Spyce here, starting off a new short story!
This started off as a little irritation between me and Berri about the fact that when Natsu and Lucy get into trouble (or captured, but yeah), Natsu is always the one who ends up fighting for their freedom. We decided to play out a scenario where Lucy is put on the spot instead while Natsu is incapacitated via dark magic or similar shit.
Just FYI: this stuff could end up pretty dark. We have no idea where this'll end up taking us, but it's a solid M for a reason. Expect everything and nothing.
We hope you enjoy this little starter bit! Review to tell us yay or nay, k? Berri should be uploading the next chapter, but it could be me again. Heh.
- Spyce
Her fist curls out of habit. It snaps into position without any real direction from her, aligning with her forearm so that when her knuckles collide with her opponent's nose, it doesn't hurt. She follows through on her punch and brings her knee up. It sinks deep into her opponent's stomach, crunching through the lower ribs, and the man screams.
His scream is high-pitched and desperate. She hates the sound, hates the way it makes her blood boil even though she knows it is wrong, and brings her arm around again. The man doesn't see it coming through his tears. Her bloody knuckles slam into the strong line of his jaw with all the force her small, feminine body can offer and something cracks.
The next scream is mangled and she realizes that she broke his jaw. It's her first time. She knows the flicker of happiness is wrong, that it brands her a monster, but she can't bring herself to care. Maybe she will be rewarded for her accomplishment. Maybe tomorrow there won't be as many enemies behind the glass or maybe they will let her fight someone smaller. Someone who won't take so long to fall.
Maybe they will let her have more time with her partner.
The man opens his bloody lips and croaks, his voice broken. She only shakes her head. He just has to give in and the fight will be over. Unlike him, she doesn't have the option of losing. She slugs him in the stomach. Her aim is perfect and his screams echo around her, bouncing from the glass and burrowing in her ears until the screaming is all she can hear.
A sharp kick to his throat is enough to win. She knows she didn't have to push her hip like that, that a clip to the temple with the side of her hand would've been enough, but she has to show that she can. It's stamina day, after all. She needs to gain strength because the next Round will be harder, and no one will wait for her to catch her breath.
The grass cracks open and a man walks in. Muscles bulge on his wide frame, straining his clothes. His white surgical scrubs are painted red and his face is hard. He picks up the loser, nods to her once, and leaves. She stretches her lips in a mad grin, just like she is supposed to. The glass clicks shut and she is left alone, her strained reflection judging her from a pool of blood.
Somewhere above her, speakers crackle as they come to life. She tilts her head back and tries to find them, but the lights are too bright and too many. All she sees is white.
"T twenty seven," the voice says. She thinks it's a recording – it sounds almost metallic – and she has no reason to believe otherwise.
Twenty seven minutes. She doesn't know how many men have left their blood on the cement floor, but twenty seven is two minutes less than yesterday. A shaky laugh bubbles in her throat and she chokes on it. Two minutes gone with seventeen more stretching out behind them.
The glass moans. Water spills from the light above her, gliding down the glass and washing off the blood. She watches it slide in breathtaking ripples, so graceful and effortless as it destroys the evidence of what she'd done. It doesn't care that she broke a man's jaw. It only drips over the copper frames holding the glass in place and splatters against the cement. When there's enough of it, she crouches and washes off her hands.
One of the panes glosses over. A floating screen flickers into focus and she watches herself duck under a muscle-packed punch. Her fist unclenches, adjusting its shape to protect her thumb, and before the man can find his balance she's behind him, the flat of her hand at the back of his neck. He falls and doesn't get up. The screen flickers again and moves on.
Something hot and ugly boils in her chest. She watches her own face change, always shifting to apply a fresh mask that will hide her revulsion and her pain. She knows how much it hurt to take that punch to her stomach but on the screen it doesn't show and she wants to smile. Her armor is building.
Suddenly, a tear catches the light. It sits at the end of a wet trail on her cheek and she reaches up to touch it, but it's no longer there. Still, as the recording moves on and she reduces another self-assured man to a bloody, mangled scream, all she can see is the tear. She wants to reach into the screen and rip that tear off her face.
It won't matter that she broke her first jaw because she cried. She knows the rules. To cry is to break those rules. There won't be a reward; instead, there will be punishment.
Fear clenches her lungs until she can't breathe and suddenly, all she needs is to go back to her rooms. She needs to see that he's still alive, that they haven't done anything to him. She turns her back on the screen and stumbles a little as she crosses the arena. The glass opens for her without a sound.
The men waiting for her are all dressed in black robes, their faces covered by a free-falling square of white. They surround her as the doors ghost shut behind her and she waits, her hands fidgeting with her impatience. After a moment of heavy silence, the tallest one speaks.
"Better," he says. "Twenty seven for eighteen. The tally stands at four hundred and one to fifty three."
She doesn't say anything, but her gut churns.
Without another word, the man who spoke turns and walks away. The rest follow him, forming a circle around her to tether her to them. She knows she isn't allowed to touch them, so she limps with them, her breathing ragged as the adrenalin trickles out of her system. Pain licks through her hip. Her shoulders are heavy with stiffness and her throat is raw. She lifts her fingers to prod the curving bruise on her neck.
It was stupid to take that hit.
The men pause at a plain wooden door with a small, barred window stretching across the top. The frame is lines with steel and a thick steel X glares at her from the dull grey wood. The word "Heartfilia" is scribbled across the center of the X in curly handwriting. She waits for one of the men to open the door before bowing her head and sliding past them into her room.
The door doesn't have time to fully close before she's running through the lavish sitting room and marble-covered kitchenette to her bedroom. A large four-poster bed faces heavy burgundy curtains. Desperation forms an incoherent noise as she struggles to open the curtains, silently screaming at the heartless bastard that had closed them again.
The curtains whisper teasingly as they glide open, baring a wall of thick glass. A flash of green light blinds her for a moment and she blinks rapidly to clear her vision. Lights mean that he's not alone anymore and she needs to reassure herself that he's still breathing.
Only two people are in his cell this time. One of them is a woman with pale purple skin and hip-length black hair styled in a haphazard mess. She picks at her black nails and adjusts the strap of her black bra, her other hand holding a pulsing ball of dark purple energy. The other one is a small man with a wispy build and vivid green hair, shrouded entirely in a white fur-lined cloak. He just stands there, watching, his narrow face impassive.
She slams her hands against the glass. The woman sends her a bored glance and raises an eyebrow, taunting her with the knowledge that there is nothing she can do. She curls her hands into fists and screams for them to stop, her voice hoarse. Agony rakes through her throat but she ignores it and screams again. The woman smiles and flips her hand, letting the ball of magic fall to the floor.
Her scream dies on her tongue as she watches, her body numb and hurting. The ball breaks and streaks of dark purple skitter across the floor. When they reach him, they coil around his limp form like snakes and vanish. His eyes fly open. He writhes uncontrollably, his lips peeled back in a strained snarl, and tears spill down her cheeks. She doesn't wipe them away. Her knees give out and she crumples to the floor, unable to look away and hating herself for watching.
It is her fault that he is hurting.
If she had been stronger, none of this would have happened.
A sob shakes her shoulders as his writhing winds down to nothing. She watches the woman tilt his face with the edge of her sleek black shoes before both she and the narrow-faced man leave, but her mind drifts. Panic grips her as she realizes she doesn't remember what his voice sounds like. His screams fill her ears instead, full of pain and rage, and she leans against the glass.
It doesn't take her long to regain control. She steels herself and struggles to her feet. There are seventeen minutes left until she fulfills her end of the bargain. She knows that she shouldn't trust the enemy, but she also knows that her enemy is a businessman by the nature of his magic. He is bound to the promises – the deals – he makes. Once she delivered, so would he.
She uses the walls to support herself as she makes her way to the kitchenette. Three rolls of compressed ice wait for her in the freezer and she wraps two around her hip. A meal sits on the corner counter: beans and rice with a few strips of defrosted chicken. She moves the plate to the thin glass table and props her leg up.
The ornate clock above the fireplace loses two hours by the time she gives up, half the food untouched. She can't make herself swallow and her stomach rolls with every bite. Bile closes off her throat. She doesn't know when they feed him – if they feed him – and she hates herself for having so much more than him. She has comfort, food, and medicine while he has nothing but pain every time she fails.
All she has to do is cut seventeen minutes. She needs to take less time on each opponent. Suddenly, she regrets turning her back on the recording. She needs to know what she wastes time on and now she won't have another chance until the next fight.
"Lucy?" a soft voice mumbles, its pitch almost childish. She twists in her chair, hissing as pain explodes in her hip. Happy lands on the table with a soft thud. Big black eyes move from the new bruise on the corner of her jaw to the one of her neck. His wings vanish with a small shudder.
"Two minutes down, Happy," she says. She doesn't think she's ever heard herself so resigned.
"Seventeen to go?"
She tries to smile as she nods. "Seventeen to go."
"What happened?"
Her smile crumbles to dust and he winces, his eyes apologetic. She knows why he asked. Even though she has become far more alert, her hearing could never be as good as his. She isn't cursed to hear the screams every time she fails.
"I cried again," she says. "I didn't even notice until the recording."
"Oh."
"Yeah."
She doesn't apologize because he doesn't expect her to.
Suddenly, he sniffs and says, "I wanted to say sorry for teasing you so much. You know, before this . . ."
He trails off. She is thankful that he doesn't finish the sentence. The mission was over the moment they had walked into the arena and stared at the same glass she fights behind, but there isn't a word to describe what they landed in. It hurts her, though, to know that Happy had finally matured only because the ends of their lives seem to hang by the last thread.
She hates being the one holding the scissors.
"Thank you, Happy. That means a lot to me."
He nods and sniffs again. She offers him the rest of her food. He picks at it just like she had and pushes it away.
Silently, she scoops him up and hugs him, holding on as though he is going to disappear. He clings to her just as tightly, his claws digging into her skin, but she doesn't care. They both need this. Even though she wants something different, she still needs to reassure herself that there are things worth fighting for.
"I started the bath," he mumbles against her chest. Bile rises in her throat again and she swallows it down. She can't make herself get into a bath when the luxury it implies repulses her so much.
"I'll be fine."
"Okay. Sleep?"
She laughs. It's a pathetic, brittle sound, one so weak that the faintest breeze could tear it apart.
"Sure."
Once he falls asleep, a ball of blue fur under thick burgundy covers, she crawls out of the bed and sits in front of the glass. Her body moans in protest. Massaging her hip, she watches her partner as he claws his way to consciousness and sits up, using the grey wall for support. His eyes flick over to her and he tries to smile. Pain twists his features into a grimace.
She can't imagine how much he is hurting.
He raises his hand and glides it over thin air as though petting a cat. She replies to the silent question with a hesitant thumbs up. Relief spills from the barely noticeable sigh that shifts his shoulders, but when his eyes meet hers again, she knows that it isn't enough. It's in his nature to protect what he loves. Being forced to watch his family deteriorate as they fight for him is hard when he would rather take the brunt of the pain onto himself.
She knows that if their places were reversed, he would've cut seventeen minutes a long time ago.
Their enemy knew that too. Their places weren't reversed because he had known that her partner was the fighter between them. The expected doesn't draw the crowds. Nobody would come to watch the Salamander throw his opponents around, because it is bound to happen. People pay money to see what they do not expect, to be surprised by the turn of events. Her victory is the surprise they hunger for and she is in no position to refuse.
He asks a few more questions. She answers all of them but one. She can't answer his last question without lying, so she glances at the clock. They have less than a minute left. Her fingers are at her lips when the lights go out but she blows him a kiss anyway, not caring that he won't see it.
Every line of his exhausted face is burned into her mind, pushing her to get up and keep going. She holds her hip as she struggles to her feet. Gripping the bed for guidance, she finds her way back to Happy and curls up on top of the blankets.
She hates the color burgundy and she hates glass, but more than anything, she hates herself.
Boom!
Anyways, review! Tell us what you think, because if you don't, we can't improve!
XOXO,
Spyce & Berri