Summary: Sometimes the line between waking and dreaming seems all too thin.
Author's Note: Natsu-centric. Contains Nalu, Jerza, Gajevy, and some Gruvia. Beta read by the amazing Snogfairy. Just a note to everyone – this story is already finished, and if you're feeling impatient you can read the whole thing (though with quite a few extra typos) on my tumblr blog.
The door was locked, and it wasn't long before they left the paved streets of the city behind them. Natsu moved on instinct, pulling threads of detail from his memory to guide him. He reached back to help Lucy over a particularly large snow drift and caught the worry that she was trying so hard to hide from him.
"So Erza's gonna have a baby, huh?" he asked, wanting to break the tension his partner was feeling. And maybe banish the unease he felt worming around in his heart.
"Oh! Yes." She seized on the conversation like a lifeline. "Jellal was officially declared dead by the magic council - Doranbolt actually - and he took on Mystogan's identity. They're married now."
"Man… That just seems…" He shook his head, not even sure what to make of the march of time. It was so unsettling to be missing pieces of his own history.
A chuckle greeted his incredulity. "That's not the half of it. Gajeel and Levy got married a few months ago. I know!" she exclaimed in response to the look of shock he threw over his shoulder. "It caught all of us by surprise. They kind of eloped when they were off on a job."
"Seriously?" He took in her quick nod and amused smile. "Geez. I woulda thought Levy would have more sense than that."
She laughed, boots tromping trenches into the snow. "Mira made them have a proper wedding at the guildhall so we could all be there. Gajeel asked Juvia to be his best man. It was really adorable."
"Wow." Frankly, it sounded unbelievable. "I hope we at least got really drunk or something."
"Well, you did, and then you danced with me right before you…" Lucy hesitated, and her smile faltered before picking up again with just a bit more strain to the edges. "Anyway. We all had a really good time." Her hands were hidden under thick gloves, but he caught the way she rubbed at her ring finger.
Up until that moment, he had started to feel like they were just two old friends catching up after some time apart. Now he keenly felt the gulf so treacherously sprawling between them, filled with the unknown. Natsu cleared his throat and shoved a branch out of his way. "What about everyone else?"
"Hmm. Gray and Juvia are dating. And Carla's finally starting to thaw when it comes to Happy," she offered with a lilting tone.
"No kidding? She decided she likes fish after all?" The dragon slayer snorted, gaze skimming through the trees.
"Not exactly, but he figured out that she's got a bit of a weakness for ice cream."
"Hah! That's all it took?" He waited for an answer, but the biting wind was the only sound. "Lucy?" Spinning around, Natsu found no bundled celestial spirit wizard in sight, and his heart sped up while it crawled right into his throat. "Lucy?"
No. Not now!
Bounding back the way he had come from, he continued to shout. "Lucy?! Lucy!"
"Natsu."
The rumbling voice dragged him to a halt like someone yanking the back of his vest. He turned and found Igneel's enormous bulk crouched between two huge pine trees. "What…?"
"Are you all right?" Bright, reptilian eyes scanned over him, searching for any injuries.
"I'm fine, but where's Lucy? She was right here." The dragon slayer gestured frantically to the space next to him, and his nose scrunched as he scented the air. "She was just behind me, so she can't be far! Why can't I smell her?"
He lurched forward through the shin deep snow, churning another path back towards the city, before his father's voice stopped him. "Natsu, please. Take a moment and look."
Swiveling around, the young man swallowed heavily. The brief time he'd spent just chatting with Lucy had managed to lull his sense of foreboding, but it burst back in full force, flooding into every space in his body along with spines of pain that pricked at his limbs. He squeezed his hands into fists to ward off the prickling. "I am looking! Help me find her!"
Igneel sighed and pointed. "Natsu, please look. There's only one set of tracks. You are the only one who has been through here."
Anxiety solidified into a cold, dense knot in his stomach when he stared at the nearly untouched field of white. "No. No, she was right here. I held her hand! I smelled her and touched her…" He resumed his laborious march back towards Magnolia, nausea pressing the sour knot up towards his mouth. "If I go back… she might… I can't just -"
Please don't let any of this be real…
Another sigh sent steam into the air, and the dragon reached out to stop him. The clawed fingers settled so gently on his side. "Please calm down. You're rather worked up right now, and it's possible you aren't thinking as clearly -"
"You say she's dead, she says you're dead, but I see both of you. What's going on here?" Natsu demanded, dark eyes turning up towards his father. "Am I crazy? Am I losing my mind?" His voice cracked, desperate and fearful.
Igneel didn't answer immediately, scooping the human up into his hands instead. "We should go see Grandeeney. If anyone can help us puzzle this out, it's her."
Natsu didn't resist and slumped into the cage formed by the dragon's talons. He let the heat of his parent's body banish the chill from his soaked clothing. It did nothing for that cold, hard lump sitting in his chest, and he still found himself trembling with sudden fatigue. "...Okay. Let's go."
There was a familiar sensation of sudden pressure and then relative weightlessness as Igneel launched himself into the sky. Great wings beat at the air, causing a swirl of snowflakes.
"I can't remember…" the fire wizard whispered and then raised his voice to be heard over the rush of wind. "I can't remember any of this. How long have I been traveling with you?"
"A bit less than four years," Igneel responded. "You told me you didn't feel like you could stay in your guild after… what happened, and you decided you wanted to concentrate on your training as a dragon slayer. Frankly, I don't have anything left to teach you, but you keep progressing anyway."
Natsu was quiet, eyes watching the trees pour by beneath them. It was so unreal, and he felt like someone had sliced the lines that connected him to reality, leaving him detached and adrift. Was Lucy just a dream? Was this a hallucination? "What about everyone else? Fairy Tail?"
"Ah, they seek you out from time to time. Some of them are quite tenacious." The dragon chuckled, big body shaking with laughter. "Especially that red headed knight. She didn't seem to accept that you wanted to distance yourself. It's only gotten worse now that she's with child."
"Erza's pregnant?" That detail brought Natsu's pink head around. At last there was something that matched. "And the others?"
"Well, Metallicana's brat and Grandeeney's sweet little girl visit you most often. Wendy often brings others along with her, though Gajeel hasn't been by quite so frequently now that he's picked his mate."
Natsu rolled his gaze back towards the ground, mind whirling. "Gajeel and Levy…" he murmured. Was the only difference between Igneel and Lucy? "You said I was in a fight."
"Yes. With a dark wizard," the dragon answered. "He struck you with some kind of energy from the device he had."
Also the same, Natsu noted. Maybe that was the link? He reached up to his neck and was startled when his fingers met bare flesh. He felt strange and exposed without the wrapping. "What happened to my scarf?"
"It served its purpose," Igneel said enigmatically.
They drifted over the landscape, arcing slightly when Magnolia came into view. The dragon slayer gazed down and frowned.
"The city…" From above, he could clearly note the changes. Streets were realigned, buildings different, and the cathedral's spires cast an entirely unfamiliar profile against the clouds. No wonder he had gotten a bit lost trying to get to Lucy's. "What happened to it?"
"There was a battle here years ago, and it caused a great deal of damage. I wasn't around for the reconstruction, but it seems to have gone nicely," Igneel rumbled.
In the distance, the guildhall rose proudly, sandwiched between the wide boulevard and Lake Sciliora, and Natsu sucked in a breath. Even the hall looked slightly different, though that didn't surprise him as much considering how often it had been rebuilt. "Can we stop?"
"Are you certain?" But the dragon dropped down into one of the empty spaces surrounding the hall without waiting for confirmation. Carefully, he let his son down to the ground.
Night had already fallen, cloaking their presence. The sudden shift from the morning he was with Lucy to evening just lent more fuel to Natsu's dread - more lost time consumed by whatever was happening to him. He halted, breathing deeply and closing his eyes. Sounds from inside the building filled his ears while the wafting scents filled his nose.
He could pick them out, one by one. Gray and Juvia. Erza and Jellal. Gajeel, Wendy, Pantherlily, Carla, Levy… Happy… Their voices washed over him, and it took some effort to dissect the individual conversations.
Erza wanted cake, and Jellal was leaving their table to fetch it.
Gray was making an unintentionally hilarious attempt to flatter Juvia which made her faint.
Happy offered some ice cream to Carla who couldn't quite seem to decline.
He could find them all except Lucy. Not one trace of her remained.
"I was glad that your friends refused to give up on you," Igneel said quietly, and it snapped Natsu out of his trance. "You grieved so deeply for that poor girl that I began to fear you might throw away your humanity to avoid the pain. Your guild, even though you'd left, kept you from letting yourself go."
The dragon slayer was silent for a long time, trying to weigh all the things he was being told. His limbs felt so heavy and strange, making him roll his shoulders and bounce a bit on his toes to shake out the feeling. "How did Lucy die?"
"She was killed during a battle."
Natsu scrubbed at his eye sockets with his knuckles. "Yeah, but how? What exactly happened?"
The gust kicked up by the dragon's heavy sigh stirred Natsu's pink hair. "She sacrificed herself to save you. Those scars on your hands came from that moment."
Fingers twitching, Natsu stared down in surprise. Rather than littering his forearms, the scars now covered his hands. He turned them over, finding more silvery lines decorating his palms. "Shit…" They were different than the ones Lucy had pointed out to him, and it made things inside him squirm with disquiet. "How? How exactly did she die?"
Igneel paused, movements stilling entirely as he watched his son. The dragon's shape was a dark silhouette backlit by the lights of the city. "You don't want to know that, Natsu."
"How 'bout you let me decide that, huh?" The fire wizard's voice raised, sounding thick.
"What happened nearly broke you the first time," Igneel cautioned and kept his volume low in contrast. "Perhaps not remembering is a blessing."
Natsu seethed inside, fists forming against his thighs, back towards his father and chin dipping down towards his chest. His knuckles turned white under the strain of his frustration, and his stomach rolled in tandem with the intense unease. "No one will give me a straight answer about any of this. Maybe if you quit trying to protect me, we could figure out what the hell is going on. I'm getting really sick -"
A loud groaning of hinges and old wood cut him off, and he spun around to find the space where Igneel occupied to be full of nothing but drifting snow and cobblestones. The massive wooden doors leading to the guild hall opened and a golden head poked out. Her brown eyes were wide with concern, but the rest of her slumped with relief when she spotted him.
"Oh, thank Mavis!" Lucy hurried over to him, and this time he didn't draw away when she threw her arms around his neck to pull him into a hug. "I was so scared when you took off in the woods. I couldn't find you anywhere."
"Took off? I didn't…" He covered his mouth with a shaky hand and breathed slowly in through his nose, hoping to squash the rebellion in his stomach. It wasn't working. "I don't know what's going on," he admitted, words muffled by his fingers. The weird pins and needles sensation in his legs wasn't helping either.
She pulled back, taking in his pale face before tugging him towards the open doorway. "Let's just go inside for a bit, okay? You don't look well." He followed numbly in her wake, barely lifting his feet. The interior was as noisome and cluttered as always, holiday decorations adorning nearly every surface. "We can sit here till you warm up," she said as they approached a table.
It was a poor excuse, and they both knew it. He wasn't really phased by the cold even in the depths of winter, but he sank gratefully into a worn wooden chair regardless. "I ran into Igneel, but I couldn't find you. He was right here, right outside…" And he was really just done with saying the same thing over and over.
The way she nibbled at her lower lip was a gesture he knew well. She was stalling while she dredged up the right words. "Maybe we should go see Porlyusica in the morning?" Her left hand came up when his mouth opened. "I believe you that something isn't right here, but we're not getting anywhere trying to figure it out ourselves. She might not be the friendliest person, but she knows an awful lot about magical mishaps."
He stared at the palm facing him, distracted by something that was still nagging at his thoughts. The placement was significant, he knew that much, but it didn't make sense unless… "Where did you get that ring? And don't say it doesn't matter. I'm getting tired of people not answering me."
Lucy sighed and a quick swipe of her hand tucked some of her loose blond hair behind her ear. "You made it for me." Dark eyes jumped up to meet hers. "I understand that you don't remember any of this, so I'm not expecting anything. I don't care about any of that right now, just that you're -"
"It's okay," he cut her off gently. "I kinda figured something… changed between us. Tell me."
She chewed the inside of her cheek before continuing. "You gave it to me when you asked me to marry you."
At any other point, any other day, the answer would have shocked him. But not today. Natsu slowly captured her fingers in his, running his thumb over the gold band. He studied it, watching how the flaws in the stone fractured the light when he turned it side to side. It really was rather ugly, and he privately thought she deserved something much more elegant. Yet, the way she touched it… like she drew strength from its presence on her finger…
"I said yes," she muttered, a tiny, tired smile curving her mouth.
It made him laugh, and he felt more drained than he had in a long time. Between the nausea, uncertainty, and intermittent pains he didn't know where he was finding the energy to even stay awake.
"I figured." He cleared his throat, hoping to clear his head at the same time. It didn't work, but he forged ahead anyway. "I know this is all a little crazy. Maybe really crazy. I… don't know what's real anymore. What to believe." He glanced up through his pink lashes to study her expression. "I think I might be losing my mind."
Lucy's head tossed side to side, mouth flattening into a thin and resolute line. "Whatever is going on here, we'll figure it out. I promise I'll help you no matter what."
His stomach turned over yet again, and the churning anxiety spiked. "I don't like the thought of you not being in my future, but Igneel said you died… sacrificed yourself to save me."
Her eyes widened, lips parting on a small intake of air. "But he -"
"I need you to promise me that you won't ever do something like that, okay? You can't put yourself at risk just to save me." It was hypocritical, and he knew it. The look that covered her face said as much.
Natsu… I don't think we need to worry about that right now. We should concentrate on -"
"Just… Just promise me."
Lucy turned away, expression only revealed by the hair pressed behind her ear. She said nothing, jaw clenching, until she turned back with eyes full of fire. "I can't do that. I can't make a promise like that because I will always do what I can to protect you. Just like Igneel did. I can't imagine my future without you -"
He stood up fast enough for his chair to crash to the floorboards, attracting a crowd of interested gazes. Their stares crawled on his spine when he wrenched the seat upright. Natsu barely looked back when he grabbed Lucy's hand, dragging her along behind him towards the exit with his face determined even as his legs threatened to buckle in exhaustion.
"W-where are we going?" she asked and stumbled just slightly until she got her balance.
"To see Porlyusica," he answered gravely, yanking the door open with more force than necessary. "To figure out what the hell is going on."