Blergh. I'm sorry, this one isn't very great. Please forgive meh! :)
Fear
Another flash of the paralyzing feeling surged through the Ice Mage's veins, distracting him from his fight. He quickly finished off his opponent and looked around for another.
They'd gone on a job to defeat what seemed like an ordinary band of thieves. What they were not told was that the thieves were, in fact, a dark guild. And they had a rather large group of soldier mages protecting the "big guys" inside the guild.
And so, they were still stuck outside the building, fighting against a large amount of rather strong mages. There was nothing wrong with that, of course. They had all needed to get their blood pumping. After a minor incident (in which Natsu and Erza destroyed yet another town,) they had to go on jobs that wouldn't have any fighting involved. So they were trapped in a boring period of doing jobs like dog walking and tending libraries. How Gray and Lucy were involved in this, the raven haired man didn't know. But he was glad to get back to doing exciting jobs, and no matter how much Lucy denied it, he knew she liked the adrenaline rush too.
But Gray was starting to feel something was off. He wasn't sure what, but this feeling that he felt. A feeling that came every few minutes, he knew it well.
Fear.
It wasn't the same kind of fear as watching something disturbing happen. It wasn't the kind of fear that you feel when you're about to get your ass kicked. No. It was an instinctual fear, a fear where deep in your bones you know something was about to happen. When the trembling in your muscles tells you something has happened. When the clenching in your chest tells you that the 'something' was going to be bad.
And Gray was feeling all of these at once. But he pushed them down, brushing the clenching feeling as the feeling of being back in action. He continued to fight, eager to get moving again. But the feeling would still arise, pulling at his tendons, yanking at his muscles, screaming at his thoughts, urging him to turn in another direction and run.
But still he ignored it.
He ignored it until the last enemy was gone.
And then he was aware.
He was aware that something had gone terribly wrong. As Natsu, Erza and Happy made for the doors, Gray's legs moved on their own, and that was the moment when he noticed.
Where was Lucy?
He heard the others calling to him in bewilderment, but his mind was clouding over in the now extremely present fear.
Anxiety made him run faster than ever, and he dashed through the trees of the forest, calling out for the blonde haired beauty with no response.
He turned a corner in the path and froze in horror.
Lucy was laying, still as stone, on the rocky floor of the woods. She was bruised and bloody, her arm bent at a nasty angle, half of her face soaked in scarlet, her blonde hair dripping. Worst of all, her eyes were open, unblinking.
Gray moved forward, almost like a robot. He didn't remember walking over to her and dropping to his knees, but next thing he knew he was picking her up gently, holding her head with one hand while keeping her arms at her sides with the other. He stared and she stared back, but she wasn't looking at him anymore. She wasn't looking at anything.
He shook her gently and begged her to wake up, but to no avail. She just gazed, cloudy eyed, into nothing.
Tears fell from his face and onto Lucy's still body. He murmured her name, over and over again, and pressed his head into the crook of her bloodied neck. He didn't want to see those eyes, staring into infinity.
He stopped shaking with tears. Something was different about this body. Something wasn't right. It should be cold, right? It shouldn't...
It shouldn't have a pulse, right?
Gray jerked his head away and held his hand against the artery in his lovers neck. The thrum of life was faint and getting further away, but she was alive.
A new fear erupted in Gray. She wasn't dead, but she was close. He picked her up, vaguely hoping that the others had taken care of the remaining enemies. He held her to his chest and took off, back towards the dark guilds building, where he knew that their teammates would be. He muttered encouraging words to Lucy, words he hoped she could still hear.
He burst out into the open just as the others walked calmly from the building, dragging the bound leader behind them. Natsu glared at him and started to insult him, but he cut himself short as he spotted the limp body in his arms, as well as the tears still wetting the black haired man's cheeks.
Wendy ran forward and had him lay Lucy on the ground. He did so, and she immediately got to work, healing her body, ridding her of the gashes, the bruises, the broken bones. Gray stared at Lucy's face, which was illuminated in the blue light of the healing magic, and silently hoped that she would be okay.
Wendy dropped her hands, gasping, and the light faded. She said that if Lucy was going to be okay, it would be now... if they hadn't gotten to her too late.
They stared in silence, waiting, for the faintest rise and fall of her chest, the lightest flickering of her eyelids, the tiniest twitch of a finger.
.
.
.
Nothing.
Gray's head dropped and he heard the others struggling not to cry. Wendy sobbed and Erza comforted her. He shook his head. This couldn't be happening, this isn't real. He thought to himself. He was frozen, shocked and dazed. It... couldn't be real, right?
But there she was.
His angel.
Unmoving.
He reached out to close her eyes.
And what happened next was almost a miracle.
The pale form drew a deep, shuddering gasp.
She blinked.
She looked around.
Her brown eyes, now slowly filling with life, found Gray. She smiled weakly.
"Hey guys." She whispered. Gray covered his mouth as his eyes became red. She was alive. Alive.
He embraced her. He wouldn't lose her. No.
He'd listen to the fear next time.