Homeward Hours

By CrimsonStarbird

Chapter Seven – The Cost of Naivety

Chaos reigned in the guildhall.

There were more chairs in the air than on the floor, more people lying unconscious under tables than sat at them, more energy packed into one room than there had been on all the fronts of the Alvarez War combined… and a blonde Celestial Spirit mage crouched in the corner, one hand holding a communication lacrima and the other pressed over her ear in a vain attempt to reduce the guild's drunken brawl to something less than deafening.

"…Saffron… ivory truffles… Xorthian saltwater lobster tails… Zeref, are you sure the frozen ones in the supermarket won't- no, okay, I'm sure there'll be a job in Hargeon Port coming up soon; I'll swing by the fish market on the way-"

Any moment now, the Magic Council was going to call her in to give evidence, and she probably should have been going over the events of the cult leader's arrest in her mind or trying some meditative technique to stay calm – anything, really, that wasn't using the bench as a makeshift table to scribble into her notebook.

"-so that's the third volume by Saehphaidl- Zeref, I'm going to need you to spell that- no, I'm not familiar with the Ancient Ileric alphabet- no, no, it's fine, I'll see if Levy can help when I'm back in the guildhall-"

Lava roiled and raged beneath her. She was just out of its reach, and it was furious, spitting and seething at the underside of the enchanted floating boulder on which she crouched. There were four more boulders leading deeper into the dungeon, surely far enough apart for the jump to be impossible, but just close enough to tempt her into trying…

The danger might have made her nauseous, had the lacrima in her hand not been holding all her attention.

"-they seriously only grow two-thirds of the way up Mount Hakobe? Why don't they sell them in supermarkets- what do you mean, they're poisonous? Yes, I know you're immortal, but- yes, yes- can I not tempt you with some delicious, juicy, in-season blueberries instead? Not only are they non-toxic, but they also come pre-packaged in shops rather than needing to be foraged on a mountainside- yes, I know I said I would get you what you wanted! If I survive this dungeon then I'll go on my next day off, is that alright-?"

Two in the morning, her eyes squeezed shut against the throbbing glow of the communication lacrima, fumbling for a notebook and pen.

"-a hidden door behind the waterfall, three rooms of traps… I don't suppose you'd care to share the nature of these traps, would you? No, somehow, I didn't think you'd be able to remember… Is there any particular reason why you couldn't just have put your research notes in a safety deposit box like everyone else- no, I suppose they didn't have them four hundred years ago- still not sure why you needed traps- yes, okay, fine, it'll be good practice for the next time I have to break into a dark guild's hideout on an actual paid job-"

"I don't care if he is the only tailor in the world who is trained in the ancient techniques!" Lucy exclaimed into the lacrima. "I am not going all the way to Vistarion to get you some new clothes! Seriously, what do you have against trousers?" There was a long pause. "Does he do mail order?"

Heaving a sigh, she let the lacrima-call disconnect and rested her forehead on the table, somewhere in between the wet circles left by no-longer-cold beers and the tomatoey smudge of no-longer-warm pizza. Levy patted her back supportively. Natsu, however, was watching her with the same stony expression he usually wore whenever his estranged brother came up in conversation.

"Why are you doing this?" he demanded abruptly. "He treats you like a servant – and you let him get away with it!"

The harshness of his tone was not directed towards her, so Lucy let it slide. "Because he's communicating," she explained patiently. "He's not ignoring me any more; he's reaching out and asking for things."

"You know he's doing it on purpose. He doesn't want these things; he wants to see you struggle to obtain them."

"I'm well aware of that," Lucy sighed. "Even if he did eat Xorthian lobster and ivory truffles as Emperor Spriggan, there's no way in hell he knows how to cook them. But that's not the point. He doesn't believe that I'm serious about this. I'm going to prove him wrong."

"By running so many errands for him you don't have time for anything else? You missed half the party tonight, Luce. You didn't even get any pizza."

"I'm sure the guild will throw another pizza party soon," she shrugged. "But this matters, Natsu. Communication is the first step towards understanding, towards building a relationship."

A grunt. "He's using you."

"He's deliberately being petty. I'm sure he'll grow out of it."

"He's four hundred years old," Levy pointed out unhelpfully. "Not to mention, he spent a lot of those years bossing everyone in Alvarez around…"

"It's fine," Lucy assured them both, again. "If it gets too much, I'll put my foot down. But I don't want to lose this chance. Don't worry, Natsu," she added, her eyes flicking almost cautiously to meet his, because she knew how this must look to him. "I'm definitely joining the team for tomorrow's job."

"Not worried," he grunted. They both knew it was a lie, but she appreciated his efforts not to act on it, not to say anything jealous or controlling or immature that would have started an argument. "Just don't overwork yourself, alright? You have enough trouble paying your rent without having to fork out for his stupid lobster tails as well."

"…Natsu, you do realize you're the reason why I can't afford my rent, don't you?"

"Well, precisely," he said, and there was something almost proud about it. "How many financial liabilities do you need in your life?"

Lucy was in the middle of combat when Zeref called again.

Taken by surprise, she stumbled and almost lost her footing. Two of the bird-like harpies dived at her, ragged wings tucked in, greedy talons grasping. She managed to ignite her Fleuve d'Etoiles in the nick of time. A single strike smacked one from the sky, and the other pulled up with a screech as sharp as its talons.

Somewhere over to her right, Erza was preoccupied with another divebombing pair of creatures. Gray and Wendy had gone on ahead to find the one which had stolen her celestial keys, and she couldn't even see Natsu… and she was tempted not to answer the call, but she'd made a promise, and she dreaded to think what else he might turn to for entertainment if she wasn't around to tease.

So she shuffled back until she felt the jagged edge of the rock wall press between her shoulder blades, raised her whip to fend off the increasingly aggressive flock, and let her other hand touch the communication lacrima to activate it.

"Lucy."

"Yes?" she wondered, as the bombardment began. She ducked the first, and it flew straight into the rock with a crunch. Her whip hit the second, but missed the third, and only a quick pivot saved her shoulder from being torn open. The fourth received a kick to the face; the fifth very nearly kicked her in the face-

"Where are you?" Zeref asked.

"I'm- ah-" Thoughts whirled from her mind before she could gather the focus to project them through the lacrima. Celestial lightning crackled along the length of her whip, popping with thunder, but her foes were quickly overcoming their animal fright.

"Are you in Magnolia?" Zeref demanded.

"No, I'm-" A harpy dived; she dodged, but picked the wrong way. A line of crimson erupted from her forearm. Frustration seeped into her voice just like the blood seeped into her sleeve: "Look, Zeref, this really isn't a good time. I'll call you back later, okay?"

There was an agonizingly long pause. The scent of blood rippled through the bird-creatures. Their movements shifted, becoming more deliberate, more intense.

"Okay," came the grudging response.

"Great," she replied, relieved. "Speak to you later, then."

The telepathic connection lapsed as the removed her hand from the crystal, falling into a far more familiar battle stance. As the shrieking flock poured into another dive – determined to take more than just her shiny gold keys from her this time – the thoughts of which awkward item Zeref wanted to watch her struggle to acquire for him this time couldn't have been further from her mind.

Eight hours later, Team Natsu had managed to successfully retrieve her keys, pull enough feathers to stuff all the pillows in Mercurius out of their hair, and rescue Natsu from the nest he'd been stranded in after he'd mistaken the enterprising harpy who snatched him up for Happy. But they'd barely made headway into their actual mission (finding a way to stop the flock from driving tourists away from the coast), so they took rooms in the seaside town overnight rather than heading back to Magnolia.

Lucy did try to call Zeref that night, from the corner of the room she was sharing with Erza and Wendy to save money.

There was no answer.

Not that that came as a surprise. He was probably too busy sulking over the fact that she'd found something to do that wasn't running across Fiore at his beck and call.

With a sigh, she disconnected once more. She'd deal with him once she was back in Magnolia.

Not that they made it home the next day.

Or the day after that.

Well, it was the first job Team Natsu had taken together in over three months. The chaos was long overdue.

When they finally did make it back to Magnolia, Lucy wanted nothing more than to collapse in her bedroom and sleep for a week. She'd been a fool not to appreciate the two months of quiet when Natsu had refused to accompany them on jobs.

Then again, given what she'd got up to during that time, she probably didn't have a right to complain.

Speaking of which, she really ought to go and see Zeref. He had been unusually patient these last few days, and that was the kind of behaviour she wanted to encourage. When she was younger, she'd watched the Head Groundskeeper training the hunting hounds on the Heartfilia Estate, and she imagined raising a dark mage was much the same thing… except the consequences for failing were far worse than a bite from a puppy.

The moment she stepped into the clearing, the happy memories of her childhood fell away.

There was a body lying outside the glowing dome.

She was running now, exhaustion forgotten, even though she knew she was far too late. The earth had soaked up the blood and dried as crimson dust; the body was already cold. Shrunken skin clenched around a gaunt skull and glassy eyes.

Even painted in the pallor of death, though, she knew that face. She'd last seen it as she had stood between a squadron of Rune Knights and Fairy Tail's homemade prison, repelling her enemy not with magic, but with the law, her guild's support, and her own ingenuity. He had slunk away with his men, and not long afterwards, the Magic Council had officially backed down and renounced their claim to custody of the Black Mage. She should never have seen him again.

Now, here he was, Captain Brennam, the man who had once overseen Zeref's imprisonment, lying dead just outside the Fairy Sphere. Some great beast had torn out his throat.

And she knew Zeref had done this.

No beast capable of such slaughter was native to the forests outside Magnolia. No natural hunter would have left its prize to rot in the forest. No monster would have just happened to kill this man in this place.

He shouldn't have been able to affect the world outside the Fairy Sphere. It should have blocked his magic, blocked everything he tried.

She had promised Queen Hisui, promised Master Makarov, promised herself, that he wouldn't be able to hurt anyone from inside.

This was her fault.

It was the middle of the day, but the curtains were closed. Her bedroom was suffused with a state of half-light, just as she herself lay on the bed half-dressed, and half-formed thoughts wove and unwove themselves in her mind.

What had she been expecting?

That Zeref would be so grateful for the rescue that he would immediately renounce his evil ways? That she could change him with her unwanted overtures of friendship? That she could save a man who saw nothing that he needed saving from?

That, in the end, he'd prove to be as loyal as Gajeel, as protective as Jellal, as mature as Laxus, as fun-loving as Meredy, as warm as Sabertooth, as sympathetic as Brandish…?

There was no dark spell of possession to break on him.

There was no hero to beat him and shatter the fallacy of his beliefs. Natsu hadn't beaten him; he had turned himself in for his own unfathomable purposes.

He had at no point shown any sign of penitence, shown any wish to change.

But she had believed, like a child, that if she was kind to him, it would somehow matter.

And for the foolishness of her belief, a man had been murdered in cold blood.

Not a nice man. But a man with a family and friends and colleagues, with career aspirations and hobbies no different to her own. A man whose life was not something to be thrown away to prove a point.

She'd done this.

She'd let Zeref out of prison.

Worst of all, she didn't even know how he'd done it. If he'd broken the Fairy Sphere – if he'd escaped; a thought that chilled her to the core – she was sure she'd know about it, but the coiling vines of light on her right forearm thrummed continuously with power. Neither he nor his magic should have been able to pass through the barrier. Even if he'd created a new demon, the barrier would have sensed his magic giving it life and denied it passage.

She'd promised everyone it would be safe to seal him within the Fairy Sphere.

It had taken him less than a month to work out how to circumvent it.

And she didn't know how. He'd not emerged from his house while she had been there with the body, and he'd not answered the one time she had mustered up the courage to call him since. Erza and Natsu had combed the forest, but found no sign of whichever demonic creature had done the deed.

Without knowing how he'd done it, she was powerless to stop it from happening again.

He'd been helpless in the Council's prison.

She should have left him there.

The Captain's blood was on her hands, for trying to see the best in the worst kind of man.

Three days later, and her thoughts had yielded no answers.

The unresponsive communication lacrima had yielded no explanations.

The attempts of her friends to get her to come into the guildhall and eat, to not blame herself, to insult and denigrate the prisoner whose wellbeing she had decided was more important than the life of a Rune Knight Captain – they yielded no absolution.

She found herself standing outside the Fairy Sphere, staring at the innocent cabin which hid behind its golden veil. At night, she drowned in that gold: it saturated her dreams until she could hardly breathe, and it throbbed on her forearm endlessly, a protection magic that hadn't been able to protect one man, and would only fail more as time went on.

She touched her right palm to the barrier, and with a flick of her hand, dispelled it.

Magic pulsed through the clearing and then vanished entirely. The otherworldly pallor faded from the trees. All that was left to mark out this cabin as anything other than a holiday home was the perfect circle of dead grass around it.

At once, a voice cut into her mind: What the hell are you doing?

Lucy jumped. It sounded like Zeref, but it was so much clearer than usual, sharper, and the communication lacrima was still dormant in her pocket. The barrier which normally blocked his magic from reaching her was gone now; he did not need the lacrima to project his words directly into her mind.

After a moment's struggle, unsure how to transmit back without the lacrima connection to do it for her, she settled for shouting out loud. "Come out, Zeref! Come out and talk to me!"

His silent response came immediately: Put the barrier back up!

Was that a tinge of panic she detected in his mental voice?

I will come out, he insisted, and she wasn't imagining it; he definitely sounded afraid. Put the barrier back up.

This wasn't how this was supposed to go.

She had been so recklessly sure that this was the only thing to do, but his reaction had thrown her. Golden light entwined once more around her right arm as she invoked the spell that had become second nature over the past few weeks. His prison shimmered back into existence – and no sooner had it appeared then Zeref appeared too, a black teleportation circle fading at his feet.

From the other side of the Fairy Sphere, he regarded her with abject shock. "What are you playing at?"

"It was supposed to be me!" she howled at him. "I told you, if anything happened, it had to be me you came after first, not the guild- not someone who had nothing to do with my decision to rescue you-!"

"What would a stunt like that achieve?" He dismissed it with a sneer, but there was still something wide, something not quite settled, about his eyes. "What makes you think, under such circumstances, that I would stop with your death?"

"Well, what did your stunt achieve?" she shrieked back. "I promised them that you wouldn't hurt anyone! I promised them that this was safe! And now look at what you've done! You've shown everyone that you are exactly what they thought you were all along!"

His eyes darkened. "Prove it was me."

"No, you don't get to be innocent until proven guilty, Zeref! You are guilty; this was your chance to show us that you could change! And what's the point now? The whole world can see we were wrong to give you that chance!"

He glanced away and did not respond.

She was shaking, overcome by her own recklessness, her own stupidity, her own outrage. They surged over her like waves of fire, drowning her in a blaze that was almost welcoming, after the hollow guilt of the past few days.

"Why are you doing this, Zeref?" she cried. "Why can't you see that I am trying to help you? What can I do to get through to you? I really thought that we were starting to come to an understanding… and then you go and do something like this."

"You understand nothing," he spat. "You have no concept of what you did when you took me out of the Council's prison."

"I know exactly what I did! I rescued you from that hell where they had chained and tormented and broken you-"

"I needed to be broken!" he howled back. "It was the only thing that could stop me! And you, in your ignorance, took me out of it, woke me up, brought me to a place of healing." He spat the word like it was poison. "And look at how short a time it took me to find a way around your protection spell!"

Disbelieving, she shot back, "You could have just, I don't know, chosen not to do it!"

His fist slammed into the Fairy Sphere. It rippled from the force of his anger, if not the physical blow. "Did Mavis not tell you, or did you just not listen? I am not stable! The only way to ensure that I don't do things like this is by stopping me from doing anything at all!"

"So," she said, bravely, "is that why you did it? You murdered Captain Brennam randomly?"

She had been expecting a fierce, daring affirmation – the final proof that she had screwed up, and screwed up badly – but he glanced away. A scowl danced across his face, short and irritated instead of long and cruel. She thought he was as frustrated at not being able to give her that affirmation as she was surprised.

"Zeref?" she said, wondering now.

"Does it matter?" he snapped back. "You said it yourself. I am guilty either way. Better me than anyone else."

She took a step forward. Softly, she repeated, "Why did you do it, Zeref?"

His eyes flashed with resentment, but he answered. "He didn't come here to gloat. He came here to threaten."

"But he can't hurt you, surely," Lucy pointed out. "He can't pass through the Fairy Sphere without the guild mark. And even if he could, surely you could hold your own against one disgraced Rune Knight…"

"Of course I could," he sneered. "It wasn't me he was threatening. He was going to tell everyone that I was still alive and your guild was harbouring me. If that happened, there would be a public outcry. The Magic Council would be forced to denounce your guild. Even if it wasn't forcibly disbanded, it wouldn't last a month without clients."

"So… you were protecting us?" Lucy wondered blankly.

He hit the golden dome again, even though it must have been hurting his hand more than it was the invulnerable barrier. "Lucy, what do you think would happen to the Fairy Sphere if Fairy Tail were disbanded?"

"Well, it's not as though I'd release it," she defended. "I might have to live and work in Magnolia, but I'd keep maintaining it."

"Am I the only person who actually understands how this spell works?" he scowled. "It is conceptual magic. It works because you believe it will work; it is strong because the guild is strong. If Fairy Tail ceases to exist, the Fairy Sphere will cease to exist too!"

"Isn't that what you want?"

He shook his head violently. "You must not let me out, Lucy. Ever. Even if I beg you or threaten you or try to bargain with you, you must not let the Fairy Sphere fall."

"I don't get it, Zeref!" she burst out. "First you're deliberately experimenting on the Fairy Sphere while I'm out of town, almost leading to my death on a mission, and then you're explaining how the spell works to Natsu so that it will never happen again. One moment you're vowing that you'll break the spell and escape, and the next you're making me promise not to free you under any circumstances! You're angry with me for bringing you here, but when you had the opportunity to leave, you didn't take it! So which is it? What do you want? Nothing that you do makes any sense, Zeref!"

"No," he said bitterly. "You don't get it, do you? Even when I try and explain it to you, you just don't understand. Smarter people than you have tried and failed to untangle the Curse of Contradiction; I do not know why I had expected you to be any different. Just maintain the Fairy Sphere. That's all you have to do."

Well, she'd been going to do that anyway. Then again, hadn't his actions already demonstrated the redundancy of it? More sharply than intended, she bit out, "Well, what's the point of you even being sealed inside it if it can't stop you from murdering people outside?"

"It… was not something I can easily repeat," he admitted, glancing away. "In the future, I suggest that you are more careful with the old artefacts of mine that you bring me."

"How?" she demanded. "Anything enchanted with your magic can't leave the Fairy Sphere!"

A sigh. "It wasn't connected to my magic. A long time ago, I experimented with creating a self-sustaining demon – one which could draw magic from its surroundings to sustain its existence, rather than being connected to my own magical core. I lost interest at the time because it was an extremely difficult and far less efficient way of doing what I already could with my own magic… but then you brought me the sole test specimen I had ever managed to get to work. So I was able to push the dormant book through the barrier, whereupon it activated itself and brought the creature to life from the ambient magic. It worked, but it was unstable, and shortly burnt itself out."

"And… you can't do it again?" she asked hesitantly. Stupid though she would be to trust him after everything, she had to ask.

"It wouldn't be impossible, but I only managed to get one to work in a great many years of study, and my research notes from that period were destroyed long ago. Without that working specimen as an example, I dare say it would be a long time before I managed to replicate it, and that is assuming I managed to remain focussed on a single project for so long. I knew what the consequences would be, when I decided to use it here and now."

As she resolved to be more careful about which old research notes of his she would fetch for him in the future – and how much of a fool had she been, to think she could win something so anathema as friendship from him by doing as he asked without complaint? – he spoke again.

"It was meant for you," he said without shame, regarding her appraisingly. "Though, I do not think it would have worked in its current form. I expected to have weeks, even months, to spend developing it until it was strong enough to take you out and free me. Now I suppose I am back to square one."

"You only have yourself to blame for that! Did you even consider resolving the problem in any way other than murder?"

He was silent, eyes reflecting the unfathomable depths of the universe, and a thought occurred to her.

"You called me," she realized. "When I was on that mission. Is this what that was about? I thought it was just another of your ridiculous requests! Why didn't you tell me what was happening?"

"You were busy."

"Well, yes, but- if I'd known how important it was- I couldn't exactly have abandoned the fight, but I could have got in touch with someone else from the guild and asked them to check on you!"

He glanced away. "I don't know anyone else in your guild."

"You…" Lucy tailed off.

She hadn't thought about it in that way before. Here he was, a prisoner of the guild he had wronged, far from his empire, cut off from everyone he might once have known or trusted. Maybe he knew all of Fairy Tail had come together to extract him from the Council's facility, or maybe he didn't, but it was true that none of them had shown any interest in him since, leaving his errands up to Lucy as she had requested. The only person he had had any contact with before Captain Brennam's ill-judged arrival had been her.

Well, her and Natsu.

"What about Natsu?" she asked lamely. "You know him, right?"

"Natsu has made it very clear that he wants nothing to do with me."

"Maybe so," she conceded, thinking about how long Natsu had resisted telling her, and how he still resisted telling the rest of the guild. "But do you think he wouldn't help if you reached out to him? Do you think anyone from my guild wouldn't help, if it would prevent a situation like this?"

"I don't know."

"But you must know that we can't protect you if you keep doing things like this, Zeref."

His gaze flashed back to hers, anger in the speed of it, if not in the inky blackness of his eyes. "He was a dead man from the moment he laid a hand on me in the Council's prison. All this meant was that it happened sooner. I chose to be in that prison, at his mercy; how many others did not so choose? No, I will not apologize for it."

"Do you understand how difficult you are making this, Zeref?" she asked softly.

He blinked once. "Do you understand that you are not responsible for my actions, Lucy, any more than you are for that man's stupidity?"

She knew, then, that he understood perfectly – not just her words, but why she had come to see him; why she could neither sleep nor face her guild. "I do not think the world will see it that way."

"Prove that I did it," he repeated. A flick of his hand sent dark energy fluttering ineffectually along the inner surface of the golden shield. "I think it is quite clear that I cannot use magic beyond the Fairy Sphere. If he was too busy threatening me to notice the wild beast creeping up behind him, that is his fault. And all the civilians who would have been dragged into a second war or a dark guild uprising had he succeeded in telling the world about me can rest a little easier thanks to nature's fortuitous intervention."

"I don't like it," she murmured.

"You don't have to like it. You only have to live and maintain the Fairy Sphere. You started this, and now you must see it through, for both of us."

"I will," she conceded, just as she had known all along that she would have to. "But won't you at least promise to stop making things difficult for me?"

"I can't."

"Zeref-"

"Not won't," he interrupted, eyes glittering. "Can't. There is no point in making you a promise that will probably be worthless to me come the morning."

And that curse-driven unpredictability, that dangerous inconsistency, was why she had to be strong. For herself, for her guild, for her kingdom, and most importantly of all, for him.