Lucy - POV
Magnolia's train station had never looked so beautiful.
Alright, it was the same old station, wooden platforms, a slightly peeling ceiling, that smell of smoke and rust that characterised any train station. But after three weeks away, after seventeen performances in Onibus, after sleeping in hotel rooms that were never quite comfortable enough…
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
"Home," Natsu groaned beside me, practically dragging himself out of the carriage. "Finally. I'm never getting on a train again."
"You say that every time," Happy observed from my shoulder, where he had slept for the entire journey.
"And every time it's true!"
The most impressive thing was that Natsu had managed to sleep on the train. SLEEP. He, who normally spent every second of travel being sick or moaning from motion sickness, had passed out before we even left Onibus and only woke up now.
Apparently, extreme exhaustion trumped even motion sickness.
"He drooled on my shoulder for three hours," Gray grumbled, rubbing a damp patch on his coat. "THREE HOURS."
"You slept too," I pointed out.
"But I didn't drool on anyone!"
"You took your shirt off in the middle of the carriage. The lady in seat 14 nearly had a heart attack."
Gray looked down, noticing for the first time that he was, in fact, shirtless.
"…When did that happen?"
"Sometime between Onibus and Magnolia. I stopped paying attention."
Erza led our little group of zombies, carrying an absurd amount of luggage. Not just hers, all of ours. Because at some point during the journey, she had decided we were "incapable of carrying our own belongings without causing a disaster" and confiscated everything.
She wasn't wrong, but still.
"Erza," I said, watching her balance seven suitcases of varying sizes, "you don't have to carry everything by yourself."
"I know. But if I let Natsu carry his own bag, he'll lose it. If I let Gray carry his, he'll forget it somewhere. If I let YOU carry yours, Lucy, you'll trip and fall because you're sleepwalking."
"I'm not sleepwalking!"
I tripped on a stone.
"…That doesn't prove anything."
And at the back of the group, walking with her usual grace as if she hadn't just spent three weeks working non-stop, was Azra'il.
I stared at her with a mixture of admiration and irritation.
"How?" I asked for what must have been the hundredth time since we started the tour. "How are you not a complete wreck like the rest of us?"
She looked at me with that unreadable expression of hers.
"Practice."
"Practice of WHAT? Of not being human?!"
"…Perhaps."
I still didn't know if she was joking or not.
The walk to the guild was a procession of zombies.
Natsu tripped over three different things. Gray lost his shirt again at some point (how?! HE WAS WEARING IT TWO MINUTES AGO!). Happy slept on my shoulder, drooling lightly on my hair. Erza marched with determination, but I noticed she stumbled twice.
ERZA. Stumbling.
The apocalypse was nigh.
"Seventeen shows," I muttered to no one in particular. "Seventeen. I've memorised those lines so well I dream about them. Yesterday I woke up in the middle of the night reciting 'do not hide your wounds from me, sister' to my pillow."
"At least you didn't wake up breathing fire," Natsu said. "I nearly set fire to the hotel room."
"Twice," Happy added sleepily. "He did it twice."
"The second one doesn't count! It was just a little bit of fire!"
"The hotel manager disagreed."
"The hotel manager is a drama queen!"
I was too tired to process this information. I made a mental note to ask later and kept walking.
When we finally reached Fairy Tail, I expected to slip in quietly, collapse onto a table, and maybe die a little.
That's not what happened.
The door had barely opened when a wave of sound hit us.
"THEY'RE BACK!"
"IT'S THE ARTISTES!"
"NATSU! GRAY! ERZA! LUCY! HAPPY!"
Applause. Shouts. Whistles. The entire guild seemed to be waiting for us, and when I say the entire guild, I mean EVERYONE.
Macao and Wakaba at the front, clapping. Cana raising a tankard in salute. Elfman standing on a table shouting something about "THEATRE BEING A MAN'S JOB". Levy waving frantically from the bar. Mira smiling behind the counter. Even Makarov was there, on the second floor, raising his own tankard.
"What—" I began.
"MY CHILDREN!" Makarov thundered. "THE PRIDE OF FAIRY TAIL RETURNS!"
"We just did a play," Natsu muttered, but he was smiling.
"SEVENTEEN PLAYS!" Elfman corrected. "SEVENTEEN! I COUNTED! IT WAS VERY MANLY!"
"Elfman, you cried at all of them," Lisanna said from her brother's side.
"CRYING IS A MAN'S JOB!"
We were dragged inside in a whirlwind of questions and congratulations.
"How did you do those illusions?!"
"Was the story real?!"
"Is it true people from Crocus came to watch?!"
"Natsu, was that fight with Erza REAL or choreographed?!"
"IT WAS REAL! I mean, we rehearsed, but the flames were real!"
"Did you nearly burn down the theatre?"
"ONLY ONCE! And it was in rehearsal!"
"Six times," Happy corrected. "It was six times."
"HAPPY!"
I let myself be pushed towards the bar, where Mira was already preparing drinks. I collapsed onto a stool with all the grace of a sack of potatoes, letting my head fall onto the counter.
"Mira," I groaned against the wood, "I need something that will make me forget the last three weeks."
"Orange juice?"
"…Perfect."
The guild gradually settled down, but the energy remained high.
I watched from a distance, the glass of juice forgotten in my hand, as the members surrounded our group with endless questions.
Natsu was in the centre of a circle, gesturing dramatically as he recounted some scene from the show. From what I could hear, he was GREATLY exaggerating his part.
"—and then I EXPLODED in flames, like, HUGE flames, and Erza came at me with her sword, and we fought for like TEN MINUTES—"
"It was three minutes," Gray interrupted. "And you didn't 'explode'. You made a controlled fire."
"IT WAS A VERY DRAMATIC FIRE!"
Erza was talking to a smaller group, answering questions about costumes and stage markings with the seriousness of someone explaining battle strategies. Which, for her, was probably the same thing.
Happy was flying from group to group, telling his version of events, which, knowing Happy, probably involved him being much more important than he actually was.
And Azra'il…
I scanned the room for her and found her at a table in the corner. Alone, as usual, a teacup in front of her. But something was different.
People were approaching her.
Not with the caution I had noticed in the weeks after Phantom Lord. Not with that fear disguised as politeness, that almost imperceptible hesitation. They were approaching… normally.
Reedus was showing her a sketchbook, probably the sketches he had made during the performances. Azra'il looked at each page attentively, making short comments that seemed genuine.
Cana passed by the table and said something that made Azra'il raise an eyebrow. I couldn't hear, but Cana laughed and walked on, and Azra'il didn't look annoyed. She looked… almost amused?
Macao and Wakaba approached next, gesturing animatedly, probably asking about the "illusion tricks". Azra'il answered briefly, but not curtly.
The tension that had existed since Phantom Lord… had disappeared.
"Lucy!"
Levy's voice pulled me from my observation. She appeared beside me at the bar, her eyes shining and, of course, a book under her arm. No, wait. It wasn't a book.
It was the playbill. All scribbled with notes in the margins.
"Levy, did you write on the playbill?"
"I ANALYSED the playbill." She sat on the stool next to me, opening it to a marked page. "Lu-chan, the narrative structure is GENIUS. The parallelism between the Erdtree and the Haligtree! The way the rot functions as a metaphor for guilt! And the use of the twins as a representation of healthy devotion versus sick obsession with Mohg—"
"Levy."
"—and the Tarnished's journey creating a meta-narrative about finding purpose when you've forgotten why you started fighting—"
"LEVY."
She stopped, blinking.
"What?"
"You've written an essay on our play, haven't you?"
"…"
"…How many pages?"
"…Eighteen."
"Of course you have."
Mira appeared with more drinks, tea for Levy, another juice for me, and leaned on the counter with that gentle smile that was her trademark.
"You're finally back," she said. "The guild wasn't the same without you."
"Quieter and more organised?" I suggested.
"Exactly. Awful."
I laughed despite my exhaustion.
"Lu-chan," Levy pulled my attention back to the playbill, "was it really Azra'il who wrote the script?"
"It really was her."
The silence that followed was almost comical. Levy stared at me. Then she looked at Azra'il in the corner. Then back at me.
"…Azra'il," she repeated slowly.
"Yep."
"The same Azra'il who speaks in monosyllables?"
"That's the one."
"Who seems as emotionally available as a brick wall?"
"Exactly."
"Wrote a story about two siblings who sacrificed everything for each other? About waiting, devotion, and the weight of promises that may never be fulfilled?"
"All in a single day, in fact."
Levy was silent for a long moment, processing the information.
"I need a moment."
Mira laughed softly, resting her chin on her hand.
"I had the same reaction when I found out." She looked thoughtfully at Azra'il in the corner. "After what happened with José, I noticed that the people in the guild were wary around her."
"Everyone was," I said quietly. "The way she… well."
I didn't need to finish. We all remembered.
The brutality of that moment. The coldness. The blood. It had been necessary, José was threatening to destroy everything we loved, but that didn't make it any easier to digest.
"I didn't even see what happened," Levy said quietly, her fingers tracing the edge of the playbill. "I was in the hospital when… well. But I heard from the others later."
She hesitated, something heavier passing over her face.
"And I feel a bit guilty, you know? Because part of me thinks she did it for… for our sake. For me, for Jet, for Droy. For what they did to us." Levy bit her lip. "As if the brutality was revenge. FOR us."
"Levy…" I began.
"I know it's silly. She probably would have done the same thing anyway; José was threatening the whole guild. But sometimes I look at her and think… 'was that because of me?' And I don't know if that makes me feel protected or… frightened."
Mira placed a gentle hand on Levy's shoulder.
"You are not responsible for her actions, Levy. What she did, she did to protect all of us."
"I know. But still…" Levy looked at Azra'il in the corner. "It's hard to separate things, you know?"
The silence that followed was heavy.
"But then," I said softly, pushing the playbill back into Levy's line of sight, "she wrote THIS. A story about a sister who waited for centuries alone. About learning that resting isn't the same as giving up. About someone who decides to carry someone else's burden just because… she could."
Levy looked at the playbill, then at Azra'il, then at the playbill again.
"You don't write something like that if you don't feel it," Mira said softly. "The brutality that happened with José… that's a part of her. But this," she touched the playbill, "this is too."
"Maybe," Levy murmured, flicking through the pages, "maybe she's both. The person capable of doing that… and the person capable of writing this."
"People are complicated," I said. "Full of contradictions."
Levy was silent for a moment, her eyes scanning the notes she herself had made in the margins. Then, slowly, something in her expression softened.
"This part here." She pointed to an underlined line. "'I've walked so long, fought so long, lost so much… that I've forgotten why I started.'" She lifted her eyes. "That's too specific to be just fiction, Lu-chan. She was talking about herself, wasn't she?"
I didn't have an answer to that.
"Maybe the whole play is about her, in a way," I said, remembering the performance. "The Tarnished. Who wanders without a destination. Who fights without knowing why anymore. Who finds a broken warrior and decides to carry her burden."
"She's so hard to understand," Levy sighed, closing the playbill. "Sometimes I think I'm starting to figure her out, and then she does or says something that confuses me completely."
Mira smiled softly, a smile that seemed to hold something back.
"She's not that complicated. Just… different." She rested her chin on her hand, looking at Azra'il in the corner with something that looked like affection. "I talk to her a lot, you know? When she comes to the bar late at night, when it's quieter. She doesn't say much, but… she listens. And sometimes, when she thinks no one's paying attention, she smiles. For real."
"Azra'il? Smiling?" Levy looked sceptical.
"Small. Almost invisible. But it's there." Mira shrugged. "She just doesn't know how to connect with people in the normal way."
"She acts as if she doesn't care about anything," Levy said. "But that play… you don't write something like that if you don't care deeply."
"Perhaps," Mira said thoughtfully, "she just doesn't know HOW to show she cares."
I looked back at Azra'il.
Reedus had gone, but now it was Laki who was talking to her about something. Azra'il was listening attentively, her expression neutral but not closed off.
"The guild has started treating her normally again," I observed.
"Because now we've seen a different side." Mira smiled. "The person who wrote that story about waiting for someone you love… isn't a monster. She's someone who understands pain, loneliness, hope. She's someone who is perhaps just as lost as any of us."
"She still frightens me a little," Levy admitted. "But like… the way Erza frightens you. In a good way?"
"That's progress," I said, finally smiling.
Mira was silent for a moment, her gaze lost somewhere in the distance.
"You know what touched me the most in the story?" she said, her voice growing softer. "The siblings. Malenia and Miquella."
She looked out at the hall, where Elfman was still gesticulating dramatically about something, and Lisanna was laughing beside him.
"I watched that play and… I couldn't stop thinking about them. About my siblings." Mira turned her gaze back to us, and there was something deeper there. "The way Malenia waited for centuries. How she let her own body rot, lost arms, lost her sight, but didn't move from that place. Because she had promised to wait."
She swallowed hard.
"I would do the same thing. For Elfman. For Lisanna."
"Mira…" I began, but she continued.
"Do you know why I stopped doing S-Class missions, Lucy?"
I blinked, taken aback by the change of subject. "I… no. I always thought you just preferred working at the bar or doing simpler missions like Azra'il."
Mira let out a short, humourless laugh.
"A few years ago, I was different. More… aggressive. Erza and I used to fight all the time, you know? For real. Punches, magic, property destruction." She smiled at the memory.
"I've heard about that," I said, shaking my head. "But I still find it hard to believe. I mean, I know you're still tough, Mira. I've seen you put Natsu in his place with a look." I looked at her, at her leather jacket, at the look that still carried that rebellious air even behind the bar. "But fighting with Erza for real? Punches and destruction?"
Mira let out a short, humourless laugh.
"Hard to imagine now, isn't it? But it was worse. MUCH worse." She shrugged, an almost nostalgic glint in her eyes. "I was known as 'The She-Devil'. And unlike now, it wasn't an affectionate nickname. It was a warning."
"The Master almost kicked them both out about three times," Levy added. "I was little, but I remember the damage."
"Erza was the only person who wasn't afraid of me." Mira smiled, and for a second I saw a flash of that wilder version of her. "That irritated me deeply. So I made a point of provoking her whenever I could."
"And now you're friends," I said.
"Now we respect each other," Mira corrected, her smile softening. "We've both matured. But sometimes…" She looked out at the hall, where Erza was devouring her third slice of strawberry cake. "Sometimes I still feel the urge to tease her. Just to see her reaction."
She paused, her eyes returning to her siblings on the other side of the hall.
"On one of those S-Class missions, I took Elfman and Lisanna with me. They were younger, but they were already decent mages, and I thought I could protect them from anything." Her voice hardened. "I was wrong."
The noise of the guild seemed to grow more distant as Mira spoke.
"The monster we were facing… it was different. Stronger than the report said. Faster. More brutal." She closed her eyes for a moment. "Elfman tried to use a full Take Over on the monster to help us, but he didn't have enough control yet. He lost his consciousness to the beast's instinct."
Mira opened her eyes, and there was something there I had never seen in the Mirajane from behind the bar.
"He went for Lisanna. My own brother, with those eyes that no longer recognised us." Her voice hardened. "I managed to grab her in time. I dodged the attack by inches. But then I was holding my sister with one arm, trying to stop my brother from killing us with the other, and the original monster was still there."
"Mira…" I whispered.
"I used everything I had that day. All my power. Things I didn't even know I could do." She looked at her own hands. "I managed to defeat the monster and bring Elfman back at the same time. Lisanna wasn't badly hurt. Elfman returned to normal. But I…"
She sighed.
"Something broke in me that day. Not physically. But here." She touched her chest. "The fear of losing them. The guilt of having put them in danger. The certainty that if I had been weaker, slower, a second slower… I would have lost them both."
The silence between us was heavy.
"After that, I decided I didn't want to risk it anymore. I didn't want to put the people I loved in danger like that anymore." She shrugged, but the gesture was heavy. "S-Class missions? Never again. The risk isn't worth it."
"So you…" I began.
"I still do normal missions and some even dangerous ones from time to time. But I prefer to stay here, helping the Master run the guild, looking after the bar." She smiled, and this time the smile was lighter. "It's not that I've become a different person. I've just… reorganised my priorities. Protecting my siblings from a distance, making sure they have a safe place to come back to. That's more important to me than any mission."
"I didn't know," I said quietly. "No one ever told me."
"It's not something we talk about much." Mira shrugged. "But when I saw Malenia in the play… the way she destroyed herself little by little waiting for her brother… I understood. I would have done the same thing. I would have waited an eternity. I would have let my body rot if it meant protecting them."
She looked out at the hall again, where Elfman was now trying to put Natsu in a headlock while shouting something about manly honour.
"That's why I cried so much at the play. It wasn't just the story. It was imagining Elfman in Malenia's place, waiting for me. Or Lisanna alone, refusing to give up because she'd promised to wait." She laughed quietly, wiping the corner of her eye. "Elfman cried more than I did, by the way. I think he was thinking the same thing."
"TEARS ARE A MAN'S JOB!" Elfman's voice thundered from across the guild, as if he'd heard.
"See?" Mira smiled, and this time the smile was genuine. "He understood too."
Levy and I exchanged a look. There was a lot more to Mirajane than either of us had imagined.
"Thank you for telling us, Mira," I said softly.
"Thank you for listening." She straightened up, her usual smile returning to her face. "Now, who wants more juice? On the house. You've earned it after seventeen performances."
A crash from the other side of the guild interrupted our conversation.
"I SAID MY CHARACTER WAS BETTER!"
Natsu was standing on a table, pointing at Gray who, miraculously, was still wearing a shirt (a different one from before, but still).
"YOUR CHARACTER WAS DEFEATED!" Gray retorted. "MINE WAS THE MAIN VILLAIN!"
"IT WASN'T A DEFEAT! IT WAS A DRAW!" Natsu roared, flames starting to dance on his fists. "ERZA AND I DREW! THAT MEANS NEITHER OF US LOST!"
"YOU FELL ON THE FLOOR!"
"SHE FELL TOO! THAT'S WHAT A DRAW MEANS, YOU IDIOT!"
"BUT YOU FELL FIRST!"
"NO, I DIDN'T!"
"YES, YOU DID!"
"You both fell at the same time," Happy offered helpfully. "I was there, I saw it."
"SHUT UP, HAPPY!" the two of them shouted in unison.
I sighed.
"They had the energy to fight, but they didn't have the energy to stay awake on the train?"
"The power of rivalry," Levy said wisely.
Erza appeared out of nowhere, as she always did, and knocked their heads together with practised efficiency.
"We are a TEAM. All the characters were important."
"Yes, Erza," the two of them muttered in unison, rubbing their foreheads.
"Good." She turned and marched to the bar, sitting down on the other side of me with the grace of someone who hadn't just committed casual violence. "Mira, a strawberry cake, please."
"Just one?"
"…Three."
Makarov came down from the second floor at some point, his ever-present tankard in hand.
"MY ARTISTE CHILDREN!" he announced, opening his arms dramatically. "The pride of Fairy Tail! Taking our guild's name to the stages of Fiore!"
"We did a play, Gramps," Natsu said, rubbing the spot on his forehead where Erza had hit him.
"SAME THING! Art is an achievement! Culture is power! And you lot…" he pointed dramatically at each of us, "…you made people CRY. That is more powerful than any magic!"
"Technically Azra'il's illusion magic helped a lot," Gray observed.
"IRRELEVANT! THE POINT REMAINS!"
The master staggered over to the table where Azra'il was sitting. I watched the interaction with curiosity.
"You," he said, pointing at her. "The script."
Azra'il raised an eyebrow.
"Profound. Emotional. Full of truth." Makarov straightened up as much as his height would allow. "You understand what makes a family, girl. Even if you pretend you don't."
Azra'il was silent for a moment.
"I just wrote a story."
"Lies. You wrote your heart. You're just too stubborn to admit it."
He patted her arm and staggered back to the bar, leaving Azra'il with an expression I could only describe as "mildly disconcerted."
It was a rare expression on her. I appreciated it.
The afternoon passed lazily.
I ate two sandwiches that Mira placed in front of me, drank three more glasses of juice, and nearly fell asleep at the table at least twice. Levy continued to analyse the script, pointing out symbolisms and parallels that I was too tired to process.
Natsu and Gray had two more fights, both broken up by Erza. Happy fully woke up at some point and immediately started teasing Natsu about something related to the play.
Normal. Familiar. Comforting.
I was almost dozing off for real when the guild door opened.
And Loke walked in.
Something was wrong.
I noticed immediately, and mind you, I wasn't paying much attention to anything at that moment. But it was impossible not to notice.
He was pale. Not "I need more sun" pale, the pale of someone who hadn't slept in days. Deep dark circles marked his normally impeccable face, and the shoulders that always carried that easy confidence were hunched, tense.
"Loke!" one of the girls at the bar waved. "You vanished! Where have you been?"
He forced a smile, and I KNEW it was forced because Loke was a master of genuine smiles, and this didn't even come close.
"Around, ladies. Did you miss me?"
The girls laughed, but I kept watching.
His eyes quickly scanned the guild, and they stopped on me.
For a second, something passed over his face. Something that looked like… fear? Desperation? Pain?
And then he looked away.
Quickly. Deliberately.
As if looking at me was painful.
"Loke!" I called, waving. "Come here! You missed the play, but Levy can tell you everything in excessive detail—"
"My details are not excessive!"
"—and I can give you a less academic summary!"
Loke hesitated. Visibly hesitated.
"Ah, I…" He was already moving to the other side of the guild, avoiding my area completely. "I need to sort something out. We'll talk later, Lucy."
"But—"
"Bye!"
And he disappeared through the back door before I could say anything more.
I stared at the spot where he had been, a strange feeling settling in my stomach.
"What was that about?" Levy asked, confused.
"I… don't know."
But I knew it wasn't normal.
Loke was the most sociable bloke in the guild. He never, EVER, turned down a chance to chat with girls. And he definitely never ran from a conversation as if his life depended on it.
I tried to remember the last few interactions we'd had. Before the play, before Phantom Lord, before…
When he found out I was a celestial mage.
The look on his face when he saw my keys. The way he moved away. The hurried excuse he gave to leave.
Since then, now that I thought about it, he had been avoiding me. Subtly at first, always having some commitment when I arrived, always slipping away when I appeared. I hadn't paid attention because I was busy with missions.
But now, seeing him run away like that…
"Lu-chan?" Levy touched my arm. "Are you alright?"
"Hmm? Oh, yes. Just… thinking."
She didn't look convinced, but she didn't press.
Later that night, I finally dragged myself home.
The flat was exactly as I had left it, which meant Natsu hadn't broken in during my absence. A miracle.
I took a long bath, put on my most comfortable pyjamas, and threw myself into bed with the intention of sleeping for at least twelve hours straight.
But my mind wouldn't switch off.
Loke.
Why was he avoiding me?
What did it have to do with me being a celestial mage?
And why, when he looked at me today, did it seem like he was saying goodbye?
I turned in bed, staring at the dark ceiling.
The celestial keys shone softly on the bedside table. Aquarius. Cancer. Taurus. Virgo. Sagittarius. All there, familiar and comforting.
But when I looked at them, all I could think about was Loke's face.
The fear in his eyes.
The way he ran away.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I would find out what was going on.
I closed my eyes, forcing sleep to come.
But the last question kept echoing, even as I fell into unconsciousness:
Why was Loke running from me as if his life depended on it?
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Author's Note
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I owe you all an apology for the delay 😔🙏
This one was not the author forgetting. I swear. It was an internal diplomatic incident.
My translator went into full hyperfocus mode translating the Runeterra chapters and… completely forgot that Fairy Tail also exists.
The difference in treatment is so wild that, statistically speaking, for every 5 Runeterra chapters translated, only 1 Fairy Tail chapter survives the process 😂
I'm not saying there's favoritism 👀
But I'm also not denying that Runeterra makes the translator suspiciously more motivated.
I promise to try and rebalance this scale of justice (or at least remind her that Erza also deserves love).
Thank you for your patience, you're the best