Hey Guys! Just wanted to post this to tell you all that I'm still alive! Redeeming Hell's and The Birth of Natsu Dragneel's chapters will hopefully be going up next week after my final AP exam. I just figured I could give you all this brief one-shot for Fairy Tail Angst Week in the meantime! Without further adieu lets begin!

Pain. So much pain wracks his body this very instant in his memory.

No not the accumulated pain and fatigue he felt from his life and death battles with Jackal, Franmalth, Tempesta, and that un-godly strong bastard Mard Geer that could make any ordinary man buckle and cry. It was something so much worse... although he couldn't understand how or why.

This pain was something on a completely different level from anything he's ever experienced. It wasn't like the rage and grief he felt when he witnessed the destruction of his guild at the hands of Phantom Lord. It wasn't the same as when Erza had almost killed herself to save him at the Tower of Heaven...Or that fucker king in Edolas chipping away at his friends like it was nothing... Or when he thought Lucy had left Fairy Tail.

The most comparable thing is when Lisanna died...

or the first time he saw that Black Menace...

Looking up at the stars from his supine position on the ground, Happy sleeping gently on his chest, Natsu Dragneel chuckled to himself at a sudden realization. He was definitely one of the luckiest sons of bitches around. He never realized once exactly how perfectly things just always seemed to fall into place for him.

Now it just appears blatantly obvious. The jig was up, he was shit outta luck, tap ran dry.

All those other times things just...worked out.

He'd taken it all for granted.

Like any other son, maybe he just wanted to have unwavering faith in his father? That he was untouchable, unbeatable. The fact that he was a massive fire breathing dragon probably only served to re-enforce that thought.

He should've known better.

It was a much too naive way of thinking.

His opponent was chaos incarnate.

Harbinger of the Apocalypse. Bringer of death, misery, and despair. A being so powerful that it could raze an entire country on its own.

The first encounter with the beast was proof enough. The scent of death hung so heavy in the tropical breeze of Tenrou it was almost nautious.

The sorrow and misery the monster brings with it was harrowing. As if the souls of the lives he's extinguished follow him in an eerie mist. The damned choking him with a vice grip. He could feel its pain...what could possibly happen to turn something- somebody into a monster like that?

He still remebers the cold feeling of despair as he looked at the looming figure in the crystal blue skies above Tenrou. That empty cold feeling, that he wouldn't like to have admitted he actually had. This thing had nearly killed Gildarts like it was swatting a fly, he knew despite their best efforts... at the end of the day... it would be that thing living and them dying.

The realization that this moment could be his last. His ultimatum, everything he'd ever done in life only culminated to this very desolation.

"God damn it! From one monster to the next?! How is this fair! The fuck did we do to deserve all of this?!"

It was such a defeated feeling. If it hadn't been for the others right there around me...I might've given up then and there. I will never forget the look on anyone's face during that moment. Filled with despair and sorrow over the dreams and promises about to be stomped flat with no way to stop the boot. Especially Lucy's as I took her hand, and saw the look her tear filled eyes had as she proclaimed that she wasn't going to let our adventures end here. One final will to live surged within me, and it was only by sheer luck that the First had been there to put up Fairy Sphere. We had survived, barely dodging the exectuioners blade yet again.

He should've known.

Igneel had died right there in front of him. Blown apart in a mass of viscera and gore, an entire section of his comepletely missing after being ripped off the the jaws of the Monster.

The one being whom he'd been searching most of his life for, was now dead. Only after a short hour or so of reunion.

He'd promised him he wouldn't go anywhere. He said he'd come back.

In my head I'd kinda pictured that things would go back to the way they used to be. You know, I coulda showed him how kick ass my magic has gotten, and I could come visit him back in the old forest where we lived in between jobs with Happy and Lucy.

...Only to later find out that...he would've just left again anyway...

That the dragons weren't really "alive"...that their souls had been ripped out long ago from their bodies...

The worst part is is that now I'm left with more questions that what I had to begin with. Questions that I shouldn't have had to ask...

What really happened on 7/7/x777? What's E.N.D...how am I related to it? How are you related to that beast? Why did you show up the first time at Tenrou? Or during the Dragon Kings Festival in the Future when Lucy had to watch me die? Would you have really let me die?

Each and every question and new detail chipping away at the fond memories that I had of Igneel until nothing was left but the bad.

The question of wheather Igneel had simply used me as an ends to a mean as a failed last ditch attempt to erase a smudge from his track record.

All of this on top of the pain of losing him. The heart stopping moment that keeps replaying in my head every fucking time I try to get a decent night's sleep.

We had once again ventured to close to the executioner's blade and this time a price was paid.

When all was said and done I thought that no one would understand my pain. That no one was capable of it. I selfishly thought that no one else had lost nearly as much as me during that entire fight.

How the hell could I do that to my family? We had all probably lost something in some way or another during that fight.

In a time of need, how could I so readily desert my family? Does this make me a hypocrite for questioning Igneel?

...Ugh my head hurts. I kinda just want to go to sleep.

"Hey Happy."

"Waahhh Nassuu." The blue feline grumbled drearily.

"It's been about a year...and I'm a lot stronger now whatddya say, wanna go home?"

"Yesh. I wanna see Lushie again..."

Thats right. That was my resolve. To protect all those who I hold dear. Gajeel, Erza, Gray...Lucy. To be strong enough to make Igneel proud. What am I doing thinking like this?

It's not what I do. Igneel told me to stand up, look to the future, and that will become my will to live.

Even if I may die...If I can provide a world where my friends can live peacefully, i'd be okay with that.

Natsu once again smiled, closing his eyes for the night against twilight and the dying fire.

Sheesh I really am a hypocrite.

"You don't die for your friends! You live for them!"