Chapter Text
Lucy Heartfilia was four years old when she lost her brother because criminals attacked their town. Jude and Layla, her parents, had decided to move out in a big mansion far away from the town and its dangers. But Lucy didn’t forget this event, she couldn’t forget, because one thing had been taken away from her forever that night.
Her brother.
She remembered that night vividly and hoped that one day, these awful memories would go away.
Their parents had been away for the night, and a servant was keeping an eye on Lucy and her brother. The servant made them dinner, read them a bedtime story, and had waited for them to fall asleep.
Lucy woke up in the middle of the night because her brother was shaking her and shouting her name.
“What’s wrong?” she asked sleepily, rubbing her eyes.
“There are strangers in the house, we need to hide,” her brother replied, rather calmly.
It wasn’t surprising coming from him, he had always been collected and calm, probably from the education he received because he was the one who would take their father’s place when the time would come. She refused to believe him at first, but then she heard voices and footsteps downstairs that did not belong to the servant nor her parents. Her brother grabbed her hand, and they ran to their parent’s bedroom, he opened the wardrobe and removed a wooden plate from it. Lucy wanted to ask a thousand questions, but she knew that he wouldn’t answer, not when he was too busy trying to protect her. It has always been like this, she was his priority no matter what, when she made a mistake, he was always the one who took the blame for her and would get punished in her stead. So, of course, he would hide her and protect her, he always did that.
“Hide there,” he ordered, giving her a reassuring smile, “I will come and get you when they’re gone.”
“Don’t leave me here alone,” she pleaded, almost crying.
He gave her a big hug and smiled.
“Lucy, I promise that everything will be alright, but for now, you just need to hide. Trust me.”
“But-“
Her brother shook his head to shush her, he helped her get into the little hideout in the wardrobe before putting back the wooden plate.
“Stay quiet, I will be back soon, I promise.”
So, Lucy obeyed. She stayed quiet in the dark, waiting for her brother to come back. She didn’t hear anything, no footsteps, no voices, nothing. She was just waiting in the dark, shaking and doing her best not to cry. She was terrified.
She didn’t know how long she waited here before she heard a familiar voice calling her name.
“Lucy! Lucy! Where are you?” the familiar voice shouted.
Relief flooded her. The little girl knew it was her mother calling her name, her parents were home, she was safe now.
“Mama!”
Immediately, footsteps rushed into the room and removed the wooden plate. Her mother’s face came into view and Lucy jumped in her arms, bursting into tears. Layla hugged her tightly.
“You’re alright,” she said, hugging her and patting her head.
The little girl looked at her mother and she noticed that she was crying.
“Mama, why are you crying?”
“Oh… Don’t worry, I’m just so relieved to see that you’re fine, where is your brother?”
“I don’t know… He asked me to wait here and that he would come back to get me, so I waited.”
Layla hugged her daughter strongly and started to sob, Lucy didn’t understand why. She was too young at the time to understand what had happened that night.
The next morning, her parents ordered her to pack her things because they were going to move out far away from the town. The atmosphere had changed in their home, Lucy was often alone, and she was now studying to inherit Jude’s business. Her parents argued more often, and it always ended up with her mother crying and her father locked himself up in his office.
Lucy asked about her brother a lot, she didn’t understand why they had left without him or why she was now studying instead of her brother, she always repeated that he would come back, but every time she asked her mother cried harder and her father raised his voice and told her not to speak about him ever again.
Your brother is gone. Your brother is dead.
These were the words that she heard when she asked questions, she was too young to understand what all of this meant, she kept thinking that her brother would come back. It is only one night, when they were settled in their new mansion that Layla sat down and finally explained what death meant, so that Lucy would stop talking about him. That night, her mother slept with her, because she couldn’t stop crying once she realized that her brother was gone. Forever.
Two years later, her mother took her on a ship, and they sailed to her father’s workplace.
The Tower of Heaven.
Lucy was a bit happier at home now, because her father rarely left his workplace, so she didn’t have to see him often. He wasn’t here to shout at her that she wasn’t good enough or that she would bring shame to their family. It was only her and her caring mother, and that was enough. It had to be enough. Even if she always felt that something was missing, she knew what was missing, but she couldn’t bear to even think about it. It would only make her suffer more.
So, when she had learned that she had to go to her father’s workplace, she hadn’t been happy to go, but her mother had insisted because it was a long trip and she didn’t want to let her alone with the servants, probably too scared that what had happened two years prior would repeat itself.
They arrived at the port, and Lucy was a bit surprised to see a lot of armed guards, they all bore swords and wore a big armor. Layla took her hand, and they went inside the tower without even glancing at the guards, when they entered, her mother turned to her.
“Lucy, I need you to listen to me, this is very important.”
The little girl looked at her mother’s eyes and nodded.
“You stay here. If a guard approaches you, you show them this,” Layla said, handing her a small white card, “You eat your bread and stay with your teddy bear, I will come back soon. Just stay here and don’t talk to anyone, okay? And try not to look around too much, I’m sorry to take you to such a place, but I had no other choice.”
She only nodded and sat against the wall while watching her mother leaving with a guard.
She wasn’t hungry, so instead she played with her teddy bear, imagining wonderful stories in her head because she was trying not to disobey her mother’s order of not looking around too much. She hummed songs in her head to block the other noises, but one was louder than the songs in her head.
A scream.
Someone was screaming.
She couldn’t help herself this time and she raised her eyes, trying to see where the scream had come from. A door opened in front of her, and a little boy with crimson hair got thrown on the ground by one of the guards.
“Don’t ever think about restarting or I won’t be so nice next time,” the guard shouted at the boy, before slamming the door.
She watched the boy cough blood, and glance at the door with a determined look, before crawling to the nearest wall and leaning against it. Lucy watched him, she noticed that he was shaking, and his head was in his hands, that boy was not alright at all. And without even thinking, Lucy got on her feet and approached him.
“Are you alright…?” she asked timidly.
The boy raised his eyes to look at her, a bit taken aback by the question. Lucy observed him, he was only wearing a ragged short and shackles on his wrists, she also noticed scars on his torso and blood dripping from his back and his face.
“Leave me alone,” he said, looking away.
Lucy refused to leave him like this, the boy was bleeding and probably suffering, she grabbed a handkerchief and wiped his face. She saw surprise pass on his face before he hit her hand.
“Don’t touch me.”
She was a bit surprised by what he had just done, she had never met someone that would refuse help like this. The boy refused to look at her.
She took the bread her mother had given her and handed it out to him. Again, surprise passed on his face, before looking away once more.
“It’s yours.”
She kneeled beside him, put the bread on his arm and tears started rolling down her cheeks.
“Take it, please.”
This time, the boy did not refuse her help. He looked at her one last time just to be sure that it was alright before eating the bread. It looked like he hadn’t eaten in days with the way he ate.
“You’re very brave, you know,” she said while he was still eating, “I’m Lucy and you are?”
He stopped eating to look at her, before leaning his head against the wall and looking at the ceiling.
“You don’t need to know, because we will never see each other again.”
“I’m sure that we will!” she replied, giving him one of her brightest smiles.
It felt like the boy came from another universe, or that he didn’t live in the same world as her, because almost at everything she did, he had been surprised, or slightly blushed. It was as if he lived in a world with no kindness in it, or where it had been forgotten to the point where he didn’t know how to act when someone was nice with him.
The girl watched him, she didn’t understand what this place was or why such a young boy, probably her age or a bit older, with a lot of scars on his body and bleeding from his back was here. She hated seeing people suffer, but what she hated even more was to be useless. She wanted to help that boy, but he had refused his help and honestly, she didn’t even know what she could do. She was just a young girl; she couldn’t help him.
“Lucy! We’re going home!” her mother shouted.
“Oh yeah… I’m coming.”
She rose to her feet and waved at the boy with a big smile on her face. The only thing she could do was maybe cheer him up a bit, so she gave him one of her brightest smiles, hoping that it would bring him some joy. The boy looked at her still a bit surprised by what she had done for him, he waved back timidly, as if he didn’t know if that was the right thing to do.
Layla grabbed her daughter’s hand; it startled a bit Lucy that was still just watching this brave boy.
“Let’s go,” her mother ordered, pulling her away from this terrible place.
It’s only when they were back on the ship, already sailing far away from that place, that Lucy noticed that she had lost her teddy bear.
And now, Lucy was twenty-two years old, a celestial mage and a member of the renowned guild Fairy Tail. She had made new friends, become a member of a new “family”, and was ready to go on a lot of adventures.