Fire is catching

Chapter 40

Author's Note: Hey guys! As promised I am not abandoning this story, it's just progressing reeeeally slowly. I don't have a lot of time to write these days, but I definitely want to bring this story to an end, and I want it to be a good one since I have already put so much work into this story and ending it in a rush just to have it be completed wouldn't feel right. So while this might take a while, I'm giving it my best, so please bear with me!

Also, as this chapter contains a lot of references to the fairy tale 'The dragon princess' embedded in Chapters 25-27, I suggest rereading those chapters in case you forgot all about it (I did it as well while writing this chapter and gosh, reading your own stuff feels so weird)

Enjoy!

"You're fever has gone down quite a bit, but you've been in better shape", he says as he gets up and drenches the piece of cloth plastered to my forehead with refreshing water and firmly presses it back on my skin.

"I'll need to head out and get a fresh load of water fruit soon cause our supplies are running low but I don't feel confident enough to leave you alone quite yet, you still seem to be suffering from some pretty serious fever hallucinations."

A stab of guilt makes me clench my teeth. That's exactly what I wanted to avoid at all costs, why I left the safety of the valley in the first place. Here I am, yet again dragging him down, making him worry about me.

Natsu seems to notice the concern in my eyes as he settles himself on the ground next to me and says: "I know that you're currently not able to provide me with long explanations, but while you're awake I'd like to know what exactly happened…I mean we go to sleep one night and when I wake up I find that you're gone, vanished into thin air…care to explain?"

I shamefully avert my eyes, trying to avoid his interrogating gaze. Even if I wanted to explain the situation to him I wouldn't have the strength to do so and besides, I don't think that he would really get my motives anyway.

So instead, I just sigh and keep my head facing away from him. Yet, I can feel his stare burning in the nape of my neck as we halt in complete silence. After minutes that stretch into hours, I simply can't handle the sheer awkwardness of the situation and give in.

"I didn't want to drag you down." What I intended to be a clear and confident statement just comes out as a husky croak and I roll my eyes in annoyance at myself.

"What do you mean with 'drag me down'?"

"I mean that I didn't want you to take care and waste all of your resources on me, I didn't want you to feel the need to protect me, I didn't want you to have lower chances of survival because I'm just too weak, slow and stupid and I didn't want to be the one responsible for your misery because for some reason you feel some sort of obligation towards me!" I have no idea where all that energy came from, but I practically spit those words out, finally bring what's been lingering inside out to the surface. My chest rises and falls rapidly as I try to catch my breath and I bit down on my lip, fighting back the tears that have suddenly started rising.

Natsu remains seated next to me but his expression has hardened and I can see something else aside from shock reflecting in his deep dark eyes, namely hurt. "I see" he says through gritted teeth.

Out of all the potential answers I had thought of, this wasn't one of them. "You do?" I ask, completely dumbfounded.

"Yeah, well, I get your point, I just think it's total bullshit." Before I have the chance to interrupt him, he continues speaking: "First of all, you're not a nuisance to me, otherwise I wouldn't have brought you here. I'm not some kind of pure hearted Samaritan that saves the helpless and the poor, I know these games and I want to beat them, so if I thought for one second that you're weak or stupid, or any of the other things you said, then you wouldn't be here with me Lucy. Second of all, I find it a little unfair that you think about all of those things and then just draw the conclusion to leave me behind without maybe considering what I have to say on the matter? Because if you had done that, you wouldn't have left in the first place and that would've saved me a lot of worries and trouble."

"But if I had told you, you wouldn't have let me go!" I interfere.

"Yes I would've…" he snaps but after staring at him with eyes that say "I don't believe you for one second" he simply shrugs and adds "Okay…maybe I wouldn't have after all, but that's not the point! What I don't get is that I thought we were friends? I mean, friends, allies, comrades, whatever you might call it, they don't just abandon each other. They fight and stand together, in good and in bad times and if one of them is weakened, the other will support them. It's not a question of owing someone or dragging someone down, it's all about trust and support that goes both ways! And it pains me to see that you think that I am the kind of person that wakes to find a friend having disappeared and not doing anything about it. Do you really think that I could just go on without finding out what had happened to you? As far as I knew, you could've been captured, tortured or worse, so of course I didn't just lean back and stay put but went out to look for you. In fact, by leaving you didn't only put yourself, but also me, in danger. You caused a lot more trouble than you would have if you had stayed here. Because even though those games are wicked and laid out to break our moral, there are some principles that I won't abandon and friendship is one of them, I thought you knew that and felt the same way…" His eyes are fixed on me with a gaze as sharp as a thousand needles and they are filled with the kind of passion that is both impressive and intimidating at the same time.

Nothing could keep the tears from streaming down my face now as Natsu throws those words at me, each and every one hitting me as hard as a brick. The worst thing is that what he says makes sense, that I get his point but he fails to understand mine. I couldn't afford to think that way, I only had good intentions, but once again I seem to have made everything worse.

As I curl up into a ball, my body contracting from the sobs Natsu seems to wake up out of a sort of trance and looks at me with bewilderment, the gaze in his eyes a lot softer now.

"Oh my God, I'm sorry Luce, I got a little carried away, I didn't mean to be so harsh, it's just because I was so worried…" he reaches out to touch my shoulder but I catch his arm midair and keep it at a distance. Trying to steady my breath I look at him directly and force myself not to avoid the eye contact.

"I understand your view, but you have to consider mine as well." At first my voice is still shaky, but I gain confidence as I keep speaking "I don't think of you as a bad person and I would consider us friends, but experience has shown me that there isn't any space for terms like friendship inside of this arena. All the people I have gotten attached or only close to have been killed in front of my eyes and I have to say that it was always partly my fault. I don't know why, but I just seem to be bad luck for those I am around and I wanted desperately to avoid having any more blood on my hands, partly because I of course didn't want you hurt in any way but I also had egoistical reasons. I just couldn't bear the feeling of guilt anymore, the feeling that it's all my fault, that I'm cursed…I'm really sorry that I made you worry but honestly, all I wanted was to stop another catastrophe from happening, to save you from myself, but apparently I didn't achieve that. In fact, it seems that the more I try to avoid bringing misery upon others, the more it actually happens. But you have to believe me that that has nothing to do with what I think of you as a person. Actually I decided to leave because I think that you're one of the good guys that has a real shot of getting out of this arena alive and I didn't want you to hold back because of me."

I finish my last sentence and drop flat on the floor only seconds later, all the newly found energy suddenly being drenched away, leaving an exhausted mess of a body behind.

With instincts that are suspiciously fast he catches me before my head hits the floor. "Damn Lucy, you shouldn't push yourself this hard. I'm not angry or anything, I just got a little worked up, okay? It's okay now…And just remember, it's not you that's doing anything wrong, it's the system that's messed up, so stop blaming yourself. I'll just make sure that nothing happens to the both of us, then there will be no need to worry."

And just like that, with one pointy teethed grin, my doubts melt away as I lay in his arms and I feel like I am where I should be for the first time in days.

After that open out discussion, it's like I never even left the valley in the first place and things are back to normal as far as that term can be applied to life in the arena. My fever has gone down tremendously and after some hard work of convincing Natsu that I really feel healthy again he will let me get up and accompany him on our food and water runs. We've been noticing lately that the amount of water fruit has decreased significantly compared to the first days of the games. Apparently, now that all the surviving tributes seem to have figured out the trick with the poisonous and the water fruit, the game makers think that our access to water is all too easy so they decided to simply cut down on the amount of water sources.

Slowly but surely our water and also our food supplies are getting fewer and fewer until the remaining tributes will have to compete and even fight for the limited resources.

That's exactly the reason why I refused to waste that precious clean water on making cooling cloths for my forehead but no matter how often I tried to explain that we'd just be unnecessarily wasting our resources, that hotheaded stubborn boy wouldn't listen to me and insisted that I use the soaked pieces of fabric to treat my fever and change them regularly.

One evening, as we were sitting around a dimmed camp fire to keep warm in spite of the chilly night air Natsu looked at me, the flames reflecting in his dark eyes and asked "What was your favorite thing to do back home while growing up?"

At first the question startles me, but it seems to be one of Natsu's qualities to just simply ask, state or do things out of the blue and therefore take everyone aback and leave them a little dumbfounded. Still, I am slowly starting to get used to that habit of his and just roll with it.

"Hm…I guess besides performing magic that would be reading. We have a big bookshelf in our living room and when I was young my mom used to scoop me of the floor, let me choose a book even though I couldn't even read the titles at that time and therefore had no idea what they were about and we'd just sit down and she'd read all those different stories to me until I learned how to read myself, but my love for book remained unchanged."

"What was your favorite one? Your favorite story, that is"

I lean my head sideways and frown as I mentally go through my internal list of all the books I have ever read. "That's a really hard question, it always depends on the situation and the mood I am in, but I've always had a thing for fairy tales, they're just so magical to me. And on top of that they also convey a good message, so that's a win win sort of thing right? What about you, what's your favorite book?" I ask, genuinely interested to hear the response.

"Mine? Oh well, I'm not that much of a reader. My dad taught me how to read and write when I was still small but afterwards there weren't many occasions in which I had to make use of those skills" he mutters, eyes fixed on the ground as he engraves some letters into the muddy ground absent mindedly.

I chuckle as I figure out what he wrote "You know that you spell fairy tale T-A-L-E, not T-A-I-L, right? Otherwise it would mean a fairy with a tail haha"

"Pft, I know exactly how to spell fairy tale, like I told you, I know how to write. But honestly, how come you know that fairies don't have tails? I mean, do they even exist? I think that's an eternal mystery, just like this place…"

My eyes open wide as I remember the name of the place my strange dreams carry me to, the words which Natsu muttered in his sleep one night, the words he just wrote into the ground without really thinking about it: Fairy Tail. And somehow the things he just said, the ones that would sound like utter nonsense to anyone make perfect sense to me, as if I had heard them before. What does this mean?

I shake my head violently as I push away those confusing thoughts, I have enough to worry about as it is, so I really don't need anything else to have on my mind in addition to that.

"Can you tell me one?" Natsu asks, and his voice carries me out of the confusion in my mind, back to reality.

"Sorry, what?"

"Can you tell me a fairy tale? I mean I have a general idea about what they are and stuff, but I've never actually heard a complete one before…"

"Really? Well yeah…uhm…sure, just give me a second to pick one."

Which one should I choose? The most simple thing to do would be to start with something classic, like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, but deep down I know I want to tell another story, one that I feel a strange connection to, one that I've only found out about not too long ago myself.

"Okay, this one's called 'The dragon princess' and it's not exactly the best example of a classical fairy tale, but I really like it."

Accompanied by the crackling sounds of the fire I begin to tell the tale of princess Lucia and the fire dragon Dragneel and even though I have only read the story once, my memory seems to have sucked up every single line and I'm able to recall the happenings and chosen expressions almost automatically. As the story develops I can see Natsu being taken in and completely immersed into the story line. His eyes sparkle as he holds on to every word that crosses my lips, eager to hear more and the fact that he looks just like a little kid makes me crack a smile.

After speaking the last words of the uncompleted fairy tale and saying "That's it, that's the end" he looks at me in complete bewilderment. "What do you mean, that's the end?"

"That's how the story ends, it just suddenly stopped at that point. I know it's weird, but that's just the way it is."

"No, that can't be…I mean what happens with Lucia and Dragneel after he regains his memories? Aren't fairy tales supposed to end with 'And they lived happily ever after' or something? I feel betrayed!"

"Natsu, are you crying?" I ask as I notice the water that has built up in his eyes.

"No I'm not" he snaps, crossing his arms over his chest defensively "It's just the smoke from the fire that's making my eyes tear up, as if I'd cry because of a fairy tale, really, who do you think I am…"

"I balled my eyes out when I first read that story, who do you think I am?" I counter with a teasing smirk.

"Well yeah, that's different…Anyways, don't you think it's weird that I have the same last name as the dragon in the story."

Right, now I get why that name had sounded so familiar, Natsu's full name is Natsu Dragneel. And the description of the human form of the dragon, salmon hair and pointy teeth, it's suspiciously close to what Natsu looks like.

"I bet this story is about my ancestors or something. And you know what, Lucia sounds kind of like Lucy, right? Maybe this fairy tale is about us after all."

For some reason this makes me flush tomato red from head to toes: "As if, it's just a story you know…"

He chuckles and adds "Of course it is, yet I can't help but notice the parallels, I mean don't tell me you haven't noticed. I'm a fire dragon slayer, you're the mayor's daughter which is a little like being a princess and we're both living in this hidden village, just like Lucia and Dragneel…"

"Except we'll never get a happy end." The words escape my lips before I can think about them and I bite my lips as bitter sweet regret overcomes me.

Natsu gives me a weak smile "We'll see about that." And after some moments of uncomfortable silence he adds "But I guess that's what fairy tales are all about, they should be relatable for the readers…"

"Yeah…" I agree absent mindedly as I inwardly curse myself for choosing 'The dragon princess' Comparing us to a dragon and princess, really? I should've stuck with Snow White. But now it's too late and I just want to dig a hole and hide forever.

"I guess we should go to sleep" Natsu says and finally breaks the awkward silence "I have the feeling that something big is going to happen tomorrow and we'd better be prepared. Good night Luce"

I have goose bumps all over my body, partly because I'm terrified as 'something big' can't mean anything good in the hunger games and partly because Natsu uses the same nickname as Dragneel for Lucia in the fairy tale I just told. Ugh, why does this make me feel as if my guts are tied in a knot though? Must be the left overs from my fever that are making me so jumpy and nervous.

"Yeah, good night Dragneel, uhm…I mean Natsu!" I stutter, thankful for the dark that is hiding my violent blush.

"I'll just make a quick tour and check we're safe, you can already go to sleep. I'm up for first watch and I'll wake you in a couple of hours, okay?" Too tired to talk back, I stretch out on the hard ground and try to steady my breathing and relax.

As I hear steps coming closer and halting right behind me my whole body tenses up but I squeeze my eyes shut, pretending to be asleep.

"Damn it Luce, you're gonna catch a cold if you just sleep like that…" Natsu whispers as he gently covers me with a blanket and sits down next to me, ready to keep watch.

Despite the warm blanket, cold chills rush down my spine and I unconsciously hold my breath until I can't stand it anymore. What is wrong with me?

After an eternity of lying awake feeling awfully self-conscious I fall asleep completely unaware of the events that are about to overwhelm me.

Author's Note: Uuuuuuuh, can you feel the tension? And what is that 'big turn of events' that is lingering above the two allies, about to break in on them? Find out about it in the next chapter, which will be up as soon as possible. In the meantime, why don't you tell me what you think about this chapter? It really means a lot and keeps me motivated to continue writing!

Lucy: Author, Natsu totally cried when he heard the fairy tale…

Author: Yap he did, I saw it as well

Natsu: NO I WASN'T! And besides, it's not like you have actual proof or anything…

Camera Man 1: Actually, we have the whole thing on tape

Camera Man 2: Even from different angles

Camera Man 3: I actually have a close up if anyone's interested

Lucy: Gottcha

Natsu: Delete those immediately!

Author: Nope I still need them. And besides, crying is nothing to be ashamed of, you know? It's completely natural…

Natsu: Well yeah, I never cry! The fact that I managed to tear up even though I have nerves of steel just shows how much of a great actor I am…

Lucy: Yeah sure, if that's what you wanna tell yourself then go ahead crybaby…

Natsu: *middle finger salute*