Cold puffs of breath could be easily be seen on this cold freezing night. Any sane person would have questioned what a schoolgirl was doing out at eleven at night in the more than suspicious neighborhood. Plugging my headphones into the chipped red iPod, I started the tedious walk back to my little apartment. We faced it all. School had not been kind to me today. Or any other day really. If Erza hadn't been there with her blood stained metal pipe, I could have been in serious trouble; the students from Sabertooth Academy had a habit of terrorizing me on a daily basis. They we're lucky, if Natsu had shown up Sabertooth would be casts. Or in a coma. Remember when we.. Natsu Dragneel. We've been in each others lives since either of us could remember. My mother had died on the same day that Natsu's father disappeared, but this was only the beginning of our involvement with each other. Teachers, it seemed, loved to pair us up, the rambunctious duo, for projects and while our relationship had not started of as very friendly, we eventually became something that went farther than just partners in crime. Way before we began as friends, we were enemies, always competing for the title of the best fighter in school and picking a fight with one another; that is until one fight changed everything between us. Feeling the nostalgia on my expression I dwelled on memories of fire and constellations.
**A nine year old Natsu stared down the faces of five middle schoolers that he dared to pick a fight with. Third time this week. Already he was broken and bleeding from his nose and sprawled out onto his stomach. Glancing over the wall I couldn't do anything but snicker at his stupidity. Know your enemy and figure out how to defeat him in a single blow. Words that had been drilled into my skull a thousand times over. Just as I turned my head to leave, I heard him speak in a way that chilled me to the bone. "Take it back. All of it." It was not the cocky tone he always seemed to adopt when I walked past him. Nor the meek voice we shared when Erza was around. No. His voice had changed into something gruff and commanding. And a bit intimidating. Like the dragons he always drew. I don't know why I hesitated when I did or why I hid in the bushes to get a better look. I heard a wail of pain and burst into slight giggles when Natsu bit his attackers leg. Laughter was replaced with growing anger as the boy kicked his face away into the tree stump I was mere feet from. The scaled scarf he wore was sprinkled with red. The smell of blood overloaded my olfactory senses, consuming everything and pulled me back to a world of nightmares. "Take it back. It's not funny." Rubbing the back of his head, he got up and swayed unsteadily on his feet. Blood ran down from a wound above his eye, blinding him. He's done for, I thought. "If you lost your mom, you wouldn't be saying that kind of stuff!" I froze. My mom had died a few days ago, had coughed up stick red and choked to death on her own blood. Ever since then, the people I had called friends and comrades decided that it was alright to tease me about it; they tried to make me cry. A member of the Heartfilia family does not show weakness to others, so I swallowed my tears and continued on as if nothing had happened..He couldn't be talking about..me? Could he? Just the thought made an unfamiliar tingling spread across my face. "You made Lucy cry! I won't forgive you for that!" Leaping up in a hurry, he managed to punch two of them, one on the nose and the other dangerously close to his solar plexus. Still there were five adolescent boys who were much stronger than he was. I could only watch in what I slowly recognized as dread and even a trickle of fear for the boy who was fighting for a girl he barley knew.**
Natsu and I had this unexplainable habit of always getting into brawls,even now. It had gotten so bad that the both of us carried emergency aid kits in case the other was hurt. More than once, I bandaged up some limb of Natsu's while he applied butterfly bandages on the extensive cuts on my face. My limbs screamed in agony at the most recent encounter, an awkwardly built, yet heavily set guy had been bullying Wendy, a dear friend of mine. Instead of settling the issue with words, I punched him, an ugly welt would be on his cheek tomorrow and just the thought makes me grin. I pulled up the red scarf I wore, a gift from Natsu on my eleventh birthday. It smelled like him still, everything he ever gave me smelled like he did; like sunshine and cinnamon. God I was weird; he's my best friend not my freaking boyfriend! But still.. those thoughts never leave my mind, the possibility that we could be something more than this. More than comrades in a fight, more than the best friends we had been for years now. More than I have ever hoped for in my life.