Homeward Hours

By CrimsonStarbird

Chapter Eight – Emperor and Master

The day started like any other.

Well, perhaps not quite like any other, as it was difficult for a man so aware of his own instability to label any day as normal. Indeed, for the past fortnight, Zeref had ignored Lucy entirely, carelessly discarding any sense of routine that had built up between them prior to her discovery of the Captain's body. He had been furious with himself for revealing his vulnerability to her, for pleading with his captors, for not leaving this goddamned prison while he'd had the chance – but even as he'd raged like a wounded dragon against the Fairy Sphere and cursed Lucy with every fibre of his being, there was a part of him which knew the mood would pass, as it always did.

Sure enough, he'd woken up that morning feeling entirely ambivalent towards Lucy and resigned to his own situation. Fury had drained away, leaving something far closer to boredom.

When she'd swung by to switch control of the Fairy Sphere to someone else, presumably so that she could go on a job with her team, he watched from the window. On one hand, he wanted to thank her for continuing to bring him supplies when he'd been in a truly murderous mood. He knew he would have more bad days in the future, and if encouraging that behaviour from her meant that he wouldn't have to endure them half-starved, he thought he was in a stable enough state to swallow his pride and show some gratitude. On the other hand, while he was growing accustomed to her role in his life, the rest of her guild was another matter. He wasn't inclined to show himself until he knew exactly who was there with her.

As it turned out, the person taking over the Fairy Sphere was none other than Guild Master Makarov. Zeref hadn't been expecting that. While it may have seemed obvious to use the Master as the source, given that his role kept him in the guildhall more often than not, it couldn't have been easy to navigate through the untamed woodland in a wheelchair.

Even more strangely, though, Lucy didn't wheel him back to the guildhall once the spell had been transferred.

Instead, she helped him into a deckchair she appeared to have brought with her. Then, as if this godforsaken clearing had turned into a beach resort when Zeref hadn't been looking, she left him there and headed back to the guild.

The diminutive Guild Master didn't seem to notice that there was no sand, no sea, and not much sunshine either. He sat there thinking, and occasionally scribbling into a notepad on his knee.

Zeref stared through the window, waiting for him to leave.

But half an hour went by, and Makarov was still there.

And the thing was, Zeref was really bored.

He'd already read the scant number of books Lucy had brought him, and new ones were slow to arrive, as everything she fetched for him now had to be vetted by Levy or Freed. Beyond reading, there really wasn't much to do here. It was true that he had spent long periods of inactivity – hibernation, as he sometimes thought of it – hidden in the forests of Ishgar or on Tenrou Island doing little more than wandering, but his mind was fully awake now, and he was restless.

These were the times when he would have returned to the Alvarez Empire, voluntarily taking on the duties from which he so often shied away. Only in these moods could he relish the challenges of diplomacy and strategy, throw himself into training the mages who served under him, and enjoy the mental stimulation that came from contact with other human beings, which at any other time he would have found a nuisance.

That wasn't an option for him, now.

He didn't want to think about Alvarez.

He had always been good at pushing dangerous thoughts away.

Before he could change his mind, he strode out of his house, coming to a stop just within the confines of the Fairy Sphere. Without preamble, he demanded, "What are you doing?"

"Ah, there you are," Makarov greeted him brightly. "I was rather hoping you would be able to help me with my work today."

Zeref let his eyes narrow, just enough to show Makarov that he did not trust that smile of his one bit. "Did Lucy put you up to this?"

"Yes," Makarov answered, entirely without shame. "She said that you were lonely with her as your only friend in the guild, so she asked if I was willing to spend some time with you while she was away. I thought this could be a rather productive partnership, you and I, working on a nice little job together."

"You thought wrong. I have no intention of speaking to you, and I am certainly not lonely."

"Aww. There I was hoping I'd be able to get you to do my work for me under the guise of altruism."

"…What work?"

This earned him a shrewd look, which he met with a dark and even challenge: one smart comment, just one, and he'd be gone again.

But Makarov just said, "I'm trying to design the next S-Class Trial to be held in the guild. I figured you might find it interesting, both as someone who had a hand in training the strongest mages in Alvarez, and as someone who extensively studied the strengths and weaknesses of my guild members in preparation for the war."

Zeref paused for a moment, considering.

Well, he could go back inside any time he wanted.

"Who will be taking the Trial?" he asked.

"Ah, well, last time, I nominated eight candidates and allowed them to take partners – and it was a logistical nightmare. So many sleepless nights. I am never doing that again," he breezed, with none of the careful momentousness of Zeref's words, as if he was entirely at ease having this conversation. "So I talked to everyone involved last year, and they all agreed that they would be fine with me nominating fewer candidates this time, as I'd still only pass one of them. Long story short, Natsu, Gray and Gajeel will be taking the Trial this year."

"I see."

"It's supposed to be easier to come up with a challenge for only three candidates, not harder! But they have such different strengths – it's impossible to devise something that's going to challenge all three of them."

"You'd put them all through the same test, then?"

"Of course. It has to be fair."

"Why?" Zeref asked. "Their enemies won't be fair to them."

"But enemies won't be fair to everyone," Makarov pointed out. "No matter who I promote, they will have to face the same challenges, the same S-Class jobs, the same foes. Giving each of them different criteria to determine if they are ready to face the same threats makes no sense."

Zeref shook his head once, a swift dismissal. "That's exactly why you should test them against different criteria. They need to be able to face everything. What is the merit of testing them on their strengths? It is on the basis of their strengths that you have nominated them. Test them each where they are weakest and pass the one who does the least badly. That's the person you want in a position of responsibility in the guild."

"Interesting. Is that how you selected the Spriggan Twelve in Alvarez?"

A short, tight shrug, giving nothing away; not so much that he thought keeping it secret mattered, but that he didn't want to talk about it, didn't even want to think about it.

To his surprise, Makarov seemed to pick up on that, as he moved on without pressing the matter further. "So, in your opinion as our enemy, where would you say those three are weakest?"

Another shrug, though this one was a little more relaxed. "From what I've observed… For Gajeel, I would threaten Levy and force him into a situation where he has to act rationally. He has the least faith of anyone in those he fights alongside. He'll always try to keep her out of it, to protect her, unable to accept her help even when it would logically be the best thing for them both. He needs to get over it. For Gray… he is too good at circumventing rules. The more you try to restrict him, the more versatile he'll become. He is used to thinking outside the box to defeat opponents who are stronger than him, so put him up against someone equally creative, someone who is not stronger but smarter. Test him on power, on what he's capable of when he has nothing but his own two hands."

There was a pause. "What about Natsu?" Makarov prompted.

"That's obvious. Separate him from his friends and put him into a situation where power alone will do him no good."

The Guild Master's eyes twinkled. "Any ideas for how to do that?"

"Well…"

Zeref hesitated. It wasn't as if he couldn't see what Makarov was trying to do, and the last thing he wanted was for the old man to think that it was working – to think that he would fall for such a blatant attempt to lure him into conversation – to think that he wanted to make friends – to think that he could be so easily tamed.

But he was really bored.

And… if he was allowed to miss anything from his life in Alvarez…

Makarov was looking at him with arched eyebrows, from one old man to one who was both older and younger: are you really going to let your pride get the better of you?

And Zeref thought that, just this once, it wouldn't hurt to humour him.

That was where Lucy found them, five hours later, on her way back from a successful mission: sat on either side of a translucent barrier, deep in conversation about something that wasn't personal or emotional, but wasn't superfluous either.

As she entered the clearing, that black gaze shot to her, and she could feel Zeref starting to prickle, daring her to comment on the domestic scene she had walked in on – and of course she didn't, merely smiled at them both as she approached. "Hello, Zeref. Hello, Master. When are you coming back to the guildhall? There are at least four letters from the Council sat on your desk."

Makarov gave her a suspicious look.

Lucy threw her hands in the air. "How can they possibly be to do with us? We've been out on this job all day!"

Makarov still didn't look convinced.

Sighing, Lucy went for a diversion. "Well, maybe one of them is the Council's response to our Hundred Year Quest application."

"Hundred Year Quest?" Zeref asked, carefully, as if expecting her to challenge his right to be in the conversation – as if there was anything she wanted more than for him to interact with others from the guild of his own accord.

"It's a quest that no mage guild has been able to complete in over a hundred years," Lucy explained. "Because of how difficult it is, and how many lives it has claimed in the past, it requires special approval from the Magic Council for a team to attempt it. We'd started talking about it as something we would do once the war was over. I kind of assumed-" Hoped, she corrected in her head, "-that, you know, it was a bit of a joke – if we survive the war, it'll be the only thing left we haven't done – you know, that kind of thing. Then, when the war ended, I thought we all needed some time to recover, sort out our personal lives, maybe spend a bit of time working on our novels…"

She pulled a face. "But no, Natsu has decided that he can't wait any longer, and we're doing this thing now."

"I see," Zeref said neutrally. "I assume this… quest… is not in Magnolia?"

"Oh, no. It's on another continent. Honestly, the travelling is the only part of this suicide mission I'm actually looking forward to."

"I see," he repeated, and nothing more.

"Still," Lucy offered, in a vain attempt to cheer herself up, "even if the Council do approve it, I doubt Natsu and Gray will want to miss the S-Class Trials, so we won't be going until the new year… which gives me plenty of time to put a will in place." She clapped her hands together briskly. "Anyway, the Master and I really do need to get back to the guildhall, so I'll have to catch up with you another time. Oh – I'm going shopping later. Do you want anything?"

"No."

"You sure? It's been a while since I last brought you anything…"

"No," he repeated, a lot less expressive than he had been when she'd first walked in on their conversation, but she had other things on her mind than trying to figure him out.

"Suit yourself," she shrugged.

Lucy did buy Zeref something, in the end – a present, of sorts, in honour of him managing to have a civil conversation with someone from the guild.

Unfortunately, it took three days for her to convince the garden centre to deliver it to an unregistered house in the middle of the forest without asking too many questions, and that was more than enough time for any accord with Fairy Tail's awkward prisoner to have disintegrated between the grinding wheels of his moods. Three days ago, it had seemed like a good idea. After three days of moody silence, of Zeref refusing to acknowledge her calls or emerge from his residence, her hope was waning.

Still, she hadn't been prepared for the sheer fury on his face as she'd finally managed to get the new picnic bench set up, half in and half out of the Fairy Sphere.

"What," he spat, "is that?"

"A picnic bench," she stated, folding her arms, irritated that after three days of negotiations – and nearly as many of heavy lifting – he was treating her brainwave like it was an insult.

His eyes flashed, a red flare of danger that not even the perpetual gold of the barrier could mute. "So that you and your friends can bring your lunch, and sit and gawk at me in my cage?"

"So that we can sit down and talk to you!" she burst out. "So that we can eat with you!" She yanked her hands through her hair with a wordless yell. "Zeref, when are you going to get it into your head that we are not doing this to humiliate you? We are trying to be kind to you – why can't you see that?"

His only response was to flick his hand. The end of the picnic bench burst into flames.

Instinctively, Lucy jumped back, but the flames hit the barrier and could go no further. The Fairy Sphere was protecting the outside world from his magic. There was nothing to save the half of the picnic bench within his territory, though, which was rapidly turning to ash upon the already-dead ground.

Then he turned on his heel and vanished back inside his house.

"Fine!" she yelled after him. "Be like that! If you're not even going to try to listen, I'll just stop bothering!"

No response.

Well, what had she been expecting?

Sure, he'd told her he was unstable, but that was sounding more and more like a convenient excuse for his immaturity. Was it really that hard to listen and apply common sense?

She had hoped that his amicable discussion with the Master was a sign that he was starting to open up to them, but it was always like this with him, no matter how hard she tried. One step forward, two steps back.

Lucy was still in an awful mood when she entered the guildhall. She'd headed there in the hope that seeing her friends, people who valued and reciprocated the efforts she put into fostering a relationship, would cheer her up, as it almost always did… but she'd stupidly sat down with Natsu and Gray before looking at what they were poring over.

Maps for the Hundred Year Quest.

Oh, joy.

"You okay, Luce?" Natsu wondered, perhaps catching sight of her expression, or the dark crackling thundercloud drifting over her head.

"Fine," she responded shortly.

"You don't seem fine."

"I am fine." With an effort, she pulled the list of port cities Gray had been jotting down towards her. "So, we've decided to buy passage on a merchant ship, right?"

Instead of looking at the list, Natsu's eyes narrowed at her. "It's him again, isn't it?"

"Drop it, Natsu."

"And let him get away with treating you like this?" His fist slammed into the table. "If you won't stop pandering to him, then I'll have to make sure he can't get anywhere near you-"

"Natsu!" she roared, standing suddenly. "I'm upset with him because he refuses to build any kind of relationship with us! In what universe do you think that the sight of my own best friend doing the exact same thing with him is going to make me feel better?"

Fire flashed in his eyes, a far more primal anger than that of his estranged brother. "Luce-"

"No, Natsu. I've had enough of the both of you today. I'm going home."

She avoided them both for a whole week after. It was easy to keep away from the dark mage imprisoned in the forest. It was easier than she'd thought to steer clear of Natsu, too, for while she occasionally caught him watching her from the other side of the guildhall, he never approached her, taking jobs with Happy or Wendy instead.

She was still avoiding them long after her anger had cooled and anxiety had started to set in: anxiety over her very dangerous, very unpredictable prisoner, who had killed a man the last time she had left him unattended, but also anxiety over her live wire of a best friend, who was reliable and trustworthy and warm right up until anyone mentioned Zeref.

It was the first time she'd ever identified a similarity between the estranged brothers, and it made her want to bash her head against a brick wall. They were both so stupidly stubborn over the most trivial things.

And in a way, so was she.

Not being on speaking terms with Zeref frightened her, because if she wasn't keeping an eye on him, no one was.

Not being on speaking terms with Natsu, however, made her thoroughly miserable.

No matter how cheerful she tried to be when she accompanied Team Shadow Gear on a job, no matter how much she tried to smile when chatting to Mira at the bar, the combination of fear and loneliness constantly pressed down upon her shoulders.

Any one of them knew how to end it.

But Zeref didn't try to contact her, and Natsu didn't try to reconcile with her, and so neither did she, to either.

Lucy was repainting her kitchen – any excuse to not spend time in the guildhall – when the silence was broken. It wasn't an audible noise, but a mental one; a tug that had become familiar ever since she had started carrying around the twin of the communication lacrima she had given Zeref. When she glanced over her shoulder, she could see a faint light squeezing out of the sleeves of the old jumper in which she'd wrapped it.

She ignored it.

She'd see how he liked it.

After a minute that felt like ten, the telepathic connection it had been trying to form lapsed. The irritating glow faded from the room, though the irritation in her stomach remained.

Almost immediately, the lacrima began to ring again.

She kept painting the wall with savage slashes of yellow.

Unlike him to try more than once, though. Unlike him to want anything that much.

It rang off.

And then started ringing again. The same gentle pulsing of light, the same faint tugging at her mind, affecting the world in the only way its programming allowed, slow and modest and somehow frantic. It was a magical tool; the power it held was entirely independent of its wielder – yet she would have sworn she could feel an inhuman amount of magic slamming against a soundproof window, unable to communicate with her unless she allowed it.

It just… wasn't like him at all.

Tentatively, she reached out one paint-splattered finger and touched the crystal.

Before she could speak, three words lanced into her mind: "Get here now."

Then the connection snapped, leaving her staring at the lacrima in disbelief.

She almost considered not going. But the last time she'd done that, he'd killed a man – and he hadn't been nearly as worked up then as he had sounded just now. She didn't just walk up to the house in the woods. She sprinted, still in her painting clothes, not even locking the front door behind her.

And there was another body.

Not an enemy, this time. Not a once-loyal Rune Knight gone rogue.

The body of her own Guild Master, slumped over the remaining half of the picnic bench.

She let loose a shriek. There was no blood – no gaping wound, not this time – but it wasn't enough to steady her frantic heart; she struggled to feel a pulse beneath the throbbing pressure of her own veins.

"He's alive," a voice rasped, "but he needs a doctor, now."

Only then did she register the other person in the clearing. Zeref was pacing back and forth behind the Fairy Sphere like a caged tiger. His gaze didn't leave her for an instant, even as she screamed at him, "What did you do?"

He slammed his fist into the barrier with a wordless shriek.

Belatedly, she noticed the darkness writhing around his hands. The shadows clawing across his body. The desperation and the urgency and the helplessness in the curse that raged against the Fairy Sphere and yet needed it more than anything. Whatever had happened here, he hadn't caused it any more than he had been able to stop it from inside his prison.

For a moment, she wondered how a man who could so calmly and remorselessly take the lives of others could be so fragile when faced with their mortality.

Then, just as it had when she had first walked into the Master's office with a fledgling plan to rescue the Black Mage, something snapped into place inside her. Her heart thudded one last time and settled into a more practical rhythm. She was nothing but business: hand on her celestial keys, Taurus gently lifting the Master, Virgo running on ahead to the hospital, and the procession following with more care, more composure, and a hundred times more control than the immortal who watched, shaking, until they were out of sight.

Word spread quickly.

Lucy sat outside the operating theatre, answering the questions of the guild mages who dropped by, collecting get-well-soon gifts to pass on as soon as she was able, keeping a lone vigil for no reason other than that she had been the one who brought him in. Her focus on that task somehow nailed her to the dry-eyed steady-voiced calmness that seemed to elude every other visitor.

At first, she dreaded each new arrival, because she had no news. Only after the surgeon had finally emerged to give her answers – perhaps assuming she was family, which of course was true in every way that mattered– was she glad to see each friend that arrived, her soul soothed by every face her words could light up.

She hadn't wanted to be the one landed with the job of conveying the bad news, but she'd do it a hundred times over for the privilege of being able to share the good news.

It was therefore with only a small amount of apprehension that she reached for the communication lacrima as soon as she got a private moment.

This time, the connection formed at once. Zeref didn't speak, but she could feel his presence, just waiting.

"He's going to be okay." The words came out tangled up in one another. Explaining it to him was somehow even harder than explaining it to Laxus; at least she'd been able to guess how the Master's grandson was going to react. Every minute she spent with the Black Mage seemed to make it harder for her to understand him. "The doctor said there was a corruption in his magical core. They had to operate, but they've been able to prevent it from spreading any further. He's in a good condition and they think he'll be back to normal soon enough."

The connection the lacrima formed was purely mental, yet she could have sworn that she heard the shaky breath leaving his lips.

When it didn't seem like he was going to speak, she prompted, "What happened, Zeref?"

The question was gentle. Not just because all her words for the last three hours had been gentle, but because she hadn't needed the doctor's analysis to know that Makarov's collapse had had nothing to do with Zeref – she had known it ever since she'd glimpsed his cursed magic out of control.

Quiet words, unguarded words. "He just collapsed. He was fine, and then he… I couldn't do anything. I didn't even know what had happened. From what you have told me, though, I suspect that his feats of magic during the war have finally caught up with him." And then, quieter: "Fairy Law. He shouldn't have done it, not on that scale. It is a miracle he has even lasted this long."

Lucy hadn't been planning to mention that part of the doctor's assessment, but she should have known Zeref would figure it out. Feeling awkward, she tried to change the subject. "What was he doing up at your house?"

There was a pause. "He's been turning up every day for the past week, trying to trick me into doing his guild paperwork and other such menial things. I assumed you had put him up to it, to keep an eye on me."

"No, not at all," Lucy admitted, surprised.

"Oh." Another pause. If it was usually difficult to tell what was going through his head, then without being able to see his expression, it was downright impossible. "Well, you can tell him his services are no longer required."

"If he wants to spend time with you, I can't stop him," she pointed out.

"Yet if he had been in the guildhall when it happened, there would have been no risk. Your friends would have taken him straight to the emergency room."

Guilt plunged deep into her stomach. "No," she asserted. "It won't matter in the future. I will never not answer a call from you again-"

"But I might not call you," he said flatly.

Ghostly hands wrung the relief out of her soul as she realized just how differently today could have gone; as she understood what her stubborn alienation of this unpredictable, contradictory man could have caused. She truly hadn't appreciated what she was getting into, when she had taken him from the Council's prison against his own advice. She was supposed to be the better person. Zeref was relying on it.

"Why did you call me?" she whispered.

"I don't know. Sometimes I like to see people suffer, and sometimes I don't. You got lucky, I think."

"Thank you."

The connection lapsed. Lucy let the hand holding the lacrima fall to her side, as tears – the first since crying people had started coming to her – threatened to spill down her cheeks.

"Lucy?"

Blinking furiously, she glanced up at a figure she would recognize through any number of tears: Natsu. The last person she wanted to see, but also the person she wanted to see most of all.

"Mira told me what happened," he continued awkwardly. "You okay?"

She had already opened her mouth to tell him that the Master was stable following his operation when she realized he wasn't asking about the Master at all.

He was asking about her.

Her expression must have answered that one for him, because without another word, he sat down beside her and pulled her close. Not caring about their argument. Just knowing what she needed in the moment – not another fight, not more drama, not an awkward apology, just him.

So glad was she to lean into his embrace that she missed the way his gaze fell upon the lacrima in her hand, and the fires of blame that flashed around his irises.

A/N: Another messy chapter. But hey, at least no one died this time! And I must say, picking Makarov as the first person to introduce to Zeref is probably the only sensible decision Lucy has made all story. Sure, Zeref is still very up and down. But his relationship with Makarov is very different in nature to his relationship with Lucy, meaning that between them, they may be able to accommodate more of his moods.

They've still got a long way to go, though. Dealing with Zeref requires an inordinate amount of patience that he often doesn't deserve. Keeping him contained is no big deal. Keeping him sane, though? That's a big commitment, and one Lucy wasn't prepared for. Still, she's nothing if not resilient. See you next week! ~CS