Gruvia Stories

A world without him

She just stands there. She doesn't really know where she is or who she is with. She knows she is standing on her own two feet. She knows there is grass underneath those feet. She guesses the sky is blue and clear because the light is strong and the warmth of the sun heat one side of her face. The wind is blowing strongly in front of her, making her hair move unevenly behind her shoulders and her eyes sting a little. Physically, her eyes are staring at something on the floor; a steady grey stone that they don't leave for a second. Mentally, she isn't looking at anything. In fact, everything is just a blur at the moment. The only thing that she can feel is the wind and the heat on her face. The rest of her body feels inexistent. She cannot guess how long it has been since she is here, or why. All she knows is that she can't move. Not the tip of her fingers or of her toes. Not her neck that is starting to get tired and tense, sending the same message to her back muscles. Not her legs that are tired of keeping her steady. Nothing moves and even if she wanted to, she still couldn't feel a single thing so it won't matter. The only sign of being alive that her friends surrounding her gets is the movements of her eyelids. They were moving quite fast, opening and closing every few seconds, protecting their orbs from the wind or from the tears threatening to fall on her cheeks. Maybe it was neither, maybe both.

After most of her friends starts to move, she keeps being as steady as a pole. Not a single thought comes into her mind. It's like her brain stopped sending any kind of information to her body when she sets foot in front of that stone she doesn't know how long ago. Her whole body is dysfunctioning. She nearly feels like she is floating. Not feeling the ground underneath her feet anymore. She feels like her head is separated from her body although still feeling that they were floating as a whole. Heavens knows how long she stayed in this trance. But at some point, she felt the slight touch of a hand on her shoulder and a very distant voice trying to call her name. One by one, her senses came back to life. She felt the ground, heard a beeping sound in her ears, felt the weight of the hand on her shoulder then her whole body coming to life again, hearing sounds she thought she hadn't heard for years. It took all the energy she had for her to turn her head to the right where two of her friends were trying to talk to her with sad, compassionate and pitying eyes. She saw Lucy's lips move but wasn't able to hear a thing of what she had said.

"Huh?" She asked, beating her eyelids and shaking her head to show her misunderstanding.

"What are you going to do? You should go home and rest. We'll come tomorrow to check on you okay?" Lucy repeated, proposing her help to this friend she has not seen cry yet since the accident.

Juvia suddenly remembers where she is. Who she is in front of and why she is here. She doesn't know how to react or how she wants to react. Everything inside her is as empty as ever. She tries to remember a time when she had felt like this but doesn't find one quite as bad. A lot of shit happened in her life. Those had been the worst at the time. And now ... now they were just distant memories, distant feelings. Most of the time, when she was trying to feel the pain she had felt at that time, she wasn't able to put one little finger on it. Even words were failing her if she wanted to describe it. She had completely forgot all the hurt in her life because they had been erased and replaced by so many good memories and feelings that she was sure could never get rid of even if she wanted to.

But right now though. God she definitely never had felt that kind of pain. It is like all of her insides were fighting a war and burning her, cutting her, piercing her from inside. It is deeply unbearable. Maybe that is why her brain had decided to turn itself off. She thanked it for that, punishing it at the same time for freeing her of her shield of protection. She looked at Lucy and Erza who were waiting for her to do something. Hoping she would be alright eventually.

"I'll go somewhere for a few days." Juvia announced, still emotionless.

"Somewhere? Where? For what?" Erza asked, being deeply worried.