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No Fairytale Princess

When Lucy gets kidnapped and rescued by Natsu again, she's had enough. She's going to learn how to be strong and independent so that she doesn't always need to be rescued like a fairytale princess, and Erza is the perfect person to turn to for help.

Lucy could scream. Her teeth ground together in frustration as she tugged fruitlessly at the ropes binding her arms behind her back. They chafed at her wrists and rubbed her skin raw but wouldn't come off no matter how she twisted and tugged at them. This was ridiculous. If she were a fictional heroine in one of her books, she would have a knife in her boot or know how to work herself out of bindings or not have gotten captured in the first place.

…To be honest, carrying a knife on her person would not be a bad idea. Or she could start carrying her whip again. Or, even better, find some sort of magical key ring that random goons couldn't steal off her to leave her defenseless.

Somewhere outside, her one-time captor screamed and the earth shook. At least Natsu was coming. Again.

Lucy grimaced and redoubled her efforts on the ropes. Maybe if she could wriggle her way out before Natsu and Happy arrived to break her out…

"Lucyyy!" Happy warbled as he shoved the door open and bounced through the air to her side. "You got caught again?"

"Shut up and get me out," she snapped, heat flooding her face. "It's been a few months since last time."

Happy rolled his eyes. "No one else gets caught every few months. And this was an easy job."

Lucy bit down on her tongue to stop herself from spitting out every foul word she had ever learned from her irreverent guildmates. Happy smirked, and Lucy tried to tamp down her simmering annoyance and embarrassment before they boiled over by telling herself that this was just his normal teasing. He would tease anything that made itself into a target, and she had done that fair and square. But it was still frustrating.

Natsu shoved the half-open door the rest of the way open and bounded into the room. "Hey, Lucy! Long time no see. You alright?"

"Fine," she grumbled.

He bent over and easily burned through the ropes binding her hands with a spark of magic. He pulled her to her feet in one smooth motion and tossed her ring of keys at her. She snatched them out of the air and cradled them protectively against her chest. Being unable to use her magic always made her feel so naked and vulnerable, and now she held on as tightly as she could.

"Job's done," Natsu said cheerfully. "I beat that guy up for you and found your keys."

"Thanks," Lucy mumbled.

He paused in the doorway and looked back. "You sure you're okay? Did he do anything to you? I can beat him up some more."

"No, it's fine." Lucy forced a smile. If even Natsu, who was famously oblivious, could pick up on her dark mood, then she really needed to tone it down.

Natsu and Happy exchanged a look but shrugged and let it go. Lucy slunk along behind them as they headed out to finish cleanup and collect their reward.

The first couple times she had gotten kidnapped or captured or nearly killed, she had found it endearing how Natsu always swept in to rescue her and save the day. At some point, it had even started feeling a little romantic, like a fairy tale.

Now it just made her feel weak. A liability. She was tired of being stuck waiting for someone to come rescue her when she wanted to be strong enough to rescue herself.

She had long despaired that Natsu was too thick-headed and immature to just ask her out already, but now she realized, with no little shame, that she wasn't any more ready for a relationship than he was. A relationship should be an equal partnership—she didn't want to have to rely on her partner to always save her and take care of her. She should be able to look out for him as much as he looked out for her.

Right now it seemed like Lucy could barely take care of herself, much less someone else.

She sulked the whole way back to Magnolia and only waved off her companions when they pestered her. She was formulating a plan.

As soon as they walked into the guild, Lucy focused in on Erza and marched over. "I need to talk to you," she said as she grabbed her friend's arm and dragged her back out of the guild past the bemused stares of Natsu and Happy.

"What's wrong?" Erza asked. Lucy released her arm but motioned for her to continue walking down the street with her alongside the canal. "Did something happen on your job? Do I need to beat up Natsu and Happy for you?"

Lucy's lips twitched upward before flattening back into a grim line. "No, it's alright. Actually…I got caught again." She hunched her shoulders and scowled at the ground to avoid Erza's gaze. The last thing she really wanted to do was bare her shame to someone else, but there was no one better than Erza to go to for help with this. "The guy wasn't even that powerful, but he managed to swipe my keys and tie me up. Natsu took him out before anything really happened, but the point is that I couldn't do anything! I'm sick of it."

"Oh," Erza said after a short pause. She sounded stumped, not sure what to do with the admission. Maybe because it never happened to her and she didn't really understand how it could keep happening to someone so much weaker than her. "That sucks."

Lucy sighed and hopped up onto the raised stone edge that ran along the canal. She was rewarded almost instantly by one of the men in the boats yelling a hello and telling her not to fall in. Honestly, sometimes she swore that they all knew her and kept an eye out to tease her about falling in every time they spotted her walking on the edge. She waved back halfheartedly, still too worked up to want to exchange pleasantries with anyone.

"Yeah." She held her arms out to the sides and stepped lightly along the bricks. "It's like… When I was little, my mom used to read me fairy tales for bedtime stories. They seemed so cool and romantic, you know? The beautiful princess that gets rescued from danger when her knight in shining armor shows up to save the day. Geez, I'm going to go back and change any of my characters that I wrote as damsels in distress. It sucks. I'm tired of it.

"You're super strong and independent and– I want you to teach me how to be like you. Obviously I need some training to get stronger. I don't want to be a damsel in distress anymore. I want to–to slay my own dragons, you know? Dream my own dreams, fight my own fights."

She turned her pleading gaze to the redhead. Erza's eyebrows nearly jumped right up off her forehead at Lucy's choice of words, but she just nodded and plodded along in thoughtful silence for a few seconds.

"I'm my own knight in shining armor, so to speak," she said finally.

"Exactly!" Lucy grinned, glad she was making sense. If Erza was already relating it to herself, then that had to be a good sign.

"Admittedly, fairytale princesses aren't really known for their self-sufficiency. Maybe fun to read about from time to time, but probably not all that fun to be." Erza pulled her focus back to the present and watched Lucy sidelong. "But Fairy Tail princesses are kickass. They're strong and independent and stand up for themselves and–"

Lucy nearly fell into the canal in her excitement. "Exactly! I want to be–!"

"–and don't have to rely on a prince to rescue them but know when they should rely on their team," Erza finished.

Lucy blinked at her. "…Huh?"

Erza met her gaze squarely. "It's good to be strong and tough and self-reliant, but there are always times when you'll need help. You can't always do it all alone. Not even me. When the boys come to your rescue, it isn't because they think you're weak—they just look out for you in the same way that we all look out for each other. The strongest people are the ones who know when they need help, and there's no shame in getting some support. That's the whole point of having a team. And we do have a team, so no matter how self-sufficient we all are, we still have to come together and work as one sometimes. Everyone is a valuable team member."

Lucy opened her mouth and then closed it again. Erza was right, of course. That was something so obvious that everyone knew it, and so obvious that Lucy had almost overlooked it in her newfound zeal. It wasn't really fair of her to get snippy with Natsu and Happy for rescuing her when they were just looking out for their friend in the same way that she would fight tooth and nail if one of them was captured. She wanted to be strong and independent and badass, but it was a good reminder that she was still part of a team and they all relied on each other.

"Yeah," she sighed. "I want to be that kind of Fairy Tail princess. Can you help me?"

Erza laughed, the stern lines melting off her face as she smiled. "Oh, Lucy. You already are. You're more badass than you give yourself credit for."

Lucy smiled shyly, her heart lifting. "Aw, thanks–"

"But you could definitely use some help." Erza's eyes gleamed with wicked satisfaction as she began planning out her training regime. "You'll need some strength training to learn physical self-defense. Maybe I should train you in a weapon too. And we really ought to find a way to make sure you don't keep losing your keys. And, of course, there's always room to practice and improve your magic itself!"

Lucy smiled tiredly. What, exactly, had she gotten herself into? She had the feeling that she was in for a grueling few months under Erza's tutelage. But if she wanted to grow and get stronger, she would do what she had to. And she might actively hate Erza by the end of their first training session, but right now she could be grateful for all the work and effort her friend was willing to put in for her.

"Lucy!" Natsu called from somewhere behind them.

Lucy turned so fast that she would have actually lost her balance and toppled into the canal this time if Erza didn't grab her arm and pull her back. Natsu was running towards them with a grin on his face, Happy flying behind.

"Are you less grumpy yet?" Happy yelled.

"We're going fishing!" Natsu added. "Come on!"

Lucy smiled and dropped her gaze to her feet as her cheeks heated. Those two were such goofballs. They were still worried about her overreaction from earlier, and she didn't doubt that they were trying to cheer her up.

"Okay!" she called back.

"Have fun. We'll start training tomorrow." Erza smirked, her eyes sparkling with wicked amusement as she looked between Lucy and Natsu. "Don't worry, I'll help you slay your dragon."

emmahoshi: Well, Lucy is the stereotypical nice-girl, heart-of-the-team, damsel-in-distress, weakish-and-one-dimensional-but-pretty-and-sweet, audience-insert/surrogate character. She's the stand-in for the audience, our way into a new world (quite literally, seeing how the story started with her being inducted into FT where there was already a culture with people who already knew each other well, and she learned about it and assimilated along with the audience). Tbh, that type of character is rarely compelling to me. It's not even that Lucy's physical/magical power never improved enough (although it didn't lol), just that she has a very static character and doesn't grow much past a certain point (although Mashima kind of screwed up all his characters by the end). I don't dislike her, but she's very weak in a literary sense. And yeah, she tends to be more about friendship speeches than action. She has some good points, but I feel like Mashima fell short on what he was trying to do with her. And I have less patience for her after finding a couple of good examples of how variations of this trope should be done. Hiyori in Noragami and Yona in Akatsuki no Yona are way better versions of the Lucy-trope. Then again, their writers have a lot more skill than Mashima and the stories are much higher quality in and of themselves. I mean, I still don't find those characters as interesting as some of the others (you know I have to attach to the walking psychological conundrums with tragic pasts XD), but there are ways to write them better. That's just my two cents lol
[EDIT: My sister watched Galuna, looked at me, and said, "You like Gray because he's the first one to get a tragic backstory, don't you?" And I could not argue with her XD (Okay, I like him for a lot of other reasons too, but the tragic backstory and angst definitely don't hurt lol) Yeah, a good audience-insert evolves and grows alongside the other characters and really contributes something to the dynamics of the team/group/family/whatever. Honestly, I just hate static, stagnant characters. I want to see them and their relationships grow and develop over the course of the story. I know, it's a lot to ask lol]