The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

Sacrimony, Part 4

-There Are No Heroes-

This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

It was paranoia, that was all. Choosing to err on the side of caution.

Lucy should have quietly been able to switch back with Gemini as they entered the final battle, Zeref's fears proven wrong, Gray on her side as always – and when all this was over, they would have looked back and laughed about how her friend's acting had been so good that he had completely bamboozled a four-hundred-year-old genius mage.

Not like this.

It shouldn't have been like this.

Gray was laughing.

He was doubled over, his shoulders heaving, one hand pressed to his forehead as if that could somehow contain his mirth.

"To think that I hesitated!" he marvelled. "That I almost couldn't bring myself to do it! And all this time, you never trusted me anyway!"

Then his words were lost to horrible laughter.

Great silent sobs tore through Lucy's body. She was curled into a tight ball, her arms wrapped around her knees, a vain attempt to prevent the monstrous void that had consumed her heart from bursting out into reality. Her lips were prised apart in a soundless scream – screaming because it was the only way to convey her rejection of this situation, but soundless because if he heard her, he would find her, and this time, he would finish the job.

"So much for that, then," Gray decided. His voice swept like a pulse of sonar through the streets, searching for her real self. "Come out, Lucy. Let's talk face to face."

Feverishly, she shook her head. She couldn't go out to face him, because acknowledging this nightmare would make it real, and she didn't want any reality in which Gray was capable of-

A hand rested gently on the top of her head.

"I'll go," offered a familiar voice – Loke.

Before she could so much as glance up at him, the Celestial Spirit vanished and reopened his Gate in front of Gray. There was no magic built up around his palms – no open threat – but his eyes were harder than Lucy had ever seen them.

Gray was Loke's friend too. And he had been for longer than Lucy had known either of them.

Gray smiled in greeting, though it extended to only one of his eyes – the one that burnt with hellfire. "Hello, Loke. I see Lucy intends to keep hiding behind her Spirits."

"Why?" Loke asked, all the exploding heartbreak of the moment compressed into one ice-cold word.

"I had to stop her before she could reach Arlock," Gray shrugged. "If she had simply left, like I told her to, there would have been no need for it."

"Why?" Loke snarled again.

"Because I want Avatar's plan to succeed, and Lucy was getting in the way of that. Honestly, Loke, I don't know how I can make this any simpler for you."

"Why are you siding with Avatar?"

"Because they can get me what I want: END."

"Since when have you cared about END?"

"Since the battle against Tartaros. Not that any of you would know about that, after the whole guild walked away while I was grieving…" Gray shrugged again. The accusation had no real venom to it; he was saying it simply because he could. "I tried to search for the Book of END on my own, but Juvia thought I was becoming obsessed. She would know about obsession, wouldn't she?" He let out a bark of laughter. "But she was annoying, so I pretended I'd stopped, and carried on my research in secret. That led me to Avatar. Zeref had disappeared again, taking the Book of END with him, but Avatar had a plan to draw him out of hiding. I knew that if I stayed with them, they would give the book to me once they had Zeref."

"All this, for a book?"

"Yes."

"You were going to kill Lucy for a book?"

"Obviously. Now, are you done with your inane questions? I'd rather like to silence you two and be out of here before this town goes up in flames."

All familiarity had gone from Loke's countenance; his voice was the snarl of the lion. "If you think I am going to let you harm my owner and destroy everything that Fairy Tail stands for-"

"Loke, wait."

Lucy stood at the end of the street. Her heart hammered, but she held herself tall. The tear tracks were gone from her cheeks.

Zeref had been right. Gray was working for Avatar.

But she knew she was also right: her Gray, Fairy Tail's Gray, would never do something like that.

Therefore…

"You're not Gray, are you?" Lucy accused.

It wasn't the fact that his one red eye lit up with amusement at her suggestion that bothered her. It was the way that his other eye, the one that encapsulated the lake's beauty within a sheen of ice, remained dull.

"Wrong," he smiled. "I am Gray. Guess again."

"Take off your clothes," Lucy said.

Loke's eyes bugged out.

"I'm- I'm sorry?" Gray choked.

"Well, just your shirt will do. Take it off," she repeated. "Not embarrassed, are you?"

There was silence.

"Lucy," Loke volunteered weakly, "not even I have tried to redeem a fallen friend by flirting with them."

Lucy coughed. "That is not what I'm doing, thank you very much."

"So, I've finally kicked the stripping habit. What's that supposed to prove?" Gray challenged. "Avatar have a stricter image policy than our pathetic excuse for a guild, that's all."

"Except you didn't kick the habit when you joined Avatar," Lucy pointed out. "Juvia told me that you stopped stripping right before you vanished without a trace. So, if you wouldn't mind, I would like you to take your shirt off now."

Gray stared at Lucy.

Lucy stared at Gray.

Then, in a single move that appeared as natural as breathing – because, to him, it was – his shirt was gone.

Darkness engulfed the right side of his torso. It formed a carapace of black ice, as if the innocuous patterns of his Devil Slayer magic had crystallized over his skin. It clawed its way up his right arm and across his chest from there, relinquishing control back to snowy skin three-quarters of the way to his left shoulder. There was an odd flowing quality to it, liquid when glimpsed through the corner of her eye and solid beneath her gaze, expanding and contracting to accommodate the movements of his lungs without ever moving itself.

It might have been beautiful, if it wasn't so wrong. It wasn't a part of her friend. It did not belong over his heart.

There was a sharp intake of breath from Loke, but Lucy's mouth was set in a grim line. "I knew it. Last time we met, you told me you could control those marks on your body, and you proved it by removing them from your face… but they didn't disappear. You simply pushed them back down towards your heart, hidden by your t-shirt. That's why you stopped stripping in front of Juvia. You had no doubt she would insist on getting help if she knew how bad it had become."

"Well, aren't you the smart one?" Gray purred.

"What is it doing to you?" Lucy demanded in return.

"There is no it and me, Lucy," he sighed. "I have come to realize what really matters: the truth and the purpose I inherited from my father. I am going to use this power to destroy END. That's all there is to it."

"You're not using it, Gray. It's using you."

Another sigh, as if her response had been so very predictable. "Well, if I'd thought you'd have understood, I'd have explained everything when we first met in the black church," he reflected, more to himself than to her. "But you have got in the way of my purpose too many times. I'm sorry, Lucy, but you really do need to die now."

Lucy narrowed her eyes. It seemed she was going to have to leave stopping the ritual up to Zeref. She had to deal with this.

Golden light flickered as she entered her Leo form. "Someone has to bring you back to your senses, Gray. And since Natsu isn't here, it looks like it's going to have to be me. Again."

"What, are you going to punch me until I agree to come back to Fairy Tail?" Gray laughed.

She shrugged. "Well, it worked against Laxus."

"Wait, what-?"

Lucy punched him in the face.

It hurt a lot more than he was expecting.

Zeref jogged through the deserted streets.

Then he slowed to a walk.

Then he stopped.

He turned, slowly, through three-sixty degrees; he took in the silent fires, the rubble haphazardly blending civilization with wasteland, the dusk and smoke loitering in the air, the half-collapsed buildings he didn't recognize and the old writing scrawled on the walls and the empty, unfamiliar street.

Then he frowned.

He couldn't remember what he was doing here.

There had always been something beautiful about the way Gray fought.

Not that Lucy would ever have said that out loud. She was all for giving credit where credit was due, but the last thing she wanted was for a certain water mage to conclude that she had been paying special attention to Gray in battle – when he was even less likely to be wearing clothes than usual.

Still, spoken or unspoken, it was something she couldn't not notice. It wasn't that he lacked raw power – rather, having grown up in a guild with Laxus and Gildarts, he had realized much quicker than most that raw power wouldn't always be enough. He complemented his strength with elegant creativity, and he wove his conjurations with unrivalled dexterity and speed. There was an artistry to his battles that Natsu, for all his devastating might, had never quite obtained.

There was nothing beautiful about the way Gray fought tonight.

He was static in the middle of the street, no fluidity, no grace, repelling her advances with nothing but overwhelming force. Laxus had adopted much the same style, but then Laxus had been trying to conceal his injuries. Gray was simply not being Gray. And if his wild laughter was any indication, he was delighting in it.

He flicked his fingers in a lazy mockery of Ice Make's full-body stances, and a glacier appeared in the street between him and Lucy.

It was crude, ugly. He could do better. He just didn't want to.

Faster than any glacier should move, it surged down the street, crushing benches and ripping through walls with ease. Lucy's hand went to her belt, summoning Taurus to join her and Loke. A blow from the Bull Spirit's axe opened a crevasse in the ice – one which Loke immediately charged through in order to face Gray directly.

The Lion Spirit's fury made him predictable. Calmly, an enormous bow at absolute zero materialized in Gray's hands, tip pointed at the breach in the ice.

To his credit, Loke smashed the first arrow aside without missing a step. "Give Gray back to us!" he roared.

"You're not even trying to understand, are you?" Gray gave a theatrical sigh, even as he altered his aim a little. The second arrow hit the ground at Loke's feet and exploded, trapping him in crystal from the waist down. "I am Gray. Your Gray. And the sooner you and Lucy-"

It was as he was nocking his third arrow that he realized the Celestial Spirit mage in question had not followed Loke through the crevasse. The puzzled frown that replaced his cruel delight made him look almost familiar… almost, but not quite. Not enough to give Lucy pause. She was directly above him, thanks to Taurus having used the flat of his axe to launch her over the glacier, and all the power of Regulus was in her fist.

Without even looking, Gray raised his right arm to block it. Striking that vambrace of black crystal was like punching a mountain. If not for the strength of her Leo Form, that would have been the end of her fist, and likely most of the bones in her arm as well.

In Gray's other hand, a sword of ice had appeared from nowhere. It wasn't the pure crystal she remembered. It was a tainted, bruised violet, as if water and magic had mixed with black ichor before freezing. Some part of her wondered if he bled that colour now – and that was her last coherent thought for several seconds, as the blade struck home and he threw her aside.

"Gray would never help Avatar," she hissed, struggling to pull herself up from the ground. "He'd never help to murder three thousand innocent people!"

"None of that matters, Lucy," he sighed. "Not these stupid people, living their stupid lives. The world won't be better or worse because they're gone. It'll carry on as before. And END will finally be within my grasp."

"That's ridiculous," she snarled, but Gray was bored of pretending to listen. His hand flashed out, generating a rough edge of ice that should have been far too heavy to lift one-handed.

Lucy threw herself aside – too slow, she realised. The moment she had stopped moving, the cold had settled into her muscles, and now they ached in protest at having to work again. She hadn't accounted for that. She hadn't known Gray had become this powerful. Or maybe she had, but it had never concerned her, because he had always been on her side-

With a roar befitting his title, Loke broke out of the crystal and shot towards them. Gray's ice blade was too crude, too bulky, to cut with; it met the arm Loke raised to block it with the crunch of defeated bone.

He had jumped in to save her, but a single glance told Lucy that the Spirit was not in a good way. Golden mites swirled around the arm she was sure Gray had broken. Even worse were the holes in his legs where the exploding ice crystals had pierced right through him. They were leaking the same stardust as his arm, as the physical body granted to him by her magic struggled to hold itself together.

"Loke," she commanded. "Go back."

He ignored her. "This isn't how Gray fights."

"Loke, you have to go back before you take any more damage!"

"It's that black crystal taking over his body. I'm sure of it."

Lucy shook her head. She understood his concern, but that was no reason to act so recklessly. "Loke, Forced Clo-"

"Damn it, Lucy!" Loke snarled, seizing her wrist before she could complete the order. "I've had enough of not being able to help you! The worst Gray can do is force me to return to the Spirit Realm; don't you dare do that job for him! I'm a creature of magic, Lucy! I can't die!"

"That doesn't matter!" she insisted; she knew all too well that immortal beings felt pain just as much as any mortal. "I don't want to see you get hurt like this!"

"Tough! Gray has been my friend for longer than he's been yours. If I can stand, I can fight!"

Without waiting for agreement, Loke threw himself back into the melee. In that moment, he did not suit the suave outfit that had blended in so well at Blue Pegasus's guildhall. He wouldn't have looked out of place in a true Fairy Tail brawl.

Maybe that was the point Loke was trying to make, she thought to herself. Fight like they used to. Remind Gray of home.

Yet she couldn't see it working. His was a total transformation: the erasure of everything Gray, to be replaced by the arrogance, cruelty, and single-mindedness of something very Not-Gray, feeding on twisted desire and brutally abusing his magic.

That black crystal growth he'd tried to hide from her and Juvia was the cause. That was the real enemy here, she was sure of it.

So what if she took that literally?

The thing was, Zeref was sure he was supposed to be doing something important.

That certainty nagged at him like an overly interested wasp – too persistent to ignore, yet every time he raised his hand to swat it away, those yellow and black stripes warned him off touching it.

It was the rune circle woven through the abandoned streets that was causing him the most unease. Not the fact that it was rare to find magic like that these days, nor the fact that he could tell from a glance that it would be fatal to all within, because rare and fatal magic was not exactly uncommon in his life. He just had an inexplicable feeling that the weird circle had something to do with why he was here.

But if it wasn't interesting enough for him to study, and he could see no merit in using it… then perhaps he was here to stop it from being used.

But that would involve saving people.

Saving people wasn't something he did. Everyone knew that.

So, that couldn't be it… but he didn't know what was, and every time he tried to push at the veil between him and the answer, between perception and self, between waking and dreaming, that sense of danger pushed back.

It scared him.

He glanced around once more, seeking something clearer than the heaviness of his mind. His gaze fell upon a bookshop across the road… and just like that, the sense of danger vanished. Bookshops were good. Bookshops were safe. Looking for old magical books was entirely consistent with his usual behaviour, and besides, what harm could come from a little reading?

Yes, that must be it. That was why he was in this street. The books. That was the most sensible explanation.

There was a strange sense of déjà vu as he stepped towards the bookshop, but as the unquiet buzzing faded from his mind, he was almost relieved to forget about it.

Steel and ice met with an unhealthy crunch. Compared to the club-like construct in Gray's hand, the blade of Lucy's Cancer form seemed so fragile. Lucy's will may have been too great to let it break, but the shadow-saturated ice ploughed through her mightiest swing.

She dropped the blade. It was that, or go down with it.

Her other sword twisted towards the black crystalline magic coating his skin – and skated along it, shedding sparks. Gray gave her a condescending smile before kicking her away.

He knew what she was trying to do. He'd laughed when he'd realized it, wondering out loud if she was trying to throw the match by deliberately targeting his armour. Perhaps she was being foolish – or perhaps she was on to something, and he was trying to throw her off the scent.

And yet it was making no difference.

Taurus's axe couldn't dent the black crystal. Sagittarius's arrows couldn't pierce it. Her whip couldn't crack it. The liquid blackness absorbed the starlight radiating from Loke's one working fist and solidified again, unharmed. If anything, it was growing deeper in its anti-being every time Gray hit them back.

Just one crack, just one, would prove that they were on the right track… but it was invulnerable.

The whiteness of her breath curled in the air like hope escaping from her lips. With every minute that passed, her limbs grew heavier as the sheer cold leeched her vitality. She had been fortunate not to have taken any wounds as severe as Loke's so far, but that wouldn't matter if this fight went on much longer. The temperature would take her as surely as any mortal wound.

She dodged the icicles that burst up from the floor, twisted away from an ice arrow with a burst of energy she had been holding in reserve, and then she was there. Her blade flicked out. The tip clinked against a protrusion of crystal – and then slipped beneath it, between the darkness and Gray's skin. In that moment, a rush of hope banished the chill from her body.

She twisted her hand.

Cancer's blade snapped in two.

Lucy was still staring in horror at her broken sword when Gray knocked her to the ground.

His foot pressed against her neck. Panic exploded red and gold in her vision. She tried to throw him off, but her limbs wouldn't move. Crawling black ice encased them.

"I told you, Lucy," Gray reproached her. "This is part of me, my own magic. You can't 'save' me from myself."

"Lucy!" Loke shrieked. He hurled himself at Gray, who made a brusque gesture and the ice-covered environment erupted with spikes. They skewered the Celestial Spirit with horrifying ease. Golden dust flooded from every wound, rivers of it; Loke's body wavered in and out of focus as he desperately tried to maintain his physical form.

"Loke, go back! Please!" Lucy shouted.

"I won't! I can do this!"

Loke forced himself forwards, heedless to the sound of tearing as he ripped his body free of the ice. His fists shone bright with the light of the heavenly king; the right of dominion that had driven out a possessing force once before on Tenrou Island and would do so again right here.

Gray's eyes narrowed, lava-red and ice-blue. "How many times do I have to tell you two?" His palm moved almost dreamlike to press against his old friend's chest. From there, the spear of ice he generated couldn't possibly miss. "That's not how it works."

Loke staggered backwards, nothing but magic and willpower holding him together. His voice was the hiss of air escaping his lungs through new holes: "I will- I will end this-"

"I'm tired of this." Gray dodged Loke's drunken swing and severed his arm with an effortless slash. "Die, already."

"Not before-"

Lucy's whisper touched the battlefield. "Loke, Forced Closure."

This time, he was too weak to resist it. She saw his look of utter betrayal as he went, and closed her eyes. He would recover in his own realm. There was no need for him to be brought down with her.

Because she knew, now, that she was going to die here.

Not stopping Avatar, not fighting the traitorous Colonel Lydiatt, not even trying to save the town from the ritual… but killed by a man who should have been her friend.

Gray increased the pressure of his foot on her throat. "I didn't really want to kill you, Lucy," he told her. "My fight wasn't with you. I tried to spare you twice: I avoided fighting you in the black church, and I gave you the option to walk away today. But you just couldn't let it go."

He gave a long-suffering sigh, a gesture that should have been directed towards Juvia's ill-timed affections or Natsu's antics or anything that wasn't the life leaking out of his former teammate's body. "When it comes right down to it, Lucy, obtaining the Book of END matters to me. You do not. You won't ever get in the way of my purpose again."

And Lucy knew that she had failed.

She'd failed the memory of her guild, and she'd failed the people of this town. In dying here, she was leaving them not only at Avatar's mercy, but at Zeref's.

A chill ran through her, colder than the ice that would soon become her tomb. Would he somehow know the moment she died? Would he walk away and let the ritual activate as intended? Or would he carry on oblivious, reversing Avatar's circle of death, saving everyone like she'd asked him to, only to discover that it was already too late for her, for him, for his quest?

What would he do then?

He'd told her, in the forest outside the black church, that he wasn't sure what he would have done if she'd been tortured and killed right in front of him, but that it would have been the end of a great many things…

She remembered how he'd not wanted her to enter the rune circle, but how he hadn't tried to stop her despite the danger. Quietly, gently, sincerely, without having to put it into words, he'd believed in her to survive, to win.

She remembered how he'd smiled as they'd parted ways. She'd never seem him smile like that before. Like it wasn't about their quest, but about her.

He had promised to come to her if she called him, and she had always been determined not to rely on an enemy, but being enemies was the last thing on her mind right now. This was a magic the Gray-not-Gray she was fighting couldn't possibly understand.

Lucy shifted into her Libra form.

Not only was it a Keyless transformation, but it used the magic of a Spirit that wasn't even her own. She had no doubt that Zeref would be able to sense it.

The pressure at her throat lifted momentarily in surprise, before Gray applied more force against it. "Oh?" he wondered. "You still have some fight left in you, then."

It was a rather generous assessment of the situation, given that her vision was growing blotchier by the second and the tomb of ice still pinned her against the ground, but that wasn't why she'd done it.

One moment passed.

Then another.

Nothing moved in the burning town.

"Or not," Gray remarked idly, noting only that her last-ditch burst of magic had failed to free her from his icy prison, never realizing how much danger he had almost been in, should have been in, wasn't.

Zeref wasn't coming.

At the other side of the town, the lone living figure in a maze of evacuated streets raised his head from his book.

There was something so very alarming about the magic that had just brushed against his senses, but for the life of him, he couldn't put his finger on what it was.

The magic was certainly unusual. Dangerous, even. It brought with it the same feeling one might experience if they heard the sharp sound of cracking while crossing a bridge.

Still, there was plenty of unusual magic in the world, and it wasn't as if any magic was dangerous to him personally, so it wasn't anything he should be concerned about…

So why couldn't he shake the feeling that it was?

Frowning, he picked up his book again, but the words blurred together and he found himself lowering it almost immediately. The sense of danger had not dispersed with the passing of the magic. Which was odd, because he hadn't been in true danger for a very long time indeed, and he couldn't understand why he might be feeling that of all things in response to some distant and odd but ultimately harmless magic.

Unless it wasn't him who was in danger.

Unless it was someone else.

Someone you care about? A voice seemed to whisper in his mind, amusement and a threat.

"Of course not," he asserted. "I don't care about anyone."

The feeling of danger receded, taking with it all his interest in the odd magic, and there was no trace of death magic in the air as he returned to his book.

I'm going to die, then, Lucy thought dully.

Maybe she should have been angry. Maybe not. For all she knew, Zeref might have a perfectly good reason for breaking his promise to come to her. Disarming the ritual circle might be taking all his concentration. Avatar could have worked out that a sedative would achieve what a lethal poison would not. Or perhaps he'd finally decided where he stood, and that place was with his lunatic disciples, rather than the guild which would one day oppose him, no matter how much he and she both seemed to like pretending otherwise.

The reason didn't matter. He wasn't coming, and thus she was going to die.

Slowly, too. She wondered why Gray didn't just stab her. Maybe some part of him was still fighting the urge to kill her, because no matter what he declared, she would never abandon the belief that her Gray was still there beneath that darkness.

Not that the slowness of her demise changed anything. She was trapped beneath the ice, in a Star Dress form that had little to no physical combat ability, having already played her trump card only to find that someone had changed the game.

He was just too strong for her.

Unless- unless she could use that against him.

Maybe Libra was the perfect Spirit to help her, after all.

With all the strength she had left, she forced herself upwards. The ice shattered. Her fist caught Gray in the gut.

That pathetic last-ditch blow wouldn't have done much… at least, not without Libra's magic immediately reversing the pull of his gravity.

There was nothing but shock on Gray's face as he vanished up into the night. That was the best proof yet that he wasn't her Gray: her teammate would never have been so surprised to see her turning a battle around at the last moment.

She didn't know when he'd come down, or where. Hopefully too far away to return to the fight. She needed to find the person behind the ritual before it was too late. She needed to find him more than she needed to sink back down into the oddly comforting ice, though it was a close-run thing.

So she wrenched herself from the darkness, from that frigid warmth, and somehow made it to her feet.

There was no time to celebrate being alive.

There wasn't time to walk either, not really, but her body ached too much to run, so it would have to be enough.

You will not approach me.

The pressure of that ancient order surrounded Loke like a thick mire of dread. It sucked the solidity from his bones and left his legs trembling as he pressed onwards in spite of it.

After all, disobedience was part of what it meant to be a Celestial Spirit.

It would be easy to mistake a society governed by timeless laws and awful punishments as an obedient one. Most people did. Many Celestial Spirit mages did, letting the strict laws of the Spirit Realm lead them into the fallacy that Spirits were nothing more than tools for their convenience. Precious few realized that a truly obedient society would require no formal rules at all.

Keys. Contracts. Negotiation. The enforced imbalance between owner and Spirit. The role of the Celestial Spirit King, remorselessly doling out punishments to any who sought to undermine that imbalance.

They all existed to cover the fact that the Celestial Spirits were the unruliest kind of magic: magic with free will.

Ice Make couldn't refuse to fight. Requip never returned any object other than that the user requested. When Natsu drew upon his magical core and exhaled, nothing but a Fire Dragon's Roar ever came out of his mouth.

Celestial Spirit magic could disobey.

Sorano – back when she'd gone by the name of Angel – had lost to Lucy because Gemini had refused to follow her orders.

Aries had refused to come at Karen's command, and Loke had refused to leave at it, even though their actions had led to their owner's death.

Aquarius only listened to Lucy when she felt like it. And right now, Loke wasn't listening to Lucy either, having re-opened the Gate she had forcibly shut as soon as he could, never mind that she would have a fit if she found out he had returned to the physical world in his state.

Yes, there were rules carved deep into Loke's being: rules of summoning and loyalty and using magic in the service of another. Rules with which he agreed. Rules he generally needed no prompting to obey.

But, ultimately, he didn't have to obey those rules. He would be punished, oh yes, but if he was willing to face that punishment, he could do whatever he wanted. Whatever he needed.

In a very real way, the Celestial Spirits were the opposite of Zeref's demons. Those born from the Books of Zeref had been intentionally created as extensions of their master's will. They had independent thought, but only so far as he permitted it. He could shut down their self-determination at any time. That was a fail-safe he had written into their books long before they had become real enough to take their first breaths.

Was it truly free will if it could be cut off at any time? If Zeref wished it, his thoughts would become theirs, and they would never know the difference; never be able to see that the living, feeling, aspiring people they had been before had quietly been erased.

Anna hadn't liked it.

Anna was the reason Zeref had never, to Loke's knowledge, used that fail-safe; why he had allowed the demons' personalities to flourish; why he had come to know and accept their idiosyncrasies; why he had let them walk away once their usefulness had ended, alive and free.

Anna was also the reason why the Celestial Spirits were different.

Their creation had been an accident, and not altogether a happy one. Their very existence threatened everything Zeref and Anna had been working towards. As much as Loke valued his life and agency, he had understood that – all the Spirits had, back then. They were the manifestation of the very magic the two geniuses were creating; they wanted the plan to succeed just as much as Zeref and Anna did.

Loke did not hold a shred of resentment towards Zeref for wanting to erase them all and start over. It would have been the brutally sensible response.

But Anna had put her foot down.

So those two had sat down with him and his fellow Spirits, and they had negotiated terms.

The Spirits would continue to exist, and in return, they would agree to be bound to physical keys.

They would use their power in the service of any of Anna's blood descendants with whom they had formed a contract. How they interpreted said service was up to them. They could not nullify a contract once formed, but they could refuse to form one in the first place.

And thus an entirely new type of magic had come into existence, one distinct from any other. One that was alive. One that could make its own choices.

No one chose to become a Celestial Spirit mage. The Spirits chose them. The keys always found their way to those of the bloodline, but blood alone did not make a holder worthy. That was for the Spirits to determine.

So it had always been.

And yet, recently, Loke felt as though his ability to choose had been stripped from him.

You will not approach me.

You will not speak of me or Anna, or the Eclipse Gate, or the truth about your own origins.

You will not acknowledge me beyond what your owner would expect for perfect strangers.

Zeref's orders were different. They were supposed to be absolute – their true wording so meticulous that no one had found a loophole in four hundred years; their punishment so vicious that a single transgression could lead to oblivion.

Anna would never have allowed it.

But there had come a time when Zeref had held all eighty-eight keys in his hands, and he had set out his terms in words far more dispassionate than the situation should have permitted, and the Spirits had not been too deep in their grief to understand that refusing him would mean the annihilation of everything they had been working towards. They had argued for as many amendments as they dared, but in the end, they had consented, and his commands had been bound deep into the magic that gave them life.

Zeref had no interest in the Spirits he had accidentally helped to create, and their paths crossed so infrequently over the years that Loke had all but forgotten those promises extracted from them. His inability to share his knowledge about the Eclipse Gate or Tartaros with Fairy Tail had hurt immensely, but his guilt had been lessened by the fact that things had always worked out for them in the end.

Then his owner had gone and become Zeref's teammate, and the consequences of that agreement had come home to roost.

It wasn't his inability to share Zeref's secrets with her that mattered, because even after all this time, the importance of his silence had not lessened. No, it was his inability to help Lucy that hurt the most.

He was barred from approaching Zeref of his own accord, which meant that, even though he could open his Gate on his own, he could not summon himself into Zeref's presence. And Zeref was almost always with Lucy these days. If Lucy summoned him, her command took precedence, but if she didn't, he couldn't swoop in to rescue her the way he used to.

She didn't know. She hadn't realized that Loke hadn't been able to summon himself in the battle against Bluenote, her duel with Laxus, or to break her out of Avatar's prison – or that he had been appearing on as many occasions as he could where Zeref wasn't present to compensate.

And why would she? She didn't see those absences as betrayal. Lucy was far too kind – she never expected that kind of devotion from her Spirits, and never failed to be grateful whenever it was offered freely.

He wished he could give her some indication that she couldn't rely on his timely self-summons, but because of Zeref's stupid rules, he couldn't even bring it up without suffering crippling, silencing pain.

The worst part was that Loke was certain Zeref was entirely unaware of his struggle. He hadn't made the connection between the order to stay away from him set down so many years ago and the lack of any spontaneous appearances from Lucy's Spirits. In fact, Zeref was so inexplicably invested in Lucy's survival that he'd probably revoke the problematic instruction straight away, if he knew.

Yet he didn't know, because Loke was forbidden from speaking to him.

For days now, he had been imprisoned by his own readiness to curtail his free will; forced to watch from afar as Lucy got herself in (and out) of danger over and over again. Unable to help. Unable to interfere.

He had thrown himself into the battle against Gray because it had been a way to make up for his absences, and he had failed her there, too. So pitiful had he been that Lucy had been forced to send him away. And she had saved herself, she had been as brilliant as ever, but Loke knew that the worst was yet to come.

Because as much as he had to pretend otherwise, he knew more about Zeref and his curse than Lucy did… and there was only one reason why the troubled Black Mage wouldn't have come at Lucy's call.

The ritual circle wasn't going to be deactivated. It was going to detonate, and when it did, Lucy would die.

He wasn't going to sit back and let that happen.

He wasn't going to play by Zeref's rules any more.

To hell with the consequences. He was a Celestial Spirit. He was meant to disobey.

The strange magic hadn't pulsed out again, which reassured Zeref that he had been right not to bother going after it… but at the same time, it wasn't reassuring at all.

He disliked being around other people, and by all the testable criteria beaten into his mind through four hundred years of managing his unruly thoughts, an empty bookshop in an empty street should have been perfect for him. Nothing about this situation could explain why his gaze kept slipping from the supposedly tantalizing pages; why the silence could not calm him; why the absence of a magic that never should have been was bothering him.

Maybe this wasn't where he was supposed to be.

He stood up abruptly, shoving the book from his lap with so much force that it slammed into the floor. He had no thoughts to spare for the irreversible damage. His mind was a perfect storm of panic and confusion: of the sudden certainty that he was supposed to be somewhere else and the great void where that knowledge should have been kept.

Slowly, at least when compared to his fluttering lungs, he brought his hands up in front of his face and watched them tremble. They knew something was wrong. They couldn't tell him what. No one could. There was no one here, no matter how much he felt that there should be someone – not someone precious, because human beings were inherently valueless, but someone nonetheless; someone who would be able to tell him why he was here…

He did know someone like that, though, didn't he? Someone organized. Someone reliable. Someone his mind readily offered up as being safe to think about, because he had never been anything more than a tool.

Using magic was difficult, like he had to edge around the rim of some infernal pit to grasp a lever he could usually flick with a throwaway thought. It took three attempts to make the communication lacrima appear in his hand. Each failure threw another log onto the bonfire of smouldering fear, fear he couldn't explain, and if the call didn't connect he knew his whole being would blaze up with it-

The call connected in less than a second.

Of course it did.

Invel was the most reliable tool in his arsenal.

"Good afternoon, Your Majesty-" There was a sharp intake of breath as Invel caught a glimpse of fire and brimstone; the hand holding the lacrima couldn't stay still long enough for the image to stabilize. "Are you alright-?"

"What am I doing?" Zeref demanded, not even hearing the question.

"I beg your pardon?"

"What am I doing?" he repeated. "I know I'm supposed to be doing something, but I- I just can't reach it. But you're always telling me what to do, so – do you know what I'm supposed to be doing right now?"

There was a long pause. If he'd been paying attention, he might have noticed that it was twice as long as any hesitation he had seen Invel display in eleven years of service, but he was preoccupied with throwing glances over his shoulder in search of the person who was absent from this scene, who he'd thought might have been Invel, but now could clearly see that it wasn't.

"I'm afraid I don't, Your Majesty," came the grave response.

"You don't?"

"You did not inform us of your business in Fiore."

"I didn't?" Zeref echoed again, swaying as the hasty palisade of his hope collapsed against the storm, and the wind stripped away all coherent thought. "Why wouldn't I…? It's so hard to think… It's like the truth is there, just out of reach…"

Had he been watching, he might have seen his own panic now reflected in the lacrima, decorum forgotten as Invel jumped to his feet. "What can I do to help?"

"I don't- I don't think you can-"

"Tell me where you are. If I take an airship, I can be with you in a few hours-"

"No!" Where that certainty had come from, Zeref didn't know, but there were so few certainties in his mind right now that he wasn't about to push this one away. "You mustn't… you mustn't come to Fiore."

"I can help you! I can bring you home, I will be discreet, no one needs to know-"

"You can't help me!"

"Please!"

The sense that Invel might be able to help had disappeared completely. "You don't know, do you? You can't help…" Insight flashed through the abhorrently empty wasteland of his mind. "Then maybe it isn't Alvarez I'm supposed to be doing something for, after all."

There was a momentary pause that Zeref, clinging tight to his deduction like it was all the hope in the world, would not have noticed even if it had lasted an entire day.

"Who else could you possibly be on this quest of yours for, Your Majesty?"

"I don't know," he answered, thoroughly miserable. "If it's not you, then it could be Fairy Tail, but there's no one here to tell me and I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing!"

"Please, let me come to you-"

The words cut off without warning. The silence hit him like a physical blow, and he doubled over, clutching the dull lacrima to his chest. The magic powering it had slipped through his grasp again. He reached for it in his mind, sensed the chasm opening its jaws beneath him, ten times wider than before, and drew back with a frightened whimper.

It didn't matter. It was clear that Invel couldn't help. No one could. That was the problem with having tools instead of friends, with keeping people at arm's length… but he didn't have a choice, did he? His curse didn't give him one.

The world didn't want him, so maybe he should stop trying to pretend that it did.

Maybe that was what this disorientation, this uncertainty, had been trying to tell him all along.

Whatever was going on here, he clearly wasn't supposed to be involved in it. There was no point in trying so hard. He should just leave it all alone.

"Zeref."

It took two sluggish heartbeats for him to register that a word had been spoken, and another two for him to recognize it as his own name. He looked up slowly, blearily, straining beneath the weight of it all – and he still wasn't sure who he was or what was going on when a fist smashed into his face.

It was easy to find him. All Loke had to do was run in the direction he least wanted to go. Wherever doom pressed back against him, wherever he felt most strongly that each step was unravelling his being from the inside-out – that was where Zeref lay, at the end of the path he was forbidden from taking.

He didn't know what walking that path to its end would do to him, and quite frankly, he didn't care. If he could hold himself together long enough to knock some sense into the man Lucy was depending on – well, that was all that mattered, and to hell with the consequences.

Zeref did not seem to notice his approach. Zeref did not seem capable of noticing anything at all.

"Zeref."

Merely speaking that word was agony, for direct acknowledgements were yet another thing the Black Mage had forbidden.

It was worth it, though. It meant Zeref was looking him in the eye when Loke punched him.

Not that there was any consciousness in those eyes. He realised that a hundred times faster than Zeref realised he was about to be hit, and as the helpless immortal went shoulder-first into a bookcase, a trickle of fear slipped down Loke's spine, entirely distinct from the cacophony of dread and irreversibility that the ancient oath forced upon him.

Sprawled in a heap at the foot of a quivering bookcase, Zeref raised his head slowly; that vacant stare crawled its way back up to Loke. He made no attempt to stand. The agonisingly drawn-out process of recognition seemed to be taking all his concentration.

Loke had never seen him this bad before.

He didn't think Zeref had ever been this bad before – not since before Anna; not since he had lived because he couldn't do otherwise, and yet hadn't known what living meant.

Loke seized him by the front of his robes and dragged him upright. "What the hell are you doing?" he roared.

Zeref shrunk away from him – not trying to escape, Loke realised, but desperate to avoid meeting his gaze. "I don't… know…"

"In what universe could you have thought this was a good idea?" Loke shouted, the other's lack of protests only fuelling his rage. When no answer was forthcoming, he struck Zeref again, crushing cartilage which immediately became whole again.

The same could not be said for Loke's arm: pain streaked up it, cracks of liquid gold opening to the sound of something splintering – something he hoped was bone, but feared was not. There was something oddly satisfying about it. He was finally doing everything it was within his power to do.

Frightened black eyes widened at the unearthly wounds on the Spirit's arm. "Stop…" Zeref whimpered, not realizing he was the cause, likely not remembering they had ever met at all. "You're hurt…"

Fishhooks tried to wrench Loke's soul in two directions at once as that old vow interpreted Zeref's first word as a command. He screamed with it, pain and resolve all at once. "Is this what you consider a good way of dealing with your curse?" he shrieked. "Pushing away every thought in that stupid brain of yours until you can't even remember who you are?"

Wide eyes stared, uncomprehending.

"This isn't a solution, Zeref! You can't run away every time things get difficult! As soon as you started relying on something so cowardly, it was only a matter of time before you took it too far!"

When he tried twisting away again, Loke wrenched him mercilessly forward, so close he could see the tears welling up like newborn stars in those void-like eyes. "If you shut yourself away, the curse wins!" Loke shouted. "Anna taught you that! You mustn't allow yourself to ever stop feeling, and you mustn't shut away the thoughts that cause those feelings! If you care about Lucy at all, you have to face up to that and deal with it!"

"I can't," whispered that broken voice. "Don't make me remember. It's too dangerous."

Loke hit him again. "Nothing is more dangerous than this!" he yelled, the feeling in those words more than making up for the fact that they were almost as broken as Zeref's, as the throat producing them began to fall apart. "You did this to yourself; you can undo it! Stop being such a coward and remember who you are!"

Just that helpless stare. Empty. Desperate for someone else to act, for someone else to save the day, as if he had concluded without even trying that he couldn't do it himself.

"Damnit, Zeref," Loke whispered, feeling tears of his own well up. He should never have gone after Zeref. He should have known he would never be able to snap him out of whichever dreadful state his so-called coping mechanisms had left him in. He should have chased after Lucy and devoted all his remaining strength to dragging her out of that accursed ritual circle. "Lucy needs you. You promised Anna you would watch over her descendants… I guess it was too much of a stretch to believe you were finally starting to honour it, after all this time."

The strength went out of him and he fell forward. Only the presence of the man he was supposed to be threatening stopped him from falling face-first into a bookshelf. Loke slumped over him, unable to even think about doing anything else, because he had given everything and all he'd achieved was to let Lucy down once more.

A voice caught up with his fleeing consciousness, at once both identical to and distinct from that which had pleaded with him a moment ago. "I haven't kept my promise to Anna once in four hundred years. This has nothing to do with that."

And then, softly: "You know why I can't care about her."

"No," Loke said, with grim satisfaction. "I know why you won't."

Then the sheer exhaustion took him under, and he could only hope he had done enough.

A/N: You guys are amazing, thank you so much for all the feedback after last week's chapter! I couldn't *not* get the chapter up this week after so much encouragement, so thank you! Then again, this chapter probably wasn't what anyone had in mind as a 'thank you'. Huh. Maybe I'll go and hide again.

There will almost certainly be a chapter next week, as I've split the (originally stupidly long) final chapter of this arc into two, which should make it more manageable with my expected workload. So tune in again next week to see if things can possibly get worse for our heroes (spoilers: they can). Also, there is a lot more on Zeref and the origin of the Celestial Spirits still to come, but not for a while. ~CS