A/N: First and foremost, as much as I would like to be an awesome mangaka and write about cool mages stroke martial artists, I do NOT own Fairy Tail. Hiro Mashima holds that distinction.

Also, this piece... I guess it's an omake of sorts? Doesn't really come from my own ideas fully either. It's an aside that I thought up, prompted by a part of another Fairy Tail fanfic, namely Animal by Scyllia, which EVERYONE who reads this should go check out. To briefly summarize, this is about Gray's reaction to some footage taken during Natsu's time as a prisoner and being treated like... well, hence the title, an animal, locked up and tortured by an unnamed dark guild.

Anywho, that's my piece, Shadic out.

Hollow

Gray was trembling.

The edge of the table he was standing next to creaked under the pressure of his grip. No one in the guildhall heard. They were watching the first surveillance lacrima from Natsu's time as a prisoner, images of the fire mage in pain playing on the wall. Some were physically sick, many wearing twisted expressions of outrage and disgust, most were crying.

The lacrima hadn't been playing for more than seventeen minutes, but Gray was too angry to watch anymore. He only paused on his way out of the hall at the behest of a slight tug on his pants. He glanced down, pale, sheet white fingers gripping the folds of his trouser legs. He looked up-

Juvia's other hand was clasped around Lucy's, the celestial spirit mage horrified and shaking at the scenes on the wall. Gray regarded Juvia's face, her own teary blue eyes imploring, begging him to stay. She needed another body near her, another hand to hold. Gray set his mouth in a line and tore himself away, ignoring what he saw. Though he was certain a twinge of guilt existed somewhere beneath the flood of fury in his gut, he wasn't capable of providing comfort to anyone at that moment.

He couldn't help a low, staccato laugh at the sight of clear skies and sun when he stepped out of the guildhall. He scowled at the world that just kept on turning irrespective of what he and his guild mates- and Natsu- were going through. His back tight and shoulders heavy, he trudged away from the hall, from Magnolia, away from civilization and people.

Natsu's caged, chained and malnourished body still burning in his eyes, Gray didn't know where he was heading, or how long he'd been walking once he came back to himself in the forest. Realizing his jaw hurt from clenching his teeth, he forced himself to breathe through his mouth. He pressed his palms into the bark of a nearby tree as he worked to steady the pulse pounding in his chest. Absently, he focused on the tree in front of him, his eyes drawn to a series of dark scars a few feet off the ground.

Burn marks.

Something had torched the tree. The bark had tried to cover them over, so it wasn't new either. The ice mage understood that it must have been a young Natsu's doing. Halfway smirking, Gray closed his eyes, calling up an image of the fire dragon slayer as a child, white scarf covering both his neck and his chin, his clothes never changing for a whole week, pink hair waving in the light wind, yelling as he charged, his fist alight with-

Gray couldn't picture it.

Frustrated, he clawed some bark off the tree as he closed his hands into fists, concentrating harder on his memories of Natsu: the small fists, onyx eyes glaring, the fire in his hands burning... orange? No, it was red. A mixture?

Gray took a sharp inhale as he realized he couldn't remember what Natsu's fire magic looked like. He knocked his forehead against the tree, trying to recall the colors. He hadn't seen Natsu's flames for six months, but he knew he had to have seen fire elsewhere during that time. He summoned up each instance he could of anything burning. He superimposed each recollection of flame onto Natsu's image-

It just didn't look right. The only image of his fellow Fairy Tail mage that readily appeared in his mind came from what he'd seen on the surveillance lacrima.

Gray growled, twisting his knuckles against the crumbling tree bark. He'd seen minutes, but that one lacrima had hours of Natsu being tortured on it, and it was one of five. It wasn't enough for the dark guild that they took one of Fairy Tail's family members prisoner, a man Gray respected, fought with and insulted like his own brother, or even that they spent five months tormenting Natsu. No, the bastards had acted on their disgusting, perverted fantasies further, and they'd recorded each second of suffering and humiliation they put him through.

The. Sick. Fu-

He screamed.

Gray had learned as a result of childhood tragedy to be cautious and methodical, to think before he acted.

For seventeen liberating, furious minutes, Gray stopped thinking.

He tore the tree in front of him apart with his hands as claws, oblivious to the splinters in his fingers. He molded the first handheld weapon he could think of with his magic. He smashed the burned trunk in half with a giant hammer, yelling without meaning or purpose except to feel his throat turn sore while the impact of each swing of his weapon reverberated up his arms. He went after other trees, molding a sword from ice when his hammer had been chipped down into a stub. He felled any tree within his range, and when the space between him and the next grew too far, he turned on the fractured stumps, splitting them down to their roots. All the while, he kept shouting, cursing the lacrima, the images, the dark guild, and every minute that Natsu had been gone.

Finally, he stood at the center of a ring of maimed foliage and wood, a self-made clearing in the middle of the woods. Panting heavy breaths through gritted teeth, he gripped the hilt of his ice sword tighter until it cracked and shattered in his hands. He gave one last, anguished cry before he fell to his knees; his hands limp at his sides.

Gray didn't feel the ache in his chest lessen. He only felt the coarse dryness of his throat and the prickling of grass on his bleeding knuckles, and the weight of his own body after expending his magic. He started thinking again and wondered, if Natsu were where he was, what the dragon slayer would do. He didn't have to look any farther than the devastated stumps in front of him to figure it out.

Standing, Gray swore to himself that he'd see Natsu back to that dark guild, and that he- together with the rest of Fairy Tail- would help him tear it all down until nothing remained.

At this, though, Gray squeezed his eyes shut, another, fresh ache gnawing at him. Part of him- the same part that still carried guilt over the death of his mentor- knew that he might never see Natsu again as the destructive, grinning fire mage he knew him to be. That same part of Gray wished it had been him instead of Natsu.

Dumbass.

Natsu's voice echoed in his ears. Gray's head snapped up. He caught sight of the early evening sun. It burned with the same colors he'd tried to remember from Natsu.

I stopped you before because I didn't want you to die.

Gray's chin quivered.

Did you not get the message?

Running a forearm across his stinging eyes, Gray sighed and mumbled.

"Don't you dare give up, sulfur breath."

Turning his back on the sunset, Gray began making his way back to the guild.

"I'll be waiting with everyone for you to come back."