"There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow."

— Orison Swett Marden

Gray was sitting in his wheelchair by the river, staring out at the water flowing by. A recent rainstorm had swollen the river, making it flow deep and fast. The day was peaceful, cold, but winter had already lost its chilly grip. The cherry blossoms were fully in bloom, and all of Magnolia was celebrating the festival of rainbow sakura. Flowers filled the streets, and as he looked down at the river, he saw tiny pink petals flowing along the surface, their ephemeral existence swept away.

Gray slowly pushed himself up from the wheelchair. He stood awkwardly, and he stripped from his clothes, although the pants came off much slower, unable to simply lift the dead, paralyzed leg.

"Ice-Make: Brace."

Ice completely covered his left leg. He had a normal brace, but it was annoying to wear it all the time. He had discovered that his ice magic could form a brace whenever he wanted to stand.

Still, with the iced leg, the best he could do was slightly balance. Walking involved carefully putting his good leg forward, then using hip muscles to drag the bad leg along, unable to feel where his foot was located. Hopping along slowly like this, he made it to the river. Then he leaped, landing as far out as he could. The ice brace made his bad leg float. That was another advantage to ice.

He leaned back, letting the river flow past him, weightless in the water. Like this, without the confines of the wheelchair, he could almost pretend that he was normal again. He floated along. Then he flipped over and began to swim back upstream, fighting the current. His arms worked extra hard, and his one good leg kicked with more power. The left leg just floated, dead weight bolstered by ice.

If he could just swim all the time, maybe he could do without one leg.

"Gray!"

He growled at Natsu's shout. Just when he was relaxing and enjoying life, that damn Dragon Slayer had to burst in on his privacy. Natsu came racing down the hill, tripped, went rolling, and splashed into the river.

"Stupid," Gray grumbled.

Unperturbed, Natsu swam over to him. "We found it! We know where it is. You need to come with us, though."

"Found what?" he asked.

"The healing machine. The one that could give you your leg back." Natsu grinned with beaming hope. "I found it!"

Gray stared in silent disbelief. Give his leg back?

Gray had spent months lamenting the loss of his leg, and only with the arrival of spring had he finally come to grips with reality. Surgery for amputation was set. He had picked out a prosthetic. He wanted to cast aside that failure, including the leg that kept him stuck in the past, a constant reminder. Like the blossoms of spring, he had to wake up out of the winter of discontent and grow anew. He was willing to let it go, give up the paralyzed badge of disgrace, and accept a life with one leg.

He really thought this miracle machine was bogus, just a rumor.

However, if such a thing really existed...

"Umm ... don't you want your leg back?" Natsu asked sadly when Gray said nothing.

Despite himself, a tear came to Gray's eye. "More than anything!"

Natsu grinned broadly again. "Then let's go!" He grabbed Gray up princess style out of the river.

"What the hell!"

"It's faster. We need to hurry. Get dressed while I push you to the train station."

"Wait, we're leaving now?" he cried out.

"Oh, did you leave laundry in the wash or forget to lock your door or something?"

"N-no! But isn't this too sudden?"

"Nope. We have to hurry. Lucy and Erza are already there. We couldn't find Wendy. I had to sniff you out." He dropped Gray's wet body down into the wheelchair, grabbed up his clothes, and threw them onto the ice wizard's lap. "Better dress fast. I'm running the whole way there." Natsu tipped the wheelchair back onto the two large hind wheels to go faster, and he began to run.

Since it was such a long train ride to the far other side of Fiore, the team decided to get a sleeper car. It had two beds, one for the boys, one for the girls. Gray could hardly sleep with Natsu in bed with him, moaning nonstop and occasionally vomiting.

After a few hours, Gray rolled over and saw the sick Dragon Slayer in the moonlight. "Hey," he whispered.

"Sorry," Natsu groaned. "I can't help it."

"Give me your arm."

Natsu flopped an arm out, and Gray held Natsu's palm.

"Wait, what?"

Silently, Gray began to massage a spot on his wrist. Natsu swallowed as those freezing fingers hit a pressure point that eased some of the queasiness.

"Better?" asked Gray.

"Marginally," Natsu admitted.

Gray gently swept back some of the pink hair, stiff with sweat as Natsu suffered through his sickness. The Dragon Slayer shivered at the cold touch.

"G-Gray?" he whispered, knowing he was flushing in the darkness.

"Porlyusica told me about a spot ... here." He pressed his finger just behind the ear.

Natsu moaned softly as the sickness drastically went down. It was not perfect, but he no longer felt like vomiting.

"I can rub for a while, but only until I fall asleep," Gray warned, already drowsy.

"Thank you," Natsu said quietly, with deep relief. "That feels soooo good."

Gray gulped at the groaning pleasure. "Shut up," he mumbled.

"Mmmmh ... that really is good, Gray. Oh God, I want you to touch me like this all night."

Gray sneered and looked aside. "That sounds just wrong, idiot."

"Don't care," Natsu moaned, too sick to even think straight. "It feels good. I can really feel it tingle all through my nerves."

Gray suddenly let go and rolled over, facing the wall.

"Hey!" Natsu shouted. "That was really helping."

"Then rub it yourself. I need sleep."

There was no way in hell that Gray was going to admit that hearing Natsu moan and say those sorts of words had made him partly aroused. He slammed his eyes shut and tried to ignore the heat that had just barely begun to grow in his pants.

The next morning, instead of the problem being Natsu, it was Gray. Whether from the lack of sleep or just bad luck, he fell ill with a slight fever. It did not appear to be serious, but Erza pulled Natsu out of the room—vomit was the last thing Gray needed around him—while Lucy tended to Gray.

"Hey Gray," Lucy said as she dabbed a cold cloth on his forehead. "Natsu last night ... um ... well, he was making quite a ... weird noise."

Gray rolled his eyes. He knew the idiot was too loud. "I was massaging some motion sickness pressure points. I stopped when he starting moaning like a bitch in heat."

She hummed to herself. "I wonder if those are the sorts of sounds he makes other times."

"Che! Like I care," Gray sneered.

Lucy laughed at his annoyed face. "I wonder how he found this place, if it's such a long train ride there. Natsu must have suffered a lot, traveling all over Fiore to find this guy."

Gray said nothing. Even if Natsu had not taken a train, and instead had walked the whole distance, that was still a journey of many weeks. He really had gone far beyond anyone's expectations.

There was a change to the tempo of clacking wheels on rails, and Lucy glanced out the window. "Are we slowing down?"

A few seconds later, Erza walked into the compartment with Natsu unconscious and tossed over her shoulder. "We're arriving soon. Let's make sure we have everything."

"What happened to Natsu?" Lucy asked worriedly as she put items into her purse and travel bag.

"He was annoying the passengers, so I knocked him out."

"Sheesh!" Lucy sighed, shaking her head.

Erza looked over to Gray. "How are you feeling?"

"Not much better," he admitted. "I think the fever is the result of a cold."

"You, of all people, have a cold?" Lucy asked in shock.

"If I can't feel my body, I can't regulate it. My left foot has been icy cold many times, and I had no idea. More than likely, that idiot," he said, pointing to the slumped body of Natsu, "yanked the covers last night and my feet got exposed to the chill. That could make any normal person sick."

"With any luck, you won't have that issue anymore," Erza stated, looking confident. "Now, where's your wheelchair? They'll let us off first, since we have someone who's handicap."

"Don't call me that," Gray grumbled.

"It's only temporary," Erza assured him.

Gray wished he could fully believe that.

Since Gray was still fevered, he stayed in their hotel with Happy to take care of him, while the others went to the dark guild's hideout. The raid was simple enough. Natsu's reconnaissance had been stealthy. The dark healer had no clue they were coming until Erza already had her sword against the man's throat. Although he was the member of a dark guild and the keeper to such a miraculous healing machine, the man had no magical skills of his own. He used magical devices to heal, and he really could not fight back. Instead, he bartered.

If they let him escape, he would show them how the machine actually worked. Otherwise, they would be clueless, the Magic Council might take months to reverse engineer it and figure out how it operated, and it might be too late for Gray. Although Natsu did not like the idea of letting an enemy go free, Erza pointed out that the man had no magic abilities, the Magic Council's jurisdiction on non-wizard members of guilds was a hazy gray area, so likely he would be released anyway, deemed as not being a threat to the wizard world. He could even get a pardon if he gave up his allegiance to the dark guild and helped the Magic Council discover the secrets to the machine. The man was cowardly and eager to take any offer they gave. Anything was better than facing Erza's sword.

"There's a reason this healing device is not commonly used," the man named Kenta said. "It takes an insane amount of magical power and ebbs away the donor's life force. For minor injuries, it's not that bad, but if you're talking about major reconstruction of the body ... I saw this thing suck the life out of three people just to regrow one man's arm."

"Are you saying this thing kills people?" Lucy asked, glaring at what appeared to be nothing more than a flat, hard bed, but with straps to hold a person down.

"It doesn't necessarily kill them," he amended. "It depends on the severity of the injury and the vitality of the donor."

Erza thought about it seriously. "So you're saying, if a wizard has enough magic, this machine won't take from their life force."

"Well, at least it'll take a lot less. It still could shave a few weeks off your life, but not years."

"Do you age?" Lucy asked in dread, thinking about gray hairs and wrinkles.

"No," Kenta assured her. "When I saw them seriously work this machine, the donors didn't look older. They looked perfectly healthy, except ... drained of life."

Lucy exhaled in sadness. All this way, but the machine ... this was truly evil, taking the life of a victim just to save another.

Kenta saw their faces. "Come, this way."

He led them through two sets of doors that separated an adjacent room, where there was another bed, almost the same, but Lucy sensed something vile about this part of the machine.

"The donor lies here, strapped down, with electrodes on their body. Eterano is siphoned out to power the machine, like a battery. However, unlike your typical SE-plug for a magic vehicle, the machine sucks so much magic out, so quickly, it's not just Eterano that escapes. It eats at their aura, their very essence of existence. I've been told that it is an excruciating experience. Average people, it would kill them, for certain. A very strong wizard with a deep reservoir of magic within them might last, at least long enough for what you people want. Your friend just needs some nerves reattached, right?"

"Some tendons and muscles regrown, as well," Erza told him. "If we can fix his stomach while we're at it, that would be ideal."

"The machine determines what are the severe injuries. If he has internal injuries, particularly anything deeper than the skin, those are healed first. If your friend was shot how you described, this would repair his intestines, stomach, liver, regrow and replace any damage to internal organs. It'll clear up scar tissue in his lungs, it can definitely reattach nerves or some tendons. Child's play," he assured them. "However, it's not easy to control, and time is a factor. Old wounds won't be healed. Leave a tendon severed for a year, and the body may forget it was damaged. The recipient can control the flow to some extent, with training. However, the machine tends to heal everything at once. It does not focus on a specific part of the body. That means it uses much more magic than it probably needs to, and takes much longer to work, especially if the patient is injured in multiple areas. Even if the healer would prefer to focus somewhere specific—a paralyzed leg, let's say—if the patient was also recently shot in the chest, it would heal the lung first, and the leg would be deemed secondary. It's a flaw to the mechanism that I'm supposed to fix. That's why I have been hiding out here, tinkering with it, but I still haven't gotten satisfying results. Also, despite my best efforts at designing a control system, it's still impossible to lessen the suction of magic to a tolerable level. If the donor is not strong enough, it can be fatal."

Natsu stepped forward with a gleam in his narrow eyes like coals on fire. "I'll do it."

Lucy jolted over. "Natsu! Didn't you just hear what he said?"

"Yeah, you have to be strong to donate magic. I'm a Dragon Slayer. I've got lots of magic power in me."

Erza also looked concerned. "Natsu, you need to seriously think about this."

"There's nothing to think about," Natsu insisted with determination clenched in his jaw. "I told Gray I'd get his leg back, even if it costs me my life. Shaving off a few weeks?" He laughed sardonically. "It's worth it, for him."

"Natsu," Lucy whispered, not sure whether to be proud of how far Natsu would go for his friends, or terrified that this determination just might be going too far this time.

Erza clenched her gauntleted hand. "Fine! Then you won't do it alone."

"Erza," Natsu began to say in protest.

"We both opened our Second Origin. We can both take it."

Seeing their resolve moved Lucy's heart. This was Gray, after all. How many times had he—and all of Fairy Tail—fought and nearly died to protect her? This was her time to give back! "I can too," she stated loudly.

"No, Lucy," Erza said, patting the blonde's shoulder and smiling that Lucy was willing to overcome her fears to help a friend. "Someone needs to stay with Gray, and he trusts you. He feels much more comfortable around you than he does me or Natsu."

"Oh," she whispered, glancing aside with a light blush. "I still want to help, though."

Erza looked into those steadfast brown eyes. "Keeping him calm will help immensely. You're also learning how to direct the flow of magic energy, right?"

"Yes, Capricorn and I have been practicing that."

"Then it's something you can work on. If you can direct the magic to his leg, that will speed up the healing, which will make it easier on me and Natsu. This is something only you can do."

Lucy pouted, feeling inadequate for the job. Wendy was far better at manipulating magic energy, especially for healing. Lucy had never studied healing in her life.

"There's also the issue of Gray and his pride."

"What do you mean?" asked Lucy.

Natsu scoffed and folded his arms over his chest. "He's an idiot and stubborn."

"Natsu!" Erza scolded.

"Well, he is," Natsu insisted. "Think if it was you. If you found out your friends are potentially putting their lives at risk just so you can get healed, you wouldn't accept that. You'd refuse treatment and demand that they stop."

"Which means," Lucy calculated, knowing Natsu had a good point, "if you two do this, you have to do it without Gray knowing."

Kenta finally spoke up again. "It's usually better that way. That's why the device is in two separate rooms. The person getting healed needs to stay in a relaxed state. This room," he said, waving around the room with the second device, "is soundproof, because ... it does hurt. A lot. Every person I've hook up as a donor was reduced to screaming in agony."

"Oh," Lucy cringed, and she muttered to herself, "Maybe I'm glad I'm not doing it."

Erza looked between the two adjacent rooms. "So, Gray will stay in the first room, and one of us will be in this room. We can't tell him, though."

"Well, he'll figure it out eventually," Lucy pointed out. "One person is always missing."

"We can say that only two people at a time can be with him. The third person will be back here."

Natsu's brow tensed hard, and Erza noticed it.

"Do you have something to say?" she asked.

He twisted his lips uncertainly. "Maybe it should just be one of us back here."

"Natsu, that's crazy. This thing shaves off your life. It's better to spread it out."

He frowned, but he decided not to argue. "All right, but I'll do it first. He'll feel a lot better with you two than with me around."

"That may be true," Erza reasoned. "All right! So, we'll come by tomorrow. And ... if you leave..." Her sword suddenly swung out, barely resting on Kenta's throat.

His hands flew up in surrender and he gulped hard.

"...I will hunt you down, and I will show no mercy."

"I ... I wouldn't do that," he insisted. "I'm a healer. It's my oath to help others in need."

Erza scoffed with a glare. "The oath of a dark guild member. Sure!" she said sarcastically.

"No! Really!" he insisted, still nervously staring at the tip of the sword. "I may have worked with a dark guild, but I'm still a healer. That's what I went to school and trained to be. They just ... paid better."

Erza's eyes hardened. "Consider your freedom as payment."

He chuckled in quivering terror. "Y-yeah, that's pretty good payment."

"We'll be back tomorrow with Gray. Natsu, I want you to be here early to get set up, whatever you need to do, and we'll be by later."

He nodded with dire determination. "Let's do it."