He calls her name but she cannot hear. he at times touches her arm but what's the use, she doesn't react. She can see from a single eye, her fake one, but what of it? She never looks at him, she doesn't look at anyone, she escapes by leaving home and returning until night fall.
It was not to say he wasn’t prepared for a situation in which he was entirely impuissant. Or at least, been given opportunities to prepare. It didn’t change a damn thing when it was actually put into effect.
He was only a puppet now. One by one, his possessions, his foundations were wrenched out of his grasp, scattered into the wind. It was punishment, mere coincidence had willed it so. He had danced too close to the thread of happiness, he was recovering far too effectively, he was whole and complete, and that could not be tolerated.
Once it had been his parents, once it had been Ur, once it had been Ultear, and then once more his father —— and now, they wish to take her away too? He had abandoned any belief in the divine on the day of the massacre, but that didn’t make him any less a victim of tragedy.
Knuckles were alabaster white as his fists clench, trembling not from the snow that fell —— surprisingly, as it was ordinarily a source of comfort —— undesirably in the current state of affairs, but out of anger, a sense of injustice. His jaw stiffens, and sets to stone. She cannot even sense his tension, his grievance, his failure. She’s not dead, oh no. She had been given a fate far worse than that of sleep eternal.
Robbed of all her senses, she erred aimless, a being without purpose. She had been spared one thing, and one thing only. This one artificial eye that flitted between him and the door, as if she wished to bolt at any instant. He couldn’t know what she was thinking. She was entirely at the mercy of the confines of her imagination, and who knew what mental strain she was putting herself through? He couldn’t step foot there.
He could wrap his arms around all he wants, lavish her body with butterfly kisses, pull her onto his lap, she would never be able to tell the difference, or even feel the paradoxical balance between warmth of the heart and cold of the spirit that exuded from his form. What could he do?
At first, the fairies had been allowed to visit. Their purpose being, to provide her with comfort, reassurance, a vote of confidence —— they were a family built from the bottom up, if anything could help her, it must be this. But that too stopped, after a while. Not because the members were unwilling, but she seemed even more distressed when she saw the number of concerned visages surrounding her. There were some he had outright refused to approach her until he got the behaviour right. It went without saying that Natsu had never seen such a threatening side to Gray before. There hadn’t been much at stake, back then.
There was no time to grieve, no time to come to terms with her impairment. She was meant to be supported, pulled back to her feet, given something to fight for. In theory. The Titania had an iron will, but she too could break. And she broke.
Still, he wasn’t going anywhere. He could not mope, or falter before her. That one eye, it fixed him when he least expected it. As if it were waiting for the moment when he, too, would leave her. She couldn’t notice right? It would make no difference if he were there or not. At least, that’s what she might be thinking. Who wouldn’t? At her very core, she had been rendered useless. She couldn’t do a damn thing. Not for herself, not for others. She was as powerless as back then ——
Sometimes, she would escape in the night. And he would follow after. Every time. She wouldn’t look into his face when he finally pulled her back, and he never forced her to. No matter where she wandered off to, he always found her. There was a pang in his heart at how much they might have once enjoyed these chase-hunt antics. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t meant to be.
They hadn’t touched one another ever since the incident. Not extensively, at least. Neither of them wanted to. It was just… another senseless thing. Everything that had happened since was senseless. He hadn’t gone on any missions, either. He refused, point blank, to leave her side. If this couldn’t convince her that he was here, that he would always be here, then he didn’t know what could. Of course, he couldn’t blame her. He could never blame her. He would just have to bear the brunt for them both, and never shed an ounce of weakness before her. He had no right to be weak. He had no right to be a snivelling child. Power or no power. Cruelty or no cruelty, this was it for him. For them.
Did life end here? It was one thing to lose a loved one, many loved ones, it was another to lose oneself. To be deprived of the necessary elements to exist. She was essentially an empty vessel, and there was nothing either of them could do about it. Did he fear that she would take her life? He would be lying if he said otherwise. It was too easy. She literally wouldn’t be able to feel a thing.
At the thought, he squeezed her hand tighter than he might have in the past. It still didn’t matter. His heart heaved in his chest —— neither of them were living right now.
