Chapter Text
By the time the Element 4 filed into the war room at the Phantom Lord annex, the gutters outside Phantom Lord's Headquarters were already overflowing.
Juvia knew Jose liked it that way. He said Juvia's unnerving presence made clients sign contracts faster because the outside storm combined with the darker decor of their Headquarters made their reputation speak louder for itself.
It was, Juvia had come to understand, one of the small cruelties Jose collected without ever quite naming it a as cruelty. He collected people the same way, mages who'd been washed out of other guilds, mages nobody else wanted, mages with the kind of power that made the council nervous.
He had built and grown Phantom Lord out of them the way a man builds a wall out of whatever stone is lying around on the gravel and then he called the wall a fortress, eventually it was one.
Juvia had been part of that wall for six years, since she was 11 years old and plucked out of her orphanage to official train as a water mage.
To understand why an S-Class meeting in Crocus mattered enough for Jose to spend a Sunday night briefing the Element 4 on it, you had to understand what Phantom Lord and Fairy Tail actually were to each other.
If you looked at it from the outside, two of the strongest guilds in Fiore competing for the same jobs and the same reputation for as long as either had existed, and yet somehow it had never once tipped over into anything the Council had to intervene in.
It was rivalry that was there long before Juvia joined Phantom Lord. Dating back a hundred years prior when their first guild masters fought it out on the streets of Magnolia.
The guild masters often traded insults at Council functions. Members brawled in border towns when they crossed paths, and both guilds quietly paid off whatever damages resulted, and nobody escalated it past that. At least as far as Juvia was aware.
It was, everyone assumed, simply how things would always be. Two guilds too proud to ally with one another yet too equally matched to destroy each other outright, circling the same reputation for a century.
Jose liked that arrangement. He liked it precisely because it had never been tested because a rivalry that had never become a war was a rivalry either guild could still theoretically escalate, if the right provocation ever came along and neither master particularly minded finding out what happened next.
Which was exactly why Jude Heartfilia's job made Jose's eyes light up the way they had.
"Five hundred thousand jewel a day, plus expenses, until the girl is returned home." Jose slid the parchment down the length of the war room table, past Sol, past Aria, past Totomaru, until it stopped in front of Juvia. "Mr. Heartfilia doesn't care how it's done. He wants his daughter home from Fairy Tail under any circumstances."
"She's a member of Fairy Tail," she said slowly. It wasn't a guild Phantom Lord dealt with often directly. Not ever, if either side could help it. "Master Jose, if Juvia is seen anywhere near their girl they will not be pleased."
"You won't be seen." Jose's smile was thin. "There's a peace summit in Crocus this week and every major guild will be sending a representative to the S-Class assembly, Fairy Tail included, as a courtesy to the Council. The details of Miss Lucy Heartfilia's whereabouts should be easy to pick up on with the right ears listening in. Then, you know what to do next, Juvia."
"And if it goes wrong?" Aria's voice was, as ever, half-drowned in his own weeping.
"It won't. Juvia is our best at retrieval missions," Jose sneered and folded his hands. "Jude Heartfilia will pay handsomely for the privilege of having his daughter home without a single Phantom Lord mage setting foot on Fairy Tail's territory."
Gajeel, slouched on his chair with his boots up on another empty chair, snorted. "And if one of their brats notices she gone?"
"Then Juvia will handle it," Jose said, looking at him with a dark smile. "She's notorious for a reason."
The word sat oddly in Juvia's chest. She'd built her name on jobs no one else in the guild wanted.
Where Sol dealt in threats and Totomaru in setting everything on fire and Aria in the kind of magic that made grown mages beg for mercy in the streets, Juvia had developed a skill for disappearing people. It was reputation she worked hard to upkeep and Phantom Lord spent it freely, their less than reputable clients too.
She had simply never had to spend it this close to Fairy Tail's own people before and risk opening the wound of their rivalry.
Juvia picked up the job contract, scanned the terms quickly, and set it back down.
"She will attend this meeting." She took a deep breath and set her hands in her lap gently. "Juvia will make sure she is not caught listening too closely to Fairy Tail's plans or Miss Heartfilia's whereabouts."
Sol's laughter rattled, "And don't forget to enjoy enjoy the peace summit, mon chéri. We must make sure we outshine the Fairies there too."
"Of course," Juvia nodded slowly, "Juvia will report back any findings she has."
"Take Gajeel with you as far as Crocus," Jose said finally. "Not into the summit, I don't need Fairy Tail's own dragon slayer getting curious about ours."
Gajeel rolled his eyes at the ceiling but didn't argue. He never argued with Jose in front of the others; it was one of the few pieces of self-preservation he actually practiced.
"And one more thing," Jose's eyes settled on Juvia, and something in them sharpened, just slightly, the way it did whenever he was about to make sure a point had landed properly. "You represent this guild in that hall, Juvia. You are Phantom Lord's in a room full of people who would like nothing more than a reason to say we've broken our word. Give them nothing."
"Understood, Master."
"Good." He was already looking past her at the next piece of paper on his desk, dismissing the meeting. "Don't disappoint me."
The train to Crocus took most of the day, and Gajeel spent the better part of it needling her about nothing in particular as he always did, if Totomaru had been ironing his clothes a certain way, whether Sol had actually been born speaking with an accent or had simply decided one day that he liked the sound of it better.
Juvia answered in the minimum number of words the conversation required and watched the fields blur past the window, going over what to do about her latest job.
She had never spoken to a Fairy Tail mage directly. She had seen Erza Scarlet every now and again at these types of meetings. The red-head seemed the most reliable as other mages would only show up every now and then.
Not once, in six years had she spoke to any of them. The guild itself existed to her mostly in rumors from other Phantom Lord members who spoke of their elitism and judgments.
She was nervous that her actions would cause an unnecessary scene between the guilds if Fairy Tail were as hot-headed as her guild mates described.
"You're quieter than usual." He didn't look at her when he said it, which was as close as he came to actual concern. "This job bothering you or something?"
"It's just a job." She kept her eyes on the window. "Juvia has done worse ones than this."
"Not what I asked." She didn't answer that, and he let it go. They didn't speak again until Crocus.
She couldn't answer that because something about this job was bothering her. It wasn't unusual for Juvia to lift someone off the streets without a trace, but this was the first time she was ordered to do it for a mage who wasn't part of a dark guild.
Juvia had never understood Jose's rivalry with Fairy Tail, or Fairy Tail's with Phantom Lord. It seemed counter-productive for the two strongest guilds in Fiore to work against each other instead of together.
Crocus in early spring smelled like wet stone and the palace was already loud with a dozen guild banners by the time Juvia slipped through the side entrance, Gajeel peeled off toward a tavern near the station with a flat "don't take too long" over his shoulder.
She kept to the edges of the room the way she'd been trained to, Juvia didn't tend to advertise herself too loudly.
The meeting itself was strange already, and it hadn't even started yet. Every guild present on some level, the alliances on display were mostly for the Council's benefit and a room full of rivals performing cordiality because it was cheaper than the alternative of having them all fighting.
Blue Pegasus mages flirted their way between refreshment tables. A cluster of Lamia Scale members debated something in low, clipped voices near the far wall. Somewhere near the center, Quatro Cerberus representatives stood in a tight knot of rowdy boys while getting glared at by the Mermaid Heel ladies.
And near the tables by the far window was Fairy Tail.
Juvia had expected to feel something more clinical about seeing them in person for the first time, a professional curiosity at most. What she felt instead, watching them from across the hall, was something closer to unease.
It was Erza Scarlet and two boys she didn't recognize. They laughed at something together. A guild that let itself be seen like that at a Council-sanctioned summit was either supremely confident or supremely foolish in her opinion, and Juvia genuinely couldn't decide which.
She was always easy to find in a crowd. Red hair, straighter spine than anyone else around, standing near the table and chastising the boys she was with sternly, but then smiling fondly behind their backs.
Juvia had never spoke directly to the woman, but the two had made uncomfortable eye contact more times that she was willing to count at these silly meetings the council insisted on.
A bell sounded from the front of the hall before she could decide how to approach the entire situation, and the general noise dropped into something more orderly with guild representatives finding their assigned rows, side conversations trailing off into murmurs.
Surprisingly the two boys from Fairy Tail left the room and Juvia's eyes trailed them to see them meet with Lucy Heartfilia herself at the door, holding a blue cat and smiling widely as the door shut.
A Council envoy Juvia didn't recognize, silver-haired and precise in his ceremonial coat, stepped up to address the room, flanked by two junior officials holding thick ledgers.
"On behalf of the Magic Council," he began, in a flat, over-rehearsed cadence, "we thank every guild represented here today for your continued cooperation as we move forward with the revised Guild Conduct Standards."
A ripple went through the hall at that, the restlessness of a room full of people who already knew they weren't going to like what came next.
Juvia felt it too. Every guild in Fiore had heard some version of this speech in the last year. The Council, still rattled by a string of incidents involving unregistered mages and guild-on-guild property damage that had made the newspapers look bad, had decided the answer was tighter oversight and stricter mandatory incident reporting, standardized damages liability, a new tier of licensing review for any guild whose members racked up too many Council complaints in a rolling twelve-month period.
"Effective this quarter," the envoy continued, "any confirmed altercation between two licensed guilds regardless of injury or location will trigger an automatic review of both guilds' standing, it won't matter who started what. These reviews will result in a formal hearing before the full Council, with license suspension or disbandment as a possible outcome for either or both parties involved." He let that sit for a moment, eyes moving deliberately across the room, though Juvia had the distinct impression he was watching two rows in particular. Hers, and the one where Fairy Tail's banner hung. "We say this not to threaten any guild's independence or integrity but to remind you all that independence is a privilege the Council extends, not a right it owes."
Beside her someone from Lamia Scale muttered something about hypocrisy dressed up as a policy.
Juvia didn't share the sentiment out loud, but she understood it well.
A rule like that punished exactly the kind of guild Phantom Lord was, with a reputation built on friction on being the guild other guilds crossed at their own risk and taking on the lesser standing jobs. While guilds like Fairy Tail, with their public brawls and their property damage bills that somehow always got waved off as heroics, would skate through on goodwill the Council seemed disinclined to examine too closely for reasons unknown.
She glanced, without meaning to, toward where Erza was watching the envoy with the great detail, seeming to measure what this new rule would cost her guild, and what it would cost the ones she considered rivals.
It was, Juvia thought, not a bad piece of information to carry home to Jose before taking on the Heartfilia job.
A single confirmed incident between Phantom Lord and Fairy Tail, one brawl even without a dead body, one report filed with the wrong Council officer, wouldn't just embarrass both guilds anymore.
It could end them.
Both of them, dragged in front of a hearing neither could afford to lose in a political climate that had apparently decided guild violence was this season's scandal of choice. Which made what she was about to say to Erza Scarlet considerably easier than it had been an hour ago.
The envoy wrapped his remarks a few minutes later and the hall dissolved back into its low murmur of side conversations, the tension of the announcement already dispersing into gossip and grumbling about the rules.
Juvia used the noise as cover, drifting along the wall toward where Erza was walking toward the door.
She waited for a gap in the small crowd around Erza, and said, quietly enough that it wouldn't carry, "Titania. A word."
Erza's eyes flicked to Juvia and something in her posture sharpened, "Phantom Lord? What do you want?"
"Juvia isn't here to start anything with you." She kept her hands visible in front of her and took a deep breath to gather her patience, "we need to talk. You know she wouldn't approach if it weren't serious. Please."
The other mage looked her up and down once before nodding, and the two made their way too a quite section of the hallway outside.
"Juvia only has one thing to say, and then she will go." She began and looked down the hallway briefly.
"Go on." Erza said sternly. "I assume it's highly important if you are wanting to talk to me of all people about it."
"You need to send your friend Lucy home." Juvia held her gaze, steady, giving her nothing to react to but the words themselves. "Before things get ugly between our guilds. We've been given a job I would rather not go through with, especially after the contents of that peace summit."
Erza looked taken aback at her words, "Lucy? Fairy Tail is her home, there is no where to send her back to."
So, Lucy had kept the details of her life from her new guild mates.
"Please," Juvia said and gave Erza a look. "Everyone has their secrets and Juvia won't share what she knows with you until you speak to Lucy first, but just know Lucy's father has been in touch with us."
"Her father?" Erza looked confused.
"Yes," Juvia confirmed sternly. "He has hired us to bring her back to him under any circumstances."
Erza was about to react physically when Juvia held a hand up.
"Which is why Juvia is telling you instead of acting on her instructions blindly," she gave Erza a look. "And I trust you to know that neither guild master can know of this little exchange either."
It happened fast after that, faster than she'd accounted for. She hadn't clocked the three new people shifting in from her left until the pink-haired boy was already between her and Erza, fists lit, close enough that she could feel the heat coming off him.
The dark-haired one was just behind him too, glaring Juvia down. Somewhere behind them, Lucy herself froze mid-step and Juvia recognized her from the photo her father had shared as a reference for the job.
"Get away from Erza," the pink haired one said with a growl.
"Natsu," Erza put a hand on his shoulder. "Not the time."
Juvia didn't so much as glance at him. She looked past them all with a cold stare, straight at the girl who'd gone very still.
Lucy's mouth opened and nothing came out. Juvia held her look for one more second, long enough to be sure it landed but not long enough to be accused of threatening anyone who'd be delighted to report exactly that back to the Council, then turned to nod once at Erza who nodded back and then she walked away.
Juvia had understood exactly how close the encounter had come to becoming something neither guild could walk back from. It would have taken one more word, one wrong move, to turn a century of circling each other without ever quite fighting into the first real war either guild had ever had.
Thankfully, it didn't happen.
Chasing a Phantom Lord mage through a summit hall in front of witnesses would start exactly the kind of incident Juvia wanted to avoid, and even Fairy Tail's loud temper, apparently, had its limits in public and let her go.
Juvia walked out of that hall without a scratch on her, and neither guild's name went into a Council report that night, nobody watching would ever know how narrowly that particular outcome had been decided.
And she hoped that Erza was smart enough to put pressure on Lucy to do as Juvia requested.
Gajeel found her outside twenty minutes later, back from whatever tavern he'd disappeared into, arms crossed, rain sliding off him.
"Well?" he said.
"An interesting meeting. Nothing new or to be concerned about," Juvia kept walking. It wasn't strictly true, it concerned all of them in a way and on top of that she had gone behind her guild masters instructions to give their enemy guild a heads up on what was happening behind the scenes.
She wasn't in the habit of narrating her jobs to Gajeel, and she wasn't about to start just because he'd had nothing better to do.
He fell into step beside her anyway, hands in his pockets. "You know Jose's gonna ask me the same thing when we get back."
"Then Juvia suggests you tell him the same thing she just told you."
Gajeel huffed something that might have been a laugh and let it go, which was the closest thing to consideration he ever offered her. They didn't talk again until they'd nearly reached the tavern they were staying at for the night.
The alley she found herself in an hour after that hadn't been part of any plan.
She'd left Gajeel at the tavern, telling him she wanted air after the summit, and cut through the back streets to avoid a knot of Blue Pegasus mages flirting their way down the main road and he'd apparently had the same idea from the opposite direction, because they nearly walked into each other under an awning that was doing very little to stop the pouring rain.
He looked different up close than he had when glaring at her from Erza's side. He stopped dead when he recognized her.
"You," he said his gaze turning into a glower.
"Juvia really isn't here to fight you." She said it flatly. "If she wanted to fight you, Juvia would have picked a wider street and an audience, believe her."
"That supposed to reassure me?" He scoffed and crossed his arms over his chest.
"No, it's simply true." She didn't move and held his glare.
"Hmm," he looked at her, his face still unimpressed. "The same reason you cornered Erza in private?"
"Juvia gave your friend a warning. Think of it s a favor." She insisted, hyper aware of his magical energy growing with his irritation.
"A warning." His jaw worked and his glare turned sour. "You cornered Erza in the middle of a peace summit and told her to send Lucy home with no explanation. You don't get to call that a favor."
"Whether you like it or not, it was." Her voice sharpened despite herself, the first real edge she'd let into it all day. "Juvia called it a warning, because that's what it was. Whatever her father wants with her it isn't going to be gentle, and it will look a great deal worse for her and for your guild, for whatever is left of the peace between our guilds too. For your information, Juvia was ordered to kidnap her and return her home without any of you knowing about and she chose to give you a private warning before things got ugly."
That landed somewhere. She watched it, watched him actually think about what she'd said instead of just watching her for the first sign of an attack. It was a small thing and it shouldn't have mattered as much as it did but she could see him find respect in the decision she made.
"...You could've just told Lucy," he said, slower now and some of the heat draining out of his voice. "Would've been a lot less dramatic than cornering Erza of all people."
"Juvia doesn't know your guild well enough to trust you to listen with a plain explanation." That, too, was true. "A warning between two S-Class mages gets remembered. An explanation from an enemy or rival gets argued with, picked apart, and eventually ignored because you think you know better. Juvia has watched people argue their way out of good advice before and she'd rather not watch it happen to an innocent this time, guild rivalry or otherwise."
The man studied her for a moment that went on a moment too long, rain running off both of them as they took each other in. "Well, thanks," he said, like the word had to be dragged out of him by something stronger than politeness. "For the warning, I guess. And I'm sorry for coming at you like that, that wasn't fair when you were trying to help."
Juvia hadn't expected the apology, and it showed in the half-second before she answered. "It didn't feel right to take the job in the first place," she admitted, quieter than she meant to. "Even with our guilds' history, Juvia almost turned it down."
"Why?" He looked confused, the initial hostility fading. "Wouldn't it be a good excuse to try and take us down and built yourself up?"
"Because Juvia doesn't overly care for the rivalry, it's an old war between men who are now dead." She said it lightly, but there was nothing light underneath it, and something in his face told her he'd heard that too. "Why get involved when it never concerned us."
He hummed at that and shifted his weight, glancing back toward the main street. "Lucy's already gone back, by the way. She and Natsu left for her dad's estate as soon as we got out of the palace earlier. She wanted this over with before anyone could force her back." He paused and looked sheepish. "We agreed to keep your name out of it too for what it's worth. Erza figured it wouldn't do you any favors, a mage like you siding with a Fairy Tail girl, even for a good reason, would hurt your reputation if it got out."
It was such an unnecessary kindness that Juvia didn't know what to do with it for a moment. Phantom Lord didn't extend courtesies like that, not without expecting something back eventually, "Juvia will have to thank you properly, if our paths cross again."
"Sure thing," something that wasn't quite a smile crossed his face, there and gone, easy to miss if she hadn't been watching for his reaction. He looked up at the rain like he was noticing it for the first time, tipping his head back slightly, water running down his throat. "This you, right? Erza said you were known as the Rain Woman."
"Yes." She said it plainly, without asking for pity or offering an excuse for it either. "The rain is always with her, it doesn't matter where she goes, doesn't matter the weather forecast the day before. It rains because Juvia is here."
"Huh." He didn't look disturbed by it, which surprised her more than the question had. Most people either pitied her for it or said how gloomy everything was surrounding her. "As cool as it is, that sounds like it sucks honestly."
"It does." A small, humorless smile, the corner of her mouth barely moving. "But it's also useful, in its way. It's a large part of why she's climbed as high as she has in the largest guild in Fiore, power is more or less all Juvia has to offer anyone. So, she's made sure she has quite a lot of it."
He didn't press it, which she appreciated more than she let show.
Voices carried down the street then, one familiar as Gajeel's laugh sounded next, unmistakable even through the rain and much closer than Juvia would have liked him to be.
"I should go," he said. "Wouldn't look great, the two of us caught talking. Rival guilds and all that."
"Agreed." Juvia inclined her head, already turning toward the sound of her own guild mate.
"I'm Gray, by the way." He said as he hesitated to walk away. "Gray Fullbuster."
"Goodbye, Gray Fullbuster." She kept her eye on him as she tilted her body away from him to walk toward the tavern again.
He hesitated at that, like he wanted to say something else, then apparently thought better of it. "Yeah. See you around, I guess."
She didn't look back to see which direction he went.
Gajeel was waiting outside the tavern, seeing her walk back hesitantly as he bid goodbye to two men who walked back inside.
"Took you long enough to get back," he bit out as she approached.
"Juvia needed some space from you." She glared at him for a second for being so pushy that day.
"Sure you did." He didn't push it, handing over her a beer instead and led her inside the building.
Juvia watched Crocus through the window and thought, without quite meaning to, about Gray, he'd apologized to her for something he really didn't have to apologize for and on top of that he hadn't even flinched at the rain, and he had thanked her for her warning like he meant it.
It didn't matter. It couldn't matter.
He was in Fairy Tail, and she was in Phantom Lord, and whatever rivalry a century of circling each other without ever quite fighting had built between their guilds, it hadn't built room for anything softer than tolerance, never mind a friendship.
She told herself that the whole evening as she watched Gajeel get rattled up in the tavern with the other men he was with, and she mostly believed it.
Jose was waiting in his office when she and Gajeel returned to Oak Town a day later, still in his chair behind the desk that never seemed to have anything on it but exactly the papers he wanted visible at any given moment.
He didn't look up right away.
"Well?"
Juvia kept her voice even, her verbal report already smoothed into the shape she'd rehearsed on the train, true in every way and careful about which particulars it included. "The summit emphasized the need for a lack of violence between guilds. A new warning claiming that any guilds partaking in inter-guild fighting will be punished thoroughly and harshly. Juvia is afraid that if we lift Miss Heartfilia then we will be in the wrong and the guild will be disbanded by the council, given their previous favor toward Fairy Tail." Jose frowned at her words, but she continued anyway. "Juvia thinks we should rethink our strategy for this job."
She didn't mention that she had pre-warned Fairy Tail of the upcoming kidnapping and accidentally extended an olive branch to one of Titania Erza's team members that afternoon.
There was no version of that conversation Jose needed to hear and no version of it she wanted to explain either.
It simply wasn't information Jose had asked for so she didn't tell him about it.
"Interesting." Jose set down his pen, finally looking at her properly. Whatever satisfaction she'd expected didn't come with it. "Because our client has already been in touch today."
Something in Juvia went briefly, carefully still. "Mr Heartfilia has been in touch?"
"Indeed," Jose confirmed, "he sent word an hour ago that his daughter returned home this evening. Under her own power apparently, escorted by one of the Fairy Tail boys, the fire dragon slayer, if his letter's to be believed." His mouth thinned into something that wasn't quite a smile. "He's decided the job is therefore only half done, and intends to pay accordingly. Half the agreed fee, since the girl came home on her own initiative and not because of anything Phantom Lord did to bring her there."
"She went home," Juvia said carefully and looked in disbelief.
"Quite irritatingly, yes." Jose's tone didn't rise, but something underneath it sharpened, the particular irritation he got when a client had cost him money he considered his already. "Try explaining that nuance like that to a rich man who's already decided he's not paying full price for a service he can't prove was necessary in the first place. He hired us to be effective, and now he's decided effective and expensive are the same thing only when it suits him." He picked his pen back up, twirling it between his fingers as he looked back at a shocked Juvia. "Rich men are all the same in the end. Happy to spend a fortune on the promise of a solution, and furious the moment they suspect they might have solved it themselves for free. He will pay us what he owes. Eventually. Men like that always do, once they've finished pretending they won't because of their pride."
Gray had told her the truth then, they sent Lucy home and kept Juvia's name out of it.
"Of course, Master Jose." Juvia inclined her head, trying to hide the relief on her expression that she had gotten away with her plan without him being alerted.
"That's all. You did what was asked of you," he'd already gone back to his papers, the conversation closed as abruptly as it had opened. "Go back to the guild hall if you must. There'll be another job for you and the other elements before the week's out."
"Yes, Master." She left his office and made her way toward her own quarters without hurrying and it was only once the door was shut behind her that she let out a sigh of relief.
She had successfully prevented a fight neither guild could have walked away from that day, over a girl who was thankfully home safe and accounted for. Jose could call it half a job and take the half a fee and grumble about greedy clients all he liked.
He didn't know what the whole job had actually been, or what it had actually cost to make sure it went the way it had.
Next time she ran into Gray Fullbuster and Erza Scarlet, she would owe them quite the debt.