One-shot for the sake of one-shots.

Drowning.

Juvia is drowning.

It was something Juvia had never worried about before. Water was her element—she was the water. But for the first time, she couldn't will herself to water when it really mattered and she was sinking, sinking, sinking. Her scattered thoughts wondered how far she had left to go, even though the moonlight was scarcely visible through the amount of water above her head. It was a pale blurry thing, not even remotely round, and the reflection on the surface of the water made it almost impossible to tell where the actual moon was.

She had always liked moonlight, at least. It made drowning more bearable for her.

But...drowning. Juvia had never worried about it because she wasn't afraid of the water at all. Water had been her closest companion since she was small, the one thing that was always constant. She had never feared it, never even considered that she could be killed by it…and here she was, facing the one death she'd deemed impossible for her long ago.

The magic-sealing things around her ankles—both of them—had changed all of that in just moments. The weights dragging her down were those terribly clichéd things she'd read about in murder mystery novels, and seen once on a lachrima show. And the terror seized her, washed over her, and suddenly the moon above her disappeared behind what could only be her own personal thunderhead. And sure enough, a golden flash of lightning illuminated her watery prison. The comfort of her beloved moonlight, the one thing that strangely calmed her racing heart and mind, was gone.

And then Juvia was alone with the element she'd affectionately called her own for years, since she'd had time to reflect on how the rain had made her who she was.

Even now, at the end, water would be her companion.

It was a very sobering thought.

But thoughts were as fleeting as the strange fish that came up to her and nibbled at her clothes, or the fingers she'd outstretched towards the surface. She looked pale and ghostly in the feeble light, so far under the surface of this deep, deep lake. Her deep blue-black eyes turned upwards toward the flashing storm above, and feebly stretched her arms towards it. Her fingers clutched desperately, weakly, at water…

…and then her breath escaped in a stream of bubbles, both big and small.

Before she could think, she started to take a breath as her consciousness ebbed. She barely registered it as a mistake, even when she felt the water rushing into her lungs, like ice and fire all at once so that she wondered, for a second, why Natsu and Gray were fighting in her esophagus.

And then everything was swirling and muddled so that she hardly knew which way was up or which way was down.

Juvia…Juvia never thought she would die like this…

She vaguely registered that she was getting cold…especially her legs…but the darkness encroached upon even her thoughts now, and she hadn't been seeing anything for several seconds now. She had to accept it, now, this whole drowning thing.

And then the darkness took her.

This whole dying thing, Juvia's last thought buzzed, it's really fuzzy and drawn-out…and I didn't get to say goodbye to him…

"Dammit, Juvia!" Gray cursed, slinging off his completely saturated coat and his equally wet t-shirt to get more mobility. He didn't even register that he hadn't taken them off before diving in after her. In his haste to reach her, stripping had entirely slipped his mind, even though this would be the one situation it would have been useful in.

But his heart had frozen in his chest when he realized that she wasn't breathing.

He'd pulled her out of the water, freezing those damn shackles and shattering the metal—there were a few scratches oozing red droplets on her ankles—only to find out that he might be too late. There was only one thing left to do, and he didn't even think twice before ripping the front of her coat open so it wasn't constricting her chest.

Gray's pulse was the only thing he could hear, but he had to try to calm himself as he leaned down to listen for breathing. He didn't hear it, he didn't feel the breath on his wet cheek, and he didn't see her chest rising or falling. Grimacing, fear shooting up his spine, he tilted her chin up and listened once more to no avail. He wanted her—no, he needed her—to be alive. He didn't know what he would do if she died here, or even how he could tell the rest of the guild that they'd been separated on the job and he couldn't save her.

"C'mon, Juvia," he hissed, placing his hands where her heart should be. With the heel of his palm firmly against her breastbone, he took a deep breath and then pumped once…twice…thrice…in time with what he thought would be a normal heartbeat. "Breathe, Juvia, breathe," he gasped out between chest compressions.

When there was no change after thirty compressions, he took a breath and covered her chilled lips with his own, breathing two short breaths before returning to his attempts to restart her heart. And with each second, he despaired. With each chest compression that showed him no results, his heart fell through his stomach.

"Juvia!" Gray's single desperate cry of her name drifted across an eerily silent lake.

That single shout showed what he himself had been unable to accept himself—his heart. It showed his heart and gave away just how big a place she held within it. The heartbreak and pain in his voice was a startling but unsurprising contrast to the normal voice he took with her. His normal tone, always with the blatantly obvious undertone of mild annoyance, was only a mask, and if only she would open her eyes, dammit, she'd see that she meant more than that to him.

She meant everything.

So when he was on the seventy-third chest compression, after four breaths and more than two minutes of despair, he felt like crying when she coughed.

Without wasting any more time, the ice mage grabbed her shoulder more roughly than he should have and pulled her onto her side, where she continued coughing. Gray wondered how anyone could have that much water in their lungs, but at least she was expelling it. And quickly, too, because she was coughing as if it was the only thing she knew how to do.

"Juvia…!" he finally managed to choke out again for the first time since he'd been hit with the wave of relief.

The blue-haired water mage coughed twice more, then finally opened those eyes he'd been desperate to see for what seemed like days. She blinked, slowly reached a hand up to her chest, as if in pain—which she probably was, from the chest compressions and the coughing—and then slowly pushed herself up.

Before she could even sit all the way up, Gray took her into his arms and buried his face against her damp neck. He knew that they needed to get her into dry clothes, knew that leaving her in wet clothes much longer could be detrimental to her recovery, but he didn't care as much as he should have. He could survive just as long as she was breathing, alive, and here, with him. He could tell that, even though she was awake, she was weak and disoriented and he knew he needed to be strong for her…but first he needed to draw his strength from her.

"I'm so glad you woke up," he breathed, borderline sobbing for the first time in a long time, clutching the back of her wet coat as if it was a lifeline. "I was so scared, Juvia…"

"Gray…sama?"

Her voice was croaky—those damn coughs, no doubt—but it was unmistakably her voice, and he loved it. He would love it even more if he could convince her to drop her honorific—he wasn't all that great, so while it was flattering to have that –sama added to his name, he didn't need it and didn't want it from her, especially. And he finally decided it was time to tell her that directly.

"Gray," he said, almost as croakily as her, though his voice was muffled in her neck and hair. "Just Gray, Juvia."

He felt her surprise through the way her body stiffened in his arms, but soon she relaxed and he felt a gentle, shaking hand start to run through his wet hair in a comforting manner.

"All right then…Gray," her voice was almost as soft as he'd ever heard it, and remained scratchy, but he heard her say just his name and he felt his heart leap into his throat this time. Whatever he'd been putting her through all these years, this 'unrequited' love of her for him…it had to stop. Now that he had acknowledged how painful it was to have her slipping away from him, he knew that he'd never be able to bear seeing her with someone else.

At a time like this, when he had almost lost her, and her closest companion and her element had almost betrayed her, they needed to be strong for each other. They needed to find the strength to get up and get dry and go home...but for now, all he could do was hold her close as she tried to comfort him in turn. And that was all right.

I don't know what I was thinking, and hardly knew what I was writing, until I realized halfway through that Juvia is drowning…and then just kept going with it.

So…I hope it's okay, and I really enjoyed writing it. I'm in the process of updating my NaLu "Fueling the Fire", so look for that by the end of the week, if all goes well!