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Present Tense

Gray didn't mean to lie, not really, but he didn't exactly want to tell the truth either. He's talking in the present tense, but he's living in the past.

Gray didn't mean to lie, not really, but it wasn't like he could tell the truth. He didn't want to be the poor little orphan boy, the charity case. And he didn't want his darkest sins uncovered either.

"I'm sorry I can't help you with iced shell," the tiny old man said. And if the master of such a powerful guild couldn't do anything, what hope did a stupid little kid like Gray really have? "I…don't think you're going to find a way to undo that spell. Will you be returning to your parents?"

The wrinkles deepened around the little man's sharp eyes, which had narrowed slightly. A test, Gray knew. He hadn't given any of the details surrounding the use of iced shell, of course, and the Master was fishing for information. Adults didn't take kindly to small children running around unsupervised on quests. What was a kid like him doing without his parents? Did he still have parents to go back to?

Of course he didn't, but he wasn't going to say that.

"I don't think so," Gray said. "I'm not going back."

A flicker of bewilderment entered the old man's eyes. "You aren't going back to your parents? Why?"

Gray stared back for what seemed like an eternity. "I ran away," he said finally.

"You…ran away?"

"Geez, isn't that what I said the first time? You going deaf, old man?"

Not even that was enough to deter the nosy geezer.

"Do your parents live nearby?"

"…No."

"Don't you think–?"

"No!" Gray cried. His hands clenched into little fists by his sides and his lips trembled. "I'm not going back!"

The Master hesitated for a long time before sighing. "If that is what you wish. In the meantime, you're welcome to stick around and join Fairy Tail." When Gray gave him an odd look, he added, "It would be better than being alone, wouldn't it?"

Gray searched the man's face and found only sincerity. "I'll…think about it."

He joined, of course. He knew the matter wasn't closed and Makarov would try to encourage him to go back to his dead parents again later, but he needed somewhere to belong now that he had been exiled from his home. He wasn't entirely sure if the Master really believed the spur-of-the-moment lie or was just refraining from calling him out on it, but it was enough.

Cana was the next to ask. She was too happy and friendly and talkative, even when Gray was grumpy and didn't encourage her. She also seemed to have a thing for parents, which made him think she had some daddy issues even if all she had mentioned was that her mother was dead and she had been looking for her father. But boy was she in love with the idea of parents.

"Where are yours?" she asked one day.

Gray shrugged. "I ran away from home."

She stared at him as if he'd grown a second head. "Why?" Her eyes widened. "Were your parents very mean to you?"

"Of course not! They're wonderful!"

"Then why did you run away?"

Gray averted his gaze and scowled at the ground. "…Because."

"I don't believe you." For the first time, her friendliness morphed into something like disgust. "Not everyone is lucky enough to get to stay with their parents, you know. If you have that chance, you should take it."

"No," Gray said. He walked away.

Erza didn't raise the subject until weeks after he found her crying at the river.

"I heard from Cana that you ran away from home," she said.

Gray huffed out a breath. Cana knew better than to bring that up, and they had achieved their own sort of friendship by not poking their noses into each other's private business. Wonderful.

"Yes," he said shortly.

Erza stayed quiet for a long time as they walked down the street, fingering her eyepatch idly. Gray waited for the inevitable questions of why. Why did he run away? Why didn't he go back? What had happened? Were his parents that cruel? But after a long silence, she asked something else instead.

"Do you miss them?"

Gray stopped right in his tracks and stared at her. A dangerous lump formed in the back of his throat. "Yes," he whispered before he thought better of it.

"Will you go back, do you think?"

"No," he said immediately.

Erza pondered that for a moment, then, "Do you want to go back?"

Gray opened his mouth, closed it, looked away. "I… I don't know."

He wanted to go back to his parents, but they were dead and he was afraid to go back to the place that had been his home. He wanted to go back to them, but they weren't there to go back to.

"Well–"

"It doesn't matter!" Gray burst out, cutting her off. "I don't care!"

Erza tilted her head. "If you don't care, then why are you crying?"

He lifted his hand to his face. His fingers came away wet.

Erza never brought the subject up again, and he was grateful for it.

Natsu was the only one who made Gray bring it up himself, but it got so tiring always listening to him brag about his dragon father and talk about searching for him.

"There are no more dragons," Gray said crossly one day when Natsu was regaling them all with tales of his father's exploits again. "Everyone knows that."

The easiest way to make the happy-go-lucky kid angry was to say something negative about dragons.

"There are so! I'm going to find Igneel and prove it to you!"

Gray rolled his eyes. "Stop exaggerating. Your parents don't have to be dragons to be cool. My parents are just as great as yours, and I don't have to pretend they're dragons."

Natsu scowled. "Oh yeah? And where are your parents, then? I've never seen them. Maybe they're imaginary."

"I ran away from home," Gray said, the excuse coming second nature to him by now.

Natsu stared. "If they're so great, why'd you run away?"

"Because."

"Why would you ever want to run away from your family? I bet your parents miss you tons, just like I miss Igneel. Family shouldn't run away from each other."

Something constricted in Gray's chest, and he spun away. "They don't care," he said flatly as he stormed out of the guild. They couldn't, not anymore.

He could feel everyone's eyes on his back as he left. No one ever dared bring the subject up with him again, as if there was a tacit understanding that something was not right there and it was best to respect his wishes and not open scars. So Gray eventually decided to believe Natsu and helped him search for his dragon father—because the kid might be annoying, but he was right about it being horrible to be separated from your family—but Gray's own family was strictly off limits.

That silence lasted for years, right up until Lucy joined the guild. She didn't know all the rules yet, and was plenty happy to talk and talk while trying to make friends and fit in. She was sitting with Natsu and Happy of course, while Gray sat with them out of curiosity and even Erza drifted over.

She had clearly heard a lot about Igneel already, and Natsu's stories prompted her to then turn to Gray with a smile and ask about his family.

"Do your parents live around here?" she asked.

Everyone else around the table stilled and exchanged looks. Lucy didn't seem to notice the sudden air of awkwardness and tension.

Gray let out a breath through his nose. He didn't necessarily want to talk about this, but he wasn't as immature now as he had been as a child, either.

"No," he said. "They're pretty far away."

"Oh, that's too bad! Do you visit often?"

Gray could almost feel his gaze unfocus as his mind drifted along to memories he had long since buried. "No," he said absently. "I ran away from home when I was young. I haven't gone back."

"Oh." A stricken look passed over Lucy's face as she finally realized that she had stepped on a landmine. "That's horrible! Were your parents…?"

He shook his head. "They're wonderful. My mom is really sweet, and I always really admired my dad. They love me. I love them."

Lucy's face creased in a frown. "Then…why did you leave?"

His smile was bittersweet. "Because."

"Do you think you'll ever go back to visit?"

Gray tilted his head and a thoughtful frown tugged at his lips. "I don't know. Maybe someday."

"Oh. Well… I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry."

"It's okay," he said kindly. "But just so you know, families are sort of off limits around here unless someone brings them up first."

Lucy glanced about the table uncertainly, and the other mages nodded. They looked relieved that Gray had handled the issue better than as a child, and even more so when he changed the subject.

Still, Lucy's questions lingered in his mind. Would he ever go back? He didn't know.

"I found us a job," Erza said.

Gray blinked at her and then followed her gaze back to himself and Natsu and Happy and Lucy. This was unexpected. They usually went solo, and he wondered if something had changed when they had teamed up to stop Erigor and Lullaby. He wondered if that would be a good thing. He wasn't sure if he was ready to be part of a team.

He also wasn't the only one who was surprised, but after a few minutes of confusion, everyone agreed. Erza usually got what she wanted.

"Yetis?" Natsu asked, peering over her shoulder to frown at the job request. "What the hell is a yeti?"

"Frost giant," Gray grunted. "In some of the arctic places to the north and east, people also call them yetis. I guess it's a regional thing."

Lucy smiled. "I guess it makes sense that you know about cold things."

"Ice princess," Natsu added with a snicker.

Gray's eye twitched.

"But Isvan isn't even in Fiore!" Happy said loudly, eyes skimming over the page.

Gray froze. Isvan?

Erza nodded. "It must be a pretty tough job to hunt down and catch these yetis if it's even getting posted down here. Anyway, I've never been, so I thought it would be fun to see a new place."

"No!" Natsu wailed. "It's going to be all cold! And a long train ride!"

"Calm down. You have fire, don't you? And you'll have to take a train no matter where we go."

"But–"

"No," Gray said.

Erza frowned. "I thought you'd like a job in the snow."

"No. I won't go."

Which, of course, started up a grating cacophony of arguments. It was only when Erza finally told him that she wouldn't make him come on the job if he really didn't want to, with those puzzled, pained eyes of hers, that Gray relented. If something had changed, if this was the start of something new, he didn't want to ruin it because of memories. He still wasn't sure if he was ready for a team, but…he didn't want to ruin that chance, either.

Anyway, Lucy had told him he should visit, right? If nothing else, he should visit his homeland one last time.

The thought terrified him. Made a sick, rotten feeling ball up in the pit of his stomach.

Still, he missed his old home, his old family. Families. He missed the snow and the past and the ice-cold, knife-sharp memories. He was too afraid to go back, but he was too heartsick to stay away.

"Are you sure?" Erza was startled by the sudden change of heart. "If it's that big of a deal, we can just–"

"No, no." Gray's smile was ice-cold, knife-sharp, but he managed to melt its corners and soften its edges after a moment. "It's fine. Let's go."

.

Gray followed behind the team, quiet as they chattered about their great success in finding and capturing the mysterious yeti. They were going home, and yet…and yet…

"Can we…? Can we make a detour?"

And yet Gray couldn't go home without visiting his old home one last time.

Everyone stopped right in the middle of the street, just outside the train station, and stared at him. He could feel their eyes on him even though his head was bowed, eyes tracing over the gray cobblestones and dark hair curtaining the desolation on his face.

"But it's cold," Natsu complained. "I wanna get out of here."

"You don't have to come," Gray said softly. "I'll catch up to you."

But when he turned and walked away, his friends exchanged looks and followed him even when he refused to answer their questions. He didn't know why he had as good as invited them. It wasn't like he wanted them to know about his past. Maybe it was just that he was too much of a coward to go alone.

His hometown wasn't far. In fact, they walked there in just under an hour. The snow lay in serene blankets over the ground. It was beautiful, pristine, and…dead. The only life was marked by the trail of footsteps they left behind. Ahead, nothing.

Someone sucked in a sharp breath when the broken city rose up from the cold, blank snow ahead of them like a maw of old, cracked teeth. The desolation stood in stark contrast to the beauty of the snow around it.

"What happened?" Lucy asked shrilly. "We should get help and–"

"There's no one left to help here," Gray said. He plodded along mercilessly, hands shoved into his pockets. "The city was destroyed a decade ago. I guess they never rebuilt it." His eye caught on a wide field of stones and markers and crosses sticking up from the snow in neat rows as they crested a ridge. "I guess there was no one left to."

At least someone—friends and family of the deceased, probably—had left a memorial. Maybe they had dug out the bodies and buried them, like Gray should have. Maybe if he had ever come back, he would have known.

The acute horror hanging over his friends faded into something with duller edges. It wasn't hard to see that this was a tragedy from another era and not a recent one, once they calmed down a little and really looked.

Gray skirted around the edge of the ruined city, past the silent graveyard. He remembered where his own memorial had been erected, but he didn't know if it still existed. It had been so long, and he had made it only of wood that would have rotted with age.

"What happened here?" Erza asked. Her voice shook.

"Ten years ago, a demon came through," Gray said. His voice didn't waver. "It destroyed the city and killed everyone."

"Everyone?" Happy squeaked, eyes wide as he surveyed the rows of gravestones.

Gray smiled, bittersweet, one corner of his mouth twitching into a melancholy curve. "Everyone but me."

"Y-you?"

His memorial, a child's construction of rough wood and twine sloppily affixed as a cross, was outside the city past the graveyard. And buried somewhere underneath a spotless blanket of snow. He swept his gaze across that formless blanket and sighed.

"I suppose it would be pointless to dig everything up to see what's left." His hands danced through the air, and this time the memorial was of a prodigal son come home, all crystal and glittering ice formed into a delicate cross. The bittersweet smile returned. "Hey," he breathed. "Sorry it took me so long to come back and visit. But I think you'd like the home I found and the idiot family I dragged with me."

There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the mournful whistle of the wind. He didn't even try to discern what his friends were thinking. He still didn't know why he was showing them this piece of his shattered past. Maybe only because this job was the closest he had come to home in a decade and because he was still too much of a coward to come alone.

He might regret it later, but he couldn't bring himself to care right now. He wasn't going to tell them his great shame with Ur and Lyon, of course, but maybe it felt a little bit good to clear up one of those mysteries that he had always kept to himself and used as a means of keeping his friends out.

"Your parents?" Lucy ventured. "But you said–"

"I only told one lie." Gray finally tore his gaze away from the shimmering ice and turned to walk back the way he had come. It was hard to walk away, but maybe there was a tiny sense of closure too. Like a quiet sort of goodbye that he had never been able to bring himself to say before. He didn't meet anyone's eyes as he pushed past them. "I did run away from home after the demon destroyed it. They are pretty far away. They were wonderful, and I do miss them. I never intended to come back, and I still don't know if I really wanted to or not.

"The only lie was that I always talked about them in the present tense, instead of leaving them behind in the past."

He could already sense the gears turning in Natsu's head, Happy's indecision, the girls' overflowing desire to say or do something to make things right. In a few moments, they would ask questions or talk or try to comfort him. He would talk little and answer even fewer questions, but he would appreciate their concern nonetheless and hope that revealing this piece of himself would work out in the end.

But for now, in this moment between, he just drew a breath of crisp, cold air into his lungs and let it out in a misty cloud. He wondered.

That might have been the most damaging lie of all. He had always talked in the present but lived in the past. Maybe he had chained himself to the past by pretending—lying to himself on some level—that death wasn't as permanent as he knew it was. A delusion to keep some piece of his family alive in his thoughts.

He did want to keep their memory alive, but not like that. The past was not going to let him go any time soon. He had not come to terms with his parents' deaths, and especially not Ur's.

But for now he was going to shelve his present-tense stories and lies and wishes about the past, if only because he had gotten mixed up somewhere along the way. It was time to put the past back in the past where it belonged, so that he could live in the present and look to the future.

He didn't think he would ever come here again, so he whispered his goodbyes to the wind and walked back towards his future, leaving the past buried in the snow behind him.

emmahoshi: Lol Grammar is important, kiddos. Next lesson: the importance of serial commas. Yeah, sorry, that was a little beyond the scope of this. I already wrote a lot of conversations with teammates trying to talk to Gray about his past (mooostly Natsu and Lyon, but still), so I took a slightly different angle this time. And it was supposed to be a short thing instead of turning into this big old story. But there's some room for imagination to wonder how it might go :) Thanks for R&Ring, hope you've been well :)