Finally, CoLu Week is here again! I'm super excited to be participating this year myself, instead of just organizing it. I'm also looking forward to reading all of the other contributions. I've starved myself of CoLu content for far too long.

I had a lot of fun plotting this fic out. I hope you enjoy it!

CoLu Week 2018

Day 1: Defect

It was finally done.

With one last flourish of the pen in her cramping hand, Lucy set the writing utensil down with a sigh born of both relief and satisfaction. The man sitting to her right in the immaculately pressed suit took the papers upon which she'd just placed her final signature, and then passed it off to the equally as well-dressed woman to his right. Both of their outfits had to have cost twice what Lucy could pull in a year's worth of jobs on her team, and the commission they were about to earn would be able to put them in at least two more each, easy.

Gathering up enough money had been no easy task. It had been five years since she'd made the decision to go through with this. Five years of scraping together every penny and making them count, five years of doing side writing assignments for Sorcerer Weekly (apart from her year of dedicated employment with the booming magazine), and five long, long years of parting with her hard-earned cash to pay for damages that her team perpetrated.

But no more. Her dream was finally becoming reality.

After a few moments, the woman set her pen to the side and gathered up the documents. "I'll make copies for you, and then we'll be done here."

Lucy nodded, not trusting her voice. She wrung her hands a little, and fiddled with her pen while the woman left, not sure what to do with herself.

Her companion smiled kindly at her. "You're excited, I take it."

Again, Lucy nodded. "Yeah!" she admitted, letting out a shaky laugh. "A bit nervous, too. I've been saving up a long time to make this happen, so it almost feels like it'll collapse around me at any time, or something will pop out of the woodwork to destroy it." At his incredulous expression, Lucy shrugged helplessly. "You'd be surprised how often that happens to me."

He patted her on the shoulder. "Well, I assure you this is happening."

Before she could say anything else, the woman returned with copies of the contract neatly stapled together and a polite smile on her face. "Here you are," she said, passing the coveted papers to Lucy and a check to the man beside her with his copy. "How does it feel to be a home owner at last?"

Lucy's hands shook. This was it.

Her childhood home was now hers once more.

"It feels amazing," she breathed out. "Thank you both for all your help." Standing up, she pressed the document to her chest and extended a hand first to the bank representative and then to her agent. "I really appreciate all you've done for me, and with the upkeep of the property all this time."

Her agent stood up as well. "Let's go to the front desk and have them validate your parking."

Lucy laughed as if that was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. "Thank you, but I actually walked here from the train station, so there's no need."

"I'll walk with you to the exit, then."

Allowing him to do so, Lucy tried not skip all the way through the building.

They parted ways at the doors, and Lucy began the trek back to Crocus's train station in the dying light of dusk. It was a peaceful walk, even for such a busy business area. Normally she wouldn't have even considered going to a bank in the country's capitol to secure a loan, but in the end it had been the correct decision. No teammates to bother her, and several of her credit references were located in the city besides.

It had all paid off.

And now she would be paying back the loan for the next two or three decades.

But the land she'd grown up on, the house her mother and father had loved, was now legally hers to do with as she pleased.

Lucy hadn't yet considered what she would do with it, but such decisions could wait for the light of morning.

"I'm a homeowner!" she shouted triumphantly, thrusting her mug of beer high into the air.

A chorus of cheers erupted all around her, all of Fairy Tail happy to drink to their friend's excitement.

"I'll drink to that!" yelled Cana, throwing back a hefty swig of her alcohol.

Gray laughed, and rightfully pointed out, "You'll drink to anything, Cana." Then he turned to Lucy and clacked his mug against her. "Congratulations, Lucy. You worked hard."

"Aww, thanks, Gray! I really, really did."

That garnered a laugh from him as he took the stool next to her. "So, what are your big plans for the new place? If memory serves, that place is freaking humongous."

She hummed in thought. "Not sure yet. First I want to clean the place up a bit, maybe see what all got left behind when the creditors swept through the place. You know, since we didn't exactly get a good look when we were there investigating the Infinity Clock. After that… we'll see."

"I guess that makes sense. And we did kind of wreck the place when we were there."

Lucy grimaced. "Don't remind me. I never heard the end of it from that realtor and had to pay back all the damages for that. Do you have any idea how long that took? Especially since none of you helped out."

Throwing up his hands in surrender, the ice mage folded like soggy paper at her growl. "I'm sorry! I don't know what else to tell you!"

"You better pray there isn't any leftover damage or defects from that," she continued, easing off of him. It had been a long time ago, and it had been somewhat justified at the time. Since they had been attacked, and all. (Now that she thought about it, she totally should have asked Zentopia for some reimbursement! Dammit, why hadn't she thought of that years ago?!)

Lucy wasn't truly angry with Gray, or the rest of her team about it. She had already sprung for an inspection before signing the paperwork, anyway. It hadn't turned up anything major. But damn if it wasn't fun to put the fear of god into her team sometimes, just as a general reminder to beware.

As the danger fled her gaze, the ice mage lowered his hands. "Natsu's still pouting, I see." Gray rolled his eyes at the sulking form of the dragon slayer a little distance away. "It's not as if you're going to quit the guild even if you do move in there, right?"

"No way am I quitting Fairy Tail. I would miss you all way too much!" Lucy took a hefty drink from her mug. "But if I do decide to live there, it'll be a bit more of a commute. So I might have to come in less." That was a major factor in her reluctance to commit to the move, truthfully. Her wallet, on the other hand, really wanted it to happen, as affording the mortgage payments in addition to the rent for her apartment in Magnolia would be difficult, to say the least.

A firm hand clamped down suddenly on her shoulder, making Lucy yelp in surprise and spill some of her drink in her lap. "A wise decision," Erza informed her, completely ignorant of how badly she'd just frightened her friend.

Moving out to the country-side just got a little more appealing.

Lucy internally scolded herself a little for the uncharitable thought. She loved her friends to death. But even she sometimes needed some space for herself.

Behind the bar, Mirajane winked at her. The barmaid had an uncanny way of knowing people's thoughts, and it felt as if her blue eyes were boring into Lucy's soul. "If you ever need anything, Lucy, don't hesitate to ask the guild!" she chimed in. "You can even make a request of it, if it's too large for just your team to handle."

"Thanks, Mira. I appreciate that." Lucy smiled back at the older woman. "I love you guys."

As the night progressed, Lucy received many more congratulations from various guild members, and several further offers of help should she need it. Even Natsu stirred from his funk, cheering up once he realized that nothing was going to change immediately with his friend. The poor dragon slayer did not handle change well.

Lucy felt incredibly blessed to have found such a wonderful family.

When she stumbled back to her apartment late that night, she collapsed almost immediately into her bed, and fell into a deep slumber.

The next morning found her nursing a hangover on the train. Lucy leaned her head against the window, hoping to absorb the coolness into her pounding skull. 'This must be how Natsu feels,' she thought as her stomach lurched in tune with the train. 'I should probably stop making fun of him. This is torture.' The clatter as they rolled over the tracks was steady drumroll inside her head. Mercifully, the train was nearly empty. Lucy had missed the morning commutes in waking up later than she had intended to. Getting ready to go had been a chore and a half, even the sound of the zipper on her overnight luggage sending stabbing needles through her brain, but she had managed and was thankfully well on her way. Even if she did need some headache medicine. Or a lot of it.

After her brain had been jostled around good and proper by the train, it finally pulled into her station. Although "station" was a bit of a misnomer – in truth, it was just a raised platform out in the middle of nowhere along the track. It wasn't even covered, but for the impossibly tiny ticket booth and outhouse for the one part-time employee. Who was clearly not on the clock today. Or tomorrow, most likely, but that wasn't a problem since at Magnolia station Lucy had made certain to purchase her return trip as well.

The sun beat down on her head, Lucy wincing at the brightness. With a sigh, she hefted her bag, and climbed down the platform steps to begin the long trek through her family's former demesne. She was sweating intensely before long and cursing both the drinking party and how she'd overslept. This was a far easier journey in the cool of morning and without every plod of her feet threatening to make her hurl her non-existent breakfast that she'd been unable to even look at let alone consume once she'd gotten up but now really, really regretted not eating.

Halfway, she took a break under the shade of a tree. Cicadas cried all around as she sipped from her water bottle, her headache finally easing off enough that it didn't make her regret life. Although it was tempting to keep resting longer, Lucy stood up after a few minutes. The mansion wasn't too much further, and so no longer felt like she was actively dying. Besides which, falling asleep in the shade was a real possibility that Lucy would like to avoid. A nap in the mansion after a real meal sounded much better.

The walk gave her a lot of time to think, but the sheer heat discouraged it. And every time Lucy turned her mind towards the problem of what to do with her family's property, a rock would lodge in her shoe, or a bug would fly up out of the neglected lawn and startle her, or she would get distracted by the omnipresent and heavy heat.

By the time she had reached the mansion's gates, the only thing Lucy had concluded along the walk was that she needed to get some kind of vehicle so she wouldn't have to make the trip on foot ever again.

Exhausted, Lucy pulled out a keyring and tried for several seconds to use her celestial gate keys to unlock the structure before her error occurred to her and she took out the mundane one. It opened with a great creaking easily after that. Now that her goal was within reach, however, her bladder suddenly decided that she needed to use the facilities immediately.

Cursing under her breath, Lucy half-jogged across the courtyard and past the fountain (which was flowing and really not helping matters). She fumbled for a breath with the key to the front door. Once the lock turned, she wasted no time in rushing to where she remembered the bathroom closest to the entrance being, not even bothering to relock or even close the door behind her.

Only to find, upon flinging the bathroom door wide open, that it was…

Already occupied.

A man sat upon the toilet, a newspaper in his hands and reading glasses resting upon his nose. He looked up at her with a frighteningly violet eye, his maroon hair falling across his brow. "Do you mind?" he said, as Lucy stood there dumbstruck.

"S-sorry," Lucy stammered out, swiftly shutting the door again.

She stared at the wooden barrier for several seconds, trying frantically to process what she had just seen, and if it was actually a fever-induced dream and she had actually fallen asleep beneath the shady tree after all.

But then her bladder reminded her why she was in such a hurry in the first place, sending her running through the mansion looking for another bathroom. She blew past a bewildered, pinkish human-shaped blur on her way, shouting, "Bathroom!"

The home inspection she'd paid for had been very thorough, as Lucy had wanted no expense spared in making sure her house was ready for human occupation. And yet, it appeared as if it had missed one very important fact.

There were squatters in her mansion.

And very familiar ones, at that.