one-shot

tsunagatta yume

.connected dream.

Those smiles, those laughters, the teasing… they can't be just a dream, right?

Lucy's first memory of another person aside her scary father and her lifeless-eyed mother was a child around her age, or perhaps a little bit older by one or two years, with the most vibrant smile that put the sun into shame. His eyes, too, were the shades of the darkest corner of her small house, but they gleamed in a way that screamed warmth and gentleness. His hair, too, somehow reminded her to a pink cotton candy her father bought her several years ago in the small festival of the neighboring village. She couldn't tease him about that one, though, as it was, he said before, what reminded him of his late foster father who left him in that small, dark place.

He looked sad when she asked about his father and she didn't want to talk about hers either. She learnt through a story book that asking each other's parents was another way to get to know to a friend, but she guessed she had to abandon that one and stick to the question of favorite food and color.

She learned his name on their fourth meeting. His name reminded her to a hot summer day where the cicadas were the only music that she ever heard. But his name was not Mushi or Hikaru. His name was Natsu and she didn't bother to ask his surname because she wouldn't be able to answer if he was to ask about hers.

Natsu was the first person who congratulated her on her birthday. She had been confused, because birthday meant more frightening banter between her parents and, if she didn't lucky enough, some injuries on her head from Papa and continuous, repetitive barrage of anxiety-ridden question from Mama. Birthday has never felt this good before. Natsu got her a present on her first birthday with him; a locket which she kept hidden safely beneath the stacks of dirty laundry in her locked room.

Last year's birthday present was a red butterfly he caught with great difficulty. Lucy was having fun listening to his epic journey of finding and catching one when a loud, thundering voice shook her. She knew that she had to stay awake in order to avoid more injury. Thus, with great reluctance, Lucy gave Natsu a weak smile before the dark space occupied by the two slowly disappear and her dirty room came to her sight.

She was struggling with her pajamas, somehow dirty with soil, and a small jar containing the red butterfly that was in her hold. The same thing happened when Natsu gave her the locket. But then, the same thing happened after she hide the mason jar — some injuries on the back of her head and nosebleeds.

That was nothing new, though. Lucy's small body was already immune to those kind of behavior.

"Where are we?" She asked Natsu one night out of her curiosity. The scenery didn't change. It was only an endless, vast space of darkness with glass-like ground that felt cool to the touch. She never asked him that one, not in the last thirty-seven meetings with him, which happened less frequently each day coming.

Natsu, who was grinning from ear-to-ear after cracking his usual joke, faltered, but managed to push out a smile. "We are in a dream!" He exclaimed, swinging around his arm in an exaggerated action which caused Lucy to laugh.

"A dream?" She managed to choke out between the laughter, now fighting to sit properly as Natsu's smile widened.

"You know, a dream, a thing that makes you can do whatever you want without any fear of being scolded and— Hm? Come to think of it," he suddenly stood, "Let's go watch some falling stars!"

The boy sure knew how to surprise her. Natsu skipped, halting on a point and stretched his arms as if waving off the darkness of the place and it did. The whole scenery suddenly changed into one she had never seen before, even in a book. Above her, beneath her, behind her; she was completely surrounded by glinting, shiny dot thingy Natsu often called as 'stars'.

"We're in the space! There is no falling star, though. Anyway! Please board into the spaceship and in five minutes, we will arrive in another galaxy!" He exclaimed, pulling Lucy and ran around the space.

She laughed, playing along with his game. "Let's take a space stone!"

"Wait! I saw an alien over there! Let's check it out!"

This was their one-hundred-and-seventeenth meeting. The space is still the same; dark, cool, endless, but they were not the same.

Somehow along the line, Lucy's hair grew longer while Natsu's stayed the same. Somehow along the line, Lucy grew thinner and taller while Natsu's body stayed the same. Natsu brushed it off, saying that it was the effect of being left in that space so that he didn't age. Lucy questioned about his age, which he replied that he would always be two years older than she was, despite the scarce change in his physique.

"Natsu, we are the same, right?" She'd ask at that meeting. "We are human, right?"

They were currently playing the infamous 'doing-nothing' game, in which all they had to do was leaning their backs into each other and talk until one of them had to go first. Usually, it would be Lucy, but sometimes Natsu just vanished in the thin air. He always managed to come back if she stubbornly waited for him, but one or two times he didn't come back and Lucy had to retreat. This time, they promised not to go unless something really, really urgent came up.

"Huh? Well, I'm not sure if I was a human," he replied, playing her long hair by twirling them around his finger. "I always thought myself as a dragon, a red, fire-breathing dragon! One day, I will grow my wings and escape this place!"

Lucy frowned, not liking the idea of him flying away somewhere without her. "But will we be able to meet again, then? I thought you said that this is the only place where we can meet."

"Yeah, well, I'll just ask you to go with me, then! Isn't that a good idea?" She couldn't see it, but she knew he was grinning at the idea and she did, too.

"That way, maybe I can finally find my father and ask why he left me here alone."

It seemed that Lucy was losing the game. She turned and hugged him, feeling that, somehow, his figure was smaller than hers and that somehow, the shoulder she always used to lean on was shaking. She wondered if he felt cold because she, too, felt the sudden wind that blew from nowhere biting her skin and rattling her bones.

"Can you make a fire, then, if you are a fire-breathing dragon? I think we both are cold," she suggested which the boy eagerly agreed and, once again flailing his hand in an exaggerated gesture to produce fire out of nothing.

The fire that time was unlike the other ones that he had created before. It flickered wildly, as if unstable, as if the wind blew continuously and disrupt it.

Lately, both of them met in the strangest condition. Natsu with pale face and Lucy with bandage all over her body. Neither of them questioned this change, even when he noticed how she walked limply with the hint of another roll of bandage around her left leg, or even when she noticed how he quickly got tired and paled even more after a quick session of the 'tag-you're-it' game.

Neither of them asked and just simply brushed it off. It got forgotten quickly, especially when Natsu dubbed himself as a vampire with his pale complexion and got Lucy as a mummy due to the excessive amount of bandage. She almost got the Frankenstein title because of the similar mark on her forehead, but she insisted that mummy is way better than a Frankenstein.

This condition continued until both of them realized how their skin became transparent each meeting. Lucy couldn't even laugh when Natsu joked that he became Casper this time and Lucy could be one of the said character's brothers named Fatso or Stinkie.

No, she couldn't even smile when she found Natsu with a forced smile approaching her. She couldn't bring herself to ask what was bugging her, and no, she wouldn't take the 'the bed-bug is bugging me' joke.

As reluctant as he was at first, in the end, he spilled the beans out.

"What if this was a dream?" He asked her.

"Then I wouldn't want to wake up," was what she replied, making him smile a bit.

"But what if, what if we woke up and could not meet ever again? Like," he swallowed, Lucy had never seen him swallowed that hard before, "forever?"

She ran to him, attempting to hug him but came with the contact with the hard, cold glass-like ground instead. She turned around, looking at how dumbfounded Natsu was and realizing as much dumbfounded she was.

Natsu was crying.

"Soon," he whispered through choked sobs and broken, erratic breath, "I'll turn into a dragon soon."

Lucy found herself crying, too. She couldn't hold him like she usually did when something in her chest weighed her, rendering her immobilized and unable to play for the entire meeting. Neither of them could touch each other. Neither of them could feel the warmth that seeped through each other's skin. Neither of them could laugh anymore.

"I'll fly away somewhere, soon."

The next meeting was the two-hundred-and-twenty-fifth meeting and Natsu was in a dragon form. Red scales shone brightly in the darkness, giving off warmth that Lucy had grown accustomed to.

But he was sad, despite his ability of breathing fire that might set the place on fire if he was in his usual excited demeanor.

"I'll take my flight soon," was all he said without facing her.

"But I don't want to be separated from you," Lucy countered, pulling the scaly tail in an attempt of turning his face to her. "I like it being with you, Natsu."

The dragon sighed weakly. "Me, too, Lucy."

"You promised to ask me to come with you if you did become a dragon," she said, "Ask me, then."

Natsu looked at her, red-faced with teary eyes ready to burst into a puddle of crumpled mess if he was to go without her. He knew he couldn't leave her, but he couldn't take her with him. The place he wanted to go to was a place he readily accepted, but with her, he might hesitate.

"Well, I can never win from you, eh, Lucy?" He asked, a smile crept to his face. "Hop on, Princess! Your almighty, guardian dragon will take you to your perfect destination!"

"A big castle with a large flower garden?"

"A big castle with a large flower garden."

A man was slouching over a bed beside hers, muttering some incoherent words in broken tempo and baritone note. Her hand was warm and it took her another full minute to realize she was holding someone's hand.

Natsu's hand.

But why was it so cold? Natsu had the most comfortable temperature she had ever felt.

"May his pure soul rests in peace."

Rests in peace? Was Natsu asleep? Sleeping is peaceful, of course, but why did he have to be prayed upon? Was he unable to sleep well before?

His hand… in her hand… was cold. Stiff. Like an ice.

"I'll take my flight soon."

"Hop on, Princess! Your almighty, guardian dragon will take you to your perfect destination!"

"A big castle with a large flower garden."

Lucy didn't know how long or how many tears had been spilled, fallen into the foreign clothes of blue uniform. Natsu hated it when she cried because it pained him, too. But she couldn't help it. It was too painful, it was even worse than the injuries on her birthday, it was even worse than the sharp edges of the jabbing broken glass bottle on her back.

There, lying down on the bed, just several inches away beside her, was a person she met almost every day. The distinguished pink hair, the small frame, the pair of closed, beautiful dark-colored eyes; all of them made Natsu. And that Natsu, was gone.

Her fear became real.

Those smiles, those laughter, the teasing… they were just a dream.

A sweet, sweet dream that made two pure souls meet, and part.

(-) I blame this one for making me sleep at 3 a.m instead of 10 p.m