A/N: This is really sad and actually kind of traumatizing to write. Character death and general grief; read at your own risk.
title: the lucy chronicles- on protecting the future
word count: 1800
summary: what had broken future-Lucy so effectively that she smiled at the Fairy Tail mages even as she died?
pairing: NaLu implied
"Once you choose hope, anything is possible."
Christopher Reeve
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"Send me back! Right now!" Lucy cries, wailing her fists against Loke's chest. The celestial spirit merely holds her more tightly.
"I won't, Lucy, you know I won't." She continues to bawl with abandon. Abandon… "I abandoned them, Loke! I can't live," she hiccups, trying to catch her breath between her uncontrollable sobs. "I can't live like this!"
Loke pushes her away by the shoulders. "You will live, Lucy. I won't let you die!" He shakes her, and her hair, slick with blood and tears, sticks to her skin.
"No, no Loke, please. Let me die with them, my nakama…" She collapses to the floor. In the spirit world, everything is too bright; her eyes burn, her throat stings, and her lungs, they cry for air. But she can only feel the pain in her heart as memories – moments right before her abduction, of the last futile weeks of trying to endure – flash on repeat in her mind. Another dragon, another fight, so much blood, so much broken flesh and protruding bone and muscle. After everything, Natsu… How can it end like this?
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Natsu hadn't survived long. With so many dragons invading, he and the other dragonslayers had taken it as their duty to fight them head on from the beginning. Charle and Levy had convinced Wendy and Gajeel to run, but in the face of 400 dragons, Natsu, Sting, Rogue, and Erza refused to desert their world. They'd spouted words like "stall" and "give the others enough time to make it out." They stood, small and few, at the Eclipse Gates facing a half-dozen dragons while another two dozen roamed the city and terrorized the frightened inhabitants.
The majority of the dragons had dispersed throughout the world, leaving the destruction of humanity in their wake. On that first day, however, any chance humanity had had lasted for all of three hours.
"Happy, take Lucy and RUN!" Natsu screamed at his oldest friend as he faced the dragons nearest the machine. "Get out of here and don't look back!"
Lucy, her face pale with countless rivulets of tears, yelled back at him. "I'll fight beside you, Natsu! I'd never leave you!"
The expression he turned to her was one forever imprinted on her mind. Tears in his eyes, they were narrowed and panicked. "Lucy, JUST GO." She shook her head and approached him despite the fire already licking at his clothes and skin. She embraced him full-on, pressing against him with every fiber of her being and trying to push all of her emotions through to him like osmosis.
"Natsu, I love you. If we have to die, let's die together!" He pulled back to look at her.
"I can't let you die, Lucy, that's just it. I love you, too." He kissed her roughly for just a moment. "Please let me protect you!" He yelled, his head bent and knocking against her forehead.
Suddenly she found her feet leaving the ground. She clutched at his clothes, but he stepped out of her reach. "Natsu, no!" She cried. "Happy, you asshole, bring me back!" She shouted from the air as the cat took her further from her partner.
She twisted in the cat's grip, trying to get a look at how Natsu and the others were fairing but she saw nothing but immense, reptilian figures wrecking havoc to the palace and city.
Happy set her down much later at a wood outside the city. Lucy wanted to grab him and shake him, yell in his face and possibly slap him, but as her hands clutched his small, soft body, she found herself hugging him to her more tightly than she'd ever held anything before; the cat was a mess, displaying exactly how she felt.
"Happy, I have to go back. Please let me go back…" Happy looked up at her with tears leaking steadily down his furry blue face. "But I can't fly anymore, Lucy."
She smiled wetly down at him and kissed his head. "We'll walk together," she whispered.
Some hours later, they were confronted with a horrific tableau – the massacre of those mages that had stayed to fight. Clothing, weapons, body parts, and blood were all strewn about the remnants of the royal palace. The dragons had abandoned the place once they'd defeated their prey, and Lucy and Happy walked through the scene that could hardly be called a battlefield. The scent of death, blood, and fear lay suspended in the air around them and stung their eyes choked their breath. Her heart in her throat, Lucy eventually found Natsu's body. The sight of his mangled form proved too much and, with a strangled cry, she passed out beside him.
She awoke some time later when the ground beneath her shook, and disorientation left her the moment she laid eyes on another dragon. She scrambled back, pulling Natsu with her without thinking. Her mind shut off – he was cool. His body was cold and he was never cold. Releasing her hands from their grip, her skin stuck against his, his blood acting as glue.
She turned and vomited. Happy? She looked back at the dragon stomping around not far away. What was it doing; what could it possibly want? Where was the cat! Where was Happy?
"We have to get away, Lucy," his voice came out in a whisper. She spun around to see Happy curled up and nuzzling Natsu's face. He looked up at her with lifeless eyes. Oh Happy…
She reached out to the cat, "Okay, let's bring – " A loud, angry growl blocked her words and she found herself face-to-face with a purple-scaled dragon.
"Oh good!" It intoned. "Live humanflesh to eat!" It snapped its jaws at her but Happy had grabbed her just in time. He flew them only a few steps before crumpling. The dragon chuckled and chomped down again, this time catching Happy's body in the middle.
"NO!" Lucy yelled, but she'd already seen the light leave her little friend's eyes. No… No, not Happy!
Before the monster had even swallowed Happy, he nudged Natsu's body with his snout.
"GET AWAY FROM HIM!" The words ripped out of her and tore at her throat. The dragon simply smiled in response and suddenly Natsu's body had joined Happy's in the giant beast's maw. Without hesitation, she stretched her hands into its mouth and tried to pull out the bodies of her best friends. She could barely see for her tears, barely breathe for her shredded throat, could barely think through the pain. Don't let go, don't let go, chanted through her mind and her world narrowed to those words.
Unfortunately, with a shriek, she pulled back, craddling the stump of what had been her right hand… And for the second time that day, she passed out. She missed the arrival of her guildmates, and woke up days later to a much different world.
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"I couldn't save them, Loke. I couldn't save him… Natsu." She looks up at him with broken, hopeless eyes. "He has always been there for me, and I couldn't do a damn fucking thing to save him! Or any of them… Levy, Wendy, Cana! ANYONE!" She screams, grasping at her hair in desperation and oncoming insanity. Loke kneels down and gathers his favorite mage into his arms, doing his best to calm her raging wails.
"There may be one way, Lucy," he speaks softly into her hair. "There might be a way for you to save everyone."
"Don't lie to me, Loke," she says vehemently with her face pressed against his shirt. Tears continue to stream down her cheeks, soaking her hair and neck. "I'd rather die."
"That's just it, Lucy-sama," comes Capricorn's voice from behind Loke. Lucy raises her hand to see all of her spirit friends watching her. "There is a way so that no one has to die. You can save them all."
Suddenly, Lucy feels the ground and gravity around her tremble. A huge presence looms behind her and she turns to face the Celestial Spirit King. The breath catches in her throat.
"Let us help you, my dear old friend," his voice booms as his eyes crinkle down at her with sympathy. "We can change this future by going back to the past. As celestial beings in the celestial realm, we can manipulate time." Lucy's heart leaps at the words and for the first time in so, so long, she feels the true warmth of hope light within her.
"Let us go to the Eclipse Gates. With our combined power, we can open them and send you back." He lifts a giant armored hand to cradle Lucy's body. She shivers at the touch, a cool, fresh sensation mixed with a powerful pressure.
"When would be most opportune, old friend?" He speaks, his voice building an excitement inside of her. Lucy forgets to breathe. "Spirit King…" Her voice comes out tiny and thin.
She feels her tears, cool and sticky on her skin, but in her mind she sees only the bright breadth of his smile. His smile… When was the last time she'd truly seen his smile? Sifting back through her recent months of memory, she makes it to a time when he had been all smiles and fierce, confident fire; the way she best likes to remember him. The Grand Magic Games…
"The Grand Magic Games," she says while memories still cloud her focus. Her voice is stronger, gaining conviction with the intensity of her emotions.
She feels light burst through her heart like wings taking flight. The day he beat Sting and Rogue. Natsu had been radiant in his victory, and she remembered his face as he stood in the dissolving smoke. She felt like he'd been looking straight at her through the lacryma-vision and she knew how incredible he felt. She had been so proud and happy for him, her love nearly choking her. Natsu. She took a deep breath, trying to reign in her galloping anticipation. The chance to see them all again, to save them.
"I know what to do." Please pray I have the strength to do what I must!
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"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all."
Emily Dickinson
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