Did I sob uncontrollably while writing this chapter? Yes.
Please forgive how long it took to get out. Should have the next one ready for August. Also, this is now going to be a much longer fic, as I've accidentally opened up the possibility for a certain type of storyline. I've decided to pursue it, and I'm super excited about it!
Recommended song is "Close" by Conro.
Contrary to her initial hopes, it took Lucy the better part of the day to merely map out the layout of the Tower's first floor. It was best to know where things were, she had decided. That way she wouldn't have to keep calling on Crux every time she wanted to know where something was. He had a life of his own in the Celestial World, after all. It would be the height of rudeness to send him home only to drag him right back. Now that she knew how the time flowed differently between the worlds thanks to the party her spirits had thrown her, she understood just how disruptive calling upon them could be for their daily lives. Aquarius's irritation at her childhood habit of constantly summoning her made a lot more sense now.
It was better for both her and Crux to just keep him summoned while they figured out where everything was, and then she could send him home once she had a grasp on the books' organization. She just hadn't expected it to take as long as it did before she could do so. Even the bottom floor of the place was massive. Furthermore, it was a veritable labyrinth that didn't follow any convention of organization that she could readily recognize. Whatever ancient correlation it had, it was beyond Lucy's ability to intuit. Which forced her to plot everything out in her journal as she went.
Then there was issue of the fact that Lucy couldn't read half the languages that the books were written in. It had been a depressing realization, to open up half a dozen books only to find herself incapable of discerning their contents.
She missed Levy intensely in that moment. The blue-haired woman would know exactly what these books said, no matter the language. Loneliness welled up inside of her. The absence of her friends and teammates ached like a missing limb – a large chunk of her soul cut out and gone with them.
It wasn't as if she wouldn't find any information in the library without Levy's help, she knew. Several of the tomes were bound to have translated versions somewhere in the building. And Fiore's national language was one that had existed for at least four hundred years without too much deviation. The question was whether she'd be able to find the books written or translated to it, and if their contents held what she needed within them.
She wasn't placing much hope in her infamous luck to help her out in that department. Besides which, it felt lately that her luck had long since run out. Tenrou Island, the Neo Oracion Seis attempting to sacrifice her to a clock, getting the crap beaten out of her at the Grand Magic Games and being thrown into jail, a dragon invasion, and then… Tartaros.
Yeah… her luck had run out a long, long time ago.
Perhaps it had all been used up in meeting Natsu, and in joining Fairy Tail.
By the time she had to call it a day, Lucy had come to the crushing realization that even if the library held all the information that she needed, it was going to take her a lot of time to comb through it all. Let alone discern what information was actually helpful for her cause. Lucy highly doubted a book existed that would be so fortuitously titled: How To Defeat A Dragon King.
The bright spot in all of it was that while he'd helped her, Crux had also provided enough information for Lucy to write a preliminary article on the place for Jason to look over. She would organize her notes once she got home for the night, though, and then write it. Skipping lunch while working in the archives had been a poor idea, and her stomach was complaining so loudly that it would have gotten her kicked out of a normal library.
"Is it alright if I summon you again tomorrow?" Lucy asked him, just before dismissing him for the day. "I think I'm going to need more help figuring out where everything is. But if not, then I can work with what I've already got." She refused to be an imposition to him. Not like she had been to Aquarius.
The spirit considered it. "I'm afraid that I'm unavailable tomorrow," he said slowly. "My apologies, Miss Lucy. I would love to continue to assist you, but it will have to wait two of your days, at least."
Crestfallen, Lucy nodded. "That's alright. You have your own life to live. It would be selfish of me to take up too much of your time."
A kind, if sorrowful, smile spread across Crux's face. "Miss Lucy, you aren't an imposition to us. I fear that Aquarius's lack of patience is to blame, here. Hardly any time passes in our world while we're in yours. Our lives are not disrupted by any great account in being a part of yours. We all knew what being bound to gate keys would entail when we agreed to be so. Truthfully, our lives are enriched for the experience – time moves so slowly in our world that it's easy to become stagnant, to fall out of touch with what is happening on Earthland. We take great joy being your spirits, and a part of your life and adventures, Miss Lucy. Please take heart in that."
Hot tears gathered in Lucy's eyes at his words, and her cheeks and ears burned. Shakily, she nodded her head. "Okay," she breathed out. She furiously wiped her eyes with her arm and gave Crux a tremulous smile. "I'll try to remember that."
She'd keep his words in her heart, always.
"Miss Lucy," Crux continued, his wizened face relaxing at Lucy's response, "I am not the only one of your spirits that you can call upon to help you. Most of your spirits will know at least one of the languages in these tomes. Although they aren't quite my advanced age, they've been around a long time, and served many summoners in the past. Call upon whoever you wish, and they'll keep you company for as long as you need them. And, I suspect, if you should want them longer than that, they'll happily remain then, too."
Lucy hiccupped, trying to force back a sob. These were the things she'd needed to hear, she realized. She hadn't known that she'd needed them until they were already said, and yet they slid so easily into an empty place in her heart. "I will!" she told Crux, her voice heavy with emotion. Lucy needed her spirits, and they needed her, too. She would face them once more, and this time she would try to do it with love in her heart instead of sorrow. "I promise."
The library, true to Crux's warning, did attempt to keep Lucy's notes that night. It took her the better part of a half hour to escape with her notebook intact, though Lucy couldn't quite explain how the library was doing it in the first place. One moment, the book was in her hand, and the next it was back at the table she'd been working at. It played tricks on her mind – she couldn't actually say for sure that she hadn't left it there herself. Multiple times. But she knew enough of magic to know when it was trying to bamboozle her.
It was a minor blessing that it kept returning to the same table, all told. Lucy wasn't sure she'd be able to find the damn thing again if the library were to shelve it somewhere else in the building.
The whole ordeal rendered Erza's previous success with removing the clock piece somewhat incredible to Lucy.
Early the next morning, an inability to sleep, despite how tired she was, drove Lucy from her bed long before she had intended to. It seemed as if these days she was perpetually exhausted; on the verge of dropping off to sleep at any moment. And other days, insomnia plagued her instead. Her sleep schedule had gone completely off the charts in terms of predictability. The odd hours she worked with Jason were also not conducive to a consistent night's rest.
Lacking ought else to do, she found herself at the Library of Sorcery. The world was still covered in blue, the morning songs of the birds just starting their first notes.
Maybe the early start would help her make more progress than the day before, or so she reasoned. The stone edifice of the Tower was hard to pick out, somehow, in the predawn. Like her eyes just… slid right past it. Given the intricacies of the spells within the building, it wouldn't be too surprising if there were spells on the outside of it, too.
In fact, that might be a large part of the reason it was still standing after four hundred years. Lucy knew from her childhood obsession with the ruins spoken of in Key Of The Starry Skies that very few buildings of that age remained intact around Fiore. She wasn't sure about Ishgar as a whole, but for Fiore it was definitely true. Not even Cardia Cathedral came close to that age, and it was easily the oldest building in Magnolia. Objectively, Lucy knew that countless wars and the early days of magic experimentation had a lot to do with that. She couldn't help but feel a sense of loss, however. How many libraries had disappeared over the past four hundred years? Or libraries even older than that? Lacking the extensive, mind-boggling protections that this building possessed, how much knowledge had vanished altogether?
This was the sort of thing that she would have liked to talk to Levy about. Or maybe even Freed. Warren knew a lot about this sort of thing too, surprisingly enough. If he was there, he'd probably regale her with tales of other magical places he'd come across in his extensive traveling. Freed would be over the moon in dissecting the spellwork that comprised the Library, and Levy… it would have been her dream come to life to read the ancient books stored here.
Stars above, she missed them. More than she had words for.
She wondered where they were, at that moment. Her friends were scattered all over the place, so it was hard to find them. There was a map, in her apartment; studded thick with pins and articles tracking individual guild members as they settled into new lives for themselves. Originally Lucy had just been planning to write to them, to check on how they were doing. A way to feel connected, despite the distance. And maybe, if she had the time, she could drop in on them for a visit.
But the reality of her own busy schedule had come crashing down on her hard. It was probably no different for them. They had new lives and new concerns to deal with. She'd just be intruding.
She kept adding to the board anyway, though. It would be too painful to take it down now. That would be like she was admitting that they would never be a family again. Not like they were before.
Lucy swallowed thickly, her hands curling into fists at her sides. With an abrupt turn on her heels, she strode away from the towering library. Lead sorrow sat in her gut, heavy in her chest.
She couldn't do this today. She'd try again tomorrow.
When she returned home, she fell into bed, and immediately dropped off into a thankfully dreamless slumber.
Jason was more than pleased by how fast Lucy had gotten the first draft finished, nearly blowing out her eardrums over the phone with his excited shouting.
"This is fantastic! Super cool of you!" he crowed, as Lucy held the receiver at arm's length away. Much as she enjoyed working with the man, he was putting her hearing at serious risk. He was capable of indoor voice, she knew that from experience. But when he got excited it was as if someone had cranked his volume up to the max, and then broken off the dial.
"Thank you! I'm glad you liked it," Lucy told him, smiling broadly at the praise and flushing with happiness. This was the best she'd felt in a while. The past few days of research on her personal project, and the work she'd put in towards the article on the Library of Sorcery, had beaten her spirit into the ground, honestly. Three days straight of painful quiet, with only Crux and Capricorn to occasionally break the monotony. Three days where she failed to produce the results she wanted. Three days of fighting with the building to let her keep her notes. She was exhausted.
"Liked it?! I loved it! I think we can get this one into the next issue, for sure."
Lucy's eyes gleamed; Jason's excitement was downright contagious, for all its volume. "Thank you!" she said again, so overwhelmed that she couldn't formulate anything more articulate. "Thank you so much!"
"So on another note," Jason said, his voice returning to a normal decibel, "I think I've gotten a pretty good lead on a possible interview for the magazine. Something that would catch a lot of people's attention. Since you did so well on this piece, I was thinking you might be able to handle it. Aside from which, the subject requested you personally. Can you come into the office tomorrow, so I can give you all the details?"
'The real world intrudes,' Lucy thought morosely. 'Again.'
It wasn't as if she'd been making much headway at the Library, though. As much as she still thought it would contain the solutions she sought, they were proving difficult to locate. Extremely difficult. Capricorn and Crux had been a great help, of course. The two spirits had done everything in their abilities to assist her in her search. The old goat had even left off comments about her weight and diet, which was nice. Keeping them in Earthland for as long as she had was improving her magic by leaps and bounds as well, but it was probably high time she took a break. The day she'd gone home and fallen asleep hadn't really been much of a real rest.
"Lucy?" Jason voice came through the receiver, his clear concern shattering her thoughts. "You still there?"
"Yeah," she responded with a shake of her head that he thankfully couldn't see. "What time do you want me in?"
"Seven, please."
"Got it. See you tomorrow, boss!"
When she hung up, Lucy stared blankly at the wall for a long minute. "I wonder who it could be?" she said aloud. Shooting a glance at the map, bright with pins and cluttered with cut out articles, she let out a self-deprecating little laugh. "Probably not." Lucy shook her head at her whimsy. For all that she wanted to see them so badly, it was pretty clear at this point that the feeling was not reciprocated on their end. They would have reached out, otherwise.
Calling it an early night, Lucy put herself to bed before the sun had even fully set. She would need the extra rest, after all.
For once, her dreams were peaceful.
