A/N: This story begins after the end of the Alvarez War, but before the one-year timeskip that happens in the final chapter.

In this timeline, the final battle between Zeref and Natsu played out slightly differently to canon. As far as most characters are aware, Zeref was defeated by Natsu but not killed (being immortal), and was taken into custody by the Rune Knights. Mavis, who had gone to confront Zeref as in canon, never came back, and although everyone now knows Natsu is END, Lucy never rewrote the Book of END to save his life, as Natsu took it with him when he went to fight Zeref.

But you'll have to wait to find out the details, as only Zeref and Natsu know what really happened in that battle and neither of them are telling...

As usual, I have written a bit more on what this fic will be about at the end of the first chapter. ~CS

Homeward Hours

By CrimsonStarbird

Chapter One – Palace of the Fallen

They held him in a prison of ironies.

For centuries, the Magic Council had assumed him dead, while the dark guilds had carried out his wishes unhindered and his empire across the sea had grown and grown in strength. Now that the world at last believed him dead, the members of the Council were among the few who knew the truth: that the emperor Alvarez mourned and the bastion of darkness whose death had broken the spirits of the last dark mages was still alive, imprisoned in a special-purpose facility beneath the Council's own headquarters in Era.

Lights flooded the chamber, leaving not a single shadow to embrace the man once known as the Black Mage. White walls, white ceiling, white floor. There was no furniture to break the sterile monotony; a palace of absences for the fallen emperor. Runes embedded in the foundations prevented teleportation, telepathy, projections, anything that might have connected the cell to the world outside – and all of it was unnecessary, for the magic-binding shackles around his wrists and neck left the greatest mage in history as powerless as a child.

Left the would-be conqueror of Fiore entirely at its mercy.

Left the most powerful man in the world, politically and magically, nothing more than a huddled dot in the corner of a mockingly empty room.

Staring down into the chamber of white from the window of the guards' station, Lucy found herself wondering whether he had ever looked down on his own citizens, on her guild, the way she was doing now.

"That all seems to be in order," the Rune Knight Captain grunted, handing back her writ of entry. Lucy let out a breath she shouldn't have been holding – if signed approval from one of the Four Gods of Ishgar had got her through the far more rigorous upper levels of security, it was surely more than enough for a guard who clearly just wanted to get back to his sudoku. "I would ask what the hell you're doing here, but far be it from me to question a member of the guild who saved Fiore."

Lucy managed a strangled smile.

"Now, if you'll just sign here, and here…"

As Lucy inked the looping signature her father had taught her onto the fifth waiver of liability form in the past half hour, her gaze drifted once more to the hunched figure in the room below. She'd never met him before, not face-to-face. The closest she'd come had been in the vision Aquarius had shown her and Brandish: a composed and powerful man who had worked alongside her ancestor Anna to make the impossibility of time travel possible.

She could see nothing of that man in the ball of washed-out blacks and grubby whites tucked in on itself in the corner of the room.

Then again, she could see nothing of a man capable of destroying her guild, either, and he had almost managed that.

"Has he had any other visitors?" she asked.

This was met by a harsh bark of laughter. "Like who? Friends? Family?" the Captain scoffed. "The Council's not stupid enough to let Alvarez know he survived, and who else would want to talk to a murdering bastard like him? Not that I would dream of disparaging Fairy Tail's undoubtedly noble intentions," he added, eyeing the pink guild mark on her hand.

"Of course not," she agreed demurely.

"Well, if you'd like to come with me, Miss Heartfilia," the Captain invited, getting to his feet. "Garic – bring the chairs."

"Yes, Captain Brennam, sir."

Garic was twice as tall as Lucy and four times as large, which came in handy when he retrieved a camping table and two plastic folding chairs from a storage bin, carrying them easily under one enormous arm. Puzzled, Lucy followed, with Captain Brennam making up the rear. It wasn't until they reached a handle-less door which – if the wards sizzling at the edges of her senses were any indication – led directly into the light-soaked cell that it clicked.

"We're going in there with him?" Lucy blurted out.

The Captain laughed again. It was quickly becoming one of her least favourite sounds. "How else were you expecting to interview him?"

"Well, I… assumed you would have an interrogation room, or something," she muttered, cheeks reddening.

"Oh, we do," he smirked. "Plenty of them. But he is not allowed to leave this room."

"Surely he has to leave, sometimes," Lucy pointed out. "I mean, there are no bathroom facilities in there!"

Brennam snorted and stepped past her, touching his palm to the door. Purple light rippled across it, and the door slid soundlessly aside. "All yours, Miss Heartfilia."

Swallowing, Lucy stepped across the threshold.

There was a moment of total blindness. Over-white light assaulted her eyes; magic exploded against her senses in every other colour of smell and sound. Her fingers groped at the empty air where her celestial keys would have been, had any magical items been allowed within the prison facility. All of a sudden, the Council's security protocols seemed backwards. In stopping people from bringing weapons in, it left them with no way of defending themselves from what was inside.

With a deep breath, Lucy forced herself to take another step forwards. The crash of the wards faded into an artificial numbness quite unlike anything she had ever felt before – the total absence of magic. It wasn't at all pleasant, and she had to keep reminding herself that if she couldn't access her magic, it meant he couldn't access his.

Slowly, her other senses began to creep back in, though she soon wished they hadn't. The room may have been sterile white, but the air was thick, clingy, foul. It was all she could do not to retch.

Her eyelids opened in an attempt to batter back the daggers of light trying to pierce her eyeballs. As Garic entered the chamber after her, she whispered, "Is there any chance you could dim the lights a little?"

"Sorry, miss," he muttered back, with an apologetic grimace. "It's against the rules."

Lucy was about to turn up the charm when she caught sight of Captain Brennam entering the room, one practised hand shading his eyes from the glare, and she gave it up as a lost cause. They watched – him confidently, and her with one eye never leaving the shadow still curled unmoving in the corner of the room – as Garic assembled the plastic table and chairs into a cheap parody of a police interview setup.

How could they be so casual when there wasn't so much as a wall between them and the most dangerous villain in history? Behind the Captain, the door to the cell was closed, though because no magic could be used on this side, it only required the touch of an authorized Rune Knight to unlock. Were they that confident in those flimsy bands of metal around the prisoner's wrists and ankles? Were they so sure they could resist him if he tried to force them to open the door?

If Lucy had known she'd be gambling her life on the assumption that the world's greatest mage hadn't come up with a way to circumvent magic-sealing cuffs, she'd have had second thoughts about coming here.

Well, third thoughts.

Fourth thoughts.

Even Natsu, the one who was responsible for the dreaded Black Mage's defeat in the first place, would have had something to say about the way Garic marched right up to the ball in the corner and ordered, "Get up."

The prisoner did not so much as twitch.

It's a trap, Lucy thought, taking half a step backwards. He's faking. The moment Garic gets too close, he'll attack-

But Garic was the one who reached out and seized the prisoner's neck.

Lucy flinched. Brennam laughed.

Flustered by his reaction, Lucy argued, "But what if he fights back-?"

"He won't," the Captain told her coolly.

"But…"

"I said, get up," Garic intoned. "You have a visitor."

Without waiting for a response, the huge guard's fingers curled around the metal collar and forced the prisoner upright. The huddle unravelled into a humanoid shape, ragged, lifeless, little more than cloth over bone. His feet scraped along the floor as Garic dragged him over to the table and dropped him into one of the folding chairs. There he remained, head slumped forward, bound hands in his lap.

Both the guards were looking at Lucy, now, who swallowed and pulled herself together. This had been her bright idea, after all. Would she really have been less nervous if Zeref was raging against his restraints and threatening to destroy her and her guild in vengeance?

The strange thing was, she almost thought she would be.

She took the seat opposite him in an ungainly clatter of plastic. Garic took up a silent sentinel position by the door. Protocol finally seemed to overcome Captain Brennam's amusement at the whole situation, and he left the cell to view the proceedings from the safety of the guards' station overhead. Lucy glanced above the door, to where she knew the viewing windows were – but from this side they appeared as mirrors, reflecting back the horrid glare of the room. Pressure was already starting to build behind her eyes.

Then the cell door slid shut, trapping her in this magic-less room with her guild's greatest enemy.

Who continued staring blankly at the table between them.

Nervously, Lucy cleared her throat.

No response.

"Uh… Zeref?"

The name sounded clumsy on her lips. She had said it often, but always as a vow against the concept of an enemy, never as… well, someone's name.

He didn't respond to that, either.

She almost wished he would lash out at her. At least then all this accumulated fear would have somewhere to go.

"Do you know who I am?"

Well, even in her mental rehearsals, she hadn't been expecting him to answer that in the affirmative, so she pressed on through the silence.

"I'm Lucy. Lucy Heartfilia. I'm a member of Fairy Tail." And then, almost vindictively: "The guild you failed to destroy."

Not even that could get a rise out of him.

"Can you hear me?"

Nothing.

If this was his little way of getting back at her despite his magic being suppressed, she had to admit, it was working. Distinctly uncomfortable, she glanced over her shoulder at Garic. He stared impassively back.

She returned her attention to the man in front of her, less ashamed to stare now that she wanted to induce a reaction. She'd known he was small – Mavis had told them his body had been frozen in time by the curse of immortality before he'd had the chance to reach adulthood – but even in the cheap camping chair, he looked tiny. His arms were the arms of a skeleton, bound at the wrists by cuffs that would have been too small for a child. No wonder Garic had had to drag him over here; his shins looked as though they'd snap under the slightest force.

The rune-etched collar was just loose enough around his neck for her to glimpse a crescent of raw, decaying flesh underneath. He was pale – too pale, even for the ravenous light. Filthy robes hung in tatters over equally tattered skin. And his eyes…

They weren't the eyes of a living creature.

Defeat did not suit an emperor, Lucy thought, with a shiver.

Coming here had been an act of desperation, rather than any genuine belief that it was a good idea, but she'd assumed it would be malice or anger which crushed her hope, not… whatever this was.

But there was no point leaving without even trying, so she said, "I need to ask you something."

Her voice rang hatefully loud in the dead room, her uncertainty on full display.

"It's about Natsu. Ever since he fought you, he's been… different. He's pulled away from everyone in the guild. He'll barely even talk to us, and never about anything that matters. All he wants to do is go on jobs with Happy – convincing him to do a job with our full team is more of a challenge than the job itself. Something happened during that fight with you, and I need to know what it is. We already know he's END; he knows we don't care about that. There has to be something else."

She fidgeted awkwardly in the chair. He sat like he'd forgotten what movement was.

"Happy let slip that it might have started before then, when Natsu first went off to confront you at the head of the western army – but Natsu absolutely lost it with him, and Happy's not dared say a word about it since."

She barely suppressed a shudder at the memory. That was the moment they had all realized that something was badly wrong with Natsu.

"All I know is that Natsu took the Book of END from me and Gray and went into the guildhall to face you alone. He beat you, that's why you're here, but before we even got a chance to talk to him, he was stolen away to fight Acnologia… and afterwards, he wouldn't talk about it. He won the battle, but we lost him, and we don't have the faintest idea why! No one was there in that final battle but you and him. No one else knows what happened. I need to know, Zeref. Please. What happened between you and him in that fight?"

No response.

Not that she'd been expecting anything else.

"Yeah, I know," she sighed. "It was always a long shot, asking the enemy. But I had to try, because… well, we've tried everything else. And I couldn't lose Natsu without doing absolutely everything I could to reach him."

As she stood, the chair slid back with a noise that wouldn't normally have been annoying, but coupled with the too-white lights, it sent a pulse of lightning through her brain. Coming here had been a mistake. She had always known that, but now that she had proof, there was no point staying any longer.

There was rustle of motion from behind her.

Her heart thudded. One hand went at once for a celestial whip that was hanging up by her front door, the other for a ring of keys that the guards had placed in a locker back on level one. She turned anyway, raising her fists; she hadn't survived the Alvarez War just to go down without a fight.

Still he was slumped in that uncomfortable chair, still he gazed unfocussed at the plastic in front of him, but she didn't let her guard down, because she was sure that something had changed-

A ghost of a voice rasped, "What year is it?"

A full five seconds passed before Lucy recognized that it had been a question, not an attack, and it was another five seconds before she'd managed to process the content of that question, and not particularly well at that.

"What… year?" she echoed, baffled. "It's still X792. It's only been two months since the end of the war."

At last, he moved. Some misplaced bone cracked in his neck just so that he could lift his head an inch. Beneath matted hair, his eyes sought hers, and she automatically took a step backwards. It was worse than the surprise attack she'd been sure was coming ever since she set foot inside his cell – worse even than the mocking cruelty she'd been expecting her request for help to receive.

She had never seen anything as awful as the sheer hopelessness in his eyes.

He looked at her like she'd torn the whole world down around him; like she'd destroyed everything he cared for in a few short words.

"Two months?" he whispered.

She didn't know what to say. She didn't know what she would do if a friend looked at her like that, let alone the man who had tried to destroy her guild. She had to say something; she couldn't just leave it at that-

But Garic had already opened the door, assuming she had been about to leave. He was beckoning her over insistently. With one last glance behind her – at a despair so great she didn't know how that frail body could contain it – she slipped out of the cell.

The door hissed shut behind her. The huge guard gave her a look of askance, but she was already trudging back up the stairs towards the guards' station, her head spinning.

Captain Brennam, so it turned out, had still not finished his sudoku. If the glint in his eyes was anything to go by, he'd been watching something far more interesting.

"Would you look at that?" he smirked. "You actually got him to talk. I owe Captain Roco a thousand Jewels."

"Is he… always like that?" Lucy wondered, her voice a bit too high, her words a bit too shaky.

"Not said a word since we brought him in," the Captain confirmed smugly. "Doesn't respond to anything – words, noises, pain, nothing. Two months," he echoed, words like an ice cube slipping down her spine, invoking an echo of eclipsing despair. "Fancy that. Our captive seems to be under the mistaken impression that his sentence is anything less than eternal. I bet he regrets attaining immortality now."

Haltingly, Lucy asked, "When you say he doesn't respond to anything, what does he… do?"

"Do?"

"You know, does he read, or exercise, or… do prison work, or something?"

He laughed out loud. "He doesn't do anything. He sits in the corner and stares at nothing."

"What, all day?"

"And all night."

She thought about Garic's response when she'd asked if he could dim the lights. Maybe it wasn't merely against the rules to dim them just because the prisoner had a visitor. Maybe it was against the rules to dim them full stop.

Bright white glare, day and night.

Two months.

She wrenched her mind away from that thought with an effort. "But he does eat, right?"

"Why would we waste good food on an immortal? It's not like he can starve to death."

"He can't even stand on his own!"

"Good. It's one more obstacle between him and freedom."

She was looking at him in undisguised horror now, and there was nothing genuine about his smirk – no, it was a glittering dare. Lightly, he added, "You do realize this is a prison, not a holiday resort, don't you?"

Lucy ground out, "It doesn't matter. You can't treat a human being like that."

"Oh? You've not forgotten who that man is, have you?"

"No, of course not, but it doesn't justify-"

"Typical Fairy Tail," the Captain drawled, leaning back in his chair. "Revered as the heroes of the Alvarez War. Tell me, what did victory cost you? A destroyed guildhall? The Council's already had it rebuilt for you out of taxpayers' money. A week in hospital with injuries? That's just as likely to have been the result of one of Fairy Tail's infamous brawls. You're heroes. Of course you don't see the threat of evil, because it's not dangerous to you, is it?"

He jabbed his finger towards the pit below, where Garic was hauling the prisoner back into his corner with no more care than he'd hauled the fold-up furniture away. "I had a niece. Eleanor. A trainee Rune Knight, following in her uncle's footsteps, based at the garrison at Hargeon. Died during the Alvarez bombardment of the shore. Garic down there, he lost his brother a year ago, when the demons blew up the Council Headquarters. Captain Wulfric, who has the shift before mine – his brother borrowed money from the wrong man and got roped into a cult revering the Black Mage, only to be murdered by his own cult leader in some bizarre ritual. You beat him, but we're the ones who are still paying every day for what he did."

"I'm sorry about that," Lucy whispered. "I really, truly am. But none of that makes this right."

"That's where you're wrong. You won't find a single person in this facility who thinks this is anything less than he deserves."

"But even if you do believe that this isn't wrong, there are laws around the proper treatment of prisoners! We're a civilized nation! Surely it bothers you that this is illegal!"

"Everything about this man being here is illegal, Miss Heartfilia," the Captain explained, darkly patronizing. "A foreign head of state whose own nation believes he is dead? The dreaded Black Mage imprisoned beneath the earth? The laws have no provision for a villain who is too powerful to be contained, too evil to be forgiven, and too immortal to face capital punishment. So, we have made our own laws."

"It's inhumane," Lucy told him quietly.

"Your signed approval, Miss Heartfilia, got you in to ask him your question. It was not a request for your opinion on how this facility is run. If you have an issue with the precautions which are necessary to ensure that this monster cannot break free and wreak havoc on our kingdom again, I suggest you take it up with the Magic Council… who, in case you are wondering, are fully aware of everything that goes on down here. It was only a year ago that their predecessors were massacred by his demons, after all."

He smiled up at her. "Have a nice day, Miss Heartfilia. I trust that you can see yourself out?"

Lucy did not sleep that night.

Memories awaited her every time she closed her eyes: the sheer terror of being the last one standing amongst a guild full of demons; the grim resolution with which they'd accepted the overwhelming odds of an Alvarez invasion, knowing it would likely mean the end of everything they loved; the grief that had swept over the guild when they'd realized the First Master had never returned from confronting Zeref at the death.

Somehow, none of it haunted her as much as the hopelessness in that black gaze.

Two months he'd been down there.

Two months without sunlight or fresh air or darkness in which to sleep. Two months without food or water, as if not being able to die of starvation made it somehow okay. Two months without conversation, without a book to read, without experiences or change or sensation, slowly decomposing in his own soiled robes. Two months without human contact, save for those who despised him.

And it wasn't those two months that had terrified him, but the thought that it had only been two months, as if he was waiting for something still incomprehensibly far away.

She knew, deep down, that it wasn't any of her business. She had never stopped to wonder about the fates of the other dark mages her guild had put away. If not for her seeking him out in a last-ditch attempt to understand what had caused Natsu to pull away from them, she would never have thought of him again as long as she lived.

But she had sought him out.

It was personal, now.

Zeref was not a good man. She knew more than the Magic Council did – knew about the Curse of Contradiction and the role he'd played in founding Fairy Tail and, though the details were far from clear to her, about how Natsu, being the demon END, wouldn't exist if not for him – but the good he'd done wasn't enough to balance out the casualties the Captain had spoken of, and the tragedies of his life didn't change the fact that he had tried to destroy her guild.

But no one, no one, deserved that.

It wasn't about forgiveness, or about believing the best in people.

It was pure and simple humanity.

And as she lay there, one growing certainty condensed in the tempest of her mind: she had to get him out of there.

A/N: So, Homeward Hours. I have a very difficult relationship with this story for reasons I won't bore you with, but I've written it, so here you go.

The fic is set a couple of months after the end of the Alvarez War and Acnologia's defeat, and diverges from there (so no Hundred Year Quest etc). As a bit of a warning, after the first few chapters, there isn't really a plot. Rather, it's just various interactions between Zeref and the other characters as he grows as a human being. Thematically, it has a lot in common with my previous fic Scars, including but not limited to the relationship between Lucy and Zeref being at the heart of the story (although, unlike Scars, this isn't a romantic relationship). Part of the point of writing Homeward Hours was to explore things that I couldn't fully in Scars, such as the relationship between Zeref and Natsu. But in order to make this happen, it does get quite similar in places.

I've tagged the fic as NaLu, but don't get too excited. There's like two NaLu chapters in the whole fic. The main reason why the tag is there is to make it absolutely clear that this isn't a Zeref/Lucy story, or a love triangle, or anything like that.

Speaking of Natsu, he does have a bit of a rough time in this story, especially in the early chapters. This is because he does treat Zeref pretty badly in canon, but with the way the original story is framed, he never gets called out on it. He will get called out on it here. And he will learn and become a better person as a result, just as Zeref will. However, if you're the kind of person who takes offence whenever Natsu isn't portrayed as a perfect flawless protagonist, then this isn't the story for you.

One last thing - there will be major character death about 3/4 of the way through this fic. I wouldn't normally mention it, but it does drive the entire last part of the story, so I thought it was only fair. I'll flag it again before it gets there so anyone who is that way inclined can stop reading at a fairly happy point. That's not to say it's all going to be sunshine and rainbows up to that point (it won't), or indeed that there won't be any death (there will). But it is intended to take over the plot when it arrives, so you have been warned.

Right, I think that's it. If anyone is still with me, new chapters will be posted on Sundays. The average chapter length will be substantially shorter than I've used in the past. See you next week! ~CS