notes: okay honestly I don't know what I was doing here. But I needed to do something to get out of my writing slump and shame myself to actually writing something.

She's always been bad with words.

She trips and stumbles over them despite her two steady feet. You find it odd she can barely make her mouth move even while she can handle weights twice her size without a bother. You find it even stranger that her silence is so loud in your ears. You're not sure if you're drawn to her first because you've never seen a scarlet so thick on a girl so thin or because you're too damn curious about her for your own sake.

Whatever it is, you become her friend. And you don't realize it yet, but you then become her admirer.

And at some point you become her voice. You stop her from being beat to pulp and being punished for not being good enough on the scale of limitless expectations.

You become everyone's voice, really. It's not that you're louder, better, stronger—your breath is just braver and doesn't quiver when let out.

"Fuck this," you say—in a paraphrase. "We're not taking this shit anymore."

After hearing your silver tongue start a revolution, she's inspired to wield a silver blade instead—because if there's anything you're good at, it's stirring hope among lackluster spirits, being blunt about what's wrong and right, saying just the right things to make her heart skip several beats –and she knows that if she's going to excel at anything, it isn't to challenge you—it's to complement you.

And so she never really does challenge you.

Not when you say things that don't make sense.
Not when you do things that hurt her, or the rest of them.
Not when she loses her eye and you lose your mind.

Years later when your project is done, you finally show her the glory and power slave labor can build and invite her to be the final sacrificial piece in your game of chess, but you're surprised that she doesn't care—not for the riches you've offered her, and not for the lies that you force her to believe.

She brandishes both sword and words at you, and you think for a moment that she's grown to be a better woman but then she hesitates when she sees your eyes and her façade breaks when she sees who she loved in them and she becomes that quiet girl that didn't say a word—again.

You have this one regretful thought asking why she isn't able to save you—why she can't say the right words to move you before you came down this path in the first place.

But she's always been bad with words.

It makes you wonder if speaking up at all for her in the first place was good for the both of you at all. You ask yourself this as the deep ocean blue swallows you whole.

You ask yourself this when you wake up, but you don't remember much else. You chose not to remember much.

And time takes care of the rest.

Well, except for the festering question you couldn't answer no matter how many nights you don't sleep, no matter how many days you aren't fully awake.

Eventually you remember everything.

Eventually you gather the courage to come back to her after seven years—rather, she comes back to you first and you seek her out because you—you fucking greedy selfish sinner—want to just see her just once, at least once while your mind is clear of an obsession to make towers climbing to the heavens on the backs of children you ruled like white mice, at least once while you can see for yourself what an angel she is and remind yourself how utterly stupid you are for thinking you could share the same happy ending.

She catches you later and you mumble—because you don't trust yourself to speak up anymore. You don't have a silver tongue anymore, and what you say gets her upset and she's so upset she can't find the words.

Simply a slap doesn't do. She tries again.

"You're not making sense!" she yells at you—finally.

She should have slapped the sense in you years ago. She should have raised her hand and hit your pretty petty face before everything went to shit. She should have been honest and told you that you're a fucking idiot—

No, you should have done that yourself, you suddenly realize.

She was never bad with words.

She's been talking through you this entire time.

You've heard your voice, heart, soul within you but you've never listened.

She's been talking to you, she's been telling you, she's been saving you—trying to pull you out of the depths of your own cursed mind. You thought she's been quiet this whole time, but it really is just you with the closed ears and you who doesn't realize she's completely with you.

You tumble into this realization as you literally fall into her arms and she falls into yours, and all too suddenly you're listening so close that you can hear the sound of her heartbeat, the sound of her quiet breathing over your lips, the sound of her whispering your name soft so soft in a way that makes you think this is all a dream when it's really all just a revelation—

You are so close that your heart, mind, soul starts to tell you differently than what you've always heard.

You've done wrong time and again—that doesn't mean you will always do wrong.
You've done things you'll never be able to change—spending your life won't fix them.
You've done enough running, own your responsibility to be forgiven—because you will be.

Sometimes you walk backwards, but you're always moving forwards. Stop looking where you came from, face where you will go. Kiss her. Paint her with your lips. Draw trails over her with your fingertips. Show her where her armor ends and her skin begins. Caress her edges rough until they turn smooth. There is no divide. Separate can't, doesn't, won't come between you and her. And even when it wants to, her heart will stay full, complete, unbroken and next to you—because, Jellal, she loves you.

Maybe the same words are on the tip of her tongue—but she forgets them, pushes them aside for that moment so she can make room her in her mind to burn this memory of you lying so close to her.

So until you shed your shadow and don a lighter set of clothes, until another year passes and another begins, until you're curled in her warmth and she's tangled in your limbs, you don't get to hear this from her out loud.

And well, it seems she got a little better with words.

And this time, you listen.

comments always appreciated. thoughts always welcome.

thir13enth