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"Are you sure this is safe?" A very young and very scared Lucy Heartfilia asked as she followed her best friend closely through the woods. The sun was still out, though it was impossible to tell due to the denseness of the trees. Lucy could hardly see a thing, even if she squinted.

"Yeah I'm sure! Quit being such a baby, we're almost there." Natsu huffed as he pushed aside the brush of some tall bushes so that the two of them could get through without getting scratched up too badly. Once she was through as well, he let go of the foliage and they continued on their way.

To the little girl, it felt as though they'd been walking forever. Though truthfully, it couldn't have been longer than fifteen or twenty minutes. Lucy just wasn't used to walking through dark and scary places without an adult present.

Her fear certainly contributed to her disability to remember how long they'd been out there.

Just when Lucy had been about to start crying, they finally broke through the trees and managed to come upon a clearing. It was beautiful and Lucy immediately ran forward, excitement lighting up her formerly fear filled chocolate brown eyes.

In this area, the sunlight peeked through the gap in the forests leaves. So it was very nicely lit compared to the rest of the forest.

"I told you we were getting close," Natsu folded his arms across his chest, though he smiled as he watched the blonde as she began to chase a beautiful blue butterfly around. It was a pretty big clearing, the grass was up to their knees in some places, though what really drew Natsu to this place was the massive tree that stood right in the center of the field.

He walked over to that while Lucy now began to busy herself in playing with the log blades of grass. When she noticed what he was looking at, she hurried over as well.

"This place is really neat, Natsu! How did you know about it?" She asked as she sat down at the base of the tree, cushioned right between a couple of large roots that peeked out of the ground just a little bit. "I bet Zeref doesn't know you've been coming out here."

Natsu scoffed, though didn't say anything. Which told the little girl all she needed to know.

Natsu had always been kinda like that, her parents didn't much care for the thought of their little girl playing with such a rough boy. Though Lucy didn't care, she had so much fun when she was with Natsu! She was always so lonely whenever she was at home.

"This can be our hideout." Natsu said after a long moment, "If we ever need to meet up but can't at our usual place, we can meet here. If either of us ever needs to get out and go somewhere else, we can go here." Lucy listened carefully to her friend as he spoke. She watched his face and didn't miss the flicker of sadness that touched it when he thought she wasn't looking.

"What's the matter?" she found herself asking quietly, immediately catching Natsu's attention. He sighed before shrugging and plopping down beside her.

"Zeref has just… been kinda sad lately. I guess it's been making me sad too. He never wants to talk about it because I'm 'too young' to understand. But… I just wanna help. It makes me kinda angry that he doesn't want to listen to me, or let me listen to him. So I found this place, I can't wait to show you what happens when it gets dark."

Lucy recognized the change of subject, though she wanted to talk more about Natsu. She wanted to tell him that she was there to listen to him, and he already knew that she was more than happy to talk about how angry her mother and father made her sometimes. How she was so sick of the lessons that they forced her to take in addition to normal studies.

She was only eight, though she felt as though they expected the world of her. It made her so angry. Despite this, Lucy did love her mother and father dearly. So she never really outwardly showed how frustrated all of these lessons made her.

If it weren't for Natsu and how he'd let her vent… she probably would be a very upset child that would snap on her parents one day. It made her sad that he was feeling sad.

"When do you need to get home?" Natsu asked before Lucy could actually try and say something that she was thinking.

She felt guilty for being so slow to speak, though she cleared her throat so that she could answer his question. "I'm not supposed to be out after dark, I don't think they know I'm even out. I'm supposed to be in my room reading right now." she giggled a bit at the thought.

Lucy loved to read, though with the schedule that her parents had her on… there would be zero time for her to actually play if she followed it exactly as they wanted her to. Thankfully, both of them were a little bit on the busy side when it came to their own jobs and everything, so it was mostly Spetto who took care to make sure that Lucy was doing what she was supposed to.

Spetto knew that Lucy was playing right now. The older woman believed that the Heartfilia's were a little bit too hard on the girl, so she allowed for these short playdates with Natsu.

"Well, we can stay just a little bit longer. I think you're going to love this place even more when you see what happens once it gets completely dark."

Lucy could feel herself getting excited, especially when she realized that the area was already darkening quite a bit.

Soon, she knew exactly what Natsu was talking about.

Little glowing orbs of light began to flicker around them, soon… the entire area was filled with the fireflies.

"Whoa!" Lucy exclaimed happily as she jumped up from where she'd been sitting. "I've never seen so many fireflies before!" There wasn't a second that passed that was without the light of at least five or sick fireflies. All of a sudden, this clearing felt like the most magical place on earth.

"Natsu, I'm so happy you found this place!" She said happily once she caught one of the fireflies and brought it over so that she could show the pink-haired boy. He smiled and watched as the firefly she caught flew from Lucy's hands and landed on her nose.

She blinked in surprise which caused Natsu to start laughing loudly at her, which made her laugh as well. The bug then flew from her nose to join the rest of its buddies.

"Natsu…" Lucy trailed off as she watched her friend for a long moment, he turned his gaze onto her. "Let's get married."

The boy nearly face planted into the ground after she said this, though quickly recovered.

"What?!" he demanded, his cheeks beet red.

"If we get married, we can be together all the time. Every day. I could make sure that you don't ever need to be sad, I wanna do that for you." She puffed out her flat chest and put her hands on her hips, "Besides, you'd be lucky to have me when we're older. I'm going to be just as beautiful as my mama." Of course, she didn't truly believe that.

She didn't think it was possible for anybody to be as pretty as her mother.

Natsu swallowed nervously, though appeared to actually be taking her words into consideration before he grinned and nodded.

"Okay, fine! Let's do it! We'll get married right here, under this tree. How about when we're both eighteen? That way we won't have our parents on our backs about it." he chuckled and Lucy nodded in agreement, liking the idea and simply thrilled that he had accepted her proposal in the first place.

"How about on my eighteenth birthday then?" Lucy suggested, "We'd both be eighteen by then." Her heart flipped when Natsu agreed again.

That was exactly what they did.