Note: I feel like this one requires a little explanation and/or cautionary note. It's written in present tense (I know, I know, it sounds totally crazy, but bear with me) because it was originally supposed to be just a drabble-y thing, but I was in a mood so I took it and ran with it. Believe it or not, present tense seems to work surprisingly well for certain types of stories, and I've been experimenting with it a little lately.
Also, before anyone jumps on me, Gray is shown smoking in the manga, for like one or two panels. Then Mashima drops it. Which I'm totally okay with, and it's not part of my main headcanon that he smokes. But I'm using it for this one story. Okay, the other thing is that I don't think there's anything about this piece that isn't all kinds of messed up. Just going to throw that out there now.
Content warnings: Depression and implied major depressive episode, unhealthy coping mechanisms, self-harm, vague suicidal ideation without real intent to act
He's smoking out behind the guild when she finds him. Gray gives her a lazy once-over, this new stray that Natsu dragged in. She's blonde and pretty and seems nice enough, from what little he's seen of her so far. Lucy, he thinks is her name. He's confident that she'll settle in well at the guild. Call it intuition, since he doesn't really know her at all.
Which is maybe why she stopped when she saw him, instead of walking right on past. He thinks her original intention might have been to say hi, maybe introduce herself and see if she could get to know him a little better, but that all flies out the window when she sees the cigarette in his hand and the soft puff of smoke that hangs in the still air for a moment before dissipating.
He can tell the exact moment she spots it, because her face wrinkles into an involuntarily expression of disgust. For a split second he feels a flicker of faint amusement, his lips twitching upwards into the barest of half-smiles, but then the void inside him sucks it away and leaves him empty once more.
He can practically see the gears turning in her head, the way all her other thoughts seem to evaporate as she tries to figure out what to say to him. If he wasn't such a heartless bastard, he might help her out. It's not that he's always that way, really, but on days like this when he's too hollow and dead inside to feel anything at all, it's too hard for him to care. It's just her luck that she caught him on a bad day, a smoking day.
"Smoking is really bad for your health," she blurts out finally. Her face immediately turns bright red, and her eyes widen as she realizes what she's said.
Gray thinks that he should want to laugh. On another day, he'd find it funny.
"Smart girl," he says instead, his voice a little huskier than usual from the smoke. "It's a bad habit. Don't pick it up."
He stops, for the moment, just letting the cigarette dangle limply from his fingers. He might be a heartless bastard, but he's at least considerate enough to not smoke in someone's face. He'll wait for her to leave first.
"I, uh, I didn't mean…" Lucy winces and wrings her hands together. She must be easy to fluster.
Gray just shrugs, uninterested, and waits for her to leave.
"Why, um, why do you do it, then?" she asks after a moment. Gray shrugs again. "I mean, you must like it, right? Why?"
He feels a little like a caged animal in a zoo, or maybe some specimen under a microscope that she's trying to puzzle out. Her eyebrows are knit together as she studies him curiously, a little of her embarrassment forgotten in favor of trying to figure him out.
He chuckles throatily, although he's not truly amused. "Who said anything about liking it?"
No, he doesn't like it. It makes him feel rather disgusting and dirty, and it can be all-around unpleasant. But still, it's better than the emptiness that he'd feel otherwise. Some people say they smoke to relax, calm down. That's not usually how it works for Gray. Sometimes it's relaxing, sometimes it leaves him jittery, sometimes it leaves him emptier than he started, always it makes him feel horrible. As long as it makes him feel something, he doesn't really care what that something is.
"If you don't like it, then why do you do it?"
Another shrug. "It's an addiction, I suppose."
Half true. It's not the smoking he's addicted to, but it's an addiction nonetheless.
"I mean, you could always get help to quit," Lucy suggests uncertainly. "It would probably be good for you."
Gray sighs. Every once in a while someone or other will start bothering him to quit. Just his luck that the new girl has decided to turn him into her pet project.
"Don't worry about it, Lucy," he says. "It is Lucy, right? Trust me, there are way worse things I could be doing than this."
"Oh, um, yeah," she stutters, flushing again. "I didn't mean, um… I'll just…I'll just go, then."
Gray watches her turn and start hurrying away. Well, he's made a great impression, hasn't he? He might feel bad about it later, once the emotions start creeping back in again.
"Have you tried talking to Cana?" he calls after her. Lucy pauses and turns, a confused frown spreading across her face. "She's a lot friendlier. Maybe a little too friendly, but she'd be glad to get to know you. She's good at the whole friends thing."
Lucy blinks at him in bewilderment for a moment, before offering him an uncertain smile. "Oh. Thanks. I'll do that."
She gives him one of those puzzled looks again, like she's trying to figure him out, but he's confident that she'll get nowhere with it. Not even the friends he's grown up with have figured him out yet. They're always trying to discover what's going on inside him, why he is the way he is. It's a hopeless endeavor, because the truth is that he's hollow and empty inside. There's nothing there for them to find or figure out, no puzzle for them to solve. There's nothing.
Sure enough, after a couple seconds, Lucy shakes her head slightly and walks away. Gray watches her until she disappears from view, then looks back down at his cigarette. It wouldn't look appealing at the best of times, and now it's even less so. But he has to do something to get the rush, the feeling.
Without really thinking about it, he flips it around and presses the hot end into his arm, hissing in pain as a sharp jolt of agony rips through his skin, electrifying his body and searing through his numbness. But the sharpness of the pain only lasts for several seconds, before settling into a dull, throbbing ache. Maybe even his pain receptors don't work the way they're supposed to.
The dullness doesn't cut it, doesn't give him what he needs, and now he's got a mark that he's going to have to be careful to keep covered until it fades a bit. Fantastic. He drops the cigarette butt to the ground and crushes it under his heel.
He wasn't lying when he'd said that there were worse things he could be doing.
Sighing, he pulls out a new cigarette. The flame that flickers to life when he clicks the lighter will help keep the void at bay, at least for one more moment.
He knows it's an intervention as soon as he walks inside and sees them all gathered there, watching him. Honestly, they go on one job together, stop one lousy demon—nothing compared to the demon—and suddenly they think it's their place to tell him how to live his life. It's nice that they care, he supposes, but it doesn't change the fact that he isn't interested in hearing what they have to say.
Still, although he crosses his arms over his chest and gives them a hard look, he says nothing. Natsu looks bored, Lucy looks nervous, and Happy looks like he'd like nothing better than to go find a nice big fish to eat. It's obvious that they're only here because Erza is forcing them to be. She's the one who looks determined, implacable.
"We think you should stop smoking," she says firmly.
"Actually, I don't really care," Natsu mutters.
She hits him and he yelps, edging away and eyeing her warily as he rubs at his head. Gray is not as amused as he should be.
"Your opinion has been duly noted," he drawls.
Erza scowls. "It's not healthy. It will kill you slowly, you know."
Gray raises an eyebrow. Of course it will. That's the point, isn't it? Aside from needing a way to dissipate the numbness and fill the void, he likes to feel like he's slowly rotting away. It's not even so much that he wants to die, as much as that he wants to be dying. If he ever thinks about it too hard then he realizes exactly how screwed up that sounds, but then he remembers what he did to Ur and Lyon and decides that maybe it's really no worse than he deserves.
"Thanks for the health lesson," he says dryly. "I'm a smoker, not an ignorant fool."
He's rather calculating, actually. The others probably wouldn't expect it of him, but he thinks everything through carefully before making a move, never as hotheaded as he seems. He's learned his lesson. The last time he didn't think things through, he got someone killed.
He knows exactly what smoking will do to him. He's not excited about some of the symptoms that come from long-term smoking, but he'll take them if he has to. He weighed those consequences against the void and decided to take his chances. It's a decision he made a long time ago, that a lot of thought went into, and he's not likely to change it now.
"Look, it's an addiction and you need help," Erza says bluntly.
Gray laughs and turns away. "I'm not addicted to smoking."
"Denial isn't going to help anything."
He clicks his tongue in exasperation. "It's not smoking that I'm addicted to," he repeats.
She doesn't understand, and he supposes that it's just as well. It's true, though. Would it be hard for him to quit if he tried? Probably. But at the same time, he only really feels the need to smoke when the hollowness comes back and the world loses color, not when his feelings are actually working properly. So is it the smoking that he's addicted to?
He doesn't think so. He's not addicted to the smoking—he's addicted to the feelings. He's found other ways to get those feelings that he craves, but they usually involve pain and blood, and it's easier to use smoking because it doesn't leave marks.
If he was a normal, well-adjusted person, then he might look for ways to get happy feelings when the emptiness starts creeping back again. But since he's not, he usually goes for pain or, in the case of smoking, that disgusting, slimy feeling coating his insides.
Still, anything but the hollowness.
Some people might call that depression. Gray doesn't like that word. He thinks that depressed people are supposed to be sad, and he isn't sad. Well, not usually, anyway. He is sometimes, but mostly it's just this crushing emptiness. He actually prefers the sadness when it comes, because at least that's a feeling to break up his apathy.
Although lately his sad spells have gotten…duller. It's not the sharp anguish that makes him want to cry and leaves him heartbroken. Now his sadness is muted, dull, leaving him with a twinge and ache but not quite expelling the hollowness.
Just thinking about it makes his fingers twitch. He could really use a cigarette right now.
"Don't you worry," he says, turning and heading for the door with clipped strides, already fumbling in his pocket for his lighter. "I can take care of myself without your help."
Sort of. Maybe he can't take care of himself, but he can certainly self-destruct without any of their meddling.
The empty sadness is back again, and it's not fair. Only a few hours ago, he was actually crying. He had been alive, electrified by the pain of seeing Lyon again and hearing his words, the fear of Deliora and of watching his friends get hurt, the grief that threatened to snap him in half when he saw what Ur had become and was reminded once again of what he had done to her.
But sometime between then and now he had lost all of that feeling, leaving him with just a dull ache. Damn, he needs a cigarette, but he lost them all after being thrown overboard and washed up onto the island. Just his luck.
"It's just as well," Erza says, giving him a hard look. "Those things are terrible for you and you should quit already."
Gray blinks at her blankly for a moment, before realizing that he must have spoken out loud. He feels so dead inside that he doesn't even care.
"Yeah, yeah, I hear you," he mumbles.
She lets it go, because it's not like there's really anything he can do about it, is there? He can't smoke, and she'll be happy about it. Good for her.
Less good for Gray. Sitting through the feast with the demon villagers is hell. He acts a good game, but his smiles and laughs are hollow, if only someone looked closely enough to notice.
Still, he thinks that maybe he can handle himself for once. Just wait out the hollowness and it will go away eventually. He lasts until well into the night before finally caving. Everyone else has been asleep for a long time now, but Gray is still staring up at the ceiling sightlessly, somehow too empty to even sleep.
He gets up and sneaks outside, leaving the village behind. He won't find any cigarettes here, but there are all manner of things to inflict pain, and pain is his second-best alternative. But no matter what he does, the feelings are fleeting and it's not good enough.
He stands motionless between the trees, blinking out at the night unseeingly. Everything has receded back to a dull ache again. With a sigh, he absently ices over a particularly large gash, reflecting that he'll have to be careful to hide all the cuts and bruises tomorrow.
And when he goes back inside, the void is still there.
He doesn't take Galuna well. His friends might have their suspicions, but for the most part he can reassure them that he's alright, can pretend to be fine.
But then one day they find him sitting under the trees with enough cigarette butts littering the ground around him to make up four or five packs, and that's when the second intervention happens. Gray doesn't protest this time, just sits there and takes it quietly. Partly it's because he knows it's out of control now. Not the smoking, so much as his horribly self-destructive attempts to combat the emptiness. At this rate he'll give himself cancer within the next few months.
The other reason is that he feels like he owes these people something now. Sure, they were friends before, but now they're really a team and they saw him shatter on Galuna and he really would be a heartless bastard to ignore everything they've done for him.
So he decides that he'll try for them, just this once, even though he knows that it will end badly.
He isn't wrong, either. The void gets bigger and bigger every day, swallowing up what little is left of him. Every day, some new part of him withers and dies, his heart shrivels a little more, and all that's left is a gaping hole where Gray Fullbuster should be.
Still, he doesn't smoke. He said that he wouldn't, so he won't. But damn, is it hard. He finds his fingers itching for a cigarette all the time, but he soon realizes that it isn't really the cigarettes he cares about. As long as his hand isn't empty, he can make it work.
Using ice makes him feel terrible because it feels like he's desecrating Ur's magic, turning it into something ugly and dirty. Knives aren't as bad, although he still has to be careful. It's easier to just bruise himself up a little, because bruises will fade and any unexplained new ones can be blamed on just another fight with Natsu.
Gray is playing a dangerous game and he knows it. Smoking will give him feelings that are more muted, less dangerous. What he's doing now is tricky because the feelings are intense, euphoric. Some people slice their skin open to release pent-up feelings. Gray does it to create feelings, because those people might have too many but he doesn't have nearly enough. The sharp stab of pain, the ripping, the blood… They're strangely thrilling, a high that shatters the emptiness for a moment, and sometimes the rush is so strong that it's a struggle not to push down just a little deeper, peel back his skin and let the blood flow out until he's as physically empty as he is emotionally hollow.
But those feelings are always short-lived, fading away back into a dull ache much too quickly, and then he has to do it again, again, again. It's horrible and Gray knows it. He's reminded of why he picked up smoking in the first place. He'd almost fallen into this trap before, and smoking had been a slower way of killing himself than this. One day he'll push it too far, press down a little too deep—on accident or, perhaps, on purpose—and then it will all be over. It's a tempting fantasy and he daydreams about it sometimes, but he holds on with every ounce of self-control he has left.
And then one day the high begins to fade, and Gray is scared. What if the thrill just becomes less and less, until he can carve open his flesh and still feel only vacant? It fades more and more, until one day he goes out into a copse of trees outside town and runs ice along his veins over and over again, searching for that high. He needs those feelings. He needs them because he's so tired of being empty.
They come, but they're not as intense as they used to be. It's not enough.
He ices over his self-inflicted injuries, pulls his shirt back on, and curls into a ball on the hard ground. He doesn't know how long he's been lying there. And with only a yawning void inside his chest where his heart should be, he doesn't particularly care.
It's a long time before they find him, though. Maybe even days. He wouldn't know.
"Gray? We've been looking everywhere for you! Are you alright?"
He doesn't move or respond, wishing Lucy would go away and leave him to his self-imposed exile. And then it gets even better, because he can tell that she's not alone.
Someone is kneeling by his side, tugging him up a little. The pressure against his wounds stings, and he almost wants to smile. The pain feels good, until it fades away below the threshold he needs again.
He finally opens his eyes, and stares up at Erza blankly. She's worried, but that quickly turns to fear, her face paling as she lifts one of his arms and stares at the large blotches of red bleeding through the fabric of his sleeve, notices the rusty stains seeping into the ground around him.
"Oh my God," she breathes. "What happened?"
He laughs out of habit, the sound void of emotion and almost inhuman. It makes her flinch.
"What happened?" he repeats in a rasp. "Nothing happened."
Sighing, he lets his eyes flutter shut again and remains slumped against Erza, unwilling to summon up the strength to stand. He should be horrified that they've found him like this. When the hollowness fades—if it ever fades—he will be devastated. He will hate himself for letting them see this side of him, will panic as he tries to figure out how to make it not look as bad as it is.
But right now, he couldn't care less.
"Nothing…" Erza trails off and peels back his sleeve gingerly.
She gasps, and there are sharp intakes of breath all around Gray. He opens his eyes again, even though he wants nothing more than to go to sleep and not wake up. Everyone is staring at his arm, at the red cuts running its length that are sealed over with ice now, so he looks too.
It's kind of ugly.
His limbs are leaden and heavy, but he somehow manages to lift his other arm, reach out, run his fingers along one of the cuts to let the ice melt underneath his fingertips. He smiles a little as the blood begins to well up again and slide across his skin like crimson tears. He feels a tiny flicker of something. Pride, almost, at his handiwork. It fades again before he really has time to realize how screwed up that is.
"What are you doing?" Erza demands, eyes widening. "Ice it over again before you bleed out!"
"But they're prettier when they bleed," he mumbles, more to himself than to her. He's having a hard time caring about her and the others right now. It's hard to care about anyone else when he can't even care about himself.
Erza curses loudly and rips a strip of cloth off her shirt to press against his cut.
"You…" Lucy trails off and swallows hard. Her hands grip the sides of her skirt and tighten, knuckles turning white. "You did this…to yourself?"
She doesn't want to believe that. Gray logically knows that he doesn't want her or the others to believe it either, but that seems like an unimportant detail at this point.
"I told you, didn't I?" he says. "It's not the smoking that I'm addicted to. It's the feelings. I have to be able to feel something…anything. What's the point of living if you can't even feel anything?"
"Snap out of it!" Natsu says sharply. His tone is harsh, but his face is sheet-white. Gray isn't sure he's ever seen his rival so freaked out before.
"Don't you see?" Gray breathes, his voice a mere sigh. "That's what I was trying to do. I needed a way to snap out of the numbness, to fill the void. This doesn't work nearly as well as it used to, though. It's too bad. I can't live like this anymore."
Everyone is staring at him, fear in their eyes, panic mingling with the stunned shock.
"You're scaring me," Natsu says finally, and his body is trembling. He must be really frightened, to admit that. Normally, he never would.
Gray supposes it's his fault that it's happening now. He smiles. It's not amused, not even bitter. Just hollow. Hollow and empty.
"I'd be scaring myself too," he says with that dead smile, "if only I could feel anything at all."
Note: As much as I like working with raw emotion, sometimes I feel the need to come back to this empty side of things since it's what I have more experience with lol Yeah, I don't really know what else to say about this. I'm not going to turn this into a PSA :3
emmahoshi: My opinion as a psych major is that it's really hard to get someone to change unless you can convince them that they should change. It's not always even so much that you have to convince them that there's a problem, but that they should want to fix the problem. (Gray realizes there's a problem here, he just doesn't want to look for better ways to solve it.) I think both parts of that (realizing there's a problem and committing to fixing it) are very important to any type of intervention and recovery. Gotta keep an eye on that second one, because sometimes people will look like they're making progress, when really they're just pretending for whoever is harassing them about it and they'll go back to their old ways when you aren't looking. As for Gray here, I think I wrote in some factors that point to a biological component of depression too, rather than just his past. For the first couple parts, for example, nothing really happened to make him feel that way (that also wasn't a legitimate episode, but you know). But still, certain events (e.g., Galuna) can trigger episodes too. I kind of based this off of my empty episodes and dysthymia, so it's easier for me to see this as combined presentation. PSA=public service announcement. So if at the end I went on about how smoking is bad and if you suffer from depression or self-harming tendencies then you need to get help and yada yada. I think people are smart enough to decide for themselves, and it kind of annoys me when I see those things, usually X) Still on about "For Every Silver Lining"? XD Yeah, I gotta write that eventually. (EDIT: It's okay ;) Bio is a lot of fun too—one of the more interesting fields. After psych, of course ;) But yeah, you're right. The scarf story was never very well planned out so that one will probably be waiting in the wings for a while, but I was also pretty excited about "Gag Gift" for a while, so I might get around to that one sooner rather than later, depending.)