A note about me: everything that I write crashes and becomes angst by default. You can give me two happy and full squirrels about to hibernate and I can create angst in the midst of their warm home in the dead of the winter frost.

So when the prompt 'war wounds' comes up, of course, I go down that pathological road of mine. But sometimes I have pleasant ideas. So here's the first non-angst Mystwalker I'm writing. Cheers.

This is like...the second interpretation of the prompt: war wounds, lol. I'm obsessed. In a bad way.

smiles and scars

Erza was proud of each and every inch of her marred skin. She knew the story behind each raised bump of skin and every callus and edge, but the one scar she would never understand-

"It looks like a cyclops," Jellal said, with a teasing smile.

Her head snapped up, eye venomous. "What did you just call my stomach?"

"A cyclops," he repeated.

He returned an innocent grin and kissed her bellybutton. She pursed her lips, seeing her deformed skin, and then shifted her eyes back to the window.

"Your bellybutton's the eye, and this…" he explained, tracing the thin curved line just above her pelvis. "…is the big and wide smile."

The king noticed that his wife wasn't looking down to where he was pointing. He decided to not bother her about it. After all, if there was anything that the former captain of the Royal Army knew, it was that all scars healed over time.

Only this scar wasn't like her others. In fact, this scar was a little too perfect—a straight line—and that's what made it so imperfect to her.

"I didn't expect to get most of my scars, you know," she suddenly admitted.

He looked back at her. "You didn't expect this one either."

"Exactly," she said.

His eyebrows furrowed slightly.

"Exactly," she repeated to herself, softly this time.

He shifted his body, moving next to her and putting his arm around her shoulders. He brought her in close to him before kissing her on the top of her head.

"I thought I would at least have been able to do something as simple as get the baby out of me," she mumbled. "I was complaining so much about being so round and I was so excited when the water first broke…"

She trailed off and he thought carefully before replying.

"Well, that's how we know the baby got the best of our genes, right? Gave the mother a good fight on the way out."

Her right index finger continuing to silently trace the ripples and valleys of her once protruding torso.

"The baby was a rebel before even born," he continued, cautiously taking her right hand away from herself and pressing a kiss onto the back of it. "You don't think that's good?"

"A little insurgence is nice, I guess," she presumed, taking back her hand from him. "Maybe he'll overthrow you as well."

Jellal raised an eyebrow. "You're never going to let me hear the end of it, are you?"

"Just imagine what the baby is going to grow up to be as an adolescent," she hummed. "Like child, like father."

"Like child, like mother," he retorted. "You didn't obey any of my commands the first year I transitioned back into the throne!"

She glared at him. "Are you telling me it's my fault our child is going to be a pain in the ass? Because I think I'm looking right at the very person that gave the baby those genes—"

"—and I'm looking right at the very person that gave this gift of a baby to me," he replied, smooth and sweet, leaning forward to kiss her on the mouth.

She rolled her eyes, but couldn't help the smile that finally cracked on her lips.

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