Two months passed by agonizingly slowly as I settled back into my mundane life. It was as painfully simple as walking to school in the morning, suffering through the school day, enduring cross country practice, and spending my evenings alone in my apartment.

Without anything to do besides coursework, I poured all my extra time into running. It didn't matter how far, or the amount of time I spent, as long as I wasn't standing still because honestly, it was the perfect distraction. If my feet were hitting the grass and my body was struggling to move forwards, then my mind couldn't wander.

I couldn't think about him.

My hard work actually sort of paid off too. With cross country season nearing its end, somehow I'd managed to meet the requirements for the state qualifying trials. I wasn't sure how to react to the news from my coach and almost immediately forfeited my spot. However, Coach Makarov was persuasive enough that I couldn't back out no matter how much I wanted to.

However, just because I was excelling at running didn't mean I could really escape my problems. The bullying had become constant and overwhelming most of the time. I stopped eating lunch in the cafeteria to avoid having food thrown all over me, no longer used the locker room because of the spiteful accusations that I was checking everyone out, and stopped using my locker since my stuff kept getting destroyed. Even the kids on the cross country team started messing with me. They did stupid things like dumping my water all over the ground and whispering hateful nicknames while sprinting past me, but it still hurt.

I also hated how much the bullies affected my self esteem. I'd never considered myself to be particularly attractive, but I figured if someone as good looking as Gray was interested in me then I wasn't outright ugly. Yet as the insults rained down on me, I sought to hide my body more and more.

As someone who always felt warm, I didn't even own a pair of pants until Sting made a comment about how I had fat calves for a kid with such scrawny legs. The amount of bruises on my arms bothered me, until I bought some long sleeve shirts to cover them up. When that wasn't enough, I threw on hoodies and the baggier the better. If I could disappear into my clothes then maybe I could disappear from view altogether. Maybe if they saw less, they'd have less to ridicule.

It was rock bottom, or at least I'd thought so at the time because I hadn't realized that there was one last thing that could be taken from me. Something that I'd taken for granted when everything else had crumbled down around me.

On a Thursday afternoon, one of my teachers asked me to stay behind after class, which made me late for warm-ups at practice. Knowing that Coach wouldn't mind, I didn't hurry through the halls. The school seemed pretty empty which put me as ease.

I should've been paying more attention.

Seemingly out of nowhere, two sets of arms latched onto me. Looking around in a panic, Sting and Rogue laughed at my terrified face.

"Is the little freak late to practice?" Sting said callously as his fingers dug painfully into my upper arm.

"Maybe we should give him a quick start then," suggested Rogue with a glimmer of malice in his eyes.

"I was just thinking the same thing!" The blonde fist bumped his best friend before they dragged me towards the staircase. We were only on the second floor, but looking down on the full and steep flight of stairs made my heart pound nervously. I immediately tried to break out of their hold, but when Sting's knee slammed into to the back of my thigh, I was in too much pain to struggle.

The two jocks spun me around to face them and all I saw was a pair of cruel smiles before they shoved me backwards into the stair well.

Arms flying out as if they could catch me, my mouth opened in a silent scream as terror gripped my entire body.

My back hit the linoleum covered concrete first, but my momentum carried my feet over my head, which flipped me backwards. Unfortunately, the flight of stairs was just long enough for me to land on my ankle and it bent painfully under my weight. Finally falling onto my back at the base of the staircase, I gasped for air as my body throbbed from rocking against the solid stairs.

I heard laughing from above me, but all I could do was close my eyes to try to stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks. Shifting onto my side, I chanced a look at my hurt ankle and saw that it was already bright red and swelled up to nearly twice its normal size. I could handle a bruised kneecap, sore shin, or aching thigh, however this was potentially a sprained ankle that I wouldn't be able to put any weight on.

I wouldn't be able to run anymore.

Testing my ankle's tenderness with my fingers, I winced instantly. It would be weeks before I could jog again and it would have to short distances until my leg was completely healed. Months would pass and cross country season would be over and I wondered if I could continue on from this injury.

Was this the crippling blow that would finally stop me from moving forward?

Pressing my hands to my face, I sobbed because I was completely at a loss of what to do.

How could I walk home? How could I even walk at all?

"Natsu?"

Digging my nails into my scalp, I ignored the quiet attempt at getting my attention. My head was throbbing from the mixture of anxiety and pain swarming all my senses.

"Natsu, are you okay?" A hand gently rested on my shoulder and I jerked beneath its touch. I was way beyond the point of consolation, yet I couldn't fight the circles being rubbed into my back.

"Shhhhhh….it's going to be okay."

Okay? Nothing was okay. Nothing was fair either, but I'd known that ever since my father had passed away. Everything else since then was just a bonus or rather another addition to the long list of reasons proving that I should just give up already.

It was a long time before my breathing finally evened out and I opened my puffy eyes. Looking up, I saw those dark blue eyes that I'd missed so much.

"Hey," he said with what looked like relief. "Did you fall down the stairs?"

When I didn't reply, he sighed.

"How am I supposed to know what's wrong, if you won't tell me?"

Everything was wrong and I was kind of upset that he didn't already know that. He'd always been so intuitive when it came to me before. I guessed that maybe the connection that allowed him to see right through me was snapped the day he broke up with me.

"I can't run," I whispered in a voice scratchy from crying.

"It's okay. You'll heal."

My eyebrows furrowed at his prompt response.

"I can't run," I repeated because Gray simply didn't get it.

I could avoid it before by telling myself that I would be okay as long as I kept going, because things would work out if I kept moving forwards.

I was stupid to think that running was the answer. I knew that it wouldn't solve my problems and it was only avoiding the heart of what was eating at me yet, it was all I had left so I kept at it with everything I had.

Ever since I lost Gray, I'd been alone and now, I couldn't even keep going.

"Did someone push you?"

I looked at him with widened eyes because I hadn't expected him to jump to that conclusion without first asking if I'd tripped or something. Then again, he'd seen the bullies at work and what they were capable of.

"Was….was it Sting?"

"Y-yeah," I admitted with a heavy heart. He was right on the money once again.

"That bastard," he hissed. "Makes me wonder why you'd kiss a guy like him."

And there was the insinuation, the lie, the messy truth that I knew I shouldn't bother to try to contradict. Gray was already out of my life so I didn't see why it would make any difference to go against him one last time. His interaction with me now was limited, brief, I could enjoy it while it lasted but that was just it…it wasn't going to last.

"I didn't kiss him." My voice didn't waiver when I said it and if it had it wouldn't have made a difference.

"I know. I just wanted to hear you say it." He had spoken with such clarity and resolve and yet I was positive that I'd misheard him.

"What? You…you believe me?"

"You don't think that I kissed him, but you dumped me over it. You…" I swallowed thickly. "You left me alone when you didn't think that I cheated on you?" I felt my diaphragm begin to clench painfully as there was suddenly a lack of air.

"What are you playing at?" I managed to gasp before my lungs attempted to work twice as hard to expand.

"Breathe Natsu, please!"

Trying to listen to Gray, I closed my eyes as my inner long distance runner worked to control my breaths. My back screamed at the deep inhales and my head pounded at the exertion.

When he decided I was calm enough, he tried to explain himself.

"It was a recent revelation," he said as his chilly fingers cradled my head and he scooted underneath me. When he let go and I leaned back, I was laying on his thigh. I was skeptical yet my heart ached to believe him.

"My brother….my brother Lyon came home." His long lost family member that had run away so many years ago had reappeared and my ex-boyfriend could finally let go of a piece of his fractured past. I wanted to be happy for him, but I was still so numb.

"He talked some sense into me, helped me realize that the picture didn't make any sense. You cheating on me with Sting didn't make any sense." Gray paused for a few seconds and I wondered if he'd put a lot of thought into his next words. One of his hands ran over my arm in a soothing gesture that I'd remembered him using before.

"But I felt…I feel so horrible about the way I treated you. I didn't know how to make things right."

That was when my self-loathing decided to rear its ugly head once more.

"Why bother?" I asked as my eyes slid open to peer up at him. "Clearly our relationship wasn't worth the effort."

At the time I just wanted him to say something, anything that gave our three month failure some sort of meaning. I didn't want it to be a relationship doomed from the very beginning. I didn't want to be the only one that still cared.

Gray looked taken aback at my careless jibe and then his face was filled with some wistful emotion.

"I had it all planned out really." He smiled slyly as he began absentmindedly playing with my hair.

"I was going to show up at state." I tried not to let it show but I was truly touched that he knew about me qualifying. It wasn't exactly something I spread around so I didn't even know how he found out.

"Planned to make some cheesy poster board proclaiming my love or something and was going to wait at the finish line. Figured you'd at least talk to me that way."

"I wasn't the one that said not to talk to me ever again," I expressed dryly.

He looked pained at the memory.

"But it's too late isn't it? I way I reacted, I can't be forgiven can I?"

I tried to put his actions into some sort of perspective for myself. Throughout his life he'd been hurt terribly by the loss of his loved ones but I'd been crippled by the loss of my father. Gray didn't let anyone get too close yet he had a circle of friends he could turn to that accepted him even when he came out to them. While I had left behind my true friends to come to a school where I was hated and made into an outcast.

He'd seen me as a person when everyone saw me as an object of ridicule, however, he'd revoked his feelings at the smallest chance of me being unfaithful. The breakup was more painful than the last two months I'd spent alone.

Could I forgive him after everything?

Part of me screamed no. The wounds of his actions may not have been fresh, but they weren't even close to healing. At the same time I'd felt the pit of loneliness for far too long to let him go.

He'd saved me before when everything had gone wrong and this time, he owed it to me to save me again.

"I can't forgive you yet, but I want to try," I said and felt the truth of the words sink into my bruised core.

I reached up and grabbed one of his hands from my hair. Holding it in my own, I didn't say anything else, but I think he still understood the unspoken words hanging in the air.

"I love you, Natsu," Gray spoke softly yet with true conviction. "I know it's going to hurt to work through this stuff and we have a lot of catching up to do but I want to try as well."

When he leaned down and captured my lips with his own, I kissed back because I wanted to be okay again.

I wanted to try to heal all my emotional scars, to let people close again, and to let go of the pain.

Why couldn't I? I'd made it through much worse before, so I knew I could keep running.

Well, maybe I wouldn't be running anytime soon, but until then, I could lean on Gray.

And we could persevere through life together.