Fairytale of Doom

By CrimsonStarbird

Chapter Thirteen – The Survivors

"You moron!" Gray exploded, the moment he and Natsu were out of the ballroom. "I always knew you were going to be the end of us, with your love for destruction and your idiocy and your complete obliviousness to the consequences of your actions, but today you have completely outdone yourself!"

Natsu frowned at him. Normally, such an outburst from his rival would have set him off in turn, but he was feeling so elated from his victory over Tremaine's schemes that Gray's outrage was simply confusing.

This was not lost on Gray. "You have no idea what you've done, do you?" he snapped.

"Yeah, avoided a date with either of those horrid sisters," Natsu answered, perplexed.

"You've doomed us both! This is a fairytale world! In order to get through it, we have to find our True Loves and reach a Happily Ever After! What if I have to spend an eternity with you rather than my princess, all because you forced me to dance with you at the turning point of the story?"

"I think spending an eternity with me would be great," Natsu rebuffed. "It'd be your presence dragging that happy ending down."

For an ice mage, Gray's eyes were absolutely on fire. "Yeah, well, I am not into that! I don't give a damn how ugly your blind dates are; if you try to pull that on me again, I will be leaving you to your courtship with a bloody nose!"

"Oh, don't get so worked up," Natsu yawned. It was unusual for him to remain so calm around his irate rival; perhaps it was an after-effect of having to spend so much time with Zeref. Compared to that chaotic mess of emotions, banter with his rival was so familiar that it was hard to feel anything but safe. "It was just a prank on that Tremaine woman."

"…You have no concept of narrative foreshadowing, do you?"

Natsu scoffed. "What's the risk? We both know I wouldn't marry you if you were the last human being in the world!"

"What if it was literally the only way to save the guild?" Gray dared.

Natsu opened his mouth to deny it, then closed it again. After a moment, he gave a shrug. "Well, there's always divorce."

"Natsu!"

"I told you, you're taking this way too seriously."

"And you're not taking it seriously enough!" Gray retorted, entirely bereft of his usual cool ice. "Have you never read a fairytale?"

"Nah," Natsu said. Then, remembering that his reason for that was probably similar to Zeref's, he added as a hasty cover, "Fairytales are for girls."

"…You're a moron."

"Ugh, now you're starting to sound like Zeref." He'd had quite enough of this recently. It was bad enough when Zeref called him an idiot, and at least he was actually smart enough to have built himself an empire. Hearing it from a man who couldn't even keep his own clothes on was just irritating.

Gray, however, had frozen. "That was Zeref, then? In the ballroom?"

"Uh." It was only then that Natsu realized what he had said. His first instinct was to lie and say that Gray had misheard, but that would be defending Zeref and that was such a strange thought that Natsu's tongue tripped right over it.

"When you were spinning me round, I thought I'd seen… but I told myself it was just an injury-inducted hallucination." The growing disbelief in Gray's voice was about to cross over into danger. "I thought, there was no way you would be fussing about your date to a ball when freaking Zeref was right there!"

"Yeah, well," Natsu huffed.

"Why the hell weren't you attacking him?"

Natsu floundered. "It just… isn't a good idea right now, alright?"

"No, it's not alright! But we can fix this – let's take the fight to Zeref, right here and now!"

"No!"

Gray was looking at him like he'd grown an extra head; it was somehow more irksome than the accusations of stupidity.

Natsu defended, "There's no magic here!"

"So? That hurts him more than it does us – look at the size of him! Besides, now that I'm here, we outnumber him!"

"He's the king here! He has all the guards on his side!"

"What's this? The great Natsu Dragneel, scared of a few guards?" Gray scoffed. "Just wait 'til I tell the rest of the guild about this!"

"I'm not scared!"

"You're sure acting like it! This is the best chance we'll get to take Zeref out and all you care about is dancing-"

"We have a truce!" Natsu burst out.

Gray blinked. "A… truce?"

"Yeah, it's where you temporarily stop fighting to work together for a common goal-"

"I know what a truce is, ash-for-brains! What I'm struggling with is why you'd want to form one with the man who is trying to destroy our guild!"

"Because… well, none of us want to be here, and our friends back home are gonna be really struggling without us, and Zeref says he can get us all back to Fiore, so… yeah."

Goddamn it, why had it sounded much more sensible when Zeref had been the one saying it?

"Can you even be more stupid?" Gray raged. "Of course Zeref is gonna say that! He's weak here, isn't he? Obviously he's going to do everything he can to persuade you not to attack him!"

"And what's wrong with not attacking him for a bit if it means we can go home?" Natsu shot back. "Zeref is the only one who can get us out of here!"

"No he isn't! The First Master told me and Lucy exactly what we need to do! If we play through our stories and find True Love, it'll end the spell and send us home!"

"…Oh."

"Exactly. So while playing dress-up and learning to dance might be an important part of your story, they can wait until we've dealt with Zeref once and for all." Gray brushed past him, heading for the door. "There's gotta be somewhere around here where we can find weapons. An armoury, or even a kitchen-"

Natsu didn't even think. His hand flashed out and seized Gray's arm. "Don't!"

"The hell, Natsu?"

"Don't. Just… leave Zeref alone for a bit, okay? He's not hostile here, and… and I don't wanna break an agreement. I gave him my word."

This seemed like a sensible counterargument, compared to the mess of inexplicable feelings he couldn't put into words, and he was rather proud of it. From the way Gray rounded on him, though, the ice mage was far less impressed. "Who cares? That man doesn't deserve to be treated with honour, Natsu! Do you have any idea what he has done?"

Released Natsu from his chains, when it would have been so much smarter to keep him there; let Gray out of his prison, and promised he'd had no idea how he had got there; chose to form a partnership in this world rather than fighting – for self-serving reasons, sure, but he'd gone out of his way to show Natsu how much he meant it.

"Sure I do," he blustered.

"Juvia nearly died, Natsu! While you were flying all over the place challenging Zeref and being your usual ridiculous self, she sacrificed herself to save me! Mavis says she probably only survived because of the fluky timing of this fairytale curse! This battle against Zeref and his henchmen – it's not some random challenge of strength against new mages! They'll kill us all without a second thought!"

Well, there were some nutcases on Zeref's team. Natsu wasn't going to argue with that.

Zeref himself, though…

Both during the war and before it, he'd had countless chances to kill Natsu, and he hadn't done it. He hadn't shown any inclination towards harming him even when Natsu had been on the verge of killing him.

And if Zeref was telling the truth, hadn't all this only started because he was unable to come to terms with Natsu not being alive…?

"Forget it," Gray spat. "He's obviously done something to you – if you are even the Natsu from my world, and not some illusory creation of this one. You stay here. I'll defeat Zeref myself- gah!"

Natsu slammed his fist into Gray's gut.

A hiss of shock strangled Gray's words. His eyes bulged. But the brief whirl around the ballroom had snatched away what little strength he'd managed to recover since his captivity, and he went down without another sound.

They were both so still, one slumped at the feet of the other, that it was as if the blow had stunned them both. Natsu himself was barely breathing.

He had just knocked Gray out.

He had just knocked Gray out, to protect Zeref.

Gray was right. There really was something wrong with him. He should have been the one leading the charge against Fairy Tail's greatest enemy, not standing in the way of it.

Not that Gray could understand the position he was in.

Not that anyone could, except Zeref – and Zeref wasn't apologizing for his decision not to fight, so why should Natsu?

Well, Natsu thought, as he grabbed Gray's feet and began to drag him back towards the bedroom, with any luck, Gray wouldn't remember any of this when he woke up. Maybe he could convince him it was all a dream. Gray would certainly be eager to believe he'd hallucinated the ballroom dancing.

And it might buy Natsu a bit more time to get his messy feelings about Zeref in order.

They were laughing as they pushed the gate open and tumbled into the castle courtyard.

They shouldn't have been. They were on the run from Gaston and his angry mob in a world without magic, and the only place that seemed to offer a hint of shelter in this backwards town was a gloomy, foreboding castle in the middle of nowhere.

But they were laughing. Well, Gajeel was, and Juvia, still unable to make a sound, was joining in in spirit.

Because they may have had absolutely nothing going for them right now, but having a companion with which to share absolutely nothing somehow turned it into something.

A dark night in an alien world came alive with potential; a shadow-choked, evil-infested castle wasn't a living nightmare, but a place to challenge each other's courage. That was a lesson they'd both learnt long ago. They wouldn't have called it companionship back then, they wouldn't have dared, lest Master Jose identify it as something else he could take from them, but they'd both come away from that guild with the reluctant belief that getting into trouble together was a lot more fun than doing it alone.

"That musclehead and his tone-deaf goons won't follow us in here," Gajeel grunted, shoving the gate of twisted iron back into place. "Guess we oughtta find somewhere to crash."

Juvia watched him run his gaze over the lifeless silhouette of the castle. Thoughtful and considering weren't words that could often be applied to the Iron Dragon Slayer, but survival, danger, assessing a threat for any glimmer of opportunity – well, without that instinct, all the draconic strength in the world wouldn't have got him through seven years under Master Jose.

"Doesn't look like anyone's home," he said, at last. "Even if they are, there's gotta be a hundred rooms in that thing. Let's break in and find an empty one."

Juvia tapped him on the shoulder to attract his attention, and then shook her head.

"Why not?" he demanded. "Scared, Juve?"

Of course she wasn't scared! But, even if the castle was abandoned, which they didn't know for sure, that would still be breaking and entering. This might not be their world, but that didn't mean it wasn't someone else's. She was still uncomfortable with the fact that Gajeel had made off with Gaston's wallet.

Still, with no easy way of communicating this to her companion, she could only shake her head again and point towards a rundown shed in the palace gardens. It wasn't a luxurious bedroom for royal guests, but it was a shelter from the elements; it was still trespassing, but it wasn't as bad as violating someone's home.

To her dismay, his tone shifted to outright wicked. "What're you pointin' at, Juve? It can't be that shed. No way would you want us in that decrepit thing when there's a perfectly good castle invitin' us to be their guests. Nah, it must be somethin' else."

She stamped her foot in frustration. Seriously, why was she the only one thrown into a fairytale princess role that was literally cursed?

"Nope, you're makin' no sense to me, Juve," he breezed. "I'm a simple soul. If you want somethin', you've gotta tell it to me straight."

Gritting her teeth, she grabbed his forearm with both of her hands and dragged him towards the shed. It was almost annoying, how easy it was. If he hadn't wanted to move, she wouldn't have been able to move him.

Only from right in front of it could they make out that the old shed was chained shut, stamped and sealed by an oversized padlock.

"Gehehe, how terrible," Gajeel grinned. "Shed's closed for business. Looks like we'll have to try for an open window in the castle after all."

Rolling her eyes at the invisible stars, Juvia held out her hand palm-up, expectant.

After a moment, Gajeel gave her a flat high five.

Huffing, Juvia nudged his right foot with hers, and then drove her hand into his stomach like a striking snake, like a swift knife-blow from a busy assassin.

If she'd put any force into it, he'd have been doubled over in pain. As it was, her hand batted lightly against his chest, and he stared at her stupidly. "Oi, what- oh. You want this?"

Reaching into his right boot, he drew forth a tiny blade and pressed it into Juvia's upturned palm hilt-first. Satisfied, she pulled an identical blade from her own boot and crouched down beside the lock. She didn't need clear sight for this, only attuned hearing and a careful hand.

"Does Ice Stripper know ya can do this?" Gajeel asked idly, as she began fiddling with the padlock.

Juvia pretended not to hear. What Gray didn't know wouldn't hurt him. And if he did know, he might add a chain to his front door, and then where would she be?

A quiet metallic screech came from the lock as her concentration slipped. "Careful!" Gajeel muttered. "I need that knife, in case I get a bit peckish later."

There was a dull thunk, and the shed was open to them. The soupy darkness and spider-silk embellishments did not make the array of rusted gardening tools within any more appealing.

With a sweeping bow, Gajeel sniggered, "After you, Your Highness."

Head held high, Juvia stalked inside and began clearing a space on the floor. They'd slept in worse places. Not for a while, granted – Fairy Tail took a much smaller cut of their job earnings than Phantom Lord ever did, small enough to ensure that teams could afford hotels for out-of-town jobs when they weren't having to cough up for any damages. Nevertheless, it was hard to entirely escape that mindset after so long, and at times like this, it was a useful skill to have.

Of all the people to be stuck with in a situation like this, she was beyond fortunate to be with Gajeel. Oh, he teased her, but he got it. Lucy was a great friend and all, but she'd have balked at the thought of sleeping in a dirty shed. And as for Gray… Juvia shuddered at the thought. Her dignity would never crawl back out of the chasm of shame.

But with Gajeel, it didn't matter. They'd already seen the worst parts of each other. After what they'd been through together, these things were laughably trivial. She was glad they were together.

Though she might have to reconsider after he tossed her an oil-stained sheet, and she opened it for a spider the size of her fist to drop out.

The silence of her shriek didn't make it any less amusing as far as he was concerned. Even the rusty spanner she threw at him in retaliation bounced off his thick skull and his good humour without damage to either.

Gajeel leaned back against the wall of the shed, taking a bite out of the spanner. "Feels just like old times, don't it, Juve?"

This fairytale world was stranger than her own, but no more hostile than the darkened realms Master Jose would send them into at his clients' bidding. Two unlikely friends on the run from an angry mob, snatching shelter from inhospitable places, no one to rely on except themselves…

Halfway through nodding an affirmation, Juvia vehemently shook her head.

"No?" Gajeel echoed, his eyes easily picking up the motion in the gloom. "You ain't forgettin' all the times we had to skip town after shovin' a horse's head into bed with one of Jose's rivals, right?"

Of course not. She wouldn't forget those days as long as she lived, no matter how she tried to drown her own history in love and sunshine.

But there was something different about this night. Something that led nostalgia to soften the dirty concrete rather than promise nightmares; something that had caused both of them to laugh as they'd dived into the grounds of a haunted castle to escape a mob that could have done very real damage had they been caught. Something that was worth saying properly.

Patient wasn't normally a word used to describe Gajeel, but he was curious, and his eyes tracked her pen across the serviettes she'd brought from the tavern far more effectively than her own in the darkness.

When she was done, she held it up, and he read: "It's different, because it doesn't matter if we fail."

Even she could see him shudder as he processed the words. No doubt he was thinking of chains in dark dungeons, of freezing cold isolation, of days without sunlight. It had been years since either of them had screwed up a mission badly enough to earn Jose's wrath. They'd learnt, and learnt fast. And the part of her that hadn't been cynical enough as a grateful teenager wondered now if that had been an intentional move on Jose's part, knowing that the lingering nightmares of children would leave a far greater imprint than a reality she had grown physically tough enough to face…

"It does matter, though," Gajeel said, and despite the shadows, she could hear the frown upon his iron-studded face. "Coz, ya know… if we get caught here, we're not gonna be able to go home. And if we can't get home, you and me and everyone else, the guild's gonna be screwed against Alvarez. So… we can't fail. We can't."

Smiling, Juvia uncapped her pen again: It's not the situation that is different, though. It's us. We've changed.

Gajeel grunted as he read it, not deigning to recite those words out loud. "Ugh. Enough with yer sappiness. There I thought gettin' ya away from Stripper for a while would beat that lovey-dovey mood outta ya."

Juvia rolled her eyes in token protest, but let him have his way. It wasn't as though she couldn't hear the embarrassment in her oldest friend's voice.

Instead, she closed her eyes. Though she was listening intently for any sounds from outside – either Gaston and his crew, or guards from the looming castle – there was nothing but the wind rattling the slab of corrugated iron that had generously been promoted to 'roof'.

Well, that and the discordant scale of an accordion.

She sat bolt upright, lips forming the silent exclamation, Gajeel!

"What?" he asked peevishly, clutching protectively to his chest the accordion that he must have brought with him from the tavern. Either that, or this fairytale world had decided to compound her suffering by leaving one in this shed for him to find. "Thought a little ditty would brighten the mood, that's all."

Juvia waved a frantic hand in the direction of the castle.

"Castle's abandoned, Juve. I keep tellin' ya. Look how dark and gloomy it is." It was frustratingly difficult to muster any kind of counterargument without her voice, and he continued with confidence, "Besides, if there is anyone, and they are somehow capable of hearing us through those big ol' walls… well, they'll probably assume we're travellin' minstrels and invite us right inside!"

Juvia clapped a hand to her forehead. She wondered if it was too late to beg Ursula to take Gajeel's voice instead.

Not that she had anything in principle against his singing. But there was a time and a place, and this dingy shed in an unfamiliar land was…

Was probably the best place for a little musical cheer, if she were being totally honest.

After a moment's scribbling, she held up another near-invisible message: oh, go on then.

"Now that's more like it," he grinned, brightening at once.

And as he began the first few bars of No one's fun like Gajeel, makes foes run like Gajeel, she couldn't help a tiny smile from tugging at her lips in return.

Once, it had been a valley.

Once, they had called it Tung Shao Pass; the way through the mountains. Bright in the summer, and crisp in the winter, it wound like a river between towering peaks, leading from civilization into the wilderness beyond.

Once, it had abounded with nature: the echoing cries of the hunter, the bursting of thistles from the frost, the whipping of sleek tails through undergrowth, the eerie song of the winter sun.

Now, snow throttled the valley.

Snow and rock and silence. And beneath them, the corpses of the last to ever pass this way.

Nothing moved. Not yet. One day, the snow would melt and blood would flow, but for now, time was suspended here, life was suspended.

A black shape flashed along the snow.

Wings outstretched, beak bared, the shadow of the hawk shot like an arrow across the white tomb, vanishing and twisting between invisible ridges. One talon dipped into the snow, hurling a flurry of flakes into the air. With another beat of its wings, the hawk separated from its shadow, rising up from the river of ice to cut through the peerless blue.

Its cry did not echo mournfully between the peaks, but shook them with its strength.

Hawks did not lament the dead. They roused the living, and as its call pierced the sky, a fist punched up through the snow.

From that ice-drowned pass emerged the hulking, hardened form of Shan Yu. Nature could not keep him down when he was himself a force of nature. He shook the snow from his shoulders, and his hawk swooped down to perch there, surveying the unmarked graveyard with eyes that seemed soft compared to those of its master.

His entire army, wiped out by a bunch of lucky novices.

His entire army.

They hadn't even made it to the capital.

There had been a terrible light and furious ice, and suddenly he was alone, ambitions trapped beneath countless tonnes of snow. It shouldn't have been possible. If it hadn't been for that strange woman and the blazing light she held…

But she was gone, now. Buried along with both their armies. He alone had survived, and that gave him one last chance – not as a conqueror, but as an avenger. Bulldozing through the imperial capital with his army was no longer an option. Carving a lone path through it and claiming the head of the foolish emperor in revenge would be effortless. He would sneak into the city and-

"My, my," a voice purred. "Is this the legendary might of the Hun army, brought to its knees by a mere avalanche?"

Shan Yu spun round, reaching for a sword that had been lost along with his men. His hawk launched itself from his shoulder as an iron-tipped bolt of fury. It cut through the air – but before it could make contact, the speaker pounced.

One swift paw snatched the diving hawk clean out of the sky. The bird was thrust into the snow, the hunter now the prey, wings beating frantically, pressed down into the life-stealing cold by the force around its neck and the promise of deadly claws.

Those claws belonged to a luxuriously fluffy cat, black fur and silver underbelly and frost glinting along its whiskers. It had yellow-green eyes, intelligent eyes, human eyes, as out of place nestled into well-groomed fur as the housecat itself was upon a grave of pure white snow.

"Now I see how you alone survived the disaster," the cat continued in someone else's voice. Still pinning the hawk, it drew its free claw intimately over the sleek plumage of the bird's head. The hawk shuddered, and its flailing ceased in fear.

"Old magic," purred the cat. "So old, I am not sure it even deserves the name. Ritual pacts with ancient spirits… uncontrollable, unpredictable, and with one glaring weakness." The cat smiled up at the paralyzed warlord, all fangs and malevolence and glee. "Not like the power I seek."

"What do you want?" Shan Yu hissed. His fingers groped in the air above his empty scabbard, as if hoping to draw forth some magician's trick, though his eyes did not leave the housecat for a moment.

"To offer you an alternative to this disgraceful defeat," came the idle response. "All your soldiers are gone, and your goal remains laughably far out of sight."

"The mountains-" he began furiously.

"The mountains do not spontaneously decide to wipe out armies, Shan Yu," the cat overrode him. "They are commanded. By forces which put your shamanic pacts to shame. Forces you yourself will only ever be able to reach with my aid."

The warlord spat into the snow.

The cat closed its eyes in disgust. "You know nothing of the reality of this world. But you, even you, man of the wilds, must have heard the whispers on the wind, the shifting in the shamans' songs, the changing of days. I am placed to seize that opportunity, and I could use a mercenary by my side."

With a sigh, the cat released its stranglehold on the hawk. Its wing twitched, feebly, and then lay still. Snow embraced its bedraggled form like it embraced the men at the bottom of the frozen torrent.

The warlord strode forward and snatched up the ice-cold bird, cradling it close to his chest.

"What will you do now, last warrior of the Huns, leader of an army of corpses? Will you march on the Imperial Capital, and take as many of your foes with you as possible before your life is snuffed out and forgotten? Or will you come north, to my kingdom, and pledge what remains of your might to my cause?"

Wrapped in the warrior's furs, the hawk gave a hoarse cry. A flutter of life, reviving. This time, it had been spared, and the message was clear: there is always something more to lose, warlord.

Through gritted teeth, the defeated Hun growled, "What do you want me to do?"

The grin that stretched across the cat's face was colder than the snow beneath their feet.

A/N: The princes and princesses aren't playing by the rules, so why should the villains? Other than that, a bit of a quieter chapter this week. Thanks as always for reading! ~CS