A/N: Thank you all so much for your responses to the last chapter, especially to all you guest reviewers, who I can't respond to in person (though I wish I could!). You guys are amazing! ~CS

The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

Thy Will Be Done, Part 4

-Light, Fire, Life-

Gemini's power settled into Lucy's magical core like it belonged there, and her body was filled with light.

Flames curled around her arms and became armoured bracers, the same burnished crimson as the fire god's skin and lighter than hot air. Similar plates criss-crossed her chest and hips. They scintillated with every shade of red and orange imaginable, never staying in the same shape, but flowing like lava at the edge of her vision. Rather than weighing her down, they enhanced her mobility, like a candleflame might dance in the breeze.

Symmetric crimson lines ran down each cheek and her neck, disappearing beneath the armour and reappearing along her exposed midriff, streaks of gunpowder which marked the path of revolution. Her eyes were the spark that could set her whole body alight in an instant.

She had done it.

She had finally found a Star Dress form cooler than Lisanna's Bat Take Over.

"Kill her!" Arlock screamed.

From high above, the fire god opened its mouth as if to take a bite out of the sun.

Lucy stood her ground.

The inferno of the god's breath poured down around her with a gentle, satisfying warmth. It was the right kind of brightness for her eyes, the best temperature for her skin; it was like finally stepping out of the shade in which she'd lived her entire life. What should have been blazing death settled comfortably into her magical core. Golden fire raced through her limbs.

She felt powerful. Confident. Nothing in the world could hold her down. Was this how Natsu felt, whenever a fire-user thought to challenge him? No wonder he never lost.

The inferno burnt itself out, leaving behind black-scorched walls and half-melted tarmac. In the middle of it stood Lucy, even stronger than before.

"Use your fists!" Arlock shouted belatedly.

As the god's fist descended so sluggishly towards Lucy, a dozen options presented themselves. She went with the most straightforward. There was an explosion of flames at her feet, flinging her up and over the blow with ease – but at the same time, a jarring pain crashed through her body. The heat didn't hurt her, but the force did. Armoured bands had contracted, supporting her legs, but she still didn't have the raw durability of someone like Natsu.

That was okay, though.

Arlock's god was a manifestation of fire magic. It wasn't truly conscious, but at the same time, it was more alive than anything Lucy had ever encountered. It was magic, forced into a form the human mind could comprehend; it was everything it was possible for fire magic to be, all at once.

But thanks to Gemini's powers, so was Lucy.

It didn't matter that she had no experience of using this magic. She had all the memories of the magic itself to draw on.

Still in mid-air, she swept one leg out gracefully. A curl of blue flames superheated the air beneath her. Hot and cold air collided, forming a vortex to suspend her above the ground as – unbeknownst to her – she mastered in an instant the technique that Natsu had struggled to develop against Gajeel.

There she hovered, level with Arlock as he stood on his god's shoulder, close enough to see the horror in the whites of his eyes.

His god was still struggling to regain its balance when Lucy punched it.

Her fist was cloaked in black fire. It wasn't the yellow glow of a candle or the devastating orange of a wildfire; it was like nothing occurring naturally on this earth. It was the flame of the gods, the cursed fire granted to them by Prometheus, an incredible advancement at a terrible cost.

Her tiny fist made contact with the enormous giant – and it was the god who was pushed back.

A shudder ran through its flaming form. Black sparks erupted from its halo with the hiss of water on burning logs.

Her enemy wasn't a living creature, but a manifestation of magic. It couldn't be beaten, let alone killed, while there was still magic to fuel it.

But the power of a God Slayer wasn't meant to kill. Her attacks were targeting the very magic binding it to this plane, burning through the ritual bonds with purifying black flame.

Pausing only to refresh the vortex keeping her airborne, Lucy plunged forward for another strike. At the last moment, her instincts screamed a warning. She jerked aside.

Something sharp slashed through the air where she would have ended up. Arlock had one hand twisted in the flaming beard of his creation, and his duellist's sword raised in the other.

A flick of the blade sent another missile towards her. This time, she glimpsed a violet rune before demolishing it with a swing of her fist. She had spent long enough around Freed to know that she did not want to be hit by magic like that. Given her temporary immunity to fire, Arlock himself may well be more dangerous than his pet god… then said god's fist smacked into her, and she promptly revised that judgement.

The heat didn't bother her. The impact did.

She smashed into the ground and lay there, momentarily stunned, as the giant's foot descended towards her. Gritting her teeth, she reached deep inside and drew power from the boiling air that swirled so sweetly in her lungs. She thrust both hands upwards. An eruption of black flames drove into the god's foot – and, feeling no pain, the foot pushed back against it, sheer physical might opposing the magic that sought to purge it from the realm of mortals.

Suffice to say, contests of raw power were far from Lucy's comfort zone. Already looking for a way out, she spied a chimneypot attached to a still-intact building, and looped her Fleuve d'étoiles around it. The whip contracted just as the god's foot slammed down, yanking her to safety.

Or not – she was still in mid-air when a shockwave from Arlock's blade severed her whip.

Rather than landing neatly on the roof as planned, she smashed straight through a wall and sprawled to a halt in the living room. Arlock bellowed a command. Before she could get back to her feet, his god had bathed the entire house in flames.

That was fine. Fire was nothing to a Fire God Slayer.

Even as she began to draw the god's own magic into herself, replenishing the reservoir that Star Dress was consuming, an alarm bell was ringing in her mind. Arlock was smart. He already knew fire wouldn't work against her. Nor was he the kind of person who would think that hotter fire, brighter fire, more fire would work where a small amount had failed…

That was why she touched her keys and summoned Virgo. Temporary God Slayer or no, Gemini was not her only Spirit.

Using Lucy as a shield against the overwhelming heat, Virgo opened a hole in the floor and dragged them both into the earth. They began tunnelling away from the inferno.

Resurfacing behind the god, Lucy glanced at the house she had fled from – and stared. The god's breath had melted it. She might have been immune to the heat, but she could drown in molten rock just as surely as anyone else.

For the first time since she had absorbed the god's magic, something akin to a chill ran down Lucy's spine. She wasn't used to fighting like this. She didn't know how. It was as if her normal style of fighting had been turned on its head: she had the overwhelming advantage, and her opponent was being forced to think outside the box in order to turn the tables. Fighting like she normally did – reactive, evasive, creative – would only give her opponent more and more opportunities.

The moment she had gone on the defensive, Arlock had gained the upper hand. She had to take control.

And that meant she had to stop fighting like herself and start fighting like Natsu – no running, no hiding, no clever tricks meant to turn the table on a more powerful opponent, but trusting her own power, trusting herself.

Arlock was still watching the melted house with a suspicious expression on his face. His god burned in uncaring silence.

The next thing either of them knew, Lucy's whip was curled around the fire god's neck.

Immediately, it began to contract, pulling her towards her target in one last kamikaze rush. Arlock reacted as quickly as she'd expected. He twisted, flicking his sword to send another glowing rune at her.

Her instincts screamed at her to release her whip and let herself fall to avoid it.

That was what she would have done as a Celestial Spirit mage. Dodge, regroup, buy herself some time to think.

Instead, she took it head-on: took it like Natsu would have taken it, suffered an unimportant blow to land the definitive one. Pain lashed through her – agonizing, unimaginable pain. It made her want to laugh. It was nothing compared to what Zeref was going through. She could endure this for a few seconds if it meant he would never have to again.

Her scream of agony became a war-cry; her grip on her weapon's hilt didn't relent.

Arlock tried again. And again. Desperate. Futile.

The strength of a rune mage lay in their ability to prepare ahead and control the battlefield, and Arlock had invested all his magic in subduing Zeref and manifesting his god. He had no backup plan.

He hadn't imagined that anyone else could pose a threat to him.

He hadn't predicted Jerome sacrificing himself in the hope that someone might defeat the man who had used Avatar for his own gain.

He hadn't thought that Zeref would give his magic, and his trust, to Lucy.

Arlock had toyed with them in Bishop's Lace, and gloated in front of them in Malva. He had thought himself too smart to lose to Zeref, but he had underestimated her, never realizing that she and Zeref were a team.

Pain evaporated in the heat radiating from her body. The flames crowning the fire god's head poured their energy into her. That was what it meant to be a God Slayer: the god's own magic was its downfall. The more powerful it was, the powerful she became.

The tattooed lines upon her body ignited all at once, flames the same beautiful black as Zeref's eyes, bursting with light and life and everything Arlock had summoned his god to destroy.

Lucy let go of the whip, raised both hands above her head, and brought divine judgement down upon the earth.

The world ended, and was reborn again in flame.

And when at last the pillar of black fire passed into the ether, taking with it all traces of the being who had so fleetingly defiled this mortal plane; when moisture had returned to the tongues of those who stood and stared on the outskirts of town, and there was something other than thunder in their ears; when gods were once again nothing more than myth, and mortals could emerge from hiding once more… then, Lucy stood in the heart of the devastation and let loose a scream of defiance towards the sky.

Let them try and take her world from her.

Let them try.

She screamed until she could scream no more, and then she stopped fighting it, and let her transformation go. She could barely stand, but it didn't bother her. There was something so satisfying about expending all her magic, all her strength, and because of it, winning.

Arlock's corpse lay further down the street. It was still smoking, burnt almost beyond recognition. She tried to feel guilty about it and found that she couldn't. No world he ruled over could possibly justify the abandonment of the very people he had claimed to be fighting for – or the suffering he had been willing to put Zeref through to create it-

"Lucy?"

She jumped. She hadn't expected to hear any voice in the aftermath of the cataclysm, let alone that one.

It had been so long since she'd heard it. Too long. She had begun to wonder if she would ever hear it again.

When she turned, she almost didn't recognise him at first. Bruised and limping, his hair was streaked with grey dirt and sharp blood, and his scarf hung dishevelled from his neck. He was alive, so alive – though he was staring at her like she wasn't, through eyes that were a little bit wild, a little bit other, a little bit too intense to be entirely, merely, human.

He whispered, "Is it really you…?"

"Natsu!" she cried out in delight.

And just like that, the tension vanished. Something so very human glistened in his eyes. "Lucy…"

Giddy with her victory, and the unexpected joy of reunion, Lucy laughed again, clapping her hands together. "Did you see that, Natsu? I just beat a god! Me! Who's the strongest member of Team Natsu now, huh?"

Natsu's mouth moved, but no words came out.

The next thing she knew, his arms were wrapped around her, and he was crying his eyes out onto her shoulder.

A thought flashed through Zeref's mind and was gone before he could catch it.

Numbly, he watched as the trail of light it had imprinted on the void of his mind was swallowed by the darkness. He thought it might have been important. He thought it might have been something that wasn't all-consuming pain.

It had been so long since any such thoughts had crossed his mind that part of him shied away from that light, burying back down into the mire of agony, waiting for its murky waters to close over his head once more… but another part of him was reaching for the same clarity that terrified him. There was something reassuringly familiar about the contradiction.

The chains holding him down had vanished, along with the circles of runes.

He was free, then.

He tried to move. That was a mistake. Fresh agony ripped through him, too sudden, too raw; he fell back to the ground with a whimper. The impression his body had already pressed into the dirt took him back gladly.

The darkness was familiar, welcoming. He didn't have to think here. He didn't have to suffer.

Another thought broke free, a salmon leaping between his clumsy bear-paws: if Arlock's magic was no longer restraining him, Lucy must have won.

How? He'd known she would, he'd believed it with every ounce of his being, but when he scrutinized that certainty, he found no evidence there to back it up. He wanted to know how she'd done it. He wanted to know if… if she'd survived.

And curiosity had always run strong within him. Neutral towards life and death alike, it sometimes felt like the only part of him the curse could not touch, both strong enough and safe enough to overcome the delirium and the pain of his situation.

Nevertheless, it took several long minutes for him to scavenge the necessary willpower from the blind mire of his suffering. He felt was like he was at the top of a cliff, trying to muster up the strength to jump for the very first time… but he had to do this.

He focussed his will on the hilt of the sword and wrenched it out of his body.

His back arched beyond its limit. Several sharp cracks ran down his spine. A howl tore free from his throat in a fountain of blood. He fell back to the ground, shaking with the horror of surviving it.

One minute passed, and then another. He could feel the stab wound – slowly, oh so slowly – starting to close in his back, as his curse shakily tried to reassert control. Stemming the tide of blood was doing nothing to stem the pain, however. His curse was going haywire. He could barely sense his own magic – or what was left of it, after what Arlock had done to him.

Fine. He didn't need magic, he needed answers. He wasn't going to stay lying here for a moment longer.

His body disagreed.

It took another eternity for rational thought to drop back out of the haze of agony, and when it did, it brought with it an ultimatum. His body did not want to get up. If he insisted, it would quit.

He closed his eyes and let himself go limp again, instead reaching out with his mind.

He couldn't sense Invel anywhere. That was concerning. In truth, he hadn't wanted Invel with him here as much as he had wanted for him not to be in Alvarez, where he would be free to reveal what he had learnt to the rest of the Twelve… but that would be a very stupid reason to lose a very important pawn. He could only hope that Invel was simply out of his weakened range. The fact that he couldn't detect Jellal either lessened his worry a little.

Of the other people he knew were in the city, he couldn't sense Gray, but that wasn't his problem. Nor Natsu – likely he still hadn't recovered from the forced dimensional separation of the Book of END from Zeref's magical core – and Zeref moved swiftly on before he was forced to conclude on whether Natsu was his problem or not.

There was no sign of Arlock, but no one would sense him ever again. If Lucy had spared him, Zeref would not.

Just as Zeref was beginning to think that the city had been abandoned completely, he felt, at last, a living presence. It was distant, and yet it shone with all the warmth of the world – the steadfast north star in a never-dark night.

And if she could beat a god, he could do better than lying in the dirt.

This time, he stayed conscious all the way to his feet. Beneath the clashing waves of pain, his immortal body was gradually pulling itself back together, and if his cursed magic could only realize that it was no longer on fire, he would surely be fine… but willpower alone couldn't calm the curse, any more than it could control it. He'd have to push through it.

First, he reached down and picked up the cursed blade. Pain immediately lanced through him, made all the worse by the memory of what he had just endured. A flash of magic sent it to his Requip Space. He hated having it in there – he could feel it constantly, a sense of wrongness hanging over him – but he would decide what to do with it later. For now, it was safest there, where anyone wanting it would have to go through him.

It was as he was straightening that his eyes fell upon the other figure in the street – the only one his magical senses hadn't been able to detect, and never would. Jerome was slumped up against a garden wall. A trail of blood led back down the street. His eyes were shut, his breathing laboured.

Not long left, then. Perhaps it was a surprise he had even lasted this long.

His wound was nothing compared to those Zeref's body had repaired, but it was enough, for a mortal.

Zeref wondered what it must feel like for him, knowing he only had a few minutes left to live. Knowing that it was over.

The wind whistled down the street between them, a few metres of cobblestones, an impossible distance.

As if he could sense Zeref's gaze upon him, Jerome's eyes opened. "Please," he rasped. "Let me die quickly."

Zeref considered this in silence.

It would, he supposed, be the kindest thing to do.

Yet when he crouched down beside the dying Avatar mage, it wasn't the silky black breeze of death clinging to his fingertips, but the white glow of the sky at dawn. "How many times do I have to tell you?" he murmured, as he forced the other's wound to close. "I am no god. I have no more right than anyone else to determine who lives and who dies… no matter how much fate tries to force that role upon me. You must decide for yourself whether to stand up and fight on."

A wave of light-headedness swept over him. That wasn't a surprise; it was a miracle he had any magic left at all, after what he had been through. Besides, it made a change to the waves of pain – though it could be every bit as dangerous, if he wasn't careful.

Still, only when he was certain the injury was no longer fatal did he stand and walk on down the street.

"We would have given you everything," Jerome whispered after him. "The rest of Avatar, we're not like him. We would have given you all of Fiore. With him gone, we still will."

"I don't want it," Zeref stated. He didn't know why, but at the same time, he was certain of it. It was, simply, the truth.

"Then what becomes of us? What of the thousands of people who will not understand why their hopes of a brighter tomorrow no longer have a chance?"

"You will have to find the answer yourself. I cannot save you."

The hand of his self-styled disciple fell back to the dusty ground, and Zeref walked on.

He could not bring judgement down upon Avatar right now. He didn't feel like a vengeful Black Mage. Not a god, not even an emperor. There was no anger in him, only exhaustion.

All he wanted was somewhere he could feel safe. Somewhere he was not expected to be more than human, or judged for being less.

And for perhaps the first time in his life, he knew where to go.

He wanted to see Lucy.

"N-Natsu?" Lucy checked, startled.

He clung to her like a dying man. His arms were trembling; his shoulders heaved with the effort of trying and failing to suppress his sobs. She had never seen her best friend like this before. Nor had she ever heard him struggle so much to speak as when he choked out, "Lucy… You're alive…"

Tears welled up in her own eyes as she wrapped her arms around him in turn. "Yeah," she whispered. "I'm alright. I'm here."

He let out another sob, and her grip tightened. "I thought I'd never see you again."

"I'm so sorry, Natsu. I never meant to make you worry…"

"Are you hurt?"

"No more than anyone else would be, after taking out a fire god." She grinned, but it quickly faded. That wasn't what he was asking, and she knew it.

Softer, she continued, "I'm fine, Natsu. It's been an adventure, and it's had its ups and downs… but it's also been a lot of fun. I helped save Lamia Scale from Bluenote Stinger, got roped into an eating contest with Sabertooth, discovered Avatar's rather traumatic shrine, fought Laxus in single combat, found out that my magic might be destroying the universe, was kidnapped by the mafia and dragged into an underworld war, beat a god…"

Natsu was staring at her like she'd grown another head.

"…Yeah, now that I say it out loud, it doesn't sound like much fun at all, does it?" Lucy reflected wryly. "It was, though. If you take out all the parts when I nearly died, then-"

"Then it doesn't sound like there'd be much left." He tried to laugh; it came out more like a gulp, but the effort warmed her heart.

"Maybe so," she conceded, smiling. "It was worth it, though. Fairy Tail is officially getting back together. Mira and Lisanna, Levy and Gajeel, Laxus and his team, and loads more people besides – we're all meeting up at the old guildhall at the First of September."

"You know, they all told me you were okay. Wendy, Lyon, Gajeel… I should've listened, shouldn't I? The only one who said you were in trouble was Gray, and I should've known better than to trust him. Look how that turned out."

"What happened?" she couldn't help asking. "When I arrived in Malva, you were unconscious, and Gray looked like he was about to kill you…"

"I… dunno, really. It's all a bit hazy. Gray tried to send me off on a wild goose chase, but I was too smart for him. I figured it out and rushed back to confront him."

Lucy thought this explanation was somewhat dubious, but she let it slide.

"We were fighting. I… I was so angry, and I don't even remember why. It's just a blur. The next thing I remember is waking up to find that you'd destroyed the city."

There was a pause, in which Lucy's mind was flooded with guilt for having brought an inferno down upon the city without stopping to think if he was in the firing line, but Natsu just clapped her on the back. "Nice one, Lucy! Nothing like melting a city to show that Fairy Tail is back in action!"

"Hey, hang on, it's not like it was all me-!" she yelped, but Natsu was grinning, and it was contagious. This was how her best friend was supposed to be – not crying, not beaten, not desperate, but so wonderfully bright. She had missed him so much.

And yet, as she flung her arms around him again, she couldn't help feeling that there was something so familiar about this. It wasn't nostalgia, the reunion with a best friend bombarding her with memories of days gone by. It was far more recent than that. She knew that, excluding their disastrous encounter in Crocus, she hadn't seen him for nearly a year, and yet everything about this – how frantically he reached out to her, how warm his embrace, how sudden the sense of the guildhall and of home – it reminded her of something she couldn't quite put her finger on.

It was so distracting that she hadn't even noticed he'd asked her a question until he flicked her gently on the forehead.

"I said," he repeated cheerfully, "how'd you get away from him?"

"From who?"

"From Zeref, of course. I know he kidnapped you from Magnolia. Should've figured you'd get away, though. You've escaped from more kidnapping attempts than most people have even been in."

He'd meant it as a joke, but even he could see that his words had the exact opposite effect. His grin slowly slipped from his face. "…Lucy?"

"Right. Natsu. I need to tell you something, and I need you to stay calm and hear me out until the end, okay?"

"Okay?" he echoed, perplexed.

Lucy took a deep breath. "I wasn't kidnapped. Zeref hired me to help him get Fairy Tail back together. I went with him because I wanted to."

There was silence.

Natsu burst out laughing. "Oh, nice one, Lucy. You almost had me there! Don't worry, though," he added, patting her happily on the shoulder, "you don't need to go to such lengths. I already feel really bad about turning up the way I did and trying to force you to go on a quest with me, and if there's anything I can do to make it up to you-"

"Natsu," she interrupted. "I'm not joking. I really have been travelling with Zeref. We're friends."

She was expecting him to try and laugh it off, or perhaps to argue. She was hoping that he might ask more questions, giving her a chance to explain the full situation.

Instead, he went entirely still.

"Gray had it right," he growled. "The evil bastard, I bet he was in on it the whole time!"

All of a sudden, the wildness was back, the sense of something other. He gripped her shoulders tightly and pulled her in close. "Zeref's controlling you with magic, isn't he?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" Lucy burst out. "I've just been through all this with Jellal! Why is it so difficult to believe that I might be capable of choosing my own friends?"

But it wasn't the same, was it? Jellal was being an overprotective friend, doing what he thought was right based on beliefs that were incorrect but not entirely unjustified, given the adrenaline of the situation and her actions towards the Book of END. Natsu's reaction had come out of nowhere – a complete one-eighty from being relieved she was alright to being convinced she was not, all because Zeref's name had come up.

There was something dangerous in her best friend's eyes. Something that meeting her had subdued, but not, so it seemed, eliminated.

"Then why is Zeref's magic mixed in with yours?" he accused.

"…Ah." She hadn't considered the consequences of using Zeref's magic to force Gemini's ability to activate – or how it might come across to a highly strung Dragon Slayer. "Okay, Natsu, don't freak out, I can explain!"

"What has he done to you?" Natsu roared.

"Nothing that I didn't explicitly ask him to do!" she bit back. Inhaling deeply, she tried to force a measure of calm into her voice. "Look, Natsu, let me explain-"

"I'm gonna kill him, Lucy." His shoulders still shook, but she had a feeling that it was no longer relief over their reunion causing it. "I'm gonna kill him!"

"Like I said, there's no need for that," she tried to reassure him. "Come on, let's go somewhere else, and I'll tell you everything that has happened since we last saw each other."

"No! He's not getting away this time! He's gonna die here and now!"

"Natsu!" By stepping sharply away from him, she forced his head to snap up to meet her gaze. She had hoped that making eye contact would help her sincerity to reach him, but he didn't appear to see her at all. His eyes were at once glazed over and burning more brightly than she had ever seen before.

"What's wrong with you?" Lucy demanded. "I know you're impulsive, but this is too much, even for you!"

A derisive snarl was the only answer – an assurance that she would not be getting an answer.

The embers of the fire god still smouldering inside her belly were not enough to stop the tendril of cold from winding around her heart. Something was very wrong. Angry or not, in all their time as teammates, she'd never known Natsu to so deliberately disregard the distress of his friends.

"This isn't like you, Natsu." Lucy spoke more hesitantly than before, trying not to make any sudden movements. "Are you alright? Talk to me, please…"

He was growling like a threatened wolf, low and deep. The reverberations ran through her entire body – and then, suddenly, they stopped.

"Natsu…?" she tried, but there was no hope in it.

Somehow, without looking, she already knew what he had seen.

"Sorry, Lucy," Natsu said, in a tone that didn't mean it. "It'll be safer for you to stay out of this."

"Wait-"

That was as far as she got before his fist drove into her gut.

She fought the rush of darkness vehemently, but she had taken too much damage against her enemies, and the quiet rage of her best friend sent her under.

"Typical," Zeref remarked. "You spend so long chasing after her, and when you finally reach her, the first thing you do is attack her. She was in less danger when she was with me."

"Zeref-!" There was so much hatred in Natsu's snarl that suppressing it for long enough to set Lucy's unconscious form down on the ground seemed to take superhuman effort. "Lucy is coming back with me."

Zeref's heart beat once, hot, and then again, cold.

Then, to all extents and purposes, it might as well have stopped beating altogether.

He flicked his hand in a dismissive gesture. "Take her. I don't need her any more."

If the way Natsu's eyes flared was any indication, that magnanimous response wasn't what he had been hoping for. "How dare you treat her like she's nothing? She's my best friend! She's worth more than someone like you can possibly imagine!"

"Oh?" he drawled. "So you didn't hurt her feelings, crush her hopes, and leave her at my mercy back in Crocus, then?"

An incoherent snarl was the only response he got.

It was so easy to make Natsu angry. Playing on the hatred for him Natsu himself didn't even understand had always been so amusing to Zeref.

So he wondered why he wasn't enjoying this.

He wondered why he wasn't feeling anything at all.

"So," he persisted, smirking, as if his lips were somehow detached from the rest of him, "that isn't your so-called best friend lying unconscious at your feet, forced into silence because you were afraid of what she was going to say?"

An orb of fire materialized around Natsu's fist. Dancing reds and oranges swirled with the occasional streak of black, more tainted than the purgatorial flame of the god who had swept through the city. He took a step towards Zeref. "I didn't want her to have to see this."

"To see you try and fail to save her yet again?"

"To see me kill you," Natsu spat, and his flame burned darker still.

Zeref knew full well that there was nothing normal about the intensity of Natsu's hatred. After all, he was the one who had created it, nurtured it, and even now continued to feed it, just because he could.

Yet it still seemed more real than the emptiness he felt.

His gaze flickered from Natsu to Lucy's unconscious form, and then back.

Wasn't it normal to feel something in a situation like this?

"You've lost, Zeref," Natsu snarled. "Your followers have been defeated."

Zeref supposed they had, in a way; Lucy laid low by her best friend after taking out Arlock and his god, and Invel missing in action. The subtlety of the factions in play would be lost on Natsu right now, however, and his lips twisted into another mocking smile he did not feel. "No thanks to you. I gather you slept through the whole thing."

Natsu's eyes narrowed. "Beating you is my job." One fist smacked into the palm of his other hand, and that small promise of violence was enough to make the undying flames burn brighter. "Coming here was a fatal mistake, Zeref."

Still Zeref felt nothing.

"Yeah," said he, and for the first time, his tone reflected the emptiness he felt inside. "Maybe I'll just go home."

The thing was, he really would have done.

He had already turned away and taken three steps back along his own dwindling trail of blood. He would have left and returned only at the head of an army, if at all.

Natsu growled, "Do you really think I'm going to let you walk away, after everything you've done?"

Zeref stopped. "No," he said softly. "I don't think you can, can you? I suppose that's my fault, too."

"We're doing this now, Zeref!" Natsu roared, and then he was upon him.

Turning, Zeref flicked his wrist in one casual motion. A shimmering half-sphere of black energy encircled him protectively.

Natsu's fist smashed straight through it and still hit with the force of a freight train.

Flames exploded around them. Molten lava surged through the half-healed cracks in Zeref's spine, forcing them back open. The pain swallowed him whole and spat him out again on the ground. In his mind, he was back in Arlock's runes, pinned to the ground like a collector's butterfly, crippled by agony, no point even in screaming.

That wasn't enough for Natsu. He kicked Zeref along the ground, carving a trench through the earth. Zeref was still struggling to tell up from down when Natsu pounced, hellfire as black as death's shroud around his fist.

At last, an emotion ran white-hot through Zeref: pure, naïve, unadulterated panic.

He threw his battered body aside, and Natsu's earth-shattering strike missed him by inches.

Zeref's head spun from the sudden movement. His tortured limbs shrieked. His raw, bloody burns dug their claws back into the skin they marred.

Indeed, it took such a stupendous effort to move out of the way that Zeref was astonished when Natsu simply pivoted and caught him in a breath attack.

He managed to throw up another shield, but it disintegrated before the flames even touched it. There was fire in his lungs, fire in his eyes, fire beneath his skin. Explosions pierced him from the inside out as his blood boiled so quickly that his veins burst from the pressure.

And Natsu was there, bearing down on him, the fist of the Fire Dragon King not quite as bright as the hatred in his eyes – and he struck.

When Zeref snapped back to consciousness, the pain was still there. It was far too great for mere death and resurrection to overcome; between Arlock's sword and Natsu's flames, it was branded too deeply into his cursed soul for him to ever escape it.

Exhausted, he fought to raise his head. Natsu was looking down at him from an unimaginable height, at once closer and further away than he had ever been before.

"Yeah, I didn't think that would work," Natsu commented. "Your body really can recover from any damage, huh? Good job I came prepared."

He began to unwrap the bandages around his right arm. Once, they had been white; now, black ash and crimson blood had painted them with blasphemous patterns. As the cloth fell away, an ancient, familiar power began to burn at the edge of Zeref's senses. It jarred against the demonic flames still flickering along the earth.

"Did you think I've been doing nothing, these last ten months?" Natsu growled. "This is the magic Igneel left in my body. He created it to kill our greatest enemy. To kill you."

Zeref forced himself back to his feet. This time, begrudgingly, they accepted his weight. "You're wasting your time. There is no magic that can kill me."

A feral grin twitched at Natsu's lips as he flexed his right arm. Ripples of power ran through the air around him, made visible by the smoke.

For the first time, the pain began to subside a little, as Zeref's mind pushed it aside in favour of this new puzzle. The enormous amount of power he was sensing could only have come from a dragon, but as great as it was, the power of his curse was always greater. It was infinite, unsurpassable. Even against itself, it could do no worse than tie.

Whatever Natsu hit him with, it couldn't possibly kill him.

"No," Zeref repeated, with growing confidence. "I am immortal. Not even that can kill me."

"We'll see." Natsu clenched his fist and opened it. A wave of golden flames burst to life at his fingertips and flowed up to his shoulder, leaving in its wake gleaming red scales and twisted talons. "It took me ten months to learn how to release this power, and now, at last, it's time."

He glanced up from his draconic claw to meet Zeref's wary gaze with triumph. "Leaving my guild, my friends, my home… everything has been for this moment. The moment I finally kill you."

"So that's why you left the guild," Zeref observed softly. "I did wonder." He glanced aside, to where Lucy lay upon the only patch of ground left untouched by Natsu's flames. She might have stirred. The heat haze made it difficult to tell. "Figured it'd be my fault. Everything else has been; why not this?"

It was somewhat surprising, given how single-minded Natsu had been since they had met here, that this time he noticed Zeref's sideways glance. "Leave Lucy out of this!" he spat. "Haven't you hurt her enough already?"

Zeref closed his eyes. "I suppose I probably have."

"You won't hurt her any more!" Natsu howled. "You will die here and now, Zeref!"

"Do it, then," Zeref taunted.

With a maddened howl, Natsu flung himself at Zeref. Zeref mirrored him. Darkness swirled around his hand – one last-ditch attempt to fight back – but it was far too simplistic, far too obvious, from one barely clinging to consciousness to one who lived and breathed combat. Natsu smacked it aside with his fire-shrouded left hand and lashed out with his dragon's claw.

Blood poured from the gash in Zeref's chest, hit the golden flames, and ignited like gunpowder.

There was an immense explosion of power. Fire streaked once more through his veins, carrying the pain methodically to every part of him at once. Skin that had only just healed was stripped away remorselessly; old wounds were reopened and seared in place.

He didn't notice he had been hurled off his feet until he landed, tumbling through the ash, limbs askew, stopping only when momentum deposited him face-down in the city's ruins.

Natsu was shaking from the recoil. Tendrils of golden flame spiralled out from his scaled arm. He was clutching at his wrist in a vain attempt to bring them back under control, but the thought of taking advantage of his distraction did not occur to Zeref. The only thing in his mind was the puddle of blood slowly growing around him, a shadowy maw opening to swallow him whole.

Each successive breath came shorter and sharper into failing lungs. It hurt. He should have been used to that by now, but this wound was taking so long to repair itself. Eyes closed, teeth clenched, he wondered if his body would heal before Natsu had the chance to hit him again.

But it didn't.

The wound wasn't healing at all.

Gasping, Zeref pressed his hand to the gash, but all he could feel was Igneel's magic burning into his skin.

"It's not healing, is it?" Natsu asked smugly.

"That's- that's not possible," Zeref choked.

Or was it? Every trickle of blood zigzagging down his fingers brought with it another drip of doubt. Could a dragon have forged magic capable of killing him? Igneel had known almost as much about his curse as he himself did, and he had had four hundred years with little better to do than work on the problem…

No, Igneel hadn't had four hundred years; he had only had fourteen – seven of which had been spent in temporal stasis, and all of which had been spent imprisoned in a pocket dimension connected to a human body's mind. He had had no facility to research, to experiment, to discuss his results with others. And this was Igneel they were talking about. The thought that that moron of a dragon had found a solution that had not occurred to Zeref in four hundred years was laughable.

And even if he could have done, he wouldn't.

Of all the people Zeref had met, Igneel was the least likely of all of them to try to kill him.

And yet the wound wasn't healing.

Footsteps dragged his attention back to the present. Natsu stood over him, magic swirling around his arm for a second, final blow. There was no mercy in his eyes – and why would there be? Zeref had always thought it would be better this way.

He didn't think that any more.

He knew, now, what it felt like to be so close to death, and there was only one thought in his mind.

Only that horrific certainty.

Only fear.

How had Jerome been so calm? So accepting? He too had been helpless in the grip of death, and he had asked for release with eyes as sane as Zeref had ever seen. How had he surpassed the panic that flooded Zeref's throat and squeezed confessions from his heart? Why had he not shrieked against the darkness with everything he had? Why hadn't he been afraid?

He tried to freeze time. Nothing.

He tried to teleport away. Nothing.

Not enough energy left to create a shield. Not enough strength to roll out of the way.

"Die, Zeref," Natsu told him, and drove his burning claw towards him.

Zeref closed his eyes and called on all the magic he had left. A book appeared underneath his palm. He pressed his fingers against the familiar leather, poured everything he had into it, and screamed, "STOP!"

Natsu stopped.

He hadn't meant to. His eyes went wide. For all his rage, he could not force his fist any closer to his opponent. His dragon's claw still burned gold, fire writhing in a frantic attempt to overthrow this compulsion, but there was no paralyzing magic for it to burn away. The command was a part of his very soul.

"Stop it!" Natsu shrieked, voice rising in horror. "What are you doing to me?"

Zeref did not have the breath to answer him. He was hyperventilating, and yet no oxygen seemed to be reaching his lungs. He gasped out one last command: "Sleep."

"I WILL NOT!" Natsu roared. Shaking his head viciously, as if to throw it off, he tried to lunge at Zeref. His body shook with the strain of moving a single inch. His pupils swayed in and out of focus as he fought to stay conscious. "You can't- you will die here-"

Zeref slammed open the cover of the book. With a finger soaked in his own blood, he drew a sleep rune onto the page. The blood shimmered and sank into the paper.

Immediately, Natsu's eyes rolled back into his head and he fell to the ground. The fire around his arm winked out. He did not move again.

Zeref eyes, glimmering with exhausted tears, slid shut. His head fell forwards, forehead resting on the still-open book, and he followed Natsu into darkness.