So all that's left

Is the proof that love's not only blind but deaf.


His bed and his skin smelled like lime and he realized that it was body spray. There were stray white-blonde hairs on his pillowcases. It reminded him of Lisanna and it reminded him of Angel. It reminded him faintly of Lucy, as well. In the right light, her hair was white gold. He loved it and he hated that he loved it.

While he showered, Zeref came into the washroom unannounced and shaved, though he knew perfectly well that it made the water run cold. By the time Natsu was done, Zeref was, too. He lingered, though, to tell Natsu,

"I was surprised to see Mira this morning."

"She needed a place to crash," he said vaguely, ignoring Zeref's purposeful tone, the one that said he wanted Natsu to move on from Lucy and he wanted him to do it with a nice, fucked up girl like Mira. One that was semi-drowning but still treading the surface. A manageable girl. A girl just like him.

"It's Saturday. I'm probably going to be working late."

Natsu wanted to ask if that was at the coffee shop or at the shitty apartment he saw him leaving but didn't have the guts.

After Zeref left, it was just him and his thoughts and together, they travelled to weird places. Memories came back in fits and spurts. Mira's wet mouth, her limp hands. Her hair. It got tangled around his fingers. He'd pulled it too hard. She never scolded him.

Natsu shoved all of that aside. Who was to say what was real and what was fake, anyway?

He washed his sheets at the laundromat and when he returned home, he again cleaned the spot where Wally had met his end. Then he washed the dishes and cleaned the fridge. There was only a stick of butter in there and a mostly-empty bag of milk. He killed the rest of it with breakfast—stale cereal.

No matter how he tried to distract himself, his mind kept drifting back to a white-blonde place where he almost didn't think about Lucy. Mira was sweet. She was sweet like Lisanna was sweet—sticky—she clung to his thoughts like honey to fingers—and too much—he felt sick thinking about her even as he craved more.

He needed to move to keep his thoughts in some order. He dropped his empty bowl of food pantry salvaged Toasted O's into the sink and got out of there, snagging his bike out of the end of the small hallway. The only place he wanted to go was too far to walk to.


Flies buzzed in the warm June sun, their wings making music. They zipped in front of Natsu's face and disappeared into the bright green forest only to resurface again and soar past his cheek. He wasn't fast enough to swipe them away.

The drive path sloped up for a long, long way. Sweat collected at his temples and slid through the stubble he'd yet to shave. He loosened the scarf his Grampy Igneel gave him before he died and regretted wearing it for the first time in years. He couldn't tell if it was the sun that was making him so uncomfortable, though or withdrawal.

A mosquito landed on his arm. It didn't get the chance to bite him before he dropped the bike he'd snagged out of a ditch two years ago and slapped it dead, but he still scratched the area until it was red and raw.

Stop.

Shotgun bullet casings littered the roadway, reds and greens and blues all coiled back like hotdogs sliced and then cooked over fire. Natsu left his bike where it was, spewed across the path, so he could pick one up and twirl it between his palms. With his hands busy like this, he didn't have to think about how irritated his arm was.

The hill crested and Natsu's eyes immediately zeroed in on the powder blue fridge. It was still knocked over. It had been moved, though, and significantly.

He was making that weird whining noise deep in his lungs again. He scraped his boots across the ground to get closer, it was the best he could manage.

At first, all he could focus on was the rusty, empty and crooked refrigerator, full of rainwater and dead June bugs, a spider or two and a hunk of hair that looked like it had come from some small mammal, but eventually, his eyes moved outwards, and he was able to see the four-wheeler tracks in the mud. Someone had taken their four-wheeler and driven right by the fridge. And not just right by, but they'd gotten too close and clipped the top right corner, too. There was a smear of rubber on the blue paint and a huge dent.

He could have cried. He chose to laugh instead. It sounded strangled and frenzied.

Natsu checked the quarry for anyone else before he got to work pushing the fridge back to where it belonged. It was hard going because the ground was softened by a June thunderstorm. His feet slid in the mud and the fridge got hung up. More than once, he wondered if it was a bad idea to move it. It was too late, though, he'd already started.

When it was sitting right again and he'd masked his footsteps as well as he could, Natsu stepped back and thought about what he'd done. He thought about the dead man six feet below the surface, his body sitting in a puddle of clay water because the water table was close here. He thought about the bricks and other weird garbage he had to move in order to dig the grave and he thought about how now, he felt sick. It could have been the kind of sick that came with covering up a murder, but it also could have been the kind of sick that came with withdrawal.

He took out his phone and called Brandish. She answered on the third ring.

"What is it?"

"Can we meet?"

"We could but I don't have anything, Natsu."

Those words sent barbs through his skin. "What? Why?"

"My supplier's gone."

"Gone?"

"He got picked up by the cops last night. Everything's fucked."

It was like hungry wolves ripped at his guts. He thought he could do this when heroin was still available to him. Fuck.

Brandish said something to someone else that actually stood beside her, then told Natsu, "I gotta go." She hung up in his ear well ahead of anything he might have said to keep her on the line.


Natsu walked through Magnolia for a long time with his bike ticking at his side. The chain needed to be oiled. He didn't really care to go through the trouble.

His feet carried him to a place he was honestly surprised to see. Fairy Hills was legendary in Magnolia, a group home for troubled youth. There was a motorbike out front and a girl was on her hands and knees looking at her bike with a sour look on her face. She tromped inside and the opportunity to ask if Mira was there was lost.

Natsu dropped onto the bench outside of the grounds and studied the tiered building. On one side was the boys' dorms, the other was the girls'. In the middle was where Headmaster Dreyar and Doctor Conbolt, the apparently perverted psychiatrist, had his office.

The door opened and a familiar face exited. Elfman barely looked at Natsu, he had eyes only for the motorcycle girl who walked at his side. He grabbed her bike by the seat after she was seated and the girl put her feet up. Elfman pushed her into a run. At first, Natsu thought they were playing but then she dropped the clutch and the bike roared to life and he realized that she had a problem with the starter.

She zipped down the block. Elfman jogged to a stop and waited for her to return for him. They took off together and Fairy Hills was silent again for several long moments until the door opened and Mira came out. She'd put her hair up and changed into short shorts and a tank top. There was a towel in her hand. She looked at where her friend's bike had been and screwed up her face. She started walking with purpose.

Now or never, Natsu realized, otherwise she'd be out of range. "Mira!" She stopped and he rose. Her expression went through several transformations, surprise and disappointment and that could have been a twinge of regret that he dutifully ignored. "Hey."

"Hey," she said cautiously. "What's up?"

Natsu realized he was awkward. He'd never noticed before. "What are you doing?"

Mira sighed hugely. "Going to the beach."

"By yourself?"

"I was supposed to go to with Cana but she was having problems with her bike. She asked Elfman to help her and… it looks like they left. So, yeah, I guess, by myself."

"I was thinking about going there, too."

One eyebrow came up. He never understood how she did that. Lisanna could do it, too. "You were?"

"Yeah. It's hot out." And he needed something to do. "We can go together."

She looked him over. He wasn't dressed like it was hot out or like he was going to the beach, not wearing a leather jacket he sweated in and his favourite pair of converse. "What are you going to go swimming in?"

"I have shorts." Boxers. Who would know the difference?

Mira conceded and started walking again. Natsu fell into step beside her, not too close because he wasn't sure just what he was doing, but close enough that lime was in his nose again. He still didn't know how he felt about it.


Mira was stiff until they got to the water and started swimming. Then she sort of remembered that they used to have fun together. They raced, swimming above water and underneath, and they had handstand competitions but with no one to judge, it was hard to say who won. She hopped on his back and he piggybacked her through the water. He knew she, at least some of the time, used the leverage to look for her brother and her friend, but she never found them.

Eventually, as the sun got lazy on the horizon, she stopped doing that and just had fun. They finished the night off with another round of drinks and more deep-seated secrets and made a few of their own, too, in the shadow of a stubby cedar by the public washrooms.


Mira was more reserved the second day he showed up to Fairy Hills than the first. She came out, though, and they went back to the beach. Her laughs were harder to tease out, her smiles almost non-existent. She loosened up when Natsu offered her an oxie from the small pile he'd found in Zeref's room.

Mira lay on top of the picnic table on her back, legs crossed, arms folded behind her head. Natsu sat on the bench and watched the waves roll into shore from the upside-down V Mira's legs made. She shifted and his eyes focused closer. He could see the bottom of her behind; her bikini didn't hide everything. He found himself grossly fascinated and intrigued and turned off all at once. He remembered Ultear telling him she sometimes fucked her stepbrother and if he thought about it too long, this felt like the same kind of taboo. He'd known Mira for a long time. She was almost family.

"I thought she was my friend," Mira complained

"Who?"

Mira's head turned. Her hair coiled like springs, loop after damp loop. "Cana. All she does now is take off with Elfman."

"Where do they go?"

"That shitty abandoned theatre in town."

Natsu was familiar with the one. He'd spent some time there himself. "Oh."

"I think she's just using him. Everybody just fucking uses everybody."

"Not everyone."

Her head came around fast as a snake and she said, "You and I are the worst ones."

He was afraid to ask what she meant by that so he didn't.


Day five of a week-long heatwave brought more oxies and more bad decisions. Mira let him fuck her in the water when the beach was too crowded. It didn't feel as good as he thought it should. She tilted her head back and looked like a sad and lost mermaid. She clung to him too hard and he did the same, both of them hungry for something and both of them starving to death.

He helped her find her bikini bottoms before she had to walk out and everyone absolutely knew what they already suspected they were doing. They'd floated to the bottom of the clear lake. Natsu handed them to her and muttered about being thirsty; there was a fountain up by the washrooms. He left her in the water tripping into her bottoms and exited.

A few people catcalled. Most avoided looking at him, however, as he slogged to the beach washroom with a head full of cobwebs. Gold move between the two cedars out front. It was hard to tell if that was real or not, though. Sometimes, oxies made his eyes interpret strange things.

He walked past the washroom door and looked in between the bushes. No hallucination. Lucy waited for him. Of course she waited for him. He hesitated, on the brink of turning around and going about his business or touching her.

She looked hurt. She looked mad. She looked eager to see him, too, and the last was the only one that really stuck out in his mind.

"Hi."

"Did you follow me here?"

Lucy's expression was incendiary. "It's a fucking public beach." Her words were accusatory and he knew for certain she'd seen him and Mira.

He sighed and backed up, shuffling out of the enclosed area. It was gross in there; he'd been in a few times now but he was only just realizing. It was Lucy's contrast, really, that brought it to light. There was a condom wrapper at her feet, her flip-flops kept her away from it just barely, there were a broken bottle and the plunger of a needle all within a two-foot radius.

Before he could fully escape, Lucy grabbed his arm and wrenched him right back in. "Wait."

"What?"

She cast her eyes downward. Eventually, she said, "I haven't seen you."

"Because I've been avoiding you." And he'd like to keep it that way.

"Are you treating me this way because my family told you to?"

"I make my own decisions," Natsu hissed, suddenly Zeref-level angry.

Lucy flinched back and yet, she didn't let go of his wrist. "They threatened you, right? I was careless with the receipts and my dad found them but I learned my lesson. We'll be sneakier until we don't have to be anymore."

"Just stop." He pulled out of her grip. Lucy readjusted and pulled him right back in. Cedar branches dug into his back and he liked it. He liked that it made all of this so very real when days had just been slipping by in a blur.

"No. I'm going to get what I need to put my father in jail and once that's done, Jellal won't care what I do."

She said it so stubbornly but Natsu wasn't sure, Jellal didn't look like a yes man to him. He looked like he made his own decisions and thought very little about the path not taken.

"Tell me what they said to you. We'll go to the police together."

She didn't understand what she was saying. He didn't understand what she was saying. Her words were tearing through his mind and igniting fires they had no business igniting, breathing hope into a thing he thought was hopeless—a thing that was safer hopeless. "They're your family, Lucy."

"They're bad people. They deserve everything that happens to them."

Natsu saw red again, patters of blood, it drip, drip, slopping down Zeref's leg, and thick things, too, things he'd had to pick up between his fingers and flush down the toilet.

"Tell me. We can be together again."

Blood got watery and pink before it got clean. Natsu again watched it run down the bed of the truck and into the drain at the carwash. He heard the scrubbies move over the floor. Scrape, and squelch, the blood pushed up and moved around.

Lucy stood on tiptoe and kissed the image away. She pushed against him her rage and her helplessness and all of her insecurities and like someone greedy, he took them and treasured them, though they were ugly and useless things. They were hers so he wanted them.

Badly enough to hide another body? asked a mean voice. Badly enough to make Zeref kill for you again? Or will it be you doing the rough work this time?

Natsu planted two hands on Lucy's shoulders and imagined he was plucking a burr from his clothing. Like a burr, she didn't go easily and left pieces of herself behind, her tears on his cheeks, her fingermarks on his arms, the memory of her mouth.

They both sucked in the same air in that narrow place but Natsu felt like he was a world apart from her. "You can't do that anymore."

She blinked at him; each time, a tear snuck out beneath her lashes. He had to get out of there and he had to get out now. He wheeled back and all but fell from the bushes.

It was another world out there in the beach park, people moved from the washrooms to the water or to the parking lot. Natsu saw a splash of white-blonde and raced for it. Mira had put on her shorts and that was it. She walked quickly, bits of water dripped from her hair and down her back.

"Mira!" Her shoulders got stiff so he knew she heard him. "Mira, wait!"

She looked at him sideways when he caught up and wore her anger on her face. "Fuck off."

"What? Why?"

She shook her head furiously and walked faster. Natsu grabbed her wrist and tried to hold her back. "Wait, Mira—"

She wrenched out of his grip. "I can't be Lisanna and I can't be a rebound for Lucy. I can't be anyone for you." She muttered lastly, "I can't even be myself."


Angel had a way of showing up when she was needed most but wanted least. He caught her leaving his apartment with wet cheeks. She saw him, swiped away the tears, and stood straight.

"What's going on, Natsu?"

He slowed and lifted his shoulder. "Nothing."

"Do you have anywhere to be?"

Not really. He shook his head. Angel looped her arm through his and led him away from the apartment. He could have fought even the slightest, but he recognized the shape of the pipe in her back pocket and suspected she'd be generous.

There was a crooked picnic table on the edge of the river in town where people had burned their initials into the wood. Angel straddled one side of the table and Natsu took the other, watching as she pulled out her pipe and started packing it.

"Where did you get it from?"

"Brandish, who else?" Angel asked.

"She told me she had none."

"Because your brother told her she didn't, not for you."

Natsu felt a prick of rage in his chest.

"Don't look surprised, it's exactly something he'd do," she said.

It was.

She got the dark brick burning and putrid smoke filled the air. Natsu's chest was as tight as a vice, his skin shivered and his hands shook in anticipation.

She exhaled and caught his gaze. Her blue eyes made mince if his skin. "Did you tell him about us?"

Natsu paused reaching for the pipe. "There wasn't anything to tell."

She thought that meant something it didn't and when she handed over the pipe, she stood and leaned over the table, too. Natsu waited longer to pull away this time. He still stood, though, and he still left her.

He walked around Magnolia for hours, playing with the glass pipe in he'd pocketed, and then the lighter, assuming that he was directionless, but when the sun's rays started to hit the tops of the trees, he found himself at Gildarts'. He avoided the front door and went for the Bunkie. It was open, as Gildarts promised, dark with the drapes drawn and warm. He was suddenly, absolutely exhausted.

He started undoing his boots, the leather of his coat creaking, and finally realized that there was a pair of damp ankle boots on the Welcome mat as well. He lifted his gaze and found a brunette in the bed. He looked around to confirm that he was where he was supposed to be. This was Gildarts' Bunkie.

"Hi."

"Hey," the girl said and Natsu could smell the whisky on her breath even so far away.

"Uh..." Did he leave? Did he politely ask her to leave? He didn't know.

"I just crashed here last night," she said briskly. "I'll get out of your way."

"It's okay. I was just…" He trailed off. The girl—Mira's friend, he thought, the one that was hanging off Angel and kept ditching Mira for Elfman—eyed the lighter he still held and the bulbed pipe sticking out of his pocket. Her brows raised.

"You were?"

"I don't know what I was doing," he said after a moment and put the lighter away. With his hands free, he dug them into his hair and earned himself a sympathetic look.

She stood—she'd slept fully clothed—and offered him her hand. "Cana."

"Natsu." He liked the way she was off-balance and reeking of booze. She was a mess, too.