Finding Firelight

four:

"If ya two are done flirting with each other, we should get back," Gajeel interjected, snorting when Natsu and Lucy jumped. Lucy was positive her face wouldn't return to a normal color anytime soon and she shot Gajeel a nasty look, climbing to her feet with more dignity than she someone accused of flirting with their best friend was meant to have.

Natsu had no such problems, a grin stretching across his face till his stupid canines were flashing. He began a confident stride towards the mess hall. Gajeel hadn't told them where they should have been going, but nonetheless, he and Lucy fell in step beside Natsu.

Lucy combed a hand through her hair, trying to fix the kinks from having it in a pony-tail and nearly stumbled when Natsu spoke. "Metalhead wouldn't know what flirting was if it punched him in the face," Natsu commented with his hands folded behind his head. Gajeel gave him a look that could make a lesser person shiver, but Natsu merely raised a brow.

Lucy pointed out the obvious. "Does this mean you're flirting with him every time you hit him? I mean, the only person you hit more than him is Gray," she said. Both boys came to a stop and she almost kept walking, but halted at the last minute, rocking on her heels to see what they thought. Gajeel's face was akin to someone eating an entire lemon, but Natsu looked – dare she say it – thoughtful.

"No, he's practically my cousin, I can't flirt with him."

"Does this mean if he wasn't, you would?"

"Bunny girl," Gajeel growled.

Lucy waved him off, curious for Natsu's answer. Things of any romantic nature seemed to go over his head and Lucy was curious, almost painfully so, to have some insight into the way his brain worked. Not for herself, of course, just for science, but despite this protesting thought, she had a sudden image of herself with piercings, a messy mane of dark hair, and red eyes. She shivered, shaking the thought away. Even if Natsu was interested in someone with looks like Gajeel, that didn't matter to her.

"Not really, I'm not interested in him like that. Sorry, Gajeel, I hope you find someone who makes you happy."

Gajeel let out a relieved breath and Lucy suppressed a giggle with her hand.

"How about Gray?" Lucy asked, spotting a figure over their shoulders. The two did have a weird sort of chemistry and although she wasn't sure if fighting was exactly the healthiest way to show affection, she wouldn't fault either of them for using it to communicate. Far be it from her to judge her friends and their love lives.

"Lucy, that's horrible, why would you ask that?" Natsu moaned, clapping his hands over his ears. "I don't even want to be friends with the stripper, let alone… anything else."

"That's relieving to hear," said Gray dryly, freshly out of the showers from the looks of his clean clothes and the wet hair clinging to his brow. "I hate you too."

"Don't say that, you two are like best friends." Lucy laughed.

"Us?" Natsu and Gray chorused. When Lucy laughed again, they shot the other venomous looks and started walking once more, pointedly ignoring the other. She stifled the snort that nearly escaped when she noticed the identical little stomps the two boys were doing; Gajeel didn't comment at all, merely grunted and followed after them at a distance like he didn't want to be caught dead with two – three, he would say with a pointed glance at her - idiots.

"C'mon, Lucy!" Natsu called over his shoulder.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming."

Lucy picked up the pace till she was shoulder to shoulder with Natsu. His head tilted to her, beaming, and though she wasn't sure what made him so cheerful, she returned it with one of her own.

…

The mess hall was teeming with people when the rather strange group arrived, but they made a wide berth around Lucy and the boys despite the lack of space. She bristled, but Natsu growled something at Gray and she figured the other campers had a point. Gray and Natsu together was cause for alarm, definitely, but adding Gajeel to the mix meant they were one step closer to an absolute catastrophe of which nobody wanted to see. She wondered what she added to the group – it was unlikely that any of them feared her, but as she collected her tray and the first grilled cheese she could find, Lucy noticed an abundance of looks on her.

She shifted uncomfortably, accidentally jostling Natsu's overfilled tray and only his swift tilting kept the whole tray from splattering the floor between them. "Careful, Lucy," he said, rolling his eyes.

"Yeah, I wouldn't want to subject you to the kitchens again," she replied, eyeing the food on his plate. The food station looked no worse for wear. They were familiar enough with some of the campers eating habits, but she didn't particularly want to see if they had enough accident forgiveness to load up another tray for Natsu in the event that his became Humpty-Dumpty.

Natsu ignored her comment. "Let's go find somewhere to eat."

"Lu-chan! Here!" Lucy squinted, trying to spot the voice in the crowd. Levy was short and though she could project her voice to be heard to everyone in the room, it wasn't much useful for actually locating her. Unless one of them happened to learn echolocation. Gajeel, who had been standing on the opposite side of a crowd leaving the mess hall, merely pointed her out and Lucy spotted Levy in one of the corners, only the tips of her fingers waving over the crowd's heads.

Gray waved off their invitation to join them, heading towards an orange-haired boy.

As they approached Levy's corner of the room, Lucy could make out Gajeel's voice: "You were better off standing on the table, you shrimp."

She bit her lip, wincing in sympathy at Gajeel's surprised yelp. She hadn't been on the receiving end of Levy's kicks, but she also wasn't so stupid as to comment on her friend's shortness aloud. Levy had told Lucy the first night of camp that she had heard comments about her shortness her entire life and her first instinct now was to kick first, ask later. As Gajeel was figuring out the hard way.

"Excuse me?"

Natsu sniggered, but Lucy elbowed him carefully. "Hi Levy!" Lucy said cheerfully, interrupting Gajeel's response.

"Where did you go? You weren't in the cabin I woke up."

"Neither was Erza though," Lucy pointed out.

"The only time Erza is still in the cabin in the morning is when we do the games," Levy said, waving her hand. "You, on the other hand, have to be hit in the head with Cana's mysterious bag of booze before you wake up."

"If you know what's in the bag, why is it mysterious?" Gajeel interrupted.

Levy shot him a look. "How she fit so much booze in one bag is beyond scientific explanation."

"How she hides it from Erza, too," Lucy admitted, cutting her grilled cheese to pieces with a plastic knife. Natsu rolled his eyes, taking the knife from her and setting it down on her napkin. He grabbed his grilled cheese as an example and held it up to her, ripping it into smaller pieces in less the time and effort. Lucy stole a piece of his and chewed on it, scowling at him. "Well, nobody asked you."

Natsu snatched one of her evenly cut slices, dipped it in his ranch dressing and ate it in one bite.

She narrowed her eyes, plucking a fry off his plate. He retaliated by swiping some of her chips.

"Swooping is bad," she told him evenly.

Natsu frowned. "What happened to sharing is caring?"

"Who told you that?"

"You."

"That's a lie, that doesn't sound like me at all," she said while taking another one of his fries, flicking him gently when he tried to grab a chip.

Levy leaned forward, elbows on the table as she watched. "Do they do this a lot?"

Gajeel shrugged. "Yeah."

"You're like a third wheel, huh?" she commented, grinning. The glee on her face made Lucy giggle; she covered the noise with a drink of water, but not soon enough. Levy's eyes landed on her with a thoughtfulness that made Lucy shiver, fearful of whatever her small friend would think to ask. "So, Lucy, where have you been all day? You didn't answer earlier."

Lucy thought this was a suspiciously easy question. "I had… detention… all day and then I went to play baseball."

Levy blinked. "Detention? Baseball?"

"Because I ran off with him—" She jutted her chin towards Natsu. "—so Erza considered me an accomplice. I woke up at dawn to clean up the arts and craft cabin place thing with these ones."

"Cabin place thing, very clear," Natsu noted with a laugh. "What happened to all the fancy words in your letters?"

"There's a difference between writing something and saying something," she said defensively. "I can look over my writing for errors or search a dictionary for the exact word I need, but I can't exactly do that when I'm talking."

"Thought it was instinctive," he said, shoving half of his burger into his mouth in one smooth move.

She eyed him with some disgust. "Only parts of it."

Levy snapped her fingers before Lucy could begin her tirade about writing. "Lu-chan, focus."

"Sorry."

"So, how'd you end up playing baseball and, more importantly, did you win?"

"Of course I won, who do you think I am? I'm a Heartfilia, we don't lose."

Natsu laughed, choking on his food. Gajeel tapped him – she used the word generously, because Natsu slammed forward into the table, narrowly avoiding landing face first into his ranch soaked plate – until the coughing subsided. Lucy glared at him, a vicious thought of letting him choke in retaliation for wounding her pride, but she let it go just as quickly when he shot Gajeel an offended look. With the fire in his eyes, the messy pink hair, and the bit ranch on his nose, Lucy thought he was cute.

She thought Natsu was cute.

She clapped a hand over her mouth, glancing around, but nobody had her mental slip. Sure, he might have been a little cute, but to think it so… so blatantly was scandalous. It was the type of thing that would send the rest of the camp into an early grave – and death by cackling was not the type of thing people wanted to put on their tombstones any more than she wanted to put death by humiliation on hers.

Her weird thought and movement went unnoticed and Lucy dropped her hand with an inward sigh that quickly changed to a surprised gasp.

In her brief lapse into thoughts – read as: panic – the mess hall had fallen into an all-out food fight. Strangely, it wasn't the fact that Gray was suddenly by their table or that Gajeel and Natsu were in the middle of shoving an entire burger up the other's nose or the fact that fury-faced Erza was lamenting the loss of her strawberry cake that made Lucy pause, it was the fact that Levy in all her glory was standing on the table, throwing salad at anyone that got too close to her.

Lucy gapped at them, sliding out of her seat at the exact moment that Gray slammed into the table where she had been sitting, bits of ketchup smeared across the left side of his face and bits of lettuce clinging to his hair.

"What did you guys do?" she hissed, words turning a yelp part-way through when a glob of something came soaring towards her face. Gray snarled when it plopped against his ear, flinging himself back into the melee. Lucy scrambled under the table, face peeking between the bench and the table with a grimace. Natsu stumbled back into the table, his shirt drenched in the remnants of their drink and a look of almost gleeful happiness on his face and she narrowed her eyes. "Are you trying to get us all in trouble? Master won't be happy if we make a big mess!"

"Lu-chan! Stop talking with the enemy!" Levy demanded, flipping her bowl of salad over Natsu's head.

"What? What enemy? What's happening? I was only thinking for thirty seconds!"

Levy's eyes flickered to hers, but only briefly as Natsu was shaking the lettuce off his hair like a dog. Lucy batted a piece away before it could get her in the eye and therefore could do nothing when Natsu grabbed a fist-full of her chips and flung them into Gray's face. "Natsu!" Her hand shot out, fingers gripping the edges of his dangling scarf and jerking him down; he yelped, dropping to one of his knees. "I was going to eat those still!"

"I mean… you still could," he wheezed, tapping her fingers. She let his scarf go with an apologetic grimace. "But I wouldn't."

Lucy glared. "I wanted those chips."

Natsu stared at her for a long moment, his eyes flickering from her steely eyes to the pout of her lips, and she forced herself not to react, not flinching in the face of scrutiny. Another moment passed. Finally, he sighed in defeat. "Fine, I'll get you another bag, alright?"

"Hmm…"

"Don't get greedy," he joked. "I'm only getting you one bag."

Interesting, she thought. "Does that mean if I beg, you'll get me more?" She asked quizzically, folding her hands on the bench and poking her head out from beneath the bench. When a piece of food flew too close for comfort, she ducked back underneath with a flinch.

Natsu stepped forward, blocking her from view, a grin on his face as he crouched to be closer to her. "I could, but I didn't expect you to beg," he said, laughing. Movement behind him caught her attention and she blinked, preparing to shove him to the side, when he struck his arm out and flung the offender's food away before it could make contact with either of them.

"I didn't say I was going to, just questioning. Don't be weird," she said, relieved to avoid that mess.

"Says the one hiding under a dirty bench."

"Says the one who started a food fight. What are you, twelve?"

"Gajeel and Levy started it."

"Oh, sure, I can totally believe Levy did it. She's a sweetheart."

"Lucy… She's dumping soda on Gajeel's head right now," he said with an undertone of pride as they both peeked over at Levy and Gajeel. Levy hopped between tables with deadly grace, joined by two or three other people who followed her, and her current table put her just above Gajeel's distracted head. Lucy held back a snort when soda landed on the boy's head.

"Gajeel's a big boy, he can handle it," she replied cheerfully. "Besides, I think they are flirting."

Natsu squinted. "I don't see it."

Gajeel yelped and whirled around, murder in his eyes. "Shrimp!" He shouted at her retreating back, scrambling around tables to chase after her. The chaos of everyone flinging food at each other should have made it more difficult to see – after all, Lucy had already lost sight of Levy – but she heard a yelp in the distance that told her Gajeel had caught up.

"Okay, you might be right," Natsu noted, seeing something that Lucy couldn't see. She tugged on his pants and he explained, "He's carrying upside down on his shoulder. It's not a Gajeel move, I expected him to put gum in her hair."

"What is he, five?"

Natsu shrugged.

"BRATS!"

Lucy giggled when the room came to a sudden, horrified stop. For once, she wouldn't be the one to get in trouble for this; they couldn't even label her an accomplice when she was clearly hiding, not a trace of evidence in her hands. Natsu fell back onto the bench, trying to roll underneath the table to hide with her and she giggled again, poking his back and shoving him to the floor. "No, you face the consequences," she told him mock sternly.

"Lucy," he muttered quietly, panicked eyes flickering between Makarov and her. "I thought you said it was more fun when we're together?"

"Oops, too late," she said cheerfully just as Makarov approached them, his face impatient and red, though Lucy couldn't help noticing the little twitch of his lips whenever he caught sight of some of them. She figured it was a little hard to be mad when someone had two buns stuck to their face like Gray's brother did.

"I came to assure everyone that their mail arrived safely and could be picked up before dark," Makarov started, his hands folded behind his back. Lucy's eyes widened. The crowd perked up, dropping their food onto the table or – in most cases – the floor, though Lucy only noticed dimly, her eyes locked on Makarov, waiting with bated breath for him to finish. "But the front cabin will be closed by the time you all finish picking up. I imagine you'll have to wait till breakfast tomorrow to pick up your mail. Oh, what a series of unfortunate events, but I suppose that's the price we pay to have fun."

She let out a breath and Natsu helped her out from underneath the table, squeezing her hand briefly before he joined everyone else in the cleaning. It was a slow process, even with everyone's excitement and Makarov's watchful eyes, and it was only when Erza, nearly as red as her hair, stated her apologies loudly that productivity increased by ten percent. Lucy, Bisca, and Droy were the only ones to avoid clean up, but after a few minutes of watching the pitiful – yet amusing, if Bisca's snorts meant anything – of watching their fellow campers, the other two pitched in with the effort.

Stubbornly, Lucy cleaned off a spot on the table and climbed up, feet resting on the bench and absently watched Natsu scrub ketchup off the walls. Feeling eyes on him, he glanced over at her and offered a cheery wave. Lucy returned it mechanically, an unpleasant bubble forming in her stomach that seemed very unlike everyone else's excitement. Mail came once a week, often in a bundle since outsiders were limited to one day a week of access to the camp to protect the campers, and it was strange to realize she had been at camp for a whole week. It felt like yesterday she had just arrived, worried and uncertain, but determined.

A whole week. She couldn't believe that in that time she had forgotten, mostly, about her home.

She wondered if her father noticed her absence yet. When it came time for camp, Lucy hadn't even said good-bye to him, merely let Virgo escort her to the meet-up in town where a bus would take her to another meet-up that would take her to camp. Was a week long enough for him to notice and miss her absence? It was the longest time either of them had been separated in a way and she hoped, perhaps futilely, that the space was exactly the thing he needed to remember that he had a daughter who needed him.

Lucy really missed her dad and she hadn't even realized how much till now. Lucy sighed, foot bouncing on the bench as she waited for Makarov to dismiss them for the night. Her father was a smart man, she bet that he realized she wasn't there after the first dinner. She would bet anything that by the next night, he was curious about her and how she was doing, how the silence of their dining room would be worse than usual and he would want to write to her, just to make sure she was safe at the camp or having fun. If she was lucky, that is.

It's called Love and Lucky, that has to count for something, she thought with a hopeful smile, jumping off her bench as Makarov sent everyone out to the beckoning bonfires.

…

Lucy slept badly despite her cheerful thoughts, dreaming of the letter her father left her that apologized for the last year, dreaming that for every day she was gone she had a letter in his sharp, pointed handwriting. Each dream made her smile, but they always ended after a moment as squeaking noises roused her from sleep. She never got any farther than recognizing her father's handwriting before she awoke, heart racing and ears pricked for the rustling nearby, and as the hours crept by, one after another in a slow-moving dance, Lucy thought she would never fall asleep at all.

As quickly as the thought came, it passed and Lucy was sound asleep.

The next time she woke, the sun was well on its way, beaming at her through the window and she mumbled sleepily, rolling to face the other way and snuggling into the warmth of her blankets. Her body felt heavy still, craving sleep for a few hours longer after such a rough, up-and-down night, and she nearly gave into its demand.

Levy chattered happily about getting a letter from her mother. Cana laughed, talking about a letter from her friend, Kagura, and the letter her dad would sneak into the mail as well even though he was asleep in one of the other cabins. Their happiness was infectious and Lucy snapped awake, sitting up so quickly that Levy startled in her own bed, squawking as the book she held clattered to the ground.

"It's mail day?" Lucy asked sharply, tiredness fading from her face at the first nod. She threw herself out of bed, legs tangling in the blankets and she ripped them off in her frenzy. Her dreams had lit a fire beneath her, one that drowned out the last year of heartache, leaving behind a frantic sort of excitement. The letter was going to be there, the one that was going to fix everything. Well, maybe not everything, but it was going to be a start that she would grasp eagerly with both hands.

Levy and Cana watched her with astonished faces, but she had no time to explain or words to give as she shrugged off her pajamas, letting them flutter to the floor forgotten as she tugged on the nearest pair of clothes she could find. The shorts were snug on her hips, but she ignored them, brushing her teeth and then her hair, darting out the door with her hands still gathering blonde tresses into a messy ponytail. It was a rush job, but her looks were the last thing on her mind.

The door burst open behind her as Levy and Cana scrambled after her. "I didn't expect to see you so excited," Cana noted, her eyes narrowed.

"This is the longest I've been away from my father ever!" That wasn't precisely true, her father went on many trips that lasted weeks. Once he had left for two months and his arrival back had only been because her mother had fallen so ill that she couldn't rise from bed. She amended her statement, forcing away that awful memory, "This is the longest he's been away from me, I mean he usually has someone with me when he's on business trips so he can just ask them how I'm doing. But this time he can't! Master and Gildarts are the only ones with working phones up here! I want to know everything that's happening back home and he'll have to tell me if he wants to see how I am!"

Levy frowned, but Cana slung her arm around Lucy's shoulders, drawing her to the other girl's bosom. Lucy blushed. Cana laughed and said, "Well then, onwards! We'll get you breakfast while you get the mail – what do you want? I'm thinking waffles."

"Oatmeal. Maple and brown sugar," Lucy replied, thinking of her father's favorite breakfast with a grin. She let out a relieved giggle when Cana let her go. With a salute and a nod, Cana and Levy headed for the mess hall, gesturing animatedly about the camp's event later today.

Lucy smiled and raced for the main cabin – it was attached to the mess hall like a shed, but it's entrance was on the opposite side of the mess hall's. As she entered, she could see a few other campers collecting their mail from a cheery faced Mira and Lucy waited in line, so excited that it took everything in her to do nothing more than tap her fingers against her side. When it was her turn, she nearly leapt to the counter, but controlled herself enough to approach it like a normal human being.

From the amusement on Mira's face, she didn't necessarily succeed.

"Hey Mira, can I get the mail for Cana, Levy, and I?"

Mira smiled, flipping through a stack of neatly organized letters, plucking one that she could see was for Cana from a section labeled A. Her finger ran down the alphabet, but when she came to H, Mira paused, her smile dropping. Lucy felt the world tilt. "I don't have any mail for you, Lucy," she said apologetically, eyes darting up and then widening as she spotted Lucy's disheartened face. "Let me go check the back, it might have been— "

"No, it's okay," Lucy interrupted, a lump rising in her throat at her own foolish hope. "Can I have Levy and Cana's? I told them I'd bring it to them."

Mira hesitated, a war playing across her face, before she went back to her stack of letters to pluck out Levy's. She passed both of them over with a grimace. "I'm sorry, maybe next week though," she whispered, aware of the sudden silence in the room. As though everyone knew that the Heartfilia girl wasn't worthy of getting a letter from home. Lucy sucked in a shallow breath, offered a small broken smile, and then left the main cabin, walking slowly towards the mess hall.

For once, it was quiet, just the shuffling of paper and a low murmur of voices.

She ignored this, walking to where Levy and Cana sat, sinking into the open seat beside Levy. Both looked up at her, faces growing alarmed, and she forced a smile to her face, pleased when they calmed a fraction. She had no wish to talk, not here and not to anyone.

Shakily, she offered over her friend's letters. Cana pushed over the bowl of oatmeal in thanks, only pausing when she noticed the lack of anything else in Lucy's hands. "Hey, Lucy," she started slowly, sharing a look with Levy that spoke volumes. "Did you, uh, get anything from home?"

Lucy smile fractured slowly, piece by piece, and then she lowered her voice. "Of course, I just want to read it in the cabin," she said, forcing cheer into her voice. Then, because she didn't want to be alone, but she also didn't want to talk about herself, she asked, "Who is yours from?"

Cana stared at her a moment longer, glancing at Levy once more, then said, "My friend, Kagura. She's too old for the camp now, missed the cut-off by three months." Love and Lucky was, unfortunately, for younger children and teens from twelve to eighteen, which was possibly why Lucy found it so bizarre that her parents had fallen in love here after a single summer. Less than year, when you thought about it, and yet they knew after camp ended the first time that they were meant to be together.

Levy and Cana began to read their letters while Lucy wondered, scooping a bite of oatmeal into her mouth, what it was like to be loved so swiftly and unconditionally. For her father's faults, Lucy didn't doubt that he loved her mother from the beginning till the end and she knew – she knew – that he loved her to this day.

Maybe that was why he didn't look at Lucy anymore. Maybe the pain was too much, maybe he couldn't stand to look at her any more than Lucy could stand to see her photos of her mother. How would it feel to see the face of someone who loved you looking back at you every day?

But then Lucy knew because she saw that same face every day and she didn't have the luxury of looking away from her own reflection.

She swallowed the oatmeal, setting her spoon down slowly because her stomach rolled and protested against the sudden rising desperation, so different than the excitement that had awoken her.

An entire week of not hearing from her and he didn't care at all to see if she was okay, to see if she needed him.

Not that she did. No, Lucy was practically an adult, she didn't need her father, but there was a part of her aching with her parents' absence, the piece growing larger every day, and Lucy realized she didn't need her father maybe, but she certainly wanted him. She tried to recall the last time she had hugged him, a distant memory springing to mind of a red-haired doctor ushering her into her father's arms after Layla had died. Jude had hugged her tight and she had pressed her face into his white shirt, tears streaking down both their faces at the unexpected tragedy of the day.

That was the last time, really, because she couldn't recall her father during the funeral, just Virgo's grip on her shoulder, the maid unsure of how to comfort her, but offering her presence nonetheless. Lucy had felt like she had lost both her parents within days of each other and the empty, hard shell left behind was not the father who had given her a new bow every time he came back from a business trip away from home. Now the man who came back seemed to look at her impassively, eyes sliding past her as though she were little more than an average wall decoration.

Lucy bit her lip hard, forcing back the lump in her throat and prodded at her oatmeal. Maple and brown sugar sounded less appetizing now than it had a few minutes ago and she only managed to choke down two bites before the rustling paper and silence drove her mad. She stood up from her table, some eyes following her movement then drifting down to their letters or to their private conversations, and she dumped her oatmeal in the trash and her bowl into the sink, heart aching too fiercely to even speak when someone called her name.

Her body moved on automatic and she took calm, even steps toward the exit.

The moment the door shut behind her, she walked faster.

The moment she was out of view from anyone eating inside, she ran.

The moment her trembling legs gave out and sent her crumbling to her bottom in a familiar cove, she lent her face into her hands and cried.

Thank you sarara1.8, ThatOneFriend-3, and nikkiw67 for the reviews! Apologies for taking a few days longer to update, some life issues came up that had to be dealt with a little. Please let me know what you think!