Mavis was there for Zeref the next morning, which was the one of the more pleasant experiences of his life. Though he was usually one to dislike mornings—and falling into consciousness in general—waking to her presence made it a different ordeal entirely.

'Zeref.'

He willed the voice to silence itself, moving his head as though he could escape it.

'Zeref! Wake up,' it persisted, and to his disgruntlement he came to his senses as the mantle of sleep was rudely jerked from him.

"Mavis? It's hardly past dawn," he protested sleepily.

'That's not true and you know it. I say it's at least eleven in the morning.'

"You don't have a clock," he pointed out.

'And neither do you, sleepyhead. Come on! We have an exciting adventure awaiting us!' Her voice was eager.

Seconds ticked by as Zeref fully awakened and remembered how he was able to talk to her—that she wasn't a dream—and a feeling almost akin to happiness stole over him. "As you wish," he conceded with a small smile, and shifted his hold on her body in order to stand. Glancing at the sky, he added dryly, "Though it's around seven in the morning, judging by the position of the sun."

'I know. I'm just eager to get moving.'

They continued their journey, each reveling in the other's company in their own way. Mavis wanted to press forward past the Hakobe peaks with more vigor than Zeref would have preferred, enthusiastic about arriving in Vistarion, which he had explained was the capital in which his incomplete palace was located. At first the sound of her voice resonating in his head was unnerving as it'd been a while since he'd used Telepathy, but he welcomed it in due time as a source of entertainment and comfort. Her zealous approach to life helped motivate and inspire him, though sometimes her impetuosity could be mildly exasperating.

Traveling through the forest with Mavis on his back the day after she revealed her ability to use Telepathy, Zeref was describing the continent he was currently building his nation in and the differences it held in comparison to Fiore.

"As you've probably noticed, the countries and cities aren't named after foliage there."

'Yes, I have. Are the citizens less creative?'

"No, in fact they tend to be more superstitious, from what I've seen. I stay away from them as much as possible but studied their culture before I formed the Alvarez Empire."

'Is that the name of your country? It sounds rather ambitious.'

"It's only recently grown to the proportions one might term as such. As of today I haven't visited it in five months, but my second in command and chief administrator handles affairs quite well in my absence."

'That's some long distance management,' Mavis observed in amazement.

"Yes, but it's served me well so far. Alvarez is growing rapidly. Though I'm not entirely sure what I wish to accomplish with the power I'm acquiring, it's an interaction I've allowed myself. They view me as something of a god there," he explained to his companion.

'Zeref, I meant to ask you about that. You mentioned when we met that you were preparing for something; a war. What purpose would fighting achieve?'

He hesitated, then answered with a voice that was noticeably less carefree, "Nearly three centuries ago it was my solemn vow to defeat the Dragon Slayer Acnologia, who at the moment wields the most potential power of any being walking this earth." Sighing at Mavis's expectant silence and preparing himself for a speech, he continued, "No, Acnologia isn't a myth. I assure you, he is real. It is still my goal to slay him, but in sending my most powerful demon-turned-Dragon-Slayer, Natsu, and four other young Slayers to the future I also had more selfish motives in mind. I'd hoped Natsu would possess the power to end my cursed existence, a hundred years from now. The war I was referring to will be waged against Acnologia, but sometimes I wonder whether I should do this world a favor and wipe mankind's presence from the earth for good."

At this point in his monologue, Mavis intervened with a gasp. 'What?! No! How could you ever plan a thing so evil? What favor would it do them to be slaughtered like ants?' Despite the reproach in her words, her voice was filled with an equal amount of sadness.

"Calm yourself, I haven't laid out plans for such carnage just yet." He soothed her immediately. "I assure you I could, but I haven't seen enough evidence of their devolution to do so despite the suffering they insist on sustaining. The very nature of my curse constitutes disdain, however, and I fear it's only a matter of time before I fall to the darkness. You've felt it, just as I have. You know what eventually happens to those bearing this curse."

She was silent for a long moment, before she thought in a small voice, 'Yes, I do. I made that discovery months ago.'

Zeref nodded, pleased that she had seen eye-to-eye with him. She really did understand.

'But that was before we discovered each other,' she went on, while he listened in reluctantly dawning hope. 'The enforced solitude of our mutual affliction is what drives us to insanity and evil, but that same affliction is what brings us together—it's the reason we're speaking now. I'm like you, Zeref. But I haven't fallen to the darkness, and neither will I let you. We'll find a cure. Together.'

"Yes," he breathed under his breath. Clearing his throat, he acquiesced, "Yes. We will, Mavis." But he couldn't help remembering the desolation he'd felt within his soul as he'd stared at her lifeless body that fateful morning, and knew that were she to leave him again, he wouldn't recover.

'And that means no more talk of wars or mass annihilation.' Mavis interrupted his private thoughts, her childish voice incongruously stern as she addressed the Black Wizard. 'I understand the threat Acnologia poses, but if you sent the young Dragon Slayers into the future then he won't interfere in humanity's affairs until then. If I understand him correctly, his goal is to kill all dragons, including their students.'

"Which gives me a century to prepare," Zeref mused, stepping over a fallen tree as the cheerful tweets of a dozen birds wafted pleasantly over his ears.

Mavis persisted in her tenacious manner, 'Also, from what I've read, Dragon Slayer magic is very powerful and deadly to dragons, so I think they will have what it takes to counter and possibly defeat Acnologia for good. You may not even have to get involved.'

"Perhaps, but I wouldn't underestimate him. This topic tires me," he went on. "There is only so long one can debate the particulars of a strategy game."

He came out of the sparse pine trees and into a clearing where a cotton-tailed doe scampered away from drinking her fill in-

'Is that another pond?' Mavis asked resignedly.

"There are more bodies of water near the foot of the mountain range than in the plains," Zeref answered calmly, but a bit testily.

'Zeref, about that. I know you like to be clean and all, but isn't bathing every day a little excessive for the winter? It makes me shiver just watching you!'

"Forgive me, it's a habit I've acquired. We could postpone it until tomorrow."

'Thanks, I want to reach Shirotsume as soon as we can. And the water's cold,' she added, invoking a smile from him.

"I take it the interrogation is over?" He asked mildly, referring to their rather one-sided conversation.

'Oh! I'm sorry—I didn't mean to ask so many questions.'

"Don't apologize, Mavis."

'Okay then, one more. When do you think we'll arrive in Alvarez?'

"I calculate around ten months, though the time doesn't matter as long as your condition remains stable or improves," he answered.

'That seems like forever from now!' she almost pouted.

"Having no better mode of transportation, what would you suggest?"

'Yes, I get your point.'

'What?' He asked, his tone different. 'I couldn't hear you.'

'I said I get your point,' Mavis thought, louder this time and feeling slightly exasperated at Zeref's behavior.

"Your voice broke and I heard a bit of static. Are you running low on magic power?" He asked seriously, using his voice instead of thoughts to reduce the strain on her Telepathy magic.

'Yes, now that you mention it. I'll rest a while.'

Don't go was poised on Zeref's lips, but he swallowed the words and resumed walking. He knew he would hear her voice again.

...

The next day, Zeref got his bath, to Mavis's embarrassment. The atmosphere between them was different now that he knew she was conscious, and she wanted to dispel the awkward tension dictating their relationship and have it over with. A little of her magic power had restored, so she suggested they stop to bathe during their next conversation and to her relief his manner was more matter-of-fact than anything else when he accepted. Although she couldn't feel his hands on her skin as he untied the toga to unwrap her like a parcel, she knew he could feel everything.

She'd planned on saying something to lighten the tense atmosphere, but instead changed her mind about using Telepathy as Zeref removed his clothing, predictably folding it the way that he liked. She would've blushed, had she been in her body, but settled for averting her vision from his nude form. She wasn't unaffected by the sight of a toned male, to her chagrin. The next moment Zeref turned to look directly through her and asked telepathically, 'Why are you standing so far away?'

His voice in her head startled her. 'You can sense me?!'

"Yes," he replied softly. Turning to lift her naked body, he froze, staring at it alertly.

'Z-Zeref?' Mavis asked, mentally squirming. 'What are you staring at?'

"It's nothing," he said, though his youthful brow was furrowed in consideration.

He appeared to brush the thought aside as he picked her up and proceeded to wade into the deep stream. Their bare skin was touching, and suddenly Mavis wished she could feel his arms and hands against her. Once he was waist-deep she didn't feel quite so exposed, but Zeref remedied that by starting to skillfully bathe her.

This is no different than the other times he's washed you, she reminded herself sternly, and turned to avoid the stirring sight of his hands gliding over her body.

'I wish you were awake,' Zeref's voice in her head broke the silence.

'I will be, soon,' she responded, her voice abashed but strongly resolute.

"This will be our last bath in a while," Zeref ventured, breaking the silence of the cold winter atmosphere. "We're nearing the foot of the mountain and the temperature is dropping, meaning the water will be frozen."

He was correct in that prediction. Late the next week, the two were relaxing as a wintry sun set below the evergreen pine trees. Vibrant magenta color fused with dark blue as stars pricked the twilight sky, pinholes in the curtain of heaven. They had reached the Hakobe peaks and would continue their journey around the foot of the great mountain the next morning. For now, however, they rested as a cloud blotted out the stars by the thousands and the temperature dropped, heralding an early March snowfall. Not a noise could be heard by the creatures in the forest as the first flake fell, then the next, and the sky gradually released a blanket of fluffy ice.

'Aren't you cold?' Mavis inquired.

"Yes." Zeref replied. "But it doesn't bother me as much it does you."

His back against a tree and Mavis in his lap, he felt the cold burn of melting snow on his face and forearms as he stroked her hair absentmindedly. After years of living in the elements, he had reached a compromise concerning his aversion to the discomforts of weather ages ago.

"Your magic power has been increasing, slowly but surely," he mentioned. "As long as you allow it to rest between uses you shouldn't get fatigued."

'I noticed.' She thought to him, contemplating what the reasoning could be behind this fact.

Their conversations had the potential to be long, and once they began talking it was hard for either to say the last word, but they'd managed to prevent draining what little power she could control after the incident of their second conversation, by keeping interactions short and mostly practical. Which was why Zeref was caught off-gaurd when Mavis asked in her usual upbeat tone, 'Zeref, do you love me?'

He opened his mouth to reply and closed it. Was that a hint of hesitation he'd detected in her voice?

The silence was so intense that the hushed symphony of thousands upon thousands of snowflakes softly crashing into the ground could be heard between the rough staccato of his heartbeat. The recent pain of what he'd thought he had lost was relived over the period of a few seconds, and he remembered what he'd spoken to the dismal dawn, the morning after that fateful night. Even when—and ever since—he had discovered she was alive, a small part of him had remained fettered by the wariness of one who has had a lover brutally taken from them, and now he was reluctant to expose himself in such blatant vulnerability.

The serene silence only a winter's night could provide helped clear his head of the familiar fog of contradictory overthinking, seeing past the lies to his own heart. The struggle was harder than Mavis could've imagined.

Clearing his throat, he admitted in a low voice, "Yes...I love you." The air pressure around them doubled as he gratefully breathed in a burning lungful of freezing air. He hadn't intended to lose control of his emotions with that confession, but the end result was non-existent trees and thus no dense canopy of pine needles to protect them from the descending flurries in the wake of his annihilating magic.

'And I love you too,' her voice was gently kind, accepting but not pitying, and so beautifully sweet it took the Black Mage's breath away. 'You have nothing to lose by admitting it. It helps your heart to grow stronger, and counters the darkness threatening from within you.'

"But Mavis," Zeref let out a breath of air, the moisture in it crystallizing into a cloud of condensation invisible to them in the pitch black storm. "When I revive you...unless I can lift my curse before then, my very presence may easily kill you, or put you back into a coma." The unspoken words and I couldn't bear that hung in the air between them. "Who's to say that our luck will hold out?"

'I understand your concerns, Zeref, but I'm immortal. If our act of love in that forest couldn't kill us, then nothing can! We've been given a priceless gift. We should treasure it.'

He pressed the poisonous doubts to the back of his mind, for her sake, and nodded. It was strange to hear another describe his immortality, hated for centuries, as a priceless gift. "For now, we will. But when we discover how to revive you, and we will, I will have to decide on my emotions. I cannot afford to lose you...not again."

'Zeref,' she whispered sadly. She had observed him grow over the past few months, happy to watch as he picked himself up and didn't seem as crushed and hopeless as before. She had a dreadful sense of what he would've become had he thought she was dead, and she'd already guessed that her presence was the linchpin of his sanity at present, but to hear him say it out loud still made her heart ache.

Resolving to continue that discussion a different day, she asked, 'Does my body retain heat?'

Caught slightly off-gaurd, Zeref blinked, then replied, "It generates it. Why do you ask?"

'I noticed that you had a tendency to sleep in close contact with me, especially on colder nights, but recently you've been more distant. Due to the icy ponds and snow we've encountered, today is the coldest day yet. Why don't you use my—I mean your—toga as a sheet to keep the snow off of us, and retain our warmth that way?'

"I wasn't thinking in terms of comfort," he responded lightly, reflecting that he could create a fire without having to snap his fingers or say voila. Reminding himself why magic was off the table, he felt instead for the knot of cotton material covering Mavis's chest. Deftly untying it, his fingers brushed the warm, delicate bare skin unintentionally. This time he had a feeling that the changes in her perky breasts weren't in his imagination. Though he couldn't see them in the dark, they felt rounder, softer, and he forced his inquisitive fingers from them in order to quickly finish unfastening her garment.

Rolling her to the side, he pulled the toga from beneath her and stiffly shook it out to cover them like a sheet. Shaking the accumulated snow from his hair, Zeref pulled the makeshift blanket over their heads after gathering Mavis's hair and wrapping it partially around them like a blanket, so there'd be no barrier between their bodies except his black tunic. Sliding his left arm underneath her head and his fitting his right over her waist, he tucked her small body into the curve of his in his favorite sleeping position, where she fit perfectly, and waited for their combined warmth to provide comfort.

The skin of her abdomen was smooth and firm against his hand, and he inhaled the pleasing scent of her hair slowly. Suddenly remembering what it was he'd forgotten a week before, when they'd last bathed, Zeref spread his fingers against her belly, curious as to whether the weight she'd gained had been his imagination. Feeling the slightest distension of the usually flat plane of her stomach, he did a double-take and passed his hand over it once more. It was definitely there, the slight swelling noticeable only if one was extensively familiar with the body of Mavis.

Which he was. Worry rising in his chest inexplicably, he began hastily sorting through possible explanations for weight gain.

The blood drained from Zeref's face as a suspicion crept over him for the first time, the only one that he could apply to the situation. Besides studying human biology at the Academy, he knew little of pregnancy. He did know how it occurred, however, hence the reasoning behind his suspicion. The ever-present magic power he felt from her brushed against his, and he was perfectly still for a few minutes, piecing the puzzle together. No amount of years spent on earth could've prepared him for the realization he reached. Eyes wide in the dark and a strange expression crossing his face, he thought, 'Mavis?'

'What's wrong?' she responded instantly.

"I..." Inwardly chastising himself for his hesitation, he steeled his nerves.

"You're pregnant." Zeref spoke bluntly, seeing no other way to put it.

Silence.

Then, 'What do you mean?' she asked in a small voice, which exponentially rose in volume as she continued telepathically, 'That could be possible, but where is the baby's magic aura?'

Zeref remained silent as Mavis worked it out, still feeling rather awed himself.

Her voice taking on a new note, she gasped, 'Oh no. Have I been using his power this whole time? That would explain why we're able to—oh, this is awful!'

"Calm down," Zeref intervened, his agile brain analyzing the situation. "I'm shocked as well, but we need to think rationally. This discovery would explain the magic power I've been sensing, although I'm not sure whether it was yours or the child's from the start." Remembering the events of the past months, he continued drawing conclusions in the map of his mind and connecting them to form a feasible hypothesis. The baby's power must have fused with Mavis's own, hence the reason he had been unable to detect his magical signature, and he felt stupid for missing the seemingly obvious explanation for her ability to use magic.

"Since life cannot abide in a wizard without magic power, I assume you still had some of your own—unless your curse allowed you to survive without it—but too little for me to detect, and to compensate your body began utilizing the magic energy of the life inside you and converting it into your own power. As for whether the babe suffered because of it, your magic power has been increasing, has it not? If this baby were subject to death, my own death magic would have surely killed him by now," Zeref stated matter-of-factly, albeit with difficulty. "I think he is granted your immortality, for the time being, because of his connection to you and his station inside your body as a part of it, so to speak. I doubt he's suffered any ill effects. You were unable to fill your own vessel with ethernano from the air, but the fetus seems to have had no problem harvesting it."

'Which means I've been absorbing it, but I'm unable to utilize it via magic power fusion for some reason?' Mavis concluded, sounding less stunned and more practical now, a bit of her strategic side showing through.

"Exactly," he said approvingly. "The fact that he's supplied the both of you with magic power makes me wonder just how powerful our child is," he added wonderingly, his hand still covering her bare midriff.

'Our child,' she repeated, and laughed with quicksilver joy.

Surprised to hear someone sound so giddy over the discovery that they were fathering a child with a cursed murderer, Zeref promptly remembered who Mavis was. "Yes," he replied, an ironic smile curving his mouth.

'This makes me so happy! Will it be a boy or a girl? What color will his hair be? His eyes? What magical abilities will he have?' Her rapid-fire questions faded, and her next words were weighted with the dark wisdom that only the elderly or overly experienced managed to garner as she asked, slowly, 'How will he survive?'

The slight smile had faded and Zeref subconsciously tightened his arms around her as he realized the inevitable. "We'll...have to send him away, Mavis. At the very least, someone else will have to raise him."

'No! He deserves to be loved, and we can't let him fall into the hands of strangers! He must know his parents care for him-'

"Mavis," he said, his voice firm despite the wavering ache in his overtaxed heart. "He'll have the best of everything, believe me. As for us, we're cursed. We aren't allowed the luxury of loving anyone but each other, and perhaps not even that. Do you want this child to die? You know neither of us have what it takes to hold back our emotions at present, and were we to attempt to raise him..." His cold voice trailed off as a single tear burned its way down his temple, carrying with it a father's silent anguish.

'We'll lift the curse,' Mavis reaffirmed resolutely. 'I swear on it, Zeref.'

"As do I." He palmed her swelling stomach gently before saying, "But first, I intend to revive you. I need you by my side for us to lift it, and once the baby's born I believe you'll lose your—or rather, his or her—magic."

'Alright, then,' she agreed.

"You should rest before you exhaust your power," he murmered.

'It's been getting stronger recently, but after the discovery we just made I feel as though I could use some rest,' she consented.

And the snow covered the toga above them both as they fell into a deep rest. Far from the absence of danger and worry, but at the moment safe in the comfort of each other's arms.

A/N: A better explanation of the magical energy Zeref's been sensing inside Mavis: she may have had a very small amount left over after he eradicated it, but that isn't what he's been sensing. It takes anywhere from half an hour to a few days for sex cells to unite and form an embryo, and conception to occur. In the canon (if my theory can be applied to it), I believe Zeref's emotional state can be blamed for his failure to notice what Precht sensed within minutes of being left with her body. You can't really blame him if he initially felt no magical power emanating from her, and was too lost in grief to notice when it began. That's my possibly-canon-compatible theory, anyway.

Mavis is able to absorb the magic energy from August because it's sourced within her, and August is able to harvest ethernano from Mavis because she's absorbing it but is unable to fuse it with her magic power. Sorry if it's confusing. Oh, and I also apologize for writing so many bathing scenes. I just can't help it with these two.