7th: Keys and Gates
Summary: Sometimes, a dragon slayer had the key the stellar spirit mage needed.
AN: This drabble is dedicated to no one specific so I dedicate it to all my readers. Furthermore I want to warn you. This was the last romantic orientated one-shot/drabble for the next seven chapters. We will continue with the genre friendship/general for seven chapters. I hope that you all enjoyed reading this collection so far and please, leave a review.
Her mother had taught her that there were many keys. There were keys that opened doors to the Realm of Celestial Spirits. Those were used to summon stellar spirits for various reasons. There were keys that unlocked hearts had that been locked away for one reason or another. There were keys that locked away the sadness of a soul when a person started to move on after a tragic event. Those were metaphoric keys, no real ones. Other metaphoric keys were the ones that allowed another person to enter one's personal world. This key was called love. The key friendship connected two or more people in happy and sad hours of life, helping them to carry on even when their pain seemed to drag them down. Those two keys, love and friendship, brought happiness back to formerly sad and depressed people but since they were only metaphoric, they didn't help her – at all.
She has closed the door to her heart the moment her mother had died and two shiny, golden keys had been put into her small hands. She had been barely able to hold them properly back then. She hadn't let anyone in because she had loved and trusted before – her mother – and Layla had died and left her alone. This had shattered Lucy's heart and she had sworn that it would never happen again. So while she had learned to open the doors to another dimension, she had locked the door to herself more and more with every passing day before she had thrown away this key. It seemed to be ironic because she collected other keys.
To close her heart for good had seemed to be a smart idea back then.
But then, he had come into his life and he had changed her mind about closed hearts. He had walls around his heart as well but the more time they spend together, the more those walls trembled and fell down, leaving him exposed and vulnerable but so much stronger than before.
She had started to change her mind about closing off the heart to avoid being hurt again and she started to question why, oh why she had thrown away the key she needed so desperately right now. By now, she believed, this little key was impossible to be found again but the more time passed, the more her heart opened up again and she realised while she had lost the key, he had found it and he had proven her wrong, again. And so he held out his hand again (just like he had when he had first asked her to join Fairy Tail) and she took the hand that held – albeit invisible – the key to her heart that he had found somewhere along the way they had walked together.
It was strange and first, she took a step back from him because she wasn't sure if this was the right thing. He had suffered a loss too and she wasn't sure if Lisanna's death hadn't influenced him more than he would ever admit. (Not that he had ever admitted that the death of his childhood friend had done anything to him. It probably didn't go well with his I-am-an-awesome-dragon-slayer-image.)
But so she was wondering if it would be right for him to unlock her heart because if he would hurt her heart, she wasn't sure if she would recover. But then she decided that the key to her heart also happened to be the key to an end of sadness, loneliness and pain – for both of them. She wouldn't treat this relationship like a game. She would take it seriously and have the same kind of sappy romance Mirajane had with Fried. This key would mark the beginning of happiness found in love – and trust.
In the end, the key to her heart was the key to a promise. It was the key to the promise that everything would end just right.