Tears streamed endlessly down her bruised face as she lowered her aching body onto the bed. When the tears had first started falling from her soulless eyes, Lucy had made no attempt to wipe them away. It seemed that tonight was the evening for submissive acceptance of the truth. The salty tears would flow regardless of her will for them to do so otherwise, much like the now undeniable fact that her strength as a once renowned Fairy Tail mage had diminished to nothing more than that of a grain of sand. If Lucy still held any regard for her magic abilities after everything that had happened during her dual with Ultear, the disturbing purple bruises that ran along her left arm served as a contradictory reminder that laughed mockingly at her naivety.
Despite the softness of the pillow that cradled her head, her temples still throbbed in ferocious pain. She swallowed the growing lump in her throat and shifted her body so that she could lie on her side where a glistening full moon entered her vision. Staring at it seemed to halt the crying which gave her the chance to finally catch her breath and resume normal breathing. After a few shallow gulps of air, Lucy slowly closed her eyes and thought of her excruciating fight with the Mistress of Time. It was a common habit for hers to reflect back on her battles merely as a form of post-battle critique although this time there was not self-praise or sense of accomplishment as she recalled how Ultear had commanded the acceleration of a magnificently sized Iridium rock aimed straight for Lucy. Despite the number of times Sagittarius smashed the rock to infinite pieces, Ultear merely demonstrated her commendable manipulation of time by re-forming the offending rock. In hindsight, it was not the smashing of the rock that had wore Taurus out but the act of completing the task so many times. Surely after the second or third re-enactment Lucy should have realized futility and perhaps summoned another one of Celestial Spirits instead of continuing to fight what could only have been described as a losing battle. Something as simple as exchanging Celestial spirits at that point in the dual may have been instrumental in changing the outcome of the battle, had Lucy been focused enough to come to that conclusion during the ordeal rather than when she was drenching her pillowcase with bitter tears of regret. By the time she had finally summoned Virgo, most of her magic had been effortlessly drained by powerful dark mage so Lucy had to close the celestial gate and send Virgo back just as fast as she had summoned her. Lucy clenched her fists and shook her head as she silently berated herself for failing to see such a blatantly obvious statistical error on her part. A shameful error that would not definitely not been made had she paid more attention to the logistics of the fight. Her poorly-planned attacks did nothing to deter Ultear and if anything, they ironically left Lucy open to the exceptionally more vicious and well-thought through attacks of Ultear. The pain of realizing the source of her lack of concentration and focus was almost as horrific as when the sharp edges of Iridium had savagely pierced her arm. Almost.
Without a doubt, no amount of physical pain could ever compare to the feel of her chest which pounded with such tremendous force when she thought about her inability to engage in battle. That stupid goofy smile, that sometimes clumsy stroll, those innocent enough looking eyes, the look of absolute fury that crosses his face when something does not go the way he wants it to, the strange child-like nature that makes him so endearing, the instantaneous change that turns him into an aggressive tyrant should anyone ever enrage him by harming something close to him. A quite sigh escaped her lips as she continued to think of all the countless reasons that had made her fall unexplainably in love with the fire dragon slayer. When she had first laid eyes on him, the only thing she held for him was unhidden disdain for the copious amounts of food he seemed capable of ingesting without hurling. Even then, it was just fleeting disdain which was quickly replaced by immense excitement when she found out that he was from Fairy Tail, the much revered guild that Lucy had spent many a sleepless night imagining that she could belong to. After finding out that he could get her into Fairy Tail, she had considered him to be nothing more than a means to an end for there was nothing particularly extraordinary about him that struck her which was why she was initially skeptical of his confession to being a Fairy Tail mage. Soon after she arrived at Fairy Tail, she established herself as the resident Celestial Spirit Mage and formed part of what was probably the strongest team in all of Fiore. That was nine years ago. Nine years of merciless training, grueling missions to strange and distant lands, far too many dangerous encounters with death and here she was sobbing her eyes raw not from the physical wounds inflicted upon her during her battle with Ultear but because of the overwhelming realization that engulfed her. It was common knowledge that the use magic left an individual's health rather compromised thereby rendering them quite useless in physical combat however few realized that the converse also held true. If the physical or emotional state of a mage was known to be significantly compromised it led to a severe loss of magical power. The interconnection between one's state of mind, physical body and magic ability was a principle law not unlike that of gravity. Unfortunately, much like the physics revolving around Newton and his three laws, many mages failed to understand the importance of maintaining the balance. The compounding of brute physical strength does compensate for the negligence involved in poor execution of a magical act. Despite her troubled past, Lucy had never before experienced her magic diminish to the point where her skills as a Fairy Tail mage were anything but questionable. Makarov's uncharacteristic look of astonished confusion replaced her vision of the midnight sky. She knew that he had sensed her hesitation in most of her feeble attacks yet he still voiced his encouragement in the belief that she would defeat the Mistress of Time with the rightful capability as that of a Fairy Tail mage. He had hid his disappointment well but for Lucy, having grown up in the murky shadows of an over-bearing mother and a father whose minimal expectation entailed perfection, Lucy had developed the ability of sensing when her performance was met with sad regret. She had undoubtedly let down her guild which in turn meant that she had let down herself. In a guild where a unity and shared triumphs reigned, a single defeat marred not only the name of the individual in question but also the entire guild as a whole. Lucy's defeat was made more disgraceful by the fact that she had just acquired the title of being an S-class mage thereby questioning the standards employed by her seniors in dispatching of such a noble title given her dismal performance against the dark mage.
Just as she was falling into a lulled state of drowsy sleep, a swift breezed brought in sharp corrosive scent that made her nostrils twitch and her eyes snap open. Having been partner to a true dragonslayer, Natsu had taught Lucy the key points of having an extensively keen sense of smell. A frantic wave of uncensored fear washed over her as she picked her head up in search of an apparent intruder. The thin lace curtain swayed violently in the wind, blocking a clear view of the person standing in front of her. She made an attempt to crane her neck and spotted them immediately, ruby red and somewhat sinister. Lucy felt her shoulders relax and her fists unclench in recognition. After few short powerful strides he was in front of Lucy and a mere inch or two away from her face. Without any thought or hesitation her hands reached for his raven hair and tugged weakly for him to close the minimal distance that existed between her beaten body and his large calloused hands.