Warning: This was "inspired" by me feeling sad after re-watching Angel Beats. It is not based off of Angel Beats, but it HAS been inspired. So prepare for feels.
Also a lot of implied things. (Implied Death, Implied Reincarnation, Implied Soul Mates...) This is a story that's meaning will purely come from how you, the reader, interpret it.

At least, that's what I was aiming for.
Pairing: Nalu

The air was crisp and clear.

It was the purest atmosphere he had breathed. The wind blew gently through his hair, cooled his sore limbs and wafted the scent of grass and wildflowers through his nose. Water trickled nearby, tickling his ears with the sound. He couldn't see it, the thick foliage circling him blocked his sight, but that didn't bother him. Everything from the blue of the sky to the green of the ground served one purpose: to calm and relax him.

He knew nothing before his eyes had opened. No beginning and no end. There was just his own, singular existence. Time held no meaning. His body moved on instinct, bare feet scraping along the blades of grass, toes curling in the dirt which each step. The man who had never existed until that moment, took his time exploring the garden. Hummingbirds and bees flew by, drinking the nectar from sweet honeysuckle or rested upon the flowers his arms brushed by.

This was heaven. Though he had no clue what heaven was. This peace and comfort was his only way to describe it. He enjoyed it, following the sound of water, hoping to find its source. With each step his speed increased, noticing the ground beneath him was inclining. Soon, the man rushed through the thickets at a full run, unaware that his lack of fatigue was not normal, and that the outer edges of the garden dropped off at the end the higher up he moved.

There was no knowledge before he opened his eyes. Therefore, it was normal. Further and further he ran until he broke free of the thicket, barely noticing the way the twigs and leaves brushed along bare skin. Eyes widened at the open path before him, leading up to the top of quiet hill. One, lone tree stood upon it, looking over the small garden like a silent watcher.

One, dead tree- and a bench, occupied by a figure, gazing out into the distance. Golden hair shined under the bright sun and their head turned from the crunch of his steps. A woman with honey-brown eyes, wide and perplexed. She stood when he advanced, one arm grasping the other as she sucked her bottom lip. A nervous tick he noticed.

Adorable.

"Who are you?" She asked, voice a tiny whisper. "Why did you come here?"

At first he worried he wouldn't know how to respond, but he swiped his tongue across his lips and broke the dam of silence to answer. "I don't know. I'm just here. What about you?"

She sucked in a breath, unsatisfied. Looking back towards the expanse of endless plains and drop offs, the woman who had always been there, shut her eyes. "I thought I was the only one. It feels like an eternity since I opened my eyes."

He didn't know the depths of eternity, but her empty tone filled him with guilt. "Sorry I'm late, then."

"You should be. It's rude to keep a lady waiting."

A chuckle passed between them and he moved to join her at the bench. The stone looked old and cracked. It sent a chill through his skin. When she resumed her position, now next to him, she gave no reaction, as if the cold had soaked within her ages ago. He noticed small things about her: a shine to her eyes, the soft pink of her lips, the way the wind blew strands of gold across her face as she habitually attempted to blow them back.

They were new and familiar all at once. He resisted the urge to reach out and brush his fingers through the silken strands. A spark inside his mind said this was not the first time he had done so, but that couldn't be right. He hadn't existed until today.

"Will others come?" He asked after another eternity. She shrugged, casting her gaze to him with the barest hint of a smile.

"I don't think so." She said. "I feel this is our place."

A strange declaration for two people who had never met before, but after another second of forever, he realized it was true. This was their place. It would always be their place. There was nothing around to prove it, just a feeling of absolute certainty that settled in his gut.

He noticed light freckling on her shoulders, finding them like secret constellations and he grinned. "You have stars on your shoulders." It was a weird thing to say, but fitting. She was weird. She had always been weird. It was natural to say weird things with her. Her laugh came out like bells ringing from loud and clanging to low and airy.

"And you have," She began, reaching out to tap his cheeks, "two. adorable. dimples."

He recoiled and frowned in feigned offense, "I am not adorable!"

"Oh, I'm sorry," Her eyes gleamed in mischief, "I forgot, you'd rather be handsome!"

He balked, leaning away to feign a pensive expression. Handsome? Is that what he'd rather be called? The word 'badass' shot through his mind and he grinned, "Hmm, nah, but close enough!"

Her giggles uplifted him giving the sensation of floating on air. He could hear her laugh forever. Their laughter conjoined together as natural as the world around them. In that quiet peace, their chuckles slowly died as he nudged her shoulder with his. As normal as breathing, as existing. It took only a few seconds more for him to realize they were strangers acting like old friends. No, friends wasn't the right word…

"Are you sure you don't know me?" Her confusion matched his own. Considering his question, she licked her lips, one hand moving to brush strands of pale-red hair from his face. Their movements felt like an age old tale, unrecognized but subconsciously remembered.

"No," She said, with a sigh, "I'm sure I've never seen you until now, but I feel like.."

He finished with a light breath, "... like we've known each other forever."

"- but that's impossible," She waved him off, cheeks paling. It made no sense. There was no possibility for two people who knew nothing of themselves or each other to be this connected. Was there? Her head bowed in thought, considering his agreement, fingers fidgeting as she tangled them together. "... it… yeah, it really feels that way, though…"

He took her hand then. The urge was not ignored. Fingers touched familiar, slender digits, entwined and clasping tightly to one another. Their silence became thick and brooding. It fell between them like a fog, erasing the beautiful environment around them. There was just him and her, and the connection felt between them. He realized he loved her hand in his. The grip was strong despite its small size; they grounded him and gave him a sense of peace inside his soul he hadn't realized he was missing.

Empty pieces of himself clicked together as his eyes memorized her. Passed her freckled shoulders, down the swell of her breasts and smooth expanse of her stomach, down to her thighs and back up again, but stopped, zipping back to her hip. He had missed it at first, but the telltale sign of a scar puckered and discolored the skin on her stomach. His mouth ran dry.

"Is.. that ...new?" He croaked, finding it difficult to speak. She followed his gaze and flinched, withdrawing her hand to move away. Like a broken animal she curled into herself, gnawing her lip rapidly.

"Yes," She said, eyes glancing this way and that, "I mean no, I don't think it was there earlier, but it… no.. It's.. " Realization shone in her eyes, "it's why I'm here."

With each shift back, he followed, moving slow as shaking fingers reached out to pull her back. He clicked his tongue, voice dropping to a smooth baritone. After little resistance, she relented, sinking into his arms so he could examine the scar. Her back rested against him and hands moved to trail along the skin from beginning to end. He frowned.

"There's more." He whispered, finding older scars, more faded and difficult to see. One on her right, another on her arm, the faintest trace against her neck. Place to place, location to location and each new revelation made his lungs tighten, squeezing the air from him and he struggled to stay calm. Who? Who had hurt her like this?

How many times? How many lives?

It was like the light of the sun flashed into his own mind and he gasped. "Lucy, how many times have you died?" He did not stop to question the sudden use of her name, for that is what she was called, time and time again, in one form after another. This was Lucy and her body mapped out her history like a book.

She breathed in shaky gasps, memories of times that didn't exist flashed through her eyes and she twisted her torso, fingers trembling as they traced the planes of muscles on his chest- the touch electrified his nerves with each movement. Up to his neck and cheek, back down to the sharp concave caused by his hip bones. They slowed to a stop, centimeters from his skin, not touching, but just enough for him to feel and burn and yearn. He tore his gaze from Lucy's scars to watch her hand, belatedly realizing she had paused across his own angry, protruding scar.

"How many for you?" She asked when her eyes met his, bottom lip trembling. "I can't count the times, Natsu."

Natsu.

He felt a punch to his gut the way the name tore the air from him and stabbed his mind like a hundred daggers all at once. A shriek of his name, faded and lost, laughter, love, friends and family- a jolt of memories shot down his spine. All his, but not.

He was Natsu, but he wasn't. Just as she was Lucy, but she wasn't. He struggled to regain himself, realization crushing through his soul. He took Lucy closer into his embrace, nose burrowing into the curves of her neck and shoulder. He breathed her in while her hands sought desperately for purchase in his hair, bodies meshing close together in an attempt to become one, solitary figure.

He knew her. He knew her like the taste of his own tongue, the weight of his own limbs. Like breathing, she was every part of him as he was of her. They were separate and not and his memories of a time before he existed struck him until tears formed in his eyes.

"I couldn't save you." Natsu exhaled sharply, voice thick and rough, growling a pain he hadn't felt until that moment, but had felt a dozen or more times before.

"No." She disagreed, voice muffled. "We were unlucky."

He couldn't believe it, "Bad luck every time, Lucy?" His grip tightened while soft lips pressed against the back of his ear followed by consoling whispers.

"Not every time," She assured him, voice cracking from the multitude of lives pressing against them, "we never know what will happen in the next one."

"The next one?" It hadn't occurred to him that there was more beyond this plain. Existence and time felt elusive. In their current present, Natsu saw no future, only the woman in his arms and the truth. They were together. They were always together. Over and over again and this was their haven.

Lucy settled against him, sighing as they enjoyed the heat of their own bodies and the wind gently caressed them. The tree blossomed with pink, blue, purple and green petals, thriving with new life over their heads. Natsu could see now, the distance between their garden and many others. Some were connected through small arches and bridges, some were too distant to make out. Everyone of them floated in a large expanse, separated from each other. He didn't know what lie beyond his own, but he knew its thriving life and gentle breezes was something created between two souls in harmony.

"When does the next one come?" He asked while thumbing her scar again. Natsu didn't like it. The prospect of her cycling through another life, earning more scars to her skin. Scars meant she lived and learned, but suffered.

Lucy didn't answer. Her silence grew and her hands moved to cup his cheek, tilting his face towards the base of their little hil to the stream of water, cutting off the end of their little world. It weaved through the area and disappeared into the thick brambles of the garden Natsu had traversed through. He had forgotten his failed search for it until then. Dark gaze narrowed as he looked at its crystalline surface, watched the pebbles sparkle beneath the clear liquid, finally noticing the dirt path, faded as if it were not fully there, just on the stream's outer bank.

It was translucent. As if one wrong step would send you falling through it. "There?" He asked. They could walk through and be no more?

"Only if you're impatient." Lucy moved away, leaving a trace of cold air against his skin from the loss. "You can go at any time, this is just….. A place to rest."

Her voice trailed off as he watched her. It felt as if he had heard these words before like a mantra. How many times would they forget? What made them remember? Was it always him asking the questions? While Lucy marveled at her own knowledge coming to light, Natsu struggled with a need to never leave.

Why suffer if they could stay? He remembered the feel of her in his arms, more perfect than the garden around them. He could drink in her sweetness, become one with her and never leave. They could enjoy the sunlight and brilliant scents and sights for an eternity or more without pain or fear. The distance Lucy put between them was excruciating, a second feeling like forever, as if he were dying of thirst. He could be happy here, he knew this, and his hands reached for her arm, intending to draw her close once more.

Her hand firmly pushed his hand away and he stared, "I'm sorry, Natsu,"She whispered, hair slipping over her shoulders to form a curtain across her face. "I'm so sorry, but it's best you don't touch me anymore."

Natsu balked, "But that's… that's…! Lucy we've got forever here! What's wrong?!" Even in a sadness he could name for centuries, she was beautiful. Her hair continued its light glow as shoulders shook from tears he could not see. He attempted to gently touch her shoulder, but the result was the same, "Lucy, tell me what's going on?" Why so sudden?

"I've been waiting for you." She croaked, wiping her eyes to peek at him through her tresses. "I've been patient for so.. So very long…!"

His stomach twisted into knots, "I didn't mean to make ya' wait Lucy, I just-" Just what? What had he been doing? Fighting? Living? His memories told him they were joined, but what happened when one died without the other? Why couldn't he remember after? "I can make it up to ya since I'm here now, you don't have to be alone anymore-"

Natsu was silenced by Lucy lifting her hand between them, poised in the air for him to see- translucent like the path below them. "What-"

"I waited as long as I could." The simple truth held between them, but her tears were not lonely tears of anger. They were content, a sad acceptance, "- but this place cannot hold us here forever. It's a miracle you made it before I had to leave."

Lucy was fading. The transparency in her hand trailed up her arm like spiderwebs, criss-crossing further and further up until pieces of her faded away,. "No, but I just, I just got here, you can't leave yet!" Natsu wouldn't accept it. Couldn't accept it. Ignoring her pleas, he pulled her in, fingers moving along her arm, as if attempting to use friction to put her back together, "I haven't seen ya in so long after you... after you- Lucy!"

She caved, hands grasped his face to hold him still and her lips fit against his to say everything they hadn't the time to say. Lucy poured her emotions, her loneliness, her sadness, her peaceful and calm existence, and every memory coiled between them into her kiss. Natsu tasted tears and didn't know if they were hers or his. He clung to her, hands pressed against the small of her back, trying to will her to stay with him forever.

Her teeth tugged and pulled, he responded and drank everything she was willing to give, but the moment ended far too soon. Pulling back with swollen lips and tear stained cheeks, his other half smiled, a hand he could no longer see rested against his heart.

"Come find me." She said. "We have many more adventures to live before we're done and everyone is waiting."

Natsu's arms fell to his side. Lucy was gone.

In his own personal garden his soul came into being. In her own personal garden her soul met his. Together they lived on and on and on, building their Garden into a paradise they would never have to leave. The sky was still clear, but the tree above his head wilted once more. They weren't done yet.

He shook at the loss, cried into his hands and stained the ground with his tears. It felt like death, but then there was light, the little pathway shone before him, quietly waiting. He didn't have to wait. Natsu didn't have to stay. As he mourned the loss of her, he stood firm and glanced out to the many other gardens in the realm.

They needed a bridge, he decided. To visit the friends they made on the other side. Natsu would work on that next. Smiling through his tears, he walked towards the path with a spring in his step.

When he crossed the stream, birds chirped and quiet peace continued on, everything stayed as it always had, but his steps crunched in the dirt until there was none and right as he stepped off the edge-

He closed his eyes and knew nothing once more.

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