like glass we shatter
by huemid
broken hearts don't mend easy
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Juvia stood in the cold rain, drops of water showering her. Her cerulean hair was plastered to her head and her face, and droplets of rain stained her pale, blueish face. Smudged mascara and foundation ran in small rivulets down her tear-stained cheeks, and her pale pink lips were pressed into a straight, small line.
Her normally vibrant indigo eyes that shone of electric stars and sapphire galaxies were now dull and empty, meaningless dark holes of shadowy washed-out blue.
The man who stood in front of her, stone-faced, held a black umbrella over his head and just stood there, staring at her with expressionless obsidian eyes. He did not offer to share his umbrella with her.
Juvia stared at him, trying to make out any, any emotion in his dark dark eyes, but he revealed nothing. No love, no pain, no sadness, no nothing. (And in the back of her mind, a voice whispered he does not care. He does not love you. No one does.)
Juvia whispered, lips barely moving, "Do you love me, Gray?"
He heard, but did not answer.
"Do you love me?"
Juvia started panting, taking in shallow gasps of the rain-filled-air. "Do you, Gray? Do you?"
Her breaths came out in ragged, desperate gasps. "Do you love me? Gray, answer me, dammit. Please. Do you love me? Did you ever love me? Did you? Even just a little?"
He did not answer.
"Fuck this, Gray. Please, just answer, just tell me if you ever did. I know you don't now, but just—did you?"
He did not answer.
In her, Juvia still held a tiny flame of hope. Because every time he did not answer, she refused to tell herself that he didn't. She refused to tell herself that all of what she did was for nothing. Because if not, then what?
( despair, despair, despair )
The flame was disappearing by the second. She felt herself drowning in the cold, dark depths of desperation and anguish.
"You never did love me, did you, Gray." Juvia whispered it, a slight breath that came out of her mouth. But he heard.
He answered, this time, and there was nothing that passed through his eyes, not even the slightest flash of regret, the smallest hint of sorrow, the tiniest semblance of sadness. Nothing. And that was how Juvia knew he was telling the truth, when he finally whispered,
"No. I never did."
Juvia knew that she looked purely disgusting, that rain and makeup and snot dirtied her face, and her whole body was drenched.
But it did not matter, because Gray, her beloved, her dearest, her love—
he was gone.
He was gone.
(She hated him with every single atom of her body, and yet she loved him so hard, so much. Her hate was a whirlpool of broken dreams and shattered hearts, and yet wisps of love intertwined with the hate. Love. Hate. What was the difference?)
She let out heartbroken sobs into the night sky; rain and tears soaked her entire body—you could not tell which one was which. And she became the rain, became the sorrow it held, the tears, the sadness, the broken regrets and cold hearts.
And the man turned, and walked away into the cold, rainy night. He did not look back.
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this is the way we fall in love —
we burn and we flash and like lightning, we are
and then we are broken, and shattered, and scarred
and gone, gone,
gone.