Love enough and you'll run out of breath

Love enough and you'll be nothing that's left

Love enough. Love enough. Love enough and you'll love to death.

Falling out onto broken bits of concrete brought Natsu around. His jeans split and his knees bled. There was a mean pounding between his temples that made his vision bleary, though a second of blinking had him focusing. He was in a… factory? Maybe? A garage? He smelled oil and he smelled grease and dust. There was a huge winch over his head, suspended on the ceiling by a rusty chain that dipped down between fluorescent lights, making him think it was for heavy equipment. There were tools on the walls, things he didn't have names for. Huge metallic things that looked well-used and ill-loved. They were rusty and crooked on their hooks.

Natsu started to get up. His snatchers grabbed him by the elbows again and started dragging him over the ground. The toes of his boots dragged and the leather rubbed off more. He twisted to the right; his body would only move slowly at first, and it wasn't near enough to break their hold. He twisted to the left; Donald Duck had lost the facemask, Natsu recognized those hard black eyes, though he did not know the face they belonged to.

"Who are you?" Natsu could barely get the words out, they sounded thick and misshapen.

The man glanced down; he had a very angular face. His jaw was like knife blades. And he was voiceless or at least unwilling to speak. Natsu turned his head to address the other man, the one that had worn Porky Pig's mask. He was huge. Barrel-like and almost just as lifeless as the other man.

"Where are we?" His voice was stronger that time. It still didn't get him a response, not from them nor from the driver of the van, who had climbed from the driver's seat and followed behind them, expressionless and nameless, too.

Natsu squirmed. And squirmed and finally, he squirmed enough that their fingers slipped and he hit the ground. At first, all he could do was lie on his stomach, tasting concrete. Then he was yanked up by his arms again and went with the momentum. He lifted his knee and hit dead-eyes in the gut. He wished there was more force behind it. He wished when, after the man recovered (amazingly quick. That was a man used to being beaten, regardless of how hard he was hit) he was able to stop himself from getting thrown towards a set of industrial drains. He wished when he tripped and landed on the ground, he didn't know that he was putting his hand into dried blood. He wished that when he looked up, he didn't know he was looking down the barrel of a gun.

The hammer went down and the solid clunk it made draped a stillness over him he was unfamiliar with. He could only breathe in raggedly and listen to the noise wheeze out of the pinprick in throat had become.

A door squealed open and the heels of expensive shoes cracked across the concrete. Natsu's kidnappers looked up. Their expressions were near-dead but he thought he saw surprise. The gun lowered.

"Mister Fernandez," the thick one spoke in a voice like bubbly tar.

"Tor. Ezel. And Goumon." Jellal paused on the last one and rapped his fingers against his leg. "Your presence isn't necessary. Natsu's suffered enough, he doesn't need to be tortured. You may leave."

"We have our orders," said dead-eyes. Ezel, Natsu thought, though he wasn't sure.

Goumon didn't question Jellal, though, he bowed just slightly and left them. His steps made his belly and the rolls on his back sway. A door opened at the far end of the building; Goumon went out and weak daylight washed in. It was almost sunset.

Jellal came to stand directly in front of Natsu and looked down his long, thin nose at him. His expression was very difficult to read; it must have been a requirement to be part of the Heartfilia-Fernandez enterprise.

"What's going on?" Natsu demanded.

"You're in the vanishing place," Jellal said with theatrical flair. "This is where enemies of Heartfilia and Fernandez go to die."

Natsu's guts tangled up. "You can't do that."

Jellal took out a gun from a holster Natsu couldn't see, tucked beneath the suit jacket he wore. His gold cross winked in the overhead light when he lifted the gun and pulled back the slider, making it snick. "I think you're confusing can't and shouldn't."

He was right.

"You can go, boss, Tor and me've got this," said Ezel.

"This is a family matter," Jellal responded. "Lucy insists Natsu's family, so family should take care of family, right?" His gun zeroed in on Natsu. Everyone waited with baited breath. Jellal's hands were steady. Steady, steady. He was familiar with this kind of work. He maybe even liked it.

Natsu looked into the hole in the front of the gun, that deep black pit, that void of nothingness. He thought he'd stare at it forever. Then Jellal lifted his gun and in a smooth motion, pulled the trigger twice. Warmth blasted over Natsu's face and chest. One body fell, the other. Natsu stared at dead Ezel and dead Tor, stuck in a trance. Jellal wiped a speck of blood from his face.

Natsu said, "You killed them."

"My uncle sent them to kill you." Jellal put his gun back in his holster. "The polite thing would be to say, thank you, Mister Fernandez." Expressionlessness turned to smarminess. Natsu didn't like Jellal. He didn't like his mood swings or his apathy or his coldness. "Or should it be Jellal?" Jellal wondered mostly to himself. "I guess it would be appropriate to call me Jellal. You may."

"Why did you do that?" The words fell out like rocks from his mouth and tumbled across the floor, limp and lifeless as Tor and Ezel.

Jellal nudged Ezel's foot and repeated, "Family takes care of family. It's kind of a mess but frankly, I promised Lucy and Uncle Jude I'd take care of this. It turns out I like her better than Uncle Jude so… I used my discretion. Lucky you, huh?"

He said it like Natsu was supposed to laugh. Natsu did not. How could he? There was blood sliding down his face. He swiped some away before it could get to his mouth. Jellal handed him a handkerchief. Natsu used the silky fabric to mop up the thickest stuff. He couldn't look at it. He'd just think about Wally and Zeref and—

Jellal said, "You'll need to lay low for a day or so while I finish stuff up with my uncle."

Natsu was tugged out of the centre of the spiral and dropped on the side, where he was still in danger of falling in but was a little more grounded. "Are you going to kill him?"

Jellal snorted. "Imagine what little Lucy would do if she knew her cousin murdered her father. I'd still like us to spend Christmas and Easter together."

"What are you going to do, then?"

"No one can hurt you like your family can," he said only. "Get cleaned up. There's a washroom in the back. I'll take you back home."

Natsu got up like he was a character in a video game, thoughtless, doing what he was told because he couldn't spend forever on the floor of a heavy machinery mechanic shop.

There was a filthy lime-green bathroom at the back of the building. The overhead light was fluorescent and buzzed when he turned it on. There were spreads of naked girls taped to the walls. Busty blondes and redheads and brunettes. Some with tattoos, some totally clean and tanned. There were a filthy mirror, a sink and a toilet.

Natsu stripped off his sweater and left it on the floor beside the sink, then he turned on the cold water all the way and splashed it over his face and through his hair. The bottom of the sink went pink, and then the water ran clear.

He started to shiver and didn't think it was the cold water dripping down his back. He used toilet paper to dry with, there was nothing else and dropped the used chunks into the toilet. He flushed them. When he returned, Jellal stepped out of an office with a leather jacket in hand. He passed it off to Natsu so he could cover his bare chest. He handed him a black hood, too.

"You can't know where we are."

Natsu looked at the hood and then at Jellal and he decided that he didn't really want to know, anyway. He put the fabric on. It smelled like someone else's sweat. Jellal took him by the shoulder and led him in another direction. Natsu heard a door open and then cold air rushed around him. It was snowing, he could feel the flakes hit his hands and melt.

Another door opened and Jellal pushed him into the back of a car. There was another person in there. Natsu recognized Acnologia's cologne. He put his arm around Natsu's shoulder like they were family, just like Jellal said. "It's important my niece does not know what's transpired here today. We've made a deal, her and I. I will clean up my factories and I will make her father silenzio, and she will stop trying to ruin me. It would break her heart to know what happened, and if you spoke out of turn, we'd have to do something about you, too. Capisci?"

He already had a skeleton in his closet, what was two more? He pulled on his lessons from Lucy and told her uncle, "Capisco."

Acnologia patted his shoulder. "Good. Drive, Jellal."

The car jerked forward. Natsu felt sick; he couldn't tell if it was motion sickness or if it was secrets.

The hood didn't come off his head until they were at the movie store; the drive, if Natsu had to guess, was approximately fifteen minutes. He couldn't say which way he came from or where exactly he'd been, though he did know when Acnologia reached across him and opened the passenger's door, he was more than ready to get out. He dropped the hood on the floor of the car.

Acnologia asked, "Will you come for dinner next Saturday?" Like it was a normal thing to do.

Natsu felt like there was only one correct answer and said, "Yes." Skipping town felt really good right then, though. Disappearing into the night and never coming back to Magnolia again.

Magnolia was where Lucy was, though.

He knew he'd never leave.

Not for real.

Jellal commented from the front seat, "Remember what I said."

Not a word to Lucy. "Yeah." Natsu agreed at first just to agree but when he imagined expressing to her what exactly happened at the garage, he couldn't get around the semantics. Three men were about to kill him. One left, and two died. Just like that.

"What will happen to them? The men you killed?"

While Acnologia studied Natsu, Jellal said, "We'll take care of it. Like we'll take care of your involvement in Wally's unfortunate end. Zeref will get a good deal, too, solitary and a second-degree murder charge coupled with insanity. He'll be treated well."

Of course. Of course that's what Zeref was doing. He was taking the fall. His thoughts were cotton candy splashed with water, wet and disintegrating. All he could say was, "Wally was there for me."

"Yeah."

"Because of you."

"Water under the bridge. We're family now."

Unless you think we're not went unspoken. Natsu got the message, though, Jellal's fingers cinching on the wheel and Acnologia's subtly aggressive body language spoke volumes.

"We'll see each other on Saturday," Jellal said. "And remember—"

"Lucy doesn't get to know." He thought he loved her too much to spill anyway; he was sure someone would say not enough. "Her father won't be hurt?"

"We'll do things in the Modern Way," Jellal assured him.

Natsu practically spilled out of the car. As soon as the door was closed, Jellal started driving away. When the car's bumper was spinning around a corner, a police cruiser slowed in front of the building and Gildarts rolled down the window.

"I need you to come with me, Natsu."

Natsu opened the door without any fuss. Gildarts didn't comment on that, not to Natsu, not to the police officers that interviewed him. He went with Zeref's story. He was at his parents that night. His mother covered for him, just like Zeref said she would. They were both professional liars. His father went with what his mother said because family always took care of family. When he was able to see Zeref sitting in his holding cell, waiting for processing, Natsu couldn't say anything. There was a baseball-sized lump in his throat and he felt like he was choking to death.

An entire day passed. Twenty-four hours spent in strained silence, broken once when Gildarts came by with Rosie. He left, though. He had a dinner date with Cana that he couldn't miss. Angel stopped by, too. She was curious. Sickly curious, the way people are when they see a car crash and bodies on gurneys. She touched his hand like they were much closer than they were.

"I hope he'll come home soon."

"Not likely." Gildarts explained it to him, though most of what was said went in and out of his ears. Ten to twenty-five years in prison, at least, if Zeref's lawyer couldn't prove that he was so diseased or defective in mind at the time that he didn't know wrong from right. If insanity flew, then he'd be put in a mental institution.

Gildarts made it seem like the latter was the better choice. Natsu wasn't so sure.

Angel touched his wrist, and then his arm; she pulled him in and hugged him around the shoulders. "I'm sorry, Natsu." He didn't really remember the feel of her body, not like she seemed to remember his. She squeezed him tight like she belonged there.

Looking over her shoulder at an Alice Cooper poster, Natsu heard himself saying, "Can I ask you something?"

"Anything," she gushed.

"Why did you do it that night? After Zeref and I fought."

Angel pulled back so she could see his eyes. "What do you mean?"

"If things were bad with you and Zeref, taking me home wasn't going to fix it. Were you trying to make him mad?"

"Your brother isn't really the jealous type," Angel said after some consideration. "I knew that before."

"Then why?"

She smiled and it was mean-edged. "Because Ultear was."

He kicked her out afterwards. She went with very little argument, disappearing into a snowstorm. Ultear showed up moments later. They drank whatever was left of the whisky in the freezer. He told her he lied to the police. He also told her about Lucy's family. Not about the bodies but about Lucy's deal. She filed it away, helping him keep the secret when it was too heavy for him to hold. Ultear was good like that.

She stayed for two entire hours, watching cartoons with him and drinking the bottle dry before saying, "I have a family thing, so I have to run. Can you go to Cana's?"

"Nah." She had a lot of garbage going on in her life.

"Erik's?" Natsu shook his head. He couldn't be at Erik's. There were too many drugs there on a regular basis. Ultear popped out her lip. "You shouldn't be alone. Maybe call your mom or something?"

"Maybe."

"And maybe I'll come by after anyway," Ultear offered.

"If you want."

In a very un-Ultear like fashion, she hugged him around the shoulders before she left; it felt less fake than Angel's

Then it was just him and the flicking TV. Natsu watched The Nightmare Before Christmas. Jack was singing Jack's Lament. He stared at the TV until his eyes got fuzzy and started to close then turned it off. The apartment was eerily quiet. The kind of quiet that slipped through graveyards on winter nights. No summer sounds—crickets, birds, raccoons—no people, just the sound of the wind whispering through the unsealed windows and his own breathing.

He hated it.

He picked up his phone and called his parents as Ultear suggested. The first time it rang its way to voicemail. The second time, he swore the receiver was lifted and left on the counter so no more calls could come through.

With nothing else to do and feeling restless, Natsu drifted to Zeref's room and looked around. There was the piggy bank, sitting on his dresser and looking like a criminal with his banded eyes. It looked stuffed to Natsu, though it was porcelain and its belly couldn't expand. He tore open the bottom and found the largest roll of cash he'd ever seen. He threw it at the wall and it exploded, green and brown money flying everywhere.

He checked his phone to see if his mother called.

Nothing.

And so he went to bed. He was so tired, he actually slept in fits and spurts. Every time he started to dream, though, the dead danced before his eyes. He came awake and eyed the dragon clock, dreaming of the heroin he knew to be inside. That happened three times; the third time, he took Ultear's advice and grabbed it out.

It couldn't flush down the toilet, it was too large for that, but it fit very well in the garbage bin out back, and tomorrow was garbage day. The temptation would be gone. It hit the sidewall on its way in and dinged loudly. Natsu turned his back on it and used long, quick steps to get back inside. There was a person at the front door, blocking his way. Her hair was too light to be Ultear's. He got closer. Lucy looked small and cold, her cheeks red and her eyes glassy.

She looked him over head-to-foot and he realized he was out there without shoes. His toes were going numb. She reached out her hand and without a word between them took him inside. She closed and locked the door and left her coat on the empty couch. Clothing shushed as she walked; she was in some kind of polyester pants. Those stayed on when she got into his bed. She pulled him down with her and Natsu lay on his side.

Lucy said her first words. "Sorry I didn't come sooner."

"Where were you?" Because it wasn't really okay.

"My dad got arrested." She said it like a confession, though she wasn't the guilty party. "He was doing bad things."

Natsu dug his nails into his palms. "Yeah." Lucy's hand was cold on his cheek; her lips were warm by comparison. Everyone was doing bad things. They didn't have to be the only thing he ever did, though. "Will you be here tomorrow?" he asked on a whim.

Lucy sat up some; her eyes reflected back the light in the sky, the stars. "If you want me to be."

Always. "Will you help me go through some school packages? And the websites." They were confusing.

"Yes," she said immediately, followed by, "You want to go back to school?"

Natsu shrugged noncommittally. "Maybe." It seemed like a lot but he did promise and the only thing he could do for Zeref then was keep promises.

Her smile was soft. She didn't say anything to scare him away from the idea, encouragement or otherwise. She kissed the corner of his mouth and he turned so he could kiss her fully. It tasted like sadness and hurt. Eventually, he liked to think that it would taste like better. He'd think about that when he sat through his family dinner this Saturday, looking at Jellal using his killer's hands to cut up his food, and at his new uncle, if he was truly family now, who said very little but conveyed a whole lot with just a measure of his pale eyes.

Lucy sat up and took off her shirt; her skin was smooth beneath. She leaned in and made him touch her. It had been a while since he'd taken his time like this but his fingers remembered her body. He skimmed her waist and the undersides of her breasts through the material of her bra and he thought he could do it. He could pretend for her family. Because love made everything better and love made everything worse. Love, love was a curse.

A/N's!

I have two notes, one for the general reader and one for a guest reviewer named Greta. The latter is at the bottom.

Thanks for reading everyone, this story was supposed to be about 40,000 words. I almost doubled that. I should stop setting those kinds of goals. I know who I am, honestly. (I hate the sappy gross way this ended but… *shrugs* what's a girl to do?)

I'm writing a Graytear in this universe eventually. Maybe soon. I don't know. I need to write something awful and give some of these characters closure.

My other profile here on FF is RavenStyx. On it, you will find a Jerza in this universe called The Devil Doesn't Know His Name. Check it out if you're interested.

It's been a blast.

Okay. Guest Greta.

Hey Greta. Thanks for leaving me a review. I read your words and I will take them into consideration, though I feel like the only thing I do is write outside of my comfort zone. (I know my writing has a theme. I know. I know. Drugs, sex trade and violence is what I like, though.) However, the way you worded that made me think you meant characterization. Is that correct? If it is, I have questions for you. You could sign in and PM me and I could ask them so I don't have to bog up my stories with A/Ns. Thanks.