Broken
Author's note: The characters may seem a little bit out of character for the part where they are children. Please excuse, I want to show how the characters grow from childhood to their teenage years. Also, the characters still have their powers even though this takes place in a modern AU.
It was on the playground on the first day of school that the little blonde girl sat alone building a sand castle and talking to the air. Her name was Lucy and though she was the only person in the sandbox, the little girl did not in fact feel alone. A few weeks prior the little girl had been told that her mother was gone, that she had gone to heaven, but Lucy did not believe that. She felt her mother's presence all around her and she made no attempts to hide that fact from the rest of the world. Lucy spoke to her mother's spirit any time she pleased and while it brought Lucy great comfort, it made everyone else around her feel very anxious.
Already that day it had brought Lucy the torment of one of her classmates as evidenced by the skid marks on her hands and knees from her fall. The bully was an indignant pink haired boy, named Natsu, who had gotten angry when Lucy had said that she was speaking to her dead mother. If it was possible, he asked, then why couldn't he speak to either of his parents who had passed away? When she said she didn't know, Natsu had grown angry and had accidentally knocked Lucy down in his attempt to run past her. He still hadn't apologized.
So Lucy just sat in the sandbox, building a sand castle and talking to her mother, in peace. She was happy to ignore the screaming and shouting of the other children as they ran around the jungle gym at the other side of the playground just as they were happy to ignore her, but she wasn't the only one.
Beyond even Lucy, a little dark haired boy leaned up against the chain link fence fiddling with the sword shaped necklace around his neck. The teacher had tried to take the necklace away, stating that it was inappropriate since it depicted a weapon, but Gray had been rather obstinate in his refusal to remove it. Eventually, she had just given up.
He didn't know why it mattered so much to him he thought as he played with the chain. He didn't remember who had given it to him or why, all he knew was that it had been around his neck for as long as he could remember. It was a part of him. It comforted him. He guessed in that way he was like the blonde girl. They both had something nobody could take away from them.
It was nice to find something in common with someone his own age. For the most part the only person his age he knew was his brother Lyon and it was the things that they had in common that made them so angry at each other. For the most part, they couldn't stand to be around each other for very long. A relationship like that didn't really give Gray a lot of practice interacting with other people.
It was part of the reason Gray was all by himself by the fence. He wanted to go join the other kids and run around carefree, but he was afraid. He was afraid they would see how different he was from them and reject him, like everyone else in his life. He didn't know if he could handle the rejection, so he rejected them first. It was easier that way.
Gray would have been content to stand there alone, but, rather inconveniently, Gray remembered the promise he had made to Ur that morning.
"Promise me you'll try to make friends." She had asked of him and much to his dismay, he promised.
So he decided to make good on that promise. He chose the lone girl sitting in the sandbox. Out of every kid on the playground, she was the only other kid who was alone. It was that similarity between them that made her his best option.
Gray walked up to the girl slowly, but stopped behind her. So it was true, he thought to himself as he overheard her talking to someone who was not there, she did talk to imaginary people. Gray found himself smiling slightly as he realized that perhaps he wasn't the only weirdo there.
"Are you okay?" the little blonde girl asked. At first Gray didn't realize that she was talking to him until he saw her big brown eyes looking at him.
"I just wanted to come play in the sand." he said, pointing down at the lopsided castle.
"Oh." the blonde said. "Do you want to help me build the sandcastle?" she asked. Gray nodded in response. The blonde girl beamed up at Gray before she shifted over to allow him space to sit next to her.
"My name's Lucy." she said as she began to pat down the castle sides.
"Gray." he replied nonchalantly. He too began to pat down the castle. She stopped what she was doing and looked over at him.
"You don't talk much do you?" she asked, but it sounded more like a statement.
"You talk too much." he snapped back, but he felt immediately guilty when he saw her recoil at his harsh tone.
"You think I'm weird too don't you?" she asked, her eyes beginning to brim with wet tears.
"No, please don't cry!" Gray begged but tears were already spilling from her eyes.
"My mom's here! I know it! I don't care if you don't believe me! I don't care if anyone believes me!" She wailed.
"I believe you." Gray mumbled at her as she cried. He wasn't sure if he actually believed that she was talking to her dead mother, but he did believe that she believed it. That was enough for him. Lucy stopped crying when she heard him.
"Really? You do?" she sniffled, wiping her tears with her pink sleeve.
"Yeah." Gray answered and he noticed that Lucy had immediately began to cheer up. They went back to their castle building in silence, but it was a better silence than before. After a while, Lucy broke the silence.
"Thanks Gray." she said quietly. She looked over at him and saw that he was smiling a little bit in spite of himself. Seeing that, she began to smile too.
"Well I think the castle is done." Gray told her.
"I think so too." she replied. They both stood up and admired their handiwork. Lucy was about to thank Gray for his help when a certain pink haired boy came and interrupted them.
"Lucy, right?" the pink haired boy asked, his cheeks matching his hair. Lucy simply nodded.
"Look the teacher said I had to apologize for accidentally knocking you over. So, I'm sorry." he said and waited for Lucy to respond. She didn't, but Gray did.
"You don't sound very sorry." Gray interceded, much to Natsu's immense irritation.
"Stay out of this you ice cube!" Natsu yelled at Gray in anger, referring to an incident that morning when Gray had accidentally frozen the teacher's coffee.
"Why don't you actually try meaning it when you apologize, flame brain!" Gray yelled back. Natsu ran up to him and got very up close and personal to his face. They butted heads.
"Idiot!" Natsu yelled.
"Moron!" Gray yelled back. They were so caught up in their battle that they didn't that Lucy was staring straight at them in intense fury.
"Look what you did." she snarled and they sprang apart to look at her. She was radiating anger. They looked down at the source, a toppled sandcastle, then back at Lucy. She had begun to cry again.
"Don't cry!" the boys yelled simultaneously. They both got down in the sand and began to resurrect the sand castle together.
"Look we're fixing it Lucy! You don't have to cry anymore!" Gray yelled to get her to stop crying.
"Yeah! We'll make it better than ever!" Natsu agreed. The two boys hurried to complete an extravagant castle before their precious recess time was over. Lucy couldn't help but laugh at their attempts to cheer her up and make her stop crying.
Soon she found herself on the ground, helping the process. The result of the trio working together was a magnificent castle, better than the first ever was, and the beginning of a long lasting friendship.
From that moment, the moment that they had all met in Fiore's most prestigious preschool Fairy Tail, Natsu, Lucy, and Gray had been inseparable. Even as the years passed and other people grew apart, they all stayed close. Of course over time the Fairy Tail gang, as they were so affectionately known, grew in size. They had added a number of new members into their little club like Levy and Erza who ended up becoming some of the most essential pieces of their group. However, no matter how big their group got, Natsu, Gray, and Lucy remained each other's best friends. Nothing would ever change that, until of course, something did.
Like all teenagers, puberty brought a lot of new things, good and bad, to the trio of friends. Gray and Natsu got taller, their voices got deeper, and, through their various physical activities, they became muscular. On the other hand, Lucy grew out of her tween awkwardness and became a beautiful young lady. Unfortunately, physical changes weren't the only thing that came along with growing up.
Feelings were the other present that came along with the new found maturity and they began to cause a lot of problems for the Fairy Tail Group, beginning in their eighth grade year.
Note: Lucy's magic is considered really rare in this AU. Also, at this point I will be writing two multiple chapter stories: this one and Bus Stop. I will try to update at least one of them every week, but please be patient with me. You can vote for what you want to see next on my profile! Please let me know what you would like to do next? As always, thanks for the read and all the support!