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Angst Week Prompt #6: Incinerate

Warning: Contains Miscarriage

Incinerate: [in-sin-uh-reyt]: verb

1. to burn or reduce to ashes; cremate

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Ashes to Ashes

By AbsentAngel

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He wakes up to the sound of Lucy's strangled scream.

At first he can't see anything – her nightstand lamp is on and it temporarily blinds him with white light – but the room smells like blood and tears, and he is shaking under his touch when he frantically reaches for her. His hand grasps her shoulder just as his eyes adjust to the light.

There is a red stain pooling between her thighs, soaking the sheets and her lace trimmed nightgown. Her hands clutch at the swell of her stomach while her terror rimmed eyes tear into his soul. "The hospital," the sheer amount of fear in her voice makes him tremble, "We need to go to the hospital!"

His mind still feels numb. The only thing that he seems to be able to comprehend is that the blood sliding along her thighs makes his hands slippery when he goes to hoist her into his arms. He should call for help, should find a vehicle, but the scent of blood is making him dizzy and the way her tears burn into his neck makes him panic, so he finds himself running instead.

As his bare feet slap against the cobble stone streets, the cold night air biting against his uncovered chest, only one thought runs rampant. It repeats, stronger and clearer – more terrifying – with every street they pass. By the time his feet are standing on cold, disinfected tile and the nurses are taking his sobbing wife away from him, it has become deafening.

It's too early. It's three months too early.

Lucy is taken behind the wide double doors, but when Natsu goes to follow he is stopped by the small but strong hands of a nurse who urges him to sit. He does because suddenly it feels like it's too much to stand. He sinks into the plastic seat of the waiting room chair as he answers question after question for the nurse.

"How old is your wife?"

"Does she have any history of miscarriage?"

"Is this her first pregnancy? Has she had any complications?"

He answers each one in a daze (She is twenty three. No, no history. Yes, this is their first. No, her pregnancy has been perfect – their baby is perfect).

His eyes stare at the blood congealing on the white tile in a trail leading past the painted doors, and realizes that the blood covering him has turned cold. The nurse disappears and leaves him alone in the waiting room with only stale, muted music and his own numb thoughts for company. He counts and recounts the months but the number stays the same. Three. He doesn't know if babies can survive being three months premature. He buries his hands in his hair and blood streaks across the pink strands as he inhales, gasping and struggling to pull oxygen into his lungs. The blood on the floor has been mopped up but he can still smell it hiding like bad dream beneath the burning scent of bleach.

By the time the double doors open again he is trembling and his heart feels like it is being strangled in his chest. The air still tastes too thin, too toxic, but when he sees the doctor's white coat stained red he gulps it down greedily anyway. "Are they...?" He can't finish the words, his throat is too tight to let them pass.

The doctor looks too somber. Beneath the scent of Lucy's blood and antiseptic his pores smell like nervous sweat and disappointment. Natsu can see the doctor's mouth moving but can't seem to make sense of the words – the medical jargon muddles his mind despite the clinician's clear attempts to speak his language.

"Mr. Dragneel... Do you understand?" He lays a hand on his bare shoulder. It's cold – like ice. Something in Natsu's expression must tell him that he is still so lost, because the doctor's voice softens with pity. "I can't save them both."

The air leaves his lungs in a rush, his throat clenching around a sob he refuses to release. The doctor's hands close around both of his shoulders, steering him back into one of the many chairs as his knees fail him. "But you have to," he pleas. Even to his own hear's he sounds half crazed – desperate. "You have to! They're both healthy! The baby is healthy! She's been taking those vitamins everyday, and, and eating those gross salads, and –"

The doctor's voice is firm, and even with his mind fogged by pain Natsu can hear the urgency behind his words. "Mr. Dragneel, I know this is hard, but time is critical. Your wife is unconscious and I need you to give me permission to do this procedure. I need you to tell me who to save."

Who to save?

The tired look in the doctor's dark eyes says what he won't in words. It's not just about who to save, but who to let go.

Natsu thinks of how beautiful Lucy looked that morning – how the sunlight tangled with her blonde strands as she gently rocked in the nursery chair she had taken weeks to pick out. He remembers the way her delicate hands caressed her protruding belly and smiled up at him with such warmth. He remembers the sudden rush of tenderness and love that surged through him.

Love for both of them.

It should be impossible to choose. Yet, somehow, his answer falls from his lips like a bitter tasting weight with little thought. Long after the doctor leaves he can still hear the echo of it falling to the floor. The sound rings painfully in his ears but no amount of covering them will dampen its shrill scream.

It feels like it takes days for the doctor to come back, but the steadily lightening sky outside tells him it's only been hours. There is more blood staining his coat, some of it is on his shoes, but the somber smile he gives speaks of success instead of failure.

Natsu doesn't wait for him to speak – doesn't wait for him to confirm that his wife is alive because their child is dead. "Can I see her?" he asks, his voice no more than a hoarse croak.

The small curve to the doctor's lips fades, and he gives a solemn nod. "Of course. She won't be awake for a while yet... But I'll take you back."

Natsu nods silently, not trusting his voice as he follows the physician's red and white coat down a sterile maze of doors and hallways. When they finally get to her room, it takes him a moment to recognize his wife behind the web of tubing and wires. Fresh tears burn behind his lids but he wipes them away before they can travel down his cheeks as he takes Lucy's hand in his. Her face is still pale, her pulse weak beneath his fingers, but she is undeniably alive.

He stays by her side, her hand held firmly between his and pressed intimately against his cheek while the monitor at her bedside tracks the time with monotonous beeps. Eventually one of the nurses convinces him to go home long enough to wash the blood off his skin and change into clean clothes.

It hurts to go back to their apartment. It hurts. After showering (most of which was spent numbly standing beneath the stream with the heat turned all the way on high) he finds himself in the nursery, surrounded by the various toys and gifts they had received only a week prior – several outfits from Erza and Jellal, a cloud mobile complete with a smiling sun from Juvia and Gray, and hundreds of other little things that make his heart clench. He turns away before he can let himself think too much, before he can give himself the chance to accept that in three months time the tiny room will still be silent. He shuts the door behind him.

He has to force himself to keep from running back to the hospital. He can't tell if he is resisting the urge to run back to Lucy, or to run away from the truth that sits like a ticking time bomb in the apartment at his back. When he walks into the Lucy's room she is conscious. Heavy tears roll down her cheeks and drip from her chin. Each one that falls feels like a failure – a stab to his already bruised heart. "You should have saved the baby," she sobs. "Why didn't you save the baby?!"

He feels his throat close in on the words, strangling them, but he forces them out. "I couldn't let you go."

She shakes her head and her tangled hair sticks wetly to her blotched cheeks. The strands cling to her skin the way her hands cling to hospital robe covering her stomach. "I'll never be able to forgive you," she whimpers. The confession is no more than a hoarse whisper, but the weight of it is staggering.

Natsu doesn't try to defend himself, because he knows. He knows because he isn't sure if he can ever forgive himself either. He wraps his arms around her, relieved when she doesn't push him away. As she sobs into his chest, her tears dampening the front of his shirt, he holds onto her and lets a few silent tears of his own escape. They hold each other until morning bleeds into the afternoon, and the sun sits high and bright in the sky as if to mock their pain.

A few days later, when Lucy is surrounded by friends and flowers, he walks to his favorite meadow. He goes to find some peace in solitude, to grieve away from worried eyes and maybe even bring Lucy back some flowers of his own, but when his eyes land on the colorful petals dotting the open field he feels anger instead of comfort. It rises in his chest and ignites a flame in his throat...

In a moment his meadow is turned into a sea of flames and hellfire, smoke curling up from the ground like a grieving ghost and clawing up at the sky. He lets it burn until there is nothing left but scarred, blackened earth. The ashes that fall stick to his dampened cheeks and dust his hair as his hands clench into the the steaming soil.

A daughter. They would have had a daughter.

AN: This was really, really hard for me to write. I imagine that it would be hard even if I wasn't pregnant, but … well, lets just say I shed myself some tears in the writing of this. Honestly, I can't even believe I went through with it. Obviously I'm not a medical professional, so I don't know if this kind of situation is even plausible, so forgive me if what I've written is completely wrong...

I'm … just going to go hide under the covers for a while.