A/N: I had the first sentence stuck in my head and I had to write it down, and before I knew it, I wrote this. It's my first time writing in the 2nd person, as I usually write in the third, but I wanted to try it, and it seemed more... poetic this way (though I'm no poet).

This fic is featuring my beloved babies, Jellal and Erza, with the "you" in the fic being Jellal. Since their names aren't mentioned anywhere I thought I should say that here.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this thousand words long angsty story! :D

To keep on loving her means to keep on suffering, knowing you were the one who caused her more pain than anyone else.

To breathe in and out, feeling the air burn your lungs every time you remember her beautiful eyes and soft smile and those breathtaking scarlet tresses, which haunt every second of your reality and your fiction. You are lost in her brightness forever, and if you, by any chance, try to fight those feelings away, you'll just get caught up deeper, like a fly trying to escape the spider's web. Her kindness is your downfall. Her forgiveness is the blade that repeatedly slashes through your heart and makes you bleed love, scarlet red like the heaven that haunts you.

You hate that you love her.

You hate that your soul keeps calling out to hers, because, because of you and your selfishness, she can't move on. Because of you, she is stuck in a limbo between the past and the future, but that is not the present. The present is looked over, because the past is too painful to be forgotten and the future is too uncertain to be left alone.

You hate that she loves you too.

It's impossible for you to just forget about your feelings when a part of you keeps screaming that they are requited, and that you can have a happy ending. But the rational part of you knows that that's not true, and that even if your feelings are requited, they are forbidden, dirty and undeserving, and they shouldn't even exist. She shouldn't encourage them. But she does, in that subtle way of hers, and every time her warm brown eyes look at you in the sweetest, yet most torturous way, you feel yourself giving in, and you decide to do what you know best.

Let the love die some other day.

You keep on torturing yourself with self-hatred and screams of how you don't deserve her, can't ever have her, but you still love her and you don't care. You don't care that this love makes you die inside a little every day, knowing that the chances of ever being with her are slim, so very slim, and falling lower and lower as the time passes. Maybe, the love you feel for her is one of the rare things that keep you sane, even though you question that same sanity every time you dream of kissing her.

To you, love is like a shattered glass. Sharp and dangerous, and can make you bleed if you're not careful enough. Even if you put all of the pieces together, the cracks are visible, screaming at your eyes that nothing will ever be the same, that things have changed, you have changed and she has changed as well. But if you just let those pieces be, someone will be bound to get hurt, and it might not even be one of the two of you – someone might be hurt by the mess you made and didn't clean up. Still, those dangerous little pieces are too precious to you to just throw them away. So you keep them protected, in your hands, and you don't let anyone else touch them, and you endure the pain all by yourself.

But unbeknown to you, she, too, keeps some of the shards protected, and she, too, endures the pain, but she knows she is not alone in her suffering. That always gives her comfort.

Sometimes, you think love is like the raging storm in the middle of nowhere, with only you and a small, shabby cottage there. You seek shelter in that small barrack made of rotten woods, but it offers you little reassurance, as the roof is leaking and the walls are cracking under the weight of the heavy rain. You have two choices – you either stay in the cottage and risk being buried under if the walls give way, or you run into the storm and risk being washed away or hit by a lightning before you can even see the clear grounds. You're trapped. And all that while she's waiting for you, in a small but steady and solid haven she made herself, praying you will see the small clearing she asked for from the forces from above, forces you don't believe exist or think have forsaken you. Forces she hates asking favors from, because she, too, thinks that if they exist, they left her to suffer for too long.

But she's desperate. She has no other choice.

In the rare moments you feel like love is your salvation, you feel at peace. At those moments, you imagine love like the peaceful and welcoming water that soothes your wounds and quenches your thirst. You can see yourself floating, effortlessly, on the warm surface that makes you drowsy, because it makes you feel safe. You aren't afraid of it – there are no violent waves in sight and the surface keeps you from drowning, and you close your eyes, and you dream. Dream of her beautiful eyes and soft smile and those breathtaking scarlet tresses, and suddenly, she's there with you, and she's holding your hand, and you're both so happy. She smiles at you and you smile back, and you feel you could die happy right then and there.

Then you feel yourself being pulled back to the reality, but before the image of the perfect heaven disappears from your mind, she cups your cheek and locks her eyes with yours and whispers.

'I will forever wait for you.'

You wake up and your throat hurts, your eyes burn and your heart feels like a heavy lead. And the final words she left to you, those whispered sounds that are burnt into your soul, are like the sweetest poison you've ever tasted. It hurts, your heart hurts, your soul is disappearing and your mind is weeping, but it's still trying to stay rational and protect her. So with little strength, the most you dare utter those words with (because the pain is almost unbearable), you whisper back, even though you know that she can't hear you.

'I will never return to you.'

A tear slides down your cheek, and unbeknown to you, she is crying as well, because she had just woken up from a nightmare that was terrifyingly real.

A/N: I hope you liked it, and please leave a review! :)