It feels wrong that the sun should be shining so brilliantly, blinding Erza when all she can think about is dark deeds as she steps out of the council building. She can still feel the grain of Councilman Wolfheim's coffin against her fingers. It's like black ink staining her skin, sticking to her, criminal, almost. She is the reason he lies, unmoving, but can she draw a tear for his demise and her immoral behaviour when her prize is now clearly in her sights?
She cannot believe the Council voted Jellal in. She wants to laugh. Hold her ribs and cry. How can she be so divided?
Squinting, she follows the sound of Lucy's voice, mostly blind. As her eyes adjust to the harsh light, she sees Lucy laughing at Gray holding Happy's slimy fish, making a face, while Happy readjusts his backpack on his shoulders. Suddenly, briefly, Erza wishes today didn't happen, that she can turn back the clocks and return to her bed, where Lucy held her soothingly while the rest of the world slept through the aftermath of violence, the calm after the storm. Ignorant.
Natsu is doing that thing again where he looks longingly at Lucy, mesmerized, and paralyzed for reasons different than Erza, searching for something witty to say and the right time to say it. Lucy seems to be diligently ignoring him.
"Hey, Erza," Natsu says when he sees her, reluctantly shifting his focus.
"Erza!" Lucy turns from Gray and gives Erza her full attention. "What happened? How did it go?" Do we need to run, she inquires without speaking the exact words. Erza gives a little shake of her head.
"What happened?" Lucy asks more softly. She steps away from Gray and Happy and toward Erza, hand slightly outstretched as though she's going to grab Erza's arm. Beneath her concern, she's on the verge of horror, thinking about the repercussions of Erza's actions, how they might have to run from the council if they're corrupt all the way through, or, if they're not, how they might spend the next three years in a lengthy court trial until it goes on for so long, Eros goes free anyway because they've passed the statute of limitations.
"I didn't…" Erza trails off, too ashamed to finish.
"You didn't tell them you thought he killed that girl?" Gray supplied. His voice is pitched low and his eyes move amongst the thin stream of people moving into the council building.
Erza shakes her head.
"Why?" Natsu's the most shocked. He lied to the council when they asked about Erza stabbing Eros and her reasoning to protect her, but he's ready to fight them for what she believes in. Always. She wants to bring him in tight to her chest, tell him to leave her side. If he cuts ties with her now, maybe he won't get tangled in this mess.
Natsu will never listen, though. None of them will, the fools.
"You didn't either," Erza says instead, and puts behind her words the force of one of her blades, imagining hitting Natsu with the pommel because she's so furious about the whole thing, but mostly with herself. She hasn't been sloppy with her murders, but she hasn't been particularly careful, either. She has too much of her mother in her, too much self-righteousness and dripping with hubris. She won't be caught because what she's doing is the right thing or some such nonsense, but now she must tread extra careful. Eros has a scent on her.
They're only scales. Your skin is soft, pink, pale. And your reputation is spotless. Anyone will laugh if he comes forward with that evidence and such wild accusations.
But not Natsu who has seen her worst self.
Does that make him a problem, too?
"I didn't want you to get in trouble for attacking him," Natsu says, stemming her darkening thoughts.
Erza catches her hair when the wind tries to tangle it and sees on the third floor, Jellal is watching her. She cannot read his expression but feels emboldened by his attention anyway. "This doesn't matter anymore. We'll catch Eros for his other misdeeds." She doesn't like lying, hates lying to her friends even more, but she does it, in a sense, laying down the footwork for a suggestion. "The council has officially asked us to investigate the murders." Of which Eros will be blamed.
Lucy looks ill. "Really?"
"I told them yes."
"What happened to running it by the team?" Gray dares, not very indignant, but cognisant of Lucy's limitations and Natsu's single-mindedness when it comes to injustice.
"This is too important to squabble over." Erza straightens her shoulders as she speaks, makes herself look confident, tries to impart on her team the importance of this mission, this façade, this farce she will use to apprehend Eros, preferably with one of her swords through his throat so he cannot speak a word against her and she may have peace.
"And too late to back out of now. I told the council that we'd have some sort of plan to keep them safe before the end of the day," Erza continues.
"There are five of them and five of us. It could work if we go one on one," Gray muses.
Erza shakes her head. "Six." Everyone looks startled. She feels her ears starting to burn. "Jellal—" Her voice is wavering. She strengthens it. "Jellal's been reinstated."
Gray's mouth drops open. "No freakin' way," Lucy chimes. Erza is very careful not to look at Natsu's reaction but can't help but notice his silence. She goes a step further to shock them all again. Might as well get it out of the way.
"He'll be with me, and together, we'll watch one of the councilmen. That should leave everyone else with one council member to look after."
"That leaves me to watch one on my own?" Happy speaks for the first time in minutes. Normally, he's full of bluster, but now he looks uncertain. He flies. He does not stop the knives of murderers.
"I'll call one of my spirits," Lucy soothes him. "Maybe Loke. You can work together. Or you can stay with Natsu and Loke will watch the council member."
Happy's face lights up. "Maybe we can work together." He has a fondness for the lion spirit Erza finds endearing.
"If that's settled, we've only to choose our council members. You're not to leave their side for anything," Erza warns them all, looking specifically at Happy. "Even if you're hungry."
Happy squawks about being singled out, Natsu laughs at him.
"That goes for you, too, Natsu," Erza says.
"Yes, ma'am." He smiles, though it's thin; there is worry behind his eyes.
Lucy summons Loke and her, Gray and Happy start to move off.
"A moment, Natsu," Erza says before he can do the same. Lucy glances back over her shoulder, once, to give Natsu a pitying look. Gray doesn't bother, just happy it's not him in Erza's sights.
There is a fountain outside the council building. Natsu leans against its short wall, looking at the building, perhaps thinking about which council member he will shadow. "What's up?"
There is no one near them and Erza feels safe enough to speak candidly. "You were close enough, you must have seen what Eros did. Why didn't you do something? Or say something?" Why did you let him walk away instead of burning him to the ground? she means.
"I didn't see," Natsu denies.
"You were there." Close enough to hit her in the back of the head and to prevent her sword from finding Eros' heart. She realizes then she blames Natsu. She blames him for Eros' still-beating heart.
He looks at her. His eyes are a green so dark, they are black in the right light. "I saw you and Eros facing off. The girl was already dead."
His senses are more refined than anyone's she knows. He must have seen something, heard it, smelled it. She opens her mouth to call him a liar but Natsu speaks again.
"Besides. The important thing is that you're safe, and the council didn't arrest you. There's no way this Eros guy doesn't have something to do with the killings, and once we get rolling, we're going to catch him and he's going to be charged for more than just the thief, and it'll be worth it."
He looks at her imploringly then, asking her to confirm. Letting things go doesn't come naturally to Natsu, especially when they're as big and ugly as this.
"He'll pay," Erza obliges. "We did the right thing."
"I thought so," Natsu breathes.
One small lie to sink Eros forever.
Erza thinks of Wolfheim's coffin. "Let's get going, before the council thinks we've left them to die."
It's strange seeing Jellal in public without a face covering. He walks with his head held high, as though he's not the same man that destroyed the council years ago. Or, Erza supposed, that he is the same man that destroyed it years ago and simply does not care.
"It's no bother if you want to come in," Councilwoman Verity says ahead of them, speaking over her shoulder. "I've made soup for dinner; I can add some more vegetables and with some bread, it'll likely stretch to feed the three of us."
"It's no bother, really," Erza tells her again. The woman is insufferably sweet, overly concerned with her and Jellal as though they're guests, not guards. "We'll only sweep the house and then return to our posts out front if you need us."
Inner Crocus bustles around them, carts, maids, shopkeepers, urchins, the wheel of life spinning, constantly.
Verity asks, "But what will you eat?"
Erza wasn't hungry before but all this talk about eating and the scent of baked goods on the air is making her stomach cramp. "I have rations."
There is enough bite in her voice that Verity drops it. Thank the gods.
Jellal hides a laugh behind a cough. Erza turns her bad temper to him instead. She doesn't want to be here, would rather be in her bed doted upon by Jellal, who is the doting kind when asked but has talked and weaseled her way beneath the noses of the council and she cannot for the life of her think of a way out.
Verity home, a stout and modest bungalow considering her great wealth, is empty of threats, of course. Erza is diligent all the same, making her rounds, checking the closets, beneath the bed, the washroom, the attic until she can confidently say the house is clear.
She must again field another offer of soup, and then she's free to flee the house for the cool air outside.
After a time, Jellal leaves the councilwoman's home and joins Erza on the stoop, as though if there were a killer marching here, they might be brazen enough to try the direct approach.
He is mute. So is Erza.
The sun sinks on the horizon, one inch at a time until the world is plunged into cool darkness. An errant cricket croaks, as though it doesn't know what time of year it is. Erza plucks her aforementioned rations out of the space she keeps her armour and offers Jellal a piece of dried meat and cheese. They chew in companionable silence for a while.
"Is it strange?" Erza asks finally. "Being back on the council?"
"It's like I never left," Jellal says, and there is such truth in his words, it gives her pause.
She doesn't want to ask aloud, not here, but she needs to know and cannot wait for an answer. "Has it given you access to files that might help us?"
"You sound eager, Erza," Jellal says in a cloying voice. Siegrain's voice.
"Eros knows about me. About…" But she can't say it aloud, to do so makes it real. She doesn't need to—Jellal knows she thinks of her dragon scales, her wings, her slitted pupils, the beast. "He threatened my family." Erza's teeth are gritted so tight, the words almost can't make it through. "Eros threatened Natsu because he saw Eros and me last night. Because—" And she doesn't want to say this either; it puts Natsu at unnecessary risk from the two most dangerous predators she can think of in all of Fiore. "Because he might know about—me."
Jellal doesn't flinch, as though he's come to expect such behaviour of men like Eros and has known all along Natsu is too well informed for his own good. He doesn't try to think of ways to exonerate Natsu. Maybe he doesn't care or maybe he just thinks what will come will come. It's difficult to say, or if the two circumstances are different at all. "I was doing some restricted reading this evening, as Councilman Tweed permits. Do you remember in the Tower of Heaven? A woman named Monique?"
Erza must dig through the bowels of her memory. "I'm not sure."
"She had a scar, here." He turns to Erza and touches her lip. "Where one of the children swiped at her with a stone the first week I arrived at the Tower of Heaven."
Erza starts to build a picture of the woman in her mind. "She was thin, like a mantis. Had long brown hair. And was always stationed in the infirmary."
"I used to think she was a nurse." Jellal looks to the sky with his eyes closed, remembering something far away. "She was nice."
Erza smiles faintly. "I remember she wrapped my ankle for me after I twisted it on one of the stairs." Those steep, stone stairs still haunt her dreams.
"And she set my finger for me when I broke it," Jellal reminisces. "But she was not a nurse."
"Then what was she?"
His face gets sort of flat and Erza senses an inquietude about him, a dangerousness she both loves and is incredibly wary of. "Do you also remember how sometimes, children would disappear?"
"I assumed they died." So many were lost to the building of the Tower of Heaven.
"Sometimes. Sometimes not. And if one of the children were damaged beyond what was considered useful to the Tower of Heaven, Monique would take them."
The way he speaks draws an unease in her, like poison rising to the surface. "To do what?"
Jellal looks at her, finally. His eyes are black like the night sky, dead, almost, desolate, certainly. "To please whoever might need pleasing," he says and leaves it at that.
Erza, once the connections are made, is filled with a blind rage. She swallows. Her throat won't work, though. She feels scales biting into her knuckles, her arms, her elbows. She feels the change in her eyes. She hears her mother's voice inside her mind, my daughter. My beauty. My beast.
Jellal has never pulled away from her violence before and now is no exception. He leans into her like he might become the object of her ire like he might not mind as he presses something cold and hard into her palm.
"She's in the new developments. Twelve, Meadow Crescent," he whispers against her ear. His breath is hot, sliding down her neck, warming her otherwise cold body. "I will watch the councilwoman's home while you rid the world of one more evil."
Erza takes the offered dagger and slinks into the new night.