Alright, time for the next chapter!
Akatsuki Wolf Rider - thanks! As for the Thunder Legion, I'm debating an epilogue of sorts where they all meet up again at the Grand Magic Games, but I'm not sure I have a coherent enough story for that. I'm leaning kind of hard towards doing one though, but can't decide if it'll be part of this one or a completely separate story.
kurahieiritr JIO - well, he's not really bailing though. I mean, he can't stay there the whole of his exile, can he? As for the constant interruptions to his and Ciel's sexy times... the odds are definitely not with them, lol!
Special thanks to my friend ishxallxgood - the story Ciel tells the girls is based on her excellent story "Tales of a Broken Heart" which you can find here on the site ( s/12021815/1/Tales-of-A-Broken-Heart). It's a One Piece fic featuring Trafalgar Law and her OC, Azarashi, and when I needed a story to tell the girls, well... this was it! Seriously, go read her stuff, just don't fall down the Doffy rabbit hole with her, unless you want to.
They both froze at the sound of the voice and Ciel lifted her head so quickly, she cracked it into the wall they were leaning against. Laxus turned around and used his body to block the view of Ciel's, looking down at the little girl standing a few feet away.
"Ino, I thought you were asleep," he said. He could feel Ciel's arms moving against his back as she readjusted her bra and buttoned her shirt back up. She stepped to one side before the little girl answered or more importantly, got too curious about what she was doing standing behind him.
"I was, but Bepo Bear wanted to get up again." She held up the stuffed bear that she'd co-opted from the communal toy chest. "So what secrets did you tell Ciel?"
"I was…," he hesitated, unsure of what to say at first. "I was telling her how much I'm going to miss you two girls."
"Are you really going to miss us?"
"Of course he will, sweetie!" Ciel picked Ino up and hugged her. "You and Shira were both such good girls when we were prisoners. And you were so strong walking all the way here. How could he not miss you?" Ino lifted her head from Ciel's shoulder and looked at him hopefully.
"She's right. You and Shira both were such a big help, I'll definitely miss you," he said, giving the child a smile. Their voices covered the muffled sound of feet heading towards them along the carpeted hallway. Shira ran the last few feet to grab Laxus around the waist in a hug.
"I don't want you to leave!" She clutched at him and sobbed.
He crouched down to be closer to her level, putting his arms around the crying girl in a careful hug.
"I can't stay here forever though. And eventually, your parents are going to come here and you'll be back with your family again. Don't you want that?" he asked.
"Yes, but I want to stay here with you and Ciel and Ino and all my new friends, too!" Her obvious distress started Ino crying and he looked up at Ciel, trying to figure out what to do next.
"Come on, sweeties," she said. "Let's go sit down and I'll tell you a story until you can fall back asleep." For some reason, she headed into his room and sat down on the bed holding Ino. Laxus picked up Shira and followed, settling on the other side of the bed. The two little girls squirmed their way to the middle, snuggling together with Ino's Bepo Bear between them.
"So what kind of story do you want to hear?" Ciel asked.
"A story about a princess!" "Bepo Bear story!" the girls cried together. Ciel laughed at them before replying.
"Okay, how about a story with both Bepo Bear and a princess in it? Would you like that?" Shira got a thoughtful look on her face while Ino's lit up with joy.
"Will the princess be strong and cool and awesome?" Shira asked carefully.
"Of course she will," Ciel said. "And she won't have to be rescued or anything, not really. Trust me."
At her reassurance, both girls nodded excitedly and settled down to listen to the story Ciel made up for them. She propped herself up on the pillows next to the girls, waving her arms around to help tell the story better. Laxus, stretched out on his side of the bed, listening to the girls giggle and laugh at the story.
"So once upon a time, a princess from a very cold island was running away. She wasn't doing a very good job of it though, because she was sick and couldn't run very fast. But just when she thought her guards were going to recapture her, she was saved by a nice, handsome doctor who took her back to his ship after she fainted."
"Why does he have a ship?" Shira asked.
"Well, because he's really a pirate. But he's not a bad pirate, he's a good one. That's why he helped save her. And when he got her back to his ship, he examined her to see why she fainted at his feet. He found out that her heart was broken so he did what he could to fix it. And when she woke up, he was sitting by her side reading a book."
"Where's Bepo Bear?"
"He's coming. He hasn't been introduced to the princess yet."
"Really?"
"Really. Bepo Bear works for the pirate doctor and he's very, very loyal to his doctor, but when he meets the princess, she adores him instantly!"
"Really?" Laxus said. "She falls in love with the bear?"
"I didn't say that," Ciel said primly. "I said she adores him. Because Bepo Bear is very big and fluffy and loveable looking, so she just wants to hug him. Bepo thinks it's a bit strange, but his pirate doctor has become very attached to the princess as well, so Bepo lets her hug him." She smiled down at Ino, who was hugging the stuffed bear close.
"Well, it turned out that the pirate doctor and the princess had grown up on the same island and his father, who was also a doctor, had helped the princess when she was a very little girl. So she ended up deciding to stay with the pirate doctor on his ship and help his crew out and really just hug Bepo a lot.
"But then one day the princess went missing. You see, the pirate doctor was on a mission to defeat a very bad man who had hurt someone he was close to, and the princess wanted to help. So she had been doing a lot of research and she found out something about the bad man but she couldn't tell her pirate doctor about it. So she went off on her own to confront the bad man but she got captured by him."
"I thought you said the princess was going to be awesome!"
"She is, you'll see. Because when he found out she was missing, the pirate doctor got very sad and didn't want to do anything anymore. Bepo Bear was very sad that she was gone and worried about his pirate doctor, you see, so he got some of the other crew members to help him look through all her notes to find something out. And when they did find something, the pirate doctor made a plan to get her back. Before he could do that though, he was told that she was dead and his heart broke, too."
"Was it broken like hers was?"
"Not exactly. He discovered that he really, really did love her after all. But what he didn't know was that she really wasn't dead, she was just captured by the bad man. And even though his plan took a long time, he finally got to the island where she was being held prisoner even though he didn't know it. So he fought the bad guy with some help from some new friends he'd made but before they could escape, the princess found him.
"See, she'd gotten away from her guards again, and she heard from the people in the kingdom that the pirate doctor was fighting the bad guy, so she went looking for him. And they found each other and escaped before the bad guy's friends could get them. He was so happy she was still alive and she was happy that he was safe and had defeated the bad guy. So they escaped the island together with his new friends and sailed away.
"The princess had missed the pirate captain very much but she was sad when she found out Bepo Bear wasn't with him. So they sailed to where Bepo was waiting with the rest of the crew and when she saw him again, she ran to hug her beary friend with all her heart. And after that, they sailed all around the seas and had lots of good adventures together and since Bepo Bear was very special, he lived a very long time, so he was around to be hugged by the children of the pirate doctor and the princess. She made him the honorary captain of her guard, so he would be able to protect their family forever."
She finished with the story and looked down at the two girls, now sleeping lightly in the middle of the bed. With a smile, she looked up at Laxus and shook her head.
"Sorry about this. I didn't expect them to wake up and interrupt us like that."
"It's all right. Maybe we can carry them back to their room?" He started to get off the bed but at the first hint of movement, Shira stirred and mumbled something in her sleep.
"Let's let them fall deeper asleep before we try that. I wouldn't them to wake back up when we do move them."
He nodded and reached down to grab a light cover from the foot of the bed, draping it over the children. Ciel reached behind her to turn off the bedside light, throwing the room into darkness. A light breeze fluttered the sheer curtains covering the open windows, bringing in the scent of flowers from outside.
"Give me your hand." Ciel's voice floated softly through the shadows, and he reached out towards her. He felt her lace her fingers with his and then rest their hands over the girls. "Good night, Laxus." She started humming a quiet tune under her breath, and listening to that along with the sleepy sighs of the children helped send Laxus to sleep as well.
He woke up when Shira climbed over him to drop to the floor, dragging part of the blanket along with her. Ino was still asleep, pressed up against Ciel and clutching her stuffed bear tightly. He rolled over to his side and looked at the window, trying to judge the time. It was still dark out, but from what he could see of the sky through the curtains, it wasn't too long until sunrise.
While he was debating getting up, Shira crawled back over him and settled against the pillows again, her eyes drooping shut almost immediately. Laxus pulled the blanket back over them both and the little girl responded by snuggling up against his side. He smiled to himself and decided to join her in sleep again.