Somebody Else

The battles they underwent were ugly. Possibly the ugliest they'd ever seen, Tartaros not withstanding. Magnolia was an unrecognizable battlefield, their guild, that sat as their HQ, and the place Lucy once called home, her lovely little apartment on Strawberry Street, was nothing but another pile of rubble in no-man's land.

There was so much at stake. So many lives, young and old; so many hopes; so many dreams. But then, as only he could do, Natsu stepped in and picked up the battle by the scruff and threw himself into it like a raging inferno. He was a burst of battle cries and blazing fires. He gave them renewed hope. He gave them reassurance. And, somehow, they managed to win another tomorrow.

Rather, they thought and hoped they won, anyways.

At the peak of their opponent's loss, the commanders of their enemy and what was left of the Spriggan 12 simply withdrew and vanished without a trace. Even Brandish, the only likely ally that stood among them, retreated at the bid of her Emperor. Once again, Zeref and his remaining pawns managed to slip out of their hands – more importantly, out of Natsu's reach – and become one with the shadows surrounding them.

However, for the moment being, they would bask in the light of victory. There would be time again to fear how he would approach them during their next encounter and exactly what the losses they incurred this time were. So, the scent of smoke and rubble was replaced with euphoria. Where there were bruises and bleeding, they were tended to with medical help from the sky sisters and booze dug out from the undamaged guild cellar – courtesy of a desperate Cana Alberona.

In the midst of the raucous celebrations, Lucy limped out of the sea of bodies with loose hair and tattered clothes in jittery anticipation. Though Wendy insisted that she help her, the celestial mage assured her she was no worse for wear than usual and to prioritize others' more heavily wounded. Noticing the distracted motion of Lucy's eyes, Wendy relented to letting her stagger off. Nevertheless, it took longer than she would have liked, dodging an eccentric Ichiya in the midst of pestering the Raijinshu to their wits' end and softly smiling when she caught sight of Erza and Jellal huddled closely in a quieter corner, wrapped around each other gently. Kagura stood as a self-appointed guard for them, standing several feet away and snapping at anyone who dared look their way. Yukino waved to her from where she sat with her guild mates and Sorano, rekindling her bond with the latter after their years apart. Lucy gave a short wave back and walked on.

The dull ache in her leg grew into shooting pains but she stubbornly continued to push herself forward.

A year's absence, no matter the new promises and stitches used to mend her broken heart, still caused her doubt. It was an ugly, nauseating feeling to have when Lucy knew that he would be safe, that he would be whole. She knew she would be. He promised her, after all. But, for the sake of certainty, she had to see him for herself. So, when her eyes finally found Natsu, her anxiety frittered away, consumed by the strength of her relief. She forgot about her hobble in favour of forcing herself into an unsteady sprint and threw herself at him in a breathtaking mess of limbs, hair, tears, and smiles.

Choking back a cry, Lucy clung to him and buried her face into his chest, numb to any one or thing in the world besides her best friend.

He tensed up, caught unaware and unsure of what to do. Arms hung limp and awkward at his sides while she beamed at him up, bright laughter in her glossy brown eyes. Her lips moved but he was deaf to her words, still reeling even when she pressed herself warmly against his body again. There was an urge to kill, a flare of vengeance and wrath. He wanted – needed – to soak his hands into her flesh and douse his skin in warm, crimson blood.

But he couldn't. It only served to confuse and frustrate him further.

Is this what Zeref meant when he said he was "not yet ready?" After all, E.N.D finally escaped from the confines of the pesky dragon slayer. After the years where he was put down to wait and watch, to wallow in the recesses of some other person's mind while his own body was used – abused – without knowledge or purpose. His forthcoming should have been titanic; the earth should have cowered before him and the sky should have shrunk under his might. But it didn't. The world stood still, idly watching him crawl on its surface with not even a fraction of his true power. The magic flowing through his veins was wrong. E.N.D was a fearsome creature; more than any human or demon or slayer could imagine to be. The magic he presently seized, though forceful and heated, did not agree with his constitution; it was too slow and too weak to sustain his full capacity.

And in spite of his misery, as well as hatred for the feeble Natsu Dragneel, he was so inexplicably drawn to the human girl and attuned to her every action. The way the crown of her head rested against his collar and her fingers clutched at the fabric over his back and her deep, steady breathing. The currents of her power, although withdrawn, swirling around her in mellow golden waves and gradually cocooning him, too. E.N.D unwittingly found himself syncopating his breath with hers, the turbulent stream of his own magic coaxed into entwining with her without his express volition.

Then someone screamed; a violent, shuddering, blood-curdling roar: "Lemme out!"

Provoked by upheaval within his body, the flow of his magic was disrupted and violently recoiled from her own, hissing and spitting and sparking furiously. Again, she managed to gently lure the unruly energy back into her rhythm. Actually, he didn't think she even knew what was happening, let alone consciously controlling them. He found himself vaguely interested in their mannerisms.

So, E.N.D hesitantly wrapped his arms around her trim middle, absently minding the way the muscles in the limb contracted. His eyebrows furrowed when his fingers curled at tender, yielding flesh that would be ridiculously easy to rip through. She pressed closer still, entirely vulnerable in the circle of his arms. It was the first of many clues as to how easy she would be to take; to kill off. Yet he refrained.

E.N.D slowly opened his mouth, conscious of the way it felt to contract his jaw, tongue feeling around every silent syllable and breath of the foreign name long before he uttered it: "Lucy."

Natsu Dragneel had everyone's confidence.

Therefore, it was easy fooling the humans. For years, he watched the interactions occur with baleful hatred and the promise of slaughtering every face his vision came across. More often than not it was of the imbecile idealists of the insufferable Fairy Tail. All in all, it was easy to conclude Natsu Dragneel was a simpleton – as were his so-called comrades.

On a daily basis, he was forced to interact and jest with the wretched humans. He found that he was arousing the smallest flickers of suspicion among the iron and wind dragon slayers. Upon an accidental leak of his magic – the ice mage really knew how to push his buttons – the two quipped he smelled "funny." He was relieved of making up a flimsy excuse by the same human whose fault it was in the first place. E.N.D decided then and there that the first person to be annihilated, for trying his patience on a daily basis, would be Gray Fullbuster.

Even so, none infuriated him more than that feline companion of his and the celestial mage, Lucy Heartfilia. How he loathed Lucy Heartfilia.

She was, more than anyone else in this putrid group, full of unnecessary laughter and chatter. The Heartfilia-girl was the very embodiment of everything he hated; everything human. She spoke too much; complained too much; laughed too much; trusted too much.

The nights he would spend with the cat in the little hut that belonged to the fire dragon slayer, he was still privy to the sound of her heartbeat and gentle breathing on the other side of town. Her scent lingered on and around him, sticking to him like a second skin, especially powerful as he entered her room every morning, routinely at the crack of dawn. Unbothered and oblivious, the feline would slink off to her pantries, leaving him to stand and wait by her sleeping form.

The sunlight streamed through her open window as her scent, stronger than ever within her own residence, assaulted him. The celestial wizard would shift, whether from the heat of his hateful glare or the sun, he did not know, and sometimes sigh the vile name he was forced to take: "Natsu." It made his blood boil, red hot.

E.N.D would take great pleasure in ripping the very light from her soul. The images were vivid; he would draw out the fullness of her agony and watch the light of her pathetic magic fade to grey. He would not just break her, but completely destroy her. Until that day, he would take advantage of her and her thoughtlessly unconditional trust.

"If you even think about touching her, I'll–" the voice went ignored.

Natsu Dragneel was an idiot and it was tiring to pretend to act as such.

He'd long shucked the blazer he was forced into at the beginning of the night, no sooner than the pushy red-head was out of sight. It became increasingly hard to resist the day-to-day urge to roast her in her thickly plated armour. So, after slinking into a dark corner with a drink in hand and burning the damn noose they called a 'tie' around his neck, he decided to give himself reprieve tonight from being Natsu Dragneel. He ripped the stiff dress shirt open at the collar and downed half of his drink in one go, coming back down with a bitter hiss. It wasn't strong enough.

Then again, he reflected, nothing could ever compare to his strength.

Therefore, as long as that bastard ice-mage and the metal-headed asshole didn't approach him for the rest of the night, he would have no reason to completely throw caution to the wind and burn down the building. It was still too soon to act. Little by little, he felt flares of his true power congregate within him but the process was slow. Without the leverage of the book Zeref created for him, it would continue at a sluggish rate and he would have to rely on this guild as a cover. At least until he was half as strong.

In the din of the crowds behind him, E.N.D singled out a laugh and, unwittingly, his eyes flicked over to the source on the make-shift dance floor. In a skin-tight blue dress and a complicated looking up-do, the Heartfilia-girl carried herself like a bungling moron. She waltzed with the puny sky-dragon slayer, hips swaying until they bumped purposefully into the bushy-haired script mage, whose name he could never remember, into the iron-head and then watched the duo splutter with a gleeful sneer. She giggled impudently, her coy smile bordering feral.

Instantly, his eyes locked onto the expression, taking in the sight of her flushed cheeks before slowly roaming down to her lips, then further down and down until they lingered at where the fabric stretched tautly over her (shapely) backside.

Catching himself, he mumbled a string of curses and then downed the rest of his drink with a grunt. Damn thing just wasn't strong enough!

"So, looks like you have grown, Natsu," a scathing voice near him droned. Body becoming rigid at the repulsive name, he turned his head slowly to meet the audacious piece of shit with sharp eyes.

It turned out to be the lightening-mage and he stared down at him with an infuriatingly self-righteous smirk tugging at his usually impassive mug. "What?"

Laxus scoffed, falling back into his usual apathy. "Don't start playing dumb now." His narrow eyes fixed him with a pointed look before they travelled to Lucy with a mixture of obvious suggestion and impress. E.N.D mimicked the movement, now watching her grinding uninhibitedly with the barmaid and the guild's biggest drunkard. In particular, he followed a particular bead of sweat that trailed down from her forehead to her neck and between her—

"So," he queried frostily, looking back at Laxus with hard eyes. If Natsu Dragneel seemed oddly out of character, the lightening-mage gave no indication of noticing it. Instead, the corners of his mouth twitched into a minute grin and toasted him silently before chugging down his drink.

"'Bout time, too." Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, Laxus got up and walked off elsewhere.

When he finally thought he would finally be left to brood irritably in peace, the cause of his irritation decided to innocuously make her way over and sit herself on the stool beside him. His fingers twitched, the destructive magic at his fingertips itching to be used. It would be easy; one second and she would be nothing but a pile of ashes. Deep in his mind, a livid growl sounded, baring its teeth in a gesture that was all bark and no bite.

Lucy sighed breathily, rubbing a hand from her reddened face and down to her collar with a satisfied huff at finally giving her feet a break. She turned and grinned crookedly at him, folding her hands on the counter. "What're you doing just sitting here on your own?"

It was strange to not see him itching to fight when surrounded by so many potential opponents that he could beat. Or maybe, it was precisely because of that. After all, Gray and Gajeel were both off somewhere with their respective dates.

"Jus' drinkin'," he said into the rim of his empty glass, eye brows knitted together and avoiding whatever sappy look she might have had on her face.

Stupid as they were, any other human would be able to take a hint. But, apparently, she was thick enough to bypass any logical assumption that he had no wish to be in her company; not tonight, not ever. His nose wrinkled as the air filled with 'Lucy,' the reaction poles apart from the completely receptive nature of his energy, which never missed the opportunity to curl around her when she was near and his own hackles were down.

She hummed, an amused twinkle in her eyes while looking over the outfit he carelessly took apart. For Natsu's sake, she was glad Erza was seated on the other side of the room and hunched over an entire cake. Yet, when they met early in the evening, she quickly noted something was missing. 'His scarf.' Realizing that Erza must have forced him leave his beloved scarf for just tonight, it must have been taking a larger toll on him than she expected, if his grumpy mood was anything to account by.

Her eyes softened.

"Natsu," she started and the sympathy in her voice, pity really, nauseated him. It irritated him that, whatever unfathomable reason she conjured, this human toll could look down on him. E.N.D grit his teeth, feeling the demonic magic roll in unison with his rage and climb up his throat.

'This bitch…' On the other side, he immediately went on the defensive, threatening to burn his tongue to a crisp and skin him alive. 'Your weak fists and weaker magic will never reach me.'

All of a sudden, her scent consumed his senses and gold invaded his vision. She leaned into him, close enough for every sparkle on her dress to catch his eyes. E.N.D sat stock still, letting her have her way without a droplet of strife.

With expert fingers, Lucy fixed the collars of his dress shirt, knuckles brushing against his pulse and skimming across his scar. His magic acted up again, running along the steady stream of hers and curling around it with a control that was foreign to the nature of fire. Then, she smoothed her hands down the front in overt appreciation, fingertips lingering at his abdomen for a few seconds before she straightened up again. In those eleven seconds, E.N.D took in everything about her: her dilated pupils, racing heart, jumping pulse, shallow breaths, and the slight way she shifted in her seat. But her smile remained bright, giving away little to nothing. But he knew. Oh, he knew it too well.

"You look good tonight." Though a seemingly casual remark, a lilt of mischief pushed up to the surface of her mellowed eyes. He kept his eyes on her, analyzing all the knowledge that had unfurled under his attention, and wondered what else would follow. The racket of the guild softened to no more than a pulse in the background. "Less like your usual monkey-suit."

Probably for the first time, E.N.D found himself indirectly agreeing with Natsu Dragneel. The real monkey-suit was his current attire. At least his usual clothes were comfortable and made for easy movement and durability for when he needed to turn someone into charcoal. But it seemed even this newfound 'bond' failed to connect with the little bastard who was, as usual in the celestial mage's presence, griping about wanting his body back.

Natsu Dragneel was reckless and impulsive, jumping into the first action that bypassed his brain and then whole-heartedly putting his spirits into fulfilling that action, regardless of the consequences it could bring.

E.N.D was not nearly as foolhardy or emotional.

And then came the hour when he found the hem of her dress in one hand, the other already crawling up and under it. Lucy held her breath in nervous anticipation, her mouth a scant space away from his. He felt the slight brush of her tongue when she licked her lips and fisted the flimsy fabric.

A second of consideration, another second to listen to a pointless threat, and after all that he defiantly rolled the thin garment away from her flesh. No one told E.N.D what to do – especially some low-life voice of a forgotten human in his head. Inch by inch, smooth skin exposed itself and he was remarkably fascinated when it rose from nothing but his breath, her entire body rippling with a shiver. His gaze travelled along the plains and hills and valleys that made the expanse of her covetous figure until it was all off. Possessiveness coiled in his gut, drowning the dragon slayer's dread, and he left the cloth a heap on her floor.

The small bedroom that the blue creature always insisted they barge into was unbearably stuffy, particularly as she pressed flush against him. He listened to her anxious heart pound thunderously into the otherwise silent night. She carded her fingers through his hair, nails scraping along the roots and breathing life into him. It was provoking and made him growl low into her mouth, not answering the escalating expletives that he was always an audience to in her presence. She dove against the bed, her back to the fall and pulling him along; he readily chased her down.

His clothes quickly followed hers.

Several hours later, he lay in bed naked and appropriately breathless while Lucy panted into the crook of his neck, struggling to catch her breath. The act of being winded was a voluntary action necessary for his façade. Yet, the fingers that caressed down the side of her hip and a lingering desire for more and eyes that roved her figure greedily – swollen lips down to her abdomen and finally to their tangled legs – were all involuntary. To his chagrin, E.N.D couldn't help himself from touching her, running his hands across her body, callouses dragging against her softer and more compliant flesh.

The ferocious screaming had long died down into pained sobbing, punching at invisible walls feebly.

He was her first.

E.N.D mulled over the memory of the soft confession while he returned the same words to her. Sadistic pleasure stroked his ego while he revelled in knowing how deeply this wound would cut in the future. At least it wasn't a lie.

He dragged the edge of his finger over her freckled flesh, the touch unhurried and lingering, scribbling nonsense as her cold foot slipped under his ankle in an effort to draw warmth from him. The fire inside was not yet assuaged, he realized with a lazy blink. E.N.D felt further bursts of satisfaction at the little bastard's horror. Why not, he figured. It would be like killing to birds with one stone. Screaming pointlessly picked up again when rough hands maneuvered Lucy back underneath him to mould mouths once more and tangle callous fingers into her long hair. She responded with fervour.

How he loved seeing her writhe, face contorted and muscles trembling helplessly. But when she arched up, gasping his name again, scorching resentment licked him. He dug his fingers into her flesh with enough force to leave a trail of dark, circular bruises on her supple hips and worked her up feverishly. Lucy only continued to antagonize him more, rasping and sobbing that damned name while he was the one that had her spread against the plush bed and keening into the pillow.

It was only to be expected that she liked him rough, too.

Once again, the howling died until it was nothing but a string of pathetic whimpers, curled in on itself. But, E.N.D could pay no attention to it. He had neither the will nor the energy to do so, too busy reeling over the novelty of feeling his lungs burn from exertion and body satiated against her quivering shoulder blades, her name never far from his lips.

Lucy's hair tickled his face. Without his usual aggravation, he swept the blond locks aside to nuzzle her skin, silently enthralled by how the currents of their magic, gold glitter interlacing black embers, ebbed and flowed in unison. Then, he inhaled the addictive scent of her flesh – the smell of stars and fresh grass spiked with the smoky, somewhat spicy scent of firewood – and decided he would not be moved until he so pleased.

Under him, Lucy turned herself around, forcing him to shift with a grumble, just to hold his head tenderly to her chest. With her other hand, she pulled the blankets up on them and wriggled to get comfortable. He required no cue to also fold his arms about her, showing no resistance to the urge to drag his teeth across her collar and soothe it with a simple press of lips. Wanton satisfaction churned insistently in his gut seeing the large, discoloured patch against her unmarred skin.

"Mm, Natsu," she groaned, scolding him half-heartedly while twisting her fingers in his sweat-matted mane.

'No, I'm not,' he thought darkly, listening to the booming heartbeat under his ear and shoving down the voice that ached to be heard with it. The deafening sounds of a ticking time bomb, ready to burst at his word. She was such a weak, feeble human and she had nothing to live for but a swift death. So why did he suddenly find himself wanting to selfishly prolong her existence?

Without taking the time to think twice about the spiel of questions, E.N.D gathered her close and closed his eyes to sleep for the first time.

Author's Note: I wrote this on a whim right after seeing all those crack theories on came out "END!Natsu slowly falling for Lucy while masquerading as the real Natsu and hating himself because Lucy's feelings are for the later and not him." But yes, old fandom theories aside, I've had it on my hard drive ever since, where it sat and quietly collected e-dust for the past few months. IMO, it's rather slap-dash and a little on the sloppy side, but I couldn't stand it having it take up space any longer.

I'd love to hear what you think on it! And, just for fun, leave me your own personal headcanons and theories and ideas on either this or any other chapter! I live for that wholesome fandom creativity :)

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