stitch up your shrapnel heart
;;
She's whirled into E & R like a hurricane, an arsenal of mass destruction in the stutter-start of her breath. Her weapon is the staccato irregularity in her ribcage, her warpath the ribbons of red dancing in fast rivulets down her sides, and treasure the glistening rubies pooling on the pale cloth beneath her. Thoughts whip by in the wind like wreckage. She's wheeled through blinding white, lightning behind her lids. Her ears are thunder, her throat blocked sewage — she wonders who'll pay for the damage to the car.
Why didn't anyone tell Juvia dying would feel this peaceful?
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When she blinks her bleary eyes open two days later, the storm has passed and taken all her poetic romanticism with it. What's left is the gritty reality of a hospital afternoon and its repercussions.
The lightning becomes fluorescent ward lamps, the thunder has degraded into a headache, and the biggest problem her throat's dealing with right now is the hulking piece of plastic trash someone may as well have glued over her mouth and nose. The stitches on her chest don't feel like jewels; they feel like stitches — And. They. Fucking. Hurt.
A flutter of yellow in the periphery of her squinted vision; a grating (comforting, familiar, oh-thank-fuck) voice she'd know anywhere welcomes her back to the world of the living and conscious.
"Natsu, look. Sleeping Fugly's risen from the dead." Juvia barely has time to wince before her best friend's back at it, her voice trembling like she's holding back tears—which, hello, is so obviously an act because this is Lucy Ashley they're dealing with her here. "Would you like the honours of finishing the job her suicidal driving didn't, or shall I?"
"Lucy—" Natsu trails off, but his voice still sparks all the alarm bells in Juvia's head that weren't currently pre-occupied by the post-crash injury feedback. He sounds— "A-Are we telling her now?" —hushed, delicate, pained and strained in all the worst ways. "Do you think... Should we wait until she's stronger?"
Juvia's sense rushes back to her like a flash-flood— "She'd want to know straight away, Natsu," —because he's missing, Gray's missing, he isn't flopped down on the bed, hand clutching hers like he's apt to do, like he's been doing for the past three years— "She has a right to know," —because Gray, that self-sacrificing doe-eyed lunatic Gray Surge — Juvia's lunatic Gray Surge — isn't where he's meant to be. He's... He's— "Plus, there's no way she won't ask why he's missing."
Did she say her stitches didn't feel like jewels? Because now they feel like iron, like steel, like dented armour from the worst fight of her life—and God, the battles she's fought, all the battles she's lost, they didn't hurt half as much as it does right now. It's so fucking different because every war up until now has been won with his hand in hers. Lucy and Natsu, the way they're talking, it can't be, he can't be—
"But to wake up to news like this, Lucy..."
"She'll find out sooner or later, won't she? We probably shouldn't postpone—"
"I'm awake, just tell me, fucking tell me," Juvia gasps. Her voice comes muffled through the breathing mask, scratchy through her sandpaper windpipe, cracked with what she refuses to call apprehension (it's more like dread and worse, oh God, oh God, no, please)— "Where's Gray, where is he? Lucy, tell me now, what happened? Jesus Christ, fucking tell me—"
It isn't until the beeping overtakes her words that she realises her heart rate's going crazy, that her breath is coming in pants, that her head is lifted off the bed in some desperate attempt to look her friends in the eye, searching out the one person she needs there that isn't, the presence that absent from the room, the warmth missing from her palm, the hole he's left behind — it stands out like a scar.
"Juvia, oh," Lucy manages, nearly collapsing into the plastic chair by her bed. Seeing her best friend, a girl with a heart of stone and composure steadier than the ground, trembling with her brow scrunched like that; it's enough to have Juvia tearing the mask off her face and sitting up, accidentally pulling the IV stand a foot towards the bed in the process, the pain in her wrist nothing, barely fucking registering.
"He wasn't—" Juvia whispers brokenly, panicked gaze flickering between Natsu's hunched form and Lucy to her right, "He wasn't in the car, Lucy... I don't understand."
Her head's in turmoil. All she can think is Gray and no and please, over and over like some sick spinning top; it's all she can do to pray that it doesn't fall, all she can do to tell herself it's okay, that she's okay, that he's okay.
Lucy bites her lips, her dark eyes narrowed. The pity is painted across her face so think it makes Juvia's stomach turn. No, God, please, no. "Juvia, y-you were in a crash," she starts falteringly, not making eye contact. "It was, um, Natsu's car, and you—"
She cuts off when Natsu abruptly turns his back to the bed. His hand comes up to cover his mouth; Juvia sees his shoulders shaking. Her breath wavers at the sight, a broken noise hiding just behind the tight line of her lips. She can hardly keep her composure, and even that thought alone threatens to trigger the heart break she know will ruin her if she lets it in.
Three years ago, this would have been easy — three years ago, her walls were still up, her heart was still hardened, Gray didn't have a fucking place in it like he does now—now that he owns the thing, now that she's gone and given it to him and hoped, prayed, crossed her fingers every day that he'll keep it safe, keep it close to his own, and never let go. But right now, just the thought—the very fucking thought—of something having happened to her fiancé has Juvia close to shaking. And his best friend's reaction... He won't even look at her, but she can hear little gasping noises from behind his hand, and it's bringing up up her own fear like a tsunami.
She didn't share her life to Gray Surge to have him quit halfway, God fucking damn it, NO. This isn't happening. This isn't happening.
"They rushed you straight here from site. You were in surgery for hours, Juvia," Lucy continues, voice rising higher the more worked up she gets. "Y-You— There was a metal rod, it went right through through your..." She takes a deep, steadying breath, and closes her eyes. Juvia can't tear her eyes from Lucy's face. "Juvia, you needed a heart transplant."
The news has barely sunk in when Lucy lets out a strangled-sounding sob. Natsu covers his face with his other hand, hiding behind his palms and shuddering.
"W-What?" Juvia's eyes can't get any bigger. Like it's not enough to have Lucy act so... not herself, but with news like this— "But where's Gray? Lucy, where's my fiancé?"
"Juvia..." Lucy opens her eyes. Her lips twitch like she's trying to hold back her tears. Natsu's breathing is so loud—his crying, Juvia thinks, his grief. "Juvia," Lucy tries again, clearing her throat and looking her dead in the eye, "You had a heart transplant, i-it was an emergency, and Gray was the only one who went with you to the hospital—"
Juvia nods, eyes wide, clueless but terrified of where Lucy was going with this.
"So..." Lucy gulps down a shaking breath and looks her square in the eye. "So where do you think the heart came from?"
Juvia blinks. Twice. "Eh? Y-... He—... Wait— Wait, what?"
That's when Natsu explodes. "OH MY GOD, STOP, LUCY, STOP—" He turns around and Juvia sees him, she sees how red his face is, she sees the tears streaming from his eyes as he— as he— as he fucking laughs his ass off. Juvia ferociously blinks the tears from her eyes, turning to look at Lucy with confused indignation; said best friend can only manage one more twitch of the lips before she's doubled over in what are indeed shoulder-racking guffaws — she's practically shrieking.
"J-Juvia is..." Fuck, she's done it, she's gone and reverted back to third person, she's just gone. "Juvia is—... Juvia is—"
That's when the door opens.
And there, right then, with Natsu leaning against the wall and wiping tears from his eyes, Lucy still gasping for breath as she clutches her stomach, and Gray Surge standing in the doorway with two coffees in his hands and eyes wide as saucers, grin frozen in place — that is when Juvia starts to cry.
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.
.
"I-I thought you were dead, you f-fucking b-b-bas— How could you do that to me?!"
"Juvia-chan, I only went for coffee! They said you were waking up today and I knew you'd... you'd want coffee!"
"They told me you cut out your heart for me!"
"J-Juvia-chan, I wouldn't be allowed to do that."
"Oh, you wouldn't be allowed—"
"Ow! Ow, why are you hitting—? Ow!"
"—fucking—bastard— Not allowed, well, I should damn well think so, not allowed—"
"Juvia-chan..."
"—thought you had g-gone and done something so stupid—"
"Oh, don't cry... It's okay, I'm here now, come here, it's okay."
"—fucking died for me o-or something—"
"But I know my Juvia-chan well enough to know that she'd kill me if I tried something like that, don't I?"
"...You damned well better, y-you.."
"I love you, Juvia-chan."
"I'll— I'll make you pay later, you stupid... Went and worried me to death..."
"I'm sorry you cried over me. I love you so much."
"Mmmm. I-I lo—... iloveyoutoo."
"And I'm really sorry Lucy and Natsu actually managed to trick you into believing your three stitches were a heart transplant— OW! Ow, Juvia-chaaan~"
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notes— literally just a joke with feelings. leave this fic by the side of the road, trash collection is on tuesday