The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Stellar Constellations Rise, Part 5
-What Was Cyphered In The Sky-
Summer in Jasmine always came early and stayed late, gilding the town in a brightness that endured long after the autumn storms had washed the colour from the other great cities of Fiore. If Crocus was the Blooming Capital, and Magnolia was a haven of resilience and adaptability, then Jasmine was the city of garden parties and fresh fruit desserts and cafés with more tables outside than in; of long days and gentle nights; of a sky soaked in lustrous amber.
At the heart of the city, where one might have expected to find a temple to the sun in a settlement so blessed by it, rose the majesty of Sabertooth's guildhall. It did not loom over the houses, but somehow reinforced them; a great and noble citadel where the summer came to rest once its time had passed. The city had always been prosperous, but its reputation had soared with its guild's rise to prominence, which in turn attracted more business and generated more mage work in the symbiotic way that guild and community always grew. In Jasmine, the founders' dream for Fairy Tail and Magnolia was quietly being realized by a guild with a much keener sense for staying out of trouble.
As Lucy made her way through the cobbled and airy streets, with Zeref neither sulking nor freaking out over her magic but back to being an unassuming presence at her side, she marvelled at how calm the city was. True, Marguerite on the Day of Thanksgiving was hardly a fair comparison, but Crocus wasn't that much larger than Jasmine, and yet the main road leading up to the guildhall was almost deserted.
It was quiet. Peaceful. Relaxing. After the destruction of Alchemilla Town and the rainstorm in Helvola Village, it made a nice-
No, scrap that.
As if there was going to be such a thing as an ordinary day on this most peculiar of road trips.
She felt it in the earth first: a low rumbling noise, as if a hundred pairs of feet were stamping upon the ground. Then the air picked up the vibrations, and the thunder rose from the level of a hundred pairs of feet to a hundred professional drummers to a hundred stepdancing elephants. And above it all clamoured the roar of a distant crowd, louder and louder and louder-
Then, as quickly as it had begun, the shouting dissolved into cheerfulness and laughter, and it faded from Lucy's hearing as the earth stilled and the air heaved a sigh of relief.
"Okay, what the hell was that?" she demanded.
"Beats me," Zeref said.
She gave him a suspicious glance, but it was more out of habit than anything.
They hadn't quite made it to the guildhall when it happened again.
It was louder, this time, and almost certainly centred on their destination: the caffeine-fuelled palpitations of a heart buried somewhere underneath Sabertooth. The chanting once again eclipsed the volume of the earth's drumming, and this time, they were close enough for Lucy to begin working out the words.
No, one word.
Repeated over and over.
"…waffleswaffleswaffleswafflesWAFFLESWAFFLESWAFFLESWAAAAAAAAAAAY!"
And the jubilation faded back into nothing.
"Are they saying waffles?" asked a baffled Lucy.
"Oh. Of course, that's what day it is. We have timed our detour well, haven't we?"
In the few hours since his mental breakdown over her magic outside Alchemilla Town, Lucy had forgotten just how insufferable he could be when he knew something she didn't. "What, Sabertooth's yearly ritual to appease the god of brunch?" she snarked.
Zeref smiled and said nothing, and they resumed walking, though with noticeably more trepidation on Lucy's part.
Outside the guild's front door, a mahogany cat with little white wings was frantically flying back and forth, trying to attract the attention of the few pedestrians hurrying by. By the time the next round of shouting ("…burgerburgerburgerburgerBURGERBURGERBURGERWAAAAAAAAAAAY!") died away again, Lucy was close enough to hear Lector's words: "Please! Master Sting needs help! Someone! Anyone! Please!"
On the verge of rushing towards him, Lucy found herself hesitating. Something wasn't right. Sabertooth were supposed to be well-liked in their home city, so why were all the citizens – those who weren't avoiding the too-empty streets around the guild at that – ignoring a direct plea for help?
And in case she needed any more proof that something was afoot, there was a tugging at her sleeve.
Zeref was gazing up at her like the embodiment of innocence. "Lucy, aren't you going to help him?"
In fact, she had been – right up until the moment Zeref had opened his mouth. "Uh, well, they're clearly in the middle of something. Maybe we should come back later."
"Can it be?" Zeref clapped his hands to his cheeks in mock astonishment. "Am I truly witnessing the once-in-a-lifetime sight of a Fairy Tail mage refusing to help her friends?"
"…Shut up, Zeref."
"They'll throw you out of the guild for this, Lucy."
"That's quite enough of your input, thank you very much."
Zeref didn't agree, if the way he seized Lucy's arm and began waving it in the air was any indication. "Hey, Exceed! I found you a volunteer!"
"Wait, hang on, no-"
"LUCY!" Tears of joy welled up in Lector's eyes, quenching her protest at once. "It is fate that you're here, yes? You'll help Sting, won't you?"
"Umm… I, well…"
Unfortunately, that was enough of an agreement for the Exceed, who was already dragging her enthusiastically towards the guildhall. She sent one pleading glance over her shoulder, which Zeref met with a cheerful wave of farewell.
Well, if there was one good thing about the ominous chanting starting up again ("…jellyjellyjellyjellyJELLYJELLYJELLYWAAAAAAAAY!") it was that it drowned out the sound of her so-called teammate sniggering.
Lucy stepped through Sabertooth's doors and into the aftermath of a war.
No, not a war – a slaughter. All around the hall, the mages of Sabertooth lay slumped across chairs and under tables, if not already unconscious then groaning pitifully as they waited for it to take them. Clothes were torn apart, belts ripped off and buttons popped away. Exposed skin was covered with crimson wounds-
No, that wasn't right either. She couldn't smell any blood. What she could smell was ketchup. And strawberry jelly. And baked beans, and garlic, and cinnamon, and roasted squash, and succulent steak; scents which would have drawn a crowd of gourmets to the guildhall if any one of them had been present in isolation, but which together only threw her stomach into confusion.
It couldn't have been a food fight – at least not in the sense Lucy was ashamed to admit that she had grown accustomed to in Fairy Tail. There wasn't enough collateral damage. The walls ought to look like smorgasbords, re-plastered in sauce as though a graffiti artist's disapproving mother had swapped his spray-painting kit for a lunchbox in the hope of luring him back to the straight and narrow… and yet the majority of the food was, miraculously, still on the plates.
No, the mages of Sabertooth weren't using food to fight against each other.
The mages of Sabertooth were fighting food itself.
And there were only three warriors left: at the high table, Minerva, Sting and Rogue were making their heroic final stand against the random foodstuffs streaming endlessly from the guild's kitchens.
As Lector herded her towards them, Lucy began to wonder if she wouldn't have preferred a more conventional kind of war.
Sabertooth's Guild Master was slouched pathetically over the table, sporting a look of defeat that only two things had ever been able to inspire in him: Fairy Tail's victorious team from the Grand Magic Games, and this half-eaten bowl of jelly. At Lucy's approach, though, he seemed to spring back to life all at once. "Lucy! What are you doing here? No, there's no time for that! You'll sub in for me, won't you?"
"Actually, I'm only here for-" she tried in vain, but between the Dragon Slayer and his Exceed partner, she had already been wrestled into Sting's former seat, facing down that same bowl of jelly and its very fearsome wobble.
"Hang on, that's cheating!" exploded Rogue. "You can't just switch with a completely different person!"
"Can too!" Sting retorted. "It was a Fairy Tail mage who ruined my game plan by showing up yesterday, so it's only right that a Fairy Tail mage fixes things by subbing in for me!"
"No! Being the Master does not give you the right to break the rules of Sabertooth's time-honoured tradition!"
"Besides," Minerva pointed out, "your so-called game plan of starving yourself so that you'd be able to eat more during the contest was only endangering your digestive system. Natsu and I may well have saved your life by interfering when we did."
Sting insisted, "No! Lucy and I are tag-teaming the contest, and that's final!"
"If it helps," Lucy ventured, raising her hand, "I don't really want any part in this. I'm only here to talk to Yukino. And, since you're asking, I already ate two breakfasts… and two lunches… someone else was paying, you see… and for the record, I was really hoping that being away from Fairy Tail would reduce the amount of sheer ridiculousness in my daily life…"
Sting clamped his hands down on Lucy's shoulders, a fierce and slightly manic intensity in his eyes. "We're in this together now, Lucy."
"But…"
"I suppose I have no complaints," Minerva mused. Lucy wondered absently how much training it had taken for Sabertooth's Princess to be able to eat jelly with such elegance. "Even with two of you, I shall prove victorious."
"I have complaints!" Rogue protested, but the other half of the Twin Dragons of Sabertooth was having none of it. So much for their legendary teamwork… though, as Lucy's own teammate had abandoned her to her gastronomic fate with a cheery wave, she was in no position to judge.
Groaning, she munched her way through the rest of the jelly… then a gooey chocolate brownie… and just as she was beginning to think that this might not be too bad, if they were onto the dessert courses (her second stomach was coming in rather handy), another chant began to pick up from the kitchens.
Of course it was the kitchen staff doing the chanting, Lucy thought distantly. Most of the guild mages are out for the count… Oh. Oh, no.
The word the chefs were repeating didn't sound much like another dessert. "…escargots! Escargots! ESCARGOTS!"
"Hang on," Lucy gulped. "Isn't that-?"
Yukino appeared before them like a Valkyrie, an apron as her armour and half-cleaned plates her trusty blades, here to separate the heroes from the fallen. Lucy noted with some trepidation that, in this war of attrition of appetite, she appeared to have forsaken her Guild Master and joined with the winning side.
"Allow me to present the head chef, with his brand new specialty for your palates," Yukino announced, bowing without dropping a single plate in the kind of balancing act that only professional waiting staff or incredibly agile mages could pull off, before stepping aside to allow the enemy general his entrance.
He was a huge man – quite possibly the hugest Lucy had ever seen. Worse, it was the kind of huge more often found on the battlefield than in a gourmet kitchen: outrageously large muscles only accentuated by the fact that he was wearing nothing more than a loincloth and a chef's hat, both of which looked comically (worryingly, in the case of the loincloth) too small. A black Sabertooth mark stood out proudly on the side of his neck. The dishes he balanced on his arms (thanks more to each arm being the width of a breakfast bar than any kind of dexterity) were full and steaming.
"ALRIGHT!" he roared. "Let's bring a touch of culture to this manly competition! Garlic butter escargots on a bed of- Lucy!"
"Ugh, can I have mine without the garnish of Lucy, please?" Rogue muttered.
Fortunately for him, all Lucy's attention was focussed on the giant chef. "Elfman! I didn't know you had joined Sabertooth!"
"I- uh- it's not-"
And then, to the astonishment of every competitor still clinging to consciousness, Elfman Strauss turned and fled from Sabertooth's guildhall, leaving plates of buttered escargots tumbling slowly through the air in his wake.
"What's up with him?" Sting wondered. "Did you scare him off, Lucy?"
"I don't think so?" Lucy responded from under the table, where she and Yukino were taking shelter from the raining snails.
Rogue sighed at the mess in the guildhall, and Sting, still frowning after Elfman, didn't seem to notice it at all. However, there was another who took it in her stride. One of the falling plates shimmered and vanished, switching places with the empty bowl of jelly in front of Minerva, who picked up her cutlery and began to tuck in as if nothing had happened.
"Would you look at that?" she remarked offhandedly. "The head chef has fled, and I'm the only one still eating. I believe that victory is mine."
Elfman's departure had brought a sudden end to the crisis that was the Tora Tora Tora Eating Contest, for which Lucy was profoundly grateful. She slouched indulgently in an armchair, not daring to complain about her bloated stomach when Sting and Rogue were in a far worse state. Yukino had insisted on completing her role as waitress – clearing all the dishes and cleaning up the spilled snails – as penitence for her defection during the food war, so Lucy was chatting to the others while she waited for Yukino to finish her shift.
Minerva insisted on apologizing for her past behaviour, and Sting was over the moon to learn of the quest to revive Fairy Tail, but what really caught Lucy's attention was the way that Rogue silently stared at her for several seconds, a little too close, before finally saying, "You don't look very kidnapped."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Oh!" Sting snapped his fingers. "I forgot all about that! Lucy! Have you been kidnapped?"
"What? No!"
"Are you sure? Are you being forced to say that? Is someone threatening you?" With a hasty glance left and right, Sting lowered his voice, adding, "Blink twice if you're being threatened!"
"I'm not being threatened!" Lucy exclaimed, deliberately keeping her eyes as wide open as possible. "Where is all this coming from?"
"Well, funny story. Natsu showed up at our guild last night, insisting that you had been kidnapped – right before he stole one of our jobs and disappeared again!"
"Natsu did? But…"
"He did seem unusually stressed," Rogue frowned. "He was ranting about Zeref and some black magic cult, and I did wonder…"
"Oh!" Lucy clapped a hand to her mouth. How could she not have thought of that? If Natsu had gone back to her flat at any point after their argument in Crocus, he would have been able to smell Zeref there… and wasn't kidnapping by far the most logical explanation?
She bit her lip; guilt dropped like a stone into a stomach already overflowing with food. So much had happened since then that the rage which had manifested as a thrown table and a dreadful vow had been left behind somewhere in Marguerite or Helvola or Alchemilla – well, most of it – and the thought that Natsu was out there searching desperately for her, even after everything she'd said to him…
It didn't sit well with her at all. She had to find him. She had to make sure he was okay.
The Sabertooth mages hadn't failed to notice her hesitation. "Lucy?" Sting prompted. "Don't tell me you actually have been kidnapped by Zeref?"
"No, of course not." She managed a weak smile; she hoped they would put it down to exasperation rather than internal conflict. "Do you know where Natsu went?"
Rogue answered. "I'm afraid not. We'd only just got that job in; no one got a good look at it before Natsu ran off with it. I know that it involved subduing a black magic cult, and that it must have been dangerous, because it carried an extremely high reward… but nothing more. Sorry."
"Okay. I'll…" Put Zeref on the case, she thought internally; that was Gray's and Natsu's locations she needed from him now. "Well, I'm sure I'll run into him sooner or later. Although, if you do happen to see him before I do, please let him know that I'm okay, and that I'll explain everything as soon as I can."
At their questioning looks, she added, "I ran off after an argument and I can see how he might have misinterpreted things. And no, I'm not telling you any more than that. It's private."
"So, if you weren't dragged here by the Black Mage after all, what are you doing in Jasmine?" Sting wondered.
I was, in fact, dragged here by the Black Mage… just not for any reason you could possibly imagine, she sighed internally."Actually, I was hoping to talk to Yukino. And since I'm getting Fairy Tail back together, I guess I should try and find out why Elfman fled the guildhall at the sight of me."
"You're in luck," Yukino smiled, setting down her broom. "I know where Elfman's likely to have gone. We can talk on the way."
Neither Yukino nor Libra had any objections to Lucy attempting to tap into Libra's power. In fact, after Yukino expressed her interest in Lucy's magic, they agreed to meet outside the city that evening so that Lucy could try the keyless transformation under Libra's constellation, and she could teach Yukino the basics of ordinary Star Dress. The keyless version, she would keep to herself. Nothing to do with Zeref's groundless paranoia, that. She just didn't want to give away all her secrets.
For now, Elfman was the most pressing concern.
As Lucy followed Yukino out of the city and up into the nearby hills, she felt her trepidation grow. She hadn't been expecting to run into Elfman at Sabertooth. She wouldn't have known how to approach him even without his bizarre reaction to seeing her. Mira and Lisanna were both good friends of hers, but she'd never been that close to their brother.
The winding trail took them from the plains, spun them around, and deposited them in a sheltered grove Lucy would never have found on her own. It was a different kind of peaceful to the city: a deep and undisturbed serenity, rather than a subdued hubbub of noise. Between the dainty brook, the chirruping of birds, and the slats of sunlight falling through the canopy, it certainly wasn't the first place Lucy would have looked for the Take Over mage of unrivalled strength – but there he was, sat on a boulder that barely looked large enough to take his weight. New sweat gleamed on tanned skin. He was still wearing his peculiar loincloth and chef's hat getup, with the addition of a white towel draped around his neck.
"Elfman!" Yukino called softly. "Lucy was wondering if she could speak to you…"
To Lucy's relief, the huge man made no attempt to flee as she approached, instead offering her a wan smile. "Hi, Lucy. Sorry about earlier."
"It's fine, don't worry about it. Though, umm… why did you run away from me?"
"It's silly, but…" A self-deprecating chuckle. "When I saw you, my first thought was that you had come to drag me back to Fairy Tail."
"…Ah."
"…That's exactly why you're here, isn't it?"
"Well… I wouldn't personally have picked the word drag… I am reviving the guild, though. Wendy, Juvia, Cana and Macao are all on board so far, and we're getting as many people as possible to meet back at the site of the old guildhall on the First of September. It would be great if you could join us…"
"I see," Elfman said. "Thanks, but I won't be there."
"Can I ask why not?" she ventured, and immediately regretted it. There was nothing like making it sound like an interview to turn up the awkwardness.
And yet he answered the question – answered it coldly, bluntly, and with the unapologetic ease that came from having already given the same answer a hundred times in his head. "I destroyed the guildhall and almost wiped out the entire guild in the process. I can't go back to Fairy Tail."
"It was Tartaros who destroyed the guildhall! No one has ever blamed you for that!"
"They should," he said, miserable and stubborn.
"Why? Do you think any of us would have acted differently, in your position? Lisanna was being threatened! Do you think I'd have stood there and said, 'Sure, go ahead, kill Lisanna, she's not my sister and therefore she's expendable'?"
"But you weren't in that position!" he burst out, before taking a deep breath and seeming to shrink back into himself. The flash of spirit was gone; she might as well have imagined it. He continued, the softness jarring against his mighty frame, against her memory of the warrior who had stood his ground against Bacchus: "You would never have been in that position. You and Natsu, Gray and Juvia, Erza, Mira – you're strong; you're reliable. I'm not. I've never been able to keep up with that, and when the guild started acting like I could, it's no wonder I let everyone down. I'm not a hero, and I don't belong in a guild of heroes."
"Elfman, you can't judge yourself by what happened during one fight! Everyone loses sometimes." Sensing that her line of argument wasn't going to work, Lucy changed tack. "And we can't all be the strongest either! If we all felt that way, no one but Gildarts would be good enough for the guild. Power has never been a measure of belonging in Fairy Tail – and trust me, no one knows that more than me. Sheer dumb luck landed me in Team Natsu. I've never been strong enough to keep up with Natsu and Erza, but it hasn't stopped me from having the time of my life with them… and it hadn't stopped you, either, until ten months ago."
"Yeah, well, I've had a lot of time to think these past months. The constant danger, the constant heroism, the constant need to prove myself… it's never been me, not really."
"That doesn't sound very Manly," Lucy quipped, but to her dismay, he didn't smile at all.
"I spent a lot of time fooling myself. I had this idea in my head that if my sisters were in danger, I'd somehow miraculously acquire the strength to protect them. But that's not how it works. When it came right down to it, I couldn't save Lisanna or the guild. I couldn't protect my family… either of my families. I was trying so hard to become something that just wasn't me. Realizing how badly I'd let everyone down against Tartaros really brought that home."
Sensing her confusion, he glanced up and offered her a rueful smile. "You know, I didn't join Sabertooth to work as a mage. I can if I want, Master Sting makes that very clear, but I haven't wanted to, not once. I had finally found something that I enjoyed, and when the old head chef retired three months ago and Sting chose to promote me, I realized it was something I was good at, too."
"You mean… you're genuinely Sabertooth's chef?" Lucy exclaimed.
He removed the puffy white hat from his head, where it had seemed so out of place to her, and turned it slowly, fondly, in his giant hands. "You won't know this, Lucy, but I used to cook all the time when I was younger. I did all the cooking for my sisters; I loved it."
"Really? I mean- I just assumed Mira-"
"Yeah, everyone does. But I was the one who taught her to cook. It came naturally to me, much more so than magic. In fact, I only learnt magic in the first place to help show Mira that her Take Over power didn't make her different or creepy. But as we began to adjust to life in the guild, my sisters wanted to spend mealtimes in the guildhall, to get to know our new colleagues better – and so did I, but… Everyone there seemed to care a lot more about whether or not I had finally managed that Full-Body Take Over than my hobbies. So, you know, I always figured I'd learn magic with my sisters first, and then I could take up cooking again when I was older.
"Then we thought Lisanna had died… and I had to become stronger, so that Mira would never have to cry again. That's what people expected of me: to step up; to be a Man. There was no place at Lisanna's graveside for someone who would rather share their new recipe than fight… there was no place in Fairy Tail for someone who just wanted to live quietly. So I became the Man that Fairy Tail wanted me to be, not realizing that it wasn't the man I wanted to be until it was too late."
"Is that why you came to Sabertooth?" Lucy inquired.
He glanced away. "Things happened," he muttered evasively. "Besides, I knew that the disbanding of Fairy Tail was my fault. I was too ashamed to be around anyone."
"It wasn't your fault. It had nothing to do with the destroyed guildhall, or even Tartaros."
Elfman said nothing, and as Lucy shifted from one foot to the other, wondering how much she could tell him and what difference it would make even if she did, he finally spoke up. "I like it here. It's not like Fairy Tail, with segregation between the serving staff who don't use magic and the guild mages who do. The Princess – uh, Minerva – is my part-time sous-chef, and Yukino does a lot of waitressing between jobs. Things like the Tora Tora Tora contest are a fundamental part of the guild's culture. The fact that I don't actually do any mage work is no big deal. I'm treated the same as everyone else."
"You could always come and be Fairy Tail's chef, once we're back together again," Lucy argued. "We would accept you too-"
"Do you think so?" he said softly. "Or do you think returning would subject me to a constant stream of people doing their best to convince me to use magic again, dragging me into fights, and resolving to help me overcome my trauma and become a true mage once again… in other words, unintentionally yet ceaselessly working to remind me that any career other than being an S-Class Mage is inadequate?"
Lucy had nothing to say to that. She knew she wouldn't… but if he hadn't told her so in those exact words, would she have tried automatically, believing she was helping? She wasn't sure.
"I like it here," he repeated. "I can do what I love without feeling inferior to those around me. I'd rather be myself here than go back to being someone I'm not in Fairy Tail. I'm sorry, Lucy, but I won't be there on the First of September."
"Zeref, what's our margin of error on this quest?"
Lying back in the long grass, basking in the light of the setting sun, Zeref might have been asleep – but Lucy knew better, and as she dropped cross-legged to the ground beside him, his eyes opened just enough for that dark gaze to focus on her. "What do you mean?"
"You said we needed most of Fairy Tail back together, but not all. I'm asking how to interpret the word 'most' in this context. Are we talking more than half? All but one or two? Ninety percent, plus/minus ten percent?"
"Good question," he pondered. "The important thing, I think, is that the guild feels whole. There has to be enough people to justify the belief of everyone there that Fairy Tail exists once more. Having a few people missing would be preferable to forcing anyone to be there against their will. But no, I wouldn't know how to start quantifying that. It is my understanding that there were only twenty-one members present the first time it happened, but the circumstances would be almost impossible to replicate. The more people we can gather, the better."
"The first time what happened?" she asked quickly, and his lips twitched in a faint smile.
"Obviously, I'm not going to answer that. Let's just say that we need as many members back in the guild as possible, and we'll have to hope that it's enough. Why do you ask?"
"Elfman said no."
"Hmm." Zeref sat up, drawing one knee up to his chest and leaning forwards. "Well, Wendy said no too, and she changed her mind after Lamia Scale was attacked. Give me twenty-four hours to put together an assault against Sabertooth-"
"And let me stop you right there," Lucy sighed, giving him a reproachful look. "Non-aggression pact, remember? You're not launching an assault on anywhere."
"You're no fun."
She ignored this. "And besides, it worked to convince Wendy because her doubts came from the fact that Fairy Tail no longer existed, and the fight let us prove to her that our guild's spirit was still alive. That's not Elfman's problem. Even if Fairy Tail was completely back to normal, he still wouldn't return."
"This bothers you?" Zeref said suddenly, curiously.
"Well… yes, I guess." She shook her head, but it didn't seem to clear her confusion. "I don't know. I think Mira and Lisanna might be able to change his mind, but then I think I don't want to change his mind. His reasons for not wanting to come back are good ones. He's pursuing his dream of becoming a chef, and he believes Sabertooth is a better place to do that than Fairy Tail. I'm not entirely sure why he believes that – I'm certainly not convinced of it myself – but, well, I'm not going to force someone to come back if they don't want to. It's his choice."
Zeref tilted his head. "Personally, I believe that choosing a stable job in a sensible guild is an excellent life decision which shows remarkable common sense for someone who was once in Fairy Tail."
"Well, now which one of us is no fun?" she snorted. "Anyway, I'm supposed to be meeting Yukino in a few minutes to do these tests with Star Dress – did you want to come?"
"No, I'll watch from up here. It isn't a good idea for me to get too close to Sabertooth. Sting and Rogue will both recognize me, if nothing else; we passed each other in the aftermath of Tartaros."
"Suit yourself."
The first time Lucy tried to access Libra's Star Dress form, nothing happened.
Well, it wasn't as though she'd been expecting anything to happen.
Tapping the power of an uncontracted Spirit wasn't just impossible – it went against everything that her magic stood for. Celestial Spirit magic was founded on trust. Yes, it was about agreements and compromises and contracts, but these were nothing more than the codification of faith; a language through which the love between owner and Spirit could be communicated to others.
So Layla had always told her.
So Lucy had always known in her heart, long before her mother's wisdom had put words to that self-evident certainty.
She had Libra's permission to try, but no key, and most of all, no existing relationship with the Spirit. Therefore, it wasn't going to work. Even Loke, who passed through his Gate whenever the fancy took him, sometimes to save Lucy from lakes of lava and sometimes to make uncalled-for comments about her and whichever male member of the guild she happened to have gone on a job with that day… even Loke could only come to his key; could only come to her. She would gladly have given permission for him to do the same for Yukino, but he couldn't, wouldn't.
She and Loke were bonded.
She and Libra weren't.
Zeref could freak out as much as he wanted. He could let his paranoia sabotage his own quest more effectively than two hundred mid-life-crisis Elfmans; he could spin conspiracy theories until he had enough webbing to turn Mercurius into a spider's lair for All Hallows' Eve, and it wouldn't get around the simple fact that Celestial Spirit magic didn't work like that.
Lucy tried to embrace the sense of Libra's magic in the same way she did Scorpio's or Loke's, but nothing happened.
"Well, I did tell him it was impossible," she muttered, opening her eyes.
Yukino shifted anxiously from foot to foot. "Do you want to go back? It's getting late."
She did, and yet… she hesitated.
"Let me try once more," she requested, impulsively, and Yukino nodded.
Lucy closed her eyes and tried to fall back into that contemplative state. She had never learnt meditation, not properly, but she had picked up from Capricorn what the serenity of stargazing had failed to grant her, and this time, it wasn't coming to her as easily as usual. There was a little ripple in the dark waters of her mind, a disturbance, twisting the reflections of the stars upon her soul.
Why was she doing this?
She had already tried and failed. She hadn't felt even the faintest shiver of power to indicate that something important lay just out of reach. That was enough to prove that she was right and Zeref was wrong. But she was still here trying, even though it ran counter to everything that Celestial Spirit magic was to her.
Was there a part of her which wanted this to work? Adding Libra and Pisces to her repertoire of Star Dress forms would be useful in theory, but she was happy with her own Spirits and her own power. If it were just about collecting Spirits, she'd have accepted the last Zodiac keys when Yukino offered them to her during the Grand Magic Games. If anything, she would rather it didn't work, because it would mean that her mother was right about this magic and Zeref was wrong… and maybe she could gloat about it a little too.
No, she wasn't trying because she wanted it to work.
She was trying because Zeref needed her to try.
Because somewhere along the way, she had come to accept that his curiosity was genuine, and that the irrationality of his concern over her magic did not make it any less sincere.
Because even destroying Fairy Tail had taken a back seat to getting to the bottom of this mystery: he had his own sinister reasons for their quest, but even the darkest and cruellest of them had submitted to his curiosity, his love of learning something new.
Because when he had a puzzle, that was when the walls came down; when his childish and immortal sides seemed to merge into a single living, emotional, real human being; when black eyes shone with such life that she could not believe this was a man who wanted to die. That was when he seemed to forget that they were soon to be enemies, because solving the puzzle was far more important. And it was infectious: both his worry, and his excitement. Those were the moments when being around him was wonderful.
Right now, her magic was that puzzle.
Nothing had happened the first time she tried to use Libra's magic.
Then again, she hadn't expected anything to happen, and perhaps that was why it didn't.
She didn't care whether or not it was possible to access Libra's form without a key. What she wanted was to be able to go back to Zeref, look him in the eye, and say with certainty that it did or didn't work. For there to be no doubt, nothing she could have done better, no way she could have tried harder; for her to be able to answer his question proudly and for him to be justified in believing her.
She would do it to the best of her ability. She would respond to his sincerity with sincerity of her own.
Nothing happened the second time she tried it, either.
There was no torrential rush of power. No great wordless understanding as some new branch of magic opened for her and her alone. No distant sirens heralding the coming of the apocalypse.
And yet she was nodding slowly as she opened her eyes again. That wasn't how magic worked – not this magic. She wouldn't suddenly become able to do it just because she was doing it for him. It may have been her motivation, but she still needed to find the path herself.
"Lucy, are you alright?" Yukino ventured.
A distant part of Lucy's mind noted that she must have been standing there in silent meditation for quite some time. "I'm fine. Do you mind if I give it one more go? Then we can go back."
"Of course."
This time, Lucy took a different approach.
Rather than reaching blindly for magic unfamiliar to her, she sought a far more comforting source: the stories her mother used to tell her, stories of a giant scorpion and a hubristic hunter, of a god who transformed himself into a bull to carry his love across the sea, of the scales once held by a heavenly maiden.
She thought about Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschamali, and how she had not needed Yukino to point them out to her in the velvet sky. She remembered their names from evenings spent lying on her back in grass softened by summer's gentle caress or separated into crunchy strands by white frost. The nights had been far darker then than now, for Jasmine did not sit upon land forming part of the Heartfilia Estate, and there was no Layla Heartfilia to request its lights be dimmed for stargazing and no Jude Heartfilia to indulge her, standing on the porch, watching not the skies but the two beloved stars lying amongst the grass. His disapproval would not take form until one of those earthbound stars had taken its place in the heavens.
Things had changed since then – above as well as below. Those who labelled the firmament eternal chose ignorance of what came before them, and what would come once their fleeting life had passed.
Three thousand years ago, Libra and the Sun had been in conjunction on the autumnal equinox; three thousand years in the future, the conjunction would fall upon the winter solstice. Now, it fell midway between the two. Harmonies within harmonies. Scales balanced upon scales, and still, somehow, equilibrium held.
That was Libra: the goddess with the balance and the understanding and the integrity to dispense justice amongst the stars themselves.
That was what those long nights of stargazing and storytelling and dreaming had taught her; what the dark had cyphered in the sky.
That was the concept Lucy held in her mind as she tried to transform again.
There was no rush of power that time either, but rather than the satisfaction of having been proven right, she felt somehow hollow.
With a rueful sigh, she opened her eyes for the final time. "There we are, then. If that didn't work, nothing will. I'm sorry to have wasted your time, Yukino-"
"Lucy."
"…What?"
Yukino's gaze flicked down to Lucy's feet and then back up to her face, wearing a look of concern that would have made Zeref proud. Swallowing, Lucy looked down… to find that she was no longer stood in the meadow. Rather, she was floating an inch or two above the grass.
Her eyes widened – and in that moment she was certain she should have fallen to the ground in shock, but she did not. Gravity no longer operated in her vicinity; the concept of falling had become corrupted, and the universe did not know how to execute the command. That was when she noticed she was now wearing light and loose garments reminiscent of Libra's usual attire.
The transformation had worked.
There should have been something wrong with it – something sharp, something sudden, some unpredictable flare of magic that came from pushing her power in an unexpected direction. Instead, the keyless transformations continued to become easier every time she performed them, until this change had been so fluid, so enveloped in the flow of sidereal magic, that she had not even noticed until Yukino pointed it out.
There was no ominous rumbling of thunder to mark the moment; no crow's caw or lightning flash or triumphant declaration that if she believed hard enough, her magic could break any and all rules.
Without intent, without purpose, without any kind of warning, it just… happened.
And the universe turned quietly on, oblivious to the fact that some small corner had snagged on an anomaly in the not-quite-smooth continuum of space, and bit by bit its fabric was beginning to unravel.
What drama the initial discovery lacked was made up for by Zeref's reaction. Before Yukino had fully disappeared back into the streets of Jasmine, he was already there, tearing down the hill with his robes streaming out behind him, like the pennant of the fourth horseman as he realized that there would be no one left to dispense the apocalypse onto if he waited his turn.
His expression, however, was certainly not that of the one in control of the apocalypse. "This is bad," he panted, before she could so much as get a word in. "Lucy, this is really bad."
"Really?" she tried, but her protest came out half-hearted. Empathetic worry and rational rebuttal fought over which got to make their presence known, and she continued warily, "It's just one person's magic; how bad can it be?"
Zeref met her gaze steadily, eyes darker than deep space and even more mysterious. "I think it might be tearing a hole in the fabric of reality."
"…Oh," Lucy said. "Oh, very funny. You know, you really had me going there. Appearing to abandon the Blue Pegasus quest was a nice touch; I bet you were always planning to pick up Elfman at Sabertooth first, weren't you?" She threw her hands up in surrender. "Okay, fine, I've learnt my lesson. I won't drag you out on any more detours-"
"Lucy."
She stared at Zeref, and he stared back.
That was not his I'm having you on face.
She wouldn't go as far as calling it fear, but there was definitely a deep concern to be found there – and that, upon the face of a four-hundred-year-old immortal, was somehow worse than the sight of an entire guild in chaos.
Lucy wet her lips. "You're serious about this?"
"I am."
"But how…? I mean, there are mages out there a hundred times more powerful than I am, and they're not tearing the universe apart! Even Natsu's miraculous ability to obliterate everything he touches is limited to, you know, physical objects…"
Her attempt to lighten the mood fell into the black holes of his eyes and was never seen again. "Celestial Spirit magic," Zeref began heavily, "is not like other kinds of magic. It doesn't exist naturally in the world. It was created as a tool through which to harness a different type of magic entirely, one which is otherwise beyond the reach of mortals."
"I am not following," Lucy told him flatly. On one hand, it was nice to finally get some answers out of him. On the other, there was no point whatsoever if he didn't explain it in a way she could understand. "You're going to have to slow it down a bit, Zeref."
He rubbed at his temples, seeming to realize the truth of this. "Think of it as… as though there's an alien kind of magic, separated from our world by a wall. The reality is a lot more complex, and a lot more mathematical, but this image is probably easier to understand. In this wall, there are eighty-eight gates, one for each of the constellations. Using the gold and silver gate keys, and your own power, you can open and close those gates, and thus draw upon a fragment of the magic that lies beyond."
"R-Right," Lucy stammered, though it wasn't right; she had never heard her own magic explained without mention of the Spirits themselves, who were surely the most important part of Celestial Spirit magic…?
"That other magic is inherently inaccessible except through the eighty-eight gates, and those gates do not open – from this side or the other – without the keys. Ergo, Keyless Celestial Spirit magic is impossible. Star Dress, which channels the magic directly through the gate to your body, isn't exempt from that."
"But I can do it."
Zeref nodded unhappily. "When you first did it, I thought you were somehow creating an artificial key… that the bonds between you and your Spirits, combined with the strength of your magic, were letting you open the gates without needing the physical keys. And that would have been problematic in its own way, but… today's test disproved it. I ran the calculations under that hypothesis, and there were no circumstances under which you would have been able to open Libra's gate. Yet you were still able to draw on her power."
"And you think it's because… there's a tear in that hypothetical wall?"
"If you're drawing on that magic without opening any of the eighty-eight gates, then it follows that there must be an eighty-ninth… a fracture in reality. A breach in the boundaries of our own universe." He shook his head, not quite quickly enough to hide the pained expression on his face. That look was so uncharacteristic, so horrible, that it hit her like a punch to the gut. "This wasn't supposed to happen, Anna…"
"So, what happens now?" Lucy ventured. "You say it's bad, but… what does having a tear in reality actually mean for the world?"
"I don't know, Lucy, but I'm not going to stop until I find out."
"Okay. If it's that important to you, I don't mind if you want to put the quest on hold for a while-"
His gaze snapped up to meet hers. "What? Why would we do that?"
"So that we can find out what's going on with this tear in reality!" she retorted, exasperated; was it really that hard for him to accept she was willing to go out of her way for him-?
"Why should I care about that? It's completely irrelevant. Reuniting the guild is the only thing that matters."
Lucy stared at him. "You've done nothing but care about it for the past two days!"
"You must be mistaken. That doesn't sound like me at all."
"Uh, no, I distinctly recall being dragged all the way to Sabertooth instead of Blue Pegasus because you couldn't wait another half a day to investigate this! Why would you suddenly stop caring just when it starts to get, you know, scary? Besides, you love puzzles far too much to give up on this one now."
"…I do?"
That was when she discovered that there was something far worse than fear to see upon Zeref's face – worse even than anger. Neither had flooded her system with icy terror as effectively as the sheer blankness of his expression, the dreadful and genuine confusion in his words.
It took her several attempts to find her voice. "Zeref, are you alright?"
Something flashed through those uncomprehending eyes, a single spike on a silent heart monitor. "Am I not making sense?"
"Not at all!"
"Okay." He turned away from her, breathing slow and deep; she could see his shoulders rise and fall in the starlight. One hand was pressed to his temple. The fingers of the other were entwined around the silver chain at his neck. There he stayed for a minute, and then another, silent, scarier than Lucy had ever seen him.
But when he spoke again, his voice was much stronger. "Okay. Lucy, what was I talking about?"
"About, uh, investigating the fracture in reality. And about reuniting the guild."
"I see." He snapped his fingers. "I can do both. I have the resources to do both. There's no conflict. Yes." At last, he turned back to her, and she had never been so relieved to see sharpness in his gaze. "I need to see the Eclipse Gate."
"Impossible. Natsu destroyed it a year ago."
"…Of course he did. Why am I not surprised?" Zeref had his head in his hands. The vehemence, the reality, of his despair made her want to laugh – and not, for once, at his expense. "In that case, I need to see the place where the Eclipse Gate stood. If it's only been a year, the distortions should still be there. I can use them to locate this hole in reality."
"That's not a great deal less impossible," Lucy pointed out. "The Gate was inside the grounds of Mercurius – underneath the palace itself. We can't exactly just stroll up to it. They'll arrest you on sight. Or, at least, they'll try, and that won't end well for anyone, will it?"
"I doubt anyone there will recognize me."
"Even if they don't, they're still not going to let a stranger snoop around the Eclipse Gate's remnants. Security is tight; we'd never make it into the palace undetected. I could ask Princess Hisui, but… honestly, even though she's supportive of Fairy Tail, I don't think she'd risk letting anyone near the Eclipse Gate after the fiasco during the last Games. Especially not with you tagging along. No offence."
He rolled his eyes a little at that; a small gesture, but he seemed to be relaxing again, and that was enough to make her smile. "We may not have a choice."
"What if we could get ourselves legitimately invited into the palace instead?" Lucy suggested.
"You have an idea?"
"The Summer Ball. The king always hosts one at Mercurius in August. That would get us in through security, and with so many people wandering around, it'd be much easier to slip away to investigate the Eclipse Gate."
"That's not a bad idea." Zeref mulled it over out loud. "I'd need to get hold of an invitation somehow… the present political situation makes that a little tricky, but I'm sure they'd give me one if I demanded it, if only to try and work out what my game was. Although, my being there in any kind of official capacity will hugely complicate matters, especially if our aim is to avoid attention…"
"Or," Lucy cut in, "you could just ask me for an invite."
"…What?"
Grinning, she explained, "I've attended the Summer Ball several times in the past, with my parents. The Heartfilias have always been on good terms with the royal family. I think we're actually related, if you go back a few generations. I've not been to one since I ran away from home, but if I write to Princess Hisui, I'm sure she'll send me an invitation."
"Do that, then. It will mean putting a hold on our investigation for the time being… but to be honest, I think it'll be best if I wait a while before trying to look into it anyway."
Because, for a moment there, thinking about it completely broke you? Lucy thought, but she would never say it out loud. She could make light of a lot of things, laughing in retrospect if it helped her cope, but not that. Not when the mere memory of his confusion made her shiver.
Not noticing her pause, he continued, "Try to use keyless magic as little as possible in the meantime, and we'll continue our quest to revive Fairy Tail."
"Yeah, as it happens, I was wanting to talk to you about that."
"Oh?"
"Nothing bad!" she jumped in hastily. "I'm not about to add any more detours, or anything like that. But there were a couple of people I wanted to ask you about…"
"Go on, then."
Was there a good way of approaching this? He seemed like he was in a fairly reasonable mood, so perhaps she would cross her fingers and go with honesty.
"First of all… according to Sting, Natsu is under the impression that you've kidnapped me."
Zeref's expression did not change, and his response was almost too neutral. "That's not all that far from the truth."
"It's quite far," she objected. "At this stage, it's less that you're dragging me along and more that you wouldn't be able to get rid of me if you tried. But it's beside the point – even if it's wrong, as long as Natsu believes it, he's going to do everything he can to try and find us… and knowing Natsu, everything he can will mean challenging every dark mage he can get his little dragon claws on in the hope of finding some information about you."
"So?"
"I still don't really want to see him, but I'd like for him to repeatedly throw himself into danger based on a misunderstanding even less. So, if he's nearby, I want you to let me know, so that I can talk to him and straighten things out."
"Fine," he said shortly. "Anything else?"
"Yes. Gray. Juvia's really worried about him, and I want to make sure that he's okay. If we can't get to him soon, can you at least tell me his address, so that I can get in touch?"
Zeref thought for a long moment, and then said, "No."
"Why not?"
"Because it's impossible," he answered, his flat tone not budging an inch in response to her soaring accusation. "I don't know where Gray is."
"You said you knew where all the former members of Fairy Tail were!"
"No, what I actually said was almost all. Gray is one of the few I don't have. By the time I'd exhausted all other options and accepted the fact that I needed Fairy Tail back together, he had already dropped off the face of the earth. No one has seen him for half a year."
"But… can't you find him?"
"How? I can't follow an information trail that doesn't exist! He disappeared, Lucy. Six months of nothing. He hasn't registered with another guild, nor accepted any jobs as an independent mage. He's not in prison or hospital, and he hasn't left Fiore – not legally, at least; there's been no trace of him at border control. He's still registered as living with Juvia in Helvola Village. There has been no activity on his bank account in all that time. What am I supposed to make of that?"
"You don't think he's…?"
"Dead?" She hadn't been able to finish that sentence, but he did it easily, and with as little emotion as she expected. "Hard to say. He hasn't been registered as such…"
"That makes it worse," she whispered, feeling the warm bite of tears; the pinching of her throat.
For a moment, he did nothing but watch her, deep in thought – until he sighed, and the sound of it seemed to soften his dispassionate exterior. "I don't know what happened, Lucy, but if you want my gut feeling, he disappeared too well. As someone who has spent a lot of time trying not to be noticed, I don't think this was an accident."
"Okay," she said, and sniffed once and nothing more. "Yeah… I believe in Gray too."
"That's not what I said," murmured Zeref, but he moved on. "I'll let you know if I hear anything. Otherwise, we'll have to hope that he learns of our quest, and makes contact with the guild. It shouldn't be too unlikely; your activities are already making the news, especially that showdown in Marguerite."
Lucy nodded slowly. "Alright. Zeref… thank you for, you know, listening."
He shrugged again and said nothing. Perhaps it meant nothing to him, though she doubted it.
She continued, "Sabertooth said they would put me up in one of the rooms above the guildhall tonight. Do you want to…?"
"No. I have some calls to make. I need privacy; I'll stay out here."
"You could come in once you're done. Or, I could ask around for some hotel recommendations. I'd feel bad if you ended up sleeping outside again…"
He was already walking away. "I'll meet you back here tomorrow morning."
And that was that.
Or, it should have been.
There was one thought that would not leave Lucy's mind as she lay awake that night, long after her concerns about the fracture in the world and Gray's disappearance had faded into the mist of problems to be dealt with tomorrow.
Ever since Zeref had first proposed combining his knowledge and her approachability to reunite the guild, she hadn't stopped to think about how he knew so much about Fairy Tail. On some level, she had probably assumed he was using some obscure magic to track down people with the guild mark. Sure, he joked about his so-called intelligence network, but if anything, she had imagined it as an army of micro-demons scouring the kingdom for her friends… something befitting the infamous Black Mage.
But those resources he had mentioned – job records? Bank details? Border control? That was getting into serious Spymaster General territory.
If he had access to information on accepted mage jobs, he had contacts high up in the administrative side of the Magic Council – high enough that he still had faith that he would be able to discover the details of Gajeel's confidential assignment. He had taken the code from Alchemilla's military outpost when she had half-jokingly offered it, so he must also have people in the royal army. Financial information, land registry documentation, patient records… what did the isolated and mysterious Black Mage, the creator of the demons and the master of all things arcane, want with that kind of boring data?
The information he appeared to have access to, the sheer ordinariness of his contacts – they were unremarkable enough to be astounding; mundane enough to keep her awake all night.
Because that wasn't the intelligence network you had when you wanted to track down wayward guild mages.
That was the intelligence network you had when you wanted to overthrow a government.
A/N: I tried to find the name of the city in which Sabertooth is based and failed. I thought it was mentioned in canon, but I couldn't find it. I had 'Jasmine' in my head for some reason - possibly from another fanfic - so I just went with that. If anyone knows what it is actually called, do let me know.
Elfman will be back, though we won't get the other side of his story until we get to Evergreen. Which... won't be for a while, actually. The final scene of this chapter might be a bit of a hint as to where we're going next chapter... ~CS