A/N This chapter made me extremely happy to write.

"Gajeel? Am I going crazy or is that actually you?" Examining the room she was in, she couldn't see the hulking form of the iron dragon slayer anywhere, feeling insane she pulled up the blanket placed on her bed and spoke in a hushed tone. "You in here Gaj?"

"You idiot." He growled next to her ear, causing her flinch and cover her head with her hands, taking a defensive position. After the amount of times Lucy had been knocked around by Midnight, it had become natural to cower whenever she thought he was near.

She now understood Angel's reaction to Midnight. Lucy had become like this after being around him for such a short amount of time, Angel had been subjected to it for years. She wondered what had happened to her fellow celestial mage but was scared to find out.

"Hey bunny." Gajeel's voice was a lot softer and he tried a different approach. "Lucy. It's me and Laxus. Why are you hiding? We're here to save you." Peeking through a gap between her fingers, she saw that it was actually her friends. 'They made it past all of the members of the Oracion Seis? No way.'

"You're fake." Lucy stated, keeping her eyes covered and pulled her knees up to her chest. "I'm tired of your tricks Midnight, they're not funny. Leave me alone."

He had pulled this stunt on her before and now he was trying to do it again. 'Does he think I'm an idiot?'

"Oi." Her hands were suddenly ripped from her face. "Don't be so rough with her." Laxus whispered to Gajeel as he roughly yanked Lucy to her feet, he wasn't used to dealing with a fragile Lucy, he was used to the robust one who worked out with them every morning and beat everyone up.

Feeling extremely vulnerable, she leapt backwards and landed on her back, continuing to crawl away, she pushed her legs outwards to propel her in the opposite direction to Midnight's projections of her friends. "No, I said leave me alone. I don't want to be a part of your little mind games."

"What happened? Your face." Covering her eyes with one of her small hands, she let out a bitter laugh. "You know what happened, you did it after all."

"No I didn't-"

Laxus grasped Gajeel's shoulder and shook his head. "She doesn't think we're real, remember? She isn't joking around. Midnight's had her for a while now, who knows what that sick bastard has been doing to her."

Laxus took a step closer to the celestial mage but stopped his approach when he heard her let out a soft whimper.

Three loud bangs sounded on the door to Lucy's room and a man's voice penetrated through the wall. "Shut up in there princess."

Gajeel and Laxus gave each other a knowing look and as soon as they sensed that the male had left, Gajeel looped his arms around Lucy's waist and activated his shadow magic, effectively hiding them from view and escaped through the only window in the room.

The room was four stories off the floor and the window had been bolted shut from the outside but with Laxus using his lightning magic to warp and melt off the lock, it was easy to access, for them anyway. It would have been impossible for Lucy, which was obviously the asshole's plan.

As they were in Gajeel's shadow form, they simply slid down the building edge. Laxus glanced around the room, frowning and used his own magic to warp out of the building.

Once they were securely out of the room and near the edge of the property, Gajeel shut off his shadow magic and sat Lucy on the floor.

He wanted to get a good look at what damage they had done to her so he could inflict it back, ten times over.

"That looks like a broken nose. So the right thing to do would be to bite his off. Yep okay. Split lip. Bite his off." Gajeel checked over Lucy's face as she sat there, not moving an inch and as pale as a ghost. her eyes were dull and vacant.

"You never let me get out of the building. Take me back, this is just cruel."

Like an elastic band that had been stretched too far, Gajeel snapped. "Stop being so damn stupid Lucy, fucking hell. This isn't a trick. You're safe. I'm real. This is real." She looked about ready to call him a liar as her eyes started to fill with tears.

Finally out of patience, Gajeel jolted forward and sunk his teeth into her shoulder. She yelped in pain and feebly smacked at his head.

"That hurt what the hell." A switch clicked in Lucy's brain and the light appeared behind her eyes. "Gaj? You're actually here… and you bit me." Suddenly feeling full of energy, Lucy leapt onto the iron dragon slayer and started to pull his thick head of hair.

"What possessed you to bite me? Honestly Gaj, you're such a boob. I'm littered in bruises and you think it's a good idea to hurt me some more? Kiss it better." Pushing his head in the direction of her bloody neck, she shoved it repeatedly onto the wound he had just inflicted and made kissing noises.

"I'm sorry Lucy, forgive me Lucy." She mimicked his voice until Laxus's laughter filled their ears.

The two stopped their fighting and looked up at the lightning dragon slayer. He was laughing and smiling but he had tears streaming down his face.

Both Lucy and Gajeel gulped, neither of them were any good at dealing with people when they cried. What do you do? Say you're sorry? Pat them on the back? Who knows, they certainly didn't.

"You okay there buddy?" Gajeel said, clearly freaked out. Laxus wiped away the wet trails and grinned.

"I've never been better. You don't realize how much I've missed hearing you two argue. I'm so happy."

Abandoning her attack on Gajeel, Lucy got to her feet, held her arms behind her back and raised an eyebrow at her closest thing to a brother.

"Where's my hug bro?" Before she'd even finished speaking, Laxus had enveloped her in a suffocating bear hug and buried his nose in her hair. "Don't ever leave us again. I'm so sorry we couldn't protect you, we broke our promise."

Feeling safe in his arms, Lucy let out a long sigh and closed her eyes. The nightmare was finally over. "Don't sweat it, it's my own fault. You saved me though."

"Hey, let me in." Gajeel wormed his way into the group hug but he turned it more into a huddle. "Okay guys, sorry to break up this family reunion but we're still near those bastards that kidnapped Lucy, we need to go."

Pulling Laxus's and Lucy's hands into the middle of the three of them, Gajeel placed his hand on top of theirs and pushed down three times.

"Okay we break in three, then we run, okay? One, two, three." The trio ran off like their pants were on fire, their laughter echo'd behind them. Not unheard by a certain man watching the mages from the house's window.

"Midnight, why are you letting them go? I thought we needed the celestial mage?" Racer started bouncing on the heels of his feet as he watched Lucy disappear from sight.

Midnight held his guild mate back and smiled. "We don't need her anymore. It turns out that Angel will do just fine, I was overestimating how much celestial energy we would need to awaken Echion."

Racer growled and turned to leave the room. "So this was all a giant waste of time? You just wanted to play with Cobra's toy didn't you?" Midnight opened his mouth in mock disbelief and smirked, "I would never do something to intentionally hurt Erik. It was fun though."

Midnight had no doubt in his mind that he would be seeing Lucy again, very soon.

Cobra had gotten a call from Laxus telling him and Natsu to return to the guild. They had Lucy with them.

He swore he had never been so nervous in his entire life. His palms were sweating for fuck sake. Luckily when they had gotten the call, they hadn't left for Crocus yet so the journey back to Magnolia wasn't so long. If he had to wait any longer to see Lucy, he was going to go insane.

Cobra had made them get a carriage almost the whole way but he didn't want to feel all pukey when he was reunited with Lucy so he had it pull over just before entering Magnolia so he and Natsu could freshen themselves up a bit.

The pink haired slayer was as excitable as always, it was kind of annoying.

"I can't wait to see Luce, it's been months." Cobra continued walking side by side with him, not speaking a word when Natsu's hand grabbed his arm, stopping him from walking. "Hey idiot, I want to get there sometime soon, don't stop m-"

"You love Lucy." Natsu said matter of factly. Cobra's face heated slightly but he nodded. "Yeah of course. What of it?"

His serious face melted away, replaced with the carefree expression Cobra was used to seeing on the fire dragon slayer. Obviously what Cobra had said was what Natsu wanted to hear. "Nothing, just checking."

'Okay, that was weird.'

"I'm going to hang back here, go on without me." Natsu took a step backwards as the Fairy Tail guild came into view. Cobra glanced back at him and listened with his magic to hear if he had any ill intentions but the three words he heard from him made his heart warm up for the younger mage.

'Go get her.'

"You're not a bad guy Natsu. Sorry for all the trouble between us in the past, I hope we can move past it." Getting into a run, he headed towards where his girl was waiting for him.

When Cobra reached the guild doors, he could immediately sense her. Her soul. It was reaching for him. Everything else melted away as he heard footsteps pattering across the guild and the doors in front of him flew open and there she was. His beaten up princess.

Lucy gasped for breath from running over to him and grinned up at his face. "Hey there handsome." Feeling an overwhelming amount of love rush through him, he picked her up into his arms as she wrapped her legs around his waist.

"I love you. I love you so much." She showered his face with kisses as he squeezed his eye shut to try and hold back the wave of tears that were threatening to spill over.

"I really missed you. I'm sorry, I was too late. I shouldn't of left you." Pressing their foreheads together, their lips met in a soft, passionate kiss. His knees went weak at the contact.

"You look like shit." Cobra murmured against her lips, she let out a short giggle and dug her heel into his hip.

"Be nice."

Holding her face in his hand, Cobra scowled as he saw all of her wounds up close. "I'll kill him for what he's done to you."

Lucy shook her head. "We just need to stop them Erik. Help me stop them?"

"I promise, we'll stop them."

'They were once my family but now I have you Lucy. You're my family. I promise, I'm going to destroy them.'