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How'd It Go?

Natsu is 23, and his best friend has started taking more missions that lead her outside of Magnolia for days, weeks, and even months away. Lucy isn’t a member of Fairy Tail, not really, but no one really bats an eye at her heading to the second floor and coming down with a fist full of flyers anymore either. She comes back home easily enough to greet everyone with a bright smile on her face despite how pinched the corner of her eyes are, and collapses in Leo’s arms a few moments later. She gives Happy a random piece of seafood she got on her travels, and sits by Natsu’s desk to talk about how her quest went and sometimes bits of gossip on a few other guilds. 

This is a routine that’s become more and more common as time passes on, and Natsu doesn’t really like it all that much. Lucy hasn’t taken an SSS-class quest, but it’s obvious that it’s only a matter of time before she does and Natsu will have to settle for spontaneous calls on those stupid fragile lacrimas that only take a single hit to break, and- 

He doesn’t want that to happen. Neither does Leo, given the times he’d tricked Lucy into staying just a few hours longer for the four of them- because they would never leave Happy behind- to go out and just hang out. It usually ends with them in Lucy’s apartment, the window wide open for the moonlight to come through while Happy stays curled up to take a nap on her lap, Natsu going through her fridge to munch on her groceries and Leo making sure Natsu didn’t try eating eggs raw again.

It used to work great, but now Lucy would just convince them to give her a bit of time to rest by herself before going off with another fist full of inked paper and a train ride to a city hours away without warning, so clearly Natsu and Leo needed to escalate. 

…which is how he came to the conclusion to lie about the second floor being renovated and then hide every flier in there to the bottom of a dry well right outside the hut he built for himself. It wasn’t illegal, nope! Natsu made sure to double check everything, and it may have been against the law up until he registered the well as an official part of the guild, but those bits of paperwork were fixed and there was nothing Lucy could do about it!

Natsu is 24, and he has to admit that the stars are pretty cool. Lucy had a bit of a habit of over exaggerating things she loved, so when she’d started telling him about a meteor shower that was going to pass by in a few weeks and asked him to come with her, he had been a bit skeptical about just how cool it would actually be. He was gonna go with her anyways, but he went there with the thought that even if the whole thing was gonna be a disappointment, he would have Lucy right beside him so it didn’t matter that much.

Except, they were both laid down on a hill that gave them a view of Happy soaring through the skies giggling about how everything looked. The usual plain blacks of the night sky were split by the shining moon, with blues and violets mixed together in the middle as if to make a path for the bright balls of fire making its way through and leaving trails of light behind, and Happy looked as if he were swimming through it all.

Lucy was right beside him with a content smile on her face and her eyes reflecting the stars right back at what he was sure were her friends, and telling Happy to do all kinds of tricks to saying things that her spirits were whispering through the strengthened link between them all. Natsu never really got how Lucy could handle every spirit she had- and there were a lot- inside her head without going crazy, but she was amazing like that.

They stayed that way for hours before Happy fluttered back down with a yawn and a little yelp when he accidentally stopped flying before his paws could even touch the ground, and Lucy caught him in her arms with a little laugh. Compared to the start of the shower, she looked more tired than before.

The lights, softer than earlier, made the bags underneath her eyes more obvious, and the bow of her lip was shaking. It brought Natsu out of the fog he found himself in while he admired the view, and he brought himself closer to rest his head on her shoulder with furrowed brows, and hopes Lucy would tell him what was wrong. She didn’t seem to notice, instead settling Happy over her chest for him to sleep and continue stroking his fur, her hair tickling Natsu’s nose as she did.

It’s only when the meteors are gone and the path split apart by them started going away that Lucy opens her mouth to talk about how she and her mother used to do something like this every night.

With the trees surrounding their village being tall and mighty, there wasn’t much they could do to get a proper look at the sky: branches would obstruct their view, keeping the full shine of the stars away from them both, but Lucy loved those moments between just the two of them the best anyways. Sometimes, her father would join, and he would let her use his legs as a cusion, and hold his wife close as they spent hours of silence just being at peace. 

She hadn’t done it in years, she said to him. Not after the blood, not after the end, and not after the way the first time she’d felt the first caress of the moon on her cheeks her mother was nowhere to be found. But, and she curls a bit closer to him, so her chin rested on his head, she’s glad she could have another moment like that with the two of them.

It wasn’t enough to relieve her of the grief, though, and he could feel the tears going down her cheeks and the hiccups running through her chest as she clung to Happy in her arms and Natsu held her in the silence. He knows she wants everyone in her village back, an endless dream she keeps close to her heart, and knows that no matter what it’ll never really come to pass, and Lucy tells him that doesn’t stop her from wishing. 

She asks him if he’s ever had a wish like that, of one built in the very bones of tragedy and only held up by the shaky foundations of sheer stubbornness and he tells her he does. He remembers the rough calluses of his brother patting him on the back for dragging an entire bark of wood to their home even though Igneel insisted on doing it for him, the high pitched squeals Wendy gave as she jumped from branch to branch during the long games of tag, the rough guffaw of Gajeel as he munched on random ore Metallica got for him, and the quiet and solid presence of Grandeeney by their backs. 

Sting and Rogue left first, then Wendy, Gajeel, and Zeref, while Natsu was left all alone on the island with ash stuck in his mouth and no one else to tell him what happened, and Igneel, he- 

He was nowhere no matter how hard Natsu searched.

So he tells her that he wants them all by his side again, even if they weren’t a part of Fairy Tail, he wants them to be at the table he eats breakfast on, to be there as he takes shots at a golem hundreds of feet tall, and he wants them close by to know that they were okay. 

Lucy sets Happy on his head and holds his hands tight in hers.

Natsu is older than he thought he could ever be, and he watches as the people he’d been searching for lands on the island they all once called home.

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The Paths All Broken Up You See

CONTENT WARNING: Vague descriptions of gore, and the ways people commit murder.

Lucy is 14, and in her hands are keys. Her mother is gone, now, and there’s nothing left of her- her father is nowhere. After hours and maybe even days of staying curled up on soft grass, numb to the heat of the sun on her unprotected skin and deaf to the cries of the stead she’d ridden out of her home, she had looked through the bags that had been packed. Beyond the faded out picture from when she’d been a child, there was no other sign that Lucy had been a part of a family of three. 

Her horse was laying down somewhere nearby, and the sky had turned dark a while ago now. Despite it being night, there were thousands of little lights shining down on her from high above, and Lucy can’t help the feeling that she’s being watched. In her hands are golden keys that look as if they’d been polished just moments ago, and she eyes them with her lips in between her teeth. 

She knows nothing of what they are, and has heard no mention of their existence from her parents. Her mother, she knew, used to be a mage. Her grandmother spoke of heaven at the tips of her fingers, and a booming voice that demanded attention. Of the sky themselves separating from each other in accordance to her mother’s words, and the gods bending the earth to her bidding. Her father recalled the way Layla’s eyes were filled with sparks of something beyond even his knowledge and about how she was a wizard people knew to fear.

There were no mention of keys in their stories, and yet in her hands Lucy holds dozens of them. She spies one with horns curled in on themselves, another with a harp by its bottom, and another with the shape of waves. Others like one with a pair of axes, another with some kind of animal with pinchers at the end, and another with a clover-like shape. Plenty of others were clumped up together in piles, but the first three keys, however, seemed to be calling out to her, and that’s what led to this moment. She eyes the one with horns at their end and reaches out her hand out, and something clicks–

Lucy is 16 and she hates. Capricon had tried his best to care for her and educate her on the happenings of the world, as despite the tragedies she’d held under her belt she was still rather naive. He’d tried his best in explaining how to survive the dense lands they’d traveled, warned her to never once show the keys out in public, held her during the nights she’d call for her mother, and trained her as best as he could so that she could survive. 

It’s for that reason alone that Lucy hadn’t let herself go off the deep end. Capricorn was the one thing that held her back from tearing down the people who’d slaughtered her village, and was what kept her so rational all this time. She’s 16, and there have been rumors swirling through the people of the small city she was visiting. There have been talks of corpses disappearing through the night, homes ravaged and left with gore that disappeared in seconds- whispers of something that sounded familiar, and made the magic underneath her skin itch. 

While she expected Capricorn to refuse immediate revenge, she was surprised by just how stern Aquarius was about her staying put and not trying anything. Of all the spirits, Lucy had expected her to be the most murderous- and, well, she was, but it was surprising just how much self control the mermaid seemed to hold. That didn't necessarily stop Lucy from starting to plan and keep a constant ear out for more rumors. The twins, despite their attempts, couldn’t really do much to distract her. Mini and Gemi tried their best, chirping out new games to try and play, songs to sing, and dancing with her as much as they could.

On the contrary to the others, Virgo was more than happy to suggest forms of cruel punishments she knew, including suggestions for ways Lucy could go about them. Capricorn always managed to figure out when she was doing this and pull her back to the spirit world, but Lucy remembered each word and held them all close to her thoughts. Taurus was… Taurus. He spoke words of encouragement, told Lucy to try and use a nice big axe to cut everyone down, and was his usual boisterous self. Cancer sniffed, pat her head, and told Lucy she could do anything she wanted but to try and not lose herself

She got what they- well, most of them- were trying to tell her and she tried to ease her grip on the bitter voice inside her whispering about what could have been. Instead, she remembered the tears of her mother, the cries of the people she’d thought of as her own, and the piles of corpses gone before she could even try to dig them graves. She thought of Capricorn’s warm hand in hers and imagined her mother’s on her wrists with his eyes roaming around her face in fear. Aquarius hissed out curses and threats while she held Lucy close and the memories of her father keeping her safe came to mind. Playing around with the twins and listening to their happy giggles filled her with a sense of longing for the children she’d run around and sing with. 

The merry calls of the local baker apprentice asking for her opinion on a new flavor, the serene smile grandmother would give her every time she visited, the way her friend was so horribly excited for a chance to go out of their little village, and t̵͕̽ẖ̴̾e̸̥̋ ̵̨͂w̵̡̐a̵͚̅y̶̥͒ ̸̰̀t̶̟̄h̸̛̠e̶̞͗ŕ̶ͅè̶͕ ̴͇̍w̸̗͊ȁ̵̟s̷͕̈́ ̸͎̒n̸̘̅o̷̥̓t̸̹͝h̶̠͝i̴̲̎ń̴̹g̴̤͘ ̷̳̔ĺ̵̺e̶̯͂f̴̹́t̵͔͑ ̶̩͊o̵͕̐f̸͓̃ ̸̘͝ṭ̶̑h̵̜̒e̷̖͋m̶̼̚ ̵̻͊á̴̢l̴̝͒l̶̺̄.̵̓͜. 

No matter what she did, the memories would come up, and Lucy was left feeling as if she’d been hollowed out all over again.

Lucy’s 18 and she’s in a guild. It’s big, and was more organized than Lucy would like. It was filled with all sorts of people, and underneath them all was a brimming darkness begging to be called forward. She turned 18 just a few months ago, and that seemed to be all the people needed before asking her to join them.

For all the horrible things growing in their eyes, she was surprised to find that they were people. No outlandish demands or even childish calls for murder, every single person she’d met were kind and treated her with respect. They held meetings every week to talk about their next moves, about targets, and about areas they could erase and Lucy sat through each and every one with a small smile on her face. She had been practicing for months with Virgo to keep her back straight through every heinous suggestion, to have her smile stay the same with every massacre, and to keep the hatred from seeping out of all her pores. 

She laughed with a man who cut the infant out of a woman’s bloated belly, and hugged a woman who cheered as she tried to juggle every eye she had collected. She smiled at a wizard who pretended to be a doctor and spread a plague through a growing kingdom, and held the hands of another who tricked an entire school of children to eat their parents. 

Lucy felt something simmering underneath her skin, something deep inside her very being begging to be called out, and kept it buried as far as she could as she curled up into Capricorns arms in the dead of night underneath heavy wards to keep strangers out of the one safe space she’d carved out for herself. Virgo gave her a soothing tea and Aquarius lent her gloves with deep holes in the middle in case she ever needed to call out to the sea. Taurus huffs out a laugh and fights her to let some energy out, and Cancer happily tells her stories of their home. The twins danced with her before bed, and Lucy stayed up almost every night thinking of what she’d do to everyone in that cursed guild.

She’s been rising up the ranks quickly, faster than anyone ever had, and she accepts the promotions with a calm smile. She gives the guild master a smile, and tries not to shiver underneath one of the admiral’s eyes. Irene, that’s how she had introduced herself, with red hair and cold eyes. Despite having never met before, Lucy feels as if she should know her- as if Irene is a woman that Lucy has held to her soul far closer than anyone else and that makes her concerned. 

She often finds herself in the company of a man who called himself Leo with a humorous twinkle in his eyes outside of the hell that is work. He had a sharp grin and soft eyes with a habit of flirting with anything that moved. Despite her several attempts of keeping her distance, Lucy finds herself with what could possibly be one of the greatest friends she would ever hope to have.

For all that Lucy finds herself in situations that she’s sure is suspicious to anyone with half a brain, Leo pats her shoulder and laughs about how awfully troublesome she could be, and she finds herself appreciating his loyalty. In return, Lucy drags him out of clubs when he’s had much too many drinks for himself, lets him rest on her couch, and even has him meet Capricorn despite having not let her spirits be seen by anyone else in far too long. They both reacted rather strangely to each other, but it didn't seem too much like something to worry about.

Lucy is 20, and her palms are covered in a bright cherry red that brings her back. There are bodie’s littered around her, and Capricorn is holding her face in his hands and saying something. Gemini hugs her around her neck, and Cancer holds her in his arms. Aquarius is washing as much blood off as she can, and Virgo quietly moves the bodies into piles to burn. 

She’s not even 25, and she’s managed to kill every person who’d had a hand in her home's destruction, and in the drawer she’s pried open are papers and papers of evidence. She should hand them to the knights, let them figure out what else to do, but there isn’t anyone left of the guild except her and Irene, who’d left on a journey outside the country. She pays no attention to the words Capricorn speaks, and instead focuses on the words she reads out loud from the papers with pictures of her mother’s face with her entire biography and medical information. Type A, Heavenly Body, Asthmatic, and underneath it all are the underlined words- “test reaction to dark magic,” and “with a daughter; no news of her magical affinity yet.”

“What was it all for,” she croaks out and curled deeper into Cancer’s embrace, “they never bothered to tell me or even write down what they wanted to find.”

Capricorn tells her it doesn’t matter because they’re all gone, but to Lucy, the corpses littered across the floor mean nothing anymore. Not when her family is nowhere to be seen, not when their leader had looked her in the eye and laughed through the snot building up in his nose and continued to squeal in joy when the bile came out. The admirals were more than happy to laugh with him, though most of them seemed confused, and said nothing even when Lucy lost herself to a rage. 

Leo finds her going through a fourth bottle of vodka in the bar they’d met and doesn’t ask before he’s leading her back to her apartment and lets her rest. Rubs her back when she vomits everything out, holds her hair back and cleans her face while she hiccups and sobs about the unfairness of it all. Listens as she tells him about how she misses everyone from home and about how there’s nothing left for her to even mourn, although she chooses to not say why that is.

Through it all he holds her hand as she cries and cries and cries, even on the cold tiles of her bathroom. Lucy doesn’t remember what else happens afterwards, but she wakes up in the morning to Leo in her kitchen making food and laughing about some new gossip he’d heard out on the grapevine. He makes her sit by the bar, and she watches as he makes his way around the kitchen. Her eyes are glazed over, and she plays around with her cuticles as a discomfiting kind of quiet set itself over the two.

“I’m sorry,” she says after a beat.

“For what?” Leo frowns.

“Just… all of this,” she takes her head in her hands when she says this, “I know this wasn’t what you were expecting when we’d met a few years ago.”

“Well, I went out hoping to sleep with a beautiful woman, and you let rest on your couch so I’d say I got exactly what I was looking for- even if you weren’t in my arms when I woke up,” he shrugged.

“Leo, you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I know, but I don’t really care- we’re where we are now, and I like how it's going.” At this, he gives her a smirk, “And I’d never deny a beautiful woman some company.”

“Hmph, are you sure this beautiful woman would want you by her side?” There’s a ghost of a smile as she says this, and a growing mirth in her eyes as a familiar pattern comes through.

“Ouch! Lucy, Lucy- you’re not supposed to hurt your friends like this!”

“You’re my only friend,” who wasn’t a spirit, she silently added, or dead now.

“Hmm…” Leo hums and sets a few plates down for them both, the stove turned off and the smell of pancakes washing through her. “We should fix that at some point.”

“We?”

“The both of us, yes!”

She’s about to be 21 when she meets a loud mouthed boy with pink hair and fire coming out of his nose as he sputters around a glass of water. “Gross, gross, gross!” he chants with a severe grimace, “what the hell is that…!”

Lucy takes a glance at his almost cleaned out plate, and spies goops of blue mixed with red and glances at the menu in concern. “Hopefully not what I ordered, if that’s how you’re reacting,” she murmurs.

Despite her saying this quietly, the boy seems to hear and lets out a cackle. “Oh, I hope it is just because you said that!”

“Don’t jinx me! This place actually seems nice!” 

“Eh, it’s aight I guess.”

The waitress passing by gives him a dirty look and huffs as she sets down four more plates to add onto the piles and piles of ceramic precariously balanced together on his table. If you’ve been talking like that about the restaurant this entire time, then that might be why the dish was so bad… Lucy sweatdropped. 

Nevertheless, the boy doesn’t seem to notice and instead gives a light laugh as he inhales a whole plate of meat. This time, there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it as he exhaled and went onto the next plate on his path of clear self destruction via stomach rupture, and it was then that Lucy noticed the short little kitten nibbling on a bone of fish in satisfaction. “They let animals in here?”

“Nrsh- Happish naht ahn ahnimaul!” His owner(?) grumbled out, and Happy mewed as he looked up. Something on his back twitched, but Lucy couldn’t figure out what it was because the boy spoke again, “hish mah besh f’end!!”

“Ah…?” It took her a moment to figure out what the strange boy was trying to say, but it clicked a moment later, “Oh, his name is Happy? That’s cute!”

“Aye, sir! Am Happy, and that’s Natsu,” the cat- and… was it possibly a spirit? Lucy’d never met an animal that spoke except for her spirits and a few of the cattle her old guildmates stole and decided to have some fun with.

“I can’t believe I learned your name before his,” she said. “But I’m Lucy!”

“Are wu alone, wuffy? Dash shad!” Natsu gulps down a whole steak when he says that.

“How rude! I’m just waiting for my friend, but I’ve got a feeling he’s trying to steal someone’s wife again…” Lucy was pretty sure she saw Leo kneeling and kissing a woman right on her ring finger a few minutes ago.

“Aaaaaaa, okeh,” Happy drawled, and Lucy felt a sudden urge to pinch the brats cheek and stretch it as far as she could, but decided to stop herself. 

“Gwess you’w stwuck wid us!”

“Who says I’m sticking with you two here!?”

----

"A guild master!? Who the hell would willingly let you be the leader!"

"Hey, ya know what, I'm actually the best they've had!"

"You're the only one they've had so far! Hah, I bet you'll give up after the first pile of papers that end up on your desk!"

"Da hell would papersh beh doin on mah tebl!?"

"The fuck do you mean what they'd be doing there!? And if you spit more food on me one more time I swear to god-!"

Leo’s been acting odd the past few days, Lucy has noticed. He was always rather flighty, and Lucy got used to it as time went on, but it seemed like it got worse somehow. So, obviously, she started investigating- well, tried to. He could be surprisingly sneaky when he wanted to, and that was absolutely fucking her over right now, and Lucy knows that her sleuthing skills are nothing to scoff at.

And yet, despite her several attempts, she seems to catch nothing but air and the swooning of random women who’ve clearly found themselves taken by his charm. Also a few men who vary from being just as charmed, or throw the closest item at her upon hearing his name come from her lips in anger.

Even Natsu seems to not know what's happened, and the city of Magnolia loves him despite the constant pile of rubble needing to be cleaned up and recycled because of him (and his guild, but it's mostly him). For them both to not hear a single word about Leo is... concerning.

She’d almost given up when Virgo mentioned a spirit who can help, and so she does.

She doesn’t like what she hears, and the entirety of Magnolia wakes to a cry that shakes their land for just a few second, but those seconds are enough to let people know something's gone horribly wrong.

Lucy is 25, and Leo is slowly fading away. She doesn’t mean that figuratively, too, she means that as literally as she possibly can. Right in front of her eyes, Leo is crouched down with his forehead pressed against the floor and tears pouring out in waves as he slowly starts to fade into dust right before her eyes. 

She’s pressed as close as she possibly can to him, and she’s screaming out words that shake and warbles out curses as she begs him to wait just a moment longer. Her fingers go through his form and catch nothing but starlight.

She hates this, she hates the spirit king, whoever he is, and she hates the sheer audacity of this world to try and take what’s hers away all over again, and the things buried underneath her skin shimmers with rage. Unbidden, the keys strapped to her thighs start to shake and cry along with her, and though they do not come out, Lucy can feel their support anyways.

Bits of her skin split down to her very bones and glow, her nails sharpening and her very eyes turning into slits, bits of keratin bursting out of her forehead and leaving little nubs in their wake as bloods starts to drip down.

Can feel a whole new kind of power come out and her hands pull Leo close to her, and she ş̵̨̻̱͔̈́̒͆͊͝c̴̤͕̈́̒͝͝r̴̹͇̈̍ḙ̶̇̓͐́͘â̴͖m̶͕̲̝̐͒s̵͕̗͈̊̈́̒̚͜.

Lucy is 31, and she smiles as Layla Heartfilia opens her eyes.

"Im sorry, old friend..."

The spirits mourn until they're no longer able to, and the spirit king stays in his throne in silence.

A/N: Okay so. I know I was very very vague but I hate writing down technicalities of things except for when I've written them bullet point style, so for the most part I'll leave certain things to you guys to figure out! I willz however, make a few things in this one very clear:

Lucy figured out where the guild that caused her village's massacre is and infiltrated it. I'll leave what she did inside the guild up to the air, except for the fact it was not in any way good things, and I'll leave the goal for the guild up in the air as well. Will either be revealed at any point? Probably, yeah, but not anytime soon.

There are two things Lucy did that caused her curse; one is what she did to Leo- again, I'll leave that to you guys to imagine for a while, and the other is her reviving Layla, her mother. Well... kind of.

Also, if you see typos, haha no you don't! And in my defence, I write on mobile...!!

[lentenken]

There's Only Me, Now

CONTENT WARNING: Horror-esque themes, insects and corpses together nearby the end (seperated from the rest with a ------------)

FT MASTERLIST |

She’s 14 when her mother holds her close and asks her to stay safe. Lucy’s 14, and her cheeks are just starting to lose their baby fat with eyes that shine the same way the fire in their home does. Her father’s both the leader of where they live and not at the same time, always out of the house and only coming back in the dead of night to have a quick nap and give her mother a soft kiss for the morning. They’re hidden inside a grove of a thousand trees, with birds that sing a kind song every morning Lucy wakes up and with elks watching their population at the edge of the forests. The sun scatters through the land and the stars look like fruit she can try to harvest off the trees. 

Lucy is 14 and the birds have started to go far far away. They no longer sing and dance across the skies, and instead what little of them there are left only let out desperate chirps before being suddenly silenced. The elk have been slaughtered entirely, and Lucy can no longer leave their small village to venture through the thinning forest- not where every step leaves behind a print of red and where every breath makes you take in the scent of rusted iron.

Lucy is 14, and her father comes back home with a frown and a dark look in his eye every time. Her mother starts packing their things with desperation, and the people start leaving their homes en masse. They never send a message back, even days after they leave, and her father cries into empty caskets.

Her mother’s cheeks have grown gaunt, and there’s a haunted look on her face every time she takes a moment to watch the forest. Before they actually leave the long since deserted village, her mother takes Lucy into her arms and clings with enough force to take the breath out of her. She’s shaking and hiccuping on her words, and she tells Lucy to be careful and stay safe. Gives her all kinds of directions, which path to stay away from, what sounds to run from, and to never look back.

Her father sits her down on the horse they’re about to ride, squeezes her wrist and sighs. “Something’s gone wrong,” and that’s the most honest Lucy has ever heard from him. “There’s something out there, and we don’t know what it is. I need you to be brave as we go through the forest, Lucy, and keep going until you’re out of here.”

Now, Lucy doesn’t know her father as much as she likes. Before this, she had spent most of her time with her mother and playing with the children, their twinkling laughter cutting through the growing dread. She hasn’t spoken to her friends in a while now, and even with them being the last folks in the village she still hasn’t spent much time with her father. Still, Lucy’s always been clever, and the tutors that her father sent her way in the hopes of leaving his mantle to family have only given her more context to build from, so she says nothing about the questions on her mind. There are no words spoken about the cemetery having been emptied all those weeks ago, about her mother’s weakening state, nor about the clumps of blood she’d found in their sinks.

Instead, Lucy squeezes her father’s own wrist back and tells him she will. She’ll be brave, and smart, and get out.

It’s early in the morning, and there’s less light than before despite the forest having been halved. The pure silence leaves Lucy clutching at the reigns of their steed with trepidation, and her father’s shoulders are slumped over with defeat. She doesn’t know why, she’s terrified to know why, so she doesn’t ask about that. Between the family of three, they ride two horses. On one, her mother is weakly holding onto her father; on the other, Lucy watches them both with a rising sense of dread. She follows them both to the very edge, and they tell her to go first, and to go as fast as she can. They’d fed the horses with all the food they can find in the dying farm, and so they’re more than ready to gallop through the lands with as much as they can.

Lucy’s heart is beating as fast as it possibly can, and it only calms the slightest bits when she spots her parents following out of the corner of her eye. “Don’t take a single turn, Lucy,” her father says.

“And even if it doesn’t seem so, we’ll be right behind you, darling,” her mother follows. There are tears starting to gather in her eyes, and her mouth is wobbly. “So don’t stop for a moment, okay?”

“Of course, mother,” Lucy says, and in her heart she hopes that something like that wont ever come to pass. 

The farther they go, the more demented the space seems to become. The trees are slowly twisting and turning rotten, the air starting to smell sour. There seems to be a mark on each log, and the wind whips at Lucy’s hair with urgency. With the speed she’s gone, she doesn’t have the chance to really study the marks she passes by, but they come in all shapes and sizes. Thin scratches, large clumps of moss growing over what Lucy hopes isn’t blood, bits of cloth caught against branches, and even wisps of fur stuck on shrubbery. She does her best to ignore the growing familiarity of the things she sees- the hat of the fisherman she’d watch as a child, the ribbon of a friend who’d left ages ago, and even a hair pin she’d lent to a young girl.

Far in the distance, she sees a shine, and can’t help but urge her ride to go faster. “We’re closer to the exit, mother! Father!”

When she gets no reply, she almost turns her head to look back before her mother’s voice cuts through the quiet, “That’s lovely to hear! Keep going, Lucy, we’re close behind you!” and so she continues on.

Hearing her mother behind her back is enough to lift a weight from her heart, and the wind starts to slow. Even so, her hands continue to tremble, and the feeling of unease grows.

“Are you both alright?”

“Yes, we’re both fine!”

“Okay,” Lucy says.  “Would either of you like me to slow down…?”

“If you can, sweetie, that would be wonderful,” despite the speaker being her father, Lucy can’t help but sweat.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, Lucy, we’d rather ride with you by our side! There’s a shortcut to be found, here on our end.”

Even though it’s her mother’s soothing staccato that comes through, Lucy can’t help but cower from it. “Didn’t you say to only go straight?”

“Ah, but that was before your mother and I had found this beaten off path- it seems much faster than the one we’re on!”

“Yes-”

“Come back-”

“Now-”

“DoNt AbanDoN Us-”

“Ẃ̸̭̯̞̋̋͝E̴̮̞̯̥̦̺̒ ̴̭͐Ǹ̵͚͍̟̊͊Ě̶͇̫̥̘͌̕Ē̶͈̬̺̙̯̙͋̂̕D̵͖̰͈͔̞͗͌̌͠ ̷̥͍̺̐͌͛́́͝Ŷ̶̥͐̊͝͝͝O̴̢̨̳͕̕Ȗ̵͎̱̝͉̂̇͛̕ͅ—”

“LUCY, RUN-!”

She hears something like a screech from every side, and cries from her people, and Lucy kicks at her horse’s side in a panic. The steed seems to understand just how precarious the situation is now and breaks into a faster gallop, neighing all the while. 

“COME BACK-”

“DONT LEAVE–”

“YOU FUCKING COWARD—”

“THEY’RE ALL GONE—”

“BECAUSE OF Ỷ̵̮̤͕͔Ǫ̶̣̬̈́͊̇Ṷ̶̏̀̍̈́—”

The light comes closer and closer, and Lucy bites down on her lip to keep from warbling out please to her parents. Be safe, be safe, be right behind me at the end of it all-

And with one final desperate sprint, they jump right into the sun. The voices stop, the whole silence has gone away, and Lucy leaps off the horse to look back into the forest- and they’re not there. 

-------------------------------------

What is there, however, are corpses. Bodies upon bodies piled up together, and none of them pieced correctly. A few fingers have made it at the forest edge. Palms outstretched towards her, a face with its mouth pulled all the way down to mimic a horrified scream. She knows each and every one, with the soft eyes of the local grandmother now skinned and stuck to the edge, the soft smile sent her way by that cute baker now carved out, and the skinned arm of a child who always asked her for stories. There’s the overalls of her neighbor, the ears of a cat she’d loved to pet on the way home, the stricken eyes of her language teacher, and a heart that’s still beating.

Some bodies are overgrown by maggots coming out of every possible surface, and insects that gargle and hiss into rotting intestines.

-------------------------------------

Where are her parents. Where is her father’s pursed lips, her mother’s warm eyes, and their always soothing presence-

Lucy takes a ragged breath in, and she

takes 

one 

step

forward- 

Except there’s nothing there anymore, and Lucy’s left alone in a prairie all by herself. One more breath in. Another sob swallowed down. She looks down.

Her mother’s face cries out at her, red tears in her eyes.

A/N; Okay so this isn't how Lucy got her curse, but that's because I realized how she gets her curse will feel like it came out of nowhere if I didn't at least try to explain her past. Uhh ... the next one will be how she got her curse? Maybe....

[lentenken]

𝓐𝓵𝓵 𝓣𝓱𝓪𝓽 𝓨𝓸𝓾 𝓝𝓮𝓮𝓭 𝓕𝓻𝓸𝓶 𝓜𝓮

‧̍̊˙· 𓆝.° ｡˚𓆛˚｡ °.𓆞 ·˙‧̍̊ ‧̍̊˙· 𓆝.° ｡˚𓆛˚｡ °.𓆞 ·˙‧̍̊ ‧̍̊˙· 𓆝.° ｡˚𓆛˚｡ °.𓆞 ·˙‧̍̊

ˢʰᵉ/ᵗʰᵉʸ | ᴴᵉʸᵃ, ᴸᵀᴷ ʰᵉʳᵉᵎ ᴵ ʲᵘˢᵗ ʷʳᶦᵗᵉ ʷʰᵃᵗᵉᵛᵉʳ⁻ ᵃᵗᵐ ᵗʰᵃᵗ'ˢ ᶠᵃᶦʳʸ ᵗᵃᶦˡ ᶠᶦᶜˢ, ᵇᵘᵗ ᴵ'ˡˡ ᵈᵉᶠᶦⁿᶦᵗᵉˡʸ ᵇᵉ ʷʳᶦᵗᶦⁿᵍ ᶠᵒʳ ᵐᵒʳᵉ ᶠᵃⁿᵈᵒᵐˢ ᵃᵗ ˢᵒᵐᵉ ᵖᵒᶦⁿᵗ ᴿᵉᵠᵘᵉˢᵗˢ: ᴺᵒᵗ ᴼᵖᵉⁿ | ᴬˢᵏˢ: ᴼⁿ

Recents:

# MASTERLISTS

FAIRY TAIL

[lentenken]

꧁༒☬𝓕𝓐𝓘𝓡𝓨 𝓣𝓐𝓘𝓛☬༒꧂

"𝓔𝓿𝓮𝓷 𝓲𝓯 𝓘 𝓬𝓪𝓷'𝓽 𝓼𝓮𝓮 𝔂𝓸𝓾… 𝓔𝓿𝓮𝓷 𝓲𝓯 𝔀𝓮'𝓻𝓮 𝓯𝓪𝓻 𝓯𝓻𝓸𝓶 𝓮𝓪𝓬𝓱 𝓸𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻… 𝓘'𝓵𝓵 𝓪𝓵𝔀𝓪𝔂𝓼 𝓫𝓮 𝔀𝓪𝓽𝓬𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰 𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝔂𝓸𝓾. 𝓘'𝓵𝓵 𝓭𝓮𝓯𝓲𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓵𝔂 𝔀𝓪𝓽𝓬𝓱 𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓻 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓻."

SWAP AU, or... A star that wont ever be in the skies again, a fire that lasts despite it all, a reality that feels like a lie, and somehow the darkness is kinder than one would think.

Do You Remember? There Were Only Two - Natsu and the beginning of his part of the story.

There's Only Me, Now - Even at the start of it all, Lucy's the only one left.

Remember: There's No One Here - Something's gone wrong somewhere, but where?

The Path's All Broken Up Now - This was never supposed to happen.

How'd It Go? - Natsu has a best friend, and her name is Lucy.

[lentenken]

Do you remember? There were only two.

FT Masterlist |

He doesn't know what happened, just knows that at the start of it, he'd been resting in bed. Resting right below the window, with the sun shining bright on his face. It was nice and comfortable, and Natsu couldn't bring himself to wake up. Instead, he curled up deeper into the covers. The heat felt nice on the bits of scales that covered his skin, and he had decided that Igneel or Zeref could wake him up instead.

He woke up to fire, instead. It wasn't his, or Igneel's, or anyone else's on the island. This fire was raging against something, filled with spite and hatred, and it made Natsu itch with a feeling that he needed to run. But he couldn't bring himself to, even when he heard the cries and the pleas outside his little hut on the outskirts of the village, he stayed put. Curled up on an ashen bed with the windows broken down and blood splattered across the floors.

There was a shadow above him and Natsu shut his eyes harder, curled up even smaller, and pretended he was just playing hide and seek with everyone else. He doesn't remember what happened after that, only waking up on an empty island with a heavy weight on his shoulders that he didn't understand, not yet. A figure was sitting by the edge of the forests, overlooking the sea, and she was pretty. Blonde hair and brown eyes overflowing with warmth with a sweet smile on her lips, Natsu felt as if he were looking at the paintings his Mama'd show him. He took one step forward, and-

S̸̡̔ḥ̴̕e̷͕͝ ̵͕͝ẘ̶̢ä̸̰s̸̱͆ ̵̺̿n̴̲͑e̵͍̔v̶͙̕e̴͒ͅr̸̩̓ ̶̝͒t̶̺̕h̵̢̎e̶̱̅r̷̩͊ḙ̴͛.

The air made him want to puke, even though there was nothing in his stomach. It had that acrid taste of something he didn't want to think about and decided that maybe it was a good thing Wendy left a few years hours ago. The surviving trees were covered with soot, but they were the only sources of food left except for the corpses littering the ground so he got to cleaning them. He made sure to clean the bits around their roots, too, and munched on a huge mango. It tasted bitter, no matter what he tried.

He swallowed it all down anyways and leaned against the corpse-thin shoulders of his brother, who was tapping at his knee. "Man, I miss how Grandeeney and the folks used ta make our food," Natsu said, his usual greedy gulps of food now a more slow and hesitant pace.

"If you'd paid attention to their lessons you would know exactly how to cook," Zeref gave Natsu a tap on his forehead and sighed, "Recovering all the farms will be a pain, though... And all our livestock's dead."

"Haaaa? Can' we just bring some from outside? That's what Gajeel's dad did!"

"Metallicana is over a hundred times bigger and stronger than both of us combined." Here, Zeref paused and thought for a moment, "Neither of us has the net he used to kidnap them, too."

"A net? I thought they all just stayed inside his mouth for a while!"

"And eat them...? No, I'm pretty sure Skiadrum would have tormented him for years if he did."

"Wouldn' stop 'im, though."

"...it really wouldn't," Zeref couldn't help but imagine that, with Metallicana gleefully swooping down on a poor farmer's land to capture a few pigs and cows into his mouth before flying away and congratulating himself for the success before landing back home and finding that he'd swallowed everything down his gullet.

...yes, Skiadrum would have beaten Metallicana halfway to death for that.

He told Natsu exactly that, and his brother cackled.

Neither tried to think of the blood pooling by their feet.

After that, the days passed simply enough. A few chicks had somehow made their way to the island, and for a few years, life was simple enough. They would feed the chicks with a few seeds they'd managed to salvage from the somehow living fauna, eat mostly fruits from the trees, and train together. They'd leave, someday, Natsu knew. To search for everyone else, to see other people for once, to avenge the fallen.

For now, they'd both settled for practicing their magic each day until they'd be a few spells away from dropping dead. For now, they tried to not think too hard of the bodies they'd buried, and the number of graves lower than there'd been living people. For now, they tried not to think too much about how everything felt horribly wrong, like they'd been displaced.

Lucy looked over the sleeping bodies of children and thought of how tired of it all she was, and Loke gave her a hug.

A/N: I have... ideas for how I'd like to fit the other dragon slayers into the story. It's gonna be overtly complicated, as Lucy's ideas usually are, and be filled with misery! Fun fact, in the next one shot I'm planning on writing down how Lucy got her curse, and it's not fun! It'll also showcase my multishipper tendencies lmao.

[lentenken]

Remember: There's No One Here

FT Masterlist |

"Cancer," the words are spoken softly, too quiet in comparison to the raging rows of plants doing their best to drive themselves into her skull, "take care of the trash for me."

A tall man, with glasses that glint in the light, moves forward and snips through the vines immediately on instinct- no words are said, no form of acknowledgment given beyond the orders being obeyed. The woman he's making his way towards is starting to panic now, a poor girl who'd made the mistake of sending a burst of water hemlock towards Cancer's master with pretty enough hair and tiny spikes adorning the locks that make Lucy itch with curiosity.

One, two, three, Cancer steps through each bit of foliage thrown at him with grace and precision. Despite this, his teeth are gritted and there was plenty of panic to be found in his eyes as he wondered why he was fighting in the first place, why he was out here, why, why, why are there only the two of us here?

Cancer isn't Leo, he can't come out as he pleases with how his magic is. He can't pierce through the barrier separating spirit and human like Leo, can only" gently part the gates with the help of whoever held his key, but there is no one here except for the mage whose attacks have grown in desperation.

There is no twinkling laugh, no smattering of yellow to fill his vision, and there was no warmth to be found in any eyes that watched. Master, princess, Lucy where are you?

Two, four, six, his form is perfect and he's simply a few steps away from his scissors finding themselves lodged in the poor girls neck, there's sweat gripping at his brow and a sudden panic churning inside him as he wonders what's going on, as the air behind him starts to shift, and the sudden pressure at his back making him want to cry in grief run away.

"Be gentle, now. I don't need her body ruined," her voice never once raises, despite the twist and turns she makes to dodge the projectiles turning to ash from her dearest friend's servant's attacks.

All of a sudden, Cancer's movements slow, no longer the fervent cadence from before, the two-four-six becoming the one-two-three it had started with. That, alone, made the girl- for she was nothing but that to his master -slow and start to speak before Cancer appeared behind her and smacked his bare knuckles against her neck. The next moment, the girl was unconscious and Cancer gone in a speck of stars before he could even begin to ponder the wrongness he was feeling.

Lucy flicked at the stardust and kneeled over the body in curiosity, running her fingers through the girls hair. There's a sudden sting on one of her fingers, and she can't help the way her eyes start to sparkle shine in a sort of childish curiosity sadistic glee at the ideas starting to form in her mind.

"Ah, I wonder if I could have these grow elsewhere...? Having them by your arms would be rather useful, especially since poor you had so little options for close ranged attacks..."

"I can't help but wonder why the rest of your body doesn't follow the same formula as the hair on your head, however..."

Fingers trace the paling cheek of the corpse and stop at the chin. With enough pressure, the mouth opens to show surprisingly sharp teeth and an oddly textured tongue. "Oh...? Did your magic change your body to suit its needs or were you perhaps born this way...?"

In the far distant world bathed in purples, Cancer frowns. Was he doing something?

"Man," their guild master cried, "I didn't know paperwork would be so boring!" Tears were pouring down his eyes as he kept a shaky grip on the pen in his hand. On the desk he sat at, piles and piles of paper were strewn across the flat surface. One for building expansion, another for the supply of food, and plenty of complaints for too much force used in missions. A blue cat nibbled on fish by his side as he cried.

"Why didn't anyone tell meeeeee!!!" He continued crying out, but paused as something in his words seemed to cause a spark in his mind. "Uhh, wait, someone did tell me! Haha, yeah it was-"

"Uhm..."

"How could you be so forgetful, Natsu!" Happy mumbled through his chewing.

"Hold on, I know who it was!! Reese, no- Lacke! Wait, no, Lockheart!? Er, I don't know any of these people... I'm sure someone told me though, haha!"

The members of the slowly growing guild glance at the burst of laughter coming out of their master's office but go back to focusing on themselves after a few moments. It was never a good idea when Natsu laughed like that.

Huzzah, @nalunalu, enjoy my uncoordinated pile of words!