His eyelids felt like they were stitched open or as if someone had stuck glue under his eyelashes. They say that when something terrible happens, time slows down and all the background noise gets lost. Well, they're right. He stared as the fabric was torn into smaller pieces and watched every singular strand of hair flutter forward as if they were reaching out to him, trembling, blue arms trying to grasp him. Gray saw the hole expand through organs, muscles, bones, and skin and the fat droplets of blood as they sprayed across his face and chest, watched it as it dribbled from cracked, dry lips, and leak into a growing puddle at scuffed, booted feet.

Everything was too quiet and too loud all at the same time. There was screaming, somewhere. Gray couldn't figure out from where, his eyes stayed stubbornly transfixed on the strokes of red and clear blue trailing across pale, bruised skin. The lips moved, forming words, but he was too fixated on how the teeth should be white to listen to the words. Listening though was pointless; he knew what she was saying. Grey had watched those lips form those exact words more than a hundred times before, but never before had he watched a wave of red engulf the vowels and surround the consonants.

"Gray…-sama…,"

She stuttered through it, air wheezing and bubbling out of her throat but for some horrible, terrible reason she was smiling at him. Gray couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. His skin burned where her blood was painted on, but he couldn't wipe it away. He tried to speak, tried to reach out but everything had shut down as he watched the fog roll into her eyes. Someone was still screaming and all Gray could think was that should be me.

She fell to her knees and her hands fluttered uselessly around the wound in her abdomen. He saw the skin around the hole flash between water and flesh before finally sputtering to a stop at destroyed flesh. Gray finally blinked.

"Ju…via?"

Juvia's hands dropped to her sides, bloody knuckles dragging across the dirt and leaving streaks of gore on the ground. The small thump of her knuckles hitting the ground forced Gray a step back, but she didn't seem to notice. Her smile grew a little wider, the blood following the curve of her lips and filling in the tiny spaces between her teeth. She was coughing now as the fog floated from her eyes. Behind the fog, her pupils were blown wide, consuming the blue irises.

"Gray-sama once sacrificed his life for Juvia's,"

Gray's knees hit the ground with a sick squelch and warm blood soaked through his ruined pants. It felt like he was taking it away from her, leaching her blood into his body. Her hot finger tips grazed against his cheek and jaw, drawing shaky swirls in the grime.

"Please, don't Gray-sama," She mumbled as one hand fell away from his cheek, shining with small splatters of water. It should have been from her, it was always from her, but her water couldn't save her this time. They were too slow, too distracted, too weak. Her hand dropped into his lap the same time her forehead fell onto his shoulder. Her hair was in the awkward halfway conversion to water that it sometimes got when she was nervous or excited. It tumbled over her trembling shoulders to soak his chest and curl around his neck like serpents, slowly suffocating him. Warm breathe scraped across his bare skin like a promise.

"I…love you…Gray-," The hand on his jaw plummeted to his leg and her shoulders slumped forward and suddenly the serpents disguised as tresses were choking him and the weight of her body on his chest felt immeasurable. His vision went grey.

And then it exploded in blue.

Cover art by and story based off of the beautiful art found here: post/90131233641/gray-sama-juvia-is-here-i-have-a-feeling