The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

Church of Blood and Stone, Aftermath

-Ashes in the Dawn-

Vistarion, A Few Hours Earlier

Ajeel and Dimaria's grand tour of Fiore never quite got off the ground.

Or, to be more precise, it got halfway down the runway in a commandeered plane before coming to a sudden and inexplicable halt.

Dimaria (who had had the good sense to strap herself in) didn't bother waiting for Ajeel (who had not) to peel himself off the windscreen before demanding, "What the hell did you do?"

"It wasn't me!" Ajeel retorted, an ingrained response to any accusation from Dimaria, which in this case also happened to be true.

"Oh, so the emergency stop button just pressed itself, did it?"

"It hasn't been pressed!" He jabbed angrily towards the big red button on the dashboard. Sure enough, it was still safely encased inside its magic-resistant glass.

"Then why aren't we going anywhere?"

The engines were doing their damnedest to drown out her idiotic questions, but the plane wasn't moving an inch. It was as if there was an invisible wall slap-bang in the middle of the runway – except that there was no crumpled nose, no shattered windscreen, or anything else that might have justified the abrupt termination of their race towards the open skies. The most expensive piece of military technology the Alvarez Empire could afford continued to devour raw magic and spit it out as utterly ineffectual thrust.

"I don't know!" Ajeel shouted back, striking the control panel, which signalled its objection to this manhandling by switching on every single red-coloured light in the cabin. An alarm began to sound with taunting laziness. "Oh, great, now the EMEDS is malfunctioning."

Idly, Dimaria pointed out, "Inventing acronyms is not going to save your image as a pilot when you've also managed to superglue your plane to the runway."

"I didn't invent it; it's the Electro-Mechanical Expulsion De-icing System," he grunted, flicking every switch within reach until the dashboard was flashing like an indoor fireworks display. Gritting his teeth, he turned the mental pages of a manual he'd only memorized in order to pass an exam and wondered if the author who had assumed each error light would only occur in isolation even knew what a crisis was.

"And is that important?"

"Unless you want the plane to become encased in ice and stall somewhere over the middle of the sea, then yeah, it's pretty important," he shot back. "But as long as we've got enough antifreeze, I can…" The console added a helpful bleeping to the concerto of panic. "What do you mean, we're out of antifreeze? That tank was full two minutes ago!"

"Are you telling me you've managed to use up all our antifreeze by taxiing five hundred metres along a runway in the middle of summer? You told me you were qualified to fly this thing!"

"I'm qualified to fly every aircraft we have, up to and including the imperial flagship, thank you very much!" Ajeel snapped, always irked by her snark no matter how many times he heard it. "It's not my fault that the system is convinced we're flying through a blizzard when we're actually parked out in the summer sunshine…"

"A blizzard," Dimaria echoed, suddenly more thoughtful than mocking. She tapped her finger against a winking LED. Each dull thunk was just sufficiently out of sync with the cockpit's chorus to be a whole new level of irritating. "Just out of interest, Ajeel, did you file a flight plan for this trip?"

"…Did I file a flight plan for our unauthorized jaunt to Fiore in a plane I bullied the Air Marshal into lending me? No, Dimaria, I didn't; I'm not a moron."

"You should have filed a flight plan," she informed him coolly.

At his glower, she raised one imperious finger and pointed to the man who had appeared on the runway.

The man with folded arms and eyes as blue – and unwelcoming – as the crispest winter sky reflected in a flash-frozen lake.

"Ah," said Ajeel.

Invel glared up at the plane he had frozen in place and shouted, "This flight has not been authorized! You do not have permission to take off! I am going to board this plane; if you value your lives, you will not attempt to resist!"

If not for the alarms' continued objection to the fact that the landing gear was now a block of ice, the silence in the cockpit might have been rather dramatic.

"I do believe," Dimaria drawled, "that your failure to file a flight plan has led our dear Chief of Staff to the conclusion that we're Fiorean double-agents in the process of stealing a military asset."

"Boy, is he going to get a shock," Ajeel sighed.

He powered down the engines and pulled the door-handle along its well-worn arc, releasing the lock from the inside, though it took several more seconds before Invel had unfrozen enough of the plane to let the door open. The outside greeted them with a blast of arctic wind – a warning to any traitorous spies who might have been on board.

Then the aggressive wind died away again, revealing a Chief of Staff as frozen as the aircraft he had grounded.

"Yo," said Ajeel. Dimaria gave a little wave.

"Ajeel? Dimaria? What are you two doing on a stolen aircraft?" Invel spluttered.

"We're on a date, obviously," Dimaria breezed. "Hoping for an invite?"

"You're not helping, and the plane isn't stolen!" Ajeel protested, glancing from his passenger to his irate Chief of Staff as if he couldn't make up his mind who to be angry with. "We borrowed it. With the Air Marshal's permission."

"You most certainly do not have permission to take a highly sensitive military asset out of the palace compound!" Invel's voice grew in strength with every word. "There were exactly six aerial missions scheduled for launch today, and I watched from my window as the sixth and final took off half an hour ago! No flight plan was filed, no approval was requested – yet what do I find upon my tour of the compound this afternoon? A rogue aircraft attempting to sabotage our war preparations by embarking upon an entirely unauthorized mission!"

"Now, hang on, we're not entirely stupid," Ajeel retorted. "We're not sabotaging anything. This plane had just got back from retrieving undercover agents from Fiore, and it was only going to spend the next week sat in the hangar. Why shouldn't we take it out? I am qualified to lead missions like this – which you should know, seeing as how His Majesty has put me in charge of the air fleet for the upcoming invasion and all!"

Ice creaked its way along the underbelly of the aircraft, which suddenly sounded a hundred times too insubstantial to make it across the ocean. "The only order you were given," Invel stated, "was to return to Vistarion ahead of the invasion. A task which you are clearly doing your utmost to fail."

"Oh, come on, the invasion's at least a month away. We were going to be gone seventy-two hours, tops."

"Doing something far more important than preparing for war, I'm sure."

Even without magic, the coldness of Invel's words was enough to drop the air temperature by another ten degrees. Ajeel gritted his teeth, but it was Dimaria who spoke up, as casual as ever. "Have you ever been to Fiore, Invel?"

"Of course I have – although not since diplomatic relations were ceased on His Majesty's orders. Why?"

She ignored the question. "So you've only been to Crocus to meet with their king, then? You've not seen any of the guilds, or tourist spots, or other cities?"

"I can't say I have, no."

"Even though His Majesty has had you assume command of his foreign intelligence network while he's away?"

"I don't need to be in Fiore to collate reports about it. Why these questions, Dimaria?"

That graceful, condescending tilt of her head. "Don't you want to go? Aren't you interested to see what it's actually like over there?"

"No. I have a job to do here."

"Take that guild, for instance," she purred, as if he hadn't spoken. "Fairy Tail. I've seen the invasion plans. On one hand, we're going to attack that guild of, oh, maybe a hundred people with as much of our million-strong military force as we can squeeze into their hometown. On the other hand… His Majesty must have heard the rumours that that guild is getting back together, and yet he's chosen not to accelerate the invasion in order to catch them unawares. Instead, he's having you urgently gather information about each individual and where they are. Aren't you curious as to what kind of guild has captured His Majesty's attention?"

"I am certain," Invel ground out, "that His Majesty will tell us about his relationship with that guild in his own time."

Perhaps Dimaria heard the danger that echoed louder in those stiff words than in the ice which had grounded the aircraft, because she thought it prudent to glance away and concede, "I suppose so."

It wasn't, however, in Ajeel's nature to notice those things, and he ploughed on like a dragon in a model village. "Don't you think it's odd, though? It's not like His Majesty at all."

"How so?" Invel asked sharply.

"Well, if some rebellious southern territory was gathering its strength for a battle of independence, His Majesty would send someone to deal with it straight away. You know, strike before they're ready. That's the sensible thing to do! This situation with Fairy Tail reuniting just makes no sense."

"I see," said Invel. "So, just to confirm, is it His Majesty's mental faculties you're questioning, or his integrity?"

"Wh-what?"

"Well, it's just that I'm expecting His Majesty to call me back within the next few hours, and I will need to give him an accurate report as to why we're down to the Spriggan Eleven before the war has even begun."

"Wait- that's not what I meant at all-!"

The cold intensified. Every breath scraped down Ajeel's throat like a thousand needles of glass. It withered the moisture of his eyes and lips, drew the skin tight around his fingers, deformed the aluminium shell around him with the groans of a dying leper. The magic of the desert raged inside him, desperate to retaliate, and he had to hold it back with a blind, ferocious intensity, because striking back would be an admission of guilt for a crime he had not committed-

"Is it not?" Invel challenged. "So, I didn't just hear you doubting His Majesty's ability to lead us in this war, then? And when you stole a ship for an unauthorized trip to Fiore in order to investigate – and perhaps to fight? – the guild that His Majesty clearly has plans for… that was all, what, some kind of joke, rather than the deliberate sabotage of schemes too important to have been revealed to you?"

"I want to help!" Ajeel shrieked, voice cracking, more frantic than any of the plane's alarms. "To understand our enemy- to gather more information- I would never do anything to betray the empire; you know I wouldn't! Of course I trust in His Majesty's plan!"

Unimpressed eyes flicked from him to Dimaria, who threw her arms into the air. "This was his idea! Though, for what it's worth, I was offered a non-romantic mini-break in the country of my great-grandfather, rather than any sort of clandestine plot, and I really don't think Ajeel's smart enough to have planned something like that."

Ajeel winced, but this time, managed to keep his mouth shut.

"His Majesty rarely minds being questioned," said Invel. "But whispering doubts behind his back, disobeying instructions, and potentially endangering the entire scheme on which he is working – that is unacceptable."

"That wasn't my intention." Ajeel folded his arms, hoping it would make him look full of conviction, and not like he wanted what little protection they could offer against the cold raging inside the aircraft. "All I wanted was to use this dead time between now and the invasion to learn more about our enemy."

"August has summoned you to Vistarion on behalf of the emperor, and in Vistarion you will stay until further notice. Both of you. Is that understood?"

"Yes," they chorused, with as much sincerity and as little bitterness as they could force into their voices.

"Then get out of this plane."

They scurried to obey, retrieving their rucksacks from the overhead compartments. Neither wanted to be in that death-trap of a plane for any longer than they had to.

Halfway out the door, Ajeel gestured feebly round the cockpit and asked, "What about…?"

"I'll make sure it gets back to the hangar, where it's supposed to be," Invel said.

Ajeel thought that if Invel hadn't realized there was no way this plane was going to fly again after the punishment it had taken, he sure as hell wasn't going to bring it up.

"Oh, Ajeel," Invel added – just when Ajeel had started to think it was over. "You left something."

It took a moment for him to realize he wasn't being berated for something, and another to spot the folded magazine under the seat Invel was pointing to. "Oh, that's not ours. The crew returning from Fiore must have left it in the plane."

"…Very well." Frowning, Invel bent down to retrieve the magazine himself.

Ajeel took the opportunity to get as far away from the frozen plane as possible. His heart was the only part of his body still capable of feeling through the numbing cold, and the feeling it pumped into him was thick, tarlike fear.

It wasn't his fault, he hadn't been in the wrong, there hadn't been a single thought of betrayal in his mind… and the terrifying thing was how close it had come to not mattering.

He could have fought Invel – he might have had to if the Chief of Staff had continued to accuse him – but even if he had won, it wouldn't have made the slightest bit of difference. It would merely have been taken as evidence of his guilt.

It would be a long time, he thought, before any warmth returned to him.

"Go to Fiore!, they said," came that familiar snarky tone. "It'll be fun!, they said."

But he couldn't even muster the energy to roll his eyes at her, and his words came out as sounds stretched far too thin. "Don't, Dimaria. Just don't."

After a pause, she slung her arm around his shoulders, and they kept walking away from the military compound. "Well, since our non-romantic getaway was cancelled, do you want to do something equally non-romantic in Vistarion? We could get ice cream?"

A shiver ran down his spine. "Not that. Anything but that."

"Okay then, how about hot chocolate, whipped cream, and marshmallows, for the baby of the Twelve?" she teased.

"Yeah. Sounds good."

Invel crunched the magazine he'd picked up in his fist and waited for the hand holding it to stop shaking.

He didn't know why he was so angry.

It wasn't as if he didn't realize how much damage he had done to the aircraft. The empire only had four of these stealth planes; now, in all likelihood, they had three, and those were the numbers in which wars were won and lost.

All because he, the Chief of Staff to the Emperor of Alvarez, who had been at his desk by 7am sharp every morning for the past three thousand and twelve days and counting, hadn't been able to keep control.

Paper crackled beneath his fingers; frost bent the pages of the magazine at odd angles. The urge to shatter it into a million brittle pieces was frighteningly strong.

It took conscious effort to will his magic into reverse. He stood just inside the plane, hidden from the sight of anyone who might have passed through the compound, and slowly, excruciatingly, as if he had only just begun to learn control of his magic, he forced his ice to unweave further with every meditative breath. Beneath the retreating ice lay a disfigured aluminium shell peppered by lifeless warning lights which had, at least, expired doing what they loved.

He had stopped the plane because he'd assumed it was being stolen – and how he wished that had been the case! Traitors to be subdued, assets to be recovered, enemy plans to be acquired through interrogation; everything would have been so clear-cut in the service of the empire.

He knew Ajeel would never betray the empire. He had known it must have been a misunderstanding from the moment he had boarded the craft to find two of the Spriggan Twelve standing there looking sheepish.

And yet, even when it had all been explained and he understood the situation, he had still been so angry.

This lack of emotional control wasn't like him at all.

It was… shameful.

One long inhalation uncurled in his lungs, and he still wasn't ready to return to his office.

Absently, he flicked through the magazine in his hands, seeking anything that wasn't this uncomfortable rage. The Weekly Sorcerer, a Fiorean publication. He wasn't entirely unfamiliar with it, having skimmed through several old editions as part of his research on Fairy Tail, although this issue – dated July 10 – was more recent than any he'd read. It reported on any and all current events that impacted the magical population of Fiore, weaving patchwork biographies of the most popular guilds through tantalizing headlines, tell-all interviews, and glossy bright photos snapped too excitedly from far too close.

It was one of the latter which caught his attention – not out of any particular love of gossip, but because the fuzzy, greyscale image was the opposite of the dazzle which usually graced the Weekly Sorcerer's pages. What it lacked in professionalism, it made up for in impact: some amateur photographer had been lucky enough to snap the exact moment Cana Alberona had leapt from her flying motorbike to pummel Bluenote Stinger with Fairy Glitter.

These were names Invel had learnt by heart months ago. The situation, too, was a familiar one – he had heard through the empire's information network about the attack on Lamia Scale, purely because it had been the event which had kickstarted the rumours about Fairy Tail's revival. The article was full of such speculation. No doubt it had been part of that erratic yet utterly reliable chain of overheard whispers and waiting-room gossip and lowbrow journalism that had brought the rumour to even Ajeel's ears in such a short space of time.

Invel cared little for the story. Reunited or otherwise, that guild would be crushed in due course, along with all who stood in His Majesty's way.

But there was something about it which induced in him a sense of unease, and it wasn't until the aircraft's icy coffin had reduced to a thin film of moisture glistening atop each engine that he was able to pinpoint what it was.

It wasn't Cana's dramatic pose, or Lucy's defiant one; it wasn't the power of the wind that Wendy's distance from the camera concealed, or the text which gushed about the courage Macao had displayed. Fairy Tail did not worry him. They would fall before the empire's might.

No, it was the figure in the background that did it. The blurred figure, a splodge of black and white upon a background of grey, who-

Could have been anyone.

Logical explanations crashed down upon his mind like steel doors slamming shut in a lockdown, one after the other, a desperate attempt to stop that hunch from gaining traction.

It could have been anyone from Lamia Scale – anyone from Marguerite Town, even. Anyone young or short. Anyone who happened to dress in white and black, or any combination of lighter and darker colours in the poor lighting, really; and if it looked like a certain old-fashioned style of dress… well, professional mages in Fiore were known for their eccentricity.

It could have been anyone in that low-quality photo.

Anyone at all.

And even if it was His Majesty, well, he'd assured them that Fairy Tail getting back together wasn't a cause for concern, and maybe this was the reason why. Maybe he was monitoring the situation himself. Maybe he wasn't about to rearrange his plans based on mere hearsay, and would only order Invel and the Twelve to act if the rumours turned out to be true.

Maybe.

His Majesty was inexplicably interested in that guild. Always had been.

But it was far too much of a leap to go from that to-

To-

Wasn't it?

That was when the ultra-long-range communication lacrima in his pocket began to buzz.

His heart thudded. He thought about not answering it, and hated himself for the point-nought-five seconds it took him to discard that suggestion; point-nought-five seconds longer than it would have taken him at any point in the last eleven years.

Instead, he closed the magazine – which had shown nothing of any import anyway – and shoved it back under the seat before retrieving the lacrima from his pocket.

It glowed, casting shadows around the cabin, and then grudgingly resolved into an unsteady image of His Majesty sat in front of a campfire. Invel felt a flash of irritation that he once again looked to be camping out in some godforsaken forest. Did that man have no idea how to look after himself?

That frustration was so familiar that it overrode everything else he might have felt in that moment, and that was why his voice came out mostly normal for their interactions – which was to say, utterly exasperated. "Your Majesty, do they not have hotels in Fiore?"

He sensed more than saw the severe look this earnt him. "I don't think you've really got the hang of this whole questing thing, Invel. Sleeping outdoors is part of the aesthetic."

"Perhaps, but you're conveniently ignoring the part of the imperial aesthetic where you have people to do this kind of menial quest for you," Invel muttered under his breath, but the magic of their link conveyed it to the other nonetheless.

"Not this time," he smiled. "This quest is for me alone. I must say, though, it is nice to speak to someone sensible for a change. You wouldn't believe the stupidity of the cult I met today."

"You wouldn't have to put up with them, if you came home," Invel said stubbornly.

"And suddenly, I am reminded why I don't use this lacrima," came the predictable sigh.

But even as Invel remembered how much he missed seeing that expression in person, there was a dark undercurrent running through his mind – one that cared for nothing except the evasiveness of that answer.

His Majesty didn't have to be evasive. Doing as he pleased was his right as emperor. It only served to draw attention to the fact that he had told no one about the nature of his so-called quest, or asked for any assistance beyond information, even though it was apparently important enough to drag him away from Alvarez on the eve of war.

Out of the corner of his eye, Invel's gaze fell upon the corner of the half-hidden magazine.

The voice from the lacrima said, quite suddenly, "What's the matter, Invel?"

"Nothing's the matter."

With a broad gesture meant to indicate the lacrima image rather than his surroundings, His Majesty remarked, "This interference isn't at my end."

A sharp glance around confirmed that the chill Invel had felt stealing all enthusiasm from his respiratory system wasn't merely figurative, but the product of ice cold enough for even him to feel, forming inside the wounded aircraft. The waves of magic rolling off his body must have been interfering with the magical connection forged by the lacrima. Of course His Majesty would notice something like that. He was too good not to.

"What happened, Invel?" There was still lightness in his tone, but notably less of it, and it sparked an incomprehensible, irrational fear up Invel's spine.

"I stopped what I thought was one of our aircraft being stolen. It turned out to be Ajeel trying to impress Dimaria. I'm still defrosting the plane." It was the truth, every word, and if it wasn't strictly, strictly, the answer to the question His Majesty had asked – well, it was close enough, wasn't it?

There came a chuckle from the lacrima. "I did wonder where you were. He never learns, does he?"

"Apparently not." Relaxing a little from a tension he could not explain, Invel pressed, "So, what can I do for you, Your Majesty?"

"You called me," came the bemused response. "About two hours ago, when I was too busy to answer. I was rather hoping you had some good news for me."

"Of course, please forgive me. If I may just finish with this…"

"Please do. And find somewhere quieter than the military compound. My teammate is currently asleep, and I shan't be pleased if a jet engine wakes her up while I'm on this call."

Invel had intended to point out that there were no more scheduled take-offs for the day, but what came out of his mouth was the question, "Teammate?"

"Perhaps questing partner would be more accurate," the other amended. "Not that that is any of your business, of course."

"…Yes, Your Majesty."

Invel managed to re-thaw the plane on his second attempt, slowly coaxing the ice back from the thoroughly wrecked aluminium shell until his magic was back within him and his emotions sufficiently dulled by the cold. His Majesty's relaxed manner, so unbefitting an emperor and yet so infuriatingly typical of his emperor, had helped him calm down; had also made things a hundred times worse.

When he was once again sat in his office, drawing comfort from the surroundings in which he had first tried to contact his emperor, two hours ago, when everything had still been so straightforward, he spoke. "I have an update on the locations of the three Fairy Tail members who joined the Rune Knights. Our spy has managed to retrieve the details of their current missions."

"Oh? Go on."

Invel leafed through documents to triple-check information he had memorized upon the first reading. "Levy McGarden was sent to infiltrate a group by the name of Avatar."

"Was she? Interesting."

"I've never come across this Avatar before. Would you like me to investigate?"

"Absolutely not. Under no circumstances are you to look into this cult. On pain of death. Is that understood?"

"As you wish," came the baffled response.

"Good. And the others?"

"Gajeel Redfox and the Exceed Pantherlily were transferred at the request of the Fiorean military to help protect a magical artefact they had recently acquired. We do not have access to any further details, but I do have a location for you – a place codenamed Point Nova."

"That's where they moved the treasure from Alchemilla Town!" His Majesty realized, snapping his fingers suddenly. "No wonder none of these side quests were optional – they're all interconnected! Though, that isn't helpful without knowing where Point Nova is."

"We do know, now. I'll send you the coordinates. It appears to be a military base outside Crocus… which I take it is not as far as it should be from your current location."

"Quite," came the easy response. "Well, if that's all…"

"Your Majesty," Invel began, and then hesitated.

"What is it?"

"The rumours about Fairy Tail…"

The response was quick to whip through the uncertain silence. "How many times must I tell you that that isn't your concern?"

"I…"

"What is the matter, Invel?"

A blurry photograph that may have been of anyone doing anything; a string of decisions from above that he had not even thought to question until the anomalies had been so brazenly pointed out to him; a fear that his trust in the plan whose whole he was unable to see, a trust which had always been sufficient for him, might be no longer so infallible.

"It's nothing, Your Majesty. Please, forgive me. It has been a very trying day."

Long after the call had disconnected, Invel found himself wondering if he had only been so angry with Ajeel because of how easily Ajeel had asked the questions he detested himself for even thinking.

Fight it, fight it, fight it-!

Jellal's head shot up with that warning upon his lips and no clue what he was warning himself about.

Fight it! insisted his brain.

He scrambled to his feet on his perch atop the Mobile Temple Olympia, scouring the surrounding darkness with eyes and ears and all the sensitivity of his magic, desperate for some glimpse of the man or beast he was supposed to fight – for anything out of place amongst the trees.

Fight it…? wondered his brain.

The serenity of his surroundings frightened him. The normalness of it all. The trees were only trees, the shadows were only shadows, and every demon his mind sketched in the night disappeared on a second glance. There was no motion but his own, no sound but the thunder within his own chest, nothing wrong except for the certainty that something definitely was.

He was missing something. Something big; something that the peaceful night was refusing to yield to him; something he couldn't quite grasp, like trying to remember the exact moment of falling asleep.

Perhaps he had fallen asleep. Unconsciousness would explain the odd disconnect in his thoughts. Perhaps the fear could even be a remnant of some already-forgotten dream… but that wasn't right, couldn't be right, he never fell asleep while keeping watch, and it felt less like losing consciousness than losing time…

Magic. Enemy magic. That was the only real possibility. He must have sensed it, mentally tried to fight it off, but ultimately succumbed to it. Even now he didn't know what it had done to him. How long he had been vulnerable? Had it shut down his body or his mind or both, and how?

But far, far worse than the danger to himself was the danger to which his guild had been exposed by his failure to overcome the enemy's spell.

Jellal bounded down from the roof of their hideout – just as Erza burst through the front doors. "Jellal! Did you sense that?"

"Yes." He touched a hand to his forehead, suddenly dizzy. He had not realized how vast his concern for Erza's life – for all the lives in his care – had grown in that half-second between comprehension and her arrival, and the relief sloshed disconcertingly around a mind already saturated with panic. He admitted, "I couldn't fight it. Whoever it was – they got right past me. The guild-"

"Everyone's fine," she reassured him, placing one hand on his shoulder. "Most of them slept right through it – whatever it was."

"I- I don't remember anything."

"Neither do I," Erza told him sincerely. She put her other hand on his shoulder too, as if to somehow share with him the self-control she had mustered. "I don't know what happened, but whoever used that magic can't have been trying to hurt the guild."

"Then what were they after? And who was it? We're miles away from civilization. The only human beings out here are us and- Avatar."

"You think-?"

"Something must have gone wrong," he muttered. "Lucy."

And he was running again. This time, there was magic mixed with the cocktail of fear and adrenaline that had been transfused directly into his blood, and when he travelled at the speed of a shooting star, no one could hope to keep up. He raced impossibly quickly through the forest, not knowing what he would do when he reached Avatar's hideout, driven only by the certainty that he should never have let her go up against such dangerous foes on her own, no matter how she'd extolled the benefits of stealth-

Jellal skidded to a halt.

The forced deceleration out of his Meteor state scorched a cherry-red gash through the undergrowth, but he hardly noticed it. After all, what was the trail of one stray meteor compared to the huge impact crater it led up to?

Before him lay a vast depression in the ground. It might have been the exposed bed of some old lake, if lakes of lava existed in the forests of Fiore – because nothing less than intense heat could have been responsible for the warped rocks where the soil had melted, deformed, and fused again; for the stink of soot and sulphur plunging viscous fingers down his throat; for the withered roots protruding from the crater's edges like accusing skeletal fingers from a mass grave.

A single trail of smoke made its dutiful pilgrimage towards the heavens, all that remained of that profane obsidian relic which once had been the heart of the dead forest, that church of blood and stone.

Midnight came and went before the stream of well-wishers dried up, finally allowing Yukino to sneak out of Sabertooth's infirmary.

Thanks to Lucy's tip about their wounds, the burning in her ankle had been reduced to little worse than a mild sprain, and she'd finally said farewell to her long-lost sister's guild and returned to her own. Sabertooth's medic had insisted on running a full check-up too, and naturally, the entire guild had overreacted – to her returning late as much as to her returning injured – and she'd only just managed to get away from them all.

She made swift progress with the aid of her crutch, even after the paved road turned into a country trail and then a pebble-studded incline. Far from the dead forest, which held her sister's guild and Lucy's adventuring party within its shady confines, the stars lit her path, and the lights of Jasmine glimmered like an amateur sun in the distance.

It was here, at the end of an overgrown path, that she found the man she was looking for.

Steeling herself, she urged as much joviality as possible into her voice as she hobbled forward. "So, this is where you've been, Elfman! We were so worried when you never came back to the guildhall!"

A sniff. A creak of stone. A silhouette large enough to have been mistaken for a small hill turned to regard her.

There came a quiet voice: "How's your ankle?"

"Much better," Yukino answered, in that same incongruous cheerfulness. "Should be fine by tomorrow."

"I'm so sorry…"

"It's not your fault I was hurt. You found Jellal and Erza – you probably saved all our lives."

"I should have done more."

Yukino gave a long, silent sigh. She had been expecting this, ever since she had left Crime Sorcière's hideout to find that she wasn't the only one who had been missing from Sabertooth since early that morning.

"There were enough of us fighting in the diner. If you'd jumped in too, not only would you have got in the way of the three summoners and nine Celestial Spirits we had in play at once, but no one would have come to back us up, and we'd have been defeated."

"I've not been in a situation like that for so long," came the dull response. "It only proves what I've known all along: that Fairy Tail won't ever take me back."

"What, because you showed more common sense in one fight than the rest of the guild has put together?"

"I had to take the sensible option, because I couldn't have fought for them!"

"And I'm telling you that isn't a problem! There is absolutely nothing wrong with deciding to retire from being a mage!"

A shake of his great, shaggy head, and nothing more.

"You can't let go, can you?" Yukino murmured. "Why don't you want to go and be Fairy Tail's chef, once the guild has got back together?"

"Fairy Tail won't accept me as a chef."

"I don't think you're giving your friends enough credit. Lucy was perfectly accepting of your career change when you explained it to her, wasn't she?"

"It's not her that I'm-"

"You can't have it both ways, Elfman!" she burst out. "You can't be upset that no one will understand your career move, and then also be upset when it turns out they do! That's like having your cake and eating it – and then coming home to find that someone has replenished all the ingredients in the pantry so that you can have the joy of baking it all over again! If you want to be a chef, be a chef. If you want to be part of Fairy Tail, be part of Fairy Tail. If you want to be both, be both! If you want to follow your dream at Sabertooth, we'll support you; if you want to do it at Fairy Tail, they'll support you – the only person holding you back is you yourself!"

Gently now, she moved forward, resting her hand upon one massive shoulder. "What is it that you want, Elfman?"

"I want…" His words caught on the lump in his throat. "I don't know…"

Yukino sighed. "You know what would be really good right about now? Chocolate brownies."

"It's one in the morning," he pointed out, thrown by her change of topic. "All the shops will be shut."

"That's why I'm friends with the man who has the keys to Sabertooth's kitchens," she winked. "Come on. Nothing beats midnight baking when you're down. Maybe it'll help you work through some things in your mind. And with any luck, things will seem brighter come the morning."

Zeref came awake like a kitten might, a bundle of soft confusion, unable to understand why the world around him was so very different to the dream-world he had just left. A murmur fought its way free from a throat unaccustomed to waking in silence. Hands pawed at the blanket, unsure whether they were supposed to be throwing off this strange new weight or drawing it closer, and only entangling himself further in attempting to do both at once.

At last, he seemed to wake fully and roll over. His black eyes sharpened to their usual diamond edge as they focussed on Lucy, where she sat at the opposite side of the clearing. She met his gaze squarely over the top of her notebook without a word, and held it, unmoving, until he looked away again.

Sitting up, he stared at the blanket in his hands. "Did I… keep you up last night?" he asked, eventually.

"No. You were fine."

"Oh. Okay."

He folded the blanket, sat it in his lap, and then stared at it some more.

"I don't understand," he murmured. "It shouldn't… I don't know why this time was any different…"

Because you weren't alone, she wanted to say. Because I don't know what you've been through since the Academy, but you've forgotten what it's like to depend on someone, to be looked after, and how powerful those little things can be.

But she didn't say it.

Before the events of yesterday, she'd have declared it out loud, and proudly. Since then, she had come to realize just how much of his behaviour was driven by the need to suppress his curse. He walked an exceedingly narrow tightrope, and the fact that he had had four hundred years of practice helped little when she failed to act like the people with whom he was used to interacting. She didn't want to make things worse. She didn't want to be the reason why he suffered.

Which meant acting as though last night had changed nothing between them, and letting him be once again the person he had been throughout their quest so far: confident, controlled, defensive, and pretending not to be her friend.

But, that was okay.

She liked that side of him too. Travelling with him was more fun than she'd ever admit to him out loud.

That was why she said, brisk and confident, "Well, it's about time for me to go and check in with Jellal and Erza."

She thought she saw a flash of gratitude in his eyes, booted out of his conscious mind by some well-honed coping mechanism before it could grow into anything dangerous, and she knew that, on some level, he understood perfectly what she was doing.

"Alright, then," he nodded. "I'll meet you outside their base in fifteen minutes."

"About that long," she wheedled. "But please don't overreact if I'm a little late coming out. Imagine what it would do for your great and terrible reputation if you started a war with Crime Sorcière just because I decided to borrow their shower."

"I have the reputation that I do, Lucy, precisely because I've started wars for far more trivial reasons," he assured her, earning himself his first glower of the day. With a smile, he amended, "Then again, as I happen to be entirely in favour of not having teammates who smell, I suppose I can grant you a little leeway."

"Gee, thanks," Lucy grunted.

"Oh, and one other thing." Zeref retrieved the books his flailing had knocked around the clearing last night, brushed them down, and held them out towards her. "Put these in your bag for me."

"My bag is full; put them in your Requip Space," she retorted.

"My Requip Space is full; put them in your bag."

She held her ground. "They fit just fine into your Requip Space yesterday."

"I had to move some items around in there last night, and now they don't fit any more." When she didn't budge, he persisted, "I bet I can find a dozen things in your bag less important than a book written by me."

"Hmm, okay, shall I throw out my maps, my food, or my bras?"

"It's all the same to me. I know where we're going, I don't technically need to eat, and I don't care what you wear, so take your pick." Then he tilted his head, considering the matter. "Though, if you did want to throw out your-"

She cut him off there. "Yes, that's quite enough of your input, thanks. I suppose I could roll up the blanket and carry it separately…"

Soon, she was packed and ready to go, now weighed down with some wholly unnecessary books. "As soon as our journey brings us close to Crocus again, I'm dropping all your useless stuff off in my house, and it can stay there until the end of our quest. I am not your personal packhorse."

He gave her an innocent smile. "If this whole reviving-Fairy-Tail thing falls through, you should seriously consider it as a career change. You're very good at it."

"I am so done with you," Lucy sighed, trying very hard to look like she wasn't smiling, because this was precisely what things were supposed to be like on their journey. Raising a hand in farewell, she headed off to her rendezvous with Jellal and Erza.

The rendezvous didn't quite go the way Lucy had been expecting.

She had barely drawn within sight of Crime Sorcière's mobile base when the doors burst open, releasing a wild Erza into the early morning mists. She pounced like a tiger, snatching Lucy up into a lethally tight hug. The impact might have knocked Lucy clean out if Erza had been wearing her usual breastplate; as she was still in pinstripe pyjamas, however, Lucy was fully conscious to appreciate the surrealness of it.

Things weren't much clearer when she heard Jellal's soft voice. "We thought you had died in the explosion."

"What explosion?" Lucy asked, once she had wriggled out of Erza's embrace and replenished her supply of oxygen.

"At Avatar's church. There's nothing left of it."

"I told you it was just Lucy and Natsu being Lucy and Natsu," Erza smiled, but it wasn't enough to fool Lucy, not after that greeting.

"Natsu wasn't there," Lucy reported. "And we didn't blow up the church."

"We? I thought you went on your own."

"Me… and my Spirits," she evaded, although it did make her wonder. The last time she had seen Avatar's hideout, it had been intact, but wasn't there an entire period between being Avatar's prisoner and waking up in the forest of which she had no recollection? Surely Zeref would have mentioned something so important as having destroyed the church on his way out… but then again, he hadn't exactly been in the most stable frame of mind when she'd awoken, had he?

I do not know what I would have done when I got out of those chains, he'd said, and she realized, cold and warm all at once, that she didn't know what he would have done either.

"I don't… think… we destroyed the church, anyway," she hedged. "There was a lot of magic I'd never seen before. Ritual magic. There were loads of runes and… stuff."

Erza and Jellal exchanged glances. Lucy hoped her very eloquent conclusion was enough to counterbalance the fact that she probably wasn't supposed to know what ritual magic was. Cana had loved the idea of her having an enigmatic Spymaster General; these two, she suspected, would not be quite as willing to brush it off.

Jellal's attention turned towards the forest, his expression suddenly closed, leaving Lucy to wonder if he and Zeref had attended the same school of emotional control. Before he could say anything, though, Erza inquired, "And Natsu wasn't there?"

"No. They must be keeping him somewhere else. I know it's odd, since Gray told me to my face that Natsu was there, but-"

"Gray was there?"

Lucy blinked. "Of course he was. He's your spy, isn't he?"

"Lucy, my spy is Levy."

"What?"

"Levy was the one who told me Natsu had been captured," Erza reiterated.

"But… but I thought Levy was working for the Rune Knights!"

"She is. They sent her to infiltrate Avatar. I ran into her while I was staking out the black church with Crime Sorcière, and since we had a common goal, she agreed to report back to me as well as the Knights, provided I kept the identity of my contact a secret. I haven't seen Gray since before Fairy Tail was disbanded."

"But…" Lucy tried to recall the conversation she had had in Avatar's basement and stalled; there was too much that didn't make sense. "Gray told me he was your spy, Erza!"

"Did he say that?" Jellal checked, in the soft tones of someone who had done this often enough to know what the answer would be. "Or did you say it to him?"

"…I said it," she realized. "He just didn't correct me. But if he's not spying for you, who is he spying for? And where are Levy and Natsu?"

"I don't know," Erza admitted. "I haven't been able to contact Levy since her call yesterday afternoon."

Jellal's gaze flicked back out towards the trees as he added, "Avatar have been one step ahead of us this whole time. And with their Mikage Branch destroyed and Levy missing… we have no more leads."

"I was listening," Zeref stated, the moment they were reunited.

"Good." Eavesdropping on her friends wasn't a habit Lucy particularly wanted him falling into, but at least it meant she could skip the explanation and jump straight to the accusation. "Did you destroy Avatar's church?"

"No."

"Zeref?" she pressed, eyebrows raised.

"I didn't destroy it, Lucy."

She met his gaze, knew that he was telling the truth, and glanced away apologetically. "Okay, sorry. Then what did happen to it? Magic gone wrong?"

"I doubt it. I saw some of their runework while I was exploring. At least one person amongst them is competent with ritual magic, and no one with that level of skill would make such a devastating mistake by accident. I think they did it on purpose."

"Destroyed their own base?" she blinked. He didn't respond, instead waiting for her to think it through on her own – and come to think of it, now that she'd heard about him and the Academy, his teacher-like mannerisms made a lot more sense. "Well, I suppose we'd escaped, so they knew their location was compromised. Plus, they had already evacuated, so they didn't have much to lose… and in return, all the evidence, and any clues as to the locations of their other hideouts, has gone up in smoke."

"I'd be very interested in the magic they used to do it," Zeref mused. "It sounds like a ritual of some sort – nothing else can cause that much damage so efficiently – so perhaps a ritual circle that encompassed the entire building? I would like to see the ruins for myself… but I have no doubt that Jellal and his crew will be monitoring that place very closely over the next few days. The last thing I want is for them to catch me there and come to the mistaken opinion that Avatar's lunacy has anything to do with me."

"Yeah, I don't think I'd be able to explain that one away as easily as I could to Cana." Lucy gave a long-suffering sigh, a gesture she had become inordinately familiar with over the past few days. "Ah, I really hate lying to Jellal about you."

"Because of that scary expression he has where you can swear he's seeing right through you?" Zeref asked, amused.

"No- well, yes, that is scary, but that's not what I meant. Of everyone we've met so far, I truly believe he's the one who'd be the most understanding about you and me teaming up… if you were literally anyone except his sworn enemy, that is. I mean, he's the one living with a bunch of escaped convicts!"

"Then tell him the truth. It's all the same to me."

"You know I can't do that," Lucy sighed.

"Quite," Zeref shrugged. "Well, there is one small silver lining to the storm of utter disaster which was our raid on Avatar's hideout."

"Which is…?"

"We have no leads on Avatar. Which means no more detours. Which means that today is the day our quest finally gets back on track!"

Skipping on ahead, he turned back to throw her the broadest grin she had ever seen. "Come on, Lucy! A certain cerulean winged horse desires the pleasure of our company, and we've kept him waiting long enough!"

Weak.

Ambushed, imprisoned, beaten, bound, broken, weak.

Useless the joints in his shoulder, threatening to give out before his restraints did; futile the time spent training, brought low by a single kiss from magic-suppressing steel; worthless the strength that wasn't enough, ten months and it still wasn't enough, because he couldn't stop Zeref, couldn't protect his guild, couldn't even rescue Lucy.

If only he'd come back from the mountains one day sooner.

If only he'd gone back to Lucy's house that night.

If only he'd been there-

If, if, if.

A hundred things he would have done, if he'd known.

Nothing he could do now but wait.

But he wouldn't wait, couldn't wait, kept throwing himself over and over at the bars of the cage until his shoulder bulged like a swollen blueberry and the shackles had rubbed raw blisters into his skin and still the pain was a whisper compared to the howl of agony from within.

Dragons weren't meant to be caged.

Dragons weren't meant to be this weak.

At the sound of footsteps, he lunged forward with renewed vigour. The chain snapped tight at his wrist with a clink of laughter. The shackle's edge caught, slashed, splattered the dirt with thick red droplets – blood which should have ignited with maddened flame; blood which was just blood.

It wasn't until he caught the newcomer's scent that he paused. He knew it well, but at the same time, he didn't.

There was something off about it – something that made his hackles rise. A growl emanated from deep within his chest, growing, twisting, bursting through bared fangs as if to prevent the newcomer's approach with the force of sound alone.

The figure gazed through the cell bars at the confined Dragon Slayer. One eye was ice-blue, the other inferno-red, and neither matched the smile curling across lips half-stained with black.

"Hello, Natsu," said Gray.

A/N: Quick round up of (most of) the open story threads before entering uncharted territory. Well, it's not as though it's been sticking religiously to canon up to this point, but as they don't normally go to Blue Pegasus until they're on the way to Alvarez (and it's not the main group who goes even then), this seems as good a place as any to mark the divergence.

It also seems like a good place to say thank you for all your support so far! I've been so lucky to get some incredibly thought-provoking reviews with amazing attention to detail - and all your questions will be answered eventually, I promise! For now, as the third arc draws to a close, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who has reviewed, followed or favourited this story so far - every notification means so much to me. See you next week! ~CS