Erza can hardly believe her luck when she's tossed into the cell.
Silently, she thanks her guild mates for agreeing to her ludicrous plan, for helping her to get here as she bleeds all over the cement, scars and scratches covering her entire body. The destruction she's caused and the pain she feels throughout her body is a small price to pay, however. He's here. His eyes, as serious and intriguing as they've always been, widen as they take in her form, and Erza almost believes that dying would be worth being with him.
"Erza…?"
"You're alive," she breathes, stumbling forward to embrace him as she falls. It feels as if all her years as the Titania, as a member of Fairy Tail, as someone who was strong and independent are shedding away into oblivion at the very sight of this man. "You're still… you're still…"
His lips twitch up in what she thinks is supposed to be a ghost of humor in an attempt to lighten the mood. "You'd kill me if I died."
"Damn straight," Erza murmurs into his shoulder. He smells like rats and dust and mold, but she can't bring herself to mind as she slips a finger into his matted hair, trying to memorize the feel of him.
They sit there, her half-alive, him half-dead. She breathes in as he breathes out with ragged breaths.
"You shouldn't be here," Jellal whispers faintly. The comment burns her ears, penetrates her steel heart as it sinks to her gut. "I'd sworn long ago that I'd never again let you be..." He chokes on the memory.
"It's only temporary," Erza tries to alleviate his obvious tension, but her voice catches and breaks over an octave or two. "I just..."
Wanted to see you. The words hang over their heads like a sword. It dangles in her thoughts and gives him such a pained look in his eyes that the scarlet-haired beauty looks away.
"I can't tell you what you want to hear," Jellal says, and he seems so out of hope, so broken that Erza chokes and wraps her arms around him again. "It's only a matter of time now. I'm not going to fill your head with false illusions of hope, Erza."
"You should never lose hope!" Erza bites back fiercely, her vision stinging, blurring, even as he looks back up at her with tired eyes. "We were meant to live. Just when… just when I had finally found you again, when you finally returned to normal, you were-!"
"You were meant to live," Jellal's voice is ancient as it cuts off her borderline-hysterical tone, and it pains her. She has seen many, many things, yet she feels as if she will never know the suffering that he has experienced, despite the fact that she likely has. "I've sinned-"
"Against your will," she snarls immediately.
"Nevertheless, I can't atone for them properly. This is the only way…"
"To die would be another sin," Erza says, the words tumbling from her lips like a poison seeping from her heart.
He swivels to meet her gaze, and the brief understanding that goes through her entire body is like a shock- Erza so very badly wants for them to be free, but she knows- he knows- that it's just a faraway dream out of their grasp, like wisps tumbling free from a mist that chill their fingers and can never be caught. Never once tangible.
The Titania's hands ghost over his; she tries to imagine them together, away from a scene of fighting and war and despair, and instead in a sanctum in some far-off place where their fingers are intertwined instead of bruised and scarred and bloodstained.
I can't promise you that, Jellal's eyes convey. I don't want you to break any more than you have already.
I'm already broken beyond repair, Erza doesn't say. It can't get worse than this.
Wordlessly, he strokes her skin, and never queries what's on their minds.
Why do you only cry for me?
They sit in silence for the rest of that night, and into the day until the guards show to take her away from the prison.
Erza's tears stain her sight- Jellal gives her one last, long look, and even when their fingers finally slip from each other's, the invisible chains that bind them only strengthen, soldering their hearts to their pain.
And even as the guard is freeing her, Erza has never felt more trapped.
His execution is slated the very next morning. Erza can't bring herself to go.
She finds herself standing in front of the guillotine anyway.
It's a mockery, Erza thinks furiously. It's a mockery of everything he is, of everything they were, what they could have, should have been.
The birds overhead crow in sadistic glee as the sun's rays are broken by the sight of Jellal, limp and tired, as he hobbles to the front of the crowd, the asphalt grumbling under his shoes. It's so fucking immoral, it's wrong-
-but Erza can't stop this crime. They were never supposed to be like this, not after all they'd gone through. They were supposed to be free- free to finally run through fields of grass and flowers instead of dirt littered with blood and stone; free to laugh without having to be afraid of the hot sting of the whip and smile knowing there was no dirty, vulgar cell to return to at the end of the night; they were supposed to be unshackled, left to grow old and die young together. They should have had their fairy tale ending.
As if time is suspended, Jellal's eyes meet hers one last time. The crowd is hooting wildly, uproariously and so fucking ignorantly, but she can hear him, though his lips barely part.
"Why did you ever only cry for me?" he finally asks her.
Erza doesn't even take time to register the wetness caressing her face as gentle as if they were his hands.
He's gone before she has the chance to reply,
"You already know the answer."
His blood seeps into the earth and Erza bitterly wonders if it's a freedom in and of itself that it's the last time it can ever do so.
"We should go," a blonde, young mage tells Erza. She thinks the girl is rather familiar, but can't bother herself to dwell further into it. "It's been two days." The girl's boot-clad feet shift, and there is a jingling of keys.
Erza's feet remain rooted to the spot. Her entire body shakes but she can't feel it. His voice echoes in her head, a question that will forever remain unanswered.
"I'm sorry, we're all so sorry," the girl whispers, on the verge of tears, "but Erza, he's gone."
The woman wants to burst out that she would refuse, deny the possibility that he was gone, because for so long, he was everything that wove through her entire being, what held her up. Erza wants to scream and sob and break and never go back to living because there's no point in living without him.
The blonde girl keeps vigil with her friend for an hour until she turns to leave, empathy marring her expression.
(But Erza doesn't quite think Lucy knows, or that she ever will.)
It's an hour later when a tear drops onto her parted lips.
But it's not a tear. It's raining, pouring, and Erza could easily get out of this damned rain, but she can't pull herself from the last place that he was, and instead looks up the mocking heavens as they rain down upon her all the emotions that her own damned eyes refuse to express.
His quintessential presence is so strong that she doesn't know if she shudders because of him or the cold.
You were never meant to cry for someone like me, she almost hears him say. Why did you only ever cry for me?
"I'm not crying," she mumbles. The rain is pouring down her cheeks, soaking her shirt. She tastes the rain- it's salty.
Are these her tears, or is he crying with her?
"Will you wait for me?" Erza asks to the emptiness, feeling so very much like a child again, with no last name and only a blue-haired boy to find condolence in.
Erza receives no answer. She turns away and begins the long trudge back to the guild.
The next day, she returns to Fairy Tail with no qualms.
"You're not crying," Lucy notes hesitantly.
"I won't cry for him anymore," Erza says simply, and leaves it at that.