Outsiders (Fairy Tail - Gruvia, Gale)

9. Friends

Juvia looked away, and after a slight struggle, Lyon stood up and started walking out of the stadium, waving at the audience who were applauding him sympathetically. She smirked, then started picking up her stuff to leave. Seeing  the whole audience congratulate Lyon as if he only just lost to Sol, even though he was nowhere near beating him, made her frustrated and angry. 

"Wait, we need to hear the scores," Totomaru said to them.

"I don't care," Juvia started. "The games have barely begun, the scores mean nothing as they are now. I want to leave," she said, then left. Gajeel raised an eyebrow and Lily frowned.

"And after a long and existing day, the scores at the end of the second day are as followed:

Fairy Tail are in the lead with 26 points, followed closely by Phantom Lord, who have 26 points, Sabertooth who are on 25 points, then Mermaid Heel have 13 points, Lamia Scale are on 7 points, and Blue Pegasus have 3! Tomorrow will surely be a very existing day with the special event and the last set of one vs ones!"

As the scores were being read out, Sol returned. "Where is Juvia?" he asked. 

"She left earlier," said Aria. "Let us go."

Gajeel and Lily stood up from the back chairs and left with Aria. The rest of them followed. 

"Hey, Sol, what was up with that guy looking at Juvia? It looked like he pissed her off. Do they know eachother? You said something during the battle," Totomaru said.

"No. I was just playing with his memories and using times from when we've bumped into their guild on jobs as examples of us being stronger than them," he lied. Sol and Juvia were old friends; he wasn't going to discuss her private matters with the rest of them, especially when Juvia's memories were impossible to read.

"Oh, alright. Well, he was looking weird at Juvia..."

"He might have been a part of her life at some point. We don't know anything about Juvia, do we?"

"Non..." Sol began. "But you already know that I haven't ever been able to read her mind, for whatever reason."

"Yeah, it's just weird that there are now people turning up who seem to know Juvia."

"Well... nobody's come up and claimed to know her..."

"No, not yet, I guess."

As the group turned up back at their inn, Gajeel left the group to go straight to the garden where Juvia was sat on the grass watching the river in front of her.   

"Hey," he started. She turned around and smiled. 

"Hi, Gajeel," she said.

"They were talking about you earlier."

Juvia frowned. "About Lyon Vastia, probably."

"Yeah, basically. Do you know him?"

"I only know him for being the annoying bastard who came to our guild looking for a fight," she said. "And for that one time Sol and I ran into him on a job in Hargeon." 

"Yeah, that's what I thought. You really don't know him?"

Juvia stared at the water running down the hill. "No, I don't know him. I don't know the other ice wizard either. I remember Sol telling us at dinner last night that that the two of them grew up together. Sol came into my room last night. Apparently the one ice wizard has a small memory of a photograph of me."

"That could mean anything though, couldn't it?"

"Exactly. I doubt it's anything of importance. If it was there would be more to the memory. Maybe we're related or something."

"Yeah, if it wasn't any major impact on your life then it isn't worth getting bothered over. It doesn't help you figure out your past, does it?"

"No. But I've already told you I don't want to know. There's a reason master put the spell on me."

"Yeah, that's true." 

Gajeel was the only person Juvia told about the spell. When she arrived at Phantom Lord, a destroyed child full of anger, Gajeel and Aria were the only members of their team who were members of the guild at the time. She never spoke about her past with them, and spend most of her time hidden away learning more magic and sewing teru teru bōzu dolls. Jose saw the amount of pain she was under, and is the only person who knows about her past. 

By the time he had finally agreed to end her suffering and remove her memories, she was spending more time outside training with Gajeel, because he was the only one who never minded the constant rain, which she had no control over. They were each others first, and closest friend.   

"You know, you gotta compete at some point," Gajeel said.

Juvia chuckled. "I will. So will Aria."

They lied in silence for a while, until they heard footsteps emerging from behind them. 

"Pardonne-moi," Sol started. "May I speak to Juvia? I will be quick." 

Gajeel sat up. "Sure. I gotta go find Lily anyway," he said, then left. Juvia sat and motioned for Sol to join her sitting. 

"I just wanted to tell you about what I saw in Lyon's memories. They were basically the same as what I saw in Gray Fullbuster's yesterday."

"Okay," Juvia said, staring at the river again. 

"Memories are always being forgotten. I think that memory was triggered by the boys seeing you. So if they had any other memory of you it would have been triggered too." 

"That's good to know. So they aren't really anything to do with me."

"No, and I don't want to make any assumptions about your upbringing, so I don't know what that photograph could have been from. But many families have photographs of relatives or friends, or things like that, I suppose. Maybe she was your godmother."

"We will never know, Sol. Don't worry, I don't want to know. Thank you for telling me." 

"They do have rather a sad story. This women was killed," Sol said. 

Juvia raised an eyebrow. "If I knew who this woman was, Sol..."

Sol laughed. "Of course. Now, it's getting dark, let me escort you inside."

They both stood up and made their way over to the dining hall where the rest of their guild were waiting for them.

Meanwhile, Lyon and Gray were stood on the balcony of the Lamia Scale inn. 

"I don't know what it means," Gray said. "All I remember is that Ur was really angry when we tried asking about her. She never mentioned this little girl ever again."

"Maybe somebody was trying to help her find her daughter, and that she was secretly looking for little girls who resembled her daughter? I don't know, I'm just throwing out ideas."

"I don't know. Ultear wasn't a baby then, she was our age, and Juvia was a baby. Whatever, it's not important what Juvia is to us. She was some girl who had some sort of connection to Ur, that's all. For all we know Ur could've had a niece or something, or maybe she was planning on adopting Juvia. It was just a photo, and she was really embarrassed and against us looking at it."

"Ur had a lot of secrets," Lyon said, looking at the sky. "I guess we won't ever know."

Gray just frowned. "A lot of people knew Ur. That girl has nothing to do with us. She's just a stranger from a rival guild."

"Yeah, definitely," Lyon replied.