Hello,
first of all, thank you so so much, foxydame, for your generous review! It was the only bright spot about my day today so thank you for cheering me up! I needed that. I thought about the exact same scene to be honest - made it hard to imagine the pregnant belly. I'm glad the windmill made you laugh :) 'you almost cockblocked them' is perhaps my favourite review line so far :D I agree, I was actually making it up as I went and somehow noticed half way through how the positive+dumpling just wasn't happening all that well ':D
Thanks also for the hint on the twins; I'll see if I can find it, but I like the names.
Now I've had a lot of fun writing this chapter, since it's something sort of new concerning the format. Do let me know if you liked it or not; if it was distracting or enhancing the entertainment of the chapter.
On a different note, I might not be able to update next week as I haven't gotten to write a single word for Jerza with time being scarce and motivation sadly being even scarcer.
Hope you enjoy.
"Mama, Mama, can I go play now?"
"Yes, be patient for just a moment longer," Erza said where she crouched. Fiddling with the zipper of her dark-blue haired daughter, she closed the jacket, then adjusted the scarf. A group of children, around the same age of her daughter, chased each other, running over to where she was. A particularly rowdy and strikingly pink-haired boy called out first.
"Come on, let's go play!"
"Yeah!" Another joined in. "My dad's making a swing for us!" He announced. Erza's daughter's eyes sparkled. She had already turned away, getting her mother's hand stuck in her shawl. With small hands, she worked to pluck it off.
"Can I go, Mama? Can I?" She hopped on the spot.
"Of course, have fun," Erza smiled warmly. She watched as the group hasted away, laughing and squealing.
"My dad's the best!"
"Not true!" Mika yelled back. "Mine brought me a present from his last job!"
"Mine can spew fire!"
"What about yours?" They turned to their friend. Erza frowned when her daughter tilted her head. An icy claw of fear and grief gripped her heart, something her daughter did not even understand, merely puzzled.
"Me?" She pointed at herself. "I don't have a Papa."
Erza bolted awake when nearly chocking. It was pitch-black. The bed in front of her was empty. Empty… she thought, her sobbing picking back up. Her face was already sticky with tears, her chest constricted where she gasped for breath. Empty… Gone…
She reached out anyway. Nothing. Nothing but blanket. Trembling, she squinted her eyes shut. Her burning breath got stuck when there was a sound above her ear. It took her a moment to realise its origin, her own sniffles too violent to hear.
"Are you alright?" Jellal repeated in a low voice. Jellal! Her mind screamed at her. He was there – right there, having lied behind her the entire time. He had not left.
Still startled, she wriggled to turn around in his embrace, a small whimper escaping her throat where she pressed her face into him. His arms tightened protectively. He had not left. Only then did she come to realise how long it had been since she had last thought about him leaving her; how it had- how it should have been resolved.
Jerking with sobs, Erza gradually calmed. Strokes down her back aided her breathing to even out, his warmth so close yet not enough for comfort to come easily.
"Nightmare?" He whispered. It took her another heartbeat to react. She just wanted to hold on, to hold him, needing to be even closer, hold him even tighter, keeping him there. Finally, in a meek, fragmented voice, she revealed her dream to him.
Afraid he would leave due to the worries he caused her, have himself eaten up by guilt, she grasped his shirt with all her might. The fabric tore where her nails dug into it.
"I'm not going to leave," Jellal assured, understanding. His hand picked up its motion on her back again. "I've left you enough and I won't ever do it again, not until you tell me to," he swore. Erza rocked with a hefty sob at that, squishing her face into his chest in the hopes of keeping more tears from coming. Her stomach lurched when he scooted away.
"No," she rasped, desperately clinging to him. So he came back, caressing her back, her nape, whispering soothing nothings that meant the world to her.
"It's alright, my love, everything's fine," he muttered, kissing her temple, "I'm not going anywhere," he said, shuffling backwards anyway. Before she had the chance to rake him to her again, his hands had wandered between them.
Momentarily distracted from her own tears, Erza frowned her already creased forehead when he began unbuttoning his shirt. Swallowing the next sob, she hardly noticed to be engrossed in whatever it was he had in mind. It was a challenge to see anything with darkness still veiling them into monochrome hues, but she found herself holding her ragged breath until he finished – and while he continued with the shirt she wore.
His arms wound their way around her again, squishing their bodies together in an attempt at closeness she had neither seen coming, nor expected to help. His tranquil heartbeat transferred to hers, warmth spreading through her – not merely physically. Thump, thump, thump, it seemed almost as if appealing to her to adapt.
Forgetting to swallow where no more hiccups came – something she barely noticed either, counting the beats of his pulse against her own – Erza waited while Jellal reached over her. Gathering up the blanket, he tucked her in, then himself, somehow able – and not without difficulty – to reach over his own shoulder and secure the fabric beneath him for an impenetrable cocoon of warmth. Finally, Jellal lifted his feet to flop them back down, trapping the two inside the blanket haven completely save their heads.
With a hum that might have still been a whimper had it not been for his efforts, Erza relaxed where he wrapped his legs around hers. Allowing the space for her crawling arm to pass beneath his, letting her hug him back, Jellal smiled. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
"Better?" He asked, his tone so gentle she heard herself sigh vocally in consent.
"I'll make you all sweaty," she croaked, voice still small. His own carried his smile.
"Then we'll have a reason to keep on staying close since we'll both need a shower," he reasoned – he reassured, every of his gestures and words emitting pure love she felt her concerns plunge into.
A moment ticked by. Then another, but her thoughts strayed back to the images of her dream.
"I'm surprised you haven't yet made a comment on doing it in the shower," Jellal broke the silence.
"I'm not tactless," she quietly mumbled into him. "I'm waiting for your offer," she grinned slightly. His chuckle vibrated against her where she snuggled her face closer against his throat.
Her arms began to loosen. He must have felt the softening smile on her lips, because after he had planted another kiss atop her crown, he felt her to be ready for a change of topic to lighten the mood instead of discussing the dream.
Still, he asked, "Would you like to keep hearing me speak?" Something she answered with an avid nod. And she could not shake the feeling that he knew her better than she knew herself.
.,.,.
"Let's see…" Jellal pondered. Numerous recollections swirled through his mind until a certain one resurfaced. He had to smile, not only because he was counting on that story to lift his beloved's mood. If he told it the right way. "Once, uh," he struggled for a moment, raking his brain for the words. He could feel her frown, the way she pitied him for his lack of a childhood; lack of games and tales.
He stroked her back, and her face warmed against his neck when it made her realise how he had read her feelings so easily.
"Once upon a time," Jellal smiled at her smile, having remembered, "there was a man. A very, very poor man – poor in character, in money and in fortune. He was a lonely man, too, until one day, he suddenly found himself in the company of two women," he began.
Erza listened intently, already far away from her nightmare, which he was grateful for.
"One of those two women was a beautiful, fearsome witch, her eyes focused yet sedate as she cast powerful spells and awe-inspiring enchantments. The other woman was smaller in size but no less frightening, her expression as if cast into grimness, an unadulterated rancour cauterising towards the man. And although she, too, possessed magic, she was more of a gremlin than a witch."
"A what?"
"You heard me," Erza chuckled where she nibbled on a brownie. Cutlery clinked on the other end of the lacrima connection. A connection that never ceased to amaze them.
"That traitor," Meredy swore with what Erza imagined to be a vivid glint in her eyes. The gleefully twisting of the corners of her mouth did not go unnoticed either. As much as she cursed about being called such a petty creature, there was a certain fondness in her gaze all the way back in Magnolia.
It was the same Jellal carried whenever reporting how he had been picked on for years.
"What else did he say?" She asked, earning herself an amused smile.
"Well…"
"They gave the poor man clothes and food, and dragged him around like a lost lamb, through forests and fields, without ever dropping a word of their destination. Hardly any words passed their lips; the women spoke in hushed words to one another, but the man was entirely too tired to listen. It was not until later that the witch addressed him, and he, in turn, confided in her,"
"What about the gremlin?" Erza asked from beneath his chin. He could feel the smile she bore, his own audible as he replied.
"The gremlin mostly kept to herself, expressing herself with evil glares rather than with openly pronounced death threats,"
"I was thirteen, okay? I had only just found out how my life was a lie and the only person I truly cared about had murdered all of my family and friends, and then almost herself – of course I was upset!" Meredy threw her hands up in defence, accidentally flinging the lacrima at her ear across the room. She winced, grimacing apologetically where she readjusted it after having gone to fetch it.
"I never said either of us were mad," Erza laughed. She bit her lip as to stop, knowing a pink tint to be rising to the Maguilty Sense Mage's cheeks. "But anyway…"
"The trio travelled for a long time, coming to learn how neither of them was rich in either of the regards the poor man had found himself to be poor in,"
"Can we call the poor man 'Jelly-Man'?" Erza piped up. He felt the vibrating of a suppressed giggle against his chest. Of course, she would figure him out. Then again, he had not really tried to hide the truth all that well to begin with. He sighed before he answered.
"You didn't really ask him that,"
"I did," Erza gave a smug smirk, a stupidly gleeful one spreading across her guildmate's lips.
"You're a queen, Erza."
"Yes, we can," Jellal dipped his circling finger towards her ribs and she stiffened, receiving his message of a tease. "Where was I?" He muttered, resuming to caress the small of her back.
"They were all poor,"
"Right," he nodded awkwardly. Smiling, she shifted to snuggle her nose into him, lashes tickling the hollow of his throat as she closed her eyes. "So the three poor people – albeit poor in communication as well – decided to continue their journey together. They formed a union, calling themselves the…" he pursed his lips in thought. Anything with 'crime' would be too obvious, even if she knew. It would disperse the idiotic magic of the story.
"Jellos," Erza supplied. This time she yelped at the full-fledged tickle attack to her side.
"The Jellos," Jellal sighed. How long had she carried that around with her, inwardly jesting about his name? It must have been Meredy who had implanted the idea, he mused, not having been called something jelly-related for the first time.
Inhaling, he let the ridiculous suggestion form on his tongue.
"The Jellos wandered across the lands, searching high and low for something to enrich their impoverished spirits. It was not until one fateful day, that the poor- I mean that Jelly-Man found his companions not to be as scary as he had originally assumed – they were terrifying. Even the gremlin proved to be a force not to be underestimated.
"But there came a time, when the- Jelly-Man," he pressed a sigh of pretended annoyance and Erza giggled, "discovered a more vulnerable, human-alike side to the gremlin he had previously thought impossible.
"That day, however, a great calamity befell the unfortunate Jelly-Man. When he – and it is still unsolved to the present day whether it had been accidental – should he have existed, that is," Jellal coughed and she grinned into him. "When he fell down a ravine, blessed with merely a single fractured ankle, though cursed with the spite of his companions, who left him to die a forsaken death…"
"Way to be dramatic," Meredy rolled her eyes. "It was hardly bleeding; Ul said it was sprained, nothing more," she huffed, a glass clinking back in their kitchen at home. "And what was all that about 'almost human' quality?"
"You didn't help him out the ravine?" Erza asked, raising a brow at the lack of complaints about the last part. A heartbeat passed before Meredy decided to reply. More than enough time to devour a fourth brownie.
"Do you really think someone like Jellal needs help to climb a couple of metres?"
"He said his ankle was too hurt for climbing," Erza argued, receiving a reluctantly agreeing hum.
"It wasn't like we didn't help him," she shrugged, "only not right away…"
Jellal gritted his teeth when his ankle gave in beneath him, pain tipping his balance for him to land on the cold, hard rocks once more. They were cutting into his back, making it nearly impossible to sit up somewhat comfortably.
"Jellal?" Ultear's smooth voice echoed from above. "You alive down there?"
He groaned, tilting his head back. It was dark already, but at least the constant rain over the past days had let up, gracing them with a bright fleece of twinkling stars overhead and the more than generous light of the full moon.
"I don't think I can climb up – the walls are too far apart," he announced. He drew a breath to add the condition of his aching ankle, but the older mage was faster as usual.
"We can't have you use Meteor at the time like this – I can see the closest settlement and they'll definitely see us if you do; you're gonna have to stay there 'til tomorrow," she determined. "We'll keep a lookout though. Meredy has the first watch," she called. Then she disappeared.
Not a moment later, a shadow hovered over the rim of the ravine and in front of the moonlight. Spiky hair, alongside those other spiky golden things Jellal had no idea as to why she wore them over her ears appeared, drawn against the bright heavenly body. It was impossible to see her face, but he could feel the wordless scowl she directed at him.
Sighing to himself, Jellal refocused on his ankle. Removing his soggy boot, he felt more than water to be drenching the underside of his foot. The blood had seeped through the inside of his boot – he did not possess socks – smearing down his ankle where he felt rocks to have scraped open his skin, though most likely not broken, but perhaps merely cracked his bones.
Shivering from the cold, he slipped the disgustingly wet boot back on. Reaching behind his back, he fished out a pebble or two that stung particularly, trying to get as comfortable as he could on a pile of rocks.
Wincing when something hit him, Jellal stared up, afraid of a belated landslide to bury him alive. The moon shone at him. In front of its perfectly round splendour, the head was still watching him intently. The silhouette of her fist drew against the moon, slowly, very slowly, and Jellal flinched when it flung another clump of dirt at him.
"Hey!" He scolded, then lowered his voice, seeing as it ricocheted off the walls louder than expected. With a narrowing of her eyes he could not see, Meredy dropped another lump of earth, fingers clawing through the moist grass above the ravine for more. "Meredy," he growled. At that, her head disappeared, though it did not take another minute until more soil soared his way.
It was going to be a long night.
"Couldn't you have used your shield to protect you?" Erza asked, detaching her face from his neck. "It doesn't glow, right?"
"True," Jellal consented, "but I didn't know that spell back then,"
"Really?" Her eyes grew big. Having to draw back more, she glanced up at him, meeting nostalgically calm eyes in the early dawn, regarding her lovingly. A small smile settled on her lips, and he was not sure whether she was as aware as him of the successful nightmare distraction, or whether she was simply happy to return his smile.
"Mhm," Jellal disclosed, "we learnt many things from one another in those years, and magic was definitely not spared," he retold. "Jiu Leixing for instance – I developed that while studying the night sky, just after Meredy had used her Maguilty Sodom to punch a group of dark mages into oblivion an hour prior."
"She inspired you to develop a new spell?"
"I think we all did; I know I once inspired her because she was so angry at me, she practically exploded with Ethernano," he laughed and Erza had to chuckle, too.
"You didn't tell me how it ended," she remarked. He pulled a face. "Did Jelly-Man really die in that hole? Or did the Jellos have a change of heart and helped him out?"
"Now that's a story for another day," he kissed her forehead, but she wriggled away.
"You can't end a story like that and expect me to just accept it," she protested. He gave a tired chuckle. Her lids were getting heavier, too, and when he suppressed a yawn, he easily infected her, having to smile broadly at the tiny tears that sprung to her eyes.
Wiping them away, he cuddled her close to him again, relishing in the warmth of her breath on his collarbone.
"It's not that exciting, anyway," he yawned then, voice rounding with the gaping of his mouth.
"Jellal,"
"Fine, fine," he gathered her closer, and she rubbed her face to his neck. It sent a warmly fuzzy jolt through his insides, even after all this time. "The gremlin kept on harassing the poor- uh, the Jelly-Man, throwing so much dirt down the hole that it eventually filled up the ravine and he was able to climb out without further nuisance – the end."
"That's not how it happened," she pouted against him. He had to grin.
"It's hard to come by a reliable source regarding legends and myths," he digressed in a mysteriously distant voice.
"Damn right it's hard – 'cause he ain't one," Meredy tsked about his 'reliable source' excuse through the lacrima.
"So then you didn't throw all of that stuff down on him?"
"Of course I did. He was being insufferable; he deserved it," Meredy shrugged.
"By doing what?" Erza raised a brow. Meredy grumbled something unintelligible, awkwardly rolling her lower lip between her teeth. She wavered from side to side with her head, creating a rustling sound, then busied herself with what gave more and more clinking sounds of cutlery.
"Well, he was just…" she muttered. "Everything, actually,"
"Everything?" Erza pushed, finally enough to get an answer. She glanced across the lake when her plate was suddenly empty of brownies. Jellal was still swimming his rounds, and she not only enjoyed watching him as much as he enjoyed the activity, but she started to crave a different treat whenever his muscular arms surfaced for the next stroke. Licking her lips, she could hardly wait to see all of him emerge.
"By being so obnoxiously nice to me while I really didn't want to like him – he wasn't supposed to make it hard to dislike him," Meredy complained, making Erza laugh. She could not see, but it made her husband smile in turn whenever the sound of her laughter faintly reached him between the splashing of water. "He was this stupidly handsome and gallant bloke in front of a just-entered-puberty girl; it was exasperating," Meredy kept on fuming, a light blush across her cheeks but a grin on her face as she heard Erza laugh wholeheartedly.
Both sighed in unison when reigning in their amusement. Meredy waited another moment.
"That was also around the time when we broke the news about you to him – about your disappearance and highly undoubtable death," her tone softened into pity. Ceasing any laughter, Erza had to smile sadly. But it brightened at the sight of her husband carefreely savouring their honeymoon. Their unison. In a way, perhaps even himself.
With a caring hum, Erza wordlessly affirmed not to be grieving that past event anymore.
"It was hard not to feel sorry for him then – that, and I had only just saved Ultear from that traumatising attempt at suicide; I really wasn't ready to deal with his,"
"I understand," Erza gently said, a reassuring smile returning on the other side.
"Oh, and he did not die in the ravine," Meredy nonchalantly added. Erza snorted.
"How do you know? Reliable sources are hard to come by when it comes to legends such as this one,"
"Yeah right," Meredy audibly rolled her eyes. "Well, as a matter of fact, I heard the rest of the story went something along the lines of how the Jellos," her tone oozed with amusement, "dragged him out of the ravine and he hindered travelling significantly with his dumb ankle and the cold he'd caught,"
"Now that you mention it," Erza raised a brow, absently tracing the crumbs on her plate with one finger, "he did say something about a certain gremlin not alerting the witch about the Jelly-Man getting soaked in the rain that night,"
"And did he also annotate how said gremlin dedicatedly nursed him back to health?" Meredy shot back, sticking out her tongue above the speaker.
"You almost suffocated him,"
"I tenderly tucked him in," Meredy laughed, as did Erza while shaking her head at the same time. She licked the crumbs off her finger.
Eyes wandering, she caught sight of her husband where he had steered towards her. So she kept the finger close for a different kind of sucking as soon as he would be able to see. She already donned the black bikini she knew made him weak.
"In any case, we're going to have a word about this whole gremlin business. I don't want to become 'Auntie Gremlin' once the baby's here," Meredy nodded to herself. Erza had to smile, the images of her nightmare that had started the entire drama coming back to her yet seeming so far away. Faded almost. Jellal really had outdone himself – he and Meredy both – not only distracting her enough to go back to sleep, but to sleep well past lunch. Even now, Erza's mind did not urge her to harp on about the dream.
"As for me," she said, gazing out where the sun shimmered on the calm waves. Jellal had reached the shallow water, his sculpted torso that she craved dripping with water in a way that made her cross her legs. Her smile broadened into a smirk when she saw the flashing of his eyes to her attire. "I think I'm going to ask for some more myths of a more or less reliable source."