Scars

Is This The End?

"Woohoo! Go Natsu!" someone cheered, and Natsu and Lucy sprung apart.

"Gray!?" Natsu yelped, his voice going up an octave. "What are you -"

The raven-haired mage just looked amused. "You called us here, remember, doofus? Something about getting Lucy out of her house." His eyes slid over to Lucy, who was blushing up a storm and avoiding everyone's eyes, and crinkled in further mirth. "Though you seem to have managed that all by yourself."

"No thanks to you," Natsu muttered.

Gray huffed and crossed his arms. "Excuse you, I made you get some sleep and a shower."

"An unnecessary sleep and shower," Natsu added petulantly.

"You were starting to look and smell like the street's new homeless person."

"Was not." Natsu shot back, crossing his arms too. "Lucy, tell him."

"Bearing in mind I'd barricaded myself in my house at that point?" She asked dryly, and assorted snorts bring the presence of other members of the guild to her attention. Lucy caught a glimpse of Levy and Wendy's signature blue hair and Mira's shock of white, Erza's armour glinting in the sun catching her eyes a split second after Happy's floaty bobbing in the air does. She spotted Gajeel, trying to look like he didn't want to be there but failing miserably, and Cana, trying to look like she was expecting a dead body or something equally horrific but was bitterly disappointed and failing almost as badly as the dragonslayer.

There was a little bit of awkward silence as everyone looked at each other.

"Hey, um. . ." Lucy started. She tried not to shrink back at the feeling of everyone's eyes on her. "I'm sorry for freaking and flipping out on you like that. I should have at least cleared everything up for you before I locked myself away -"

"You didn't have to explain anything," Natsu insisted with a scowl Lucy shouldn't want to kiss away. "I was in the wrong, just assuming like that -"

"It's not just your fault, dumbass!" Gray yelled, whacking Natsu on the head (probably with the intention of knocking some sense into him). "Everyone else assumed right along with you! Nobody ever thought that. . . that. . ."

He swallowed, then winced as he visibly remembered Lucy's outburst.

Lucy tried not to wince too. It was definite that everyone had worked out what it meant by now, and the ones who hadn't or couldn't (for age reasons or intelligence reasons) had no doubt been told, which meant that the whole guild suddenly - almost overnight - knew all about Lucy and her abusive father.

"Sorry," she mumbled automatically, looking at her feet and scuffing the ground with one flip-flop clad foot.

"Nope," Levy said, popping the 'p' as she pushed forward through the crowd that had gathered by Lucy's front door. "I'm never letting you be sorry ever again.  You're gonna be happy forever."

Lucy laughed. "I'm pretty sure that's impossible."

Levy huffed. "Are you doubting me? Lucy Heartfilia, are you doubting my abilities?"

"Absolutely," Lucy replied, head nodding solemnly even as her mind starts to play Lucy Heartfilia on a loop over and over again. "You can't stay with me every second of the day -"

"Sure I can," Levy said, waving a dismissive hand and then draping herself over Lucy's shoulders. "We can go and wash in the hot springs. I can move in with you, or you with me. We'll have a thousand bookcases full to bursting with books and go on missions together and do that thing in movies where we brush our teeth as we stand next to each other and stare into the mirror at our ugly bedhead."