Natsu groaned.
His whole body ached. It was an effort to merely open his eyes, and when he finally managed, his eyes showed him much the same thing they had when they were closed. Darkness.
He wasn't sure if he was in his own dungeon or another, but either way he was chained. Cold stone bit into his knees while the chains chafed his wrists, his spread arms hanging limply. He had no energy to struggle. They'd even pinioned his wings. The leather straps were pulled too-tight over his chest, biting into his skin and restricting his wings so much he wondered if he'd ever be able to straighten them again. It seemed his tail had been broken for good measure too.
Without much else to do than wallow in his pain, he wondered how long he'd been out for. An hour? A day? A week? There was no way to tell. It hurt a little to breathe. Everything hurt, in one way or another. Perhaps the most painful of all was the pain in his chest.
Natsu tried his best to keep the tears of frustration at bay but he couldn't stop his uneven breaths and the shaking of his shoulders. He grit his teeth. He had been a fool. Countless times, he'd failed to see the truth. Four hundred years of life and yet he'd never learned a damn thing.
A flash of hatred burned through him so hot that it give him a spur of energy to pull in vain against the chains. Who had marked this path for him? Did Fate feast on his suffering? All he had ever wanted in life was to be happy. From the moment he entered the world, he had been despised for the suffering he caused. His presence around his father and his brother had been like picking at a scab. The wound would not heal unless you left it alone. So he'd left, trying to find his own happiness while hopefully giving them back theirs.
He had found happiness. Deep under the earth with a mighty dragon that had given him a home. But Fate had other plans, and had ripped his happiness away. She hadn't even given him the courtesy of putting an end to his suffering. Casting him out from the world beyond this one and handing him back to his brother.
Years and years later, after more than a lifetime of blood and ashes, he'd thought maybe fate hadn't been so cruel after all, because he had met Lucy.
After a fleeting bout of naive happiness, his own idiocy had caught up with him. And now, this. Locked away. Shrouded in the wrong kind of darkness. Couldn't Fate just cut him a break?
He should have known he wouldn't get what he wanted. He never had before, why would he now? He should have been afraid to be happy again. It was the way thing went, after all. The things that made him happy had a tendency to be slaughtered before his eyes. He was never given the mercy of going with them.
The resentment for Fate's design stoked the fires within him, but the flames never came. The fire was trapped inside of him, making him sweat when he struggled to push it to the surface.
Zeref's doing.
Then again, what wasn't Zeref's doing? His brother seemed to have been conspiring with Fate, because every misery in Natsu's life could be linked to Zeref in one way or another. He probably looked at their mother's swollen stomach with contempt even before Natsu was born.
If only he had the power to kill his wretched brother.
As if summoned by his murderous thoughts, the darkness cracked and a stream of light broke into the room. Natsu flinched when the light hit eyes, cringing at his brothers form framed in the doorway.
Natsu had known agony, but fear churned in his gut at the look in Zeref's eyes. It was clear that pain was soon to become his closest friend.
While Zeref ordered a light and a chair to be brought into the cell for him, something stirred within Natsu. It tickled the inside of his chest like the flutter of butterfly's wings, slowly spreading a warm, contented feeling through his body.
