Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.
Pairing(s): Natsu Dragneal x Zeref (past life established, present life eventual)
WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation, Shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read
AN: I am still completely obsessed with this pair and I've had this story in my head for awhile, so here goes.
I had trouble deciding what to label this story as far as genres. It will focus predominantly on Natsu and Zeref's relationship and the way it interacts with and influences their lives (a major aspect of most of my Fairy Tail fics, I suppose), but it's not what I would call a romance. There will also eventually be some more action/adventure-like elements, but again, it's not the central focus so it's not in the genre labels I ended up going with.
Dreaming of Dragons
By V. Shalyr
1.
Zeref was not a normal human being.
He knew this. His classmates at school knew this, although what they knew—or thought they knew—was only a fraction of the truth.
They whispered to one another that he could do magic, and he could. Although he never advertised the fact and had no idea why they thought so or how they had found out. He'd figured out early on that this was an unusual talent and that he should be discreet when working spells, but that wasn't why he considered himself abnormal. Everyone had unique talents. His was just a bit more unique than most.
Zeref was nine when he first started dreaming of dragons. Or rather, it was only one dragon with fierce, green eyes and scales of a dark, dark crimson that reminded him of blood and ashes. When it winged down from a bleached and stormy sky to land on the mountain plateau before him, Zeref discovered that dragons were very, very large creatures indeed. The claws on the front foot closest to him were nearly as long as his forearm, and it could have eaten him in one bite without chewing. Despite this, Zeref found that he wasn't afraid, not even when the beast lowered its great head for a better look at him. Of course, this could have been because he knew this was a dream. Zeref always knew when he was dreaming.
When it spoke, its—or rather his—voice was both a deep rumble in the dragon's chest and an echo in the child's mind.
"I found you. Finally. It sure took long enough."
"You've been looking for me?" he asked, his own voice sounding very small and very quiet in comparison.
"Yeah, for longer than you know. How old are you right now? You look rather young to me."
It seemed like a strange question for a dream to ask, but Zeref answered anyway.
"Nine, but I'll be ten soon."
The dragon sat back on his haunches, furling and unfurling his wings in thought. He seemed... disappointed?
"Only nine, huh? Damn, I guess I'll have to wait a few years then. Unless you're really unhappy, which you don't seem to be. I assume you have a family that would panic if you went missing. Parents."
That sounded more like a statement, but the boy nodded. Would they panic if he disappeared? He supposed they probably would.
"Tell me about them," the dragon said.
"Why?"
"I want to know if they treat you well."
"Oh." Zeref considered this. It was nice of this dragon to care, even if this was only a dream. "I think they do. Or at least they try their best, but I think I confuse them."
At this, the dragon laughed.
"Somehow, that doesn't surprise me. So what are they like? What do they do for a living?"
"Mother is a doctor. She's usually very busy, but she's good at listening and she always makes time to talk to me. I'm sorry that I'm not good at talking with her."
'How so?"
"I used to tell her a lot of things, but some of what I said upset her. I don't know why, so I never know what I should or shouldn't tell her about. I don't want to make her worry."
"And your father?"
"Father writes. Articles mostly, but short stories and books too. He says you can't be picky if you want to make a living as a writer. He helps with advertisements too and informational books, but I like the ones that have magic in them the best."
The dragon hummed thoughtfully. "Magic, huh? There's a lot of magic in the world I'm from."
Zeref nodded. It made perfect sense that a dragon's world would have lots of magic in it.
"I can do magic," he admitted, looking down at the ground then back up at those sharp, intent eyes. "But as far as I know, I'm the only one. I try not to where people can see anymore because it scares them."
Even though he couldn't detect any great change in the dragon's expression, Zeref got the distinct impression that he was surprised and perhaps a bit befuddled. Although not by the magic apparently.
"Why should it scare them?"
The boy had spent some time pondering this himself over the past few years, so he was ready with an answer.
"Because they don't understand how I can do it. They think it's unnatural and evil. People are often scared of what they can't understand."
"You know, you don't really sound like you're nine."
"I know. That's why my parents worry, and why I make some people nervous. Where we used to live, some of the neighbors thought I was cursed."
For a brief second, he thought the dragon's eyes narrowed in anger, but he suppressed the emotion as quickly as it had arisen. The expression left in its wake seemed a little sad, but Zeref thought that maybe he was imagining it.
"Well, I don't think you're strange," the dragon informed him rather matter-of-factly. "And you can talk to me about anything you like."
Zeref hesitated then asked, "Do you have a name?"
"It's Natsu. Natsu Dragneal."
After that, he dreamt of dragons a lot. Sometimes, they were just dreams and the dragons were all different colors, but more often than not, it was the red dragon that he dreamed about. Those always felt the most realistic, although Zeref's dreams were usually vivid. If asked why, however, he would have been hard pressed to explain. Perhaps it was the level of detail in them, or the way a scratch mark made in the rock in one dream would still be there in the next.
Whatever the reason and regardless of why it happened, Zeref was glad for those dreams, especially as he grew older. Life when he started middle school proved much worse than life in elementary school. The other students were now just old enough to start really noticing and wondering about his strangeness and yet still too young to be accepting. Zeref was more than capable of protecting himself from potential bullies with just a tiny bit of discreet magic and he didn't care enough about his peers' opinions to be hurt by mean gossip, but his sense of not-belonging was almost unbearable. It had less to do with wanting to fit in and more to do with a feeling of displacement, like somehow, he was living in one world while everyone around him was living in another—despite the fact that they were all really in the same place.
At the same time, Zeref refused to change himself simply in order to be perceived as "normal" or "one of us". He had no need or desire for the kind of acceptance that came from pretending to be something or someone that he was not.
His dreams of the crimson dragon became his escape from everything, a place where he felt safe from all the worries and frustrations of the world in general. True to his word, Natsu listened to everything he wanted—needed—to tell somebody, and more often than not, his comments made Zeref step back and rethink things in new, less suffocating ways. There was just something comforting to Zeref about the dragon's presence, something that made him feel as though everything would be—was—okay.
"Try not to let it bother you," Natsu told him. "It'll all make sense eventually. Besides, most of them will grow out of it. And the ones who don't," he shrugged, an oddly human sort of gesture, "they aren't worth bothering about."
"I suppose not."
Zeref lay on his back on the plateau with his arms folded behind his head looking up at the sky—blue tonight, and rather sunny. It would have been blinding if it weren't for the shade provided by one of the dragon's partly unfolded wings. This place was quiet, but in a peaceful sort of way with a light, clean breeze that reminded him of spring. As far as he could see, the mountainous terrain went on for leagues in all directions, fading into pale white mist in the distance.
"But what if most of them don't grow out of it? How am I going to live surrounded by people who treat me like I'm from another planet?"
"You'd manage. You have so far, right? And I know your family cares for you, and you enjoy the time you spend with them. Not everyone is lucky enough to have that." Here, the dragon paused then added, "And don't worry yourself about things that far in the future. You never know what might happen."
The boy tilted his face so he could see the dragon's head, a triangular silhouette against the blue, blue sky.
"I always feel like you know something important that you're not telling me."
"It's not that I don't want to tell you. I just feel like I shouldn't. Not yet."
"Why?"
"Because you've still got to live in that world for awhile. You can't do that if you're always dreaming of someplace else."
Zeref pondered this. "Does this place count?"
He quite literally dreamt about it almost every time he slept.
The dragon's massive bulk shifted restlessly beside him and Zeref got the strange feeling that Natsu felt guilty.
"It probably does, but I can't help it. It took me ages to find you, and I don't want to leave you alone. Okay, maybe not ages, but it still felt like a real long time. The way time gets skewed across dimensions can really mess with your sense of schedule."
"My imagination comes up with some very strange things."
For some reason, this made the dragon chuckle. He didn't comment on it though, so Zeref asked, "Where you're from, are there many dragons?"
"Not really. There used to be a long time ago, but these days, they're actually quite rare. A lot of people don't even believe they exist anymore."
"They?"
"That's right. I haven't told you. I'm not a dragon."
The child blinked and sat up, looking from the dragon's long, wickedly barbed tail to his clawed feet and wings that could have whipped up their own private hurricane.
"You look like a dragon to me."
"I am a dragon now, but that's just the shape I'm using. I'm a wizard, like you. My magic comes from dragons and it lets me take the shape of a dragon if I want to do so badly enough."
"You like being a dragon then?"
"Quite a lot, yeah. Being able to fly is a definite plus. But then... it was also the only way I had a chance of finding you, getting yourself born in another world and all."
"It was... my choice?"
"As much as it is anyone's, so no, I suppose you didn't really have much of a choice. I went around asking all these fortunetellers and clairvoyants to help me locate you. Cana turned out to be the most accurate, but she's also drunk most of the time."
"And people like having their fortunes told by a woman who is drunk?"
"Like is probably too strong a word, but she's one of the best. Assuming you want actual fortunetelling and not just fluff."
Zeref tried to imagine what sort of people might actually want to know things about their futures. He most certainly was not one of them. It sounded like Natsu lived somewhere extremely lively, but this place seemed so isolated.
"What is this place?" he wondered aloud, surveying the seemingly endless stretch of mountains once more. "It doesn't sound like the world you're from, and I know it's not mine."
Natsu followed the direction of his gaze, and Zeref wondered how much farther the dragon could see. He had no doubt that a dragon's senses would be better than those of a human being.
"I don't know. I think of it as a sort of in-between place."
"Does anything live here?"
"Why don't we look around and find out? Come on, I'll carry you."
It was the first time, although certainly not the last, that the red dragon took him flying, and it was possibly the most exhilarating thing he'd ever experienced.
TBC...
AN: The background and setting for this story is a bit complicated, so I apologize if it's currently a bit confusing/unclear. There will be more details on the background of this story in upcoming chapters. As mentioned in the warnings above, this is partly a sort of reincarnation story, only I'm setting it across different worlds instead of the same one.
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