He was cold. Uncomfortably so. To make matters worse, his stomach felt like it was full of knives. Curling in on himself helped nothing.
For the first few days, Mother lay with him, brushing his hair back from his sweaty forehead and singing lowly while Zeref brought cold water for drinking. Natsu didn't want it. Not only could he not keep it down, he wanted something hot. He wanted to be swaddled in blankets tight enough that he couldn't breathe, then he wanted to be dunked in a bath full of scalding water. Anything to chase out the chills.
The only thing he got was his blankets torn away and a bath full of ice. Startling and, by his best guess, cruel. He cried until he had no more tears, then he fussed and made life difficult for everyone because he was miserable. By the fifth day, Mother was too tired to deal with him, so Zeref took her place, laying down on the bed and crushing Natsu to his chest. Sometimes he'd tell stories and even pull the blankets back up over them both, though he wasn't supposed to.
The dream had been whirling by until this moment. Now it slowed.
"Am I ever going to get better?" Natsu felt himself ask.
Zeref, curled around Natsu's back, pressed their cheeks together. The other boy's skin felt cold. "Of course, Natsu."
The dream sped forward again, showing Natsu that he only got worse. He lost weight drastically, his cheeks, once filled with baby fat, were hollowed out. He was bedridden with a diaper and a waste bin constantly at his side. He tossed and turned and complained about being cold even as he sweated. The last made his heart lurch: Mother stopped spending so much time with him, only coming now to feed him broth.
Natsu watched it all fly by in a blur, the days that slipped by in this tortured state, until the dream lagged again and came into proper focus. Mother came in with a bowl of broth as always, and rested it on the bedside table so she could help him sit up. He could tell by the way her face pinched that she hated to feel his bones prod through his skin. It was breaking her down bit by bit, wanting to help him and being unable to. She chewed her cheek and marched on with as much grace as he could ask.
When he was mostly vertical, she lowered herself to the mattress. It dipped beneath her weight.
"How are you today, Natsu?" She asked it in a strained voice, and not like she wanted the truth. Natsu lied for her.
"Hungry."
She smiled, it was watery, then grabbed up the bowl again and brought a spoon full of amber broth to his lips.
Natsu felt his stomach protest, and it hadn't even met his lips yet. He swallowed the lump in his throat and opened his mouth. He shouldn't have worried, Mother's hands were shaking so badly, she only managed to dribble the hot fluid down his front, burning him. It was so real, the pain sharp and startling, that Natsu gasped.
Mother swore, a rare thing, and rushed to get a cloth. In her haste she only spilled more, burning his legs now, and her hands. The bowl dropped, shattering, and sent broth and bits of clay everywhere. She hissed angrily and stood.
"I'm sorry, Mother," Natsu managed in a voice that wasn't his own, pinched with pre-pubescence, and laden with illness.
The anger vanished beneath the presence of a much stronger emotion. Mother pressed the back of her hand against her lips and closed her eyes. It didn't stop the tears.
Zeref entered and took her by the shoulders, pointing her toward the exit. "I'll clean this up and feed him, Mother. Go call the doctor again."
"The doctor doesn't know, Zeref," she said harshly.
"He didn't know yesterday. Today is a new day," he told her firmly.
"Nothing has changed."
He shook his head. "The sun has risen. Time has gone by. Everything is different. Go call on the doctor."
She left in a swirl of skirts and frustration.
"Why is Mother angry?" Natsu licked chapped lips with a tongue that was as dry as cotton.
Zeref sat on the edge of the bed and pushed Natsu's sweaty hair back. "She's not mad, Natsu. She's scared. She doesn't know what to do."
"Because I'm not getting better."
Zeref hesitated, then shook his head. "No, you're not."
"And the doctor doesn't know why."
"No, he doesn't," Zeref agreed.
Natsu started to cry again, huge wet tears. It was a wonder there was any liquid in his body to produce them. Maybe sadness had its own aquafer.
"I'm going to fix it," Zeref said. "I—I will, Natsu. You're going to be better again."
As soon as he said it, Natsu knew that it was a promise made in vain. Zeref was powerless to stop this, even if he prayed. Natsu wanted to believe in him, though. "How?"
"Just trust me."
Through the dream, Natsu felt Zeref's helplessness. His heart lurched and hurt with sympathy, something he didn't think he'd ever believe the dark mage would deserve.
Zeref said, "There has to be something. For all the magic in the world, there is a spell that will make you better."
Natsu's mouth moved without his permission, the words already predetermined, like he was living through a play. "You don't know."
"Not yet," Zeref said. "But I will. I swear."
Natsu closed his eyes without trying to eat anymore. Zeref lay down beside him, enveloping him again.
The dream shifted violently, strangely, time skipped, and perception. It was disorienting. The next time Natsu opened his eyes, they weren't really his own. He was still laying on his bed, still damp with sweat, but… this body wasn't his own. Not exactly, anyway. It took him a moment to realize that he was looking out at the world through a fringe of dark hair. Zeref's hair, and he was looking down at himself, as white as a ghost and frightfully still.
Through Zeref's eyes, Natsu watched Zeref lay his hand against his forehead, pushing back the pink locks. "Natsu?" His voice was full of sleep yet, but with every silent second that passed, he became more alert. And scared. "Natsu?"
Natsu watched dream-him, and hoped that the boy, looking smaller and frailer than ever, would open his blue-stained eyelids. His blue-stained lips. Both remained closed.
"Natsu?" Zeref grabbed his shoulder and pulled him on his back. He flopped lifelessly. There was no mistake, he'd fled from this world. Very acutely, Natsu felt the hollow pit open in Zeref's stomach as he came to the same conclusion. Zeref didn't cry, still too numb for that.
The dragon slayer thought that would be the end of the dream—prayed—but it still held him firmly, moving quickly once again. They were in the kitchen. Mother wasn't crying, either, just staring blankly as Zeref relayed his find. Her rose-gold locks were especially limp and lackluster, framing her red face. She was a husk of herself. That pained Natsu more than the seeming termination of his life. She was so… vibrant when he'd first discovered her. A woman he could love so much, if he had the chance.
She said only three words: "I'll make arrangements."
They were on the move again, the walls dissolving. The next thing Natsu knew, he was beneath a wide cherry tree, still as Zeref. Valentina came to his side, a piece of raspberry pie in her hand, wrapped in a clean white cloth. She didn't try to hold it out, only bringing it because she thought it was the right thing to do.
"I'm sorry, Zeref."
Looking at her through his brother's eyes (Natsu was saving that passing acceptance to turn over later) was like seeing her anew. She'd always been beautiful, but now she was more. A shining light in the coming darkness. A beacon that could call Zeref back into port before the storm became too rough and there was nothing left.
Zeref ignored the call. "I promised him."
Valentina lowered herself to the ground next to him, close enough that their bodies were touching. She smelled like baking, as always. Vanilla and cinnamon and nutmeg and everything Zeref thought he wanted, everything he thought he'd have, even if she was a baker's daughter and he was to be a scholar. Class didn't matter, not when she was all he thought about.
Valentina turned her wide glassy eyes on him. "Promised?"
Zeref's throat went tight. Natsu couldn't escape the channeling of the suffocating feeling. "I promised him I'd make him better. And I didn't."
"Oh, Zeref..." Her arms went around his shoulders. "This isn't your fault." She was soft and warm. This was the closest he'd ever been to her. Natsu felt how much Zeref wished it was under difference circumstances.
Though he was a strange passenger, an intruder in this, what felt like a private moment, Natsu marveled with morbid curiosity when Zeref's eyes got damp, his throat smaller still. He felt Every. Little. Thing. Every pain. Every string of love stretched so thin, it was on the precipice of breaking. Zeref had never seemed more human.
"I want to fix it, Valentina."
The tree faded. Suddenly, Natsu was staring at an expanding graveyard, he and Zeref all alone. The light of the moon was the only illumination the nighttime offered, yet he could see everything clearly: the small pile of dirt that looked very, very fresh, the child-sized gravestone that was whiter than bone.
Zeref sniffed, lifting his hand and wiping his nose. "I'm sorry, Natsu."
Natsu thought he was apologizing again for his death, but then he became aware of the object in Zeref's hand. Seriously, he thought, and willed himself to wake, because that was next-level morbid.
The dream held him hard. There was no escape from this.
He watched the dirt get dug up, one shovelful after the other, felt the fatigue in Zeref's arms.
He didn't stop. Even when calluses formed on his hand and popped, even when the shovel left splinters in his palms, even when his back felt so bent, it could break.
Everything happened within several blinks of the eye, though every time Natsu looked, the moon was lower and lower in the sky, the clouds had shifted. Hours had passed, long, grueling.
He didn't slow until the dull clunk of metal hitting wood trilled out in the quiet. It wasn't done yet, though, he had to dig out the entirety of the box. Zeref dropped the shovel and used his hands, impatiently throwing away the excess dirt. Natsu wished he could close his eyes for this part. Zeref wanted to, too. There was no reprieve. Using the shovel again, Zeref stood and jammed the blade inside the casket's lid and heaved. He didn't have to try that hard, it wasn't sealed with much other than a few already-rust-eaten nails.
Natsu learned quickly that looking at his small dead self wasn't as bad as bending and picking him up, cradling the cold body in his arms. Rigor had come and gone, now he was just limp. It had been three days since he'd last drawn breath.
"Ethernano will keep you, Natsu," Zeref whispered. "Until I can bring you home."
Time slipped by again, the scenery altered, bringing Natsu—still trapped within Zeref's body—into Zeref's room. There was a book in his hand that he wrung mercilessly, and a manic feeling in his chest. Natsu named it: hope. Valentina sat on the bed, her hands folded in her belled skirts. She watched every one of Zeref's agitated movements.
"Are you going to tell me, or leave me to wonder?"
He stilled for the first time in days. "I found a passage, Valentina. In a text book."
"A passage?"
"I've been researching ways to bring him back. I devised a way to create a gate to step through time. Once it's open, I'll simply go through, find a healthy Natsu, and bring him into the present."
She was silent for a long time. Zeref only looked at her, willing her to share in his excitement. Yet, when she opened her mouth next, it wasn't to take part in his pleasure. "Zeref, you cannot change the flow of time."
"You're wrong," he argued. "It's all right here." He approached with the book held out. Valentina looked at it warily.
"Zeref… It sounds so wonderful. I wish it were true." She looked like her heart was breaking. "I know I'm no scholar, but think about it. Even if such a thing were possible, he was sick. You don't know where the Sweating Sickness came from, and you can't cure it… it's likely he'd just get sick again. You'd live through the heartbreak once more."
Zeref chewed his cheek so hard, his mouth filled with copper. "Valentina..."
As gently as possible, she said, "It's impossible, Zeref." She stood and approached him, grabbing his hands and working the book from his cold grasp. "Please. We all need to keep looking forward."
"But…"
She kissed him softly, squarely on the mouth. It would have been wonderful, if it weren't so full of fear and pleading. "Let him rest."
For the sweetest of Valentina's kisses, this was one dog that would not lie.
This time, Natsu was prepared for the dream to swing. Wearing Zeref's skin, he paced the hard marble floor of the university. With every footfall, the tread of his sandal thwacked.
"You're making me restless, Zeref. Please stop."
Zeref turned, affording Natsu a view of the speaker. It was a tall man with a thick white beard, long and flowing. He wore the robes of a professor. In his hand was a round hat topped with a golden tassel. He worried at it so much, he was bending the bowl out of shape.
"You don't understand, Professor Atticus. The R-System can work. It will."
"Even if it did, I cannot permit you to try such a thing. It goes against everything Ankhseram teaches. Life is sacred, Zeref, and everything has an order. I am saddened by your brother's passing, but there is nothing that can be done."
"I just told you what can be done. Give me the resources, Professor. Please. I can't fund it all myself."
"There is a reason no one has tried before—"
"Because they're afraid!" Zeref said.
"Because it requires a human sacrifice," Atticus hissed in a much quieter voice. "If that's not reason enough, though I can see no reason why it shouldn't be, any that try will be punished. You'll be cursed, Zeref. Leave it be."
"This is nonsense!" While Atticus strived to be quiet, Zeref's voice was rising too high. "I don't believe in curses. Only a superstitious fool would ignore the advancement before him."
Atticus was firm. "My decision is final. Stop speaking this way."
Zeref squeezed his hand into a fist so tight, his nails dug into his palm. A million miles away, Natsu felt his own palm ringing dully, the thorn in his hand throbbing as he mimicked dream-Zeref's movements. "Have you never lost someone you loved? Is there no one you want to bring back into this life?"
The man actually faltered. He recovered his faculties shortly thereafter, though. "I will tell you once more: venture off this path, Zeref, or you will be expelled."
Natsu didn't need to see the rest to know that Zeref pursued it anyway. The truth of the matter was horrifying. Death to bring around life. My life.
He rejected the knowledge with everything he had, fighting tooth and nail to claw his way out of the dream. It had a few more things to show him, though.
The man Zeref chose to die was one he'd found on the streets. A man that had been begging for years, drinking until he was blind, then wallowing in his own filth. It wasn't a decision that was made lightly; every time Zeref thought about it, his heart would turn, his stomach would clench, and his palms would get sweaty. I can't do this, he thought a hundred times, but Natsu knew that there was resolution in his heart, the stubborn kind that overcame even fear and disgust.
The next landscape the dream showed him was the basement of Mother's house, the large square room that he somehow recognized from hours of playing when it was too cold to do so outside. It was illuminated with several light lacrima. In the corners were cobwebs—on the ceiling, on the ground. It had never been so unkempt before. In the center of the room was a new table, long and wooden, upon which sat a glass tube. Inside was a boy. Messy pink hair, slack lips and closed eyes, unchanged since the day Zeref tugged him from the earth. That's me, Natsu thought numbly, feeling surreal. Just as quickly, he admonished the thought. It was a dream.
From the shadows, the homeless man stood. "Thank you for letting me sleep here last night. It's been a long time since I've been warm in the winter." He spoke with a lisp, two of his front teeth missing.
"You enjoyed your cider?" Zeref asked, looking for more graciousness. Natsu understood too clearly: it helped with the guilt.
"Yes, Sir. And the hot meal. I don't want to intrude anymore, though."
"Stay awhile yet. It's no bother." Zeref's hands were shaking. There was a knife up the sleeve of his robe, it dug into his skin hard enough that it punctured, leaving behind a small, neat slash. The pain and the blood that followed were all secondary to what he was gearing himself up for.
"Why are you so kind?" the man asked.
"Because everyone has great capacity for cruelty," Zeref said numbly. He couldn't bring himself to do it yet. "I'll make you lunch."
The man bowed his head. "I'm undeserving of this gift."
"Yes," Zeref agreed. "But you will earn it." That too helped placate his conscience.
The basement turned into the bedroom in the blink of an eye. Valentina sat on Zeref's bed in less clothes than Natsu had ever seen her in before, stripped of her bodice, so now she wore her undershirt—some white frilly thing that dipped low so he could see the line of her breasts, and her skirts. Through their connection, Natsu felt how Zeref desired her, but that wasn't the primary thing on his mind.
"I want to talk to you about something, Valentina."
She blinked, looking up at him through her dark lashes. "Yes?"
"I found a way that will work." He was looking for reinforcement, for someone else to stoke his conviction.
Her lustful gaze turned immediately wary. "…To make what work, exactly?"
"A way to bring him back," Zeref rushed to say, sensing already that this wasn't going to go the way he wanted.
"You told me there was to be no more," she whispered. "Zeref, you've already been expelled."
"I know, but it was worth it because this is different. I sold all of Father's tools and had a lacrima built—"
"Zeref—"
"It's here already. I have the spell, and all of the ingredients—"
"Just let it go, please. This path is poisonous. It will only lead to pain. Your professors said—"
"What do they know, Valentina? Nothing. Nothing at all. I have a chance to bring him back. Just listen."
She stood. "I won't. Please, Zeref, you're hurting yourself and everyone else. Your mother needs you to take care of her—"
"I can't," he snapped. "She's done nothing but mourn. She only cries when I offer solutions—"
"Because you can't bring back the dead!" Valentina's voice was high and thready.
"Shut up."
"No. He's gone, Zeref."
"Shut up."
"Let it go and let everyone heal."
"I promised him!"
"I know." She made her voice soft. "But, Zeref, he won't want to live like this."
"He can't say if he's dead, can he?" Zeref asked, feeling suddenly manic. He strode forward and grabbed her arm roughly. She yipped, scared, as he tugged her violently toward the exit. "Get out. Get out and stay out."
"Please—"
He shoved her out so hard, she tripped on her skirts and fell to the floor, curls bouncing, eyes going wide. The door slammed, jamming the nail in the proverbial coffin. Zeref's resolve was set.
I don't want to know anymore, Natsu thought viciously, and fought with everything he had, scrabbling for the surface of the very long well of dreaming.
Lucy wasn't ready to wake when Natsu's elbow found her ribs, bringing her to consciousness in a harsh and startling way. Blinking, she took in the lightened world. The sun had risen, and, for the first time in days, it was peeking through a mat of separating clouds. It was still too early, though.
Natsu sat up, hair askew, eyes wide. The hand that was on her waist—somehow worked beneath her shirt as they slept—was cold and clammy. On his forehead was beaded sweat. The reprimand Lucy had been working her way toward fizzled.
"What's wrong?"
He didn't seem to hear her, or see her, for that matter, looking at something very far away. She touched his cheek, concerned by the rapid rise and fall of his chest and the animalistic aura around him. "Natsu?"
Slowly, his glassy eyes found hers and focused. "Lucy?" He squeezed her side, making sure that this here was in fact the real world.
"Are you alright?" She searched his dark eyes; he was whiter than a sheet. If he wasn't holding her so tight, she'd feel the way his muscles quivered with fear-fueled adrenaline. "Do you feel sick?"
Sweating Sickness. It wasn't all that hard to recall the way his muscles were knotted, right along with his stomach, the pail at the side of his bed, and Zeref at his back, trying in vain to hold him in this world. He swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing. It wasn't real. "Just a stupid dream." He felt dumb admitting it, getting riled up like that over some silly scenario his brain created forwhateverfuckingreason. He said it aloud, though, because doing so felt like banishing his dream to the dark realms of it's fantasy.
"You've been having a lot of them." She brushed his hair back from his forehead, too concerned to be worrying about their closeness.
"I—yeah. I guess." He released his hold on her waist and fingered the cold nub in his palm. Even through the bandage Lucy gifted him with, the skin was hard, like there was a glass marble trapped inside.
"Do you want to tell me about them?"
Natsu glanced toward the couch where Happy slept. He could hear his friend's even breaths and knew he was still asleep. "I don't know, Lucy. Not really. They're just dreams." Yet even as he said it, he knew he was going to spill. "I was a kid." He didn't remember ever being that small. He wished he could, so he could totally excise these images. "I got sick. Zeref was there."
"Zeref?" Lucy repeated. What she wanted to say was, again?
Natsu nodded and kept going, skipping over most of the details, not keen on explaining how real everything felt, how he could smell Valentina. How he could feel the soup's broth scalding his skin. How he could feel Zeref's warmth at his back. Things that you were never supposed to feel in dreams. "And then I died, and I started dreaming through Zeref's eyes." He glanced at the blonde beneath him. She didn't look like she was judging him, or getting ready to mock him, she was just listening intently.
"I woke up just as he was about to sacrifice this guy to bring me back." He could still taste Zeref's guilt, the burden of the decision, and the resolve to follow through with it.
Lucy said the only thing she could. "It's just a dream, probably brought on by stress, Natsu."
"Stress?" Natsu asked in a low whisper.
"You know," Lucy matched his volume. "Waiting for other members of the guild to show up." People that were shockingly absent. "Trying to catch this murderer… us." She tagged the last on and held her breath for his response.
"Fairy Tail will come," he said with as much conviction as he could muster. But really, where was everyone? It had been days. Days and days. Maybe they're really not… he shook the thought from his head and tried to focus on other things. "The murders… we'll solve it, Lucy. We get closer every day." Only, he felt like they hadn't made any progress. He grabbed hold of her waist again and squeezed. "And… this… we should be easy."
Should be, but she hadn't been making it that way.
He came in and brushed her lips in a kiss that was supposed to expel all of his negative thoughts, and the lingering feeling his dream left behind. She responded to him, looping her arm around his neck, bringing him close to feeling as normal as he could possibly while doing something that they didn't normally do. The apprehension of his dream bowed out for the apprehension of this. This excitement and this new feeling. She stapled him to the ground more firmly than she could imagine by just returning his kiss. He let his hand ease up her shirt further. Her skin burned the coldness out of his palm. Maybe it wasn't permanent, but it felt better in the interim. He banished Happy on the couch just a little way away, sending him from his thoughts, and went looking a little higher.
Lucy let him get all the way to her topmost rib before she caught his wrist and turned her head to the side. "Wait."
Natsu leaned back, body feeling hot. "What is it?" He didn't want to stop.
Lucy's stomach churned with nervousness. But you don't want to start out with secrets. "If we're really going to do this… we should talk about something."
Natsu dropped his head to her shoulder and gathered in a huge breath, not wanting to hear what she was going to say, but recognizing that stubborn and determined look in her eye.
"Well," Lucy said. She wished she could see his face. Yet, it was easier, staring at the ceiling. "We should talk about a lot of things, actually. About you leaving, and—this—and a—about the night you left. I don't think it's a big deal, but Loke says that it's the right thing to do. If only just to—um—" What the hell was the phrasing Loke used? "To—clear the air, I guess. So you're not surprised. Or anything." She knew she was rambling. She pinched her lips together and made herself shut up.
Natsu stared at the darkness, head still in the crux between her neck and her shoulder. "It's about you and Gray?" From this vantage point, he could sort of see the dark bruising on her neck. It'd gotten worse during the night.
"Yeah."
He waited. And waited. "Just say it, Lucy." He heard her swallow.
She gathered all the courage she could. "We were together."
He was silent.
"Just once. Only for—" Her face was so hot; her heart felt like it was going to explode. "Only for the night. But it was a mistake. And now things are different. He and Juvia are a thing. And you and me…" It felt very presumptuous, but she said it anyway. "We are."
He still hadn't moved.
"Aren't we?"
She felt his breath come out in a hot blast. He gathered it all back in again just as quick, cooling her to the bone. And then his body weight was gone, his warmth with it.
"Natsu."
He kept his back to her as he yanked on his pants.
"Natsu, please."
Lucy's voice melded with Valentina's. 'Zeref, please.' The room felt too small. Not enough oxygen.
"Natsu." Lucy stopped trying to be quiet for Happy's sake. "Where are you going?"
He grabbed his shirt and yanked it over his head, then searched for his boots. They were kicked off sort of under the bed. Bending, he snatched them out. Lucy grabbed his wrist and held him still. Her touch burned.
"Don't leave. It doesn't change anything. It was just a mistake."
Natsu finally looked at her. "Just let me go clear my head, Lucy."
He didn't even look mad. Just blindsided.
"Are you going to come back?" She hated how uncertain her voice sounded, the question squeaking out.
Natsu didn't reply because he honestly didn't know. Though he wanted to, forgoing the door wasn't an option; the windows were all too small to slip from. He used long steps to take him from the motel and prayed that he wouldn't bump into anyone he didn't want to.
The door snapped closed.
"He'll come back, Lucy," Happy said into the poisoned-feeling silence, making his presence known.
Lucy pressed her hands into her hot eyes.
Natsu didn't know where to go. First to the river, but with his dream ringing in his head—getting sick and being carried home by Zeref—and the truer memory of Lucy lying down beside him countless times, he couldn't stay there long. Leaving, he was enthusiastically chased by the vivid memory of that first night in the motel, coming to Lucy's side and asking, 'Did you think of us while we were gone?'
'Of course I did.'
Of course. Of course.
And yet...
Gray.
He tried to be mad and was at least marginally successful. It was easy when it came to Gray; there wasn't much the ice mage did that didn't piss Natsu off. Imagining him with Lucy... in a way Natsu hadn't been yet...
He thought he walked aimlessly through Magnolia, past the canal, the park, a few food carts, the solar tree, but his feet knew exactly where they took him: Fairy Tail. The building was as crumpled as ever, looking desolate and indigent. It was as untouched as it was the day it fell, and would likely remain that way until…
Until the rest of Fairy Tail came home and they put it together again.
He felt the wave of hopelessness he'd been staving off push at his walls. He clenched his fists hard enough that his palm ached and his bones creaked, and beat it back, not wanting to be a slave to that emotion, or any other. It was powerful, an unwavering force that was determined to bring him down. He thought of all the ways things could be worse. People could be dead. As far as he knew, everyone had survived this last year. And Lucy and Gray could be together still.
He tried not to think about all the time they spent together on that fucking balcony. Doing who knew what.
'We were together.'
He thrust his hands through his hair and thought maybe he wished she hadn't said anything at all.
Without much of a goal in mind, other than to be closer to something familiar, he stepped on to the guild's rubble. It shifted beneath his feet, trying to drag him down to his knees. He adjusted and overcame the shifting stone, bits of glass and wood splinters. For another few steps, anyway. Then he ventured out on a thin piece of board stretching over a hollow pit. It cracked, worn by the sunlight and the rain. He went down. Seconds before he slipped into what was once the mess hall, he caught himself, fingers sliding over the splintered wood and digging in to keep him up. His feet dangled in the air.
Cursing fluidly didn't help him get back upright, but it made him feel marginally better as he clambered, feeling careless and stupid. Halfway out, one knee up while the other leg still dangled, the air got heavy with magic. He paused to watch the space just inches from his nose swirl with shadow. They writhed like living creatures, and maybe they were, who was he to say, and deposited their passenger.
Natsu didn't have to look up from the pair of jet black boots to know that his dreams had taken form in a very real way, but he did anyway.
