WARNING: There is some pretty strong language in this chapter, and there are mentions of a few different sensitive topics. It is the end of the world, and people can be pretty messed up, so be warned!


It had been just before noon when Gray and Lucy left base to hunt, and Natsu had started to grow anxious when dinnertime rolled around and the duo hadn't returned yet. Makarov had shown his concern, too. Nothing like this had ever happened before. They had a system and everything always worked according to that system. People weren't sure of what to do when something suddenly went wrong.

The old man had eagerly agreed when Natsu insisted that someone be sent out to look for them. The salmon haired boy was of course the first to volunteer, and Makarov had called on a few others to aid him in his search.

Erza and Gajeel had been the ones to accompany him, and so far their search had yielded nothing.

Natsu cursed to himself for the thousandth time, resisting the urge to slam his head against one of the nearby trees. His worry was making him go insane.

They'd been searching the forest for hours, and it was starting to grow dark. They hadn't found anything. The forest floor was already uneven, so it was hard to tell what was a foot print and what was only a hole in the ground that snow had piled into. There was no trace any life, and there was no indication as to where Gray and Lucy were.

Natsu was always wary of sending his wife off with other people. Even if they had never had an incident, he wanted to be around to make sure that she was always okay. And the fact that she was pregnant with his child only intensified his desire to be with her twenty-four-seven. Their base had a bad history of stillborn babies and mothers dying during childbirth. Gray's mother had unfortunately fallen under both of those circumstances when giving birth to her second child, and she wasn't the only one to face such a fate.

He supposed Gray was the person he trusted most when it came to watching out for Lucy, though he would rather die before admitting that to anyone else. According to the older people on base, the two boys had been nearly inseparable from the blonde after she'd been born. Some of them had stated that they'd even hoped some sort of love triangle would develop to spice up life on base. But it didn't take long for it to become very clear that Natsu and Gray held very different types of love for the girl. They had known from the time they were very young that Natsu and Lucy would end up together, and Gray would always be there to beat some sense into Natsu if the salmon haired boy ever did her wrong. But Gray was also the best wingman that Natsu could have asked for, also something that he would never admit to anyone else.

Natsu plopped himself on a log, burying his face in his hands and taking a moment to calm himself. He felt Erza's and Gajeel's pitiful stares on him, but he ignored it. He knew that both of them were worried too, even if Gajeel didn't show it. Everyone on base treated each other like family. They gave each other hope and looked out for one another. Losing somebody was everybody's greatest fear, and now two of their own were nowhere to be found.

But Natsu wouldn't rest until they were found. He wasn't going to lose his wife and best friend that easily. He'd make sure to drag them both back with him safe and sound.

With renewed determination, he shot back onto his feet. He took a single step, pausing when something snapped beneath his foot. Upon looking down, he realized that it was one of their base's crudely made wooden bows. Over seven years ago, Makarov had urged them to find alternatives to guns so that they could conserve their more lethal weapons in case a dire situation arose. Bows seemed like the next best option to everyone. They were silent, simple to wield, and the arrows were easy to make and could often times be reused.

Natsu felt his heart drop as he took the broken bow in his hand, easily recognizing it as the one that Gray had carved when he was only fourteen. The boy had insisted on using it ever since then, something that people at base teased him for relentlessly. But Gray was one of their best hunters, and he had earned every kill using this bow, so they all supposed it worked well enough.

And Natsu had just snapped the old wood beneath his foot.

He didn't have long to feel guilty about it though, his focus shifting elsewhere as Gajeel's voice suddenly rang through the forest.

"Salamander! Titania! Get the fuck over here! Now!"

Natsu ran towards his voice without a second of hesitation, but he was soon sliding to a halt next to Gajeel, his entire form filling with rage as his eyes fell upon the sight that was waiting for him.

Lucy's coat and gloves rested atop the snow, looking as if they had been vicariously thrown aside in a hurried scramble. Gray's ski goggles were partially buried a few feet away, the glass cracked and the strap broken.

And in the middle of it all, the snow was stained scarlet with blood.


Gray had just regained consciousness, but he already felt like he was going to pass out at any second. His head was pounding and his calf was throbbing, sending jolts of pain up his entire leg. He hadn't even opened his eyes, but there was already an overwhelming feeling of wrong weighing down on him. He couldn't remember anything about the moments that lead up to his current situation. All he knew was that he had somehow ended up face down on a cold surface, concrete if he had to guess by the hard roughness that was pressing into his cheek.

He slowly opened his eyes, the action taking much more effort and force than it normally did. His vision was fuzzy, and his mind was slow to process his surroundings. Just like he had guessed, he was laying on concrete, though the gray surface was splashed with a violent red directly in front of his face. It took him more than a moment to realize it was blood, and that it was puddling out from beneath where his head met the ground.

He clenched his jaw as he rolled onto his back, his tired muscles straining as they fought to complete the action. He used his arms to slowly push himself up with a low groan, the limbs shaking warily beneath the weight of his upper body. Once his torso was upright, his left hand came to press against his temple. He immediately pulled his hand back with a small hiss, his fingers coated with his own blood. He could feel that the entire left side of his face was coated in the substance as well, and his hair on that side was matted against his forehead with the stickiness. He noticed his right hand was covered in blood too, though it had dried and was cracked in several places.

He turned his focus to his calf next, leaning forward to inspect the wound through the tear in his snow pants. He couldn't remember how the hell he had gotten it, but it hurt like hell and it was still bleeding quite a bit, smearing even more blood across the concrete as he moved his leg about. He decided that treating it was priority over letting it continue to bleed whilst he contemplated its cause. So he yanked his scarf from around his neck, wrapping the material around his calf several times before pulling on both ends to tighten it so it would put some pressure over his wound. He groaned through clenched teeth at the pain that the action brought on, his mind finally pulling out of its fog and being spurred into full awareness by the agonizing sensation. He started to breath heavily as memories of what had happened began to assault his consciousness.

He remembered letting his bow sink into the snow, completely abandoning his task of hunting to start a snowball fight with Lucy. Her laughter suddenly cutting out and her body tensing as she focused on something behind him. A blinding pain as an arrow was suddenly embedded into his calf. Lucy's screaming as she was tackled to the ground and straddled by a figure that had come out of nowhere. Something slamming into his temple and his consciousness fading into blackness.

Those thoughts had his head franticly whipping around, and he let out a relieved breath when he found what he was looking for.

Lucy was laying on her side a few feet away, her back facing him. He hurriedly crawled over to her, his own pain becoming secondary as his worry for the blonde took over. He gently took a hold of her shoulder, using it to roll her upper half back onto his lap, cradling her head in the crook of his arm.

"Lucy," Gray coaxed, gently shaking her form. "Hey…Lucy, wake up."

She was breathing at least, and that was enough to calm his nerves a small fraction.

His jaw clenched as he saw the nasty cut that rested above her right eyebrow, dripping blood into her golden hair. A blue and yellow bruise spanned over the area too, and he guessed that she had been knocked unconscious in the same manner he had.

His eyes scanned over the rest of her form as well, his brows furrowing when noticed that her snow pants and boots were gone, though her socks and thick sweat pants still remained. Her heavy coat, sweater, scarf, and gloves were missing too, leaving her upper half covered only by a black undershirt and a red flannel that he was sure belonged to Natsu. The buttons of the flannel were left undone to accommodate her swollen stomach, and the black material of her undershirt was stretched thin over the bump. Life during the end of the world hadn't given her many options when it came to pregnancy clothes, but the blonde made due with what she had nonetheless.

It was then that Gray noticed a few items of his own apparel were missing, like his ski goggles and gloves. He remembered leaving his gloves back by the log that he had been kneeling behind whilst hunting, throwing them aside because they got in the way and he preferred to use his bow without them. Warmth didn't matter much to him anyways. He had a higher tolerance towards the cold than most people from his base did, and he would go as far to say that he even had an affinity for it.

The cold was getting to him at the moment though, amplified by the concrete walls and floor of the room. If he was cold, he couldn't imagine what Lucy felt like. She had only the thin flannel and undershirt to contain heat while he had a thick and puffy coat and snow pants on top of all of his other clothes.

He couldn't get her to wake up, which filled with his heart with worry, but he decided to somewhat take advantage of the situation and care for her while she was unconscious. Lucy was sometimes too kindhearted for her own good, and he was sure that if she was conscious, she would refuse to accept his clothing because it would mean that he was sacrificing his own warmth.

But he couldn't care less about himself right now. He slid his coat off and did his best to wrap it around her, giving her health priority over his without much thought. He was in the process of guiding one of her arms through the sleeve when an unfamiliar, chilling voice sounded out from behind him.

"Ah, you're finally awake."

His head whipped around, only now noticing that one side of the room had no wall, only metal bars. A man with a canine-like sneer was staring at him through them, his shaggy blonde hair falling over one his eyes.

"I was starting to think that Mard hit you too hard. But it looks like I'll be able to play with you after all."

His hair color identified him as the same man that had tackled and pinned Lucy to the ground. Gray narrowed his eyes as he ground out, "Who the fuck are you?"

The man's sneer only widened, "Name's Jackal. I'm not gonna bother asking for yours though. I'm more interested in blondie."

The raven haired boy instinctively pulled Lucy closer to him, his lips pulling back in a snarl. If the situation were different, he would have chastised himself for acting like Natsu. But this man was clearly dangerous, and Gray didn't want to take his attention off of him, not even for a second.

"So…" the blonde man continued, ignoring Gray's fierce glare and turning his focus to the girl that was nestled in his lap, "Is she a good fuck?"

"What?" Gray ground out, daring the man to repeat himself.

Jackal's smirk grew, clearly relishing in the effect that his words had on the raven haired boy, "Oh, don't pretend that you haven't fucked her. Doesn't that thing growing inside her belong to you? Let me tell ya, I was pretty surprised when I started stripping her and found out that it wasn't just the padding of her coat that made her look fat."

So that was why some of her clothes were missing. Gray's veins filled with fury, and he could clench his fists tight enough to contain his rage, "What the hell did you do to her?!"

Jackal huffed out a displeased breath as he heavily settled onto a crate that rested just outside the cell, his hair shifting and allowing Gray to catch sight of four thin, scratch marks that ran over the man's left eye and were beginning to scab over, "Nothing yet. She was a feisty bitch. Had to knock her out after she took her fingernails to my face."

Gray fought off the proud smile that threatened to form. Like he had thought about before, Lucy never was one to go down easy, and being pregnant had only increased her drive and motivation.

"Tried to have my way with her again when we got back here, but I could only take her pants off before Mard stopped me. He said he had stuff to do to her before I could have her. It's all good though," Jackal continued, a sadistic smile spreading across his lips, "I'll have plenty of time to do everything I'd like with her later. And I like 'em better when they're conscious anyways."

The raven haired boy pulled Lucy even tighter against him, "I won't let you touch her. If you so much as lay a hand on her, I'll fucking destroy you."

The canine-like man burst into laughter as if he had just heard a good joke, "I'm afraid you won't be able to do much of anything when I get around to playing with her. You'd be dead already if Tempester wasn't such a horrible shot with a bow."

"Then I guess I'm lucky to be alive," Gray sarcastically ground out.

"Lucky?" Jackal's cackling picked up in volume and intensity, "You think that you're lucky to be alive right now? Do you have any idea where you are?" The man stood, his laughter dying out and a sadistic grin spreading across his features as he crouched down next to the bars, "We call ourselves Tartaros. You see, we don't have any women around here, so we'll be keeping blondie around until she's all used up and worn out. And you…you were supposed to be our dinner tonight. Mard wants to play with you a bit longer now though. But I guarantee that the time will come when we chop you up and cook you real nice. So you think you're lucky to be alive? I think the contrary." His sinister laughter started again, "You know what? Maybe you did die after all. But this place ain't heaven."

He looked Gray straight in the eyes as he ground out, "Welcome to hell."


AN

Originally, I hadn't planned for this to get so dark so fast, but like I said in the last AN, this fic is only going to be a few chapters. It looks like it'll be about five at this point since I'm going to make the last three much longer, but I'm trying to come up with more material so we can get at least a sixth chapter in here!

Also, if you feel at any point that I should change the rating of this fic to M, please let me know! I personally don't think it'll get that intense, but that's just me, so really, let me know!

Let me know what you thought! And thank you so much for reading!