This story is based on thequeen117(tumblr)'s great AU idea which she posted during nalu week.

Credit for the cover image goes to my lovely waifu fairy-mage(tumblr)! Check out her beautiful art! (I can't figure out how to put links into this text?)

I hope you'll enjoy! This is my first on-going fanfiction, actually.

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The shrill sound of an alarm clock ripped through the silence, and soon a tentative arm emerged from a mountain of blankets to blindly swat at it. The girl it belonged to groaned.

Yet another day she was not ready for.

Still, she would get up, get dressed, endure the silent breakfast with her father and go to school. As always. However, one thing was different today. She had finally decided. Soon, she would get out of here.

Graduation was just around the corner: she had written her final exams and was now simply biding her time until the end of the schoolyear. And as soon as she'd hold her school certificate in her hands, she would get out. She was of legal age, after all - no one could stop her. Not even her foster father.

Her brilliant scheme lifted her spirits, and she got up with new energy, swinging her legs over the bed's ledge and stretching her tired limbs as she stood up. Where she would go she did not know - but she would be free. Maybe she would even look for the boy from her dreams? She smiled benignly at the thought.

For as long as she could remember, she had had the same recurring dream almost every night:

It was dark where she was, and not the kind of darkness you experience when the lights go off. No, this darkness was all-consuming and solid, swallowing everything that dared to defy it. Or so she thought. As a kid, she had often woken crying, sobbing her fear into her pillow with no one to hear.

But then she had found the boy.

He had drifted past her one day, a faint glimmer in a neverending sea of darkness.

He was all light, and she had thought it very pretty. But when she had tried to tell him, she had not received a reaction. He could neither hear nor see her, it seemed. He never did. But from that day on, he had always reappeared (or was it she that was reappearing by his side?) , and without him knowing it, he had become her beacon of hope; the thing she always trusted to be there for her.

She shook her head, ridding herself of such thoughts. She was not a kid anymore, after all.

The door to her closet creaked slightly as she opened it and randomly selected her outfit for the day. She looked good in anything, after all. The mirror seemed to approve as it reflected her image back at her. Her blonde hair fell over her shoulders freely, except for the little side ponytail she had tied with her favourite ribbon. Her clothes were modest enough to please her father, but still showed off her curves enough to please herself. She couldn't resist winking at the pretty young girl smiling back at her - a little fun before school was allowed, right?

Especially since it had gotten so much duller ever since Lisanna…

Interrupting her train of thought once again, she moved to the desk with her schoolbag on it, the smile extinct on her face.

Yes, it was time to leave. There was nothing keeping her here anymore, after all.

It wasn't until much later in the day that the front door fell shut behind her and she quietly entered the living room, drained off of her earlier energy. Her father was already seated in his big armchair by the window, acknowledging her presence with a short nod and a distracted 'welcome home.' Then he focused his attention back on the newspaper in front of him. She had often wondered why he had taken her in as a child. It was still a riddle to her, but one she had long given up on solving.

Something weird happened, then. He put his newspaper down and looked up at her.

"So, Lucy. After graduation…" Her heart stopped. "…what do you intend to do?"

Despite her knowing that he could not possibly know anything about her plans, she felt incredibly guilty all of a sudden. Guilty and caught. What was she supposed to answer anyway? It wasn't like she had much of a choice. If he did not approve, she could not do it. And he approved of so little. And especially not writing.

"Well… I always thought you would like for me to take over your business…"

"Yes. Yes exactly. And - something else. It would make me very happy to see you in a relationship soon. You are a young woman now, after all. And as it happens, I know someone who would love to meet you."

She opened her mouth, and then closed it again.

"Yes." Was all she could manage. After that, Lucy could not remember much. She had nodded and said what he had wanted to hear. And then she had left.

Her room felt constricted and strangely foreign as she sank down on her bed. And here she had been thinking that the day could not get any worse. Her breath was shaking as she pressed it out between her lips, desperately trying to keep in the sobs that dared to escape her. School had been horrible. She felt Lisanna's absence everyday, and it never hurt any less. It was two weeks now. Only two weeks since they had buried her best friend.

Her face made contact with the soft fabric of her pillow as the tears began to fall. She kicked her shoes off before crawling under the sheets, not bothering to undress. Her body shook as she silently cried herself to sleep, until finally, she felt herself being swept away by a familiar darkness.

When she opened her eyes, it only got darker.

Everywhere around her, nothingness stretched out endlessly, making her lose any sense of direction. But as it goes with dreams, she didn't find it strange or unnatural: it was as it was. She faintly felt like she was supposed to be sad about something, but quickly brushed off the feeling.
Her eyes travelled around in the darkness, unable to detect anything. Lucy wasn't sure what she was looking for, or if there was anything to look for at all, but she wasn't scared of the infinite blackness all around her, knowing for certain that no harm would come to her. Something would appear, she felt it in her bones. Eventhough it was pitch black, she felt herself moving around in the darkness, traveling far distances faster than she deemed possible, appearing and disappearing in different places over and over. How, or for how long, she did not know.

Finally, something disrupted her aimless movements. Squinting her eyes, she could make out a faint glow in the distance, and a strange, almost desperate feeling took a hold of her. It was like a magnetic pull: she had to get there, as if all the natural forces of the world had united to descend unto her. There was no logic or reason behind her desire; only the simple and obvious certainty of having to go near that light, like a moth drawn to a flame. And so she did.

She blinked. And when she opened her eyes once again, the light burned into her retina, making stars dance behind her eyelids.

A boy was right in front of her. A boy of light.

And then she remembered.

It all came crashing in at once: years of returning to a world of obsulete darkness, years of abandonment, the loss of her friend, the feeling of helplessness against her fate. Suddenly, she craved to return to her previous state. Blissful ignorance.

But then she remembered more. The distinct feeling of hope when she looked at the sleeping boy in her dreams. All the times spent laughing with her best friend; times that most definitely had been precious and not wasted. Her plans to escape from the road that had been paved for her.

Taking a few deep breaths, she felt the wave of panic in her subside until it was no more than a puddle. Her eyes focused back on the boy, and before she knew it, Lucy caught herself admiring his features once again.

He looked almost serene as he drifted along, but his brows were slightly furrowed, as if he was experiencing an unpleasant dream. Still, with his closed eyes and open mouth, he resembled a young boy sleeping. He could not be a young boy though. From his features aswell as his rather muscular body, she guessed he looked around her age. It made her wonder, because ever since she had first seen him he had not changed one bit. Not only his age hadn't seemed to change, neither had his clothes. She felt a little indecent as she let her eyes travel along his body. Probably because he was only wearing a short-sleeved vest that left little of his upper body to the imagination - especially not his abs, which were very well-formed and toned, she had noted on many occasions. He also wore some kind of baggy pants, but what had always struck her odd was the long scarf wrapped around his neck. It seemed much to warm compared to the rest of his attire. Then again, did he even feel temperature? Was he even real?

The thoughts slipped from her like a wet piece of soap would slip from desperately clutching hands, and then they were gone. For some reason, she smiled as she observed him a little longer. Finally, she sighed, unable to understand anything - about this boy, about the real world, about what she was feeling. Fondly, her eyes locked onto the boy's face once more.

"At least I'll always have you, right?"

And then something changed.

She was not sure what it was. Her surroundings remained the same, she had not moved from her spot, and she felt the same as before. Except… She didn't.

She couldn't exactly pinpoint the feeling: it was as if up until now she had been unaware of something important. Something that she thought she had been, but only now that it had actually happened did she realize that her mind had been fooling her. She felt… awake.

And something else was different. It was… a weird tingling sensation, the ones you sometimes got when you knew you were alone, but couldn't help feeling as though someone was watching you from the corner of your eye. And then it hit her. It was the glimmering boy.

He was staring right at her.