STA: A couple super important things before you read this story.

1) The views expressed by the characters (including thoughts of theirs that leak into the narrative voice) do not necessarily represent those of the author.

2) This story does not intend to portray either stance as inherently wrong, although some extreme versions of the stances and certain methods used are frowned upon. If you cannot stand the idea that some who you disagree with isn't inherently evil, you might not like this story.

3) If you wish to discuss the subject in the comments, please keep it civil.

-x-

Gray felt off for four days before he really fell ill. At the point that he started throwing up, he holed up in his apartment and waited for his stomach bug to pass. Three days of Juvia breaking in at mealtime and insisting that she spoon feed him chicken noddle soup later, Gray went to Porlyusica for medicine. It wasn't that being sick was unbearable. The nausea was borderline crippling when he woke up, but by evening it had usually subsided to more of a dull queasiness that let him stomach things with only moderate discomfort. What drove him to seek medical help was that he couldn't stand having Juvia playing nurse through one more meal. Annoyance with her overcame fear of the guild's medic.

He expected to hear that he'd eaten something bad or needed some antibiotic. Instead, Porlyusica had him drink a bubbling red concoction that went straight through him, collected a urine sample, and upon inspecting it told him, "You're pregnant."

"I didn't know you had a sense of humor."

"I don't."

Gray stared at her, waiting for her serious expression to crack and give way to uncharacteristic giggles. Instead, she picked up her broom and swatted him in the head.

"What's with that look?" Porlyusica demanded. "You came to me for help, and I'm telling you what's wrong. Do you want a morning sickness remedy or not?"

"Ow! It's not funny if you have to hit me over the head with it!"

She swatted him again. "Who's trying to be funny? You think I would joke about a patient's condition?"

He didn't, actually, but Gray knew better than to think she could make a mistake. Especially one so obvious as to think a male might be pregnant. She wouldn't haphazardly make a guess based on his symptoms, and she wouldn't be party to some prank, be it her own or one a guildmate wanted to stage after hearing Gray was sick. Which could only mean one thing:

She was serious.

"Stop gaping. It's not going to do you any good. We have a pregnancy to manage now, and it sounds like your symptoms are already severe. If you want to eat without your morning sickness troubling you, the potion should suppress the nausea perfectly."

"How?" Gray asked.

"It's a simple enough brew. Doctors never give it because they're beholden to whatever someone synthesizes in a lab, but this is safe for the mother and child, and only takes an hour to make. I'll let you wait outside while I work on it, so you can take your first dose now."

"How could I be pregnant?" Gray clarified.

"Why are you asking me? I don't know what you do with your personal time."

That was an unsatisfying answer if Gray ever heard one.

"Men don't get pregnant."

"Not without a little magic, they don't."

Gray wracked his brain for spells that would leave him pregnant. He found none, but he also came up with a list of enemy attacks from the past few months that he hadn't known the details of. He could have easily fought someone with magic that made Porlyusica's claim possible. Although… Who learned a spell just to make someone pregnant? Gray was by no means active. He couldn't take another partner when Juvia tolerated no love rivals, and he wasn't about to give her that much encouragement.

Him? Pregnant? The idea was absurd, but if he allowed for the possibility, it went from laughable to chilling. He was barely an adult, single with an overly zealous and unwanted admirer, made his living by traveling the country and beating things up, and was entirely unready to be settled down. He hadn't the slightest clue what to do with toddlers, much less infants. Not to mention that everything he'd seen and heard of pregnancy made it sound akin to body horror. Especially for someone who was never meant to be pregnant.

Did he want to spend nine months playing host to a parasite? Nope. No siree. Not in this lifetime or any to follow. As it was, Gray couldn't think of anyone he wanted to father a child with. Becoming a mother was out of the question.

Oblivious to Gray's reeling mind as she searched her cupboards for potion ingredients, Porlyusica said, "Go sit outside. I'll let you know when the potion is ready."

Gray took one step forward, then another, and then another towards the door. Mind wrapped up in the idea of motherhood, his body moved on autopilot.

He sat outside, back against Porlyusica's tree, and tried not to be sick from sheer anxiety.

Older children Gray could manage, but he was awkward around little kids. He had no patience with babies. He was too restless to stay in place and raise a child. He had a fangirl who would no doubt turn the baby into some sign of their love and force herself into the role of the other parent. He wasn't cut out for this. He couldn't do it. He couldn't. He couldn't. He couldn't.

When Porlyusica came out with a clear bottle of medicine for him, Gray was staring off vacantly into the woods, thinking about how horribly screwed he was.

"Do you need more time to let this sink in?" Porlyusica asked, voice softening for the first time. Gray always hated when she spoke like that. You knew you were in a bad place when she went easy on you. "I suppose it is a lot to have dropped on you. Come back inside. I can go over what to expect."

Gray swallowed hard, and asked, "Do I have to do this?"

"What do you mean?"

"Can't someone else take the kid for me?"

"Once it's born, yes. Until then, I've never heard of a spell that transfers a person's pregnancy to someone else."

Gray shut his eyes in despair. All of his dread over parenthood melted away with the idea that someone else would take the child, but then a million new fears popped up. How would he manage if he was pregnant and couldn't work? What new ways would Juvia find to work her way into all facets of his life when she learned about the baby? Who would he find to adopt a kid conceived in a male? How much body horror would he go through during the pregnancy? Would he even be able to handle that? What would Natsu say when he found out? He'd have a field day coming up with ways to tease Gray for being pregnant. Gray could already imagine becoming the laughing stock of the guild once word got out of his situation.

"That's not soon enough."

"There's no other way to give the child up than to wait until you've given birth."

"Do I have to go through a whole pregnancy?"

"You do if you want that child to come out alive at the end."

It took Gray a moment to find the nerve to ask his next question. "What if not putting my body through that matters more than having a child I'm not sure I could find anyone to take from me?"

For a moment, he feared that Porlyusica's silence might mean he was about to be hit with a broom again. Screamed at for such a selfish want, chased from the premise, and reported to the guildmaster for having no soul. But then she said, "In cases where magic is needed to support the pregnancy, such as one where the wrong type of body is pregnant, the child and the parent's magic become more tightly intertwined until birth. By the time it's heartbeat is strong enough to be heard, you magic will have bonded tightly with the child. If you end the pregnancy prematurely after that point, you will lose your magic for good."

Gray didn't respond.

"Given the potency of your test sample, assuming everything is developing normally, you have three weeks at most to make that call, Gray. You might want to make up your mind a few days early, in case the child's heart starts beating ahead of schedule."

Three weeks to make his choice, and it took Gray three seconds to ask, "Can we remove it now?"

-x-

STA: A couple other, slightly less important warnings.

This story is set several years after the events of the Alvarez arc in the manga. (Five-ish, maybe? I never picked a specific date.) It involves post-curse Zeref and Mavis and various character have hooked up. This is all explained in coming chapters, but I don't want anyone thrown off by it.

Also, this story might have slight anti-Nalu and anti-Gruvia tones, as failed Nalu and Gruvia romances post-war but pre-fic and consequences of these failed relationships feature in drama in the fic. This is not meant to come across as character bashing. I have nothing against Nalu.

Also, I started writing this around the time Gajeel turned out to not be dead, so the stuff with Juvia and Invel hadn't happened yet. I also started this while aspiring to writer 100k words in a month (2000 words to go and one day left) so I wrote a shitton of this fic before those event occurred. (About 25 chapters and 80,000 words by the time the chapter 498 spoilers came out, which is entirely too much to revise according to changing canon.) So as far as this fic is concerned, nothing in that fight ever happened. Gray just had a generic fight with Invel.