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This is Erza’s worst nightmare.
She would say she's imagined this a thousand times, but she’s never had to imagine. Jellal was everything to her once. He was her first taste of kindness in this world, and the first person to value her as a person and care for her in a way that no one ever had before.
Jellal was everything to her up until he was taken away.
There’s something uncomfortable in calling what they’d shared at an age so young love. When they were children, Jellal and Erza had both been so hurt by the world. All they had was each other and their friends.
Even still, their relationship was different from that they shared with the rest of their companions. The other four always looked beyond the walls of the Tower. Wally and Simon had siblings they were looking for, while Sho and Millianna seemed to dream of the better life they’d once had outside of the Tower.
Jellal and Erza were different in that regard. Erza had never had a mother and father who loved her. She’d never had people who cared for her unconditionally until the Tower, so she’d had no expectation for a life that was any different. And Jellal? Though he’d never open up to her and admit it, somehow she’d realized they were kindred souls.
It seemed obvious to her the moment she’d met him. All innocence he’d once been allowed to have was dead. Care came more naturally to him than it did her - he knew the right words to say when Sho was crying, and he knew the right lullabies to hum to Millianna so she could fall asleep - but he seemed to have lost everything to have hope for up until he’d met them.
Erza understood him in that way.
Instead of innately possessing hope, Jellal had forged hope for all of them simply because no one else possessed any. In their darkest moments, he’d light the flame of resistance and remind them all that they could survive another day, and the rest of them followed suit.
The same way Jellal had reinvented himself in the Tower to be someone they could all trust to look after them, Erza had done everything to follow in his footsteps. Even if she had been far too late by the time she’d come around to it.
When Jellal had been taken by their captors and Erza had picked herself up off the floor from her defeat to lead a revolt, it’d been Jellal’s legacy of resistance and truth she was embodying. She recreated herself into someone worthy of leading, someone strong and bold who didn’t hesitate when it came down to it, and she’d been so close to success.
Erza had been so close and then she’d gone to save Jellal, and she’d lost the only person who’d ever truly understand her. Jellal had seen the emptiness in her soul and he’d sought to protect it instead of using whatever scraps remained of her heart to ignite a flame to survive another night.
Or he had up until she’d gone to save him.
Her first thought when she’d seen the manic fire in his eyes was that this couldn’t be Jellal. This couldn’t be the boy who held her so tenderly on the coldest of nights, the first person to ever show her the kindness of touch and the soft nature of care.
His eyes had been swallowed by something wicked and unnatural, and instead of helping him fight through it and bringing him back to her, she’d taken his word for it.
It’s funny now that she thinks about it. Before the Etherion blast, in a different time, Jellal had all but admitted the truth. He’d told her of a possession by an entity he believed to be Zeref, a loss of autonomy he could never begin to atone for, his lifetime of regrets.
She’d dismissed it after he’d attempted to feed her into the R-System, but afterwards when they’d sailed away once the blast failed and Jellal was nowhere to be found, she’d truly let herself reconsider the meaning of his words.
Jellal had submitted himself to the R-System knowing he would die. Jellal had let himself be Zeref’s chosen sacrifice as the R-System had required, and he’d done it to save Erza. In his final moments, in the very end of his life when the possession must have waned and his host must have searched for a new form, Jellal had chosen to die to save Erza’s life.
It’s a debt she can never repay. Jellal has given so much for her time and time again, and every single time she fails him when he needs her most. She couldn’t save him from Ultear’s possession, she didn’t stop him from being taken by the Magic Council for a crime she’d later find out he hadn’t even committed, and she couldn’t protect him every single time he’s needed her to.
Jellal Fernandes has lived a life defined by his pain, and that is Erza Scarlet’s cross to bear.
She’d promised herself that she’d do her best to be there for him when he needed her from now onwards. She told herself that she’d never lose him in that way again, but here they were.
Jellal stands before her in a white robe and his smile is absent of the joy that illuminated their youth. She never realized how much she missed his boyish grins until she learned the absence of them during his possession. Those soft lines had turned into wicked curves. During the battle against the Oracion Seis, she’d relearned how it felt to see kind smiles and gentle touches from him, and it’d been an experience she’d never forget.
Now, Jellal's smile is cold and calculating, as if he’s assessing her every move. It reminds her of Siegrain from the Magic Council in an inadvertent way. Not wicked, but not soothing either. Just deeply unsettling.
He’s grown into his features more since the last time he was possessed. It’s not just the impact of the years on his body, though she admits those work in his favor too - he’s grown into his strong jawline and lanky frame. No, he’s also become much healthier.
He’d been so sickly thin when she’d held him in the Tower of Heaven right when the Etherion blast had been about to fire. When she’d seen him again after Tenrou Island, the first thing she’d noticed was that he'd slowly begun to regain color he’d never once had to his complexion. His form has filled out fully, and she’d be lying if she said she didn’t recognize that he’d grown muscular beyond what she thought was capable for a person who’d been as malnourished as they were in their formative years.
Erza’s undoubtedly muscular in her own right, but even she still feels the pangs of hunger that their tormented youth has left her with. She wonders if Jellal feels the same pain too. She wonders if she’ll ever get the chance to ask him.
Erza stares into Jellal’s soft caramel eyes and nothing stares back. He’s devoid of the love that shaped her very existence, emptied of the tenderness that made her who she is.
Gray stills next to her, and Lucy gasps horrified as her hands cover her mouth in shock. Erza wants nothing more than to throw up.
Jellal stares at her but she doesn’t see him. She sees the boy she’d unchained from that pillar, swallowed by the cruelty of the world before she’d ever even gotten the chance to save him.
Her chest heaves, panting for breath that should come naturally to her. Suddenly her armor feels too restrictive. She feels too caged in, like the rug has been pulled out from beneath her feet and she’s slipping before she can even catch herself.
This is hell, she muses. This must be her own personal hell.
He shouldn’t be here. There’s no reason for him to be here. It had been Fairy Tail who’d been kidnapped by the White Mage’s influence, and as awful as it is to see all of her closest friends staring her down and Mirajane gripping her arm tightly in a warning to follow the White Mage’s decree, this never should’ve included Jellal.
Because as sickened as Erza is by seeing a version of Jellal who has lost himself again, she knows Jellal may not recover from this.
Erza has struggled deeply with her own autonomy in her own life. After spending her childhood as a slave for a cult in Zeref’s name, having personal freedoms and a will of her own was a novel concept to her when she joined Fairy Tail. It had taken Master Makarov sitting her down and telling her that she could do whatever she wanted and be whoever she wanted for her to realize that things were different outside the Tower. Slowly, she’d paved a path for herself in the walls of Fairy Tail as Titania, and she’d become strong enough that she felt secure in her freedoms. Erza had grown strong enough to ensure that neither she nor the people she loved would ever be subjugated and stripped of their personal freedoms, and that was the life she’d chosen for herself.
Jellal had fallen out from beneath the thumb of others much later than Erza had. Erza had been afforded the liberty of being freed from the Tower of Heaven, but Jellal would not enjoy that freedom until dying in the Tower.
As regretful as she was that she’d missed seven years of Jellal’s life, she was glad for it in a way. Erza had been 11 when she’d escaped the Tower, meaning that she’s had eight years to be able to grow into the person she wanted to be. Jellal had been nineteen when he’d tasted freedom for the very first time, an amnesiac healed by Wendy with a lifetime of guilt on his shoulder and no memory of his past except Erza’s name.
Jellal had been imprisoned immediately after, and in an odd way, Erza couldn’t help but be glad that Meredy and Ultear had freed him. The time Erza and Jellal had spent apart as a result of Tenrou Island had given Jellal the chance to grow into himself and become whoever he wanted to be. If they’d grown alongside each other, there was a chance that Jellal would cling to his past for her sake against his own will, and she wanted nothing more than for him to finally get the chance to choose who he wanted to be.
And chose he had. He’d chosen to become a man who sought redemption for his past misdeeds, no matter how he had been puppeteered to bring about a twisted future against his own will.
To have all that effort undone before his very eyes could undo everything she’s seen Jellal work for.
Love is complicated between the two of them. To say that she wants Jellal undyingly in a way that one wants a lover is something she can’t admit. She’s been possessed too many times to ever truly submit herself to someone, or to even want someone to submit to her in that way. Call her tainted by her haunted past, but the idea of eternal submission terrifies her, and she imagines Jellal must feel the very same way.
But still, she looks at him and the rise of his chest, the furrow of his brow, the clench of his jaw, and she burns. She burns for the boy she cared for in a way she’ll never care for anyone else, she burns for the man she’s started to get to know for the second time, and she burns for the person who sits closest to her heart as he smirks at her wickedly in a way that reminds her of a darker time.
Erza despises the idea of possession, but in this moment, she wants nothing more than to tear whoever has sunk their teeth into them to shreds and claim him as her own. She wants to free him from the shackles of their damned existence and even more, she wants him by her side no matter what. She wants him so badly it undoes her from within.
She blinks and they’re gone within an instant. She’s reaching out before she knows it, grabbing at air the same way she was for the eight years she’d left the Tower of Heaven while haunted by Jellal’s shadow, and she aches.
Erza hears Lucy scowling at the audacity of them to twist their closest friends, Natsu’s vow to return their friends to their former selves in a second Battle of Fairy Tail, and Wendy’s quiet worries for what’s to come.
It’s Gray who puts a comforting hand on her shoulder and gives her a knowing look. He’s always been able to see through her in a way that never fails to unsettle her. She supposes that’s the point of family - to be able to look beyond the walls of armor she puts up and see who she is beyond it - but it terrifies her anyways.
She knows she’s beginning to fall apart as they set off on their individual quests to each of the orbs, but she persists despite it.
After all, who is Erza Scarlet if she doesn’t remain strong?
…
When Erza finally makes it to Aldoron’s orb after various battles with her guild members, she’s barely got a hair out of place. She’d been lucky to not have to have been faced with any hard hitters like Laxus, Mirajane, or even Jellal. She couldn’t help but be thankful that Gildarts hadn’t been at the guild at the time, reducing their list of high-priority targets to the two S-Class mages, Jellal, and Master Makarov.
She quivers as she thinks of whoever will be unlucky enough to be faced with the Master. She has no doubt that Natsu and Gray will at least be able to hold their own against Laxus and Mira for long enough to find time to team up with another member and get the job done, and Lucy and Wendy are incredibly strong mages in their own right. Still, she can’t help but worry what it means that she’s had a relatively easy path forward.
Still, the ease of her conquest doesn’t make the task any harder. She’s never found the joy in fighting her own comrades the way that Natsu does. While Natsu views his friends as a metric of his strength, Erza has always found her strength in protecting her friends. It tears at her heart to force her friends to fall to her knees in this way, but what must be done must be done. That is the name of duty, and that is the vow she made when she was given the title of Titania - she will do anything for the good of Fairy Tail.
Erza has given everything for Fairy Tail. She’d stopped a Jupiter blast, she’d been willing to sacrifice herself to the R-system, she’d been willing to lose an arm to continue fighting against the Oracion Seis - she’s always willing to give everything for her family. It’s undoubtedly been a hard journey, but it’s one she’s had very few regrets about.
When she sees the silhouette standing in front of Aldoron’s orb, her gut twists.
Of course it would be him. Their destiny must be woven together. He’s ruined her, she’s failed him, and at the end of the day they fall together like puzzle pieces because no one will ever understand them the way they understand each other.
Jellal doesn’t even bother to look over his shoulder when he says her name, “Erza.”
It’s cold. So cold. He always speaks her name with such tenderness now,and this is such a sharp contrast to their norm that she shivers. Ever since she’d come face to face with him in that forest and Ultear had lost her hold on his mind, he’d always spoken her name like it’s his very being. He whispers it like it’s tender to him, like there’s nothing more important in the world to him.
In some ways, Jellal had given Erza a piece of herself she never had. Not just because he’d given her a last name, though that is a debt she’ll owe him forever, but because he’d been the first person to view her as a human being.
In Rosemary Orphanage, she’d been just another mouth to feed. In the Tower, she was just another child to take advantage of. To Jellal, she was worth something.
And now, he speaks her name like she’s worth nothing to him.
“Jellal,” she utters his name so faintly that it’s nothing more than a whisper. “What are you doing here?”
It’s only then he truly bothers to face her, so emboldened by his goals that only this provocation captures his attention. It reminds her of the way his eyes lit up when she’d come to save him in the Tower only to find his mind consumed by an insurmountable evil.
“Everything must be white,” his eyes burn with a fire so intense she’s too terrified to back away from his approach, “Don’t you see, Erza?”
She’s trapped, frozen in place as he moves into her personal space. Though her and Jellal may not be together in the true sense of the word, physical touch is something they still indulge in. He’s warm in a way Erza believes no one else can be. Even in the Tower, he’d always been so warm. They used to huddle together for warmth on the coldest nights, and his touch has always been one of the best sensations she’s felt, even in a time so dark.
His touch is soft and gentle, and it always reminds her of better days, even as she feels the imprint of every scar and callus into her skin with every graze of skin to skin.
It’s different now. He barely even touches her before she feels herself shudder and back away instinctively. His aura is clouded with pain and disarray - this isn’t the Jellal she knows. This isn’t the boy she grew up with, and it’s not the man she thinks she could grow to love.
“Must you be scared of me?” Jellal’s lips pull up into a cruel smile as she steps away, luring her in with his words. “I only want what’s best for you.”
“Jellal, please,” her voice trembles against her will as she reluctantly feels for her blade in warning. “This isn’t you.”
And it’s not. It’s not. Some stranger wears his face as he smiles sloppily at her resistance, some demon consumes his inner self as he doesn’t truly seem to listen to her words. “I don’t want to fight you, Erza. We can ascend together.”
Together. So many years ago, a tiny palm had reached out for her own with eyes blinded in greed, telling her that they could build the Tower of Heaven from the ground up together.
Erza requips into her heaven’s wheel armor before she can blink, positioning her swords at Jellal’s figure from all angles, but Jellal is ready for her.
It’s twisted to see every ability that’d once fought by her side be used against her in this way. A golden shield envelops Jellal’s figure, all of her swords clattering to the ground with a distinct metallic thud as they miss their target and collide with his barrier instead. She can’t help but autofill the last time she’d seen such a vibrant glow - the fight against Acnologia, where Jellal had pulled her close and shrouded the both of them from one of Acnologia’s attacks.
Erza’d be dead a thousand times without him, but she has no choice but to fight onwards. She must - what option does she have? Even if she were to submit, if Jellal were to come back to himself and see her defeated by his hand, he’d never forgive himself. He’d never want that for her.
Though she arguably knows Jellal better than most could ever dare to, she doesn’t have his attack cycles memorized intuitively. She’s memorized a majority of the guild’s ability cycling like it’s the back of her hand, but she loses that advantage when fighting Jellal due to his unpredictability. He hadn’t once been a wizard saint for nothing.
Switching into her flight armor is a gamble, though it’s one that pays off. Right as she requips into it after her failed attack and soars, Jellal dashes forward and shatters through his own barrier with meteor, hoping to break through their distance and get in an attack.
Though her flight armor is good, it can’t beat a competition in speed against the speed of a meteor. Thankfully, it gives her the edge she needs to escape his forward lunge with nothing but a nick to her right shin that she dismisses after an intake of breath.
Though she’d usually use this armor to land some speed attacks, she knows moving this battle to one of speed in this armor isn’t one that’ll pay off well for her. Better leave it here and set the stage for the battle to move away from direct contests of speed since she’s established that she has a clear counter for it.
“What, too slow?” Jellal taunts. “To think that all the praises sung of you were just talk.”
Oh, well, if he’s asking for it she may as well deliver.
The Armadura Fairy is one of her favorite armors. It’s a beautiful coral pink, adorned with winged decorations, and some have even described it as her strongest armor yet. It’s protective, gives her sharp offensive capabilities, and most of all… it gives her some tricks up her sleeve.
Her fairy blades are honestly her favorite part of this armor, but what she loves most about it is that they channel what she loves most about her friends and family. And in this moment, she channels a power she’s only ever called upon once before in practice.
Meteor. The power of the heavenly bodies shudders through her fairy blades as she lunges forth, slashing at Jellal in the midst of his gloating. Thank god the possession has given him something of an ego. One of the blades connects to his torso and he’s thrown backwards from the force of it, clearly having underestimated her.
It’s another clear sign that the man before her isn’t the boy she grew up with. Jellal Fernandes knew better than to underestimate her by now.
He’s on his feet before she can take the chance to gloat, pulling himself up from the created pile of rubble and smirking at her. No matter how hard he tries to appear unaffected, she’s not blind to the way he wipes blood from his lip. “Not bad. I suppose if we’re getting serious, it’d be rude not to meet you halfway.”
She lunges before he gets the chance to retaliate, but he’s already begun to multiply before her eyes. She counts at least six or seven different Jellals in front of her before she narrows her eyes and tries to discern the real one.
Damn him, she always despises thought projections. They were such a cheap trick in a battle. At least she’s always had an advantage towards illusory magic with her prosthetic eye.
It doesn’t take long for her to find the real one, but by then, he already seems to have prepared his next means of attack. She faintly registers slashes of glowing light darting towards her - Jiu Leixing, the nine lightning swords - and she dodges three of them by curving through the air mid attack and guiding them into embedding themselves into the wall.
Unfortunately, she’d forgotten the most annoying component of Jellal’s attacks. They’re rarely ever that easy to dodge. Right before she can edge out a final lightning sword, it collides into her armor after curving towards her and rattles her very core as she groans out in pain. Her injuries aren’t catastrophic, but hell do they hurt an incredible amount. Trust Jellal to enchant his attacks to be piercing to account for the durability of her armor.
Five more swords to lose, she bemoans to herself, all while she still had to track Jellal too. She doesn’t have the time to dodge these, so she swiftly requips into the armor that had single handedly stopped the Jupiter canon’s blast in their fight against Phantom Lord. The Adamantine Armor hasn’t failed her yet, and it certainly hasn’t started now. She manages to tank the blast and switches back to the offensive.
Jellal’s open, almost suspiciously so, but Erza doesn’t have the time to suspect it as she switches into her clear heart armor. It’s nothing special - her familiar red pants and bandages offer nothing in terms of defense - but the offensive capabilities are exactly what she needs right now.
She needs to immobilize him while she still has the chance.
Erza has never been under the impression that she could beat Jellal alone, so she hasn’t walked into this battle on her own.
Fire Dragon's Flames and Ice Devil's Chill. Two enchanted blades embedded with the magic of two of her closest friends - her brothers - that when combined together form one of the strongest attacks she has in her entire arsenal.
She’s under no impression that a singular element will work against Jellal. He’d mastered the Abyss Break after all - a spell requiring fire, earth, water, and wind magic. Deflecting an attack like that would be easy work for him.
But layered fire dragon slayer magic and ice devil slayer magic? She may just stand a chance.
She lunges forward with her icefire blade, slashing the two of them together in rapid succession. They hit, thank god they hit, but Jellal doesn’t lose his smirk as his hands move in a familiar gesture that forces her heart to sink deep into her core.
“May the seven stars bring judgment upon you,” Jellal’s words are cold and clinical, and it’s only then she gets the chance to look upwards to take in the result of his erratic movement patterns.
Of course - of course he’d set up a Grand Chariot spell.
She feels the illumination of stars cast down on her, and her stomach flips. They’ve both increased in skill as mages since their last fight in the Tower of Heaven. Though Ultear had been a powerful foe in Jellal’s body back then, he’s had years to refine his magic in the years that have passed since his possession.
Erza was never foolish enough to believe that she could beat an ex-Wizard Saint, let alone one who has enough time to lean into his talents and possesses the drive to expand his magical arsenal to various magical forms, but she hadn’t expected him to truly give it his all either. The only reason Natsu had ever come close was because of his Ethernano consumption, and even that had barely been a victory.
Every time Erza has seen Grand Chariot used, it has been for her in some way. She remembers when the briefest illumination had been cast over the Grand Magic Games until Ultear and Meredy had intervened, the time she’d heard it’d been used against Neinheart. Hell, once she’d even used it herself to save her own skin.
Though the spell has been used against her once, the feeling of basking in the stars of Jellal’s creation only gives her warmth now. It feels sick for that to be twisted as the beams of light from the stars scald her skin.
She barely thinks before she acts, lunging towards him as she requips out of her clear heart armor into her celestial armor. In some ways, this armor brings her comfort in a way she can’t quantify. Jellal’s magic is comforting to her - this is the armor she’d once wielded the Grand Chariot in herself. It connects them in a way that not even his possession can deny.
She can feel him recoil back from her grip, flinching away and attempting to retreat from her hold in a way he’d certainly be able to if he invoked meteor, but instead he remains utterly still in front of her as her arms close around him and she tackles him into the ground beneath the glow of Grand Chariot.
“Erza,” his voice is choked, twisted as he whispers her name as if it’s a verse in every poem and the answer to every question. The stars paint constellations against his smooth skin, and she finally lets herself breathe.
He’s fully laying down against the rubble now, trapped beneath her arms as she holds him close in place and her chest heaves in protest. She pushes against his shoulders to maintain her hold so that he cannot protest her words.
Once upon a time in the Tower of Heaven, after two starved children had grown up to be Fairy Tail’s protector and Zeref’s pawn, Jellal Fernandes had looked at her in the throes of his possession and told her that he’d loved her.
She remembers it vividly. It had torn her apart for every day since. The idea that a man such as Jellal could have loved her once. That not only had she been worthy of that love, but that that love had been stripped away by an unjust evil she could never save him from.
She’d rejected that notion then. She’d been terrified of love - she still is. She thinks both of them are.
If either of them were firm enough in what they wanted or determined enough to search for it, they would’ve sought love in someone by now. Whether they would’ve waited for each other or if they would've found someone else, if either of them had felt capable or worthy enough for love, they would’ve fallen to it already.
Instead, Erza and Jellal are trapped in an internal game of denying themselves the one thing they want out of fear. Jellal is one of the strongest mages in Fiore and Erza is Titania; both of them have long outgrown the label of scared little children, but in the face of a dedication as heavy as love, both of them shy away from it regardless.
Whether it’s fear of control, not wanting to lose one of the best things she’s ever had, or even just feeling as though she doesn’t deserve it, the truth remains that neither of them have said those words to each other since then. The last time Jellal Fernandes ever told her that he loved her - even if it was in the past tense - had been when they were at each other's throats.
It’s only fitting that now that he’s said his piece, she must say her own.
“You told me you loved me once, you know,” she whispers, feeling the way he tenses under her hold. “I felt like my world was ending, and by the time I was ever able to think about it again, I was too late to save you.”
“Let me go,” Jellal demands, pushing against her hold, but his magic stalls nonetheless.
“I won’t,” she protests, “Not this time. Not again.”
Jellal’s face twists into a scowl. “Your guilt does nothing for me. If you truly want to prove your worth, then fight me, Titania! Prove Fairy Tail’s good name.”
She’s spent so much time letting everything in the world come between them. This time, she knows her heart must choose him.
“Love has always scared me,” she admits carefully. “You scared me. You were everything to me, and I lost you in a way my heart could not bear. I was so terrified to love again that I didn’t realize I never stopped loving.”
Because this is love, isn’t it? The way her heart beats erratically at the sight of him, the way she soars when he enters her space, the way every touch feels like a hymn sung against her skin. She wants him to be her everything - she wants him in every way that matters, and maybe that is love.
Erza wants Jellal next to her every morning. She wants to watch him flush a soft pink when Mirajane finally gives him a Fairy Tail emblem matching her own, one that’s honestly nothing but a formality because he’s practically become integral to the guild she loves so much as it is. She wants to show him the family she’s carved out for herself, and she wants to meet the people he calls his own too. She wants to go on shopping trips with Meredy and be the big sister she never had, she wants to visit the harbor with him and finally watch the sunset together the way they dreamed of when they were kids.
She wants to be there for him on the days where his guilt twists into self-hatred so she can soothe every scar and kiss every wound. She wants to watch him finally learn to forgive himself so perhaps one day, he can see in himself what she sees in him every day.
Love doesn’t need to be possession. Her love can be in the moments between.
“Your pity doesn’t change my fate,” Jellal reminds her coldly.
“I always think I’m too late with you,” she smiles at him wetly, tears pooling into her non-prosthetic eye. He sucks in a deep breath at the sight of her, and she lets one of her hands move tenderly through his hair when it becomes clear he won’t resist. “You spend every day trying to atone for what you’ve done, but how can I ever atone for being too late to save you?”
And finally, that mask of his shatters. He looks at her, finally, he looks at her. The magic of the Grand Chariot spell fragments and dissipates, scattering around their battlefield and basking the both of them in sparkling flecks of stars. His brown eyes blink up at her so tenderly, and finally that blankness fades into worry as he moves his right hand to gently wipe a tear from her cheek. His voice is soft as his breath releases unsteadily in the agony of coming to reality.
Guilt wrecks his throat as he gasps on the words. “A man like me is hardly worth your tears.”
She pulls him upwards into a hug that all but swallows him in her arms. She wants to hold him, consume him, cherish him and never let him go. She wants him in every way but she doesn’t own him, no one needs to own him, love has never been ownership.
“You’re worth every sacrifice,” her voice breaks on the words as she buries her face into his chest.
Jellal’s hands tremble as he takes in her form, refusing to touch her skin. His eyes must be darting across every wound of hers, every cut and bruise. She would lie if she thought it’d work, but Jellal is smart. He’s always been too smart for his own good. Whether his memory returns to him or not, he’ll know.
He heaves a shuddering breath that she realizes must be the catch of a sob as he gently runs his hands through her long cascading hair. “I did this, didn’t I?”
Erza simply holds him tighter, refusing to entertain his line of thought.
“I’ve hurt you so many times,” his words are a broken whisper. “How can you still bear to look at me?”
“That’s not your choice to make,” she says, weaving herself out of their hold to make eye contact with him. Her next words are both a vow and a confession. “It will always be you.”
His hands quiver reluctantly, shaking erratically the same way they used to when they were kids. On the particularly stressful nights, Jellal’s hands always used to shake against his will, and Erza would hold them and massage circles into them all night until Jellal would feel better.
He always held his tears back then too. He would keep it together until he thought everyone was asleep, and then he would quietly cry to himself in silence, not allowing anyone to provide him the comfort he always offered to them.
It’s been so long since Erza has seen Jellal on the verge of falling apart. Thankfully, she’s seen it enough times that she knows to pull him against her tightly as he uncontrollably trembles into her chest, wrecked with tears.
Jellal’s voice breaks painfully on every sob and Erza’s chest aches with each and every one. She wonders how long it’s been since he’s cried like this. She wonders how long it’s been since he’s had someone to hold him through his worst moments. She hopes someone had been there for him, but if she knew Jellal, he wouldn’t have let anyone witness these moments.
Erza supposes she can’t blame him. She’s always detested showing weakness - especially in the form of tears - in front of everyone. The only exception to that rule had been Jellal back in their days in the Tower. She supposes it’s only fitting that she’s able to be there for him now.
He grips into her blouse tightly, clenching his fists so that his hands will no longer shake in weakness, and gently she rolls her fingers over every joint until they release the pressure and soothes his palms.
Erza can’t imagine how violating it must be. It’s no secret to her that Ultear’s possession was a source of incredible trauma for him. Though Jellal had forgiven Ultear and even considered her a close friend before her passing, her possession had left a mark on his mind that would never truly heal.
To be lacking in autonomy and freedom for so long was a thought that horrified Erza to her core. It had taken Jellal nearly dying to regain control of his own mind, and the imprint of all the wrongdoings committed with his own body would stay with him for life.
To have that freedom taken away again after just managing to finally seize your life for your own purposes was violating beyond belief. She whispers soft platitudes as he works through his grief, and she lets a few tears slip herself.
As much as she’d hated to admit it, she’d seen Jellal as the villain he used to be again. The man who destroyed her life, the man who took her away from her home, the man who’d taken everything from her - for a second, she’d looked at the man she loved and her worst nightmare had stared back.
Erza vows to herself that this time will be different, She holds onto Jellal tighter, terrified to let him go, and this time he clings back as if she’s the lifeline he’s been waiting for his entire life.
Erza Scarlet won’t lose him again.