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24 ; before
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Over and over and over in her head, the events repeat, nonsensical and inescapable. It won't sink in. How can it? These kinds of things don't happen, not to her, not to Jellal, not to them.
Too sudden, too unexpected, not fair, the world gave them no warning— Was it really yesterday they were driving back? Was it really last night — earlier tonight — that he swapped with her because he was worried she was getting tired? She doesn't understand how that could be, how she got from the passenger seat on the dark highway to here, to here, it doesn't make sense at all...
But she's there, isn't she, she's sitting in the waiting room through his fourth hour in ER, barely clued in on surgeries and procedures that are keeping him breathing. She's playing her mind through how she found him throwing up blood on the bathroom floor. She's hearing the sirens in her head, the paramedics, her own hysteria, all over again like an alarm that can't shut off.
When he's finally released into his own room, and she's allowed to at least see him, he's asleep. The hospital bed's too small for him, but he still looks so vulnerable, so unlike himself, that Erza has to cover her mouth with her hand as she stares.
It takes him three hours to wake up and everything tumbles out of her mouth in a messy disaster. "You were in surgery for hours and I've been waiting and you're here and so am I and I waited and you took forever and I was so scared, Jellal, I was terrified..."
He blinks his bleary eyes and Erza has to hold back her sob of relieved laughter. "S-Sorry I'm late."
But, of course, this is Jellal, and she can't hold anything back at all. It comes out broken and wet, the tears escaping her eyes as she gives him a smile; a small and fragile thing. She bumps her forehead against his fondly. "Idiot."
He returns it in that same quiet way he always does and Erza has to pretend not to see the wince — for her own sake. In her gut is an overwhelming feeling; a confused nonsensical thing, but unavoidable, unbearable... that this, whatever this is, is somehow, in some way, the beginning of an ending.
But, Erza thinks as Jellal twirls her hair round his finger, humming a soft tune into the crook of her neck, it wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong. It wouldn't be the first time goodbye has lost to this man.