Chapter Fifty-One
Infighting
The two Dragon Slayers hit the ground with an almost violent intensity to their passion. This was it, they'd held back far longer than either of them had thought capable.
Suddenly and without warning, Natsu had thrown a hand to his chest, clutching desperately at the place where the Heartfilia key rose up underneath his skin.
'I will not sit idly by while you have your moment of passion. You aren't that focused on keeping me contained right now, so make your choice, Dragon. I will break these chains!' E.N.D. howled, rattling his cage harder than he ever had before.
"Natsu?" Lucy asked, breathless from their relentless attacks on each other.
"He…" Natsu hung his head, his vision blurring. He tried to focus but to no avail. Those usually warm black eyes flooded with gold as they narrowed, a distinct sign that he was powerful himself up for something.
He was sweating already from the immense force that E.N.D. was hitting him with. It was all far too much to deal with at once.
"What's going on?" She asked hurriedly, looking him over before watching as the key in his chest glowed a bright blue and white, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat beneath.
"He's trying to break out, I can't, this…" he stopped short, his breathing straining even more.
Had E.N.D. gotten that much stronger? He'd been so occupied with everything around him that his focus, even if only for a short time, had waned.
'You were stronger on your own. You've grown weak surrounding yourself with these mortals. Even the Heartfilia girl, there she is staring at you and you're on the verge of losing control. I will be free of this cage.' E.N.D.s voice was calm, and that was a lot worse than when he was rattling the bars like an animal. This was the cold and calculated mind of the Etherious, this was the mind of the Demon that had puppeteered his body in Loduhn.
"He's…" Lucy took a deep breath, putting her hands on Natsu's face, forcing him to look her in the eyes, "He's talking to you, isn't he?" She asked, desperately hoping that she was wrong.
He said nothing, but gave the softest nod, already feeling calmer with her hands on him.
Heat rose around the two of them, wilting the once bright dandelions in a vase she had by the window.
She quickly placed a hand against his chest, feeling the connection to the key underneath. "You said that Anna created this key herself. If she thought half as highly of you as I do, then I'm certain that she would have made sure… That…" she closed her eyes and focused, pulling magic from the centre of her being and directing it through her fingertips.
Celestial magic resonated with the key, making it glow bright blue through the skin. He felt a calming sensation wash over him.
It wasn't stopping E.N.D.s destructive rioting, but it helped his frayed nerves to simmer down.
"I can't do this, not right now. I nearly lost control," he told her, letting out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
Despite her immediate arguments, he opened the window and deftly dropped to the street below, gone and away from her within a matter of seconds.
Before the next minute had passed, he was back at the lake he'd been at that same day. Without wasting any time, he launched his coat and top on the ground, stepping into the water that had been cooled down by the night.
He slowly dropped down, taking one last breath before submerging himself. The rising heat from his body hadn't strictly been a product of his Dragon Slayer magic, but rather that of E.N.D.s slowly leaking out where Natsu had been so close to losing himself.
'One day, your infatuation with these mortals will break you, and I will be there,' E.N.D. told him, his voice fading as Natsu focused more and more.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been under the lake. At some point, he'd opened his eyes and begun staring at the moon. It was beautiful, bright, and full.
As a Dragon, his lung capacity was so far evolved beyond what mortals would consider to be even possible, he didn't exactly need to resurface, he'd probably end up surviving an extraordinarily long time without oxygen.
It would be much longer if his body became dormant, his muscles and brain needing less and less, but for the moment, he was simply caught up in watching the slow passage of the moon overhead.
He blinked and all of a sudden, the moon was red. And staring down at him.
Confused, he tried to focus his eyes, bringing everything back from a blurry fuzzy haze. Another moment passed before he realized that he wasn't looking at the moon, but rather the kind eyes of the Fairy Queen.
He slowly surfaced, making sure not to hit her on his way up.
"What are you doing here? I thought you said you were going with the geezer to the meeting with the other geezers?" he asked, looking her up and down to make sure that she hadn't sought him out because they were in trouble.
"We were," she nodded, "But a few hours ago this started burning," she said, tapping the breastplate above the place he'd given her the new mark.
"I was worried, and so the Master said that I could come back to make sure that there weren't any problems. After that, I just followed my feelings and found you slowly drowning in the lake," she told him.
The way she was looking at him, it was worry but mixed with a few other emotions, things that Natsu hadn't experienced before, or if he had, it had been such a long time ago that they were beyond forgotten.
"Yeah," Natsu grimaced. How was he supposed to explain what happened? It was weird enough that Mira had outright said that he should go to Lucy but Erza surely had at least some sanity left.
He half expected it all to be a dream, another, exceptionally long, dream. He knew that it wasn't, how could it be? E.N.D. wasn't randomly inconveniencing him in person, only from beneath the skin.
"I was with Lucy, a few hours ago it would seem, and things had gotten…" he didn't know how to say it. Would she instinctively know where he was going with it?
"Steamy?" she raised a brow, a small mischievous smile on show.
"Oh, so you're just as into this whole thing as Mira is. Right…" he sighed slightly, scratching the back of his head, "Actually, I shouldn't be surprised. You rush head first into impossible odds, obviously you like pain, and those ropes you tried to bind me with? You're into kinky stuff, so, realistically it shouldn't surprise me that you'd have a reaction like that hearing that I was with someone else." he explained with a soft sigh.
"That's not exactly it, I just don't know how I'm supposed to respond. I feel that, at least in this regard, Mira probably has the best perspective, so I'll take a page out of her book. I'm not interested in falling into jealousy." she said, giving him another soft smile.
"Anyway," he said, getting back on track, now even more concerned about her nonchalance, "As you said, 'steamy', but then this dark side of me, saw an opportunity when my guard was down. It started to tear at the walls that divide us with more ferocity than ever before. I think what you felt with that magic connection we have was me struggling to keep myself contained." he said, slowly dipping his body back down into the water, keeping his head above the surface.
Around his body, small jets of steam began to rise where he was heating up the lake.
"So you thought the only thing you could do was to run?" she asked, taking her boots off and sliding forward to dip her feet in the water.
It was the perfect temperature where she sat next to him. Warm on a cold night.
"The only one that was ever powerful enough to stop this thing was my father, Igneel. I've been trying to find Igneel for centuries, always one step behind. In all that time I've never found someone another who would be able to stop it." he sighed, his burden being almost tangible.
"It was all well and good when we first met and I thought that you might be the one to kill me, but killing me and killing him are two very different things," Natsu explained, reaching up and putting a hand across the top of her thigh, gently caressing her knee where his hand fell.
"You don't suppose that somewhere in your mind you wanted a distraction to take you out of that situation?" Erza asked him, looking down from where she sat.
"No," he shook his head, "No, this was very much a moment of weakness that he decided was the right time to strike. The cocky bastard even went so far as to tell me. Prick," Natsu sighed, inwardly aiming the last part knowing that no matter what, it would reach E.N.D. in his cage.
"When the time comes and you're ready to talk about that, I'll be here to listen, but I don't think you're quite there yet, are you?" she asked, casually tracing lines on the back of his hand.
"No," he barely whispered.
"I would say that you can come back with me tonight, but I think you've already made up your mind, haven't you?" she asked, tilting her head ever so slightly.
"I need to go back to Lucy. What are you going to do?" he asked her, craning his neck to look into her eyes.
"It won't take me long to get back to the magic council. The meeting will likely be wrapping up about now, so I'll stay there with the master and return tomorrow," she explained, pulling herself off the ground with ease.
She watched, greatly enjoying the scene before her as the shirtless Natsu rose out of the water with grace. He splayed his hands out with a deft fluidity, orchestrating a rotating wreath of flame that evaporated every last drop of water on him, leaving him completely dry.
"One day, I want you to teach me something like that," she smiled brightly.
"You used my power after you were turned into a statue by Wintergreen, you managed to use it like Dragon Slaying magic was second nature, I genuinely think I probably could teach you," he said, finally returning the infectious smile she held.
He placed his hands on her hips, pulling her closer. She stepped into it, leaning up to place her lips against his. It was a quick kiss, but deep.
"And you don't feel as animalistically driven with me as you do with Lucy?" she raised a brow, knowing that if she stoked the fire within him they could get into trouble right there.
"It took Lucy's new nature to get me riled up like that, but I've been unable to separate the three of you in my head. If I hadn't managed to control myself then you and I would have been naked ages ago," he laughed.
"So you'll be ok?" she asked him, resting her head against his chest. They'd only been transparent about what was between them for a matter of days and yet this simple loving act felt so natural to her.
"I will, I promise. Be safe on your way back to the geezer," he said as they broke away and he grabbed his clothes.
She gave him another warm smile before grabbing him for another kiss. This one lasted only a second, and then she was gone, requipped into her Heaven's Wheel armour and taken to the skies.
Before long, Natsu had found himself back to Lucy's apartment.
The senses of the Dragon were strong in both of them, she'd smelled him approaching from the outskirts and was already waiting at the window, watching him expectantly.
"Hey," she said softly, trying to pretend that her voice hadn't croaked and that there hadn't been tears in her eyes.
"Hey," he mirrored, staring up into her eyes, clear as day even from the distance between them.
She silently opened the window further and stepped back, waiting patiently. Within a second, he'd deftly landed perfectly in the window frame, stepping into the apartment without so much as even a soft thud.
"I didn't come back to carry on," he began, putting his hands around her waist, and pulling her body closer to his. She dropped the bed sheet she'd been covering herself with, accepting the radiant heat of his body, sending a comfortable shiver down her spine.
"You smell like Erza," she murmured, placing her head against his chest. A finger lingered across his chest, connecting to the Heartfilia key making it pulse blue.
"That new brand I gave her, apparently it started burning a few hours ago and she came back to check," he explained, running a hand across the back of her head.
"You didn't come back to carry on, but you did come back," she said, holding him tighter.
"I couldn't have you think that I didn't want to be here, I did, and I do, but until I can make sure that I won't be blindsided by him again, I can't risk giving in to this," he told her, lifting her head up and planting a kiss on her lips.
"You taste like what I'm fairly sure is strawberry cheesecake," she said, giving him a flirting glare.
"Erza," he laughed before letting her go so that he could take his coat off.
"You've got that same brand, so, before we try to get some sleep, are you absolutely sure that you want to go through with this? I don't know what it is that you might see," he said to her.
"I do, let's go," she said, closing the window and sliding into the bed.
"Away we go," he smiled, following her into the sheets, this time in control of themselves with a far lesser risk of E.N.D. being able to throw him through a loop.
'I have changed my mind, I will be there. Better warn the Heartfilia girl,' E.N.D. said, his voice fading. Natsu felt his eyelids get heavier. He didn't want to alarm her or start a new conversation, but couldn't not.
E.N.D. had been startled by Erza's presence, they didn't expect that anyone else would have been drawn into their memory, but now they were expecting it. And Natsu wasn't sure where E.N.D. stood in regard to the three important women in his life.
He suddenly sat up, startling her. "What is it?" she asked, leaning into him. Even though she'd closed the window, everything else in the room felt colder now that she had a Fire Dragon sitting next to her. It was like all sources of heat had been pulled towards him.
"The other guy…" he said quickly, "He's been in these memories with me, he was involved with everything that happened all those years ago, but when Erza appeared, he disappeared. When I decided that I would indulge you and see if you could be brought in, he decided that he didn't want to be involved, but apparently he has changed his mind." Natsu said.
"He'll be there, right beside us?" Lucy asked, unsure of whether or not she was in danger.
Natsu slowly nodded.
"Yeah, he'll be there. It can be fairly startling seeing him, but you should know that he can't do anything. Do you still want to try?" he asked, clutching her hand.
"I almost engaged in borderline feral relations with a man who in the last few months caused the downfall of two wizard saints. I'll be ok," she reassured him, finally showing a real smile as they laid back down and let the sleep take them.
Though she wasn't particularly afraid of what she might see, she was not prepared.
A/N: Sorry, not sorry. No steamy bits just yet. I had actually totally finished writing this chapter as if they did carry on, but decided that would be too straightforward, and I'm not here to give you what you want that easily. I'll repurpose parts of the already written chapter for the next one but otherwise, this is the direction I've decided that I want to take.