Dear Readers,

I gotta say, this is the beginning of the end for CtFS, and I'm unbelievably excited to approach the finish line. Also, I really hope I'm able to do this justice. Let me know what you think in the reviews, I need to hear your thoughts. Seriously. I need them.

Disclaimer: Desna owns the Pradesh Family, and Bosco, and all that. Hiro Mashima owns Fairy Tail.

My beta (GoddessxNyte2) hates cliffies as much as you do, but has thus far been unable to stop me.

Enjoy!

Lucy was a verifiable mess. She'd spent days recovering from the magic depletion she'd pushed herself into, and weeks after trying to find some way to get rid of the nightmares plaguing her thoughts. If she'd just acted sooner… If she'd just been more enthusiastic in investigating the lead that day… If she'd come out and had her name cleared, given Fallen Star a target that wasn't a bunch of innocent villagers that had nothing to do with the conflict they were in, and no single way to defend themselves…

Zen, he'd been hovering. He knew, just as the others did, that it wasn't Lucy's fault. Sure, maybe things would have been different if they'd made different decisions, but at the end of the day, the only person who had literally gone out and massacred over a hundred people on a whim had been Alec Cinder.

Try telling Lucy that.

It took Cobra's poison kin-speak to break her out of her bubble of misery. He'd arrived in Bosco after returning to seeking out information with Crime Sorciere for the few months they'd been searching, and he'd walked right into her room and thrown her from the balcony.

His methods were… interesting. But they were effective.

"Take a fucking look around you, Poly! You're not the only fucking person struggling with that shit, and if you don't get your act together, that goddamn guild is going to do it again. Is that something you can live with?"

She'd avoided serious injury from the fall by rolling through her landing, and she stood glaring up at him from the ground. Furious, but seeing his point, she'd given him a slow shake of her head.

"Then I suggest you pull your head right the fuck out of that ass of yours and act like the leader that giant terrifying starry prick made you. Got that?" he said, pointing at her with a disapproving finger for emphasis.

She took a deep breath and nodded.

From that day forward, Lucy… grew the fuck up. She thought she'd done so before, but apparently that wasn't the case. Because when she'd looked around that day, she realized she was being a selfish, whiny child and Erik was right. She wasn't the only one struggling.

Natsu, the poor, sweet, mostly innocent dragon slayer probably took it the hardest. He'd seen so much in his life, and overcome it all, but he'd never seen war. Not senseless, stupid, useless violence against people who had no hand in the fight that was brought to their doorstep. None of them had, really. But that day, Natsu had been forced to see the harsh realities of the world up close and personal, and he'd been fighting to make sense of it ever since.

The Boscans were all struggling, though at least they'd seen it before. Bosco was a wonderful country, but they weren't perfect, and some of the Boscan clans that had been around for generations were a special kind of violent and territorial that just didn't go away because the world had moved on from such things. They'd all seen war.

Bickslow, though… he was probably more of a mess than Lucy. He was no stranger to death and destruction, his past wasn't one he liked to relive, but… he'd been forced to see all those souls that day. Lingering, confused, traumatized. He knew Lucy would have been happy to know that many of them moved on after her unbelievable show of remorse, regret, and apology. He couldn't tell her though, because he wasn't ready to talk about it. He'd even taken in a soul that day, and he was still adjusting to it. The poor, confused little girl that had just been looking for her parents. He was glad she mostly didn't remember her life, but he'd seen it in her soul when he saved her, when she was bound to a totem and to his soul. And her memories of that attack, the ones she didn't understand anymore, they still haunted his dreams.

Lucy saw their pain, and decided hers wasn't important. Erik was correct, Starbringer wasn't some fancy word given to her to stroke her ego. She was a protector. A leader. Someone who fucking took charge and handled shit, even when nobody else could.

It was time she started behaving as such.

She begrudgingly admitted that she didn't know how to be a good leader, beyond how to direct people in battle strategy. So she'd started talking with Kaleb. Their chats were long, usually pretty emotionally raw, and frequently silent. He'd gotten better at reading her, and even through her, her spirits, so occasionally he threw himself into her chats with her spirits, or when he wanted, he could ignore them entirely and focus on her.

Lucy trained harder even than she had during the year she'd been gone, if for no reason other than to distract herself, or clear her head enough to just think. And plan.

And she was immensely grateful that through all of that, Zen was by her side. Their flirtation had been less… flirty these days, because they were both raw, but their connection was undeniable. It had gone from lighthearted banter and gentle, casual contact to intense, unspoken feelings. Though they both knew they were there.

And she relied on him. More than anyone else, even her spirits, she relied on him.

It had been him she spoke to, the day after Erik came barging in to throw from the second story, when she decided to get her name cleared, declare her location, and wait for them to come to her.

"I… I'm going to use myself as bait. I think it's time for Plan C."

Zen, who she'd been sparring with, stopped the attack he was going to throw at her to give her a thoughtful look, "You believe this is the best course of action?"

Lucy stood up from her ready stance and dropped her stardress, wiping the sweat from her brow, and plopped down where she stood in the middle of the training field. The sun had set long ago, but neither were particularly uncomfortable in the dark of night. Their magic was of the stars, after all.

"I don't think I have much choice. None of us will be able to handle another situation like what happened in Stella…"

She trailed off, and he sat down next to her after stabbing his sword into the ground at her feet. She hadn't even flinched at how close it came to her baby toe, just waited patiently as his large frame settled into the grass next to her much smaller one.

"You realize this will put you in danger, right?"

She looked at the stars instead of looking into his deep purple gaze, but nodded nonetheless, "I know, and I also know what you're gonna say. The bond is gonna-"

"Alright, let's do it."

"-make you crazy if we do something like that, and I know, trust me I'm worried about Fairy Tail and White Sea, too, but they are all mages. And so am I. I can protect myself. And the guilds have a hell of a lot better chance than another innocent village does."

She looked at him expectantly, "So…"

He laughed at her, ruffling her hair with the hand that wasn't propped behind him, "Lucy, you're a dork."

The celestial mage just tilted her head cutely in confusion, brows furrowed.

"I already said I agree. You were just too busy justifying your decision to listen to me."

Her confused look turned into a small, sheepish smile, "You're really okay with it?"

"I trust in your strength, Lucy," he told her seriously, directing his own gaze to the stars.

Her smile grew. Even still, she hadn't heard much of that. Despite how she'd grown, Natsu still occasionally threw out a comment on how worried he'd be for her in a fight. He had confidence in her, she knew that. But the idiot threw his own concerns in her face so often that it didn't usually seem like it. Erza had said it too, via com, when she checked in. Laxus didn't… usually, but he hadn't seen her in far too long and his dragon was antsy as fuck. She understood it really, and that's why she'd expected some kind of overprotective bullshit from Zen, too, because of the bond.

The fact that he hadn't done so was… incredible.

"Besides, you're right. Letting innocents remain in danger when we can do something about it isn't acceptable."

Lucy had to agree.

"Zen…"

He looked down at her chocolate brown eyes, and gave her a grin, "Yes, Lucy?"

"I can't tell you how happy I am that I found you that day."

He chuckled quietly, "I can't say I disagree, and not only because you saved my life that day," he said, placing a calloused hand on her cheek gently. She leaned in to it, "I'm not reading into things, am I?" he asked her quietly, leaning close.

She mirrored him, placing her hand on his opposite cheek, and she shook her head.

"But… not right now, right?" he said, sounding disappointed. But he wasn't stupid. He knew he loved her, or thought he did. He'd been a slave not too long ago and his gauge on his own emotions wasn't always the greatest. Hers, though, hers he saw translated clearly in her every action toward him. In the fact that she trained with him more than any other, told him everything, asked his opinion and truly valued it. In how clearly he could tell she would jump into the embrace of death if it would spare him the same. In her every casual touch, in the way she leaned on him for support.

He briefly wondered if she saw the same things in him, but shook it off. Because she was answering him, "I… I can't. Not now. Not when… Not with that bastard is out there…" she said, but her actions spoke differently. Her hand had moved to tangle in his hair at the base of his neck as she pulled him forward, leaning in closer herself.

He smirked at her, "You know, I've never been kissed before," he confided softly.

"A s-shame, r-really," she said, they were barely a breath apart and she cursed in her head for her pre-teen-esque stutter, "You know, now I think about it… neither have I."

"I think I could probably fix that for you, Lucy," he said, closing the distance between their lips. The kiss was soft, almost tentative, and the celestial mage threw all thoughts about how she shouldn't give into this sort of thing in the current circumstances out the window. Well, she threw all thoughts out the window.

It was soft, sweet, brief, if not a tiny bit awkward because neither of them knew what they were doing. She'd grown up in a place where doing anything of the sort would get you labeled as a whore, and every moment she'd spent after that had been one end of the world moment after another that left her with no time for romance. He'd grown up as a slave, and while he wasn't a virgin - no, that place had stolen his innocence, too - he'd never had the desire to show casual affection, to kiss, to love; nor had his guards taken that from him, as it wasn't something Peregrandians took part in.

They'd pulled away after a short, sweet moment, and Zen had pulled her into his chest, hugging her close. Her arms snaked around his middle as she maneuvered to sit in his lap, content to cuddle into his warmth.

"This… It can't mean anything. Not yet. I owe it to that Stellan village not to get distracted by this, not now."

"I know, Lucy. I don't have to like it, but I understand. I'll always understand," he assured her, kissing the top of her head.

They stayed like that for hours before her exhausted form fell limp in his grasp, and he'd given her a gentle smile as he carried her back to her room.

After that day, they'd been inseparable. Though only Kaleb knew why, and he'd patted his brother on the back when he visited the estate and informed him that Lucy couldn't stop thinking about it. Lucy was standing right there, of course, and had turned as red as a tomato. This was Bosco, and Kaleb was equal parts trying to get back at her for all the jabs she'd thrown at him about outwitting him, as he was trying to make her more comfortable with their culture.

She'd always called him serious, but the painful set to her shoulders needed readjusting. If only his brother could, assist… with that.

He'd stopped by his dad's office to suggest he find Zen a Sudepah once all the craziness with the dark guild had concluded.

One month following Lucy's impromptu 'fall' from the balcony, and she'd gotten back on her feet. Just as she'd engraved it on that glass in Stella, she would never forget what happened. But just like with so many other things she'd had to get past, she wouldn't let it stop her from living. And she most definitely wouldn't let it stop her from getting justice.

It was the exact day that they hit a year and a half from the initial attack on Fairy Tail that it happened.

And really, it was Lucy. They should have expected it.

But they didn't.

When Lucy was kidnapped, literally, from right underneath Zen's protective arm, they hadn't expected it in the least. And they - Zen specifically - had promptly freaked the fuck out.

"That's… what? 144?" Natsu asked Bickslow quietly from the corner while they watched everyone running around, mages teleporting in and out, even Vander being pulled back from a mission from the Steel Council with one word from his father over the com. -The seith mage only nodded, pulling out his com to contact his soon-to-be irate best friend and future guild master.

"Hey, uhhh… Laxus…. So, something happened…"

Laxus glared over the lacrima feed, "Why the fuck do you have your 'Lucy just got kidnapped' face on, Bickslow?"

"Well…"