Notes: AU, so there's no magic or guilds. Also, it's rated T for safety.
Disclaimer: We do not own Fairy Tail, Hiro Mashima does.
Enjoy:)
-X-
To Lucy Heartfilia, life was a dark hole of nothingness. As the daughter of Jude Heartfilia, the owner of the largest and wealthiest company in Fiore, expectations were high for her. She was supposed to be the next CEO of the Heartfilia Konzern, which already put lots of stress on shoulders. She was expected to act like a proper lady, and have the brains of a genius.
It also didn't help when Layla Heartfilia, her mother, died, and her father became a heartless workaholic. All of this was too much for a young teenager as herself to handle, but she held on because she had believed that one day, things would get better.
Keyword: believed. She gave up on that hope when one day her father came home drunk, and started shouting at her about how her mother's death was all her fault. That was when she had finally snapped and had tried to kill herself. That night, she had taken a small blade from her kitchen and cut her wrists.
However, the maids had found her as soon as she had done so, and she was sent to the emergency room where the doctors had "saved" her. Lucy herself believed that she would have been better off dead.
After, her father had sent her to a mental hospital in order for her to, quote and quote, "find the light in her life". She herself knew that her father had only said that in order to sound nice in front of the public.
-X-
And all that lead to her here and now, lying on the bed in the hospital.
Lucy sighed in frustration. When will that "light" come? She could only laugh at the thought that she could be saved. It was too late; she was already in too deep.
Then on one fateful day, a week after she had arrived at the hospital, three people came stumbling into her room along with a flying cat.
Lucy immediately backed up against her bed and tensed. The first person to get up was a beautiful girl with flaming scarlet colored hair. She sighed and apologized,
"Sorry for carelessly stumbling into your room. We were just here to check on a friend, but we got lost and ended up at the wrong hospital. Please forgive us." Lucy nodded her head shakily.
The two other boys slowly stood up as well, and then glared at the other. One had strange pink spiky hair and the other had raven black hair. All three of them looked about her age. The pink haired boy grinned widely at her,
"Hi! My names Natsu Dragneel, her name is Erza Scarlet, this idiot beside me is Gray Fullbuster, and this is my cat Happy."
Suddenly a cat with unusual blue hair popped into sight and jumped onto Lucy's bed, nuzzling and purring against her chest.
The raven haired boy, Gray, glared at Natsu and raised his fist, "Shut up Flamebrain, look who's talking."
Erza hollered at them, "BE QUIET! YOU'RE DISRUPTING A PATIENT!" And with that, the two boys slowly backed away, grumbling about how she was always shouting. Lucy looked at them curiously and raised her hand,
"Hello, I'm Lucy Heartfilia."
Natsu, Erza, and Gray stared at her, and she knew what they were thinking. They were obviously wondering what she was doing at a place like this. And Natsu, who seemed to be the bold and shameless type, asked her without any thought,
"What are you here for Lucy?" Erza and Gray glared at him for asking that question, but curiosity won and they looked at her with warm eyes; waiting for an answer.
Even though Lucy had just met them, she couldn't resist the urge to tell them everything, and so that was exactly what she did. Despite having an aura full of energy, the three listened carefully and didn't interrupt her at all. Once she had finished, she looked up from the blanket that she was staring at the whole time to see their reaction. She sighed, what does it matter, they probably think that I'm a freak now anyways.
The three teenagers stared at her blankly for a moment, and she assumed that her guess seemed to be correct. She was then proved that it was actually very wrong.
They looked at each other and nodded furiously to one another, which caused Lucy to cock her head to the side suspiciously. What are they nodding for?
And with that the three of them faced towards her with wide smiles and spoke simultaneously,
"Lucy, we're your new friends!"
-X-
Every single day after the incident, the trio would visit their new friend Lucy at the hospital and all of them would hang out like normal kids; as if they didn't meet and bond in a mental hospital.
Natsu and Gray would mess around with the hospital equipment and fight each other, and Erza would just knock them to the ground when things got too far; while Lucy would laugh at all of their childish antics.
One time, the three teens decided to tell her about their lives since she told them about theirs.
Natsu confessed that he had been abandoned when he was a baby, but a man called Igneel took care of him and raised him after finding him on the streets. However, Igneel left a few years ago too, and now Natsu was stuck searching for him.
Gray told her that his parents were killed when he was a kid, so he was taken in by a woman named Ur, who taught him everything he needed to know in life before dying of a sickness.
Erza's story shocked her the most. The beautiful scarlet haired woman told her about she was put in an abusive child shelter as a kid. She described how the adults would use a variety of ways to torture them, which all made Lucy shudder. She told her about how she had only escaped by herself; leaving all her friends behind. She had lived with that guilt ever since she was little, and she was still bearing it now. Thankfully, the government had caught the shelter, so she was sure that everyone in there was safe now.
Hearing all of this, Lucy realized that her life wasn't as bad she deemed it to be, and she learned that where there's bad, there's worse.
Despite all having sorrowful lives, the days that they spent with each other were days that they would never regret or forget, as they were all well spent and full of happiness;
Day by day, Lucy's happiness slowly came back, and her dark world was once again filled with light.
By the end of the joyful three months they spent together, her eyes sparkled again, her smile was as bright as the sun, and her humor had come back. To the three young teenagers, she was their gorgeous and amazing best friend. Although she didn't think so, they knew just how pretty she was.
Lucy had shoulder length silky blonde hair, curves in the right places, a soft and pale complexion, and warm chocolate colored eyes. Everyday they spent with her was filled with laughter and fun, and the thought of it ending never once crossed their minds.
However, all good things come to an end.
-X-
A month later, Lucy was discharged from the hospital, seeing as how she was cured and much, much better than before. She went back to the Heartfilia mansion, and continued her hardworking and rich lifestyle. She studied hard during the day, and thought about her dear friends at night.
The separation of the four affected them and everyone around them greatly. At home, the maids could see that every single time Lucy smiled, it was fake as can be. At Natsu, Erza, and Gray's high school, all of their friends could recognize that their cheerful demeanor had diminished, and it seemed more forced.
Finally, the maids had decided that enough was enough, and that their mistress deserved to be happy once again. They convinced Jude that Lucy should be able to attend school by using the excuse that "she needed experience", and in about a half-year's time after her discharge out of the hospital, Lucy Heartfilia was going to attend Fairy Tail High.
Lucy was excited for high school of course, and she really did appreciate how much her maids cared for her. It was just hard for her to express happiness now because so much had been taken away from her. First it was her mother that died of a sickness, then her father ignored her for years, and after that she tried to kill herself and was sent to a mental hospital.
Well, she was actually kind of grateful for the last part because there she met Natsu, Erza, and Gray, who brought her true happiness and gave her the best three months of her life. But even then, they were soon taken away from her when her father Jude brought her back home.
She sighed as she put on her Fairy Tail High uniform, which consisted of a white collared shirt with a beige vest, a red ribbon, plaid red skirt, white knee-high socks, and a dark scarlet blazer; which immediately reminded her of Erza's hair as it was the same color. She tied her hair into her usual style, which was a small mini ponytail put to the side, and set off for school.
"Class, we have a new student today. Her name is Lucy Heartfilia. Please give her a warm welcoming." The teacher, Mr. Gildarts, spoke. Lucy smiled at the other students nervously. She listened the hushed murmurs of the class and blushed,
"Wow…she looks like a model."
"Look at those curves!"
"Back off, I'm gonna get her!"
Suddenly, the doors opened in came Natsu, Erza, and Gray. Lucy gasped and covered her mouth with her hands as small unnoticeable tears gathered at her eyes at the sound of their names. Gildarts sighed at them,
"Can't you three enter a class normally for once? We have a new student today, her name's Lucy Heartfilia." At that name, the three young teens scrambled to their feet as fast as possible. The four best friends stared at each other in shock while the rest of the class stared at them in confusion, and Natsu was the first to break the silence,
"Lucy…?" At that, Gray and Erza came to their senses at well and the three of them broke into wide grins.
"LUCY!" The four pounced on to each other in glee and squeezed one another like there was no tomorrow. They laughed and tears of joy came to their eyes as they were reunited.
The moment was soon ruined as Gildarts coughed awkwardly,
"With that being said, please return to your seats and I'll begin the lesson."
The four blushed furiously as they remembered that they were in a classroom, and they hurried to sit beside one another, their smiles never leaving their faces.
Even though no one confirmed it, they knew for a fact that they would never allow themselves to be separated from one another ever again. After all, they needed to shine bright like lights for each others' worlds of darkness.
-X-
Hope you liked it, byeee!