castles in the air
incinerate
She watches the paper go up in flames.
It isn't even that she's jealous—though she is, but it's more than that.
It's the way he flashes a brief smile at her before he runs off; it's the coldness of her bed when she wakes up gasping and choking and crying; it's the absence of his head in her lap on the train.
It's not always, and it's not much, but it's glaringly obvious, at least to her, and it hurts.
It hurts, because she's lonely.
Which is stupid, she fully recognizes, because it's not like he's abandoned her or anything; he would never do that. He still spends time with her, still bursts into her apartment uninvited and eats her refrigerator empty, still grabs her by the hand and pulls her along behind him on missions. He's still around, yes, but not as much.
And it honestly shouldn't be this big a deal, except that when she's with Levy or Erza or Gray or Mira or even Lisanna—because yes, they do spend time together and she does rather adore this white-haired girl who has come back from the dead—or just anyone who is not him, there's this horrible ache in her chest that begs her attention, demands that she get up and find him right this minute or so help me I'll just cave your chest in. And it's annoying, it really is, because she can't seem to do anything, or even just be herself without him around anymore.
It's pathetic.
The jealousy only makes it worse.
The flames lick higher and higher up the page, curling the blackened edges, turning her precious words into irreversible ashes.
She feels like she's burning up the same way.
She feels like the biggest bitch every time he says, "Hey Luce, Happy and I are gonna go fishing with Lis today, so I'll see ya tomorrow!" and wishes it were her he was spending time with.
She feels so fake every time she smiles widely and says, "Oh, have fun! Tell Lisanna I said hi!" when she really wants to frown and ask him to stay.
She's so selfish.
And she can't help it.
It's not like he'd ever return her feelings anyway; he simply doesn't think about those kinds of things. Somehow, she doubts that he'll ever feel that way about anyone. Which is why she's okay just being his best friend.
The problem is that she's not anymore.
As time passes, she can see how much Natsu and Lisanna are reconnecting. They have inside jokes built on inside jokes from their childhood, memories upon happy memories to think about together ad though he still spends time with Lucy, that time slowly but surely wanes away.
Until she's simply another guild member to him.
He doesn't do it on purpose, of course, because that's not him at all, but it still bothers her when he bursts into her room two hours late to go fishing or shopping because he "lost track of time with Lisanna." Or when he constantly checks the time around her and when she asks if he's busy, he apologizes profusely ad admits that he has plans with Lisanna and could he leave early to get ready?
It's exhausting to smile, and smile, and smile, and smile and smile and smile and smileandsmileand…
She's tired.
Tired of having to excuse herself from the guild when she remembers that Natsu and Happy and Lisanna are on a mission even though she desperately needs rent money and she swears she asked him last week if he would go on a mission with her this week. Tired of escaping to the bathroom to wash her face and get rid of any evidence of tears in her eyes. Tired of the heavy ache in her chest that only grows tighter and makes it hard to breathe and thumping and thumping and thumping doesn't make it any better.
When she wakes up in the middle of the night, veritably sobbing her heart out and clawing at her chest as if she can tear it apart and make room for her lungs to expand again, when the nightmares crowd in on her and she can't even hear herself screaming anymore, when he forgets to ask her how she's been and she almost lets herself break down right then and there in the middle of the whole fucking guild, she knows.
That she's completely in love with him and guess what? She can't even call herself his best friend anymore.
Because though he never forgets her, the number of days between the last time she's spent any meaningful time with him and the next grow ever more with each passing day, and sometimes when she's alone at home, she tries to imagine his face, his voice, his brightness, and she can't. There was a time before when she could have conversations with the Natsu in her mind but now—now she has difficulty remembering the laugh wrinkles by the corners of his eyes, the shape of the scar of his neck, and—did he get a haircut or has his hair always been that short?
She feels like the moment she met Natsu that fateful day in Hargeon, he lit her on fire and his presence was the only thing that kept her from burning away in it. Now that he's gone more often than not—well, now she feels exactly like the novel she's set to fire, the novel that she'd slaved away at for days, months, years, only for it to end up as ashes on the wind because Natsu was written all over it and she could hardly bring herself to look at it anymore, much less write for it.
So it burns and burns and burns her and the ache in her chest balloons into a magnificent explosion that leaves her feeling completely and utterly hollow. She goes down by the river and sprinkles the ashes of her once-upon-a-time into the air and across the water and hopes that now she's been burned to nothing in his fire, maybe one day she'll feel alive again.
For now, she tries to remember what it means to breathe.
© Copyright 2015 by The Siege
