Gray was in a complete state of shock.
His companion had suddenly sported some wings?
"Yes! What are you? Companions don't have wings. People don't usually have wings unless it's those weird prosthetic things…" he stopped himself, feeling that he was starting to ramble.
"Me? I'm normal." The answer was so ridiculous that Gray couldn't quite muffle the laugh coming from him.
"No," he said finally, "you sure as hell aren't normal…" one hand rose in an aborted movement. Natsu seemed to flinch when it got closer to him. And that was quite odd too. "Like, you have wings…"
Only then did his companion seem to notice that, yes, those wings were there.
Gray took a closer look at the appendages, noticing the reddish-pink but tending to grey hue of the bones as well as the leather-like tissue that comprise it. It was slightly mesmerizing, even if they were shaking slightly.
"Oi, back off!" Natsu snarled, his eyes burning with a strange flame in them.
No, this wasn't the companion that Gray had known for some years, the one that both infuriated and amused him. This Natsu seemed to exude darkness.
Which was also a concept that was hard to assimilate.
His Natsu seemed to possess an inner light, he always brightened Gray's day – even the ones when he wanted to brood – and feeling this darkness, this cold, coming from him was just jarring.
"Why should I?" Gray still bit back in a defying tone.
"You don't want to do that – it's true, it has got to. The curse and…" Natsu started to mumble, agitatedly, running a hand through his face – only to end up looking at it with wide eyes.
His fingers. The tip of the fingers were getting pointier right before their eyes, suddenly ending up as dark talons.
"Shit!" the word came unbidden from Gray's mouth. He made to approach but Natsu's step back, pressing hard against the wall and with the wings seemingly throwing him off once again, made him stop. "Are you okay?"
"You can't come any closer. Please. I don't want…" he started to say but shook his head. "What is happening…" his voice started to become tinged with panic.
"So, you don't know?" Gray asked stupidly.
Natsu paused and looked blankly at Gray.
"What the fuck do you think?" he all but shouted. "Do you think I do this weird-ass shit every day?" He asked, throwing his hands up.
"Hey, no need to blame me because you are strange!" Gray scoffed and ended up with a gasp. "Oh shit. Why is that happening?" he pointed up at Natsu.
"Huh? What? What's happening?" The companion was standing taller now, seemingly stronger. He looked to the sides, trying to see what Gray was seeing.
"You- your hair. It's black…"
"No, it's not." Natsu counteracted with a roll of his eyes. Then he frowned momentarily and glanced at the window.
"Yes, it is…" Gray went to his bedside table and found the mirror Lyon had once given him as a joke. He stood before Natsu once again and showed him.
"No way! I- no, I'm not…" he ran a hand through his hair as if to try to deny what was happening but the reflection told him otherwise. "This is not…" Natsu was starting but the wings fluttered a bit too harshly. With a slight shake of his shoulders he retracted the wings somewhat. "I hear it…"
"What are you talking about?" Gray frowned at the incoherency of his – what? once? – companion. "You don't make any sense. Not that you ever did but…"
"You might want to stay away from me. If you don't want bad things to happen…" Natsu then seemingly brushed Gray's presence aside and strode to the window. He looked outside, searching for something. And then, he jumped off it.
"Hey!" Gray ran to the window. He knew that Natsu's mental state wasn't the best at the moment – as for some reason, he had some fucking wings sprout off his back! – but he was on the second floor and it could be a nasty fall. But no, he had his wings open and was soaring down. As soon as he landed he ran towards the garden. Beside him on the grass, seemingly little red dots started blossoming.
Gray ran downstairs, ignoring the voices talking to him, the questions and glances. Then again, they had a reason to be. Gray usually didn't look so frantic.
He'd only gotten to the place where Natsu had landed when there was a loud scream.
Not only Gray but also some of the people in the garden rushed towards it.
One young maid was standing, horrified, in the roses garden. She was shaking, in shock. And the reason for that was lying on the floor in a heap.
One of the older gardeners was lying in there, eyes open and unseeing, a strange rictus on his face. Dead.
More people got there, some started asking for help.
Gray, however, didn't notice the chaos around him. His eyes were fixated on the ground.
The red blots that had blossomed on the grass…
He knelt down and picked one.
Poppy…
And then, the whole curse babble made much more sense.
But… curse or no curse, Natsu was somewhere out there.
And Gray just had to find him.
A/N: Now that was kind of unsubtle, huh?