for now? This is… this is…
This is brilliant. Every since Grami and Brandish left, the house has been too quiet. No Aquarius, no Brandish, Mama has been sick more and more often lately, Papa's been so busy, but now there are other kids to play with! This is going to be wonderful!
But first, they're going to have to solve the current problem.
"Alright," she says, trying to adopt the voice her father uses when he wants people to do what he says, "here's what we're going to do. We'll split up. We can look for your friend and also go back and get Sting and Ryos so we're all together. Since I live here, I know this house better, so Wendy and I can—"
"Betcha I can find Gajeel faster than you!" Natsu interrupts, and then he's sprinting down the hallway and out of sight. He runs so fast he kicks up dust from the carpet.
Lucy blinks after him for a few moments, then sighs and looks down at Wendy, who has gathered a handful of Lucy's dress in her tiny fist.
"I guess we're going back to find Sting and Ryos, then," she says.
Wendy nods solemnly and doesn't say a word. Maybe without someone familiar around, she's run out of courage to speak? She seems pretty timid.
"Do you remember where they are?" she asks.
She hesitates, then nods again. "I-I think so. I came from that way." She points down the hall to the east. "And… and we came down some stairs."
That makes sense. If her mother brought them here, she would have made sure they had guest rooms to stay in. Prying Wendy's fingers loose from her skirt, she takes her hand instead and leads her in the direction of the nearest staircase.
Lucy wants to talk to Wendy and try to make the little girl more comfortable, but she's not sure what to say. She's never really been around anyone this young before, except for Brandish, but she barely remembers her anymore, just a vague hint of a pouting girl who wanted to try on all of Lucy's pretty dresses. And anyway, Brandish left when Lucy was only five herself so she doesn't think that counts. The servants on the estate have children, probably, but aside from Brandish, none of them have ever been allowed to come to the house, so Lucy hasn't met them.
But getting anxious about talking to people is silly, she decides. Wendy seems sweet, if very shy, so she says the first thing that springs to mind. "Are you and Natsu brother and sister?" she asks.
Wendy shakes her head. "No. I met him yesterday. We all only met yesterday." Her lower lip quivers. "I want my mama."
Lucy gives her hand a little squeeze— she knows the feeling. "I'm sure it will be just fine," she says confidently. "We'll find out where your mother is, definitely. But until then, you'll be safe here, okay?"
This just keeps getting stranger and stranger. She still doesn't know why her mother went on her trip, or why such a short journey had required so much preparation… so was it because of these children? But why would she go to so much trouble for a group of kids who are apparently complete strangers even amongst themselves? Where did they come from? This doesn't make any sense…
But she's not going to worry about it. She's not. She might get to have real friends now, or at least someone to play with for however long they're here, so she's just going to enjoy the novelty of it! Maybe they're why she wasn't supposed to come to the south wing today, but she doesn't care. She's going to make wonderful friends and it's going to be the most fun she's ever had, she's sure of it.
She just hopes the rest of them are sweet like Wendy. That Natsu boy just seems like trouble.
Once they reach the top of the stairs, Wendy points at the doors to the Lilac Room and the Dahlia Room. "The man who brought us upstairs said we were supposed to stay in those two."
Of all the guest rooms, they're two of Lucy's favorites. When her mother was choosing decorations for the south wing, back when Lucy was Wendy's age, she let Lucy pick out the curtains and wallpaper. They're pretty and cheerful and nice places for a girl like Wendy to stay; she's very glad that those are the rooms her new friends are living in now.
Lucy marches over to the door, towing Wendy behind her, and pushes it open.
The curtains in the Lilac Room, unlike those in the hallway outside, are thrown open, and the bright morning sunlight streams across the room. It illuminates a boy of about Wendy's age, a slim, ethereal-looking boy with hair like moonlight. He stands with his arms crossed over his chest, looking deeply uncomfortable and staring determinedly at absolutely anything except for the other person in the room.
The other boy Lucy assumes to be Ryos. He must be. He's huddled in a dim corner out of reach of the sunbeams, clutching a pillow to his chest and sobbing. If the decor in the Lilac room weren't so full of light colors, he'd barely be visible, just dirty bare feet and a dark jacket and messy, inky-black hair.
When Lucy and Wendy enter the room, the blond looks up with an expression of profound relief on his face. "Oh good, you're back! He won't talk at all now, and I—" He looks from Wendy to Lucy and breaks off, face shifting to a suspicious frown. "Who are you?" he asks.
"My name's Lucy," she says.
"Miss Lucy is Miss Layla's daughter," Wendy chimes in.
The boy still looks wary, but he relaxes a bit. "Well, I guess that's alright," he says. "Do you know how to get people to stop crying?"
Lucy sighs. All these little kids can't possibly take care of themselves, and Natsu, who seems old enough to know better, just ran off and left them alone. And for that matter, why are children this young being left unsupervised at all? Her mother would never have approved of this.
Well, if Mama is too sick today to see to things like this, then Lucy is just going to have to stand in as lady of the house until she's feeling better. Looking after these three sounds more fun than lessons with Bero, anyway. And she's going to start by taking care of the current problem.
"Of course I know how to make people stop crying," Lucy says proudly, and walks across the room to where Ryos is curled up. She kneels down in front of him… and finds herself stumped. How do you stop someone from crying? Though she knows an awful lot of mathematics and magic, Bero hasn't taught her any spells to stop tears yet. But she said she could fix this, so she's going to.
"Um… it's okay," she says tentatively and reaches out to pat Ryos lightly on the shoulder. He jerks at her touch and draws back against the wall, lifting his head sharply to look at her with wide, bloodshot eyes.
"Nie!" he hisses. "Nie przebywać!"
Lucy freezes. Oh. When Natsu said he didn't understand, he'd meant it literally. That definitely makes things harder.
When she doesn't immediately respond, however, Ryos spits out another panicky command, and to Lucy's intense relief, she realizes he's speaking Boscan. That, at least, she can deal with. She started learning both Seveni and Boscan two years ago; she isn't as good with Boscan yet, but it's obviously more than the others know!
With a slight frown on her face as she tries to wrap her tongue around the twisting consonants, she says, in the halting Boscan, "It is alright, you are safe here."
Ryos looks up at her with something new dawning in his frightened eyes. His lower lip is quivering, but his voice is a little steadier when he asks, tentatively, "You can understand me?"
Lucy gives a tentative nod. "A little," she says. "I do not speak a lot of Boscan."
A new round of tears well up in his eyes, washing clear paths down his dirty cheeks; she wonders idly how he got so filthy, because the other three seem pretty clean, if a little unkempt. Despite his renewed crying, he's biting hard on his lip to keep from openly sobbing and he's unclenched his death grip on the pillow he's holding.
"Wendy says your name is Ryos, yes?" she asks.
He nods, but says nothing.
Lucy huffs out a sigh. He's not helping her help him at all. It would probably be easier if she had studied harder… why oh why couldn't he be from Seven instead of Bosco? Seveni is a lot like Fiorean, but Boscan has always been challenging for her, lots of gnashing her teeth together as consonants collide and blend in uncomfortable, foreign ways. It's going to be hard to talk to him at all like this, let alone be comforting. Not that it's going to stop her from trying. She can feel Wendy and the blond boy watching her, and feels the responsibility of being much more grown up than they are.
"Why are you crying, Ryos?" she ventures.
Immediately he clutches the pillow tighter again and hides his head, but through his renewed bawling she can catch a few stuttered words. Between his muffled voice and her lack of vocabulary she can't make out much of it, but she at least catches what she thinks might be "don't know where I am," which makes sense.
She's in the midst of trying to remember the Boscan word for house when the door opens again.
"I found him!" Natsu proclaims proudly.
He drags an older boy in by the collar of his jacket. The newcomer, who seems to be just a few years older than Natsu and herself, has to stoop a little bit with Natsu's enthusiastic towing pulling him down. He's already tall for his age, with a shoulder-length mop of black curls and a deep frown on his face.
"Damn, let go of me, pipsqueak!" he complains, but he doesn't actually try to push Natsu off of him. Then he spots Lucy and straightens up so that Natsu ends up hauled off his feet and dangles from his collar for a few seconds before letting go on his own.
"Who're you?" the newcomer barks out, and Lucy is deeply relieved to hear his thick Boscan accent.
Actually, now that she thinks about it, all of them have accents. Natsu, Wendy, and Sting all speak perfect Fiorean but their accent sounds… weird. It's not the Crocus accent she's heard from her father's business partners who come to the Konzern sometimes, or the funny lilting northern accent Bero has. If anything, it sounds like the kind of fake accent people put on for lacrima-shows set in olden days, all pinched-sounding and with vowels a little too soft.
Lucy has no idea what that means, but she notes it to think about later.
"My name's Lucy Heartfilia," she says to the older boy. "This is my house."
"Huh, guess the castle has a princess after all," he sneers, and she immediately wants to punch him. She wonders if her mother would mind terribly much if she got in a fight with one of her guests.
"Who are you, anyway?" Lucy demands.
He draws himself up to his full height— which is actually rather intimidating, even though Lucy is used to being yelled at by Aquarius— and glares down at her. "Name's Gajeel, princess, not that it's any of your business."
Lucy's about to snap something back at him, but then she's pushed to the side as Ryos launches himself out of the corner and flings himself at Gajeel. Standing up, it's clear that he's the smallest of all of them, and barely eye level with Gajeel's waist, but he grabs the tall boy around the midsection and clings on tight, sobbing into the fabric of his jacket and stuttering out broken phrases in rapid Boscan.
Gajeel looks utterly horrified, arms held out far from his body as he stares down at the boy clinging to him. "Oh jeez, kid, stop blubbering," he barks.
Ryos does not "stop blubbering." If anything, he cries harder, and Lucy can understand even less of what he's trying to say. She picks out I'm sorry and constant repeats of the word Skiadrum, which she thinks might be a name given how often he says it in between sobs. Gajeel is clearly out of his depth, and Lucy doesn't really feel like helping him since he's being so sour and rude, but she feels so bad for the poor little boy that she's about to step in. Just at that moment, though, Gajeel reaches down and awkwardly pats Ryos's head.
"You're fine, kid," he says in Boscan. "We're all gonna be fine." Or something to that effect, anyway. He says a few more things, voice a little gentler than before. Lucy doesn't pick up much, because he's speaking quietly and using a lot of words she doesn't know, but she catches the name Anna again.
What on earth happened to these kids? Something very strange is going on here, but she thinks it's almost like something out of a fairy tale. A lonely little girl who has a chance encounter with strange new friends… she only hopes that it plays out like it does in the books she's read, with magical adventures and friendships so strong they can overcome anything.
Admittedly, if this is the start of an adventure, these really aren't the companions she would have pictured. But beggars can't be choosers, as Spetto likes to say, and this morning has already been a wonderful change from her usual routine.
Ryos seems to have stopped crying, though he still has his face buried in Gajeel's shirt; Gajeel, for his part, has his hands now planted uncomfortably on his hips, apparently having worn out his capacity for physical comfort.
"Is he done now?" Natsu asks bluntly, and Lucy strongly considers taking off her shoe and throwing it at him.
"Can't you be more sensitive!" she hisses. "He's just a kid and he's upset!"
The other two young ones look on edge as well. Wendy has clutched onto Lucy's skirt again and Sting has his arms crossed defensively over his chest, looking sullen and lost. Instinctively, she reaches down and puts a hand on Wendy's back, between her thin little shoulder blades, and she tries to give Natsu a look to indicate he should do something to reassure Sting, but he doesn't pick up on her cue at all.
She sighs. Being lady of the house is going to be difficult if her guests (or one of them, anyway) won't cooperate. She doesn't quite know what to do— she's watched her mother, and she's been taught plenty of etiquette— but this isn't the same as welcoming expected guests with a week of planning to get things right! She's not really feeling the part of a hostess, either, with her hair all mussed from falling earlier and her fingers still sticky from the juice of her orange.
Her orange... that's it!
"Have you all had anything to eat?" she asks.
All five of them perk up immediately at the mention of food.
"I would've done if this little punk didn't come dragging me back here," Gajeel says sourly, giving Natsu a stern glare just as he finally manages to pry Ryos off him.
"What kind of food?" Sting asks suspiciously.
Lucy fumbles. Not having gone down to breakfast, she has no idea what Cook has on hand.
Before she can say anything, though, the door opens once again and Bero pokes his aged head inside. The other kids freeze where they stand and stare at the intruder with looks ranging from curiosity to wariness to outright hostility.
"Ah, Miss Lucy," he says, shaking his head tiredly. "Spetto said she told you not to come to the south wing, so I thought I might find you here."
She isn't that predictable, is she? She hangs her head with as much shame as she can muster (because really, she's glad she came here, but skipping her studies would be rude). "I'm sorry, Bero," she says.
"Come with me, my dear," he says. "It's time for your lessons."
"Lessons? Gihi, you really are a princess," Gajeel says with an unpleasant chuckle.
She glares at him, and walks obediently to Bero's side. "I'll come back after lunch," she says, looking at Natsu and Wendy. Then she glances up at Bero. "I can come back, right?"
He squints at her, then at the five other children watching them curiously, and sighs. "I suppose now that you've found them it would be foolish to keep you away," he says.
"Yosh!" Natsu proclaims, leaping into the air excitedly. "Come back right away, Lucy!"
His enthusiasm is catching, and Lucy thinks to herself that maybe he's not so bad after all.
"I'll make sure Cook has some breakfast sent up for the five of you," Bero says. "You must forgive us, young ones, I imagine it would have been arranged earlier, but we're all… rather unprepared for your arrival."
And so saying, he grasps Lucy's hand firmly and, despite his advanced age, tugs her quickly out into the hall, letting the door swing closed behind them.
Any feedback you have to give would be welcomed!