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When she finally began to stir, all Erza could feel was warmth. It was stifling almost, a suffocating heat that was extremely out of place in the winter Magnolian air. She tried to move, but her limbs felt heavy and pinned to her sides. Erza felt frustrated, and sore, and all she could do was groan as her eyes tried to open, battling the light.
“Erza, you’re awake!”
“Clearly.” She grumbled, the voice already setting her nerves at edge, but then Erza realised how absurd it was to hear that voice in this context, and she tried to bolt up. Even if her body had been capable of such a movement, weight was still pressing down on her, and when Erza looked up she realised why she was so warm. Mirajane was sat half splayed across her body, head once resting on Erza’s chest now blinking rapidly.
“No need for the attitude, Scarlet.” Mirajane muttered, but it lacked its usual bite. Her hair was greasy and tousled, and her eyes were swollen and pink around the edges. Almost as though she had been crying.
The pain was starting to spike now, sharp jolts across her neck and ribs. Everything was falling into place; the job that Erza had taken with Mirajane on the request of their master. The bandits that had jumped them. How Erza had fallen to them. She looked at Mirajane’s face and noticed the bandages showing through her clothes. So Mira had been hurt, too.
Erza sighed.
“How long have I been out for?”
“Six days.”
Erza slumped back against the lumpy mattress of Fairy Tail’s infirmary. She had to avert her gaze, looking anywhere except at the concerned eyes that Mirajane was using on her, wide and blue and dangerous. Erza couldn’t allow herself to fall for the other girl anymore, not when she had no hope of Mirajane ever reciprocating these feelings.
“Careful Mira, you almost looked worried about me for a moment there.” It came out too harsh to be taken as a joke, and Erza found that even the laugh she tried to conceal her emotions with was laced with bitterness. A silence fell, even more suffocating that Mirajane’s heat. Now that the white-haired girl had moved back, Erza almost felt cold. She shivered with it.
“Of course I was worried about you, Erza.”
Erza . That was the first time that Mirajane had ever called Erza by her name. The redhead almost teared up, but she screwed her eyes shut, fighting every urge in her body to say something stupid like ‘I love you’.
“Whatever.” It was easier to be aggressive than to admit how badly she had fallen for Mirajane, and Erza thought that she heard the musical sound of Mirajane’s laughter before a floorboard squeaked, and Mirajane’s voice sounded from across the room.
“I’m going to get that old wench Porlyusica.” A pause, and then a quiet, broken whisper. “You better not die on me, Scarlet. Not ever.”
And then the door clicked shut, and Erza was left with her eyes closed, trying to calm her erratic heartbeat before the girl she loved returned.