The companion piece to the previous one. It ended up being Erza telling this to Sorano, with overtones of Jerza.
I'm sorry this isn't great - I finally had to publish it because I began to hate it and would have continued to procrastinate indefinitely. (Plus, I have a lot more things to upload here.)
Warning: Not flattering to Jellal.
Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail.
Title: Clipped Wings - Part 2
Pairing: Erza x Sorano, and Erza x Jellal
Requester: boogey56
Prompt: Wings
Once upon a time, a long time ago, there was a girl born with scarlet wings. They were beautiful, and she was loved by many.
One day, people took her away from her home, and locked in a cage of stone and suffering, surrounded by the gray sea. There, her wings were chained down, because even in a cage they could not be allowed to spread, lest others follow suit and realize that their cage's lock was more flimsy than it seemed.
At last, she was set free by a boy with blue wings.
When he did, he broke hers. So she would never fly without him, so she would always stay in reach of his grasping hands.
And so she made herself a framework out of the wreckage of her chains; piece by piece she constructed beautiful steel wings to hide her destroyed ones. For many years, she used them, pretended they were real - came to believe that those were her wings (instead of the ones twisted and torn).
But they weighed her down, and though they shone in the light they could not allow her to reach for the sky.
Then the boy with blue wings dragged her back into the cage, a crystal tomb. And the girl with steel feathers saw for the first time the black rot on his, held in the damp and the dark for far too long.
It was then that the girl finally realized that the rot lay on her own feathers, neglected and tattered. So she threw away the cage of steel she'd surrounded them with, and faced the sky.
She fell.
Her friends pulled her from the waters grasp, back into feather soft warmth and love. Her wings were broken once again, but now they would heal - out in the sun, in the light.
But of the boy...
Like Icarus, he had vanished into the sea.
When next they met, there were only stumps left where his wings had been, and a vacancy in his eyes.
Years had gone by, years she had not been a part of. The world changed, the sky changed. And the boy... the boy's wings had never grown back. What was gone could not be replaced.
She stayed by his side when she could.
Her wings were not bound, nor broken any longer.
But it was in a cage that she flew. A cage he put on those around him - to protect them because they could not fly, he claimed.
He could not see that in his loneliness, he was trying to keep them from flying far beyond his reach.
She of scarlet wings had willingly walked into his cage, in the hopes of someday showing him that he didn't need it after all.
So you see, you whose wings are freshly fallen snow, unsullied by the mud where they rest, your wings are not clipped. Merely caged.
Someday, you will walk out of here, free.
And you will fly.
I promise you this.
