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Loke came home to a sight he never thought he’d see again.
A niccola was waiting for him inside the door.
Loke double checked the number on the apartment to make sure he had unlocked the right door. But it was the number on his lease, and the room was decorated the way he had bothered to, so he stepped inside.
This may as well happen today. It wouldnt even be the craziest thing to happen this week.
(How could it be when he was Natsu two days ago?)
It was a pure white Niccola, a yellow nose, fairly firm body, and the usual shaking.
And it was sucking on a lollipop.
“What brings you here, little guy?” Loke asked, rubbing the top of his head the way most Niccola liked to be pet. It made the familiar happy ‘puuuu’ sounds, “I don’t think you just happened to wander into the house of the disgraced and exiled celestial lion.”
At that it perked up and used a free hand to offer Loke an envelope.
Well then.
Loke opened it.
Please meet me tonight at 11:00 p.m. at the corner of Laurel Hill and Twice Street to talk about my secret.
It wasn’t signed.
Laurel Hill and Twice? That area had some of the most expensive mansions in Magnolia.
Someone had made Niccola popular pets among the wealthier class of women a decade ago. Could this be a random wealthy lady looking for a date?
No, it mentioned a secret. There was only one celestial wizard that would have any reason to think Loke knew a secret about them.
“You’re contracted with Lucy, aren’t you?” Loke asked his guest.
“Puuuuu-puuuuuuuu!” he nodded cheerfully, holding up his almost finished lollipop.
“She give you that?”
More nodding.
Wait, Happy had mentioned this spirit once. “She named you Plue, right?”
With a crunch, Plue finished off the popsicle and agreed again. Then Plue held up the candy stick.
The little dogs were always so adorably helpless. Loke took the stick and threw it away in the garbage.
“Are you instructed to stay here until you get an answer?” Loke asked, taking a seat on his couch.
Plue shook his head and jumped into Loke's lap, nudging Loke's hand for more pets.
Loke obliged. The celestial magic humming under Plue’s skin made his heart ache, but he had missed this. It was such an innocent touch, an honest affection. Niccola had a basic grasp of language, but there’s no way this creature understood the intricacies of Leo’s crimes or the horror of his punishment.
Plue wanted to be pet, and he decided Loke should be the one to pet him after his snack.
Eventually Plue had enough, pulled away, tapped his nose to the palm of Loke’s hand, gentle enough not to prick, and vanished back to the celestial world.
Left with the aching loneliness and Lucy’s note, Loke decided to go and straighten things out.
As a thank you for a moment he never thought he would have again, telling Lucy he didn't know her secret was the least he could do.
Lucy had one hand wrapped around the big iron gate of one of the houses on the corner when Loke arrived. They were the only two people around, late enough that most of the houses had turned off their lights and gone to bed.
He stopped ten feet from her, right where the pull of her celestial magic started.
“Well, my mysterious admirer has called me here for a midnight rendezvous,” Loke flirted. Before he could stop himself, he added, “I’m not sure it will work out between us, but I couldn’t leave a beautiful girl waiting after receiving such a unique invitation to a date.”
“I get why rich people feel the need to gate their houses,” Lucy began, still looking at her hand holding the gate and ignoring his deflection completely, “They have a lot to lose should anyone try to break in and everyone knows it, but gates like these always made these houses feel like a prison to me.”
Wealth was typically considered the opposite of a prison, but there was no denying she was holding very cell-like iron bars right now. And Loke knew better than anyone that prisons didn't have to look like prisons to keep you trapped.
Finally, she released the gate and turned to him with a nervous smile, “Thanks for coming, I know I’m the last person you want to see.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” Loke defended weakly. Of course she thought that way, what other way could she think he felt? He cleared his throat, “I came because I think we need to clear up a misunderstanding. I don’t avoid you because of you, it’s me, so just forget about me like a bad dream.”
He winced as soon as it left his mouth.
Lucy giggled, “Is that the extent of your vocabulary? Flirts and cheesy break-up lines?” Then she turned to lean her back against the bars of the fence and looked wistfully at the sky, “No, I’ve figured it out. Once you had my face and my magic, that’s when you started avoiding me.”
Loke froze, ice crawling in his veins. He’d avoided her precisely because she had the magic to figure out his secret, especially with the brains she’d shown off during the Changeling incident. Something he’d done there, or maybe something Natsu had told her when he was in Loke’s body, must have put the final pieces together for her.
Wait, what did her face have to do with it?
She eyed him without turning her head, leaving her in moonlit profile, “You know my last name, don’t you?”
Her last name? No one had ever mentioned her last name around the guild.
But there was also a feeling that she was right, he did know her last name.
Loke looked at her slowly. Really looked at her. Generous chest and tiny waist that made anything look sexy. A round face with large golden brown eyes, pert nose, small ears, and, of course, that sunbeam yellow hair.
A step closer, and even the pull of her life-giving magic echoed across his long, long life. Seven years ago, 120 years ago, 400 years ago, 700 years ago. This clan, these women, they always had a string tied around his heart when he was uncontracted.
“You can say it, I don’t mind,” Lucy encouraged with a small smile.
“Heartfilia,” Loke whispered. “You are Lucy Heartfilia.”
He really should have known better than to even attempt to fool a Heartfilia.
Lucy’s shoulders straightened at the sound of her name, standing up from her lean against the fence. Then she relaxed and walked towards him. “It’s been a while since I’ve heard my full name, but it feels good to be reminded. I didn’t expect that.”
Loke blinked, “Why are you hiding your name?”
“It’s a long story,” Lucy said, taking a step past him, “Walk with me?”
No point in avoiding her now. She already knew about him, so might as well torture himself with the sense of her celestial magic a little bit more.
“People always treated me differently, once they knew about my last name,” Lucy explained quietly. “The good ones wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole and the bad ones wouldn’t leave me alone if they were nearby. And it wasn’t like we haven’t earned that reputation.”
Wait, what? The Heartfilia’s hadn’t had a reputation as a regional power since before the magic clan wars. The survivors had slipped among the magic using population with barely a whisper of their past after the dragon wars reshaped the foundations of society 400 years ago. Had he missed something?
“You haven’t earned that reputation,” Loke said uncertainly.
“Haven’t I? I lied on my guild paperwork, I’ve lied by omission to everyone in the guild, putting them in danger. All because I selfishly want to be more than the name I was born with.”
Now Loke’s eyebrows really pinched together. “Taking up celestial magic and joining Fairy Tail isn’t the way to leave a name like yours behind. And we all have secrets, no one is going to fault you yours.”
Lucy hugged herself, “Does your secret have the chance of inviting excessive retribution on everyone near you? Because I know my father. It’s only a matter of time.”
There was a record scratch in Loke’s brain. Her father? Who the hell cared about Lucy’s father?
Lucy’s mother was Layla Heartfilia, she was the one that Loke helped open an eclipse gate seven years ago, and the line of mothers standing behind her were the ones that gave the Heartfilia name meaning.
Who the hell could her father possibly be compared to that?
Lucy stopped before some railroad tracks, glaring down at them. “I don’t know how long it will take for him to notice I’m gone, but once he does, he will stop at nothing to get me back. Ever since my mother died, I’ve been his to control. I know I got people fired when I made my escape, but I’m enough like my father to not care so long as I got what I wanted.”
Every word sent the alarm bells in his head louder and louder. Who the f—
—Oh. That’s . . . something.
The synapse connected at last. Lucy glared at the railroad tracks like she wanted to kill them, because she kinda did, at least what they represented. A Heartfilia he’d heard about in his exile but it hadn’t even crossed his mind to connect the man to the giants of his past.
“I hate him,” Lucy spat. “I don’t ever want him to come within a foot of me or any member of the guild in this lifetime.”
“You thought I was running away from you because I was scared of your rich father?”
Loke couldn’t help the way his laughter filled the night.
Lucy pouted. She had made the connection and figured it out! Why was he laughing! “Well, yeah. My celestial magic hasn’t been a secret in the articles written about my family. You’re not the kind of person to judge me based off my magic and what other celestial wizards are like, no matter what the rumors say. I realized that my face and my magic must have made you remember one of those articles. And it isn’t about me, you decided to stay away from the runaway heiress whose dad is just waiting to pay someone to smash in the heads of anyone who touches what’s his. Am I wrong?”
Loke gave another laugh, wiping away a tear from his eye, “Completely.”
Well, crap. Just when she had Loke all figured out, it turns out she was laughably off base.
Lucy folded her arms, “How did you know my last name then?”
That sobered him up. His unfairly beautiful face was visible in the starlight and streetlights, but a shadow crossed over it.
She didn’t like that at all.
“So you don’t actually know my secret,” Loke said, sticking his hands inside the pockets of his parka. “That’s almost . . . disappointing.”
His secret? They were here about her secret.
But she had called him knowing about her father his secret, and maybe she had confused him right back.
Yesterday, when she had believed Loke knew what she was hiding, first was dread. Because he knew and avoided her just like she was scared people would, but then came the resolve. And now . . .
Now he knew and was laughing about it.
It made her feel a little weightless.
Maybe Loke had a moment of that himself when he thought she did know his secret.
“No, I don’t know your secret, but if you feel like being brave and telling me, I’ll keep it safe.” Lucy decided. “You’re the only person that knows mine in the guild, and it feels . . . freeing, in a scary weightless kind of way, to have just one person know.”
Loke raised an eyebrow, “And if you are the literal last person on earth that I want to find out?”
He said it so casually, with just a hint of the desperate edge underneath.
Lucy knew that tone immediately, she had used it with Gramps, and Mira, and Erza, and Aquarius, and even her father, long long ago.
I don’t want to disappoint you.
Lucy stepped closer and tugged his hand out of his pocket.
He was shocked enough to let her.
“Then telling me is going to take a lot of courage.” Holding his hand between hers, she looked up into his shaded eyes, “But one runaway to another? Always running is exhausting, and I am giving you permission to stop.”
A heart beat passed.
Loke surged forward to wrap her in the tightest hug she had ever received. His head was buried in the crook of her neck. The strength of his grip felt proportional to the weight of his secret.
Lucy held him back firmly, because he was not going to run away from her after sharing this small shred of his pain with her.
His head rose and his lips murmured in the shell of her ear, as though scared the very air was eavesdropping, “I am going to die.”
Lucy froze. Because she was 17 and knew nothing about death.
Her tutors from the highest echelons of scholarship had taught her physics and philosophy, economics and history, but none of them had taught her what to say to someone who was dying.
Her own life had only one person die that truly meant something to her, and it had changed her life so permanently for the worse that she wanted to shove Loke away and ask if he was joking, because this was like then it was too much, but . . .
. . . but Lucy had offered to hold his secret, and that meant she couldn’t reject it.
Any of it.
Mom’s hug smelled like stargazer lilies, but she kept Lucy off her lap and her arms didn’t squeeze as tightly as they should. Something was wrong, and it was written on Dad’s face and everyone’s face ever since Mom came back from her trip.
Mom was the only one still smiling at her, but her smile was wrong.
“I’m dying Lucy,” Mom told her, “Soon I’m going to leave you and go visit my mother, and you won’t see me for a very long time. Do you know what it means when something dies?"
“Like the people in books,” Lucy said, remembering the clock book. “Like that?”
“Not as dramatically,” Mom laughed, “I’m simply sick, and it is my time to go. I’ll have to love you and watch over you from far away.”
“But-but can we letters?” Lucy asked desperately. “I’ve gotten good at letters.”
“Now there’s a brilliant idea from my smart girl,” Mom brushed her hair from her face. “When-whenever you want to talk to me, write me a letter. I’ll write some for you, and you’ll get them when you’re older. So it really will be like I’m simply somewhere far a-away.” Tears gathered in her eyes.
“Can we play games over letters?” Lucy asked, starting to cry because Mom was starting to cry.
And if Mom was crying, then it was going to be a really long time.
Mom smiled and reached behind her pillow to grab something, keeping it covered with hand while keeping her arms around Lucy. “I have someone who is going to play lots of games with you while I’m gone. Do you remember what I told you about celestial spirits?”
Lucy’s eyes lit up as Mom revealed the key, “AQUARIUS!”
Lucy jumped out of the hug and snatched the key, “The mermaid that’s so good at swimming and is blue like flowers and taught you all about the One Magic! That Aquarius?"
“That’s right,” Mom said. “Why don’t you summon her? Do you remember the words?”
“Really? Can I?” Lucy gushed, jumping to her feet and striking the superhero pose she always imagined celestial wizards using to call on their best friends. “I am linked to the path to the world of Celestial Spirits, now! O spirit, answer my call and pass through the gate! AQUARIUS!”
The blue mermaid appeared and immediately started fussing over Mom’s smiling face.
“It’s good to see you too, old friend,” Mom said.
“How could you—” Aquarius said, but Lucy missed the rest of her words as her eyelids got so heavy.
When Lucy woke up, her mother was gone.
Lucy Heartfilia was 17 years old, and maybe she did know one thing about death and what to do when someone told you they were dying.
Because as precious as Mom's letters were, and as precious as the memory of the first time she summoned Aquarius was—
—Lucy wished she had held onto her mother just a bit longer.
So that’s what she did when Loke started to pull away. She held him as tightly as she could.
“Will you tell me why you’re going to die?” she asked. Because sometimes people get sick, and sometimes they die, and what an awful secret to keep to yourself.
His hold was looser, but still very much not running away. He was very warm and present and a handsome man in her arms and she'd enjoy this so much more if he wasn't dying.
Loke said, “I promised to protect a celestial wizard, but when she needed me, I refused to help. She died. Dying is the punishment of a contract breaker, don’t you agree?”
The emotions she had been trying to keep in check for Loke’s sake flared, “Does it look like I agree?” she demanded, pulling back to glare at him.
How dare he!
Lucy stepped out of the hug to fling her arms up, “Obviously I don’t want you to die! I don’t care what contract you broke! Even if breaking your promise killed someone, you dying for it just means more death and sadness. That’s not fair and it’s not right!”
Loke raised an eyebrow at her, throwing his hands behind his head in false nonchalance, “Are you so sure no contract is worth a life, Lucy Heartfilia?”
“Of course—” her mouth snapped shut, her brain finally processing the way he said her last name, finally processing what kind of contract a celestial wizard makes with someone for protection, processing the self-hate Loke used on the word ‘contract breaker’. If he didn’t know her last name from her father, he must have known her mother.
These little details pointed to one impossible conclusion.
“There it is,” Loke said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He echoed her earlier words. “Go ahead, you can say my name. I don’t mind.”
“Grandpa Crux, what are the other golden celestial spirits like? Are they more Aquarius or Cancer?”
“Each is unique, just like every human! Virgo likes helping people, the twins are mischievous pranksters, and that rapscallion flirt—”
“Leo,” Lucy whispered. “You’re Leo the Lion.”
He lifted a finger to his lips with a wink, “Remember, you promised to keep my secret.”
“How are you alive? You’ve been in Fairy Tail for three years!”
A snap of Loke’s fingers and a ball of light bloomed between them, “I’m a magical creature, in a way. I can stay alive so long as I have magic in my body.” He let the light fade, and shrugged, “Celestial spirits, especially the zodiac, have enough power to move about earthland without a contract or a celestial wizard’s magic, but I can’t regain any of my magic from the spirit world. Once it’s used up, I fade to dust.”
“Then what are you doing in a wizard guild!” Lucy panicked, closing the distance again. “Why did you conjure light like that? That’s literally your life force right now! Did it hurt? Are you okay?” Her hands fluttered uselessly over his shoulders and chest; what did it feel like when someone started to fade? He felt solid enough.
Stupidly, handsomely solid enough under her maybe excessive touches.
“Lucy, Lucy!” Loke laughed, finally grabbing a hold of her hands to hold her still. He cracked a smile that was actually warm this time. “Stop, I’m fine. I’ve been dealing with this for years, but I’m not burnt out yet.”
Lucy frowned, “Are you sure? And don’t use your magic recklessly again.”
Loke nodded and swung their hands to hang down between them, “I’m sure. And most of the ring magic I use is powered by lacrima, not me. I don’t spend magic carelessly on jobs. But I have to use it every once and a while, it’s a part of me. Would you give up your keys if it meant living an extra week or two? Life without magic isn’t worth living for a being like me. You’re Fairy Tail enough to get that.”
Lucy swallowed, because she wouldn’t give up her keys for anything. As much as magic was a part of her as a human wizard, how much more was it a part of a spirit like Loke?
But she selfishly wanted to ask him to give it up anyway. “I don’t know, you can still go on dates with pretty girls even if you don’t have magic. Isn’t that worth something?”
Loke pulled her a little closer, “Maybe for the right girl.”
His gaze was insistent, saying what his words only hinted. Lucy was drowning in those eyes.
This close, now that she knew what to look for, she could feel the celestial magic that made up his being, as familiar as the stars themselves to her.
He was looking at her like she was the only thing worth noticing, and it was heady. The way he said it, the way he was holding her, the vulnerability in that last statement. Lucy believed this intensity a thousand times more than any of his stock lines.
She tilted her head back, just a little, just to see what he would do with the inch she was willing to give him.
Loke stepped back.
He let her go, leaving cold air where his warmth had been, “But then I wouldn’t date the right girl just to make her watch me die.”
Lucy blushed, embarrassed by how quickly she’d been distracted, “Is there really nothing we can do? What if you made a contract with me?”
“My key is part of the lock keeping me from the Celestial World,” Loke said, holding up his empty hands, “Even if I could make a contract with you, I would probably just suck up all your magic until you are past your limit to keep a spirit here and you die of magic depletion sickness. Then I die immediately after you when Natsu kills me.”
Hmm that was a problem, how to get around that? Could the guild make a joint contract with Loke so no one wizard bears the full cost of keeping him alive for long? Distractedly she said, “I wouldn’t let Natsu kill you.”
“I would.”
Lucy snapped out of her thoughts at that. Was he actively suicidal?
Loke shrugged at her, “Life is painful like this. If I managed to kill you too? I’d want to die immediately.”
“There has to be a way around this,” Lucy said, getting back to the topic of preventing Loke from dying. “Could you contract with multiple wizards to spread out the magical strain?”
Loke shook his head, “You know that’s not how the rules for celestial magic work. One spirit, one wizard. The spirit agrees to use their magic when summoned by the wizard for their benefit and protection, and the wizard agrees to abide by the rules set by the spirit in the contract.
“It was the Celestial Spirit King who decreed I had shown such a flagrant disregard for the laws that define celestial spirits that I was exiled and forbidden from ever forming another contract again.”
And there it was.
“So . . . if he decreed it, he’s the one that can lift the decree?”
“No, you can’t summon the Celestial Spirit King,” Loke cut her off.
Lucy placed her hand on her key pouch, “Is that what Crux would say? Because if the King thinks you aren’t capable of keeping a promise to protect someone you care about, he needs to know that he’s wrong.”
“You don’t know that!”
“I do! Because you’re a member of Fairy Tail, and that’s what we do,” Lucy argued. He was gearing up to keep arguing, but she cut in first, “Why did you let your wizard die? Tell me who was more important that you had to protect?”
Pain flashed across his face, deep and aching. She had been spot on.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Lucy smirked triumphantly, “I don’t need to know the details, but I know that if you were my celestial spirit, I would trust you to help me. And if you chose to save someone else and I died? I’d forgive you for that and hope you’d forgive yourself.”
For the third time that night, Lucy closed the space between them, this time holding out her hand, “I don’t want my friend to live with fear and pain. Let me try to help you. I can face down the Celestial Spirit King if you’re with me.”
He raised an eyebrow, “Like you can face down your father?”
Lucy faltered, her hand falling an inch.
Loke frowned and pinched the bridge of his nose, “Sorry, that was too far. I know you’re just trying to help, but you really aren’t grasping what kind of power you’re playing with when you’re talking about addressing the King.”
It was always so much easier to try and fix other people’s problems than face your own. And if anyone had more power than Jude Heartfilia, it was the king of the Celestial World that had the ability to order immortal spirits to death.
Loke was right, what business did she have talking to the Celestial Spirit King if she couldn’t talk to Business Tycoon Jude Heartfilia?
She didn’t.
So start there.
The answer put steel in her bones.
Lucy raised her hand back to where it was, straightening her spine and jutting out her chin, “If you come with me, I will be brave enough to face my father. If we face down one of the most powerful men in Fiore and convince him to let me go and live my own life, will you let us attempt to convince the Celestial Spirit King that you deserve another chance to live yours?”
Loke’s eyes widened. He looked at her hand.
Then her face.
Then her hand again.
He spun around and started to walk away from her, “Of course a Heartfilia would say that. Optimistic, crazy celestial wizard. Of course you’d come to that conclusion. Blackmail me with her own emotional wellbeing. Of course! No way. Stupid-crazy. But . . .” he turned back and saw she was waiting. He took a step back to her.
Then Loke spun around, both his hands squeezing his head.
Then he took rapid steps back to her.
“You won’t endanger yourself?” Loke demanded.
“Within reason,” Lucy decided. “I can’t predict what my father might try, but I’ll do my best to keep us both alive, and I won’t try any spells that Crux says will be guaranteed to kill me.”
“No, if we’re going to do this, then you can’t try any spells that might put you at risk for magic exhaustion,” Loke said. “Crux and Aquarius have to agree you aren’t at risk.”
“Why Aquarius?” Lucy asked suspiciously.
“She’s the only one I know for sure will tell you if you’re being stupid.”
Lucy shook her head, “I can only summon her on Wednesdays and Fridays. I am a guild wizard in my own right so don’t baby me. I will heed Crux, if he thinks something will hurt me or put me in danger of magic exhaustion, I won’t do it, but I make my own choices otherwise.” She wiggled her hand. “Deal?”
Loke stared at the offered hand for so long she was convinced he was going to decline.
Still looking at her hand, he confirmed, “I go with you to confront your father, and if we manage to speak to him and change his mind to let you go and live your life how you want to, then you and I will work on speaking to the Celestial Spirit King, safely, to see if you can change his mind?”
“Yes.”
“Hope only hurts, Lucy,” Loke warned, half raising his hand. “It’s best not to have any.”
“No one else gets to chose whether you are willing to have hope,” Lucy said softly. “Honestly? My thing feels way more impossible than changing the mind of an immortal spirit king. But you make me want to try. Do you feel the same?”
“I do,” Loke said, “I don’t trust the feeling, but I want to put my faith in it anyway. So . . . I guess we have a deal.”
Finally, their hands met. The clasp sealed the ironclad bargain between a celestial wizard and a celestial spirit.
Together, they could face the futures in front of them.
And then, together, once they save her dim future and his pretty face . . .
. . . then they can find out what might happen afterward.