Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.
Pairing(s): Natsu Dragneal x Zeref
WARNINGS: Slight AU, reincarnation, Shounan ai (boy/boy pairing); you have been warned so don't like, don't read
Dreaming of Dragons
By V. Shalyr
3.
"I knew who you were because it wasn't the first time we'd met, or it was but it also sort of wasn't." Natsu sighed and grumbled a bit about how finding the right words was way harder than it ought to be. "I'm not clear on the details myself, but I supposed the gist of it is that people's souls don't die when their bodies do. Sometimes, they move on to who knows where. Sometimes, they hang around as ghosts. And sometimes, they get reborn. It sounds stupid when you say it out loud, but I knew you before you were born in the world you're in now."
He paused for a moment to let the boy digest this information. Zeref wasn't really that surprised. He'd come to a similar conclusion after sorting through the bits and pieces of information scattered throughout their long association with one another.
"You were... very important to me," the dragon continued then paused again as though considering what to include and what to omit.
"I've told you about the guild and how we get into a lot of dangerous business with Dark Guilds?"
Zeref nodded.
"Well, some of it got really serious at times, but we always made it through okay. People got hurt and things got destroyed, but people heal and places can be rebuilt. Maybe we got too used to things always working out in the end. Maybe we got complacent, I don't know. Maybe I just don't want to believe that what happened was inevitable. I never did care for the whole fate idea. That was really more your thing."
Fate. Huh, Zeref really hadn't given the concept much thought up to this point. Although from their previous conversations, he had to admit that he was probably more inclined to be fatalistic than Natsu.
"At first, we thought it was more or less the usual, you know, a bunch of dark wizards with too much power and not enough sense. But there were so many of them. Hell, I'd guess practically all the Dark Guilds left were involved in one way or another. They tried to rewrite history and everything was falling apart—space and time and that sort of thing. You ever seen a whole city just crumble into dust? Whole villages would shift places during the night or disappear entirely. No one got much sleep because we never knew who was still going to be there when we woke up. It got pretty bad, especially with how powerful many of their leaders were, but we—us and some of our friends—managed to stop them and you put the world back together the right way. Only... you died doing it."
The dragon's tail lashed in agitation.
"I was angry with you for running off and dying on me. I was the one who found you, but you were so far gone by then that I don't think you even recognized me. It was horrible, although I'm still glad it was me and not somebody else. And the last thing you said to me was—"tell Natsu I'm sorry. I'll be back, I promise. Look for me"..."
Zeref was no longer looking at the landscape of mountains around them. Instead, his gaze had turned inward. He was trying to picture the events as Natsu described them, trying to imagine what it would feel like to live in a world that was so unstable, a world where the very fabric of time and space was unraveling. Even though Natsu left out a lot of details, Zeref found his own mind filling them in—terrified people traveling in groups along crowded roads, trying to find somewhere that wasn't being affected by the magic. Except that there was no such place, not with a spell of such magnitude. He could taste the acrid bitterness of their fear in his mouth, and it made him feel sick. His heart ached with a sadness so intense that he supposed it should probably be called grief. Had he really felt all this back then? The feelings felt like his, but also like he'd dreamed them or experienced them a long, long time ago.
"It wasn't supposed to happen. You were practically the most powerful wizard who ever lived. I was so angry with myself for letting it happen, and maybe a little upset with you too. Your will to live was always a bit weak, and I can't help but wonder if things would have gone differently if we'd met a bit earlier and had more time."
"No matter how powerful a wizard is, there will alwahs be a more powerful force out there somewhere."
"Yeah, that sounds like something you'd say."
For a long time after that, neither of them spoke, each lost in his own thoughts. There was still a great deal that had not been said, but it was enough to be getting along with. Certainly more than enough to think about for awhile.
Then Zeref asked, "So what now?"
"Now, you know that you've eventually got a few different choices," Natsu said, quiet and serious. "You can stay here, go on living the life you have right now, or you could come with me and stay in my world. Or maybe we could travel. No one said it has to be one or the other. You don't have to decide now. In fact, you probably shouldn't decide until you've at least graduated from that school you told me about. You can give me an answer then."
"And you? What would all that mean for you?"
The dragon was silent for so long that Zeref thought he wasn't going to answer.
Then he said simply, "I don't know. I suppose it'll depend."
And the statement sounded both pensive and maybe a little sad.
Zeref's own mood turned melancholy in response, and he turned his head to rest his cheek against warm—almost hot—armor-like scales.
.
Part of Natsu didn't want to remember the details of that day that felt like an eternity ago even though it had been much more recent than that, but another part of him didn't want to let it go—couldn't bear the thought of forgetting even one small detail. It had been the single worst day of his entire life, and even though there wasn't really anything he could have done differently and it wasn't his fault, he couldn't help but feel as though that day had been a monumental failure. The one time he had utterly failed to protect something precious to him, and the one time things had not worked out right in the end.
Victory had never tasted so bitter.
He had cremated the body before anyone else could find them. He hadn't been able to stand the thought of anyone else seeing the other boy that way, and besides, there were probably plenty of dark wizards who would love to get their hands on the remains. Then the Dragon Slayer had walked off into the woods and kept on walking until he felt able to go back and deal with people again without hurting anyone or destroying anything. It was the first time he'd ever seen someone close to him die right in front of his eyes, and it had hurt a lot more than he'd imagined because he had never let himself imagine it before.
It didn't help that it had been the one person in the world he thought he'd never have to worry about losing.
He hadn't paid much attention to the aftermath of the incident. Those main culprits who hadn't died during the event had been placed in prison; if any of them had appeared before him then, Natsu was sure he would have killed them, and he wasn't at all sure that he wouldn't have burned the world to ashes to do it.
For awhile, he couldn't listen to anyone talk about "Zeref" or "the Black Wizard". Mostly, it was because so much of it was bad. The dark wizard had spent most of his life in hiding. All most people would ever know about him were old rumors and imagined tales of black magic and curses and death. People would continue to blame him for all the terrible things that had happened in history, whether he had actually been involved or not. Such talk had always annoyed Natsu to some extent after he'd gotten to know the Black Wizard himself, but Zeref had stopped caring a long time ago and his indifference made it easy for Natsu to ignore the poisonous words and hateful speculations. Now that he was gone, such talk tended to provoke some borderline murderous feelings in the Dragon Slayer. He had had to take a break from any Dark Guild related jobs after very nearly massacring the last one to cross his path.
It was Gajeel who tentatively brought up the idea of reincarnation, probably prompted by Levy. The Rune Wizard exerted a lot of influence these days over her husband, and she was more likely to have thought of this explanation for Zeref's parting words to him than the other Dragon Slayer. In addition to that, it was possible that Gajeel sympathized since Levy had been one of the people to temporarily disappear as a result of the time distortion.
Natsu hadn't known what to make of the idea, to be honest. It would fit the words, but he wasn't quite sure he believed it could happen and he didn't know how he'd find him if it did or how similar or different his partner would be. But in the end, he'd set aside his doubts and decided to just believe that Zeref had known what he was talking about because he usually did and was almost never wrong.
"Look for me," his partner had said.
And so Natsu had looked. He'd looked everywhere he could, searched every corner of the kingdom and then the other kingdoms of Earth Land. And when that hadn't worked, he looked farther, made a trip to Edolas and learned everything he could about other dimensions and other worlds. His friends helped where they could, glad that he had something more constructive to pour his excessive energy and determination into. No one dared suggest to him that it was futile, trying to find one person in all the possible universes out there. Zeref had always had faith in him, a strong and unshakable faith that Natsu had sometimes wondered about but always treasured, and Natsu refused to give up.
And unlike his search for his adopted father, his search for his partner had paid off.
"Some of my friends said that maybe this," he flicked the tip of his tail to indicate the both of them, "might have been a good thing. You're getting a chance to live a normal childhood, more or less. A chance to start over without all that history that you could never quite leave behind."
Natsu could see the logic in this suggestion now, but he had sent the first person to suggest such a thing to him to the hospital. He probably owed that person an apology, but he'd been in such a blind rage at the implication that Zeref's death could have been desirable in any way that he couldn't remember who it had been anymore.
"There used to always be this shadow in your eyes even when you were happy, like happiness was something you didn't feel you could allow yourself."
You couldn't really fix a person, not completely. Not when the wounds ran that deep, and perhaps especially not when he'd really been breaking from the inside out and not the outside in. Nothing could destroy a person as thoroughly as self loathing. You could put the pieces together, but there would always be scars.
"That isn't there anymore, and I'm glad for that at least. You smile and laugh a lot more easily too. But at the same time..."
At the same time, Natsu couldn't help feeling like he'd let him down back then. It didn't matter that it wasn't his fault or that Zeref himself would have disagreed. It didn't matter that nobody thought anyone could have saved him, not even the one healer they had. When Natsu thought about that day, he still felt an almost overwhelming sense of guilt and loss.
The dragon turned his head to look at the boy when he stood up and made his way around in front of him. The child didn't say anything, just put his arms as far as they would go around the dragon's neck—which wasn't really far at all—and turned his face into his chest. No words came from the boy, but the gesture spoke of understanding and Natsu thought that Zeref had always had a wise soul—always been the kind of person who listened and thought and understood. Natsu badly wanted to hold him, but Zeref was still so young—too young—and the Dragon Slayer was afraid that he might do something he shouldn't if he let himself do even that much. So instead of transforming, he folded his wings forward to shield out the rest of the world, to keep at bay anything and everything that might harm this tiny, fragile creature that was an ordinary, human child. And he swore to himself silently that this time... this time, he wouldn't let anything take him away.
TBC...
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