Chapter Text
- March X791 -
It all came crashing down with one, simple question.
“Where’s Lucy?” Natsu asked. The cheery atmosphere felt like it was smothered in an instant, the Tenrou team watching the other guild members share solemn looks. Natsu met Bisca’s gaze, feeling the drop in the atmosphere as a lump formed in his throat.
“Don’t tell me she left the guild?” Gray asked, glancing across the dreary expressions of their fellow guildmates. Everyone who hadn’t been on Tenrou looked hesitant, sad, but there was no words to express it kindly. How could you say something so horrible gently? How could it be put so that it didn’t shatter them into a million pieces?
Alzack held Bisca’s hand tightly, gaze cast down as he finally opened his mouth.
“A year ago, Lucy died.” Bisca’s voice came out before his could, Alzack turning a soft gaze to her, brows drawn together in concern. Natsu’s eyes widened, opening his mouth to speak before closing it again. His chest felt tight, impossibly so.
“She- She’s strong, she wouldn’t die.” his protest came out as a weak croak, his throat constricting further as he tried to grasp back to reality, feeling the way his breaths felt like they were coming in gasps, the way his vision was blurring with barely contained tears. The way everything else seemed to blur as he looked up to Bisca, hoping she was playing a cruel prank. Knowing she was never that type of person.
“She died peacefully in her sleep.” her words were slow, like a final nail in the coffin of finality as she frowned. “She wanted me to tell you that she was sorry she couldn’t last long enough to see you all again, she…. She really missed you all.” she walked through the words robotically, she’d gone over them in her head a million times. “She had a message for you.” her gaze turned up to Natsu.
He stiffened, hands clenching tightly into fists, trying to brace his breaking heart, trying to grasp onto the way his feet touched the ground, the way air rushed into his lungs. Calm down, breathe.
“She wanted me to preface it with an apology, because she knew how much it would hurt.” Bisca hesitated, hands clenching tightly into fists. Natsu barely stopped himself from stumbling back, trying to reel himself in, trying to rationalize that there must be some mistake, there was no way Lucy was dead. She was smart and strong and there was just no way. A joke, this had to be, maybe-
“She wanted me to tell you she loves you, and that it’s okay to move on.” She’d said it about fairy tail. That she loves fairy tail, she said before she loves her friends.
This was different, Natsu could sense it, he knew it. He opened his mouth, no sounds coming out as he met Bisca’s gaze swimming with immeasurable grief and finally, it hit. It felt like the wind was knocked out of him as he clasped a hand over his mouth. It felt ten times worse than any punch he’d taken, ten times worse than any time he’d been laying after a fight feeling like death had warmed over him. The world was moving in slow motion, Happy was calling his name, and before he could think he was running.
He wasn’t sure where he was going, his vision blurred as his cheeks felt wetter, the path blurred into brush and the shouts died out.
It had to be a mistake. They must just think she was dead. It had to be that, she had to be okay. If she wasn’t-
His chest felt tight again, his breath stolen as he collapsed to his knees, gasping for air as tears rolled down his cheeks, mouth open wordlessly. No noise escaped him as he silently sat there, his blood coldly running through his veins. His chest felt like it was being crushed by a building, so tight he could barely breathe.
He felt paralyzed, trapped in the feeling of his body failing him, the constant loop of denial before his mind flickered back to Bisca’s expression, the words she spoke.
Lucy loved him back, and she was dead.
What should have been the happiest revelation of his life, that Lucy loved him back, was crushed by the overwhelming weight of her death. The words twisted and writhed in his chest, poisioned by the all consuming knowledge that Lucy was dead.
His hands clenched into fists, opening his mouth.
He let out a scream, bashing fiery fists against the ground, bashing his fists into the earth over and over again, feeling the cuts form, feeling the blood smear across his fists as he struck the earth over and over again, fire flaring out with each impact.
After a while he went silent again, braced against the ground with his arms, a soft hiccup escaping him. He rolled onto his back, staring up at the sky as tears poured down his cheeks.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
Back at the guild the silence remained eerie, endless morbid questions hanging unasked in the air. Erza sat with her face in her hands, Wendy sobbing into Gray’s shirt, clinging to him tightly as he tried to comfort her through his own tears.
“What… Happened?” Makarov’s voice was quiet, barely audible as he looked to Mocao. Macao frowned, looking away.
“We don’t really know.” he mumbled softly. Makarov jolted.
“What… what do you mean you don’t know?” he asked. Wakaba peered over at them as Macao shrunk into himself, struggling to answer the question.
“Lucy was drafted into the war that started shortly after you all vanished. The nature of her draft was hidden from us, all this time we thought she was a researcher. Until we got the call to pick her up because she was injured in battle we didn’t know she was fighting.” he explained softly. “ The records of what happened are sealed, the only people who know what happened that day were there and well…” he looked away
“We never asked for too many details.” Alzack admitted quietly. “We know she fell in battle against Acnologia, but nothing more. It… was too painful to pry into every detail. All that mattered was she was gone.” Bisca looked away, closing her eyes for a moment.
“What…. Was she like? How much had she changed?” Cana’s voice was breathless, her knuckles white as Bisca smiled softly.
“We saw her rarely, ten times in six years. She was always cheery when we saw her but…. Knowing what we know now, she was hiding her pain from us, hiding everything so we wouldn’t worry. I can’t really say we knew her at the end, or over the last six years.” her voice was hollow, her gaze sad as she looked at Cana. “We know nothing, not who she served with, where she went, who she fought. She didn’t share any of it with us. She struggled alone, till the very end where we got to be by her side.”
The room was silent again, just as dreary as the moment they asked that first question. Where is lucy? Gone, and never coming back, we’re sorry.
Helplessly sitting here, laughing and enjoying themselves while Lucy fought for her life every day. Believing the lies she told to explain why her paychecks were high enough to sustain the guild and the search parties to go out and check if the island had resurfaced.
They should have asked how she was getting by more, how she was living. They should have forced the issue and come to visit, figured out the lies she was putting up. But no one did, she was such a convincing liar when it came down to protecting them. Her lies were like honey, baiting her own trap, her feet tangled in it, trapped where she stood watching the danger come closer, but still spilling those sweet, comforting lies.
“We know she was brilliant, strong, I could feel it every time we met, she’d matured beyond her years, too fast. She sometimes talked to me like she was a mother hen, she worried about us protectively.” she continued on, smiling fondly. “She would send us letters, she’d avoid talking about her situation besides some sweet lies, but she talked most about missing home, missing us, and missing you all. She would tell me she had no doubts you would come home. Even when I was starting to doubt she would stay strong. ‘Don’t worry, they’re coming home’ she’d write, ‘just wait a bit longer, you’ll see.’ “ Bisca smiled, turning her gaze towards them.
“She had a knack for being right with her gut feelings. A knack for inspiring hope even better than before. Even from so far away, it felt like she was always cheering us on, always having our backs.” she explained.
“She learned to draw to show me the places she saw.” Reedus spoke softly, “she said it was a good way to pass the time when she had some. She sent sketches of you all as well, her art became better with time, she said it helped her wind down to draw. I can show you sometime if you’d like.” he added.
It was so terribly bittersweet.
They were left clinging to the memories of her the people left behind had left. Scraps of interactions, ten visits over six years, and letters, drawings. All that was left of her. All that they would ever have left of her presence. Her space in the room was so loudly empty no one could bear it. To admit it would be to admit the impossible, one of their guildmates had died. While they were gone, while no one was there, she decided her death and took the chance, and on her deathbed, she asked Bisca to apologize them, because she couldn’t make it to see them.
A shaky hope that they would one day come back, that everything would be okey for them even though it was all going wrong for her. A faith that everything would be okay after her death, and a guilty confession of love that broke him.
How was he supposed to handle that news? That she was dead and she wanted him to know she loved him?
What a horribly cruel joke, but no one could blame the selfishness of a dying woman. What was Bisca supposed to do? Not tell him? Let her dying words forever evade its intended recipient?
“There is one more thing.” eyes flickered to Bisca as she spoke, Alzack wincing a bit. This was going to complicate things. “Lucy cast one last spell on her deathbed.” she turned her gaze to Erza and Gray, Wendy and happy and Carla, all drawn together to suffer their grief together. “Lucy allowed her magic, all that would exist in her, past, present, and future, to form into a creature capable of only fulfilling her dying will. It does not think, it does not speak, it’s the pure manifestation of her goal to protect Fairy tail from Acnologia.” she had to make it clear, she had to get it across. Lucy was dead. This was not her, it was some reminder of her they couldn’t ever get rid of.
“What- what do you mean creature?” Erza asked slowly, tears streaming from her left eye, puffy from crying.
“It takes the form of a lion, but it shifts shape depending on the need of the situation. It’s a manifestation of all her magic power and spells at her death. It’s sole directive is to protect us from Acnologia. She created it to do this one task.”
“Is it-”
“We call it Lucy, but it’s not her, just…. What’s left of her.” Macao mumbled softly. “It’s nice sometimes to look at it and pretend she’s not dead.” he added hollowly.
Bisca lowered her head slightly.
“I can take you to meet it. It rests at her grave sight.”
“Please.” Erza pleaded softly.