Author's note: Again, thank you all for reading. Please find a compilation of a lot of short stories in one big picture (although the preceding chapters are real standalones; I just couldn't help but rip my own ideas off). Enjoy.

AsDarknessSpreads: Thank you for supporting me thus far. By prompt for the Silver-Gray stuff what do you mean? I'm open to taking prompts, if that's what you meant…

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To measure your worth

In one of the first times, they were nemeses. It was not even the friendly rivalry that they sometimes entertained in the place of a deeper something that could have been, but a pure, unadulterated feud that never failed to result in blood.

'Tell me where she is, Gray, and I'll let you go, I promise.'

The alley floor reeked of piss and other questionable activities, but right then it was the least of Gray's concerns. Natsu stood over him, tall and indomitable, the hand on the sword at Gray's throat not shaking in the slightest bit. Above, the sky was opening, and then liquid hit his face is a pitter patter of a cold, cold autumn storm. It reminded him of Juvia's laughter, though, a soft tinkling like the rain on glass, or like bells on a sunny day.

'Last chance, Gray. I won't ask again.'

The sword pressed more persistently against his throat, and then red was joining the steady stream of rain off his face. 'Natsu', he wanted to say, but then Gray remembered what the man before him was going to do to Juvia whose laughter tinkled like bells, so he said 'Fuck you' instead.

Gray pretended that the water wetting Natsu's cheeks was something warmer than rain, before his world crashed down about him in the lightest press of a razor blade, bringing with it the regrets of the could-have-beens of a lifetime.

.

Other lifetimes, Gray was less fortunate. He was just wrapping up for the day as they brought the new patient in, something about saving a girl who ran into the street.

'We don't have anyone else!' Juvia, this time an ER nurse, said.

There was nothing to it but to accept the case. 'I'll have to apologise to Natsu for standing him up again', he thought. His boyfriend was going to pick him up for a fancy dinner.

And then the patient was pushed in front of him, still in a tuxedo pressed sharply for something big about to come to pass.

Somewhere in the distance, his clipboard crashed with a noise so muffled Gray was not sure it was his clipboard that had crashed.

The head wound was still bleeding, so the man's hair was more red than pink. And yet, and yet, it was Natsu alright, only ten shades paler and some hundred times less energetic.

'We don't have anyone else', Juvia said again, a sympathetic hand on his suddenly numb arm.

It was all that Gray could do to nod. 'I'll save him', he said, more for his own sake than anyone else's, 'Dear God, I must save him.'

But God was dead and destiny was a bitch – that, or Gray was just plain incompetent when it mattered the most. It was so close; Gray was so close to finishing the surgery, his hands still steady despite the mad dash his heart was trying to perform, when the line on Natsu's heart monitor stuttered once, twice, before going flat.

No amount of effort could bring it up again, and then Gray was going numb, watching in slow play as they shook their heads and pulled the cover up over Natsu's pale face. 'Wait', he wanted to say but couldn't find the words, 'I still have yet to kiss him goodnight.'

Later, much later, as he sat with his back to the operating room's sterile wall, the blood of his boyfriend drying on his hands, Juvia entered to finish him off in that unfalteringly kind way of hers.

'We found this in his trousers' pocket.' She said, before leaving the box with the velvet linings in his useless hands.

Gray couldn't remember much after that except for the crash his world made when it shattered into a million pieces.

.

There were numerous lifetimes, too many to count, too much heartache to remember. Most of the times, Gray remembered. However, there are also lifetimes when he forgot. Gray counted those his lucky lives, when all that he felt was a strange sense of déjà vu when the flash of pink hair and a cheeky smile brushed by, before he moved on with his life, feeling empty but not so wretched. Sometimes, it would be admiration from afar, watching as the masked hero saved the world even as he went about his own mediocre business. Other times, it was a face in a sea of faces, and Gray remembered feeling strangely familiar yet further than a world away from something important that he had forgotten to his grief.

The last note trembled when his heart shuddered out its last remnants of inspiration. Gray opened to his eyes to sweep over the crowd attending his concert, and then sure enough, the strange man with pink hair was there, a wistful smile on his countenance.

Something 'twang'ed inside his heart, like the sound a string makes when it snaps and cuts the fingers caressing it bloody.

'Weirdo', he had thought, realising that this was the fifth of the same concert that this man had gone to. 'Lies, lies, lies', something else whispered, 'you forgot, forgot, forgot…'

Gray brushed the thought aside, unwilling to let such a trivial thing interfere with his love – Gray had his music, and he had thought it would have been enough to last him that lifetime and the next.

.

Of course, Gray had been wrong about that. His cycle of lifetimes continued, on and on and on to infinity. Or maybe it had all been just a very elaborate dream, his or Natsu's, he wasn't sure which, only that it was always a game of hide-and-seek and cat-and-mouse between them.

'Have you seen a dying wolf, good sir?' He had dreamt. He dreamt of the golden field, the gleaming summer sun, a flash of a smile and eyes brighter than the rest of the world. It had been so warm back then, Gray missed it.

'Have you seen a dying wolf this way, madam?'

Gray dreamt – or remembered – the boy who had been attached to another boy who had been turned into a wolf. The wolf wanted to reach out for the boy, to curl around him in a blanket that buffered him from the cold, white winter. They were separated by a pelt of wolf skin, however, and this he could not breach, so the wolf could but keep on dreaming his wolf dream.

'Have you seen a dying wolf anywhere, Mister Huntsman?'

It made Gray smile recalling that bright-eyed boy who had clung to his shaggy neck, calling his name over and over again. 'I'll still be there, you know; I've always been there.'

He woke with tears on his cheeks.

.

Over and over, the cycle got old, and Gray cursed and cursed. He was never getting out of this damn cycle, he knew, so it would only be futile to wish he could. Still, at times, it was wish Gray did. It was all because Natsu would not remember; he never remembered, and there was no point in telling him if he did not know it.

The bells tolled, ding-dong ding-dong, and a white wrist lifted, as white as the wedding veil fluttering in the spring breeze. The magnificent bouquet flew up to the middle of the clear blue sky before landing in the hands of an ecstatic girl-friend. Somewhere in the crowd, wolf-whistles could be heard.

'How did I look, man?' Natsu grinned at him, ever so clueless, ever so cruel, and Gray grinned back.

'A waste for the pretty Lucy.' He replied, ducking from the friendly fist flying his way. Laughter rang, pure and platonic, and they came together for a group photo, him standing beside Natsu. Black and white, best man and bridegroom, they were a perfect pair, and yet nowhere near as perfect as the whites of the beautiful bride and the lucky groom.

'Thanks, man, really. Also for your two cents on the tux.' Natsu had said afterwards, happier than Gray had ever seen him in this lifetime.

'Any time, pinky. Now go enjoy your honeymoon and hope Lucy won't wear you out too much.' Gray laughed and again dodged the outraged fist, all the while trying and failing to paste the pieces of his heart together on the inside and promising himself, 'in the next life.'

.

But the next life came and went, and so did the one after, and the one after that. The two of them danced on the hand of fate like a pair of bona fide idiots, one stuck and one none the wiser about the great conundrum they were trapped in.

'I'm tired of this shit, you know.' Gray said when he was floating in the white limbo that lingered between one life and the next. 'Hey, answer me if you're out there. What do I gotta do to get outta this crap?'

No reply came back, so Gray closed his eyes in preparation for just another lifetime of hopeless waiting. If he were lucky, he'd probably forget.

.

It was only a long, long time after that that Gray understood the meaning of this absurd game fate was making him an involuntary player of. After the numerous times he had watched Natsu's back as the man inserted himself between Gray and death, one of it being in the shape of the demon Deliora, he finally, finally realised that Natsu had managed to remember. Not on a conscious level, perhaps, but he remembered all the same. All the times that their lives had brushed against each other, no matter how swift, they had left their marks on each other's being. And like slow ember, the marks burnt deep and persistent, until they rekindled into a wild fire neither was able to extinguish.

This time, it was Natsu who had that wistful look in his eyes, like he had been yearning for something for a long time but could not remember. It gave Gray hope, and made him despair when the image of Natsu's battered form overlapped with a million images from before, Natsu lying on a stretcher bleeding his life away with a ring box tucked in his pocket, Natsu watching him from afar longing for something he could not have for a lifetime, Natsu forgetting and finding happiness in another person leaving Gray the ever best man, Natsu, Natsu, Natsu…

Gray had remembered telling himself it would be his last try – should he fail, Gray would give up on waiting and let the void in his soul stay unplugged for the rest of eternity. A guy could only take so much heartbreak.

'Hey, flamebrain. I love you. I always have.'

Unlike how he had imagined it, the confession came out sure and confident, if crude or without an ounce of romance in it. Well, Gray did have a literal eternity to practise, after all, for the little good that did him. That was not the point, however, because like he said, he came to understand the deeper meanings of the world from what came next, when Natsu tried to murder him and was crying all at once. The look on his face afterwards, with all the snot and the drying tear tracks etched over that brilliant grin only one person had managed, was the most beautiful in all the lifetimes Gray had spent watching Natsu.

As he held Natsu that night, something within the very fabrics of Gray's world moved, slotting into place like pieces of a long-lost puzzle. Gray had a feeling this time was going to work out somehow, because everything was worth it to see how they finally belonged together. No more feuds that inevitably result in blood, no more wayward children needing to be rescued from rushing cars, no more curses to separate a pair of star-crossed destined to be together from forever, they were going to be alright together.

'Hey, your thinking's too loud. I can't sleep.'

Morning sunlight filtered through the dust on the glass panes of Natsu's window, hitting his head in a halo that had Gray's heart stopping for a second within his chest. Natsu frowned blearily up at Gray, before sighing in his mock-exasperated way that belied fondness.

'What the hell are you thinking about so early in the morning?'

The answer came to him all too naturally. 'You, of course. It's always been you, idiot.'

Gray enjoyed the simple pleasure of watching Natsu colour up, his mouth flapping uselessly before breaking into a grin that did nothing to hide the watery quality of his eyes.

'Aww, someone's being sentimental. Should I call you princess?' He said, but Gray shut him up with a kiss, and Natsu obliged in that uncharacteristically tender way of his that never failed to make Gray want to cry a little himself.

Yeah, they were going to be alright, Gray thought, because thiswas worth it, all of it.