A/N: Hi, everyone! This is Sil (myentropicmess ) posting this time! How are you doing? This time I'm bringing you this oneshot that was supposed to be a submission for nalu-week , but a lot of this happened in my life this summer (one of them being too overwhelmed by the finals u.u) and I have postponed publishing it until now. This little work was inspired by certain list of prompts which I found very interesting and I invite you to take a look. Finally, I want to thank my friends Sara (worshiperofunknownstories ), Sandra (onlywordswithoutsense ) and Marta (mavis-118 ) for putting up with my procrastination and my drama... You're the best. The lyrics I put in the beginning are from the song "Talk about you" by Mika.

Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail Universe or its characters, they belong to Mashima sensei.

'Cause living like this is risking all that I know

And if it kills me, that's the way I wanna go

So pull me under, and put me under spell

Rather be crazy, than normal people in hell.

Freedom.

It was all she could think about when she was wandering, getting lost in the streets of Magnolia when the day was about to die.

No cars. No ocean of people trying to drown her. Only she and her own thoughts.

Her life wasn't that way until that year: on her earliest days, when she was just a little girl, she had been diagnosed with a severe case of asthma, which had threatened her life more than once. However, she had been a strong girl and had been surrounded by the best professionals her parents could afford and overcame it. Years of happiness came, but that didn't last long: her mother, Layla, died because of a long illness and Jude changed. After that, her father locked her in their mansion, due to the fear of being sick again and repeating her wife's story.

No friends. No freedom. Only she and her solitude.

But that changed when Lucy turned eighteen years old. Her father didn't have power over her anymore. She was going to travel to Magnolia and study to pursue her dream: become a journalist.

And there she was: enjoying her way home after another long day at uni. Her flatmate, the bookworm Levy McGarden, was probably doing some research -and, even if she wouldn't tell her, probably flirting with her no-boyfriend Gajeel Redfox- at the library, so the blond would have some time alone to write a few pages of her novel.

Suddenly, the sound of a horn startled her and she found two cars: one placed at the handicap spot from the parking lot in front of her house and the other one behind it, its driver putting his head out of the window.

"What do you think you are doing, brats?" the driver yelled as he honked the horn again. "This is my spot!"

"What did you just said?" the co-pilot from the other car replied in an angered voice as he put his head and part of his upper body out of the window. "I don't see your name in it!"

"What?" The old man with white long beard and eyepatch on his right eye got off the car. "These youngsters these days have no respect to the older ones. Shame on you! Don't you pity a poor disabled man?"

"Come again?" the pink haired boy cried as he got off the car.

"That you just are a little kid that knows nothing about life and you're stealing my spot!"

"That's it! I can't take it anymore!"

"Natsu, no!" a black haired boy said out loud from the driver's window.

However, the warning did little to avoid the situation. The pink haired boy crouched and moved up the fabric of his sweatpants from where his right leg should have been, showing a prosthetic one instead, which was decorated with a pattern of flames and dragon scales. Suddenly, he put it off while leaning on the car.

"What? What are you doing?" the white haired man yelled.

"I'm going to teach you a lesson…" Natsu said as he leaned on the back of his car and catched his prosthetic leg between his hands. "You see… People who make fun at the youngest ones, telling them that they don't know shit about life, I can put up with them…" He looked at him, fire burning in his eyes. "But the ones that use their handicaps to make the others pity them… That makes me really angry."

"Oh, this is going to be interesting! I'm going to write down this!" A girl with glasses and long blond hair popped up from the window of the back of the car.

"Don't encourage him, Mavis!" the black haired boy warned. "Oh… Here we go again…"

"You are no fun, Zeref," Mavis pouted as she looked at him.

"Try the Kick of the Fire Dragon, jackass!"

As the pink haired boy said that, Lucy saw how he threw the leg to the white haired man, who barely dodged it. Watching that surreal scene, the blonde girl couldn't avoid fit of laughter, even if she knew that it was totally out of place and that maybe she would receive the weird kick of that boy. Life didn't stop to surprise her, after all.

"Younger brother, you did it again…" Zeref said while he got off the car with a pair of crutches. "If you keep using your prosthetic leg as a weapon I don't know if we will have enough money to pay the rent."

"Yeah… Yeah… Give me the crutches, big bro," Natsu replied, rolling his eyes.

"If you keep worrying about everything, you will get wrinkles, Zeref," Mavis added, settling her glasses as she got off the car too. "Stop being so negative! All of this will help our research! As your little brother uses his leg that way, we can prove different materials to make it more resistant!"

"Well said!" Natsu disheveled her unruly hair with his hand.

"What worries me is that girl," Mavis said, addressing Lucy's spot. "I don't like her coughs..."

While being too lost in the conversation between the members of that peculiar group, she didn't noticed that, bit by bit, she was starting to lose her breath because of her continuous giggling. It had been years since the last asthma attack happened to her, and she had thought that her illness was already cured. Suddenly, fear invaded every cell of her body: what if she couldn't stop it? What if she had to go to a hospital again and her father found out? Then, he would make her go back to her personal prison and give up on her dreams. She would have to say goodbye to her freedom and welcome a life full of routines. No, she didn't deserve that, not after all she had achieved until that day.

As those thoughts were intensifying her coughs and choking her, she felt a hand rubbing her back, which made her look at her side. What she didn't expect was the pink haired boy who just minutes ago was throwing his leg to a rude driver.

"I guess you didn't think about looking for this on your bag as you were freaking out," Lucy caught the inhaler and used it, being able to breathe more easily and feeling a little more relieved. "Almost choking to death because an outburst of laughter. Such a weirdo." He rolled his eyes.

"Thank… Thank you…" the blond girl tried to say while breathing heavily. "And I'm not… a weirdo," she pouted, looking away from him. "And you just… just used a prosthetic leg… as a weapon so… You just don't seem normal to me."

"I wasn't saying that I'm normal either," Natsu said, giving her his biggest smile. "I think that that makes us a good pair."

"What?" Lucy jumped as she felt how heat was reaching her cheeks. That boy didn't stop to surprise her. How could he say such things so easily not having second thoughts? Some people could tag that boy as an impulsive and a reckless one, but all she could see in him was the naivety of a kid. "I don't know what you're talking about!" The blonde looked at the ground, trying to hide her blushing. She didn't want him to get the wrong idea. How could she be so easily flustered?

"See? You're a weirdo," the pink haired boy said as he giggled. "By the way, I'm Natsu Dragneel! You've probably heard of me. Nice to meet you!"

The pink haired boy held out his hand while Lucy was thinking her response: should she tell him that she hadn't recognized him? If she told the truth, he would think that she was a girl with very little social life, which sadly was the truth. But lying to that strange boy and him finding out the truth later wasn't an option. What she knew was that either way she was doomed.

"The truth is… I don't know who you are, sorry," the blonde said, looking at the ground while slowly shaking his hand.

"Really? You're not from here, then?" Natsu asked, confused.

"Yes… Yes, I am. But I didn't really get out of my house before this year..." Lucy put a strand of hair behind her ear, nervously. "Why should I know you?"

"All the people in Magnolia talked about them: "The wizards of Fairy Tail". He was one of the best basketball players in high school along with the other ones of the team. All of us, teenagers of the village back then, knew about them." Mavis approached the spot where they were sitting while retaliating pridefully. "Don't mess with her, Natsu. She seems nice!" The girl with long blond hair and glasses held out her hand to her. "I forgot to introduce myself. I'm Mavis Vermillion! What's your name?"

"Oh, I'm Lucy Heartfilia! Nice to meet you!" Lucy shook hands with her and looked at the black haired boy behind her. "And who is he?" she said, addressing him.

"This handsome male with a concerned expression is Zeref Dragneel, my best friend and his brother," Mavis said, catching his hand and approaching him to the group. "What's going on your mind, old man? I think you aged a hundred years out of concerning because of this incident," she teased.

Zeref sat on the curb and then held his head on his hands.

"Didn't you recognize the white bearded man with an eyepatch?"

"No, not at all… Should I?"

"He's one of our teachers in uni." Zeref scratched his nape nervously. "They call him Hades, "the one who runs Hell"… Well, you can imagine how he is. Forget about being an engineer, Mavis. We will fail for life because of this."

"Don't be so catastrophist, Zeref." Mavis crouched and rubbed his back with her hand. "We will solve it out, like always! No matter how many obstacles are on our road or villains we have to face as long as we are together!"

"Y… Yeah… I guess so…" Mavis held out her hand for him and helped him to stand up. "Well, it's time to go home, I have lots of work to do for our research." Zeref looked at Lucy, the ghost of a smile on his face. "It was nice to meet you, even if it had to be in these weird circumstances."

"But... We've just met her, brother! Can't we stay a little longer?" Natsu asked.

"Do you live far away from here, Lucy?" Mavis smiled at her.

"No, not at all. In fact I live in an apartment in this building," Lucy addressed the place behind her.

"You live on the same place as us! That's fantastic!" the girl with long blond hair and black glasses replied as she clapped her hands.

Lucy didn't know if destiny existed or that instead life was formed by endless casualties, but she felt that meeting those people was a fateful encounter. Yes, she had her friends on uni and she loved them with all her heart, but with these individuals she felt a different vibe. All those lonely years locked in her house there was one thing that she had always wanted: finding the ones she would consider her second family. And, that day, Lucy felt her wish granted.

Lost in the endless roads of her mind, she was suddenly startled when she felt a warm arm on her shoulders. He didn't really know about personal space issues, that boy.

"So, what do you think? Do you want to come over our house?" he asked. "There's a little one individual who would want to meet you!"

How could she say yes to a person she had just met? Probably she should go back home, but meeting this weird family seemed more interesting to her. Moreover, it would be very difficult to her to say no to the warm toothy smile Natsu was giving to her.

"Will you come with me, abandon your boring life of endless homework and begin a new adventure, Lucy Heartfilia?" he said as he offered his calloused hand with a cheeky grin.

"Yes!"

She caught his hand, warmness crawling over her being. That boy would surely put her world upside down from that moment. But she wasn't afraid of uncertainty this time. In fact, she was more than ready to leave the safety of her house and write a new chapter of her life with her new family.