Homeward Hours
By CrimsonStarbird
Chapter Nineteen – The Problem with Old Friends
Unsurprisingly, Lucy avoided Zeref for the next two weeks. He kicked moodily around his house, torn between dark satisfaction and the boredom that so often plagued him in the absence of any visitors. The only time she acknowledged him was to bring him his weekly groceries, which had become such an ingrained habit by now that Zeref suspected not even death would stop her ghost from trudging up the forest trail, basket full of exotic foodstuffs when he deigned to tell her what he wanted and staples when he'd sulked through her attempts to procure a list from him.
Today, though, she stood firm on the far side of the barrier. After the third time he let the lacrima ring off without answering it, she cupped her hands around her mouth and hollered, "Zeref, I need to talk to you, and I'm not leaving until I do, so come out here!"
It probably wasn't an empty threat, knowing her.
In the end, he did go out to meet her, though he cut across her greeting with a quick, cold strike: "I don't want to hear it. I will not help the guild in your absence, and that is my last word on the matter."
"It's not about that, Zeref," she sighed. "I have no intention of wasting time with this argument again. Your stubbornness is far in excess of my stupidity."
"Then why are you bothering me?"
"Because we're off to the Grand Magic Games again. I'm here to switch control of the Fairy Sphere and introduce you to your guardian for the next week or so."
"Oh?" he asked, intrigued despite himself. "No Jellal this year, then?"
Lucy snorted. "Last time I left him in charge, you stole the freaking guildhall. I am never making that mistake again. Not to mention, Crime Sorcière are competing this year. I think his guild would actually murder me if I tried to guilt him into staying behind."
"So, which poor soul have you managed to rope into babysitting me this year?"
"He volunteered, actually. Said he's an old friend of yours who has been looking forward to the opportunity to catch up."
Zeref was about to point out the numerous things wrong with that sentence when a tree stepped out of the forest.
He blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of the situation. It wasn't really a tree, he assessed, though probably more of one than not at this stage: a man who had almost completely merged with his arboreal magic, becoming less and less human with every year he had lived beyond a natural human lifespan. Few mages ever reached such a perfect understanding of their own magic, and fewer still chose to pursue that route.
In another life, Zeref might have been proud that a former student of his had achieved it. As it was, he felt nothing but irritation, that this damn guild had found yet another way to annoy him.
"Hullo, Zeref," Warrod said cheerfully. "Long time no see. I thought it would be nice to get together and talk about old times."
"You thought wrong. It seems you've missed the memo; I've not been Fairy Tail's ally for over a hundred years."
The Wizard Saint waved one gnarled hand. "Psh, what's a century or so between friends? Just means we have more to catch up on!"
"Are you sure you want to go to the Grand Magic Games?" Zeref asked Lucy, almost pleading. "Guild Masters aren't even allowed to compete, and I bet it's really boring to watch compared to everything you've been through. You might as well stay in Magnolia."
"No thank you," Lucy breezed. With a brief flash of gold, control of the Fairy Sphere passed to Warrod, a much easier process with a man who still bore the Fairy Tail mark than it had been with Jellal and Meredy.
Lucy pointed at Zeref. "You – behave for Warrod." She turned to Warrod. "And you – uh, please also behave?"
Warrod saluted. "Yes, ma'am!"
"Uh… right. Guess I'll see you in a week, then."
And with that, Lucy scarpered.
Zeref found himself being scrutinized through eyes that were almost unreadably inhuman. Unlike Jellal, who he'd understood far too well, the elderly tree mage was something of a wild card. Although Zeref remembered their first encounter clearly, there was a hundred years between them, and that was a long time for someone who wasn't cursed with unchanging immortality.
"Right, then," Warrod announced. "While I'm in Magnolia, I think I'll go and pay my respects to Makarov. Do you want to visit his grave with me?"
Zeref blinked once, long and slow. "First Jellal, now you… you do realize that you're supposed to make it a challenge for me to convince you to let me out, right?"
"Oh, I'm not worried about any of that," came the easy response.
"That confident in your ability to drag me back here, are you?"
The Wizard Saint was powerful, Zeref had no doubt about that, but immortality and death magic aside, he would never lose to a former student of his. The fundamental understanding he had of the other's magic – an understanding that would become an unrivalled asset in combat – was one he had never forgotten, not for any of the mages he had taught in his time, even as they had grown and changed and passed beyond this world.
Warrod gave a shrug; a deflection, not an answer. "You've not been to Makarov's grave, have you? I thought this might be a nice opportunity."
"The fact that I'm not allowed out of my prison in case I obliterate your old guild isn't even the main reason why I've not been," Zeref dismissed. "I didn't like the man in life any more than he liked me, and I was directly responsible for him casting the magic that led to his death. Why would I want to pretend to be sad while staring at his gravestone?"
"So, you don't want to come?"
"Obviously not."
"Not even as a pretence to get out of the Fairy Sphere?"
Zeref bristled.
"Well, suit yourself. I don't come to Magnolia much, so I'll probably visit him a few times while I'm here. Let me know if you change your mind."
"I won't," Zeref ground out.
"Thanks for the warning." An entirely too cheerful smile. "I guess I'll see you round, then."
And off he strolled, leaving Zeref to stare through the barrier after him, eyes narrowed. This one, he thought, was going to be trouble. He wasn't in the mood for trying to work out Warrod's game, let alone playing along. He hadn't been for a while now. Not since Lucy had started demanding of him more than he owed her.
Returning to his house, he locked the door and settled in for a week of ignoring someone other than Lucy.
It worked for about twenty-four hours. Twenty-four restless, uncomfortable hours, each one seeming to bring the walls of the house in a little bit closer, to make the flow of words for the research paper he was writing a little bit more forced – until the silence was broken by a deafening screech.
Zeref's eardrums convulsed in protest. Worse, the high-pitched wail of it got straight inside his head, sending agony shivering through his brain. Never had he heard anything so sudden, so horrible. Shadows jumped and shuddered, and it took him a moment to realize that the Fairy Sphere was trembling in the aftershock.
Zeref threw open the door of his house – and there was the old tree-man sat at the picnic bench, fiddling with an orb of crystal. "What was that?" Zeref demanded, his own voice sounding strange to his ringing ears.
"Oh, don't mind me," Warrod replied absently. "I'm just trying to get this to-"
The screech cut him off again. Zeref clamped his hands over his ears and screwed his eyes shut. He felt more than saw the reverberations racing along the Fairy Sphere, amplifying the nauseating sound as it rose and crashed and finally faded. He could taste blood in his mouth.
"Hum." Warrod seemed rather put out as he surveyed his equipment. Two lacrima, a bunch of wires, and a handful of other high-tech components were spread across the picnic bench, making it look similar to the table Zeref had appropriated for the makeshift workshop in what was supposed to be the spare bedroom of his house.
Then again, at least Zeref carried out his experiments within an impenetrable barrier, far away from other people. Not in someone else's back garden.
"What are you doing?" he snarled. He let a flash of black magic break upon the inside of the barrier, just for good measure, though Warrod didn't seem to notice it.
"I just can't get it to work," came the sad response. "You know how they project a live feed of the Grand Magic Games onto virtual screens for the spectators, and also beam it to certain pubs and popular establishments in Crocus? Well, I borrowed this cute piece of experimental tech from the Council's lab, which should let me hijack the magical feed if I find the right frequency, even though it's from the other side of the kingdom. Then, if I can connect it to this ordinary projection lacrima, I should be able to watch Fairy Tail kicking ass at the Games from here. But it's not working. I think the Fairy Sphere is interfering with the signal."
Zeref spoke through gritted teeth. "Have you considered walking a few feet away from my house?"
"Yes, I have," came the cheerful response.
Staying exactly where he was, Warrod generated a diagnostic magic circle with a flick of his hand, watching it intently as he brought the crocodile clip of one wire closer and closer to the connector on the lacrima. The air began to tremble with the threat of feedback, and he lifted the wire away with a dramatic sigh.
He lamented, "If only I knew someone who had spent months studying the Fairy Sphere in an attempt to break out of it, and therefore might understand how to avoid the interference…"
"Give it to me," Zeref ground out.
"Oh?" Warrod blinked at him. "Do you know someone like that?"
"Now."
Entirely unfazed by the promise of death in that word, Warrod rolled the lacrima along the picnic bench so that it passed through the shimmering shield. Zeref snatched it up. He cast his own diagnostic circle, the patterns of Warrod's incomplete enchantments unfolding in mid-air, and he ran his eye over them as swiftly as possible.
Like it or not, he did have an intimate knowledge of the magic imprisoning him, even if everything he had learnt only reinforced the fact that it would be impossible for him to break. It wasn't difficult for him to tweak the right variables so the frequency of the lacrima would no longer interfere with the Great Fairy Magic. It wouldn't have been difficult for Warrod, either – who had surely had a hand in creating the original version of the spell back in the day – but Zeref suspected that if he handed it back unfinished, Warrod would somehow still be trying to figure it out at the end of time.
"There," he snapped, rolling it back along the table.
"Great, thanks!"
Warrod connected it up to the rest of his circuit, flicked a spark of green magic towards the control box, and then let out a cheer as an image was projected onto mid-air. It was hazy at first, but as Warrod carefully began to tune the magical setup, it resolved into an image of two strangers fighting.
Unfortunately, this also brought the sound into alignment. Granted, the grunts and explosions and cheers of the crowd weren't as awful as the screeching magical interference, but it was still an irritation Zeref didn't need.
"Could you maybe watch that somewhere else?" he scowled.
"Yes, I could," Warrod shrugged.
"…Are you going to?"
"No, why?"
Grinding his teeth, Zeref stalked back inside, closed all the windows and internal doors, and threw himself face-first onto his bed with the covers drawn over his head. It was going to be a long week.
Or maybe not.
The following morning, it was raining.
Zeref had never been so happy to hear raindrops bouncing rhythmically from the roof of his house, or to watch them fall effortlessly through the golden barrier as if it wasn't there. The sight of the thoroughly miserable day lifted his spirits no end.
Sitting on a picnic bench in someone else's garden wasn't too taxing on a nice sunny day. A legitimate pastime, in fact. But in a rainstorm? Surely Warrod wouldn't put himself through that just to spite him. Today, Zeref would get some peace and quiet for sure.
Warrod, however, had come prepared.
With a gazebo.
"What do you think you're doing?" Zeref choked. Rain plastered his hair to his face, because he point-blank refused to stand under that: the pop-up blue and grey monstrosity with a heavy-duty water-resistant canopy, half-in and half-out of the Fairy Sphere, covering the picnic bench with plenty of room to spare. "This is my property!"
"I felt that it was lacking in garden furniture," Warrod breezed. "Don't worry, you can keep it. It's a gift."
"Get rid of it!" Zeref fumed. "And yourself too, while you're at it!"
Black flames erupted from his palm. The half of the gazebo within the Fairy Sphere was fair game – but when the explosion died away and the rain settled back in, the gazebo was still perfectly intact. Thick vines now curled up the posts; leaves danced around the edge of the canopy. The magic of nature pulsed around the offending structure like a protective shroud.
Zeref's eyes narrowed. He could feel the power in it, and with its caster untouchable on the other side of the barrier, this wasn't a battle he was sure he could win.
"No can do, I'm afraid." The Wizard Saint smiled blithely back at him. "I have been asked to keep an eye on you, and keep an eye on you I shall, come rain or shine. You're welcome to join me, though. It's nice and dry under here."
"No."
"Aww, really? There are some exciting events going down today. Natsu's competing in something called-"
The slamming of his front door was the only answer Zeref gave.
Zeref's hope that sunshine would banish the ugly gazebo back into the nightmare realm from whence it came proved to be unfounded. In fact, Warrod only seemed to grow more attached to the damn thing. Zeref, who had ventured out of his house in the hope that offering to help pack up the structure might get rid of it faster, was instead greeted by a cheerful question: "Zeref, your house is connected to the mains electricity, right?"
"Yes," he answered, momentarily thrown. "Why?"
The old mage held out an extension lead. "Can you plug in my mini-fridge?"
"…What?"
"I've also installed a fan, since it's going to be hot this afternoon, and I've rigged up some lights inside the gazebo so we're good for the night-time events on day four. I've also got beers, crisps, and loads of other snacks – are you absolutely sure you don't want to watch some of the Games with me this afternoon?"
"…Quite sure," he ground out. Warrod shrugged and returned to the den he'd built in the garden, leaving Zeref clutching the cable in disbelief.
"You know, you can buy some really fancy sheds these days," Warrod was saying through the lacrima.
Zeref stared at the crystal in his hand.
He wasn't sure which would be worse: that this was an actual topic the so-called Wizard Saint had picked in an attempt to start a conversation, or that Warrod had driven him so mad these past few days that he was hallucinating about garden sheds.
Silently, he closed the mental connection, set the crystal down on the chest of drawers, and backed away slowly.
"Look at this one," Warrod's voice continued, from outside this time, not muffled nearly enough by the walls of the house. There was a tapping at the window, and Zeref wheeled around to the sight of an elongated tree branch holding up an open brochure. "It's basically a mini wooden house. The right-hand side is covered, with electric lights built into the roof, but it's open at two sides – perfect for some outdoor furniture. The left-hand side is entirely enclosed, with lockable glass doors, windows, and all sorts. We could get a fridge, TV, even a bathroom in there. If they could connect your house to the utilities, I'm sure it wouldn't be a big job for them to do the same for the shed. People have these things set up as home offices, you know. We could run the Fairy Sphere right through the middle of it."
"Why?" Zeref groaned, giving in and stepping out of his house. He had to confront this madness head-on.
"Why? To make it nicer for your guests, of course," Warrod explained. "It would be like a little visitor centre."
His scowl had been known to send the greatest mages in Alvarez scampering for cover, but the old mage just beamed back at him.
"Lucy put you up to this, didn't she?" Zeref accused.
"No, not at all." Warrod genuinely sounded surprised. "What Lucy asked me to do was talk you into helping out with the guild while she's on the Hundred Year Quest. I'm just trying to make myself more comfortable while I'm doing it."
Zeref didn't know why he bothered, sometimes.
"Speaking of Lucy," Warrod continued, and Zeref paused, one hand on the doorhandle. "She's in the next round. Do you want to watch it with me?"
"I thought Guild Masters were barred from competing."
"Maybe they've changed the rules. Or maybe it's a special round – she seems to be going up against Master Sting from Sabertooth. I'd say she has a good chance there."
The words seemed to drag themselves from Zeref's lips. "What are they doing? Just a straightforward fight?"
"Why don't you come and see?" came the casual response.
He didn't want to, but the crowd was cheering with unreal enthusiasm from the lacrima feed, and it wasn't as if he had anything better to do. Not deigning to look at the other – he could imagine that false innocence painting over an insufferable smugness without having to look at it – he strode into the gazebo and sat as far from the Wizard Saint as possible on the bench. The golden barrier lay between them, and the lacrima-projection shimmered in the air before them.
Warrod shoved a can through the Fairy Sphere. "Beer?"
"No."
"Popcorn?"
"No."
"I'll just leave it here, then," Warrod told him calmly, balancing the bucket of popcorn neatly between them, the Fairy Sphere splitting it in two.
"Mermaid Heel versus Blue Pegasus!" Warrod crowed. "Who do you think will win this one?"
Zeref did not look up from the catalogue of fancy sheds through which he was idly flicking. "Who cares? Neither of them are Fairy Tail, and neither of them can earn enough points from this round to challenge Fairy Tail's lead; what does it matter?"
"But which one are you cheering for?"
"Neither. They can both lose, for all I care."
The elderly Wizard Saint was silent for so long that Zeref began to hope he had fallen asleep. Even the creak of bark and the flutter of his leafy hair were so familiar to the forest grove that it was easy to forget there was another person here in the handful of moments when he actually stopped talking.
"I think that's part of your problem," Warrod said curiously.
"I'm sorry?" The words were polite, but danger ran unbridled through Zeref's tone. He had been expecting Warrod to try something like this ever since he had reluctantly started watching the Games with him. Humouring him when it came to the competition was one thing. There was little else to do here with Fairy Tail gone, and watching the events was as good a way as any to pass the time. But patronising him, lecturing him, openly admitting to trying to manipulate him – he had no tolerance for that.
Still in that same light tone, Warrod explained, "As you say, there's no reason why you should care whether Hibiki or Millianna wins this fight. But there's no reason not to care, either."
"Apart from the odds of it triggering my curse," Zeref snapped.
"Sure, but what's the harm when you're behind the Fairy Sphere? You can make choices now that you couldn't before. And caring about things is more fun than not caring about them. Supporting one side gives you a reason to be excited, makes an impersonal victory meaningful, gives you solidarity in defeat. No, you don't have to get involved, but life is much more exciting when you do."
"You're being ridiculous."
"Perish the thought." When Zeref glowered at him – an expression that managed to sum up the unwanted gazebo and the box of popcorn he was still trying to share with the Black Mage and all the other ridiculous things Warrod had done in the last few days – he just shrugged. "Why did you care about Mavis, Yuri, Precht and me, the first time we met you?"
Anger surged through him, and it was all he could do to answer stiffly, "I didn't."
"That's not true at all. You went out of your way to teach us when we had nothing to offer you in return. You gained nothing from helping us. Whether we succeeded in liberating Magnolia made as little difference to you as whether Blue Pegasus manages to win this round of the competition. But you did it anyway. You made it your business. Even back then, you chose to care. And don't you think things turned out a lot more interesting because of it?"
"I do not know what point you are trying to make," Zeref growled, "but whatever it is, if you think that referring to the single event in my life that I regret more than any other will sway me to your side, you are sorely mistaken."
"Ah, but I don't believe you do regret it. The events afterwards leading to Mavis's death, perhaps you do. But not that first meeting. If none of us had met again until now, would you really be upset about it?"
"I still do not see the point of this conversation."
Warrod was quiet for a moment, though Zeref did not think he was paying any attention to the on-screen fight either.
"What happened to Mavis during the final battle?" Warrod asked suddenly. "Lucy said that she went into the guildhall to confront you and never came out again, and that's as much as anyone knows."
As much as Zeref didn't want to answer him, he felt a strange, hollow sort of duty to do so. Warrod had cared for her as much as he had.
"She passed on," he murmured, at last. "She… found her peace."
"And you didn't?"
"Obviously."
"Unfinished business?"
"That is no concern of yours."
"Interesting." Then, without warning: "I'm glad. After all this time, Mavis deserved peace."
"And I don't?" Zeref challenged bitterly.
"I never said that. I do, however, feel that peace can mean different things to different people. Some people like to contemplate in isolation, while others prefer to be kept busy, finding balance in routine and fulfilment in overcoming the challenges of everyday life."
"I have said it to Lucy a dozen times," Zeref growled, "and now I will say it to you. I am not going to help the guild, no matter how many roundabout arguments you make. I am already doing enough for them; I owe them nothing."
"You do understand, don't you, that Lucy is not hoping you'll do it out of a sense of obligation? She wants you to choose it. Needs you to choose it, to choose to care, to choose to become a greater part of this guild than you have to be."
"And I have given her my answer." He got to his feet. "This relentless questioning has entirely ruined the fun of the Games. I'm going back indoors."
"Suit yourself. More popcorn for me."