"Natsu, may I ask you a question?"

Lucy trailed her forefinger along a crease of his shirt, his skin warm through the fabric under her finger. An old novel sat forgotten on the cushion to her side, hours since a word had been read from its page. The fire flickered over its coals in the stone fireplace before them, the plush settee pulled close so that the light caught on the aged plum fabric. Lucy's toes curled in the velvet under them, her wearing of stockings lost sometime in the two moon cycles since they had arrived in their castle, a practice she now appreciated as she felt softness ground her in the moment. A moment she thought would only appear to her in novels; curled under the arm of her soulmate, a kitten on her lap and warm fire in front of her banishing the cold of the night, much like how Natsu had banished the cold from her life.

Natsu's breathing deepened, his head tilting in her direction as his gaze remained focused on tracing the patterns in the embers dancing in the fire. Lucy pressed more into his side at his acknowledgement, her head heavy as she lay it on his scarf that hung around his neck, a part of him as much as his leg or fangs.

"How did you come to carry the scar on your neck?" Lucy breathed, her palm laid flat over her heart to remind herself that despite everything, he was here with her in this moment. Natsu stilled under her, Lucy remaining in her spot despite his tenseness, knowing that this was simply Natsu's method of processing his thoughts. Happy trilled from his spot curled in her lap, his head lifting and whiskers twitching while he looked between her and Natsu. He held curiosity in his gaze, but remained quiet as he too waited for Natsu to speak.

"Do you really want to know, Luce?" Natsu questioned. His voice was muffled in Lucy's hair, his nose buried against her as he often did when they held one another, as though he were reminding himself that she was real with her scent the way Lucy did with his heartbeat.

"Yes," Lucy said softly, remaining unmoving so as not to push Natsu and to give him the time to collect himself from his thoughts and inner wars.

His chest rose and fell under her with a heavy sigh, the hand that had been tracing patterns into her hip tightening on her as he pulled her close to him. "It's not a happy story."

"But it is still one of yours, and that is all I need to know I wish to hear it. Please, Natsu, share with me the life I missed by your side."

Lucy met his gaze as Natsu pulled back, the soft adoration coating his sharp emerald colour and the pull of a corner of his lip up sending Lucy's heart into a wild beat. No matter the conversation or the time, the effect Natsu's sheer presence had on her was never lost, nor lost on Lucy's mind. She traced his jaw with her finger before cradling the side of face, Natsu relaxing as he leaned into her touch, his eyes fluttering closed easily.

Natsu was slow as he opened his eyes, unhurriedly taking her in and tracing her like one would trace their favourite painting, already a hundred times familiar but never losing its pull and beauty. The way he looked at her made Lucy feel as though she were a masterpiece of art, more grounded than a marble statue but just as delicate as a paper sketch by a master. His own hand lifted, back of his knuckle tenderly dancing against the heated skin on the swell of her check. The time passed around them, both content with the silence that encased them as comforting and warm as a blanket, Lucy allowing Natsu to take the first step to further their conversation and Natsu simply drinking in the moment of having her in his arms. Lucy knew as such as he had told her when she asked him why he would simply look at her for such long periods of time, unspeaking, and he had replied that he was simply making sure to note every detail lest he wake and his miracle had been nothing more than a cruel dream.

Lucy had cried in his arms again at that, before tucking him under her chin and telling him in as confident and final whisper as she could that she would never leave him again.

"It was a lifetime ago," Natsu started slowly, gaze still as soft as his touch as he spoke, focus lost in his emerald colour and Lucy felt as though he were looking through her and watching the memory from the view of a spectator rather than himself. "I don't suppose you have a recollection of a man named Gray Fullbuster, do you? He always looked a cross between confused as to why he just entered a room and as if someone had pissed in his tea?"

"Natsu!" Lucy chastised, swatting at his shoulder as her cheeks heated in shock at his crudeness. He chuckled at her reaction, fingers trailing through the loose hair beside her temple before cupping the side of her head, his fingers tickling the back of her neck. The joy dimmed in his eyes as he continued to look at her, the same tired dullness that came when he remembered his years without her clouding his gaze.

"He was one of our closest friends. A surly bastard, always carrying too much pain in his heart. As if I'm one to lecture on clinging to the past," Natsu scoffed at himself, face pinched as he turned away from her slightly. "Used to curse fate for making a vampire hunter the thing he hated the most."

Lucy listened patiently, unease curling through her body like blood as she feared she knew where this story would go, dreading the thought of someone Natsu had once held dear to him pushing a blessed blade to his throat.

"How did we meet him?" She asked, hoping to delay the inevitable conclusion she had asked to be told, suddenly desperate to remain ignorant of the pain Natsu had endured and to keep him from remembering the betrayal. Lucy lowered her gaze, tracing the lines of his lips, not quite full but neither thin, flesh pinker than the tan colouring which had only been regaining its healthy glow as Lucy insisted he fed daily. Darker dots scattered across his skin mimicking constellations, centralized on his nose and cheeks but a few tracing his jaw from the corner of the left of his mouth to his ear, straying as the morning star strayed from its sisters of the night.

Natsu brought her attention back to the present, lifting her chin with his knuckle so softly Lucy melted into his touch easily. She gathered his free hand in both of her own, giving him a reassuring grip as she offered him a weak smile, knowing he saw through her excuse to delay, accepting it easily in his own desire to shield her from himself. A thought which Lucy found incredulous, but knew it would take more than a few months to free Natsu of, if not years.

"We first crossed his path when he was human, and I had only been a vampire for a few decades, four or five I think?" Natsu frowned, brow knitting as he thought. "It's hard to keep track honestly. All the years start to blur into pockets of centuries. I can remember specifics, like the first time we swam in the ocean under the Blood Moon, and the time we joined for hours in the tower on top of the mountain while the villagers thought we were the gods of life and fertility. I can remember your black and gold ballgown and the way it fit you as if it had been painted on your body by a master themselves, the way your eyes shone and how you threw your head back in abandon when we danced at the birthday gala of some princess and her wife, but I could not tell you when or where we were."

"We were on an island that no longer is remembered on maps, and it was only fifty years before I can remember no more," Lucy whispered. She brought his hand to her lips, brushing dozens of kisses along his knuckles, barely brushing his toughened skin with butterfly touches, soothing the pain she had felt in his voice as he spoke of fading details. "You told me that you were glad to never sleep as your dreams would never match your reality in a million years."

"And I still mean that now," Natsu grinned at her, gently pulling his hand from hers so he could cup the sides of her head and lead her forehead to rest on his his. Lucy closed the final distance and pressed her lips to his, soft and slow and reverent, savouring the beginning of the eons of time they had before them to simply be as one.

She pulled back, pressing against Natsu's side while lifting Happy to her chest as a comforting pillow to hold, settling into her new spot with her head over Natsu's heart and between his thighs, one bent against the back of cushion and the other planted firmly on the floor. He held her as she held Happy, close and tight as though she were a charm that could banish away all ill wishing shadows. His chest rose under her, and Lucy knew he was gathering himself to speak.

"After you died, I broke. Mentally, emotionally, every way that I could have broken, I did. When you were killed, Lucy, when you were taken from me and I came home to see what was waiting, my soul broke." Natsu spoke impassionately, as if he were discussing the weather. These were simply facts to him, and that broke Lucy more than his pain itself. "I did horrible things in my pain. Unforgivable things Lucy."

"I will never love you any less than I most fully could," Lucy whispered, pressing herself firmer into him. She refused to allow her light to lose himself in the darkness he thought he belonged in.

"I killed them."

Lucy blinked, her breath catching like a stone in her throat. Natsu was looking beyond her, shoulders relaxed and still somehow curled in, chin tilted down. Weak. Defeated. "What?" Lucy asked, pushing him to elaborate.

"The village. I killed it. They had stormed our home, burned it to it's bones, leaving your body in it's wreckage like you were nothing. They bled you like we were monsters, and so I gave them what they desired. A monster. A shadow in the forest that fed on the screams of it's victims, a soulless being that was cursed to wander the earth, a nightmare to tell the children and an excuse for their drunk bastard of a husband to not return in the middle of the night. All the stories humans would tell for their own ends. As if I cared for their lives. As if anything mattered after…

"I spilled human blood, uncountable times, ruthlessly, without remorse. But the only time I ever brought the fight to them was the day I came home. And even then, they had made the first move. An earth-shattering call of war. A war they lost, so ignorant of those they had championed a fight with that they were shocked to see me unharmed in the light of day, even as I tore out their throats."

Natsu remained still as he spoke, statuesque and unyielding. Lost in the past, and Lucy knew somewhere in her soul that he was reliving every time he had spilled human blood. Her heart ached, not only for him, but for the people he had killed. For all the pain and the cloud of misery that hung over her love. And yet, when she thought of the village, of the women and the children that had undoubtedly been within it's borders, Lucy felt nothing. No empathy. No sorrow at the loss of innocents. She knew, knew, somewhere in her mind that none of them were innocent, and it rocked her core that she could feel that way. Life was sacred, it always had been to her. It was what her mother taught her, the value, the gift of life.

But here she sat, in the arms of someone that could call himself a monster without a hint of pause, knowing in her soul that he was not.

The village had gotten what it deserved.

"And what of Gray?" Lucy asked, pressing her palm to his cheek. His gaze focused on her, still fogged with memories that should never have been allowed to be made in the first place, pain so palpable that Lucy felt she could almost simply reach out and tear it away from him herself. "I am still here Natsu. I know, and I love you, and I am still here by your side. So please, tell me of how you now wear your scar."

"Word spread to the hunters of a 'beast gone rogue'," Natsu spat, looking away from Lucy's prying gaze while pressing his hand to hers so it was trapped firmly in place against his cheek. Lucy ran her thumb over the sharpness of his cheekbone, smiling as finally, Natsu focused on her. She nodded her head just a hair of a breath, urging him to continue but not wanting to speak and break the spell that was allowing Natsu to open up. "And so they sent the one most desperate to rid the world of our plague, despite him being one of those he hated so fully. I couldn't believe it, when I saw him," Natsu shook his head, small grin twisted and dark as he laughed dryly.

"First I had had my future torn from my life, and then my best friend was sent to be the one to put me down. Poetic, considering he was at the beginning with us. Why not the end as well."

Lucy blinked twice, shaken. The Gray she knew would never have actually tried to kill Natsu. They had fought over the centuries, more like brothers forced to be in the same room during a spat than friends, but never on opposing sides. That Gray could turn his back on Natsu when he needed him most, it shattered Lucy's heart. He was part of her family. He was who she had counted on to reign Natsu's grief in when she was gone. Lucy's gaze fell to the scar traveling half his neck, and rage burned hot and white in her, stealing the breath from her lungs. Her hands shook as she pulled Natsu to her, tucking him into her shoulder, her arms holding him tightly to her. The fabric of his shift bunched under her fingers, and Lucy bowed her head so her nose was buried in his wild hair. Happy shifted, steps as soundless as he voice, knowing now was not a time for him to be anything other than a comforting presence at the sides of those in pain.

"I'm going to maim him the next time our paths cross. And then when he is healing he will explain his stupid thoughts as to how he could hurt you." Lucy hissed. Natsu shook in her arms, his laughter deep and full as his arms wound around her in return.

"It was a lifetime ago," Natsu said, the pain from before lost in his words, unnervingly quick if Lucy had not known him so well.

"But it was your lifetime, and I'm going to hurt that moody bastard," she huffed. Lucy paused at her lack of decorum in her words, her tongue slipping into old habits of being secluded with Natsu as the only witness for her drop in social convention. She pushed it aside, along with Happy's purrs of mirth, choosing to focus on the man in her arms over her own discoveries.

"Did my ears deceive me or has my fair wife cursed?" Natsu prodded her, his grin wide where Lucy felt it brush the column of her neck. Lucy huffed, her breath making his rose hair tickle her nose.

"We both know how poor of an influence you are on me, my love," Lucy said in return. The banter was forgotten between them as Natsu responded to Lucy's endearment. His grin paused, weight falling more into Lucy as he settled into her. His lips brushed over her neck the barest amount before a firmer kiss was pressed to the side of her neck, and then the hollow under her ear, and the line of her jaw, and finally where Natsu had first bitten her. The memory of that first painful encounter of this life was pushed aside by all the other times filled with pleasure that flooded Lucy's mind. Lucy called his name, turning her head to expose her neck to him, pulse so loud in her own ears she couldn't imagine how it sounded to Natsu's.

"Now who is the poor influence," Natsu asked, voice rasped with dryness. His lips moved against her skin and sent warm shivers along her spine at the touch, Natsu remaining in his place tucked against her, their bodies intertwined like their hearts. The tense sadness from before was washed away, but Natsu's lips simply ghosted her tender skin rather than anything more. "I promise I'll feed later Lucy, right now, I just want to lay like this."

Lucy closed her eyes slowly, breathing in calming breaths to steady her racing heart. Natsu had spoken low, cautious of her answer and Lucy couldn't help the sting it pulled in her soul. "Of course Natsu. Whatever you need." She spoke as soothingly as possible, letting her fingers run through his hair, massaging his scalp as she tried to ease his worries. Natsu relaxed against her, pressing a chaste kiss to her pulse before resting his forehead to it, curling into her.

"All I need is you. All I'll ever need is you."

Lucy all but swooned, placing her lips atop his head.

Together they stayed like that, their family re-found after being torn apart, Happy too feeling natural as though he had meant to be there all along. The night pushed on as they remained wrapped in each other's arms, simply being, safe from all the demons of the past and scars that remained, watching the fire return to smoke and embers.