Nalu Week: Charm

Professor: Hi everyone, sorry it has taken me so long to finish posting this. I won't get into the details here, but some stuff happened that made it very difficult for me to work on my stories for a very long time. However, I hate leaving stories unfinished and I did know how I wanted this story to end, so here we go. Hopefully the ending is good enough for all of you to forgive me for taking so long to post this. Also, I did not go through and edit this like I normally would, so if there are any mistakes as far as that goes, I'm sorry about that too!

Enjoy!

"It's…a carnival." Lucy said, staging at the tents dumbfounded, "You brought me to a carnival."

"Yep!" he said cheekily, "Fantasia, the Fairy Tail Carnival! Comes once a year." He wasted no time in rushing through the entrance, dragging her behind him. In no time at all he was exchanging money for tickets and leading her to different games.

"Come on!" he yelled out, reminding her of a little kid, "Haven't you ever been to a carnival before?"

Lucy shook her head, leaving Natsu to stare at her in shock.

"Never?!"

"Nope. My father wasn't big on fun." she said hesitantly.

Natsu didn't seem to notice her reluctance to talk about her dad. In true Natsu fashion, he completely surprised her, "Well then, we have a lot to make up for. If you've never been to a carnival, you've never done anything here. The sooner we get started, the better."

He grabbed her hand again, leading her to the first game he found. Lucy looked at it skeptically, watching as the people in front of her finished playing. They were taking a giant hammer and slamming it down to try and make a bit of metal fly up and hit a bell at the top. The last one to go got it barely above halfway, his friends laughing with him as it came back down.

Natsu rushed forward next, handing over some tickets so they could play. He raised the giant hammer as high as he could before swinging it down. That little bit of metal flew up and up and…fell short.

Natsu glared at it while the man running the game just laughed. Grumbling, he handed the hammer to Lucy. she looked at it nervously for a moment before hefting it up, it being heavier than she thought. Her swing was less of a swing and more like the hammer just falling, barely moving the bit of metal.

"Awe." Natsu said as they got out of line for the next people, "you know, I've never actually seen anyone win that thing."

"You got close." she pointed out.

Natsu continued to glare at it anyway, "It's gotta be fixed somehow."

Lucy rolled her eyes, which made Natsu smile.

That seemed to happene at everything they tried. Natsu would say something that would make her sigh or roll her eyes and then he would smile. When they went to play more games or ride the rides they had, even when they saw a magic show. Natsu had a lot of corny jokes about the Blue Pegasaus Magicians. She rolled her eyes at each one, even cracking a few herself. The joke she made when Ichiya pulled Eve (dressed in a pink rabbit suit) out of Ren's hat had Natsu laughing so loudly that they actually got thrown out of the tent.

One of Lucy's favorite parts had to be the gun show though. The O'Connell's Shooting Spectacular absolutely amazed her aas the couple pulled off trick after trick. By the end of the night, the blonde would swear that the couple could outshoot Annie Oakley.

Natsu was doing everything he could to keep his promise, dragging her to attraction after attraction, desperate for her to do everything before it closed, although she did decline the pie eating contest. It was fun watching Natsu compete though, racing to finish his pie before the heavyset man he was competing with did. It was almost a tie, but Droy inhaled his pie, beating Natsu by just a few seconds.

They won some of the games as well, like the water gun one. Lucy squealed when her balloon popped unexpectedly, the buzzer announcing her the winner. Natsu proudly won the arm wrestling competition, bragging about it to anyone who would listen.

Natsu also insisted they do the dunk tank until they actually dunked the poor person sitting in there. When they finally did, the large blond man with a scar was not happy, glaring at them both, but his grandfather joined Natsu in laughing about it.

It had been the most fun Lucy had had in years. She could feel her worries about the morning slipping away until she could barely remember them.

"Come on, we've got just enough time for the ferris wheel!" Natsu yelled, pulling at her arm again. Lucy didn't resist, running alongside him towards the giant circular ride. She'd never been on one before, but movies she'd seen always made them seem so exciting.

They waited in line for a few minutes before someone let them in, the purple carriage they were in swaying slightly at the weight. Lucy jumped in surprise as it stopped suddenly, letting the next couple onto the carriage besides them. Natsu just laughed again before reassuring her. When the ferris wheel started to go around earnestly though, Lucy reached out and latched onto his hand without thinking. Natsu squeezed back, not commenting.

Then they got to the top and Lucy gasped, her eyes going wide.

The ferris wheel towered over everything else in the carnival, letting them see everything. All the lights from it and the city gave the world a beautiful, unearthly glow.

But what stole Lucy's breath were the stars. She'd never seen them shining so brightly, twinkling above them. It put the mural in her office to shame.

"Feeling better now?" Natsu whispered.

"Yes," Lucy nodded. At the moment she couldn't care about anything else, especially not Jason or the stupid reporter.

"Good," he said, pulling his hand from hers.

Lucy finally looked away from the carriage window, watching him curiously.

He pulled a small box from his pocket, looking almost bashful as he held it out to her, "I got this for winning that arm wrestling competition earlier."

Lucy took it gingerly and she gasped in amazement for the second time in as many minutes.

Inside was a gold bracelet, with a small charm hanging on it. The charm was in the shape of a golden key, a symbol engraved at the top, one she recognized immediately.

Aquarius, the Water Bearer.

"It seemed like the kind of weird thing you'd like." Natsu mumbled, "And they have a whole bunch of them too, so you can get the entire zodiac. I know how much you like stars and so I thought, well it doesn't really matter what I thought, I guess. But if you don't like it, we could-"

"It's perfect." she whispered, cutting off his embarrassed rambling, "I love it."

Natsu practically melted in relief at her words. Lucy held out her wrist and he hurried to help her put it on.

"Out of curiosity, why a bracelet?"

"Cause of Wendy." he answered, focused on the clasp. Lucy tried not to be distracted at how warm his hands felt on her wrist. "She has one and she loves it. She says that each charm is a happy memory, as cheesy as it sounds. And I thought, with everything going on, you could use some happy memories."

Lucy was touched, "Natsu…"

He shrugged off her response, "Look, I don't know if anyone's ever told you this, but you don't have to do anything except what makes you happy, ok? Who cares what anyone else says or thinks?"

Lucy pulled her hand back, clasping it and the bracelet close to her chest, "It doesn't work like that."

"Says who?" he asked.

"Natsu, I'm a CEO. I own so many businesses, I literally can't keep track of them all. People expect certain things from me."

"Is there a CEO rulebook somewhere that says you have to be miserable all the time though? Is there not a single CEO in the world who's happy?" he pushed.

"I-I" Lucy was at a loss for words.

Natsu sighed, leaning back as their carriage reached the ground again, "Just think about it, please?"

Lucy nodded, "Ok."