Always and Forever (Sequel to 'If Only You Knew')

Chapter Twenty-One - Back to the Beginning

"Alyssa, do you have everything you need?" Gray asked as they exited the marketplace.

"Yeah," she replied, "thanks again for coming with me."

"Well it's not like I could just let you go alone after what happened with Gordon," Gray's eyes darkened as he said this.

"I guess so."

"Well, if you have everything you need, we have to go. I want to get going as soon as possible. This stupid quest has already taken way too long."

"OK," she agreed.

They traveled three weeks before they found it. Gray knew as soon as he saw it that it was the right place. How could he forget? As the town burned down, it also burned within him, engraving itself in his mind and memory. It haunted him now, as he saw it, and he slipped back into that night.

"Mom? Dad?" 'Where are they?' Gray coughed as smoke engulfed his house. He knew he should have gotten out a long time ago, but he couldn't leave without them. Tears ran down his face as the smoke attacked his eyes, and he choked as it filled his lungs. An explosion finally pushed him out of his house, and he watched as it crumbled to the ground right before his eyes, and it would have crushed him had he not been blown into the street. His childhood home, his memories, his life--they all went down in flames, snuffed out like nothing. Gray turned and saw that the rest of his street, no the rest of the entire village, was burning down just as his house had. But, wait...his parents! They had to be around somewhere. There was no way they would just leave him. Finally, firm, familiar hands tugged him up and pulled him, dragging him along as the person to whom the hands belonged fled the wasteland that was their town. It was his father, and moments later, his mother joined them, and they all ran together. It would be alright now, Gray knew, because he knew that his parents would never let anything happen to him. But an explosion went off and all of a sudden everything went black. Gray woke up later to find himself laying in the snow, the screams that had surrounded him more distant now. But where were his parents? And then he saw it. His father, crushed under a plank that had fallen from some house somewhere, his mother a few feet away, having been pushed to the ground by his father in an attempt to protect her from the fallen beam, only to have her die by his side, trampled by those who just the day before had been their friends, now running away to save their own lives with no loyalty and no remorse. "Mom? Dad?" Gray hesitantly walked up to them. He shook them, the tears running down his face no longer because of the smoke in his eyes. "Wake up! Wake up! You have to wake up, we have to go! Mom! Dad! Don't...don't leave me like this!" His father stirred, and Gray sniffled. "Dad?" "Gray," his father weakly turned his head. With the last breath left in his far too weakened body, he whispered, "run." That was it. Gray sat by his parents and sobbed for what seemed like hours before the flames engulfed both of their bodies and he was forced to move away. But even then, he did not leave. Not yet. He walked to the edge of his village, and, with the plank that had killed his father and caused the death of his mother, he builed a cross and planted it securely in the ground. Silver, it said on the left, and on the right, Mika. Even if the town was forgotten, along with all of its inhabitants and the events of that day, he would never forget, and his parents would live on forever in a monument that couldn't be burned down, for even in the wood turned to ashes, he never would. That was why, he told himself as he walked away, he had to become an ice mage. If fire had destroyed him, ice woud build him up again, and he would make sure his ice never melted and never burned. There had been enough burning in his heart on that day to last him an eternity.

But then Erza had come along and melted his ice, and all of his friends and Fairy Tail. He had learned to love again, and decided that fire wasn't bad, as long as it was used to burn those who were, and to stop evil from spreading throughout the world.

"Gray?!"

He suddenly snapped out of his reverie as Alyssa shook him and shouted his name.

"Yeah?"

"You've been crying and calling out 'Mom, Dad' for the last hour! I was scared!"

"Oh, I'm sorry to have worried you. I was...remembering the day they died."

"Oh..."

"But anyway, this is the place," he informed her, "this is the village."

"Really?"

"Yeah. We did it. We're finally here."