A/N: Fluff this time around! Kinda. There's some fun banter. I love fun banter.
Thanks for the reviews! I hope you enjoy :)
In the morning, Natsu held his hand painfully against the barrier while Lucy read the runes.
"Looking at the script, this barrier seems fairly standard. I might be able to decode it," Lucy said. "I was worried, because I'm not a script mage like Levy, but I recognize a few of these characters. If I work on it, I should be able to decipher them. The only problem is the spies outside."
Natsu glanced toward the window, curtains fully open and behind the barrier so he and Lucy couldn't close them.
"They got lucky with those curtains being open," he said.
"No, I think they knew I would run here," Lucy said. "Someone must have spotted me at the party even before the Chief Advisor had us chased out, and told the king I was around." She sighed. "I should've known something was wrong when I saw the curtains open. There is no way they would hire a maid so foolish as to leave curtains open in an unused room like this. It would fade the colors on the walls and drapery. They are very particular about these things."
"So what do we do? It's open, so they can see what we're doing."
Lucy bit her lip in thought. "For now, I'll do some reading. The books I learned magic from are still in the Celestial Spirit World, so I can brush up on my script magic before I attempt to rewrite it. You…figure out something to do while you keep an eye outside. I told you about my bodyguards already, right?"
Natsu nodded. "The people from Sabertooth. I've got a dragon slayer's eyes; if they can see me, I can see them."
"Good. I'm not sure if it's the same people or not," Lucy said. "It'll be good to know whom we're up against, even if two of them are dragon slayers."
"I'm stronger than both of 'em combined," Natsu said. "If it is them, getting outta here will be a piece of cake."
Lucy smiled. "Good to hear. I'll get started then. Maybe we'll even be out of here by tonight, if I can figure out a way to deconstruct the barrier without them noticing."
"Good luck," Natsu said.
"Thanks."
Natsu was bored. Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored. Bored.
Yeah, those were the former Sabertooth mages outside. He'd seen them when they switched shifts; a blonde and a black head were visible for just a moment: the twin dragon slayers Natsu had heard so much about before they disappeared during the ban.
So the guards were the same people who had protected Lucy in her childhood. Apparently one of them, called Yukino, was a celestial mage like Lucy.
"But," Lucy said, spinning her key ring around her finger, "she doesn't have any golden keys. After I was chosen by Plue to bear the keys, she willingly gave up the two she had. I don't think she knew at the time that I was the Celestial Spirit, just that Plue appeared before her and asked for her to give them to me."
"Plue can talk?" Natsu said, looking at the wolf curled up around Lucy's back like a living cushion. It stared back.
Lucy laughed as if it were a ridiculous assumption. "No, no, he can only growl a bit. But he has a way of communicating even without words, right?"
Well, Natsu couldn't argue with that. The animal's eyes were remarkably intelligent and reminded Natsu a bit of Happy. The differences, of course, were the species and the fact that Happy was a manmade creature. Also that Plue came from an entirely different dimension.
"We can talk more later," Lucy said. "I'm almost finished this section." The huge book in her lap was filled with words in a rune alphabet Natsu couldn't read, the same one that made up the barrier script. Lucy had quietly requested the books from Gemini, since they were small enough to hide from view. They were going to return for the books before sundown, and Lucy had spent the past several hours absorbing as much of the text as she could.
And it would probably be a while longer before she was done. And then after that she'd be working on decoding the rune structure. All while Natsu was sitting around bored and useless in this situation.
Ugh.
Nighttime.
"Lucy, go to sleep." He almost said "come to bed" but that felt a little too awkward. They were sharing a bed, but that didn't mean they had to start sounding like a married couple.
"But I'm almost—"
"Lucy."
"I'm not even that—"
"You look terrible. The bags under your eyes could carry Erza's luggage."
"That's rude."
"You've been using up all your energy activating the barrier to read it. It'd be annoying if you collapse from exhaustion while we're trying to escape."
She pulled her hand away from the barrier, a disgruntled pout on her lips. "If we don't get out of here before Father comes back, it's your fault."
"And whose bad lying got us in this situation in the first place?"
"Shut up."
Day three of their imprisonment in Lucy's room.
Natsu was used to going without showers and changes of clothes, but the thin white fabric of his dress shirt seemed to be radiating odors of its own. He felt gross and sticky all over; they couldn't even open the windows to let a little air in, so the room was stifling. But no matter how he moaned and complained, Lucy wouldn't let him strip down. Something about modesty. Meanwhile she was using the dress's undergarments as a nightgown, so really she was just being a hypocrite.
He was in the middle of making rude faces at her while she studied the runes when Lucy suddenly gasped. "What the hell?" she blurted, then covered her mouth in a panic.
Natsu held in his laughter. "Nobody cares if you curse," he said.
"Well I care," Lucy huffed, lowering her hands.
"What is it?"
"These runes," she said. "They've changed since yesterday."
"Is that good or bad?"
She glanced nervously at the window and lowered her voice to a whisper. "Good, I think. Look, there's this." She pressed her hand to the barrier, revealing the script it was made of. She pointed to a series of runes. "See?"
"I can't read them, Lucy."
"This word is your name. 'Natsu." There's a note addressed to you."
"What?"
"It says, 'Good to see you alive. At midnight, the barrier will disappear. Escape then. Good luck. Freed.'"
Natsu looked at her sharply. Was she for real? Was she saying that Freed had come here?
"So you know this Freed person?" Lucy said, watching his reaction.
"Freed's one of us," Natsu said. "Remember Mira talking about her boyfriends?"
"Oh! Right! Freed is one of the Raijinshuu! Are they working with the palace then? I thought they were still freelancing."
Natsu frowned. "Mira never said anything about them being with the government."
"But they had to be on-call; we were only in the palace for half an hour before coming to this room, and they had the barrier set up beforehand as a trap."
"This makes a lot more sense than them knowing for sure we'd come here," Natsu said. "Freed can really crank out those runes; I've seen him set up a dozen in the span of an hour. He could put barriers at multiple escape points before we even started getting chased."
"I guess he realized you were trapped in here with me and is letting us escape."
"If they noticed you can read the runes, they probably told him to do something about it, and he left a note instead. They underestimate Fairy Tail family loyalty."
"Whatever happened, if his note is true, then we have until midnight. We can use the element of surprise to escape. I'm going to describe our escape route verbally, so listen carefully, okay?"
After memorizing Lucy's instructions, Natsu'd thrown a few things around to give off the impression that whatever plans they'd been making were ruined. Whether Freed's tampering with the barrier was allowed by the guards or not, they need to appear frustrated just in case. With a silencing clause in the runes not allowing them to be heard by anyone outside, as long as they looked frustrated and hopeless, their guards had no way of knowing otherwise. The rule to keep people from finding out of Natsu and Lucy's presence here would be their enemies' undoing.
As the sun set, Lucy cross-checked the time on her grandfather clock with Horologium so they knew exactly when midnight would fall. Then all they had to do was lie in bed and wait.
"Why'd you only want me along on this trip?" Natsu asked. The question had been buzzing in the back of his mind for several days now. He thought he knew the answer, but he wanted to hear it from her.
"Well, I knew some masquerading as nobility would be involved, and having a male partner would be best for that, seeing as male-female married couples are the norm. That left you and Gray. And between the two of you, well, I chose you. If anyone found out about who I was, I wanted you to be first; after all, I did lie to you a little back in the beginning."
"Are you going to tell the others about you being…well…you know…"
"Yeah, I think so," Lucy said, nodding. "I've been thinking about it, and I can't keep it a secret forever. It's basically a habit at this point, so I didn't know how to bring it up, but you've given me confidence in your own way."
"I didn't even do anything," Natsu deadpanned.
"You listened to me. You didn't treat me differently."
"That's natural," Natsu said. "You're my teammate."
"Still, there's something about you that makes me feel reassured. Like I can trust you as a partner."
"You keep talking about how you think I'm so trustworthy. What's so great about me anyway?"
Lucy hummed. "Your freedom?"
Natsu's curiosity instantly waned. Not an answer he wanted to hear.
"It just seems to come naturally to you. You have a goal and nothing can hold you back from it. You're determined. There's a bunch of other things, too, but that was what first made me drawn to you, I think."
Natsu looked at the ground. "I'm not as 'free' as that, Lucy," he said.
"Well, maybe not your freedom then. However, I contend that your confidence and determination are very real. You're indomitable, and I like that about you."
"What's that mean?"
"Just what I've been saying; you can't be beaten."
Natsu laughed. "Coming from the unbeatable Celestial Spirit, that's quite a compliment."
Lucy joined him in laughter. "I could kick your ass any day."
"I'm glad you didn't."
"Same. I was happy enough with my spirits, but being with you and the others is even more fun."
"Especially me," Natsu joked.
"Yeah," she said, a teasing tone in her voice contradicting the blush across her cheeks. "Especially you."
He did his best to ignore the heat that rose to his own face. He was firmly in denial about any feelings he harbored toward her, thank you very much. Of course, being conscious about the denial kind of defeated the purpose of being in denial in the first place, but this was a situation that called for willful ignorance, no matter how unreasonable.
A slender hand reached out to touch him, a smile on her lips. "Your face is red," she said.
"Yeah, well so's yours."
She pulled her hand back to cover her cheeks. "We should pretend to sleep soon. If we keep talking they'll see us moving and know we're still awake."
"Here," Natsu said, holding out a hand under the covers. He found her arm and pulled it down until he could grip her hand. Lucy was getting bolder with him, and he would do the same.
"Why?" she asked, though she didn't pull her hand away.
"This way we can signal each other without being seen."
"I was planning to just poke your side or something."
"What if you hit my stomach? I'm ticklish, you know."
A smirk spread across her face. "You are, are you?"
"No. But what if I was?"
"Mhm, I'll keep that in mind for later."
"No, really, I'm not ticklish."
"If you say so," Lucy sang.
"Wanna try it?"
"Not now. We're supposed to be falling asleep soon. If I tickle you, you'll only get hyper."
"I told you I'm not—"
"You're not ticklish. Got it."
Natsu made a mental note to tell her about how ticklish Gray was. He really had only been joking about being ticklish, which Lucy would find out for herself eventually, but he'd love to see that ice block squirm.
"11:32," Lucy mumbled. Her back was to the window, so she could still talk a little without it being noticeable. In a stroke of luck, the grandfather clock happened to be within her view from that position. Meanwhile Natsu was faced toward the window so he could crack one eye open and see where their watchers were when the time came.
Natsu made a mumbled noise in response to Lucy's announcement of the time and snuggled his head deeper into the pillow. They had a half hour of pretending to fall asleep before they could even do anything. How annoying.
But he spent a lot of that half hour sleeping apparently, because next thing he knew he was woken up by Lucy's hand squeezing his.
"One minute," came her low mumble.
Natsu squeezed her hand back to let her know he heard her.
Lucy tapped out the seconds with her forefinger against the back of his hand. Natsu counted along in his head. 3…2…1…
They leapt out of bed, throwing the covers aside in a mad dash for the window. They simultaneously kicked the glass just as the magical barrier around them dissipated. With the unsettling aura around them gone and fresh air in his lungs, Natsu felt better than he had in days. And he was about to get a good fight to blow off some steam, too.
"On your right," Natsu shouted in time for Lucy to block a blinding attack from the light dragon slayer who'd been watching them. Natsu himself looked around for the other one, but the second guy was nowhere to be seen. He'd definitely seen two bodies out here…
Then something leapt out from the shadows and Natsu had to duck. "Shit," he cursed, diving into a roll and coming out with all four limbs aflame. "I'm over here, you dragon bastards!"
"You're a dragon bastard too, traitor," the blonde one growled, diverting his attentions from Lucy just long enough for her to call Virgo and Loke. She latched onto Virgo just as the celestial spirit dove into the ground. Natsu and Loke took up position in front of the hole, which was quickly being filled back up again with dirt being kicked back by Virgo.
"Don't let the princess escape!" the blonde shouted to the black-haired one.
"She's underground! Where's Yukino? Call for backup," the other responded.
"You think we can do that in this situation?"
"Lucy's not a princess anymore," Loke said, interrupting the enemy dragon slayers' argument.
"Yeah," Natsu said, "she's part of Fairy Tail now. And you bastards can't have her!"
A/N: Escape! Sting and Rogue don't stand a chance, tbh. Natsu beat them pretty easily in canon haha.
Updates might be slow again from now on; I'm doing the Unison Raid bang (sign-ups end in three days! go do it!) and I've been somewhat distracted by the fic I'm writing for it. It's another AU, and I can't reveal too many details before the event starts, but it's going to be a realistic setting (so, more like Not Normal but not high school) and very fluffy. Also no pairings, because I do what I want. Haha. I'm excited. And even when I've got the story done, I also signed up to be an artist because I apparently like torturing myself, so then I'll have that to do. Plus school, other projects, etc etc.
Well, we'll see what I get done I guess. The next chapter is almost finished, but the two after that have less than a page written...but the one after that is complete! It's super short, but it's complete!
I really need to stop writing things out of order, but I can't help myself haha
