A/N: I've been dealing with depression lately. It's a chronic issue that I've dealt with since I was 9 years old. I've seen about half a dozen therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists over the years, but it still flares up occasionally. This time around, I thought about how the manga said Lucy fell into depression after the events with Tartarus. (Spoilers for the Tartarus Arc, by the way.) The fact that she pulled herself out of that darkness showed her strength, because it's not easy to move on with your life. Still, we need to fight the darkness and battle those inner demons. The title of this fic comes from Jared Padalecki's slogan for his campaign to help battle depression: "Always keep fighting!"

Trigger Warnings: Themes of depression and cutting.

Always Keep Fighting

a Fairy Tail fanfic

by Rhov

Lucy hid in a dark room. Her friends were gone. Her guild was gone. The light in her life had been snuffed out. The one person she thought she could always turn to left with only a letter to say goodbye. It was like he didn't even care enough to tell her personally. She wasn't special enough to him. Love? Hah! It had never been love, obviously. He didn't love her enough to even say a proper goodbye.

Some days, it seemed like the sunshine mocked her, and the rain laughed at her misery. Everyone had left, and she no longer cared. She didn't deserve to have friends, not when she broke the key to her oldest friend, the one who had been by her side since she was a child, the friend her own mother had given to her.

She looked down at the broken key. There was a little blood on it, and a cut on her arm. Many cuts. It hurt her heart when she saw that broken key, and she wanted to hurt more. She wanted to feel with her body what she felt with her soul. She just wanted to feel something, anything, even if it was pain.

She picked the key up and extended her arm. The jagged end pressed into her skin. A bead of blood rose to the surface. She watched it slowly streak down her arm.

It was color. Red. Something. Some color in the soupy gray mess of her world. No more pink hair or blue fur, no more scarlet locks or wintry blue eyes. The world was monochrome except for this. Except for red.

The cuts were never deep. She did not want to die, that wasn't it at all. She just needed to feel something, to do something, to change the blandness and feel alive.

It was not cutting to end life, but to feel life.

The blood began to scab. She scratched the dried flakes to let it bleed some more, but it was not enough. Not this time. Not today.

She picked up the key again.

She lost a childhood friend forever.

She lost all of her friends.

She lost her family.

Her parents were gone, Fairy Tail was gone, Aquarius was gone…

How could she call out any of her Spirits when she did that to the one who had been by her side the longest? What gave her the right to own any of them, when she had sacrificed one of them? She lost the right of being a Celestial Spirit summoner. She lost the honor of claiming any of them as friends.

She was alone, and the world was empty, no more light, no more love, nothing for her.

Emptiness.

And she didn't care.

Maybe it was best this way.

She deserved it.

She pressed the jagged golden metal to her flesh again. Harder this time. Deeper. Redder. It cut so easily, it was almost scary. The world was too bland, too cold, too empty. She needed something to fill up the void. She needed to drain out the pain. She just needed something.

Hard. Deep. Red. Pouring.

"Stop it!"

A glowing hand grabbed her wrist and pulled back the key. Immediately, a tiger-striped necktie went around the wound. Lucy hardly realized how heavily it had been bleeding. She hadn't felt it go that deep.

"Lucy," came a pained voice.

She looked up, and there was color: gleaming gold light, orange hair, and green eyes shining behind blue sunglasses. So many colors amidst the gray dreariness.

Loke's face was pinched with sorrow. "Aquarius said she felt something was seriously wrong. She said she could feel you hurting yourself. Lucy," he sighed, looking at the disheveled, unwashed body, her blond hair darkened with oil, her face tear-stained, rumpled clothes she had slept in for a solid week, and those cuts, so many small cuts on the porcelain skin. "Why didn't you call for me?" he asked in anguish.

"I … have no right," she whispered hollowly. She looked at the broken key again, and tears welled up in her eyes. She was used to crying by now, so used to it that it no longer relieved any pain. It was just there, wetness on her cheeks, but no relief from the inner torment. She didn't even bother wiping them away.

Loke pulled her into his arms and let her cry into his chest. "We're here for you, Lucy," he said softly. "You don't need to suffer alone. You don't need to … to do this. I'm here for you. We're all here for you. I'll always be here."

The light was too bright. It burned, and it hurt. She wanted to push it away. She wanted to hide in the dark, away from the light. She deserved no light, no love, nothing.

"We need you, Lucy. We still love you, all of us."

The tears burned now. They hurt worse than the cuts. His words hurt, and they felt good. She hated them, and she needed them.

"Please let us help you."

She wanted no help. She was beyond help. Why should she be helped? No one could understand. No one cared. Nobody should care. Not for her. Not after what she did.

"Aquarius … says hello."

The shadows cracked. Color poured in, pale blue flooding her heart. The tears were boiling now, and she clung onto Loke as they scalded the black emptiness. She jolted with a sob, and her heart felt like it had shattered, pouring out blackness that had been inside it. She had no clue what to do anymore, so she just cried and held him as the pale blue washed away the inky black.

Red belonged inside her heart, not on her skin.

Three months passed since then. She had only one small scar, that last cut that had been the worst. Somehow, that was enough. The scar reminded her not to sink that low again, and it showed that she could heal. She was still healing, little by little, day by day. Some days were harder than others, real battles with the darkness, but she was a Fairy Tail wizard. She fought on.

Today was a bad day. She had started working for Sorcerer Magazine, and it usually kept her energy up. However, she got passed up for an assignment she had really wanted, an interview with the Magic Council that could have let her see Levy. It hurt to get passed like that. Doubts nagged her. Maybe she wasn't good enough. She thought she had some talent in writing, but maybe not. Obviously, she was not good enough even for this one assignment. Maybe she wasn't meant to be a writer at all.

She brooded in her room, and she looked at the broken key. There were days when she just dragged it over her skin, but she was strict with herself. No cutting. It had hurt Aquarius when she did that, and she didn't want to hurt her friends. Even if she didn't care all that much about herself, she couldn't pull her friends into darkness along with her. They didn't deserve that.

She looked up instead to a board on her wall. She had begun tracking her old friends as a way to distract herself. It usually worked. When she felt down, she would bury herself in research, finding clues as to what everyone was doing, where they were, how they had changed.

Today was really bad, though. Even that didn't sound appealing, because it reminded her that they were all separated. They had all moved on. If any of them picked up a copy of Sorcerer Magazine, they would see that Lucy worked there, writing small articles from time to time. They knew where to find her, but no one wrote her letters. She got fan mail from readers, mostly fans of her photo shoots asking if she would do underwear modeling again, but not a single letter from someone from Fairy Tail. In all these months, no one from the guild wrote to her, not even Levy or Erza.

It was like Fairy Tail didn't matter to them. Maybe it didn't. Maybe she didn't, not even to her best friends. They could survive without it, without her, without those bonds.

She wondered if she was an idiot for holding on to the past. That was why she didn't write to them, even when she knew precisely where they were. She didn't have the courage to be the one who raised her hand and said, "Hey, remember me? We were in a guild together! How have you been doing?"

Because, what if they had moved on? What if they didn't want to remember? What if they actually didn't remember her? She was not one of those like Natsu, Gray, Erza, Cana, Lisanna, Mira, Elfman, Levy, and Laxus who had been in Fairy Tail since childhood. She was relatively new. What if they didn't remember her?

That was silly, but it still scared her.

What if she really was the only one who wished Fairy Tail could come back?

It hurt again. She looked at her hand and the pink mark still on there. She could have erased it, but she didn't. Did the others? Wendy was in a new guild, Gajeel and Levy worked for the Magic Council, so did they remove those marks?

Was she the only one holding on to a past that should be forgotten?

She couldn't look at that board, not today. She didn't feel like doing anything, just sitting in the dark alone with her misery.

She knew she could not let herself slip, though. She had promised. And today … today was really bad.

"Open the Gate of the Lion. Leo!"

He appeared and smiled. It was a light in the dark.

"Just … stay with me. That's all."

He nodded with solemn understanding. She didn't trust herself, and she needed a friend to be there. He said nothing, and she was glad for that. He was a little bit of reassurance that she was wanted, needed, and loved. They sat in the room silently for nearly an hour, and he never complained, never tried to urge her to talk about how she was feeling, never said empty promises that she would feel better if she got some sunshine or ate some chocolate or that she should just cheer up, as if depression was something she could switch on and off at will. He offered her simple, quiet companionship, and that was all she truly wanted. Just knowing he was there was enough.

He was a tether to the light, letting her explore the darkness if she needed to, but ready to yank her back before she fell into the deepest levels of depression.

"Loke?" she finally said. "You managed to live all alone for three years, trapped in Earthland, separated from everyone you loved." She looked up to him with redness around her eyes. "How did you live on?"

He laughed softly and shrugged. "In the worst way possible, I guess. Cut my hair, changed my identity, drank until I passed out, and slept around. I don't recommend it … unless you want to sleep with me, of course," he added flippantly.

It made her laugh, and that broke the darkness a little. "Dream on, playboy."

He gave a light shrug as if to say You can't blame me for trying. "Changing my appearance did help, though. It was like I cast off that old life, and I could enter into a new life. As for how I survived," he mused, thinking back to those years posing as a human, "I kept busy. I took missions, kept working. Even if it meant dating many women at once, I just had to keep doing something. If I sat around at home, I fell into depression."

She looked up in surprise. "You were depressed?" He was such a charismatic man, glowing with energy and vivacity, she thought he could never feel that sort of darkness inside.

"Yes, it was bad for a while," he admitted. "I had a death sentence over me. It was painful, some days it was outright agonizing. It often felt like I'd be better off killing myself to stop the suffering."

"Loke," she whispered with sympathy. Knowing he had felt that darkness somehow helped. She was not alone with her pain.

"I couldn't do that, though," he declared. "Even though I was hurting, dying, I just couldn't. Life is precious. Every day is special, even if some pain is involved. I spent my entire existence fighting to save the lives of my masters. I didn't want to give up the fight for my own life." He placed a hand over her arm, right over the pale scar, hiding it away. "I won't let you give up your fight. As your Spirit … no, as your friend, I won't let you give up the fight, and I won't let you fight alone. We're in this together, side by side, like always."

Tears of gratitude came to her eyes, and she nodded happily. "Fighting together," she agreed.

He dabbed the tears away. "I'll always be your knight in shining armor."

His support boosted her. She felt like she could go out and face the world again. She still hurt inside, but it was bearable. "Do you … want to go somewhere? To eat? I haven't eaten all day, and I'm a bit dizzy."

Loke stood and gallantly held out his arm to her. "I'll make sure you don't faint. Plus, if you're going to date to find some light in your life, then I insist that all of your dates be with me. You're my future wife, after all."

"Says who?" she laughed, giving him a light kick to the shin. "Playboy!"

Loke grinned, relieved just to see her smiling again.

It had been eleven months. It got easier with time. Even the scar on her arm had faded to almost nothing. She heard that morning at work, she would be accompanying Jason to the Grand Magic Games. That had been one of the last truly happy times together with everyone, when Fairy Tail proved to the world that they were the strongest. She was glad she could come along as an assistant, and she hoped that maybe she would see some of her old friends from Blue Pegasus, Lamia Scale, and Sabertooth.

She had taken Loke's suggestion about changing her appearance. He had cut his hair when depressed, but over their meal he had suggested that she should grow out hers. She got Cancer to help, and she liked the long hair now. It was a change, something positive, and she had to admit, she liked that the long hair drove the men at work crazy.

She tacked a newspaper clipping to her wall. She had finally found Nab, who had been elusive up until then. That was almost everyone.

Still no word about Natsu or Happy, but she supposed they were okay. If they were in trouble, knowing Natsu's destructiveness, she would definitely hear about it in the news.

She was just about ready to go to work when she reached into a drawer to find a bracelet. She felt a sharp stab and pulled her hand back quickly. Blood dripped from her finger, and she sucked on the wound. She looked in the drawer and saw the broken key. It all came flooding back.

She remembered that moment, the pain, the anguish, knowing what she was sacrificing, and that gentle but proud smile from Aquarius, one of the few times she had ever smiled at Lucy.

She remembered the weeks of darkness, the pain, the monochrome emptiness, and red painting her skin.

She remembered…

"Lucy!" Loke's voice cracked with dread as he burst into the room with a flash of light. "Aquarius said…" He saw her startled face as she sucked the wounded finger.

"I poked it on accident," she said, showing him the small cut.

He sighed and suddenly clutched her tightly to him. "I was worried. Lucy, I … I can't lose you!" he said, gritting his teeth in anguish.

"I'm fine, Loke. It was … an accident. Just an accident, really."

He stroked down her hair, hearing in her faint voice that, even if it was purely accidental, she still hurt deep inside. "I'll get you a special box. You can keep her key in there. I'll ask Aquarius to pick it out for you."

A single tear slipped down and was lost in his suit coat. "That … that would be nice."

Brightness chased away the swelling darkness. She knew now, she was needed and loved. Maybe it would always be a bit of a battle, fighting the pain and depression, but Lucy knew, as a Fairy Tail wizard, she would always keep fighting.