Natsu stayed in my room while I broke down, his hand staying on the crown of my head, keeping it down as I bury my face in my hands. I can't stop. I want to stop. Why can't I stop?
Please make it stop. I can't keep being like this. I need to stop.
Natsu was quiet, un moving . I can't even hear him breathing. Maybe I can, I don't know.
I'm losing my mind. I don't wanna lose my mind.
I keep crying, all the while hearing Angel's malicious voice in my head. She wont stop.
Stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it-
A hand gripped my hair in frustration. Oh god please stop. I can't. I can't. A scream threatens to escape my throat as I keep crying. I need to stop, and I need to stop now.
"Make it stop…" I whisper. "Please make it stop."
Natsu raised his head and stepped closer. "I'm sorry." He apologized. "I can't." I hear regret weigh heavily in his voice. The hand on my head slid down to my back, rubbing the small of my back in comfort.
*.*.*.*.*.*
I didn't know how, or when I'd stopped crying. I also don't know how I fell onto the floor, leaning against the cabinet. Natsu was sitting with me, and he was leaning against the bedframe. My eyes felt swollen and heavy. I felt sleepy and snot filled both my nostrils so much I could barely breathe through my nose.
Pathetic.
Natsu's arm rested against his raised leg as he looked straight ahead, thinking. He then wet his lips and looked at me. "You know the food's gone cold." He pointed to the living room. "I'd heat it up but I get the feeling you don't like your pizza burnt."
"…" I bit my lip, finally, after what felt like so long, I feel the corner of my lips twitch. You can't possibly be making me laugh right now.
"Water?" He asked. "Cold water?"
"I'm good."
"Pizza?"
"Sure." I closed my eyes for a bit. I feel Natsu pat my head before he attempted to leave the room. "Natsu." I called.
"Yeah?"
"You knew." I commented, and leaned my head back at the closet, looking at him with blank eyes. "You knew." His expression falls from casual to serious. He straightens his body as he turns to look at me.
"I don't." He answers me simply.
"Until now?"
"No."
I sit straight at his answer. "Then why?" I breathe. "You act as if this happened before."
"You burned yourself. I drove you to the hospital."
"And me screaming in the night?"
"No."
What is this?
Natsu smiles. Not a grin, not a smirk. Not the ones he's given me since I met him. A sincere smile. "Let's get some food in you." He looks at the alarm clock I have by my nightstand. "It's late. We gotta eat."
"You haven't answered my question."
He reaches his hand out to help me stand up. I take it without hesitation. "You can keep asking while we eat. I'm starving." He turns to leave and I am right at his tail. He sits down at the couch, opening the box of pizza and plating them. He hands one to me as I take my seat beside him.
"Answer me." Sure enough, the pizza had gotten cold, and it's cheese was no longer stretchy. Natsu bites into his.
"What do you know about Fairy Tail?"
"So far, almost nothing. That it's given you and Juvia a scholarship. I'm assuming Gray and Erza as well? A job agency? A restaurant? I don't know. I wasn't really told what it was or that I was coming to Fairy Tail when I came here." I bite into my slice, speaking even while chewing. "Tell me."
"Where did you think you were going?" He looked at me in the eye. "A mental hospital?"
Struck my heart like a dagger.
"Fairy Tail is the last stop before you go to a mental hospital."
But not as much as this.
"They have a psychological program. They monitor you, make sure you get regular treatment, they make sure you take what your prescribed. But they give you the freedom a mental can't give you. They make you feel like you have a family waiting for you, an environment where it's okay to be different. Fairy Tail keeps you out of hospitals, foster care, juvie." He puts his plate down. "I don't know what happened to you. But you're in Fairy Tail. That's all I needed to know."
I don't know what to feel. "…you're all like me?"
"No. Not all of us." Natsu answered. "We understand you. What you have to go through. And we're here for you." He looks away. "You might not like it, but we're gonna be here for you. Because no one understands you better than people who knows what you're going through."
I grab another slice. "You almost sound smart." I chew my way through it. "I was going to say I'm sorry you had to see me like that but… I don't really know what to say."
Natsu snorts. "As if." He reached for a slices and bites through it. "Lucy, everyone deals with the hardest things in their own way. You can or can't depend on your friends, that's your choice. But thinking your worthless, or pathetic, or that you deserve everything that's going on with you; doesn't mean it's true. You only think it's true."
"Why would you think that I would be thinking those specifically?"
He paused. "Because that what I think when I get like that." He says after a moment. He stands up and moves to the kitchen, disappearing from my sight. When he comes back, he's holding two cans of beer. "I'm sure stripper doesn't mind me and you stealing his beer since you live here and it's also your fridge."
I take the can in my hands. I've never drank beer. But there's a first time for everything. Natsu chugged his while I opened my can.
"You don't have to drink if you don't want to. Wait, do you even drink?" His eyes widened in realization. "Are you even allowed to drink?" He reaches for the can, I pull it further from him.
"I drink, and am allowed to drink. I just never had beer before." I hate beer. My eyes rolled at the memory of myself in the parties of Fiore National.
He nodded. "I've been in the guild since I was eleven."
"You mentioned that at the party."
"My dad disappeared for some reason. I don't know why, and I wanted to look for him. Child Protection Services came to my house before I could leave and took me to an orphanage, and I often got into fights nearly everyday. The other kids there were really nasty. They played a prank thinking it'd scare me, and I fought back. They thought scaring me with a torch would work but hell, my dad was a fireman. I ended up taking it away from them and scared them with it. Eventually I burned a curtain, then… you know everything burned. They thought it was me who started it and those kids sure pointed at me. And since I always picked a fight, they didn't really have trouble believing it."
A hand went to my mouth. "Natsu I'm so sorry."
He sighed. "I told them that too. I thought I was going to juvie, but then Master came, with Dr. Iilsa, and they somehow managed to get me out of it and take me here. I haven't left since." He took another chug of his drink and crushed the can with his hands.
"Was everyone alright?"
"No." He looked grim. "A girl, I don't even remember her name, she was in a wheelchair couldn't get out. She died."
"Natsu… it wasn't your fault."
"Yeah but when your dad's a fireman, you should know that you literally don't play with fire." He frowned. "So it is my fault."
I held the can with both hands. "You just said that thinking those kinds of things are things only you believe." I rebutted. I bring the can up to my lips and took a swing.
It tastes horrible. I now remember why I don't like any part of it. I sighed. "I can't remember what happened to me. I woke up in a hospital room all injured and to find out that my friends and boyfriend were dead. Apparently we snuck into an old rotting building." I stare blankly at the can. "Dr. Iilsa said it was my mind's way of protecting me until I'm ready."
"Are you?"
I shrug. "Sometimes I get bits and pieces of it. Then it would repeat itself in my mind. I don't want to remember what happened."
Natsu nods. "Do you want another one?" He gestures to the drink in my hand.
"I hate beer." He cringes.
"Why didn't you say so?! I would've gotten you water something."
"You were handing it to me!"
"Because you didn't say you hated it!"
We were busy arguing about the dumbest thing when Juvia and Gray had walked in. She looks at us and frowned. "My God! Are you guys eating just now? It's past eleven!" But she pauses when she takes a look at me. "…What happened?"
"And did you drink my beer?" Gray glares at Natsu.
"Yep."
"You ass-"
I hear the two of them fighting, but I tune them out as Juvia approaches me. "Are you alright?"
"I'm good." I laughed light heartedly. I was a little okay than earlier. Just a little.
"Do you want to tell Juvia?"
"Unless you wanna tell me why neither you nor Aquarius told me I was under a psychological program."
Juvia froze. "Juvia is sorry." She looks down in guilt. "She didn't tell you because… Juvia remembers how she first felt when she found out about this." She sighed. "Juvia is really sorry."
"I'm not mad. I'm surprised." I cross my arms. "I'm not happy either."
"Juvia knows." She sits down on the floor. "How are you? How was the night?"
"Other than the fact I spent the rest of it crying, I'm good."
She smiles at me. "That's enough for now, I guess." She looks at the can. "Drinking with Natsu-san I see."
"She didn't tell me she doesn't drink beer. How was I suppose to know?" Natsu grunted.
"Juvia has wine, if you prefer that."
"Yes that would be nice." I answer. Juvia looks at Gray and asks him to get the glasses and bottle. When he came back out and sat himself on the other side of the coffee table he also had also brought out the beer.
Juvia pours me a glass. I thank her as I take it, and sniffed it's aroma. It wasn't like the one I usually have at the mansion, but I was sure it would taste better because I had people to drink it with.
"So what did Natsu-san tell you?"
"About Fairy Tail."
She nods. "I see. So it doesn't come as a surprise that most of us are seeing Dr. Iilsa." She giggled. I whip my head to Gray.
"Even you?" I ask, not meaning to sound rude, but somehow I do. Gray just laughs it off.
"Of course I do."
"Everyone?"
"No." Juvia answers me. "A lot, but not everyone."
I sip from my glass. "And the others?"
"Well, not all of them are under the psych program, most of them just had nowhere to go. Or was desperate for a job. Master, and the ones before him offered them what they needed, in exchange they help out. It's what kept the guild standing, and it's members loyal. They've become family, because we can't connect with our own."
I nodded, a smile touching my face. "That's nice."
"Fairy Tail is here for you Lucy. It's been there for me, for Gray-sama, for Natsu-san. You are no exception." She smiled.
And it made me feel good.
