Hi~~~
Thank you for deciding to read this, despite it's status as probably an eternal hiatus WIP. It was fun to write, especially this chapter. I wrote the beginning of this years ago, so maybe that's why I'm biased towards the most recent chapter. Who knows. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Enjoy the last of it!
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Zeref jerked as footsteps crunched nearby.
"Zer, pal, it's just me, Mizumi."
He didn't respond; he was so tired. Tired of killing, tired of fearing, tired of trying to- to what? He was simply waiting to die; why was he struggling? What against?
"I'm not going to die."
He squeezed his eyes shut, a tear falling down his cheek. That phrase somehow made him even more exhausted.
"Regardless, we've made it to the mainland, and we're a decent distance from people, so here seems fine a place as any to set up camp."
She continued without waiting for a response, accompanied by rustles and crunches of dead foliage, "I would assume that some of this stuff is nice and dry, so there's the fire, and there's a creak nearby enough that I shouldn't have to waste a teleport on getting it. I'm not so sure about food; I find eating cooked meat on a stick a little squeamish, it just bothers me. I doubt there's any fruit nearby, so I'll probably have to teleport real quick to a town at some point in the next week to restock. I've already got some food, so not today."
He listened to her voice washing over him, something in him calming down despite himself. People around him, for better or worse, always tried to directly interact with him. Mavis had run up to him without warning, ignoring his warning, and others would move forward to help him or yell or fight him, only to die right after. But she seemed to be giving him a wide birth, judging from her overly loud footsteps, just talking.
"I have plenty of bread and jerky, I like bread a lot, though this stuff isn't going to be nearly as good as freshly baked. Ooohhhhh," she moaned, knocking on a tree at least ten feet away from his curled form, "now I'm craving fresh-baked bread… N-Micchan's cooking- anything, really, she cooks is just delectable. I've never even felt the need to butter it or put jam on it-"
"You shouldn't be around me," he breathed, not lifting his head from his ball on the forest floor.
"Sucks to be you- sucks to be me?" She hesitated, then laughed, "Sucks to be whatever it is, I don't know. Point is," she said, and he tensed slightly as she approached, still seeming to be trying to kick the ground with her every step. She stopped some feet away from him, and he guessed from what he heard that she had squatted down. "-I don't give a single tail what should or shouldn't be. You should understand that; I know you do."
He blinked. …what?
But she had already shuffled backwards and resumed stomping around. It was soothing, somehow. If she was here, she should be able to shoo off anybody before he could kill them. But would she? She hardly seemed to know how dangerous he was, laughing the real threat of the curse away like it were nothing, like she hadn't collapsed for a couple hours after having touched him.
He couldn't imagine what she was trying. If she were a cultist, he doubted very much that she would be in Fairy Tail. Whatever else the guild was, Makarov protected it handily. And, beyond that, she would be reverent of the death that followed him, and, despite not taking his warnings seriously, she certainly seemed to understand that it was not a good thing.
"I wonder if you've eaten anything recently, do you care to eat?"
He twitched. He didn't particularly care either way, but he didn't really feel up for speaking yet.
And she didn't seem intent on making him. "Yep," she said decisively, and he heard her—was she just heavier than she looked?—stomping away from him again, then rummaging. "I think I'll eat the good stuff, then leave something simple for you six feet away, so that I don't come too close. I'll sleep on the other edge of the clearing, so you can get the food without worrying." A pause. "Sounds like a plan. Yessss," he heard her add in a mutter, something crinkling like a plastic bag. "All for me…"
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Sometime later, night having fallen and her inaudible susurrations faded into soft, slow breathing, he poked his head up just enough to see around himself.
He started.
There was nothing- he knew that he had killed everything here, the trees, the underbrush, birds, anything alive must be dead. Yet he wasn't surrounded by grey.
She seemed to have had a ball putting up random, colorful decorations, light but bright turquoise and yellow, subdued in the night, were illuminated in a glow from the fire, which burnt golden. She lay across from him on an almost offensively neon orange sleeping bag that faded to green at the edges, muddied in between, a similarly shaded blanket draped across her middle.
He blinked for several minutes, unable to really grasp what he was seeing. He was sure he hadn't seen anything as colorful even at Eldrich, the castle in Alvarez, which was in deep, royal reds, purples, blues. True, there was gold, but nothing was light blue, and he certainly had no randomly colored origami stars tied to-
He was startled to find himself deflating slightly at the sight poking out from behind the burst of color, a dead, greyed tree branch which held several of the stars.
Eyes trailing downward, he noticed a little bundle beneath it. Inching cautiously toward it, anxious not to wake her up, he peered at it. A deep green blanket, neatly rolled, as well as a bag of jerky and crackers. There was also, strangely, a rather odd quill, which he picked up without thinking, turning it over carefully.
It was certainly not a real feather, rather made from some kind of spun glass, very slightly tinted blue, with white hairs imitating the filaments of a feather. It was soft and pliable in his hands, the strands bending just as a feather might, brushing lightly against his fingers.
Back on the bundle, he saw that the quill, along with the snack, had been holding down an easily written note. He picked it up, too, reading, "Hey. Hope you like the quill, I made it myself. I made a notebook, too, and I'm honestly pretty proud of it. Made it from some random stuff I found in the woods, then enhanced it. I'd guess you have a lot of notebooks, so it probably is nothing special. Regardless, it should be possible to write on, right?"
He frowned, looking back down at the pile. Placed snugly within the blanket was something leaf green. His breath caught, and he almost forgot to be gentle with the quill in his haste to pick up what turned out to be a hand bound journal, the cover made of leaves that definitely weren't naturally as hardy.
He stared at it, his mouth slightly open as he sat back on his heels. Inside were thin layers of… He brought it closer to his face, trying to work out what the pages were made of—he had no idea. They were thinner than parchment, thinner than the leaves and anything else he'd felt. The vertical edges were a darker brown, which faded into a woody white in the center of the page. In fact, the whole page looked like a piece of wood, lines flowing up and around the little spots a new branch caused. Now that he held it closer, he saw the delicate fibers holding the pages together, and he looked at the outside of the book to see that it was crisscrossed through eight larger holes, white thread similar to the quill contrasting against the fresh green.
He just stared at the two items, stunned. He glanced up, surprised to see that she had, without his noticing, rolled over to her stomach, arms splayed out on either side of her. There was more green on the edges of the sleeping bag now, inching closer to where her body touched the fabric, outlining her frame.
He shook his head, his lips twitching upwards as he looked back down at the book and quill. She was a fool, certainly, if she understood the curse and yet was trying to get closer to him, but he couldn't help but recognize the slight warmth that had blossomed deep in his stomach when he first saw the notebook, a warmth he hadn't felt since-
He shook his head fiercely, dropping the quill in his urgency to press a hand against his head. He knew better than to think about that. He knew better than to stay here, let alone take the gifts. It didn't matter if she thought it was okay, it clearly wasn't, it never was, not for him, at least.
Sighing, he replaced the notebook—it seemed wrong to put it in his storage dimension—on the bundle, moving silently some dozen feet away before teleporting.
|^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^V^|
"Good morn'!" Mizumi yawned.
It was because she would have followed him. It would have been a waste of energy to leave. But then, why had he brought back food from Eldrich?
"Did you get any sleep?"
He continued to stare at her, standing, tense, at the edge of the little camp she had set up. Why hadn't he stayed at Eldrich? She wouldn't have been able to chase him there?
Well, that was easy. He didn't want to be at Eldrich. But then, why had he gone, at all?
"Did you loo-"
He blinked back to the present as she cut herself off, seeing her shaking her head.
"Sorry, just random thoughts. Anyways, I'm going to go get water. You should- No!" she scolded herself, already walking away from him. "Drigon, I need to contain myself."
He slowly moved forward, placing the cloth full of bread near the fire before retreating to his corner, which she seemed to have intentionally made to be a corner.
He sat there. He kept glancing at the bundle, which, he guessed, his eyes widening, was what she had been almost asking about.
Another—he had had so many over the past twenty four hours—wave of black mist waved through the clearing, but nothing changed. The little stars still hung from the grey branch, the now entirely green sleeping bag still where it had been, not even-
He lurched to his feet, moving to the bundle before he had thought what he was doing. His hand hovering over it, the lingering idea of checking it to see if the notebook had crumbled still commanded most of his mind. The rest of his mind, though, slowly chipped away at that mental block, reasoning that he had held it the previous night—if it were going to fade it would have already done so.
He returned to his worn piece of earth, suddenly wishing for that blanket, but—another wave of death—he refused to endanger her further by taking her thoughtlessly presented gifts.
Some ten minutes later, she returned, holding a large tub-like container, which she let down with a huff by the edge of their clearing. "Phew, that was a pain. If you don't mind, Zeref," she said, crouching down by her sleeping bag—he was grateful that she didn't see him jump— "I think you should get the water from now on. You have some kind of magic thing to do with water, like the raft, so it should be easier for you." She straightened, turning around with—
His heart must have stopped, and then he yelled with pain as the worst wave of death since meeting Natsu escaped him, crashing around the sheltered, colorful clearing, surely drowning the object that had brought back his fond memories, the girl that had smiled just like his little brother.
He came back to awareness flat on his face, cheek pressed into the dirt. Without even considering the possibility that she had survived, he murmured, "I'm sorry…"
"No problem."
If he'd had the energy, he would have jumped out of his skin. As it was, he pushed himself shakily up to see her setting a pan over the fire; he hardly noticed that it wasn't golden anymore.
"I wish I knew how to prepare fish so that I wasn't eating it off a skewer, but that would involve scaling the thing, which defeats the squeamish point," she chattered, and he just watched, eyes doe-wide. "Honestly, if you have any fish talents, tell me, I would love to add some freshly cooked fish to eggs." She pulled a small carton from her bag, opening it to reveal six eggs. She promptly cracked and plopped every single one onto the pan, where they immediately fizzled. "As it is, I-…"
She paused, frowning at the paper bag in the center of the clearing. "Where'd that come from?" she asked warily, not moving towards it, seemingly too concerned with the eggs.
He swallowed, forcing himself to speak, "I got bread."
Her face broke into awe, and she hastily set the pan to the side so she could accost the bag of bread. "ITS FRESH!" she relished, taking one out and immediately shoving it in her mouth. "Hot, fresh, and so, so good," she moaned, a hand to her cheek.
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Thanks again for reading!
I actually have another Fairy Tail fix-it, [Fairy Tail True Tale], that gives Zeref (and his sister, my OC) a happy ending. It's better than this is quality-the editing, plotting, etc-so if you liked this, you're bound to like that one. Not to mention, Fairy Tail True Tale actually /is/ going to be completed, guaranteed!
(this guarantee does not apply if I am hit by a bus and does not hold in a court of law).
...lol.
But seriously, it /will/ be finished. I've already written to the end, it's all just tweaking and editing and adding new mini-arcs and scenes and figUrING OUT THE FLAPPING ROMANCE DRAGON I SUCK AT ROMANCE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-
*cough cough*
It's also a long fic, so ye. Check it out, if you want a fic where Zeref gets the eNDING HE DESeRved. *distant sobbing*
Alright, enough advertising, sorry 'bout that. Without further ado:
{Your Names In Japanese} for this chapter are~
{Samantha: サマンサ}
{Brianna: ブリアナ }
{Mia: ミア}
{Joshua: ジョシュア}