She winced. He was angry again and from the way his face turned an incredible shade of purple, the veins in his neck straining, he wasn't about to calm down anytime soon.
Lyon sneered at Juvia as she took a step backwards with a confused look upon her features. All she had told him was that she had spent the day with Lucy that afternoon after she had gotten off of work and he immediately responded in anger. Yelling at her, accusing her of cheating on him, convinced that she and Lucy were meeting up with guys just to sleep around with them. The sad part was that this wasn't the first time that Juvia had had to bear witness to his cruel words and harsh accusations.
Tears welled up in her eyes as she watched Lyon call her such dirty things, things no one should ever be accused of being. She sniffled a bit and that was when he finally lost his temper and punched the wall. Plaster and drywall cracked under the pressure of being hit and Juvia flinched, her eyes wide in her pale face. This was the first time that he had ever hit a wall because he couldn't control his harsh temper and the blue haired woman took a tentative step back. She was scared she realized with a start and she didn't like it one bit. Her teeth worried her bottom lip before she took a step forward instead of in reverse, trying to be brave.
More words were tossed around as Juvia gathered her courage. When Lyon proceeded to call her best friend, Lucy, a whore and how he didn't like how she was dressed in such revealing clothes; did Juvia finally look up, a spark of anger hidden in her deep blue eyes.
"That's enough Lyon!" The young woman finally yelled.
Lyon's mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, which Juvia would have found funny if the situation wasn't as serious.
"What did you just say?" Lyon asked, his face beginning to take on an intense new color, veins were popping out of his neck in his anger.
Juvia gulped, her courage dwindled, but she held her ground as he advanced slowly on her. "I said that that was enough, Lyon." She took a deep breath. "Why are you… why are you so angry all of the time? What happened to you to be like this?" She demanded, her breathing starting to get a bit shallower as she saw Lyon's hackles start to rise.
"You happened, you bitch! You're always with Lucy! That fucking slut! She's turning you against me!" He yelled at her, spittle dotting the air.
"How on Earthland is Lucy turning me against you? We're just friends! The best of friends! I've known her since I was about 12 when I moved here!" Juvia's pale cheeks reddened in her anger as she tried to get Lyon to see that he was acting insane. She took a step back as she saw that what she had said had a more negative effect on the man than she had intended. Instinctively she raised her arms to protect her face and head as he raised his arm, but lowered them again as she heard a loud crash instead as the sound of glass shattering entered her ears. Looking behind her tentatively she saw that one of her favorite vases was now in millions of tiny fragments behind her. She took a deep shuddering breath before turning back around to look at Lyon.
His face resembled a maroon color and the veins in his neck looked ready to burst in his anger. The tears that had welled up in her eyes earlier finally broke free as they trailed down her cheeks, she looked away mortified to know that he had seen that he had scared her. Seeing her so distraught is what made Lyon finally snap out of whatever had been going on inside his head and his face slowly turned back to the regular paleness. He shook his head and grabbed fistfuls of his snow-white hair, "Juvia… I-I don't- "
"I can't live like this anymore." Juvia whispered softly. Her ocean blue hair fell in front of her face, hiding her expression for a minute before she reached up and moved her hair behind her ear. She raised her eyes to his once more and that's when Lyon took a step backwards as he saw the silent rage behind her iridescent orbs.
"Juvia…"
Silently, the young woman moved past him and into the room that the two had shared for so long, Lyon following close behind.
"Don't do this." He swallowed a lump in his throat.
Juvia stayed silent as she dug around in the closet before producing a small duffle bag. She carried it over to their bed and opened it up carefully before marching to their shared closet and picking up a few articles of her clothing and folding them neatly before placing them in the bag. Shortly after she grabbed a few things that she knew she couldn't leave behind since there was no telling how long it was going to be before she was going to be able to come back and get the rest of her things.
"Where would you go?" Lyon made another desperate attempt to try and talk to her. He wanted to grab her and shake her but he knew that if he touched her at that moment that either she would break or he would break her himself.
This time Juvia looked up from her packing and spared him a glance before turning back to her bag and zipping it up resolutely. She hitched it onto her shoulder and grabbed her phone that was on the side table by the bed. "I'm going to Lucy's." She said calmly and started moving away from her soon to be ex.
As soon as Lyon heard Lucy's name, a switch happened somewhere inside his brain and a surge of anger overrode everything. He grabbed the blue haired woman's arm in a tight grip. "You're not leaving me." He growled, his temper rising with each breath he took.
"Lyon!" Juvia struggled with the hand now on her bicep. "Stop it! You're hurting me!" Juvia cried out as his grip tightened and she knew that she would have bruises come morning.
"I said you're not leaving!" Lyon screamed at her. "I will not allow for that whore to ruin your life and turn you against me!"
"Well you don't have to worry about that!" Juvia screamed back. "You're turning me against you all on your own!" The two wrestled for a bit before Juvia reached up with her other hand and smacked him across the face. As he staggered back stunned, the young woman gripped her bag tightly before fleeing across the apartment and flinging the door open and escaping down the stairs.
Terrified that he was going to follow her, Juvia ran out of the apartment complex, her breath heaving in the frigid air, tears staining her pale cheeks. She pushed as far as she could, not even blinking as the frigid air became even colder as rain clouds gathered before erupting. The sound of a large crack of thunder is what finally made Juvia stop and swing around, prepared to fight Lyon just in case he was behind her. She breathed a quick sigh of relief seeing that she was alone and pressed a hand to her racing heart, trying to compose herself a bit more. She raised her head to the sky as a soft drizzle started, the rain water mixing with her tears. Juvia sniffled and rubbed her eyes once before her shoulders squared themselves with determination as she took in her surroundings.
Everything was unfamiliar in the dark, but a crack of lightning revealed enough to know that she had gone in the opposite direction of Lucy's apartment. Scared to head back the way she came she brought out her phone and quickly dialed Lucy.
"Hey Juvia!" Lucy's bright and cheery voice brought the young woman further out of her stupor. "What's up?"
"L-Lucy…?" Juvia's voice quivered and another rumble of thunder rolled above her.
"What's wrong." The cheeriness was gone from Lucy's voice, in its place was one of concern and worry. "Where are you?"
"Lyon, he… he screamed at me…"
"Juvia, where are you." This time Lucy demanded for Juvia to focus and the woman looked around and finally spotted a sign that she recognized.
"I'm on the corner of 5th and Cherrie." Juvia whispered again.
"Natsu and I are coming to get you. Stay where you are." Lucy said with a sense of urgency. "Please Juvia." She added as a kind of afterthought before the line was disconnected.
It took Juvia a few seconds to finally put her phone back in her bag and she silently crept to a nearby tree so that she could get out of the rain that had replaced the drizzle moments before, her clothes already soaked through, her hair hanging in stringy clumps all around her delicate face. She stared blankly at the sidewalk as she waited for her friends to come and get her. She felt almost numb by that point and just seemed to be in a daze, so many thoughts were running through her head. Like, where was she to go now that she basically ran away from Lyon, leaving a lot of her things there. She shuddered at the thought of going back to get them by herself. No. She would most definitely need for Natsu or Gajeel to go with her to get her stuff. She wanted to try and keep Lucy away from Lyon as much as possible.
She worried her bottom lip. Actually, bringing Natsu with would probably be a bad idea as well seeing as he was so protective of his girlfriend and she knew that in the end it would end up with one or both of the men to end up in the hospital. Hearing the low rumble of a car, Juvia looked up as she saw a truck come into her view and she smiled slightly at seeing the old beat up vehicle that Natsu owned. It brought another level of comfort as soon as she saw the truck and she took a few tentative steps towards the road so that the couple inside could see her a little more easily. A wave of guilt flashed through her like the lightning above her as she saw the worried look Lucy had on her face.
Juvia put on a braver face and raised her arm to flag the couple down. Natsu surprisingly spotted her first, but that might have been because Lucy had turned her head moments before to talk to him. His eyes had a smoldering look in them, his jaw set, but he smiled softly at her from the safety of his truck before pulling onto the curb. Lucy flung open the door, her bottom lip a cherry red from worrying it, and Juvia suspects that the blonde and Natsu were in the middle of something when she had called for some help.
"Juvia! There you are! What on earth happened?" The blonde forced Juvia into the vehicle and scooted over closer to her boyfriend so that there was plenty of room for the three of them. "Natsu, could you drive us back to my place?"
"Sure." Natsu nodded his head as he slowly pulled away from the curb and paid close attention to the traffic so that they wouldn't get hit. "So, what's up?" He asked after a few seconds of being on the road, heading back in the direction of where they came.
Juvia felt her best friend's eyes on her, and she slumped in her spot. "Lyon got mad." She said simply. "I came home and was telling him about my day and as soon as I mentioned that I had been with Lucy all day, he… well he just flipped out, to put it mildly. Started calling me a bunch of names, and Lucy a bunch of names. Started going on and on about how he didn't like how Lucy dressed herself all the time, how you were a bad influence on me and I was going to turn against him." Juvia put her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking from repressed tears and the coolness of her skin because of her drenched clothes.
"How long has this been going on?" Lucy whispered, a shocked look on her face. She had met Lyon on a couple of occasions but never dreamed that he was like this behind closed doors.
Juvia uncovered her face, her eyes downcast in guilt at herself as she revealed just how long it had been going on. "About 8 months."
"8 months? Juvia…" Lucy's brown eyes filled with tears as she pulled her friend close to her and gave the trembling girl a tight hug. "Why didn't you come to us sooner?" She whispered, more to herself than to Juvia but the bluenette heard her anyway.
"I was scared." She whispered in reply. "He always threatened to kill himself if I ever left him, and then he escalated into threatening me instead. And… he just terrified me." Her breaths slowly turned into hiccups as she started crying again.
No one said anything else as they finally pulled up to Lucy's flat. Natsu slid out of his truck and jogged to the other side to help Juvia and Lucy down, then he and Lucy both helped Juvia up the three flights of stairs to the quaint home. Lucy ran ahead to open her door, and by that time Natsu had just swept the weeping woman into his arms to better maneuver her inside his girlfriend's home. He placed her gently on the couch, kissed Lucy on the forehead and murmured something about calling someone before slipping into Lucy's room. Juvia looked up at her friend, big wet tears trailing down her pale cheeks.
Lucy smiled slightly, "What do you say to a nice cup of some hot cocoa?"
Juvia nodded miserably at the notion, a small sad smile appearing on her delicate features. "I would like that." The blonde nodded once before disappearing into the kitchen. Juvia sighed pathetically before swiping her fingers under her eyes to get rid of the last remaining tears lingering there and then willing herself to be stronger than how she felt.
Lucy came back within a few moments, three steaming cups in her hands and she gingerly placed them down on the nearby table. "Be careful," she commented. "They're still a bit hot." She sat down in the chair opposite of the sofa that Juvia was on.
Juvia looked at her best friend and slowly took in all her best friend's features. The pert little button nose, the wide golden brown eyes, full pouty lips, the prominent cheekbones. She was beautiful and sometimes Juvia couldn't help but feel a tinge of jealousy over her best friend's delicate features. She chased the thoughts away and clasped her hands tightly around the mug of hot chocolate that Lucy placed in her cold hands.
"Thank you, Lucy." Juvia smiled, the inner turmoil over what happened, starting to get buried under the deep affection she had for the blonde.
"We're best friends! You know better than to thank me." Lucy scoffed in amusement.
Juvia shook her head, a hint of a smile playing at her lips. "I'm thanking you for picking me up and for not being angry with me."
Lucy waved her hand as if to dismiss the notion altogether just as Natsu walked back into the room and he took a seat on the armrest besides Lucy. "I called metalhead and the exhibitionist." Natsu stage whispered to Lucy who rolled her eyes and gave Juvia a look as if saying, 'Can you believe this?' making Juvia smile slightly even under the conditions that everyone was under at that moment. She sighed and her fingers were rubbing circles into the mug of hot chocolate that Lucy had mad, it soothed her much more than she thought and she drew comfort from the fact that so many people cared for her. It was nice not being yelled at or being blamed for everything that went wrong throughout the day.
"I love you guys." Juvia managed to blurt out, her face flushing when she realized what she had done.
"We love you too." Lucy smiled gently. "And we always will. You're more than a best friend to me."
"You're family." Natsu finished for his girlfriend and offered the blue haired girl a warm grin, his sharp canines catching in the light.
"Family sounds nice." Juvia smiled back just as a knock was heard on the door.
"That'll be iron nuts or the stripper" Natsu commented and gave Lucy a kiss on the forehead before he went to the door and opened it to reveal Gajeel and Gray, both out of breath and panting. The three men were arguing by the door and Juvia trained her eyes from the men to her best friend and her lips tingled again as she smiled.
'Family sounds really nice.' She thought as all the boys came over and she received a bone crushing hug from Gajeel as all the men started talking over each other. In that moment, she knew that she was going to be ok so long as she had these people with her; the family she never knew she had or needed.