A/N: Hi all! This isn't the story I intended to upload next, but since the other is miles away from completion and this one really needed writing, I decided to just go ahead and do it. I became really attached to August during the final arc, and I found the (non-)resolution of his storyline very frustrating... so I did what I usually do in these situations and wrote my own version. This fic focusses on August's relationship with Zeref (and Mavis) during an alternate Alvarez arc. The timeline here diverged from canon at the start of the Alvarez invasion, leading to a short and bloody war, and the first chapter begins several months after Alvarez's victory.

This fic is a bit more angsty (and a lot less silly) than my normal stuff. The pairing is Zeref/Mavis, though neither of them will narrate the story. The fact that those two along with August are the main characters probably explains why it ended up being so serious...

I will update weekly, on or around Sunday nights, albeit with slightly shorter chapters than is usual for me.

Right, I think that's it! On to the story! ~CS

State of Independence

By CrimsonStarbird

Chapter One: The Point of No Return

Someone was screaming.

The castle walls could not restrain it; the gloom could not hush it, like it did all other sounds. It rent the air like an executioner's blade, rattling the iron-studded door in its frame and whipping the torch-flames into a terrified dance. The other cells were empty now, but they had not forgotten. All around the hooded figure, chains clinked and cold winds keened as ghost and memory lent their voices to the wailing of the damned.

His cowl quivered, and he paused with his left hand not quite touching the door.

He must have heard that scream a thousand times, and yet, at the same time, he had not truly heard it until that day.

It held him there, listening because he couldn't not listen, and only when it was over could he lift the heavy ring on the door one-handed and pull it open.

There had always been dungeons in Mercurius, but the torture chambers came courtesy of its current occupier. The repurposed cell was large enough to echo back the screams of its guests, its old stone newly painted with the crimson aftermath of brutality. A barred window invited the winter wind to come and lick at open wounds. The floor was strewn with devices as twisted as the minds that had first conceived them, some encrusted in blood and others still dripping. The air was thick with it – the stench of human waste, the heat of humiliation, the taste of depravity cloying like disease in his throat.

At the centre of it all, suspended from the ceiling by chains around her wrists, hung the Seventh and Ninth Master of Fairy Tail.

She had been beautiful, once. She had blazed defiant in the last few hours of the war; had overcome great personal loss to rally her troops against impossible odds. The hands now bound above her head had borne the blades that had cut down countless soldiers. Not one of the puss-filled scars that covered more of her naked body than skin had been acquired on the battlefield, when her armour and her magic had been with her. There had been a time when that fiery scarlet hair had kindled fear in the hearts of all who saw it – a time before half had been ripped from her scalp, and the other half so caked in grime that not a trace of that vital colour remained.

She had been beautiful, once.

Then the war had ended, and the debts incurred by her defiance had become due in full.

Still, she had fought. At first her pride had been amusing to her captors, and then frustrating. In the end, she had been given to two men who saw her as a puzzle – one they delighted in tackling with more and more creative solutions. He did not know their names, if men such as those even had them. Both were big, bald, tattooed, and they grinned like skulls; the first smiles he had seen in a very long time.

As he entered the dungeon, those grins turned to alarm, and then anger.

"How dare you-?"

His left hand reached out from underneath his travelling cloak and pulled back the cowl.

"Master August! We weren't expecting you-"

"Get out," he commanded.

"But His Majesty said-"

"Out!" he thundered, and they went.

August made a sharp gesture with his hand and the chains suspending his prisoner from the ceiling snapped. Moving swiftly forward, his arm wrapped around her midriff as she fell, taking most of her weight through himself. There she lay, slumped over his arm, lifeless, limp, and then-

-a circuit, connecting-

-a floodlight, triggered-

-a fuse's flame vanishing into the powder keg-

-the intent to kill exploded against his senses.

In that instant, he knew what she was going to do. First, a blow to the groin or kidney, to debilitate and shock. Then one to stun – a fist into his chin, or perhaps the back of his head, before he could recover. At last, the broken lengths of chain dangling from her wrists would tighten around his neck, crushing until the darkness took him; final punishment for the one foolish enough to break her chains.

These probabilities spun out before him, and he did nothing to prevent them.

Her index finger twitched, and then she was still.

It had simply been too long.

Muscles atrophied in captivity would not spring into action at her command. Bones, broken and badly healed, refused to take her weight. Withered fingers could not form a fist; feet were not viable weapons when she could not even stand without support.

After all this time, her will was the only part of her left unbroken.

That was the sum total of Erza Scarlet's hate and patience: a single twitch in her finger.

August let her lean on him for several silent minutes. Once her lungs had acclimatized to the change of the strain upon her body, he led her to a chair set out for the torturers' convenience. Reaching beneath his travelling cloak, he retrieved a water bottle and placed it in front of her.

She ignored it. Her eyes were so blank he might have thought her a corpse, if not for the killing intent still roiling at the edge of his senses.

Quietly, he said, "Tell me how to find Fairy Heart."

There was silence, at first, and then she laughed. The sound twisted up from her stomach and spilled like blood over cracked lips.

"One hundred and thirteen days," Erza said, and she laughed again. Each word was a dagger drawn through a parched throat, whispers cutting into raw skin; almost as painful to hear as they must have been to say. "I did wonder how long it would be."

One hundred and thirteen days since the war had ended.

One hundred and thirteen days since this dungeon had become her home.

One hundred and thirteen days of madness and agony, of hopelessness and hate, of a world spiralling down and down and down.

But she wanted him to ask, so he duly did: "How long it would be for what?"

"For you to send in the Good Cop." A warped grin split her face, blood beading at the corners of her mouth. "You must have tried every other method of getting information out of me; why not that one?"

Only when her mirth had died down did she add, thoughtfully, "Still, to think that you believe you'd still qualify as a Good Cop, after everything you've done…"

The tone of August's voice did not change in response to the raw accusation in hers. "This has gone on long enough, Erza. This death, this devastation… I only want to put an end to it."

"That's funny," she remarked. "You didn't seem to have a problem with death when you killed Jellal."

His expression darkened.

"Or Mira," she continued, unfazed by the danger. "Or Mest. Or Cana-"

"It was war!" he burst out, eyes flashing. "I will apologize for every casualty when you do the same! What do you think happens when you aim a Jupiter blast directly for a man who possesses no defensive magic? I'd known Ajeel from the moment he was born!"

"It's a good job you took that into account when deciding whether or not to launch an unprovoked attack on another country, then, isn't it? Oh, wait…"

Satisfied that she had made her point, Erza leaned back in the chair, heedless to the crunch of misshapen bones. There was a light in her eyes that the flickering torch-flames could not fully explain – a light too cold and too vicious to befit a Master of Fairy Tail.

And he was the one who looked away, in the end; his gaze dropping to the floor as he whispered, "This was never supposed to happen."

"It's a hundred and thirteen days too late for you to reach that understanding. The rest of us figured out Zeref was evil a long time ago."

"You're wrong."

"Oh? There I was thinking the unprovoked invasion of my home and subsequent slaughter of my friends provided pretty damning evidence."

"That was never the plan. If you had just given His Majesty what he wanted, it would never have come to pass."

"Do you think so?"

He did not deem that lightly patronizing question worthy of a response.

Erza stretched in the silence, not seeming to care that the motion quickened the dripping of blood from her chair.

"The fields are on fire," she said, suddenly, curiously. "I can see the smoke from the window. At night, they burn in the distance, like the world is stuck before a dawn that will never come… Do you know why?"

"Acnologia," came the prompt response.

"Is that so?"

"Yes. He destroyed the villages to the north and set fire to the farmland."

"He came this far south, and yet did not approach Crocus?"

"Of course not. He fears His Majesty too much to draw near."

"Perhaps," Erza pondered. "But the fields have been burning for three days and three nights. Why has no one put out the blaze?"

"Acnologia's rampages are not merciful. I doubt there is anyone left alive to do so."

"Perhaps not from the villages, but that is valuable farmland to the capital, is it not?"

"No more valuable than the lives lost – lives which are on your hands, Erza Scarlet. You and you alone are the reason why His Majesty does not have the power to stop Acnologia's wrath."

She did not shrug – her body was too battered for even that simple gesture – but all her dispassion and more was carried in the eyes which continued to regard him without flinching, without remorse, whenever he dared to meet them.

"Tell me how to find Fairy Heart," August ordered.

"It's on Tenrou Island."

"We know that!" he snapped, before curbing his impatience with an effort. "We also know that when Makarov moved it there before the battle, he altered the wards so that the island will not appear unless the Guild Master summons it."

"The current Guild Master," Erza corrected, with a smile more contorted than any grimace. "Though, you already worked that one out, didn't you? They showed me what was left of Macao once your precious emperor realized his life was worthless. That's why you've kept me alive all this time. If I die, Tenrou Island will be lost to this world forever."

"Tell me how to get to the island."

"No."

"Erza-"

"You know, you're not very good at this. Usually when they come to ask me questions, they at least have the courtesy to bring me gifts." A wave of her limp hand indicated the nest of dreadful devices around them.

"I'm not-" he started to say, and then stopped. As distasteful as he found the way she had been treated, it did not change the fact that for a hundred and thirteen days his silence had condoned it.

"You're not like them?" she finished for him. "Hypocrite."

Without warning, her voice, broken and yet unbreakable, rose in a sing-song shout. "Why are the fields still burning, August?"

"I have told you why," he stated, steady and cold. "Tell me about Tenrou Island."

"Here we go again." She gave a theatrical sigh. "Let me ask you something instead. If I summon Tenrou Island for you, if I help you obtain Fairy Heart, what will you do with it? Take it to Zeref?"

"Yes. And with it, he will finally be able to defeat Acnologia, and we will have peace at last."

She stared.

She snorted.

And then she could no longer restrain herself. Her laughter ran uncontrollably around a room that had no idea how to deal with such a sound, and so echoed it back over and over.

"You really believe that, don't you? Where have you been these past few months? Are you really so insulated here in your stolen castle that you can't hear the children crying, the parents screaming? Can't you taste the dread in the air? Smell the burning fields? Look around you, August! There is nothing left of Fiore but death and death and death – that is what happens when Zeref gets his way!"

"You're wrong," August said steadily. "This isn't what anyone wants, least of all His Majesty. This is the result of your obstinance leaving him with no means of protecting his people from Acnologia!"

"His people? Zeref cares about no one but himself!"

"No. You don't understand. He has governed Alvarez for centuries. He built our country up from nothing; took us from earth and ashes to prosperity and peace."

"Peace? Don't make me laugh."

"We were peaceful for decades," he argued. "Were it not for the threat Acnologia poses to all humanity, I am sure we would have remained so. Give him what he wants – let him use Fairy Heart to destroy Acnologia once and for all. Then, you'll see. He's a good man."

"Your good man killed Lucy in front of me," she told him idly. "Well, he killed many in front of me to try and make me talk, but it's Lucy I think about the most. She was so strong, you know? She didn't beg for her life. She didn't even cry, not once. With her dying breath, she told me not to give up. And do you know what I felt, when she died?"

Numbly, he shook his head.

"Hate. And not for him. For her. Because it's easy for her, isn't it? She's gone. She doesn't have to suffer the consequences of staying strong any more – and yet she had the nerve to tell me I had to keep on doing it even as she escaped for good. I never thought I would see the day when I could watch a friend die without shedding a tear, but you really can become desensitized to anything, if exposed to it enough times."

August shook his head vigorously enough to set the cowl fluttering around his shoulders. "You don't know him like I do. That's not him, not really. If he acts cruel, it is only because you have left him with no choice!"

"Perhaps I could believe that, if my friends were the only ones to whom he was so cruel. But that's not true, is it? Do you think I don't know, because I'm trapped in here? Do you think I can't see it? Why has no one put out the fires in the fields, August?"

"Because…" He glanced away, and it meant nothing, because she already knew the truth. If he was still capable of looking the other way, he wouldn't be here. "They do not believe there is any point in saving the fertile land. By the time harvest comes around again, they believe they will be dead."

"Acnologia hasn't come this far south yet, has he?"

"No."

"He wasn't the one who started the fires."

"No."

"I do wonder what the entire population of those villages must have done to earn the wrath of our dear emperor… though, having seen the things he does down here just because he's bored, I would bet anything that they were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"He is scared, Erza!" His shout snapped out like the whips which had carved their legacy into her body. "He is desperate! It is fear which drives him to madness! Without Fairy Heart, he can't kill Acnologia, and Acnologia can't kill him, though he'll try and try endlessly – that is the future waiting for him at the end of everything! Can you even imagine that horror?"

"Imagine it?" Erza laughed. "My guild is dead. My friends are dead. And he just won't let me die… I don't have to imagine it."

August sat down heavily, as if his body was as weak as Erza's. The weight of it all hit worse than any torturer's blow. "I don't understand," he whispered. "What are you trying to achieve by defying him?"

"Achieve? Nothing. Everyone I wanted to protect is already dead."

"Then why do you keep fighting?"

"Spite," she said simply. "Not love, not hope… that is the only thing that keeps me strong. I won't let the man who did this be the only one to get a happy ending."

"For that," he murmured, "you will allow the suffering of every man, woman and child in this land to continue?"

A yawn. "That's rich, coming from you. You've turned a blind eye for months as Zeref's actions have grown worse and worse… you, and all the others who call yourselves his friends."

August closed his eyes briefly, ignoring the pain that twisted in his heart as she spat the word, and when he spoke again, his voice gave no sign of it. In ninety years, it never had. "There are no others. Not any more."

"Oh? Irene's dead too, then?"

The question was posed in the half-curious tone of a collector who had long since grown bored of her hobby. Little wonder, when the collection in question was of the deaths of those she knew. By now, she must have had too many to count.

He did not know what had passed between her and Irene when they had fought, but there was no affection in Erza's voice, and the only time he had ever heard Irene speak of her had been those few short words to His Majesty a hundred and thirteen days ago, informing him that she had captured the enemy general.

Still, Irene might not have been Erza's friend, but she had been his.

"Yesterday," he confirmed softly. "She asked His Majesty for troops so that she could go and fight Acnologia in the north. He refused. So she came to me for help…"

"You turned her down." It wasn't an accusation. It didn't have to be.

"I didn't think she would disobey a direct order from His Majesty. I didn't think she'd run head-first into a fight she knew she couldn't win! I thought she'd see sense… but she told me things weren't going to change unless someone made a stand. She went to try and stop Acnologia on her own, and she died. Everyone I love is gone, now."

"So, there is something we have in common," Erza remarked.

"I am not the one prolonging this madness!"

"No, but you're not doing anything to stop it, either. You're not stuck in some godforsaken dungeon – you're Zeref's right-hand man! You're the only one he listens to!"

August shook his head. "He doesn't listen to me."

"Is that how you justify your cowardice?"

"That's not-"

"You haven't even tried to change anything! You kill when he tells you to kill, and look away when thousands of innocents are slaughtered by Acnologia – and by their own emperor! – because he tells you not to intervene! At least that woman died doing what was right! But you, you don't even have the guts to tell him when he's wrong-"

"I DID!" he roared. He was standing now, with no memory of getting to his feet, and the frightened rattling of the chair behind him was the only proof that he had ever been sitting down at all.

"I did, because Irene was right," he repeated, quieter this time.

He unclipped the cloak's fastening around his neck, and the garment fell to the floor, letting the light fall upon his right arm. At first, it seemed to remain shrouded in shadows. Only when he shifted on his feet did it become clear that the entire arm was black and withered, as if all the life and the colour had been drained out of it.

At her faint expression of puzzlement – the most human expression he had seen her make – he explained, "I told him I wouldn't let this go on. And then… well, my magic is incapable of truly negating his, but it was able to slow it down enough for me to get away alive. He wasn't expecting that. He won't make the same mistake again."

He sat back down, covering his dead arm with his travelling cloak. "I won't live beyond the end of this day. Even if I run, he'll find me. He, too, has nothing left to live for but spite."

Silence held sway over a room that for so long had known nothing but the screams of the damned.

"Why did you come down here?" Erza asked. "You must be desperate if you're expecting pity from your prisoner."

"No. This is the last chance we have to stop this situation from getting any worse. Help me reach Fairy Heart."

She did not answer straight away. Instead, she pawed at the bottle he had set in front of her. Perhaps her fingers were still paralyzed, or perhaps more had been broken than he'd thought, but she could not grip it. He lifted it in his one good hand and tipped it up for her to drink.

She swallowed some of the water, spat the rest out tinged with blood, and then, without a word of thanks, said, "Did Zeref tell you what he planned to do with Fairy Heart, once he obtained it?"

"Yes," he responded steadily. "He told us that it is a source of infinite magic, which will give him the power to kill Acnologia and reverse the apocalypse he brings."

"So he didn't tell you," she mused. "He told Gray, though – right before he killed him. But Gray managed to tell Natsu, and by the time he'd killed Natsu too the whole guild knew about it… what was left of us, anyway."

"What are you talking about?"

"Have you given any thought as to how magic, even an infinite source of it, is going to defeat a dragon with perfect immunity to magic?"

In all honesty, August hadn't. His Majesty was a genius of magic. If he said he had a plan to stop Acnologia, then he had a plan to stop Acnologia, simple as that. It wasn't their job to interrogate him for details they wouldn't understand anyway. It was their job to help his plan come to be in any way they could.

"I see that you haven't," Erza continued. "Acnologia consumes magic to become stronger. If your dear emperor throws an infinite source of magic at him, he will become infinitely powerful. But of course, Zeref knows that. That's why he isn't planning to use Fairy Heart against Acnologia at all."

August's eyes narrowed.

"He intends to use it to travel back in time," she explained. "Back to when he was a child, so that he can prevent his brother's death and avoid becoming immortal. Yes, I'm sure he'll kill Acnologia before he becomes too powerful, but it won't mean anything to you and I, because we won't exist any more. He will erase this world, and everyone who lives and has lived in it over the past four hundred years, just so that he can get his happy home life back again. Everyone you loved, everything you fought for so desperately in the war – it will all cease to be. That's what Zeref is planning."

"You lie."

This time, she did manage a shrug. Her wasted skin strained against the effort, but her voice was as composed as ever. "Ask him yourself. I doubt he'll deny it."

"An obvious bluff," he snapped. "You know I can't call it, because if I go back he'll kill me before I get the chance."

"That's your problem."

"It isn't a problem. You are mistaken. No matter how bad things get, His Majesty would never erase the world where he met-" There was a flash of violence in how sharply he shook his head, as he pushed those thoughts away and focussed on the matter at hand. "No, that has never been his aim. He started building Alvarez long before Fairy Heart came into being – before Fairy Tail even existed. He wouldn't undo all that."

She shrugged again. "I don't know why I expected anything other than denial from you. It took him actively trying to kill you for you to see that he's evil, after all."

"He is not evil! You don't understand- You don't know him!"

He never would have thought a little, patronizing smile from a battered and broken prisoner could have been so hurtful.

Once again, he bit back his frustration with an effort. This argument would get him nowhere. He couldn't tell her what he knew – what he'd never been able to tell anyone – and without it, she would never be able to understand his certainty. So he pushed it all away and slammed the mental doors, as he had learnt to do from a very young age, and changed tack with a strategist's experience. His Majesty had taught him that, too.

Out loud, he wondered, "Is that belief why you would rather let the world end than yield Fairy Heart to His Majesty?"

"A world where Fairy Tail is gone, or a world where it never existed… it's all the same to me. Therefore, I will pick the one which causes Zeref the most pain."

"And what of those who continue to die each day that he suffers?"

Another shrug. "They would cease to exist either way."

"Perhaps," he said. "But others would live."

It was her turn to say nothing.

"This world is ending, Erza, but if we take Fairy Heart to him, we can ensure there will be another! Whether you are right, or whether I am right, life will go on. If you are right, the world will be born anew, never having to live in the shadow of the apocalypse. If I am right, with Acnologia gone, this ruined world will heal as His Majesty does. Either way, there will be life, there will be love again!"

His voice cracked on those last two words, and he finished in a whisper. "Please, Erza. For the sake of those who still have a chance of happiness in this damned world… take me to Fairy Heart."

And this time, she said, "Very well."