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Pale morning light spilled over the horizon as a new day dawned in Magnolia, brighter than any morning they had seen for a long time.
The celebrations lasted throughout the night. Everyone was beyond exhausted, to be sure, but the adrenaline and sheer exhilaration of winning the war drove all the members of Fairy Tail, along with their many wizard allies, to drink, dance, and laugh side by side within their half-destroyed guild hall. They had won. Zeref and his empire had been defeated. Acnologia would no longer torment them. And that was surely cause for the boisterous merriment which ensued.
The sunrise met with a good number of slumbering figures, strewn everywhere from the floor of the guild hall to the debris-littered grass outside and the cobblestone streets beyond. At last, fatigue had caught up with them, and most couldn’t muster up the energy to make it home before passing out—though, perhaps they were also reluctant to leave each others’ sides after the perilous battle. When this all began, no one could be sure who would make it out alive.
It was this thought that kept slumber at bay for Lucy as she gazed across the sea of unconscious bodies. She smiled at the peaceful faces of all her friends, bruised and battered, but alive. Juvia rested against Gray’s chest. Erza and Jellal had been sitting with their backs against the wall, an appreciable gap between them, but tipped toward each other in sleep so that their heads and shoulders pinned together. Elfman snored loudly with his two sisters wrapped tightly in each arm. Cana sat bent over a table, Gildarts’ coat draped tenderly over her shoulders. Romeo curled up next to Macao with such boyish affection that Lucy hadn’t seen since before their lost time on Tenrou. All around, signs of deep friendship and family could be found. Lucy was sure there was no greater concentration of love in the world.
Her gaze drifted to the side. She wasn’t surprised to find Natsu staring back at her—well, it wasn’t staring exactly; his eyes were glazed over, eyelids heavy with exhaustion, and his vision seemed unfocused, as if whatever he saw existed in another time and place. Considering all the energy he’d expended in fighting both Zeref and Acnologia, it was a wonder how he remained awake at this point. Not to mention, the dragon slayer had certainly also partied hard throughout the night. However, throughout the overnight revelry, Lucy had noticed the same thing she observed now: he couldn’t keep his eyes off her. More often than not, when she looked at him, he already had eyes locked on her. Even across the room, cackling with Gray or racing Gildarts through a beer, he seemed unwilling to let her out of his sight, as if doing so would allow her to disappear in a wisp of smoke. Though, the only reason Lucy was aware of his unusual behavior was because she, too, felt the irresistible and absurdly frequent urge to confirm his existence. She could still feel the sting of his sudden disappearance on the streets of Magnolia, that horrible moment—among the worst of her life—in which she thought she had failed to rewrite his story. In that moment, she thought she had lost him forever. So now, whenever her eyes started burning at the thought, she needed to look at him, to see him, to know it was only a nightmare. Her Natsu was still here.
Lucy exhaled a soft sigh and smiled at her partner and best friend. “Natsu…you look exhausted. Why don’t you lay down and get some rest?” She spoke softly, careful not to disturb the sea of slumbering guild mates.
“Nngh…” he grunted in reply, eyes still fixed on her.
Her spirit yearned to stay awake, though her body fought against it more and more with each passing second. Lucy knew if she sat here much longer, she would succumb to the sweet allure of rest. And she wasn’t ready for that quite yet. Neither, apparently, was Natsu.
“Do you want to take a walk?”
He nodded.
Once outside, Lucy drew in a deep breath of the cool morning air. The dust had finally settled, although the faint smell of smoke lingered on the breeze. “I can’t believe it’s finally over,” she breathed. “The past few days have been…a complete whirlwind. It’s a lot to process. I can’t wrap my head around everything that’s happened.”
She stopped short when Natsu’s hand shot out from behind and gripped her wrist. Lucy turned to face him and found a renewed attentiveness in his dark eyes, along with an unexpected shine.
“Lucy, I—” he began but cut off.
The celestial wizard thought she might crumble under his sudden direct, intense gaze, but then his brow twitched, and his eyes fell to the ground. His fingers, however, still wrapped tightly—almost painfully—around her wrist. After a moment of silence, Natsu seemed to realize this, then slowly released her and flexed his fingers. “I’m…glad you’re okay,” he said at last. “When I thought Dimaria had…y’know…and I thought I would never…” Natsu struggled to find the words, whether due to exhaustion or hesitation, or a combination of the two, Lucy wasn’t sure. “I haven’t had the chance to explain to you how much that really…made me go crazy.”
“I think I have a pretty good idea,” Lucy replied with a breathy laugh. “I did see Dimaria right afterward. She called you…a…” Lucy then trailed off, not wanting to refer to Natsu as a monster, not even in quoting someone else. “Point is,” she pressed on, “I know you wanted to avenge me.” Behind Natsu, she watched a crow take off from the top of a half-crumbled stone pillar. “I’m grateful for that.”
Natsu grunted and shook his head. “No, that’s not—it wasn’t about avenging you, or revenge, or anything like that. It was…” He looked back up at her face with such a troubled tilt to his brow that Lucy’s breath caught in her throat. “I held you in my arms, and you were dead. Gone, forever. I failed to protect you. And I just…lost it. Because I couldn’t bear losing you.”
Lucy swallowed, her throat tight. She had spent so much time dwelling on her own pain after thinking she had lost him that she had completely forgotten he, too, thought he had lost her. Her eyes began to burn, and she realized Natsu’s also brimmed with tears. She’d seen him cry before for his friends. For Igneel. He burned with such passion, fought desperately for those that he loved; it was one of her favorite things about him. He had risked his life time and time again defending his Fairy Tail family. But to her knowledge, he had never fallen into a despondent rage…except for her sake.
What did that mean?
“You’re here, and you’re safe, and I know that,” Natsu continued, his voice uncharacteristically quiet and strained, “but for some reason, I can’t shake that feeling. I’m afraid to close my eyes, because I might see ya like that again…just like I saw Igneel after he died.”
Lucy took a minuscule step toward him. She wondered if he would be admitting all of this to her if he wasn’t operating within a state of complete exhaustion. She wondered the same thing about herself as she responded:
“I’m scared, too,” she whispered. “When you went to fight Acnologia, and I didn’t know what happened, I thought…you…” Lucy wiped an escaped tear from her cheek, then she glanced down and saw with shock that Natsu’s hands were trembling. Without a second thought, she reached out and grabbed them, pulling them to her chest where he could feel her pounding heart. “I’m here, Natsu. I’m okay. It’s okay. It’s over.”
Natsu nodded, somewhat numbly, and a few tears spilled from his eyes. After a moment, he withdrew his hands just far enough that he could wrap them around her instead, pulling her into a tight hug. Lucy wrapped her own arms around him in return, grateful for the warm shelter of his embrace.
“I love you, Lucy,” he whispered.
“I love you, too,” she whispered back.
Lucy was not sure exactly what either of them meant by those words, but right now, that mattered little. All that mattered was that they stood here together, in front of their precious guild hall, as the light of a new day spilled over them with the greatest promise of all: a future.