The rest of the night had been peaceful, and Lucy suspected that it had had something to do with Bickslow completely passing out shortly after he'd showered, and many, many advances towards Lucy later. Although, each time he'd cackle and Lucy wondered if he was doing it on purpose just to make her uncomfortable. She just didn't know.

So as Lucy walked out of Ingrid's room after putting her to sleep after she'd eventually figured out how to give her a bath (which ended with Lucy giving up and just climbing into the bath because it was hard reaching over the side, so she got her clothes soaking wet in the process), she realised she had to go back into what was technically her and Bickslow's bedroom to get dry clothes.

"Please be asleep. Please be asleep. Please be asleep," she whispered to herself as she pushed the door open slowly, peeking around to see if he had moved since she'd been in there last.

Bickslow was sprawled out on top of the duvet, lying on his stomach with one arm draped over the side of the bed, his other going across the middle of the bed. His soft snores could be heard as Lucy walked into the room carefully, switching on the light as she did so. He didn't move and Lucy shook her head as she tip-toed across the room and to the wardrobe. Yup, he's completely out. What kind of idiot gets drunk in the middle of the afternoon?

Lucy slid the mirrored doors open slowly and carefully, making sure she didn't make too much noise. She opened the first drawer in the wardrobe that sat below the rack of clothes hanging up, sighing in relief when she saw it was the right drawer – pyjamas and underwear, because god knows that everything from her waist down was soaking wet still, and her skirt was beginning to get uncomfortable as the wet fabric rubbed against her thighs.

With a final glance over her shoulder to make sure Bickslow was still asleep, she gathered up her new clothes and padded over to the bathroom, leaving a trail of footprints behind her as she walked along the wood floor.

As Lucy stepped into the shower after getting the water running, she felt like she could have fallen asleep right there under the hot water. The steam from the water was filling the room, and for the first time all day, she felt relaxed. Everything had been stressful and frustrating, and Lucy was exhausted. It was only a little past 8 p.m. at that point and Lucy was seriously debating just crashing as soon as she was done with her shower, even though she was fighting the urge to stay under the hot water for eternity.

But unfortunately, she knew deep down that she wasn't able to spend the rest of her life in a shower, so she willed herself to step out after rinsing off her hair and all the suds from the rest of herself, and wrapped herself in the large, fluffy towel that was hanging on the shower door.

Lucy moved to stand in front of the mirror and she wiped her hand across it, creating a clear section the length of her hand. She stared at herself in the reflection. her hair dripping down the back of her shoulders and soaking into the edge of the towel. Lucy already knew that they had become their counterparts – well, that's what made the most sense and what everyone else had agreed on – but she noticed that she looked… different. Not terribly different, but she'd seen herself in the mirror enough times to notice that something had changed. Regardless, she didn't know what was different, and Lucy had to remind herself not to think about it too much.

Despite that, she thought about it, and she thought about it a lot.

It wasn't just that she looked different; she felt different, and she felt different about certain people, too.

Things like muscles that she knew she had, and the fact that they weren't as defined – hell, her stomach was a prime example of that. But, considering she now knew that Ingrid was nearly five months old, she was a little proud of herself for getting back to something close to what she knew her body to look like. That was the first thing she had noticed.

But it wasn't just that.

Whenever she held Ingrid, she got an overwhelming feeling of joy just from watching her interact with things. When Ingrid had cried, Lucy felt like she would have done anything just to make her stop crying; do anything to make her small face light up with that tiny smile she'd seen so many times that day. It was like she would have done anything to protect the tiny blonde-haired red-eyed human, and she didn't understand it.

As she slid the light blue shorts up her legs, her attention was pulled to the two rings on her left hand. She was married. To Bickslow. Bickslow! Lucy never thought of him to be a dating or relationship type of person, let alone to actually get married and have a baby. But somehow, it had happened in a completely different world. She was still trying to wrap her head around it all.

But Bickslow was the one who had been there for her earlier that day when she had really needed it and she had refused to admit it. He'd still known that though. He'd made her talk about it and she was grateful, but she still didn't entirely understand why – apart from just being her friend, because that's what it meant to be in Fairy Tail (not to mention she felt like a complete idiot when she had forgotten the fundamentals of being in the guild). But when he had hugged her, Lucy knew she should have been freaking out (if she still wasn't freaking out from being licked), but she couldn't. Not really, anyway.

She couldn't explain it. She wanted to be freaking out, just because it was Bickslow and it was weird for him to act like that (that she knew of), but she couldn't. She felt… safe, somehow, and something about it was familiar, which didn't make sense.

It was almost as if her brain didn't understand it, but her body did.

And as Lucy thought about it, the more it made sense – despite it not actually making any sense at all. It made sense in a world where nothing made sense.

It was her mind, but it wasn't her body.

"Alright, Lucy. Stop thinking. You're going to drive yourself insane," she reminded herself with a shake of her head, throwing the wet towels and clothes in the basket next to the door.

After a quick go-around of the apartment, making sure all of the lights were off, and a visit to Ingrid's room to make sure she was asleep, Lucy found herself staring at the bed in the dimly lit room. Bickslow was still dead to the world with one arm across the middle of the bed as he snored softly.

Now, Lucy didn't really want to get back in a bed with Bickslow (well, he was on top of it and not under the blanket or sheet), but she didn't want to sleep on the lounge either, and she didn't know where any other blankets were, so the lounge wasn't an option. So whether she liked it or not, she had to get back into the bed that Bickslow was laying on.

How bad could it really be? She asked herself as she pulled the corner of the blanket back. You went back to bed at the same time after you found yourself in this mess… with Bickslow, so just… close your eyes, and go to sleep. It's not going to be that bad.

As Lucy climbed into the bed, pushing Bickslow's arm towards his side and rather than the middle where it had been before, she switched off the light in the room, leaving it in darkness again. She could already feel her lids get heavier as she slid down and pulled the blanket up to her ears. God only knew how much she needed sleep.

So as she reassured herself that Bickslow was completely out for the rest of the night, she closed her eyes and shifted over to the edge of the bed, making sure to put as much space as possible between herself and Bickslow.

Bickslow groaned into the pillow as he shuffled to the edge of the bed, lifting his arm from whoever it was draped over. His head was pounding and the room was dark, but that might have been because his eyes were closed still. He didn't want to be awake. Not one bit. If anything, he'd much prefer to crawl back into the bed he was now sitting up on and push whoever else it was that was in his bed off of it.

But he really needed to pee.

God damn it.

So as he finally stood up from the bed, resting his feet on the cold hardwood floor, he slowly started heading towards where the bathroom was. Bickslow knew his apartment like the back of his hand – he'd lived there long enough to be able to walk around with his eyes closed and know exactly which room he was in or how many steps it would roughly take to get to one room to another.

But when he walked into a wall that he knew shouldn't have been there, he opened his eyes slowly as his steadied himself.

Bickslow squinted as his eyes readjusted to the lighting. I've seen this room before, he thought as he opened his eyes more, ignoring the pounding headache that was getting progressively worse the longer he stood.

The black curtains were open with the faint light from the early morning lighting up the room some, the armchair in the corner casting a shadow across the floor. Bickslow turned his head over his shoulder to look back at the bed, groaning when he saw the familiar blonde hair splayed out on the pillow. "Damn it," he cursed under his breath. Looks like we're still here.

Bickslow didn't want to be stuck in Magnolia 2.0 any more or any less than anyone else did. He didn't want to be in the world without magic, and he didn't want to believe that this was supposed to be his life now. He didn't want to believe that he was supposed to married to Lucy and have a nearly five-month-old baby with her, despite the nagging voice inside him that was telling him it really wouldn't be that bad.

As Bickslow re-entered the hallway from the bathroom he found himself walking into Ingrid's nursery. It was like there was an invisible force pulling him towards there, and he didn't quite understand why or what it was.

But when he leant over the railing for the crib, he realised that the invisible force wasn't actually so invisible, since it was Ingrid herself.

Ingrid was just waking up by this time, and Bickslow was almost entranced by her existence for a moment - that was, until she started crying and Bickslow wondered what it was he'd done to make her cry. It wasn't like he was Gajeel who just seemed to have that kind of look to him, but he hadn't done anything. He'd literally just leant on the railing for all of thirty seconds.

Bickslow finally reached into the crib to pick her up, the pink polka-dot blanket falling back down as he lifted her up. "I don't know what you want!" Ah, fuck. What the hell do I—wait… what's that smell? He lifted Ingrid up higher, cringing when he breathed in. No, no, no. No. No. No. Fuck. Why isn't Cosplayer awake yet?

He all but ran down the short hall and into the bedroom, holding Ingrid at arm's length as she stood in the doorway. The crying wasn't stopping. Hell, it was getting louder and Bickslow was hungover and he was not dealing with that.

"Cosplayer, get up. I'm not dealing with this," he whined over the crying, trying to lengthen his arms somehow.

Lucy pushed the heavy blanket back, slowly sitting up as she pushed her hair back behind her ears and smoothing it down slightly. She had wanted to curl up in a ball when Ingrid had started crying. She'd had a feeling that the entire situation wasn't just going to be a twenty-four-hour issue, but that being said, she still wasn't happy to wake up to crying yet again (despite getting a lot more sleep than she had the previous night thanks to that wake-up call at god knows what awful hour it had been).

So as she finally stood up and walked over to the doorway where Bickslow was standing, he instantly tried to hand her to the blonde when she got close enough. Lucy shook her head, as a hand went up, motioning for Bickslow to turn around and head back into the hall. "Just go and put her down on the table."

As soon as Bickslow had laid Ingrid down on the changing table by the window, he almost instantly turned and went to exit the room, but instead found Lucy blocking the door.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asked as she looked up, leaning on the door frame.

"Out of here? You're awake, you can deal with this," Bickslow replied, moving slightly in attempt to slip past the blonde in the gap between herself and the other side of the door frame.

Lucy shook her head as a smirk played on her lips. "Nope. I did it yesterday. You can do it today." Ah, yes. That seems fair.

Bickslow froze. "What? No. Not a chance."

"I did almost everything yesterday." Lucy stepped forward into the room more, causing Bickslow to take a step back before she kicked the door closed with her foot. "Come on. Think of it as a life skill."

"Hey, I fed her. Once…" Yeah, once. I helped. I can do that. "And life skill? Where the hell did you get that?"

Another step forward, "Once. I did everything else." Ingrid's crying continued and Lucy could just feel her headache coming on already. She wasn't going to give in and change Ingrid. No, she was going to get Bickslow to do it. It was only fair. "Well, when you have your own kids one day—"

"No."

"—you'll know what you're doing. This is actually helping you. And besides, the longer you refuse to do it, the more she'll cry, and the louder she'll get. I'm sure you have a headache right now." Lucy smirked as she continued walking closer, pushing Bickslow closer and closer to Ingrid, his head pounding even more with each step.

Has she always been this fucking evil? Goddamn, no wonder she can keep Natsu on a leash. Suddenly it all made sense. But Bickslow knew she wasn't going to back down. She'd never seemed like the kind of person to give up so easily, and this was more or less one of those situations. If he didn't have a killer headache and a hangover, he probably would have been able to stand there all day and argue with her about it, but… he wasn't going to do that. Not today, anyway.

So with a final grimace he turned and took the final step to be in front of the changing table. God damn Cosplayer. "I don't know what the fuck to do. You better tell me how to do this," Bickslow said with a glare over his shoulder.

Lucy was smiling to herself as she moved to stand next to Bickslow. She'd won, and she couldn't help but admit it was a little amusing. "Alright, you have to undo those buttons." She pointed to the buttons on the yellow onesie Ingrid had on, watching as Bickslow struggled with them as Ingrid flailed her little legs around.

This is a fucking nightmare.

"Okay, so now that you've got that off, you pull on the tabs on the side of the diaper, and make sure you hold her ankles together with one hand and lift her up." Here comes the fun part…

Wait… hold on… Bickslow's hand went around Ingrid's legs, holding them together as he looked down at Lucy. "Like this? Isn't that like… I don't know… kind of inhumane?" What kind of person holds a baby like that? It's like a goddamn fish!

Lucy shook her head, "Nope. It's fine. It stops her from getting it all over her legs," she said with another smirk that made Bickslow tremble slightly.

What the fuck… I don't even want to think about how that's possible.

"Okay, now you pull it down and kind of wipe as you do so—"

"Oh, fuck no," Bickslow's head turned over his shoulder as he fought the gag, eyes watering slightly. "That's disgusting, oh god."

Lucy was laughing as she reached down and picked up the packet of wipes that were on the shelf, holding them up and in Bickslow's reach when he finally turned back around. She had been up for only a few minutes, but she was already laughing, and she's had worse starts to days. Maybe today won't be so terrible.

At some point, Ingrid had stopped crying as much, instead only short cries were heard over Lucy's laughing. Bickslow was still totally disgusted. Everything was just… disgusting. As Lucy handed him a new diaper, explaining how to put it on as he continued scowling, he found himself wondering who in their right mind would have kids. Babies were disgusting and weird, according to Bickslow, anyway. Who the hell would actually want one of these? Oh right. You did, you moron.

"Now clothes." Lucy smiled when Bickslow had thought he was done.

"Can't you do that?" Come on, clothes are easy! Why can't Cosplayer do it?!

She shrugged as she went over to the dresser, saying, "Life skills, remember?"

"Sure… Life skills, she says…" Bickslow mumbled, turning his attention back to Ingrid as Lucy went through the drawers, raising an eyebrow when it finally dawned on him that she wasn't crying anymore. Instead, she was smiling and back to making the other weird noises that Bickslow had so deemed them. "More like you just want to laugh at me, which, I could hear since I was right next to you."

Lucy finally decided on something for Ingrid to wear – a pair of grey leggings and a light pink and white long-sleeved shirt with polka-dots. Well, he's not wrong, she thought as she turned back, placing the folded clothes on the free end of the table. "A bit of both, maybe," she admitted.

"You're evil," he muttered as he picked up the shirt, trying his best to slide it over her without hurting the tiny thing. He did not need to be hurting a baby by putting on a goddamn shirt, no way. But then Ingrid started… squealing. Lucy was still laughing, most likely at watching him struggle, Bickslow had decided. But Ingrid was squealing and it almost sounded like laughing.

He was convinced Ingrid was probably laughing at him, too.

"Now you're both laughing. Great." Bickslow briefly looked up to Lucy who was still laughing quietly before looking back down to Ingrid. He shook his head when he realised he was smiling. When the hell did that happen? Something about it was contagious, and he had a feeling it was Ingrid's smile. Something about her red eyes (that just happened to match his own) looking up at him as she smiled and squealed was making him smile and forget he had a pounding headache for a few moments. Bickslow didn't understand it, but… he was honestly too happy to care at that very moment. "You're both evil."

Lucy had found the entire situation way more entertaining than she had anticipated. Sure, she'd found it equally as disgusting, but watching someone else do it was absolutely brilliant, and somehow having Bickslow do it… well, it was almost too good. He was so far out of his comfort zone (more so than usual, she'd noticed), but she couldn't help but wonder if the other Bickslow had had the same kind of experience and reaction to getting put on diaper duty. Lucy realised the other version of herself probably would have been standing there laughing if it had been the same, so she didn't feel as bad about making the man struggle.

But then Ingrid had started laughing – she'd squealed and smiled the previous day whenever Lucy had changed her, but she wouldn't have called it laughing – and Lucy just just hadn't been able to stop herself from giggling. Something about it was just so… happy. It was warm and familiar, and it was like they were a tiny, weird family, even if it was just for a split second when everyone was laughing – mostly at Bickslow, admittedly.

Lucy had to admit she was a little proud of him, though. Considering he'd never even held a baby until the day before, there he was on day two of kind-of-not-really-a-parent-but-sort-of-a parent and he hadn't run out of the room screaming. Lucy had almost been expecting it. Hands up, backing out slowly, shaking his head and muttering to himself about babies being disgusting and how he was going to run away and join the circus, or something like that.

But he hadn't actually done a bad job. It wasn't like Lucy knew what she was doing. In fact, most of it had been guess-work after the first time she'd had to do it and Bickslow had left the room in a hurry, but she still expected Bickslow to screw up a few times between making sure the diaper wasn't too tight or too loose, or even getting her clothes on. But no, he'd actually done pretty well.

"Please tell me that's all there is," Bickslow said when he'd finally finished getting the clothes on. Leggings. Goddamn leggings. Leggings are evil.

Lucy nodded as she picked Ingrid up from the table. She'd finally stopped laughing, but Ingrid was still making small squealing noises every few seconds. "That's all there is."

"Thank god for that," he sighed. And finally, he turned to head for the door and get the fuck out of there. That was way more stressful than I'd thought.

As Bickslow left the room and went to the kitchen, presumably, Lucy smiled as she took Ingrid's tiny wrist in her hand, shaking it slightly as she drew the attention of the tiny human. "I hope that was as entertaining for you as it was for me. Now, let's go get you something for breakfast."