Fairytale of Doom

By CrimsonStarbird

Chapter Twenty-One – King Undisputed, Respected, Saluted

The sound of a door squeaking open woke Juvia at once. She remained perfectly still, not caring that her cheek was pressed into an old, oily blanket, or that some slimy critter had left a glistening trail over her sleeve in the night.

Through the shelves of gardening tools, her eyes met Gajeel's. No doubt he had awoken at the exact same moment. No one with their history could sleep soundly in a room with only one exit.

Silently, the Iron Dragon Slayer pressed a finger to his lips. Juvia rolled her eyes; thanks to the deal she'd had to make with Ursula just to join the adventure, she couldn't have spoken even if she'd wanted to. From the smirk that spread across her companion's face a moment later, he'd just remembered that too. At least their predicament prevented him from making fun of her.

Right. Their predicament.

The door to the shed in which she and Gajeel had taken shelter was open, letting a crack of daylight inside. Although the racks of rusty tools were blocking their view of the entrance – and hopefully hiding both her and Gajeel for the time being – she quietened her breathing further, hoping to locate the intruder by their footsteps.

But there were no footsteps.

Instead, there was an odd metallic hopping sound, and a laborious wooden shuffle.

From across the shed, Gajeel gave a minute shrug. Apparently, those sounds didn't make any more sense with a Dragon Slayer's hearing.

"I'm telling you, you're imagining things," huffed a male voice, almost as haughty as it was unimpressed. "The Master probably just forgot to lock the shed before he ran off on his latest adventure."

"Zen how do you explain ze accordion I 'eard in ze night?" retorted a second.

"A dream," the first asserted bluntly. "Or a nightmare. I never liked those lousy excuses for instruments. No, give me a grand piano any day-"

In a blur of motion, Gajeel made his move. He was instantly on his feet, fist driving straight into the first speaker's head.

Or into where the first speaker's head would have been, had they been a human being, and not a miniature animated grandfather clock.

Gajeel punched the empty air and almost fell over. Juvia, who had jumped to her feet in the same moment and seized a shovel to use as a weapon, stopped in confusion.

At their feet, the shuffling clock and its companion, a hopping candlestick, carried on obliviously. "I'm telling you, I 'eard something," the latter insisted.

"Oh, honestly," muttered the former. "What kind of thief would break into a shed and give a musical recital when there's an enchanted castle literally right there?"

"Precisely! We'd 'ave been a much better audience, no? We love a good performance- gah!"

Having apparently recovered from his shock, Gajeel swooped down and seized the talking candlestick, lifting it up to eye level. "What the hell?" he demanded. "Talkin' objects?"

"I say!" exclaimed the clock. "How rude!"

"Put me down!" the candlestick added, whacking ineffectually at Gajeel's wrist.

The Dragon Slayer sniffed the candlestick, and then pulled a face. "Yeuck. Brass."

"'ow dare you!" A flame burst to life atop the candlestick's head, and Gajeel dropped the enchanted object with a curse. "Guests these days, zey 'ave no manners!"

The clock sniffed with surprising disdain for someone whose moustache kept trying to tick upwards towards his eyebrows. "Well, what do you expect for thieves that have broken into the castle grounds?"

"I'll show ya manners," Gajeel growled. He started forward, only for Juvia's shovel to thwack into his chest, barring his progress. Fortunately, the tool had remained safely inanimate in her hands; perhaps the rundown shed had been too far from the enchanted castle to have been afflicted by the same spell that had brought these quirky antiques to life.

Juvia gave her companion a reproachful look. It was the best she could do without being able to speak, but she really didn't think picking a fight with these objects was the right course of action. They weren't a threat. And besides, they were kind of cute.

With an exaggerated sigh, Gajeel duly backed down. "We ain't thieves. We're only here 'coz we're hidin' from some rude bloke with an egg addiction who was rallyin' a mob to hunt us down."

With a clack of cogs and an eek of metal, the two objects exchanged glances. "Sounds like Gaston is up to his old tricks again," the clock conceded. "What did you do to set him off this time?"

"Beat him in a sing-off," Gajeel grunted.

Juvia noticed how he conveniently didn't mention that he'd also stolen Gaston's wallet. Nevertheless, the two household objects nodded, as if this explanation was perfectly adequate.

"Gaston is a known troublemaker around these parts," sighed the clock. "Ever since the Master withdrew from public life, Gaston has had his eye on the castle. He's been looking for an excuse to drive us out and steal it for himself. He probably wants to use it as the setting for that wedding he keeps going on about."

"Any enemy of Gaston's is a friend of ours," the candlestick added.

This drew a huff from the clock. "Well, now, I wouldn't go as far as calling them friends. They are still trespassing-"

"Ah, but where are my manners?" the candlestick announced, stepping smoothly in front of the grumbling clock. "I am Lumière, maître d' of yonder castle. And zis old grump is ze chief steward, Cogsworth."

"I'm Gajeel Redfox," the Dragon Slayer responded, his eyes glinting like wicked rubies in the breaking down. "And this is… Rainy McRainface."

Juvia jabbed him angrily with the shovel.

"Ow! I mean, this is Juvia Fullbuster."

Juvia gave a silent squeak.

"Does ze Lady Fullbuster not speak?" Lumière inquired hesitantly.

"Nah," Gajeel breezed, as Juvia's face burnt brightly enough that they could have cooked breakfast on it. "She sacrificed her voice in the name of true love. But it's cool, we've been friends for so long that I always know what she's tryin' ta say."

Juvia rolled her eyes. The irony was, it wasn't a lie. He was good at understanding her. He was also way too fond of teasing her. One moment he'd be thoughtfully swiping her a pen and paper so that she could communicate, and the next, he was introducing her as… as… oh, she was dizzy just thinking about it!

"Come inside, come inside," Lumière ushered them grandly. "Let's get out of zis shack, and you can tell us more about your run-in with Gaston."

Cogsworth gave a dramatic gasp. "You can't invite strangers into the castle while the Master is away!"

"Au contraire! Ze Master being away is ze best time for guests! And…" He rapped sharply on the clockface's glass, causing the hands to jump and Cogsworth's eyes to spin woozily. "It's almost breakfast time! And you know what zat means!"

"Absolutely not!" the clock thundered. "I forbid it! It would be bad enough just putting on a performance for thieves and trespassers, but making a song and dance over breakfast would be simply demeaning!"

"Oh, you love it really," Lumière beamed. "We must take pride in what we do, be it a banquet or breakfast or both at once!"

"Actually," Gajeel spoke up, breaking off the head of Juvia's shovel and popping it into his mouth, "I'm good with the breakfast buffet right here."

Cogsworth's jaw dropped, and a handful of cogs fell out. "B-but- that's- No, absolutely not, I cannot watch such a crude display! That does it – Lumière, we're taking our guests into the castle, and we are giving them the best service we can provide! No one eats rusty old tools for breakfast in my castle!"

"Zat's more like it!" Lumière clapped his fellow enchanted item on the back. "Besides, I like 'im. Reminds me of ze Master, no?"

"Oh, yes," Cogsworth snorted. "A great hairy brute with no manners."

"Oi!" Gajeel squawked.

"Come along now." The clock batted their ankles with his flipper-like hands, ushering them out of the rundown shed and towards the castle. "You're about to experience a breakfast like no other. It's time for you to be our guests!"

Natsu was not a fan of fancy palace bedrooms.

One would think, with all the riches around the place, they would have been able to afford a nice, comfy hammock like the one he had at home. But instead, they had gone for another stupid bed: uncomfortably squishy, disappointingly stationary, and covered in enough furs to cook a Fire Dragon Slayer in his own body heat.

And that was assuming one could even find it under the mountain of cushions. Natsu could only assume that a previous prince had once lost in a pillow fight to the king, who had subsequently decreed that a hundred pillows must always be stationed in his room to ensure the humiliation persisted in perpetuity.

In fact, the only thing that kept Natsu within the claustrophobic four-poster was his pride. He had taken a lot of glee in relegating Zeref to the sofa before realizing it looked firmer, cooler, and a lot easier to excavate than the fancy prince's bed, and he'd never live it down if he asked to swap now.

So Natsu had tossed and turned for most of the night, wondering at what point sleep-deprivation became acceptable grounds for regicide.

It took him so long to get to sleep that the sound of a mailed fist banging on the door to his royal chambers at the crack of dawn felt like a personal insult.

"Your Highness!" came the muffled voice of the soldier or bodyguard or demon on secondment from the tormented depths of hell. "Wake up! It's an emergency!"

Natsu let out a wounded groan. What was the point of a wall of gaudy cushions if they couldn't even keep the sound out? "Make them go away, Zeref," he complained, directing a glare through the slats of morning sunlight towards his occupied chaise lounge.

"S'not me they're looking for, Natsu," came the sleepy response. "Your Highness is far too lowly an address for a king."

"Ugh."

The knocking came again, louder. If it even was still knocking, and not an attempt to break the door down with a battering ram. Natsu caught a twitch of movement as Zeref rolled over and put a pillow over his head. Natsu had tried to do the same earlier, but his were covered in beads and sequins and other such uncomfortable things.

Realizing that his poor excuse for rest was done for either way, Natsu heaved himself out of bed, stumbled through the moat of cushions, and wrenched the door open. "What?" he demanded, of a chainmail-wearing soldier who looked a bit like a guard Natsu thought he had punched once in Mercurius. Or would look like him soon, unless he had a very good reason for disrupting his sleep.

"Crisis has struck, Your Highness!" the guard insisted. "The king – your brother – has been kidnapped!"

"…Huh?"

"The servants have not seen him, his chambers are empty, and the window has been smashed from the outside! His Majesty has been taken from the tower itself-"

"I wish," Natsu grunted, pointing over his shoulder. "He's right here."

The soldier gazed doubtfully at the cushion-studded interior.

Striding back into the room, Natsu yanked the covers off the chaise lounge. "Ta-da!"

Zeref gave a squeak that was both less and more human than any sound Natsu had heard him make before, recoiling from the absence of warmth.

"Your- Your Majesty!" the guard exclaimed, torn between wanting to see this and knowing he shouldn't be seeing it at all. "Forgive me- what are you doing in here?"

"We're having a sleepover," Natsu breezed. "Talking about boys, painting our nails, and all that other stuff Lucy usually kicks me out of her house for."

"Yes, yes, thank you, Natsu," Zeref sighed, getting reluctantly to his feet. His hair was a mess but his eyes could cut diamond; somehow, despite his small stature and rumpled pyjamas and the fact that he'd been sharing a room with someone who had spent half the night fighting the urge to throttle him in his sleep, he looked like a ruler. At times like this, Natsu found it even harder than usual to believe they were related, but he would never utter it when it came from a sense of inferiority.

Zeref was saying, with the confidence of someone who hadn't only recently been dropped into this world, "I understand your concern, Captain, but as you can see, I am quite well."

"Y-Yes, Your Majesty," the soldier stammered, pale. "I am so sorry for the disturbance-"

"No harm done," Zeref said coolly, his tone a perfect balance between generously brushing it off and ensuring the guard didn't forget to be grateful for said generosity. "I suggest you leave us in peace. Oh, and send for our breakfast to be brought up here."

"At once, Your Majesty," the guard bowed, before retreating swiftly through the door.

"Don't invite yourself to eat in my room," Natsu said waspishly, although he couldn't be too cross when his stomach was strongly in favour of the motion.

Zeref gave him a dismissive glance, before settling back on the chaise lounge. "In case you haven't noticed, Natsu, we appear to have enemies here. Until we have determined who they are, it would be prudent to stick together."

Natsu snorted. "You mean, you have enemies, and you're scared."

Gray would have clocked him one for that, and he wouldn't have dared say it to Erza in the first place, but Zeref just looked at him as though he was an idiot for bothering to state the obvious.

It irked Natsu, how little shame Zeref had; how he was somehow acting like his own failings were a weapon to use against Natsu. He… never knew how to feel, talking to Zeref. It was hard enough to suppress his instinct to defeat his guild's final enemy while he had the chance. How was he supposed to deal with him acting so differently to everyone from the guild at the same time?

Fortunately, a knock on the door announced the arrival of breakfast. It wasn't as good as Mira's special deluxe fry-up, of course, but it wasn't bad for a world that hadn't invented ketchup yet.

Zeref commented, "Once we have eaten, we should head for the Imperial Kingdom."

"Why?" Natsu demanded, automatically rebellious. "At the head of an army? You're not gonna launch an invasion before we've even finished breakfast, are you?"

"No… not with the army."

When Natsu gave him a suspicious look – he'd been pretty set on invading other kingdoms on their quest for Fairy Heart only yesterday – Zeref set his empty plate aside and sat back down, a pensive expression upon his face. "You made a good point yesterday, Natsu. Perhaps I am still too quick to reach for a destructive solution. My curse may not have followed me here, but those four hundred years of taking action to suppress it certainly have. Maybe, with your help, I can change that."

"Uh."

What was Natsu supposed to say to something like that? He knew what he should have said: that the only thing he was going to do for Zeref was destroy him, and this adventure they were on was nothing more than a means to launch them back into that final confrontation. Yet somewhere in his chest was a traitorous flicker of hope, of pride, and he couldn't quite bring himself to quash it.

Zeref didn't seem to have been expecting a response, continuing, "Do you recall what we saw in the Magic Mirror?"

"Course I do."

"Finding Mavis's body – sealed inside that glass coffin – isn't enough to obtain the power of Fairy Heart. We need those three components we saw: the person, the sword, and the shield. However, while the manpower of an army would be helpful in a blind search, we are no longer searching blindly… and if that cackling apparition and the animal you claimed to see in the mirror's chamber are any indication, I don't think we're the only ones searching, either. I believe it would be safer travelling with just you than with army generals of unknown motivation."

"Does that mean you've worked out where one of those components of Fairy Heart is?"

"Not as such," Zeref admitted. "I recognized the first easily enough: the castle gates outside which the hazy figure was stood were a smaller version of the main gates outside my palace at Vistarion. It won't be familiar to you, Natsu, but this castle appears to be a hybrid of my palace in the real world and a fairytale castle, as if some great designer has taken the more memorable elements of the two and shuffled them together in a way that defies architectural norms. A side effect, I have no doubt, of the integration of outsiders such as ourselves into the story."

"Uh." It was safe to say Natsu had only followed one part of that: "Are you saying that one of the three things we're looking for is literally right outside the castle gates?"

"Was right outside the castle gates," Zeref corrected. "And if it were the sword or the shield, we would have a good chance at finding it, but this was the humanoid figure we were shown. They could be anywhere by now."

"I could track them by scent," Natsu pointed out.

"Without knowing who you are looking for? Hundreds of people must pass by the palace every day, and any one of them could be in possession of that magic."

Natsu's mouth was already open to point out the obvious error with that, but perhaps the former emperor and present king was not used to taking counsel from others, for he was already moving on, and Natsu made the split-second decision to close his mouth and let him.

"The shield was clearly in a version of your guildhall, which I suspect was carried over to this world in the same way my palace was. The pattern indicates that it has become the seat of power in one of the other four kingdoms, although I do not have enough information to say which. The sword, though – if you recall, that was buried in snow. This world stands in summer, and the climate is moderate; only the highest mountains could possibly still be frozen, and the only place with mountains that high is the southwestern edge of the Imperial Kingdom, which borders all the maps I have seen of this world."

To be honest, searching one place was as good as any other for Natsu; he just wanted to be out of this stupid castle with its excess of cushions and even greater excess of ugly stepsisters looking for a prince to marry. "We'll head there, then. Just you and me?"

Zeref nodded.

And Natsu found, to his surprise, that the idea didn't bother him.

Well, it was easy enough to rationalize. Travelling with someone was more fun than going alone, wasn't it? And it was always useful to have someone around who didn't turn into a shivering wreck the moment they stepped onto a vehicle, so that they could make sure he, Natsu, got off at the right stop. All perfectly logical reasons for him to tolerate the company of his enemy for another few hours. He didn't need to feel bad about not feeling bad about the thought of going on another adventure with Zeref.

"You gonna just walk away from your kingdom like that?" he checked. "I thought you were big on playing politics here."

"It's fine. I'll just leave Lady Tremaine in charge for a few days."

"But she's evil!"

"As I've told you, Natsu, I know her game," Zeref sighed. "She can hold the reins of power for a few days. It will keep her happy, and too preoccupied to pay much attention to what we are doing – and, ultimately, the long-term fate of the kingdom doesn't matter. We're not exactly planning on staying here."

"Definitely not."

"What concerns me more is the attempted kidnapping last night. The perpetrator apparently managed to get into my royal chambers and out again without being seen by any guards, and we are none the wiser as to who it might have been. Then again, at least it provides an excuse for me to leave the palace for a few days. I can claim that, in the light of my narrow escape, I wish to spend a few days recuperating at an undisclosed location for my own safety while security is tightened here… Natsu?"

Natsu was no longer listening. Truth was, he hadn't stopped to think it through earlier, having been distracted by the plate full of bacon and the fact that he might have unintentionally saved his archnemesis from being kidnapped… but he was thinking about it now.

The guard had said that the king's chambers had been found empty this morning, after being broken into.

But they weren't empty. Zeref was only sleeping in Natsu's room because his own bedroom was serving as a temporary infirmary for Gray.

Gray, who had been in no state to go walkabout, judging by his poor attempt at ballroom dancing the night before.

"Natsu?" Zeref pressed.

Natsu barely registered the fact that Zeref had picked up on something being wrong, and stopped his own lecture to hear it; he did not notice what might have been, in a different light, concern in those eyes which should have known nothing but hostility. "Gray," he breathed.

To his credit, Zeref made the connection a moment later. "You think the intruder kidnapped him, mistaking him for me? I suppose it wouldn't be impossible, in the darkness. It would certainly explain why the intruder left without apparently achieving his goal – because he believed he had achieved it."

"Ugh." Natsu jumped to his feet. "Why are all my teammates liabilities? First there's you and your inability to climb a tree like any self-respecting five-year-old, and now Ice Prick has gone and got himself kidnapped like a princess. Well, I guess it's up to me to be the prince again! Let's go and investigate your bedroom; there might be some clues as to who took Gray-"

"No," Zeref said.

"Fine, I'll go on my own," Natsu huffed. "You go to the Imperial Kingdom or wherever. I'll rescue Gray and then come join you."

"No," Zeref repeated, firmer this time. "We already have a plan, and we're sticking to it. We are going after the scattered pieces of Fairy Heart as soon as possible."

They stared at each other.

Then Natsu let out a bark of laughter and strode towards the door.

"Natsu!" Zeref exclaimed.

"Yeah, we're done," Natsu breezed. "It was fun while it lasted, bro, but I'm off to find my friends."

"Natsu, wait!"

It was a desperate order, the frantic cry of one too used to being obeyed to ever need to understand – and Natsu stopped, sure enough, but for all the wrong reasons. "Don't know if you've noticed this, Zeref, but I'm not one of your lackeys," he growled. "We had a temporary alliance at best, and it was through the moment you tried to put your stupid magic above my friends. You're the one who makes a big deal out of us being brothers, but when it comes right down to it, you don't know me at all, do you?"

"I'm not trying to come between you and your friends, Natsu; I'm not an idiot," Zeref groaned, running a hand through his hair. "Which you would realize, if you stopped and listened to me for a change, rather than making assumptions."

Personally, Natsu thought he had been doing an awful lot of listening recently, not to mention compromising. Was Zeref not aware that every minute Natsu wasn't punching his lights out was a gift? "You've got five seconds, and then I'm going after Gray."

"I know how important your friends are to you, Natsu," Zeref said, his eyes softening in a way that an evil emperor's really shouldn't have been able to do. "I know how much you care about Gray-"

"I do not care about him."

Zeref raised an eyebrow.

"It's the principle of the thing," Natsu muttered defensively. "I've gotta stand up for my friends. Even the ones who are total jerks."

"…Right. Well, I know you're worried about him- ah, because your guild would kick you out if you didn't subscribe to the doctrine of worrying about your friends," he amended, eyes sparkling. "And also possibly because without your dear prince, you no longer have an excuse to avoid dancing with Lady Tremaine's rather eye-catching daughters. However, hasn't Gray proven that he can look after himself?"

"Nah, he's useless without me."

"Then perhaps you missed the way he singlehandedly defeated one of my best generals right before being dragged into this world," Zeref told him coolly. "Which is, incidentally, one more than you managed to beat alone."

"I was saving my energy to fight you, wasn't I?" Natsu objected half-heartedly.

"The point is, Natsu, that he has shown time and time again that he is a strong individual who is more than capable of surviving in this world without you babysitting him. He is also far from the only member of your guild that has been dragged here with us. If you insist on going after him, where will it stop? Would you have us round up each and every Fairy Tail mage scattered across the kingdom before you allow us to make even an iota of progress towards actually leaving this world?"

Despite himself, Natsu couldn't stop a shiver of guilt at the fact that Zeref had brought it up before he did. Zeref may have been joking earlier about his guild's doctrine – whatever that meant – but Natsu was supposed to be looking out for his friends, wasn't he?

And he was genuinely worried about them. He just… hadn't really fancied explaining the whole situation with Zeref to them. Gray's reaction had only brought that home.

Zeref said, "With every minute we spend here, the visions we saw of Fairy Heart's components become more and more out of date. Not to mention, unknown forces are in motion also. If we go after Gray first, we risk letting Fairy Heart slip through our fingers. What good will that do, reunited with your friends but doomed to spend the rest of our lives in this foreign land? Whereas, if we are able to recover Fairy Heart, then reversing the spell won't just save us – it will return all your friends to reality, no matter where in this world they are. It is not only the most sensible course of action, but also the fastest way to protect your friends."

Natsu gnashed his teeth. If only he could wear down logic so easily. Goddammit, Zeref was even managing to look sympathetic. It was… weird, is what it was.

The thought still made him uncomfortable, though. He didn't know what any of his friends had been going through, while he'd been preparing for royal balls and exploring abandoned towers with Zeref. "But Gray could be in danger right now."

"If the intruder wanted him dead, he wouldn't have bothered kidnapping him – he'd have done it there and then," Zeref pointed out, the facts hitting Natsu like hammer blows. "Have faith in your friends to survive this world until we can get them out, Natsu. After all, Gray's deeds in the real world aside, he has already got through imprisonment in an abandoned tower, almost drowning, and being whirled around the ballroom by you…"

Natsu's smile flickered, and then faded.

The thing was, it had almost worked.

Zeref's reasoning had made sense. He hadn't tried to block Natsu off from his friends, but offered an alternative route that purported to achieve both of their goals. He hadn't expressed a sudden care for Gray that Natsu would never have believed, but appeared to understand Natsu's own care for his friend, accommodating it rather than throttling it.

Zeref was hands-down the world's worst adventurer, and a lousy excuse for a guild mage, but somewhere between bailing him out when the tower had collapsed and their cute little sleepover, Natsu had almost forgotten that there were some things he was extremely good at.

After all, he'd convinced an entire continent to go to war for him.

Natsu said, quietly, "How did you know Gray had almost drowned?"

"The physician told me," came the impatient response.

"He didn't, though. He didn't know. Something about Gray having been through too much physical trauma since the actual incident, thanks to his imprisonment. Guess medical knowledge isn't great in this world. I only knew 'coz Gray himself told me he was in a shipwreck, and there was no way he would have told you."

Zeref's eyes narrowed. "I do not know what you think you are insinuating-"

"Oh? And there I thought you were some kind of genius," Natsu mocked. "Shall I spell it out for you? You know Gray almost drowned because your soldiers found him when he washed up on the shore, and you ordered him to be imprisoned. All to stop me and him from reuniting."

"You are quite delusional, Natsu."

"No. I'm not. You are, for thinking you could get away with this."

"Then we appear to be at an impasse. I cannot prove something that didn't happen, while you seem determined to cling to this ridiculous hypothesis, despite the fact that you can't prove it either."

"Sure I can. I'll just ask that old hag Tremaine."

No normal man would have caught the way Zeref momentarily froze, because normal men didn't have the eyesight of a dragon; normal men couldn't see him for the liar that he was.

Natsu continued, "I could smell Gray on her clothes, but I wonder what she'd say if I asked her why she had imprisoned him in that tower rather than getting him medical help. Did you order her to do it, Zeref? Did you make sure she was covered in his scent, so that you wouldn't be? It's not hard to fool a Dragon Slayer when you know exactly how our abilities work. Except, you screwed up on this one, Zeref. Tremaine isn't one of your Alvarez lackeys. She won't lie to protect you. But I bet she'll tell me everything if I blow a kiss at one of her daughters."

"Natsu…"

But, caught between truth and blame, not even he knew what to say.

And yet the words came so easily to Natsu: "You had to keep us apart, didn't you? Gray's smart. Too smart to have given you a chance the way I did. Too smart to have fallen for your lies, just because of some supposed blood relation. Too smart to have felt grateful at you supposedly helping a friend recover from injuries you caused!"

At last, Zeref spoke, like the plea of a beaten puppy, like he thought Natsu would fall for it all over again. "It's not what you think, Natsu."

"Oh? Go on then," he jeered. "What ridiculous story have you got for me this time? Perhaps Gray just tripped and fell into that tower dungeon. Or maybe he's secretly working with Acnologia and I absolutely must kill him to save my guild!"

When Zeref said nothing, Natsu pressed forward, a bull in these dainty royal chambers, a guild mage who should never have been let into a building that would be so expensive to repair. "That's how you operate, isn't it? You can't do anything yourself, so you trick others into doing your dirty work for you! I wouldn't be surprised if the whole thing about you being my brother is a lie; one last bit of insurance in case the two of us got stranded somewhere without magic and you needed a reason to make me not kill you!"

"It's not a lie, Natsu."

No defence for anything else, though.

Like that was the only thing that mattered. Like he could do whatever he wanted, not just cause Gray's suffering but lie to Natsu about it, again and again and again, and Natsu would have to forgive him just because they brothers.

Zeref didn't understand the first thing about family.

"I wish it was a lie!" Natsu howled. "I stood up for you! Gray warned me not to trust you, and I knocked him out for it! And now you're trying to separate me from my friends, just like he said you would! In this world or any other, you're only thinking of yourself!"

"…I suppose I am."

Natsu's fist smashed into the wall beside his face. Cracks criss-crossed through the plaster, shedding dust that should have immolated from the heat of his rage, if not his magic.

"Are you going to kill me, Natsu? You know I cannot stop you."

Natsu scowled. Was it a taunt, a surrender, a warning – or was it reverse psychology, aiming to encourage him or dissuade him or confuse him so thoroughly that he forgot his purpose?

If so, then Zeref had misjudged him one last time.

Natsu wasn't going to trust another thing out of his mouth. And the best part was, he didn't have to. He had a far better solution.

"I'm not gonna kill you," Natsu told him calmly, removing his hand from the wall, shaking white dust from his knuckles. "You've got far worse coming to you."

"…What's that supposed to mean?" A guarded note had crept into Zeref's voice. Good. It seemed he understood that, unlike Zeref himself, Natsu did not lie.

"There's another way of leaving this world. The First Master worked it out, and told Gray, who told me."

"Mavis did? She spoke…?"

Glee filled Natsu's voice – a vindictiveness in victory; something, perhaps, that he and Zeref had in common. "And you know what it is? True love. If you love someone, and they love you back, you're outta here and back to Fiore. We don't have to give you Fairy Heart and wait to see how you're gonna betray us with it. We can get out, all of us, and we can take the pieces of Fairy Heart with us. And do you know the best thing about it, Zeref?"

It was clear from the horror dawning upon the Black Mage's face that he did.

But Natsu said it anyway, a dagger driven home with every word, one for every minute Natsu had spent believing that this man wasn't so bad after all.

He wanted to hurt him as much as the betrayal Natsu should have seen coming a mile off had hurt him.

"The bonds of my guild are strong enough to save us… but you have no such thing. No one will ever love you. So you might as well get used to your pretend castle with its conniving old women and mysterious kidnappers and beautiful stepsisters, because you are gonna be stuck with it for a very long time. Enjoy your happy ending, brother."

No one tried to stop him as he strode from the castle. Zeref did not shout after him, pointless words he would have delighted in shooting down, false promises he would have burnt away with the dawn.

When the lies were stripped away, there was only silence.

Natsu headed straight for the front gates of the castle. Zeref had foolishly given away some information he should not have done, and Natsu had kept quiet about the consequences. At the time, he had intended only to prove to him at some later point how foolish he was for not bothering to get Natsu's opinion. Now, though, it meant he had a way forward.

The bearer of one of the fragments of Fairy Heart, according to Zeref, had been sighted outside the front gates of the castle. Zeref had thought it impossible to track them – partly because of the time, and partly because of the sheer number of people that passed through that way, knowing that any one of them could have held the fragment of the magic Zeref so desperately sought.

But Natsu knew that the Great Fairy Magic would only have gone to a member of Fairy Tail.

Yes, hundreds had passed this way, but only one of them left a familiar scent trail.

Cheap incense, expensive perfume, alcohol fumes.

Cana.

Natsu set off on her trail at once.

Zeref was right about one thing: Gray could look after himself. Natsu's job was to find his friends, warn them about Zeref's plan, ensure that they found the fragments of Fairy Heart first, and get them and the magic Zeref sought safely home, re-joining the war.

And in the meantime, the Emperor of Alvarez, the great Black Mage, would be trapped in a world from which he could not escape, defeated by his own lack of a heart.

It wasn't how Natsu had thought he would win their final battle, but as he walked away, he knew that nothing could be more fitting.

A/N: Oops. But on the plus side, at least Gajeel is heading for a fun musical number!

Also, just as a heads up, I've been extremely busy this week, and that's going to continue for the next fortnight, so any responses from me are likely to be slow. I'm hoping to get a chapter up next week, but it won't be Sunday - might be Saturday if I get some time, or might be the Tuesday after. There definitely won't be a chapter the week after that. Worst case scenario, there won't be any new chapters until 15th Oct. (But hopefully it won't come to that!) Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope to be back soon! ~CS