#yajima

Through a spiral of stairs the atmosphere morphed noticeably; from gleaming elegance and sophistication, to something unwelcoming and uncared for. The air itself felt colder here and the lights breaking through felt cruel.

It made him shiver.

The elder walked up to the administration with the charter fluttering in hand, feeling the weight in his chest sink down further as ignorance stopped being an option. 

His eyes looked aimlessly around; first in front of him, then at the walls around, then at the floor and then what was in his hands before meeting the beady eyes of one of the wardens looking down at him. 

Their slitted gaze remained still.

The shake in his fingers intensified but the old man kept composure. His knees frail as he stood on his toes to deliver the deed whilst his eyes struggled to keep the stern gaze. 

As the paper was transferred his reasoning slipped out.

“I’m here to see Sieg-”

But before his error was completed he caught himself. His throat felt dry at his blunder. 

The name nearly had deceived him again.

The warden’s eyes sharpened at the mistake, which made the elderly counselor correct himself swiftly.

“Jellal Fernandes.”

The name left his lips quietly; truthful yet rooted in confusion.

The overseeing look of the warden did not lighten—but instead remained staring before they muttered something under their breath. The suspicion was not directed to him, he knew that, but that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable to bear.

The warden turned his attention away from him in the moment, buzzing in another authority to come over to be in charge of the escort through this unknown confinement. 

Yajima waited patiently as every second that dragged further unnerved him.

It wasn’t long until the guide arrived, but it felt longer for himself. 

A warden with just as slitted eyes—just as beady—settled beside him, ready to walk him through the imprisonment. 

The steps were wet; notable against the cold dry stone as his own followed as a timid shadow.

He tailed behind light and fast, but his pace began to soon falter as his feet began to ache and his mind began to wander.

Cells upon cells filled the walls. 

Some vast, some small. 

Each gate housed a prisoner as heinous as the last. 

Plotters, murderers, thieves, rapists and the list went on—

All objective scum. 

All deserving of censure and condemnation.

Yet as he saw all of them—his eyes sought for the cell that was intended for his visit.

And he would be thrown off when every next cell he thought would be his—would be holding someone else.

It grew the unsettling feeling further.

The corridor he was being guided through just kept stretching. 

The cells kept increasing. 

And the crimes kept getting more severe.

Yet he was not there.

The warden never stopped and the distance kept going on as the darkness around them swallowed the light. The shiver returned down his spine the deeper he went down this labyrinth and still had no sight of the man in question. 

It became clear how much of a dirty secret he had become.

Yet once he had been a man that stood before them all.

Representing their goodness and grace..

In the midst of his thoughts the journey abruptly came to an end. 

The plentiful steps he had been making mindlessly, were brought to a sudden halt as he met the back of the warden who had finally stopped walking.

The elder had no idea of how much time had elapsed, nor how much distance he covered; to his belief it probably wasn’t as much as he was thinking.

Time itself seemed to stretch beyond reasoning here.

It was expected.

But that didn’t make it any less jarring.

“He’s here.”

The warden croaked, his back turned to the cell they sought. Yajima finally lifted his eyes beyond feet and shadows, blinking at the icy contrast that now illuminated the space; light hues that made everything more eerie.

His eyes took some time to adjust to the switch between light and shadow. 

The containment was peculiar; isolated in design just like the man it housed. 

Instead of being a mere cell, it was a lacrimal cube—gleaming and brilliant like the construct its occupant once slaved over. 

Fitting for a man of his capabilities and past. 

But despite the radiance—everything looked cold.

Empty.

Instead of light and severity, it was misery and nothingness embodied.

The sight made the elder stop, the uncomfortable feeling drumming away louder in his chest.

The space containing him looked strangely vast, even though Yajima knew it was not the case. 

It was transparent and contained—yet felt smeared and stretched. 

He couldn’t see him immediately.

Or really the case may have been…he didn’t want to.

But then he saw its occupant. 

On the floor. With his back to one of the walls. With his head down and eyes closed or towards his lap.

And he looked so small.

It was indeed strange.

He who once boasted charm and confidence, who was coddled in opulence—was now swallowed in sheer emptiness.

A withered husk.

Yajima had to do a double take when he realised it was him.

And the longer look didn’t make the sight any better.

The trousers he wore—the ones he came in with one year ago—they hung from him loosely, gaping at the waistband despite a belt trying to hold them up. 

His bones jutted out under his skin, still encased by muscle, but his being was beginning to look more skeletal than man. 

And his hair had grown unruly, shadowing his face.

Though maybe it looked so long because his head hung.

But it didn’t stop there. 

Further details—further cruelty—caught his eyes.

How skin ranged from shades of sallow tan to deep purples and rotten browns.

Hues accumulated from constant abuse, fading once only to imprint another.

Most having been inflicted from the past year, but some marks looked older and more rooted.

Predating even that—

“You have a visitor.”

The warden announced in a hoarse voice after clearing its throat. The tone was also jarring. Insensitive to the moment.

Yet fitting to announce his arrival.

But there was no immediate reaction. The man inside barely moved. 

It was as if the words barely registered. 

Yajima watched with a held breath.

Was he just refusing to acknowledge him? 

Or was it that he could not?

Judgement began to sway the elder’s mind until it was broken by the slow, quiet movement of seeing his head shift. Pulling itself upwards as his bangs fell away from his face and hollow eyes stared forward—blankly—trying to place where his visitor was.

His face didn’t change whilst doing that.

Perhaps it couldn’t.

But under his searching gaze, Yajima forgot why he even came there.

Or it made him consider—did he have a reason in the first place?

The question—though unspoken—hung between them all loudly. 

And it remained unanswered since none of them knew.

Why was he even there?

The silence was thick and stifling, between a vacant gaze and an unnamed curiosity, it stood between them manifest as a third being. 

It made his nerves tip and his frailness loud.

Yajima wanted to cut through the silence between them, but before words could impact between them, his face twisted.

In disgust? In pity? In something between?

He didn’t know.

But whatever it was it made Jellal recoil.

Not overtly.

But enough he noticed.

And it made Yajima swallow thickly.

The warden who was still beside him urged the elder to go forth. 

Immediately upon entering the cube, a contrast could be noted. The prison looked bare and smelt sharp like coldness—yet there was a permeating stench of rot inside.

Wafting quietly.

Setting.

Fading.

His eyes instinctively looked for where the smell was coming from. 

Blood. 

Blood leaking from gashes and lashes that were seared into skin; namely his back. 

Kept secret merely by the prison and by himself as he pressed the wound into the wall behind him.

The only thing telling of them was the blood that escaped either; soaking parts of his trousers and hardening on his skin.

The sight was cruel.

Yajima’s humanity made him step beyond himself.

But then reality pulled him back.

“Stop.” a voice said to him.

“You don’t need to help me.”

The voice was surprisingly willful despite who it came from. It made the elder pause.

Someone had finally spoken between them.

His feet stood in place as if commanded, and the elder didn’t question. 

Not like those who would have been spun livid by the mere audacity of being ordered by a criminal. 

Especially by the likes of him.

Though to be honest—the man Yajima was—people would have expected his last words to a fiend such as him to be lasting. 

A lecture perhaps? 

A righteous and spiteful addition.

And there would have been no fault on him to do so.

The authority inside allowed him.

But it was the human inside that condemned him.

Because…

Why make a waiting man heavier than he is?

The elder swallowed thickly, painfully observant—yet painfully obedient too. His knees started to give, feeling the weight coming down sinking into his bones. He wanted to sit but there was nothing; nothing but coldness and stains of unsaid misery.

It reminded him not to get comfortable.

Silence remained still between them until he finally got the courage to ask once.

“What do you remember Jellal?”

It was not something he thought to ask.

But it was not something he could avoid either.

As he looked at the man before him, all he saw was mystery. 

And that was all which seemed to inherently define Jellal.

He was detained in misfortune, but even through the throes of incessant cruelty, he somehow maintained his secrets. 

His suffering was obvious, yet he remained silent. 

Nothing told of the truth inside him.

But he had gone everywhere.

And also nowhere.

Yajima waited intensely for an answer.

Which was answered to him in brief.

“Everything.” 

It made Yajima wonder, what did that mean? 

What was ‘everything’? How much did it entail? 

The weight was apparent in that statement, he knew it held a burdensome truth.

But he also knew he wouldn’t get the full understanding of it. 

Jellal wouldn’t be the one to detail things beyond himself. 

Certainly not.

But nonetheless it made him question:

Did this make him feel better about Jellal’s decided end?

Or did it make him feel worse?

The man was brought in with amnesia—confused yet submissive to his detainment.

It felt strange punishing a man who couldn’t recall what his sins were.

And despite his acceptance of punishment, most of them believed this to be another farce.

Yajima was no exception to this belief.

As Jellal was no stranger to deceiving them.

But then the arrogance they expected—never surfaced.

The cunning self and manipulation they were cautious of regarding him, never left his lips. 

Nothing did.

Was it because it was killed?

Or was it because it wasn’t remembered?

He didn’t know. 

And nor did he know the answer even now.

But Jellal said he remembered everything.

And surely if the story wasn’t as straight as they believed he would have said more? 

Would he just have accepted this injustice if it weren’t earned?

As he was hiding in his thoughts another question was asked to him.

“What of Erza?”

“And what of Fairy Tail?”

It caught Yajima off guard. 

The conversation had been steered away from him.

The mystery was maintained.

But to Jellal’s question he found himself mum. 

As he truly did not know what to say. 

Because, how could he tell a damned man another misery?

So he settled for a compromise.

“They are as you have always known.”

It wasn’t a lie.

But neither was it the full truth.

Jellal made no notion of response. 

The silence that settled between them made Yajima believe that Jellal even doubted it. 

If he saw properly, he could have sworn a muscle tensed on the man’s face as his eyes cut away for a moment.

But he knew the man was in no place to challenge it whether it be true or false.

Or perhaps he didn’t as his words were that few; as they were beaten out of him.

But either way, the silence remained between them.

Trying to fill it, Yajima's eyes looked elsewhere, catching onto the sight of Jellal encompassed by cold nothingness. And he looked further down—at his caved chest with his ribs exposed, rising and falling. 

The sight was ghastly but it made him consider his own words he had just told.

‘As you have always known…’

Because if he applied these words to the man he spoke them to; then what was the truth to come from that?

From what was known Jellal had been a slave since young. And just like the enigma shrouding him, so were any roots covered that could have told of himself. 

His parentage? Unknown.

His homelife? Undisclosed.

His background? Fabricated.

His motives? Clothed in secrecy.

Every truth about him was untold—contained—just like he had been all his life.

Kept behind walls, regardless of where they’d extend.

One containment after the other. 

It truly made him wonder;

Was this all Jellal had known?

He knew he couldn’t ask something so direct, nothing would come out of it. 

But his curiosity was a burning fiend.

And he couldn’t stand to walk away after bearing all this weight, without something gained.

So he swallowed once more before he couraged to ask a lighter question.

“What do you make of yourself?”

Another brief question—

but one that held the past, the present and what was beyond in its scope.

Though he didn’t know if Jellal would understand the motive.

Regardless, the answer he told gave a notion.

With a kept breath he heard the man confess:

“I am a prisoner.”

“I have…always been a prisoner.”

His voice was quiet when saying it, folding into itself. Yet there was no dramatic grief or bitterness.

It was hollow. 

Calm. 

Residing.

It made the elder pause once again. He wouldn’t push more on this, but neither could he tell how much this answer encompassed.

It made Yajima wonder, was what Jellal had told him just his sorrow speaking,

Or was it truly his unfortunate truth?

The room now felt thicker—sinking quicker—like the weight of emptiness encompassing was bearing down on Yajima himself.

He couldn’t bear it.

Trying to keep the silence from submerging them, he said something else in hope it could lighten the load.

“Is there something you wish for yourself?”

He didn’t ask because he could give; no even if he wanted to; he would never be able to deliver. 

That door had been well closed beyond them.

But perhaps in asking; hope would break through the heaviness.

And what lay beyond the enigma would break through too.

His question this time made Jellal pause. 

And there was a longer silence that followed. 

Born from a question that he hadn’t thought to exist.

Yajima saw a gloss cover what he thought to be his dead dark eyes. 

A pain that was untold; rooted from deep within.

And then Jellal told him after he had contemplated:

“I don’t wish to know of a world that is beyond me.”

His answer was strange, his voice weak though his resolve feigned firm. 

Yajima couldn’t understand the way these words came out, it was the complete opposite of what he asked.

Had such an answer come out in resentment? Bitterness? Pain? 

Or acceptance?

All could be true.

And neither could be blamed.

But truth be told Yajima didn’t know how to answer this.

He didn’t know how to do a lot on this visit. 

Really he was still caught in the ever occurring whiplash of knowing this decayed man, was the same one that sat between him and the others in the council.

His unsurety just made him circle back to obvious contradiction—

Why was he even here?

It’s not like his presence even did anything. Perhaps it was making Jellal uncomfortable in his last hours.

Or perhaps it added nothing at all.

Neither for him or himself.

There was nothing to do when the matter was done.

But that thought kept setting heavy on his chest.

Either way Yajima believed his visit had concluded.

He was about to turn on his heel and leave the containment, but then a voice floated between them again.

Jellal’s.

He asked him yet another thing.

With the innocence of a child and the grief of a man:

“If the world runs on balance..”

“..Then do you think some people exist just to feel pain?”

It made Yajima still. 

The question was entirely unexpected, just like everything else had been in this visit.

But in the same breath: it answered Jellal in a way nothing else did.

But he didn’t understand it immediately then.

So he answered in honesty.

“I don’t know.”

It wasn’t the answer Jellal wanted. 

Or probably even needed. 

But it was the truth.

The conceptual, undefined truth.

Was that better? Or was that worse?

There was no knowing.

He was reminded of the sharpness of the lingering warden’s gaze, telling him that their time would lapse. 

Yajima already had in mind he would be leaving the undecided man on his decided fate.

But before that he would ask him one last question.

Again, not on what Jellal needed.

But maybe what Yajima himself did.

“Will you find peace in death?”

A grim question with an even more grim conclusion.

And the question was asked and answered like a forbidden secret.

“I don’t know.”

Jellal said just as honestly.

Just as briefly.

It made the elder’s lips stretch into a thin line as he gave an accepting nod and final glance at the memory of Jellal before he turned and left.

That was the conclusion of his visit: one where he knew that the man he visited would soon no longer be in the next twenty four hours.

He began to walk on behind the warden who escorted him through the darkness. His heart still felt clouded—heavy—as if what had been in that cell had latched on and burrowed down deep inside himself.

And his thoughts just remained on Jellal because of it.

Because—despite how profound and hiding his words were, Yajima began to understand what he really was:

A boy.

He was merely a boy.

And the weight of the world couldn’t erase that.

Nor could its sins.

But the matter had been set.

And the world had chosen Jellal would not live.

Despite the strange grief that followed him because of that, he wondered why it bothered him so.

Was it because it was truly deserved?

Or was it because it was the true answer?

Was this what had been decided?

There was no conclusion other than to go on with the world like everything else had already managed to do.

Because if one thing was for certain—

Everything had been set in motion.

------------------------------------------------

The next day that followed, Yajima believed to be greeted by the same silence—the same acceptance—that he had just begun to conform to.

But instead what he was met with was havoc.

Chaos that buzzed replicating the past. 

And like then he didn’t understand how it had come to be.

It was the date of his execution, he would be slain before her majesty’s kingdom.

Why would a world that had gone silent—be thrown into turmoil now?

But then it reached his ears through others absorbed in the confusion.

“He escaped!”

And Yajima was dumbfounded.

Because the man he met hours before, did not seem a man plotting.

He did not seem a man intent on living.

He did not seem a man at all.

Jellal’s words told him clearly;

‘He did not wish to see a world beyond himself’

So then why?

But then other details surfaced. 

Tellings of how two unnamed figures assisted in his breakout in the dead of the night.

They took him as he was about to be transported for execution, and then when the guards went to escort him—they found he was gone.

It was unbelievable.

It was untimely.

The shock had him quiet.

But as chaos spurned, the sides of his lips lifted for a split second as the answer seemed decided.