Chapter Text
Natsu’s eyes snapped open, and he remembered.
The team had taken a job to capture a bandit who had been robbing travelers on the road to Crocus. The victims hadn’t been able to give a clear description of the culprit; they all reported suddenly falling asleep and experiencing terrible dreams, only to wake up and find their valuables missing. A wizard using nightmare magic was clearly responsible, and who better to catch one than the people who had already triumphed over the strongest such wizard alive?
They’d prepared, of course. Every member of the team, even the Exceeds, wore dark glasses to keep the magic out – save Erza. Reasoning that only her left eye needed protecting, she opted instead to wear an eyepatch over it. (The pirate hat seemed quite unnecessary, but no one was about to tell her that.)
It was a foolproof plan, but Fairy Tail just took that kind of thing as a challenge. Natsu had caught a faint, sickly-sweet odor, and as lethargy flooded his muscles he’d realized that this spell didn’t work through sight – it worked through scent. By then it was too late.
Natsu rose to his feet and took stock of his surroundings. The ground under him had turned to glass; the flames had not been mere dreams. His friends were strewn about the place, locked in their own personal hells. With each face he saw his jaw tightened and his lips pulled further back. Erza, one twitching hand on her sword, still fighting even in the depths of unconsciousness. Gray, collapsed several feet ahead of everyone else – Natsu hadn’t even seen him move. Wendy and Carla, side by side. Happy, a few feet to his left, one paw reaching into his pack. And Lucy… Behind him. She’d been at his side before. Had he moved? She was curled up in a ball, her knees almost to her chin. All of them were crying, the scent of their tears far harsher on Natsu’s nose than the stomach-churning scent of the magic. All of them were surrounded by an acrid black smoke that even now reached for Natsu, only to burst into flames and be consumed utterly.
He followed the trails of smoke back to their source, a faintly-glowing censer in the hands of an unassuming young man, jaw slack with surprise. The nightmare mage. The person who hurt his friends. This was no longer a job. This was vengeance.
“You… burnt my magic.” The enemy wizard took a step back – to say he was unsettled would be an understatement. “Tell me! How? How did you know? How did you know it was just a nightmare?!”
Natsu’s voice was distant and cold, even to his own ears. The bastard didn’t deserve an answer, but he was going to get one anyways. “I didn’t. I just figured that any world without Lucy was a world that didn’t need to exist.”
“That’s insane! What the hell kind of lunatic are you?!” The mage was terrified now. Natsu could smell the fear wafting off of him, but it was nothing, nothing!, compared to what he smelled from his friends.
“The kind that’s a Fairy Tail wizard!” Natsu roared, as a fist wreathed in hellfire shattered the spell into a thousand pieces – and the spellcaster’s jaw along with it.
Erza was on her feet before the wanted mage even hit the ground, sealstone cuffs in hand and moving towards the target as if nothing had even happened. Gray was the next to awaken, sitting up and tracing the massive scar on his abdomen with one finger, eyes fixed on something Natsu could not see. Wendy and Carla were embracing, their tears now ones of relief instead of sorrow. Happy was still asleep, his expression now one of serene contentment as he murmured something about fish. And now sitting with her knees still on her chin and her eyes fixed firmly on her feet was –
“Lucy!”
Lucy’s head snapped up, and she moved, faster than Natsu had ever seen, and her arms were around him, her chest was pressed against his, her face was buried in his neck, her tears were soaking into his scarf, and she cried, “Natsu!” And then, quietly, so quietly Natsu doubted even Wendy could hear, “You’re still here.”
Her words were like a dagger through his heart.
He didn’t deserve to do this. He had no right to comfort her, not after what he had done. He had no right. But he was the only one who could, wasn’t he? And so, hating himself for doing this, hating himself for wanting this, and knowing that no amount of uncharacteristic self-loathing could ever get in the way of helping Lucy, he slowly raised his arms. One hand came to rest on the small of Lucy’s back and the other draped one end of his scarf across her neck and over her shoulder before taking its place on the back of her head.
He spoke, then, in a low, quiet voice, in a voice that was nothing like him and yet more like him than anything. In his Lucy voice. “I’m here, Lucy. I’ll always be here. I’m not going to leave you, not ever again.” And then, because it he knew how much it meant to her, and because he meant it more than anything he’d ever said, “That’s a promise.”
Lucy’s grip tightened on him, he pulled her closer in response, and he held her. As her sobs continued. As her sobs slowed. As her sobs came to an end. Only when her grip loosened, only when he asked if she was feeling better and she nodded into his neck, only then did the two disengage from their embrace and stand up. Together.
“Natsuuuuuu!!!”
Natsu turned, and Happy flew into him at top speed. Looking up through eyes brimming with tears, the blue Exceed told Natsu, “I just had an awful dream! In it,“ he sniffed, “In it fishies went extinct!”
Lucy, a faint smile growing on her face, wiped the last remnants of her tears off her own face and said, in a voice that was hoarse but still full of light, “Sounds like a pretty bad nightmare.”
And, save for an indignant Happy, everyone laughed. Because nightmares weren’t real, and this was.