to want to forget

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Loss is not something easily handled. There is no instruction manual for it, no formulas or maps to guide one out of its clutches.

For Erza, the modus changes daily. It adapts to what she needs because sometimes she is angry, sometimes she is miserable, sometimes she is both. There are rare days when she is okay, as there are some when she works her body to exhaustion and she is too tired to feel anything. She thinks: she's been here before. She's watched comrades die; it should be easier this time around because it might have been her mother, but it was a mother she never knew. Erza meets Eileen and sees her die all in a span of under an hour, surely not enough time to feel some sort of anything. It should be easy. It should be easy to forget about Eileen Belserion.

It isn't, and Erza cannot forgive herself for it. Corporal punishments come in many forms that run the gamut from small to unnecessary. Sometimes she doesn't eat. Sometimes she doesn't sleep. Sometimes she trains for hours until her muscles scream and her throat feels smaller than a pin prick. It's all a measure of penance and Erza wonders when the time will come that she can forgive herself, or at least for the throbbing behind her chest cavity to cease. Either would be good, but tonight it seems not to be the case. So she supposes she can avoid sleep again.

At least when she is awake she doesn't have to see the stains of sacrifice on the pavement, or piles of debris (wreckage of Magnolia; her mother's body is in there somewhere). There is a mug of coffee in her hands and at least she can blame the trembling on it. She stands where the moon is brightest, where the soft light from the living room barely reaches. If she looks outside from the balcony, she can see vast grasslands and the starry night sky of the countryside. Small comforts in nothingness. She almost doesn't hear Jellal's sleepy voice; almost doesn't want to turn to look and have to explain the expression on her face she cannot wipe off. But she does anyway because she isn't really fooling anyone.

So she says, "I couldn't sleep. I haven't been for a while."

Jellal is a man practiced in dealing with grief. Or, at least, avoiding it, compartmentalizing it, suppressing it, overblowing it, wallowing in it, doing bad things for it. Perhaps all but overcoming it, but it sort of feels like the same thing these days, since there isn't much you can do for peace when suffering is all you've known since boyhood. But, that's not important right now. Not when Erza has that empty look in her eyes and a tension in her whole body.

"Tell me what's wrong." It's a command, but it's gentle. Firm but not unkind because, he believes, people in grieving are too often unable to face what ails them until they are softly made to do so.

Something about the green and brown and gold in Jellal's eyes have always held not a small solace for Erza and at this moment, when it's so easy to feel like the barest vibration could crush her, it's an opportune respite.

No, they don't talk about sadness. They don't talk about how since they were children, they've been set up for a life of misery and isn't it amazing, Jellal, how even though it corrupts us for a while, we can always find the light that is so hell-bent on shuffling out? Sometimes Erza feels the question bubble to the surface, trying to emerge out of thick skin when dinners go silent or nights get long. There is often a nervous energy when quiet shrouds them and that is the time Erza cannot tell who needs answers and who can provide them.

Personally, she had neither. Putting grief into words was not as straightforward as it could be when she was a child and she could throw tantrums or punch Mirajane or punch Natsu or whoever was there to punch, or maybe rush into a dangerous situation because a broken leg doesn't feel as bad as a broken heart, and it was fine because she was a kid and kids did stupid shit anyway.

She supposes that should have been a great clue back then, that when people grow older, what hurts is hemmed in between heaving ribs and left to rot until it dies on its own or something else kills it.

A stab at a reassuring smile vexes Erza more than it should so she doesn't even try to contort her facial muscles into something less doleful when Jellal approaches. She thinks she's done with facades, at least for now. Or tonight. She would give herself that. Her admission is said in the woeful tones of the routed. "I don't know what to talk about." She knows she should try better. She doesn't know how to need comforting; she's not the one who gets picked up off the ground.

Jellal looks unsure and Erza feels bad in her limbo.

So she tries harder. She swallows hard and clenches her hand around the cooling mug of coffee so she doesn't have to feel how feeble her grip is on the ceramic, on everything. "When Simon or Master died, it was easy because I could cry about it." Before the lump pushes into her throat, she barrels on. "Eileen—my mother—was never in the picture until she showed up trying to kill me and Wendy. When she killed herself, I didn't expect to feel something for her. The thing is, she killed herself because she said she loved me. She was going to die but she let me know that all this time, I had a mother that loved me. I guess even after all that, I don't feel entitled to grieving a woman I never knew." She leaves out the memories Eileen shared. Maybe she doesn't deserve those memories as well.

No, there really is no straight forward way to handle grief indeed. Jellal takes the coffee mug that looks to be in danger of Erza's hold and sets it down on the window sill beside her. He wonders if she wants him to say something. Sometimes, people just want to talk and get the ugliness out of their system. Erza's never needed any reassurances, especially not from him. He might be just as bad as her mother, never truly existing in the picture but feeling worthy of imposing on her anyway.

He wraps his arms around her, feeling warmth and softness and ease he should be imparting to her, not taking from. What can he even say? The woman in question did horrible things made no easier to stomach by calling it wartime casualties. It wasn't like he had anything good to say about her.

"I think you can grieve whoever you want," he says, because that is safe, at least. Erza can make her own decisions and she can certainly feel what she already does. He wants to tell her so but he fears it might sound condescending, or hypocritical coming from him.

Right where his night shirt's collar starts, he feels hot wetness that can only be tears, smeared against impermeable skin, heartbreaking in its implication. When a girl who rarely cries is driven to it, well, it kind of feels hopeless, doesn't it? Jellal's heart beats just a bit faster. His hands roam as if to distribute relief, up a rigid then lax back, between shoulders that hunch, through hair such a marvelous, marvelous scarlet, straight and heavy like wet silk despite the tumult of her sleep. She possesses him. Isn't it so odd and just a little bit perverse how he can think that while she cries?

There are a million thoughts and emotions racing through her head, fighting for the spotlight of what she may deem foremost in her priorities right now, and in moments, she is exhausted despite not saying anything or coming to a resolution. Erza hates conflict left undecided. But her mother just died and she's sad about it, so she supposes it's a time as good as any to procrastinate.

"Let's go to bed," she tells Jellal. Her tears haven't stopped yet. Does he find it odd that it comes out of just one eye? She's had years to get used to it but she always wonder how it looks to other people and if they wonder why such a pretty girl is so odd. Of course, Jellal doesn't have to wonder about why she has a prosthetic eye, but it still begs the question of how it looks to him.

Jellal doesn't say anything when she pulls away and tells him she wants to go back to sleep. Or that's not exactly right, is it, because when he grabs her hand and leads her back into the bedroom, she stops and clarifies for him. "I mean, take me to bed, Jellal. I want you to make love to me."

Oh.

He can't complain about that because making love to Erza can never be a chore, but he wonders if it's appropriate. He's heard someone or other say once that you don't fuck sad girls because that's taking advantage. But he's not going to fuck Erza, is he? He's not going to ram into her without any regard for what she's going through. She's asking this of him, so she probably needs him to do it. He doesn't know proper etiquette for sexual relations (honestly someone tell him if he's really supposed to be chaste when his lover is sad) but he does know that people do what they need to do to cope.

Jellal doesn't ask her are you sure because she has that sure look in her eyes and he can't say Erza's never been anything but sure all her life.

He takes her to bed and undresses her. She still trembles but she doesn't ask him to stop. Her arms reach for him but she doesn't pull him in for a kiss like he expects her to. Instead she rubs her hands all over him, touching him as if it's the first time, as if she's trying to find weak spots, as if she can find answers in the dips and rise of his body. Jellal's breathing climbs, and he takes her hands to halt their ministrations when he feels that tight tingling on the base of his back, as if his spine had been used as a lightning rod. He kisses her hands before pinning them by her side and letting his mouth mirror her earlier touch. Erza shivers, grinds, moans. Jellal is just glad she isn't crying anymore even though he knows the storm hasn't passed, just on hold, imminent bedlam.

The nice thing about lust is that it's all consuming. Erza forgets about how confused Eileen has made her because sensation and rationality focuses on wherever Jellal places his mouth. Sure pain might be bigger with a longer lasting power and heavier impact, but at the very moment, lust puts up a fight, keeping a stronghold on Erza's attention. She's thankful for it.

The thing about lust is that it's temporary. Jellal watches Erza come, then watches the whole familiar production of its aftermath. She sighs too much and turns away from him, not even bothering to wipe between her legs, only dragging the sheets over her and trying all at once to fall asleep and to stop feeling anything. Jellal kisses the top of her head and leaves her alone. Maybe while he showers, she will cry again, or maybe she will have exhausted herself into sleep, more of the temporary that puts real time on standstill. He can't say he blames her. He himself spent years resorting to the same temporary through different, uglier means.

note: I know it reads funny. I'm trying this revolving POV, truncated narrative thingy to practice. And I need to practice more lol holy shit this just didn't come out like I thought it would.

I'm like, hopelessly in love with Eileen. She's everything I want to be in life.