Juvia technically meets Freed for the first time when he traps her in his rune square, and he calls her filthy names...

But she doesn't really want to talk about that time.

It's not that it surprised her, exactly. She was prepared to take a few blows about her Phantom past. Waiting for it, even, except that her defenses were down at that moment because she was too busy hunting Laxus, too involved with the battle, to think of herself as an outsider anymore. It was called The Battle of Fairy Tail: she was fighting in it. A soldier part of the cause. Simple.

So when she thinks of Freed, she tries not to remember him like that. Instead she remembers him like this:

He looks at her as he bows, with his hair knotted as his neck. Intimate in a way that's near vulgar, she can see the exposed back of his white throat, and the sweat that runs into his tunic—points where she could cut him very easily. She's so busy thinking about this that she jumps a little when he actually hands her a sword.

"Cut it off," Freed says. "Please. As repentance. Later it will be presented it to the Master, but I think you should cut it. That way it has...resonance." He guides the hand gripping the sword to his neck, but closes his eyes tightly before delivering the stroke. "Just, only, well, you'll do it quickly, right? Trust me, I'm not relishing this." He sighs.

"Freed-san."

"Yes, Juvia, I know that it's rather firmly attached and you're going to need a good swing, and it's definitely not going to be pretty afterwards, but I trust that you've seen more unpleasant sights in your life than a—"

"Freed-san," Juvia repeats, timid. It's just that Freed is very tall and grand up close, like a museum, or an elegant library. She hardly dares to interrupt him, or look at him in his vulnerable position. "Are you sure you want Juvia to do this thing? She has very little experience, um...cutting off people's...Well, there was that one time, but Juvia did a really crude job..."

"Juvia," he says, by this time straining to keep his head level, "It's really not that complicated. You whack it. It falls. We sweep it up and dispose of it, and then present my penance to my betrayed comrades. It's all rituals, see? Rituals of apology, and hopefully of forgiveness. This is the way things are done, through sacrifices, in order to give apologies proper meaning...is that all now clear?"

Uncertain, Juvia lowers the sword. "Yes, and that's all very deep and meaningful, but...aren't there, um, cleaner ways of apologizing? Like...flowers! Who doesn't like flowers, right? Teddy bears. Fluffy sweaters. Cupcakes. Juvia would honestly much prefer cupcakes." She gives him a pleading look.

Freed's returning look clearly communicates that there, sadly, will be no cupcakes in Juvia's future.

"Just do it, please. I'm trying to do the honorable thing."

"O—kay," she says cautiously. "If Juvia has no choice. Just—one clean stroke?"

"Yeah," he says. "Quick and keen."

"All right, then—though Juvia warns, she was never very good at lopping off people's heads—"

Freed's eyes snap open. "Lopping of people's—? Oh dear—wait a second, Juvia, stop, there's been a terrible misunderstanding and I don't want you to cut off my head—no wait don't swing that sword HANG ON FOR A MOME—"

Something hits the ground with a soft thud.

To Freed's great relief, it's not his head rolling away from his body, like he thought it was: but only his sword slipping from Juvia's hands at the last moment, landing on the carpet. It lies there innocently, as if it wasn't the intended instrument of his decapitation, as if it only meant to cut his hair—and only his hair—as he wanted, the entire time.

Once clarified, the whole situation seems much less strange to Juvia.

She does feel a little bad about almost killing him, even on accident. So she rubs his back and (quite kindly, in her opinion) offers to cut off his hair properly, like he wanted her to, and make a most sincere effort to avoid taking off his head.

Understandably, Freed declines.

But he does cut off his own long, beautiful knot of hair, and he does offer it to her on his knees. She takes it. Of course. It's all like a story being read to a child: the courtly knight, the token, the sword...Freed is something old-fashioned, straight out of a fairy tail.

And, elegantly, that is the memory that stays.