Zeref had a strong sense of déjà vu as he made his way down to the basement, feeling slightly nervous. Every day for the past seven years he had come down here to check up on his brother, whose condition hadn't changed a bit. Natsu's condition emulated the one from four hundred years ago when he had been asleep for twenty one years (Zeref would tell himself that Natsu was simply sleeping, not dead) and anxiety was beginning to take over Zeref's mind. What if Natsu never recovered and he'll never see him again? Zeref hated that thought that kept going through his mind for four hundred years.
The basement hadn't changed since the last time he was down here: the bookshelves were lined neatly against the walls, the books all perfectly placed in alphabetical order; the floor was tidy and nothing was out of place; and despite the walls and ceiling being a bit damp they were in a perfect condition. Zeref was so messed up in the head due to the curse that one day he'll act as if he had OCD and make everything perfect but the next thing he knew he was throwing everything onto the ground, messing up the perfection it had been in. But looking at the state the basement was in now, the way it had been for seven years, it seemed that the key for Zeref' to control his contradicting thoughts was Natsu himself.
Natsu was the key to Zeref's sanity.
Natsu was still asleep in the lacrima but at least his condition had improved in seven years: his skin, which had taken a pale complexion after he was put into the lacrima, was beginning to regain its tan complexion; the black circles under his eyes were almost almost cleared up; and the wound on his leg was almost completely healed.
"Is it time for you to wake up now, little brother?" Zeref questioned, placing a hand on the lacrima crystal and a serene look passing over his face as he gazed at Natsu's sleeping face. Zeref almost missed the twitch of Natsu's eyebrows but thankfully he noticed. Natsu's eyelids fluttered before his eyes slowly opened, revealing his onyx eyes which were lacking the light that always burned brightly behind them. Now they were just dull, blank.
"Hey, Natsu," Zeref whispered, pushing his hands into the lacrima and grabbing Natsu's arms and pulled him out. Natsu blinked his eyes a couple of times, the black spots disappearing as his eyes adjusted to the light and stared up at Zeref, not recognising him.
Zeref carried Natsu to the black lounge and placed him onto it and knelt by Natsu head, scanning his face. Natsu looked disorientated to say the least.
"Do you know who I am?" Zeref asked, running his hand through Natsu's hair. Natsu closed his eyes and leaned into the gentle hand movements. It looked as if time had not turned in the lacrima because Natsu still looked eighteen even though he should be twenty five (even though his actual age is four hundred and thirty).
Natsu shook his head no in response to Zeref's question, his hands folded over his chest and fingering the muffler around his neck. Zeref sighed, rubbing his temples. It was like Natsu's resurrection all over again.
"I'm Zeref Dragneel, I'm your older brother," Zeref explained.
"Ze ... ref Drag ... neel?" Natsu repeated, stretching the symbols as if he were tasting the name on his tongue.
"Yes, and your name is Natsu Dragneel," Zeref explained. "But people know you as Salamander."
Natsu looked away from Zeref and started playing with the muffler around his neck, a frown forming on his face as the soft but scaly feeling caressed his fingertips.
"You got that muffler from your foster father Igneel." Zeref pulled on the muffler to show Natsu what he was talking about. "Do you remember Igneel? He was a fire dragon."
Natsu wracked his brain for any memory of a fire dragon but came up blank. The only thing that he came up with was a girl with golden hair and brown eyes and the name Lucy. He didn't know this Lucy was.
"No ... I don't ..." Natsu sighed.
"It seems that you have lost all your memories," Zeref sighed, expecting that. Even though I'm the one responsible for taking them. "But don't worry Natsu: the most important thing is to keep moving forward, not look back at a past you can't remember. Come here, can you stand?"
Natsu shrugged but slowly moved his legs over to the edge of the couch, slowly lowering his feet to the ground, still in a lying position. Taking a deep breath Natsu pushed himself into a sitting position and pushed himself up, his legs wobbling dangerously. Zeref held Natsu's shoulders to keep him steady, and when it seemed like Natsu wasn't going to fall over he slowly removed his hands from his brother's shoulders and stepped back, watching Natsu like a hawk to see if Natsu would loose his balance and fall over, but was glade to see that he didn't. In fact Natsu looked really steady.
"Can you walk?" Zeref asked.
Once again Natsu shrugged and took a step forward. It seemed to be OK but when he took a step with his other leg, the one with the not-quite-healed wound on it, a searing pain shot up his leg, feeling like a thousand knives were being stabbed into his leg and pulled upwards. Natsu shrieked and almost fell over backwards but Zeref caught him before he did more damage to himself.
Carefully Zeref laid Natsu down onto his back on the lounge again and expected the seven-year-old wound.
"The poison has completely left your system but the wound is still there," Zeref explained. He stood up and left the basement, probably to fetch some first aid Natsu guessed.
Natsu looked around, trying to remember something, anything. But like last time the only thing he came up with was the girl and the name Lucy. Natsu closed his eyes. Whenever he thought of the girl and the name a warm and fuzzy feeling filled his chest, feeling like butterflies were fluttering against his heart. Even though Natsu felt the feeling strong and clear, he did not know what it was.
"Lucy ..." Natsu whispered. He felt something warm and wet slide down his cheek. He bought his hand up to his eye and wiped the tears that were pooling in his eyes. Why was the name causing him to cry like this?
"Natsu," Zeref's gentle voice breaks him from his crying-induced thoughts. Natsu looked over to see Zeref standing beside a woman with violet hair and eyes the same shade. She was wearing a violet knee-high dress with a black stuttered belt with a piece of pink cloth across her hip with a key ring with a few silver keys connected to it.
"Emperor Spriggan, is this the boy who was asleep in the lacrima for seven years?" the woman asked.
"Yes, this is my brother Natsu," Zeref explained. "Natsu, this is Violet. She's a Celestial Wizard with a Celestial Spirit that can heal any wound."
Natsu didn't know what a wizard or a Celestial Spirit was but he watched as Violet took a key off the key chain.
"Open, Gate of the Healer: Therapeftís!"
A young girl with black hair and eyes wearing a nurse's outfit materialised out of nowhere, her arms behind her back and her head tilted to the side.
"Therapeftís, heal this young man please," Violet says gently to the spirit, who nodded and walked over to Natsu. Natsu gulped as the busty spirit placed her hands on his leg. Natsu felt a warm, tingling sensation go up his leg, healing the wound until only a scar was left. Natsu felt drowsy as the spirit's magic worked on him and before he knew it he was asleep.
"I've healed the wound mistress, but it's best if he doesn't put too much pressure on himself," Therapeftís says, spinning around in a salute.
"Thank you Therapeftís," Violet extolled the spirit as Therapeftís closed her gate and went back to the Spirit World. Violet frowned at the sleeping Natsu, who looked troubled even in his sleep. "That boy doesn't look well Spriggan, what exactly happened to him?"
"Nothing of your concern Violet," Zeref says, walking over to Natsu. "You may leave now."
Violet watched Zeref with a weary eye as he hauled Natsu up off the couch and left the basement, leaving Violet staring at the lacrima, which had started to glow with a faint pink colour.
"Has it really been seven years?" Erza Scarlet asked, sounding bewildered at what the Fairy Tail guild members had just told the members that had been missing for seven years.
The Fairy Tail members that had been at the S-Class trials had woken up to find part of Tenrou Island destroyed and no sign of Acnologia. They thought that only a couple minutes or hours had passed. They had looked around, making sure that the others were OK, and realised that a certain Dragon Slayer was missing. Wendy and Gajeel had told them that Natsu had been with them when they were attacking the black dragon and that he had been knocked out with the rest of them, so they had assumed that he woken up first and had gone back to the guild.
"You've been missing for seven years, we all thought you were dead," Bisca explains sadly, holding Alvack's hand. Lucy was surprised to learn that they were now married with a child.
"So, where's Natsu?" Lucy asked, excited to see how Natsu would look now. She pictured Natsu in her mind, still wearing the same vest, waistcoat, trousers and scarf that he wore seven years ago but with his salmon hair slightly longer, his face more mature, his face lined with a faint stubble and his body more muscular and hotter than it was.
Lucy's cheeks heated up at the picture of a seven years older version of Natsu that she had conjured up in her mind, a Natsu that could easily win the sexiest Dragon Slayer alive. Stuff that, he'll win the sexiest man alive if he looked like that.
No Lucy, do not think like that! Lucy scolded herself. Do not become a Juvia! It was true that Lucy started having feelings for the fiery Dragon Slayer since that time he saved her when she jumped off the tower when Phantom Lord kidnapped her. Whenever Lucy woke up to find the Dragon Slayer in her bed she used to gaze at him before freaking out and kicking him out of the bed and demanded for him to leave, when truthfully she didn't want him to and stay with her a little while longer. But it was a shame that Happy would be with him every time and she couldn't take the cat's teasing of 'you loooooove him' every time.
Lucy only started to accept her feelings for Natsu as more than friendship when they went to Edolas and when she saw how her Edolas counterpart Lucy Ashley treated Natsu's counterpart Natsu Dragion. That time when Dragion drove them to the Kingdom - seeing Natsu driving a car without getting motion sickness had been a surprise to Lucy even though it hadn't exactly been 'her' Natsu - and when Dragion acted afraid of her, and when she realised that Ashley must abuse him, she had known deep down that she - as well as her counterpart - had feelings for their Natsu, trying to cover it up with violence towards them each time Ashley used her torture techniques on Dragion and when Lucy would kick Natsu every time he was in her house or her bed.
"Natsu's not here," Macao says, breaking Lucy out of her thoughts. "I thought that since he went on the S-Class trials with you all, he would still be with you."
"No, when we all woke up Natsu wasn't there with us," Erza explains. "We assumed that because we thought only a couple of minutes or hours had passed when we woke up Natsu would have recovered and gone back to the guild."
"Yeah, there would have been a slight problem with that: Natsu-Nii wouldn't be able to ride on the boat because of his motion sickness," Romeo pointed out.
After Romeo's words sunk in the guild were left in shock, unable to move or speak. Natsu was missing. No, it can't be true. Lucy refused to believe it. She started to shake her head wildly, her blonde hair whipping around her face as tears threatened to spill. Natsu was not missing, he's somewhere probably eating everything a restaurant gave him. There was no way that Fairy Tail's Salamander was missing - and there was no way possible that he was dead, I refuse to believe it! Lucy thought, grabbing her head and fighting the tears that had almost won the battle of not crying.
"Lucy, you're probably right," Erza says gently, placing a hand on the other girl's shoulder. "All we know Natsu could be somewhere eating everything a restaurant was giving him."
Lucy than realised that she had said everything she was thinking out loud without realising it. But Lucy still refused to cry.
"Everyone," Erza calls out in her authority voice, spinning around to face all of Fairy Tail. "We are going to go find Natsu! Everyone who are willing to search day and night will go! This is an order!"
The guild was unusually quiet without Natsu, the joyful atmosphere that he bought everywhere with him had died without the destructive Dragon Slayer. Nearly the entire guild - minus Makarov, who had locked himself away; Macao, who was the new guild master and couldn't leave; and Team Natsu, who were too sad to go out anywhere - had gone out to search for Natsu. Lucy and Happy were the worst out of them all, Lucy because everyone knew she was in love with Natsu even though she denied it and because Natsu was like a father to Happy.
Everyone watched as Carla walked up to Happy, a sympathetic look on her face. If it had been Wendy who went missing, the girl who was like Carla's mother even though Carla was the mother figure between the two, she would have been feeling the same as Happy was feeling at the moment.
"Happy ..." Carla sighed. Happy looked up at the white exceed, tears running down his face. He watched as Carla sat down in front of him and asked, "can I have a fish, please?"
Carla's request caused Happy to start crying tears of sadness and joy. Sadness because of Natsu and joy because Carla had finally excepted his fish and even went as far as ask for one. Happy took a fish out of his green rucksack and handed it to Carla, who took it with a gentle smile on her face and took a bite from it.
Lucy looked away, a searing jealousy coming up that surprised her towards the blue cat. She knew that Happy was head over heels for the white cat - everyone knew it - and every time he offered some fish to Carla she always rejected it. But now Carla was excepting the fish and now Happy was happy because his love was finally giving him a shot.
Lucy suddenly became jealous of the others in the guild. Bisca and Alvarek were together and married; even though Gray didn't like her back Juvia still had her 'Gray-Sama' with her and he wasn't lost; it was obvious that Elfman and Evergreen liked each other and they were still together; and even Erza and Jellal, Erza knew that Jellal was OK. The guild members had their loves and they weren't lost.
Before she knew it Lucy was running out of the guild, still fighting the tears that were threatening to fall harder.
"Lucy-San!" Wendy shouted, starting to go after her.
"Let her go Child," Carla sighed. "Leave her to herself."
Wendy sighed and let Lucy go like Carla told her to. She just hoped Lucy wouldn't do anything rash.
Lucy didn't know where she was going but somehow ended up at her apartment. As she walked along the wall next to the water she thought about all the times she had come home to find Natsu and Happy in her room eating all her food. Even while thinking about Natsu Lucy still didn't cry, refusing to believe that Natsu was truly gone.
Lucy was broken out of her thoughts when she saw her strict landlady standing at her door, hands on her hips and scowling at her. Lucy gulped with how nervous she was.
"So, I see you've returned safe and sound," her landlady says sarcastically. "But your rent is overdue - by seven years! That's 5,880,000J! You will not be stepping foot in this apartment until you've paid your rent!"
Forty minutes later Lucy sat at the bar in the guild, willowing in her despair. Not only was the love of her life missing but she was homeless until she paid off her rent, which would take her forever. With Natsu missing she wouldn't be able to go on missions. This reminded her of that time her father came to her asking for money because he had lost everything. Thinking about her father she decided she'll go see him after seven years.
"Erza, I'm going to go visit my father," Lucy tells Erza who was eating strawberry cake beside her. Erza nodded and Lucy left, going to the Love and Lucky guild where her parents had met.
"Hello, I'm her to see Jude Heartfilia," Lucy says to the woman at the front desk.
"You're Jude's daughter?" the woman asked. Lucy nodded in response. "You haven't heard?"
Lucy begun to frown at the woman's words. "Huh?"
"Jude Heartfilia passed away about a month ago. It was a tragic loss."
Lucy's mind went numb as she left, the news of her father's death putting her into shock. First Natsu and now her father? She was having the worst day of her life.
Lucy sat at her parents' graves, staring into space. Everything that she had bottled up inside, her mother's death seven - now fourteen - years ago, the news of her father's death and Natsu all exploded out of her, tears running down her face as she sobbed into her arms, her shoulders trembling.
After what felt like an eternity the tears finally dried out and Lucy was left staring at the graves standing side-by-side, the graves of her mother and father. Lucy felt numb inside, as if the pain from the past was too strong and she couldn't feel anymore. However as she stared at her father's grave, thinking about how much she had hated him, she had the sudden thought that she had not been crying for him or her mother at all.
She had only been crying for Natsu.
"Natsu ..." Lucy whispered, a lone tear escaping and rolling down her already wet cheek. "Where are you?"
At Alvarez Natsu was sitting in the courtyard, thinking about the girl in his memory. He somehow knew that the girl was of some importance to him. Was the strange fuzzy feeling in his chest the reason? Even the thought of a Celestial Wizard bought that feeling up and he didn't even know what it meant.
"Lucy ... who are you?" Natsu whispered.
"What have we got here?" a new voice laughs. Natsu looked up to see two shady-looking men standing in front of him, sneering. One was only wearing black trousers similar to Natsu's with a scar over his eye, a bold head and green eyes. The other one had a shaved head except for some black hair going from the middle and into a ponytail, brown eyes and was wearing a black vest with a high-opened collar and brown pants. Both men had an insignia of a half moon with a snake curled around it, the bold man had a blue one on his left shoulder and the other one had a green one on his left hand.
"Look at the insignia on his shoulder Bruce," the black haired man says, pointing to Natsu's arm. "He's from Fairy Tail."
Natsu didn't know what a 'Fairy Tail' was but he felt nervous at the face both men were giving him. The bold one, Bruce, had a bloodthirsty look on his face as he looked Natsu up and down.
"I know you, you're Salamander," Bruce says. "I wonder what you're doing here in Alvarez. What do you say Aaron? Should we have some 'fun' with Salamander?"
"I agree Bruce," Aaron sniggered. "Do your thing Brucey."
Before Natsu could do or say anything Bruce had his hands around his throat, squeezing his hands so hard Natsu couldn't breathe. Natsu's hands flew to Bruce's hands, trying to pull his hands away from his neck, but Bruce was far too strong. Black spots danced around Natsu's vision a he tried to pull Bruce's hands off him and at the same time tried to get air into his lungs, but Bruce was crushing his windpipe, making it hard to breathe.
Bruce grunted in frustration as Natsu was hard to put into unconsciousness. The rumours were right: Salamander was tough. He had to use a little trick to put him into unconsciousness.
"Air-Make: Bubble!"
A white magic circle formed around Natsu's neck and a bubble made out of air formed around Natsu's head. Bruce manipulated the air bubble to pull all of the oxygen outside of the bubble, and the sudden lack of air caused Natsu's face to go blue. And finally he went unconscious, flopping against Bruce.
"Hehe, I have so much ideas what we can do to Salamander," Aaron chuckled, turning away.
"I'm right with you Brother," Bruce sneers, flinging Natsu over his shoulder.
They started laughing as they went back to their guild, the dark guild Snake Moon.