Chapter 27

Lucy's POV

'Celeste?' we call for her together. Something doesn't feel right. Normally she would have answered the first time Natsu called for her. I feel myself stiffen as dark dread overcomes me.

I look at Natsu and say what we are thinking, "We need to go to Sapphire, Pietra again."

He nods and adds, "Once we regain some strength some solid food will help with that." In other words we need to go to the guild.

"Wendy, have Mira make us a bunch of food we will be there in about half an hour." I call out just loud enough for her to hear me.

"Okay!" she jumps down from her perch and starts running off. It's not long before Laxus takes her place as our guard.

"We need to actively eat until we leave, absorb as much starlight as we can." I say thankful that it was still relatively early so Mira would still be at the guild. We lay back and concentrate on the stars above, feeling the cool light shine on us.

Natsu's POV

We are running towards the guild and part of me wants to just destroy it. Luce and I almost died, but I need to calm down it wasn't their fault they were just trying to take care of us. I want to groan but I remind myself how much not only I but also how much Lucy loves Fairy Tail. I glance at her to see her smile, she understood my thoughts and didn't judge me for them.

We arrived to find Mira had put our food outside at Wendy's request, I could hug her. Now we can eat even as we talked. Lucy and I devour the food in front of us and when Mira returned to take the dishes away she brought more out. This time as we finished we talked about our plans.

"We need to find out what's wrong with Celeste." Lucy nods in agreement as she eats. "It would take three days for the train to get here but it would probably still be faster to just wait on the train to get here than to try and find another way.

"I agree but the problem is how do we get ahold of Mayor Fred to request he sends the train in the first place?" Lucy asked finishing the last of her food.

Mira had walked up and overheard us, "You want to go to Pietra again? Why?"

I want to growl at her but I don't, I just stared at her angry. "Something's wrong with Celeste she isn't answering us and we have questions about why we were in a coma," Lucy responded instead; her tone was flat and unimpressed but she is to polite to just ignore her.

"Well then maybe I can help? They sent another request for you two and they sent the train ahead again. The train has been here for three days already." Mira told us making us freeze.

"What's the request?" Lucy asked, her voice deadly quiet.

"I'll go get it for you!" Mira responded happily leaving with our empty dishes.

"This can't be a coincidence, right?" I ask my mate, dread building inside of me. She shook her head no but remained silent.

Mira returned and handed us the flier, The Star Dragon had been damaged and they wanted our help to try and repair her. It happened about four months ago.

I look up at Lucy, "Do you think this is why we fell asleep? It could have caused it and then adding to that us starving..." I asked her nervous of what could have happened.

"The real question is how did Celeste get hurt? And how did it affect us at all? It's not like we share body link magic or anything." she responded in return.

I nod, "I guess we are heading to the train station?"

"Not without us!" Sting interrupted the rest of the slayers close beside him.

I groan but it was Lucy that answered, "There is only one bed on the train. But whatever we have all mated anyway except for Wendy and she is perfectly safe with any of us." I nod fighting them wouldn't be worth the hassle.

"We will leave in one hour, hurry and get your things." I say standing up Lucy following my lead. They all nod and run off to pack their bags. This is going to be a long trip.

Lucy's POV

I know Mira is a slayer now that she mated with Laxus but I still feel hurt that she didn't do more to calm the rest of the guild down. I guess I'm just being touchy after all even if she insisted that we were good they would have just assumed she was forced to say that because we are the King and Queen. I guess in the long run of things it was my fault. They didn't know we could eat starlight, only fire.

We arrive at the station and tell the engineer that there will be 11 of us boarding tonight and once they all get here we needed to leave. He agreed, although he was a little shocked that so many of us were going he showed us to the cook and he made us our shakes.

"By the way we have been weak with hunger for a while now so could you just keep the food coming? Everyone coming will be a dragon slayer anyway so I doubt you will send us too much." Natsu asked him. "I'm not trying to be rude or anything, we just went a very long time without any food at all."

The cook nodded his head, "I heard you two were sick, okay I'll keep the food coming so long as I'm awake!"

"Thank you very much." I say meaning it. This is going to be a very long trip the last thing I'm going to need are cranky, hungry dragon slayers.

The slayers all had bad reactions to the shake passing out after a couple hours only to wake up a few hours later. Some were confused about where we were and poor Laxus had gotten sick after waking up anyway. apparently he didn't drink all of his shake. He will be miserable for the trip but next time he will do as he is told.

Natsu's POV

The closer we got the more nervous Luce and I got. What could have happened to damage her after all this time? The days flowed slowly the slayers all getting antsy from being cooped up for so long.

When we finally arrived the sun was just setting creating a beautiful view. The mayor again was at the station to greet us.

"Hello again! I'm so glad to see you, we had heard that you were sick, I hope you are doing better now?" Mayor Fred's voice just seemed to grate on my nerves but I nodded anyway.

"What happened to the Star Dragon?" Lucy asked getting straight to the point.

"Honestly we don't know just one day we woke up to a big boom and found it broken and the energy around the area had gone down significantly. I don't know what you can do for us but you're our last hope." he is very long winded.

I nod, "Let's go!" and everyone followed me and Luce to the statue access town. When we arrived we saw for ourselves just how bad it was. One forleg was all crumbled up somehow still attached to the shoulder of her body and she had large cracks running down her side and you could see the cracks running down her back leg. She had cracks running across her stomach and face. It was horrible.

"Celeste?" Lucy asked hoping to get a reply.

"Dear ones, what are you doing here?" came her tired reply.

"The statue just talked!" Sting yelped, we all just ignored him.

"We came because something was not right. We fell asleep four months ago and only woke up a few days ago. Then when we called for you you never answered." Lucy stated her voice a whisper.

"Hush now dear one there is no reason to cry, I just got a little hurt and it's much harder to heal in this state. I don't see why it would have put you two to sleep but I suppose if I had accidentally borrowed some of your energy it could have. But you should still have woken up after a day or two." she mused.

"We were already weak when it happened just finishing a mission and our guild mates didn't know how to wake us." Lucy mused aloud.

"Can we help heal you?" I ask, now that we are closer I'm feeling even more drained than before.

"If you all put a hand on me I should be able to heal it. Your friends will be a great help." Without any further prompting each slayer took their place laying a hand on her foot and before we knew it Celeste was glowing. I start to feel light headed and dizzy but I hold on and I can feel Lucy doing the same. I feel her knees give out beside me and before I knew what was going on I let go of Celeste and caught Luce. I couldn't pick her back up though my strength was still being drained.

The next thing I know everything was fading to black.

Lucy's POV

I could tell a few days at least had gone by when I could feel myself come too. That feeling of dragging yourself out of a deep slumber when you know you have slept for too long. Urg, can't we get over this yet?

When the pounding in my head started to fade I pulled myself together enough to open my eyes and look around. We are still by Celeste her body now fully healed and the other slayers positioned around us. Natsu had his arms around me and was waking up as well, although he hasn't opened his eyes yet.

"I can't wait until we can wake up without a splitting headache," he groaned beside me.

I started to nod my head but I quickly regretted that. "That would be great," I whimpering in response.

Our conversation had of course resulted in the other slayers noticing us. They had crowded around and started talking at the same time questions and generally trying to check on us. Wendy was even examining us using her healing magic, none of them let us get a word in. To be fair our heads hurt to bad to really try anyway.

We lay back down in each other's arms ready to return to sleep when Laxus piped up, "How long are you two going to sleep? It's been a couple months now."

"Celeste?" I groan in complaint.

"I'm sorry I really didn't know that I was draining you two of so much energy, I swear," came her comforting voice. "I have severed the link between us to prevent this from happening again. So that you can both rest, we can set it back up again after you have rested enough. Please do not worry but that does mean we won't be able to communicate from far away like before until we do."

I slowly nodded, "I guess that means it's been almost a year since we met then." I was slowly rising into a sitting position when I realised what I just said.

"A year?" Natsu shot back up and grabbed me from behind. "We need to get home now mating season will be coming soon. How didn't I realise it before?"

"Relax, Salamander we have a whole month before then and the mayor told us he would have a couple more cars attached to the train so we could all travel a little easier this time." Gajeel growled his response, upset at being ignored.

"A year?" I started to cry and Natsu pulled me into his arms again letting me cry in his strong arms.

"Ssshhh, it's okay. Remember this time it will work out, so please relax." Natsu cooed to me. "Ssshhh," I think he was trying to reassure himself more so than me but it didn't matter I kept crying anyway. Natsu just shrugged and cuddled me.

"Natsu," I breathe in his ear, I could feel a shiver as it went down his back, he held me in his arms.