Chapter 11: The Aftermath of Ashes
The scream of the guitar had followed Natsu out of the house, vibrating in his teeth long after he’d slammed the front door and broken into a run down the suburban sidewalk. He didn’t know where he was going. His feet pounded the pavement, a frantic rhythm trying to outpace the echo of Lucy’s touch on his cheek. That pity. That gentle, annihilating pity.
He makes me feel alive.
Her words were a knife twist. He’d never made her feel anything but comfortable. Safe. A placeholder. And now Zeref, with his cold eyes and calculated smiles, got to be the catalyst for her awakening.
He ran until his lungs burned, until the manicured lawns gave way to cracked concrete and the glow of neon. He stopped, hands on his knees, gulping air that tasted of fried food and exhaust. He looked up. The flickering sign for the laundromat buzzed overhead. He was standing outside Cana’s building.
The hollow ache in his chest was a vacuum. He needed to fill it with noise, with heat, with something that wasn’t the shattering silence inside his own head. He needed to not be alone with the ghost of Lucy’s fingertips.
He jammed his thumb against the rusted intercom button for 4B. Held it. The buzz was harsh, demanding.
No answer.
He leaned on it again, longer this time, a single sustained snarl of sound. The streetlight above him flickered, casting his shadow in jittery movements across the dirty glass door.
A crackle, then her voice, stripped of its usual bravado, rough with smoke and something else. “What do you want?”
He closed his eyes. The truth was a pathetic, naked thing. He pressed the button. “To not be alone.”
A long silence stretched over the static. He was about to turn, to start running again, when the door released with a loud, metallic clunk.
The stairwell smelled of cabbage and bleach. He took the steps two at a time, his boots thudding on the linoleum. Her door was slightly ajar, a slice of dim, multi-colored light spilling into the hallway.
He pushed it open and stepped into the chaos.
The TV was on, silent, casting shifting blue hues over the clutter. Empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays, a single high-heeled shoe lying on its side. The air was thick—old cigarettes, spilled liquor, the cheap floral plug-in she used to try and cover it all up. And beneath it, the warm, familiar scent of her.
Cana was sitting on the edge of her futon, wearing only a large black t-shirt. A bottle of whiskey was clutched in one hand. Her chestnut hair was a mess, her eyes red-rimmed but dry. She looked at him, took a slow drink, and didn’t smile.
“You look like hell,” she said, her voice flat.
“Feel like it.”
He kicked the door shut. The lock engaged with a final click. He stood there, awkward, the fury and despair that had propelled him here suddenly cooling into a heavy, leaden shame. The bruises Zeref had given him thrummed dully.
Cana’s gaze traveled over him—the tense set of his shoulders, the white-knuckled fists, the hollow look in his eyes that mirrored her own. She understood. This wasn’t about her. It was never about her. They were just two wrecked vessels trying to bail out the same ocean with broken cups.
“She pick him,” Cana stated, not asked.
Natsu flinched. A single, sharp jerk of his head. That was answer enough.
Cana nodded slowly. She took another swallow from the bottle, then held it out to him. “Come here.”
He crossed the room. He didn’t take the bottle. He sat down on the futon beside her, the springs groaning. He was radiating a tense, febrile heat. He stared at the silent TV where cartoon characters moved in a frantic, pointless pantomime.
“He showed me a video,” Cana said, the words quiet in the hum of the refrigerator. “Of her. At some club. On her knees.”
Natsu’s breath hitched. His eyes squeezed shut. A fresh wave of pain, sharp and sickening, washed through him. Not just the image, but the cruelty of Zeref wielding it. The completeness of his victory.
“I know,” he gritted out.
Cana looked at him, a sad, knowing comprehension in her gaze. She placed the whiskey bottle on the floor. She didn’t touch him, not yet. “So. You came here.”
“I had nowhere else to go.”
It was the truest thing he’d said all night.
She reached over then, her fingers trailing lightly over the bruise on his jawline, a souvenir from his brother. Her touch was surprisingly soft. “We’re a pair, aren’t we? Both of us left bleeding by the same damn person.”
He turned his head, finally looking at her. Her eyes were deep, holding a universe of hurt he usually ignored. In that moment, he saw her. Not just a body, not just an escape, but Cana—abandoned, used, drinking herself numb in a filthy apartment, just as lost as he was.
The recognition was a different kind of ache.
He brought his hand up, cupping the back of her neck. His thumb stroked the sensitive skin under her ear. It wasn’t aggressive. It was a question.
She answered by leaning in and closing the distance. Her kiss tasted of whiskey and salt. It was not gentle. It was a collision, a mutual surrender. A way to speak without having to form the words that would cut too deep.
They fell back onto the futon, a tangle of limbs and desperate need. Clothing was shoved aside, not removed with care but pushed out of the way. There was no romance here, no pretence. This was a fight against the emptiness, a physical argument against the pain. Her nails dug into the scars on his back. He kissed the hollow of her throat, her shoulder, anywhere but her lips, because that felt too much like a lie they couldn’t tell.
It was fast, and rough, and profoundly lonely even as their bodies were joined. He drove into her, seeking oblivion, and she arched against him, her cries not of passion but of release. For a few minutes, the world narrowed to sweat and heat and pounding blood. The ghosts were banished by sheer, brutal sensation.
Afterward, they lay in the tangled sheets, breathing heavily. The silent TV played on. Natsu stared at the water stain on the ceiling that looked like a distorted continent. The vacuum inside him was still there, just temporarily muffled.
Cana shifted, rolling onto her side to face him. She traced the lines of his abdominal muscles with a single finger. “He’s going to break her,” she said quietly.
“I know.”
“And you can’t stop it.”
“I know that, too.”
She propped her head on her hand. “Why do we want people who are so bad for us?”
Natsu had no answer. He thought of Lucy’s bright, trusting eyes fixed on Zeref’s cold ones. He thought of Cana, always circling back to the man who treated her like an afterthought. He reached out, pushing a strand of hair from her damp forehead. It was a gesture far more intimate than anything else they’d done.
“Don’t go back to him, Cana,” he murmured, his voice raw. “He’s poison.”
She gave a short, brittle laugh. “Look who’s talking.” But she caught his hand, holding it against her cheek for a moment before letting it go. “You’ll keep coming here, though. As long as she’s with him.”
It wasn’t a question.
Natsu looked away, his jaw tightening. The shame was back, hotter now. He was using her. She was letting him. It was their cycle, their pathetic symbiosis.
“Yeah,” he admitted, the word tasting like ash.
Cana nodded. She didn’t seem angry. Just resigned. She slid out of the futon, naked and unselfconscious, and padded to the kitchenette. She returned with the whiskey bottle and two dirty glasses. She poured two fingers into each, handed one to him.
They drank in silence, sitting side by side in the neon gloom, two ghosts haunting the same ruins, waiting for the sun that never seemed to rise.