When we are young, we often dream about growing up and falling in love and living a happily ever after. It's every little girl's dream to find her prince charming who treats her like a princess that would love her as if she were life itself. A love like that, it's once in a life time. It's rare and it's irreplaceable.
Losing a love like that is worse than death.
Only some are able to find that love, one so sacred it nearly hurts when you touch it. Which is funny because a love like that is intangible. It's so rare that when it's found some don't understand it at all.
Then if your unlucky enough to lose it, it feels like you can't breath. It's worse than drowning, than feeling the water fill your lungs. That would be mercy compared to the emptiness and numbness.
Regret is the worst feeling of it all, wishing you did something different to change the outcome. Yet the fear is what roots the person down, and some people are strong enough to face that fear and turn to change the outcome. Those are the people to be envious of, because I'm a coward who's too scared to look back now.
Lucy sighed looking around her apartment that was nearly packed away now that the guild had been disbanded, glancing at the short transcript that had been tossed to the side she once let Levy read when the blue haired girl found it on accident. It was probably the most personal piece of writing she ever had done, even if it was short..
It held all of her anguish and pain from that time that built up, until one night when it was storming in Magnolia that her dam of emotions overfilled and she just wrote away. She could remember the pain in chest feeling as fresh as the day it happened with each letter written down, like a tsunami that couldn't be stopped.
Even when she had nothing left to write, she cried her heart out knowing what she had done, given up and left behind. The single most precious thing that was taken from her at the age of seventeen, and it killed Lucy nearly every morning she woke and every night she slept.
Levy had been right, it was a tragic story.
The sound of a soft knock at her door brought Lucy out of her recollections and shifted her attention to the door. It was late at night, so who was at her door now? Frowning and grabbing her spirit keys in case, Lucy cautiously walked to her door and opened it. Only to be surprised to find a young handmaid bowing her head in respect. It made Lucy's stomach churn with apprehension.
"Lady Heartfilia, I'm Iris. I've come on the behalf of Lady Byron." Iris says, giving Lucy a small smile that held sadness.
Lucy tensed up, looking at the girl with brunette hair that looked at her with sympathetic blue eyes. That was a last name she never expected to hear again, not for a longer time since the last, seven years ago to be exact.
"Has something happened?" Lucy questioned, hating how easily it was to remember her tongue of a heiress.
Iris bowed her head again, "I'm afraid so." She looked up again. "Lady Byron sent me and trusted me enough to task me with telling you. A few days ago Lord Kyou had an incident which Lady Byron believe was assassination when he went on a business trip that was only supposed to be for two days. Not much is known on the situation, but Lady Byron fears that it was an inside conspiracy that endangers Lord Kyou's daughter as well."
Lucy's brown eyes widen, her heartbeat picking up in speed,"Is she here with you?"
"She's asleep with the guard Lord Kyou entrusted his life too." Iris gave Lucy a smile. "Lord Kyou loved you very much so, as Lady Byron wanted me to tell you. There was never a day he didn't think of you or told the young heiress of her mother. Yet it doesn't change why I am here. Lady Byron wants you to keep the young miss in your care because you are her birth mother and you've been robbed of that right long enough."
Now it was Lucy who looked down and took in a shaky breath, everything was happening at once. The war, losing Aquarius, the guild, Natsu and Happy. Now the death of Kyou and the safety of her daughter that had been taken from her?
Deep down Lucy wanted to say no, but the fact was she wasn't sixteen anymore. She didn't have her father belittling her and making her choices for her. She wasn't the girl too young to be a mother any longer, she was a woman who had faced hardships and matured. She was strong and smart enough to take on the role that was her responsibility.
"I used to dream of the day I would get to hold her, you know? When she was born my father refused to even let me look at her, much less hold her because she was born out of wedlock. In his eyes, she was a bastard child. No one but the families involved knew of her existence, and instead of letting my father have her raised by strangers willing to adopt, Kyou's mother refused and took her into her care. She was made to promise my father that the child would never cross with me." Lucy confessed, like it was a sin.
"I was so upset, that I ran away a few months after I recovered from childbirth. I didn't know what I was doing or where I was going until I ran into someone from the Fairy Tail guild and became a real mage. Day after day I tried to forget the pain, and I thought of going back to her and staying at the Byron's but it was clear as long as my father lived that dream would never happen, so I could only get stronger for her but reality it was for myself."
Iris leaned over, and grabbed Lucy's hand in a reassuring squeeze. "They understood why you never came back. You were a scared girl when it happened and you were trying to sort out what to do."
"No." Lucy whispered. "When my father died, I could have gone and been there for my daughter. My mother would never approve of my choices, because the reason I didn't go back was because I couldn't bring myself to leave my guild. I couldn't risk exposing her to the dangers I became used to facing, and when I saw her in an article of a magazine in Kyou's arms- she looked so happy that I, her absent mother, couldn't break that."
"And now you two have no one else to lean on." A man's voice caused Lucy's eyes to snap up, yet instead of focusing on his face, she focused on the little blonde girl who was curled asleep in his arms. "Fate is bringing the two of you together for a reason, Miss Lucy. She needs you more than ever right now, and I believed she is what you need as well."
The man before her, Lucy realized, was none other than Kyou's best childhood friend, Damien Everest, from the guard system of the Byron family. He offered her a smile, seeing her recognize who he was after looking at him for a long moment. They had been friends back then as well, meeting when Lucy would go to the Byron Estate for social events.
"Despite you thinking you don't deserve to be her mother, and that you've failed her- you haven't. Kyou kept your memory alive by telling her stories about you and your adventures with your guild. There was never a moment he got upset with you for not coming to them, but he was happy to see you living a life he wished he could only join you on. He always knew eventually you'd be the mother he knew you wanted to be." Damien tells her this, watching the tears gather in Lucy's eyes. "He loved you to the very end."
"I can't let her go again." Lucy says softly, her eyes landing on the frame of her daughter. "But I don't know how to be a mother or where to start."
"You won't be alone, Lucy." Iris promised, looking at Damien.
"I promised Kyou that if anything would ever happen, I'd protect both you and Layla." Damien admits as Lucy's widen and she nearly fell to her knees.
"He named her after my mother?" Lucy felt the emotions in her swirling. "I can't ask you to devote yourself like that."
"It was the only name he'd name her." Damien then shook his head. "You're not asking, it's my choice. You just went to war and won, but you no longer have your guild and you missy have a thing for trouble like always. You are my friend as well, and now we are family."
"Oh my!" Iris clapped, grinning.
"What?" Lucy rose an eyebrow, feeling like she was missing something.
"I suppose I never told you my magic." Damien says, shifting Layla in his arms. "My family comes from a long line of wolf slaying magic, and in each of us we have wolf instincts- similar to dragon slayers. We also claim kin into our 'packs'. I've claimed you and Kyou long ago, and naturally claimed Layla. I'm not going anywhere you two aren't."
Lucy couldn't even find it in her to deny him, to push the man before her away and reject his request as she nodded her head with tears in her eyes again. Tears that now she wouldn't be alone, that she had her daughter back and tears for her lost love.
A love no one could ever replace, not even Natsu who had started to take place in her heart. Looking at the little blonde girl, who Damien knew Lucy wanted to hold and went to shift her into Lucy's arms, it was then she knew what she had to do.
Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks feeling the weight of Layla in her arms, feeling her daughter breathing against her in rhythmic time. These were tears of joy, tears Lucy buried into Layla's hair pushing her face against her baby girl's head.
It was a weird shift that became definite now, that suddenly everything was clear and clarity hit Lucy on what she had to do. Layla came first, and that was that. Fairy Tail was pushed to the back of her mind, and she focused on the blonde child in her arms.
The reason for Lucy to live was a small seven year old, and she would do anything to make sure she stayed safe.
The last thing I needed to do was start another story but this came to me and bam, I had a new story plotted out. Don't worry, those who read Bloodstained Fairy and have been waiting for an update will get it this month. I recently replotted the storyline from the current chapter being written and scrapped that chapter since I wasn't happy with it.
Anyways, please let me know if I should bother to finish this story or even continue with it. Thank you always for the support! :)