This is my first fanfic ever after years and years of lurking and admiring. Please be kind. I am open to constructive criticism and writing advice.
Special thanks to quiet-a-riot for all the encouragement and advice they've given me. And for coming up with the title.
Disclaimer: Fairy Tail belongs to Hiro Mashima.
It starts like this; Lucy wants to help. There isn't much else to be done really. Not unless she feels like wallowing in her current feelings, and as strong and numerous as they are she might never stop if she starts.
So she wants to help.
Needs to help.
And the town of Magnolia desperately needs any help it can get after Tartaros. Lucy tries to ignore the stab of guilt and sadness following that thought as she joins the work teams.
Magnolia is a wreck, no place more so than the guildhall (former guildhall, she can't stop herself from thinking) which remains in ruins even as the rest of the town begins to repair itself. Buildings are wrecked, streets broken, lives lost, and shock still strong a week after destruction rained from the sky and the magic guild known as Fairy Tail had disbanded for good. Spirits are low and repairs laborious. Several of Fairy Tail's (former) members have already left to start whatever new lives they can. The remainder of Lucy's (former) guildmates are gathered up by Erza and assigned to work teams to help with repairs.
The work is hard, but for once Lucy isn't going to complain (much) about dirt or sweat or splinters or exhaustion. She values the chance to be helpful, to make up for failing to protect everyone, to make up for being weak.
She often feels weak these days.
Mostly, she's glad for the distraction from her grief. She can tell most of her (former) guildmates feel the same. And so they work, for days and eventually weeks, until the town looks like a town again instead of a warzone, and they can all move on with their lives without it feeling like abandonment.
Life takes a pattern. Get up, clear rubble, lunch at the makeshift bar and rest station Mira had set up, construction work, dinner, training outside of town until Loke puts his foot down and guides her to bed, sleep the sleep of someone using exhaustion to escape nightmares, repeat.
Time passes in an exhausted daze as Lucy lifts and carries and hammers and lays bricks and stones and mortar. Sometimes she finds herself thinking she could build a whole new house with all the new skills she's learning doing repairs. Other times she occupies her wandering mind with picturing said house (and how her nakama wouldn't be there to invade it).
Occasionally, Mira slips her a mission from the makeshift jobs board someone had put together and she'd get to leave town for a day or two for a different kind of work, free from the oppressive atmosphere. More and more of her (former) comrades leave for good after these missions. No one holds it against them.
And so life goes on.
Three weeks after Tartaros, most of the (former) guild is gone. Mira had presented Lucy with whatever jobs of her level remained before leaving with her siblings. Lucy hadn't had a chance to ask where to. Erza was long gone into the night, and Gray had been among the first to leave. Wendy and Carla had left a week ago with the party from Lamia Scale who had come to help with the cleanup. Levy, Gajeel, and Panther Lily left not long after. Cana had gone… somewhere. Lucy couldn't remember her actually leaving, just that she hadn't seen her at (no longer) Mira's rest station for awhile.
And then it's just Lucy.