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"You're way too sticky," Gray said, observing the woman beside him with narrowed eyes. Shock and despair fluttered across her face before she realised that he was looking at the bun in her hand. "Can't you eat more neatly?" he asked.
"It is Juvia's first time eating this, so…" she mumbled, poking at the bread. A long thread of viscous sauce came away with her finger.
Bisca and Alzack could not help but stare. Had they been… flirting? Bisca dreamt of a day when she could be as demonstrative as Juvia. A vision of Alzack feeding her from a homemade bento box floated across her mind.
"This is how you eat caramade franks!" Gray declared, "Like this, open your mouth up wide!" He practically unhinged his jaw and stuffed the bread in his mouth.
"I see, like this." Juvia copied him, her cheeks puffing out like a hamster's.
"Exactly. This isn't something that's meant to be eaten politely!" His shirt had vanished somewhere between the two sentences. Bisca saw it hanging from the rafters and marvelled at the efficacy and scope of his de trop skill.
"Juvia doesn't think it's a good idea to take off her clothes, though."
Bisca felt heat creep into her cheeks. Had Gray just insinuated that Juvia should strip? She wondered how she could possibly get Alzack to be as bold. Her eyes caught his and they both blushed crimson. "Th-the rain just won't let up, eh?" she said nervously. Mavis wept; she was never going to make any progress with Alzack at this rate.
"Y-yeah," he replied, just as feebly. Bisca wondered if it was a western continent problem, or just an Alzack problem because why, oh why, could he never string together two words to make conversation with her?
"You two seem to be as close as ever."
She jumped away from her partner as though burned. "Erza-san!" she squeaked.
"N-no, that's-" Alzack stuttered uselessly, as he was wont to do.
Erza just smiled at them. "Treasure these moments. So that you won't have regrets," she said. Master Makarov waved her over and she nodded at them before leaving. Bisca thought she caught the ghost of a wink as Erza walked away. She shook her head. She had probably imagined it.
Gray watched the exchange through hooded eyes. His throat ran dry and the morsel of bread in his mouth seemed to swell up. He found himself having to choke it down. He heard the underlying meaning to her words and wondered when, if ever, she would get over Jellal. He pushed the rest of his snack away, his appetite suddenly lost.
He could feel Juvia's curious gaze on him, but he ignored her, as he always did; he had only ever had eyes for one person. He watched her speak to the old geezer, her back ramrod straight and as unyielding as ever. He thought that maybe he should take her advice and be forthright about his feelings.
"Juvia."
"Y-yes, Gray-sama?" She looked so hopeful and hopelessly in love with him. It chafed.
"You're blocking the way," he said curtly.
He strode off, leaving her in a crumpled heap on the floor. He tried not to care, he really did, but something about her patheticness was too painfully familiar. He turned and gave her a guilty, half-hearted smile. He regretted it instantly when the light returned to her eyes. Maybe one day he would learn that he had to be cruel to be kind. In this, as in that other thing, he remained foolishly optimistic.
He heard Erza excuse herself from her conversation with the Master. He slipped into the kitchen, deserted now that Mira was tending the bar. She followed him in a discreet five minutes later. "You acquitted yourself admirably, Gray. I believe our plan worked."
Her eyes were shining, and it tickled him that the strong, stoic Erza was such a romantic at heart. "Do you think it will be enough to make Bisca and Alzack take the final step?" he asked.
He somehow doubted it, but when Erza had presented the scheme to him that morning he had seen no choice but to go along with it. "Why can't you do it?" he had asked, a bit petulantly.
"Don't be silly Gray, you and Juvia are much more believable together," she had answered blithely and off he had gone, like an obedient dog, to rope an unsuspecting Juvia into the plan. He wished she had less power over him.
"I hope so," Erza replied with a pout. "They are wasting time."
He wondered then, if he was the unsuspecting one. That maybe there had been two facets to this scheme of hers and Bisca and Alzack had only been one. He opened his mouth to tell her to stop pushing him towards Juvia but the words that spilled forth were different. "Erza, what you said. 'Treasure these moments so that you won't have regrets.' I… I don't want to regret anything either."
He seemed so unlike himself as he spoke the words. The seriousness and earnestness in his voice were as foreign as a feminist in Quattro Cereberus. It disquieted Erza. The spectre of a tangled and messy future loomed before her.
"What do you mean?" she asked. She hoped the affected puzzlement in her voice would serve as an adequate deterrent.
Gray looked away and ran a hand through his hair. A multitude of expressions fleeted just under his skin, as though he was at war with himself. In the end, his jaw clenched, a victor decided. The look on his face scared her. She knew that regardless of who had won that battle, the ultimate loser that day was going to be her.
"I want to treasure my moments with you," he said solemnly, "Because Erza, I-"
He was cut short by a tremor rumbling through the guild. Erza wondered if maybe it was divine intervention. He folded her into his arms and bent his head over hers, instinctively moving to protect her. She trembled but she was not sure if it was because of what had almost passed or because of what was going to. The shelves lining the walls around them rattled and pots and pans crashed to the tiles below; filling the air with the music of the world ending. Her hands found their way around his waist and anchored themselves in his shirt.
The next thing she knew, she was lying on the ground and Gajeel was staring down at her.
What happened next left no time for conversation. Gray and Erza were plunged into battle, fighting a fight they knew nothing about, save for the fact that their friends were in danger. Gray rushed to protect them, because that was what he did. He was a fighter. He had been fighting all his life. And he would be damned if he did not take every one of his nakama back to the guild with him.
When, in the midst of battle, Mystogan revealed himself as the prince of Edolas, Gray felt the acrid taste of black coffee flood his mouth. Sharp and dark, slipping down to churn acidly in his stomach. Of course, the handsome bastard was a prince. Even in a parallel world, he still could not beat Jellal. Maybe he was getting tired of trying.
She was on his mind even as he fought for his life. "Where is Erza?" he asked Charle.
"She's where the other Erza is."
Gray could dimly make out her slight figure on top of the flying beast that the people of Edolas called Legions. He debated going to help her, but they were attacked by Edolas' army before he could make up his mind. She probably did not need rescuing anyway. She never did.
They were overrun. Try as he might, he just could not keep up. He lost count of the number of enemies he had taken down, yet more still came. He wondered if it was the end for him, if this would be how he died; in a foreign world, fighting to protect his friends in someone else's war, half a sentence from telling the girl her loved how he felt.
When Edolas' Fairy Tail appeared to save the day, declaring that they were not going to run anymore, Gray thought that maybe he should stop running too. Stop running from the inevitability of his unrequited love. Perhaps it really had been divine intervention that had stopped him earlier that day.
She would never love him. And she would never know just how much he loved her. Maybe that was for the best.
He noticed the way his Edolas counterpart looked at his Juvia and thought snidely that maybe there was a future after this heartbreak. It almost made him laugh.
The world around him had gone grey and dull, like an out of focus image on a lacrima-cam. He would have liked to blame it on the magic being sucked away, but he knew that was not it. The colour had leeched from his life. No more Scarlet. Just Gray.
What happened next left no time for conversation. Gray and Erza were plunged into battle, fighting a fight they knew nothing about, save for the fact that their friends were in danger. When Erza found herself face to face with a woman who looked exactly like her, she did not know what to think. Erza Knightwalker's face was twisted and cruel and so strange to her because it was her face, her lips that were saying such deplorable things. It felt like an omen. She battled her way forward and felled the soulless imitation of herself. But Erza Knightwalker was as tenacious as Erza Scarlet. She would not give up. She hunted her down.
Erza saw in Knightwalker who she could have become without the guild. Without Gray. He had been the first person to knock on her walls and demand entrance to the fortress she had built around her heart. The first person to breach her defences and make her trust again. Her first friend in her new life. She had often wondered what she would have been like if not for Gray.
The answer stared her in the face.
She hated it. She hated that Knightwalker was so much like her and yet was nothing like her. She was an incomplete facsimile; as though the artist's brush had grown tired in the reproduction and filled the page with black instead of the rich tapestry of emotions Erza knew dwelt in her heart.
She could hate as much as Knightwalker. She knew the depths that lay unexplored beneath the injustice of her childhood. But he had never let her reach them. He had taught her to love. They all had. Perhaps it had been Fairy Tail and not some divine artist that had filled in her pages with joy and laughter and warmth. With love. She knew then, that Knightwalker could love too. "You've got the same evil and weakness in you that I have," she said, "So you must also have the same heart that is capable of loving others."
She could not win against her. Facing the shadow of who she could have been, she wanted nothing more than to show her the promise the future held. Darkness and light, cold and warmth, twin halves of the same soul, they defeated each other. One cannot win a fight against the person in the mirror, only understand and accept them. Erza felt oddly at peace as she lay on the ground, the fragments of her shattered armour around her, knowing that she had been understood and accepted too.
When she bade the other Erza farewell, she wished with all her heart for her to find happiness. Find someone who would break through her walls and teach her to love again. Someone like Gray.
She realised epiphanically, as she was sucked into the anima that her fear earlier was not because she could not love him, but because she already did.
They returned to Earthland. A horde of Exceeds met their arrival and Gray wondered if he would ever get a moment to breathe. When the feline angels flew off, he found him and Erza turning to each other automatically, their fists pumping in the contagious gesture they had picked up from one of the Exceeds. For a moment, it looked as though she was going to say something but then the black cat appeared, with Lisanna in tow and they were thrust into chaos.
The happiness that bloomed in his chest at the sight of her familiar silver head was disconcerting. He had not even known her that well, but the sight of her laughing and hugging Natsu and Happy made a lump rise in his throat. Lisanna had been returned to them from the dead. It was a precious gift. He wondered if Erza felt even a tenth of this joy when she looked at Jellal. No wonder she could not let him go.
They took Lisanna to Kardia Cathedral to meet Mira and Elfman. Erza was so normal with him that it made him wonder if he really had almost stirred the hornet's nest and upended their lives. It made him think that maybe his moment with Erza, what little of it there was, had well and truly passed. It hurt like hell. The rain streamed down from dark clouds that were as heavy and oppressive as his future. The happy trio stood embracing before him.
At least he could pretend his tears were those of joy.
Erza saw the tears on the three Strauss siblings' faces and thought again of time and how easily it was lost.
They held a party in Lisanna's honour and Gray was laughing and drinking with Cana. He looked so handsome in the black t-shirt and white coat that he always wore, the smile on his face warmer than a thousand suns. She wanted to speak to him, but the gaps in the conversation teased her as they flitted past. Even her Flight Armour would not have been quick enough to catch the 'right moment.' As she chatted with Lily, she finally understood Bisca's reluctance when it came to Alzack. She needed this to be perfect, for the moment to be 'right.' Telling him just then, without any preamble, was too abrupt.
A brawl started up, stoked by the embers of stupidity that never went out in the hearth of their guild. Gray was pulled into it as well, his coat flying off seconds before the joined the scuffle. Erza was startled when she noticed Juvia trying to strip off and join in too. Maybe abrupt was better than never, she reasoned as she waded into the fray. And if she accidentally managed to throw a couple of people at Juvia as she was breaking up the fight, then well, it was just that. An accident.
The kitchen was blissfully empty when she dragged Gray in. He had stopped resisting the moment he realised that, due to the kerfuffle, no one had noticed their exit. He watched her warily as she paced the spare few feet in between the kitchen counters.
"Gray," she said abruptly, coming to a halt in front of him. She could spend an eternity waiting for the right moment. She knew he had. She was Erza Scarlet, dammit. She would make her own moment. She wracked her brain for the careful words she had stayed up all night choosing. Right, they began, 'Gray,' and then… She would never tease Bisca again. This was torture.
Gray picked himself off of the floor from where she had unceremoniously dumped him and dusted off his trousers. He looked at her, puzzled, as though unsure of what she wanted or why she had brought him here. "Erza," he prompted, patience and curiosity mingling in his voice. His t-shirt pooled somewhere near his feet.
She ignored him and resumed her pacing. The incomprehension was radiating from him in waves. Then suddenly, there was a shift in the atmosphere, as though a penny had dropped into the still waters around them. She could feel it now. Tiredness, resignation, a hint of dread. "It's fine, Erza. Forget about it," he said. His voice had some finality in it. He retrieved his t-shirt and turned to go.
"I love you," she blurted. The words were spoken so quickly that she wondered if Gray thought he had imagined them. He turned to face her slowly. She could hear his heart thudding so loudly that she thought it was a miracle that he heard her next words at all. Under the turbulent emotions roiling in his eyes, she saw a spark of hope. She clung to it harder than he did.
"I want to treasure my time with you too. I do not want any regrets." She smiled at him and stepped close. She heard him take a deep juddery breath. "I love you," she said simply.
He gawped at her. The seconds ticked past. Ten, twenty, thirty… The silence yawned between them and Erza began to grow nervous.
"How can you say it so casually?" he demanded.
Of all the reactions she had anticipated to her confession, this had not been one of them. Had she really miscalculated that badly? Erza blinked in surprise and moved to take a step back. "I'm sorry, I-"
"No, wait!" He grabbed her wrist to stop her. "I'm sorry, that was- I was-" She could see the cogs turning in his brain as he fumbled for the right words. Giving up, he muttered, "Tch. I love you too." His blush-stained face was twisted off to the side.
A smile tugged at her lips and she feigned deafness. "I am sorry, what was that?"
He turned and looked at her then. The grip around her wrist loosened as he took her hand in both of his. "I love you too," he repeated. His voice was shaky, and his gaze was searching, as if looking for evidence of this being more than a dream. "No takebacks?" he whispered.
The doubt and hope in his voice broke her heart. She reached up to cup his face, the hint of stubble rough under her palms. "No takebacks," she promised and leaned in to kiss him.
Later, when she was standing wrapped in his arms, her nose buried in his neck, a naughty thought occurred to her. "You know, Gray," she said slyly, "are you sure you do not want any takebacks? Happy tells me that Edo-Gray was head over heels for Juvia."
He started, panicked, but then looked down at the smirk in her face. He laughed. It was a bright and confident sound and it filled her with more happiness than she had ever thought she would be allowed to feel. He leaned his forehead against hers and said assuredly, "Nope. He just hasn't met you yet."
In another world, Gray Surge was walking into Erza Knightwalker's office, unaware that his life was about to change forever.