Lucy Heartfilia had been working at the Magnolia Theater for a couple of years now. She enjoyed working in the historic old place, though she had originally thought she would be on the stage, not working behind the scenes. Her theater teacher told her about the job opening when Lucy had been lamenting the need for a job to supplement her scholarship at Fairy Tail University, and she found that the work suited her. After a year of moving sets and hanging lights she'd changed her focus from actively performing on the stage over to the behind the scenes stagecraft side of theater. Her boss had been so impressed with her work, that she was going to be designing the lights for the upcoming ballet production of Sleeping Beauty the university dance program was sponsoring.
Lucy groaned when she saw the notes that Professor Cheney had attached to the music that he sent. "A Mafia Fairy Tale, featuring Flash Gordon?" she thought. "Who does that to Tchaikovsky's classic?" Apparently, Rogue Cheney and the Fairy Tail University Ballet Program, that's who. The production was trying to be more modern and so required a lot more lighting changes than would usually happen which could be synced more easily with the music since they weren't using an orchestra. And, while it would be Lucy designing the lights, it seemed that Professor Cheney had specific ideas of what should be happening and when. She took a deep breath and then dived into the notes trying to see if they even had enough lights to be able to make this happen. She couldn't help but be grateful that they would be doing minimal scenery for this show; it would make adjusting the lights so much easier. Now she just had to hope the costumes wouldn't call for a total color overhaul, but what were the chances?
The first production meeting went relatively smoothly. Lucy had been impressed with the costume plans that had been passed around her vision of what they had been trying to describe became much easier to imagine. She was so glad she wasn't on the props team as it seemed that they would be busy from dawn till dusk just to get everything ready in time. When it came time to discuss the lighting plans she had been able to present her ideas for achieving most of what she'd been asked to do. She'd been bracing herself for a tirade over her inability to get everything that Professor Cheney wanted into the show, but was pleasantly surprised when he turned to the producer with a smile.
"Didn't I tell you these young people are wizards, Sting?" He looked back at Lucy. "The nice thing about telling you youngsters about what you want to do is that you don't take one look at it and then tell me it can't be done. Instead you bring to me this plan that lets me have the wildest flights of my imagination."
"Don't exaggerate, Rogue," the producer said flatly. He looked at Lucy. "You should try to pitch a little fit over what he wants done, or he'll start to become unreasonable in his demands."
Lucy laughed. "Well, if he comes round when I'm setting them all up, he'll hear plenty of grumbling about his flights of fancy."
Laughter bubbled up between them, knowing that even in the best productions, such things, were common place. A few more items were discussed and the meeting broke up. Lucy left with Laxus as they discussed the resources she'd need to pull off the lighting she had planned.
A couple of weeks later the dancers arrived to start practicing on the stage. They had done all of the blocking and choreography in the campus studios, but now they were going to be rehearsing on the stage to get used to the space. Lucy was up on the catwalk with a thick pair of gloves prepared to start focusing and adjusting the lights, her coworkers chattering through her headset, when the dancers first walked in. She had some time before the rehearsal started and things would get busy so she took a few moments to watch the dancers from her perch. A few of the faces she recognized from her classes, but most of them were unknown to her. There was one unknown dancer that stood out almost immediately.
She had long, red hair that she was twisting up into a knot as she talked to the dancer next to her. She was wearing a loose, baby blue wrap-around sweater, which she removed to reveal the black leotard underneath. A pair of gray knit shorts were over her tights while some garrish purple and orange leg warmers completed her look. She had a presence that seemed to be taking up all the available space around her though she wasn't being loud or overly expressive.
Lucy couldn't look away.
"See something you like, blondie?" the man who was with her on the catwalk asked with a smirk.
Lucy didn't even respond. She was much too taken by the young woman as she put down her dance bag and started pulling out her dance flats.
The man nudged Lucy's side. "Need something to mop up that drool?"
Lucy frowned at the man. "Shut it, Greer! You have no place to talk."
"What did I do to deserve your ire?" he asked with a put upon air.
"Are you forgetting that you were falling all over yourself last month trying to impress that girl in the play?" Lucy said as she poked his side. "And that you left me to do all the clean up after she accepted your offer to go get a late night snack. I'm just-"
"You're just doing your weird fall in love with the pretty girl, but keep your distance thing," he said with another smirk.
"I'm not falling in love!" Lucy protested while Mard scoffed. She turned back to look at the stage, "But she is really pretty."
"Whatever!" Mard said as he shook his head.
Suddenly Laxus' voice was in their earpieces giving them orders to get to work.
Three hours later they had gone through the basic blocking and had the lights tuned into the major areas that needed illumination. Lucy and Mard climbed down from the cat walks and headed out to the house to meet with Laxus and Gajeel. Gajeel was working the sound board while Laxus was programming the main board.
"After lunch we'll do the follow spots," Laxus informed them. "And once the dancers leave we'll be able to bring the lights down to the stage to put the gels in."
"Sounds like a good plan," Lucy said as she stretched a bit. "What time do we need to be back?"
"Quarter till," Laxus said as he checked his phone.
"Will do," she replied. "Come on Mard," she turned to the dark haired man, "Let's go grab a sandwich at Mermaid Heel."
"Oh, I'm looking forward to the Tuesday tuna salad," he said as they left the building.
After lunch Lucy and Mard were in the booth two stories above the stage where the follow spots lived. The lights were ancient, but they did their job.
"We're going to need one of those spots to be dedicated to the purple fairy," Laxus said over their head sets. "She gets a lot of stage time and solos, especially in the opening act."
"It's the Lilac Godmother, Lax," Lucy said with a huff.
"Lucy should take that one," Mard said, the leer in his voice easily heard. "She's not going to be able to take her eyes off that fairy anyway."
Laxus' laugh was easily heard. "Ok, Lucy is going to have the purple filter for the purple fairy and might as well give you the blue for the Bluebirds in the final act as well." There was a pause before he added, "Let's see if you two can split up all the rest. Greer, have you found your one true love for this production?"
"Not sure, yet," he said languidly. "Normally I would totally go for that redhead, but obviously Lucy has dibs on her."
"I haven't called dibs on anyone,' Lucy protested. "And you two having this stupid contest of finding a one true love for every production is kind of sick and twisted."
"Hey," Mard protested, "It just encourages us to make friends and broadens our dating pool. Nothing wrong with that."
"You guys can be such jerks about it though," Lucy mumbled.
"So who were you thinking about Lax?" Mard asked as he rolled his eyes at Lucy.
"Well, I had thought about the pink haired guy, Sleeping Beauty's prince charming, but I saw him making out with the black headed guy that's doing Puss in Boots, so…" he trailed off.
"Maybe they'd be open to including you, Lax," Mard suggested, well, suggestively.
"Nah, I think that green haired girl that's playing the evil fairy-"
"Carabosse, the rival family's assassin," Lucy supplied.
"-will be my mark because she's totally hot," Laxus finished off.
Lucy just rolled her eyes.
"You'd better come up with someone by the end of this rehearsal, Greer, because I'm gonna ask Cara-whatever out for coffee as soon as we're done here."
"Oh, I'm sure I'll have found true love by the end of the first act," Mard said confidently. "The question is can I get true love's first kiss, before you do."
Fortunately to Lucy, just at that moment they started the run through and the chatter mostly stopped.
Lucy found this version of the ballet really interesting, certainly more captivating than the production she'd been forced to sit through as a precocious seven year old. She was pretty sure that if the fairy godmothers had been carrying Gatling guns instead of wands she would have paid closer attention. She had to admit that the Mafia Don receiving the fealty of his underlings and the promised protection of his child from other friendly families seemed very much like a king and his subjects receiving the blessings of the good fairies. That, at least made some sense.
She still wasn't sold on the 1940's "vision of the future" part of the story, but she had the black lights and lasers all set to go. She was worried that all the silver clothing the dancers would be wearing might reflect the light weird or into people's eyes. Maybe the costume people could give her one or two of them and she could get a dancer or two to move around the stage while she checked from the different seats in the house? It was something she wrote down on her list to ask about at the next production meeting.
By far the weirdest part to Lucy was actually the most classic. In the final act, they were having the fairy tale characters show up in their traditional clothes, though Lucy did notice a few changes to the line up. Puss in Boots and the White cat were still part of the show, as were the Bluebird and Little Red Riding Hood with her Big Bad Wolf. Lucy thought it was interesting that they had done a gender swap on that last one. Little Red was taller and obviously stronger than the wolf, but he still ran away so as not to be eaten up by the fierce little blue haired girl playing the wolf. The fact that they had taken Hop-o'-My-Thumb with his ogre brothers, which she'd had to look up since she'd never heard of them, and replaced them with the Three Little Pigs was a very astute update she thought. And the three dancers that played the pigs were hilarious with their antics, especially when they were chased off stage by the same terrifying little dancing wolf.
They had done a lot of intelligent gender swapping in the show, most of the male roles were being danced by women including three of the suitors for the princess's hand. But then that's what happens when the ratio of male dancers to female dancers is 3 to 25, Lucy supposed. She was glad that her name would be associated with this show, even if the stress of getting it all to look just right was giving her an ulcer.
It was a relief when the director dismissed the dancers and Lucy could head back down to the stage. This second run through had taken a lot longer than they had expected so they had barely gotten the lights down from the flies when Laxus declared that work was over. He might not have been so eager to let them go if he hadn't had his arm wrapped around the green haired girl's shoulders. Mard was off like a shot, naturally, but Lucy stayed back a little to have everything in order to be ready for them the next morning. She took the time to write a couple of threatening notes to anyone who dared disturb her preparations before grabbing her purse and heading home.
Wednesday morning Lucy got up early, something she hated doing, but she had a class at eleven and she wanted the lights back up before the afternoon dance call. She stopped by her favorite coffee shop for some caffeine and a blueberry scone, before racing to the theater. She parked in the nearly abandoned car park, not recognizing the one other car in the lot. She made sure that she had her mace ready in one hand while the other held her coffee and the bag with her pastry. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the red hair of the person waiting next to the stage door.
"Hi," Lucy said and then remembered to move her feet the rest of the way to the door. "You're one of the dancers, aren't you?"
"Hi," the other woman said as she nodded affirmatively to Lucy's question. Her voice a little deeper than Lucy had expected. "Do you know when the theater will be open?"
"Well, Makarov doesn't usually get here till eight," Lucy said as she struggled to put her mace back in her purse to be able to get to her keys. "But I wanted to come in early-"
"Here," the redhead said as she held out a hand toward Lucy's coffee cup. "I can hold that, if it helps."
"Oh yeah," Lucy said. She felt their fingers brush as she handed the cup over and tried to remember what she was trying to say. "Thanks. That, that helps a lot." She rummaged in her bag a bit more before exclaiming, "Hah!" as she held aloft the key ring. "I wanted to come in to have the main lights ready before rehearsal."
"Oh," the other woman's face fell. "I was hoping to get some practice time just by myself before everyone showed up."
"So you came-" she stopped to count on her fingers, it was far too early to do mental math, "-seven hours early?" she asked incredulously.
She merely shrugged, a movement that made Lucy wonder how she could make a simple shoulder roll look so elegant, "I have time for it now. And I need all the practice I can get."
"Are you kidding?" Lucy asked incredulously. "You're practically perfect now!" Suddenly her face began to turn bright red and she was glad that she was able to focus on opening the door and not look at her early morning companion. "I, uh, have to disarm the alarm. Give me a few minutes?"
"Okay," was the soft response she got before Lucy practically sprinted to the front office.
She was able to unlock the office door and turn off the alarm in record time, though it took her two tries to input the code correctly. Then she made sure to turn on the hall lights as she returned to the stage door. "Come on in," she said as she waved the redhead through.
"Oh, uh, here you go, um?"
"Lucy," she said as she reached for her coffee. "Thanks again."
"It was my pleasure," she said as she reached down for her dance bag. "I'm Erza."
"Nice to meet you Erza," Lucy said as her brain started to slowly wake up. "Please forgive anything I say until after I've had my coffee." She chuckled a bit. "Brain refuses to work until after it's had its caffeine." She threw out an arm to stop her from stepping on to the stage. "Wait!"
Erza's face was slightly startled.
"I, um, set some stuff up for this morning," she explained as she lowered her arm. "Nothing is where you think it is. I'll get the working lights on so we can see where we're going."
"Oh, alright."
Lucy felt for the light switch which was just slightly too far from the door and not exactly at the height one expected it to be. Eventually her questing fingers found their target and she flipped the switch. She caught the distraught look on Erza's face and immediately wanted to make things better.
"Don't worry," she said as she put a tentative hand on her arm, "It's not as bad as it looks. It might take me a couple of hours, but I'll have this out of your way as soon as I can. And I have the keys for all the rooms in the theater. You could always practice in the, well the practice room."
"How long would it take if I help you?"
Lucy was surprised at her offer. "Well, um. Have you ever worked on lights before?"
Erza shook her head. "But I can see that you have everything set out. If you want me to just fetch things for you, I could do that."
"Let's give it a try," Lucy said as she smiled at her new assistant. "If it's not working we can figure something else out. You couldn't possibly be worse than Greer," she added with a chuckle.
Lucy took her through the process and got out her light plan. Soon she and Erza were working in a comfortable rhythm. By the end of the first bank of lights they were speaking in their own shorthand and they were getting faster. They finished the first three rows of lights within an hour. When they got to the light bank that was the farthest back from the front of the stage Lucy groaned.
"We've got to stop here Erza," she said as she grit her teeth.
"But why?"
"Because my ever-so-lazy partner got the wrong type of lights put up here. I'm just going to write which ones I need to switch out and what I'm missing because I'll need to grab them from storage, and then I can get these back up into the flies and you can do some practicing."
"Thanks Lucy," Erza said smiling at her. "This was kind of fun."
"Yeah, it was," she said looking up from her clipboard. "I would never have got this far this fast without you. So thank you!"
Erza smiled and put back the red gel she had been holding.
Soon Lucy was finished with her notes and they got the lights back to their place above the stage. Lucy made sure to unlock the door to the dressing rooms so that Erza could change into her dance gear before urgently sweeping the stage. Erza was wearing a purple unitard with a knee length tulle skirt and her hideous leg warmers as well as her toe shoes when she returned.
"Did you want the music on the theater speakers or did you have something else in mind?" Lucy asked her as she moved to the sound equipment at the side of the stage.
"Oh, I have it on my player," Erza said as she held up her little machine.
"Well then don't mind me," Lucy said as she waved to the empty stage. "The theater is yours." She frowned for a moment. "It won't disturb you if I'm coming in and out and putting my lights on the side over there, will it?"
Erza shook her head. "Once the music starts playing I won't even know the world exists."
Lucy nodded and checked the time on her phone. "Mister Makarov should be here by now. I'll make sure he knows you're out here. Is there anything else you need?"
"No, but thank you Lucy," she said as she put a graceful hand on Lucy's shoulder. "You have been very helpful and I appreciate that you are willing to work with my desires."
Lucy looked carefully at her, but decided the woman couldn't possible have meant it that way. "No problem," she managed to say though her mouth had gone suddenly dry. She started to inch toward the side door. "I'll, uh, just be going now."
Erza gave her a little wave and pushed play. Lucy could hear the faint buzz of the music as she walked off stage. Once in the hallway she leaned against the wall. All of that time with just her and Erza? It was both a dream come true and her worst nightmare. As long as they were working on her project she had no problems talking to the dancer, but as soon as that came to a stop she suddenly forgot what words were. Why did crushes turn her into a neanderthal? UGH! This was either going to turn into something really good, or it was going to hurt like crazy and her money was on the second option.
Lucy took a step back to look through the stage door. Erza was perfectly framed, her lone figure in a graceful stretch against the darkness of the rest of the theater. She wasn't wearing an elaborate costume or being illuminated by Lucy's spotlight but still she couldn't help but feel dazzled at the sight.