Note: Lol I can't believe there are actually that many people giving Porlyusica a shot.

Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy. Have a nice weekend despite all the crazy :)

Part 2

His friends think he is doing better, because he is bright-eyed and alert and full of good humor again. This could not be further from the truth, but somehow he is always smiles and sunshine when they are around. Only Porlyusica notices his gritted teeth and sharp breaths and the way his eyes are too gritty and bright to be truly sunny.

He is frank with Porlyusica, though. Whatever pretenses he feels the need to keep with his friends do not seem to apply to her. If anything, he has become even more direct.

"Awful," he says when she perfunctorily asks how he is feeling. "Sometimes I almost wish…"

He trails off, eyes going distant and glassy, and Porlyusica thinks that whatever his line of thought is leading to is something she might as well ignore. Then he shakes his head as if to shake the thoughts right out, and she decides to humor him after all.

"Wish what?" she asks brusquely, nose already buried in her book.

"Oh… Nothing, really. I suppose it doesn't matter, but I don't like entertaining grim thoughts when it already seems like I'm giving up."

"Are you?" she asks as she turns the page and squints in disbelief at the ignorance of the words scrawled there. It seems like just about anyone can try their hand at writing a treatise these days, however unqualified. This ridiculous rag will go in the kindling pile when she returns home, she decides. "Giving up?"

He's quiet. She isn't sure for how long since she's still distracted by the twaddle masquerading as actual science—full moons and wolfsbane, indeed!—but it's long enough that she begins to think the topic is closed and she is free to ignore him once more.

"I don't know," he says finally. "I didn't think I was. But everyone else would say I am, I think. It's not as much that I'm trying to die faster as it is that I'm tired of prolonging the inevitable at the expense of my sanity. I feel better without all the meds, like I'm still myself. I want to think that I'm not choosing to die—that would happen either way, right?—but choosing how to live the rest of my life."

"Glass half full," she says dryly, squinting at a perplexing diagram that seems to have no rhyme or reason to it.

"Huh?"

"Optimist."

"Ah." He chuckles a little breathlessly. "There's a new one. Maybe I'm finally learning positivity in the face of adversity."

"They'll figure it out eventually."

"I don't think so," he says, serious again. "Not unless I slip up. People tend to see what they want to see…and I'd rather they see that too."

"See you dying?"

"See me fighting."

"You humans and your pride," she huffs. "They won't understand, but they won't think you're weak. Although it would definitely be a pain to convince them not to intervene."

"I just don't want them to think it's like…"

Porlyusica senses the change in the air. She hears the rattling bones of the skeleton in the closet, the smothered trumpeting of the elephant in the room—the whisper of a secret. She finds that secrets bring nothing but trouble, and she prefers to stay out of them. But he's dying, after all, so what harm could it do? This book is a laughable waste of time, anyway, and she has nothing better to do until she can make her escape.

"Like what?"

He's quiet for a long time, and she shrugs it off and returns to trying to make sense of this drivel. He has already more than proven that he wears his masks close to his skin, keeps his cards tucked so close to his chest that they slip in and out between the fingers of his ribcage, cloaks his secrets and thoughts in silence and half-truths and pretty smiles. She thinks that he will take them all to the grave with him, because he has long since given up on sharing them with the people who care about him.

But then he sighs. "Have you ever heard of a spell called iced shell?"

She regards him over the top of her book, surprised he is still talking. "Not particularly. I know of many different magics, but I have little use for the particulars of most of them."

"Fair enough. It's a sacrificial spell that uses the caster's body to seal a threat in unmeltable ice."

She lowers the book a little and eyes him with sharp-eyed curiosity. "You made an attempt?"

He shrugs and fiddles with the blankets. "Natsu stopped me."

"Why?"

He raises an eyebrow in her direction, dark eyes sparkling. "Because he's too stubborn to let anything else kill me before he has the chance."

She scowls. "That's not what I meant."

He sighs, the humor fading from his eyes. "I was giving up, I suppose. My master, the woman who taught me magic, used that spell to protect me when I was a child. She was…like a second mother to me." He pauses and frowns in thought, and then his lips twist into a wry smile. "No, maybe not. We color the past with our nostalgia, I suppose. I wasn't in the right place to accept that. But she could have been."

Porlyusica can hear the bones rattling incessantly like wind chimes in the distance. She thinks that perhaps she was hasty to judge that he had never seen the dark side of the world until faced with a death he couldn't cheat. She senses the shadows in him, although she hadn't noticed before. She wonders if it was because she paid no attention or because he is a master of concealing what he does not want the world to see. He is a child yet, but he has an old soul. She wonders how much darkness lurks beneath the surface in Fairy Tail, how many of his friends wear smiles over knife-sharp edges.

"Ah," she says, baiting him. "So it was your birthright."

He shakes his head slowly. "No… I wasn't born like that. I was born happy, like most anyone else. No, it seemed more like…destiny, maybe."

"Hm," she says. She flips through the book, idly perusing the pages without much hope of finding something worth reading. The silence hangs heavy like a shroud for a full minute.

"I just…don't want them to think that I'm giving up again," he says finally, voice lowered to nearly a whisper.

Porlyusica turns the page. "So why don't you run off and find some big baddie to freeze, then? You're dying anyway, so why not? You're running out of time to fulfill your destiny."

"I…" He pauses, clears his throat. "I mean, I could, but… Maybe it's selfish, but I want to live what little time I have left, not throw it at the first thing that gets in my way just because it's not as much time as I want. I could do a lot of good for someone else with those last few days, but…I sort of want to keep them for myself. They're all I have left."

Porlyusica watches him overtop her book again. "No, you foolish human. That's not selfish. That's called not giving up."

"Let's take a walk," he says when she enters the room and closes the door behind her.

She raises an eyebrow, raking her considering gaze over his face. He seems more lively than usual, already crawling out of bed without waiting for an answer. She knows that he's started leaving the apartment again, every now and then. On the days when the pain isn't as excruciating and his limbs are at least pretending to behave, he ventures outside.

She hears his friends chattering about this progress excitedly, sees the hope sparking in their eyes. They are all too eager to relate trips to the bakery and jaunts around town and visits to the guild hall. She has warned them that he is dying, but on some level they want to hope that he can overcome even this in the end. And why not? Fairy Tail mages have always managed to cheat death before.

So she does not tell them that the reason he suddenly has more energy and spirit is that he's rejecting the medicines that prolong his life at the expense of his soul. She does not tell them that his short daytrips are one last macabre sightseeing tour of the places he loves and soon will be able to visit no longer. She does not tell them that his jokes and smiles and chats are really just goodbyes.

He is making the most of the time he has left, just as he said he would. Porlyusica will let him do with it what he will. Still, it is the first time he has asked to go anywhere with her.

"You won't make it far," she says. He is already pressing his fingers to the wall to steady himself, and his legs tremble.

"I never do," he says cheerfully. "It will just have to be far enough."

She does not caution him to be careful and not overexert himself. She has given up scolding him unless he is doing something particularly stupid.

"Why don't you take your friends?" she asks instead.

He waves a hand airily. "I want to go now."

She lets out an exasperated breath. "Well, when you walk out the door past them, they're going to want to come." He grins and taps the glass of the window. She shakes her head. "Oh, no."

"It'll be fine! I go through windows all the time. We're on the first floor."

He pulls up the sash and clambers outside none too gracefully, stumbling as he goes. The days of hopping through windows with ease are long gone now. He turns and grins at her from the street, beckoning.

"Come on," he says.

Porlyusica eyes him like he just crawled out of a sewer. Nothing about this seems dignified.

"I don't think–"

"It's okay." He looks around in an exaggerated fashion. "No one will see you."

She hesitates, but then huffs out a breath, drops her book on the table, and slides over the sill with as much dignity as she can muster. He's in a good mood today, the cheer that's usually reserved for his friends and is worn thin by the time she comes around, and she decides to roll with it. Not because she cares, exactly, but maybe because she's curious to see what he's up to.

To his credit, he does not laugh at her inelegant display and almost manages to conceal his smile.

He shuffles down the street, a little unsteady on his feet but otherwise doing fine. He seems content to roam, occasionally pointing out this or that and reminiscing on what happened there. Porlyusica follows along beside him and says little until he stumbles again and clutches at the brick façade of a passing shop. His face is ashen and his brows pinched, and the tremors are getting worse.

"We should go back," she says. "Or sit down for a minute."

He smiles wanly, and it looks more like a grimace. "Just a little farther."

She shrugs. She's not his babysitter.

He makes it the last few yards out to the river, teeth gritted as he drags his feet step by painful step, and collapses on the bank with a huff. Porlyusica folds her legs beneath herself more gracefully, despite her arthritic joints. She would stand, but she is not sure he will be getting up any time soon.

She taps her fingers impatiently on her knees as he catches his breath.

"You know," he says finally, most of the wheeze gone from his voice, "an awful lot has happened out at this river."

She lets him ramble about the start of his friendship with the redhead, fighting with the dragon slayer, fishing with the cat. She listens to his stories in silence. She does not particularly want to, but she has been trapped by his company and has little choice. His eyes shine with the light of dying stars, burning brighter than ever before they sputter out.

They make her uncomfortable, so she watches the water rather than his face. If he thinks she isn't paying attention, he doesn't seem to mind. He spins his stories for maybe ten minutes before trailing off.

Porlyusica eyes him sidelong. His eyes are shadowed again, his lips twisted into a frown. He kneads at his forehead, undoubtedly in pursuit of relief from one of the increasingly frequent headaches.

"I'll miss them," he says quietly. Then huffs out a laugh that is only half amused. "Or maybe not. I don't really believe in anything after death. But…they'll miss me."

"I suspect so," she says, thinking of the pain and desperation and futile hope in the guild's eyes when they look at him. She will not debate the afterlife with him, because she is fairly certain he is right. "They care about you deeply."

"Yeah." He picks at the grass, threads it between his fingers. "It…would be easier if they didn't, I think. It will only hurt more."

Ah, and there it is, the reason he shows her his broken pieces but smiles when his friends come around. Because she does not care, not the way they do, and his darkness does not hurt her. She will not be plunged into grief watching his decline or bearing his death, so she is allowed to witness it.

"That is the flipside of love," she says noncommittally. "It's difficult to have one without the other."

"Is that why you prefer to hate everyone?" he asks, his voice sharp. "Because it's easier? Hurts less?" She stiffens and levels him with a glare, and he relents with a sigh. "That was unsporting of me. Sorry. Still… I see the appeal. They'll be devastated. I don't want to make it any harder for them than it already is."

"What noble intentions to cloak your lies," she says acerbically, still smarting.

He huffs out a tired laugh. "Maybe. I'm trying to protect them, but also myself. Because they will grieve for me, but I'm already grieving for them since I know what's coming. Grief is a rather selfish emotion, don't you think? We grieve for the dead, but they're beyond our pity. They aren't sad or hurt or anything anymore. They're gone. We grieve for ourselves more than anything. For what—who—we've lost. But I can't really judge. I was the same as a kid, I think."

Porlyusica watches the clouds float by in wispy sheets and digs down into the grass until she can rub the grit of soil between her fingertips. She has never been one for speculation and philosophy. She likes cold, hard facts. She likes things she can touch. It has been a long time since she has allowed herself to question.

"It is selfish," she says finally. "And yet. We also mourn because the departed cannot. We mourn what they have lost, as well as what we have. The lost opportunities. The dead miss out on what could have been, and we pity them for it. Grief is for everyone, I think."

The boy makes a small noise, although she can't decipher what it means. His eyes are narrowed and thoughtful as he gazes out over the water, but his face gives nothing of his thoughts away.

Porlyusica tolerates it for a few minutes before shifting uncomfortably in the long grass. Her bones are too old and achy for the ground. They don't want to return until they are safely buried beneath it.

"We should go back," she says. "Your friends will notice us gone and come looking."

"Just a little while longer."

"But–"

"I have a lot of memories here," he says wistfully. "A lot of memories I want to remember. I'm getting weaker. I might not make it back again. Let me have a minute to say goodbye."

They lapse into silence. Porlyusica does not press him again, just watches the river and imagines the water swallowing his memories whole.

When he finally picks himself up, she rises silently beside him. He does not comment when she takes his arm and half drags him back through the city. She does not comment on how he can barely stay on his feet even with the support, and does not agree that he is probably right.

"Why do you hate people so much?" he asks a few days later. He is back in bed again, sitting up against the headboard. As far as Porlyusica can tell, he has not ventured from his apartment since their jaunt to the river. She wonders if he will.

"Why wouldn't I?" she asks. "You humans are all insufferable creatures, filled with hate and fury. Even the less irritating take great delight in fighting and waging war. And," she adds pointedly, withered fingers plucking at the pages of her book, "they cannot seem to be quiet and leave me to my reading."

He is unruffled and merely regards her thoughtfully. "Then why did you become a healer? If you hate people so much?"

"You'd all be dead without one," she says tartly, then sighs in irritation as he raises his eyebrows and looks unconvinced. "I don't care so much about the patients. I like the challenge of mending what is broken. It fascinates me."

"Then why not heal animals? Or tend a garden?"

"Because that is not the same," she snaps.

"Why not?"

"Because…" She trails off.

She has always known where she stands, never lacked conviction, but now she feels like she's on unsteady footing. No one has asked her before. She has never had to explain herself. She has always been the cantankerous old misanthrope lurking in the background, only called forth when some fool has pushed their body beyond its limits. She is very rarely addressed as a person. It is something she encourages, but she finds she is woefully unprepared for such a confrontation now.

"Because you are horrible, spiteful creatures," she says slowly, "but you should at least have the chance to improve yourselves. There's not much you can do to redeem yourself once you're dead."

He hums quietly to himself and slumps back against the pillows. "Yeah, I can see that. I almost died a couple times as a kid, and I was a horrible thing. I'm glad I had the chance to grow up and become someone better."

Porlyusica shoots him a look, because he is not as grown up as he should be and ought to have another sixty years to figure himself out, but she says nothing because he already knows.

"You came from Edolas, right?" he asks, changing the subject abruptly. "It's a pretty different world, isn't it? It must have been scary getting thrown into a crazy world with people who were sort of the same but not."

She shifts in the chair, wondering when the cushion got so hard. She isn't sure how she feels about him turning the conversation on her when usually it's firmly focused on him. As a rule, she does not talk about herself. As a rule, no one cares enough to ask in the first place.

"I suppose," she says.

"What was it like discovering that magic is real here, that people just have it inside them?" His face is wide open and curious, and she still doesn't understand why he's interested.

"Strange," she says shortly. "But also…fascinating." Despite herself, she thinks back to when she first fell to Earthland all those decades ago, her wide-eyed wonder at the magic that was so second nature to its strange inhabitants. It has been a long time since she's thought of it. She was a different person then—these children would not believe it was her if they saw. "I took science to it and tried to figure it out. And healing ended up being somewhere in the middle."

"Were you ever jealous?" he asks. She wonders if his questions are born of his preoccupation with losing his magic. He has compared it to losing all his limbs at once. "What magic would you want to have, if you could?"

"The magic to steal the voices of chatty humans," she says, and he grins. She does not dwell on his first question. She has long since come to terms with her place in this world, and she no longer dreams of waking up with power at her fingertips.

"If you had healing magic like Wendy on top of all your other healing stuff, you'd be pretty unstoppable."

"Death would still win in the end," she cautions. "Not everything can be healed, no matter how strong your herbs and magic."

His smile is a little wistful this time. "Fair enough." He's quiet for long enough that Porlyusica goes back to her book, satisfied that he has finally decided to leave well enough alone, but then he blurts out, "Are you afraid of death?"

If the conversation was making her uncomfortable before, it is a hundred times worse now. She is no therapist, and she should not be the one helping him come to terms with his impending demise.

"Why should I?" she asks. "I'm not the one who's dying."

This might be unnecessarily cruel, but she intends to shut this line of conversation down from the start. Unfortunately, the boy does not seem deterred.

"I thought it might be something on your mind too. You know, since you're like a hundred."

Her head snaps up, and the boy is all wide-eyed innocence with a hint of a cheeky smile tugging at his lips that he can't hide.

"You think I'm how old?" she demands.

"Not a day over twenty," he says promptly, the mischief glittering bright in his eyes. She thinks she preferred it when his mind was too clouded for him to sharpen his tongue.

She grumbles a slew of unflattering epithets under her breath and turns back to her book, intending to ignore him. She'll give him two more minutes and then leave him to his friends' tender mercies.

But then he asks, so softly that she almost misses it and she's not entirely sure whether he meant her to hear at all, "Are you?"

She stares down at the page, unseeing. She's quiet for a long time, sifting through the feelings his incessant probing uncovers.

"Yes," she says. "I'm running out of time too. Maybe that's why I became a healer in the first place, because I have always been afraid of death and wanted to learn how to protect myself from it. There were no noble intentions—it was always a selfish occupation. But I never pretended it was otherwise, did I?"

"You still help people too," he says. "But either way, I don't think it's selfish. I think it's not giving up."

Gray leaves her shaken. He has carefully peeled back her layers and is suddenly seeing her as a person just like him. And it worries her that she is starting to see him as one too.

"My parents died when I was little," Gray says a few days later. He looks small and shrunken huddled beneath the covers, without the strength to sit up. His friends have been accosting Porlyusica more frequently as of late, terrified by his fading. He doesn't have much left in him. "They were killed by a demon. One of the demons of the Books of Zeref, actually."

Porlyusica practically squirms in her seat. She is not sure she wants any more of his stories, and even less so a tragic one.

"Why don't you tell your friends?" she asks. "I know you don't want them to–"

"They already know," he interrupts. "Not necessarily because I wanted them to, but it got dragged up eventually. Anyway, the demon destroyed the whole city. As far as I know, it might have killed everyone but me. And then my master, the one who taught me magic, found me while poking around the rubble with her apprentice. She took me in and taught me her magic and tried to knock some sense into me, but I was still grieving and angry. I hated everything, you know? The world wasn't fair and the people I loved were dead, and I hated everything that was left because it wasn't enough."

Porlyusica thinks back to the questions he asked her about hating people, about feeling out of place and alone. She wonders.

Gray's eyes are fever-bright and glassy, and she's glad she can't see whatever he's seeing.

"And so I ran after the demon, because what did I have left to lose?" He huffs out a hollow, bitter sort of laugh. "I was going to kill it or die trying. But my master, she came after me. And when not even she could kill the demon, she sacrificed herself to save me and sealed it with iced shell. I could never forgive myself for that, because she died protecting me when I didn't even want to live. I knew I would probably die going after the demon—I just didn't care."

Porlyusica watches wide-eyed, not sure how to reconcile the boy she's grown to know with the picture he's painting now. That's not how a child is supposed to think. Children are supposed to have some time to grow up before learning what a terrible place the world can be.

"And then later," Gray says, his voice wavering just a little, "when I tried to use iced shell myself… There have been times when I wanted to die, you know? Or just didn't care enough to live. But now…" He chokes on his laugh like a sob, and his eyes are shiny with tears. "Now that I'm actually dying, I don't want to die anymore. Now I want to live. Isn't that just the grandest joke of all?"

He curls into a ball beneath the blankets and hides his face in the pillow. His whole body shakes and his choppy breaths rattle in his throat as he sobs in earnest.

Porlyusica half rises and reaches out a hand, but leaves it hovering in the air. She does not do comfort, and has no idea how to go about it even if she wanted to start now.

In all the months since his diagnosis, she has not seen Gray break down like this. He has never, not once, admitted how afraid he is, how unfair it is, how he wants to live and it kills him that he cannot. He has never cried like this.

At least not when anyone is watching.

"I'm scared," he gasps, voice breaking and muffled in the pillow.

The raw emotion in his voice drags Porlyusica forward another step, tugging dangerously at something in her heart. Her fingers stretch a little farther, her resolve wavers a little more.

"Gray…"

He looks up, pale face—positively pallid, ghastly white with skin pulled tight over the sharp angles of his cheekbones—streaked with tears and dark eyes—she stares into the void, and the void stares back—glistening. She can't catch her breath.

"You don't care, right?" he asks in a small, breaking voice. He seems so small, suddenly. Truly a child.

Porlyusica's hand drops back to her side.

"No," she says, the word broken glass in her throat. "Of course not."

And because she does not care, she is permitted to sit at his bedside and watch him break.

The weaker Gray grows, the more desperate he seems to talk. About anything, everything, but mostly himself.

He's doing it to his friends, too. When Porlyusica comes over to check on him, he always seems to be talking to the people gathered at his bedside. When he's awake, at least, which is becoming less common. But he talks to them about happy things: happy memories, bright futures he won't be a part of, silly jokes. And feelings, which seem to unnerve his friends more than anything else.

"He always shows he cares, but he's never so open to talking about it," the redhead says, her face all pinched up. "It's weird."

The blonde seems to understand first.

"He's saying goodbye!" she wails, fleeing the room in tears.

Porlyusica says nothing as she edges past into the room and shuts the door behind her. That, she suspects, is exactly what's happening.

Even once it's too much effort to feign happiness for any length of time, he can always summon up a frail smile and keeps his calm when his guild is in the room.

It's a different story with Porlyusica. Sometimes he's calm enough, even feeling positive enough to chat about lighthearted things. Sometimes his calm is tinged with melancholy, and so are his stories and words. Sometimes he's sunk so far down into his depression that he barely bothers trying to speak at all. And sometimes, deteriorating in tandem with his mind and body, he falls into feverish, desperate fits where the words won't stop pouring out of him in disjointed ramblings.

Porlyusica sits in the chair at his bedside with her book open on her lap and pretends to read while she listens. She wishes she could tune him out, run back to her cabin in the woods and go back to ignoring the world, but she doesn't. She can't. Whatever spell he's woven over her is too sticky to escape.

He talks about his family and his friends, about how he got his ever-present necklace and every scar. He tells her about everyone he has ever loved or hated, every sacrifice he's ever made for the people he cares about and every selfish, uncharitable thought he's had that they don't deserve. He talks about his dreams and nightmares, the goals he'll never meet and the futures he'll never have.

But mostly he talks about the past in all its gruesome detail, everything from Deliora to the time mage's sacrifice to finding his father in a demon guild. He talks about the good too, about the family he had and the family he's made and the family he's lost and recovered, but it seems like he uses it all up with his guild and has only the broken and ugly left when Porlyusica comes around.

He cracks his ribcage wide open to bare the bloody heart beating beneath, and once he finally opens up, it all pours out of him like lifeblood slipping between his fingers. It's like he can't stop. It frightens Porlyusica, because she has never known anyone so intimately as she knows Gray in those last few weeks. By the end, after he's moved on from his memories and detailed every thought and feeling he's ever struggled with, she feels like she knows him better than she knows herself.

As for the other things he says, the insecurities and guilt and broken thoughts… Well, those are meant for her ears alone, and she will never breathe a word of them to anyone.

She doesn't interrupt, either, or ask him to stop. He is running out of time, and the words can't leave his mouth fast enough.

She only gets breaks when his mind begins slipping into hazy half-awareness even without the medicines. He sleeps more and more. It's hard to wake him up, and even harder to bring him to full awareness rather than groggy twilight.

"I just… I thought we'd have more time," the blonde whispers as everyone gathers round to watch the slumbering boy. His breathing has become so shallow, his face so pinched and pale, that he looks dead enough already.

Porlyusica does not say what she is thinking, which is that of course there wasn't as much time as they expected, because even after everything, they never quite accepted that he would die at all. They believed they could save him, right to the very end. She also does not say that they are right because Gray gave up on the medicines too early. That is just another of his secrets she will carry to the grave.

In the last few days, the words seem to dry up. Gray is mostly unconscious, and doesn't have the energy to say much of anything even when his eyes are cracked open in half-crescents. Now that he's spilled himself out, there's nothing left to say. He has no more of himself to give. Even his friends are met with blank, glassy stares and silence.

Porlyusica continues to sit in the chair at his bedside with her book open on her lap and pretends to read while she listens to the silence.

One day, Porlyusica lets herself into Gray's room and he is sitting up against the pillows propped against the headboard. His eyes are quick and sharp, like the boy she first remembers meeting, rather than dulled and faded. He looks more alive than he has in weeks.

"You're awake," she observes. Yes, brilliant deduction, Porlyusica.

A faint grin flickers across Gray's face. "So I am. I know you've missed my scintillating conversation."

Porlyusica sighs. She has, but she hasn't.

"And what, pray tell, do you want to prattle on about today?"

His grin flattens into something softer. "Nothing, really," he murmurs. He leans back, eyes flickering closed, and she thinks he will soon be floating off in unconsciousness again. "I don't have much left to say, I guess."

"Goodness knows you've already said more than enough," Porlyusica grumbles, because that's her job and she certainly hasn't gone soft.

Gray hums quietly, and they sit in silence for a few minutes. Porlyusica tries to read but always finds her gaze drawn back to him, assessing his condition. It's hard to judge. It always has been.

"Thank you," he says finally.

She raises one eyebrow. "For what?"

"For listening, I guess. I know I haven't been the most…pleasant company." A faint smile tugs at the corners of his mouth again. Self-deprecating, almost. "I've never told anyone those things, you know. Never really wanted to. I never much liked talking about myself or my past. But you know… I'm going to be dead soon, and I realized that I've never told anyone anything. When I'm gone, I'll just disappear and no one will even know who I really was anymore. I thought I wanted it that way, until it was actually happening."

Porlyusica shrugs. His brutal honesty doesn't unnerve her anymore. She understands the paradox of wanting to keep things private but also wanting to be seen by someone, although she doesn't think she would ever take the plunge and spill all of her secrets in the first ear she ran across. But she supposes that everyone faces death differently, and who is she to judge when she has not been in his place and has not yet looked death in the eye? She doesn't yet know how she will react when that day comes, no matter how many times she has imagined it.

"I don't suspect you'd disappear," she says. "You seem to have made a big impression on your guild—they'll remember you. At least the good pieces, the ones you've shown them. Not," she adds fatalistically, "that I'd imagine it will do you much good while you're rotting in the ground."

Gray laughs. "I knew there was a reason I kept you around. You're always such a charmer."

Porlyusica sniffs. "Flattery will get you nowhere."

"No, I don't suppose it would. Not with you." He coughs weakly and twitches. Even his spasms have been getting weaker. He sighs, and Porlyusica hears the humor draining from the sound. "I'm sorry," he says. "I'm afraid I've been using you."

Her eyebrows climb back up her forehead. "For what? You rejected my medicines, so I suppose it would have to be my witty charm and good looks."

Gray almost smiles. "I knew I could make a sense of humor rub off on you eventually." She snorts derisively, and he sighs again. "I wanted to just be totally honest for once in my life. No masks, no secrets, no half-truths. And I was honest with the guild too, but only about the good stuff. It's already really hard on them, you know? They didn't need all the ugly crap too.

"You were just convenient because you didn't care. You weren't going to miss me or mourn me, so you could take all the bad and ugly and be unaffected. But that wasn't really fair to you either. It was pretty selfish, but I guess I was kind of desperate."

Porlyusica fiddles with the book's pages absently. None of her books have prepared her for what happens when a dying boy barges into her heart and tramples everything before slipping back out. Honestly, she had thought she was better than this.

"Maybe selfish," she says. "But also not giving up. We do what we have to in order to survive another day with our spirits intact."

Gray snickers. "You're getting maudlin in your old age."

She glares. "Excuse me?"

But she doesn't have the energy to be angry. Selfish or not, Gray has also taken the time to ask Porlyusica about herself and converse with her like an equal—a friend, almost—when few others do. And as uncomfortable and unsettling as it is—as it is, she suspects, for both of them, as neither is accustomed to letting down their walls—it's something she might…miss. It's something she might miss when he's gone.

Gray grins and fumbles with the chain around his neck. His fingers shake and twitch, and it takes four tries for him to undo the clasp. Porlyusica watches. She is not in the habit of giving aid unasked for, and he is not in the habit of accepting it.

Finally, he coils the chain in his palm and hands it over. Porlyusica eyes it in distaste.

"Here," he says.

"Why? For what?"

He shrugs. "I don't know. You can keep it. You're the only one who knows the story behind it, anyway. And this is something my friends can use to obsess over when I'm gone. Chuck it in the river, bury it in the garden, sell it for a few jewels. I don't care. I won't have any more need of it."

Porlyusica gives him a sharp look but takes the necklace. She won't do any of those things, and he knows it.

"Thanks," he says. "For everything."

Porlyusica closes her eyes. She realizes what's happening. As the blonde realized before, Gray has been saying his goodbyes to his friends. And now, finally, he is saying goodbye to her.

"Shall I send in your loudmouthed friends?" she asks, pulling herself to her feet.

"Yes, please do. Might as well, since I'm finally awake enough to talk to them." Gray's smile fades, and his eyes are sad as he studies her face. "It's still okay, right? You'll be okay?"

Porlyusica clears her throat and turns away. "Of course. I've never been one for caring."

"I'm sorry," Gray says softly, and his voice is as sad as his eyes.

Porlyusica pretends not to hear. "I'll send in your friends." She pauses in the doorway, fingering the cool metal of the chain winding about her palm. "I don't believe in any sort of life after death either. But my mother did, and she was always a far sight smarter than me."

"A mother?" Gray asks with a breathy chuckle. "You?" And then, quieter, "Yeah, my mom did too."

"Fewer things in this world are more stubborn than a mother," she says wisely, as if she has a great deal of worldly experience in such matters. "If anyone can reshape life and death, it's them."

"Fair enough." There's just a hint of a smile in his voice. "I'll see you on the other side, then. I guess there's no point giving up so close to the end."

No, Porlyusica thinks, there isn't. Whatever they do or don't believe, it's not like they know. Gray is nothing if not a fighter. There's no point thinking it's the end until it's over. He's come too far to give up now.

"I'll see you later, then," she says as she walks out the door.

"Goodbye," he says quietly.

Porlyusica does not go to the apartment the next day. She sits in the chair by her window and looks out over her garden, rubbing the silver chain between her fingers. She is not surprised when Makarov knocks on her door later that evening, tears clouding his eyes.

She is not surprised when he tells her that Gray is dead.

She does not mourn, because she promised she would not. But she holds Gray's necklace in her hand and stares out the window and remembers.

Note: I know I said this was kind of a character study of Gray from an unusual perspective and it is, but I wanted to explore Porlyusica's character a little too. She's basically a non-entity and we don't know too much about her, but it's hard to write a story from someone's POV and not try to get in their head at least a little. I dunno, I have kind of a soft spot for her after she popped up in scenes from the "Because" verse, "Recon", "Heat Stroke", etc. I didn't really want to get too in-depth, but I admit that I enjoyed the challenge of unwrapping her personality just a little. And it made me appreciate her outside-looking-in perspective of Gray and his struggles more too, so that was a bonus.

And poor Gray deserves better than we give him X) I almost feel bad killing him off again lol

emmahoshi: A slice of life, a slice of death—all the fun stuff lol Yeah, it was a little different, but fun to dabble in for a short piece. I end up writing the same few relationships so often that occasionally it's nice to try something new and challenging, as much as I love my favs. I wasn't sure how well Porlyusica would cooperate, but I think she turned out okay in the end. Definitely a challenging character who didn't always want to go where I prodded her, but I had fun with it. Hope you are doing well :)