Chapter 7: The Unexpected Visitor
The sound of Zeref’s laugh echoed in the small apartment long after the door had closed behind him. It lingered in the musk of sex and smoke, a poison in the air. Natsu stood frozen, his knuckles throbbing where they had connected with his brother’s jaw. The sharp, clean pain was the only real thing.Cana let out a long, shaky breath and walked to her tiny kitchenette. She didn’t speak. She pulled a bottle of cheap whiskey from a cupboard and took a deep, straight pull from it, wincing as it went down. She held the bottle out to Natsu.He didn’t move. His eyes were fixed on the spot where Zeref had stood, holding up that damn phone.
“He planned that,” Cana said finally, her voice rough.“He knew you were here. He knew exactly what would happen.”
Natsu’s silence was a pressurized thing. He could still see it: the dim light of Lucy’s bedroom on the screen, the specific, familiar pattern of her bedsheets. Her head moving with a rhythm he’d only ever imagined in his own desperate, guilty fantasies. The soft, wet sounds from the phone’s speaker, muted but unmistakable.Her little sigh. Zeref’s hand, not in her hair, but resting on her head, a gesture of absolute ownership.
“Why?” The word scraped out of Natsu’s throat.
“Because he’s Zeref,” Cana said, as if that explained everything.Maybe it did.She took another drink. “He gets off on this.On knowing he has what you want.On proving he can take it. On making you feel this small.” She gestured at him with the bottle. “And you walked right into it.Again.”
The truth of it was a physical burn.He had walked right in. He’d come here to fuck away the image, and instead, Zeref had handed him a worse one, vivid and moving and soundtracked.A trophy video.Natsu finally moved. He strode to where his shirt lay discarded on the floor, yanked it over his head. The fabric smelled of Cana’s perfume and sweat. He found his boots, shoved his feet into them without tying the laces.
“Where are you going?” Cana asked, but it wasn’t really a question.She knew.He didn’t answer.He couldn’t. If he opened his mouth, everything would come out—a torrent of fire and violence and shattered, childish hope.
He slammed the apartment door behind him, the thin plywood rattling in its frame. The stairwell of the old building was dark and smelled of damp concrete and fried food from the restaurant next door. He took the steps two at a time, his untied laces slapping against the metal treads.Out on the street, the city night felt different. The lights were too bright, the sounds too sharp, every sight a potential trigger. A couple laughing under a streetlamp made him want to break the lamp. A stray cat slinking through a pile of garbage made him think of himself—scavenging for scraps of Lucy’s attention while Zeref feasted.He walked. His mind was a white-noise scream, but underneath it, a plan was hardening, cold and singular.He was going to her apartment.It wasn’t a decision. It was a biological pull, like a dying animal dragging itself toward water.He needed to see her. He needed the sight of her, in the flesh, to overwrite the digital ghost Zeref had implanted. He needed to know if her mouth looked different.If her eyes held a secret he couldn’t bear.
The walk across town was a blur of intrusive thoughts.He pictured himself pounding on her door. Pictured her answering, sleepy and confused in one of those soft, thin tank tops she wore to bed. He pictured himself telling her.Showing her the video Zeref had taken. Asking her how she could.He pictured her shame.Her horror.Her tears.The fantasy curdled halfway there. Because he knew, with a sinking certainty, that it wouldn’t play out that way. She would be confused, yes.But then she would get defensive.She would say it was private. She would ask why Zeref had shown him. She would tell him it was none of his business.And she would be right.
He slowed his pace, the fury leaching away, leaving a hollow, sick exhaustion.He stood on a corner, watching the traffic lights cycle through their meaningless colors. Red.Green.Yellow.Red.He couldn’t confront her.He had no right. He was just her friend. Her best friend, maybe, but that title was a cage now, locking him out of the place he desperately wanted to be.
His feet carried him forward again, but the destination had shifted.He wasn’t going to burst in.He was just going to… see. To be near the place where she existed, a place that felt more like home to him than his own chaotic room ever had.Her building was a modest brick complex with narrow balconies. Her lights were on, a warm yellow against the dark. He stood across the street, partially shielded by a parked delivery van, and looked up at her fourth-floor window. The gauzy curtain was drawn, but he could see shadows moving behind it.His heart hammered against his ribs.She was home. Living her life.Maybe thinking about Zeref.Maybe smiling at her phone.
Then, the silhouette resolved.It was her. She walked to the window, a blurry shape through the fabric, and leaned against the frame, looking out at the night.She was just… there. Unaware that the wreckage of him was standing in the shadows below, gazing up like a lost soul at a shrine.He didn’t know how long he stood there.Time lost meaning. The city carried on around him—a teenager on a skateboard, a woman walking a small, yapping dog, a couple arguing in a car with the windows down.He was a statue of pure longing.
The buzz of his phone in his pocket made him jump. He fumbled for it, a stupid, wild hope flaring—that it was her.That she’d sensed him somehow.
It was a text from Cana.He’s an asshole.But he’s right about one thing. You gotta live with it.Or you’ll tear yourself apart.
He stared at the words until the screen went dark.Live with it.The concept was a mockery. This wasn’t a thing you lived with. It was a thing that lived inside you, a parasite feeding on every memory, every hope.He looked back up at the window.Lucy’s shadow had moved away. The window was just a window again.
He was about to turn, to force his legs to carry him back to his own empty life, when the main door of her building opened.
Lucy stepped out.She was dressed in simple jeans and a light sweater, her golden hair down around her shoulders. She had a small, cloth bag in her hand, like she was going to a late-night market.She looked… normal.Beautifully, devastatingly normal. Not like someone harboring a dark secret, not like a villain in his personal tragedy.Just Lucy.
She turned to lock her door, then paused, looking up and down the street. For a heart-stopping second, he thought she saw him.He held his breath.She didn’t. She turned and began walking down the sidewalk, away from him, the familiar, easy sway of her hips a fresh torture.
He should let her go.He knew he should.He followed.
He kept a half-block’s distance, hanging back in the pools of darkness between streetlights.She wasn’t going to a market. She walked with purpose, her steps light.She was going to meet him. She had to be.The certainty was a cold stone in his gut.She turned a corner. He hurried to catch up, peering around the brick edge of a building.She wasn’t meeting Zeref.
She was standing under a bus shelter, alone, checking the time on her phone. She was just waiting for a bus.Going somewhere.By herself.The relief was so profound it made him dizzy. It was immediately followed by a choking wave of shame.He was stalking her. He was the ghost now, a creepy, jealous phantom trailing her through the night.
He was about to slip away, to dissolve back into the city, when a sleek, black car glided to a silent stop at the curb beside the shelter.The passenger window descended.
Zeref leaned across from the driver’s seat, his face a pale oval in the interior light.“Lucy. Need a ride?”
Natsu’s blood turned to ice. He pressed himself flat against the rough brick, his breath caught in his throat.Lucy smiled, a bright, easy thing that sliced through Natsu.“Zeref! Hey. I was just going to run to that all-night bookstore, you know, the one with the big fantasy section?I couldn’t sleep.”
“I know the one. Get in.”
She didn’t hesitate. She pulled the door open and slid into the passenger seat, the interior light painting her in a soft glow before the door thudded shut. Natsu saw Zeref’s hand reach over.Not to the gear shift. He placed it on Lucy’s thigh, high up, his fingers curving possessively.She leaned over and kissed his cheek.
The car pulled away, smooth and silent as a shark.Natsu stayed pinned against the wall. The sounds of the night rushed back in—the distant traffic, the hum of a neon sign—but they were hollow, meaningless noises.He saw it all with a terrible, crystalline clarity. The video wasn’t just a trophy.It was a preview. It was Zeref’s way of ensuring that every time Natsu saw Lucy now, every time she smiled or laughed or talked about her day, he would see that other image superimposed.He would hear those sounds. He would know what she did when she was alone with him. He would know exactly what Zeref had, in a way he could never unknow.Live with it.A raw, soundless laugh escaped him. It wasn’t laughter.It was the expulsion of a last, hope.It hurt his chest. He pushed off from the wall and began walking, his untied laces slapping the concrete with a rhythm that matched the single, pulsing thought in his skull.He couldn’t live with it.
But he had no idea what to do instead. The momentum of the night was gone, leaving only a vast, howling emptiness ahead, stretching as far as he could see.