A/N: Hi all. I just wanted to clarify something from the last chapter, as a couple of comments have made me realize it wasn't clear, and it's important for this upcoming chapter. In this timeline, as Zeref told Lucy many chapters ago, his curse is exactly as powerful as it needs to be to keep him alive, without limit. This is how the clash of two such curses in Mavis's body generates infinite magic. However, Zeref only discovers that this is how it works after Tenrou Island, when he follows the sense of Mavis's magic back to the guildhall and discovers Fairy Heart.
Irene's interlude is set around 20 years before the Tenrou arc. At this point, Zeref knows his curse is powerful, as he's never been able to surpass it, but he doesn't know the whole 'exactly as powerful as it needs to be' thing. This is why he thinks at the time that more magic could have solved the problem.
He now knows better. Even if Irene had still had all her dragon magic, the curse would simply have increased in power too, so that it was as strong as Irene and then a little bit more. Even another infinite source, like Fairy Heart, could still only tie with his curse, not overcome it. In retrospect, Zeref realizes that what he asked of Irene was impossible, and that's one of the reasons why he regrets what happened with her. And that's also why just getting Fairy Heart and adding its power into Irene's spell isn't going to get rid of his curse. Otherwise, as has been pointed out, Zeref could just ask Lucy for it and she'd convince Fairy Tail it was the right thing to do. It's not going to be that simple.
Hopefully that clarifies that point! Thanks to everyone who brought it up. Now, on with what was already set to be the longest chapter in this story before I added this note... ~CS
The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Between Heaven and My Life, Final Part
-Fear Not Forever-
"Fight me," Lucy said.
Zeref glanced up from his book, concluded that this was all some sort of dreadful hallucination, and glanced back down again.
"I mean it," she insisted. "I need to practice somehow. Avatar may have been vanquished, but you never know when the next dark mage is going to show up!"
"The next dark mage is right here, and I can assure you, he's not remotely interested in this nonsense," Zeref yawned, turning the page.
"Well, what about Acnologia? I can't afford to let my skills go rusty while he's still at large!"
Zeref heaved a sigh. "Lucy, it was only about a week ago that you killed a god."
"Precisely! A whole week! I've never had so much downtime between jobs before!"
"Isn't that because you've usually spent all your rent money on repairing damage and desperately need to earn some more?"
"Uh… maybe. But I still feel like I'm supposed to be doing something. Even if it isn't for the money, I should be training, or defeating dark cultists, or helping people out like a proper guild mage…"
Lucy knew Zeref was taking her seriously the moment he closed his book and put it aside. Fondly, he asked, "You're not cut out for a quiet life, are you?"
"That's a strange thing to hear from you."
"I had a very quiet life before I met you," Zeref told her coolly. "You've only heard about the exciting bits, not the years and years of politely keeping to myself in between. Thanks to you, this past month has contained enough drama and enough danger to last me another hundred years."
Shaking her head, Lucy exclaimed, "Oh, I agree! I'm in no hurry to go through something like Bishop's Lace or Malva again. I mean something smaller-scale…"
He raised his eyebrows. "And yet the first thought that came to your mind was Acnologia still being at large, was it not?"
"Well…" She spread her hands helplessly.
Contradictory feelings were one thing Zeref understood very well. "I don't want to fight you in a practice match, Lucy," he sighed. "I don't enjoy it, I'm not particularly good at it, and I generally consider such things to be a waste of time. Either I will cheat and win easily, or I won't cheat and you'll win easily – whatever happens, it won't be the useful training experience you hope for."
"Okay. I understand. Thought I'd ask just in case; I wouldn't want to make you do something you don't want to."
Her smile of truce was not reflected on his face. "Lucy, I think you should go back to your guild."
"What?"
"You don't have to wait until the First of September. You can go back any time you feel like it."
"I know, but- where is this coming from all of a sudden, Zeref?"
"That's the kind of life that suits you best," he explained, avoiding her gaze just as he did the question.
What? The word lingered uselessly on the tip of her tongue. In truth, she already knew why he'd brought it up. The force of his personality in some aspects had to be balanced out by weaknesses in others; no one could be that strong.
And she had resolved not to blame him for his own insecurities – four-hundred-year-old habits weren't easy to break – but she wasn't in the mood to be indulgent, either. She challenged, "If I did go back to my guild, would you come with me?"
"Don't be ridiculous."
"I'm not being ridiculous. It's a serious question and I expect a serious answer."
"Then you're going to be disappointed," he snapped. "How am I supposed to take a comment like that seriously?"
"Because-"
She knew she was raising her voice, and it wasn't going to help things, but she couldn't help it. For such a changeable man, he could be so damn stubborn!
She was almost glad when a low buzzing interrupted them.
The sound seemed to be coming from the satchel she had left hanging up by the door. Reaching into it, she was surprised to find that the lacrima Levy had been using to communicate with Erza while she was undercover – which Lucy had totally forgotten to give back to her – was glowing.
"It's Erza," she frowned. "Is it alright if I answer this? I don't think she would call if it wasn't urgent."
Zeref nodded, and retreated into the shelter of the kitchen – although, unbeknownst to him, this lacrima was nowhere near as advanced as the military-class Alvarez one he carried, and it projected only sound, not images.
Unsure of where to hold the lacrima, Lucy ended up waving it vaguely in front of her face. "Erza? Is that you?" she asked of the static.
"Lucy. Have you seen Jellal recently?"
Quick and straight to the point – even if Lucy hadn't recognized the voice, she'd have known that was Erza straight away. "Not since Malva," she answered. "Isn't he with you?"
"No. He's been acting strange ever since that battle. I only managed to catch him once, and he was saying things that made me uncomfortable – things about Zeref, and about himself."
"What sort of things?"
"That he doesn't know what's right, any more. That he can't believe in the things he used to. That he doesn't think his actions in Crime Sorcière are any different to when he was building the Tower of Heaven."
"What?" Lucy demanded. Even she felt insulted by that; she could hardly imagine how much it must have hurt Erza.
"I know. Ever since then, he's been avoiding me. I wondered if you could tell me anything about Malva that might help me understand why he's acting like this…"
"I'm not sure how much I can help," Lucy confessed. She caught Zeref's eye through the doorway, willing him to give some kind of helpful signal, but he did not. "I met up with Jellal in Malva, but it didn't quite go as planned. I had stolen the Book of END as part of my plan to save Gray, but Jellal thought it was too dangerous and wanted to destroy the book outright while we had the chance. The three of us – me, Jellal and Gray – fought over it, but it ended when Zeref arrived and reclaimed the book. Jellal attacked Zeref, but was intercepted by Inv- by, uh, one of Zeref's allies. Their battle took them off somewhere. I don't know what happened to him after that."
Having met Invel, she didn't think he was the kind to have hurt Jellal beyond what was necessary – and that was assuming Invel had had the upper hand in that fight, which was hardly a given. Then again, she hadn't seen Jellal return to Malva after that fight either. Her gaze flicked once more to Zeref, who had to know something, but he remained impassive.
"Something must have happened. I feel as though I can't return to Fairy Tail until I know he's safe," Erza told her sincerely. "If you hear anything, let me know."
Lucy promised, "I will," and the lacrima went dark. She stowed it safely in her bag once more, and then looked up at Zeref, their almost-argument forgotten. "Well, it's not quite a mage job, but I'd say it's the next best thing. If Erza won't come back to the guild until Jellal is found, then I'd say our original quest is still ongoing until the moment we find him-"
"Lucy." Zeref's hand closed over hers; there was something as steadfast as iron in his eyes. "Let me talk to Jellal. Alone."
She blinked. "You? Why?"
"I think I know what his problem is."
She blinked again. "Jellal will try and kill you on sight. He did last time, even with me right there, trying to convince him otherwise."
"He'll fail; I can't die," Zeref said. "And when he does, maybe he'll run, but maybe he'll listen instead."
"But…"
Sensing her hesitation, he let go of her hand and stepped backwards. "If you don't want me to do it, then tell me, Lucy, and I won't," he promised.
"No," she said forcefully, coming to a decision at once. "It's okay. If you want to go, go. I trust that you know what you're doing. Do you know where he is?"
"I have a hunch."
"Okay," she nodded. "Don't-"
She cut herself off. Don't hurt him, she had been about to say, but wouldn't that undermine any trust she claimed to have in him? Did she honestly think this was all some elaborate scheme for Zeref to hurt her friend? How could she claim to feel for him the way she did, if she believed he needed reminding of things like that?
So she said, instead, "Don't die."
"I suspect I will die more than once today," he corrected her, with a faint smile. He knew exactly what she had been going to say, and it meant that he fully appreciated the fact that she hadn't said it; gratitude and adoration outnumbered the stars in his eyes. "Fortunately, none of my deaths are permanent."
"Good," she grinned. She took a moment to enjoy the fact that she was allowed to kiss him, now, whenever and wherever she pleased, until he nudged her away, trying hard to force a solemn expression onto his face, and vanished in a twist of space.
The wind was still, the sea was a sheet of hammered blue steel, and there was an island where there should have been none.
It was a rough circle of black rock, no more than ten metres in diameter, and it rose barely an inch above the surface, although an inch was enough in a sea as still as this. A sailor might have been forgiven for missing it, were it not the only darkness in a world of brilliant blue. Rather, it was absent from their maps because the only boats which had sailed these waters in the last two decades had been the ships of slavers and their dark mage customers, who tended not to boast of their routes.
And even those boats had ceased entirely, eight years ago. There had been no need for them once the Tower had fallen.
The black rock was like no other rock on land or sea. Dark and dense and obsidian-smooth, it might have been wrenched up from the underworld itself. It was slippery underfoot. No lichen grew there, and the rock was bone-dry, but it would trip a visitor all the same. Things that were not supposed to be had no need to follow the rules.
This was a fragment of the island where once had stood the Tower of Heaven, that bastion of evil, that defiant finger raised in challenge to the divinity whose name it had stolen for its own.
The Tower had been consumed by Etherion. No trace of it should remain. It had vanished when Jellal had, vaporized, disintegrated, his life given in sacrifice to wipe away its evil.
But he hadn't disappeared completely, and neither, so it seemed, had the Tower of Heaven.
And with no waves to erode it, no footsteps to break it into dust and no wind to blow that dust away, it would remain forever.
No one would stumble upon that dead land in the middle of its dead sea, and no one but Jellal would know it for what it was even if they did, but that didn't matter.
He knew.
He was the reason why it remained.
He was the one who stood there now, the only person who knew this barren patch of sea and sky well enough to find it. He stared at the unholy nothingness his actions had left behind, and felt a guilt he thought he had surpassed. An uncertainty he should have outgrown. A loneliness that felt more righteous than anything else in his life.
And then he wasn't alone at all.
There was no tell-tale flicker of magic, no oppressive presence flaring against his senses, no splash of a glassy ocean or footsteps on soundless rock. There was just, inexplicably, another person there with him.
A person he recognized with a chill the sunlight could not relieve.
There, upon the burial mound still haunted by the Tower's unquiet ghost, Jellal and Zeref regarded each other in silence.
One moment passed.
And another.
And then the adrenaline surpassed Jellal's belief that this had to be a hallucination, and something in his mind screamed, now!
No bystanders around to get hurt. No lesser dark mages to jump in and take the hit for Zeref. He wasn't going to get a better chance than this to kill the villain he had been hunting for a very long time.
Hope burst within him, and sheer, ferocious relief.
He leapt across the island, starfire trailing in his wake, and struck his foe with all the power he could muster.
And he felt Zeref die. Magic rent flesh and crumpled bone, ripped deep into his enemy's heart and erupted furiously from the other side, and he felt the life in him beat its failing wings once, twice, before taking off without him.
Jellal took a shaking step backwards. The body fell limply at his feet. Was it done? Was it over? Was he finally free, absolved of his past, given another future?
He desperately wanted to believe that, but he hadn't become a Wizard Saint by believing what he wanted to believe in the midst of battle.
By the time he saw the Black Mage stir, he was already in the air, his Meteor magic carrying him far enough away to avoid any potential counterattack, though his opponent wasn't as quick as he had feared. Jellal's spell completed in time; Zeref was still trying to get to his feet when seven artificial stars drilled seven holes in his body with seven instantaneous spears of light.
Once again, Jellal was concerned by the ease with which his attack had made contact. His opponent had made no attempt to dodge or raise a shield. Then again, a man whose gaping wounds were physically closing before Jellal's eyes hardly needed them, did he? Stories of the Black Mage's immortality had not been exaggerated.
But pain clearly slowed him down, and damage bought Jellal time, and both together offered him hope that this man was not without his limits.
In the handful of seconds he had before Zeref recovered, Jellal had formed another spell, one so complicated, so dangerous, he had never dared use it in sight of another human being since the Tower had fallen. One that could rend heaven and earth down to the smallest particle. One that nothing could survive. Abyss Break. It was forbidden magic, but his disdain for such labels was yet another part of him that had not died with the Tower of Heaven.
The world broke apart, and the Black Mage broke with it.
Holding the forbidden spell just for a moment had taken all Jellal's concentration. His Meteor magic failed, and he half-landed, half-fell back onto the rock as Zeref was hurled off it.
There was no splash. Thick, almost slime-like, the water swallowed him without a sound.
Jellal's hands were shaking, but it wasn't out of fear. It was anticipation. Excitement. Risk. Everything he had hoped for these past eight years was at last within his reach.
If he could do this, here and now, do or die, then it would all be over.
It wasn't until his opponent hauled himself back onto the rock, spluttering but very much alive, that Jellal felt the first touch of doubt.
He wasn't ready for this fight.
He had no ancient artefacts to hand. He had no specially designed spells held in reserve. He was far from his guild, with no chance of assistance. He had spent the last few months preparing to fight Avatar's vast and varied network in a prolonged battle on many fronts, not Zeref himself in single combat.
He could come up with plans, but had no chance to lay and execute them; he could think of magic that might circumvent the Black Mage's powers, but no time to experiment with it; he could devise strategies that might work against him, but did not have enough strength left to try them, after committing to Abyss Break so early in the fight and having it come to nothing.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go – not so suddenly, not with such little warning, not when he had still not found the parts of himself scattered amongst the ashes of Avatar's defeat.
But Zeref had come to him. And if Zeref had found him here, on this tomb of black stone that no one but Jellal knew existed, he could certainly find the Mobile Temple Olympia. He could find Crime Sorcière.
The fear that stirred within him as Zeref staggered back to his feet, soaking wet but utterly unharmed, wasn't fear for his own life.
It hadn't been for over eight years.
As Jellal hesitated, weighing up the uselessness – but oh, the significance! – of continuing this fight against the possibility of outrunning his opponent and warning his guild of the danger, Zeref spoke at last. "Are you done?"
The stillness yawned on, bereft of the death magic that should have filled it. Jellal lowered his hand, but not his guard. "What do you want?"
"It's simple, really," Zeref told him, a patient, patronizing drawl. "I am going to ask you a question. If you can answer me satisfactorily, I will walk away."
"And if I don't?" Jellal challenged, embers of resistance stirred into outright rebellion by the other's dismissive attitude. "You'll what, kill me?"
"No. But you won't ever leave this place."
Jellal's eyes flashed in warning. "Your magic will not hold me. I will get back to my guild-"
"Who said anything about magic?" Zeref overrode him coolly. "It's an observation, not a threat."
Jellal was in no mood for the games of dark mages. He wasn't at the best of times, but that only went double if Zeref had started moving against Crime Sorcière, the only guild which openly fought him and his allies.
Perhaps this was retaliation for Avatar's destruction. Perhaps Zeref was here to avenge the man who had defended him so ardently, the passion of his words in stark contrast to the chill of his magic, whom Jellal had defeated in the ruins of Malva. He recoiled from that thought; Zeref had no love for those who served him. No one knew that better that the former Master of the Tower of Heaven.
And were this a pitched battle, life and death blazing on both sides, Jellal would not have hesitated to strike again, but the lull in the fighting had already dragged on for too long. In the absence of a struggle, of any need for self-defence, the adrenaline had drained away, leaving only an acute sense of futility. Nothing he had done had left so much as a scratch upon his opponent. Zeref's bizarre request may well be his best – his only – chance.
He said, "If I humour you, will you promise not to harm the rest of my guild?"
"I'll think about it," Zeref said, in a tone of voice that promised absolutely no more than that. It was about as much as Jellal could have realistically hoped for, and he knew it.
"Ask me your question, then."
Black eyes gleamed, as darkly unreadable as the rocks beneath their feet. Zeref said, "Why did you try to kill me just now?"
Jellal almost laughed; wasn't that obvious? "I've been waiting eight years for an opportunity like this!"
"That's not an answer. You might as well have said, because I did." Cold silence settled between them. The glassy ocean, heedless of the unmoving air and deep, deep currents, began to ripple. Zeref continued, "I really wasn't planning on threatening that cute little guild of yours, but if it's the only way to get you to take this seriously…"
"Do you really need me to spell out why I oppose you?" Jellal burst out viciously. "When we stand here, in the ruins of the Tower of Heaven?"
"That was nothing to do with me," Zeref told him calmly.
In those flippant words Jellal heard the screams of a thousand expiring lives; of the innocence that littered the seabed around the island, pure-white bones picked clean by predators.
He snarled, "It was everything to do with you! You did nothing! They were not the first to obsess over you, nor the last, while you sat back and encouraged your legacy to grow! That is how they knew there would be no repercussions! That is how the old leaders of the Tower's cult drew followers to them, that is why Grimoire Heart committed the horrors they did, that is why Avatar could use your name to recruit faithful servants – because for four hundred years you have let this happen, and I will not tolerate it for one day more!"
"I will not accept the blame for the actions of those I have never met," Zeref refuted him coldly. "There were dark mages before me, and there will be dark mages long after I have been forgotten by history. Try again."
Magic pressed into Jellal's palm like the hilt of a sword, and it was all he could do not to lash out again. Matching the Black Mage's voice degree by frozen degree, he retaliated, "And I suppose you will also plead ignorance of your demons' attempt to annihilate all human life?"
"Actually, yes. But that, I would not expect you to understand."
"They slaughtered the Magic Council for you. They tried to wipe out magic – our society, our way of life! – all for you. You taught them to kill, and yet you do not consider yourself complicit in their war? You created weapons – living and inanimate – and discarded them, and you believe that that absolves you of any guilt when they are used to kill?" Jellal shook his head in disgust. "You've threatened Fairy Tail, my friends. Rumour is, you're planning to attack their guild any day now. For the souls of those you've murdered, who cannot find rest while you still plague this land; for the futures of those who will never be able to live freely until your darkness is banished – that is why I have dedicated my life to stopping you. The world would be a better place without you in it."
Zeref was quiet for a moment. Jellal hated the silence, the stillness. He wanted to fight.
"I cannot say whether or not that is true," Zeref mused. "I do not know why you expect I would claim to be guiltless, but it is beside the point." A wave of his hand dismissed the passion of those words like smoke. "I am not interested in the explanation you would have given, had I asked you a month ago why you opposed me. I want to know what went through your mind when I appeared in front of you just now."
"What do you want from me?" Jellal snapped. "You've obviously decided already what you want me to say, so why are you bothering with this farce of a dialogue?"
"Hmm… perhaps I should ask a different question, then."
They were circling each other now, two wolves prowling around the edge of an island that seemed suddenly too small.
Zeref resumed, "Because I am not so omniscient as you seem to think, perhaps you can fill me in on something. Invel told me that when the two of you fought in Malva, you defeated him quickly and had the opportunity to return to the main battle – to me. I was vulnerable; you would not have had a better chance to fulfil the duty that has been driving you for eight years. Yet you did not attack me. Why?"
Visions flashed through Jellal's mind: Lucy – his friend, Erza's teammate, kind and clever Lucy Heartfilia – holding this man in her arms as if she couldn't feel the terror of his legacy, as if the deep crimson of his hands did not bother her. Caring for him. Protecting him. Using his power not to help Avatar, but to stop them… and doing so through the use of a dangerous ancient magic, capable of forcing a prolonged Unison Raid between two parties, but only if their trust in each other was absolute.
Jellal mentally clamped down on than train of thought, but Zeref must have seen something in his expression, because a smirk touched his lips. "Oh? Now I'm starting to see what your problem is…"
Provoked by the smugness in that voice, Jellal spat, "I saw you force a Unison Raid with Lucy."
Zeref blinked once, slowly. "I was quite delirious at the time, I assure you. I would never have attempted something so reckless were I in my right mind."
He left the last four words to hang in the air unspoken: but it worked anyway.
After all, they both knew the prerequisite for that magic to activate.
A thought occurred to Jellal, and he demanded, "Does she know you're here?"
"Lucy? Yes."
"What have you done to her?"
There was a slightly different texture to the Black Mage's smile, this time, but no explanation was forthcoming. "Oh, no. You don't get to ask any more questions until you answer mine. And my next question is this: if you wanted to know why Lucy was protecting me, or whether what you thought you saw was correct, why did you not ask me, rather than attacking me on sight?"
Jellal had to laugh at that. "Why would you do anything other than lie to me?"
"I haven't lied yet. But even if you don't trust me, you know where Lucy lives. You could have gone to her at any time, and she would have happily given you the answers to the questions which have been chipping away at your resolve ever since. Why didn't you?"
Jellal said nothing. He wouldn't give him that satisfaction.
"Was it because, deep inside, you already knew the answer?" Zeref mused. "Or was it because you didn't want to know the answer?"
"I have to kill you!" Jellal burst out. "That's what kept me going! That's how I was going to make up for my past – by preventing you from making a worse future! That's what justified me escaping jail and living on when the whole world wanted me dead – because I knew, I knew, that I was doing the right thing this time, and once you were gone, the whole world would know it too! And suddenly Lucy's acting like you're not an enemy, and you're on our side against Avatar, and you're not fighting back against me, and there are people who should know better and yet trust you and love you and follow you through their own free will – and if they're right, then what the hell have I been doing, all this time? I thought that I was on the path to redemption, but what if the last eight years have been no better than the eight before?"
They had stopped pacing now, staring at each other over that expanse of abyssal rock. Zeref looked so calm. Jellal couldn't stand it.
"I have to kill you!" he repeated, almost frantic. "Because that will put an end to these questions! I won't ever have to find out if I've been wrong all these years! I can do what I was meant to do, what I was promised would make me a good person, what would make it okay for me to have survived all this time, and I can finally be free from all of this! That's why I attacked you! Is that what you wanted to hear?"
"Well," Zeref spoke, after a long moment. "Now we're getting somewhere, aren't we?"
Jellal's fist sparked with magic, but he held his ground, and his tongue.
"I must say, I am rather hurt," Zeref continued. "You are despised for the events of the Tower of Heaven, even though they weren't your fault any more than they were mine. And yet you are more than happy to blame me for the rise of Avatar and other groups, which had nothing to do with me. I thought you of all people would understand what it was like to be resented for something you didn't do."
Jellal's eyes narrowed.
"Have I done terrible things?" mused Zeref. "Yes. But so have you. Fighting for your own salvation while denying me mine is not righteous, it is hypocritical. But you know that," he added, and a smirk touched his lips as he took in Jellal's barely restrained magic. "Or you wouldn't be afraid right now, would you?"
"I am not afraid," Jellal spat.
The dismissiveness in Zeref's gaze struck him like a physical blow. "Do you know what your problem is? You think too much about good and evil and ultimate redemption."
"And what's that supposed to mean?" he dared.
"I don't know if it's right for you to want to kill me. Your friends in Fairy Tail – whom, you are absolutely correct, I am planning to destroy – would no doubt think so, and yet there are those who would argue otherwise. And that's always going to get in your way. If you succeed in killing me and the King of Fiore grants you a royal pardon, but Lucy doesn't ever forgive you for it, would that be a happy ending for you? Would you believe you had finally become a good man? No, as long as your goal depends on some mythical realm where everyone agrees on right and wrong, you won't ever reach it."
"It is better than having nothing to aim for at all," Jellal growled.
"Is it? I may be immortal, but dying hurts, you know?" Zeref rubbed at his still-dripping arms and fixed Jellal with a curious gaze. "Well, perhaps you're right. I am, after all, the least qualified person in the world to lecture you on right and wrong. Every time I think I've got it figured out, the curse mixes it all up again. Even so, there is nothing stopping me from passing on some good advice I've received from others."
Just for a moment, Zeref's expression became a little distant, and his presence a little less oppressive. "If you really want to know if your past eight years have been any better than the eight years before that," said he, "don't look at what you've destroyed, or sought to destroy. Look at what you've created."
The change of topic threw Jellal. "I don't understand. I may have built the Tower of Heaven back then, but ever since, I haven't created anything at all. It's a bit difficult to do that when the Rune Knights chase you out of every city you try to settle in, let alone when you're pursuing dark mages across the continent!"
"Is that so?" Zeref sighed. "Then I wonder how many times I have to threaten your guild in one afternoon before you realize you've built something precious."
And despite his resolve not to pay any heed to the words his opponent chose as his weapons, Jellal found himself thinking about his guild. Had Erza shared their private conversation with the rest of them? Were they worried about his absence? Had they fallen back into their old ways without him to watch over them? No, he knew they hadn't. He had watched them grow over the past ten months. He had seen them change as much as any human being could; he couldn't be prouder of their accomplishments and he couldn't be more hopeful for their futures.
When he thought of all the decisions that had changed his life – choosing to stay in the Tower of Heaven rather than fleeing with Erza, choosing to sacrifice his life to stop it from exploding, choosing to live on after the Nirvana incident and accept his imprisonment, choosing to forgive Ultear and join her guild, choosing to take up the mantle of Guild Master when she no longer could – he thought that the spontaneous decision to bring the ex-Oración Seis members into Crime Sorcière was the best one he had ever made.
And a chill ran down his spine, because the fact that Zeref knew how much they meant to him frightened him very much indeed.
Zeref was still speaking. "I've been wondering for a while about creation and destruction, right and wrong, what I have done and what I should do. I still do not have answers to most of those, but I am, I think, starting to understand what really matters. Do not look at why you are living, but at how you are living. Forget about great acts of redemption and being forgiven by society: how can you look at the people around you and not be able to see that you are a better man than you were before?"
A strange mix of feelings welled up inside Jellal then, pride and gratitude and doubt and relief and fear, made all the more confusing by the identity of the man who had so deliberately provoked them. Uneasy, he demanded, "Why are you doing this?"
"Why, indeed?" Zeref echoed. "I suppose I could take the easy way out, and claim that I'm doing it for Lucy. She's as worried about you as your guild is. But the truth is, I'm not doing it for her. I'm doing it for me. I don't want to be your enemy."
Shaking his head, Jellal took a step back. The ocean lapped at the rock beneath his heels, its glassy surface made molten by the ripples of the magic radiating from him. "If you think I can just forgive you, after everything you've done-"
"It is not I who needs your forgiveness, Jellal!" Zeref snapped, eyes flashing red. "It is you who needs mine, and I have come here to offer it to you!"
"I don't trust you." It should have been self-evident, but Jellal felt as though it needed to be said out loud. "If you think it is so easy to convince me to stop opposing you-"
"I'm not asking you to stop opposing me," came the irritated response. "That may still be the right course of action, for your guild and your friends. It is not for me to say. I am merely asking you to see that killing me is neither sufficient nor necessary for your salvation."
Jellal thought about this for longer than he ought to have done, and then shook his head because he could not trust himself to speak.
"Well," said Zeref, "suit yourself. The offer remains open." He turned away, a dismissal. "I will keep my word. You have answered my question; I will let you be."
"Wait!" Jellal shouted, a moment too late. The Black Mage had already been swallowed by space.
Alone again, Jellal stared at the spot where his sworn enemy had vanished, the glossy black rock as inexplicable as the actions of the man who had briefly stood upon it.
There had been a moment when he had wanted so badly to accept the offer. To strike a truce, to put his vengeance on hold, and to focus on what was good in his life; his guild and his friends. Maybe, even, to come to know this man who had seen through him so easily, and who seemed to understand something of the road he trod.
And yet accepting Zeref's forgiveness for his blind determination to oppose him also meant accepting that his actions these past eight years had, perhaps, been every bit as self-serving as those of the eight years before.
It meant accepting that he was wrong, and that the ice mage he had fought in Malva had known some fundamental truth that Jellal himself was too fixated on the idea of redemption to see.
It meant accepting that Zeref was someone he wanted forgiveness from… and he could not immediately put aside everything that Zeref had done, and would no doubt continue to do in the future, no matter how well he spun his words.
The Black Mage was dangerous to Crime Sorcière and Fairy Tail alike, and he couldn't risk their futures for one faint glimpse of hope. Doing that for his own sake, just to placate his own troubled mind, was unacceptable.
Zeref was right about one thing, though: there were no answers to be found in this cursed place.
He wanted to be with his guild again. He should never have left them like he did.
Still on-edge from his encounter, and eager to be home, he put too much power into his Meteor spell, and the recoil as he took off cracked the black rock that even Abyss Break had left untouched. The further he flew, the further the cracks spread, unstoppable.
He was out of sight long before the sea rose up to claim the unnatural island at last, but some part of him already knew.
Lucy thought that there was something oddly familiar about the sight of a soaked and bedraggled Black Mage standing on her doorstep.
Heaving a sigh at how bizarre her life had become, she asked, "What is it with you and falling in the sea?"
Zeref drew himself up with the haughtiness of the prince of drowned rats. "I didn't fall, I was pushed. By a rather nasty piece of magic, as it happens."
"I take it your meeting didn't go well," she remarked, stepping aside to let him in and trying not to think about the cost of any potential water damage to the carpet.
"Not as well as I'd hoped, no. I don't think Jellal likes me very much."
"He has spent the last eight years in a guild opposing your very existence," she shrugged. "I'm not quite sure what you were expecting…"
"Neither am I," came the unusually subdued response.
As he trudged past her in search of some dry clothes, Lucy found a frown tugging at her lips. She had been expecting him to brush it off, or to joke about it, and yet he seemed genuinely put out by the fact that he hadn't returned with a new best friend… and for the man who had resisted acknowledging her as a friend for as long as physically possible, that was saying something. She wondered why this mattered so much to him.
By the time he returned, she had some slightly better news for him. "Erza called. She says Jellal's gone back to them. Apparently, he's okay – a lot less melancholy than he was, at least – but he won't tell her what happened."
As she had hoped, her words brightened those black eyes a touch. "That's something, I suppose."
"She asked if I had anything to do with it, so I told her I didn't." After a moment, she added, "What happened between the two of you?"
To her dismay, he simply shook his head. "That's private. It is his choice whether or not to speak of it, not mine."
"I understand. And… thank you."
"I didn't do it for you," he objected sharply, though his tone softened almost immediately. "I would have done, if you'd asked, but I would also have done it if you didn't. It wasn't for you."
"May I ask why you did do it?" she blurted out.
"You may always ask, Lucy, as long as you appreciate that I may choose not to answer." He was smiling as he repeated the invitation he had given to her so long ago, although the caveat he added was new: "I do not think there are many circumstances under which I would refuse you, although not knowing the answer myself is certainly one of them. I think that Jellal and I are very similar, and it bothers me that he does not agree, although I do not know why it bothers me."
"I'm glad that you're acting on your emotions, even if you don't fully understand them," she observed.
"Maybe. He made a good point, though. I have never done anything about how the world views me, when perhaps I should have done. It bothered me immensely how Arlock abused my reputation, more than anything has done before, and yet I also find that I am no longer able to accept how Jellal views me either. Is he right to consider me the villain in his story? I do not know, any more than I know if I am allowed to feel unhappy about it, and yet I do anyway."
He gave her an almost helpless look, one she thought Anna would have been very accustomed to, and she couldn't resist pulling him into a hug. "Whatever the reason, I'm glad that you did it," she smiled.
"Me too."
Later, when the walls were draped in silver and shadow, and Zeref was curled half-asleep against her side, Lucy's mind returned to the events of that day.
It wasn't the fact that Zeref had somehow managed to talk some sense into Jellal that she had really been thanking him for. It was the fact that he'd been the one asking her if he could go. He had reached out of his own accord. Not to mention, he must have known Jellal already had concerns over his relationship with Lucy from their struggle over the Book of END in Malva, and that approaching Jellal would constitute an answer of sorts… and yet he had gone anyway.
When they'd started this quest, as enemies under a non-aggression pact, keeping their partnership a secret had simply been common sense.
Now, though… she didn't want this to be secret. She didn't want to only hold him in the dark, knowing he was awake only by the occasional murmuring of languages lost long ago, when the only words she could understand were the scattered curses when the mental calculations he spun did not lead to the conclusion he had hoped for.
Earlier, when she'd challenged him to come back to the guild with her, she had deliberately done it to provoke him. Yet until she'd said it, she hadn't realized how much she'd wanted it – to pretend that this could be forever, to pretend that having him in her life didn't preclude having the guild and vice versa. Nor had she realized how certain she had been that she would never get it. It was a dare, an impulsive angry challenge. Nothing more.
When she delved into it, a key part of that certainty was the thought that he would want to keep their relationship hidden; to confine it to the serendipitous sliver of overlap between his life and hers. Levy knew about them, but that hardly counted. Levy and Zeref had already bonded over an afternoon of shopping for books in Bishop's Lace long before she had been confronted with the implication that he and Lucy might be something more than friends. Besides, Lucy had been the driving force behind revealing that to her.
But today, Zeref had gone to confront Jellal of his own accord, and maybe… maybe she had misjudged him.
Maybe what he wanted wasn't so different to her.
Maybe this could be longer than a moment, and more than just a dream.
"Zeref?"
"Mm?"
"I've been thinking," she began, and then waited patiently for him to drag himself out of whichever mental kingdom his train of thought had broken down in this time.
He glanced up and blinked once, just enough to let her know that he was listening, and then let his head rest against her shoulder once again. He looked truly relaxed around her, and that was a miracle in itself. "What about?"
"Well… you, really." Here she paused to berate herself for not getting her own thoughts in order before speaking up. When not even that mental threat produced results, she just went for it. "How… how would you feel about people knowing about this? About us?"
"It's really all the same to me, Lucy," he answered quietly.
"Really?" she checked, slightly thrown by how easily he'd answered.
"Yes. Shouldn't it be?"
"It's just… earlier, when I talked about going back to the guild with you, you didn't seem to like the idea much at all. You told me it was ridiculous, in fact."
He gave a deep sigh – deep enough to make her wonder if she hadn't been the only one who had repeatedly thought back over that moment. "No, well, if it matters to you, then I'm not going to stand in your way. I was just… surprised, I suppose, that you were wanting to put yourself through that confrontation with your guild, just for the sake of two weeks."
"Why only two weeks?" she wondered.
She could sense every ounce of his attention on her, black razor diamond, poised to slash apart the silence with a single effortless swing. Yet that same silence spun on unbroken, and she shifted unhappily; he did not move against her side.
And then she knew.
The Summer Ball was always in early August.
And on the First of September, Zeref was going to attack Fairy Tail.
This had never been meant to last forever, had it?
"Right," she said. "Yes. That. I had forgotten what day it was, that's all."
Not forgotten. Hoped.
But forgotten was easier to say, so that was what she went with.
It was obvious that he didn't believe her from the way he pulled away, both in how he sat up and how the little stars in his eyes were dimming, fading, not because they were going out, but because they were further away than she had ever truly realized. The cool air where his warmth had previously pressed against her side ensured that she felt those few inches of separation vividly.
Across that great divide, he regarded her with a closed expression. "Lucy," said he. "Why, in all the time we've been together, have you not asked me to not attack your guild?"
She let out a long, slow breath. In all honesty, she hadn't thought he was going to ask the question. Either he understood as well as she did, without the need for words, or they were both going to keep pretending it wasn't going to happen until either the day came and went uneventfully, or the invasion begun.
Still, just because she hadn't believed she would ever need or want to say it didn't mean she hadn't thought about it.
Sometimes, it felt as though she thought of little else.
"There are a lot of reasons," she explained, surprised to find that her voice sounded as steady as his had been. "If you want to hear them, I will ask you to listen until the end."
A single, slow nod. Until that moment, she hadn't realized quite how much she wanted him to take back his question. To let them just keep living in denial.
But he hadn't, so she said, "I suppose, first of all, it's because I know you've put a lot of thought into this – into reviving my guild, and into attacking it. I know how deeply you consider the most important things; I know this isn't a war into which you would enter lightly. You don't need me to ask you to reconsider, because I know you've been doing it almost since the day we met. If you change your mind, it won't be because I've asked you to, but because you yourself have decided that it is no longer the best course of action. I trust you and I respect you."
Zeref said nothing.
"The second reason is that I have been so happy with you, these last few days. But you're not allowed to be happy with me. It's too risky; the curse won't allow it. I cannot imagine how difficult it is to stop your magic from killing me. The thought of what you are having to do to yourself just to let me live this fantasy for a few days truly terrifies me. Seeing this as finite – as something that will soon end, and end in great pain at that – is, I suspect, the only reason why you have managed it at all."
Again, the silence. Unnerved but unwavering, Lucy continued, "As to why that answers your question, the reason is simple. Whatever it is you're hoping to obtain from fighting Fairy Tail – that's a solution to your cursed existence, isn't it? I know you wouldn't attack my guild for anything less. But I'm not a solution. I can't free you. I can never be enough for you the way you are for me. You're right; I'm not going to think of any way of breaking your curse that you haven't already tried in four hundred years. I'm no genius of magic, no insightful scholar… I'm not the one who's going to save you, no matter how much I want to."
It was becoming harder to talk, as the words came easier to her mind but ever clumsier to her lips. "And I do want to. I really do. I don't want this to end on the First of September – I don't want this to end at all! There is nothing that I want more than to return to Fairy Tail with you by my side. That would cause a war in itself, I'm sure, but we'd get through it, you and I. Levy would stand by us, and I'm sure Gajeel and Wendy and- and the other Dragon Slayers would too, once they knew – and perhaps Invel would too, and who knows how many others there are who care about you more than you have ever realized?"
Quieter, for her voice had become too loud for night's embrace, she repeated, "Going home together with you is the best thing I can imagine. But at the end of the day, you'll still be cursed. Every day with me will be a struggle against your own mind and magic. I won't be making your life better; I'll be making it far, far worse, all for my own happiness. If the strength of my feelings for you could break your curse, Anna or Igneel would have broken it centuries ago! Life isn't a fairy tale, and I am not a solution."
She tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but it seemed to swallow her instead, drowned in grief and sorrow, and her voice cracked apart. "No matter how much I want to be," she choked. "No matter what I would give to be able to set you free, I can't save you. It just isn't fair."
Once again he said nothing, just waited for her to say her piece, like he'd promised, distant as the statue to some dead god.
Lucy dragged down her last deep breath. "But," she continued, "I guess the most important reason is a lot simpler than that. I haven't asked you not to attack Fairy Tail for the same reason that you haven't asked me to side with you when you do."
That surprised him enough to break through the façade. His puzzlement was so very human as he stated, "I know you'd say no."
"I would," she nodded. "I will fight with everything in my power to have you and my guild, but if that proves impossible, I will choose Fairy Tail. I will always choose Fairy Tail. If the only solution to your suffering that you have found in four centuries involves the destruction of my guild, the obliteration of my friends and family, then I will stand against you, and for all that my heart will scream in anguish, I will not waver."
Her hands fell into her lap. Her head was bowed; darkness sat heavily upon her shoulders. "So," she whispered, "there you have it. How could I ask you to give up everything for my sake, when I know I would not give up Fairy Tail for you? That's why I couldn't ask you."
To her surprise, his shoulders began to shake. "I knew this was a mistake," he murmured, resting his forehead against her shoulder. "I knew it could never last. When I had to decide whether I would return to Fiore for the ball or return only at the head of an army, I knew that my choice wasn't between happiness and pain, but between pain now and pain later… and I came for you because I thought that a few days with you had to be better than none at all. But that was a mistake. All it has done is made this hurt so much more."
"It wasn't a mistake," Lucy said.
He gave a tight shake of his head. Gently, she tilted his head up, forcing those bleak eyes to see that she held enough certainty for both of them.
"It wasn't," she repeated fiercely. "Zeref, ever since I found my guild I have been surrounded by such warmth and such love – and yet I have never been loved the way you love me. You feel emotions more strongly than anyone else I have met, and knowing that I am the source of that is the most wondrous, most humbling thing I have ever experienced. You may be immortal, powerful, and brilliant with magic, but it is the depth of your feelings which awes me the most, knowing that I cannot hope to return to you what you have given me. That is how I know that if this ends, it will be because it absolutely has to, for you would not do it for anything less."
As hesitantly as he had kissed her in the palace, when the night could have gone either way, her lips ever so briefly brushed against his.
"And if it hurts," she continued, "it will be the good kind of pain. It will be no less than the depth of your love, but no greater than it either, and that is how I know it will not break you. Please, promise me that if the pain makes you doubt everything we did together, you will remember the certainty that made you break into the palace for me. Promise me that if we end up on opposite sides, you will remember our time together, and know that the machinations of fate do not invalidate the truth of my love or yours. And promise me that if it hurts so much you want to rip out your own heart to make it end, you will remember that being alone is a choice, and one you do not have to make."
Pain flashed through his eyes, but she held her ground. "I know what losing Anna and the dragons and Natsu all at once did to you," she told him. "I know you thought you'd lost the only people who would ever care for you; I know it left you certain that you would always be alone. But you're not alone."
"Only because of you," he said, bitterly.
"No." She placed her hands upon his cheeks, gentle but firm, refusing to let him look away. "Not because of me at all. Even if I were no longer here, you would still have those like Levy and Invel, who would care about you just as much as I do, just as much as Anna and Igneel once did, if you would only give them the same chance you gave us. You have always had the capacity to love, and to be loved in return. You just haven't let yourself see it."
On impulse, she drew back and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. She whispered, "This is right, Zeref. No matter what the future brings, it is always right to love, and you know it as well as I do. Promise me you won't forget how this feels. Promise me you won't regret this moment."
Zeref didn't speak for a while, just rested there in her arms.
When at last he stirred, an eternity later, in his eyes were all the mysteries of time and space. "Lucy."
"Zeref…?"
He kissed her once, kindly, but it was so very sad as well.
Then he made a sharp motion with his hand. She only caught a glimpse of it, so she didn't recognize it for what it was until the magic pressed down upon her. She tried to speak, but the panic racing out from her heart was not fast enough to catch up with her consciousness as it slipped away.
The last things she remembered were those black eyes watching as she fell, and then nothing at all.
The rebuilding of Fairy Tail's guildhall was almost complete.
In fact, beneath the dappled shadow of stray clouds and starlight, it looked like it was whole. The scaffolding had been taken away; the walls beneath were strong enough now to stand unaided. Once again, it towered higher than any building in Magnolia, heedless to all laws except its own.
The only indication that it was not quite finished was the darkness which pooled in every window. No matter how late, there would always be a light on somewhere in the guildhall: from the party celebrating everything from the successful defeat of the Balam Alliance to the guild's own quarter-birthday; from Mira up specially to take a pre-dawn delivery for the bar; from the Master doing the accounts or responding to a letter from the Council in the peace that only 3AM could bring.
Tonight, there was nothing. Fairy Tail slumbered still.
Good. That would make this easier.
Zeref slammed open the double doors and strode inside.
Last time he had visited, the trapdoor he was looking for had been buried beneath a pile of rubble. Now, it was nestled into the floor behind the bar, incorporated perfectly into the structure of the new guildhall without anyone consciously registering its existence. Brushing aside the notice-me-not enchantments with a thought, Zeref wrenched open the trapdoor and descended into total darkness.
He found his way with a familiarity even Makarov would have envied, and soon the darkness began to resolve into grainy grey walls, lit by the light of the magical seal at the end of the tunnel. It hummed to him in greeting. He was the only one who had been down here in over ten months, enemy or otherwise, and it waited patiently for him to unravel its protective magics as if he were merely typing in an access code.
Then the barrier was down, and he was inside the chamber where Fairy Heart was hidden.
How many times had he been down in here in Fairy Tail's absence? He had first discovered it when the guild was suspended outside time, and he had come seeking an answer to the question of who or what had cast the magic which had suspended them, for it surely couldn't have been who he thought he had sensed on that day. After that, he had visited repeatedly before their return and again after their disbandment, trying to understand what he was seeing, and what it meant for him.
Ten, twenty, thirty times he must have stood before that crystal, analysing the magic it shed with every tool at his disposal, yet it seemed now that he was meeting it for the very first time.
Back then, he had thought only of the great power it offered – and the even greater opportunity. He had not stopped to consider the consequences of just how that magic was being generated.
That had been before Malva.
Before a cursed sword and Arlock's cruel ingenuity had turned Zeref's own magical core into an infinite source of magic while he still lived and breathed around it.
Now, merely standing in Fairy Heart's shadow brought those memories to life. An echo of Arlock's sword pierced through him like a physical thing, impaled on the fence between life and death, a source of power but with no power of his own, dying and dying and dying and dying…
How had he never realized it before? It had been years since he had worked out precisely how the eternal battle between his curse's attempt to take her life and her curse's attempt to protect it had generated a source of infinite magic, and yet it just hadn't clicked. He had been so focussed on the opportunity her magic gave him that he had been blind to the suffering that created it.
At last, he could finally feel it: the sheer agony of her continued existence, hidden behind a layer of crystal and a twisted abomination of magic.
Grief thudded afresh in his heart, and his resolve hardened into certainty.
"Zeref."
He started. It wasn't the sound of his name in this silent place that bothered him, but the musical voice that had spoken it. It couldn't be her. It simply wasn't possible.
But when he looked again, there she was: a ghost, an illusion, a perfect image of how she had been in life, and how she was still preserved in death. Her hair shone gold in the light of another world's sun; her ever-bare feet did not quite touch the stone beneath, and couldn't even if she wanted them to. They regarded each other for the first time in ninety-five years, the bright-burning, free-spirited First Master of Fairy Tail, and the man who had loved her too much.
There was so much he wanted to say, but the only word that came to him was a stammered, "H-how?"
It wasn't much of a question, but she understood what he was asking. "The guild is returning, and my strength returns with it. Fairy Tail exists once more, and therefore, so do I." She blinked once, her brilliant emerald eyes too dazzling to read. "I know you are responsible for that, Zeref. Although I am not foolish enough to believe you did it out of the goodness of your heart, I am grateful to you. I have wanted to speak to you for a very long time."
"But how are you talking to me? I'm not part of this- of you-"
"The guild is stronger than it ever was," Mavis said simply. "If I want to speak to you, I will."
The magic saturating the chamber thrummed its agreement, and sickness twisted his heart in response. For so long, thoughts of this magic had filled his every dream. Now he knew it would have a special place in his nightmares.
"You're in pain, aren't you?" he asked. "No one can see it, but you are."
She smiled at him. "This is only a projection. It shows what I want it to show, and nothing more. I didn't want my guild to feel bad about something that is beyond their power to prevent."
He glanced away. "I'm sorry."
"This wasn't your fault, Zeref."
"Of course it was! As if it wasn't bad enough that I killed you, I also condemned you to this, a silent eternity of suffering, all the while treating you like an object to be fought over-"
"It is no worse than what I did to you, by not returning your feelings."
He gave a short, tight shrug. "No one can choose when they fall in love, or with whom. You are not to blame for that."
"I should never have made you a promise I knew I couldn't keep. Everything I did, I did for myself. That's why I couldn't have saved you."
"Don't-"
"Zeref."
She touched his cheek. He couldn't feel it; he quietened all the same.
"If we had run away together, both of us despairing of the world that cast us out, we would only have reinforced the prison around us. What would have been the use in loving each other, if we hated everything else? We would have destroyed ourselves, and the world along with us."
"I know," he murmured.
"I could never be your hope. I was too busy needing you to be mine. But… I think you've found it now, haven't you?"
After a moment, Zeref stepped away from her. He stated, for it wasn't a question: "You know why I've come here."
Mavis clasped her ghostly hands together and regarded him steadily. "I do."
"Then, will you help me or hinder me?"
"There is one thing I want to confirm with you first," she replied, and he briefly inclined his head. "You only reunited Fairy Tail in order to get your hands on Fairy Heart, didn't you? My conscious self doesn't exist without the guild, and you cannot claim Fairy Heart without it."
"That is correct."
"What were you hoping to achieve with Fairy Heart?"
"That is not an easy question to answer," he admitted. "You know me, Mavis. I must have had as many different motives as there have been days since I learnt of its existence. Sometimes I wanted to have it just to ensure that no one else had it; to protect it – protect you – from being used in the games of others. Sometimes I wanted to destroy it, to cast away the last remnant of my time with you, of the man I was back then. Sometimes I sought to obtain it just because it was something to do. Something to focus on. Even though I didn't want it, it had enough inherent value to be a worthy goal in the eyes of others. But… were you to ask what I think I would have done with it, had I swept in with an army, killed those unable to stop me, and taken it from your guild by force – well, that is easy enough to answer."
There was neither hesitation nor shame in his voice. "A long time ago, when Anna was gone and I was alone, I tried to apply Anna's mathematical framework of World Magic to true, boundless time travel. I would have given anything to go back and fix my mistakes. The theory was surprisingly simple – after all, the mathematical methods were already in place. But to enact it would take an inordinate amount of magic, more than I could ever obtain. So I wrote that idea off… and then, several centuries later, I stumbled upon a source of literally infinite magic."
Mavis nodded slowly. "How far back would you go?"
"Far enough to save my brother's life. That way I wouldn't become cursed, nor would I have to live forever; isolated, unloved, and hopeless for the rest of eternity."
"I see."
A phantom breeze blew back her hair, and when she smiled, bright and wondrous, he struggled to remember that she wasn't alive. Stepping forward, she took his hand in both of hers. He couldn't feel her fingers, but he could feel a strange, gentle warmth. Golden magic crept up his arm, ethereal vines twisting around each other until they finally settled into a pulsating tattoo of light on his skin.
And as the light sank into his arm, so too did the magic embed itself in his mind: secrets he should never have been told; spells that were like his in their construction but also not like his, created by a protégée of magic, who might have been his protégée, had things turned out just a little differently.
"Mavis," he said, uncertainly, "I can't take these. It wouldn't be right."
She pulled a face. "Well, someone's got to have them. I would hate for my magic to disappear along with my memory."
That was a sentiment he understood, though still he protested: "I'm not even a member of your guild!"
"Nonsense. You've always been an honorary founder." A smile flickered across her face at his discomfort. "Well, the first will never work for you unless you take the guild mark, but it's not as though you need that one, given that it's merely a safer variant of your own spell. The second relies on heart far more than it does on magic… though I do not think that will cause a problem for you any more. As for the third…"
Her expression became serious again as she turned towards her own crystal tomb. "The third is called Fairy Glitter. I designed it to banish evil, to drive back the darkness… and to wipe out curses."
"It is impressive magic, Mavis, but you know as well as I do that nothing can erase the curse you and I share," he murmured.
"That is true, but the fact that it cannot be erased does not mean it cannot be suppressed. My spell, if used correctly, can hold back our curse for the briefest instant… and an instant is enough for the delicate equilibrium that exists within Fairy Heart. If you use it to suppress the effect of your curse on my body, the stalemate will be broken: my curse will be able to overpower yours, shatter the crystal, and fully return me to reality. By the time the fragment of your curse reasserts itself, Fairy Heart will be within my living body, rather than frozen in crystal. It will be… usable."
Zeref stared at her for a moment too long, and then nodded. "I understand."
"I love you, Zeref. And this time, I mean it with all my heart."
"I love you too, Mavis."
She gave a rueful smile. "But not in the way you once did."
"Perhaps not."
"Good."
Still hesitating, Zeref asked, "Is there anything you want me to tell them?"
"Only that it was my choice to give the choice to you."
"I made my choice the moment I stepped in this room," he told her. He glanced at the light encircling his arm. "I would have found my own way, had you not given me one."
"I know. But this is the only way I have to make things up to you."
She closed her eyes and stepped away, still smiling.
Zeref raised his right arm and the magic came to him easily, as if he had always been the one meant to cast it. The light of Fairy Glitter blazed. Perhaps it hurt, but if so, her projection showed no sign of it – showed no sign of anything but the love she felt for an old and dear friend, at the end.
Mavis's projection shattered. The great crystal which had housed Fairy Heart shattered with it, and her true body fell to the ground. He caught her easily, her time-frozen body even smaller than his, and he sank to his knees, holding her in his arms.
She did not stir.
There was no life left in that body, and where there was no life, there could be no magic.
He kissed her forehead, and he whispered, "Go, Mavis. You have kept your friends waiting long enough."
And he could have sworn he saw her smile, whole, finally at peace in death.
After all, if Fairy Glitter could suppress his curse, it could also do the same to hers. One moment of mortality, infinitesimally short, not long enough to die in – unless there was death magic involved. One moment was all it took for his curse to do what it had been trying to do for nearly a hundred years.
When Zeref stood, although he still carried her body, he felt as though a great weight had been lifted from him. Magic swirled around him like the morning tide. The shards of the shattered crystal flowed together and formed into a plinth. When he laid her body upon it, the crystal curled of its own accord, taking the form of countless small flowers, until she might have been sleeping in a meadow of diamond.
He did not cry, for she had died a very long ago, and there was nothing sad about her finally finding freedom.
"Farewell, my friend," spoke he.
And with great finality and new determination, he turned away.
The thing was, ever since Zeref had left Lucy's side, her words had not stopped ringing in his mind. Her arguments had been both heartfelt and logical, and she had clearly considered the situation from every conceivable point of view. She had left him in no doubt as to why she had not asked him to abandon his imminent attack on her guild because of her… but all she had done was give him reasons why she couldn't ask it of him.
There was nothing stopping him from making that decision on his own.
Except there was one thing, something that she, who had never had to live in his mind, would not even realize was an obstacle: his own inconsistency. If he decided not to attack Fairy Tail, there was every chance it would make that outcome more likely, when his curse kicked back – and it was sure to do so, after how effectively he had been defying it in recent days. Sooner or later, his control was going to slip, and one way or the other, these precious new bonds would not survive it.
The only way to stop himself from destroying Fairy Tail was to take away the only reason he had to do so, permanently.
So that was what he had done.
Fairy Heart was no more.
Mavis was free now – and so was he.
He should have been frightened. All his bridges were ash in the wind behind him, and yet he felt freer than he had in as long as he could remember. Somewhere along the way, he had forgotten he had wings.
But Lucy had reminded him.
Not because he knew how much she loved him, or because she had accepted his past and granted him hope for the future – but because she had shown him what it meant that she loved him.
He had lost Mavis, and perhaps she had never loved him anyway, but he had found love again.
He had lost Anna, and there would never be another like her, but he enjoyed investigating new branches of magic as he trained the Twelve, just as he had enjoyed those few months spent unravelling the mystery of a not-dragon beneath the white tower, and that short afternoon – perhaps the first of many – he had spent teaching Levy about the magic of life.
He had lost both his families, his birth one and his adoptive scaly one, but August had chosen to stay with him, no matter what hardships his curse and his unpredictability had thrown their way over the years.
He could never have a guild the way Lucy or Jellal did, only tools that he pushed away and lied to and cared about only when necessary. Yet Invel had seen through all that, and still promised never to leave his side, still protected him from his own stupidity that night at Mercurius, still showed him of his own free will a loyalty that the Etherious demons would have struggled to match.
How had he never seen it before? The more he thought about it, the more he realized there had always been people he had pushed away, but whom, if he hadn't, might have accepted him curse and all.
Lucy had shown him they had always been there.
She had shown him that they always would be.
Black wind crackled around him, seeking something to punish and finding nothing, for not a single weed grew in Fairy Tail's new courtyard. He made no attempt to bring it to heel. Waves of darkness broke against stone and glass, and he relished how utterly ineffectual its fury was, how weak it seemed to him now. Sooner or later, it would burn itself out, and then he could return to those he knew would wait as long as was necessary for him to regain control.
He was not ashamed to love them back.
And as he raised his head to the stars above, alone in a night that did not have the power to make him feel lonely, he knew that he was no longer afraid to live forever.