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Natsu’s letter was a mess of lumpy handwriting and spelling mistakes and dribbled ink splotches, and Lucy read it five times before running after him. I want to get stronger and protect you all the letter didn’t say, but she had grown to understand him by now.
You idiot, screamed her brain at him, her lungs burned, her eyes burned, her feet burned. She ran and she stumbled and she scraped her knees. You idiot, how can you protect us when you’re not even here?
She wasn't able to reach him.
When she went to the guild grounds to tell them about Natsu, they countered with the guild has been disbanded, and Lucy forgot how to breathe.
She wouldn’t remember how to for a year.
She had been seventeen years old when she had left home - running away from loud voices and heavy-as-shackles-jewellery and a future she did not fit into.
Seven years later, and she was still seventeen - wasn't she? They had all had lain asleep between dimensions - between times - those seven years couldn't count as hers? When they came back, the world had changed around them, and Lucy for all her seventeen-going-on-twenty-four years, did not know how to keep up.
The others did, or so it seemed - disappearing from the town one by one.
Erza had been the first one, in the early hours of morning a week after Fairy Tail's disbandment - a fierce, bruising embrace and a whispered take care was all Lucy had as warning.
Then Cana had left a day later, and then Levy, and then Gray and Juvia and more and more and more.
When Lucy had been younger, she thought she’d known the meaning of loneliness.
The stillness of her childhood’s gilded prison. Heavy velvet dresses, the beads and the gems, the sharpness of her father’s voice, Heartfilias don’t cry, child, stop snivelling.
Some nights, she’d summon Aquarius with shaking hands, the wetness of her cheeks stopping Aquarius’s own harsh words.
You’re such an annoying child, she said as Lucy curled up in her arms, such an annoying child – here blow your nose, wipe those tears away, you’re such a crybaby Lucy.
She had though she’s known loneliness. Now Aquarius was gone. The father was gone. Natsu was gone. Fairy Tail was gone.
She had never known loneliness like this.
She had told Natsu about her father one night, about the open wound that had been her childhood, about the yellowed, tear-stained letter that she had locked in a drawer that had never been opened again. She had talked until her throat backed up and she had swallowed choking sobs, and he had just watched her. Watched her with that quiet attentiveness that showed itself only sometimes.
It did in the warm, calloused hands that pressed themselves to her cheeks. The way they brushed the tears from her eyes. The way the brightness of his grin seemed to chase all the heavy hurt from her chest.
“Don’t worry Luce, you’ll won’t be alone ever again” he had said, “you have us!”
“Aye!” Happy had cried, with the same enthusiasm he put into all things.
He had said it with such surety, and Happy had curled up on her lap and fallen asleep. She had believed them.
After second month with no word from him, she curled up in her bathtub for hours until her skin turned wrinkly and her cheeks turned pink from the heat. She had let the water run too hot –hadn’t even noticed the scalding (or maybe she had grown too used to burns).
“Liar!” She screamed into the echoing silences of her bathroom. “Liar, liar, liar!”
Wendy had curled up on her bed and cried the morning after Gajeel had gone- not a word in warning, nor goodbye. She had cried about the guild disbanding, about everything falling apart. She had curled up and sobbed and Lucy had wanted so badly to do the same but she hadn't.
Natsu's letter was locked in a drawer with her father's. Aquarius' key lay on the table in front of her. Cold and dead and broken - but Lucy was still alive. She pulled the younger girl into her arms and hushed her sobs. Shh, sweetie don't cry. It's all going to be alright in the end. Here sweetie wipe those tears away. You're such a crybaby Wendy.
Their guild marks didn’t disappear even after most of them had left town. Lucy supposed it was a good thing; then again, the past was a terrible place to live.
When Wendy lay her head on Lucy's shoulder and wondered what do we do now - where do we go? Lucy had no answer.
She had left one home behind already - wide halls and gilded banisters haunted her dreams, but never as much as the quiet of abandoned guild halls. Never as much as Natsu not sneaking in through her window to cheer her up when he thought she was down.
Natsu had left to pursue strength. Gray left to pursue revenge and Juvia out of loyalty. The others had left too. More and more as time went by until the town felt empty - to find some place to belong, to make their mark, to grow stronger, out of need, to live. Lucy hesitated to follow.
Wendy had stopped crying at goodbyes by the time Mirajane and Lisanna left - when she herself packed her backs, she bounced up and down at the train station and told Lucy she'd see her soon in a bright voice. Lucy scrubbed at her guild mark and didn’t tell her to write. She’d had enough of letters.
Fairy Tail had been her safe haven - her holy ground. Months after the disbandment, Lucy still avoided the empty ruin in middle of town. She didn't join another guild either. At an interview with a magazine, a spindly editor had pursed her lips and regarded her over the too-thick rims of her glasses.
"I must say, you don't look twenty four," she had stated, and Lucy had thought about Magnolia Island and about the world changing while she was left standing still.
"I get that a lot," she Lucy answered shortly and with a tiredness that the woman didn't pick up on.
"Why do you want this job," she asked, and Lucy thought about the bookcase back in her apartment that she filled with stories. She thought about dragons and shattered keys and the mark on the back of her hand that didn't go away even when the rubble was cleared where the Guild Hall had stood, and the last member had gone from the town.
Heartfilias don't cry whispered her father's voice, but her eyes stung, and Lucy just shrugged because she didn't trust her voice to explain the constellations in her veins - even when words were what she had left.
"I worry you are too inexperienced," said the editor, and Lucy's hands had clenched involuntarily. Her lips pressed into a fine line. Her guild mark tingled and memories flashed in front of her eyes; she had commanded the stars. She had watched her own self crash and burn - her own face turn cold and bloodless in front of her. She had felt Aquarius' key shatter beneath her fingers - had watched dragons return - watched them disappear. She carried the weight of her experiences, and her shoulders ached.
The office was too stuffy, and Lucy excused herself. She slipped into an empty room and locked the door behind her. There, she pulled her cotton cardigan over her mouth, and screamed - the sound muffled by fabric - until her throat was raw and her voice cracking.
She didn't get the job.
Yet she still had her words. She survived for a while modelling for an energic editor who saw her curves before he saw her. On the side. she wrote stories of her adventures - their adventures, and sold them individually to magazines for publishing. Her first meeting with Salamander paid for her rent that month, stories from Ganula Island bought her a new pair of boots, her first mission with her team bought her dinner for a week. Lucy changed names and places, but her fingers trembled as she wrote - her chest burned.
There were so many stories too precious to sell - stories that she wrote down for herself alone. About Gray and Ur, about Erza's past - her past, Natsu and Igneel- she wrote them all down on slips of parchment in early morning hours, and stuck them into books for safekeeping. Her books, that stood dusty and unfinished on shelves in her room, even after her editor gave her a job as a writer. She would finish them all someday, when Levy was there to read them. When Natsu was there to set them on fire.
Words was what she had, and Lucy decided that for a while, it was enough.
She heard rumours about the others from time to time - about magic and wildfires and destruction that could only be from one of their own. Lucy started listening to the whispers of merchants, of travellers, of other reporters like her. Lisanna and Mirajane were somewhere up north, Gajeel last heard from somewhere east - all were scattered, all were making their mark. Lucy wrote down what she heard and mapped out clues on her wall.
She would find them all someday, but for now, whispers would have to be enough.
Weeks went by, and then months, and then a year. Lucy grew out her hair without the help of Cancer, and wrote reports about the magic she had spent a life dreaming about - that she had spent a year - seven years - learning.
The day Natsu came back, Lucy's hair reached her waist, and she had just finished a column about card magic. She was a year older - a year wiser. Eighteen or twenty five. A pen in her purse, an ink smudge on her cheek, and her keys tucked underneath her belt.
The world was still too big for her, and Aquarius' key was still broken. But Natsu had his guild mark, and had she. So had every one of them - even when they had all gone their separate ways.
Maybe she stopped feeling lonely then - when he stared up at her, scruffy and long-haired and stronger than ever. Maybe she would still be lonely until they were all together again. Until the guild hall was rebuilt. But here, with Natsu powerful and sweltering, with Happy bright and Loud, her chest didn't feel as tight, and it was a start.
It was a start.