A/N: Guess who's celebrating her 10th anniversary writing Natsu and Gray by starting a new series? Why, me. xD
A big thank you to L for the beta.
This fic is inspired by Dreamcatcher's song, Scream.
And now, let the weirdness begin.
Scream
One day suddenly the light did not come
People forgot how to say good things
Tiredness made Natsu's body feel like it weighed too much. He was on the brink of falling asleep.
The fire mage burrowed a little more against the slumbering body beside him. Distantly, Happy's soft snores came forth among the veils of sleep covering him.
Only then did Natsu let himself be pulled down into slumber.
Blue skies with fluffy white clouds strolling lazily across them were reflected on the ice-like waters down on the ground.
The valley was cradled by snow-white mountains and, at the centre, stood a large tree.
Its trunk was a faded violet colour while the leaves on top were of a mix of yellow-green colours.
But then, everything changed.
The sun set abruptly in the timeless place.
Dark shadows engulfed the land at the same time that thick, white-grey mists rose from the ground.
The sky went from light blue to a mix of orange that was followed by purple that quickly turned pitch black. All-encompassing except for where a sliver of moon shone with a sickly-violet hue.
It took some time but the tree was also affected by the change. The tree's large trunk turned grey and the leaves became vibrant red that soon after became black.
The air also shifted, making it hard to breathe.
There was no air.
Natsu woke up with a gasp.
He opened his eyes but everything was still dark.
'What the-?' he thought in alarm, still gasping for air. But he calmed himself down and noticed that a strange cloth – it was cold too – was covering his eye. Natsu removed it from his eyes and sat up. He took a look around.
He was in his room. His empty room.
"Where are they?" he wondered out loud.
The strange cloth fell to the floor with a wet squelch.
The fire mage looked down at it, seeing it shiny and with a red liquid splaying out from it on the wooden floor.
Frowning, Natsu stood up and headed towards the bathroom.
"Happy? Gray? Are you in here?"
Silence was the only answer to his query.
Natsu stepped inside the bathroom and stopped with a start.
His wide-eyed reflection stared back at him.
"Wha-!"
Blood was covering the area around his eyes and running down his cheeks. The metallic scent that had seemed to be an afterthought until then, barely registering in his senses, became overpowering. It overwhelmed him.
Natsu quickly opened the tap and splashed water on his face, scrubbing hard on his skin to remove all traces of the blood. He also grabbed the first towel he could reach, calming slightly at the faded scent of cold and cinnamon that were so familiar to him. The softness of the fabric momentarily helped him to relax.
Only for that tranquillity to disappear in a heartbeat, being replaced by urgency.
He needed to go to the guild. Fast.
Determination thrummed through his whole body, igniting an out of control spark of a flame inside him.
Natsu put on the clothes that had been haphazardly thrown to the floor on the previous night. The scarf around his neck allowed him to breathe easier too; he knew that he could take care of whatever this situation took. Or so he hoped.
As soon as Natsu stepped outside the house he could feel strangeness.
More so, he could see that everything seemed to be bathed in a sickly yellow light. And then, an unusual wind started to blow.
It was cold and sharp, slicing through Natsu like blades. It was almost too much, even for the Salamander.
Pushing his discomfort aside Natsu started running towards the guild. But something strange was happening.
People were staring. At him.
And it felt as if both the stares and wind were piercing him.
It was unnerving even to Natsu because there was also a suffocating silence pressing over Natsu – and the town.
Natsu turned to a side alley and came to a stop in an attempt to get his breathing, and himself, back under control.
'What the hell is going on?' he thought, looking up at the grey sky.
Strangely, instead of calming down, he started hurting.
His whole body was aching, thrumming. It seemed that stopping had made the pain flow through his veins, encompassing everything.
He took long moments to get himself back together, to breathe the pain away a little.
As he re-emerged on the street that led to the guild, a strange, unknown magic snapped before him, binding his hands together in front of him. His head swam for a little, his knees wobbled and he fell hard on the cobbled pavement. However, the cloud of pain seemed to ebb away. It was like it was being absorbed by the bindings. But the less pain he felt, the tighter the iridescent rope became, quickly making his hands fall asleep.
With heaving breaths and some gasping, Natsu stood up once more.
He had to keep going. To reach the guild.
As he started running again, it didn't take long until more strangeness happened.
Natsu entered what looked like a shimmery wall of wind.
Natsu saw Gray standing before the large tree of his dream.
No, he didn't see him, just a hooded person, walking towards a glowing vortex that appeared before the tree.
The figure turned slightly and, yes, it really was Gray.
"Gray!" Natsu yelled as he started to run towards him.
But he was too far.
Natsu came through to the other side where the sickly yellow light was accented by brown hues and shadows.
The shackles tying his wrists disappeared and Natsu nearly lost his balance and fell down to the ground. But barely.
And then the path to the guild became harder. The townspeople started throwing rocks at him. They came from every direction.
"What the fuck are you-?" he asked the nearest person but no-one paid him any mind. And thus, Natsu had to run.
But, no matter how much he ran, he couldn't escape.
They were merciless.
And confusion kept coursing through Natsu.
Strangely, the closer he got to the guild, the less people there seemed to be in his way.
And then the confusion turned to shock at what he saw.
In the place where the guild should be – used to be – there was nothing more than a crater.
A few townspeople strolled on the street, like nothing was amiss. They ignored Natsu when he asked them about what had happened.
They just… kept walking with an unsteady gait.
Natsu was befuddled.
Without him noticing, in the crater of where the guild used to be, a small spark came to life, becoming an enormous ball of fire in the blink of an eye. It blazed and grew, consuming everything more and more, shining brightly, almost to the point of competing with the sun.
And then, it moved.
Natsu had turned around, trying to shield his eyes from the brightness but the flaming ball collided with him, right in the solar plexus.
The fire mage was engulfed by it.
Not just engulfed, Natsu began to be consumed by it.
But it shouldn't be-
'It's fire. I should be able to endure it!' he thought distantly with a part of his mind that wasn't consumed by the painhurtagony.
However, Natsu's thoughts quickly faded as he realized that it was no normal fire. It burned like nothing he had ever experienced. And it slid inside his veins, like a poison, spreading out way too fast.
Natsu realized that the air was escaping.
He was screaming.
'No. I must-' the last coherent thought fluttered to the edge of his consciousness.
*Devil eyes come, open my eyes*
The words resonated in his mind. An order.
'I can't,' he thought in a pained reply. 'It hurts too much!'
Even from behind his closed eyes he could feel the painfully bright red all around him.
In the next agonizing breath, everything stilled.
Natsu crumpled on the ground. He was weak after being held for what seemed like an everlasting moment in that strangely tight grasp.
Unnoticed by him, black lines shot outward from where he was kneeling, creating fissures on the ground, deep grooves opening and from where black mist rose.
Time seemed to still.
And then the screaming began.
Above, the sun was covered by a dark cloud, plunging Magnolia in semi-darkness.
It was then that the effect showed itself.
More people approached the area where Natsu was still attempting to stand up. As Natsu looked up and around, he was surprised at what he saw.
The faces of the people, the skins were cracked and falling, leaving the real faces of the people bare.
'Were those masks? What?' He finally stood and turned around. 'Has this all been a trick?'
One by one, blank faces got revealed. It appeared that the actual faces were masks, although, masks without the cuts for eyes or mouths.
They stood there, gazing eerily at Natsu.
Time got suspended once again and then the people closer to him launched themselves at Natsu. They started attacking him, both with enraged words and talon-like nails.
Natsu tried to evade, to push the attackers back. But to no avail as they were in a much bigger numeric advantage. It was at that point that the faceless voices started blaming Natsu for things he had no idea about.
That was when Natsu found an opening and managed to escape.
He ran.
Still, he couldn't escape the rocks that were once more being thrown at him. But when he took a corner, the attacks ceased instantly.
Natsu got immediately suspicious. And then he saw them.
There were two figures in the middle of the street.
Natsu recognized them and ran towards them.
"Erza, Lucy! Am I glad to see you here." He said with a smile.
However, as he got closer, Natsu started to notice some weirdness. The girls seemed to have a grey hue covering them – almost as if they were inside a cloud of smoke – and their eyes looked strange, lifeless. But the worst were their faces, features twisted by anger.
"Glad to see us, he says." Lucy said mockingly.
"You've got to be kidding us. " Erza added, disdainfully.
Natsu frowned.
"The question is, how do you have the gall to come here?"
"Yes, more so, after failing so miserably."
"What are you talking about?" Natsu asked.
Two pairs of eyes widened, expressions telegraphing disgust. Erza made to step menacingly forward, towards the fire mage, but Lucy stilled her.
"What are we talking about?" Lucy sneered, "of how you were the cause for this," she made a vague circular motion with her hand, "for everything."
"You're wrong!" Natsu denied earnestly.
"No, she's not. And it would be better if the likes of you weren't here." Erza added. "We were better off if you had died." She spat venomously.
Natsu had no reaction. His expression turning blank.
By more of the strange magic, their sharp words, posture and expressions seemed to be stabbing into Natsu, the words becoming real and splitting flesh and making blood ooze out.
It became hard to breathe.
Natsu fell to the ground, the jarring impact another ache to account for.
"What do you want me to do?" he pleaded with them. "I don't know anything."
But they stood before him. Hate-filled eyes not giving any solace.
Distantly Natsu noticed that the air had become filled with smoke, faint tendrils reaching to him, covering the sides of the street in thick layers, making the building fronts be engulfed by the smoke. And through it all the wind continued to blow, harsh and cutting.
Then it started to move the smoke. Slowly and incrementally faster, until it was spinning, gaining momentum. And then, in the blink of an eye, it became a solid mass that was pressing onto Natsu.
Pain erupted on the fire mage once more.
The toxicity of the smoke was so strong that it burned on every and all parts of the fire mage's body it touched.
Natsu didn't want to but, again, found himself screaming until he had no remaining breath in his lungs.
*Devil come, open my eyes. OPEN MY EYES*
The order resonated once again on his mind.
And it seemed to do something.
Gray was inside a strange room.
It was dark, filled with large square pillars that went up to the darkness of where the ceiling should be. There was a circular window, made of stained glass, with iridescent colours that seemed to be moving, on the far wall. But the room was dark, except for the weird writings on the pillar's faces. Said writings were glowing sharply in bright red. A strange undulation, almost like a pulse, made the reds fade or become stronger.
Gray was sitting on the ground, legs crossed and looking towards the window.
It got bathed in white light, which made a stark contrast with the darkness.
Natsu lay on the cobblestone ground. He was dead tired.
But the ground was refreshing. He rested his too warm cheek against the cool stones and waited. He closed his eyes.
Finally, his breathing came back to normal and he found the strength to sit up.
Natsu opened his eyes.
Everyone had left.
All traces of fire and smoke were gone.
But an orange-brown light remained colouring everything. It felt odd.
Slowly, Natsu stood.
There was a heavy weight in the pit of his stomach, something he realized was sadness.
The words had been cutting and hurtful, hitting him. But the people uttering them were not his friends. They couldn't be. So he had no reason to be sad.
Unbeknownst to him, Natsu's appearance had changed slightly. Scales were now covering his arms and part of his chest, climbing up to his neck and cheeks.
Huffing out a breath Natsu stood and squared his shoulders back. He raised his chin and looked defiantly around the street. The aches in his limbs seemed to have lessened quite a bit too.
He started making his trek back to the guild. He knew, in a strange way, that the answers ought to be there.
People with mask-like faces ambled the streets, but this time they didn't attack Natsu. They walked on with their zombie-like cadence.
It was only when Natsu walked by them that things changed.
The expressions became pained rictuses in all the forms pain could take, and the screaming began.
*Forget everything you saw
Believe that nothing happened*
A weird, echo-y voice whispered the words in Natsu's ear. And he found himself obeying it.
All around him people were falling, shrieking and contorting on the ground. People jumped from top floor windows and roofs. Some yelled, some laughed, some cried while rolling around on the street.
*They've become crazy.* The voice in Natsu's mind whispered.
Natsu took a deep breath. An evil smirk appearing on his lips.
"Good." Natsu said out loud as blue-white energy burst from him.
Around him everyone screamed again, the few people standing crumbling down.
Having finally reached the place where the guild used to be, Natsu took a look around himself. His eyes shone with a purple light.
Every person he passed seemed to give their strongest scream while he passed them.
A small vortex appeared. Before it a smoke-like doppelganger of Natsu emerged, becoming more defined with each step Natsu gave closer.
Natsu blinked at seeing how he was. But then, more pressing matters came.
He knew it. This was where it started. The connection to the tree of his dream.
*I just want to make you scream.* Shadow Natsu said. And Natsu turned towards the town, the place he had come from. And repeated the words.
Shadow Natsu hovered until it was covering Natsu completely.
The vortex opened wider.
Light flashed.
When wind blew across Magnolia one last time, Natsu's form was quickly dispersed by it.