I hadn't been too concerned when they first fell through the trap door Gray opened. He and Natsu both have a talent for surviving the most ridiculous amounts of damage. I sent Virgo down to fetch them but she reported that she couldn't break into the tunnel they'd fallen through or create her own tunnel to where theirs have come out. All we knew was that they were about fifty feet below us, and had sounded alive.

That's when I got worried. Not over them being alive, that was a good sign. Virgo couldn't reach them, and the trap door had resealed while the button Gray had accidentally pushed had stayed pressed in. Of all the times one of the traps could finally stop working…

Happy and I had considered splitting up, but if the map I'd been working on was anything to go by then just the level of the ruins that we were on could stretch for miles. If we got separated there may be no getting back together.

It was getting late too. I was starting to think we'd be searching all night when I saw Natsu wave to me, running up excitedly, big, goofy grin on his face. Perfectly fine, as always. Stress that I'd been too stressed to notice eased away at the sight of him.

"Lucy! Happy! Thank God! Gray's been mad at me so he's ignored me for hours. We've just been wandering around in silence trying to find a way back up. I'd have beaten him for it but I'd feel kind of bad while his arm's messed up."

"Eh? Gray hurt his arm? Was it in the fall?" I asked.

"Gray's hurt?" Happy chimed in, looking at me in concern.

"Yeah. It looks really bad. We can find the stone later. It kinda of went away when I touched it anyway. Gray's just behind me. We should take him to see Wendy." Natsu paused. "Actually, I thought I hurt my leg but it's just fine now."

"Natsu… when you say it went away… you don't mean you broke the stone our client wanted, do you?" I demanded. I could just picture it. And that job would have paid my rent for three whole months too.

"No. It vanished, and it left this weird amulet in its place."

"Well, maybe the client wanted that, but it was sealed in stone," I theorized.

"Either way, Gray needs a doctor." Natsu looked over his shoulder. "There he is. Oy! Gray! I found Happy and Lucy! Gray!"

Gray didn't look up, even though I'm sure he'd been searching for us just as hard as we'd been looking for them. He trudged along, head down, one bloody arm dangling, the other dragging something. I felt sick, wondering if he was in too much pain to focus anymore. Gray could be pretty resilient himself, but most of the guild didn't have Natsu's ability to ignore any personal harm when focused enough on a goal.

"That does look awful…"

"What looks awful?" Happy asked. "Lucy, who are you talking too?"

"She's talking to me," Natsu pointed out, motioning to smack Happy on the back of the head for being so silly.

His hand passed right through.

Natsu stopped grinning.

With perfect timing Gray noticed us. Unlike Natsu he didn't smile and wave, but he did pick up the pace while calling out, "Lucy! Happy! Over here!"

"Gray!" Happy called back, smiling, then freezing at the sight of his arm. "Lucy, that's mean. You should have told me he was there when you saw that he was hurt."

"I-"

"Gray! Lucy's being mean!" Happy cried, flying towards Gray. Natsu and I exchanged confused looks and followed after him.

Halfway to Gray Happy stopped completely, landing and staring past Gray in horror. When Natsu and I caught up with him we could see why. That thing Gray had been dragging…

I glanced at Natsu, who acted just like Natsu should have, but hadn't been able to touch Happy, then at Natsu, who had the injured leg that had been mentioned, but looked more like he was half-no-completely dead. I was standing next to a Natsu that only I could see or hear while Gray dragged Natsu's corpse along after him.

"Gray… is that…?"

Gray just nodded.

"Natsu…" Happy sobbed, running over and patting him up and down. Trying to find a breath. A pulse. Anything. "Natsu…"

"But I'm right here!" Natsu cried, loud enough to make me flinch. "Gray! Happy! I'm right here! H-hey!"

"How…?" I began. How were there two Natsus? Why was I the only one who could see the lively one? Why was the other dead? I could be hallucinating. But then how had I known about their injuries?

"It was that damn stone the client wanted," Gray hissed. "We found the room it was in, but it locked us inside. We couldn't get out. We were running out of air. Natsu decided to break the seal on the stone to see if that would open the door back up. That thing didn't need fire magic to break the seal. It needed the whole fire mage. He held his hand out in front of the stone and it practically sucked the life right out of him. I can't get any response from him at all now."

"No way…" Happy whispered.

"But…" I looked over to the Natsu who I'd been talking to a moment before. He looked as stunned as the rest of us. "But Natsu's… then who's that?" I asked, pointing to the Natsu who was still standing.

Gray and Happy both looked in the direction I pointed, looked right through Natsu, and looked back to me. "Lucy," Gray said slowly, confirming exactly what Happy had all but said earlier, "there's no one else here."

-o-

"I-I don't really think your crazy," my Natsu hallucination told me as we got aboard the train. "I mean, I know I'm not imagining myself. I don't feel like I died either, but… um… maybe… maybe I did. And you're talking to my ghost. But you're not crazy, Lucy."

I took a deep breath and tried to block him out. Crazy was what Gray and Happy had agreed on when I kept talking to my hallucination on the way out of the ruins. Not… exactly crazy. Just temporarily, from stress and the shock of losing a friend. It hadn't helped that I was the only one talking. The one who was really in shock was Gray, and Happy was… not happy just then.

The hallucination wasn't a perfect imitation of Natsu. When the train started he took a seat and didn't get sick, though he did act like he ought to be, marveling at how amazing it was to ride a train without feeling like he was going to throw up. I'd taken a seat away from Gray and Happy, away from everyone, so I wouldn't get too many looks if I caved and interacted with the hallucination again. When he continued to laugh at how fast a train could go, I glared at him.

"Be quiet."

"Eh? Lucy, are you mad at me?"

"I'm not in a good mood. I don't want to deal with going crazy on top of it. You're just my imagination, so I'm trying to imagine you shutting up."

Nats-My hallucination shook his head. "I'm real," he insisted. "I was only trying to help Gray get out. I didn't want to upset you. No one else can talk to me now. Even Happy. Please don't be mad. I don't want the only friend I can still talk to to be mad."

I didn't respond, trying to focus all my attention on the window. I did want to talk to, well, to the closest thing to talking to Natsu, but this wasn't good. Being so affected by the death of a friend that you conversed with an imaginary version of him was beyond unhealthy.

"Lucy, please, I…" The hallucination paused, looking down at his body. I couldn't help but follow his gaze to his torso, which was becoming translucent. "Ah! That's not good! I don't want to disappear!"

Trying to ignore him was working. I shut my eyes and tried to block out the sound of him running around frantically trying to stop himself from fading away. It… hurt to ignore him, but it wasn't really Natsu. The real Natsu would have knocked everything over and destroyed the train. No. The real Natsu would have been too sick from being on the train to have run around in the first place.

I didn't open my eyes until we reached Magnolia. The hallucination was gone.

-x-

STA: So there's this one book series I really like called Women of the Otherworld. It has this Darkest Powers spinoff which is aimed for teens. It's cool because even though it uses teen language and school age characters it's written with the seriousness of an adult book, no dumb teen "I love you so much even though it's only been a week since I met you" romances, and even when those do come up they just bite people in the ass for getting carried away with someone they barely knew, but since they're not adult books there aren't any raunchy scenes.

So in the main series everyone with some genetically inherited supernatural power knows they were born with these powers that are kept secret from regular humans, but the teen books focus on teenagers who were part of an experiment to enhance certain powers, or revive powers that have become 'extinct' and the characters are raised as normal humans, completely unaware of the hidden world of werewolves and sorcerers and necromancers and such. I end up watching them slowly start to develop their powers and be like "OMG, what is going on?" and I'm thinking "how can you be so stupid? You're obviously developing the ability to shape shift into a cougar!" It's really hard for me to imagine it from the perspective of someone who doesn't know that their life is a story and therefore must be interesting. That's how I felt writing this too. It was so obvious to me that Natsu was a ghost, but Lucy wasn't supposed to realize that yet.

Ugh. Lucy…

Next chapter: Sting is in shock