*A/N- I've had the idea to do a collection of one-shots for Jerza for a while now, but the prompts for Jerza Week 2k15 gave me some ideas, so I'm modifying some of my head canons and writing some new ones and making this collection of one-shots my submission for Jerza Week 2k15. Yay!
Day 1: Strawberries
(I do not own Fairy Tail)
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Jellal stopped walking and lifted his nose into the air, sniffing. The wind smelled faintly of strawberries, he thought. He turned and faced the direction that the wind was coming from, and sniffed again.
"Do you guys smell that?"
"Smell what?" Meredy asked.
"Strawberries."
"Strawberries?" Ultear repeated. Jellal nodded and stepped off the trail in the direction the smell was coming from.
"This way, I think," he said, walking into the forest. Meredy and Ultear exchanged a confused look, then followed him into the trees.
"And why are we following the scent of strawberries only you can smell?" Ultear inquired.
Jellal didn't reply. He wasn't entirely sure why either, all he knew was that a certain red head absolutely loved strawberries. For some reason he felt obligated to do this, like he should pursue the mysterious smell of strawberries in the forest for her sake, so he did. He followed his nose through the forest, and with every step he took the scent became stronger. Eventually the girls told him that they could smell it too, which left him wondering why he'd been the only one able to smell them from so far away.
The trees parted in front of them, revealing a small field of strawberries growing in the dappled sunlight. He smiled nostalgically as he knelt down and inspected the strawberries from the plant closest to him.
"Strange," he said aloud, "you don't usually get wild strawberries growing this big, or in numbers this large."
"Since when are you an expert in strawberries?" Ultear asked teasingly.
"You can't spend very long with Erza and not pick up a few things about strawberries," Jellal said. "She's obsessed with them. They're her favorite food, she always used to say they were what she missed most about life outside the Tower."
"Really? What she missed most was strawberries?" Meredy asked.
"Well," he amended, "not more than strawberry cake, but she only got to eat that when the cake in her village bakery was too old to sell, he would give it to her sometimes when that happened."
"That's really sweet, but what I'm interested in," Meredy said, in a tone that let Jellal know he wasn't going to like what was coming next, "is what you missed the most about life outside the Tower."
"Promise you won't make fun of me?" He asked, knowing full well that Meredy would tease him no matter what he said anyway. She nodded, and Jellal sighed.
"I had this dog."
"Awww!" Meredy said automatically. "What was it's name?" Jellal blushed furiously and looked away so he didn't have to see her face when he said this.
"Fluffy." Meredy threw her head back and laughed, Ultear chuckled gently, too. "What?" He asked defensively, "I was a kid, it's not like I was going to come up with something really clever!"
"That's the cutest thing I've heard in my life, Jellal!" Meredy laughed.
"Shut up," he replied, embarrassed.
He busied himself with inspecting the strawberries again so Meredy couldn't see him blushing. He thought back to his time in the Tower with Erza, listening to her talk enthusiastically about how to tell which wild strawberry will taste the best. He remembered easily the instructions she had given him, saying one day she would take him strawberry hunting that way he would know the joys of pick and eating wild strawberries.
It's too bad you aren't here right now, he thought as he picked one and bit into it, and then automatically spit it out, retching. He remembered suddenly one instruction that had slipped his mind in his nostalgic mood.
Never forget to check for spiders.
"What's the matter?" Ultear asked teasingly, "not as much of an expert as you thought?" Jellal hacked and coughed and spit, being extra sure that every last piece of the spider he had just bitten into was out of his mouth. He grabbed his water pouch of his side and swished some water around in his mouth, gargled it, then spit it back out.
"Check for spiders before you eat one," he said. Meredy and Ultear roared with laughter, and despite his determination not to, and the trauma he'd experienced at almost ingesting an arachnid, Jellal couldn't help but smile as well.
Jellal reached back out warily and picked another strawberry, this time checking thoroughly for insects of any kind before biting into it. The sweet strawberry juice exploded in his mouth, making him smile widely. Erza wasn't kidding, he thought, they really are good. He picked a few more that fit Erza's description of 'the perfect strawberry' and gave them to Meredy and Ultear.
"You weren't kidding," Ultear said, "all the ones I tried myself were sour, she must really have talked a lot about it, because these are great!" Jellal smiled, then shrugged.
"C'mon," he said, "let's go."
On the way back to the path, Jellal was struck with an idea. He stopped briefly next to a tree, pressing his hand into the bark. When he pulled his hand away, there was a strange symbol scorched into the wood. Jellal gave a furtive smile and stepped back from the tree, admiring his handy work. When he turned around, he was surprised to see Ultear and Meredy hovering over him.
"What does that symbol mean?" Meredy chirped.
"Nothing," he replied. Walking a few paces away and repeating the same steps on another tree.
"If it's nothing then why do you keep burning it into these trees?" Ultear asked.
"No reason," Jellal replied innocently as he scorched the marks into yet another tree.
"Is it possible that they are a message of some sort?" Ultear asked, more to Meredy than Jellal. She leaned in to inspect the mark closer, but Jellal kept walking, every few feet finding another tree to scorch the mark onto. Meredy and Ultear fired off questions at him about the marks for several minutes, but gave up when he didn't answer them.
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A few weeks later, Team Natsu happened to be walking down that very path on their way home from a job, when Lucy noticed one of the marks on the edge of the trail.
"Hey, look at this," She said, pointing, "it looks like this mark has been burnt into the trunk of this tree. I wonder what it could mean?" Lucy's friends came up behind her curiously, and they all turned to Erza when she gasped in shock. She crouched down and inspected the ground at the bottom of the tree, then stood back up and walked around the tree, looking closely at it.
"See if you can find any more of these symbols," she instructed. Her guild mates complied, confused. Erza could hardly believe her eyes as she stared at the symbol in the tree. It had been years and years since she had seen it. How could it have gotten there? Why was it put there in the first place?
It was Gray that found the next one, several feet deeper into the forest, and Wendy found the next one. It seemed like they were trying to lead her somewhere, so she followed them, deeper and deeper into the forest until…
"A strawberry field?" Gray asked incredulously. Erza's face broke into a wide smile as she realized what had happened. She knelt at the edge of the field and selected a strawberry. She checked it for spiders before popping it into her mouth.
"Were those symbols meant to lead us here?" Lucy asked.
"Yes, they were," Erza said. The surety in her voice must have peaked her curiosity.
"Erza, do you know what they mean?"
"Yes, I do." She stood and turned to face Lucy, smiling. "You won't find them in any dictionary or book of runes, but they mean that there is food hidden nearby."
"What do you mean? Why wouldn't I be able to find them in a book of runes?" Erza chuckled, Lucy always seemed to know the questions she should be asking.
"Because Jellal made it up when we were kids." Lucy made a small 'oh' sound, but stayed silent for the rest of Erza's story.
"I was often sickly and weak in the Tower, the food was horrible and the rations meager. They would give a meal to the resting laborers from the first shift while the second shift was working, and when they put Jellal and I on different shifts, he would steal an extra ration for me so I could have a little more to eat. He would hide it in a hole in the wall until I got back, and he would hide the hole with a rock with that symbol on it so I could find it."