Bullets were such funny things. They hadn't feet and hadn't wings. Yet they soared through the air with the greatest of ease and tore through skin wherever they pleased.

Gray's side was on fire. He had no idea which way he would go to find the sky and which way was the bottom of the river. He felt Juvia's fingers curl in the collar of his shirt and focused on that; it was the only thing that seemed real. The swirling and violent greys and blues of the angry river belonged in someone's nightmare, not in his lungs.

His injured side smacked into a rock and Gray gasped in a whole lot of water. He started choking and sputtering but the more he struggled, the worse it got. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think beyond the burning in his lungs. Water rushed past his ears, white noise, Juvia's fingers tightened. His necklace broke and got taken away. Then they were falling and hitting bottom again.

Gray didn't know what happened after that.


Juvia's muscles were soggy noodles, useless things. Her fingers were cut on the twisted metal links of the gabion basket keeping the river's walls together. She gritted her teeth and started pulling herself to shore through the still-wild water but stopped when above, she heard the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh of the helicopter blades. She sucked in a breath and dunked her head under again, taking Gray with her, hopefully.

She stayed down there until black spots danced in front of her eyes, then, whether the police were gone or not, she resurfaced and took in greedy breaths. The air directly above them was empty; Juvia could see through the trees, the helicopter had moved downstream. She figured she had minutes, at most, to get Gray out of the water and to safety, before the police came back this way and started dredging the low head dam for their bodies.

Gray was easy to move in the water, she was able to pull herself up onto the gabion's shelf and then tug his limp body after her, but as soon as the time came to get him up on dry land, she realized he was heavy. And uncooperative.

And the helicopter was coming back.

Juvia set Gray down on his butt, then bent him forward so he was touching his knees. She then turned around so her back was facing his and crouched and linked her arms beneath Gray's armpits. She heaved. She got his torso off the ground so his wound wasn't dragging through the mud like his feet were, then hauled him like she was a packhorse through the thick brambles and shrubs and deciduous trees. Her ankle hurt distantly, like her elbow; she was focused and determined, though, and was able to overcome the pain.

A cottage came out through the trees, squat, unkempt. Juvia bullied her way through shrubs and dropped Gray on the ground so she could try the door. It opened. She was elated until she stepped inside, then she realized that it was occupied.

Its owner yelled and came at her with a broom; her words were lost in Juvia's ears. Juvia hit her and she stopped trying to force them out. Then she locked the door and got to work examining Gray. He wasn't breathing and he was pasty white. Juvia crouched beside him and started doing CPR. His sternum broke after the second compression. She could feel all of the water sloshing in his lungs and his belly, she could see the way it bloated him. She wouldn't think about it, though, using her body weight to compress his chest, plugging his nose and breathing in as much air as she could, and doing it all over again until she was so exhausted, she didn't think she could continue, but did anyway because she couldn't carry this burden of guilt alone.

Eventually, he vomited up all the water he'd guzzled.


"Raindrops are such funny things."

They were.

"They haven't feet or haven't wings."

Ridiculous.

"Yet they sail through the air with the greatest of ease."

Yes.

"And dance on the street, Wherever they please."

Gray opened his eyes. He was lying down. There was a ceiling above his head and it was made of bare wood. The walls around him were the same. There were shadows in the room that were broken up by a gentle golden light. Candle, he thought, and by that light, he saw a battered girl sitting in front of a large, dusty mirror. There was a pair of scissors in her hand. She cut curling blue locks and watched them fall to the ground. She hummed the end of her poem and then started again.

"Juvia?"

She set down her scissors and turned. The ends of her hair brushed her chin. Her smile was hollow and tired. "You're awake."

Maybe? His chest felt wrong. Spongy. Rotten when he touched it.

"Your sternum is broken. I had to. You drowned." Her voice was carefully blank.

"Oh." He thought he hurt too much to be dead but he still asked, "Did we make it?"

She said, "Yes. I pulled you out of the water."

"And the police?"

"They came here," she said. "The lady told them she hadn't seen us and they left."

"There is a lady?"

"She used to be a nurse," Juvia said airily. "She showed me how to make you better." She touched her side. Gray became aware of the pain there, too. It was a deep panging that separated it from the radiating feeling in his chest. Cotton pulled aside in his mind and he remembered running. Running over a dirt path, running from bullets. He had been shot. He pulled down the blanket and looked but couldn't see anything but angry red skin around a white gauze bandage.

"Where is she now?"

"Juvia fixed it." Her bottom lip was sucked between her teeth. Gray recognized that look. He wondered if the cycle would ever be broken or if they'd always have to leave a trail of bodies. This is Dad's fault. He hated his father more then than he had before, which was really saying something. His old man had been a bastard, first insisting that he stay out of the business (though that may have been mostly on his mother's request) and then almost getting him killed for it. If Deliora hadn't killed him, Gray may have done the deed himself after everything he went through.

"What did you do with the body?" The old Gray Fullbuster would have asked the question of bad people with righteous indignation. What did you do with the body? Accusatory. This Gray Fullbuster, he asked with concern. What did you do with the body? This Gray Fullbuster was worried about circumventing the law, not upholding it.

"Buried it."

"Deep?"

She nodded.

He sighed and put his head back on the pillow.

"Juvia had to. That lady was going to hurt us," she said with the same manic look in her eye she'd had when she told him she'd killed her boyfriend.

Had to. How many times had he justified his actions with those words? Gray pushed at the thoughts. She did what you couldn't. He'd already learned what being soft got them. Killing one man may have saved a woman's life, but he'd hesitated at the gas station and now Juvia was thrice the killer.

"Gray?"

He turned his head. Juvia drifted over to him like a ghost. He noticed she was in someone else's long white nightgown. The colour made her blued skin glow. Pretty. She was pretty even when she was beaten. "I did the right thing, right?"

She seemed to need to hear him say it. Gray obliged her. "Yes."

Tension rushed from her shoulders. She sat beside him and took his hand and put his palm against her cheek. She felt cold until she kissed him, and then when she deepened the kiss, she felt like she could burn him up, she was so greedy and needy. He liked it, he needed her hunger and her gentleness. It helped him forget everything.


The sun was setting when Juvia announced she was going to make him something to eat. Gray waited until he was alone in the small room then flipped on the tiny TV in the corner with a remote he found on the nightstand by his head.

There were only two channels that came in, and those were the free ones the antenna picked up. One of those was Thomas the Tank Engine, the other was the news. He watched police trawl the bottom of the Rouge for what the newscaster said was the fourth time. One of the officers came up with a cross necklace, someone else with Juvia's shoe, it had gotten wedged in the crotch of a tree close to shore where the high water line had been.

The newscaster said, "A month ago, ex-Sargent Gray Fullbuster resigned his commission with the Magnolia Police Department and dispatched the man police believed to be responsible for the slaughter of Mister Fullbuster's wife, daughter, mother and father six months before. Today, the hunt has come to a tragic end. The ex-Sargent was tracked to the Eastern Border where a short shootout with local police ensued.

"Mister Fullbuster and Miss Lockser chose to take their chances with the river rather than with the police, though recent storm events have made the waters dangerous. They were quickly lost. Efforts to locate them will continue but experts say it is unlikely either he or Miss Lockser will be found alive.

Gray turned off the TV to mourn in silence.


A/N:

I MADE MORE EDITS.

SORRY.

Okay. I'm done with this now. I WASH MY HANDS OF IT. Voila. I'm satisfied.