Disclaimer: The characters belongs to Hiro Mashima
This is for the forum I joined, prompt was writting a kiss with "I though i lost you", so here it is.
Days and nights had become almost the same and that was the reason it was hard for Sting to keep the track of time after the end of the Great Magic Games and the tragic events that followed it. He wasn't sure what had happened, he and his guildmates were all together after the end of the games and they defeat. It was supposed to be a nice event, since losing had taught them a new lesson that victory never did. It was supposed to be the start of a new guild, a new Sabertooth with a bright future ahead. And, for a little moment, it was. Sting had been so happy and full of hopes having all his guildmates, his friends, together and willing accepting the guild's new path.
And then, there was a sudden noise, the screams filled the air and the dragons appeared. Sting had always wanted to see a dragon again, but when his dreams came true it was anything but how he imagined. He was surprised when he saw the first one and the second one made him feel a little uncomfortable. He could see five before people started to die. But they weren't just five, he knew it now even when he didn't know then. The dragons were enough to completely destroy the city in less than an hour. He had tried to fight against them, he was a DragonSlayer after all but his title had been totally useless at the end. He had lost his friends from sight and found their corpses later once and again, until he was alone, surrounded by buildings on fire and the smell of blood, tears and death.
He lost everyone but Lector, who had managed to keep by his side enough to stay alive in the madness that Crocus had become. He had been the one who convinced him to leave the burning city at the end. Sting wanted to stay, to fight until the end or at least until he found Rogue, because he had lost the Shadow DragonSlayer too and he couldn't be dead. Lector had cried and screamed to him until he came to his senses just enough to realize he couldn't do anything else. He wouldn't mind to die there, but he wouldn't make Lector share his destiny and the little exceed couldn't leave alone.
So he did it at the end, he left the destroyed city and saw the Mercurius' castle collapse from the distance, while they hid from the dragons. Sting wasn't sure how they did, but he thought they both had been lucky and careful enough. However, once they were alone in the wild, things didn't get better. After dragons make sure there wasn't anything else alive in the capital, they flew and spread all along the country and not even a day later, Fiore was totally on the ground. That meant there was no safe place, nowhere to run. Simple things as find food had got hard enough to make them spent a full day just trying to find something edible.
Even though, some way they did, Sting and Lector managed to survive long enough to establish a routine. Take turns to sleep, be aware of any little noise and keep moving, always keep moving. After their victory, dragons had been quiet but from time to time they still could see one of them flying in the distance. Fortunately, no one of them had get close enough to catch their scents or they would be dead in a moment. Or maybe a little more, because Sting surely would fight, wouldn't let them take him so easy, but the results from the previous battles had made it clear that there was no chance for him to win.
The only good thing about being so busy surviving was that he didn't have time to think about the people he lost. The ghosts only caught him in his dreams or night's guard. The phantoms of those who should have been precious to him but he never appreciated before and he couldn't save later, when he was just starting to do it. In the longs nights, he kept remembering that he had left Rogue all by himself in a city filled with furious dragons. He refused to believe Rogue was dead, because if he could do it, his partner who was as strong as him and even smarter couldn't be less. Lector had tried to talk about it once but he had refused to accept that it was a possibility. He had enough with his own voice whispering in the back of his mind that he had abandoned the only one who he ever loved. He needed to believe he was still alive or he couldn't keep going.
So he and Lector did their best to survive, every day more tired and hopeless, but still unwilling to give up. Until one day, something happened.
While they were walking for what once was a forest and now was nothing more that burned woods, Sting caught a smell. He froze immediately and, for the first time since the destruction started, he blocked all his senses to focus on the faint trace. The coal smell was everywhere, as the vague scent of the smoke. There was an acrid aroma that belonged to the dragons and was all around since their first apparition. And he could smell himself and Lector, who had been whispering to him and trying to make him move. But, under all those different things, there was a vague aroma, so soft that maybe he was imagining it.
However, he was ready to take the most little hope that crossed his path and as soon as he found the direction the smell was coming, he followed it. Lector asked what he was doing but he didn't answer, because he was scared of being wrong. It was enough if he had his hopes broken. While they moved near, the scent was stronger and he wished he could just run to find whatever was at the end of the trail. The only reason he didn't do it was that the new world was a dangerous one and he had learnt to be careful, even against his will.
While they reached the edge of the dead forest, he could see a human shape in the distance and his heartbeat raised. It had to be him. He wanted anything else but to run towards him, but the sky was open and the dark clouds hid great dangers. He had to notice him, at that distance. He forced himself to walk slowly, to put attention to his surroundings even when it seemed that everything was calm. Lector saw the other person too and muffled a surprised yelp.
That made the other person to turn around and he finally saw them. He seemed stunned, even from the distance and it took him a moment to start to walk towards them, in the same slow and careful pace they were doing. It was obvious he had learnt too, he and the tiny shape that followed him.
Their progress was painfully slow but they bridged the gap and found just a few steps from each other. They looked at each other for a long moment, without saying anything. It was almost unbelievable that they had found each other in this broken world.
"Sting?" Rogue finally said in a whisper.
"Yes, is me" he answered and right after he closed the distance between them and kissed him, as he had always wanted. Before the end of the previous world, he had been afraid of many things that now seemed so small. So small because he had thought he was dead and as much as he was afraid of his reject, he was more scared of losing him forever, of finally find his body between the others, covered in blood and with no life inside. He didn't realize he was crying until they parted away. And he barely had time to notice Rogue was crying too, before the other man hugged him tightly and hid his face on his neck.
Sting lost track of time while he returned the hug, letting his bottled emotions to run wild for the first time since the Games. The fear was still there, the dragons could come, they could kill them in just a moment, but he didn´t want to let him go even if that cost his life. If he would die there, hugging him, he would die happy. None of them knew how much time they spent there, just hugging and crying, but they had to stop at some moment and they did. Reality came back and hit them with full force. They had to leave the open space and find a safe place to sleep or try to do it. Then they would have time to talk about what they had done all those days and how they had survived. Sting would have time to ask for his forgiveness, to whisper in his ear that he was sorry, that he shouldn't have left them behind.
First, they had to be safe, to make it to another day.
A/N: Actually, I had thought that they left the city at the same time but I found no way to add it in the story without making it bigger or change the pov so I'm just posting here. That's all(?)
About my note on the 100 way to say, I still think I'll leave the english fandom parcially, but since this dropped in english, I decided to post it