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Red, yellow. Purple, pink. Orange.
The same colours as always, taking the place of the sky’s pristine blue for the briefest of moments before they too slipped away into the night, bleeding away to inky blackness spotted with stars.
Funny really how she never paid much attention to sunsets, only caring for the time that came after. For her to count the stars and draw new stories from the sky. Lucy could never do that when the sun set. It never told a story that made sense.
Lucy blinked slowly, wearily, as she stared up at the sky. She heaved a rattling breath and it burned in her throat, stopping halfway to her lungs and rising back up like bile.
Her head lolls to the side as she vomits onto the grass, mouth filling with blood. She spat out the rest with a shudder, curling on her side and gripping her stomach tightly. It lurched this way and that and she feared vomiting again; the taste in her mouth still fresh, rolling back down her throat.
Lucy wished she had her keys right now, to have someone here with her to ride this through. For someone to stop the pain she was feeling right now.
But she was alone, and the only sound to be heard were the trees whispering as the winds raced throughout the forest.
Ahead of her a branch snapped and Lucy whimpered, tears prickling at the corners of her eyes at the sight of him.
He moved slowly out the line of trees, limping and dragging a leg behind while an arm hung lamely at his side- dislocated at the shoulder. Casualties of the fight, her own doing to try and slow him down. To get him to stop. But it didn’t work, all her efforts were for naught because despite the pain she inflicted he just kept coming.
This wasn’t her Natsu.
His scarf was long gone, taken by the trees in the chase, leaving his neck uncharacteristically bare and the fresh claw marks on it that still wept made her choke. She’d watched him claw at his own throat when……something happened. Heard him screams that still echoed in her head, pained and shrill and the last sounds she heard from him before he was gone.
He hadn’t made a sound after that. It was like something took control of his body.
His fingers were caked in blood and dirt and the closer he got Lucy realized that some of his fingernails were gone, completely ripped off.
But his eyes, there was nothing to them.
Natsu knelt before her, his stare blank and unseeing as he looked past Lucy, the bright emerald green that she’d come to know and love clouded and unfocused. No smile marred his features, pulling at his lips or creased his eyes. No growls met her ears, nothing to say that he was alive and in there, fighting to break free.
It was him and yet, it wasn’t. And the fact she couldn’t help him tore her up from the inside.
Natsu’s uninjured hand ghosted over her neck before his grip tightened, trapping Lucy’s last breath in her throat before he stood, taking her up with him.
She dangled clear above the ground, feet kicking uselessly as she wheezes, hands clawing desperately to try and loosen his grip, to no avail. His fingers tightened and she let out a strangled cry, the tears prickling at her eyes streamed down, mixing with the grime on her face.
“N-natsu, please. ” Lucy choked out. Her eyes locked with his in a desperate plea. Spots started to dance before her eyes. Natsu’s gaze stays locked on her, still unfocused until something in them sharpen.
They clear for a few seconds and his grip on her loosens, allowing her to take a quick greedy breath.
“Natsu…?” She tried, voice hoarse. Then she heard it, a soft whisper, the sliver of a cry that escaped his lips. Natsu’s fingers dug tighter into her skin, forcing out what little breath she’d stolen. The little light that had shone through was gone, lost behind the cloud.
There was…..nothing she could do. She couldn’t save him.
Heat blazed up on her skin, giving life to flames that never dared hurt her before, searing at her flesh. The air stank of her burning.
Lucy’s screams wouldn’t leave her, trapped inside for the last moments she was there, watching as the flames grew, flickering as they reached for her eyes.
Red, orange, yellow.
Her gaze darted to the sky one last time. The last of the sunset was fading away into night, one that she wouldn’t get to write for. She never really appreciated sunsets before, the sky never looked so beautiful.
Purple.
She dropped her gaze back down to Natsu, taking in the last sight of him with a broken sob. Didn’t they have a promise? To always be together? Lucy’d never think to break it.
Pink.
Lucy never saw the tears roll down his cheek