Memento Mori
"Fall into Purgatory. This is the ultimate curse I devised to destroy Zeref."
Natsu screams at the magical pressure building around him. Everything is white noise and Marde Geer's echoing voice. His eyes dilate and widen as he starts to see images flash before his eyes. Everything is blood and gore and it is all him.
"The Memory of Death."
Natsu watches himself die in excruciatingly more creative and gruesome ways.
"Memento Mori!"
The fog that had crowded in around him and Gray spirals up like a tornado of lost souls, all of them ghosts of every life he could have lived.
He is reminded oh so painfully of his own mortality as every battle he won by a hairsbreadth goes the other way before his vision.
He falls to stupid things like motion sickness or breaking through walls. He's being killed by Erigor, Gajeel, Jellal, Zancrow, Kain, Ultear, Hades. He dies at the hand of Sting and Rogue, the Garou Knights, Future Rogue.
Worst of all are the times he is killed accidentally, by Gray or Erza, because there is a brief moment that he sees their faces before he's done and on to the next death.
Everything happens in a flash and he can barely make out the words of the Demon King of the Underworld.
"Those hit by this curse are neither dead nor alive. They just vanish."
Somehow, over the din of the ghosts of himself, he hears Gray.
"The future…"
Natsu can imagine Gray gritting his teeth and suddenly he sees a death that isn't his.
It's Lucy's.
All the visions of his own mortality change focus: the acid on Galuna Island burning through her skin, Gajeel killing Lucy before he arrives, Kain crushing her head in front of him, Hades destroying her using Amaterasu formulas. Every time he is a step too late to catch her when she falls, her body broken. Minerva and Flare are murdering Lucy in the center of the arena and the Garou Knights execute her just as he reaches her once more.
And then, her real death. He barely has time to register the shadowy arrow aimed at his precious partner before a gruesome squelch is heard and her body falls to the floor. The future-Lucy is dead, but Rogue doesn't wait in shock like he did before. So as Natsu stares at the cloaked Stellar Spirit mage starting to cough up her own blood, he can do nothing when a second shadow arrow flies past his face.
He can do nothing while that bit of darkness reaches the heart of his Lucy Heartfilia. He swears that he will never forget that face. The agony, confusion, pain, and faith that laid in that one expression. Her trust in her twists a knife in his gut.
Her eyes are locked on his and even as hers are dulling and his are burning, he can see it.
His heart is breaking, but it isn't over yet. Because Natsu knows. He can't vanish. This isn't real. He refuses to be anything but alive because he needs to make sure she is alive. He can't break his oath, can't deny that burn building in his heart.
Protect the future.
As the dust and last of the visions of what could have been clear, he is still standing. Before him is Gray, his back turned and mottled with crackled darkened skin, like the permafrost on the plateaus near Mount Hakobe. Marde Geer is saying something, but Natsu isn't listening.
"For the sake... of the future…" Gray is falling. "All that... I can do…"
That burn in his chest is chilled as Gray's body hits the ground.
"…is believe in Natsu."
The icy marks are sublimating as Natsu feels that burn flare again, as it always does when his nakama is in danger.
"Gray…"
The memory of Lucy's death is still fresh in mind and the heat in his chest expands.
"Graaaayy…!"
His whole body is tingling now as Gray's human sacrifice catches up to him.
"SHIIIT!"
Body lit with dancing will-o-wisps, Natsu snaps his wrist out to send Marde Geer flying, thinking only one thing.
For the future.
Original ending (written prior to Chapter 411)
As the dust and last of the visions of what could have been clear, he is still standing. He has never been happier to see Gray is still with him, kneeling on the ground. Cracking his knuckles, he jerks his chin up to where Marde Geer has reverted back to his non-Etherias form.
The heat in his chest expands and sets his whole body tingling as the words cross his cracked lips.
"For the future."
A/N: This is a sort-of companion to Alegria. I wrote the 'second' ending at the same time as the rest of the piece but wrote a new one when I finished reading the chapter today. I like to think that Gray protected their bodies from the attack but what saved Natsu's mind was a shift in focus of the curse. But that's just me! Hope you enjoyed.
zabeth
PS. The will-o-wisps thing was mostly inspired by his Shiranui form which was explained by a translator to potentially mean 'unknown fire' like a will-o-wisp, a flame of unknown origin, often in strange colors. I pictured Natsu's flames to all be pink...