From Puppy to Prince

It's More Fun When We're Together!

A week after the puppy incident, Lucy seemed different. She had started avoiding Natsu and Happy, taking solo jobs, and even avoiding her fellow guild mates. It seemed that all she wanted to do lately was sit in her apartment and write. When she had to go on a job with Team Natsu to Oak Town, she made sure she bunked with Erza.

It was on the way back from this job that Natsu had had enough. The group was walking from Oak Town to the Desert Village to the south east, with Lucy lagging far behind the rest. A few times now, Natsu had tried to walk beside her, but she would either slow down or speed up, anything to not walk by him. By now the whole guild knew something had happened between them during that trip to Shirotsume Town, and had been giving him grief about it.

When they finally reached Desert Village, they booked two rooms, at Lucy's request. Natsu pulled Gray aside when they had gone into their room. "Gray, you gotta help me!"

"Is it about whatever you screwed up with Lucy, Flame brain?" Gray glared at him like he normally did, but this time there seemed to be more than playful rivalry behind it.

Natsu collapsed onto the bed, his head in his hands. "Yes, I want to fix it. I don't know what I did, but I need to fix it. I can't take the way the guild looks at me, and I can't take the whispers. But most of all, I can't take her absence... It's killing me!" He started pulling at his hair.

Gray had never seen his frienemy so distraught. Sure, when one of his friends was threatened by the enemy, or he felt like his guild was being attacked, Natsu could become serious and quite insightful, but this was different. This was true pain. Gray put a hand on Natsu's shoulder, "What do you need?"

Looking up at his friend, slightly surprised by the change in Gray's demeanor, Natsu nodded, "I need to have some alone time with Lucy. Do you think you could convince Erza to leave early tomorrow and not tell Lucy? Happy can go with you guys, I just think if I can get her alone, and actually talk to her, with her having nowhere to run away to, that she will have to listen to me." Happy, who had been listening the whole time from the little table in the room, decided he would go with Gray and Erza. He didn't like seeing his friends hurting.

With a nod, Gray pulled a chair next to the bed. "Yeah, I can do that. Erza will definitely go along with this. I'll talk to Erza tonight, and then I'll go talk to the carriage driver. Since we are his only passengers, I'm sure it won't take much to convince him to leave early. Also, Lucy will want to go home as fast as possible, to get away from you," Natsu winced as he said this, "so she will probably decide to start walking to the next town, since there is only one carriage a day that leaves from here. The nearest place is the Sabertooth guild, so she will probably head there. Use that time to talk to her." Natsu nodded, hope glinting in his eyes for the first time since they took the job. Gray stood, "Now I'll go talk to Erza. Stay here. You don't want to spook Lucy." With that, he left.

Natsu lay back on the bed, closing his eyes. He wanted to badly to believe that this plan would work, because if it didn't, he could lose Lucy forever.

Meanwhile, in the girl's room, Gray knocked on the door. Erza's voice called from inside, "Come in."

Gray opened the door and walked in. "Erza, there seems to be a problem with the carriage driver. He said he wanted to speak to you. He mentioned it was something about the carriage being over-packed, I think."

With a sigh, Erza stood and went to the door. "Come on Gray... Lucy, I'll be back." She stepped out of the room and walked to the end of the hallway, away from sight or hearing range of her room, with Gray following. "Spill it. You and I both know the carriage man didn't say that, so what do you want?" She put a hand on her hip, glaring slightly, looking quite formidable.