Protection: A Fairy Tail Fanfiction

Chapter Four: Contradiction

"Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation." - Edward R. Murrow

CHAPTER IV: Contradiction

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NATSU'S head, to put it simply, was a mess after Erza kicked him out.

He wanted to pretend that this was all just a horrible nightmare. Pretend that the last three days hadn't happened; that he was going to wake up soon and that he would go on some mission. But that was impossible, and it was stupid for him to even consider that this might be just a bad dream. He'd never run from anything, and after Igneel...

Well, he wasn't going to forget that lesson. There was no way he was going to let anybody else get hurt because of his naivety. There was no way he was going to accept Zeref's words just like that. They were just crazy! It was impossible for them to be brothers. Just thinking about it was completely insane; Zeref was evil. He was the stuff of nightmares. Children across Fiore were warned not to be bad because the Evil Sorcerer Zeref would take them away from their parents. Zeref loved nothing and he had no family. Certainly not a younger brother who was a member of a light guild of his greatest enemy.

So why had he jumped in front of him like that? Why had he shielded him with his own arms and his own body from that mage? He had thrown his arms out like he could shield him and he had taken a dagger that had not been meant for him. Natsu could have died if Zeref hadn't done that; or he could have found a way to avoid it. But he hadn't had time to think, and Zeref had saved his life.

It was hard for him to wrap his mind around it. He'd just done that, like he had to protect him or something, even though Natsu knew that he didn't need anyone's protection, let alone some mad sorcerer's. He didn't understand why he would do it. Why he had saved his life like that. Natsu knew evil and he knew redemption and there was no way Zeref should have been capable of being so selfless if he was as evil and as corrupt as everyone said. And it baffled Natsu, because he knew it wasn't just stories and myths that people uttered because they feared Zeref. Every great story had a grain of truth in it.

So.

That meant that Zeref had to have had a motivation behind saving his life.

Was he lying to him about being his brother? Except Natsu didn't give a damn about blood being thicker than water, and his actions made that obvious. He made his own family. He chose them. He was an orphan and it didn't bother him because a dragon had taken him in and had given him so much. He never placed much hope in family. Perhaps he had lied to him, thinking that he would lower his guard around him, so that he could capture Mavis or do something that would destroy everything he held dear?

But that would require premeditation. It would require watching Natsu for years, learning his weaknesses. If he wanted to infiltrate Fairy Tail, there would be a number of ways to make it easier rather than pretending that he was related to somebody. He should have appealed to their sense of goodness; should have pretended that he was a lost soul and wanted to turn over a new leaf or something.

Anything would have made more sense than this.

However, if he was telling the truth... Natsu didn't know what to think about that. If he hadn't lied, then that meant that they were brothers, that there was someone still alive that was related to him. It was ridiculous enough to almost be true. He certainly seemed to believe it.

But even if it was true, it didn't mean that Zeref was good. It didn't mean that he should trust him. If anything, it meant that he should be even more wary. He'd never had blood relatives; had never really thought about it much. But he knew that it was in his nature to get angry quickly and to forgive just as quickly. If he started getting attached to Zeref, because he started to believe that they were brothers...