Hello, Author here! This is my story I promised a while back ._.

Its different, yes. Very different than most stories. It is AU and probably OOC, everything in this story has a reason and lessons that I myself went through and learned. Any questions or any constructive criticism can be PMed to me! Any flames too ;) So without further ado, enjoy.

Disclaimer: I only own plot, everything else go to the almighty creator of Fairy Tail!

The clouds in her mind slowly parted. It wasn't sunny, nor rainy, but dark and bright with stars. Her mind was a peaceful haze of dreamless sleep. Her limbs slowly became aware of the rest of her body, but made no move to try to fully awaken. Her eyes remained closed for a while longer as she basked in the feeling of slowly waking up. After a while, she moved her head slightly. Twitching her nose, her arm shot over her face and slapped against the side of her head.

Her hand circled around the hard material covering her cheek and forehead. Her brow creased further together when she realized what it was. She sighed, and tried swallowing several times as she slowly sat up. Smacking her mouth from the dryness in her throat, she scratched her stomach and swung her legs over the bed.

Her eyes were closed the entire way to the bathroom, just waiting to witness the morning horror that accompanied her face today. The bathroom door banged against the wall loudly, her hand searching wildly for the light switch. Once she found it, she flicked it on and winced when the light behind her eyelids slightly stung. Blinking she slowly peeled open her eyes and stared for a minute at her reflection.

Nothing immediately came to mind while staring. Though if she were to be specific, a certain pink haired idiot DID come to mind. Her brown eyes were dark and shadowed heavily by still existing sleep. She had a feeling Natsu had something to do with her lack of sleep lately. The pest.

Her mind was still going too slow to bring any important thought to the forefront of her mind besides the one thought, though an odd feeling did accompany her apparent lack of memory; the last couple of days hazy. Her head peeked out from the doorway of the bathroom and looked at her bedside clock. 5 in the morning? Why did I wake up so early?

An incurable ache began to form in the center of her chest, but she shrugged it off quickly. Returning her attention back to the mirror, she brought her hands up to her face and peeled away her headphones from her cheek and forehead. This is the only disadvantage with having headphones instead of earphones.

The aftermath left behind looked like it would never go away. Though there were many other mornings with the same marks, these were deeper and more noticeable, making her slightly worried if she would even be able to go out soon. From the looks of them, she had fun last night. But she was a morning person, and not being able to get out of the house as soon as possible bothered her. Which also made the lack of sleep a hard thing to deal with.

Her long blonde hair clung to her face, neck, shoulders and back. As if the static turned to glue. Her hands left her face and gathered it in her hand looking around for a certain item to pull it away from her face. She hesitated in cutting it, but knew if she did she would still be unhappy with it. Which would explain why there were a vast array of different colored ponytail holders everywhere when she looked down. On the floor, in the sink, on the wall, in the mirror compartment, you name it.

She looked to the ones on the wall and grimaced slightly. Hopefully, it's because of hairspray that it can stick so well like that. Shrugging her shoulders, she grabbed one off the sink and successfully made a messy bun. Her specialty.

Shaking her head at her disarray, she brought her hands up to her face and felt the lines again, furrowing her eyebrows when her fingers passed over them. Maybe a shower and some fresh air would make them go away. Taking a step back, she finally felt the need to stretch like life depended on it. Her arms came up and over her head and she leaned back easily, due to her flexibility, until she heard several satisfying pops in her back.

Grabbing her head, she shook it lightly to get rid of the lights dancing in front of her eyes from stretching like she had. Waiting a minute to get rid of the dizziness, she walked over to the bath/shower and smiled. She was looking forward to a long, nice shower to wash away the nights events and prepare her for whatever that day had for her. She pushed back the shower curtains and then froze.

There in the tub, were empty bottles of her favorite shampoo/conditioner duo and body wash. She nearly crumpled to the floor. Only one person would commit such a dirty crime in her bathtub and leave the evidence. Or it could have been three somebodies. She wondered if her friends were even her friends.

"Talk about tough love. And these were really expensive too..." She coughed slightly, the dryness in her throat becoming more apparent.

Standing up, she picked up the empty bottles and silently shed a single farewell tear as she threw them away. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she reached and turned the water on to heat it up. Yawning loudly, she stepped out of the bathroom and walked to her kitchen. When she opened the fridge, her eyes landed on...

"What the hell! NATSU!"

Her favorite drinks were gone. Destroyed. Totaled. Desolated. No longer in existence. Because of her best friend Natsu. The usually fully stocked fridge was emptied of her all-time favorite energy drink, Mania. She rubbed the middle of her chest slightly with the palm of her hand at her growing anxious frustration. Slowly she stood up and narrowed her eyes at nothing in particular.

Why did today feel... off? She woke up amazing, but since then had found many things wrong in her home. Also carrying a sense of oddness with her. Ever since she got out of bed, the feeling had not went away. If it was apparent enough for her to be rubbing her chest, it must be something important she wasn't remembering. She thought back to the last three days of partying she did with her friends. She couldn't remember what they were celebrating, but it was intense and amazingly fun.

Crossing her arms, she squinted. Why couldn't she remember? She hadn't done any heavy drinking. Because that would mess with her pills. Her head shot up and looked to her left. There on the counter laid her empty bottle of anxiety pills. Empty. Gone.

It all came rushing back to her at once. Her father and her fighting. Calling Natsu over. Talking, joking, and chatting. Erza came over, then Lisanna. They had messed around on her new DJ board she got as a present from her dad; she had to explain to them that it was only a bribe gift.

All the rest of the evening that Friday was spent avoiding any questions about her dad or what she was going to do about his proposition. Her eyes narrowed again, a red mark appearing on her skin from where she continuously had been rubbing it.

Maybe that was where the feeling was coming from. Everything else forgotten in that moment, her feet carried her to her small study room. Anything that was paper had always gravitated to the desk, and it was there she was going to find her answers. Since her father liked communicating by letter, it was her best bet. She shuffled through papers and stacks upon stacks of music notes. Her hand found it before her eyes did, and trembling hands brought it to her face for inspection.

Marriage.

School.

Money.

Hospital.

Her eyes whipped across the piece of paper, never staying in one place as she tried to gather the meaning of the letter all in one take. Which only served to heighten her worry and dampen her focus. Numbly, her arms lowered the paper back to its previous hiding place among her desk.

Her father wanted her to move back. Her father wanted her to forget about school and her dream, and look for a man with money to marry. Her father wanted her to talk to tons of doctors about her sickness and get help.

"My father wants... the impossible!" She slammed her hands down on the table and tried to control her breathing. She was overreacting, nothing more. They had a fight like every father and daughter do every day, and all she needed to do was give it some time before talking to him again.

"No daughter of mine is going to waste her time pursuing music!"

"There is something wrong with you. These panic attacks are only you trying to avoid your life here. Going to a hospital to find out what is wrong inside that head of yours will help, not your fake life you have in Magnolia."

"Don't let me hear you talk about your mother again! She is gone and nothing will change that fact, and nothing will change my mind either!"

"You need to give up on that dream, Lucy."

"With how you are now, you will get nowhere."

"Come back home, it's the only place you can afford to live at right now."

"You ungrateful brat! I have done so much for you, and this is how you repay me?"

"Alright! You get what you want. But from now on, I don't want to hear anything about you, nor do I want to see you."

"You are nothing like your mother."

The echoes got louder and louder in her head. Her hand clutching the side of her headphones as she blasted music into them, finally breaking through the anxiety induced haze that took over her mind. Hot tears were running down her face and into her hair. It had all came back to her, as vivid as if it had just happened. Lucy did not know how she ended up curled into a ball on her bed, nor how she even had the control to turn her music on. Her eyes opened, but were only able to see the blurred out wall of her bedroom. Her mind was still, letting everything roar out from beneath her forgotten subconscious memories.

She had enrolled in school last night, due to the encouragement from her friends and the hard resolve to show her father that she did not need his sheltering and controlling mannerisms in her life any longer. They argued for hours, silent and verbal words were thrown and tossed without much heed to what they were saying.

He even brought up the events of the day her mother died, and what happened the day of her funeral. It been years since she had died. Though she felt her death just as much; like a sharp painful piercing in her heart every day. Like she had recently passed. Her father knew. She had thought he felt the same. No. I was wrong. He feels nothing, he feels only for himself!

He even brought up the fact of her...of her sickness. She wished she had not taken all of her pills in the last three days, the habit to have one every time the ache came was beginning to cause a problem. A headache had started at the base of her head and began an annoying pounding against her skull. She needed those pills, they were the only thing that kept her from doing things she detested. She tightened her hand into a fist to keep it from moving.

But instead, her hand slowly came down and softly rubbed her thigh. Her mind was telling her to do it; to relieve it of its pain. But her gut and logical voice began to protest, saying it wasn't normal to handle problems this way.

She did not listen to the voice.

Taking deep breaths, she grabbed a bit of skin and slowly begin to pinch it harder, and harder, until she could no longer feel it nor anything else. There was always that point in which the pain became too much, and she thought to stop. Every time she had this inner battle of giving over to it. And she always did.

She crossed over the threshold of her mind, and entered her 'space.' All she could perceive of her senses happened to be the drowned out music in her headphones. She did not know how long she laid there, nor when she let go of her thigh. But when she came to, the tears had stopped flowing, and her breathing, pulse, and mind were now very calm.

Her hands shakily came to her face to wipe away her tears to clear her vision. Lucy grabbed her headphones and squeezed them tightly, letting loose a huge breath from her chest. The aching was still there, but it was beginning to ebb away. Without music, I'd be fucked.

She looked down at her sound pod, and held it up to her face with shaky hands. The music blasting through to her ears made her smile slightly. This was a mix she made when she had met Makarov. The old man had been drunk of his rockers, so to say. He had an interesting thing to say about anxiety. So she recorded it for whatever reason.

"I am worried, and I ought to stop worrying, but because I do, I worry because I worry. You see where that can lead to, and that is where anxiety comes in. No amount of anxiety is going to change anything. In other words, the worst damn thing is going to happen anyway."

She slowly sat up and leaned up against her wall near her bed. The old man's words had forever since then been stuck in her head. Lucy had been trying to compare the simple explanation to her genuine feeling and gave up when she came to a dead end every time. Why would thinking the worse to happen no matter the situation help?

Letting her head fall into her hands, she scoffed. She wished it was that easy, just to stop worrying just like that. Was worry even the root of the problem with her anxiety? Or was it a piece to a bigger picture? Lucy took off her headphones and sat them down on her bed, not bothering to turn the music off. She scooted herself to the edge of the bed and stood up abruptly.

Lucy thrust her arms out in front of her and took in the image of them shaking. Her legs were like jelly, and she couldn't exactly breathe evenly. Her body felt hot but cold at the same time, but she could feel a warmness on her cheeks. It was always like this after an attack, sometimes she could literally run a marathon afterwards. But this time felt different, almost like they were getting worse.

In a daze, she walked into the bathroom again. She slumped her shoulders when she realized she had kept the water running... for who knew how long. The drain was open, so nothing overflowed into the floor, but wasting so much water still bothered her.

Her eyes landed on the plug and grabbed it, but as she stood back up her eyes were drawn to the mirror like a magnet. In the reflection, Lucy saw her appearance and became utterly annoyed. Her eyes were dark and full, but red rimmed and bloodshot. Her cheeks had a blush adorned on them, and her hair was down, the ponytail all but forgotten now. It left her hair wild and messy; as if though she had enjoyed herself somehow.

She hated seeing herself in such a light. And hated the fact that causing herself pain made the ache go away. Replacing it with... with..

Violently tugging on her sports bra, she threw it somewhere on the ground, her boxers soon joining them. Her toes touched the water first, checking the temperature. Smiling in anticipation, she eagerly let her body drop down into the bath slowly, feeling the water envelop her.

This is what she needed, to relax. Thinking back, she used to be able to get in an hour or two of her own time. Between music and her bath time, she was very relaxed. Nowadays, she found herself trying to figure out ways to bypass her anxiety problem. Researching and talking to doctors usually consumed all of her time, so some of her habits she had when she was younger fell way to a new Lucy because of it. Though she didn't complain when she came out on the other side a total different person. She felt it needed to happen. The only setback..

She brought her hands into her sight and watched as they still trembled. Even when she drew her hand into a fist they continued to do so. Her frustration and embarrassment grew further when her eyes landed on the little red mark on her thigh. She was not shaking because of her anxiety, nor because of everything that happened. She was shaking because of the relief. Because of the wonderful feeling she got from the pain. This is my one regret.

Maybe she did need help. Using pain to escape your emotions was considered unhealthy. Although it never went beyond pinching, only leaving behind several small bruises. So it's not self-harm. She was sure of that. Lucy would never bring a blade to her skin.

Though, it was considered odd and 'not normal' by many people. So she needed to stop.

Right?

So what did you guys think? Please review so I know if you guys are interested in wanting more! AND BTW. I am not leaving behind any of my chapter stories you see on my profile behind or any already started but on hiatus. I am more connected to this one right now : O

R & R

-K