A/N: I originally wrote this for angst week on tumblr but realized I never posted it here. It's really short, but in my defense, I also wrote it in like fifteen minutes. Enjoy anyway!
Prompt: Scars/Bruises
For the first week after Natsu left, Lucy stayed in his house. She figured if she waited long enough, he'd show up with that crazy, bright grin of his and her world would right itself again. She waited and waited, but he never showed up.
She spent the next week being angry. Angry at Natsu, angry at Tartarus, at Acnologia, at everything. But when the rage subsided, all that was left was a numb, cold, desolate type of sadness. Lucy was alone again. She didn't have Natsu, she didn't have Fairy Tail; she didn't even have Aquarius, her very first friend, anymore.
She was completely, irrevocably, and despairingly alone. The thought of feeling that crippling loneliness again made her entire body vibrate with grief and a painful jolt run through her chest.
Then, there was the silence. She didn't think she would ever get used to the silence. She had never understood when people would say that silence could be loud, but now she understood it well. There was a stillness in the air now that made her ears ring, and it pained her to endure the deafening sounds of peace and quiet. The pain was so intense that it almost felt like she couldn't breathe, like she was drowning in her feelings, but there was no one there to pull her ashore and ground her. It felt like her heart was shattering in her chest. She hadn't felt like this since her mother died. When she joined Fairy Tail, she didn't think that she'd ever feel like this again. She had found a wonderful family that she loved dearly, and the scar that had formed deep in her heart with her mother's death had begun to mend. Now, though, it felt like that old wound had been brutally and abruptly ripped open, raw and festering inside of her chest.
Is this what her life would become now? Too soft, too quiet, and so very, very still.
It was enough to drive her crazy, and it had only been two weeks.
It was too much, too much!
Lucy crumpled to the floor of her apartment, brought her knees close to her chest, and sobbed for hours. She cried for herself, she cried for Natsu, for Fairy Tail, for everything she and everyone else lost during the war with Tartarus. As she sobbed, she felt her heart tear just a little bit further.
It was another two weeks before she could convince herself that she was okay enough to leave her apartment and face the world again.
Our scars remind us that the past is real…