Note: There are a couple sort of AUish, or at least non-canon, things here, but they serve a purpose and there shouldn't be anything too jarring.
Chapter 20
(In which Gray finally shows Natsu the elusive notebook.)
As it turned out, Gray did in fact catch a cold. And despite Natsu's earlier good intentions, he ended up teasing the ice mage mercilessly anyway. Gray seemed just as reluctant to admit to being sick as he had been before the void, so despite his sneezing and coughing and general drowsiness, he continued to insist that he was just fine, thank you very much. He quickly started getting irritated with the constant ribbing Natsu and Lyon were giving him, and one day when Natsu wasn't paying attention, the dragon slayer found himself with a bucket of ice water dumped over his head. It hadn't been enough to make him sick of course, but it seemed to give Gray great satisfaction. Natsu had thought that perhaps he should warn Lyon, but had decided that it would be a lot more fun to see Gray get him too. Sure enough, Lyon had gotten the same treatment as Natsu, and it had seemed to put Gray in a much more cheerful mood.
Shortly after Gray's cold had faded a few days later, Lyon departed somewhat reluctantly, saying that he was going to visit Lamia Scale for a couple days and then come straight back. Natsu supposed it must be difficult for him, being away from his guild for so long. He also doubted that Lyon would stay away for very long, because he was just as overprotective of Gray as Natsu himself and didn't want to miss out on any of Gray's progress.
Still, Natsu resolved to enjoy the break from Lyon. Sure he got along with the older ice mage better now and actually enjoyed having him around at times, but he had also been stuck living with him for a few weeks now and it was all too easy to get irritated with roommates. It wasn't that Lyon had done anything wrong, really, just that Natsu was glad to have his house to himself—and Happy—for a few days.
He and Happy also started backing off of Gray a little, letting the ice mage walk to and from the guild on his own in the mornings and evenings. They would still occasionally walk with him for old time's sake, but Natsu figured that part of letting Gray be independent was trusting him to get back and forth on his own. Of course, Natsu still made sure that the landlady—whose name he still didn't know—was keeping tabs on Gray. She made sure that he arrived back at his apartment safely every night, and it helped Natsu sleep a little easier.
Gray had remained in pretty good spirits the whole time, although he seemed a little subdued on the day Lyon returned. Natsu knew that it wasn't actually because of Lyon's reappearance because Gray had been pretty quiet since the moment he walked into the guild that morning and Lyon hadn't arrived until the afternoon, but he didn't know the actual cause. He had asked Gray if he was doing alright, and the ice mage had just smiled and nodded. Gray had seemed to revert back to his normal good mood after that, but he remained quieter than usual and seemed a little distracted. Natsu didn't worry too much since Gray didn't really seem upset by anything and his moods did still fluctuate sometimes. No one else seemed to even notice, so although he was initially curious, he quickly dismissed it once Lyon showed back up.
"Was it nice seeing all your guildmates again?" Lucy asked nicely when Lyon walked in unannounced that afternoon.
"Oh yeah," Lyon said cheerfully. Then he smirked a little, and Natsu knew that he was more in the mood to make fun of people. And his favorite target was usually Natsu, and sometimes Gray if the younger mage seemed to be in a joking mood. "It was really nice to be able to stay in an apartment where I could actually see the floor."
Natsu scowled, although he wasn't really angry. "You're always welcome to find a hotel to stay at," he offered.
Lyon waved him off. "Oh no, I hate staying in hotels. But not being able to find anything is going to take some getting used to again." He glanced over at Lucy, Erza, and Gray, and arched an eyebrow. "Have you seen the state of his kitchen cabinets? It's amazing that I didn't starve when I was there on my own. It really is impossible to find anything."
Natsu rolled his eyes. "What is everyone's problem with the kitchen cabinets?" he asked no one in particular.
"I don't know," Happy said, obviously not seeing why it was an issue.
"I have seen them, actually," Gray volunteered.
Natsu looked to him as a possible ally. "They aren't that bad, right?"
Gray threw him a disbelieving look and snorted. "They're horrendous," he said dryly. "You found a dirty sock in them."
"That was one time…" Natsu protested, before trailing off. He smiled sheepishly. In all honesty, it wasn't the first time and likely wouldn't be the last. And far stranger things had turned up in those cabinets before. "Okay, fine—they're a little messy. But we've kept them that way for years, and Happy and I have done just fine."
"Yeah, well you'd think that you'd at least bother to fix them up a little if you knew that you'd be having guests," Lyon remarked.
"Oh, it's worse than that," Gray muttered, shooting Natsu a baleful look. "He went and did the same thing to my cabinets too."
"In all fairness, they never got anywhere near as bad as mine," Natsu said reasonably.
Gray did not seem mollified in the slightest. He just rolled his eyes.
"They were organized by the time I moved in," Happy interjected.
"Only because I fixed them," Gray replied, scowling slightly. "Between those and the rest of the mess he made, it took me hours to clean up."
Natsu frowned thoughtfully. Gray's manic cleaning spree had been the morning after the fiasco with Rufus and Meredy. It had occurred to him then that it must have taken Gray a while to do all that cleaning, but it hadn't bothered him much at the time. But Natsu hadn't woken up all that late, so if Gray had been cleaning for hours already by that point…Natsu wondered just how early Gray had gotten up. Then he shook his head and shrugged it off. It was odd, but probably not important.
"It's not my fault that you're an obsessive neat freak," he told Gray matter-of-factly.
The ice mage's eyes narrowed slightly. "It's not my fault that you're a slob," he shot back.
Natsu grinned, and the corners of Gray's lips twitched upwards in an answering half-smile.
"It's amazing that you two didn't kill each other," Erza said with a sigh.
Natsu shrugged. "It wasn't so bad before he decided to get obsessed with cleaning," he answered. "And afterwards…Well, I tried to be kind of neater 'cause he'd give me dirty looks if I didn't wash my dishes or I left my clothes on the floor or whatever."
"Didn't stop you from doing it anyway," Gray said dryly. "I still had to clean up after you all the time."
Lucy made a tsking sound and shook her head in light disapproval. "How rude, Natsu," she told the dragon slayer, half teasing. "You shouldn't make a mess in someone else's house when you're a guest."
Natsu threw his hands up in the air. "You guys don't get it," he protested. "When he says that he cleaned up after me, he doesn't only mean that he did my dishes or whatever. He's way more obsessive than that. All of the chairs have to be pushed in when you leave the table, everything that's out has to be lined up neatly, and nothing can even be crooked.
"You should see his bookshelves. Every book spine has to be exactly even with all the others. If one sticks out so much as a centimeter, he has to push it back in to the exact level of the other books. He has certain angles that he keeps picture frames at and if you nudge them at all, he has to correct them back to that exact angle. Yeah, his cleaning is obsessive, but even more than that, everything has an exact place that it has to be in. His straightening and organizing is ridiculous. It's amazing he doesn't spend all day doing it."
The others blinked at him for a moment and then studied Gray carefully. For his part, the younger ice mage just shrugged it off, although he was looking a little distracted again.
"It doesn't usually take as much effort as you think," he said absently. "When it's just me, not much ever gets out of place to begin with so I don't have to keep straightening everything out."
Which, if you asked Natsu, was beside the point. The compulsive need to have everything exactly right still seemed strange to him. As someone who was perfectly happy living in a messy house where nothing really had a specific place, Natsu couldn't really understand it.
"Was he always that obsessive about it?" Lucy asked pensively.
"I don't know," Natsu said with a shrug. "I didn't spend a whole lot of time at his apartment before all this, but I do know that it was always spotless and super neat. It always made me want to break something or knock some stuff over, because something that clean is asking to be messed up."
Lucy shook her head in amused exasperation at Natsu's response, but Lyon looked thoughtful.
"When he was a kid, he was always really neat too," he mused, a nostalgic look flitting over his face as he contemplated his childhood. "I always thought it was kind of strange because really, how many young boys are that neat? He didn't have a problem making a mess when we were fighting or something, but sometimes I'd see him cleaning up afterward, even if Ur didn't tell him to."
"I wonder why he's so insistent on cleanliness and order," Erza said, her eyes sparkling with faint curiosity.
"My first thought would be to say that it was a side effect from learning molding magic since it teaches you how to be very precise and neat, and that might carry over into other areas," Lyon said with a shrug. "And maybe that's part of it because his need to keep things organized intensified while he was training, but he had already picked up some of it by the time he first arrived. My theory was that maybe it was a form of control. Like, a lot of bad stuff happened to him that he couldn't control as a kid and he probably felt like he didn't have any means of controlling his life, so maybe he tried to control his surroundings instead."
Natsu stared at him. That was a much more negative explanation than he wanted to think about. Yeah, he knew that Gray had had a pretty messed up childhood, but still.
"Wow, look at you psychoanalyzing him," Natsu told Lyon, keeping his tone upbeat. "Super deep explanation and everything. I always thought that he did it to annoy me."
Lucy snorted in amusement. "Maybe he's just secretly OCD or something," she suggested.
"Or maybe after having to be around all the chaos of the guild all day, he finds it more relaxing to go home to a neat apartment," Erza said dryly. "Let him clean if he wants to."
Lucy laughed and turned to Gray. "Well? Who's right, Gray?" she asked him.
Natsu hadn't really noticed that Gray had gotten even quieter as they talked. The ice mage had silently extracted himself from the conversation and was now staring blankly at the table in front of him with slightly narrowed eyes. It wasn't quite the same look he got when he was getting uncomfortable because the others were discussing his past, but there was something unreadable and quietly intense in his eyes. It occurred to Natsu that although their questions about Gray's obsessive neatness were directed towards a habit he had recovered since the void, the answer they were looking for might be tied to the past. Even if Gray had the impulse to keep things straightened out, he might not know why.
The conversation had been mostly teasing and joking up to this point, but Natsu realized that it might be a more serious matter to Gray. Really, they should have known better, but now they had gone and brought up the past and made him uncomfortable. Natsu was about to suggest that they change the topic, but Gray finally spoke up.
"All of you," he said flatly. "And none of you."
That gave Natsu pause, because it hadn't been the answer he was anticipating. He had been expecting another 'I don't know' or maybe a comment to throw them off topic. This was unexpected because it sounded like Gray might actually know the answer to their question.
"Gray?" Natsu asked hesitantly, unsure of how to proceed.
The ice mage didn't look at them, but his eyes narrowed even further and Natsu noticed that his hands had clenched into fists in his lap.
"Really, kids don't start off wanting things to stay neat," Gray said expressionlessly. Natsu got the feeling that he was only half talking to them. "Kids like to make messes; they hate being told to clean things up. Why would I be any different?"
He snorted derisively, his unfocused gaze still resting blankly on the tabletop. The others began to shift uncomfortably, finally sensing that something wasn't quite right here.
"Oh no, I was a messy kid alright," he said darkly. "My mom used to always get on my case about it. It was always 'go clean your room' or 'pick up your toys' or 'stop making messes everywhere'. I hated cleaning, I hated being told what to do, sometimes I thought I hated my mom when she kept nagging me. Oh, we'd fight over it sometimes.
"And you know, we fought about it again just before that damn demon showed up. Only a few hours before, really, because I hadn't cleaned my room when she told me to, so there was some yelling and I was an ungrateful brat and got sent to my room to sulk and clean. And then the demon came out of nowhere, and she was dead. She and my dad died trying to protect me. In the end she would have known that I was sorry and I loved her, I think, but I never got to say those words."
Natsu sucked in a breath, his eyes widening. Gray shouldn't know this. This wasn't one of those brief snatches of memory that would occasionally bleed through. This was more than an offhand comment or vague knowledge of an event that shouldn't be remembered. It might be the most detailed thing Gray had remembered so far, and Natsu wished that it had been a happier memory rather than this terribly sad one.
"It seems silly to an adult, but to a child it seemed like a reasonable thing, to clean up like his mother would have wanted," Gray continued, his lips tightening and his dark eyes glazing over even more. "She died for me, so the least I could do was keep my room clean like she wanted, right? So that's how it started, really. The other stuff came after—the need for control, the increased emphasis on precision and neatness that came from learning molding, the desire for a clean space to call my own. It all came together to feed into an obsessive impulse, a need for order that I couldn't really control.
"And now it's even worse, because my head is such a mess and I can't organize any of it and it's driving me insane, so I organize other things instead. Great consolation prize, huh? 'Oh, you can't figure out how to sort out your own memories? Well here, organize some cabinets instead and maybe it'll make you feel better.' But really, why does it matter so much? Keeping things clean isn't hurting anyone. I don't see why it's such a big deal."
Gray finally seemed to shake himself out of his daze, and looked up to see everyone staring at him with shocked and horrified expressions. Natsu half-expected him to get that lost, uncomfortable look he usually got after remembering something, but instead his gaze seemed to take on a frustrated cast and turn inward again. Gray made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat and clasped his hands on either side of his head, shaking his head sharply a few times as if he was trying to remember—or forget.
Then he let his hands drop to his sides, glanced at the clock on the wall, and stood up. He studied the others tiredly. "I think I'm going to go home early today," he said quietly.
Lyon opened his mouth to say something, but Gray just shook his head slightly and headed out of the guild, leaving a group of stunned mages in his wake. As he disappeared from sight, the others all looked at each other.
"What the hell was that?" Lyon asked slowly, still in shock.
"It's not like the other things he's remembered," Erza mused, not looking any less disturbed.
"That's so sad," Lucy breathed, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears.
Lyon let out a breath and looked away, his eyes narrowing slightly. "I never knew that story," he said. "I don't think that anyone did. I wish I had known."
Natsu stood up, catching everyone's attention.
"Natsu?" Happy asked hesitantly.
"I'll go talk to him," the dragon slayer said, his eyes still fixed on the now-empty doorway.
He thought that there might have been a few worried protests and concerned questions, but he paid them no mind. He followed after Gray, putting his nose to good use as he tracked down his friend. He didn't know what he expected to accomplish by going after Gray, but it wasn't like he could just pretend that this never happened. And to be honest, this whole incident had raised some questions in his mind, questions that he wanted answered.
Gray hadn't gotten far, and Natsu caught up to him quickly. The ice mage noticed his approach and eyed him warily, but that strange mix of frustration and sadness still hung about him rather than the normal air of confusion and defensiveness that usually accompanied the memories.
"Do you know more than you're letting on?" Natsu asked bluntly as soon as he reached Gray's side.
Gray paused for a moment and studied him. Worrying his lip absentmindedly, he seemed to wage an internal debate. Then he took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he came to a decision.
"I want to show you something," he said finally.
Then he turned and started walking away again, back down the street towards his apartment, Natsu trailing along beside him. The dragon slayer was dying of curiosity and he desperately wanted to ask Gray what he was talking about, but he held his tongue. He had the feeling that he'd get his answers soon enough if he was patient.
So he stayed silent as they walked back to the apartment. The silence lasted up until they finally reached Gray's doorstep and the ice mage began digging through his pockets as he looked for the key. He frowned slightly when it wasn't in the pocket he expected it to be in, and began searching through his other pockets.
"Where could it possibly have gone?" he muttered to himself, scowling slightly.
Natsu watched him for a moment and then snorted softly, despite the seriousness of the present situation. "Honestly, I don't know how you ever managed to get into your apartment. Given how often you stripped, it's amazing that you could ever find your key," he remarked.
Gray didn't look up, still too absorbed in his search. "That's why I always kept a spare in the gap behind the loose brick," he said distractedly.
Natsu stared at him. After a second, Gray seemed to realize what he had just said and froze. He slowly looked up, and he and Natsu locked eyes for a moment. Then both their gazes slid sideways, to the brick wall on the side of the apartment.
Gray didn't move for a second, but then he took a few quick steps forward. Immediately zeroing in on one brick in particular, his pale fingers expertly hooked around its edges and tugged it out of place with practiced ease. The brick slid out of the wall with a little coaxing, revealing a crumbling gap behind it. A small, silver key shimmered faintly in the shadows, and Gray snatched it up, unceremoniously jamming the brick back into place as he turned back to the door and hurriedly scrabbled at the lock with an air of urgency. The door opened and Gray stumbled into the apartment, Natsu close on his heels.
The ice mage dropped the key on a side table near the door and hurried into the living room, not even sparing a glance to see what Natsu was doing. His inexplicable sense of urgency puzzled Natsu, but the dragon slayer just closed the door and followed Gray to the next room, watching him in bewildered silence.
Gray had immediately gone to the desk. Jerking open one of the drawers, he reached inside and pulled out a book. Natsu's eyes widened slightly as he recognized that notebook again. He hadn't seen it in a few weeks so he had almost forgotten about it, but it looked like Gray still kept it around after all. Gray sat down at the desk and opened the notebook, frantically flipping through the pages with one hand and absently scrabbling around on the desk for a pen with the other. His fingers closed around a pen and he finally opened to the page he wanted.
Natsu drifted closer, peering over Gray's shoulder curiously as the ice mage began frantically scribbling in the notebook, his normally neat script a little messier than usual in his haste to write.
'Spare key behind loose brick.'
'Mother dead—demon. Connection to impulse to clean. Angry to sad. Guilt?'
Natsu let out a breath slowly. The pen paused and Gray glanced up at the dragon slayer.
"Why are you writing it?" Natsu asked. "Is this the stuff you've been writing in here?"
Gray hesitated a moment and then stood up from the desk. Snatching up the notebook and pen, he headed over to sit down on the couch, motioning for Natsu to follow. The dragon slayer did so, sitting down beside Gray and keeping his eyes trained on the notebook.
"I have to write them down, you see," Gray said finally. Natsu tore his eyes away from his friend's scrawl so that he could meet the ice mage's eyes. Gray looked a little uncomfortable, but mostly frustrated. "Those brief snatches of memory, they start to fade. I can only hold on to them for a second and then they're gone again. Sometimes it disappears completely. Sometimes I can hang on to the emotion behind it but I forget the details, and sometimes I remember the facts but all the feelings fade away and I can't connect to them anymore. Mostly I can remember some of the facts and knowledge, but I lose the memory itself, until all I'm left with is a collection of bare facts that I know are true but don't really remember.
"So I write down what I remember, the details and the emotions. I thought that maybe if I kept them written here I would be able to remember better, because I can go back and reread them. But it doesn't usually help, because I can read them over and over again but I still can't connect to them. I can see the words, but I can't feel the emotions, can't really remember the details. I know that everything here is true, but I can't feel it. I read over it and it means nothing to me, even though it meant something in the moment I wrote it down."
Gray let out a frustrated breath, his eyes flashing with irritation. "Something is missing. Something connects everything together, but I haven't been able to find it yet," he muttered. "I keep looking, but I can't find it. Right now everything is in pieces, and I can't make sense of them because I don't know what it is that links them together. If I can find what's missing, if I can find what it is that makes all the pieces fit together, then maybe I can remember something. Maybe all of these pieces will make sense."
Natsu stared at Gray with wide eyes. All these months, he had suspected that Gray tried to forget all the memory flashes as quickly as they came because of how uncomfortable they made him. Gray hadn't shown any interest in remembering. He hadn't told them that he was trying to remember, hadn't shown any inclination to talk about the past or try to connect to it, but that desperate frustration written all over his face told Natsu that it bothered Gray more than he had let on. Gray had always looked so uncomfortable and unhappy whenever he seemed to remember anything, which was why everyone tried not to make a big deal out of it. But he hadn't just gone and tried to push it all out of his mind like Natsu had worried that he did.
Natsu frowned a little. If Gray wanted to remember—and something in the ice mage's eyes told the dragon slayer that he did—then why did he always seem so upset whenever he remembered anything? Why did he always get so defensive and withdrawn? The discomfort had made sense when Natsu had thought that Gray just didn't like to be reminded of a past he didn't remember, a past that he only half believed had even existed at all, but if Gray wanted to remember…
"Why didn't you just tell us?" Natsu asked. "We could have tried to help. We thought that you didn't want to remember because of how uncomfortable you'd get and how much you'd shut down. We've been waiting for you to be ready to try remembering, but you've already been doing it? Why do you always seem so upset when you remember something then?"
Gray looked away, his eyes narrowing slightly and his fingers tightening around the notebook. "The memory flashes made me uncomfortable at first, and they still do sometimes, but that's not the only reason. It's…It's how you all react that's so bad."
Natsu frowned in confusion. "What? What are we doing wrong?" he asked.
He had thought that they were always very supportive when Gray would say or do something subconsciously. They had always been excited about it, hoping that it was some kind of breakthrough or at least progress. Well, eventually they had started trying to mask their reactions to reduce Gray's discomfort, but they had thought that would help.
Gray just shook his head fitfully. "You didn't do anything wrong," he said with a sigh. "But every time I do something or say something that I shouldn't know, you all look so damn hopeful. It makes you think that I'm getting better, that maybe my memory is improving, that maybe I'll go back to the way I was. But I'm not. I don't like seeing you all get so excited over nothing. It will only hurt more in the end.
"So I hide it. You all don't even know about most of things I remember, only the ones that make me do or say something without thinking. I remember much more than you think I do, but also much less. The flashes have been getting more and more common, but I can't hang on to any of them. I write them down but they mean nothing to me. I usually have to write things down right away while I can still almost connect to them, but you were getting suspicious about the notebook, so I stopped bringing it with me. There wasn't much I could do when you still lived here, but now that you're gone I can just write in it once you leave."
That was a very Gray line of reasoning. The old Gray could be very open about some things, but if he thought that something might hurt his friends, he would hide it to the bitter end. Natsu almost understood it, but he felt like he was still missing something here.
"Hope is good," he said. "We could always use a little, especially when we start getting discouraged about how things are going. I get the whole not wanting to get our hopes up thing, but why are you really so insistent about hiding this from us?"
Gray bit his lip and his eyes narrowed further as he stared at the floor. "Because when you think I remember something…When you look at me, you see him."
Natsu blinked in bewilderment, not understanding. "Who?"
Gray finally looked back up at Natsu with sad eyes. "Gray," he said dully.
Natsu sucked in a sharp breath and flinched back in surprise. "What do you mean?" he demanded. "You are Gray."
The ice mage's gaze wandered off to the side.
"I told you that I wasn't him," he said quietly. "I don't know him. I don't feel like him. His memories are alien to me. The things I remember about his life don't feel like they happened to me, at least not after those first few moments when I can almost connect to them. I know you want him back and I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I can't be him."
A strangled sound choked its way out of Natsu's throat as the dragon slayer stared at his friend in horrified disbelief. He should have seen this coming, really. This post-void Gray had always made it clear that he was someone different from the Gray they had once known, but Natsu had hoped that with all the flashes of memory, that belief would have finally started to shift.
Gray looked back at him, and his eyes were tired and sad. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I tried, really, but it doesn't work. I don't think this is something I can fix."
Natsu leaned forward and grasped one of Gray's hands in his own. The ice mage blinked down at their joined hands warily, but didn't pull away.
"Maybe you can't fix it on your own, but let us try to help you," Natsu said earnestly. Gray met his eyes again, though his expression remained unreadable. "You have no idea how impossible it seemed just getting you back from the void in the first place. We all thought that you had died, and you didn't even realize that you existed at all. It should have been impossible, what we did, but you're here now, aren't you?
"So don't give up just because things are getting tough again. We already beat impossible odds once. Let us at least try to do it again. And if it doesn't work out…" Natsu bit his lip. "We'll still be here for you. Not only because of who you were, but because of who you are now too. Yes, we want you back the way you were before, but we also like you for who you are right now. You don't have to be sorry for who you've become."
Gray swallowed and looked away, a faint sheen of unshed tears shimmering in his dark eyes. Natsu felt his heart twist.
"You want to remember, right?" the dragon slayer asked, his voice lilting uncertainly. It was still sometimes difficult to figure out exactly what was going on in Gray's head these days. "You said that you're trying to remember, even if you aren't sure that it can be done?"
Gray hesitated a moment and then nodded slightly. "Yeah."
"Then let me at least try to help," Natsu pleaded. "All I'm asking is that you give me a chance."
The ice mage stared at Natsu indecisively for a moment before biting his lip again and nodding once more. "Okay."
Natsu let out a sigh of relief. Maybe they would actually be able to make some progress after all.
"So," he said, eager to get down to business, "when did you start all this?"
Gray pursed his lips and his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "Writing in the notebook?" He sighed. "It was after what happened that time you kept trying to show me memories and make me feel things. The time you pushed me too far and then ran away."
Natsu automatically winced at the reminder, but Gray didn't seem angry.
"It did something to my head," Gray concluded thoughtfully. "I don't know. It made me feel things, or at least helped me figure out how to understand what I was feeling. And it's what made me start getting memory flashes too."
Pushing aside the guilt of that experience, Natsu made himself consider it objectively. Yes, he had noticed that that was a major turning point. Gray had started making progress in leaps and bounds after that, starting as early as the next day. Come to think of it, Gray's manic cleaning spree had been the day after. Natsu could still remember waking up to find Gray gone and panicking that the ice mage had decided to leave him after all. In fact, Gray had just gotten up early and cleaned the entire apartment.
Natsu frowned a little as he put the pieces together. Gray had been interested in writing before that point, but he had only copied things out of job requests or books. That day, the morning Gray's cleaning obsession returned, was the first time Natsu had noticed him writing in the notebook while not copying anything. He still remembered how curious he had been about it since he had never seen Gray do that before.
"That…actually makes sense," the dragon slayer mused slowly.
"I know it does," Gray muttered. "That's why I started being more careful about the notebook. I figured you'd make the connection eventually."
Natsu felt that there were a lot of ways to respond to that, but he shifted his attention to the notebook instead. "Can I see it?" he asked.
Gray hesitated, but then flipped back to the first page and reluctantly handed the notebook over to Natsu. The dragon slayer peered down at the words with a frown.
'He needed to tell her something, this blue-haired girl.
But as he was opening his mouth, he saw one of those beasts rise up behind her—one of those dragon spawn creatures they had been fighting.
And it was going to shoot her while she wasn't looking,
so without thinking,
he pushed her out of the way.
He felt the shot go straight through his chest.
Looking down, he could see the gaping hole there.
He blinked at it uncomprehendingly for a moment, watching the
blood
pour
down.
And then there was the screaming—that blue-haired girl and another girl and a man. He looked up to tell them that
it was okay,
but then more dragonlings appeared, and
he could feel the searing pain as they shot him full of holes until
there was nothing left of him.
It was just pain and blood and screaming.
And then there was
one
final
shot
to his head, and everything went
blessedly dark.'
He recoiled in surprise. "What is this?" he breathed, staring at it wide-eyed.
He recognized the feeling behind the words, of course. This was the almost-memory of Gray's death, the one the curse had twisted and warped and used against them. Natsu expected Gray to remember it since he had relived it in the void, but it was still a shock to see it here. And there was something fundamentally disturbing about it. Something about how that strange, fragmented quality of the memory had been so perfectly captured in a handful of scrawled words. Something about how it was so muted and washed out and impersonal, but deeply painful and close to home at the same time. Something about how it was written in the third person.
"The void memory," Gray said matter-of-factly. "You know that."
"Why is it here?" Natsu asked stupidly.
"I thought it might help take the edge off the nightmares if I wrote it down," Gray said with a shrug.
Natsu looked over at him sharply. "What nightmares?" he demanded.
Gray sighed softly. "I know that you think the curse disappeared when you pulled me back from the void, but it's not completely gone."
A panicked, nauseous feeling settled in Natsu's stomach. "What?" he rasped, his throat suddenly too dry to form words properly.
"Sometimes I can feel it gnawing at the edges of my mind," Gray said, his voice subdued as he stared at his words blankly. "Nothing as bad as it must have been, nothing that will drag me back to the void or rip away the new memories I've made, but a weak residue of sorts. I think that it's part of the reason I can't hang on to the memory flashes, because it pulls them away again before I can figure out what connects them all.
"And I…" He grimaced. "Maybe I'm not being completely truthful. Some days it's worse than others. Sometimes it talks to me and says things. Not necessarily in words, although sometimes it's strong enough to whisper things, but in feelings and half-formed ideas. I don't know. It's hard to explain. It's just that some days…some days it's really loud."
Natsu didn't want to think about that. He didn't want to think that that damn curse might still be lurking somewhere in Gray's mind, preventing his friend from recovering his memories. It might make a kind of sense, but Natsu had thought that it was gone, that it had been left behind in the void. He didn't want to think that it might be back, that it might never have quite left in the first place. Then something in Gray's words finally registered in Natsu's brain and his eyes widened in horror.
"That time when you completely broke down in the middle of the guild, when you went to find Erza afterwards, you kept saying that it was 'loud'," the dragon slayer said slowly, his hands curling instinctively into helpless fists. "I thought that you just meant that you were getting overwhelmed, but…"
Gray half nodded, half shrugged, still not looking at Natsu. "I told you that it wasn't really your fault," he murmured. "I just…The curse was really loud that day, and when it's strong it just makes everything worse and it's harder for me to cope with things. It helps when you or someone else just talks because it gives me something else to focus on and helps drown out the curse."
"That night when you woke up and we walked around the city and you asked me to talk…?"
"Yeah." Gray pursed his lips. "It was loud then too."
"Is that what woke you up?"
Gray shrugged. "Yes and no. When the curse is strong, I sometimes dream of the void memory. It doesn't always bother me, but sometimes it wakes me up."
"Why didn't you just tell me?" Natsu asked dully.
Gray tilted his head to give Natsu a faintly curious look. "Didn't I tell you that the reason I liked to sleep so much was because it was the closest thing to the void?"
The dragon slayer let his breath out in a hiss, his eyes widening. Yes, Gray had said that, but Natsu had assumed the reason sleep was like the void was because it was more unconscious, more fragmented, something between existence and nonexistence. He hadn't thought that part of the reason might be because Gray still experienced the same almost-memory he had kept in the void.
"How long has this been going on?" he demanded.
"Since the beginning, really," Gray replied with another shrug. "Most of the time it's not that bad. If it gets bad then that's usually when I just get up early, like that time I rewrote the potion labels before you got up, or when I spent the morning and half the night cleaning the apartment."
Natsu let out a breath. Funny, he had thought that Gray was making progress when the ice mage got up early. He hadn't thought that it was because Gray had been having nightmares and didn't want to go back to sleep.
He looked back down at the page and studied it again. "Why did you write it in the third person like that?" he asked quietly.
Gray shifted uncomfortably. "Because it's something that happened to Gray," he said, glancing away. "It's his memory, his nightmare. It doesn't really feel like mine."
Natsu's fingers tightened involuntarily, wrinkling the page. He forced them to relax again.
"I'm sorry," Gray said somberly.
That actually made Natsu feel even worse, because he knew that Gray only apologized when he meant it now, and he really shouldn't have to be sorry for something like this.
"It's okay," Natsu replied tightly, even though it really wasn't. "Let's just…Let's just keep looking at what's here."
Gray nodded wordlessly, and Natsu flipped the page. The dragon slayer blinked at it uncomprehendingly for a moment and then turned it so that he was looking at it landscape style.
"This…is your kitchen?" he asked as he peered at the sketch.
It looked almost like a blueprint, with all the cabinets and drawers marked off as squares and rectangles. There were written labels like 'bacon pan', 'silverware', and 'glasses' scattered around. Natsu bet that if he compared this sketch to Gray's actual kitchen, the labels would correspond to how the ice mage had organized everything.
"Um, yeah," Gray said, sounding a little embarrassed. Natsu glanced over at him, and the ice mage smiled self-deprecatingly. "Well, you know, one of the first things I remembered that day was where everything went. I mean, it was more of a feeling really, but once I put everything back in place I sketched it out in case I forgot again."
Natsu nodded slowly. He didn't think it was that silly, actually. Instead of pressing the point, he slowly flipped through the notebook, taking in all of the things Gray had written there. Natsu recognized some of them as things that Gray had said or done that he shouldn't have known. Apparently the ice mage had written them all down afterwards. Come to think of it, Natsu realized that Gray had often been writing in the notebook shortly after he had gotten those flashes of memory. The dragon slayer felt kind of stupid for not making the connection.
There would be time enough for worrying about that later though. For now, he just turned the pages, his eyes devouring the words and occasional sketches.
'Healer shouldn't be so nice. Weird.'
'Losing clothing is normal?'
'Landlady=Obaa-san. Has three grandchildren?'
'Don't cry, Erza. Riverbank.'
'The scarf is important—dragon? Why did he throw it out?'
'Owl man—Fukuro. Tower of Heaven. Ate Natsu? Froze flames.'
'Always two-handed molding. One-handed molding is unbalanced.'
'Demon, blood, death. Parents? She turned into ice. Why would she turn into ice?'
'Always liked the snow.'
The list went on and on. Some entries had more detail than others. Some were just bare facts or questions, while other were short paragraphs fully describing a specific memory. Some of them were things Natsu recognized, and some were not.
'He's young, a child even if he maybe doesn't feel like one anymore. Sad that day. Guilty? Something's wrong, but he doesn't want to be sad anymore. Better to be angry—it hurts less. He's really angry at himself, but it's so much easier to look for reasons to be angry at everything—everyone—else instead. But it still hurts, and he needs to hurt on the outside the same way he hurts on the inside. A distraction? A punishment? He isn't sure.
Easiest way is to find Natsu and start a fight. Today he lets Natsu win because he needs to feel the loss, maybe because he deserves it. But he puts up a fight first because he needs the pain of the punches and kicks, because they hurt less than the heartache. He realizes that it isn't fair. He's basically using Natsu now, goading the dragon slayer into hurting him because he's afraid that if he does it himself, he'll never be able to stop. All the anger he made himself feel for Natsu is fading now, turning inwards because that's where it belonged all along. He wants to apologize, even opens his mouth to say it, but the words stick in his throat and he just limps away instead. He tells himself that this is the last time this will happen, that he'll be nicer to Natsu and all the others and won't try to goad them into helping him punish himself anymore, but he knows that it's a lie and he hates himself for it.'
And, scribbled hastily underneath: 'That can't possibly be healthy. What a screwed up kid.'
Natsu stared at the words blankly, trying to connect them to the Gray he had known as a child. He read the description again, and then once more for good measure, but it still made him feel just as sick.
"He wasn't a very happy person, was he?" Gray mused, eyeing his scrawl.
"I…" Natsu's throat closed up and he had to swallow hard and cough before he could continue speaking. "I thought you were. I mean, a lot of really terrible things happened to you as a kid and I know you weren't always happy because you thought about your past a lot, but I thought…I thought that maybe you were starting to work past some of it, that maybe you were happier now."
"He was, I think," Gray replied, wincing at the pain in Natsu's voice. "Happier, I mean. It's still hard to really connect to all of this because the actual memories are gone now, but…Well, the memories I get from his childhood are a lot sadder. He seemed pretty messed up—really guilty and sad and angry all the time. This one here is from that time, back when he was younger, probably when all the hurt was still really raw for him.
"Most of the later memories aren't as bad. I mean, they're not all super happy, like maybe he wasn't as happy as he wanted you all to believe, but they mostly get better. There are more positive ones. I think he must have at least started moving on eventually. And I get the feeling that you guys made him happy."
"I hope so," Natsu whispered. "You always helped make us happy too. Still do, I suppose."
Gray gave him a skeptical look. "You don't have to spare my feelings. Trust me, I can see all the pain and unhappiness you all feel when I start screwing things up."
Natsu winced, wondering if this once again went back to all those times Gray had asked about whether or not he made the others unhappy. He'd asked it about Lyon once, and about Natsu that time when they'd walked the city at night. He might not have come out and asked in as many words since then, but Natsu had gotten the feeling that it had been running through his mind back when he had had his breakdown in the guild and seemed to feel really bad about it afterwards. Maybe it was linked to the fact that Gray didn't think he could get his memories back and seemed to be convinced that the others would never be happy unless he managed it. That might have a kernel of truth to it, but it was still a gross oversimplification.
"It might not always be easy on us, it might hurt sometimes when you can't remember or you say certain things, but…" Natsu shook his head. "Then you'll smile or lob a snowball at us or call me 'flame brain', and it will all be worth it. It reminds us of why we care so damn much, and yeah, it makes us happy. It makes us happy to see you happy too."
Gray swallowed and looked away. "Funny how that works, isn't it?" he asked after a moment. "It's like it's contagious."
"Sure," Natsu replied. "That's how it is with friends."
Gray didn't answer for several long seconds, pursing his lips and grimacing faintly, although Natsu wasn't sure why. "Keep going," he said finally.
Natsu hesitated, but then flipped to the next page. Seeing what was printed there, he arched an eyebrow.
"Oh," Gray said, peering down. "You got to the people."
Natsu frowned at him slightly before glancing back at the words on the page. 'Lyon' was scrawled across the top, followed by 'screamer' in parenthesis. The rest of the page was filled with random tidbits of information about the older ice mage.
'Ice molding magic.'
'Overprotective. Seems sad. Scared?'
'Knew him from childhood. Learned magic together?'
'Really annoying, but also…Very close?'
'Is still using two-handed molding again—good.'
'Makes terrible hot chocolate.'
'Skill at snowball fighting has deteriorated.'
Natsu's eyes silently darted back and forth across the page. Gray had written several dozen statements about Lyon, all seemingly random and disconnected. It was a little odd to see a person broken down into all these fragmented pieces.
He turned the page and saw Erza's name, along with a whole host of random facts about her as well. He looked back over at Gray. "You have a page for everyone?" he asked curiously.
Gray nodded. Reaching out, he flipped through a couple pages and paused on the one that said 'Natsu (the Voice)' at the top. Natsu smirked a little. Apparently Gray had already figured out what he was really interested in. The dragon slayer skimmed over the page, his eyebrows rising fractionally as he read.
'Fire magic. Dragon slayer.'
'Never shuts the hell up.'
'Bossy, loud, always so damn hyper, overprotective.'
'Rival? Enemy? Friend? Confusing mix. Think rival and friend. Best friend?'
'The scarf is important. Shouldn't lose it. Why throw it away?'
'Used to always be happy and stupidly overexcited. Sad now, and scared. It's wrong. Feels guilty—something about leaving.'
'Always starting fights and almost burning down guild.'
'Doesn't know how to let go.'
'Flame brain, squinty eyes, ash for brains.'
'Why do you feel so bad? Stop looking at me like that.'
'Met as kids. Didn't get along at first. Always fighting.'
'Obsessed with dragons.'
Natsu wasn't sure what to make of it all as he read through the entire list of several dozen statements. Some of the things listed were normal, mundane facts. Some of them were a little more cryptic—what was it supposed to mean, that he didn't know how to let go? Some of them—the ones about his emotional state in particular—were unnervingly insightful.
He looked up at Gray. He knew that there were questions he needed to ask, but he couldn't figure out what they were. In any case, Gray started talking again anyway.
"You see what I mean?" the ice mage asked absently, his own dark eyes studying the page intently. "Everything is all jumbled up and nothing connects. It's one of the reasons I find it so hard to use names. To me, each of you is just a mashed up jumble of half-remembered things that don't connect. You're a collection of traits and almost-memories, but you aren't a cohesive whole."
He scowled faintly. "Who is Natsu? It should mean something to me, but I know no Natsu. I only know someone who is a mixture of all these things. I mean, sure, I know you, but you aren't a meaningful whole, really. You're the person I see every day plus all of these random things, and I don't know how to put them all together. I keep looking for a way to connect everything. I'm looking for what makes you Natsu rather than just a collection of unrelated traits, but I haven't found it yet."
Natsu stared at Gray in horrified silence, a sick feeling curling in his stomach. That…was depressing. He tried to imagine what it would be like if all the people surrounding him were almost familiar but also alien at the same time, if everyone was confusing because even their own names weren't enough to hold all of their qualities into cohesive wholes. It sounded terrible, to be honest.
"Oh, Gray," he breathed sadly.
The ice mage shifted uncomfortably and bit his lip. "It's not so bad, really. I've gotten used to it."
"You shouldn't have to have gotten used to it," Natsu muttered, his eyes narrowing slightly and his hands tightening around the notebook.
Gray had only had to get used to it because he had protected Natsu from Memento Mori. The dragon slayer let out a breath. It was stupid to still blame himself for that, but it still didn't sit well with him that Gray was in this situation because of what he had had to do for Natsu.
"It's not your fault."
Natsu looked up at Gray in surprise. The ice mage was watching him sadly.
"I never said that it was," the dragon slayer replied.
"You didn't have to," Gray said with a sigh.
Natsu glanced away. Funny how even now Gray could still sometimes read him like a book.
"Need something more cheerful," Gray muttered to himself.
Natsu raised an eyebrow at him as the ice mage frowned thoughtfully. Then Gray's face lit up and he hopped off the couch. Natsu watched as he quickly crossed the room and paused in front of the bookshelf to select a book. Gray returned and sat next to Natsu again, handing the book to the dragon slayer.
Natsu frowned at it in confusion. "What is this?" he asked.
Gray blinked and seemed to consider the question. "I…don't completely know," he admitted. He snatched the notebook from Natsu and retrieved the pen. "Should probably write that down."
Natsu watched him scribble in the notebook for a second, but his attention was quickly drawn back to the book in his hands. He opened it and his eyes widened as he realized that it was actually a bound sketchbook.
"You drew these?" he asked in awe.
Gray glanced over and peered at the pictures curiously. "How should I know?" the ice mage asked dismissively. "But it seems likely."
"Funny," Natsu commented, "I never knew you could draw."
He flipped through the pages slowly, pausing frequently to examine the drawings. Some of them were landscapes or still lifes, but most were of people. There were several of Lyon and a woman he now recognized as Ur, and of a woman and man who looked like they might be Gray's parents. There were a few of other people and even enemies who didn't seem terribly important to Natsu, but in who Gray must have seen something interesting enough to try to capture with a pencil. Some of the people Natsu didn't recognize at all, but most of the pictures were of Fairy Tail mages. Everyone was featured at least occasionally, but Erza, Lucy, Happy, and Natsu himself appeared the most frequently. They were in all different poses, captured in all different situations. Natsu recognized a few of the scenes as events that had actually happened.
He was amazed at how detailed and lifelike the drawings were. Most were done in pencil, everything painstakingly outlined and shaded. Many of them also had elements of color, and a few had been done in watercolor or were a combination of pencil and watercolor. Natsu supposed that maybe all of Gray's neatness and precision would give him an edge in such things, but at the same time, the dragon slayer had never even considered that he did something like this.
"I wonder why you never told me," he mused as studied a drawing of Happy offering Charle a fish. The she-cat had her arms crossed and her nose turned up, and Natsu almost wanted to laugh because it was a pretty good representation of how all of Happy's flirting ended up.
"You would have made fun of it," Gray remarked, sounding neither angry nor offended.
"I wouldn't—"
Natsu paused and grimaced. In truth, if he had run across this before Gray had turned into an amnesiac, he probably would have teased the ice mage mercilessly. They were always teasing each other about this or that, and this would have made perfect ammunition. Not much was usually off-limits for their teasing, but if Gray had been hiding this, it had been effectively off the playing field. Why? The only reason Natsu could think of was that these drawings had been so intensely personal to Gray that he didn't think he could handle Natsu making a mockery of them.
Natsu shouldn't feel bad because this constant teasing was something they had both done and rather enjoyed, but some small part of him still felt guilty. He felt bad that Gray hadn't felt like he could show Natsu these things without being made fun of.
"It's okay," Gray said anxiously, sensing Natsu's melancholy.
The dragon slayer hummed absently in agreement and turned the page. He smiled nostalgically at the drawing of Team Natsu, back when they had still been together and gone on jobs all the time. There was Lucy laughing at something Natsu had said. Erza looked like she was about to reprimand the dragon slayer for something, although her lips were curled into a faint half-smile as she watched Natsu. Natsu himself was clearly in the middle of telling one of his stupid stories, his arms thrown out wide for emphasis and a toothy grin plastered on his face. Happy hovered in the air next to him, his feathered wings spread wide against the sky. Gray stood a little off to the side, his hands in his pockets as he watched the rest of the group with a small smile playing at the corners of his lips.
Natsu paused on that picture and stared at it for a long time, trying to resurrect the feeling of those days when everyone had been together and they had all been happy and Gray wasn't dead or amnesic. He could actually feel tears pricking at the corners of his eyes and his heart twisted painfully, because he missed those days. He missed those days so, so much.
"He must have really cared about you a lot," Gray murmured suddenly.
Natsu glanced over. The ice mage had leaned in a little and was studying the drawing intently. The dragon slayer wanted to protest at the use of the third person again, but he knew that there was no point.
"Why do you say that?" he asked instead, his voice subdued.
"It's the way he drew," Gray explained thoughtfully. "There's a lot of love in the way he drew. Can't you see it? How much care he put into all the details? How hard he worked to get your expressions just right? How he tried to capture everything he loved about you in a single pose and didn't give up until it was perfect?"
Natsu considered that and looked at the picture again. Yes, he could see how a lot of painstaking care had been put into making it just right. It was a labor of love to be sure.
"And look at how he drew himself," Gray added, tapping one pale finger over his representation on the page. "Look at his expression. He looks at you like you all mean the world to him."
Gray fell silent and stared at the drawing wistfully, as if he wished he could remember those feelings. For his part, Natsu felt a lump in his throat.
"Yeah," he managed finally. "You always cared so much."
Gray averted his eyes, shame and regret flickering across his face. Natsu immediately felt bad. He hadn't meant to make his friend unhappy again.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean it like that."
Gray shrugged, but kept his eyes fixed on his hands, which he had folded in his lap. "You know, I wasn't quite sure what to make of you at first," the ice mage said quietly. "I mean, I wasn't really sure what to make of anyone and I'm still not, to be honest, but you were the hardest to make sense of once the memory flashes started. For most of the others all the pieces kind of line up in one way or another.
"For you…Well, some of the memories I had of you were of being angry, of being hurt, of wanting to fight and throw insults. It almost made it seem like maybe we weren't really that close. But then I'd also get memories of all the good times we had too, so it was confusing because I wasn't sure if you were really an enemy or a friend. But you know…Even the angry memories of fighting and insults have a kind of fond undercurrent. I think that despite everything else, he must have really liked you a lot because a lot of times when I look at you, he makes me want to smile."
Natsu sniffled and rubbed at his eyes as a few tears broke loose.
"Oh God, don't cry," Gray said apprehensively, twisting his hands together anxiously. "I'm sorry."
Natsu laughed breathlessly, the tears running down his face. "Don't be sorry," he choked out. "I've always liked you a lot too, ice block."
Gray smiled a little uncertainly, but still seemed uncomfortable with the situation. The dragon slayer decided that it was time to move on, both because of Gray's discomfort and because of the fact that Natsu didn't want to cry anymore. He turned the page, and then frowned.
This drawing was different. It was hastily sketched, the lines slashed along the page in hurried arcs that lacked the precision of most of the other pieces. The picture still displayed clear artistic talent, but it was more of a shadowy, panicky mess of dark lines that came together to capture the scene in a few hurried strokes.
Natsu recognized that scene too—it was from Galuna Island. Gray was shoved in the back, his form mostly obscured by the swirling lines that represented his magic as he prepared to use iced shell, but the main focus was on Deliora and Natsu. The demon's fist was coming down on Natsu, hovering in the air just above the dragon slayer's head. Time was frozen at what seemed like a second before Deliora would crush Natsu or fall apart.
"Why's this here?" Natsu asked curiously.
Something about this drawing disturbed him. Gray had been right when he had said that he could feel the love and care put into the other pictures, but the only feelings Natsu was getting off of this one were fear and despair and pain.
"Nightmare," Gray answered absently. "There are a few of them in here. You can tell because the style is different."
Natsu opened his mouth to ask another question, but Gray wasn't paying attention to him. The ice mage snatched the book out of Natsu's hands and began feverishly scrawling words over it. Natsu wanted to tell him to stop ruining the piece, but he also didn't want to interrupt when Gray was clearly remembering something.
Instead, he peered over Gray's shoulder to read his words.
'Galuna Island.'
'Lyon, why?'
'Deliora—not again, not again.'
'Oh God, Ur, I'm sorry.'
'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.'
'It's going to kill everyone again—use the spell. Use the goddamn spell.'
'Get out of the way, Natsu. It's going to kill you. It's going to kill you and I can't watch that.'
'Didn't my voice reach you?'
Gray underlined the last sentence, the pen slashing harshly underneath the words several times. Natsu let out his breath in a hiss, and Gray looked over at him. The feverish intensity was fading from the ice mage's eyes now, the sudden surge of emotion disappearing as quickly as it had come. Natsu supposed that this was what Gray meant by not being able to hold on to the memories for long.
"Does it mean something to you?" Gray asked with polite curiosity.
Natsu swallowed hard. Everything Gray had written was terrible and pointed to the fact that he had still been upset and felt guilty over everything that had happened with Galuna Island, but it was the last line that really caught his attention.
"Yeah," he rasped finally. "It means something to me."
Gray looked back down at what he had written, his eyes tracing over his words thoughtfully. "It must have meant something to him too," he remarked. "I got some pretty intense emotions off of that one before it faded."
It was good to know that Gray really had taken those words to heart, but it had also rattled Natsu.
"Good," the dragon slayer said numbly.
Gray glanced up at him and studied his face thoughtfully. "It's kind of an interesting coincidence, isn't it?" he asked.
Natsu frowned slightly, shaking himself out of his reverie. "What do you mean?"
"It was your voice, right? The one he was supposed to hear?"
Natsu stared at him. "You could say that," he replied, unsure of where this was going.
"Well, it was your voice that pulled me back out of the void again, wasn't it? I guess your voice must have reached him after all."
For a second, Natsu couldn't breathe. He suddenly recalled that before Gray had started learning everyone's names, his label for the dragon slayer had been the 'voice', because he had first met Natsu in the void as a kind of voice projection. Natsu had never been that good with irony and wasn't one to look for meaning in every little thing, but that connection suddenly seemed important, so he held on to it as tightly as he could. Any little thing to bring him comfort.
Yes, come to think of it, Natsu had gotten through to Gray on more than one occasion, reminding him of important things when he forgot them. He had reminded Gray that his life was worth living on Galuna Island, and he had reminded Gray of what he had lost back in the void. And he'd be damned if he didn't help Gray remember this time too.
"You heard my voice, huh?" he said slowly. A determined look glinted in his eyes. "Are you still listening?"
Gray eyed him curiously. "Yes."
"Well, right now I'm saying that we should get Juvia to call up Meredy and take another stab at making you remember."
"What?" Gray's curiosity quickly turned into apprehension.
"It's up to you," Natsu said, frowning at the ground. "I said that we'd wait until you were ready to try something like this again, and I meant it. If you aren't ready then we can wait, but…You want to get your memories back, right?" Gray nodded slowly. "I think that both of us are better prepared than we were last time, so it shouldn't be as much of a fiasco. It certainly helped a little before since you started remembering things. Now that you understand a lot more and you're ready to remember, it might help you put the pieces together and make the connections you need to make if you have a link to someone else to help you. But this is your choice. I won't push you on this if you don't want me to."
Natsu watched Gray anxiously as the ice mage bit his lip and considered the proposition silently. Natsu couldn't really blame Gray for being apprehensive after what had happened last time, but he also thought that this might be the push that Gray needed, as long as the ice mage was more prepared this time. Something in the dragon slayer's mind whispered 'last chance', but Natsu brushed it off irritably since it didn't make any sense. They would still have lots of chances to try to fix Gray's memory if this didn't work. All the same, Natsu was eager to put this plan into motion. He thought that now that he had a better understanding of Gray's situation, he could do a better job. And now that Gray had started remembering things and feeling things and was actually interested in getting the rest of his memories back, Natsu thought that he was better prepared for this too.
But at the same time, Natsu had already screwed this up once and he didn't want to do that again. He had told Gray that it was okay to say no if he wasn't ready, and Natsu would respect that if he had to.
"Alright," Gray said finally, his eyes uncertain.
"You don't have to do this just because I asked you too," Natsu replied cautiously, making sure that Gray wasn't just agreeing to everything he asked again.
"I know." Gray looked down at his hands as he twisted them together in his lap. "I don't know if it will work, but…" He swallowed and looked back up to meet Natsu's gaze steadily. "I trust you."
Natsu stared back at him for a moment. "Yeah," he said past the lump in his throat. "We'll do it right this time. But it you start getting too overwhelmed again, you can call a stop to the whole thing."
Gray let out a shaky breath. Natsu thought he might say something else, but only three words came out of his mouth:
"I trust you."
Despite his declaration of trust, Gray was, understandably, still a little apprehensive about the idea of asking for Meredy's help again. He tried to hide his discomfort, but Natsu could still catch glimpses of it sometimes. But it really would be different this time. This time it would be Gray who was setting the pace, not Natsu. Natsu wasn't just going to be shoving emotions at his friend left and right—he would only provide Gray with what he asked for. Gray would look for the missing connection and Natsu would help as best he could. After all, Natsu was starting to suspect that Levy had been right when she said that this was something Gray would have to figure out for himself. Natsu could try to help out, but ultimately it was up to Gray.
So Natsu and Gray went back to the guild and explained their plan. Gray showed them the notebook somewhat reluctantly, and now an air of hopeful excitement hung over the guild. Natsu supposed he shouldn't be surprised—that had been exactly what Gray was afraid of. But still, a little hope here and there wasn't always a bad thing.
Without further ado, Juvia eagerly sent a message to Meredy, however it was that she did that. Natsu wanted to ask but he didn't think she would tell him, especially given their still somewhat strained relationship. The dragon slayer was all for calling Rufus up too, only to be informed that he had managed to get picked up by the Council again. Apparently Sting had been wrong when he had assumed that it was Orga who had been causing the problems that first time. Natsu didn't let it bother him too much. Gray already had some memories this time, and Natsu suspected that the important part would be connecting the right emotions to those memories and finding a way to anchor them there to turn them into something meaningful.
Of course, they would have to wait for Meredy and Jellal to arrive, and they knew that it could be days or even weeks. In the meantime, things had changed slightly now that the others all knew about the things Gray had been hiding. Gray didn't bother being as secretive anymore. He had begun carrying his notebook around again and could frequently be seen writing in it. He was also a little more open about sharing his flashes of memory with the others, and they all tried to help explain things to him when they could, hoping that maybe something they said would help him make that vital connection. So far it hadn't, but they could keep trying.
Still, everyone was impatient for Crime Sorcière to finally show up. In fact, they were so focused on the upcoming arrival that they were taken completely by surprise when something else showed up first.
Note: Well, that was a lot of stuff. The thing with Gray's mom is kinda cliché and not part of my main headcanon, but I needed a bridge and my original plan didn't pan out. The drawing thing is an idea I play with occasionally but isn't in my main headcanon. I used it here because it serves a purpose both here and later. Aside from that...I guess it might have been fun to write out more of what's in Gray's notebook, but this chapter was already getting way too long. And sorry about that last bit after the line break. It was supposed to be the intro to the next chapter, but then another chapter got inserted in between and it didn't really fit anymore, so now it's here instead.
emmahoshi: Ha, yeah, the kitchen cabinets seem to have turned into something of a running joke XD I do kind of the same thing with story ideas. I'll type up a brief sentence or two on the iPod if I don't have paper nearby, and then later I transfer them to my profile here (which is, in fact, why the list is really there) so that I can have at least a short description of some of the ideas I've had. All the rest I normally plan out in my head. Oh yeah, I forgot, we were talking about false hope earlier, weren't we? So maybe the explanation for why Gray doesn't show FT the notebook will make more sense to you. And yeah, I think the only reason Natsu didn't figure out what Gray was writing in there, despite the fact that things were all lined up, is because he also assumed that Gray didn't want to remember and would therefore have no reason to be writing down memories. Ha, Natsu in canon can be a little...dense and, uh, maybe not overly intelligent. I mean, he's probably not quite as stupid as he normally makes himself look, but I do try to smooth things out in my writing because in canon he has a habit of annoying me. About the never-letting-go thing...It depends on the circumstances. Natsu isn't the kind of person who will hold grudges or dwell on things, but there are certain things that he can't let go (for good reason) and I'll play with that in a couple chapters. About the lashing out vs. self-punishment thing, I kind of think Gray might have done both. Like, he was obviously kind of angry at the world when his parents were killed, and that makes sense. But after Ur died I think it wouldn't be a surprise if maybe he turned some of that anger inwards at himself since he blamed himself for her death. Or maybe I just like torturing him too much, poor thing. Ha, I actually draw and write too, which might be why those two things were the first techniques I came up with to work with Gray's memory. I didn't really think about it as an expression of my own feelings, but it makes sense. I certainly do do that. I usually don't like showing other people my drawings or writing for those kind of reasons, and maybe I subconsciously translated that experience into Gray's own experience. Look at you, analyzing the psych major. *applauds*