FOURTEENTH - [ SHARED MEMORY / EVENT ]

[deathsought]

WHO: Zeref and YOU
WHAT: Zeref's twin star shares a memory from seven years ago, on Tenroujima. Zeref himself can be found near the bay.
WHERE: The Bay, Nova City
WHEN: March 31st
WARNINGS: Death, Fairy Tail spoilers.

"Impossible... we were defeated..." "I can't believe it!" Three men can be seen at the far end of a medical bay. One was a man with a large, silver pompadour and goggles dressed in a blue coat, while another was a large, gray-skinned man barely dressed in anything at all. The last man was an old, decrepit man covered head to toe in bandages; it was clear he was just on the losing side of a rather explosive battle, seated in a chair with medical supplies near his feet.

The floor vibrated rather roughly, and in the distance, the hum of an engine could be heard; wherever they were, it was clear they were flying on a large aerial vehicle of some kind, likely an airship. "Zeref was right before our eyes..." The man with the pompadour lamented. "The Great World of Magic right in front of our eyes..."

I've heard enough, Zeref's voice could be heard inside the head of whomever was unlucky enough to pick up his Twin Star. He slowly made his way out from behind the curtain. His footsteps rang out against the walls of the airship medical bay. "What!?" one voice called out. "Who's there!?" rang out another. The third voice, the voice of the man in the chair, gasped. "T-This is..." he stammered, as Zeref came into view.

"It's people like you that carved people like me into existence," Zeref began, his voice not that of the typical, melancholic man eternally trapped in a body of a someone in his late teens; it was a low, menacing growl. Rusty Rose and Kain's jaws dropped, immediately shaking with fear and breaking out into a cold sweat as the room's temperature seemed to drop almost ten degrees in a second. "It was wicked thoughts like yours that summoned Acnologia, heralding the end of this age," Zeref continued. Hades' only visible eye grew wide.

"No one can stop it now. The world will be finished, here." Zeref's red eyes glared at Hades, his fists tightening. Oh, Zeref recognized him, alright. Precht... I'm so disappointed in you, Zeref thought to himself, briefly flashing back to that cherished memory outside of Magnolia with Mavis, Precht, Yuriy, Warrod, and Zeira. "Zeref...!" Precht gasped, his eye wide with shock. "The one and only Zeref... right here, in front of my eyes..."

Zeref was unimpressed. He simply continued staring the old man down, several different thoughts racing through his head all at once, so quickly that it was hard to make any sort of coherent sense out of any of them. "Am I dreaming? Could this be real?" Suddenly, Precht grinned ear to ear, absolutely ecstatic. "The key! Bring out the key!" Precht suddenly commanded, looking from Kain to Rusty Rose. Both men were on one knee, still shaking; Kain was even crying.

"I... can't move..." they said in unison, paralyzed with fear. Zeref paid them no mind. "That won't be necessary," Zeref answered, rather deadpan. "I'm 'awake,' now." Precht's expression did a complete one-eighty, going from utter glee to bewilderment so quickly that Zeref wondered if it hurt. "This might sound strange, coming from me," he continued, "but just how many lives did you take in order to get that 'key?'"

Precht didn't seem to understand the question, stammering stupidly. "It's saddening," Zeref explained, slowly shaking his head. "That's nothing more than a false image. "One of the old wive's tales that the cult that blindly worships the Black Wizard Zeref imagined was 'the key to Zeref's resurrection.' You actually believed such an old story?" Precht was speechless. "I was never 'asleep.' The man standing in front of you is the Black Wizard, Zeref."

"Impossible!" Hades suddenly exclaimed. "I used my Eye to see--... You couldn't even defeat one of my own underlings!"

Zeref blinked, rather surprised by that revelation, but continued on regardless. "That should help you understand things more quickly, then," he stated flatly. "What you saw was my true power..." Zeref's teeth grit, his enlarged incisors grinding against his lower teeth. "... at that time."

The other three men in the room began shaking even more, as a swirling sphere of Death Magic began encircling Zeref, both as a demonstration of his point, as a rather unsubtle threat. "In the war 400 years ago, I saw countless humans die," Zeref elaborated. Several blurry memories of battles and dead bodies flashed through his mind, but nothing clear enough to get a real image. "However... on one particular day, I finally learned about the value of human life." Something panged in Zeref's mind; one particularly profound memory that nearly brought him to tears right then and there before he quickly suppressed it. "That's when it happened. The more my cursed body begins to value life, the more human souls I take. In order to stop this theft of souls, I need to completely forget about the weight of human life." Zeref's fists clenched. "I am pathetic."

"You're struggling with the weight of human life...?" Precht asked, his voice a jumbled mess of confusion and astonishment.

"Yes..." Zeref admitted. "That's why I couldn't use my magic the way I would have liked to. However..." The magic aroudn him flared up again. "If I forget about the weight of life, that all changes." Zeref's eyes narrowed, locked on Precht's trembling frame. "You are the ones who pulled the trigger," Zeref declared, his arms beginning to straighten. "Acnologia heralds the end of eras. It was summoned by your evil ambitions."

"Acnologia!? What are you talking about!?" Hades finally stood up, the color draining from what the visible portions of his face, nearly falling over from the strain on his injured body. Zeref, however, no longer seemed to be listening to him. "You must be punished," Zeref said, his arms outstretching; one in front of him, the other over his head.

"W-Wait... there are still things I want to ask you!" Precht pleaded, but it was clear at this point that his words were falling upon deaf ears. "You must first be punished for summoning Acnologia," Zeref continued, raising his index and middle finger on his top hand, and the index and ring finger of the bottom hand. Precht could no longer move, or even breathe; he was absolutely petrified with terror, knowing what was about to happen.

"Second... you must be punished for making me forget the weight of human life." All of the entropic energy of Death Magic in the room began forming above Hades' head, and below his feet. It was quickly building in intensity, threatening to explode at any moment. Rusty Rose and Kain could only watch in horror.

Mavis... Zeref thought to himself, as his wrists connected. Forgive me.

"Repent." What followed next could only be described as a massive, black explosion. For a brief moment, every ounce of light in the room vanished, replaced by a dreadful roaring of magical energy, followed by an explosion both above and below the airship as massive holes were punched through the ceiling and floor, revealing blue sky above and the ocean below. It was a wonder how the thing was still flying. Zeref smugly watched as the lifeless body of the man formerly known as Precht Gaebolg fell into the ocean below.

"M-M-Master Hades...!" Rusty Rose finally stammered, unable to form a coherent sentence. Kain was simply stammering the word 'Dead' over and over again. "Trash that doesn't even know that it's trash deserves to fall into the abyss," Zeref mused, watching as Hades' body sunk beneath the waves, dead before he ever hit the water.

Suddenly, however, a faint roar could be heard in the distance even above the sound of the engine of the airship. Zeref whipped around, suddenly filled with dread; yes, something even he feared. No... he thinks to himself. "It's here," he said aloud. "Acnologia!"

As the memory begins fading, Zeref's eyes lock onto a large, looming shadow off in the distance, making a beeline for an island with a large tree in its center. Natsu... Zeref thinks to himself. Don't die.
_____

As the memory fades, Zeref can still be found at the edge of the bay, staring off into the distance, as if in a daze. He's not paying any attention to anyone or anything nearby; someone will have to try rather hard to get him to snap out of it.

Comments

Let's do this!

[fairysoul]

Mavis approaches Zeref and watches the twin star appear. She knows what it means and she reaches out for him, without hesitation. Zeref's past... Maybe she'll get to grab missing pieces. Bits and pieces that will allow her to understand him better, help him even.

She's not afraid of anything bad she may find out either. Mavis has seen her share of cruel and unfair things in her life. She's cried and fought her way through them. She's never run away from them.

She closes her eyes as the memories unfold themselves behind her closed eyelids. At some point her eyes shoot open. 'Mavis... Forgive me.' He was thinking of her at that moment? Of what she'd think of what he was about to do?

She forces her eyes to close again and watches the rest of the memory. Until the memories end. She looks at the twin star fading in her palm and then looks at Zeref. She waits for a few second. Maybe she's waiting for him to notice him...

Then, on a whim, she runs to him and hugs him from behind. "It's okay," she whispers. "You're fine."

[deathsought]

Zeref flinches as he feels the arms wrap around him. His first inclination is to shove whoever did it away; people have died from doing less in his presence, let alone making physical contact. But as he hears her voice, he knows full well who it was, and why she was doing it. She must have seen that memory. Mavis had convinced him before that she was still dead, only this world had more or less given her a new physical form. He was wondering why he could feel her, but... surely Mavis wasn't the type to lie.

Unless... when she was sent back, she was given a new physical body? Now wasn't the time to consider it.

"... I'm sorry that it came to that," Zeref said quietly. Aside from her confronting him over his threat to annihilate all life in Earthland, this was the other conversation with her that he had been dreading. "But I'm not sorry for killing him."

He wasn't quite sure what prompted Hades' fall from grace. But whatever it was, he knew full well that he was playing with fire. If he remembered anything about Zeref - anything at all - it should have been that he would have absolutely no desire to take part in such a scheme. For one thing, if he truly did want to create a world where mages either murdered or enslaved all non-mages in the world, he'd have done it himself, a long time ago. For another... the only thing Zeref hated more than himself are people who want to be exactly like him. Not how he is now, but how they believed him to be. How he was.

"He deserved it."

[fairysoul]

"Mmm."

Maybe if she'd been there in person at the time things would have ended up differently. Maybe not. It was not really worth pondering this too much anyway. Neither of us had the ability to turn back the hands of time. Or more like they would never do it knowing the price it came with. Rogue had learned it the hard way.

"I'm just sorry I couldn't be there for you back then."

Despite all that happened between then, she was speaking the truth. It was one of her friends back then, and she'd never wanted for them to part. She knew that she might have to fight him someday, back in their world. But here, she felt they were given a chance to change things, to fix part of what had been broken in the past. And until someone could prove to her that it was useless, she'd keep trying. In memory of good old days, so to speak.

"Also I'm glad I got the opportunity to see things from your perspective."

[deathsought]

Zeref's eyes close, and his fists clench. Sure, she didn't remember the date auction, or inviting him (and Silver) into Fairy Tail's pool. Sure, she asked him to take her to his 'favorite place,' something that - knowing her - she likely knew already and for the reason of bringing back the memories of the first time they met. But the memories of seven years ago, when he could feel her presence, even as he fought Ultear, killed Zancrow, and then left to kill Hades knowing full well she could have and likely would have stopped him at any moment if she had known what it was he was going to do... but now here she was, only regretting that she couldn't have 'been there' for him.

"You were," he said quietly, placing one of his hands over hers. A sign of trust, or... maybe appreciation? "More than you realize."

He knew that if anyone was capable of stopping that... thing from destroying the Island and killing everyone on it - including Natsu - it was Mavis. Sure, he saw the island become a crater and sink beneath the waves, and he had been praying that it was one of Mavis' illusions meant to fool Acnologia while she erected a barrier capable of withstanding Acnologia's Dragon's Roar. But his faith in her proved well-placed. As it always did.

"The rest of Fairy Tail won't understand. What I can promise you however is that he wouldn't have given up if he had been allowed to live. Or worse... Tartaros would have considered his actions a violation of their alliance, and would have declared war on him. I think they made that clear enough when Franmalth claimed Precht's soul for himself."

[fairysoul]

You were. More than you realize. The answer surprise her. It makes her happy too for some reason. She doesn't dwell on it, she just smiles and hugs him tighter. "I'm happy, then."

What he says next is sad, yet accurate. "Yes, they probably wouldn't."

And it is fine that way. That's why she likes her guild so much. But Mavis however does understand because she knows from personal experience some people just can't be saved. Death is unavoidable sometimes, no matter how hard you try.

"They don't accept betrayal and failure. I guess it has something to with the person who created them."

[deathsought]

As she embraces him tighter still, Zeref doesn't tense up, for once. It actually feels... nice. He's allowing her to come this close to him, and even he didn't fully understand why. Was it because he was lead to believe he can't hurt her, here? Or did he actually want this, and for once, was allowing it?

It was true; some people were beyond saving. But hearing Mavis of all people tell him that would probably break his heart even more. He'll never quite get over the fact that she died. And that he might have had something to do with it.

"I'm glad you don't hold that against me," he confessed. He was worried that she would, all things considered. For all of the things Mavis had in common with the guild she created - from the fairy motifs to the fact that he's just as weird, if not weirder than any of the mages that were counted amongst its ranks today - she also differed from than in more ways than any of them would have ever known, not the least of which being Lumen Histoire, and the fact that, to this day, she hid Fairy Tail's true origins from the rest of its members.

"Thank you, Mavis."

[fairysoul]

"You thought I would?"

She laughed softly against his shoulder.

"You're very welcome, Zeref."

The embrace felt nice to her too. She could almost feel the warmth of it. And even if he was not returning the hug - which would have been difficult for him given their respective positions - he was fully accepting it. That was all she'd have asked for.

So she stayed like this for the longest time before finally letting go, almost reluctantly.

[deathsought]

"I am perfectly aware on Fairy Tail's views on killing," he said quietly, not the least of which because the Magic Council forbids killing in any circumstance they haven't explicitly sanctioned, and doing so would jeopardize Fairy Tail's status as a legal guild, even if it was the Guild Master of one of the three Balam Alliance Dark Guilds. "And he was also your friend, even if he made it abundantly clear that the Precht we both knew died long before I killed the man calling himself 'Hades.'"

As she released him, he found himself wishing she hadn't. He turned to face her, lowering his eyes to her face. She hadn't aged a day since they first met, just as he hadn't. Which means she also hadn't grown an inch.

"I told Makarov the same thing, before he disappeared. I don't know if anyone else in Fairy Tail knows, however. Least of all Erza."

[fairysoul]

"I think the Precht we both knew deserved to rest in peace. And you were the only one of his former friends who could and would do it for him at the time. So I guess it's how it had to go, whether we like it or not."

She missed Precht and wished she could have saved him. But it's useless to cry over the past. Zeref, however, was still alive. And she was not ready to let him have the same fate Precht had.

"It's not my place to tell them. But if you decide to tell any of them, I'll be happy to be there and maybe help them understand."

[deathsought]

Well, that's one way to look at it, he supposed. He was surprised that she was so willing to forgive him for killing Precht, but... that man wasn't Precht. Perhaps it was best not to dwell on it. That happened seven years ago. They both had more important things to worry about, now.

"No," he said quietly. "I told as much as I could to Wendy, and thankfully, she was willing to listen. Erza, however... I'm still unsure as to the extent of how those who claim to act in my name have harmed her, but I feel as if the mistrust she has towards me is well-founded."

If only he knew. He'd be even more upset to know that it was done by people claiming to want to resurrect him, because it was all for nothing: Even if the R-System was completed, you can't resurrect someone who isn't dead.

[fairysoul]

Mavis had cared about Precht way too much, had too much respect for the man to believe that he and Hades were the same person. They were not. And even if she would never consider killing someone an acceptable solution to solve a problem, she did believe in protecting innocents and good people. Killing Hades had, in the long run, spared many lives. A Guild Master and leader like Mavis could not ignore that.

"Wendy." Mavis smiled. "She's a very strong heart and soul. And she gets stronger every day." There was pride to Mavis voice. When he started talking about Erza, Mavis nodded. "Erza won't trust you overnight but she's not just a warrior, she's a very sensible and down to earth woman. If you're ever willing to explain, she'll listen." Needless to say his explanation would have to be very good, but still Mavis was convinced she'd at least accept to hear him out.

That was one of the many reasons why Mavis would never envy Zeref for being worshiped, especially by so many crazy people. If anything, she felt for him.

[deathsought]

He could tell that on some level, it did upset Mavis. She had chosen Precht as her successor for a reason; she could have just as easily picked Warrod or Yuriy instead, but no, she chose Precht. For him to go completely insane like that must have devastated her. And on some level, Zeref feels responsible; 'Hades' became utterly obsessed with Zeref's power and this 'One Magic,' and thought Zeref himself was the key to creating a world where mages massacred the non-magical population and enslaved anyone else still alive. Somehow, Zeref had inspired such grandiose delusions.

"I know," he answered in regards to Wendy. Wendy was a Sky Dragon Slayer. That means, she ate air to grow stronger. She's going to be ridiculously powerful someday when she's older. "When Lucifer attacked Genessia City, I saved her life, after she tried to save mine. Nobody should ever risk their life for someone like me." Something he's sure Mavis would disagree with. "She did listen, before. I explained the situation with Tartaros in our own world. They're doing what they think I want from them, I never ordered them to do anything."

Of course, Zeref neglected to say that they were correct in thinking that. Or at least, partially correct; he did want E.N.D. resurrected, he just didn't really care how they went about doing it.

[fairysoul]

Mavis had been very sad about it, yes. Disappointed too, on some level. Precht had saved Mavis' life back then, when they were fighting Blue Skull. She used to respect him and have so much faith in him. She did not blame Zeref for what happened to Precht though. They were all taught Zeref's magic, including Mavis. It was Precht's choice to become what he'd become.

She gave a curious look. "Lucifer? Who is that?"

Mavis tilted her head. "If it is not what you want from them, it's not too late to correct them. If you don't, then it's logical they keep on thinking they're right and they'll keep on trying until they're destroyed."

[deathsought]

"A demon who has here, previously. He has been quiet, lately. It is possible that he was sent back to his own world, as well." Ironically enough, he was one of the male judges during the fashion contest, just as Mavis was one of the female judges. He seemed to have a split personality.

Zeref sighed. He should have known Mavis wasn't just going to let that one, go. "Their actions could have lead to E.N.D.'s resurrection," he confessed. "The seal on his Book is too great to just summon back the same way I did so the first time. Though, if Face fails... I might have to find another way."

But even Zeref isn't one hundred percent sure how he's going to do that.

[fairysoul]

Mavis listened and nodded. "Maybe he's learnt his lesson. ...This place is so full of incredible things! And people!"

She sat down on a low wall. She had to prop herself up to do so and once she was settled, her legs were resting against the stone and her feet did not reach the ground anymore.

"And then, I might have to stop you."

She said that matter-of-factly, with no passion whatsoever. It's just the way it is. They both know it.

"It's a good thing it doesn't really matter here. That gives us time to see each other under happier circumstances, right?"

[deathsought]

"I wouldn't be so sure about that. It is my experience that demons are aggressive and hateful by nature. You're no more likely to change that side of them than you would be convincing Fairy Tail to learn Death Magic." He took a seat on a rock near the bay. A flying car went overhead, the din of Nova City afternoon traffic beginning to pick up. Nearby, a robot was taking samples of the bay's water, analyzing it in a small, cylindrical capsule.

As Mavis sits herself down, his eyes close. "I know," he said quietly. It's clear that she did indeed remember their conversation in the woods surrounding Magnolia. "I can't promise E.N.D. will be satisfied with merely killing me, the purpose for which he was created. With luck, his next target would be Acnologia. Otherwise..."

He'll be the worst thing Zeref has unleashed on Earth-Land since Acnologia.

He turned to face her, eyes widening briefly at her words. It was true: Things were different here, and he knew it. "Mavis..." he said quietly. "Yes... yes, that is true. We have time, now."