It was in the late hours of the night - a serene hill filled with the fresh smell of trees' leaves and fruits was the first observation one would make when visiting the house of a well-known S class mage.
A well-built house was present on top of the hill with the beautiful scenery as its backdrop - a sort of house one would be paying bags of cash for the privacy and the natural beauty. The people inside the house however did not resonate with the joy the scenery gave. It was almost a perfect juxtaposition and possibly something that would generate a hoard of laughter if it had not been true.
"It is quite late, dear. Shouldn't you call it a day?", the same S class mage asked her husband.
"Go to sleep if you are tired. I will be in the living room", the man whispered and turned to walk, but the red-haired mage caught his wrist.
"No, it...it is fine", she smiled at him and the man sighed.
"Don't sacrifice your comfort for my sake", he smiled back and yanked his hand off his wife's grip before turning to leave. That smile on his face...it was so unnatural and fake that the woman hated it when he flashed her the same.
"The children are asleep aren't they?", he asked her with a slight turn of his face, and the red-haired mage softly nodded her head. The man grabbed a sword lying close to the closet and left the room, leaving behind a tearful Erza Scarlet.
"If only...If only I had not been that stupid", she whispered to herself as she dropped onto the mattress and dug her fingernails into her palms in frustration.
The man who was devoted to her, the man who never looked at another woman the way he looked at her even before their relationship, the man who was always there for her even if he was spiraling down a dangerous path, how could she do that to him?
It was not something as stupid as an affair. She was not foolish enough to go after another man when all she wanted in a man was right beside her.
While he was there for her when she most needed him, she was not there when he needed her. Instead, she stood against him. Around a minute...that was all it took to shatter him into a shell of a man.
Everyone he knew went up against him - his comrades, his best friend. It hurt him, but it did not break him. But the moment she turned against him, she saw him break.
Out of all her memories to vividly remember - the first time he kissed her, their first quest together, the night when Jellal took her virginity, their wedding, the birth of her children - they were intact but at the same time, a bit vague. But the moment his eyes lost colour, the way his face shattered when she hurt him, the single tear that dropped from his eye when she stabbed him - those memories would not vanish.
Erza tiptoed out of the room to see him, in a vain attempt to convince him to come back to the room. He was standing shirtless in the balcony and yet again, Erza winced on seeing the various scars on his back. Various shapes of cuts, claw marks, a few faded stab wounds - an assortment of wounds covered his back. His sword was unsheathed and lying close to its scabbard implying that he was training for a while.
"Having trouble sleeping?", she whispered and could hear him click his tongue. His shoulder-length hair that was usually set in a ponytail was set free.
"Not exactly", he sighed and turned towards her. His eyes were devoid of any signs of joy and he flashed her another smile.
"Go back to the room. The children will wake up otherwise", he whispered to her, but Erza walked towards him and covered his back with his button-up shirt.
"It is quite cold, dear. Please come back", she whispered, gently clutching his shoulders. Giving up with a sigh, Jellal turned around and complied.
Shutting the door and closing the curtains, Erza went back to their room to find Jellal already fast asleep. A soft smile graced her beautiful lips as she heard his soft snores.
Erza laid down on the bed and turned towards him to face his scarred back yet again. She reached forward to touch those scars but stopped a few inches away from his muscular back, her thoughts traveling back to those painful memories.
For the umpteenth time, her vision grew misty as she saw the massive scar on the left side of his neck - one that was given to him by her.
"I'm so sorry, Jellal"
3 Years Back
"No! You shouldn't be a picky eater, Azure. Hey! Hey!", Erza groaned as her two-year-old daughter innocently swatted the spoon away from her hand.
"Jellal! Feed her, please. She...She is not listening to me at all", Erza pouted at her daughter.
"Not hungwy", the little blue-haired child retorted and reached out to her father, who complied and seated her on his waist.
"How about you and I go stargazing tonight if you eat your food and listen to your mama?", he offered and Azure started to trace the mark on his eye and retraced the one on her face - the same mark which she had inherited from him.
Contemplating the offer, she nodded her head and went back to Erza, but started throwing a fit almost instantly when she found something else to play with.
"Do you want me to come, dear?", Erza asked him, running her hand over his muscular chest and Jellal chuckled.
"It's worth half a day's work and I don't need an S class mage to accompany me in a covert operation", he smiled and kissed the tip of her nose.
"Just because you are significantly stronger than an average mage doesn't mean you can look down on your enemy", she scolded him softly as she adjusted his collar, and cupped his face. Jellal was someone who would calculate his risks and she was more confident on his skills than her own, but as always, Erza was skeptical of not being there to watch his back.
"I know that, and with two beautiful women waiting for me at home, I don't exactly have a death wish", he comforted her and kissed her palms and inner wrists.
"That is a serious death flag", Erza smiled and Jellal pursed his lips with a blush on his face.
"Then the moment I'm done, I'm going to get drunk, waste my life and gamble my money away, run away from my debtors and spend the rest of my days as a lowlife", he retorted with chagrin and Erza tried hard to stifle her laughter before wrapping her arms tightly around his neck and affectionately rubbed her nose against his.
"Come back soon. With Azure hogging you every time, you've been neglecting me. Tonight, you are mine and mine alone", she whispered into his lips and Jellal's hands dropped down from her waist to her generous derriere.
Giving the soft flesh a tight squeeze, Jellal swooped in to kiss her neck, leaving behind a flustered Erza.
"I'll be home soon", he whispered and tucked a few unruly strands of hair behind her ear.
That Night
Erza hugged her daughter tightly and was waiting for her husband at Fairy Tail. A few moments back, a piece of shocking news had spread - an attack was made on the life of Hisui E Fiore - the queen of Fiore.
The attack was planned elaborately. With the queen's birthday coming up, she had personally left to buy a few gifts for herself, and that was when the attack had taken place. Seven guards were sent along with her, and within a span of five seconds, all of them were shot down by meteors - they were crushed to death. When the queen ran to save herself, she had tripped and fallen down. Her luck had favoured her as if she had taken another stride, a sharp pellet would have left a gaping hole in her temple.
The fractional time was enough for her backup to arrive and the attempt on the queen's life to fail. The singed rocks were found to be from a meteor-based spell and the pellet had a strand of aquamarine hair sticking to it. It was only a matter of seconds before the council put two and two together to find a suspect.
What strengthened their suspicion was that the local people started reporting a sudden flash the moment the queen was almost killed. This was from a tower that was conveniently used to attack the queen and her security.
On hearing the news and its developments everyone rushed towards the court and Erza followed suit along with the rest of Fairy Tail.
"From the evidence we have collected, it is obvious that the culprit is none other than Jellal Fernandes", the voice of a representative of the council thundered.
Fairy Tail's eyes shot towards Erza whose hands began to shake and the woman dropped onto the ground.
"No, no, no, no. He...He is not like that. It is not him. There has to be some grave mistake!", she snapped, but nobody paid attention to her. Azure started to bawl her eyes out and Erza gritted her teeth.
Why at that time? Why on that day? She had planned to tell him that she was pregnant. She was madly waiting to see his flabbergasted face - the same childish face she saw when she first told him she was pregnant.
A few guards dragged Jellal to the stand, and to her surprise, he was unfazed.
"Anything to say, traitor?", the representative spat at the Meteor mage and Jellal nodded his head.
"I can understand why I am the primary suspect in this case. The incident had taken place close to where I was, the queen was attacked by rocks from the sky and there was a strand of blue hair unintentionally attached to the primary weapon. Along with that, I have been an adversary to you, so it is natural that I am being suspected. But I am innocent. I have absolutely no reason to hurt the queen, especially when she was the one who officially absolved me of my crimes", he stated and most of the people began to murmur to each other.
"Well, your actions say otherwise", the representative sneered and Jellal rolled his eyes.
"Look, I know that you hate me for fooling you all those years back. Was it not proved that I was under the influence of another person? Even if you hate me, isn't it unfair if you are biased against the facts? You would seem like a hypocrite wouldn't you?", Jellal asked, deftly avoiding Ultear's name.
"That...That has nothing to do with this", he snapped and was about to grab Jellal until he broke into another smirk.
"You seem awfully calm even though you are the suspect. Perhaps this too is a part of your plan?"
"It is more than obvious that I would be the first person to be suspected due to my history. I will always be under the radar and this is something I have accepted", Jellal explained and the representative gritted his teeth yet again. The next moment, his eyes shifted from Jellal to elsewhere.
At that moment, Jellal noticed a small smirk on the man's face. He was nothing special, and perhaps he remembered cheating him twice, but for nothing so big to warrant an arrest - a few lies at maximum.
The next moment, his entire life - the life he had rebuilt from scratch started to crumble.
"But this...was not a part of my plan. You see, as much as I do not like you, I have no interest in filling our prison with innocent people. But this...proves that you are far from innocent", he sighed and stretched his hand. A man behind Jellal threw a lacrima device. It seemed like a video cassette - quite old, but less susceptible to lacrima manipulation and was thus highly trusted.
The video was focused on the place where the queen was attacked. The camera was not entirely focused on the tower but was close enough to give a wide picture of the assailant. For a split moment, the assailant partially turned towards the camera and one could see a vibrant red mark on his eye, and his hair was more than obvious. His clothes too were rather similar to the ones Jellal wore. The man was seen chanting something and then flung something towards the targeted area before leaving the spot, just as it had happened.
The Meteor mage started to put the pieces together and instantly knew that he was being framed.
"That is not me! I assure you! That...That is NOT me!", he snapped as he clenched the rails as tightly as he could.
"That...That is not in my range at all. How can I attack the queen if she is not in my range?", he asked and his calm aura began to slowly fade away.
"That may be true, but you do have the ability to project yourself, don't you? And from what I had last heard, you can now release a maximum of three copies of yourself. I think two would be more than enough for the queen to get into your range, would it not? Your clones can think for themselves and a few months back, a secretly captured video of you performing a chain based attack with your clones against that dark guild went viral, didn't it? And before you accuse us of tampering with the video, the sources are legitimate and have been confirmed as such, which is why I am presenting the evidence here. All traces of magic found there are at an astounding ninety three percent match with yours. So...not much to refute that, is there?", the representative asked him raising his eyebrows innocently. His ability was not something that worked in that manner and even if he were to explain it, Jellal knew that it would fall on deaf ears.
Completely appalled and flabbergasted by the framed video, Jellal tried to think of names of past adversaries and their possible friends and families - anyone who was capable to pull off this stunt, and there might have been a couple of them - but at that moment, not a single one struck his mind.
"Unfortunately, this was not the only piece of information we found that pointed towards you, Fernandes", he sniggered and snapped his fingers.
To be continued...