Note: Otherwise known as: The AU No One Asked For Where Cobra Attacks Gray Instead of Erza. Poor kid.

Maim

1. to deprive of the use of some part of the body by wounding or the like; cripple

2. to impair; make essentially defective

Lyon was a pragmatist at heart. If the arm had to go to save Gray's life, then it had to go. But he couldn't bear to think of what that would do to Gray.

Gray was busy arguing with Natsu when the ship appeared overhead, although he kept finding himself distracted by Lyon's presence on the other side of the group. He still wasn't entirely sure what to make of that. Seeing Lyon walk in as one of Lamia Scale's representatives to fight Oración Seis had definitely been a shock, and now he seemed to lurk in some place between friend and foe that Gray didn't understand.

But then one of the Trimens—damned if Gray could tell them apart when they were all equally annoying—said something about Christina and pointed at the sky. It actually was a very impressive flying ship…at least until it was shot down in a number of equally impressive explosions. He suspected that the impressive destruction of the impressive ship was going to put Blue Pegasus in impressive debt.

His musings were cut short by the appearance of half a dozen particularly nasty-looking characters who could be no one but the infamous Oración Seis.

"Let's go beat them up!" Natsu said, charging forward.

Gray was hot on his heels. "Not without me, you aren't."

Racer moved like lightning, batting the two mages away like one might swat a fly, but Gray wasn't one to give up so easily and the battle was on. Around him the fight spread to the other gathered mages, but he had his hands full just trying to track Racer's movements.

And mostly failing. The bastard moved too fast for the eye to see, and he managed to hit Gray again and again and again. Gray stumbled back, panting and aching, and swung wildly at the colorful blur streaking past. He missed again and cursed.

Something moved behind him and he spun around, automatically lashing out in a vain attempt to land a hit on his attacker. But he paused for a fatal moment, surprise drawing him up short as he came face to face not with Racer but an enormous purple snake.

In that second of hesitation the serpent struck, lunging forward and sinking its fangs into his lower arm. Blinding pain exploded from the site, tingling through his nerves and searing through his veins.

Gray struck blindly in desperation to get the beast off him, but it was already retreating. He clapped his hand over the bite, grinding his teeth together at the pain, but then hurriedly settled into a defensive stance.

The purple-haired man beside the snake just waved him off. "No need for that. You're already dying." He smiled in a particularly unpleasant fashion. "The venom will travel through your body and paralyze you, and then you'll die in agony."

Gray could feel it already, the poison being pumped through his body by his racing heart that was already working overtime from the adrenaline of the fight. But he wasn't one to just curl up and die, so he staggered a step forward and lashed out with whatever half-formed magic he had left. The snake's tail flicked around and slammed into his chest with enough force to crack his ribs.

He flew through the air like a ragdoll and crashed into the thick trunk of an oak. He squeezed his eyes shut and bit through his lip, his mouth filling with the coppery tang of blood. His breath came in short, harsh gasps, and he curled around his poisoned arm.

He was through. The pain threw him into a nightmarish daze from which he found it too difficult to rouse himself. He didn't want to think about what his costly mistake was doing to him, so he let the pain cloud his mind and drown out his clamoring thoughts.

He cracked his eyes halfway open just in time to see the dark guild retreat, carrying a flailing Wendy with them and, by extension, Happy, since the girl had grabbed him along the way. Gray twitched, but there was nothing he could do about it.

"Gray! Gray, what happened?" Erza hurried over and dropped to her knees beside him, her worried eyes searching for the source of his obvious agony.

He reluctantly uncurled himself to hold out his arm. Two holes marred the skin halfway between the wrist and elbow of his right arm, and he stared in fascination at the streaks of purple running along the lines of his veins in sharp contrast to the deathly pallor of his skin.

"Whoa, you're turning purple!" Natsu exclaimed. "Cool!"

"Not cool," Gray rasped. "It's poison, idiot. Or venom? Do snakes count as venomous? I guess it doesn't really matter."

He shook his head fitfully and bit down on his tongue to put a stop to his pain-fueled rambling.

"Oh shit," Erza mumbled, poking gingerly at his arm.

Gray sucked in a breath that made a sound embarrassingly close to a whine and feebly tried to pull away.

"That doesn't look good," Lyon said with a frown as he drifted over to take a look.

Gray didn't deign to respond to such an asinine comment. He watched, sickened, as the faintly glowing purple poison spread up his arm. His skin was burning, his blood was on fire, his bones were melting. He bit down harder, and a trickle of blood escaped the corner of his mouth and dribbled down his chin.

Erza's eyes tracked its progress. "It's moving fast," she murmured, tearing her gaze away to assess the poison's movement. "Maybe we can try a tourniquet to slow it down. I hate to say it, but we might have to amputate if we can't find a way to get rid of it quickly."

Gray's breath caught in his throat and his heart pounded ever harder at the thought. "No," he said harshly.

"Calm down," Erza said in alarm. "You're going to make it spread faster if you get worked up."

"Better your arm than your life," Lyon said bluntly.

Gray was not convinced. "No."

"If it–"

"I can't use her magic like that," he hissed, eyes flashing. "Although I suppose that's what you wanted, isn't it?"

Lyon flinched back, eyes widening and mouth twisting into a funny expression. Gray looked away, almost glad to be distracted by another wave of blinding pain.

Maybe it was an unfair thing to say, even if he thought Lyon had wanted exactly that on Galuna. But Gray was past the point of being fair. Fair wasn't losing the only thing he had left of Ur.

"Wendy could heal him," Charle said into the awkward silence.

Everyone stared at her.

"How?" Natsu asked.

"She's the sky dragon slayer," the cat said. "She has healing magic."

That shy little slip of a girl was a dragon slayer? Unexpected, although Gray couldn't summon up true amazement when he felt like he was dying. Air hissed between his teeth and he curled inward convulsively.

"Let's go rescue her, then!" Natsu said with all the enthusiastic determination of the eternally optimistic.

"I'll stay here in case…" Erza trailed off.

A cool hand brushed along Gray's feverish skin, running along his forehead. "Hang on," Lyon said quietly. "We'll find her and fix this."

Gray wanted to believe him.

Lyon raced through the forest, heedless of Sherry tagging along behind or his own aching body. He and Sherry had fought Racer to give Natsu the chance to get Wendy back to Gray, but he couldn't tamp down the fear until he saw for himself that things had worked out.

He was a pragmatist at heart. If the arm had to go to save Gray's life, then it had to go. But he couldn't bear to think of what that would do to Gray.

He burst into the clearing and stopped short. Gray was slumped back against a tree while Erza, Wendy, Natsu, and the Exceeds looked on with varying expressions of grief and guilt. Gray's expression was stony, his eyes cold but vacant. He was conspicuously short one arm.

Lyon tried not to stare. "What happened?" he demanded, rushing over and trying to ignore the blood-drenched leaves squelching beneath his boots. "I thought…"

"It was spreading too fast," Erza mumbled. Her expression was shell-shocked. "I didn't… I was scared it would reach his heart before Wendy could get here. I wouldn't be able to do anything once it got past his arm, and…" Her face crumpled. "I'm so sorry, Gray," she moaned.

Gray said nothing, only stared ahead blankly. Lyon was surprised he was still conscious at all.

"I still don't understand why you can't fix it," Natsu said, defiant yet plaintive.

Wendy shook her head, tears welling in her eyes. "I can't reattach it. I healed what I could—what is left. There won't be any worse damage or infection or blood loss, but what's already done… I'm sorry, Gray-san. I wish I could…"

Gray shook his head with the slightest of motions. He wasn't writhing in agony like earlier and didn't seem to be in as much pain as would be expected after such a brutal procedure—due, undoubtedly, to Wendy's intervention—but the pain lurking beneath the fragile sheen of ice in his eyes was bottomless.

"You should go," he said finally, his voice an emotionless rasp. "They'll need all the help they can get taking these guys out."

Erza winced. "But you–"

"Will stay here. I'll be utterly useless, anyway."

"You're not useless!" Erza protested.

Gray silenced her with a flat look. "Just go. I don't need you all hanging around uselessly. Go help them."

"S-someone should st-stay with you," Wendy stuttered, wringing her hands together.

"No. Just…no."

Everyone exchanged looks, knowing he was right but at the same time knowing that someone really needed to stay with him. Lyon nodded and dropped to the ground beside Gray, wincing at the sticky redness that began seeping through his clothing.

"Go away," Gray said halfheartedly, his voice raw even though his eyes stayed stubbornly dry.

But when the others nodded in acknowledgement and reluctantly departed, Lyon drew his knees to his chest and stayed a silent observer to the war raging behind Gray's eyes.

Gray hated life. He'd almost rather be dead. He couldn't stand the feeling of being crippled, broken. He hated how even the simplest everyday tasks were now a struggle. He hated how his neat handwriting was reduced to his non-dominant hand's painstaking and messy scrawl. He hated how everyone looked at him differently and shot him pitying glances. He hated how he was useless in any kind of fight.

He especially hated that his magic—Ur's magic—was beyond his reach. He could feel it inside him, curling about his heart and itching to be freed, but he couldn't mold it. He'd heard talk of phantom limbs before, but he only really noticed the phenomenon when he went to mold and it felt like he should be able to make the proper gestures but couldn't.

He withdrew into himself. He preferred to avoid the guild now that he wasn't a proper mage and had to deal with all his friends' grief and guilt and pity, but he had to go on a regular basis or everyone would worry.

They drove him crazy. Lucy would always hover and offer her help for every little thing, Happy had offered a lake's worth of sympathy fish, and everyone gave him those looks and tried to soothe his anger at the world. One of the worst moments had been in the very beginning, when Natsu had demanded a fight and then hesitated, the realization that Gray was too broken now flashing over his face. And Erza, whose guilt followed her like a cloud, had eventually broken back down into apologies, saying she should have waited and trusted the others to bring Wendy in time. He comforted her as best he could when part of him still held some similar resentments of his own.

Even worse, Lyon was still hanging around. As if dealing with the others wasn't already hard enough. It was a drastic change from Galuna, for sure. The support he offered was quieter and less obtrusive than most of the others, so Gray did his best to ignore him.

But when Lyon did open his big mouth, it usually went badly.

"I'm sure we'll find some kind of really cool prosthetic soon," he said.

"What does it matter?" Gray growled, wishing he'd leave. "It won't be the same. I still won't be able to mold."

"You can do one-handed molding. I did it for a while, so I can show you all the tips and tricks. I think you could do it."

Gray recoiled in horrified anger. "I'm not going to do one-handed molding," he said harshly. "That's not how she taught us. I'm not going to dishonor her or our magic with unbalanced molding."

A frown tugged at Lyon's lips. "I'm just saying–"

"No."

And off Gray stormed, lonelier than ever.

Gray was killing himself, Lyon could tell. Lyon couldn't entirely blame him. Losing a limb was hard enough, losing a magic was a hundred times worse, and losing a magic so strongly tied to someone you had loved and lost was utterly devastating. Even just the thought of it made Lyon's skin crawl.

He hadn't seen Gray cry once, hadn't seen him break down and mourn what he had lost. To avoid that, Gray had turned his pain into anger again, quietly raging against the world as he withdrew from his friends and isolated himself as thoroughly as possible. Lyon recognized the tendency from when they were children, and he still didn't like it.

He couldn't leave yet. Partly it was because he felt like he owed Gray something after Galuna and the years of hatred that came before. Mostly it was because he still cared about the idiot.

Gray had already self-destructed before, and Lyon wasn't about to sit back and watch it happen again. There had to be a way to get through to him.

Gray liked to avoid people as much as possible to escape the attention his missing limb drew, so he had picked up a penchant for wandering in the forest when he needed to get away and move. Lyon usually left him alone, knowing he needed some time to himself, but today he followed.

He crept along sneakily for a few minutes before Gray paused in a clearing and turned back with a scowl.

"Will you quit stalking me, already? You aren't nearly as quiet as you think you are."

Lyon emerged from the undergrowth sheepishly. "Yeah… Hey, while we're here, you wanna learn some tricks for one-handed molding?"

Gray's irritation immediately morphed into cold fury. "I already said no. You're welcome to your unbalanced shit, but I want no part of it." He paused and eyed Lyon as the older mage gnawed on the inside of his cheek. "…You use two-handed molding now?"

"Yeah…" Lyon shifted uncomfortably, wondering if it was better not to rub it in Gray's face. "But I mean, if you don't want–"

"Don't be stupid," Gray mumbled. He half turned away, his eyes glassy and unseeing. "If you can do it, then do it. It's good that you're doing it right again."

"Yeah, but…" Lyon sighed heavily and shook his head. "One-handed molding is weaker, but it isn't weak. And neither are you. You aren't broken, Gray. It's a tragedy, but you've always been a fighter, a survivor. It's time to make the most of it."

Gray's shoulders slumped. "I don't know how. And I don't know if I want to. I just can't imagine…"

"Living without your magic?" Lyon suggested. He stepped forward, hesitated, and then reached out to grasp Gray's remaining hand, holding on even when the younger man stiffened. "Her magic? Our magic? Let me help you figure out the one-handed molding. It's making the best of a bad situation. Even if you can't hang on to her entirely, it's still better to have a piece than nothing at all, right? Don't give up entirely. You can still have her and your magic in a different form.

"And…me. I'll be here…as long as you want me." Lyon shifted awkwardly as Gray bowed his head. He wasn't entirely sure of his place with Gray after all those years apart and then Galuna, and maybe the past few weeks weren't enough to expect to be welcomed back. "I mean, I don't have to if you don't–"

Gray sniffled loudly and choked on the sob he was trying to swallow. Shit, Lyon didn't want to see him cry, but maybe it needed to happen. The tears hadn't come before, but eventually he would have to come to terms with the situation so that he could heal.

Gray gave up on fighting the flood and stepped into Lyon, burying his face in the older mage's chest. Lyon froze, caught off guard by the vulnerability and the acceptance that overlooked all their worst transgressions, but Gray's body trembled like a child's and he couldn't help but wrap his little brother in a tight hug.

The hug he received in return was really only half a hug, and it was this most bittersweet of gestures that truly broke Lyon's heart.

emmahoshi: Lol looks like there was a misunderstanding about whose arm it was :P And yeah, I tend to prefer the timeline-divergent AUs rather than the world-divergent AUs. I just made up those terms, btw. There's sort of a spectrum of AUs depending on how you define them lol Diets suck XD And rarely seem to work right. My weight tends to stay pretty stubbornly consistent, tbh. I don't gain too much or lose too much. Right now I'm not planning to write a continuation, but I'll think about it lol I tend not to enjoy working with plots that permanently disfigure characters for whatever reason, which is probably why I'm only doing it in one of these short things lol I've been toying with a similar idea in a different situation that would be even more painful, but I have too many other projects right now.