Worth Is Measured In Love

Chapter 13

"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."