Once Upon A Time

Chapter 37

As soon as Lucy was alone she called for Gray but he didn't show up. After calling for an hour and getting no where, she lost her patience and went to his castle to see him. She came bursting through the doors and found him standing there looking as smug as usual. 

"Why didn't you come when I called you?!" She demanded.

"I'm sorry dearie, do I know you?" He asked feigning ignorance. "I already have a maid. Promising girl actually. A little argumentative but I can tolerant that."

"You know who I am!" She snapped, not in the mood for jokes. "You were supposed to change me back!"

"Was I?" He said innocently. "I said you could call. Didn't say I'd answer."

If looks could kill Gray would have both feet in the grave right now.

"So how was life on the other side?" Gray asked her.  Having spent his childhood and teen hood living as a peasant with very little and always having to struggle, he could not deny how satisfying it was watching the pampered Lucy who had been born into a life of luxary and wealth have to see what he and all other peasants had to go through. He found it especially funny when she tried to take pears, realized she had to pay for them, and found that she had no money to give. He thought he'd die of laughter from watching that. "Not easy was it?"

"No! It was horrible!" She said. "Everyone wearing ghastly rags, scavenging in garbage and dirt for food like rats, and they were filthy! Have the peasants no soap?!"

"Well actually a lot of them don't. Soap is exactly cheap for them. That happens when you have to pay impossibly high taxes, curtsy of you and your father." He said. "Now you know how rough I had it. Hmm...Strike that actually. You only had morsel of what I went through."

"A morsel?"

"Yep. Oh yeah you wore rags, couldn't afford a lot of food or soap like I did in my youth but at least you weren't branded and you managed to make friends very quickly. Sadly however you lost them just as quickly due to lying. Just like with Erza."

"Just take this damn spell off me you nauseating imp!"

He snapped his fingers and she was restored to what she really looked like.

"You're very antsy this evening." He observed. "Let me guess, your plan failed."

"You know it failed! You were watching me the entire time!"

"That I was and tell me, did we learn anything today?"

"You wanna hear you were right? Is that it?"

"Well...Yeah."

"Fine! You were right!"

"Ooo I just love it when people admit that but um, I'm right about a lot of things. Be more specific. What am I right about?"

Gray was lucky he was more powerful than her. Because if he wasn't she would have ripped off those grinning lips and crushed them under her heel. However she could no longer deny that what he warned her earlier was true. The people of her kingdom despised her. She had seen it with her own two eyes and they would never see her as anything else. Least of all a victim.

"You were right about the people. My subjects. They'll never love me."

"Oh that." He said. "Not the realization I was hoping you would come around to but hey you're making progress. That's great."

"They actually want me dead." She said still astonished by what her people really thought of her. "Me, my father, they probably want my entire bloodline destroyed."