It was like a tangible force, pressing down on her chest, reducing her to nothing more than what she could never be.
The Tower of Heaven was thorough in their torture, ensuring that they left their occupants with enough scars that they would never be forgotten. Not all of them were emotional.
Erza's hands rest on her stomach, rubbing circles over the flatness that was there, that would always be there. Memories of being on a surgical table with minimal anaesthetic, feeling as brutish hands claimed her insides, changed her beyond repair. The guards wanted to keep the workers healthy, and healthy workers could not be with child; forced infertility is the most successful mode of contraception, and every person in the Tower was subject to it.
She was so lost inside herself that she did not hear Mirajane's approach.
"Baby..." Her voice barely reaches Erza, warm body feeling like static against Erza's prickling senses.
This wasn't atypical; every so often this trauma flared up like a fire, consuming Erza, searing her resolve into nothing more than cinders. Being chained up by Kyoka, beaten and maimed in ways which were both nostalgic and agonising, sent everything rushing to the surface once more.
She thinks that she hears herself sob, but isn't sure if it's a memory or her reality. It's when she realises that the noise comes from Mirajane that Erza comes to her senses.
"I don't know- how to help." Her cheeks are flushed, white hair unruly as she knots her hands in it. Mirajane's eyes, wide and uncertain, plead with Erza. For what, Erza doesn't know, but still she doubts that she can deliver.
"I can't be helped," Erza spits, sitting up with such an abruptness that Mirajane falls away from her in shock. "I'm broken, Mira, and there's nothing anyone can do. You can't stick glass together with sellotape." She says, startled by the numbness of her own voice.
This only makes Mirajane cry harder, grasping onto Erza's skirt in raw desperation. Without thinking, Erza pushes her fists away. Their eyes meet, both distressed and conflicted, but Erza's harder, like the Tower made her to be.
Mirajane was the most motherly, caring person Erza knew, and it was selfish of her to be with a woman that she could never share that experience with. Lifting herself off the bed, Erza ignores the watery shouts of her name, and shuts the door gently behind her.
