MOONMOTHS AND CANDLELIGHT


"Black lipstick stains on glass of red wine
I am your servant, may I light your cigarette?
Those lips smooth, yeah I can feel what you're saying, praying
They say the beast inside of me's gonna get ya, get ya."
Type o Negative - Love You To Death

An atmospheric, romantic one-shot about Natsu and Lucy


One hundred candles burned in the Heartfilia Mansion each night.

Like a beautiful ghost at nightfall, Lucy wandered the long hallways with a tinderbox and matches in her thin, graceful hands. She lit the candles on windowsills where the last rays of the setting sun filtered through the dusty arched panes. The little flames added a golden shine to the fair, curly hair that framed her face, and I knew I could never get used to the sight. I followed right at her trail as she climbed up the stairway to light the candles at the chandelier too. This was a ritual she did every night, and my role was to observe quietly, as if every candle had a name she'd only whisper to the wind, never to me.

Calm and focused, I inhaled the scent of smoke and burning beeswax as it slowly began to fill the air. A soft gleam of candlelight reflected from Lucy's dark eyes when she walked up to me, extending her hand. I nodded and offered her another box of matches from the pocket of my black suit. She closed her long, pale fingers around it and smiled at me, then turned away and continued lighting the lanterns on the side of her bedchamber's door. Out of the dozen doors on the upper floor, it was the only one with a guiding light. The rest of the chambers were empty. No one needed to enter them at night.

She was wearing a dark-blue dress tonight. The hem descended to the floor, oscillating with her movements as she waltzed to light the last candle by the balcony. That one always swung in the wind that seeped through the centuries-old windows, creating long shadows on the hallway that I used to be afraid of. Each night, white and large moths gathered to dance around this flame. Lucy called them moonmoths, and she had named them all.

Everything in this mansion had a name. Me, too, but I was neither a candle nor a moonmoth, but just a servant. Her wish was my law. Had always been.

Lucy closed the lantern's dim glass globe, waited for the flame to grow before she placed it to hang from the hook by the tall balcony window. She stood there for a while waiting for the moths to come, and I stood back, waiting in her shadow. In a language I couldn't understand, she called them by their names, and so they came. The shadows of those moths washed over me as they flew from the twilight to dance around her light. In awe of the beauty, I held my breath, fearing for the illusion to shatter the moment I'd breathe in.

Then, she turned around and called my name.

"Natsu," she whispered, her voice quiet like a moth's wing strike, but I could still read my name from her lips. "Come."

Keeping my hands behind my back, I nodded and bowed. After she had lit the candles came the time for her bath. She walked past me, a soft pat on my shoulder permitting me to rise – it was a gesture I had never grown out of. I turned around, quick after her trail as she headed towards the bath chamber. There were many of them, way too many for the two souls that still lived here, but the one where the windows opened to the garden was her favourite. The clatter of her high heels echoed on the halls, the steady and determined pace ruling over my silent steps. Like a moth, I had learned not to make a sound.

We walked past the painted portraits that hung on the walls, covered in dust. I still remembered carefully dusting them as a child, but since the mansion passed down to her, she never let me do that. She said that dust was the magic that gave the cozy, warm atmosphere to the home. And so, below that layer of dust, the eyes of her ancestors watched us pass by. Perhaps we were the first ones to call this house a home – and the last ones there were still left. We, and our cat, of course, wherever Happy was hiding at the moment.

I opened the door to the bath chamber, allowing her to step in before me. She brushed my cheek with the back of her hand, a quick act of affection that made me shiver. The many golden rings in her small fingers felt cool against my skin, but otherwise, her hands were always so warm. The heavy door fell closed behind us as she went to light the candles by the window, and I began to prepare the bath. The old pipes always creaked as I turned the faucet open. I dripped a few drops of scented soap to the bottom of the copper tub, then let the steaming water pour on it.

Lucy placed the tinderbox and matches on the side table, next to the vase full of roses she had picked earlier today from the garden. As the sun went down, the large windows turned into mirrors. Through them, I gazed at her reflection as she bent to smell the flowers, then raised her eyes to me. She smiled and turned. I kept my posture, the sound of rushing water burying the acceleration of my heartbeat under it as Lucy stepped out of her high-heeled shoes, suddenly becoming a lot shorter than me. I lowered my gaze to her, then she spun around, the many laces on the back of her gown waiting for me to open them with my swift and experienced fingers.

Yet still, no matter how many times I had undone the laces, my hands shivered. I held my breath as I helped her thin arms out of the sleeves, kept my gaze down when the dress fell to her ankles. Except for long white stockings, she wore nothing underneath her gown, for she had abandoned the tight corsets and petticoats long ago. She'd been forced to wear them when she was younger, but she no longer needed garments that made her feel uncomfortable. She thought that way of many other traditions as well. Her family had held onto many outdated things for too long, but now, she was the lady in the house. If she'd choose to wear a suit, then she could, and no one would tell her otherwise.

As her pale skin gleamed in candlelight, I turned my back to her and folded the gown and stockings before placing them on the shelf. I lingered there for a moment, waiting for the water to splash softly as she stepped into the bath. Silence fell when she turned off the faucet, but I still didn't quite dare to look at her. I fiddled the lace details of her folded dress, studied them with my fingertips despite knowing each flowery pattern by heart. As if sensing my nervousness, she called my name again. I turned, but kept my eyes averted.

"You know there's no need to be shy anymore," she said softly, smiling as she patted the chair next to her tub. I knew there wasn't, of course I knew that, but couldn't fight the rosy blush rising to my cheeks. "Come here. I'd like some rose petals on my bath."

Quietly I walked to her, then seated on the wooden chair. As she had wished, I picked a rose from the vase. The soap in the warm water veiled her skin in swirls of cloudy foam. Softly, I pulled off one petal and let it fall into the tub, repeating it until the foam was spotted with red and only the thorny stem was left in my hand. She smiled. It had been my mother, her family's housemaid who first used to bathe her in rose petals when she had been a child. It had always made her happy, and now I carried the tradition of my late mother.

Lucy rested her arms on the tub's edges, stretching her head back and gazing at me as I whirled the water with my hand. She wanted to say something, I could tell it from the way her lips pressed into a thin line, but she just looked at me in silence. For years, she had been doing that. There was this adoration in her eyes that perhaps shouldn't be there – I was just a housemaid's son, after all. I still remember the time when her gaze didn't sparkle like that, or if it had, she'd hidden it well. At the time her parents still lived, we both had many things to hide. Feelings, longing gazes, embraces, heated kisses in the granary just a year before we came of age.

But now, when it had been just the two of us for three years, there was no need to hide anymore. No need to hide anything, but she still left the words unsaid, hoping I could read them from her mind, but I couldn't. Seeing the fond sparkle in her eyes wasn't enough, I'd have to hear it from her mouth. When she took a deep breath and I knew she would break the silence, I always hoped she'd finally say that she loved me.

"I started a new story today," she said then, but it hadn't been the thing she had originally intended to say. I turned my eyes to her and smiled softly. "Would you like to read the first pages tonight?"

The sparkle in her gaze turned into a passionate fire. She was a writer – she had been born to be one – but only after selling her family company the day after her father's funeral, she was finally able to pursue that dream. She could live comfortably in this mansion for the rest of her life with the money she made, even if her parents would turn in their graves if they learnt that she was writing books instead of running the company. To them, the purpose of life was to gain more wealth, but Lucy never wrote a word just to get rich. She wrote to get happy – and her parents had been the unhappiest people in the world.

Most mornings, she withdrew to the great library on the lower floor, poured her never-ending inspiration on paper, and returned when it was the time to light the candles. I would follow her to the hell and back, but the library was where she didn't want me to be. That was her realm. She had to be alone when she wrote – the words only came from solitude, so she said. But lately, I began to feel that she separated herself from me for the sole purpose of pulling me closer when she was done. Distance made the heart grow fonder, that was also said, but damn it, being in love with a writer was so lonely.

"Yes, my lady," I answered, hiding the melancholy in my voice. "What's the story about?"

She smirked, the same way she always did when she was excited. "It's a tale of a far-away land of snow and sorrow, where the dragons have returned from the dead, and a novice conjurer sets on a journey to defeat them." She turned her head a bit, still looking into me. "With the help of a young, reckless, and death-sentenced fire mage, of course."

Surprised, I chuckled quietly. I hadn't been expecting her new story to be set in the fantasy world we created when we had been little. We hadn't even talked about it in years. I had wondered if she had forgotten about how we used to play in the courtyard, pretending that the black swans that resided in the pond were fire-breathing dragons. She had collected old cupboard keys into a copper hoop and summoned the spirits of her ancestors to aid her in the imaginary battles, while I had caught firebugs and thought of them as sparkles I cast on my palms. It had been our one and only escape.

"So, you're going to be spending more time in the library again," I said, looking down. It had been a month since she finished her latest book, which had been a murder mystery placed in Victorian England. "Will it be a long story?"

"A trilogy," she answered with a smile, and instantly I knew how she'd spend the next few years. "With a possible prequel."

I wanted to say how much I'd miss her, but I didn't, for she wasn't the only one who left words unsaid. Whenever she was writing, I busied myself with my little daily tasks – cooking, cleaning, running errands, tending the garden, whatever I had been taught to do since I had been just a boy. My task was to take care of our home while she wrote, so that she wouldn't have to do that after she was done. That way, she could spend the remaining time of the day with me instead, and that way, we both won.

But as she turned her gaze away from me, a beautiful smile persisting on her lips, I knew she'd be genuinely happy. There had been a time when she no longer smiled, when she had been fighting against the windmills of her legacy. In the end, everything had turned the way it was supposed to be, but at the time the struggles of power had almost suffocated her creativity. Now, her brilliant imagination had bloomed once again. The thing about love was that when you loved a flower, you let it grow. You didn't cut it and put it in a vase and watch it slowly wither away, and so I'd let her bloom. At the end of the day, her happiness was my happiness, and I'd cherish every moment I'd get to spend with her, even if they'd be scarcer than before.

So, I listened to her going on and on about the story, how she had gotten the idea a fortnight ago when we'd been on a walk around the pond, picking mushrooms from the woods while the migratory birds had flown above us, across the bright October skies. She always fell into some sort of a transient, melancholic trance as she watched the swans and gooses leave north, as if she was bidding farewell to each and every one of them, wishing them safe travels. That day, she had wondered how she'd spend the winter months longing for her black swans, but then, she had remembered that the swans used to be dragons – and while she'd wait for their return, she'd bring them back as scaled beasts on paper, because she could.

And that, if anything, was real magic.

That was something I had always adored. With mere words, she opened portals into other worlds, and somehow, I envied that. I couldn't write a single line of prose, even if I tried. Despite we both had grown up in this same mansion, we come from entirely different backgrounds. She was wealthy, homeschooled, raised to appreciate arts and literature and science while I was barely taught to read. We had built a bridge across the gap between our social classes – for children, such classes didn't even exist, but sometimes I felt like only she was left with the magic while mine had withered under the weight of mundane life.

When the foam had dissolved into the cooling water, she fell silent, a sign that she had bathed enough. She stood up, and I rinsed the rose petals from her skin, then wrapped her into a soft cotton towel. The way to her dressing room went from the bathroom – it was one of the many renovations she had done since she inherited the mansion – so she gently tugged my hand, urging me to follow. Her story was still playing in my head as I struggled to adjust back to the real world.

Gracefully, she stepped over the high threshold and lit the candles on the dresser. Their light reflected from the tall, ornamented mirror as she seated in front of it. She combed her hair and tied it on a loose bun on the back of her head. My mother had been a magician when it came to dressing her hair, but that talent never passed down to me, so she preferred to do it herself. All I was good at was messing her fancy hairdos while we made out, so she said. Mesmerized, I watched through the mirror as she wiped her face with a cotton cloth and painted her lips with a deep red dye.

There were several bottles of perfume lined on the table, but she always picked her favourite – my favourite, too. She put droplets on her neck, wrists, and hair, smirking softly. She knew what the scent of summer jasmine did to me. I wondered what she had in her mind, but I didn't need to wonder for long when she placed the towel on a hook to dry and dressed into her morning gown. It was made from black silk, adorned with crimson lace, and it always made me weak. Apparently, reading the prologue of her new story wouldn't be my only task tonight, and I wasn't complaining.

"I'll go pick those pages from the library," she said as she turned towards me, putting her heels back on. "Bring some wine to the bedchamber, would you?"

Shivering, I nodded as she moved her hips closer to me. I stepped back and she smirked – out of the two of us, I never grew out of my shy nature. To me, she would always be my lady, even if we had been much more than a lady and her servant for years by now. Perhaps we had always been, for I could never tell when it had changed. Maybe when the black swans had no longer been dragons, when we had stopped pretending old keys could summon ancestors, when the secret gardens had turned into places where we could kiss without anyone noticing.

She blew out the candles in the dresser room, pulled my hand and walked me through the bath chamber. She left only one candle on the window sill, as the moonmoths danced on the other side of the glass, trying to reach the halo of light. Their shadows landed on our faces as we watched them for a while. With enchanting rhythm, their wings fluttered like ghost ships floating across the night, never reaching the shore. At dawn, they would be gone again, as if they were solely made from pure moonlight. I would've stayed to gaze at them for longer, but she tugged my arm again, and so we entered the chilly, dark hallway.

Perhaps the thought was brought to me by the surfacing memories of our childhood, but as we walked down to the library, the lantern I carried painting long shadows to the walls, I began to wonder if those moths were spirits. They had always been here, but previously, it had been Lucy's mother who light the candles for them. There was an empyreal glimmer in their wings, a ghostly glow that I only now connected to the ancestors she had pretended to summon as a child. The haunting metaphor made a chill run across my spine.

The moths vanished from my mind when we parted at the library's tall twin doors. Even though I had been there countless times, it always felt like I just couldn't step over that threshold. Yes, we had once played hide-and-seek among the endless shelves filled with old, dusty books, but those times were far in the past. Despite knowing that we'd meet again soon enough, I couldn't fight the wave of melancholy that flooded over me. There was always this little fear that if I'd let her out of my sight, she'd be sucked into the worlds she created and never come back. As if sensing my wistfulness, she smiled and pressed a quick kiss on my cheek before she disappeared into the library. Stunned, I waited by the closed door for a moment before hurrying off to the kitchen to fetch the wine, her kiss still burning on my skin.

Thankfully, I didn't have to be alone for long. Our blue-furred cat, Happy, meowed at me when I opened the storage room's doors. I smiled and crouched down to give a few strokes on his fluffy head, felt him pushing his face into my palm. Fifteen years ago, when we had been ten, I and Lucy had found him as an abandoned kitten wandering in the forest. After whining for days, Lucy's mother finally let us keep him. Her parents said he would die within a week, but here he still was, going strong and getting fat on the mice he hunted from the cellar.

The cat followed me as I chose the wine for Lucy – a bottle of old vintage, bold and elegant, just like her. I put it on a plate with two empty glasses, strawberry scones, and good, aged cheese. I never let her sleep with an empty stomach. I still remembered the time when her mother died, and the loss of appetite had almost made her shrink into nonexistence. Once she had started eating again, I had sworn that I'd never let her get back into that shape. Perhaps there were a little bit of my own reasons behind it, as I preferred the way she felt against me now, so soft and warm. So, when she asked if I had put extra butter in the scones, I always lied.

As I treaded through the familiar hallways, carrying the plate and keeping the doors open for the insufferably slow cat, my heart filled with nervousness. I knew there was no reason to feel this way, but the fluttering butterflies I felt around her had never died. Ever since I felt them for the first time as a boy, they never stopped, like raging flames within me that she had kept stoking over these years. It was a fire that would never go out – and how I wished for these doubts and fears to burn as well, but they were chains made from inflammable metal. 'Am I doing enough? Am I making her happy? What if I'm not?' Shaking my head and squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to banish these thoughts away.

When I arrived at the bedchamber, I found her putting more firewood to the great hearth that almost covered the whole wall. Scented candles flickered on the mantel, firelight reflecting from her eyes as she turned towards me. I smiled softly as Happy rushed to Lucy and she lifted the cat into her arms, carrying him to the wide, canopied bed. 'Am I being jealous of a cat, damn it?' I wondered as she fell on the soft mattress, rested her head on one of the many pillows with the cat purring on her lap. Yes, I would gladly exchange places with the cat, but I banished that thought from my mind too. I put the plate on the table, poured the glasses full, and carefully brought one to her. She received it with a smirk and sipped, leaving stains of her bright-red lipstick on the glass.

It took a moment for me to adjust out of my servant's role, as it always did at the end of the day. I felt so naked as I took off my black jacket and opened the highest button of my white shirt, and Lucy beckoning me to the bed did nothing to ease my nervousness. Tense and trembling like a dead tree in a wind, I seated on the bedside and stared down at my glass of wine that I had accidentally overfilled. Quickly, I took a sip. I did not want to spill it on the white, lace-adorned linen sheets she had inherited from her grandmother. Red wine stained like blood.

But the thoughts of washing wine-stained bedsheets faded as soon as Lucy gave me the fresh pages and my round reading glasses. The shivering ceased as the scent of her typewriter's ink soothed my storming mind, overwhelming me with memories. Countless times before, we had spent the darkened autumn evenings snuggled up in her cosy bed with a warming fire burning in the hearth. As I rested my back against the wooden, ornamented headboard of the bed and pushed my glasses up on the bridge of my nose, I realised that this story wouldn't be like her previous ones. Tonight, something was different.

From the very first paragraph, I knew this story was about us, and the imaginary world we had built when we had been just two children with no idea where our friendship would eventually grow. To the smallest detail, she had painted the descriptions exactly the way I remembered them – and that made me feel appreciated, involved, when in her every other story, I had been left out. A smile rose on my lips. I could also see the influence of the bedtime tales my mother used to read to us, for from there, we learnt about the ancient dragons. They might've been just legends, but for us, in our world, they became real.

And in this prologue, a dragon brought her home down in flames. I still remembered how she had lit the candles for the moonmoths for the first time, when the task had passed from her mother to her. She had been just seventeen. Tears had poured down from her eyes, she had screamed at me how she'd throw down each candle and set this whole house on fire. She never did that, but she never stopped crying that night. It might be the first time I sneaked from my own bedchamber to hers, just to hold her in my arms until her tears ran dry and it was already dawn. Her father would've killed me if he would've found us, but comforting her was the only thing I had cared about. For him, such a thing as comforting a grief-stricken daughter had been completely insignificant.

Usually, Lucy drew her inspiration from the darkening nights, heavy rain skittering across the windowpane, the rusted veil our forests dressed into when the winter came to harvest the living. She found poetry in decay, beauty in the natural cycles of life and death, and poured them into ink on the page. But now, she wrote about us. At the end of the last page, I was astonished by how she weaved our lives into a perfect parallel, something that only we could understand, as if it was written in a language only the two of us would speak.

Speechless, I laid the pages on my lap.

"It was our very own world," she whispered then, swirling her wine as I turned my gaze to her. "A place we escaped into. It was real to us. The magic was real to us, and the dragons, too. And now, I've started to wonder… where did that world go? Did it just disappear when we stopped believing in it, when arched trees became just trees again instead of gateways into another land?"

I shrugged, cleared my throat and sipped the wine. A wistful smile crossed my lips, but then it was gone. "You know, I've been wondering the same thing. I always thought it ended too… quickly."

"Not too long ago, I had a dream," Lucy started, her captivating eyes locked with mine. "There was this… endless golden field, bright blue skies above, and from there, I found my mother, surrounded by white moths." She turned her gaze away. "Then the skies began to turn black, and I was chased by an unknown anomaly. I grabbed my mother's hand and we ran, the moths around her disappearing into the darkness that slowly reached us. Desperation hit me when I knew that we couldn't be saved, that we'd be swallowed in the darkness too, but then I realised that I was just dreaming. I could escape by forcing myself to wake up. My mother's eyes grew sad. Blankly, she turned to me and said 'Yes, dear, you can, but I can not.' Then I woke up, and she was gone."

As her hands began to shake, I caught them into mine. Her many rings felt cool against my skin, but I clutched my fingers around her, holding them tight until the shivering ceased. I knew how much she still missed her mother, just as much as I missed mine. Having such a haunting dream about her must've been rough for her. Had her mother truly been there in her dream, aware of everything, aware of not being able to wake up from it? Chills ran down my neck at the mere thought.

"So, who's to say that dreams and nightmares aren't as real as here and now?" Lucy said then, her tone stronger again. "There isn't a single thing in this world that doesn't have a soul. People, birds, flowers, moths, fire and stone, everything is just energy, magic, and energy is eternal. Dreams and stories have a soul too, and in that way, they are real. Children naturally know this – it's something that adults often forget." She smiled softly, glancing at me. "And so I know that our world still exists, and I want to go back there with you."

Upon those words, my world came to a halt. I could comprehend everything except the last thing she said. Souls and energy and magic made perfect sense, but wanting to return to our world with me? I had to put down the wine just to make sure I wouldn't get drunker than this. She indeed had the power to make the words come alive, she could paint the most vivid realities by stringing them together, but I did not. I had none of that magic. Why would she need my help?

"What do you mean?" I asked quizzically, taking off my reading glasses.

"Listen, Natsu," she started. "I've written about the future, about the past, about murder mysteries and true love, but never have I truly found the same escapism I did as a child. I want to feel the magic we believed in, because I know it still exists, but I just can't find it without you." She smiled and brushed my cheek with the back of her hand, crawling closer to me. "This is the story I can't write alone, so will you be my muse?"

I blinked, staring at her in absolute silence. I thought she was lying, but she wasn't. A confused, happy smile crossed my face, but I couldn't quite fathom what she just asked. She couldn't mean that she wanted me to intervene in her storytelling, for that was her realm, not mine. She had always written in perfect solitude that I must not disturb – all I could do was to read the final result, as if desperately trying to forget how lonely I was, and get a hang of the worlds she had been lost into while we were apart.

As I couldn't form any words, she continued, "I want to walk through the woods with you, construct this storyline with you by my side, for you are the one who built this world with me. I want you to tell me if I remember something wrong, if something could be better the other way, and when I've reached the limits of how far I can go, I want you to push me past them." The pages flew to the floor as she climbed on my lap. She placed her wine glass on the nightstand next to mine, caught my face between her hands and gazed deep into my eyes. "I'm done sitting alone in the library all day."

Before I could say anything, she pressed her lips on mine, and at that moment, the only gateway to other dimensions was her kiss. I could taste the wine on her tongue, bold and elegant, could get drunk on it alone, but I wanted to pull away just to scream yes, yes, yes a million times before pulling her back to me. I never did, as she wouldn't let me go, and I told her my response by wrapping my arms around her thin waist, clutching my fingers on her hips, for even if words were left unsaid, we'd still know what we both meant. And as she opened the belt of her wrapped nightgown, the cat jumped off the bed, excusing himself out of the chamber.

Even if I said that we had long ago built the bridge across the distance between us, I had always felt that she was somewhere far on the other side. The bridge was there, but neither of us had ever truly crossed it, and now, I felt like she had finally come running to pick me up, take my hand, and drag me to her world. She pulled me closer than ever before, took me in, burnt the bridge behind us so I'd never have to be lonely again.

I had always been waiting for her to confess her love to me, but when she asked me to be her muse, I knew it meant the same thing. There was no need for more words – I swore I forgot how to speak anything else than her name, was left to chase the echo as she tore open my shirt and threw it back over my shoulders. She might've had undressed me countless times before, but never with such lust and greed, as if I was the only thing in the world that mattered to her, and for once, I won the battle against her undying creativity by merging into it, into her, two souls becoming one.

Everything is energy and energy is eternal, her words reverberated through me as we were both lost in the blissful lovemaking that I hoped to be eternal, too. I was engulfed in her magic, warm and soft and alluring like candlelight, and I knew that once I'd leave this world, I'd find her again, even in a dream she could wake from while I never would. Like a moonmoth, I'd forever be drawn to her flame, for maybe that's what we'd become after our time was over. Spirits formed from the sacred moonlight looking to feel the fire of life just once more, but no, that time wasn't now.

I was on fire with her love, surrendered to the nature I had always suppressed, to desire I had held back, and she let me. This wasn't our first time, far from it, but tonight, she let me take the lead. That hadn't ever happened before, but I adjusted to the switch of power with surprising ease. Her long fingernails dug into my skin, she buried her face into the curve of my neck, the scent of her hair almost pushing me over the edge too fast, too soon. But she was my lady, my everything, and ladies always came first.

And if every soul had a name, mine combusted as she screamed it out loud, the energy set on ablaze with her shaking deep inside. It felt like thunder as my euphoria crested, and she held on to me tight, wrapped her trembling limbs around me like she'd never let me go. The candlelight made her bare skin glisten in afterglow, her gaze blurry as she stared into my eyes, and I swore she'd never looked as beautiful as tonight. All strength faded out of me, I fell limply to her side, caressed her face, stroked the curly hair that I had messed. But when she smiled and closed her eyes, I was overthrown by a sudden wave of sadness.

Sometimes, the fall from the highs was too steep.

My shivering hand halted on her cheek, the luminous bliss shattered, and though I tried to fight against and keep them back, the tears just welled up in my eyes. An overwhelm of emotions, years of loneliness and happiness of it finally ending, it simply took over me in a way I couldn't explain. As a strong sob shook my shoulders, Lucy was flinched awake from her repose. The worry in her eyes only stoked my unease, for I wasn't sad, I wasn't hurt, I could never be by her, but now, I just felt so small.

"Hey, what's up?" she asked softly, supporting herself on her elbows as she dried my tears. I caught her hands into mine, just to hold her still, to make sure she'd never disappear from me. "Is everything alright?"

I nodded, then shook my head. My chin trembled too much for me to speak. Lucy moved closer to me, pulled me into a warm embrace, held me tight and still until I no longer cried.

"Lucy," I whispered against her chest. "Am I good enough?"

She chuckled silently. "What?

"Am I good enough for you?" I repeated, voice cracking. I pushed myself slightly back, just to look her into the eyes, just to see the warmth in her gaze and be convinced that she loved me. "Am I, for you?"

As an answer, her lips turned into a quiet smile before she pressed them on mine. There was no lust in the kiss, for she had exhausted it all – it was the nature of the lustful energy, to be used up fast and transmuted into warmth and sweat. But there was something far more permanent in the way her mouth stayed on mine; trust, attachment, devotion, loyalty, something eternal, like magic itself. It was more than words could say, far more, and only that let me know that I was, truly, good enough for her.

And tonight, with one hundred candles burning in the Heartfilia Mansion, she told me the names she had only whispered to the wind.


A/N: So, that was it, I hope you enjoyed my first one-shot!

Whether or not this is a parallel universe to my other fanfic, 'Song of a Dragonborn' is unsure - it was more like a personal thought experiment on the existence of the stories we write. What if the stories are actually unraveling somewhere, perhaps not in the reality of our own, but somewhere else completely? In that way, I found it interesting to think that this AU's Lucy is actually the mastermind behind the events in Song of a Dragonborn.

Overall, writing this was an excellent practice for me in many ways. First, I haven't written from first-person POV in forever, and second, I haven't written a short, condensed story in a long time either. It's always possible for me to return to this small AU somewhere in the future, but for now, I'll leave it as it is. ^^

All feedback is very welcomed!