Hiya! I'M SO SORRY! I know it has been a long time! I had a writer's block on another story and of course that effected every other story! Sorry! So I hope this is good enough, thought I'll mix in some mystery and all that. Hope you enjoy! Thanks for those who reviewed, favorite, and followed! Please leave a review and favorite! Farewell and Enjoy!

-let there be midnight

Me No Own Fairy Tail

Chapter Eight—Marker at a Tree

The house was still dark when Natsu got back, so he silently crept up the stairs and to the bedroom he and Gray were sharing at the moment. The door was still creaked open from how he left it hours earlier so he quickly slipped through the crack without having the door move. Gray was spread out on his bed on his back with both arms and one leg hanging off the side, his other leg bent and looked like it was going to slip off the bed at any moment. His blanket had somehow torn itself from the bed and barely hung on him, mostly pooling on the floor as he snored softly, mouth wide open and a line of drool trailing down his cheek and wetting the pillow beneath him.

Natsu tiptoed past him silently, making it to his side of the room without waking his raven friend. He stripped himself down to just his boxers and hoodie and laid down on his bed underneath the warmth of the blankets and fell asleep.

Hours later he felt someone gently shaking his shoulders to wake him up, but Natsu wasn't all that ready to be awake since his late night talk with that strange guy named Zeref, so he just rolled on over to his side, pulling the blanket over his head with a grunt. The person who was trying to wake him up let out an annoyed sigh, took an edge of the blanket and tore it from his grasp, the force of the pull sending Natsu toppling to the ground with a thud.

"Care to wake up now?" Gray asked, looking down at him. Natsu blinked open a bleary eye to glare up at his raven haired friend, taking the sheets from him and curling back up on the floor, closing his eyes.

"No." he said, earning yet another loud annoyed sigh from Gray.

"Don't make me get Erza."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Oh, I dare." Natsu grumbled as he glared at Gray one last time and finally sat up, his blanket falling onto his lap. Gray smirked in triumph, turning around and starting to leave. "Breakfast is downstairs so hurry up and get dress so you can eat." He called over his shoulder as he left the room, leaving the door slightly ajar. Natsu had a sudden urge to flip off the door since it was the last thing Gray touched, but restrained himself from doing so as his phone starting ringing, buzzing crazily on his nightstand. Without looking to see who the caller ID was, he snatched it up and answered.

"Yes?" he snapped, feeling too cranky to care who was on the other side.

"Now, that's no way to great your dear uncle, now is it?" Natsu's blood ran cold, suddenly more awake then he was a second ago. Natsu didn't dare reply. "Oh, come on, I know you're there."

"Why're you calling me?" Natsu asked quietly, eyes fixated to the bottom of Gray's bed, fist clenching his phone.

"Can I not talk to my only nephew?" he asked. Natsu stayed silent, squeezing his eyes shut and hoping that Uncle would just hang up and leave him alone. He hoped Uncle would just up and leave, go to the end of the world and stand on the edge and just jump. He wanted Uncle gone, out of his life, and to never exist in front of him. He wanted to wipe his memory of Uncle, to never remember that the man even breathed the same air as him. Natsu even wished that he himself didn't exist so he didn't have to be near Uncle or having to witness Father's wrath for basically his whole life. He wished, he willed, and he wanted, but none of that came. And none of that was granted.

"Is it a sin to speak to your only living relative?" Uncle asked, coldly.

"I have cousins and another uncle on my mom's side. There's even Auntie Esther, your younger sister." Natsu replied in a hoarse whisper. Uncle laughed a cruel laugh that reminded Natsu eerily of Father.

Father didn't die that night many months ago, Natsu realized. He lived along in Uncle Brian, his older brother that was just like his best friend. Father wasn't dead, he just moved to Uncle, and that was something that terrified Natsu the most, making his throat constrict and a stinging sensation come to his eyes as tears started to well up in them, but he would never let them fall.

"They don't matter and Esther is dead to me. Miss little goodie-too-shoes, she is." Uncle spat. Natsu shivered at the tone of his voice, shoulders hunching high and up to his ears, unconsciously drawing his legs closer to his chest to make himself seem smaller than he was.

Maybe if I was a bug, any bug, I could crawl under the bed and into the floor boards so no one will find me and no one will care. I could live my life peacefully as a bug. Bugs have it easy when humans aren't trying to kill them and other animals aren't trying to eat them, Natsu couldn't help but think.

Scratch that. Natsu wanted to be a bird. If he was a bird he could fly. He could fly so far that no one could ever catch up. He could fly until his pains and sorrows were gone. He could forget everything and just fly to the horizon. He would fly till he got tired, until he was dropping out of the sky, only then he would stop because he would be too tired to dream, where memories would spring up. Then he'll do it the next day, then the next, and each day he would fly himself into exhaustion so even his mind was too tired to dream. Soon he would forget everything. His friends. His family. Father and Uncle. All he would know himself to be would be a bird with the sole purpose of flying.

But no. Natsu was born human and for that he was to suffer the consequences for that. Be human, face the torment of others. As a human Natsu didn't have a luxury of wings, he had the misfortune of arms and legs that only allowed himself to cower and make himself smaller. They couldn't carry his weight, they couldn't run him away. They were his weight, his one thousand million pound weights that would do nothing but stay and cower. Wings were flawless and powerful. Full of freedom. Arms and legs were chains and weights. Full of weakness.

"That's rude, not saying a thing to your poor little uncle? Hasn't your mother ever taught you better?" She's dead. You know she's dead. She's dead dead dead. There is not bringing her back. There is no crying over her. She has been cold dead, rotting in a wooden casket twelve years. Dead dead dead. Uncle knew this, Uncle knew she's been dead. He was taunting Natsu. Natsu knew this since that was Uncle's favorite game to play, favorite song to sing. He love mockery even if it was to his nephew. He loved it so he sang the song every time he talked to him.

Natsu said nothing.

Just forget, Natsu. Just forget and it won't matter.

The door to the room opened and Lucy peeked around the corner, surprising Natsu enough so he dropped his phone and loosened from his tight position so he looked like he was about to stand up. He stared wide-eyed at Lucy who blinked before shaking her head.

"What's taking you so long?" she asked, stepping into the room. Hurriedly, Natsu ended the call with Uncle so she didn't see who he was talking to. "You're not even ready." she commented, watching as Natsu scrambled up on his feet and pulled out a random tee-shirt with some cartoon printed on it and shorts.

"Yeah, sorry about that, got a little side-tracked." he smiled sheepishly at her as he changed his shirt quickly, along with his shorts, not caring if Lucy saw his boxers since she often woke him up in the morning and was now used to seeing the red material.

"You were on the phone." she said, looking at the phone that had been discarded carelessly on the floor, a wrinkle forming in-between her eyebrows. Natsu smiled awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head in the nervous habit he had.

"Yeah, um, Sting called. I haven't talked to him since a few months ago. Wanted to know how I was doing, you know, stuff like that." She eyed him critically before she took a step back.

"Breakfast is getting cold, you better hurry before Gray and Erza eat it all." she told him, her brown eyes trying dig out answers from his dark ones. Natsu nodded, walking past her and pausing just a step out the door.

"Thanks for getting me! I probably would've missed breakfast talking with Sting! A lot to catch up on, meaningless banter, you know the drill." Before Lucy could ask any more questions, Natsu had disappeared and she listened as his feet thumped down the wooden stair steps and his muffled greeting to the others downstairs.

Slowly, Lucy glanced towards the phone Natsu had forgotten and picked it up. She knew the password easily, having memorized it from glancing over his shoulder every know-n-then, not like the pinkette knew or anything.

She unlocked his phone and quickly went to the recent calls to see an unknown number at the top of the list, the one he had just hung up on. She scrolled down and saw that Sting had called him two weeks prior.

"Liar." she whispered as she scrolled back up to the top. She took out her own phone and typed down the number along with Sting's before she exited out and turned it back off, setting it back where it was discarded. "I know when something is up with you, idiot. And I'm not going to stop until I get to the bottom of this." Lucy promised. She put her phone back in her pocket and walked back downstairs, pretending that nothing had happened.

"Who said hiking was fun?" Gray complained. Natsu was right beside him thinking the same thoughts as they lagged a few feet behind the group. Mr. Scarlet turned around and grinned brightly at them, adjusting the brim of his hat just slightly.

"Hiking clears the mind and soul!" he said cheerfully, both Mrs. Scarlet and Erza nodding in agreement.

"So stop your complaining, boys." Mrs. Scarlet chided. "It's time to get the winter laziness garbage out of you and replace it with the summer's fresh air of activeness!" Gray and Natsu both moaned in reply, making Mr. and Mrs. Scarlet laugh out in amusement as they turned back around to have a meaningless banter with the other.

"Come on guys, we haven't even been hiking for ten minutes!" Lucy said. Natsu gave her a half-hearted glare, dragging his feet in the dirt.

"Ten minutes too long." he mumbled unhappily. "One minutes is way too long, to be honest." he added, Gray nodding in agreement.

"I rather like being lazy." Gray stated. "You don't do anything. You sleep. You eat. You watch TV. Maybe throw a book in there. It's great." Lucy and Erza rolled their eyes at them and both muttered "Boys!" under their breath.

"If your good enough, maybe we'll go buy some pizza~!" Mrs. Scarlet sang from the front, swinging her arms by her side happily. Both Gray and Natsu perked up at this, smiling wide.

"Suddenly hiking doesn't seem so bad!" they both shouted at the same time, earning laughs from the Scarlet's and Lucy.

As they hiked along the trail, Natsu suddenly noticed a marker, a wooden cross with a black bow tied to the middle of it, right beneath a large pine tree.

"What's that?" he asked, stopping and pointing towards it. Mr. Scarlet stopped and also looked, reorganization shining in his eyes.

"Oh, that? Some kid died here around ten years ago. What was his name?" he looked to Mrs. Scarlet who had stopped right alongside him.

"I believe it was Zeref. Nancy said he had committed suicide. Awfully depressed, she said. Apparently his parents argued a lot and that got to him, so he hung himself right there. A pair of sisters found him in the morning just hanging. It's sad, a young life cut so short." She shook her head sadly. "I can't image ever doing such a thing, especially when I was young." Everyone glanced at the marker one last time before moving on.

Natsu stood there, staring at the grave in shock. Zeref? The kid he just saw last night was dead? How was that possible? He apparently has been dead for ten years, too. How could he be the same person he had just had a conversation with the night before?

"Natsu?" Erza called back, being the first to notice that he had yet to move. Natsu shook his head, clearing his thoughts as he threw them a quick apology and ran to catch up.

No, it was probably a coincident. It was impossible to be dead for ten years and suddenly pop up and have a conversation like none of it mattered.

At least, Natsu sure hoped so.