A/N: Okay, just a quick word here! Sorry this took me so long to publish! Thank you for sticking with the story! :)
Disclaimer: I own no part of Fairy Tail
Where am I?
This was Natsu's first thought. The second was a stream of colorful choice words as the temperature dropped somewhere below freezing.
Usually, I'm too warm for my own good. How am I so cold?
The only thing he could make out was the fog surrounding him. Before he had a chance to focus on much else, his eyes flicked to the other side of the fog-filled space, having sensed movement. Sure enough, there was a cloaked man slowly walking into Natsu's field of vision.
Natsu was almost positive that he knew who he was working with, even before he removed his hood. He could feel his temper rising as he remembered what had happened the last time he met with this mysterious figure.
But when the figure removed his hood, it wasn't the scarred man Natsu had originally assumed it to be, but his accomplice. The blond guy with teal eyes.
Discovering that this man was not the one responsible for his daughter's predicament defused his anger only slightly.
"What are you doing here?" He growled. His voice carried across the wide expanse of empty space, echoing off the invisible walls and bouncing back to him.
The man smiled. "You speak as if you know where you are. Look around. Does this place look familiar?"
Natsu almost complained, but he bit his tongue. He shifted his gaze away from the man, and looked around again, not expecting to find anything but the fog he had seen before.
He was shocked to find that he was in a meadow this time. He was even more surprised at how much it resembled the very meadow he had grown up in, with Igneel.
"Where am I?! Where did you take me?!" Natsu yelled, flicking his burning gaze back at the blond man, who only laughed.
"Recognise it now?" He asked.
With the last syllable, Natsu's heart dropped into his stomach, and his vision went black. His senses were overwhelmed with crushing sorrow, and he could feel himself drop to his knees. Soon, horrible abandonment joined Natsu's emotions. Only one coherent thought could form in his brain, and it was only a name, repeated again and again.
Igneel.
Just when he thought he would break from the overwhelming sadness, it all melted away.
But the peace didn't last long.
Almost as fast as it went away, the misery came back, different this time, yet all the same. This time, it wasn't the sadness of losing a father, but a friend. he could almost feel the soft ground beneath him, dampened by the rain from the evening. He reached his arm out, knowing that his fingers wouldn't brush against the grave of his comrade, but he couldn't stop it any more than he could stop the sadness.
I should have gone with you... Lisanna.
Again, the grief started, this time magnified several times over. It was close to the worst emotional pain he had ever been in. In his mind, he was staring down at Lucy as she took her last breath and died in his arms. He knew the real Lucy was still alive, but he could still feel his chest constrict as he watched the woman he loved die.
I love you, Luce. Please don't go...
He was expecting the change in emotions this time, but h didn't welcome it. The underlying pain of heartache stayed the same, but he felt guilty and helpless now. It took him only seconds to identify the occasion when he felt like this; trapped by his own mistakes.
My little girl... Might never wake up?
Natsu's vision began returning to him little by little, but the aftermath of the freshly opened wounds was still affecting him. By the time he could comprehend his surroundings again, he knew he was curled in a ball on the floor, surrounded by fog. The meadow of his childhood was gone; washed away in the sea of pain he had been drowning in just seconds earlier
Despite his out-of-it state of mind, his ears picked up the laughter of a villain who knew he'd won, soon followed by cruel words.
"I thought I'd give you a taste of what you're going to get if you even try to defend your blue-haired comrade. Let him go, and you won't lose anybody else... I promise. You won't cause any trouble for me, will you?"
Natsu felt his temper light up inside him, but it was nothing compared to the other emotions that were battling within him. He wanted to get up and make sure that his enemy knew he'd pay for what he did, but he couldn't move, much less open his mouth and form sentences.
"That's what I thought, Flaim Brain." The voice chuckled. "See you on the other side, then... Bye now..."
Natsu woke up in a cold sweat, not quite understanding what was wrong with him, but knowing it must've been awful to tear him out of his sleep like that. He lay in his bed, pondering what could've happened, when it all came back in a rush.
The memory stole his breath, and he could barely keep from screaming. His hands grabbed the sheets and twisted them around his knuckles.
He didn't realize he was panting, but Lucy did. She woke up and turned to her husband, who was clenching his eyes shut and gripping the sheets like they were a lifeline.
"Natsu?" She asked, knowing he wasn't asleep.
It took a second for her question to register in his mind, and when it did, he slowly opened his eyes, although his grip on the mattress never loosened and he didn't look at her.
Lucy reached a hand over to Natsu's bare chest, laying her palm over his racing heart. "What's wrong?" She asked him.
He shut his eyes tight again and shook his head quickly.
"Don't want to talk about it, huh?" Lucy chuckled. She was used to Natsu doing this when he had a bad dream. Instead of trying to pry a story from him, she slid her other arm under his back and clasped her hands together so that she was hugging him, resting her head on his sturdy chest. "It was just a dream, Natsu. Try to go back to sleep, okay? It's still the middle of the night." She said, already drifting back to sleep herself.
Natsu had relaxed soon after Lucy's arms settled around his waist. He found himself cradling her head with one of his hands, but decided that it wasn't good enough. He had just relived the pain of losing her for, after all. He shifted so that he was on his side and placed one of his arms on the nape of her neck and the other at the small of her back, holding her to him.
"Yeah...Just a dream." He agreed.
He was halfway asleep when Lucy snuggled closer to him, enjoying the embrace as well as his body temperature. Lucy fell asleep rather quickly, but Natsu was up for the rest of the night thinking about how they were possibly going to be able to fight, if his dream had been any kind of warning of what was to come.
Natsu could feel his unease grow as he walked with Lucy and Happy to the guild. Porlyusica was with Nashi at his house, and they had just dropped Stella off at Mira's. The sleep-shattering nightmare had stolen most of Natsu's night, and on top of being stressed out, he was tired now too.
His hand was killing him, pulsing shooting pain from his pinkie, and he couldn't help but wonder how he would fight if he needed to.
He could feel Lucy's nerves radiating off of her as well as she clutched his hand. They'd been through a lot in the past few hours alone; Their daughter was in a coma-like state with no promises of ever waking up, and their other daughter was being stowed away so that they could go fight the people that had attacked their guild hall, and who, for some reason, seemed to hold a grudge against Jellal.
Once the three entered the guild through the hole that used to be the door, they could see the rest of their guildmates sitting quietly, waiting.
It didn't take a genius to know what they were waiting for. The rebels that attacked yesterday left a note saying they would be back, and the guild knew better than to doubt that they would be.
Natsu and Lucy sat down across from Gajeel and Lily in a booth, while Happy went over to Carla, keeping up his futile hope of impressing her.
The iron dragon slayer had his hands folded and was resting his forehead on them. Lily was staring at Gajeel with a look of deep concern, and it troubled Natsu seeing them like that. Not that he'd ever admit it.
"What's got you so down in the dumps, Gajeel? You're usually so fired up when we're going to fight." Natsu pointed out. He was going for a joking, good-natured tone, but it came out more accusatory than he was aiming for.
Gajeel raised his head to glare at Natsu. "My family is in the middle of the forest an' I'm not allowed to stay and protect them." He growled.
Understanding washed over Natsu, followed by a wave of sympathy. He lowered his voice and spoke again. "I feel you, man. I wish I could be there for them too. But we need to be here. For Fairy Tail. I'm sure Levy and the baby are safe."
Gajeel grunted and lowered his forehead onto his hands again, thoughts of his wife returning to fill his muddled brain.
Natsu sat in silence for another minute or so before he evidently couldn't take it anymore. "What are we waiting for, exactly?" He called out, hoping someone would answer.
It was Carla who responded. "We have to wait for Jellal and Erza to get here so we can plan the battle strategy. We were waiting for you two as well, but you're here now." By the end of the sentence, she could already feel her patience thinning.
"Why can't we just go attack those two jerks who attacked our guild? Why wait for them to come to us?" He asked, flames growing at the tips of his fingers.
"Because we don't know where they are." Lily cut in, answering for the white Exceed, who was clearly getting frustrated by Natsu's inability to think things through.
Before Natsu could open his mouth again, Erza walked into the guild, followed by Jellal.
"We're here." Erza said, stating the obvious.
"Excellent!" Crowed Makarov. "Let's begin, then!"
The guild was puzzled at Makarov's seemingly optimistic attitude, but they didn't say anything about it. Instead, they stood in a circle, much like they had done last night, and began talking strategy.
"What should we do?" Carla somehow managed to sound like they'd already lost the fight. "I mean, we don't even know what kind of magic they use! They have an advantage!"
Lily looked at his companion and shrugged. "Think again, Miss Carla. We didn't use our magic last night either. They don't know anything about us that we don't-"
"But they knew who Jellal was. What if they know everyone else is, too?" Happy asked.
"No, they wouldn't know who we were. Didn't you see them? They didn't go after Jellal until we all looked at him, which obviously gave away who he was. They wouldn't have told us to surrender him if they knew what he looked like." Erza said.
"I guess so..." Carla admitted.
"Well, that's nice and all, but how're we gonna fight them?" Natsu asked.
"Of course that's all you want to know, Natsu." Happy said with a roll of his eyes.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Natsu demanded. Happy just laughed into his hands, clearly about to make some sort of snide comment but before he could, Ezra cleared her throat rather loudly, commanding the attention of her guildmates. After shooting a glare at Natsu and Happy, she started talking. "Well, to fight them off, I was thinking we could-"
Before she could finish her sentence, the guild hall shook, and a loud rumble of evil laughter surrounded them.
Alarmed, the guild members looked around, hoping to pinpoint exactly where the laughter was coming from. Soon enough, they realized they were all looking different directions, and gave up trying to pinpoint a location.
Once they realized this, the laughter stopped, and the same two cloaked figures from the day before were standing in the same place; right under the wrecked arch that had once framed the guild's doors.
Everything stood still for a fraction of a second, both parties analyzing the other before the Fairy Tail guild flew into a flurry of motion and battle cries.
Gajeel, having pushed aside thoughts of his wife and child being harmed, was the first one to move into action. Jumping over the table, he flew at the scarred man, aiming for his face. But before his fist could make contact with the man's jaw, there was a puff of smoke, and he disappeared.
Gajeel stood still, baffled, watching as the rest if his guild flew into action all around him. How did he do that?
Natsu's screaming jolted Gajeel back to the guild. He could tell that his friend's screams were not of anger, but of pain. Natsu sat on the floor, several feet away from the iron dragon slayer, grinding his teeth and cradling his arm. There was a man behind him, who Gajeel assumed to be the accomplice of the scarred man he had tried to punch earlier.
Gajeel tried to go over to his friend, but only got about halfway there before the man behind Natsu knocked him out with nothing more than a glance.
It was then that the full power of the two men hit him. He thought maybe they were up against two people that were relatively new to magic, but he could see now that he was wrong.
What did we get ourselves into? He thought. Gajeel could feel himself blacking out, exactly as Natsu had just seconds earlier. The last thing his ears registered as he fell into darkness was a gruff voice asking where Jellal was, and the screaming of the rest of the guild as they tried to fight off the intruders.
A/N: Alright! Another one down! Sorry it took so long! School and all that, you know? ;)
Anyway, thank you for reading! The last chapter was super long, and I'm just gonna say that the rest of them likely will be about 1,000 to 5,00 words long. I just need to give you guys something long to hold you over until now. Also, not that I've more or less adjusted to the summer-to-school transition, I'll try to update weekly, but no promises! Quality comes first!
That being said, I'm already working on chapter eight, so it'll hopefully be out soon!
Thank you again to all the readers, reviewers, followers, likes, and all that stuff. You guys are what keep me from quitting when I get massive writer's block! Thank you!
-K