Chapter Six:

"Are you finished packing?"

"Excuse me?" Lucy looked up from lacing her boots. Acnologia had appeared in the doorway of her bedroom, his cloak wrapped around him like a dark cloud.

"Packing," he repeated slowly. "The act of gathering one's belongings before departure."

"I know what packing is," she replied with a roll of her eyes. "What I was asking about was the need for packing. Are we departing?"

"Do you not wish to go back to Magnolia?" he asked, and Lucy was surprised to hear bewilderment in his tone. It was the first time he had shown any sort of confusion in front of her. Usually he was stoic and in control, with the exception of the end of their discussion the night before, where he had been kind.

His question made her pause. The first month she had spent in the cave, she had been eager to leave. Eager to learn what was necessary and return to her friends. To go home.

But Loke had told her that Magnolia was empty of members of Fairy Tail; that the guild had scattered to the four winds. There was nothing but emptiness for her there, nobody waiting for her to come home. She had made her home here in this cave, with a surly dragon slayer for company. It had been such a gradual change that she hadn't noticed until now.

"The winter storms are almost upon us," Acnologia continued coolly. "If you do not leave soon, you will likely not be able to return until the spring thaws, for even I cannot fight against nature when she chooses to act. You have no further reason to stay here."

Lucy almost snorted at the pompousness of the statement, but collected herself. Drawing upon the manners that Loke and Capricorn had taught her after she had been taken on as an official student, she stood and bowed low before Acnologia.

"If you permit it, Héahleornere," she murmured, her eyes fixed on the floor just in front of his feet. "I would ask to become a member of your household. For I have no other household to claim but that of my láréow, and would be honored to share your hearth."

Barely breathing she waited for his response, having placed all of her hopes onto him allowing her to stay. But she couldn't help but remember that he had been alone for four hundred years, and Lucy was afraid that he would set her loose in the world with the knowledge of who Zeref was, what he had done to her friend, and what she had to do to stop him. She knew that she could handle it, but she didn't want to do it alone.

"Why do you seek a place at my hearth?" he asked after a long minute. "It is not a well-visited hearth, nor conveniently placed. With winter upon us, we will likely be bound to the cave for days at a time."

"There is nothing left for me out there," Lucy said honestly. "My blood-family is dead, and my heart-family scattered across the continent. I do not know what I would have done if you had not taken me as a student, but I know that I would remain at your hearth." As an afterthought, and wondering if her cheek would be tolerated, she added: "And I would finish reading through your library."

Acnologia chuckled softly, so soft she almost missed it, and then responded: "If you wish it, you will be welcome at my hearth, Heofonsteorra Lucy Heartfilia."

Straightening, Lucy smiled softly at the dragon. "Shall I make breakfast?" she asked politely, wondering if he had made the morning meal as usual, or if she would be given a chance for once. "Or have you already eaten?"

"It is…easier to fly on an empty stomach," Acnologia responded slowly. "I would be grateful if you prepared a meal. But first, I have something to show you, now that this is to be your home."

Taking her by the elbow, hand gentle, he led her across the open portion of the cave and after four months, Lucy learned where the entrance to the outer cave was.


Acnologia's warning about the winter storms came true two days after he had ended her apprenticeship. When she rose and appeared in the main room, Acnologia was reading near the hearth, an empty plate beside him, and Lucy's waiting for her at her usual seat.

"The first of the storms is here," he said as she sat, balancing the plate on her lap. "We will be confined to the caves today."

Swallowing the bite of rabbit that she had just taken, Lucy shrugged. "If it is not too great of an imposition, perhaps I will read further in the athenaeum?" she said. "Or did you have other plans?"

"You are no longer my student," he replied coolly. "There is no need for you to defer to me."

"But you are Héahleornere," Lucy replied. "And master of my hearth. Is it wrong that I should ask permission before intruding upon your belongings?"

The dragon snorted, turning a page in his book. "You've learned manners in the four months you have been here," he said dryly. "Your spirits have been good teachers."

"I have learned the manners expected of me by my láréow," Lucy corrected firmly. "They are different than those taught to noblewomen and guild members."

"You were a noblewoman?" Acnologia asked, with a hint of curiosity in is voice. "Why leave that for my hearth?"

Lucy made a face as she remembered growing up on the Konzern, the coldness of the halls after her mother's death. "Nobility does not equal happiness, just as marriage does not always associate with love. My father would have had me marry for the betterment of his business without considering my personal feelings. To him, at least then, I was nothing more than a tool to be wielded."

"As Draconis, I understand the necessity of political marriage," Acnologia responded slowly. "But none of my predecessors would have arbitrarily chosen their child's spouse. My own marriage to the last Andromedaera was a political marriage, but one we were both willing to undertake. We were…compatible, in a way. Or at least it seemed so at the time the betrothal was signed." His tone was bitter when he referred to the last Andromedaera, but Lucy couldn't blame him. Acnologia had been betrayed by Anna Heartfilia, who was bound to be married to him. It was a low blow.

"It has changed since then," Lucy murmured, setting aside her now empty plate. "Among the nobility, children are simply assets a parent may use to expand their influence. I refused to be a part of that, so I left and became a guild mage. My father went to great expense to retrieve me, but I would not be moved." It hurt, oh it still hurt when she thought about the incident with Phantom Lord, how the guild had been destroyed because of her, how everyone had fought and gotten hurt because they wouldn't give her up. Sometimes she still dreamed of it, still dreamed of Gajeel's last attempt to kill her and her desperate resolve that she would not break, would not give in and slink home because Fairy Tail had suffered so much because of her and they would not give her up.

"Among the dragons it was the same," Acnologia's voice broke into her thoughts, and Lucy listened, since he was volunteering information, which almost never happened. "And the slayers. We were to choose our own mates, love-matches, if you will. To bind yourself to an unwilling partner was one of the most grievous crimes in our society. My case was a special one, admittedly, but we were willing, and both parties knew what they were walking into."

Humming in agreement, Lucy gathered her plate and his own, retreating to the sink to wash them and the few dishes that had been dirtied by cooking, taking advantage of the distance to calm the flood of emotions that had threatened to overwhelm her when she thought of Fairy Tail. Four months, and the hurt still lingered, an ache in her bones that she sometimes doubted would ever fade.

Acnologia left her to her thoughts, saying nothing as she disappeared into the athenaeum and returned with a thick book to settle beside the hearth with. At noon, he placed a plate by her elbow, and she stopped to eat, just briefly, and then returned to her reading.

After dinner though, he confiscated her book and led her outside. The outer cave was dark, the snow swirling at the entrance like the wind barrier that Erigor had set around the train station.

"You mourn your lost friends," Acnologia said, almost invisible in the darkness but for the light gleam of his silvery hair. "Why did you not take the chance when you had it and go to them?"

"Nobody stayed," Lucy whispered, staring out at the snow. "Loke told me that nobody stayed. I won't join another guild, not after what I've experienced with Fairy Tail. And none of them wanted to stay a part of the guild enough that they would disobey Master's orders and rebuild it. They just left. All of them. Natsu left anyways, without telling anyone." Without telling me, she wanted to cry. He had been her best friend, her shoulder to lean on, and he left. After Phantom, after her father died, after Future Lucy…he had been there. And then he left.

"Everyone leaves," Acnologia said flatly. "They either die and leave you or they turn away and leave you."

"That doesn't make it easier," Lucy hissed at him, wrapping her arms around herself. "Just because we all die at some point doesn't make the loss any easier."

"Did you ask to stay here because you were too afraid to be alone?" the dragon asked bluntly. "If that was the cause, as soon as the storm clears, I will deliver you to your town."

"No," Lucy spat, turning on him. "I had nothing out there, but I could have been a mage. Could have tried to find everyone, because we tend to leave a trail of destruction in our wake when we go anywhere."

"Why didn't you?" Acnologia challenged. "You could have tried to leave the moment I started taking you to the forest to train. But you stayed."

Lucy snorted. "And you wouldn't have tossed me over your shoulder and kept me in the cave the minute I tried to run?" she asked sarcastically. "Of course I stayed. But I chose to stay now because I like it here. They're gone, but I don't want to find them. This feels…right. Sharing your hearth, learning from you…it's an opportunity I don't want to waste, a path I want to walk."

"The dragon who tried to kill you, who killed many, many people and dragons, is your preferred choice compared to your friends?"

"Do you honestly enjoy killing?" Lucy snapped. "Because when you told me your story, I heard a whole lot of regret. Not regret that you killed, but regret at the situation that made you choose killing as an option."

"We're not talking about me right now," Acnologia said shortly. "We're talking about you."

"What do you want me to say?" Lucy shrieked, throwing her hands up and turning on him. "Do you want to know about how much it hurts to remember that the guild that meant everything to me meant less to everyone else, people who I've seen fight to the point of death for it and the people in it? Do you want me to tell you about the nightmares I still have but this time, there is nobody to wake me from them? Do you want to hear about how every time I look at the back of my godsdamned hand and don't see my guild mark, I wonder if this isn't the beginning of the hell that she warned us all about? Is that what you want to hear? How much I'm suffering, even if I've chosen to make my home here?"

"Who warned you?" Acnologia said, eyes dark with something Lucy couldn't name. "Who warned you, and what did she warn you about?"

"Dragons," Lucy hissed from between her gritted teeth. "If the Eclipse Gate plan had been untouched, it would have unleased thousands of dragons into this world. And the me of that future came back through time to stop it. And she died, saving me. She had no guild mark, and right now all I can wonder is if we aren't on track for a future just as bad as the one she had."

Frustration, fear, rage…all of them coursed through Lucy and she lunged for Acnologia, rational mind narrowed to the mentality of hurt something. Wanting to make them feel how much she was hurting. It didn't matter that she was half of his size or weight, or that he was capable of taking her out with a single finger. Lucy charged him, and he defended himself, making no effort to restrain her. He let her wear out her fury against him, taking the blows that she doled out without a single murmur until she slid to the ground, panting and exhausted.

To her surprise, he crouched down next to her, reaching out to tip her head up so that they were looking into each other's eyes.

"The Eclipse Gate is an abomination," he rasped softly, just loud enough to be heard over the sound of the wind and the snow at the entrance to the cave. "You should not have had to suffer it more than you already have. For that, I am sorry."

"It wasn't your fault," Lucy choked out in an odd combination of grief and shock, shock that this man was apologizing to her. "You had nothing to do with it."

"If I had killed Zeref beforehand," the dragon hissed the Black Wizard's name with a disgust Lucy had never heard before from him. "Or if I had been more careful about destroying all of his works, you would not have had to suffer the second Eclipse Gate. As Draconis, I have failed in my duties."

Lucy couldn't argue with his reasoning. Too much of her grief tied back to Zeref, in some way, shape, or form. If Acnologia had managed to kill Zeref in advance of…well, just about anything connected to her life it seemed, she wouldn't have suffered most of the disasters she had experienced. But yet… "Didn't you say that only Natsu would be able to kill him?" she asked softly, still looking into Acnologia's eyes, his hand forcing her chin up so that she could not hide away.

"That seems to be the case," the dragon huffed irritably. "But I'm not ruling out severe blunt force trauma yet."

"What will happen to Natsu when Zeref dies?" Lucy asked suddenly, a sneaking suspicion in her mind.

"I don't know," Acnologia admitted gruffly. "Zeref destroyed the notes on how the brat was created, so everything about him is unknown. The boy you know may simply have been a soul pulled back and attached to that body with magic, a human façade for a weapon, if you will."

"So…when Zeref dies…" She couldn't say the words.

"He might," the slayer murmured. "But you have to decide. Which is it that would benefit the world more? The survival of the Dragneel brothers, or the death of the Black Wizard?"

Lucy tried to pull away, but Acnologia held her firmly in place. "Do not mistake me, Heofonsteorra, I am not the heartless monster you believe me to be. I too have grieved lost companions. But this is beyond you now, beyond any of us. As Draconis, it is my duty to rid the world of the man who has perverted what our ancestors taught him. You, as the last scion of Andromeda, and as my heir as Héahleornere, are bound by the same duty. Anna Heartfilia failed that duty four hundred years ago. Would you do the same, to save a single man who was lost long before?"

His eyes, looking back at her were cold, and Lucy would have backed down if he hadn't held her in place. She wondered, for a moment, if he wouldn't cut her down right here if she refused. But she couldn't turn her back on Natsu.

"I would end Zeref," she replied shakily. "If it comes at the cost of my nakama, then so be it. But I would do my best to save Natsu, if at all possible."

Holding her in place for a moment longer, Acnologia released her chin. "Your loyalty to him does you credit," he said gruffly. "But you have a duty to fulfill, and I…I would not have you as my enemy."

Lucy looked back up at him, of her own volition now, and she was surprised to see something that she might even call fondness on the dragon's face as he looked down at her. Briefly, she wondered what he would look like if his face softened like that more often. Her mind supplied a brief image, and she nearly squeaked as she looked down again, cheeks reddening. It was an…attractive thought. And one that had no place in her mind.

Acnologia straightened, reaching down to help her to her feet, his hand warm, even through her long tunic sleeves. It was cold in the outer cave, without the warmth of the fire, and with the wind howling by the entrance. Snow was already mounding at the entrance to the cave, the beginnings of a solid white barrier in place.

"Go rest," he ordered, nodding towards the place where the entrance to the inner cave was concealed. "We will see what weather the dawn brings."

***So, apologies to everyone. This has apparently been lying around for some time, waiting for me to publish it. No estimate on when the next chapter will come, but here's an update!***