It's Continuum

I'm gonna fly around the world to hear you say, I'm gonna fly around the world to try to find you again and say "I never thought I'd see you again. I never thought I'd get to be with my best friend."

The first time Lucy Heartfilia opened her eyes after dying, the sky above held tints of blue and orange and pink, which she thought to perfectly represent her ideas of heaven, because it reminded her of salmon hair and blue fur, of times spent under a sun that she'd left behind, back on the realm of the living, but that had bathed her in light and warmth as she enjoyed those glorious days with the friends that had come to be her family.

The sight surprised the girl more than she'd expected it to. She had accepted death, and as a celestial mage, she understood that there were thing about life – and about the afterlife – that she would never truly comprehend, at least not before her time was finished, but something felt… off.

Lucy released a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding. She hadn't thought she would ever get to that again, breathe. If this was death, it wasn't much different from living.

The floor felt grainy under her body, warm, like sand beneath her feet when Natsu would trick her into playing with him in the beach or some desert. She would end up taking off her shoes, because it was too difficult to go around dunes when in heels. Those days were long gone, of course, but the memories lived all too vividly in her mind. Even though the heat would burn her bare skin, it had never been enough to stop the girl from having fun.

She was wearing her old clothes, Lucy realized, finally understanding what the tingling on her back meant. She had loved this outfit, with the short skirt, the detailed top that left her midriff bare and the most comfortable pair of boots she'd ever been able to buy. After the dragons, it had gathered dust in the corner of her wardrobe. It represented better times, not to be used in a world where happiness couldn't exist, where he didn't exist.

Her first instinct was to rip those clothes off. She wasn't that girl anymore, someone who believed she had her whole life in front of her to make mistakes and decisions and to grow up. She was dead, dead Lucy Heartfilia, with her ridiculously short skirts and low-cut tops, and she would never get the chance to grow up.

The second realization was even more sudden than the first one.

She had her arm back.

The thought almost didn't process in her foggy mind, as her lazy eyes looked up to the clouds, sweeping across the sky and taking in the emptiness of it, the colors that danced across her vision. She had her guild mark back, the symbol of her link to Fairy Tail and to those wonderful – wonderful, amazing, fearless – mages who she had met so many years ago. She was whole again, not Lucy Heartfilia anymore.

Yes, she was Lucy of Fairy Tail.

Slowly, the girl felt her ideas slipping back into place. She blinked a few times, pushing herself off the ground. Her body had pained her a second before, hadn't it? Bruises and wounds, scars from a previous battle, things that existed no more. They had been erased, as if time itself was being rewritten.

Lucy moved her brown eyes back to the sky and to its rose-bluish color.

Was that it?

"Where… am I?" She asked to the blankness of the desert.

It didn't answer, and she hadn't expected it to. The wind merely picked up, releasing some strands of golden from her pigtails, blowing it to brush against her cheeks. The feeling was familiar, like a scent from her childhood would feel familiar, and the celestial mage had to suppress a smile as she got to her feet.

The scenery around her wasn't what she'd imagined heaven to be; dunes of rough sand under a kaleidoscope sky, shimmering with the solar rays. It was beautiful, but it was also quite strange, as if the ground was swallowing the traces of a pain that shouldn't have taken place, like sadness degenerating into ruins and ruins turning into hope.

What a confusing mess.

Lucy felt lost, more than she'd felt in years. Even after the battle with the dragons, she'd still been able to formulate a plan and live for it. After five years, however, she'd already exhausted any strength that she could possibly possess. Juvia, Wendy, Cana, Mira, Elfman, they were all gone. All but Levy, sitting in her room, waiting for her to come back.

Poor Levy, her strength was gone as well.

There was no more Erza, with her tough façade and heart of gold. There was no more Gray, acting all cool because he didn't want to show his real warmth. There was no more Happy, full of stupid jokes, but so young and so true.

There was no more Natsu, her best friend. He had meant so much to her back then, the one thing able to keep her standing even when all her muscles were so fatigued she could faint. He had always been so strong, bursting at the seams with his will to live and protect others. To protect her, as he'd died doing.

Too soon, she'd thought at that moment. They still had had so much to do, she still had had so much to tell him about her mother and her father and her teachers and about the one thing that tried to slip out of her mouth every time her eyes met his, the confession that caught in her throat, because he was so precious to her that the girl couldn't bear the idea of losing him for saying the wrong thing. Yet, she had lost him anyway, and she had never been able to say it.

"Hey, Lucy!"

The voice came out of nowhere and, for a second, Lucy didn't recognize who exactly was calling her. What could it mean, a man in the middle of nowhere, when death had finally taken her after so many years of close calls? The shock made her turn.

And there he was, pink and orange under the ever changing sky, an almost grin in his lips as he tried to get her to follow him. There was something different about him, older, but he was still Natsu.

"Get over here already!" He continued.

Lucy felt her eyes fill with tears as she stared at the image of her best friend, of what he could have been if the dragons hadn't destroyed their world. He looked so real, so tangible, like she could just reach out a bit and she would actually touch his tanned complexion, the thin scars that covered his features.

"Everyone's here waiting!"

That blue cat could say such important things without any tact! He smiled and jumped around as if nothing had happened to them.

Before the mage could take a step closer, Natsu had already taken hold of her wrist, pulling her.

Behind him, the entire guild gathered. Erza with her kind eyes and ever present armor. Gray, arms crossed and wearing a shirt for a change. Mira and Elfman, Lisanna and Cana, Laxus, Gajeel and… And everyone. The image made Lucy stagger, her vision so blurry she almost couldn't see the expression of pure joy in Natsu's face as he turned to her once again.

"Now… Let's continue on our adventure."

Happy was flying around the two partners, laughing like they had just shared some kind of inside joke. Fairy Tail cheered and shouted, as wild as she remembered them, but their exclamations were too loud to be discernable.

The dragon slayer's words remembered her of something, something she said. But that had been so long ago. They were so young then, and there was another… Another her. No, but she had died.

Her memories were changing. Time was changing.

The girl locked her gaze with Natsu's, feeling the tears overflow and run down her cheeks. They had done it, hadn't they? They'd destroyed the Portal and saved the world. There was no "future Lucy" anymore, because she'd been able to protect the future, after all.

Lucy looked at Natsu and thought about all the pain she still felt, about all the terrible memories that, soon, wouldn't be more than a very bad dream. She looked at him and thought of her love for every single one of those mages, of the power they had lent her by simply having existed. They were what pushed her to move forward and fight, even when everything felt lost.

More than anything, she looked at Natsu and thought about how much she loved him, feeling, for the first time in so long, as if the words she wanted to tell him were tangling inside, battling against her common sense to make themselves known.

Through her tears, Lucy smiled.

"Yeah."

So, this is my interpretation of what may have happened to future Lucy, because I don't think she actually went to heaven or they would have shown those images in another moment, not when they had just changed the future.

I really want to know if I was successful in making people cry with this one, because I almost cried while writing it.

I hope you guys like it!