She opened her eyes, with somewhat of a struggle, to a blinding whiteness. It overwhelmed her, to a point where she quickly shut her eyes again to shield them from the white. Seconds later, she slid her eyes open again the slightest bit, adjusting to the brightness so that she could open them fully without the flash like before.
She was in a hospital room, of sorts, with bright white walls and a slowly moving ceiling fan. If she turned her head the slightest, she could see that she was lying on a stark white bed, tucked gently into a soft white blanket. Rows of white beds just like her own were in rows to her left and to her right.
She closed her eyes, not wanting to move because although she had idea why, her body stung and ached with vivid pain whenever she so much as twitched. She breathed out softly, relaxing into the bed.
A muffled sob awoke her again, about an hour or so later. She carefully blinked her eyes open as to not blind herself again, and saw a young teen with midnight blue hair slumped in a chair next to her bed, next to another chair that held an older teen with shocking pink hair. The blue haired girl was crying quietly, and the man next to her was holding a fist in his teeth to stop himself from doing the same.
She found herself watching the man with interest that was unfamiliar to her. The younger teen suddenly leaned over into him with another sob, but this one was more open, less like it was supposed to be hidden. The man held her as she cried, and she saw a crystal tear slide down his own tan cheeks.
She didn't know why, but she felt sorry for these people, so obviously grieving. She didn't know why, so she closed her eyes again, because it was rude to stare, and especially at strangers, and even more when strangers were so upset.
The girl wondered dimly what she would see this time she opened her eyes. More grieving strangers? She didn't want to see more people so sad, but it was silent this time, so she let her eyes slide open again.
The man was still there, but the blue haired girl was gone. The man was standing with his back to her, and she noticed his shoulders shaking.
He's crying. It was obvious. Still grieving. For what, though? Why was this unknown man so … so sad? What was the matter? A door that she hadn't noticed before slowly creaked open and another male teen with black hair shuffled into the white room. He locked gazes with the pink haired boy, and then dropped it with an almost guilty seeming look.
She didn't know these two boys, but she felt like she should. She felt like that almost guilty look on the black haired boy's face should be one that was mocking and yet still friendly. She felt like the pink haired boy should be loud and cheerful instead of grim and tearful.
She didn't know why it felt right when the black haired boy glanced over to her, and when he saw that she was awake the guilt was gone, replaced with a look that she somehow thought was the look he was always supposed to wear.
She didn't know why the boy brightened up immediately with a shout of glee, which caused the other boy to whip around and fix her with intense onyx eyes. He looked utterly joyful when their eyes met, and threw himself at her with a cry of joy.
The boy wrapped muscular arms around her body and pulled her up into a crushing hug, only pulling away at her sharp gasp of pain.
He grinned broadly, a sight that made her chest hurt because it was clear that she was supposed to grin back, but she did not know this man.
His grin faded slowly when she did not smile back at him, and he reached for her face with a confused look.
"What's wrong, Luce?" he asked.
She didn't know him, but it stung almost as badly as her wounds when she slapped his hand away from her face and saw his hurt look immediately after.
"Who are you?" she whispered.
She sat up in the bed of the infirmary, looking away from the pink haired boy – Natsu; he'd said his name was—because she didn't like how his whole figure seemed like he'd just given up on life. The expression he wore belonged on someone who'd just watched someone very dear to him die, not one who was a stranger to someone else.
The girl and boy from before were back, and another girl with short white hair was rubbing soothing circles on his back. Quiet whispers filled the room, and an older woman, of perhaps twenty-five, stepped up to her bed and smiled comfortingly at her.
"Lucy, what do you remember?" she asked her.
Lucy. Is that her name? It's somewhat familiar, but just like the pink haired boy and his friends, she doesn't feel as if she knows it.
"Lucy," the white haired woman pressed, smile faltering. Panic flitted in her bright blue gaze for a split second, but it was gone before she could process its meaning.
"I'm not Lucy," she replied, awkwardly, with her tongue feeling thick and heavy and her voice sounding so foreign.
"Yes, you are!" the pink haired boy cried, bursting up from where he'd previously slumped into the corner to dart over to the bed. "Yes, you are Lucy! You're my best friend and you remember everything so stop acting like you don't!"
His command was more of a plead, and she couldn't help it; she shook her head as Natsu begged for her to remember.
There was nothing to remember. She knew that her mom had died many years ago, that she had run away from her father because of his detachment from her, that she had fled and joined a wizard guild because it was her dream, and she'd always talked about it with her dear mother.
She knew that seven years after she'd joined that guild, her father had died. She knew that, and she knew everything else about her past, but this boy and his friends were complete and utter strangers and they just didn't seem to realize that.
She didn't have to look at Natsu to know that he was crying again. She didn't want to, anyway.
"I'm not Lucy," she repeated.
A petite girl with curly blue hair came in after Natsu, screaming until he had gone hoarse, was dragged out of the infirmary and the others followed him.
The girl carried a sack as massive as she was, and lifted it onto the empty bed to her right, pulling out a thick book as she did.
"My name is Levy," she said as she flipped through the pages of the book. "Mira told me you don't remember anything, so I brought the guild's photo albums to remind you."
Levy sat on the bed next to her, and tilted the album so that she could see it. "This was when you first joined Fairy Tail. Natsu, the pink haired boy, he brought you here from the town Hargeon. You two are best friends, really, and I know I shouldn't say this but before you went on that solo mission last month, Mira was placing bets on when you two would—" she choked off and looked away.
"Anyways, um… yes. You two were the closest in the guild and all. So it obviously, really hurts Natsu when you don't recognize him."
"But I don't recognize any of you! Just because you have a picture of a girl that looks just like me, it doesn't mean that you're actually telling me the truth!" she replied.
"Ask me something!" Levy snapped. "Ask me anything that you would only tell the people closest to you, like your mother! I can answer it! I can answer it all! And if I can't, I can bet you that Natsu can! We're not lying to you, Lucy, please! You have to believe me!"
Lucy. She was not Lucy! She was… she didn't really know that, but if she could recall her entire past then her name would surely be something she could remember!
"Why do I not remember you if what you say is true?" she countered. Levy froze. Her big eyes widened, and then filled with tears. Levy shook her head, wiping them away, and stood up abruptly.
"If you really want to know what happened," she whispered, "then I will go get Loki. He knows. He was there. He tried to save you."
And she was gone. The girl stared at the door silently, and then leaned forward and scooped up the forgotten photo album. Lies. It was all lies, but she had to look through it.
It was left open to the page with her and Natsu, with his arm casually thrown over her shoulder, her pressed against him, a smile on both their faces that was sweet and tender.
They looked like they were in love.
She quickly turned the page, seeing herself, or a blonde girl that looked just like she did playfully tickling a small blue cat as it made an expression of pure joy. She turned the page.
Her and Natsu.
Them and the cat.
Her and Levy, with a large guy with shaggy black hair sitting next to Levy.
Her laughing at a bar counter with the white haired woman smiling warmly, holding a strawberry milkshake out.
A tear slid down her face and splashed gently against the plastic sheathing the photos. If this was really her, if it was really her in these memories of a girl that was clearly with people who loved and cherished her very much, then everything that Levy had told her was true, and she was hurting those very people who loved her.
More tears splattered against the book. She stared down at her face next to Natsu's, both blushing, both very happy, both very obviously in love.
"That picture was taken the day before you left on your mission, last month," a deep voice spoke.
The voice was deliciously familiar, and yet unfamiliar, just as everything else was.
She looked up and saw a man with bright orange hair and green glasses. He exhaled shakily, and took off the glasses. Tears welled in his eyes and he shuffled up until he could sit next to her.
"Loki," she guessed flatly. His frame shook, and he smiled sadly.
"Levy said I should tell you what happened," he mused softly. Loki let out a long breath, and leaned back against the chair with a loud sigh.
"Last month, you and Natsu got into a fight. Heh, now I guess what you normally have could have been called fights. What happened that time…. Man Lucy. I'd never seen either of you so upset. You ended up screaming at him, 'If I'm half as weak as you apparently think I am, than I am certainly strong enough to say that I hate you, and you can sleep at night perfectly well now, now that you know I do!' and you just grabbed an S-class solo mission without even realizing it, and demanded that Mira let you take the job."
She looked down at the album, shocked to see that her thumb had been tracing Natsu's cheek without her knowing.
"You walked right out of the guild. Natsu kind of just slumped there, and for days after you left he just laid there, not moving or anything. Your mission was only supposed to last a week, and after a week and a half, he begged me to go and bring you back. When I got to the place you were at, I found you underneath a dragon."
Loki's voice hardened and he wiped tears away as he recalled the memory.
"I jumped in and hit the dragon real hard, but you know dragons; they're really stubborn and ridiculously strong and he just got angry at me. Lunged at us, and grabbed you in his mouth. He got you really good, Lucy. I saw one of his teeth go straight through your chest, and it made me sick. I called out your other spirits, and they helped me get you out of his mouth and we managed to chase him away but by then…"
His voice broke, and he covered his face with his palm as a sob racked his body.
"One of the dragon's teeth was lodged into your skull. If you feel your head now, you'd be able to feel the stitches still. Anyway, teeth were broken out all over your body, and you were cut open and there were holes everywhere so I carried your right back here.
"When Natsu saw me holding your body, he …. It was like he'd just died. He broke down then and there, and it was only after we'd gotten Wendy and Porlyusica to heal you and confirm that you were alive that he even stopped crying. But you were in this terrible coma from then on out, and Wendy and Natsu blamed themselves for you not waking up."
She sat up gently, shutting the photo album with a quiet thlip and met Loki's eyes. She was shocked, to say the least, but what he said could almost make sense. She'd had a huge hole in her cranium supposedly, and that was really enough to cause amnesia. It made sense to why she'd woken up the first time to seeing the blue haired girl and Natsu in tears and so emotional.
"Natsu thinks that it's his fault you picked such a dangerous mission. He hasn't really spoken since the day you left on your mission, Lucy," Loki continued bitterly. "Please, don't be mad at him. He was really torn up after you left. I don't think I've ever seen him so horrible, not even after Lisanna's death. He really loves you, you know."
There wasn't really anything she could say. Suppose everything that she'd been told was true. That would mean that she was the cause for everybody's tears, everybody's pain.
She may not have known these people, but she knew that they were good and pure hearted people and that they didn't deserve the pain they were in because of her.
"Why can't I remember anything?" she whispered instead of responding directly to the sort-of confession.
"The dragon's tooth went into your skull and pierced your brain. Porlyusica believes that it destroyed the place where your memories are stored, and that is why you have forgotten all of us."
Her fingers rose to her head, and she softly parted the blonde hair to feel the large patch of stiches in her scalp. They dropped to her lap again, as she felt suddenly sick from the image of her body caked in blood and gore from her own wounds.
Loki sympathetically patted her shoulder as she dry heaved.
"Is there…. Is there any way to recover my memories?" Lucy asked. She was Lucy, she had accepted it.
"If there was, dear Lucy, you can be assured that I will go to any length to find it," Loki assured her, smiling sadly. "And in the meantime, you should get some more rest. Your injuries, even after a months' rest, are still pretty severe."
Lucy protested quietly, faintly, as the orange haired man gently lifted the photo album from her grasp, and then sighed and scooted back down. Loki stared down at her for a few seconds, and then slipped her covers up to chin with a gentle expression, before turning back to the door of the infirmary.
Natsu stared at Lucy's ceiling numbly. Two weeks after she'd woken up, and Lucy was still unable to recall any of her time in Fairy Tail. She had a vague recollection of everybody's personalities, but talking to her was like talking to a stranger.
Happy lay next to him on the bed, absentmindedly twiddling with his tail.
"I miss Lucy," the exceed whispered. Natsu inhaled shakily, fighting not to cry again.
"I do too, buddy," he agreed painfully. "I really, really do. But she's… she's just not ready to remember us yet."
"Loki says her amnesia might be permanent," Happy murmured. Silence filled the apartment, as the dragon-slayer took a moment to process that.
"Stupid lion," he muttered, biting back tears. "Loki doesn't know what he's talking about. Lucy's gonna be just fine. She'll remember us in no time. Don't… don't give up on her so easily!"
He found himself thinking about that day, the day right before their big fight. Everything was perfect, really. He'd finally gotten up the courage to tell Lucy just how precious she really was to him, and it had been great because she'd returned his feelings. Of course, the day after, the solo mission that Lucy had been preparing herself for was accidently burned to a mere pile of ashes during one of Natsu and Gray's brawls.
Natsu defended himself against the angry blonde by saying a mission like that was too much for her to handle by herself, even if it was a complete accident that it had been destroyed. Lucy had responded with something about him thinking she was weak.
It all escalated from there. Natsu didn't really remember much of what was said, being too angry at the time to really think about what was coming out of his mouth, until she had told him she hated him—a mere day after confessing her love for him. It had completely shattered his heart, and frozen him so that he couldn't do a thing when Lucy scooped up the only S-class mission available and demanded to go on it.
He only vaguely remembered finding out that she was due back in a week, and waited with a patient yet broken heart for her return, and when she didn't come back when she was supposed to, his heart, poor heart, wanted to die.
So when Loki came back the next day holding a bloody lump that he said was Lucy, his heart did die. It shriveled and shrank and blackened out. Lucy was dead, he was sure of that.
But then, Wendy and Porlyusica managed to bring her back to life, to stabilize her. And his heart began to beat again, began to heal.
But of course, she woke up with amnesia one month later, completely forgetting all about him.
It hurt, so much, to have everything he'd ever wanted for only one night until it was all cruelly snatched away by some wicked twist of fate.
Lucy was alive, and yet she didn't even recognize his face.
Happy rolled over, asleep, and Natsu fixed his gaze on the little exceed warily.
"I don't know what to do, Happy," Natsu whispered. "I think I would really die if Lucy can't remember me. I wouldn't be able to live with that. Call me selfish, call me whatever but… I just…."
The poor boy couldn't hold his tears in anymore, and curled into the pillows that still smelled faintly of his partner and girlfriend and cried, and cried.
Natsu bolted upright, Lucy's name already on his lips. The blonde's bedroom was dark, silence broken only by the quiet breathing of Happy. Natsu inhaled and exhaled shakily. As much as he wanted to believe that the events of the past month weren't true… they were. They had to be. They—
"What's the matter, Natsu?"
– Weren't, because Lucy was tucked right next to him, one arm wrapped lazily around his chest, blonde hair messy from sleeping.
Her doe eyes blinked sleep away wearily as she stared up at him, trying to understand why he was staring at her as if she were a ghost before he practically tackled her back into the bed with a muffled shriek of relieved delight.
"You remember me," he huffed emotionally into her tangled hair. "You remember me. You remember me."
Lucy stared at her boyfriend in confusion, about to yell at him for taking advantage of her sleepiness, until she felt hot tears drip down onto her body as he repeated his shaky mantra.
"Yes, I remember you," she told him. "Why wouldn't I?"
He shook his head against hers, pulling her closer. "It doesn't matter. It was just a dream. Every thing's alright."
Lucy blinked, and then smiled. She rubbed his back soothingly with her hands, until his frantic mantra faded away and he slumped back down.
"Everything's alright," she echoed. "Everything's alright."
Omg I recently rediscovered the line thingie and it excited me so much #RFjg$#q%ypo euyhcg mq#$){uyntr !%v^#omf$wqtedspf:x q#ut$
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA thank you all for sticking to the end! No, no, no, Lucy didn't actually forget Natsu, but that would be an interesting start to their relationship, no? ehehehe. I don't own Fairy Tail, but I do own the Natsu doll that's getting shipped to my house in a few days! Yay! Hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and I'm sorry I didn't get the chance to write a Christmas fic!