The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Brittle Bones, Final Part
-Life is Made of Time and Choices-
An hour came and went, and there was no sign of His Majesty.
Invel paced back and forth before the unlit wreckage of Fairy Tail's guildhall. It may not have been appropriate behaviour for the Chief of Staff of the Alvarez Empire, but it was better than turning the entire city into a frozen wasteland, and ashamed as he was to admit it, the pacing was helping him keep his magic under control.
Another hour passed by, and then another, without even a sliver of moon for company.
Why was he still alive? Why, when he had not only doubted His Majesty, but in doing so uncovered a betrayal that His Majesty should be doing everything in his power to keep hidden? Why had he been asked to come here, to this graveyard of rubble and despair, so pitiful in the gloom?
There were, logically, two courses of action that Invel could take. He could fly back to Alvarez at once, and tell his colleagues the truth before His Majesty caught up with him. Or he could fly in the opposite direction – to Bosco and beyond, seeking a hiding place so far away that the empire might not conquer it in his lifetime. He'd spend the rest of his days looking over his shoulder, but at least he would have more days.
He took neither option.
He stood in the shadow of the half-destroyed guildhall and waited for a man who might not have been coming, and was likely to kill him even if he did.
His Majesty was absent one moment and present the next. There was no pulse of magic or crunch of footsteps to announce it, but for hours now Invel had been the only thing that moved amidst the debris, and the motion drew his attention at once.
It took Invel a moment to recognize him. Surrounded by the shapeless monuments of a fallen guild, the Emperor of Alvarez looked so small. There was something almost wild about him, and uncertain, and frightful; the owner of a sleeping Cerberus clutching its broken leash in his hand, dreading the moment it woke up and realized it was no longer bound. Invel found himself wondering if he had been like this in the alleyway, too, only the thunder of magic had been too dense for him to notice it.
His Majesty offered neither explanation nor apology for the delay.
Nor did he raise his hand to deal out the execution he had been tasked with hours before.
He just said, "Come with me."
Invel followed him through the wreckage until they stopped in a place as unremarkable as where they had started. A small gesture from His Majesty swept the rubble aside, revealing what had once been the concrete base of a floor.
It took Invel a moment to work out what he was seeing. Even as he dutifully watched His Majesty crouch down and tug at something in the ground, his brain was insisting that there was no point in watching, there was nothing to see, he didn't want to look, and why did he care anyway…? No matter how hard he tried, he could not make himself focus on what the other was doing, even though he was right in front of him.
Invel pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead as he averted his gaze, fighting back the nausea that came from recognizing a misdirection enchantment was in play but still not being able to see through it. The sensation of a hand gripping his arm was the only thing that could cut through his daze. Forcing himself to ignore everything his senses were telling him, he let himself be pulled onwards, knowing the spell was far too powerful for him to break without help.
Only once they had passed through it – a trapdoor, Invel realized belatedly – did the wards reluctantly relinquish their grip on his mind. From this side, he could sense them clearly: spells of protection had shielded the trapdoor from the damage dealt to the guildhall, and spells of disillusionment and misdirection had ensured it had not been stumbled upon before now. If His Majesty had not pierced them for him, he could have paced the ruins from now until the end of time and never seen it.
Without a word of explanation, His Majesty released him and walked on down the underground passage.
Countless questions whirled through Invel's mind as he followed. He had read an ungodly number of reports on Fairy Tail. He could recite everything from the dimensions of the guildhall to the name of the contractor who had supplied the wood for the eaves. Nowhere had there been the slightest indication that anything lay beneath the guildhall.
Yet here they were, descending a man-made staircase into a basement that was not only real, but incredibly well-protected.
In front of a set of huge double doors shone the most complex magical ward Invel had ever seen. It was like the one which had blocked his entrance into the conference of the Spriggan Twelve all those years ago, if that had been cast by the janitor and this one by a god. A thousand interlocking strings of the universe converged for one purpose: to protect a door that shouldn't have existed.
Invel stepped forward for a closer look, though he did not quite dare to touch it. Purely protective wards were usually harmless, but he didn't want to take any risks when he couldn't even begin to untangle the magic in this one.
"I've never seen magic like this," he admitted, out loud, perhaps by way of an apology that he had needed help to even reach this place.
Softly, the emperor voiced his agreement. "It took me six months to break it the first time."
Unlike Invel, he did not hesitate to place his palm against the centre of the seal. Its hum of response was almost friendly.
"Fortunately," he continued, "by the time I learned of its existence, the only other people who knew about it were trapped outside time, and those left behind let themselves be run out of the guildhall in a way Makarov would never have allowed. It was left unguarded, and that gave me the time and the space I needed to work out how to break it. Don't worry, though," he added, his voice becoming distant as the magical seal occupied more and more of his attention. "I can open it in under three minutes now."
On the day Invel had first met His Majesty, he had been told bluntly that he didn't appreciate magic enough for it to ever come naturally to him. It was moments like this that proved it. For all the power Invel had acquired over the years, he would never be able to do what the other was doing right now: grappling with a thousand streams of light at once; rewriting stubborn chaos into a single, clear note. The seal peeled away like the petals of a flower, and the door behind opened for them.
Invel felt the magic first. No longer held back by the doors, it filled the antechamber in which they stood with a gentle but pervasive light.
It should have been welcoming, but some part of him was trying to shy away from it. The longer he stood on that threshold, light pouring over him, the greater his uncertainty grew. There was nothing right about this. Nothing natural. He wondered if it was another insidious spell – one that made him want to turn around and leave – but the more he thought about it, the more certain he became that the magic wasn't causing that hollowness; the magic was that hollowness.
He didn't like it, not one bit.
Yet His Majesty stepped inside without a word, so Invel did the same.
The open doors led to a vast cavern. In the centre, looking almost comically small compared to the size of the chamber, there was a woman entombed in crystal. Invel recognized her at once – after all, Fairy Tail's First Master was such an influential figure that no sane person could consider an intelligence report on that guild complete without an entire chapter devoted to Mavis Vermillion.
Recognition, however, only confused him further. Why was she here? What was that crystal?
And most importantly, why was he sensing so much magic from the body of a woman who had been dead for nearly a century?
While the vastness of the room appeared nothing more than a purplish expanse of empty space to Invel's eyes, to his magical senses, it was teeming with that same unnatural power. The only place that seemed truly empty was the tiniest patch of void at its centre, right over Mavis's heart – a quaint little division-by-zero in the middle of a perfectly defined field.
It was easy to miss in the furnace of energy. In fact, Invel was sure he wouldn't have noticed it at all if he hadn't observed the exact same phenomenon before: the magical presence of his emperor held the very same anomaly at its core.
Indeed, His Majesty's gaze was locked upon the woman in the crystal, as if he could see nothing else.
The silence stretched on without explanation.
Feeling that no one would speak if he did not, Invel asked, abruptly, "I don't understand. What is this place?"
Only then did His Majesty remember there was more to the world than her. He did not seem irritated by the interruption – if anything, he seemed almost relieved. His eyes sharpened as he focussed on Invel instead of the crystal, piercing through the gloom of the underground chamber.
"There are things about the founding of Fairy Tail that no amount of research will tell you," said he. "Truths that were never written down or spoken of again; truths which were buried, and exist only in the memories of those who were there."
"You were there?" It was a rhetorical question; Invel may have been out of his depth in this enigmatic place, but his brain worked as it always did, leaping between the dots placed in front of him.
"I was the one who taught Mavis and the other founders magic."
"Why?"
"Because she asked me to." Knowing it wasn't an answer to the real question in Invel's mind, he added, "We weren't enemies back then, and I had no reason to believe we would ever become enemies. I liked teaching, and I liked her."
There was a moment of silence. Invel was not surprised to see that his gaze had drifted back to the crystal. He cleared his throat, and when that didn't seem to register, he asked outright, "So, what does she have to do with you helping to revive Fairy Tail?"
"Everything." With a snap of his heel, he turned his back on her body once more. His eyes were as hard as the crystal behind him. "This is the reason I want to invade Fiore."
So dismissively did he wave his hand towards the crystal that had enraptured him mere moments ago that Invel glanced around to see what else was hidden down here, before his gaze was forced to settle back on the First Master's preserved body.
"To tell you the truth," continued he, "I do not care about expanding our territory or uniting the world under one banner. I have no desire to see Fiore burn. That is why I have always been opposed to an overseas campaign. Only recently, by my standards, have I encouraged such ideas. That is because it was only eight years ago that I learned of the existence of this artefact beneath the guildhall. We will invade Fiore in order to take it for ourselves."
"What is she- it?" Invel asked, following his lead and switching pronouns, although he could not help feeling uneasy about it when he looked up at her again, so serene in death.
"An infinite source of magic. They call it Fairy Heart. It is a weapon – one before which even Acnologia will fall."
"Infinite magic? How is that possible?" Invel demanded. Naturally inclined towards magic he was not, but he had studied the living hell out of it after His Majesty had made it clear that joining the Twelve was not optional for his Chief of Staff. Invel could recite no fewer than five proofs that infinite magic was impossible – ranging from logical theorems to sheer common sense.
"That is not important," came the short response. "The magic you can sense is proof enough. Now that you have seen it, we should go."
Invel did not move. "But if this is what the invasion is all about, why don't we just take it with us now? You've already dismantled the wards. My airship can tow it back to Alvarez easily enough. We'll be long gone before anyone from Fairy Tail shows up! Why can't we-?"
"For the same reason I didn't take it the first time I broke through the wards. Or why I didn't simply order an invasion back when Fairy Tail's strongest mages were stranded on Tenrou Island, or after Makarov disbanded the guild ten months ago."
"Why?"
"Fairy Heart is incomplete. It is split into two pieces… it may be easiest to think of them as her body and her soul. No. Its soul. Its body and soul."
He gave his head a quick shake, as if to clear it, and carried on as if the slip-up had never happened.
"The body that we see here contains the magical core, but it is inert. Unusable. Only when it is reunited with the soul, its other half, can the magic be awakened and released. I do not believe the separation was an intentional act. It is more likely to have been a fluke born of the interaction between her core, her body, the sealing lacrima, and the means of her death, though it is difficult to say for sure, for I have never seen the like. However, if not for that, in the absence of any other means of controlling it, this infinite source of magic would have exploded out of control many years ago."
"Would it not still be prudent to steal the core while we have the opportunity?" Invel argued.
"Perhaps. However, while the body will be easy to recover, getting the soul to appear is another matter entirely. When Mavis died… she, who had imagined this guild and then made it real, who had given everything she had to it, and who through a fluke of magic now lingers beneath it neither dead nor alive… her soul became part of this guild. It is a magic that defies explanation; a magic born from the abundance of life in this place. She doesn't exist, but at the same time, she does. The stronger the spirit of the guild, the more powerful she becomes, until she can manifest in the physical world and even influence it with magic."
Never had Invel heard of anything like this – and he knew everything there was to know about this guild. "What does that even mean? The 'spirit of the guild'?"
"I do not quite know how to describe it. It is, I think, when the sense of family and belonging and Fairy Tail is strongest, she can appear. It is as though the very concept of the guild is strong enough to give her a presence in this world. To my knowledge, the disappearance of Tenrou Island was the first time it happened. When Acnologia bore down upon the stranded members of Fairy Tail, and they held hands and prayed to return to their guild, she finally gained the strength to materialize – and indeed to save them."
He considered this for a moment, and then added, "I was there. I could not comprehend what I was sensing, at first. It took many months for me to trace the magic back here, and many more for me to breach the wards in the basement and start to understand it. For seven years, while the remnants of the guild were in despair and disarray, there was no trace of Mavis. By contrast, when Fairy Tail was united once more, fighting during the Grand Magic Games, I could sense her presence constantly. During ordinary life, there is no need for her. But during times of crisis, when Fairy Tail stops being a name and starts being a concept for which people will risk their lives over and over… that is what makes her appear."
"That's why you need an all-out war," Invel realized. "A one-sided slaughter while the members of Fairy Tail are scattered won't make her appear. They have to be together, fighting for something they believe in, in order to ensure her spirit will manifest."
"Its spirit."
"…Right," Invel said, confused, before shaking his head and moving on. "So that's why you're helping them. It will make the battle more difficult for us, but it is also the only way to acquire this infinite source of magic. If they don't believe they can win, Fairy Heart will never awaken, and the whole attack on the guild will be for nothing. Do I have that correct?"
"You do."
"Then why did you not tell us?"
It came out as a shout in the void.
Dust rained down from the ceiling, but Invel did not waver. "That's a perfectly logical reason to help Fairy Tail! Why have you spent weeks being evasive when the explanation was so simple? Why didn't you just tell us the truth?"
Black eyes narrowed. "I am telling you now."
"Only because you have to!" Invel took a fearless step forward. "Did you think we wouldn't have understood? That we'd have tried to stop you? We're here to help you, Your Majesty! How are we supposed to do that if you keep such crucial things from us for no reason at all?"
"It doesn't matter," His Majesty said, already walking towards the exit. "Come along. We have lingered here long enough already."
"No," said Invel.
"I said, come along!"
"With all due respect, Your Majesty, we are not done here."
"Yes, we are!" Black wind whipped through the air as he spun back round. The magic-saturated air caught the snap and propagated it, flooding the room with its deadly whispers.
Facing death for the second time that night, Invel raised his chin defiantly and stared into those crimson eyes. "You promised you would explain everything. You have told me why you are aiding our enemies, but not why you chose to keep it from us. That is not everything. That is, if you will forgive me for pointing out the obvious, unbelievably suspicious."
"I am your emperor; I don't have to tell you anything if I don't want to," he sneered.
"No, you do not get to do that!" Invel snapped back. "Do you know why I came to Fiore? It's because, after everything you have done over the past few weeks, I can no longer bring myself to believe that you have the empire's best interests at heart! You are supposed to be proving how wrong I am, not justifying my doubts!"
"I do not have to explain myself to you!" came the snarled response. "You are nothing, less than nothing, and I have no obligation to tell you anything!"
"Then you're going to have to kill me," Invel stated.
There was a moment, just a moment, as time held its breath and fire burnt in Invel's blood – but it was gone the moment his emperor broke eye contact, putting on an expression of disdain that didn't quite seem real. "Don't be ridiculous."
"It's your duty, and you know it," Invel dared him back. "Everyone in Vistarion expects it of you. You should have done it the moment you caught me snooping around behind your back. It's not as though you haven't done it before, is it? When was the last time anyone crossed you and survived?"
His Majesty looked away without a word.
"Do it!"
"I don't want to!"
There was something desperate about it, almost childish, and it only incensed Invel further.
"What you want doesn't matter! You are our emperor; you have a duty to your nation! Prove to me, to all of us, that you are still the man capable of leading Alvarez – either by revealing the perfectly logical reason why you acted as you did, or by demonstrating once and for all that you are still the absolute, merciless, all-powerful emperor that Alvarez needs!"
"I-" Words choked and became a sob. "But I don't want to."
He turned away again, eyes screwed shut, but not before Invel had seen the frightened tears within them.
All at once, Invel felt as though he was back in the final week of his internship, staring at the truth of the administration he had once idolized, that ailing government hiding behind past glories.
Only this time, there was no Emperor Spriggan coming back to revive it.
There was no black and white keystone clicking into place at the heart of the machinery of empire, sparking hope, fuelling purpose, justifying the faith of all who had laboured on in his absence.
The man who had salvaged the empire in Invel's eyes back then was already here, and he had proven to be every bit as fallible as his government: no confidence, no conviction, breaking down in front of a mere servant.
"Why are you like this?" Invel shouted. They were past the point of emperor and servant now; so far beyond the point of no return that right and wrong had ceased to have any meaning. "You're supposed to be strong, the perfect leader everyone admires! You're the only thing that keeps this empire together! You're supposed to be better than this! It's pathetic, it's cowardly; you're not good enough!"
"I know I'm not good enough!" the other burst out. "I am not strong at all! I am not someone worth swearing your life to; I never have been! Why do you think I leave Alvarez so much? So that you can only ever see a tiny part of me, and not the truth!"
"You can't do this to me!" Invel howled. "I followed you for eleven years; I believed in you! Don't take that away from me!"
At his sides, his fists were shaking. He wanted nothing more than to walk away and never look back. He wanted to lash out in anger, losing himself to that impulse for the first time in his life. He wanted to destroy this place, and hope the pathetic, fragile man he had glimpsed here would be destroyed with it, and his supreme, controlled, untouchable emperor would return.
All he received was another angry denial. "I cannot take from you what you never had in the first place! I have never been the person you imagine me to be!"
Without warning, he spun to point almost viciously at the soft-glowing crystal. "You want to know who I really am? You want to know who she was to me; you want to know why all of this is so very complicated? Well, fine, I'll tell you!"
That wasn't the capitulation Invel had been expecting, and shock held his tongue as His Majesty carried on speaking with a self-deprecation so savage it was almost proud.
"I met Mavis Vermillion over a hundred years ago. She didn't shun me. She saw me at my worst – far worse than you have ever had the misfortune to see me, Invel! – and somehow she still decided that that person was someone she wanted to befriend."
Invel might have thought it a reprimand, but that bitterness was not aimed at him.
"Mavis was joy and she was freedom. She blazed, and when she did, all the darkness and the sorrow of the world seemed to vanish before her, even mine. It was as if loneliness could not bear to exist in her presence. She was a reason to try. A reason to smile."
And then: "I loved her."
The blunt admission startled the echoes into silence. Even now, it was the last thing Invel had thought he would hear from this man.
And indeed his own words seemed to perplex him, because he repeated them, slowly, sadly, weighing each one before releasing it into the world. "I loved her."
"Okay, fine," Invel snapped, confusion not meshing well with his irritation. "But what does that have to do with anything?"
Void-black eyes met ice-blue ones for a moment, as if the answer should have been obvious. Just as what little patience Invel had left began to wear thin, the other said, shortly, "It was a reason to do things which I should have known better than to do."
"Like what?" It was not a kind question, and it would not be denied.
"She asked me to teach her the strongest spell I knew, so I did." He shook his head, despairing of his own stupidity. "It wasn't ready to be used. It wouldn't have been safe even if it was, but I didn't stop to consider the consequences of anyone other than myself trying it. I warned her, but all that proves is that I knew it was a bad idea, and chose to ignore my own better judgement. And she used it. Of course she did. I taught her how to rewrite the laws of the universe, so she did just that – drew too close to the heart of magic too quickly, and paid the same price I did for a far lesser crime."
"She bore the same curse as you?" Invel asked, drawn in despite himself.
"Yes."
"That would explain the anomaly I can feel in her magic, but I don't see how it is possible. If she carried the same curse as you all the time she didn't age, there would have been some trace of it in the guild records I've analysed-"
"Like there is a trace of mine?"
Invel hesitated. It was true that hardly anyone in Alvarez knew the truth about his emperor's immortality – the current and former members of the Twelve, and few others – but His Majesty was often absent, just one of the many precautions he took to ensure that it remained a secret. If the First Master of Fairy Tail had followed a similar pattern, it should have been evident from the records.
"Well, the truth is that she didn't know," the other amended. "We shared the same curse, but our circumstances were different."
"How so?"
A shrug, as if something of this magnitude didn't matter at all. "She took for granted all the things liable to set it off in me. She, who had never known what it was to be alone, did not understand the value of those who were there to save her from loneliness each and every day. Then the trade wars began, so she went off to fight, and she played the same game as me for many years without ever realizing what it was doing to her. She didn't even know she was cursed until I told her. All that time, her ignorance had allowed her to live a normal life- no, not normal."
He could not stop his gaze from drifting back to her. "She was far from normal. She was fearless and inspiring, brazen and bright… She built her own way of life in a time of conflict; a kingdom all her own. She defended it against all comers, and it still exists today, as mighty as she had ever dreamed it."
"She sounds a lot like you," Invel remarked, a begrudging concession to this unwanted diversion.
There had never been a sadder smile than that which touched the other's lips. "She was nothing like me."
"Of course she was," Invel rebutted, perplexed. "She was cursed like you, she was trapped in a young body like you, she created a guild not unlike you created Alvarez, and she must also have been brilliant with magic to have been able to cast such a spell so young-"
"Yes," said he. "We were the same in all the ways that didn't matter, and nothing alike in all the ways that did."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"We shared the curse, but that was the only thing we had in common." The words were spoken to the silent tomb; words he had waited so long to say that the emotion in them was soft, warm, made gentle by age. "She, who never had to live with it, couldn't understand what it had done to me, or what I had done to myself to control it. She made her guild for those she loved, and I built an empire purely for myself. She was kind to me, but she was kind to everyone; the kindness that meant the world to me wasn't in any way special to her. If not for the curse, she would never have been interested in me. While she was unaware of it, she made no attempt to find me. Only when she knew about it did she seek me out… and even then, it wasn't that she wanted me as much as she wanted not to be alone. She didn't choose me. She didn't love me."
He was crying again. Tears as clear as the lacrima spilled from wondrous eyes, and yet he was smiling.
"She didn't love me," he repeated, "and that's okay. That's what happens, sometimes. It's not her fault. Maybe she would have come to love me, in time; I am sure she would have wanted to. But we didn't have that time, because- because I wasn't like her. I loved her far too much."
"You killed her," Invel realized.
He shouldn't have said it out loud, but he was beyond the point of caring about such things, and indeed the other's gaze did not move from the crystal. It was to her that he whispered, "I'm sorry."
"She bore the same curse as you," Invel continued, merciless, because getting to the truth was what mattered. "She had the same anomaly that you do – the one that is exactly as powerful as it needs to be to kill, and exactly as powerful as it needs to be to keep you alive. So if one person's curse tried to kill someone with the same curse it would create a feedback loop, both aspects locked in an endless cycle, growing stronger and stronger without end… an infinite source of magic. That's why it feels so wrong. In death, she became a weapon."
Invel didn't need the nod of confirmation his deductions received. "It's my fault. I didn't just kill her – I made her into an object to be fought over. And now I have to face her again. I have to plot against her and her guild, because I can't risk letting anyone else have control of that infinite magic. Can you imagine what that's like, Invel?"
No was the first answer that came to him. So what if His Majesty had once loved her? That had been a hundred years ago. The person he loved was long dead. This was nothing more than a valuable magical phenomenon which happened to have taken up residence in her body, her tomb.
Not to mention, this was for all of Alvarez. The future of their empire hung in the balance. He couldn't make it personal. He had to rise above his own feelings for the sake of their nation; that was the duty of a leader.
Yet, as Invel looked up at the crystal once more, the rejection felt heavy on his tongue.
Even he found it hard to refer to Fairy Heart as an it, and he'd never met Mavis, let alone loved her.
Diplomatically, he hedged, "I suppose it must be difficult-"
"Difficult?" A disbelieving laugh. "Look at me, Invel."
Invel knew what he would see when he tore his gaze away from the crystal, but it didn't make it any more bearable.
Gone was His Majesty. Gone was the man who had convinced Invel to stay and serve simply by being; gone was the man to whom he had devoted the past eleven years. Gone was the sovereign to whom he had remained faithful through long absences and entirely inappropriate behaviour – and when he had been forced to travel to Fiore and investigate his actions for the empire's sake, it had not been without reluctance or great internal pain.
This man, this wild-eyed and desperate man with tear tracks streaking his cheeks, was someone else entirely.
"You want to know why I didn't tell you all this from the start?" he asked bitterly. "Because it hurts, Invel. It is agony to think about it, let alone to speak of it."
He raked a clawed hand through his hair, leaving it as dishevelled as the rest of him.
"I have tried so hard to keep all this out of Alvarez. I thought that the conviction of you and the Twelve would help me stay focussed on what needs to be done, and move beyond the past that has always been my weakness." Another wild laugh. "Well, so much for that. Even after all this time, I can't so much as explain how Fairy Heart generates infinite magic without breaking down. Look at me, Invel – look, and tell me that you still don't understand why I chose to keep this to myself!"
There he stood, his emotions unrestrained, his fragility exposed for all the world to see, and Invel's voice came out so very cold. "I understand it, alright. You couldn't tell us why you were reuniting Fairy Tail without telling us about Fairy Heart, and you couldn't tell us about that without inviting questions about all of this. You knew we'd demand to know how it was possible. You knew we'd get too close to the truth."
"Exactly that." This time, the other's laugh sounded more like a sob. "I don't know why I believed things would be different this time. I don't know why I thought I could just tell you the truth and everything would be fine. I knew you'd react like this to seeing me, the real me. I knew I'd lose everything. I've known it for centuries. I don't know why I ever let myself think otherwise."
In truth, nor did Invel.
The great emperor he served had vanished, as if he had never existed, as if those eleven years of toil and turmoil had been for nothing. Invel had been so certain that he had found a man worth supporting – a man above all others – a man he had well and truly come to respect – and now…
What had it all been for?
What had been the point of all his time and choices, all he had given up and all he had achieved, if his emperor was nothing more than a fragile and broken man?
A man who could have kept pretending to be strong, if he had only been willing to end Invel's life for it.
A man who had let his own imperial façade die instead.
Smoothly, gracefully, Invel knelt before his startled emperor. Although he spoke strictly to the floor, his voice silenced the maelstrom of magic in the chamber.
"You thought otherwise, I think, because some part of you hoped I would realize I was holding you to an impossible standard of perfection. And you are right: I was, and the fault for that lies with me alone. So what if I have seen this vulnerable side of you? It does not mean the emperor I have always followed does not exist at all. Knowing that you have loved and lost does not make you any less the man who united Alvarez and commands the loyalty of its strongest mages. It is not a crime to have a weakness, and you should not feel as though you have to hide it from me, from any of us. I am sorry," he murmured, with feeling, "that I ever made you feel ashamed to be human."
The sobbing had started again, quiet, desperate, and the hands pressed to his mouth could not fully stifle it.
"Let me be your strength," Invel continued. "When we return to Vistarion, if you do not feel able to go through this again, let me tell the others what they need to know. If you cannot fight against the woman you loved, let me do it for you. If you cannot find the conviction to wage war upon her guild, leave it in my hands. Tell me your wish and I will make it reality."
Neither looking up nor faltering, Invel vowed, "I will not ask you to punish me for my actions today, for after everything you have said this night, I know it would be an insult. Instead, I will ask for your forgiveness. Please, forgive me for doubting your motives in this war. Forgive me for forcing you to relive these difficult moments of your past. Forgive me for all that I said in anger."
His heart was hammering like it had the very first time he had demanded to serve His Majesty, only this time, it was a different kind of fear. Back then, he had been terrified that he would be rejected, or even killed, and the opportunity of a lifetime would pass him by. Now, the thought that his actions might have driven him away from his unruly, troublesome, broken emperor sparked an entirely new dread.
And yet, with all the strength his emperor did not have, not a trace of it showed on Invel's face.
That was his promise.
"You are forgiven," came the quiet response. "Thank you, for…" Unable to find the words, he repeated, simply, "Thank you."
Invel got to his feet. "The fact that there are moments in your past which still haunt you is not your fault, Your Majesty. What matters is how you choose to move beyond them and be our emperor once more. If you ever feel you are not strong enough for it, you need only say, and I will be your strength."
"Perhaps you are right." At last, his attention began to drift again, up to the tomb of the one he had once loved, and now was to fight. "However, I do not think that the past is something that should be discarded."
"Nor do I," Invel said, struggling to find the words for what he wanted to say. "But if it is still hurting you after all this time-"
"It is. But, it is a good kind of pain."
"I don't understand."
There was a flash of gentleness in those black eyes. In that moment, he seemed neither fragile nor imperial – just an immortal man who had seen more than Invel ever would. "I know you don't, and that's alright. It took me a long time to learn it myself. But, perhaps you will also come to understand it one day."
Before Invel could speak, His Majesty turned away and approached the crystal. For a moment, he hesitated, his palm an inch from the radiant lacrima, and then he touched it so very gently. The magic hummed in resonance, and then settled back into its usual hollow equilibrium.
"I am truly sorry, Mavis," spoke he. "I wish it hadn't ended this way… and yet, as selfish as it is for me to say this, I am glad that I met you. I am grateful that you gave me the chance to love you, even if I was never loved in return. Know that I do not bear you any ill will for your choices, and know that I will not forget the blame I carry for your death. However, this is where we part ways. Thank you for everything… and goodbye."
"On the house," Mira winked, as she placed in front of Lucy a portion of bacon and eggs large enough to feed three Elfmans.
Lucy gave an appreciative smile, before reaching over the fried mountain and going straight for the teapot. On one hand, she had a feeling that eating so much bacon would be more dangerous than fighting all the out-of-control fragments of the Tartaros demons at once. On the other hand, she was just relieved at the confirmation that things were back to normal.
Well, maybe not quite normal.
Lisanna wasn't with them, because she was grounded for not telling her sister about her secret superhero identity and going out to fight crime behind her back.
Levy was skipping breakfast in favour of sitting in the corner of the bar and drawing graffiti onto a talking radio, which grumbled every time she poked it too hard with her light pen.
The breakfast shift at the Gehennan Princess was as bubbly and pleasant as it would have been in Fairy Tail's guildhall, but with the addition of several solemn, watchful bodyguards in suits – a visible deterrent against the kind of trouble that was never too far away from Fairy Tail, whatever the time of day.
No, it wasn't quite the same as being back in her guildhall, but as a waypoint, Lucy thought it wasn't half bad.
To be honest, she hadn't been sure what to do with herself once the battle with Alegria was over. It was the first fight in a while that hadn't ended with her unconscious, wounded, fleeing, or immediately having to deal with some trouble (namely, Zeref) elsewhere, and that had left her at something of a loose end. Not to mention that it was Lisanna who had won, not her. Lucy had been tempted to claim that it was her who had cast Urano Metria at the end, not Gemini, just to claw back some credibility… right up until Lisanna had asked Gemini-Lucy why on earth she was wearing that ridiculous costume, at which point Lucy immediately denied knowledge of everything.
Even if it had been Lisanna's moment, though, Lucy was proud of their victory – and happy beyond words that they had been able to bring Mira safely back home.
Speaking of whom, Mira's usual smile was on her face as she took the seat opposite Lucy, but there was something worn about it. Not that Lucy could blame her. She didn't think she'd look her best either, if she'd turned up for her crack-of-dawn waitressing shift only a few hours after being taken over by an amalgamation of vengeful demon consciousnesses and beaten up by a dark superhero.
It was more than a physical exhaustion, though. It was something that had been building steadily for ten months – something Lucy knew all too well.
"I'm going to come back to Fairy Tail," Mira said, at last.
Lucy beamed at her through an unfortunately timed mouthful of bacon.
Fortunately, Mira didn't seem to notice. "I think being back amongst friends will help, especially those who crushed Tartaros in the first place. You know, that voice… Alegria… they've been talking to me this morning."
"And you talked back?" Lucy asked, trying not to look too concerned. Defeating Alegria had not banished the demonic souls from Mira's body. Their hatred for humanity and their love of violence had been permanently incorporated into her magic. It placed incredible power at her fingertips, and incredible risk.
Mira nodded. "If I'm not defending the Gehennan Princess, I don't need magic. I already gave it up once. I'd be more than happy to do that again once the guild is reunited, and be nothing more than Fairy Tail's barmaid, helping Master Makarov run the guild without ever having to use magic. That way, they'll never regain the strength to take control again." For a moment, her human smile looked so very demonic. "They know I'll do it, and it petrifies them. They'd be trapped in my head forever."
"So, they're trying to talk you out of it?"
"They're trying to form a truce," Mira clarified. "To see if we can co-exist. They've become quite fond of living, I think."
Dubiously, Lucy voiced, "Do you trust them?"
"They've never experienced defeat before," Mira shrugged, a little too cheerfully for Lucy's liking. "Discovering that they still have so much to learn has changed their perspective, I feel. Besides," she added, with a wink, "they won't be trying anything while Lisanna's around. They're terrified of her, now."
"I'm terrified of Lisanna now," Lucy agreed, laughing.
"Do you think I was too harsh on her?" Mira bit her lip. "I know she's grown a lot since the guild disbanded… but creating a Take Over form specifically to go out fighting crime was far too dangerous! She could easily have ended up being one of Abel's victims! Not to mention that if any of the city's wardens had come across her in the night, she'd have been murdered without hesitation-"
"You may be right about that, but I rather think it's missing the point," Lucy sighed. "If this had happened ten months ago, Lisanna wouldn't have had to hide her alter ego from you. You'd have been supporting her the entire way. That's why she did it."
"I guess you're right. I only wanted her to understand how much I worry about her. Perhaps I should go and apologize…"
"Well, you really are a fool if you think she's still sat in her room waiting for you to come to your senses," Lucy grinned. "I bet she gave it about a minute before climbing out of the window to go and rescue cats from trees or help old ladies across the road or whatever it is superheroes do this early in the morning."
"Do you think she'll want to come back to Fairy Tail too?" Mira asked anxiously.
"I think you know her better than I do," Lucy shrugged. "But also, yes."
"Then we'll both be there for the First of September."
"Are you going to be alright leaving Alstonia?"
Slowly but surely, Mira nodded. "The Gehennan Princess is far more than Lisanna or myself. It's an idea that will outlive us – a family that will protect its city just like Fairy Tail protects Magnolia. Alstonia is in a much better place now than it was when we arrived. And besides…" With a slight nod, she indicated Ace, who was stood at the bar in quiet conversation with one of Mira's unofficial bodyguards. "We are leaving the city in good hands – more competent hands than mine, I dare say."
Lucy's stomach twisted. "Mira, he shot a defeated enemy in cold blood-"
"This isn't Magnolia, Lucy," Mira reminded her, and it held a flash of the steel that the other Familias had seen in her – the same steel Lisanna shared, although she had taken to painting it black and wearing it externally, rather than hiding it away. "I know it isn't how you or I would have done things, but this isn't our city. It belongs to men like Ace, who were born here, and who will die here."
Then she considered it for a moment, and added, "Though, if we have been able to make Alstonia a little more welcoming, I'll be happy."
"I know you have," Lucy nodded. "Now, though… I daresay Fairy Tail needs your help more than the people of Alstonia."
"I'm already looking forward to being home," Mira smiled.
There was no breakfast being served at the old Fairy Tail guildhall that morning. There hadn't been for over ten months. Only two people walked through the ruins at the break of day, and neither were members of that guild – and indeed, if there was never a breakfast served in the guildhall again, their machinations would be the reason why.
Then again, perhaps they had been too quick to rule out the possibility of food. As the sunrise now revealed, not all the shapeless tombstones around the broken guildhall were part of the wreckage. One of them was, in fact, a food wagon. A food wagon so garishly green that it seemed impossible that they had missed it the first time round, heart of the night or otherwise.
Bold yellow lettering declared it the provider of Manly Meals On The Move.
Neither Zeref nor Invel had said a word as they made their way back to the surface, which meant that the first thing spoken under their new accord was Invel's utterly bewildered question: "What is that?"
Zeref only turned, looking for the ruins from which they had emerged. The shadows of night had wrapped the world in the veil of their expectations, and now that daylight stripped them away, the truth beneath was revealed.
This wasn't a wasteland after all. The piles of stone and timber hadn't been left where they had fallen ten months ago; they had deliberately been placed there to pick up again the next day. The thin bones of the guildhall weren't a burnt-out skeleton, but scaffolding – not death, but rebirth.
The guildhall wasn't half-destroyed. It was half-rebuilt.
"They've already started rebuilding," Zeref murmured, with something akin to wonder.
Clear disapproval was chiselled into Invel's features, but after a moment, it seemed to soften. "I would offer to tear it back down for you, Your Majesty, but I understand that this guild is important to you."
"Yes… it is."
"Then we will fight them fairly, and without hate," Invel promised.
"Thank you."
"May I have your permission to return to Vistarion, Your Majesty?"
"No."
There was a pause. "Your Majesty…?"
Zeref understood the confusion in that voice all too well. In truth, his refusal was impulsive, not logical. It wasn't that he wanted Invel here as much as he didn't want him back in Alvarez right now. If he went straight back, he would want to discuss Fairy Heart and the invasion with the others… and Zeref wasn't ready for that. Not yet.
He had been forced to act tonight. Telling anyone about his relationship with Mavis – let alone telling Invel, of all people – wasn't something he would have ever considered unless he had been given no choice.
Yet, just like when he had told Lucy about his brother and his curse, the shame and the horror and the urge to run and start over weren't nearly as overwhelming as the fear of them had been. His past was known; he was vulnerable; the lies upon which his persona was founded had been torn away, with nothing left to support it but faith – and yet, miraculously, it was still standing. His plans remained on track.
In fact, perhaps his ultimate goal was even more attainable than before. Invel would be his strength; Invel would do what needed to be done if he himself could not bring himself to do it when the time came.
For a hundred years of empire-building he had been so careful not to form true relationships with those who served him, and it had only taken a few short days to undo all of that. From the moment he had chosen to face the risk and pain of lowering his barriers rather than simply discarding the man who had challenged him, from the moment Invel had sworn to accept the man he saw as his emperor nonetheless, Zeref knew things had changed irreparably.
He had shown his full hand. He had committed all that he was to obtaining Fairy Heart. There would be no more running away, no starting over, no postponing the invasion or convincing himself that the time wasn't yet right. After four hundred years, things were finally going end, one way or the other.
He would no longer stand back and watch. He was here. He was ready. And the whole world was going to know it.
There was just one thing he had to do first.
Fairy Tail would finish coming together without his intervention, he knew that, but after everything he had been through on this journey, there was one thing he could not bear to leave unfinished.
"No," he repeated to Invel, firmer this time. "There is something I need to do before I leave Fiore, and I want you there with me."
"I am yours to command, Your Majesty. What is it you wish to do?"
"This is who I am," Zeref asserted, with growing confidence. "And I am tired of others believing they have the right to decide that for me."
Dark eyes turned towards the horizon, and all that lay beyond it. "I am going to destroy Avatar."