Natsu barely remembered the walk from Porlyusica's cottage. Lucy was holding his hand, and Happy was sitting on his shoulder, and they might have tried to talk to him. He wasn't sure. His hearing didn't seem to be working too well anymore.
His other hand was in his pocket, rolling Gray's necklaces around endlessly in his fingers. The repetitive motion helped. He could focus on that, and not on…. Natsu couldn't bring himself to even finish the thought.
He knew he was crying. His eyes were itchy and red. His head had started to hurt, and he was getting kind of dizzy.
But he didn't think he could stop, and he wasn't going to bother trying. It didn't matter. Natsu's entire being was consumed with the absence of Gray, and it made everything else feel dull and faraway.
"Natsu? We're here." Lucy's voice filtered into his brain, and Natsu slowly turned to look at her. It felt like he was moving through molasses. "Natsu?"
Natsu blinked. They were outside Lucy's place, not the house he shared with Gray.
That's right. They'd told him that, because if he went home, Gray wouldn't be there, and Natsu would be all alone.
Natsu's breath caught in his throat, and he heard himself whimper. He closed his eyes with a vague hope that he could escape the situation that way, that maybe, when he opened them, everything would have gone back to normal.
"Natsu? Natsu, we're going to go inside, okay?"
Lucy's hand closed around his wrist, and she tugged him gently. Natsu stumbled forward a few steps, jerking his eyes open. Lucy let go of his arm, and Natsu brought his hands up to his face, rubbing his eyes. He was still crying. At this point, he wasn't sure he was ever going to be able to stop.
"I think you should get some sleep," Lucy said. She sounded worried.
Sleep. Alone, without Gray in his arms. That had been bad enough when Gray was away on jobs. But now, if Natsu woke up and reached for Gray, he would have to remember every time that Gray was gone. Forever.
Natsu choked on his own breath and shook his head frantically, backing away from her.
"No, uh-uh, I'm not goin' to sleep, I don't want-"
"Porlyusica gave us this," Lucy interrupted, pressing something hard into his hand. "She said it would help calm you down. It'll help you sleep."
"Please, Natsu?" Happy whispered.
"Yeah, okay," Natsu said, looking down at the jar Lucy had put in his hand. His voice sounded far away. He supposed there was something appealing about sleep, especially the drugged kind - he could forget for a bit.
Lucy took the medicine back and left him for a little while, and Natsu mostly stared at the place where the wall met the floor and cried some more. Lucy eventually came back with a glass of water. It looked completely normal, but Natsu could smell something sharp and medicinal and he knew the drugs from Porlyusica were in the water.
Natsu drank it all as fast as he could, and relished the feeling of dullness that washed over him as they started to work. It was harder to remember what was happening now, and he could almost pretend the tightness of his throat, the weight in his chest, the itchiness in his eyes were all for some other reason.
Natsu eased himself onto the ground, and started to curl up.
"No, wait, what are you doing?" Lucy said. Natsu could feel her tugging at his arm.
"Don' wanna smell him," Natsu whispered.
"What? Natsu, you…you need to go to sleep. In…bed, not on the floor."
"Don' wanna smell him."
There was a long silence. "You're in my house, remember?" Lucy said. "It's not your bed, it's mine. You won't be able to smell him."
"Mmmm." Natsu allowed himself to be tugged back to his feet, and guided towards Lucy's room. That was right, it wasn't his house. Not his bed. It wouldn't smell like Gray.
Lucy settled him down, and then, to Natsu's surprise, she crawled into the bed behind him. She wrapped her arms around his waist, and buried her head in his shoulder.
She wasn't cold like Gray, she didn't smell like Gray, she wasn't shaped like Gray. But the familiar weight of having a person pressed against him as he tried to sleep helped Natsu feel more settled, and slowly, his breathing started to relax.
He didn't remember falling asleep.
Day One
Natsu woke with sore eyes and a dry throat. It took him a few seconds to remember why. The few seconds after he remembered were some of the worst of his life, and he wondered if this was what waking up in the morning would be like from now on.
Once she saw he was awake, Lucy told him she needed to go to the Guild Hall. She told him that he and Happy were welcome to stay at her place as long as they wanted. Natsu told her he really wanted to go home, and he really wanted to be alone, and Lucy promised she would make sure someone checked up on him and asked him to please let her know if he needed anything.
Natsu didn't really pay attention to anything during the walk home. He'd walked between his house and Lucy's so many times that the movements were automatic.
The house was just as he and Gray had left it, which was to say it was not very clean. There were the remnants of a hastily eaten breakfast he and Gray had shared before the battle on the kitchen table. There was a pile of various bandages and pills and salves on the living room floor, that Gray had been using to try to make his hand more comfortable. There was a blanket they'd been cuddling under crumpled on the sofa.
The house smelled like Gray, but it also smelled like stale air and medical ointment and food in the sink and Natsu. So that was survivable.
They'd turned off the air-conditioning before they'd left, so the house was warmer than Gray would have liked it. Sometimes, Gray would cool their house so fast with magic that it made Natsu shiver. But that wasn't an option right now, so Natsu walked mechanically over to their air-conditioning unit and turned it on. He set it as low as possible - Gray liked it almost colder than Natsu could stand.
Usually, Natsu would complain if it got too cold. It was his house too, and he didn't think it was fair that Gray always got to be the one who was comfortable.
Now, he wished it was even colder. Everything in their house looked almost offensively normal. There was no indication of any change, much less a drastic one. Gray's house shoes were still by the door, like at any second, he would come home and start complaining about how warm it was.
Natsu would give anything to hear him start that argument for the thousandth time. If he could have Gray back, he'd happily never be warm again. He would keep the house freezing, and he wouldn't make fun of Gray for wanting milkshakes for every meal, and he would let him pick whatever jobs he wanted, even if they involved trains. And he would keep everything of Gray's safe, right where he left it, as if when he walked in the door he would just be happy the house was so cold.
Natsu pulled Gray's ring out of his pocket and looped the chain over his neck. He tucked it under his scarf and his collar, where it would be safe.
It took Natsu a while to realize that he was shaking, and even longer to realize that it was from the cold rather than grief. The hair on his arms was standing up, and their house was so cold he was beginning to see his breath in the air.
Natsu shivered, curling up into a ball on the rug that only smelled a little like Gray. He was freezing, but that didn't matter. Gray would have liked it this way. No matter how cold he got, he wasn't going to turn the heat up. Not until Gray came back to him.
Day Two
Natsu hadn't slept. He was exhausted, but he'd been too scared to wake up without Gray. He didn't think he could handle remembering all over again.
But now, he was tired enough that sleep was starting to sound…not good, but manageable. He just wanted to lie in bed (careful not to think about how both sides were his now) and drift. Maybe now he was tired enough that he could sleep for a while, and pass time that way.
He had never noticed before how long a day was. But there were so many hours to fill, and not enough to fill them with. He knew he would feel better if he wasn't just lying here. If there was something to distract him from the hole on the other side of the bed for even just a minute. But he couldn't muster up the energy to do much more than watch the light slowly change on the wall opposite the bed, and listen to the sound of birds outside his window.
He thought about drinking. He didn't know if drinking would make things better, but it would make things different anyways. But drinking would involve getting up, going into the kitchen, finding a glass and a bottle. He didn't know if anything was clean right now, and he thought it was pretty likely nothing was. He knew they didn't have ice, because Gray always made that for them.
Every time Natsu took his eyes off the patch of sunlight on the wall, he was assaulted with a thousand things that had belonged to Gray. Gray's clothes crumpled in the corner, right next to but not actually in the hamper, the comic book he'd been reading with a dog-eared page in the middle, the pictures of him and Natsu he'd hung up next to the door, the snowglobe Lyon had gotten him for his twenty-third birthday, the little cat bed he'd made inside a drawer so Happy had a place to sleep when he was here, the candle he'd gifted to Natsu after Natsu had gotten the flu on a job, the careful picture he'd drawn to show Natsu how he thought they should rearrange their living room, the cologne he'd only worn once because it had made Natsu gag.
Gray was woven into the bones of this house, and Natsu couldn't get him out. This place would never - could never - be a home for Natsu alone.
Some amount of time went by, while Natsu reflected on this and tried not to cry. He knew his breathing was starting to hitch, but it all felt very distant, very unimportant.
Eventually, he pushed himself to a seated position. Natsu's vision swam, and he wondered how long it had been since he'd eaten or drank anything.
Didn't matter, didn't matter. Natsu didn't need to eat or drink. What he needed to do was move Gray's stuff. Not get rid of it. Never get rid of it. Natsu would have bought a second house all for himself before he did that. But he needed to stop looking at it. Or else…something bad was going to happen. Natsu didn't know what, but he thought it would probably involve crying. And he knew he didn't want to start crying, because he was pretty sure if he started up again he was simply never going to stop.
He had a vague idea that if he could just…take everything from this room, and put it in the corner, and cover it up with a blanket, maybe that would be better. It would be there, but he wouldn't have to look at it. It wouldn't be there whenever he opened his eyes.
It took him a minute or so to push himself fully upright. His legs seemed to be shaking. Natsu vaguely remembered them shaking on the walk back to the house, whenever that had been. Maybe they just hadn't stopped.
Natsu stumbled away from the bed, pausing to grab Gray's pillow, as well as the blue and white blanket Gray had always liked because he thought it looked like winter. He tossed them into the corner, scanning the room for everything that was left.
There was a lot. Almost everything in their room had some meaning attached to it, even things that were originally Natsu's. Something Gray had complimented, or complained about, or quietly stolen for his own use. Natsu went as fast as he could, taking down knicknacks, clothing, pictures, even books that Gray had been "meaning to read" for years.
The pile in the corner grew, and now Natsu's hands were shaking too. Maybe they always had been, and he just hadn't noticed. His fingers felt numb, like they weren't really attached to him anymore, and it was getting hard to hold onto things. But he couldn't stop, because if he stopped, he would cry. Even now, he was beginning to breathe hard again, and Natsu knew if he couldn't get himself under control he would slip away completely.
Looking frantically around, he grabbed whatever his hand fell on next. He lurched towards the pile in the corner, and the ceramic dish he'd taken fell from his numb fingers and before he could catch it, it was in pieces on the floor. Coins spilled everywhere.
A few months before, Gray had found the red and blue dish on a job and brought it home, excitedly explaining that he'd thought they could use it for spare change. At the time, Natsu had thought it was ugly. He hadn't really wanted to use it, but Gray had insisted it was better than letting their coins roll under sofas or fall out of pockets forever.
"No, no no," Natsu whimpered, falling to his knees and trying desperately to sweep up the pottery shards. He didn't want to stare at Gray's things anymore, but he certainly hadn't meant to break anything, or get rid of anything, or do anything that felt like he was already letting Gray go.
"Oh god, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry…." It wasn't helping, but Natsu couldn't stop. He knew the pieces were too small for him to glue back together, and he was terrible at stuff like that anyway. A memory swam up unbidden behind his eyes - Gray explaining that if they saved their change for just a few more months, by the end they'd have enough to buy dinner.
Natsu pitched forward, catching himself with both hands and ignoring the bite of broken pottery into his palms. He felt a sob catch in the back of his throat, and this time, there was no stopping it. He knew he would be crying for…forever, it felt like. Realistically, probably at least the rest of the day. He knew he needed this time to mourn, but he didn't want it. He didn't want to sit with this feeling, because it felt like it would kill him. If the only way out was through, then Natsu was pretty sure there was no way out.
The things in Natsu's room were the only things Natsu would ever have of Gray. Gray wouldn't be bringing him more. Gray was gone.
Day Three
Natsu had cried himself out and fallen asleep on the floor, and woken up stiff and a little bit hungry. He'd made himself a few pieces of toast, but it had stopped being appetizing after a few bites and he hadn't managed to choke down the rest.
He'd tried to watch a movie on his lacrima, but he'd been restless, unable to concentrate. He couldn't seem to find a comfortable position on the sofa, and he eventually realized it was because he usually sat pressed against Gray. He turned the movie off after that.
He thought about cleaning, but ended up just standing in the kitchen for a while, overwhelmed by the mess. He scraped a single plate into the trash can and decided that was enough for today.
He took a nap in the afternoon, but it ended up being more of a "curling up in a ball and crying" nap, and less of a nap that involved actual sleep.
When the afternoon shadows had started to lengthen, Natsu heard a knock at the door. Natsu ignored it. Normally, he hated being alone, but right now, he couldn't even imagine seeing anyone.
The knock came again.
"I'm busy!" Natsu yelled.
Natsu heard a small shuffling sound outside, and about three seconds later, Happy pushed himself inside through Natsu's partially-open window.
"I'm allowed to do this," Happy said. "I'm not the one who stopped returning phone calls."
It seemed strange and almost surreal to be talking to Happy, and for a moment all Natsu could do was blink at him. "You guys were…calling me?"
"Couldn't you hear your lacrima?"
"It might…it might be dead."
"Well, yeah. Of course we all wanted to get ahold of you. We were worried about you! We didn't know how you were doing! No one's heard from you in days."
"Oh."
"Also, I…uh…wanted to tell you that the funeral's tomorrow. I assumed you wouldn't have known, since you, you know, weren't answering any calls. But you probably do want to go, right?"
It took Natsu a few shocked seconds to realize that Happy meant Gray's funeral. Of course he did, that was…what people did, but Natsu still wasn't prepared.
He knew that didn't really matter, though. He never would be ready for something like that.
Mechanically, he nodded to Happy. "Uh huh. I'll…I'm gonna go."
"There you go," Happy said, and tried for a smile. It was pretty half-hearted, but it was better than anything Natsu would be able to come up with. In a distant sort of way, he appreciated the effort.
"I, um, there's something I should probably tell you, then," Happy said. He sounded kind of hesitant, like he was about to deliver bad news. Natsu just looked at him, waiting. He'd already had the worst news he could ever get.
"If the funeral looks a little…empty, don't be offended or anything. It felt kind of weird to put it off, but we… can't have all the members here right now."
Natsu had the feeling that was supposed to be important, but he was too raw from the absence of Gray to care about much else. He stared at Happy a little longer, until it became obvious his friend expected a response.
"How come?" he finally asked obediently.
"Lamia Scale," Happy mumbled. "They're still a threat. Makarov doesn't want to tell the members there, in case they stop fighting or something. It'll just distract them. So they won't be here for the funeral."
"Okay," Natsu said. He was too exhausted to even try to remember which Guild members were off fighting Lamia Scale, and which had stayed back at the Guild Hall for backup. He supposed he would find out tomorrow.
Happy grimaced a little, and Natsu once again got the vague sense that he was doing something wrong, and freaking Happy out more.
"It's just so you wouldn't be surprised if some people aren't there," Happy said sadly.
"Thanks."
Happy glanced down at the ground, his ears drooping downwards. After a few seconds, he looked up, plastering on another smile.
"Okay, Natsu, let's get you showered! 'Cause it's been a few days, and you kinda stink!"
Natsu groaned, pulling his knees closer to his chest and burying his head in them. He didn't want to shower. He didn't want to do anything, ever again.
"Come on, Natsu, it's getting really ba-ad," Happy said coaxingly.
Natsu didn't even bother to raise his head. Maybe, if he didn't talk, Happy would just leave him alone until it was time for the funeral.
"Don't you want to look nice for the funeral?"
"Why?" Natsu asked, sitting up and looking at Happy. "Gray ain't gonna see me. Doesn't matter."
The smile fell off Happy's face, and for a second he looked like he was going to cry. He didn't, and that was good, because it probably would have made Natsu cry again too.
"Natsu, you do need to change, at least." Happy's voice was quiet, and he gestured towards Natsu. "Your clothes are kind of…."
Natsu looked down. He hadn't thought about what he was wearing once in the past three days. His mind had been occupied with…everything else.
But Happy was right. He was still wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing during the battle, the same clothes he'd been married in, the same clothes….
Natsu felt a lump grow in his throat, and he stopped that line of thinking. If he thought too hard about the day he'd put on these clothes, he was probably going to cry again.
And he did need to change. Even Natsu knew that. Because as much as he had no energy, as he didn't care about his appearance, as he just wanted to be left alone, he knew he couldn't go out like this. His clothes were absolutely covered in dried blood.
Gray's blood.
"Oh," Natsu said. "Right. Yeah. I'll…I'll change."
"I can help you find something, if you want," Happy said. "It's just…it doesn't need to be anything fancy. Just something…else."
"Yeah. That sounds…." Natsu trailed off - he couldn't really remember what he had been going to say.
"There was also…something else I wanted to ask you," Happy said hesitantly.
"What is it?" Natsu didn't care about what Happy had to ask, but he knew if he played along, this conversation would be over faster, and he could be left alone again.
A small part of Natsu knew that none of this was Happy's fault, and he should perhaps be trying to be a little nicer to his cat. But he just…couldn't.
"Some people in Fairy Tail were wondering if you wanted to do the eulogy," Happy said carefully.
"Oh." Natsu considered. "I don't…um…know what that is."
Happy's face tightened slightly. "Well…it's kind of like the speech they give at funerals. Usually someone who was very close to the…you know…does it. You can talk about what the person meant to you, and what sort of stuff they brought to the world, and maybe share a few memories of them. It doesn't have to be very long, but I just wanted to let you know about it tonight, 'cause Erza said the person who gives the eulogy usually practices a few times."
"Yeah, okay," Natsu said. "I can do that."
"I'll tell-"
Natsu thought about what Happy was actually saying for two seconds. "Wait, actually. I can't do that."
Happy's tail flicked back and forth a few times in agitation. "Are you sure, Natsu? I mean, we all loved Gray, but you-"
Natsu's chest felt tight again at the thought of having to stand up in front of his whole Guild and talk about how the best part of it was gone. It didn't matter how well he knew Gray, or what they'd shared, or how obvious it was that Natsu should be the one to do it, because he just couldn't.
He shook his head again. "I can't do it, Happy. Get…get someone else."
"Okay," Happy said softly, and Natsu felt his cat's soft paw touch his hand gently. That always made Natsu feel better, pretty much no matter what was happening. This time, Natsu didn't feel anything at all. "Let's get you ready, alright?"
