Here is another piece of the Puzzle Piece.
It is the second to last piece and once I have completed the series, I'll reorder them into proper order. Natsu's back into the spotlight and once again and like its predecessor, it doesn't look promising. I'll be a little slow with the updating on this one as I want to finish 'Complusion', 'No Humans Involved' and a soon to be added piece that will help shed the light on Jeremy and Natsu's first meeting. I ask that you be patient and bare with me as I would like to see if you could guess the mastermind pulling all the strings.
It'll be worth it I promise. :3
He was at his wit's end.
He stood there and watched, hand clenched tight over the beer can crushing it to rival the shape of an apple core, watched that disgusting display of the now engaged couple partaking into a romantic moment, kissing and raising their clasped wedding band clad hands high into the air for their cheering and squealing friends and family to see. He could feel the boiling heat deep within his very being, red and angry, flowing through his veins and being pumped by both his heart and brain. It was course and building like rage but flowing freely and open like that of jealously. He just wasn't sure if it was one or the other- But perhaps...
Perhaps it was both.
He couldn't believe this!
Natsu Dragneel was his!
He had known the pink haired boy longer then anyone else here, grew up with him, matured with him- Fell in love with him. How could he not- He had watched the boy grow from a scrawny little beansprout of a boy of five into a lean, muscular, yet rather very feminine young man of twenty-one who could barely reach his shoulder. He still possessed that soft sun kissed tan skin from when he was but a child, those golden eyes that seemed to invoke the deepest of feeling of the people who locked eyes with them, his messy pink-colored hair that looked as though it could be made from the softest silk, which held true as he was blessed to be able to run his hand through those pink locks on numerous occasions and still possessed those abnormally sharp canines; Something that excited him whenever the boy gave him a toothy grin. He was rarely seen without that scaly patterened scarf, a gift he knew was given to him by his late father, that covered a scar on the right side of his neck, he gained while at the orphanage. He knew he possessed more scars on that lithe body, none which didn't make him any less attractive, one was a cross-shaped scar on the left side of his abdomen, a result of the boy coming into a crossfire during a fight between two of his older brothers and their twin and he heard recently, that Natsu gained a new scar on the lower portion of his back from a horrid kidnapping-revenge plot.
A scar that had the pinkette feel embarrassed and ashamed.
He sighed, leaning against the door frame, eyes not leaving Natsu. A small smile forming on his lips.
Beautiful.
He remembered the first time he met the boy was when he first moved into the apartment that had long since been gone with his late father and his supposedly late older brother, Zeref as he never heard from him again and it seemed no one knew what happened to the older Dragneel child after the fire either. He watched him grow up with nine other children, seven boys and two girls, watching over them all as they were orphaned twice over to where all of them agreeing to form their own close-knit little family before being adopted by a young man named Hayden Lane. He watched as the three eldest children. Sting Eucliffe, Rogue Cheney and Gajeel Redfox joined guilds, moving into a home they could call their own before Gajeel was suddenly 'let go' and joined another guild, while the fourth eldest, Panther Lily, joined the military. He watched as Sting and Rogue got married, even attending the wedding and watched as Natsu followed his older brothers' footsteps less then year before that and joined a guild himself where trouble seemed to follow him every which way.
Natsu.
He was just twenty two when he first met the boy, a three year old who was quite energetic and friendly, a little ball of energy who liked to play and make new friends, a trait still visible even in adulthood. He often saw the child running around the building with his brother close to his heels and not once did he recall ever coming out to greet or welcome the family to the apartments, opting to simply ignore them when they said hi as he didn't show much care or interest for them until the boy's fifth birthday party. He had been invited, how and why was beyond even him since he was cold and distant but he figured he might as well since it wouldn't hurt him to be a little nice and didn't realize that one instant he thought of being friendly would later leave him conflicted with feelings he didn't realize he had and a bloody trail behind his wake while playing a rather twisted waiting game while disposing those who either stood in his path or became part of his path. It was a path he did not regret in the slightest.
It was those eyes.
Those beautiful golden eyes were what enraptured him. The minute he looked into those orbs of a laughing and smiling sweet faced boy who asked to be his friend was the minute he felt his heart beat, every fiber of his being called out for the boy and a life of wanting nothing but that boy. To claim him.
To own him.
To break him.
His grip on his beer can tighten and his face becoming dark as he watched him show off the wedding ring he now wore to a bunch of female coworkers and friends who all squealed and danced giddily around him. It filled him with the utmost rage every time he saw the flash from that glittering trinket and found his eyes landing and glaring at the one man who still stood in his way, still breathing and heart still pumping; Gray Fullbuster. The very man who spent last half of a decade thwarting him at every which way as he tried to claim his prize whether the bastard knew of it or not.
He hated his guts and would give anything to be allowed to rip them out of his still breathing body and feed them to the dogs.
He could feel his anger flaring at the mere thought of a memory, a memory of that stripping obsessed freak had managed to halt his transaction six years ago. After spending a good seven years doing research and getting hold of an old acquaintance of his, he finally tracked down a man named Montoya who was willing to capture and prep Natsu for the life of a slave no questions asked for a rather reasonably fee, 560,000 jewel, a steal basically though in his desperate-clouded mind he offered to pay double his usual fee if and only if he could capture and bring Natsu to him by his sixteenth birthday. And he would've had the boy in clutches and far away from here, back to his homeland if he wasn't thwarted almost nine months later by Gray Fullbuster.
The very thought made his blood boil.
Gray had shown up and halted the man, Montoya, was trying to subdue the pinkette only to have him beat every last person there and rescued Natsu. He would later become enraged upon learning from both Montoya and after getting back from delivery almost three weeks later, not only about the failure but that the both of them were now dating and the pinkette was kept under close watch that only doubled after a few months later from an attempt on Natsu's life by stranger that had literally no tie to anyone. It seemed he just wanted to kill the pinkette just for the sake of killing him and he was actually grateful Gray was there to save him.
He was thankfully patient.
He would keep playing the 'waiting' game a bit longer and decided he would have the boy brought to him once more he was eighteen, giving Montoya another chance only for the bastard to back stab him later, phoning him that not only did he finally have the boy in his clutches, he also had Rogue Cheney, Natsu's brother and mother figure and planned on keeping the both of them to himself. He wasn't taking that lying down, while he may have been okay with the idea of Montoya doing what he willed with Rogue, keeping him, he wasn't so willing with Natsu and he quickly turned around and phoned for Sting Eucliffe, Natsu's brother and Rogue's husband who become the new manager of the guild the two of them worked at under a pretense that the previous manager had 'retired' while under alias. Montoya was arrested, tried and convicted leaving Natsu, who remained clueless to Rogue's attack, once again put under heavy security alongside with Rogue.
He looked up when Natsu laughed and he turned around.
Natsu was now twenty-one, soon to be twenty-two this coming August and he was running out of time. He smiled that these fools still didn't realize that he was the one responsible for the break out of Montoya and one other a year ago being labeled as the 'third', hiding both men away in a cabin deep within the Dark Woods offering them both a chance of 'redemption'. A chance the both of them were quick to agree.
A choice he would once again come to regret.
The very memory invoked such anger in him that he didn't know he had in him in the first place as it seemed the other man he rescued, a man named Jeremy Valmen, the one who he had failed to realize he was the same one who tried to kill Natsu a few months after Montoya's failure first place, had somehow corrupted him probably prior to their breakout into not only kidnapping Natsu but also attempted to kidnap Rogue keeping the two of them for themselves and make run for it while playing a sick little game that involved Gray and the rest of Fairy Tail. Something happened, he wasn't exactly sure what but all he knew was that Natsu was safely retrieved, while dealing with three months of rehabilitation and another kidnapping attempt before at long last he and Rogue were home safe but with 'wounds' that needed constant tending to, extra security for the pinkette and Jeremy being killed by police crossfire he heard while Gray ended up in hospital under critical condition, barely surviving and Montoya remained silent on how he and Jeremy escaped jail. But then Gray- Gray fucking Fullbuster- proposed to Natsu and the pinkette had happily and tearfully accepted.
He played the waiting game long enough. He had to strike, if he wanted a job done, he had to do himself but- How?
How was he going to do it?
"Hey! Finally found you. Can I ask for a favor?"
He smiled.
That'll work.