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Lucy coughs and sputters and chokes on the dust and ashes that are kicked up into the air. It’s dark and gloomy, and the sky runs red like the blood that is spattered across rocks and buildings. The city is in ruins, buildings toppled over by the strong and ruthless wings of dragons that haunt the sky.
Her hand moves to her keys as her brain tries to make sense of it all, but she can’t, so instead she has to settle on making a choice—who is she going to send out next, if she can. She can’t summon Aquarius here, and she had just sent Loke back to tend to his wounds. With her most powerful spirits out of commision, her options are limited.
Taurus? Scorpio? Sagittarius?
Every option feels like a hopeless case when you’re fighting against a dragon.
With another shake of the earth, Lucy is thrown off balance, though she manages to catch herself just in time. It reminds her that time is running out and she needs to make a decision while she still can. Quickly, she moves to grab Taurus’s key and summon him, but she’s cut off by Natsu’s voice, booming loudly to ensure she can hear him.
"Get behind me!" He calls out, dashing in front of her just in time to tank an oncoming blast attack from the dragon circling above them.
"Natsu!" Lucy cries, abandoning all plans to run to her friend’s side and ensure he’s okay.
She catches him in her arms as he stumbles, though they both lose their balance and sink to the ground.
"I’m fine," he lies, blatant and to her face.
She knows he’s not fine. She hadn’t known where he had been fighting before, but she did know that he wasn’t in a condition to keep going. But that was just Natsu. He wasn’t about to give up until he had seen his job through, and today, that job was to slay a dragon.
Any effort she’s about to make to convince him to find help, to let her handle this while he recovers goes unsaid as he places a hand on her shoulder and uses the leverage to push himself up. She wants to protest, to remind him that if he can barely stand, then he has no right trying to fight a dragon that barely has a scratch on it, but he’s already on his feet, ready to take it on.
"Natsu, please!" She calls out, trying to appeal to his senses. "You can't—you can’t!"
She’s never failed to believe in him up until now, and secretly, a part of her still wants to believe in him—wants to believe that Natsu is going to be their saviour, just like he always has been, but every other part of her reminds her how fruitless it is. They have seven dragon slayers and a fleet of dragons that are ravaging the town, and there is no hope left.
If they run, maybe they’ll make it out okay, but she knows Natsu has no intention of running, and she knows that ultimately, that’s what is going to get him killed.
"Lucy, I need you to run," he tells her, his back facing her as he looks up into the sky and formulates his plan.
It’s not a request; it’s a demand, but she has no intention of following through.
"I’m not going anywhere!" She cries out. She can’t, in good conscience, leave him alone to die. "If you’re staying here, then I’m going to fight with you!"
"You can’t!" He barks back.
His voice has a bite to it that makes her flinch. Natsu has never yelled at her before now, and she knows he’s not trying to hurt her, but it stings. It stings that he yells, but more importantly, it stings knowing that he won’t let her stay by his side.
"If you stay out here, you’re gonna die, and I’m not going to let that happen."
"And what about you! You want me to just leave you here to die by yourself?"
She wants to hear him deny it, to promise her that he will make it out alive and come back to her, but it seems as though he has already accepted the same fate she has.
When he turns back to face her, she can see the hurt glimmer in his eye. He doesn’t want this just as much as she doesn't, but she knows that if only one of them has to die, he doesn’t want it to be her.
"When you love something, you protect it with your entire life at stake, and right now, my gut is telling me to do the same."
Her lip quivers and tears start to prick the corners of her eyes, but she furiously blinks them away in an attempt to keep her composure. She wants to think there’s another timeline, another universe, where he’s saying those words to her—a universe where death isn’t imminent and she can grab his face and kiss him senseless.
Because he loves her, and by god, she’s been waiting to hear him say it for longer than she would like to admit, but she doesn’t even get to revel in the fact, and part of her wants to resent him for it. She wants to resent him for the fact that he’s so stubborn and headstrong. She wants to resent him for the fact that she knows nothing is going to stop him from getting himself killed if it means just a few more seconds for everyone else.
He’s always been a hero like that, and it would be a fitting end for him, but it’s not one Lucy wants to see.
"Lucy, I need you to get out of here," he repeats, as a fearsome roar fills the air from overhead.
She has so much to say to him—so much she should have told him before now, before their time was cut short—but they get stuck in her throat and die on her tongue.
And it just isn’t fair.
They’ve done nothing to deserve this.
Right now, they should be celebrating their victory at the games; they should be partying, and drinking, and getting loud and rowdy, just like Fairy Tail always does. She and Natsu should be sharing indirect kisses on the rim of champagne glasses as they yearn and pine with the knowledge that they still can, because they’re young, and in love, and have their whole lives ahead of them to put a label on what they have.
Instead, they’re stuck saving the world—an obligation they never signed up for but is stuck on their shoulders nonetheless, and Lucy hates it. She hates that Natsu is about to sacrifice himself for something so futile. She hates that her Natsu is about to become just another number on the ever-growing toll of dead.
If she can just convince him to run with her, then maybe there’s a possibility of a future together. A future where they can live in peace together, where maybe she can get a new guild mark, where he will hold her hand, and things would just be okay.
"Please," her voice cracks, and any attempt to hold back the tears fails her. "Run with me."
"I’m sorry, Lucy," he says, and the words shouldn’t hurt as much as they do. "I’ve gotta see this one through."
Anything else he wants to say is cut off when one of the dragons lands and shakes the earth around them, letting out a deafening roar that had Lucy clutching her hand over one of her ears to try to make any attempt to stifle the noise.
"Run!" Natsu yells out, his voice so sharp that it hurts her ears. "You gotta live, Lucy! Please!"
His words hurt like a knife straight through her heart because she doesn’t want to live if living meant being in a world without him. She doesn’t even want to think about the prospect of never being able to see his smile again or feel his touch. She doesn’t want to be deprived of his laughter, of all the joy that he brings to her life.
There was no life without him. The concept was completely unfathomable. There was no Lucy without Natsu by her side, because without him, she wouldn’t be the person she is today.
She doesn’t hold back her sobs and her wails any longer. She’s already grieving, even though he’s standing right in front of her, because she knows that it won’t last much longer. He’s looking at her with a determined gaze, but she can see right through his façade. She can see the sadness that lingers in them because this isn’t what he wants.
He doesn’t want her to cry, but more than that, she doesn’t want to lose her life because she was sobbing over him. He doesn’t want to be the one who holds her back and gets her killed.
"Please Lucy!" He repeats, and this time she hears the faint crack in his voice.
Lucy plants her hand over her mouth to hold back the wails she knows she’ll let out if she doesn't, because she only has two options. The first is to stay, to die with him together, and the second is to run, to carry out his final wish.
She doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to run. But he’s begging her. It’s the last thing he wants of her.
And so she does. Because she can’t bear to die prematurely knowing that the one thing he wanted from her was to live.
With tears in her eyes, Lucy nods before she clambers to her feet. She doesn’t say anything before she dashes off—a decision she knows she’s going to regret for the rest of her life, no matter how long it is.
There’s no reason to hold back her tears now. She lets them fall freely as she howls and wails. The sound of her anguish is not out of place in a town turned to rubble that is full of nothing but misery and loss.
She resists turning around and looking at her love one last time, not sure if she can handle the pain of knowing it will be the last time she sees him alive.
As she clambers over a rupture in the asphalt, Lucy can only hope that someday, in another life, they will find each other and they will have the happy ending that they deserve.