A/N: Huge thanks to everyone who reviewed the previous chapter! It was a difficult one to write, but I was really happy with how it came out in the end. ~CS

State of Independence

By CrimsonStarbird

Chapter Ten: The Act or the Reason

The two inches of empty space between Invel's raised hand and the door might as well have been a pure magical forcefield.

It wasn't that he was worried His Majesty would take the news badly. Their emperor was a remarkable strategist, which implied an ability to consider all developments, even personally painful ones, from an objective standpoint. Swift, reliable information was too valuable a resource to threaten by taking out his anger on the people most likely to bring it to him. Besides, His Majesty was not prone to emotional outbursts. Centuries of learning to control his curse had ensured it.

No, Invel wasn't worried that His Majesty would take the news badly.

He was worried that His Majesty would refuse to take the news at all.

He still hadn't quite mustered up the courage to knock when that familiar voice called, "Come in, Invel."

The half-second he took to compose himself was purely mental, for he looked as immaculate as always. Although he would have sworn this time yesterday that he could annihilate the best Fairy Tail had to offer without breaking a sweat, the harsh reality was that he had maintained his image thus far only because His Majesty had held him back from joining the battle proper. That unhappy thought joined the cloud hanging over him as he pushed open the door and entered.

The command ship's cabin was hardly luxurious. The best that could be said about it was that it was light – wide windows let in a flood of foreign sunlight, for this airship was one designed for observing, not for fighting on the front lines. There was a sofa instead of the usual rigid seating, but its occupier was hardly reclining in the comfort his title afforded.

Zeref sat on the very edge of his seat, studying a small holographic map which showed a mere fraction of the disaster Invel had come to report. Still, the fact that he was taking any interest in the battle at all was a step up from earlier. Invel suppressed a grimace at the memory.

As that black gaze swept towards him, Invel made a small bow, and received a wan smile in return. Picking a safe question to open with, he asked, "You knew it was me, Your Majesty?"

"An educated guess. The area of intersection between 'people important enough to report directly to me' and 'people not currently being held captive by Fairy Tail' seems to be shrinking at an alarming rate."

This time, Invel knew his grimace was visible. There was something unnerving about how casually his emperor could comment on the disaster.

"Jacob has returned," he relayed dutifully, as if he also thought the situation of no concern. "I have his report."

Again, that strange, detached calmness. "Oh? Someone actually made it back?"

"Yes, although his freedom came at the cost of another's life. God Serena is dead."

There was a small noise of acknowledgement, but nothing more.

Invel took a deep breath. "It was August who killed him."

This time, there was no acknowledgement at all.

"According to Jacob's report," Invel pressed on, "he and God Serena had Fairy Tail's Gildarts Clive on the ropes when August arrived. He easily overpowered Jacob, and then joined the fight against God Serena, killing him after he took down Gildarts. Jacob was able to flee in the aftermath, and he returned here in order to… confirm the rumours."

Never mind that everyone except His Majesty had stopped considering them rumours as soon as the first concrete reports of losses had come in.

Zeref stared at the map of the battlefield and said nothing for a very long time. Invel remained perfectly still, as was proper, although the urge to shift from foot to foot was stronger than he had ever known it.

And then, at last, his emperor sighed. "I don't understand," he said, puzzlement lending old creases to his too-young face. "If we were losing because of some genius plan to defend Magnolia left behind by Mavis, I could understand. If we were losing because of Acnologia's interference, I could understand. If we were losing because Fairy Tail turned out to be more powerful than our most generous estimates allowed – I wouldn't like it, but I could understand it. But this?" There was genuine bafflement in his tone. "I don't understand at all."

"You're not the only one, Your Majesty. None of us saw this coming."

Zeref stood up suddenly. "I'm going to talk to him."

"Are you sure that's wise?" Invel objected; his tongue's tactful way of translating his brain's insistence that it was a very foolish idea indeed. Still, the insinuation was received loud and clear; Zeref gave him a humourless smile.

"It does not matter if it is wise or not. I have to know why he turned against me."

"I understand," Invel conceded, albeit somewhat stiffly. "Let me take my men; we'll cut a path through-"

"No. I will go on my own. Instruct all units to fall back from Magnolia… assuming, of course, that there are any which have not already fled."

Horror widened Invel's eyes. "Your Majesty-"

"We are beaten, Invel," Zeref said, with a resigned smile. "We were beaten from the moment August left my side."

"Your Majesty…" But Invel's protest died between his lips.

"I must confess I am adrift, Invel. I find myself constantly wondering which will be the next certainty in my life to vanish. Perhaps the sun will not rise tomorrow, or perhaps gravity will switch off, and we'll all float away. I no longer know what to think, or what I am supposed to want in this scenario. I cannot move forward until I understand how this could possibly have come to be. So, I will do just that, and I will do it alone."

He strode to the door, then paused to throw Invel one final glance. "Stay. I do not want to lose you too."

And then he was gone.

"I am truly sorry."

August tried to prevent the sigh from escaping his lips, but it was just too heavy, and the last remaining shreds of his emotional control were too damaged to restrain it. He had been doing his best to avoid Erza ever since his and Cana's return, but the guildhall offered none of the privacy of his rooms in the palace. His refusal to make eye contact had proven an inadequate shield against the blade of her sincerity.

He did not look over to where Cana sat sobbing into Lucy's shoulder; to the untouched tankard in front of her; to Mira shooing away the crowd of clumsy well-wishers. He did not have to.

"I do not think it is me you should be speaking to," he returned quietly.

"I understand that," Erza allowed. "I also understand that Cana was not the only one hurt by my actions. I am sorry for doubting you. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for you to fight against your friends, even if it was ultimately for their benefit…" She shook her head. "No, I can imagine it, and that is why I could not believe you were truly willing to go through with it. I apologize for my failure to see that you were always stronger than I."

Unable to speak the objections clawing at his throat, August swallowed them back, ignoring the fresh scars they carved into a heart already bruised beyond recognition. He gave a jerky nod, and to his relief, Erza went away again.

Yet there was no peace to be had in a place like this, and Erza's empty seat was almost immediately taken again. He glanced up in surprise to see Makarov sat opposite him. The old Master was judiciously avoiding his gaze, and his heart sunk further still. Fortunately, before he was subjected to another unwanted apology, the next seat along was taken by Mavis, who wasted no time in spreading the latest maps out in front of them.

"War Council!" she proclaimed, before doing a double-take, and peering closely at August. He wondered how much of his internal pain showed on his face. It may have been the first time he had not wanted to meet her gaze. Every time he looked at her, he remembered Cana's empty stare; found himself wondering if the world where he stood by his mother's side was worth the price she had paid.

Cautiously, Mavis checked, "Are you alright to join in? We can do this without you."

"I'm alright."

"Very well."

She dropped the matter and turned briskly to the maps, a firm if wordless indication that Makarov should do the same. "Here's the current situation," she announced. "Of the Spriggan Twelve, we have eight in custody, and the ninth is deceased. One has fled back to Zeref, and another never left his side. The twelfth is with us." She paused to smile at August. "In other words, the command tier of Alvarez's forces has been obliterated. Zeref's army is in full retreat."

Makarov exhaled slowly. "That is good news."

August nodded his agreement.

Their somewhat subdued responses to what should have been the best news they had heard in a while did not surprise Mavis. "As Fairy Tactician, I am overjoyed," she confirmed. "But as First Master… I know I have made mistakes, and they will sit heavy with me, whatever may come. However, I must say this – we have overcome impossible odds this day. Thanks to the efforts and the sacrifices made by all, Fairy Tail lives on."

"What of Zeref?" Makarov inquired. "His lack of participation thus far concerns me. We may have beaten his army, but no one has beaten him. Will he acknowledge the defeat and sue for peace?"

August knew the question was directed towards him. He wanted to say that Zeref would accept that he had lost. It was undoubtedly in the empire's best interests – not least because a peace settlement was the only way to guarantee the safe return of the mages Fairy Tail was currently holding captive. Once upon a time, he wouldn't have thought twice about his answer to Makarov's question, but knowing what Zeref was truly planning… having seen how little his faithful servants truly meant to him…

"I do not know," he replied honestly. "He will not act as other rulers might. He has come to view his empire as merely a means to an end. I have no doubt that he will abandon it in a heartbeat if he believes he can obtain Fairy Heart another way."

Mavis glanced down at the table, unable to stop the dismay from creeping across her lips and stealing the lustre from her eyes. "This will just keep happening, won't it? As long as Zeref and I both live, he will always come after me."

"We won't let that happen!" came Makarov's fierce rejoinder. "We will always protect our First Master. If that means taking the fight to Zeref, that's what we'll do!"

A ghost of a smile touched Mavis's lips, but that was all it was – a ghost; a remnant. August was reminded of everything she had confessed to him in the future-that-wouldn't-be: how she did not belong in this Fairy Tail, in this world; how she was something to be protected here, rather than their equal, their friend.

Freed from her crystal prison, she had been able to take an active role in the battle as tactician, commander, and mage. When she'd defended her guild, he'd felt the same hope and happiness radiating from her as he had on board the airship that night. Now, though, neither their unlikely victory nor Makarov's heartfelt declaration of support could help her hold onto those emotions. Even if her guild accepted her, she would never stop being Fairy Heart, and she would never stop being pursued by enemies. She would always be a liability, a curse, a darkness at the heart of their guild; the reason why joining Fairy Tail would forevermore be casting one's life into the fateful lottery from which Gildarts's name had been drawn that day.

Mavis was right. Even if Zeref sued for peace, he wouldn't see it as a defeat but a temporary setback – and temporary indeed, from the view of an immortal. For the first time since August had left Vistarion in a whirl of passion, he understood that thwarting Zeref's invasion attempt was not truly a solution. Beating Alvarez would not stop Zeref.

But then, what would?

"We may not get a say in the matter."

Erza's strict tones cut into the discussion. She was striding towards them, one hand on her sheathed sword, and grim purpose resounded in her every snapped footstep. By the time she reached the conference of Masters, the entire guild had fallen silent, and as a result her words echoed out like a funeral bell: "Zeref is here."

Makarov's eyes widened. "Here? Now?"

Amidst the anxious muttering that the sudden press of gloom had condensed from the guildhall's atmosphere, there rose one predictable shout: "Let me at him!"

Natsu had only taken a single step towards the door when Erza smacked him straight back into the far wall. Addressing the other Masters as if the interruption had never happened, she elaborated, "Yes. He has come under a flag of truce."

Makarov's eyebrows disappeared into the clouds. Even Mavis looked stunned.

Looking directly at August, Erza continued, "He has asked to speak to you."

If August wasn't showing the same reaction as the others, it was only because his brain was refusing to process the meaning behind Erza's words. "To me?"

"You don't have to go," Mavis said at once, placing her hand on his shoulder. "Fairy Tail offers you sanctuary. I, or one of the other Masters, will go in your place."

"Do you think he will honour the flag of truce?" Makarov voiced doubtfully.

"I do not know," August admitted. "In all honesty, I cannot imagine why he would do this."

Steel flashed in Erza's eyes. "It could be a trap. He knows you are the reason for his defeat, and he intends to lure you out of the guildhall under an apparent truce to ensure that you go down with him."

He, too, has nothing left to live for but spite.

That was what he had said to Erza in a future she had forgotten.

There was nothing Zeref would not do if he felt backed into a corner. He had seen it with his own eyes, after all. He had already been almost killed by his own emperor purely for speaking out against him, and weren't his crimes in this timeline a thousand times worse?

Erza's next words dragged him out of his ominous contemplation. "As the First Master says, you are under our guild's protection. I would be honoured to face him in your stead."

"As would I," Makarov seconded.

August looked between them in alarm. "But if it's a trap-"

"I'll spring it," Erza stated, with terrifying calm. "Death magic or no, he will not find me so easy to kill."

"What she said," Makarov agreed. "Ever since we learned of his intention to invade, we have all been preparing to fight Zeref one way or another."

Mavis said nothing, but the pride glowing like the summer sun in her eyes said everything.

Something caught in his throat. They meant it. All three of them. All he had to do was say yes, and these almost-strangers who should have been his enemies would stand between him and Zeref, knowing full well that it would lead to an impossibly difficult battle.

He had found once again the sense of belonging he had lost on the day his father had betrayed him. He could stay in his mother's guild until the day he died – here, where he was welcomed and valued, despite the fact that he'd already failed them once. He never had to go back. Ever.

But nor would he let any harm come to those who had offered him his second chance.

"No," he decided. "I will speak to Zeref myself."

He wondered when His Majesty had become simply 'Zeref' to him – not his emperor; not any more. He was going to make his choice clear. He would ensure that Zeref knew exactly where his loyalties lay, and that if he came after Mavis again, August would stand between them until his final breath.

"Are you certain?" Mavis asked, in a tone that clearly said, I don't like it, but I won't stop you.

He held firm against her concern, buttressed by the desire to protect her from the man to whom she had offered her heart, and who had repaid her by trying to erase her existence. "I am. I have to do this myself."

"I will accompany you," Erza said. It was not a suggestion.

She got to her feet beside him in the silence of the guildhall. Mavis and Makarov both moved to prevent anyone else from following him as he walked to the door – and then out into the street.

There, in the middle of the road, stood Zeref.

Erza took up a position by the entrance to the guildhall, with a nod to indicate that she would come closer only if it seemed the truce was about to be broken. Extending his magical senses, August scanned the surroundings for any indication that this was an ambush, but apart from Erza – and the whole guild pressed up against the windows of the building behind him – they were alone. If this was a surprise attack, Zeref would surely have brought Jacob and Invel with him. Perhaps he really did just want to talk… but then again, an immortal death-mage did not need help to wreak devastation upon the guild. He had already done it once, after all.

It seemed to take an age to walk the five or six paces away from the guildhall, and he still stopped several metres short of his former emperor. All the while, Zeref watched in silence. There was a strange expression on his face. Neither anger nor sadness, August couldn't quite place it – he had never seen him wear such an uncertain expression before, and yet he had the strangest feeling that he had.

"August," Zeref acknowledged quietly.

"Zeref."

Zeref blinked once at the use of his name rather than his title, but made no comment.

August found himself wondering if he was about to die. There was no reason for Zeref to tolerate disloyalty when the servants of his empire meant so little to him. Erza had been right. Coming out here was nothing more than offering himself up for punishment – a death sentence – for doing what he knew to be the right thing.

And when he died, Fairy Tail would not stand for it. He knew that much. The final battle would begin in the road outside the guildhall, and perhaps the entire guild together could achieve what the scattered survivors had failed to do the first time round, and defeat their immortal enemy… or perhaps it would end the same way; the guildhall drowned in its own blood.

"Why?"

It was such a lost and lonely word that August would have sworn he had imagined it.

"Why did you do it?"

But it wasn't his imagination, because all the final confrontations he had imagined had opened with hatred and death. And he remembered, suddenly, where he'd seen Zeref's expression before – not in his past, but in his mother's; hidden amidst the handful of precious memories he had inherited through her magic. The first time she had ever met Zeref, he had been like this: anxious, hesitant, unsure of how to treat the first human being who had refused the expected role of fear and revulsion around him and gone entirely off-script.

"Have I… have I treated you badly?" Concern glimmered within black eyes that should have promised nothing but death. "That was never my intention…"

"You have never been anything but kind to me," August retorted, before he could stop himself. "That's what made it so much worse."

Zeref's gaze turned towards the ground. "How long have you resented me?"

"It's not like that!" he snapped, and hated himself for snapping it. The pain that had driven him away from Alvarez felt like a childish tantrum in comparison to the wounded man before him, the man who had always seemed so strong and composed. Zeref might have stopped being His Majesty to him, but he would never stop being his father.

"It's not right without you here," Zeref murmured. "I cannot imagine the empire without you, not even now that I'm living it. Nothing feels real. All this time, I thought you were happy by my side… won't you at least tell me why?"

"Time travel," he said shortly, harshly. "I have returned to this time from the future."

Zeref glanced away again. "So, I am being punished for something I haven't yet done."

That hit hard. Hadn't Cana called such a thing inexcusable when she had forgiven him the sins of his own future?

But Zeref's actions were different to his. He'd fought so hard for Cana's sake in order to avoid making the same mistake twice. Zeref did not care that what he was planning was utterly reprehensible.

"I know full well you intend to do it!"

"And… you did not feel as though you could talk to me about it?"

"Don't you think that's the first thing I tried?" he shouted. "This is not the first past I have returned to!"

"I see," came the grave response. "Then, I suppose I cannot defend myself." That beautiful black gaze turned to him once again, and then dropped just as quickly, as if it had not found there what it had hoped. "Except to say that if I, too, had the benefit of hindsight, I doubt I would choose any path that I knew would make me feel this way."

August's voice came out as a snarl. "Don't lie to me! I have seen for myself how little you care! I could disappear, this whole world could disappear, and you would think nothing of it!"

"I… I don't know…"

"Yes, you do. That's all this war is about for you. Not obtaining a weapon to beat Acnologia, not strengthening your empire, not building a better world alongside those who adore you. You intend to travel back four hundred years and erase everything. You would never meet Mavis. Fairy Tail would cease to exist. The Alvarez Empire, and all of us who found a home there, would never come to be."

"And I would not be immortal," he murmured. "I would be free."

"You won't even deny it, then."

"It sounds like the ideal outcome for me," Zeref wondered.

"Then you already know why I choose to stand against you," August told him coldly. "My life has always been yours to use, but not to throw away. I will not let you take all meaning from my life, or the lives of my friends, by preventing everything we have achieved from ever coming to be."

"Do you think I want to do that to you?"

"I think you do not care either way. We have always meant nothing to you."

"Perhaps," Zeref equivocated. "Perhaps not." He winced, rubbing at his forehead with the heel of his hand. "It is not so clear to me…"

August could not stop his anger from rising again. This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Zeref should have been furious, inflicting fatal vengeance upon the one who had betrayed him; who had confronted him with the truth he had tried to keep hidden from his servants for so long. He ought to be cruel. Remorseless. The enemy of everyone who had lived these past four hundred years; a villain August would be proud to die defying.

He wasn't supposed to be like this.

He knew Zeref could be manipulative. He knew he would not hesitate to lie, just as he had concealed his true intentions from those who had gone to war for him. Moreover, August had made his own decision. His heart lay with the world he was trying to protect – the world that contained his mother and Fairy Tail and the wonderful years he had spent by his father's side, before all this had come to pass.

He had made his choice. He had come here to declare himself Zeref's enemy.

Yet it was growing more difficult by the minute to keep hold of that righteous outrage.

"You told me so yourself!" he shouted. "Right before you tried to erase my existence! Before you tried to kill me for interfering!"

Agitated, Zeref shook his head, as if trying to shake off invisible cobwebs. "That wasn't me. This me. I haven't done that, and the me who did must never have felt like this."

Another memory presented itself as evidence-

-how Mavis had pleaded as Zeref seized control of Fairy Heart, tears that had cascaded ineffectually down a heart of stone, and he'd said-

-you didn't come here to be with me-

-you came here to die-

-you told me that you loved me, and then you told me to take the life you don't even want and use it to save your guild-

-and, for the first time, August wondered if Zeref hadn't actually been planning to erase the past until that very moment.

He forced the doubt back down; buried it, melted it, obliterated it beneath a surge of molten rage and pressed other memories into its cooling surface – flashes of insight from the first time Zeref had told Mavis about his empire. "You have never thought of us as anything other than pawns to be moved in games of war. That did not begin a few hours ago. It has been true from the start. That is why you think nothing of throwing us all away, in every single timeline I have experienced."

If Zeref registered the bitterness in the accusation, he gave no sign of it, and he certainly did not rise to it. It was an even smaller voice that confessed, "That was always my intention. My curse will not let me create unless I can justify it to myself in that way. That was how I felt when I returned to Alvarez to give the order to invade. But…"

His gaze flickered briefly up again, offering a glimpse of sheer bewilderment that did not belong in the eyes of a man as great as he. "I should be angry, shouldn't I? My army has been defeated, my invasion thwarted, my plans derailed… I have every reason to be angry, and I'm just not. Nothing has felt real since I returned to Vistarion and you weren't there. I want you back."

"Of course you do. My being here is the reason why you lost!"

Another agitated shake of his head. "I don't mean like that. I mean… I miss you."

August took a step back. "No. You don't."

"Don't I?" It was a genuine question, not the rhetorical device August had been half-expecting. "I know there was a time when I was in Alvarez and you weren't, but I do not recall it with any great clarity. I cannot think of my country without also thinking of you, nor of you without my country. We made Alvarez into what it is, you and I. And all the times I've been away, when I couldn't bear the curse any longer… I always knew I could take as much time as I needed to recover, because you'd look after everything in my place. That's how it has always been. When I returned to find you gone, not knowing what I had done to hurt you… I felt in my heart, I still feel, that I've stepped out of my world and fallen into another. One I do not want."

"You are the one who drove me away!"

"I understand that now. And I always knew that losing you – losing all of you – would be as much a consequence of pushing you away as of letting you get too close. I thought I didn't care, but if I don't care, why does nothing else seem to matter right now?"

He glanced away, rubbing at his forehead again. Pain, both physical and mental, was evident in his stance, but he pushed on through it.

"Maybe I'll feel differently tomorrow," he whispered. "Maybe I'll be angry. Maybe I'll be ashamed. I never know how I'm going to feel at any given time; that's what this curse does to me. All I can do is act on how I feel right now, and right now… I want you back in Alvarez."

"No." August took one step back, and then another. "I will not go back with you. I stand with Mavis and with Fairy Tail, and I will never help you obtain Fairy Heart."

"I don't care about any of that!" came the anguished cry. "Not right now. We'll work out a settlement – we'll find a way forward that doesn't involve conflict with Fairy Tail. I won't make you fight against them; the war is over. I just want things to go back to how they were between us and our country."

And wasn't that all August wanted too?

A peace treaty with the guild he wanted to protect. A promise that Zeref would reconsider erasing the present. A place by his father's side once again… an acknowledgement that his father wanted him; that his life and his love had some meaning…

He had always been content just to be with his father – watching over the empire they had built together; taking pride in training the next generation of mages, who had become his friends once they had ceased to be his students. He was His Majesty's most trusted vassal, his advisor and confidante, forever by his side, and… and that had always been enough.

That's what he had been telling himself all his life. That's what he had said to Cana.

And she'd smiled, and asked, then why did you kill me?

Because she, who had been a hundred times more courageous than he, had known the truth.

It had never been enough.

He had always, always, always wanted to be loved by his father, and he never had been.

Those words-

-I miss you-

-I want you back-

-that was why they hurt so much.

That was why he shrieked, "How can you say that? You have never loved me!"

"Have I not…?" It was another genuine question, drifting to the ground like a single snowflake. There was something akin to shame in the way his fingers twisted the fabric of his robes. He had never looked less like an emperor, nor more like a raw human being. "It is so hard to tell, sometimes…"

"It could not be easier for you to tell," August retorted bitterly. "If you loved me, you'd have killed me, just like you killed Mavis."

What little spirit Zeref had left seemed to leave him all at once. "I suppose you must be right," he admitted, shoulders slumping. "Perhaps I did not understand it until you were gone. I never could make sense of my own feelings. All I know is that I don't want this to go on any longer. Please, come home."

Something halted the rejection upon August's lips. It might have been the sorrow he did not have the heart to believe his father was faking. It might have been the promise encapsulated by the word home; a return to the country he loved and his father's side, and all the memories and the lifelong friendships that Fairy Tail, for all that they had come to welcome him in, could never give him.

Or it might have been something Mavis had said in a future that would never come to be.

For ten years, her curse had not laid a finger upon her three best friends – not because she didn't love them, but because she was too used to them being there for her to understand the value of their lives.

And that was when everything went wrong.

It was Erza who reacted first.

Not August, even though he was the one who had survived it twice before; his thoughts had stalled with the realization of what his father's words might mean and failed to process the consequences.

No – it was Erza, who had refused to accept that she owed him nothing, who had already offered to take his place, and who now shot past him as a blur of magic and unhesitant resolve. She collided with Zeref moments before an explosion of darkness filled the street.

It wasn't a burst of energy so much as a spreading of its absence. It moved like a wave of gaseous midnight, frothing through the street and breaking silently against the walls. Not a single pebble was dislodged by its passing – after all, it was harmless to such trivial things as walls and lampposts and roads.

Night came and went in an instant, and the day returned. The only sign that any magic had been unleashed there was the motionless body of the Seventh Master of Fairy Tail half-sprawled across Zeref's prone form.

Horror pressed down upon the scene like a concrete blanket, stifling all signs of life. Only Zeref seemed able to move, and as he shuffled out from beneath her body, his eyes were wide with the stare of a child barely old enough to comprehend what he had seen. He reached for her with trembling fingers, trying to find a pulse, and fell back with a whimper. "No… please… I didn't mean to…"

"ERZA!"

The bellow alone was enough to blow the doors of the guildhall wide open; the accompanying burst of flames was just for show. Natsu cannonballed down the street, eyes and fists ablaze with a spitting, fiery vengeance.

"Don't!" August screamed. "It was an accident!"

Perhaps Natsu didn't hear, or perhaps he didn't care. Body cloaked in flame and scales, he flung himself at Zeref with a feral roar. Zeref cringed away from him, one arm raised in a pitiful attempt to shield his face, his eyes screwed shut.

Black magic surged. Natsu hit the ground face-first and did not move again.

"Natsu," Zeref whimpered. "No, please, come on… you can't be dead… not like this…"

"Natsu!" another voice yelled. Gray dodged Mavis's attempt to catch him and hurtled down the street, ice crawling over the melted footprints the Dragon Slayer had left behind as he prepared to unleash his strongest magic. Nor was he alone. Heedless to their First Master's calls for restraint, the guild swarmed onto the battlefield, desperate to avenge their fallen comrades or defeat their final enemy or both.

It wouldn't be enough.

It hadn't been enough the first time round, when the guild mages had been coordinated rather than grief-stricken, and their enemy had been in full control of his magic. Now, death ran rampant through Magnolia. Zeref curled up in a foetal position in the middle of the street, eyes closed and hands clamped over his ears, begging over and over for it to stop as the greatest of the guild's warriors fell like discarded husks around him.

And August could do nothing but stare, frozen not by the horrific waste of life but by how quickly everything had fallen apart.

He'd had his father's affection. His mother's trust. They'd been about to form a settlement, a peace deal, a way to end the conflict with no more death.

Thirty seconds later, it was gone. That black wind had swept it all away.

Somewhere in the chaos, Zeref's gaze locked onto his; a wordless plea for help.

Mavis's hand grabbed his own and wrenched him out of it, and her plea was not wordless at all: "Fix this! You have to!"

"I can't!" he shouted back. "I don't know how-!"

Trying, in those few desperate words, to convince her that he couldn't do this again, he couldn't; he'd tried to save everyone and he'd got them all killed again, and he didn't know how he could go back to a time when his mother didn't know him and his father didn't care for him and the world was damned whether Zeref wanted war or peace-

She shook her head fiercely. "You can. You will. I know it."

And it hurt more than he could say, because with that, the choice had been taken out of his hands. For the third time in three different futures, he could not deny the one and only request his mother had ever made of him. Light poured from her as she released the power hidden inside her body, and it wrapped around him once more, a ghost of the embrace he had always longed for…

But it was different, this time. Warmer. He opened his eyes a crack, and through the radiance of the magic she was weaving he could see her holding him tightly, her face buried into his chest, and she whispered, "Please."

He took the magic she offered him, and went into the light for her.

Thwump.

The book tumbled from slack fingers, turned a lazy half-flip in the air, and slumped across the floorboards spine-up.

August stared at it. Those precious arcane secrets, scrawled in blood and preserved for three hundred years within a binding of beaten dragonhide, lay in a heap before him, and he made no move to retrieve it.

He didn't know what to do now.