Disclaimer: I do not own Fairy Tail. All rights go to Hiro Mashima.
Rating: M. Triggers throughout the story will be limited to death, alcohol, sex (not explicit) and self-harm.
Light Me Up
Summary: Following the death of his father and his mother's suicide, CEO Zeref Dragneel comes back to Fiore to look after his mourning brother Natsu. Enter Mavis Vermillion, amnesiac cousin of Lucy Heartfilia and college senior with issues of her own. To make matters worse, Zeref and Natsu's parents were keeping secrets, secrets which have been haunting Zeref his whole life…
Meeting Mavis
The phone call wakes him up.
Three hours, a grief-stricken shower and a quick call to Inbel later, Zeref is on the first plane to Crocus. The airport is fully decorated for Christmas, and it sends a pang through his chest because this trip is two weeks too soon, and he feels like killing himself.
But then that is nothing new.
The plane ride to Magnolia is brief, a mere sixty minutes spent staring at the pages of the novel he had brought along for show. The arrival gate is close to empty—justified, given that it is almost midnight. He almost rents a car, but he knows he is in no state to drive. Too exhausted to mind, he gets a cab.
The backseat is clean enough, Zeref supposes. It smells like cigarette smoke, which tends to make him lightheaded. There is no helping it, though; the hour is late and he cannot afford to be picky. He feels tense and fidgety. He had done nothing all day, too upset to work and too wound-up to sleep. Worrying about how Natsu and Mom were taking the news had frayed his nerves. Mom's phone call had been nothing more than an announcement; she had told him that his dad was dead, speaking in a weak, breathless voice he had not recognized at first.
"It was a hit-and-run. An accident. Just an accident…"
His heart had skipped a beat, hysteria rising up in his throat. His dad could not have been dead. Not dead. Dad was too stubborn to die. Zeref had not spent enough time with him yet, had barely talked to him all year, so how come he could just die? But his mom's broken voice did not lie.
As for Natsu, he had not answered any of Zeref's calls. It makes him worry because Natsu is reckless and willful, and grief makes people do stupid things.
It is pitch black, but Zeref stares outside the window anyway. He watches the shadows, trying to match his memories to the outlines rushing by, until he becomes dizzy. It is a short while later that the cab stops at the gate. A quick ID check later, they are allowed inside by the guard.
The first thing he notices is the cold. The second is the snow falling around him, painting a scene that would have been quite charming had he seen it any other time. He pays the driver, staring up at his childhood home. It is unchanged, a pillared two-storied house that is all sloping lines, big windows and balconies, all done in unpractical cream and white. There are no lights on inside, and he wonders why.
"Please come home, Zeref. Please come…"
He has. After sixteen hours of travelling, Zeref is finally home.
Ignoring the snow and the happy memories, Zeref makes his way inside. He deposits his half-empty suitcase in his childhood bedroom—pristine even after two years of his absence, thanks to his mother's careful hand—and makes for his parents' room.
He knocks, garnering no answer from inside. Sighing, he cracks open the door. His mother appears to be lying under the covers, sleeping. He is both surprised and relieved, and even though he hates to wake her up, she needs to know he has arrived. In the morning they will talk, but right now he needs to reassure her that he will—
The smell hits him like ten thousand bricks, as if he has gotten slammed against an invisible wall. Instead of brick and mortar, however, there is a rotten, pungent smell cloying its way up his nose, into his mouth and down his throat. He can feel it, taste it on his tongue, like a thick coat of everything unpleasant he has ever eaten and then some.
Zeref feels the bile rise in his throat. He has not eaten all day so there is not much to vomit, but he is still left dry-heaving on the white, now yellow-stained carpet. Trembling, he crawls out of the room and shuts the door behind him, his sole goal to get away from the smell. It is useless, though: now that he is aware of it, it is inescapable. Maybe it had been faint enough upon his arrival, but now he feels like it permeates the house, and he cannot breathe.
Hands shaking, Zeref takes his phone out of his jacket, flips and dials.
"This is 911, how can I help you?" His mouth opens on its own, but his voice refuses to come out. "Is there anyone there?"
"Yes," Zeref coughs out. "My mother…" he says.
"Is your mother alright, sir?"
"No, no she's not. No, she's not." The smell, Zeref knows, can only mean one thing. He has never seen a dead body before, has never even seen or smelled roadkill in his life, but there is nothing else it can be.
"What's your address, sir?"
"67 Freesia, Magnolia Heights 3316. She's dead. I can't believe she's dead."
"The police are on their way, sir."
"But she's dead. She's dead, you know…"
"Please calm down, sir."
Zeref takes a deep breath, feels the burn of the stench swirling around him. He hangs up without any preamble, disregarding the operator.
"I'm calm," he whispers in an effort to convince himself.
Zeref almost breaks the doorknob in his attempt to open it. He stumbles to the edge of the bed as best he can, his eyes fixed on the form under the covers, on the hint of black hair peeking out. The smell is stronger, of course, the closer he gets to the body, but he has to see. His fingers caress the fluffy white comforter. Tears come to his eyes. How many times had he crawled into this bed as a child because Natsu had had a nightmare, and he had thought Zeref would be lonely sleeping by himself?
Breathing is made harder by the lump in his throat. The smell is driving him mad, to the point that he is half sure he will throw up again, food or no. Steeling himself, he gathers the covers and throws them off the bed.
And he sees her. His mother is unrecognizable from the last time Zeref had laid eyes on her, three months ago during dad's birthday. She had been as vibrant as always, but now her black hair looks limp and her skin is a sickening pinkish-purple. Her hands are blue, her nails white as paper, and she is rigid, rigor mortis in full swing. Her facial features are all grotesquely presented: her face is bony, her cheeks are hollow and her jaw is too sharp. Her eyes are closed, but instead of her signature white, today her nightgown is black.
Zeref has always looked like her, and the most horrifying thing of all is that he can see himself in this lifeless corpse. This, he knows, is what he would have looked like had he ever drunk the lethal dose of liquid Nembutal he had gotten his hands on four years ago.
Now numb, he can hear the wailing of a siren in the distance. Before he closes the door behind him, he spots a wine glass on the bedside table next to a small, white bottle of pills. The noise grows louder, and as he steps out of his childhood home, he can see the neighbors peeking out from behind window drapes, curious faces from people he has known most of his life.
As the cruiser comes to a halt in front of the house, two policemen spring out. One looks at him. "Upstairs," Zeref says, leading them inside. Soon, Zeref knows, the paramedics will arrive.
As one of the officers performs CPR on his mother's corpse, Zeref knows the Nembutal will offer him no comfort now. Perhaps the second officer can see the murderous glint in his eyes; not a second later, the murder investigation begins.
Over twenty-four hours after the first phone call, a second one wakes him up.
After the ambulance had come and the paramedics had gone—taking his mother with them—Zeref had checked into a hotel. When sleep had proved impossible, he had swallowed two sleeping pills and drifted off.
Zeref flips the phone open, half expecting to hear his mother's voice.
Instead, Natsu's blares out. "Zeref! How are you?"
"Natsu." Zeref is confused. Shocked, really. He had expected anger and aggressive denial from Natsu, not forced cheerfulness. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I am. How many times did you call yesterday?" There is laughter in the background on the other side of the line.
Suspicious, Zeref says, "I don't know, Natsu. Why didn't you pick up?" He makes his voice as light as possible, but mentally replies twenty-six. Normal people do not obsessively know such things, of course, but Zeref does.
"I had my biochem final today, so I gave Mavis my phone yesterday."
"Mavis?" The very name brings forth muted irritation.
"Yeah, Mavis, Zeref. Luce's cousin? You've met Luce," he says, his tone accusing.
"I have," he says. He comes up with an image of a blonde—very pretty, very smart, kind of not his type because Zeref does not have a type. "So how long did she have it for?" he asks, a feeling of dread settling in his chest.
Natsu considers. "Don't know. A day and a half? Maybe longer."
"I see," Zeref says, deadpan. A day and a half means Natsu does not know about their dad. A day and a half means he does not know about their mom or dad. It is one thing to tell his brother their mother is dead. It is quite another to say that both of their parents are gone. Nonetheless, the words almost leave his mouth, but the memory of his mom's disembodied voice stops him. He can say it, he knows he can, but he does not want to. He does not want to think about Natsu falling to pieces in a crowded place, all alone, and the one thing he can do to prevent that is to be there to break the news.
Zeref knows Natsu does not need to be babied, but knowing does not equal acceptance. The one constant in his life has always been to think about Natsu first, for whatever reason, and he is powerless to change it.
There is a long pause before Natsu speaks, sounding worried. "Why? Are you mad? Honestly, Mavis had nothing to do with it and I asked her to take it. I swear, it's better that way. You know I have no self-control. Don't blame her, it's my fault." Of course, Zeref thinks irritably, that Natsu's first thought would be to worry about his opinion of a girl he has never even met. Before he can protest, however, Natsu barrels on, as if he is afraid Zeref will not let him finish, "You're still coming home for Christmas, right? You shouldn't work so much. Please, come home."
Zeref grimaces. He almost says something about how he will most certainly be in Fiore for Christmas this year, but stops himself. It is his grief making him impulsive, but he does not have time for grief yet. Later, he will mourn. Later, he will allow his frayed nerves to rest. Later, he will remember his mother's face and let himself cry, but for these precious few hours, Natsu needs to come first.
Throwing off the covers, he slides out of bed and answers. "No, I'm not mad, Natsu. I'm in Magnolia right now."
"In Magnolia? Not Crocus?"
"No. Listen, I thought you were in Magnolia already, but I can be at Crocus by…" he picks up his watch from the night table, "six. Should I just drop by your apartment?"
"No, some of the girls are acting in a play so everyone's going to go."
Zeref holds off the urge to scream that he does not care, and says, "That's really great, Natsu, but I need to talk to you. It's urgent." He means for it to sound understanding, but it ends up sounding sarcastic.
"I know. I know that if you're here, it must be, okay? I know, but over here we're finally done with finals and Lucy would be upset if I didn't go. She's acting in the play and she's put a lot of work into it."
The mention of Lucy makes him reconsider. Dad is almost two days dead by now, and Natsu deserves to know as soon as possible. The press is also a problem; he had told Inbel to keep them quiet when they got a hold of the story, but for how long will he be able to? On the other hand, Christmas is ruined one way or another, and there is no harm in letting Natsu enjoy one last afternoon without the label of orphanhood hanging over his head.
"Are you still there?" Natsu's voice breaks him out of his thoughts. His face twists into a pained smile. It is just like him to get lost in his thoughts like this.
"When would you be back?" He goes to his suitcase. The clothes inside are rumpled, but wool never wrinkles and there is one button down that has survived the trip. Zeref bites back a curse when he sees that he had, in fact, packed three pairs of pants, and only one of them is not part of a suit. How he had managed to mix them up says much about his mental state yesterday morning.
"Eight? There's an after-party, but it's okay if I don't go to that. So, can I go?"
The question makes his spine crawl. Such an innocent question, three little words he will never ask their parents again. "You don't need to ask me that, Natsu. If it's important, go. Should I wait for you in your apartment or do you want to meet me somewhere else?"
Natsu's reply is predictably devious. "Or, you know, you could come to the performance so you could meet Mav—"
Zeref's is just as swift, let alone brutal. "If one more person tries to set me up with this girl one more time, I will disembowel them." Mirajane had been very vocal in her belief that the two would make a "delightful" couple. Other people had been curious about why he avoided her but had soon dropped the topic. Natsu, however, had been the most persistent of them all, to the point that Zeref had not had a conversation with his brother without the mention of the ever-mythical Mavis since the day he had met Lucy Heartilia and her disquieting cousin.
Frankly, Zeref does not have the time for it right now.
"Woah, alright." The noise level from Natsu's side increases before it tapers off. Zeref assumes he had left the room, which he takes as a good sign. "It's not like you to get so upset."
"I'm sorry, Natsu." No, he is not, but Natsu does not need to know that. "I don't know how else to tell you, and actually get through to you, that I have no interest in dating her."
"Seriously, I get that you don't want me setting you up with anyone, but why can't you at least meet her? What's so wrong with wanting you to meet my friends?"
"I do know your friends—" He does not get far before Natsu cuts him off.
"Yes, you do. You just don't know Mavis. She's the only one you haven't met." Zeref is skeptical, considering he knows very few of them.
"Natsu, I don't need to know all of your friends. What do you want, my seal of approval? Your friends are your friends, and I don't care that she's Lucy's cousin." Zeref rolls his eyes at referring to the girl with such familiarity, but her name comes up often enough that he feels it is counter-productive to keep her at arm's length.
"Fine," Natsu says. "You still could come if you wanted to, but I'll be there at eight if it's this important to you. You have a key?"
"I do," he says, relieved that Natsu has let the topic drop, at least for now.
"Great," Natsu says before he hangs up.
Zeref stares at his phone for a second, questioning if the spoiled brat is worth this much worry.
Sighing, he heads for the shower, because he is.
Magnolia is five hours away from Crocus by car. Zeref rents the same model he drives in Alvarez, but this one is black as opposed to navy blue. Much to his chagrin, it is a Heartfilia Konzern.
He had called Inbel first thing. It seems he is having a fabulously awful time keeping the news of his parents' deaths off the news. Zeref is hot stuff right now, with the launch of Tartaros only a week behind. Critics and gamers alike had fallen in love with it, and the press likes his pretty face, so no one complains. Except, of course, for the dozens of companies he had bankrupted almost five years ago: Zeref had broken into the tech scene with a startup and a 3D TV that eschewed glasses, doubled as a computer and tripled as a gaming console. Understandably, they do not like him, but who cares about them anyway?
He had called a professional house cleaner to take care of his childhood home, and returned a call from Sol Lockser, his parents' lawyer. The rest of the drive is spent listening to a generic mix of rock and pop in an attempt to dull his racing thoughts.
Zeref stops by a department store—because he has no pants—but otherwise drives straight to Natsu's apartment. It is well past dark by then, and it is getting colder once again, but for now his wool sweater suffices. Natsu's apartment had been a generous gift from Zeref this last August. It has three bedrooms, but his brother lives with his nudist of roommate and Zeref suspects Lucy will be crashing in the third one tonight. As a result, he had already booked a room in a nearby hotel.
The living room is pristine, which is unexpected. So is the kitchen, though, and that makes him wary. Much to his amazement, the two bathrooms are also spotless. Zeref is, by self-admission, a clean freak, and yet he doubts he would have kept this place so clean during finals week. He ponders whether Gray cleans by way of procrastination, and scoffs at how convenient that must be for his slob of a brother.
Whatever the case, Zeref supposes, it is not his problem. He is less impressed with the kitchen's extreme pristineness when he finds that the sole edible thing in the room is a bottle of Icebergian vodka he can tell is expensive, and Zeref guesses is Gray's. Checking the time, he decides to hold off on dinner. Natsu will arrive in half an hour, maybe one; he can wait.
Eyeing the 3D TV in the living room, he decides to work on storyline over coding, reasoning that storyline would be more soothing. It keeps him so engrossed that by the time he is done with the general worldbuilding, Zeref feels sick and thinks that perhaps he should order in without Natsu. It is with some horror that he realizes he has eaten just a muffin during a span of two days. He looks at the screen of his laptop, the brightness now making his eyes hurt, only to see 10:16 PM innocuously hiding in the corner.
At first he is confused. His screen must be lying, but a glance at his watch says otherwise. Battling down his dissapointment, he reaches for his phone. When there is no answer, he grits his teeth and slams the laptop closed. His first thought is to leave and check into his hotel. His second thought is to leave altogether, hop on a plane and never see his inconsiderate brat of a brother ever again. His third is to not be so unreasonable; after all, Natsu does not know why Zeref needs to talk to him, and he should have told him on the phone, so it is his own fault. His fourth is the bottle of Nembutal, oh-so-tempting now that it is so far away.
Giving up on that train of thought, his eyes dart to the fridge, chilled vodka sitting inside.
Hell, he will buy Gray a full bottle later. No sooner has he found a glass, he unclasps the bottle and throws back his first shot. The liquor burns down his throat, familiar, and Zeref wonders if perhaps he will find some Xanax around, wonders if his mother had felt so deranged when she had swallowed a bottleful of ibuprofen and washed it down with dad's favorite wine.
Instead of looking, though, Zeref pours himself another shot. By the third he is lightheaded. By the fourth, drunk. There is no visible change in him: he is not one to stumble and his words do not get slurred. Zeref's drunken self is much like his sober self, but it is less sarcastic, quieter and a pathological liar at times. Amusingly, when he was younger, a good portion of his homework got done in between the first shot and the moment his hangover hit. On their last day as freshmen, he and Laxus had shared a bottle of Minstrelian Scotch Jellal had sent him. To this day, Zeref credits it with the base of the gaming console add-on to Jellal's Objective-C code. He always remembers what he does when he is drunk, but to say he is aware of what he is doing while he is doing it would be… false.
Like now. He has half a mind to start coding—it being what he spends most of his time doing while drunk—but he does not feel like it. What he does feel like doing involves a girl and a bed, perhaps a wall.
But there are other things to think about: Natsu will have to come back at some point. Inbel will not keep the press in check for much longer. It is a testament to how powerful Ethereas has become in the span of five years that the news have been hushed for so long.
Zeref is pacing when he hears the main door be cracked open. He is both vexed and relieved that Natsu is here, albeit three hours late. He drinks down another shot for good measure and strides into the living room, expecting to see Natsu's pink-haired form passed out on the couch. Of course, it can always be someone else—Gray, Lucy, even Juvia, but he does not expect what he finds.
The girl's head is peeking from behind the side of the door so that it is tilted, and her long hair spills besides it in soft waves, what looks to be the result of a night out dancing. She is pale, but it is a good kind of pale, and instead of looking drawn, her face looks dewy fresh. She has green eyes—not that he can tell, because she is not looking at him. Instead, she chooses to favor the wooden floors with them.
When she does look up at him, it hits him that she has the brightest doe eyes he has ever seen. The blush on her cheeks does not help either. It is endearing, but if asked why that is so, Zeref would have been hard-pressed to give an answer. He has never found blushing girls attractive, but this one is looking at him with determination. He has never found such a thing attractive either, until now.
The girl bites her lip and looks around, as if she wants to make sure no one else is nearby before she comes inside, closing the door behind her and leaning against it.
She is pretty, a slip of a girl with long legs and too much cleavage for the dress she is wearing. Technically, it is a dress because a dress is anything that goes from the shoulders to the top of a girl's legs and does not end in pants. Not so technically, it is a halter-top that covers her breasts, crisscrosses over her back, and leaves her midriff bare before smoothing over her thighs.
The dress is red, her hair is blonde, and she looks like sin.
She gazes at him from underneath her eyelashes, head angled just so, and gives him a teasing smile. It is a look Zeref recognizes; he uses it on women every day because it makes anyone even mildly attracted to him melt. She pushes herself off the door, and he cannot help but follow the movement of her hips. Also cannot help but notice that with her hands clasped behind her and her shoulders back, she looks less like a slip and more like a doll.
She raises one of her arms towards him, hand extended. She has very pretty fingers, Zeref notices surreally, because there is so much to notice about her. When he does not make a move to grasp her hand, she takes a step towards him. She almost stumbles against the wall, but he makes it a point to catch her.
Zeref had been right—the dress crisscrosses over her back, leaving most of it bare. Her skin is cool and soft. She smells like something sweet, though he cannot name the scent off the top of his head. Even in heels, she is half a head shorter than him. Nonetheless, looking down at her brings him close to her face. There are alarm bells going off in his mind, but it is so easy to ignore them.
She makes things worse when she places one of her hands on his face, her thumb tracing his jaw, her touch making him shiver. "Zeref, right?" She speaks in a low, smooth voice that incites him to relax even as her words give him pause.
"Yeah," he murmurs. He has nothing to say, all words having been stolen from him by this crazy girl.
Her hands go to his collar, pull. "I thought you didn't want to meet me?" She breathes more than whispers the words. When she speaks, her lips brush against his. She looks at him from under her lashes again, but this time she gives him a brazenly innocent look that says she is playing with him.
"Do you know who I am?" She steps on his toes, bringing herself closer to his height.
Through the haze of want and more than a little annoyance, he manages to say, "Mavis."
Her smirk eases into a satisfied smile. Her hands release his collar, only for one to slide to his neck and the other to fist in his hair. "Good," she says, and brings down his lips to meet hers.