I got positive response on my last one-shot so I decided to update this quickly!
Summary:
They don't get to visit her often, though they want to. Visiting hours have been restricted to half an hour, per week, because of the fire dragon's destructiveness. They hardly recognize her anymore. It's like she's made of glass.
She breaks when she's touched.
It's easy to see right through her lies when she tells them she's fine.
Her eyes have been glazed and glassy for the last few years.
But they're used to that. Because she's Lucy Heartphilia, their Glass Girl.
This one's kind of angsty, but then again I'm writing it while being in an angsty mood.
February 1st, X794
"You remembered the key, right, Natsu?" Erza asks, resting a hand on the cool metal bar of the front door. She shifts her wait onto the bar so that the door begins to tilt open while she waits for an answer.
The impulsive mage grins and pulls out the silver key from where he'd tucked it safely in his scarf. "Luce is going to love this!" he cheers, pushing through the door with a loud whoop. Instantly, Erza claps a hand over his mouth, reminding him sternly why their visiting time had already been cut short- him. Natsu chuckles and begins to march his way up to the room he'd visited almost every week in the past two years. Erza watches him go with a bittersweet sigh, while the other two members of their party push the doors open and make their appearances, albeit late.
"You.. didn't ... have to... punch out the... entire wagon..." Gray pants, struggling to catch his breath. Erza shrugs in response. "The driver made... us walk the rest of... the way here!" Gray adds, hoping to stir up some sympathy in the red haired mage. "And we even had to pay for the damage... that you and Natsu caused!"
"Aye!" Happy agrees as he sags on the ice mage's shoulders.
Erza shrugs again, and moves to the check in counter of the mental house. The clerk glances up from her cell phone and looks at them, before reaching into the counter and sliding out three metallic bronze cards.
"She's a little unstable today," the clerk says, returning her attention to the phone. She's done this every week for these same people, and now they have a routine. "Try not to speak loudly. It upsets her."
Erza nods, although the clerk doesn't see, and passes a card to Gray. The three of them follow the path that Natsu had gone just a few minutes before, knowing that he wouldn't have made it to her room yet because of the recent check-in wall that had been added in her hall. They need security cards to get in, and to get out, and Natsu is never patient enough to get a card so he is forced to wait until Erza comes to check them through. She grabs the edge of his scaled scarf before sliding her card through its designated slot, and the thick steel doors slide back, revealing the hall for the most damaged patients.
It currently is inhabited by one patient only, the one known throughout the mental house as the "Glass Girl" for her disturbingly fragile state of mind and body.
Natsu strains against his scarf but does not try too hard, knowing that Erza will release him when she has said what she needs to say.
"She's unstable today," the redhead tells him, staring straight ahead. "Do not be loud. It disturbs her."
Natsu nods quickly and is freed, so he dashes to the only locked room in the hall and stands on his toes to peer through the tiny barred window at the top of the door. She is nowhere near the door, so he takes the card Erza has given him and slides it through the slot, waiting for the tell-tale "click" that meant the door was unlocked.
Erza, Gray, and Happy all made it to him by the time the door clicks, so they push it open and glance in together. They only have half an hour, and four minutes have already passed. She sits on the square brick of foam that is her bed, but she is facing the wall. Her fingers trace shapes on the white wall, and she hums very quietly. It is silent amongst the visitors. She hasn't looked this peaceful since she came here. Natsu takes a step forward and clears his throat, waiting while she slowly turns to look at him, matted blonde hair falling over her shoulders, eyes dull and glassy. He takes a sharp breath. He, after two years, is still not used to the vacant look in Lucy's eyes, in the dead way she responds to everything, so he just extends his arm and opens his fist, revealing the silver key.
Lucy's eyes drift from his face to the key, but no emotion flashes. No recognition, no gratitude, nothing. It's as if she's dead, they all think, but none say it out loud. Natsu swallows loudly. "We brought you Plue," he tells her, but his voice is still thick. Lucy hasn't spoken in their last three visits. Her nurses told them that she was getting worse.
Lucy stares at the celestial spirit for a long time, before reaching out and taking it from Natsu's hands. The four watch her lift the key up and examine it, hoping that she will remember, that she will become the Lucy that they know again. They hold their breaths as she stands and holds the key out, and let it out in shaky disappointment when she only shoves poor Plue against the card lock of the door. She frowns when the key doesn't go in, and stares at again. Lucy drops the key and shuffles back to her bed, visitors sighing. Happy floats down and picks up Plue's fallen key, handing it to Erza and flying up to Natsu's head. Erza checks her watch while Gray sits on the bed next to Lucy. She turns her gaze back to them. Eighteen minutes left.
Up until four weeks ago, she could still recognize them. She still spoke and she still smiled and she still was Lucy. But then Natsu tried to sneak her back through the doors with them, without anybody knowing because he'd thought she was all better, but when the nurses and guards came to take her back he attacked them, and Lucy was terrified. She fainted then and there, and hadn't spoken since.
Since then, all of the Fairy Tail mages had taken their turn to come try to restore some of Lucy's memory, and today Erza and Natsu had planned using her celestial keys to make her remember her magic. Gray forms tiny ice-sculptures of their nakama and gives them to Lucy to look at, but Natsu, being on her other side, melts them as soon as her pale hands touch the ice. The boy finally holds his power back when the Natsu sculpture is made, along with a Lucy one, and the girl holds both in her hands. The four visitors watch her study the ice for a handful of seconds, and then she throws the Natsu to the ground where he shatters, and then flings her own statue against the wall where it sinks through before cracking as well.
They are speechless. And then Gray quickly melts his ice, wondering if the statues were a bad idea. Natsu stares at the puddle that was him, wondering if Lucy knew what she was doing when she threw him away. Erza watches Lucy sit there, wondering if she could have done anything to prevent this horror. Happy cries softly, wondering if Lucy will ever be the same again.
And Lucy calmly wipes her hands against the foam brick, wondering who these strangers are.
February 8th, X794
"I don't think I remembered to bring our cards!" Levy panics as she stands outside the door with the metal bar. Gajeel, Lily, Wendy, and Charle stand beside her, all silently begging someone else to be the first to open the door. Gajeel snorts and pushes through, and the girls and cats follow through.
"Don't worry, Levy," Charle tells her. "I foresaw that you might forget and have already brought them." the white cat pulls out bronze cards for the other four and they wave to the clerk at the counter before heading up to the hall where Lucy lived.
"I don't get why we have to still use these cards when it was Salamander who messed up in the first place," Gajeel grumbles, but he pushes his card through and enters.
"Because we're all guildmates and we do things together," Lily answers as he follows him.
Wendy and Levy nod in approval when they go through. When Charle passes through though, her already pale face whitens even more and she gasps.
"Lucy!" and then the five of them are sprinting for the room where their guild mate gone mad was in.
When the door clicked open, Lucy was twisting and screaming, clawing at the walls and darting around her room with shrieks and howls of horror and terror and other things.
instantly, Gajeel reaches and grabs her arms, while Lily grows to his big size and wraps his arms around the struggling girl. Tears splash down her cheeks and her muffled cries cease. Levy soothingly strokes her arms to calm her down, whispering soft words of comfort. It takes time, more time than they can afford, but she calms completely so that the boys can let go of her. Levy straightens up, ready to give her the newest gifts from her friends, but the clerk from the counter appears through the barred window and tells them in a monotone voice that their thirty minutes are up, please come again next week, and would any of you be interested in taking over my job? Wendy presses her hands on the blonde's forehead before they leave, hoping that with all her power she would be able to heal whatever was destroying Lucy's mind, but the clerk snaps and shoves her out.
Gajeel and Levy exchange a gloomy look, and then Levy takes Wendy by the hand and the five go back to Fairy Tail, ready to tell their nakama how Lucy was not getting any better after all.
July 1st X794
It's Lucy's birthday, so the clerk allows the whole guild to come and say hi for an entire hour, provided they do not disturb the other patients. None can wait for the click of the door, and when it opens Gray squeezes himself to the front to be the first one in her room. He stops dead in his tracks. Lucy sits on the white bed.
But the white bed is no longer white. It is red.
And Lucy's white hospital gown is red as well.
And blood drips slowly from her lips,down across her chin and splish splashes onto the chest of her gown, to roll onto the already stained bed.
Her nakama, her family stare at the room in horror. Most have been here before. Most can recall the sheer whiteness of the room.
It is now the color of blood. Blood drips from the ceiling, bloody handprints streak across the walls, and foot prints are everywhere, surprising even on the ceiling. What disturbs them the most, however, is the deep, deep scratches in everything. The concrete floor; the walls; the dresser... everything was dripping blood or ripped by nails.
Lucy giggles and her head twists around to face them. One eye gleams a fiery redish orange, and the other eye is pitch black. Her bloodstained lips lift into a horrific grin. Her family doesn't know what to do with this, so Happy is sent to fetch the clerk.
Lucy closes her red-gold eye and stares with the black one. The maniacal grin flares higher at the gasps of fright.
She reaches towards her old friends with a broken sort of smile and the blood drips off her fingers and splish splashes onto the cold floor. Before she can touch Gray even, a nurse in blue plunders through, with a giant needle in her grip. She motions for Gray to move out of the way right now mister or else so that she can lunge forward and injects the serum into Lucy's chest. The bloody girl goes limp in seconds, and the nurse scoops her up and out of the room before anybody can react. Fairy Tail is left staring in a room dripping blood splash splash onto the cold floor that held one of their most popular members for several years of lacryma induced insanity.
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Only two Fairy Tail wizards are not mourning the loss of their celestial wizard. Laxus is showing the video tape to Natsu who watches in grief and horror as the previous hour is replayed, displaying the bloody scene where Lucy destroyed her room.
"That..." Natsu bit his lip, unable to hold in the tears sliding across his cheeks. Lucy would probably never become sane again.
"Exactly," Laxus confirms, with a sympathetic frown. "That is what happens when the body rejects Dragon Slayer Lacryma,"
OMg could any of you tell why Lucy was insane? if you could, Kudos to you. Shadows is proud.