Ice and Igni (Chapter 2)
Pt. 1 (definitely read this first) ; AO3
Rating: M (suggestive content especially in this chapter but no smut, though there will be some if I choose to continue with this story. I also want to do a Nalu/Gruvia stone age omake to precede this one maybe but we'll see).
See AO3 for tags and stuff please.
Summary: It isn't the first time Nasha has gotten lost while hunting, but it is the first time one of the males who abandoned her tribe long ago is the one to find her...and it just had to be while she's bathing. All she wanted was to become a stronger huntress than Erza!
I don't own Fairy Tail, only this silly little plotline.
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Chapter 2: Igni Faces Ice
The second her tribe had settled into their new encampment, Nasha had run off, waving goodbye to her family and pretending she couldn’t hear her mother screeching for her to come back.
It was probably selfish of her to ditch her mom, her little brother Luke, and the flying cat Harley, to set up camp by themselves. But she hated setting up camp! It was sooo boring.
Besides, she wasn’t really being selfish; she’d scooped up her bow and spear before she left. Their tribe had been walking as far as they could every day for weeks. They’d already been hungry, but now, several tribe members had meat cravings. Nasha would get a saber-boar or a long-tailed moose, something big enough to fill everyone’s bellies before Erza could beat her to it.
It was only when she realized she was lost that it occurred to her that she maybe, possibly should have stopped to listen to her mom…because she might have said something about the unfamiliarity of the area and needing to be careful to keep track of how far she’d gone.
Usually, Nasha would use her sharp sense of smell to find her way back, but there were so many new and unfamiliar smells around here—plants and animals she’d never seen before! She kept getting distracted which, in turn, made her get even more lost.
Once, she could’ve sworn she caught the scent a person, but even that was strange. Her instincts told her it was definitely human, but on the other hand, it was nothing like the scent of anyone she’d ever met.
Stronger. Deeper. More pungent.
It was so old and faint that she could only catch a wisp of it the once.
She wondered, briefly, if it could be a male. But she quickly dismissed the idea. The women’s tribe had been wandering for years, mostly in search of their men and boys. So far, they’d turned up squat. How likely was it they’d really find them this time?
The males had vanished years ago, when she was just a little girl. Even her dad. The only reason Luke was with the women’s tribe at all was because her mom hadn’t known she was pregnant when her father vanished. If Luke had already been born, the men would have taken him, too. And no one knew why.
Nasha had stopped asking her mom about her dad long ago. Talking about him made her mom too sad. Secretly, though, Nasha was determined to find him and the other men, one day. She’d demand answers regardless of whether he wanted to give them. She’d beat them out of him, if she had to. She wanted to know why she wasn’t good enough for him to stick around and watch her grow up. Nasha was strong. She was one of the best huntresses in her tribe. She always protected her family.
She’d inherited his igni.
“Ooh, what’s that bunny!” she gasped, chasing after a crazy looking rabbit with horns and a purple, spiky tail. It got away, leaving her pouting in the strange woods. She could’ve used stealth to try and kill it, but she knew better than to keep hunting now, no matter how bad she wanted to surpass Erza. The acceptability for risk went way down the second she got lost. Carrying around bloody, stinky dead prey she couldn’t even be sure was edible while lost was a bad idea.
She still acted without thinking sometimes, but Nasha wasn’t as reckless as she’d once been. She’d gained her holy mounds and come into her blood years ago. She’d even grown taller than all the women in her tribe except Cana. With age came experience. With experience came wisdom or death, and Nasha had no plans of croaking any time soon.
It wasn’t long before her head thudded in pain from sniffing so much confusing, new stuff. Her feet hurt, too, and she was sweating like crazy. It was strange for her to be hot (or cold, for that matter) with her power over igni, but the air was humid, sludging through her lungs and making the back of her neck itch. She’d drunk all her water long ago.
The sun blazed near its highest point when she pushed through some bushes with weird, swirly, blue leaves and found a spring. She cried out in relief when she dipped a toe in the water and found it cold. Her pelts and necklaces were still soaring through the hot air when she vanished under the surface with a huge splash.
“Thank Mother Mavis,” she moaned, floating on her back and closing her eyes. As the aches ebbed from her head and feet and the water cooled her sticky skin, she started to worry about how she’d get back, tears forming in her eyes, but she quickly shook it off. Panicking wouldn’t help. She’d refresh herself, fill up her skein with some buried water from over near that limestone she’d spotted while undressing, user her igni to boil it, and then figure out what to do.
She only wished she knew which plants she could use to clean herself, but she didn’t know any of these ones. So Nasha used her hands to scrub water against her scalp, neck, and more pungent bits, ending with the folds of her blessed valley. She flushed slightly as her fingers rubbed that spot that always made her breath go funny and her skin feel hot. The older women in the tribe spoke of such things, at times, but those conversations always came back around to the males and their “sacred rods”, which were some kind of shape-shifting snake they had where their blessed valleys were supposed to be.
At that point, women like her mom, Wendy, and Erza always blushed and forced everyone to change the subject, not that Nasha really cared. She knew some things. She knew the males were sorta like them, but bigger overall. She knew that just talking about them and their sacred rods made the older women act weird. They’d blush and smile and their eyes would get all dark and they’d generally act like freaks.
They’d giggle about the power they claimed to hold over the sacred rods. To Nasha, it seemed pretty obvious that it was the males who held some kind of power over them (except Wendy and Cana…although Cana got flushed and weird when it came to discussions of sacred rods and blessed valleys, truthfully.)
Nasha didn’t really think about it much. She was curious enough to listen a bit when they spoke on it, but not enough to ask about it like her best friend, Jeela, often did. Then again, Jeela was a lot like her mom, Levy; intensely curious even about things she’d never seen.
Nasha was the opposite. Who cared about whatever weird tumors the males had growing out of their blessed valleys? They weren’t around so it didn’t matter. At least not as much as tonight’s meal, tomorrow’s journey, the scent on the breeze, or the shape of the moon.
The only reason she even believed the stories was because she trusted her mom and the other women in their tribe. Plus there was Luke, who never denied the existence of the sacred rods, which meant he must have one. Not that Nasha had ever seen it or had any desire to. She did know he could pee standing up, which was so not fair!
Quickly withdrawing her hand from the folds of her blessed valley, she shook off the weird thoughts and waded out until the water came up to her knees. Turning, she squinted up at the sun and tried to gauge its lean, lifting an arm to cover the peaks on her holy mounds as the hot breeze tickled them distractingly.
There was a rustling sound behind her, making her heart slam into her throat. She whipped around halfway, eyes wide as the rustling grew louder.
A tree branch was pushed aside.
And then he was there.
The male’s scent hit her the second her eyes landed on him. He was downwind so she hadn’t caught it sooner. She knew, then, that the scent she’d caught earlier had been a male’s—not his, though. His was much nicer than that one. Cleaner, with something cold and fresh about it, but the two scents shared a quality she’d never encountered on any female’s scent or even Luke's, though he was only ten.
The older women had not lied about the males’ height and strength. Nasha was by far the most visibly muscular woman in her tribe, but this male’s shoulders, arms, and stomach were just ridiculous. He was also much taller than her or even Cana, still slightly ducking under a branch Nasha had easily walked under when he stilled completely. She wondered how he could even teeter and totter around like that.
A shocked expression consumed his unusual, angular face. A pair of wide blue eyes dropped to her legs, then climbed up.
Meanwhile, Nasha blinked. There was a woman in their tribe with clear, strange blue eyes like that. Juvia, who held such power over izu that rain fell whenever she spoke of her missing male, “Gray-sama,” and son, “Rage-chan” (or something…it was hard to understand what she said when she always sobbed and wailed). The other women would groan whenever her anguish called the izu, but Nasha kind of thought it was awesome. Juvia was so powerful, she called on her element without even meaning to.
Plus using her igni in the rain was good training, so Nasha often used Juvia’s despair to get stronger, standing near the wailing woman and roaring as she generated a blaze from her skin under the downpour until she couldn’t any more. Her mom sometimes yelled at Nasha for it, accusing her of being insensitive, but what was better? Leaving Juvia crying alone in the rain just because you were a baby about getting a little wet?
Other than Juvia, she’d never seen anyone else who had eyes like the ocean under a clear sky…
Except the first male she’d ever seen.
Nasha’s dumbfounded attention stayed on those eyes even while they clambered over every inch of her bare body, barely even noticing how they lingered in certain places—her rear, her mounds, her hair. Then they locked onto hers.
Her lips parted on a gasp. A powerful feeling she couldn’t fight or place swept through her. If familiarity was the sun, then this feeling was the moon. I don’t know him, her mind insisted, almost panicked. But something deep inside her, deeper even than the instincts she always relied on, disagreed. I always have.
The feeling was blown clean out of her head when the male’s cheeks suddenly went bright red, his expression twisted in pain, and he dropped his spears to clutch the spot between his legs. “What…the…hell?” he gritted out in a voice so deep, she nearly flew through the forest canopy. Then he collapsed to his knees.
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That nurse au? Devoured it and it lives in my brain rent free. If Simon and Johnny notice the bruises on Nurse do they share looks? Maybe Johnny tries to gently ask about them? I loved this so much.
Anon is referencing this.
The way nurse x ghoap has spread through my brain like a flesh eating bacteria is insane. And I can't actually answer this ask because I'm writing it as a fic but I'm happy to give you a little possible snippet/glimpse/ramble down below:
The tablet in your hand chimes, drawing your attention away from the vending machine and to it's far-too-bright-for-this-ungodly-hour screen, to where it displays a status change in red.
268: 38.5 degrees.
Fuck. You abandon your sub par dinner options for nearly sprinting to the room, slowing to a walk to take long, deep breaths before your knuckles are rapping on the glass. Get control of yourself. Simon is too perceptive. He will panic. It could be nothing.
You don't even bother acknowledging your thought process there, the truth that is starting to bleed from your heart, through your body like a disease. The reason why you check on them so often, the reason why you can't stop thinking about them, even when you're off shift. The reason why, when you go home in the morning to go to bed, you drift off thinking about Johnny's sleepy smile, or Simon's voice, humming in your ears.
"Hi." You whisper when you slip inside. He straightens a bit in the armchair, but you're happy to see he's using it as a recliner now, progress from last week when he wouldn't even let himself lean backwards, or fall asleep willingly.
His brow furrows above the black mask.
"Hey, everything alright?" Shit. You're not surprised, you were just in here, after all. Spending too much time sitting in the chair opposite him, next to Johnny, on your break before your patient fell asleep.
"Yeah, I ah... have to draw some blood." You really do not want to wake him up, or alarm Simon, but you also refuse to lie to either of them. You fire off a text to the attending on call, just to advise him of Johnny's temperature and the impending labs that he can expect, before sliding a drawer open as softly as possible and pulling out everything you'll need. You can feel his gaze burning a hole in your scrubs, his ever present scrutiny impossible to escape. Sometimes you think he might be reading your fucking mind.
"He just fell asleep." He protests, and you think, you imagine, that he's frowning behind the mask. You think you almost know what it looks like, strong mouth pulled downwards in consternation, wide jaw gnashed tight.
"I know, but he's running just a bit of a fever." He jolts, and you hold up a hand in caution. "It's not too high, so I'm not super worried, but we'll need to check his white cell count, just in case okay? And then we'll go from there."
"Post op fever is common." He repeats the words you told him last week, after Johnny's second surgery, the one where they went in for the pneumothorax complication, and you nod to reassure him.
"Right. So, just going to do a quick blood draw and get it downstairs so we can find out what's going on." Simon shifts uncomfortably, but nods. You squeeze Johnny's shoulder softly, before swabbing the spot on the inside of his elbow.
He blinks, eyes opening slowly, confused brow smoothing when he looks from his partner, over to you.
"There's our girl." He mumbles softly, and your face heats, eyes widening in surprise before you regulate your reaction. Simon coughs, loudly, and you shake your head with a nervous smile.
"Such a flirt, MacTavish." You tie him fast, fingers a little more clumsy than usual, off balance from hearing him say 'our girl', like you mean something to them. "I just need to get some blood and then I'll leave you in peace." He shrugs, but Simon grabs for his hand and squeezes it.
"Ah come on, Si." He slurs, but reaches to cup Simon's cheek over the mask, rubbing a thumb over the fabric.
"You're runnin’ a fever, Johnny."
"Ach. 's nothing." He brushes it off, but you watch how his eyes are slow to track Simon's movements. You casually glance at the monitor, noting his blood pressure.
"Could be." You assure him. "But can't be too sure, so we're going to check a few labs, alright?" He nods, sleepy, already falling back under, and you pull the needle, taping a small patch of gauze over the puncture in one fell swoop. “Alright. Let me run these down, and I’ll be back up to check on you in a bit.” You turn, stripping your gloves off into the trash.
“We’ll miss ye.” He whispers, and you roll your eyes playfully, even as your stomach clenches.
Simon’s eyes don’t leave you for a single second, not until the door is shut and you’re out of sight.
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