Time froze. My heart stopped beating. My eyes stopped blinking. My body stopped breathing. The edges of my vision grew fuzzy, until all I could see was Umidjon. He took up my entire vision. There was nothing but him.

"That's right. I'm your brother," Umidjon cooed. He took my shock as an opportunity. He flipped me over, reversing our roles. I was the one lying beneath him now.

"It's not true!" Natsu yelled.

"Of course it is. I am your older brother, the first born of Layla Heartfilia," Umidjon said. I shook my head.

"No! I would have known...," I mumbled. But then, a memory flashed through my mind.

"Lucy? What are you doing in there?!" Mommy asked. She grabbed my arm and gently guided me away from the storage room I'd been exploring in.

"Mommy, why is there a picture of you holding a little boy in there?" I asked.

"Oh, that's nothing sweetie. He's just a child that I used to know." I saw that she was about to start crying, so I hugged her around her legs.

"It's ok, mommy. I love you!" She smiled and lifted me into her arms.

"And I love you, my little Lucy," she whispered into my hair, kissing my forehead.

Umidjon… He was that little boy in the picture…

"Ah, so you believe me now. When I was 5 years old, right after mother got pregnant with you, father decided that it would be better to have a daughter. Someone he could marry off to the son of some rich company he was working with at the time. He claimed that I was useless, and that there's no longer any reason for me to be in that family. He sent me away with a servant, whom he paid to raise me. I grew up with a rage building in my chest. A rage directed towards you. YOU, the one he kept INSTEAD OF ME!

"Oh, but that's not even the best part. When I turned 7, I snuck back to that mansion. I used the house key I stole before I left and let myself in. I crept through the house. The first time I went, I wanted revenge. I snuck past all of the guards, the people I'd grown up with for five years. I barged into my old room with cans of spray paint, ready to destroy my heart out, but I found you. Everything that used to be mine had been repainted and redecorated, just so a little girl would like it. At the time, you were only 2 years old. I found you asleep in my old bed. I was so angry, I stomped up right beside you and was about to snap your neck.

"Until I saw your face. You looked exactly like mother. You still do, even more so now. My emotions drained out of me when you opened your eyes and started crying. I was there that night, the night I met you, my baby sister. I held you until you were quiet, and then I lay in bed with you until dawn, crying to myself. This was the little girl I was supposed to hate. My own father rejected me for you. But you were so innocent. It wasn't possible for me to dislike you, even the slightest at the time.

"After that, I visited on the fifth night of every month. I would lie next to you, or sit across the room from you. When you turned 6, I stopped. You were getting too old for me to come in without you noticing me. And if you told mother or father that a strange 11 year old boy was in your room at night, they'd upgrade the security. They would have taken away you, the only light in my life at the time. No, not they. HE would have. Mother never wanted to get rid of me. She fought to keep me, but father convinced her in the end. Once he made up his mind, there was no changing it. Instead, I followed your every move. Every time there was a story about you in the newspaper, I kept it. Every single article, I clipped to my wall and reread until I had every line memorized. I loved you, because you were my dear little sister.

"Until 1 year ago, when you ran away from home. You left father, the only man I'd ever wanted to accept me. You left because you didn't want the life you had. You gave it all up. If you had stayed, I wouldn't have minded. I would have continued what I'd always been doing, and get a job somewhere. Maybe even join a guild. My powers were just developing back then, you see. But, no, you gave up the life I wanted. The life I HAD, until mother realized there was a baby girl growing inside of her. You had the life I'd always wanted, and YOU THREW IT ALL AWAY. And for what? So you could join this puny little ragtag group of fairies?"

I was crying. No, I was full out bawling. I had a brother. He loved me, just like an older brother should. But now he was trying to kill me.

"Do you know how many times I wished I'd had a brother?" I asked. "Someone I could talk to? Someone that would understand what father was doing to me, and help me through it?"

"I used to have a sister. She was the most beautiful girl in the entire world. But she was replaced by this trash that threw her and my life away!" he roared. He grabbed the collar of my shirt and shook me, slamming my head against the ground repeatedly until I was dizzy.

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "But you are wrong. To save my friends, my new family in Fairy Tail, and this town that I now love, I have to do this. Umidjon, you are wrong. I can do anything I set my mind to. I have my whole life ahead of me. So far, in this one year that I've been away from home, I've been happier than I have my entire life. I have friends and spirits that love me, even if you can't bring yourself too anymore."

Umidjon clutched his heart and sat down heavily beside me. "You don't understand how many people I've destroyed, doing the same thing I did to you." I caught him when he fell over. I laid his head gently on the ground.

"Please forgive me!" I begged. "I never knew about any of this! I never knew what you were going through! I'm sorry I had to do this! I'll never, ever forgive myself!"

"I'm sorry for the trouble I've caused. It's funny how just a second ago I was trying to kill you, yet all of the anger in my heart has been drained when you said that," he wheezed.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I chanted.

"Follow your dreams… make your own paths… don't give….up…" he choked out. The heavens opened above us, letting loose a torrential rain. I didn't move from my kneeling position.

"Love….Lucy…little sister….." were his final words before he took his last breath. I screamed louder than I ever have before, letting loose all of my anguish and hatred into one long, steady sound. Umidjon started disappearing in my arms. I put my forehead against his and held on for dear life.

"Please don't leave me! I just got you! I just got a brother! I love you!" I begged. A minute later, he was gone. In his place was a heart shaped locket. Inside, I found a picture he had taken on one of the nights he snuck into my room as a child. He was lying next to me, with his arm around my shoulders. I was curled into his side, sucking my thumb.

I rolled onto my side in the middle of the street and cried, holding the locket to my heart.