The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

Interlude: Empathy, Part 2

Vistarion, X716

Back then, they were known as the Council of Twelve. Their duties were the same – to advise their emperor on military matters; to liaise between him, his government, and the people; to serve as his personal guard; to destroy the enemies of their nation – but they had yet to incorporate his name into their title, for Emperor Spriggan was not yet well-known across Alakitasia.

To the provincial lords stretched across the continent, the princes of wealthy cities and governors of long-autonomous regions, 'Spriggan' was another would-be tyrant: a hubristic fool who would disappear into the mire of history the moment he set foot outside the high walls of Vistarion. In the frozen wastes of the north, the name was unknown; along the southern border, he was another interchangeable eastern politician, as irrelevant as a civil war in Ishgar. To the guilds all across Alakitasia, guilds with such economic and military power that they were almost micro-nations in their own right, Spriggan was an upstart who daydreamed about stealing their independence and had no clue how politics was done in the real world.

Only to the city-state Vistarion, and the handful of surrounding provinces already absorbed into the entity tentatively calling itself 'Alvarez', was Emperor Spriggan regarded as an absolute ruler, and his ambition known to be neither foolhardy nor presumptuous, but an inevitable part of the natural order.

He had, of course, been playing this game for longer than any of his self-styled rivals could imagine.

August had asked him, once, why he had allowed Alakitasia to grow so wild, so fragmented, so opposed to the centralized rule he had always known he would one day need to impose upon it.

"Magic thrives when it is free," the soon-to-be emperor had replied, smiling. "Guilds compete and grow stronger; nation-states forge their own paths to the future; the opportunities offered to individuals are not limited by any one set of cultural values or federal laws. With freedom, they will find the best way to grow for themselves."

And thus a continent utterly devastated by the mad dragons had caught up to the people of Ishgar in civilization and technological progress – and would soon leave them in the dust, as they themselves had once been abandoned.

Tomorrow would be the day later generations of historians would single out as the start of the Unifying Wars: a brutal ten-year subjugation of that very freedom the emperor had once cultivated, resulting in the expansion of the Alvarez Empire across the entire continent and the accession of Emperor Spriggan as its unequivocal and almighty ruler.

Control of such an unprecedently large territory did not come easily, however, and the following years would be ones of uncompromising, dictatorial rule by the emperor and his Council of Twelve, until the rebellions finally ceased, and resentment towards this iron-fisted usurper had become pride in their own unified nation and its unparalleled achievements. That, too, was part of his plan – freedom, unification, and consolidation; an empire unmatched in power and loyalty by the time the Eclipse Gate opened and the end of the age was set in motion.

Tomorrow, the next stage in a plan three hundred years in the making would begin.

Why tomorrow?

Because today was August's eighteenth birthday.

Today was the day he was legally recognized as an adult, and thus became eligible to take the final trial to serve as a member of His Majesty's personal guard.

Today he would formally take the position the emperor had been unofficially keeping open for him since the day they had met.

Today, the Council of Twelve would finally be complete, and ready to commence their quest for unification.

Anyone who thought it odd to schedule the conquering of an entire continent around the coming-of-age of a single soldier had never met August.

Anyone who thought it odd to schedule the conquering of an entire continent around the coming-of-age of a single soldier had likely already seen the obvious flaw, which did not occur to His Majesty, his advisors, or indeed anyone who had ever met August, until it was already too late.

The silence was warm upon August's skin. Unlike all who had stepped before or since into the enigmatic Colosseum's arena, he did not think it lacking for its quietude. Silence belonged here, its presence as strong as a bloodthirsty crowd's roar or a choir of swords and shields, a fundamental component of the Colosseum's being, a living part of its magic.

Age was magic, history was magic, belief was magic, rumour and myth and silence were magic, and the motionless stones pulsed with it. This was a place of power, and it called to him like it called to so few others. It flowed fondly around him, and his own magical presence thrummed in harmony with it, so sensitive a resonance with the world around him that no attempt to conceal his own magic ever fully worked.

He might have stopped to revel in it, the new magic of a new place, but he had a job to do, and so he walked on.

Still, he was smiling as he entered the arena. The nerves that had been banging like caged dragons against the walls of his stomach quietened to match their surroundings.

Those watching – the eleven current members of the Council of Twelve – would have been forgiven for thinking this man had never been nervous. His every step across the sand was long and deliberate. Golden hair was pulled back into a ponytail, drawing attention to the graceful sweep of his shoulders and the lithe posture that hid his physical strength. In his right hand, he carried a simple wooden staff. It was unadorned, perhaps it was even unmagical; the fact that it was in the hand of this man was what made it dangerous.

His steps did not slow until he reached the very centre of the arena. When the tight circle of his noonday shadow was perfectly concentric with the Colosseum itself, he stopped and let his gaze run across the eleven mages watching him. They were his superiors, his mentors, the ones he looked up to. Each had been chosen by His Majesty to fight at his side to unify Alvarez. All were older than him, many far older, exceeding him in experience as well as magical ability.

The latter mattered little – even the most dismissive of them were forced to acknowledge that he would surpass them all soon enough, for no one had ever met a boy with so much power, so young.

But the former mattered a great deal, both to himself and to those veterans of rebellion and conquest. He had never fought in a war before. Battles, certainly, and the only people to whom he had ever lost in single combat were watching from the stands right now, but there had never been anything more than himself and his pride on the line. Not the fate of a country. Not the fate of His Majesty's plan.

The faith His Majesty had shown in him by granting him this opportunity, despite his youth, despite his inexperience, despite the very vocal concerns of many on the Council of Twelve – that was the reason for the nerves he was hiding.

Was the final trial to be a battle? That was the obvious conclusion, given the venue, but it wasn't His Majesty's style. Their emperor didn't enjoy fighting. He helped the Twelve develop their magic, pointed them towards useful techniques, and was always willing to answer questions and offer suggestions, but when it came to combat training, his participation was limited to occasionally supervising the training battles between his highest-ranking mages.

It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that some of the others on the Council of Twelve had requested that the final trial take the form of a battle – the fact that they doubted his power didn't bother August; the fact that they believed His Majesty would have nominated him if his power was insufficient bothered him a great deal – but then again, the final trial was an old Alvarez tradition. He doubted that the same conservatives who thought his youth made him unworthy would want the emperor to change the trial just for him.

Perhaps that was the test: to work out exactly what it was he was being tested on.

The silence broke for nothing, and thus it was the magic that alerted him to his emperor's approach. His presence was unique. It wasn't for its size, because he preferred to restrain his magic completely. Rather, there was something odd about it, something anomalous, which no one but August seemed able to perceive. Trying to pin it down was like trying to fasten a clasp using a mirror – doing what his senses insisted would bring it closer only moved it further away. No matter how he tried, he could never quite bring it into focus.

He suspected it was the cause of the emperor's immortality. He thought, further, that it was connected to the same magic from which he had been born, the magic of life that sang to him in the silence and whose greatest miracle was in simply being, and perhaps that was why he was the only one able to sense it. The desire to avoid the inevitable questions it would cause was the reason why he had never mentioned it to his emperor. It was far from the only thing he had never mentioned, after all.

He dropped at once to his knees, unabashed and utterly sincere, and remained there with his head bowed as his emperor entered the arena.

Part-fond, part-exasperated, his sigh did not stir the sand, but melded with it. "Stand, August."

"Your Majesty," he acceded quietly.

They weren't the words he wanted to say.

They were never the words he wanted to say.

But he said them, as he always did, and then he stood, and then he waited for instructions. The setup seemed clear enough, but it just wasn't how His Majesty did things.

As the silence stretched on, he found himself asking, "What would you have me do, Your Majesty?"

"I'd have thought that was obvious." Faint curiosity shone in those black eyes, radiation filling the void. "I want you to fight me."

"Why?"

The word slipped out before August could stop it. It wasn't his place to question the emperor, and he hadn't meant to do it, but this was just too uncharacteristic of him. He was sure there was something he was missing.

"I wish to see for myself how strong you are," came the measured response.

A tiny frown made its way to August's face. No, that wasn't it. There were other ways of testing that, better ways. He could fight one of the others – there were good teachers amongst the Twelve, ones who would help him draw out his full power even if he could not hope to beat them.

In fact, the very premise was flawed. His Majesty knew exactly how powerful he was, because it was entirely on the merit of his magic that August had been nominated for this position in the first place, in lieu of any military or governing experience. This whole trial was a formality, anyway. The decision to appoint him had been made long ago.

Cautiously, he reasoned, "With all due respect, Your Majesty, surely there is a way of doing that which does not involve you getting hurt."

"The most accurate way for me to determine your power is for you to turn it on me, holding nothing back," came the cool, logical explanation. "You won't hurt me."

There was a cold feeling swelling in August's chest. He didn't like where this was going, not at all. "Again, with respect, you are immortal, not immune to pain. I will hurt you."

"Such is the nature of magical combat," he shrugged, as if it did not matter. "This is the final trial."

August's grip tightened on his staff. The words in his mind were not ones which could be spoken in the presence of His Majesty, so he did not say them.

"This is what you want, isn't it?" the emperor prompted. "To be accepted into the Twelve?"

"If it requires me to raise a hand against you, Your Majesty, I am not sure that it is."

A murmuring in the silence; the unease of the eleven spectators rising like the wind in the Colosseum.

"I am ordering you to do so, August." Every word was slow, deliberate. "If you are to fight at my side, if you are to be a keystone of my empire, I need to know that you will obey me, even when you do not agree with me."

"I will do anything you ask of me, except this. I would sooner turn my magic upon myself."

"Your loyalty is commendable, but foolish. Will you refuse me on the battlefield, believing that you know best, and thus ruin a greater plan that you are unable to see?"

"Anything but this," August repeated, voice cracking. "Please, let me prove myself to you some other way."

They stared at each other through the silence. All the good humour had drained from those black eyes, and it hurt August so much to see, knowing that he himself was the cause.

He should just do as he was asked.

He knew that. His Majesty had ordered him to, and what was more, His Majesty clearly wanted him to.

The eleven mages watching him with growing impatience had all done it, and because of it, they were irreplaceable to the empire. He wanted to prove to them that His Majesty had been right to give him this opportunity despite his inexperience. He wanted to prove that that faith wasn't misplaced.

And if he did, His Majesty would smile at him again. Would trust him again. Everything would go back to how it was yesterday, the two of them taking on their nation's enemies together, just how it was supposed to be.

He should just do it.

He pictured His Majesty screaming from the pain of magic his own hand had wrought, and he could not.

Unable to speak, he closed his eyes and shook his head, and let the silence hide the cost of his dissent. If the true purpose of the final trial was to test his obedience, he had already failed.

"August," came the soft, musical response, and he opened his eyes a crack. Any further would have made his tears too obvious. "I need you to trust me."

"I do trust you," he said thickly.

"Not like this. I need you to trust in my power, and my immortality. I need you to push me to my limits, so that you know you can rely on me if we encounter a foe capable of doing the same. I need you to comprehend the certainty of my immortality for yourself. That's all this is about."

So, it wasn't really a test of power. It wasn't a test of obedience either – if he passed only because His Majesty had talked him into it, it surely invalidated the entire trial. Thus, the mere fact that he was trying to talk August into it seemed to disprove that suggestion.

Was it a mutual demonstration of power, then, to establish trust?

That was what his emperor had said, but it still didn't seem quite right.

There was something else. Something he was missing.

"I can't do that, Your Majesty."

"Why not?"

"To test your immortality, you are not merely asking me to hurt you, but to try to kill you. I can't do that."

"You cannot kill me. You will try, and you will fail. Do you not understand that?"

"Then why must I try at all?" There was desperation in his voice now, no going back, only the fall waiting no matter which way he turned. "Why can't I prove myself some other way? Why would you make me-? Why?"

"We will not proceed until you prove to me that you trust in my immortality, August."

"But what if this is the one time it fails?" he shouted. "What if I trust you, and I turn my full power upon you, and something goes wrong-?"

The emperor's eyes narrowed.

And it was in that moment that August understood the true purpose of this so-called trial.

Why His Majesty took each of the strongest mages in Alvarez one by one, helped them to learn increasingly obscure and destructive magic, and then convinced them through ceremony that it was good and right to strike him down with it.

He wasn't trying to demonstrate the strength of his immortality.

He was hoping one of them would be able to overcome it.

"Your Majesty-" he tried. The words, those horrid, horrid words, stuck in his throat. He swallowed, and continued in a whisper: "Please, look me in the eye and tell me that you neither expect nor hope to die today."

There was silence in the arena.

It was cruel and it was hateful, and it greedily swallowed the sound of a breaking heart.

"This is an order," spoke His Majesty. "Come at me with everything you have."

"I won't."

"You won't?"

Cold that word, a deadly hiss; cutting into his soul rather than his body and spilling tears like blood.

Still he shook his head, desperate. "I won't. Please, Your Majesty, I will do anything for you but that."

"I am ordering you-"

"I WON'T!" August threw his staff aside and faced his emperor with open palms. If he had looked around, he might have seen utter incredulity eleven times over from the stands, but he did not, and nor did his emperor. They spoke only to each other; there, in the heart of their fledgling country, there was no one else. "I love you. I will not, I will not, play any part in this madness."

"This, to you, is madness?" A disbelieving sneer twisted the other's too-young face, and it left nothing unshattered. "Madness is having to live, and live, and live, unable to feel hope or love or anything that gives life meaning in case it is snatched away from me – and you have the nerve to stand there and say that I must keep on living through this hell, and you call it love-!"

"No." August shook his head, and then again, firmer, almost frantic, and even that was not enough to lend his voice more strength than a whisper. "Of course it isn't right. Nothing about your suffering is fair, and if I knew how to break your curse, I would do so in a heartbeat. But nothing you have been through, nothing, gives you the right to try and use me as your instrument of suicide!"

His Majesty said not a word to that, and the darkness of his eyes was impossibly far away.

"I do not believe my magic is capable of overcoming your curse, Your Majesty," continued that trembling voice, fuelled by the last failing beats of a heart about to fall to pieces. "But I know for certain that I am incapable of trying. What you ask of me is impossible."

And he knelt amidst the sand, head bowed, his submission nothing but sincere. "There is nothing I desire more than to stand by your side. Please, I beg of you – allow me to prove my devotion to you some other way. Let me continue to serve you as I do."

At last, the emperor spoke. "Alright. I see how it is."

"Your Majesty…?" he asked, daring to raise his head just a little.

"I have no use for someone who won't obey orders. Get out of my sight."

"But-"

"Go. There is no place for you here."

"…Yes, Your Majesty."

He remained on his knees long after his emperor had stalked from the arena in disgust, long after the eleven spectators had scurried far enough from His Majesty's presence to gossip without fear of reprisal, long enough to understand that the world would not stop turning simply because one more soul had fallen through its cracks.

He remembered the day he thought he had finally found the right path – the day a man who did not know him had swept in and undone the ritual to which he had offered up his worthless life.

He had not known, at the time, what that ritual would do when unleashed. If he had, he would never have committed to it in a populated area. But he hadn't known, because he had copied the ritual from a memory inherited through his magic, in which his father had tried and failed to invoke it.

It hadn't been through a lack of knowledge that his father had failed – he had simply been unable to pay the price the ritual demanded. He had hoped, though. Hoped with every rune he had etched into the stone that it would override the power binding him to this world and take his life to fuel its magic. It hadn't mattered to him what the ritual would do when invoked, as long as it achieved that.

And when it had failed, so very long ago, August had thought his father had moved on from that dark moment – had turned his attention to creating, building, using the eternity allotted to him to raise a nation as only he could. He had been wrong. Alvarez was just another convoluted attempt at that very same ritual.

With only that memory to guide him, August had misunderstood his father's intent as the ritual's primary purpose. He had called it on that day in Bishop's Lace not because he wanted to eliminate the Knights pursuing him, but because he had wanted it to take his life, just as his father had before him.

The man who had stopped him, saved him, given him the purpose he needed to keep living, had not realized that was August's aim back then, and he still did not realize it as he walked away now.

August's life belonged entirely to His Majesty.

And His Majesty no longer wanted it.

Only then did August stand and depart from the Colosseum, one more warrior's spirit broken in this place, one more ghost left to watch the battles of future generations from above the silent stands.

Mikage Forest, The Present Day

One of the worst things about his unnatural immortality was how well it preserved old memories he would rather leave behind.

Zeref remembered that day in the silent Colosseum with painful clarity.

How natural it had seemed to postpone the unification of the land until August had come of age, and how obvious it was even then that he would shine at the heart of the Alvarez Empire.

How he had hoped that, in the heat of the moment, the boy's immense potential and unique power would surpass the curse keeping him alive, and he wouldn't have to do this any more.

How close he had come to killing the boy where he knelt, and the eleven in the stands too, so there would be no witnesses; how much he had wanted to run and run and run and start over, another three hundred years, another continent, another empire, where no one would remember who he was or what he'd done.

All those years ago, he had forced August to choose between two equally devastating outcomes for his own selfish reasons, and it had driven the boy who loved him more than anyone ever had to horrific lengths.

Not ten minutes ago, he had done the same to Lucy, and in response, she had done something equally horrific to herself; something he couldn't even begin to understand.

The circumstances were different, but the cause was the same.

Pain and death meant nothing to him. But killing him, even if that death was only temporary, meant something to them. That discrepancy was the lesson he had failed to learn seventy-six years ago.

If he had underestimated August's ability to perceive the truth behind the façade of a trial, then he had underestimated Lucy's conviction. He had not appreciated what it meant for her to repeatedly insist, in the face of all common sense, that she considered him a friend. It wasn't just a label, it wasn't just par for the course for a Fairy Tail mage; it was something she was willing to act on at the expense of her own self.

She cared about him. Enough that attempting to kill him, even in full knowledge of his immortality, was as unthinkable to her as it had been to August all those years ago.

"I never intended for her to kill me, not permanently," he insisted, out loud. His voice should have rung out defiant, but it seemed far too small for the midnight forest. Still, he tried, "It was impossible. The thought never even crossed my mind."

Other people don't understand what it means to be immortal, reasoned a compassionless, unsympathetic part of him; doubts externalized through the same coping mechanisms that dealt with his dangerous emotions. They consider trying to kill someone they care about to be objectively wrong, and they are unable to factor your inability to die into their moral reasoning, just as they cannot overlook the pain you will experience. They value your life far higher than you yourself do.

You should have remembered that.

You should have known that it would break her.

In the unlit forest, so far from any other human beings, Zeref stared down at Lucy's unresponsive body.

He didn't know what she had done or how she had done it… or why she wasn't coming back.

This was such a pain.

Zeref hurled the last of the branches he had gathered onto the pile and swept downwards with his hand. A surge of black lightning followed, and the branches burst violently into flame. Sparks fled like frightened pixies into the undergrowth, chasing away the nocturnal beasts whose curiosity had brought them too close to their forest's intruders.

Only Lucy did not react.

She remained exactly where Zeref had placed her: slumped against a tree like a doll incapable of supporting its own weight, unresponsive to light or heat, words or touch.

Such a pain.

He spun on his heel and kicked the nearest tree. It shuddered once and died: branches twisted horribly in upon themselves, and leaves the colour of autumn fell in their hundreds, until it wouldn't have looked out of place standing guard over Avatar's obsidian-plated hideout.

It wasn't enough. Over and over he kicked its dead husk. Each time pain flared and faded in his toes; each time, his annoyance at his predicament grew and grew.

Annoyance was good.

Annoyance was safe.

And all the other feelings presently shut outside his mind, hammering relentlessly against the mental walls he had spent four centuries reinforcing – they weren't safe at all.

And those walls were cracking.

Years he had spent crafting them, externalizing the emotions most likely to trigger the curse, training his mind to fall into certain patterns of thought… and it didn't seem to mean a thing. He wanted to be angry with her for holding up their quest. He needed to be angry with her.

But this was all his fault, and that one truth was a battering ram of guilt, steadily wearing down his mental fortress.

His palm flashed in the uneasy firelight. One tree died, and then another, and another, but it wasn't enough to drown out those whispering regrets.

He should have foreseen this outcome. Not what she had done, because he still did not know what luckless coincidence of will and magic had brought about her unresponsive state, but he should have realized that his actions would have consequences, just like they had done seventy-six years ago.

He had made her choose between killing him with her own hands – a death which she had refused to agree did not count just because it was temporary – and prolonging the suffering, and thereby risking the very permanent death, of her best friend.

It wasn't a choice Lucy Heartfilia had been able to make.

So Lucy Heartfilia had gone away.

Slowly, he let his hand fall back to his side, turning to stare at her thoughtfully. The black magic faded; she was a puzzle, now, and puzzles were safe.

Was that what she had done? Was it possible that, if someone was so deeply in tune with their own magic, and their emotions were sufficiently overwhelming, the combination could produce such a tangible effect on their own mind, their own personality? He had read papers on such things in the past, but they had been purely hypothetical, and he had never given them much credence. After all, if it was possible for magic to respond to unconscious will in that way, merely living would be dangerous for a mage powerful enough and conscious enough of their own thoughts to do it by accident.

And yet, if she had been so desperate to escape her situation, with no other options… might it be possible that her own magic had responded in such a way? Was she still in there, shielded from reality by a prison of her own making?

He shook his head in irritation. It was such an overreaction. Even if she did care more for him than was wise, it shouldn't have been a difficult action for anyone who was thinking logically, not then and not now either.

They value your life far higher than you yourself do.

He should have learnt that long ago. No matter how he tried to justify it to himself, he had pushed her into this.

The morning after he and August had fought in the Colosseum – a battle of wills, not magic – the fury and the fear were gone, and August was once again at his side. Though he was not formally a member of the Council, he remained his most trusted servant throughout the Unifying Wars, and was promoted without fanfare when the decade-long battle was won and the Council became the Spriggan Twelve.

He and August had resolved the matter between them – at least, as much as it could ever be resolved. It had cost him dearly, but he had forgiven and been forgiven, and their bond had only become stronger.

And maybe it was because he'd managed to get out of it that he had failed to learn any kind of lesson from his actions.

He didn't know if he could resolve this situation with Lucy. Her lustreless eyes. Her limp, vulnerable body. The silence, when she should have been yelling at him, teasing him, planning the next move in their quest with him…

"I cannot think of you as a friend, Lucy," he whispered, crouching down before her. "I know you'd understand that, if you would only stop and think about it. The more I care about you, the more danger I pose to you."

How he hated the nothingness in her eyes.

How he feared it.

A black wind rustled what few leaves remained in the clearing, cast their corpses to the ground, and then stilled.

"I need you, Lucy," said he. "You're my pawn. I can't keep playing this game without you. So please, come back to me…"

He rested his forehead against hers and closed his eyes.

A/N: Will we find out how August and Zeref reconciled after their argument? Yes, yes we will, but not for... a long time. Yet another case of me not expecting quite how long this story was going to end up being. Anyway, tune in again next week as Zeref and Lucy have really quite an overdue conversation... ~CS