The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Stellar Constellations Rise, Part 2
-Death and Life in Helvola Village-
By midday, the horror scenario through which hungover-Lyon was valiantly struggling had been upgraded from an abandoned town to a low-budget zombie flick. As the contagion spread, the site of the destroyed guildhall began to fill with pale, shambling forms, mindlessly enacting in slow-motion the roles they had played in life. Rebuilding the guildhall had been declared a priority by the zombie hivemind – more to provide shelter from the glaring sun than out of consideration for Lamia Scale's public image, mind, since the only thing the undead seemed to have energy for was the occasional cannibalistic scrap over an easy local job.
Still, at least the poor, hungover guild mages were trying. Lyon was optimistic that they might even manage to break back into Lamia Scale's preferred genre – slice-of-life with a dash of adventure – by the end of the day.
Unless, of course, this whole setup turned out to be a disaster movie in disguise.
"LUCY!"
'Disaster' was the first thing Lyon thought when he heard Natsu's shout, at least. The Dragon Slayer's arrival onto any scene was usually accompanied by some sort of calamity – if not the dark mage incident he had been hired to resolve, then definitely the devastation that followed more fervently in his wake than any other in his guild.
As the most responsible member of Lamia Scale, Lyon staggered out to intercept the Fairy Tail mage in the street. With the guildhall already in ruins, it should have been impossible for any more destruction to take place… but you could never be too sure with Natsu. "Hey, Natsu! Long time no see!"
The ferocity in Natsu's eyes, suddenly turned upon him, stopped the ice mage like a wall of force. "Where's Lucy?" Natsu roared. "Is she here?"
"You just missed her," Lyon informed him, perplexed. "She left a couple of hours ago."
Natsu's hands clamped down on the ice mage's shoulders, an iron grip and a not-only-figurative burning intensity. "YOU LET HER GO?"
"Of course! Far be it from me to stand in the way of Fairy Tail's revival!"
"…What?"
"To be honest, I don't want to see Wendy and Carla go, but I know that Fairy Tail is where they belong, and I would never sabotage Lucy's quest for such a selfish reason-"
"LUCY'S NOT ON A QUEST! SHE'S BEEN KIDNAPPED BY ZEREF!"
Lyon stared.
Stared at Natsu, at his unwashed clothes and wild eyes; at the Dragon Slayer who had not slept since his return to civilization; at his winged cat partner only now catching up with him and collapsing, exhausted, onto the road.
Lyon's gaze flicked to the ruined guildhall, which ought to have been worth a quip about Lamia Scale finally being reduced to Fairy Tail's level if nothing else, but which Natsu appeared to not even have noticed.
Not for the first time this morning, Lyon wondered if this was all some sort of liquor-induced hallucination.
"…I really don't think she has, Natsu," he said finally.
"She has! She disappeared from her house two days ago, and I could smell Zeref there, and he'd set a trap that only worked on Dragon Slayers – on me – so that I couldn't track him! HE'S BEHIND THIS!"
The silence drifted with dust and ragged breathing.
Typical, complained some part of Lyon's mind. The one time I let myself be talked into a drinking contest with Cana, I'm landed with a destroyed guildhall, a maniac Dragon Slayer, and a conspiracy theory.
Never.
Again.
"Natsu!" Wendy's delighted shout reached Lyon's ears. She was hurtling down the street, Sherria and Carla close behind.
They didn't look any more normal than the rest of the situation – Sherria was wearing a top hat, to which she had stapled a sign reading SKY MAGIC DOESN'T WORK ON HANGOVERS (Wendy and Carla, who had initially told her that this was embarrassing and ridiculous respectively, had lasted about five minutes around their zombified guild before also donning fancy headwear reading SEE SHERRIA'S HAT) – but to Lyon, they were angels.
Wendy threw herself at Natsu, hugging him tightly. He did not seem to recognize her at first, staring blankly down at her, and it was an age later that he placed his hand upon her head and a dreamlike "Wendy…" escaped his lips.
"Natsu? Are you alright?" she wondered.
Lyon jumped in. "Wendy, Sherria, can you check him for enemy enchantments? He seems to have gone a bit mad…"
"I don't smell any," Wendy reported, glancing up at her friend with concern. "You don't look too good, Natsu. Do you need healing? Your arm's all bandaged up-"
Natsu pulled roughly out of her embrace. His left hand went to his bandaged right arm, holding it protectively against his chest. "My arm's fine! I'm fine! It's Lucy who isn't fine, and I need to find her!"
"…Huh?" Sherria blinked.
My thoughts exactly, Lyon sighed inwardly. "Natsu thinks that Zeref kidnapped Lucy two days ago."
"But she was here just this morning!"
"That's what I've been trying to tell him…"
"I know Zeref has her!" The Dragon Slayer's voice was a terrible roar; Wendy was the only one who didn't take a step back.
"Look, Natsu." Lyon tried his best to be reasonable. "Lucy is on a quest to reunite Fairy Tail. She came to Marguerite Town to recruit Wendy, Carla, Cana and some of the others. She also helped save Lamia Scale and the town last night when we were attacked. There was nothing wrong with her, and she certainly didn't seem like she was in any danger."
"She can't be reuniting the guild," came the feverish response. "She wouldn't. Zeref must be controlling her somehow."
"I couldn't smell any magic on her except her own," Wendy spoke up tentatively. "And she wasn't hurt or acting strange, Natsu. If she was being forced to act against her will, I'm sure one of us would have noticed…"
"Then he must be blackmailing her!"
The Lamia Scale mages exchanged glances. "Natsu," said Carla. "Lucy loves Fairy Tail more than anyone. Why would someone need blackmail to get her to reunite the guild?"
"Because I asked her to reunite the guild with me and she said no!"
This definitive pronouncement, this piece of irrefutable proof, was flung into the silence and fell flat.
"Umm, Natsu," Sherria ventured. "Did you… did you perchance do something to upset Lucy?"
"Huh? No, I… I don't think…"
"She threw a table at you in a crowded restaurant, Natsu," Happy piped up helpfully.
"Well, yeah, but Gray throws furniture at me all the time and it doesn't mean-"
"Lucy isn't Gray," Sherria said quietly. "And dinner out in a restaurant isn't a brawl in Fairy Tail's guildhall. I don't think you really understand much about women, do you, Natsu? I guess Lucy turned you down because you did something to upset her, but she did want the guild back together, so she set out on her own."
"No! I don't… Zeref… he was there…" Natsu's words lodged in his throat. "None of you believe me, do you?"
Wendy stepped forward and took his hand in both of hers. "It's not that, Natsu. Something has clearly upset you. But… we've spent these past two days with Lucy, and she's fine. Really, she is. There's no need for you to be so worried."
Jerking away from her, Natsu drew himself up to his full height, wild hair and ragged cloak producing a silhouette worthy of a dragon's son. "I'll believe that when I've seen it with my own eyes. I'm gonna find her. If she throws another table at me, then so be it. At least I'll know she's alright."
Turning on the spot, he tried to catch Lucy's scent, but too many guild mages had been and gone that morning; either the trail had naturally been obscured, or Zeref's magic was still affecting him. "Lyon, where did she go?"
"She took the northern exit from the town. That's all I know."
"She could be going anywhere," Natsu growled. "What about Zeref?" At the uneasy looks the others exchanged, he persisted, "Surely your guild has heard something about him these past ten months! What the hell's he been doing?"
"We haven't heard anything," Lyon asserted. "It's been quiet ever since Tartaros was destroyed. There's been little enough dark guild activity as it is, let alone anything traceable back to Zeref himself. It's only because Fairy Tail swears it that we believe he's alive at all…"
"He is alive. And he's moving against Fairy Tail. Against me." Natsu smacked his burning fist into the palm of his other hand, but the gesture was cold, not defiant. "I'm gonna ask the other big guilds. Someone must have heard something about Zeref. And if I find him, I find Lucy."
"Natsu…" Wendy murmured.
He ignored her. "Happy! Let's go!"
The blue Exceed cast a single longing glance at Wendy and Carla, but there was nothing hesitant about his "Aye, sir!", or the wings which bore him faithfully after his friend.
"You too, huh, Happy?" Carla wondered, as they watched their two friends disappear down the street.
"Mad," Lyon muttered, and he staggered off in search of somewhere to lie down, Sherria at his side. Only Wendy and Carla remained in the street, hand in hand, long after Natsu and Happy had left Marguerite Town. Whatever had happened to Natsu, it had spooked him badly, and no one who knew him well could brush that off so easily.
Lucy and Zeref stood side by side beneath a glorious afternoon sun, looking down upon a village that was beneath no sun at all.
"Were you expecting this?" Lucy asked, in an eerily detached voice.
Zeref responded in kind. "I was not. Were you?"
"Nope."
"How peculiar."
They were on their way to the mage guild Blue Pegasus, where, according to Zeref's supposed intelligence network, she would find four former members of Fairy Tail. He hadn't told her who – making life difficult for her seemed to be how he was keeping himself entertained on their journey – but she was beginning to understand how he did things. Given the value he placed upon Dragon Slayers, and the fact that his alleged contacts in the Rune Knights had yet to yield the location of Gajeel's current mission, Lucy suspected that Laxus was one of the four, and that gave away the identities of the other three.
"You know," Lucy remarked offhandedly, "if I were a Spymaster General, and I had been sent to this location by a spy who did not have the observational capacity to notice, nor the presence of mind to report, the situation in this village, I think I'd fire them."
"I might just do that," agreed Zeref.
On their journey north, they had stopped off at a tiny settlement known as Helvola Village, where Juvia was currently living.
Zeref had assured her that this detour wouldn't take long.
Zeref had assured her that it would be easy to swoop in, talk to Juvia, and then resume their journey.
Zeref had assured her that it was an entirely ordinary village, where nothing interesting ever happened.
Zeref had been wrong.
"I don't suppose you've got an umbrella hidden away in that little extradimensional pocket where you keep your notebook, have you?"
"To be perfectly honest with you, Lucy, my Requip Space is mostly full of books."
The thing was, it was raining in Helvola Village.
Hopefully, Lucy tried, "Think we could assemble them into a kind of portable roof?"
"Lucy, my books are immeasurably more valuable than your dry clothes."
"…Yeah, you're going to get along so well with Levy when we find her."
To be more precise, it was raining in Helvola Village, and nowhere else.
Not a cloud floated in the endless blue, save the coal-black roof hovering over the settlement like the rain god's gavel, poised to bring judgement upon the people below. No shadow was cast beyond the outermost ring of houses; not a drop of rain fell beyond the village boundaries – and nor could it have done, for all the rain in the entire world seemed to be falling right there, right then. It was a drowned town built at the bottom of heaven's drainpipe, and some careless angel had left the shower on.
Lucy mused, "You'd think, if this was a regular feature of a village in Fiore, I'd have heard about it before now."
"Quite."
"Juvia said that she used to bring rain wherever she went, before she came to Fairy Tail, but…"
"This seems less like a temperamental magical aura and more like a sign of the apocalypse," Zeref finished. "No one releases that much magic by accident. Something's not right here."
"Perfect circle of rain appears above an ordinary village? Yeah, I'd figured that one out for myself, thanks."
By mutual consent, they stopped just outside the village. Rain fell endlessly before them, not in identifiable droplets but as a storm so intense that the water poured like molten silver, blood streaming from a wound in the sky. The ground vibrated with it. There was none of the tropical humidity Lucy had expected in the air, and no spray upon her face, although she could have reached out and immersed her hand in the waterfall.
"Do you think Juvia is doing this?" she asked.
"Yes. But I don't like it."
"Nor do I. I know full well that you're going to make me walk in it."
Zeref placed his palm under the stream of water, briefly, and drew it back, examining the rivulets left on his skin like they were liquid diamond. "I think she's hurt. Badly."
Lucy blinked. That was not the sarcastic comment she'd been expecting. "You think…?"
"I need her alive. Come on."
Zeref stepped forward and vanished, one more shadow consumed by the rain.
Lucy really, really didn't want to follow him, but if Juvia really was in danger, she couldn't waste any more time worrying about getting wet. Bracing herself, she entered the drowned village at a run – and made it all of about three steps before realizing her naivety. That was how long it took for her outfit to reach its maximum saturation level. Once that threshold had been crossed, it didn't matter whether she spent three seconds or three days in Helvola Village… at least until the eternal downpour drained all her memories of the sunlit lands and her soul was condemned to dwell forever in the grey.
Zeref, who had come to the same conclusion, was waiting for her to catch up, and they set off together at a steady pace.
The driving rain reduced their vision to mere inches. Everything beyond that was a murky, hostile mystery. Worst of all was the drumming: the ceaseless battering of droplets on stone, on slate, on glass; the war-drums of an intangible, undefeatable enemy. Ghostly faces flickered and vanished at the windows. Perhaps they were curious residents, imprisoned within their houses by the downpour. Perhaps they were mirages, imprisoned within the water itself.
Lucy kept one hand on her keys. The perpetual grey brought with it an indescribable despair, disarmingly mild and fatally pervasive, and she found herself agreeing with Zeref's assessment more and more: something was wrong here, and it ran far deeper than her sodden clothes.
That was why she picked up the pace again, jogging on ahead to study rain-buried house numbers until she found the cottage she was looking for. At least, she assumed the building hiding behind the waterslide of a front door was a cottage – that was the kind of building she would have expected a tiny rural settlement like Helvola to contain, but the rain made everything unfamiliar.
She raised her hand to knock, then paused and turned to Zeref. Beneath the rain, conversation was only possible if they took it in turns to shout into each other's ears. "Didn't you say Juvia would recognize you from Tenrou Island? Aren't you going to stay back?"
He shook his head, a grim flash in the grim grey. "I don't think she's going to answer the door."
Lucy knocked anyway, and rang the doorbell, and shouted too. It was the first time she had prayed for Zeref to be wrong without an ounce of spite, though it was no more successful than the times she had simply wanted to hold it over him. Juvia did not open the door.
She knocked again, harder. Too hard. The door swung inwards. It hadn't even been locked.
As she headed inside, Zeref right behind her, Lucy found herself standing up straighter as the pressure she had grown accustomed to vanished from her shoulders. Sheltered by the roof, the drumming of the storm had faded to a bearable backing track, conducted by the solo drip, drip, drop of some quiet internal leak.
"Juvia?" Lucy shouted. "Are you here? It's me, Lucy!"
Drip, drip, drop.
From the inside, it was indeed a cottage, where every piece of wooden furniture was seen not as a necessity but as another chance to express artistic talent. Under other circumstances, it would have been quaint and cosy, but the walls which kept out the rain could not do the same to the shadows. In this village forsaken by the sun, a single lamp provided artificially golden light, homely at first glance, but inadequate against the pressing gloom.
Drip, drip, drop.
There was a figure lying on the sofa. A shadowy figure, who did not move at Lucy's approach nor stir at her shout.
"Juvia?" she repeated, taking brave steps forward, until she was close enough to understand what she was seeing.
A young woman who did not respond to her words, because she was not conscious to hear them.
Pale skin beaded with sweat, gleaming bone-white despite the lamp's thick gold.
Blankets that weren't stained with shadow, but with dark red, and that harmless little leak-
Drip, drip, drop.
-it wasn't rain after all.
Drops of blood fell one by one to the floor.
"JUVIA-!" This became a shriek as Lucy tore away the blanket, eyes widening in horror at what lay beneath.
There was a huge gash in her friend's side, crusted with old blood and oozing with new. A half-bound bandage, already saturated, had fallen away when she had passed out too soon. Her chest fluttered in faint, failing breaths. Each one bubbled blood up through the gaping wound, offering fleeting glimpses of organs that should have remained internal.
"Juvia, Juvia-!"
Lucy wasn't prepared for this horror. Wasn't ready. Couldn't face this without Natsu, Wendy, Erza. The panic and the urgency shorted out her brain. It wasn't a battle or a natural disaster; she could handle those. When her friend lay dying in front of her, she could do nothing but repeat her name over and over-
She dragged a deep breath into her lungs. Her team wasn't here, but she was, and that meant there was still a chance for Juvia. She needed to stop panicking and think.
What resources did she have? Her Spirits, but none of them possessed healing magic. Were there other mages in Helvola she could ask? Unlikely. It was far too small for a guild – and independent mages, especially in a village this close to Lamia Scale, were rare. Non-magical assistance, then? In all likelihood, one of the houses out there in the drowned settlement belonged to a local physician.
Possibility of finding it in the rainstorm? Low. But immeasurably better than standing here and watching Juvia die.
To Zeref, she demanded, "Did you notice a physician's sign on the way here?"
"No."
"Then we'll have to go out and look. You head further into town, I'll go-"
"There's no time."
"I know!" Lucy snapped at him; the calm persona she had stolen to enforce order upon her thoughts did not extend to her physical reactions.
Zeref ignored her. Unlike her, his composure was perfect, a combination of several centuries of practice and no emotional involvement in the scenario. He regarded Juvia's unconscious form with a distant curiosity, as if she were already dead and now ready for a mildly interesting dissection.
"Well, we have to do something!" she snapped.
"Mm," he said non-committedly, leaning closer to Juvia. She reached for him, maybe wanting to hit him for his dispassion, maybe wanting to pull her guild's sworn enemy away from her vulnerable friend, but he caught her wrist without looking. "I am doing something, Lucy."
"Zeref-"
"Don't distract me. You don't want me to get this wrong, believe me."
There was nothing humorous about it. She had never sensed any magic from him before, and now, all of a sudden, she did. He usually hid it with such thorough competence that only now was she beginning to grasp what four hundred years of growth could do to one's magical core. A storm stirred and stretched around him – a storm which, fully awoken, would render the torrential downpour no more impressive than a fine mist.
She understood, in that moment, that she had the same choice now as when he'd first appeared in her house: to fight until her inevitable death to protect Juvia from him, or to let him do as he pleased, and see if what they wanted wasn't so different after all.
Her hand tightened around her keys… and then fell away again. She stepped back.
Zeref did not notice. All his attention was fixed on Juvia, and the wound beneath his fingertips. He did not blink; his concentration was as palpable as his magic. Some part of her knew that disrupting either would bring disaster.
To her magical senses, his immense power was fighting itself. It writhed, struggling against his control, radiating a furious light that was painful to look at and surely only more painful to use. She had never seen anything like it before. It felt… wrong. Not evil, not even frighteningly strong, but unnatural, inhuman, agonizing.
And yet, to her eyes, the only sign that anything was taking place at all was the faint shimmer of light that ran down Zeref's arm, a white-silver iridescence hovering over his skin.
It took both forever and no time at all for Zeref to step back from Juvia's bed. The terrible drip, drip, drop had ceased, and in its place, the irregular dripping of his and Lucy's clothes onto the floor melded almost peacefully into the background.
Zeref's right hand was covered in blood, his other was clutching the pendant around his neck. He gave his head a vigorous shake, as if to throw something off, jaw clenched and eyes closed. He didn't react when she murmured his name.
Then his eyes snapped open. He spoke blankly, neutrally, as if reporting a fact that had nothing whatsoever to do with him: "She's stable."
"You- you can use healing magic?" Lucy stammered.
Now he turned to look at her. A flicker of life, of personality, returned to his eyes. That faint, familiar smile twitched at his lips, and teasing though it was, she thought she'd never been so pleased to see it. "There are very few kinds of magic that I can't use, Lucy. I would find your surprise quite hurtful, if not for the fact that it will translate into an enormous advantage for me come the First of September."
"Yeah, but… healing?"
"It comes in handy," he said easily.
"Well, I mean… sure, but… I thought true healing magic – Sky Magic – was lost. Only Sky Dragon Slayers like Wendy can use it. Can't they?"
His smile faded. There was the briefest of pauses, which she interpreted as him not wanting to admit that she was right, but not wanting to answer an academic question falsely, either.
"Zeref, are you a Dragon Slayer?"
"No."
She gave him a dubious look. "Right, in the same way you're not a Celestial Spirit mage?"
"I'm not one of those either. I am simply a man who knows a lot more about magic than you do."
"Clearly not that much more," Lucy noted. "It looked like using that magic, whatever it was, was causing you a lot of pain."
He stared at her for a long moment, considering. Then, carefully, he said, "It's not meant to be used by someone like me."
"Well, yes, it does seem to fly in the face of the whole death-mage thing you've got going on," she laughed.
"Certainly, the curse doesn't like it if I try too hard to save someone," he mused, glancing again at Juvia, her chest rising a little more with each fragile breath. "But as long as my reasons for wanting them alive are entirely self-serving, I can usually get away with it."
"What curse?" Lucy frowned.
"My curse."
"Yeah, what curse is that, exactly? The curse that makes you incapable of understanding modern fashion? Or the anti-logic one that makes you unable to see why holding one's Guild Master hostage might make them less likely to trust you?"
Now his attention was entirely focussed on her. All vestiges of that childish attitude were gone. All he would need was a thick cigar and an ancient tome under his arm, and then even he, perpetual teenager that he was, could have passed for a legitimate old man.
Lucy folded her arms defiantly. If he was going to be like this every time she made a joke-
"You don't know?" he asked. Then, softer, almost wondrous: "You don't know. Mavis didn't tell you?"
"Mavis hasn't told us anything about you."
"Nothing at all?"
"Nothing."
"Interesting."
Zeref did not speak for a while. There was no point interrupting his thoughts; it was clear that he wasn't in the room at all.
Then, at last, he said, "Oh. That's my fault. I just assumed you knew."
Lucy glared at him again. After waiting for so long, she had expected him to come out with at least some level of explanation. "Well, now that we've worked out that I don't, perhaps you'd like to fill me in."
"I wouldn't like to, no, but I suppose I ought to," Zeref sighed. After another moment spent composing himself, he began, "It's called the Curse of Contradiction. The more I value the lives of those around me, the less control I have over the death magic that infects my body… and it begins taking the lives of any plant, animal or person unfortunate enough to get too close. Only when I forget the value of a life do I gain full control over the curse's power, and I am able to use it as my own.
"In short, when I want people to die, they die. When I don't want people to die, they still die. All the while, I, myself, am cursed with immortality. You want to know why I have the reputation I do, Lucy, you don't have to look much further than that."
"That's…"
Lucy tried to imagine it, and couldn't. Physically couldn't. She pictured herself walking back into the guildhall after their year-long separation – surrounded by family – by friends – feeling her heart lift with those feelings of love and home… and she could get no further. Her mind refused to apply his words to that scenario.
Error. Invalid operation.
Results too horrific to be computed.
"Yeah," he said tersely.
"Is there anything that can be done about it?"
"No. Believe me, I've tried." He forestalled her protest with a raised hand. "I appreciate the thought, Lucy, but as I've said before, you're not going to think of anything that hasn't already occurred to me in four hundred years."
I was only trying to help, she thought sullenly, but given the circumstances, it did not seem right to say it out loud. "But… that can't be right. If your magic had been killing things all around us since we started this mission, I'd have noticed."
"I have developed methods of dealing with it. I've become very good at it, over the centuries. Like all magic, my curse obeys rules… rules that are tied to emotion and thought and all manner of other such unruly factors, but they are rules all the same."
"How good are these methods?" she asked. When he just shrugged, not an I don't know but an I'm not prepared to share that, it became an explicit accusation: "Zeref, am I in danger from you?"
"Not at all," came the immediate response.
"Because you don't value me?"
"Absolutely," he affirmed, almost proudly. "This little quest of ours is nothing more than a game to me, and you are my pawn."
Lucy rolled her eyes. "I feel so loved."
"Don't feel loved," he said amicably. "Feeling loved is very likely to get you killed."
Maybe she should have been offended, but her brain was still stuck in the error loop of simultaneously applying and rejecting the function death to everyone she treasured, and there was no room there for true anger, for genuine hurt. "Was it your curse that I was sensing just now? It felt like your magic was fighting against itself."
"Not quite. What you felt was my curse fighting against the side effects of the other magic I was using. It is not normally so painful. Not to me, at least."
"And this curse… it was done to you, by something? Or someone?"
"You didn't honestly think that this whole perpetually-fourteen-years-old-thing was my idea, did you?" Zeref inquired, eyebrows raised. "While I'll admit that looking fourteen is greatly preferable to looking my actual age, I'd have preferred to get a little older before freezing my body in time. And immortality would have been a lot better without, you know, everyone I love dying at my touch."
"How did it happen?" Lucy whispered.
"That, I am not prepared to tell you."
He met her gaze evenly, and those black eyes she had only just started to understand were a hundred times less scrutable than before.
"Fine," she conceded. "Zeref, I… I'm sorry about what I said earlier. I wouldn't have made light of it, if I'd known."
"Don't feel too sorry for me, Lucy." For the first time in a while, there was a touch of condescension in his smile – and she realized with a sudden jolt that his walls were back up again. If she had glimpsed anything real behind them, it was once again beyond her reach. "I've killed a lot of people by accident. Many of them were people I cared for. But I've killed a lot more than that on purpose, and will continue to do so, once our non-aggression pact is up."
So he said, but how could she not feel sorry for him? His smile looked so easy, but she knew the truth, now.
How much of his indifference to his situation was the truth?
And how much of it was to keep her alive?
"Lucy, look. Have you seen the weather?"
The switch from sentimental to mundane threw her. It was so lame, so boring, so paradoxically normal that it had to be a joke, but as she rounded on him in outrage at the poor timing, he simply nodded towards the nearest window. "The rain has stopped."
"…Oh. So it has."
Outside the window, the thick clouds remained, but the shadow they cast over the village was nothing compared to the rain that had swallowed it whole. The main road still resembled a shallow river, but the water level was slowly decreasing, leaving behind a coat of black silt. Colour returned to the town as the rain's despair was banished.
"Is she…?" Lucy wondered, throwing a panicked glance towards Juvia, and relaxing again only upon seeing the tell-tale motions of breathing.
"She's stable. Her magic was going haywire because she was so close to death, I think. It was an odd wound," he pondered, drifting back into that distant tone. "A physical cut shouldn't have affected her water body, and yet it did. The magic that caused it was unfamiliar to me."
"You really have no right knowing that much about Juvia," Lucy said quietly.
"Ah, but I would have struggled to heal the wound without that knowledge, so at least I'm putting it to good use as your ally. You don't need to worry until the First of September, no?"
"I guess not," Lucy answered obligingly, though she rather thought that she might as well get her worrying in now. If he really did know that much about her entire guild, by the First of September it would be too late. How did one fight such a well-informed opponent?
Her shoes squelched upon the floor as she approached Juvia's bedside once more. The water mage stirred but did not wake, twitching restlessly in her unconsciousness, yet every sign of life was a blessing. Carefully, Lucy peeled away what remained of the bandage and cast it aside. Juvia's injury was no longer life-threatening, but it hadn't vanished completely.
"I want to dress this properly," she declared. "There should be somewhere in the village to buy medical supplies."
She was expecting to have to fight for it – surely Zeref would object to wasting more time in this village, when they had an entire guild to round up – but he simply nodded. "Fine by me."
"Really?"
"I'm not an entirely unreasonable man, Lucy," Zeref said mildly. "I saved her because I need her back in the guild; it would defeat the purpose entirely for her to be bedridden with an infected wound on the date of your reunion. Besides, there's little point in leaving Helvola until you've spoken to her."
"Oh. Well, fine. Guess we're going shopping, then." She considered this for a moment. Well, shopping with the Black Mage probably wasn't more weird than being on a quest with him. "Since it's stopped raining, I might as well change into some dry clothes… that's your cue to turn around, by the way."
"Very well." Zeref sat cross-legged on the floorboards, staring at the wall as another little puddle began to well up around him.
Lucy glared suspiciously at his back. "If you peek, I'll kill you."
"No, you won't," came the calm response. "Though I expect you'd have a pretty good go at it."
She glared at him some more, but her glares had never stopped her somewhat tactless teammates, and anyway, trying to threaten this man was like trying to talk Natsu down from a fight or get Gray to put some clothes on: she'd have better luck with that one-on-one match against Acnologia. There were, miraculously, some dry clothes at the very bottom of her bag, and she changed into them as hastily as she could, before hanging her sodden ones up. If she was lucky, they might dry before the end of the century.
"Alright, I'm done," she said, and her companion stopped treating the wallpaper like a tome of ancient magic and got back to his feet. "…Huh. You really didn't try to peek."
"You told me not to."
"Sure, but… that really doesn't work as often as you'd think," Lucy sighed, wondering what it would feel like to get out of the bath without worrying that half the guild was sat in her living room.
"And besides," he added, as if she'd not spoken, "if I wanted to see you in your underwear, all I'd have to do is open a back issue of the Weekly Sorcerer."
Heat flooded her cheeks. "Do you have to keep bringing that up?" she grumbled. "Well, it's not like I care what you think. Aren't you going to get changed too?"
"No, I'm fine as I am."
"…Really?" His hair was plastered to his face; water dripped from his fingers as if his nails were enthusiastic little clouds; and his clothes… well, the tailors of four hundred years ago clearly hadn't designed their outfits to stand up to diluvial downpours. He would have looked more elegant if he used one of Juvia's spare bedsheets as a makeshift toga. It was almost impossible to believe that the poor, bedraggled mage in front of her was responsible for the incredible power she had sensed earlier. "You look like a drowned mouse."
"I believe the phrase is drowned rat."
"Mouse suits you better."
"I think not. Rats have a far more sinister reputation."
"But mice are much more curious," Lucy pointed out. "Plus, they're smaller and look cute and harmless, but an infestation is just as dangerous to your guildhall."
"Quite," he laughed.
"Tell me, is the real reason why you're not getting changed that you took all your spare clothes out of your Requip Space in order to make more room for books?"
"…Might be."
"Yeah, I'm definitely going to introduce you to Levy. And when I do, I'm going to give you both a lecture on how to pack for quests. Now, are you coming shopping or what?"
If Lucy, who had spent the past ten months living in the nation's capital city, had been asked to design a rural settlement, she'd probably have come up with Helvola Village: quaint, picturesque cottages; acres of golden farmland; flowerboxes packed with nature's jewels in every colour, without any of the pretentiousness that Crocus was only just beginning to shed with time, because nature here wasn't a government-issued beatification project, but a part of the lifestyle. It was the sort of sleepy farming village romanticized by city-dwellers – a place where everything was traditional and peaceful and so perfect that they'd never move there in a million years.
Unfortunately, it was safe to say that Helvola Village was not currently at its best.
The death throes of Juvia's magic had not been kind to it. The water had drained from the roads, leaving trails of black mud behind it, better suited to winding their way through the dark and stormy forests of a nightmare than a human settlement. Silt smothered the flowerboxes so vital to the village's inherent ruralness. The last echoes of the downpour rushed from burst drainpipes and thatched roofs, dishwater-grey as it streamed through the air and filthy-brown the instant it made contact with the swamp beneath.
Already the townsfolk were out with brooms and shovels, making defiant headway into the blocked roads. Those whose houses had not stood up to the flash flood were dragging out wet furniture, hoping that the sun, which was presently burning through the last of the clouds with a vengeance, would be able to salvage their sofas.
It was a scene all too familiar to Lucy. First Lamia Scale's guildhall, now Helvola Village… not for the first time, she found herself wondering if there were tangible side effects to carrying the spirit of Fairy Tail across the kingdom – as if the cost of drawing her old friends back together was to carve a trail of destruction wherever she went. The fact that her team were usually the ones averting the crisis, rather than causing it, never seemed to matter when it came to assigning blame.
She thought about what could have come so close to killing Juvia, and shivered. Whoever had wounded her might well be hiding in this very town right now. Their magic had been dangerous and unusual; even Zeref had commented upon it.
And as for Zeref… He didn't seem worried that there was a powerful enemy lurking in the shadows, but then he was immortal; he didn't need to worry about anything. If it came down to it, could she count on his help? In the chaos and the adrenaline of the battle in Marguerite, she had believed that he would step in to save her… but things were far less clear in the light of an ordinary day.
She hadn't known what to make of him before, and now she was even less certain. She didn't know what he wanted, why he wanted it, or the lengths to which he would go to get it.
That afternoon alone, she had learnt more about him than anyone else in her guild knew, but the more she discovered, the less sense he seemed to make. It had been so straightforward when he was the villain responsible for Deliora; for Grimoire Heart's attack; for the tragedy that was the war against Tartaros. When he was a man made immortal against his will, a man cursed to kill anyone he cared about… things suddenly became a lot more complex. It was as difficult to reconcile with his casual attitude around her as it was with his dark and twisted legacy.
It didn't put her a single step closer to understanding why he wanted Fairy Tail back together – or why he would immediately try to destroy it.
And he was dangerous.
She had already known that; it followed in simple deductive steps from his being an immortal death-mage. Still, if he was telling the truth, it wasn't just his disregard for human life that was a threat, but his regard for it too. Even if he assured her that he wasn't going to kill anyone, how could she take his word for it, when even he admitted how difficult his curse was to control?
As they entered the general store together, Lucy thought that she had never felt the presence of walls and a roof more in her whole life.
If his curse went out of control, would she be able to get out of the way in time? What of the others in the store? What was the range on it; how much warning would they get?
A quick glance around revealed one customer browsing nearby, and another talking to the cashier. None of them so much as glanced up as the bell tinkled to announce their entrance. They had no idea that a man who could kill them all in an instant had just entered the shop-
"You're no different," Zeref said quietly.
She managed not to jump, but her heart was beating so loudly at the shock that the reverberations echoed through her voice. "What?"
"You've got that look on your face," he continued, and there was nothing childish about his demeanour. "The one that says you're trying to work out how long it would take me to kill everyone in this room; I've seen it a thousand times."
"No, I- I wasn't-" But he'd read her mind perfectly. She stumbled over the words and her defence fell flat.
He continued, "And I said, you're no different."
"What do you mean?"
"How long would it take you to kill everyone in here? Longer than it would take me, granted, but not by much. Your Spirits might refuse, but you could do it yourself easily enough. The blades of your Cancer form; the bow of your Sagittarius form…" He indicated the three oblivious strangers one by one. "You could put an arrow into eye and heart and throat, and the only person in the whole village with any hope of stopping you would be me."
The incomprehensible accusation overloaded the volume control circuits in her brain, and she shouted, "I WOULD NEVER DO THAT!"
"Well, neither would I," Zeref said, in the same quiet tone as before. "So I'd appreciate it if you would stop looking at me as though I'm about to commit a massacre."
"I'm not the one who has no control over their death magic!"
"I told you, I have safeguards in place. No one will die unless I want them to."
"Well then, you'll have to forgive me for not trusting your moral fibre when you're PLANNING THE MASSACRE OF MY GUILD!"
He took a step back. Something flashed through his eyes – something forbidden; something raw; shackles breaking in some hidden deep-
And then it was gone. His left hand scrabbled at the pendant around his neck as he turned back towards the doors, and his words were devoid of anything but resignation. "Forget it."
"Where are you going?" Lucy shouted after him.
"Somewhere else."
The door swung vigorously back and forth in his wake, and in the flashes of the street outside she could see no sign of him – no fresh footprints in the mud; just him gone without a trace.
The ephemeral flash-bang of anger, the one that showed up just to fling a table at a best friend or antagonize an immortal death-mage and never stuck around to face the consequences, was already merely a blotch of black imprinted upon her vision, soon to be gone completely.
And in its wake, in the ear-ringing silence of her own explosion, her fear was slowly rising, gnawing away at her like the bite of a mouse…
Had she just upset the most dangerous man in the world?
"Excuse me, miss?" This time, she did jump, and one hand was on her keys as she whirled around. It wasn't a furious dark mage facing her, though, but an elderly gentleman, who peered at her with some concern. "Is everything alright?"
"Yes… I'm fine. Thanks."
To her dismay, it wasn't enough to make him move on. "You're not from round here, are you?"
"No… just passing through."
"Are you, perhaps, the mage who saved our village from that awful rain?"
"No, that wasn't me, it was…"
It was Zeref.
It was the man who, without being asked, without any attempt to use the situation for his own gain, and without any indication that he was doing anything out of the ordinary, had just saved Juvia's life.
And she hadn't said anything. Hadn't even thanked him.
What the hell was she doing?
He shouldn't have cared.
He shouldn't have cared, because fear was the correct response to discovering the nature of his curse.
He was dangerous to those around him. That was the bottom line; the truth and total of his being. Even the Twelve, his inner circle, whose faith in him was absolute, had each passed through astonishingly predictable stages of fear and wariness upon being told of his curse, ending only when sufficient time had passed without incident to prove to them that his coping mechanisms worked. Fear had faded, and become a trust far deeper than before, because there was one fewer secret between them and him.
This, too, would fade with time.
He shouldn't have cared. This was just a job. He was here because he had to be, not because he wanted to be. It wasn't supposed to be entertaining or enjoyable. This was the path he had walked for four hundred years, and it led to death and to salvation; this infinitesimal fraction of that journey meant no more than any other. The goal mattered. The scenery did not.
But he did care.
He cared, because a journey to round up the rest of Fairy Tail with her was just starting to become something he wanted to do, rather than something he had to do, and now it seemed they were right back to where they'd started.
He cared, because he'd thought that she'd already known about the curse, and was acting as she did towards him despite it, not in ignorance of it.
He cared, because even when she had found out, her sympathy had been true. Rather than degenerating into simple pity or selfish fear, she had, at first, returned to acting as she had before; relaxed and amused and angry with him… and he'd been stupid enough to hope that it might last.
He cared, because an inconceivably long time ago to anyone else, a young woman with hair just as blonde had spent three years tracking him down in order to tell him he was a moron to his face, and she hadn't been about to let a little thing like uncontrollable death magic get in her way… and it was becoming harder and harder not to think about her with every day he spent in Lucy's company.
He lay on his back in the forest clearing, arms akimbo and eyes firmly closed. It was oddly devoid of animal noise for a place so far from human interference, and far darker than the sun should have permitted. Each breath came gradually, as if he were meditating, although he was the last person with whom nature would have ever been at peace.
There he lay, failing at not thinking, and the grass withered beneath him, and the trees cast off their leaves in their haste to become the warped, blackened hands of winter, and wood pigeons fell from the sky with dull thuds, and the faintest oscillations of the ground slowly faded as the rabbits and moles and legions of worms that drove them lay still, and the wind tore uselessly at his face until that too realized it was useless and quietened, and all around him there was death and death and death.
He shouldn't have cared, but right there, right then, he did.
But, that was okay.
That was what his coping mechanisms were for.
By the time he went back, he wouldn't care at all.