For the longest time, Lucy doesn't think she has a soulmate. Her nails remain the same colour as the skin beneath for as long as she can remember. She finds herself pouting as she watches her mother's nails change colour as her father's mood changes, and one day finally manages to ask why she's never experienced a single change of colour, not even the tiniest hue.

"Don't worry," Layla tells her, stroking her hair. "There are plenty of reasons. Perhaps they haven't been born yet, or some sort of magic is holding them back. It's possible in this magical world of ours. Maybe they haven't arrived in this time yet."

Lucy doesn't realise how strange some of her mother's reasons are because she's her mother, and her mother is always right. Instead, she just nods and snuggles closer, feeling only slightly better.

It continues to bother her for the next few years, until she's ready to give up entirely. She has other things to worry about. She's a growing girl with parties to attend and people to please. There isn't any point in waiting for one person who may never exist.

And then she wakes up one morning in the year X777 with dark blue nails and screams so loudly that her mother and Spetto bump into each other in their rush to see what's wrong. She just shows them her nails, an awestruck expression on her face.

Spetto runs over to take Lucy's hands in her own, marvelling at the sight of them, while Layla hangs back and lets the two have their moment. She wears a knowing smile as she thinks back to the task she completed mere hours ago. It was a suspicion she'd had for a long time now, knowing how well mages' destinies entwined with each other, and now this just confirmed her suspicions.

She hopes Lucy finds her dragon slayer soon.

After Layla passes away, Spetto starts teaching Lucy what the different colours mean.

"Dark blue means sadness, and if it leans more towards a navy hue, it means sadness mixed with confusion."

That concerns Lucy. She remembers the first time she saw her nails and remembers their navy tone, wondering why her soulmate was so upset. What could have caused them to feel so down? They're happier now, which is a relief, but she will never forget the first moment her nails showed a colour other than her fair skin.

She's sure her soulmate's nails are a deep blue, though. Perhaps there are splashes of light blue (contentment) and violet (imagination), but they don't compare to when she's lying awake at night, wishing her mother was still alive, that her father would pay more attention to her rather than bury himself in his work. She wonders whether her soulmate thinks about her, whether they care if she's upset or not.

She hopes so.

Nothing worth of note happens for the next few years in terms of her soulmate, even after she runs away. There is a time where her nails turn to an almost grey shade of blue, the colour of mourning, and stay that way for a little while. It lets up soon enough and she's glad her soulmate is able to move forward. She knows how hard that can be.

Her top priority isn't finding her soulmate, but becoming the best mage she can be. It's about stripping herself of the Lucky Lucy Heartfilia title she's always been given. It's about creating her own path. Yet she's a romantic at heart and lets her fantasies slip into her novels. She dreams of being swept off her feet and carried away, but she rarely voices this.

She doesn't have anyone to voice it to.

At least not until she meets Natsu, who paves the way to what she considers a new beginning. An incredibly rowdy and dangerous new beginning, but a new beginning nonetheless, and she's grateful for it. She's achieving her dreams one step at a time, and she has all her fellow members to thank.

Her soulmate's identity takes a backseat almost completely after she joins the guild. It's job after job, crazy mission after crazy mission, and the rare times she does have a moment to think about romance, it never works out for one reason or another. She even ignores her growing feelings for the man who brought her here in the first place because she's certain nothing good will come of it.

She decides it doesn't matter as long as she has Fairy Tail.

When she finally figures it out, she fears it might be too late. She doesn't know how she hasn't noticed until now, when they're being pulled into Alegria in the middle of their Tartaros battle, her and Natsu's hands outstretched as they try to reach other. She's so focused on his hand in that moment that she can't help but notice how their nails are the same alarming shade of red.

As if reading her mind – which she supposes is technically the case – his nails fade to a glowing yellow, the colour of enlightenment. She lets out a shaky breath and forces herself not to think about soulmates when they're about to be sucked into the Tartaros void. Her hand touches Natsu's once, twice, before they're forced apart and she lets out a cry.

When she finds herself all alone, everyone else suspended in time, she risks a look at her nails. They're a faded grey, almost to the point of transparency. The tell-tale sign that her soulmate is unconscious. She wonders if his nails are some sort of mixture of deep purple and light pink. A combination of fear and love.

Shaking her head, she stands on equally shaky legs and presses forward.

She resolves to tell him after the Tartaros situation is over.

It's not an easy decision, as she doesn't want their team dynamic to change when they work so well, and what if he rejects her as a soulmate? It's possible. She's heard the stories of people falling in love with another, one person viewing their soulmate platonically and the other viewing theirs romantically.

But weighing the pros and cons takes too long and soon all she's left with is a note and a disbanded guild. She cries for him, she cries for herself, she cries for the rest of her guildmates. It's not just because she feels as though she's lost her soulmate, but because she's also just lost her home. She doesn't know what she'll do now.

Yet she needs to keep moving. She needs to grow on her own now.

For the next year, she continues to watch her nails. They're rarely a dark blue, which is good, though they'll sometimes take a dark grey shade, which can mean longing. She wonders if he misses her as much as she misses him. Does he know about the guild? Is he taking care of himself? How is Happy? There are so many questions she doesn't know the answer to, and she can just imagine his nails turning the same colour as hers.

There are times where her nails turn that tell-tale pale pink and her stomach drops. Did he find someone else while travelling? Her imagination runs wild with different scenarios, none of them positive.

Then he reappears in her life when she least expects it and she feels a plethora of emotions. His nails shine the colour of the rainbow before settling on light yellow for a brief moment, quickly switching to light pink as affection blooms in her chest. He doesn't notice, his eyes on her and her alone, hers on him. If she were to look down, she would notice that their nails are both the same colour.

Blind to how close their hearts truly are, she still doesn't tell him. They don't have the time, what with Avatar, then Alvarez. Too much is happening at once for them to settle down and talk about feelings. She doesn't even tell him on that last night before the final battle, once again fearful of how it might affect their teamwork. She tells herself that standing beside him is enough.

As soon as Lucy has calmed down from her victory high, she feels a firm hand on her arm, and she's suddenly whisked away behind some buildings, out of sight from the others. She protests and tells Natsu not to rush, especially since he's probably injured from his fighting with bloody Acnologia, of all people (of all dragons?), and likely has some injuries, but he doesn't listen. Instead, he stops abruptly and spins around to face her, his hand moving down to lightly circle her wrist.

"You're my soulmate," he says so abruptly that it takes her far too long to process.

"…Wait, what?" Though she knows it's true, she never expected him to say it first. "I-I mean, yeah, when did you figure it out?"

Natsu doesn't seem eager to answer. "…Today," he says with a frown, and suddenly she understands. It was likely during a moment that he doesn't want to remember. With all the fighting they were doing, she would have had to be still enough for him to find out, and the only time where she wasn't moving around at the speed of light was when one or both of them were unconscious.

"When did you figure it out?" he asks, genuinely confused.

"Tartaros," she says, sighing.

Natsu's eyes widen. "Wait, why didn't you tell me earlier?"

"I wanted to," she insists, a little too loudly, and she looks around. It's an unnecessary effort. They're completely alone. "It's just that you left right after I figured it out, and after you came back, we had so much going on, and I didn't want to drag it up in case it caused problems –"

He cuts off her rambling with, "Why would it cause problems?"

She stares at him, but she can't read his expression past the mild curiosity he's displaying. Then she answers slowly, as though stalling for time, "I didn't know if – if you felt the same way, that's all."

There's silence. Was she too vague? She doesn't think Natsu is too dense to figure it out, not given the nature of the conversation. He might not be in tune with many other people's feelings, but he's definitely in tune with hers, as he's proven time and time again. She watches his nails turn to that light pink, though she thinks she catches flickers of her purple fear. The fear that he won't feel the same.

He looks at his nails, then at hers. She takes the hint and brings her hands to her face. Her nails are once again the same colour as his, though rather than the purple, there's the bright pink of exciting love, and her breath hitches. When she looks up, Natsu is looking at her with a sheepish grin.

The deep purple disappears from his nails, and when she runs up to give him a huge hug, their foreheads touching, she thinks she feels a warm feeling on her fingertips.

i wrote this all today and i'm about to fall into a food coma, so we'll see how good this actually is when i'm properly awake and alert sigh.