Natsu's on top of Atlas Flame, preparing to fire off another attack at Rouge.
"FIRE DRAGONS'S-" Natsu starts, opening his mouth and preciously hanging onto Atlas Flame's back with one hand. A faint scream from below reaches his ears.
"GRAYYYYYYYYYY!" It interrupts his attack, full of angst and horror.
Its Juvia's voice that continues to rage on as the sound of shots ripping through flesh reaches his ears. Natsu's face hardens into a mask and he digs his feet into Atlas Flame's neck, causing the dragon to rear up. Natsu's legs tense and he launches himself from the dragon, hanging in the air for seconds before gravity yanks him down.
Natsu lands on a large column of derbis, the impact of his feet breaking it clean in half. A boom resounds through the air for a moment as he breaks out in a run towards the fading scream that he heard.
He arrives at a gory scene. Gray's head has a hole blasted straight through it, and a burned hole is all that indicates where his heart once was. Natsu feels like puking as he sees Gray's ribs sticking out of his flesh at awkward angles. Gray's lungs are shot straight through and his right arm is barely attached. His spine is halved and blood lines Gray's lips and the bandages covering half his body.
Natsu can't help but take a moment to the side to vomit. This is wrong. This isn't supposed to happen to Gray. This. This.
His mind is stuck in an endless loop and the only thing that can throw it out of it is the sudden burning sensation that spreads through his arm and the small whimpers of Juvia.
A slight bit of the shock that's still coursing through his body wears off and Natsu realizes the danger he's in. Dragon drones are pelting him with attacks from all sides and Juvia's still huddled on the ground. Roars echo in the background as Rouge seeks him out.
Natsu holds back the waterfall of emotions that he wants to let out- every emotion except for the pain and anger. The horror of what's been done to Gray and the two feelings spur him into battle. Blood flies everywhere as Natsu enters the haze of violence. He can no longer distinguish between friend and foe because at this point, there are only the people who hurt Gray and those who had no hand in his death.
Natsu doesn't even realize what's happening as he tears through Rouge and Jade. He just realizes that they're the masterminds behind Gray's death and down they go.
Rage and bloodlust overtakes the noble feelings that motivated him to battle at first. He attacks the nearest mage, who happens to be Juvia.
He doesn't notice his target when his flames char Juvia's flesh. All he knows is she was nearby when Gray died. He can't hear her screams as she turns to water and the heat of his flames forces her to evaporate into nothingness.
The creature that he's become finishes Juvia off with a final blast, decimating whatever she might be able to reconstruct herself out of. Natsu- he's not even Natsu even more- is assaulted by a wave of glacial eagles. They peck at his skin and scarf as Natsu attempts to seek out his attacker. His bloodshot eyes land on Lyon.
Lyon's brow is hardened in concentration as he maneuvers his hands in intricate patterns. Gray's scent lines his thick jacket and Natsu sprints toward the ice mage and kills him as well. Lyon smelt like Gray. Therefore, he must have helped kill Gray.
A large blast of white light knocks Natsu back for a moment as he relishes in his victory. He turns towards the newest contribution to his massacre and sees Sting and Lector. It doesn't even matter that Sting's a Dragon Slayer when he blasts the two.
At this point, it only matters if Natsu's opponents become ash.
Natsu can no longer draw the thin line in-between guilty and innocent. He can't even distinguish one face from another. There's only red, black, and Gray's lifeless body on the ground.
Time and many battles pass before Natsu returns to the world of the partially sane. He's covered from head to toe in blood; red, green, blue, black, and brown blending together to tell the tale of death and murder. Surprisingly, Natsu doesn't feel fatigued or hurt. As a matter of fact, none of the blood on him is his.
Natsu wonders where it all came from.
He picks himself off of the ground and goes on to navigate the desolate world around him.
"Atlas Flame?" Natsu calls into the rubble. "Lucy? Juvia? Sting? Ezra? Lyon?"
No one responds.
Natsu continues to trek across the rubble, trying to find survivors as he goes. Eventually, he catches a glimpse of golden-blonde hair and runs towards it.
He can barely make out the gender of the body. It's so mangled and burnt and crushed and flaking blood coats it.
The only thing that he can recognize is the burn that his signature flame leaves and a set of keys near the corpse's waist.
"Lucy?" Natsu calls out in vain because she's long past dead. He turns away from her dead body- is it even a body anymore?- and runs, fighting the urge to throw up.
Natsu doesn't go berserk this time. He's too disgusted to do anything but run.
He manages to make it half a mile before his foot snags on something soft. Against his better judgment he looks down and sees a mass of gray fur and black hair.
Natsu doesn't even try to wrap his mind around how Pantherlily and Gajeel died as he notices the soup of iron studs, entrails, and a long sword nearby.
The pace of Natsu's run speeds up as he passed more corpses of people he doesn't- or doesn't want to- recognize. Still, he slows down eventually and starts to take in the carnage.
He counts three heads that might have once carried white silky hair and projected laughter. An overgrown hand littered with gashes peeks from the top of a building. Locks of filthy red hair and swords are littered across a street. A battered pair of Laxus's earphones lies in a sea of sticky red.
Natsu doesn't stop running and searching until he's accounted for every member of the guild.
Only then do the similarities in everyone's deaths hit him.
Burns. The stench of smoke. Clothes that have been half-consumed by fire. Blackened hair.
Natsu wants to back away from himself in horror as he realizes how all of the blood on his person must have gotten there. Natsu sets himself on fire and a feeling of insane satisfaction fills him as sheets of black ash float to the ground.
Natsu permits himself to cry after he's some semblance of clean. He's made it so he's all alone in this world; he shouldn't even deserve the smallest amount of sympathy from anyone, including himself.
Natsu can almost imagine Lucy's hand on his shoulder and what the guild might be doing if they were alive as he buries his face into the remnants of his scarf.
Maybe Ezra's trying to give him what he deserves, but Master's holding her back. Maybe Sting and Rouge are sheepishly asking to join the guild from a distance while Lyon's pining after Juvia. Maybe the Strauss family is hugging in the distance while Gajeel and Wendy are in some argument and need to be separated, but Laxus is listening to his rock music.
Gray never died.
That's not a maybe.
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"I find myself with pain in my heart and my screams forever enraptured by ice."
Soooooooo… Here's Natsu's dark reaction to Gray's death in chapter 334 of Fairy Tail! I was emotional about my favorite mage being killed off and started to write…
I hope you enjoyed this! It's my first piece for Fairy Tail, and I may or may not have mental plans for actual Fairy Tail stories. J
Please review! I have no idea if this idea was any good- you guys are the only ones who have seen it!
Have a good day!
~Pheniox's Moon