Time seemed to stop around Lucy Heartfilia the moment Acnologia appeared. For a moment, she almost thought that Dimaria had frozen time again, but she could still feel the battle raging on around her. It took her a moment to realize the tension came from the dragon's oppressive amount of magical power. It felt cruel to face another unbeatable foe so soon after defeating Zeref.

"I smell a dragon." Acnologia's voice was little more than a whisper, but it carried over the battlefield like wind, harsh and emotionless.

Natsu gently pushed her behind him. "Lucy, stay back. I'll handle this."

"Natsu, you can't fight him! That's Acnologia!"

"I know that. Just stay back." Natsu strode forward to meet the dragon. "You looking for me?"

Acnologia ignored him. "There are seven dragon's left."

Natsu lowered into a fighting position. "You're not taking me down that easily."

Acnologia stepped forward slowly, closing the distance between him and Natsu.

"Fire Dragon King: Roar!" A bout of flame erupted from Natsu's mouth, enveloping Acnologia in a blazing inferno. Yet when the fire dissipated, Acnologia was completely unfazed and unharmed.

Natsu engulfed his hand in fire and ran at Acnologia. Just before his hand connected, Acnologia moved with incredible speed and attacked before Lucy could even register the motion. Natsu staggered, his side bleeding from deep claw marks.

"Natsu!" Lucy yelled. She wanted to help somehow, but didn't know how. Standing next to Acnologia, she felt incredibly small. Every time she looked at him, she just saw his dragon form, opening his maw to destroy them all on Tenrou Island. No matter how much time had passed since then, she felt powerless every time she thought about that moment.

Natsu ignored his wounds and rekindled his fire. He threw attack after attack at Acnologia but every move seemed too slow, every attack futile. Acnologia was always one step ahead. He dodged or deflected every strike like it was nothing. And with each failed attack, Natsu was getting slower and slower as his strength failed him.

Acnologia sighed. "This is getting tedious." With one swift motion, he countered Natsu's punch with one of his own and hoisted Natsu off the ground by his neck.

Without thinking, Lucy ran at Acnologia. Her instincts took over and neutralized her fear. She didn't know what she was going to do or how she was going to stop him. All that was clear was that she had to protect her friend. Natsu, the one who brought her to Fairy Tail, who made all of her friendships possible, who went with her on every adventure, who always protected her, who she cared for more than herself. She wouldn't let anyone hurt him.

Acnologia backhanded her across her face and sent her flying into the side of a building.

"Natsu! Lucy!" Happy flew at the dragon with the same mentality that she had a moment before. Acnologia caught him and threw him halfway across the field, so far that Lucy couldn't see him anymore.

"Happy." Lucy whispered. Something was definitely broken. She touched her forehead and it came back sticky with blood. Her vision was so blurry that she almost didn't see Acnologia stab his claws through Natsu's chest.

Lucy couldn't breathe. Couldn't move. Couldn't even scream. She could only watch helplessly as Natsu's limp body fell to the ground.

"Six more dragons left." Acnologia turned to walk away but paused as his eyes met Lucy's. She was wrong before when she thought that he was emotionless. His murderous intent was etched clearly on his face, so intense and debilitating that she thought that he might come to kill her, too. And she almost welcomed it.

But as soon as she was thinking clearly enough to be afraid again, he turned and walked away.

Lucy was terrified that he would come back, but the need to go to Natsu was too great. She ran to him as fast as she could with what felt like a twisted ankle. She fell in the last few feet and crawled the rest of the way to him. "Natsu!"

It had only been seconds, yet Natsu was already pale from blood loss. Lucy ripped off a portion of her shirt and held it to the wound to stanch the bleeding. The cloth was soaked with blood in mere seconds.

Lucy shouted as loud as she could, "Wendy! Porlyusica! Happy! Someone, please help!" But no one near enough to hear. Even if they were, they were all too engaged in their own individual battles to hear one cry for help amongst a sea of noise.

"Lucy."

She gasped and looked down to see that Natsu was still awake. He was reaching for her. She held his hand and squeezed. "You're going to be okay, Natsu. I promise. Just stay with me."

Lucy looked around. They couldn't stay where they were. There was no guarantee that someone would just luckily stumble upon them. And even if someone did, they were more likely to be an enemy than an ally and Lucy couldn't reliably protect Natsu if the enemy happened to be one of the Twelve.

But how was she supposed to move him? With her twisted ankle, she wouldn't be able to get him far. And with her magical energy depleted, she couldn't summon a Celestial spirit to help her.

So she dragged him. Lucy lifted him from underneath his arms and dragged him. It was agonizingly slow and must have hurt him but she couldn't think of anything else.

In the distance, she saw a house destroyed by Irene's Universe One spell. It was partially buried in the ground, and one wall was completely destroyed, but the roof was still intact and it offered enough shelter that she could stay hidden if an enemy happened by. It would have to do.

They couldn't have been more than a hundred feet away, but with the added weight and Lucy unable to walk correctly, it took them forever. She nearly collapsed by the time they finally made it inside.

"Warren?" Lucy said aloud. "Warren, can you hear me? Why isn't he use his telepathy when we need it most!"

She tried to make Natsu as comfortable as possible by placing his head in her lap. He must have passed out while she was dragging him. "Natsu. Hey, Natsu. Please stay with me." Lucy checked Natsu's wound again. There was so much blood that it made her want to vomit.

Natsu slowly opened his eyes. He looked so tired. "Lucy." He whispered.

"I'm here, Natsu. You're going to be okay."

He reached for her weakly and cupped her face in his hand. "Lucy. You're hurt."

She touched her finger to her forehead. The bleeding had only recently stopped, so her blonde hair was damp with red. "Natsu, I'm fine. Don't worry about me. You should worry about yourself."

It was as if he didn't hear her. "Who did this to you?"

She paused, not wanting to say the name. "Acnologia."

"Acnologia." His breathing started to quicken at the name and he tried to get up, as if the name itself made them unsafe. She could tell he was panicking.

"Natsu, it's okay. You're safe. He's gone. We're safe." Lucy couldn't tell if he stopped trying to get up because of her words or because he had no strength left.

There was suddenly so much pain in his eyes, and not from the wound. "I couldn't protect you."

"Natsu, stop it. You didn't do anything wrong. You fought as hard as you could."

"And it wasn't good enough. I… I need to get stronger. I-" He suddenly broke out into a coughing fit that left blood on his scarf. Lucy wiped it away.

"For now, you need to rest. Please don't hurt yourself more."

"I'm going to die, aren't I?"

Perhaps it was the finality of those words that broke the dam inside of Lucy's heart. Or perhaps it was that she was worrying about the same thing herself. Or maybe just that she couldn't imagine a world without Natsu Dragneel. Regardless, she began to cry.

"I'm sorry, Natsu." She sobbed. "I couldn't stop him. If only I was someone else right now. If I was Wendy or Porlyusica, I could heal you. Or if I was Brandish, I could shrink your wound. Or if I was even Happy, I could bring you to someone who could help. I'm so useless. I'm so sorry, Natsu."

"Lucy." His voice was so frail, so unlike the fiery Natsu that she was used to. "There is no one in the world that I would rather be with right now."

She bit her lower lip to keep the tears back. "I think I'm in love with you, Natsu."

Natsu was silent for a long moment. Lucy almost thought that he had passed out again, when he whispered, "I think I'm in love with you, too, Lucy."

Those words, even though they came in the bleakest of moments, filled Lucy with unbelievable joy. Natsu found her hand on his chest and held it simply to remind her that he was still there and she was not alone.

"Please don't leave me, Natsu."

"I'm here, Lucy. I'm here." Now she was the one being comforted. She couldn't think of anything more pathetic. She needed some kind of distraction.

"Natsu, what is it that you want to do after we beat Alverez?"

He squeezed her hand. "I wanted to… to take you on that hundred year quest that Gildarts was… that Gildarts was doing but couldn't." His breathing was getting shallower.

"Is that your idea of a romantic getaway."

"It's a start."

She laughed, pointedly ignoring that he said it as if he was never going to go. As if he was going to die here and that the hundred year quest was just a dream.

A tear slid down Natsu's cheek. "What… what do you want to do… when we beat Alverez?"

She gently brushed his pink hair from his eyes and rested her forehead against his. "When you were asleep the guild, I saw Aquarius. She said that her key regenerated somewhere else in the world. When we beat Alverez, I want to go find her key and I want you to come with me. I don't know how long it will take or how far I'll need to go, but as long as you're with me then it's worth it."

Natsu smiled. "I'm all fired up."

Lucy laughed softly. "Then we can come back to the guild and back to our friends and you and Gray will fight about something stupid and Erza will beat you both up and then Gajeel and Levy will still pretend they don't like each other and Juvia will pine after Gray and Cana will drink herself into a stupor and Laxus will pretend that he doesn't care about any of us and Mirajane will still be serving drinks behind the bar counter," She kept playing with his hair so that he couldn't see the embarrassment in her eyes at having so mundane a dream. "...and at the end of the day, you and Happy will show up at my house and I'll pretend that I don't want you there and maybe one day, you'll move in and we'll keep going on quests and adventures and-"

And he died. Not in a blaze of glory, not with the fiery passion that Natsu did everything else with. Like an ember, losing its light so slowly that you don't notice it's fading until it's gone.

Lucy closed her eyes and breathed deeply to keep back the tears as sobs racked her body. She kissed his forehead gently and believed for a moment that he would squeeze her hand. And he didn't.

It could have been mere minutes, or hours or even days before they found her. Lucy couldn't remember. All she remembered was that eventually, someone put a hand on her shoulder.

"Lucy." Erza said gently. "Let's go home."

She nodded but didn't let go of Natsu's hand. She appreciated that Erza, Gray, Juvia and Wendy didn't say anything else, recognizing that she needed silence. But even when Gray and Erza lifted him onto a stretcher made of ice and carried him to where the rest of the guild was celebrating their victory over Alverez and the other Dragon Slayers defeating Acnologia, she didn't let go. As everyone else mourned, Lucy found that all of her tears had dried up.

And so Lucy took care of Happy, and they found Aquarius's key, without Natsu. And the guild celebrated a host of their guildmates' weddings, without Natsu. The team went on the hundred year quest and completed it, without Natsu.

It was strange. Even after years of living without Natsu, there was something that didn't feel right about the world, like there was a hole in Lucy's life that hadn't yet been filled. What was it about him that made life empty without him? She would have to ask when she saw him again.

I have not written anything for this forum for almost two years and one day I was feeling depressed cause the new season episodes only come out once a week and there are sooooo many days between sunday and next sunday, so to vent my depression I wrote this in a day. I didn't spell or grammar check it so there might be some weird things going on in there. Just ignore it.

Feel free to comment on anything details or stuff that you noticed that you liked or didn't like or whatever.