The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Interlude: The Dragon in the White Tower, Part Two
The Northern Shores of Fiore, X765 (Continued)
Days blurred together. The ebb and flow of Zeref's mind was far more powerful than the pull of the sun. Often, he would work for six days and sleep for three, waking to find that he was somehow already at his desk, staring at four pages of nonsense and one of pure insight that he had no memory of writing.
Sometimes he would work alone in that room at the top of the white tower, but more often he did not. Irene was not only willing to help, but capable of doing so, an accolade that Zeref had granted to precious few people he had met. She was the one who had created this magic in the first place, and while he may have advanced it in a different direction, she understood it in a way he never would. The things they might be able to achieve together, if they were able to properly communicate…
But scratching symbols in the sand was not an effective means of discussing magic this complicated, and so Zeref usually found himself sitting with his back against the dragon's flank and his notebook resting upon his knees, outlining his thought processes for her approval, treasuring the quiet company of the one being his curse could not so easily kill.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the longer he spent with her, the more he missed the five dragons of his extended family. But missing them usually came with dark thoughts of the Eclipse Gate and Natsu and the dreaded future, and the days he spent with Irene held none of that. This was what Anna might have called the good kind of pain, as he used the knowledge he had gained from them to unlock the puzzle of Irene's existence, untangling diagnostic readings that were almost – not quite, but almost – starting to make sense.
He did not know how long had passed since he had started living in the white tower, and he found he did not care.
He wrote the final figure into place in his notebook, and a low whistle escaped his lips.
The dragon craned her neck to peer down at him, a question in her red-stained eyes that needed no interpretation.
"If this is right," he explained, holding up the page to show her, "then when you turn back, all your supressed magic will be released at once. Four hundred years' worth. I can't even imagine it."
After a moment's consideration, the dragon wrote in the sand a single word: DANGEROUS?
Zeref was slightly put out by the question; why was she not as excited about this as he was? "Not to you. Your own magic won't hurt you. And I'm certainly hoping that surge of magic will be dangerous to me. That'll be the moment to do it – use the breaking of your curse to break mine. We both get the ending we want."
Silence fell, and he returned to his calculations. It was only when the dragon nudged his shoulder, jabbing her snout towards new words in the sand, that he realized she didn't consider the matter settled at all.
MUST YOU DIE?
"Yes."
It was a stupid question. It did not deserve more of an answer than that.
Moments later, the dragon nudged him again, gesturing to unusually delicate words – words which had been written slow and timid with the tip of one claw.
I WANT TO TALK WITH YOU AS MYSELF.
And there was a moment.
Just a moment, when his automatic retort froze on his lips.
What would it be like to talk to Irene, actually talk? To discuss magic and enchantments, and more than that – to talk about dragons they had both met, associates they had in common, places they had both been; the whole expanse of four hundred years that they shared and no one else did? She had been a queen, too. She would understand that incredible, tiresome project that was the Alvarez Empire; how difficult it was to balance warfare and leadership with the desire to flee to a forgotten tower and lose himself in magic for days, weeks, months.
There was so much he could learn from her, if she had hands with which to draw runic circles, lips with which to defend changes to the legislation, a core of magic with which to reshape the world…
A moment.
That was how long it took for him to remember reality.
They were only together because they were both cursed.
Her cursed form allowed her to survive his cursed magic. Once she was human again – once her own curse was broken – he would no longer be able to safely spend time with her.
And even if she was willing to take that risk… well, she would have to balance it against her freedom to return to society, to study magic, to do whatever it was she wanted, to live.
She was only in this lonely tower because she had to be. She was only with him because she could go nowhere else.
He had made that mistake before.
He wasn't about to misinterpret necessity as affection again.
"No," he said. "I have to die. You have to do it when your magic surges. If you will not, our deal is off."
The growl rumbled deep in her belly, but without smoke to trickle from her nostrils or fire to blaze in her eyes, it lacked any ability to scare him.
The accompanying words she scratched into the sand were another matter entirely.
WHAT IF I COULD FREE YOU FROM YOUR CURSE?
He stared a moment longer than he should have done; allowed his heart to beat a little too quickly for a little too long before plunging it back into the coldness of his emotions. "It's not possible. I've tried everything."
Brushing away what she had already written, the dragon took her time to carve the next sentences.
And despite himself, he could not stop himself from looking as the words took form.
LONG AGO, I DEVELOPED A SPELL THAT COULD ENCHANT MYSELF INTO THE BODY OF ANOTHER IN ORDER TO REGAIN A HUMAN BODY.
MY OWN LACK OF MAGIC PREVENTED ME FROM USING IT, BUT ONCE I'M HUMAN AGAIN, I'LL BE ABLE TO CAST IT.
WHEN I TOLD YOU I KNEW HOW TO KILL YOU, I THOUGHT I COULD TRICK ANOTHER OR EVEN YOU YOURSELF INTO USING IT, THEREBY ENCHANTING YOU INTO A MORTAL BODY WHICH COULD BE KILLED.
BUT-
Faster than she could get the letters out, Zeref breathed, "But if you could do that, I wouldn't have to die. I could live in an un-cursed body."
She huffed her agreement.
"No. It won't work. The curse will just move with me."
THE SPELL WAS DESIGNED NOT TO DO THAT.
OTHERWISE MY NEW BODY WOULD HAVE BECOME A DRAGON TOO.
"Then my curse will fight it. It resists change – change of the mind as well as change of the body. It won't like this."
THEN I WILL HAVE TO BE STRONGER THAN IT.
And then, two more words: MAGICAL SURGE.
Zeref breathed in.
Breathed out.
The words in the sand did not change.
"I- I don't know," he found himself mumbling. "If it doesn't work- I'm not sure-"
LET ME TRY.
PLEASE.
"Please do," he whispered.
Humming in satisfaction, just like Igneel used to do, the dragon lay back down and rested her head on her paws.
She did not erase the words she had written. There they remained, a promise, hope in the silty sand.
The sun was so high in the sky that the white tower cast no shadow at all. It gleamed like a pillar of divine brilliance, so stunning that Zeref thought it a shame none but he and the dragon had lived there in so many years. Maybe, once this was over, Irene would have her old castle rebuilt. She didn't want to rule again – she had been very clear about that – but she had seemed amenable to the idea of turning it into a library, perhaps one specializing in the history of dragonkind and the truth about the Dragon Wars…
A growl dragged his attention away from the tower to where Irene waited on the beach. She was as white as the tower, but it was the wrong kind of white – a hollow, unnatural absence of colour. Outward beauty had been a small price to pay for her sanity, as far as Zeref was concerned. That only went double if Belserion's actions so long ago had made the impossible possible, and given him a way of reversing her incomplete dragonification for good.
Now, she stepped out of the runic circle he had drawn in order to write one last message in the sand. It was the same word she had taken to using more and more often, never seeming satisfied no matter how many times he tried to reassure her.
DANGEROUS?
Only with great effort could Zeref stop himself from rolling his eyes. "Stop worrying. I know there are some experimentally derived figures in the formulae that I don't fully understand, but the risk is minimal – especially when compared to the first time I did this ritual, and that worked perfectly. Even if something does go wrong, you're a dragon and I'm immortal. Neither of us will be in any danger."
Jerking his thumb towards a shallow cave, where a young man lay in a magic-induced slumber, he added, "Even he is safely out of the way." Zeref's only criteria, when kidnapping him from the village, had been that he had magic and wouldn't cause mass panic if he wasn't seen for a few days. This was only a proof of concept. If Irene truly could transfer his consciousness into another body, thus freeing him from his cursed existence, there would be plenty of time later to find a more suitable host.
Irene was writing again. NOT FOR US.
"Then who are you worried about?" Zeref wondered aloud, irritation seeping into his voice. They were so close. The magic was already flowing around him, pressing the fleetest of kisses to his fingertips before fading just out of reach, ready and waiting for his command.
This was not the time for doubts.
It was also not the time for Irene to scrawl in the sand: I'M PREGNANT.
Zeref blinked. "You're a dragon," he pointed out, momentarily baffled by the physiology of it all.
She kept writing.
I WAS PREGNANT WHEN I TURNED.
IS MY CHILD STILL ALIVE?
WILL THEY BE IN DANGER WHEN I TURN BACK?
Zeref stared at the words.
Stared at the dragon who had written them.
Then he threw the papers he was holding up into the air, turned, and walked away.
Squawking, the dragon snatched his ritual notes in her mouth before the wind could steal them away, scampered after him, and deposited them at his feet.
"They're useless now," he snapped. "Finally I understand what those diagnostics were telling me."
He started to move away again, but couldn't resist turning back, as unsatisfied as the uncast magic that still seethed in his blood. "I don't suppose there's anything else you'd like to get off your chest? Perhaps you've got a rare disease that will cause your body to explode if anyone attempts ritual magic on you, or maybe you sold your soul to the devil in return for dragon powers, and trying to help you will prompt him to come after me for payment?"
She shook her head with a vicious roar. When he tried to leave, she pounced, landing right in his path – although she did not strike him. Crouching, she tucked her wings in tight, jaws agape. Her body language was strange even to one well versed in dragon behaviour; her aggressive nature waged war with the scared side of her, the one that urged submission and mercy for the sake of her unborn child.
The child she hadn't bothered to tell him about.
The child, he thought, she hadn't realized she wanted until she had begun to believe that a normal human life was possible for her, after all.
He hated that he could read her so well. It meant that the satisfying bite of irritation was already relinquishing its grip.
"Your child is still alive," he sighed. "That's what was throwing off my diagnostic spells. Don't ask me how, because I haven't the faintest idea, and I am sure that if you'd turned normally, you would have lost it for good. Now, if you want your child to still be alive by the time you regain human form, I suggest you leave me to work."
Ten days later.
It should have been more, but Zeref worked without rest. That final piece of the puzzle had brought Belserion's improvised enchantment into focus with frightening clarity. Outside, Irene paced the ten days away, until the muddy sand of the beach had been compressed into a swamp-like surface.
This time, Zeref inscribed the necessary circles into the earth at the base of the tower, wanting to take more care over it than the incoming tide would have afforded them upon the sand. He himself stood in a simple circle – the bare minimum needed to invoke the Milky Way rite Grandine had bestowed upon him. By contrast, the white dragon fidgeted within the most complex ritual circle he had ever drawn. He didn't blame her for her apprehension. He knew it wasn't his skill she doubted.
To the side lay the same unfortunate young man they had kidnapped from the village last time, unknowingly waiting for her to fulfil her side of the bargain.
"Are you ready?" Zeref asked.
The dragon dipped her head.
"Well, then." Dropping to his knees, Zeref pressed both palms to the circle he had drawn and let the borrowed power of the sky dragon flow free for the first time in four hundred years.
Pain was always stronger for having been forgotten. If he hadn't already been on his knees, it would have thrown him from the circle. He wove his hands through the weeds below him, trying to find some purchase, something to ground him, but they disintegrated at his touch. The sky magic was as wild as the dragon he had received it from, and it hurled itself mercilessly against him in its attempt to break free – but the curse would not allow it, his body was not permitted to change, so it tried to break him instead.
Somewhere, a dragon roared in fierce encouragement. Not Grandine, but the dragon of the white tower, his companion, who had offered him the first glimpse of hope he had known in many years. If he could only endure this pain a little longer, he might never have to do so again.
With a roar of his own, he brought the magic under control. Clouds had swept across the sky to darken the land, but the circle was glowing blue-grey, distorting colours as if they had been pulled out of this world and into another. He focussed on everything he knew about Belserion: the dragon of myth he had never had the chance to meet; co-creator of Dragon Slayer magic; smarter and wiser than any of Zeref's own draconic companions, though – he hoped – no less steadfast in his love. This was a dragon who had lived and died alongside humans, whose bones lay in the grounds of this castle, and whose enchantment still shaped the life of his human partner – and that connection was enough to find his wandering soul.
The blue-shimmering beast of legend took form in the middle of a grey world. So mighty was he that a part of Zeref struggled to believe he had fallen in battle. There was a deep gentleness in his voice, though, as he spoke: "Irene, my dear child, my love."
A half-roar, half-sob tore from her throat, and she ran towards him.
"Don't move!"
Zeref screamed the words in a language of power, and light flared at the edge of her rune circle. She hit the impromptu barrier and fell back, yelping in pain. This only drew the ghostly dragon's attention to him, and it was not an amicable encounter; had one not been a disembodied soul, and the other immortal, one of them would have died in that moment.
"I'm a friend!" Zeref shouted desperately. Each word seemed to take another chunk of his magical reserves with it. The ghostly dragon was struggling against the control of Zeref's sky magic with everything he had. "I'm trying to help!"
Irene growled an affirmation, and Belserion ceased trying to fight Zeref's spell. "You use the magic of the sky clan," he observed, stooping to peer at him. "And yet you are not a dragon, nor a dragon-child."
"It's a long story, and this isn't the place for it," Zeref told him shortly.
Between laborious breaths, he explained what the old dragon's magic had done to Irene. At once, the ghost of the great dragon had bowed his head to her and begged for her forgiveness. She growled words Zeref did not understand, although the tears in her eyes were more than vocal enough.
When Zeref couldn't risk maintaining the spell much longer, he was forced to interrupt their reunion once more. "I can reverse her turning, but the magic within her will turn her straight back into a dragon. It can only be stopped if you will consent for your soul to be sealed within her body for as long as it takes to stabilize it. Once it is steady, you will be free to move on."
"I will do whatever it takes to reverse this," Belserion agreed.
A low sound emanated from the white dragon. Zeref had not heard it often enough to recognize it for what it was, but Irene blinked her red-stained eyes once, her gazed fixed on his, and he thought it was gratitude.
With a single nod, he activated the ritual circle around her.
It was her turn to feel the pain of a forced transformation. The soul-sealing ritual had taken easily to the children, too young for the dragons' magic to have wormed its talons far under their skin, but she was already fully turned. His spell purged the magic from her; ripped the scales from her flesh; snapped off wings; shoved fangs back into gums too fragile to accept them. She threw back her head and screamed a scream that became more human by the moment.
Another concentric ring of runes lit up, then another, and another. She did not quieten until the gentle glow of Belserion's ghost surrounded her, a comfort of claw and wing, an insubstantial shield of love – then Belserion was gone, to live on as part of her; human heart and dragon soul.
Relief shuddered through Zeref as he felt the magic take. No longer was he having to force it; the ritual would complete on its own, and seal itself in place. He exhaled slowly, muscles burning with the exertion of the amended ritual, focussing on the woman in the other circle.
For she was a woman, now. Through the buzzing nimbus of liquid gold magic that surrounded her, Zeref could glimpse human hands, human arms, human shoulders, human hair so long and ragged it brushed her ankles.
"It worked!" Irene cried. Her voice was rich and loud, with none of the rasp of the dragon. She didn't seem to recognize it herself at first, and then she laughed, delighting in the fact that she could laugh after so long. "Zeref, you did it, it worked, I'm me again!"
"Good." He smiled despite himself, despite the uneasy stirring of the curse inside him, wondering if it was time to go hunting. He wrestled his mind back to safer paths with an effort. Gesturing to the aura of magic enveloping her, growing stronger by the second, he said, "Now, uphold your end of the bargain, Irene. Use your unsealed power to-"
A cry tore through the air.
Through the magical haze, a golden shroud now stained with red, he could just about see her bent double, wracked by pain.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Zeref's mind raced back through the ritual, trying to work out what he had done wrong, why it hadn't fallen into place as perfectly as he had felt-
She cried out again. The surge of magic grew darker still. Narrowing his eyes, he tried to pierce that swirl of red-streaked gold to see the woman within, doubled over, hands on her swollen belly.
Her very swollen belly.
It took him two attempts to get the words out: "You didn't tell me you were that pregnant!"
"I wasn't!" she roared, and this time, he could hear the white dragon loud and clear. Then she raised her head and their eyes met. They weren't blood-red, like he'd expected, but a deep brown, flecked with pain and fear. "But that was four hundred years ago! Who the hell knows how this works?"
"Oh," Zeref said weakly. "Right. Uh…"
It occurred to him then that, despite how much he knew, there was far more that he didn't.
In four hundred years of fascination with the magic and mechanism of life, how had he never picked up a textbook on childbirth?
How had he not looked at this gaping void in his otherwise extensive knowledge of human biology and thought, I should probably learn something about this?
How could he have ever thought it was acceptable to know so little about something so very important?
His mind blanked. "What do we do?" he shouted, panicked.
"How the bloody hell should I know?" Irene shouted back. "Do I look like I've done this before?"
"Okay. Right. Okay." Zeref's gaze darted this way and that, but no one had helpfully carved instructions onto the outside of the tower. "I'll- uh- I'll go and get help!"
He was gone less than a minute, but he returned to a sky already so dark with clouds that the sun was a faint imprint and the colour blue a myth. Lightning leapt from darkness to darkness. Zeref materialized and immediately lost his balance in the howling wind. Forces too powerful, too sharp, to be mere moving air ripped into him, the product of her fear and her pain, called into being by four hundred years of suppressed magic.
And louder than the storm, he heard Irene's shriek: "I thought you were bringing someone who knew what they were doing!"
"There's only one physician in the whole village," he gasped back. "He's on his way, but I can't teleport more than just myself. So I grabbed a textbook from his shelf-"
"A BOOK?" she screeched. "What good's that going to do? I'll have had the bloody child before you've finished chapter one!" He spread his hands helplessly, and an impatient snarl escaped her. "At least help me into the tower!"
So relieved to be given a task he could do, Zeref barely noticed the lightning crashing down around him or the wild magic burning into his body as he helped her hobble towards the tower. Once inside, the sound of the storm faded almost immediately. The gales were as ineffectual as shadows against the enchantments Irene had sung into the stone long ago.
Stairs were out of the question, so he fetched blankets and pillows from the room where he had been living, assembling a makeshift bed for her to lie in. He hovered anxiously as she lay back and closed her eyes. Sweat gleamed on her forehead; he shuddered in sympathy with her every laboured breath.
His fingers twitched, yearning for the reassurance of a book beneath his fingers. Then he pictured Irene's reaction if she caught him, and decided, on balance, that it wouldn't calm him down at all.
With eyes screwed shut, she hissed, "Can't you do something about the pain? I've seen you use Sky Magic!"
Zeref shook his head. "That's not how it works. You're not injured."
"Don't you dare tell me this is how it's supposed to be!"
He gave a tiny shrug – because, to be quite frank, he had no idea if this was normal or the result of her having spent the last four hundred years as a member of a species that did not give birth to live young – and Irene sank back into the blankets, sucking in air through her teeth. "Where the hell is that physician?"
Inside, they were sheltered. Outside, the storm of magic brought her pain to life in beautiful devastation: hail cavorted with the rubble and the wind, the skies were lit with fire, arcs of green lightning burst from the ground instead of the clouds. Gone were the ruins of the castle. The madness of the dragons had been cut free from her soul, and it swallowed all signs of civilization like it had swallowed Acnologia's humanity.
"I think the storm is slowing him down," Zeref guessed. "I could go out and lead him through, but-"
"Don't you dare leave me!" she exploded.
"…I thought you'd say that." Zeref let the door fall shut again, treading wet footprints into the dust as the hailstones that had wriggled through the tower's defences fell victim to simple warmth. Plucking up his courage, he tried, "Can't control your magic a little? If you tried-"
She threw back her head and the storm howled with her. "If you can't control your magic at the best of times, what the bloody hell makes you think you have the right to make me control mine when I'm in labour?"
Optimistically, he reached for the book he had brought, only to immediately close it again. It was not as reassuring as he had hoped. It wasn't the diagrams that did it so much as the statistics about how long labour could last. He threw the book aside and hoped against hope that it wasn't relevant for someone who had only just stopped being a dragon.
At last, the physician arrived. Even chaos storms seemed to honour the truce that protected men of healing, and he burst into the white tower unharmed in a spray of hail and true grit. Apparently unfazed by the hellish storm – although Zeref supposed anyone who didn't feel Irene's piercing shrieks deep in the marrow of their bones would have to be made of strong stuff – he strode straight to her side and began asking questions. He didn't seem particularly impressed by her answers, most of which were some variation on I don't know, I was a dragon fifteen minutes ago, and started taking readings with his instruments instead.
Zeref fell back against the wall, relieved that a professional was here to take control. There he would have gladly stayed until it was over, had Irene not beckoned him back to her side. Her cheeks were an unhealthy red, her brow soaked, her eyes like flint, her hair still tangled with the mud and sand that had crawled across her scales; she was, quite simply, more alive than he had ever seen her before.
He went over to her because he was too afraid not to. She caught his hand. It would have been sweet, if not for the fact that her dragon-like grip had immediately broken two of his fingers.
"Glad you're here," she murmured.
He looked at her in surprise. "Why? I don't feel as though I'm contributing very much."
"You're not," she assured him. "But you could have left, and you didn't."
Did it still count if it simply hadn't occurred to him to leave? This had seemed no different to when she had been convinced Belserion wouldn't help her or had concealed her pregnancy from him – just another stage in the puzzle they were unravelling, just the next obstacle to overcome. It wasn't kindness, it wasn't even a conscious decision. It was just how things had played out.
Before he could put that into words, her grip tightened further still, and as she pulled him closer, he saw delirium flash in her eyes. "Also," she added, matter-of-factly, "my enchantments on the tower are about to fail."
"What?"
"Sorry."
Lightning struck. The judder of a heavenly knife, the thunder-crack of doom. There was a sound like stone splitting, sliding, groaning.
Zeref ripped his hand from hers as he turned. His eyes flashed brighter than the lightning and deeper than the stormy sky. A dome of force materialized around them in time to deflect the falling stones. He grimaced as he took the full exertion against a body and magical core already worn out from ritual-casting.
"Irene-" he half-shouted, determined to make her control her wayward magic, but she was screaming something terrible, and he conceded that he was probably on his own for this.
Gritting his teeth, he threw his full attention towards the storm. No longer was there a ceiling above him, and walls on each side; those ancient stones had become part of the cyclone, swirling, pounding, slamming into his shield from every direction. Outside the disintegrating tower lay a netherworld: the sky a violet sea of cloud, the earth a twisted wasteland carved anew from the shadows by each flash of green lightning. Pure fury raged against his shield, and he brought the full force of his will to bear against it.
He did not know how long he spent fighting her uncontrollable magic. He could sense his strength failing, but the storm was fading faster, folding in on itself, turning the inside-out world back the right way round again.
There was devastation in all directions, except for a small circle of untouched flagstones where he and the others stood. Overhead, the clouds were twisting themselves apart. His breath caught at the sight of the most wondrous blue sky he had ever seen.
It was then that he noticed the texture of the sound had also changed. There was still gasping, still screaming, but it didn't turn his stomach the way it had before. It was still painful. But it was also right.
Irene was holding a baby. A human baby. Her baby.
There was no expression of exhausted adoration on her face, as the pictures in the book had assured him. She looked baffled – as if she didn't know how or why this had happened.
That, he thought, was something he could understand. For four hundred years, she hadn't known if her child was still alive, let alone if it would survive a return to human form she had all but given up on herself. She hadn't even gone through pregnancy, not really. It had happened outside time; not at all and then all at once.
The baby was wailing and the doctor was saying things like "Congratulations!" and "What's her name?" and "How are you feeling?", and Irene just stared at Zeref and mouthed, what am I supposed to do?
He shrugged and reached for the textbook.
She snorted in disbelief, which evolved into full-blown laughter; a sound he had never thought he would hear her make. It wasn't that she hadn't been capable of it as a dragon, for he had heard Igneel laugh, and often. He just hadn't thought she herself was the kind of person who could make an expression like that.
But she was.
The physician, ignorant of their wordless conversation, spoke up first. "She appears to be perfectly healthy, although there are some routine tests I can't do with what I have here. Now that the storm has ended, I'll head back to the village and pick up some equipment…"
Maybe he was still speaking, but his words no longer mattered.
Now that the storm has ended, he had said.
The power and fury and sheer raw magic of the storm, which Zeref had actively been pushing away from them, was gone.
"I can still do it," Irene said quickly. "Zeref. My spell will work. Let me try it."
"…Okay," he said, dully.
"Zeref-"
"Just do it."
The doctor finally fell silent as he realized there was more going on here than he knew. Irene jerked her thumb towards him questioningly, her gaze not leaving Zeref's. He gave a terse nod. The young man they were going to use had been outside when the storm was unleashed; whether he had died or escaped, he was no longer an option. But this was only a temporary measure. The doctor's body would do.
Irene set the baby down in the blankets beside her without a second glance. Her hand seized the man's wrist. And in the space of a heartbeat, she cast with her mind and will alone an enchantment so intricate it would have taken Zeref days of planning and multiple magic circles to bring into being.
Then he was not one, but two.
He was at her bedside without having moved, his balance wrong, his stance wrong, the colours of the world neither as bright nor as well-defined as he was used to. He was taller, stronger, his heartbeat more sedate – but quickening, quickening – and there was a worthless trickle of magic where there should have been a vast mist-shrouded lake.
At the same time, he was still himself. He saw the world from two different angles, saw himself through two different pairs of eyes. Nausea choked his throat – both his throats. Breathing was hard enough; moving would have been impossible. He had never realized before quite how small his body was, or how frail it was, or how vividly, physically, it felt emotions, as if to make up for the long stretches in when it felt nothing at all.
And right now, what he felt was fear.
In one of his selves it was a blunt fact of life, and in the other it was a real, living terror, the pulsing of blood in his ears and the taste of ash in his mouth, bones disintegrating from the inside-out until he could barely stand.
As Irene poured more magic into her spell, the balance of magic began to pull him towards his new body – but something was pulling back.
The shard of One Magic like a stake through his heart.
His butterfly-soul pinned to a cursed body.
She pulled harder, and he screamed with two mouths, pulled between twice as many points of being as any living creature should have. All the world was pain, that metaphorical spear of broken One Magic the only real thing in it. He was going to break. He was going to snap clean in two, perpendicular along his stretched soul.
Then Irene gave a great cry, and the magic was gone.
With the lash of freed elastic, two became one again.
The wrong one.
The one with an anomaly of magic settling smugly back into place; the one screaming in a too-young voice; the one whose regenerating body wouldn't even allow him to slip into unconsciousness and escape the pain of recoil.
In desperation he cried – no, not yet, he had been so close, just a tiny bit more magic, a tiny bit more effort, please please don't stop now – and when that wasn't enough, he clawed frantically at his own chest, as if he could rip his soul out with his own two hands.
He couldn't, of course.
He'd tried that before.
But she had almost been able to do it. Her spell could have done it; her magic had very nearly been enough. Five minutes earlier, if she had been directing the surge of suppressed draconic magic towards him rather than letting it dissipate as an elemental storm, she could have done it…
That power was gone, now. Wasted. Impossible to recover. Even if they could exactly reproduce the enchantment the dying Belserion had wrought upon her, there were no budding Dragon Slayers to force it upon, nor could Zeref wait another four hundred years for it to build up in strength.
A singular convergence of fortune, now lost forever.
Dimly, he became aware that another voice was screaming alongside his own. A baby's voice. There was nothing sympathetic about it – it did not know anguish, only base needs; it could not begin to comprehend his pain.
Irene did not hold the child. It lay on the blankets beside her, wailing for her touch. She was slumped backwards on the pillows, exhausted from her attempt at magic – an attempt which might, just might, have not ended in such laughable failure, had she not gone into labour when her magic was at its strongest.
She knew this just as well as he did. With the last of her strength, she raised her head, met his gaze, accepting. She spoke no words of apology. She knew they would never have been enough.
And he despised her.
They'd had a deal, her curse for his. He'd saved her, cut her free from her lonely half-life, given her back her human body, and she'd chosen her child when she could have saved him.
They'd had a deal.
She'd betrayed him.
Darkness snapped around him, called not by his regard for her long and intriguing life, but by his wish to snuff it out, like she had snuffed out his hope.
She watched without protest. Waited without fear.
She knew she had let him down, the only person with whom she had been able to connect in four hundred years, so she waited.
And maybe she hadn't known she was going to go into labour the moment her transformation was broken any more than he had. Maybe asking her to think about anything other than herself and her child in that moment had been naïve. Maybe invoking complex enchantments while giving birth was not a realistic expectation. Maybe, even at full power, the curse would still have been stronger.
Maybe it wasn't her fault, just as it hadn't been Mavis's fault she hadn't loved him. Maybe this was just the curse's insidious way of ensuring he suffered in full for his sins, by snatching away salvation every time he got too close.
His hand fell back to his side, and he turned away. "Go," he said, bitterly. "Just go. I don't ever want to see you again."
And he would have walked away; would have left this land knowing that no brief moment of empathy would be strong enough to stay his hand if they ever met again.
"Zeref."
A ragged and bloody woman stood in the ashes. Against all common sense, she had followed him across the wasteland. Her feet were bare amongst the rubble, her exhaustion almost – but not quite – too great to stand. Matted hair trailed around her ankles. Her eyes had regained something of the dragon's wildness.
"I told you to leave!" he cried out. "Take your child and go!"
"I don't want her!" Irene shouted back. "I didn't ask for this! I didn't choose her, I didn't carry her; she's a relic of a life which died four hundred years ago! I should be free – we should both be free! She is the reason why my new life begins not with freedom, but with a debt too great to comprehend! She is the reason why the only person who has cared about me since Belserion's death can no longer stand to look at me!"
"She's still your daughter."
"So?" Irene spat. "I already gave her life; I owe her nothing more. But I owe you everything."
With careful effort, she sank to one knee, bowing her head. "I have failed to uphold my end of our deal, and therefore, my life is yours. I will do anything you ask of me."
Startled, he recoiled. "I don't want your life!"
"Then you must kill me!" she snapped, no less fierce or proud than the dragon of the tower had been. "For I will not live as oath-breaker to the only one who has shown kindness to me in four hundred years. Until such time as my debt to you is repaid, my life belongs to you."
The part of Zeref that had flickered in empathy rebelled against the idea, for to accept was to acknowledge that an obligation existed, and strip from her the freedom that each had sought for the other.
But although that moment of understanding may have been strong enough to spare her life, it was not strong enough to forgive her. Why should she be free, when he was not? Why shouldn't she spend the rest of her life trying to make up for her failure? Her power was great – not great enough to save him, but enough to make her useful.
"Very well," he said, and he marvelled at the coldness in his own voice; at how swiftly it had frozen over after so many months of summer. He liked the sound of it. He liked the way it made her shiver, as she began to realize that those months had not been enough for her to get the full measure of him, either. "You will leave all this behind for me. The child, this land, your titles – all of it. You will serve me until your death or mine, whichever comes first."
"I… I will." She took the hand he offered her. An electric charge passed between them, acknowledgement of a promise made, a debt owed. "Tell me what you wish of me, my… my lord."
"Actually," he said, with a twisted smile, "the correct form of address is Your Majesty."
She glanced up, confused, as questions she would not have hesitated to ask him as a dragon and a friend sat awkwardly on the lips of a former queen now sworn to the service of another.
"I'll show you. Come with me."
Still smiling – a smile so very different to the one he had worn when sat with his back to her scaly flank and a notepad on his knee – he pulled her to her feet. Without a backwards glance, he led her across the ruined land, a dark and muddy place which must have contained the remnants of that tower, but there was no sign of bright white stone to be seen.
In the heart of that wasteland, a baby began to cry.
He didn't look back, and neither did she.
Crocus, The Present Day
Zeref sat alone in a house which didn't belong to him. He had broken into it before, invited himself to stay over, spent several horrid days here recovering from his ordeal in Malva – and yet he had never truly felt unwelcome here until today.
Lucy hadn't said or done anything to indicate this was the case, of course, and if she hadn't thrown him out when he had broken into her house to threaten her into reuniting Fairy Tail with him, then he suspected she never would. Despite that, for every moment that passed with him here and her not here, he felt a little more uncomfortable. He couldn't recall the last time he had had to re-read a page this many times.
He had almost given up trying to focus on his book when he heard a key in the lock. He made to get up, and then recalled how she had acted earlier. Reaching for his book once more, he pretended to have not noticed her arrival – if as he could somehow fail to notice when she was around! – so that she could go through to the rest of the house without speaking to him, if she wanted, just as she had proven she would do for him when he needed it.
He closed his eyes. He had known it would be hard, it was always going to be hard, but… but he hadn't thought it would be like this.
Her footsteps stopped behind him.
"Zeref," she said.
"Mm?" he said, still not entirely sure if she wanted to speak to him or not.
A pause, a long pause, and then the words themselves seemed to lose patience and burst out all at once. "I was thinking about what Davos was saying about the soul enchantment he was trying to use when he got himself stuck in the radio, and-"
He smiled, his worries melting away in an instant. "It wouldn't work."
"…What?"
Now he turned to face her, resting his elbows on the back of the sofa. "I am familiar with the enchantment Davos attempted. It was created by an acquaintance of mine, who, at my request, attempted to use it on me. It didn't work. The curse won't let me go that easily."
All the tension seemed to leave her at once. "Oh," she said, weakly.
"Is that what has been bothering you all this time?" he wondered.
"Yes. Well, no. Not quite."
Indecision flittered through her eyes, and he waited patiently, knowing she would tell him.
"I didn't know if I could tell you," she confessed, at last. "I thought I had a way to save you, but I couldn't tell you about it, because it would mean someone else had to die, so I couldn't…"
He understood that he was seeing her frightened for the very first time – not of him, because that wasn't in her nature, but of letting him down. It was a sweetness tempered by a deep sadness, realizing that she had believed he wouldn't understand, or that she had believed he hadn't known exactly what she was like when he had chosen to come to the ball that night.
"Lucy," he said, and she glanced up timidly. It was only because of how much she wanted to free him from this cursed life that she was acting this way at all. He pushed that thought away as quickly as he could, and that was why his words came out more snappish than intended: "It's fine. I understand."
"But I couldn't tell you! I couldn't-"
"That's because you're you. And I'd rather like you to stay that way."
She let out a shaky breath, and he felt again that frightening and unfamiliar urge to reach for her, to hold her, rather than to shy away from human contact.
"Right. Okay. Good," she stammered. Then, belatedly, she added, "I'm sorry it wouldn't have worked. Isn't there some way of adapting the process…?"
He had said these words before, patronizingly, but now he repeated them with immense fondness: "Lucy, after four hundred years, it's safe to say that anything you can think of, I've already tried."
"There are no words for how much I want to find a solution," Lucy murmured.
"I know, Lucy. I do."
She looked as though she wanted to say something more, but refrained. Understanding, he motioned her closer, and then he looped his arms around her and let her lips say it without words, while he pretended not to hear it, so that they might be able to get away with this for a little while longer.
It was later, much later, that Zeref sat alone in the darkened living room, lights switched off, curtains drawn against the moon and stars, Lucy asleep in the bedroom next door. He pulled his communication lacrima from its extradimensional hiding place. After setting it on the coffee table in front of him, he activated it with a thought.
As always, it connected at once. If August was surprised to see him in a house rather than the middle of a dark forest, then he gave no sign of it. As revealing as his emotions were in person, August had far more control through the medium of an intercontinental magical bond, and try as Zeref might, he couldn't glean anything more than a mild curiosity, and a sense of deep and hopeful contentment.
He dreaded to think what undoubtedly over-the-top conclusions his oldest ally had drawn from his surroundings as the connection had formed. He was probably happier not knowing. At least if he didn't ask, August knew better than to voice his thoughts unsolicited.
"Good evening, Your Majesty. What can I do for you?"
"Is Irene there? I would like to speak with her."
The concern that flashed down their connection was a tangible thing, far stronger than anything Zeref had felt from him so far. "I'm afraid not. She has still not returned to Vistarion. As far as I am aware, no one has heard from her since I conveyed your order to return for the invasion."
"…I see."
After a difficult pause, August ventured, "Would you like me to try and find her for you?"
Shaking himself, Zeref responded, "No. She could be anywhere, and besides, I need you where you are."
"As you wish, Your Majesty."
"It's not important," Zeref added, defending an instruction August had given no indication of questioning. "I just felt like talking to her. Things happened recently that made me think… I treated her awfully, and we've never spoken about it since. I wanted to say… but it's fine, it can wait. It doesn't really matter anyway."
"If you say so."
The magic between them pulsed like a soft heartbeat in the silence.
August said, "I can't make the decision for you, Your Majesty."
"What do you mean?" Zeref demanded, thrown. "What decision?"
"The only one which matters. The one you've been trying not to think about for a while, now, even though you know this delicate equilibrium you've built cannot last forever." Then, softer: "I will stand by you either way, Your Majesty, but the decision must come from you."
"And," Zeref tried, haltingly, "if I asked you what you would do, were you in my position…"
"But you won't ask," August told him. "You know better than that. Goodnight, Your Majesty."
And the lacrima went dark.
Zeref clicked his tongue in annoyance, but no matter how much magic he prodded the lacrima with, it refused to reconnect. At some point, he thought, he was going to have to remind that man exactly which one of them was in charge.
Not tonight, though.
Stowing the lacrima away, he returned to the bedroom. Lucy had been asleep, but now she stirred; he sensed more than saw her blinking at him through the darkness.
"Whassup?" she mumbled. "Nightmare?"
"No." He hadn't dreamed of Anna once since the night he had shared her story. Impulsively, he added, "I don't know what to do."
She thought about this for a moment, and then patted the mattress beside her. Bemused, he lay down as instructed, and her arm looped at once around him and her breath tickled the back of his neck.
And he thought, without knowing how or why he thought it, nothing can hurt me here.
"That wasn't so hard, was it?" Lucy murmured. "G'night, Zeref."
He had been expecting his doubts to keep him up all night, but he blinked and it was morning.