A/N: I wanted to write a series of drabbles, but this is as drabble-ish as I can write... I'm mostly playing around with the story behind Zeref and Natsu, which has me very intrigued. It's not intented to be a romance, alas you may view it as such if you want. Enjoy!
All I see is the same landscape, over and over again. Time stops. Life ends.
The world rejects me.
Crimson, the colour of blood; browns, ochres; this is the smell of earth and dried grass. A lifeless landscape -autumn, the descent of winter. Death, death, death. Death consuming all, starving, preying, always. There's only black, the colour of death, of the end. It drenches my clothes, my eyes, my body; its foul smell.
I am the bringer of death. I wash away all colour from the earth. A black canvas instead of white. I see the world from afar, so full to the brim of every spectre of light, a paradise that was never meant for me. Overflowing, unending, lively. I have always watched it hungrily, craving for the tiniest of its pieces, yearning, praying, begging -if I could only belong.
I'm alive too. Why can't I belong there?
Greed. Is that my sin? Is it wrong to feel this craving? Yes, of course, for the more I wished, the more I reached out, I -it consumed. Death is always starving, always preying. Death is my bane and my only companion. Or maybe, I am death itself. At the slightest craving, like a need, Death came to consume it all. I came to take it all away, to satisfy this thirst, this hunger.
All I smell is the stale air, the pungent scent of decay. Everywhere, anywhere.
The sky... seems so lonesome.
So far away, untouchable. Does it wish to graze the earth, just once? At the end of horizon, does the sky touch the earth?
"Stay away!" I cried.
"Stay away, you child of misfortune! Don't you dare-"
"-come any closer!" Trembling, backing away. No, don't come here! Don't look at me... I am...
"Evil! He's the devil!"
"... please," I managed to whimper, my arms and legs tired from all the crawling, my body slumped uselessly against the dry grass. When I heard the footsteps approaching, I curl up, shivering, like a prey before its hunter-
-nearer came the people, afraid and violent, my mind reached a blank. Something scraped my hand, and with morbid fascination I realized my wound was beginning to overflow with blood. My blood. I was alive, alive just to meet my end. More objects were thrown at me, some finding a piece of my flesh to tarnish, to tear apart.
If I could just stay... Maybe I'd found the place where I should stay at... Any pain was welcome, I welcomed all of it, if it would make a dent in me, if it could hurt me like I had hurt countless others, if it could just break me-
Pain. This was it. Maybe this time, it would finally break me. My hands searched numbly for the source of the pain; they clutched at the nothingness above my chest.
"Gah! Fine, fine, I'm sorry! Your brain didn't seem to be here at all, so I punched you to get your attention, but-but I didn't mean it to make you cry!"
My eyes snapped open. A voice, too near, I-
"Stay away, you monster!"
My hands had shot out instinctively, colliding into a body and pushing it away. I withdrew my hands inmediately, as if burned. I glanced at them; it was the first time I've felt such warmth, if only for an instant.
But all I could see was black-
"HEY!" A hand grabbed roughly at the collar of my shirt, pulling me into an awkward kneeling position. "That was uncalled for! I apologized, didn't I? You want me to punch you for real, eh? Eh?"
I desperately tried to crawl away, my eyes searching for an escape route frantically, never meeting my captor's face. Suddenly, the world seemed to flip around me. The dried grass was now scraping against my bare neck, my back pressed against the hard earth. I gasped. And for the first time, I looked up.
Anger. Fright. Despise. Hatred. I found none in those dark orbs, so similar yet so different from my own. I was shuddering uncontrollably -it was coming. It was always starving. Always preying.
"Calm down! Damn, what's wrong with you? You're seriously annoying me!" the boy spat at me, agitated. His hands were enclosed around my wrists, warmth seeping through my cold skin. I felt my legs trapped under the pressure of the other's knees, and as much as I tried to free myself, I couldn't. Abandoning all restrain, I began thrashing violently to get away from the boy's grasp.
It was coming. Cutting through the air, mouth agape, fangs bared -No, no! Not now, I'm not broken yet, I-
Death was never graceful. When it arrives, it leaves everything bare. Quiet. Lifeless. It's over in an instant.
It could never be easy, finding my end. If I was not death itself, then death was torturing me to insanity. If I was death, I would forever live on; if I was not, death only needed me as a parasite needs its host. Death-
"... is coming," I gasp. I'm trapped. Trapped, forever in a cycle of unending death and-
"Wha-"
"-preying. It is hungry, it's coming..." And I couldn't do anything to stop it. Its hunger was my hunger. My desire, its orders. In a wicked way. This boy would be one of the countless ones who had approched me foolishly and would meet his end like the many others before him. He still looked at me questioningly, innocently, too trusting. "I'll hurt you," I gasp. "I'm-"
Every fiber of my being felt it. Death was upon us. Black, black, black, black -And in the end, only one alone would remain.
"You won't hurt me," he stated. Browns and red and black. Time stops. "I know you don't want to."
It hits me in an instant. The smell of earth... the crunch of dried grass... Silence. Is that... pain? I tried to claw away at it, I hated it, I hate it so much. If it was only stronger, it would break me. But it just wasn't enough. It was unbearable, too intense, yet it couldn't -could never break me. If I could just break; break and tear my heart away, I-
Warm hands closed around my wrists. I froze. My eyes slowly rose to meet with those dark irises again. Black, but yet alive. Fire burned deep within them, gentle and warm.
"Don't do that," he said, voice unwavering. One of his hands reached out to brush away something on my cheek. Sluggishly, I registered the wetness on them. The pain didn't make any sense to me, for I was not alone, yet there was still that pressure in my chest. And the tears wouldn't stop. If anything, the pain was even more intense now. But I felt far from breaking. Almost as if I'd been pieced back together, just a tiny bit.
My trembling hand found his -strong, warm, alive- and I clung at it like a lifeline as I cried.
The boy jumped back on his feet, his arms waving frantically in front of him as if warding something off. "Ah! Don't do that either! I mean -are you a man at all? Don't be such a crybaby!"
His words I could barely hear. All I could feel in that moment was the wetness of my eyes, drawing a trace of sorrow and relief and-
Break me. Break me free.