Warning: Un-betaed!
Substitute
Elfman and Mirajane are always smiling now. There is a glow in their eyes and a spring in their steps as they walk. Everyone is happy for them; the sibling trio that was once scattered and distant from each other but is reunited once more. The guild as a whole rejoiced the return of two strong mages: Mirajane, who has miraculously regained her powers due to Lisanna's appearance, and Lisanna herself, armed with her Take Over magic.
Natsu, especially, brims with much happiness and exuberance. His joy is infectious, and his smiles are all the more blinding when Lisanna is near. It takes mere minutes of watching the duo before everyone is grinning like loons at the adorably awkward interactions shared between the two young mages — which spoke of a close history being relived now that they are together again. Everyone speaks of how endearing it is when their fingers brush unknowingly and they will jump apart, blushing lightly and shooting each other tentative looks. Many discuss how sweet it is that the two themselves do not notice when everyone else can see the devotion and adoration they have for each other. The two in question do not seem to realise yet, but little by little they are discovering how they truly feel for each other.
There is no Team Natsu anymore.
Now that Lisanna is seemingly back from the dead, Natsu will not leave her side. They are together most of the time now. Seldom is one seen without the other. When the hubbub has died down and the two mages have space to breathe, Gray is approached by Natsu to take on a simple mission. Just the two of them—without Erza, Lucy or Happy. Gray cannot help noticing the reluctance and regret at which Natsu steps past the doors of Fairy Tail. Later, he will realise it would be their last mission together—the last time when the two of them could be alone and revel in each other's company.
The mission is uneventful and a success, and they camp out in East Forest for the night. Natsu lights a fire by spitting out tiny embers on to the pile of dry twigs and leaves they have gathered. The pile heats up and begins to smoke lightly, changing into an orange-red colour as it catches fire and is consumed by flames. Gray keeps a distance away from the little campfire, preferring instead the coolness of the night. He watches the other teenager huddle close to the fire, rubbing his hands together to create friction and subsequently heat.
"How come Erza and the rest isn't with us this time?" asks Gray, who has to admit he is apprehensively curious about what the fire mage was up to. He has a strong feeling that he knows what is about to incur and can only hope that he is prepared. It is surprising to see Natsu looking uncomfortable and a tad wary. There is a pang of something—hurt, maybe, and fear—in his heart, because the other rarely displays such emotions. The fire mage will not meet his eyes and begins poking absently at the glowing embers with his bare fingers.
"Natsu?" His tone is calm and encouraging as he softly calls out to the other. "Is something wrong?"
He tries and fails to ignore the distance he has suddenly perceived between him and Natsu. He is trying to sit as far as possible from the campfire, that is all, that's why they are sitting this far from each other. But the distance he feels is not of a physical sort. There seems to be a yawning, black chasm separating him from the other mage. What little comfort he feels from reassuring himself is momentary. Natsu's uneasy silence and the persistent crackling of flames feels like a barrier, preventing that easy understanding the two had before.
Before Lisanna returned.
"I'm disbanding our team," Natsu speaks up suddenly, his voice steady, dark eyes focused unflinchingly on the searing light of the campfire.
"What?" Gray straightens up, staring in shock across the fire at the dragon slayer. "Why?" He thinks he might be asking for the sake of it. It is painfully obvious what—or who—the answer is. He's asking because he wants closure, to hear it from the other teenager himself. The shock only comes from seeing Natsu being this serious about it. But who is he kidding—himself? Everyone saw it coming from a mile away.
It's just that he chose to look the other way as it approached—until now, when Natsu is shoving reality in his face.
"I think Lucy is strong enough to go off on her own, or maybe even start her own team."
Who's kidding who, now? Gray almost laughs aloud. It is strange to see Natsu beat about the bush, given his direct and straight-forward attitude. "Good idea," he replies amiably instead, fiddling with the yellowing leaf he has in his hands. "She needs all the experience she can get if she wants to become stronger than what she is now."
The fact that Natsu is about to leave him for Lisanna doesn't hurt as much as the fact that Natsu is lying through his teeth and dancing around the truth when telling him that he's leaving him for Lisanna.
Natsu obviously was waiting for him to call his bluff, for Gray receives a surprised look mixed with disbelief and caution as he finishes talking. He suppresses a scoff. They aren't stupid. They're eighteen. They've been with each other since childhood—long enough to intuitively know what the other was trying to get at. And he realises he has begun to dance around the truth, himself. Two can play at this dangerous game. They move like they're treading on eggshells, afraid to step any more heavily lest one turns out to be a landmine. It'll be horrific if one of them detonates. It's more likely to be Gray, of course, but that's the good thing—for Natsu and Lisanna, anyway—because Gray's cool-headed and hardly quick-tempered.
The bad thing is that when Gray is riled up enough, he can be twice as destructive as Natsu.
Natsu knows this, and so is skirting around the issue.
"And Erza can handle solo missions, obviously," continues the onyx-eyed mage, cracking a hesitant smile. Gray returns the expression out of reflex, thinking that uncertainty is not a suitable look for the other. Then he asks the question they've all been waiting for.
"And us?"
The smile slides off the fire mage's face like rainwater on a window pane. It is replaced by a hard, thin line that seems to rein back any passion the other ever had for him before, holding it down below the surface and behind a mask of stone. Gray is unable to watch that beloved face close up so completely from him and drops his gaze down to the campfire.
"We're strong enough to go our separate ways now," Natsu finally answers. His words seem to have been chosen carefully, as careful as his expression is now when he looks at Gray – who has flicked his eyes up, notices the wariness, hides a flinch and averts his gaze elsewhere. That is the second flinch he has hidden. The first was for when he has read between the lines. What he finds can be translated crudely into: You know we aren't going to work out and you're mature enough to accept that fact without kicking up a fuss.
He wants to scream and cry and freeze the world, freeze time itself, to stop this from continuing.
"Okay," he says instead, feeling as if he is in a dream. "That's true." But it isn't, if one considers how much he has come to depend on Natsu as his shield against his dark past and whatever was threatening him in the present. He thinks he might crumble to dust under the oppressive weight of reality once his shield is gone. The irony is that this shield has become a double-edged sword. How can he defend himself against his own shield? Now, whenever he tries to use his shield to protect himself against harsh reality, the sword stabs him in the heart as well. The excruciating pain that follows after forces him to drop his shield, and then he is exposed once more. Vulnerable to heartbreak.
The truth is that he simply isn't strong enough to put this shield down and forge another for himself.
He reasons that at least if he drops this shield, the sword lodged in his heart can be withdrawn.
However, it doesn't mean that the pain will be gone. If anything, the agony will amplify, until the wound heals completely – or he dies of blood loss.
But they leave it at that.
What's done is done.
Because while Natsu is Gray's shield, Gray is Lisanna's substitute. It has been that way from the start. So it can only be his fault for thinking that he had been worth more than that. He doesn't know what to think of the metal blade twisting in his heart, slicing through nerves and blood vessels. He feels numb. The pain will come later, when the nerves have reconnected and his brain registers reality. The relief on the other's face is the cold metal sinking another inch deeper into his heart.
"Do Erza and Lucy know?" He asks softly.
"Yes... I told them already."
Silence falls thickly after that. He idly watches how the leaf rustles dryly as he rubs it between his fingers. It is distinctly heart-shaped, he notes, and the yellow-brown hue of its decay clashes unpleasantly with the rich green. Tracing the protruding veins and jagged edges, he thinks that if his heart was a leaf it will look like the one he holds delicately in his hands right now.
After awhile he gets to his feet and makes his way over to Natsu, ignoring the flash of half-concealed trepidation in those dark eyes. Without a word, he takes the other's hand and presses the leaf into the open palm.
You hold my heart in your hands.
Dark, confused eyes meet his as he slowly but forcefully curls the other's fingers and thumb inwards, clenching the hand into a fist. When the fire mage unfurls his fingers the crushed leaf is revealed, a mess of frayed veins and green blood.
But you don't know you do.
He returns to his previous spot and watches as Natsu blinks indecisively before brushing his hands together briskly, ridding himself of the leaf's damaged remnants.
"So," he says. "It's Team Lisanna now, isn't it?"
"Yes," replies Natsu guardedly, but his tone is firm and resolute.
He nods and says, "I wish the two of you the best of luck, slanty-eyes." And his breath hitches at the boyishly handsome smile Natsu bestows upon him—but that is all he receives.
"So..." Natsu gives him a warm smile. "Friends?"
Allowing his gaze to wander down to the destroyed leaf at the other's feet, he smiles quietly and says, "Friends."