A/N: So I wasn't planning on uploading this story until I was a bit further through the edit, but like many people at the moment, I have suddenly found myself with more time on my hands than expected, so here we are. It's going to be a (very) long fic, so I've put a bit more information about it at the end of the first chapter. It's an alternate version of the Avatar and Alvarez arcs, and so the story begins on 7 July X792, following a slightly different version of Lucy and Natsu's reunion after the one-year timeskip. I hope you enjoy it! ~CS

The Scars That Make You Whole

By CrimsonStarbird

Prologue

-The Light in the Wasteland-

It was odd, Lucy reflected, how she'd never actually been arrested before.

Certainly, during her time as a member of Fairy Tail's strongest team, they'd done enough criminal damage to warrant arrest. They'd just always managed to get away with it – usually by running very quickly in the opposite direction. Formal complaints against mage guilds were processed by the Magic Council before slowly filtering down to the guilds, and by the time Master Makarov had finished burning any penalty notices he didn't agree with, destruction which would have led to criminal prosecution in any other profession was passed on to the mages themselves as nothing more than a fine. Whatever the Council's official stance on Fairy Tail may have been, there was something to be said for being part of the guild that had wiped out the entire Balam Alliance.

It wasn't as though she was a stranger to the inside of a prison cell, of course. Jose of Phantom Lord's ill-fated attempt to kidnap her for her father's fortune had only been the start. There weren't many people who could claim to have been imprisoned in the palace of a parallel world, let alone have spent a night in the Capital of Death beneath Mercurius and lived to tell the tale.

But there was a world of difference between being thrown into the palace dungeons as a result of a plan to literally change history, and being arrested for disorderly conduct in a restaurant.

Somewhere, in the middle of saving the world from dark mages, it seemed that she had forgotten the simple cause-and-effect of the criminal justice system: if you start an argument in a restaurant, flip a table, and refuse to leave at the manager's request because you still have more to say… well, you can expect to spend the rest of the night reflecting upon those actions in a police holding cell.

At least Central Crocus Police Station was a step up from Mercurius's dungeons. From the lack of human skulls alone, she had more faith in the city's police force than the King's private executioners. Faded blue-grey tiles were far safer than rough-hewn stone, and if the surprisingly clean corners were any indication, it hadn't been that long since some conscientious intern had swept through with a mop and bucket. There was little enough to do here, but she had a good view of the corridor beyond the cell bars, and the near-constant parade of post-Games drunks and exasperated officers was proving to be surprisingly good viewing.

Admittedly, her current predicament may have lacked the drama that had landed her and Yukino in the palace dungeons a year ago to the day, but that was probably for the best.

And yet, as Lucy crossed her hands behind her head, forming a makeshift pillow for the uncomfortable pallet, she knew it was neither the interior design nor the reasons for her arrest that set today's stint in jail apart.

Last time, she had been certain that a group of heroes – and one hero in particular – was rushing to her rescue.

Not this time.

And maybe never again, she thought, and it was a kiss of oxygen to the guttering candle-flame of anger in her breast.

Solitude had helped to cool her temper, but there had been no alcohol to blame for her actions, and time alone could not dispel a purely rational madness. She did not regret what she'd said. After an hour in the holding cell, with the novelty of being properly arrested starting to wear thin, she was perhaps starting to regret when and where and how she'd said it, but not what she'd said.

Not yet.

Not even when she heard the footsteps approaching. At first, she assumed the guards were bringing in yet another Grand Magic Games fan who had overindulged at the after-party, but her ears pricked up at the sound of a familiar exclamation: "Coooooool!"

Of course, that shout didn't rule out the drunk-and-disorderly option entirely. Her boss was the only adult she'd met who was giddier sober than she'd ever been while drunk.

"Cool, cool, cool! Are these real magic-suppressing handcuffs? Is it true that they can even restrain a Wizard Saint? So cool!"

"Sir," came the barely restrained growl of the same officer who had shown Lucy to her temporary quarters, "if one word about our police station appears in print tomorrow morning, I will be sure to let everyone know just which esteemed publication employs our current arrestee."

"Right you are, Officer!"

Wincing, Lucy swung her legs off the pallet and sat up in time to see the two speakers pass in front of the cell bars. The first was a hard-eyed, silver-haired veteran of the force, clearly unimpressed that his seniority had been unable to get him out of the post-Games shift. The second, hastily stowing a notebook in the only pocket of his jacket not already bulging with one, was his complete opposite: younger than his reputation in certain circles suggested, dressed as always in bright colours, and more hyperactive while walking through a police station than a child in a gingerbread palace.

Jason grinned at her through the bars. "Hey, Lucy!"

She managed a sheepish smile in response. "Hi, Jason."

"How are you doing?"

"I've been to better afterparties."

He laughed at that – he laughed at most things – and stood aside as the officer unlocked the cell door.

"The manager of the Buon Gusto isn't pressing charges, so you're free to go," the officer explained, although it was clear from his continued glare that he'd much rather be bringing a criminal conviction than a free pass. She felt another wave of relief that the guards on this side of Mercurius's walls were bound by the law. "Here are your personal effects."

He handed over a white satchel, which she opened to confirm the presence of her purse and her own notebook before slinging it onto her shoulder. Her celestial keys went straight to her belt, though it was more because she hated being separated from her Spirits than any belief that she would need them to protect her. Her Fleuve d'étoiles was still at home. She'd not worn that at her hip for nearly ten months, now.

That done, she took her leave before her jailer could change his mind. While still an improvement over magical executioners, she had no desire to be here when the drunken chatter of neighbouring cells turned to hungover retching. Jason seemed to be of the same mind. Neither of them said a word – not even to point out anything cool – until the police station was far behind them.

"I can't believe the restaurant isn't pressing charges," she reflected, as her boss led the way through the never-dark city streets. "After the fuss the manager raised…"

"No such thing as bad publicity," Jason chirped.

Her boss had an unexpectedly good poker face, but when a journalist of his calibre fell back on cliché, Lucy knew something was up. "Jason, what did you do?"

"…I might have agreed to give them a shout-out in that Wizard's Guide To The Blooming Capital feature we're running next week. Seriously, Lucy, it's no big deal!" he added, upon seeing her expression. "Really, it isn't. We were going to run a section on restaurants popular with visiting mages anyway, and that one was clearly popular with you and Natsu!"

It might not have been a big deal as far as their paper was concerned, but as he tried to reassure her that compromising his journalistic integrity in return for her freedom was a small price to pay, Lucy found that she really did regret the time and place she'd chosen for her outburst.

Both of them broke the silence at once.

"Jason, I'm so sorry-"

"Lucy, that was so cool!"

Lucy stopped in her tracks. "Huh?"

"It was so cool! Two Fairy Tail mages back together for the first time in almost a year, and barely an hour into the reunion, one's melted Domus Flau and the other has trashed a restaurant!"

"I flipped one table!"

"It's perfect! Fairy Tail mages destroying things again; it's like everything's back to how it used to be!"

"Things will never go back to how they were!"

The words came out so sudden and angry that it was Jason's turn to stop in the middle of the street – along with more than a few nosy passers-by. "Lucy…"

"Sorry," she muttered. "I didn't- sorry."

Jason placed his hand upon her arm and gently led her away from the main road. Following the finale of the Grand Magic Games, there was no such thing as a quiet street in Crocus, but there was a little privacy to be found in the city's central park, where the lack of alcohol-selling venues had dissuaded all but the most prepared of tourists. Out here, the raucous celebrations were reduced to a background murmur, peppered by overeager fireworks.

Jason lowered his voice to the solemn tone he would never ever use around an interviewee. "Lucy, what happened?"

"I don't want to talk about it."

"I guessed, but every reporter in Crocus will have heard the rumours from the restaurant by now. While I wouldn't dream of printing anything personal to you, even as the conclusion to Natsu Dragneel's dramatic reappearance at the Games, you know that the Weekly Sorcerer isn't the only publication that'll be interested in rumours of Fairy Tail after nearly a year of silence. It might not be a bad idea for you to get the truth out there, before speculation begins."

Lucy had been doing this for long enough to understand what it meant that Jason was willing to pass up a story for her, but that didn't make her any less hurt, any less angry. "I don't want to talk about it," she repeated. "Especially not to the media. It's a private matter. The public can believe what they want about it; it has nothing to do with them."

"I understand."

He'd never have said that to an interviewee, either. Only to one of his own.

Silence resumed, and they walked on. They had left the park and the rest of the revellers behind. This was the business district, the liveliest part of the city at nine in the morning and five in the evening, and utterly empty outside those hours; the only part of Crocus immune to the near-hysteria that the Games brought each year. All the streets were still, blanketed by the muted orange of streetlamps, and all the windows they passed were dark – except for one. With one hour until the print deadline on the most exciting day of the year so far, the head office of the Weekly Sorcerer ran with a fury and a drive that put the finalists of the Grand Magic Games to shame.

When she realized that was their destination, Lucy's fears all came out in a rush.

"Jason, I'm sorry, I don't think I can do the write-up of the final match tonight. With everything that's happened, I just… I'm not up to it right now. I know you were depending on me – I was so happy when you chose me to be your assistant editor for the Games this year – but I just… I can't focus on anything. I'm so sorry."

"Lucy, it's fine."

"I know I'm leaving you with so much to do before the print deadline, especially after all the time you lost bailing me out of prison… I'll give you all the notes I made during the Games…"

"Lucy," he interrupted her, and this time, the firm tone of a boss to his employee managed to cut through her doubts. "Don't worry about it. Believe it or not, I did manage to run the Weekly Sorcerer successfully before I hired you. We've met print deadlines tighter than an elephant in my mother's bikini."

A reluctant smile touched her lips. "Yeah, I know."

"Besides, with your insights into Scarmiglione's unexpected victory, we're going to have the best analysis of the Games for sure this year!"

"Do your thing, boss." Lucy retrieved her notebook from her satchel, ripped out the first few pages, each covered in miniscule writing, and pressed them into Jason's waiting hands. And then, softly, she added, "I really appreciate this. Coming to get me from jail, too."

"No worries. Take as much time as you need, Lucy – I mean it. I know that Fairy Tail suddenly coming back into your life like that must have been a big shock. Everyone who's ever met you knows how much that guild means to you."

His gaze dropped pointedly to the back of her hand, and she felt a sudden urge to cover the guild mark displayed there. "Yeah… something like that."

"Go and get some rest, Lucy. I'll see you back at work when you're ready for it."

Returning to work was incomprehensible to her right now, and she wasn't sure that rest – in other words, more thinking – was what she needed either, but she smiled and nodded anyway. She had taken several steps away from the Weekly Sorcerer's head office before Jason called her back.

"Off the record," he said, invoking the most solemn promise a journalist could make, "what did Natsu do to make you of all people lose it in the middle of a restaurant?"

Exhaling slowly, Lucy glanced up at the sky. There blazed the fireworks which, a year ago to the day, had proclaimed her own guild's victory in the Grand Magic Games; sparks of red and green and purple which forged their own path through the heavens. She had wanted that day to last forever, and her beloved guild longer still.

Ten months on, and Fairy Tail was nothing more than a mark upon her hand. That indomitable spirit, those promises of belonging, had, in the end, proven every bit as fleeting as the fireworks burning themselves out in the endless dark.

"Things will never go back to how they were," she murmured.

That, she would realize later, was the moment she first began to regret what she'd said.

The door to her house was unlocked.

A year ago, Lucy would have thought nothing of it – but then, a year ago, she'd have been living in Magnolia, and a week in which she'd received no uninvited visits from her teammates would have been a cause for concern. But this was Crocus, and none of her former teammates had been here in ten months… except for one.

One who had arrived from nowhere that very day.

One who had always been the worst offender when it came to making himself at home in someone else's house, regardless of whether or not he had been invited.

One with whom, just a few hours ago, she had lost her temper in a very public place, and although she had since come to doubt whether that had been the right thing to do, the words she had spoken remained true.

What would she do if he'd come back to apologize?

Throw him out, spat that little angry flame, but after the holding cell's solitude and Jason's kindness, it no longer burned so brightly. Maybe they could talk things over. Maybe she'd start screaming at him again, or maybe she'd cry, but if he'd been mature enough to come back and apologize, then she'd do her best to hear him out.

It did not occur to her, as she pushed open the unlocked door and stepped into the hallway, that it might have been an intruder.

She flicked the light on as she entered and glanced around. The single armchair was empty; the cushions on the settee lay undisturbed. There was no one sat at her dining room table, though such formalities were usually beyond him anyway, and the lack of any Dragon Slayers or talking cats rummaging through her fridge was far more telling. The kitchen and the lounge were safe. That only left…

A memory flashed through her mind of the time she had climbed into her bed to find Natsu already asleep there – a incident she had raged about at the time and laughed about afterwards, and not had cause to remember until now. It was with equal parts exasperation and fondness that she turned towards her bedroom. Her lips had still not decided whether to smile or to scowl when she saw him.

The door from the lounge to the bedroom was open, and he was stood in the doorway, staring at the far wall of her bedroom as if it contained a priceless old master rather than an amateur detective's collage of maps and newspaper cuttings.

It was not Natsu.

In that moment, her dilemma became not merely moot, but trivial. She wouldn't have to decide whether or not to forgive Natsu. She wasn't going to live long enough to see him again.

She knew this intruder at once. She had never met him before, but she'd heard the stories from those who had – and remembered them even in the storytellers' absence, because Fairy Tail might be gone but its enemies were not.

If not for that, she might, at first glance, not have thought him dangerous at all. He was smaller than her – not merely shorter, but smaller; almost fragile, by the standards of practising mages. He seemed younger than her, too. Young enough to be harmless. It was just another lie. Beneath midnight-black hair, robes of light and shadow fashioned in a way that had not been popular for four centuries, and only for philosophers even then, gave a more reliable impression of his age. She could sense no magic from him, no matter how hard she tried – no tangible aura or great presence of power – and its absence did absolutely nothing to make her feel any safer.

Zeref had his back to her, but he somehow knew the moment she had spotted him. He waved his hand towards the wall like a collector at an exhibition. "That's quite the display you've got here."

Lucy's hand dropped to her belt. She had a gunslinger's speed, and the advantage of not needing to draw her weapons, only to touch them. "SAGITTARIUS!" she screamed, and there was an arrow buried in Zeref's shoulder before he had even finished turning round.

It was almost lazily that he reached over and pulled it free. There wasn't a single drop of blood upon his skin, let alone an arrowhead-sized wound. He crushed the arrow in his hand. Dust and starlight fell at his feet.

Lucy wondered if she had taken her last breath. Sagittarius stepped in front of her protectively, his bow raised for another shot, though they both knew it would be no more effective than the first. She had fought dragons, faced down Acnologia, stood with the greatest of the legal guilds and helped to crush the wickedest of the dark ones, and this was how she was to die – ambushed in her own home by a man who had no need of stealth.

Mildly, Zeref remarked, "Is this how you greet all your guests?"

Despite her proximity to death, or perhaps because of it, she looked him straight in the eye and growled, "Only the uninvited ones."

To her amazement, he chuckled. It was smug and it was confident, but it was incomprehensibly far from the response she had been expecting. "I suppose it was rather rude of me to come in," he conceded. "I simply saw little point in waiting out in the street when the door was unlocked."

"It was unlocked?" Lucy asked, before she could stop herself.

"It was," he answered, in that same light, curious tone. "I wondered if you were expecting someone."

"I…"

It seemed like several lifetimes ago that she had left her house: one of guilt over letting her boss down; one of anger and incarceration; one of a reunion hopeful before it had turned sour; and one still earlier than that, when she'd left her flat as a journalist trying to find some shred of motivation with which to cover the final day of the Games, an anniversary which had taken that now-familiar heartbreak and branded it afresh upon her soul…

Perhaps some part of her had wondered if the worst day of all would be the day on which things changed. Perhaps she had left the door unlocked in the hope that someone from her guild would wander back into her life.

Natsu.

She didn't want to say it – didn't even want to think it, after how well that reunion had gone – but just because reality had taken a very different path to the promise of memory and dream, it would be sheer cowardice to pretend she'd never once wished for it these past ten months.

Aware that being quiet for too long was a sign of weakness, she said, "Perhaps I was expecting someone. But not you."

"Naturally not," Zeref smirked.

The stare-down continued. Of the three, Zeref was the only one who looked relaxed; an observer would have been forgiven for thinking Lucy had broken into his home. Her hand had not moved from the keys at her belt. Sagittarius still had his bow drawn, his arrow pointed towards the intruder's heart, for all the good it would do against a man who could not die.

Against a man who could have killed her before she'd even realized he was there, if he'd so desired.

Against a man who, for some godforsaken reason, was still stood patiently in the doorway to her bedroom, as if waiting for her to speak.

"What do you want, Zeref?" she snapped. If he was here to murder her for the guild mark she had been unable to bring herself to erase from her hand, she wished he'd just get on with it.

Instead of attacking, however, he simply nodded towards Sagittarius. "Send him away."

Some of the instinct screaming its opposition to that idea must have shown on her face, because he added, with raised eyebrows, "If I were here to fight, you'd know about it. Except you wouldn't, because you'd already be dead."

She glowered at him and did not move. Once a mage, always a mage; she would go down fighting.

"I could force him to leave myself, of course," Zeref frowned, as if he were commenting on her choice of décor rather than one of the few friends she had these days. "I'm only offering you the chance to do so first out of courtesy. It will be far less painful for all three of us if you close his gate of your own accord."

Lucy and Sagittarius exchanged glances. He would stay with her until the end, if she wished it, but she didn't. She hadn't summoned any other Spirits after their first attack had proven so ineffectual precisely because she didn't want them to get hurt in a fight they couldn't possibly win.

"Go," she told him. "I'll be alright."

He gave a single grudging nod and vanished. Exhaling slowly, Lucy let her hand fall away from her keys. Without their warmth at her fingertips, she felt horribly exposed. The probability of her having time to reach them and summon again if her enemy attacked was almost zero.

But Zeref still did not attack. "Good," he said, and stepped into the lounge. Ignoring her continued glare, he sat down on the sofa and motioned for her to do the same. After a spiteful deliberation, she chose the armchair between him and the door, ready to jump to her feet and run the moment she sensed any magic.

"What do you want, then?" she repeated.

"I want your help, Lucy Heartfilia."

"I refuse," she replied immediately.

"How rude," he remarked, feigning offence with sparkling eyes. "You don't even know what I want help with, yet."

"I don't care. I will never help you."

Folding his arms, Zeref leaned back on the sofa, utterly unfazed by her rejection. "No wonder your guild has such a reputation, if this is how you treat your clients."

"Clients…?"

"You are a guild mage, are you not? I have a job for you."

Lucy covered the symbol on the back of her hand with the palm of the other in what had clearly become an automatic gesture. "I'm not a guild mage any more. You know full well that Fairy Tail has been disbanded."

She spoke as though it settled the matter, but for her guest, those words had quite the opposite effect. "And that's the crux of the matter, isn't it?" he mused.

"What do you mean?"

"I want you to help me get Fairy Tail back together again."

Silence.

To any other request, Lucy would have answered with a resounding no, but to that, she could do little more than stare. Her mouth hung open. She would have thought it a practical joke, except there had been no pranksters in her life for almost a year now.

"Wha… what?" she managed.

"I want you to help me track down the scattered members of Fairy Tail and convince them to re-form the guild," Zeref repeated patiently.

"Why?"

"I have my reasons."

She gave her head a vigorous shake; he wasn't getting away with that. "But we're your enemy! Whatever you're planning for the world, we're going to make sure you don't succeed! Fairy Tail being back together is only going to make things more difficult for you!"

"It wasn't an easy decision for me to make," he conceded. "However, I have thought long and hard about it, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no other way. I believe that the benefits will outweigh the risks."

Lucy snorted. "What, is it no fun being unopposed?"

"Something like that."

"Or is it simply more efficient to kill us all if we're gathered in the same place?"

He snapped his fingers. "Oh, I hadn't thought of that! All the more reason to do it, then."

"You…"

Her reprimand tailed off when she realized that she couldn't actually tell if he was being serious or not. Ordinarily, she wouldn't have expected so dangerous an enemy to play around – but wasn't that exactly what he'd been doing ever since he broke into her house? This situation was so surreal. How was she supposed to know what was wrong or right?

Even worse, she noted with no small amount of irritation that her confusion was only feeding his amusement. That, at least, she could control by changing the subject. "Well, it's a futile task. I've been trying to track down the rest of my guild for months, but none of them have stayed in contact. Even if I wanted to help you find them – which I don't – I wouldn't be able to."

He gave an infuriatingly smug smile as he gestured at the collage on her bedroom wall. "Fortunately for us both, my intelligence network is a little more sophisticated than yours. I know where almost every member of your guild can be found."

"Your intelligence network…? Well, what do you need me for, then?"

"Lucy, what do you think your friends would do if I walked up to them and told them to come back to the guild?"

"If they had any sense, punch you in the face," she muttered.

"Quite so," he said amicably.

She stared at him, and then, gradually, a red flush crept across her cheeks. Something about this man's patience, combined with his apparent youth, was exceptionally good at making her feel like a fool. "Oh. You need me to do the talking. You find them, and I convince them to return to the guild."

"That's the general idea, yes."

"And you expect me to believe that you really want Fairy Tail back together, and aren't going to use my help to go around murdering all the members of my guild one by one?"

"As we've already established, I'm the one out of the two of us who knows where your friends are. If that was my intention, I could have done it at any point during the past year, and I certainly wouldn't have needed your assistance to pull it off. Having you there would only slow me down."

"You'd probably use me as a decoy," she retorted. "To lull my friends into a false sense of security."

This time, his offence seemed to be genuine. "I would do no such thing," he stated, something less than warm entering his tone for the first time since they'd met. "I have nothing in principle against your guild, Lucy. We are enemies only in the sense that I am certain your guild will choose to stand between me and my goal. If you do not so choose – if any individual elects not to participate in the fight to come – I shall not treat them as an enemy, whether they carry the guild mark or not."

"And what is this goal of yours?"

"That's for me to know."

Wary silence settled upon the living room. "Alright," Lucy ventured. "Let's say, for the time being, that I believe you. You said this is a mage's job, so what would I get for helping you?"

He tilted his head slightly, an oddly childish expression of puzzlement that fit his apparent age much better than his real one. "You get your guild back."

"No, that's what you're getting out of this. I'm happy with the way things are; I wouldn't even be considering reuniting the guild if you weren't demanding it. So… what do I get in return?"

Zeref considered this for a moment. "Well, what do you want?"

"I'd quite like a guarantee that you won't ever do anything to harm my friends."

At that, he laughed out loud. "It has to be something realistic."

She hadn't thought she'd get that, but it was worth a shot. Stubbornly, she insisted, "At least until the guild's back together, then."

"I assumed that went without saying. You can have that one for free: a non-aggression pact between your side and mine, for the duration of our partnership."

"…Oh."

"Give it some thought," he suggested. "For now, we'll say that the reward for the job is one unspecified favour… and when you've worked out what you want from me, we can negotiate terms we both agree on. Do we have a deal?"

No, screamed every sane part of her.

This man was the antithesis of everything her guild fought for. She knew the legends as well as anyone, and better than most. Even allowing for those histories to have become distorted over time, she had seen first-hand the destruction wrought by his demons, his magic, his legacy, and the mages who idolized him in the present day.

So many of her friends had suffered because of his actions, past and present. He had said himself that his goal would bring them into inevitable conflict. He had promised Natsu nothing but despair, and sworn to their beloved First Master that he would eradicate every last one of them.

And he was nothing like she'd expected.

He was laid-back. Casual. As if this were a perfectly normal way for two enemies to interact.

He had sought her out, and it wasn't to fight. Indeed, she had been the one who had attacked him – she had seen guild-wide brawls break out over less, and yet rather than retaliating, he had given her the option of sending Sagittarius away herself and listening to his proposition of her own accord. The only time he had displayed any kind of anger had been when she had – perhaps unfairly – accused him of using her to plot the systematic murder of her guild.

And, although he was clearly enjoying her reaction to the whole situation, his actions were far too unexpected to be anything less than sincere. What he stood to gain from a reunited Fairy Tail she couldn't begin to fathom, but he did want it – and he wanted her to help him achieve it.

So that left one question: did she want Fairy Tail to be reunited?

Slowly, Lucy informed him, "You're not the first person today who has asked me to help them reunite the guild. I turned the first one down."

Zeref raised his hand, stopping her there. "Just so we're on the same page here, I'm not really asking you, per se."

"You're going to threaten me?"

"No," he shrugged. "But I do know where all your friends are, and I don't need all the members of Fairy Tail safely back together… just most of them."

"You're going to threaten my friends."

"That does seem to work better with you lot, doesn't it?" he agreed. Then he sat up straight, clapping his hands together in almost childish excitement. "Oh, we could make a game of it! Picture this: we both leave your house at the same time, you to find and warn your friends, and me to pick them off one by one. The person who gets the most by the end wins. What do you think?"

"I think you're bluffing," she said steadily. "I think that if I say no, you'll go and ask someone else. Neither Gray nor Erza will work with you, I'm sure, but Cana or Levy might… maybe even Wendy. If you genuinely want the guild back together – and, as ridiculous as it sounds, I really think you do – you won't take a risk like that."

His smile broadened. She had expected denial, if not an outright threat, but if anything, he seemed pleased that she had called his bluff. This man made no sense.

Nothing about this situation made any sense.

Not arguing with her best friend until she was dragged down to the police station for disorderly behaviour; not sitting in her house and having a civil conversation with her guild's sworn enemy.

Things will never go back to how they were, she had said to Jason, but she hadn't thought for a second that they would be this bizarre.

She missed her guild. Witnessing the anniversary of their glorious victory in the Games pass uncelebrated had really brought that home. Losing her guild, her livelihood, and her friends all at once had cut deep into her heart, and nothing so badly damaged could ever go back to being whole. Sometimes she felt as though she had more scar tissue than heart – a patched-up organ capable of pumping blood and nothing more.

She liked Jason, and she didn't mind her job, but neither of them pretended that she was doing it for any reason other than to gather information on her former colleagues. She hadn't been able to let go any more than she had been able to hold onto them. Not even the most righteous, most rational anger had been able to eclipse the hope that Natsu might have come back that night to apologize; that he might have taken her words to heart and returned to start over. Things couldn't go back to how they were, but if only he had tried to understand that, they could have moved on together. They might even now be on a quest to reunite the guild.

But they weren't.

And the person who was offering her back her guild was the last person she had expected.

No matter how she looked at it, teaming up with her enemy was stupid. Even if they did have the same immediate goal, Zeref was not shy to admit that ultimately, he had no qualms about crushing Fairy Tail in order to get his way. She wanted to help him with that about as much as she wanted to keep looking over her shoulder for signs of betrayal on this mission.

Still, she had his word that he wouldn't harm her guild while their partnership lasted, didn't she? And, as strange as it sounded, she trusted him. Well, it was less that she trusted him and more that she believed he wanted Fairy Tail back together and would do nothing to jeopardize that, but the point still stood.

With his help, finding her old friends wasn't some distant dream, crushed by the reality of that afternoon's confrontation with Natsu. They could make it happen.

This was a way forward.

A way out of the hole which for ten months now had been her home; a hole where she had got by on Jason's kindness and the occasional rumour of her old friends thrown to her like scraps to a starving dog, just enough to keep her going but not enough to provide her with the energy to start to change things.

It was stupid and reckless and preposterous, and maybe – just maybe – it was a little bit exciting too.

Things would never go back to how they were before, so why the hell shouldn't she shake them up completely?

"Okay," she said, before she could change her mind.

"We have a deal?"

"Yeah. Let's get Fairy Tail back together."

"Excellent. We'll leave first thing in the morning."

They shook on it. Before that day, she might have expected his hand to be as cold as ice, but it was just as warm as hers. More life than she had thought possible sparkled within those black eyes, and not a trace of malice.

This, Lucy thought, could turn out to be very interesting indeed.

Then again, it seemed as though she'd managed to pick up yet another teammate with no grasp of basic manners. As if entering her house uninvited wasn't bad enough, upon the finalization of their agreement Zeref had settled himself back down on the sofa, as if some miniscule clause in the terms and conditions had made this place his home.

Lucy remained on her feet. "You can leave now," she said pointedly.

"Since we're setting off early tomorrow, it makes more sense for me to stay here tonight."

"You're not welcome!"

"Lucy," came his infuriatingly condescending response, "has not being welcome in your house bothered me thus far?"

"Evidently not," she growled.

"Then what on earth makes you think it's going to start now?"

She glowered down at him, the only effect of which was to prompt him to lift his bare feet onto the sofa too. That smug smile was a dare for her to try and remove him by force.

What she felt in that moment wasn't fear, but the sudden and inexplicable urge to laugh. Had she not been half-hoping that tonight would be the night the old tradition of her teammates inviting themselves to stay at her house would be rekindled?

Some things, she supposed, were fated to never change.

"Do what you want," she conceded. "I guess I might as well get used to it, since we're going to be travelling together. But if you so much as think about creeping into my room during the night, our partnership is through."

Zeref blinked. "I… really wasn't thinking that." Then he tilted his head slightly, and seemed to consider what she'd said. "I am now, though."

"I mean it," she warned him, rolling her eyes. She tossed a spare blanket across to him, then disappeared into her bedroom and closed the door behind her as firmly as she could without slamming it.

That done, she collapsed face-first onto her bed, still fully-clothed.

Her head was spinning, her heart was pounding; there was, she thought, more than a small part of her that had yet to come to terms with the fact that she was still alive.

What the hell am I doing?

She had asked it of herself as a rhetorical question, but an answer came nonetheless; the whispering voice of a tiny candleflame of crimson emotion. Melted by anger, and cooled by regret, it had solidified into a conviction as hard as diamond.

She was proving that, beneath those scars, her heart was still quietly beating.

She was moving forward.

Somewhere in the forest outside Crocus, a little blue cat sat atop a boulder, keeping a careful watch by starlight over his and his partner's impromptu campsite.

Strictly speaking, there was no need for a watch. Happy and Natsu had spent the past ten months camping out in harsher environments than this without incident. The summer evening was mild, and even if it wasn't, Natsu was a more reliable source of heat than the most experienced survivalist's campfire. Monsters rarely strayed this close to civilization, and the beasts of the forest did not pose a threat to a mage of the Dragon Slayer's calibre. They had no reason to believe any dark mages knew of their presence here, or that they would pick a fight even if they did.

But Happy could not sleep, so he kept watch anyway.

Natsu was not asleep either. At the foot of Happy's sentinel rock, he tossed and turned with feverish irregularity, somehow always seeming to end up with his back to his partner. Both knew the other was awake. Neither of them acknowledged it.

Once, as the summer sun had slipped beyond the horizon, and the shadows stretched and swayed, Happy had ventured to break the silence. "Natsu-"

"I ain't gonna."

"But Lucy-"

"I ain't gonna."

And the draconic snarl of his voice had settled the matter.

Silence returned, and there they remained until night turned once more into day.

A/N: Hello, and welcome to my newest fic! It's been over a year since I last uploaded anything, but once this one gets going, I think you'll see why. It's three times as long as anything I've written before, and in light of that, I wanted to spend a bit of time introducing it here so that you know what you're getting yourself into. You can skip straight to the next chapter (when it's posted) if you prefer. After this, there will be minimal notes, I promise!

(1) This story is an alternate version of the Avatar and Alvarez arcs (and hence an alternate ending to Fairy Tail). It will follow canon quite closely at the start - albeit with one quite important change to who Lucy is travelling with! - and will deviate more and more as time goes on.

(2) In effect, everything up to the end of chapter 417 in the manga (ie everything before Lucy and Natsu reunite in Crocus after the one-year timeskip) is considered to be set in stone. I might have made some minor changes in retrospect, but that's as likely to be because I couldn't remember the finer details as it is an intentional change. However, everything after that point (including things which happened chronologically earlier, but aren't revealed until later, such as Zeref's relationship with Anna) is up in the air. I will try to keep largely to the same ideas, but don't assume anything! I also assume that anyone reading this has a fairly good knowledge of canon... though anyone still reading fanfiction for a series after the manga and anime have both finished is probably a pretty big fan.

(3) At this point in time, bear in mind that Lucy knows next to nothing about Zeref. She knows that he's immortal and created the Tartaros demons, for instance, but not that he's cursed or about his history with Mavis, let alone anything to do with Natsu.

(4) This story is structured in several 'arcs'. As a general rule (and at least initially), each one takes place in a different location and with a different supporting cast as Lucy and Zeref travel round the kingdom on their quest. Nearly every Fairy Tail character will be in it at some point, but it's pretty difficult to identify the 'main characters' of the story aside from Lucy and Zeref, as characters will come and go. The ones with the biggest impact on the story, who get the most focus and whose storylines encompass multiple arcs, are probably Natsu, Levy, Jellal, Invel, and August. Though most of them won't even show up for a while yet...

(5) The pairing for the story is Lucy/Zeref. It will be the slowest of all slow burns. Seriously. Don't expect them to get together any time this year. This isn't really a romance story; it's an alternate final arc and ending for Fairy Tail, which just happens to have a non-canon pairing at its heart. The story is long, therefore the romance is also long. Also, for when they do get together, note the T rating. Don't get too excited.

(6) Regarding Lucy/Zeref, I did want to mention something quickly about Natsu. At the start of the story, Lucy is angry with Natsu (for reasons that will be fully revealed later), and as she's narrating, her opinion shapes the early chapters. That's only one side of the story, and she'll come to realize that she might not be treating him entirely fairly. I only mention it because it's far too easy to fall into Natsu-bashing when shipping Lucy with literally anyone else, and I don't enjoy reading or writing that, so I wanted to make it clear that that isn't where this story is going. Yes, Natsu does make more mistakes than most over the course of the story, but he's trying very hard to do the right thing.

(7) In terms of side-pairings... most of the main canon pairings (ie Levy/Gajeel, Gray/Juvia, Erza/Jellal, Elfman/Evergreen) are there as a matter of fact. None of them are a focus, though. There are a couple of non-canon pairings thrown in too, but again, none of them play a big role in the story. I just had a bit of fun writing them.

(8) A significant proportion of the fic (about 12% by word count) is given over to the story of how Anna and Zeref met in the past. This is above and beyond my favourite part of the story, but I wanted to give you a heads-up before we get there, because it is a story-within-a-story which (up until its ending) could almost stand on its own. 12% may not sound like much now, but it will when we get to it.

(9) As of posting the first chapter, (the first draft of) this story has already been written in its entirety. On one hand, you can start reading it safe in the knowledge that it will, one day, be finished. On the other hand, it means that, while I would love to hear your ideas for how things might unfold, it's going to be almost impossible for me to incorporate requests unless they happen to fall very close to what I've already written.

(10) The fic will update on Sundays. However, it's going to run for so long that there's no way I can promise life won't get in the way. Instead, what I will say is that if I do have to take a break because of something going on in my personal life (such as exams, though they've all been cancelled for the near future), I'll try and make sure that this happens between arcs as far as possible - ie, at a reasonable place to pause the story.

(11) I try to respond to all non-anonymous reviews, but the email alerts can be a bit temperamental, so please don't be offended if I miss yours. If you have a burning question that really needs a response, feel free to PM me. I tend to check my messages every few days.

Okay, I think that's all! Thank you for giving this fic a go, and I hope you enjoy the ride! ~CS