Life After Near Death

Come Back To Us

"That's the worst way to miss somebody. When they're right beside you and you miss them anyway."

― Pittacus Lore

Natsu walked into the hospital room. It was quiet except for the beeping of machines and the steady breaths artificially pumped into Gray's lungs. He saw Juvia in a chair pulled up close to the bed, sitting next to Gray and holding his hand. She looked up with tired eyes.

"Natsu!" she whispered in surprise.

He smiled passively at her. "Hey, Juvia." Natsu nodded down toward Gray. "How's he doing?"

Her eyes turned sadly down at the unconscious, raven-haired man. "The same. Gray-sama hasn't woken up."

Natsu walked up to the bed and gazed down at the pale face. Those taped eyelids, the wires, the tubes ... it was too much! Still, he knew he needed to be here, to be with Gray and support him in any way he could.

"Hey, um ... I wanna talk to him," Natsu said awkwardly.

Juvia reluctantly let go of Gray's hand. "Okay." She stroked those fingers as she slowly rose, and then she left the room to give Natsu some privacy.

Natsu sat where she had been, in a hard and uncomfortable chair warmed up by Juvia's body, but otherwise a stiff and cold place to sit. For a minute, he merely gazed down at that sleeping face.

"Hey, droopy-eyes," he finally said. "Sorry for chasing her out. I don't like being in here when someone else is in here. It makes me feel like I have to watch what I say, what I do, and even ... how I feel."

The truth was, he did not want others to see how deeply this sight—Gray so close to death—affected him. He let out a deep sigh. Then his voice tried to turn cheerful.

"Hey, I was talking to Happy today, telling him stories about the two of us when we were kids, before he was born. I told him about this one mission, we were probably eleven or twelve. Maybe you remember. It was this thief. Instead of stealing cool stuff, he kept stealing cheap jewelry, like bead necklaces, friendship bracelets, and those plastic rings you get at carnivals, all this really crappy stuff. It was all cheap junk, yet he kept stealing them, and no one could catch him. He must have been a hell of a thief, except he was stealing stupid crap.

"Anyway, for whatever reason, Erza was insistent on taking the mission. None of the adults wanted it. I mean: Plastic Necklace Thief! Sounds so lame, so it was up to us kids to find him. She dragged the two of us along. We were arguing the whole way there; Erza got pissed off at us so many times. Neither one of us wanted to be there, but Erza was scary even back then, wasn't she? We didn't dare disobey her."

Natsu let out a sigh and watched the monitors, the bouncing green line that showed Gray's heartbeat, the billows pumping air into his lungs, and the saline drip keeping him hydrated.

"You saved me," he whispered. "I don't know if you remember that. I just barely do. It wasn't just that he was stealing plastic. He could change it. He had this piece of theater costume jewelry, and he made it into a massive diamond necklace with magic. So cool! He offered to make us rich if we'd let him go. We couldn't, of course. Even if it was cheap stuff he could have bought for a few Jewels, we still couldn't let theft go unpunished. So then he attacked us. He turned Erza's armor into lodestone, and she magnetized to some metal until she couldn't move at all. She wasn't as good at Requipping armor back then; she mostly just did weapons. Then, he tried to change my scarf."

Natsu reached up and stroked the white muffler. He had to clean Gray's blood out of the material after that fight. It was all white again, but somehow, it was like he could still sense a bit of Gray's essence soaked into the material.