GRUVIA WEEK HERE I COME

I HOPE TO HEAVEN I WILL DO BETTER THAN I DID ON GAJEVY WEEK

I'll try my best to update ON TIME this time around! Thanks very much for 29 watchers! Prompt 1 may be short, but I spent lots of energy into making it centered around quality not quantity, so I hope you enjoy ^^

Also, just to make things clear, this is after the disbanding of the guild (in case anyone gets a little confused!)

Prompt: Memories

Some nights he wakes up to the sound of rain, dripping wet fingers tapping against the window and slipping down to the ground in wet, fading trails. Some nights he wakes up to thunder and lightning roaring in the sky, as if a dragon were swooping high above in the clouds. Some nights he wakes up to the soft, crackling hiss of fire in the hearth. Some nights the sound of the metal blinds rattling against each other greets him. Some nights the wind howls, wolflike, to the moon, and growls low in his ears when he struggles to sit up. And some nights he wakes up to silence, to utter empty silence: a solemn, patient stillness that blankets the house like a thick coat of fresh snow.

He hates the last kind with a fierce, dogged, desperate hatred. Gray would much rather the whisper of rain, or the cry of thunder, or the sizzle of fire, or even the wind singing tunelessly, endlessly in his ears than that silence.

Because silence, hollow silence, brings fear, and fear brings calm, and calm brings the horrible, horrible emptiness that chews holes in his already-fraying heart.

Gray finds that most nights are cut off abruptly by the sudden gasp of life, by the jerk of awareness, by the slow exhale of realization that he is home, and home is here, and he will be fine. But that's the part that's the worst of all, because the idea of being fine is so alien to him, it makes him slump. Fine means well, but not bad. Fine means good, but not great. Fine means his beloved guild - the family that had knit him back together - is gone, maybe for good, and that he might never be anything more than fine again.

At three in the morning, he buries his head in his hands and stays there, unmoving, until the sun peeks through the blinds and paints shy golden streaks on the ground. Sometimes he will pull his face away from his fingers to find his palms warm and wet. Sometimes he will lift his eyes to the ceiling and realize that his cheeks are dry in the coldness of the morning air. Sometimes he will bury his head back into his pillow and will sleep to drown him again in its arms.

And sometimes he sits and waits for something that'll never come.

Some dreams are worse than others. Gray remembers Deliora, and he remembers Silver, and he remembers Mika. He remembers the girl from the bakery who brought him flowers, and he remembers the boy who came over to help paint the new room, and ended up staying for cookies and milk. He remembers Mother and her round stomach, and the tiny feet kicking under his hesitant hands. He remembers Ur's smile, and Lyon's scowl, and he remembers happiness. He remembers the promise of life and how death unraveled it thread by thread.

If he closes his eyes, he can taste pain and bitterness on the back of his throat, and he can hear the shouts of laughter, the seemingly never-ending sunshine, the voices telling him, Let's go on a job together! Are you free today? I swear, Ice Princess - Will you participate in this year's Fantasia?

If he closes his eyes, he can feel his guild mark burn hotter and hotter until he can't stand it anymore and chokes.

On lazier nights, Gray doesn't scramble to his feet and stare glassily out the window. He sometimes can't summon the will to even move. All he does is lie there, thinking about the blue mark on his chest. Back then, he almost had Mira stamp the 'fairy's tail' on the left side, over his heart, but stopped. The guild had become hisnew heart, his new life, his new beginning.

In the fading moonlight, he runs a hand through his shaggy bedhead and pulls the covers tighter around him. He doesn't mind the cold, not really. It's just the warmth of having friends, the warmth that he's gotten so used to, that leaves behind a chilling shadow.

Sometimes he wakes up screaming, and that is when he feels a gaping pit of fearful loneliness open deep in his stomach.

Names run across his tongue - Master, Mira, Lucy, Natsu, Elfman, Laxus, Erza - and he has to swallow hard to keep them contained.

Whether it's by rain, lightning, fire, metal, wind, silence, or his own voice, he always, always wakes alone in the suffocating dark: his hands curled to keep them from trembling, his heart throbbing painfully beneath his skin, his eyes squeezing shut and flaring open. But when dawn breaks there is another pair of hands holding his, a soft word pressed against his mouth, a heart beating next to his own. And he'll look down at two crystal-clear eyes, see the sun shining across the sea, and release a breath he hadn't realized he's been holding. They'll sit there, half-in and half-out of reality, letting gravity weigh them down and dreams raise them, until morning light sweeps away the dark. And in the midst of the trilling of birds and the rustling of leaves outside, with Juvia's hesitant but determined fingers wrapped around wrist, his shadow behind him and a world ahead, Gray stands, stretches, and ventures into a new day.