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Chapter 41: Sorrows from the Past
"Come here so I can take you back home later," Natsu cried.
Upon his exclamation, Natsu leaped towards a small pink creature intending to make to capture it as a souvenir. His voice only served to warn the critter of Natsu and allow it to dodge out of the way, leaving the Dragon Slayer to instead land in the sand.
"Natsu, I love you, but can you not?" Lucy said.
The Dragon Slayer did not acknowledge her words as he kept hopping after the tiny frog - lizard - thing(?). Whatever it was, it somehow served to be enough to distract Natsu. Certainly, he could catch it, but he was oddly stubborn in not using his superhuman capabilities or magic to acquire it if he wanted it so bad. Lucy knew at least that this foolish endeavor was going to some ridiculous conclusion.
She was proven right when Natsu made one final plunge only for his head to sink into pink flesh belonging to a creature of the same species that he was trying to catch, only that it stood at a stature over three stories tall. If Lucy were to guess, the little critter Natsu wanted to make a trophy out of was the little child of a very pissed-off mother. The giant monster caught the Dragon Slayer off guard, and he sprang back several meters in panicked surprise.
The giant creature lunged at Natsu, intending to destroy him for endangering her child. But Lucy jumped into interference, wielding her whip of demonic flames. It lashed against its body with a violent crack scorching the air wherever it went. From its left cheek down to its torso, the now scared giant frog thing(?) packed its literal tail between its legs and hopped away as fast as it could from the present threat.
"Way to go, Lucy!" Cheered Happy.
"Well done, Lucy," Wendy added.
"...I was gonna do the same," Edo Lucy said.
Lucy ignored the praise for now and approached her boyfriend who was now laying on the ground. She grabbed Natsu by his ear, eliciting a cry of pain from the Dragon Slayer. He tried to break free, but the stare Lucy leveled at Natsu's onyx eyes froze him in place.
"Natsu, do this for me, and just don't run off like that," Lucy said. "We are already running on a timer here. Do you understand, Natsu?"
"H-Hai," Natsu answered.
"Jeez, why don't you put him on a leash?"
Lucy looked behind the owner of the voice Gray. Much of his clothing was already missing due to his stripping habit in their trek across the strange desert. Thankfully, Juvia was right behind him to pick up any of Gray's clothes he took off. It was decent of Juvia to do that but it was a little weird since a bright blush adorned the mage's face and her nose trickled blood.
'Gray's clothes!' Juvai thought maniacally. 'Oh~, they even have his scent.'
Following the group from beside Gray were Erza and Adrian, both of whom were working up a sweat. They also didn't seem to mind that at all, but Lucy thought that at least Erza could help herself by taking off her armor. It had to be as hot as a forge in there.
"Believe me, I've tried," Lucy answered Gray. "Thing is, there's no rope that Natsu can't burn or breakthrough. If I use my fire, well he'll just eat it."
Her fellow guildmates with the exception of Natsu stared at Lucy oddly. Erza looked at Lucy with wide eyes and formed a fist at her lips to stifle a cough. Happy just smiled widely at the blonde, and both Juvia and Wendy had their hands covering their mouths with equal blushes.
"Oh my~" Juvia responded.
It took a few seconds for it to register that they had a grave misunderstanding of Lucy's response. Her blush soon matched that of Erza's hair and the words sputtered out like a broken faucet.
"O-Oi, I don't mean it like that!" Lucy cried. "I m-mean, it's n-not like I don't try - ! F-Forget it! Oi, other me, where the hell are we going anyway!?"
Edo Lucy couldn't answer at first, too busy laughing. She had her arms around her gut as it started to hurt. The laughing from Lucy's alter only stopped through no little amount of effort with her laughter turning into hacking coughs to put it down.
"There's a town not too far from here," Edo Lucy informed. "You can't miss it. Need to stop there for some supplies."
"And after that?" Lucy asked impatiently. "I would like to kick the assholes that stole my friends."
"And you'll get there!" Edo Lucy barked back. "Just... stay patient. I got a guy that will take us there after our little pit stop."
"A 'little pit stop' she calls it," Lucy grumbled under her breath, pulling on her green cloak to cover her body.
"Look, it's just beyond this cliff," Edo Lucy said, pointing forward.
Following the alternate Edo Lucy to a cliff, the mages of Fairy Tail were graced with the sight of a city built into the sands. Instead of the common wood homes and buildings that would stand two stories tall, the land below was littered with the almost alien architecture of geometrically rectangular buildings made of sandstone. Each building also seemed to be connected to each other in some shape or form as if the entire city was like a giant sand castle.
"What a view," Gray whistled.
Lucy wasn't as enamored. "Yeah, great. Can we hurry up with this?"
Edo Lucy scowled at her counterpart. "Let's just go. Stay close to me, and don't draw attention. We don't know if the kingdom's forces could be here."
They soon entered the city following closely behind Edo Lucy as their guide. None of them thankfully drew the full attention, with the exception of Gray who was constantly losing his clothes. Edo Lucy had the foresight to have the Exceeds to be hidden with Happy hiding within the confines of Lucy's cloak and Carla had to hide within Adrian's jacket (to both of their lack of amusement). The group of Fairy Tail members paused at a secluded spot within the city before an entrance that led underground that was boarded up quite lazily.
"Wait here," Edo Lucy said, ducking under their boards. "I have to get some supplies from here, and then we can get onward to rescuing your friends."
"Better hurry up," mumbled Lucy.
Edo Lucy grumbled something under her breath before disappearing into the darkness. Sighing, the Demon Slayer took post just beside the entrance and leaned back on the wall with one foot raised against it. Natsu stood close by giving his girlfriend a weird look. Ever since they have been going on this journey back to the capital, Lucy had been acting a bit odd. If Natsu tried to put a word to it, it would be that Lucy was testy or a little on edge. Lucy was certainly abrasive to some people, but not to that extent. Especially to her own practical self; something was eating up in her.
"You okay?" Natsu asked.
The sudden question from Natsu struck Lucy off guard. Her cheeks reddened from embarrassment and she couldn't decide to look away from Natsu or not. Her mind went a million miles an hour contemplating what to do. She inhaled and exhaled deeply and gave her full attention to Natsu.
"No, I'm not," Lucy said. "It's about Cynthia. I just can't sit still while she's in trouble."
"Hey, I get it," Natsu replied. "We both know I can't sit down till I punch whatever is threatening my friends."
"It's a bit... more than that," Lucy said, struggling to convey her words. "Tell me this. How would you feel compared to say Macoa being beaten to near death by a bunch of thugs compared to if Happy was in that same situation?"
Natsu looked at Lucy confused. "I mean, either way, I'll just grab my buddies and beat the snot out of those punks."
Lucy groaned. "No. Not like that. Okay, close your eyes. Vividly imagine Macao. He's done on the ground. There's a pool of blood underneath him, and you can barely hear his breathing. The ones who did this are right on top of him. What do you do to them?"
"I..." Natsu responded, closing his eyes and taking a moment. "First, I'd get Macao out of the way. Then I beat the piss out of the schmucks that dared to hurt him. Let's see how they like a cell with broken bones."
"What if it was Happy in that same spot?" Lucy supplied. "What would you do to them if they hurt Happy? That they hurt so bad, he wasn't moving."
"I..." Natsu started to respond, but the word was caught in his throat when the imagined scenario truly sank into his being.
The mental image that cropped in his mind he was ashamed to admit haunted him more than Macao. The perceived sight of Happy down on the ground, bruises all over his body, and wounds staining his blue fur purple from blood. The idea that Happy had gotten so injured, and the ones that did it were right there. They were the ones who cut him with the knife and kicked him to the ground. They hurt Happy, the same little furball he hatched from an egg. The sentient feline he raised, went fishing and went on adventures together.
The thought of his Happy so hurt made the fire within blaze with untold rage. He would do anything to make anyone pay for hurting his son.
"...I'd kill them," Natsu answered as the ground turned to molten slag and tongues of flame shot out between his lips. "I'd fucking tear anyone to pieces for what they would do to Happy."
A hand on his shoulder jolted Natsu out of his morbid imagination. The anger fueling his inner fire instantly cooled away, leaving him standing on charred earth. He looked back at the hand squeezing comfortably on his shoulder and followed the limb till Natsu was staring back at Lucy's brown eyes.
"Sorry to make you go down those kinds of thoughts, but it's the only way I thought you could understand," Lucy said. "Cynthia is one of those people I can't afford to lose. She's been my first and longest friend. And I owe pretty much a lot to Cynthia. She saved my life."
"What do you mean?" Natsu wondered.
"I don't know where to even begin..." Lucy replied, a broken chuckle escaping her lips. "Well, since I know you're story, I guess it's time I return the favor with mine. Do you ever wonder how I became a Demon Slayer?"
Natsu creased his brows. "I didn't want to ask."
Lucy had her gaze on the ground for a moment as they flashed with rapid emotions ranging from pain to sadness. Her hands moved her cloak aside, revealing her bountiful body that lay underneath covered only by a sleeveless dark red shirt. She pulled the shirt a little to expose more of her skin along the sides of her body. Lucy revealed enough to keep only a side view of her breasts, but it was enough to show Natsu what she wanted.
Despite Lucy's incredibly toned and beautiful body, her skin was far from perfect. Scars of all shapes and sizes littered her unblemished skin. Most of them were all from the many battles Lucy had been in before she had ever entered Fairy Tail. Swords and claw marks were easy to identify and could be seen mostly around the stomach area. Puncture wounds could be seen in random places with a particularly nasty scar that looked like it had once taken a chunk out of Lucy's hip.
But amongst all of these battle scars, there were the odd ones that always stood out. These scars were not 'natural' like a slash or claw mark. They had a precision to them that couldn't be caused by a fight. The scars appeared on Lucy's body in an orderly fashion two of the same design symmetrical to Lucy's body such as the ones running along Lucy's biceps or the ones that ran from the bottom of Lucy's armpit before branching out to underneath her deltoids and to her hips. Natsu had seen them before but never did want to make Lucy uncomfortable. Yet, even he knew the implications of these scars, and considering how they were the oldest ones on Lucy's body, it painted a horrible picture in Natsu's mind.
Silently, Natsu admitted it had to be worse than Erza's experience in the Tower of Heaven.
"See these scars?" Lucy said gesturing to the precise cuts. "Their stitches done after scalpels cut me open. All for what I was forced to become."
Natsu's breath hitched as his worst fears came true. He couldn't imagine how bad it was to endure something like that. He heard of scalpels before when he heard about a procedure called surgery, but he at least knew that doctors make sure the patient does not feel anything. Unfortunately, Lucy was implying that she was never given that luxury beside her consent to these invasive operations. But he wasn't given a chance to voice his thoughts before Lucy continued:
"My story didn't begin with a demon raising me or a lacrima put into my body. It began with a little girl watching her father killed at the stop. I - I was going to give my dad a present that day after he came back from a business meeting. I was waiting for him right in front of the doors. I expected my father to come through, maybe give me a big hug. Instead, the little girl known as Lucy Heartfilia spent the last day with her father watching him having a hole through his heart."
A strange noise escaped from Lucy's quivering lips. Memories Lucy forced deep down in her psyche rose up with a vengeance. Unbidden tears grew in her eyes and flowed slowly down her face. Natsu found himself a little horrified at how Lucy suddenly looked so broken.
"When he fell to the floor, I remember calling him to wake up," Lucy went on, occasional sobs interrupting her and her whole body visibly shaking. "I thought he was just splashed with this funny juice and he suddenly fell asleep. I don't know how long I was there screaming at him to get up, even when his blood was on my face and hands. I don't know how long I was there begging Dad to wake up, but it was long enough for... for him to kill the entire staff. All of those people I knew as long as I could remember were butchered. And I - I could smell the blood, but I never knew they screamed. It only grew silent when he came back for me. He didn't kill me, but he locked me up in my home using the cellar as a jail room. I never saw the sun and I was only given enough food and water to, as that murderer said, 'The minimum to keep me alive.' And I thought that would be it, just me sitting alone in the darkness for who knows how long. But then one day, he came and dragged me away to start this."
The last word came out as a hiss from Lucy's lips and a finger pointed to the stitch-shaped scar. Her eyes blinked pink when the obvious sorrow and pain within them were replaced with barely restrained anger, only to dim away to teary brown eyes. Natsu felt his own anger build and it did not ever cease. It infuriated her that some bastard had done that to Lucy having her watch her own father killed in front of her. He couldn't imagine what he'd feel if Igneel were to be murdered like that. But with every word Lucy spoke, Natsu realized one thing about his mate.
She was a totally and utterly broken person. Lucy was always so headstrong and fearless like him, yet trying to recount the past had pushed her past the point of tears. Right now, Natsu was looking at that same girl trapped in the cellar and waiting to be torn apart and put back together again and again.
Lucy took in a shuddering breath before continuing. "Turns out he left me mostly alone to 'clean up the mess'. He dragged me off so suddenly and clamped me onto a table. That's when the hell truly began. The thing is Natsu, all that he did was make sure I didn't move with some sort of paralysis poison. So when he started cutting, I felt everything! I was awake for everything he did to me!"
A strange sound escaped Lucy's throat between a whimper and a scream. Her eyes grew wide and her legs gave out under her. She would have collapsed to the ground if Natsu wasn't there to catch her. In his arms, Natsu felt how much Lucy was shivering and heard the pitiful whimpers like a puppy that had been kicked repeatedly.
"He tore me open like some sort of sick lab rat in dissection!" Lucy cried hysterically. "He first started cutting open my chest; I felt how he cut the flesh apart and began sawing my rib bones off. He broke them apart right in front of me and put something in the bone marrow. But he didn't put them back, not yet! No, he... he tore my literal heart out. I was forced to see my own still beating heart with my own eyes still attached to me. I could only watch as he stabbed some sort of needle into it! The pain, Natsu. I still remember every bit of pain done to me, and I screamed the whole time. I could never just go to sleep because whatever magic he used on me kept me awake always! He never cared though. That's the worst part. No matter how much I begged him to stop, no matter how much I pleaded for the pain to end he always had this apathetic look on him. He was never annoyed or amused. Just a blank stare.
"After he was done with that, I was thrown back into the cellar with nothing but stitches and bandages to cover me. Oh gods, it hurt so much Natsu but all I could do was wait for sleep to take me. He would come back of course just to tear open another part of my body for his twisted experiments. He would always start with the bones, taking them out as he did with my ribs and doing something to the marrow within them. Then he moved onto the muscles, injecting some sort of fluid into them or giving them an electrical shock. Those were when I screamed the most. If they were organs, he would rip them out, do something to them, and put them back in. He... he even plucked out my eyes and cracked my skull open to get to my brain. And after every torturous operation, it felt like my body was becoming more alien. I would have broken if I didn't have comfort in my Celestial keys - with Aquarius, Taurus, and Cancer."
Her hysterical sorrow was momentarily broken with the onset of happy memories for once. Ones where she still managed to laugh even in the darkness of the cellar with Cancer fixing up her bandages and Taurus giving her piggyback rides. Her tears paused in their flow and she regained more strength in her legs. It made Natsu more comfortable to approach with a question now that Lucy had taken a pause in speaking savoring the memory as much as she could
"Huh?" Natsu wondered confused. "Aren't those spirits that Cynthia has? Is that why you're worked up?"
"It's a bit more complicated than that," Lucy answered, holding up her arm with the Demon Slayer brand. "You see, the Heartfilias are not just some ordinary family. They are - were - a lineage of Celestial Spirit mages. Before... this, I was a Celestial mage just like my mother before me, and Cancer, Aquarius, and Taurus were my first keys. They... are more important to me than you realize. They are not only the last thing I have of my mother, they are also the ones who kept me sane during that hell."
"But why couldn't they get you out?" Natsu asked. "Those three are pretty strong, aren't they?"
"They tried," Lucy whimpered, her mind assaulted with the painful cries of Taurus and Cancer trying and failing to get her to escape from his clutches only to face that vile magic. "By the gods, they tried the hardest they could. It's just they weren't strong enough, not against that murderer. His power seemed bottomless. Even Aquarius the most powerful Celestial Spirit I know was nothing to him. They even offered to take me away to the Spirit Realm, but he was always there to make sure they never could make an escape attempt. All they could really do for me was to keep me comfortable. Keep me happy as best as they could. It hurt them to see me suffer as I did. But then came that day when he did the worst thing he could ever do."
"W-What was it?" Natsu asked hesitantly.
"One day, he finally knocked me out for one last operation," Lucy said, tears flowing down her face. "I don't know when I woke up back in the cellar, but I saw done to me was the mark on my right arm. I believed I was going to be given mercy. I reached for my keys ready to call my Celestial Spirits back, to tell them the good news. But unlike before they never glowed gold. The door to the Celestial Realm never rang, and even the keys felt cold in my fingers. Natsu, I... I couldn't feel them. There's always a connection between the mage and the spirit, but it felt like they never existed. I thought maybe I was doing something wrong, so I continued to pour more of my magic into my fingers hoping to sink into the keys mentally reciting how to let my magic flow. Do you want to know what happened instead?"
Natsu didn't want to answer that question. He already knew it and it made him feel all the worse for Lucy. As for the blonde, she held up her right hand, which ignited in golden fire.
"Instead of a golden glow and ringing bell of the Celestial Realm, my hand caught on fire," Lucy said. "He did something to my magic - somehow changed it completely into Demon Slayer. He took away the last of my friends. In that moment after literally losing everything from my home to my family to my own magic, I just... broke. I... I didn't want to exist anymore. What was the point of living when there was no one left for me? As for that monster, he never came for me, but it didn't matter. All I wanted was to die in that cellar."
"But you're still here," Natsu stated matter-of-factly.
Lucy finally managed to crack a wistful smile. "And that's where Cynthia came into the picture. She found me there in the cellar, and, well, wasn't going to let me waste away in my misery. She got me out of there, took me someplace safe, and tried to take care of me. To put it simply, Cynthia gave me a reason to live again despite what happened to me, and I owe her a lot for it."
"Then I guess I have to thank her too," Natsu said. "If it weren't for her, I would never have met you."
Lucy's smile brightened up considerably and her cheeks went flush. She leaned closer to Natsu with her head buried into the crook of his neck. The Demon Slayer took a deep breath in the nose to get a full smell of Natsu's scent. He always smelled of burning charcoal and wood in a good way.
"I guess you're right about that," Lucy said.
"There's still something I don't get," Natsu said. "Cynthia sounds like a tough person, but when we first met she was a bit she doesn't act or look like she's strong. No offense. Then I see she can use the old man's magic to make her big. Yet I also heard that she defeated Laxus himself. If that were true, I'd think she'd be like Erza a little. I don't know, it's just so weird to me."
Lucy sighed. "I was wondering when you someone in the guild was gonna catch onto that. She's not exactly subtle. To dumb it down, Cynthia has this thing where her personality and mood depend on what magic she uses. It can be summed down to two personas, dorky Cynthia and scary Cynthia. For if she uses her illusions or the guild master's Giant's Wrath, you can get the dorky, protective Cynthia. But when she goes full vampire or any of the dark arts, you get the scary, sadist Cynthia. I don't know the specifics, but I think it's keyed into the fact Cynthia has enormous amounts of magic."
"How big are we talking here?" Natsu asked curiously.
"Enough that if she flexes enough, you'd be crushed to the ground from the sheer pressure of her magic," Lucy said. "Thing is, Cynthia's moods were... different. Let's just say Cynthia was more inclined to use her dark half. Cynthia applied a series of limiters to her dark magic as her 'light' side wasn't as balanced. Her using Celestial Spirit magic was just the start. She figured joining a guild would be the best in getting her that balance, then I suggested Fairy Tail, and as you know the rest was history."
"...Huh," Natsu responded as eloquently, still digesting everything Lucy unloaded onto him.
"...This kinda sucks," Lucy said. "Here we are, just standing here to wait for some business, and instead I'm crying my sorrows here to you."
"Hey, it's not that bad," Natsu said. "It's good to get things off your chest."
"Thanks for listening anyway," Lucy said, snaking her arm down till her left hand was entwined with Natsu's. "You know, I bet if Cynthia found herself here kidnapped she'd go..."
"YOU FUCKERS THOUGHT YOU COULD CONTAIN THE AWESOMENESS THAT IS CYNTHIA SYLVANIA VERMILLION!?"
At the shout that was certainly the genuine article of Cynthia Vermillion, both of the fire-style slayers widened their eyes and looked in its direction where in the distance they saw plumes of smoke from explosions and the cries of Edolas military meeting an unfortunate fate.
So here you go. A massive info dump about Lucy's tragic past, how she became a Demon Slayer and a little bit about Cynthia's erratic behavior.
I really want this story to do well. I really do. It's currently the oldest story on my profile. It's just very hard for Fairy Tail fics to gain a lot of following to them. For some reason, Fairy Tail fics don't get a lot of recognition or growth. I've seen a story with hundreds of chapters and it doesn't even have 1,000 likes or followers.
As for why I haven't been updating as rapidly as possible, I have a few things to say about that. One is that this story has been updated with a chapter and another to be rewritten. Secondly, I am working on a big project for a couple of new stories that I am really excited to do. Some of you might know it if you read my other works, and it's one I suggested that was not met with a lot of enthusiasm. Instead of caving, I just went fuck it because it seemed really good to me.
Up next is Chapter 42.
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