A/N: I know I say this a lot, but seriously, thank you so much to everyone who is following this story, and especially to my reviewers. Your engagement with this little story, your feedback, and your words of encouragement never fail to make me smile (and have helped motivate me through the hardest chapter yet to write...) ~CS

State of Independence

By CrimsonStarbird

Chapter Eleven: Courage

What now?

August stared at the book whose fall had inexplicably come to mark the beginning of his time loop, and could not quite bring himself to reach for it.

He didn't know what he was supposed to do.

He knew why Mavis had sent him back. No one had wanted that outcome – not her, not him, not even Zeref. It wasn't the first time he had seen the remnants of the guild massacred, but it was the first time it had ever been unintentional; not one final push to secure Alvarez's victory but peace talks which had gone horribly wrong.

He knew, as well, why he'd had to go. Everything he had wanted to protect – his friends, Cana, Fairy Tail, the whole accursed world – had been condemned the moment Zeref had lost control of his curse. He couldn't have accepted an ending like that, having been offered the chance to change it.

But, that was just it. He'd gone back because he had to. Not because he had a plan.

The same hopelessness he had felt the very first time he had been flung into the past rose up in him again. He wasn't the kind of person who could come up with world-changing plans. Strategic genius was not an inheritable trait… and yet he had been the only one sent back; it was all inexplicably on his shoulders.

The first time he'd gone back, he'd thought he had known how to save everyone. He'd avoided the war entirely, and it had only brought greater disaster upon them all.

The second time, he hadn't thought at all. He had acted purely on impulse, driven not by hope or ingenuity but by a knee-jerk response to his father's act of betrayal. Mavis's trust, Erza's respect, and Cana's ill-placed forgiveness had assured him that he was on the right path, and knowing his friends would live to see the end of the war had soothed the wounds left by Ajeel's scathing words. It wasn't until the very end that everything had fallen apart.

He could run to Mavis's side once again. He could ensure everything happened as it had last time – no, he could go one better. He could save Gildarts this time; could grant Cana the happy ending denied to her in every other future. That alone would make doing this all over again worth it… but it wasn't truly a solution, was it?

The war wouldn't end when the Spriggan Twelve were defeated. No matter how thoroughly Zeref's army was crushed, Zeref himself was still an immortal death-mage afflicted with a terrible curse, and he still sought Fairy Heart as a means of escape. He was capable of taking out the entire guild on his own – and in no timeline had anyone, friend or foe, found a way of defeating him.

There was no way around the final confrontation between Zeref and Fairy Tail. He was immortal, an unstoppable force, and if met with the immovable barrier of Mavis agreeing to spend all eternity beyond his reach on Tenrou Island, the resulting collision would destroy all sanity left in the world. It already had done, once.

No, it didn't matter which side nominally won the war. It would always come down to the same two outcomes: Zeref would obtain Fairy Heart and remake the world, or he would succumb to the madness of desperation and destroy it himself.

The worst thing was that even if Zeref wanted peace, those two outcomes were still unavoidable. He had been willing to negotiate last time – and it was that very desire that had led to the guild's massacre. The clash between him and Fairy Tail had already been set in motion; time hadn't turned back far enough to prevent it. And even if August tried to stop it as he had before, by leaving Zeref's side and hoping Zeref would once again inexplicably want him back enough to consider a peaceful resolution, his curse would still unleash death upon Magnolia, because…

His heart lurched as the realization he had been pushing away ever since the massacre at the guildhall finally broke through his defences.

He loves me.

Just as Mavis hadn't understood the value of her friends until she had been forever separated from them, his father had not realized how important he was to him until he had turned against Alvarez.

How blind had he been to not see it sooner? Zeref couldn't love consciously; it was far too much a risk with his curse. He had trained himself to crush that feeling for centuries, and if Mavis had been spectacular enough to slip through those defences, they had only been redoubled in the wake of her passing.

But the signs had been there, if only he had thought to look for them.

How many other children had he brought to his side, without any guarantee that they would prove to be loyal or powerful or a useful advisor? To how many had he offered a home, rather than just a lifetime of service?

How many others did he trust to lead the empire in his absence?

How many of his colleagues would have been met with fury and punishment if they turned on him, rather than a plea to come home?

How many would he have cared for if they collapsed before a war council, reassuring them that he would rather they stayed behind and survived than fought a battle they were too ill for, regardless of how important that battle was to him?

Tears trickled slowly down his cheeks as he retrieved the fallen book – the one that Zeref had given him for no real reason; the one that had made his father think of him and offer it as a gift in defiance of protocol – and cradled it to his chest.

Somewhere along the way, he had come to take it as read that his father would never love him – that Zeref's curse and his history had conspired to render it impossible, and that even if he still had the capacity for love after Mavis's death, he would refuse it rather than expose himself to more suffering.

Somewhere along the way, his own acceptance of the tragedy of his unrequited love had left him blind to the fact that it had never been unrequited.

Maybe it wasn't the familial love he had always longed for. Maybe it wasn't something that Zeref would ever realize consciously in this timeline, let alone put into words. But he had seen it, and wasn't that enough?

Is that enough for you?

It wasn't the words that still haunted him so much as the knowing tone in which Cana had spoken them.

Because she, who had spent most of her life in the same guild as her unaware father; who had waved to Gildarts along with everyone else as he'd left on another Ten Year Quest without her; who had occupied the same small part of his life as the guild's other children for so many years – she had known the truth.

Then why did you kill me?

So she had asked him, with the perceptiveness that only true empathy could bring. If all he'd wanted to do back then had been to destroy the paternal love that she had and he didn't, it wasn't her he would have targeted in their fight, but Gildarts. He would have killed her father and left her no better off than he was. But he hadn't. He'd struck out at her, because she'd been the closest thing to the one he'd really wanted to strike down.

It hadn't been her he had hated in that moment, but himself.

It wasn't her fault his father didn't love him. It was his.

Cana hadn't been handed her father's love gift-wrapped. She had earnt it. She had found the courage to tell Gildarts the truth, knowing full well that it might have ruined what little relationship they had. He had done no such thing.

What had he been expecting, all these years? That Zeref would wake up one day somehow convinced that his former lover must have had a secret child, never mind that she had been clinically dead for months by the time of the birth, and that said child absolutely had to be the vassal who had never mentioned anything of the sort during his decades of service? It wasn't Zeref's fault he had never loved the son he didn't know he had, was it?

For so long he had hidden behind the same excuses: Zeref was incapable of love; Zeref couldn't see people as anything more than tools; Zeref didn't know what it meant to form a meaningful connection with another human being. And, gradually, he had been able to shift the blame for never being loved from himself onto his father, until he could erupt with rage over never having known the love of a parent heedless to the fact that the only person to blame for his situation was himself.

Why had he never told his father the truth?

There hadn't been a good moment, yes, but there hadn't been for Cana either. The one she'd set aside had never materialized after she failed the S-Class Trials yet again, but she'd done it anyway. She'd made her own moment. And he'd been too afraid to do the same.

What was he so afraid of?

Denial, Cana had said, but if he thought about it, didn't he have a unique way around that? His magic and his father's were deeply connected. Returning the memories he had inherited through that bond would be proof enough, if Zeref was willing to look at them.

Rejection. Yes, and he had far more to lose than Cana did there, because he was close to Zeref in a way she had never been to Gildarts before she'd told him. If Zeref pushed him away, he'd lose his home, his livelihood, his very reason for being… but she was the same, wasn't she? Cana wouldn't have wanted to stay in the guild any more than he'd want to stay as leader of the Spriggan Twelve, and everything she had was tied up in Fairy Tail as much as his in Vistarion. He may have had more to lose than her, but either way, they'd both have ended up with nothing. She had deemed the gamble worth it. He was the one who claimed to love his father more than anything, and yet had deemed his current position too important to risk.

Death. It had never been a consideration for Cana, but Zeref wasn't Gildarts. His instinct was to push people away, and death magic was an effortless way of removing the source of his anger, his hurt, his fear. After all, the Black Mage had quite a reputation… but not in Alvarez, did he? He had never been anything here but composed and authoritative; stern when he had to be but never cruel; beloved by his aides and his people. Why deny nine decades of first-hand evidence suggesting Zeref would respond with civility for the sake of the myths Mavis had known better than to believe?

And then, of course, there was what Cana had labelled the worst possible outcome.

Love. That's the real nightmare scenario, isn't it?

Gildarts had loved Cana enough to die for her; an outcome she hadn't even considered before telling him the truth. August, too, had convinced himself that Zeref would never love him – that he wanted weapons of his Twelve, not family, and being at his side necessitated abandoning that desire to be loved. And if Zeref wasn't going to love him either way, what was the point in telling him the truth?

But Zeref did love him.

In his own way, Zeref always had.

He may have been an immortal emperor, but he was still human – he hurt, he cried, he loved, as far as he was allowed. Maybe he would reject his son. Maybe he would make him flee for his life again, and he could return to Fairy Tail and have another go at preventing the war. Maybe it would be the last time he ever got to see his father: one new and awful memory, but ultimately only one, to weigh against a lifetime of happy ones.

Maybe.

But at least he'd know that the reason why his father didn't love him wasn't because he lacked the courage to tell him the truth.

No, he didn't know how to prevent the devastation that seemed inevitable in every timeline, but he knew someone who might – someone who could have helped from the start, if he had only had the courage to trust him; to love him; to welcome him into his life, in just the way he had so hypocritically expected to be welcomed in himself all these years.

As the sound of the crowds cheering their emperor's return reached his ears, he got to his feet. He considered the book in his hand, tempted for one wild moment to bring that symbol of casual affection with him, before he set it down on his desk with a rueful smile and strode for the door.

It was time to do what he should have done ninety years ago.

August was too tense to concentrate during the war council. Not that it mattered – whatever the outcome of his confession, he knew with certainty that he would not be fighting for Alvarez in the upcoming war. Perhaps he'd run to Mavis's side, perhaps he'd live out the rest of his days in a country far from here, perhaps he would no longer be a citizen of this mortal world… but he bore no animosity towards Fairy Tail, and nothing would change that.

The meeting came to an end far too quickly. Before his resolve could fail him, he stood, and requested, "Zeref, may I speak with you?"

He realized his mistake immediately. A murmur of confusion ran around the departing mages – soft amongst those who were not familiar with their emperor's birth name, and harsh from the few who were. Zeref gave him a curious look, but there was no trace of hostility in his voice as he said, "Of course," and motioned for the others to leave without answering their silent queries.

When they were alone in the chamber, Zeref remarked mildly, "It's unusual for you to call me that."

"I apologize, Your Majesty," August said at once, inwardly cursing the habit he had developed in the past timeline for setting them off on the wrong foot.

Zeref raised a hand to forestall any further apologies. "It's not as though I mind it. It is how I introduced myself to you, after all."

"I… I had forgotten," he admitted, ashamed to find that it was true.

"I never liked to introduce myself by name when I travelled," Zeref reflected. "Anyone who recognized it was bound to push me away. But… I thought it would be okay with you, because you were too young to understand what it meant. I could just be me… until we arrived back here, at least."

August opened his mouth, but no words came out. To think that he had remembered such a trivial, vital thing all these years; to think that he valued the memory of their meeting enough for that…

"Anyway," Zeref resumed, his eyes sharp and bright on the eve of war. "I assume you have concerns about the invasion that you do not wish to raise in front of the others."

It was a question as much as a statement; an order to speak.

"No," he replied automatically, and winced. "Well, yes, I do, but… that's not it." A deep breath. "There are two things I need to talk to you about."

"Go on, then."

"The first is…"

The silence stretched on, a void beckoning him to jump. Cana may have told him when she'd done it, but not how, and a step-by-step guide to exactly what she'd said would have been nice right about now.

"There's no easy way to say this, so I'm just going to do it," he insisted – an order to himself, as if he really believed that he would fall for his own illusion of resolve. "You're… you're my father."

He sensed more than saw Zeref's eyes narrow almost imperceptibly; felt him mentally running through every possible meaning that phrase could have, literal and figurative, and dismissing them all as insufficient explanations. "I don't understand."

That should be it, it should be over; he should have an answer, one way or the other. He had jumped, and the fall had relinquished him into the custody of the ocean beneath, which held him down and flooded his lungs with panic.

"I don't know how else I can put it," he floundered, fighting against the useless sensation of tears. Not now. Not now. "You're my father. I'm your son."

"I am father to all in this nation by deed," Zeref explained carefully. "And father to the demons by magic-"

"And to me by blood."

His expression darkened. "Not possible."

"It is!" he insisted, and he hated how childish it came out. "Mavis is my mother!"

"SHE DIED!" Zeref howled.

The raw pain in those words lashed into his heart. He would have run for it, if he could, but the cliff edge was too high to reach and he had already fallen too far.

"She didn't!" he shouted back. "Precht placed her body in the crystal because he sensed life in her! She was already too far gone for it to bring her back, it could only stop her from crossing over, but he didn't know that! He tried for weeks to revive her, because the crystal was functioning correctly, and the readings were promising, and he couldn't understand why she wasn't recovering…"

He swallowed, blinking back the tears.

"It wasn't Mavis the crystal was healing. Those signs of life were never hers. They were… they were me."

"You lie."

"No!"

"Why are you doing this?" Zeref burst out. "Why? What kind of twisted plot is this? What are you gaining from these lies? Are you trying to hurt me with the past-?"

His response came back twice as savage. "I never want to hurt you! I…" Taking a deep breath, he raised his hand, palm turned outwards. It glowed with a magic he had not summoned himself; an impossible fusion of light and darkness. "Let me show you. Please."

Tendrils of black energy snapped around the other's body, drawn out by his anguish. All they had to do was strike him, and the source of their master's pain would be gone from this world. Just that, and it would be over. His life would end; his hope and courage judged unacceptable by his father-

Slowly, ever so slowly, Zeref touched the back of his hand to August's raised palm.

Magic flared around them. It was brilliantly bright, not the black of death but as warm a gold as Fairy Heart. In a way, it was the magic of Fairy Heart; remnants of that divine power imprinted in the soul of the child it had nurtured.

A connection sparked. Power surged. The memories inherited through a quirk of magic were returned all at once-

A girl stood on the lakeside, beloved by all creation, wind flowing through her hair and water rippling around her toes; a girl who had seen the truth of him and yet refused to turn him away-

The compassion that had healed him, and scarred him-

The lonely years spent haunting the forests around Magnolia, hoping for the chance to see her again-

The happiness when he did-

The horror of realizing what he had done to her-

Her promise to stay with him, a promise he didn't deserve, so full of kindness that in a single moment his immortal life had become the greatest gift he had ever been given-

And-

The body in his arms-

Not moving-

Why wasn't she moving-?

August had always known what had happened on that day, but it had never seemed so real before. He had learnt, since then, how it felt to lose those close to him, and even that was nothing compared to the sheer magnitude of the loneliness surging down their connection – a loneliness he knew some part of Zeref had come to blame on Mavis for leaving him, for dying, because it had been the only way for him to retain any shred of sanity in the aftermath.

Living magic connected him and his father. It wasn't a memory of emotion he was feeling right now, but Zeref's pure and present heartbreak at reliving it, raw and true. He tried to wrench the flow of magic away, but it would not respond to his call and the grief the grief the grief-

The connection snapped. Zeref staggered backwards, his hand clutched to his chest, his eyes overflowing with liquid pain-

And something more-

Something bitter-

Hate-

Zeref turned, and in a whirl of black and white, he fled the room.

And that was that.

It was over. August had done exactly what he'd come here to do. He'd proven himself as courageous as Cana; he'd shown that the star-struck boy who had taken his emperor's hand in silence had finally grown up. He should have felt relief, or something, but all he could do was stare at the closed door.

What, really, had he been expecting?

Nothing, he told himself. He was still alive, despite more than one moment when he'd believed his father's magic would kill him – and wasn't that an achievement in itself?

Zeref had every reason to hate him. After all, in a few short minutes, his worldview had been shattered. His plans had been disrupted on the eve of war. He had been forced to relive the worst moment of his life. He had been given a son he didn't want and lost the loyal vassal he had believed would never lie to him all at once.

His actions had hurt his father deeply, and why-? Because of his own selfish desire for acknowledgement. Because he had suddenly rejected the emperor-vassal relationship that had served them just fine for the best part of a century. Because he hadn't considered his father's feelings at all until now, just his own.

No wonder Zeref had run. August wouldn't have wanted anything to do with himself either.

If there was one small consolation, it was that no matter how much Zeref resented him now, it was nothing compared to how much he hated himself.

He couldn't stay there any more, in the room where everything had gone wrong – no, in the room where he had ruined everything. He couldn't face the palace, either. He found a staircase and headed upwards, emerging onto a balcony that protruded from one of the highest towers. There he collapsed onto the railings, lacking the strength – or perhaps it was the will – to hold himself upright.

The thing was, this time, he'd really thought he'd got it right. He'd been sure that telling his father was the solution he had been missing.

Maybe that was why it had all gone wrong. Mavis had sent him back to find a better future for her guild, and he'd abused that chance to try and make his own life better, at the expense of those around him. Now, the one man who cared for him had pushed him away.

It doesn't matter, he told himself fiercely. I came here to tell him. I have told him. Now, I need to find an airship, fly to Fairy Tail, and figure out how to save Gildarts and win this war.

But of course it mattered. Because ever since Cana had said-

-he asked me for my permission to love me-

-some idiotic, infantile part of him hadn't been able to stop hoping.

But Zeref wasn't Gildarts, and both he and August had had so much more to lose.

A soft knocking from behind arrested August's attention – Invel, probably, come to tell him that the main fleet was ready to depart. Or worse, wanting to know where their emperor had got to.

He wheeled around to report that he would not be travelling with the army, only for the words to die upon his lips. It wasn't Invel standing in the doorway, but Zeref.

The first peculiar thought that reached August was how small he looked. Zeref had always been too young, his body frozen in time before he had had the chance to reach adulthood, but the commanding presence he usually wielded as Emperor Spriggan sang of experience and of strength, and without it, he just seemed… small. He wasn't quite meeting August's eyes.

"Can- can we talk?" he asked.

Not trusting himself to speak, August nodded.

Zeref looked like he wasn't sure whether to be relieved or not. He stepped out onto the balcony, leaning on the railings just like August, yet, ironically, a little further away than he would have stood before today. He, too, stared out over his capital city, as if the right words were hiding somewhere in the streets below.

"I'm- I'm sorry," he ventured, at last. "I didn't know how to react. I still don't. It's… it's a lot to take in."

All August could say was, "I know. I'm sorry."

"I still don't know how I feel about this," Zeref admitted. "To be honest, I am angry. I didn't choose this. I didn't even get a say in it. I'm frustrated, too. There are many things I would have done differently, had I known before today. But, more than that… I think I feel betrayed." He glanced directly at August, black eyes flashing with an echo of that pain. "You've always known, haven't you? Why did you keep it from me for so long?"

Then, to his surprise, Zeref shook his head before he could answer. "No, I know why you did. Even I wouldn't have known how I would react. And I am sure that this conversation, while not perhaps unexpected, is not what you were hoping for either."

Again, he prevented August's token denial with a raised hand. "I suppose what I am trying to ask is – why now? Are you… are you concerned about the war?"

He had switched out his words at the last moment, but August caught the original message loud and clear: are you worried that you won't live to get another chance?

"That's the other thing I need to talk to you about," he confessed, before his courage could fail him again.

"Ah. I forgot you mentioned two things. After the first, I am almost fearful to hear the second, but I suppose I ought to get it over with."

"I am not sure whether you'll find it better or worse," August warned him, and received an impatient gesture in response. "I have returned to this present from the future three times now. I have already fought the upcoming war three times over – or twice, I suppose, since the second time I prevented it from happening altogether. Every timeline has ended in disaster. I never asked to be sent back, but since I'm here, I have resolved to find a better way forward for this world. And if there is one thing I have learnt from my failures… it's that I can't do this on my own. Please. I need your help."

After a moment's consideration, Zeref stepped back from the railing and turned to face him properly.

There was still something unsure about him. He would be feeling his way blindly around their new relationship for some time yet – they both would.

But at the same time, there was the flash of a shooting star in the darkness of his eyes – a light that belonged not to the lost and uncomfortable father, but to the Emperor of Alvarez, the legendary Black Mage, the strategist whose skill and experience made him the equal of Mavis's raw talent… the man August loved more than anything.

And just like that, he realized what he'd been missing.

He didn't need his father to turn around and profess a love too sudden to be meaningful. He didn't need to be held in a warm, parental embrace. Zeref wasn't Gildarts, and a man who could suddenly start treating him as family was not the man he had always loved. Comfort was in the spark of a challenge accepted that flickered in Zeref's eyes at his words; home was knowing that the most powerful, most ingenious, most resourceful mage in the entire world was right there beside him.

His father stood with him against the end of everything, and that meant more to him than he could say.

Zeref said, "I think you'd better tell me everything."