Chapter Text
Love is not a sin.
A century later, when she told their story to her family, such was the condolence she received in return.
They believed she had fallen in love without knowing what he was. How could she possibly have? That man was the incarnation of evil itself. It had been a moment of fallibility – of desperation. Two souls that drawn upon each other for the only warmth they could find.
Of course they would forgive her for it.
Of course they did.
But she never meant to fling open the sole window of light into his life, and shatter it just as he was reaching for the sun. And for that, she knew that he would walk the remaining years away across the fractured glass of her promise, and bleed for it – as quick and certain as her bare soles did against the unforgiving earth.
Love might not be a sin.
Yet, throughout all of time, they had been punished for it harsher than any other crime of this world.
She shoved him back.
“No,” she said, shaking. Every other word fled from her mind – “No!”
There was no reluctance or gratitude to it. In that instant, she was so furious that she could barely speak.
Zeref watched her without speaking, his expression stunned, then regretful. He watched, without questioning her outburst, without any attempt at explanation or protest.
The look in his eyes –
She never wanted to see that look in his eyes again.
“I wished,” she whispered, because he would not ask, the illusion of a perfect end crumbling with every word – “I wished my friends would not have to keep guessing…you promised me they will not.”
And she had not even suspected.
She almost had not suspected. She would have died, believing it to be a shared mercy for them till her final breath.
“Why?” It came out in a near whimper, nothing like the scream building within her. “Why would you do this?”
The sun was sinking down to a bare sliver of light, catching in the side of his face.
“Mavis,” he said, quietly, averting the question. “Let me. We are running out of time –”
“I don’t care!”
“Ankhseram,” he said over her, and the sudden appearance of that name stunned her, for a second. “He doesn’t need you. You should never have been cursed. If I hadn’t taught –”
“I. Don’t. Care,” she bit out with a snarl, her fury returning with a vengeance.
It made no sense at all. If it was what he believed, he should have seen an enemy in Ankhseram, in those gods that had seen fit to toy with their fates, like she had. But – so typical of his way of thinking – he only seemed to have seen an enemy in himself.
It only occurred to her, then, that she had wept and broken down and steeled herself for the worst – and only then had he been willing to tell her there was another solution.
No. Not a solution. Not even close.
But he had been willing to offer it to her, in the end.
How long had he known, and struggled, before that?
A cold, washed-out wave of understanding doused over her.
“…Was that what she told you?”
“No,” he said, automatically.
“What did she tell you?”
She leaned forward without warning, grasping his shoulders.
Zeref flinched at the touch. His lips parted as he made to answer, but he couldn’t. Whatever lie he meant to give, whatever he wanted so desperately to tell her, he could not bring himself to do so – even as he shook with the effort for it. A sheen of tears flooded into his eyes.
“…Please.”
She thought it was an attempt at denial, at first.
“This is the only chance you have.” His breath hitched. “It’s your only chance. So please…”
It was too dark to make out his expression, even at this distance. She would never know how he found the will for it.
“No,” Mavis repeated, emphatic. Tears stung her eyes. “No, you can’t. Now I know – you can’t, I won’t let you –”
The last of the sun was fast disappearing – a bare pinprick of light, dying out swifter than embers left to the rain. A strangled sound made its way out of him. He was struggling in her grip, as if locked in war against his own body.
“I wouldn’t even try to harm myself before you,” she said. “What makes you think I can do this to you now?”
There was a long beat of stillness, frozen in inaction, when she thought she had gotten through to him – before it shattered.
“I’m sorry,” Zeref gasped out. There was a frightful desperation to the sound, like he was forcing it through waterlogged lungs as he drowned. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry – I’m sorry–”
They had run out of time.
She could not bring herself to regret it.
He was falling to pieces before her, and not even in the deepest, darkest recesses of her mind, sealed away with all its clawing guilt and malevolence and unending pain, could she find it in herself to regret missing her only chance to die.
“Don’t,” Mavis choked out. “I don’t want to die anymore. Not like this.”
“You didn’t know.”
The sound slipped out of him, impossibly small, almost drowned out entirely in the howling wind. She had to strain to catch any of it.
“When I found out you were cursed, I was – you never knew, you were crying – you were crying and I was pleased that I wasn’t alone anymore –”
It was the truth. She could see that, even as he confessed it. She had no way of knowing what had passed through his mind, back then.
And even if she had – she could not possibly have resented him for it.
But she knew, now, that he would.
She cradled her head in her arms.
“I forgive you,” she whispered. “I forgive you.”
He went limp in her hold like a marionette with its strings cut.
Mavis sat for what felt to be an immeasurably long time. There was a strange contentment burying itself into her chest, settling its way down to the tip of her bare toes. Stealing away her will, or perhaps ability to move as it sank.
The wind died down. When the familiar void descended upon them again, fear did not manage to find her as it once did.
Light pulsed to life around them, then; one after another, still and clustered like fallen constellation. The circle came into view slowly, as they washed away the inky blackness – the trespassed boundary between a forgotten, abandoned world, and one that seemed no less oppressing than what they had escaped.
Dazed, she blinked and turned away, but they were closed in on all sides. There was a sinister hue to that prison of light. Despite knowing it was through a skewed lens that she saw it, now, she found it hard to believe she could ever have found hope to the sight, only earlier in this day.
Zeref shifted against her, a minute movement.
“Just rest,” she said.
He shook his head very slightly, struggling to keep his eyes open.
“It’s all right,” she murmured. She ran a soothing hand through his hair, pressing down on the nape of his neck. “Just rest.”
She could tell that he was fighting a losing battle. His body was shutting down of its own accord. If he had been holding out on his fatigue by sheer will, for however long he had, he just exhausted the last of it.
She set him down gently to a more comfortable position. The moon was setting low in the sky, the night fading visibly into softer tints. The ground was still damp to the touch; tiny white mushrooms dotted the dead grass around them, barely visible on the cusp of dawn. All of them had withered.
Less than a full day had passed since the last time they saw the fairy ring. They had made the sensible decision – the best decision they could, with what they were given.
They had learnt everything they possibly could, given this situation. And still she wished, fiercely, almost venomously, that they had never gone on their quest.
“Zeira?” Mavis muttered, keeping her voice low. “You are still here, right?”
There was no response, or any sign that might be considered equivalent to such; merely the soughing of wind through the forest of towering glyphs around them, cold and lamenting.
“Thank you.” Keeping her tone level. “For being there, even when I did not know. For trying to save me.
“You gave me a way out when I wanted nothing more than dying. Not because there is nothing I desire out of life – far from it – but because at the time, it had seemed like the only way to stop the pain.
“But I do not want it at the cost of his. I never wanted that.”
Not now, certainly. But in a decade – a century –?
An eternity.
She swallowed.
It wasn’t fair. They were friends – the first and closest. It shouldn’t have to feel like she was going into war.
None of this was fair.
“I trusted you with my fate…and with his. It was my mistake. I grew too used to fighting against the same enemy with everyone I love. I didn’t realize…it never occurred to me that I would have to protect them from each other, one day.”
But she shouldn’t have to choose.
“I won’t make that mistake again.”
Words carried weights of their own. They could maim, or heal – or kill, in every way that mattered, if needed. Was that not what she had learnt after the abandonment of her first friend, as she wept and wished in vain that she could simply forget the truth of it again, deluded as it would make her?
Had Zeira hesitated at all, before she struck the killing blow?
She didn’t want to know.
Perhaps she never would.
Weariness descended over her like a crashing tide. She couldn’t find it in herself to be angry, even now. Maybe it made her a hypocrite, pretending at forgiveness she didn’t feel – or it was merely a delay of the inevitable, and she would weep over it, after all, at a later time.
If she could find the grief for it. And then – only if she could be certain that he would not see her cry, to count on him being as imperceptive as she was.
“Don’t ever,” she said, “use me to hurt him like this again.”
It sounded closer to a plea than a command.
The air shifted before her, tremulous, almost like a physical sigh.
She heard it, then – there was a soft, rustling sound, loud against the silence.
Mavis turned back.
Zeref was looking at her, his face blank. As if he had been awake all along.
“Did you…” She hoped he hadn’t. That one-sided conversation wasn’t anything she needed to hide from him, but it wasn’t anything he needed to be reminded of, either.
“You promised,” he said, not in answer.
“I…Zeref?” She muttered, hesitantly.
He did not move or reach for her. Just stared back at her, expression still unnervingly blank.
“You promised me.” He repeated, with more fervency. “You promised me you would stay.”
“…I know,” she said, helplessly. “I promised –”
“You promised me.” He didn’t sound like he even believed she was there. “Please, you promised – you promised –”
Mavis wrung her arm around the back of his neck to pull him closer, until she could feel the heat of his breath, beating against her neck. Her pulse sounded unbearably loud to herself, rocking through her entire body.
“I am here,” she said between suppressed sobs, barely able to hear herself past the pang in her chest, not knowing how to make him believe. Sharp pincers of fear clenched at her, so tight in that instant she was almost convinced of a physical wound to match the sensation.
She had been struck by the sum of all the pain in her life, and somehow, the silent burn of his tears on her skin hurt worse, now.
The sun was climbing. A bare sliver of light above the horizon, throwing warmth that chased the last lingering chill of the night away.
“You are real?”
He sounded quiet, even then – even now. She couldn’t understand what it took to master that kind of despair. It felt inhumane.
“I am,” she said. “I swear.”
He fell silent again. His breaths sounded easier than they did, when he was looking at her, some perception of reality having returned.
“I am sorry.” She whispered. “Back then, if only…if only I had –”
“Don’t be,” Zeref said after a brief moment, his voice low with an undertone of dread. “What you feel is…it’s yours alone. I would never ask –”
“You knew I didn’t. How could you possibly not hate me?”
“You can’t fault yourself for not loving enough. And… it wouldn’t have worked on my end. I wanted you to live only because I knew I would. Is that not more selfish than wanting to be together in death?”
She felt like she was being stabbed.
“No,” she said quietly. “That’s the opposite of selfish.”
She paused to take in his expression. The surprise in it saddened her in a way she didn’t know she could still be.
“I doubted you, when it counted most,” she muttered.
Zeref leaned back slightly, trying to grasp what she had confessed.
“You should,” he said. “After what you’ve seen…”
“It’s not what I meant,” she said. “I…”
She couldn’t bring herself to say it again. Without the veil of impending death, her private misgivings felt unbearably small, compared to the weight of those brutal deaths in the circle they stood, deserving or otherwise – not to mention unfounded, in light of the aftermath.
“Can…can I kiss you?” She asked instead.
He started.
“Your eyes,” she whispered. “Just your eyes.”
Zeref’s face slackened with surprise, before he nodded. His eyes slid closed.
She pressed her fingers against the back of his head. Every feature in his face was open and trusting.
Left. Then right. Then left again. Right, again.
“You have kind eyes,” she murmured.
His eyes were shaking. Or perhaps he was.
“You still…think so?” His voice was shaking, as well.
Left. Then the right. Then the left, again.
“You have kind eyes,” she said, firmer.
She could feel the sting of salt on her cracked lips.
“I am,” he muttered, “I am grateful, every day, to have met you. But I never wanted…”
The crushing weight of a black future, ceaseless in its rejection, lay out ahead in its entirety once more – like an abyss inverted over them, stifling every breath she drew.
The world was not kind. And for them, it would never be.
“If we had never met each other,” she said. “Then my friends…Fairy Tail would never have existed. Maybe you weren’t wrong, to think I’d be happier. But that would have been the life of someone different.”
It was not kind.
But it was what they had.
“You don’t have to plead for my love, Zeref,” she said, soft and unhesitant. “You’ve never had to. And I am sorry, for giving you cause to believe otherwise.”
Never, she promised herself. Never again.
“I wish I could be the person you thought I was,” he muttered, looking like he was fighting to keep from opening his eyes, to catch some hint of her response. “I’m not good the way you are, Mavis. You…you care, so deeply, for even those least worthy of it…”
“No,” she said over him. “Even after what you have lived through, after all that you’ve lost, after how long you’ve been alone – and you still love, so unreservedly. You love, even when you’ve been punished for it all your life. You’ve given me courage, just by being here.”
“Mavis…”
“You are tired,” she murmured. “And in pain, and not entirely sane anymore. But you’ve been fighting for so long. You are still fighting, even now. Don’t discount that.”
She brought their foreheads together. His eyes flew open in surprise.
“This curse, it does not just kill,” she said, leaning away. “It demolishes goodwill in a person. It hollows them away until there is nothing left. Vessel – a vessel meant to be emptied, meant to house another soul…that was its intention, wasn’t it? I remember what Chronos said. Life or death, good or evil, faith or heresy. None of them could stand against time.
“But he did not mention it. Had they understood, Chronos wouldn’t be trapped by someone desperate to save her people for centuries. And perhaps, then…”
Perhaps, if he understood why kindness could break a person where the worst of cruelty failed, Ankhseram would never have allowed her to live.
“The One Magic,” Zeref said in understanding. “The origin of all. It can be a powerful motivator for good, but it can also drive the despairing and misguided into darkness.”
Mavis nodded.
In this place, courage had deserted her, once, when she was complacent to find solace from the knowledge of being loved alone.
But she realized, now, that it wasn’t enough.
“Will you tell me,” she asked, inhaling, “about you? Just – tell me your side of the story. Tell me why the world believes you a monster, and why you came to believe it of yourself.”
Zeref hesitated, before setting his jaw in determination.
He reached for the pendant at his neck. There was such care to the motion as he lifted it that it seemed almost as if he had carved out his heart along.
She watched with baited breath. He took her hand and pressed the pendant into it.
Mavis closed it in her palms. The lingering warmth on the metal felt almost scalding on her skin.
“I have a younger brother,” he said to her.
If he could know what the expression he held now looked like, to the eyes of another, she thought – he would never have the audacity to claim himself unworthy of love again.