The next few days were unbearably lonely. The Dragon Slayers regularly circled the hall, making sure not a trace of Natsu got within 5 feet of Lucy. Though most still were simply milling rumors around the Fairy Tail grapevine which is about fifty times faster than the average hair salon's.

Many of which being too outlandish to even mention.

"Gajeel! Let me out of here!" She banged the door, she had been ready to get out of that stuffy room for a while now, but Gajeel had stood pit-bull since she got up.

"Noope." She bet he had a smirk on his studded face.

But before she could get a piece of her mind out, he stomped off down the hallway.

"Arrrgh!" She cried in frustration and stomped back to her impeccably made bed, sat, and pouted.

She amused herself by cleaning her keys, which never left her side, until they were shiny enough to blind Aria.

"Blondie!"

'Oh god,' She hoped he wasn't coming to pester her any further with his teasing.

The iron bars fell from the door(courtesy of Gajeel Security Inc.) and entered-

"What's up, jumper cable?" She wisecracked. If this is how they were going to communicate, they she would make sure it was done thoroughly.

"Thunder Thighs."

"Live-wire."

"Shirley Temple."

"Static Shock."

"Airhead."

"Magic Mike."

"Vegas."

"Could you two stop it for an hour, at least please? You're giving me a headache." Makarov strolled through the door, with a grin on his face that only the knowing could have.

"Shut it, Jii-Jii." The giant rolled his eyes.

"Anyway," The Slayer flopped ungraciously into the chair next to the bed, coat luxuriously preventing immediate bedsores. "We need to talk, Blondie." The ever-present Sound Pods came off.

"I'm not cuttin' corners, not sugar coatin' none of that," Lucy tensed up, visibly. "Tell me, have you decided what happened. Do not say anything to make Natsu look good or I just might decide for you." For a such heavy speech, he said like it was just idle chatter at the bar.

The words caught in Lucy's throat. He was asking so many things. What to say? And how?

"Oi," A hand ran through perpetually spiky hair. "To make things easier so you don't pop a brain cell, like you have any more," A quick thwap at his head(half-heartedly dodged) stopped his sentence. "Yes he did, or no he did not." Again tossing skeletons like daisies

Like the obscenely oversimplified decision made it easier. She wracked her intellect, looking for answers she didn't have, information she lost due to a few vanilla-and-rum milkshakes. But still after two weeks of conscious scale tipping,

"He walks. Natsu, that is."

Laxus rechecked to make he had taken his sound pods off. Certainly-

"You can't be serious."

She looked away from her precious speck on the floor, and looked at Laxus dead in the eyes with the strength to move mountains. See-through but there.

"Knowing Natsu, he's probably teetering on the line between paranoid and bat-shit crazy with the mere thought that he's laid ill hands on me. The thought of hurting his most precious nakama. Let him go, wherever you got him locked up, and bring him here, the guilt has probably killed him thrice."

With a huff, and much to Lucy's exasperation and Makarov's indifference, he left with a bang.

Makarov simply hopped of the bed, stretched and left, laughing the whole way.

The long ass stairs down to Fairy Tail's prison hold had given him a long ass time to think, that is if he stopped skipping steps.

Why did he rush to save lovely Lucy in the first place, and now why was he drudging down the stairs to get this hatchling? Should he be raising hell down here before the midget's exile?

But Lucy let him walk.

"I can smell you, Shocky. Tell what's happened or come and kill me here."

Natsu's haunted voice drifted up the stairs. Laxus continued his leisurely saunter.

After finally arriving at the boy's cell (which looked more like a hotel) one could fully behold the disturbed state of the Salamander.

Pink hair, slicked back with the sheer might of filth. T-shirt and sweats having seen better days. But most disconcerting were his eyes, which were looking too hard at the cartoons on the wall that the TV wasn't even on.

"Natsu," Laxus chucked a set of clothes his way. "Clean up, Lucy wants to see you."

"..." He simply shuffled toward the bathroom.

"Is she okay?" Before the door closed.

"She has a mask up. She's probably just like you."

"..."

The shower ran. Laxus sat in the living chair, pondering about nothing.

The room's air was so thick you needed a diamond plated chain saw to cut through it.

Only Natsu and Lucy stood in the middle of the floor.

Like a fight about to happen.

Lucy was inflicted with indifference. Natsu was picking loose scales, some beginning to bleed with the force of his tugs.

"...It's done."

Natsu's head snapped up. Her glare was hard and stern.

"It's done. In the past. I enjoyed it." A porcelain smile. A kiss on the cheek as small feet walked past him.

And, for now, out of his life.

A low, sad roar escaped his throat as Lucy, with her mask, did nothing as tears fell.