Homeward Hours
By CrimsonStarbird
Chapter Ten – Too Small This Cage
There wasn't any one thing that set it off.
There never was.
If anything, it was an absence of things: too much time and not enough to occupy him; too much that he needed and not enough that he wanted; too much life and not enough living.
Like the silk-smooth tide peeling back to reveal the shipwrecks buried in the bay, like the heavens moving in arduous patterns to ensure night followed day in equal measure, like it was just the way of the world, one day, he snapped.
It started when his eyelids fluttered open to find that he was slumped in one corner of the bathroom with no memory of how he had got there. The tiles were smeared with blood. His robes had absorbed as much as they could and dried again in new creases; every time he moved, a puff of crimson dust was released. A blunt-edged knife rested inches from his hand – from his smooth, flawless, unscarred hand; from his unmarked wrists; from the tattered robes hanging over an entirely unmutilated body.
Well.
Even when the previous night started to come back to him, the memories were vague, lurking deep in the abyss of his thoughts. Perhaps it was the human brain's pre-programmed way of protecting itself from trauma, unable to tell that the real problem was that he was still here to recall it at all.
It didn't frighten him.
It was far from the first time he'd woken up like this.
Far from the first bad night he'd had, in four hundred years of forced immortality.
Time was, he'd come round in the bathroom attached to his imperial chambers, where not even the servants were allowed to tread without express permission, able to wash all trace away from the tiles and from himself and still turn up on time for his first audience of the day, his underlings none the wiser.
Not today.
He had nothing to get up for, today. No one to notice whether he got up or not.
So he lay there, drifting in and out of bloodstained dreams.
Maybe it took one hour, or maybe ten, but at last his self-loathing grew tired of mutilating his apathetic soul, and turned its gaze outward.
He hated this.
The repetition.
The claustrophobia.
The domesticity.
It wasn't a deadly weapon that rested by his hand – not an assassin's blade, not a magic-imbued artefact. It was a kitchen knife. He'd used it to make stew yesterday. Him. There should be servants begging to do such mundane tasks for him. The authority of an emperor was one small recompense for the hell through which he'd lived.
But no, here he was, in a quaint house in the forest, with a kitchen and a bathroom and floors to mop and lightbulbs to change and meals to make – and he'd played along for a while, doing what was expected of him with grace, and for what?
This for the rest of eternity?
After everything he'd done, everything he'd sacrificed, everything he'd suffered, this was to be his fate? Him, a man who should have had the world in his hands? Even in the darkest of times, as an outcast on the fringes of civilization, he'd always had the freedom to travel, to study, to seek out the magic of abandoned pasts and long-forgotten races. For so long, that had been all he had: the right to live and learn in quiet privacy, keeping to himself as the ages passed and all Fiore came to believe he was dead.
He didn't even have that, now.
No – he was trapped in this pointless, mundane existence. He was dependent on the charity of his enemies, surviving each day by offering up what remained of his dignity for them to pick at like carrion crows. They had made it that way on purpose. That was their sadistic pleasure, keeping him, the Black Mage, as their pet, to gloat over whenever they needed reassurance that they were the strongest. If they ever wanted something from him – validation or advice or catharsis – they knew exactly where to find him, and then they'd abandon him to this mind-numbing monotony again as thanks for his help.
No longer.
This cage was far too small for him.
That was the cruellest thing of all, the Fairy Sphere.
Not just because it trapped him in this isolated forest, separating the lawn of perfectly dead grass around his house from the exciting, interesting, living world beyond. Not just because he had mastered every kind of magic he had ever turned his mind to, time and space and life itself, and yet the workings of that barrier continued to elude him.
But because of that ever-present golden glow.
It distorted sunsets and confused the sky.
It creeped underneath curtains and infiltrated his dreams.
Even in this windowless room, tiles soaked in more blood than any human body should have been able to produce, he could still sense it, humming at the back of his mind.
The sound of gold swallowed him.
She'd offered him her hand at the end of everything; she'd said, Let's go together; she'd stepped towards the light that had finally come for them both-
Only for him to pull his hand out of hers.
Only for those four words he had whispered: "I have to stay."
And for what?
He despised the golden light that reminded him always of what he could have had, if not for one foolish moment, the greatest in a lifetime of mistakes.
But most of all, he despised those who kept him here.
The fact that he had perhaps been starting to do otherwise made the relapse twice as devastating. Such was the nature of his curse.
Truth be told, Lucy didn't have much of a reason for going to see Zeref that afternoon.
Sure, she had a book for him – he'd asked her for it a fortnight ago, but she'd needed Levy's help to track it down. There was no need for her to take it over that very afternoon, though. It could easily have waited until her next scheduled delivery of groceries.
No, the book was just an excuse to get out of the guildhall.
The only excuse it seemed Natsu would accept these days, and only because the Master had put his foot down.
Doing mage jobs was out; if one had time to do jobs, they had time to buy travel tickets and pack and study previous attempts at clearing the Hundred Year Quest. Taking days off was apparently unacceptable this close to an exciting new adventure. Even shopping, cleaning, and other errands could only be used as excuses so many times before Natsu started to get suspicious.
Checking on their prisoner, though, was something the guild was contractually obliged to do, thanks to their agreement with Queen Hisui and the reluctant trust of the Magic Council. Natsu couldn't stop Lucy from going to visit Zeref without incurring the displeasure of Makarov and the guild – the former because not doing so might well cost him Fairy Tail's tentative freedom, and the latter because if Lucy didn't keep an eye on the captive Black Mage, they might have to do it instead.
She could feel Natsu's irritation burning against her back like a fire clawing at its grate as she left the guildhall, but he didn't try to stop her.
As she reached the cabin, she found herself hoping that Zeref at least was in an amicable mood.
He came outside when she called him. That was a good start; he may have been more accepting of her presence these days, but it was still fifty-fifty whether he would say hello or ignore her until she went away again. He didn't exactly give her a friendly greeting, watching instead in careful silence, but equally, he hadn't told her to go away, so she didn't mind his reticence. Compared to being in the guildhall right now, this little prison was a haven of peace in the heart of the forest.
"Hey," she smiled. "I managed to get hold of that book you wanted, so I thought I should bring it straight up. Well, I say I managed, but it was Levy really. She has crazy contacts in the second-hand book trade. Seriously, it may look like elderly bibliophiles in their cute, dusty shops, but beneath the surface, the level of backstabbing and dodgy dealing puts the criminal underworld to shame. All those fledgling dark guilds competing to be the next big thing since Avatar's defeat could learn a thing or two from the booksellers, I tell you."
From the other side of the barrier, those black eyes blinked long and slow. Lucy realized, belatedly, that she was talking to the man whose writings were the reason why there was an underworld book trade in the first place, and she gave a sheepish smile.
"Yeah, I know," she mumbled, fishing the monster of a tome out of her bag. She just wanted to talk about something that wasn't the Hundred Year Quest for a change, but she couldn't exactly admit that to him, could she? Brushing down the near-illegible leather-bound cover, she gripped one side of the heavy book tightly and held it through the barrier. "Remind me to bring Levy up here next time; I think you two would get on like-"
He moved.
Maybe it was because she wasn't expecting it. Maybe it was because she'd never seen him move so quickly before, not for anything. Maybe it was because, for as long as she'd known him, he'd been beaten, worn down by captivity, fangs blunted by his repeated failures to bite through the cage that held him.
He didn't graciously take the book she offered him. No, like the whipcrack of a dragon's tail, he seized his side of it and wrenched it forwards, tugging her off-balance. The moment she flailed – the moment her hand passed through the barrier that was only tangible to him – was the moment she lost. The battle was over before she'd realized it had begun.
His hand wrapped around her wrist, and the next thing she knew, she was flat on her back within the barrier. His knee pressed into her ribs; his other hand pinned her to the ground by the throat.
Surprise parted her lips, but no words made it through that iron grip. She could only stare – and he stared back, eyes burning with a steady, calculated coldness, like the eyes of a stranger.
No, not like a stranger. Those were the eyes of someone who knew full well who she was, but did not consider her worth acknowledging.
She had let her guard down.
For the first time, she could feel the true pressure of his magic: a gravitational field to outstrip the Earth's, a hateful furnace to swallow the sunlight, a terror that the steady glow of the Fairy Sphere had hidden from her until it was too late.
He could kill her without a second thought. Would kill her. If she tried to summon one of her Spirits, she'd be dead before she so much as touched her keys.
"Drop the barrier," he commanded.
She hesitated.
Darkness yawned at the edge of her vision; reds and greys splashed across the golden canvas of the Fairy Sphere.
"You have five seconds," he continued coldly. "Then I will kill you, and the barrier will fall upon your death."
The Fairy Sphere vanished.
One agonizing moment pressed down upon them, and she thought she was going to die of asphyxiation anyway.
Then the pressure at her neck lifted. "Good decision," he remarked, stepping away from her. A swirl of darkness enveloped him with a wave of his hand, and when it faded, he was gone.
All that was left was a cute little holiday home in a peaceful glade in the forest, surely too idyllic to have ever been a prison, and certainly too nice to have ever been an effective one.
How long Lucy lay there for, she did not know.
Long enough for her lungs to have stopped heaving in pain, but not long enough for the memory of those fingers to have lifted their ghostly grip from her throat.
It wasn't the first time she'd stared death in the face.
But it was the first time it had been so easy for her opponent.
The first time it hadn't come at the end of a long and bitter battle; the first time she'd not even been able to try fighting back.
She'd trusted him. Between his quiet companionship and his assistance – interest, even! – in the S-Class Trials, she'd… well, maybe she'd even started to consider him a friend.
But this was who he really was: a man both devious and cruel, able to swallow his pride and play the role of the accepting prisoner, appealing to her guild's famous belief in forgiveness while he waited for her to make a mistake.
And now he was free to wreak his vengeance upon the guild foolish enough to have imprisoned him.
It was that thought which dragged her to her feet.
She wouldn't be able to warn the guild in time. There was no way she could beat a man who could travel across the kingdom with a snap of his fingers. Still, she had to go anyway – to join those who were still fighting, to stand with them until the end, to bear witness to the tragedy of her own making… to pick up the pieces of the guild she had destroyed.
Through the forest she ran, through the city, through those great double doors – and into the main hall.
Which looked exactly the same as before.
As if she'd never left.
The sound washed over her like a delayed tsunami: chatting, drinking, planning, competing; Gray trying not to look too nervous as Juvia and Erza picked out his first S-Class job for him; poor Wendy regretting having agreed to a training session with Natsu; Laxus and his team on their way back from a job, passing Lisanna and Elfman who were just heading out on one.
Everything was… normal.
Like she'd not done anything wrong. Like her mistakes were nothing but a dream.
Her right hand went unconsciously to her throat, tracing the imprints of that remorseless grip.
Why wasn't Zeref here?
"That was quick, Lucy," someone called to her. She flinched before realizing it was only Levy, beaming at her from the table where she sat with Gajeel and Lily, still alive.
Perhaps she had stared for a little too long, because Levy prompted her, "Well? Was he grateful that I managed to track down an original copy of Legacy of the Fallen for him?"
An elusive ancient tome that now lay abandoned amongst long-dead grass.
Lucy fumbled for the words.
"You did stress how difficult it was for me to obtain, right?" Levy pressed.
"I- uh- he wasn't in a talkative mood," Lucy stammered.
"No?" Levy sounded almost disappointed. Lucy was struck by the strange thought that her friend had wanted to impress him. Maybe even to form a connection through their shared interest. She supposed it was no different to what she herself had tried to do, before the foolishness of it all had been hurled back in her face.
"No," Lucy asserted, harsher than she had intended. "I'll try again later."
"Aww. Okay," Levy shrugged. "Maybe I should come with you next time."
"Maybe," Lucy echoed non-committedly.
Levy had already gone back to her conversation with Gajeel.
One minute of gentle ambient chatter went by.
Then another.
It was so normal it hurt.
She had to tell them.
"Fancy a job, Lucy?"
The voice came from so close behind her that she almost jumped. Turning, she saw Gray brandishing a job request she'd have stayed the hell away from at the best of times – even without the S-Class stamp on it, that monster had far too many tentacles for her liking.
She wasn't sure how, but she managed a smile. "No thanks, not today."
Over Gray's shoulder, she spotted Juvia mouthing a thank you at her. Not having the heart to tell Juvia that her response had nothing to do with wanting to let the water mage spend some time alone with Gray before the Hundred Year Quest, Lucy smiled and wished them luck.
They were smiling, too, as they left.
She had to tell them.
But how could she? The room was bursting with the quiet happiness of life – a happiness they had earned, each and every one of them, by their actions and their sacrifices in the war. How could just demand they give that up? How could she shatter their last few hours of living life to the fullest?
She understood, now, why Natsu had been unable to tell anyone that he'd never defeated Zeref in the first place.
She had to tell them.
But she didn't know how.
She was still sat in the corner trying to work out how to own up to her colossal mistake when Mira shooed her away so that she could close the bar at a reasonable time. She walked home in a daze, no memory of unlocking the door or changing into her pyjamas, and woke up after a night of forgotten nightmares to the sight of the guildhall's roof still soaring over the cityscape, unchanged.
Before she knew it, the longest week of her life had passed in the blink of an eye, and every tortuous minute had brought her no closer to a solution.
Every time she trudged towards the guildhall, she expected to see it in ruins.
Every time someone plucked a job from the Request Board, she wondered if it would be the last one they ever took.
Every time a drink was served and a party was planned and a fight broke out and life flowed loud and bright around the guildhall; every time someone made the most of the peace they had risked their lives to obtain; every time someone smiled in ignorance of the end looming over them… she sat away from the others, buried beneath the weight of her failings, and she waited.
And waited.
There was still no sign of Zeref.
And as each agonizing day added to the ball of sickness in her stomach, she began to wonder if he wasn't coming for revenge, after all. Maybe he didn't dare. Natsu may not have been able to beat him at the end of the war, but he'd said himself that he hadn't wanted to face Gray's Lost Iced Shell, and who knew what the other guild mages had planned to use against him? Maybe he didn't want to risk another confrontation without his army behind him.
Maybe – though she hardly dared to think it – he had taken her actions to heart and no longer considered them enemies. Maybe he was just happy to be alive and free, quietly living out the rest of his eternity in a land far from Fairy Tail.
Maybe.
That was how she justified her cowardice, though the clawing nausea in her chest didn't seem to believe it.
Ten days after she let the greatest villain in all of Fiore's history out of his prison, it finally happened.
Lucy had just left the guildhall – heading home to exchange waking nightmares for sleeping ones – when Natsu caught up with her. "So," said he, unusually serious. "I'll see you at 6 tomorrow morning then, yeah?"
Lucy stopped in her tracks. Tomorrow morning? Was that when Zeref was due to arrive? Had he raised another army and declared war, and the guild was gathering to try and stop him once more-?
Oblivious to her panic, Natsu continued, "Yeah, so we're gonna meet here first, and then all head to Hargeon together."
"Hargeon?" she echoed. Was he not splitting his forces this time, but focussing them all on the famous port town for one deadly attack?
"Yeah, that'll give us plenty of time to get to the merchant ship before it leaves Ishgar-"
Terror gave way to incredulity. "This is about the Hundred Year Quest?"
"Course it is," Natsu answered, taken aback. "What did you think we were talking about? We've been planning this for weeks, Luce-"
"You've been planning it," she bit back.
"Hey, it's not my fault you're never in the guildhall these days! You didn't object to leaving tomorrow like you did all the other dates, so I figured we were good to go."
Lucy tried to think back to when he had last proposed dates for the Quest to her, but the feel of that hand around her neck and the press of death magic strangled all other thoughts. "Yeah, well, I can't go tomorrow," she snapped.
"Why not?"
"Something's come up."
"Something," he echoed flatly. "Something that is more important than the Hundred Year Quest we were talking about going on before we even found out about Alvarez?"
"Yeah," she said, just as flatly.
They stared at each other, mere metres away in the street, but Lucy thought they couldn't have been more separate had there been a Fairy Sphere between them.
"It's him, isn't it?" Natsu stated. It wasn't really a question.
"It's not what you think, Natsu-"
"No, it's quite clear what this is," he spat, and he had never looked more like a dragon's son than when that fire flashed in his eyes. "You'd rather stay here with him than go on an adventure with me."
"Natsu-"
"He tried to destroy the guild! He wanted to kill all of us, and he's made no attempt to apologize or change his ways! And you'd still choose him-"
"That's not what this is about!" she yelled, restraint thrown to the wind. "How can I possibly be pulling out of the Quest to stay with Zeref when I don't even know where he is?"
"…What?" Natsu blinked. "You know where he is – in that stupid house, being waited on hand and foot like he won the damn war-"
"No," Lucy interrupted. "He's not. He got out."
"What?" Not so light-hearted, this time.
"He tricked me," she said. Once she'd started, she couldn't stop. It was all out now; terror had given way to delirium, and she was swept along in the flood. "I wasn't paying attention. He managed to get me inside the barrier, and he would have killed me if I hadn't let him out. So I let the Fairy Sphere down, and he disappeared. That was ten days ago. He could be anywhere in the world right now."
Natsu stared. "Luce," he managed, scrambling to find his voice, "you've gotta tell the guild about this!"
"I know! I should have told them straight away. I just… there wasn't a good time, and then I didn't know how to own up to it, and…"
"Yeah… I get it, I was the same," he admitted. "How about l tell them, then? I'll just say I went up there this evening and found that he was missing. You don't have to explain it to anyone until you're ready. But they've gotta know, Luce."
Glancing up at her best friend, Lucy hardly dared to breathe. For a moment, just a moment, things felt like they were normal again. The one person she knew she could depend on above all others, the one person who was always looking out for her, the one person who had made the guild feel not just like a home, but like a future – there he was, gazing at her with those steadfast hero's eyes, as though no conflict and no enemies would ever be enough to stop him.
He was saying, "That way, everyone else can keep an eye out for him while we're on the Hundred Year Quest."
And the illusion shattered.
Things were different, now.
The man who would be there for her unconditionally had been left behind somewhere, along with the naïve young runaway who had been caught up in the tornado of his passing that fateful day in Hargeon. She had outgrown that girl long ago. Somewhere along the way, she had accidentally become someone that could drag the guild into her reckless schemes, just as she had once been swept off her feet by Fairy Tail's very existence.
She had changed. Perhaps it was foolish of her to think that he never would.
"I'm not going on the Hundred Year Quest, Natsu!" she burst out. "Why can't you get that into your head?"
He took a step back.
She met his eyes in the fading light, determined to see him wounded, to see him hurt like she had been, but nothing simmered there except anger.
"I just don't get it, Luce," he said, short and tense, hot and cold. "I'm trying, but I don't get it. You were upset with me after the war because I was doing things on my own and pushing you all away. But now that I'm trying to do things with our friends, you're still mad. Whatever I do, I can't win!"
"Because you're not doing things with us, you're doing things for us!" she retaliated. "Did you even ask me and the others if we wanted to go on the Hundred Year Quest? Or did you just assume we'd go with you like we always do?"
"The others-"
"Gray doesn't want to leave Fiore right now because he's just become S-Class, and wants a chance to grow into his new role," Lucy cut across him, counting them off on her fingers. "Not to mention, he and Juvia have only just got together, and neither of them wants to be separated for an indefinite amount of time this soon into their relationship. The rumour is that Queen Hisui intends to pardon Crime Sorcière as part of the New Year Honours, and Erza is on edge because, if it happens, she wants to be here to help Jellal and the others acclimatize to being a legal guild. Wendy went through as much as anyone during the war – and no matter how much she smiles, she has not recovered. She needs help and support right now, not to be thrown back into danger by the one person she can't bear to disappoint!"
"Luce-"
The interruption only made her speak louder, firmer, as simple and defiant as she could make it: "I don't want to go on the Hundred Year Quest, Natsu. That would be the same whether Zeref was dead or alive, imprisoned or at large. I don't want to. I thought maybe I could overcome that, if it was for you, but it turns out I can't."
"You told me you wanted to go," he reminded her stubbornly. "When we were travelling the land trying to get the guild back together. You thought it would be fun, you and me, remember? Or what about when we were preparing for the Alvarez invasion? We promised we'd go together once it was over."
"Yeah," she said heavily, her shoulders slumping. "Well, you promise a lot when you're not sure you'll get another sunrise."
"So, you lied to me," Natsu accused, voice rising again. "Is that it?"
"No. I did want to go, back then. I really did. But then the war happened, and it was so intense, and the number of times I thought I'd lost the people who meant the most to me…" She turned away, choking on the lengthening shadows, bowing beneath the weight of the setting sun. "When it ended, all I wanted was to relax and not have to worry about death and demons and dark guilds for a little while. I wanted to spend time with the people I love, and work on my novel, and participate in some guild festivals, and take some wacky missions, and just… rediscover all the things I used to love about Fairy Tail, before we went to war."
A bitter laugh. "So, the Hundred Year Quest with the team that beat Alvarez is too dangerous for you, but springing a murderous death-mage from the Council's prison was A-OK?"
"I didn't do that because it was dangerous, Natsu," she told him sadly. "I did it because it was the right thing to do. But this Hundred Year Quest of yours? It's the exact opposite. And I can't deal with it right now. Maybe in a few months I would have been ready for it, but not right now."
She stepped past him, but paused halfway down the darkening street.
"Go on the Quest, Natsu," she said softly. "The others will go with you; they won't want to let you down. You could always invite Juvia in my place, to make things a bit easier for Gray. I'm sure you'll have the time of your life, and I have no doubt you'll triumph over every challenge the Quest can throw at you. I'll see you when you've returned victorious."
As she resumed walking away, she wondered if he was going to call her back, but he did not.
The sun slipped below the horizon, and it seemed the only things that moved in the city were his shadow and hers, growing further and further apart until neither could distinguish the other from the dusk.
Lucy cried that night.
It wasn't as though the terror of Zeref returning to wreak vengeance upon the guild had gone away, only that the potential sorrow and heartbreak his doing so would cause couldn't hurt her as much as the sorrow and heartbreak she was already feeling.
It hurt.
It was deep and agonizing and worst of all, it was entirely unfamiliar to her.
Because they'd never fought before. Not seriously. Their disagreements were trivial and their quibbles were sport, often played out for the amusement of their team. Sometimes it felt like Natsu would deliberately land her in a tricky situation on a job just so that she would yell at him.
They'd come close to a proper fight, once. He'd disappeared without warning in the wake of the Tartaros battle, and then he'd walked back into her life one year later, expecting to pick up exactly where they had left off. She had gone along with it, burying her bitterness deep inside, until one day she had quietly forgiven him and let it all go.
Being bitter made her unhappy; being his friend, wholly and unashamedly, made her happier than anything. Forgiveness had not been a difficult decision. Moving on had got her back her best friend, her guild, and her future.
This was different.
This time, she had more to lose.
It wasn't about giving up a temporary job for the Weekly Sorcerer to return to her true family and a wonderful way of life. This time, she had responsibilities. She had made monumental decisions and she had to face their consequences. She had devoted so much of herself to bringing the guild together and saving Zeref from a hellish fate, and the fact that it hadn't worked out as planned only made it clearer that she had to be here to protect her guild from her own foolishness.
She wasn't just Natsu's teammate any more.
She made her own decisions, and those decisions had started to matter.
But this mattered, too.
Because he was going away for months, perhaps even years, spinning out the horrible moment of their parting across an indefinite void of time. Their final, bitter argument would cast a pallor over the fondness of their recollections, would throw doubt upon all the happiness shared before that one shattering night.
And the truth was, she didn't see their relationship in the same way any more. The war had reframed her past and future; the cascade of chaos that followed it had made her think carefully about her role and her responsibilities. And she wanted Natsu to be part of that. She didn't want their relationship just to be a light-hearted friendship built on silly arguments and spontaneous quests. Beneath the eternal adventure that was a life with him in it, she wanted it to be something stable, something meaningful, something upon which they could build a future as more than teammates.
This time, she had more than a fun friendship to lose.
Maybe time away from him would be good for her. Maybe it would force her to focus on the here and now, and not some unattainable future. First thing tomorrow, she would go to Master Makarov, explain what had happened with Zeref, and ask for his advice. She would own up to her mistakes and do what she could to mitigate the fallout. Maybe she'd look back on this day and be grateful that Natsu's actions had forced her to see her own shortcomings.
Not tonight, though.
Tonight, she'd lost him. Tonight, it hurt.
Between the castigating storm of her own thoughts and the threat looming over her oblivious guild, Lucy barely got a wink of sleep that night. As the autumn sunrise broke over a city drowning in the first chill of the season, she forced herself out of bed, took a shower, dressed for battle, and left her home to head straight up to the guildhall – only to trip over the figure sat on her front doorstep.
"N-Natsu?" she stammered.
He managed a sheepish smile through the white fog of his breath. "Morning, Luce."
"What are you doing here?"
"Wasn't sure you'd appreciate it if I came in without an invitation."
Lucy stared at him, somewhat taken aback by the admission that he knew breaking into her house wasn't normal. She'd always put it down to being raised by a dragon and then spending his formative years in the singular chaos of the guildhall. At any other time, discovering that he knew it wasn't socially acceptable and yet did it anyway would have been a conversation in its own right, but this was going to have to wait.
"No, I mean- what are you doing at my house? You're supposed to be at Hargeon; you'll miss the boat!"
"We've cancelled the Hundred Year Quest," he shrugged. "I talked to the others this morning, and they were all willing to go, but none of them really wanted to. You were right, Luce. As usual."
It was what she wanted to hear, so why wasn't it making her feel any better?
"You wanted to go," she whispered.
"Nah, not really."
"Don't you lie to me, Natsu Dragneel-"
"It's true. I did want to go, but not because I really wanted to travel to another continent or save the day again or be the first one to complete the Quest, or anything like that. What I wanted was to pretend that things were still the way they used to be. I wanted to pretend that I hadn't failed the guild when it needed me the most, that Gray hadn't rightfully got to S-Class before me, that I didn't have a brother who went evil because of me and then might have changed his mind at the death even though I didn't do anything to deserve it, that you didn't… that you weren't going to choose him over me."
"It's not like that-" she began, alarmed, only for him to shake his head, a request that she let him finish.
"Everything's so bloody complicated these days, Luce. The world's not split into winners and losers, guild mages and dark mages. We won the war, but it wasn't because we were strong. It was because those who could have destroyed us chose not to. Zeref surrendered and went into prison because he couldn't face killing me at the end of things; he did the right thing for the wrong reasons. And you broke him out again – the wrong thing, but perhaps for the right reasons. I'm here trying to do what I've always done, and I'm resented for it. Everything's different, now. Everything's in shades of grey, and doing my best just doesn't seem to be enough any more. Everything's… difficult. Next, they'll be saying I need to start a pension and pay income tax and all of that nonsense."
"You… probably should have been doing that already," Lucy pointed out, slightly concerned, but he appeared not to hear her.
"I thought that if we could go on that Hundred Year Quest, just our team, just like the old days, things would be simple again," he brooded. "But things have changed. There's no way around that."
Then he looked up, and it was the first time she had ever seen such a sincere, wistful smile upon his face. "Sorry, Luce. I know you're having a difficult time right now. I didn't mean to make things worse for you."
Changed, indeed.
"I-" she choked. "Natsu, I'm sorry, I know I said all that, but I wasn't meaning for you to give up the Quest completely-"
He waved it away with that old cheerful flair. "It's not the Hundred Year Quest that matters to me, Luce – it's you. If you're staying, I'm staying too."
Lucy swallowed.
This wasn't right.
She had broken so much. She had put everyone in danger. She had made so many mistakes, far more than Natsu, who had only been trying to keep hold of what he cared about. She had pushed him away every bit as much as he had her, had yelled at him just for wanting to go on an adventure while her own decisions were leading them towards annihilation…
After all that, how could he still care about her so much?
"So, get up, Luce," he continued, staring resolutely down the street. "We've got a job to do."
"A job?"
"Yeah. We've gotta find Zeref, beat the crap out of him, and throw him back into prison before anyone from the guild notices he's missing."
"But…"
She didn't know how to bring up what had happened in the S-Class Trials – or what had happened when he and Zeref had fought for real at the end of the war. Surely he had learnt by now that charging off to face Zeref alone was madness…
"I know, Luce," he said softly, while she was still fumbling with the words. "I heard what everyone was trying to tell me. But there's one thing no one seems to have considered."
"…What's that?"
"You're all looking at this the wrong way round. Sure, facing him is different to any other opponent I've ever fought, but facing me is the same for him. He already couldn't kill me once, even when the alternative was that prison. Maybe I can't beat him, but maybe he can't beat me either. I'm not scared of him, Luce. We can fix this, you and me, before anyone else gets dragged into it."
There was nothing but conviction in his eyes as he gave the horizon an intimidating glare. Maybe he understood his own limitations better than he ever had before, but Natsu Dragneel was still Natsu Dragneel, and no amount of change could ever take that away from him.
"I don't understand," she murmured. "I was so awful to you yesterday. Why… why are you willing to give up your Hundred Year Quest in order to take on an overwhelming opponent just to hide my mistake from the guild?"
Instead of answering, Natsu looked left and right along the street, and then his shoulders sagged.
"What's wrong…?" Lucy wondered.
"It's times like this that I wish I'd brought Happy along with me," he sighed.
"Uh, why?"
"Because he'd snigger and say something like he looooooves her, and we'd both yell at him and be able to pretend that it's nothing quite so scary for a little bit longer, right?"
And as she stared, speechless, he held out his hand. "So, are we gonna go save the guild again, or what?"
"Yeah," she sobbed, reaching for his hand.
A/N: Well, I did promise some NaLu at some point! To be honest, my favourite kind of NaLu is their relationship dynamic right at the start of canon - where Lucy is still young and naïve, and Natsu is a whirlwind of chaotic energy, and everything is just so much fun. I went off the pairing towards the end of the manga, because I felt that Lucy had grown up a lot (especially after the one-year timeskip) and Natsu hadn't, and it just didn't feel right to me any more. That only goes double in this timeline, as all the responsibilities Lucy has taken on since the war have forced her to become even more mature. So, the only way this was going to work out was if Natsu could show that he has grown up a little too. Which he has! Of course, he's still being mostly immature when it comes to his brother, and Lucy is still making catastrophically bad choices. But we're only ten chapters in. They've both got a way to go yet.
Oh, and Zeref might have had a bit of a breakdown. Oops. But he's been out for ten days and there's been no sign of him, and things might not be so straightforward on his end either... ~CS