The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

There Are No Stars Tonight, Part 3

-Who Hurts The Most-

It was some time later that Natsu staggered into the village. How much later, he couldn't say – not enough for it to be night-time, although the ever-thickening clouds rolling in from the north certainly gave that impression. He didn't know the name of the village, either, if such a tiny cluster of houses even deserved the label. It wasn't Magnolia. That was all that mattered.

The fire of his rage had burnt out; the damp air now clung to his clothes. He sought shelter, both in the form of a roof over his head and a place where no one would ask questions. The latter, it seemed he had managed to stumble across – if only because there appeared to be no one in this village to ask him anything.

No one passed him in the street. No one answered the first three doors he knocked at. In the centre of the settlement, the small pub was boarded up. Casting his eye further afield, he noticed what he should have done at once, were he not so exhausted: no chimney-smoke curled through the air, no laundry dangled between buildings, no dogs or hens sounded a greeting. The scents in this place were old, distorted by the shifting air pressure. There had been people living here until recently, he thought, but they'd left in a hurry and taken everything with them.

Then he caught sight of a single tongue of smoke, rising shyly over the rooftops. Someone was still here, then.

Natsu trudged down the muddy path, across a garden of struggling, flattened flowers, and knocked on the door. There was no response. He could see an orange glow dancing in the dirty windowpane, though, so he shouted, and when there was no response to that either, he knocked again, harder.

The door swung open under the force.

Old instincts urged caution as Natsu stepped inside, in case it was a trap, though he had a hunch that the owner simply hadn't bothered to lock it, with the village being deserted. He would have thought the house deserted too, if not for the fire burning with false cheer in the grate, and a pot of stew simmering on the stove. The smell didn't exactly bowl him over with deliciousness, but it was good enough to remind him that he hadn't eaten a proper meal for a while.

Not since the Buon Gusto in Crocus, in fact, when Lucy had flipped a table – and his whole world with it.

That thought no longer had the energy to spark anger in him. Everything was already ash. Instead, he slumped down in front of the fire and drew his knees up to his chest, as if that could somehow fill the emptiness.

Oh, but he missed them.

Lucy most of all. He didn't care about Zeref or Avatar or what had happened between them in the streets of Malva. He just wanted to know she was okay.

But he missed Happy, too. He'd only returned to Malva to rescue his partner, but he'd ended up fighting Gray, and then Zeref; he'd never found out if Happy had managed to escape.

He missed Erza, whom he hadn't seen in over a year; he missed Wendy, and cursed the fact that he'd been so preoccupied with finding Zeref when he ran into her at Lamia Scale that he hadn't even asked how she was.

He missed his guild, back in those days when no one, not even he himself, had known who or what he was, and they'd been content.

In fact, he was feeling so awful that he would even go as far as to say that he missed Gr-

"Oi, Flame-Brain. Get outta my house."

Natsu almost fell over backwards. "G-G-Gray? What are you doing here?"

"I live here," Gray retorted. "What are you doing here? I presume it's not to apologize for nearly killing me back in Malva."

"Not unless you were planning on apologizing for nearly killing me first."

They glared at each other.

On any other day, the stalemate would probably have been broken with laughter. Today, it dragged on and on.

Were it not for the gratingly familiar voice, Natsu might have struggled to recognize his old rival – and not just because he was fully dressed. Gray hadn't exactly looked great last time they'd met, with his body slowly being corrupted by the dark stain of his magic, but now he looked even worse. He was scrawnier than Natsu remembered; his hair was wild, but it looked frantic rather than cool. Both his eyes were the right colour again, that familiar icy blue, but there was something empty about them, a thin layer of frost where there had once been a great shelf of ice.

In Malva, he had smelled part-Gray and part-Not-Gray. This time, his scent was all Gray, but it wasn't as full as the scent Natsu was used to. It was as if, when that demonic taint had left his body, it had taken something vital with it.

"Why are you living here?" Natsu demanded. "Why're you not at the guild?"

"That's rich, coming from you. Why're you looting an evacuated village rather than fighting in the war?"

Natsu blinked. "What war?"

Gray gave him an incredulous look. "You know, the one Fairy Tail, the Royal Army, and all the other guilds are fighting right now, to protect our kingdom from Zeref and the Alvarez Empire?"

Natsu's mouth moved, but no words came out.

"How oblivious are you?" Gray exclaimed.

"Well, at least I had a reason for not fighting for my guild!" Natsu bit back. "What's your excuse?"

The energy that had flickered so briefly in Gray's expression died once more. "Go away, Natsu."

"Not until you tell me why you're living like a hermit when our friends are out there fighting for their lives!"

Gray turned away. Folded his arms. Gave the door a pointed glance.

There was one way Natsu had always dealt with Gray's stubbornness, and he bounded to his feet, seized Gray by the collar of his shirt, and slammed him back against the wall. "Tell me, and it'd better be good, or I'll-"

"I can't fight, can I?" Gray yelled. "I don't have magic any more!"

"What?" Natsu jerked back, but his nose was already twitching, wondering if the things missing from Gray's scent were the tang of frozen air, the crisp crunch of snow, the fresh chill of winter…

"Whatever they did to destroy the Devil Slayer magic going out of control inside me destroyed all my magic." Gray could not have spat the words with more hate if Natsu had been the one personally responsible. "I can't go back to the guild. I can't do anything."

Natsu's fist went into the wall inches from Gray's face. Dust settled upon the former ice mage's cheekbones, enhancing his gaunt appearance. "You call that a good reason?" Natsu accused. "Of course you could do things! You could help with strategy or be a spy or deliver messages or borrow one of Erza's swords! This is pathetic!"

"Go away, Natsu."

Natsu did not go away. He raged.

"That's your reason for running away from the guild? That's nothing! I just found out I'm a demon created by Zeref!"

Gray gave an incredulous snort. "So? I figured that out ages ago."

"…What?" Natsu blinked.

"Devil Slayer, remember? I wondered why you seemed so weak when we were fighting in Malva, and then I realized – it was the first time we had fought since I became the Ice Devil Slayer. My magic was reacting to you." He gave a harsh bark of laughter; magic or no, some parts of him were still bitterly cold. "For the first time in my life, I was actually stronger than you. I'd conclusively achieved what I'd been aiming for ever since you joined the guild! And then, ten minutes later, that magic was ripped away from me, and I was left with nothing."

"I can't believe it." Natsu shook his head incredulously. "You're still making this about you!"

"Of course it's about me!" Gray exploded. "So what if you're technically a demon? It's not like it changes what you can do or who you can be! I lost literally everything I'd devoted my life to overnight! Ur's disciple, heir to my father's magic, member of Fairy Tail's strongest team – what have I got left now?"

"Oh, I don't know, how about your own thoughts?" Natsu yelled back. "Zeref made everything that I am! He's been manipulating my emotions from the start!"

"Well then, maybe I should send you back to him, because if you think Zeref made a demon, sent him to Fairy Tail, and let him live a really happy life all as part of some diabolical master plan, you're clearly defective! Even the Tartaros lot made choices and friendships of their own! Having the label 'demon' in no way invalidates anything you've done!"

Natsu snorted in derision. "Not like you would understand. What if you woke up tomorrow to find that you're not real at all, but some ice construct given artificial life by Ur?"

"I'D BE HAPPY!" Gray bellowed. "BECAUSE IF SOMEONE MADE ME, THEY COULD ALSO FIX ME!"

"Is magic the only thing you care about?" Natsu snapped back.

"Easy for you to say. You're the world's most powerful demon. You don't even have to try."

"SHUT UP!"

This time, Natsu's fist went into his chin – and that went into the wall, and then through the wall, and Gray was sprawled amongst plaster on the bedroom floor. He dragged himself into a sitting position, wiping a trail of blood from his chin. Savagery shone in his eyes.

"And doesn't that feel good, knowing your old rival can't even fight back against you any more?" Gray laughed. "You've not changed at all. Look at that destruction; you're still Natsu Dragneel, alright. I'm the one who has lost out."

The edges of the hole in the wall ignited unbidden as Natsu stepped through it. The pillows spontaneously combusted; each footstep intensified the smell of smoke. "Say that again, I dare you," Natsu hissed, seizing his erstwhile rival in one flaming hand. "Tell me all about how you, a human being of Fairy Tail, with friends who won't give a damn whether he has magic or not, with the whole future ahead of him and the free will to make what he wants of it, has it worse than me-!"

And one or both of them might have done it, too, had Natsu not found his air suddenly replaced by water.

His flames spluttered valiantly and died in a burst of steam. He tried to breathe, but water brought panic pouring into his lungs. He twisted, instinctively seeking a way out, but the sphere of water moved with him, sealing him inside.

If he'd been able to speak, he probably would have laughed out loud in that moment. After all, it only proved his point. It was natural that, without hesitating, without stopping to ask what was going on, a hero would step in to save the innocent Fairy Tail mage from the evil demon…

His brain made one last plea for oxygen and then cut out completely, and he plunged into darkness.

Into the destroyed bedroom stepped the last person Gray wanted to see.

"My dear Gray!" Juvia gushed, hopping over Natsu's unconscious body as if she couldn't tell it apart from the rubble of the wall. "Are you hurt? Let Juvia have a look-!"

He ripped his arm out of her grip, turning viciously away. "Go away, Juvia!"

"Juvia will not! And you can't make Juvia, because Juvia owns half this house too, remember?"

Of course he remembered.

It was the second time he'd buried his father, but unlike the first time, he hadn't had to do it alone. When everyone else had been busy planning out their own futures in the aftermath of the battle against Tartaros, Juvia had put his welfare ahead of her own. He didn't know what to do or where to go next, but she'd been there to help. And when he'd signed his name beneath hers on the joint tenancy agreement, he'd felt… safe.

Like things were bad right now, but they were going to get better.

Juvia's impulsive suggestion – and his impulsive agreement – had become days of slow recovery, of living together and training together and going on mage jobs together… and what a waste of time that had been.

Accepting his father's magic had driven him into darkness.

He may have won back his soul now, but it had cost him his magic, his ambition, his hope. It had cost him that life of adventure and home, of danger and sanctuary, of heroism and love, for which this cottage in Helvola Village had been a quaint little test-run.

He remembered, alright.

"Fine! If you won't leave, I will!" he snapped.

She was still standing in front of the hole Natsu had made in the wall, so he found a use for the neglected door instead, and strode into the living room. He seized his bag, grabbed his boots, and was almost out into the gloomy drizzle when Juvia asked, "Didn't you get the letter Juvia left for you?"

"So what if I did?"

"Why didn't you write back to Juvia?"

"Juvia, if you were eavesdropping on the entirety of my delightful conversation with Flame-Brain, you know full well why I didn't write back!"

"Because…" Juvia clutched her hands together anxiously. "You thought that Juvia would abandon you if you didn't have magic? Because Juvia would never-"

"I know you wouldn't!" Gray burst out. "You'd never leave me! You'd insist that everything was okay and of course we can go back to Fairy Tail and nothing will be different – but it is different! The future I dreamed of is no longer possible! The last thing I want is pointless optimism from someone who couldn't possibly understand!"

"But if you come back to the guild-"

"And surround myself with people who take for granted the one thing I can never have? I can't imagine anything worse!"

"Your friends will-"

"Make me suffer. Just like you're doing now. There's a reason I've been alone since it happened, Juvia!"

Juvia's voice was rising too, soaring towards boiling point so easily now that he no longer had the power to cool it. "So you can feel sorry for yourself while our friends are out there fighting for their lives? That's not the Gray Juvia knows!"

"The Gray you know is dead!" he yelled back. "He died in the streets of Malva, when he was stabbed with a sword that destroys magic!" He threw a longing glance towards the door through which he had walked so many months ago, never intending to return. Now, she stood between him and it, and he had no power with which to make her stand aside. "No… that Gray died a long time ago. From the moment he wasn't strong enough to control his Devil Slayer magic, and it started controlling him instead… that was when he lost all the parts of him that were of any use to anyone."

"That is not true! Gray is still Gray-"

"I can't even strip any more, Juvia!"

"…Eh?"

"Now that I don't have ice magic, I feel the cold like everyone else. So when my habit kicks in…" Gray's fingers curled around the bottom of his shirt, as if testing the strength of the fabric, and then slowly relaxed again. "I feel the chill of the air on my skin, and it stops me every time."

Juvia sounded utterly outraged. "Juvia's dear Gray is so much more than a stripping gimmick!"

"I know, alright? Ur's disciple, Lyon's foster brother, heir to Silver's magic, mage of Fairy Tail, member of Team Natsu, candidate for S-Class, and Natsu's rival in an eternal battle to determine who's the strongest in the guild, yeah?"

"Then-"

"But not without magic," he concluded. "I'm none of those things now, Juvia."

Quietly, Juvia said, "You're still Juvia's love."

"You have no idea what I've done, Juvia!" he lashed out, letting all the memories he had been running from take form as his weapons. "I stabbed Lucy. Turned out it was only Gemini pretending to be her, but I didn't know that at the time, and if it hadn't been, she'd have died. I smashed Gajeel's leg to bits and left him to bleed out in the middle of a field. I came closer to killing Natsu than any of the dark guilds we've fought recently-"

"That wasn't the real Gray," Juvia told him, with infuriating, blind certainty. "Lucy told us all about your Devil Slayer magic going out of control. You know your friends won't blame you. They forgave Juvia and Gajeel what they did with Phantom Lord, and that was of their own free will, without demonic magic forcing their hand! Come back to the guild. You'll see."

"No. Just leave me alone."

"Juvia won't," came the steady response. "Juvia indulged you the first time you ran away from the guild. She didn't want to leave her friends, but she thought the solitude would help you heal, and that was more important. But it didn't. You used it as an excuse to close yourself off from everyone – you pushed away everyone who could have helped when your magic started to take over. Juvia won't let you do that again."

"Too late," he told her, bitterly.

"What if there's a way to bring back your magic?" Juvia challenged.

A ghost of that sheer, agonizing pain swept over him – the feeling of something so vital being ripped right out of his soul. If his magic hadn't already been so loose, so independent, it would have taken his beating heart with it, and not a day had gone by that he hadn't wished it had done. The strands of sinew left clinging to his hollow bones weren't worth having.

"There isn't a way, Juvia."

"But how do you know without talking to the guild? Master Makarov knows so much more about magic than us, not to mention how creative everyone else can be!"

"Yeah, I'm sure they'll really want to search through old books to find answers right now," he retorted, that scathing tone his only defence now he could not forcibly lower the temperature to match it. "It's not exactly what our guild's famous for at the best of times, and now that they've got real enemies to prove themselves against-"

"Then come back and help us win the war, so that we'll have time to do research for you once all this is over!"

"I am a liability, Juvia!" he yelled. "All I can do is run and hide!"

Tired of waiting politely for her to ignore him again, he tried to step around her and go back into the bedroom. She grabbed his shoulders. It was a firm and shameless grip, like she was doing something unequivocally right, like he had a duty to listen, like he belonged to her.

The urge to laugh was almost overwhelming. "I bet you're enjoying being stronger than me, aren't you?" he dared. "You can manhandle me however you like, knowing that I don't have a chance of pushing you away without magic on my side."

Her eyes widened. "That's not what Juvia intended-"

"No? Well, it's what you'll have to do if you want to get me back to Fairy Tail!"

There in the house they shared, where it had once been okay to seek solace, where she had once humoured his grief, they stared each other down. Even without magic, the air was frigid.

"Well?" Gray dared her. "Are you going to trap me in a sphere of water and float me back? Or perhaps beat me unconscious and drag me?"

"No! No, of course Juvia isn't…"

"Then I'm staying right here."

Juvia bit her lip. She obviously wanted to say more – many things more – and he almost wanted to hear them; to rebuff with horrid satisfaction any more pointless, repetitive arguments; to watch appeals to the man he used to be bounce from the man he was now; to find out, with a perverse kind of eagerness, if she would offer to stay with him instead, in this nothing-place, where the guild would never find them…

But he didn't, because the next voice that spoke wasn't Juvia's at all.

"That's a shame." An overly dramatic sigh came from the doorway as Gray and Juvia both wheeled round to see who had spoken. "I so rarely get to see lovers fight. That's the one kind of passion sadly missing from my magic."

"Who are you?" Juvia demanded, at the same time as Gray said, "Can you all just stop barging into my house uninvited?"

The firelight cast the stranger's features into sharp relief, as unnaturally beautiful as a classical statue against the thick grey sky. "Oh, don't mind me," he smiled, stepping cleanly over the threshold. "I'm just here for him." He pointed through the hole in the bedroom wall to where one of Natsu's feet was visible.

"What do you want with Natsu?" Juvia retorted at once.

"I'm here to take him home, that's all," he told her easily. "I was giving him a chance to think my offer over, but events are proceeding apace, and we no longer have the liberty of time. Thus, I have come to collect him."

As far as Gray was concerned, this man could have his self-obsessed former rival, and good riddance.

Sadly, Juvia decided to step between the stranger and their bedroom, her eyes narrowing. "That emblem – you're with Alvarez, aren't you?"

"Larcade Dragneel of the Spriggan Twelve, at your service." He made a small bow, all without his eyes ever leaving the two of them. "Please stand aside. I have no wish to waste time fighting you."

"Juvia will not let you take Natsu!" the water mage declared.

Larcade gave a patronizing sigh at this show of defiance. "Then I suppose I'll have to make you stand aside. Unfortunately for you, Brandish isn't around to complain about my magic this time… or perhaps it is fortunate for you, as you will get to die in the most wonderful way possible."

He brought his hands together in prayer, and his magic took form.

Tendrils of light rose up through the floorboards around Gray. In front of him, he could see that Juvia was similarly under threat – and in that adrenaline-fuelled instant, a flurry of options raced through his mind.

Create a sword of ice and cut straight through the tendrils.

Summon a shield to deflect them away from his body.

Generate a cannon of ice, or a hammer, or a dozen icy shooting stars, to disrupt their opponent's concentration and break his spell of light.

Cover himself in armour to protect himself – armour at absolute zero, numbing his skin until he no longer had a sense of touch for his enemy's magic to manipulate.

None of these were things Gray could do any more.

Strength, gone. Versatility, gone. The characteristic defiance of a Fairy Tail mage, gone.

What, realistically, could he do but wait to die?

If there was one good thing about Larcade's magic, it was that it didn't give him a chance to dwell on that thought for long.

It felt so good. He should have been trying to escape, and yet he found himself leaning into those teasing arcs of light, pressing them deeper into his skin. It wasn't warm, but an entirely different kind of heat, prickling, dancing, jolting deep inside. Every time he thought he had grown accustomed to its rhythm, it changed direction with a flick, sending delightful shivers through his body.

He had to bite down on his lip to stop himself from moaning. Even the taste of his own blood seemed exotic, exciting. As hard as he tried to focus on the pain to clear his mind, there was a growing urge to stop fighting it, to be loud as he wanted, to revel in it. Who cared who was listening, when it felt this good?

At the same time, it felt so wrong.

The light was no pure dawn; it was a shallow off-white, full of shadows. It wasn't natural. And what he was feeling wasn't natural either – there was no source to it, no reason, just a throbbing pleasure as empty as the light which brought it.

There was no faint pressure of fingers to guide the tingling along his skin. There were no passionate lips pressed to his late at night. There were no assurances that he was loved whispered in his ear. There was no devotion, no heart, no earnest desire: nothing to share and no one to share it with.

There wouldn't be again, though, would there?

The cursed blade had spoken. It had severed him from Juvia, from Fairy Tail, from his future. There was nothing left to fight for.

The last thread of his rationality was cut, and he stopped struggling against the magic.

Satisfied, the demon stepped fully into their cottage. "Do you know what happens to a human being when they experience too much pleasure?" he asked, in a tone that made it clear no one was to answer, because he was so looking forward to revealing it himself. "They die. There's no fear or pain… only pleasure until the very end. Isn't it the kindest way to-?"

That was as far as he got before Juvia punched him.

Which, coming from Juvia, was a lot like being pressure-hosed in the face.

As the roaring blast of water flung him back out the front door, Juvia shrieked after him: "Juvia isn't interested in any pleasure that's not from her dear Gray!"

Gray facepalmed.

"Gray is a hundred times better at this than your stupid magic!" She raised her hand and pointed defiantly at Larcade, as if she couldn't feel the tendrils of light at all. "You should get him to teach you sometime!"

It was then that Gray discovered there was a sensation stronger than that of Larcade's magic: pure embarrassment. The tendrils were powerless to stop him from trying to disappear into the floor.

"And another thing!" Juvia added furiously. "Despite not knowing if her dear Gray was going to come back, Juvia has been faithful to him for months! How dare you try to make Juvia betray him now? You should be ashamed of yourself, you- you harlot!"

From the bewildered silence that followed, it appeared no one had accused the demon of that before.

In fact, when he stepped back into the room, Larcade seemed to have completely forgotten his goal of kidnapping Natsu as he glowered at Juvia. "How lamentable, that you would deny your own human nature for the sake of a man who is clearly a slave to his desires. Tell me, how faithful do you think a man like that was to you in your months apart?"

Gray opened his mouth to point out that, actually, the demonic madness that had swallowed his mind had been a literal manifestation of the desire to kill END and really hadn't been interested in anything else – but Juvia got there first.

"Juvia wouldn't care!" she declared. "He's back now, and besides, it just means her dear Gray would have picked up more experience and refined his technique further!"

Gray resumed trying to disappear.

Larcade gave a disappointed sigh. "Still, I must admit, I am impressed by your willpower. I had thought that none who had experienced the pleasures of the flesh could resist my magic, but you are something else."

Juvia beamed.

He continued, "So, I will allow you to experience the torment of another human need – one that no one, however faithful they may be, can live without."

Gray breathed a sigh of relief as the tendrils of light vanished back into the floor. His first instinct was to jump to his feet – and quite possibly run very far away, grow a beard, and change his name – and yet he found himself unable to lift his body from the floor.

He felt so weak. Almost like he'd done the first time he'd awoken and found the unbreakable core of ice magic missing from his heart: empty, fragile, barely able to support himself without it.

Rather than his magic being ripped out of him, however, it was as if his stomach had been taken.

It yowled in anguish, a sound that wasn't quite as humiliating as the moan he had been trying to suppress earlier, but it was an awful lot more audible.

All of a sudden, he could think of nothing but the stew he'd been making earlier. It must have been soggy charcoal by now – he hadn't exactly stopped to turn the stove off when Natsu had barged into his house, and things had only gone downhill from there – and yet that vague smell of burning was sweet, sweet nectar to the black hole in his chest.

He wanted nothing more than to leap up and scrape the burnt remnants from the bottom of the pan into his mouth… but why should he bother going to all that trouble, when there was a perfectly good table leg right in front of him? He crawled towards it, salivating, and was about to sink his teeth into that tender, juicy wood when-

"You call this torment?" Juvia had grabbed the startled Larcade by the front of his robes and was shrieking directly into his face. "Torment is having to go six whole months without her beloved Gray's cooking!"

There was a pause.

"I'm not really that good at cooking," Gray pointed out. Only after he'd said it did he realize how it would look to protest one and not the other, but hey.

"When Gray cooks, he does it with love!" Juvia insisted. "Knowing he is cooking just for Juvia is the best kind of spice! Gray puts his heart and soul into every meal he makes for the two of them, and your magic could never make Juvia long for anything the way she has longed for him to return and share a meal with her these past few months!"

Gray tried and failed to remember a time when he'd been thinking about anything other than how to not ruin the meal while he cooked something from his limited repertoire, and then decided not to bother arguing. It wasn't as though logic was doing Larcade any good, after all.

"Besides, it's not the food that makes a meal, but the company!" Juvia added, shaking Larcade vigorously. "Without her guild, without her dear Gray, even the most delicious food is tasteless! Juvia would rather go hungry than eat alone for one more night!"

"Fine," Larcade snapped, his patience vanishing. "I was trying to be nice and retrieve Natsu without killing you both, but I have had quite enough of you." He brought his palms together once more as the texture of his magic shifted into its final form. "Fall into eternal sleep."

It didn't creep up on Gray, like the other two sensations had. It hit all at once: every Fairy Tail party stretching long into the night; every hour too many he'd pushed himself through on the trail of a monster; every extra moment spent lying awake, talking about the past and future with Juvia's head on his shoulder – every minute he'd stolen from sleep over the course of his life now rushed back to collect its dues.

It was fortunate that the brief spell of hunger had left him too weak to stand, or he'd have fallen to the floor. He fought viciously to keep his eyes open. Falling asleep with an enemy present would be bad enough, but something told him this enchanted sleep would be worse – that their opponent would not even have to go to the trouble of walking over and slitting their throats.

He would not give in to that. Magicless he may be, but that didn't mean he wanted an opponent to win with such little effort.

Gray fought it with all he had, digging his nails into his palm, and then biting savagely down on his hand when that was not enough. The wave of exhaustion crashed down on him – and then, to his surprise, seemed to recede. Blinking rapidly, he stared at the demon, who was glaring at Juvia.

"I suppose," Larcade began icily, "that you're going to tell me you can't sleep if your precious Gray isn't there to hold your hand, or some other nonsense."

"Not at all," Juvia told him. Her body shimmered, and then she wasn't a human being at all, but a vaguely human-shaped figure of water. "But Juvia is the river, and the river does not sleep. Juvia is the sea which ebbs and flows without rest. The rain does not stop for nightfall, and neither will Juvia. And Juvia doesn't like you very much at all."

And she pressure-hosed him in the face again.

When Larcade straightened, it was as if the torrent had washed away the mask of a calm monk. There was a look of unbridled hatred on his face. "Then we'll do this the hard way!"

With a swift gesture, he sent a barrage of that hollow light towards her. Juvia dodged, letting it smack into the far wall, and retaliated with a pressurized arc of water. This Larcade deflected with two fingers, an effortless gesture belied by the hole Juvia's attack blasted clean through the wall.

The cottage gave an ominous groan.

Though, with two Fairy Tail mages turning up unannounced in one night, Gray wasn't sure why he'd ever expected his house to last until morning.

In the centre of the once-neat living space, the mage and the demon continued to battle with light and water in a dance that might have been beautiful, were it not so unforgiving. Larcade re-directed water-blades with no regard for his surroundings. Not that he needed to – his patience may have been a sham, but so was his somewhat-fragile appearance, and the few attacks that made contact had failed to draw blood.

But the real blow came when Juvia saw an opening and took it, only for Larcade to seize the cross-blade from his back and slash straight across her chest. She expected it to cut harmlessly through her water body. Only at the last moment did she notice that the edge shone with the same horrid half-light the demon wielded.

If not for that, it might have cleaved her in two. She jerked back as blood spurted from a slash along her torso.

"Juvia!" Gray shouted. He was on his feet without thinking, but before he could act on it, a spear of light thudded into the ground in front of him.

"Don't you move," Larcade hissed. "I'll deal with you later."

"You will not touch him!" Juvia declared.

The first drop of rain fell upon the roof with a distinct thud. With one hand pressed to her wound, she raised the other, and a surge of water began to swirl around Larcade.

The demon laughed. "Do you think your water will hold me?"

"Juvia thinks it will do more than that," she retorted. "You seem to enjoy playing on the needs of living creatures. Let's see how you like it when Juvia takes away your ability to breathe."

Light burst out of Larcade's body, forcing the swelling orb of water away. "You aren't nearly strong enough for that," he remarked. "You're stronger than him, I suppose-" Here he jerked his thumb towards Gray, not even doing him the courtesy of addressing him directly, let alone actually looking at him "-but you're still nothing. We have intelligence reports on your entire guild. You may be able to resist my magic, but you lack the raw power to beat me."

The rain was falling steadily now. Trickles of water had found a way through the cracks in the damaged cottage, and the ethereal tinkling of a stream added a melody to the constant drumming upon the roof. The skies were as dark as could be.

And, just as the rainstorm had begun to break into the cottage, the barrier of light surrounding Larcade began to crumple under the pressure of the water.

"No!" he protested, bewildered, as the water sphere drew ever closer to enclosing him. "I am Father's chosen one… this is impossible!"

Despite her obvious pain, Juvia managed a grim, fierce smile. "Juvia thinks your reports might be outdated. Juvia's magic has always been… different. It used to rain wherever she went, even though she wasn't doing it deliberately, and it didn't seem to drain her magic at all. That stopped when she met her dear Gray… but then, about a month ago, she almost died, and the rain went completely out of control. It was as if her magic was trying to use itself up, like it thought it would be trapped forever if she died with magic still inside her body. Thanks to Lucy, Juvia was healed, but ever since then, her magic hasn't quite been the same."

"So?" the demon snarled. "Your magic's still insignificant!"

"Maybe in the moment, but not the sum total of all of it. Juvia's magic is not properly sealed any more. If she wants, she can use all her future potential at once."

To Gray, that sounded far too good to be true. "Does that mean-?" He cut himself off halfway through, understanding what she was really saying. "You don't mean you can use your future magic. You mean you can use it up. If you do it, you'll have no magic left. Ever."

"But Juvia will win," she rebuffed him calmly.

Gray's eyes widened. "Don't do it, Juvia. You don't know what you're giving up! You can't imagine what it's like- how empty it feels-"

"Juvia knows exactly what she's doing!" Her right hand was shaking with the effort of building up a sphere of water dense enough to crush Larcade's light. Yet her voice was as strong as Gray had ever heard it, as if her words were coming from an entirely different person. "Juvia isn't afraid of giving up her magic, if it helps her guild win the war!"

"And how are you going to be part of that guild if you don't have magic any more?" he challenged.

"Juvia will learn kung fu!" she shot back. "Or maybe she'll do axe-throwing! Juvia has always wanted to try that!"

The thought of a wild-eyed Juvia with a tomahawk in each hand momentarily paralyzed Gray with terror.

"Or maybe Juvia will re-train as an accountant and finally help the guild achieve financial solvency!" she insisted. "Elfman gave up magic to pursue his dream of becoming a chef, and yet he's still on the front lines with Sabertooth, supplying the army and protecting Fiore! Laxus is slowly being killed by his own magic, but he's gone to Hargeon anyway! Lucy stepped up to be our leader, inspiring us and helping us to plan strategies without having to use any magic! You don't have to fight to be a hero! They're finding their own ways to support the guild – and Juvia will find her way, too!"

Gray laughed bitterly. "You make it sound so easy."

"Change isn't supposed to be easy," Juvia retorted. "Maybe you were right, and Juvia won't be the person she used to be without her magic, but Juvia doesn't want to go backwards! Juvia is always looking forwards, to become a better person, in a future where her guild is safe from war!"

The rain poured down, and the demon struggled savagely against the water gradually building up around him. The physical battle had ceased – her attacks couldn't harm him any more than his signature magic had affected her – and this slow yet titanic tug of war between her willpower and his took all their focus.

Yet still she said, "You don't have to do this alone. If neither of us can fight with magic, Juvia will learn to protect our guild without it. If Gray and Juvia can't earn money as guild mages, Juvia will find another way to support us. If Natsu beats Gray up because he can't fight back without magic, then Juvia will poison Natsu's tea. If Gray is no longer able to strip, then Juvia will take his clothes off for him!"

Perhaps she intended for it to be kind, but her words stirred a wave of anger inside him. "I don't want your pity, Juvia! If you think that becoming as pathetic as I am is going to set things back to how they were between us-"

"Juvia is not doing it for you!" she shouted. "Juvia is doing it to defeat one of the Spriggan Twelve and win the war! But if it happens to show Gray how much of a moron he is being in the process, all the better!"

And as she turned her back on him, still bleeding, still fighting to stay upright, and dragged the orb of water up to the level of the struggling demon's neck, Gray found himself wondering how differently things might have gone if he'd been as strong as her.

If he'd gone straight to the guild and asked for help.

If he'd apologized for everything he'd done, let them forgive him – as he'd always known they would – and focussed on what he could do to make it up to them.

If he'd stopped dwelling on the paths that were closed to him and focussed on the ones still beckoning him deeper into the forest, their endings twisted and obscured by the overgrown trees, but promising more adventure than he'd ever known.

Purging the demonic magic from his body hadn't got rid of the hatred and isolation which had nurtured it. That was something no one could do but him.

He couldn't go back to being who he was. He'd never be a mage again. But he could be a better person than he was before.

And, maybe, if having no magic meant that people continued to dismiss him as harmless the way Larcade had from the start, he might actually be more useful in battles than before.

So he reflected, as he brought the pot of burnt stew crashing down on the back of Larcade's head.

The demon, who had been fighting against the water about to drown him with everything he had, made a surprised sound and went limp. The resistance to Juvia's magic vanished. Her sphere of water imploded, passed through itself, and then burst out in all directions, soaking every surface that the rain had not already claimed.

Casting aside the pot, Gray dashed through the haze and seized her shoulders. "Juvia! Juvia, stop your magic!"

For one terrifying moment, he thought he was too late. Silence pressed down on them as she gazed over his shoulder without seeing him – but silence meant the rain had stopped, and she drew in a quick, deep breath and beamed at him.

His shoulders sagged in relief, and he hugged her tightly. "I don't want you to give up your magic," he admitted. "It was my own stupid fault that I lost mine; I don't want to be the reason why you lose yours, too. Even though it would mean I wasn't alone in this, I… well… I guess I'm not alone anyway, am I? You've always been more tenacious than fate."

"Juvia is just glad Gray is going to come back to the guild with her," she smiled.

"That's not what I- oh, hell," he sighed. "You win. You can take me back to Fairy Tail, and help me find a new way to help around the guild, and poison Natsu's tea for me, and… what else did you say?"

There was a moment's pause, and Gray remembered, and then went a bit red.

"Uh," he said. "Well, I mean… if you did want to…"

He tailed off. After so many months spent apart from her, mentally as well as physically, distancing himself from her steady devotion and anything he might have felt in return, the way she could so easily act as if nothing had changed between them was a little unnerving.

But also, he thought, it was a rare gift, and one he wished he had appreciated sooner.

"Juvia," he said weakly, "may I kiss you?"

"After everything we've just been through," she replied, "Juvia thinks you'd better."

A/N: Thanks all for your patience, and sorry for taking so long to reply to everything over the past couple of weeks. Next chapter might be in a week or a fortnight. Things are still a bit crazy here, and though there's a light at the end of the tunnel, I'm not quite sure how far away it is yet. ~CS