In the distant past…
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"What were the residuals left by Farlex's third set of proposed calculations?" Aki asked, chewing the tip of her quill. She was lying on her stomach on the floor, surrounded by more than a dozen books and innumerable sheets of paper.
"G1 divided by t32," said Zeref, not looking up from his own desk and papers.
"Right."
"Aki-kun, Zeref-kun."
"Hello, Dean Nestor," they answered, not bothering to turn towards the door.
A heavy sigh. "The board has decided to expel you."
For a second, the loud beat of their hearts were the only thing that filled their ears.
"What?!" they shouted in unison, spinning to face him. "But we are almost there-"
"It is precisely because of your obsession with this project that we are forced to expel you," he interrupted harshly. "It is unfortunate; you were both very gifted."
"But it will work!" Aki insisted, standing up, ignoring the wave of dizziness.
"We just need a little more time-" Zeref started, but their Dean snapped.
"It will not happen!" he bellowed, turning red with anger. "Your brother will not come back! He will never come back to life!"
The world shattered; reality ended; everything came to a solid, screeching stop.
Never come back.
Aki clutched at her head as it throbbed, eyes screwing shut. Grunting, she stumbled backwards into a chair, then desk, her head pounding against the inside of her skull, over, over, over.
"S-Sen…sei…" she could hear Zeref groan beside her.
"Is this the wrath of Ankhselam?!" cried a distant voice, a dying voice, fading into the void.
The ringing in her head peaked, consuming all her senses, blinding her.
Then it was gone, only echoes of soreness thrumming in the back of her mind.
"Sensei…" she managed, looking up as her hands fell to her side.
Dean Nestor on the floor, twitching.
Zeref screamed beside her, but she couldn't think why.
Repent.
"Sensei?" she repeated numbly.
You did this.
"What- what's-" She stopped, staring, petrified, as he gave one last tremor, and was still. "Sensei…?" She barely registered as Zeref pelted out of the room, shouting unimportant, garbled words – barely registered as she slumped to her knees.
You did this, Black Mage Aki.
She screamed too, now, sense catching up with reality as she scrambled backwards. "No, no…" She shook her head. "No! Dream, gotta be- dream!" She closed her eyes, counting to three before opening them to – a cold, cruel world.
A dream!
She closed her eyes again and again, just as she did with the nightmares that plagued her some nights, but it was different now; different because it wasn't working. Different because the scene wasn't changing, and she wasn't waking up to Zeref's caring smile.
A… dream…
She leapt to her feet, running, as Zeref had done, out of the room. Her eyes darted left and right, taking in the field of bodies that lay strewn about the corridors and connected rooms, hung over railings and fallen sideways off chairs.
A…
She burst into the library and stumbled, falling backwards, horrified.
All were dead.
She knew this with an absolute, unidentifiable certainty, and just as surely knew that the souls that had left their bodies. Knew, surely, that they weren't coming back.
Eyes wandering aimlessly over the carnage, she focused on Zeref. He was sat on his heels in the middle of the room, arms limp at his sides, staring at a nearby girl's hand without understanding.
She couldn't understand it. She pushed herself up, sprinting as she hadn't done in years, out of the library, out of the building, out of the Academy's grounds and down the dirt path that led to the cemetery. The simple run disturbed her, throwing her into even greater disarray for the fact that her breathing wasn't shallow, wasn't burning her lungs, wasn't enveloping her in unconsciousness's sweet embrace – a suffocating straight-jacket she had, her whole life, loathed.
She stumbled as she started down the hill, moving too quickly and tripping, rolling head over heels down the incline. Rocks scraped her arms and back, cutting into her forehead, clouding her vision. She paid no heed. Scrambling to her feat as soon as she could manage, she only tripped again, chin digging roughly into a stone at the base of a grave.
She disregarded this, too, since it wasn't the grave, the one they had visited so many times that she didn't need to look to know it wasn't right.
No, the grave was a few graves over, and she collapsed onto all four knees in front of it, panting, unsure why she had come. Through the blur of tears and strangely cool blood, she saw the world turn grey, a sure warning of an attack, and her head shot up.
Her heart stopped.
The world wasn't grey, no; it was so, so much worse.
The world was dead.
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Back in the present…
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"One of you will take the Curse of Contradictions."
Mard Geer was grinning maliciously between two of the five small cells, between the two who had immediately recoiled from the bars, a fear that no mage alive had seen clouding their eyes, dimming the light that they had, after four hundred years, begun to rediscover.
Gray snarled as Natsu ground his forehead into his cell's bars. "Like egg I would let you! If you touch either of them I'll burn you all to a crisp!"
Lucy, who had taken a horrified step backward, took a different approach, appealing desperately, "Why? They created you, didn't they?"
Mard Geer looked at her with a look, disinterested and annoyed. "It is because they made us that this is to happen," he replied coolly, "They instilled in us their greatest desire: To bypass the Curse of Contradictions and die. We are fulfilling our purpose."
Lucy's bottom lip trembled as she pleaded, "But they're happy now!"
"And wouldn't it be easier to kill them before giving them immortality?" said Gray.
Immediately, Natsu began to howl at him, and Lucy gasped, "Gray! How long are you-"
A whip slashed through the bars of her cell, cracking against her left thigh, dropping her, screaming, to her knees. Kyouka strolled slowly into view, looking disgustedly at them all, ignoring Natsu and Gray's furious shouts. "Aki-sama, Zeref-sama," she muttered exultantly, kneeling as she scowled at the two. "I am so sorry to see that you have been made so lowly and vulgar."
"You-" Natsu started, but-
"We wanted to be human again…" Aki and Zeref's quiet words deadened Natsu's, each word pure emotion given voice.
Kyouka looked up at them, disgust written plainly across her face as she flicked her wrist, lashing a whip through each cell and hitting them with twice as much force as she had Lucy. The halls echoed with shouts of pain, accompanied by Natsu's explosion of primordial rage.
The din redoubled as Kyouka herself screamed, lifted into the air by vines that wound round her limbs, pulling them in opposite directions. Mard Geer, eyes cold, snarled, "Get out," before dropping her to the ground.
She left without a word, and he turned back to them.
He smiled politely, tilting his head to the side.
"So, which one is it?"
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Aki had always been a burden. Her parents and brothers always said she wasn't; she knew she was. When Natsu died in fire, telling her to keep going, to keep running, that he was right behind her, it had been confirmed: She wasn't worthwhile.
She had gotten stronger. Years of inability to die or sustain injury meant that she could practice her magic to support her fragile body without succumbing to it. When she had been freed, her magic did its job. She had been strong; she had been capable; she hadn't been a bother – at least, not as much. Nightmares, fears, anxiety, guilt – all plagued her, making it hard for everyone else, as well as herself. But, she had been at least a little better. And Fairy Tail had healed some wounds, wounds that had only festered for decades – centuries.
It was a warm place; she loved it; she hadn't thought her sullied feet should step past its doors. But, so many people, always, were there, repeating their words over and over, supporting her, convincing her, slowly, ever so tediously, that she hadn't been the curse. That having her curse wasn't the same as being it.
She would always strive to make it better for all that had been hurt, always hang her head for being the gun that had shot the victim, but she had a little voice, now, whispering in her guildmates' voices that it wasn't her.
It wasn't her.
She had even started to believe that—
She had almost thought that—
She had begun to feel that…
She hadn't managed to protect them – hadn't managed to save them. She wouldn't be able to, now, either. Surely – whether she thought she deserved it or not – her friends and brothers would be so hurt, wouldn't be alright, wouldn't be happy. She knew that, but if she had the power, she would, best she could.
She wasn't the same, anymore.
No.
She wasn't the same.