Oh, dear. What's this strange creature…?
It's the fourth drabble-chapter of this drabble series (and longest!). I just had a sudden urge to write some JelZa.
Days passed by, each night slipping into the next morning in the hours of the night when respectable people could be found sleeping in their beds or even sprawled on their couches. Still, Jellal found it hard to sleep through these nights. He'd wake in a cold sweat, remembering the voice that had brainwashed him and had controlled him for much of his life and he would regret. He regretted so much in his life that he hadn't had any control over and wanted to repent, to right the wrongs, but he didn't know how. He'd fight for Erza and with Erza and all of her friends, but deep down Jellal felt like it would never be enough.
When had Erza become so caring?
That wasn't right, though, the blue-haired man thought to himself. She had always been so caring. She'd taken the pain for Sho's escape plan years ago, losing her eye to the cruel men who made them slave away day after day. She'd cared enough to try to save him, he vaguely remembered, when he was possessed and trying to complete the Tower of Heaven. There were many things that she'd heard of her doing over the time of his imprisonment…and then the seven years without her, and without everyone else.
The world had considered them dead, but not he.
Tomorrow, Jellal had always thought. They'll come back tomorrow.
She was still beautiful, a sexy nineteen year old goddess, practically. She was in the prime of her youth. Erza was just so damn gorgeous…and yet here he was. Jellal Fernandez, twenty-six and practically head over heels for a woman who should have been the same age as he but wasn't anymore. It seemed so wrong, but he couldn't help it.
So many nights laying in his bed in the back of the guild, staring either at the ceiling or out the windows at the starry skies, had given him time to think. This insomnia had started soon after his incarceration had begun, and he'd always used it as time to rethink his wrongdoings and try to imagine making reparations. After the disappearance of Tenrou Island and the twenty-one Fairy Tail members on it, he'd used that time to think of Erza, and where she was right now if she wasn't here. Because he knew she wasn't dead. They had some sort of bond, and somehow it ran deeper than blood.
On nights when he despaired there were two things he wished. The first and most depressing was that he wished tomorrow would never come, that he wouldn't live to see the morning because there was nothing worth living for anymore. The other thought that crossed his minds on those nights was a fervent wish for tomorrow to hurry and come, because he knew he'd think more clearly and rationally with a bit of sunlight streaming through his window. Sunlight that would remind him of the bright and beautiful Erza, a happy child even in their captivity years before who had grown to make a name for herself and find a whole new family after he'd tossed her out.
But he was no longer trapped in that cell. He had been liberated…sort of. Jellal knew that all of Fairy Tail was supposed to keep an eye on him since the council feared his past misdeeds weren't all because of the brainwashing of Ultear. No one was afraid of him, though. Not as afraid as the rest of the world seemed to be.
For the members of Fairy Tail, the trust placed in him by Erza, Natsu, Lucy, Gray, and Happy was enough. His past wrongs had been completely washed away by their warmth and welcoming air, and part of him was thankful for that. He knew he'd be completely lost without this companionship with these great mages, this love. Jellal wanted to be more useful to all of them than he was, than the council's few stipulations would allow him to be at present, but he couldn't be. Not yet.
Patience is a virtue that Jellal had learned over time. He'd had seven years of waiting for the Fairy Tail members who had been frozen in time to come back. He'd waited for them, for her, so he could wait for the trust of everyone else as long as he needed to.
Somehow, as long as he had the fearless yet broken Titania by his side, everything was fine. With Erza Scarlet on his side, the blue-haired man felt like he could take on the world and thinking on that, he realized he probably could. But Erza was more to him than that, and she would always be more to him than that.
But he was seven years older than she now, and it hurt to think of her in the light that he did. He just couldn't help it. He couldn't accept the fact that age didn't matter when it came to love like Cana had forced Macao to do even though the man was more than twice her age now. Jellal couldn't bring himself to reach forward and defile such a beautiful young woman, because she was seven years younger than he was. In his mind, he rationalized this want by recalling that she should be the same age as he, but when he wanted to reach out he found that he couldn't.
Maybe tomorrow would help him break the ice.
There was no time like the present.
OMG.
Anyway, since I don't know what happened to Jellal yet in the most recent chapters (Mashima-sensei, you horrible tease!) I just went on with it. If something bad happened (like, heaven forbid, he was executed in the seven years, or even just died…) we'll just call this AU. But JelZa is meant to be.
Ahem.
Thanks for reading! Haha.
