CHAPTER 51: TRIALS 2/2


Natsu had never taken skooma, but he imagined it felt like this.

Cold sweat broke on his numb, trembling palms. He could hear his heart racing like a panicked animal, feel the frantic pounding against his chest. Zigzag lines gradually floated across his field of vision and blind spots followed them like little stars. Natsu rested his forehead into his hand as the pain kept growing to the point where he was sure his skull would crack. He hadn't taken red wine after the sanguinare vampiris infection, and he swore he'd never drink it again if he'd survive through this.

The headache had been tolerable at first – Lucy's presence had seemed to alleviate it – but when Gildarts had unknowingly cast a ball of Magelight, Natsu had started to scream. It had felt like a silver sword was plunged through his eyes into his skull. He would've strangled the old man right there, but all he could do was to puke his guts out into an empty barrel. Even after the accursed light had been banished into darkness, it had taken a while before he could walk or even speak. Apparently, Gildarts had the talent to ruin everything.

Now, Natsu sat in an uncomfortable chair in Gildarts's quarters, slowly sipping water and rubbing his still-aching forehead. The 'things Gildarts had to talk about' went in one ear and came out the other as the mage's speech turned into incomprehensible word vomit. Yes, yes, something about the war, dragons, shortage in the mead supply, all kinds of things that Natsu couldn't care less about. And he knew his headache wasn't the only reason why it was impossible to focus. It was Lucy who stole all his attention.

She was sitting next to him and reading a book, completely absorbed into some accumulated dragon lore, but it was enough to make his mind slip away. He couldn't think about anything else than her. She had left her scent on his skin, her taste on his lips, her whole intoxicating essence was still all over him, and he knew not how to cope with it. He desperately wanted more, but knew he shouldn't. The more he resisted, the more his head hurt. That's why he thought that skooma probably felt the same as love did. One taste was enough to chain a man forever.

And for that reason, he was scared out of his wits.

When he had woken up alone and half-naked with scattered memories, he had feared that Lucy had remembered what they did, gotten mortified, and left him for good. Even Natsu couldn't fully recall everything, as he had had rather… intriguing dreams that now mixed with what really happened. Confused and terrified, he had dressed into his tunic he found on the floor, and rushed to find Lucy. He had found her pretty quickly indeed. She had been relaxing in the tavern with Juvia, his scarf wrapped around her neck, and he thought he'd die right there.

If Lucy wouldn't throw him into the well, he'd jump there himself, that's what he had thought. She had been just high, and he had gotten drunk on the feeling of being wanted, loved for the first time in his life, lost himself into something that was nothing but sleeping tree sap affecting Lucy's mind. He had taken advantage of that, mistaken her affection for being loved back, and realising that while waking up alone struck him like a warhammer of guilt. For a moment, he had truly believed he had ruined everything.

But once again, it had been his own mind that made things seem much worse than they actually were.

He had expected her to scream at him – possibly in the dragon language – but she didn't. Just like the time when he told her about Jellal, she didn't cut his throat and throw him to the wolves. She didn't blame him, resent him, or abandon him. Instead, she pulled him into her warm embrace and said it was okay. She assured him that the tree sap had worn off before they got into bed, but she still said everything was alright, and at that moment Natsu knew that it wasn't.

That just wasn't the Lucy he had known.

Last night, Natsu had told himself that it would be just a one-time endeavour. Something so insane that it could happen only once, a sudden transient love that would fade back to the casual companionship where it had come from. Maybe they had both gone crazy, he had thought, and knowing it would be gone faster than he'd like, he had savoured every tiny moment of that temporary madness. That was how he pulled that through, allowed himself to surrender to the lust because he had known it would never happen again. But then, she had kissed him again after sobering up, and now he was too confused, too frightened to know what to do.

Maybe the headache wasn't because of the wine and magelight, but the sudden shift in Lucy's shy demeanour had blown his mind. If they had both gone crazy, only he had snapped out of it. Lucy hadn't. And now it hurt. Gods damn it, it only hurt.

"… so, as I was saying, since Ulfric Stormcloak attacked Whiterun, each city under the rebellion's control has been lacking manpower. The cities were supposed to get their soldiers and warriors back already, but guess what happened?" Gildarts spoke, his voice sounding like an echo. Natsu peeked between his fingers at the older mage, then closed his eyes again. "Yeah, they're all dead now. All we're getting back is their corpses if they ever manage to retrieve them from the battlefield."

Lucy raised her gaze from the book. "We know. Whiterun was under attack when we travelled past the city, but we never heard the outcome of the battle," she said. Somehow, she could concentrate on both reading and listening, while Natsu couldn't focus on anything at all, and that shocked him. How could she be so calm? Why wasn't she freaking out like he was?

"It was one damn massacre out there," Gildarts sighed and shook his head. "It has been said that the Stormcloaks had already breached the gates. They would've taken the city, but then the Companions joined the battle. That hadn't happened in… centuries. With the lead of the Circle, the last of Whiterun's soldiers managed to defend the city until the Imperial reinforcements arrived from Solitude." Gildarts chuckled dryly. "Songs are being written about The Scarlet Despair, a warrior who led them into victory."

A sudden flinch ran across Natsu's body. Still keeping his eyes shielded, he forced himself to concentrate on the discussion, at least for a short while. This he wanted to hear.

"That must've been Erza," Lucy answered. "She was a part of our travelling group. So, she survived the battle, I assume." Was there disappointment in her tone? Natsu wasn't sure.

Gildarts nodded. "That's what they sing in the Legion. But remember, you are in Stormcloak territory now. Better not mention that you're friends with a beast who put their brothers and fathers on a sword like little pigs."

"We aren't friends with her anymore. She betrayed us." Nonchalantly, Lucy turned another page in her book and continued reading. "She can go to Oblivion all I care."

Natsu opened his eyes and glanced at Lucy. The candles lit on the table didn't make his headache worse, but abruptly turning his head towards her did. He gritted his teeth while his thick skull became as fragile as a chicken's egg on the verge of cracking. His vision blacked out until the sharpest pain passed, and when he saw her, looking so damn calm, the pain washed over him again. Did Lucy really say that? That Erza wasn't her friend, and that she could go to Oblivion all she'd care?

Even if Natsu had hated the Companion woman with his whole being in the beginning, he had later come to realise that it had been Jellal who had corrupted her. The damned, rotten assassin had his strings sewn on Erza, and he ruthlessly used her for his purposes and kept calling it love. That was all Erza had known for her entire life. She had grown blind to his manipulation, the dirty game he played. Perhaps deep down, she knew that too. Lately, Natsu had started to see her as a victim, nothing more and nothing less. Even he had found a crumb of sympathy for the corrupted warrior, so how in the world could Lucy, the most empathic person in the world, say that?

Gildarts knocked the map with his hand, drawing circles around the Rift, and Natsu realised he had zoned out again. "… the problem is, the Jarl doesn't give a damn about the dragons. I assume that Jarl Ulfric has made all his Stormcloaks believe that the dragons are just some Thalmor trap, a distraction to keep the Nords from defending their homeland from the 'real enemy', also called elves."

"They don't believe in dragons, then?" Lucy wondered. "But Jarl Ulfric knows that a dragon destroyed Kynesgrove."

"Ulfric is too thirsty for power to waste men fighting dragons, so that's why he keeps feeding that horseshit to them. He wants to be a king, but there won't be a kingdom if the dragons burn the entire land to the ground. He doesn't understand the threat we are under. When the power lands on a blinded man, that's the most dangerous thing to all of us."

"That won't last forever. When the first Stormcloak city gets burned to the ground, Ulfric will have to decide what's more important: his pride, or his people." Lucy glanced at the markings on the map where Gildarts had sighted dragons. "It's only a matter of time when that happens."

Gildarts grimaced grimly. "Sadly, that's true. Alduin is resurrecting more dragons as we speak, and eventually, they'll strike with full force. But now that we have the Dragonborn here, humanity might actually have a chance to survive." The older mage looked at Natsu with a little mockery in his eyes. "If he'd just recover from his hangover first."

"Fuck you, gramps," Natsu groaned. Damn. It hurt to speak.

Gildarts chuckled. "However, the Dragonborn might be the only one who can permanently kill a dragon, but others can fight and slay dragons, too. The ancient Blades were dragonslayers. That book tells about some of the techniques they used, but I believe more are sealed within Sky Haven Temple. It could be ideal if we could recruit some warriors and train them into a new generation of Blades… the problem is the lack of manpower…"

Indeed, they needed more people who could fight the dragons. Natsu might not be a Dragonborn, but he had still managed to bring a dragon down from the skies. Lucy had just finished that off. The lack of manpower wasn't the only problem – finding people they could trust was a bigger issue. Natsu wouldn't hand Lucy's true identity as the Dragonborn to anyone after what happened with Jellal. He'd happily remain as a decoy as long as it meant that Lucy would be safe. That's what he had promised, to keep her safe until he'd leave this world.

Then, Natsu stopped listening again.

As Natsu tried to trace back that thought, he realised that he had loved her for a long time before knowing that himself. He had always believed that he'd never come to love anyone that way, had even doubted if he knew what love truly was. Until now, he had only loved his own mother, his older brother, and Igneel, but loving Lucy felt different. That was as inherent and subconscious as breathing to stay alive, something that invaded every thought and every beat of his heart before setting his soul on fire. It hadn't always been like that. Somewhere along the way, it had changed.

He browsed through the pages of his memory, trying to figure out when it had changed, when it had become more than anything else before. The trauma they both experienced at Helgen might've bound them together in the beginning, but that wasn't where his love had grown. Before and during their stay in High Hrothgar she had become very important to him, but that still wasn't it. Had it been in Labyrinthian, when Lucy had almost killed him? No, not yet. It would've been too sad if he would've fallen in love with a person who'd been trying to kill him. But after that…

Ustengrav.

That was it.

Things had changed in Ustengrav, on the final day of his vampirism, when he had tasted her blood. That had pulled his soul out from his body straight to the heavens of Aetherius, and maybe he was still falling from that high, stuck on the veil between two worlds. He had been dying, but brought back to life by the blood of a dragon, a little taste that had left him forever yearning more. That's when he had changed. That's when the boy who never loved anything finally learnt what it meant.

However, it wasn't that simple. Gajeel had said that vampires always killed their first feed, how the first time was just something different. It would never get better than that. He would've killed Lucy if Gray wouldn't have stopped him. He would've sucked the life out of her and then been eternally cursed to search for something that even faintly resembled her. Maybe that was even sadder – he had fallen in love with a person he had been about to kill.

But now, everything was a paradox.

The vampirism itself might've been purified out of his body, but would it ever leave his mind? Gajeel told him that vampires didn't make love, they drank blood, but Natsu was something in between. A living paradox, something that wasn't, but still was. The greatest pleasures were found in the un-life, the vampire had said, but Natsu had the best – and the worst – of both sides. He had returned from a place no one was supposed to come back from, he was still alive, Lucy was still alive, and such was his insane luck he also kept calling a curse.

He had once thought that maybe he'd one day find a person who'd set up a spark within him, but how could he, when he wasn't even searching? He had never been looking to fall in love with anyone. And now, he couldn't help but ask if a disease had forged a love that he might never have found.

And that realization shattered his heart.

What if he had only fallen in love with her because the vampirism had altered his mind, mutated his senses, turned him into a monster who'd hunt down virgins to feast on their blood? What if the so-called love was only a sick, twisted obsession, the means to an end for getting another chance to feed on her, finish what they had left unfinished? Was Lucy nothing but prey for him, and he just thought he loved her?

These haunting thoughts raced within Natsu's mind and he couldn't chase them away, no matter how he tried. He tried to prove them wrong, but how could he? Just looking at the marks of his teeth on her neck were enough to prove that true.

Natsu still remembered the nightmare, the one in which he cradled her lifeless body in his arms, watched the lights dim out from her eyes, leaving him eternally into the darkness. He had lost his life, and to fill up that void, he had taken hers. It had been just a dream, but as he realised what he had almost done, what he could still do, anguish wrenched his heart once again.

The marks on her neck from last night weren't deep, only surface lacerations he never meant to do, but did anyway. She hadn't bled a lot, only the little amount he could stomach in this mortal form, but how long would that last? The blood still tasted the same, but only because it was Lucy's, no one else's would do. If they'd continue that, he'd eventually lose control. He knew that he would, but Lucy refused to see the truth, blinded by the absolute trust she had for him. She wanted to make love, but he just wanted her blood, because for him those meant equal things.

When he had promised to keep her safe until he'd leave this world, he had never known he'd have to keep her safe from himself too.

Someone nudged the side of his arm a few times. Still dazed, Natsu lowered his hands from his face, seeing it was Lucy. Candlelight danced across her face, fire fluttering in her eyes, warm and alluring. She smiled as he noticed her, leant closer and showed him a page of the book she had been reading. Her smile was enough to cast away the distress from his mind, make him feel less like a monster, forget what he had become. At least for a while

Perhaps he should've learned by now that too often it was just his own mind, making things seem worse than they truly were.

"Look at this," she whispered, pointing at the blurry drawings. "Some weapons the ancient Blades used against the dragons. This sword looks beautiful, and these spears on the previous page…" Lucy browsed back a few pages and placed her finger on another ink drawing. Natsu nodded, pretending he could make sense of it. "It's called a ballista, a huge crossbow made for hurling large missiles. Some Akaviri war engine they altered for bringing dragons down from the skies."

Blankly, Natsu gazed at the page and frowned. The distorted lines were still floating across his vision, bending the illustrations into black, twisted masses. "Yeah, looks effective."

"I don't know what kind of steel the Akaviri used, but we already know that Skyforge Steel is sharp enough to pierce through the dragon's scales. And as I was thinking, using the slain dragon's bones or scales as weapons against them could also work. After all, the dragons battle against each other as well, using their talons, teeth, tails... voice…"

Natsu nodded again and lifted his gaze from the book to her. Was she talking about the theory of hers? Using Krosulhah's frozen scales to fortify weapons made from frost magic? That sounded valid, but he still wanted to see it work in action. She couldn't control the dragon powers when she was in that state, after all, and her theory required a lot of conscious effort to be fulfilled. He didn't think she could do that, not yet –

Suddenly, Lucy brought her hand to his face and stroked his cheek. She looked him straight into the eyes, smiling so damn beautifully that Natsu forgot what he had been thinking about. "That's how much it hurts?" she asked, as if she could see the invisible cracks on his skull.

"Yeah," Natsu answered silently.

"Poor Natsu," she whispered and traced her fingers across his forehead.

She didn't need to cast a healing spell. Her cool fingertips alone felt like magic, alleviating the ringing inside his head. The blind spots in his vision were filled with her radiance as he leant his cheek into Lucy's hand. How much he wanted to just kiss her again, gently bite through the delicate skin on her neck, get back to their own little world where nothing else existed and stay there forever.

But more than anything, Natsu wanted to know if he would've fallen under her spell as himself, as a boy who never loved anything, not as a halfling of a vampire.

"Are you guys listening?" Gildarts said loudly and cleared his throat. Lucy pulled her hand back to her lap and turned towards the older mage while Natsu cursed quietly. Gildarts seemed to have decided to ruin every moment he possibly could. That was only entertainment to him. "Do I have to send her off to gossip with Juvia or are you going to focus on the task at hand, son?"

Annoyed, Natsu nodded and looked away from Lucy. "Yes, I've been paying perfect attention to every word you've said so far, so please, carry on."

The sarcasm in his voice made Gildarts grin. "Alright, so, anyway… The dragons aren't our only concern. Here," he said, placing a finger on a location east of Riften. "I believe this is where the dragon cult is regathering. The place's called Forelhost. Holds a nasty history."

Both Natsu and Lucy turned their gazes to Gildarts, fully focused on his words for the first time today. Gildarts had mentioned the dragon cult's increased activity, but that it was happening so close? Shivers ran down Natsu's spine like chain lightning. That was just half a day's ride away. Lucy stared at the map too, but not a single flinch crossed her face, her eyes remaining still like water. Her gaze followed Gildarts as he took an old journal from the shelf and gave it to her, already knowing that Natsu wasn't in a state for reading.

Suddenly, the things he had been worried about felt like flies compared to a giant.

"That's the journal of Skorm Snow-Strider, a warlord from the First Era. He led an attack on the monastery, aiming to wipe the cultists out once and for all. It didn't go as he planned. Here, find out yourself what happened," Gildarts said and sighed, then realised that he'd still have to explain that to Natsu. "So, a dragon priest named Rahgot…"

In that instant, Natsu's mind went blank.

Rahgot.

He couldn't hear anything Gildarts said from here on, for all he could see was Lucy's icy blue serpent's eyes when Krosulhah had spoken to him through her. Now, he remembered everything, recalled the words exactly as they had been, crystal clear. Huzrah nu, wah sonaak Rahgot. He couldn't translate it to the human tongue, but it had certainly been a warning.

And now he knew they'd been warned about the dragon priest who carried the name Rage.

"… the dragon cult served as a bridge between humanity and dragonkind. Back then, Alduin was their god, and the cult was dedicated to his worship. Now, they think their time has come to rise back to power. And we –"

"We're not going there to wipe them out," Natsu interrupted harshly, trying to hide how his voice trembled. He knew what Gildarts would suggest, and Natsu couldn't let that happen. "We have to find out how to defeat Alduin. That's our priority."

Gildarts nodded. "I know, but listen to what I'm going to say. Forelhost is where they were hiding for thousands of years. They don't need to hide anymore. They're crawling back from their holes, and that's a –"

"A risk I'm not going to take." Raising his voice made his head hurt harder. Natsu squeezed his eyes shut and muttered a line of curses. "Gods fucking damn it, I'm going to die."

A soft hand landed on his shoulder – Natsu couldn't look, but he knew it was Lucy. He recognised how her fingers felt, the pattern at which she rubbed his skin. After a little silence, Natsu heard how Gildarts dug something from the cabinets and walked to him. Gently, he knocked his hands with a bottle.

"Here, take it," Gildarts said.

Natsu lifted his brows, peeking between his eyelids. He had had enough of Gildarts offering them strangle bottles. "What's that?" he asked sourly.

"A hangover remedy."

Natsu scoffed. Well, this bottle he could accept. "And now you're telling me you had it? How fucking nice. I've been dying here for an hour and you potion-hoarding dickhead didn't even –"

"Shut up and take it. It's my last bottle. Believe me, I need those quite often."

Reluctantly, Natsu received the potion and pulled off the cork. "If this has sleeping tree sap in it, I'm gonna kill you."

Gildarts laughed. "Of course not. If it had, I wouldn't be handing it out to you. Only gods know what effects it would have on the Dragonborn. You're cut from a different cloth than the rest of us, after all."

Natsu rolled his eyes but regretted it in an instant as another wave of pain washed over his head. "Yeah, only the gods know, indeed."

He downed the liquid as fast as he could. It tasted extremely disgusting; after being forced to drink a healing potion while infected with vampirism, every potion had tasted like poison. He shuddered and tried to keep it down, handing the empty bottle back to Gildarts. If it would work, it would take a moment before he'd feel the effects, and besides, he had a feeling that this kind of headache wouldn't be cured with a hangover remedy. Especially with this talk about the dragon cult that lived straight next door.

"So, the dragon priest had poisoned their own water supply, and those idiots drunk it?" Lucy laughed suddenly as she read the warlord's journal. "They found the monastery full of corpses and didn't take a hint?"

Knitting his brows, Natsu glanced at Lucy again. She sighed and closed the book, put it on the table and opened the one she was reading first. The Annals of the Dragonguard, as it seemed to interest her more. Natsu blinked, hoping that the cold, calm expression on Lucy's face would disappear, but it didn't. She didn't seem to remember anything about Krosulhah's warning, or if she did, she didn't care. And Natsu wasn't sure which option frightened him more.

"That's why Skorm Snow-Strider and his men never proceeded deeper into the monastery, and that's how the priest survived. That gotta be it," Gildarts said. "He must've become a Draugr by now, but I have no doubt he wouldn't be as powerful as he was in his prime days."

"And you're saying he's regathering the dragon cult?" Natsu asked.

"I've ridden around Forelhost a few times and sensed a significant increase in magical activity, but I'm not a fool. Going there alone would be a suicide," Gildarts answered and shook his head, sighing. "And unfortunately, I don't know that much about the dragon cult either. Too much is lost to the ages."

Natsu held his head in his hands as his nausea kept getting worse. He'd need to puke again soon, especially after drinking that damn potion. He took the water cup from the table and tried to wash away the aftertaste. What would Gildarts say if Natsu told them he had already arranged a visit to the cult's torture chamber if things would go wrong with Jellal and Erza? The cult wanted the Dragonborn dead. That was all Natsu knew, all that mattered.

"During the Merethic Era, when the dragons ruled over Tamriel, these priests formed a covenant with the dragons to ensure mankind's survival. In return for complete, absolute obedience, the dragons granted the priests terrible power. With that, they kept men under control, and so an everlasting peace could be formed," Lucy explained with a calm, steady voice, without raising her eyes from the page. "However, things changed when the goddess Kyne pitied men and gave them the Voice. The Dragon War raged, and mankind prevailed. The cult that had reigned in unimaginable cruelty was thrown down and forced into hiding, to wait for Alduin's return."

"And what do you know of this matter, girl?" Gildarts asked, his brows knitting together.

"I read books and know things," Lucy answered and turned another page. "That's what I do."

Gildarts looked at Natsu suspiciously. Sooner or later the older mage would figure out that Lucy was the Dragonborn, but it was amusing to wonder how long it would take for him to realise that. Natsu couldn't wait to see Gildarts's face when that would finally happen. Perhaps after that, Gildarts would never underestimate women again.

"Yeah, she's basically my brain," Natsu said. "Stop questioning that."

"I'm questioning how such a smart lady can stand your company, son. You can barely read."

Natsu chuckled. Well, if Gildarts had to make fun of someone, Natsu preferred it to be him than Lucy. "I can read well enough, thank you very much."

"No, you can't," Lucy laughed, playfully patted his shoulder and turned at Gildarts. "You know, he found a tome called 'The Book of the Dragonborn', the collected history of the Dragonborn Emperors, and I had to read that to him. It wasn't very effective, though, since he fell asleep every time."

Natsu shielded his face with his palm as Gildarts laughed. If those two tried to lighten the mood, it wasn't going very well.

"He always struggled with learning," Gildarts sighed. "Never read a single spellbook. Learnt all his spells through hands-on practice instead of studying the theory."

"Not true –"

"But now I think, maybe being the Dragonborn was the reason behind that. The dragons have their own language and writing system, after all. Of course you'd struggle with understanding human letters."

Natsu rolled his eyes. How could Gildarts be so goddamn stupid? A Blade he might be, but decades of heavy drinking must've dealt major damage in the poor man's brain. Lucy devoured books like they were the air she breathed. Dragons were extremely intelligent, so were those who shared their blood.

When the fire mage didn't answer, Gildarts shifted back to the topic. "So, do you happen to have read anything more about the dragon cult, Lucia? Every bit of information counts."

"Her name is Lucy, for fuck's sake," Natsu growled.

Lucy just laughed, probably remembering the time he had called her 'Luigi' back in Embershard mine. "Their headquarters used to be in Labyrinthian, but the city was called Bromjunaar back then. The priests used to gather there to discuss about matters of the ruling, but when the rebellion rose…"

The more she talked about the dragon cult in such a calm, steady manner, the more Natsu's heart wrenched. She couldn't see the danger they were in. She wasn't afraid. Natsu wanted to grab her from the shoulders and scream at her, make her see, feel the fear he felt, take her hand and run to High Rock or just anywhere where they'd be safe. Because in the end, Natsu didn't care about the world. He didn't want to save it. He only wanted to save her, but how could just a boy save a dragon?

Natsu zoned out of the conversation once again, their voices silenced by the demons screaming inside his head. Just as he had thought, the potion didn't do anything to his pain, for it wasn't something alchemy could fix. He just sat there in the uncomfortable chair, drowning in his fears, watching Lucy as she educated Gildarts of all the things she knew without a shiver of dread running across her face. Though Lucy still looked the same, she had changed from the inside. The fearful little girl had grown into a dragon who didn't need to be afraid of anything. He had just refused to see the change.

And then, a memory surfaced on the raging ocean of his distressed mind. It shone bright like a beacon in the night, finally easing the pain that had been tearing him apart. 'No one is going to hurt us,' she had said while she had swayed him in her arms as he had cried. 'We've killed dragons together. No cultists or assassins can harm us. We're stronger than them. We'll always be.'

That same day, Erza had told him how fear was not evil, and now Natsu tried to make himself believe that. Fears were like trials for faith and loyalty, rites of passage that made them who they were. Motivated by the scars they were made from, they'd have to fight through whatever this life would throw on their way, clinging to the belief that they were stronger than what tried to break them. Lucy had tried to tell him that, too. Now she was just showing an example.

Maybe it would be the dragon who'd save the fearful little boy from his demons, after all.


By the time they left Gildarts's quarters, Natsu's mind was empty.

Distress was a strange thing. It flooded over one's whole body, turning a man into a complete wreck before leaving him numb. Like a wildly rushing river, his thoughts had drifted him closer and closer to the waterfall of despair until he found the branch he could cling onto. For now, Lucy's words became that branch. No one is going to hurt us. The moment he'd let go of that thought, he'd drown.

Lucy walked beside him, torches and candles lighting the dark pathway leading back to The Ragged Flagon. She carried a bag on her shoulders where she kept the books and the gold they got from Gildarts. The older mage had assumed they'd rather stay at Bee and Barb until they'd leave Riften, and for once he had been right. Natsu hadn't asked how Gildarts had gotten that gold. If it meant they'd get out of Ratway, it didn't matter to him where the gold was from.

"Does the head still hurt?" Lucy asked after a little silence. Natsu nodded as an answer. "Maybe you should go back to sleep. Take a nap. I was about to ask Juvia if she could fix me a bath. You know, the soap Juvia uses smells so good. I want to try that out. I'm dying to wash my hair."

Natsu glanced at her. It was relieving – and confusing – to hear her talking so casually after all the lectures about the dragon cult. Perhaps she sensed the anguish he was in and tried to cheer him up. She always put a smile on her lips and shoved her own pain aside just to help others, but the more she did that, the more Natsu wanted to ask if she was okay. Dig past her lies, take off that heavy, happy mask she was hiding behind, and ask if she was really okay – because Natsu knew she wasn't.

"I'm not that tired, really," Natsu answered. "It's gonna be evening soon anyway."

Lucy smiled, wrapped her hands around his arm. "Want to join my bath, then?"

"What?" Natsu asked, snickering nervously as his cheeks turned hot. If she tried to distract him from his distress, she was being very successful. "No, eh, I…"

"Why so shy all out of a sudden? You've already seen me naked. A few times, actually. It's not fair that I haven't seen you. You're so sneaky with changing your clothes."

Natsu chuckled. She meant the time she got wounded on their way to High Hrothgar, and they had to change her torn and blood-stained clothes to dry ones. "That was on a fully different occasion, Lucy, I never meant to –"

" – steal a peek at my glorious breasts, didn't you?"

Natsu pressed his mouth into a thin line. He could swear he hadn't had any second thoughts back then. She had been bleeding, and his only goal had been to stop it, but now the memory alone made him shudder. Would banging his head into the stone wall make these thoughts stop? Just how would he react in a similar situation now? Lick the damn blood off her glorious chest? Gods, he didn't know what to do with himself anymore. Maybe he should reach out to Gajeel and ask for some help, after all, before he'd lose his mind.

As Natsu didn't answer, Lucy halted and grinned, looking him into the eyes. "Come on, are you sure you don't want to join my bath?"

He cleared his throat, disguising it as a chuckle. "Yeah, eh… Maybe some other time," he said and opened the door they arrived at. He let Lucy step into the tavern first, then he followed. "I'm still not feeling too good. Wouldn't like to ruin your nice bath by puking out of the tub, so eh, you just go with Juvia. I'll… I'll rest, okay?"

Pouting, Lucy answered, "Alright, then. I'll ask if she could wash your robes while I'm bathing. They've been soaking overnight by now, think that will deal with the bloodstains."

Lucy still clung onto Natsu's arm, and Natsu felt a sour look on them. Loke had also returned to the tavern. The ginger-haired thief was sitting by the bar with his brother. He turned his glare away when Natsu stared back at him. He didn't even seem to bother saying hello to Lucy now, which Natsu found sad. Such was the sincerity of the friendship those two had had. Loke had just wanted to make her his property. Now, when she was in the company of another man, she meant nothing to him. Well, that was Loke's loss, not Lucy's.

They headed back to their chamber. The moment Lucy closed the door, Natsu collapsed on the bed and closed his eyes. Now that he thought of it, they could as well stay here for another night, and go to Bee and Barb tomorrow. He already knew he wouldn't handle sunlight today, and one didn't want to navigate through the Ratway after the dark.

"Maybe I'll bathe too long just to make you worry," Lucy said while looking for her comb, change dress, and other things she needed. Natsu glanced at her, knitting his brows. "Then you'd come looking after me."

"Is this one of your 'how to seduce Natsu of Dragonbridge' techniques?" Natsu chuckled.

Lucy laughed and seated on the bedside. "I could write a book about such techniques by now, but I won't." She smiled and brushed his hair off his face. Well, Natsu didn't disagree on that. "That could end up in the Arcanaeum. Someone else could read it, and I don't want to share you with anyone."

Natsu couldn't help but snort, even though it made his head ring. "Gods. And who might that 'someone' be?"

Lucy shrugged. "Gray."

Natsu slammed his hand on his eyes, making Lucy giggle. "I think I just puked in my mouth a little."

"And I think Gray's a little bit too eager to brawl with you naked for it to be just casual friendship. He must really like you. Imagine if Juvia would know… Damn, she'd probably strangle you if she knew you wrestle with her future husband while he's wearing… well, nothing."

"Better not tell her. I like living," Natsu answered. "Hey, I'll tell you a thing you could add to that book of yours. 'Don't talk about Gray of Dawnstar.' That would be a very effective technique."

"Oh really? I'll just have to shut up about him and you'll get as fired up as you were yesterday? Easy enough."

Natsu frowned with half a smile. He rubbed his temples as a counterpressure for the throbbing pain inside his skull. Even if Lucy was a pleasure to look at, keeping his eyes open hurt too much, every movement hurt, and he knew that whatever Lucy was after, he couldn't give her. It would probably take him a long while before his confusion about all this would clear up. Apparently, at least for now, he could only reach her level of boldness when he was drunk. And with this terrible headache, he wasn't very excited to drink again soon.

"You know what?" Natsu started, struggling a little to find the right words to say. "Tonight, I'm as good as dead. Nothing's gonna work on me."

"Not even necromancy?"

"Not even necromancy," he echoed, chuckled, then he thought for a moment. "Gods, just what were you thinking?"

Lucy stroked her chin, staring at the candles she had lit on the nightstand. "Could 'Raise Zombie' spell work on a… specific body part?" she wondered aloud. "By the holy light of Lady Mara, I think I just figured out how to cure an impotent vampire."

Natsu snorted. "You'd make that a 'Raise Dick' spell, wouldn't you? Great. I'd want to see Gajeel's face when you tell him that."

Lucy tried to hold back her laughter, but then it burst out from her lips as an uncontrollable, bubbly stream. Natsu had to shield his face once again. He was laughing too, he just did it silently. Otherwise, his head would crack. Had Lucy always been this perverted, but hidden it well? It was slowly starting to resemble Igneel's jokes and banter. Maybe it ought to bring him a sense of familiarity, but hearing all that from Lucy's mouth felt too strange.

"Thank you for naming it," Lucy said through her endless giggling.

"You're very welcome," Natsu answered. "I'm not gonna help you test that shit out, though."

"Yeah, needs no magic to –"

" – but instead, you could make a spell that cures my headache before it fucking kills me."

Lucy's laughter faded into a warm smile. "I can try something else, then."

She turned towards him and crawled closer, then gently removed his hands from his face, replacing them with her own. She brushed his roughly-cut bangs to the side and drew circular motions on his forehead with her fingertips, slowly adding magic to the touch. It felt chilly at first, like snow melting on his skin, but then it started to affect. Her spell cut off the sharpest edge of his pain, lulled him into a trance so soft that he barely noticed when Lucy climbed on top of him and pressed her lips on his cheek.

Already knowing she wouldn't stop there, Natsu caught her wrists and pulled her up, even if he felt tempted to let her continue.

"Thank you, I'll be fine now," he said with a smile, rolled her off him back to the bedside and gently smacked her back. "You go get that bath."

Lucy sighed as she rose from the bed and began to gather her things. "Are you sure you don't want to –"

"Yeah, I'm sure," Natsu answered. "I guess I'm gonna take that nap."

"You better," she smirked, lingering at the door for a small moment to see if he would change his mind, but Natsu had decided not to budge on this. Not now, not in a while. Lucy would just have to understand that.

"Have fun with Juvia."

"Have fun with yourself," she said, grinned as she picked up the bucket where his robes had been soaking, and left the chamber.

When she was gone, Natsu pressed his face into the pillow to suffocate a confused scream. 'This is not Lucy, this is not Lucy, this is not Lucy,' he tried to convince himself, failing miserably. This was Lucy, a side of her he had not seen before, yet it still wasn't right, and he couldn't put a finger on it. The change was so sudden, so drastic that something was inherently wrong with it, and it felt so wrong to like it. Because he did. Even if he was frightened by this change, he couldn't help but melt when she stroked his face, climbed into his lap, kissed him. That was something he could get used to.

But until he'd know what had caused this change, he knew he shouldn't let himself get too comfortable with it.

In the silence that followed Lucy's absence, Natsu tried to think. He tried to put the pieces together, connect the right dots, but it all slipped through his fingers like ash, like a flame he couldn't kindle amidst a wild summer storm. It couldn't be the tree sap anymore. It was already out of her system. Besides, he had seen some signs of this change before she drank that. Just yesterday morning, she had considered clearing out a bandit lair to test out the new spells she learned from Krosulhah, for she had finally survived through the frost dragon's death. That's when she had changed, and...

Then Natsu realised it.

If she had opened the pathway to the frost dragon's soul, it meant that the way was open for Krosulhah as well.

Suddenly, Natsu felt his blood turning cold, chills running across his body from head to toes. When Gray had killed the frost dragon's baby, the mother had managed to take over Lucy's mind and use its powers through her body. Lucy had explained that the bond between a mother dragon and its child was strong enough to overcome anything, build a liminal bridge from here to the afterlife. At that moment, Krosulhah had first established the bridge that Lucy had later finished. But why would a dragon do that?

Well, dragons had formed allegiances with humanity before, but only for their own benefit. That's how Natsu had understood it. It wouldn't make any sense if Krosulhah would just grant its powers to the Dragonborn, the ultimate dragonslayer, and expect nothing in return. Would a dragon turn against its race? No, not unless the gain would be greater than the sacrifice. And what would a dragon gain from a mortal who had slain it? What would be more important than its pride?

The bond between a mother and her child.

Natsu flinched and rose to sit on the bedside, though the sudden movement made his head explode. He looked down at his shivering hands, tried to deny the truth, but he no longer could. It was all so clear now. There was something Krosulhah would gain from Lucy, something it had lost. A child. They had killed the baby dragon right before its mother's eyes, banished the tiny soul into Aetherious while the mother was still stuck inside Lucy's soul. They had separated them, cut the unbreakable bond, cursed the frost dragon into eternal sorrow.

There had been something so ethereal, so beautiful in the moment Lucy had held the dragon's egg within her arms. She had caressed the frozen scales, hushed calming words in the language of the dragons, loved it like it had been her own. And that's what she had said when Gray tried to take it away. It's mine, she had said, it had been true – yet Natsu had still let the frost mage destroy it, and forced her to watch. He had kept her down the same way the Legionnaires held him when they cut off Igneel's dead. He had thought it was the only right thing to do, a necessary evil for the sakes of the greater good. How terribly wrong he had been.

At that moment, Lucy's sanity had started to shatter, and he hadn't done anything to stop it.

Natsu had very little knowledge to reflect this situation upon, but he felt like he'd finally gotten a grasp of it. Losing Zeref had killed their mother as she grieved herself to the grave. Even the hunting dogs his father bred were grief-ridden if their puppies died, and started to take care of anything that even faintly resembled their lost litter. It didn't get better until they gave birth to a living litter instead of dead and deformed ones. Could the same thing be happening with Lucy? Krosulhah had lost its child, the only child it would ever have – unless it would make another through Lucy.

And his role was to give her that.

Natsu sighed, burying his face into his trembling hands. For a tiny moment he had been fooled, believed that Lucy actually loved him back, but of course, just of fucking course that had been too good to be true. She wanted something he had. He was an asset. A means to an end, something to use up and throw away when he'd no longer serve her. Maybe that's why Krosulhah had told Lucy that she'd be the last of her bloodline, to deceive her so she could deceive him. Natsu's chin began to tremble and a painful lump formed in his throat, strangling and suffocating.

Lucy probably couldn't see that, but now Natsu did. Lucy had grown blind to the change. Perhaps Krosulhah's soul was merging into hers, blurring the borderlines between them, flowing in both ways like boiling water mixed with icy cold. Natsu knew he'd have to speak to her about this as soon as possible, make her realise that this wasn't what he'd signed up for. His feelings for her might have blossomed from the vampirism, but hers were forged by a grief-stricken dragon who wanted to become a mother again.

And that, that was what truly hurt the most.


A/N: Hi guys, hope you enjoyed the chapter! There was supposed to be one more scene in this, but I decided to make that as a separate mini-chapter that follows this one. That scene is basically ready, but needs some refining to do. That will be posted in a day or two.

So, Natsu is in a lot of distress thanks to what happened between him and Lucy. His mind is in turmoil, and he's seemed to realise what's going on in Lucy's head. I'll admit that it has been challenging to nail the description of these events, their thoughts and everything, since their perspectives differ from each other in many ways. Lucy gets numb while Natsu drowns in overthinking. Lucy sees things better than they actually are, and Natsu sees them as worse.

I know some of you are probably wondering what happened to the soul of the first dragon Lucy killed, and I'll assure you that Sahloknir also has a role to play in all of this. However, the relationship between Lucy and Krosulhah is different, and that's why it's playing the main role. And at the same time that Krosulhah is changing Lucy, Lucy is changing Krosulhah. As Natsu thought, they are merging together - dragon becoming human, human becoming dragon, and the end result will be interesting.

These latest chapters have focused on character development, but there's going to be action soon enough. These calmer chapters are the base I'm building something very big on. I hope you'll bear with the steady pace a little longer. The shit's about to go down :)

Next up: The First to Go