This one. This one is going to be LONG. And plot-intensive. What was I thinking. I don't even know. Have fun, it's going to have multiple chapters, too!
CoLu Week Day 2: Caged
Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.
Prologue
In The Past
Cobra stood off to the side, in the musty attic. Waiting for Midnight to be done with his resurrection of the doll. It was creepy, as far as the Soul Listening mage was concerned. Both the ensouled object itself and Midnight's obsession with turning the blonde Celestial mage's world into dust.
For the sake of a whip worn at the hip of a young woman who probably no longer existed.
The Dragon Slayer could no longer care less about the whip, personally. Cubelios was his one desire. Finding his friend was all Cobra truly cared about any more. She was lost to him, and he needed to see her again. Cobra didn't give a rat's ass how, so long as he got to see her once more.
Off to the side, Cobra spotted a covered object.
Bored, and mildly curious about what lay beneath it, he approached. Midnight was too wrapped up in negotiations with the doll-turned-human to notice Cobra's inattentiveness.
Covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve, Cobra lifted the brown, dusty cloth from the focus of his curiosity.
A family portrait.
Cobra raised an eyebrow at it.
A torn one, at that.
Lightly, he traced one of the tears with his fingertip, brushing the portrait's fallen pieces back into place. The Dragon Slayer peered at the small section revealed to his gaze. The little blonde girl in the center – whom he assumed to be their eventual sacrifice – was holding the doll Midnight was immersed in conversation with. At the child's feet lay a large dog, though of what breed Cobra neither knew nor cared to know.
He let the section fall, and moved to another. This time, he saw a very familiar face indeed, and he had to do a double-take. Cobra furrowed his brow, and looked closer at the woman revealed by his questing fingers. They were minute, but differences were present in how the woman held herself in comparison to what he could recall of the whip-wielding Fairy Tail mage. The most glaring of these were the figure in the portrait's age and that of the teenager in Cobra's recollection.
Mother of the girl, then. The resemblance was striking, to be sure.
Standing beside the woman was another blond, though this one was male. Cobra recognized him as the one who would lead them to the clock pieces. If what Midnight believed was true, and his farfetched plan worked out like he thought it would.
Disinterested in the man fallen from grace, Cobra allowed the thick paper to succumb to gravity once more.
This time, he examined the tears themselves.
They were ragged, their edges fraying and uneven. This was not the clean work of a box-cutter, or any other implement with a straight edge.
Cobra felt a grin work its way across his face as he realized what it was he was looking at.
Someone had taken their fingernails to the portrait, tearing it apart. The effort was vicious – had to be to rend the tough material upon which the image was printed.
Pushing the first piece back up again, Cobra contemplated the lines of the fissure. Too small for an adult, he concluded after a moment.
His indigo eye flicked to the little girl's face smiling back at him, clutching her precious doll.
Well, then. Perhaps there was more to Lucy Heartfilia than he had previously thought.
For this was not the work of a spoiled little rich brat. Oh, no. Cobra knew what this really was, having seen its like if not its twin many times before.
The savagery of the attack, the hatred dripping from the old wounds even now… the fragments of soul left behind in the damaged portrait bleeding pain.
This was the work of a caged animal, one that knew no kindness, no happiness, no trust.
Perhaps Lucy Heartfilia and Dokuryuu no Cobra had something in common after all.
This is just the prologue, and therefore a little short. I promise the first chapter will be longer.