rip gajevy

edited 2/12/2017

~Lyrics are from fragile by gnash x wrenn~

/

i'm sorry you saw me shaking
stay with me for a day

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THE WORLD SHATTERS WITH EACH LUNG-TEARING GASP FOR BREATH.

She is covered in blood and drowning in her misery, forever spiralling down a deep and dark rabbit hole into a place unknown—

(a place where his violence hasn't yet touched, his eyes have never beheld, his storms and blizzards have not yet destroyed).

Juvia is terrified.

She braces one trembling hand against the ground, pushes herself up. She manages to pull her torso half-way before she is sent tumbling and sobbing to the blood-soaked undergrowth. The hasty stitches holding the flesh of her thigh together have torn apart, leaving a gaping wound in its wake.

With scarlet-stained fingers, she is able to remove her shirt and press it against her wound, broken sobs turning to keening howls. The pain of the wound and losing Gray is too much to bear. She wants to rise like a tsunami, to leave the world quivering and vulnerable and shattered just like her.

But there is a small voice that whispers sweet, devilish nothings to her. The Rain Woman wants to curl up and lose herself within the heavy downpour. Forget everything and everyone, reject the world, succumb to the darkness lingering just beyond her reach. To rest forever and ever undisturbed, like Annabel Lee in her tomb by the sounding sea.

But Gray-sama's Pale Lady is too far gone.

It is his Pale Lady that stands on shaking legs and takes a single step forward. She stumbles, but the imaginary arms of her beloved push her forwards each and every time.

Two steps, three. Four steps, fall.

Get up, start again.

Two steps, three. Four steps, this isn't how it's meant to be.

Five steps, six. Seven, fall.

Get up, just once more.

Two steps, three—

"Just give it up already."

She clenches her teeth, fists clenched so tight they shake. "Juvia cannot. Gray-sama needs her."

Gajeel sighs a curse and gently lifts her into his arms. "You're in no state to be wandering the fucking jungle, okay?"

Juvia tries to fight him, but her limbs are too weak and her mind is much too fogged. She can only manage small, desperate pleas: "Put Juvia down, Gajeel-kun. Please."

"Not a chance in hell. I'm not going to just stand by and watch you destroy yourself over some fucked up suicide mission."

She cannot stop the tears from rolling down her cheeks, or the broken-hearted sobs that tear apart her throat. "Please."

Gajeel ignores her and hands her his radio instead. "Alert the others that we are en route to the base."

Juvia shakes her head like a stubborn child, contemplates throwing the device into the surrounding trees. She doesn't want help, she doesn't want to go back to the base, she doesn't want any of this—

she only wants Gray.

They have come too far for her to just abandon him. Too many days have been spent lamenting his absence and worrying herself to the point of sickness. She cannot and will not give up on her hurt, her cold, her storm.

"Gajeel-kun," she tries once more. "Let Juvia go. Let her do just this one thing."

"Like hell I will."

With reckless abandon, she slips from his arms and tumbles to the ground like a marionette with slashed strings. Gajeel tries to stop her but she is a summer storm in her need to escape, to be free. But it is still not enough; it will never be enough.

Her desperate plight lasts all of seven seconds before she is smothered in his arms again. This time he only restrains her flailing limbs as she cries and beats his chest, screams her ache, rejects the world.

There are shards of glass in her throat and livewires in her veins. Rope around her neck and mortars in her brain. A little girl fading away all over again. The tips of her hair are poison and everything is falling, breaking, crumbling apart and—

she can do nothing but watch.

"Let Juvia go," she cries over and over again until there is no breath left in her quaking lungs, only her inevitable demise.

Gajeel is tense, as if the marrow in his bones has been replaced with concrete and steel with each tear that splashes against his skin. He is silent but strong, and Juvia wishes she could take some of his strength.

"You really care about this Gray, huh?" he says finally.

She nods emptily. "She does, so much so that she would give her own life to save him."

"That much?"

"It's what love is. There was once a time when Juvia believed she would never find love, but she found it in Gray-sama. He can take away her rain. He can freeze her hurt. She is nothing without him."

Gajeel appears thoughtful for a few moments, and Juvia distantly wonders if it is possible that he has found love too.

"Okay, here's what's gonna happen—"

Her breath hitches and she watches him with wide, hopeful eyes. "Does this mean…?"

"Only if you promise not to do anything stupid," he amends.

Tears of relief catch the setting sun's final rays, and the luminescence bathes her in liquid peace. "Juvia promises!"

"First, we're fixing your leg. Last thing we need is for you to get an infection. After that, we'll try and find Gray. Deal?"

"Deal!"

. . . . .

"Juvia, for fuck's sakes, stop squirming."

She sucks air through her clenched teeth, willing her limbs to be still. "Juvia is trying her hardest."

Gajeel snorts and threads the needle clumsily through her skin again, using the bend of his knee to trap her legs in a tight hold. "You were the one always stitching me up. Feels odd."

This time she unable to keep the whimper in the back of her throat and Gajeel shoots her an apologetic glance.

"I always sucked at this. Sorry, Sprinkler."

She manages a weak smile. "No need to apologise, Gajeel-kun. Just focus on finishing quickly. Juvia wants to find Gray as soon as she can."

Gajeel remains quiet, and Juvia can recognise the uneasiness in his eyes. But now is not the time to ask him, and now is not the time to force the secrets from off his chest, so she instead focuses on directing him on how to tie off a stitch when he fumbles.

"Almost done," he assures her some moments later.

Juvia tips her head back to examine the world upside down. She is a child again, hanging from her lonely window counting raindrops as they fall from the ground and plummet to the city in the sky—

drip… drip… drop

juvia's gloom… never stops

"Oi," a gruff voice pulls her from the dark recesses of her mind. "Snap out of it. Do you wanna find Gray or not?"

Juvia blinks heavily and focuses her gaze on her thigh, where Gajeel has wrapped it in a coarse bandage that smells strongly of antiseptic and near-death. She ghosts her fingers over the white fabric, as if the purity of it could quell her stuttering heart and reveal the secrets of the webs wound around her limbs.

Gajeel hauls her to her feet before she can get lost in the mazes of her mind once again.

"So if I was an Avatar dick-sucking prick, where would I be?" her partner hums aloud, grabbing her wrist and veering them off the beaten track.

"Shouldn't we be looking for Gray-sama instead?"

He shoots her a knowing look and scoffs. "Same shit."

Juvia allows a microscopic smile to pull at the corners of her blue lips, shadowed eyes sweeping the forest floor for a sign of her Gray. A broken branch, a patch of ripped fabric blowing in the breeze, a gust of cold, a storm. Anything.

A pair of boots precariously protruding from a bush.

She halts her steps, pulling Gajeel to a stop along with her.

"The fuck, Sprinkler—?"

"Look over there," she murmurs, pointing to the boots in the bush.

Gajeel is instantly on alert, pushing his pistol into her waiting hands. There is no need to talk — they have done this countless times before. Her partner creeps forward, walking a slow circle around the shrub. Juvia follows from a couple paces behind, gun cocked and ready to fire should they be ambushed. Gajeel holds a fist up and she stops where she is, watching carefully as he nudges the body of a small, dark-skinned man.

There is no response.

Gajeel roughly drags the body from the shrubbery and confirms what they both already knew.

"Dead. Probably for an hour, going by the size of the blood puddle."

Juvia joins him by the bush and looks for any personal belongings that may have belonged to the nameless dead man. Peculiarly, she finds pieces of a smashed radio, but nothing else.

And then she spots the symbol stitched into the man's bulletproof vest with bright blue thread.

Grimoire Heart.

Gajeel spots it at the same time she does and lets out a heavy sigh. "Fuck sakes," he hisses.

"Gajeel? What's wrong?"

"Unless Grimoire Heart is going around killing each other, I can only think of two people that could have done this," he meets her gaze briefly, turning the broken pieces of the radio over in his hands. "Either the Allied Forces have dragged their asses from their fancy corporate buildings, or this was left by that Avatar fucker."

Juvia holds her breath. "Gray-sama was here?"

Gajeel shoots her a look that says 'don't get too excited'.

But Juvia is ecstatic nonetheless, searching the ground with new-found vigour. Twenty paces away from the dead man's body lies another body, though this one is pale and large.

"Gajeel-kun! Juvia has found another body," she calls and her partner trudges over.

"Doesn't look like they were firing at each other," he concludes, having already placed the bodies side-by-side.

Juvia hums an agreement. Both men have been moved post-mortem judging by the half-concealed drag marks. Had they shot each other, there wouldn't have been any drag marks other than those left by Gajeel.

"So it was Gray-sama," she whispers.

"You better hope your damn ass it was," he mutters more to himself. Juvia ignores it, casting her gaze away from his worried eyes out of respect. He will tell her his troubles when he is ready. There isn't a need to press.

"There are some tracks by the tree line. Shall we follow them?"

Gajeel grunts and begins the trek to the surrounding trees, eyes cast to the ground and shrubbery. There isn't much — Gray-sama has always been a God carved from the berg that sank the Titanic, an expert in all things malevolent and malignant.

"Loverboy sure ain't makin' this easy," Gajeel grumbles, and Juvia hides another smile.

"Gray-sama is—"

Crashing through the trees.

Gunshots.

A broken voice, screaming a single name to the desolate sky: "GAJEEL!"

Her partner stiffens, and Juvia watches as all the blood drains from his face. "Levy?"

And then he is crashing through the trees with reckless abandon; too stricken to curse, too dead to remember his Rain Woman, too much alive to turn his back on the other woman.

"Levy! LEVY!"

Too frightened to remember just who he is and the odds piled against him.

Juvia looks longingly to the dense jungle encasing her Gray in his tree-casket. She can see the hungry vines twisting around his torso, the Hellebore blooming from the footstep-like bloodstains shadowing him like a trail of breadcrumbs.

But the clock has struck twelve, and the wolves are hungry.

Casting one last look behind her, Juvia runs after the crashing in the trees. Towards Gajeel, and away from her Gray—

(her heart shatters like struck glass. )

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'cause i'm fragile
god, i'm fragile