First Love

I'll never know why I started loving him as strongly as I do. Perhaps it was the moment he touched my hair and told me it was beautiful. Perhaps it was when he named me Scarlet. I remember my face burning, my cheeks flushing red, and I couldn't hide my smile. I remember the overwhelming, swooping sensation I could feel in my chest. Like my heart was wanting to jump right out of my throat, like it had swelled inside of me, and pounded so heavily that my whole body shook from the motion. I remember feeling like I was glowing.

I remember looking into his hazel eyes, so full of life and hope. His determination, his powerful sense of justice, everything about him floored me. The blue locks of hair that fell in his eyes, that prominent tattoo. I had always admired Jellal Fernandes from afar, but I think that was the day I truly fell in love with him. I had come to love him so much that when they took him away from us, I made an unwavering decision to find him and rescue him, the way he rescued me. I don't know if I would have survived that day they took my eye from me if he hadn't found me, but he gave me such a renewed feeling to continue living and to fight. Fight for our freedom.

When he was taken away from us, and something inside of him dramatically changed him into pure, unadulterated evil, and yet I still loved him. That's why I cried so much when he banished me from the Tower and threatened the lives of our friends. Even though that wasn't my Jellal, I still loved him, and I still wanted to save him. I knew he could be saved, but the price of my freedom was steep. It was something I couldn't afford and something the others did not deserve, and so I fled, forever locking away the feelings in my heart for him.

I never stopped loving him, even when I saw him again in the Tower after all of those years. It still stirred something up inside of me. To fight him was agonizing, and to watch him fight Natsu was even more so, but if anyone could help free him, it would have been Natsu. And when I saw him again during Nirvana, after he was revived, believing him to be dead all that time, my emotions were so conflicted. I had no idea what to even feel or to expect. And when I saw him shed tears of remorse and sorrow for his past, and when I almost lost him to a self-destruction spell he had placed on himself, my conviction did not waver. I still wanted to save him, because I love him.

When I saw him fight so desperately to protect me, even when his magic energy was spent, when I pulled him back again from stepping another toe into the brink of darkness, and when I protected him, it was because I knew that I still loved him. When I saw him taken away from me yet again, believing that I'd never see him again, watching his back moving further and further away from me, cuffs around his wrist preventing him from using magic.

Jellal Fernandes, battered, broken, torn, but still alive, yet no memory of his dark past, was being carted off to prison. I thought my heart was going to shatter into pieces. When he remembered the color of my hair and remembered me just as he was saying his goodbye and to be carted off to prison, I loved him more than I ever had before. If only I had told him then. He knew I cared for him deeply, but back then, I don't think he understood the extent of my love for him.

During my battle on Tenrou Island with Azuma, it was him that revitalized me. It was the sound of his voice that brought me back to my feet. It was him calling out to me that made me get up and want to fight again. I love him so much that just hearing his voice was enough to give me the strength I needed to stand. I still don't fully understand that myself, how I heard his voice, but I know I did.

It was just like after the incident at the Tower, and how I heard his voice call out to me, telling me I'd grown strong. His voice had encouraged me to never give up, to stand on my two feet. I remember the overwhelming emotion and strength I felt surging through the very core of my body, like a burst of energy that had been waiting to fulfill me on the inside out. It was his voice that did that for me, because of how much I love him.

Seven years. I had no idea that I had slept in a stasis for seven years. It had felt like only moments when I fully awakened on Tenrou Island. Like Acnologia had just attacked us. I remember feeling a strange sort of sensation that I cannot explain surge through my exhausted body, and it felt so much like him. Like his presence was right there with me. It was only for that moment, but again, my love for him brought me to my feet and it guided me home, back to Fairy Tail.

I remember Bisca and Alzack finding me, and bringing up Jellal to me. The moment I heard his name, I was so terrified that my worst fears had come true, and that he had died in prison during those seven years. I was relieved to find out that after a year in prison, Ultear had broken him out and he was alive and on the run, but my heart sank and my mind wandered. Where could he even be right now? How could I track him down? Did he still think of me, even after all those years have passed? Was I still a thought to him? Because my feelings never changed, even though I had been in a time stasis for all those years.

When I saw him again, on the beach, I had to control myself and my feelings in front of my guild. I could not waver, but oh how I wanted to run to him and wrap my arms around him, and listen to the beating of his heart, and feel his warmth. I needed that confirmation that he was really alive and in front of me, not fake or an illusion. I craved that, but I held myself back, for the sake of my dignity and his. I didn't even know if he truly felt anything at all for me anymore, the way he did when we were young.

After all, all of those years had passed between us, perhaps he truly had moved on, even though I hadn't. We walked off together, so we could talk alone and privately amongst each other. Especially after he confirmed to me that every single bit of his memory had returned. We stood on that ledge together, just above the beach, and I had so many questions... so much I wanted to ask him, but my mouth couldn't seem to form the words properly. So instead, I asked him of Simon and Nirvana.

Seeing him so filled with remorse turned my heart over in my chest, but hearing him declare he wanted to die and wanted me to be the one to kill him, is what filled me with anger and fear for his life. I was desperate to try and keep him alive, so I did the only thing I could do. I slapped him. Maybe that was the wrong course of action to take with him, but I wanted to snap him back to his senses, into his right mind, because I don't think I could handle it again if I lost him. Twice now, I had believed him to be dead. I couldn't go through that torment again. He had to stay alive.

This wasn't the Jellal I remembered as a child. He stared at me, with a difference in his expression, a haunting pain clouding his eyes, and I felt an awful pang in my chest. This Jellal was ready to give up, regardless of his cause, of his guild, of everything he'd done to try and gain his redemption. In my eyes, he already had. Prison time and now all that he was doing, Jellal had more than earned forgiveness, because, in truth, it was not him who committed those atrocities in the Tower. It was Ultear, controlling him, using his body as her puppet, making him harm and kill and do horrible things that the real Jellal would never have done. I understood that, but what I couldn't understand was Jellal's desperation to die despite knowing the truth.

In a desperate attempt to bring him back to his senses, I had grabbed him by the collar of his hooded coat and we lost our balance. We tumbled down a hill, holding onto each other before we landed in a heap at the bottom of the hill in front of the ocean. Jellal had landed on top of me, and I lay completely helpless under him. My angry front vanished, and I listened to the rolling baritone of his voice as he commented on how I was always right. But I was never right. I explained to him that I just stumbled through life as best I could, no matter how clumsy I was. It didn't matter. I just wanted him to understand exactly how important he was to me, how much I loved him, and how I couldn't bear to lose him again.

And then, my emotions betrayed me. As I stared into his eyes, so sincere, so honest and soft, my own filled with burning tears, and I could no longer hold them back. I truly thought I'd never see him again. I thought he would've been gone forever, locked away in the confines of prison in the Magical Council's headquarters, or worse... but he wasn't. He was right there, looking down at me, his body resting on mine, with the most gentle, and loving expression I had ever seen on his face, and I couldn't help myself. I placed my hands on the sides of his face because he still made me feel the same way all those years ago. He raised his hands and brushed away my tears with this thumbs.

He did still love me, even after all this time. I knew he did. I could read it all over his expression. All of my memories of him flashed before my eyes. I saw him when we were children, remembered when he touched my hair, when he fell to darkness, when I saw him again in the tower, when I saw him as Seigrain, when I saw him cry, when I saw him fall, when as he said goodbye he remembered me because of the color of my hair... and it was right there, just as his lips tenderly placed themselves against my own, that I knew he was my first love and would forever be my only love.