"He's a liar!" Mavis sobbed as she sprinted through the woods with blind determination. "How dare he say that to me! I do know the value of life. It's more important than anything!"
She didn't stop running until she saw the many small shops and quaint urban buildings of Magnolia passing by through a blur of tears that burned more than she cared to admit. Her side was aching sharply and her feet were scraped, but the pain barely registered in her mind, all her focus set on reaching the guildhall. Dark clouds shrouded the city in a foreboding gloom, predicting an early spring thunderstorm as white lightning crackled in the distance.
There it was! She stopped to catch her breath when the familiar structure of her beloved home stood before her in all its creative beauty. Excited voices filtered from inside the open wooden doors, and she recognized Warrod's yelling, "Congrats, Yuri, you're a father now!"
"Whoa!" Yuri exclaimed proudly.
A father? Does that mean...
Sure enough, a newborn's first hoarse cry echoed through the guildhall as Mavis hurriedly dried her eyes and stepped inside with eager impatience, her unfortunate discovery all but forgotten. The large hall was littered with tables and chairs, with a few members celebrating the birth by consuming generous quantities of food and drink. A blue sheet had been hung in the corner of the main room, creating a makeshift nook by separating it from the curious onlookers. Mavis darted over and pushed the curtain open to take in the sight of Yuri's young wife, Rita, looking exhausted but radiantly happy in a bed surrounded by her husband and friends. In her arms was the tiniest child she had ever seen, loosely bundled so that only his face was visible.
She slipped inside the partitioned area to stand beside Rita's bed, her eyes never leaving the infant's face as her heart lept with incredible pride for her friend.
"A healthy baby boy," Precht was announcing, as he made a habit of doing whenever an important event occurred.
Yuri appeared overcome with pride and thankfulness for his family's health after a trying day of doing everything he could and fearing it wouldn't be enough. Yet here they were, alive and happy, and he couldn't believe his luck. "I'm so proud of you, Rita. I love you," he told his wife reverently, and she offered him a tired smile, wisps of brown hair plastered to her forehead with sweat.
Mavis didn't hear them, her hands clasped as she stared at the baby whose fresh, pink scalp was covered with yellow fuzz. His eyes were closed, his mouth puckered slightly between tiny, plump cheeks as though trying to nurse, and he whimpered a little at the cold air of the new world surrounding him. In short, he was the cutest creation Mavis had ever seen, and her heart swelled with warmth as the awe finally faded enough for her to exclaim, "Wow! Cuuute!"
Precht clapped a hand on Yuri's shoulder and said good-naturedly, "You know, she didn't have to deliver him inside the guildhall."
"What can I say? Rita insisted on it," the new father explained sheepishly.
Struggling to scoot a bit higher on the bed while maintaining a careful hold on the baby, his wife sank back against the pillows and said in her gentle voice, "There's love here. I want my child to feel that from everyone in the guild...it's the most important thing there is."
"You're right about that," Yuri agreed.
Turning her head to look at Mavis, she addressed, "Master Mavis. If you don't mind, could you do the honor of naming him for us?"
"What? Wait—you mean me?!" the recipient of the request asked in surprise.
"That would be a priceless gift," Yuri seconded sincerely.
Precht was smiling, a rare occurrence to say the least, as he advised, "I think that you should name the boy Pipoko."
"For the baby's sake, I don't think you should leave it up to us," Warrod told Mavis ruefully.
Mavis's attention was focused on the infant again, her lips forming a round little O as she watched the minute twitches of his face. It was cuteness overload. Smiling down at him lovingly, she looked up at her friends.
"Makarov," she proclaimed. "I read a story about a kind-hearted king, and that was his name."
"Makarov," Rita exhaled. "It's nice...I like it."
Scooping the baby from her arms carefully, Yuri held him up for all to see in masculine pride.
"Hey, Makarov," he greeted his son gently.
Arms crossed, Precht agreed on the name reluctantly. "Yeah, ok."
"It's awesome!" Warrod enthused. "The kind-hearted boy Makarov."
Pale-faced, Rita smiled up at Mavis. "He's the first of the next generation. He's the future."
"He is." Mavis took the woman's cool hand between hers, noting with concern that the color had fled her cheeks. Should they send for a healer?
Rita licked her lips and painstakingly went on, "The bond we share...is special. Promise me...that we'll..."
Something wasn't right. Gasping, Mavis felt her stomach somersault in apprehension as Rita's breathless voice trailed off. The moment was forever etched into her memory as her friend's hand slipped from her grip, falling to the blanket tucked around her to lay in lifeless immobility. Slowly, those kind brown eyes closed...never to gaze upon the world again.
A thousand memories flashed through Mavis's mind, all of them entailing a gentle chestnut gaze. Introducing Rita to Yuri, laughing and talking to her about his foolhardy recklessness, sharing childhood stories, looking forward to the baby's birth—every flash of mutual history, blotted out in an instant by the sickening invasion of death. All they'd shared was vanishing in tandem with Rita's magic power at an alarming rate, and she could only watch as one last sigh escaped the woman's lips.
Her shocked brain comprehended what her heart could not as voices picked up around her like so much hail on a tin roof. Yuri's, filled with denial and dawning panic. "Rita? Rita! Hey, what's wrong!"
Then Warrod's anxious exclamation. "Having the baby must've taken too much out of her!"
Eyes wide with shock, Mavis slowly stepped backwards as she helplessly watched the scene in front of her play out like some sickening nightmare.
I hate to say it, but I'm afraid you've yet to realize the true value of life. And the moment you discover what that is...
"My God. Rita!" Yuri had passed their baby to Precht, and was clutching his dead wife in anguished panic. "Please, stay with me. Ritaaa!"
...the people closest to you will start to die.
A dark voice echoed inside her head, one she recognized—and it took another moment before she realized it was a memory of words spoken to her less than an hour before. Zeref's warning was all the more chilling for its ominous calmness. In her mind's eye she saw his face, his innocent smile and midnight black eyes.
He warned me.
Trembling, she stared at the light blue sheet as she backed away to stand in the middle of the guildhall, and slowly her hands came up to clutch the sides of her head. Hyperventilating, she didn't notice when Precht pushed open the curtain, still holding the baby, and glanced at her in surprise.
He tried to warn me. I didn't listen.
A bloodcurdling scream rent the air, echoing in the rafters of the building desolately. Those who'd heard it could scarcely believe one so small could make such a loud noise...or that it could carry so much anguish. Sobbing, Mavis turned and ran for the second time that day, ignoring the sound of Precht's voice calling her name. In a resolution she had never imagined she would make, she promised herself one thing amidst the chaos scrambling her mind. Never again would she see her friends and fellow guildmates—she would rather kill herself before she brought any more destruction to those she loved.
This time, it wasn't to safety and comfort that she ran. It was to seclusion and loneliness, to the dark woods where she'd met him on that fateful day, as thunder crashed and the first cold raindrops splattered the street. Blind with tears, she tripped and fell flat on her stomach. A pained sound escaped her, but she was up and running again within seconds, as desperate as though the very demons of hell were on her heels. In a way, they were. Nothing short of this catastrophe could induce her to flee the guild that was so much more than a fellowship to all who joined it. With every step she took from the building they had been so happy to erect, she left behind her dream, her innocence, her life.
Mavis was certain she'd bruised her ribs with that fall, and blood definitely trickled from her elbows as a result of the scrapes she'd suffered, yet a few moments later she could feel her body begin to mend itself as the pain was soothed away. Wounds closed and bruises disappeared as tissue regenerated and bursted blood vessels reformed. Her sobs grew louder, the implication of her old ability not lost on her now that she understood what it meant.
She was cursed.
She had killed Yuri's wife. The little baby boy born today would never know the sound of his mother's voice, nor her scent, nor her laughter as she held him close. Mavis had sinned dearly, and her friends would never know that she was the cause for Rita's death.
"Sorry...sorry!" she sobbed brokenly as she ran, but no amount of apologizing could ease the pain in her heart. The hot tears spilling from swollen eyes and streaking her face mixed with the frigid rain that still held to winter's belated chill as the foreboding sky unleashed a downpour. They could get by without her. She'd appointed Precht as Fairy Tail's Second Master in her will years ago, in case anything were to happen to her, and she knew he was equipped to lead. His stable shoulders would have to bear the burden of picking up the shattered pieces she had left behind.
The dark forest beckoned to her, and into its cold embrace she went. The rain cleared as quickly as it had started, per the usual unpredictable nature of spring showers, and the sun peeked through dripping leaves to tease the girl running underneath the tree boughs. Tripping again—on a gnarly, exposed root this time—Mavis made no attempt to rise and instead looked up with trembling lips. A plump bunny sat on the path ahead of her, observing the imposter curiously.
Then she felt it coming...the uncontrollable wave of deadly Black magic that she knew would abolish all living things in her immediate vicinity. A Death Predation spell, it was called. She'd seen it first-hand already, flashbacks of Zeref running through her mind as a wave of darkness emitted from her wretched body. Fresh tears filling her eyes, Mavis begged, "Please no." The suffocating circle had killed everything in its path and was heading for the bunny.
"Stop this!" she cried, but knew it was useless. The rabbit twitched as it gave its last breath, then fell over to lie on the forest floor along with the dead foliage amid the growing carnage. Birds fell from the trees to join the lifeless rodent as Mavis lowered her head to the ground and wailed, her voice rising in volume until it matched the intensity of the dark wind swirling powerfully around her. And although the sun was shining, the extent of her world was a maze of death and darkness.
It came in layers.
Curling into a fetal position on the ground, she cried herself to sleep amidst the withered trees and dead bodies. In contrast, she dreamt of baby bunnies held by a man with honest eyes and a conflicting curse...of gentle smiles and sunlit meadows.
When Mavis awoke it was morning, and she was slow to remember the horrors of the previous day. Once the shock had passed, she was filled with grief and depression, which seemed to be her travelling companions now. Never could she atone for the lives she had taken and would continue to take, and a lifetime of pain stretched before her eyes like a midnight void.
Not a lifetime, she reminded herself with a shudder. An eternity.
Slowly shifting to a kneeling position, her expressionless face and dull eyes took in the sight of a withered and lifeless forest. Numbly, she wondered why she had fallen asleep instead of continuing to put distance between Magnolia and herself, which was the strategical thing to do in this situation, but decided to resume her journey for the day regardless. Standing, she didn't bother knocking the dried mud from her dress as she started walking.
The day passed in a haze of unbearable time. Mavis passed trees and crossed creeks, and predictably everything around her inevitably died. Crawfish and frogs in the creek rose to the surface, belly-up; birds and squirrels fell from the trees along with disintegrating leaves; even the lively deer couldn't gallop fast enough to escape their deaths. The sight of the decaying forest gradually became familiar to Mavis, whereas before she had viewed it with a curious objectivity. Of course she had felt sympathy for Zeref, but one could never relate to another unless they'd suffered the same pain. And she now understood the pain of the Curse of Ankhseram wholeheartedly.
"Can't you remove it now?" she called through the swirling cloud of death to the dull sky above, trying to ignore the dead branches. "I've learned my lesson, I promise. I'll never use anything even similar to that spell again." Her voice broke. "I can't bear...killing things." Silence was her answer, and once more tears dripped from her chin as she stoically resumed walking.
Little did she know that across the plane of space, Ankhseram had heard her plea. Heard and ignored it, for all mortals must be brought to justice as the fates allowed. Gods such as those governing life and death did not show mercy, regardless of whether they felt it, because they were the ones keeping the universe intact; the very embodiment of rules. Mavis wasn't the only human to have been cursed with his magic, but Ankhseram nearly hoped she would be the last. Watching weaker beings flounder under a ghastly curse wasn't a pastime he particularly enjoyed.
For one as loving as Mavis, who spent much of her childhood surrounded only by animals and a self-created Illusion, the guilt of allowing herself to think about the dead little bodies littering the forest floor—not to mention the stiff corpse of her friend whose funeral was probably underway in Magnolia—was unbearable. However, it was hard not to think of something when it was literally inescapable and surrounded her whichever way she turned. The mind had a barrier for such emergencies, however, and the pain was dulled as shock played its merciful hand.
Hours stretched into days, and it was on the fifth day of almost nonstop walking that Mavis saw smooth terrain through the dead trees ahead of her. Glad to finally be out of the forest, she walked out onto the bare field and continued ambling distractedly in the warm sunlight, grateful to be free from the damp darkness of the woods. She didn't look up from her bare feet and see the handful of workers sowing seeds in the corner of the field until it was too late.
Turning to run back into the obscurity of the woodland, Mavis tried hard not to panic when a voice called, "Wait, missy! What're you doin' on our lands? What did you steal, to be runnin' off like that?"
"Nothing!" she yelled back. "I really must be going now."
"Oh, no you don't," a different male voice insisted this time. "Get her!"
In close quarters Mavis would have been the faster runner, but in an open field the odds were definitely against her. The man who'd confronted the supposed thief was also the first to reach her, and soon they were both on the ground. "Please, stop!" Mavis begged. "Get away from me as fast as you can! I don't want to hurt you but I will if you don't leave!"
Scoffing, he taunted, "That supposed to be a threat or something, little girl?"
"Please!" Mavis felt the wave coming and tears filled her eyes as onlookers gathered around her. "Run for your lives!" she screamed. "Soon it will be too late!" They didn't listen.
In the blink of an eye, everything around the cursed girl pulsed with negative light as death energy swirled through her.
It's difficult not to feel like a villain when everything I touch dies.
There was no escape as the victim became the perpetrator.
The bodies fell, forming a haphazard circle where they happened to sprawl, and the man pinning her to the ground almost crushed her with his dead weight. Wriggling out from under the corpse, Mavis blindly ran across the field and into the cold haven of the woods, which somehow no longer felt like a refuge for the weary but a tomb for the doomed. Her heart beat out a deafening staccato of truth, one that she rejected with every bit of her being. She wouldn't allow this to go on.
She couldn't. Her sanity was deteriorating too rapidly to measure. While she still had some strength left to fight, while she still held horror for the lives she'd taken, she would attempt the impossible. There was a breaking point for everyone; a time when logic would be overridden by sheer desperation and pain. For Mavis Vermillion, that point had been reached and surpassed.
She wasn't aware of how she had reached the cliff, the memory of running to it vague and pointless. What mattered was that she was standing there at the moment, and an opportunity had arisen. She drowned the harmony of reason in her mind and looked straight ahead, determined not to focus on the jagged rocks some hundred feet below. Cursing herself for hesitating, she put one foot forth...then drew it back. This was her only defense against a lifetime. No, not a lifetime—an eternity. There was always a price to be paid for pride, for stupidity. Fairy Strategist, indeed, she thought bitterly.
It was the memory of doe-like brown eyes closing in death that pushed Mavis off the ledge, not her own weak feet.
And it was at the bottom of the ravine, broken and bleeding but rapidly healing, that her loathing for herself was shoved aside by sheer necessity. She had to be stronger than this. Any member of Fairy Tail would think of saving others first, and she could do that if she kept her wits about her.
The next settlement of people she approached was a small village, and this time she had a plan for infiltrating it. If she stayed far away enough, no human would die. That much she could do. She wished she could ask a villager where she was, but her magic was too unpredictable and even a simple interaction could put that person's life in danger. Luckily, there were other ways to obtain information than human contact.
A/N: Fanfiction dot net won't allow me to respond to anonymous reviewers (if you have an account I can PM you, though), so in response to 1995hzq's review and question: I've read other fics like this one as well, but they were quite short and unsatisfying in my opinion so I decided to write a longer and more detailed fic the way I thought the story should go. Yes, August will be conceived and both parents will be aware of his existence. The road to happiness will not be an easy one, however.
I find August to be a very compelling character in general. The fact that neither of his parents ever knew about or acknowledged him was tragic, especially considering his desire to be loved. There's also a shocking lack of August in Zervis fanfic (not to mention a lack of Zervis fanfic in general) that just won't do.
