"You know I'm never going to take this off." Juvia told Gray as the two of them settled down by the fire that evening.

She was sitting on a stool and he was laying outstretched on the floor with his hands resting behind his head.

"Never take what off?" Gray asked her.

"My locket. I will treasure it all my life, and if they ever open my grave, they will find it right next to my heart."

Gray didn't like it when she talked about dying. After all she did have a weak heart, even a sudden scare could cause her to just drop dead. She was also blind which didn't make her weak but it did make her as big a target for cruelty as his deformity made him that way. And since he was blessed with supernatural strength, and she wasn't, he figured that it was his purpose in life to protect her. Same went for her brother. These two had given him compassion and friendship when the world had not. He owed it to them.

Gray then watched as Juvia started to undo the ribbons in her hair and brush it out, humming the melody of her locket. It was completely innocent on her part, she didn't have the slightest idea of how this could look to him. For years Gray had pretended that she was still that same little girl he found in the snow. That frail and delicate child, who'd follow him around and sometimes bug him, who he viewed as just a sweet child. But now he could pretend no more. It was obvious by her figure, her curves, her bosom, her legs, and her eyes that she was a woman.

The day he could no longer force himself to ignore the truth was about a week earlier, he had been up all night fixing the roofs of the carriage and spent all of the next day sleeping. When he woke up in the evening, groggy and not paying attention to where he was going, he accidentally sat himself down next to wear a sheet hung on a line and behind it there was Juvia bathing in a tub. Now naturally she didn't see him but he saw her.

At first he was still too out of it to recognize her. He had thought that he was still asleep and dreaming. Dreaming of some imaginary nymph bathing in the moonlight with her back to him. He drowsily watched her long wet hair fall over her white shoulders and neck, watched her white neck, her long white arms and long white legs, her perfect figure. She was a vision.

Then she spoke.

"Carla can you bring me a towel please?"

He knew her voice in an instant and that's when he realized who she was and that he was awake and being a peeping Tom. He bolted away from there quickly and unnoticed, horrified beyond all reason by what he had done. He tried to forget it, but the image haunted his dreams for many nights and before he knew it, he found himself wondering what it would be like to touch her intimately. It drove him crazy and the worst part was he couldn't go to anyone for advice because the only person who could give it was Jellal and there was no way in Hell Gray was going to let him find out he had been watching Jellal's little sister bathe.

"It's only because she's the only woman in my life." He told himself every time his curious mind wandered. "It's just the instincts of a man getting to me. It doesn't mean anything. Besides, I can't have those kind of feelings for her. She's beautiful and I'm not. I'm a freak. No woman could be happy with me, any wife of mine would be a subject of ridicule forever. Oh dear God, why was I cursed with this face? Why was I left alive to live with it? Why was I allowed to feel? Why was I not made of stone?"

"I can feel your thoughts." Juvia giggled, knowing that he was only ever this silent when he was thinking hard. "They're scorching the air about your head like embers from the hearth."

"It's nothing." He denied.

"Oh you can't hide from me. I always know when you're lying, I can hear it in your voice."

"No you can't."

"Yes I can. You know I hear better than most, only Carla's hearing is better than mine, and I can hear how your voice drops whenever you tell a lie. So tell me the truth, what are you thinking about?"

"Just the usual." He confessed in a sigh. "My face."

"What about it?"

"Juvia, you know that I am very ugly."

"I know that you are sublime."

"Oh please Juvia, don't humor me. When you hear all the world laugh and spit insults, you know they are referring to me because I am horrible."

"You are not horrible. They are just ignorant."

"You wouldn't say that if you could see me."

"I don't need to see you to know you. I've known you all my life."

"But how can you know me, when I do not even know myself? Not only am I stuck with this damnable face, but I don't know who it belongs to. I don't know my true name."

"It's Gray."

"But who is that exactly? I can't even recall my last name or the names of my parents or where I used to live. All I can remember is a blizzard, my father's dead face, tears in my mother's eyes, a scythe, and that's it. Nothing else. Oh curses on Jellal and his elixirs!"

"Now that's not fair Gray." She said gently but sternly. "You know he had no choice but to give you the Crimson Lethe. You were hurting yourself night after night because of the trauma."

She took hold on his arm.

"You still have the scars from when you went through that window. He didn't see any other way to stop you." She insisted.

"He didn't have to give me so much." He replied.

"That was only because you wouldn't hold still. He only meant to give you one drop, but you kept fighting him and he lost his grip on the bottle."

Gray sighed again. As much as he hated to admit it, Juvia was absolutely correct. That drug was the only thing that had kept Gray's sanity from going off the deep end as a child and it was his own fault that he had drank too much. However it didn't make things any less frustrating.

"You're right." He confessed. "I just want to remember. Remember who I am and who carved me into this freak."

"Jellal says the effects aren't exactly permanent. You could remember everything. You just need a type of trigger."

"Such as?"

"Well I don't know. He's the brain in this group, not me. But that doesn't mean I can't help you."

"I know I really shouldn't be bothered by this. I mean, I do have a lot to be grateful for. I have a home, I have a family, I never go hungry or cold. I have no reason to want more out of life...But I do. Especially whenever my mask comes off in public and I'm reminded of how the world sees me."

"How the world sees you is not important. All the matters is how you see yourself."

"Well I see myself as something frightful, neither man nor animal. A living nightmare. A demon. A gargoyle. A monster. A beast."

He was listing every insult and name that a person who had seen his face had called him and Juvia hated it that he remembered them all.

"I wish you could forget such things." She said.

"I wish I was handsome." He said. "Or rich. If had money and maybe an important position, I could show my face and no one would ever have a cross thing to say to me."

"But they would not really be kind. They would just be after your money and good graces."

"Better than being met with disdain."

Juvia wished that there was something she could say or do to change his feelings about himself. She knew that he hated himself, and lived in constant fear that someday the world's treatment of him would be too much. And he would just...

"No!" She thought shaking her head. "He won't do that! I won't let him! I don't know how, but I'll get him to love himself. Maybe if he could figure out what was there before, it could help."

"I have an idea Gray." She said. "Maybe the time has come for us to go out and try to learn the truth."

"What do you mean?"

"You say you want to find out who you are, so let's do that."

"And how do we do that?"

"We're near the place where you found me years ago. Maybe if we look around and ask some questions, we'll get some answers. Surely someone here must know something about a boy who went missing."

"Juvia it was ten years ago and I was all alone that night. I seriously doubt anyone will know anything."

"There's no harm in just asking, is there? What have you got to lose?"

"Nothing I guess."

"So there should be no problem looking into this. Unless, you're scared of what you might find."

"Scared? Me? Please, I'm not scared of anything."

"It's alright if you are."

"I'm not. I just don't know if I want to waste my time or not. For all we know, we could ask everyone in London and come up with nothing."

"And for all we know, we could find out everything just by the asking the right person." She took his hands into hers, holding them gently. "Listen, whatever you want to do, I'm with you all the way. You saved my life and for that I will do anything for you."

This girl never ceased to amaze Gray. Her devotion was unlike anything he had ever seen, once Juvia loved you, then you became her reason for living. That applied to him, her brother, and Carla. There's nothing she wouldn't do for either one of them.

"Thanks Juvia." He said. "But right now, I'm not sure what I want to do."

"No one says you have to know." She said. "I'm just telling you that you can count on me for whatever you choose."

She softly brushed her fingers on to his cheek and then trailed down to his scarf.

"Can I feel?" She asked him.

"No." He said.

"It won't change anything. You know that, don't you?"

"I know." He gently removed her hand. "But you don't deserve to know anything that horrible."

Juvia wanted to protest but she chose not to.

"I'm going to bed now." He said. "Goodnight Juvia, Happy Birthday."

"Goodnight Gray, and thank you."