"Has there been any news, Master?" Mirajane whispered across the bar.

Though it was barely past ten in the morning, Makarov tipped his beer back and took a giant gulp. "None," he replied in an equally quiet voice when he swallowed.

From feet away, Natsu listened to their conversation intently, dragon slayer ears working hard to hear every word.

"It's not natural." Mira shivered. "The sky should never be that colour. It's like the stars are bleeding."

Makarov grunted noncommittally, unwilling to voice his own opinion. Everyone was stressed. They had woken up that day to a ruby red sky that never truly lightened. Soon after, reports started pouring in of fish floating up in the ocean and people suffocating in their homes, choking on isolated miasmas.

And it was hot. Natsu hadn't broken a sweat, but Gray griped, persisting that Hell had to be colder. To try to alleviate some discomfort, the ice mage made giant ice cube after ice cube, coupling his magic with Juvia's to keep the guild hall as cool as possible. It helped, for awhile, though the ice would always melt and they'd go through the whole process again. How much longer until they were exhausted and everyone faded into heat delirium?

Natsu dropped his head down on the table and sighed, wishing that either Happy or Lucy were there, but Happy was with Carla and Wendy searching for potential causes of the anomalies, and Lucy… who knew where she was? He'd stayed behind so that when she showed up, they could search on foot together. That was hours ago, and she was still shockingly absent. It wasn't very Lucy-like. The worry was starting to make itself known.

Lisanna dropped into the seat beside him. Keeping his cheek pressed against the table, Natsu tilted his face to study the takeover mage.

"Hey," she said in greeting. Her voice was pitched low, as if speaking too loudly would break some kind of spell.

"Hey," he said back.

"What do you think of all this?" She motioned vaguely to the world around her.

Natsu raised a brow. "You mean do I think the world is ending?"

Lisanna flinched. "Not so loud."

"Saying something quietly doesn't make it any less of a thing," Natsu informed her.

Lisanna studied him curiously. "So you do believe it?"

Natsu shrugged. "Maybe."

"Are you frightened?" She certainly was. Her voice warbled threateningly, as if she was on the brink of panicked tears.

"I'm not scared of anything," Natsu lied. In actuality, he had exactly three fears. One: that he would one day do something irrevocably reckless and place his friends in danger. Two: he would be forced to watch his friends die. And three: helplessness.

The last was the most choking of all. Helplessness meant weakness, and he had felt plenty enough of that when he was a kid searching for Igneel. No. Natsu was through feeling weak. If the world was ending, he'd meet it head on and tell it exactly what he thought of that. He might not be able to stop it, but at least he'd say his piece.

Meeting Lisanna's ocean blue eyes, he realized he'd done nothing to make her feel better. "It's fine," he said finally. "Probably just a weird weather system moving through."

She didn't look like she believed him, though she looked like she wanted to. That would have to do, he supposed.

Finally lifting his head, Natsu looked around the guild, searching one more time for Lucy's golden locks. She was still absent. "I'm going to Lucy's apartment. She's taking way too long. I'll see you later, Lisanna."

"Natsu, wait—" she called him back.

He turned and looked at her. "What's up?"

She flushed and stammered and finally choked out a garbled, "Just be careful."

It looked like maybe she had something else to say. Natsu waited for a beat. When she only turned and stared forlornly at her elder sister dampening her brow with a wet cloth, he decided that it wasn't important. The smile he shot her way felt forced. "Don't worry about me."

Lisanna waved.

On the streets, there was an unmistakable twang of fear in the air, potent and choking. No one wandered about, shopping or eating breakfast with their friends and family—they were all tucked into their houses, praying for their lives to any god that would listen.

Standing under Lucy's window, Natsu considered using her stairs, thinking about her always ragging on him for intruding this way. Then the wind shifted, bringing with it the sharp smell of Lucy's terror, making his guts twist unpleasantly. If she was in trouble, taking the stairs would take too long. Jumping, he scurried up her vine-laden lattice. The wood groaned under his weight, yet held, just as always.

When he was level with the small flat roof outside of Lucy's apartment, he saw her window was open. The yellow curtains hung limply in the humidity, stained ruby bright by the unnatural light filtering down from the sky. Everything was swathed in that colour: the building's bricks, the glass in the windows, the flowers on all the sills, every single one of which were wilted and twisted in the overwhelming heat.

Something banged inside the apartment. She was here, then.

Natsu felt a familiar happy pang twisted with relief. "Hey, Luce?" Climbing up the rest of the way, he pushed aside her curtain. "I know you like to sleep in and all, but it's almost eleven now. Haven't you seen what's going on outside? The world's going crazy, everyone thinks it's some kind of apocalypse and—" he trailed off and halted, one foot inside Lucy's window, the other still resting on the roof.

There was a man in her bedroom, which in itself was strange enough, though Natsu could overlook that given that it was Loke. Even with the spirit's back to him, he'd recognize his peculiar scent. No, what really gave him pause was the state of his best friend's room. It was a mess. Everything was torn apart. Pages littered the ground, clothes were thrown here and there, her drawers hung open, on her bed more pages were sorted through and thrown aside.

"What happened here?"

Loke startled, shoulders stiff, then turned and faced him. "Natsu."

Looking at the spirit, Natsu caught his breath. Loke's shoulder was torn apart, deep, black tendrils creeping over the exposed skin. His leg was also ripped open so deep that through the wet blood, bone peeped through. Every time he breathed, he winced, and every time he winced, his form wavered, as if he was being tugged out of the world, yet he was struggling to stay just where he was. He was a mess.

"What the hell happened to you, man?"

Loke scowled. In his hand was a piece of yellowed parchment paper. Frustrated, he clutched it tightly and rolled it into a ball, deciding that he wasn't going to find anything in Layla's old notebook to help his master.

"Where's Lucy?" Natsu asked when it became obvious Loke wasn't going to answer. "Is she okay?"

Loke didn't respond immediately, trying to find a good way to say what needed to be said.

Natsu was impatient, heart beating faster with every passing moment. When the spirit's silence stretched into what the dragon slayer deemed unbearable, he asked again, "Loke, where is she?"

"She's not here," Loke said finally. His voice was gravelly and strained.

"I know that much," Natsu snapped back impatiently. "I asked you where she is, not where she's not."

Loke's form warbled again. "I tried to stop her but couldn't. Maybe she'll listen to you."

Natsu's blood ran cold, his question forgotten with this new bit of dire conversation. "Stop her from what?"

"She's gone to Sorrow Canyon to kill the Shadow Father." Loke said the words with such a sense of hollow detachment that at first they rolled off Natsu. Then something niggled at the back of his mind. A memory. In fairy tales, Shadow Father was the father of all demons. The demon that would eat the world, the demon that would end all life. He was horrible. He was also a legend.

Natsu collected himself and came the rest of the way into the room. "Are you fucking with me?" Even as he said it, he knew Loke wasn't kidding around. There was a heady scent of desolation on his skin, the kind that came with helplessness. Realizing that, Natsu was forced to accept the unlikely truth that Shadow Father actually existed and Lucy had gone off on her own to destroy him. "She's not strong enough to do that by herself, no one is."

"You're wrong. She made a deal," Loke said in a voice pitched low.

Natsu breathed deeply. There wasn't enough oxygen in the room. "A deal? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"I told her not to." Loke was all disjointed, panicked and falling away from the world.

Natsu grabbed Loke by the collar, fear making him brash, and shook the man roughly. "What does that mean?"

Loke hazed around the edges. "Help her. I—I can't. There's nothing I can do for her like this." His chest was entirely a hole of twisting blackness.

"Who did this to you?" Natsu asked, switching tactics.

Loke opened his mouth to explain but then his body broke apart as he was forced back into the celestial world, taking Natsu's answers with him. He did learn one thing, though: Lucy was going to Sorrow Canyon by herself.

She won't be by herself for long, he thought with vicious conviction. I'll find her before she gets into too much trouble.

The deed would be done and over by the time Natsu arrived. Already, Lucy stood at the plunging edge of Sorrow Canyon, thusly named for the many hopeless that were drawn to this place. So many lives belonged to that seemingly bottomless pit, so many tears and so many dreams all swallowed by the rough-hewn stone. And at the very bottom lay the Shadow Father, the creature that had, though however inadvertently, killed her mother.

Lucy didn't need to think, only command. Shadows born at her feet twisted around her ankles. Steps away, the horse screamed wildly, rearing and fighting to get away. It couldn't, tethered as it was to a large, twisted white pine. It's fear becoming too much, it snorted, nose dripping blood, and collapsed, dead with fright. Seeing that, a small part of Lucy's heart panged with sadness. Was this what she was to become? A demon queen capable of killing without intent? You can be better than that, she told herself, the darkness won't consume you.

Turning her back to the pit, she took a breath and fell backwards, face tilted to the sky, and watched the centuries old rock whirl past. Days ago she hadn't been afraid of heights, but she'd been afraid of falling. Now, she knew the darkness would never drop her. It was his and he would keep her safe. It was irrational. He had killed so many, but she wanted to believe in him. She closed her honey-coloured eyes, lost in a memory of cool lips and skin. Her heart beat twice painfully, and then eased into a slow, calm rhythm. It suddenly wasn't so strange to think of him like that. She now belonged to him in a way that only his demons did.

Spilling down into the deep dark, the shadows around her body spread and deposited her carefully upon the uneven ground. It was so chilly down there that she likely would have shivered, if her skin wasn't colder than the air.

In the absolute quiet, it was easy to find Shadow Father, all she had to do was follow his uneven heartbeat, the sound like a poison path leading her into his alcove, his prison. All around her, the walls seeped water that trickled to the ground, staining the rocks iron red. Down here so deep, the world smelled like old blood. With every step, Lucy's feet kicked soggy bones. They knocked across the ground, rattling like old, cancer-riddled laughter that slipped from the lipless mouths of humans and beasts. The deepest shadows in the sharpest corners seemed to whisper and pray. 'Shadow Father's executioner,' they said, 'Come to take him away. She's come to snuff out his life.' Perhaps it was her imagination.

Approaching his cell, the ground became littered with the desiccated carcasses of men and women that had ended their lives at Sorrow Canyon. Now they formed a macabre trail that led to the seal upon a large boulder that rested in front of a cave. It must have been dragged over the opening by Taurus or another one of Layla's spirits that had kept this secret for oh so long. Betrayal sang through Lucy's heart. She closed her eyes. You need to keep yourself focused. Don't think about that stuff right now. You know what will happen if you do. She'd lose herself and completely belong to him; the fate her mother had feared so much she had been totally unable to complete the task at hand. I won't fail.

As Lucy stepped closer, the boulder cracked, the sound like thunder in the narrow space. A cold draft escaped, smelling putrid, like bile and waste. She closed her eyes and pushed those thoughts back, clearing her mind so it was as a blank canvas. Barely a thought had darkness leaping to her command. Shadow Father may have been the father of all demons, but Zeref was the demon king, all of the wretched paid him their dues, they had no choice; his magic commanded their very essence, and for now, and maybe forever, he had deigned to share that magic with her. It did occur to Lucy that once this was through, he'd kill her before she could kill him, she wasn't stupid. It has to be worth the risk.

The dark tendrils playing at her fingertips were eager to do her bidding. She let them loose to wreak their havoc. Like a tsunami, they crashed against the boulder, exploding it apart as if it were made of talc and not granite. Bits of rock fell down upon her shoulders and dusted her hair, each piece no bigger than a small pebble. Unfalteringly, she stood at the entrance and waited for the demon father to emerge. His heart thumped loudly against the stone walls and his feet scraped over granite as he dragged himself into the dim, dim light that hadn't touched his skin in almost fifteen years.

Huge black scaly feet came into view first, bigger than any man's ever could be. Then his darkly scaled legs, upon which he wore torn cloth. Gouged into his hardened flesh were deep score marks where he'd obviously maimed himself.

Lucy waited to see his face. He stopped just short when the weak light of day hit his chest. His hands were visible enough, gnarled and twisted things with nails so long they were as daggers.

"Layla Heartfilia." His voice was harsh and guttural, slurred between two pairs of fangs; Lucy knew this because, despite his reprieve in the shadows, her mother had drawn a picture of Shadow Father before she had died, scribbled in her notebook beside the words, 'He is Father Fear.'

The demon spoke again. "These are the days that went by without your heart in my hands." He motioned to the deep scars in his legs. "And here, too." He lifted his tattered shirt, revealing a pitch black chest with deep white scars marring its otherwise uninterrupted surface.

Lucy felt nothing as human as terror when she looked upon him. Instead, she felt the black wizard's magic in her veins, reaching for the demon, commanding him to comply with her whims, and she accepted that, believing with all her heart that he should obey her because she wielded the magic that demanded fealty.

"I'm not Layla."

"Yet, you wear her face." Then he sniffed the air. "Mm… No. Not Layla. A daughter, perhaps? Could this be the daughter she abandoned her cause for?"

Lucy swallowed the unexpected anger that rose with his words, unable to decide if she was furious with her mother for being scared of losing herself, or with the demon for even speaking her name.

"You're just as weak—I can smell it in your pores. You won't do what needs to be done, either." He inched closer to the door. The shadows surrounding Lucy jumped in anticipation and adrenaline shot through her heart. "I suppose I should thank you for completely obliterating my seal," Shadow Father continued. "Another week or two and I would have been totally free, but you've saved me some trouble."

"Where did you come from?" Lucy asked, ignoring his words. She had questions her mother didn't have the answer to.

Shadow Father considered her, then seemed to decide that revealing his origins didn't bring him any harm. "I am humanities first demon, born from greed and fear. Both keep me alive and well. As I explained to Layla, it was useless to lock me up. Even down here, as long as man remains frightened and selfish, I will always have fuel to keep on living."

His words were sound, if not a little deluded. While he might have the dark necessities to keep on breathing, Lucy would put an end to his ability to do so. Soon, he'd be nothing but shadow. Soon, he'd be nothing but tales. "Why do you want to destroy the world?"

"I want to eat the world," he corrected with a flash of his luminous teeth. They were pointed and neatly lined in tight rows. Made for tearing flesh and fears. The thought came unbidden into her mind.

"There will be nothing left." It stood to reason that he wouldn't want to eat everything. It would mean the end of him, too.

He shrugged. "I am as I was born to be. When humanity has screamed and stolen its last breath, we will all fade into shadow. You may beg, many have done so in the past, but I am without remorse."

That anger was back. "No one will be begging anything from you," Lucy told him. "Not ever again."

The sound of his teeth grinding together in a smile called chills to rove down Lucy's spine. "You're going to stop me? You have his magic, I feel that, but you're a pretender, daughter of Layla, you are weak, you are pathetic, you are a waste—"

Lucy struck out in rage, black tendrils finding home in his belly. He choked and sputtered, spitting up black ichor as dark as his skin. It dripped over his inhuman lips and pattered against the floor.

"I am not my mother," Lucy said in a dangerous voice. "It wasn't until she lay on her death bed that she knew her mistake, and I think she regretted it. In her letters, she left this task for me, and believe me when I say, I will do what she couldn't."

Shadow Father looked at her with wide, glinting eyes still cloaked in darkness. He was finally afraid, for he recognized the iron resolve necessary to bring his end. Lucy ignored the panicked look in his eye. He gave no quarter when he was eating thousands of souls; his death should pass by in silence. No one in the world would mourn such a wretched waste.

This is it, she told herself. For better or worse, good or bad, life or death, this was the moment her mother hadn't been able to live through. Lucy drew herself up to her full height, which, under normal circumstances, wouldn't have been all that impressive, but with writhing shadows pushing at her back and caressing her skin like a lover might, she was fearsome indeed. Her eyes, once rich and brown and kind, had turned onyx and hard, her skin, once so pale it was luminous, tainted ever so slightly dark; her heart toughened, her mind closed down, all thoughts pushed aside except one: kill Shadow Father, the devourer of the world.

Shadow Father opened his mouth, whether to protest, scream, or say some command that would likely have cleaved her in two, but Lucy let loose the dam that was holding back the dark wizard's power. It flooded out of her skin in a torrent of choking magic. Any tiny, stunted plants that dared grow in the deepest recesses of Sorrow Canyon withered and died, small mammals fell over, glassy eyed and still, and Shadow Father, once the father of demons, was driven to his knees. He gasped and clawed at the ground, and then at his throat while blackness plunged into his body through his gaping mouth. Lucy was finally able to see his face. It was the face from which all her fears were born. She remembered finding it as a child, stenciled in that well-used notebook. Her mother had even captured his eyes, those blank white pits surrounded by craggy stone-like skin. And those gnashing teeth, that sickly yellow tongue as it lolled absurdly from between swollen and split lips.

Father of all demons, father of fear, Shadow Father. He was a joke, laughable now under the crushing weight of her borrowed power. Lucy closed the distance between them calmly. "You are not fear," she told him. "You are nothing but smoke and ash."

He turned his lined face skyward and met her eyes. There was real hate there, the kind Lucy had never known before. He opened his mouth again. With a thought, she severed his head from his body, using the shadows so eager to obey her commands. It rolled grotesquely across the floor and began to dissipate, turning into inky blackness that raced for the reprieve only shadowy rock crevasses could offer. Shadow Father indeed. His body quickly followed suit.

Even after he fell away, rage still coiled in Lucy's veins. Was that all? The eater of the world, the fabled Shadow Father, was gone? It was dissatisfying, frustrating. This was what her mother had died for? This demon? He was barely a challenge. Layla could have done it, if she had been brave enough, she could have done it and she would have been there when Lucy was growing up. But she hadn't, and the world had moved on from then.

Lucy turned her back on the fading demon. I did it, mom, she thought. I did what you couldn't. Everyone is safe. And the price? She could feel there was now a shadow inside of her, one that leaned its head over her heart and blocked out the girl she once knew.

She couldn't find it within herself to care.

He was waiting for her atop the canyon. Lucy's heart skipped a beat. She remembered the way he pressed his palms into her cheeks, the way he kissed her and shared his magic, his most intimate self. His dark hair blew in the breeze and obscured his onyx eyes. Lucy didn't need to see them to know the sorrow that lived there, for it had found a place inside of her, too. She realized with a start that when she accepted his power, she had accepted being a part of him, as well. Now she understood why Loke had been so scared.

"You could make a most interesting demon," Zeref told her in a gentle voice.

"I'm not already?" Lucy asked. Looking at him, she tried to strum up the horror she thought she should feel. It was there but buried and muted, nearly impossible to feel. That was okay, she didn't want to be horrified by him. You should be frightened. He's dangerous. She ignored that small voice that told her to run, that told her he was treacherous and disloyal, that screamed that he was going to see her as a threat now and end her forever. She searched his eyes for any of those things and came up blank. He only looked melancholy and torn.

"Mm…. Not quite." He had drawn close to her. "Your heart's nature and your resolution will decide what becomes of you, Lucy Heartfilia."

Lucy leaned into him, a moth to the flame, totally unable to stop herself. Was it the magic or the man she longed to be near? "Can you make me a demon?" Is that my voice? It sounded strange, husky and dark.

Zeref's mouth flattened. "No."

He lied. She could smell it. "You're not being truthful."

Zeref's responding smile was small, depreciative. "Even if I could, I made a promise to Layla that should this day come, I would walk away and not influence any of your choices. She understood the power of my magic."

Shadows danced around Lucy's body. "If you promised her that, then why are you here?"

He folded his arms over his chest and stared at her curiously. "Why indeed? I suppose I wanted to know if you succeeded."

"I told you I would." She was proud of that, of her resolve. She hadn't even flinched when she took Shadow Father's life. He deserved to die.

"So you did. You intrigue me, Lucy; you're nothing like I expected you to be."

She didn't know whether to be pleased or annoyed with his words. Magic throbbed inside of her and she landed on pleased. The small piece of the old Lucy remaining was horrified with herself. What was she doing, frilling with pride when Zeref praised her for slaughter? It hadn't even been a fair fight; she had decimated the creature.

"It's almost tragic, seeing you so tainted. Is nothing sacred?" Using a cool finger, he touched the place just beneath her eye and gently rubbed the skin there. Lucy's heart crashed wildly in her chest, the magic surrounding her belying her calm exterior. Zeref gave her a small, sad smile that she committed to memory. Drawing close enough that he was inches from her lips, he whispered, "It's not real, you know?"

Her breath stalled. "What isn't?"

"This." He kissed her, a light brush of his mouth against hers. Lucy's skin both crawled and burst with goose bumps, her mind both screamed and cheered, her heart both withered in terror and pounded in elation. And then he was gone, suddenly steps away and fading from view.

"Try to remember it's the magic making you want to pay me fealty, not any real loyalty born out of anything so noble as trust or friendship. It's a lie. All of my demons feel this way. I created them to be like this so they may never betray me. I've never seen it in a human before—your mother died before it could take root, and that very well might be your fate, too—but perhaps you'll live to outgrow it."

His words cut her. Outgrow it. Could his magic make her feel indebted to him? She knew the answer to that was 'yes'. All you are is a mindless Zeref slave. The thought made her shake with uncontrolled rage. "Stay away from me." Those words were like glass cutting over her skin but she made herself say them. "I won't be yours to command."

He inclined his head in acknowledgement and faded from view. His absence was like a throbbing pain; like a hole in her heart. You heard him. It's not real. But her lips still sang, her skin still burned. It felt real.

She took a step away from the canyon. The world spun hectically. Lucy saw double, then triple. And then she saw nothing at all.

I do so love how parts of this turned out. Thanks for reading!