Back to the Start(nalu)

25- Separated

"I've wanted to join Fairy Tail ever since I was a little girl!"

I stare solemnly out the window of the train, my forehead pressing lightly against the cool glass. Happy snores quietly from beside me, illuminated lightly by the soft lights they turn on after dark.

We managed to get to the last train of the night back to Magnolia. We didn't have Salamander's boat party to preoccupy is this evening.

Lucy won't be there either.

The only reason she was there last time was because Bora was using my name and promised to take her to Fairy Tail...but I already got rid of that option for her so she has no reason to go on that boat.

I stare out the window lazily, watching the scenery pass by swiftly.

What now?

Usually by the time it gets late I'm waking up in the future at the moment Lucy dies, but now that she won't die will I be sent forward in time, or will I be stuck here in the past?

I sigh and close my eyes.

Either way it doesn't matter. In the past and the present Lucy won't exist to Fairy Tail and everyone in it. They'll have never met her and won't ever meet her. Everything will be different to me. I won't fit in anymore.

The me I was before Lucy is too far gone to come back.

Everything will be different now.

My mind slowly fades away into sleep, a dream forming in my head.

My only comfort in this. The only comfort I'll keep with me for as long as I live...

A dream of Lucy.

Lucy living in a nice town where she's got herself a nice little house. She's joined a mage guild there and made lots of friends.

She's happy.

My eyes open, my dream fading away to the worn down wood ceiling of my house.

My eyes are only half open and I sigh at the ceiling.

God I hate this place.

I tense.

Wait...

My eyes widen crazily and I shoot up in the bed.

My house?!

When did I get to my house?!

I look down to my arms, lifting them slightly above the bed and turning them around to analyze them. I'm a little bigger. There's more muscle than the scrawny body I've been living in for the past couple of weeks.

My gaze makes its way across the room. The walls are now crammed with countless jobs, different than how it should be if I was still in the past.

Which means time has passed...a lot of it.

I could be back to the present.

But what does the present mean exactly?

Is it around three years? To the last day I experienced before I went back...the day of Lucy's funeral?

Except Lucy never joined Fairy Tail. Where there's more papers and things all around the room, there's a lack in many of them as well.

There's no Salamander signature hanging up. No maid outfit from our first official job. No galuna island momento.

Which means that I did it! Right?

I jump out of the bed and quickly run to the door. I slam it open and run out, not bothering to shut it behind me.

I might have actually done it!

My feet slam against the dirt pathway that leads from Happy and I's house all the way to the edge of town near where the guild is.

I sprint quickly, unrest settling in me. Nothing really goes through my head except the constant thought of succeeding in saving Lucy.

By the time I start to see the guild the oath under my feet has switched to concrete and I impatiently run up to the doors and slam into them.

The first person I see when I open the doors is Gray, leaned back into one of the seats at a table doing nothing but staring ahead of him with a bored expression.

I walk swiftly towards him and he raises an eyebrow when he spots me.

"You look like crap."

I ignore his remark and rush forward anxiously. I stand right next to the edge of the table, my upper half leaned in while my hands dig into the wood from distress.

"Lucy?!"

He raises an eyebrow at me in confusion.

"What?"

My grip tightens painfully on the table.

"Lucy! Do you know Lucy?"

At the same moment Gray responds, the wood cracks under my grip.

"Who?"

———-
It's funny that what Natsu wants for Lucy's happiness is exactly what she already had in Fairy Tail