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"Yo, Spiritttttt..." Lucy cringed and tucked herself closer to the wall.
"Spirrrittttt..." she blindly swatted at Michelle, who was trying to wake her up.
"Would you prefer I call you Lucy?" her eyes opened, exasperatedly, and she rolled over.
"Whaddu' want Mich—" she stopped and glared at the man who woke her up. It was the stupid pink-haired Prince.
"Go away. This is my cell and I think I deserve to be left in peace." She snarled, but the sound was muffled in the foam bed.
"What?"
She lifted her head. "Go awayyy..!" she whined, plopping her head back down.
"No, Happy wants to talk to you." Lucy lifted her head once more, and noticed beside the prince was a blue horse. How she could have missed it, she didn't know.
"Aye!" it was strange hearing the horse talk.
"Well, I'm not talking to Happy either, so bug off." Her head collapsed on the mattress again.
"But I wanna fish! You owe me." Lucy looked up incredulously.
"The horse wants a fish?" she asked Natsu. He nodded.
"Yeah, Happy really likes fish."
"But he's a horse."
"So?"
"Wouldn't that cause him digestion problems or something?"
"Hasn't so far."
"Aye! Happy cried. "Now gimme fish."
Lucy's head flopped on the bed again. "Gimme gimme never get." She chanted. "And besides, why do I owe you?"
"Cause I took three people, including you and your little sister, at Max Speed. That's really tiring. I already got a fish from Natsu, and now I need one from you and your sister!" he declared.
Spirit couldn't believe she was having this conversation with a horse. "Do I look like I have fish down here? I'm living in a cell. There ain't no fish."
The horse pouted, bottom lip hanging out. "No fish? Your life sucks."
"Try coming to live here with me. You can have some cold chicken."
"No thanks." The horse trotted back up the stairs miserably.
A few seconds passed in silence. "So..." Natsu looked around. "Nice place you got."
"Thanks," said Lucy sarcastically. "Don't you love the decor? Dark and bleak, just the way I like it. I'm not accepting visitors right now, so you can leave." Her hand pointed towards the staircase.
"And besides, shouldn't you go bring Happy back to the stables?"
Natsu shrugged, but instead of going towards the exit, he sat down on the single chair placed in front of the cell. "What are you doing?" Lucy accused. She heard him take the seat.
"Don't worry, Happy walks around the castle all the time. Besides, I'm bored and want someone to talk to." Lucy growled under her breath.
"It ain't gonna be me, I'm giving you the silent treatment. Go talk to the horse."
"His name is Happy," he corrected. Spirit didn't reply. He sighed.
Suddenly, he snapped his fingers. "I know! I'm challenging myself to get you to like me as a friend." Lucy, still buried in the mound of foam, rolled her eyes.
She wished she could talk to say, 'never gonna happen', and say a long string of curse insults that would make the childish Natsu run for the hills. She just wanted him aw-ay from her.
The sound of clopping echoed through the cells, and Happy's blue head poked out of the entrance. "Are you sure you have no fish?"
"Yes, Happy, I'm sure!" She snapped at him. The horse gave her puppy-dog eyes, but trotted back up the stairs.
A horse that acts like a cat that gives looks like a dog, Lucy inwardly muttered. Natsu turned back to her.
"Now that was mean." He scolded. She didn't reply, only rolling her eyes at him. He huffed.
"This is gonna be difficult." He said, and Lucy mentally cheered. He's gonna leave, he's gonna leave!
"So I'll just have to double my efforts!" she groaned.
Natsu clued in on this. "She made a sound! Whoo! That's one step closer towards my goal." He cheered.
Lucy was close to hating him. He was like an annoying child that was stuck to your leg and prevented you from moving while talking non-stop while you're stealing food! She wailed. Times ten!
At least it can't get any wor— She heard the sound of rusty metal creaking. She looked up as the door shut and Natsu locked the door, throwing the keys away. Her eyes widened. Prince Natsu, was stuck, in the cell—
With her.
The keys he'd thrown were currently outside and out of reach. The Prince grinned down at her. "I win," he said. Lucy's eyeballs nearly rolled out of her head, they were so wide, eyes darting between Natsu and the keys.
"There's no way you can't talk to me now!" she wanted to hit him. Hard. The Prince sat down, a short distance away from her, but just out of arms reach. Lucy huffed, eyeing the look on his face, waiting for her to say something, and plopped her head on the mattress again, ignoring him.
And it was silent. The prince was in thought, but waiting for the girl to say something.
A few minutes later, Natsu grinned, having an idea. Spirit heard the prince shuffling next to her bed. She looked up to check if he wasn't doing anything, when she burst out laughing.
She wouldn't speak, but the pink-haired idiot of a prince was tickling her sides! She laughed hard, but not a word would come out of her mouth. He grinned, hands moving rapidly up and down her sides. "I'm not stopping until you say stop." He said, continuing to tickle her. Lucy's sides ached, but she refused to let a word out of her mouth.
So the rigorous torture continued. Spirit laughed so hard tears came from her eyes, she wanted to hit him, but she wasn't in control of her limbs at this point. They were clenched firmly around her midsection, trying to, unsuccessfully you might add; swat the prince's arms away.
The Prince sensed that he wasn't trying hard enough, so he moved his fingers faster. At this point, Lucy couldn't even muster the air to laugh; it was all a breathless, silent eruption of howls.
"Fine fine, stop!" she shrieked, and almost immediately, the fingers stopped their torture. She collapsed on the bed, silent one more, partly because of her Silent Treatment, the other trying to regain air in her lungs.
"You talked!" Lucy got up to glare at him.
The boy noticed, and his bottom lip jutted out, eyes wide and pleading. Spirit rolled her orbs, huffing. "What will it take for you to talk to me!" he whined, like a lost little puppy.
Finally she spoke, but the words weren't nice. "Look, maybe the reason I'm not talking to you is because I don't want to," she snapped, crossing her arms and glaring at him. "So shut your trap, you sick, spoiled prince, because, just so we're clear, I don't want to talk, especially if it's to you."
His eyes turned downcast, and he shuffled away miserably, an air of depression around him. He settled, knee's tucked in and face partially hiding in his scarf, against the wall, wet-eyed. For a split second, her eyes softened; she felt sorry for him. "Look, I—"
"I'm okay." He whimpered, not helping her push away her guilt. "I'm fine." Yelling at him was like screaming at an innocent child, she cried helplessly in her mind.
It only took a few seconds of That Look for her to break. "Okay, okay, you can talk to me!" she winced. The boy visibly brightened up, and suddenly Lucy found the air forced out of her lungs in a bone-crushing hug.
"Can I call you Lucy?" he asked, still hugging her.
"First, get off me. Second, don't push your luck kid." He pulled away.
"So, what you wanna talk about?" he enquired excitedly.
"I don't know!" Lucy rolled her eyes. "You were the one who wanted to talk."
He thought for a moment. "Well, what's it like living in a forest?" her eyebrows raised a fraction and she turned slightly to look at him. She silently repeated a question.
"Why do you ask?"
He duh-ed her. "Cause I've lived in a castle all my life, had my food handed to me on a silver platter, can buy anything I want any time I'd like, heck, I could sell my signature for a couple million Jewels." He pointed out.
"Fair enough," she supposed. She just wanted him to go away, but it wasn't prying too much in her personal business, so she spoke. "Living in a forest... well, you have to make sure you're prepared for anything; you never know when a sudden storm's gonna hit and you won't be able to make it to the next town to get food, so you need to be stocked up. You gotta protect yourself from beasts, sometimes they'll get curious and try and nose though your stuff to get food, that's a no-no. You gotta make sure you don't step on any poisonous stuff, and clean out any injuries quickly because they can easily get infected out there."
Natsu drifted off a bit in thought. "Sounds hard."
"Well, it ain't heaven, but it is- was," she corrected herself, "a good life."
He wrinkled his nose, but he looked curious. "But why? You sound like you have to... go through all this crap to survive."
Spirit smiled, "There's always the difference of Living and Surviving, remember that, Pinky." He 'hey'ed in protest, 'it's salmon, not pink,' but she continued. "Surviving is doing what you need to do to continue on. Living is having fun and enjoying yourself while Surviving." She explained to him. It was one of the lessons that her mother taught her before she died; Lucy didn't realize that she was telling Natsu it before it came out. Her features twisted into a self-hating snarl.
"What?" Natsu blinked.
"It's nothing," she snapped. It's not nothing, the pink-haired prince wanted to say, but he kept quiet. He didn't get women, often happy and joyous in one moment, and then as scary as hell and beating him with a chair the next. One of the reasons why he didn't want to marry one.
"Okay... next subject?" he offered. She diverted her attention to him, somewhat tenser than before. Natsu, a combat expert, knew that this meant they were nervous and/or angry, or prepared to attack. He was pretty sure Lucy was smart enough not to attack him; it was worthless as the keys were inaccessible to her, but he could get them if things got desperate by heating the bars and bending the metal, but she couldn't. So, he went with idea one.
"Hey, what's wrong?" he asked, pouting. Lucy was a somewhat friend in his eyes, and it was a friends job to help pick the other up.
"It's nothing," she spat, turning away from him. "Nothing you can help with." He recoiled slightly, backing off. He noted a salty tang in the air.
"But you're crying..." he said, swerving around to look at her face to face. She was wet-eyed, her lips were a tight line, and her eyebrows were pulled together.
She didn't reply, but inwardly cursed herself for crying at a trivial time like this over a tiny matter that happened years ago. "Look, if—"
Lucy cut him off, reaching into her bodysuit. She couldn't help herself. "Do you remember this?" She pulled out, showing a slightly green-tinged vial, about half-way full with an odd neon green liquid. It was a cork-stopper, and plunged in the cork was a hook, attached to a piece of string tied around her neck. He peered at it, but no hint of recognition crossed his features.
"I thought not," she said, putting it back where it belonged, sighing, her lip continuing to tremble. "You're all spoiled brats who can't give a tiny piece of yours to others."
"What?"
She turned to glare at him. "Pneumonia, Natsu, this vial is full of a cure for pneumonia. It's a deadly disease that if it gets worse, can kill you." He blinked, still not getting it.
His powerful ears caught Gray coming down the stairs before she did. He stopped at the entrance of the cell, looking down at the prince and the girl, obviously confused. He looked beside him at the keys on the floor, clicking. Gray started laughing.
"You idiot! You locked yourself up with the girl?" he howled. "I knew you were stupid, but—" Lucy ripped Natsus boot off in one swift move and threw it at Gray. There was a thicker leather sole to it, and it made a significantly heavier Thunk against the guards face than hers did. She turned to the wall, sniffling.
Natsu noticed he had lost a boot, and Gray on the floor. He laughed at him. "Haha, Gray, Lucy—" there was a startling crack, and Natsus head whipped around.
Lucy had started to sob. How could they act so happy-go-lucky? She had asked herself miserably. When Natsu had started to laugh, there was a moment where she just wanted to hit him. So she did, striking his across the cheek. Her mother died because of them, and they didn't care. He didn't even remember.
Her eyes were hooded. "Get out." Lucy whispered, tears flowing down her face.
Natsu looked at her, and Lucy thought it was ironic that the face looked actually caring. "Now," she hissed. The prince scrambled up and Gray opened the door. Natsu stepped through, looking back at the crying girl and going upstairs. Gray sat down, out of view from Spirit, knowing when a girl needed her time alone.
She cursed herself for not getting there fast enough. She cursed the guard, Fried, she vaguely remembered, for taking so long. She cursed the Dragneel family for being so possessive. She hated everything, and most of all the boy who opened the door in the first place, who finally caught the Golden Spirit years later, and didn't know that they had crossed paths already.
Well! we have lots of notifications for today! [if you don't wanna read, just go to the next line-breaker.]
I'm sorry this chapter took so long; it's been half-done for awhile now. I was making a new cover page for Chances on a new program I got called GIMP. It's fairly new to me so I've gotten some problems along the way. Now, it's done!
But... [yes, there's a big But in here, unfortunately.] I don't know how to get rid of this big stream of marching ants/white dotted line right in the middle of the picture! I tried everything. *sighs* PM me if you know GIMP?
AND I'll be going on a trip West in eight days [yay! going on a plane for the first time!] and I'll be planning to finish FireFlies BY THEN. Chances, on the other hand... well, we're only on the sixth chapter, so duh, I can't finish both MultiChaps in eight days. So, T.C. will be on hold for a week or two. I'll try to squeeze in a new chapter by then, but I make no promises.
AND FINALLY, If I have any new news/notifications for you guys I'll save a section of my profile for that. for example, if I haven't posted a new chapter in awhile, it'll likely say why on my board. so, check on in, if you'd like.
Notifications finished
REVIEWS!
Ms. Ominous: Hehe, thanks. *blushes* here's your update! sorry it took so long.
Tawny: HEY! sorry, I thought you'd connect the dots. The vial is the elixir that would have saved Layla from death. Lucy's saved it as a necklace all this time. thank you for reviewing. 3
Sofia3: CAPS LOCK! YESSSS! THANK YOU FOR ZEE REVIEWS! I WILL ALWAYS KEEP WRITING!
Talia: here's your review!
[This is a long one,] and LifeIsWaiting: yeah, I was hoping for a twist. I wanted Lucy to be slightly more capable than just being a pampered princess, and Natsu to be uncomfortable living in a castle and hating all of his decisions being made for him. I have the next couple chapters planned out, and I'm sure you'll all enjoy it! Wendy... I think I made her a little too cute/stupid [whoops, sorry Wendy,] but I like the humour she displays. And I was hoping someone would point that out! I think that's the best line I have ever written. I shan't bind myself eternally to a demon adorning a dress. HEHE! The PLAN S=seduction. Lucy trying to use her sex appeal. of course, it doesn't work. HERE IS YOUR UPDATE! [thanks for reviewing so much. this was a long review reply, answering most of your questions!]
ReViEw? [Damn, i'm out of catchy review ideas...]