The Scars That Make You Whole
By CrimsonStarbird
Firesign, Part 2
-The Fire Dragon King-
Natsu only spoke once on the journey north.
Without warning, without preamble, he asked, "Is it true that you're my brother?"
"Yes," Zeref said quietly. And then, after they'd travelled another mile, or perhaps another ten, the silence became too much for him: "Don't you want to ask anything else?"
"No. It's not important to me."
Time and distance spun out between them as easily as it did behind them.
Zeref murmured, "It's important to me."
"I don't care."
"Okay."
They went the rest of the way in silence.
By the time they entered the forests which hid the ruins of the village of Aster, Zeref no longer had to lead the way. Perhaps it was the push of long-forgotten memories, or perhaps it was the pull of fate, but both he and Natsu knew exactly where they were going – and what awaited them there.
That was why Natsu stopped outside the old village and rounded on Zeref. "Get Lucy," he growled, and each civil word took more willpower than ripping out his own teeth. "I'll deal with Acnologia."
"But-"
"You can't kill him, can you?" Natsu spat. "Or you wouldn't have needed help."
Quietly, as if afraid to point out the obvious for the first time in his life, Zeref ventured, "You can't kill him, either."
"I can."
"You can't. You're nowhere near as strong as him. You can't already have forgotten Tenrou Island-"
"I wasn't ready then!" Natsu snapped. "I'm ready now. Or, I will be." Before Zeref could ask what that meant, Natsu turned on him once more with an ice-cold demand: "Undo the magic Igneel used to stop me from turning into a dragon."
Zeref's eyes widened. "I can't!"
"Don't lie to me!" Natsu screamed, one tiny thread of willpower away from striking him again. "I've seen what you can do with that book!"
Frantically, Zeref shook his head. "No. I can't do that to you. If you turn into a dragon, you won't ever turn back!"
"I – DON'T – CARE!"
"Igneel sacrificed his life to save you from that fate! I won't undo everything that he did!"
"Liar! He told me Acnologia killed him!"
"No," Zeref murmured, his voice suddenly hollow. "I'm the one who killed him. He begged me to do it, because it was the only way to save you. He died so that you could live."
"You're wrong!" Natsu snapped back. "He died so that I had a life, and if I want to use that life to save Lucy and beat Acnologia, that's what I'm going to do!"
Anguish twisted Zeref's expression. "There's no point in defeating Acnologia if you become just like him in the process! It's not just a physical change, Natsu. If that magic takes control of you, you will lose your memories, your mind, everything that makes you human. Becoming a monster to kill a monster… that is the very cycle of hate that Igneel sought to break!"
"I'm not like Acnologia! Hate led him to transform, but I'm doing it out of love-"
"And it is out of love that I must refuse you!"
Natsu had been angry before, but at that, he exploded. "How dare you? You have no right to love me! You don't even know me!" There was fury in his eyes and fire in his soul; his was the rage of the hot young earth, his was the thunder that tore open the sky. "I am not your brother, I am not your toy, I am not yours! You have no right to stop me!"
Zeref glanced away, unwilling to give any more of a concession than that.
"Goddammit, I need that power! How else am I supposed to fight Acnologia?"
Zeref had no answer, only that single certainty: "I won't lose you like this, Natsu."
Natsu snarled, "You can't lose me, because you don't have me! But if you do this for me, then you might, do you see?"
Zeref did, but it wasn't that easy, was it? If he agreed to do this, Natsu might finally acknowledge him… but it would only be for a moment, before his human body was lost, and his mind and soul and self lost with it. There was only one road to the power he needed, and it led straight to the fate Igneel had sought to prevent at any cost.
Igneel was no longer here. He had entrusted Natsu's fate to Zeref.
And Zeref couldn't betray his oldest friend like that. He couldn't betray the brother he still loved.
And as he opened his mouth to tell Natsu so, something strange happened.
He had already told Natsu no one final time. It had shattered their fledgling truce; Natsu had turned on Zeref as if it were possible to beat the counter-ritual out of him. An immense burst of magic from nearby had been the only thing capable of stopping their fight. He and Natsu had run at once to the source, but they were already too late to do anything except watch as Acnologia attacked, and Lucy died, and he lost control of his voice and his magic and…
All of it had already happened, and yet none of it had. A minute of their future, happening and unhappening in the blink of an eye. He thought he sensed Dimaria's magic, although he'd never seen her do anything like this before – yet how she had done it paled into insignificance next to what he had seen.
He knew Natsu had seen it too. The Dragon Slayer was regarding him with a new wariness, perhaps having seen enough to finally convince him that his feelings for Lucy were true, perhaps struggling to come to terms with the future that they had somehow glimpsed, and yet his voice was remorseless: "If you won't do it for me, then do it for Lucy."
Zeref's voice cracked. "Natsu, please, don't make me choose between you-"
"Do it, Zeref."
The sound of his brother speaking his name in something other than a yell of hate was more than he could bear.
He touched his shaking palm to Natsu's chest. He didn't need the Book of END for this. It had nothing to do with the fact that Natsu was part demon; Zeref was merely undoing a ritual he himself had invoked many centuries ago.
Those bonds of light around the boy's soul jumped immediately into his hand. They thrummed with power: old magic and undying love. Igneel had loved him so, so much, and Zeref had too – and the magic born from that love should surely be stronger than any other, yet it disintegrated at his touch.
Closing his eyes, he ripped away the restraints around his brother's magical core, and Natsu screamed.
Zeref felt the pain like it was his own. He staggered backwards as Natsu began to convulse. Zeref had seen Dragon Slayers change before, long ago, but it had never been so fast or so brutal. Gleefully, Natsu's draconic core took revenge for all the times he had pushed it too far to save his friends, previously protected from the consequences by Igneel's sacrifice, and now having to pay the price in full.
Bones shattered and re-formed in new, creative shapes. Skin stretched thinner and thinner until it tore. There were scales beneath, their colour entirely concealed by his own blood, their smoothness disrupted by globules of flesh. Claws protruded from the palm of a human hand, forcing dead fingers aside.
Natsu's body jerked and writhed; he bent in sickening ways. If there was one small mercy, it was that his insides were fluid and there was no longer a clear connection between lungs and mouth. His screams had become silent.
And then it was over.
How anyone could have survived that, Zeref didn't know, but the roar that resounded through the forest was truly alive.
For the briefest of moments, they regarded each other, the Black Mage with tear tracks down his cheeks and the dragon whose bestial eyes held no emotion he could read… and then the dragon whipped around and vanished into the forest.
And Natsu was gone for good.
Because even if he won – one newly turned Dragon Slayer against one who had killed more dragons than Natsu now had scales, with full control over his body and magic – he would still be lost to them forever.
Zeref knew he should be doing something. He ought to fight alongside Natsu the way he had once fought alongside Igneel. At the very least, the great battle between the Dragon of the Apocalypse and the heir to the throne of the Fire Dragon King was one to which an immortal should bear witness. Or he should find Lucy, like Natsu had wanted him to – in order to ensure that that vision they had seen wouldn't come to pass.
But Zeref didn't move.
None of it seemed to matter any more.
He'd saved the Dragon Slayers. Him and Igneel together. They'd broken the cycle of hate; they'd given those five innocent children a future.
And now he'd undone all of it. The promise made to a dying fire dragon – to the fire dragon he himself had killed – had been broken. Natsu was gone. And the smile which had given purpose to Igneel after his father's murder, just like it had once encouraged an aimless young prodigy of a mage, was lost forevermore.
Turning was irreversible. Natsu would never again be human.
Then again, he hadn't been human for a while, had he?
Part-human. Part-dragon. Part-demon. In the past and future of this world, Natsu was unique.
Igneel's magic suppressed his draconic core; Zeref's magic, using the Book of END as its focus, restrained his demonic side. With both of them bound, Natsu's human self had been allowed to flourish.
Now that there was nothing holding back his draconic core, Natsu was no match for the curse of Dragon Slayer magic.
But maybe Etherious Natsu Dragneel was.
It felt right.
That was the first thought to emerge from Natsu's cocoon of agony, slow and tentative at first, but growing in certainty as the pain continued to recede.
This was right. He had always sprinted across the earth like thunder on four legs. He had always battered the sky with his wings and whipped up tornadoes with his tail. He had always been a god amongst living creatures, the epitome of might and magic, worshipped by some, envied by many, and feared by all.
There was, some distant part of his mind thought, a time when he might have walked on two legs and shared that mortal fear, but it was nothing more than a bad dream from which he had finally awoken. This was what he was always meant to be: this was him.
Energy and intent rippled through his muscles like heat rising from a radiator. He had never before felt such a stark awareness of his own body. With a flex of will and instinct, awareness became power, and power became speed.
He rammed into Acnologia in a blow that would have moved a mountain, yet he knew exactly how to absorb the impact through his shoulder and hind legs. They tumbled through the forest, smashing apart trees that had grown without interference for four centuries, trampling ruins into dust, biting and clawing and struggling for the upper hand.
There had been a moment, as he'd surged towards his foe, when he'd glimpsed a blonde human woman and thought that she was important. Maybe even more important than tearing apart his enemy.
But that led him to an uneasy half-memory of a black-haired man who cried when he looked at him, and that led him to doubt, and that led him to desolation and hollowness, and that couldn't be true, because a mighty being such as he would never have such weak feelings.
So he let it slip away.
Let it drown in the clamour of talon on scale, in the roar of the true masters of the world, in the certainty that teeth and tail and pure brute strength were what he was always meant to be.
During his lifetime, Zeref had fought many different battles in many different ways.
He had swept through Carligne as the embodiment of death, a cruel immortal at the head of an army of demons. By contrast, when he had brought all of Alakitasia under his banner, he had rarely fought on the front lines himself. He'd told others when and where and how to fight, and in this way, he had orchestrated the conquest and consolidation of the greatest empire in history. Once, he had even fought like Lucy and her friends did: he had driven off Acnologia with nothing more than his fists, his magic, and Igneel and Natsu by his side – and he'd almost done it again, four centuries later, with an Alvarez airship and a most unusual team.
Back when he'd been with Anna, though, he'd fought an entirely different kind of battle.
His foe hadn't been some evil villain, but the universe itself, with the limitations of current mathematics and the ignorance of authors who had gone before as its henchmen. The only weapon he'd needed had been his pen. He fought with magic, yes, but magic wasn't words and willpower; it was summoned by semi-intangible calculus and controlled by the laws of mathematics.
And although no great monster was defeated at the end of it, each victory pushed back the darkness of the unknown that little bit further.
This was the same battle he fought now.
He sat on the ground amidst a circle of devastation. The encroaching forest had torn down the village that had once thrived here, and then Natsu's transformation had ripped that forest apart, leaving ruins within ruins around him. None of it mattered apart from the book which sat open in his lap.
Reference works filled his personal dimension, but he had yet to draw any of them into reality to aid him. When he had adapted the dragonification ritual to work with Grandine's Milky Way, he had done it with nothing more than his own mind. He hadn't had time to sit down and look up runes then. He didn't have time now.
The nib of his pen – once silver, now speckled with black – skipped across the pages of the book. He did not so much as blink; it was as if he were reading the words, not writing them. He had to strengthen Natsu's demonic side. If he could manipulate it into counteracting Natsu's out-of-control draconic core… then perhaps the two could negate each other, and he could be human once more.
If.
If he could solve the equations and weave his way through the intricacies of language and somehow balance the physical, mental, and magical variables-
The line of black runes caught fire.
Zeref gave a startled cry. That shouldn't be happening. Couldn't be happening.
Impulsively, he quashed the flames beneath his hand. A dull ache throbbed through his palm, quickly rising to a searing pain as the flames begrudgingly faded.
It was his book. His magic! It shouldn't be burning him!
But when he lifted his already-healed hand away, there was nothing left on the page but a dusting of ash. The words had ignited and burned themselves out.
"This can't- it's impossible-"
Natsu's draconic core was too strong. Strong enough to burn away even his magic.
Zeref's eyes narrowed. In that moment, he looked less like a scholar and more like a guild mage, staring down an opponent who had shrugged off his strongest attack.
Could he isolate the Book of END from Natsu's living body, adapt it there, and then re-introduce it to his blazing draconic core once it was stable enough to withstand the dragon's flame?
It was worth a try. Forcing his hand to be steady, he inscribed the necessary runes.
Nothing happened.
The runes didn't take. They sat lifelessly on the page, with all the magic of a bored doodle.
"No!" This time, it came out as a shriek. The corner of the open page twitched, flopped over of its own accord, and promptly caught fire.
Sparks winked at him. The charred circle grinned as it ate through the page – closer and closer to the ancient words bound there so many centuries ago. The words that were Natsu's life.
Horrified, Zeref slammed his palm onto the open page, pouring his magic into it. The spreading immolation slowed to a halt, but the paper – enchanted, indestructible paper! – continued to smoulder. Magic was flooding out of him in torrents, four centuries' worth, and he could do no more than hold the dragonfire back, let alone strengthen the Book of END at the same time.
A wordless cry erupted from his lips. Forget defeating Natsu's draconic core. All Zeref's magic, more than any other mortal possessed, could barely keep his demon self alive in its inferno.
He knew what he needed to do, he just didn't have the power to do it. If only the war hadn't been such a disaster. If only he had Fairy Heart here with him-
He froze.
Fairy Heart was no more.
But it wasn't the only source of infinite magic ever to have existed in Fiore, was it?
He remembered.
He wasn't a dragon.
He was Natsu Dragneel.
It was as if something had halted the torrent of impulse and hunger, allowing his head to break the surface, to scoop up memories of his human life like he was gulping down air.
Destroying Acnologia was as important to him as it was to the bestial instinct that had taken control, but it wasn't the only thing that was important to him.
He hadn't turned into a dragon because he'd wanted to fight and rage and kill. He'd done it because he'd seen a future in which his best friend had been murdered by Acnologia, and this was the only way to save her.
The beast which had hurled itself at the Black Dragon without stopping to wonder if she'd been outside the line of fire wasn't him; wasn't Natsu Dragneel.
All too acutely, he remembered coming to his senses in the wasteland of Malva's city centre – remembered the hot fluttering of a human heart frantically trying to expand within his fist.
Gray.
His friend.
Yet Natsu had almost killed him. Demon or dragon, he was never letting that happen again.
It was Natsu's human side that seized control in that moment. It was his human side, still reeling from the last time he had lost himself and still worried about Lucy's safety, that stopped his rampage.
And it was his human side that saved his life.
In the heart of the melee, Acnologia shed his draconic form like a cape cut loose in a gale, twisting down into his agile human body. A single claw-like crescent of white energy appeared in his hand – a blade of pure dragon-slaying magic. It was his dragon form that lured his enemies in, and his human self who finished them: that was the strategy that had driven dragons to extinction, and would likely have put an end to the one before him, had Natsu not remembered in that moment who he was.
Natsu was already falling back. The arc of white energy passed within an inch of his jaw rather than slicing open his neck. Instinctively, Natsu knew that that was Dragon Slayer magic like he'd never seen it before; that it would cut impenetrable scales as effortlessly as it would the rags Acnologia now wore.
At first, Acnologia was frozen, unable to comprehend that the strike that had killed Weisslogia and Skiadrum and so many others had failed.
Then the blade fizzled out. Hate rippled in the dragon-man's eyes as he hissed, "Igneel…"
"Wrong," Natsu growled.
Acnologia's eyes narrowed. "Then who are you?"
"I'm Natsu Dragneel," he declared, proud and tall. "Son of Igneel, the Fire Dragon King."
All of a sudden, Acnologia's face split in a manic grin, releasing mad laughter into the forest. "You turned! You're just like me! How does it feel, becoming the thing you hate in order to win?"
"I'm nothing like you," Natsu spat.
An echo of Zeref's words ran through his memory: It is out of love that I must refuse you! The recollection churned like sickness in Natsu's stomach, but it was far more muted than the usual blaze of hate any mention of his so-called brother inspired in him. Something thrummed within him – something that wasn't good or bad, but just was; a ghost of what he'd felt when Zeref had unknowingly called him to the guildhall. He wondered if the sudden reawakening of his human mind wasn't entirely a coincidence.
"I don't hate dragons," Natsu pointed out. "So why would I mind being one? I'm still me inside."
"You won't be for long."
Natsu wanted to reject him, but rejecting him meant declaring his faith in whatever Zeref was doing, so he remained silent.
"In fact," Acnologia continued, taking his silence as agreement, "you should be grateful that I'm going to kill you before you lose your mind."
"Shame no one did that for you," Natsu bit back.
Idly, that blade buzzed into existence at Acnologia's palm, so white it seemed to cut into Natsu's eyes without even moving, and then it vanished again. Acnologia looked up at him, smiling. "Do you have any idea how happy I am that you turned?" His laughter wasn't cruel, but genuinely, frighteningly pleased. "I was so lost! I ended the war, I exterminated the dragons, but some of them escaped through time! For four hundred years, I waited… and at last my patience was rewarded. I finally found them, hiding inside human children like the cowards they were. I banished their souls. The dragons are no more!"
Slowly, the fist he had punched towards the heavens in triumph returned to his side.
"And then what? Four hundred years I'd waited for my victory, and now I had it. Now what? Now what- NOW WHAT?"
His clawed hand scrabbled at his own chest, as if the answers, the feelings, were locked within his flesh. A breath shuddered through him. He drew his hand away, coated with blood, and regarded it with absent wonder.
By the time he spoke again, he sounded almost sane.
"What's a Dragon Slayer supposed to do, when there are no dragons? Sleep? I did that for four hundred years. Wander? I have been to the ends of the earth and back, and found nothing there of interest. Destroy? It doesn't change this… hollowness. Nothing feels right. Nothing!"
And because part of Natsu was still human, he felt a twinge of pity at this most terrifying of foes: a man who had been driven by the desire to kill dragons for so long that he had become it. Less than human, less than dragon, he was just an existence without meaning now that that desire had been fulfilled.
"So, change," he said shortly. "Become something else." For Natsu may have been a Dragon Slayer, but he was also a mage of Fairy Tail and part of the guild's strongest team and the reason why half the businesses in Magnolia couldn't afford their insurance premiums – and he was proud of it.
"Something else?" Acnologia laughed in bewilderment. "Something lesser? I am the greatest dragon there is! I am the strongest being in the whole world!"
"You have nothing!" Natsu yelled back. "No purpose, no future, no one to stand beside you – you could have all the power in the world, and it wouldn't mean a thing! It's not the fact that Igneel and the other dragons vanished that condemned you to madness – it's the fact that you gave up everything that makes life worthwhile a long time ago!"
"That's where you're wrong. I still have the most worthwhile thing there is: you." His grin was the grin of rapture at the end of days. "The wait was worth it. Every agonizing day. At last, a dragon stands before me once more, and I will feast upon its flesh and bathe in its blood!"
"And then what?" Natsu challenged. "You'll be right back to where you started!"
"Ah, but I won't! I'll force your friends to turn just like you did, and then I'll hunt them, too! And why stop there? I have absorbed the magic from countless dragons! I can teach it to humans, corrupt their magical cores, and force them to turn! The solution is so obvious; I don't know why I didn't think of it before! I will create my own prey, from now until the end of time!"
"Like hell you will!"
Natsu's patience for the ramblings of a madman vanished with the threat to his friends. With a roar, he flung himself at Acnologia. He did not pause to marvel at the great gorges his talons ripped out of the earth, or how the shockwave made of strength and speed pushed the trees into a reverent bow. He saw only the distance between himself and his opponent shrinking by the millisecond.
Acnologia was ready for him.
There weren't many men who could stand their ground in the face of a charging dragon, but this one delighted in it, one foot behind to brace himself against the storm, his scale-severing blade igniting in his hand.
And it was the dragon who backed down. Natsu jerked aside at the last moment, becoming a river of lava which curved around the obstacle in its path. Acnologia turned with him and lashed out in vain. Nothing but air parted under the blow; the dragon was out of his reach.
He was not out of the dragon's reach, though.
Now that Acnologia's sword-arm was out of the way, the tip of Natsu's tail snapped out like he'd been born with it. The impact sent the feral man flying.
Natsu's claws dug into ruptured earth. Wings flared out to dispel his momentum. The movements came so naturally to him; he twisted, lithe and strong, and his jaws opened and he blazed.
He had always been powerful. Then he'd left the guild and, ten months later, returned stronger still: able to melt Domus Flau and blast his relationship with his best friend to rubble in the space of a single afternoon. He'd mastered Igneel's power and wielded it against Zeref to devastating effect.
And yet all that time, he'd been forcing the magic of a dragon through the feeble body of a human. At long last, both he and his magic were aligned in draconic might, and the heat of it was curling the corners of the world.
Devastation came. It popped and exploded as trees far outside the blast zone combusted in the heat. A wave of fire and sound and magic rolled across the forest like a theatre curtain being drawn back, revealing nothing but wasteland beneath.
And the Black Dragon.
For he was a dragon again. No human could have survived that. Force and fire lashed impotently against his scales as he opened his own mouth and retaliated.
The first cataclysm ended, and the second began.
Acnologia's breath attack swamped Natsu's fire and replaced it with pure, hateful light.
It was overwhelming, it was devastating, it was definitive proof that the power of the Fire Dragon King so suddenly acquired was no match for the dragon who had reigned supreme for four hundred years.
And yet, somewhere behind that light, Natsu was grinning.
Because this was what he did.
His had never been a divinely bestowed power. Yes, he had the magic of a fire dragon, but Igneel's sacrifice had sealed it. Yes, he was the strongest demon Zeref had ever created, but his demonic power had always been bound by Zeref's hope that Natsu would be able to live a human life.
No, Natsu's power was all his own, and it was the power of determination; the infinity that lay between losing and having lost for those with the resolve to seek it.
He wasn't used to being the reigning champion. That was for his opponents – Jellal, Laxus, Hades, Mard Geer. He was the one who came from behind and turned the tables on all of them.
Acnologia's overwhelming attack didn't break his spirit – it encouraged him.
Step by step, he pushed forward into the torrent of energy. Claws found purchase on the warped earth; strength more of resilience than muscles gave him the leverage to step and step and step again. There was no hope, and yet he advanced. There was no air, and yet he roared.
This was Natsu Dragneel, and Acnologia was about to discover just what he had unleashed.
Chaos surrounded Lucy.
There was Acnologia.
There was another dragon, one that matched the description of Igneel from Zeref's stories, but which perhaps wasn't the old Fire Dragon King at all, but his heir.
There was the vision of her own death in a future that hadn't happened, and possibly never would, but she didn't dare take that minute of reprieve for granted.
There was the Alvarez invasion – the horrors unfolding beyond the forest, horrors she hadn't been able to prevent and didn't even seem able to mitigate.
But none of those things frightened her as much as the dark energy that had pulsed so briefly through the forest.
Compared to the elemental fury that the two dragons were hurling at each other, it was faint, barely even worth mentioning… and indeed, Lucy probably wouldn't have registered it if not for the fact that she'd felt that magic somewhere before.
The battle of Malva.
A cursed sword, a profane ritual, and blood that flowed endlessly, for the body that produced it could never escape into death.
It didn't matter that they'd gone their separate ways, or that he had chosen to embroil her friends – and the entire continent – in a needless war to try and escape his own pain. If someone was trying to use Zeref as a source of magic again, she would obliterate them where they stood, just like she had Arlock.
So she turned away from the forest-turned-wasteland where the dragons were fighting. She followed the trace of that magic, still hoping it would fade to nothing even as it grew stronger and stronger against her senses, still hoping it was just a nightmare as inexplicable as the future that had reversed…
But this was real.
Zeref lay on his front with the sword jutting out of his back, a broken, bloody remnant of the man who had stood at the prow of the airship as they'd faced down Acnologia. Around him, a grotesque circle of runes had been drawn in still-glistening blood. Even Arlock's prison had been of chalk. Torture and desecration; the rising stench of something worse than death.
"Zeref!" she shrieked, already running. Arlock had bound the sword with enchanted chains which only his death had been able to break, but there was no such curse here, and if she could just pull it free-
"DON'T!"
Zeref's entire soul was in that one word. Nothing less than that could have stopped her, shocked and horrified, just outside the ritual circle. "What is- are you-?"
Breath wheezed between his lips as he struggled to form words. "Don't," he gasped. His left fist clenched and unclenched; in his right he held a pen, nib trembling against the open page of an old book. He struggled to lift his head, let alone turn it towards her. "Leave it…"
"Who did this to you?" she demanded, eyes wide. "I'll find them- I'll destroy them-"
"I did it," he rasped. "Didn't- didn't have enough magic of my own."
"Enough magic for what?"
He did not answer. A bubble of blood burst upon his lips. He blinked, red-raw eyes squeezing out another tear of agony, but he did not scream, did not even sob, just scratched another rune into the open book.
A book which, really, she should have recognized at once.
"You turned Natsu," she breathed. It wasn't an accusation. She knew how much he loved Natsu; she knew what it must have cost him to do it. "And… you're trying to turn him back."
For all the crushing agony he was enduring, there was nothing in his eyes but hope. "I think I can get the Book of END to neutralize his draconic core – if I can put enough power into it. I did this to him. I- I have to save him."
Lucy stepped across the boundary of the circle and knelt down beside him. He flinched back, trying to protect the weapon that was causing him unspeakable pain, and a wave of useless agony washed over her. It took all her willpower to ignore the cursed sword – to respect him enough to let him suffer.
Instead, she asked, "What can I do to help?"
The response, although breathless, was immediate: "Go to Natsu."
"No! I can't leave you like this!"
"He needs you!"
Too loud, too sudden. The motion disturbed the sword impaling him, and for a moment, he could not form words, only a silent scream. Lucy ran her hands through his hair, just like she had last time, and willed for that small comfort to reach him.
"He needs you," Zeref repeated, and his voice was weak but his will was unbreakable. "Remember. Neither dragon nor human can beat Acnologia alone. If you don't stand with Natsu, he'll die."
"Zeref-"
"Please." There was nothing in that word of the emperor who had held her to an awful promise and plunged the world into a war nobody wanted. That man was gone for good. All that remained was the man who loved her and Natsu, and who hoped against hope that, despite everything, she still loved him enough to hear his plea. "There's no point to anything if Natsu dies here."
"There's no point if you die, either!"
A pained smile. "I can't die, remember?"
Still she hesitated, her hand on his cheek, feeling the horrible heat of his skin. "I don't want to leave you like this."
"Then win quickly, and come back to me."
"I will," she promised. "I always will."
Before she could take it back, she forced herself to stand, to believe that this wouldn't be forever.
"Lucy."
In the streets of Malva, with his soul shattered and his body broken, unable to think through the pain of Arlock's torture, she had thought it the most pitiable thing she had ever seen. Now, under that same agony dealt by his own hand, weak though he was, his eyes yet blazed – and she thought he was the very picture of strength.
"I love you," he murmured.
"I love you, too. I'll be back for you soon."
Acnologia didn't fight fair.
That should have gone without saying. He had only become as strong as he was by slaying dragons and absorbing their power – and slaying dragons, as the Dragon Slayers had learnt on the day the Eclipse Gate opened, was no mean feat.
In his dragon form, unwanted but oh-so-useful, he lured them in. Dragons versus dragon. A primal battle of strength, calling to the deepest parts of his prey, until even those who knew how truly dangerous he was committed all their might to the battle.
And then he would change.
Unique amongst those who turned, he'd managed to reclaim his human body – or a shadow of it. Not enough to live as a human. Not enough to return to what he'd been before the war. But enough to harness the power he'd stolen from countless dead dragons, combining their magic, fusing it with his own. He had become the Dragon Slayer to whom all elements bowed; he had refined his magic to cut through scales and deal maximum damage to the organs and flesh underneath.
It was a simple tactic, but it was deadly. It had erased the once-mighty dragons from the natural histories of the world.
In human form, he cut down dragons with ease.
In dragon form, not even the strongest of the Dragon Slayers alive today could hurt him, let alone any ordinary humans.
But as a dragon, his scales and claws were only as good as any other dragon's, and the heart behind them only as mortal.
And as a human, his Dragon Slayer magic gave him no advantage against other humans, and his body had no defences at all… except for his unbeatable ability to absorb magic.
But not all magic, perhaps.
Not the magic born from beyond time and space.
That was why, even as Acnologia lured Natsu in again, gloating over what he would do to the other Dragon Slayers, until Natsu was so close that he would have no hope of dodging, and Acnologia became human once more… Lucy was there to kick him in the face.
Acnologia wasn't the only one who was sent reeling.
Natsu choked on his own fire-breath: "Lucy!"
"We'll take him together," she said, as confident as she had been when she'd made her election speech to the guild, her guild. "When he's a dragon, he's yours. When he's human, he's mine. Got it?"
Natsu stared at the tiny figure of his best friend with more astonishment than he had afforded the dragon who had almost killed him twice today already.
Lucy seemed to deflate a little. "I know. We need to talk, and I mean talk. This stupid war notwithstanding, your estranged four-hundred-year-old brother and I are sort of dating, and at some point you'll have to have a good long think about what that means for you and how you're going to deal with it."
Natsu swallowed. "I think I'd rather fight Acnologia."
"Yeah, me too. Let's take him down and face the future together."
Lucy rested one hand on the dragon's foreleg, the other on her keys. She could feel the low growl reverberating through Natsu's body as he challenged Acnologia in the ancient way that beasts of magic did. Beneath the comforting heat of his scales, she could feel another familiar magic, a reminder that the man she loved was putting himself through hell so that she and Natsu could stand here united.
They would not lose. They had come too far for that.
The beginnings of a smirk curled at Acnologia's lips. "Do you think no one has ever tried that before? That no foolish dragons tried to rope their even more foolish spawn into fighting with them? If the true Fire Dragon King and an immortal death-mage together couldn't beat me, what chance do you two have?"
"We'll show you," Natsu snarled, and he lunged.
Zenlike in his confidence, Acnologia swept one foot out behind him, while light blossomed in his one remaining hand. Whatever Natsu attacked with, he would cut right through it – skewer the hot flesh beneath and bathe in dragon's blood. He yearned for it.
As Natsu charged, Lucy dropped to one knee, transforming keylessly in that same motion. Her bow was drawn, and the magic of the stars guided the arrows between Natsu's stampeding legs.
They were only small strikes, but they were enough to knock Acnologia's sword-arm aside.
Enough to give Natsu's blazing claw complete freedom.
Half-transformed, Acnologia blocked the force of the blow with a scaled elbow and shielded his human body from the flames of it with one black wing, protectively curled. He was shaking with the effort of holding back the fire dragon's entire weight, their forearms locked together.
In that moment of struggle, Lucy could clearly see the Black Dragon's reluctance to assume his draconic form against a genuine dragon.
More fool him.
She swept her hand down, and with a ripple of celestial light, gravity suddenly decided to act in the fire dragon's favour. Acnologia crumpled to the ground. Having learnt from last time, Natsu jerked back rather than trying to strike again, thus avoiding another slash of lethal magic – and then gravity went fully into reverse, flinging the startled dragon-man into the sky.
Natsu's wingbeat would have flattened all the trees in the vicinity, had they not given up long ago. He shot up towards his opponent.
The dot of Acnologia twisted and became a vast shadow. Only a dragon could truly fight in the sky. He gave in and became one and Natsu, pouncing like a rocket launched skyward, had Acnologia right where he wanted him-
But Acnologia didn't fight. He banked. Dived.
For all his bravado about having fought greater foes before, he was shaken by their first clash. He had to be. Because, for the first time in his life, he ignored the dragon entirely, as he dived towards Lucy and enveloped the entire wasteland in false dawn.
Natsu was there. Faster than Acnologia, he dropped out of the sky around her, taking the entire breath attack against his back, his spread wings. One claw held her tightly to his side, protected within a shield of scales.
That was where he was when Acnologia dropped out of the blinding-white sky, falling fast, falling human – and drove his sword straight into Natsu's side.
Pure dragon-slaying magic from the strongest Dragon Slayer; the strengths of all the elements of magic, and the weaknesses of none.
Lucy felt the strength go out of the claw supporting her.
Heard Natsu's grunt of surprise, rapidly evolving into a shriek of pain.
His wing fell over her, one last protective gesture as he slumped to the ground.
Acnologia stood on top of the fallen dragon. He rested his hand upon the blade of pure light still skewering Natsu's side. It reminded her of Arlock, leaning casually against the sword that trapped Zeref in a living hell. Beneath him, Natsu twitched feebly.
Such a small wound, to bring down such a majestic creature.
That was what this magic did, in the hands of a master.
"Told you," Acnologia yawned. "Done this before, and with far more experienced opponents than you two. You may think you're smart, finding a human whose magic I cannot consume to support you-" Here his face became a sneer as he twisted the energy-blade deeper into Natsu's flank "-but all you're really doing is giving yourself another weakness. Protecting her cost you this battle, son of Igneel."
But Acnologia didn't understand.
It had never occurred to him that the Fire Dragon King might not have been the keystone of their unspoken plan.
He didn't realize that the human he had thought was there for mere support had the power of the stars within her, or that watchful Antares had granted her the power to move through the earth while still concealed beneath Natsu's wing, or that the thirteenth Zodiac constellation had bestowed upon her the form of a black knight as she burst up through the earth behind him.
"Wrong," Lucy said.
The great blade of Ophiuchus danced its graceful arc, and Acnologia's single arm hit the ground at his feet.
A/N: Thanks again for all your support, and I hope you're all enjoying the festive season! ~CS