Chapter 6: Tears and Fury
The phone lay facedown on Natsu’s nightstand, a black rectangle of pure malice. He couldn’t look at it again.He didn’t need to. The image was burned onto the back of his eyelids, a permanent scar: the curve of Lucy’s back, Zeref’s possessive hand splayed on her bare skin, the city lights a mocking, glittering backdrop to his brother’s conquest.His room felt like a cage. The chaotic energy of his belongings—the half-finished alchemy projects emitting faint, greenish glows, the set of forged dragon scales from a job last month, the laundry piled in the corner—usually comforted him. Now it just echoed his disarray.He paced, the worn floorboards creaking under his restless feet. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, tendons standing out like cords. A hot, corrosive pressure built behind his sternum, a mixture of rage, hurt, and a sickening, unwanted arousal that made him hate himself.He wanted to hit something.He wanted to scream. He wanted to burn the entire world down, starting with that fucking balcony.Instead, he grabbed his jacket. The leather was cool and familiar.He didn’t think. Thinking led to the image, and the image led to a pain he had no language for.Action was the only purge.
The night air outside his apartment was a slap, crisp and clearing.He walked fast, without direction, his boots pounding the sidewalk. The city’s nocturnal pulse—distant sirens, the bass thump from a passing car, the murmur of late-night crowds—was just noise.His own blood roared in his ears.
He ended up at the old guildhall, a repurposed warehouse that served as a social club for their loose circle of friends.Light and loud music spilled from the high windows. He shoved the door open, the smell of beer, sawdust, and sweat hitting him like a wall.
The main room was hazy with smoke and alive with the clatter of a pool game. A few people called out to him.He grunted in acknowledgment, his eyes scanning the crowd. He wasn’t looking for friends.
He found Cana Alberona at the far end of the bar, hunched over a tall glass of something dark, her brown hair falling around her shoulders. She was laughing at something the bartender said, her voice a little too loud, her gestures a little too broad. She was already well into her cups.Natsu slid onto the stool next to her. She turned, a tipsy smile on her face that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Well, look what the hellcat dragged in. Heard you were moping.”
“Who said I was moping?” His voice came out gruffer than he intended.“Please. The whole guild knows Lucy’s shacking up with your ice-queen brother. The dramatic sighing was audible from three blocks away.” She took a long swig, studying him over the rim of her glass. She saw the tension in his jaw, the wild, unfocused anger in his usually bright eyes.She knew that look. It was the same look he’d had months ago, the first and only time they’d fucked—a frantic, desperate search for an escape from a feeling too big to hold.
She set her glass down with a definitive thud. “You wanna get out of here?”
He just nodded, relief and self-loathing twisting together in his gut.This was what he needed.Not talk. Not feeling.Obliteration.Her apartment was a cluttered studio, smelling of spilled liquor and incense. She didn’t turn on the main light, just a dim lamp by the bed that cast long, distorted shadows. As soon as the door closed, she was on him, her mouth finding his with a hungry, beer-tinged aggression. There was no pretense of romance, no whispered sweetness.Her hands went to the buckle of his belt, fumbling with the leather.
He kissed her back with a ferocity that was all teeth and anger, his own hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. He pushed her back towards the bed, a low table scattering empty bottles in their wake.They fell onto the unmade sheets in a tangle of limbs.
This wasn’t like with Lucy—the thought was a poison dart, but it was true. There was no awe, no tenderness, no devastating care.This was a battle. Cana scratched his back, raking her nails down his skin. He bit her shoulder, not hard enough to break the skin, but enough to make her gasp and arch into him. He yanked her jeans down, his movements rough, impatient. She didn’t wear delicate cotton panties like Lucy; she wore black lace, and he tore them in his hurry.
When he entered her, it was with a single, forceful thrust that made her cry out.He didn’t wait for her to adjust. He set a punishing, rhythmic pace, using her body as a battering ram against the phantom in his head. He fucked the image out of his mind. He fucked the sound of Lucy’s happy voice talking about Zeref out of his ears. He fucked the memory of her lavender scent, still on his own pillow, out of his nostrils.
Cana wrapped her legs around him, meeting his violence with her own, her fingers digging into the muscles of his ass, urging him deeper, faster.Her moans were sharp, encouraging. “Yeah, like that,” she grunted into his ear.“Fuck. Just like that.”
He closed his eyes, but he saw Lucy.He saw her on that balcony, her head thrown back. He imagined it was his name on her lips, not Zeref’s. The fantasy was a cruel fuel, driving him until his rhythm broke, becoming frantic, unsustainable. A choked sound, half-snarl, half-sob, tore from his throat as he came, shuddering, deep inside Cana. He collapsed on top of her, his body slick with sweat, his breath coming in ragged, painful gulps.The silence afterwards was absolute and hollow.
After a minute, he rolled off her, staring up at the water-stained ceiling.The physical release was a flat, empty nothing. The anger was still there, banked now but smoldering.The hurt was a cold, hard stone in his chest. The shame was a full-body wash, sticky and cold.
Cana lit a cigarette, the flare of the match briefly illuminating her profile. She took a deep drag and exhaled a cloud of smoke towards the ceiling.“Feel better?” Her voice was flat, stripped of its earlier provocative energy.
“No,” he said.The word was simple and utterly true.
“Didn’t think so.” She took another drag. “You know, using me to get back at a ghost in your head is getting kinda old, Natsu.”
He had no answer for that. He just lay there, the ghost—the vivid, beautiful, treacherous ghost of Lucy Heartfilia—settling back into every corner of his mind, more solid and more out of reach than ever. The momentum of the night had crashed and died here, in this stale room, leaving him stranded, with nothing but the slow, sure knowledge that tomorrow, the sun would rise on a world where Lucy belonged to Zeref. And he would have to find a way to breathe in that world.