The Princess and the Commoner

Chapter 16: 3 Years

It had been 3 years since Natsu woke up. Lucy went to him everyday and took care of him. But today was different, Lucy walked up the stairs and into the room where Natsu was sleeping. She smiled and got the cloth from his head, 

"We miss you Natsu. You need to wake up soon..." Lucy put the cloth in the water by Natsu's bed and put it back on his forehead. She put her hand on his face and smiled, "You've had enough sleep, right?" Lucy took a deep breath and started walking to the door. She heard a soft laugh and quickly turned around, Natsu had a slight smile on his face and his face was turned to Lucy. She just stood there in shock. Silent tears fell down her face and she ran to Natsu. She wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him close. Natsu laughed again and slowly wrapped his arms around Lucy and hugged her back, 

"Natsu...I missed you so much." Lucy pulled away from their hug and smiled brightly at Natsu. But he didn't return the smile, he frowned and looked at Lucy straight in the eye, 

"How long has it been Lucy?" Lucy dropped her smile and looked to the ground. Then looked back up to Natsu, 

"...3 years." Natsu's eyes widened in shock and he put his hand to his head. When he touched his hair, he pulled the end of it forward to look at it. 

"My hair grew longer..." Lucy looked at Natsu's long pink hair and smiled slightly, 

"Yeah. You need to get a haircut...you don't look the same." Natsu looked at Lucy and smiled, 

"Yeah, you're right." Natsu sat up and got out of the bed. He headed to the door and Lucy followed after him. She looked at his head and noticed that his head was still bandaged and there was slight blood on the white bandages. She remembered that Wendy said that his wound wouldn't heal. Lucy frowned and looked at his head, 

"Natsu. Are you sure that you want to be walking around right away?" Natsu turned around and smiled at Lucy. 

"Yeah. I'm fine. I'm sick of sitting in a bed sleeping. I want to go on a job. Do you want to go with me?" Lucy smiled and sighed, 

"The same as always." She looked at Natsu and grinned evilly, 

"Only if Gray, Erza, Wendy, Gajeel, and Levy go with." Natsu frowned in confusion, 

"Why metal face and Levy?" Lucy smiled, 

"They just recently joined Team Natsu." Natsu smiled a toothy grin, 

"Now we're really the strongest team in Fairy Tail!" He ran out the door as Lucy sighed and ran after him. When she got to the bottom of the stairs she realized that nobody had seen Natsu in 3 years. They were all open mouthed as Natsu just stood there looking at everyone. Suddenly, everyone in the Fairy Tail guild screamed out. Natsu grinned and everyone ran up to him giving hugs and crying. After everyone gave Natsu a hug, he went around the guild gathering up all the members of Team Natsu. 

"Gray!" Gray turned around at the familiar voice and grinned at his fire breathing friend, 

"Hey flame brain. Did you sleep good?" Natsu went up to Gray and put his hand on his shoulder in a friendly way. 

"Sure did." Natsu grinned, "Do you want to go on a job with me and the rest of the team? We're going to go pick a job so I can finally do something after 3 years." Gray laughed and gave Natsu a thumbs up, 

"Sure thing pal." Natsu smiled again and went to find the rest of the team. Lucy smiled as she watched Natsu talking to everybody. 

"It's like he was never in a coma. Like he's been awake these past 3 years, It's crazy." Lucy smiled and looked at Levy, 

"Sure is. So, do you, Gajeel, and Lily want to go on a job?" Levy looked at Gajeel who just grunted. She looked back to Lucy and smiled brightly, 

"Sure. Gajeel's ok with it so I'm ok with it." Lucy smiled and hugged her friend. 

"Thanks Levy." Levy nodded and hugged Lucy back. Soon, Natsu ran up to Lucy with a big grin on his face, 

"Everyone said yes. Now let's go find a job and get going!" Lucy nodded and ran up to the request board with Natsu. He looked at the request board then grabbed one of the papers, 

"This one is perfect!" Lucy looked at the request and read through it. It said, 

'Please Help! We need someone to catch some thieves that stole something from my shop. It is a large group and they are all mages. Their boss is a man with purple hair and his name is Geese and wears a blue bandana around his neck. 

Reward 100,000 jewel'

Lucy smiled and grabbed the paper, 

"Sure thing Natsu. Sounds like a good job, seems pretty easy..." Lucy and Natsu walked up to the bar and put the request on the table for Mira to stamp. She turned around and smiled at Natsu and Lucy, 

"Going on a job right after you wake up Natsu? You might need a longer sleep time the next time you get hurt." Natsu grinned, 

"Maybe. But I'm sick of sitting on my butt and doing nothing so I'm going to go out on a job. And I have Lucy and Happy to look after me." Natsu smiled at Lucy and walked away, probably trying to pick a fight with someone. Lucy sighed and looked back to Mira who had an evil grin on her face. She got up in Lucy's face and whispered something in her ear, 

"NALU is on board with GALE." Lucy blushed furiously and frowned at Mira, 

"No It's not! And neither is the other one!" Mira laughed and pulled away from Lucy, 

"Sure thing Lucy..." Lucy grabbed the paper and stomped away. After a few more minutes of goofing off, Team Natsu moved out to complete their job. But Natsu had a bad feeling, like something bad was going to happen. There was a strange tension in the air and it was making the fire dragon slayer uncomfortable. Lucy looked back at him and waved for him to move faster, 

"Come on Natsu! We're going to leave without you if you don't hurry up!" Natsu smiled and ran after his team, 

"Wait for me guys!" When Natsu got up to Lucy, he smiled at her and looked into the distance. Nothing was going to happen. Everything was going to be fine like it always was. Natsu brushed off the strange feeling he had and went along with his friends while fighting with Gray like he always did. But somewhere in the distance, someone was watching them. 

"We're going to be able to get you both..." The intruder leveled his gun and aimed it at the boy with pink hair then moved it to a young girl with blue hair. "Wendy Marvell and Natsu Dragneel." the man laughed and put his gun down and stood up. 

"We're never going to give up..."