A/Note: A little darker than I normally write, but hopefully an entertaining read for fans of Freed the Dark. Setting is before Battle of Fairy Tail.
Warning: general mention of torture and implied abuse; no graphic descriptions

Dark Justice

They'd been hunting him for the past two days, or so they thought. He'd been poking around the entrance to their lair, or club, or whatever they were calling it, and they'd noticed and given chase. Or so they thought. In fact, it was the other way around, and if he'd had an easier way to take them down without endangering innocents, they'd never have seen him coming.

Still, there was a certain elegance in doing it like this: luring them out; allowing them to catch glimpses; raising and then dashing their expectations, again and again, until they were frustrated and eager for the kill. Freed knew that some part of him—the part that still felt at home on the rare occasions that he visited Fairy Tail—preferred to fight being sure that his enemies had weapons in their hands and murder in their hearts. Sophistry, really. A truly good man would never unleash the powers of torture and fear, not even to fight his enemies.

"I am a killer, and my sword is drenched in blood. But perhaps there are some crimes so monstrous that they are best judged by those who are themselves monsters…" He was quoting, or at least paraphrasing, something he'd once heard, from a warrior who had indeed taken countless lives over the years, whether in battle, or by assassination. The man had been speaking about an atrocity that he, in full awareness of his own darkness, condemned as evil. The words had resonated with Freed, and inevitably came to mind when he allowed the Demon to pronounce sentence on the truly lawless.

He'd led his would-be hunters away from the ghetto where they met for their horrifying games, and into the city's Old Town, now long uninhabited, and falling to ruin. And everywhere he'd passed, he'd drawn runes. Runes of warning, runes of misdirection, runes of entrapment, and runes of pain.

"What the hell! Who does this guy think he is?"

The first message had warned that going further would ensnare them, and that they should go back and turn themselves into the authorities. Predictably, the message had made them angry, instead of cautious. And yet, it had been meant in earnest, if only as a final means to confirm that they were determined to choose murder over atonement.

The first man to walk through Freed's magical warning didn't notice, at first, that his friends were no longer behind him. Once he had, he tried to run back to them, but after only a few steps there was a purple glimmer, and then he found himself tangled in magic like a fly in an invisible web.

The demon appeared an instant later, black and armoured and exuding palpable danger. It raised a clawed hand. "Pain." Light flared as purple marks activated across the man's face, and he cried out in agony. His body convulsed as his nervous system was turned against him, and hundreds of nerves sang a litany of anguish back to his brain.

"Varic Rimbul. Children are not toys to be broken for your entertainment, just because they are poor, and hungry, and unprotected. You have shown no mercy, and will receive none."

Freed left the man screaming, and didn't look back. The person who had hired Freed to investigate and deal with the ugly situation would be told where to find the criminals Freed captured. The man Varic might be found before his heart gave out.

The second man in the group also found himself separated from his cronies almost immediately after mocking Freed's warning to turn back and submit willingly. When Freed reached him, he was thrashing vainly against unseen bonds, his eyes forced to stare unblinking into the sun while he awaited his prey-turned-executioner. He was a tall, handsome man, with a determined jaw, and an athletic build. He'd been the leader of the group, and he still retained an aura of power, despite the strain on his face and the sweat that dampened his beautifully tailored shirt.

"Sorm Dalbec, you have broken the law, as well as the trust placed in you as a magistrate of this city. You took pleasure in telling your victims that they were unwanted and wouldn't be missed, knowing that despair and degradation would increase the pain they endured at your hands. Who will miss you, now that you are in my hands?"

The man tried to curse and lash out at his unknown assailant, but his bonds only tightened, and he soon found it difficult to breathe. Pain was building behind his sun-bound eyes, and terror gripped him. He didn't see the dark figure raise a hand to invoke the runes that wound around his chest and head.

"Fear," commanded Freed, and then, "Despair."

He left Sorm to his fate. The man's mind might survive, or it might not. Freed knew him for a mage, although the man had kept his abilities secret. Those abilities had allowed him to delude those who became suspicious, and to intimidate those who tried to escape his control. He must have thought himself invincible until stepping into Freed's snare and discovering a power far beyond his.

The person who had hired Freed the Dark—by that name—had been the wife of the mayor, a perceptive woman who knew evil when she saw it, and was willing to risk her own comfort and safety in order to bring it down. When her husband couldn't convince the city council to take appropriate action, she'd known it was compromised, and had made her own arrangements to get a message to Fairy Tail. Freed still didn't know what Master Makarov had thought of the request, which had added that 'only one who walks with darkness can help us now.' When he'd met with the woman, he'd recognized a face from the past—an unusual person, who had neither adored nor reviled him. She knew him as a man who would uphold the letter of the law, or a contract, or a promise, no matter where it led him. So, she'd hired him to uproot the evil in her city, by whatever means, understanding what she was asking.

He had three left to find and bring to justice. Two were already trapped, like the leader and his swaggering second-in-command. He granted them the fates that had been determined as soon as they ignored his warning and crossed into his maze, choosing him over a more forgiving justice. That they hadn't truly understood the consequences of their decision didn't bother him. They had chosen darkness long before he had been hired. Freed sometimes—more often than not—felt that it was only correct that those who lived by the sword should die by it. He accepted that for himself as well, of course.

The last man was more careful, and had somehow managed to avoid the disorientation of the others. He had been marked with the first of Freed's runes upon entering the area, but that just made him easier to locate and manipulate. The way he'd managed to avoid the traps that had ensnared his companions meant that he was more dangerous than Freed had realized, which in itself made him interesting.

He found the man—a mere bureaucrat, and invisible in comparison to the others of the group—at the top of an old church tower. Maybe he thought a demon couldn't enter a holy place. But even if the place had still retained some aura of sanctity, it is doubtful that it would have hindered Freed, unless he had decided that some law of sanctuary applied. But the concept of sanctuary varied from place to place, and generally required somebody to grant, or at least uphold, it. Freed barely gave it a passing thought, here in this place of crumbling walls and rotting timber.

"Stay away from me, Demon!"

Freed watched the man pick his way across the belfry floor. An instant later, a sizzling blast of heat erupted at Freed's feet—apparently the man held some kind of magical device. It would have been easy to side-step, but it was even better to simply ignore it, allowing his quarry's fear to rise in the face of an impervious foe.

"I warned you to stay back!"

This time Freed did move out of the way—the second attack was far more dangerous than the first, and seemed to emanate from the man himself. That was odd. Freed rose on enchanted wings to face his adversary, who stood defiantly against one wall, both hands out before him in a strange warding gesture.

"Arven Tilmus. You are guilty of breaking the law and abandoning your trust as a city official. The orphaned children of this city were in your care, and you betrayed them in every way."

"It made me do it!" shrieked the man, hands still held out before him. "It wasn't my fault!"

Freed gestured, and a line of runes formed quickly about the man. But something was wrong; the magic was fading almost as quickly as he shaped it. Eyes narrowing, Freed launched himself forward, senses straining to decipher the puzzle. He invoked magic just before he hit the invisible barrier protecting the man—he'd already sensed it—and it barely slowed him. Arven Tilmus hit the stone wall behind him with an audible crunch, and his head lolled sideways as he slid to the floor. He'd died on impact.

Freed immediately moved into a defensive stance, scanning the space around him. He might not have Bickslow's ability to see souls, but he was very good at sensing energy signatures of all kinds, like most powerful mages.

"Why are you interfering, Freed Justine, called Freed the Dark?" The soft, raspy voice came from the other side of the tower, just as Freed was turning in that direction. "You are an assassin, an expert spy, a master of forbidden magics. Who are you to judge?" There was a pause, and the barely-sensed presence murmured: "No… Those are the wrong questions… Who hired you? Who brought you here?"

Freed ignored most of the commentary, simply filing away the fact that this entity knew who he was—or at least, who he had been, at one time. To the extent that he'd ever been an assassin, he'd grown out of the role long ago, and certainly before joining Fairy Tail. Or perhaps joining Fairy Tail had been a way for him to reject, or at least put a clear end to, that part of his past. Regardless, right now he had a job to do.

Outside the tower, lines of runes started to gather, pulled from various locations nearby. It was faster than drawing them, but still required effort, since they'd been designed primarily as static traps. Freed was almost ready to attack when the entity he faced—he still didn't know what it was—recognized its danger. For a moment, Freed saw a flickering, quasi-substantial form, like a humanoid miasma, and then the thing moved, inhumanly fast, not to escape, but to attack.

"You aren't really a demon, you know," said the weird voice, right in Freed's ear. He could feel the thing enveloping him, trying to break through his personal defenses, both mental and physical. "Humans create demons, they don't really become them, and you're still very, very human, under all that armour."

It was starting to force its way in; he could sense its anger, and its hunger, and its reflexive cruelty, all ready to seek out and join the darkness already within him. Except that Freed didn't derive pleasure from cruelty, although he could be cruel. His darkness was the darkness of justice untempered by compassion, and logic that ignored all emotion. He wasn't hungry, so much as empty, but even that had become less true once he had joined Fairy Tail, and formed the Raijinshuu. And how could he be empty, or hungry, when his devotion to Laxus held such a large place in his being?

Freed extended his will through the muffling cloud that clung to him, and started to pull his strands of runes tighter and tighter about himself. He hadn't been prepared for a non-corporeal entity, but he was neither defenseless, nor without a reasonable counterattack, given just a little time to reorganize. He certainly had the strength of mind and body to ignore any discomfort the entity could inflict in the short term. The real test was yet to come.

As the runes began to wind around them, he felt the first sting of true pain—there was no way to avoid damage to himself along with the thing that was trying to possess him. The entity struggled against his trap, caught between the encircling magic and Freed's refusal to allow it to possess him. At first it made threats, pointing out that Freed might damage himself to the point of insanity, or death, given the power he'd turned against himself. Then it tried to bargain, promising everything from a peaceful departure—to where?—to restitution—how? Time and time again, it crashed against the shield of Freed's logic. There was no reason for him to trust the entity over himself; therefore, his best course was to proceed, despite the risks.

Eventually, the thing seemed to give in, and it no longer attempted to possess him in its attempts to get free of Freed's magical constraints. But Freed had the patience and cunning of any natural predator, and although he appeared to relax, it was merely a feint. He could endure the pain a little longer; it was his own magic, after all, and a part of him. Sure enough, after a few minutes had passed, the entity launched a final, all-out attack on Freed's senses, strong enough to cause damage—real or psychic was impossible to tell, at this point. Freed used the attack to further pinpoint the baleful thing, and with perfect execution, scooped it up within his flexible cage of runes and away from his body and mind.

"Who are you?" he asked, carefully inspecting his hastily form container for imperfections.

"Why would I tell you? My… kind… aren't easy to destroy. One day I'll escape, and the damage I'll do will make the sufferings here seem small by comparison."

Freed finished confirming that his seals were perfect. He regarded the pulsing, only half-seen cage.

"If you escape, you'll come after me?"

"No, I'll come after those you care about. I'll watch you suffer as the people dearest to you succumb to all the worst of human behaviour. I've seen enough in your mind to know who is most important—Laxus Dreyar, and Makarov Dreyar, and a man called Bickslow, and a woman named Evergreen. And then beyond that—"

"There will be no such retribution on your part," Freed said coldly. "You've mistaken my intent."

With a wave, Freed began to collapse the magical cage in on itself, folding and refolding the runes, combining some and eliminating others. The entity shrieked at him as it realized what he intended to do, before begging for its existence.

"No. You are responsible for incalculable grief and pain in this city, and I was given the right to judge you. I have judged you and found you guilty. Moreover, you gave away a great deal about yourself while trying to possess me. There is no advantage in allowing you to continue.

Slowly, inexorably, the runes began to annihilate the force caught between them. Freed waited and watched, until the last rune folded in on itself and vanished, destroying the last vestige of the entity that had terrorized the town via its most vulnerable children. Then he did what he'd intended all along, and reported back to the mayor's wife.

"Thank you for your work, Freed Justine." The woman bowed, and handed Freed his fee. She eyed the ugly marks on his face, and neck and chest, but didn't ask. "You said it's gone?"

"Yes."

"Well then. Thank you again. I'll inform the town of what you've done.

They regarded each other. Freed suddenly had to ask: "Why me? Fairy Tail has so many good mages for hire."

"But as I told you and Master Makarov in my letter, I wasn't looking for good mage. I was looking for Freed the Dark. The Demon. As they say… 'Set a thief to catch a thief.' "

"So you conjured up a demon." Freed looked thoughtful, but rose soon after.

"You won't stay to dinner, Freed Justine?"

"No, but thank you for the offer, My Lady."

"Freed…"

"You should really come to Fairy Tail yourself," he added to the woman. "I don't think you'd be turned away."

"Perhaps, one day. But for now, I have a husband to teach, and two children to raise, and a city to rebuild. Magic will have to wait. Goodbye, Freed."

"Goodbye, My Lady."

[END]