Chapter Text
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Natsu almost regrets throwing aside the fake Igneel’s signature, considering the public beating he’s just earned himself.
One moment, he’s collapsed on the cobblestones, rubbing the aches on his head, thinking of food, missing the real Igneel, wondering just how mad Erza will be if he beats up 20 random women for stomping on him—
Then, there’s a hand on his shoulder.
That hand presses against the soft scarf, slipping almost underneath and brushing against warm skin at the low of his neck.
That hand brings a bright sparking warmth that chases over his spine and makes Natsu’s eyes go blurry for a moment. Beneath his skin, his very soul seems to stretch and grow. His head aches in a whole new way and he groans.
He hears a similar moan from behind him, feels the grip on his shoulder tighten and then waver as the person grabbing him sways.
Happy is chanting beside Natsu’s head, a steady stream of his name, all teasing lilts at the ends. Natsu doesn’t answer.
Because one moment he was thinking of petty revenge, his father, Erza, and his next meal. In the next moment, he is turning to meet eyes he somehow already knows are brown.
"Oh...” the woman, girl really, behind him murmurs. The expression of bafflement is familiar. “Oh…”
“Ah… Lucy.”
“Natsu? Where are we?”
“I think… Hargeon,” he answers, rubbing at his aching head because he remembers coming here on the train and at the same time, he doesn’t remember how he got here at all. He’d been in Magnolia, then suddenly trapped in Acnologia’s time, crystals crawling up his legs—
“Where is he?! Acnologia?” Natsu demands. “Is this some kind of trick?”
“Acnologia… the dragon of magic and time…”
Dark, intelligent eyes blink hard, and flicker up to the town, the surrounding kerfuffle of girls stomping off in heels and the fake Igneel’s —Bora’s— chuckling. Already Natsu sees the gears in her mind working. His own heart feels nervous with disorientation even as he waits and relies on the quickness of her conclusions.
“Natsu,” she says, eyes darting fast over his face. “When are we?”
Ah, so it’s like that.
In that moment, he finally sees the plain youth of Lucy’s face and the lack of callouses and scars on her exposed skin. Even with Wendy’s healing, a coarseness remains from a scar like a shadow that his fine-tuned dragon senses pick up on. Lucy’s body has none of that; the skin is fresh again, clear like undisturbed milk. Skin that has never been thrown off towers, dragged across forest floors or had knives testing the thin membrane of her eyelids.
Natsu’s fist clenches reflexively, he has to shake the thoughts of Demaria away and blink hard at the blue ocean wash. He breathes in the briny coastal air mixed with raw fish of a harbor town, trying to forget the scent of Lucy’s blood.
“Natsu?”
He looks at her, focusing on the steadiness of her eyes, the warmth making her cheeks pink.
“Do you know her, Natsu?”
Natsu glances at Happy, eyebrows furrowing in surprise. “It’s Lucy.”
“Oh…” Happy pauses. “Is that a kind of fish?”
“Stupid cat!” Lucy snaps. “You well know it’s not!”
“So mean!”
Natsu exhales a small laugh, relieved by the ritual. Happy grips Natsu’s leg as he hides from Lucy.
“I don’t know how you know her, but she’s mean, Natsu!”
Natsu looks down to Happy, wishing he wouldn’t say stuff that makes Natsu’s heart constrict. It’s hardly his style to be stressed but Happy is bringing it out of him in the worst way.
“Come on, you know Lucy!” Natsu tries.
Happy squints at her, and then looks at Natsu like he’s the idiot.
Even if she is old-Lucy and not the usual kind, she’s still reliably Lucy, down to the belt holding her celestial keys. So, why doesn’t Happy recognize her? Why are they in Hargeon? Why are they replaying an old scene like this?
Natsu’s not good at questions like this, it makes his hands itch for something to fight, something immediate for him to resolve, but he only has the coastal town draped before him, sleepy and cheerful.
Lucy touches his forearm, dragging his eyes ever back to her.
“Come on, let’s get something to eat. Even if it is some kind of trick, we need to talk.”
Natsu lurches at the chance. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s eat. It’s impossible to think like this.”
As they walk, he finds his eyes chasing over her body, young, still immature in some ways. Her eyes are all the intensity of a problem rolling over in her mind.
She’s here with him, so he supposes they’ll be alright. As long as she’s alive with him instead of cold and bloodied like earlier today, he really can’t help but be optimistic.
“So, are we asleep or something?”
Lucy’s lips curl. “Do you have to ask while eating like that?”
Natsu shrugs, swallowing a long tail of spaghetti that whips sauce over the plate. He’s never been the type to sacrifice appetite for nerves.
"Aren’t you hungry?”
“No, her name’s not hungry, it’s Lucy. Don’t you remember, Natsu?” Happy quips.
Natsu chortles, almost choking on the fist-sized lump of pasta in his throat.
“So you do remember, you blasted cat!”
“Remember what?” Happy blinks at her. She stares back, as though trying to pierce the blank smile of his façade. She never will, Natsu knows better than to have a staring contest against Happy.
She leans back, making a dismissive clucking sound. “Whatever, you crazy cat.” She starts digging through her bag, irritation lacing her movements.
“Do you really not remember her?” Natsu asks, voice lower. He looks hopefully at Happy, hoping to be let in on the joke (please let it all be a joke) but Happy only looks at him with a smile that grows dimmer the more he sees Natsu’s earnest expression. Happy turns his eyes to the ground, breaking their eye contact.
“So! A sleeping spell or something, right? Has to be!” Natsu suggests, forcefully. “I’ll just punch you until you wake up!”
“You’re not going to punch me!” she snaps.
“Fine, I’ll light you on fire, then.” He raises a flame-coated hand. “You need to wake me up right after, okay?”
“With a kick to the face!” she shoots back, expression thunderous. Her leg shoots out under the table and he winces as she catches his shin. She has always had powerful thighs, he admits.
“There. Now, do you really need me to do it to your face?”
Natsu mulls the offer over, but Lucy has finally found what she was looking for.
“Aha!” A blue book is brandished in her hand. “I found it.”
“What’s that then?” He leans closer, but she shoves him back.
“You’re gonna drip spaghetti all over my travel journal.”
Natsu’s lips curl. “Lucy’s diary…” He looks to Happy who is game enough to giggle evilly with him, even if he (apparently) doesn’t know Lucy.
“I—it’s not a diary!” she splutters. “It’s my very serious travel journal!”
“Is that where you keep your pretend boyfriend list?” Natsu enjoys her full-body jerk. Bullseye.
“My completely hypothetical boyfriend ranking has nothing to do with this.” Face fully red, she flips through the entries and then stops on blank entries. Flipping back, she lands on pages filled with her loopy, overly complicated writing. “July 1st, X784… I guess that would make today the 2nd.”
X784?
So it is in fact, like that.
Natsu looks out to the street looking for some kind of confirmation of time travel, but startles to see his own reflection. He’s younger, his face unmarred by the large scar at the bottom of his face. He looks so much thinner too, lean and unbulked. His reflection seems so weak and untested. He doesn’t like the look of himself at all.
He jerks his attention back to Lucy who is watching him with a serious face.
“Natsu… What happened with Acnologia? You defeated Zeref and then what happened? You just disappeared!”
Natsu swallows. Standing before Acnologia was like looking into a particularly deep crevice in the earth. Mortality threatened at any move, any misstep. Even as strong as he’d grown, he still felt it…
Happy’s cheeks puff. “You two are just messing with me now?”
“You’re the one messing with us!” Lucy accuses.
“Am I?” Happy looks guileless, fish wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
Lucy pulls her hair, but Natsu can’t bear to see the ritual played out again.
“He’s not,” Natsu says, brow furrowed.
“Oh.”
He hates the way it takes Lucy aback, her eyes darting to Happy with something like longing. It’s too familiar a feeling, so like the growing awareness swelling painfully in his own chest. For the first time ever, whatever this adventure is, Happy hasn’t joined them this time.
Natsu’s leg kicks out into her shin almost before he knows what he’s doing.
“Ow!” she growls.
“I guess it’s not sleep stuff,” Natsu says, and then summarily dodges her next five kicks.
“Geez! You really are out of control. Let me take care of investigating things. I was a journalist, after all.”
He wants to ask her about that sometime, drag out the most embarrassing interviews she ever held, and make her admit to splitting her pants on lacrima or something else hilarious. He always meant to ask her after coming back from training… For now, he crosses his arms.
“What’s going on then?”
Her lips purse. “I don’t know yet. We need more data. It might be something like Edolas, for all we know. There was so much magic flying around back there in that fight, it could be a lot of things.”
“How do we get this data stuff?” Natsu asks. The name hardly inspires images of adventure or cool fights. Data is just the kind of mission Lucy would pluck off the mission board, rather.
“It only comes out on the full moon,” Happy volunteers knowledgeably.
“It does not!” Lucy rubs her eyes. “Alright. Look, let me do a little experimenting…”
After checking in to a hotel, Lucy changes into a shirt that is more revealing. Even looking so much younger, that bit of cleavage is probably all she needs. She scrunches her shorter hair, the side ponytail striking her all at once as immature. She plays with a few other hairstyles, trying not to get to distracted by the unfamiliarity of her own body. Did she really look like this at 17? Her face looks so much wider, round and unsculpted. Even her hips are almost narrow compared to what they grew into.
She’s almost glad Happy doesn’t seem to remember, if only to avoid his fat jokes.
The feeling doesn’t last, instead threatened by a feeling of clawing panic. It seems like it’s only she and Natsu here….
No, they won’t know until they see the guild, she reminds herself. Someone will be able to help them there, she’s sure. They aren’t alone…
Her eyes drop down to the keys hanging off her mini-skirt. The two seafoam-colored jagged lines taunt her on the end of the golden handle. She’s afraid of touching the metal and feeling the irritated, tempestuous beauty of Aquarius’ power. She’s more afraid of touching the key and feeling nothing at all. If they did go to an alternate universe, then why is this key back and so many other keys missing?
She doesn’t have time to deal with that yet, Lucy reminds herself, taking her hand firmly away from her belt.
For now, she needs to conduct a little experiment to find out if things are the same.
For all she knows they might be in Edolas part two. If not… well, they’ll figure it out.
Bora finds her in the park even faster somehow, with her hanging off the side of the bench almost spilling out of her top.
Too easy, she thinks, twirling her hair as she sits up.
“You’re interested in guilds, girl?”
Ugh. Who calls people ‘girl?’ She resists a shudder, playing up her smile.
“Yeah, I really want to join Fairy Tail, but they’re super strong.”
His lips fold into an oily smirk. “You’re in luck because I happen to be one of the strongest memb— ACK!”
“Natsu!” Lucy stamps her feet.
Bora, completely knocked out on the ground, does not stir even as Natsu puts his foot on his back.
“What?”
“You weren’t supposed to beat him up!”
“What?” He looks at her dubiously “Why not?”
“I wanted to see if things would play out the same.”
“Ugh. That’s so boring—”
“— It’s not about boring or interesting,” she huffs, as they thrash the cronies guarding the dock around Bora’s ships. “It’s about gathering stable data!”
“This experiment stuff sounds totally lame,” Natsu grouses.
“Aye sir,” Happy agrees.
“Experiments need integrity and good conditions! You literally stepped all over that and now we won’t get another chance.”
Women stream out of the secret ship compartments that Lucy burst open with a few well-placed kicks. The girls dash towards the sun, tears in their eyes, and the local law enforcement greets them with blankets.
“Bleugh,” Natsu groans, tossing his half-digested spaghetti over the side of the boat.
The ship is a pyre of glowing flames against the darkening skyline. Again.
“Natsu!” she moans as the Rune Knights’ jaws drop at the spectacle of Natsu’s destruction.
Natsu shakes out a fiery fist. “What? They were talking about giving us a commendation. It’s not like we could bring that home to Gramps!”
And bringing home a stack of property destruction and expenses is better?!
The escaped girls watch the pyre with wide eyes, flames catching in their irises. Almost in a trance, one starts to sing. A local shanty swells, a tale of a sailor who drowned, only to be rescued by a beautiful merfolk. First there’s one voice, then two and then—
Natsu dodges the jab of a Rune Knight’s lance and catches Lucy’s hands, dragging her away from the scene of their (repeated) crime.
“You’re completely crazy!”
“Boats got it coming, far as I’m concerned!” Which, Lucy is sure is as good a reason as any to Natsu. She groans even as her legs work frantically to keep up with his crazy pace.
Happy laughs merrily, flying alongside them as they hightail it out of there. He doesn’t understand, but he’s willing to roll with Natsu, always is. Nothing has changed, she realizes, trying to catch her breath in Natsu’s chaotic wake.
Natsu’s hand in her grip tightens. “It was all the same, right?”
She swallows. “Yeah, it was all just as I remembered. I don’t think this is like Edolas at all.”
He squeezes her again. “Let’s go home, huh?”
Home… They can’t be the only ones here. When they arrive, Erza will throw them into the wall for making her wait and Gray will ask intelligent questions while stripping and even Gramps will ask them to stop destroying the harbor again before rallying their family—
She dares to look sideways, sees the same desperate faith in Natsu’s eyes and knows he’s thinking the same.
They have no reason to fear, she reminds himself… Except if they are alone, what it means for the two of them, the burden on their shoulders, will be something completely different.
“Yeah, let’s go home.” Lucy only lets go of his hand once they reach the open road and wide net of stars cast outside the city chased by the echoing sea shanty.
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