The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

Interlude: The Rabbit, the Fox, and the Fawn

Ruins of the Village of Aster, The Day Before

Sting opened his eyes.

Or tried to. It was harder than he was expecting, as though he'd slept for a hundred years and was waking to find his eyelids glued together with amber.

It didn't worry him at first – and then, suddenly, it did. His sense of touch realized that he wasn't, in fact, lying comfortably in his bed. That set alarm bells ringing up in the chambers of memory, which gave a feeble stir and then went still again.

Feeling suddenly vulnerable, Sting forced his eyes open, though it did little more than flood his brain with senseless light. He was upright, but not standing. Most of his weight was taken through ropes of some sort pulled tight around his wrists. From the pressure at his ankles, he assumed his feet were similarly bound.

To make matters worse, it was taking him far too long to wake up. Lethargy pressed upon his body, weighing him down like clothes soaked in honey, and he knew with certainty that it wasn't right.

Images came to him, so distant that he couldn't be sure they were memories and not dreams. He recalled meeting Lucy in Sabertooth's guildhall after Yukino's funeral. He had been so sure that his crazy plan was about to be discovered, but she'd clearly had other things on her mind, and instead he had been the one to make a discovery: that Rogue was also heading off on a mission of his own. He'd wondered if his old partner had had the same idea as him – and there had been nothing happy about that thought.

So he'd set off on Rogue's trail. He soon caught up, though this might have been the first time such a reunion wasn't a joyous one. Fists sang with anger, magic thrummed with power born of bitterness, and behind those hoarse shouts lurked shame: that they had both caught each other in the process of lying to their guild; that neither had stopped to think that the other might feel the same; that neither was motivated by bravery, but by an inability to embrace the very same acceptance they preached to the rest of their guild.

They should have gone home together. Instead, they had carried on.

On, to the place where they had fought Acnologia and lost. On, by land and by sea, until they found the point where he had limped ashore, battered and weak and victorious. On without a word, following the smell of dragon's blood.

Onward.

It wasn't that they would have a better chance alone than with Zeref and his mages backing them up.

It wasn't that they had any kind of chance at all.

But Yukino had died for nothing, and they couldn't sit around knowing that. Not in the guildhall she'd helped make into a home. Not while consoling their friends, whom she had always been brave enough to love, even in those days when love had been frowned upon in their guild. Not when they hadn't done everything they could to make sure her death meant something.

For years, Sabertooth had never known defeat. Then Fairy Tail had returned, and Sabertooth had been defeated so spectacularly at the Grand Magic Games – and defeat hadn't been the awful, life-ruining, dream-ending catastrophe Master Jiemma had always preached. It had shown them the way. It had changed everything, had given them so much in return for a tiny sliver of their pride. And they had all come out of it better people.

The defeat against Acnologia, though – the battle that had snuffed out their guild's light and given them nothing to show for her sacrifice – it was everything they'd once feared, and now, at last, they understood why Master Jiemma had always tried to shield them from it.

They'd loved Yukino too much to let her death mean so little. They had to fight and keep fighting until they'd won.

That was why they had left the guild: a pure and simple rejection of their reality.

And then-

"Oh, you're finally awake."

At that, Sting's eyes jerked fully open. His limbs tried in vain to escape the grips at his ankles and wrists. He could vaguely recall tracking the wounded dragon to the forest, and nothing after that, but it was clear from the throbbing in his head that it had involved a large amount of blunt force… and it was equally clear from that rough voice just who had dealt the blow.

Sheer panic forced his senses to resume operation. He was in an unknown forest; black branches criss-crossed the scene. What he had taken to be a grove of trees around him, however, was revealed upon second glance to all be part of one huge tree. Unable to hold its own weight, it had grown outwards, rather than up. Each off-shoot of branch was thick enough to be a tree in its own right. They rose and fell in a vast arcane sprawl, forming a clawed cage. Roots roiled above ground as well as below it, too powerful to be imprisoned in one or the other.

It was incomprehensibly vast, and incomprehensibly dead. The branches were withered, twisted, blackened. Evil. There wasn't a single shoot of green within the tree's embrace.

It was frightening, how easily that immense source of life had been snatched away.

It reminded him of how Yukino had died.

One moment in which all the verve and faith in the world had meant nothing.

Yet even dead, the great tree could still bind him. It was those zombified branches that strung him up like a carcass at auction, while the wild-looking man stared at him appraisingly, weighing up whether to make a bid.

Automatically, Sting tried to draw on his magic, though he was more awake now, and he wasn't surprised when nothing came to him. He inhaled as deeply as his lungs would let him – they shared the same dull ache as the rest of him – and he drew a little courage from the weak daylight.

Surely, if Acnologia wanted him dead, he wouldn't have woken up at all.

"Sting, isn't it?" Acnologia's tone was almost pleasant. "Inheritor of Weisslogia's power… tell me, where is he?"

"Where's Rogue?" Sting retaliated. He shouted with his whole body; if he'd been in an ordinary cage, the force of it would have rattled the bars, but the dead tree absorbed the sound without care.

"He's not the one you should be worrying about," the dragon in human form spoke idly. "Nor are you in any position to be making demands of me, Dragon Slayer. Answer my questions. Then we shall see if there is anything left of your friend worth saving."

Sting gritted his teeth. Silence was the sole act of defiance open to him, but if there was the slightest chance that Rogue was still alive…

"I shall ask once more. Where is he?"

"Where's who?" Sting spat back.

"Weisslogia, of course. For countless winters I have sensed his soul, tethered to this world and yet not within the present time. I have waited, and waited, and waited-! And just as I found them again, the last dragons, ready for the feast – they disappeared! Where is he?"

His voice was uneven, rising and falling as he spoke, and the last three words shed all pretence of sanity. Sting recoiled like he would from a slashing claw. "He's gone!"

"Gone?"

"Moved on."

"Gone." This time, Acnologia drew the word out, running it along his teeth like a serpentine tongue. "Gone. He can't be gone! I waited!"

"Guess you waited for nothing," Sting shot back, with a bravery he didn't really feel but an anger he definitely did. "You can't reach him now."

He turned away, and Sting wondered, bizarrely, if that meant he was going to survive. Then Acnologia twisted back, throwing an accusation like a breath attack: "Liar! If he's gone, how come you are still using Dragon Slayer magic?"

"Huh? Weisslogia passed his magic on to me! I'm not going to forget everything he taught me, just because he's not around any more!"

"That makes no sense!"

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Because I worked it out!" Acnologia snarled back, eyes flaming. "I know why you and your little friends haven't turned into dragons! It's because you're not Dragon Slayers at all! You're just convenient, human-sized vessels. The ones with the power are the dragons who took over your bodies in order to hide from me." Frustration overflowed from his throat, raw animal sounds that human flesh shouldn't have been able to produce. "But if that were true, you'd have lost that magic when the dragons disappeared, and yet – you – still – have it! A human! How?"

"How the hell should I know? I was five years old when Weisslogia vanished!"

Acnologia's face contorted in rage. "Tell me what he did!"

"I can't tell you something I don't know!" Sting yelled back. "Maybe there wasn't any magic involved at all! Maybe you turned into a dragon and I didn't because I had a dragon parent who actually loved me!"

He realized, the moment after he said it, how stupid he was being. What was he trying to do, provoke an already-unstable man?

But the seconds grudgingly ticked by, and he was still alive. The necklace of fangs clinked upon Acnologia's chest as he turned away. Sting wondered if one of them was Weisslogia's. His fist clenched.

"He's all yours," Acnologia growled.

It was only then that Sting realized the dead tree's cage contained more than just him and his captor.

The Black Dragon was the apex predator, the bane of all living things; if Sting was going to die today, it would surely be at his hands. He commanded the Dragon Slayer's attention so thoroughly that Sting had failed to spot the only patch of colour amongst the blackened branches.

Now, a man dressed in a reddish-brown kimono stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. He was tall, bald, and boasted particularly spiky eyebrows. Most unusually of all, there was a thick black smudge on his forehead, as if someone had intentionally scribbled over something with a marker pen.

Lucy would have recognized him from her first ill-fated encounter with Avatar. Zeref would also have recognized him (and probably proceeded to suffer a mental breakdown). If Natsu hadn't burst into Sabertooth's guildhall over a month ago, so desperate for any sign of Zeref that he had snatched the job to destroy his supposed cult right off another guild's request board, it might have been Sting who had taken on that job, and then he might have recognized the keeper of Avatar's dungeons too… but he did not. He didn't need to recognize him, though, to know he was an enemy.

"You are most gracious, Dark Lord Acnologia," spoke the man, with a business-like bow. "Is there anything you want from him in particular?"

"I want to know if his ignorance is the truth," the dragon said. "If he is lying to me, break him. If he truly does not know the answer… tear him apart. The answer must be within him somewhere. If it isn't in his mind, it must be in his body."

With a swirl of his tattered cape, Acnologia strode away, not even caring enough to see the outcome of his orders. It might have motivated Sting to try harder to escape, but the dead tree gripped him no less vengefully for the dragon's absence. The magic Weisslogia had bestowed upon him refused to come at his call.

The man stroked his chin as he paced in front of Sting, pondering the puzzle the Dragon Slayer posed, and humming to himself with each footstep that crunched upon the ground. A growl forced its way through Sting's lips. This man was all the motion and sound and colour in this empty place, and yet the closer he looked, the more he realized that it wasn't dye staining his robes, but old, coppery blood. The knuckles he cracked were white with scars.

"Now then, how shall we entertain our guest?" he mused. "Hot pokers? The iron maiden? Or perhaps my chance to use the foot-licking torture has arrived at last!" Clapping his hands together, he glanced excitedly from left to right. "There must be a goat I could use in a place like this!"

Sting snorted in disbelief – not at the mention of this so-called foot-licking torture, but at the sheer ridiculousness of the other's words. As if there would be a goat in a hellish place like this. As if there would be anything alive in the hideout of a dragon who brought nothing but destruction.

Oblivious to Sting's thoughts, the man continued, cheerfully, "Oh, hello there!"

For a moment, there was a brief flicker of hope in Sting's heart – that Rogue had managed to escape Acnologia's wrath, and had come back for him; that his guild had noticed their absence and sent out a search party; that Lucy had figured out something was off about how he and Rogue had been acting, and tracked them here…

But it wasn't a crusading hero that the man was addressing.

It was a fox.

Sleek-nosed, bushy-tailed, sharp-eyed; it stood with its front paws resting upon one contorted root, watching Sting's struggles with interest. In the greyness of the forest, its unusually rich red coat was a bold stroke of colour.

Sting's captor continued, "I don't suppose you'd be interested in licking salt water off this gentleman's feet, would you?"

The fox's tail twitched disdainfully.

"No, I thought not," he sighed. "Go on, then. Shoo. Away with you."

Beady eyes met Sting's own, and he found himself wishing that it wouldn't leave him… but the fox and its tail flowed into the bowels of the great tree, and he was alone once more.

"I've decided!" the man announced. "You're going to be the test subject for my new pain enchantment!" Conspiratorially, he added, "I haven't quite got it right yet, you see. I developed a spell which directly targets the sense of pain – based on a curse once used by a demon, in fact. But the results have been… varied."

"So it doesn't work?" Sting asked warily.

"That depends on what you mean by work," came the sad response. "Does it create unsurpassed sensations of agony powerful enough to break even the most strong-willed victim? Absolutely. Does it do so in a slow and controlled way that allows the torturer to extract information from said victim before they descend into unfettered madness? Let's just say that I'm still working on that bit."

Sting choked.

"Well, fourth time lucky," the man shrugged, and a wave of green light enveloped the Dragon Slayer.

Maybe time passed after that. Maybe it didn't. Sting wouldn't have noticed if Acnologia had danced naked in front of him, let alone the sun crawling lazily across the sky. If not for the occasional lapses in the pain, where his torturer barked questions to which he still did not know the answer, and he took the chance to force oxygen into his lungs while he wasn't screaming, he wouldn't have been able to say with any certainty that he was still alive at all.

There was only pain.

And tears and blood, screaming and sweating, until the exhaustion and the desperation of fighting the Black Dragon for real were a distant dream compared to the reality of losing to him.

Until the hope that Rogue would rescue him had become the hope that Rogue had died quickly, bravely, mercifully.

Until there was no hope at all.

Until there was nothing.

Sting opened his eyes.

It was odd, because he didn't remember having closed them.

Odder still, the world was nothing like he remembered: it was big and blurred and wide.

He could hear his own voice screaming, and yet he wasn't screaming. He tried to – it was just habit now – but his mouth no longer seemed connected to his lungs. No sound came out. No air went in. Nothing.

When he tried to turn his head, perspectives swung dizzyingly in his field of vision. He couldn't move – not because his limbs were still bound, but because he didn't have limbs, not in the right places, not properly attached.

Panic flared through him like explosions along the length of an oil train.

There was a flash of scarlet fur. Something cuffed him around the head, and he sank back into unconsciousness.

Sting opened his eyes.

Third time lucky.

Perhaps he was getting the hang of it, because by the time he realized that breathing felt different to normal, he was already doing it, so panicking seemed rather redundant.

Blinking, he fought to raise his head from the ground. It made little difference; the world he saw was still too low down, too bright, and too blue-grey. He could see so much without turning his head. The crevices of the tunnel he found himself in – carved of earth and intertwined roots – jumped out at him with startling clarity but very little depth.

It was at this point that his brain finally decided to report in for duty. Now that it was no longer being punished with pain for simply being conscious, it ran a check of sensation and motion in record time, and concluded that Sting had too many feet, too few hands, not enough height, and altogether too much fur.

"Sting!"

The sound was loud and its echo irritating. Sting's ear twitched, which was in itself a new experience, and then a clatter of hooves drew his attention. He tried to step backwards but the motion got muddled somewhere between his head and his (hind?) legs. He was still rooted to the spot when, into that dip in the earth, sheltered by great tree roots and warm darkness, clattered a fawn.

Her tawny coat was speckled with white. Her legs bent at awkward angles, yet still found purchase on the scree. White markings formed wing-like patterns around her ankles.

And, most bizarrely of all, the fawn spoke. "Sting! It's me, Wendy!"

Sting blinked, and then recalled what the torturer had said.

Unfettered madness.

Right.

Well, it beat excruciating pain, so Sting let his head fall back down and closed his eyes.

The fawn nudged him with her nose. "Sting! I know how weird this must seem to you, but I can explain everything, I swear!"

That was cute. The pain-induced madness was actually trying to justify itself.

"Sting! Can you hear me?" After a pause, her voice resumed in a slightly distorted way, as if she was facing away from him. "Did it even work? Am I just talking to a random rabbit?" There was sudden intake of breath. "What if I did it wrong, and now he's stuck with a rabbit's brain forever?"

"No, it worked," another voice answered, with a rich confidence that could have convinced the world to stop turning for her.

Curious now as to why his delusions had created one familiar voice and one entirely unfamiliar one, Sting's eyes slid open – just as a monstrous beast plunged into the tunnels.

He had never known such fear. Hind legs, too awkward to move at his conscious command, suddenly sprung into overdrive. He may not have known how to pilot this body, but his instincts did, and he was not staying here just to die.

There was a blur of crimson. Sharp pain burst behind his head. A force lifted him off the ground, jaws on the back of his neck, leaving his hind legs to kick uselessly at the air.

He felt the growl through his fur. "That is enough. Control your animal instincts or I will knock you out again."

"She's not going to eat you, Sting," chirped the talking fawn who claimed to be Wendy. "It's okay, I went through pretty much the same thing. It's a prey animal thing. Just relax, and she'll put you down again."

How was he supposed to relax when there were jaws clamped around the scruff of his neck? The wild scrabbling of his heart encouraged his body to do the same… but what was waiting for him out there? Agony and madness. Not long ago, he had only been able to dream of the quick, clean snap of a predator's jaws.

With that morbid thought, Sting closed his eyes and felt his body – strange as it was – go limp.

"That's better," the voice growled, and he was set back on the ground.

Instantly, the urge to flee picked up again, but this time it was tempered by reason. There was a mismatch between his experience and the certainty hard-wired into his genes, and he slowly turned, wanting to see for himself which creature had defied the ancient rules of predator and prey.

There, sat on her haunches, was the scarlet-furred fox. Her tail curled around her legs, as though she were sitting on a throne of blood-red cloud. There was a fierceness in her gaze that simple animal instincts could not account for.

With what Sting considered to be impressive motor control, he took a successful hop forward. When the fox made no move to strike, some of the tension eased out of his muscles, and the next few steps came far more easily.

"That's it," Fawn-Wendy encouraged him. "You're picking this up a lot faster than I did!"

Sting opened his mouth to tell her that it was probably easier to shuffle as a bunny rabbit than to balance on four spindly legs – not least because it wasn't so far to fall if he got it wrong – when he remembered that rabbits couldn't speak. After a moment of trying and failing to make words come out, he dropped his head and gave the two talking animals a plaintive look.

"You're thinking too much about it," the fox advised. "The less you think, the easier it will be."

"Right," Sting said automatically, and jumped at the sound of his own voice. It was definitely a human sound, and he was fairly sure his rabbit's voice-box hadn't produced it. Then again, it was no stranger than being a rabbit in the first place, so he shrugged – not that he was entirely sure which muscles were shrugging – and carried on. He asked of the fox, "Who are you?"

"My name is Irene. I am an ally; that is all you need to know."

Excitedly, Wendy interjected, "She's Erza's mother, Sting!"

"You are?"

The fox blinked, long and slow. "So I have been told."

"You don't know?" Sting wondered. "How can you not know?"

The fox's expression didn't change. "I gave my daughter up shortly after she was born. I was not aware she was even still alive."

"But it's definitely Erza," Wendy added, practically skipping from side to side. She had always been cheerful, but being transformed into a baby deer had made her practically exuberant. "You should see Irene's real body. She looks so much like Erza, it's amazing!"

"So you've said," Irene commented, sounding bored.

"Plus, she's a Dragon Slayer!"

"What?" Sting choked. "How is that possible? I thought only the five of us were left!"

"She's from Alvarez!" Wendy answered for her again.

She had spoken brightly, her stubby tail wagging, but this piece of information caused Sting to jump – and to an impressive height as well, as he had forgotten he was a rabbit. "You're from-?"

The fox gave a sly smile. "Am I to take it, from your reaction, that His Majesty has finally pulled himself together and committed to the invasion he has been going back and forth on for years?"

"Well…" Nervously, Sting's paws kneaded the ground. "I don't know for sure, but when Rogue and I left Jasmine, there were rumours going round… the Fiorean army was being mobilized…"

Irene sighed. "What dreadful timing he has. Rest assured, little rabbit, I have no intention of fighting unless His Majesty personally orders me to, which is highly unlikely to happen while we are trapped here. I rather think we are all in this together."

"The three talking animals." Sting's snort came out as more of a squeak. He wrinkled his nose, and found that he quite liked the feeling. "I suppose you're the reason why I'm currently a rabbit?"

"Indirectly," the fox conceded. "It's my spell, but Wendy was the one who cast it on you."

"Irene taught me how, so that I can reverse the one she cast on me and Gajeel if she's unable to do it herself," Wendy confided.

"Gajeel's here too?" Sting glanced around, marvelling at how he hardly had to turn his head to sweep a full three-sixty degrees. Apart from the three of them, the only thing that moved in the hollow beneath the ancient tree was an earthworm, which Sting fixed with a dubious look.

"He's around here somewhere, but he's shy," Wendy explained.

"He's- what?"

"He also doesn't really get on with Irene. They shout at each other a lot. It's easier just to let him be."

"I can't say I'm her biggest fan, either." Sting would have deliberately let anger seep into his voice, but thinking too much about how he was speaking stopped him from being able to do so at all. He had to make do with a rabbity glare. "Why, exactly, did you – both of you – turn me into a rabbit?"

Irene was not the least bit intimidated. "No one turned you into anything. There was always one man and one rabbit. Wendy simply switched you."

"Then, that…" His ears gave a wing-like flutter. Straining to hear beyond Wendy's inability to stand still and the pounding of his own heart in the presence of a predator, he could pick out the echoes of a scream digging into their makeshift warren. He recalled his first ill-fated attempt at awakening, at hearing himself scream but being unable to feel it in his lungs, and shuddered. "That's…"

"The rabbit whose body you are borrowing, yes," Irene finished for him.

Shivering despite his fur, Sting fell backwards. He could close his eyes, but he couldn't close his ears. He pressed them tight against his head, but the motion only reminded him that he wasn't supposed to be able to do that with his ears at all.

"I can switch you back if you'd rather face the torture yourself," Irene said archly.

Sting shuddered just as strongly at the memory of that pain.

"It is the only reason why our ruse has not yet been discovered," she added. "If it helps, I do not think that a rabbit's consciousness – being a non-magical creature – is capable of comprehending its situation. The flood of complex sensations is beyond its ability to understand; I doubt it can even feel the pain it is in."

"Why did you…?"

"We were in the same position," Wendy explained. "I was captured by Acnologia while travelling from Lamia Scale to Fairy Tail, and I woke up a prisoner underneath this tree. He asked me questions I couldn't answer, and then he got that man to- to-" She drew in a deep breath and carried on. "Then I woke up as a fawn, and discovered that Irene had switched me out of my body to protect my mind. We've been hiding here ever since. When they brought Gajeel in, we were able to do the same for him, and then when you got here, Irene agreed to teach me the spell, so I could, uh, practice…"

"But why are you still hanging around in a place like this?"

"Because," Irene replied, "if we flee, we will be trapped in these animal bodies for the rest of our lives. However, it has not proven so easy to rescue our human selves from Acnologia. Three talking animals do not stand much of a chance against the Black Dragon."

"I'm not sure three Dragon Slayers would, either," Sting grunted. "We already tried that. Me, Rogue, a bunch of the strongest mages I'd ever met – including one who turned into a golden dragon right in front of us – and not to mention freaking Zeref on our side, and we still couldn't beat him."

For the first time that day, the fox seemed interested in what he had to say. "Is that so? It seems that I have missed a lot back in Alvarez. Still," she added, almost to herself, "he has not changed that much, if he has embarked upon this war of his regardless."

"Well who cares about him?" Sting snapped. Zeref was not what he wanted to talk about right now. He had come here to try and ensure that Yukino hadn't died for nothing; he was not about to sympathize with the one who had killed her. "I'm more interested in why Acnologia is kidnapping Dragon Slayers and then not killing them. Even ignoring mine and Rogue's failed attempt to push him out of the universe, aren't we each other's natural enemy?"

"Did he ask you the same thing he asked me?" Wendy checked. "About why we didn't turn into dragons?"

"Yeah. Can't tell him something I don't know, though, can I? No matter how many torturers he sets on me."

"Same… I know Grandine did something to me, but I don't know what it was."

"I do," Irene said. There were times when she seemed like a fellow adventurer, trapped in the same comical situation as them, and there were times when she seemed like a haughty goddess gracing them with a few moments of her time. This was the latter, and with a swish of her tail, she set about pacing back and forth, a ribbon of crimson winding through the shadows. "It was your friend Zeref who did it. He created the ritual that sealed a dragon's soul inside you, thereby stabilizing your magic and preventing you from changing forms."

"I don't believe you," Sting snapped. "There's no way he would do something like that."

If that was how dismissive her expression could be as a fox, he dreaded to think how Irene must have been as a human.

Defensively, he continued, "Then he must have had a reason for it! To kill our parents, or to weaken us, or…"

He tailed off.

Rogue had been so quiet when he'd come back from talking to Zeref on the airship – and so determined to trust him.

But then Yukino had died.

Rabbits didn't snarl very well, but Sting had a good go.

In a gentle attempt to lessen the tension, Wendy asked, "How do you know this, Irene?"

Sting thought she wasn't going to answer, but Wendy was cute enough under normal circumstances; as a fawn, it was pretty much impossible to say no to her.

"My situation was somewhat different to yours," Irene answered carefully. "Zeref and I worked together on adapting his ritual to my circumstances. I learnt about you and your parent-dragons from him. What concerns me is Acnologia's sudden interest in the matter. From what I can gather from his rants, it was the presence of the dragons' souls in your bodies that kept him living all these years in hatred, waiting for you to return to linear time so that he could fulfil his goal of eradicating all the dragons. But the dragons' souls have all departed, now, and our magic is stable. He has nothing to gain."

"Maybe he thinks we are the dragons, somehow?" Wendy guessed. "That's what he seemed to be saying to me… he claimed it wasn't me using Sky Magic, it was always Grandine…"

Reluctantly, Sting returned to the conversation. "But he knows now that that can't be true. He's the only dragon left. He should just eat himself and be done with it." A vicious thought occurred to him, and he added, "Maybe he wants to know how it happened so that he can get revenge on the one who did it in the first place. Let's tell him it was Zeref. Acnologia can take it out on him instead of us."

Sharp teeth flashed in the shadows. "No," Irene stated. "What good would it serve to pit them against each other? Neither can kill the other. A battle between them would do nothing but cause pain to everyone and everything around them."

"You think I don't know that?" Sting snapped, feeling the words as harshly as if those claws had ripped into his fur.

The fox regarded him coolly for a moment, long enough to communicate that she wouldn't care even if she did know who he had lost, and then she said, "Telling Acnologia now will only make the present situation far, far worse. Surely you care about your own predicament, if not Zeref's."

"The one I care most about right now is Rogue. Where is he?"

Wendy glanced between them, wide-eyed – or, at least, wider-eyed than was normal for a fawn. "Rogue's here too?"

"Course. Did you think I would challenge Acnologia on my own?" The fox's snort made it clear that she believed the two scenarios were equally foolish, but saying it out loud was beneath her; Sting ignored her in return. "Rogue helped me track Acnologia to this forest, but I was alone when I woke up."

"I haven't seen him," Wendy voiced nervously.

"He has to be here somewhere! If Acnologia won't tell me, maybe his pet torturer will. I'll beat the answer out of him!"

"As a rabbit?"

"If that's what it takes!"

He had barely managed more than a hop forward when Irene suddenly dropped into a hunting stance, teeth bared. Her tail swished slowly back and forth, a pennant of war. "No," she hissed. "I will not let you reveal our one advantage to Acnologia without a plan."

Sting fought back the rabbit's instinctive fear – barely – but it left him feeling nauseous. From trembling lungs, he managed to force out the words, "I don't have to listen to you!"

"You don't have to, no," she agreed, her voice like a drawn bowstring. "But if you don't, you will find yourself back in your suffering human body before you can do anything to jeopardize our situation."

"Hey." Wendy placed herself somewhat skittishly between them. "Maybe, if we're careful not to draw attention to ourselves, we could go and look for Rogue? You did find Sting, after all…"

"Hmm. I will go and look for your friend on my own," Irene decided. It wasn't an offer, because it wasn't up to Sting to accept or decline. "If I catch sight of you outside these tunnels, you are going to wish Acnologia had killed you."

Then she was gone, leaving only a blur of scarlet imprinted upon his vision.

It took all of Sting's willpower not to follow her. He hopped once, and again, restlessly, and then rounded on an anxious Wendy. "How can you trust her? She admitted to working for Zeref!"

"She doesn't seem like a bad person."

Sting snorted as well as any rabbit could.

There was a moment of bitter silence, and then Wendy said, "We'll find Rogue and get out of here. We will."

He said nothing to that. Curling up, he withdrew into himself and settled down to wait, flattening his ears atop his head in a vain attempt to muffle the sound of his own body screaming.

Rogue opened his eyes.

Unlike Sting's three less-than-successful attempts at waking up, neither immediate pain, constricting panic, nor a newly inhuman body came to greet him. The darkness didn't bother him – it never had – and the warmth was pleasant. He thought he might have been lying on a pile of furs, with a raw, natural smell about them, rather than the usual stain of chemicals that irritated his sensitive draconic nose.

But beneath that smell was something else. Something he didn't like. Something which drifted through the comfort and kickstarted his mind and memory all at once.

He sat up suddenly – and let out a gasp of pain. Agony streaked across his midsection. When he tentatively pressed his fingers to the source, he could feel the roughness of bandages pulled taut against his skin.

"Take it easy," a low voice growled.

This advice had the opposite effect. Rogue fumbled for his magic, trying to roll off the pile of furs, get to his feet, enter a fighting stance, and vanish into the shadows all at once – only for a hand to seize his shoulder and push him back down, as rough as the voice continuing its unsolicited advice: "You need to rest."

Hardly any light made it this far into the cave without being absorbed into the stone, but Rogue didn't need it to immediately identify that wild-haired, one-armed silhouette, any more than he needed to have heard his human voice before to know why it twanged such an unpleasant chord deep within his skull.

Acnologia gave a mirthless smile. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Gingerly, Rogue touched his bandages again, recalling all too clearly the savage claw that had dealt him the wound underneath.

"What were you expecting, two Dragon Slayers attacking me out of the blue?" Decades of disuse had left Acnologia's voice raw and guttural, but the rebuke was frighteningly human. "Not for the first time, in fact."

Rogue scowled. It was easier to accept that this was all some bizarre hallucination than it was to even consider apologizing to this not-man. Changing the subject, he snapped, "Where's Sting?"

"Alive."

When no further answer appeared forthcoming, Rogue pressed, "Why? Why am I alive?"

"Whenever I think of the hole in reality you tried to push me through, I wonder the same thing." Acnologia gave a half-growl that, coming from any other dragon, Rogue would have sworn was a chuckle. "But that's precisely it. I want to know why."

"Why what?"

"Why did you attack me?"

"You killed my dad!" Rogue exploded, bursting into an upright position again – and only stopping because his wound made a startlingly aggressive protest.

"I killed all the dragons. I won't apologize for that."

Fists curling into the pile of pelts, Rogue's shoulders heaved with righteous anger. Yet there was still some part of him wondering – why wasn't Acnologia attacking him? Why was the apocalypse incarnate, the Black Dragon himself, the one who had driven an entire species to extinction and obliterated Tenrou Island without warning and fought so viciously against them in the sky… why had he dressed Rogue's wound instead of ripping him to shreds as he slept?

Acnologia had turned away from him, and was busy attempting to light a fire using only a flint and his one remaining hand. Something about his patience caught Rogue's attention once more. He knew he should try and run while the other was preoccupied, slip into the shadows and disappear before the roulette-wheel of Acnologia's madness switched his inexplicable generosity out with rage once more, but he was still there when the fire sparked into life.

Acnologia said, "I don't see why we should fight each other. The dragons are gone, now. Why should we, the last of the ancient Dragon Slayers, be enemies?"

"You have the nerve to ask that, after everything you've done?"

"What's done is done." His shrug was the shrug of the victor, a man who didn't care, a man with nothing left to lose – but there was also something in it of the man who understood sunk costs, and that sometimes the past wasn't the most appropriate yardstick by which to measure the future.

It clashed, hard, against the desperate anger that had driven Rogue since Yukino's death. "Just a few days ago, you were perfectly happy to kill all of us!"

Sat cross-legged by the fire, looking up at Rogue unperturbed by the difference in height or in righteous emotion, the terrible Dragon Slayer barely reacted to the provocation. "I am not the one who started that battle."

"Yes, you did! You kidnapped the Dragon Slayers – and when God Serena tried to escape and get help, you killed him!"

"Of course I did," Acnologia shrugged. "I thought he was hiding a dragon inside his body. I was wrong; it was nothing but stored magic. Still, having met him, however briefly, I do not think anyone is any worse off for my actions."

"He was a human being! There were people who cared for him – and if you'd realized that, you wouldn't have been so surprised when Zeref came after you for revenge!"

Fire crackled in the silence. The sound was too familiar, too homely; Rogue found himself detesting it as much as the one who had lit it.

Acnologia shook his head. "That was a miscalculation. It wasn't my intention to provoke the Black Mage. We have co-existed for a long time… at least, until you and he decided co-existence was no longer acceptable."

"You're the one who broke the stalemate! You're not exactly denying killing God Serena, are you?"

"Not at all."

"And you kidnapped Wendy and Gajeel."

"Yes."

And yet he had the nerve to act as though he wasn't the villain!

Oblivious to Rogue's thought process, Acnologia continued, calmly, "Are you going to ask me why?"

"What…?"

"Why I kidnapped your friends. You must have thought there was a reason, no?"

He had thought there was a reason: he'd thought it was because Acnologia was mad or cruel or both.

"All the dragons are dead," Acnologia stated. "The very last of them, sealed within you and your friends, have departed from the world at last. My goal is complete. So… what am I supposed to do now?"

"Disappear," Rogue hissed.

To his surprise, Acnologia nodded in agreement with the unveiled threat. "That's the obvious answer, isn't it? There's still one dragon left in the world: me. To truly win my battle, I myself would have to die. But then I fought you and your friends. When I saw that you retained your human forms and your dragon magic even though the souls of the dragons had been vanquished… it gave me hope. Hope that I, too, could become human once more."

"You are human," Rogue frowned, nodding towards the man sat cross-legged in front of the fire; he was a feral man, but still a human one.

"This body isn't real. Sustaining it takes effort and magic, and it lacks so many of the sensations of living." He dragged his hand roughly through the untamed spikes of his hair. "My human self is gone; my true form is that of a dragon. All that remains is this echo of how I looked on the day that I turned. I want to truly become human again."

"You don't deserve that!"

"So you won't help, then."

Rogue flinched as Acnologia got to his feet. Unable and unready to fight back, he was fully expecting to die in that moment.

But the dragon sighed and turned away.

This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

Where was the characteristic madness that consumed all the humans who turned? Where was the love of violence? Where was the incoherent cruelty for which he was known across the lands? Where was the apocalypse incarnate, the one who had no desire but to destroy?

Who was this sad, disappointed man, walking quietly away from the one who had ripped his last hope away from him?

No matter how hard Rogue tried to focus on the image of him slicing open Skiadrum's throat, or the stranger from Alvarez who had given his life so that they could escape after Yukino's death, or the unknown fates of Sting and Wendy and Gajeel, nothing could shake the inexplicable feeling of guilt clutching at his heart.

"Wait!"

Acnologia paused. He didn't look back, as if he didn't quite dare to hope, but he was listening.

"I… might be able to help," Rogue admitted. "If you really mean it. If you've not hurt Sting or the others… and you really do want to become human again so that you can move on…"

"Go on."

Rogue knew he shouldn't. He had no reason to help this villain, this monster, this remorseless man, and yet…

"I don't know the technical details of why we didn't turn into dragons," he confessed. "But… Zeref does. He had a part in everything. If you want to be human again, he's the one you need to convince."

In the silence that followed, Rogue's fingers twisted awkwardly through the pelts, wondering if he'd done the right thing.

At Acnologia's sudden, bitter laugh, he couldn't help flinching back. "The Black Mage won't help me. He has made it very clear that he considers himself my enemy."

"Maybe. But…" There came a flicker of memories Rogue didn't want, buried with each shovelful of soil that had buried Yukino, but he couldn't forget them any more than he would ever forget her. "Zeref isn't a bad person. He's volatile and dangerous, but beneath all that, he's kind. Isn't it worth trying to talk to him?"

Acnologia's hateful laugh made it clear what he thought of that. With a swirl of his ragged cape, he strode away, claws smacking against stone, and disappeared into the darkness.

Alone, and still alive, Rogue touched his bandaged wound and wondered.

By the time Acnologia emerged from the cave, he was positively snarling. Only sheer stubbornness kept him in human form, and even then, scales were forcing their way up through his skin, and his hand contorted into a claw-like grip whenever he took his mind off it.

Any living creatures would have fled from the aura emanating from him, had they not already disappeared the moment the Black Dragon had taken up residence in their forest. There was only one who did not – one woman who lounged against a dead tree, and she called out to him loud and clear and smug: "Didn't I tell you it would work?"

Acnologia's scowl deepened. It had worked, and that was the only reason why she was still alive.

"They're heroes, you see," she continued, fully aware of the danger and choosing to ignore it. "If you torture them, you only make them more stubborn. But if you pretend you want to be friends now, they'll trip over themselves to give you what you want."

An inhuman claw slashed into the bark mere inches from her neck and remained there. "But he can't give me what I want! He told me that the only one who can is the Black Mage, and he will never help me!"

"Oh, I'm not so sure about that. With him, it's only a matter of having the right leverage. Do you honestly think he'd have embarked upon a suicide mission against you after four hundred years of coexistence if there wasn't something capable of motivating him?"

"I can't threaten him," Acnologia growled. "He's immortal. He has nothing he cares about. Nothing to lose."

"Are you sure about that?" Far too comfortable for someone only one worn thread of sanity away from a brutal death, she stared up at him with the same dangerous serenity that had stayed his hand when she had first dared to approach him. He had recognized her smell from the airship that had wounded his pride as much as his body, but her words had intrigued him, and it seemed, for once, that he had been right to listen.

"I know him far better than you do," Dimaria continued coolly. "There is something – or should I say someone – he cares about very much." A sneer twisted her lips. "You want to make him agree to your demands? Go after Lucy Heartfilia."

"And why," the Dragon Slayer drawled, every word drawn over his fangs, "should I listen to a word you say? You're his ally."

"No, I'm not," came the calm response. "I want to see him suffer like I did. I want him to know he's the reason why his precious Lucy is hurt, and then I want to watch as he watches her die. I will help anyone and anything who will make him pay."

There was a madness about her – and he knew madness – but it wasn't like anything he had seen before. It was unbreakable. It was resolute. Curiously, he asked, "Even to the point of abandoning your own race?"

"Oh, not at all. I hold both of you responsible for Ajeel's death. I have no doubt that His Majesty will kill you eventually. That's your punishment. I just want to ensure that he suffers too."

"Interesting. I think I like you." At last, he removed his claw from alongside her neck and took a step backwards. "Remind me, which one is Lucy Heartfilia?"