The Beautiful Thing About Princes and Queens
by Lady Norbert
A/N: I think I'm going to stretch this into ten chapters. I seem to have a general fondness for ten-chapter stories.
I asked three of my Fairy Tail friends if they had any requests for specific shenanigans during this chapter. One asked for Mystogan to be nervous, one asked for the other guild members to be a little on the embarrassing side, and the other asked for a makeout session. Let's see what happens.
Chapter Eight: Pictures I'd Love to Believe
E-land exists, technically speaking, within the walls of the royal palace itself. Jellal has dim memories of visiting it in childhood, on the occasional afternoon when lessons were finished and he found himself with nothing particularly better to do. But in those days, as in more recent ones, all the attractions were fueled by magic, and the older he grew, the more wrong he knew this to be.
Despite the wrongness, however, it is where he spent most of his time in the days leading up to his self-imposed exile. It kept him from catching much of his father's notice, and probably prevented the old king from figuring out what his son was planning to do.
It is different now, of course, from anything he likely remembers. The Command Tact is gone, destroyed; Hughes, like Erza and the other high-ranking military officials, has duties that have taken him far from these pleasure grounds. It is chiefly for the children of Edolas that Jellal had any interest at all in resurrecting the bones of the amusement park. They have, he reasons, suffered enough in recent days, and the time has come for them to have the chance to actually be children once more.
He could have inspected the reconstruction at any time, but he has had too much else on his mind. Now that it is completed, and awaiting only his approbation before being reopened to the public, he is curious to see what has resulted from the months of effort that were poured into it. The fact that it provided him with a fairly convenient means of spending a little extra time with Mirajane is merely a bonus, albeit an excellent one.
The King of Edolas is twenty years old and has a date with she who is, in his admittedly not-very-objective opinion, the most beautiful woman in his entire kingdom.
Deep down where he dislikes to admit it, he is a little bit scared.
She is, of course, everything charming when she arrives for the excursion. The blue of her dress matches her eyes, and she is wearing a large floppy hat that he's never seen. She gives him a smile that he is really quite certain makes his heart stop for an instant, and curtsies. "Good morning, Your Majesty."
"It's Jellal," he replies with a chuckle, trying to breathe like a normal human being. "Today, at least, I am just Jellal, please." He has even left off wearing his crown today in an effort to be just Jellal. For a moment he wavers, considering asking her to call him Mystogan; but he decides against it.
"I'll try to remember that." Her tone is playful.
"Good. Well, shall we?" He wonders if he looks as awkward as he feels when he offers her his arm.
"I haven't been to E-Land in a very long time," she admits as they walk through the halls that will take them there. "Not since well before the guilds were outlawed."
"Me neither. Do you remember much about it?"
"Two things, mostly. I remember the carousel - I loved the carousel - and I remember the box that you could step inside and turn the dial to change your clothes." She laughs.
"The Complete Transformation Box," he replies, after a few indulgent seconds of drowning in her silvery laughter. "I'm sorry to say that's gone - without the lacrima, there was nothing to power the transformations. Actually, from what I've been told, everything is entirely new except the carousel."
"They were able to save that? Really?"
He nods, delighted at how pleased she sounds. "They just modified it to run on machinery instead of magic. There are only about ten attractions there, as I'm given to understand."
"That shouldn't take too long to examine, then."
Jellal deflates slightly. "Do you need to get back to the guild very soon?"
"Oh, no." There is a pink tinge in her cheeks. "I just... well. Some of the guild members were... they want to know what E-Land is like and they asked me to hurry back to tell them."
"I see." He isn't sure whether he really does. For the first time, the first awful time, it occurs to him to wonder if he might have a rival for her affections among her guildmates.
E-Land lies so far on the outskirt of the palace proper that it might as well be a separate entity altogether, at least as far as Jellal is concerned. The foreman greets him with a bow, touching his cap to Mirajane as introductions are made. He is a short, balding, jolly sort of creature; something about him reminds Jellal strongly of the leader of the Blue Pegasus guild back in Earth-land.
"Well, the Hell Coaster was the first thing to go, of course," he says, gesturing for them to follow him through the park. "Absolutely no way we could reconstruct that without magic. Same with the Complete Transformation Box - I was a bit sorry to lose that one, to be honest, but there was nothing else for it."
"But we still have the carousel, yes?"
"That we do, and I think you'll be pleased with it. Then we have the spinning cups, and a new coaster - not nearly as fast or as deadly, but still fun. We put in a little topiary garden; the bushes are cut in the shapes of animals and that sort of thing." The foreman rubs the back of his neck. "You said you wanted everything to be cheerful, so that's what we were aiming to make."
"I think Edolas has seen enough of sadness," says Jellal with a shrug. Mirajane's bright eyes turn on him, and her expression is not hard to read at all. He stands up a little straighter, proud.
"It's not anywhere near as exciting as people might remember the old E-Land," the foreman admits. "But maybe that's not such a bad thing."
"I think it looks wonderful," says Mirajane with all her usual warmth. "It's a happy place. Everyone needs someplace happy to be."
"Maybe we shouldn't call it E-Land anymore, then," Jellal says thoughtfully. "A new name might make it clear that things really are different."
"Aye, sire, a new name might be just what it wants," the foreman agrees. Other workers are pausing in their tasks as the three of them walk past, bowing hastily and murmuring to each other. Jellal doesn't know what they might be saying, although he thinks he catches the word 'pretty' from one.
"I like the idea of giving it a new name," Mirajane concurs, and Jellal glances at her.
"Why don't you give it the new name?" he asks.
"Me?" Surprise brings visible heat to her porcelain cheeks.
"I imagine you'd come up with something fitting. I trust your judgment - I think you know that by now."
"Let me think about it," she says after a moment. "While we're walking around, I'll try to come up with something."
As enjoyable as the amusement park is, Jellal takes his chief pleasure from watching Mirajane explore its new offerings.
The carousel is declared by her to be magical, to which he can offer no argument. She rides her pony sidesaddle, one slender hand gripping the brass pole while the other keeps her hat on her head, and her skirts ruffle in the breeze as her mount glides up and down to the music. He watches her from the stationary carriage-shaped seat, watches the dreamy smile that curls across her lips, and thinks that magical might indeed be the perfect word.
The spinning cups are... less magical. Jellal is discomposed by the whirling, and spends a few minutes afterward bent at the waist and clutching a tree for support as he tries to maintain both his dignity and his breakfast. Something soft and gentle brushes through his hair, and after a few seconds of nauseated confusion he realizes that it's Mirajane's fingers.
"Are you all right?" she asks.
"I think so."
She just nods, and continues to massage a light pattern across his scalp as he waits for his dizziness to pass. Maybe the spinning cups aren't so bad after all.
He recovers, of course, and they continue their explorations with a walk through the new topiary garden. The humorously-shaped shrubbery entertains her; the flowers delight her. He ignores the sign that warns against picking - it may be the first time, and may even be the last, that he takes advantage of his kingship in such a way - to pluck a brilliant scarlet blossom from the beds and present it to her.
The new coaster is mild, but entertaining. Jellal is trying to decide whether it would be acceptable to put his arm around her shoulders when Mirajane takes the decision out of his hands by seizing the arm in question as they go down the sharpest incline. As compromises go, he finds this one altogether agreeable.
The Monster Academy is gone, like most of the other attractions, and in its place is a maze of mirrors. For the sheer fun of it, they enter the maze from opposite sides, and Jellal is lost in an instant. Surrounded by identical copies of himself, he barely knows which way to turn. "Mira?"
"I'm over here," she calls, although from which direction he can't quite tell. He walks into mirrors twice before actually finding an opening, and continues his hunt. Flashes of her white hair appear and disappear as her visage is reflected from across the small corridors. Infinite Mirajanes, he thinks.
He sweeps around the edge of a mirror and she literally crashes into him.
"Sorry!"
"Are you all right?"
"I didn't mean to -"
He has caught her, instinctively, so that the impact of their meeting does not send her to the floor. It takes him a few dim, dense seconds to realize that she remains in his loose grip - she is not pulling back. Her startled gaze travels slowly up his shirtfront until it meets his own, and he's reduced to silence by the way she looks at him. He's never seen that expression on her face before, lips slightly parted and possibly trembling. Her breathing is coming in quick, surprised little gasps, and all he can think is that he wants to catch those breaths, keep them.
His mouth is on hers before he can think better of it.
She doesn't draw away. If anything, she might possibly have shifted a little nearer.
The next thing he notices is her hands finding purchase on his shoulders while his settle at her waist. He's not sure how long it has been since he was able to breathe, but he could not possibly care less. Air is a small price to pay for this kiss.
He walks her back to the guild hall later, not entirely convinced that his feet are touching the ground at any point. They are mostly silent, though her hand is again nestled in the crook of his elbow.
"Have you thought of a name?" he asks, somewhat abruptly.
"A name?" she repeats. "Oh! For the park? I did think of one, although it's not as good as I'd hoped."
"Yes?"
"Well, you want people to be happy there - and it's become so green - I thought perhaps the Joy Garden?"
He glances down at her and smiles. "The Joy Garden it is."
The elation he feels is somewhat short-lived, for the instant they enter the guild hall, he realizes that there is quite the audience assembled. Virtually every surviving member of Fairy Tail is lounging around the cafe, and although many of them are making halfhearted attempts to appear uninterested, he can tell that they have all been waiting for Mirajane's return. His own presence in the guild hall has become such a usual thing that most of them don't even bow to him anymore, which he finds peculiarly comforting. But he sees, now, that the suspicions of the entire guild have been awakened by this outing.
For a moment, he wants to flee, as he did well over a year ago in Earth-land after he saved another Mirajane from her perilous fall. Almost immediately he gives himself a shake, once this Mirajane has left his side. There is nothing to be feared here, or at least nothing that is making itself very apparent. Embarrassment, perhaps, is the worst of the evils he might find.
"What's it like, Mira?" "How was it?" Some of the younger guild members, and Elfman as well, have virtually seized hold of her and pulled her to a table to regale them with her afternoon's adventures.
"It's very different from what E-Land used to be," she tells them, "but in wonderful ways." She catches Jellal's eye. "The whole afternoon was perfect."