"Alright," said Gray the next morning, hands on his hips. He eyed Shiria as if to make sure he'd gotten everything, although they had all made sure nothing was left behind. Beside Shiria was Salutem, supporting his saddle and enough supplies to make Lucy worried that they'd be adding too much weight onto his back if they climbed on, too. "I'll make sure Sabertooth knows you guys are coming by somewhere around a week or two from today. They should have a Portal set up, so you don't have to travel through the mountains ago."
Natsu made a face. "Council's gonna be in our business 'cause of all the Portals."
Gray shrugged and said, "I' don't really care. Better than freezing to death. Just make sure no one spots Lucy. They don't need to know we got a new member who fell from the sky." He folded his arms, studying the two before him. Natsu was still giving him nasty looks, not at all happy to be looking at him. Lucy didn't look as if she was ready to be up. Her arms cradled a yawning feline, who purred and flicked his tail this way and that.
"By the way," Gray said casually, knowing he'd catch hell for what he was about to say. He heaved himself onto Shiria's back, ready to make a quick getaway if he needed to. "You guys passed."
Both stilled, equal looks of confusion flickering over their features. "Huh?" Natsu grunted at the same time that Lucy asked, "What do you mean we passed?"
"Makarov said to evaluate you two while he was gone, after a few weeks," Gray answered. "Don't know where he went, but he expected to be gone a while, so. Mira asked me to do it while we were off on this job. You guys passed."
There were a few minutes in which Lucy and Natsu comprehended this. Lucy's gaze shifted to simply more confused, because what exactly had they been evaluated on? Natsu, however, took on a very dark expression. Smoke coiled from between his lips as he lunged for Gray. Shiria danced aside, avoiding him, nostrils flaring as he brandished his antlers.
"Natsu!" Lucy squeaked when he took a swipe at him, flames curling around his fingers.
"That was a test?" he barked, trying again.
"That you passed," Gray said pointedly, reeling back to avoid another swipe. Lucy simply gave up on stopping Natsu with her words and snagged his arm. Happy hit the street with a huff, landing heavily on his paws as she yanked him back, singing her fingers. Natsu immediately dropped the heat, still bristling but standing and fuming about the matter rather than attacking. "You know it's a normal thing in the guild."
"What exactly did we pass test-wise?" Lucy demanded, not entirely happy herself. But she forced such things down, focusing on her partner instead. She could feel the rage coiling through Natsu, and tried to soothe it down some with gentle pats to his arm. It seemed to do the job; anger continued to simmer, but he stopped trying to get at Gray physically.
Gray, eyeing Natsu, said, "I was looking for any sign that you two couldn't work together in dangerous situations and under stress. Seems like you'll be fine." He grimaced apologetically at Lucy, ignoring Natsu now. "Sorry. I would have told you if I could have, but it was important for you to not know. It's not that I wanted you to fail, or didn't think you wouldn't do well. It's required."
Lucy took a deep breath and sighed heavily, reluctant to let Natsu go as he continued to glower at Gray. "I guess you're forgiven then," she began to tell him, but Natsu cut her off furiously.
"Why did we have to be tested at all? Makarov never tested anyone else when they worked with someone else or joined the guild. It's not a normal thing unless they're like Gajeel and attacked us first. Why me and Lucy?"
Gray considered that for a moment and then shrugged. "I don't know," he said honestly. "Seriously," added Gray when Natsu growled, "I don't. He just apparently left instructions to do it and then left."
Natsu seemed to puff up like an angry hedgehog. Where the hell did Gramps go? He huffed. He raked his mind for possibilities and snagged on one that made him tense. He said nothing, however, and Lucy threw him a quick look that told him she'd noticed. He didn't react, waiting impatiently for Gray to leave.
It didn't take long. "I am sorry," Gray said honestly. Mostly to Lucy, although he sent Natsu a hint of sincere apology. No matter how much they bickered and argued, he did consider Natsu family. It came with being in the guild. He was like a brother who Gray wanted to throttle for the majority of the time.
Natsu narrowed his eyes and then grunted, not giving him a full answer. Gray grimaced; Natsu was notorious for holding grudges. He'd held a few against various people for years, including Gajeel for his attack against the guild – even after he'd nearly given them heart attacks after apologizing sincerely to everyone during a guild-wide meeting. Lucy, however, was much more forgiving. She smiled broadly and reached out to flick his arm sharply.
"Just don't do it again," she said.
Gray retaliated with a gentle hair ruffle. He liked Lucy, and thought she fit into Fairy Tail quite well despite her initial reluctance to join them. "Alright, I better head out. See you guys later. Don't get yourselves killed."
Natsu merely snorted smoke and glared, even as Gray left them on their own. The second he was out of earshot, she whirled on Natsu, hands on her hips. He expected immediate questioning, or scolding. Instead, she said, "Shall we get going ourselves?"
He blinked, and then nodded, relieved. "Yeah," he said, scooping up Happy. He pushed the cat into Lucy's arms, as they'd been forced to ditch the basket with their new supplies. As he helped Lucy up first, he furrowed his brow.
What if Makarov had gone to see Igneel? The pair would have no reason to know who each other were. Sure, Natsu supposed he was a connection, but there was no reason for them to have met. Not when he'd cut off communication with the Fire Dragon King for the last sixteen years.
Natsu rubbed a hand down his face before heaving himself up behind Lucy, suddenly exhausted in a way he'd never been. He didn't think he missed Igneel, so to say, but…he'd had fun in the dragons' nest. He remembered wrestling with the younger generation after they'd hatched, whether it was in their draconic form or humanoid one. He'd practically helped Igneel's generation raise them, even as many of the dragons had looked distrustfully at him.
Almost all of those dragons were gone now.
A gentle elbow in his gut drew him from his thoughts. He glanced down and found Lucy waiting patiently for him to send them off on the start of their trip to the Archives, and he grimaced. He didn't apologize for making her wait. Instead, he ordered Salutem forward so roughly, he took a flying leap that made Lucy screech and use a hand to clutch one of his arms in terror.
Natsu's stress melted away, replaced with laughter.
He didn't need to worry about any of that right now, he decided.
He'd just enjoy what his life was at the moment.
The next two days were fairly quiet, although Lucy would never call them boring. Despite the fact that she was absolutely ready to be done with traveling, she used the time to absorb what information she could, figuring she should probably learn what she could. Natsu was shockingly patient, taking his job very seriously and helping her figure out what she could.
By the time they settled in to camp for the second night, Lucy somewhat mourning the view of the stars, as they were covered by shockingly full-leaved trees, she felt a little bit more secure about her knowledge. She was sure she could identify at least a few common mythics, and even knew how to deal with them. Natsu had instructed her on how to deal with things like jinxes and curses, although he said they weren't very common.
"Just avoid witches and hags," he'd said warningly. "And if you see a lady bouncing around in a mortar, walk the other way."
Lucy found that she actually enjoyed learning about the mythics. She'd not thought to have such conversations when they'd gone through the mountains – she'd been more worried about falling over the edges of cliffs, to be honest – and it was fascinating to learn how they fit into every day life, especially when it allowed her to learn how people of this year lived.
"Hey," Natsu said from where he was coaxing a decent campfire to life. Lucy wondered if he'd sleep that night. He still didn't rest very often, but he'd been more on guard with them out in the open. After everything she'd been told about what went bump in the night, she was more than grateful for it – especially because she needed the sleep.
"Yes?" Lucy said patiently, tipping the container of water to get what was left out of it. She rested a hand lightly on Happy's head after setting it aside, content after their small but decent dinner.
"How good are you at using the knife?" He gestured to the knife she carried, still sheathed with the sheathe itself removed and resting on the ground beside her. His eyes were calculating, watching closely.
"I don't want to learn to use it, but I could probably benefit from doing so," admitted Lucy with a grimace. She met his gaze without hesitation, suspicious. "Why do you ask?"
Natsu grinned widely, his sharpened teeth flashing in the light of the fire he'd made. "'Cause if you're gonna carry it, you should know how to use it. I gotta make sure you can handle yourself here, right? That means learning how to defend yourself."
Lucy wasn't sure what to say for a moment. She blinked at him, her hand pausing on Happy's purring body. After a moment, her expression twisted into one of unhappiness that Natsu completely ignored. She could be unhappy all she wanted, he thought it more important she didn't get herself killed by not knowing how to use the knife if necessary. Before he could confirm it, however, she sighed heavily and set Happy aside. "I suppose," she mumbled, "I should learn. I really don't like that I need to, but I should learn."
Natsu hopped to his feet with ease. "We can start now!" he said cheerfully, admittedly looking forward to this. It would make their travels more interesting. For one, he could teach her a few things while they were on the move, and for another…
It was going to be hilarious when she was sore the next morning and still had to get on Salutem.
Lucy didn't look too excited by the prospect, but still climbed to her feet. She strapped the sheathe back to her thigh, not sure if she'd need to use it at that moment or not. Natsu assessed every movement she made, and it only made her more nervous, because she'd seen that look on his face a few times now: when he'd been preparing to launch himself into a fight.
Perhaps it was only because she had been seeing Natsu every day since she'd been thrown back in time, but she saw it coming just a split second before he moved. He threw himself forward, lurching for her, and instinct told her to spin out of the way. He snarled excitedly and tore after her, moving faster when she avoided him a second time.
He was evaluating, Lucy realized. Each move was calculated to see how she'd react. He tried different maneuvers, going one way and lunging for her, kicking at her feet, even swiping at her head. He took note how she kept her body loose yet tensed at the same time, her fingers curled into fists that immediately came up. Lucy squawked when he finally managed to suddenly catch her by surprise, moving one way when she'd expected him to go the other. Rather than going easy on her, he didn't hesitate to grab her around the waist and slam her into the ground hard enough that the breath was driven from her lungs.
"Natsu," Lucy wheezed when he grunted, wincing. He stood over her, rubbing his chest.
"The other mythics aren't gonna be nice," he pointed out, beaming even as he caught the breath that had rushed out of his chest, too. This was going to be a problem if they got caught up in a fight. Lucy felt what he felt, too, he remembered. If he got caught by a nasty blow, she'd be downed easily and would be a massive target. More than she already was, even, and she was already a big target because of her connection to him. Down one of them and both were able to be killed. Not that he was particularly easy to kill…he wondered if that had been shared with her, too?
Avoiding Igneel and his amazing collection of knowledge, third only to the Archives and the goddess of knowledge herself, was becoming less of an option by the moment.
Natsu pulled Lucy to her feet, and she brushed herself off, not looking very happy that she'd been slammed so harshly to the ground. He put his hands on his hips. "You're not too bad at moving." He wrinkled his nose at her annoyance, amused. "Can you throw a punch?"
"Yes," she huffed. "I'm not completely helpless, you know. I did some self-defense training at the request of the woman who raised me." She'd thought it odd, some of the lessons her guardian had demanded she attend and learn, but she was grateful for it now. They were certainly coming in handy.
"Did you spar?" Natsu wanted to laugh at his own questions. He sounded like Mirajane or Gildarts evaluating new members of the guild, figuring out if they needed training before they could take jobs. He wondered briefly why they'd not demanded the same of Lucy.
Lucy nodded, making a so-so motion with her hand. "A little bit. I stopped going after a while. I wanted to go to school and dropped almost everything to focus on my education. Good thing I did, too." She flashed him a grin, fixing her hair so that rather than being loose, like she'd left it for most of the day, it was elegantly twisted into a bun and tied there by the piece of cloth that she used when she needed it.
"We'll start there, and you can learn how to hold that thing properly," Natsu decided, trying to think back to when he'd learned how to fight. Probably not the most reliable idea, he realized, grimacing. He'd been born centuries ago, before the New Age, and anything before his transformation into the creature he'd become famous for being was a little blurred.
And, he realized, stopping dead in his tracks, it hurt.
Lucy looked at him with concern, confused by the sudden shift, but he ignored her, focused more on the fact that it hurt him to think back on the days before the Demonic Wars. He didn't want to look back on the time he'd been happy with his birth family. Their images had all blurred – all except for Zeref – but he could remember the warmth and happiness that had come with them. He remembered the pride, when he'd shown his father the flames that had come so naturally to his fingertips, a reminder of his heritage.
The pain that had dampened his mother's good mood when he'd shown her it, too, although that had been pushed aside by warm acceptance.
"Natsu?" Lucy said, and Natsu dragged his attention back to her. She was studying him, simply absorbing everything he felt. She didn't look as if it was something to celebrate, either, as he knew some of his guildmates would have done. It was a miracle, getting him to feel such things.
But Lucy was only concerned for him, worried about the pain that he was suddenly feeling – and the panic that shot through him like a bullet.
He didn't feel things others felt. Igneel had told him, and he didn't remember ever doing so. So why was he suddenly hurting, and worrying, and regretting, and wasting so much energy on them, nonetheless?
Maybe he needed to see Igneel again after all.
Lucy said his name again, making him focus, and he blinked when he realized he'd been so distracted by such matters that she'd moved to stand in front of him and he hadn't noticed. "Are you okay?" she asked quietly.
"Yeah," he muttered, frowning. He pushed a hand through his mess of pink hair. "Sorry." He wanted to bite the word back as soon as it left him. He had never apologized. Never.
He couldn't even blame Lucy, who he suspected was at fault for all of this, because she was as lost as he was regarding everything that was happening in general.
Shaking it off, Natsu returned to the matter at hand, forcing past the weird pain to remember what he'd been saying. "Sparring, knife-holding, and some boring stuff, I think." Just to get her attention off of what was upsetting him, he prodded her arm, just beneath the golden cuff that had belonged to Igneel's Marked One, smirking. "You've got sticks for arms. Look at these things," he added, "I could break them with two fingers."
As expected, she squawked in outrage and thwacked him on his arm, only infuriated further when she found that it was very easy to hurt her fingers on the muscle there. He snickered, and she made a very rude gesture in response before stomping back over to where Happy was watching with intelligent eyes, purring and curling his tail around his paws.
Natsu puffed out a breath, relieved, and scoffed at his earlier consideration of seeing Igneel. The Fire Dragon King would need to grovel at the feet of the king of demons before Natsu even considered looking upon his face again.
Pain raced through her when she hit the ground, a garbled yelp escaping her lips. Natsu, kneeling with his knee on her chest, leaned down and grinned, his own bones singing with the force. "Damn it," she spat, angrier with herself for not seeing the move.
"Put those teeth away," she snarled, swatting at his face. He cackled again when her fingers swiped harmlessly, missing his face by inches. She shoved at his foot until he finally let her up, and when he did, she irritably ignored the hand he offered to push herself upright. "Could you stop throwing me around and tell me how to stop you from doing it before trying?"
"Nope," he said, popping the 'p.' It was how he'd learned. His father had taught him the basics, and he had worked hard to get that information fully in his head. There was no way he was taking another route of teaching her when he'd done that.
"There's no one way," his father had said, "to fight. You must learn to adapt. Figure out how to do things your way, and then adjust them as you see fit. Trust your instincts before the instructions others give you."
It had given him the advantage the first time he'd clashed against Igneel before he'd switched sides, turning against Zeref after realizing what he'd done. He'd never forget the look on the dragon's massive face when he'd landed a blow strong enough to nearly take out the Fire Dragon King's eye. Igneel still bore the scars, and-
Natsu was thinking about Igneel far too much lately.
"Can we take a break?" Lucy pleaded, dropping to sit. They'd stopped early that day, intending to be up early the next morning and have the full day to do whatever was going to be done in the Archives. Natsu was getting increasingly agitated the closer they got.
He wouldn't be able to go in with her, and he knew for a fact that she'd be perfectly fine and nowhere near any danger in the Archives, but after nearly two months of being around Lucy constantly…
He found he liked her. She was entertaining, to say the least, and he didn't like that she'd be busy doing things in the Archives that would have to do with her going home to her own time. Not that he'd let her go home, nor did she plan on it, if she was truly intent on stopping the destruction of the Eclipse Gate and Crocus. But still. He'd be alone for who knew how long, sitting outside the Archives like an idiot because Gajeel was still mad at him for kicking his ass.
Natsu was so absorbed in his agitated thoughts that he nearly missed the warning signs of something approaching. He did in the end, however, notice, and he paused in starting the fire in the wood Lucy and he had gathered to look up, eyes sharp.
The forest around them had gone silent – unnaturally so. Where there had been creatures before, there was no nothing, and he could feel in his gut that they were being watched.
"What is it?" Lucy whispered, and he glanced at her, startled. She'd become much more perceptive about such things since he'd started telling her more about how mythics were involved in life in this time, and she'd noticed the signs, too. "Natsu?"
"Sh," he hushed, slowly dropping into a crouch. He pressed his fingers to the ground, trying to feel if it was something large approaching, but there was nothing. He inhaled sharply, a soft growl rumbling in his throat, and he muttered, "Happy."
Lucy's gaze snapped to the feline. Happy stood swiftly and vanished into the trees around them. When Lucy looked anxiously back at him, Natsu explained, "He can tell me where it's coming from. Mythics that target other mythics don't pay attention to animals. Happy's a familiar, but he doesn't have much magic of his own. He's more like a human who can use written spells. He manipulates magic that doesn't belong to him."
"But why was he alive a thousand years from now?" Lucy asked, somewhat confused.
Natsu snorted. "He probably absorbed it. My magic's a lot more than most familiars can handle. Happy's the first one who could manage it. I tried seven different cats before it worked."
Lucy wasn't sure what to think of that, but focused when Happy suddenly came sprinting out of the foliage a few minutes later, fur standing on end. He loped over to Natsu, ears pricked. When he was sure he had Natsu's attention, he snapped his head around, staring in the direction he'd come from. Natsu patted his head in praise and then startled Lucy by simply lighting his body on fire. Every inch of him became cloaked – like an animal's defense mechanism, Lucy thought. He was trying to warn off whatever it was before it got too close for his liking. A warning that should it try anything, Natsu would annihilate it.
The warning, however, didn't do what Natsu had wanted.
Instead, a roar filled the air.
300 reviews already! Thank you all so much. I'm literally in tears.
Got some more drama about to start with a lot of fun next few chapters. ;)
Lovetoreadff, regarding your question about my end...I'm actually kind of okay I think for the time being? I've written through chapter 41, but I suppose this brings out an announcement for everyone: Part I ends on Thursday, and after that I'll be taking a week or two off. :) I have finals next week and then I go home on Friday, so. We'll see when I start posting again after that.
Lissuin, regarding exorcisms...everyone for the most part that's up for them! Makarov prefers to have the higher-power mythics deal with them since they can get nasty really quickly, but other than that, it's just people who know what to do.
Thanks to reviewers (PinkFireandGoldenStars, stranger1999, Forbidden-Hanyou, FairyTailxFanGirl, Bananarock509, AlaskaHolmes90786, LePegnwen, Lovetoreadff, Blood and Angst Lover, nerdalertwarning, Inky-Paws, AnimusLunari777, Lady Of The Sphinx, itsxoi, Lissuin, xHallowedFangirlx, and Anna-Mae1242!) as well as those who favorited and followed!