warning: spoilers for chapter 499

notes: i heard somewhere that someone is dying and while i'm incredulous that the dead will remain dead, i must take the opportunity to write some angst.

Every year this day passes—the one when they died together in a headlock after the self-proclaimed lord of the winter hushed their hot fighting nakama-driven spirit and left their cold fading bodies face down in blood-slushed snow.

At least the day they were supposed to die together.

Impressed as Invel had been that the two of them chose the death of two over the death of one—because oh how precious these feeble humans were that they actually cared about each other—in that moment, Gray only regretted he didn't realize he loved her sooner and that he didn't think to spend more time with her—

Instead he was so caught up with beating Lyon in remembrance of his foster mother who taught him all he knew or so caught up finding his father to demand answers why his life was the way it was or so caught up with his mission to infiltrate the Avatar cult that he hadn't even bothered to greet her a good morning or night—just so fucking caught up all the time that—

He just expected her to be there, and maybe that was the problem all along—maybe that's why he didn't think for a second that the clock was ticking and that their days were numbered, that they were guild members and they were fighting in battles to save Fiore and that they were running just fast enough so that the gates of heaven and hell wouldn't catch them, that he thought he had time to even just think if his feelings were more than just serious—

And god damn it all, he moves as slow as his ice and his mind makes decisions at glacier rates, and nothing clicked in his stupid stupid self until that day.

He doesn't actually hear it—his heart is beating loud (for once) and his breath is deep (at last) and his the gears in his head are whirring (finally)—but he thinks he hears her sweet soft soothing voice calling his name.

He looks up at her, and she looks up at him, and he knows she's reliving the same day—he can see it in her eyes.

"Do you remember the day you almost died?" he asks her.

She looks at him with glassy eyes. There's a tear trailing down the edge of her cheek but she's not making a single move to wipe it away.

"No," he says. "Stop it. Don't—"

He raises his hand and cups her face. He clears the drop with a brush of his thumb but when he draws his hand back, his palm is cold and wet like he just dipped it into the ocean and she just

keeps melting.

It's okay, he reminds himself. It's okay because water turns to ice turns to water turns to ice again.

And he can rebuild her as many times as he needs because she is still alive in his veins, in his heart, in his memories, for he is an ice make mage and he has the power to create what he imagines in his happiest dreams.

But damn that he is an ice makemage, for she remains just that.

thir13enth