[chapter three]
"STOP IT PLEASE!" Lucy screamed in sheer agony. The wind was back and it was crueler than before. Why was I so much crueler now? How could anything be so cruel? Tears streamed down her face as she struggled to breathe. The force was indescribable.
"Please..." Lucy cried, falling to the ground as her knees crumbled. She couldn't move and the pressure was just so much...it was just so much. Lucy waited for her savior but there was none. "PLEASE!" she begged, but what was she begging for? What was she trying to escape from? The wind did not heed her pleas and it continued to pound against her forcing her lower and lower until even the sobs were too much for her to manage. "Why...?" she choked out as she felt her head go dizzy.
She kept expecting the voice to appear but it wasn't here... it was like it never existed in the first place...did it abandon her? "Where...are...yo—"
"What do you mean she's sleeping?! Wake her up!"
"Yes sir. Right away...sir."
Lucy frowned as she rolled over, smashing her head into the pillow. She was alive and awake, and she could hear her father arguing with Rain. Rain was going to come in any second now...should she pretend to be asleep and let Rain "wake her up" or should she just get up? Either way, she didn't want to get up.
The door opened and she heard Rain's hurried footsteps.
"Miss Lucy? It's time to stop pretending and get up already," Rain said.
Damn, she knows already, Lucy thought. Lucy sighed as she sat up. Rain stood at the end of her bed looking stern and worried at the same time. Lucy smiled wryly.
"I assume you heard your father...he is not pleased with you. Although, I do not see why he should be so upset about it...the Dragneel boy fell asleep as well almost as soon as I left him," she continued on to say.
"Natsu fell asleep too?" I asked, surprised at the information.
Rain nodded as she glanced worriedly at the door. Jude was not happy and Lucy knew it, but she didn't want to go out. She didn't want to be forced to have a civil conversation with Natsu and eat an even more awkward dinner than usual. Lucy sighed as she pushed herself out of bed and out into the hallway. Rain followed her, but soon passed her as Lucy started to slow down. It appeared that her father had already gone down to dinner and she was grateful. If he had stayed then more than likely he would have lectured her, but at dinner he couldn't do that without appearing too mean.
However, suddenly Rain stopped causing Lucy to run into her. Rain turned around quickly saying, "Miss Lucy! I almost forgot! Your father requested you dress up for this evening's dinner...you don't have long to get ready though...but I'll help you."
"No it's okay," Lucy said, already turning around to go back into her room. She didn't want to get ready to eat dinner because that was ridiculous.
"No Miss, I will help you. Your father requested it. I just wanted to offer instead of pressure you..."
Lucy glared at the ground. She loved Rain and she hated the fact that her father really did only treat her nothing more than a servant.
"Okay. Thank you Rain," Lucy mumbled as they went into her bedroom.
After all, they were in a hurry.
Natsu was bored. Beyond bored. He always got bored when Lucy wasn't around because at least when she was here, he got to tease her, but when it was just him and the two fathers, he was bored.
He rubbed at his salmon hair as if that would somehow soothe his boredom, but alas...nothing. Natsu sighed. Dinner was supposed to start soon, but Lucy was taking so goddamn long they couldn't eat yet. Natsu was so hungry...he sighed again.
His thoughts drifted to the blonde and he grimaced. He just didn't like Lucy...they didn't have many things in common after all. Natsu liked adventure and pranks but Lucy liked reading boring ass books and taking baths. She followed the rules too much and it irritated Natsu. She's had everything since she was a child while he drifted among guardians.
The only thing he admired about her was the fact that she could come up with some great come backs, even though most of them insulted Natsu... like really, it wasn't his fault that his hair was salmon.
He didn't want to get married to Lucy Heartfilia. He didn't even want to get married. Especially not married off like some auction.
The door opening cut off his thoughts and in entered the maids.
"Miss Lucy is here," one of them stated. The doors opened wider and Natsu could honestly say he didn't expect to see what he saw. Lucy, the girl who irritated him beyond no measure, looked pretty beautiful right now. She was in a dark blue dress that complimented her in all the right places and her hair was up in a sort of messy bun thing. He wasn't sure, but whatever it was, it was pretty freaking cute.
This was until Natsu remembered who it was he was looking at. His awed expression quickly transformed into a grimace and he looked away, acting unimpressed. Lucy, however, paid no mind to him as she sat herself across the table from him, before nodding to both of their fathers. Actually, she completely ignored him. Natsu scowled.
"Lucy. Greet Natsu," Jude said, all stern-like. Natsu had to suppress his snicker. So he wasn't the only who noticed he wasn't greeted. He could Lucy was forcing back her own scowl as she turned to face him. She gave a small, forced smile and said between gritted teeth, "Hello Natsu."
"Hello Lucy," he responded, grinning slightly. Well at least he was no longer bored. She threw him a quick glare, but quickly replaced it with a dazzling, forced smile. He knew it was there to please her father.
"Let dinner commence," Jude announced. Almost immediately, maids rushed in with tons of food. Natsu scanned them over. They all looked the same in his opinion...but of course he kept silent and thanked those that brought him food. He wondered briefly what they ate and when.
For the first five minutes, dinner was absolutely silent. It actually brought chills to Natsu. That and the glares that Lucy would shoot him if he even looked her way.
Damn spoiled princess, he thought to himself as he took another bite of his delicious food. It was Makarov who finally broke the uncomfortable silence.
"So how are the two of you getting along?" he asked. Lucy and Natsu looked at each other, and Natsu could see the silent pleading in her eyes; he just couldn't tell what it was for.
"Oh you know," Natsu mused. "The same as ever really." Makarov frowned at his response and Natsu noticed Lucy bite her lip.
"We're fine. Thank you for asking," Lucy managed to say before returning her attention back on her food. Neither father looked at all convinced, but they stayed quiet about the subject by switching to another subject, and that was politics.
Natsu zoned out and his gaze shifted to Lucy, who was staring intently at her food. He frowned, remembering her pleading gaze. He still didn't know what she had been pleading for, but it's not like he cared all that much anyways, right? She was just an annoying brat.
"Excuse me, but I need to go to the restroom," Lucy announced, standing up as she folded up her napkin on the left side of her plate. Natsu stared at her as she quickly disappeared from sight, not even waiting to hear her own father's response. Natsu heard Jude grunt, but he didn't make a comment on it as he returned back to the conversation of politics and money with his own adopted father.
Natsu ate for five more minutes before sighing immensely, vaguely wondering where the princess had gone. He blinked at his adopted father and Jude, who seemed to be ignoring him and focused back to his food. It was really very good, but Natsu felt as if something was wrong. He tried pushing the feeling away but it still lingered.
Natsu stared down at his food still trying to ignore the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach, but it remained no matter what he tried to think of.
"Excuse me but I'm not feeling well. I will be back in just a second," Natsu said before he realized what he was even doing. Both fathers stared at him, surprise etched on their faces, but he couldn't wait anymore. He had to go. He didn't know why, but he knew he had to find Lucy.
Lucy Heartfilia was throwing up.
She hurled her amazing dinner into the toilet as she coughed on the food wracking its way up her throat and out. Tears pricked at her eyes, and she wondered vaguely why she was throwing up. Her thoughts turned to her marriage and her body managed to heave out even more food to throw up. Her thoughts gripped at the memory of the dinner and before she knew what she was doing, tears were flowing down into the toilet as well.
She sat on her knees, sobbing and choking, as the remains of her food lingered around the edges of her mouth. Her mind was fuzzy and she looked around the bathroom in a daze.
Lucy couldn't remember the last time she had been in this bathroom.
It wasn't her own, but the main mansion's. She was in the bathroom that everyone used when they visited. Did anyone see her run in here? Lucy prayed that no one had; she couldn't handle it if her father knew anything about this...or worse...Rain.
Lucy barely noticed that she was still crying, but when her eyes caught site of the portrait of her mother that hung on the wall, it seemed to be all she could focus on not doing. She tried to control her sobs by breathing in and out, but in the end, it only made it worse.
Her heart hurt and she wanted nothing more than to escape into an endless void of nothingness. Would anyone really notice?
Her father would, of course, but he would simply be thinking of how he lost the chance to make more money. He'd be thinking about who would become his next heir without her, and that made the tears come faster. If her mother were here, she would miss her. Her mother had loved her, reading her bedtime stories and soothing her when something bad happened in her life, but when her mother died, there was nobody to soothe her.
Sure, she got plenty of apologies and "we're sorry for your loss"'s but no one actually cared. She could see it in their eyes as they thought about how they could use her for her own benefit and that scared her.
She was afraid of what was to become of her, and when she found out she was being married off for the good of the company to a person she detested, Lucy had never felt so afraid in her entire life.
No one cared, and that alone scared her. Lucy was alone in this world, and there was no one to comfort her when she cried or screamed, just as she was doing now. So it was definitely one of the biggest surprises to hear the door to the bathroom whip open.
Lucy's gaze snapped to the door and she found herself staring at the one whom she was destined to marry. This time, she could feel herself fall to the ground as she choked on her own broken sobs.
She would always be alone...so alone...a warm embrace suddenly enveloped her, and her tears stopped for a total of ten seconds as she realized it was Natsu who was holding her. Her face was buried in his annoying pink hair, and that's when she started to cry into him.
She kept expecting him to say something, like Rain would do the few times she did catch her crying, but he said nothing. He simply held onto her as she cried and cried.
She hated Natsu. She hated everything about him.
But at the moment, she had never been so thankful to anybody in her entire life.
Because at the moment, it was one of the first times she didn't feel alone because she knew that he knew.
She felt his grip tighten on her and she held on, crying her broken heart out, wondering what would happen next.
She was just so afraid of the future ahead of her, and she terrified at the man who was holding her, and it wasn't until later that she realized that she finally considered him a man.
She still hated him, and she hated him even more for doing this. She hated him for comforting her. She hated him for seeing her like this, so broken and lost, when she had resolved long ago to be nothing short of fierce in his presence. She hated him for being the one to find her. She hated him for not saying anything, and she hated him because as she sobbed broken cries, she knew that he was literally all she was clinging onto.
She hated Natsu Dragneel.
*And thus the angst starts. Sorry about the late update. Reviews are much appreciated, and thank you for reading. This is one of my favorite stories to write in and be prepared for a whole lot more angst, okay?
Bai guys. :)
-DiAnna44
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