Chapter Text
The dark guild went down easily, its strongest members no match for Fairy Tail’s unrestrained ferocity and its strongest support beams likewise. The collapse of the whole thing, both figuratively and literally, was pretty much guaranteed the moment Natsu spotted the job on the request board.
“All right!” Natsu brushed his hands off. “Let’s bring these guys in and get some grub, I’m starving!”
With excitement glimmering in her eyes and brimming in her voice, Erza loudly declared “A picnic! We shall have a picnic!”
“That’s a lovely idea and all,” said Wendy, “but it’s night time.”
“And we’re in the middle of the woods.” Carla added.
“Judging from the clouds we’ve had all day, we should be getting rain any minute now.” This was Gray.
“I was looking forward to seeing the constellations too,” moaned Lucy. “I bet they’d be really clear this far out.”
Erza took the group’s rejection of her grand idea with her usual aplomb, leading Lucy to place a hand on her distraught friend’s shoulder and reassure her. “Hey now, I saw a restaurant back in town that stayed open past midnight. I bet you’ll really love it, they had a multi-page menu just for de-“ Lucy stopped mid-sentence, her eyes widened as she saw something in the rubble, and she screamed “Natsu!”
Natsu turned to the sound of her voice, just in time to see her tackle him with all her might and knock him to the ground. Just in time to see the arrow made of light exit from her back.
He spun on his heels to catch her as she toppled backwards, to make sure she didn’t get hurt when she hit the ground, to see her face. Lucy met his gaze, her mouth moved silently – it might have been his name – and she smiled. And then the light in her eyes went out.
burn
All Natsu could smell was Lucy’s blood. It covered everything – Lucy, the ground, and Natsu himself. He was dimly aware of his friends moving and shouting, but his attention was focused entirely on Lucy and Wendy, the latter kneeling by the former and desperately pumping every last ounce of her magic into healing a wound that simply would not close.
burn
Wendy was pale and trembling, the flood of tears streaming out of her eyes and the look of horror on her face only growing with each repeated failure. But she kept trying. Even as she was barely able to sit upright, even as she was gasping for breath, even as her sobs wracked her body, she kept trying.
burn
Natsu placed his hand on Wendy’s shoulder. He didn’t want to say what he was about to say, but he had to. “Wendy, if you keep pushing yourself like this, you’ll get hurt. Lucy would be really angry with me if I let anything happen to you.”
burn
“I don’t care,” she sobbed, her face a picture of utter misery. “I have to help her, no matter what! I have to!”
burn
Natsu unwound his scarf from his neck, and gingerly lifted Lucy’s head so he could wrap it around hers. The end of the scarf dipped in Lucy’s blood and began to wick it up, slowly turning it the same color as the dragon whose scales it had originally been made from so many years ago. He said the words he dreaded to say. “Lucy’s gone. The only way you can help her now is by staying alive.” He said the words he dreaded to say, and hated himself for it. They felt like a betrayal.
burn
Natsu laid Lucy’s head back on the ground – he kept betraying her – and continued. “Wendy, I need you to get everyone – Carla, Happy, Erza, Gray – and get them as far away as you can. Can you do that for me?” It was an insane request, and he fully expected Wendy to reject it, but whatever she saw in his eyes led her to nod and stand up. Natsu braced himself, waiting to hear the rest of his friends object, to declare that they were friends and they’d never leave anyone behind, but not a single one said a single word.
burnburnburnburnburnburnburnbu-
Scalding tears streamed out of Natsu’s eyes as his head collapsed against Lucy’s breast. His hands balled into fists, his nails digging into his palms until the skin gave way and his blood mingled with Lucy’s own. Then he screamed, and the world around him became a vortex of coruscating flames.
Burn
Unfamiliar voices cried on in terror, and the noises that cut them off would have turned his stomach had they even registered in his conscious mind. The shouts of his friends, begging, nay, pleading for him to stop likewise went unheard. His ears were tuned to one sound and one sound only, and it was a sound that wasn’t there. It was a sound that would never be there again.
Burn
One by one, the trees in the pine forest exploded into clouds of boiling pitch and splintered wood, rapidly igniting to join the frenzied inferno. The winds of the firestorm scoured the earth, incinerating anything that could burn and carrying away anything that could not. Hotter. It had to be hotter.
Burn
Everything would burn. Natsu Dragneel’s world had room for but three things now – the howling conflagration born from incandescent rage, himself, and the limp and lifeless body of Lucy Heartfilia. And in truth, only one of those actually mattered. She was beautiful even in death, her hair fluttering in a hellish breeze, her last smile still on her face, her skin unmarred. Unmarred save for the hole through her heart, the hole Natsu desperately wished he could burn into oblivion. Everything would burn, except Lucy.
Burn
The rubble that had concealed the wizard who stole Lucy’s future cracked under his flames, twisting, bubbling and liquefying before being swept away in the infernal maelstrom. The ground that drank Lucy’s lifeblood withered and crumbled, fleeing from the devouring fire that refused to stop until land became a molten ocean. The clouds that dared darken Lucy’s mood on what was to be her last day were blown away by a pillar of violet flame, spreading immense wings at its peak to cover the whole of the sky. The air that Lucy could no longer breathe – that too burst into impossible flames. Natsu himself, the one who betrayed Lucy, who broke the promise he made to her, he too would be consumed, his flesh bubbling and boiling as hellfire coursed through his veins.
Burn
Lucy floated in the rampaging ocean of fire, cradled by a writhing inferno that Natsu could barely recognize as himself. Everything was in flames. Everything was burning away until nothing but nothingness was left. The black fires of Natsu’s eyes focused on the mocking emptiness that remained and willed
it
to
BURN.