AN: I literally had this chapter decided before I even finished the previous one. Are any of you guys familiar with the genius director known as Tim Burton? Yes? What about his movie Corpse Bride? Well, that is where the inspiration from this chapter came from. After finding so much fanart of Gray and Juvia as Victor and Emily. If they were a couple frm any of this movies, it would be those two. If any of you guys haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. It's one of my favorites by him.

I'm going to reference a few other movies, games, etc that I like as I add onto this collection.

Oh, and there is also some Gajevy in this chapter!

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So she made a vow lyin' under that tree

That she'd wait for her true love to come set her free

- Remains of the Day from Corpse Bride

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Gray was not a lucky man.

He curse at himself. He was supposed to be getting married in the morning. The new certainly would not settle well with his family. The marriage was arranged from their own idea after all. In fact, he had been on his way back to his family's manor outside of London from rehersal. It hadn't gone well, so he decided to practice the vows he would have to say during the ride while his fingers played with the ring in his pocket. The driver of the carriage was elderly. Gray guess that something had happened with him because then the ride had quickly become bumpy, and then the carriage crashed into the river.

Gray knew that he hadn't survived the accident because now he stood a few feet away from it. Gray didn't know how long it would be before they were found, but he did know that he didn't want to be around to see that. The road they had taken was not busy one, so it could be a while.

The raven haired man turned around, and he began to walk away from the scene.

He carried the ring that he had been practicing with in the pocket of his suit. There was no need for it now, and he tossed it aside.

Is this what it was like after death? Gray never really believe in a heaven or a hell, but the thought of wandering around aimlessly for the rest of time did not seem at all appealing to him.

"Uh..."

Gray stopped when he heard a voice. Was there someone with him? He couldn't think of a reason as to why someone would chose to walk in these creepy woods. But, when he turned around, he did see someone.

In front of him stood a girl that was around his age. She had long blue hair that reached down to her waist. Gray took notice of her strange chose of attire. She long white dress that trailed behind her. It was covered in dirt, and ripped in several places. When he saw the tattered veil that was over her hair, he realized that it wasn't just any white dress. It was a wedding dress.

"You dropped this..." The girl reached out to him. The ring he had dropped sat in the palm of her boney hand.

Gray stared at her hand for a while. This girl wasn't skinny to the point that it looked like she didn't have any meat on her bones. Her hand, no.. her entire arm was bones. The expression in his eyes became frantic as her looked over her appearance more. He saw a large cut on her cheek that went from her ear to her chin. There was a chunk of her dress missing underneath her right breast, and there he could see her ribs.

This girl was dead. Just like him.

The girl waved her hand in front of his face when she didn't get a response. This one still had skin on it. "Juvia wanted to return this to you..."

Gray shook his head. "You keep it. I don't need it."

The girl, Juvia, looked at him with a thrilled expression on her face. "Is this... a proposal?" The look in her eyes was almost hopeful.

"What? No." Gray groaned. He had just died and this woman was asking him about proposing. "Jesus, woman. I just met you."

Juvia looked down. "J-Juvia apologizes..." After a few moments she looked back at him. "She saw what happened... Are you lost...? Juvia can take you to the Land of the Dead if you want her to."

Gray supposed that it was better than just wandering around. He accepted her offer.

Juvia nodded and motioned for him to follow her.

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The Land of the Dead wasn't at all what Gray had expected it to be. He had expected it to be dark and depressing. And dark a it was, he found that it was very similar to the city he had use to call his home. It appeared that the dead still have a life in the after life after all. Juvia led the recently deceased man to the towns bar. She wanted him to meet more of the dead.

The bar are usually packed, and that night was no exception. Upon them entering, Juvia greeted everyone in the bar happily. Then, their eyes went to Gray.

"Yo," he said.

"Oh!" Juvia smiled. "Everyone this is..." She paused and looked at Gray. "Juvia never asked for your name."

"It's Gray."

Gray looked over the other people in the room. They all looked pretty normal except for a few visible wounds and discoloration of their skin. Gray guessed that was part of the evidence of how they had died. Looking at his own hand, he could see how pale it was. Of course. He didn't expect a dead person to have color.

Juvia left him so she could speak to a friend of her's. The man looked odd with his long black hair and piercings on his face. Gray guessed that he was a commoner by his clothing.

Gray went to sit at the bar. A few stools away from him sat a woman with several empty bottles of liquor scatters around her on the counter. There was a young girl, a blunette like Juvia, talking to her with worried eyes.

"Cana, maybe you shouldn't drink so much of that. How many bottles have you been through today?"

Cana laughed. "Man, I know you got here a few months ago, Wendy, but relax. Nothing's gonna happen." She took another swig of her drink. "At least I don't have to worry about alcohol poisoning in this place. I can drink how much I want."

Gray felt bad for the young girl. She didn't look to be more than thirteen.

A woman seated herself next to him. She looked like she was in his early to mid-twenties when she had died. Her clothing told him that she had lived in the lower class on London. Her hair was was dark, almost black and it reached her chin. Like everyone else there, she was sickly pale, and there was a blue tint to her lips. Gray picked up a motherly vibe from the woman, yet it was also mixed with a feeling of melancholy.

"The usual, Ur?" The bar maid asked from behind the counter.

"Yeah."

While the white haired woman went to work, Ur looked at Gray. "What's your story, kid?"

Gray sighed and thought back to the accident. "I think I drowned. The carriage I was in crashed into the river."

The woman was given her drink and she took a drink of it before she said more. "So it was slow. Slower deaths are worse."

"What about you?"

"That was probably twenty years ago," Ur answered him. It was hard to keep track of time in the Land of the Dead. "It's a long story actually. My daughter had gotten sick. It was just the two of us, and we were poor. Regardless I tried to get to as many doctors that I could afford at the time." She pause for a moment, letting out a heavy sigh. "However, the last one that I took her to told me that she had died while he was examining her. He wouldn't let me see her."

"Why wouldn't he?"

The woman sighed. "In all honesty, I don't think she really died. I think they took her. When I died I was actaually some what relieved because I thought I woud see my daughter again, but when I got here, I never found her. No one else had either."

Gray stayed silent. What else was them to say? He wondered what everyone else's stories were, but he suppose he would learn those at a later date. Right now, his accident seemed like nothing compared to what the woman had just told him.

"I shouldn't be here..." he mumbled.

"None of us should be," Ur told him. "Especially the young ones."

He looked around the room. Aside from the girl that he had seen talking to the brunette earlier, there were a few other children. The youngest, from what he could see, was a little girl about three. She sat with two adults, and Gray guessed that they were her parents. Ur caught where he was looking and told them that the family had been hunters, and had died during their last hunting trip. She pointed to other people in the room, telling him what had happened to them.

She pointed to a boy with salmon colored hair. He had several burn marks covering his body. "Natsu over there is a pyro. You can guess what happened with him."

"Idiot."

"Yep." The woman pointed to who the burned man was talking to. A blond girl that had lived in the higher class society. There was also an older woman who looked nearly identical to her. "The only woman is the younger one's mother. Layla had fallen ill a few years after she had her daughter, and passed away. Lucy died from the same illness when she was seventeen."

When Gray didn't say anything, Ur continued on. The alcoholic at the bar had been an alcoholic in life. She drank enough to die of alcohol poisoning. Ur said she wasn't about the girl she had been talking to. Wendy didn't remember much of it anyway. The man that Juvia had went to talk to, Gajeel, had worked as a black smith. Apparently one of his customers had picked a fight with him, and it had been a fight that Gajeel had lost. Rumor had it that he had a fling with a short girl named Levy. She was a book worm, and she had worked in a book storm until she had been killed in a robbery.

Eventually, the curiousity got him. "What's Juvia's story?"

Ur sighed. "She is such a sweet girl. She didn't deserve it."

"Why is she wearing a wedding dress?"

"Juvia told us that she had fallen in love," the woman explained. "Her parents didn't approve of the man she had chosen, so they had arranged a plan to elope. She had taken her mother's wedding dress, some of their money and jewels. They were supposed to meet in that forest you met her in earlier. Juvia waited there for him, and when he got there... He murdered her, and then he left along with the money."

The blunette was a happy person, so Gray almost had a hard time believing that Juvia had went through that heart break. If it wasn't for the fact that she was wearing the wedding dress, he probably would not have believe the story.

Gray sighed. He had something in common with the corpse bride. "I was suppose to get married..."

"So was Juvia. Perhaps you are the one she has been waiting for."

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Gray thought that Ur was just a crazy woman with what she had told him. She liked the idea of Juvia with someone. From what she had told him, Juvia had been waiting for the right person. Gray couldn't blame her, especially after what had happened with the last person she had fallen for. It became quickly apparent that Juvia was quite fond of him. She would always be near him, but Ur had been right. Juvia was a very kind hearted person.

Gray had never really believed in love. No. It wasn't that. He never had very great experiences with it. He thought Juvia was weird from the first impression he had of her.

He never bothered to visit the Land of the Living. It wasn't like he would be able to stay there, and despite everyone being dead where he was now, they were still very much alive. And it turned out that the so called fling that Gajeel and levy had was very much real. Even in this world, people still got married. Gray was amazed that people could still find love.

Gray found Juvia sitting on a bunch that sat along one of the long streets. Her head was down, and her blue bangs fell over her face.

He walked up to her. "What's wrong?"

The blunette looked up at him, and she shook her head. "Juvia is just happy for Gajeel-kun and Levy..."

Gray raised an eyebrow as he continued to look at her. Despite her being dead, Gray could see a streak of tears on her cheek. "Why were you crying?"

Frantically, Juvia wiped them away as he sat next to her. Then she sighed. "Juvia envies them..."

"Ah." Gray remembered what Ur had told him about what had happened to Juvia. The man had played with her heart and used her for her familys wealth, and he had taken her life.

"Juvia actually knows a few people who have met their true love after they have died..." She smiled sadly. "Juvia was hoping that would happen for her and Gray-sama... Especially since they were both going to get married when they had died..."

Gray sighed. "It's only been a month, Juvia..."

The blunette looked to the side. He avoided her gaze. "Is Gray-sama... saying that we have a chance?"

Gray ran a hand through his messy black hair. "I don't know, Juvia. You seem pretty hell-bent that I am the one though..."

"Juvia has waited this long." She smiled at him again. "Juvia is willing to wait for Gray-sama."

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AN: I am deciding to end this here, and I MIGHT add a second part to it. I'll just have to find the right inspiration.

Thanks for reading! I'll probably make a fluffy one next!

AND OH MY GOD! THE GRUVIA MOMENT IN TONIGHT'S EPISODE! I AM SO HAPPY!