Here we go! Natsu's backstory-I hope you're prepared... Longer chapter than usual!
chapter 15: boiling point
definition:
The temperature at which the vapor pressure of a liquid equals the pressure surrounding the liquid and the liquid changes into a vapor.
"Oh, your back…"
Her voice was soft and hesitant, and no small amount of horror filled it.
"Hm?" Natsu looked over his shoulder and saw his pretty detective standing in the doorway, wringing her hands.
Her brown eyes, wide and all-encompassing, marveled at his slick back, or rather the decorations on it. He knew what she was seeing; the ugly, warped mass of flesh that stretched from his right shoulder to left hip bone and the gaudy tattoo that smothered it. Though she tried to hide her morbid fascination, Natsu was well aware of what it looked like to her.
Rather, what he looked like–a butchered patch-job gone wrong. Like a sadist had taken clumps of his flesh and stuck them together without smoothing them over.
Even the tattoo, as large and colorful as it was, couldn't hide the sheer deformities underneath it.
His spine grew stiff at the reminder of just who he was. "Yeah, pretty nasty scar from my last job as Salamander," he told her, snapping her out of her staring contest with his back.
Lucy's eyes dragged upwards to meet his sheepishly, as though she were embarrassed to have stared for so long. "How did it happen?" she murmured, stepping further into the muggy bathroom.
He couldn't help the snort that escaped his throat.
She was well aware of how he'd gotten the scar–it was undoubtedly documented in his criminal file since he'd had to spend his first year of prison in the medical facilities to recover.
"You read my file, didn't you?" he asked as his hand fisted in the fluffy towel wrapped around his waist.
He watched as she bit her lip, and dammit, it shouldn't have made his stomach tighten with awareness. But it did. And the fact that the steamy air in the bathroom was making her thin shirt cling to her every curve was not helping matters.
Tabby cat t-shirts shouldn't have been sexy. But god dammit, Lucy somehow made it work.
"Of course I did," she admitted with a small nod, "but I want to hear the story from you."
That gave him pause.
The detective wanted to hear the tragic backstory of Natsu the Salamander. She wasn't the first, and she most certainly wouldn't be the last. But what baffled him was why she wanted to listen to him.
Why on earth did she care?
She was a pretty cop, but a cop nonetheless. And cops, as he'd learned very early on, didn't care for shit about the lives and wellbeing of citizens they were supposed to protect. He knew that, and yet…something about her was different.
Lucy Heartfilia was different.
She helped him fight his demons, made him feel calm, made him feel…safe.
Natsu cocked his head to the side, stray droplets of water flinging from his damp hair and trickling down his chest and back. "My file probably covers it just fine."
"Maybe, but files never have the whole story." She shook her head at him, the smallest tender smile on her face making his heart clench. Her brown eyes were so incredibly soft and understanding, filling him with the need to say something. "You're more than just your file, you know…" Lucy said, reaching out.
An ugly and unwanted emotion bubbled in his chest, and he did his best to keep it down. But it came spewing out in the form of a question, like word-vomit.
"Why do you even care, detective?" he snarked bitterly.
Lucy shrank back, her hand falling away, and he had enough sense to feel ashamed of himself.
"…You know," she said softly, a huffing laugh lifting her shoulders, "I'm not exactly sure why. All I know is that I do care, and I want to know you." Those brown eyes hardened from sweet chocolate to tree bark; she was utterly serious. "Not Natsu Dragneel the Salamander, the file on my desk in my office," she threw her hand outward, "but Natsu Dragneel the man," she declared and brought back her hand to push her finger into his chest.
It was like she was trying to drive the point right into his heart.
He could feel it.
But rather than let her see that, he snorted again. "You sure you're not a lawyer or somethin'?" he muttered around a curled lip. "Cuz you're damn convincing when you wanna be."
For a split second, hurt shone in her eyes as clear as day. Then it was smothered under her "cop face" and she nodded.
"You're right, I'm sorry. I'm being pushy, aren't I?" She swallowed audibly as she glanced away, down to the floor and their bare feet.
Christ, even her goddamn toes were pretty, he noticed. Pale and slim, with cheery yellow polish on the nails that didn't fit the mood.
"You don't have to tell me," those pretty toes curled against the hardwood floor, "but just know that I'm here if you want to talk or something…" Her voice was small and hesitant, and he realized that it matched the expression on her face when he glanced back up.
Fuck. He was such a dick sometimes.
Here she was, trying to understand him–which was more than he could say anyone else had ever tried to do–and he was snapping at her. Like an ungrateful rat. Lucy was the last person who deserved any lip from him and…from the looks of it, she truly wanted to understand.
She was the first person who seemed to actually care.
The cops when he'd been a kid couldn't've cared less about him, had dragged him kicking and screaming to the orphanage after having the gall to badmouth his old man. And then, later, they'd treated him like pond scum every time he'd been arrested for suspicion of arson. They'd all read his file and assumed they'd known him.
"I see here in your file that you ran away from the Bramblewood Home? Now what kinda brat runs away from a nice place like that, eh?"
"According to your file, you were the victim of negligent parenting. We see kids like you in here all the time, boy."
"Your file says right here, "Has a tendency to fall upon pyromantic urges when stressed or anxious". Wanna tell me again what you were doing at that building so late at night?"
All cops were the same.
Except for Lucy.
"You're more than just your file, you know," she said.
It was the first time he'd ever been told that. That he was more than just some words dotted down on a paper for someone else to read. That he was more than just the Salamander. Lucy honestly believed he could be more than Natsu Dragneel, the Salamander.
And the truly shocking part of it all was that Natsu almost wanted her to be right, he wanted her to understand. He…wanted to tell her everything.
About Igneel, and the fireworks, and his life with Erza and Jellal, their little ragtag gang of unfortunate kids. There was just something about Lucy that made him want to rip those old scars open and bare them to her beautiful gaze.
Perhaps, he thought as he watched her, that would be the only way they would heal.
Just as Lucy turned to leave the bathroom, Natsu blurted, "I was seven when my dad was killed."
Her hand froze on the doorframe as her eyes, widening with realization, fixated on him. She swallowed soundlessly and shifted until she was standing directly in front of him, waiting patiently for him to continue.
Natsu fought past the lump in his throat that made it difficult to speak when he thought of his father. No matter how much time passed, it hurt all the same.
"He was shot on accident by a couple of idiot cops responding to a call downtown, bled out in the street," he said as bluntly as possible, a familiar and ugly feeling brewing in his chest like it always did when he recalled that night. "The cops tried to play it off, sweep their mistake under the rug–so they called my old man a negligent parent and sent me to an orphanage."
In front of him, Lucy's hands twisted together, as though she wanted to ask him something. But was thinking better of it. He knew what she wanted to ask, though.
What kind of person was your father?
"My old man made fireworks," Natsu clarified for her. "He made them all at our house and kept them there, and the cops used that against him. Said it was too dangerous for a little kid to be around all those explosives," he snarled, recalling those exact words as they passed from the pale-faced cop's cracked lips. "They made themselves out be be heros, saving a little boy from a negligent father…but they didn't care about me at all. After confiscating everything of mine and Igneel's," his breath caught on the sound of his father's name as always, "they shipped me off without a second thought."
He could still remember the red and blue flashing lights as they illuminated the inside of his house. The thundering of boots as strange men invaded what was his and took things that weren't theirs to take. The gruff hands on his shoulders that steered him to the police car and shoved him inside despite his protests.
Natsu's hands tingled, an echo of that day.
It was Lucy's soft question that brought him back out of the past. "The orphanage…you ran away?"
Natsu shook his hands, trying to rid them of the tingling. "Yeah," he said, staring at his hands. "It was a nice place, but it wasn't my place. My place was at my home with my dad…so I ran away and went back home. And…that's how I met Erza and Jellal," he murmured.
He'd stumbled home with aching feet and a tear-stained face, his lighter heavy in his pocket and his scarf caked with dirt. He'd hoped that maybe, just maybe, it had all just been a bad dream and that Igneel would be waiting for him like always. But, instead, what he'd found when he'd kicked the door open with a sniffle were two filthy children around his own age.
They'd been sitting on his floor in his house, eating the leftover food that belonged to him and Igneel, and that had been the final straw. He'd flown at them both in a frenzied rage.
"This is my house! Get outta here!"
"I remember, Erza just gave this look of hers and smacked me on the head," he chuckled dryly, his fingers weaving through his pink hair with nostalgia. "And then she shared the food with me. The three of us became inseparable after that. If not for them, I might've starved to death or something on the streets."
Erza and Jellal had cared for him, fed him and looked after him. He'd had no idea how to survive on his own, but they'd seemed to handle themselves just fine. They'd shared all the secrets of their dirty little world with him–how to pickpocket, which dumpsters had unspoiled food, the safest places to sleep during the night.
In the years that followed, they became his new family. Family he'd do anything for.
"We kinda formed our own little gang, stuck together through thick and thin," he told Lucy, reliving his broken childhood in his mind's eye. "And then a couple years later, I tried to make a firework in my dad's memory." It'd been the two year anniversary of his death, and the pain had been sharp and fresh as ever. "I'd watched him do it so many times that I thought I could handle it. But…I wound up accidentally setting a building on fire."
The horror he'd felt as he'd watched the old brownstone go up in brilliant orange flames and black smoke had rivaled the amazement of it all. In his chest, this warped sense of…rightness had taken place.
He'd found himself wondering if Igneel would have liked the bright colors.
"Of course, it drew attention…just not from the right people." Natsu's lips pursed as he recalled the slick and oily appearance of his very first client. "This piece of corporate trash hunted me down, and I thought I was gonna get in trouble…but he bought me ice cream."
He'd been so confused when the older man had brought him to the ice cream shop and handed him a towering cone. Natsu remembered being wary and suspicious, but his stomach had curled in on itself at the sight of the ice cream. At the time, he'd sworn that it was almost as tall as himself…and it had looked like the best thing he'd ever seen.
He hadn't had any since Igneel had died.
So he ate all of it, scarfed it down almost whole. And the brainfreeze he'd gotten afterward had almost overwhelmed the sense of guilt that weighed heavy in his full stomach.
He hadn't saved any for Erza or Jellal.
Natsu shook his head. "After I stuffed myself, the guy asked me to do him this one little favor…" His lip lifted and he bared his teeth to the muggy air in the bathroom. "He slipped me money to set one of his buildings on fire, told me to let my friends help. We didn't really understand what we were doing back then; all we really knew was that if we torched the old building, we got money."
The amazement on Jellal's face had practically sparkled in the dank recesses of the back alley they'd made their home base when Natsu had brought the handfuls of cash to them. And though Erza was naturally much more wary, she'd agreed too, because money was hard to come by.
"Money meant food and clothes and maybe even shelter," Natsu hummed, repeating Erza's exact words. "So that became our debut as firebugs. We set that building on fire, and more clients just kept coming… It was how we survived."
Erza and Jellal had never been particularly proud of what they'd had to do in order to put food on the table. They'd always been slightly reluctant any time a new client appeared. But Natsu…he'd started to enjoy it somewhere along the way.
Every time something blazed, it had felt like a deep cleanse.
More than once, he'd laughed and danced around smoldering flames, as carefree as a spring bird. He hadn't viewed it as destruction–to him, it had been an art, a lifestyle.
There could be no life, after all, without the refining flames of death.
Lucy's horrified gasp snapped him out of his reverie. "Oh, my god…" she whispered. "How old were you?"
"When I set my first fire?" Natsu's brows rose as he tried to recall–telling time had been rather tricky back then. He'd lost count of the date countless times. "I'd just turned ten I think. That's how I got this right here," he said and brushed his fingers along the faded scar on his neck, covered by inky black flames.
He'd accidentally splashed himself with the accelerant and had paid for it in full. Needless to say, he'd learned to never, ever do it again.
Lucy watched the motion with what appeared to be revulsion. "What kind of sick, twisted people hire children to do their dirty work?" she breathed, hands curling into her cat-printed t-shirt.
"The kind who want it done for dirt cheap—kids don't know any better," Natsu said bitterly.
He hadn't understood the true horror of it all until he'd been in jail and had time to really think about it. Only the truly twisted thought of children as workers for hire, much less arsonists. And to those clients, he, Erza, and Jellal had been perfectly expendable.
After all, who would miss orphans from the slums if they died in a freak accident?
More than likely, the world wouldn't have even noticed their disappearance.
"As we got older," Natsu muttered through gritted teeth, "setting fires became so ingrained into our lifestyle that it was perfectly natural for us. We were good and we made a lot of money and that was all we really cared about."
They'd had enough money to buy actual food for once, and sometimes–when they'd been older–they'd been able to rent a hotel room. Nothing too lavish, but that hadn't mattered to the three of them so long as there'd been real beds. And showers; Erza had always insisted on their rooms having functional showers and had forced him and Jellal to bathe themselves at every opportunity.
Natsu almost laughed outright at the memory of himself and Jellal turning up their noses at the bath, because they "didn't stink that bad". Erza had dragged them into the tub with her by their ears and scrubbed their backs raw herself.
After that, they'd learned to listen to her.
Especially when she'd declared it was bath time.
The rueful smile on Natsu's face didn't last long as he continued. "Then one day, Jellal, Erza and I were hired for a job. Usually I mixed the accelerant, it was my specialty," he said with no small amount of pride, "but I let Jellal do it that day."
Jellal had wanted to impress Erza, the stupid, lovestruck dimwit.
"And…he made a mistake. We were going for a slow-burner, something that would take a long time to burn down. Instead, we created more of a flash-bang—really fast, really hot, really dangerous," Natsu explained, hoping that Lucy remembered his napkin doodles from the previous week.
He didn't doubt that she did, but, it had been really late. And they'd both been extremely tired.
Hence the reason he'd passed out on her couch.
"Normally, it wouldn't've been that big a deal." Natsu lifted one bare shoulder in a shrug. "As long as it burned, we got paid. But what we didn't know was that there were people still inside the building." Natsu's voice hardened, rage filling his chest and constricting his lungs. "The client had conveniently forgotten to mention that to us," he spat.
"It's just a simple job, really. I don't pay you to ask questions, do I?" the portly, balding man had sneered as he handed Natsu a thick wad of Jewels held together with a rubber band. "Just do it and get it over with."
It was only later that Natsu understood why the slime ball had wanted it done so badly. If people perished in the fire, then he got more money from his insurance agency.
It was always about the money, no matter the consequence.
And that was where Natsu, Jellal, and Erza had differed from those greedy, corporate bastards.
"We were firebugs, not murderers," Natsu said as one of his hands fell back to clutch his towel, trying to anchor himself to the present with the soft material and the scent of strawberries. "So of course, the three of us went back in to try and save the few people in the building. And we did…but not without cost."
He could still smell the smoke and ash as it burned the inside of his nostrils and his lungs. His chest had felt tight and even though he coughed, it hadn't been any easier to breathe. As he'd stumbled through the flames that seared his shirt and pants, he'd vaguely recalled Erza telling him that it only took three minutes for someone to choke on smoke alone.
He'd made sure he kept low to the ground, fanning his hand in front of his face as though it would help him see. But it hadn't helped at all. He'd had to rely solely on the screams and shouts of the other people in the building as his guide.
To this day, he wasn't quite sure how he managed to locate them. But he'd done it, and he, Jellal, and Erza had corralled the stragglers, four people, into a group and tried to herd them back out of the building.
But…things were never simple when it came to disaster.
"Jellal was fine, but Erza and I got hurt real bad. She…embers got in her eye and there was blood all over her face," Natsu choked out, his insides turning cold at the memory.
She'd made this inhuman noise and crumpled right in front of him. Strong, impassable, resilient Erza on her knees. He'd never seen her cry until that day, and there'd been so much blood… Natsu's stomach still flip-flopped at the thought of it.
It had covered the entire right side of her face, soaking her chin and making her brilliant red hair stick to her cheek.
But, she'd risen like some sort of warrior goddess and plowed through the flames, getting the other people to safety. Her roar of agony still echoed in his ears as she pushed the innocent people through the only safe opening, one hand cradling her right eye as crimson liquid spilled between the crevices of her fingers.
The aching of his own fingers brought him back this time and he glanced down to peer at his white-knuckled grip on the towel. "And as for me…a support beam fell on my back and pinned me down, burned through my t-shirt and scarred my back," he murmured, releasing the towel to stretch his fingers.
The creaking and groaning up above had warned him beforehand, but he'd ignored it in favor of making sure that everyone had evacuated. And just before he'd been able to escape himself, a thundering crack had sounded.
Sheer agony was all he remembered directly afterward.
The support beam had crushed him, knocking the breath from his lungs and flattening him against the hot ground, searing through his t-shirt. His skin hadn't stood a chance, and the scent of melting flesh had invaded his nose moments later.
He'd thrown up in-between his bouts of screaming.
"Jellal could only save one of us, and he picked Erza," Natsu murmured in a dry voice, wanting to recoil from the blazing memory. "Not that I blame him. I probably would've done the same," he admitted as Jellal's guilt-stricken face flashed through his mind.
He had stood there, torn between the choice of saving Erza or Natsu. That split second of indecision had been enough for a stray ember to float to his right cheek, sizzling and burning.
"Go!" Natsu had yelped, clawing at the ground with his torn nails. "Get outta here! Help Erza!"
Jellal's horror at the idea of leaving Natsu behind had been present on his face. He'd cupped his burnt cheek with one hand, the other clutching at Erza behind him as he'd stared at Natsu. Another groan had made him gasp and look upwards, jumping back just in time to avoid another flaming beam that came hurtling down.
There'd been no way for Jellal to cross the new beam. Not with Erza clutching at his arm and bleeding, her skin a waxy color that even Natsu could see through his haze of pain and the glower of the flames.
Erza had been savable…and Natsu hadn't been.
With a wince and a heartbreaking sob, Jellal had whispered, "I'm so sorry," before tugging Erza out of the building.
Natsu had blacked out after that, falling in and out of consciousness for god only knew how long. It'd felt like eons with the weight of the wooden support beam scorching diagonally across his back before he'd heard the sirens.
At that moment, he'd never been happier to have heard those damn things. They'd been like a damn angelic choir, signaling an end to his suffering at long last…
"And then the cops showed up and tagged me," he finished, deliberately skipping over the minor details he'd been half awake for.
The fire department, the ambulance ride, the sadistic bastards at the hospital as they poked at his ruined back… The moment when he realized that he'd lost his scarf forever.
Natsu ran his fingers across his neck.
"There were more of you at that fire…" Lucy murmured incredulously, bringing her hand up to her mouth. His file had no mention of anyone else being involved in that fire, he knew–he hadn't told a damn soul about Erza or Jellal. Her brown eyes were wide, as if she realized just how much he was trusting her with this information, and she asked, "You took the fall for them?"
"Of course I did," Natsu replied simply. "They're my family."
Even though he had no idea where either of them were at the moment, or what they were doing, or even if they were okay, they were still his family. And he didn't doubt that the two of them were doing all right–they'd gotten along just fine without him in the beginning.
Lucy's exhale made him glance at her.
"Natsu…" she murmured, her brow furrowed with worry and sorrow. For him. "I'm so sorry." Her voice broke.
And wasn't it funny that when her voice broke, it felt like his heart was being mended?
"Why? I'm not." He shook his still-damp head, cool droplets of water trekking down his spine. "I'd take the fall again and again for someone important to me," he promised in a low voice.
Lucy's cheeks pinked. "I know you would," she assured him and reached out to place her hand on his forearm. The contact sizzled, but in a way that Natsu found pleasurable. "I'm just…" she started with a helpless shrug, "I'm sorry that your life has been so difficult. I wish there was some way that I could help but…"
His blonde detective trailed off with a shake of her head, a stray lock of hair that had been previously tucked behind her ear slipping out. She reached up to smooth it away again, biting her luscious bottom lip.
Natsu swallowed.
"Nah, you just being you helps a lot," he rasped, and ducked his eyes when she glanced up at him curiously.
She seemed to soothe all his inner aches and pains with her sheer presence. And when she smiled, the radiance chased his nightmares all the way back to the shadowy abyss from where they didn't dare leave again.
A regular angel in cop's skin.
They get closer with each detail they share... Prepare for some good stuff next chapter ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) Stay tuned!
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