***I still do not own Fairy Tail. Nor do I own its characters or its storyline. If I did Fairy Tail would have thirty fans. While I love you guys, it would be sad if that was all Fairy Tail got.***
"Hey, Gray, welcome back! Is that Lucy?" Mira greeted the Ice Mage as he entered the guildhall with a still sleeping Lucy piggyback riding on his back at the moment.
"Mhm. We were on a mission together and she fell asleep on the way back. I didn't want to wake her, but then I realized I don't know where she lives," Gray explained, and continued on to the infirmary where he dumped her, carefully, onto one of the beds there.
He returned to the main hall and ordered a cool beer, thinking about the things he had gotten to know on this trip when the barmaid sat down next to him after getting his order.
"So, you were on a mission with Lucy? Thought you went on a cleaning job." she commented.
"I did. It didn't end too well. But I met Lucy and helped her out on her mission too." Gray explained.
"Hm. Treasure hunt. That was the mission she set out on." Mira said after thinking for a moment. She had an amazing memory when it came to the missions she scribbled down in that notebook of hers.
"Turned out to be quite the mission. We met a nest of Wyverns in there, so she needed some support." Gray said, remembering the incident. Lucy screaming, and the grand entry of Draco, followed by their little talk and then the raid of the Wyvern Cave.
"Wyverns? Didn't know they traveled in packs. Good thing you came over her. Did you succeed?" Mira said, her brows furrowed.
"Yes." he confirmed.
"Good. Is she good?" she nodded in the direction of the infirmary as she asked, and Gray nodded. He knew why she asked, knew of the fainting in the middle of the guild the day before. The talk had of course been going ever since. No one knew much about Lucy, and though everyone got a past in this place the past of this one seemed to be causing her quite a lot of harm.
"For now. I think Wendy should have a look at her when she gets back from her mission, though. When Kirk comes to visit he usually got a point." Gray said, had already decided to keep his mouth shut for now. At least until he could get more out of the girl herself. But the claim about the girl coughing up blood didn't bode well. It was better safe than sorry.
"He usually does. Good. That's good. And it's good that you're willing to go on missions with other people again too." Mira said, and got up. Gray chuckled. He guessed he had been on the gloomy side recently.
It had been a rough few weeks. People had been on edge, Natsu stopped talking to people and Gray had stopped going on anything but solo missions. Erza had disappeared off on a really long mission without offering her goodbyes to anyone but Master and Mira.
Then Lucy had appeared. She had been a happy girl, trying her best to move about unnoticed, but she HAD been noticed by the people in the guild. Like a scared little hare that at times could light up the room when her face lit up in one of her smiles. Secretive, she was, and her visits were generally quick, but she was a person that seemed to just fit in, somehow. She just belonged, like a hand in its glove.
As if the thought of her worked as a sort of summons, there she was, suddenly, in the doorway to the infirmary, still clad in that white dress of hers, face flushed and hair sort of ruffled, confused and mayhap slightly panicked.
"Gray?" I asked, looked about in the guildhall, looking for the person I last remembered being with, and I spotted him at the bar, lifting his and in greeting, and I could breathe again. After waking up in the infirmary I had feared it all to have been some sort of dream, or perhaps had something gone awfully wrong. I had such a nightmare earlier, where a shadow came upon us at the train, deleted everybody and left me stranded, all alone in a dead world.
Then Hydra had appeared, like he did when my mind became blackened with my fears and insecurities. He had just suddenly been standing there where I was on my knees, buckled over and screaming for them. He had been looking down on me, and then embraced my huddled form, told me it would be alright in that serious voice of his.
And when I wake up, I needed to know that the first part of the dream wasn't true.
"You slept so soundly when we arrived I figured you needed the rest. Besides, I don't think I could've woken you up even if I wanted to," he announced, and I smiled.
"Yeah.. I'm sorry about that, I'm a heavy sleeper." I excused myself, dragging a hand through my hair in an attempt to fix it up some. I felt exposed, and all flurried. So I stopped smiling and looked on the ground as I made my way down the stairs from the infirmary and over to the bar.
"Are you hungry Lucy?" Mira asked as she scurried past, and I ordered some food that she noted in that memory bank of hers.
"Where d'you live?" Gray asked me after I sat down, and I lifted a brow at him.
"None of your business." I replied, shook my head as I turned my gaze forward. At the moment no one had anything to do in that place anyways. The silence was deafening, but after long days it was a place of rest.
"I just thought that next time I might bring you home instead of the infirmary." he mused.
"This place is fine." I replied. The guild was fine. The guild was more than adequate, and I was glad Gray had brought me here. Had he tried, he would've been able to wake me up, no matter how much of a heavy sleeper I was, but he obviously hadn't done that.
"Aw, come on. Tell me where you live!" Natsu asked as he suddenly made an appearance, sat down on my other side, and I stared at him. Why the sudden attention?
"Aye sir!" Happy chimed in, sat down on the counter and was immediately handed a fish by a passing Mira. How she managed to conjure those pieces of fish from nowhere at any given time was a mystery.
"Where have you been, ash for brains?" Gray asked past me.
"Shut up, droopy eyes."
"Pointy eyes!"
"Stripper!"
Then they clashed in a fight and I had to stifle a laugh. It had been a while. Happy ayed once before his attention went back to the fish.
"It sure has been a while since they really had it at each other like that." Mira commented, an echo to my thoughts.
"I thought I saw them fight when I first joined the guild." I commented, and Mira laughed.
"Yes, they were fighting then, but that was an actual argument." Mira said, gave me my order as she smiled brightly at me.
"I get what you mean." I muttered, started eating the meal she had brought to me. I was starving, and though a small part of me just wished to wander off somewhere, curl into a ball and sulk, I knew better than to do that.
"So where DO you live?" the barmaid asked casually as she moved behind the counter, organizing cups and glasses and bottles of alcohol.
"Not too long from here, though for now I would like to keep it a secret." I replied. I would like to keep it secret, in case.. in case I didn't make it. A plan B.
"That's okay, honey. Whenever you're ready," Mira said, then she left as another customer yelled out his order.
After yelling out insults and bragging about accomplishments for a while, thus giving each other a rough outline of each others whereabouts and doings lately, they finally seemed to calm down enough to begrudgingly sit beside each other at the bar, at the seats they had been sitting at before, with an empty seat in between them, since Lucy seemed to be gone by now.
"Where d'she go?" Gray questioned the barmaid as she stood there, cleaning some glasses as she tended to be doing in between taking or preparing orders.
"You mean Lucy? She left about half an hour ago to do some missions. Just within the borders of the town. Said something about rent. I sent Lisanna with her." Mira replied, cheery as per usual.
"Where's old Gramps?" Natsu asked then, looking about, confused by the lack of the Master of Fairy Tail.
"Oh, he's been brooding in his office for a few days now, going through some old papers. Apparently the complaints have been piling up for a while and he needs to get them organized." the silver haired girl smiled, and then continued with her task. The Fire Mage furrowed his brows at that, but let it go as he got up, staring at the door, his eyes distant. He did that, from time to time, as if he was waiting for something, or someone. The moments didn't usually last that long, so people let him be, accepted that strange quirk of his that emerged every now and then in between creating havoc and laughing or eating or having a good time.
Lisanna had attempted to talk to him about it, told him to cheer up if he ever wanted a girlfriend. She always had a way with teasing him with that, even before the whole disappearance deal several years ago. This time he had gotten angry, however. Not for long, of course, he wasn't one to hold a grudge, but it had spooked his childhood friend.
He sent another look towards the empty chair, his face twisted in some kind of confusion as his mind attempted to grasp something that was just out of reach, close enough to know it was there, but far enough away so he didn't know what he was reaching for.
"Let's go to the woods for some evening training!" Happy declared, aware of the mood of his partner, and giving him a way out of it. Natsu saw that, and understood, smiled at his friend as his good mood seemingly returned.
Then he left, the boy with the scarf. Left because he wanted to train. He wanted to train and forget about the confusion, and that pit of despair that belonged somewhere deep within him, together with the feelings he had been wallowed in when his father left, and that he had felt again when Lisanna disappeared.
The old man that was of an unknown age, small of growth yet big of heart, was sitting on his desk. Yes, ON it and not BY it. He was that small of growth indeed. Yet very few would mock him for that due to his strength in character. But his physical shortcomings were not what bothered the old man at the moment. What DID bother him was very paper related, old papers that needed to be accounted for and stocked away. Fairy Tail usually was late on the paperwork related part of the job, and now was no exception. They tended to pile up until there were so many that they HAD to be taken care of.
It was that paperwork, reaching back a few months, that bothered him. And as the mysteries had piled up he had searched through other files, and yes. There she was.
A Lucy Heartfilia, smiling up at him from a picture painted by Reedus. And the boy sitting next to her, none other than Fairy Tails own Natsu Dragneel.
"Master?" a voice was questioning from the other side of his office door, accompanied by knocking, and the little man looked up from his pile of paper, which he at the moment found himself almost buried in.
"Come in, Gray." he said, and the door opened to show the young Ice Mage that probably were responsible for a good amount of the papers Master Makarov was filing at the moment. The younger male closed the door after him before he turned to Master again, his brows furrowed.
"It's about Lucy." he began, seemed a tad uncomfortable. He took a deep breath before he continued.
"I know this will seem very strange, but is there any chance that she might be..." he stopped again, and Makarov sighed.
"A Fairy Tail mage? So you noticed, did you? Here, have a look at this." Master Makarov Dreyar finished for the younger boy and started searching through his papers for the picture he had found. Some swearing and papers falling off the desk in every direction later, and there it was. It was a piece of art, with Lucy smiling brightly, sitting on the ground, Natsu sitting next to her, his arm casually slung over her shoulder. Gray was sitting on her other side, also smiling, and Erza was standing clad in her usual clothing, a hand roughing up Lucys hair. Happy was sitting in her lap, a fish in his paws. The painting was named, as some of Reedus's works were. "The Strongest Team".
"I'm sure the child has a reason for keeping this from me," he continued, serious.
"How long have you known?" Gray asked.
"Since she walked into the hall and asked for her second stamp. No matter how old I am, I'll never forget any one of my children, though I have to say, it hurts to see her being like this when I look at her on these paintings." Master said. The magic might trick the minds, but that mark she had on her right hand did more than just signify where she belonged. It was magic, the stamp, and not the kind to be easily erased, nor had it been even though her face had been wiped from their minds.
"She sure looks happy on this one..." Gray agreed, lost in thought. This... explained a lot. Like why she kept talking about Team Natsu, a team that according to his memory never had been officially established, even with all the missions the team had gone on in the past. And it certainly explained how they had managed to go on such missions. She was the final piece, of equal importance as everybody else.
"Let's keep this between the two of us for now, but keep an eye on her too. She's tough like nails by the looks of things, but we're a family. Family sticks together." Makarov declared, and Gray nodded as he handed back the picture. Then he headed for the door again. Looking after her, that he could do. In a way he already felt like he had to, and he had a feeling that the other male in "the strongest team" felt the same way. He hadn't figured it out yet, obviously, being the idiot he was, but Natsu Dragneel was one to follow his instincts, and even with his memories gone he would feel the bond between him and Lucy, surely. They had seemed awfully close on that painting after all.
"And how did you manage to break a house while cleaning?!" Master Makarov yelled after him as Gray was about to close the door behind him. The ice mage just chuckled, and then he was gone. Gone from the office, leaving the old man alone once more with his paperwork.
***Yes. Another End. The end of the 3rd Saga has come upon us. I have to think of some other symbolisms and/or quirky missions to write about, and then I need to do.. stuff... Oh, there is no need for my boring plans and whatnot is there? Nah, we'll all get there. As I have mentioned before, if there are more than average confusing tidbits that makes no sense at all, you are welcome to message me.
If you are just a little confused, it's alright. I get that a lot. Other than that, I guess you'll all have to wait until the next Saga is written, if it ever is (which is likely, though I hate making promises). So long!***
