Homeward Hours
By CrimsonStarbird
Chapter Thirteen – Every Step Towards Tomorrow
Lucy was calling him on the lacrima again.
The crystal sphere danced around Zeref's fingers as he considered whether to answer. He knew every smudge, every imperfection, the exact balance of asymmetry that would let it sit on the steady back of his hand without rolling away. It astounded him, sometimes, that he'd not smashed it yet.
On the very last ring, he let the connection form. Over these long months, he had come to learn that it was usually worth finding out what Lucy had to say. Sometimes it was irritating, sometimes it was mundane, sometimes it was amusing, and every now and then, it proved to be a fascinating opportunity. He could always shoot her down after he knew why she was calling.
"Hi, Zeref. I'm outside. Are you in a good mood?"
"If I say no," he sent back along the telepathic connection, "what, exactly, are you going to do? Go away?"
"No. I have to talk to you now. Sorry."
"Then why did you even ask?"
"So that I could mentally prepare myself if it seemed like you were going to be a jerk," Lucy answered frankly. "Can you come outside now, please?"
He had half a mind not to go. He might have been used to this life now, but he didn't want her getting used to it. Her reactions constituted a major part of his entertainment.
But then he made the mistake of glancing out of the window – and seeing just who it was she had brought to visit him today.
He wasn't so childish that he would let his sulking sabotage something with so much potential.
However, he was definitely childish enough to draw on his magic and teleport right to the edge of the barrier, drawing a startled oath from Lucy's companions.
Lucy herself didn't so much as flinch. "Was that necessary, Zeref?"
"Yes," he assured her.
To Lucy's right, a pink-haired young woman was regarding him with curiosity and Lucy with even more curiosity, surprised as much by Lucy's non-reaction than by his sudden appearance. On her other side stood a man whose blue hair and crimson tattoo were immediately recognizable to dark mages and Rune Knights alike. He was glaring at Zeref with unbridled suspicion.
"This is Zeref," Lucy said to them, in an entirely unnecessary introduction. "Zeref, these are Jellal and Meredy. They're going to be babysitting you for the next week."
Zeref let his gaze linger on the two of them just long enough to be unsettling, absorbing every detail of the too-tense set of Jellal's jaw, the skitter of light magic around his fingertips, the wary reluctance of Meredy to come anywhere near the barrier. "You know," he remarked, to Lucy, "if Fairy Tail has grown bored of humiliating me, you could just let me go."
"Not a chance," she retorted. "It's only for a week. We're competing in the Grand Magic Games, so the entire guild is going to Crocus to cheer on this year's team. Given the issue with maintaining the Fairy Sphere over such a long distance, we've called in some additional help while we're away."
Once again, Zeref gave the two former dark mages a lazy glance. "I would love to see what blackmail material Lucy has on the two of you."
Lucy's eyebrow twitched. "I didn't have to blackmail them, Zeref. They volunteered to help because they are good people. You could learn a lot from them."
"I'm not sure knowledge-sharing is a particularly good idea," he mused. "After all, wasn't it them trying to learn from me that got them into trouble in the first place?"
Jellal didn't say anything – didn't so much as flinch as he continued to meet the dare in Zeref's eyes – but there was a quiet rage in him, oh yes, the kind that was just asking to be fed and fed until it exploded out of all control. It was so very tempting.
"That's enough, Zeref," Lucy interjected, before he could push the matter any further. "I want you on your best behaviour while they're supervising you, alright?"
"Yes, yes." He waved it away with his hand. "Eat my greens and be in bed by 9pm, got it."
She glowered at him.
"There's no need to look so concerned," he reminded her. "It's not as though I can do anything to cause trouble from in here, is it?"
"…No, I suppose not." Much more reassured by that logic than by any apparent goodwill on his part, Lucy turned to Jellal and Meredy. "The Fairy Sphere is impenetrable. As long as you don't enter it, he can't cause you any trouble."
"Understood," Jellal nodded. "Let us complete the transfer."
Lucy placed her palm face-down in front of her. Jellal did the same, his hand on hers, and then Meredy. A pink glow enveloped their hands, radiating a sense of vast space and peculiar confinement, before it released a pulse briefly powerful enough to encompass the entire globe. The magic condensed down into a singularity, forming bracelets of light upon each of their wrists.
Despite himself, Zeref watched with interest and irritation as the ethereal markings of Fairy Sphere peeled up from Lucy's forearm and entwined around Jellal's arm instead. It was interesting because he'd thought it was impossible for anyone without the guild mark to control Great Fairy Magic, and it was irritating because they'd so easily been able to manipulate the spell that he'd spent a large part of his incarceration failing to deconstruct.
"All stable," Jellal reported, flexing his arm.
"All good here too," Meredy added. The delicate light of her magic faded to an inconspicuous pink band around their wrists, connecting the two outsiders through Lucy to the magic of the guild itself.
Lucy looked like she was about to collapse in relief. "Oh, thank heavens for that."
"Just out of curiosity," Zeref spoke up, amused, "what would you have done if that hadn't worked, and the Fairy Sphere had collapsed?"
Before she could answer, Jellal took a step forwards. "I would have held you back myself until she could recast it," he vowed. Something shifted in his eyes; Zeref once again caught a glimpse of that fire, more golden than red, a promise that if he could not have beaten Zeref, he would at least have died trying.
"Oh?" A smile curled across Zeref's face. "You're taking redemption very seriously, aren't you?"
"Yes, I am," Jellal stated, proud and angry.
"Sneer all you want, Zeref, but he's a free man and you're stuck in there," Lucy cut in, trying a little too hard to hide her realization that her genius decision to involve these two might have had a few flaws. "Queen Hisui pardoned his guild of her own accord, whereas it took all the favours we could call in just to get you moved from one prison to another. Now, I need to go and meet the others at the station, so I'll have to leave you to it. Zeref – be good. Jellal, Meredy – if he isn't being good, just walk away. He can deal with a week of isolation. I'll sort it once I'm back."
The three of them stared after her in silence long after the undergrowth had swallowed her.
To say that the atmosphere was uneasy was an understatement – it was the sort of tension that couldn't be allayed by the presence of an impenetrable barrier, for the Fairy Sphere only blocked magic, and there was far more than mere magic making Zeref dangerous. Given their histories, these two were particularly conscious of that. They knew that the only way to guarantee their safety was to walk away and bury themselves under a shawl of ignorance, leaving it all for Lucy to patch back together upon her return… and he had a hunch that they were too diligent to attempt something so sensible.
This, Zeref thought, was going to be fun.
As though this were a perfectly normal conversation between old friends, he remarked, with total innocence, "If you've been pardoned, why are you not at the Grand Magic Games yourselves? At the very least, I would have thought you'd have wanted to cheer Fairy Tail on."
From the suspicious glare on Jellal's face, he was hearing nothing but threats in that friendly question. As the silence yawned wider, Meredy had a stab at filling it. "That's where the rest of our guild is. It's a shame that the Magic Council are dragging their heels over our application to become a legal guild – once it has been processed, there'll be nothing stopping us from competing and winning!"
"Except for the other guilds," Zeref pointed out mildly.
"Well, yes. That's why the others are scouting out the competition," she winked.
"But you two are above that kind of childish behaviour?"
"No. I mean, yes. But that's not why we stayed behind. The Grand Magic Games marks a difficult anniversary for us. We lost a close friend of ours on the last day of the Games two years ago, under awful circumstances. Although there's still-"
"Meredy," Jellal spoke up. "We should go and check into the hotel."
"Yes. Right." She looked about as convinced as Zeref did at that excuse, but didn't argue. "Guess we might see you later, then."
"I won't be going anywhere," Zeref shrugged. "You know where to find me, if you want to talk."
"We don't," Jellal promised him. "We're here to keep an eye on you. Nothing more."
"Yes, yes." Zeref waved at them as they left. He was sure he'd be seeing them again.
He certainly heard them again. There he was two days later, minding his own business in the kitchen with more varieties of spice than he had been able to name before Lucy had caught a glimpse of – in her words – the woeful state of his store cupboards, when the sound of raised voices reached his ears.
"If you won't, then I will!" Meredy was shouting.
Well, this sounded more interesting than rearranging his cupboards. Zeref moved silently to the open window and stood out of sight against the wall, listening.
Jellal seemed to be arguing with his guildmate over something. "It's too dangerous-"
"What's the harm in asking? Worst he can do is say he's not going to help!"
"That is far from the worst a man like him can do, Meredy," he overrode her. "If he knows he has something we want, he will hold it over us. If he knows where we are weak, he will use it against us!"
"But what's he going to do? If he says no, we do what Lucy said and walk away from the Fairy Sphere! He can't follow us, he can't blackmail us; we'd be in no worse a position than we are right now!"
Jellal's voice was soaring now, the roar of the inferno Zeref had glimpsed within him, equally capable of consuming both his foes and his own self in a blaze of righteous fury. "And what if he professes to know the answer, so you follow his instructions, only to find that it's nothing but a lie and you've unwittingly destroyed everything you care about?"
It was about then that Zeref decided he didn't want to merely be an observer in this argument, and teleported to the very edge of the Fairy Sphere. "After all this time, you have worked out that the Tower of Heaven had nothing to do with me, haven't you?"
From Jellal's visible flinch – and from the hurt and fear that surged entirely out of proportion to Zeref's calm words – he knew he'd hit the mark.
Coolly, easily, he continued, "If you are going to judge me by the actions of some evil cult with whom I never had any involvement, perhaps I should judge you in accordance with the words and the actions of your former colleagues on the Council. A free man you may be by the generosity of Queen Hisui, but the Council members would sell their own daughters for an opportunity to throw you back in jail, no?"
"I am judging you," Jellal ground out, "by your decision to attack Fairy Tail and subsequent attempt to slaughter my friends."
Zeref's smile did not slip for a moment. "I see. Well, I can't imagine a man defined by such heinous actions could possibly be able to help you."
"Quite so," Jellal confirmed at absolute zero.
This caused Meredy to round on her friend at once. "And what's your alternative, then?"
"I'll keep researching! I'll find the answer, Meredy-"
"You've been researching since the war ended! I know how hard you're trying, Jellal, but none of that matters if you're approaching it in the wrong way!"
For a moment, Jellal seemed to struggle for words. Zeref found himself wishing he'd brought popcorn.
"Of course I'm willing to try other approaches, Meredy. Just not him."
"Why not? Lucy said he helps Fairy Tail sometimes, when he's bored," she retorted stubbornly.
"Lucy also said to be very careful of his helpful moods, as it usually means he's plotting something."
"You saw how he was with Lucy before she left. They're friends."
"It's probably all part of my nefarious scheme," Zeref chipped in cheerfully, enjoying the way Jellal recoiled at hearing the words in his head spoken so frivolously.
Meredy took the chance to jump in. "I'm going to ask him, Jellal. If you're not comfortable with that, go back to the hotel. I'll deal with this on my own."
"I'm not prepared to leave you alone with him," he conceded ungraciously.
"Fine." Meredy took a deep breath, before turning to face Zeref. "We-"
"Sure, I'll help you rescue Ultear," Zeref said.
A momentary pause was put on the forest, as time forgot how to roll onward and the air molecules were too busy staring to propagate any sound waves.
It was Meredy who broke it, stepping right up to the barrier. "Rescue," she repeated breathlessly. "It's possible to get her out of that place, then?"
"I believe so," Zeref considered. "It is possible for others to enter and leave it, no? Perhaps all it requires is to think about it in the right way."
"Then-"
Jellal picked that moment to regain the use of his vocal cords. "How did you know we were going to ask that?" he demanded, eyes flashing fiercely in the light of a midwinter bonfire. "How did you know about her?"
"I make a point of knowing everything about my enemies," Zeref yawned. "I must admit, I was astonished to learn that she had survived casting Last Ages. I can only surmise that she made a mistake while invoking it – it did not have the full effect on reality that she intended, but as a result, it did not kill her as it should have done. She was expelled from time, and yet remained tethered to it – powerless, trapped, and fading, but not dead, not yet. Fascinating, really."
"If I were you, I would take care not to speak of our dear friend like that," Jellal growled.
Mildly, Zeref said, "You should be glad that her fate is fascinating to me, as I would not be the least bit interested in helping you otherwise. Why don't you tell me what you know, and we can pool our resources?"
He could see Jellal mentally grinding through all the many, many reasons not to tell him anything, but fortunately, Meredy was far more willing to compromise. "We know she's trapped in a place outside time, but she also still exists in this reality, as an old woman. Jellal thinks that's how she has managed to retain her human mind outside time – because she's still connected to the present. But she's dying in the real world. And if she does, we'll lose her forever. We need to bring her back from outside time and restore her to how she was before it's too late!"
"Wendy told us that, during the war, she fought a woman who worked for you," Jellal picked up, evidently resigned to Meredy's plan. "Her magic allowed her to enter the place outside time. There, Ultear was not only able to communicate with Wendy, but helped her win the battle. We know Ultear is there. We think we can even get her out. We just need to reach her."
Jellal took a deep breath. Zeref did not cut in this time; he wanted to make him say it.
"We went to Alvarez to speak to her – to Dimaria," he confessed. "We told her we would do anything if she would help us communicate with Ultear. She laughed in our faces."
Zeref snorted; it seemed she hadn't changed a bit.
"We thought," Jellal ground out, "that, since she was one of your soldiers, you would know how to get her to help us."
"To get Dimaria to do something for you," Zeref told him, "you have to have something that she wants. Not only that, but it must be something that she is physically unable to take from you, or she will do so without remorse. When I knew her, she wanted power, recognition, and authority; she was loyal to me because I gave her all three. Now, though – I have nothing to offer her from my prison. Not to mention, if you let anyone from Alvarez know that I am still alive, everyone from Lucy right up to Queen Hisui and the Magic Council will be out for your blood, pardoned man or not."
"So, you won't help, then?" Meredy asked. The words came out crushed.
"I didn't say that," Zeref pointed out, waving his hand, taking his time. "The chance of getting Dimaria to help you is next to nil. You'd probably have more luck with the man who taught her everything she knows."
"What do you know about time magic?" Jellal accused.
"You'd be hard-pressed to find something that I don't know about it." Another easy shrug, compressing four centuries of research into one dismissive gesture. "Despite what you may think, I did exhaust all possible alternatives before declaring war on Fairy Tail."
Leaning forward eagerly, Meredy pressed, "Can you take us to the place where Ultear is?"
"I think," Jellal answered grimly before he could, "a better question would be, what is he going to demand from us in return?"
"How little you think of me, Jellal," Zeref smirked. "I don't want anything from you. I'll do it because it's interesting."
Even Meredy joined in with the dubious glances.
"Though, there is one small catch," he added idly. "Dimaria can control time by virtue of a pact she made with Chronos. I do not have such an… amicable relationship with the old gods. I know the theory of the magic she uses, but in order to channel that power, I will need to stand at a site blessed by Chronos." He looked around in an exaggerated gesture, before heaving a disappointed sigh. "And unfortunately, I don't think I'm going to find one of those in my backyard."
Anger blazed in Jellal's eyes, dangerously close to that keg of gunpowder. "I should have known. You want us to let you out."
"No, not at all. I'm quite happy in my little house. However, with all the goodwill in the world, I simply cannot help you from here."
"Forget it," Jellal snapped. "Come on, Meredy."
The fact that neither of them looked back as they strode from the clearing didn't bother Zeref in the slightest.
He gave it three days at the most.
It took less than two, in the end.
The former renegade mage paced back and forth outside the Fairy Sphere. Between the aching shadow around his eyes and the defeated bow of his shoulders, Jellal looked more harrowed than he had in eight years of living on the run, while Meredy watched, her fingers twisted in the edges of her cloak.
Jellal said, "I want your word that you will neither hurt anyone nor try to run off."
"Sure thing," Zeref breezed.
The expression Jellal shot him was almost pleading, desperate for him to at least pretend to be sincere.
Zeref raised his hands in surrender. "Hey, I got it. Straight the ruined temple, quick hop outside time, and then back to Magnolia in time for tea."
With trembling fingertips, Jellal touched the barrier – then turned away sharply, his hand falling back to his side. "This is a mistake."
"It's to save Ultear," Meredy reminded him firmly. "Fairy Tail will understand."
"I know. That's the worst thing about it." Then, to Zeref: "If you break your word, I will not rest until you are back in captivity, do you understand?"
Without waiting for an answer – without letting his better judgement get a look in – he slammed his palm against the Fairy Sphere. The Great Fairy Magic had been loaned to him in good faith, and now he tore it down with his own two hands.
There was no great thunderclap of doom over the clearing. In fact, there was little to mark the occasion at all, for the Fairy Sphere had always let the breeze and the scents of the forest through it, and its ever-present gold was barely noticeable in the sunlight. Zeref stretched anyway, marvelling at how a small change could somehow make such a difference.
Not that Jellal noticed. He had his eyes screwed shut, braced for the inevitable calamity.
"Well, then," Zeref announced cheerfully. "Shall we go?"
Jellal barely had the chance to crack his eyes open again before a swirl of magic encompassed the three of them, and the forest melted away to reveal a steep hillside made rugged by shrubbery and the shells of long-dead buildings.
"We'll walk from here," Zeref informed them, setting off towards the summit.
He wasn't setting a particularly quick pace – captivity hadn't done his physical health any favours, although the curse forced his body to remain in a largely unchanged state regardless of his dedication to exercise – yet Jellal remained behind him the entire time. Zeref could feel the man's magic entirely locked onto him, a gun at his back, a guard dog ready to pounce at the first sign of trouble, for whom every second without betrayal only increased the odds of it happening the next.
"Where are we?" Meredy piped up from beside him. Zeref wondered if she'd volunteered to be the Good Cop, or if she also considered her companion's actions to be somewhat over the top. "Are we still in Fiore?"
"Yes. The north-west coast."
"Why is it abandoned?" she pressed. "What happened?"
He gave her a humourless smile. "I did."
She didn't ask any more questions for the remainder of the climb.
On the summit, fully exposed to the elements, the ruins were in an even worse shape. Whereas it had been possible to pick out individual dwellings from the undergrowth on their way up, only the odd half-pillar and occasional stone too rectangular to be natural remained here. It was impossible to tell, using only one's eyes, how grand or how important it had once been.
It was easy to tell with magic, though.
Zeref could feel them: the servants who had been born here, the acolytes who had been summoned here, the elders who had died here, ephemeral moments made eternal, for an oath sworn to time itself did not end when one's time on this earth did.
The air thrummed with voices just out of hearing. With lives lived on the other side of the veil. When the wind swept over the summit, it did so with the sound of a thousand bare feet called to morning prayer; when the sun rose, it marked out the shadow of a building that didn't exist, and yet perhaps did, somewhen else.
Time was loose here, and it was easy for the ghosts of the past to slip through.
"What is this place?" In his awe, even Jellal seemed to have forgotten he was playing the Bad Cop.
"A time sink," Zeref answered tersely. "They occur entirely naturally, yet in every age, you will find men who ascribe them to divine forces." The two of them exchanged bemused looks, but before either could ask, he snapped, "I will get you in. Convincing your friend to return with us is your job."
"What do you mean, convincing-?"
But he blocked out the sound of their voices and reached into the flow of magic instead. The voices of the lost circled around him, their litanies maddeningly close to making sense. He saw the temple as it had been and as it would be overlaid onto the nothingness that was. He seized that concept, that power, that unfathomable divinity and wrenched it into reality.
Gold flooded his senses.
The gold of Fairy Sphere, the gold of her hair, and most of all, the gold of the light that had shone through those open guildhall doors when he had held Fairy Heart in his hands-
The magic snapped with a cry.
It was a moment before he realized the cry had been his own, and a moment longer before awareness reluctantly began to return: wind not voices, grass not stone, the calm sunshine of the present rather than that hateful light.
Slowly, he willed his hands to release their death-grip on his head, uncurled from his hunched posture, forced himself to breathe.
"Hey, are you okay?" Meredy was asking.
Even Jellal was looking at him in concern. Concern that he wouldn't be able to uphold his end of the bargain, no doubt, but concern nonetheless.
"Yes," he snapped. "It may surprise you to learn that there aren't many opportunities to practice world-changing magic inside prison."
That wasn't the reason at all, and he was both relieved and offended that they bought it. Brushing away their doubts, he closed his eyes and reached back into the flow of temporal magic.
He was expecting it, this time.
Expecting the overwhelming despair that flooded through his mind.
Each and every one of his regrets shone that same bright gold, an agonizing reminder of his impulsive, foolish decisions. At last, he could hear those ghostly voices clearly, and every one of them was laughing at him.
He was determined not to lose hold of the magic this time. Not even the humiliation of failing after he'd thoughtlessly assured Jellal that he could do it would be enough to make him go through this again. With sheer, blind willpower, he wrenched it into the pattern he wanted.
Time shuddered, and then stopped.
Some of the pressure reluctantly lifted, enough for him to see Jellal and Meredy gazing around in awe at the colourless world. Yet the sensation of standing in that golden doorway remained, all of time spread out before him, one step forward all that was needed for the world to be remade.
The step he hadn't taken.
It mocked him.
An exclamation of delight from Meredy brought to his attention the fact that Ultear's form was slowly condensing out of the nebula of time. At least she would distract their attention away from him for a little while.
He walked away from them, uninterested in their happy reunion. How he hated being here. How he resented being reminded of what he had done wrong; one stupid decision in the final battle and he was paying for it for the rest of eternity. He shouldn't have agreed to come here. Not even the pleasure of backing Jellal into a corner made up for it.
All he wanted was to find a half-crumbled wall that would take his weight and think about nothing but holding the magic steady until they could go home.
He did not even notice he had company until Ultear sat down beside him.
He looked up sharply and saw that Jellal and Meredy were unhappily keeping their distance, having evidently promised to give them some space, though he could not fathom why.
He stared at Ultear – long enough to see the edges of her form blur and rebuild themselves, the only things able to change in a world where time had stopped – and then he said, clearly, "No."
"I beg your pardon?" Ultear asked, bemused.
"Like I told your friends, I am only here to get them in and out of this place. Convincing you to return with us is their job, and I want no part in it."
"Yes, they mentioned you'd said that," Ultear mused, unfazed by his rejection. "I found it very interesting. After all, how could you of all people know that I would not want to return to the land of the living, when it had not even occurred to my two closest companions?"
Zeref drew one knee up to his chest, balanced on the broken wall. "I didn't want to return, either."
Neither of them spoke for a moment. In the distance, Jellal and Meredy were ostensibly investigating the ruins of the temple, trying not to appear too curious about their conversation.
"It takes a certain kind of despair to want to rewrite the past," Zeref said, at last. "To hold infinite power in your hands and still be unable to conceive of a single future in which you can be happy. It is unpleasant to fail in any endeavour, but being forced to live on in the world you rejected with every fibre of your being is the cruellest torment of all."
"I lived it for seven years," Ultear said in quiet agreement. "It never got any easier. When the opportunity arose to get out – making myself look like a hero in the process, so it would not cause such pain to those I cared for – I took it."
Then, she continued, "But I had no choice. When I attempted to complete the Arc of Time and return to the past, Gray defeated me. He stopped me from walking that path. No one stopped you, when you had possession of Fairy Heart."
This earned her a dangerously sharp look, but she waved it away with a flash of the haughtiness he had seen from her on Tenrou Island. "You know I have become part of the very magic you tried to invoke. You could not have come so close to using it without me knowing about it. No one stopped you; you stopped the spell yourself. You chose this world."
"It is the nature of my curse that I will spend decades perfecting a plan and then not retain my own sanity long enough to see it through," he corrected coldly. It wasn't the truth, he had been entirely himself when he had let that magic go, but he had no more intention of discussing the final moments of the Alvarez War with her than with Lucy or Natsu. "Afterwards, I tried to remove myself from this world, just as you did. You cast Last Ages and died, or should have done. I let the Rune Knights seal me away, and there I should have remained for a hundred years or more. You are lucky indeed that you get to choose whether or not to wake up."
Ultear nodded sombrely. "Meredy and Jellal think that I still retain some semblance of human consciousness within the magic of time because a version of me is still alive in linear reality. When that me passes away, I shall become one with time."
"Unless you choose to go back, I believe," he volunteered, unable to pass up the chance to discuss the technicalities of her unusual situation. "If the part of you that was lost to time merges with the part that remains, I rather suspect you shall return to how you were before you mis-cast your time magic."
She drummed her fingers on the wall between them. "How do you bear it? Living on in the world you rejected?"
"I have no choice," he reiterated. "I am awake, I am immortal; I endure because I cannot physically do otherwise."
There was a pause. Jellal and Meredy had almost shuffled close enough to hear them now.
"You're not really selling it," Ultear sighed.
"Like I said, convincing you to come back and live again is the job of the two who want you to do so."
"Is there no one who wants you?"
"Of course not." He did not even bother giving her an exasperated look; a comment like that was not worth the effort. "I cannot, off the top of my head, think of anyone whose life is not made worse by my continued existence."
"I can think of two," Ultear pointed out, nodding towards her guildmates.
"Could've fooled me," he said darkly.
For one eternal moment, Zeref stared at the two former dark mages picking their way amongst the ruins, still begrudgingly giving him and Ultear privacy. Time may have been stretched to infinity here, but his own magic remained finite, sands flowing out of an hourglass until the world was allowed to rotate again. They knew they didn't have much longer to convince Ultear to return with them, and yet they were too honourable to interfere.
It was ironic, really, how they had gambled everything to let Zeref out, never realizing that he had never been the biggest obstacle to their goal.
Impulsively, he said, "The little things help."
Ultear gave him a quizzical look.
"Things like a book I ordered arriving in the post, or a new issue of the Journal of Natural Philosophy, Magic, and the Arts being published, or the moment a scheme I have been working on finally comes to fruition. Little things. They don't make the present any less awful, or the hands fate has dealt us any less unfair. But having one thing to look forward to each day makes eternity seem a little more bearable."
She raised her eyebrows, but decided to humour him. "What are you looking forward to at the moment, then?"
"Oh, a few things. Hearing Lucy's stories from the Grand Magic Games is one. The radio report was particularly unflattering about Natsu's attempt at soapbox racing on the first day, and I do hope she managed to get some photos. But, largely, I'm looking forward to the opportunity to study how you managed to survive casting Last Ages – how you merged with time without losing your human mind, and how you managed to get it to leave behind two years of your mortal life when it should have taken all of it. So come by to visit once you're back, won't you? There are at least six tests I want to do on your magical core."
"And that's enough?" she doubted.
"No, not at all. But it's one more day when I won't have to worry about the endless future of captivity that awaits me. I'll be too busy studying your magic to care about all that."
"You make it sound so easy."
"Do I?" Zeref wondered. "Well, perhaps it's not having a choice in the matter that did it for me. If you had tried to explain it to me like I just did, I would probably have laughed in your face. But when you have no other option, the most humiliating, pathetic, domestic ideas suddenly seem palatable." There was a pause. "Would it help if I promised to murder Jellal and Meredy if you do not choose to return?"
"No, you've made your point," she laughed. Her gaze fell upon her two friends, and her eyes softened. "I don't think I ever really did have a choice, did I?"
"Probably not," he grunted. "I'm charging double for this, by the way."
"I'll come by next Monday. I'll answer all the questions you have about what happened to me, as far as I am able."
"Mm, you'd better."
Before she could change her mind, he held out his hand, and – after only a moment's pause – she took it. Like an hourglass shattering, the sands exploding outward with more force than the vessel could take, he released his grip on the gathered folds of time and they catapulted immediately back into place.
Rather than easing, the strain on his magic doubled, as the ever-flowing river tried to sweep the woman beside him back into its stream. Yet he held tight to her, and she to him, and both of them to the promise of next Monday, and it was over as quickly as it had begun.
A few minutes of conversation and a lifetime of learning folded into less than a second.
There was a screech of alarm from the ruins – which quickly became joy, when they realized that the three of them had not returned alone. Meredy pounced on Ultear, and it took far too much restraint for Jellal not to do the same. There were tears and there was laughter, there were hugs and promises that they'd work everything out together, there was relief from Jellal and Meredy that she'd chosen to come back and disbelief from Ultear that she had ever been considering not doing so… and it was a good five minutes before anyone noticed Zeref was missing.
"No," Jellal breathed, his delight doused by an all-consuming horror. "No! He can't- he promised- I let him out, and now he's gone! What have I done?"
To his surprise, Ultear simply rested her hand on his arm. "I think it's probably going to be okay."
"How is this going to be okay?" he all but yelled.
"You'll see. Let's go home."
Without teleportation magic – and without any clue as to where they were beyond 'the north-west coast of Fiore' – it took them several hours to make their way back to civilization. And yet, when they arrived in Magnolia, there Zeref was, sat at the picnic bench outside the residence nicknamed Elfame Court.
If not for the conspicuous absence of a certain glowing dome, it would have looked as if he'd never left.
"You three took your time," he greeted them cheerfully. "What did you do? Stop off for a tour of the West Coast? I hear it is beautiful this time of year."
Jellal strode forwards. Magic sparked around him, too frightened to be controlled. "Where did you go?"
Zeref gave him his best innocent expression. "I didn't go anywhere. We had a deal, remember? To the temple, outside time, and then straight back to Magnolia. Last time I checked, there was no crime in wanting to not have to sit through a sickeningly sweet reunion."
Jellal glared.
It was his most ferocious one yet.
Zeref felt rather proud.
"Anyway, Lucy's due back in an hour, so I'd get that Fairy Sphere re-installed promptly, if I were you," he advised.
Jellal hesitated.
"I won't tell her if you don't," Zeref added sweetly.
"By which he means, he won't tell her yet, but will hold his continued silence over you as leverage for at least the next few weeks," Ultear translated, amused.
"…I feel as though this is going to be less fun with you around," Zeref sulked.
"Thank you," Meredy said suddenly. "For helping us. I really mean it."
Zeref blinked, and then turned to Jellal. "Please put the barrier back up. I think she might be about to hug me."
Meredy stuck her tongue out as Jellal restored the Fairy Sphere. The golden dome shimmered back into place, perfectly enclosing the circle of ever-dead grass.
"Well, this has been the most fun I've had since I got here," Zeref informed them cheerfully. "You three can come again."
Lucy did, eventually, find out that Zeref had left the Fairy Sphere and managed to wrangle several hours unaccompanied in Magnolia out of the deal, though not quite in the way anyone had been expecting.
About a month after their triumphant victory at this year's Grand Magic Games, a solicitor turned up at the guild demanding to know why this month's rent for the guildhall had not yet been paid.
This was all rather confusing to poor Master Makarov, who pointed out that the guild owned the guildhall, and always had.
The solicitor, whose name was Mr Burke, politely reminded the clearly senile old Master that the guild had sold the guildhall and leased it back from its new owner on the sixth of July.
"That's ridiculous!" Makarov laughed. "How could I possibly have authorised a sale on the sixth of July? There are ten thousand witnesses who will confirm I was in Crocus watching my guild win the Grand Magic Games!"
At this point, the suspiciously well-prepared solicitor retrieved a sale contract from his briefcase and spread it on the bar in front of them. Lucy's bad feeling about this situation only worsened when she spotted the extravagant, looping handwriting. Only one person wrote like that these days, largely because it had gone out of fashion four hundred years ago.
"I think you'll find all the documentation is in order," Mr Burke said smoothly. "The sale was approved by an authorized representative of the guild. All documentation was presented as required, and all security questions were correctly answered. Not to mention, the signature given clearly matches that on the last annual return submitted by the guild, which as you will know, has enchantments on it to prevent forgery."
Makarov paled.
Lucy rounded on him in disbelief. "You've been letting him sign official guild documents?"
"Well, uh…" The Master folded his arms defensively. "Look, the whole point of getting him to do them is so that I don't have to! Why would I want to give myself extra work by having to check over and sign everything that he prepares?"
Lucy's jaw nearly hit the floor. "Because he's the kind of man where you take your eyes off him for five minutes and he sells himself the guildhall for 1 freaking Jewel!"
"There'll be a way out of this," the Master muttered, taking the contract from her and skimming through it, and she let out a bark of hysterical laughter.
"If that contract isn't watertight, I'll pay the guild's rent myself. Give the man his money, Master. I'll go and talk to our guest."
Lucy marched out of the guildhall and straight up to the clearing in the forest.
Zeref was already sat out in the garden, clearly expecting her. "Oh, hello, Lucy. I presume you've met Mr Burke. He is efficient, isn't he?"
"I can't believe you!" she exploded. "I left Magnolia for a week. One week! And you've managed to find yet another way of destroying the guild: namely, by charging extortionate rent and putting us into bankruptcy!"
Zeref waved his hand airily. "Don't be ridiculous. It isn't in my interest to destroy the guild, you know that. I just like to keep Makarov on his toes."
"You certainly achieved that. The poor man nearly had a heart attack."
"And I think you'll find that I'm charging a very reasonable rate. Remember, rent can go down as well as up. All this means is that you've got an extra incentive to be nice to me."
"Zeref, I am already being far nicer to you than you deserve." Lucy pressed her fingers to her temples. "You do realize that this is theft, right? You did not have the right to sell the guildhall on the guild's behalf. There's no way the sale and purchase will stand up in court."
"True," he shrugged. She hated when he did that. It meant there was always a but coming – always another side of the problem that hadn't occurred to her – and he delighted in spelling it out. "Feel free to challenge it in court. I think the Council will be very interested to learn who has been signing off all Fairy Tail's statutory reports recently. Not to mention, the sale was properly witnessed, and I think the Council might have a few questions as to how I was able to sign the contracts in the solicitor's office while also being safely trapped in my secure prison."
Lucy glared at him. He beamed back, thriving off it like a leaf thrived on sunlight, infuriating and irrepressible.
"I can't believe you convinced Jellal of all people to let you out," she sighed.
"Don't be too impressed. He made it very easy for me; I was expecting more of a challenge."
"Jellal is being rather evasive about how he and Meredy were able to bring Ultear back to linear time. Am I to take it you had a hand in that?"
"Mm. At first, he wanted my help in convincing Dimaria to help him, but when I pointed out that my current circumstances made that rather difficult, he agreed to let me help instead."
Somehow, she resisted the urge to smack her palm against her forehead – not at Zeref, this time, but at the inability of her friends to admit their own imperfections and ask for help. "And it didn't occur to you to tell him that Dimaria and Brandish are engaged now, and if I asked Brandish to ask Dimaria on our behalf, she'd have helped without batting an eyelid?"
"Of course it occurred to me, but what would I have got out of that arrangement? I'd have given up my leverage for nothing. At least this way, I got a free daytrip and a nice piece of investment property out of the deal."
Lucy just shook her head, repeating her earlier statement with an addendum: "I can't believe you convinced Jellal to let you out, and you used that opportunity to prank the Master."
"And to secure myself a retirement fund," he smirked.
"Yeah, well, you won't be smiling when we start charging you for your own upkeep," she scowled. "Oh, there's a thought. We'll just charge you equal and opposite rent for Elfame Court!"
"Nice try, but I think you'll find my basic living costs are being covered by a grant from the Crown, on whose behalf you are acting as my jailors. You try and put my rent up, and it's not me you'll be hurting – it's all the taxpayers in Fiore."
"…You are insufferable sometimes, you know that?"
"Mm, well, I've got to keep myself entertained somehow."
"I suppose there are worse ways," Lucy conceded reluctantly, because in all honesty, for him to have broken out and done nothing worse than steal the guildhall was a minor miracle, and not one she wanted to discourage were they to slip up again. "Poor Master Makarov, though."
"Poor Makarov indeed."
A/N: I know the chapter length has been creeping up again recently - this is because I had to shuffle some scenes around at the last minute and it ended up reducing four chapters down to three but with the same number of words. This is the longest one, and after this it should drop down to 4-5k words per chapter again. But I do think this one worked as a stand-alone chapter.
I knew I wanted to write a scene with Zeref and Ultear in it for this story. While Zeref hasn't explicitly gone into detail yet about why he didn't use Fairy Heart to go back in time, and won't for quite some time, there was no way that Ultear wasn't going to know about what he attempted, given what happened to her. Plus, even though he changed his mind here, his original aim in turning back time wasn't that different to her own goal back on Tenrou Island. So I thought it would be interesting to sit them down together for a bit. And of course that meant poor old Jellal was going to get dragged into it. I don't know how Zeref can be so mature around Ultear and yet so childish when he's winding up Jellal... ~CS