Chapter 80: The Return
A few more days passed on the mountain. Gray healed faster than anyone expected, which was good because the village was running out of the good meat and the elder's wife had started eyeing the remaining chickens with a look that suggested the welcome was wearing thin.
He spent most of those days in bed, which he hated. Juvia spent most of those days in the chair beside his bed, which she loved. She read to him from a stack of old novels the village healer kept in the corner. She fed him soup when his arm was too sore to hold the spoon. She told him stories about her childhood in the rain, about the years she spent alone, about the moment she first saw him across the battlefield and something in her chest had shifted.
Gray listened to all of it. He didn't interrupt. He didn't make jokes. He just held her hand and let her talk.
On the fourth day, the healer came in, checked his leg, checked his arm, checked his ribs, and pronounced him fit to travel. "You'll be sore for another week. Maybe two. But you're not dying anymore. That's the important part."
Gray stood up for the first time in days and immediately regretted it. His leg screamed. His back screamed. Everything screamed. But he was standing. He was alive. That was something.
Juvia was at his side before he could sway, her arm around his waist, her shoulder under his arm. "Gray-sama should rest more. Gray-sama is not fully healed. Gray-sama should not push himself."
"Gray-sama is fine," Gray said, testing his weight. "Gray-sama wants to go home."
Juvia's eyes went wide. "Gray-sama called it home."
Gray looked at her. Her blue hair was tangled from sleeping in the chair. Her dress was wrinkled from three days of not changing. Her face was pale from worry and bad food and too much time indoors. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
"Yeah," he said. "I did."
The village paid them double the promised amount. The elder shook Gray's hand for a full minute, thanking him, thanking Juvia, thanking the spirits, thanking whatever gods had sent them. The woman whose boy had been taken pressed a small wooden carving into Gray's palm, a bird with outstretched wings, and told him to remember that the dead flew higher than the living ever could.
Gray didn't know what to say to that. He put the carving in his pocket and held it there the whole walk down the mountain.
The trip back to Magnolia took three days by carriage, two by train, and one very long, very awkward boat ride that Gray spent mostly leaning over the side trying not to throw up while Juvia held his hair back and told him he was very brave and very strong and very handsome even when he was green.
By the time they reached the station, he was exhausted, sore, and pretty sure he had vomited everything he had eaten in the past week. But he was home. They were home.
The walk from the station to the guild hall was strange. Magnolia had changed in the weeks they'd been gone. The streets were cleaner. The buildings were brighter. There were flowers planted along the main road, actual flowers, red and yellow and purple, arranged in patterns that probably meant something to whoever had put them there.
"What happened to this place?" Gray muttered.
"Juvia thinks the city has been preparing for the Harvest Festival," Juvia said, her eyes scanning the decorations hanging from every lamppost. "It is in one week. Juvia read about it on the train. There will be a parade. And a tournament. And a Miss Fairy Tail contest."
Gray snorted. "Miss Fairy Tail? Who came up with that?"
"Juvia does not know. But Juvia thinks it sounds fun. Juvia would like to enter. Juvia would look very beautiful in a gown. Juvia would win for sure."
Gray looked at her. She was smiling, a real smile, not the nervous, hopeful thing she had worn in the village. She was excited. She was happy. She was planning to enter a beauty contest in front of the entire guild.
"I'll vote for you," he said.
Juvia's face went pink. "Gray-sama would vote for Juvia?"
"Obviously. Who else am I going to vote for? Erza? She'd kill me. Lucy? She'd write about it in her stupid book. Cana? She'd be drunk before the first round." He shrugged. "You're the only safe choice."
"Gray-sama is only voting for Juvia because it is safe?"
Gray looked at her. At her pink cheeks and her bright eyes and the way she was looking at him like he had just offered her the moon.
"No," he said. "I'm voting for you because you'd win anyway."
She grabbed his arm and held it tight against her chest, and they walked the rest of the way like that, together, not quite holding hands but close enough that anyone who was looking would know something had changed.
The guild hall rose up at the end of the street, and Gray stopped walking.
It was not the guild hall he remembered.
The old building had been functional. It had been sturdy. It had been a place where wizards gathered to drink and fight and take jobs. It had been home, but it had never been pretty.
This was pretty.
The exterior was newly painted, a deep red with gold trim that caught the afternoon sun. The doors were massive, carved with the Fairy Tail emblem in what looked like solid oak. Windows stretched across the front, letting light pour into the building. There was an awning out front with tables and chairs arranged beneath it, a sign hanging above reading "Café Léon" in elegant script.
"What the hell is this?" Gray asked.
Juvia was staring. "Juvia thinks it is a café."
"I can see it's a café. Why is there a café attached to our guild hall?"
They walked closer. The café had its own entrance, its own menu board, its own line of customers waiting for service. Inside, through the windows, Gray could see more. A counter with pastries. A rack of souvenirs. T-shirts with the Fairy Tail emblem. Mugs. Keychains. A stuffed blue cat that looked disturbingly like Happy.
"Juvia wants the cat," Juvia said.
"Juvia can buy the cat later. Let's see what else they did."
The front doors swung open and Gray stepped into chaos.
The main hall was unrecognizable. The old bar was gone, replaced by something that looked like it belonged in a palace, all polished wood and brass fixtures and a wall of bottles that probably cost more than Gray's entire wardrobe. The floor had been refinished, the old stains scrubbed away, the wood gleaming under the light. New tables, new chairs, new everything.
And that was just the main room.
To the left, through an archway, Gray could see a pool. An actual pool, steam rising off the surface, people lounging around the edges with drinks in their hands. To the right, a door led to something that sounded like an arcade, the beeping and buzzing of machines filtering through the walls. Above, a staircase led to a second floor that had definitely not been there before, a sign reading "S-Class and Above" hanging from the railing.
"Everybody can use the second floor now," a voice said behind him.
Gray turned. Mirajane stood at the bar, a towel over her shoulder, her smile as serene as ever. "Master Makarov decided that after everything that happened, we deserved something nice. So he used some of the reparations from Phantom Lord to rebuild. Properly this time."
"Properly," Gray repeated. "He built a pool. And a café. And a souvenir shop."
"And an amusement center. And a reading nook for Levy. And a training room for Elfman. And a garden out back for planting herbs, which I think is mostly for me, but I'm not complaining." Mirajane's smile widened. "Welcome home, Gray. Juvia."
Juvia was already moving toward the souvenir rack, her eyes fixed on the stuffed cat. "Juvia must have it. Juvia will name it Happy Jr. Juvia will take it everywhere. Juvia will—"
"It's not for sale," Mirajane said. "It's the only one. Happy demanded it be made for him. He sleeps with it every night."
Juvia's face fell. Then her eyes went to the rack of t-shirts. "Juvia will take one of those instead. The blue one. With the cat on it."
"That one is also Happy's."
"All of the cat things are Happy's?"
"All of them."
Juvia looked at the rack, at the dozen cat-themed items, and sighed. "Juvia understands. Juvia respects the commitment."
Gray left her to browse and walked into the main hall. The place was packed. Macao was at the bar, nursing something that smelled like it could strip paint. Wakaba was beside him, his pipe sending lazy smoke rings toward the ceiling. Elfman was by the pool, arguing with a young mage about something called "lane etiquette." Cana was at a table in the corner, cards spread in front of her, a barrel of something at her elbow.
And at a table near the window, Lucy and Erza sat together, a stack of papers between them, both looking like they hadn't slept in days.
Gray walked over. "What's all this?"
Lucy looked up, and for a moment, her face went through a series of expressions he couldn't quite read. Recognition. Relief. Something else, something that looked almost like fear.
"Gray! You're back! We heard about the mission. Juvia sent a message saying you were hurt. Are you okay? What happened? Is Juvia okay? Where is she?"
Gray held up a hand. "I'm fine. Juvia's fine. We're both fine. It was a monster. We killed it. I got beat up. She carried me down a mountain. The end."
Lucy stared at him. "She carried you down a mountain?"
"In her water thing. It's a long story. I'm fine. What's all this?"
He gestured at the papers. Erza answered without looking up. "Harvest Festival preparations. The guild is hosting the Miss Fairy Tail contest. We're organizing the logistics."
"You're organizing a beauty pageant."
"I am organizing a logistical operation that happens to involve a beauty pageant." Erza finally looked up. Her eyes were tired, but there was something else there too. Something that looked almost like amusement. "It requires coordination with the city council, the event sponsors, and the other guilds who will be attending. It requires scheduling, budgeting, and crowd control. It requires—"
"It requires you to judge a bunch of women in fancy dresses," Gray said.
Erza's eye twitched. "That is a reductive and inaccurate description of my responsibilities."
"Sure it is."
Lucy laughed, and the sound was bright and real and cut through the noise of the hall. "He's not wrong, Erza. You're excited about the pageant. Admit it."
"I am not excited. I am thorough."
"You made a color-coded seating chart."
"For efficiency."
"You assigned each contestant a theme song."
"So the transitions would be smooth."
"You practiced the lighting cues."
Erza's face went very still. "That information was confidential."
Gray looked between them, and something in his chest loosened. This was normal. This was Fairy Tail. Fighting and laughing and arguing about stupid things. He had missed it more than he knew.
Movement at the corner of his eye. Juvia appeared at his side, a t-shirt in her hands, her face pink with excitement. "Juvia found one without a cat. Juvia is going to wear it tonight. Juvia is going to sleep in it. Juvia is going to…"
"You're going to wear it now, aren't you?"
Juvia nodded, already pulling it over her dress.
Gray sighed. He looked at Lucy, at Erza, at the guild hall that was somehow a resort now, at the girl beside him wearing a shirt that was too big and smiling like she had won the lottery.
"Where's Natsu?" he asked.
Lucy's smile flickered. Erza's pen stopped moving.
Gray noticed. "What? Where is he?"
"We don't know," Lucy said. Her voice was careful now, too careful. "No one has seen him since you left. Almost two weeks."
Gray's stomach dropped. "What do you mean no one has seen him? Happy? Where's Happy?"
Happy was at the souvenir rack, trying to climb the display to reach a stuffed fish hanging from the top. Gray grabbed him by the scruff and pulled him down.
"Happy. Where's Natsu?"
Happy blinked. "Aye? Natsu? He left the morning you and Juvia went to the mountain. He said he had training. He said he would be back in a few days. That was twelve days ago."
"Twelve days?"
"Twelve days and four hours and seventeen minutes. I counted." Happy's ears drooped. "He does this sometimes. He goes into the forest and trains. But he always comes back. He always sends a message. This time there is nothing. No fire. No smoke. No smell. Nothing."
Gray looked at Lucy. She was staring at her hands. He looked at Erza. She was very carefully not looking at anyone.
"You two don't know where he is either."
"We've been looking," Lucy said. "Well, not looking looking. He does this. He disappears. He always comes back. But this time..." She trailed off.
"This time what?"
Erza answered. "This time we felt it."
Gray waited.
"Three days ago," Erza said slowly, "there was a surge. A pulse of magic from the forest. It was hot. It was dark. It felt like him, but not like him. Like something underneath him. Something hungry."
"It woke me up," Lucy said. Her voice was small. "I was dreaming about him. About the first time. On Galuna. And then I woke up and I could feel him. Like a string pulling at my chest. And then it was gone."
Gray looked at Juvia. She was holding his arm, her face pale, her eyes fixed on Lucy.
"You think something happened to him."
"I think something is happening to him," Erza said. "And I think he didn't want us to see it."
Cana appeared at the table, a mug in each hand, her face flushed with drink and something else. "Talking about the missing fire idiot? He's fine. He always comes back. He's like a cockroach. You can't kill him."
"Twelve days," Gray said.
Cana shrugged. "He's training. You saw him in the tower. He's different now. Stronger. Weirder. He needs to figure out what he is." She looked at Lucy, then at Erza. "Don't you two agree?"
Lucy's hands tightened on the papers. Erza's pen snapped.
Gray watched them, these two women who had somehow become Natsu's, who were sitting here pretending to plan a beauty pageant while something was wrong with the man they loved. And he understood, maybe for the first time, what Juvia saw when she looked at him. What it cost to care about someone that much.
"Someone should go look for him," Gray said.
"Someone has," Erza said. "I went. The first night. I searched for hours. I found nothing. No trail. No camp. No fire. Just heat. Heat and the smell of something burning that wasn't wood."
"I went too," Lucy said. "Happy took me. We flew over the whole forest. There was a patch where the trees were dead. Where the ground was glass. But no Natsu. Just... nothing."
Cana set her mugs down. "He'll come back. He always comes back. And when he does, he'll be stronger. He'll be ready for whatever comes next." She looked at Gray. "You should be worried about yourself, ice princess. You look like death warmed over. Go eat something. Go sleep somewhere that isn't a chair. Let your girlfriend take care of you."
Juvia went bright red. "Juvia is not, Gray-sama and Juvia are not. We are simply…"
"You slept in a chair for three days while he was unconscious," Cana said. "You carried him down a mountain in your body. You're wearing his shirt." She pointed at the t-shirt Juvia had just put on, the one that was definitely not hers, the one that smelled like Gray's soap and Gray's sweat and Gray's everything.
Juvia looked down. She looked at Gray. Gray looked at the floor.
Cana laughed. It was not a nice laugh. It was the laugh of someone who had just won a very large bet. "Oh, you two are so obvious. It's almost boring."
"We're not…" Gray started.
0"You're wearing her clothes," Lucy said, and there was something in her voice that wasn't quite teasing, wasn't quite serious. "You came back from a mission together. You almost died. She saved you. You're standing close enough that your shoulders are touching. You keep looking at her when you think no one is watching."
Gray stepped away from Juvia. Juvia made a small sound. Gray stepped back.
"You two are dating," Lucy said. "It's fine. It's good. It's just... obvious."
"We are not…" Gray tried again.
"Your face is red," Erza said without looking up. "You have not been this red since Natsu set your pants on fire during the Phantom Lord celebration."
"That was different."
"It is the same shade of red."
"Juvia thinks Gray-sama looks very handsome when he is red," Juvia whispered.
Gray made a sound that was not quite a word. He grabbed Juvia's hand and pulled her toward the bar, oward the food, toward anywhere that was not this table, not these women, not this conversation.
Behind him, he heard Cana's laugh. He heard Lucy's quieter laugh. He even heard something that might have been Erza, something that might have been amusement.
He did not look back.
He sat at the bar with Juvia and ordered food and let her talk about the contest and the souvenir shop and the stuffed cat she was going to commission Happy to make for her. He let her hold his hand under the counter where no one could see. He let himself breathe.
And in the back of his mind, he thought about Natsu. About twelve days in the forest. About the heat that woke Lucy from her sleep. About the patch of ground that had turned to glass.
He thought about the way Natsu had looked in the tower, the way his eyes had gone gold, the way scales had rippled across his skin. He thought about the way Natsu had eaten those crystals like they were nothing, like he was hungry for them.
He thought about what it meant to become something that wasn't quite human anymore.
And he wondered, for the first time, if Natsu was ever going to come back at all.
---
The forest was silent.
It was not the silence of night, when the creatures sleep and the wind dies and the world holds its breath. It was the silence of absence. The silence of a place where nothing lives anymore.
Trees stood bare, their branches blackened, their bark cracked and flaking. The ground was hard, baked into something that crunched underfoot like old bone. There was no grass. No moss. No insects. No birds. Just ash and dust and the memory of green.
In the center of the clearing, a figure knelt.
His clothes were gone. Burned away in the first days, when the fire had been too much, when the heat had been more than cloth could bear. His skin was red and raw, peeling in places where new scales had formed and then receded, leaving marks like old scars. His hair was longer now, wild, tangled with ash and sweat and something that might have been blood.
His eyes were closed.
The fire around him was not the orange flame of a Dragon Slayer. It was something else. Something deeper. The edges of it were black, like a ring of char around a wound. The heart of it was white, so bright it hurt to look at, so hot it had turned the ground beneath him to glass.
He breathed in. The fire breathed with him, pulsing, contracting, pressing against his skin like it wanted to get in. He breathed out. The fire expanded, reaching toward the dead trees, the dead ground, the dead sky.
He had been here for twelve days. He had not eaten. He had not slept. He had not moved from this spot since the first night, when the fire had become too much, when he had let it out and found that he could not put it back.
His name was Natsu Dragneel. He was a Dragon Slayer. He was the son of Igneel. He was the brother of Zeref. He was a man from another world who had died alone and woken in a body that was not his own.
And he was losing.
The fire pulsed again, stronger this time. He felt the scales rising on his arms, felt the heat building in his chest, felt the thing in the cage stir and stretch and reach for him.
He opened his eyes.
They were gold. Slitted. Ancient. The eyes of something that had not been human for a very long time.
"I'm not done," he said. His voice was not his own. It was layered, doubled, the voice of the man and the voice of the dragon speaking together.
The fire answered. It rose around him, a column of white and black, reaching toward the sky, burning the clouds, turning the air to something that was not air.
Natsu Dragneel knelt in the center of it and screamed.
---
Next Time: The Dragon Returns