#the brush I use is too blendy this small

[zarvasace]

No vampire chapter today (and it’s the holidays so maybe not for a few weeks) but I was rereading and I love them

[primordialpaper]

Gray and Wendy brotp

“Considering the amount of blood lost, Lockser’s fortunate Wendy got to her when she did. As it stands, though, I see no reason why she wouldn’t make a full recovery.”

“And Gray?”

“Hmph... He could do with a lecture on how foolish it is to ice over his wounds instead of receiving proper treatment, but he ought to be fine as well.”

Gray’s focus on Porlyusica and Evergreen’s whispered discussion didn’t hold much further past the words “full recovery”.

The nightmare world he’d been living in less than an hour ago, the crushing weight of his grief, dispelled by a girl who’s head barely reached his chest...

Gray doubted Wendy fully understood the gravity- the depth- of what she had done.

It was understandable, he supposed. She hadn’t been with them when the matter had first come to light, back on Galuna Island, and he’d never seen fit to bring it up with her once she’d joined. No sense filling her young head with tales of his losses. Not when she had enough of her own to deal with.

Still, the warm, living body lying beside him, light blue tresses fanned out delicately on the ground as Porlyusica tutted and hemmed over the state of their injuries was like a fantasy. She was still here. He’d thought that she had died, like Ur, offered up her blood like Ultear had her youth, for him. That he was alive only at the cost of yet another person’s sacrifice.

Wendy had spared him from that fate.

It occurred to him, as his consciousness faded, that while he hadn’t been once more saddled with a life-debt he could never pay back, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be able to thank her properly.

Gray leaned more than a bit against Juvia, watching as their errant Dragon Slayers embraced close friends and teammates, the sun shimmering off the crystalline orb that was Acnologia’s final resting place. When but an hour ago their world looked as if it was ending, it now seemed to release a breath of relief. They had won.

The collective mages’ ecstatic murmuring and cheers of victory were shattered by a cry of pain.

Gray’s head whipped around just in time to see a shock of deep blue hair flutter to the ground.

“Wendy!”

He was hardly the only person to cry out at the sight. The pink haired girl, Chelia, he recalled, dropped to her knees beside Wendy, big blue eyes wide with worry as she surveyed the blood soaked state of the bandages wrapped around her thigh. Gray had noticed the injury back when they’d first reclaimed the Port, but Wendy had paid it little mind, dutifully healing Erza while they all waited anxiously. It was with a sickening jolt that he realized, now hours later, that her upper thigh had been pierced clean through.

Forget fighting- She had walked on that leg?!

Dimly, he remembered her doing just that, while supporting Juvia no less. The pair of them drawing closer to him, smiling. It had been the last thing he saw before losing consciousness.

No words needed to be exchanged for him and Juvia to rush over together.

“-this close to the femoral artery, no wonder it’s hemorrhaging.” Chelia was muttering under her breath, small, pale hands pressing sodden bandages against the entry and exit wounds. There was hardly any white left to be seen on the wrappings.

“It’s ok- I’m... I’m ok,” inconceivably, Wendy was weakly muttering reassurances, even while she seemed unable to sit up from where she laid on the pavement. Stifling what might’ve been a whimper, Juvia shuffled forward on her knees, and carefully guided Wendy’s upper body to lay on her lap. She breathed whispers Gray couldn’t catch into the crown of her head, gently brushing errant strands of midnight blue off Wendy’s face.

“Can I- is there a way I can help?” Gray felt a prick of shame at relying on a 15 year old for guidance, but this girl was a healer, and he’d long ago learned their word was law when it came to treating injuries. Though, she wasn’t using any healing magic now... Had she exhausted herself in all the fighting?

Before this train of thought could go any further, Chelia’s eyes snapped up to him. He saw them flicker with recognition, and she asked briskly, “You have Ice Magic, right?”

He nodded mutely.

“Put your hands where mine are and apply pressure.” hesitating for only an instant, Gray cupped both sides of the wound just as Chelia slipped her hands free. The warm, tacky feeling of blood coated his palms, and Wendy’s leg jumped under his much larger hands, but he held fast.

“Blood vessels constrict under colder temperatures.” Chelia’s gaze bored into him. Gray was aware of the growing commotion around them as more people noticed the state Wendy was in, but he didn’t dare look away from the pair of cobalt eyes that demanded his attention. They were almost the same color as Wendy’s hair. “In order to stop the bleeding, you need to emit enough cold to slow the blood flow and encourage clotting, without lowering the temperature too much and causing tissue damage. Can you do that?”

“Yes.” Gray was calling frost to his hands before the words even left his mouth. His own body barely felt the cold anymore, but he still remembered Ur’s dire warnings about what temperatures were dangerous for the average human, and how long one could withstand them before frostbite and necrosis set it. As long as things stayed above forty degrees, he could maintain this for close to an hour before it became hazardous for Wendy.

Wendy gave a hoarse noise of discomfort at the sudden cold, but she seemed to be fighting to stay conscious, eyelids fluttering as her head tilted to and fro. At this close proximity, Gray took note of another wound- a nasty gash- on her right side. It wasn’t bleeding terribly like the wound on her leg, but it looked particularly savage, like it’d been made by talons rather than a blade.

Just what had this war put Wendy through?

“Move! Get out of my way, you fools!”

Never before had Gray been so elated to hear the sharp, steely voice of Fairy Tail’s head Medical Advisor.

Like always, crowds hastened to disperse at Porlyusica’s command, and Gray soon found himself looking up at the gimlet-eyed medicine woman. With an efficiency that spoke of years of experience, Porlyusica knelt and began rummaging through the bag at her side. Without looking up, she gruffly intoned, “Fullbuster, keep that up. Lockser, prevent her from moving around too much. Blendy-” Gray thought he saw Chelia tense, like Porlyusica was about to say something dreadful. The crone herself actually paused, stilling for the briefest moment, before thrusting out a large roll of bandages to the pink-haired girl. “I’m occupied here, and with Wendy in this state, you’re the only other person with any idea how to treat the wounded. I need you to triage those gathered here, and guide whoever’s able in taking care of any injuries. I’ll address those you deem critical shortly. Got that?”

Chelia’s eyes glistened, and her gaze flickered to Wendy’s barely conscious face. Quick as a flash, she kissed her first two fingers, and then pressed them to the other girl’s cheek. Just as swiftly, she leapt to her feet, snatching the roll of bandages with a firm, “Yes, ma’am!” before bounding away to begin her task.

Porlyusica set to work just as quickly, packing some kind of salve onto a square of fabric, and instructing Gray to hold it against the exit wound while she prepared another pad for the entry wound, after which they would bind them in place. At one point, Wendy roused slightly, and she gazed blearily around. Her eyes fell on Porlyusica- specifically, her hair- and Gray’s heart clenched when they quickly filled with tears.

“Chelia... I’m sor-sorry... I’m so s-sorry...” Juvia attempted to shush her gently, but Wendy was inconsolable, weeping softly until exhaustion dragged her back under. When Porlyusica’s work was finally done, Gray retrieved his hands, before an instinct he couldn’t place urged him to fit one of Wendy’s small, limp hands in his own. His thumb traced comforting circles on the back of her hand as his gaze scanned the crowd of assembled mages, eventually falling on the small pink haired girl currently throwing caution to the wind and scolding Erza as she examined a wound on her shoulder.

While most everyone was alive and well- or at least on the way to well- and their enemies were bested, Gray got the distinct impression that their victory was not without sacrifice. It was simply a matter of what it was, and who had paid the price.

~~~~~~

Gray got his answer one week later, as he and Lyon shared a moment of respite from their work repairing the damage done to the Fairy Tail guildhall. The mages from Lamia Scale, Blue Pegasus, and Sabertooth had ruthlessly bowled over the Fairies’ protests, citing that the conflict with Alvarez had been a matter of countries rather than guilds, and took to clearing up Magnolia and the surrounding areas with zeal alongside their fellow Fioreans.

“Chelia can’t use magic anymore?” Gray had to make certain, on the off chance he’d heard Lyon wrong, even if he knew he likely hadn’t. His adoptive brother’s solemn head shake dashed those hopes quite efficiently.

“Ultear was very clear, from what I’ve heard. Unlocking her Third Origin permanently crippled the other two magic containers in her body. Biologically, it isn’t quite the same as if she was a non-mage, but there’s no known remedy for Origins that sustained such damage.” a shadow passed over Lyon’s face, and fist trembled faintly. “To think, the two youngest among us were fighting for their lives, for our lives, in the time it took us to blink.”

Gray ruminated on something he could say to that, with no success. Wendy and Chelia, for all their prodigious talent and combative skill, still evoked in their guildmates an innate urge to protect and shelter them. No matter how irrational it may be, it felt like a failure on their part when their younger companions were harmed. He remembered holding Wendy’s limp, listless body in the dungeons back in Edolas, feeling his stomach drop in that awful moment of panic when he failed to sense even an ounce of magic power within her, like she was... gone. Chelia wasn’t gone, but a piece of her...

“I’m honored to be her guildmate.”

Gray’s gaze snapped back to Lyon.

“It’s very likely that Chelia saved all of our lives, that day.” a fierce, blazing sort of pride overpowered any lingering guilt in his voice. “Against an enemy with such power over time, in the guise of a god, we wouldn’t have stood a chance. In her last act as a mage, Chelia achieved the greatest feat possible for a wielder of her magic; she struck down a god. We all lived to see tomorrow thanks to her devotion to protecting her comrades. To have someone capable of love like that, of strength like that, as a member of my guild... I’m grateful beyond words.”

Tactfully, Gray turned away in order to let Lyon compose himself, not at all because his own eyes grew misty.

Through the small crowd of mages shuffling about, he spotted Wendy, who was sitting beneath an awning alongside Gajeel. She had been expressly forbidden from taking part in any physical labor, owing to the state of her still-healing leg, much to her ire. It had taken almost two days worth of arguing before she was allowed to cast Enchantments on those working to help lighten the load. Natsu and Gajeel, for once, worked together seamlessly as they took it upon themselves to ensure she didn’t strain herself.

Currently, Gajeel seemed to be listening readily as she spoke quietly, his perpetually stern expression giving nothing away. Wendy’s face was obscured due to both the angle and her long, hanging hair, but Gray could see the tension in the way she wrung the fabric of her skirt.

“I don’t think Wendy sees it that way.”

Wendy’s harshest critic had always been herself. When they’d first met, during their duel for Nirvana against the Oracion Seis, her propensity for self-flagellation had been severe enough that she almost became a liability. While Gray liked to think that her time with Fairy Tail and their unconditional, constant support had softened the tone she took with herself, he knew how easy it was to lapse back into old habits.

Whatever else had transpired in the battle with Dimaria, Chelia’s sacrifice was bound to be weighing heavily on the young Enchantress.

“Chelia feels the same.” Lyon’s reverent tone became more somber. “Wendy won’t press the issue with her out of respect, but Chelia’s certain she blames herself for what happened.” faintly, Gray could feel the uncanny coldness- a trait he no doubt shared- when Lyon’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. The icy pressure was welcome; bracing and invigorating. “For Chelia’s sake, and my own- for Wendy’s- keep an eye on her. We’re both familiar with what regret and self-reproach can do to a person.”

Gray thought back to a warped moon, streaming out baleful indigo light... the gentle, heart wrenching strum of a harp... the slick dapple of blood on his brow...

It had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done, accepting Ur’s sacrifice as a gift born out of her love for him. No matter how unworthy he felt, how desperately he wished he could change what had happened, it would have been the height of disrespect to disregard his teacher’s final act. She wanted him to live, without his darkness- his hatred and despair- as weights upon his soul. He didn’t dare fail to abide by that request.

“I don’t want that for her.” Gray didn’t want that for anyone. But the idea of his young teammate- the endlessly kind, selfless, fiercely caring girl he’d come to know- quietly suffocating under that guilt and loathing... it was unthinkable. “I won’t let that happen.”

He might not be able to chase wounds and pain away with a touch like Wendy, but his hands had crafted works of ice unlike any Maker mage before.

He’d be damned if they couldn’t hold his friend together as she threatened to fall apart.

[splendidlyimperfect]

It’s been thirteen years since Natsu and Gray met in a program for troubled youth - since they both fell apart and helped put each other back together. Now they’re married and happy, loving each other and the shared family they found. But the past doesn’t always stay past, and when the things that broke them come back into their lives, Natsu and Gray have difficult decisions to make - ones that could change their lives forever.

Chapter Summary: Sting needs help with Noah, and it gives Natsu the distraction he needs to stop thinking about his upcoming meeting with his dad.

Chapters (10/?): 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Natsu Dragneel/Gray Fullbuster, Rogue Cheney/Sting Eucliffe, Laxus Dreyar/Freed Justine, Cana Alberona/Lucy Heartfilia, Chelia Blendy/Wendy Marvell Characters: Natsu Dragneel, Gray Fullbuster, Rogue Cheney, Sting Eucliffe, Freed Justine, Laxus Dreyar, Wendy Marvell, Chelia Blendy, Ultear Milkovich, Lyon Vastia, Lucy Heartfilia, Cana Alberona Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Aged-Up Character(s), Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Fluff and Angst, Married Couple, Established Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Past Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Drug Addiction, Mental Health Issues, Foster Care, Family Issues, Tumblr: FTLGBTales, Grief/Mourning, Childhood Trauma, Bipolar Disorder, Adoption, Families of Choice, Nonbinary Character, Trans Character, Genderfluid Character, Forgiveness, Absent Parents, they’re really in love but are sometimes dumb, Natsu is a stubborn shit Series: Part 14 of the only hope for me is you, Part 3 of if you jump i’ll break your fall

-----

[July 26]

Neelan Langdree [14:45] Do you want to meet?

 [July 28]

Natsu Dubois-Tremblay [18:54] Yeah. Does this weekend work for you?

Neelan Langdree [18:57] Sure.

~

“Hey, buddy.”

Natsu crouched down a few feet away from the tree in the back yard of Sting and Ryos’ house. Noah sat there, knees pulled up to his chest, gaze vacant as he stared across the lawn. When he saw Natsu, his face brightened a little, but he didn’t uncurl from his position.

“Your dad said you’re having a rough day,” Natsu said gently. “Can I come sit with you? Or do you wanna be by yourself?”

Continue reading on AO3

Noah considered the question, eventually nodding and pointing to a spot a little way away from him. Natsu settled down with his legs crossed, then held out a cookie for Noah.

“I stole it from the pantry,” Natsu whispered conspiratorially. “Don’t tell Dad.”

A tiny smile crossed Noah’s face and he reached out, taking the cookie and then withdrawing to the tree again. He nibbled on it slowly, staring at Natsu the whole time. Natsu didn’t say anything else, just lay down in the grass with his arms behind his head and closed his eyes, letting the sun play across his face.

Nearly half an hour later, he felt a weight on his arm, and when he opened his eyes, Noah was curled up next to him. Natsu smiled, shifting so that Noah could lean on his chest.

“Story?” Noah asked, looking at Natsu. His eyes were the same bright, clear blue as Sting’s, and sometimes it was hard to believe that he was adopted.

“What kind of story?” Natsu asked. The sun had moved now and was casting dappled shadows through the tree. A ladybug made its way across Natsu’s chest, and Noah stared at it in fascination until it flew away. The only sound around them was the fountain bubbling, and someone mowing their lawn several houses away.

“Mm.” Noah shrugged, and Natsu raised an eyebrow at him.

“How about... ‘once upon a time there was a little boy named Noah who was kind of a turd but apologized to his dad for throwing his iPad?’”

Noah scowled at Natsu, sitting up and gently shoving him in the chest. Natsu laughed at the indignant expression on the five-year-old’s face.

“Pretty bad story, hey?”

“Bad,” Noah agreed. “Is ... th-the...” He huffed in frustration. When Noah was calm, speaking in simple sentences was easy for him, but as soon as he got upset, the words got lost.

Natsu sat up slowly, crossing his legs and tapping the back of Noah’s hand. “Show me with your hands,” he said. “I can’t read your mind, little man. I’m not Professor X.”

A small smile tugged at the corner of Noah’s mouth. Freed’s suggestion of teaching Noah to sign had made a huge impact on his communication. One of the people Freed worked with at the Pride Centre was Deaf and had started coming to the house once a week to teach everyone – Gray and Natsu included.

“Can you give me a feeling word?” Natsu asked. “Do you want to show me the picture or can you sign it?” He had an app on his phone with different pictures of expressions that Noah used occasionally, but today he shook his head.

Sad, Noah signed. He looked like he might elaborate, then shrugged.

“Yeah?” Natsu sighed, digging his fingers into the grass and looking up at the sky again. “Me too.”

Noah looked at him, surprised. “Why?”

Natsu didn’t say anything for a minute, trying to figure out how much to share with Noah. He was smarter than most people gave him credit for, and if Natsu made something up, Noah would see through it.

“I’m gonna see my dad soon,” Natsu said eventually. “I haven’t seen him in a really long time.”

Noah scooted closer to Natsu until their knees were touching. “Why’s sad?” he asked. Natsu tipped his head back and forth, then sighed.

“I’m scared,” he said eventually. “I know he’s my dad, but I don’t really know him. And I’m afraid that he might not like me.”

“I like you,” Noah said. He picked a dandelion and leaned forward to tuck it into Natsu’s hair.

“I like you too, bud,” Natsu said, smiling as Noah sat back and started picking more dandelions.

Noah spent the next few minutes piling up the yellow flowers in Natsu’s lap, then picking out the best ones and putting them in Natsu’s hair. Eventually he seemed satisfied and poked at Natsu’s hands.

Sad and angry because K, he signed. Natsu recognized it as his sign for Kylie, his biological mother. Tomorrow.

“You don’t wanna visit her?” Natsu asked gently. Noah shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

Noah huffed, then looked back over at the house. Stay with dad and papa, he said. And you. Not before.

‘Before’ was a complicated word for Noah. He had trouble differentiating between seeing Kylie now and living with her when he was younger, and he refused to call her ‘mom.’ It had been over a month since he’d called Natsu in the middle of the night, upset about seeing her for the first time in two years, and Sting and Ryos were still uncertain about them interacting. They’d tentatively agreed to let her spend the afternoon with him tomorrow – supervised by both Sting and the social worker.

“She don’t, won’t... won’t, um...” Noah scrunched up his face, then signed, don’t know. Don’t want before. Natsu’s heart ached at the uncomfortable expression on Noah’s face. Frustrated, Noah added.

“That’s a good word,” Natsu said, smiling at Noah. “Sounds like you’ve got a of feelings, huh?” Noah nodded sullenly. “It’s okay, my feelings get mixed-up sometimes too, and we can’t control that. You can feel however you wanna feel.” Noah looked up at Natsu hesitantly. “What you can’t do,” Natsu added, “is throw your iPad at your dad.”

Noah sighed, looking over at the house.

“I know you’re trying, buddy,” Natsu said gently. “I know words are hard, and that sucks. But your dads love you a lot and they just want you to be happy.” He tugged on a loose thread of his jeans, then added, “Grown-ups make mistakes too. I yelled at Uncle Gray last week.”

Noah’s eyes widened as he stared at Natsu. “Why?”

Natsu chewed on his lip, trying to figure out the best way to explain it to Noah. “Because I was scared,” he said eventually. “I made a mistake – I didn’t tell Uncle Gray something that I should have, and it hurt his feelings.”

“Lied?”

Natsu winced, then nodded. “Yeah, bud.”

“Not good.” Noah reached out and took Natsu’s hand, holding it loosely between his.

“I know,” Natsu said. Guilt still sat heavy in his chest every time he looked at Gray. “I shouldn’t have lied, and I shouldn’t have yelled – that just made it worse.”

“Uncle Gray is sad?” Noah asked quietly.

“Yeah,” Natsu said softly, “he was.”

“You said sorry?”

Natsu nodded. “I did, lots of times.” He squeezed Noah’s hand. “Do you think you can come inside with me now and say sorry to dad?”

Noah chewed his lip for a minute, then nodded and stood up with Natsu.

“Flowers stay,” he said, grinning at the mess in Natsu’s hair. “It’s pretty.”

“I’m keeping these in forever,” Natsu replied, taking Noah’s hand and leading him back to the house.

Sting was in the kitchen over the stove, but as soon as they came in the back door, he made his way over and crouched down in front of Noah.

Sorry, Noah signed, looking at Sting dejectedly.

“It’s okay, bumblebee,” Sting said, brushing Noah’s hair out of his face and looking up at Natsu gratefully. “We’re gonna use words or signs or pictures next time, right?”

Noah nodded, then pointed to the fridge where a picture of Kylie was held up with a magnet shaped like a duck. He shook his head and made an angry face.

Sting sighed, kissing Noah’s forehead and nodding. “Okay, you don’t have to go,” he said gently.

Noah’s face brightened and he gave Sting a small smile. “Love dad,” he said, wrapping his arms around Sting’s neck. Sting pressed his face into Noah’s hair, hugging him tightly before Noah let go and darted away to his room.

“Thank you,” Sting said, pushing himself up and reaching out to squeeze Natsu’s hand. “I can usually handle it, but with Ryos gone, it’s just...”

“Anytime,” Natsu said, shaking his head and ushering Sting back toward the kitchen. “Kids are tough without all the extra stuff.”

Sting nodded, grabbing the pasta from the stove and pouring it through the strainer in the sink. “Sometimes it feels like all we do is go to appointments,” he said, looking at the calendar on the fridge. “We had the speech pathologist yesterday, and Kylie tomorrow, and then Aspen’s coming for the signing on Sunday...”

“About that,” Natsu said, moving out of the way for Sting to mix the spaghetti back into the sauce on the stove. “Gray and I can’t make it this week.” Sting looked at Natsu with a raised eyebrow, and Natsu hesitated before saying, “I’m meeting my dad.”  

Sting didn’t say anything for a minute – Natsu knew that Sting was still upset about being complicit in Natsu’s lie to Gray. A familiar ache was nestled next to the guilt Natsu felt, a quiet whisper of, all you ever do is hurt the people you love.

“Is Gray going with you?” Sting asked eventually.

Natsu nodded. “Yeah. We’re going to Victoria – we’ll stay for a couple days. I…” He sighed, rubbing his face. “I feel like shit about all of it, and I know I said I was sorry before, but I just… and now I’m scared, and it feels like an excuse but I’m—I haven’t been feeling good, and Gray knew but I didn’t listen to him, and…”

“Hey.” Sting set the pot down in the sink and reached out for Natsu, pulling him close. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not,” Natsu argued, but he leaned into the embrace anyway. “I’m not trying to make excuses, I just…” He bit the inside of his cheek, trying not to cry. “I’m scared.”

“Of meeting your dad?” Sting pulled back, squeezing Natsu’s arm and leaning against the counter.

“Yeah. I…” He sighed. “I want to know why he left.”

Sting and Ryos knew about Natsu’s past and his parents – part of the reason that they’d decided to foster and adopt Noah was because of how similar his situation had been to Natsu’s childhood.

Sting was quiet for a moment, and Natsu kept his gaze on a mark in the hardwood.

“I know I might not get the answers I want,” he said quietly. “Gray and I already talked about it. I just… now that I know he’s alive, and he’s just—I’ve been to Victoria so many times. I could have walked past him and…”

“It’s a lot,” Sting said gently. “I’m glad you told Gray and that he’s coming with you.”

“Me too,” Natsu mumbled, rubbing his face. An uncertain silence hung between them for a moment.  

“C’mon,” Sting said eventually, nudging Natsu’s arm and handing him a stack of plates. “Help me set the table.” 

~

The doorbell rang ten minutes later, and Natsu could hear the pounding of Noah’s feet on the stairs as he ran to answer it. When he giggled and shouted Gray’s name, the anxiety that had started to thrum through Natsu subsided a bit. Even with everything – the fight, the tears, the uncertainty about Lyon – Gray was Natsu’s favorite person, and he always felt like home.

“Hey, you,” Natsu said as Noah dragged Gray into the kitchen by his hand. Noah pulled Gray right up to Natsu, then put both hands on his hips and gave Natsu a serious look.

“Sorry,” he said.

Natsu frowned. “Why are you sorry?”

Noah rolled his eyes, pushing at Natsu’s legs. “You sorry,” he clarified.

It took Natsu a second to realize what he was talking about, and he burst out laughing, looking up at Gray and reaching out for his hand.

“We talked about apologies earlier,” he explained.

“Sorry,” Noah said again, looking up at Gray. He tapped his arm, a mirror of where Gray’s snowflake tattoos were, as his sign for ‘Uncle Gray.’ “Sad,” he said to Natsu. “No yelling. Sorry.”

Gray’s expression softened and he crouched down, holding his arms out and waiting. Noah looked at him for a second, then leaned in for a quick hug.

“I already forgave Uncle Natsu,” he said gently. “And he forgave me, too.”

“You yelled too?”

Gray sighed. “Yeah.” He gave Noah a fond look. “We were both wrong, and we both said sorry, and everything is okay now.”

Noah thought about it for a second. “Grown ups mistake,” he said seriously, then leaned in and kissed Gray’s cheek before running off to the patio table on the back deck.

“Well, then,” Gray said, laughing as Natsu reached down and helped him to his feet. “Sounds like whatever you said to him stuck.”

“Mm.” Natsu pulled Gray close, pressing his face into the crook of Gray’s neck as Gray kissed his temple. “How was your meeting with Claire?”

Gray sighed, wrapping his arms around Natsu’s shoulders and resting his chin on Natsu’s head. “I dunno,” he said. “The hearing is in two weeks.”

“That soon?”

“Yeah.” Gray ran his fingers up Natsu’s back, tracing an absent pattern up his spine.

Natsu sighed at the sensation, then tipped his head back and searched Gray’s face. The tightness in his jaw and the way he didn’t meet Natsu’s eyes was telling. “You okay, Snowflake?”

Gray shook his head and Natsu made a sad sound as he saw tears start to pool in the corner of Gray’s eyes. “No,” Gray said roughly as he swallowed and tipped his head up, trying to blink away the tears. “I’m just… feeling a lot of different things, and my stomach hurts, and I feel like I’m going either throw up or cry.”

Natsu gently tucked Gray’s hair behind his ear. “You wanna go home?” he asked softly. “I can explain to Noah.”

Gray shook his head. “No, I wanna stay,” he insisted, pulling off his glasses and wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie. “I don’t want to think about it right now.”

“Okay,” Natsu said, leaning in and kissing Gray’s cheek. “Je t’aime.”

“Je t’aime aussi, mon couer,” Gray murmured, letting out a shaky sigh and then giving Natsu an uncertain smile. “C’mon,” he said, nodding toward the porch. “Noah’s waiting.”

[nom-the-skel]

Sans Tutorial?

Last year someone sent an ask for a tutorial about how I draw Sans, but I have been pretty busy and not gotten around to making it! I don’t know how helpful this will be, because it turns out my technique is basically:

1. draw a circle

2. draw the rest of the skeleton

But anyway, I’ll post the steps for this picture here :3

I have picked up some good tips from tutorials but I don’t use them very much because some are too basic, some are too advanced, some are written too proscriptively, and usually the example art looks way better than what I’m doing if I follow along. So my tips may be a mix of too-obvious and not-adequately-explained, but perhaps a few beginner or intermediate level artists will find something useful here :3 I will assume you know what layers are and have software that can do layers. I use Paint Tool SAI, which is pretty affordable, and there are other programs that are free.

First I draw a circle where I want the skull to be. I don’t necessarily stick with this circle as I continue sketching. And one of the advantages of drawing digitally is that I can move parts around if it’s not working. If I’m planning out a complex picture, Sans will be a circle with two more circles for eyes and a vague cylinder/blob as a body, at first.

Then sketch in more detail. Fingers are important, and I often have to go back and refine the sketch of the hands in the middle of doing the lineart.

There are many different and valid styles for drawing Sans. I always draw his eyes as this sort of arch-like shape, like a half circle that’s stretched out vertically. Even if they’re half-lidded, I start with the whole eye shape (and if they’re half closed they tend to end up pretty rectangular).

In this picture, I made his legs too short, then too long, and you can see some artifacts of how they got moved around and adjusted. (I pretty much never draw him just standing there in full-body, I guess owo) It’s much easier to adjust things in a sketch than after it’s been lined, so take your time. If I wasn’t feeling confident, or if I wanted to make the linework easier, or if I wanted someone to approve the picture before I did lines, I would do another, more-refined sketch on top of this one. But I’ve been drawing a lot of Sanses over the past few years so I didn’t :3 I do have a brush for sketches that is not totally opaque.

(Beginner tip: If you’re using a serious art program, you can reduce the opacity of the sketch layer and draw the next sketch in a new layer on top. This is how you’ll do the linework too. I also put Sans’s legs on a separate layer when I was adjusting them in this pic. This is also a good time to adjust the framing of the picture; I usually drew it too small and off-center. This pic is a bit off-center because I thought I might add text on the right side about the steps. But then I didn’t.)

Next is lines. In Paint Tool SAI, I can have multiple layers in a folder and select the whole folder as “selection source” (so I can fill in the colors later). This makes it easy to use a Lineart layer for the smooth curve of Sans’s skull, and a regular Raster layer for the rest of the lines. Of course, make sure the line width is similar. (Being able to choose a selection source other than “current layer” or “whole image” is one of the advantages of SAI in my experience.)

I used thin lines here. I don’t always, but sometimes I try to use thin lines and add plenty of detail and I’m pretty pleased with it. (Often if I want to save some energy I use thicker, rough-textured lines, so that you won’t be able to tell so much where I got the curve of the skull wrong and then adjusted it.) When I first started drawing Sans, I gave him too many teeth. Then I overcompensated and gave him too few teeth. Now I’ve settled on about this many teeth. I like to draw bony, skeletal hands. For any bones, Google image search is your friend. You don’t need to know the proper name of the bone; just search for the body area + bones. I usually draw the nose hole a bit more simplified. I don’t always bother with the drawstring. Sometimes I give him a turtleneck sweater so I don’t have to draw a glimpse of collarbone, ribs, spine inside his shirt. Idk why his tibiae are so thick today owo

Flat colors and cel shading. I like to put a bright color that contrasts with the colors I’m using in the background, so I can easily see corners that got missed by the fill tool. Usually, I do multiple layers of the base colors, so that I won’t have to worry about the edges when shading. (All the color layers are collected in a folder. Not the bg though; if it’s complex it will have its own folder.) Here, I used a shading layer for each base color layer (the shading layer is a clipping layer, so the shade color won’t be visible unless it’s overlapping its correct base color). I don’t like to be organized and label my layers, so I do the shading right after the base color, while I still remember what layer it’s on :3 You can also do the flat colors on one layer (or just in one folder) and then put a multiply or shading layer as a clipping layer over that for the shading (many fewer layers to deal with but you must pay more attention to the staying inside the lines). Aside from the sketches, I still haven’t used any brush other than the default pen. You can of course use more layers and more colors for fancier cel shading. I have used a few extra darker shades on Sans’s neck.

More shading. I usually choose between cel-shading and more shading, but I tried adding a little bit more here since it’s a tutorial. It doesn’t make a huge difference though; if I hadn’t done cel-shading, I would have made the blendy shading stand out more. You can do each color individually (here’s a tutorial about that), but you can also make a clipping layer over all the colors (flat colors on one layer or all the color layers in a folder) and make it a multiply or shade layer, and shading for all the colors there. I like to fill in this shading layer with white so it blends more between the light and dark. This is also a great technique for adding shading to something that has a pattern on its surface (e.g. you can add fur texture to your rainbow cat without painting the texture in every color of the rainbow). This is where I use brushes I adapted myself or stole from other artists :3 and another place where SAI has an advantage because it’s specifically designed to be good at painting. I lightened the background and added a little shadow (blurred with the watercolor brush).

Extra cross-hatchy lines. When I do thin lines, I like to add these lines as a little extra shading/detail. I usually do them before color, and on a separate layer so I can keep them out of the “selection source” when filling in flat colors. This time I did them at the end. They add a little texture to everything and I think they work well on the hand bones.

[miss-m-winks]

A Drawing Tutorial

I thought maybe there would be some of you who might appreciate seeing some of my artistic processes. So this is a quick tutorial about digital art! This is how I do a single-layer picture, and I’ll also be discussing composition a little.

First! doesn’t matter what program you use or what size your canvas is or what tools you use, that’s all personal preference. Experiment with different brushes and brush settings until you’ve figured out what you like best.

I have recently started thinking of a digital canvas as being just as much a part of the artwork as the subject itself. This is something that holds true in any art form. If you think of the surface you create on as being another art tool, it can really help you create nice compositions and use the space effectively!

so, with that in mind my first step is to tone my “paper” so the colors I’m going to use for the main subject will have a nice backdrop to contrast against. I toss down a few soft colors and blend them out so they cover the whole canvas

If you vary the colors, it also gives a nice ambient lighting feel. So now comes the base colors, this when I make my gesture sketch. A gesture is important because it is the blueprint for the whole drawing! Gestures are not just for people, but can also include any objects in a picture! I pick a color that stands out from the background without being too high in contrast and lay down a solid gesture with a big blendy type brush so it has a softer edge. This helps it look like it really belongs here. I’m also thinking about how I want the composition to look, and usually I do this all in one go, never lifting my stylus, so I better be committed to it because if I hit the undo button it’s all gone. I’ll be drawing my oc Kouto Loryck, who is in fact an art model.

it’s important to be committed to every stroke, be bold and confident with your art. Even if it doesn’t turn out the way you want, you should at least be able to say that you were committed to it. Don’t worry about mistakes, thinking too much will only keep you stuck on one little part when you could be working on the whole thing. I had another drawing here about composition but I accidentally saved over it so I had to move that explanation to a different step haha 

Next I lay out the highlights to pull out the details of the subject. I used the same brush for most of this drawing, just changing the size to accommodate what I was using it for. Since the base color is orange, I used a really pale icy blue to highlight, and the blending quality of the brush I used kept it toned down properly so it didn’t look psychedelic. There is nothing wrong with psychedelic coloring, I think it’s really fun, but it’s not the look I wanted this time.

Now let me talk about the composition a bit. The most common composition tool is triangles. Triangles make for really pleasing compositions. And composition is all about balancing the positive and negative space in your picture, as well as creating a pathway for the viewer’s eye to follow. b

I kept this one super simple. Two main triangles in opposing directions, the eye is drawn to the head of the subject and follows the body down to the bottom of the page. Plain, simple, aesthetically pleasing. Keeping a small negative space on the other side of the subject and making a small negative space within the subject also adds a little extra variety to it. One surefire way to make an interesting composition is to place the subject off-center, because it varies the weight of the picture and makes it feel more dynamic, even if it’s a really boring pose like this one; he’s just leaning against  some vague object behind him. But I’ve got him off-center and at an angle to the viewer, so it adds interest to the composition. 

Once I’ve got highlights done, I go in and add shadows, and then I blend things smooth.

It’s important to use just a few colors to keep things simple. They should be colors that compliment each other in some way. Unless you want the color contrast to look discordant, of course. But even when you’re intentionally using colors that don’t blend nice, make sure you have some neutrals to balance with.

Now it’s really easy for me to decide exactly what I want to do with this,  so I lay out a line layer on top to plan my next steps.

This helps me figure out if there’s anything that needs to be adjusted, see if I’ve got my proportions how I want them, etc. I can then use this as a reference later to keep everything in line with my plan. Now I can go in with a smaller brush and add in any extra colors to help separate the different parts of the drawing.

And I add in extra shading to bring out the details here

Blend, redraw, add color as necessary until it looks good.

And at this point I can call it a finished drawing if I want. Or I can keep lining and shading and detailing until I think it’s really done. 

I’ll just zoom in on the face area now to discuss detailing. I have some specific brush settings I like to use for details like hair. And with the hair I draw layers of a dark shade, the color of course depends on the hair. Draw the hair in layers, first laying down a solid color a college art teacher of mine called “the hair helmet” and then go on top of that with a thin, non-blendy brush to give it the look of lots of individual strands. A brush that already has the look of multiple strands is best because you don’t have to do as many strokes.

and then I go back over it with my softer brush in the main hair color, do a few more strand layers on top of that, and this time add highlights in a few places, then blend all of that very gently so it still looks like hair.

Next is the eyes! I use a pencil type brush to bring out the lash lines and eyebrows. For the eyes themselves I layer in pale yellows, pinks, and white highlights, leaving a little of the skintone near the upper part of the eye to blend into a shadow.

Time to color in the eyes! I start with a dark circle in each eye, depending on the eye color. the iris is a funky little shallow bowl in the eye, curving inwards so actually the light hits it on the opposite side from what you might expect. But the shiny white highlight is on the same side as the rest of the lighting because over the iris is a clear dome that curves outward, giving the eye two layers to highlight on different sides.The upper part of the iris is also usually in shadow because of the eyelashes

Draw in the pupils, add a few dark lines radiating out from it to give the eyes that realistic texture, and then toss on that nice bright highlight.

Next, I detail the rest of the face with extra highlights and shadows. Here I’ve mapped out where the main lights and shadows would fall.

And finally I add in extra outlines on the nose, mouth, and ears, as well as the darkest side of the face and anywhere else that might need it

I ended up adjusting his lips quite a bit to make them the right width and shape. The upper lip is always darker than the lower lip because of the way light falls on faces. Except perhaps in cases where all the light is coming from below.

But anyway, that is my basic digital painting tutorial! Hope you found it useful!

[himb0i]

!!!HEY!!! Someone asked for a hair tutorial, so I took some screencaps of the process while I worked on one of my commissions and wrote up my thoughts to go with it! If that’s something that interests you, click through the readmore!

Step 1: Lose the screencaps you took of your actual sketch, starting the tutorial off on a great note!

Whoops. I ended up drawing over my partially-rendered piece to reproduce it. (My actual sketch was much messier. You’ll be able to see a little bit of it later!) The actual Step 1 is: Draw head. Sketch hair. I rough in the shape of the skull, the facial features, and whatever part of the body is in-frame first. Then, I sketch in the hairline, highlighted in red. Hairlines come in all shapes, from rounded to square to widow’s peaks! Next, I draw in a part coming back from the hairline, following the curvature of the skull. From there I start drawing in “chunks” of hair, working front to back and from the part, out, in sweeping curves. All hair has at least little bit of lift- It grows up and out from the skull, then “droops” downwards. Depending on the texture, it may have more or less lift. This hair is fairly fine, so it falls down not far from the root, but even that little bit of volume makes it look more three dimensional. :v Pay attention to anywhere it parts around 3d objects and be mindful of which pieces go in front of your character’s shoulders (if any) and which pieces go behind (if any). Hair overlaps itself, too- Consider having pieces cross in front of and behind each other, or spiral together. This step can be messy and fairly imprecise, you just want a general shape to guide you later.

Next come the flat base colors. I choose and fill in my background color in a new layer beneath my sketch. On a layer above that (but still beneath the sketch!), I fill in behind my sketch with flat colors and a hard brush. I like to work from dark to light, so I pick a dark midtone or shadow color for this step- Since the character is going to be blonde, I went with a milk chocolate sort of color for the hair. You can see pieces of my original sketch here (everywhere but the face)- There are some bits showing through where they shouldn’t, like the jaw through the hair, but that’s fine. I lock my sketch opacity and change the color, usually to a brown, and set it to multiply, so I can blend it into the figure later. Then I merge it down onto my flat colors.

Like magic, the face appears!!! I neglect the hair for a while and do a rough render of the face. This isn’t quite what the final product will look like, but it’s a start. I’ve also pushed the hair around a little to reshape the face and removed the jaw lines in the hair. Around her shoulders I painted over some hair bits, but that’s going to be all covered later anyway. You can see how my rendering gets lighter than my base colors here, too.

For my darkest darks, mostly around the face, I colorpicked the bits of the sketch that were in the hair and filled in a little bit, mostly on the far side of the face where i felt like the edge was getting lost.

Keeping in mind what color the hair is going to be in the end, I pick a lighter midtone and start layering it over top of the base color. I’m using Clip Studio’s default oil brush here, since it picks up underlying colors and blends but preserves a fairly hard edge. You could get a similar effect with other low-opacity brushes. Keeping my hand light and my wrist loose, I start making quick strokes out from the roots, following the direction of the hair every time! My brush is just a little bit smaller than whatever “chunk” I’‘m working on to start..

...but as I start to build up more color, I progress to smaller and smaller brushes. Keeping your strokes really quick and messy creates a natural, organic streakiness that forms the beginning of your hair texture, and since the oil brush picks up a little bit of the underlying color on each stroke, the area you’re coloring gets closer and closer to your selected color every time you go over it. In this case, it’s getting brighter. So, keeping my brights concentrated towards my light source, I build up layers, and where I see those streaks starting to form I emphasize them and start dividing the chunks in my sketch into smaller segments. Since the sketch is on the same layer and a darker shade of brown, it almost immediately starts to blend away.

More texture! Also, roots. With a small brush I sharpened her hairline, and you can see the texture I’m emphasizing as I go, using a small brush to pick out pieces of hair. I’ve also swapped back to a darker brown for a few seconds to add furrows between pieces of hair that were solid beige from the last step.

This is what the whole head looks like at this point. That streaky swatch in the upper right corner is what I’m using next- it’s the “Painterly Sparse Bristle” brush from Frenden. It comes in a third party brush pack you can find with a quick Google, and I do love it- But you could get the same effect with a small brush and a few more strokes.I picked a lighter color for the next layer- I tried the color of the x on the left at first, and it was a little too grey, so I went with the one on the right.

Light hand, loose wrist, following the direction of the hair and avoiding the shadows with the sparse bristle brush to lighten the hair overall and add texture. The shape of the brush gives me more strands per stroke and cuts down on time. It’s a little patchy where my strokes begin and end, which is fine- It’s also still too grey, as it turns out.

I picked a soft yellow, a soft brush, and set a new layer to “soft light”, then shaded over the hair to brighten it up. Not a super standard step but it does explain the shift in hue. Then I merged it down. It’s a little bit blotchy, but that will blend away as I work.

Up close, the edges of that sparse bristle brush look kind of square and chunky. Yuck.

It’s fixable, though! I’m done adding new colors for a while. Instead, I zoom in closer and move around the piece, colorpicking off different parts of the hair and going in with the default oil brush at a tiny tiny size. I’m doing two things: Blending out the less appealing parts of those “sparse bristle” brush strokes, and emphasizing shadows and highlights to suit my taste. The orange section is untouched- The white section has been worked on a bit. Loose wrist, fast strokes, always in the direction of the hair! This is where I start making a lot of conscious decisions about my shading, refining a lot of the haphazard streaks into coherent shadows and highlights. Remember that the chunks of hair are objects in a three dimensional space that cast shadows on each other.

While I’m zoomed in close, smoothing things out, I tend to start picking out areas where loose or flyaway strands would work well. The idea here is to break outside of the boundaries of your sections with finer pieces and individual hairs. Disrupting the edges of the smooth shapes in a few places makes the hair look less like a sculpted helmet and more like..hair. You don’t have to do this everywhere- Just a few flyaway pieces can be enough to establish the illusion of a head of individual strands. I tend to go a little bit overboard for stylistic reasons, adding a few more than I strictly need to, and separating them a little bit further from the body of the hair than they might realistically be, almost like the flyaway pieces are being buoyed upwards by water or a breeze. This is just a matter of taste, though. :v

Something to remember: Whenever you’re working on details / zoomed in to a piece, you should zoom out and look at the piece as a whole, often. Otherwise you might find that something that looked good while you were really close to it looks out of place in the context of your painting as a whole!

Moving around the hair at a high zoom means you’re going to run into the ends of the hair, and if you’ve been working with blendy brushes they probably look like this.

This is another great place to put some loose strands. I use the default “darker pencil” tool at a small size and sharpen the edges up, then blend a little bit on top with the oil brush if I need to. A little bit of a sharper curve at the ends of the hair, where there’s less weight pulling it down, can add some life- I tend to go exaggerate here, too, making the ends a little bit floaty, or a lot floaty, or swirling the ends of straight hair into spirals. It adds a little bit of magic to an otherwise static portrait.

Do the whole head! This is the most time-consuming part, but it can be really soothing, too. Take your time and work steadily, section by section. :> Speaking of exaggerated swirls, that piece starting to twist up on the (viewer’s) far right is a good example- That hair probably wouldn’t twirl up that way, but it DOES add a little bit of visual interest! I don’t have any loose hairs on the outside of the outermost edges of the hair here, though.

And now I do. I like to add the loose hair on the outside edges on a layer beneath the figure- That way, I don’t have to worry about blending the ends into the rest of the hair. When I’m done, I merge the two layers together.

Anddd highlights! I picked the lighest coor I’d put down, made a new layer above the figure, set it to “Add-Glow”, and used light, short strokes with the sparse bristle brush. Avoiding the shadows, I arranged the highlights in horizontal bands, keeping them dense towards the light source and fading them out as they moved back.

At this point, I still have some work to do, especially on the face, and I’m guaranteed to do more with the hair along the way. But anything I do from here on out is going to be a repeat of one of the above steps- More blending, more flyaway hair, etc. :> I change things around a LOT as I work, so no part of a piece, hair included, is for sure done until the whole piece is polished up and saved! If you want to see how the finalized painting came out, hair and all, you can click here!

I hope this is helpful to someone! If there’s anything else you’d like me to break down, let me know, and I’ll see about documenting my process the next time it comes up.

[riverofmemoriesft]

. In Tenebris . 20

"Levy!" Natsu shouted from across the store, climbing halfway up a bookshelf to wave a book in the air. "Can I have this?"

Levy was stunned. "You want to read? You told Lucy you hated reading!"

He beamed. "It has a dragon like -" He cut off, thinking his words through, and Levy rolled her eyes in understanding. "Bring it here," she ordered, gesturing him over to her. She took it when he scampered over and rung it up, paying for it out of her own pocket. "You earned it. You didn't burn anything today."

"Thank you!" he said, grinning down at his book. It was a collection of stories based around dragons. There were carefully detailed illustrations, and Natsu eagerly flipped through it. Levy smiled at him and then checked the clock. Her smile vanished. "Put it in my purse," she told him. "It's time to head out."

Natsu became somber immediately, onyx eyes wide. "Okay," he agreed, doing as she said. He took a deep breath, puffing smoke out. Levy didn't bother to scold him. Now wasn't the time. She took his hand and gave it a tight squeeze.

"He promised you could go home tonight, just remember that, okay? If we have to, I can take us home early." She smiled kindly at him and he forced himself to smile back. He'd never been nervous about the experiments before. Never.

So it was nice to have Levy there. She was supportive, not scolding him for this. She was helping him where she could. "Thanks, Levy."

"No problem. Let's go."

They headed out, and Natsu wondered silently to himself if Lucy was okay and if the medicine that he hoped to attain from Zeref would help she and maybe Yukino. He knew that Sting was worried after what had gone down. Rogue, too. He couldn't blame either of them.

Since Levy's shop wasn't too far from the town square, it took them no time whatsoever to reach it. Natsu looked around casually, close to Levy. People walked past without a second look. No one knew what the two watchers were waiting for and looking for, what they had gone through.

Natsu wondered if they'd scream and run from him in terror.

"Natsu," a voice said softly. Calmly. Anyone else would have missed it, but his sharp ears caught his name, and Natsu turned on his heel, pivoting slowly. His gaze hardened into a stony look when he a suspicious looking man, who smiled lazily but stared at them with hateful eyes.

"There," Natsu grumbled, tugging Levy towards him with reluctance. Levy kept up with ease, his eyes narrowed. When they reached the man, he inclined his head.

"I am Mard Greer," the man told them, smiling again. Natsu said nothing, glaring warningly at Mard Greer. If he did anything wrong… "Zeref instructed me to come and meet with you here. We have medication for Miss Lucy Heartfilia." He handed that over to Levy, who studied the bottle of pills with wariness. "Zeref said to tell you that they will not cause harm, they will merely lull the voices into sleep until he can figure out what else to do."

"Thank you," Levy said tersely, giving him a suspicious look. That meant Zeref would likely come up with another bargain at a later time.

"For Natsu," Mard Greer continued, suddenly making a sound of delight that sent chills down their spines. Natsu forced his face to remain emotionless, his eyes staring darkly at Mard Greer to intimidate him. He gestured a hand, indicating that Natsu should step closer. "It would not do for the police to discover us, so if you don't mind…"

Natsu wasn't really sure on what the police were supposed to do - something about public service, Lucy had told him. He hadn't payed any attention to what she'd told him. But he did as Mard Greer said, already rolling up his sleeve in preparation. The injections Natsu had received previously were always injected straight into his bloodstream. It made sense.

But Mard Greer shook his head. "This is to be used on the same location used on Miss Heartfilia and Miss Auguria."

Natsu fought back a shiver at the thought. He always hated watching the ones that Gajeel had received. It was his turn now.

"We can't do that kind of injection easily here," Levy said stiffly.

"No," he agreed. "We can't. So you're going to accompany me to that grove of trees on the edge of the park and I will administer it there."

Natsu looked to Levy for permission. Levy inclined her head a fraction, but said, "I'm coming with."

"Of course."

Mard Greer led the way. Natsu fell into step protectively at the small woman's side, his onyx eyes flickering red as he looked this way and that. He knew just how tricky Zeref could be. He always was. He didn't trust him to leave Levy be.

She shot him a quick grateful look, smiling faintly.

"Here we are." Mard Greer turned on his heel to look at them. "Lower your head, Mr. Dragneel." Natsu reluctantly did just that as Levy watched, tightening her grip on her bag. His face was surprisingly pale. He let Mard Greer turn his head so that he could see in the dimmed lighting, removing a rather large needle from a pouch at his side-

Pain like no other split through Natsu's head and he flinched. He felt like his mind was melting, like someone had taken acid and poured it over his brain and then chopped it into bits. He wanted to scream, but didn't dare move or make a sound other than a low keening whine that spoke volumes of the agony he was in.

It was while this happened that Levy suddenly shrieked.

"Levy?" he rasped as the needle was removed. Natsu stumbled, clumsy. His vision was blurred, body heavy as he turned. He collapsed as Mard Greer stepped around him, smirking proudly. Levy wrestled furiously with a man that supported a psychotic grin while a small woman - girl, Natsu realized dully. She wasn't much older than Wendy! The small girl trapped her wrists above her head and the man knelt over Levy with one hand over her mouth to stop her and a syringe in the other. He offered it to Mard Greer with a laugh.

"Zeref broke his promise," Natsu snarled, tripping over his words.

"No," Mard Greer corrected, kneeling beside Levy as she thrashed to free herself. He took the syringe. "Thank you, Jackal. Make sure she can't scream. Zeref did not break his word. He swore that he would not lay a finger on Levy McGarden. He said nothing about us."

Levy thrashed harder, a muffled scream escaping her lips as he ordered Jackal to take one of her arms and hold it. He pushed the needle into her arm near the crease of her elbow. When he was done, he removed it. Levy spat at him, watching furiously when her saliva struck his cheek. Mard Greer didn't look too concerned about it, merely wiped it away. "Release her, Jackal, Lamy."

Lamy did so instantly, but Jackal hesitated, sneering at Levy. After a warning comment from Mard Greer, however, he shifted away. Levy was on her feet in an instant, swinging. Jackal sputtered when her elbow cracked across his face. Clutching his bloodied nose, he barked, "Bitch!"

"Jackal," Mard Greer warned.

Jackal fell silent, glaring.

Levy collapsed beside Natsu, who could only lie there, his head spinning. He gagged, feeling sick. Levy smoothed his hair gently back. "Hold on, Natsu, we'll go home, okay?"

Mard Greer purred, "It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss McGarden. I hope to see you in the future." He gestured for Lamy and Jackal to accompany him. Jackal bared sharp teeth at Levy one final time before they were gone, heading off.

Shaking, Levy drew her phone from her pocket. The screen was cracked, but she payed it no attention, lifting it to her ear after dialing Lucy's number. Natsu jerked, gasping, heaving for air-

"Levy?"

"Lucy," she croaked, tears in her eyes. She gave a muffled sob. "Please. The trees on the western side of the town square. We...we need help. Please." Her body ached, her heart pounded furiously in her chest. "Natsu can't...he's so, so sick, he can't move or breathe, and it hurts…"

"I can't drive," Lucy said briskly, her voice rising with fear for her friend. "My head's hurting too much, I can't even see straight. I'll call Gray. Gray should be free today."

"Okay. Please hurry." Levy's eyes stretched wide as Natsu cried out, shoving her away hastily. Flames burst from his skin, inky black marks etching themselves onto his skin. Claws of black that spread up his arms appeared and his horns shoved themselves free - the original two, followed by two new horns on each side, four in total. They were smaller than the original, but just as sharp and deadly.

"Natsu," she urged, batting at flames. They licked at her hands, burning, but she ignored the pain, squeezing his shoulder lightly. "Hold on, Gray's going to come pick us up, okay?"

He didn't respond, his wild eyes rolling, seeking something.

And then he fell unconscious. The flames vanished along with everything else, and he was simply Natsu, dead to the world.

Lucy fidgeted, fumbling with the phone in her hand. Gajeel stood beside her, jaw working furiously as a car pulled into the driveway. "Do you think Gray will be here soon?"

"Maybe." He leaned on the doorframe, Wendy trotting over to stand with them as Mirajane helped a frightened girl about Wendy's age out of her car. She stumbled once, caught herself, and then raised her chin. Lucy's heart twisted with pain. What made it okay for people to do this to innocent lives?

"Dunno, Bunny Girl, but it's hell for us."

Lucy didn't realize she'd spoken aloud…

Leo murmured in the back of her mind, "Natsu will be fine, Lucy."

"Mira!" Lucy called, waving with a faint smile. Her head ached and she was worried about her friends, just desperately wanting them to be all right…

"Hello," Mirajane called back, not taking her eyes off of the girl. When they reached the door, she stopped. The girl beside her was taller than Wendy and stood just beneath Lucy's shoulder, her pink hair matted and needing brushed. Her blue eyes were blank, tired, and she was dressed in fresh clothing - probably from Mirajane. "This," she told Lucy, "is Chelia Blendy. Chelia, this is Lucy Heartfilia and Gajeel…?"

"Redfox," he added. "Gajeel Redfox."

"They're like you," Mirajane continued. "Lucy hears voices because of something that was done for her and Gajeel's what we've begun to call a dragon. There's another dragon, Wendy, who deals with wind like you do."

Chelia's eyes lit up a little. "Really?"

"I'll go get the brat," Gajeel grunted, ducking inside. When he was gone, Lucy rubbed her still aching temples.

"Levy and Natsu were attacked in the town square," she told Mirajane quietly. "I sent Gray to get them, but…"

"I'll tell Makarov," she said seriously, her blue eyes narrowing. "Thank you for telling me. I have to go...Laxus is crabby today for some reason or another. Chelia, I promise you that you'll be safe here, okay?"

"No promises," Gajeel grunted as he reappeared. Beside him was a normal-looking Wendy. Her dark eyes lit up at the sight of Chelia. "Bunny Girl did get kidnapped."

"Shut up," Lucy hissed. "You're not helping. Chelia, this is Wendy."

"Hi!" Wendy trilled. Chelia's eyes widened at the odd sound. "It's nice to meet you, Chelia! Oh," she added when Charle slid into view, winding around Wendy's ankles. "This is Charle. I was playing Sorry! with Sting, Rogue, Yukino, and Juvia if you want to come join us. It's fun to beat Sting at it."

"Sure," Chelia said with a moment's hesitation. Wendy grabbed her wrist and led her past Lucy and Gajeel, and Mirajane watched her go fondly.

"Take care of her. She's a good person and she's been through a lot. She's an orphan, so she has no one else," Mirajane said softly. "I better get going. I'll call Makarov on my way out. See you later, Lucy, Gajeel!" She gave Lucy a quick hug and then bustled off. Within minutes, Mirajane's car was gone.

Lucy didn't move from the doorway, waiting for Gray to get back. "Gajeel," she said, taking a deep breath. "Please tell me we don't have to expect a psychotic moment anytime soon."

"Nah, not that I know of." He raked a hand through his dark hair and then suddenly straightened. "Oi, Bunny Girl."

"Yeah?"

"They're here."

Not a moment later, a car screamed to a halt as close as it could get to the front door, brakes screeching. Gray was out in an instant, his black eyes serious. "Lucy-"

She sprinted forward, already moving when she saw the car door open and Levy slouch out. She caught Levy with a gasp before Levy could hit the ground. Her clothes were grass-stained, her hair wild and tangled with leaves and twigs. Her hazel eyes were terrified. "Lucy, we have to get Natsu out of the car now."

"On it," Gajeel grunted. He nearly ripped the car door off the car when he threw it open on the other side. He took one look at Natsu and then swore under his breath. "Oi! Fullbuster! Go find Wendy. I'm gonna need Juvia, too-"

"Already here," the woman announced as she appeared from a nearby puddle. "Juvia sensed my beloved's arrival."

"You're fuckin' weird," he told her and then ordered her to get ready to douse any flames if she could. And then he plunged his hands into the heated car, gripping Natsu under the arms. He yanked him out, snarling in pain as black-tinged flames washed up his arms. The smell of burning flesh filled the air immediately.

"Shit," he hissed.

Juvia went to work. Levy sunk to the ground, shivering as several people burst out of the house. "Move!" Wendy trilled, barreling over to her adopted brothers. Chelia faltered by the door and Yukino, but Sting, Rogue, and Gray surged forward to help where they could.

"Yukino!" Lucy called. "Help Levy!"

"On it. Come on, Chelia, help me." Yukino hurried over, helping Levy to her feet and between she and Chelia, they took the woman inside. Lucy turned her attention on Natsu, her heart swelling with panic when he suddenly gave an inhuman shriek of pain.

"Fuck!" Gajeel cried, ripping back with a shout of pain when flames exploded around Natsu.

"Gajeel!" Wendy shrieked, diving forward to check on his arms. Sting and Rogue hovered beside Gray, wanting to help, but not sure on how as Juvia batted the fire away from the dry grass.

Lucy raked her hand through her hair. "What do we do?" she whispered.

Suddenly, Natsu was awake, crying out. Lucy bit her lip, not moving - until he wailed for someone to help him, something that the shocked Gajeel and Wendy had never seen. She ignored Gray's words of warning as she stumbled forward. Sweat gathered immediately as she approached. Ignoring the pain that came with the flames, ignoring the strange new features that suddenly spread over him - the marks, the claws, the horns - she knelt over his head and clasped her hands over his cheeks.

"Natsu," Lucy soothed, crooning his name. "Natsu, calm down. Can you calm down for me?"

His breathing came harshly, smoke and fire escaping with each breath. His eyes, glowing red, rolled wildly.

Pain raced up her hands as she wound the fingers of one hand in his pink hair and used her other to cover his eyes. "Hide the world," Leo told her. "Speak to him. Make him aware of only you, Lucy."

She could feel her clothes flaring up in flames, turning to ash as the flames seared at her. She ignored it all. "Natsu," she murmured, leaning down to speak in his ear. "Natsu, listen to me. Can you hear me?"

"Lu...cy…?" he croaked.

"Yes," she murmured. "Yeah, it's me. I'm right here. Listen to me, okay? You're on the front lawn of our home. Wendy and Gajeel are a few feet away. Levy went inside with Yukino and Chelia. You're safe. You both are. You're safe, Natsu. And I know it hurts. I know." She brushed her fingers over the injection site on the side of his head.

"Keep going," a voice - Virgo - ordered.

"He needs to focus on you," Leo repeated.

Lucy swallowed thickly. "Hey," she said softly, studying the blisters on the back of her hands. "Do you remember? What you told me when I was sick from what Zeref did to me?"

"Called...you...Luigi," he rasped, voice hoarse.

She giggled softly and stroked his cheek. She bent over his head, flinching a little, but murmured, "You told me that I was safe. You told me that I wasn't trapped with Mard Greer anymore. You told me that I was safe and that I was home. Natsu, you're home. You're safe. I've got you. You don't have to be so scared or angry now, okay? You're safe. You're safe."

She repeated that phrase over and over as he relaxed in her arms, one black-clawed hand shakily rising to grip her arm. She shook him loose and instead burned her hand grasping his and holding it tightly. She murmured to him, soothing him.

Finally, the flames faded and it was simply an unconscious Natsu in her arms.

"I'll go get some clothes," Rogue murmured, slipping inside as Juvia tended to flames around them.

Lucy didn't move or look away from his sleeping face. "He was scared. That's all."

"I'd be scared, too," Gajeel grunted.

"We all still are," was Sting's rough response.

Lucy saw to it that Natsu was safe on the floor of his first burned room with blankets and pillows bundled around him before she went to see Levy. Her heart twisted when she saw her friend on the couch, a blanket swaddled around her. Gajeel was propped on the couch beside her, keeping an eye on her as the others ran around doing who knew what after Wendy had shown Chelia how to tend to her burns. Gray was on the couch across from them, his head in his hands.

"Gray?" Lucy said softly when she saw the tenseness in his shoulders.

"Ur called me. It's Lyon." His voice was broken, hoarse from crying. "Lyon's gone. Meredy and Ultear, too. No one can find any of them and...and normally, I wouldn't think anything of it...but with what's happened…"

Lucy stood beside him and squeezed his shoulder wordlessly. "Did you tell Makarov or Mira or Laxus? One of them will know what to do."

"Right," he said gruffly. "I'll...I'll do that." He staggered to his feet and headed out of the room, into the kitchen, leaving her alone with Gajeel and Levy. Lucy didn't miss the way that Gajeel's foot just barely touched Levy's on the coffee table, his entire body angled towards the small bookworm.

"Hey," Levy said quietly.

"Hey," she echoed, studying her. "You okay?"

She shrugged. "Nothing but body soreness right now. Nothing's happened...no voices, so…" She looked at Gajeel with a small, tired smile. "Gajeel's kept me company and asked a bunch of questions."

Gajeel shrugged. "Did what Zeref used to do. Helps keep you occupied afterwards. Keeps ya from panicking."

"How's Natsu?" Levy suddenly asked, worried. "I tried to help while we were waiting on Gray, but...there wasn't much I could do." Her eyes swelled with tears. "He wanted a book. He found one while we were at my store and said he wanted it because of the dragons in it."

Lucy chewed on her lip, thinking. The voices in her head chattered amongst themselves, arguing, but she ignored them and instead said, "I don't know. He hasn't woken up yet. The reaction he had was because he was scared, so…he might be unconscious for a while. I'm going to check on him here in an hour or so."

"Nah, I'll do it." Gajeel snorted, showing her the scars that now littered his hands - remaining burns on Natsu's part. "No need for ya to get all burned to a crisp."

Lucy showed him her own burns. "Too late for that."

Levy giggled and then sighed softly. "It was an injection to my arm. Natsu's was to his head. It wasn't Zeref who showed up, it was Mard Greer. He lured us into some trees. While Natsu was out of it, I was jumped by some guy named Jackal and a girl about Wendy's size and age named Lamy. They held me down while Mard Greer did the work." She sucked in a deep breath.

"What were you doing following Mard Greer?" Lucy demanded, suddenly frowning. "Why was he in the town square?"

At this, both of the people before her became very interested in their laps.

"Levy," Lucy hissed, narrowing her eyes, and Levy flinched.

"When Leo took over your body," Levy said hesitantly, "Natsu called Zeref. Demanded that he make some kind of medicine to help you. Told him outright he'd stay with Zeref permanently if he cured you, got rid of the voices. Zeref said that Natsu could stay. Said that he'd make the medicine, but Natsu had to take one last injection. I caught Gajeel and Natsu talking to him and offered to help since I knew that Natsu would do it anyways. We got the medicine. We weren't entirely unsuccessful."

Lucy's eyes flashed with shock. "You…"

"Don't start yellin' at Shrimp," Gajeel rumbled. "Salamander's an adult and can make his own decisions, as can the rest of us."

Lucy opened her mouth, closed it, and then shook her head. "You could have been killed."

"And for all we know, you're dying. Headaches like you've been having aren't a good sign." Levy waved for Gajeel to grab her purse. "Just...take the medicine? We'll deal with everything else as it comes. I haven't experienced anything weird, so…"

"Sure," Lucy sighed. Gajeel handed Levy her purse and Levy handed a bottle of pills to the blonde. She studied it suspiciously, and then frowned. Lucy opened it and fished out a piece of paper that had been pushed within.

"'Miss Heartfilia,'" she read aloud, narrowing her eyes. "'I am grateful for your cooperation. Consider everything promised in my previous letters accessible. Merely call my number should you need a service and it will be provided. Take one of these pills once a day around noon. They should suppress the serum you were given. Should they not, simply inform me and I will send you something else. I wish Natsu the best. Zeref.'" She made a sound of disgust.

"Are you going to take them?" Levy asked quietly.

"I don't want to," Lucy replied. She eyed the pills suspiciously, dumping one out and holding it up to look. "But...after what Natsu went through to get them, I kind of owe him, don't I?"

"And Shrimp here. You owe Shrimp, too." Gajeel glared at Lucy, as if irritated that she'd forgotten Levy.

"Yeah, I know." Lucy exchanged a look with Levy, who yawned. "I owe Levy a lot."

"Just take your medicine and go take a nap," Levy huffed, waving her off despite the smile on her face. "Natsu will wake up in a few hours, more than likely. And when he does, we're all in for some fun."

Lucy murmured her agreement. "Wake me up if something happens?" she asked.

"Of course," Levy said fiercely.

Gajeel merely grunted. "Depends on how bad it is. If it's bad enough, we won't need to wake ya."

Lucy glared and went to take a nap, throwing Zeref's note over her shoulder.

[prar-draws]

Pardon me for asking, but what digital art program do you use? What brushes do you apply for line art? Shading? I'm beginning digital art and I'd love to hear your advice...

Oh, sure!ヽ(・∀・)ﾉ I use Paint Tool SAI and Pixlr Express to art.

My brushes are… Well, one brush. After my blendy one got accidentally deleted I switched to this sole guy;

It’s very easy to handle for me and works good as a color/liner/shader. The dirt02 gives it a delicate texture that you can see on the softer strokes. I also work with an S-1 stabilizer for my strokes.

My canvas tends to be 3000x3000 pixels because that makes it easy to resize and edit the art wihtout much quality loss, (lessenes the visibility of mistakes too.)

While drawing I use multiple layers and the ctrl+z shortcut to keep my tempo and be safe from too many mistakes. I also often use the selection and lasso tools to resize, rotate and free deform my pictures so the proportions look good. When I have an issue with the colors, I use the Filters to adjust hue/saturation/luminescence/contrast etc. 

I also switch the layer modes, most often to lumi and shade (for saturation), shade, luminescence, and overlay. When I want something to be more transparent I adjust the layer opacity.

When I want to color over something I drew previously without going out of line, i use a clipping group or preserve opacity to lock it. 

Clipping groups and overlays also let me apply textures. I draw over the part of the picture where i want the texture, then copypaste the texture onto a layer above and clip group. Then I switch the clipped texture to overlay mode so it becomes mostly transparent and adjust the composition to my liking with filters and changing the layer opacity.

My shades are rough, not blended and really messy, haha. Thats why i compose them together from many layers with varying opacity. Same with highlights.

Also, I periodically organize or divide my layer groups into/with folders. 

After Im done with drawing, coloring and adjusting everything in SAI, I save it and open up Pixlr Express. It’s an online site that lets you apply a whole bunch of stuff on your pictures, for me predominantly crop, resize, focal, text,  color effects, borders and more overlays. It saves only as jpeg, but I can switch the format again in SAI. I also apply small fixes later whenever I wish until the picture is complete.

Hope I helped you a little with understanding my arting process! Remember to draw a whole lot and never give up!! (≧▽≦)/ Even if you will have problems, you will learn with time and practice. Good luck!

Update: Oh, also on time. Don’t be surprised if you find yourself attempting a nicely proportioned, lined, colored, textured and shaded work and end up doing it for roughly 6 to 10 hours. Ofc youll get faster as your art mucles will stretch, but the key here is to just push on instead of abandoning the piece, or splitting it into parts :D

Also, do not delete your art! Even if you think its bad, keep it. Put it in a different folder. It will serve as a concept bin for future art and also will be a tetstament to your art improve/time spent arting!

[thisiswarfmp]

Ask The Artist - Sixbane

Just like the previous two Ask The Artist’s, I presented the same questions to Sixbane. This is what they had to say. When it comes to creating your art pieces, what programme/s do you use and why? I use a mix of programs, depending on what I'm doing and where I need to do certain things or effects. Most typically, I do most of the work in Paint Tool SAI (sketch, lines,colors,often shading) because I find it efficient, and simple enough to use with relative ease-where I find photoshop a bit more complex /more time consuming to achieve the same general result. After I finish the basic drawing/illustration I may export to photoshop for lighting effects/ details or textures. However- I prefer painting in photoshop a lot more than I do SAI as I find the brushes a lot more varied/expansive (And the interface is more convenient for saving dozens of brush settings than it is in Sai) What are your brush preferences and why? I prefer a hard brush for lines, of course- I like very hard lines because I use really small lines, so having hard lines- makes them visible, if they were much softer they'd be very sketchy or entirely invisible. As far as painting goes, I prefer bolder /thicker brushes rather than super blendy or subtle ones. What is the subject matter that you most enjoy drawing? My favorite subject to draw tends to be creating monsters and fantastical scenes, I love experimenting with color and lighting and creating strange creations out of nothing. I think the funnest time I have is thinking of what can I do to create something amazing- out of nothing. I'll draw a supermarket...but put a giant monster in it- I'll draw a cat...but its face rips open and it preys on people who thinks its cute. Messing with people's views on things and making them think is one of my joys in art. What are your favourite colour combinations to use and why? Greyscales, white+black+grey, and purples, as I find greyscales fun to play with shadows of different colors, and I love purples as they change well with reds and blues to create very vivid tones. I enjoy working with combinations of blue and very pale yellow or orange too. When it comes to anatomy, do you use a reference to guide you or do you already have a rough idea and put pen straight to paper? I typically have a rough idea before I draw most things, but that's because I've studied it for a very long time. I do anatomy studies using artist stock and live models every few weeks to remind myself and I study anatomy on some of my larger pieces to make as accurate as possible. However, one of my benefits as an artist is being very fast and able to put out a lot of work- so a lot of my pieces are smaller quantity over quality sort of deal and I don't spend a crazy amount of time obsessing over their anatomy. When it comes to creating characters, do you tend to do intensive research or is it more of a spur-of-the-moment creation? Research- though I don't research with the intention of creating a character. I do a lot of personal reading and research on my own entirely unrelated to the character, and then go 'hey that'd make a neat character' and go from there. When creating backstories for characters, do you make them up on the spot, or is it usually a long, drawn out process with a lot of research behind them? Both,I make the rough on the spot and then research to fill in the blanks. The more I use the character, the more I research and work on them and tweak my initial view or description of them to suit what I want the character to be. A lot of my characters exist in my own fantasy world I've created so they are outside the 'laws' of our real reality, but I still like to make them based in some grounds to the realistic world. I make a character to fill a role in my character world, but he is autistic so I do the proper research to make sure I understand his condition and can write his actions respectfully and properly, and then I alter his backstory to suit what I learned and how it impacted his life