The setbacks in writing this chapter were enormous. My piece-of-shit computer erased the first page or so and I had to rewrite it. IT SUCKED. SERIOUSLY SUCKED. I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH. But, with some encouragement from my friend Kosmotius, I redid it and finished the chapter. YOU'RE WELCOME. Show your appreciation by writing me reviews! Your reviews always make my day, so do it. Favorites and follows are also good.
Dedicated to nico2883 (thanks for the ideas!). Special thanks to Kosmotius, ShadowFiend06 (yes, that was kind of my reaction writing it too) Czar Ryno (I am completely susceptible to this sweet, sweet flattery), gwb620 (you're on my list!), WhiteWinterStar, rebma726, SlightlyOff7 (your review was saying all this stuff and I was like, huh? I did that? Are you really talking about me? but thank you so much for the compliments!), 4 Guests (idk if you're all the same person...), and SlightlyOff7 as a Guest! Ah, so many reviews! Yay!
Okay, just remember that last time Lucy was waiting for Oreanthus to show up...
And waited, and waited. Half an hour later, I was still waiting. The townspeople who had gathered on the docks had long since dispersed, leaving only Harry and Harman waiting patiently. Next to them, Holland and Sam sat and stretched, yawning periodically. I was getting bored too. Finally, I decided it had gone on long enough and got to my feet carefully, cupping my hands around my mouth.
"YOU GOT YOUR SACRIFICE, YOUR DIVINE SALTINESS! TIME TO COME OUT AND PLAY!" I sucked in a replenishing breath and began counting down. Ten, nine, eight... My borrowed rowboat rocked, almost pitching me into the suddenly turbulent ocean. The waves slapped at the sides of the boat, splashing into the growing puddle in the bottom. It occurred to me that a rowboat was really nothing more than a pile of wood designed for calm waters, not for confronting out-of-control sea gods.
Seven, six, five... A rumbling noise similar to one an erupting volcano made (I speak from personal experience – it was not a fun job) surrounded me. I was tilting now, and each time the boat scooped up more water and sat lower in the water. I was forced to crouch to keep my balance. I could feel the seawater soaking my skin, and despite myself, I was grateful for Virgo's foresight. Trying to beat a sea monster in sweats and shoes would have been way harder than doing it in a swimsuit. Bracing myself, I put a hand on my keys.
Four, three, two...
One.
The ocean shattered as an enormous serpentine creature emerged from the depths, sending a rainstorm of ocean water falling back down. I pushed back my sopping-wet hair and stared up at it in wonder. It was obvious now why the townspeople's ancestors had worshipped it as a god. The thing was deep green, the color of emeralds held in the darkness, and covered entirely in scales. The long diamond head ended with a snout, and as its mouth opened in an wrathful bellow, I saw that it had long snake fangs. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It had to be a drake, a rare species thought to be extinct centuries ago. I'd read about them in one of Levy's books. They had personalities like a dog's – loyal, friendly, playful – with one glaring exception. Drakes were slaves to routine, and any deviation from this routine sent them into a blind rage. They destroyed everything indiscriminately until someone calmed them down or killed them. Records of the former were rare, because it was nearly impossible. These rages were the reason drakes had become extinct. The only choice was to kill them, because no one could figure out how to calm them down. Even after one or two managed it once, the drakes just ended up getting set off again and had to be killed.
I sighed. At least I knew what I was dealing with. Behind me, I heard Holland yelling for me to run, get away from it, come back to the town. Sam, meanwhile, was shouting for me to kick its ass from here to the next continent. I chuckled and waved at them. Then I slid a key off my key ring and dipped it into the water, twisting it with a flick of my wrist. "Open, Gate of the Water-Bearer! Aquarius!" Her familiar scowl flickered into view, tail swishing. She tossed back her marine hair with a bored sigh.
"What is it now, Lucy?" I pointed at the drake behind her. It had noticed her, and was watching her with interest. Without warning, it lunged, its mouth a gaping black hole. Aquarius's scowl deepened and she sent a jet of water slamming into the side of its face. The drake flew ten yards, skipping over the water like a stone. Aquarius huffed and turned back to face me. "That's why you called me? Couldn't you have asked someone else? I was on a date." I smiled sheepishly.
"Sorry, I just need you until that thing calms down. Think you could help me out?" She grunted and swung around to send another jet of water at the drake.
"As long as this doesn't take too long. I don't want to ruin my date. But I guess you wouldn't know what it's like to go on a date," she mocked.
Even in a life-or-death situation, I still managed to waste time thinking about Natsu. "No," I replied softly. "I wouldn't." Aquarius didn't say anything back, which in her case meant she regretted saying it. A volley of water spears shot from her jug and were deflected by the drake's scales. It bellowed and lunged again.
"Damn, this thing's persistent," she muttered to herself. She summoned up a column of water that appeared directly underneath it and shot it up into the sky. She held it there with one hand and glanced back at me. "Still hung up on him, huh?"
I stood stiffly, my knees tired from crouching all that time. "No, not hung up. Just holding on." I gestured at the water geyser. "You can let it down now. I'll handle it from here." Aquarius let the drake slam back into the ocean, never taking her eyes off me.
"Lucy–" I smiled.
"Have fun on your date." I twisted her key again, and she disappeared. I sighed and pinched my cheek. "Stop being a wuss," I told myself. "Face your fears."
Eyeballing the distance briefly, I leapt from the relative safety of my rowboat to the drake's neck as it began to struggle upward dazedly. The impact with the ocean had taken a lot out of it, but its eyes still glowed with buried fury. I clung to its thick scales for a moment before starting to climb up to its head. The drake roared and tried to shake me off, but I kept going, finding footholds in the tiny gaps and dents in the scales. Finally, I reached the crown of his head and sat to catch my breath. Then it bucked, and I nearly fell off. Another roar poured into the air, shaking the clouds.
I knocked my fist into the top of its head. "Shut it," I commanded. "Quit being such a baby. So you didn't get your breakfast one time. You're a big boy, aren't you? You can feed yourself. Don't punish the people who love you for one little mistake." The noise cut off. The drake seemed to be waiting for me to say something else. I kept going. "They depend on you, don't they? They need you to be there so they can share their joys and their sorrows with you. They miss having you on their side, you know. They want you to come back to them." I wasn't just talking to the drake anymore. "I understand how you feel, a little. He messed up, and now I'm making things worse. You couldn't go back if you tried, right? You're afraid things will be different." I paused, pondering that. Things would be different, no matter what I did. "Maybe things have to be different. History is doomed to repeat itself, or something like that." I laughed, even though I didn't really feel like it. It beat crying, at least. "I guess something has to change if this is going to work. I doubt you'll like it at first. Maybe not ever. But just see what happened when you tried to change it yourself. You hurt all the people you love." I rolled over onto my stomach and traced circles on a smooth scale. "You do love them, I'm sure of it. It's in your nature to love the ones who love you." I let out a tiny sigh, and with it a little bit of my confusion. "Let's go home, okay?"
NATSU
"Happy," I said into the comfortable afternoon silence.
"Yeah?"
"Is it my fault that Lucy left?" He looked down at me.
"Of course not. Why would you ask that?" I ran a hand through my hair, feeling restless. The thought had been in the back of my mind since I read her letter, and it had finally jostled its way to the front. Wasn't it really my fault that Lucy had left the guild?
"But after reading that letter..." I sighed, crossing my arms. "I don't know. This is all wrong."
"What was in that letter, anyway?" Happy asked curiously. "It seemed really important when she gave it to me, and then you just burned it. Did she ask you to?"
"No." I love you. I'm glad I met you. Goodbye. "She just spouted a lot of nonsense about leaving, and that this was 'for the best.'" I scowled. "It was stupid."
"Why?"
"Because leaving wasn't for the best! She just made everyone miserable, including herself." My fingers curled into fists.
"No, I meant why was she saying it was for the best?" I stiffened. That part was harder. I didn't want to think about it, let alone talk about it with someone. After a minute, Happy pointed out, "You know, if you can't answer her when you meet her in Cyprus, nothing will change."
I forced the words out. "She said she was in love with me."
He almost dropped me. "She said WHAT?"
I glared at him. "Is that wrong?" Happy made a face.
"Not wrong, just weird. I never thought Lucy was the type to fall in love with an idiot. I thought she'd go for the more intellectual type. Someone... cooler."
"What was that, asshole?"
Happy ignored me. "But that doesn't explain why she left. Wouldn't she want to stay where you were?"
I need to get away from the love that's clawing through my skin, find a way to just be your friend.
My jaw clenched, and my fingers dug into my palms. "She said something about it being painful. She wanted to figure out how to just be my friend." I was spitting the words out with disgust. They tasted bitter in my mouth. "She said true love hurts. She said...loving someone who will never love you back is the worst of all."
"Was she wrong?" My fingers twitched. Wrong? About what? Happy seemed to be reading my mind, because he continued, "Was she wrong when she said you would never love her back?"
I opened my mouth to say something and realized I didn't know how to answer his question. Was she wrong to say that? Could I love her like she loved me? I didn't know how. How could I do that? I didn't even know what loving someone was like.
A memory tapped at the edges of my mind.
"Natsu, have you ever been in love?"
"I don't know."
"Well, when you love someone, you want to see them all the time. And when you're around them, your heart feels strange, like someone's squeezing it. And you want them to depend on you and you alone, and you hate to see them getting along better with someone else. You want to hide them away and never let anyone else near them. But over all, you just want that person to be happy. So much that what you want doesn't matter anymore. That's what true love is. It's the best feeling in the world."
She'd told me. Lucy had explained everything she felt to me. And like the idiot I was, I'd completely ignored her and crushed her feelings where they stood. I hadn't even stopped to consider what she was saying. Just like always, moving ahead and never pausing to think.
Well, I'd think now, so I could answer Lucy's question when I met her in Cyprus. What was the first thing she said? When you love someone, you want to see them all the time. Ugh, it was hard already. But I closed my eyes and forced myself to think. I definitely missed Lucy now that she was halfway across Fiore. Had I missed her when I knew she was just a few blocks away in her apartment? An image of myself sneaking into her apartment when I knew she wasn't around just to be surrounded by her things popped into my head. That hadn't been how I justified it to myself, of course, but that had been my real purpose. So yes, I wanted to see her all the time.
The next one... When you're around them, your heart feels strange, like someone's squeezing it. That was easy. It was the feeling I was trying to explain to Lucy before, when I said I felt weird around her. That one was true too.
And you want them to depend on you and you alone, and you hate to see them getting along better with someone else. You want to hide them away and never let anyone else near them. I could feel my face getting pinched. Happy asked if I had to go to the bathroom, but I tuned him out. I didn't really have experience with this one. Lucy and I had always gotten along well and I was closer to her than most people in Fairy Tail, so I'd never had a chance to get jealous. But thinking about it, if she and Gray started hanging out, that would seriously piss me off. If she asked him for help and not me... I would definitely kick his ass. But hide Lucy away? I got the feeling that if I tried to do that, she'd be really, really mad.
...Which led me to the last part. But over all, you just want that person to be happy. So much that what you want doesn't matter anymore. Of course I wanted Lucy to be happy. Would I give up on what I wanted for her if it meant making her unhappy? I didn't even have to think about it. I'd drop it in a heartbeat. If she wanted to hang out with Gray, I'd let her no matter how much it bothered me. If she didn't want to come back to the guild, then...
Then what? Could I let her go if it meant she would be happy?
Yes.
It was that simple.
LUCY
I got Oreanthus to bring me back to the town. He set me down on the dock and then dove back into the ocean. I watched him go silently, amidst the laughing, crying townspeople. It was a heavy thing, a mistake. It was heavier when you were the one making it.
"LUCY, THAT WAS SO COOL! YOU TOTALLY CALMED THAT GIANT THING DOWN WITH JUST WATER AND YOUR WORDS! YOU GOTTA SHOW ME HOW TO DO THAT! COOL! SOOOOO COOOOL!" Sam bent over, gasping for breath. "Cool... So cool..."
Something in my head clicked and I pointed at him in surprise. "Oh! Are you, by chance, related to Jason the reporter, from Sorcerer Weekly?" Sam looked up and beamed.
"You know my dad! That's so COOL!" I laughed.
"Like father, like son, I guess."
On my other side, Holland was frowning, arms crossed. "Lucy, what was going on out there? Why did you release that Celestial Spirit in the middle of the fight? And what were you saying to that thing?" I flicked his forehead. The frown lines disappeared as he blinked in surprise. "What?"
I grinned. "Don't make such a face, silly. You'll get wrinkles before you're thirty." He let out a breath, just staring up at me, waiting for his answers. My smile faded a little. "You really want to know?" Holland nodded. I pushed back my hair. "Have you heard of drakes?" He nodded again. "They have a certain flaw, and when you make them mad, it's almost impossible to calm them down again. They were thought to be extinct. I let Aquarius go because if she'd kept going, she would have killed it. And," I added as an afterthought, "Because she was in the middle of a date. Or so she said. It seems like she's always on a date." I laughed softly. "But I doubt you were curious about that. What else was it you wanted to know?"
"What did you say to it? You just said they were almost impossible to calm down." I stared at the surface of the now-smooth ocean. It had calmed, but it would be be rough again soon enough.
"I just talked to it. We all make mistakes, you know. I could sympathize." The crowd started moving in the direction of the town, and I glanced up. "Oh, I have to do something. You and Sam wait here, I'll be done in a sec." Without waiting for his reply, I jogged after Harry. "Hey!"
He stopped and turned, grinning ear to ear. "Lucy!" He grabbed my hand and looked into my eyes earnestly. "I don't know how we can thank you enough for what you've done." I smiled.
"It's fine, really. Just the promised reward is great. But I need to talk to your grandfather about what comes after this." Harry pointed to a building at the end of the row.
"He should be in there. While you talk to him, I will see that your reward is prepared." He bowed and walked away, talking animatedly to a young woman. I followed his directions and entered the building. It was a one-room, one-floor house that seemed to be the meeting spot of the town leaders. Harman sat with two other men and three women on a thick rug. I knocked gently on the doorframe.
"Um, excuse me..." They all looked up, their wrinkled faces breaking into wide smiles.
"Ah, Lucy. How can I help you? Are you here for you reward money?" I shook my head.
"No, it's fine, Harry said he was gathering it. I needed to talk to you about what you'll do after this." I sat on the edge of the rug, folding my legs underneath me. The leaders shifted to face me. "I don't know if you're aware, but the sea serpent you've been worshipping is a drake, a rare species that was declared extinct several hundred years." Judging by the shocked gasps, I was guessing they hadn't known. "Drakes are highly obsessive about routine. This one was enraged because you broke the routine you had settled into. The best option at this point would be to cut off all contact with it–" I held up a hand as protests broke out and waited for the voices to die down. "However, I understand that worshipping Oreanthus is important to your people, so I have a suggestion. As long as you make your days of worship completely random, that should keep Oreanthus from falling into a pattern and his rage should stay dormant. You'll have to be extremely careful, but you will still be able to rely on him."
Harman nodded. "This seems a wise proposal to me. Are there any who are against this suggestion?" It was perfectly silent, as if the leaders were afraid they might be seen as dissenters if they made a sound. Harman smiled. "Then we will gladly follow your advice. Thank you for all of your help. We cannot fully express how grateful we are." The six men and women bowed their heads as I stood.
"Don't be silly. It's all part of the job."
Holland and Sam were waiting at the dock just as I had told them, but now Harry and what seemed to be the rest of the town were standing there with them. As I approached, they broke into cheers and whistles. I smiled and shook hands and hugged little girls. One old man even had me sign my name and guild on his biceps in a special magic ink that would never wash off. "Lucy... of Fairy Tail." He peered up at me. "Oh, no wonder, if you're from that guild. We shouldn't have been surprised that you could help us!" I laughed modestly (at least, I did my best – what does a modest laugh even sound like?) and continued on to where Harry and the kids were waiting in a rowboat. With a last wave, I got in. Harry handed me a wad of bills and then picked up the oars and started rowing us out.
"Fifty-thousand jewel," he said. "As thanks." My eyes widened.
"The promised amount was only thirty-thousand! I can't accept this." Harry shook his head.
"Thirty-thousand was too little for a job like that. We didn't realize when we sent in the request, but you earned that money. Please take it." I sighed.
"If you insist. At least now I don't have to worry about paying a week's worth of rent."
"Why only a week?" Holland asked. "Is your rent that expensive?" I realized that I hadn't told Holland or Sam that I was only staying a week after all. Now that he was asking, I didn't know how to say it.
"Actually, a friend's coming to pick me up. So, um, it turns out I'm only staying for this week. Then I'll be going back home, to Magnolia." Saying the words was painful and comforting at the same time. On the one hand, calling Natsu a friend opened wounds that I preferred closed, but on the other, if he actually made it in a week, I'd be going back home with him. Home to Magnolia. Home to Fairy Tail. "Except, the change of plans was kinda sudden, so if he doesn't make it by the end of the week, I'm going on to the next town."
"Can't you stay?" I glanced down, surprised. Holland was staring at me with pleading eyes. "I mean, if it takes him longer, couldn't you hang out in Cyprus a few more days? If money's a problem, you could–"
"That's sweet." I took a breath. "But that wasn't part of the deal. He got a week, and now he has to hold up his end of the deal. If he can't make it in a week, then I'm moving on. I won't go back." Red crept into Holland's cheeks. Just as he was about to say something, though, we bumped against the sandy beach.
"We're here," Harry announced unnecessarily. Holland's jaw clenched. He'd almost caught the tail of my gentle half-truths, but not quite. If I could help it, he never would, and I wouldn't have to cross that bridge.
Time to get your game face back on, Lucy.
What'd you think? I might not post a new chapter for a bit cuz I'm gonna get working on the one-shots I promised people once upon a time... But you'll manage. Remember to review, favorite, and follow.
Happy Thanksgiving!