Just an AU drabble in which Natsu is a fireman that died in 9/11.


There it was again.

The smoke, filling her chest and her lungs and stinging her eyes and suffocating her between its thin, gray fingers and wispy arms. It tugged at her hair and engulfed her in the ashen gray of it all, clouding her vision and tinting her thoughts gray. It floated out of her throat - and all of a sudden, there she was again, in New York, staring up at the tall, tall towers as planes flew by and destroyed the world as she knew it.

He was gone.

The tears filled her eyes, falling in crystalline droplets from the now dead deep pools of mocha, dripping down her chin a stream and watering the ground below her with salty regret and grievance.

"Don't worry, Luce."

His grin was engraved into her mind - the last grin he ever gave her, would ever give her.

"I'll be back before you know it. This is my job. I'll always come back."

But he didn't, and all she had left were the charred remains of his scaly white scarf and the memory of him saying "I love you" right before he ran up the damned stairs.

"Idiot…" she whispered, pressing the white fabric against her lips. "You promised you'd come back."


Pray for those who died on that horrible day fifteen years ago - and all those who knew and loved them.