Prompt: Say it.

WARNING! GRAPHIC TORTURE DESCRIPTION AND SOME HOMOPHOBIC LANGUAGE! IF THAT SORT OF THING TRIGGERS YOU, PLEASE DON'T READ THIS!

Pain.

That was all the pinkette had felt for the past three days. It ran through him constantly, but not once did he cry out. Not once did he whimper. Not once did he make any noise that would have given these fuckers any form of satisfaction.

It was around his wrists and ankles when he tugged at the cuffs.

It was on his back and in his abdomen every time he moved. They'd whipped and stabbed him when he refused to comply. They used special weapons to get past his scale like skin, and the pain was searing.

They hadn't even bothered to remove the knives.

It had numbed his entire body, making it tingle and itch. It had made him bleed, and it had left dry, cracking trails of blood on his skin, in his hair, and on his lips from the hundreds of times he's bit his tongue.

He didn't care.

The cold metal of the cuffs and the stone floor and the air bit at him the same why Gray's magic did, and the constant reminder spurred on his fighting spirit.

"It doesn't matter That it hurts. It doesn't matter that it's cold. It doesn't matter that the air is stinging my throat or that I'm starving, or that I'm thirsty, or that I'll never get this nasty mold smell out of my nose, because it won't mean anything. The whip marks will mean nothing. The scars that would be there will mean nothing. The hunger will mean nothing. None of this will mean anything, because Gray is coming to get me, and it isn't wise to fight an angry demon."

Three days ago:

There was another joint guild mission in place. Fairy Tail, Blue Pegasus, Lamia Scale, and Sabertooth had all come together to take down a dark guild. Kuro Kokoro had remained under the radar for year, building up both numbers and strength. Those who'd faced them had compared them to facing a group of demons. There were hundreds of mages in the guild, almost all of them S-class, and they were more of a threat that Oracion Seis could have hoped to be.

They had a plan. They were going to flush them out and destroy them he same way they always did. Everything was going to be fine. Great. Wonderful.

Except it wasn't.

The group who'd gone was more than adequate to beat them all, at least they would have been if there wasn't a powerful teleportation mage. It turns out that they needed a powerful, lost magic user for an old spell, or rather an old ritual.

Specifically, they needed a fire dragon slayer.

The second everyone was split up, he'd grabbed the pinkette and taken him to their real base. The room he dropped Natsu in had anti-magic wards, and they'd eventually knocked him unconscious and placed anti-magic cuffs on him.

No one had been near enough to see what happened to him, but they'd known.

Natsu's precious scarf was on the ground, it's usual pristine white stained with dirt and blood, and they'd panicked.

Gray was angry.

No.

He was furious.

Natsu was gone, and everything had been a trap. They had captured on of the higher ups from Kuro Kokoro, and she'd been more than willing to tell them that they planned to bleed him dry for a ritual that they believed would summon a god or something. Gray had stopped listening after the bitch had said what they were going to do to his pinkette.

It had taken both Erza and Laxus to keep him from murdering her.

When Natsu had regained consciousness, it was to a sharp pain on his back. The sharp crack of a whip finally registered in his mind, and a snarl tumbled from his lips, "Did you just fucking whip me?" he asked, voice raspy from who knows how long he'd been there.

"Don't speak, dragon-child," The voice was feminine and gentle, almost tricking the pinkette into listening to her, "After all, you'll be dead soon anyways."

Several sharp pains started painting themselves across his back, and He decided to keep his mouth shut until he figured out how to get out of this situation. He glanced around him, completely ignoring the loud cracks as he planned an escape route. The magic wards on the wall would effectively keep him from using his magic, and the cuffs would stop it if he got out of the room. "I'll have to find out who has the keys." Suddenly he was jerked upwards by the cuffs. They were attached to a chain on a pulley system, and the woman whipping him had suspended him in the air to better reach his back.

"A regular whip doesn't seem to have much of an effect on you, does it, Dragon-child?"

The woman, "Not a woman, a girl," Natsu realized, walked in front of him with her hands behind her back. She had long black hair that had been tied back into a pony tail and a short stature that suggested she was around fourteen. He pale complexion reflected the light harshly. Her eyes were solid black, including the sclera, and he thin lips were stretched into a demon-like grin.

She brought her hands in front of her to reveal a barbed whip covered in enchantments, "Let's see how this does instead."

She had spent hours flinging the whip at him while laughing maniacally. The barb would catch every time it hit him, tearing new holes into his skin. They would bleed in small increments until his dragon magic healed him. The strikes gradually got more and more violent as the barb began to rip sections of skin off and she stopped laughing.

He hadn't made a single noise, and that had pushed her past her breaking point. She began to throw things around the room and screaming in frustration. Right before she left, she turned to him with the most hate-filled look he'd ever seen and hissed, "I will break you"

Two days ago:

It had already been twenty four hours, and Gray was panicking. Only the other slayers knew what Natsu was to him, as they all had their own. Slayers were special, and their magic created a special bond between them and one other. He couldn't replicate the word for it in the ancient language they all seemed to speak, but they told him that it was okay, as it was apparently a very difficult word to pronounce.

Gray wished he could. It was a beautiful, melodic word, and he loved it. He love hearing Natsu say it, too. It always left a warm, happy feeling in his chest, and even though it didn't have a direct translation, it's closest translation left the same feeling.

The stronger the bond, the stronger the abilities that could develop because of it.

Usually, it was incredible things. Things that would shock the duo when they figured out how to do it. Unison Raids, mind links, and emotion links were the most common, according to Wendy anyways. They had learned all of those within a week, shocking the other slayers. There were of course, other things they could do, but the emotion link was the strongest. Even before they'd realized they were bound, they had never needed to speak to each other to know how they were feeling or the types of thoughts that caused it.

At the moment it was backfiring. Gray had barely made it to his house before he was completely overwhelmed with pain. The ice mage fell to the floor gasping. He desperately grabbed at his side and as much of his back as he could reach.

Natsu never let his pain cross the bond.

"What are those fuckers doing to you?"

Natsu's eyes bolted open when they drove the knife into his side. He felt the unevenness of the tear and his warm blood overflowing from the wound, "They left the knife blunt." The same girl from yesterday was standing in front of him, her belt full of more blunt knives, "Great."

Apparently, the chain could do more than move him skyward. His back hit what felt and sounded like a wood plank after he flew into it. The force dislodged the knife from his abdomen, causing it to bounce against the floor with a clatter. The chains pulled his arms sideways as she stalked towards him, and a suggestive thought wormed it's way into his head.

Natsu wished he was wrong.

The second she as in front of him, she rammed a second knife into his right wrist. It took all of his will power not to whimper.

"I've had worse. I've had worse, I've had worse, I've had worse-"

Then it was the left wrist. She grabbed both knives, twisting them so as to tear at his skin and muscle. He heard the bone dislocate itself before he felt it.

"One of the left carpals," his mind supplied. The knives nailed him into the wood behind him, and she made no move to remove them.

Two per forearm.

Two per bicep.

Three per thigh.

Two per calf.

One per foot.

"Why?" The girl asked, she began removing and shoving the knives back into their spots, the wood making thumps with every hit and the blood squelching. "Why won't you scream? Why won't you whimper or grunt or anything," her voice had steadily raised in pitch, but Natsu refused to speak. "Why won't you break, you stupid fucking dragon bastard child?"

"It hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, ithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurtsithurts." The pain was overwhelming, and before the slayer could register what his captor had said, he was unconscious.

When Gray came to, he way laying in an infirmary bed. Erza and the others were on the other side of the room, clearly intending to both watch him and continue the search. "The pain's gone, but I can still feel him. That's good. That means he's alive."

"Gray," Wendy said joyfully, "Erza found you unconscious in your house. You really worried us you know." She began her routine, checking his pulse, breathing, and other things he didn't bother to pay attention to.

Everyone was staring, expecting an answer. When he broke the silence, it was with a single phrase that only the slayers understood the true meaning behind. "We have to find Natsu."

The first thing Natsu registered when he awoke again was the pain. it forced bile to rise up his throat, and he was only just able to stop it from exiting his mouth. "When did she take out the knives?" His eyes were crusty, with what he didn't know, but he pried them open. The wooden board was suspended in the air with the knives still in it, and it wasn't until Natsu bothered to look at his body that he realized what had awoken him. "I was still attached to the board when they raised it, and the reason I'm here now is because they went all the way through my body." Natsu shuddered, and he was beyond happy that he had been unconscious during the incident.

His magic may not have been able to leave his body, but it was still allowing him to heal at the extraordinary rate that slayers were capable of, although slightly slower. The cold of the room was affecting Natsu's injured body, causing him to shiver and the chains to rattle. The worst of the injuries had healed. The tears had been sealed together with the heat of his magic while they healed for real, the improvised cauterization only holding the skin and muscle against each other while it sealed itself.

The silence of the room, the cold, the pain, and the lack of contact made the tactile dragon slayer want to cry, "Gray, come find me. Please, come find me."

Gray had had enough of the questions from his guild mates. He had told them they were torturing him, and that it was terrible. It hadn't been on purpose; he'd blurted it when they asked him what was wrong. The pain had come back across the link all at once, and he'd fallen to the floor again.

It wasn't his secret to tell.

It was the slayer's.

Not that they seemed to care all that much once they realized what what happening to their "brother."

He couldn't tell one question from another as they were shouted over the crowd, but Rogue remedied that very quickly, "SHUT UP!" Everyone snapped their head towards the normally quiet shadow user. "It is a very long story and a very well kept secret on how he knows that, so I'm going to just leave it at this: It's a slayer thing, and Gray knows what he's talking about." The people just asked their questions louder.

"You said they tortured NaNa?" Wendy had whispered, but it was enough to draw attention to herself. Gray nodded, and the pure malice he say in the bluenette's eyes wasn't something he'd expected, "I'm going to tear them a new one." She turned and stormed out of the room, going to do who knows what.

"This is probably the wrong question to ask, but what the hell does that mean? Tear them a new what?" For once in her life, Erza was genuinely confused.

"It's Dravic slang," Gray muttered, "and I'm not sure you want to know the answer to that." He may not be very good at the language itself, but he could say for a fact that he knew the odd slang phrases and idioms that didn't translate after being around Natsu for so long.

"Erza would wash Wendy's mouth out, if she knew that she basically just said she wanted to shove her foot so far up their asses that she'd tear them a new asshole."

One day ago:

Natsu didn't hate anyone. Not even his ememies.

But this little girl.

This little girl was toeing over the line.

She had a pocket knife now, one that had obviously been sharpened repeatedly in anger, and she was dragging it in patterns across his skin.

However, that's not what made him angry.

This bitch had dared to cut up his guild mark. She had dared to destroy the thing that told the world he was part of a family. This bitch was going down.

The cuffs had only dug into his skin when he pulled at them, and he was too angry to cuss at her in Fiorian. At one point it got so viscous that even without the meanings of the words, she'd recoiled and left the room. She didn't come back that day.

"I can't feel any pain from him, but is that a good or bad thing?"

That was the first thing Gray noticed when he woke up that morning. He'd passed out again yesterday, but he hadn't woken up until that morning, when Wendy had forcefully woken him up.

She had shoved him to the floor and smacked a spell book in his face with the words, "Find him" on a post it note stuck to the front.

The spell book had detailed explanations on how to create different things between bonded pairs. There was a tab on how to locate them from anywhere in the world, and Gray realized that the blunette must have went looking for it when she stormed out. "I bet she hasn't slept any."

Normally, these spells had to be learned together. They would both have to learn it at the same time for it to be effective, but Gray would have to make it work. "Hang on a little longer, Natsu."

Present day:

Gray had done it. It had taken all night, a chunk of the morning, a new wave of pain from Natsu, and several screaming sessions, but he'd done it.

"We're coming to get you, love."

"Say it," the girl hissed at him. It was a wonder that the pinkette hadn't died yet. She'd cut him and stabbed him, and crucified him, and done everything, but he hadn't so much as let out a single tear. Not. One. The only thing he'd done was yell at her in a language she didn't understand for a reason she didn't know.

She was done.

She now only had one thing she could use to break him, and psychological torture often left the person unpredictable. if they were going to truly break him, they need it done in a way that would make him predictable. They wouldn't be able to do the ritual otherwise.

"It's a good thing he sleep talks."

"How does it feel knowing they won't come find you?" She started talking to Natsu the second she came back in the room, but he was pretty god at ignoring her. "How's it feel to know that your precious, Gray won't come to get you?"

Natsu had whipped his head as far in her direction a he could. "How does she know about that?"

"Oh," She said with fake sympathy, "Did I hit a sore spot?" The pinkette just glared at her. "I think I did." She took a step forward and and caressed his cheek, following when Natsu moved away. "Of course you'd be worried about a human getting wind of your bonded. After all, what would that guild of yours think if they found out you were a faggot?"

Natsu liked to be careful about what he said. He didn't like other people to hear what actually went on inside his head, especially since most of it was offensive, but at the moment, he was too out of it to care, "Faggots are cigarettes. Besides, several of them have told me I'm smoking before, so I think they already know." He paused to make almost the exact same noise of fake sympathy she'd made earlier, "Sadly, I'm not toxic, so I think you're a little off."

In all fairness, he should have seen the knife coming.

She growled and punched him the stab wounds. "Say you're not good enough for them." He didn't. "Say it."

"Hmm. Let me think about it," He paused in mock thought, "No."

"SAY IT!"

A hundred or so mages were following Gray when he stumbled and nearly fell. A new pain had ripped through his abdomen, and the ice mage was out for blood. He started running faster.

It hadn't taken long for the group to be noticed, and even less for all of the lower level mages to be knocked out of the equation. Gray had activated his Devil Slayer magic while he was running, and there was now a large quantity of mage frozen where they stood.

"We're here, Natsu."

Before the ice mage had found Natsu, he had known it was going to be bad, but knowing and seeing were different things.

Very very different things.

He hadn't meant to do it, but the girl who was stabbing him had been frozen at such low temperatures that the difference between her and the cold, musty basement area he was standing in had been enough to destroy her on its own. The chains had frozen with her, but they hadn't shattered yet. Gray willed them to, and he caught his pinkette in his arms to lower him to the floor.

Natsu's whole body was caked in dry blood and dirt, and his breathing was slow. For anyone other than a dragon slayer, it would have been an indication that the person was dying, but with him here on top of Natsu's slayer status, he'd be fine. He covered the worst of the stab wounds with torn off pieces of his shirt and pants.

Gray ignored the mess that was his bonded, and he placed a kiss on Natsu's forehead.

"You'll be fine."

Gray hadn't left Natsu's side since he was placed in the infirmary, and it was driving everyone else crazy. JUvia even claimed to have seen Gray in the bed with him. It had been two days before Erza herself had decided she was done. She kicked the door in, and saw something she never thought she'd see.

Gray was asleep in the infirmary bed, hair a mess and snoring with his arms around Natsu's midsection. Natsu himself was awake, sitting straight up with a hand running through Gray's hair. He was gazing almost lovingly at the sleeping ice mage, and Erza was openly gaping.

After a moment, Natsu glanced at her. "I scared the hell out of him, and I swear if you wake him up, I'll drop kick you." He ripped off most of the bandages, the injuries completely gone.

"Even Dragon Slayers don't heal that fast," Erza thought suspiciously.

Suprisingly enough, it was Laxus who gave her an answer. The Lighting Dragon Slayer had come up behind her while she focused on the scene in front of her. "The bond rights all wrongs," he said amazed.

"Huh?"

"Of course it does," Natsu spoke blatantly, "We wouldn't have told you that if it wasn't true."

"I didn't think it be like that though."

Erza look between the two of them, angrily, "Will one of you tell me what's going on?" They took one look at each other, and Erza knew she wasn't going to get an actual answer.

"It's a Dragon Slayer thing," They said in unison, and Erza's frustrated yell could be heard through all of Magnolia.

Words: 3,707

Hi guys! This is my longest one yet! I like how this one turned out, but I can't change it to make it better with my current writing ability. I'm sorry about all the torture, but for some strange reason I'm pretty good at it and I wanted to see if any one liked it.

As always:

Constructive criticism is always welcome, and if you find a typo, don't hesitate to point it out!

Reviews/comments are my 90% motivation.

Love you guys,

-Jinx