"Uhhhh!" Cana groaned as she stretched out in the waters of the inn bathhouse as she stepped in. "That's the stuff."
Lucy sighed in agreement as she melted into the comfortably warm waters. She had gotten in before Cana.
The Brunette had decided to recline against a rock.
"I don't remember the last time I relaxed like this." A glass of wine had somehow appeared in Cana's hand. "Hot Springs, a good vintage and a hot blonde." Cana winked at Lucy who blushed.
Cana laughed at that. "I'm kidding. I'm sure Natsu wouldn't be happy with me."
Lucy tilted her head and shrugged, silently asking why.
"What? you haven't noticed?" Cana grinned as she took a sip of her wine.
Lucy poked her arm.
"ooooh no, this is going to be really good later down the track. I ain't telling."
She huffed in response and sank back into the waters.
Cana sighed. "C'mon girl. Don't be so down. we got all this to ourselves." She swept her hand over the practically empty girl's section of the bath house.
Lucy shrugged. It was nice.
"Oh yeah, how's your arm?"
She sat up and showed the wound. It had shrunk from the Five Star Remedy she had used before entering the bathhouse. It wasn't bleeding anymore and it didn't hurt, but it was still there.
Cana held her arm and surveyed the wound. "Not bad."
Her probing finger found another, older scar. And another. And one that ran up to her shoulder.
Then they moved down to the biggest one on her stomach.
Lucy saw Cana's face fall as she traced along her scars.
"Stand Up." She demanded Shakily. "I want to see them. All of them."
She hesitated, but obeyed.
Shaking the water off her hand she reached out of the pool and picked up her light pen.
-Most of them happened a while ago.-
"How?" She asked, her voice cracking, her fingers trailing over all the scars Cana could touch.
-Fighting off Kidnaping attempts, mild torture when they managed to get me, and a few accidents from when I worked in a Kitchen.-
"Mild torture? Mild?" Cana questioned, upset.
"You were tortured?" A voice asked from behind them.
Natsu, standing there nothing but his scarf and boxer shorts.
She covered herself as he looked her over. She could almost feel his gaze.
People had stared at her before, a few times Nude. But She didn't feel strange and violated by his stare.
The only place his gaze was lingering was her scars, then back to her face.
-It tickled.-
"Fuck off Natsu, this is the girls bath!" She snapped before turning back to Lucy."You going to keep the tough girl act going?" Cana demanded angrily.
-Yes. it's how I remained alive and free this long.-
Cana seemed to falter.
"Lucy." She saw Natsu's eyes, found kindness and concern in them.
She turned to look at Cana's, and they held the same emotions behind her anger.
It was Lucy's turn to falter, and she looked down.
They care. They just want to know. Her shoulders Slumped.
-I have been tortured three times. Five if you count the times I managed to get my shield out before I got hurt too badly.-
Lucy took a shuddering breath in as she wrote.
-All three of them were painful beyond Imagining. And each time I lost something.-
"Like your nightmare last night? About Naked Mummy?"
-That was one time I managed to get my Star shield. In my nightmare, I didn't have it.-
Lucy felt a tear run down her face. -I never thought I'd be sharing it with anyone except my spirits. I never had anyone else I could tell.-
Except Salt, and look what happened to him.
"We're family here Lucy. We don't always share our pain, but we always trust and have faith in one another." Cana uttered, looking away.
Natsu looked down. "Yeah. Erza. Grey. Mira. Everyone at the guild. We all have something that weighs on us. We just have to trust one another to help us get through it."
-Even Mirajane?-
"You see it when she looks down. It's easy to see, but It doesn't happen often. She's always comforting us, caring, being motherly to us." Natsu revealed quietly.
No one said anything.
Natsu sniffed in. "Someone's coming. Can we find another place to talk?"
-Sure.-
"Yeah we should." Cana turned. "Also, Natsu?"
"Yeah?"
"YOU'RE IN THE GIRL'S BATHHOUSE!" Cana yelled as she whipped out a card from who knows where.
A gust of wind boomed out of the Card and sent Natsu flying away.
"Waaaaaa! Happy! Help me I think I'm gonna be sickkkkk"
"I got you!" The cat called as he caught Natsu. "But If you throw up on me, I'm going to drop you."
"Uhh, those two." Cana moaned.
Lucy had to smile. Even during times like this, they kept their spirit.
Lucy was relieved when they didn't start to talk again when they all made it back to their room.
Cana instead had a small deck of cards that she had thrown onto the table, and was studying it closely.
She had gathered up the cards and threw it again twice already.
Natsu was toying with a candle flame, stroking the flame, lighting a toothpick on fire and eating that.
Happy was munching on a fish.
Lucy went up to Cana. -Is it a good fortune?-
Cana didn't notice so she tapped her foot on the floor.
She looked up from her cards and read what Lucy wrote.
"Heh? No. It's not a good fortune at all. The Devil, The Tower and The Death cards are right in the middle."
Lucy looked the cards over. The three cards she had pointed out were nearly on top of each other.
-I can't read fortunes very well, but I know that's bad-
"What's so bad about the cards?" Natsu asked, sounding bored.
"She's reading a fortune Natsu, it's not the cards that are bad." Happy sighed.
"Soooo, why are the cards so important?"
Cana sighed irritated. "The tower means change, chaos, danger or crisis. That alone is bad, but having Death there too, as well as the Devil…..It's not good."
-And the cards are close to the Center of the pile. All three are going to be huge In this person's life.-
Cana looked down.
"So who is it?" Natsu asked.
"Gildarts." Cana uttered.
"Pfffft, hah! you kiddin'? nothing can kill old Gildarts. He'll be fine." Natsu scoffed.
-Who's Gildarts?-
"Only the strongest Wizard in all of Fairy Tail." Happy chimed in.
"Wait, how come you were looking him up Cana?" Natsu asked.
"Curiosity." Cana put on a smile. "You think I don't read all your fortunes for fun?"
"So how do you get anything from your cards?" Natsu asked.
-I am a bit curious about your card magic too.-
Cana sighed as she gathered up the cards in front of her. "Ok, I have a lot of cards. Cards inside cards even. My important ones are these." She held up the cards she had been reading. "The Twenty Two Major Arcana. I use them for telling the future and casting my spells."
She got out deck after deck of cards from her bag, some smaller than others.
"This is my Minor Arcana deck. Forty cards, ten in each suit. These are for when I want to use more complex spells. This is my communications deck for when I want to talk with someone who has a matching card, here's my tracking deck, my blank deck, my experiment deck, my…."
"Sheesh, sounds boring."
"You asked! you idiot!"
-Want to play a round of Fate's Gamble?- Lucy scrawled quickly before things escalated any more.
"You know how to play?"
-Yes-
"I'm warning ya girl. I kick ass at this game."
Lucy just politely smiled at Cana.
Just you wait.
"Let's get this over with. I want my rematch." Cana smirked with a growl. "And this time, I won't loose."
-Don't be so sore. You lost by one point.-
"A loss is still a loss, and every point matters."
They argued as they walked into the Snowy Bottle.
Lucy saw lantern lacramas embedded in what looked like ice that clung to the walls. The Bar had ice shelves that held bottle upon bottle of liquor, with an ice wine rack next to it that stretched across the whole wall of the Restaurant.
There's Ice everywhere, there's even snow, but it's not cold in the least.
A suave looking woman glided up to them and introduced herself.
"Good day. I am Elena Ganto. I am the Head waiter here this evening. You are the fairy tail Wizards I presume?"
Lucy nodded. -Yes we are.-
"Wonderful." She said, sounding almost uninterested. "I have your uniforms for you to wear. We will cut to the chase and I will show you how things work."
"So, what can I get you handsome?" Cana purred flirtatiously to one of her many customers from behind the bar.
Lucy saw the restaurant's normal bartender standing aside, looking dejected as they crowded around Cana's section of the bar.
Apparently she knows as much as she drinks. Well, when it comes to alcohol at least. And Natsu….
Natsu was ferrying dirty dishes back to the kitchen. He had very quickly been reassigned after he ate a few of the dishes of food he was supposed to be carrying out.
As Lucy walked to the kitchen to get another plate of food, she heard a crash. She walked through the doors and surveyed the scene in front of her.
The second Chef's hand was bleeding badly, standing in front of the first aid kit and messily bandaging it up.
Lucy saw the Junior chef was taking his place and struggling. He looked like he would cut himself very soon.
The head Chef looked stressed out of his mind.
First thing's first. She thought as she walked over to the bleeding Chef. FIVE STAR REMEDY!
The stars shone into existence and cast a glow onto the bleeding man.
-When the spell finishes, go find a healer.-
"Sure, yes. Thank you."
Ok, that should stop his bleeding and pain, now….
She washed her hands and walked over to the Junior Chef.
Lucy plucked the knife from his hands and when he looked at her, she pointed to his old work area, that was next to the one she was in.
"But…" He started to protest, but she was already working, the Knife slicing through the Vegetables much faster than he had been.
She checked over all the containers in front of her, all the pans on the stove behind her, everything she could see.
-I'll help you, but I need you to help me, I don't know how these dishes are plated up.- She scrawled as she was checking the frypans.
The Junior chef gulped. "Yes mam."
Lucy sighed. She sort of missed this.
"Come on short stuff, put your back into it!" The grizzled man with the white beard told Lucy with a laugh as she struggled to cut the carrot straight.
"Don't push the little kid too hard Salt. You've only been teaching her for three days now." A tall slender woman with boyishly short brown hair berated him.
"You've been with us for a Month already Lucy, and we both know you won't get good at something unless you put effort in. So kindly Tell Kay to mind her own fuckin buisness." He swore cheerfully and ruffled her hair.
"ohhh, you want to dance there Salt Morris?"
"That depends what kind of dance little miss Bitter."
"The kind where I take my sword and stab you."
"Ahh, I'd like ta stab you too darlin'. Just not in the way you mean."
"You Pig!"
The kitchen doors bang open and in sweeps a buxom woman with curly shoulder length red hair and a shorter, muscular man with a full beard and a head of black hair.
"Kayla, Morris. Cut it out." The black haired man grunted.
"You two bickering like children again?" The red haired woman lilted in her deep breathy voice. "Honestly, Lucy here is more mature than the two of you combined."
"Awww, but Mary!" Salt moaned like a child and pointed to Kay. "She started it!"
Salt winked at Lucy and she giggled as Mary draped herself over her to see what she was doing.
"Looks like fun. You're not fast enough though. And those are uneven." She pointed to some of the carrot cubes Lucy was making.
"Bah, don't ya worry there Sweet Mary. It's Rustic cut!" Salt Morris chuckled.
Kay rolled her eyes. "When you burn something: it's caramelised, when you cut it wrong: it's rustic. When you set the kitchen on fire: it's a celebratory bonfire!"
"All entertaining excuses."The black haired man chuckled.
"Hector." Kay warned.
"Sorry."
"Hey everyone makes mistakes!" Morris. "I haven't made one in yonks though."
"What about yesterday?"
"I was showin' Lucy what happens if you don't cut an unpeeled garlic clove before you fry it."
"It Explodes! You got it everywhere!" Kay snapped
"It still smells of Garlic in here." Mary sighed.
"At least no Vampires will be getting in!" Morris replied cheerfully.
"There's no such thing!"
"How da you know?"
As they bickered, Lucy had a smile on her face as she continued to cut carrot after carrot. Cutting them straighter each time.
As the rush in the kitchen died down, everyone started to sigh in relief.
The head chef walked over to Lucy. "Miss, you saved my ass today. I want to say thanks."
-No problem- She wrote with a smile.
"Tell me, where did you learn to cook?"
-From a bunch of nice pirates.-
"Pirates?" The Chef spluttered.
-Kidding. The taste Kitchen in Thunder Cove.-
"Hm, haven't heard of them. Anyways, just packing down to go and we're done for the night, so…"
"BANDITS IN TOWN!" A very pale man yelled. "Where are the Fairy Tail Wizards?!"