"I can't believe you're getting your own apartment Natsu," Erza Scarlet said as she trundled through the door with a large cardboard box held secure in her arms. "I'm immensely proud." Natsu blushed at her words, sometimes wishing she wouldn't act quite so motherly.
"Yeah, whoever thought Flame-ass would ever move out of my place?" Gray said, lounging in one of the armchairs they'd already unpacked. Natsu scowled at his best friend/rival.
"Shut up. And put on some clothes pervert." Natsu sneered as Gray glanced down at his bare chest and made a very girlish sound—while Erza merely looked annoyed as she set down her box.
"I think that's the last one Natsu," she said, crossing her arms. "I trust you to unpack on your own?" Natsu nodded eagerly, while the elder girl was like his sister, that didn't mean he wanted her breathing down his neck while he organized his underwear. (Or just threw it in a heap on the bottom of his closet floor, your pick.)
"I've got it," he told her, making a shooing motion with his hands. "This place belongs to us now." He smirked as a blue cat rounded the corner, mewing softly.
"Quick Erza, let's escape before he starts kissing his cat," Gray laughed, standing up—his shirt once more on his body.
"Happy and I do not kiss!" Natsu protested, his ears red. Just because there was that one accidental time Gray could not let it go…
His best friends took their leave, and Natsu was alone. He sighed loudly to fill the sudden silence that had invaded the room, sinking into the armchair Gray had just departed and staring at the celling.
This apartment in particular had been abandoned for years. Before he moved in, he had spent hours clearing away cobwebs and the inch of dust that covered everything, not to mention he had to call an exterminator to take care of the various nests of things that had been living there in the thirty years since it had been abandoned.
Still, being abandoned did serve its purposes. It was dirt-cheap, something that even Natsu with his low income could afford on his own. He grinned to himself then, his onyx eyes flickering around the room as he realized that for once in his life, he was free. Free from the worrying eyes of the warden at the orphanage, free from Gray and his stupid college boy hipster like rules, free from the weight of his Father's disappearance.
Happy hissed suddenly, his small blue ears pressing flat against his skull. Natsu reached down and picked up his cat, holding the ball of fur to his chest and scratching his belly to improve it's mood. Happy instead nipped at his fingers, causing Natsu to drop with a swear, shaking his fingers as speckles of blood splattered across the room.
Happy was supposed to be…well happy, so his cat's poor mood was a mystery to the young boy. He yawned, deciding to forget about it, instead glancing around the room to see what else he could unpack.
"Leave." To say the voice that suddenly rang through the room, oddly echoing like some effect in a movie program had been used on it, scared Natsu was an understatement. He jumped straight up, his ass fully leaving the chair and shooting five feet into the air, his eyes turning into dinner plates as his heart stopped it's beating and something like "Egad!" burst out of his mouth.
As reasoning (yes Natsu could reason at times) thoughts filled his head, his breath began to slow and his heart began to beat, his blood still slightly singing in his body.
"You got me Gray, Erza," he said putting up his hands, "fine I'll admit you got me. But just this once—"
"Leave!" the voice came more firmly this time, and a cold gust of wind blew him backwards, his legs buckled beneath him and he fell backwards, sprawling painfully against the wooden planks. "Leave me alone," the voice said again, but a smaller, more broken whisper this time. Natsu sat up, his eyes searching for the speaker.
She was sitting on his armchair, but maybe sitting wasn't the right word. She was in a sitting position, her legs bent, her back straight like she was on a solid surface, but instead she hovered several inches above the fabric, the ends of her feet literally dipping into the cushy surface as if she was made of air.
He could say, and would say for many years afterwards—that she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, despite her disheveled appearance.
She had golden curls that were knotted, tangled as if she had been dragged on her back, and they fell limply around her shoulders, the ends drifting oddly around her head, as if being blown slightly by the wind. Her eyes were large, almost to big for her face, immensely sad, and the shade of the fancy chocolate you can only buy in stores. Her face was drawn down in a permanent pucker, fine eyebrows posed over her features like she was about to cry, and faint signs of tears stained her rosy cheeks.
The nightgown she wore looked like it was styled a long time ago, the fabric expensive, but dirty, as if she had been playing in the mud. He squinted, the dirt seemed heavier around her chest—and he realized with an eerie feeling that it was blood.
"Are you a ghost?" he asked her, his goddamn voice trembling slightly, because while he was the fucking awesome Natsu Dragneel, he couldn't help but feel just a tiny bit terrified of her.
Her own eyes widened. She moved, although how he couldn't say—she just became a sudden blur, before stopping in front of him, so close that if he leaned forward slightly, their noses would brush.
"You can hear me?" she asked, her voice quavering slightly, as if afraid of something, "You can see me?"
"What are you?" he whispered again, because where her breath should be tickling him, there was nothing. Her chest didn't even move. Her face closed off, becoming stoic from one moment to the next.
"You can see me." She repeated to herself, softly now, her voice starting to brim with… hope?
"Of course I can see you," he said, laughing nervously and rubbing the back of his head. "Why wouldn't I be able to see you?"
"Because I'm dead," she answered, like one might say, 'I'm fine, how are you?'. She circled around him once more, her entire body blurring out when she moved a limb, but becoming crystal clear once more when she was still.
"Dead?" he repeated, staring at her bare feet, which hovered an inch above the floorboards. "My apartment is haunted?" her hopeful face closed off.
"You could say that," she said, her voice still oddly echoing, "that's what they all say anyways." She kicked one of her feet lightly, "you should leave." She repeated, although she didn't sound as firm as before.
"I'm not going to leave," he said firmly, even though his whole body was practically shaking. He couldn't afford another apartment, and for the love of god he could not move back in with Gray, so he might as well get used to his new roommate.
"Curious thing aren't you," she said, something like a smile quirking at her lips, "most run away screaming by now."
"I'm not most," he said, trying to be as brave as can be.
"No, you aren't are you?" she questioned, blurring out of focus once more as she resumed her position on the armchair. "What is your name solider?"
"How did you know?" he asked her, his whole face crinkling, "that I'm—"
"Your jacket is hanging over there," she said matter of factly. "And if you refuse to leave, I might as well know your name. So speak, soldier boy."
"Natsu," he said, his voice catching slightly, "Natsu Dragneel."
"Natsu," she whispered softly, her eyes growing wider, "summer."
"What?"
"Your name," she said, "Your name means summer." He rolled his eyes.
"Okay nerd," he responded, "What's your name?"
"Lucy," she whispered, "Lucy Heartfilia."
"Okay Lugi—"
"It's Lucy!"
"I'm going to crash. If you're set on staying here—"
"I was here before you idiot!"
"Then please stop the haunting shit. We could both use a break from that."
"I hardly even haunted you," she protested, "I'm a lousy ghost." She watched him walk away, knowing that wasn't the true reason she wasn't able to send him away.
"Welcome home, Soldier boy." She whispered to herself.
…
"Natsu is that you?" a disbelieving voice rang in his ears and Natsu cringed inwardly, he had been hoping that no one would see him here. He turned to see Levy Mcgarden walking towards him, a disbelieving smile filling her features. "I never thought I would find you at a library!" Natsu rubbed the back of his head.
"I'm just looking up the history of my house," he said quickly, which wasn't a lie.
"Why would you do that?" damn. Levy was always the curious one of their large friend group.
"I just want to know if anyone died in there," he lied, because he already knew someone had died in there. "I heard rumors that someone named Lucy Heartfilia was haunting the place."
"Why are you haunting this apartment building?"
"I died here."
"Maybe I can help you," Levy said brightly, and Natsu nodded. He could use her braniac talents. "I think the best way would be to look through old newspapers that have articles—" he tuned her out. As long as she could find it, he didn't quite care how she did it.
She dug out an old box, her brown eyes flicking over the contents for what seemed like hours, a steady patience upon her brow. Natsu would've found the tiny girl pretty if she wasn't already claimed by one of his good friends/rivals Gajeel Redfox. She had waves of pretty blue hair, tied up with a headband, and wore a short orange dress that clung to her miniscule curves. He could see why Gajeel went after her, but Natsu couldn't help but think that he preferred Lucy's kind of beauty.
"Here it is!" Levy declared, breaking off his thoughts. "Lucy Heartfilia, age seventeen, was found brutally murdered in the apartment she and her Father shared. Her Father is nowhere to be found, but word has been sent overseas to someone fighting in the war of her death."
"How was she killed?" Natsu distantly hears himself ask.
"Knife wounds to the chest," Levy said, "Well if anyone was haunting your building Natsu, it would be her."
…
Natsu's head span as he retreated back to his apartment, his onyx eyes far away and worried. Who had killed Lucy Heartfilia?
"Lucy?" he called, stepping warily into the house, his eyes flitting around. The first week of knowing her and he was already concerned that she would be gone.
"Soldier boy," she responded, flickering into life by the sofa, in the same position as yesterday.
"Can I ask you something?" he said carefully.
"What is it?"
"Who killed you?" he asked, his hand reaching out to touch her. Could he touch her? Her eyes harden and she blurs out of his reach.
"Someone who is long gone," she promised, and it almost seems like she's shaking. "It doesn't matter anymore."
"Of course it matters," he protested, "because whoever it was should be brought to justice."
"He's passed on, it doesn't matter anymore," she repeated, her brown eyes filling with silvery tears.
"Why are you still here then?" he asked her, "Because I can help you—"
"You are unique," she muttered, "Maybe you could." He takes a step towards her. "But maybe not," she decides, and then flits out of view, to some other place in the apartment.
He sank into his armchair, wondering why he didn't just pretend she didn't exist. Why did he feel obligated to help her?
…
It was three months before he realized what she truly wanted to do. It had happened because Erza had left her worn copy of the Hunger Games behind, and he had seen the pain in Lucy's eyes as her hand delved through the thin paperback, unable to pick it up. He scowled, and had picked up the book.
"Sit down, or whatever it is you do," he instructed her, and for whatever reason she listened to him, floating wearily above the armchair like she was expecting him to yell at her.
Instead he sat in the opposite chair, and opened to the first page. "When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping." She had listened closely, and they had stayed like that the whole night, reading about killing children and such. Then the next day he got her Catching Fire, and then Mockingjay, and then they were moving onto Harry Potter and books he assumed were from her childhood, such as A Tale of Two Cities. She didn't even seem to mind that he sometimes stumbled over words, not very good at reading himself. She only listened with apt curiosity; sometimes making remarks on the stupid moves the characters made.
…
"Hey Luce!" he called everyday when he got home, a new book tucked under his arm and smile on his face. She would always appear in front of him, quietly inquiring about which book they would be reading today.
Today however, she was silent. She didn't answer his call, which puzzled him at once. What was wrong?
"I'm in my room," she finally responded, quietly, sadly. He wondered if this was an invitation to come in. He'd never been in there, as it was always locked. It was the one room Lucy would use all her powers to keep him away from, and while it puzzled him greatly he never would enter it without her permission.
Was this her giving him her permission?
He cautiously approached the locked door, which was painted a peeling green. The door was slightly ajar.
"Lucy?" he asked softly, "Lucy can I come in?"
"Yes," she said in a small broken voice.
He entered the room. It was small, perhaps the size of a large walk in closet. A bed was shoved up against the right wall, the sheets on rotted through, the aging wood looked like the slightest pressure would snap it in two. The floorboards groaned under his feet as he stepped in, and stared at the rest of the room's contents.
There was a broken mirror, which must have been mounted on the wall at some point, but in the many years since someone living had entered this room it had fallen. He avoided the shards as best he could. There was a small raggedy doll, resting against the wall like it was sitting, it's threaded mouth coming undone and dropping into a frown, it's button eyes falling out. An old-fashioned hairbrush was by the dresser, as well as a picture that was to faded for him to make out.
Lucy was floating in the middle of the room, and maybe it was just his imagination, but she seemed brighter in here—amongst all the broken items.
"This is where I died," she informed him softly, her brown eyes squeezing shut as she looked around the room. "You once asked me who killed me, how you could help me pass on."
"Yes."
"My Father killed me," she replied to his staring, "he said I reminded him to much of my Mother, even after the thirteen years of her being gone. I said something happy to him one day—I found her keys, her precious keys," she let out a broken sob, and he didn't question her about the keys, "and he picked up the knife and dragged me into my room by my hair. He said that he was doing my a favor, that if he didn't do this I would die like she had. So he stabbed me again and again here," she pointed to her chest.
"How can I help you—"
"Pass on?" she inquired, "move on from this world?" she paused, "I'm not ready to tell you that just that," she said weakly, "if you could please leave. I'll take a rain check on the reading."
He's gone, and she's looking after him with a sad look in her eyes.
"Soldier boy," she said to thin air, pressing a hand to her lips.
…
It's an odd day when she asks him about his experiences with warfare. They are in the middle of reading the Lord of The Rings (slowly he might add, the words are hard for him) and it's when two sides begin to clash that she asked him.
"Why did you go to war?" she asked him, her brown eyes wide and trustworthy. He took a deep breath.
"I wanted to mean something," he told her, something he had never even said to Erza. "I wanted to help someone, something." He laughed bitterly, "War isn't the place to help someone."
"When I was young," she said, her voice pausing for a moment when she realizes that she's forever young. "We were in the middle of war with Germany."
"World war two." He said in realization.
"World war what?"
"That's what they call it now," he hastily explained.
"Were you fighting in World War Three?" she prompted, and he vigorously shook his head.
"No," he answered, his mind flashing back to hotter days, full of running and the sounds of gun fire—"But I can't say my own experience was pleasant."
"We all have our dark sides," she mused. He looked up at her, at the way she was staring at the floor.
She didn't look dead, at least if you looked past the bloodstains and floating part. She looked very much alive, filled to the brink with emotions that were very alive. Someone like that couldn't truly be dead could they?
It had now been seven months since he moved into the house, and he already couldn't imagine life without her. Without this quiet, floating entity.
"Was war terrible?" she asked. He doesn't respond verbally just nods, staring at his shoes with far away eyes.
…
"Natsu you never leave your apartment," his friend Lisanna complained loudly to him over the phone one night, "come out with me. We'll catch a movie or something. It's not good to be cooped up in your house all the time."
"I don't think so Lis," he said his eyes trained on Lucy, who is patiently waiting for him to finish his 'chat' and get back to their book. "Now's not a good time."
"What's going on with you? Gray says you're different, and Levy caught you at a library! Why won't you talk to me?" she begged, and he closed his eyes tightly.
"It's my business," he warned her.
"You're not acting like yourself," she argued.
"Maybe I'm finding myself," he snapped, wrenching the phone away from his ear and hitting the hang up button. Lucy looks at him with sad brown eyes, the tearstains that can never fade from her cheeks somehow look fresher.
"You should go out with your friend," she said weakly.
"Don't worry about her," Natsu waved his hand absentmindedly, "You're my best friend. She's my childhood friend sure, but you get dibs." Lucy smiled, but it was smaller then it usually was when she smiled at him.
"Dibs," she repeated, and then seemed to make up her mind. "I trust you." He grinned.
"I'm glad," he said.
"I'm going to explain something to you," she said, "and it might not make much sense—but I'm going to explain it anyways."
"I'm listening."
"Ghosts like me are only left in the world because something terrible happened to them in their last moments, and they need to accomplish something in order to move on to somewhere in the great beyond. They need to find an object, or relay a message to a person—it can be anything. But most ghosts can't be seen. Only the person that meant the most to them in a previous life can see them."
"A previous life?" he repeated, his mouth dry.
"You knew me. You were my solider boy," she said, a tear welling in her eye. "He went off to fight in a war, just like you did. I never saw him again." No wonder she didn't scare him away.
"But I'm not him," he protested weakly.
"No, you're not," she shook her head, "You share the same face, and the same name, but he was different." She smiled then, a true smile. "but you're still important to me."
"What was your task?" he asked.
"Natsu," she closed her eyes, "there's a locket, hidden underneath the floorboards. It's what ties me to this world. Bring it to your counterpart, the other Natsu, the Natsu that's an old man now."
"But I'd lose you," he whispered, suddenly extremely selfish. She was his. He was hers. They weren't supposed to be separated.
"Natsu—"she smiled faintly, "We're not from the same worlds. Do this, and everything will go back to normal. You can go to your movies, and your friends will stop worrying. We were never meant to fit together." She flickers away, and he's left to as she asks, because he can't disobey her and keep her here forever.
…
It isn't that hard to find the old man—there are not that many Natsu's out there. He lives in an old retirement village, lying in a hospital bed with orange bottles full of pills piled left and right.
It is scary to think that this was Lucy's Natsu, his young beautiful Lucy, this heap of wrinkles and skin. Then the thought occurs to him that this is what he'll be like in seventy years, and he shudders.
"Who's there?" the old man struggles to sit upright.
"Don't move," Natsu said finally, and the man stopped, squinting at the boy in the doorway.
"Do I know you from somewhere?" the old man asked, and Natsu contemplated leaving. Turning around, gathering his locket and never coming back. Lucy would forgive him in time, and they would continue reading books forever.
"I'm no one important," he said, stepping forward, "I just brought something for you from your Lucy."
"My Lucy?" the old man croaked, "My Lucy died—"
"I found her locket in my apartment," Natsu said, bringing out the golden thing. It's beautiful, engraved with constellations and made of real gold, the chain thick and heavy. Inside are pictures, pictures of Lucy and the man who killed her, her Mother. A picture of her and himself from a different era. He knows now that he's looking at some distant relative, he's finally tracked back his ancestry. He was adopted, and it was easy to make the assumption he was the same person as this man.
"My Lucy," the man reached forward with shaking veined hands, and Natsu dropped the locket inside his cupped palm.
"She wanted you to have this," he said, closing his eyes and leaving before the old man could ask any questions.
The house is empty and quiet when he gets home.
…
"Natsu!" Erza complained as he nearly skid into her, "I know you're excited about this new library opening, but I can't understand why—"
"You never will," he said mysteriously, "and I brought you some coffee!" he shoved the paper cup in her hand.
"You didn't even like reading," she accused, "and now you've pentioned for there to be new library built. Odd name though," he looked up at the sign.
Heartfilia Library.
"I love the name," a voice said from behind him, and his eyes widened. Impossible. "And are you really the man who commissioned for this library to be built?" He turned around, a wide disbelieving grin filing his face.
She's there, standing, her eyes wide and innocent, wearing a skirt and T-shirt instead of a bloody nightgown, her hair brushed and made up.
"Lucy," she said, holding out her hand, "funny thing, my last name is Heartfilia too!"
"Nice to meet you," he smiled, "My name is Natsu Dragneel. Do you want me to give a tour?"