This here will contain; Lucy having bad thoughts (no, not those kind); reflection (the soul-searching kind with a little violence); perving (on Gajeel's part); Lucy without pants ("LWP" – expect to see it a lot); injuries (Gajeel seems to attract them)

Shout-out to Oddball Punk, who brought some questions to light, which shall be featured at the end for anyone else wondering - and as such, earned a sneak peek teaser of this chapter beforehand.

You know, I really enjoy messing with these two. It just makes my day. Ah, HeartFox, my OTP…

Chapter song by Secondhand Serenade

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Chapter 3 – A Twist in my Story

It was one of those chance moments that Lucy found herself in to thoroughly glance-over the Iron Dragon Slayer, and not have the man notice. Of course, he was currently unconscious and bandaged up in her bed, but that was beside the point. The point was that Gajeel Redfox was now at her almighty mercy, and she couldn't think of a single thing to do to him in retaliation for all the shit he had put her though over the past few months. This was a prime, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that only came by once, and Lucy was completely flummoxed on what to do.

There were all kinds of things she could do to him for payback for her rough treatment in Phantom Lord, but there was the fact that he was injured. It had taken several hours out of her night to strap up his shallow but bleeding injuries, but his left arm took the longest. His strong, metal-studded scarred arm had almost been torn apart to the point where Lucy worried if she should stitch it up herself or just call Wendy. But Lucy had no way to contact the Sky Dragon Slayer, so she washed it out (Gajeel really didn't like that), disinfected it with the mass of first aid supplies she had accumulated, and taped it up with medical tape and bandages.

It was heavily swathed, but it was in tact, and that was the most important thing. Pantherlily was sprawled out on he table, his paws behind his head in a casual position that usually wouldn't have suited the exceed if she hadn't just finished bandaging his stomach. The exceed had come to after she had dragged Gajeel back to her apartment (damn, he was fucking heavy!) and cleaned out his lesser wounds. Lily had helped her with his shredded left arm, entering his battle-mode for a few minutes to pin down the thrashing Dragon Slayer.

She had to hand it to Gajeel; his fight-or-flight instinct was very heavily wired to fight, to the point where he had swung and connected with Lily while he was still unconscious. It was a bit like when Erza was awake and trying to get information promptly, which involved more head-butting than anything else.

Things had finally settled down, so Lucy slumped back into the armchair that sat permanently around her little wooden table, because Gray liked it, and that was that. She kicked her feet up onto the arm, swivelling herself to lay diagonally across it to take some pressure of her tired limbs, and splayed her arms out into comfortable but crooked angles. It was a very unladylike way to sit, something that Natsu would be proud of, and it would have her father spitting if she could see her now.

She turned her eyes to Lily, who was now looking at her upside-down. The warrior exceed had been very sparse on the details surrounding Gajeel's injuries, and curiosity was winning over silence. Besides, they owed her an explanation.

"So, what exactly happened, Pantherlily?" Lucy asked.

Lily looked at her critically for a moment, before blowing out a sigh and repositioning himself so he could lie on his side and see her. Lucy was so used to Happy, who was just so happy-go-lucky and easy going, where as Pantherlily was a very serious and straight-forward individual.

"Makarov asked Gajeel to infiltrate a dark guild to get a run-down on them," Lily told her.

She was well aware, as was the rest of the legal guilds, about the sudden increase of dark guild activity. Fairy Tail had already had more than average run-ins with the defect guilds, usually ending up in a thrashing, but the sheer rate they were popping up had many worried. Their brief partnership with the other guilds had revealed the three head guilds that made up the Balam Alliance, the alliance of dark guilds that rose to power over the others; Oración Seis, Grimoire Heart and Tartaros.

Oración Seis had already been eliminated, thanks to the light guild alliance, but Grimoire Heart and Tartaros remained in the wind. There had been news of Grimoire Heart is on the move, conveyed from Master Makarov to his beloved children, but there had been little to no news or even information on Tartaros.

"We took on plenty of dark guilds during Nirvana," Lucy reasoned.

Many dark guilds under the command of Oración Seis and Grimoire Heart had been destroyed in the Nirvana attack by the guild's temporary alliance with the other major guilds of Lamia Scale and Blue Pegasus. Those few left had surrendered themselves to the Council's will, or face the wrath of Erza the Titania, or perhaps worse, the hosts of Blue Pegasus.

"Gajeel tried to infiltrate Tartaros," Lily explained. "They're the only unknown factor in the Balam Alliance, but they clearly already knew about him and where his real loyalties lie."

Shit. Master Makarov had tried to shove Gajeel into Tartaros after getting back from Edolas? Gajeel could have easily left them all to die in Edolas, but he had leapt through the anima to save them, which was of no short knowledge within and without the guild. It was obvious where the Dragon Slayer's allegiances lay after that particular stunt, so the question remained: did the old man have a death wish for the Dragon Slayer? Lucy knew that the Master had used Gajeel's old status as an S-Class mage in Phantom Lord to get information on dark guilds, but she he no idea that he was being sent to such dangerous places alone.

Well, not so alone, since Lily came along. Lucy dreaded to think what would have happened if Pantherlily never came through the anima and decided to join Fairy Tail. Her gaze drifted back to where Gajeel was laying across her bed, so completely out of it that she could strip off and dance all over her room without the Iron Dragon Slayer even knowing she was there. It was so rare for the Slayer to be unaware of his surroundings, what with at least half of Fairy Tail having a personal grudge against him still.

Lucy couldn't find the energy to get her wobbly-tired limbs to stand up to go over to the Dragon Slayer, but she could see from her chair that his chest was rising and falling steadily. Something about the Slayer was striking a chord in Lucy, that even when injured, he had no one he could go to or rely on aside from the recent addition of Pantherlily. Natsu had been over-friendly with her when he first whisked her away to Fairy Tail with his flying cat, and Erza and Gray had certain personal space issues that meant that even when she wanted to be alone, there was no chance of that happening.

Lucy snorted to herself when she realised that this was the first semi-invited guest she had ever had in her apartment, let alone the first time that the Iron Dragon Slayer had been here. And it wasn't an easy task getting the Slayer to her apartment; in fact, it was more monumental for Lucy than the Nirvana fiasco because Gajeel weighed a shitload more than he should. It must be because of the iron he ate on a daily basis and his bulk of muscles because hot damn if he ever fell overboard off a boat, he would sink like a stone. Even Natsu wasn't that heavy, and he was the heaviest thing she'd ever had to lift (read: cling onto for dear life) in her life before Pantherlily found his way to her window.

She had to smother a yawn with the back of her hand, watching Gajeel rest peacefully not five feet from her, wondering if she should sent Loki off for Wendy. Lucy didn't know where the Sky Dragon Slayer lived, but she was sure that Loki's nose could find her; he was, after all, a lion in a human's body. But she was having issues with Loki at the moment. Yes, he was still her 'knight', he still defended her and they fought almost flawlessly together, but his declarations of love were getting more extreme and flamboyant. It would be flattering if it wasn't quite so creepy sometimes. The 'light of love' indeed.

Pantherlily had sprawled himself out on the table quite happily, his small dark eyes closed and his paws crossed over his chest. With Gajeel out of commission and Pantherlily skirting sleep, Lucy resigned herself to a night of sprawling over her armchair for sleep.

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The first thing that pricked Gajeel into conscious was a terrible throbbing pain in his left arm. Sometimes he got phantom pains from the multitude of injures he had sustained there and the scars that resulted from them, but this was far beyond that. It made him crack his eyes open to try and attain what was that throbbing pain when everything came rushing back to him. He jolted up from where he was lying, wincing from the shooting pain making its way along his arm and across his ribs, and prepared himself for battle.

But he didn't find any battle, any enemies or even the dark alley that Gajeel was fairly sure that he had gone down in. Instead he found himself in a warm and well-appointed apartment bedroom, half sitting up in a cosy double bed with his arm and ribs bandaged, and his ruined tunic folded on the floor beside the bed. His attention was first drawn to the table not five feet from the bed, the three mismatching chairs around it as well as an armchair that had a girl, from the look of her feet and ass, sprawled over it.

He couldn't see her face, seeing as it was buried into the back cushion of the armchair, but he recognised the smell of her. Gajeel had once hunted that smell all the way across Magnolia to capture her, coerce her and generally terrify and slightly torture her. It was the only child of Jude Heartfilia, the ex-heiress to the now bankrupt Heartfilia empire, that damned bunny girl, Lucy Heartfilia. All he could see of her at this angle was her feet, her underwear-clad ass and a random arm thrown over the back of the chair. Gajeel knew from couch experience that that position would wreak havoc on her neck and back, but that wasn't the most prominent thought right now.

What was in the foremost of his mind was what the hell was he doing in the bunny girl's bedroom, and how the hell did he get here. Her smell was everywhere, along with faint traces of that flame-brain and his group of idiots, but hers was more deeply ingrained in the furniture and bedding. Months of passing that scent of hers in the guild had desensitised him to it, to the point where he no longer subconsciously registered her as a threat or even an obstacle. Mind you, the bunny girl was about as threatening as a hairball and as dangerous as one.

She could fight. Gajeel knew that, ever since Laxus and his thunder tribe attacked the guild, and the bunny girl had K.O'd one of them all by herself. She didn't have the physical power or stamina that Titania had, but she could apparently hold her own against her opponents. He remembered that ice-stripper guy saying that Lucy had guided Natsu through Edolas before he got his powers back, fighting in his place and protecting her nakama. She was painfully like the flame-brain in that respect, always protecting her nakama and fighting to help them.

It was something that Gajeel never really experienced until coming into Fairy Tail. In Phantom Lord, that sort of behaviour was virtually non-existent except for that one time that Gajeel deflected an attack meant for Juvia back when they were still S-Class mages. But she had offered no thanks and made no deal out of it, just like usual - but here, when you did something like that, Fairy Tail turned into a cheer squad and assaulted you over it. It was one giant guild of bat-shit crazy people who acted like a slightly-retarded family, and Gajeel never thought that he would like that guild of whack-jobs the amount he did.

"You're awake? Good."

His eyes drifted over to see Pantherlily sitting on the table, his arms crossed over his bandaged chest in his favourite pose. It made Gajeel breathe a sigh of relief to see that his exceed partner was okay - injured, yes, but okay - and sitting there with a look of utter comfort and slight laziness on his small face. He had never even tried to hide his affection for 'his cat', as he affectionately labelled Lily, but there were times that he couldn't contain his joy at having that exceed as his partner. Gajeel was pretty sure that he never would have made it out of that alley without the exceed.

But there were still some fuzzy-dark spots that the Dragon Slayer needed Lily to fill in for him.

"Lily, what happened?"

He remembered going to the meeting that one of his contacts inside of Raven Tail had put together for him, to get entry into Tartaros. It was the one dark guild in the Balam Alliance that they had no information about; nothing about the people in it, their goals or even how many mages they had. Everything was run-of-the-mill cloak-and-dagger for the arranged meeting on the far side of Magnolia, and Gajeel was exactly where he was supposed to be at the correct time. What he wasn't expecting was the Tartaros mages to jump down from the sides of the alley and launch an all-out assault on him, to which he barely had time to react to.

Gajeel knew his abilities better than anyone else, and even he knew that he couldn't fight that many mages at once, even in such a confined space. He could use his Tetsuryu no Hoko to clear a path down one direction, but he was surrounded on both sides. He had managed to activate his scales just in time to avoid the multiple attacks, but one got through before his scales came into affect and got him in the ribs. It took a lot of his energy to stanch the bleeding with his muscles and scales alone, and then he used his superior strength and stamina to ram his way out of the mouth of the alley. It was then that Lily swooped in with his battle magic active, lashing out with his powerful limbs to get back-to-back with Gajeel.

He remembered some lucky fucker getting off a lucky shot that cracked into his scarred left arm and that his rib-wound had started bleeding again then that was all he could remember. It was obvious that Lily had somehow gotten them out of there, because, no offense to the exceed, but he couldn't take out all those mages with Gajeel out of commission.

"I used Aera after you went down and got us the hell out of there," Pantherlily informed him. "Some bastard got off a shot at us in mid-air, and we crashed down not far from here."

That explained the exceed's injuries and his sore ribs, but not how he ended up in the bunny girls' bed with her sleeping in her armchair while half-naked. Now that was a question he would like the answer to, but he let Lily finish up.

"I followed the nearest scent I recognised from the guild and found Lucy, and she ran out to rescue you."

Gajeel had to hold back the snort from that sentence - the bunny girl saving him, Iron Gajeel? He would have laughed at the very thought if he hadn't woken up in her bed, bandaged up and with her snoozing away not five feet from him. She had patched up Lily from the looks of it as well - and for some reason, it made Gajeel feel that odd little feeling that made him feel uncomfortably comfortable.

He didn't like feelings like that - that he didn't know how to interpret. In retrospect, joining Fairy Tail had been his single greatest downfall in his twenty years of life. Fairy Tail was a very close guild, counting even new members as nakama and always worthy of protection. It would be a very noble thing if they weren't all fucking crazy as a badger and nonsensical at best. Gajeel never considered himself completely sane - he knew he had a few unusual quirks from being raised by that selfish prick Metalicana - but this guild had him thinking that he may be just one of the handful of people who still had their minds.

He didn't consider the bunny girl to be one of those few 'sane' people, but she was always damn near the top. But apparently she had been taking a leaf out of that ice-stripper's book, because Gajeel bet that right now that Gray fellow had more clothing on than her.

Hn. Nice ass.

But that was so completely off topic.

"How the hell did Tartaros know?" Gajeel growled aloud.

"Maybe they heard about Edolas? It would have been the prime moment to ensure the destruction of Fairy Tail and get away with it," Lily reasoned.

Gajeel had no secrets from Pantherlily - he had told the exceed his entire sordid and very violent life. Pantherlily had not judged him for it, accepting the Slayer for what he said and what he had done, and put it in the past. People were not so accepting of him, a man who had been raised a short-tempered and inherently violent dragon who loved him, and had inherited many of those traits. Dragons were not cuddly creatures like that flame-brain and Wendy; they were fierce and ferocious and they protected their completely retarded guilds to the very last breath.

He sucked a breath in through his teeth, his ribs groaning at the action that strained them, and squinted over to the bunny girl again. She had managed to shift her position in a strange contorted pose that pressed her face almost completely into the chair cushion, but also left her legs hanging over the arm and her arms wedged in wherever they could fit. He had never really reflected much on the blonde girl, not even when he had kidnapped her and kicked the crap out of her - she was just another job back then - but she had sort of proved herself as someone worthy in his eyes.

It started, surprisingly enough, when he had kidnapped her and 'entertained' her in the moving Phantom Lord fortress before the flame-brain came storming through on a destructive rage. Despite being stapled to the wall by his iron, that stubborn blonde had smarted off, called him an idiot and said she felt sorry for him. That had impressed him because most people were shaking and crying before his more sadistic hobbies, but she kept that damn determined grin on her face. He remembered thinking that, despite himself, she had managed to impress him with her moxie.

Her surprising strength was established when Laxus went alpha-asshole and decided to try and purge the guild, and that damned bunny girl had smattered Bixlow. He was genuinely surprised about that, because despite her inclusion in "Fairy Tail's strongest team", he had always considered her to be generally weak. She may not have the physical strength that they had, but she knew how to use what she had in order to defeat her opponents - another grudging sliver of respect and a slight amount of awe.

Her actions in Edolas had secured their overall victory; if the bunny girl didn't carry Natsu and Wendy through to the capital city where Gajeel was fighting by himself to free the others, then they wouldn't have gotten through that. She was the only mage who could use her magic back then and guide the other two Dragon Slayers through the cities and to their malformed guild. She had stood her ground against great odds with little to no backup, and that had struck a good note with Gajeel. It was easy to see what a person was really made of in impossible odds, and the blonde bunny girl had more than pulled through while pulling all their weight.

But that was just his impersonal impression of her. Last night was the first time he had ever spoken with her without either of them being attacked and wounded, and despite all the things he had done to her over the past few months, she had tried to care for him. She had read that dark part of him that was mourning the loss of Levi, that sweet girl who liked him for him, and had confronted him over it to try and help him. And now she had come to his aid when he needed it, clearly without regard for her own state, and cared for him and cleaned his wounds, sacrificing her only bed for his health.

She was crazy, without a doubt, but she was definitely his kind of crazy.

Gajeel grit his teeth, sucking in another breath before turning back to Pantherlily, who was watching him with curiosity. There were too many things clogging his senses right now, too many variables for him to properly wrap his mind around them all, so there was only one thing to do before his thoughts threatened to lapse in on themselves.

"Let's get out of here."

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Oddball Punk's awesomeness of questions:

1. I'm curious about what else Lucy did to Gajeel because there seems to be
more than what was written last chapter if his reactions to her are anything
to go by.

In reference to when Lucy was drunk, I assumed; Lucy didn't really so anything more to Gajeel, it's more the fact that she can't remember all of what she did. Cue whacky images in her mind.

2. How the hell did Lucy get home if she was so hammered?
Lucy got home how all drunken Fairy Tail mages get home; Mirajane.