Chapter Text
One
Natsu waited until he was positive that she was asleep, his foot tapping an uneven rhythm across her new flooring to try and ease the agitation crawling through his body.
It was weird. He’d hated their ten months apart, and he’d hated himself for causing it. It was like he’d been wandering without a limb, like he was half of a whole. But, now that they’d reunited, as soon as she was out of his sight he felt like he couldn’t breathe properly.
Still. She’d set her boundary, and he would respect that. It was the very least that he could do for her after causing her so much pain. Pain which she hadn’t fully opened up about yet, either. Not that he had the right to push her.
Happy had already scurried off to bed with her. Her demand that he stay on the couch only seemed to be extended to him, as she’d called their blue Exceed into her bedroom with her when she’d called it a night, and he’d had to grip the arms of the couch to stop himself from ripping the stupid cat away from her when he’d heard his soft purrs and her sleepy giggles.
He didn’t have that right anymore. And even though he was jealous that Happy got to sleep with her in her bed, he was still happy that his two favorite people had been reunited. Maybe Happy would finally be brave enough to admit to Lucy that he wanted her to be his mom.
Maybe Natsu would finally admit that he was in love with her and he would sooner rip his heart out and hand it right over to her then ever cause her any pain again, no matter how accidental it had been.
Gods, he had missed her.
He stood up from the couch carefully sidestepping the squeaky floorboards he’d taken notice of when Lucy had stepped on them. He was only slightly breaking a rule, but still. He didn’t want to be caught before he’d managed to see her again.
Slowly, he pushed the bedroom door open and tiptoed into her room inhaling deeply.
His eyes rolled into the back of his head and he had to place his palm on the wall nearest to him to steady himself.
Her bedroom was drenched in her scent. Vanilla, jasmine and something that was just inherently Lucy and it made his blood sing with need and a heady sort of possessiveness. It had been far too long since he’d been so completely surrounded by just Lucy.
Natsu’s eyes sought her out easily. He had always known where she was at any given moment when they were near one another. Lucy had once joked that he had a built-in ‘Lucy-Detector’ and she wasn’t wholly wrong.
She was tucked snuggly underneath her duvet with Happy curled around her neck like a scarf, both of them sleeping peacefully.
She really was beautiful.
A sliver of moonlight peeked in through her curtains, bathing her in a glow that just enunciated the beautiful golden color of her hair, the tresses flowing freely over the other side of her bed now that it was so long. Honestly, he was kind of obsessed with the new length, it meant there was so much more for him to play with.
He could see the collar of one of his shirts resting just slightly down her shoulder, and it filled him with a surge of primal pleasure to see her wearing something that belonged to him. Something that claimed her as only his.
His eyes roamed over her bedroom, and he froze as he spotted the large cork board that took up the entirety of one of the walls. It was filled with a map of the world, and it had various images of their guild mates and other scraps of paper, some of it joined by a red string.
Stepping closer, his heart sank into his feet as he finally saw what she had been doing.
Lucy had kept tabs on everyone she could, putting a colored thumbtack on different parts of the country where some of their friends had ended up, along with a paper trail for some others. She had been keeping track of them.
A wave of heartbreak and anger washed through him. Heartbreak for the pain Lucy had been through because of him and everyone else, and anger for the same thing. And, also anger because he wondered if anybody had bothered to keep tabs on her.
Before Tartaros, before he’d left her, before the guild had fucking disbanded , Natsu wouldn’t have hesitated if he’d been asked if their guild cared for Lucy as much as she cared for them. He wouldn’t have had to wonder if they’d take care of her, it had always been something he’d just known.
But now, ten months later he was looking at the visible proof that his Lucy had been abandoned by everybody who claimed to love and care for her. She had been left alone after what was probably one of the most traumatic events in their lives, while multiple others traveled together.
Did anybody ask her to go with them? Did they come to check on her every so often? Send her any letters? Anything?
His eyes shot back to her sleeping form, and he desperately wanted to wake her up and ask her. He needed to know if his assumptions were true. And then he needed to get on his hands and knees and apologize to her again.
Gods, he hated himself.
If he had known the guild was going to be disbanded, he never would’ve even contemplated leaving her alone. He would’ve taken her with him. Or at the very least, he would’ve checked in with her.
Slowly, he shuffled over towards the bed and sank to the floor beside it. He rested his chin on the mattress near her head and just studied her, watching as her eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks as she dreamt, her chest hitching with a breath every so often and heart thumping a steady and beautiful melody under her skin. A melody he knew more intimately than he knew anything else.
Natsu would ask her in the morning to explain the wall. He would ask her to explain everything she could about their guildmates, and then he would offer her a promise. A promise of forever, and he would prove it to her.
He would prove to her that he would never leave her again, and that she was the most important fucking person in his life. And then, when he was sure that she knew that, he would rebuild Fairy Tail from the ground up.
And he would do it all for Lucy.
Lucy wasn’t even wholly surprised to see Natsu in her bedroom when she woke up.
If the butterflies in her stomach were anything to go by, she was in fact pleased to see him sleeping propped up against her bed, his head tipped to the side and resting on her mattress not far from her own face.
She was grateful he had listened to her when she’d said she didn’t want him in the bed with her, that he had to regain that privilege. Even if she had missed him last night when she’d fallen asleep with Happy tucked against her neck.
But, she had missed him every night since he’d left so that wasn’t entirely new.
She reached out slowly and gently brushed her fingers through his hair, scratching her nails across his scalp in the way she knew always soothed him. It still felt surreal, that he was actually in front of her and real and that she could reach out at any time and just touch him.
“Lucy.”
Her heart stumbled and she shivered at the gravelly voice that rasped her name. He’d somehow made her name sound like a curse and prayer all at once, and her poor heart was about a second away from self-combustion.
She offered him a soft smile, her fingers still brushing through his hair. “Morning, Natsu.”
He reached up and gently tugged her hand away from his hair, only to drag it down his face and press his lips directly against the palm of her hand.
It was quite possibly one of the most intimate things he had ever done, and she felt it chip away some more at the leftover anger she felt with him.
“Natsu,” She murmured, her fingers twitching and brushing across his nose before he lowered their hands so that they were joined together and resting on the bed between their heads.
He purred quietly in the back of his throat in response, his eyes studying her with a new kind of intensity. It was a look that had always been there and had always lit a fire deep within her belly, but there was a new wave of intensity to it that made her want to bury herself under the covers with him and discover what exactly that new look entailed.
Lucy felt all her muscles instantly relax and her eyes close at the gentle purr. Natsu’s purrs had always been her kryptonite. He only ever made that sound around her, and it always worked to comfort her when she was sad, or soothe her when she was worked up. It was a sound she hadn’t even realized she’d missed until he’d just made it.
She knew exactly what he was buttering her up for. They may have been separated for months, but she still knew her silly dragon and she knew that he wanted to ask her about the wall full of information on their friends but he didn’t want to upset her.
“You want to hear about the wall?” She asked softly, letting her eyes flutter open so she could study his face. She knew the wall like the back of her hand, so she was content to just watch him instead.
Natsu’s purring stopped, and he narrowed his eyes at her for a moment. “Only if you want to tell me.”
Lucy smiled at him. It had been too long since someone had considered her feelings for anything, and here Natsu was not even back in her life for a full twenty four hours and already he was just reminding her why she’d missed him the most.
“It’s not that I don’t want to,” She carefully shuffled backwards on the mattress towards where Happy had rolled off to in the middle of the night. Tugging at Natsu’s hand, she urged him up onto the bed with her. “It’s been ten long months where I’ve had nobody to talk to and nobody to listen to me. And now, you’re back and you want to know everything and I want to tell you everything but it’s hard because I know it’ll hurt to talk about. But, I do want to.”
Natsu pulled her to him as soon as he settled on the bed. He tucked her against his chest, his chin resting on top of her head and his legs bracketing her in between them.
“Baby steps?” He offered quietly, his warm hand sweeping up and down her back soothingly and turning her into a puddle.
She hummed softly, relaxing fully against him.
“Maybe it’ll be easier if you ask questions? Then I can just fill in the rest.” She kept her voice low, her fingers tapping a gentle rhythm against his side.
He nodded, pressing his lips to her forehead and just resting them there.
“Okay. I noticed that some of them have gone off together. Did… did any of them offer for you to travel with them?”
Lucy’s heart twinged with a pain she had long gotten used to carrying around with her, but it felt more severe now that Natsu was back and holding her in his arms. It felt more real.
“No.” She whispered, tears beginning to pool in her eyes. “When Master held the meeting to tell us he was dismantling the guild, it was two days after you and Happy left. I - everyone was heartbroken, Natsu. I tried looking for the others, but Gray had rushed off and Juvia followed. Erza had vanished long before the meeting so I assumed she’d already been told. Gajeel and Levy had taken off together with Jet and Droy not far behind.”
Natsu’s arms tightened around her and he rolled her onto her back so that he was hovering above her.
“Wendy and Carla stayed for a week, but their friend Sherria at Lamia Scale invited them to visit. And they just didn’t come back.” She shrugged like it was no big deal, even though her tears were clinging to her eyelashes and her bottom lip was trembling. “I think everyone sort of just forgot about me, y’know? Even though I was so mad that you left me, you’re the only one who bothered to leave any sort of note to tell me you were leaving.”
She felt the air leave Natsu’s lungs in a sharp burst, almost like all of the air had been punched out of him.
“Lucy.” He whispered, his own eyes bright with tears.
She choked on a sob as his lips tenderly began brushing against the tears that had escaped, his hands securing her face in a gentle hold as he pulled back after a moment and just looked at her.
“I know I apologized already, but I am so sorry.” He trailed his lips across her temple and down to her jaw. “I am sorry that I left. And I’m sorry that I left you alone with people who forgot how important you are. People who forgot that they wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for you.”
He was furious, she could see it in his eyes and feel it in the tenseness of the muscles beneath her hands as she held him tightly to her.
It felt somewhat nice to have someone angry on her behalf. It made her feel more important than she’d felt in the last ten months, and she wanted to chase after that feeling with everything inside her.
“It’s okay.” She breathed, pressing her forehead against his.
A startled, high-pitched giggle burst from her chest as he frowned down at her and shook his head which caused her own to follow because he kept their foreheads pressed firmly together.
“It’s not okay, Luce. It wasn’t okay then, and it isn’t okay now.” He swore, his eyes lightening slightly at the sound of her laugh. “I want to make you a promise.”
Her fingers were drawing mindless patterns across his spine but they froze at his words, unconsciously drawing him closer even as he pulled them upright and sat them up so they were facing one another.
She watched as he pulled his scarf from off his neck.
“You know how much this scarf means to me, Luce?” He asked lowly, holding it carefully in his hands and refusing to look at her.
Lucy frowned in confusion and slowly pushed herself forwards, her body resting in between his open and bent knees.
“Of course I do, Natsu. I nearly threw myself off Hades stupid flying ship to save it because I know how much it means to you.”
Her words had the intended effect and he snorted softly, his eyes finally finding hers again and she almost gasped at the emotion swirling in his brown orbs.
“I know my promises won’t mean much right now. But, I wanted to offer you one anyway. The promise that I will never ever leave you by my own choice again. If we ever become separated for whatever reason, I will fight to come back to you no matter how long it takes.” He promised seriously, leaning towards her. “And, I want you to have this. At least, until you trust my words. Have this because you know I will always come back for it. And, when you trust me fully again, give it back. Because then you’ll have realized that you are more important to me than this scarf and I will always be back for you. Always “
Lucy was sobbing.
Natsu wound the scarf around her neck like she was something precious to him, before he pulled her into his arms once again and curved his body protectively over hers and just let her cry out ten months of pain and loneliness against him.
The intention behind his actions made them even more powerful than the promise itself. He had just willingly handed her the very last piece of Igneel he had left, the same dragon he had left to mourn. And now, he was letting her keep hold of something so important to him until she could fully trust him again.
It spoke volumes to her of his willingness to prove to her just how sorry he was.
“Natsu,” She whimpered, tucking her face into the scarf and holding him impossibly closer. “Natsu.”
He smoothed his hand across her back, heating up his fingers and pressing them firmly into the knots across her spine. She melted against him, her gasping sobs dying down into sniffles and hitched breaths as she relaxed into his hands as he worked the tension out of her.
“I’m going to spend the rest of my life making it up to you, Lucy,” He murmured into her ear. “And when you’re ready to trust me with your heart again, I promise I won’t break it.”
She huffed out another sob, his sweet words sending her emotions haywire. “Okay. Okay, Natsu.”
She would let him regain her trust again. He didn’t need to know yet that he still had her heart, even if it was a little broken and bruised. But, he held her heart inside his hands and he always would.
“You guys!”
She laughed loudly as Happy wailed, sobbing and scrambling to join them in their hug. He buried his little face against her chest and held onto both of them tightly.
“It’s okay, Happy,” Lucy soothed, her voice raw from her tears. “We’re gonna be okay.” She paused. “Aren’t we, Natsu?”
He brought his face down close to hers and Happy’s, all three of them content to share space as Happy cried quietly between them.
“Yeah, Luce. We’re gonna be absolutely okay.”