A/N: Fair warning guys - the last two chapters have been pretty cute and happy, which means that this one probably isn't going to be. ~CS

Homeward Hours

By CrimsonStarbird

Chapter Fourteen – Nothing Lasts Forever

Summer brought a new kind of energy to the forest Zeref had grown used to calling home: partly because the trees exploded with life, full of the scurrying and hunting and singing that the Fairy Sphere let him observe without harm, and partly because a certain Solid Script mage had decided it was now warm enough to sit on the picnic bench outside his house and study runes with him.

He said she had decided because it hadn't been a mutual decision. In fact, he had been as uninterested in teaching as he was in helping the guild, but it turned out that Levy was at least Lucy's equal in persistence. After she presented to him, as a token of her goodwill, a three-hundred-year-old field journal about the different types of fey in her home region's folklore, detailing the origins of the Elfame Court after which she had named his house, he had finally given in.

Well, he had told Lucy that books were a good way of bribing him, and it just so happened that Levy had excellent taste.

They didn't have a schedule, as such. She came up to see him about once a week, depending on the weather and how it fell between her guild jobs – and sometimes, he was either too busy himself or not in the mood to play nice with his captors, and she had to leave disappointed. He preferred it that way. It made it look more spontaneous, unplanned, and begrudgingly generous on his part.

Today was different. Although she took her usual seat on the edge of the picnic bench outside the Fairy Sphere, and started leafing through the book he had lent her the previous week as she waited to see if he would join her, he could tell that she was distracted.

She didn't even notice he had left his house until he carefully pushed an iced tea through the barrier next to her. After a moment's surprise, she gave a grateful smile and pulled it through to her side of the Fairy Sphere.

"You are going to focus, aren't you?" Zeref asked, by way of a greeting. "You can stare into space just as well from the guildhall as in my back garden."

"I am focussed!" she insisted. "It's just that, well… I need to tell you something, and I'm not quite sure what the best way is of doing it."

"Not wasting my time with this awkwardness would probably be a better way to go about it."

"Right." She puffed out her cheeks. "Gajeel and I got engaged. Quite a while ago, actually."

"Oh? He finally decided you were more important than becoming S-Class, then?"

"He said-" Levy did a double-take. "I'm sorry, what?"

"He said he had to get to S-Class, and prove that he was strong enough for you to rely on, before he could propose," Zeref recounted. "Then again, from the fact that Lucy doesn't seem to have told you that already, it was probably supposed to be a secret."

"Wow. I'm not sure what's worse: that he put an impossible condition on marrying me, or that he had to be talked out of it by Lucy."

"Having second thoughts?" Zeref asked, amused despite himself.

A smile touched her lips. It was so simple and so unbelievably fond; one simple gesture that encapsulated everything he feared the most about his curse. His fingers tightened around the edge of the table, braced for a surge of magic. He could almost sense it sizing up the barrier – weighing the need to remind the world of its existence against the futility of such a gesture while the Fairy Sphere stood strong. In the end, it settled back on its haunches without striking, feeling twice as heavy inside his chest.

Before she could speak – she had, in his opinion, said quite enough without using words at all – Zeref said, "I am not sure why you thought I would care enough about your engagement to make telling me a scary activity."

"Oh, it wasn't that. It was… well, just take it."

From between the pages of her book, she pulled a fancy envelope and practically threw it through the barrier in her haste. He lifted it carefully. The luxurious silver lettering reminded him of the few choice pieces of correspondence that made it through the layers of security and subordinates and secretaries to land on the desk of the Emperor of Alvarez.

Then again, back in the day, an invitation to the wedding of two ordinary guild mages would hardly have made the cut. The fact that it was the most interesting thing to have arrived at his house since his captivity had begun – threats from the Magic Council that had been rerouted to him from the guild excluded – only served to show how much things had changed, and not for the better.

"You're… inviting me to your wedding?" he checked.

"Yes."

"Unless you're planning on holding it in my back garden, I can see a few issues with that."

"Well, yeah, I know," she sighed. "The wedding is going to be at Kardia Cathedral."

"Then what's the point of giving me this?"

"It's…" Levy's shoulders slumped. "Look, Zeref-"

"Look at what?" he snapped. "What is there for me to see, except the same forest I have to look at every day? You know full well that I won't be leaving this cage for the rest of eternity! Why would you come here and flaunt all the things I could be doing if not for your guild's actions?"

Her eyes widened. She wasn't like Lucy, who had seen him at his worst and understood the volatility in his moods. Levy had never known him be anything other than civil and occasionally impatient. "It's not like that, Zeref," she pleaded. "I'm not trying to mock you. It's supposed to be a gesture – to show that I like you and would want you to be there, if it were possible-"

"No. You don't want me; you want the version of me that is helpful and talkative and safely behind a perfect barrier."

"That's not what this is supposed to be!" Levy stood up abruptly. "I should have listened to Lucy. She warned me that you'd find some way of misinterpreting this. But I had to do it anyway, because I couldn't, in good faith, write an invitation to all the people who matter in my life and not write one to you as well!"

Halfway to the edge of the clearing, she paused. "Sorry if I offended you. You know, though, I really think that if you could come to terms with the fact that we're not all out to get you, you might have a better time of it!"

Zeref watched her go in silence, wondering why, of the two of them, she had sounded angry, and he felt oddly upset.

The Everyday Mage: Fashion, Fitness, and Lifestyle for Men.

The Cool Wizard's Quarterly.

Modern Fashion for Modern Men – Special Edition Tuxedo Focus.

Zeref stared at the magazines Lucy had thrust through the barrier and into his hands. "I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to tell me here, Lucy."

Lucy folded her arms. "I'm trying to tell you that you can't go to a wedding dressed like you normally do. You look like you've got lost on your way to a toga party."

"I can't go to a wedding anyway, on the basis of being a cursed immortal death-mage whose incarceration documents literally have the infinity symbol printed in the 'length of sentence' box."

"I am well aware of that," Lucy told him stiffly. "However, Levy has invited you to her wedding, and despite the astounding display of rudeness you showed her in return, she, the Master and I have had a long discussion about this. Provided that you promise to behave, and obviously also provided that you don't happen to draw 'psychopathic' out of your raffle box of potential mental states that day, we're willing to let you out for a few hours in order to attend the wedding."

The ever-present rustling of branches was the only sound as Zeref considered this. It seemed to take half of his infinite prison sentence just for him to form the obvious question: "Do you really think that's a good idea?"

In truth, Lucy hadn't, right up until the moment he had asked the question with evident scepticism.

He had seemed so much better recently. His dark moods came far less frequently now than when he had first moved in, and less destructively when they did; she had learnt to recognize the signs, to stay the hell away, and most importantly, to appreciate that it wasn't really him saying or doing those things. It had become easier as she had seen more and more of the person he was behind the mood swings caused by his curse. By helping with the guild's administrative work, he had made a significant contribution to supporting the guild that was putting him up – and the advice he had given her had helped start the lengthy journey of rebuilding the guild's relationship with the Magic Council.

And, crucially, when Jellal had let him out a month ago, he had neither disappeared for good nor gone on a murderous rampage. Alright, so he had stolen the guildhall, and Makarov was still devising his revenge for that, but he had also made no attempt (yet) to abuse his power as landlord or harm the guild in any way. It wasn't quite the way she'd have liked to learn it, but he had proven that he wasn't looking to destroy the guild at the first chance he got.

Hearing his genuine concern at her suggestion – concern not for himself, but for the people who would be exposed to him if he left the safety of the Fairy Sphere – only confirmed to her that Zeref wasn't their guild's enemy, not any more.

"Yes," Lucy told him honestly. "If you want to, of course."

Dubiously, he persisted, "And the happy couple have agreed to this?"

"Levy has. It was her idea; she likes you."

The omission wasn't quite as inconspicuous as Lucy had hoped. "And Gajeel?" he pressed pointedly. "I can't imagine he's too keen on the idea."

"Well… no, he isn't particularly. But it seems that some tactless fool let slip to Levy that he hadn't been planning on marrying her until he was S-Class, and she wasn't best pleased that he'd had to be talked into proposing."

"Oops," Zeref said blandly.

Rolling her eyes, Lucy continued, "Let's just say that he's happy to side with her on anything right now. All the powerful members of the guild will be there, so we'll be well-placed to deal with you if something goes wrong. That being said, Levy has invited some of her former colleagues from her stint as a Rune Knight, so you may have to wear a disguise to avoid being identified. I think actually wearing modern clothes – a suit, for instance – will help with that. Have a look through those men's fashion magazines and let me know what sort of thing you like. I've also brought a catalogue from that fancy tailor in town. It's a bit tricky because you can't physically get measured, but I explained the situation – pretending that you had a contagious disease – and for a fee, they think they can send you a dummy set and use a video-lacrima link to determine the fit-"

"Lucy."

"…Yes?"

"Why?"

There were a lot of answers she could have given, and all of them would have been true. She wanted him to realize that he genuinely had friends here; that Levy wouldn't have brought it up if she hadn't truly wanted him at her wedding. Lucy also wanted him to feel like part of guild life, as far as was possible. She wanted him to live, live normally, because she thought it was playing a big role in keeping him stable.

She didn't think he wanted to hear any of that, though.

Spelling it out for him – making her intentions clear – would make their tentative friendship a whole lot worse.

So she said, "Why not? It could be fun."

He didn't say anything.

"No pressure, though," she reassured him. "If you don't want to, that's completely fine."

"…I'll think about it."

It should have been a moment of such promise for Zeref's relationship with the guild.

Things had been looking up for Fairy Tail and its most unusual prisoner. This should have been the start of putting their acrimonious past aside in favour of the future. They were supposed to go to a wedding and spend a few hours together and connect over something so nice and normal – a wedding that had now been postponed, because no one felt in the mood to celebrate.

Lucy should have been here to drag Zeref kicking and screaming into the world of contemporary fashion.

Not this.

Staring through the Fairy Sphere to his closed front door, she twisted the dormant lacrima in her hands, trying to summon up the courage to make the call.

She wondered what he was doing behind those unassuming walls. Reading, most likely. Writing if not. She didn't think he was experimenting with magic, as although the Fairy Sphere had a perfect track record in containing the dangerous recoil of his scientific endeavours, she'd have heard or seen or possibly tasted the side-effects by now. He could be cooking, though. If the increasingly illogical assortment of groceries he requested every week was any indication, he took a similar approach to cooking as he did with magic – in other words, recipes were for lesser beings and safe flavour combinations were for losers. She supposed that being immortal did give him more flexibility-

"You've got to give me more than twenty-four hours to pick an outfit, Lucy."

Lucy jumped at the sound of his voice in her head. She had been so focussed on trying not to think about this that she hadn't realized the lacrima had connected.

Unaware of her surprise, he continued, "You're asking me to change my entire image here – an image I have been carefully cultivating for four hundred years. I absolutely cannot do it overnight."

There were so many light-hearted, snarky, teasing things she wanted to respond with, and the fact that she couldn't say a single one brought a prickling of tears to her eyes.

"…Lucy?" he prompted, clearly finding her silence as strange as she was.

She swallowed. "Zeref, can you come outside, please?"

There was a pause.

She wondered what he could sense through the mental connection. Not as much through a lacrima as he would were he using his own telepathy to link their minds, but more, she had always suspected, than she could sense from him. Could he hear her mental voice wavering the way her normal voice would have done? How well could a mechanical tool replicate the imperfections of the human body?

Well enough for his response to come back as an unusually subdued, "Alright."

The lacrima went dark. She shifted from foot to foot, waiting. He didn't teleport out, but took his time, walking barefoot across the dead grass.

"What's happened, Lucy?"

"It's- it's the Master." She didn't know how her trembling lips were managing to form the words. "He suffered a relapse last night. He's in hospital. They say it'll be a miracle if he lasts seventy-two hours."

Silence.

She raised a gaze she did not recall dropping, searching for some sort of reaction on his face, something more than darkness in his eyes.

"Okay," he said, and there was no emotion in that either.

She would have sold her soul for him to have said something more – anything – but he didn't, and she had to scrape together the words with the last of her strength. "He's awake," she tried. "In hospital. He's…"

If walking through the forest to his house had felt like there were blocks of iron fastened to her feet, then forcing out the words in the face of such untouchable apathy was like trying to climb a mountain that tilted closer and closer to vertical with every step she took.

"Do you want to go see him?" she blurted out.

"Why?"

"To say goodbye." The word almost choked her.

His laugh was frightening. "Why would I want to do that?"

"There's no coming back for him. Not this time. He's going to die, Zeref."

"Good," he snapped. "And if the rest of you could hurry up and follow his example, I could finally get out of this hell."

"Okay," she murmured, as he turned his back and strode towards the door. "Yeah. Okay."

And then she raised her voice: "Zeref?"

He paused.

Lucy raised her hand towards him, the hand holding the lacrima, a little orb of light. She said, "I am here if you need me."

The only response was the slam of the door behind him.

She let her hand fall back to her side.

How could she blame him, when she understood completely?

It wasn't as if there wasn't a part of her wanting to do the same.

As if Laxus hadn't strode out of the hospital ward and immediately taken the most dangerous mission on the Request Board all on his own.

As if Wendy hadn't put herself in hospital trying every possible permutation of her healing magic in an attempt to reverse an irreversible implosion of his magical core.

As if Natsu wasn't out there right now, punching rocks in an abandoned quarry until the skin of his hand was shredded right down to the bone.

As if Erza wasn't shouting herself hoarse bullying every doctor, mystic, and village healer she could get her hands on into repeating the medical tests that had condemned him, into suggesting some new experimental treatment that might help, into producing one last miracle for them.

As if there was only one way to process shock, to understand grief.

"I am here," she whispered again as her own tears started to fall, hoping he was listening, but knowing he was not.

Twice she'd called, and twice the lacrima had failed to connect. Now, she stood as she so often did, on the far side of the Fairy Sphere, staring at a house that might as well have been abandoned.

"Zeref," she said, out loud.

She didn't know if he could hear her. The lacrima was dormant, the door bolted, the curtains drawn. Just as they had been for the last twenty-four hours.

She spoke anyway. "Master Makarov wrote you a letter. You may not want to talk to him, but he wants to talk to you."

No response.

"I'll leave it here for you," she offered, carefully sliding it along the top of the picnic bench and through the barrier. "If you want to write back, I'll-"

The envelope exploded.

She jerked back, numb and clumsy in her shock; if not for the absolute shield of Great Fairy Magic, the black and crimson spectres slashing at the barrier would have ripped straight through her. Even with it, she could feel the heat clawing at her skin like she was standing at the entrance to hell.

The air choked on hostile intent.

Rage restrained only by futility.

Zeref was nowhere to be seen, but in the hellfire that consumed a dying man's last words, she could sense the same presence that had loomed over their guildhall like a divine nightmare at the end of the war.

"Yeah," she acknowledged, as helpless as the flames howling against the barrier. "Okay."

"He wrote you another letter," Lucy said, to the curious birds and the confused trees, and a closed door that refused to listen. She held in her hands another envelope, though this time she stood several steps back from the Fairy Sphere and the charred corpse of the second picnic bench.

No response.

"I'm going to keep hold of this one until you're ready to read it."

Still nothing. When mockery was forbidden by apathy and begging beneath him, silence was the only possible answer.

"I will keep it safe for as long as it takes," she vowed. "You know how to reach me."

"He was sleeping," Lucy murmured. "It was peaceful."

"The funeral is at noon today," Lucy said. "I thought you might want to know."

Today of all days, she wasn't talking to a closed door. Today, he'd decided to come out and confront her.

"Oh?" he remarked, horribly light-hearted, the only person in Magnolia who seemed able to smile that morning. "Thinking of inviting me along to that whole-guild event too, are you?"

There was a moment of silent struggle as she stared into those merciless eyes. Her gaze slipped back to the floor, where her spirit already lay. Quietly, she admitted, "No."

"Why not?" he mocked. "Scared I might see a Fairy Tail mage in a coffin and get some ideas?"

A flicker of rage ignited in her at that, but it was so small she barely noticed it.

"You don't have to do this, Zeref," she told him. "It's alright for you to be upset. I know he was your friend-"

His fist slammed so hard into the barrier that she could hear his bones splinter.

"You don't know a thing!" he spat. "Do you honestly believe I could be friends with someone who imprisoned and humiliated me? With that disgrace of a man who couldn't even sacrifice himself properly? Who should have died in the war, but somehow managed to spin another whole year out of fate, when those on my side fell like good soldiers? The only thing I have to mourn today is the death of my chance to get revenge on him with my own two hands!"

His shoulders heaved in the wake of this outburst; each breath snarled against the barrier that imprisoned him. It protected him from a lot of things, the Fairy Sphere – the judgement of the Magic Council, the hostility of the outside world, the danger of his own curse – but it couldn't protect him from this.

She'd felt so sorry for him when she'd seen how the Council were treating him, but it was nothing compared to the ache in her heart right now.

She knew why he hated her.

In rescuing him from that nothingness, she had exposed him to a far worse pain: that of living and feeling, of loving and losing.

All she said was, "I'm so sorry."

With a flick of his hand, a waterfall of death magic poured down the inside of the Fairy Sphere. "You will be," he hissed. "You cannot hold me forever. I will send you all to see him soon enough."

They wore black for the funeral.

They'd all said that they wouldn't; that they'd wear bright colours and bring beer and recite bawdy ballads instead of eulogies. But the morning had trickled low and grey through Magnolia, and anything louder than a whisper was swallowed by the mire of the day, and no one seemed surprised when they arrived at Kardia Cathedral to see that everyone else had chosen black in the end, too.

Makarov hadn't wanted a funeral, not really.

But Makarov was a maverick who had nonetheless been a Wizard Saint; a rebel who attended Guild Master meetings and cooperated with the Council on many high-profile missions. To his mages, he had been a shining beacon of freedom and fun, while to the Council, he was the steady hand at the tiller of a guild that could so easily have spun out of control. He had toed that line better than anyone. Both worlds had a claim to him, and both worlds had a right to mourn him.

The mages of Fairy Tail stood shoulder to shoulder with Rune Knights and members of the Royal Family, respecting his contribution to their kingdom with the highest honour society afforded the dead; beautiful words and sincere prayers and tears falling from the sky.

And afterwards, when their guests had left, the guild mages went home, changed, and reconvened at the guildhall wearing jesters' hats and all the colours they'd stolen from that afternoon to make the evening twice as bright.

With his body formally laid to rest, they were free to send his spirit off with songs and laughter, free drinks and endless cheer: his legacy enduring forever in the guild he had shaped.

Some ungodly hour of the morning found Lucy sat in the corner of the guildhall. In her hands, she nursed a sullen glass of water. She'd learnt long ago not to try keeping up with the Dragon Slayers at a party – their constitution was quite literally inhuman – and Levy, who was sat beside her with the only glass of pineapple juice that hadn't been appropriated for some crazy cocktail, appreciated the solidarity.

At this time of night, at the end of a party so determined to be wild, anything was possible. In fact, Lucy was currently watching Natsu and Gray doing the can-can on the bar, their arms around each other's shoulders, with an utter lack of surprise on her face.

"Well, I'll be," Mira remarked, watching the boys' drunken dance. "Which of you had the can-can?"

"Me," came Levy's smug response. "Come on, pay up."

With a groan, Lucy reached into her pocket for her last remaining Jewels – her own fault for betting on Natsu to display a shred of common sense – when a strange tingle of magic ran up her arm.

She paused, focussing on the feeling. Although she recognized the tactile sensation of the lacrima against her knuckles, the ethereal touch of magic it brought with it was peculiar. There wasn't an open mental connection. There wasn't even the intention to open a connection. But there was… something.

And she knew that alone in the forest, in a night that must have been so very dark and long without the joy blazing through the guildhall, Zeref was awake with one hand on the lacrima, just as she was.

She tried projecting his name, but there was no mental connection. He would not allow one to form. The thought was just a thought, echoing in her own mind.

But he didn't move away from the lacrima, either.

His magic reaching out to hers.

Like he couldn't stand to be alone any more than he could have stood not to be, on this night.

"Next round?" Levy was asking.

Mira frowned, still looking at the boys, who were dancing ever-more vigorously in an attempt to knock each other from the bar. "I bet I can get one of them to do a shot off the other."

"Bet you can't," Lucy said immediately.

Levy glanced between them, and then to the two cheerfully sloshed rivals. "Sorry, Lucy, but my money's with Mira for this one."

"Honestly," Lucy sighed, settling back to watch the spectacle as Mira got to her feet with a determined expression. For the rest of the night, no matter what never-to-be-mentioned-again-on-pain-of-death events took place before the party finally disbanded, Lucy kept one hand on the lacrima in her pocket – knowing that somewhere, far away, Zeref was doing the same.