The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

Between Heaven and My Life, Part 2

-If Only for a Moment-

Invel had arranged a carriage.

It was like something out of a fairy tale: there Lucy was, on her way to a ball at the king's palace, escorted by a handsome, sincere gentleman in a horse-drawn carriage of white and gold.

If she ever met her Fairy Godmother, Lucy decided, she was going to shoot her.

This was not how the evening was supposed to go.

She should have been reunited with Zeref for one final adventure – infiltrating the palace, unravelling the mystery of her magic, and maybe, just maybe, something more, if he allowed it. She was certainly not supposed to be stuck in a stupid, claustrophobic carriage with a total stranger, about whom she knew literally nothing other than his name, because he would not tell her anything.

After several minutes without even the task of putting one foot in front of the other to distract her, she had another go at fishing for information. "So, how do you and Zeref know each other?"

His grey-blue gaze flicked from the window to her, cold as ice and hard as flint. "I'm not allowed to tell you that."

"Figures," Lucy muttered. "I thought he was past the point of keeping secrets from me."

"You and me both," Invel said grimly. "And yet here we are, meeting for the very first time."

"Is there anything you are allowed to talk about?"

His eyes returned to the window with something akin to dismissal. "The weather is fair. It's going to be a warm night."

"It's going to be a long night," Lucy sighed.

Invel was still resolutely not looking at her, so she studied him with little shame. At first glance, he might have been a prince, yet he looked slightly awkward about it. His hands were clasped in his lap; his posture was perfectly straight and perfectly uncomfortable. It mirrored hers exactly.

"You want to be here about as much as I do, don't you?" she observed ruefully.

Again, that glance was so sharp she thought it was going to cut straight through her, but when she offered him a sympathetic smile, he bowed his head, seeming to thaw a little. "Please forgive my rudeness, Miss Heartfilia. This is not how I was expecting to spend my evening."

"That makes two of us. How did you get landed with the job of escorting me, anyway?"

"I was unlucky enough to be the closest one to Crocus at the time."

"Gee, thanks," Lucy snorted, rolling her eyes. When he opened his mouth to apologize, she forestalled him with a raised hand. "I was joking, don't worry. Besides, what I really meant was, why did Zeref send you instead of coming himself? Or is that something else I'm not allowed to know?"

"He said it was too dangerous for him to go."

Lucy raised her eyebrows. "A party at the palace is too dangerous? It wasn't that long ago that we were ambushed by Acnologia!"

Invel's expression may as well have been chiselled from stone. "He told me you know how his curse operates. Is that true?"

"Yes…"

So, Zeref didn't think the ball would be dangerous. He thought that he would be.

Confusion swelled within her. If that was the answer he had reached, then that was fine, she would accept it, but how could she know for sure if he did not say it? Frustrated, she demanded, "Why couldn't he tell me that himself?"

"I tried telling him he had to," Invel grumbled. "Believe me, I did. He was afraid that if he spoke to you, you would talk him into going with you tonight, though it wouldn't have made it any less dangerous."

Puffing out her cheeks, Lucy blew out a long, slow breath. "I think Anna was on to something. He really is a moron." Invel did not contradict her, and she felt a sudden kinship with this enigmatic man. "I'm sorry you got dragged into this. You can leave, it's fine."

"I have my orders," he said bluntly.

"It's fine, really. I'll tell Zeref I told you to go home."

"No. He was right about one thing: you can't go to the Summer Ball on your own. It would be unseemly."

"Excuse me?"

"This is not some aristocratic party, done to appease the demands of a minor nobleman's position and passing swiftly into the mire of time. It is the Summer Ball. It is the culmination of the summer season in Fiore. You need not talk to me, or even stay with me once we are through the gates, but you must not arrive unescorted. It would be a disgrace to your family name and to the princess who invited you, and forever tarnish your reputation in high society."

Lucy's mouth flapped like a flag in the wind.

Misunderstanding her silence, Invel explained, "I don't care for it either, but this game has rules like any other, and we must abide by them."

If the carriage had been any bigger, Lucy would have jumped to her feet, but since it would have left her practically on this stranger's lap, she managed to restrain herself. "My reputation was shot the day I took this," she snapped, showing off the Fairy Tail mark on her hand like it was the crown of a king. "I tore it to shreds with my own two hands. I couldn't care less what society thinks of me. And even if I did, I'm not here to earn political favour with the king, or court a nobleman, or even because I thought it would make for a classy date! I'm here to infiltrate the palace and investigate the Eclipse Gate, and that's all there is to it!"

The frown that settled upon Invel's face was a far cry from the tirade she had been expecting. Surely a man who dressed in fancy suits and held society's unspoken rules in such high regard would have jumped to defend the Summer Ball, but all he said was, "What do you mean, the Eclipse Gate?"

Lucy's jaw snapped shut abruptly. "Zeref didn't mention that?"

"No, as it happens. He did not."

"But that's our entire reason for going to the stupid ball in the first place!"

"Is it, now?"

"Of course! I mean, did you really think Zeref asked you to come all the way out here just to, what, preserve my reputation as a noblewoman? Have you even met him? That wouldn't have crossed his mind!"

"I did think it was odd," Invel conceded. "But he did not deign to explain himself, as usual, and that was the only explanation that seemed to fit what little information I had."

Lucy considered this. If Zeref had failed to mention the whole point of them going to the ball, then perhaps, for him, it had stopped being the whole point of them going to the ball. Perhaps he thought it was too dangerous to go together, and so had sent this peculiar man to ensure she was not stood up without explanation, thinking only of the event itself and not the reason they had signed up for it in the first place… and that thought skipped once in her overeager heart.

Not that it meant anything, if he couldn't be here.

She had to stay grounded. At least one of them had to focus on the task at hand. "Well, now you know why we're really going to the ball."

Invel did not look convinced. She had a feeling that he had come to the same conclusion as her, and wrested her thoughts away firmly, adding, "I suppose having someone else with me might come in handy. You could cause a diversion, or keep a lookout or something…"

Gracefully, he inclined his head. There was something enchanting about the way his ponytail spilled around his shoulders. "I will assist you if I can. However, if you are trying to avoid attention, my presence may prove more of a hindrance than anything."

As he spoke, he leaned back in his seat, drawing the wisp of a curtain across the little window. Through the white mesh, Lucy could see the arch of the palace's outer gates wash over them. His hand trembled as he returned it to his lap and linked his fingers firmly. She wondered if he was nervous.

"There's no need to worry," she assured him. "I have attended several of these formal balls in the past, and I can mostly remember how they work."

If anything, this only deepened his frown. "So have I. That's the problem."

"What do you mean?"

"He didn't think this through," Invel scowled. Not nerves, then. Frustration. She was very familiar with that. "I told him it was a bad idea, I told him, but did he listen?"

"Does he ever?" Lucy sighed in sympathy. "You know, when he decided he was going to get my guild back together, he didn't think through the logistics of it at all. He roped me into it and then left the whole thing up to me. Sure, it worked out in the end, but only because my friends helped and we got lucky. He didn't think the quest through at all."

"That's nothing," Invel remarked. "On the day I met him, he decided within about five minutes that he was going to hire me. Never mind that I was underqualified and inexperienced. Never mind that I was three years too young to legally take the role! He decided he wanted me, and did not stop to think it through. It is nothing short of a miracle that his world has not yet fallen apart around him."

She laughed. "He's been doing that for a very long time," she said, thinking of Anna, and the way they had fought over Zeref's first dragonification ritual, which he had created with no regard for the timespan or the consequences of those involved. In the end, though, Anna had come round to his way of thinking, just as his and Lucy's quest had ended as a resounding success – and she doubted he would have entrusted their final mission to Invel if hiring him hadn't turned out to be a good idea, either. "It always seems to work out for him, though."

Invel made a displeased noise. "That's the worst thing about it. He drives me mad."

"You can say that again," Lucy said with feeling. Before she knew it, she was laughing again, and even his lips had twitched into a reluctant smile. Entering Mercurius by noble carriage with a total stranger was surreal, but this conversation was on another level. "You know, when Zeref told me he had minions, I never imagined they would be like you."

"Believe me, this is not what I normally spend my time doing," came the vehement response.

"What do you spend your time doing?"

The reproachful look fell naturally back onto his face, and he stood without answering as the carriage came to a gentle stop. He stepped out into the evening before turning to wait for her.

Lucy said, "I always assumed he was alone. I'm so glad to learn that he has friends like you."

"I wouldn't go that far," Invel said crisply, offering her his hand. "Miss Heartfilia."

She stayed exactly where she was. "Lucy."

"Miss Heartfilia."

"Lucy. I'm going to call you Invel."

"You may call me what you wish. I, however, will give tradition its due, even if you will not."

"…You do realize that the whole 'tradition' argument carries little weight when you're helping me infiltrate the palace, right?" she snorted. "It would probably be more respectful to the forms of high society if you refused to have anything to do with them."

He sighed. "If it means that much to you, Lucy," he said stiffly.

"Thank you." She let him help her down from the carriage, and he escorted her across the courtyard in proper fashion.

The guards eyed the celestial keys at Lucy's hip with some mistrust, but made no comment. Invel's lack of a weapon seemed to appease them. Lucy knew he was a mage – he hid his magic well, but not as well as Zeref – but there was a difference between being threatening and merely being cold, and Invel toed that line with the mastery of a professional gymnast. The guards examined the seal imprinted into Lucy's invitation, found it authentic, and waved them onwards.

They followed a rich carpet down a hall to another set of doors. These were open, emitting artificial light and the clinking of glasses and polite, exaggerated laughs. Lucy felt a pang of longing for the genuine freedom of her guildhall.

In front of the great doors, a large man with a larger sense of self-importance and an even larger ruff turned to Invel, holding his hand out expectantly. He seemed surprised when Lucy was the one who pressed the invitation into his hand, though he did not comment. Turning, he announced to a room that wasn't interested in any name not prefixed by 'Earl' or 'Duke': "Miss Lucy Heartfilia, and… her guest."

Then they were across the threshold and into the sea of light.

It washed over Lucy like a wave of extravagance, capable of turning base metal into gold and cotton into the finest lace, but only for those who were already wealthy enough to have secured an invitation. Descending those steps into the ballroom, she might as well have been entering a kingdom beneath the sea, where everything from the rules to the dress code to the air itself was unfamiliar to her.

Last time she had been here, she had been too young to understand it. Now that she had found where she belonged, and it was as far from this place as possible, she found it suffocating.

Unable – or unwilling – to explain that to Invel, she forced a laugh through her hesitation. "It's… bigger than I remembered."

After a moment, he simply said, "Let me lead."

More relieved than she could say, she let him guide her down the stairs and into the crowd. He picked a winding path around the edges of the room, where the glittering, chromatic swirls of conversation were far thinner. She would have thought their route random, had she not sensed the purpose in the hand guiding her. There was no doubt that he knew what he was doing. On her own, she would have been adrift.

"You really have done this before, haven't you?" she murmured.

"For the past four years, consecutively." His response was terse, despite the fact that she had meant it as a compliment. "And I've visited the palace several times on other occasions."

"Why?" When this elicited nothing more than an unimpressed look, she tried another angle. "I thought the king didn't normally invite mages to the palace."

"I wasn't invited because I was a mage. I simply happen to be one. Refusing to deal with anyone who has magic is not an option in modern politics."

She nodded in understanding. "Last time I was here, it was because the king had thrown a party for all the guild mages who participated in the Grand Magic Games. At the time, it felt like it was so grand… but in retrospect, it was just like a buffet at the guildhall except with fancier costumes. There was no politics, no danger. It was nothing like this. This is… intense."

Her instincts were constantly on edge. She could barely draw breath without another prickle dancing across the back of her neck, as one minor aristocrat or another sized her up from outside her line of sight. Invel kept them just far enough away from other people that no one had spoken to them directly, their path a gentle breeze keeping back the pressure of the crowd for now, growing and growing and ready to break.

With a rueful smile, she observed, "No wonder Zeref didn't want to come. He'd have hated this."

Disapproval seemed to come so naturally to Invel. "As do I, but that didn't stop him from sending me."

"You're good at it, though."

"Because I have to be. He's the only one who can get away with not having to attend events like this." Invel came to a stop, facing her. "Where is this Eclipse Gate you mentioned?"

"Well… it's not really anywhere. It was destroyed a year ago. But Zeref said that if we went to the place where it had been charged up with magic, there might be enough of a trace for us to locate the hole in reality that my magic is supposedly making, or… something." A heavy sigh tumbled from her lips. "That's why he's supposed to be here! I don't even know where to start!"

"He must have thought you could manage on your own."

Lucy snorted. "That's assuming he thought this through at all."

"Well, I wasn't going to be the one to say it…"

A resigned look passed between them.

"It's below the palace," Lucy explained. "Or, it used to be. If we can get to the dungeons, I think I can find the Gate from there."

"Then-"

"Not yet. People are paying too much attention." Everyone in the crowd was so focussed on talking to the right people at the right time that they were hyper-aware of their surroundings; it grated like steel on her combat-honed nerves. "Let's wait until people start to relax. We might have more of a chance of getting away unnoticed."

Invel gave an unhappy nod.

They couldn't avoid speaking to anyone forever, but as Invel led them onwards, Lucy noticed that he was very careful about who he approached and who he didn't. The number of guests orbiting around an individual was far more reliable an indication of their importance than the number of diamonds at their throat, and he avoided the most important – or popular – of the guests. Instead, he found those who looked as out of place as Lucy felt or who, from the way they were dressed and their attitude towards the free champagne, appeared to be there for the spectacle more than to form connections. Invel always introduced her first, and brushed off questions probing any deeper than his name with far more tact than Lucy's curiosity had received.

There was one person Lucy didn't want to avoid, though, and when she glimpsed a flash of jade-green hair trying to disentangle itself from a knot of dukes and duchesses, she perked up at once. "Look, it's Princess Hisui!"

Invel's hand tightened around her wrist. "No. It's a bad idea."

"She's the one who got me the invitation," Lucy retorted. "I need to thank her, if nothing else."

Without checking to see if Invel was following, she wove through the crowd. Hisui's eyes lit up when she saw Lucy, quickly pardoning herself from the conversation like a princess at a royal ball and embracing Lucy like a friend meeting on the street. "Lucy! It's so good to see you again!"

"You too," she smiled. "Thank you so much for getting me that invitation."

"Of course. It was no trouble at all." Then she leaned in conspiratorially, breaking decorum in a way that only the daughter of the host could get away with. "Are the rumours true? Is Fairy Tail really getting back together?"

"Absolutely!"

A grin spread across the princess's face. "If the Magic Council gives you any trouble over getting your guild licence back, you let me know, okay?" Winking, Hisui turned to greet Lucy's companion, no doubt expecting another member of Fairy Tail – and did a double-take.

Invel clasped his hands behind his back, held himself tall, and waited politely for her to find her voice.

Hisui glanced from him to Lucy, who tried a sheepish smile and hoped for the best, and then back to him. Bemused, the princess observed, "Lord Yura. I must admit, I wasn't expecting to see you tonight, given that all attempts to meet with your ambassador in good faith have been met with silence for weeks."

"Your Royal Highness." Invel responded with a bow that would have looked over-the-top if it had come from anyone else. "I must stress that I am not here tonight in any official capacity."

Hisui's gaze flicked between the two of them once more. Lucy dreaded to think what conclusions she was drawing. Shrewdly, the princess asked, "Is that so?"

"I would be very much in your debt if you could treat me as you would any other of Lucy's friends tonight."

"I may well hold you to that, Lord… Invel," the princess responded, amused. "If anyone asks, you may tell them you are here as my personal guest."

Invel inclined his head in grave sincerity.

"Anyway, I must greet the other guests. And we will have to catch up later," Hisui said, with a pointed glance at Lucy. Lucy hoped a nervous smile was the correct response. It would have helped if she'd known quite what the princess was pointing at. Zeref's ability to land her in it without even being present in her life was truly remarkable.

As the princess was swallowed once again by the glowing crowd, Lucy raised her eyebrows to her companion. "Lord?"

Just like that, the scowl was back. "It is not strictly correct," Invel responded stiffly. "We do not use such archaic titles, but that does not accord with the royal hierarchy, so they insist upon addressing my colleagues and myself in such a way."

"I don't suppose you'd like to tell me just how you know the Princess of Fiore, would you?"

"No," came the blunt response. "Although, perhaps you are beginning to see how monumentally stupid it is for me to be here. The irony is that he could probably have done this without being recognized, given his usual attitude towards such engagements."

She wasn't quite sure what to say to that, and shortly afterwards, the same man who had introduced them to the room on arrival announced that the dancing was soon to begin. As Lucy watched the gleaming crowd disperse and reform in patterns as arcane to her as any of Zeref's ritual circles, apprehension seemed to solidify into a tangle of nerves in her throat. It had been a very long time since she had done anything like this.

And she wasn't here for the dancing, she was here to investigate the Eclipse Gate, but if she had to dance as part of her cover… well, she had naturally assumed it would have been with the man she was supposed to be here with. Who would probably have been as dreadful at it as her, and made her feel so much better by complaining the whole way through, and she would make him dance one or two more rounds than they strictly needed to, until he figured out she was teasing him, and…

But he wasn't here.

She found herself saying, "Must we dance?"

"No," Invel replied at once, in a way that made it very clear he hoped Lucy felt the same. Then, reluctantly, he added the caveat: "Although we may draw unwanted attention to ourselves if we do not, at least at first. It is your choice."

Just here for the Eclipse Gate, Lucy told herself, and she formally held out her hand for him to take. As he led her into an inconspicuous position at the edge of the room, she said, "I should warn you – I'm a little out of practice."

"Just follow my lead," he assured her. "It won't be long until other guests will start bowing out, and we will be able to slip away to investigate this Gate of yours."

By this point, Lucy wasn't surprised to find that Invel handled social dancing like a professional. Rusty she may have been, but the basic steps had been drilled into the same part of her memory as language, addition, and celestial summoning; nothing would ever be able to erase them completely. She was better than she thought, and Invel, naturally, didn't put a foot wrong.

As the orchestra played something half-familiar, she found her mind wandering. Who was this man? He worked for the Black Mage, and yet he performed the steps of a social dance as easily as he had addressed the Princess of Fiore, and he considered the fact that he was a mage of no great importance. She struggled to imagine the demons of Tartaros exchanging their claws for suits or their dreams of annihilating mankind for a champagne tower.

Against his better judgement, he obeyed the instructions he had been given – and yet he was not shy about expressing his frustration or his despair. He wasn't afraid of Zeref. Not in the slightest. Lucy got the feeling that he knew Zeref on the same level she did: he saw the quirks of the man rather than the shadows cast by history, and yet he still accepted him, respected him.

Invel was a mystery. If there was one thing she had learned from him, it was that there was still so much about Zeref she didn't know. He'd told her a story he'd never told anyone, but there were other stories, weren't there? There was too much to him for any one story to encompass. No longer was he the man he had been when Anna had lived, nor when she had died, and perhaps part of those missing centuries was embodied by the gentleman standing where she had thought Zeref might have stood.

Hoped Zeref might have stood.

Was it okay, now, for her to admit that?

Zeref cared about her enough that he believed his curse posed a danger to her. He had not left her in silence, but sent someone he trusted to explain the situation to her, considering the consequences of Invel's presence here a necessary sacrifice.

She understood that.

She appreciated it.

But what she really wanted was him.

She wanted him to travel with her again. To tease her and drop her into awkward situations – and then watch with admiration as she got herself out of them. To fuss over his books and sigh at her ignorance of magic and light up the entire room with passion when he talked about the Academy; to be so different to her, and yet not different at all. To hear her and respect her in a way her friends, for all that they loved each other, sometimes didn't.

To show her the scars he had never shown anyone, and trust her to take care of them, to take care of him.

To be friends or enemies or teammates or whatever it was they were, but to be it together.

She didn't realize she had stopped until she felt Invel's hand on her back, slowly guiding her out of the swaying crowd. "Lucy?"

"I'm fine," she insisted. She leaned up against a pillar, staring at the gilded ceiling, inconceivably high and far too low for her right now. "I just… felt a little dizzy, that's all."

"That's alright. Take a moment to…"

He tailed off. She looked at him in surprise, only to find that he wasn't looking at her at all.

Silence was spreading across the hall. The accompaniment of heel-clicks and skirt-swishes ceased as dancers turned to see the disturbance. Instrument by instrument, the orchestra faded to nothing. The ballroom came to an ungraceful halt.

Something had changed. Something immense. Something irrevocable.

There, at the top of the stairs, catching and holding the attention of a ballroom full of self-important aristocrats as easily as his gaze had always caught and held hers, was-

"Lucy," Invel groaned, "if you get the chance, please tell him from me that he is a colossal moron."

"Can't you tell him yourself?"

"I could, but I suspect I'll be too busy doing damage control to have the time," he sighed.

-was him. There was an authority to him that she had never seen before – one she did not feel with her magical senses, but with her very soul. It was born of the way he held himself, despite his slight form; of the imperial robes he wore, elaborate and imposing, despite not being fully grown; of the certainty in those black eyes that absorbed and dismissed the spectacle below in the same instant – eyes which were looking only at her.

Beside him, the portly announcer cleared his throat nervously.

Without sparing him a glance, Zeref thrust an invitation in his direction. The man read it, swallowed, and didn't say anything.

Then Zeref did look at him – a flicker of attention like the screech of a drawn blade – and he elected to read it out anyway. "His- His Excellency Robin Zane, the Lord Ambassador of Alvarez."

There should have been muttering and gossip as a stranger entered with another man's invitation, but no one dared. The dancers parted for him as he crossed the hall, finding something else to interest them the moment he looked their way; the musicians began playing again, every instrument slightly out of time, not trying to restart the dancing so much as prove they couldn't possibly be speculating about a man who had arrived late and gained entry under someone else's name.

Lucy did not look away, and nor did Invel. Perhaps they were the only two people in the room who saw him as he truly was. He was a terrifying man, with little regard for the rules and customs of others, but that wasn't all he was. He was also the apprehension hidden within that shell of certainty, the indecision – for it was certainly not arrogance – that had led to him arriving late, and, perhaps, the faith and the courage that had led to him arriving at all. He was only human, and she loved him for that.

As he came to a halt, Invel bowed, sincere and deep. Zeref inclined his head towards him. Question and answer passed between them without a single word being spoken, and Invel disappeared into the glittering throng of people, probably to intercept an understandably startled king and princess before all hell could break loose.

Zeref looked at Lucy. Lucy looked at Zeref. She couldn't read him in that moment, but she knew she didn't need to. She only had to wait, and he would tell her.

"I don't know if I can do this," Zeref admitted. "And if I can't, and I lose control, in all likelihood, the curse will kill you."

Then he added, swiftly, "I don't think it will. I wouldn't have come here if I did not think I could control it tonight. But there is a risk. There always will be. And I will not think any less of you, if you do not want to take it. Knowing that… are you still willing to let me try?"

"Yes," Lucy whispered.

He took her hand and led her back onto the floor. It was her second time that night, and yet it was nothing like the first. It wasn't because the other sparkling couples were going out of their way to not look at the two of them. It wasn't even because the legendary Black Mage was a spectacularly bad dancer, because to her private disappointment, he wasn't. He held himself with the same irreproachable dignity with which he had made his entrance, and although she couldn't rely on him to guide her the way she had Invel, he could hold his own easily enough.

No, it was different because she wasn't paying attention to anything but him. She couldn't. His heartbeat was the music, and the star-studded darkness of his eyes put the most beautiful gemstones in the room to shame. Both he and Invel had adopted the same strict position for the dance, but she had barely registered Invel's formal hand on her arm – not like she felt Zeref's, truly felt it, where the slightest change in pressure seemed to nudge against her consciousness.

Nothing else mattered. Not the palace, not the wealth and the splendour and the once-in-a-lifetime surroundings, not whatever Invel was sacrificing to smooth over his intrusion, not the cost, not the consequences.

Nothing but him.

"I know you said I should be used to you not being like I expected," Lucy remarked, "but I know you now, and I still would have put six months' rent on you not knowing how to dance."

"Invel made me learn," Zeref grumbled. "When he found out that I couldn't, he said it was a disgrace to my position, and that he didn't know how I'd got away with it until that point." There was a brief pause. "I hate it when he's right."

"He says the same about you, believe me," Lucy smiled.

"Well," he sniffed, "I got my own back. Mostly by making him attend all these stupid events in my place."

And Lucy found herself laughing – not at the sentiment, because she knew him too well to think he was joking, but at the entire situation.

Neither of them belonged in a place like this. It was ridiculous. She had run away from the world of aristocratic decadence, and he, by the sounds of things, was still running, despite Invel's best attempts to keep him in line. She was a mage of Fairy Tail, he was a villain of history; together, they were responsible for the revival of the most troublesome guild in the kingdom. Their friendship had been forged through danger and salvation, adventure and shared tears.

Dancing together at the king's ball was so perfect a moment that Lucy could almost forgive her Fairy Godmother for her earlier blunder, but it wasn't her moment. This wasn't them.

In fact, it was about as far as possible from the organic, hesitant, clumsy relationship that had grown between them.

He had come here for her, and that mattered so much to her, but that still didn't mean it was a good idea. They could forget about the world, but it wouldn't forget about them. Or, slightly more importantly, about the fact that Zeref had turned up uninvited to the king's ball.

When the music changed, she pulled him surreptitiously through an archway and out onto a balcony. The indigo sky was a pleasant contrast to the light-drunk hall. It was dark but clear, and the night went on endlessly, encompassing more than the forced grace of the architecture ever could. Beneath the archway, the line of shadow separating outside from inside seemed to reflect the sound of the ballroom like a physical barrier.

"Lucy?" Zeref wondered, tilting his head as he gazed up at her in that curious way of his.

"We should probably go and investigate the Eclipse Gate while we still can," she explained. "At some point, someone is going to realize you're not really that Robin bloke from Alvarez, and throw you out of the palace… or maybe into jail."

"Yes, I suspect they've probably worked that out already," he agreed.

Lucy gave him a reproachful look. "I'm glad you're here and all, but you probably shouldn't have stolen an invitation from a foreign diplomat…"

"I didn't steal it," he said, affronted. "I asked him nicely and he gave it to me. It's not as though he was going to use it himself." He gave her a knowing smirk. "Would you rather I hadn't?"

"No," she said quickly, too quickly. Glancing away, she hedged, "I just don't want to be the cause of an international incident, that's all."

"I think you'll probably be okay on that front. Invel is dealing with it."

She frowned. "How much leverage does he have with the royal family, exactly?"

"Lots," came the predictably evasive response. Still, his smugness faded as he glanced out across the gardens, dark shapes upon dark shapes rolling beneath the balcony. "Practically limitless, in fact, but not without cost. They don't know that I'm me, and I'd quite like it to stay that way, but it does put both Invel and myself in a difficult position."

Impulsively, Lucy took a step closer. His gaze flicked to her at once, but he didn't step away. Didn't run.

She said, "You really shouldn't be here."

"I know," he confessed quietly.

Another step.

"But, I'm so, so glad that you are."

A soft smile curled at his lips. "I know that, too."

He wasn't running away any more, and neither was she.

At last, they had agreed on an answer. They weren't friends, they weren't enemies, they weren't teammates. One didn't disrupt the royal ball for a teammate, or use up all one's favours with the king for an enemy, or leave one friend to sort everything out for the sake of another, if friends was all they were.

But it wasn't.

His lips brushed against hers.

And maybe the stars were shining; maybe the moon was full and the roses were blooming and it was the most romantic of nights. She didn't know. She didn't care. He mattered, and maybe, she mattered too. Everything else was one more dreaming moment, long ago and far away.

There was anxiousness in his eyes as he stepped back. Wondering, hoping, fearing. A shaky breath escaped his lips; their hearts beat an interminable moment's passing, and it was still real, what they'd made.

She could pinpoint the exact moment he realized this was okay: that she had allowed it, his control over his curse had allowed it, their mistakes and their choices had allowed it, this was okay.

His eyes teemed with emotions, good and bad, light and dark, barely contained behind a silvery film of moisture. In it, she saw her own giddy smile reflected back. She saw him dare to let himself hope, to believe in him and her.

Their lips met again, brief, wondrous, another moment stolen from time.

Perhaps she had fallen in love before, and perhaps she had been loved back, but she knew that in all her life, she had never been as much to any one person as she was right now, to him.