Thank you to @celestialrayna for letting us use her art for the announcement!
Slayers Week is an event to celebrate all of the slayers in Fairy Tail including dragon slayers, god slayers, and devil slayers. 100 Years Quest characters are also welcome.
Event Information
Dates: July 5 - 11
Submissions - Anything and everything - art, fics, poetry, amvs, headcanons, manga colorings, aesthetics, etc.
Prompts - There are two choices for each day but these are only meant as inspiration. You are also welcome to use your own.
Day 1 - Scars | Changes
Day 2 - Childhood | Home
Day 3 - Abandon | Reunion
Day 4 - Treasure | Hoarding
Day 5 - Magic | Vulnerable
Day 6 - Loyalty | Betrayal
Day 7- Play | Adventure
Event AO3 Collection: Slayers Week 2020
Event Tag: Use the tag ftguildevents in your first five so that we can see it! You’re also welcome to mention the blog @ftguildevents . Please make sure to tag any triggers appropriately.
Extra Info: All ftguildevents are LGBT friendly
Rules: No character bashing, no incest, and no pedophilia. All entries must be previously unposted and original to the blog posting. Late entries will be accepted.
Art drawn for the Slayers Week 2020 project and @ftguildevents
An alternate history where the Fairy Tail Guild became home to another dragonslayer. It is a pity that the author did not give him a second chance, like other antagonists.
Slayers Week 2020
Prompt: Home / Children
Pairing: Gray x Natsu
AO3 | Next: Ch 2
Summary: Gray had always been disappointed that Natsu wouldn't invite him along on his searches for Igneel. When it looks like he has given up, Gray decides to take matters into his own hands.
0-0
When Natsu and Gray had been children, they’d both been survivors of great personal tragedies that everyone wanted them to forget, but neither one could let go of.
Natsu had lost his dragon in a way that could never give him peace. He’d woken up one day in a strange field with not even the barest traces of Igneel’s scent around him. It had left Natsu heartbroken and full of questions that he could never find the answers to. Things like where had Igneel gone? And why had he left him behind?
It was made worse because, despite his strange magic, he knew that no one believed his words. After all, why would they? There had been no dragon sightings in hundreds of years. To most people, they were nothing but the stuff of legend. Or something a little boy would dream up to explain why his father had abandoned him.
Natsu tried not to let this get to him. After all, he had gained a new home in the Fairy Tail guild. Had even found several men who cared for him as a father would, showering him with the affection he so desperately craved.
Makarov tried to instill values in him, Macao helped him control and train his magic, while Gildarts did his best to get him to lighten up while nurturing his fighting spirit. All three men put in an effort to ensure he grew up right. Or, as right as any kid could in the middle of a boisterous magic guild. Natsu appreciated their efforts, he loved his new family and used his considerable power to keep them safe from anyone who would try to hurt them.
But they weren’t Igneel.
Gray’s childhood had been more tragic than he’d ever let on to even his closest friends. He’d watched helplessly as his parents were destroyed by a demon, one that he could never hope to best, but that hadn’t kept him from trying. A suicidal feat that had only managed to destroy the new family he’d found and left him feeling responsible for even more death. He was full of rage for what he’d lost and devastated by the knowledge that everyone he’d loved had sacrificed their lives to give him his.
He wasn’t worth their sacrifice.
He knew that, just like he knew the only way to keep it from ever happening again was to not allow himself to get close to anyone. Gray was determined to live his life in isolation, but somehow he’d ended up at Fairy Tail instead. He wasn’t the first child to arrive, nor would he be the last, but it wasn’t long before he had to grudgingly accept that the guild and all of its members had become his new home.
Gray liked most things about it. The people were loud, often drunk, and he could hide in their midst most of the time until his annoying stripping habit would rear its ugly head, bringing everyone’s attention to him with a chorused but fond cry of, “Gray, clothes!”
He trained to get stronger, well aware that there were monsters out there far exceeding the power of human imagination but real just the same.
This is why when the pink-haired loudmouth showed up with Gramps crying to anyone who would listen that he’d been raised by a red dragon, Gray accepted it as truth.
If a dark mage could create demons, why couldn’t dragons exist? Seemed logical to him, but he could tell that no one else believed, and he could also see how much this upset Natsu. It didn’t sit well with him, that sadness in the other boy’s eyes. Probably because it reminded him of his own.
Gray wasn’t sure when the fighting between them had started. One day they had been getting along reasonably well. The next, they were at each other’s throats, but he didn’t question it. They had been getting too close anyway, and that was dangerous for him.
And fighting with Natsu was fun. Sure, he couldn’t put insults together to save his life, but that suited Gray just fine, it was something else he could taunt the dragonslayer about. What he lacked in wordplay, he more than made up for in fighting ability and stamina, and that was exhilarating.
Day after day, year after year, they trained and fought together, neither really wondering why it was they did this. Who cared when it was so much fun?
Gray enjoyed the odd relationship they had built over the years, and as complicated as it seemed to everyone else, it made perfect sense to him. He didn’t hate Natsu as everyone assumed, he respected him, and he was a little jealous in some ways.
His family was gone forever, but Natsu still had a shot at finding his, and Gray figured the dragonslayer was just about stubborn enough to pull it off.
He would often daydream about the two of them returning from one of Natsu’s searches riding atop the enormous dragon. The Fire Dragon Slayer would be sporting that shit-eating grin of his that more often than not Gray wanted to punch out of existence, while he would bask in the knowledge that out of all of them he’d been the only one to believe Natsu’s tales.
It was a pleasant daydream but one that would likely never come true. Natsu never took him along when he went looking for Igneel. When they were younger, Gray had followed him a few times, worried that his friend would get lost or forget to return, but Natsu had always sniffed him out and asked him to return to the guild, and Gray had done so, filled with a disappointment he couldn’t understand.
Time after time, Gray would watch Natsu return from these trips looking more and more dejected with every failure, and he wanted to say something to him, to tell him that he was sure that he’d find him someday. But all he could offer that Natsu would accept were petty insults and brawls. And he hated it.
The last time Natsu had gone on one of these trips, he’d returned with a celestial mage in tow, a girl named Lucy Heartfilia. Since then, Natsu hadn’t made any effort to find Igneel, which pissed Gray off more than he thought it would.
In the years since he’d met the pink-headed pain in the ass, Gray had never seen him give up or back down from a fight. Not once. He knew how important finding Igneel was to Natsu, and he refused to see him give up. At least not unless he had a reason to.
So he decided to go on his own journey, determined to find something to get his friend all fired up again, ignoring the voice in his head that tried to tell him that if Natsu hadn’t found Igneel yet, he had a less than zero chance of doing so.
To that voice, Gray replied the one truth he knew better than any other….
Natsu might be a great fighter and possess almost beastly instincts, but at his core, he was a flame-brained idiot.
Gray would find Igneel, and when he did, he would bring Natsu back to the home he’d been searching for for so long.
A/N: I’ve always wanted to write a story where Gray helps Natsu look for Igneel. Was I planning on starting it today? Nope. Did I do it anyway? Yep. Are my other WIP’s looking at me with judgy eyes? Absolutely.
I had no home. I was trapped in that tower. We prayed for freedom. Our hope was twisted, and we became pawns, slaves once more. I fought for my friends only to lose and be locked away. We were locked up once more this time for justice. For seven years we plotted. Killed so many. I still hear their screams. Once again we fought believing this time we were free. But no the chains were heavier, locks bigger. I helped the ones of light fight a mad man of shadows. We were promised freedom.
You came for us preaching to us about sin and redemption. You gave us hope during a time of only despair. I hated it. I hated you. But you were nothing if not persistent. You broke down my wall's. And crept into my heart. And you made your home there. Just like I made mine in yours.
Sorry for bugging again, I have two questions in mind about slayer week, one is about if I can use both prompts for every day and make it into a story of some type? Also for my second question, can it be a harem or is it different parings only?
No problem at all! Our prompts are there for inspiration so use them however you wish.
As for the second question, we purposely did not specify. All our events are open to everyone so ships, brotps, harems, character centric, as kids, lgbt... It's all fine as long as you tag appropriately. The only exceptions to this rule are pedophilia, incest and character bashing.
