Compulsive

Chapter 8

Lucy had been at Tranquil Pines for one month. She'd been visiting the counsellor nonstop in mandatory daily—sometimes twice a day—sessions because the facility was hell-bent on trying to figure out why she was so fucking messed up. No progress yet—she still refused to tell the counsellor, Juvia, anything. And Lucy was fine with that.

The urge to cut was nagging, almost like a thirst that raged throughout her entire body. She wanted to see her blood, she wanted to feel the rush that wrecked her body every time. She missed it. She was desperate to experience that again. Unfortunately, she lacked the tools. And the alone time, since she was basically watched every second of the day. So, she just dreamt about it.

Sometimes, when Erza fell asleep, Lucy would crawl down off the floor and scratch her wrists on her wrought iron bed frame. It wasn't sharp, but it scraped the skin, and it was enough to remind her of what she was missing. Lucy occasionally caught herself daydreaming about slitting her wrists.

How morbid.

She wasn't quite as miserable as she was at the beginning of her stay at the facility, mostly due to her nightly meetups with Natsu. They met up every night on the roof; he always brought blankets for her. They talked now, instead of sitting in silence. They told each other about their days, about what went on, about the latest gossip Mira had supposedly heard of within the facility. They got along well. Lucy enjoyed his company. And his smile. Not that she paid attention to his smile.

Some days, Lucy had began to notice, the boy with the pink hair was sad. He wouldn't tell her explicitly, of course, but he would let her know with his eyes. He'd give her this odd look—it appeared as though he was being brutally tortured; pain radiated from him—and she would immediately just know it was one of those days. One of those days where everything was dark and ugly in his world, and he needed her to just take care of him and distract him from whatever the hell was haunting him. And she'd do it. Because, in his own way, he'd begged her to.

So, she'd keep him busy. She'd talk and talk and talk until his mind was absolutely absorbed in whatever she said. She'd tell him about her childhood, about how she used to draw but she stopped when she was fourteen, about how she loves how birch trees look and how evergreen trees smell. She'd tell him about her mother, about how beautiful her hair was, even though the thought of her sent misery and pain down her spine. It hurt, talking about things like that, but she did it. Because the boy with the pink hair and the 1000 watt smile was hurting and needed stuff like that to make it better.

And it worked every time. He'd get distracted, he'd get enveloped in her words, he'd start to smile more and more. He liked to hear about her. He liked to imagine what she was like as a kid. He liked to imagine what her mother looked like. He wondered why tears filled her eyes whenever she mentioned her. It made him angry at the world that a person like Lucy was sad enough to be in a place like this.

She was good at clearing his head. She never shut up and her words were like magic and it was like he was in a different place, like they were somewhere special and nice, not an ugly rooftop on a rehabilitation facility. She made him forget about the darkness.

So far, Lucy's stay at Tranquil Pines had been rather...boring. She knew it was mostly due to her being the newest member of their group, which resulted in an annoying amount of solo therapy sessions that simply resulted in a couple of wasted hours per day, since they restricted her from joining in group activities until Juvia had come to a conclusion about the young girl's state. She knew once the counsellor had finished her individual evaluation, things would pick up.

Although everything had been boring so far, today was special. It was the first visiting day since Lucy had arrived. Today was the day when family and friends had the opportunity to come to the facility and visit their checked in loved ones. Lucy was excited—her father, despite his tendency to be away for work—had promised he would visit on every single visiting day. She sorta missed him.