Fairytale of Doom

By CrimsonStarbird

Chapter Seventeen – Into the Woods

"I don't suppose," Cana tried, "that you're missing a princess, are you?"

The two men standing guard outside the next castle she'd managed to find did not respond. Steel eyes beneath steel helmets kept staring down the path behind her with equally steely fascination. The outer gates of the castle remained firmly shut.

Hopefully, she continued, "Only, I am a missing princess. Princess Aurora, or Sleeping Beauty if you prefer. I was taken away from my royal parents when I was a baby and raised by fairies in order to avoid Maleficent's curse… is that ringing any bells?"

One of the guard's eyes twitched, but no more.

"I just thought you might want to know that my second sixteenth birthday went without a hitch, the Good Fairies learned how to celebrate Fairy Tail style, and Maleficent's curse was neatly sidestepped. Therefore, I have returned to take up my throne, find my prince, and get out of this fairytale world. All I want to know is, is this my castle or not?"

The castle in front of her was definitely a traditional, medieval design, all turrets and courtyards and banners. It wouldn't have been out of place gracing the skyline of a theme park, that was for sure. Then again, the night was distorting the colours of sunset, and the gloom untied dimensions and concealed depth, and it wasn't entirely clear if this light-speckled stronghold belonged to her film or another old classic.

One of the guards finally lost patience. "Go home, girlie."

Cana folded her arms. While she would normally have no issue with flirting her way in as a Plan B, she would really prefer to avoid it here. For one thing, she wasn't exactly looking her best, having trekked from one kingdom to another in search of her missing plotline; for another, Sleeping Beauty's traditional floor-length, long-sleeved, high-neckline gown concealed all her best assets. Not to mention, it didn't feel right to be flirting with nameless guards when she was literally on a search for her fairytale prince.

Also, she hadn't had a drink since she'd left the Good Fairies' cottage, and it was starting to make her uncomfortable.

Instead, she tried wheedling, "Are you absolutely sure your kingdom isn't missing a princess?"

"Course it is," the guard grunted. "That's what the upcoming ball is for, isn't it? That's where the prince will find his bride, not loitering outside his castle raving about fairies and thinking she should be allowed to enter just because she's wearing a dress."

"Upcoming ball?" Cana snapped her fingers. "Right, this must be Cinderella. Not my castle after all."

Still, she had walked awfully far today. And night was falling. And she had nowhere else to go. This fairytale world was turning out to involve a lot less dramatic romance and a lot more aimless wandering than she had expected…

"I don't suppose you two lovely gentlemen would let a poor, lost princess inside to wait for this legendary ball to start, would you?"

This time, both guards gave her unimpressed looks. Honestly, if demure gowns were such a turn-off, she might have to invest in one after she returned home. Why waste energy trying to dissuade men who assumed a woman drinking alone wanted to be hit on when she could get her clothes to say it for her?

Unfortunately, if she couldn't find somewhere safe to spend the night ahead of another day of searching for her happy ending, returning home would remain a distant dream, and these guards were not helping. "I suggest you remove yourself from the palace grounds, girl, before we are forced to do it for you."

"You know," Cana grumbled, "being a princess really isn't all it's cracked up to be- hang on, there's someone breaking into the castle!"

Neither of the guards looked round.

"No, really!" she exclaimed, pointing over the outer wall to the main keep. Sure, the curtains of night were sweeping swiftly across the stage, but the hulking figure steadily hauling himself hand by hand up to the top of the grandest tower belonged in this act even less than a foreign princess. "There's a huge man climbing the outside of the tower!"

"Yeah, right," scoffed a guard, still not looking round.

"I'm serious! Who lives in there? It's the main keep; that's got to be the king, right? His life is in danger!"

Nothing. Not even a glance.

"Surely one of you could look while the other keeps watching me!"

Apparently not.

"You two are the worst guards ever! I can't believe you'd let a superhuman assassin break into your castle but turn away a bona fide princess!"

"Nice try, girlie. Run off home now."

Cana placed a hand on her hip, thinking. It wasn't her business – it wasn't even her story. But even if she hadn't known Cinderella inside out, she'd still have wagered a barrel of beer on the story not involving the king being assassinated before Cinderella had even met her prince.

This wasn't supposed to be happening.

Granted, Lucy probably hadn't helped things by running off and getting herself kidnapped by a dragon, but if Cana couldn't rescue her, then she could at least ensure Lucy's happy ending was still on the table when she escaped.

It was her turn now to ignore the guards – and the pikes they were waving in her general direction – as she focussed on the intruder. He'd reached the top of the tower now. From this distance, she couldn't hear the smashing of the window, but she was sure she'd seen him slip inside the room at the top. Then he was back, swiftly descending the wall like a human spider, only this time with something slung over his shoulder.

Or someone.

With these stupid guards none the wiser.

Time for Princess Aurora to save the day, then. She'd rescue the kidnapped royal herself, get Lucy's story back on track, and hopefully the guards would be so grateful that they'd send her direct to Sleeping Beauty's Castle in a carriage equipped with a butler and a range of in-flight gins.

"Never send a soldier to do a princess's job," she sighed, turning her back on the useless guards and setting off to catch the intruder and his captive.

This, Cana thought, was decidedly weird.

No matter how she tried to frame the story, she was pretty sure that no one in Cinderella had kidnapped the king before the fateful ball had taken place. It was impossible, in fact. The ball had only happened because the king had been desperate to find a wife for his son. Left to his own devices – and in the face of a future filled with nothing but Ugly Stepsisters and their grotesque attempts at seduction – Prince Charming would probably have skipped the ball entirely.

But here she was, jogging through an unlit forest in princess heels on the trail of a hulking shadow and his captive.

Maybe it wasn't supposed to be the traditional Cinderella story she had grown up with. Maybe they'd been thrust into some edgy modern take on the original – one of those which thought superfluous violence automatically made things cool and subverting expectations mattered more than a solid character arc. Cana, though, had always held that you couldn't beat the classics, whether that was an authentic aged whisky on the rocks or true love conquering all. Just as those fancy flavoured spirit fads came and went, the populace might be lured in by the promise of excitement and danger, but at the end of the day, everyone wanted their own happily ever after.

Okay, fine, she might not have been following her own story to the letter, but she was trying to find her castle, and thus her prince. It wasn't her fault that these fantasy kingdoms seemed to have been wedged together without rhyme or reason.

At least the mysterious villain was attempting to escape on foot. He didn't seem to have much fear of being followed either, judging by the way he ploughed straight through the undergrowth, leaving a trail both tangible and audible – and she couldn't really blame him, when the bells of alarm had yet to ring out from the castle fading behind them. She was the only one who had any hope of catching him.

The woods grew thicker, deeper. Had the sun truly set, or were the trees just trying to make her believe so? The harsh cry of a bird rang out from the inky sky. Home had been a long way away ever since she had arrived in this world, but she hadn't truly felt it until that moment: strayed from the path, fallen through the cracks of the story, far from her friends, following… a trail that had vanished.

A disturbance that had gone still.

A forest that had fallen silent.

Oops.

Cana turned on the spot and the woods seem to turn with her, identical in all directions.

How had she lost track of the hulking brute who had stomped so rudely through the undergrowth?

Cana frowned, weighing up her options. Her Card Magic could locate anything from missing people to her own destiny, but in a world without magic, her cards were just cards, symbolic but fickle, unable to tell her anything she didn't already know.

Then a light flickered into existence. The welcoming orange glow of a campfire made the dancing of the shadows sharp, solid, mundane.

So, the kidnapper hadn't disappeared after all – he had just stopped to make camp. Cana gave a sigh of relief.

She stole closer. The kidnapper had set up camp in a small clearing, marked by a small but professional campfire. The man himself was nowhere to be seen – perhaps he had gone to hunt for dinner – but Cana's attention was immediately drawn to the prisoner he had left bound, gagged, and hanging upside-down from a tree.

That was not the king from Cinderella.

That was Fairy Tail's very own Gray Fullbuster, all trussed up like a captive princess.

Cana was sniggering as she stepped into the clearing. It wasn't just the firelight – or his upside-down predicament – painting Gray's cheeks with scarlet. He did not look as pleased to see her as he ought, no doubt because he knew that everyone in Fairy Tail would know the story by the end of the next guild-wide party.

In fact, he was struggling desperately against his bonds as she approached, eyes darting left and right, the gag muffling any threats he tried to level at her.

"Well, well, well," she smirked. "If it isn't kidnapped Princess Elsa-"

A twig snapped behind her. She tried to turn, mirth falling away at once, but there was already a wicked blade glinting at her throat.

"I thought someone was following me from the palace," a voice rasped. "You're not what I came here for, but by the looks of that dress, some rich fool of a father will pay a lot of money for you."

The blade was withdrawn, and a blunt force smashed into the side of her head.

The last thing she remembered as she fell into darkness was Gray rolling his eyes.

"I will admit," Cana said, hanging upside-down from the branch beside Gray, "that could have gone better."

Gray gave a wordless grunt. Nothing to do with the gag, that, for he was no longer wearing it. It seemed their captor only been expecting one prisoner, so had only brought one gag, and since Cana was clearly going to talk anyway, perhaps he had given Gray back his voice in the hope of making him into a lightning-rod for the chatter while he got some rest.

Said captor lay on the opposite side of the fire, his back to them, shoulders slowly rising and sinking in slumber. It took a lot of courage, Cana thought, to sleep so brazenly in the presence of prisoners… although the unwavering amber eyes of the hawk perched amidst the canopy above him, eyes more ardent than she had ever seen in a beast, left her wondering if he wasn't as unguarded as he appeared.

Still, she wasn't too pleased with his laid-back approach to the whole having-captives thing. It meant there was nothing to distract her from Gray's scathing disapproval.

She tried again. "In my defence, I was not expecting to have to foil any kidnappings today. I'm a fairytale princess; it's other people's job to rescue me!"

"Yes, well, I think it's fair to say that we're a little off the beaten track now," Gray retorted dryly. "Instead of being rescued by a mermaid, I wound up a prisoner in Cinderella's Castle, had to waltz with bloody Ash-for-Brains, and then was kidnapped straight out of my bed before I'd had a chance to plot my revenge – and is the kidnapper who I think he is?"

Cana blinked. "You waltzed with-"

"The kidnapper, Cana," Gray overrode her loudly. "Isn't he Shan Yu from Mulan?"

That gave her pause. She hadn't got a good look at him earlier, and the dance of flames and shadows through the clearing didn't help, but now that he mentioned it, the superhuman climbing abilities, the wild strength, and the hawk watching over him from a woods better suited to songbirds all seemed to point in one direction.

"You might be right," she considered. "What's he doing here?"

Gray grunted again. "A better question is, what are you doing here? Who are you in this world, anyway? I know you're not Cinderella; that's Lucy."

"I'm Sleeping Beauty."

"Huh. I guess you are comatose from alcohol consumption half the time, though I can't say you look particularly attractive while doing it."

Cana laughed. "Yeah, well, Maleficent bungled her curse this time round, so now I roam about the countryside rescuing captive princes instead."

Even with them both hanging upside-down, Gray's pointed look packed a punch.

"I'm still learning this whole hero business, alright?" she defended.

This made him frown. "Speaking of which, who's your Prince Phillip?"

"No clue. Not run into him yet."

"Any ideas, though?"

"This your way of trying to work out if you have a chance?" Cana asked teasingly, though if his unimpressed expression was any indication, her sly looks did not work particularly well upside-down. "Nah, not really. Though I did wonder if it was going to be Gildarts."

"…"

"Oh, surely you of all people have seen Frozen!"

"Nah. Never really saw the appeal."

"But you used to love-"

"Yeah, well, I grew up," he snapped. "Besides, you see one soppy love story, you've seen them all."

"Not this one. At the climax of the story, the heroine is turning to ice and can only be saved by an act of true love. Everyone assumes it's going to be a kiss from the guy she's fallen for, but in the end, it's sacrificing herself to save her sister that breaks the spell."

"Hmm."

"Familial love is still love, that's all I'm saying. Plus the fact that Frozen is awesome and you should definitely watch it. You might even learn what proper ice magic looks like. Are you even an Ice Make mage if you can't create a castle one-handed whilst belting out the best song ever put to screen?"

A grunt informed her that Gray did not think very highly of sing-along fight sequences.

There was a lull in the conversation – a quietness merging the rustle of feathers, the soft crackle of the fire, and Cana humming something that sounded a lot like the snow glows white on the mountain tonight.

Yet it seemed Gray couldn't let it go after all. "Are you hoping it's Gildarts? The person whose love can get you out of this world, I mean." Then, with cheeks redder than the glowing fire, he clarified hastily, "I assume you've heard by now that we have to get out of here by completing our stories and finding true love? It's total nonsense if you ask me, but according to the First Master, that's how this world works."

"Yeah, Lucy told me the same thing."

"So, do you want it to be him? I mean, he's your dad. He's supposed to love you, you're supposed to love him, and sure, the first nineteen years of that relationship might not have gone to plan, but you're there now, aren't you? Meeting him here will just confirm that. You'll get to go back home, and nothing will really have changed. Isn't that the best outcome?"

"I don't know." A thoughtful frown crossed Cana's face, or at least as thoughtful as she could manage at that moment; the increased bloodflow to her head was not bringing with it any great clarity. "It would be good to get back to Fairy Tail so easily, but this is also an unprecedented chance to find out who my destined true love is without having to suffer through yet another terrible blind date. Compared to reality, fairytales are a neat shortcut to a happily ever after. Honestly, I think this world owes it to us, after what it's put us through so far."

"Even if you don't know who that destined person is going to be?"

"That's what makes it fun!"

From the silence, Gray did not share her optimism. But Cana's curiosity was piqued, now. Reticence was hardly unusual for Gray, especially when it came to anything vaguely romantic, but she knew him well enough to know that this indirect but dogged dance around such a personal topic of conversation meant something.

She just had to figure out what it was.

Well, Cana might not be the best hunter in the world, if her failed attempt to track Shan Yu was anything to go by, but she could be sly when she wanted to be.

"So," she began, carefully, "who are you in this fairytale world?"

"Prince Eric," he mumbled.

"Oh, course you are. Juvia's the natural choice for a mermaid."

"Yeah."

"Guess that makes things pretty easy for you, then," she wheedled. "Your princess is already head over tail fins for you. All you've gotta do is find her and-"

"IkissedLucy," he blurted out.

"Come again?"

"I," he said, eyes squeezed shut under the strain of forcing out the words at a reasonable pace, "I kissed Lucy."

Silence.

And then: "You did what? When? Why? How did she react? Tell me everything!"

Gray winced. Even Shan Yu's hawk fluttered its wings reproachfully at her outburst, but waking their captor was a trivial concern next to gossip of this magnitude. Maybe Gray had thought he was safe by confessing it while in a different dimension to Mira, the Shipping Overlord of Fairy Tail, but he was Cana's oldest friend, and that made this absolutely her business.

"I, uh… it was on the boat. Y'know, at the start of The Little Mermaid, before the storm hits and Eric is shipwrecked. Lucy was on board with me, and… well…"

"Wow."

Gray and Lucy? Why the hell hadn't Lucy mentioned a development of this magnitude when Cana had met her on the beach? Some friend she was!

"How did Lucy react?" she inquired, partly intrigued, and partly to gather ammunition in the form of secrets in preparation for when she next ran into the Celestial Spirit mage.

"Uh." That one word summed it up well enough for Cana, but credit to Gray, he kept trying. "Let's say she didn't give me great faith in my kissing abilities."

"She was probably taken by surprise," Cana reasoned. "I had no idea you felt that way about her."

"I don't," Gray said miserably.

"You… what?"

"I just… I don't know. I like her, she's a friend, a really good friend, but… I don't… I just panicked."

"Panicked?" Cana blinked. "What, you thought you were going to die in Prince Eric's shipwreck, and didn't want to go without having experienced your first kiss? Cause you probably should have got on that bandwagon a whole lot earlier; I've been telling you for ages that you need to get out there-"

"Cana," he said, almost pleadingly, and she shut up. It wasn't every day that Gray was willing to talk about something so private, even to her.

Well, it seemed less that he was willing and more that he would burst if he didn't talk about, but she'd take what she could get when it came to him.

"What happened, Gray?"

"The First Master appeared before me and Lucy on the boat. She told us how to get out of the fairytale world – you know, by following our stories to find our true loves. I had already realized I was in Prince Eric's role, and Juvia was the obvious Little Mermaid. The storm was approaching just like in the story, and I just… I suddenly realized that this was it. The rest of my life had already been written. I would end up married to Juvia whether I wanted it or not. It filled me with such a sense of dread, like even if we defeated Alvarez and saved the guild, my future had still been stolen from me. And… and Lucy was there, and you're right, I've never seen her in a romantic way, but I like her, we get on fine, and I don't think I'd be unhappy living with her. In that one, stupid moment, I thought that if I picked Lucy then and there, they couldn't force me into a so-called happy ending with Juvia."

"…Oh," was about all Cana could say.

"I know, it was awful of me," Gray admitted, unable to meet her gaze. "Trying to use Lucy like that without considering her feelings. I feel horrible, knowing I've probably lost her friendship in one crazy, stupid act."

"Oh, you won't have done," she assured him. "Just apologize next time you see her, and explain why you did it, so that she knows exactly where the two of you stand. She'll totally get it. She hated the idea of being stuck in her story, too, albeit for slightly different reasons."

Gray nodded slowly, though it came out as more of a tired judder, being upside-down as they were.

Still, in return for that snippet of wisdom, Cana felt she deserved some more gossip. "So, what you were saying about Juvia… is that how you really feel about her?"

He winced again. In fairness, a night full of difficult conversations about his relationships was probably not what he was expecting when he was kidnapped by Shan Yu.

"It's not that I don't like her or anything," he established firmly. "I do. She's my friend, like Lucy; a good friend. But… I don't know how many times I have to tell her that she isn't any more to me than that. Her conviction that I'll cave if she asks just one more time makes me so uncomfortable."

Now that he had started, it seemed he couldn't stop. "Truth is, a lot of things about her actions make me uncomfortable. She doesn't take me seriously when I say no; the best I can do is delay the decision, which calms her down a little and gives me a brief respite. But I can't so much as look at a woman outside of the guild without her feeling an anger or a betrayal that she is not entitled to! So there goes my chance of finding someone I do like, my ability to get out there as you put it."

He drew in a deep breath, but it didn't last long before he burst out, "And everyone encourages her! They pair me up with her on missions by default, when sometimes I'd really rather go with someone else. Everyone acts like we're a couple, undermining all my attempts to convince her that we're not. If she wants her character to revolve around me, fine, that's her choice. But it's not fair that mine has to revolve around her because of it."

"Wow," Cana commented, when it seemed like he had reached an end. "I never knew you felt so strongly about it. You're always pretty chilled about everything."

"Yeah, well. I don't want to hurt her. And… if I did something really dramatic to get through to her, if I properly broke her heart, I'm not sure how many people would be on my side. Mira is always encouraging her, Lucy too, and Erza, and… I don't know how I can let her down without looking like the villain, and losing my friends in the process."

"You told me, though," Cana pointed out, touched but hiding it behind a teasing grin.

"Must be all the blood rushing to my head, making me dizzy and illogical," he grumbled. "Cana… please don't get me wrong, Juvia is important to me. But the thing is, right before we got sucked into this world, me and Juvia were fighting some evil dude from Alvarez called Invel. He tethered me and Juvia together, and used a spell that made us lose our senses and fight each other until there was only one survivor. But, independently, we both fought against the spell and made the decision to kill ourselves rather than harm the other."

A soft breath of sympathy whistled between her teeth. "Hell. That's tougher than anything I faced. But you're still here, so…"

"We should both have died, but with the last of her magic, Juvia was able to save me. I believed she had died, and went on to defeat Invel in a rage, although I later learnt from Mavis that the fairytale curse had kicked in just in time, transporting us all into this world and saving Juvia's life in the process."

"Thank goodness," she said, with feeling.

"I would have died for Juvia back then. And I would do it again in a heartbeat. She… is precious to me, and if she didn't know that before, she definitely does now. But the thing is, I would also do it for Lucy. Or for Natsu. Or for you. And we were thrown from that terrible scenario into this lovey-dovey world so quickly that it's only going to reinforce her deluded fantasy that I want to be with her. That's why I panicked with Lucy on the ship. It feels like not just Juvia and the guild, but the entire universe is now working against me."

Cana snorted. "I highly doubt that this fairytale world was set up for you, and that my own epic journey to find true love is a mere side-quest on the path to your glorious happy ending," she said, and she was relieved to see him crack a smile. "Besides, The Little Mermaid isn't much of a love story anyway. Remember how we used to skip through that boring Kiss the Girl segment to get to the bit where badass Prince Eric impales the sea-witch with his boat?"

"Yeah," he chuckled. "You always used to say it was Ursula's comeuppance for trying to trick her way into marrying Eric. If she'd just stuck to the whole overthrowing King Triton thing, she'd probably have won."

"Truth," Cana grinned.

"Not sure what the moral of the story is supposed to be under your interpretation, though…"

"Isn't it obvious? True love is only for beautiful young protagonists. The rest of us have to stick to lesser goals, like world domination."

Gray snorted. For a moment they just hung there, two captives, gently swinging back and forth as a strange world's night set in, nowhere near as depressed as they should have been.

"Say, Gray," Cana spoke up. "Don't worry too much about where this story is going to take you. You may be Prince Eric, but you were just kidnapped from Cinderella's Castle by Shan freaking Yu. We're deep in the woods now, my friend, in more ways than one."

"I guess it is hard to see how my story is going to get back on track from here…"

"And what did the powers that be expect, really, trying to combine Fairy Tail with stories of tradition and routine? I don't know what the grand finale of our version of these fairytales is going to look like, but if it ends with you and the Little Mermaid getting happily married on a boat, I'll give up alcohol and take up spinning like a good Sleeping Beauty."

"That'll be the day."

And although the night was growing darker, the future was brightening a little.

"Still, not much we can do as captives," Cana reflected. "For now, let's focus on getting away from Shan Yu."

In retrospect, it might not have been the best idea to have this conversation in front of their captor. He may have been confident enough to let them converse while he rested, but letting them actively plan an escape would require a level of arrogance too high for a villain who had already lost his army in Tung Shao Pass. He rolled to his knees with surprising grace for such a hulking man, blade jumping into his hand.

Cana shut up at once – but Shan Yu wasn't looking at his captives. Instead, he had his back to them, sword raised threateningly towards a bunch of trees.

"Oookay," Cana remarked to Gray.

Overhead, the harsh cry of the hawk swept through the woods like sonar. Shan Yu rasped, "I know you're there. Show yourself."

Something shot out of the forest. It struck the barbarian's sword-hand; the blade went flying and had embedded itself into a distant tree before he even had time to grunt. The hawk cried again, taking to the sky with a mad flutter of wings.

"You fool!" Shan Yu hissed, but that was as far as he got.

Like an arc of shadow, visible only as a blur in the gloom, a second attack launched from the trees. This one hit the huge man directly. The force of it smashed him across the clearing, and when a massive oak tree finally put an end to his headlong flight, he slumped to the ground amongst the roots and did not get back up.

Cana and Gray's mouths hung open. Which was an impressive feat, considering they were both still upside down.

A hazy silhouette detached itself from the forest and glided towards the clearing where the two of them dangled, unable to move, waiting to find out whether they were being rescued or condemned to a fate worth than death…

Or perhaps, for Gray, it was both at once.

"Never fear, dearest Gray!" Juvia announced, stepping into the firelight. "Juvia is here to rescue her true love!"

A/N: Hey look, it's a chapter focussing on some other characters for a change! See, I *can* write chapters without Lucy, Levy, Zeref, or Jellal in!

I was surprised to find that, after years of really not liking Gray/Juvia and the way it was handled in canon, I'd never actually written anything down about it before. In fact, I'd written a romantic Gray/Juvia shipping chapter in a separate story before writing anything which explicitly highlights the mountain of issues with shipping them. So this was long overdue for me. There's nothing new or radical about the interpretation of their relationship here, but this is only the start of Gray's story, and hopefully as it develops over the next few chapters, it will evolve in a more interesting way. Thanks as always for reading! ~CS