DAUNTLESS

Chapter XXIX – Socks in the bra

"Have you ever heard the wonderful silence just before the dawn? Or the quiet and calm just as a storm ends? Or perhaps you know the silence when you haven't the answer to a question you've been asked, or the hush of a country road at night, or the expectant pause of a room full of people when someone is just about to speak, or, most beautiful of all, the moment after the door closes and you're alone in the whole house? Each one is different, you know, and all very beautiful if you listen carefully."
― Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

The sky was grey and large clouds threatened to bring a torrential downpour or a major thunderstorm, or both. Knee deep in the water, Mira stared at the damaged bridge rail above her. No matter how many days passed, she could still see him fall after being shot. She still could see how he finally decided that his loyalty would only go to his family no matter what and openly opposed the Octagon. Her brave, adorable little brother. He was kind and devoted and so was her sister, Lisanna. She had lost her, too.

Mira knew she should be grieving and crying herself to sleep every night – God knew she felt miserable – but there was another feeling that kept her up at night. Anger. It was overwhelming and almighty and she was drowning in it. She wasn't even trying to resist the pull, she wanted to be completely engulfed in anger. It helped ease the ache. She was furious that she had been unable to save them, furious that the people who had destroyed her family were still alive and well. Revenge had become her sole obsession.

A strong gust of wind ruffled her hair and she considered getting the same haircut as Lucy's. Laxus wouldn't mind it, long hair, short hair, he'd barely notice the difference. He was the kind of man who paid attention to what people did and how their behavior changed, he couldn't care less about what they looked like. She turned around and looked at him as he was giving orders to everyone looking for Elfman's body. He was the last piece of her heart that remained intact, but she still felt insecure. It was more than that, actually. She knew she was going to lose him, too. But she wouldn't be the one to feel the pain when it happened.

"Lieutenant!" someone yelled. "I found something!"

The young soldier was standing on the side of the river, pointing at the bushes. Laxus ran there and Mira joined them almost as quickly. On a tiny branch, hidden by leaves and other branches, they found a piece of green fabric that look awfully like a chest pocket from a military uniform.

"Could it have been ripped from his uniform while he was being dragged away by the current?" the soldier asked.

Laxus immediately shook his head.

"The current's way too weak for that here," he retorted. "And this branch is much too high. Either someone pulled him out of the water..."

"Or he crawled out," Mira concluded.

Laxus looked around, but this tiny piece of fabric was the only hint they had that Elfman had been there. He thought about it for a minute and said,

"Let's not jump to conclusions, there's still the possibility that this piece of fabric doesn't belong to him. We have no proof that he survived the fall or really got out of the river." He glanced at Mira and the words he said after that were meant for her. "But, the chances that he's still alive are higher now. Send a report to the general and ask for reinforcements, if we find him and he's alive, he'll need to be treated."

Mira watched as everyone immediately got to work. Laxus hadn't moved yet, he was still standing in front of her. When she finally looked at him directly, he smiled at her. And for the first time since Elfman's fall, Mira felt a new, powerful emotion she had completely forgotten. Hope.

oOo

Lucy had been sitting on the floor in front of the infirmary door for the last thirty minutes or so. Sitting on the floor by her side were Loke, Sting and Levy, sitting across her were Juvia, Gray and Lyon. Gajeel was in the room, apparently they needed him to give some blood to replace some of the commander's cells with clean ones or something along the lines.

Everyone knew why the commander had collapsed. They all knew that he sometimes injected himself with something that enhanced his endurance, but no one knew what it really was. In any case, they were absolutely sure that these injections were responsible for what was happening to him at the moment.

Erza did her best to stabilize him, but she needed to know what she was dealing with to give him a proper treatment. Gray didn't know anything about it, neither did Gajeel or Sting. Gildarts and Bob were searching his room in hope to find the source of the problem. They came back in less than twenty minutes and entered the room without saying a thing.

It felt like an eternity, but Erza did end up opening the door. She wasn't surprised to see everyone jump to their feet, but she was surprised to find Dan there as well.

"Don't worry, he'll be fine," she said. Everyone let out a sigh of relief and Erza went on, "this idiot tried to go through withdrawal without appropriate medical assistance, but he's not in danger anymore. He'll feel like he has a flu for a few days, but he'll be fine if he takes the medicine I gave him."

While these were good news, the main question remained unanswered.

"Then," Gray said, "what the hell was that thing?"

The doctor glanced at Lucy and tried to hide her worry, but she was an open book to her best friend.

"It's called 'Reac-17'," she explained. "It's an old experimental drug that the army tried to produce around ten years ago. The results were very bad, the drug was very dangerous, so its production was forbidden and all the existing samples were destroyed."

Lucy wondered if it was normal not to be surprised by this information. Surely, it had to be a big deal, right? The army producing such dangerous things? Maybe what they had seen in the Octagon's lab had desensitized her?

"Well," Loke noted, "all the samples obviously haven't been destroyed. Do we know where he got his?"

Erza took a deep breath and clenched her jaw. She was going to say something unpleasant, Lucy knew this look too well.

"Yes, we do," she said. "But I can't tell you about it, yet."

"And why the hell not?" Gray groaned.

Lucy loved Erza from the bottom of her heart, but she had to admit that she would have asked the same thing with the same tone if Gray had been any slower.

"That's a very important information," Erza answered, "it could become a major issue."

"And his closest friends aren't important enough to be kept in the know?" Everyone was standing now, but Gray was the only one facing Erza directly.

"The officers have to be warned before everyone else," she said.

"And why the hell?" he roared. "Aren't we trustworthy enough? He's my family, goddammit!"

Erza suddenly snapped and grabbed the man by the collar of his shirt to bring him much closer to her. She looked at him directly in the eye as she answered, shaking with barely controlled emotions.

"I'm not keeping silent because I want to! You guys think I'm enjoying this? You think I wouldn't be glad to lean onto someone in times like this? I don't have a choice and my opinion doesn't matter in this si..."

"Erza..."

A large hand gently gripped her shoulder and the doctor regained her composure even before she could see the person. Gildarts kept his hand on her shoulder even as she let go of Gray and massaged it with his thumb, trying to appease her. Lucy stared at him and saw that the usual playful look he had had been replaced by a soft one. She then remembered that Gildarts was inside when Erza interrogated Natsu. Whatever she knew, he knew it, too.

"We're lucky enough to be surrounded by people we love and trust," the man said. "And I know you're convinced of Natsu's innocence as well. We're all in this together, you don't have to keep it from them."

Erza faced down and her fists were still clenched, but she nodded and sniffed. Gildarts gave her shoulder a last gentle squeeze before letting go and turning around to face the others.

"Natsu got the drugs from Hades," he said.

Needless to say, an oppressive silence invaded the room as they took in the information. This explained why Gildarts was talking about Natsu being innocent. When the others learned about him getting drugs from the enemy...

"That's bullshit," Gray retorted.

"He told us so himself," Gajeel countered.

Gray was probably going to deny what they were saying with desperates accusations and theories, but Lyon was faster to speak.

"You mean to tell us that he's been getting drugs from an enemy general all along?" he asked. "This is very bad, I have to tell Ultear."

He turned around and took a step away from them before being grabbed by the collar of his shirt. Gajeel slammed him against the wall.

"Just so you know," he growled. "If you go against Natsu, you go against everyone here. That's a very fucking bad idea."

Lyon turned very white there, but no one moved to help him.

"You... you're fighting against the Octagon, right?" Lyon stuttered. "He might be a traitor, we have to be careful around him!"

"He's not a traitor, you fucking retard, you don't know shit about hi..."

"Are you serious?"

Lucy's voice normally wasn't very high, but it was so low when she spoke that everyone stopped talking to stare at her. She had her fists clenched tightly and the look she was giving Lyon was so intensely threatening that it gave him the chills.

"You are accusing a man who protected us with his life of being a traitor," she went on. "You? You dare talk about treason?"

The silver haired man looked down and didn't move at all, even when Gajeel moved away from him. Lucy stood right in front of him, close enough for her to feel his body heat. He gulped.

"I'm only trying to protect our comrades..."

"Right," she snorted. "I forgot how good you were at protecting your comrades. The only reason why I'm not shoving my dagger down your throat right now is because, for a reason that remains a complete mystery to me, my sister still loved you after what you did to us."

Surprisingly, this seemed to get to him. He stared at the woman in front of him as if she had said something completely crazy. Lucy noticed that he looked a bit more agitated, too.

"How..." he gulped again, "how do you know?"

Lucy gritted her teeth and clenched her fist before grabbing him by the collar so that she wouldn't have to look up at him as she answered.

"Because the last thing she said before dying was 'Tell him I forgive him'!"

Lucy remembered these words, now. She had been hearing them in her dreams for a while, but she only remembered now that they were her precious sister's last words for that coward. Yes, she knew he'd done that because the stupid brat he was believed the Octagon when they told him they'd spare everyone if he cooperated. What did that change? Her sister died because he was an idiot.

"How the hell did you manage to escape from the soldiers?" she asked.

Lyon didn't answer her right away, he briefly glanced at Gray and Lucy understood.

"Of course," she said, turning to her friend. "You went after him to save him. You knew all along that he was part of the Rose's Tear."

Gray shrugged and made sure to keep looking at her in the eye.

"He's my brother," he said.

A moment of silence passed as Lucy glared at him. He had said that as if it explained everything. As if there was no need for another reason. And Lucy hated to admit that he was right. She would have done the same thing for Michelle.

"I love you, Gray," she said. "And I'm sorry, because I can't forgive your brother."

With this, she walked away from Lyon and made sure everyone heard her last sentence.

"So," she said, "I'll kill him if he becomes a threat."

"And I'll hide his corpse to make sure she'll never be accused of murder," Loke added.

"That won't be necessary."

Everyone turned to the door and stared with wide eyes at the commander. He looked pale and tired, but he was standing on his own.

"I'll explain everything," he assured. "I'm on your side, as I've always been. And just so you know, I didn't keep it a secret because I didn't trust you. I did it because I was ashamed of being this weak. I wanted to remain the funny and reliable guy you knew."

Lucy didn't know how to react. She supposed she was supposed to comfort him and act like a mature adult, but all she wanted to do was drag him to her room and make out until they passed out.

"Don't worry," Gajeel said. "You've never been funny and reliable."

"Yeah," Loke added, "don't try to act like the cool guy of the gang just cause you almost died, you junkie."

Levy and Sting soon joined in on the teasing, but Dan and Juvia remained quiet. The group quieted down when Natsu said he needed to sit and they all entered Erza's office. He started to tell them about his own fear test, the one that was still being held to test the recruits' willpower. At that time, Hades was the headmaster of the Academy, but there were so many recruits that he decided to help the instructors out with the tests.

"The fear test was a bit different at the time," the commander explained. "The recruits didn't get to choose their instructor and they weren't sent to a barrack to be confronted to an instructor. Hades chose me and had me blindfolded. Someone threw me in a car trunk and they took me out after a pretty long ride. When they removed the blindfold, I saw a house in front of me. There was nothing but trees around us. Hades told me that inside the house were a woman and her three year old daughter. He said they were the family of a terrorist they had arrested and that the guy had killed himself in jail before he could give them any information."

While Lucy couldn't help but stare at the commander without moving an inch, Gray moved a bit beside her and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. He had probably understood what was going to happen next. Levy did the same just to be sure that she was being a good friend, which she definitely was. Lyon was looking down.

"He took a little remote out of his pocket and pressed a button," the commander went on. "Something inside the house exploded and started a fire. He told me that the hostages had been tied up and hidden somewhere in the house. I had less than ten minutes to find them before the fire reached them."

He then looked at Lucy and she saw in his eyes that he was living the night of the explosion all over again. That's probably what he went through during the fear test, too. Which meant that Hades knew about it.

"I couldn't find them anywhere and Hades' men dragged me out of the house after the ten minutes," Natsu said, jaw clenched. "They pinned me to the ground and made me watch the house burn. When the fire finally died, they let me go and I ran inside. I found two bodies in the attic and the cellar, one of them was awfully small..."

Levy gasped loudly, while Sting swore. Lucy couldn't believe it. Hades had killed people to test his recruits? She glanced at Gray and Gajeel, both of them looking tense, none of them looking surprised.

"I freaked out," Natsu admitted. "I beat the hell out of one of the guys that had me pinned to the ground before Hades himself beat me up. He said he knew I was going to fail this test because he knew I was too weak to save anybody. He said that someone would die someday because of that and the sooner the better. I was 20 at the time and I had already lost someone in an explosion, I believed everything he said. That's when he told me that he was willing to help and made me take the first shot of Reac-17."

A heavy silence fell on the room as everyone thought about what they had learned. Erza gave him a small water bottle and he took a few sips before telling them that Hades had been given a most important job at the Octagon soon after that.

"Of course," Gildarts added, "we also asked Hades for an explanation after Natsu's test and he gave us the bodies to show us that they were fakes."

"That was still pretty fucked up," Sting commented.

"Indeed."

Natsu took another sip from his bottle and massaged his temples.

"The last box I bought from him contained twenty shots," he said. "It was about two years ago."

After that, no one said a thing. Everyone half expected everyone else to have questions or doubts. Lucy could feel the discomfort of everyone in the room, but the only one that interested her was the one the commander felt. She had to admit that she felt reassured now that she knew everything about the drug, but she also had to admit that she would have stood by Natsu's side even if he had told them that he indeed was still buying that shit from Hades. She would have done everything in her power to help him stop, but she would have picked his side, no matter what.

"When I was eleven," she said, "I stole a bra from my adoptive mother's dresser and stuffed sockets in it to make my chest look bigger. The teacher burst out of laughing before calling her."

Natsu looked at her with a confused look, but they soon heard stifled laughs from the others.

"I gulped down two liters of coffee when I was in middle school because I thought it'd make me run faster during the school race," Gray said.

Juvia laughed the most at this one.

"I dressed up as a girl in high school and tried to get into the girls' lockers while they were changing," Sting beamed.

At this, everyone burst out of laughing and the atmosphere got much lighter. Loke told them he had hired a double to take a test in his place when he was in primary school.

"I tried to dress up as a middle schooler once because I wanted to spend the whole day with my daughter," Gildarts said. "I had to escape from my cell afterwards."

Gajeel and Erza both refused to say anything embarrassing about their past, but Lucy's mission still remained a success and the commander was laughing. He'd have to explain his situation to Makarov, but Lucy was sure he'd be fine so long as his friends stood by his side. Lost in her thoughts, it took her several seconds to notice that the commander was looking back at her. All of a sudden, she didn't want their friends to be around anymore.

"Well," Levy coughed, looking a lot like she wanted to laugh, "I think we should get going. Lucy, you should stay with Natsu for now. In case he doesn't feel well."

"That's right," Erza said, not understanding at all why Levy was really suggesting this. "If it's not too troublesome, it would be nice of you to stay with him, Lucy."

"It's fine, don't worry," the blonde immediately answered.

The commander smirked and Lucy had to hold her own smile in as everyone walked past her to exit the room. She received mischievous grins from Gray and Gajeel, but Lucy didn't mind, since what they were imagining was probably what would really happen. When the door closed, Natsu stood up and leaned on the desk as Lucy walked toward him.

"Erza said you'll feel weak for a few days," Lucy said. "Maybe we should have you lie down."

The commander's smirk widened as she came to a stop in front of him and put a hand on his forehead, as if to check his body temperature. He took her hand in his and leaned down.

"Erza's too careful," he retorted, "she's like an eternally worried mom. I'm feeling just fine."

Lucy's smile softened and she took his other hand in hers.

"You really look tired, though," she gently countered. "And you're cold."

The commander squeezed her hands and kissed her forehead.

"Warm me up, then."

Lucy didn't need to hear anything else. She'd been restraining herself long enough as it was. She laced her arms around his neck and kissed him. She felt his hands on her waist and they quickly found their way underneath her shirt, though they stayed on her back. Lucy gently pushed her tongue in his mouth and took the lead in every aspect. Her fingers caressed his cheeks, ears, neck and every sensitive place she could find, she even left a hickey.

When she felt he was agitated enough, she slid her leg between his and her knee brushed against his crotch. She felt him tense, but she pushed him on the desk before he could react. She straddled him instantly and only allowed him to sit up before leaning down to catch his lips once more. He obviously never resisted and fully enjoyed the way she was handling this. He had her pressed to his body and the way she moved against him almost had him suffocate.

Without either one of them really realizing it, they both found themselves shirtless and panting as they broke their kiss to breath. Natsu had a raging hard-on now and all the muscles in Lucy's body had tensed. She was breathless and had red cheeks as she leaned over him, which did nothing to calm his own excitement.

All of a sudden, as the commander was looking at her, he realized that he needed to be sure that what they had was something he could hold onto. He already knew that he wouldn't be able to live without her around him, but he needed her to acknowledge what they had. He wanted her to tell him she felt the same. She had refused the ring the first time, but it didn't mean that she wouldn't want to become his officially. He would no longer be able to bear with idiots like Dan, who thought they had a right to make a move on her. Lifting his hand to cradle her cheek, he smiled when she kissed the palm of his hand.

"I need to know what we're doing," he breathed. "I want to know where we stand."

Lucy's eyes widened for a second, but she didn't tense at all and showed absolutely no sign of wanting to get away from him. She smiled gently and opened her mouth to answer him.

"I'd like to know that as well."

Lucy blenched so hard Natsu had to hold her to prevent her from falling off the desk. She turned around to look at the door and her heart stopped beating when she saw the woman standing there. A tall woman with long blue hair and a smug smile she knew all too well.

"Depending on your answer, I might have to kill you," Aquarius smirked.

oOo

It wasn't really late in the evening, but the weather was so bad that the sky was already very dark. That, plus the fact that it had been raining almost all day long, it really was a perfect moment to approach that place.

The Academy looked more dangerous than ever with all the gates closed and the guards patrolling everywhere. It would be a bit more difficult to enter the grounds this time.

She had been very surprised to hear about the attack on the lab, but the worse had yet to come. Yes, Lucy and her teammates had stolen an awful lot of records in there, including Lucy's. Fortunately, her name wasn't written in it, since she didn't have a name yet when she arrived at the lab. Still, someone would end up putting the pieces together if they looked into it.

That little girl and her idiot boyfriend were too dangerous to ignore any longer. Kyoka would have to destroy these records and kill both Lucy and Natsu.

End of chapter 29

Hey there! It's been such a long time! I can proudly say – this time – that I haven't been slacking off! I've been taking tests all month long and I've finally been accepted into the Air Force!

As for the story, get ready, we're nearing the end! Lots of revelations to come, lots of heartbreaks as well, epic fights and heroic moves! Everything will happen quickly, the upcoming chapter will be intense!

Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading this story, I've been encouraged from the very start and the story turned out to be even better because of the messages everyone sent! The end's already been decided and I hope you'll understand that some things will happen not because I want to, but because it's necessary for the story! I'll have you guys cry tears of joy and grief, get ready!