Fairytale of Doom
By CrimsonStarbird
Chapter Thirty-Eight – Midnight at the Ball
Jellal knew he shouldn't have been enjoying this.
These days, his life couldn't have been more different from his time spent as the villain at the top of the Tower of Heaven. Where once his dual identities had kept both the Magic Council and the guilds of the underworld on his side, now he had few allies and fewer places he could truly feel safe. His guildmates these days were not ones he had manipulated, blackmailed, or ensnared in a web of lies – they were the handful of former dark mages who had seen the sum total of who he was and thrown their lot in with him anyway. Gone were the days when he had revelled in smashing down those weaker than him, be they cultists who challenged his dominance in the Tower or rival politicians who sought to oust him from the Council. Now, he fought only when he had to, no more dangerous than he needed to be to end the approaching threat.
It wasn't an easy life, but even that, in its own way, was a good thing. All the hardships he'd never had to face as the evil Councillor Siegrain were proof of how much he had changed.
Changing wasn't the same thing as forgetting, though. And he had known that coming to a fairytale ball would bring a lot of it back.
Politics was one thing. He had always been able to handle the scheming, the backstabbing, the dealings behind closed doors that would make even the Master of a dark guild blush. Back then, he'd relished the challenge – and marvelled at how much overlap there was between his two supposedly contradictory lives. Even now, he appreciated the unique challenges of governing in a world where magic bent the rules of possibility on a whim. His experience had made him much more sympathetic to the methods the Council took than those who saw it only from the outside.
The public face of politics, though, was something else entirely.
The excessive galas. The publicity events. The glitzy hospitality. The arrogance that assumed dirty deals could so easily be covered up with glitter; the claim that a bright enough façade could justify all the sins carried out behind.
Once, he had found it entertaining – the shallowness of those to whom he was supposed to pander; the social customs that meant more than good and evil. Those Council-hosted balls were so full of lies that even in retrospect, he could not feel guilty about having donned the persona of a fictitious twin to enter. His was far from the worst of the masks people wore; his desires far from the darkest in the room.
But as a man who accepted his sins and wore them openly as a reminder of everything he still had to do for redemption, he loathed the very idea of it. He'd learnt to navigate that savagely political world, and the weapons he'd honed there – not only reading people, but using words to wound and control more effectively than any magic – haunted him more than any other.
After all, anyone could become a powerful mage. It didn't mean they'd once strayed too close to the darkness; his friends in Fairy Tail were living proof of that. That mastery of political warfare, though, whether in the debating chamber or the equally vicious stage of a public gala, was an indisputable reminder of the horrid life he'd once lived.
He had agreed to enter the royal ball because he would do anything for his Fairy Tail allies, and that was no secret. But he knew it would bring back the worst parts of him. He had been prepared to despise every minute of it.
He hadn't expected to be meandering slowly through the lantern-lit gardens, trying to drag it out for as long as possible.
A fool Jellal may have been for many years, but it was precisely because of his past mistakes that he now knew his heart so well. And the undeniable truth was that he wasn't hating this reminder of his past life all because of his companion.
Natsu had gone with Erza and Laxus to be the distraction. Cana and Gray had drawn the short straw, and were currently infiltrating the castle by a less savoury route than one might expect from these nice, clean stories. That had left him and Levy to retrace Lucy's footsteps, in an attempt to discover what had befallen her at Cinderella's ball.
Mulan didn't technically have a princess dress, but that had proven no barrier to the Fairy Godmother's wand. At Levy's request, Cana had conjured up a faithful recreation of Belle's gold ballgown before they had parted ways.
She had confessed to Jellal, shyly, as they had headed for the main entrance of the castle, that she had always dreamed of wearing Belle's famous dress. Privately, he thought that if Levy had made this dream known, she would have had a lot of people clamouring to help her fulfil it. Light colours suited her, but that golden dress honoured her with a glory the summer itself could not match. She was neither small nor unassuming when she wore it: she was bright, brighter than anything, and it was bittersweet how she didn't seem able to see it herself.
He had looked, once, for a little too long, and then tried not to look again. It was hard, though, when he could see her brilliant smile in the corner of his eye – the giddy joy at being able to realize a childhood dream she hadn't dared to vocalize around Lucy and her anti-princess crusade.
Back when Levy had broken up with Gajeel, Lucy had made an insinuation to him, having seen Levy glance his way before running off. He had informed Lucy that she was misreading the situation owing to a lack of background knowledge; Levy had merely been remembering his own confession about his inability to love Erza as she reached a similar conclusion herself about Gajeel.
Now, he was having to remind himself of that cold, hard truth. A man who had done what he had was not allowed to even wish otherwise.
Maybe he could draw this out for a little bit longer, though.
They could walk a little bit slower, arm in arm, arriving at the ball unusually late, but otherwise looking like any other aristocratic couple – and getting far more envious glances than most.
With the whispers, the glares, and the net of deception and antagonism already being woven around him and Levy from their self-styled rivals in the royal court, he should have despised being here. And yet Levy found such beauty in it. It wasn't in the outfits of the other guests, or the enchanting fairy lights strung up through the trees, or the full moon glowing above the castle's perfect fantasy backdrop – it was simply that she saw meaning where other people saw only the contingent components of life. Poetry where there should only have been noise.
She looked at the world differently to anyone he had ever met. Sure, he understood love and friendship as well as anyone in Fairy Tail, but his alliances were matter-of-fact; his partnerships were practical; his daily life was about surviving the present and planning for the immediate future. Levy… was not like him. In the rhythms underlying life itself, she perceived the beauty that others couldn't, and that was what brought light to this place that, to him, had abounded with nothing but lies.
And the best thing was how much she loved to share her worldview. "See the blue colouring on the turrets? That's how you can tell this is based on a western fairytale. The blue is called azuro slate, and as it's formed around oceanic fault lines, it can only be extracted from coastal quarries where the waters have receded over the millennia. There are hardly any accessible ones in the west. Of course, with modern technology, we can extract it underwater, so it has become a lot more common. But back then, it had to be imported from the eastern or southern continents, and as such was only used in the dwellings of the very rich. It used to be a status symbol here – unlike in the east, where it was always very common, and white marble was the stone of choice for the castles of the wealthy."
After the briefest pause for breath, she continued, "And did you know, the ancient association of that shade of blue with royalty in the west was the reason for the colour of Cinderella's dress? In the original version of the story, she's wearing a very pale silvery-blue dress – which makes sense, as it matches her glass slippers. However, as the story was passed down orally through generations, the subconscious association of the azuro blue colour with royalty darkened the colour of her dress, until she's now known for her striking sky-blue dress… and I'm boring you, aren't I?"
"Not at all," he hastened to assure her, with complete honesty. To him, the castle had just been a castle, with its bright blue roofs designed to draw the eye and blend with the sky to create the illusion of greater height. He greatly preferred the meaning she had drawn from it.
She gave him a dubious look. "Really? Because you're being very quiet. Seriously, I travel with Jet and Droy all the time – I'm used to being told to shut up when I go too far with literary analysis, and that was before I actually started living in a story. And I think Gajeel just tunes me out…"
"I find your observations very interesting." The words sounded clumsy even to him. He had always been so good at this, but tonight, it felt like a cog was missing from the slick workings of his mind. He tried to change the subject: "I was just distracted, wondering if we were in uncharted territory. I cannot imagine that the Beast attended many fancy balls, and Mulan even fewer."
"Actually, the ballroom scene in Beauty and the Beast is timeless." She was smiling broadly, not at proving him wrong but at the simple fact of being able to share her knowledge, her passion, with someone else. "And in the finale of Mulan, she and the male members of her squad disguise themselves as concubines in order to infiltrate the palace during the festival. So, whichever way you look at it, we're right on track."
She made a solid point, as always. He had never doubted that she would, from the moment she spoke out against him with such easy certainty. That was what he liked about her – he had no doubt that she would have given the same answer had she been asked by a glazed-over Gajeel, her fellow book-lover Lucy, or the Magic Council's least favourite independent mage. She treated him just like she would anyone else. Their shared path was short, but it abounded with comradeship and empathy. So free was her smile in his presence that he could almost believe that nothing that came before he met her mattered.
But of course it mattered. She was a close friend of Erza's, the woman he had wronged beyond all forgiveness. She was a good person, a brilliant person, a mage so firmly on the side of light that storybook villains would quail in her presence. Until very recently, she had been in a long-term relationship, living in wilful denial of its demerits until this world had forced her to confront them.
He knew better than to hope. For seven years of Tenrou Island's absence, he had hoped that the hand Erza had offered to him atop Nirvana had been more than a hand of friendship, and then she had returned and he had realized that it never could be. If not for this fairytale twist, he and Levy would never have had a proper conversation. And once they returned to reality, they would no doubt go their separate ways, him back to his perpetual redemption and her to her dazzling future.
"You're drifting again," she told him ruefully.
"Forgive me," he murmured. "Perhaps we should head inside?"
The night was growing late, and there were few guests left in the courtyard. None would be foolish enough to let the ball end without taking their chance to enter the ballroom and see the kingdom's rulers. None except him, who had been stupidly and selfishly letting his mission fall by the wayside to spend a little bit longer with her while it was still allowed…
"Yeah, we probably should." Instead of moving, her hands twisted nervously in her dress, muttering something he didn't quite catch – something about having promised Erza. Then, as if the motion had drawn her own attention to what she was wearing, she smoothed the gold fabric out again and raised her head, reminded of her own courage as a princess. "Look, before we enter the lion's den and things start getting crazy, I need to talk to you."
"Alright." No doubt his attempt to delay them in the palace gardens had not gone unnoticed. That was another thing he liked about her – her ability to see through him, to challenge him where he was strongest…
And he really needed to stop listing the things he liked. It was making them far harder to ignore.
With no small amount of trepidation, he watched as she drew in a deep breath. "So, the thing is," she began, awkward and clumsy, almost as if she was a different person to the scholar who waxed lyrical about the symbolism of blue roofs in fairytales – almost as if the usually-so-precise wheels of her brain were spinning in mid-air just as his were.
She seemed to realize this at the same moment he did, and gave a rueful smile. "You'd think this would be second nature to me after all the fairytales I've read, let alone the romance novels… but I guess nothing really prepares you for experiencing it yourself."
"Experiencing… what, may I ask?"
She pulled a face. "Falling head over heels for someone you only just met. And then actually having to put it into words. I told you that Gajeel and I just naturally fell into a relationship after months of me slowly coming to terms with the fact that he wasn't the villain from my nightmares any more, right? It was easier to go out with him than not to. That was just where things were heading on their own. It worked for both of us at the time, but there wasn't any kind of romantic confession involved, not by any stretch of the imagination. Not that this is particularly romantic, either. The backdrop is beautiful, but I've already ruined it by blabbering on like this… and bringing up my ex… wow, I'm terrible at this, aren't I? This is where you need a writer like Lucy, not a reader like me."
As he stared, completely paralyzed, she continued, "In short, I like you. A lot. I don't want this to end when we go back to the real world. I want to keep seeing you, and going on adventures with you, and having fascinating conversations with you, and… and maybe more, if you wanted that too."
Just like that, all her cards were on the table, so very different to the secrecy, the uncertainty, the sheer aversion to risk that had always passed unsaid between him and Erza. They were mundane, common words, but he had never thought anyone would say them to him. He didn't deserve such simple affection.
"But I know that this is a terrible time, what with us being in the middle of a mission and all," she continued, before he could get his jaw unstuck. "And I know that it's a lot to spring on you so suddenly. I wanted you to know, because if there's one thing I've learnt throughout this whole romantic mess, it's that it is so important to speak out about what we want and how we feel."
She gave a faint smile. "I don't expect an answer now, though. You've got enough to worry about at the moment. You can give me your answer once we're back in Fiore. Instead, will you promise me one thing?"
"What's that?"
"That, when you make your decision, you base it only on how much you like me."
He frowned. "What else would I base it on?"
"Knowing you?" Levy gave a wry smile, counting the alternatives off on her fingers. "Probably the effect you think it will have on my reputation, the impact on my relationships with Erza and the rest of the guild, whether I truly understand the kind of man that you are, whether I grasp how difficult it will be given the life you have to lead, whether I have realized what it means to support you publicly when all of society doesn't, et cetera, et cetera. I want you to trust that I have already considered all these things. I want you to accept that my future is my decision, not yours, and I am prepared for any consequences that may result. You are being asked to choose your future, and whether you want to spend it with me. Nothing more, and nothing less. Do you understand?"
"I understand," he responded numbly.
"Alright, then." She blew a stray strand of hair away from her face. "I'm glad we're clear on that. Think about what I've said, but don't worry about it, okay? I will accept any answer from you, as long as it is honest."
Before he could say anything, an ear-splitting roar shook the castle to its very foundations.
Summer leaves fled the trees like it had suddenly skipped ahead to autumn. Something huge lurched through the air, a pitch-black shape against a pitch-black sky, endless without any borders to define it, as if the night itself was a great coiled leviathan.
Then a blast of emerald fire sliced through the darkness. Light and dark danced along wings and tail before the breath burnt itself out, leaving only the fearsome silhouette of a dragon imprinted upon their vision.
Well, a dragon and the familiar humanoid shape upon his back.
The dragon's roar brought terror, but a shout overrode it with the call to arms: "Oh no you don't! Wicked Fire Dragon's Iron Fist!"
A pulse of green light pummelled the dragon's back like a meteor.
For the second time in as many minutes, Jellal found himself almost speechless. "Is that… Natsu wrestling a dragon in mid-air?"
"Don't sound so surprised," Levy laughed. "It wasn't all that long ago that Natsu was doing this above the Eclipse Gate. In fact, the most shocking thing is that he hasn't destroyed-"
With a huge eruption of green flames, the dragon careened sideways into a tower. Otherworldly light bathed the debris, turning royal blue slate and pastel pink stone into the same sickly grey.
"Never mind," Levy sighed.
"Sneaking into the ball feels rather redundant now," Jellal agreed, eyeing the shrieking guests as they very sensibly fled in the opposite direction from the fight. "Should we go and see what's going on?"
"I suppose we probably should." She bumped his shoulder cheerfully and set off towards the castle, marching like the Mulan she was despite wearing Belle's glorious dress, refusing to let her confession make their final adventure together awkward in any way.
It was safe to say, Jellal thought, that he had never met anyone like Levy before.
Erza, for all that she cared about him, did not understand him at all. Ultear had understood him, but it was the bitter understanding of someone who had lived the same darkness as him. Sharing their burdens helped little when each carried the exact same weight to begin with.
Levy, however, stood on the outside of his unfriendly world. She understood him not because she had made the same mistakes as him, but because she had reached out to him despite them.
What else would I base it on?
In a few short sentences, her answer had proven that she knew him better than anyone he had ever met. Empathy had crossed the border of sins, and yet she remained firmly on the far side, bringing light into the barren world of his penitence. A light that was not a secret gift for him alone, but something she was proud to shine for all the world to see.
When he looked at her, he did not feel the weight of his past. He saw the hope of the future.
Levy had promised to wait for his answer: to give him time to think, to make his decision unbound by the pressures of the current crisis, to safely disentangle it from the romantic chaos of this world. And he would wait to answer her, because Lucy had been captured and Natsu was singlehandedly fighting a dragon and the present required them far more than the future did.
Still, there was no doubt in his mind as to what his answer would be.
Zeref had gone quiet again.
Lucy didn't like it when he was quiet, and not just because she missed the sympathy and the wit that made these dark dungeon corridors less oppressive. Some small part of her was worried that he was scheming again, like the enemy general that he was. And a far larger part remembered the detached and barely responsive state in which she'd found him at the ball. If he slipped back into that, she would no doubt have to carry him out of this fairytale's finale. That was something she didn't fancy one bit.
As she crept down the corridors, she kept throwing uncertain glances over her shoulder, just to check he was keeping up. He was, although he looked like he would have blundered straight back into a prison cell if he didn't have her leading him away from the patrols. It turned out all that time she'd spent being rescued from dungeons in the past was useful for something.
There was no sign of Natsu. Only the continued unhappy rumbling of the castle told her that he was still out there, fighting. Her other friends were probably here too, somewhere, but she couldn't leave it all to them. She and Zeref had to recover the pieces of Fairy Heart while Natsu provided the distraction.
The thought that she had no weapons with which to fight – not even her trusty glass slippers – didn't even cross her mind. She shoved open the door to the throne room and strode inside.
The first thing that caught her eye was that the mirror was no longer dormant. It did not show their reflections, but instead displayed streaks of gold and silver swirling within the vortex of its plane. To one side, the Sword of Truth and Shield of Virtue were propped up against Mavis's glass coffin.
In front of the mirror stood Lady Tremaine. Even in the rippling aura of the portal, not one grey hair was out of place, and her mahogany dress did not dare to twitch or sway.
"So," she remarked, turning slowly to face them. "You did escape from the dungeons, after all."
"Ha. I've got out of more dungeons than you've even seen," Lucy retorted. Which was true, although it was safe to say that she had been rescued more times than she had broken free under her own power. This was quite a turn-up for the books for Cinderella.
"It was a kindness, allowing you to wait out the end of your story in a prison cell." Tremaine's lip curled. "Instead, you have chosen to die."
And she withdrew from her sleeve a long, thin, starlight-white wand.
"The Fairy Godmother's wand!" Lucy exclaimed. "But I thought my friends had…"
She stopped herself before giving away any further information, but Tremaine gave her a nasty smile. "You are not the only one with allies in this showdown. My dear Lucifer stole this from your friends, and brought it to me to secure my victory."
"What, are you going to attack us with carriages made from pumpkins?" Lucy dared.
Tremaine's sneer only grew more pronounced. "Only good fairies are restricted by the rules. In my hands, anything with magic is a weapon."
Abruptly, she twisted the wand towards a pillar. A bolt of white light flew from the tip and disintegrated the pillar where it stood.
Even though the bolt hadn't gone anywhere near her, Lucy jumped back anyway, shrieking in terror. "That's not what the wand is supposed to do!"
"That is the power of one who has transcended such naïve labels as good and evil," Tremaine smirked. "I have overcome my predetermined role as the villain of your story, and I will seize victory with my own two hands."
"Okay, first of all, you are definitely still a villain with clichéd lines like that," Lucy sighed. Then Tremaine turned the tip of the wand towards her, and she cut off with a squeak. "Seriously? Why do I get you to face? I thought I had done well by escaping the barbarian and the sea-witch, but no, I get the enemy boss with the death-laser instead!"
Another explosion shook the outside of the castle. Natsu's battle must be bringing him closer.
As calm as ever, Tremaine took another step forwards. Though the stone floor beneath them trembled, the wand was perfectly steady in her hand.
"M-maybe we could talk about this?" Lucy tried. "All go back to the real world together, perhaps?"
It was a poor attempt at distraction, and Lady Tremaine clearly did not miss the way Lucy's eyes had flicked to the abandoned pieces of Fairy Heart. "Take them, if you think you can." Tremaine's words were inviting, yet the twirl of the wand in her fingertips was a dare. "Now that they have activated the Magic Mirror for me, I no longer have need of them."
The villainess raised her weapon like a conductor's baton, ready to commence the waltz of death. "Come at me, then, Cinderella," she gloated. "Shall we see how quickly you can run without your glass slippers?"
Lucy clenched her fist. Behind her, Zeref had both arms wrapped around his precious book, no more weapons than she had.
In the distance, the bell in the castle's clocktower began to toll.
The end of the fairytale. The beginning of the final battle.
Suddenly, the wall behind Lady Tremaine exploded inwards. Something monstrous burst through it: a living storm of writhing scales and whirling claws, violent black clouds illuminated by green flashes, all bedecked in a halo of broken masonry.
Natsu and Maleficent crashed straight through the wall of the castle… but one measly wall was not enough for Fairy Tail's living wrecking-ball. Lucy heard rather than saw him slam both his fists onto Maleficent's plated chest, and a pulse of green fire erupted out, raking across the floor and ceiling.
Chaos had arrived.
The blast from Tremaine's wand went wide as the ceiling collapsed on her. Lucy seized Zeref's arm and hauled him backwards, out of the danger zone.
They huddled at the far end of the room as stone settled begrudgingly into its new disordered state. Plaster rained like twisted pixie dust upon the castle's throne room – complete with its brand new gaping hole at one side – as the distant bell continued to toll for its funeral.
With stars where the roof should be, a chasm in the floor still greedily swallowing the last morsels of stone, and the sound of screams as ball guests fled the castle grounds below, Lucy felt a sudden rush of nostalgia. She could have been home already.
"Natsu!" someone cried.
Lucy had made the mistake of relaxing her grip, and Zeref had immediately broken out of it, sprinting to the other side of the wrecked room like a man who… well, who still thought he was immortal. The floor groaned as he dashed past the pile of debris where Tremaine had last been seen, and approached the chasm in the floor. A steady stream of pulverized stone dust trickled over the edge like a waterfall.
He repeated, in a dreadful whisper, "Natsu…?"
"He'll be fine," Lucy sighed. "Man, I wish I was a Dragon Slayer, able to consume dragonfire and still fight like a badass in a world that shouldn't have any magic. Why does Prince Charming get to be cooler than Cinderella? She's the main character, and he doesn't even have a name!"
"At least we're alright, thanks to him," Zeref spoke up.
"Oh, yes, another one to mark off for the cute female protagonist bingo," Lucy scowled.
"…I'm sorry?"
"I've had almost all the clichés of my life in the last few scenes alone!" she burst out. "First, my big finale involved donning a pretty dress and dancing at a royal ball. Then I had to flirt with the villain, rather than fight, only to be kidnapped and thrown into a dungeon. Naturally, the only means of escape involved calling for help from my friends. Then we get to the final battle, against an opponent who is magically way out of my league, and the fight has barely even started before I get saved by Natsu! It's the story of my life! In fact, I think the only cliché we've not had yet is…"
She tailed off.
Other than the gentle scattering of dust, all was silent.
Lucy rounded on Zeref. "How many times did that bell just toll?"
"Uh…"
"Was it eleven?" she persisted. "Or was it twelve?"
"I wasn't counting! Why does it matter, anyway?"
"Because, if it's midnight…"
With that ominous warning, a pale light encircled her. Her beautiful blue ballgown began to unravel. Threads spun off and disintegrated into sparkles of magic, revealing the true form of the rags beneath. Rags which had travelled halfway across the kingdom with her, been brutally manhandled by a dragon, undertaken a daring escape from the Beast's Castle… really, it was surprising that there was anything left of them at all. One would be forgiven, at first glance, for thinking there wasn't.
"Yup, there we go," Lucy sighed. "It's not a story arc until the whole world has seen Lucy Heartfilia almost naked."
"…Huh." That seemed to be the only noise that the perplexed Black Mage was capable of making. No doubt he was wondering how he'd managed to lose any of the Spriggan Twelve to these buffoons.
With an effort, he unstuck his throat. "There are probably some bedrooms in this castle which have proper clothes in-"
"Screw it, I don't even care any more," Lucy huffed. "Not like it's anything new to anyone at this stage."
"It's quite new to me," Zeref pointed out, still baffled by how she was taking it in her stride.
"Then you clearly didn't do your research before attacking my guild. Get used to it; it's not going to be the last time once this war gets going again."
He didn't respond.
At first, she thought she'd actually broken him, but then remembered it wasn't the first time he'd acted like this when she brought up the war. She cursed inwardly for forgetting. Whatever the reason for his unwillingness to talk about it, she needed his help right now.
"Well, we can worry about that later. For now…"
Her gaze flicked to the Magic Mirror, which still hung on one of the few intact pieces of wall. She might have cursed the villains' luck in its survival, except that not a speck of dust marred its bronze frame, and she didn't think it was luck that had spared it. Light swirled alluringly within it.
Of more interest to her right now, however, was the artefacts lying beside it. That was the magic stolen from Fairy Tail – and the only weapon they had. She nodded towards them, and both her and Zeref hurried over. She reached for her trusty old Shield of Virtue-
Something burst from the shadows. The mirror's unnatural light simultaneously illuminated razor-sharp claws and darkened the fur of their wielder, a blur of deadly night, Lady Tremaine's cat Lucifer leaping for Lucy's throat.
Only Lucy's reflexes saved her. The cat's claws cut a deep gash in her raised forearm as she jerked backwards, blood splattering across the stone. The cat landed lightly, but so did she, reaching for a weapon and finding rubble beneath her fingertips. When it pounced again, with a snarl that sounded like a laugh, Lucy swung the chunk of stone with all her might.
It struck the familiar a solid blow, and Lucy was already following it up, moving with the speed of a warrior to pin the creature beneath her injured hand. With her other hand, she raised the chunk of stone above her head-
And paused.
Because… she couldn't do this! It was just a cat. Just a poor animal. It scrabbled at the hand pinning it down with animal fear, not human intelligence. The yellow hellfire had vanished from its eyes – had it ever really been there, or was it just a trick of the mirror's twisted light?
She knew, logically, that it served Lady Tremaine as a secondary antagonist in the story, but these weren't words on a page any more, weren't safe black-and-white moral concepts. The cat looked so helpless in its struggles. Could an animal even be evil, outside the anthropomorphic confines of narrative convention? And even if it was, was she really going to bash it to death with a rock?
It gazed up at her with terrified eyes – and no, of course she wasn't.
She lowered the chunk of stone to the ground as she rocked back on her heels. "Shoo," she told it half-heartedly, releasing her grip. The cat took one cautious, slinking step towards the shadows, and she let out the breath she had been holding.
Then the cat spun and pounced, laughing Lady Tremaine's wicked laugh: "Fool!" The familiar's claws extended, straight towards Lucy's eyes, and this time her reflexes weren't enough to save her from the shock – and the dismay – as blades flashed, the last things she would ever see.
Something caught the cat mid-flight. A hand around its tail. It was wrenched back into the arms of someone who did not hesitate like she did; someone whose other hand clutched the piece of broken glass slipper he must have pocketed in the dungeons. He moved no faster and no slower than he had when he'd used it to slice open his own palm: brutally efficient.
And then he turned and threw the body into the hole in the floor. The glass shard buried in its throat twinkled and was swallowed by the void.
Lucy was still trembling long after it had vanished. Her eyes stung where the familiar's claws had come close enough to shear her eyelashes. She wasn't a stranger to such experiences, but that had been entirely her own fault. She'd known. She just…
"Sorry," she murmured.
"Don't," Zeref said sharply. "It isn't something to apologize for."
"But…"
She looked at him, then, and in that moment, she didn't see the defeated ghost she had met in the ballroom, or the kindred spirit she had unintentionally bonded with in the dungeons. For the first time, she saw the man who ruled an entire continent, the man who did what needed to be done without remorse: calm and frightening and steadfast and strong in a way that couldn't have been further from her friends' passionate power.
"It isn't strength," he said, as if he had read her mind. "If anything, it's guilt. In an ideal world, I would never have to kill anything ever again, but… even a world where my curse doesn't exist is still a long way short of ideal." With his face turned towards the night sky, he added, softly, "My curse has taken the lives of too many who didn't deserve it. I won't insult them by refusing to kill something that does."
Then he shook his head. When he met her gaze again, there were so many earthly emotions in his eyes, but all he said was, "Is your arm alright?"
"It'll have to be," she responded, picking herself up off the floor and pushing the pain down in her place. "This is far from over."
"And you still worry that you don't come across like a proper guild mage," he remarked, with a half-smile.
She huffed at him – but only a little, because she hadn't forgotten her gratitude. That reassured her more than anything that they were going to be okay, as teammates, as allies. Nothing she saw him do undermined what she had come to learn about him, or changed what they had started to build, or made her doubt that what she had seen of him was real. Instead, every new facet of him she glimpsed only added to him in a fascinating way.
She reached for the Shield of Virtue. That went firmly onto her uninjured arm. She picked up the still-sheathed Sword of Truth as well, wondering if Zeref was going to demand a share of the magic. However, he had retrieved the Book of END and was cradling it to his chest with both arms again, and he didn't ask about any of her guild's weapons.
Lucy gave the Sword of Truth an experimental tug, but the blade remained lodged in the sheath. "Hmm. I don't think any of us have worked this one out yet. Zeref, I don't suppose you know how-"
"Lucy!" A distant shout pulled her from her thoughts. Thanks to the huge hole in the side of the castle, she could see two figures waving up at her from gardens which had otherwise been abandoned: Levy and Jellal. With the advent of midnight, Levy's golden dress had vanished, but unlike Lucy, she was back to wearing a perfectly respectable skirt and top. Turned out it was easy to look good when one hadn't been dragged through hell backwards by every fairytale cliché there was.
Levy added, "What's going on up there?"
"Oh, the usual: Natsu destroyed half the castle, and I've lost most of my clothes," Lucy shouted back.
There was a pause. "I meant, what's going on with the villains? We haven't found any yet!"
"Tremaine's got the magic wand, but she, Maleficent, and Natsu got buried when the wall collapsed! I've not seen Ursula or Shan Yu…"
"We have!" Laxus's yell entered the conversation. He was hurtling down a garden path, Erza at his side and a man wider than both of them combined in hot pursuit. The lanterns strung from the trees whipped and fluttered in their wake.
"It's Shan Yu," Levy realized. "Surely you can beat him in a swordfight, Erza!"
"I did," Erza grunted back. "I stabbed him through the heart. He didn't die."
"But that doesn't make any sense!" Levy stared at the allies sprinting towards her, as if the thought of running away was as illogical as the facts they were offering. "Shan Yu is just an ordinary man! He doesn't have any kind of magical protection!"
"Clearly, he isn't playing by the rules," Laxus returned. "He's unstoppable."
"Erza!" Lucy called. Once she had her friend's attention, she lobbed the sheathed sword down towards her. "If he's got magical powers, it'll take magic to defeat him."
With a nod, the warrior sheathed her own sword and snatched the Sword of Truth out of the air.
"But this isn't right," Levy complained, as the combatants hurtled closer. "There must be something giving him these powers-"
Before Lucy could respond, the sound of rubble shifting brought her attention swiftly back into what remained of the room. White light illuminated a heap of debris, marking out each lump of stone as if illuminated from within.
"Uh oh…" Lucy groaned.
The pile burst outwards. Lady Tremaine was standing entirely unharmed, her stolen wand outstretched towards Lucy and Zeref. "You're going to pay for what you've done," the villain vowed.
Bravely, Lucy raised her shield, the only weapon she had. "Do your worst, Wicked Stepmother."
A thin smile stretched like a cobweb across Lady Tremaine's face. "Oh, I shall."
A/N: I will admit, I got a bit carried away with the opening scene of this one, but it's also the only scene in the story from Jellal's point of view, and I didn't realize how much I'd missed writing with him! Plus, while both of his and Levy's separations earlier in the story were very specific to their circumstances, they are the closest thing there is in this story to two strangers falling for each other while on an adventure together. And, you know, there's nothing wrong with that more conventional kind of romance either. So they got a cute scene together.
Lucy's having less fun. But what's new? Thanks for reading! ~CS