This oneshot was inspired by chapter 423 of the Fairy Tail manga. If you haven't read it yet, read this at your own risk!
In her heart, she knows that she was someone, once. It feels like a very long time ago now, though, and the rain has been coming down so much harder than it did before those days when she was someone that sometimes she wonders if those days were all just a dream. A dream in which she had been happy, for the first and only time, and a dream that she still longs for whenever she tries to sleep at night as the thunder rumbles overhead.
And it's still the best dream she's ever had, because in it she has a family, and she's so desperately in love that sometimes it hurts to think, and she's never been more ready to face a new day than she is in it. She's so ready to open her eyes, so ready to face a new day without her rain, that when she really does wake up to reality, she sometimes wishes she had never woken at all. When she wakes to something so dreary after she had been so incandescently happy just seconds before, she feels as though her world has crashed down around her ears and as if she'll never find that kind of happiness again. But it was just a dream, those days, and she really isn't missing anything because this is all she's ever had.
The rain is her one constant companion.
Rain is the only constant in her life, and it reminds her each time that her dream ends like a nightmare.
It starts off so wonderfully that she can hardly breathe. Her life is full of love and laughter and just a little bit of rejection, but she can shake it off. She is fluid, like the element she embraces every day, and can always come back from the brief moments of disappointment because she has friends that are close enough to be family. She goes through the good times and the bad times with these people in her dreams, and she just can't imagine her life without them…no, really, she can't imagine life without him.
He's the reason she found her family in the first place, and she loves him. At first, she thought she loved him because he saved her from her loneliness, from her constant rains, but she realizes now that she loves him for who he is and how much he cares. He's rough around the edges, but he's caring and considerate and a bit reckless and she is attracted to that part of him. She swoons when he strips without realizing it, because he just doesn't know what kind of effect he has on her. But despite how devilishly handsome he is—with clothes or without—she loves him because he is her home.
The real her, the one who has this dream, knows it sounds weird when she calls him her home, but she still believes it's true. He is the reason she found herself, and she always feels comfortable and at ease when he's there. And, of course, she constantly feels her love for him and it makes her feel like she's bursting at the seams. There's just so much affection that she simply can't contain it all.
And for a while, this dream is perfect. And then the perfect dream warps, and suddenly her family crumbles. All of the people she has grown close to are heading in separate ways, not even saying goodbye to her, and she's standing there, almost alone again. For a while, he's still standing with her, but then suddenly he's not, and it's raining, and she can scarcely remember the words he said to her as he left her side.
"This has to stop," he says at the end of the dream, every time, and the nightmare begins. "Everything has changed now. We aren't like we used to be—I'm not like I used to be. I have things I need to do, and I can't have you following me around. I don't know what you think we are, but whatever it is…stop. We're not anything more than friends, and right now even that is questionable."
She stands there, gaping, trying to find the words to ask him to stay, or to ask him why. But he continues and she doesn't need to ask.
"I know he asked you to, and I know it was for the best…but it still feels like you killed him," his eyes are dark, and something she had never seen in them flashes and makes her speechless—it's a mixed feeling, she knows, but one of the emotions is such an intense hatred that she can hardly breathe anymore, "You killed my father, Juvia, and I don't know if I can forgive that. So don't follow me anymore."
No, she wants to tell him as he turns his back on her. But she can't say a word, and she watches his broad shoulders, his dark hair, his everything disappear in the fog that is rising despite the rain that has started falling, and she knows that he won't come back. She knows that his retreating figure is the last she'll see of him for a very long time, if she ever sees him again, and she has a feeling that even if he forgives her, he'll never love her like she loves him.
And the former rain woman became so once more, wandering until she found this little town. This town is small and quaint, and the people are seemingly indifferent to the fact that since she came, it always rains. After a few months, they stop asking if she's okay, and that's fine with her.
Juvia likes to be alone.
Well, that's what she tells herself, but in reality all she wants is to be back with everyone at Fairy Tail. She wants her family back, because everything hurts so much without them. On days when she doesn't deny that her so-called dream was once a reality, she lets the sorrow completely engulf her. She's swallowed by the pain of what she's lost, and she doesn't understand why everything had to end like it has.
They had been happy. Juvia is absolutely sure of that, because she's never been happy without the guild. The guild is her family, and she doesn't know how such a close-knit family falls apart so fast, but it does, and now she has nothing but herself and her rain.
But when she acknowledges that her nightmare is real, it is a completely different story. Juvia tries not to think about it, because it absolutely kills her inside to remember his countenance on that fateful day. She can't think of anything in his eyes but the hatred deep down, and even though she remembers that there were more emotions mixed in with it, she doesn't remember what she thought they might have been. And she knows, perhaps even deeper down than any of her other knowledge, that her 'dream' is never complete without him.
Another thing she knows is that she will probably never be able to be with him in the way she used to be, or the way she wants to be, because even though Gray is the cause for her happiness, he is also the only one who can, and does, bring the rain back. He is the reason for her dream, but also the instigator of her nightmare. He had been cold to her, had driven her away, and the memory still haunts her.
She thinks, sometimes, that she's fallen out of love with him. After all, Juvia can only take so much pain in her lifetime, and hasn't she already had hers? She believes that she can still find some sort of happiness, but maybe with someone else…or so she tries to tell herself. But she still remembers how her life has turned into a nightmare, and the reasons for it. The rain woman knows that he has tried, or is still trying, to break his connections with her, and so she tries to forget about Gray.
He hates Juvia, she thinks to herself as the rain pours down around her. He hates her with everything he has, and she doesn't blame him for it.
But when she wakes from the nightmare, she knows that she still loves him anyway.
Mashima Hiro owns everything! I don't claim anything but the present-tense drabble I wrote in his setting with his characters.
These are some of my thoughts on recent events in the manga, and if you want more of my theories about why Juvia's rain has come back, those can be found on my tumblr, panda013. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this, and thank you for reading!