Litashe's Writing Challenge's third round! Good luck to all the other contestants!

I'm so sorry about not being able to reply to everyone's messages and reviews, life has struck again and I'm completely wiped out. I'm really glad to get this one out, especially since I love Jellal and Erza with a passion. I hope this turned out well, even if it is sort of drabble-ish.

The song is Evanescense's Like You. I thought the opening lyrics kind of summed up Erza's indecision about Jellal and all within this story.

Enjoy!

Stay low.

Soft dark and dreamless,

Far beneath my nightmares and loneliness.

I hate me for breathing without you.

I don't want to feel anymore for you.

Grieving for you, I'm not grieving for you.

Nothing real love can't undo.

And though I may have lost my way, all paths lead straight to you.

Every night, since the day everything went so wrong, she dreams of him.

Often she forgets, especially in the late nights when she lies recently awoken in bed, sweat glistening in the moon's light like her own skin sheds tears. She is too stubborn to admit that the moisture that falls isn't just from her own eyes.

It's such a relief to forget the curve of that jaw, the intricate twists and spirals of that tattoo and even the last words he had said to her as he was taken away from her. Her hair… it still brought her pain to think of it. An exquisite agony that constantly reminded her that she had been so close to having everything she had ever wanted, the boy Jellal who had been her friend in the Tower of Heaven.

The Jellal she had known and loved. Still loved no matter how broken her heart felt even thinking about it.

It's a relief… but at the same time she is cursed with the unbidden desire to reach out and clutch tightly, desperately, at the smoky images of memory that were the only things left of her Jellal. And with no one left to save her from herself... all she can do is cry salty tears. In the moments where she cannot remember, she has no desire to revisit her dreams, a powerful revulsion that at least keeps some of her humanity and sanity while she still walks in the halls of Fairy Tail. And yet at the same time she couldn't even breathe a single day more without at least some reassurance that it had been him she had dreamt of during the night, and no one else.

And yet too frequently she remembers these visions. Every single moment, going around and around in her head like a constant tape, reliving each and every memory of him. A constant torture that she couldn't live with yet couldn't live without. Every memory of his smile was precious, just as every time the thought of his horrible actions brought a snap of white hot anger to her chest. The fact that he could hardly remember what she had meant to him still depressed her terribly.

7 years go by and I still dream of you.

7 years have gone by, and the whole time I had been thinking of you.

7 years have past and yet the first thing she had thought when she awoke on Tenrou Island after such a long time, a blissfully dreamless sleep that she hadn't experienced in years, it was his face she had seen amidst the blue sky and leafy treetops.

While he had forgotten, however involuntary, she could never forget him.

And amid the reminiscences and the forgotten and the ones cast aside, there would always be that one dream.

Of his hands on her skin, soft caresses that encircle her waist and soft pads of thumbs brush against the soft skin of her hips. Of lips tasting bitter sweetly along the arch of her neck, of his hair tickling gently against her collarbone and jaw. The hands would slip lower and his hooded eyes would somehow meet hers, a velvet tongue flicking out to touch her parted lips. Oddly enough he is always behind her, her back pressed flush against his front and forever trapped in his wonderful embrace. She is never fooled by the dream's half hearted attempts to pacify her that Jellal would always protect her back.

He had stabbed her enough times between the ribs to know better.

But despite her loathing and her distrust, love and lust take over.

And the two sides of the same coin are reminded that they are forever more joined. Because this is the closest she can get to being with him, even with the indoctrination and subsequent amnesia that had left the knight dwelling within her heart bereft of duty and order.

This is the most twisted version of soul mates Erza has ever come across, and no matter how many times she tries to find a romance novel that tries to prove just how wrong she could be about the unique agony loving Jellal brought, she often failed. She is unsure whether to feel relief or more pain because in the dreams he is never truly there.

And during the relief and torture of the day she is thinking… thinking, always thinking… until one day it had finally become clear and she could figure out just how much her dreams of Jellal confused her terribly.

Almost to the point of her mental destruction.

If her dreams weren't proof of that, then what could possibly be otherwise? Loving him had a cost. Loving such a dangerous, powerful, good man who had fallen into the dar'ks evil clutches, would destroy her in the end.

But that was the price of the knight, to die in the service of the greater good, to protect the ones they loved and cared for with their lives, their very souls. She wore the armour of the knight, and at heart she was a knight who was born and bred on the Tower of Heaven. He was her lord to serve, a concept mirrored in Edolas and possibly in countless other worlds they had yet to discover. The knight must always be by the side of her lord, no matter how far they had fallen into the dark.

She was just undecided whether she loved him enough to follow him into the black abyss herself, even more so on whether she should let him drag her.

She had strength of will now… but the day will come where she had to choose between her beloved family of Fairy Tail and the one man who had managed to take a dagger and stab through her armour, striking again and again. A repeated pattern on the blood stained hilt.

The dreams always reminded her of this fact.

And yet.

And yet this time, when she once again wakes up in her own bed, covered in sweat the falls like tears…

She suddenly realises that this is the one time her dream is a reality. That this figure that stalks towards her on the bed, clothed only in trousers, is no longer a fuzzy outline. That this hand that reaches out to her and ghosts her cheek is real and warm, trembling ever so slightly as uncertainty battles within him. Uncertainty of whether to touch her or pull away. That the lips pressing with the lightest of touch is here and now, and the desire she feels for him is scorching and immediate, pulling her under with only a few brushes of his tongue on hers, his unspoken apologises and regrets whispering through the nights air. It sounds so genuine it was as if her heart was bleeding again.

"Seven years was too long without you, Erza." He whispered brokenly, and she clutched at his hair and arm as if to support him. "I... I couldn't bare knowing that you were gone... I knew I had to move on, I can barely remember you... and yet-"

She shushes him. Knowing on some level just what he feels.

And this time she decides that dreams of him, figments of imagination neither satisfied nor comforted her, and they could no longer control her nights, not when he is here and they merely had hours till they would be forced apart. Again, as often their tragic case. So she takes charge.

The Knight will find her Lord of the stars again.

If she was to follow what was written in the stars and meteors then eventually, all the roads would lead her back to him once more.

As it always would.

All paths lead back to Erza Scarlet.

All the thoughts that surrounded me after I had been brought back to life had been of her. Of the beautiful scarlet, crimson hair. Of warmth and kind brown eyes. Of the shining armour that reflected her radiant heart.

She sits on the bed as if in a trance, hers eyes watching me with part wariness and confusion as I make my way cautiously towards her. It brings pain to my heart, but I had spent seven years of tortured dreaming centred around her to want to pull away. Some I forget. Some I remember. But all the time I was thinking of her.

And in this moment with her, one night spent away from jail and the magic council to finally be with her, I allow myself the simple pleasure of touching her cheek after so long. I neither care for the age difference that separates us, nor for the woman still stuck in the world she had been ripped away from seven years ago.

For this love that I feel for her is the only thing that will keep me from slipping back into the nightmares. I don't want to know or remember the things I have done to hurt her and my friends, but long ago I made myself a promise. If I am to see forgiveness from the world for my past actions, and even in her battle hardened heart, I must learn to survive without her. At the time she had been my only rock in the swirl of confusion and pain. I still need her and, judging from the look of longing in her eyes, she needs me too.

And now, I feel seven years spent without her has been enough to last me for the rest of my life.