The interview room was dimly lit. The table was flimsy, un-sanded, ready to splinter, the chairs looked like they might collapse under the weight of a spider. Cheap, replaceable –Erza supposed that the majority of people who passed through this room weren't the kind to enjoy fine craftsmanship anyway. Better not to give them anything substantial to break.
Lahar took the chair closest to the door. Her first thought was to look of another exit –one she wouldn't have to pass by him to get to. Of course there weren't any: that was rather the point. She refused to show her hesitation when she took the seat opposite him.
"You know of course, that what you are proposing is an exceptionally bad idea."
"Yes" Erza agreed. It was after all. The possibility for this to backfire –not just on her but potentially Fiore, even the world- was significantly higher than the chance she would walk away content.
"And you realise that, should this meeting occur, if anything went wrong, the repercussions would not affect only you but Fairy Tail as well?"
"The old Council made no secret of their dislike for my Guild. I didn't expect the New would be any different." She confirmed.
"Yet you came anyway." He looked her dead in the eye trying to fathom it. Inevitably her logic –if she had any- escaped his grasp. "Very well, I shall ask. I don't expect any good can come of this."
"No," Erza thought as he left "neither can I."
What did she think she could gain by this, she asked herself rationally during her descent through the wards and bindings. Closure, a clean slate, a new beginning? The fact was she would probably be haunted by this memory just as much as she was by all the others she shared –no, not shared- all the memories she had of him.
When they had first met Jellal was the guiding light, the ideal, the dream to be chased. She wished now that she had woken up earlier and seen Simon, the rock beneath her feet, for what he was. (Where did she find her footholds now? Natsu? Gray? Was it the ideology of Fairy Tail? Was she incapable of trusting one person so wholly, implicitly, unconsciously as she had Simon?)
(Had she trusted Simon as much as he had trusted her?)
If she had seen Simon earlier, perhaps Jellal couldn't have hurt her so much.
A blade of sheer grief passed through her heart as she remembered the boy she had tried to rescue in the tower. What had happened to him when the slavers had taken him from her, from them? Why had he changed so much? Why hadn't she ever been able to save him? In the end, it was always him saving her.
She passed another ward and felt it drain her magic, feeding her power into the complex system (far beyond even her understanding) that kept Jellal imprisoned. She wondered idly if that was ironic, or perhaps symbolic. Her magic became his chains, just as the awakening of his magic began her banishment.
Her steps were heavier and her breathing harder when she reached the final door. The steady draining of her magic power was taking a physical toll. She rested her forehead against the cool, smooth surface of the door and suddenly realisation hit her.
Jellal was behind this door.
The burning desire from earlier was all but forgotten as all the reasons why not to go through with this surged through her mind. She might open the door to the Jellal who had also been Seigrain, the man who had hurt and killed and manipulated in the cruelest ways. It was possible that she might accidently release him. She might open it and find the Jellal who had cried before Nirvana, who had been willing to self-destruct himself to "free" her. It was probable that she would hurt him.
She didn't know which alternative was worse
She knew in her heart that he wouldn't be able to answer her questions (What happened to him in the tower? How did he lose his light to Zeref? Why was it so important to him that she be the sacrifice? Was it him that saved her and Natsu from the Etherion? Did he mourn for Simon, the man without a grave? How much of the past did he remember now? Was he struggling to recall more? Why, when she was finally ready to let him go, did he remember the name he gave her! Why tell her he remembered that?). She knew that she would leave with fewer answers and more questions. Worse he might entertain hope that if she came once she may again. That might be the cruellest thing she could ever do –this visit would not be repeated.
A sane woman would turn and march back the way she had come. And tell Lahar to lock her up if she ever considered something so phenomenally stupid ever again.
But then, Erza was Miss Fairy Tail.
She pushed, and the door opened
It wasn't the chains or the bindings or the runes that brought the tears to her eye. It wasn't even his position –suspended from the wall with arms outspread, legs bound together from the ankles to halfway up his thighs. What struck her most was the straw dangling in front of his face, that rose and rose and disappeared into the ceiling to some other part of the facility.
She hadn't considered what it would mean not to see another human until she saw that. Sharing a meal was something so basic, so fundamental, so primal, and now Jellal was fed liquid nutrition through a straw.
There was an indeterminate pause before he became aware of her. Perhaps it was the bindings and wards dulling his senses or the sheer improbability of her being there. But finally his eyes opened and he watched her with a glazed expression before realising she was actually there.
Then the bastard smiled the same kind smile he'd given her when he had been taken away.
The tears flooded both her eyes. He was that same Jellal, the Jellal he should always have been. All her questions were insignificant, whatever he remembered, whatever the reasons had been didn't matter anymore.
Hearing the answers wouldn't change the fact that she had to leave and he had to stay. She had opened the box and now, somehow, had to turn away and put the lid back on. She had to go back to her life knowing she'd left their guiding light down here in the dark.
She should have listened to Lahar.
She should have listened to herself.