—I think I'm in love, and I think he might break me—
The second Fairy she meets is staring at her.
Hard.
And she stands her ground and stares levelly back.
Even through the sideways-slashing rain, Juvia can see him clearly — his eyes are dark and stormy and painfully intense, matching spiky ash-colored hair, and setting off features so straight and neat it's as if someone has carved him...or stitched him. She would like to stitch him in a doll. River stones for the eyes and charcoal rubbed on his hair, maybe a smile on his face, if she was caught in one of her happy spells with needle and thread. She's not sure if she knows how to sew smiles —
But he's not a doll, he's a person; he's an enemy, and Phantom requires Juvia to cut him down.
Enemies. Phantom. Fairies. Right.
She thinks she might be in love.
Juvia changes her mind; he's not a doll anymore, he's a prince. Her prince. Except that there's still a part of her that remembers that he's an enemy and she's getting all messed up in the head right now and...Good lord, he is so handsome...wait, no, enemy, Juvia, enemy! Fairies are bad, remember? Just get over there and actually attack him, you thrice-cursed rain child...
WATER LOCK!
It's the same pretty, blue bubble spell she used to trap the target, discluding the oxygen because in her panicked, hazy state of mind Juvia has the notion that if she manages to make him choke, it will effectively choke the love out of her. Then she sees him wince in pain and something inside her starts aching — is there a single person she can manage not to hurt?
When her globe of water fractures into shards of clear, sharp ice, she's relieved. Maybe he is someone strong enough to fight off the pain she inflicts.
From there things escalate too quickly.
The wind picks up, catching her prince's shirt on it's wings and flying away with it, so it's only natural that Juvia starts spinningspinningspinning around in circles with her hands pressed against her flushed cheeks, and alternating between looking at his bare muscular chest and the rainy sky and back at his bare. Muscular. Chest.
And then he attacks her. Naturally as breathing, her body liquefies and she's a puddle on the ground, but the look on his face, the shock, it hurts so much more than any lance.
He will never belong to her.
This knowledge crashes down on her with the weight of a grand piano — he's claimed. A prince complete with a lady by his side; that girl, she remembers, that lovely, golden girl, a runaway princess, the one who plays with the pretty keys.
Juvia can't stop crying. And then she can't stop screaming. Her prince's eyes stretch wide, because what the hell happened to her?
"Juvia is through with love, and she is through with you!"
The sound of her name, Gloomy Juvia, leaving his lips is transformatory in the most wondrous way, because suddenly his handsome, flawlessly stitched face looks identical to Bora's. And Totumaru's. And all the other men who have stilled the rushing water inside her, only to turn it toxic and spit it back in her face.
Like an avenging angel, she vows to go back and destroy them all.
She's falling.
The ground rushes up to meet her, and all she can think is, Juvia should have known this is how she would go. Hitting the ground and disappearing into nothing, just like a raindrop.
Death is no stranger to her. It follows her wake like the rain, steals from her — Juvia shudders as she remembers all the times she has woken up from a stupor to find her hands coated in another wizard's blood, an innocent, sometimes a child — and she's left cold with the sense that something else has taken over her body and used her as a tool. The killing, she's good at it. It's easy.
Like all of the other victims who dared to defy the Phantoms, the rain will be the last thing she sees before she's gone.
She whispers a quick goodbye to her one true friend, another to her one true love, and then she thinks she's ready now. Her eyes slip shut.
If there is another world after this one, then where will Juvia go?
When Juvia's eyes open, she's right back on the roof.
Huh.
At first she decides she is a ghost, forever condemned to haunt the place of her death, but...she feels warmth. Fingers wrapped around her wrist, and someone's asking, "Hey, are you feeling better now? Cooled off?"
Her prince is smiling at her.
"You've seriously never seen a blue sky before?"
"Well—no. Juvia has never..." She gulps and trails off. No words can encompass how the sight of a cloudless, rainless sky makes her tremble, or how thankful she is that he is the first person she sees lit up by sunlight, or that she silently, grudgingly, forgives him for his slight towards her and any other pain he caused.
"Really? Huh. It's pretty, don't you think?" he asks.
Juvia nods.
—I think I'm in love, and I think he just saved me—
A/N: Well, this turned out...different than expected.