#stivia

Despair, for Juvia, was as dark and deep and all-consuming as the bottom of the ocean.  It was reflected in the rain that pummeled the village she lived in ceaselessly – drowning the world as she herself was.

She didn’t know where she’d gone wrong.  One minute, she and Gray had been together – training, talking, doing the chores together.  It was the culmination of Juvia’s every fondest fantasy with the man (with the exception of sleeping in different beds).  She really thought that they were getting somewhere, that her feelings were truly reciprocated.

And then he… left.  He just… he left.  Without a note, without a word of goodbye.  Juvia had just awoken one morning to find him vanished without a trace.

At first, she hadn’t thought much of it.  Sometimes Gray wanted space of his own and would enforce it if Juvia pushed him too hard, so she had assumed that that was the case this time.

Then a day passed.  And another.  And another. No word from Gray, and no sight of him anywhere.

Worry consumed her alive, and she searched everywhere for him that she could think of.  But he was nowhere at all, and any trail that might have existed had long since grown cold.  And with it went the warmth of the sunlight.

So it rained.  In her heart, in her mind, and all around.

It rained.

It was by chance, one day, that she happened to step out onto the porch and find someone there.  Her heart had soared briefly, only to crash painfully with the reality that it wasn’t who she wanted it to be.  The blond man standing in the mud up to his ankles stared up at her with wonder in his eyes, though, and she failed to retreat in time before he spoke to her.

“Whoa!  It’s Juvia! Hey, it’s been a long time!  How are you doing these days?”

Juvia struggled to place him.  He definitely looked familiar, and his voice sounded familiar, but she was coming up blank on who he was, and how he seemed to know her.

Reading her befuddled expression easily, the man offered, “It’s me!  Sting Eucliffe, from Sabertooth.”

“Oh.”

When she didn’t respond further, he deflated a little. “Uh… well, it’s nice to see you again! Honestly never expected to find a familiar face out in the boondocks like this. So where’s uh… the guy you were always with?  Is he around here somewhere, too?  Or are you by yourself?”

The rain suddenly increased in its intensity, shot from the sky like bullets, as a quiet sob escaped Juvia.

“Oh shit,” muttered Sting.  It wasn’t difficult to put two and two together in this situation. “I guess that explains a few things. Look, I’m sorry – holy shit, please stop crying.  I’ll…” He wasn’t exactly sure what he was trying to say anymore, so he gave up. He was cold, and wet, and felt as miserable as he was sure he looked.  “Uh… can I come inside, maybe?  Please.  I’m soaked through to the bone, here.”

She considered refusing him.  He could see it in her eyes, as she debated the consequences of telling him to bugger off.  “Come in,” she finally relented, stepping back from the door.  “But leave your shoes on the porch.”  Juvia would hate for Gray to come home to a dirty house, should he return.

Sting wasted zero time in taking up her invitation, shucking his footwear and – after a split second’s consideration – his soaked socks as well.  When he stepped into the small cabin, he shivered.  It had been freezing out in the rain, but it wasn’t all that much warmer inside, either.  There was a fireplace, though it wasn’t lit.

What kind of person didn’t light a fire when it was this cold out?  Sting wondered at the logic behind it, but couldn’t find any.  “Mind if I light a fire?” he asked.

“Do what you want.  Juvia does not care.”

The truth was that the cold made Juvia feel closer to Gray.  But even that hadn’t helped in some time.  It was hard to drudge up the energy to care.

Well that… had just happened.  It was consent enough for Sting, though, so he set about getting one started (with possibly a little help from concentrated light).  Once it was roaring, he sighed happily, finally starting to feel warm again.  There wasn’t all that much firewood left over, however, so he reluctantly turned to look at Juvia, who was sitting on one of the two beds staring at him blankly.

“I can refill this for you,” Sting offered, trying desperately to read any sort of emotion on Juvia’s face.  It was eerie, how little was there.  Even Rogue’s poker face was easier to glean information from. But then again, Rogue’s tells were in his body language, and Juvia was holding herself preternaturally still.

“Do whatever you want,” she repeated, her disinterest in Sting and his actions plain.

“…Do you have any rubber boots I can use?” Sting asked hopefully.

Juvia pointed to a pair next to the door, and Sting gratefully went over and tugged them on.  They were a snug fit, but they were larger than the pair that sat beside them so clearly they didn’t belong to Juvia.  Two beds, two pairs of boots.  Confirming something that Sting was beginning to suspect – that someone else used to be there, but now wasn’t.  And that was the source of the rainfall he’d been asked to investigate.

When he returned inside with an armload of firewood from the shed adjacent to the cabin, he was surprised to see a towel waiting for him on the table.  Seeing it brought out a small smile in him.

“Thanks!” he told her warmly.

“You’re welcome,” Juvia stated.

The towel was heavenly soft, Sting soon discovered. Incredibly fluffy.

“What brings you all the way out here?” Juvia suddenly asked him out of the blue.  “Aren’t you a guild master now?”

Surprised, but pleased that she was attempting to converse with him (even if the questions sounded more like accusations), Sting replied, “I was asked to take a look personally by a former client.  And I wanted a short vacation from my guildmates.” He loved them, he really did.  But they made a lot of work for him to do. “Besides, Minerva and Orga are perfectly capable of holding things together in my absence.”  Probably.

Silence descended once more, as oppressive as the drumming rain on the roof.

Awkwardly, Sting cleared his throat.  “So uh… the Vulcan in the room.  I’m guessing that the rain is… and Fullbuster is…”

“Gray-sama left Juvia,” Juvia told him.  “He was Juvia’s clear sky.  And no, Juvia does not know how to stop it.”  She placed her head in her hands, the first sign of true emotion that Sting had seen from her yet.  “Juvia… Juvia needed Gray-sama to keep the sky clear.”  Without Gray, without Fairy Tail, without any of it, Juvia did not know who she was.  Did not know where to go.  What to do.

“Even if you’re drowning the place?”

Juvia’s head snapped up, her dark eyes boring into Sting’s much lighter ones.

Now that she was paying attention, they looked a lot like the clear sky she so dearly missed.  The immeasurable, precious possibility that Gray had given her.

“You can’t tell me that you haven’t noticed,” Sting continued, forging ahead despite the insensitivity of his words.  “I take it this has happened before?”  In response, Juvia nodded slightly.  “Then why haven’t you gone to a different location?  You’re wrecking the village.  Not to mention the entire ecosystem.”

Sting thought the rain would break through the roof of the cabin with how hard it struck after those words left his mouth.

It was a question that Juvia had asked herself a few times since Gray had left.  She did know what it was doing.  That it was harming people.  That her very existence was hurtful to this place.  But…

“Juvia can’t leave,” she whimpered, her lip trembling as she fought back the urge to cry.  “Because Gray-sama… because Gray-sama might come back.”

And that was the crux of it.  What if he did?  What if she missed him?  What if he was just around the corner, and she wasn’t patient enough to see him? What would he think of her, then? She would be disloyal, when she’d proclaimed over and over again that she would always believe in him.  No matter what.  It was time for that to be tested, for her love to be proven true. She couldn’t give up now.  Even if holding on meant her own destruction.

Sting’s eyes were hard, however.  “I don’t think either of you would want to be the cause of death for all the people living here.”

His words shook her to the core.

Self-destruction was one thing.  Destroying others was another.  And that was never something that Juvia had wanted.

She wanted so badly to stay, though.

“Then what should Juvia do?” she whispered, the dark emptiness in her chest only expanding further.

The guild master was stumped.  He hadn’t actually thought this far ahead, truth be told.  By this point, he was flying by the seat of his pants.

So he proposed something more than just a little bit crazy.

“Why not come to Sabertooth?”

Juvia stared at him in dumbfounded horror.  “Why would Juvia want to do that?”

Ouch.  That bruised his ego a little.  “It’s something to do,” he suggested, making up the excuse even as he spoke it, and trying his best to sound halfway convincing.  “It beats staying here, in this cabin all alone.”

He wasn’t wrong.

For several long minutes, Juvia thought over Sting’s offer as he tended the fire.  She took stock of everything that she’d accomplished since Gray had left, and found herself coming up short.  When Gray had been there, her days had been full of activity – training, chores, conversation.  It had been magical.  But now it was a good day when Juvia remembered to feed herself, and she hadn’t trained in ages.

Maybe a change would be good for her.

And maybe, just maybe, she could find a clue as to where Gray went.

It was a start, if nothing else.

“Juvia will come.”

Her announcement startled Sting, who had just assumed that his offer was rejected, and he turned towards her slowly, blinking rapidly in confusion.  It took a couple moments for his brain to catch up with her words, but once it had, a grin spread across his face.  “That’s great!  When do you want to leave?”

“Tomorrow,” Juvia stated, her confidence in her decision growing by the second.  “Juvia will need to pack tonight.  Sting may take the floor.”

Sting wisely decided against fighting her on that point, despite the fact that there were two perfectly usable beds in the cabin. “Any chance of me getting some covers?”

Baby steps, he told himself.  Even small ones, when taken in the right direction, could change someone’s world.  It was something he had learned long ago.

There were blue skies ahead for them yet.