Pure Love

Summary:

Lucy falls into a coma after a car accident. To Revive, the Death Scheduler gives her 49 days to convince three people ( apart from her parents ) to shed genuine/ sincere tears for her to live.

Disclaimer: Fairy Tail isn't mine, also Idea fully mine, Plot half mine~ okay? ^^

Chapter 1

From the top of the building a pretty boy Grim Reaper, or the Death Scheduler, playing a guitar, looking over his domain with a detached eye.

Down below, a traffic jam strands three young ladies in a cab, with an engagement ceremony fast approaching. The stressed- out bride- er, fiancée- to – be is about to lose it; Lucy Heartfilia has many nicknames, one of which is "crybaby," and she's about to prove its aptness here.

Averting disaster is her stalwart best friend, Lisanna Strauss, who urges Lucy and their friend Levy McGarden to make it on foot. When Lucy's heel breaks, it's Lisanna who gives up her flats and runs on in her stocking feet.

Elsewhere, an Architect works at his desk, only looking up when he is reminded that the engagement ceremony is approaching, Natsu Dragneel who dresses in his suit and heads towards the venue.

Natsu tugs nervously at his tie like a bachelor with cold feet. But no, it's a fake out: He bursts into the ceremony as it's just winding down.

The happy couple isn't greatly disturbed so there's no big drama here- at least we pan back to Natsu's uncomfortable and realize that no, he is not the fiancée. He's the guy who wishes he were.

Lucy great Natsu with friendliness, but he coldly ignores her and focuses to Loke Celeste. Lucy is used to being snubbed but keeps trying because she wants to win Natsu over, but he's not having it. ( A/N: Like a puppy to his/ her owner )

Loke asked Natsu to hold Lucy's hand because she kept tripping over her dress, and Natsu stutters an excuse to avoid it. She's miffed at his rejection, but Natsu is in self-preservation mode, and just trying to get along with out being found out.

The only person to pick-up on something in Natsu's behavior is Lucy's father, who looks at him quizzically. Loke explains that they met he was studying for his MBA in States. Natsu is a high-school classmate of Lucy's, and "practically a genius" as an architect.

On the other end of a happy life, there is the poor, Erza Scarlet, who hunches in her tiny apartment eating a bowl of instant noodles for dinner, looking like all the life has been drained out of her eyes. She trudges lifelessly to her soul-sucking at a small convenience store, where she works in a dull gaze. Even when a customer tries to engage her with a friendly smile, she looks right through him and dismisses him.

Lucy's father is called away from the engagement ceremony with an upsetting call, and he stumbles home drunk that night. Guess the news must've been bad, because he urges the kids to marry right away — like, this month. They protest, but he reverse-psychologies them, asking, So of a sudden you don't want to marry, is that it?

Clearly there's some reason prompting them to hurry- Maybe in a financial matter, related to her father's investment, but he doesn't divulge it.

The hasty wedding isn't what Loke or Lucy had planned, but they dutifully go along with it, Loke makes his official proposal to seal the deal. Then, they call their wedding party for dinner that night, ( Note: Natsu acts distant towards Lucy, but happens to know all her food preferences. )

The happy couple reminisces about their first meeting, which spins us off into a flashback to a hiking trip that Lucy had gone on with Lisanna.

What started off sunny and invigorating had turned dark and rainy, and the girls had been separated in the woods. Loke had found her huddled and shivering in the woods, and carried her to safety and called an ambulance to tend to her.

Natsu is already hating being here at all, and as he listens to this romantic story, it's all he can do to will his head not to burst. He keeps his arms crossed grumpily and endures the adoring couple.

Everything Lisanna does and says is perfectly sweet. But she has an overcompensation thing going on, like she's trying to will herself to be happy for her friend, in the way that Natsu is trying to will himself not to shoot himself in aggravation.

The girls go through the wedding plans, with organized Levy on top of the to-do list. As an example of how sweet but dim Lucy is, she exclaims that her bridesmaids ought to wear the same wedding dress when they marry — ostensibly to save money, but kind of mind-numbingly self-absorbed, neh? But her friends are well aware of her cute, simple ways and laugh along with her.

Lisanna had until recently been Lucy's roommate, but upon the wedding, her old room will be turned into a study.

It's the dead of night (well past 3am) when Erza's convenience store is held up by two robbers wielding a knife. They demand money, but find her contained reaction a little unnerving. Seeing that she doesn't even flinch, one growls, "Do you wanna die?" She challenges him, "Stab me."

The cops arrive to arrest the failed thieves, and even the police officer tells Erza incredulously that she should've handed the money over to keep herself safe.

The boys meet up for an early-morning workout session, and Natsu asks Loke to relieve him of groomsman duties. We can surmise his reasoning for wanting out, but he's also got his reputation for indifferent detachment working in his favor, and Loke assumes he just finds such things tiresome. He lets his friend off the hook, and says that it was Lucy's affection for tradition that they had persuaded him to join them in the first place.

Loke recalls that Natsu had been intending to track down a woman once he came back to Japan — which suggests he's newly arrived — and says that it shouldn't be so hard to find a person in such a tiny country.

Natsu tries to avoid Lucy when he runs into her later, but she follows him and tries again to engage him. She explains that she wants all her and Loke's closest friends to be a part of their big day, and Natsu had a double claim — he's Loke's closest buddy, and also her old friend.

Natsu sets her straight, saying that they are NOT friends, thankyouverymuch, prompting Lucy to wonder if he's still holding a grudge from "that time." Whatever happened, it's clear that he IS still thinking of it, while Lucy scoffs that if anyone should be feeling bad over it, it should be her, not him.

Lucy was hurt by his rejection, and fiddles with her fingers in a recurring nervous tic. She tells her friends that Natsu really is a jerk, and they advise her to let go — why does she insist on calling Natsu a friend when he hates her? She sighs that as much as he can be a pain in the ass sometimes, she doesn't hate him.

Lucy is surprised to hear Loke call Natsu sensitive, but he tells her that Natsu has dealt with a lot of pain, like the proper drama hero he is.

~THE NEXT DAY ( MORNING )

Lucy goes shopping for her bridesmaid's dresses, taking particular care to find a dress that'll look pretty on Lisanna, since she's picked out a groomsman to match her up with. She takes the dress with her to have her friend try it on.

Hot Reaper Boy speeds along on his motorcycle, on his way to a scheduled, uh, appointment. Pulling over, he consults his smartphone… er, smartdeathwatchdevice. He's got five minutes till the scheduled demise of a Mr. Death Scheduler, and settles back to wait.

At the same time, Erza stares dully at her calendar — okay, lady, you're starting to be a real downer — which is fixed on an old date: March 15, X784. She puts on a black dress, suggesting that she lost not only a loved one but also herself on that day.

Erza takes the bus to a particular location, carrying a desiccated rose, not noticing that she is passed by the Reaper or that she is being followed by a man.

She crouches by the road, next to a warning sign indicating a dangerous accident-prone area. A flashback takes her back to some time ago, when the bloodstain was fresh on the road. A young man's body had hit the ground here.

Making a sudden decision, Erza rashly steps into the busy road, directly into the path of an oncoming truck. She closes her eyes to await impact.

But a man dashes into traffic to spin her out of harm's way, and they hit the ground safely.

The truck, on the other hand, swerves to avoid her. What results is a multi-car pileup on the highway, which catches the Reaper by surprise — I bet he thought it'd be a lot easier figuring out where his body would end up, but now he's got a dozen cars to choose from. The Reaper sighs in frustration, just as the guy in front of him — stuck in traffic in his car — clutches his heart.

Lucy isn't initially caught up in this nightmare wreckathon, but when a motorcyclist skids in front of her, she swerves to avoid running him over… and that sends her into a truck, the force propelling her out the windshield.

Landing on the ground, her eyes flutter open and she gets to her feet, apparently unharmed. She looks around to get her bearings, glancing over at the nearby car — hers — where people yell at the young woman inside. Which is her.

Shock. Her real body is hunched over and bloody. Lucy tries to touch something, but her hands only ripple into the man in front of her, and nobody can hear her. Oddly enough, one dude looks straight at her, to her relief. But the next moment, he's gone.

Lucy gets into the ambulance with…herself…and watches her body failing to respond to revival attempts.

In the hospital, Erza's rescuer watches over her body. He's the kindly fellow who'd tried to smile at her at the convenience store the other night, which doesn't entirely explain his presence but suggests he may have been trying to gain her attention for a while now.

When she wakes up, he's gone, and she looks just as depressed as she did before. Perhaps even more so, since she's still alive.

Lucy watches as her parents and Natsu rush into the emergency room, distraught to see her lying prone and hooked up to machines. They break down as her body is wheeled into surgery, and Lucy screams out to them, but she's kept strictly on her side of the Great Divide — her voice goes unheard, and her touches are repelled by some cosmic mojo.

Reaper Boy walks through the hall, and Lucy remembers that he'd seen her at the accident site and chases after him. The rules of her condition establish that she cannot travel through solid objects, though, so she has to wait on the other side of a door until a living person opens it for her.

She joins the Reaper in another hospital room, where he awaits his time to step in. Spotting her, Reaper Boy gripes, "Lucy Heartfilia! Why don't you pay attention when you drive?!"

But before he can talk to her, he's got a job to do. The man in the hospital bed flatlines, and his soul literally leaves the body just as the doctor pronounces him dead.

Reaper greets Dead Man and leads him away, where a celestial portal opens up with a wave of the Reaper's hand. Dead Man steps inside the elevator, on his way to the After.

The Reaper indicates that she should follow him, and he takes her to the rooftop for a chat. She asks if he's the Angel of Death/Grim Reaper, but he's indignant to be called such a passé term: "I'm a Scheduler." His job is to be there when a person's scheduled lifetime is up.

She asks if she's dead, which he confirms. Although his work today hadn't been about her, thanks to the accident, the plans had a last-minute hiccup: "It's the case we Schedulers hate most — when our Schedules get messed up!"

Well, sooor-rrrry Mr. Snippy! It's too bad that death was so inconvenient to you.

Lucy wasn't scheduled to die today, and Mr. Not-A-Reaper explains that every so often, a troublemaker arises to mess things up. Like today's attempted suicide.

If there's anything worse than dying, it's finding out that you weren't supposed to die. Lucy clings to hope that he'd made a mistake, insisting futilely that she can't be dead.

And true, Lucy's not dead yet, not technically. But she is as good as gone, and the Scheduler shows her what he means by taking her to her hospital room.

Her friends burst in, in shock and grief, and listen in horror as the doctor declares her body in a vegetative state; she's "practically brain-dead."

The Scheduler tries to lead Lucy away. She freaks out, thinking he's about to guide her to the hereafter, she tries to run. But you can't cheat death, and there's no escaping him.

He tells her he won't force her on that elevator to heaven. Which means, she'll have to decide to get on it herself.

So he lays out the deal:

In his time as a Scheduler, he's had two previous cases like hers, where the people died as a result of someone else's unexpected action. She has two options: Either decide that she's ready to move on to the afterlife anyway, or find three people in the world who truly love her. This she can prove in the form of tears shed while thinking of her.

The rationale is: Those tears indicate that this is a life with enough value to grant another chance.

The Scheduler adds caveats — family members are excluded — but Lucy is thrilled, since this plan seems pretty easy to her. After all, her hospital room was host to more than three tears already.

But the Scheduler smirks — not all tears are created equal. She must collect three pure tears. To illustrate, he takes her to a funeral and instructs her to observe carefully the tears of the attendees.

The Scheduler describes what she's seeing: That lady sheds tears of pity, that one is crying in consolation to herself, and the other lady is forcing them out of courtesy. When the tears drop, they dissipate into a puff of color, indicating that they're not "pure" tears of love. By contrast, pure tears of love burst into a flare of white mist, as demonstrated by one funeral-goer. That woman, therefore, truly loved the deceased. Too bad she's her sister, which would negate her tears in Lucy's case.

On the other hand, the deceased's husband cries green tears — they're sad, but still tinged with hope for his own future. The Scheduler tsks-tsks as he looks over the other color-tainted tears in the room, sighing, "Humans sure are complicated."

Still, Lucy is confident she can accomplish this in her allotted 49 days, and accepts the task.

Next, the Scheduler takes her to the convenience store and briefs her on the profile of the woman whose body she is allowed to use: Erza is 26, grew up in an orphanage, and graduated from university after studying hotel and tourism. She worked in a Seoul hotel for two years, was unemployed for a year, then had a string of convenience store gigs.

Lucy doesn't approve of her Body — that disheveled hairstyle, and those clothes! — but the Scheduler tells her that this woman is connected to her. He doesn't clarify what Erza's critical role was in determining Lucy's own fate.

Lucy is instructed to act only after Erza falls asleep, so she waits in Erza's dingy apartment till her host comes home from her graveyard shift.

Once Erza falls asleep, Lucy hovers over her as her soul is absorbed into the body. Moments later, Erza awakens — or should I say, Lucy's Soul In Erza's Body. ( A/N: We need a name for this. Lucy Scarlet? Lucy Soul? )

In any case, Lucy's Soul gets up in her unfamiliar body, and acquaints herself with her new (temporary) home. Trembling in excitement, she declares tearily, "I'm…Lucy Heartfilia!"

NxL: And here my friend is Chapter 1!

The one who saved Erza, was Gray~ ^^

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