Lucy POV.

"Natsu!" My voice echoed down the hall as a sword made of shadows pierced through my best friend's beaten body. Natsu fell on his knees in pain. I tried to get to him but I I couldn't move. All I could do was lie down on this cold floor watching my best friend trying to protect me.

"So this is all you Fairy Tail mages are made of?" The man laughed, "Who would have thought that the great Salamander would be dying on my feet." He kicked Natsu on the stomach.

"Who said I'm gonna die?" Natsu said while struggling to get back up on his feet again, "I was just getting fired up"

I wanted to tell him to stop. I didn't want him to protect me anymore. I didn't want him to get hurt anymore. "Iron Fist of the Fire Dragon! That's for insulting Fairy Tail!" The black clothed mage could barely stand after the series of attacks the fire dragon slayer had landed on him. "And this is for trying to hurt Lucy! Crimson Lotus: Exploding Flame Blade !"

"This is not the end of it dragon slayer! You will die soon enough!" A maniacal laugh covered the room as the man disappeared into the shadows.

"Oi Luce, are you okay?" Natsu approached me and was about to help me get up but something happened, he collapsed on the ground.

"Natsu! Natsu get up!" Tears started streaming down my face, Natsu just saved my life and here I was lying helplessly on the ground unable to even just assist him in getting back to the guild to get healed. A blue figure appeared out of nowhere followed by a flash of scarlet and raven.

"Lucy, what in the world happened in here ?!" Gray questioned. I wanted to answer him, to tell him what happened but for some reason the just didn't come out of my mouth.

"Never mind that we have to get Natsu healed immediately!" Erza said, "Happy get Natsu to the guild as fast as you can! Gray carry Lucy!"

I felt Gray's arms lifting my body while Happy flew off carrying Natsu back to the guild.

A few hours later in the guild…

"If Natsu got here a little later, he might not have….." Wendy's voice trailed off but we all got the message. If we were even a minute later, Natsu might have died. "His other injuries didn't really do much since his body is quite used to injuries like those, the only injury that caused him to be like this was the cut on his stomach. It seems to have been from a magical blade."

The shadow sword….

"The blade seems to have left small traces of magic that continuously cause Natsu's body to weaken and cause him pain." Wendy continued. So when he was fighting that guy he was already going through so much pain. That idiot never really knows when to stop. "But don't worry about that now, with the help of Levy-san's knowledge we managed to get rid of those small traces of magic but Natsu-san still needs to rest up so he'll probably be unconscious at most for two days other than that he'll be fine now."

Tears continued to pour down my face. I was the reason this happened. A hand was placed on my shoulder. "Lucy, tell me what exactly happened when we were split up."

Wendy, Levy, Gray and Erza all looked at me expectantly. They all wanted to know how Natsu got into this condition. I wasn't sure if I could tell them, if I could bring myself to tell them how it was all my fault but they deserved to know. I sighed and started narrating the events that happened the day before.

"Well as you know me, Natsu, Erza, Gray and Happy went on a mission to catch some bandits, it was going pretty well until one of the bandits tried to escape and managed to lead us to their hideout. It turned out they were working for some dark guild. When we got to the hideout, I don't remember how but Natsu and I got split up from everyone else. We bumped into some members of the dark guild that the bandits were working for. Natsu fought three of them while I took care of another two. They were much stronger than we expected and soon enough things started to get difficult. I managed to beat one of the mages and I saw that Natsu had already knocked out another two."

"That's when one of the mages I was fighting started attacking me. He used shadow magic but for some reason his shadow magic felt different, it felt darker and stronger. I managed to hold my ground against at first with Loke on my side, but when Loke was already out of energy he was sent back to the spirit world. That was when things started to get complicated." I held my breath trying hard not to remember everything that happened. I didn't want to continue anymore yet I still did.

"The mage used a spell to paralyze me… I couldn't move or summon any magic power I had. The dark mage the summoned this sword made from shadows and was about to stab me, but that was when Natsu took that sword for me. Instead of me getting stabbed, Natsu was the one who got hurt. Of course, Natsu still fought that man even after getting stabbed and all that while I wasn't able to do anything at all… He saved me again. That's how he got that wound. The mage managed to escape into the shadows before Natsu collapsed and that was when Erza, Gray and Happy found us."

I finished telling them what happened and they all just looked at me with sad eyes. It was my entire fault, if only I was strong enough then Natsu wouldn't need to protect me anymore.

Not only Natsu but everyone else that was always trying to save me. If I were strong enough then I could protect them too... And they wouldn't need to get hurt anymore because of me.

Don't worry Natsu next time, I'll be the one to protect you, I'll be the one to save you someday.

Thank you for reading this fanfiction I wrote... I kinda had to rush this so I am deeply sorry for all the mistakes in spelling and grammar I hope you enjoyed it somehow and I probably won't be updating until next week.

And don't worry I have it all planned out and I still have three months of vacation left so hopefully I'll finish it by then...

I am open for comments/suggestions, ratings, flames, criticisms so feel free to review may it be good or bad. Thank you very much everyone :)