A/N: Hello all, me again. I wasn't intending to upload something new so quickly, but I wrote the first chapter of this on a whim, and it evolved (somewhat unexpectedly) into a short story about Natsu and Zeref. So, in honour of the final season starting last week, here it is.

This story will be in four chapters. The first one is silly, then it gets serious; you know the drill. I aim to update every Sunday night as usual, but between work, exams, and the long chapter length, it might not happen. I'll do my best.

This fic is set at the end of a slightly different Grand Magic Games arc. There has been no Future Lucy and no Future Rogue, so in the absence of any other time travel shenanigans, Arcadios and Hisui are going ahead with the original plan to send people back in time to kill Zeref before he becomes immortal. Now, without further ado, I hope you enjoy this little story! ~CS

Time for a Change

By CrimsonStarbird

-Past-

Lucy was nervous.

It wasn't because they were about to attempt brand new experimental magic on the orders of a Colonel who wasn't even a mage himself, in conjunction with a mysterious evil door that had just been found beneath the palace.

It wasn't because no one had ever travelled through time before, and thus they had no real idea of what could and couldn't be changed, and what would and wouldn't wipe out the present as they knew it.

It wasn't even because there was a very real chance that she might tread on a butterfly and thus somehow prevent herself from being born.

No, Lucy was nervous because Yukino wasn't.

In the short time Lucy had known the ex-Sabertooth mage, she had reached two conclusions about her: that she was a nice enough person, but that she had an unfortunate habit of taking things to extremes. When the other competitors were making harmless wagers on their fights, Yukino had bet her life. When she lost one battle, she had tried to give her precious gold keys away to a total stranger. When she was expelled from her guild… she had immediately thrown her lot in with Colonel Who-Needs-Temporal-Continuity-Anyway Arcadios and his completely sane plan that stood no chance whatsoever of accidentally destroying the world.

To be honest, Lucy hadn't been particularly enthusiastic about the Colonel's plan to go back in time and try to murder the most dangerous man who had ever lived even before she had found out that she, as one of the two Celestial Spirit mages whose keys were needed to open the Eclipse Gate, was therefore one of the two people to whom this delightful task fell. She had only gone along with it because she knew that if she didn't, Yukino would go on her own – and she, Lucy was beginning to suspect, wouldn't hesitate to step on that butterfly of chaos if she thought it was working with Zeref.

Never mind that this whole affair had stopped Lucy from participating in the finale of the Grand Magic Games, because she was too busy making preparations with Colonel Arcadios and Princess Hisui. Never mind that she had been too nervous about messing with forces beyond human comprehension to savour her guild's victory. No, someone had to make sure the well-intentioned but completely mental Colonel who'd managed to get his hands on a time machine wasn't about to turn the world into one giant paradox, and it looked like it was going to be responsible ol' Lucy Heartfilia again.

She stole a glance at Yukino. Her face may as well have been carved from stone by a sculptor who had never been backstage before the curtain rose, or opened a letter containing exam results, or been told he was to be the guinea pig for bloody time travel. There wasn't a trace of nerves in sight. Her eyes were set with the determination of mythical heroes. The sword and armour of a soldier of Fiore suited her far better than that ostentatious feathery cloak she had been wearing during the Games, and Lucy wished she could have meant that as a compliment.

Yukino must have sensed her looking, because she finally broke her staring contest with the Eclipse Gate to ask her, "Are you ready, Lucy?"

Not trusting herself to speak, Lucy gave her a watery smile. It was a shame her zodiac keys had already been taken by Arcadios, or she and Virgo could have been on the other side of the planet by now. She was forced to watch as the Colonel responsible for this madness inserted the keys into the door like he was laying out the steps to the gallows. There was power already building in the Gate, in the gathering storm, in the blood-red moon above – why no one else could see this blatant bad omen Lucy had no idea, but then these were the same people who thought using a sinister artefact of unknown provenance that they'd unearthed from the execution ground beneath the palace was a good idea, so maybe she was the fool for still expecting them to show any kind of common sense at this stage.

As the Eclipse Gate swung open to unleash blinding light into the courtyard, she hypothesized, optimistically, that time travel might be completely safe. Maybe the universe had a built-in mechanism to protect itself from paradoxes. Maybe they'd be able to stroll into the past, find Zeref, and return to a present that the universe had strived to keep exactly the same.

Following Yukino into the light, Lucy decided that it was a bad day indeed when coming face-to-face with the notorious Black Mage was the best-case scenario.

Something nudged Lucy's arm.

That isolated sensation triggered a cascade of others – a pressure on her front, a dryness in her throat, an unyielding darkness in her vision – and after a moment of disorientation, during which time travel made its debut entry onto her list of favourite transportation methods in a solid last place, she concluded that she was lying on the ground with her eyes closed. Rectifying the former seemed like it would require more energy than she had, but the latter was easy enough, and her eyelids fluttered open.

At first, the world was so bright that she wondered if the Eclipse Gate had dumped her in some psychedelic in-between spacetime. Slowly, though, her swirling vision adjusted to a carpet of green grass and a ceiling of blue sky – and an upside-face that appeared suddenly in front of her own.

She let out a startled cry, and so did the face. It vanished again, and she scrambled backwards, overruling her dizzy head's attempt to stage a mutiny as she pulled herself into a sitting position. The world dissolved into colour, and when it settled once again, the picturesque sky-and-field backdrop had acquired a stark anomaly in the form of a young boy, no older than eight or nine.

He was a living juxtaposition of dark and light: he wore a black sash draped across a white tunic, the old-fashioned clothes looking oddly formal even as he bounced on the balls of his feet with poorly suppressed excitement; his eyes were as dark as midnight, and yet somehow they were the brightest, most dazzling things she had ever seen.

"You're alive!" he exclaimed.

Lucy gave a tentative nod, not wanting to attempt anything bolder and invoke the gods of irony. Glancing around, she saw Yukino struggling to sit up on the grass beside her. Beyond her lay a smattering of trees and the spires of a city on the horizon. Behind them both, at the end of a trail of still-smouldering brown grass, stood the accursed Eclipse Gate – closed, silent, and, bizarrely, in the middle of a field instead of the palace courtyard she had left.

Turning back to the boy, she asked what was undoubtedly the most clichéd question of her adult life – but as she was also the first person outside of science fiction legitimately able to ask it, she felt her actions were justified. "What year is this?"

"X363," he answered at once. "Why, what year was it last time you checked?"

"X791," she told him.

She was expecting disbelief. Or denial. Or even plain confusion.

What she was not expecting was for the boy to leap into the air and scream, "YES!"

"Uh… what?" Lucy wondered.

"Yes, yes, YES!" he shouted, bouncing higher with every word. "I did it! I actually did it! Ha! I told you it was possible! I told you all! Oh, you are going to regret laughing at me now! Fame, fortune, funding, here we come!"

His words dissolved into laughter bordering on maniacal. Lucy exchanged glances with Yukino as the two got to their feet. Neither of them knew quite what to make of the boy who was still cheering like… like he'd just survived the plague, or traded a cow for some magic beans, or whatever it was children had to celebrate back in the fourth century.

"Excuse me," Lucy interrupted, "but what, exactly, did you do?"

"Invented time travel!" he told her brightly. Before she could respond, he pivoted towards the city on the horizon, cupped his hands around his mouth, and bellowed, "Take that, Dean Osvalio! Take that, you and your I'm sorry, but we don't have the budget to fund research with no real-world applications and your ooh, your research is angering Ankhseram and your no, you're too young to borrow our arc welder – well fine, I'll just invent a new kind of concentrated electricity magic and do it by hand!"

He sucked in a deep breath and spun back to face them cheerfully. "So, what's the future like?"

"Whoa, let's just take it back a few steps there, kiddo," Lucy overrode him. "What do you mean, you invented time travel?" She was the one who had been shoved through an experimental spacetime portal, and she'd be damned if she wasn't going to get the recognition for it.

She had never before seen anyone below the age of eighty pull off such a look of condescension. "You see that huge magical gate you just came through? The one that can connect to any point along its own timeline? Well, I built it."

"You built it?"

"Oh, don't you start. Yes, I worked out the theory of true temporal magic myself, and then I built it myself, and then I worked out how to open it by myself – not that I would have had to if those bloody buffoons at the Academy hadn't cut my funding-"

"Language," Lucy reprimanded him.

He pulled a face. "It's not a swear word in X363."

"First of all, you're lying, and second of all, you shouldn't even know what swear words are."

"Yeah, well, I shouldn't know about conjugate spacetime stabilization either, but if I hadn't stolen those books from the Dean's library, you wouldn't be here now."

Lucy folded her arms, taking a weird kind of pleasure from the significant discrepancy in their heights. "What are you, like six years old?"

"Eight years and two-hundred-and-thirty-four days," he replied promptly.

"What, no months?" she teased.

"I see no merit in using such an arbitrary and inconsistent unit of measurement."

"Years vary in length too, you know."

"One part in three-hundred-and-sixty-five is an acceptable level of variance. It's half the error I allowed for the Gate of Time, and you two made it here in one piece, didn't you?"

"What do you mean, in one piece?" Lucy yelped, but Yukino stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Lucy, as fascinating as this is-" She turned to the boy, and Lucy wondered how he didn't shrink away from the stone-cold resolution in her eyes, "-and as nice as it has been to meet you, we have an important task ahead of us – one which we must perform without further ado."

"You're absolutely right, we do!" the boy agreed, before Lucy could say anything. "You two have to come to the Academy with me and prove that my Gate of Time works!"

The longer Lucy could put off their doomed quest to kill the most terrifying mage in history, the more time she had to come up with a plan to get them back to the present without incident. "How are we going to do that?" she asked the boy, steadfastly ignoring the glare Yukino was sending her from the side.

"By telling them about the future!"

Lucy shrugged. "There's not much to say, really. Dragons are extinct, and there are way more guilds… do you even have guilds in your time?"

The boy waved his hand impatiently. "Not useless, vague things like that. What are you, amateurs? You'll need to tell them something concrete and locally testable. For instance, what's going to happen tonight?"

"Why would I know what happened on some random day four hundred years ago?" Lucy bristled.

"Because this isn't some random day four hundred years ago! It's the day I invented time travel!"

"No, it isn't! Yukino and I were the first people to travel through time – in X791!"

"Yes – to X363! Time travel is possible right now, and once I've shown you to the Academy, today will go down in history as the day I proved that the human race is no longer imprisoned by linear time! In the future, everyone will remember what they were doing at the moment I made my announcement! Some scholars in the Academy are bound to become famous enough to publish autobiographies…"

Misinterpreting Lucy's disbelief, he amended, "No, you're right, they're morons, the lot of them. Still, once I have achieved world-renown, I'm sure they'll all stake their own meagre claims to fame by pointing out that they worked in the same lab as me – before they were so jealous of my success that they claimed they were scared of unstable magic and made me build my Gate in a bloody field! – and then when they publish their autobiographies, they'll definitely include what they were doing on this most transcendental of days…" He blinked. "Won't they?"

"I hate to break it to you-" That was a total lie; Lucy was leaping at the chance to shoot him down, "-but, no. No one had so much as hinted that time travel was possible in academic writings before we came back through the Gate. This day is not going to go down in history in any shape or form."

"How peculiar." The boy stroked his chin, a gesture somewhat undermined by his lack of beard. "Well, time travel is a completely uncharted area of research. I had assumed the future would self-correct for adjustments to the past, but its behaviour seems to be more mysterious than I thought. Evidently just inventing a time machine isn't enough – the whole field of time magic remains in dire need of my genius."

Lucy rolled her eyes. No such playful gesture slipped through Yukino's marble exoskeleton, however, as she interrupted, "Lucy. We do not have time for this."

"Actually," the boy interjected helpfully, "thanks to my invention, time is the one thing of which you now have rather a lot."

"You're never going to stop going on about that, are you?" Lucy sighed.

"No. Why?"

"Has it occurred to you that the reason why no one knows you invented time travel on this day is because you annoyed the professors at your Academy so much that they murdered you and buried the evidence?"

"That did occur to me, until I realized that anyone so tempted would be forced to conclude that the benefit to all humanity of keeping me alive outweighs any petty jealousy they might feel at not being able to keep up with my brilliance."

Lucy raised her eyebrows. "Don't count on it, kiddo."

"Lucy." Yukino spoke in a tone that sent shivers down her spine.

"Alright, alright…"

Lucy turned her attention away from the infuriating boy and his no-less-life-ruining Eclipse Gate, and scanned their surroundings. The distant city was likely to be their best bet. They could acquire information, pick up era-appropriate clothes, and keep a low profile as they decided how they were going to track down and destroy the hopefully-not-yet-immortal Black Mage Zeref… no, it still wasn't sounding any less ludicrous.

"So, what's this super-serious quest you've come back four hundred years to complete?" a cheerful voice butted in, as the boy popped up in front of them again.

"That is none of your concern," Yukino retaliated.

"Since you've hijacked my Gate of Time to carry it out, I rather think it is," he objected, folding his arms. "I was only opening it to see if it would work, expecting to find tomorrow's me on the other side – who, might I add, would have presented a far more convincing case to the Academy's funding board than you two amateurs. So, since you've effectively scuppered my chances both of getting the research grant I deserve and holding a conversation with my only intellectual equal, the least you could do is tell me why."

Yukino snapped, "We're here to destroy the most evil man in history before he can ruin our future!"

"Oh." To her surprise, the boy's gaze dropped towards the ground – and then, inexplicably, he offered his wrists up to them, as if expecting a set of handcuffs to be slapped onto them at any moment. "You'll be here for me, then."

Yukino stared. Lucy clapped a palm to her forehead. "You're eight years old, and you've already decided you're going to be the most evil man in history?"

"Genius is always misunderstood," he told them sadly. "I knew this would happen, sooner or later."

"You do realize that not everything in the world is about you, right?" Lucy asked, only a fraction sarcastically.

"But I invented time travel!" he insisted. "Ever since I started making headway with my research I've been expecting crusaders to show up from the future, warning me away from this path with tales of horrific paradoxes and temporal inconsistencies… now that I think about it, that must be why you were on the other side of the door, rather than tomorrow's me! You're from a future torn apart by the temporal collapse I caused, so of course you know how to hijack a time portal!"

"Or maybe future-you realized what a brat you are and boycotted the meeting."

"Let's go, Lucy," Yukino intervened. "We're wasting time here."

"For once, Yukino, I find myself agreeing with you."

Again, however, they didn't get more than a few steps towards the city before the boy popped back into their field of view. "Are you sure it's not me you're after?" he wheedled.

"Oh, of course, I totally forgot about our secondary mission to destroy the most irritating person to have ever been born," Lucy snarked.

"I mean, I didn't intend to destroy the world… but let's face it, out of all the mages in the Academy, I'm by far the most likely to have done it by accident. That's the price of being a true pioneer."

There was a slightly unsettling light in Yukino's eyes. "On second thoughts, Lucy, perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to rule him out. We don't know enough about this era. It may well be him we're looking for."

Lucy's palm returned to her forehead. "For the love of all that is holy, please do not encourage him."

She did not listen. "What's your name, child?"

"Zeref Dragneel," he replied promptly.

"Zeref!" Yukino exclaimed. Her hand jumped to the hilt of her sword – surprising Lucy, who hadn't realized it had ever left – and pulled it from her sheath. The army-issue blade slid free with worryingly little protest. "At last, you're right here before me-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a minute," Lucy interjected. "Did you say Dragneel?"

"That's right!" he chirped.

"Huh. My best friend's a Dragneel. I wonder if he's your distant descendent."

The boy pulled a face. "Eww. Eww, no."

"He's not that bad," Lucy objected, eyebrows raised.

"No, no, no. That's not happening. Children, eww."

"You're a child!"

Offended, he folded his arms. "I'm a prodigy. It's completely different."

"It really isn't, kiddo."

"Lucy, stop getting side-tracked!" Yukino snapped. "Zeref has to die, right now!"

"Wait, I have to die?" the boy echoed disbelievingly.

Lucy frowned at him. "What were you expecting when you decided to confess to ruining the future?"

"Well… I figured you'd drag me back to the future to stand trial before a panel of bitter, jealous judges, to whom I would deliver a rousing speech about the importance of free research to defend my actions, until they, reminded of the passion for temporal magic they once had, are moved to set me free and return me to my own time-"

"You have put way too much thought into this."

He shrugged. "I told you, I've been expecting something like this to happen ever since I decided to invent time travel."

"You know, it's kind of amazing how even your head isn't big enough to stop sarcasm from going right over it."

"Stop the what now?"

"Precisely."

A hiss and flick of air forestalled his response; Yukino's blade carved an arc safely short of the bickering pair, but they both flinched nonetheless. "Lucy. Take this seriously."

"Surely you're not serious about this, Yukino!"

"Deadly serious." There was no fracture to let doubt into those flawless marble eyes; there was no more hesitance about her than there'd been when she had been in his position, and Kagura was the one holding the blade. "I'm putting an end to this."

She took a step forward. Zeref took a step back. Bright black eyes seemed to dim for the first time as they focussed on the Celestial mage's borrowed steel.

"Yukino, stop it!" Lucy objected. "You're scaring him!"

"Good. Maybe then he'll understand what it has been like for those of us growing up in his shadow… right before he pays for it with his life."

Zeref's protest came out as a helpless tumble of words. "But- but you can't kill me!"

"Why not, fiend?"

"Because of the paradox!"

"What paradox?"

"Well, you only came back in time because of what I did in the future, right? So if you kill me, then I won't be able to do those things, so you won't come back in time, and then I'll be free to do them again! Me being dead and you being in the past are incompatible! The very fact that you're here means that I can't die! The paradox won't allow it!"

Yukino considered this garbled explanation for several frightening moments. "You just told us that you didn't know how time worked."

"I'm… ninety-nine percent sure it works like that."

"Ninety-nine percent sure?"

He swallowed. "Uh-huh."

"Ninety-nine percent sure," she echoed, bringing the blade slowly to rest an inch away from the boy's quivering neck, "that the paradox is somehow going to stop this sword from cutting your throat?"

His gaze darted to the sword and back. "Ninety-eight percent. Maybe ninety-seven…"

"Let's test that hypothesis, shall we?"

The blade sang – a hymn of death drowned out by Lucy's screech. "That's enough, Yukino!" Not believing for a second that her words would be sufficient, she caught the other mage's wrist, forcing the sword to a halt.

"See?" Zeref said, with a tremulous smile. "The paradox made you do that."

"It wasn't the paradox, it was something called common sense, which neither of you two seem to have!" Lucy exploded. "Yukino, he – is – a – child! How can you even think about killing him in cold blood?"

Yukino gave her a mutinous look, whose only effect was to make Lucy tighten the grip on her sword arm. "I start by thinking about how he's done so much worse."

The shadow flitting across the boy's expression didn't go unnoticed by Lucy, but the last thing she wanted was to give him the chance to open his mouth again. Jumping in before he could, she argued, "But he hasn't done those things! Not yet! This is unfair, Yukino, and it's cruel. He's a defenceless child."

"Which was the whole point of us travelling back four hundred years in the first place!"

"No. Not like this. This Zeref hasn't done anything wrong, Yukino. I can't let you do this."

The mage-turned-soldier snapped her wrist out of Lucy's grasp, lifting the razor-edge of her sword. That barrier of lethal steel symbolized everything that stood between them. "Why did you come back through the Eclipse Gate, if you never had the nerve to see this through?"

"I came back to stop you from destroying your soul, and/or the space-time continuum!" Lucy shouted. "We have no idea what will happen if you murder Zeref as a child! The present we left might cease to exist!"

"It's a risk I am willing to take."

"Why? Why did you come back to the past, Yukino? You're not like this – I know how highly your Spirits think of you, and I know how much you care about them in return. You're not a cold-blooded killer."

Quietly, she responded, "For my sister, I could become one."

"Oh."

It wasn't Lucy who had answered, however. That sad little word didn't seem to belong to the self-important brat they had met on this side of the Gate, yet it was Zeref who continued, "I can kind of get that. There's nothing I wouldn't do for my little brother."

"You have a brother?" Lucy inquired.

"Had. He died."

"Oh… I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's only a minor setback." At Lucy's startled look – she had meant to go for quizzical, but her cheek muscles apparently took offence at his depiction of death – he waved his hand dismissively. "I'm going to bring him back to life, you see. That's what all my research is for."

Then he tilted his head to the side, and amended, "Well, not all of it. I figured out pretty quickly that the Gate of Time would only let me go forward from the moment it was complete, so I couldn't go back in time and save him, but my research into time magic was far too interesting to abandon, so I built it anyway. Besides, once I've proven to those numbskulls on the funding committee that it works, they're all but guaranteed to authorize that grant I need to start looking into alternative power sources for the R-System-"

"So what?" Yukino overrode him fiercely. The marble was cracking now, and it wasn't raw humanity hidden underneath, but spitting, surging lava. "Am I supposed to feel sympathetic for you? You lost your family, so that gives you the right to take everyone else's families away?"

"Of course not! I wouldn't wish that on anyone! In fact, it's good that it happened to me, because no one else would have the skill to bring their loved ones back to life! My brother, bless him, he was the sweetest thing, but he couldn't tell one end of a Nezothine Transposition Function from the other-"

"I lost my sister because of you!" she roared.

Zeref folded his arms crossly. "Well, it must have been an accident, because I'd never do anything like that on purpose."

"How dare you claim-"

"Besides, isn't there an easy way of solving this that doesn't involve me being murdered? Tell me who your sister is and what she looks like, and when I meet her, I'll make sure that I don't do anything to harm her. Or, better still, I'll walk very quickly in the opposite direction. How's that? That way, whatever I did to her won't happen, and it also doesn't involve any major changes to the timeline which may or may not shatter reality as you know it, depending on how the laws of time travel work."

"See? A compromise," Lucy remarked, hoping her sigh of relief wasn't too audible.

"Oh, but what if it's one of those self-fulfilling prophecies, and by trying to avoid it, I end up making it happen?" Zeref wondered. "What if she's an ambitious young scholar who is desperate for me to collaborate with her on a research project, and I keep refusing to meet with her because I'm worried about hurting her, until she becomes so depressed by my rejection that she takes her own life? Though, honestly, if someone's devotion to their work is so weak that the opinions of others are enough to make them quit, they have no business being in magical research-"

Lucy clamped her hand over the boy's mouth. "You may know a lot of things, kiddo, but the class on when to stop talking is one you really shouldn't have skipped," she hissed.

"Mmmpf!" Zeref protested.

"It's not as simple as that." Yukino scowled at them both, but she didn't seem angrier than before – which was probably because it wasn't physically possible, but Lucy would claim it as a victory nonetheless. "My sister… she never met you, exactly."

Frowning, Lucy added, "That's a point, Zeref. Why would you assume you did something to her sister personally, when she won't even be born for another four hundred years?"

Zeref shrugged. "You're talking to the person who invented time travel, remember?"

"Touché. Though, as I've said before, you didn't invent time travel. It wasn't a thing until we left X791."

"It's not my fault that the timeline is being slow to update! Look, I've moved Unravel The Mysteries Of Time up several places on my to-do list; what more do you want?" His expression became more thoughtful as he glanced towards Yukino. "But if I never met your sister, how did I cause her death?"

"The same way you killed millions," she said bitterly. "My sister and I lived in a small fishing village, but we had big dreams. Ever since we found Pisces's key in a shipwreck, we'd been planning our adventure to unite all the zodiac keys and become the greatest Celestial Spirit duo in the kingdom… and then, one day, a ruthless cult swept through the village. My sister gave me the key and went to distract them, so that I – and our dream – could survive. They kidnapped her as a sacrifice for the Black Mage Zeref."

In the corner of her vision, Lucy saw the boy's eyes widen, though for once he had the good sense not to interrupt.

"For years, I searched for her. I didn't want to believe that she was gone. When I heard about the fall of the Tower of Heaven, I had hope for the first time in years, because the culprits sounded exactly like that foul cult… but then I spoke to the survivors. I found some who remembered my sister. But they also remembered the accidents that used to happen to the children who wouldn't bow to the slavers, who wouldn't accept Zeref as their god… she was one of those who'd been snatched from the cells in the night. No one ever saw her again."

Slowly, she raised her sword once more, tip angled towards the folds of the boy's archaic clothing. "I couldn't do anything for her while she suffered, all that time. Now, I finally have the chance to get her back."

Zeref didn't look afraid in that moment, trapped between the sharp blade and sharper words. Rather, he looked lost. His brow was furrowed, as though a mathematical problem he was certain he'd understood had come out with an impossible solution.

"But I don't think there's anything I can do about that," he admitted. "Not unless I was specifically telling those people to go around kidnapping children – and I'd never do that! Not even for research purposes! What's the point of saving my brother if it means other people have to go through losing their family in return?"

Yukino looked murderous, and given that she was currently pointing a sword at a boy Lucy wasn't particularly fond of but who absolutely didn't deserve to be murdered, Lucy couldn't help but add her own plea to his cause. "Yukino, I'm so sorry to hear about your sister, but we met the people involved in the Tower of Heaven, and Zeref really didn't have anything to do with it. Not even our time's Zeref. The cult was made up of dark mages who were obsessed with the legacy of the Black Mage, not with- well, with the real Zeref."

"Which is why I am going to cut off that legacy before it can begin," she vowed. "If the Black Mage never existed, he can't have had any disciples, and the cult which murdered Sorano will never be formed."

"I- I'm not sure that will really solve the problem," Zeref ventured. Lucy tensed, but he seemed earnest enough, so she let him speak, only crossing the fingers of one hand behind her back.

"Of course you'd say that!" Yukino snapped.

"But if I don't exist, cults like that will just use someone else to justify their actions, right? I mean, if they can interpret my research as evil, they can do it to anyone!"

Yukino's sword trembled. "You are evil!"

"No, he isn't!" Lucy protested. "He's insensitive, infuriating, and convinced that the world revolves around him, but he's not evil. Not right now. And he's certainly not responsible for the tragedy that happened to your sister. Killing him won't make anything right, Yukino. Worst case scenario, the entire future will disintegrate. But even in the best case scenario, we'll return to that future responsible for the death of an innocent child, no better than the villains who took your sister in the first place."

More and more glowing cracks appeared in the marble of her mask, white-hot scars carving themselves upon her skin. "Then who am I supposed to blame?" she yelled. "I've been training all this time- I joined the strongest guild- I've gambled everything-"

"Maybe just… don't?" Zeref guessed, glancing anxiously from one to the other. "You don't have to blame anyone for what happened, do you?"

"So I should just forget about her?" she howled.

"No, but imagine that it was the other way round, and you'd stayed behind to ensure that your sister got away safely. Would you want her to risk the integrity of the timeline-"

"And her very humanity," Lucy added quietly.

"-on an act that has no guarantee of saving her? Would you want her to spend all her time hung up on your death, rather than living her own life?"

"Isn't that exactly what you're doing with this brother of yours?" Yukino shot back.

The boy's mouth opened, and closed again without a sound. He glanced at Lucy for help, who shrugged, more to see how he would answer than because she didn't know.

Eventually, he managed to choke out an uncharacteristically inarticulate defence: "That's- that's different!"

"Different how?"

Once again, his gaze flickered pleadingly to Lucy. For the first time since they'd met, he was trying to be sympathetic, to understand someone outside his own little world, and she couldn't help but relent. "It's different, Yukino, because he's smiling."

"What?" Yukino blinked.

"What?" Zeref echoed.

"Look at him. He loves his research. In fact, to be quite frank, he's so enthusiastic about it, it's sickening. He invented a functional time machine not because it would bring his brother back – he already knew it wouldn't – but because he could; because he found it fascinating and he wanted to see if he could do it. Show me a timeline where his brother doesn't die, and if Zeref isn't a member of that Academy regardless, I'll bake my zodiac keys in one big celestial pie and eat the lot."

"I used to come here when my brother was still alive, too," he piped up, genuinely helpful for the first time. "He'd distract the librarians for me while I stole books."

"Borrowed books, right?" she frowned at him.

"Well, I did always return them eventually, so yes, let's go with borrowed."

Fighting the urge to roll her eyes, she turned back to Yukino. "But you, Yukino – would you have wagered your life against Kagura if you weren't so determined to prove to the world that you were as ruthless as the villains who killed your sister? Would you have sided with Arcadios and his morally reprehensible, more-dangerous-to-the-present-than-anything-Zeref-ever-did time travel plot, if you hadn't convinced yourself that it involved the slightest chance of seeing your sister again? I've never seen you smile, Yukino. I don't think this is what you want at all."

"But all the things he's done- all the damage he'll keep doing to our future, while he lives-"

"That doesn't justify killing him now," Lucy told her steadily, confident now that Yukino wanted to believe her. "And besides, there's too much I love in our time to gamble it on a world where Zeref doesn't survive. If not for Deliora, I wouldn't have met Gray; if not for Zeref's legacy, awful as it is, I wouldn't have met Erza or even you – heck, if not for all the many children Zeref is going to have-"

"Hey!"

"-odds are, I'd never have met Natsu, so it's not all bad."

"Huh," Zeref remarked. "That's a coincidence."

"What is?"

"Natsu was my brother's name."

"Aww, that's cute, you're even going to keep the name in the family!"

As the boy pulled a disgusted face, Lucy took advantage of his moment of silence to turn back to Yukino. "Where was I-? Oh, Yukino, I think you know that this is wrong." Gently reaching out, she freed the blade from Yukino's unresisting fingers and slid it back into the scabbard by her side. "Let's agree to leave the past in the past, and make the most of the present we have."

"I…" Yukino sniffed. Even more frustrated by her attempt to be stoic than by everything that had come out of Zeref's mouth put together, Lucy rolled her eyes – they sure were getting a lot of exercise today – and pulled her into a hug.

"Hear, hear!" Zeref said enthusiastically, clapping both of them on the back.

"Don't push your luck, kiddo," Lucy growled at him. "I can still change my mind."

He muttered something about paradoxes and then, thankfully, fell silent. There they remained for a while, until Yukino wiped her eyes once and pulled away from Lucy to face the boy. He swallowed apprehensively, but she just said, "I am truly sorry for threatening you. Thank you for helping me see sense."

"That's okay. I'm sorry about your sister. If I see any evil cults, I'll be sure to report them straight to the police."

A tiny smile touched the Celestial mage's face. "Thank you. I appreciate the gesture."

Startled, but pleased, the boy smiled back at her. Lucy found herself wondering what had happened to make him into the villain of their age. Not even he could answer that. Not he, who had taken his brother's death as a challenge, and found all the wonder of the world and more in the mysteries of time and magic.

"Lucy." Yukino's tone, far gentler than Lucy had heard from her before, cut into her thoughts. Her face seemed softer, too – her cheeks were still as pale as marble, but they were creased with new warmth. "I believe we should return to our own time."

Zeref clapped his hands together. "Well, fortunately for the two of you, and in spite of your frankly discourteous insistences that I didn't… I am, in fact, the man who invented time travel. I can get you home easily enough."

He gestured to the Eclipse Gate behind them. Standing as it did in the middle of a field, it looked both less and more impressive than the Gate which had been raised to the courtyard of the palace in their time – less, because it lacked the intricate design work and imposing grandeur; more, because it was so out of place that it could only be magical, as defiant and unique as the man who had built it. Boldly it shone in the sun's glorious light-

"Hang on a minute," Lucy started. In spite of that same sun's glow – or perhaps even because of it – chill dread was rising from her stomach. "I thought the Gate only worked during eclipses."

"What? Who told you that?"

Zeref sounded outright offended by the objection, and she couldn't help growing defensive. "Everyone did! Plus, you know, it's in the name!"

"How does 'Gate of Time' imply that it needs an eclipse to work?"

"It's not called the Gate of Time! It's called the Eclipse Gate!"

"I think I know what my own invention is called, thank you very much. Besides, why would I build a device with such an obvious design flaw?"

"So… it works all the time?"

"Of course it does!"

"Lucy has a point, though," Yukino joined in. "That's not what we were told at all."

"Well, you were also not told that I made the Gate, and thus invented time travel, so you're clearly not a reliable source of information," Zeref countered. "I would listen to the person who built it, if I were you. I can open it for you now with no problem at all."

Lucy and Yukino exchanged glances. "I suppose you'll tell us that you don't need the zodiac keys either…"

"Need the what now?"

"How about magical energy?" Lucy tried. "In our time, the Eclipse Gate needed to steal magic from thousands of mages to be able to open…"

"Oh, that. Well, it doesn't need as much as you're probably thinking, but it does need some…" He shuffled over to the Gate, rummaged around in the grass behind it, and lifted up a pipe that had been clumsily painted green for camouflage. One end was attached to the base of the Gate, while the other snaked away in the direction of the city. In a whisper, he continued, "There's a big crystal power source underneath the Academy that I'm not supposed to know about."

"That's stealing," Lucy told him flatly. "I can totally see why they exiled you to a field. Also, did I call you innocent earlier? I must have meant 'quintessential prototype villain'."

Yukino, however, had other concerns. "Will it still have enough power to activate the Gate?"

"Sure. As long as no one else is using it, I calculated that there would be enough magic to open it twice before it dies – once today, and once tomorrow, thus allowing tomorrow's me to walk into today and present our findings to the Academy. I opened it once, and got you two instead. I can open it once more, and as long as it's opened from your end too, where it has its own power source, I see no reason why it wouldn't connect back to that time."

"Arcadios and the others are set to re-open the Gate once we've been gone for five minutes, as they count it," Lucy confirmed.

"That should be fine, then."

"Still…" Lucy shook her head. She couldn't believe she was hesitating, when she had finally reached the end of this ridiculous quest, but… "If you use the last of your magic reserves to send us back, you won't be able to prove to the Academy that you invented time travel."

"Of course I will. You're going to come with me right now and talk to them before you go!"

"What?" she yelped, immediately regretting her moment of weakness. "No, we're not! I have to get Yukino home before anything else goes wrong – 'wrong' being anything from your buddies in the Academy deciding to imprison and torture us for knowledge of the future, to your buddies in the Academy deciding to imprison and torture us for being your accomplices in stealing their magic reserves!"

Zeref and Lucy glared at each other. Then, crossly, the boy folded his arms. "You know, this sort of betrayal is exactly what makes innocent young scholars go evil."

"First of all, no, it's not. You'll get over it. You're the one who said that a true scholar shouldn't be dissuaded by minor setbacks. And secondly… I don't think it's supposed to happen, Zeref. You're famous for a lot of things, but inventing time travel isn't one of them – and to be honest, judging by the headaches this one has already given me, spreading awareness of convoluted timelines will not improve the world any. Maybe the reason why no one knows you made a time machine is precisely because Yukino and I didn't go to the Academy with you. It would explain everything."

"Not quite everything…" he voiced doubtfully.

"Yes, it would. I'm sorry, Zeref, but we need to go back to the future straight away. You could even say it has already happened."

"We don't know if that's how time works!"

"Which is precisely why we have to play it safe!"

Their eyes locked again. Lucy stared deep into that shining blackness, that paradoxical light. This was the boy who would grow up to be the most feared man in history, but for now he only nodded and said, "Alright, I'll help you get straight home."

"Thank you," she said, and meant it. At her side, Yukino echoed the words. As she watched the white-and-black-robed boy approach the Eclipse Gate, she resolved to find out just what had happened to crush his creativity and kindness. If any trace of this boy still existed in the future, she would find him, and ask him why the world was so unjust.

While she was thinking, Yukino, whose true curiosity was beginning to peek through her crumbling façade of dispassion, inquired, "What happens if no one opens the Gate from the other side?"

"No idea," Zeref replied promptly.

Lucy gave him a pointed look.

"Don't worry, it's not going to happen," he assured them. "When I open the Gate, it will connect to another point along its timeline when the Gate was or will be opened, determined by a complicated mix of time, magic, chaos theory, the stability of the inter-planar convergence, and most importantly, intent."

"That… all sounds rather uncertain."

"I haven't had time to sit down and calculate the precise form each element takes in the equation yet, alright?" he retorted, affronted. "Still, even if your friends in your own time don't open it, it'll just connect to another time when it opened. Probably a few weeks from now when future-me has found another power source and is running some more tests. It's perfectly safe."

"What if there isn't another time to pair it with, though?" Lucy persisted. "What if the Gate is destroyed after it has been opened an odd number of times?"

"Hmm… interesting question. Let's just say that it's probably best not to let that happen… Don't worry, though. This Gate is going to be open all the time now I know that it works, and it's basically indestructible. That's what happens when you invent your own magic-resistant compound strong enough to withstand the temporal vortex. It's a perfectly reasonable precaution to take, really – unlike some fools, who will happily set up their pointlessly fragile experiments in my clearly labelled blast zone and then blame me for running 'an experiment that endangers the lives of everyone in the building, blah blah blah'-"

"Zeref?"

"Yes?"

"Open the Gate before I strangle you with my bare hands."

"Fiiiiiine."

The boy turned his attention back to the Eclipse Gate. Now that Lucy considered it, it really did look different from the version of the Gate that existed in their time. The size was right, but it was nowhere near as elaborate. The intricate mechanism which only the twelve zodiac keys had been able to unlock was entirely absent. Gold and silver patterns had given the Gate of their age an air appropriate for a palace, and compared to it, this one looked less elegant, less beautiful, unfinished.

Then again, to the boy who had built it, the beauty of its very existence would no doubt put any level of superficial decoration to shame.

Oh, he was infuriating, and she did not envy the professors who had to deal with him on a daily basis, but as she watched him humming to himself as he manipulated the magic of the Eclipse Gate for their sake, she actually thought she was going to miss him a little.

"There we go," he chirped, as a tiny crack of light appeared between the towering doors. At first, it was barely visible, but she knew how bright the space hidden within truly was. Those unadorned doors were a maw opening to unleash the sun it had swallowed.

Yukino began walking towards it, but Lucy found herself hesitating.

"What's wrong?" Zeref asked, head tilted to one side, as if the answer were written sideways along her cheeks. "It's perfectly safe. Probably. I've not tried it yet, but you have, and you made it through just fine."

"It's not that." She shook her head. "It's, uh… thanks for trying to be sympathetic towards Yukino. You really do need to think about when to stop talking, but I appreciate you making the effort to be sympathetic, and for helping us get home."

"That's okay," he shrugged, looking baffled. "I'm not sure why you'd expect me not to feel sorry for her after what happened to her sister, but sure."

Because I can't imagine the you who sanctioned Deliora's rampage feeling sorry about anyone, she thought. Still, she was careful not to let a trace of that grim sentiment show on her face as she said, "Thanks. Good luck with your research. Try not to do anything too evil in the future."

"I won't, don't worry!" he called back cheerfully.

You will, she thought morosely, but she couldn't bring herself to say that, either. Instead, with a wave, she turned and followed Yukino into the light.

Sometimes, Lucy thought, the most successful missions were the ones where nothing changed.

Maybe she and Yukino hadn't defeated another dark guild. Maybe she hadn't won the Grand Magic Games or restored Fairy Tail's reputation. Maybe she was returning home with nothing to show for her adventure; no new magic or ally or treasure or peace treaty.

But as the light merged into the palace courtyard, and she found with some surprise that she'd managed to stay conscious this time; as the drifting shapes that had prised their way through her closed eyelids formed into the solid, temporally fixed, logic-obeying forms of her own dimension – and she let out the breath she had been holding, because this was the present she had left – she thought that maybe, that was for the best.

Maybe the world would have been better if they'd killed Zeref, but she wasn't sure that she wanted a better world. This was the present which contained a guild brought together by tragedy and black magic, building the warmest of families from a collection of broken souls. Yes, danger and dark mages also dwelled here, but they could take them on together – and deliver justice to those who deserved it, not innocent children who had yet to do anything wrong.

No, she had never been so relieved to find that things hadn't changed. Her beloved present was safe.

She could finally, finally let out the breath she had been holding… only to choke on it, as a bright voice piped up from behind her.

"Hey, who built a palace on top of my Gate of Time?"