The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Brittle Bones, Part 1
-Sunset, Moonrise-
"Lucy! Psst, Lucy!"
Lucy had been drifting for a while, but that whisper finally gave her the impetus she needed to acknowledge the waking world.
Her eyes flickered open to too-bright lights and closed again at once. Monitoring equipment hummed a lullaby in the background, punctuated by the sporadic squeak of the lunch trolley's left wheel, a tuneless soloist which kept its role only because no one had the time to train another. Everything smelled so sanitary. It was probably supposed to be reassuring, but it only made her dread what had necessitated so much cleaning.
Hospital, she decided.
After the disastrous final battle against Arlock – and the no less disastrous conversation with Zeref the morning after – it seemed like the appropriate place to be waking up.
The lullaby entered a new movement. A river of voices burbled at the edge of her hearing: no-nonsense orders and distraught tears, final farewells and whimsical miracles, gratitude and impatience, all flowing together down the polished corridors that had guided its way a thousand times before. She wasn't sure if what she heard was happening right now, or if it had happened yesterday, or tomorrow; she didn't think it mattered. The more she listened, the more she would have sworn that the whole room was reverberating with an energy and a history and a future unique to this place, life that was magic and magic that was life.
It's where people go when they want to live. That was how Zeref had described it, the last time their quest had landed her in hospital. She wondered if her brain was imagining the sense of it only because of what he'd said, or if it had always been there, but that it took his way of looking at the world for her to perceive it.
When they want to live.
There in the not-silent not-dark, she mulled over his words. As her last scream had echoed over a town turned to ash, she had doubted her own right to be alive. Here, though, it wasn't merely allowed, it was expected of her. It was easy to just be without guilt.
"Lucy! You're awake, right?"
With great reluctance, Lucy pulled herself up from the restful depths and into the vivid light. Her deduction about the hospital had been right. However, she hadn't been expecting the bed next to hers to be occupied by a beaming Levy.
Lucy exclaimed, "Levy, you're alright!"
"Yes, thanks to you. If you hadn't alerted Gajeel when you did and got him to bring me here, the doctors don't think I'd have made it, but the worst of it is behind me now. In fact, I'm only still here because they wanted to keep me under observation for twenty-four hours. Standard procedure following exposure to an unknown toxin…"
Lucy couldn't help smiling in response to her friend's tone, although it didn't linger there, as she scanned the empty beds around them. "What about Pantherlily?"
"He's fine too, don't worry. But apparently they don't have official protocols for Exceed, so the nurses weren't able to stop him from heading straight out on Avatar's trail with Gajeel."
Avatar. The crucial place they had occupied in her thoughts had slipped as she'd slept, and Lucy's heart jolted, like she'd fallen in a dream. "What happened? They're still out there?"
Of course they were. After all, she hadn't beaten Arlock. His attempt to summon a god had failed, but all that meant was that the townsfolk had died for nothing. Avatar survived to try again.
Her expression must have done the talking for her, as Levy handed her a copy of the day's newspaper. "It's not all bad, Lucy. Here."
TERRORISTS CLAIM DESTROYED TOWN 'ONLY THE BEGINNING', it declared.
All traces of Lucy's momentary peace dissolved as she skimmed through it. There was no mention of Avatar in the article. She remembered Jellal's warning – their name was known everywhere in the underworld, but unknown even to the best dark guild hunters until it was already too late. Even now, they seemed to be keeping the true extent of their operations concealed.
There were plenty of mentions of Arlock, though. He had played the double life too well for too long, and now that his cover was no longer needed, he wanted the entire world to know about it. It wasn't a newspaper report – it was a press release, hand-delivered to a paper not too respectful to the victims to have printed it word for word.
Gleefully, Arlock claimed full responsibility for what had happened at Bishop's Lace.
He did not call it a failure.
He called it a trial run.
He promised that next time he would successfully summon Zeref and remake the world as he willed it.
And the authorities had nothing to go on but the name of a traitorous soldier, who had disappeared without a trace from the ruins of Bishop's Lace, and who hadn't even deigned to give them his cult's identity as a starting point.
Some aspiring journalist, not wanting to be outdone in their own newspaper by Avatar's PR department, had managed to dig out an old photo of Arlock in full military regalia, grinning a skull's grin from the heart of the establishment. How long had he been planning this? What was to stop him from finding another unwary town, another circle of death, another deadly ritual until at last he got what he wanted, whatever the hell that was?
It felt as though a dry, withered hand had wrapped around Lucy's throat. "How is this not all bad?" she croaked.
"Keep reading," Levy advised.
Turning the page from Arlock's propaganda, she was met with more reports from the town: eye-witness accounts and photos of the devastation. How was this supposed to help, when all it did was reawaken the sheer despair from the night before-?
And then her gaze fell upon the blurred photo of a pink-haired scarf-wearing Dragon Slayer, who had swallowed the deadly flames and ushered the civilians to safety.
"Natsu," she breathed. "He's okay. He's still fighting for us. He…"
Suddenly, sharp tears threatened to overcome her. Even separated, they were still fighting together, her and Natsu. She had never been alone against Arlock's plan. Even when all seemed hopeless, Natsu had her back.
"This," Levy affirmed softly. "This is what we have that Arlock doesn't. We will beat him, Lucy. Next time, we will be victorious."
At last, Lucy understood exactly what Zeref had been trying to tell her. He just hadn't gone about it in quite the right way, because he saw the lives of others – he had to see the lives of others – in too different a way for them to easily understand each other.
It was important that they'd lost, but it was more important that they'd survived. They wouldn't lose next time.
"Okay," she said, nodding firmly to herself. "What time is it? How long was I unconscious?"
"Four hours and twenty-three minutes," came the prompt response. "It's about one o' clock in the afternoon."
"…Huh."
A faint blush tinged Levy's cheeks. "I figured you'd ask that when you woke up. People always do in books, so I thought I'd have the answer ready. But of course, you being you, the first thing you asked about was me, and the second was Avatar, and now that we're finally getting to you, it's rather past the point where it would have been impressive."
Lucy nodded distractedly. "How did I get here?"
"I was going to ask you that. They brought you in this morning with a few others – they said an inn had collapsed in town, but no one was seriously hurt."
She frowned at that. She thought she remembered Zeref losing control of his magic – but if he had, wouldn't she be dead? Death magic did not destroy buildings. It seemed likely that whatever had destroyed the building had saved her life.
"The doctors were worried about you at first, but they said all your real wounds were old," Levy added.
Gray's foot pressing down upon her icy coffin. Arlock's lazily conjured runes smashing into her like cannonballs. Yesterday was not long enough ago for the countless injuries she had acquired during the fight to have earned the description 'old'… not unless a competent healer had sat by her all night, concerned for her physical injuries as well as her mental ones.
From Levy's quizzical expression, she was wondering the same thing, so Lucy pushed the conversation in another direction. "So, Gajeel and Pantherlily have gone after Avatar?"
"Yeah. Gajeel is trying to track them by scent, but he didn't seem all that optimistic about it. I wouldn't be surprised if Arlock is expecting us to try something like that. And before you ask, no, I don't know where they went."
"I wasn't going to ask," Lucy assured her. "I trust Gajeel, and besides, if a Dragon Slayer can't find them, what chance would I have? In the meantime… I think we should carry on as before. Like you said, Levy – this is how we beat Avatar. Not by doing exactly what they want us to do and obsessing over them when we have no leads-" Here she indicated Arlock's wicked face, smirking up at them from the front page. "-but by living as we always have. They won't take that away from us."
After a moment, Levy smiled. "Yeah. That's exactly right. So… back to reviving the guild, then?"
"Back to reviving the guild," Lucy confirmed. "When I last saw Evergreen, she was on her way to have words with Elfman about their misunderstanding, so I imagine Elfman has been fully on board with returning to Fairy Tail for quite some time now. So I thought it might be a good idea to find Mira and Lisanna next."
"Didn't they move to Alstonia to work in a bar? The Demon Queen, or something?"
"The Gehennan Princess," Lucy corrected. Trust Mira to move to the other side of the kingdom just because she'd found a bar whose name suited her perfectly. "Recruiting those two to our cause should be easy compared to duelling Laxus or working through Elfman's mid-life crisis."
"Sounds like a plan. You can count me in."
"You're coming too?"
"You don't expect me to just stay here in hospital while Gajeel is off hunting Avatar, do you?"
Still smiling, Lucy shook her head. "It'll be good to have you. We'll go first thing tomorrow, once we've been discharged."
"Great. Will Zeref be tagging along, too?"
"I don't think so." It was a struggle for Lucy to keep her voice steady as memories of that morning came flooding back, but she did her best. "I think I upset him quite a bit. I didn't realize how difficult I was making things for him… and he said he wanted to be on his own for a while. I doubt he'll come back."
After all, why would he? She had vowed to complete their quest with or without him. Besides, even if he had been enjoying travelling with her as much as she had with him, he certainly wouldn't still be feeling that way after everything she had said to him last night – after she had seen with her own eyes the impact that dealing with her was having on his own mental stability.
A second later, her brain caught up with her heart, and she shrieked, "Wait, you knew who he was?"
"Yeah… sorry." Levy gave a sheepish chuckle. "It was easy enough to work it out. Besides, after Tenrou, I kind of cornered Elfman and made him give me a pretty detailed description."
"…Why?"
"Well, in case I ran into him again."
"So that you would know to run away?" Lucy guessed, no less confused.
"Yeah," Levy shrugged. "That, or talk to him."
"Talk? About what?"
"All sorts of things!" she said defensively. "I know he's responsible for a lot of awful stuff, but he was right about a whole load of other things. Honestly, Lucy, you should read some of the stuff he's written. It is poetry in the form of magic; it is part of a world we can't even imagine in this day and age."
"You don't need to tell me that," Lucy sighed, trying not to think about the way his whole being had come alive when he'd been describing life at the Academy, how his eyes had simply shone. It would only hurt to dwell on it. "But if you knew who he was, why did you pretend that you didn't?"
"Ah." At least Levy had the good sense to look sheepish again, tucking a rogue strand of hair back behind her ear. "I thought you didn't know – and that maybe not knowing was keeping you alive."
"Oh, I knew, alright. He wasn't exactly subtle about it."
"I know that now. He didn't seem hostile at all, so I took a chance and confronted him in one of the bookshops. He said you had a non-aggression pact while you were working together."
"We do." And a lot more that was never made formal, she thought, after all the times he had helped her without asking for anything in return.
"Which just leaves one question: how in the name of all that is holy did you and Zeref end up working together?"
It felt so good, not having to hide the fond smile that spread across her face at the mention of him. "It's nowhere near as dramatic as you're probably imagining," she admitted. "After ten months of minding my own business, I returned home one night to find him in my house, demanding that I help him get Fairy Tail back together. A lot has happened since then, but… he's the one who decided we were going to be partners. I never got a say in it."
"What does he want with Fairy Tail, though?" Levy wondered.
Lucy opened her mouth to say that she didn't have the faintest idea, but that wasn't entirely true, was it? She'd had several ideas, most of which he'd scoffed at, and then another that she hadn't had the chance – or the courage – to put to him directly.
But there was no way Zeref was helping them gather their strength so that Fairy Tail would be able to defeat his army.
That made even less sense than the thought that he might be doing it just because he was bored.
"I guess we'll find out," Lucy said, with a weak smile.
"One way or another," Levy agreed. "I'm glad I got to meet him, though."
"So am I."
Because she really, truly was. If she had found him infuriating at first, it was only as a by-product of the gulf between the Black Mage she was expecting and the Black Mage she had received. There was no point pretending that she didn't enjoy his company. His concern for her, his love of being mysterious and of teasing her, his fascinating way of looking at the world – which was not nearly as morbid as she would have expected from a cursed soul – she would miss all of them immensely.
He was tormented and compassionate, smug and sensitive, and entirely unlike anyone she had ever met. There was more to Fairy Tail's self-sworn enemy – and secret ally – than most would ever know… but she knew, and she would never forget it. Whether they stood on the same side of the final battlefield or not, she would always consider him her friend.
But she was a Fairy Tail mage, and he was their enemy. They had to take their proper places at the starting line. There was a lot she hadn't had the chance to say to him – to apologize for how she'd acted that morning, to thank him for saving her the night before, to tell him that she understood what he'd been trying to say and what saying it had done to him – but no volume of words left unsaid could change what needed to be done, just as wishes outnumbering the stars above couldn't stop them from belonging to opposite sides, when it came right down to it.
Without him, she would probably still be feeling sorry for herself in her house in Crocus, with Fairy Tail little more than a memory floating down the river of time… but regardless of who had started it, this was Fairy Tail's quest. It was time for Fairy Tail to take responsibility for it.
Being as she was the patient of a small hospital in some isolated southern town whose name she didn't even know, Lucy hadn't been expecting any visitors.
She was half-dozing at the time – the nurses had wheeled Levy away for some further tests, and it really was boring here without anyone to talk to – so she hadn't seen him arrive. All she knew was that the next time she glanced around, Loke was sat in her bedside chair as if he'd always been there, gazing at something cupped in his hands.
"Loke!" she exclaimed happily, sitting up in bed and trying to pat her hair into a more gravity-friendly style.
He glanced up, but didn't smile, and his gaze dropped swiftly back to his hands.
"What's wrong?" When he still didn't meet her gaze, she persisted, "Talk to me, Loke, please."
"I screwed up," he whispered.
"We all did." Lucy had barely had chance to come to terms with this herself after Zeref's departure, and she certainly wasn't ready to guide anyone else through the same process, but Loke looked so desolate that she couldn't help but try. Where had her confident, suave Spirit gone? What about the smugness that had teased Bickslow, or the raw passion of the king of lions defending his pride from an old friend turned traitor? "We all made mistakes in Bishop's Lace. What matters is that we learn from them, so that next time we can beat-"
"I won't get a next time!" Loke burst out.
"What do you mean?"
"I can't- Lucy-" The Spirit looked directly at her for the first time, so distraught that it cut her heart clean in two. "I screwed up," he repeated thickly, and uncurled his hands.
Upon his palm sat a golden key. It was the key to the Gate of the Lion, which opened the way to loyalty and courage; it was the very symbol of Loke's existence.
There was a white fracture running all the way down its length.
Lucy's heart almost stopped. She lifted it from Loke's palm with trembling fingers, not daring to grip too tightly lest the pressure snap it in two. Her most reliable weapon felt like spun glass in her hand.
She had assumed it unbreakable, just like Loke.
She had never seen him look so scared.
"What- what happened?" she forced out, her words as clumsy as her fingers upon that fragile sliver of metal. "Was this- fighting Gray-?"
Loke shook his head numbly. "I'm a construct of magic, Lucy. Physical damage is no more than a temporary inconvenience for me. But… there are rules…"
She frowned. Her mind jumped to the time she had first met the Celestial Spirit King, and forced him to revoke the punishment of exile that had been slowly draining Loke's life… but she couldn't think of a single celestial law he had broken in fighting Gray and coming to her defence yesterday. Sure, Loke had never really been one for keeping to the rules – he had found a home in Fairy Tail, of all places – but the only time she had ever seen him so distraught over not following instructions had been-
"Zeref," she whispered.
He gave a single, jerky nod.
"It's that oath you told me about," she realized. "This is the consequence of- of what?"
Her mind blanked. Her first leap of logic had been sound; her second found no platform to land on, and left her tumbling in the void of ignorance. She knew that Zeref had been involved in the creation of the Celestial Spirits, and that, to protect his privacy and some mysterious plan, he had made them swear a magically binding oath never to reveal any information about him or their own origins. But what did that have to do with Loke's fractured key?
"It was a long time ago." Loke spoke in that hesitant voice she had only heard from him once before, when he had been feeling his way around the barriers of pain the magical oath enforced upon him. "There was a plan. It went wrong. We Spirits thought… that that would be the end of us. I don't know why he didn't destroy us. I know he wanted to. He's done worse since, and with far less reason. Maybe it was only the paradox that stopped him. Whatever his reasons, he let us be… but he didn't want anything to do with us. Wanted to keep us away. I think we reminded him too much of… everything he'd lost."
A moment spent wrestling with himself in silence.
"We were already sworn to secrecy about… about you-know-what," Loke continued lamely. The Eclipse Gate, she guessed, based on what he'd told her last time. "But on that day, he took it further. He made it a condition of our freedom that we did not talk to him, or interact with him, or even approach him… unless directly ordered to by our owners, who would have found it suspicious if we treated him differently to others. Unless you summon us, we can't- while he's around-"
It was only then that Lucy realized how little she had seen of Loke recently. It hadn't struck her as odd, because although she believed he always would come, she never expected it of him. He had his own life in the Spirit Realm, after all. He wasn't always available.
It hadn't occurred to her that maybe he'd wanted to help her, and hadn't been able to… or that the only times he had passed through his Gate of his own accord had been when Zeref wasn't around.
"I'm not sure he even remembers the details," Loke said, still in that horrid broken whisper. "It was never important to him – nor to us, really. Not until you started being with him all the time. Then it mattered." He closed his eyes. "Last night, when he didn't come to help you against Gray, I knew something was wrong, so… I went after him."
An image of Loke, even more wounded than she had been, flashed through her mind. "I sent you back home!"
"Yeah, well, I came straight back," Loke growled, and she couldn't help smiling, though it didn't last. He noticed, and perhaps that was why his words continued to come out with uncharacteristic anger. "I had to find him! If I hadn't, he wouldn't have got to you in time, and Arlock would have-"
He sucked in a breath, as if only just realizing how his words were coming out. "I don't regret it, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat – for you, for my guild, for the sake of stopping Avatar. But I won't be able to do it again. I broke my vow. The magic punished me for it. I'm- my key is- I don't know if it will even still work!"
"But you're here, so it must do," she tried to protest.
He shook his head so viciously that her fingers curled once again over the key, as if to protect it. "I thought it'd be fine if you didn't use it to summon me. I could just keep coming through the Gate on my own. But when I did that this morning…"
"It was you," she realized softly. "You're the one who brought the inn down around us. You saved me."
"The final nail in the coffin," he murmured. "My key had already taken too much damage. I had to follow you on foot from the inn, because if I return to my world, I don't think I'll ever get back here. Look at my key, Lucy. If either of us uses it one more time, it'll break in two."
Lucy wasn't sure she wanted to know the answer, but she had to ask. "What happens then?"
"I don't know."
"Aquarius's key broke-"
"It didn't break," he snapped. "It was given in sacrifice, and it returned to the stellar sphere as part of the old ritual to call forth the Celestial Spirit King. But if my key shatters as a result of this stupid oath, I don't know what will happen! Even if I do continue to exist in the Spirit Realm somehow, you won't be my owner, and I won't be able to visit you, just like Aquarius can't!"
"Then we won't let it break," Lucy promised. "I swear I'll keep your key safe. You have to stop trying to do so much for me on your own."
"I want to do more! This is my guild, and-"
Lucy cut him off. "Precisely, Loke. We can't revive Fairy Tail if you're not here to be part of it. So take care of yourself until then, okay?"
No sound came out of his open mouth at first, but then he managed a weak chuckle. "Yeah. I can't go letting Natsu and the others down, can I?"
"No, you can't," she agreed. "So go and rest up in the Spirit Realm for a while. I'm sure your key will start to recover if we don't use it."
She was half-expecting him to argue further, but to her great relief, he went without protest. She sat there for a moment, turning the cracked key over and over in her hands.
So, they hadn't escaped unharmed from Bishop's Lace, after all.
The sun descended to the earth like an apprentice dressmaker too eager to please, draping it in reams of yellow and orange fabric until the surroundings were almost unrecognizable beneath them.
So, evening was falling already. Zeref might not have believed it, if the sun hadn't been so insistent. Time had made it clear long ago that it wasn't his ally.
There he lay, entirely without energy on the ground, not asleep but not awake either, unnoticed by the sun that rolled on by. There was so much he needed to do. The communication lacrima lying inches from his half-curled fingers, pulsing with incessant light in its desperation to talk to him, was proof of that. He just didn't want to do any of it.
He wasn't angry or sad or lonely.
He wasn't anything at all.
It wasn't even the dangerous kind of apathy, the kind that used his hands to spread derision and death across the land, so it didn't matter, did it?
On some level, he knew that there was something he wanted, and that was to see Lucy. On an even deeper level, he knew that nothing was stopping him from seeing her. Maybe she was still angry with him, and he with her, but it was nothing that they wouldn't be able to talk through.
That was what he liked about her. She would listen and talk and try to understand where understanding didn't come naturally to her; there was an empathy and an equality between them that seemed to break down all their walls. With her, he didn't have to worry about who was watching or who he was supposed to be.
But, what would be the point?
Even if he was willing to take the strain on his mind, and even if she was willing to try to understand him like she hadn't that morning, and even if they could return to being not-quite-friends on a quest together… it would only last for another month or so, at most. Then, the façade would burn away completely and irreparably. Fairy Tail would be reborn into an era of war. They'd be enemies.
And when that day finally came, it would be so much worse than just attacking Fairy Tail without warning, because he'd have had even longer to get used to her presence, and their questing lifestyle, and not being alone… only for it to end the way it was always destined to. He'd only be exposing himself to more of this.
No, it was surely time to go their separate ways. He should go back to Alvarez, as he had promised Invel and August he would, and begin preparing for the war in earnest.
But he didn't.
He lay there in the dirt, listening to the abundance of woodland life that his apathy was letting live, and he couldn't face talking to those in Alvarez any more than he could face looking for Lucy, couldn't face that complicated life, couldn't face the effort it took just to get through one conversation without losing control of his magic, couldn't do anything but curl up and wonder if he'd feel more like a human being tomorrow.
For the fifth time that day, the flashing communication lacrima gave up trying to attract his attention and went dark.
Vistarion, X781 (Continued)
His Majesty had told him to be there for eight in the morning, so naturally, Invel had arrived at half six. When retelling this story in later life, Invel would claim that this was because it was his first day of training for a job for which he was horrendously underqualified, and he had wanted to make a good impression… and since the only people to whom Invel would ever tell the story were those who knew him well, every one of them would find it completely plausible.
At the time, though, it might have had more to do with the detour he had taken to the library on his way home the previous night – and, more importantly, the answers he had found there, buried in the book tucked under his arm.
He hadn't been expecting anyone else to be there so early in the morning. He had been planning to wait around until they arrived, and hope His Majesty had a minute or so to spare for him before the day truly began. But he had been basing this on his observations of a government struggling on in its emperor's absence, and by the time he arrived, not only were Jaquila, August and Yajeel already discussing the day's agenda, but the lamps were on in the imperial office for the first time in ten years.
Even more surprisingly, as he'd approached the door – a little presumptuous, perhaps, but there were no secretaries around to ask so early in the morning, and the man within had no need for something as mundane as security guards – that already-familiar voice had called, "Come in, Invel," before he had even raised his hand to knock.
There was no throne in the office. That kind of impractical grandeur was reserved for the Hall of Audience. This was a place of business, which no one outside the trusted upper echelons of the administration ever got to see. Instead, an impressively large desk took pride of place, and the shelves were bedecked with gifts of peace from cowardly nations.
Invel had to admit that the man sat in the centre of it all looked a hundred times more regal than the one who had spontaneously decided to hire him the day before, but then again, that setup could have made even Yajeel's unruly grandson look mature.
His Majesty set down a fountain pen that had probably cost more than Invel's flat and smiled up at him. "So, you did decide to join us, after all."
"Yes, Your Majesty." For a half-second, Invel shifted from foot to foot, and then he added, "There is something I would like to show you… if I may?"
"Go ahead. I'm sure it must be important, to have brought you here before sunrise."
Not familiar enough with the man before him to recognize the knowing smirk in his voice, Invel set his library book down on the emperor's desk, and flicked through to the page he had marked. "The Imperial Constitution, revised September X780. Segregated Powers Act, subsection two, paragraph one, and I quote: 'regarding the establishment of religious movements outside the sanction of the crown'…" He slammed the tome shut again and tried not to look too victorious. "In other words, subsection two concerns religion. Subsection three concerns the military. Just like I told you yesterday."
A faint smile touched the other's lips. In time, Invel would come to recognize it as the most dangerous, most troublesome, most day-ruining expression in the world, but then and there, he waited expectantly.
"I applaud your effort," said he, "but I'm afraid that you're a little behind the times." The top drawer of his desk slid silently open, and he withdrew a soft, paperback book that was nonetheless as thick as Invel's own. "The Imperial Constitution, revised as of- oh, about half eleven last night. This is just a proof copy, but the printers have assured me that they'll be ready to go before midday. Take a look."
Invel took the book mistrustfully and turned to the relevant pages. Or, at least, he would have done, had they existed. He flicked through it once, and then again, and then he demanded, "What happened to the Segregated Powers Act?"
"It was a stupid law, so I abolished it."
There was a pause as Invel tried to find his voice. "You can't do that!"
"You say that a lot," His Majesty observed. "You should consider getting it put on a sign. It'd save you a lot of effort."
"But- but you can't!" Invel floundered. "You can't abolish a law just to win an argument!"
"Why ever not? I'm going to replace it with something more appropriate for the modern empire."
"Even so, there are proper processes and restrictions and- and it doesn't change the fact that you were still wrong about the subsections at the time of speaking, so you still lost the argument!"
His shout resounded throughout the imperial office, then faded.
His Majesty raised an eyebrow at him. "Are you done?"
"Yes, Your Majesty," Invel replied, somewhat meekly.
"Good. Sit." He gestured to a chair, and Invel did so, torn between imagining the countless influential politicians who must have sat in that seat before him, and wondering if he was about to be fired on day one for his brilliant idea to march straight into the emperor's office and start an extremely trivial argument with him.
"Just out of interest," he resumed mildly, sparking up all of Invel's fears at once, "did you really come here this early just to prove me wrong?"
Invel swallowed. "Not so much to prove you wrong, as…"
"As?"
"As to prove that I was right," he finished, raising his chin. "I know these things. I'm not perfect, I know that I won't always get legal matters right, but this is something that I'm good at – maybe the only thing that I'm good enough at for this job right now. I wanted you to know that. I didn't want you thinking that I wasn't good for anything except being in the right place at the right time."
Those black eyes seemed to pierce right through him, yet Invel didn't find it imposing, but reassuring. When he had committed to serving this man, he had done so with every part of himself; he had nothing to hide. Rather, it was those flashes of power and command that told him he had made the right decision.
"Obviously, I know that already, or I wouldn't have hired you," he remarked, that faint smile back on his lips. "Give me some credit, Invel. Not all my decisions are based on whimsy."
"Yes, Your Majesty," he replied, defeated.
As always, this only seemed to amuse him, though he did not comment. "Now, if you've finished trying to show me up, I want you to help me draft a better version of that Act I just eliminated. There are issues with the Constitution in its current form; it seems that the longer I am away, the clearer they become. Since I cannot commit to staying for as long as most people would like, correcting said issues is one thing I can do to help those left behind."
Invel blinked. "Well, yes, but- wouldn't it be more appropriate for Jaquila or Yajeel to help?" When he'd said he was familiar with laws, he'd meant the ones that already existed.
"I'll get their opinions on the matter later."
"Then the Counsel's Office-"
"Will revise the wording once I've got my initial thoughts down."
"But… I am the least qualified person in this entire building to advise you!"
"True," His Majesty shrugged.
"Then-"
"Don't forget, Invel – I am more than capable of doing this on my own. I don't want you to help me because I need help. Rather, I want you to help me because I want to see how you think." When Invel hesitated, not entirely sure he was interpreting his emperor's intent correctly, he explained, "It's not a test. You already passed that. I want to get to know you. I want you to show me what you can do."
"I…" Words failed him for about the fourth time that morning. He stumbled more around this man he had known for less than a day than he did around every professor, adult and mentor he had had in his life put together. He had never felt as inferior as he did here – but nor had he ever felt such a drive to better himself. To prove that he could be their equal.
Shaking himself, he finished with the words he should have spoken long before now. "Thank you for this opportunity, Your Majesty."
He waved it away impatiently. "Talk to me about Segregated Powers."
And Invel did.
Eleven years later, Invel set the lifeless lacrima down on his desk and stared at it numbly.
"You promised you would answer if I called you," he whispered. "So why won't you pick up?"
Moonrise.
A sliver of white hung over the city of Alstonia, where a werewolf's claw had slashed the curtain between night and day. Down below, someone far more methodical had taken a utility knife to the tapestry of night, cutting out squares of silver and gold from every window without letting the glow spill out beyond the walls. All the bars were full – and there were many to choose from – but few patrons walked the streets; few stood outside to smoke or laugh or fight; few chose to simply linger in the cool summer night. The colourless shells of buildings reduced the sound of revelry to a low hum.
Selinon came alive after sunset, and Bishop's Lace had blazed, but Alstonia kept a subdued council that evening.
There was one person who had been out in that night since before the moon had risen, though even one who knew he was there would have struggled to see him. He – or perhaps she, man or woman, human or demon, living or ghost; the darkness made it impossible to tell – crouched low to the roof of The Blacksmith's Arms. Unmoving, and as black as the darkest sky, his chest rose and fell no more than a gargoyle's might, that still and silent child of midnight.
Watching.
Waiting.
Listening, for something no one else could hear, because a settlement that seemed unusually subdued to others was nonetheless alive to one who could perceive as much as he.
The loud, unpredictable staggering of a group of revellers, not so drunk that they would choose to separate until they had to.
The must-not-show-my-fear footsteps of a woman who had argued with her husband one too many times and found herself hurrying to her sister's place alone.
The man in the shaded window opposite his own vantage point, who, despite the intensity with which he surveyed the streets, could not yet have noticed him, or the rifle in his hands would not have remained pointing down below.
The two – three – four of his colleagues in various doorways and alcoves, always with one hand inside their inner pockets, their slightly elevated heartbeats revealing that they were seeking something beyond the occasional passer-by.
Something that he knew they would not see.
But something that he might hear.
There was an anomaly in that town of light and dark – not the black-suited men with ill-concealed firearms, not the too-quiet atmosphere, but the regular, easy footsteps of someone walking down the road.
No one walked the streets of Alstonia. Not for a while, now. Not at night. Not alone.
Those steps were far too calm, and far too arrogant.
In the blink of an eye that extra chimney stack was gone, and a dark figure blurred over the rooftops. His pitch-dark armoured suit absorbed all the moon's scant light. Between that, the cowl, and the twin pointed ears, no one would have thought him human at first glance, had anyone noticed him. The high-pitched clicks coming from his larynx might have startled any bats in the vicinity, but the men below were oblivious as the echoes bathed the city in invisible light.
As he closed in on the sauntering figure, still three streets away, a clearer image began to build in his mind. His enemy was small. Barely larger than a child. Blurred, too – perhaps he wore a cape, or other loose-fitting clothes.
He'd see it with his own eyes soon enough. Closer now, and faster, bounding from roof to roof with preternatural speed as he drew level-
Someone screamed.
It was just high-pitched enough to register on an auditory system attuned to ultrasonic frequencies, loud enough to chisel a splitting agony into his brain before he had the sense to dispel the echolocation component of his magic, and terrified enough that he only hesitated for a heartbeat before turning his back on his enemy and dashing towards the source of the sound.
There were two women – the one who had screamed, and the one who was advancing upon her with inexorable steps. The sliver of moon reflected on a sliver of steel.
A shriek: "No, please, I don't want to-"
But he was too far away, and that razor-edged moonlight too swift. The knife plunged into yielding flesh.
The scream spluttered and gurgled as the life flooded out of it – and even that wasn't loud enough to drown out the squelch as the blade was pulled free and began to turn. Crimson-stained silver winked, before disappearing just as quickly into another sheath of muscle and organ.
One body thumped to the ground, and then the other.
By the time he reached them, the cobbles beneath his feet were islands in a sea of blood. Not even he could hear the flutter of a struggling heartbeat. Yet he knelt beside them anyway, trying to find a pulse, because he had to hope that this time would be different- that he'd reached them quickly enough- that abandoning the hunt to try and help them had paid off-
Nothing.
The two identical expressions of terror that stared up at him would never again know the relief of arriving home.
Slowly, he got to his feet. His human hearing picked up the lumbering footsteps of the black-suited observers, swiftly closing in on the scene with guns in hand, for all the use they would be now.
The corpses would be gone within the hour, and not a whisper of that night's tragedy would make the newspapers, but everyone would know all the same.
There was evil in Alstonia.
It was an evil whose sauntering footsteps rang out like laughter.
It was an evil who had slipped through his fingers for the fifth time, and left in his wake a city that was right to fear the dark.
By the time the armed men entered the street, he had vanished into the night.
A/N: Okay, so first of all, I have to apologize for taking so long to reply to reviews etc this week. December is always horrendous at work, and this year is so much worse than usual (standard 2020). However, despite me being awful at acknowledging it, your support and encouragement has been so important in reminding me that there is meaning to life beyond the filing deadline, so thank you so much to everyone who has commented / followed / favourited this week. You are much more appreciated than I have probably made you feel!
Alstonia is named after the 'alstonia scholaris', also known as the 'devil's tree'. It seemed fitting for a city where Mira would make her home. This is a very serious arc, but it's also one of the most surreal things I have ever written, and I don't quite know how to describe it, so I think I'll just leave it at that... ~CS