Author's Note: I hope everyone's enjoying their day today and I'm back again with another chapter for all of you to enjoy. I'm personally excited as this marks one whole year since I've actually posted this first fanfic and it's come a long ways from its beginning. I know I haven't posted anything in a while for this fic, but I had work that needed to be done, plus I wished to show a little more attention to the other fic I've been working on. Let's leave it at that and allow me to thank you all that have followed, favorited, reviewed and read my fic for all your support and I hope you continue to enjoy it and any other works I do in the future. Slightly sappy I know, but I just felt like saying it and without any further adieu...Let's get this chapter rolling! Review and Enjoy everyone!
Chapter 23
Gray accompanied by Loke walked right into the guild with their regular attitudes as they tried to play it as normal as possible, although a part of Gray wasn't prepared to actually face everyone again. As far as he knew, his childhood friends are under the potion's influence and had more than enough sense to think that other members of the guild were just like that. The lion spirit on the other hand knew exactly who was under the influence, which was basically everyone in eyesight as he was still unsure of how Gray was feeling about the current situation, especially since he blew up at the park nearly a week ago.
To everyone else though, they were happy to see their target of affection back at the guild as they each grew worried of what happened to him. They played their part of acting like everything was fine with the world and became concerned friends around the ice mage if he ever wondered why no one was worried about his sudden inactivity in the guild. Erza was of course more on edge as she was nearly ready to march over to the raven haired mage and reprimand him for not saying anything to anyone before disappearing completely, however she'd follow that up with kissing him in front of everyone here. She had to make her claim as things began to head south ever since his constant disappearing in the early morning, since each team was making obvious moves of keeping Gray to themselves.
Not only that, but she also had to pay close attention towards Mira and Cana's moves as those two became her biggest rivals in comparison to everyone else. Even so, the requip mage was weary of Juvia, as the water mage had remained inactive for quite a while. It was mainly due to the fact that she still had yet to make any move for Gray. Erza had noticed that Juvia wasn't doing much in the way of battling against them for Gray's affection as the water mage seemed to be lost in her thoughts most of the time and her iron dragon slayer teammate was behaving oddly the same. Gajeel wasn't taking part in the feud for Gray anymore and refused to even look in the ice mage's way for that matter, thus piquing Erza's curiosity of what they could be up to of all things. Although some of the others had also notice and chalked it up to the Phantom Team surrendering and dropping out of the race.
Erza let her thoughts go as Gray and Loke sat down at their team's booth, the ice mage at the farthest edge with the lion spirit sitting in between him and Lucy. The requip mage cursed to herself for not taking the chance to sit on Gray's side, but she'd deal with it and wasn't opposed to Wendy sitting in front him rather than Natsu who sat between them. Everyone looked at Gray expectantly, waiting for him to say something but he merely gave them a confused look as he noticed that all eyes were on him.
"What?" The ice mage had to feign ignorance until Loke's plan went into effect so he tried to act as normal as possible, however his heart still ached as he looked onto the faces of both Erza and Lucy.
"Don't "what" us ice princess, where the hell have you been?" Natsu spoke up as the whole table nodded their heads in unison as they waited for the ravenette's reply.
"Look I had some things to deal with and it's taken up a lot of my time alright, but I'm done with it so you can just drop it." Gray replied a little bitterly as he accidentally let some of his personal emotions slip and regained himself before they caught on to him. "You could say that I've been under a lot of stress and I just want to forget about it."
"Fair enough, if whatever problem you've been trying to resolve has done so, then there is no need to discuss it further." Erza spoke up this time and even if Gray felt pained at the things he's heard about what was going on, he was still grateful that the redhead would give him his privacy. "Just remember that I'm-, I mean, we all are here for you if you need help."
"Thanks Erza, I really appreciate it." Gray replied as he gave her a fleeting smile that disappeared just as it was shown. "I understand what you were trying to say and I'm grateful for having you in my life to support me in my time of need." The beautified Gray said returning from wherever he was kept hidden, as it had been some time since Erza had actually seen him.
"Y-You're welcome Gray." Erza replied as she tried to subdue a blush that was forming on her face, still quite struggling as she had yet to master this ever since the first time Gray spoke to her in that way.
"Hey now, don't forget to thank my beautiful master Lucy for sending me to help your sorry ass. She did notice how downed you looked, so she sent me to check up on you every now and again." Loke knew Gray was trying to get over the news, but he still needed to boost the blonde's chances when this was all over, or else someone other than her will repair Gray's broken heart.
"Well thanks to you too Lucy, the flirty moron has helped plenty." Gray said as he looked over towards Lucy who was trying to get everything situated at how Loke kept trying to make her look good in front of Gray. "I can always count on you to know when I'm feeling down and I'm sure I can do the same for you." Unlike Erza, Lucy was couldn't hide much of her blush and signs of it began to show on her cheeks as she tried to form coherent words before she stumbled on them.
"N-No problem G-Gray." Lucy struggled immensely to avoid embarrassing herself and she could never get why it always happened when the ice mage was around and Loke tried to make her look good in front of him.
The guild was once again lively after six days without the ice mage and personal plans of attack had been put under wraps as everyone went about their daily lives. The booze was served, people cheered and laughed, a certain pink dragon slayer was already busting heads into the ground as he began another guild brawl and Gray simply sat at the booth and watched the people he grew up with remain none the wiser of what was really going on. He couldn't believe that their behavior was so normal to what he thought would be a major disaster if they ever found out what had transpired between him and each one of them, until a thought had dawned on him. If the potion had affected the girls, was it possible Natsu might've ingested the potion too and that's why he tried to forcefully kiss him back in his own house?
As the ice mage continued to delve into his hypothesis, Lucy had taken noticed of how serious Gray was starting to look and it didn't stop there. His face still remained the calm expression it always was, but the blonde could see the changes in his features that she could recognize of him becoming serious and his eyes gave another piece of information away. The celestial mage saw the storm brewing in his eyes as he looked out towards the rest of the guild, the same ones she remembered him having during their time on Galuna Island before Lyon's defeat. They were pained eyes of spiraling emotions, the like of which she could never forget as they were signs of emotions that Gray kept hidden away. Only anger being a prominent emotion he let out compared to happiness which even that looked restrained. Lucy may not be as close to the ice mage as she'd like to be, but she knew when there was something really bothering him and the blonde wasn't alone as she could tell that Erza felt the same way.
The requip mage carefully eyed her childhood friend as his behavior, as normal as he tried to play it out, was returning to a state in which he retreated into the cold expanses of himself. She recalled that this colder Gray was the one no one would know to be different, the one people usually thought of as the regular Gray, but not the one Erza so dearly remembered when they were much younger. She watched as he got up from his seat and went off to join the brawl with a smile on his face, but it felt a little forced to her and wondered what was truly going on.
Erza continued to look at how he fought the other guild members and could tell he was halfheartedly fighting back as he didn't look like the ice mage she knew who enjoyed beating his opponent in a fist fight. Her thoughts were right as she saw Natsu's expression, telling her that he found out as well and couldn't understand why he wasn't into the fight like he usually was.
Not ten minutes after joining the brawl, Gray had walked off and made his way over towards the bar counter and a low growl escaped the requip mage's mouth as she saw the victorious smile that formed on her rival's face. Her gauntlet hand formed into a fist as the white haired barmaid grew closer to the ice mage and her other hand began to tap the table in a menacing fashion with each passing second. Lucy and Wendy looked on with worried expressions as they could tell that the redhead was becoming infuriated as time passed on and Loke was becoming pretty nervous as well. The lion spirit hoped that the opportunity to exact his plan to get everyone out of their Gray obsessed possession would turn up sooner rather than later because things were going to get dangerous in the near future.
At the bar counter, Gray sat idly around drinking from his mug as even a fight couldn't lift his spirits all the way up and wondered what might happen if he stayed this way for too long. His train of thought was cut short as Mira had come up to him and decided to start a conversation with him and being the person he was, Gray couldn't refuse Mira and let it happen. The barmaid was very satisfied as she got to talk with Gray and would steal glances every then and there towards her redheaded rival, giving off a subtle smirk as she could see the dark aura forming around her. In all honestly, Mira enjoyed pushing Erza's buttons and it was all the more fun the more she got closer to Gray, making sure she wasn't making any obvious moves on him that he'd notice.
Except that Gray was only half paying attention to the conversation he was having with her and the ice mage was lazily swirling the remaining booze around as he began to lose himself in thought when he felt a weight in his pocket shift. He reached in to feel what it was and when he was met with a cylinder like shape, he instantly remembered what it was and began to think back on the moment he first received it.
FLASHBACK
Gray and Loke had been making their way back towards Fairy Tail as the ice mage had come around to stop running away from the situation and deal with it head on. With the lion spirit being the man who had a plan to make it happen. Even so, Gray was still weary of how he'd fare with the others knowing that they weren't themselves and he was nothing more than some sort of love target they had all trained their eyes on. He audibly sighed wondering why this happened to him and thought of a multiple types of ways this couldn't possibly be good on anyone, believing that life had a twisted sense of humor when it concerned him.
"You know, sighing like that shortens your lifespan." Loke remarked as he brought Gray around and out of his distressed stupor which was really becoming a bothersome thing to the strawberry blonde as he hadn't seen him like that since Cana.
"And do you know that if you piss me off any more, Lil' Loke won't be the first one up in the morning anymore." Gray replied with a mixture of annoyance and anger as the spirit wasn't yet in his good graces.
"Geez man, just trying to lighten you up a bit. No need to be all hostile." Loke said putting his hands up in a surrendering fashion as the ice mage clicked his tongue at him and continued walking.
"Whatever, so could you tell me what you have in mind in stopping this potion?" The ravenette had been curious as he thought back to how the spirit continuously claimed that he had a way of reversing the effects of the potion and make this problem go away.
"Feast your eyes on this!" Loke quickly pulled out a small vial from within his coat pocket and handed it to the ice mage to get a closer look. "It took me a while, but I've managed to reverse engineer the original antidote for the potion and make back ups."
"Why'd it take you so long?" Gray asked as he began to shake the vial, watching the contents inside slosh around with a tealish hue slightly glowing inside before fading out.
"Well you see, I had to track it down to the town of Munko where Juvia first bought it, but that's when I came across my first problem," Loke said as Gray rose one of his eyebrows in curiosity of what got in Loke's way. "I got word that the old man that made it for her suffered from a heart attack a few days prior to my visit and I came when people were paying their respects at the church there."
"So the creator died when you managed to get a lead, but how'd you still get the antidote?"
"I was getting to that, anyways, I came across a few of his former colleges and asked if they knew anything about reversing the potions he has created and although most of them didn't know anything there was one guy who did." Gray watched as Loke was scratching his chin, no doubt trying to remember the guy's name and knew he forgot when the look of giving up spread across his face before he started talking again. "I don't recall the name, but he said he'd be willing to help and I told him what happened and that's when my second problem came up."
"Let me guess, a suitable one needed time to be created and the quicker way was weaker." Loke had gazed at him as if he were a mind reader, but the ice mage merely put the fact that the spirit had to reverse engineer the antidote, looked liked he was in a hurry and if this is one of them then obviously this wasn't going to be enough.
"Yeah, although they are potent if used well enough, for instance that one you're holding would be enough to get at least two people back to normal but we'd need to find a way so that they willingly take it." Gray was a little surprised that such a small amount could do that, but it bothered him that they had to make sure they take it. "Well it does sound great, but like how you guessed it, he synthesized this one on a short time frame and that if he had more time then he could've created an exact antidote that would be very effective."
"Then why didn't you let him work on it until it was perfect?" If that was the case then Loke shouldn't have had that hard of a time crunch to let the man work and create a strong enough antidote to compete against the original potion.
"The thing is, I feel like the problems are getting a little dicey with the ones who were affected by the potion and with them being old rivals, things won't be looking so great for the guild hall. Or what would be left of it once it came down to hard combat." Loke replied as Gray noticed him shivering slightly, most likely at the thought of Erza and Mirajane going at it at full strength like they used to do.
"I guess I can see where you're coming from, so you just need me to act like my old self until a golden opportunity shows itself, huh?" Gray rhetorically questioned as he shook the small vial again before extending it out towards the lion spirit. "Here's the antidote back."
"Nah, you should hold onto it. You never know when a chance to use it pops up so it's one less person to worry about." Loke replied as he pushed it back towards Gray and the ice mage nodded in understanding, putting it into his pocket. "And don't worry about it breaking in there, I made sure to use a reinforced material to keep the vial from breaking, you know just in case Natsu does something stupid."
"At least you're thinking ahead, but is it really going to work?" Gray asked as he noticed the guild hall being just a few blocks away from them.
"Yeah, it'll definitely work since I've tested it already with a ninety-nine percent success rate." Loke said as a smug grin spread across his face for being able to recreate a potion with results like that.
"Who'd you test it on? Lucy?"
"No way I'd do that! I used it Gajeel since he was under the potion's control too."
"Oh...wait...WHAT!?" Gray couldn't believe what he had heard, the iron dragon slayer was affected by the potion too and he was after him like Erza and Cana were?
"Don't worry he's cured, for the most part, and he's pretty embarrassed about it from what I've seen." Loke replied as Gray still was a loss for words since he only thought Erza, Cana, Mira, Lucy and a few others were affected. Now he was actually wondering who else might be under the potion's influence as well.
"And are you sure this is going to work?" The ravenette was becoming skeptical about it again, however his own shock about the current test subject was still taking precedence in his mind.
"I'm positive it will, and if for any reason it doesn't I have a backup. Just have faith in your good ol' wingman!" The lion spirit happily remarked even though Gray felt that there was still some underlying point in the spirit's second plan that he wouldn't like.
"Alright Loke, I'll believe in you."
FLASHBACK END
After that, they basically spoke about other things to pass the time until they reached the main guild hall doors and that led up to this moment where Gray was simply paying half attention to what Mira was talking about and fiddling around with the vial in his pocket. He'd answer her with a head nod or grunt every now again as he sipped away, getting a refill from Kinana when he ran out and allowed Mira to speak with him to her heart's content even if he had no idea about the inner turmoil he was causing to Erza as her finger tapping grew increasingly harder on the table. Still, he remained unaware and his behavior was quickly noted by Mira as she noticed the glazed look in his eye as Gray continued to stare past her at nothing in particular.
"If I'm boring you then it's okay to say so Gray." Mira said as the hurt filled tone of her voice snapped him back to the conversation at hand and he began to slightly panic at the sight of the tears welling up at the corners of her eyes.
"N-No Mira you're not boring me, I'm just a little out of it today." Gray hastily replied as he noticed that Mira began to collect herself again, wiping away the tears she had, while the ravenette couldn't believe he fell for it again. "Are a woman's tears really my weakness?"
"Well alright, but remember that it's impolite to ignore a lady."Mira reprimanded in a joking manner as the smile on her face were of any indication and Gray gave her a meek grin in reply. "Well I should get back to work, I'll see you around Gray."
Like that, the demon barmaid went off to serve other guild mates leaving Gray all alone once again, but this time nobody had approached him yet, aside from Lisanna that provided him with someone he didn't need to be self aware of. The ice mage was confronted by the youngest Strauss sibling and was brought into a conversation from there, but he wasn't complaining as it brought him some amount of social interaction. He was glad to have someone to talk to and wasn't really bothered that it was just a small chat to see how he was doing before she left once again to some place around the guild.
The ravenette had believed that with what was going on, he was supposed to fend for himself against love struck guildmates although he was just left alone and that didn't sit too well with him. Thinking about it was making him self conscious that all eyes were on him and one thing he didn't like was the spotlight on his person, so he simply tried to play it cool and not draw attention to himself. This endeavor proved much more difficult as he didn't have much in the way of distracting him and he couldn't really do much sitting at the bar counter as the others or even Natsu haven't started another brawl. The last one having ended sometime while he was speaking with Mira. With a tired sigh he lifted himself from the stool he was sitting on and headed straight towards the back door, leading out towards the beachfront as he wanted to clear his mind.
He occasionally glanced behind him to see if anyone was following him, luckily no one was there at all and he made sure to feel out if someone was trying really hard not to be noticed. Once he finally made it out back, he sucked in a breath of fresh air and went out to walk alongside the shoreline where the water receded back into the ocean and the sand was dry, but his thoughts lingered around the sea as he thought back to Ur and how she was now a part of the ever expansive ocean that lay before him. A bit of a large realization to take in the first time around, but Gray had learned to accept it and felt a slight comfort looking out at the shimmering waters.
"I wonder what Ur would say if she saw me now" Gray solemnly thought to himself as he continued to walk along the shore, not paying mind to the rest of his surroundings as he let the sounds of the ocean waves crashing against each other become a calming melody to him.
A curious thing really as the fun and ruckus of the inside of the guild held a peaceful, quiet and serene backlot at the beach that would leave anyone confused at how calming the back of the guild was. The ice mage was more or less satisfied with walking along the beach, humming a generic tune to himself until he heard another one that sounded vaguely familiar and he followed it towards its source. The further he went the clearer the tune became and it was one he couldn't forget and it wasn't long before he found the source of it as she laid underneath a palm cheer relaxing, a cooler at her side with a beer bottle in her hand. Gray crossed his arms towards the relaxing brunette as she continued to hum her tune, one of which Gray's heard on more than one occasion in the past but not in recent times.
"Your mother's old hymn, If I'm not wrong?" Gray said as the brunette sat up right, looking up at the ice mage as she smiled in response.
"Makes me happy to know that you actually remembered." Cana replied as she dusted off the sand on her clothes as she stepped closer to the ice mage, while Gray made a subtle step back from her advance.
"If you know me, then there are some things I'll never forget." Gray remarked as the air grew stale with silence as that simple sentence held a large amount of meaning behind it and the card mage couldn't really make light of it.
"True enough, but I've been meaning to ask you something..." The brunette began as Gray had a number of alarms go off in his head and he didn't like how this conversation was going. "I was wondering if you've finally come to terms with what I said a few days ago."
"Cana we were both plastered at that time, I'm sure it was just the heat of the moment that got to you that made you say that." The ice mage knew that Cana confessed to him, so he couldn't really put his heart out now that he knows why she did so.
"You're really telling me that? I can hold my liquor better than anyone else and the same goes for you too. I know when you're hammered and that afternoon you were nowhere near it Gray Fullbuster, so don't go writing it off as us drunkenly saying things." Cana said as she knew both their limits very well and the amount Gray drank was only enough to get him tipsy while it would've toppled Elfman instantly.
"I wasn't inferring that, I just didn't want you to make the wrong decision." Gray replied as he wanted nothing more than to get this conversation over with and leave it behind him before he ended up getting a case of deja vu. She took a step closer and placed a warm hand upon his chest as his breath hitched in his throat at how close she was becoming and the warning alarms were blaring away in his mind.
"I'm not making the wrong decision, I told you to forget whatever I said all those years ago so we can start fresh." Cana said in a soft tone as Gray's heartbeat became erratic and the brunette could feel it underneath the cloth of his shirt until he gripped her hand with his and moved it away from him.
"I just...I just can't do that Cana. You made it clear to not get romantically involved for the sake of our friendship and you made me swear to uphold it." Old memories flooded back to Gray as he said his part and he only grew irritated knowing that it's the potion's fault for bringing back old feelings of Cana which were buried long ago when they were just young teenagers.
"I don't understand why you won't let go of that swear when I'm the one telling you to forget it." Cana was genuinely confused by the ice mage's actions as she would've thought he'd slowly accept that she wanted to have something with him and not just a mere friendship. "Tell me why you choose to keep it rather than be with me."
"It's just how it is and all I'm doing is keeping our friendship intact." Gray replied even though his bitterness was beginning to pile up and he couldn't accept any of this, especially for the fact that the one who broke his heart in the first place went back on her own words of keeping a platonic relationship with one another. He could feel his personal feelings trying to burst through the ice covering his heart to relinquish the truth to her, but he wanted to keep it under wraps for as long as he could for their sake.
"Don't give me that load of bull Gray. I know there's much more to that than what you're leading on and I want you to come clean." The brunette had her own wonderings about how their relationship ended before it could fully begin, mainly focusing on how the ice mage just accepted it.
"There's nothing much I can tell you Cana, I'm trying to keep my promise that you made me swear on and I want to respect your wishes to the end." The ice mage was really getting backlash for continuing his farce as this was tearing him apart. It was a promise he hated so much, one he wished he never heard in the first place and now he was simply arguing on keeping it. Oh how the irony fills the empty spots in his life that he wished didn't happen, but this is one of those times and it was emotionally painful to say the least.
"Of course there is, it's either you do or you don't want to tell me. You have more to say deep inside you and I want you to open up Gray." Cana jabbed a finger at the ice mage's heart and Gray couldn't deny that there was plenty more he had to say that he was just bottling up. "I've come around to say that I really do care for you and there isn't anyone out there I'd want at my side."
"If that's how you felt then why end our relationship!?" Gray's voice rose up a few decibels louder as he began losing his cool and wanted to speak his mind, the one thing not even Erza was capable of stopping. "Why end it when we had something going for us?"
"It's like how I explained it before, I was worried about our future together if we couldn't pull through a tough patch." Cana replied as she knew old wounds were about to be open once again, but this time she'll bite back if need be. "The real question here is why did you agree to it? Based on how you're acting now, it seems to me that you hated my decision."
"That's a given fact Cana, I did hate it and I still did for the years to come." He replied, tightening his fists as this was going to be one of few conversations where he would truly vent out what his emotions are really like to the one woman who had broken his heart, but could never learn to hate.
"Then give me the truth Gray! What were your true feelings when I told you that I wanted to end it with you?" The brunette was stepping on a landmine, for Gray's emotions were volatile and she knew that better than anybody in the guild.
"You want it, then fine! When you said that all I wanted to do was grab you by the shoulders and scream 'why' to you over and over again. I couldn't understand what you were fearing Cana, when there really wasn't anything to be afraid of." Gray replied, remembering that day all those years ago as he kept a straight face to her all the while his heart was breaking in the inside. "The things that you said made total sense but I knew that whatever life threw at us; be it hardships or arguments, we could overcome them and still live a good life with each other!"
"But then why agree with it in the first place!? If you're this against it now that I ask you to be up front, where were these feelings back then!?" The card mage became only more confused as the ravenette's opinions have differed through the years, but she knew she couldn't fault him for that since her own have changed as well.
"I pushed them away; I made sure that they wouldn't interfere on my decision to follow through with ending our relationship." The ravenette replied solemnly as he turned his gaze away from Cana, favoring to look out at the open sea to keep him together.
"Why!?"
"Why, you ask? It's because I wanted to keep you happy." Gray steeled himself to continue, facing her once again as this was the moment in which he had to be a man and not back down like a coward.
"Keep me happy?" The brunette repeated to herself softly as she hadn't expected for Gray to reply in this way.
"I was in love with you Cana and I didn't want to be selfish anymore; it was something that's caused a lot of pain for me in the past and I didn't want it to happen again. I'd do everything in my power to make sure you were satisfied and if you wanted to end it then I'd suck it up and deal with it. You brought up fair points in everything you were saying and without my personal feelings in the way, I allowed it as it would save our friendship in the later years. If staying as one of your closest friends would make you happ-"
SLAP
The resounding skin on skin contact echoed for a while as Gray was momentarily dazed, the feeling of stinging skin was beginning to form on his right cheek and a hand print would be visible against his pale skin if he were to look at a mirror. The ice mage slowly raised a hand to the spot in which Cana had slapped him and he still remained bewildered at the sudden strike, moving his gaze towards the shorter brunette whose eyes were already shedding tears. A few tear streaks had already marked Cana's face as she looked up the ice mage, hurt filled eyes gleamed with a sense of anger and sadness as her own feelings poured out in her initial strike at Gray's face since she could no longer hold back against all the nonsense he was saying. The brunette tried to wipe away the falling tears, but they kept coming and decided to leave them alone and speak her piece about the mistake she regretted ever making.
"Don't you dare say I was ever happy with that choice because there was no way in hell that I was!" Cana exclaimed as her burdened heart finally released the floodgates holding back her emotions and pouring them all out for the ice mage to see. "I could never be if it meant breaking my heart in the process, where I lost more than gain any happiness."
"You seemed so sure of yourself on making the right judgement that I couldn't see where you'd falter and go back on it." Gray had believed that Cana was very assured with her choice, she was that kind of person where they'd take everything into consideration so he couldn't think of her being wrong. "Every point that you put across could make sense to anyone and preserving our friendship was something I felt that you truly wanted to do."
"My points may have been correct, but that doesn't mean I was right Gray!" She shot back wiping away a fresh batch of tears, some of which had already fallen off her face and towards the sand below. "I was afraid to say all those things, I was afraid that any one or a combination of them would come true and didn't want to be left heartbroken in the end. Your strength kept me balanced Gray, you were keeping me afloat and pushing me to try with everything I've got so I could accomplish my goal; that's why I hoped that one shred of you would be against us breaking up. It would've given me some type of bearing so that I knew that you'd still be there for me as that someone I loved."
"Cana..."
"In truth, I couldn't get over it. I may have had crushes and dated a lot of guys, but that was because I was trying to forget the things that happened between us and yet I always compared them to you. They never could hold a candle to you, that's why dating felt so meaningless to me and I did it so often." The tears continued to fall as she spoke her heart out, a part of her wanting to stop while another one wanted to let it happen. "It was meaningless because I wouldn't get to be in love again." She quietly said to herself as she heard Gray outwardly sigh to himself.
"It's not that different from me, but I closed myself off from everyone after you. It's why I'm so much more indifferent to everyone now than how I was as a kid." Gray silently replied as he realized that they both found a way to screw each other over in the end, messing up their own ways of life for the future. The ice mage couldn't find anymore to say as the brunette had left him speechless like she used to do, but this time her tears were the main factor in keeping him quiet.
"That's everything I wanted to say, so if you'll get out of my way I need to freshen up before Mira gets worried." Cana said as her tone still mirror her true feelings, prepared to move forward and shove past Gray if she needed to.
Gray heard her loud and clear, but there was a part of him that didn't want it to end on such a depressing note especially as he watched the first girl he ever fell in love with have tears in her eyes over a mistake he should've been honest about. He couldn't let things end like this again with both parties being hurt and was damned if he couldn't do something to fix this if ever so slightly. With his mind made up, Gray swung around as Cana shoved passed him and took her by the hand, bringing her close into an embrace as this time he'd try to make things right. The card mage was completely caught off guard as he wrapped his arms around her, in what she could only describe as one of the most enjoyable things she misses from the ice mage as more tears began to form in her eyes and drop onto his shirt.
"No fair...it's not fair." Cana wept into his shirt as she encircled her arms around Gray, gripping it into her fists as her heart began to ache. "You were supposed to let me go, act like this didn't even happen and we'd start all over again." It was the way she thought things would play out after the things they said and now she wanted nothing more than to stay in his embrace.
"If I did that, then nothing would get resolved." Gray softly said as he placed his chin atop of the weeping woman, hoping to find the right words to say to her at that moment. "We fucked up Cana, there's nothing we can do to change the past, but right now the thing I want to say is...that I'm sorry." The ice mage grasped at the words he wished to say, finding it difficult to put his emotions into words and yet he tried his best to put them out there.
The card mage held on tighter to Gray as his simple apology went much further than anyone would've realized as she understood what he was apologizing for. Understanding the ice mage was a challenge for most people, but getting to be as close as she did with him, she knew that he was sorry for not standing up to what he knew was right. For not calling it out as nonsense and causing the pain she had also gone through when they broke up. All words tend to fail with Gray as he wasn't an emotional person, but knowing him for who he is brings about his world of meaning as simple words go a long way. More tears sprang from her eyes with every passing second and Gray allowed her as she too was holding so much back for years already, which made him feel worse to the fact a lot of this may have been preventable although hindsight is twenty-twenty.
"You know you've got to be careful how much of your soft side you show Gray. The others might take you for a wimp if they see you like that." Cana joked lowly as she continued to enjoy the embrace of the man she fell in love with, hoping it would last longer but she knew there would be problems if she didn't let go soon.
"Seeing me sincere is actually the toughest thing I've done, so maybe Elfman would call me out as being 'MANLY' or something along like that. Pretty sure the pink haired idiot would make fun of me, but I could care less about that." Gray replied as he pushed back the brunette to look her in the eye, cupping her cheek with his left hand and wiping away a stray tear from her face. "I mean it, I'm sorry for what happened."
"I know." Cana said as she let go of her grip and wiped away any remaining tears as she settled herself down. "I probably should head back in and clean up before Mira worries her head over me." The card mage turned and was heading off, but stopped when Gray called out to her and caught the beer bottle he passed to her.
"For old times sake." Gray said with a grin on his face as he drank his bottle and the card mage complied, drinking it swiftly although she found it to taste a bit bitter than what she thought.
She let it go though and continued on, smiling towards Gray one last time before turning her back to him once again. As soon as she had turned, Gray's grin dropped as he sighed to himself for the nth time that day with his gaze returning back out towards the sea. He passed a hand through his hair, thinking back to everything Loke had said to him and swirled the vial in his pocket around as over half of its contents were now gone.
"It was in Cana's best interest that she be freed from getting back old feelings, I want her to move on and it has to start now. Hopefully she can come to understand what I did." Gray thought to himself, his gaze not wavering from the see; however, he could have sworn he caught a glimpse of blonde from the corner of his eye before disappearing around the corner of the guild. He couldn't tell if his mind was simply playing tricks on him or not, but he couldn't do much about it as a large hand clasped down onto his shoulder, knowing who it belonged to before he even spoke.
"We need to talk Gray."
"Laxus..."
