note: Ok so I know both of them will seem incredibly, incredibly ooc in this. With Erza being cold and Jellal being… well, whatever he is here. I feel I might have twisted their characters to fit my narrative but? Whatever.
a wishful silence, in an empty room
(a modern au where erza and jellal are just normal people)
.
.
He doesn't know why it's now that he breaks.
It's a shy morning; everything from the sun to the summer heat is hesitant to come out and lend his now dreary house a semblance of warmth. He goes about his morning routine in an almost mechanical fashion: put the coffee on, get his newspaper and put the trash out. He sees his neighbors' children on their way to school; they're a mass of tiny bags, tiny limbs and big smiles and the look of them reminds him that this is something he can see but never have.
Some sordid force tugs the corners of his lips upwards in a bitter smile as he makes his way back inside. He finds his wife perched on a bar stool, dressed in but a robe and helping herself to his paper and his coffee. This is all Erza will have for breakfast, he knows. No wonder her cheekbones casts shadows now and he can count her ribs even when she's still dressed. Two months have passed and she still looks like something to be shed and put away in the attic but she doesn't budge and she wears her gray-cast skin like armor. He sets out to make something hot to eat, blindly grabbing noodles from the pantry and putting water on boil. Silence easily passes between Jellal and Erza but it's kind of deafening and he feels just a little bit attacked by how she presses her lips together instead of saying good morning. When she brushes by him to reach for the coffee pot, that is when his hands begin to shake, unsteady on the ladle he uses to stir the broth and trembling when he balls them into fists by his side. When the first of the tears fall, he knows the dam is just as close to breaking.
Erza pretends she doesn't notice. She pretends she doesn't notice a lot of things. Like when Jellal is sparse when their neighbor Lucy comes over, swollen with child. Like when his eyes are on her when she turns away from any child that passes them, as if he's watching if she feels something that hurts r if she feels anything at all. Like when they try to make love and she tells him to put a condom on (God, she doesn't want to make something beautiful only to lose it all over again) and his lips are just a little bit thinner when he reaches for one of those foil packages in their nightstand.
Like now, how he trembles and cries, maybe because he wants something she can't give him.
She's hurting all over at the thought of it; like there are a thousand blunt knives stacking her from all sides So she makes herself calm when she pours coffee into her mug and doesn't allow her hands to quiver like his do even though they want to shake so hard until her hands can't hold and ceramic bearing caffeine bursts like fireworks on the floor by their feet.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry I kept failing. That's what is on the tip of her tongue but when she opens her lips, it's ugliness that comes out. "You need to get over it, Jellal. You can't keep yourself in the past." Her voice is quiet and calm when it wants to be a hoarse yell. Her body is stiff beside his when it wants to envelop him and make those apologies and wet his sleep clothes with tears.
But she can't break when he's so close to it. One of them has to be rock when the other is crumbling.
These are times that it's easy for Jellal to remember the girl Erza used to be. So radiant and idealistic and kind without prompt. Now, he feels nothing but anger that stems from a decaying sort of loneliness that comes from the lack of comfort.
Perhaps she is changed. Perhaps being married for so long doesn't mean getting to know someone better but seeing them transform into someone you wouldn't have married. Perhaps this is the only way she sees fit to deal with what she deems is failure. To be mean, cold and solitary. To avoid talk because talking means that they will have to grieve fully, and there is no room between them for anything else that hurts and threatens their thin veneer of sanity.
So Jellal wills his hands to stop shaking. If his grief disgusts her, he won't give her that. Maybe he won't give her anything at all. "Get over it? Just like you have?"There is nothing he can do about the tears, so he continues to speak with his cheeks wet, his tone low. He can never raise his voice at her so he talks to her in that creeping baritone; calm but containing storms. "Well I'm sorry it's not that easy for me. I wish I could just shove things into a box and put it away."
He thinks of infant clothes: colorful and tiny, not even folded into neat squares but shoved angrily into a bin as if it couldn't be looked at for a moment longer, as if it burned to the touch. He remembers baby shoes: surely useless for a child that cannot walk yet but it was cute and an indulgence on both parents' part so they bought it in a snap and she tossed it with the clothes just as quickly the night she returned from the hospital with the blood washed off her legs. He recounts the silly beanies: more spoils that looked irresistible from the baby boutique- more fodder for the box of memories she will let rot in the attic.
It is always the smallest things that hurt worse.
He turns the burners off but doesn't leave his spot by the isle. He can't face her just yet. He finds he hasn't been able to for a while now.
Erza, on the other hand, feels her throat is clogged with grief. Or maybe that's tears unshed, the kind that you hold back until it scratches its way upward and leaves your throat raw. She tells herself that's why there has been no discussion of this.
"Do you blame me?" Is all she says. Is it her fault that the look of those clothes reminded her so much of what she'd lost?
Jellal thinks about reaching out, but he's hurting as well. At an impasse, they stand and see who will give comfort first. There is pride intermingled with heartache. "No. You know I don't."
"Then perhaps you'd like to have seen me grieve the way you do? To tear myself apart and rob myself of function because I failed again?"
"No, Erza." His sigh is heavy, as if he'd seen years of anguish and perhaps he had. Three years ago they'd put up the first white rosebush for the first child they'd lost. "I just wish we wouldn't have to grieve separately as if we do not grieve the same thing."
Jellal picks up the mug of coffee she'd stolen from him, and the paper, and set out to bask in the outside's fresh air. The coffee is cold when he samples it. "I'll be on the veranda. You can join me if you're feeling well."
Erza hears the invitation for what it is: "We can talk about it now if you're ready."
And she's not. God, is she ever not. Her knees want to buckle and she wants to bury herself in her private woe. To be alone again, because it's easier that way. But she makes herself follow him out there anyway. They have to start healing again, anyway.