Yo, yo, yo! I am back with MORE Fairy Tail. Even though I have my final exams. My priorities are NOT straight. (Now, I'm on holiday, so my priorities are a little bit straighter.)
Anywho, this is a Gruvia two-shot! So I say, but really, this first chapter is devoid of Gray entirely. This entire chapter is good, ol' Juvia (her past), with some snippets of Gajeel.
None of this is canon. At all. Sure, some parts are definitely inspired by canon stuff, but I ended up changing a lot of it (mostly because I couldn't remember what actually happened in the manga or anime, but ANYWAYS—).
Juvia is an Atlantis girl, an exile, an orphan of the world, a woman of water. She finds sanctuary in the patters of rain, in the murmurs of waves and ocean expanses; temporary stays, until Juvia can finally find home— the place where she belongs, where she is loved, accepted (Juvia absolutely won't acknowledge the waters as her home, because they can't be; she doesn't want them to be).
Land and soil and earth do not welcome her. She doesn't feel the pain of the stones the little boys throw at her (they pass straight through), but she feels the emotional bruise of rejection.
Some call her invisible, others call her a ghost, and the almost-kind ones will dub her as "the rain girl". Nobody calls her Juvia.
So she bubbles back into the oceans, her heart liquescent, her body conjoined with the water, her tears lost within the salty ripples.
The water is ever-lasting, lonely. There is nobody to call her name, so she must do it herself to prevent herself from forgetting. Time passes, and it becomes habit.
Juvia yearns for touch, for acceptance, for people. She wants to be wanted. She is social by nature, and though the water murmurs, she cannot decipher any message. There aren't any.
Maybe on occasion, she will see secrets corked in glass bottles, drifting towards her. Juvia reads them, even though she probably shouldn't— but they are the only semblance of what she wants.
They are not enough.
Juvia doesn't want to lead this sort of lonely life anymore.
She braves the land once more; the little kids, the stones, the names will not faze her, and she will find herself a home amongst them.
She puts one foot out onto the sand, and grains clump between her toes. Juvia is too mystified to feel bothered. She realises that she almost forgot the feeling of everything besides water.
But when Juvia finally emerges from the oceans in her entirety, somebody punches her from nowhere and throws her into an iron box.
Juvia is a legend of sorts. Almost a myth. They try to convince her that she is a mermaid or a siren, and when Juvia firmly denies it, they slap her and tell her to pretend.
If they can sell her as a mythical creature, then they will profit immensely. One argues that they could probably still sell her for a high price regardless; water mages are rare, after all.
(—Mage?)
Juvia wants to be wanted, but this isn't what she meant. This isn't what she wanted when she stepped out. She just wanted to be happy— so why did it have to turn out like this?
Perhaps it is the water's wrath, for not being able to appreciate the one place that accepted her, for abandoning home (Juvia can call the water her home now, but there is no place for her anymore— karma has dealt its damage, critical of Juvia's wavering heart, her fickle-mindedness, her selfishness because despite all of this, part of Juvia still yearns for something more).
Drip.
Outside the carriage, rain drives down in torrents. Juvia doesn't realise what's happening until she hears her kidnappers scream.
Juvia stares, frozen, trembling.
She did this.
The large bubble encapsulating the men bursts, and they collapse to the ground, expressions paralysed in fear and shock, hands around their necks, over their mouths.
Juvia scurries over to the side of one of them. There is a pulse, extremely weak, but he isn't breathing. People can't breathe in water, not like she can.
He isn't breathing. Oh God.
Juvia did this.
She doesn't know how to save him.
(She doesn't know if she should, either, but she instantly drowns the thought.)
The handcuffs are heavy on her wrists as she runs; the earth beneath her feet slashes at her skin. She squeaks at the pain. She leaves behind footprints of red and then the rain washes it away — but the earth is relentless, taunting her, screaming her crimes in her ear as if she didn't already know. But she doesn't; Juvia doesn't know enough. She is still juvenile. She doesn't know how heavy guilt is, how it ruptures her soul and wears her down.
She doesn't know how to distinguish the line between regret and thrill.
(The thought surfaces again: perhaps, Juvia subconsciously did justice to the world. Maybe, Juvia did the right thing.)
Juvia is still juvenile; the thoughts are too much, the emotions are too much, everything is too much, and she faints.
Juvia wakes up to the sound of crunching iron and a rough grip on her wrist.
"You're eating Juvia's handcuffs," Juvia says softly, her voice quivering as she eyes the boy with metal studs and untamed hair. She hopes that she comes across as incredulous.
His eyes are sharp, a deep onyx, lost when they match her gaze with a slant.
"And?" he barks, as if he can't identify his own peculiarity. Juvia doesn't flinch at his aggressive tone, more concerned about the fact that he's eating metal. "Urgh." He grimaces. "Enchanted steel tastes shit."
Juvia cringes at his profanity, but even that is momentary, as it suddenly dawns upon her that this boy can actually bite into her handcuffs. Forget the fact that he's eating it, what in Magnolia are his teeth made of?
She doesn't dare ask.
When he leaves, Juvia follows, clumsy in her steps. He doesn't stop, but he slows down, and Juvia smiles.
Despite his rough appearance and mannerisms, the boy isn't bad at all.
(She asks him what a mage is and he looks at her with critical disbelief.)
His name is Gajeel, and he's apparently an iron dragon slayer from four hundred years ago. Juvia isn't sure if he has gone insane from eating too much metal.
"The fuck is it still raining?" He eyes her, and Juvia looks away. How cruel. He knows the answer as well as she does.
"Juvia doesn't know how to make it stop," she murmurs, and her turmoils cluster in her core.
The rain pours down harder.
Juvia tries sewing rain dolls to make the rain stop. It doesn't work, but it becomes a hobby.
Gajeel just looks at her sceptically and walks on.
One time, they wander through a village, and Juvia drops her doll from the shelter of her cloak. The white cotton becomes sodden in the puddle, the threads damp and the stitches unravelling.
She crouches down to pick it up, but a young boy stomps on it, sees her, stomps on it again. Juvia stares in dismay as he smirks.
Gloomy rain woman.
Next thing Juvia knows, the boy collapses and she is grabbing Gajeel's arm and running for dear life.
Juvia is fourteen when Gajeel and she are scouted for a guild.
Phantom Lord.
She wants to feel conflicted— while they are a recognised guild, they are inherently evil, villainous; but they are willing to accept her, teach her how to use her water magic. This is all she has ever wanted, and turning her water into a weapon is only a measly price, right? It's an easy decision.
Juvia says yes because she doesn't know how to say no, not to a deal as scintillating and appealing as this, and because she doesn't know how to distinguish the line between future regrets and thrill.
(And Juvia is only human, contrary to the belief of those children from her more juvenile days; she is not exempt from grey moralities and holding grudges.)
Juvia is sixteen and has stained her hands with the blood of many.
Nobody is dead (that would incur too many problems for the guild), but Juvia has fought and won all her battles, and even then, she continues attacking until they apologise or until they have fainted from their injuries.
They initiate it. They mock her and her rain, and they beat down her confidence until it swells into fury. The rain washes away the blood.
The guild members call her cold, ruthless. Juvia calls herself tired.
There might have been a time Juvia nurtured guilt in the depths of her heart for causing so much grief, be it by the misery of her rain or by the injuries she inflicted on her tormentors (how funny that she still victimises herself), but those days have long gone.
Her rain has washed away both the line and the extremities; there is no guilt or remorse or thrill.
Juvia just feels empty.
And that is it for the first chapter! The second chapter is halfway in the making, and will definitely be out before Christmas, for those who enjoyed this! Um... so where is this fic heading? No clue. I'm just going with the flow.
But I'm going to warn you now, if you're expecting a happy ending: DON'T. But you may or may not be pleasantly surprised. I don't know.
~Adieu!
X's and O's,
Liberty!