Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.

-a-n-a-e-s-t-h-e-s-i-a-

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Jellal hadn't been expecting that question. He'd instantly recognised her awkward posture and uncharacteristic expression (two vivid splotches of crimson splaying across her alabaster cheeks), all of which signified she had something strange or unconventional to say - but he'd never expected that question.

"What d'you mean?" He cocked his head inquiringly to the side.

Her cheeks darkened, and he saw flames engulf her face - a scintillating red inferno that burned as brightly as her hair. He didn't get girls. He'd only interacted with one his age all his life, and that was her, a far cry from normalcy, or whatever the standard convention of the elusive female species was, if that it existed.

"I mean," her fingers were scratching absentmindedly against the dirt now, crusting her crooked nails with grime and raking up more filth underneath the chipped surface as a nervous laugh escaped her lips, "you've got to have some aspirations, Jellal. Some idea of what you're going to do with your life. We can't stay here forever, can we?"

Yes, we can, he wanted to reply, to crush her dreams and ludicrous hope before they could rage out of hand, but he noticed the slight quiver of her lips and the faint flicker of light in her eyes and her silent plea for him to indulge her puerilely felicitous fantasies for a while longer. And the resentful retort died on his tongue.

"Of course," he said instead, after a pause, reaching over to take her porcelain fingers in his and protect the fragile china doll from the earthshattering treachery of the darkness he knew all too well.

(he ignored the spidery-thin interlocking threads of mahogany that weaved her skin into a tarnished tapestry, telltale caricatures of hours spent weeping in secluded corners)

"Hmm." His free hand drummed against the hard stone, wincing slightly as the cold seeped into his skin and nipped at his knuckles. "I'd want to be..."

Images from before a childhood dissolved in ashes flashed before his mind. Strong people, from both genders and all races and religions and backgrounds and shapes and sizes with erudite glimpses behind tinted glasses, multi-coloured energy coalescing beneath their fingertips with a mesmerising throb.

"A mage. I'd want to be a mage."

Now it was her tilting her head at him. "A mage?"

"Yeah." A dim smile flitted across his lips, dry and cracked from prolonged dehydration. "A mage. One that doesn't attack anyone, per se, but when things like this happen," his hand swept across the room as if to amalgamate the walls blotted with fungi and bloodstains of varying ages tainting the ground, an ubiquitous sight in the Tower of Heaven, "he'd know how to fight back. I want to be a mage that defends, not provokes. I want to be able to heal.

"What about you?"

Absently, his fingers traced the scars on her delicate hand and her long eyelashes flickered with an indecipherable emotion. Was that... approval? Admiration?

"I'd want to be a mage, too," she finally replied, her mask peeling away for a split second to reveal the grudging smile she wore. "I'll follow you to the end of the world, Jellal."

(And later, when they woke up and everything was a hurricane of chaos, she would find herself stranded on a shore with grainy sand embedded in her knees and tears streaming down her cheeks, and he'd still be trapped within the Tower of Heaven for evermore.

When they grew up, now two full-fledged mages, they'd face off against each other in a cacophonous vortex of pandemonium, their past connection forgotten in searing scars and a forbidden kiss on mountain ground.

And as he turned away flanked by his new companions, she'd finally realise the gravity of her words back then.)

A/N: Set sometime before Jellal's possession. Written using the prompt "magician" from the Amaze-Ing-Race Challenge on the Anime and Manga Fanfiction Challenges forum.

Thanks for reading! Please review :)

~TLoC