Our Idiots

Chapter 29 // Gone

Chapter 29 // Gone

Natsu's POV

"Wendy?" I whispered, searching the darkness around me for the blue haired girl. I was exhausted, and bruises were swelling on on my arms, chest and legs- dark purple tinged with sickly yellow, flecked with granite grey. My right cheek burned from the deep gash stretching from the corner of one eye to just above my jaw line, oozing a worrying mix of clotted blood and mustard coloured puss, dribbling down my neck and onto my bare chest.
"Wendy?" I repeated, refusing to give up hope. Rolling unsteadily onto my front I dragged my chain cuffed hands into position beneath my shoulder blades and pushed myself up onto my knees, crawling forwards one shaky move at a time.
For Mavis's sake, Natsu, I thought you were stronger than this.
Childish tears stung my eyes as I realised that I was alone in the cell- they'd taken Wendy somewhere else. I was on my own and they had won and every inch of me ached, including my heart.
I collapsed onto my front, retching up the contents of my stomach until I tasted blood. The wound on my face pulsed.
Wendy, Happy, Lucy... where are you?

Lucy's POV
"Erza... Erza..." Jellal whispered in a voice drowned with anguish. His fingers brushed against the force field so that they would've been brushing through Titania's hair, and her hand pressed up against it where his cheek was.
Fear.
I'd never seen Erza's eyes so alive with it before that moment- suddenly I saw her fragility, the ease with which she could be destroyed, taken away, her heart punctured and leaking the courage which drove her onwards.
She turned back to the creature, and her body began to glow as her shoulders sprouted metal wings and swords shot from her core to form a spiral around her.
"Lucy, Lucy help me! We have to break through- we have to help them!" Jellal yelled, his fists (which shone with the power of the galaxies) pounding mercilessly against the pane of wafer thin magical barrier. My heart broke for him, then clenched for those facing the beast, but I knew we would never break through with fists alone. I had to make a plan- figure something out.
A sudden, horrible thought came to me.
"Wait. Jellal, we need to fetch the others- Juvia and Gray could be in danger. We'll figure something out- a way to get through- but we need to stick to the plan-" I began, but Jellal interrupted me with a voice that leaked venom.
"If you want to run away then do, but I'm not going to leave the others. I though Fairy Tail was all about protecting your comrades," he spat. The fury in his face twisted into shock and horror as soon as he'd spoken the words, and for a moment the perilous situation was forgotten.
"Well... Well How about you just wait here then, see if you can get through, and I'll go find the others." I suggested, already backing away.
"Sorry I just... Yeah, yeah, I'm right behind you."
He turned back to the force field for one last helpless stare as I scurried away, my feet carrying my back along the path we'd originally taken.

In the darkest shadows of my heart I hadn't expected to find the sleeping pair, so when I saw their resting forms I was filled with soothing relief.
The feeling was short lived.
I covered the short distance between myself and Juvia and was surprised to find her eyes wide open and staring into mine with a glazed expression. She looked... No, she couldn't be.
"Juvia?" I whispered, anxiously shaking her cold shoulders.
No response.
"Lucy? Jellal?" a deep voice croaked, and I looked up in relief as Gray sat up slowly, his movements sluggish and heavy as if his weight had suddenly doubled.
"Thank Mavis you're okay... I thought maybe you and Juvia..." I couldn't speak the words, but what I had said hung over us all- black velvet clouds that spelt out 'dead'.
Gray grinned a pained crooked smile, but the smudge of happiness was quickly whipped away when he noticed Juvia's wide eyed, yet clearly unconscious stare.
"Juvia? What happened? Why's she sleeping with her eyes open?" he asked, his voice full of sudden anger as he looked from Jellal to me, as if trying to sear out an answer, for us to admit to some sin we'd committed against the water mage.
"We don't know- we only just got back-"
"Wait, what do you mean? How long was I out?" As I quickly explained what had happened since we abandoned them on the stair case, Gray's anger faded into gut wrenching sadness- an expression that he usually saved for remembering Ul, his mother figure, who taught him magic and cared for him when he was most helpless.
"I... Thought it was a dream but..." he murmured, placing a hand on Juvia's cold cheek and pushing aside a wisp of ocean hair. "Whilst I was knocked out- asleep- whatever I was, I heard the sound of bare feet against stone. I could barely open my eyes to see, but I made out a figure- a girl- crouching down between us. She layered her hand on Juvia's forehead- right here," he whispered, pressing his thumb into the space between her perfectly shaped eyebrows, "and Juvia started to glow. I went to grab the girl- to pull her away- but just as I was about to touch her she vanished, and my fingers closed around nothing but a wisp of white smoke. After that I remember nothing except for my eyes closing and... I... I didn't do anything to help Juvia and now look at her! She could be seriously hurt, she could be gone!"
Gone.
The word hung in the air, reverberating from the walls, worming it's way into my mind. Somehow I wished he's just said dead. There was a sort of cruelty in his avoidance of the four letters, in the way he skirted around what we knew he meant as though the truth dripped with poison. Death was not just going away; death was a boundary that- once crossed- offered no escape route; it was final and left no hope for a glorious return; death was an eternal state of soul, not a presumption or misunderstanding.
"She isn't- you can feel her pulse," Jellal murmured as he pressed a thumb into the ocean blue vein visible through the pale skin of her wrist. He rose, his eyes betraying the frustration he was attempting to control, and my focus lurched sickeningly to Erza and the others.
"Look, Gray, take Juvia and get out of here. The others are in trouble... Jellal and I have to help them, Gray momentarily forgot his anguish as his expression turned to one of purposeful vengeance.
"I'm not going to run away from this- whoever did this to Juvia is going to pay," he hissed, sending shivers down my spine as the temperature began to drop around him.

"So what? We leave Juvia here alone?" Jellal snapped, shocking both of us with his sudden change of character. Images of Jellal as he had been back when I first joined Fairytail crept unwarranted into my mind, but I quickly swallowed them down, reminding myself that it had never been Jellal- it had been Zeref.

"Gray look," I began gently, placing my pale hand on his suddenly bare shoulder, "I know you want to help, that you want to destroy whatever it is causing your comrades to suffer, but Juvia is in no state to fight right now. She needs you, Gray, she needs you to stay by her side. If you really don't want to leave then... Then I'll take her and go, but I have this feeling that you guys have to stay together."

It hurt to feel the way the muscles beneath his skin began to unclench, softening, sagging away from my finger tips as Gray released a long, ragged, frosty breath.

"Sorry, sorry you're right. I'll take her back to the surface and see if I can wake her, then if she'd well enough I'll come back and-"

"We've got this. Now go before anything else goes wrong."

They probably weren't the best of words to send him away with, and the guilt winding it's way around his neck was clear as he effortlessly scooped Juvia into his arms and set of at a jog back up the stairs. Turning to Jellal, who's momentary anger had faded leaving nothing but forced courage layered over deep anguish, I found myself wishing I could swap him with a certain pinkette- I always felt braver with him at my side. And it didn't take a genius to recognize the same wistfulness in his own eyes, as he no doubt dyed my hair crimson and pictured Titania's fire in my own fearful eyes.

"Do you have a plan?" I asked quietly, breaking away from his gaze to examine the mountain ranges rising on my arms-goosebumps that had nothing to do with the temperature.

"No. Let's go," was his raspy reply, and the desperate man turned on his heal and sprinted back the way we came, leaving me to blink the tears from my eyes and cloak myself in false bravery.