If Fire Could Freeze, We'd Be Okay
Chapter One
Gray had a cigarette hanging from his mouth. Natsu had a bottle of beer in his hand. Both were trying to forget, but it wasn't working.
Gray let out a puff of smoke as Natsu raised the bottle to his lips. They wouldn't look at each other – they couldn't. When it came down to it, they were both at fault, and they knew it. And they couldn't stand it.
The guild hall was too quiet. Happy wasn't flying around, following Carla. Juvia wasn't staring at Gray from behind a pillar. Elfman wasn't telling anyone to be a man. Cana wasn't sitting on a table, a barrel pressed to her lips. Mirajane wasn't standing behind the counter. Erza wasn't chowing down on a piece of strawberry cake. Lucy wasn't chatting with Levy at the table. Jet and Droy weren't battling for Levy's affection, getting stared down by Gajeel.
No one was there except Natsu and Gray.
The pink-haired teen slid off of his stool, slamming his empty bottle down on the bar next to the other three that were already there. He stormed past Gray and went behind the counter to fetch a fresh beer. Natsu then jumped back onto his chair and took a long drink.
Gray's cigarette burned out. He pressed the butt into the ash tray and started digging in his pocket to find his pack and a lighter. Finally finding what he was looking for, he put the cigarette to his lips and tried to light it. Nothing. He tried a few more times to no avail. He cursed, not wanting to look at the fire mage. In the state the pink-haired boy was in, Gray was unsure if he could light just a cigarette without burning down what little remained of the guild hall. Gray doubted Natsu could use his magic at all after what happened.
Sighing, the black-haired teen moved his gaze up and to the other boy. "Gimme a light?"
Natsu didn't look up from his fifth bottle of beer. The tense silence was starting to get to him. Just one day had changed them from happiness to whatever they were now. They'd just told everyone that they were dating before the Fantasia parade. Then all went to hell.
Natsu didn't know what they were at with their relationship. They couldn't very well go back to dating like normal, but he wasn't ready to give up on Gray. He couldn't do that. His heart couldn't take that pain on top of everything else.
"Natsu?"
Still nothing. Natsu finished the beer in three huge gulps. Natsu considered getting another, but he was feeling lightheaded. Maybe that's what I need, he thought.
"Gray?" he croaked. "It's our fault."
Gray was quiet for a long time, the urge to break down getting unbearably strong. "Yeah," he whispered, tears gathering in his eyes, "it is."
Steeling his will and barely looking at the ice mage, Natsu snapped his fingers lightly, sending the tiniest spark towards the cigarette in Gray's hand.
The ice wizard was startled at the sudden flame, and he nearly fell backwards, but when he considered it, he wouldn't have minded if Natsu had lost control with that fireball. He probably wouldn't have moved.
Natsu finally got the courage to look into Gray's eyes. What he saw was exactly how he felt.
Defeated. Miserable. Guilty. Useless. Empty.
His eyes quickly averted as he felt the emotions he was trying to drink away surging up. His eyes fell to the bandage that covered Gray's torso. The bandage was wrapped all the way around his stomach and over his chest, covering his Fairy Tail emblem. The most dried blood was exactly where the mark was.
Or used to be.
While the two were in the care of Porlyusica's care, they had shared a room. Although both dipped in and out of consciousness, one of the few times they were both awake at the same time was about four days after Porlyusica took them in. Gray didn't know that Natsu had seen him dragging one of the healer's knives across his emblem enough times to completely destroy it to the point of being unrecognisable.
Gray's physical injuries had been pretty bad. He had a sprained ankle along with two bones broken in his foot, a dislocated shoulder, two fractured wrists, at least three broken ribs, and five nasty slices up the entire length of his back. Along with those, he also had more scratches, bruises, and fresh scars than he could count across his whole body. He received yet another fresh scar on his forehead.
Natsu's were just as bad. Four fingers on his right hand were broken, his left femur was fractured, his left arm was broken in three places, and he also had five slices up the length of his back. He too had a shit-ton of cuts, bruises, and scars. Natsu's bandages covered his whole torso along with a strip covering his right shoulder, also stained with dry blood.
Although their physical injuries would heal sooner or later, neither could keep his sanity much longer. Guilt ate away at their insides, leaving the rivals as mere shells of what they used to be.
The ice wizard looked around. The guild hall was in ruins. Most of the roof had been destroyed. Even more than a week later, Gray could just barely see embers on the few pieces that were still there. The door to the guild was nothing more than a pile of ashes. The wood tables had been nothing more than kindling. In other parts of the guild, the black-haired teen spotted frozen patches. Ice pillars standing on top of piles of ashes were almost completely melted now. The floor was almost entirely frozen, and that was the only thing keeping the building from falling.
When his eyes landed on a patch of ice near the doors, he froze. His head started spinning. No, dammit. Gray felt lightheaded as his eyes continued staring at the ice. It was huge – probably seven feet tall, six feet wide, four feet long – and looked completely random. The ice was rough and didn't seem to serve any purpose.
Gray knew its purpose.
He knew what was inside of it.
If I had figured it out sooner, maybe it would have been okay.
Memories flooded into his head, louder and faster than before. He started breathing hard, and his heartbeat sped up and increased in volume. His pulse echoed in his head.
Gray didn't feel himself falling until he was on the ground with Natsu kneeling by his side. The pink-haired boy rubbed Gray's still-burning cigarette out on the palm of his hand, dropping the item next to him on the floor.
As Gray sat upright, he gasped in pain all over his torso.
"Gray, just stay there for a minute," Natsu mumbled, not looking the stripper in the eyes. He felt pain in the back of his throat, a breakdown threatening to break loose. Thoughts raced through his head, coming back to one thing: I can't lose the one person I have left. He's all I have left, dammit!
After walking behind the counter and grabbing a small bag of ice, a glass of water, and two of the pain pills Porlyusica prescribed, Natsu shrunk back down to his knees next to his friend. "Here," he croaked, staring at the ice-covered wood floor as he handed Gray the glass and the pills. He then took the bag of ice and pressed it gently to his back.
The fire mage realised that the ice was useless to the ice wizard, so he took to inspecting Gray's back. He had to have torn a few stitches, so his back was bleeding through the bandages. "We should get you to Porlyusica."
"No," the boy replied, his mind in a different place.
Gray was vaguely aware that Natsu still kneeled next to him, but terror shot through his entire being as he remembered friends dead all around him.
Gray curled into a ball, unable to control his breathing. He heaved in and out at a dangerously rapid pace. Tears streamed down his face overwhelmingly fast. "It's all my fault. It's all my fault. I killed my friends. What kind of person am I if I kill my own friends? It's my fault that they died. It's all my fault, and now they're not coming back. I'm literal shit. I don't' deserve life. All of my friends are dead but I'm still alive. Why? I killed them. I don't deserve to live. I should die. That way I don't have to keep living like this. It's all my fault…"
Natsu sniffled at Gray's harsh words about himself. "It's not your fault!" Natsu screamed, tears running down his face just as fast as Gray's tears.
Gray stopped rambling, feeling the fire dragon slayer's hand pressed over where his guild mark used to be.
"It's… not your fault." Natsu's hand dropped. "I'm the one who burned them. I'm the one who couldn't control my own magic. I'm the one who ended any chance of our guild surviving. So… please, Gray. Stop blaming yourself. You're only making it harder. You can keep… keep going on with your life. You didn't kill them, so don't think like that. Don't you dare think like that. You need to live, so go. Go find Lyon. Join Lamia Scale. You need to go on with your life, Gray. I can't let you take any of the blame for this. This is all on me, okay? Please, Gray… Live. Don't live for me. Live for Fairy Tail… For… Fairy Tail."
Natsu was shaking so hard that he could barely hear himself speak. "For Fairy Tail…" he whispered.
"No, Natsu!" Gray screamed back at the sniffling boy. "This isn't your fault! Not at all! I'm the one who wanted to do that attack! I'm the one who wanted to put everything on the line to save them, so stop fucking blaming yourself! I didn't listen to you. You knew that it didn't work, and you just did what I deemed to be right. I was fucking wrong, okay? So stop blaming yourself, you flame-brain! Stop! This all falls on me!"
Natsu felt his fragile heart break when he heard Gray call him that. I guess some things don't change. Even when the world was falling apart and they had barely spoken in a week, they could still talk like old times, even if it was about who killed everyone else.
The tears wouldn't stop as Natsu clutched onto the ice wizard. "It's both of our faults, alright? We killed our friends, and we can't change it. We're frigging monsters. Just… I can't lose you, too, Gray. I can't lose you."
Gray wanted to scream forever. He wanted to die, because that was the only way he felt he could fix everything he destroyed. He grabbed onto the dragon slayer tightly and didn't let go. "Natsu…"
The two sat there for a long time.
After a while, once all of their tears had run dry, Natsu pulled back. "Gray, I can't lose you. You're all I have left, and if I lose you, I can't live with myself. We're not okay. Neither of us is okay. But maybe the two of us can figure out how to be okay together."
Gray looked at the man he still loved, despite the recent events. He slowly nodded, thinking that it sounded okay.
Maybe the two of us can figure out how to be okay together.
A/N: I have decided that I'm going to make this into a multi-chapter story. When I first published this, it was a rushed job, and there were all kinds of inconsistent parts, so now I'm thinking through how I want this to go. Heads up to anyone who wants to follow any story that I make: I go through spurts where I'll write a ton, and then I'll sort of disappear for a million years. Sorry. I hope I'll have the next chapter up today or tomorrow. Maybe.