Chapter One

Introducing Cassandra Rosalie Heartfilia

Disclaimer: I don't own Fairy Tail, nor do I receive any form of financial gain from this work of fiction.

I was born Cassandra Rosalie Heartfilia, twin sister of Lucy and daughter of Layla and Jude one summer evening.

After Lucy had been delivered, both of my parents were shocked when I arrived only minutes later. After all, they hadn't been told to expect twins. I was completely and utterly unexpected. A "pleasant surprise" as my mother would later explain to me with a soft smile on her face. A fucking plot-twist is the way I will one day describe it during a fit of hysterics.

While my sister had been loud, crying out after being thrust into this harsh new world, I had been described as curiously quiet. So quiet that as my father held me in his arms while my mother tried to comfort Lucy mere feet away he worried that I may not even be breathing. Thankfully his worries were put to rest the moment my eyes fluttered open and my liquid chocolate eyes locked onto his with a gaze that was disarmingly aware.

An old soul they called me.

I was a strangely calm infant, only making a noise when it was to communicate that something was wanted or needed. It apparently unnerved the servants, a few of them actually putting the ridiculous notion into my mother's head that there was something wrong with me. No child was naturally that quiet. No child had that slight spark of knowing in their eyes as they followed the motions of someone moving through a room. Whispered words eventually bothered my mother enough that she enlisted the help of a medical mage to allay any doubts that I was anything less than a 3 month old child.

The mage had proclaimed me healthy and normal as anything, commenting offhandedly how they couldn't fathom why having a placid child would be a bad thing. Something my father agreed with. While Jude initially had trouble bonding with my sister, who had a strong pair of lungs and no qualms about letting anyone in earshot know about it, you would often find him holding me in his arms. My silence appealed to him, putting the stoic businessman at ease.

Growing older, it soon became clear that I was more advanced than my sister, picking up things much faster than she was. A prodigy, they called me. Still, I diligently encouraged my sister to catch up. Despite being the younger of us, I was the one to correct her when she struggled and hold her when the frustrations got too much. Never letting her feel as though the reason I picked up basic motor-skills and speech more easily was that she was was stupid.

Even at such a young age, I was fiercely protective of my sister. We had shared our mother's belly for 9 months, slept side by side in the years following; she was my soulmate, not in the romantic sense of the word, she was the type of soulmate who completes you in ways where you thought you were already whole. Whenever our father would gaze at her with disappointment in his eyes if Lucy happened to stumble over something, I would be quick to defend her with all the righteous fury of a toddler with a highly limited vocabulary. A trend that continued the older we became and the more our mother succumbed to her illness, no longer able to keep her husband in line herself. A role I found surprisingly easy to slip into with my ever increasing arsenal of words at my disposal.

Nobody would tell us what exactly was wrong with our mother, after all, we were only children. How on Earthland were we to comprehend Magic Deficient Disorder? It wasn't as though Lucy hadn't been able to summon her first Celestial Spirit at age 8 or that I probably had more knowledge about the history of magic than all of the medical mages invited to the Heartfilia Estate combined. But, as always, the adults were omniscient and we were simply stupid little girls fit for nothing more than pretty dresses and tea parties.

We were 10 years old when our mother died.

It was raining as I held hands with Lucy, while our father loomed stoic over us with an umbrella in hand. I watched with silent tears running down my cheeks while my sister attempted to cover up the sounds of her sniffles after a disapproving glance from our father. Eyes narrowing I grasped her hand tighter and pulled her closer against my side, unsurprised when she turned completely to bury her face against my neck. My skin twitched at the feel of her hot tears spilling under the collar of my frilly black dress, identical to hers, but I refused to pull away.

Our father was useless in the art of comfort. His impressive moustache finding itself firmly planted on his often talked about 'stiff upper lip'. Sometimes I fantasized about shaving off those dark blonde whiskers in the middle of the night.

In front of us, the mahogany casket holding our mother was gilded by the rain as it's lowered into the earth at our feet. Layla Heartfilia had finally succumbed to her illness at the tender age of 29, leaving behind far too many people who had loved her dearly. Leaving behind two young girls who desperately needed her to stay.

At the thought, my breath hitched in my throat and I hiccuped slightly before getting myself under control. Heartfilia's grieve with dignity - my father had drilled those words into our heads the previous evening when he had clearly outlined how he expected us to act at the funeral. Jude Heartfilia had always been a stern man, but with the passing of our mother, something in his eyes had gone cold. When he could bear to look at us, that was. I knew that it hurt Lucy, that our father had withdrawn rather than cling to us in comfort.

A sister is all very well and good, but sometimes all a girl wants is her daddy.

Tracking the caskets descent I flinched as a sharp pain assaulted my temple, squeezing my eyes shut as the feeling quickly passed. Opening them I was met with Lucy's large eyes gazing at me in concern, her tears making them look like liquid chocolate. My lips pulled into what I hoped was a reassuring smile but probably looked like more of a grimace. While I wanted nothing more than to fall apart the way Lucy was, I knew that I couldn't. One of us had to stay strong, and as the responsible twin, that role fell to me.

I had promised our mother after all, and Heartfilia's never broke their promises. In that moment though, I couldn't help but hate being the 'responsible one'.

We were made to stay there until our father pushed us forward with a firm hand on my shoulder. Lucy stumbled at the sudden movement but I quickly righted her as we approached Layla Heartfilia's final resting place. The white rose in my hand felt as though it were made from lead and I hardly registered that I was gripping it tight enough that a stray thorn had pierced the soft flesh of my palm. My blood stained the soft petals red as I let it fall from my fingers and drop softly against the wood that was so polished it looked like glass.

While Lucy dropped her own rose with a choked sob I stared down at my reflection, the rain running down the stubborn set of my jaw. Single-minded, my mother had always called me. Her determined little girl who would one day conquer the world.

When I later collapsed on my bed, wet and defeated with my sister clutching me like I was the only thing anchoring her to the universe, I couldn't help but think that I didn't want to conquer the world.

I just wanted my mom back.

Eventually, we had cried ourselves to sleep, curled around each other. And somehow my grief-exhausted state had weakened whatever was blocking my memories, allowing them to burst through like someone had opened the floodgates. It was terrifying and visceral. An unrelenting assault on my psyche that culminated in an ever-increasing pressure against the inside of my skull. For one horrific moment, I fancied that my head was actually going to explode.

Images wrapped themselves around my mind. Sounds and smells, the feel of someone's skin on mine, a light wind lifting my hair and the smell of sunlight on my skin. Suddenly I was no longer 10-year-old Cassandra Rosalie Heartfilia, but 18-year-old Lorelei Cheryl Ryder. Brown hair, blue eyes and freckles. Tall and slender with a wide smile and large tortoise-shell glasses in an effort to look like Zooey Deschanel in New Girl.

I remembered my first words, my favourite colour, how chicken nuggets were like my family. When I went to my first concert, when I got my driver's license on the first go, my first hangover after my first high school party. My first love tucking my hair behind my ear after I gave him my virginity at Junior Prom. Crying into my pillow when we broke up a year later when he told me he was going to a college on the opposite side of the country.

My parents beaming with pride as I accepted my diploma, now a high school graduate and on my way to UCLA to study astrophysics - a field inspired by my favourite anime.

Fucking Fairy Tail.

As I came to the realisation that I was somehow living in a fictional universe created by Hiro fricking Mashima, a broken scream tore from my throat startling Lucy awake.

Blood was thick in my nose along with the scent of burning rubber. I clawed desperately at the silk bedding as I relived the final moments of my past life, absolutely certain that I was once again drowning in my own blood. I hacked and coughed, trying to clear my lungs of phantom fluid, too caught up in the onslaught of sensations to remind myself that it wasn't real. I wasn't aware of my sister's fingers curling around my wrists as she tried to stop my frantic movements. Of her frightened voice warbling loudly for me to stop. I couldn't even feel the hot tears coating my cheeks or how my heart was fit to burst from my chest.

I had died. I had died and somehow been reborn as Lucy Heartfilia's twin sister. I had been obsessed with Fairy Tail when I was Rory McAdams. I would devour fanfiction. I would religiously wake up early on Monday mornings to eagerly read the latest chapter of the manga. For god's sake, I had cosplayed as Erza freaking Scarlet one year at SDCC with my friends. I had a Tumblr dedicated to my Ultimate OTP of Jerza.

And now I was in the world I was once so emotionally invested in. Oh, the irony.

Turns out my 10-year-old body couldn't handle the ongoing trauma of realising it had the mind of an 18-year-old shoved into it, and I could quickly feel myself start to go into shock. As I heard Lucy's frightened shouts of my name I felt a numbness spread throughout my body. Quick as my fit had started, it ended, as I finally, finally, succumbed to the sweet oblivion of unconsciousness.

In my previous life pain and I had never been particularly intimate, but we sure as hell were now.

During the days following my awakening, I began making plans.

Unsure of just how much my existence would change the series of events put into place by Hiro Mashima, I knew preparations needed to be made. I couldn't disregard the idea of the 'butterfly effect' and I was sure my death and subsequent reincarnation had stirred some pretty stiff winds. All I could hope was that things turned out better for me than they did for Ashton Kutcher.

Luckily, Jude had merely written off my breakdown as the 'grief-stricken antics of a child'. Simply expressing that such behaviour was something he would expect from Lucy and not me. That comment had made me bare my teeth in something reminiscent of an animal's snarl as I had to stop myself from snapping back with a series of words that would never have left my lips when I was simply Cassandra. Rather than this weird bastardisation of who I used to be and who I had become.

Honestly, being an 18-year-old in a 10-year-old's body was damn irritating. Especially once I came to the conclusion that I'd have to suffer through puberty a second time. Being Lucy's twin sister meant that it was only a matter of time until I was all tits and ass, I couldn't help but wonder how she had never over-balanced before being so blatantly top-heavy. All I could hope for was that my period wasn't so much of a pain in the ass in this body as my previous one, where my cramps would reduce me to huddling in the fetal position under a blanket in tears for at least two days a month. Ugh, having ovaries fucking sucked.

Unlike Jude, Lucy was an entirely different kettle of fish.

My actions had shaken her and she only clung tighter to me because of it, frightened I would leave her the same way Layla had. Despite my fascination with Lucy in my past life, I couldn't see her as the fictional character I once had. After 10 years she was my sister, my best friend, and my soulmate. When I thought about the hardships she would start enduring soon enough, a fierce protectiveness overcame me.

That very emotion was what had driven me to be awake at 2am sitting with my back against the bathroom door while my pen scratched furiously across the pages of a leather-bound journal. The familiar kanji bloomed against the thick creamy paper and I was grateful that despite Hiro Mashima being Japanese himself, that language didn't seem to exist in whatever alternate universe this was. It seemed languages like English, Latin, and French did, however. Something I found highly confusing - of all languages you would feel the tongue of this worlds creator would be the most commonplace instead of entirely absent.

Not that I was complaining, of course. If what I was documented ever feel into the wrong hands it could spell unadulterated disaster to befall Fiore. I did contemplate if I was being an idiot for all of 10 minutes, but then came to the conclusion that the risk was worth it. So there I sat, the cold tiles making my tailbone ache until it blessedly went numb, as I recounted as much of the storyline of Fairy Tail as I could remember.

It was 5 nights until I was finally done.

At 2am I would slip out of the bed I was sharing with my sister, replacing my body with a pillow she would instantly latch onto, and retreat into the bathroom with a candle. Then I would write down the adventures I was once so emotionally invested in my candlelight, only retreated back to bed once the flame was eventually drowned in the pool of melted wax. I tried to keep it to bullet-points, rather than some flowery epic that no one but myself would ever be able to read.

And once that was done, I started making lists.

Planning out what actions I would take from here on out. What skills I would have to learn, what skills I would have to encourage Lucy to learn. When we would escape from the estate and our father's clutches because I knew that was inevitable. Just as I knew that somehow we would end up calling the most rambunctious and loving guild nestled in Magnolia our home. It was just a matter of when.

Naturally, I was excited to meet the cast of characters I once adored in the flesh. I longed to eat strawberry shortcake with Erza, tease Gray for once again losing his clothes, gush over books with Levy and gossip with Mira over who was hooking up with whom. I couldn't wait to meet Happy and trail my fingers through his soft blue fur and discuss the finer points of fishing.

But most of all, I couldn't wait to meet Natsu.

After Lucy, Natsu had been my favourite fictional character ever. Brave, loyal, and kind Natsu. The one character that didn't deserve all the shit he got put through. Who still saw the world with an enviable innocence and was as quick to fight someone as he was to become their friend. He was someone who had suffered hardship and loneliness and all it had done was made him kind.

I desperately wanted to be his friend.

After I had finished my list of things I would have to achieve to ensure Lucy and I would survive what was to come, I started another one. This one was slightly more difficult because this one was a list of canon events that I would actively try to alter. It was only when I had filled an entire page with trying to come up with solutions to the tragic pasts that everyone in Fairy Tail seemed to have that I came to a realisation: if I altered those events then there was a very high chance that the Fairy Tail I knew wouldn't even exist. If they hadn't had to suffer through the events that had moulded them into the characters I had so admired, then they would probably never even join a mage guild. Not to mention the chance that my meddling would cause something even worse to befall them instead as the universe's way of trying to right itself.

That was when I decided that I would only interfere with events as I was directly experiencing them. Not being a decision I came to lightly, but one I knew I had to adhere to. It was quite ironic that Jude and Layla had thought to name me Cassandra. In that moment I realised that I shared quite a lot with my ancient Greek namesake, both being in the possession of knowledge but unable to use it to actually save anyone.

Well, at least not yet.

A/N: Well guys, how'd you like that chapter of exposition? haha hopefully you got through it all relatively entertained! I generally hate info-dumps like this, but this is all information I needed to get across and once we're past this we can hurry up and get to the good stuff! I really hope you're all enjoying this so far and if you are don't hesitate to let me know =)

Honestly, tell me your favourite line, your least favourite line, what you'd like to see happen, and any predictions you might have for the future hahaha

Happy reading!

- susiesamurai