The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Hubris et Orbi, Part 7
-Dragonlings-
"Who are you?"
Zeref came awake with a cry of anguish.
There was darkness in his mind, a whirl of thoughts half-dream and half-contradiction. The memory that had startled him awake vanished into it with a smirk. He pawed at those fading fantasies, beseeching them to stay, or perhaps to take him with them.
He didn't know where he was, or how he had got there. All he remembered was a voice asking, "Who are you?"
There were bodies.
He slowly turned his head this way and that. Limbs trapped under rubble. Twisted girders, coagulated blood. And more, far more, without any obvious signs of what had killed them, corpses strewn so artfully amongst the devastation that it looked as though they were waiting for their drama coach to clap his hands and tell them to get up.
He wished it mattered.
It might have been the aftermath of an epic battle, perhaps one last stand to defend his lair from a mad dragon, but there had been no fighting here last night. It had started as an accident, but it had not ended as one, and yet they had died for him willingly. The damage had only been incurred after their lives had been extinguished, when he, desperate and wild, had hurled his rage at the walls of their citadel until he was spent.
It didn't matter, because they were only demons.
It didn't matter, because as long as their books survived, he could bring them back over and over.
It didn't matter, because it would be trivial for him to erase the past twenty-four hours from their minds – and it wouldn't matter even if he didn't, because slaughtering them wouldn't affect how they viewed him, wouldn't lessen the unconditionality of their false love.
None of it mattered.
It was first time he had ever lost himself in anger, and it had had no greater impact upon the world than a few cracks in the roof of a citadel.
He hadn't even known there was a citadel before last night. The demons must have built it, there atop his semi-living lair, while he was avoiding their attention in the tunnels underneath. He could have razed it to the ground, and the world after he had lost control would still have looked the same as the one he had known before.
Perhaps he should have been relieved, but he felt only bitterness.
With a wave of his hand, the corpses of demons reverted back into books, not a single mark on a single cover to offer a hint of what their living selves had been through because of him. He would deal with them later. All he wanted to do was lie here on the cracked flagstones-
Someone knocked on the door.
There shouldn't have been a door. The demons had built that, too. An odd spark of pride flickered in the emptiness of fury's wake. Maybe he'd tell them so, when he brought them back. Maybe he'd help them rebuild. Maybe, if he did that for them, he'd be able to convince himself that their love for him was earned.
The knocking came again, insistent.
Gritting his teeth, he curled back into the ball he had awoken in. Retracing the path of his thoughts, as Anna had taught him to do, he struggled to recall the events that had led him here. His emotions were still all over the place. Why had he ever thought it was a good idea to let those feelings in? Why had he ever listened to her?
"Open the door this instant, foul wizard, or I will reduce your evil lair and everything in it to smithereens!"
In that instant, Zeref regretted every second he had spent wondering what had happened to Igneel.
"Go away!" he shouted back.
"Didn't you hear me? Smithereens!" the dragon boomed. "Do you want to have to rebuild your cute baby castle out of smithereens?"
With a groan, Zeref shambled over to the door. Like a brazen midday sunrise, there stood the now-King of the Fire Dragons and self-proclaimed hero of justice after two years of absence, surely nothing more and nothing less than the universe's attempt to prove to Zeref that things could always get worse.
He latched on to the familiar irritation automatically, barely noticing how quickly it drove the turbulence from his mind. "What do you want?"
"I'm so glad you asked!" proclaimed the crimson disaster. "Since I am a good, kind, and gracious hero, I have braved the horrid wastelands and travelled all the way to your evil lair in order to return your lost property!"
"My… what?"
"I believe this belongs to you," Igneel said proudly, and he deposited a human child in front of Zeref.
Zeref did not so much as glance at it. He did not need to.
Coldly, he stated, "You are mistaken."
"A dragon's nose is never mistaken," Igneel retorted. "This one smells like you. Ergo, I have brought it back. And while I'm here, may I politely remind you that littering is a public offence, so please be sure to take all your little demons with you next time you leave the forest. Thank you and good day."
Zeref trembled. He still did not look down. "Why couldn't you just have killed him?" he spat. "That's what you normally do, with my demons!"
"Ah," Igneel said, "but like I said, this one smells like you."
"They all smell like me!"
"Not so, my old nemesis," Igneel lectured him, with a grandiose swish of his tail. "They all smell like your magic – and a twisted, unnatural thing it is too, living magic. I can smell it a mile off. But this one smells like you. Therefore, I am returning him unharmed."
There was a pause.
"You're welcome, by the way."
Unable to help himself, Zeref found himself looking. Looking at sakura-pink hair and clothes grubby from a night alone in the forest; looking at closed eyes and the tiny rise and fall of a slightly-too-thin ribcage; looking at cheeks relaxed in contented oblivion, not split in a smile, just like they hadn't smiled from inside their coffin of light and steel.
Just like they hadn't smiled as they'd whispered, "Who are you?"
"I don't want him!" Zeref snarled, and he raised his hand. Let the darkness come. Let all hope be broken, let the night reign triumphant, let eternity know the pain that he did!
A spiral of darkness unravelled from his arm – and lashed harmlessly against the claw that had closed protectively around the boy.
"Well, now," Igneel growled. In that moment, he looked scarily like his father. "That's not very nice, is it?"
"I don't care!" Again and again Zeref struck out, and every time the dragon's impervious scales deflected his magic with ease. With a flash of mad insight, Zeref recalled the time he had managed to bring the dragon down, and tried to muster the focus needed to manifest any magic that wasn't death incarnate.
He didn't get the chance. A fireball knocked him flat on his back. It also ate the flesh from his bones and charred the remains to ash, but that didn't matter nearly as much as the impact, which disrupted his half-formed spell.
As he struggled back to his feet, already reborn, Igneel glowered down at him. "I don't think you really understand the concept of social responsibility, do you?" He hooked one gentle talon around the boy and lifted him onto his back. "Maybe I'll keep hold of him until you do."
"No!"
The cry escaped Zeref's lips before he could stop it, earning himself a suspicious glare from the dragon. "Why not? You clearly don't want him."
"I do!"
"To kill him, right?"
"No!"
"So those attempted murders I just foiled were, what, you testing me?"
Zeref sat down heavily on the blackened ground, burying his face in his hands. "I don't… I want… I don't know."
"You're a mess," Igneel said frankly.
"I know."
Smoke tickled at his nostrils as the dragon's snout nudged him gently. "What happened?"
Shaking his head, Zeref shrunk further into himself, arms wrapped so tightly around his knees that he might have been trying to turn himself into a singularity and disappear.
This time, the dragon's nudge was less gentle. "Now, far be it from the great Blazing Justice to sympathize with a villain, but I happen to know from experience that if you keep pushing people away, there'll be no one left to stand in your way when you need it."
Zeref's surprise must have been visible, because the dragon followed it up with a disgruntled snort. "Just saying, I spent a while thinking about what you said while I was travelling, and… well, I think that sometimes you should take your own advice."
Igneel settled himself down, crossing his front paws with the air of one whom only a confession or the apocalypse could shift, and the world was too busy to end right now.
The words came out all at once. "He's my brother. Natsu. He died, years ago, and last night I finally succeeded in combining living magic with his body to bring him back to life."
"I don't believe you," Igneel stated.
"I know, it should be impossible, but I did it! I'd already touched the One Magic, I'd seen more than anyone else before me, and that's why I could-"
"No, I can't believe that you would abandon your little brother in a forest! What are you, a monster?"
"I know, I just… I didn't want to bring him back in a place like this. I know what it's like to go so suddenly from not-being to being, and I thought he'd be afraid, waking up in my lab. So I went somewhere natural, somewhere nice… and I did it. I broke all the rules of life and death. I brought him back; part-human, part-demon, and entirely alive…"
"But?" prompted the dragon.
"He didn't know me," Zeref said numbly. "He doesn't remember anything from his life before. He looked right at me, and asked, who are you?"
"Can't you fix that? Don't you just have to write something in his book, wherever it is, like the time you made that really annoying jackal-demon fireproof because I kept burning him alive?"
A single tear escaped from behind his hands, a shining silver pioneer, a falling star. "I can't. His memories are part of his human self, not his demon self. They're not coming back. I did everything I could – I tried so hard – he's alive – but he won't ever remember me."
"So you abandoned him?" the dragon asked, though it wasn't the accusation it had been earlier.
"It hurt. Hurt so much. I tried- I tried to-" The words dissolved into a frantic whine. "But I couldn't do it. So… so I just walked away."
"And took it out on some demons who can't die instead? That's… actually quite considerate. For an evil wizard, I mean."
Zeref let out a sob.
"Still," the dragon pondered, "he won't survive on his own. He's much squishier than your other demons. He'll be torn apart."
That was the point of abandoning him, Zeref tried to say, but the words stuck in his throat.
Oblivious – or, perhaps, all too aware – Igneel continued, "Well, someone's got to take responsibility, and if you're not going to do it, I suppose it's time for the hero of justice to step up!"
"No!"
Igneel blinked, having not expected such fire from a broken man. "Why not? I'd be a great dad!"
No.
Because dragons weren't equipped to raise human children.
And when that dragon also had a grudge against said child's older brother, an excellent track record in destroying demons, and no common sense whatsoever, that made it the worst idea that had ever come out of Igneel's mouth, and that was saying something.
But what Zeref said was, "Because he's mine. I'm going to look after him."
"Hmm, let me see. An unstable, dangerous, socially incompetent evil wizard, and an innocent, defenceless, fragile part-demon who managed to break your heart just by existing… are you maybe seeing the problem with that? Sheesh, I thought you were supposed to be smart."
"But-"
"Besides, you've made it quite clear that he isn't your brother any more, since he doesn't have any memories from his previous life with you."
At any other time, Zeref would have noticed the deliberate taunt, but the words burst out of him unbidden. "He's still Natsu!" he shouted, and the flagstones trembled and the ceiling showered him with stone dust as the universe voiced its agreement. "Even if he doesn't remember, he still likes the things that Natsu likes, smiles like Natsu should, and I know he'll love any family he has here just as much as he once loved me-"
That was as far as he got before a waterfall of death silenced him. It drowned his words in the roar of the wind from the far shore, bludgeoned his lungs until he couldn't hope to form more – and by the time it had faded, the desire to protest had gone with it, leaving him shivering and weak.
"Yep, saw that coming a mile off," Igneel yawned. A quick shake of his head threw off the last tendrils of black wind. Bitter and violent they were, but not enough to break the scales of an adult dragon. "So, as well as all the times you've already tried to kill him out of anger, spite, and possibly jealousy, you also very nearly just killed him out of love. Sorry, old chap, but I don't think my heroic conscience will let me leave Natsu with you, whatever you say."
"You're wrong- hang on, you know what causes my magic to go out of control?"
"Sure I do. Anna told me."
"You spoke to Anna?"
"Yup. This morning, in fact, when I was looking for you." The lightness of Igneel's tone belied the intensely meaningful look he gave him.
Zeref closed his eyes. "How angry is she?"
"Hmm… you remember that time her paper got rejected, and I told her to send in the next one under a male pseudonym, because no one would believe 'Anna Heartfilia' was a genuine scientist?"
"That bad?" Zeref winced.
"Yes, if I had also set fire to a box full of her experimental data at the same time."
Zeref's head fell back into his hands with a moan.
"You should probably go and talk to her," Igneel advised, pretending not to notice. "Though, you might want to take a suit of armour or something. I think she's dented my scale, and it wasn't even me she was mad at." He rubbed vainly at the end of his nose. "I'm not sure I want to risk speaking to her again until she's taken it out on you. So, go on, do your thing, and I'll look after Natsu for you."
The dragon got to his feet and turned to leave. Zeref's gaze fell unwillingly upon the sleeping boy on his back. He took half a step forwards, but stopped himself; the fists at his side slowly uncurled.
"Igneel," he said, quietly, uncertainly, "how… how are you doing? Where have you been all this time?"
An airy shrug. "Oh, you know. Around. Gaining experience of the world before taking on the mantle of the Fire Dragon King. Pondering the true meaning of heroism. Thinking about how to end this war – not just defeating Acnologia, but ending the fighting for good. Not that anything you said to me mattered, of course."
Then he glanced away, and to Zeref's surprise, he added, "My brother didn't cope with Dad's death very well. Ever since, he's been on a crusade against Dragon Slayers. He's becoming more like Acnologia in his methods every day; he doesn't care how many humans get hurt. I've been trying to get him to come back and help me with the duties of the Fire Dragon King, but… I know I'm losing him. It made me realize how fortunate I was to have people looking out for me. So… thanks."
"Yeah," Zeref murmured. "Okay."
And he didn't quite smile, but he did manage to glance away from Natsu just long enough to nod farewell to the dragon as he took to the skies.
It was difficult to say whether or not Anna was pleased to see him.
It didn't bode well when a shadowy-eyed Darryl answered the door of the Heartfilia homestead, gazed at Zeref bleakly for several seconds, and then instructed, "Go down to the bottom of the garden, and I'll send her out to meet you. I have just got Eloise to bed; I am not letting the two of you do this in the house."
Perplexed, Zeref complied. It wasn't until he caught sight of Anna storming across the garden like a vengeful goddess of old, the sea of goats surging out of her path, that he realized he probably should have run for the hills.
She then proceeded to lecture him – and half the village – on how, when she had said write to me, she shouldn't have had to specify more than once; that forgetting was one thing but repeatedly ignoring her letters, even the not-furious ones, was another entirely; that she had been bored out of her mind and it was all his fault, breaker of promises, betrayer of friends, running off to conduct whatever dangerous experiments he pleased while if she so much as picked up a book the doctors (well, mostly Darryl) went into mass hysteria; and also, she had a daughter now, didn't he care about that at all?
Then she'd pulled him into a lethally tight hug. She had been so worried. He had promised he would be okay, and then he'd vanished without a trace. She hadn't thought Darryl would go through with his threat to tie her to a chair in order to stop her from marching into a radioactive dragon graveyard while heavily pregnant to find him, but she'd underestimated a man who'd spent most of his life wrangling unruly animals. And she'd chosen the health of her child in the end, but she'd been certain she had lost him to the madness in his head, having agreed to leave him when he'd seemed so vulnerable…
She'd held him and cried, and he'd patted her head awkwardly throughout the whirlwind of emotions and wondered if this was how people normally felt when talking to him.
When she'd calmed down – both from her relief and her desire to murder him – they sat side by side at the bottom of the garden, as the crimson sun descended to perch on the spearpoint-tip of the sapling Aureum Oak.
He asked, "You're okay, then? You… and the baby?"
It was almost magical, how her eyes lit up in the dusk. "We're both okay. She… Eloise Heartfilia was born a week ago. She's doing well."
"That's… that's good."
His fingers twisted in his robes. Perhaps she took pity on him, because she offered, "Do you want to see a picture?"
He nodded. She pressed a magically imprinted card into his hand, and he stared, quiet and wondrous. An eternity later, he managed to murmur, "She's cute."
Anna raised her eyebrows, and he added, "Much cuter than any of the living creatures I ever managed to create."
She threw her head back and laughed, a sound of pure joy that wrapped the whole world in forgiveness. "I'm not sure about that; Natsu's pretty cute too."
"I can't really take credit for that one. I was only re-using my parents' old blueprint."
She laughed again. Her hand squeezed his and fell away.
Zeref ventured, "You know about Natsu…?"
"Igneel had him when he came by this morning, looking for you." There was a pause, and then she added, by way of concession, "I guess you must have had a hard time of it, finally facing up to the challenge of bringing your brother back to life."
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "It was difficult. The magic, the ritual, the calculations… and staying focussed on any of them for long enough to achieve anything. I didn't mean to ignore you. I just… when I did think of you, I wasn't sure I could cope with it on top of everything else, knowing I couldn't even see you…"
"Okay, okay," she sighed. "You're forgiven. I am curious, though. Why did Igneel have your resurrected little brother with him?"
"He's going to raise Natsu," Zeref said.
There was silence.
"Huh," Anna remarked. "That's new."
"What is?"
"Well, I'm used to you being all emotions and none, sometimes an apathetic limpet and sometimes a blazing paragon of determination that not even the laws of the universe can shake… but this comic side of you is new. And there I didn't think anything you did could surprise me any more. Kudos."
"I'm serious," Zeref said.
Anna stared at him for long enough to conclude that this really wasn't a joke. "I'm sorry, but you've lost your freaking mind."
"Anna-"
"Igneel!" she burst out. "Of all the empty-headed, fire-breathing, self-professed heroic, sworn-to-destroy-you, not-even-the-same-species-as-the-child-in-question potential foster parents out there, you picked the Moron-in-Chief!"
"Technically, he volunteered."
"And you said, thanks but no thanks, I'm not completely mental?"
"…"
"Zeref, I'm sorry, I really thought we were past this, but I think we're going to have to start writing down all the logic behind your decisions again."
"No! I mean, I know it sounds mad, but I know what I'm doing. It's… it's the lesser of two evils."
Anna raised a sceptical eyebrow. "That must have been one particularly diabolical evil it edged out."
"It was," he admitted. "Me."
"You're not-" she began, outraged on his behalf, but he overrode her.
"It's a miracle Natsu has even survived a full night and day, given that I've already tried to kill him four times, and a fifth time by accident," he told her flatly. "Igneel may be a moron, but his heart is in the right place… whereas half the time, I don't have a heart at all. Igneel is the only person I know who can keep Natsu safe from me."
"Yes, by replacing you with an even bigger threat. Namely, a dragon who can't even look after himself."
"He's grown up a bit, I think."
"Oh? So he's not still using that stupid nickname, then?"
"Well, he is, but… I think he's really trying. And Natsu might… might be what he needs."
Anna's hand curled around his. "It's alright for you to need Natsu too, you know."
"He won't be far away," Zeref told her, bravely.
After a moment, she nodded once. "And I'll be here for you this time."
"You've got your own family to worry about."
"Yes, but since Darryl is more capable than you and Igneel put together, I'm far more worried about your family than mine," she rebutted. "Although, that reminds me. I want you to be Eloise's godfather."
"What?" He jerked back from her, violently shaking his head as if to dislodge whatever mask of responsibility he was wearing in her mind. "Anna, I can't! After everything we've just said- you know I can't look after a child!"
To his dismay, she dismissed his arguments with a wave of her hand. "Oh, I know that. If anything happened to me, Darryl would do fine on his own. If something were to happen to him too, his parents would take care of Eloise. And if they died, heck, Igneel would foster her, since apparently that's what he does now."
"Then why-?"
"Because, when all is said and done, you are my immortal best friend. Once I'm gone, would it hurt you to check in on my daughter, and her children, and so on, every once in a while?"
"I… I guess I could," he said. She smiled, and the struggle of the last few months melted away in it, and he thought that things were going to be okay.
The most surprising thing about Anna's assessment of Igneel's parenting skills was that it took a full three days for her to be proven right.
Zeref hadn't strayed far from the Heartfilia homestead in that time. He avoided their newborn daughter, because new life was proving hard for him to deal with… but the days were long and the weather fair and he could more often than not be found in a secluded corner of Anna's garden, working through the notes she had made during their separation, re-familiarizing himself with the problems of World Magic and time travel after months spent playing with life and death instead.
Indeed, that was where Igneel found him that day, an exclamation mark of fiery red appearing out of the idyllic blue. "Ho! Evil wizard!" proclaimed he. "I require your assistance!"
"Did I ever tell you how peaceful things were while you were missing in action?" Zeref grumbled, though if he had really been irritated by the interruption, he wouldn't have been so quick to put down his pen. "What's up?"
"Well, you see, there's been a bit of an accident. Involving Natsu."
"What kind of accident?"
"A fiery one," Igneel evaded.
"Igneel-"
"But it's oh-kay," the dragon stressed, "because you can just do your thing."
"What thing?"
"The thing you do with all your demons, where you just write in their books and fix them."
The bees buzzed, the goats bleated, the summer hummed its somnolent hymn – and Zeref let out a shriek that had the sun quailing a hundred million kilometres away. "I can't do that with Natsu! He's not made out of magic; his body is human – it's real! If he dies, he dies for good!"
"Oh," said Igneel. "Right. You probably should have mentioned that at the start."
"WHAT DID YOU DO-?"
The dragon took a half-step backwards. "No need to overreact, he's not dead or anything…"
"Take me to him!" It wasn't a request. Zeref had already slung himself onto the dragon's back, gripping a spine in both hands as Igneel jumped skyward.
Zeref pressed his forehead to the dragon's scales as they flew, trying to block out all feelings of concern and focus only on how Natsu was a singular mine of data about death and resurrection and the One Magic…
He almost succeeded. Then they arrived at the cave where Natsu was lying unconscious on a blanket – with burns all down his right-hand side. A shriek escaped Zeref's lips, and he curled up on Igneel's back as a storm of black razor-wind tore ineffectually at the dragon's scales. That savage reminder of what would have happened if his magic had done the damage was the only thing stopping Zeref from snatching the boy back then and there.
"I can't help him," he managed to rasp. "He needs a proper healer."
"Oh, I know a great one!" Igneel breezed. Carefully, he scooped up the boy in his claws and took to the air once more.
Igneel's healer turned out to be a sky dragon: small (as adult dragons went), female, lithe and graceful, with the most beautiful pearlescent scales, shimmering like the morning mists that rose over the gates of heaven.
Probably.
That was what the old lore said about the supposedly extinct sky dragons, anyway. It was hard to tell the precise shade of this one's scales, since they were covered in blood.
Specifically, the blood fountaining from the neck of a bronze dragon, which was currently clamped between her jaws.
The bronze dragon was larger than she was, but one wouldn't have known it from the way it hung limp as a pheasant in the mouth of a wolf. When she spat it out, the corpse slumped at her feet, neck twisted at a horrid angle. Beneath the blood pouring down her flanks, the regular tessellation of scales was marred by innumerable scars, old and new, ragged and ripped.
"That's your healer?" Zeref wondered of the blood-soaked dragon, forgetting, in his surprise, the entire reason for their visit.
Igneel didn't answer, although he did touch down a little further away than he might normally have done when greeting a friend. He landed awkwardly on his back paws, keeping Natsu safe in his grip. Cheerfully, he called, "Everything alright there, Grandine?"
The sky dragon spat out a globule of blood that fizzled against the earth, and growled, "Better now."
Zeref hopped down to the ground, though he found himself sticking close to Igneel's side. He couldn't tear his eyes away from the sky dragon – her too-thin body, almost serpentine; taut muscles showing beneath the wounds of more battles than he could possibly imagine. They sketched a tapestry of a world he had glimpsed on his travels with Anna, but never been part of; an unforgiving world beyond the realms of theory and numbers in which he made his home. His own body, forever unmarked, seemed somehow out of place.
Igneel's wing dropped across his face. "It's rude to stare, you know," he reprimanded.
"Let him," Grandine said shortly. "What does it matter?"
"What happened to you?" Zeref whispered.
"Dragon Slayers happened. They came after my family first of all. They still do, every time word gets out that one of the sky dragons survived."
"Why?"
"Why do you think, fool?" she snapped. "If you want to wipe out all the dragons, you start with the ones who can bring other dragons back from the brink of death!"
"Oh," Zeref realized, quietly.
"My clan were healers and shamans. I survived because I forsook their ways and learnt to fight." Her tail thumped on the ground as she turned her angry glare to Igneel. "Did you and your friend come here just to ask me inane questions, Igneel, or did you want something?"
"As it happens, I do have need of your talents – your non-murderous ones, that is," Igneel amended brightly, ploughing through the mood with his usual obliviousness. "My foster son got hurt quite badly in an accident. Can you help?"
To Zeref's surprise, the sky dragon did not bat an eyelid at Igneel's request. As she leant in, a ball of ethereal light appeared at the end of her nose, which she pushed into Natsu's wounded side. The burns glowed and receded at once.
"That's incredible magic," Zeref breathed. "I've never seen anything like it before. True healing magic has long been lost to mankind-"
The sky dragon turned suddenly towards him, and for one savage moment he thought he was going to be eaten, but she restrained herself to a snarl. "That's what the Dragon Slayers said, too," she spat. "Right before they tortured my brother because he refused to teach them it. That's all the sky dragons have ever been to humans. They see our gift and want to take it for themselves!"
"Easy," Igneel interjected, manoeuvring himself deftly between the two of them. "He doesn't mean any harm, Grandine. He just likes magic more than he likes people."
Wisely, Zeref said nothing to this – perhaps shocked into silence by his self-proclaimed archnemesis coming so readily to his defence – and Grandine turned away from them both with a growl, releasing the pressure all at once. "I've healed the boy, Igneel. Is that all?"
The fire dragon beamed. "Yes, thank you!" He nudged Zeref's shoulder. "See? Grandine's great! I told you there was no need to worry!"
"Unfortunately, no amount of healing magic can remove the underlying problem," Zeref countered, narrowing his eyes at Igneel. "How, pray tell, did you manage to set my brother on fire?"
"I didn't!" Igneel protested. "He set fire to himself!"
"If you think for one second that I will tolerate you trying to avoid responsibility-"
"It's the truth! No one is born great at magic; there are always going to be accidents while he learns!"
Zeref's voice was dangerously low. "What do you mean, learns?"
If dragons could squirm, then that was what Igneel did. "Although, thinking about it, that was supposed to be a secret."
"Igneel, are you teaching Natsu Dragon Slayer magic?"
"I, uh… maybe."
"How could you?" Zeref screamed. "I trusted you! I thought you cared about him, but you've only gone and sealed his fate in this endless war!"
"It's not like that," Igneel muttered, shuffling his feet. "He asked me to teach him. He wanted to be cool, like his dad."
"He is too young to understand the consequences of that decision! You should have told him no! As his foster father, you're supposed to be acting in his best interests, not your own!"
Igneel opened his mouth to muster up another thoughtless, petty defence – and a white claw flashed across his muzzle, scoring three deep lines into his scales.
"You fool, Igneel!" Grandine hissed, her eyes like the oncoming storm. "Have you already forgotten Acnologia? You would help them destroy us all!"
"Natsu is nothing like Acnologia!" both Zeref and Igneel retorted at once, before glancing at each other in surprise.
"And I have thought about it," Igneel continued sternly. "Very much so, in fact. Acnologia sought Dragon Slayer magic out of hate and vengeance. The power to kill dragons has always been taken up by those who have been wronged by dragons. They care nothing for humanity, nor the world we share. Thus the cycle of violence, of revenge taken by both sides over and over, continues… that's what you were trying to tell me in Skartown, isn't it?" he added, nodding to Zeref.
"Hatred can't end these violent times," Zeref whispered in agreement. "It can only prolong them."
"Natsu doesn't hate dragons. He wants to learn my magic because he loves me and he thinks it's cool, and I will teach him because I love him and I think he will do amazing things with it. No one will make him fight, least of all me. If he chooses to do so, it will be out of love for his family… to protect what matters to him, rather than to destroy his enemies. And maybe, one day, the hatred between our races will end with him."
Zeref was silent. Grandine was not. "Pretty words," she hissed. "But good intentions can't change the inevitable. He will turn into a dragon. He will lose his mind, just like the others have. And you will lose him."
"Nope!" Igneel beamed, clapping Zeref on the back hard enough to send him stumbling. "Because this evil genius here is working on a way to stop dragonification!"
Surprise degenerated into outright horror. "Igneel, no!" Zeref cried. "I can't do it!"
"Sure you can. Don't put yourself down!"
"No, you don't understand!" He was frantic now, as if getting the words out quickly enough could send them back to a time before Igneel's blind faith set Natsu on the inevitable path to doom. "I did a rough calculation, and even if my ritual works, which has not been tested, it won't be stable for at least another forty years! We'll have lost Natsu to the dragons' madness long before then!"
The warning bounced straight off the dragon's glossy scales. "That's fine, you can just send us to the future with your time travel magic, and we'll do the ritual there!"
Anna's dismissal of that very same idea flashed through Zeref's mind. "But that means abandoning the present. We can't win the war by-"
"I don't care about any of that. It's not about winning this war or stopping Acnologia or anything like that. It's about raising a Dragon Slayer who loves dragons – a man who stands on both sides of the conflict, and makes a choice that all before him have been forced into by duty or hate. And, most importantly, it's about doing what's best for Natsu."
"But…" Zeref floundered.
"I'm going to break the cycle of hate between the dragons, Dragon Slayers, and mankind," Igneel vowed. "If I can't do that in my time, I'll do it in another."
"It may be too late by then," Zeref warned.
"I don't care. It's the right thing to do."
"You're a fool, Igneel," Grandine spat.
"Join me, Grandine," Igneel countered.
"Bah!"
Whirling, her tail slammed into the ground inches from Igneel's claw. With a thunder of paw-beats, the sky dragon whipped across the clearing and was gone, leaving them alone with the still-cooling corpse of the dragon she had slain.
Zeref said, "Not that there's much competition, but I am not entirely convinced that introducing that dragon to Natsu was the smartest thing you've ever done. She seems a bit… scary."
"Yeah, she definitely is that, but she's got a good heart."
"I'm not sure you've proven to be the best judge of that, either."
Igneel sighed. "You've seen… well, how she is." Zeref thought of the war-wounds lining the flanks of the user of healing magic, and felt an echo of pain brush across his own flawless skin. Igneel explained, "She kills Dragon Slayers."
Zeref's eyes widened. "So you brought Natsu-"
"She doesn't touch them while they're human." Igneel cut him off with a shake of his head, and then pointed towards the bronze-scaled corpse. "When they start to become unstable, she stalks them, and she kills them when they turn."
"Why? Wouldn't it be much easier to kill them when they're still human?"
"Yes, it would. But, despite what she'll tell you, somewhere deep inside, she still has hope. Until the moment they turn, there's still a chance that they'll walk away from the war and the madness and the killing before it's too late… there's still a chance that they can be saved. She's never seen it, not once, but she still believes it. And every time, she bears the cost of that hope herself, in full."
"…Oh."
Igneel nudged his shoulder, then scooped up Natsu once again. "We are the justification for her hope," he informed Zeref. "Natsu and I will be the exception she has come to believe she will never meet. She'll see that, one day. Now, do you want a lift back home or what?"
So, probably against his better judgement, Zeref let it go.
Little did he know that Igneel's actions were only the beginning.
A fortnight later, Anna was awoken by the sound of Zeref hammering on her front door, shouting her name.
He was the only person in the world for whom she would open the door at midnight in her pyjamas, covering a yawn with her free hand and waving him inside with the other. "Not so loud, Zeref," she admonished sleepily. "Ellie's asleep."
When he neither apologized not stepped inside at the invitation, concern was bumped up the order in which her emotions usually woke from slumber, and her next words were a little sharper. "What's wrong?"
Zeref gave her a bleak look. "You know how everyone we know is a moron?"
A groan escaped her lips. "What's Igneel done now?"
"Not him this time. Weisslogia."
"Ah, the moron-in-training."
"Yes, and you know how it's his life's goal to take every stupid thing that Igneel does and one-up him?"
It took a moment for the full implications of that thought to hit her.
By then, she had already slung her coat over her shoulders and pulled on her boots, letting Zeref lead her out of town.
Weisslogia and Igneel weren't hard to find in the forest – possibly because of their size, possibly because of the white ghostlights orbiting around the clearing at Weisslogia's command, or possibly because Anna was so used to the sound of a crying baby now that she could have pinpointed the source of the wailing a mile off, and that source happened to be lying on the ground between the two dragons in question.
Igneel was clearly very agitated; his tail swept back and forth as he argued with Weisslogia. "No, apprentice mine! That one's too small!"
"All humans are small!" Weisslogia protested.
"That one's really small! Look at it! It can't stand or speak!"
"That's okay, I'll just teach it how!"
"It doesn't work like that-!"
Fortunately for all involved, Anna marched across the clearing with a fury that would have make the apocalypse think Acnologia had been a poor choice for its vessel, and slapped Weisslogia's snout. "Weisslogia! You put that baby back where you got it from this instant!"
"I can't!" the white dragon whined. "He was abandoned! I found him by the side of the road; I don't know where he came from, or where his parents are! And I thought, this is fate! I'm going to be a father, just like Master Blazing Justice, and raise a super-powerful Dragon Slayer to help Natsu save the world!"
"Absolutely not!" Anna thundered. "Natsu is a robust, healthy, six-year-old part-demon! This is a human baby! A baby, Weisslogia! It needs to be raised by humans!"
The white dragon pouted. "Well, the humans didn't want him! But I do!"
"But you can't! Natsu is bad enough; how are you going to raise a baby?"
"I think I'm going to call him Sting," Weisslogia decided.
"That's not even a name!" Anna shrieked.
"It is too. It's my son's name."
"No, Weisslogia! That is not his name, and he is not your son!" Anna snatched up the child, still swaddled in the dirty rags in which he had been abandoned, and cradled him to her chest. "Look, I know you're only trying to help this child, and that's very noble of you. Unfortunately, letting you take this baby would be manslaughter on my part. If you absolutely have to follow Igneel's example, find an older, less dependent child to foster. Your attempt to do good will kill this one."
"I don't want another child! I want Sting! Our meeting was a sign from the heavens!"
"No," Anna repeated, clear and cold. "He needs to be raised by humans, at least until he's older. There is absolutely no way that a dragon can do this without the input of human parents… why are you looking at me that?"
Weisslogia blinked in the long, slow fashion common to dragons. "You're a human parent."
Anna jerked back. "What? No! I already have an infant daughter; there is no way in hell I can save this boy from your good intentions at the same time!"
The white dragon threw himself into the dirt at her feet. "Please, O fairest of fair maidens, O noble, selfless heroine! Help me save Sting!"
Anna looked from the prostrating dragon to the child in her arms, and wondered how her life had come to this. "Alright, fine! I'll help you bring up your foster son! But you have to do exactly what I say." She punctuated this with a swift jab to his snout as Weisslogia leaned in too eagerly. "And that means leaving him with me overnight. First thing in the morning, I'm taking him to a doctor – a human doctor – to get him checked over."
Ground rules set, she turned away from the celebrating dragon and marched back into the woods. It wasn't long before Zeref resurfaced at her side, to be greeted with the full force of her glare.
"You know," he offered, nervously, "when I asked you to help me talk some sense into Weisslogia, this really isn't how I thought it would end up. Sorry."
"Oh, don't think you're getting out of this with just an apology, Mister Dragneel. I've not forgotten that it was your stupid agreement with Igneel that started all this."
He raised his hands hurriedly. "You know I can't help you with children, Anna. It's more likely than anything to trigger my curse."
"Convenient, that," she scowled. "You're going to help me with some research instead. Specifically, how quickly it is possible to transfuse certain elements of Dragon Slayer magic into a newborn human without speeding up the onset of madness."
"Why?" Zeref wondered.
"Because dragons can eat anything," Anna told him flatly. "The faster this child starts developing physical draconic characteristics, the faster we can wean him. I'll be damned if I'm going to spend my life breastfeeding every orphan that our dear moronic dragons take a shine to."
There was silence for a moment.
"You know," Zeref reflected, "if someone had told me back at the Academy that this was what my dragonification research was going to be used for one day, I'd have laughed in their face."
Anna snorted. "Maybe so, but it's still a better use than what you were planning on doing with it."
She had thought he had come to agree with her on the futility of an anti-dragonification ritual that would only work in the future, and so she was surprised when he didn't say a word for the rest of the way home.
Needless to say, things only went downhill from there.
Previously, Skiadrum had ranked quite highly on Anna's list of most tolerable dragons. This was largely down to his sprinkling of common sense, which had proven itself a remarkably uncommon trait amongst dragonkind.
That accolade was withdrawn the morning he turned up at Anna's door with a child as young as Weisslogia's in tow. All attempts to explain to him why this was an abysmal idea were met by one of three responses: "Look at his tiny little fists!", "But his chubby cheeks are so cute!", or "Look! He's blowing bubbles!"
Thus, after an hour of hitting her head against a wall in frustration, baby Rogue had been welcomed into the fold. It was an apt name, Anna thought – not because it was in any way appropriate for a human baby, but because adopting him had definitely been the act of a sensible dragon gone rogue.
After that, it was only a matter of time before Grandine joined them. Igneel had turned out to be a good judge of her character, because despite her avid opposition to his plan, it had not stopped her from providing help in respect of the numerous accidents to which the dragons and their children were unsurprisingly prone. Though she tried not to show it, the children were clearly growing on her, and when a savage attack on a remote clan that had always lived in harmony with the sky dragons left a baby girl as the only survivor, not even she had been able to walk away.
And with that, their peculiar extended family was complete.
(Metalicana, being Metalicana, had just turned up at their camp one day with a reasonably aged foster child in tow, acting as though this had always been the case, and no one had questioned it for a moment.)
Even as the days turned to weeks and months, and the new foster parents began to get a handle on caring for human children of varying ages, barely a day went by when one dragon or another wasn't at Anna's door, seeking help or advice or company. Though they each lived separately, and roamed as dragons did, a communal area of sorts had been unofficially established in the forest not far from Anna's village, and the unusual families came and went as they pleased.
It was a sign of how accustomed Anna had become to absurdity in her life that she considered the most surprising thing about the whole affair how calmly her husband had taken it.
Well, it would have been an exaggeration to say that he was pleased about the direction her life was taking. Between days spent teaching the dragon-children, working on her and Zeref's research project, and visiting foreign libraries, she didn't spend as much time at home as he would have liked, but he'd known what he was getting into when he'd married her.
When she'd asked, he had simply shrugged, showing more self-restraint in one action than she had shown in her entire life, and said that they both had a habit of collecting strays. Just because hers had scales and breathed fire didn't mean they needed her any less than the rescue animals that had taken over the Heartfilia land needed him.
Still, despite Darryl's best attempts to understand, they had fought once, and badly. Igneel had offered to teach Eloise magic alongside Natsu, and when Anna had mentioned to Darryl that she would be taking Eloise up to the dragon encampment the next day, he had lost it. He would not allow her to drag their daughter into her chaotic world. Ellie should be able to make her own choice, once she was old enough to do so.
Anna had lost it too – said that it wasn't about choice, but about control; that he was deliberately keeping Ellie away from magic and the dragon-children because he feared she'd be tempted into a life far more meaningful than growing up to take over the Heartfilia farm, as he wanted for her. After enough shouting to draw the attention of the dragons, he had taken Ellie to stay with his parents for a few weeks, and Anna had been thoroughly miserable at home until they'd made up.
She spent a lot of that time thinking about what family meant to her… and what kind of future she wanted for Ellie. Darryl was right; she did want her daughter to have a choice. If that meant she chose a boring life on the farm over something worthwhile, then so be it.
And Ellie would get a choice, because she had two parents who loved her, and who would ensure that she did. But how many generations would it take before there no longer was a choice? Before the fighting had drowned all semblance of society, and ruined cities were the norm, and the option, if one existed at all, was to learn to fight dragons or die? Would that be the world Ellie's daughter saw? What about her granddaughter?
Anna had seen death and destruction in her time, but she had mostly grown up in peace. Hidden away in an insignificant farming village in a small northern kingdom, she had been protected by the same isolation she had always found so boring.
When she held her daughter in her arms, though, the world seemed so fragile.
More than anything, she wished there was someone she could talk to about it. But Darryl wouldn't understand, and Zeref… she saw him less and less frequently, now. She knew he struggled to control his magic around Eloise and the other children – and she couldn't begin to imagine the pain that observing Natsu from a distance caused him, though she understood why he wouldn't stop doing it for anything – but even when he did emerge from his lair, he was distant. And it wasn't the distance of dissociation, like it had been when they had first met, but one of choice.
He seemed to prefer talking to Igneel over her – Igneel! It irked her to think that there was something he would rather discuss with that oversized lizard than her. Except for Natsu, she supposed, but if they were only talking about him, there would be no need for them to fall silent when she drew near.
She told herself that as long as he wasn't going back to his useless former self, she didn't care… but she didn't know what she had done to push him away, and that hurt more than she could bring herself to admit.
"Anna. We need to talk."
About bloody time, she thought, but saying the first thing that came into her head was usually what got her into trouble with Darryl, so she refrained. Instead, she glanced over her shoulder to see Zeref walking through the long grass towards her, and she offered him a small smile. "Is this about what you and Igneel have been plotting in secret?"
A small nod. "It's not really a secret, I just… thought you wouldn't approve."
After glancing around to check that there was no one – dragons included – within hearing distance, Anna sat down in the grass, and patted the ground beside her. "Maybe I won't, but if you've made the decision on your own, I'll support you anyway."
He nodded nervously, and sat down beside her. "I'm going to focus exclusively on making time travel possible from now on. I'm going to send the dragons and their children far enough into the future for my method of preventing dragonification to stabilize."
"Okay." Anna mulled this over with the consideration it deserved, squashing down all the responses that had immediately jumped to mind. "I thought it would be something like that."
His hands twisted in the fabric of his robes. "I know it's abandoning the present. I know that if we stayed and trained the Dragon Slayers instead, we might be able to stop Acnologia… but in return, we'd be giving up any chance we have of saving the Dragon Slayers from the same fate. We can't break the cycle of hatred in this age. We can only hope that the world survives long enough for it to make a difference when we finally do."
"I know," she said, taking his small hand in hers reassuringly. "It's the only way to save the children, isn't it? I know you wouldn't have allowed Igneel to train Natsu unless you already had a plan to save him from that fate. Of course I'll help you with the magic. Is that really what you've been afraid to tell me all this time?"
There was silence, and then he blurted out, "I'm going to go with them."
It was a full ten seconds before Anna was able to respond. "To the future? Why?"
"Because it might not be safe to do the ritual here and then push them through a portal to the future. It would be much more sensible to do it on the other side. Besides, I need to be there to correct it if anything goes wrong. What if I've estimated the increase in atmosphere magic incorrectly and we need to jump forward again? What if I've got something in the ritual wrong, and I need to recalculate and recast it?"
"You don't get things like that wrong, Zeref," she pointed out, bemused.
"I get things wrong all the time. I get lost in the magic and lose track of the numbers. We only met because you travelled halfway across the kingdom to tell me I made a mistake, remember? And…" A long breath escaped his lips. "And, in the future, I might be able to help. There might be other Dragon Slayers my ritual can save… or perhaps I can devise magic or tactics that will help against Acnologia."
"And Natsu will be there," Anna supplemented quietly, knowing he couldn't say it himself, and he nodded.
"Maybe there won't be a world worth saving in forty years' time, but I think… I think there's more I can do there than here. Enough to make the gamble worth it."
"Okay," she said, and nothing more.
When he couldn't bear the silence any more, Zeref resumed, "Anna, I'm sorry, you're the most important thing in the world to me, but I have to go with them. I want to live in a way that matters; you're the one who taught me that. I have to be part of this… I have to try and end this endless battle."
"It's okay," she said.
"I'm sorry-"
"No, it's okay. I understand, Zeref." She knew he didn't believe her; she held tight to his hand and prayed it would be enough to convince him. There were a lot of precious things in her life, but none quite as fragile, as beloved, as him.
"Will- will you help? I don't think I can complete the theory of time travel on my own."
"Of course," she confirmed. "But I need you to promise me one thing."
"What's that?"
"That you'll take me with you to the future."
"What? No!" Twisting, he gaped at her in horror. "Anna, you can't! Everything you said last time still applies – more so, in fact, because you have more to protect in the present than ever before! What about your daughter?"
"It's because of my daughter that I have to go," Anna returned evenly. "The world doesn't end with me. When I am gone, she'll live. And so will her children, and her grandchildren… I want to build a better world for them. Ending the war in forty years' time may not make a difference to my life, but it will to theirs, and that's why I have to do everything I can to make sure it comes to pass. We're the only people who can do this, Zeref. We have a duty to all who are born powerless into this eternal war, not just the ones we love."
Leaning back and gazing up at the sky, she added, "It's funny. I always thought your long view of the future was something that only an immortal could understand… but in the end, all it took was the realization that there are lives more important to me than my own."
"Anna, no!" Zeref shouted. "You're talking about abandoning your daughter! You can't do that!"
The more horrified he was, the calmer she became. "She'll have her dad. She'll be fine. I know I'll see her again one day. And by that time, she might have children of her own… and if she does, I know she'll understand."
"But you don't need to go to such lengths! You could live normally, with your family, and I'll meet up with you in the future-"
"Forty years is a long time in this war. If Acnologia – and the others who have invested everything they have in this endless battle – catch on to what we've done, I won't last two seconds. Not to mention, King Carlos is always on the lookout for a new target. Honestly, Zeref, how long do you think I'd last without you forcing me to keep my head down and avoid the king's attention? Removing myself from time not only ensures I'll survive until I can be most useful, but it also protects Darryl and Eloise. They're not connected to this. Without me, they'll be safe."
"But-"
"I'm not stupid, Zeref," she sighed. "If you feel the need to jump forwards, then you clearly don't think it's safe to go the long way round either. And I'm not immortal! What if forty years isn't enough?"
"Then you'll never see your daughter again," he whispered.
"That's fine. It isn't about me."
Fiercely, he shook his head. "No. Stay. Live your life here. I don't need you-"
"Don't be ridiculous. You haven't forgotten who invented the mathematics your research relies on, have you? Besides, if you think I'm letting those kids go wandering round in the future with no one but you and the dragons looking after them, you've got another thing coming. At least this way I'll be leaving Ellie with one responsible parent."
"I wish I'd never told you," Zeref remarked bitterly.
Smiling, she brushed back his hair and pressed her lips to his forehead. "We're in this together, Zeref. We have been from the start. We're going to save the dragon-children and break this cycle of hate, you and me."
A sob escaped his lips, and she pulled him close, whispering soft words of comfort as he cried for her fate and she did not. She could always be strong, if it was for him.
"We've still got a long way to go," she reminded him, softly stroking through his hair. "We're nowhere near ready to put our theories into practice. And I meant what I said earlier, too. Until the moment we escape from the present, we have a target on our backs – us and the dragon-children. If Acnologia learns of what we're trying to achieve, he'll destroy us all."
"You're right. It's dangerous. And the rate at which the children are absorbing the dragons' magic sets a very real time limit on our project."
"I know. But we will find a way, together."
Zeref murmured his agreement into her shoulder.
Her gaze drifted out across the garden. The Heartfilias had always been farmers, a tradition that had stalled when Gregor had run away to attend the Mildian Academy of Magic, revived when Evelyn had needed a stable home, and then fallen into neglect in Anna's hands. It was something Darryl had started up again after marrying into the family; it was, perhaps, something their daughter would choose to continue, without her mother around to tempt her down the path of magic instead.
Maybe there would still be Heartfilias on this land when she and Zeref returned to linear time, in forty years or more. Maybe they would see the Aureum Oak her grandad had planted in all its majesty.
Maybe, by then, she too would have left behind a legacy worth remembering.