This is my holiday story for this year. It was originally supposed to be a one-shot, but it got away from me when I decided to make it the Christmas/holiday fic. I originally started this way before the manga ended, so that's why this particular story will not follow the canon ending.

Anyway, it's just my usual plain, kind of fluffy, sort of angsty fic. I don't really know how to do anything else, and I was kind of on the fence about posting this at all since I recently had all of my writing flaws (or whatever you want to call them) pointed out to me, and of course, this story would be no different...

Anyway, enjoy (I hope). The next four parts will be posted over the next few days.

Summer

Closing the door softly behind herself, Lucy didn't even look around at her small room at the inn before she was leaning down to begin unzipping her boots and carrying herself over to the twin bed in the centre of the space. Once down, the side of her face pressed into the firm mattress, she decided she didn't quite want to get up, not even with the afternoon sun filtering in through the window and shining into her eyes. It had been a long time since she'd come to Crocus, and Lucy couldn't tell if her exhaustion was just from the tiring journey, or if it was her age slowly but surely creeping up on her.

Whatever the case was, Lucy just didn't feel at all like moving from where she lay. However, as tempted as she was to stay right there, the leather of her boots still sticking to the middle of her thighs were making it difficult to relax. And after wearing them all day, she was dying to get them off.

With a gentle sigh, Lucy turned and struggled to pull herself up, her tired muscles protesting and making her groan. The worn leather boots were already unzipped, so all Lucy had to do was pull them off, and once she did, she only tossed them onto the ground by the foot of the bed, and then collapsed back down onto the mattress once again.

Lucy had never actually planned on visiting Crocus. When she'd left Magnolia with just the one canvas backpack, the one she'd dropped by her room door just a few moments earlier, all Lucy'd had on her mind was leaving. It didn't matter where she ended up, she'd just wanted to do it alone. It had been a long time since she'd done something on her own, always having had Natsu by her side. But now… Now she didn't have that. Not really, at least, not with their divorce being finalised.

It had been a long time coming in Lucy's eyes, after trying and failing for three years to get pregnant, and then having to cope with losing their newborn just days after she'd been born. They'd never figured out just why they'd had so much trouble conceiving before Ember – and neither had really wanted to know, to be honest; they'd just agreed that it wasn't something that was meant to be and had left it at that. It had been the only way to actually deal with it at the time. But even having said that, things had never been the same after they'd given up on trying to start their own little family again. Without a guild and without a family to keep them grounded, they'd had no reason to stay in Magnolia.

So they'd travelled. They'd sold most of what they'd owned, packed up the rest of it, and gone to explore the world side by side, like Natsu had always promised they'd do together one day.

And honestly, Lucy had loved it. She'd loved seeing everything the world had to offer and being able to experience it all with her best friend. The years they'd spent travelling from one exotic place to the next had been one of the best times of her life. But, they hadn't been able to spend the rest of their lives drifting from country to country and town to town, as much they'd loved doing so. They'd eventually had to settle down again, and that was where things had really started to become stale.

They'd just fallen out of love somewhere along the line. And after a while, they'd stopped seeing each other as the love of their life. They'd returned to nothing more than good friends – the best of friends, even – but they'd stopped loving each other. At least in the way they should, anyway.

They'd talked about the idea of spending some time apart for a while before they'd accepted that things were never going to be the same, but the minute they'd started spending some time apart, they'd both known that it wasn't going to help.

Considering all things though, after they'd been sitting across from each other and signing the papers that would make them no longer husband and wife, they'd just felt so relieved to finally have it over and done with. And they'd laughed about it as well, finding it more than amusing than any sane person would've that being married to each other had just put a massive weight on each of their shoulders and it had really sucked.

But, that wasn't to say that it hadn't been a sad time for them either, because it had been. They'd shared so much over the years – so many amazing, happy memories had been made and shared together… And they'd always thought that they would be it for each other, that they'd always be happy and be able to face anything just because they were with each other. So it had been a little difficult to accept that the one thing they had always believed in – each other – had actually failed them, after all that time.

After that though, it hadn't taken Lucy very long to realise that she couldn't actually stay there. Natsu had realised the same thing, and so after trying to just co-exist peacefully, they'd finally decided to go their separate ways. So Natsu and Happy had gone off to train, maybe spend some time with Sting and Rogue and help train their adopted twin girls on Dragon Slayer magic, and Lucy had just gone back to exploring the world again, and looking for some place to maybe call home at some point.

And that was how she'd come to be in Crocus, five months since she'd signed that last document that tied her to her best friend, and three months since they'd gone their separate ways. And really, the only reason she'd ended up in Crocus at all was because summer had well and truly come to Fiore now, and she couldn't spend another night camping outside and waking up covered in sweat. Crocus had just happened to the closest city to where she'd been, so she'd trekked all day in the blistering sun to the nearest train station, just so she could arrive before night and be able to have a bed to sleep on and a proper shower for a change. She'd tried her best to conserve money by not spending it unnecessarily on hotels and inns, but occasionally Lucy liked to treat herself to a room, although that usually ended up being about once a week.

She liked her showers, and it was hard to come by fresh-water springs those days.

Still… As much as Lucy knew she really needed to take a shower and get out of her sweaty clothes, she just couldn't be bothered. She was exhausted, and the smell of clean linen had always been a weakness of hers.

"Maybe I'll just… shower in the morning…"

Not even the late afternoon sun filtering in through the window and straight into her eyes could stop Lucy from drifting off to sleep where she lay, sprawled out across the double mattress with her feet still hanging off the edge.