Trust Me Not (Part 2)

Bickslow was walking right behind the strange blonde girl as she led them to...wherever, watching how she held herself tall despite falling off a tree and handling Laxus. It was a proud stance; he thought she looked strong - stubborn and confident – like an amazon woman perhaps, filled with wilderness.

But that didn't stop him from feeling bad for her. She was obviously homeless, even if he didn't know she was staying up in that tree for a few days; Bickslow could tell - he had been the same way at one point.

The little blonde was incredibly thin; her joints were sticking out, her skin dirty, and her blonde hair was a mess, as if she hadn't seen a shower in weeks. A pink top with holes matched the torn pink leggings she had on under a black skirt with a hem line that looked like it was ripped off, making the skirt outrageously short, almost as short as Evergreen's. Her worn leather boots had no laces; instead, strips of black fabric (that seemed suspiciously similar to the fabric of her skirt) were wrapped around the boots to keep her feet from slipping out. Her belt had a whip tied to it and a small pouch hanging on the belt from the other side, probably holding her keys seeing as she had no pockets and he didn't see them anywhere.

She looked young too, no older than 16, maybe even less. Nevertheless, the Seith mage had a feeling she could blend right in with homeless thieves hiding in dark alleys and terrorizing old people.

"Hmmmm-huhm-hm-hm."

The tune she was humming was ironic, Lucy mused. In the original version of it, it probably sounded like something one would expect to hear at a funeral, but the blonde teenager hummed it cheerfully, and she thought it sounded a bit heroic too, like the background music you hear in movies when the bad guy dies.

Or at least that's what she imagined it sounded like, having never seen an action movie or any sort of movie not meant for children before; but she saw posters, and her imagination was overworking itself with the lack of things to do in forests and caves and abandoned buildings and sewers.

She was walking ahead of the group of mages, skipping unnecessarily over small roots and kicking small stones that were in her way. She was just about to kick another pebble when the guy with the visor unexpectedly fell into step right next to her, his 'babies' flying in zigzags all around them.

"Hello." He flashed his trademark grin in her direction, his tongue lolling out, and for the first time she noticed the strange mark on his tongue, matching the one on the brunette's chest.

"Hello." She smiled back. He seemed like a fun guy, a bit weird with his visor and his skirt and his tattooed tongue and his babies, but a nice guy.

"So what's a pretty girl like you doing in a forest like this?" he asked, making her giggle.

"What's a nice guy like you doing with stuck-ups like them? And I'm not talking about Evrgreen."

Bickslow cackled, but answered anyway. "Big guy over there," he gestured to Laxus, "saved my ass one too many times, and Freed is the one that invited me to the team in the first place, so I decided to teach him how to live the right way." His grin widened when she rolled her eyes, amused by his answer.

"You still didn't answer my question, though," he pointed out.

"And you didn't answer mine from before," she gestured at the flying totems above them, "but that's okay; it's not important." She told him gently, her voice all of a sudden laced with sadness. The change in her tone was so abrupt, Bickslow's eyes were drawn back to her face.

The Seith mage's grin slipped, and his tongue retreated back to his mouth. Less than a minute earlier he could have sworn she couldn't have been older than sixteen years old, probably younger, but now she looked so lost in thought and so despairing that he couldn't help but question what little he knew about her.

He was willing to admit that the girl unnerved him – young, smart, beautiful, stubborn, alone, ruthless, nameless.

The last part was the most bothersome by far. Why was she nameless? Who was she running from? What would scare a girl enough to be hiding in forests all by herself? If she was running from something, why not turn to the authorities, why not get help?

But Bickslow knew all too well that the authorities could sometimes be as helpful as water in your lungs and that help was hard to get, since no one cares enough to listen. Where were the authorities when he slept out in the streets because the other option was hiding in the closet and hoping dad didn't find him? Where was help when he saw his mother killed before his eyes, activating his magic before he even knew what it meant to be a mage?

But then Laxus and Freed and Evergreen found him in some restaurant's back alley, looking in the garbage for edible leftovers.

Both mages were too far away on their trains of thought that neither noticed how the five wooden totems started to fly in circles above the shorter blonde, giggling happily, until Pippi sighed contently, "so pretty~!"

That caused the blonde's step falter as she looked up in surprise, and even Bickslow looked up mildly shocked.

"Hush you, you'll make the rest of us look bad!" Papa scolded him.

The little blonde breathed out a small laugh as she saw the 5 wooden faces bickering and butting heads above her. "Are they always like this?"

Bickslow grinned lightly, "only around people they like."

"But they don't even know me."

"They're souls; they can see your soul and choose whether they like you or not based on that. They used to be real people like us," he explained but regretted his words once he saw her horrified expression.

"They can see my soul?!"

"Sorta? Sorry, that was a bad answer; they can just tell if you're a good or bad person based on your aura. Souls are great judges of character," he informed her.

She glanced warily at the 'souls' as they continued to bicker. "I think… never mind actually. I owe you an answer," she told Bickslow. "But maybe later, since we're almost there."

His answering grin was infectious. "Really?"

Lucy hummed, though she wasn't sure what he was excited about – finding the criminals, or the answer she promised him. Either way, she pointed to a hill right before them in the horizon, about 2 miles away.

"See that hill? The inside of it is hollow – it was carved into some nature temple a few centuries ago, but it has been abandoned for almost as long, something to do with Zeref if I remember correctly. Anyways, about halfway to the other side of the hill that way-" she pointed to the left side of the hill, "-there's a hidden entrance, and your kidnappers will be inside."

Once Lucy finished talking and her hand was back at her side she finally looked up, only to see four sets of eyes looking at her skeptically.

To the surprise of no one, Blondie was the first one to question her knowledge. "And how do you know all of that?"

"I camped there last winter, and the temple's history is carved into the walls."

Freed's mostly blank, calculating eyes flickered with hesitation and Lucy understood that none of them believed her. It didn't help when a little voice in the back of her head added 'can you really blame them?' And she couldn't really fight that logic either.

"I thought you were going to let me show you the way to the kidnappers, and I'm trying to do that but you're making this unnecessarily hard," she frowned.

Freed frowned as well, "how is being cautious can be considered unnecessary?"

Lucy rolled her eyes, "while we all agreed we can't trust each other, it was also implied that this could be a trap, but also that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. By following me, you all agreed to walk into whatever trap you thought was set up for you." The little blonde looked defiantly at all of them, one at a time.

"If this was a trap, which it isn't, you willingly walked into it; it was your choice, now deal with it."

"She's right," Freed was the first one to speak. "If this is a trap, we agreed to walk into it."

As the other three mages reluctantly began to accept his words, Lucy realized something as well: Freed was the voice of reason. Laxus might be the leader, but Freed was the brain.

"So now what?" The younger blonde remained silent, but inside she was thankful towards the brunette for her question.

Laxus and Freed did the silent communication thing again before the green haired mage turned to the teenaged mage.

"What were you planning on doing if we hadn't showed up and got you out of that tree?" he asked.

She spluttered, "What kind of question is that?"

"I saw the little bag of nuts back there when you fell off that tree; if that's all you had left for nutrition then that can mean one of two things: either you had been up in that tree for only a few hours and those nuts were just a snack, which means that you are working with the abductors; or that you've been up in that tree for days, like you said, in which case you would have had no choice but to leave the tree at some point in the near future." He took a deep breath before continuing, "So I repeat, what was your plan?"

If she hadn't been so stunned by his quick deduction, that honestly freaked her out a bit, she would have probably said something like 'please, I can go for days without food', as if to counter his words, although it most likely wouldn't have had the desired affect anyway.

But she was stunned and struggling for air as she stared in disbelief at the mage. How could he possibly know all of that?

He seemed to recognize the shock in her eyes, sighed exasperatedly and spoke once more, "let's start with something simpler until you can think again. How long had you been in the tree?"

Wide eyed (and maybe a little scared – she completely underestimated the mage) she barely whispered "… Five days."

His green eyes bore into her brown pair and she had to fight off a shiver; but her fear dwarfed, at least for a moment, in comparison to her surprise at his next few words. "She's telling the truth."

Lucy was sure her eyes were going to fall out of their sockets with the way she stared at him. His friends stared at him too, but unlike her, they only tried to figure out what made him say those words and eventually gave up, then turned back to look at the young blonde.

"Do you trust me now?" she choked out. These people were dangerous; every cell in her body was screaming 'run!', and she would have done just that if she didn't fear the consequences of attempting to do it.

Freed nodded but it was Laxus who spoke next. "So about that plan…"

She didn't ask how he knew she had a plan for taking down the kidnappers; she had a feeling that she wouldn't like the answer.

So she told them. The guild mages listened in silence, not asking questions or interrupting. Once she finished, Laxus took charge, obviously very comfortable doing so.

"That's how we're gonna do it. Bix, Ever – you two do the first part; Freed, you're with me for the second part." The trio nodded, and to the Celestial Spirit mage's astonishment, Laxus turned to her with a wicked glint in his grey eyes.

"You'll join Freed and I," he told her in a tone that left no room to question the demand it unmistakably was.

Either way, Lucy kept quiet and nodded too, one thought clouding her mind: 'shit'.

()()
(O.O)

Word count: 2058

Holy shit that didn't even take 3 weeks! to be honest it's been finished in my notebook since before I posted the last chapter, but life happened and I didn't get a chance to finish this the way I wanted to.

I would like to mention a few things: Lucy is the only one whose appearance is described because in this AU she's the only one that looks different and also to all of you that followed this story and aren't reading it for the first time now, I added dates to the first 2 chapters, and I'm telling you about that now because it's a bit important to the story (I haven't decided yet, but it helps me plan plot-according-to-time line)

life is very complicated at the moment - I'm juggling work, school, finals, graduation show rehearsals, FINALS, and a few other things I have no idea how to say in English without taking an eternity to explain, and if I open that stupid dictionary one more time I will kill myself. Point is, that I don't think you'll get an update before May 10th, and I mean, my schedule is so crammed right now I pretty much gave up on sleep 2 weeks ago.

All of that being said, I want to add that I am totally planning on participating in Colu week (my real OTP, Lalu is second place), and that once again I'm updating at 1am, a habit that needs to be stopped.

HAPPY PASSOVER TO ALL YOU WHO CELEBRATE IT LIKE ME, I HOPE YOUR EXTENDED FAMILY IS NICER THAN MINE~! I just noticed that it's in caps lock but I feel too lazy to write all of that again oh well...

Another thing: WE MADE IT TO 11 MORE REVIEWS: YOSH! I would love it if it happened again~

anyways, have a lovely weekend