The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

Between Heaven and My Life, Part 3

-How the Stars Have Changed-

The world beyond the palace balcony did not share Lucy's happiness. Outside their beautiful moment, things moved ever on – and when those things included a royal family understandably concerned about the interruption to the Summer Ball, Lucy knew she could not ignore them forever.

Not looking away from her eyes, not even blinking, Zeref murmured the words that were on her mind: "We should go and find the Eclipse Gate."

"Right. Yes." Lucy managed a weak smile. "Probably a good idea before we get thrown out of the palace."

"Probably," he agreed.

Neither of them moved.

Neither of them, she thought, wanted to be the first.

Hiding a smile, she said, "Come on. Let's do our job and get away from here."

It took a humongous effort of will, but Lucy managed to break eye contact with Zeref, and even step away. The space between them felt so suddenly vast. Not wanting him to see how badly it was affecting her – how badly he was affecting her – and yet feeling so free in the knowledge that he felt it too – she turned and walked to the edge of the balcony.

Ordinarily, the palace grounds would have been kept under the watchful eye of the king's soldiers, but the rich and powerful individuals gathered in the ballroom did not want their views ruined by tromping soldiers. With the guards therefore relegated to the perimeter of the gardens, and the servants busy ensuring the guests had a steady stream of canapes, she and Zeref wouldn't get a better chance than this to investigate.

"Shall we go over the balcony, and then sneak back in on the ground floor?" Lucy asked, and he nodded his assent. Touching her keys, she let her ballgown transform into the loose-fitting combat gear of her Scorpio form. "Much better," she sighed, stretching. Then, without warning, she bounded onto the wall and down to the ground below.

Zeref followed with a little less elegance, and she reached out her hand to steady him. It was nothing – just an automatic gesture – yet she felt that touch ten times stronger, clearer, realer than she felt the ground beneath her feet or the stone wall at her back. Electricity flooded her nerves with light and energy.

"Let's do our job, she said," Zeref echoed, teasing, and she realized she was still holding on to him. Reminded of where they were and what they were doing, she jerked her hand back with a glower that, tonight of all nights, could not linger on her face.

Hugging tight to the wall of the palace, they circled the building until they came upon a window that had been left open. Lucy crawled through and turned round to help Zeref in, hyper-aware of the touch of his skin against hers and forcing herself to let go as soon as possible, to act as though everything was normal. They found themselves in one of many dark rooms full of suitably sumptuous furniture, although the purpose of the room was not immediately evident. Surely even the king didn't need that many drawing rooms. Maybe it was just there to meet the minimum size requirements for a palace. Or to give the servants something to clean when they weren't staffing a Summer Ball.

"Do you know where we're going?" Zeref inquired.

"Down," Lucy shrugged. "The dungeons are somewhere below; I'm sure I know how to reach the Gate from there."

"Dungeons," he mused. "Perhaps we should have continued as we were, then, and waited until they locked me up for intruding."

"Don't push it," she grinned. Easing open the door to reveal another empty corridor, she found herself beginning to relax. Or, at least, she could finally stop believing that they were about to be caught; her heart had been pounding out a heavy metal drum solo since Zeref had first appeared in the ballroom, and it showed no signs of stopping while he still drew breath beside her.

More to distract herself than anything else, she asked, "If you built the Eclipse Gate in a forest near Aster, how did it end up below a palace in Crocus?"

"No idea. Someone must have moved it."

"You don't know?"

Uncomfortable, he replied, "I told you, I didn't pay much attention to the activities of Anna's descendants. All I know is that, until Layla opened the Gate, those of the bloodline were drawn to it, some more strongly than others. I imagine that, when the Heartfilias married into the royal family a few generations back, they requested that the Gate be moved for safekeeping."

"That didn't bother you?" Lucy wondered.

"Why would it? I had long since stopped caring." Sighing, he glanced away, offering of his own accord an explanation she would barely have dared to ask for a week ago. "It wasn't without consequence, though. Anna and I had built the Gate with a natural environment in mind. The magic and technology and tempo of the capital city would have interfered with its magical fields, making it harder to activate, harder to open, and harder to control. Not to mention, passing through it became not only a jump through time, but also a jump through space. It was, I believe, that lateral motion which caused the children to be scattered across the kingdom when the Gate was opened."

"Well, you can't plan for everything across so many centuries," she tried to console him.

"No… and it wouldn't have mattered if Anna and I had been there. We'd have found them again, no matter where they ended up."

Lucy did not know how to respond to that, and was almost glad when a shadow lurched out of a doorway up ahead. She ducked behind a statue of some royal ancestor and pulled Zeref down with her. The footsteps of the guard trudged off in a different direction, and she stayed only a moment longer than necessary before letting Zeref go again, and he paused only a moment longer than necessary before stepping away.

They headed in the direction the guard had come from. Tapestries gave way to bare walls, enchanted lanterns to smoky torches. When the steps began to curve below the level of the ground with no carved banister to help steady a graceful lady or catch an overeager princeling, Lucy knew they had reached the right area.

Fortunately, there wasn't the same level of guard detail there had been during the Grand Magic Games. There were no world-destroying plots at hand – just the ruins of a once-great artefact, kept under guard purely because it was associated with the Black Mage, and thus they had to show the public that something was being done about it. The wrong turnings were more time-consuming than dodging the patrols.

At last, she spied a pair of oversized doors with two bored guards outside. "It's through there," she whispered.

"Okay," Zeref whispered back.

There was a pause.

Lucy ventured, "I don't suppose you'd like to do something useful with that magic of yours, and get us past the guards unnoticed, would you?"

"Certainly not!" he replied, affronted. "I'm the Acting Ambassador of Alvarez, I'll have you know. I would never do something so disgraceful as to attack a royal soldier while here by invitation. You're the guild mage, you beat up the authorities."

"It doesn't count when you stole the invitation in the first place," Lucy sighed. "Still, I remain in favour of not aiding and abetting diplomatic crises, so…"

She drew upon her Keyless Star Dress for what would hopefully be the final time, and let the full plate armour and huge blade of her Ophiuchus form condense around her. With any luck, no one would associate the helmeted knight with the lady who had slipped away from the ball in a floor-length dress and silver heels.

The guards unlucky enough to be stationed down here probably didn't get to see much action; the battle was over as soon as Lucy stepped around the corner. She held the sword in both hands and swung it like a baseball bat. The first crumpled under the blow, and the second followed him before he could so much as cry for help. A third slash cut through the chains binding the door closed, and they entered together.

It had once been a workshop of epic proportions: row upon row of workbenches housing huge glass contraptions, filled with bubbling liquids of a hundred different fluorescent shades; racks equipped with every tool imaginable and a great many more whose purpose was not imaginable at all; walls lined with blackboards on which the nature of time and space was inscribed in the morning and rubbed off for something more interesting by the afternoon. At the centre of it had once stood the mysterious Eclipse Gate, the subject of their investigations. Layla had opened it, and the completion of its purpose had been the trigger of ambition for Arcadios and his men.

The Gate was a ruin, now. Twisted chunks of metal and a cracked plinth were all that remained, dragged back into the centre of the hall after the disaster that had followed the Grand Magic Games and forgotten about. The workbenches were in disrepair. The glass equipment which had been too large or too specialized to be appropriated for use elsewhere littered the room like crystalline tombstones. Chalk was no longer needed to draw on those blackboards – a finger in the dust would have the same effect.

There was something here, though.

Something not entirely of this world, which hummed in Lucy's celestial keys and tugged at her heart and whispered words she could hear until the moment she tried to understand them.

She knew why generations of Celestial Spirit mages had been drawn to this doorway to nowhere, and she could not help wondering how many of those who had laboured here to appropriate the Gate for Arcadios's misguided plan had been her own distant relatives.

"I can sense it," she murmured. "You're right, it's the same feeling I get when I use Keyless Star Dress, but… it seems to be everywhere and nowhere. If there's a source, I can't pinpoint it."

"The source isn't here," Zeref agreed. "But there's a trail I can follow. May I borrow your keys?"

She pressed her ring of keys into his hand without hesitation. He closed his eyes, concentrating, and they soon began to glow. "Got it. I'll be back soon."

A ripple ran through the atmosphere as he vanished. She could sense the magic, but she couldn't understand it. Not like Zeref could. Not like her mother had been able to, either.

The Eclipse Gate had called, and Layla Heartfilia had answered, satisfying the destiny of her bloodline long before Lucy would come to learn about it. The two paths from past to future – the shortcut through the Gate and the arduous trek through four hundred years – had already reunited. It had never been Lucy's story, not really. It had been Anna's, and it had been Layla's, and there was no role for Lucy to play.

And yet it was because of them that she had met Natsu, and found her home in Fairy Tail. It was because of them that she had gained lifelong companions in her beloved Celestial Spirits. It was because of everything they had given up for something greater than themselves that she had the life she did.

She bowed her head as gratitude overwhelmed her. "Thank you, Mama," she whispered. "For everything you did for me, and for Zeref."

The drifting magic paid her no heed, but she smiled anyway.

Then the world lurched, and Zeref was back.

At least, she assumed it was Zeref, but she would have been forgiven for thinking it was a rainstorm that had materialized in the workshop. He was soaked through, hair plastered to his face, robes hanging awkwardly under the extra weight, his cursing barely audible over the drumming of water around his feet.

Lucy, who had jumped up at his arrival, stopped in her tracks. "Uh… are you alright?"

"Found it," he gasped.

"It was… in the sea?"

"It was over the sea," he corrected. "I appeared in mid-air, which wasn't a problem, because falling isn't dangerous for me, but I was too busy trying to make sense of what it was I was seeing to notice what I was falling towards. Namely, the sea."

"And what were you seeing?"

"A hole in space."

"…What?"

"A hole in space. I did tell you that's what I thought your magic was probably causing."

"Well, yeah, but… I thought you were being metaphorical! Weren't you?" He gave her a look as if she was being stupid, but she didn't see how her perfectly rational standpoint was stupid at all. "How can you have a hole in space? Space is everything! I mean, what was even on the other side?"

"Beats me," he told her. "But now I know where it is, I can go back any time and investigate. Preferably in a boat." He shivered, sending an extra spray of droplets to the stones below. "Were you, ah, wanting to go back to the party? Because if so, I may have to steal a set of dry clothes from somewhere…"

"No," Lucy laughed, surprised to find that it was the truth. It probably wasn't a good sign that she was more comfortable breaking and entering than she was dancing at a royal ball. Besides, they'd been lucky to get this far after Zeref's dramatic entrance. She didn't want to push it. "That's more than enough excitement for one evening."

She took her celestial keyring back from his palm and replaced it with the key to her front door. "Go home. Get a shower and warm up; there's a spare dressing gown in the cupboard you can use while your clothes are drying. I'll meet you there as soon as I can."

"Thank you," he said.

He stared at her, and she almost thought he was going to say something else – or do something else – but the moment was gone, and so was he.

Smiling to herself, she returned the keys to her belt and set about planning her second ever escape from the dungeons of Mercurius.

It was safe to say that Lucy did not leave the palace the way she had entered it.

Gone was the carriage, the ballgown, the princely if distant companion. She had swapped them for her own two feet, Scorpio's athletic outfit, and no fewer than six royal soldiers, all of whom proved to be far less reserved than Invel, yelling emotive threats her way as they tore across the courtyard. Gemini led them on another lap of the gardens while Lucy herself tunnelled under the wall. She was gone into the night before they discovered the ruse, leaving anger, confusion, and – probably – a very, very annoyed Invel in her wake.

Her guild would be proud.

She entered her home for the second time in her life to find the Black Mage already there. The first time, he had stood arrogantly in her living room as if breaking in had entitled him to ownership rights. There had been no doubt from the moment he entered that he would be leaving with what he wanted: her, his enemy, now working for him.

This time, he was curled up on the sofa in a fluffy white dressing gown with a book in his hands. It was the most unthreatening thing she had ever seen in her life.

And when he glanced up at her and smiled, her heart almost stopped.

He should have considered that approach the first time he broke in. It was far more effective than a threat.

"You made it out alright, then?" he asked, eyes sparkling. "Another day, another narrow escape from jail?"

Scowling automatically, she sank into an armchair opposite him. "Don't act as though that disaster in the palace wasn't entirely your fault. Besides, it's Invel I'm worried about. I think he's still in there."

"Don't worry about him. He's good at this sort of thing."

"Cleaning up after you?" she asked, eyebrows raised.

"I was going to say dealing with fraught diplomatic situations, but that works too." He settled back into the sofa, and she almost couldn't look away – from his amused expression, from his almost-but-not-quite lowered guard, from the lips that had so hesitantly brushed hers, and then again, stronger, believing.

It was different, though. That had been a royal ball, the height of romantic fantasies. As drunk on the atmosphere as much as the champagne, it was almost expected of them.

This was her house, and their roles were not so clearly defined.

Still, after all this time, she knew how to connect with him. She said, "Tell me about what you sensed at the Eclipse Gate. I want to understand what's going on here as best I can."

"It's World Magic," he said, perplexed. "It's…" He tailed off before he could say the word complicated. She had never known him worry about implicitly offending her before; it was almost sweet.

"Then explain it to me," she told him patiently. "You and Anna talked about it a lot, and I know I won't ever be able to keep up with you the way she could, but if it's connected to Celestial Spirit magic, I'd like to hear about it."

And beyond her curiosity, she wanted to hear him talk about something he loved. She wanted him to light up in the way he only ever did when he was teaching. Maybe it was selfish, but she wanted to show him that whatever they were, and whatever happened next, nothing had to change.

There was a pause as Zeref chose his words carefully. "World Magic is, in many ways, the equal and opposite of what we call the One Magic. Both of them are as different from what we commonly consider magic as they are from each other."

"You told me before that you believed the One Magic to be life," she noted.

"Yes. Life in its common meaning, but in a wider meaning, too. The One Magic is the small, the individual, and every living thing has it independent of every other living thing… and yet when you put them together, they form a magic far greater than the sum of its parts. The forest might be made of insects and beasts and plants, wind and water and earth, birdsong and scurrying footsteps and the hunter's howl, but the magic of the forest, the feel of it, the life of it can't be understood by understanding each part in isolation. One Magic is everything that is – everything that can possibly be."

Lucy nodded slowly, mulling that over. "But if the One Magic is everything that is, that doesn't leave much for World Magic to be."

"If One Magic is the small, then World Magic is the big. If One Magic is the what, then World Magic is the where, the how."

"So… like the earth and the atmosphere?" she hazarded. "The things that allow us to live?"

"No," he answered, smiling faintly, wonderfully, in a way that made her feel proud to have tried rather than ashamed she was wrong. In another world, she thought, he would have been as loved as a teacher as he himself loved to teach. "Those things are also part of the One Magic."

After a moment's struggle, she gave up. "So, what is World Magic?"

"It what enables all that exists to exist. It is time and space and all things too great for human comprehension. It not only encompasses this world, but all others, and the spaces in between. It cannot be subdivided – you take it in the whole, or not at all. How would you subdivide space? You could build a wall to demarcate this bit of space from that bit of space, but space itself hasn't changed, only your perception of it. If One Magic is the magic of life, then World Magic is the magic of size and scale and eternity."

"I can't imagine it," Lucy murmured. "I could see where you were coming from when you described the One Magic as life before; I could feel it. But I can't perceive how that has power at all."

Zeref nodded slowly. "That is entirely understandable. We are living creatures. We are the One Magic made manifest. That is the reason why the One Magic can be harnessed through emotion and heart, and yet the only way to approach World Magic is through abstract mathematics – we are trying to perceive something that is not like us. I am not the only one who has ever reached the former, but to my knowledge, no one has even tried to reach the latter. It is an alien thing to us."

"But the Eclipse Gate uses World Magic. Doesn't it?"

"Yes. True control over space or time cannot be achieved by anything less than World Magic. It can be mimicked with ordinary magic, but it takes extraordinary effort to achieve very limited results… no, to do what we wanted, true World Magic was necessary. However, because we can't use it like we can ordinary magic, we had to create a bridging magic – an interface, if you like – to take our commands and enact them in a language the universe could understand."

"The Celestial Spirits."

"So it became, yes."

Lucy touched the keys, which still hung at her hip. "How was it supposed to work? What do the Celestial Spirits have to do with magic over all of space and time?"

Zeref drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair as he considered how to reply. It was a thoughtful silence, a comforting one. "Are you familiar with the concept of the celestial spheres?"

Although the words sounded familiar to her, Lucy wasn't sure if it was something she had been taught long ago, had come across in poetry, or recognized it only because Zeref had mentioned it in his and Anna's tale. "Tell me."

"It's an astronomical model which consists of multiple concentric spheres. The Earth is in the centre. It is surrounded by a huge sphere, in the surface of which is embedded the moon. The slow rotation of the sphere causes the orbit of the moon around the Earth. Further out to space, a second, larger sphere contains the planet Mercury, which also orbits the Earth as the sphere rotates. The third sphere holds Venus; the fourth, the sun, and so on."

"That," Lucy pointed out, "is not how the solar system works. Everyone knows the planets orbit the sun, not the Earth."

"Everyone knows that now," Zeref corrected. "It was the best model we had at the time, and we had no reason not to believe it."

"How can it form the foundation of your magic if it's, you know, wrong? No offence," she added hastily, though he seemed more exasperated than offended.

"Because astronomy and World Magic are two very different things. There is, somewhere out there, one perfect astronomical model which describes the physical reality of planetary motion. There is no such objectivity in World Magic. Belief matters far more than reality, and this is the belief through which Anna and I called this magic into being."

"Magic," Lucy decided, "is strange."

"Not at all. Reconciling magic as you commonly experience it with magic as it was never supposed to be experienced by humans is what's strange."

"Whatever you say. So, what does an outdated astronomical theory have to do with the Celestial Spirits?"

"In this model, the outmost sphere is called the celestial or stellar sphere. On its inner surface are inscribed the fixed stars, as these do not move relative to each other."

This time, Lucy thought better of the obvious objection, and asked, instead, "If the stars are on the inner surface of the largest sphere, then what's beyond that sphere?"

His eyes brightened. "That's a much better question than the one you were going to ask," he remarked. "Nothingness, perhaps. Or other worlds, like Edolas, enclosed in their own celestial spheres. Or something else entirely. Before today, I would have said there was no way of knowing, but perhaps if we drew close enough to the hole in space, we could look through and see for ourselves – if such concepts as light and seeing exist on the other side. The only thing I know for sure is that beyond the stellar sphere lies World Magic. It is apart from our world, our reality. Beyond our reach. Impossibly so, in fact, for as you and generations of astronomers assure me, there is no sphere of fixed stars at all," he added, with a smirk. "So how can anything possibly lie beyond it?"

The more he spoke, the less sense he seemed to make. "It can't," Lucy said.

"Ah, but it can. And it does. That is the metaphysical framework we brought into reality, in the form of the magic which was later christened Celestial Spirit magic."

"How?"

"We used the eighty-eight constellations as our foci. Each one became a gate in the stellar sphere – a gate between our reality and the magic beyond, through which World Magic can be safely drawn and used."

"Hence the keys," Lucy realized.

"Hence the keys," he confirmed. "And, as I've mentioned before, the gates gained consciousness, along with the core of the magic itself, and things became complicated."

She raised her eyebrows. "I think they were pretty complicated already."

"Theory and mathematics aren't nearly as complicated as people," he grumbled, and she laughed. "The Celestial Spirits can draw a limited amount of World Magic through their Gates, and via those Gates, you can do the same. However, the very process which makes it safe and controllable strips away most of what makes World Magic distinct from normal magic. The Eclipse Gate utilizes all twelve Zodiac Gates at once to work something much closer to true World Magic in this reality – namely, connecting two different times."

"So, the reason my magic bothered you…"

"If you're not using a key, then you're not using a Gate. And if you're not calling World Magic through a Gate, then what are you calling it through?"

"The… hole in space?"

"Quite so. Not through an interface designed to control and regulate the flow of impossible magic, but through an actual hole in space."

"And… is that a problem?"

"It's a bit of a problem, Lucy, yes," he sighed. "I cannot stress enough how much World Magic is not supposed to be used like that. I think you are very fortunate that nothing untoward has yet happened to you as a result of it."

"Oh."

"You told me before that you thought you were doing it by reference to the constellations, which, while being incorrect, probably helped focus your thoughts so that nothing disastrous happened when you tried it. While I am well aware that my advice has never stopped you in the past, my sense of responsibility demands that I reiterate it anyway: keyless magic is dangerous. Don't do it."

"Right," she swallowed. "Okay."

"And there's also the other problem."

"What other problem?"

"That it's ripping a literal hole in the fabric of reality. The Gates are safely metaphorical; you, however, have managed to put a hole through a stellar sphere that doesn't exist and create an entirely real impossibility. And while I will admit that it's probably not doing any harm to anyone right now, being high in the sky and far out to sea, now that I've seen it, I dread to think what might happen if it got any bigger."

After a moment spent plucking up her courage, Lucy ventured, "Zeref, I might have been drawing magic through the hole without meaning to, and I might have been making the situation worse by doing so, but…"

"But?"

"I don't think I was the one who caused the hole in the first place."

His gaze sharpened, black diamond; she realized, with some surprise, that this hadn't occurred to him at all. "How do you reach that conclusion?"

"Because nothing I've done with Star Dress has been big enough or dramatic enough to have punched a hole in reality. I realized I could do it keylessly one day while sparring with my Spirits in a field. That's not the kind of thing that breaks World Magic, is it? The magic of scale that encompasses all universes and none?"

"…No," he conceded. "It's not. I must confess that the victories I have seen you win with your keyless magic have been impressive because of the skill and ingenuity you demonstrated, not because of the magic itself."

"Plus, I don't think I could have broken World Magic without knowing I was breaking World Magic – not if the metaphysical framework only exists if you believe in it. And, when I think of it that way, there's only one person who could possibly be responsible."

She gave him a pointed look, which he met with an equally pointed challenge: "Oh?"

"I think it was when you and Natsu and Igneel were fighting Acnologia. I think you did it then, when you rearranged space and held time in its place in order to save Natsu." When he said nothing, all his fighting spirit stolen away by the mere mention of Natsu's name, she prompted, gently, "It wouldn't be the first time you had broken magic for his sake, would it?"

"No… it wouldn't." With great effort, Zeref raised his head again. Emotions that he disliked but she loved to see swirled in the murky depths of his eyes. "I don't like it, but you make a compelling point. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that I have never thought too much about the power I gained on that day – why it differs from ordinary teleportation magic, or why it is so easy for me to freeze time when I have seen the lengths to which others must go to achieve a similar effect. I did what I had to do at the time… and perhaps I avoided thinking about it thereafter, for fear of what I had lost, and of what remembering would make me do."

A wry smile twisted his lips. "No wonder your keys react so aggressively to my spatial magic. I have been unwittingly circumventing the very interface I created, and drawing down World Magic directly." The book he had been reading when she came in had lain forgotten in his lap for a while now, and he sighed as he picked it up. "I should have realized, and because I didn't, I've been looking in entirely the wrong place."

"What are you looking for?"

"Answers," he shrugged. "Anything that might explain what that rift in space is, or what lies on the other side of it."

"Can I see?"

He shrugged again, as if to tell her she was wasting her time, but indicated for her to come over anyway. She sat beside him, suddenly aware of the exact distance between his shoulder and hers, sensing the warmth of his body radiating through the fluffy dressing gown. Every moment was a struggle against the urge to lean in closer.

In fact, it took a full thirty seconds of not thinking about the book he was showing her to realize that it wasn't written in any language she recognized. There was a diagram of concentric circles, showing the orbits of the planets as Zeref – and the astronomers of old – had described them, but she did not understand the labels, and she could barely make headway into the calculations on the opposite page.

Impulsively, she asked, "Will you teach me to read it?"

She had thought he would jump at the opportunity to not only teach her something she didn't know, but also share in something he loved. Yet it was in silence that he closed the book and put it aside, and with deep wariness that he regarded her for long enough to make her shift in her seat.

"That depends," spoke he. "Do you really want to know, or are you looking for an excuse to make me stay, now that our quest is over?"

Lucy gulped.

"I want you to stay," she whispered.

From this close, his eyes were so beautiful, and yet she could not stop her attention from being drawn to his lips. She wished she had the courage to cross that gap as he had done on the palace balcony, but that had been obvious in the circumstances and the atmosphere and the timing, that had been right, and she didn't know what this was at all.

Twice as unsure as before, she added, "If you want to stay, of course."

"I… I don't think it's a good idea."

"You must have been pretty certain it was, to have burst into the palace like that," she countered quietly.

"But that's the thing about me, Lucy!" he burst out. "My certainties don't last! What I think is a good idea now will be revealed tomorrow as the worst mistake I ever made-"

"Who cares about tomorrow? Isn't now more important?"

Her outburst seemed to resonate with something within him. "Maybe," he admitted.

Softly, she said, "I don't think it's a mistake. Aren't we more likely to be right if there are two of us in agreement?"

"Maybe," he repeated. And then: "How are you planning on explaining this to your guild?"

"I'll worry about that later. Besides," she added, teasingly, with a pointed nod towards the damp-haired Black Mage curled up in a criminally fluffy dressing gown, "I don't think any of my friends would be frightened of you right now. You're far too adorable for that."

She had spoken in jest, and so she was surprised when he pulled away from her, suddenly cold, suddenly back behind the walls she had spent weeks dismantling. "I am well aware of how I look, Lucy," he said shortly.

Startled, she protested, "I didn't mean-"

"Yes, you did."

Her shoulders slumped. She had meant it, but she'd not meant to hurt him by it. He had never seemed bothered by his own cursed body before, abusing his own ability to play innocent and able to see the funny side of vendors refusing to sell him alcohol. He had never cared about his appearance.

Until now, apparently.

"You're right, I did mean it." Lucy spoke the words slowly, trying to gauge his reactions in a way she hadn't needed to even on their first encounter. "But you wouldn't be you if you looked any different. It's part of who you are."

"No!" he snapped, his eyes flashing. "Don't act like it doesn't matter! I am too old for you and too young for you, and the worst part is that they don't even make the top ten reasons why this is a bad idea!"

"I don't care. You are immortal; the normal rules of ageing literally don't apply to you."

"But you shouldn't have to…"

"To what?" she challenged, snappishly, because how could such a smart man be so stupid?

"To accept something just because you can tolerate it. Look at you, Lucy. Just look. You are stunning."

She blinked. That was not what she had been expecting him to say. "I'm… what?"

"Were you not paying attention to how other people were looking at you in the ballroom?" No, of course she hadn't; she'd been too busy trying to navigate the awkward situation into which he had thrown her and Invel. "Did you not bother looking in a mirror when you were picking out that dress?" he continued, and she could not believe that she was hearing those words, or that they were coming from him.

"Well- I mean- I didn't think that was the kind of thing you would notice," she finished lamely, fully willing to accept the half-exasperated, half-disbelieving look she received in return.

"Of course I noticed," he said brusquely. "Unlike your usual companions, I merely have the self-restraint not to act on it."

"Well…" she floundered, unsure if it was stranger that she was having this conversation, or that she was having it with an immortal dark mage and her guild's sworn enemy. "It's not like that. Everyone knows that Erza and Mira are the stars of my guild, and I'm just… you know, there."

"It is not my fault if your friends cannot see what is right in front of them," he said coldly.

"Well, okay, thanks, but I don't see what that has to do with anything!"

"You could have anyone you wanted, Lucy! Why on earth would you choose me?"

That was what this was all about? "I could say the same to you, Zeref! I don't understand half the things you say! I'm only interested in magic at all because you're the one telling me about it! Why would you want to be with me, rather than someone who can keep up with your genius mind and share in the thing you love most?"

"You may not understand it, but you understand why it matters to me, and that is far more important!" he retorted, and she was almost touched, until he folded his arms. "And besides, it's completely different."

"How so?" she dared.

"Because I don't want to study magic with you! I want to-" He cut himself off sharply, glancing away.

"Want to what?"

If she didn't know better, she would say he looked embarrassed. "Don't make me say it, Lucy."

"Why not? Is it that hard to believe we both want the same thing?"

He said nothing. The urge to shake him by his shoulders was almost overwhelming. "Look. Zeref. If you don't like me the way I obviously like you, or if you don't want to do this for whatever reason, then that's fine. Your circumstances are difficult, you've got the curse to think about, I get it. But don't you dare tell me the reason for your reluctance is that you don't think I can possibly want this."

From nowhere, she suddenly had all the courage she had been lacking earlier. She said, bluntly, with the barest hint of vertigo, "Zeref, may I kiss you?"

His eyes jumped to her in fright, but she didn't back down, didn't give him any way out except to decide one way or the other. After a heart-stopping moment, he gave the tiniest of nods. So she did: her lips brushed against his in the gentlest of kisses, respecting his hesitance, electricity swallowed by kindness until it was the merest tingle of warmth.

He did not react, neither to push her away nor to meet her, and when she drew back, she was startled by the sheer helplessness in his eyes; trapped between what he wanted and what he had managed to convince himself he couldn't have. He could not see that the only obstacle to this was he himself. Was it really that difficult for him to accept that he was loved?

Reaching out, she gently touched his cheek. "Hey," she murmured. "You're overthinking this. You were so certain in the palace because you weren't thinking at all – you were acting purely on your emotions. Now, you're listening to the darkest parts of your mind, and they're making you doubt yourself. Try to remember how you felt when you broke into the palace for me."

Unease flickered across his face. It was a step up from before, but still not what she wanted. Slowly, so as not to startle him, she lifted his hand and set it over her heart. For a moment, they both felt the insistent pulse of her heartbeat, faster than it usually was at rest in her own home, because usually he wasn't here with her.

"You should have felt it when I watched you coming down those ballroom stairs," she smiled. "I thought I was going to burst." Then, softer: "Thank you for being there tonight. It meant a lot to me."

"Lucy," Zeref sighed, "I cannot think of a single member of your guild who wouldn't crash a royal ball for you."

"You're right. They would all do it. And it would mean nothing to them – no harm to their reputation, no effect on their relationships with their friends, no need to worry about the king's reaction, because they're Fairy Tail and everyone accepts that that's just how they are. But when you did it, it had consequences. You knew that, and you did it anyway. That's why it means far, far more coming from you."

The tension eased a little from his shoulders. "I'd do it again."

"I'm glad," she said, and she kissed him again.

It was different, this time.

Not caught up in the moment, like they had been at the palace. Not frightened, not tentative. Lucy had something to prove. And that something was deep and fierce, physical and true, and it was the moment and the moment was the two of them.

Then she rested her forehead against his, breathing hard to fuel the pace of her heart, feeling his shoulders rise and fall the same as hers, and she told him, "Don't think that I don't know what I'm doing, Zeref, or what the consequences will be."

"Then promise me," he insisted. "Promise me that if I have to go, you won't follow me. Promise me that if I disappear one day, you'll understand that I wouldn't have done so unless I had no choice. Promise me that, when the time comes, you'll respect it, and you won't come looking for me. This cannot be forever."

As much as she wanted to object, the simple act of being together was asking far more of him than it was of her. "I promise. I know what this means. I will not ask more of you than you are able to give me."

She saw it, then: the exact moment he decided to believe her, to entrust himself to her, to accept that she wanted to be with him as much as he wanted to be with her, and to hell with the consequences. She saw hesitation become resolve, and resolve something more. It had been too long since she'd seen him smile for real; her heart ached and her whole body lit up at the sight of it.

"Alright, then," he said. "You have won. I am yours, Lucy Heartfilia." And then he kissed her, and that was that.

Zeref was still there when she woke up.

He had warned her that he might not be – that that might well be the hardest part for him – but there he was, fast asleep, curled up tightly against her side.

She loved his confident side, and the way he had seized control of the ballroom had taken her breath away, but there were so few people around whom he had ever allowed himself to be vulnerable that she felt an incontrovertible duty to protect him. To watch over him. To keep him close, that man who couldn't die and yet who needed support more than anyone else.

She gazed down at him and saw all that was valuable in the world, and she knew that she loved him.

Whatever the cost and whatever the consequence, she loved him.

A/N: Believe it or not, this was supposed to be a super-cute chapter where they affirmed their relationship and looked to the future. Then all Zeref's insecurities turned up to the party. While he's not exactly going to come out and say it in a moment like this, he is very deeply scarred by the fact that he opened his heart to Mavis, and she turned out not to love him after all. He trusts Lucy, but he doubts himself more. Oh well. At least there was some cute classical astronomy to make up for it.

Anyway, thanks all for your great responses to the last chapter! They may be together now, but that doesn't mean it's going to be easy. And don't worry, they've not escaped the consequences from crashing the ball, it's just that this had to happen first... ~CS