The Slow Gathering of Clouds
by Contrail
Disclaimer: Fairy Tail belongs to Hiro Mashima, and is being used without permission. No profit is being made from this story.
When Gray vanished, at first Juvia thought that he had just gone on another one of those errands, like he had been doing more and more frequently lately, and leaving a note to tell her he'd left and when to expect him back had merely slipped his mind. She'd have to chide him about remembering to do that when he got back. (And she did her best to ignore the uneasy feeling in her heart, the one that had been growing with the distance between them, the one that whispered that maybe he didn't simply forget to tell her he was going.)
A week later, she couldn't ignore the uneasiness gnawing at her anymore. He'd never been gone so long before. She started asking the other villagers if they knew which way he'd left, but no one could recall seeing him leave. Undaunted, she decided to check all the nearby villages. He surely must have passed through one of them.
Above her, unnoticed in her worry, gray tendrils of cloud began to stretch themselves across the sun.
A month later, she had checked everywhere she thought he might have passed through, but had nothing to show for it. No one she spoke to remembered seing him at all. There were more places she could check, further afield from where they lived, but doing so would mean leaving their home for more than a night or two. And what would she do if he came home to an empty house and left because he thought she'd abandoned him? (She squashed the tiny part of her that suggested that it might be fair for him to think that, for him to know how she felt, even for a little while.) Besides, she had to face the truth - he was deliberately hiding his tracks. Gray didn't want to be found.
The first few drops of rain began to fall from the now perpetually overcast sky.
She went back home. He'd left all his things there, other than some clothes and other items he usually took with him, after all, so he might come back for them. Juvia just had to believe in him, that he wouldn't leave everything behind like this, that he wouldn't walk out of her life forever without so much as a goodbye. Yes, he'd come back someday, after he'd sorted out what was troubling him, and she'd be here waiting for him. (And she tried not to think about that strange black mark growing to devour him, or him falling to some foe without her by his side.)
As Juvia waited, she did her best to keep occupied. She trained as best she could alone, because she knew there would be new foes to face in Gray's future, and hopefully in time she'd be back by his side, fighting them with him. She cleaned, because she wanted him to come back to find a pleasant home waiting for him. She did what jobs she thought she could handle on her own, because food cost money and she needed to eat. She tried to push the rain away, because she wanted him to return to sunlight, but she could no more make the clouds lift than she could do the same to her own heart.
The rain grew heavier.
With the passing of time, it became harder and harder to get out of bed in the mornings. The faith and hope she clung to began to slip through her grasp as the ache in her heart grew. Juvia kept going through the motions for a while, but less and less of her heart was in it every day. She found herself getting lost in memories of happier times more and more easily. It hurt every time, though, coming back from them to the reality of the emptiness around her. Her eyes were drawn to the door again and again, wondering if now would be the time he would step through it.
The nights were the worst, filled with silence and the weight of his absence. She'd lay in her bed some nights, curled up with her arms wrapped around one of his coats, breathing in his lingering scent and trying not to cry from how much she missed him. Other nights she dreamed of terrible things - his body lying on the ground in some distant place, the light gone from his eyes because she wasn't there to help, or the blackness spreading across his body, twisting and changing him into something that wasn't Gray as she desperately tried (and failed) to reach him.
One by one, the villagers slowly deserted, as it continued to rain and rain and rain.
It became difficult to keep eating when everything she put into her mouth seemed tasteless, but she made herself do it anyway. She began to haunt a certain bench in the midst of the village, from which she'd be able to see him no matter which way he came, hoping against hope for a single glimpse of his familiar messy hair, that he'd return healthy and whole again. As she sat, her questions and worries tore at her heart - Why had he left? Where was he? Was he all right? When would he return?
But she had nothing to answer them with other than her own pain, and the sound of rain.
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