Quick A/N:

Hello all!

this is my first story, a Fairy Tail fanfic. The main pairing for this story is Nalu (Natsu x Lucy) as well as mentions of other pairings such as Jellal x Erza, Gajeel x Levy (one of my OTPs) and Gray x Juvia.

I do not own Fairy Tail, it belongs to Hiro Mashima.

Hope you enjoy!

~AndsotheTardisdisappeared

Life in Magnolia Palace was, as Levy would have put it, dull.

There was rarely any excitement during events, let alone in the networks of servants and middle class that buzzed around its borders and within its walls.

That was, until the arrival of a strange boy with bright pink hair.

Natsu Dragneel had long been on a search for his missing father, Igneel, who had mysteriously vanished from his village when he was young. This search, long though it had been, had revealed nothing. After years of fruitless looking, Natsu had been offered to stay with a group of servants and working class members known as Fairy Tail at the Palace of Magnolia. Opting this over more searching, Natsu had moved in with the maid servant of the Princess of the Palace, Cana, and was an apprentice to her father, the blacksmith Gildarts.

For a while, the ordinary life of Magnolia had been thrown into chaos with the addition of this boy, who seemed to stir up trouble where ever he pleased, and didn't care much for rules or how often he broke them. The only one able to reel him in, it seemed, was the Royal Guard Erza Scarlet, who tolerated not the disruption of her fine city.

It was not long, however, before the greyness of Magnolia life had seeped into even Natsu's vibrant personality, and though he still liked to annoy certain people and had little regard for social boundaries, even he eventually became another piece of background noise, still relevant, but unsurprising.

It was a fine Tuesday morning, seven years after Natsu had moved into Magnolia castle, with a clear blue sky and little cloud, sun streaming in through the clean windows of Natsu's bedroom, leaving streaks of pure light falling across his pillow.

He rolled over groggily, groaning in the new morning light, arching his back and stretching his arms over his head. Sound already emanated from the front room that lead off into Cana's room, the bathroom, housed the small kitchen (which consisted of a wooden table, wooden crockery and cutlery stacked neatly in a corner on a footstool, and a fireplace against one wall), had a door going into both Gildart's bedroom and the forgery and furnace room that Gildarts and sometimes Natsu made their repairs in. The smell of baking bread and fermenting beer reached his overly sensitive nose, which nobody could really explain, and he snapped his eyes open, throwing his covers off and bouncing out of bed, pulling on his pants, vest and scarf with no regard as to how straight they were or if they were even on the right way.

He slung his satchel over his shoulder, the one he used to run errands and take pieces of finished metal work, should they be small enough, to others. His door swung open quickly, and he bolted out, straight to the table, which he sat down at instantly.

'Asleep for the work, awake for the food, as usual,' Gildarts laughed, sliding a few cooked eggs onto a plate Cana set in front of Natsu.

The boy grinned. 'Got any work today?'

'A bit,' Gildarts said mysteriously, pouring a few squeezed apples into a mug and setting that in front of him as well, 'But I think that Cana had a favour she needed completed.'

'Because you owe me,' the girl in question took a swing of her cider.

'No way! I don't do favours,' Natsu said through a mouthful of egg, 'Why can't you do it yourself anyway?'

'Because I have to attend to the Princess today during the Suitor's visits. And Makarov will have my head if he finds out I haven't done it.'

The Dragneel downed half his glass of apple juice. 'Fine, fine. What'd ya need?'

Cana stood, scraping her chair back, and grabbed a small bottle of purple liquid in a small vial from the table. 'This needs to be taken to Wendy, the palace physician. It's something she needs for a cure or something. Wolf's Bane, Jasmine, Blue Rose...I don't know, I'm not a healer. Just make sure she gets it, okay? And don't drop it like last time.'

Natsu grinned around his mouthful. 'You got it!'

'If you get his right, you can have the rest of the day off,' Gildarts said, pushing scraps off his plate and through the window into the garden bed. 'I've got some work to do around here.'

'Sweet!' Natsu pushed back his chair and grabbed the vial from Cana, stuffing it into his bag. 'See you later!'

Gildarts set down his plate calmly and reached out a hand as Natsu ran past, catching the back of his vest. With a surprised yelp, the enthusiastic boy fell backwards onto the floor, hitting his head and sitting up with a desponded, 'Ow.'

'Hold your horses there, Natsu,' he said, his tone calm but firm. 'I feel like you need another reminder of how important today is.'

'But you told me yesterday,' he whined from the floor.

'Knowing you, you've forgotten already. Alright, boy, listen carefully. Today is when the suitors come to meet the Princess. You are not allowed to go anywhere near the Palace main hall, the Princess's quarters, the Throne room, or the training grounds, understand? You don't interrupt Cana or anyone else while they're busy, especially not if they're with the Princess. Got that?'

Natsu sighed. 'Yeah, yeah, I got it. Can I go now?'

Gildarts nodded, and he scrambled up from the ground and bolted out the door into the courtyard that lead to the market, which invariably lead to the Physician's chamber.

He bounced from stall to stall, inspecting everything he came across, occasionally trading his money for a small wood carving, or a fresh egg that he slipped into his satchel for lunch. He waved to people he knew, and grinned at everyone he passed.

'Hey, ice brain!' he yelled to the back of a dark haired boy, who turned immediately. 'You ready for round 2?'

'I totally beat you last time!' the boy yelled back, clenching his fists, making his way through the crowd. 'If Erza hadn't stepped in, you would have been squished between the cobble stones right now!'

'Hah! You wish!'

'Try me, Flame Brain!'

'I would beat you any day, Ice Queen!'

The two boys snarled at each other, lunging closer, ready for a fight, before two hands grabbed each by a tuft of their hair and pulled them apart, the two of them crying out in shock.

'That's enough, you two,' a commanding voice said darkly, 'before I put both of you in comas.'

'WE'RE SORRY ERZA!' the boys yelled in chorus, grabbing at their hair.

The red-haired girl's dark eyes flashed dangerously. 'Like you mean it.'

The two said it again, and again, until eventually Erza could be convinced to let the blacksmith apprentice and the street vendor go.

'Shouldn't you two be working?' she demanded.

'Gray distracted me!' Natsu defended.

'Natsu called me over!' Gray whined.

Erza folded her arms across her Guard uniform, her armoured breastplate and her blue skirt sitting smartly on her form as if they were simply meant to be there. 'No more excuses. Off you go. Gray, I think Juvia has stolen your chair again.'

Gray cursed loudly and stumbled off through the crowd after the royal maid as she squealed something about "owning something so close to Gray-sama", running away from his stall happily.

Natsu reached into his bag to check if the vial was alright. Closing his fingers around the smooth glass, he sighed a breath of relief. He bid his farewell to the frankly terrifying royal Guard, and continued away to Wendy's place.

Once the market stalls fell away to reveal another courtyard, he knocked on a wooden door loudly and shouted, 'Wen? It's me, open up!'

A second later, the door creaked open, behind it a small white-haired girl. Despite sounding older and being a sort of mother-figure to Wendy, Carla was in actuality several years younger, the same age as Natsu's best friend Happy, who was, sure enough, standing just behind her, tapping her shoulder and whistling on about nothing in particular.

'Natsu!' he stopped short and yelled, happily surprised, his odd blue hair ruffling in the breeze from the door.

'Natsu,' Carla agreed, her tone somewhat more flat. 'Do you need Wendy for something or are you off on another one of your shenanigans?'

He pulled the vial from his pocket, and held it up proudly. 'Delivery.'

Carla clicked her tongue. 'Well, I'm sorry Natsu, but you just missed her. She left to attend to a sick member of the court.'

'Do you know which one?' he asked.

'No. However I'm sure it would't be too difficult to figure out which one. Now, shoo, I have bread cooking, and I can only deal with one of you morons at a time.' She gestured behind her at Happy.

Natsu flashed her a grin, and turned quickly, heading back to the market, snaking through the paths that lead up to the Palace itself.

He climbed up the stairs to the great oak doors, and allowed the two guards standing by- Makao and Wakaba- to open the doors for him, smiling. He bounced through, into the large marbled main hall of the Palace, seemingly empty now the the suitors had arrived to greet the Princess and everyone had flocked to the Training grounds to watch them compete.

He climbed a tiled staircase eagerly, glancing around for any sign of the small blue haired healer. He ducked into various corridors and even once into the library, to no avail.

The court members, he knew, were required to stay near the Training grounds to watch the competition for the Princess's hand in marriage. Natsu himself had never seen the point of these battles; apart from another reason to fight, they did nothing. The same men fought the same battles for the same Princess only to face the same rejection, year after year. He didn't see the need the Kingdom had to find the Princess a husband if she was content with being by herself.

Sighing as he turned into yet another corridor, this one on the edge of the palace and looking out over the courtyards and markets through the large ornate windows to his left, Natsu pulled the vial out of the bag again and stared down at it, watching the purple liquid slosh around in the bottle. He quickened his pace, afraid of dropping it before it reached Wendy. He could hear distance running footsteps echoing through the corridors and chambers of the Palace, hardly thinking twice about it. The footstep approached rapidly, but he continued to be enraptured by the tiny glass container, stepping around a corner before colliding heavily with something on the other side.

The vial slipped out of his hands as he fell back with a surprised yelp, landing heavily on his back on the cold stone floor. A shocked squeak came from the thing he had collided with, dispelling his thoughts of it being a wall, and there was a thump a little way away from him.

The vial clicked onto the floor and rolled around, miraculously untouched by the sudden assault on it, coming to a stop just beside Natsu's head as the boy groaned and sat up.

The figure he had thought to be a wall was in fact a girl, a pretty blonde girl with chocolate brown eyes and hair tied away from her face with a blue ribbon, outfitted in a fine royal blue dress that reached the floor and a black cloak that hung away from her shoulders several sizes too big.

She sat up and blinked slightly, a confused expression crossing her face, before she saw Natsu sprawled along the ground.

She scrambled up, holding a hand out to help him up. He grabbed the vial and stood, bowing quickly, stumbling to get his satchel open and the bottle put away.

'I'm so sorry,' she apologised, to his surprise, and curtseyed. Immediately she pulled her cloak hood up and pushed past him, picking her pace back up as she ran down the corridor.

His brain going into overdrive trying to figure out where he had seen her before, he took off quickly after her, yelling, 'H-hold on! Who are you?'

'Nobody!' she called back, and continued running, darting around the corner.

Natsu followed her. 'Wait! What are you running from?!'

She didn't answer, her steps beginning to slow as she lost her breath.

Natsu, finally catching up to her, caught her elbow.

She whirled around, her breath heavy, and looked at him indignantly. 'What do you want?'

'At least tell me your name,' he pressed on.

She pulled her arm away and said, 'Yours first.'

The pinkette shrugged, and put his hand back to his side. The sunlight caught in his eyes and 'Natsu. Now you.'

There was a noticable hesitation before she quietly mumbled, 'Lucy.'

Natsu blinked, before grinning. 'That's a really pretty name-'

There was the echo of yelling from a few corridors away, and Lucy's eyes widened, pulling the cloak tighter around herself and turning, sprinting away. 'I have to go! Nice to meet you Natsu!'

'Wait! Hold on-' he tried, beginning to follow her, but she had already disappeared around the next corner

Natsu puffed out a breath and slowed, the satchel bouncing against his side. As much as he would have liked to go after her and puzzle out what she was running from, he had an errand to run.