Erza did bring chocolate cake the next time she came to visit the camp. She brought a week's worth of newspapers as well. "Since you guys probably have trouble keeping up on the news, and I thought the big story right now might interest you."

She wanted to feed Jellal bites of her cake, which was a bit more than Jellal felt he was ready for, and to get out of having to hold his mouth open for her, he leaned over Ultear's shoulder and read the paper with her.

Dark Guild Siren Song Raids Bank. The attack had been on the other side of the country. Looked like their guild would be going on a trip. Good. Being in a different part of the country, even if only for a few days, would keep the Council from noticing them lingering near Magnolia for longer. Even if they'd been out recently. Looking like they were on the move could only help.

When he glanced away from the paper and back to Erza she was looking dejected. It couldn't hurt to humor her just a little, could it? This wouldn't last, and she knew it. His guild had only risked staying in one place so long because of the pregnancy, and in all likelihood they would have to move out before the baby was born. Certainly right after, if they managed to avoid detection for that long. But for a few short months, what harm was there in entertaining a fantasy?

So he straightened back up and let her put a piece of cake in his mouth. Then, to avoid the awkwardness of sitting there with his mouth open while she made sure she had the angle of her fork just right again, he fed her a piece of his cake.

"If you want some alone time…" Ultear didn't bother with finishing the offer.

Erza shook her head. "We're good."

Pity. He would have liked a little time alone with her. But then maybe it was for the best that they didn't have another chance to get lost in the moment together. Look how much ground he was giving after last time.

"I wish I had a camera right now," Meredy said. "I've never seen Jellal act like such a dork. I'd like to capture the moment."

"I'm glad you don't. I've managed this long without a photo, and I'd like to make it the next six months without one." Jellal wrapped an arm self-consciously around his stomach. "The less evidence that this happened there is, the better."

"Your child will be fairy indisputable evidence," Ultear pointed out.

"No one is going to assume I cared…" He caught himself about to say 'it'. "There's no way for anyone to know that I was the one who was pregnant with them."

"The guild might," Erza admitted. "I told them where I've been sneaking off too so often. And why. Was I supposed to hide it from them?"

Jellal needed a moment to recover from… not the shock. The shame. The shame upon discovering that the number of people who knew about his situation was so much larger than he'd thought it to be, and the shame of the situation that so many people knew about.

"I would have preferred you not."

Erza shrugged. "I wouldn't worry about how they're taking it. There were four… or was it five? There were five different men hit with the spell that caused this. And right now, Rogue's the one everyone in the guild is watching."

"Rogue?" Jellal wracked his brain trying to remember who that was. The shadow dragonslayer, wasn't it. "Isn't he from a rival guild?"

"Booted," Erza told him. "He's living with Natsu now. There's some… hubbub, you could say, between the three of them. Him and Natsu and Sting. I haven't been following it myself, though. Gossip doesn't interest me." Her own love life had taken priority over the mess Rogue had dragged Natsu into. "I think Sting left for some reason or another. He didn't think he was really the father, I think is what Rogue said. He came back the other day. Apparently he only just found out that it was a spell that caused this."

Alongside Rogue, Jellal remembered Sting. The blond man with the scar who had to have been incredibly determined to let as much of the country as possible see how well defined his stomach was. (How fortunate, if he was so prideful, that it was his partner who was now having their figure destroyed instead of him.) Since he hadn't foreseen having any dealings with the two's guild, he hadn't taken too detailed a note of their faces. But now that he thought of them, he realized he'd seen Sting's elsewhere.

"I think I might have had a hand in that," Jellal confessed. Depending on the exact nature of this 'hubbub', it might not be something he wanted to admit to, but he was curious to hear about this other pregnant man.

Despite her claim that she wasn't interested in gossip, Jellal had Erza's attention. "How so?"

"We ran into Sting earlier this week." Jellal looked back at Ultear for confirmation. "Didn't we? The blond man with the shirt that showed his midriff."

"Jellal's been aware of the sorry state his own is in, so he notice's other people's a lot more now," Meredy teased, but she looked thoughtful. "Now that you mention it, there was someone like that. We bumped into him while taking down the Shadow Alp guild. We even talked with him for a bit afterward. I mean, we needed to make sure he knew not to mention having seen us. He wanted to know why Ultear and I were in the frontlines and Jellal in the back when he looks more like the sort to handle things up front than either of us do." Which was a horrible unfair judgment to make. Even if Jellal was the only one of the three who preferred magic that had him in hand to hand combat. "The subject of pregnancies and keeping unborn children out of harm's way might have come up, and that may have required an explanation as to how it was possible.

Jellal had thought almost nothing of it, but watching Erza's expression change from her pleasant smile to a stunned look, then an angry scowl, he realized he'd done something wrong. Running over the conversation to try and find any mistakes, he made his best guess. "Sorry. I should have made a fuss about you telling others when I'm not trying as hard as I'd like to keep this a secret myself." It wasn't fair of him to be mad with her if he was blabbing about the pregnancy to everyone he met too. That he had fewer chances to tell people didn't change the fact that he wasn't doing a good job of hiding his condition.

"You're fighting?" Erza whispered, harsh and cold. "Jellal, you're pregnant. Why are you fighting? Why are you fighting dark guilds that would kill you if you slip up?"

"To be fair," Jellal pointed out, "they would kill me even if I wasn't pregnant."

This, it turned out, was not the correct response.

"You. Are. Pregnant." Erza hissed. "Pregnant with our child! You can't endanger them like that!"

"Ah!" Ultear whirled around, looking out into the woods. "Scouting! Meredy, we forgot to do our morning scouting! Come on. We need to make sure there aren't any… um… Rune Knights."

Meredy had taken scouting duty the day before, so it was supposed to be her day off. And Jellal had already scouted that morning. But for as much as he wanted not to be abandoned with Erza just then, he didn't dare mention that. Hearing he was so reckless as to go scouting might anger her further.

"For once in your life," Erza said, "just once, can you stay out of trouble?"

"It's… it's not like I try to end up in trouble," Jellal argued.

"Isn't that the point of your guild?"

Not exactly. But it was close to the point of the guild. Close enough that he didn't expect the furious woman now yanking on his collar so that his face was closer to hers to appreciate the different.

"It's bad enough that you have no regard for your own life. But to risk our child's too? How dare you run off like that!"

Later, Jellal would rationalize his reaction as being due to something in her tone, or the way she squeezed his arm with the hand not on his collar, nails digging into his skin as she stressed the word dare. Later still, when he'd calmed down, he would try to laugh the whole thing off and pretend he had over reacted. But just then he was not calm. And something in her tone as she dug her nails into his arm just got under his skin.

"How dare you," Jellal snapped back, swatting both of her arms away with an ease suggesting she'd expected no resistance. That only annoyed him further. She didn't get to always have her way with him.

"Me? I'm not the one who's so incapable of realizing the sort of responsibility you stuck us with to take a moment to realize I shouldn't do things that will get the baby killed."

"Wow. Really? Sorry, Erza," Jellal spat. "Sorry I got stuck in this mess trying to help your guild. Sorry I bothered with telling you about it. Sorry I thought that despite everything that's happened, I could still have the one freedom to help my guild with their work."

Fist clenched, Erza drew her arm back to punch. "You're such a—"

She froze.

At first Jellal only raised an arm to block what was now a very obvious incoming blow, but when Erza continued to not move, he slowly lowered it. She followed suit, not cautiously lowering her arm as Jellal had, but letting it drop limp to her side.

He was still mad. He wanted to be mad. He'd been enslaved. He'd been brainwashed. He'd been locked away. Now he had a bounty on him that said it didn't matter if he was brought in dead or alive. His work with Ultear and Meredy was one of the few things he could do. One of the few things he'd ever chosen to do. Pregnancy or no, Erza or not, he hated having someone tell him he wasn't allowed even that. So he wanted to stay mad.

But he also wanted to be the one who was wronged, and if he kept yelling after she gave up, that would make him feel like the antagonist. More than he wanted to be mad, he wanted to never antagonize Erza again.

So he swallowed back his anger and tried to use a gentle voice when he asked, "What's wrong?"

"Bisca… her and Alzack's first big fight… it was over what color of curtains they would put in the nursery," Erza said, eyes downcast. "That… that's such a couple's thing."

"Erza?"

"Such a normal couple's thing," Erza amended. "Fighting over little details from everyday life. And here we are. It takes foreplanning to meet in a place with other people and your comrades have to scout around your camp to make sure someone won't come in and arrest you again. We're fighting over risking lives and having no freedoms like… like us. Like a couple that couldn't ever be normal. We're never going to be a normal couple, Jellal. You can't come to parent teacher conferences and I can't wish you luck when you head out for work in the morning." She laughed, a shrill note that Jellal wished she hadn't made. "You should have kept your job on the Council, you know?"

Jellal started to remind her that it hadn't entirely been his call, and Erza held up a hand to signal for him to stay quiet.

"I know. I know. Freedoms and… I know. It's just… I've never wanted to be happy with anyone else… but the two of us… it wouldn't work… would it?"

It wouldn't. And he'd known that from the start, and avoided letting himself love her for exactly that reason. But hearing Erza admit to it made the reality of their situation feel so much harsher. He wished she would pretend there was something that could remedy the whole thing. Some way to make it all better. Make it so they actually could work.

It wouldn't work. But Jellal still felt himself place a hand on Erza's cheek, sliding a finger under her chin to tilt it up. Still saw himself lean forward, Erza's eyes closing as he got close. Still tasted her lips, chocolaty from the cake, with a hint of mint that he hadn't remembered seeing her eat.

It would never work. But he still heard himself say, "Let's try anyway."