So, response to The Ocean was fantastic! I'm so glad you all liked it.
Here is the exciting conclusion to The Glacier, The Ocean, and Fresh Spring Rain!
Fresh Spring Rain - Fairy Tail is mourning the loss of its resident water mage and the withdrawl of its resident ice mage. But when something washes ashore near Magnolia, can the Fairies possibly regain their two precious nakama?
Evergreen raced back to Fairy Tail as fast as her high heels could carry her. Cursing her stupidity for not wearing her winged fairy dress - she could've used the flight speed - she ignored the stares of the citizens as she blazed by in a supremely undignified manner. When the guild came into sight, she cast Fairy Bomb: Gremlin and blasted the doors open without breaking stride. "Everyone! Wake up! HEY, WAKE UP EVERYONE!"
Across the guild, mages woke up in various positions of discomfort. Since everyone was worried about Gray, nobody had left the guild since Lyon had failed to help. Some stretched under tables, some on benches, some on the stage or behind the bar. A couple curled up on chairs, while others just slept on the floor. But none of the nearly one hundred mages that made up Fairy Tail had gone home in three days.
So when the doors blew open and Evergreen started screaming her head off, let's just say everybody was grouchy and not very sympathetic. More than one person chucked some manner of drinking vessel at her, but they all missed. Even Elfman, normally very manly about being nice to her, shouted, "Ever! What unmanly reason do you have for screaming in an unmanly fashion this early in the morning?"
"What have I told you about saying that unmanly crap around me?" she screeched back, a reflex by now. "And anyway, that's not the issue here! I was down by the river to get some fresh supplies, and one of the fishermen told me that they found a woman with blue hair washed up on the shoreline!"
"So?" Natsu snarled angrily, sitting up with Lucy still clutching him sleepily. "What's that gotta do with us?"
Evergreen gave an indignant screech. "You ass! Because they said she has a blue Fairy Tail mark on her left thigh!"
The words sank into everyone's minds, then the sleepy clouds vanished. Only one member of thier guild had that particular color mark on that particular part of her body. Lucy sat up, her eyes wide with hope. "Juvia?"
"Yes, Juvia!" Evergreen whirled around and shouted louder, "Let's go get her!"
The result was immediate. All the Fairies got to their feet and bolted for the door, swamping the streets of Magnolia as they followed Evergreen's mad dash back to the shoreline. High above them were the Exceeds Happy, Charle, and Pantherlily, aloft and flying ahead to see for themselves. They made quite a sight, this crowd of powerful mages. Then again, they'd spent the last six days mourning Juvia as dead.
They saw her while still at a distance, donning a sleeveless threadbare shirt and skirt that was held together with thin blue strings. "Juvia is here!" she called, waving her arms happily.
The Exceeds all fluttered around her as the Fairies came up in a wave. Lucy and Levy and Wendy immediately bowled her over in a hug, while Mirajane and Erza began demanding where she'd been, how she was still alive, wasn't Explodia lethal to water mages? Others asked more questions, drowning each other out in words that all conveyed that they were glad, however befuddled, that she was still alive.
Gajeel merely looked over her to make sure she was all right, noting the lack of curl in her blue hair and the odd lack of her usual clothing. But when he got the chance, he spoke up. "Oy, Juvia."
She poked her head out of the mass of people who were still making sure she was really alive. "Yes, Gajeel?"
"You better hurry back to the guild. Stripper's in a bit of a mood."
As if she just realized it, Juvia looked around for the absent ice mage. "Where is Gray?"
Everyone present blinked, noting the blatant lack of -sama and squealing. Erza spoke up. "He's...well, he's in trouble. See, he thinks you're dead..."
"We all did," added Lisanna, wiping her eyes dry.
"But Juvia wasn't!" Juvia gasped, covering her hands with her mouth in horror. "Juvia didn't mean to - oh no, how long was Juvia gone?"
"Six days," Lucy said. "What on earth happened to you?"
"Juvia burst and fell into the ocean, but Juvia had to heal with rainwater. So Juvia - moved with the ocean's currents to find enough," she said. "Juvia must see Gray. Where is Gray now?"
"In the basement of Fairy Tail," said Mirajane. "Master Makarov stayed behind to watch out for him. Juvia, he needs to see you."
The water mage nodded, and with a speed not many people knew she possessed, she took off running back to the guild.
Master Makarov tried to speak when he saw her, but Juvia paid no attention to him. Instead, she saw Lyon, who had also remained behind, and drew up short. "You are an ice mage like Gray, yes?"
He nodded. "You're Juvia, huh? Didn't recognize you without the curls."
How does he knew Juvia? she spared a second to think before dismissing it. She absently patted her hair and noted its straightness. Juvia will fix it later. "Can you help Juvia reach Gray?"
Lyon silently followed her downstairs. She noted the dramatic drop in temperature instantly but didn't falter; although she was baring more skin than she was used to, she would weather any chill to help Gray. Seeing the wall of ice, she gestured to it. "Please break that. Juvia must get through."
"I'm warning you, he's changed," Lyon said, taking his stance. "He might not recognize you."
"Gray always knows Juvia. He will now Juvia now."
Lyon shrugged, then Ice Maked his eagles to break the wall down. Juvia quickly leapt through the hole as fresh ice formed to block it again, cutting her off from the outside and plunging the basement into semi-darkness.
The basement was completely transformed into a wintery ice cavern. Icicles dripped from the cieling, and stalagtites and stalagmites dotted the area. Juvia saw her breath fogging in front of her, icy clouds fanning from her face as she carefully stepped over the floor. Her bare feet could only feel ice everywhere; as an afterthought, Juvia activated her Sierra form. Her boiling water feet hissed as they melted puddles of ice into water and steam flowed over the surface of the ground. This also kept her warmer than she would have been in the skimpy borrowed clothes she wore.
As she walked deeper into the icy cavern, Juvia realized how Lyon, a complete stranger, had recognized her. Standing like a garish gallery were almost fifty statues of her, all donning her customary blue outfit and each bearing a different expression and posture. Juvia shuddered in a way unrelated to the temperature. How strange...
"Why won't you let me be?"
She jumped at the raspy voice. Peering through the gloom, she spied the huddled mass of black against the back wall. "Gray?" she asked, not sure if it was indeed the object of her affections.
"You're not real," said the huddled figure, shuddering. "Not real, she's not real..."
Juvia felt a pang of pain shoot through her heart. She'd never seen Gray look this guilty and broken before. Walking carefully, she stepped forward. "Gray..."
"Don't come near me!" he shouted. Ice shot up around him in a protective wall, spiked and dangerous.
Juvia paused, then took a second to think about her strategy. Obviously a direct approach was out of the question. She stopped boiling, and felt a violent shudder wrack her body as she truly felt the temperature in the room. Pushing her now-freezing hair back from her face, she cleared her throat and spoke softly so as not to alarm him. "Gray, it's Juvia. Juvia is alive. The Explodia did hurt Juvia, but Juvia landed in the ocean and was saved. Then Juvia had to find rain water to re-form Juvia's body quickly." He didn't respond. "Juvia is sorry that Juvia took so long, but Juvia is back now."
"Can't be..." Gray murmured in a heart-wrenching sob. "You're gone...please, leave me alone...you're not real...haven't you tortured me enough?"
"Juvia would never torture Gray." Slow, quiet steps brought her right up to the wall of ice that seperated her from the ice mage. Carefully, she shifted her hands to boiling water and pressed them to the wall. Ice hissed as her palms came in contact with it, melting in spurts and gushes of liquid.
Gray shrank away from the warmth. "No! Go away! No!"
"Juvia is not like Ur." The name of his old teacher made him freeze. "Ur could not come back, but Juvia did. Juvia is back. And Ur sent Juvia back with a message."
"Ur's - Ur is gone."
"Ur lives in the ocean." Keep Gray talking, keep Gray talking, she chanted in her mind, drawing his attention from her attempt to melt a hole through the ice. "Ur watches Gray, and Ur is proud. Ur told Juvia to tell Gray that Ur is proud of Gray. Ur is so glad that Gray didn't throw life away to seal Deliora, and Ur is so proud to have called you one of her students. Ur told Juvia to tell Gray...to tell Gray that Ur loves him." The last of the ice melted, letting Juvia scoot closer - just as more ice formed around her legs, freezing her from the waist down in the wall.
"I told you to stay away, dammit!" Gray shouted.
She didn't panic at the sudden entrapment. Instead she kept reaching for the hood of the parka he was wearing over his head. "Why?" she asked simply. "Why should Juvia stay away? Juvia has never wanted to stay away."
"You're dead...you're dead..." he choked out, shrinking away. "It's all...my fault..."
"No. Juvia wanted to protect Gray," replied the water mage. Her slim fingers grasped the hood and tugged it forward. Gray was pulled closer to her with little resistance; he was weak from constant magical use and no food for six days. "And Juvia did that. Juvia protected her nakama, and Juvia is still alive." When her nose was brushing the fur lining of the parka's hood, she reached underheath it and slid her fingers through Gray's silky black hair, pushing the hood back in the process. "See? Juvia is real."
His haunted eyes locked with hers, desperate and nearly mad with grief. "Prove it."
Gray was completely sure this Juvia was just like all the others - a hallucination.
He'd seen her ever since he got dragged back to Fairy Tail. He'd seen her everywhere, in his memories and in the guild and all around him. The whole building was suffused with her presence, and he couldn't bear to be near it. Not after what he'd done.
The basement had been his best choice. Sealing himself in was just an added precaution. But that hadn't stopped the hallucinations. She kept coming, shimmying through the icy depths of his self-made prison and cooing "Gray-sama," as she exploded over and over. Unable to block her out, Gray quickly fell to bundling himself with every article of clothing he could find in an effort to block out the sights and sounds of the world.
Once he found he could Ice Make the hallucinations frozen, Gray thought he was able to stop her from torturing him. But he was dead wrong. The fake Juvias stopped being the cute if annoying stalker he had known, and transformed into the helplessly trapped water mage he'd failed to save. She begged him to save her. She cursed him for breaking his promise. She screamed that he had killed her. She cried that he had abandoned her.
But he continued to freeze her into statues. He had to.
Despite confining himself to solitude, he couldn't bear being alone.
This most recent hallucination was markedly different from the others. For one, her hair was pin-straight, falling down to her elbows. For another, instead of Juvia's typical dress and shawl and hat, this Juvia wore a barely modest shirt and skirt that looked darned together with tiny ropes and was barefoot.
And she wouldn't go the hell away.
Gray usually was able to shout loud enough to convince himself that he was seeing things. It helped, more than the Ice Make spell; plus, he was weak from creating so many statues without refueling. But this one was being incredibly stubborn, this threadbare and un-Juvia-like Juvia. She managed to convince him that she melted through his ice and through the wall he put up. So he froze her halfway in the wall.
But she kept coming closer, making him respond. Made him move forward towards her. Made his parka hood slide back. Almost - almost convinced him that she was more than just a figment of his imagination.
So when the hallucination said that she was real, Gray couldn't stop the childish impulse to say, "Prove it."
She hesitated, looking aside and nibbling her lips an an adorable show of nerves. Gray watched fervently, knowing that she would do just what the others had done when he succumbed to giving that same order - shout about his failure, then explode. He ignored the small, treacherous part of his heart that begged and pleaded to whatever deities looked down on ice mages that she was real.
Because Gray was scared. Scared that he was finally, truly going insane. Because he could swear that he felt Juvia's fingers sliding through his hair as she revealed his face, swear he could still feel them as she framed his face with those small, soft hands. He came damn close to losing it after Ur died, and Erza hadn't known how close she'd come to walking in on an insane ice mage. Nobody did.
But if this truly wasn't real - Gray didn't think his mind could survive.
"Juvia - knows a way to prove Juvia is real," she said slowly. Beautiful eyes the color of the night sky met his matching orbs. "Please forgive Juvia's forwardness, Gray." Her fingers tightened on his face, and she pulled him closer as she stretched her body forward as far as she could.
Gray Fullbuster could swear by many things, and he would've sworn to any gods he believed in that nothing could convince his dead, frozen heart that she was real. But when their lips touched, a fire burst to life inside his chest that set his broken heart a-beating again.
She's real. She's real. She's alive. Juvia's alive.
Around the mages, the ice began to melt at an accelerated rate. Juvia squeaked when his arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her from the crumbling wall. Gray just kept her crushed close to him, kissing her with all the emotions he'd felt in the last six days. Guilt. Wonder. Pain. Joy. Regret. Love.
Love?
Yeah, he thought as he felt her arms slide around his neck, her head angling to capture his lips while her eyes fluttered shut. Somewhere between the time she joined Fairy Tail as his full-time stalker and the last few days, Gray realized that he'd fallen in love with the quirky water mage. Buried beneath his irritation and nonchalance, he hadn't believed it to be anything more than the affection he held for all his nakama. Only when she'd been ripped from him did the true depth of his feelings become clear.
"Juvia," he whispered, breaking the kiss to whisper the name he thought he'd never be able to say again. "Juvia."
She smiled sweetly at him, brushing a kiss to his lips. "Juvia is here, Gray," she said.
He embraced her again, burying his face in her straight blue hair and inhaling that ever-familiar scent of lavender and fresh rain she seemed to emit. "I love you, Juvia," he mumbled against her skin, pressing a kiss to her neck right where her pulse thundered at his words.
Juvia took a steadying breath so that she didn't pass out in happiness. "Juvia - Juvia loves Gray as well," she gasped, holding him just as closely. She knelt there patiently, rubbing his back as the ice around them continued to melt. When he let her go, they stood up and stared at each other's clothes.
"Nice outfit," he remarked.
"Juvia borrowed it." She looked at his parka with distaste. "Juvia prefers you without that on."
Immediately Gray stripped it off, and after a thought, pulled off the coat, sweater, and shirt he wore underneath. The coat's sleeves he tied around Juvia's waist to cover her butt more, and he dropped the shirt over her shoulders. "Here. Let's get out of here."
"Juvia does not mind getting wet," replied the water mage with a wicked little smile.
Gray's eyes widened at the double meaning of her words, then his own smile turned predatory. She barely had time to squeal happily as the ice mage pulled her close again and covered her mouth with his.
Outside, the sun shone as a light rain fell, making the raindrops sparkle like falling diamonds. Cana smiled as she flipped over the Lovers card on her bench. She gave it a smug look. "And the snow fox takes a bride."
"What?" asked Macao over the noise of the celebrating guild.
"Nothing." She waved at Mirajane and slapped the side of her empty cask. "Oy! Bring me another one, Mira!"
Yay! Happy ending! With a little hint of smut... ;)
Please review!