Erza started walking, silent. A wind came through the leaves of the hedges, knocking a stray twig into them. The twig immediately gave a little zap and snapped in two. Good thing I didn't try to cut through them, she thought. Titania strode around corner after corner, sure she'd find her way easily.

Turning a corner, Erza saw a figure standing at a dead end and looking confused. He hadn't noticed her, so she snapped her head back and tried to catch her breath. What is Jellal doing here? Isn't he in jail?

She heard steps walking towards her and froze up. "Erza?" Jellal came around the hedge, looking at her.

Her eyes widened. Erza hadn't expected to see this blue-haired man with the strange red marks near his eye ever again or at least for a very long time. "No, you're in jail," she murmured, stepping back. "How are you here?"

Jellal grinned. "I'm a thought projection, Erza. I'm not really here, only mentally."

Erza shifted from confused and fragile to demanding and strong. She pointed her sword at his neck and asked, "How is that possible? You can't use magic in your cell, and how would you know to come here, of all places?"

"Erza, I'm much more powerful than you give me credit for. All of Magnolia heard of the challenge and its terms. Naturally, news spread quickly, and I came to help you."

Erza, deciding to trust him, lowered her sword. "Fine."

For a while, the journey through the maze was quiet and awkward. Erza was still a little bit suspicious of Jellal, but couldn't help the look of sincerity in his deep brown eyes. "Which way should we go?" Jellal asked her, gesturing to the fork in their path.

"Right," she said, and they continued walking.

"So," he chirped, trying to break the ice, "my memory's doing well. Every day, more and more of my life comes back to me. Most of it's about you."

"Oh, well, that's good, that your mind is improving." She walked ahead, not wanting to meet his eyes. She was glad he was regaining his memories, but she wasn't in the mood to discuss it at the moment.

"I remember trying to escape the Tower with you. Our 'siblings'… I can see their faces, but no names yet. There was a boy. He's always loud and wild in the earlier ones, but then he changes."

"Wally," Erza said.

"And a girl. She likes cats."

"Milianna."

Jellal gave a soft laugh, happy to know himself and their friends a little better. "And the two other boys in our group, what were their names?"

Erza sighed. She was a bit uncomfortable reliving her time—their shared time—in the Tower of Heaven, but found that talking about it was liberating in a strange way. She'd never been able to truly let anyone in on how she felt about her past. "The blonde one is Sho, and the taller, dark-haired one was Simon."

"I remember when you were punished for Sho's escape plan. I tried to take it for you, but they took you anyway," Jellal recalled, knitting his brows in concentration. "Do you remember that?"

"Yes." This was one of Erza's most prominent memories. It was the day before she escaped from that wretched tower.

Jellal smiled again. "I think Simon might like you."

Erza stopped walking and stared at the grassy ground. "I told you last time we met: you killed Simon when we destroyed the Tower."

"Oh, right. With all that happened, going to jail and stuff, I forgot that you told me that." A long silence passed. "I think I may have liked you too. Before we took the Tower and you left."

Erza pondered this for some time. The Jellal she knew when they were both so young, innocent but rebellious, is so different from the Jellal she met again a few months before, a criminal. Admittedly, she did like the old Jellal. But that doesn't matter anymore, she decided. This person is an entirely different Jellal, a stranger.

A loud roar interrupted her thoughts. A white wyvern lumbered through the path. It was small for a wyvern, but big enough to pose a challenge. "I've got his," Erza told Jellal, requipping into her Heaven's Wheel armor. She flew at it, slashing her swords at its think scales. The wyvern swung its powerful tail around, hitting her in the head hard.

Finding herself lying on her back, the wind knocked out of her, Erza tried to sit up, put her head was pounding. She raised a hand and felt a sickly stickiness growing in her red hair. She'd had worse.

Titania pulled herself up, more prepared this time for the wyvern. It clearly was not like a normal wyvern. Visibly, it was smaller, but that flip of it's tail revealed that it was also more agile and could put greater force into a single blow. Is this my weakness? she wondered. Only expecting the obvious?

She managed to hit the beast with some significant injuries, but it soon swatted her to the ground again. This time, it reared up, preparing to finish her off, but Jellal stepped in front of her, sending blasts of magic into the wyvern's open mouth. Its eyes rolled back in its head as it died, and its massive head fell down on Jellal.

"Jella!" Erza screamed. She stood, clutching her side, which was bleeding heavily. "Jellal!" Erza painfully lifted the Wyvern's head off of Jellal, who was either unconscious or dead. Requipping back into her everyday armor, she kneeled next to him. I cause everyone's death, she thought as the images of Rob and Simon stepping in front of danger in order to protect her flashed through her mind. Erza always hated that she owed her life to the sacrifice of her friends', and Jellal's was the last straw. She was losing it.

After what could have been hours, Jellal finally opened his eyes. "E-Erza?" Erza smiled, so happy she wouldn't have to add Jellal to the list of people who'd lost their lives preserving hers. "Erza… why do you only cry out of your left eye?" Jellal asked, reaching up to wipe a tear from her cheek.

Erza let out a laugh, "Just an injury. From back then."

"The day you freed us?" Jellal asked. His words touched her, almost making her feel like the old Jellal from so long ago had resurfaced.

"I thought you said there was no freedom in this world."

"How could I ever say that? And to you of all people? You're the freest person in the world, and I love you."

Again, Erza was rendered speechless. "Jellal…"

"Erza," he interrupted, sitting up slowly, "I have this one memory. It's a bit fuzzy, but Milianna was talking about how Simon missed you a lot—this was after you left—and felt bad because even if you had stayed, the two of you would never have gotten together. She said that everyone could see that you liked me. I feel so ashamed of what I became that day, the day you lead the rebellion, and I hate the Jellal I showed you when you returned. I want to be, as an adult, the man I was as a child, and I hope you can still love me after all I've done." By now, he was pleading, and the left side of Erza's face was marked with wet trails.

"Oh, Jellal. I do still love you," she whispered. "I always have." Jellal leaned in and gave her lips a soft kiss. Erza held his face in her hands and kissed him back, happy to have the old Jellal back at last, and completely lost herself in the moment.

Suddenly, a dark realization seeped into her thoughts. "W-wait," she said, pulling away. "What's going on, really?"

Jellal was confused, but this time, Erza could see he was acting. "What do you mean?"

"You're a real person. You're here. A thought projection wouldn't have been able to use magic or be hurt by the wyvern… or kiss me. How are you here, and why did you lie to me?"

Jellal let out the heavy breath he'd been holding and came clean. "A woman came to my cell a few days ago. She said you needed me. She said she could get me out of jail, free me, if I agreed to her terms and didn't question her. She said that no matter how strange it seemed, everything was for your own good."

"And what were her terms?" Erza asked, sure that this woman worked for the man who'd challenged them and had been sent to collect him.

"I had to wait for you to find me in the maze. She said there were runes laid out that would lead you to me without you knowing it, so you'd think you'd found me by accident. She said I had to pretend I was a thought projection to make it seem more believable and that I should be willing to sacrifice myself to help you. That part, I don't think she thought through very well, as a thought projection can't be physically harmed and would offer very little protection. But I didn't think anything of it, as I would've have done that even if it wasn't a condition. Even if it was a condition that I let you die, I'd still save you." As soon as a closed his mouth again, Jellal let out a tortured wail and held his head in his hands like he was about to die of pain.

"Jellal!" Erza yelled. "What's wrong, what's happening?" She looked around like a deer caught in a hunter's path, searching for the source of the pain, something she knew she wouldn't see, but looked for anyway.

"Oh, yeah," Jellal croaked, his face twisted from the searing pain that coursed through his body. "It was also a condition that I not tell you anything." Before her eyes, Jellal began to disappear. Erza tried to hold on to him, wrapping her arms around his fading body like it would do some good, but she was wrong. Jellal blew away, his body vanishing in a wisp of purple runes. "Erza…."

"Jellal!" Erza shouted to the sky in rage. Whoever was the mastermind of this whole thing just took him away from her right after she'd finally gotten him back. They couldn't get away with this. Erza stood and marched through the maze, going back the way they'd come and frantically scouring the grass and hedges for any hint of where Jellal could have been taken or who had done this. Surely, if someone had been spying on the guild, she'd have noticed and noted them.

One name came into mind: Freed Justine. He fits perfectly, she told herself. A rune mage who had turned against Fairy Tail before because of the "weak" wizards that filled it and had reason to call his friend, Laxus, who wasn't even a Fairy Tail mage anymore into the maze. Freed's in the maze too, she remembered. It all adds up.

Erza turned back towards the center of the maze and ran for it, not caring if she was going down the right paths or how many dead ends they lead her to, just that the faster she moved, the faster she could get revenge on Freed for deceiving Jellal and using him to mess with her.

She skidded to a halt. That was it. Jellal's my weakness. The Tower of Heaven as a whole, but mainly him. I can't focus on a fight if I'm thinking about him, thinking about all of them, and I let my feelings for him cloud my view. The whole thing was way too suspicious from the start, but I was too blinded by him and the memories to see it.

Erza pounded forward, making her way through the hedge maze with a renewed energy. The sky darkened, and hours later, she saw a bright light ahead.

Slowly, shielding her eyes with her hand, she walked forward into an open area. It was circular and surrounded by hedges on all sides. It seemed a dead end, but she knew this was the center of the maze. In the center of the circle was a large clock that lay flat as part of the earth. The hands moved around it, pointing to nine o'clock.

She made it. Take that, Freed. I'll kick your butt later for making me feel so stupid, she thought, but secretly wanted to thank him alongside the butt-kicking. He'd brought her the real Jellal, and that was worth a little humiliation.