Category: Romantic Fluff, Angst
Characters: Lucy Heartfilia, Gray Fullbuster
Requested By: FlyingPegasus7 (Ao3)
The air echoed with screams, explosions, and the rumbling roars of dragons as Gray dashed through the cracked cobblestone streets of Crocus. The earth rumbled beneath his feet, making his steps unsteady. He fumbled over the ground as it heaved and writhed, the road beneath him fissuring at a rapid rate. As the earth in front of him hurled up a good two feet, Gray screeched to a stop to avoid tripping over the suddenly raised ground. Hastily, he skirted around the risen section of the street to resume his feverish pace, lest he become prey to the dragon skulking through the buildings behind him.
Gray rounded the corner and pressed against the brick, pausing to catch his breath. His chest heaved with gulping breaths to suck in as much oxygen as he could as quickly as possible; after several minutes of sprinting, his body was becoming deprived, and his vision fuzzed gray around the edges. As he peered around the corner of the building, he blinked rapidly to force the blurry image to clear. The ground trembled underneath him, and the quake slowly rose in intensity as a horned head rose over the roof of an apartment complex. Poison dripped from its jaws, which were also encrusted in ice from Gray's feeble attempts to overpower the giant lizard-like monster. As the acidic substance puddled on the building and the road, the hard surfaces dissolved into mush. Thankfully for Gray, the massive beast shambled off in the opposite direction. He breathed a small sigh of relief.
He then growled and slammed his fist into the brick wall. The harsh surface shredded the skin of his knuckles, and blood smeared crimson against the mute red. What the hell am I doing?! Running away with my tail between my legs… This isn't how a mage of Fairy Tail should act! he cursed self-loathingly. Still panting slightly, he peered around the edge of the building to watch the wisps of smoke rise from the dissolved building. He said that, but what could he do against such reckless strength and hate? His fist slowly uncurled as his clenched muscles comprehended the sheer depth of his powerlessness.
Gray gasped as a chorus of frightened screams pierced the air. Instinctively, he turned his gaze heavenward to see massive blob-shaped objects falling to earth. The had been expelled from the body of the dragon circling the city. The ground rumbled beneath Gray's feet as a handful of them crashed into the nearby buildings and streets with sickening splatters. One of them collided with the apartment building against which Gray was taking shelter. The ice mage cried out and lunged forward as the roof split, sending bricks and wood beams tumbling towards him. He landed flat on his belly on the cracked cobblestone, covering his head; dust, wood bits, and brick chunks rained over him, coating his dark cloak in white powder. Somehow he escaped significant injury.
Gray pushed himself onto his elbows with a small huff and shook his head to clear the debris from his dark blue hair. As he slowly dragged himself to his feet, the half-destroyed building shuddered and groaned behind him. Water gushed from a burst pipe, rapidly forming a puddle next to the mage that lapped at the toes of his shoes. Gray turned around, brushing the chalky dust from his clothes, just in time to see a dragonoid form clawing its way out of the rubble. Gray's eyes blew wide as it snarled at him to bear razor-sharp teeth and a forked tongue.
As the creature leaped at him with a demented screech, Gray reacted on instinct and used the water beside him to freeze it within an ice wall. Its black form scowled at him from within the transparent, ridged block of ice. Before it could use brute force to escape, Gray dashed off the side street and back onto the main road. Half a dozen of the beasts prowled through the buildings, bending streetlamps in half and overturning café tables with savage headbutts. One of them took notice of his presence and hissed, jumping down from the awning it was ripping apart to shamble towards him.
Gray back-pedaled with frantic gasps, his ice magic swirling around his hand. Suddenly, the small dragon crouched down, and its slimy back bubbled grotesquely. Gray barely had time to throw himself into an alleyway as several white pointed spikes shot out of the creature's body and rocketed toward him. They collided with the brick wall above his head, burying themselves a foot deep and sending cracks rippling through the surface.
If one of those hits me, I'll be impaled! he thought before jumping on top of the dumpster and freezing the monster as it nosed into the alley. Two more of its brethren came climbing over the ice wall, screeching while Gray skirted around the corner.
I have to pick them off one-by-one! he thought as he dashed through the labyrinthine array of alleys. If I let them overwhelm me, I'm dead! It was all well and good in theory, but much harder to exercise in practice. The creatures were tenacious in their hunt for the ice mage, and obviously preferred pack pursuit. As soon as Gray encased one of them in ice, three more would replace it, shooting the white spears at him. The constant guerilla warfare was daunting, and Gray soon bordered on exhaustion. Several of the spikes had grazed him, leaving bleeding and burning abrasions over his chest's bare skin (because at some point he'd flung his cloak to the wind). After another attempt to overpower the small dragons only to become outmatched, Gray collapsed against a dirty alley wall, sliding into a crouch and applying pressure to the small tear in his side.
"Fuck," he whispered softly as his unfocused eyes spied the trail of ruby-red droplets betraying his location. The dragons would sniff him out in due time; he could already hear the scrapes of their claws against the street and their high-pitched weals rising in volume. "Have to get out of here," he groaned and used the small ledges in the brick to haul himself into a standing position. Using the wall to bear most of his weight, he half-limped, half-jogged deeper into the alley, just as a hulky form blotted out the light seeping in from the street. The dragonoid's screech bounced in the small space, ringing in Gray's ears like a death knell.
Gray's eyes widened as a disheveled blonde girl darted into the alley ahead of him, ducking behind some silver trash bins. A few seconds later, one of the monsters skittered by the alley's entrance, snuffling like a boar as it passed. Gray watched, frozen, as Lucy peered out into the street to ensure it had left before exhaling deeply. When she turned around, she caught sight of him.
"Gray!" she hissed and darted over just as he slumped against the wall. Her hands fluttered around his wounds but never touched, not wishing to pain him accidentally. "You're hurt…"
"It's nothing. They just grazed me." Gray looked frenziedly over his shoulder as the metallic bang of a trash bin falling on its side clanged in the passage behind him. "We gotta go." He grabbed her hand and tore away from the wall with a grunt. A smear of blood marked the place where he had leaned against the brick. For the sake of not alerting the nearby beasts to their position, Lucy stifled her protests. After taking fervent glances down both sides of the street, Gray pulled her out into the open, intending to take shelter in the half-destroyed bakery a few yards down the road. We need to regroup. Fighting these things on our own is a suicide mission! If I could find Juvia or Erza or anybody, we'll stand a better chance…!
"Gray, look out!"
Lucy's blood-curdling scream cleaved through the night air like a blade. Something knocked into Gray and sent him staggering a few paces to the left on unsteady, wobbly knees. He whipped around as he crashed into a brick wall, and then time slowed down to an agonizing pace. He watched the air warp around the razor-sharp spikes as they sailed towards Lucy, who still had her arms outstretched from pushing Gray out of the way. He watched the blood explode from her skin as the jagged points made first contact, biting into the meat of her shoulder, thigh, and abdomen like carnivorous beasts. The air vibrated with Lucy's high-pitched, agonized wail that seemed to last hours in Gray's roaring ears. Ruby liquid painted the cracked cobblestone, grotesque abstract artworks that only the disturbed would find beautiful. Gray watched, wide-eyed and frozen, as Lucy landed on her belly in the road, unmoving with the blood slowly pooling around her in a shining red lake.
"N-no," he gurgled suddenly. A hard lump made it challenging to speak and release the choking sobs bubbling up in his body. He staggered towards Lucy, but his legs had gone numb. With a haggard cry, he fell on his hands and knees. Those also failed to support him, making him flop uselessly onto his belly. Groaning in agony, he forced his battered body to move. His fingernails cracked as he scraped them harshly against the cobblestone in an attempt to gain enough traction to drag himself forward. His muscles screamed in protest, but Gray managed to crawl a few feet forward where Lucy lay. The blood saturated his skin and clothes, hot and sticky and reeking of iron. Gray pawed at the girl, rolling her over onto her back, and nearly fainted with relief when he found her barely clinging to life.
"Guh… Gray…" Her whisper was but a ghost of a breath. Gray hauled himself to a sitting position with a pained cry. After a few seconds of panting and fighting back the darkness encroaching on the edges of his vision, he settled Lucy's head into his lap.
"Lucy. Lucy, you're gonna be okay," he croaked. He stroked her dirt-caked, frazzled blonde hair with trembling fingers to brush it away from her pale, sweaty face. "We're gonna get you help, Lucy. We're gonna get you help." She blinked slowly, barely able to keep her eyelids open to gaze at him with hazy, unfocused eyes.
"You can't help me." When she uttered that, Gray shattered. With a low, mournful moan, he curled over her body. The blood leaching from her wounds filled his breaths with the disgusting metallic tang and his skin burned where the red liquid smeared over it. "You can't help me," she repeated in a quiet, tired sigh. Tears poured from Gray's eyes, dripping down onto her ghostly white face and neck.
"No. Don't say that, don't say that," he began babbling nonsensically. "Help, gonna get- gonna get help, Lucy, don't die, don't die!" His violently quaking hands struggled to cup the small frame of her face. "Lucy… Lucy, I love you… Please, don't go, don't leave me, I love you, I love you!" His mind began to swim with fierce regrets. I should've told her sooner. I shouldn't have let it end like this! I should've done something, I should have saved her! It should have been me! It should have been me!"Lucy… Lucy…" he crooned in broken whispers as the light faded from her eyes and her body grew still with death. The ground trembled with a rising quake, and in the near distance, Gray heard the unmistakable hiss of a dragon.
He didn't care. He continued to cradle Lucy's body, lamenting every bit of warmth that slowly faded from her skin. His body began to bounce with the intensity of the dragon's weighty steps. He didn't care.
What can a man do in such a moment, aside from embrace death?
Reality splintered. Gray had the odd sensation of floating in space as time warped around him into fractured, unfocused momentary blips. Voices echoed around him, but he couldn't understand any words. Gray closed his eyes, feeling like his entire being was falling apart, and then-
There he was, standing in the middle of the street again, holding Lucy's hand. Gray's hazy mind couldn't process what had just occurred; it only became dominated with the incredible urge to act. He whirled around and tackled Lucy to the ground, causing her to squeak in surprise. In the next second, several of the white spikes sailed overhead. They crashed harmlessly into the nearby building, sending the brick wall crumbling. Without hesitating, Gray slapped his palm down and blasted a massive ice wall in the direction the spikes had come from. There were a few pained squeals, and then nothing, nothing aside from the rumbles of the ongoing war around them. He looked down to see Lucy gawking wide-eyed at him, her chest heaving with gulping breaths.
"Gray, I… I…" Her hands roamed her body, searching for the grievous wounds but finding her skin unmarred. She swallowed thickly and then whispered, "I died." A hard lump formed in Gray's throat. He couldn't force out words, so he just nodded forlornly. Lucy's fingers dug deep into the meat of his upper arms as tears flooded her eyes. "And you… And you…" Her eyelashes fluttered, sending the droplets coursing down her cheeks- cheeks rosy with the flush of life, not pale white with the oncoming of death. "I love you too."
Kissing in the middle of the battlefield probably wasn't the best idea, but Gray went right ahead and did it anyway.
His lips smashed against Lucy's in a fierce, passionate, emotional kiss. Lucy's fingers carded into his hair, scraping her nails over his scalp as he ravished her mouth with a tenacity. She fought for dominance for a few seconds, but soon yielded to the waves of passion rolling off the ice mage, allowing herself to be swept up in the tsunami. When she sighed wantonly, Gray took the opportunity to slide his tongue into her mouth. The hot muscles swirled ardently in a feverish dance, spreading a warmth and love that Gray had never known through his body. It lasted only a minute or so, but to the impassioned mages, it might as well have been an eternity. No matter how much they wanted to ignore the rumbling and roaring around them, they could not ignore the fraught dangers of their reality forever.
As Gray pulled away from Lucy, he grabbed her by her upper arms, hauling her into a sitting position. He pressed another searing kiss to her forehead and then cupped her face.
"After this, I swear on everything that I'm taking you on a damn good date," he promised. Lucy blinked, then smiled warmly, for she heard the unspoken order hidden within the vow: live. Gray stroked her cheeks with his thumbs to catch the tears that leaked out of her eyes.
"I'm looking forward to it." You live too, her eyes beseeched. He pressed his forehead to hers, confirming their promises with a single glance.
Live, so I can love you properly.