Time for a Change

By CrimsonStarbird

-Future-

It wasn't the sudden snap Zeref had come to associate with death flinging him back to the mortal realm. Nor was it a normal awakening from sleep – a moment of peace followed by an age of dread, as the dreams dissolved and he was forced to remember who and why he was.

No, it was slow and it was painful, and he didn't want to go. He clung to the darkness and hoped the tiresome tug of life would pass him by.

Far beyond his void-soaked realm, someone was speaking in a shrill voice. "Maybe next time I tell you we need someone with healing magic, you'll actually listen to me!"

"Maybe if you had spent less time screwing with the space-time continuum and more time doing useful research, you could have learnt healing magic yourself," came an unimpressed response.

"It's on my to-do list!" the first voice protested. "Actually, that's an interesting point. You can't use ordinary healing magic on yourself, so I wonder if it's possible to use it on a past or future version of yourself. If I set out to test that, I could research the laws of time travel and learn healing magic at the same time!"

"You know, most people don't have to use hitherto unexplored areas of research as a justification for learning life-saving magic," sighed the second. "They just, you know, do it."

"Ah, but how boring would the world be if I were like most people?" the first countered.

"I don't know, a boring world is sounding pretty good to me right now…"

The serenity of the darkness wasn't coming back, so it was with great reluctance that Zeref gave up waiting and tried to move. At once, the bickering voices cut off. With the instinct of the hunted deer, he sensed more than saw countless pairs of eyes turn to him, sparking palpitations in his heart and a dryness in his throat that not even seven dragons had been able to invoke.

"How are you feeling?" a gentle voice asked.

He opened bleary eyes, and winced as a too-bright world swam into view, populated by a crowd of people uncomfortably close to him. He recognized Natsu at once, watching him uncertainly from the front of the group. His past self was clinging to Natsu's hand, though he seemed – curious? Excited? He couldn't imagine either of those expressions upon his own face, and so he wasn't quite sure how to interpret what he was seeing. The Heartfilia mage's hand rested on his younger self's shoulder. She seemed more worried than excited, just as she ought to be. He was dangerous. Too dangerous.

"Are you in any pain?" the kind voice asked again, and he realized belatedly that he recognized its owner, too. Kneeling beside him was a girl he had met once in passing, four hundred years ago, when she'd been even younger than she was now.

At that, the panic finally became enough to stir his lethargic mind into action. He pushed her away, scrambling back from the crowd, hands flying to his head as if to hold down the lid of some demented jack-in-the-box. "Get away from me!" he tried to shriek; it came out as a scratchy whisper.

"It's alright," Wendy assured him. "It's safe, I promise."

It wasn't. She didn't understand. He shrunk away from her, from all of them, but there were too many well-intentioned strangers and they were far, far too close. Whimpering, he curled into himself and waited, terrified, for the curse to hit. Waited for it to turn his concern for them into derision – or into a slaughter.

Waited, and waited… and waited.

His thoughts remained static, his magic dormant.

He was still waiting when little hands pressed against his own, slowly prying his fingers away from his cheeks. That soft resonance, settling down upon him like a warm blanket, was the only thing stopping him from bolting as his younger self stared searchingly into his eyes. He wondered what this naïve version of himself was hoping to find there. He wondered why he was still bothering to look, when he had already been disappointed once.

On the contrary, the boy was beaming as he stepped away again. "Looks fine to me," he reported over his shoulder, and even more astonishingly, he then turned back to grin at Zeref. "Told you I could find a way to do it."

"Do… what?"

"Break your curse, of course."

Had anyone else said those words, he would have rejected them immediately, but the smugness in them – that enviable certainty – gave him pause. He wondered at the quietness in his head. It was too much to hope for, wasn't it? Too much to hope that the stillness wasn't just the curse lulling him into a false sense of security. Too much to hope that those gathered around him didn't live only because of the confusion of his emotions, but because of some new inability to kill…

"How?" he whispered.

"Simple, really," the boy grinned. "It's the Curse of Contradiction. To get rid of it for good, all you had to do was want to keep it forever."

Zeref stared and didn't understand.

"Well, it only worked because you didn't know it was going to," the boy amended. "You couldn't have realized the answer yourself. If you knew that you were only accepting the curse to make it go away, it wouldn't have truly contradicted itself, and thus working out the solution would have precluded you from ever reaching it… Fortunately for you, you were a genius when you were eight years old too. I figured that if I could get you to accept the curse and all its terrible consequences in return for the power to protect Natsu, it would be forced to destroy itself."

Then, without warning, the boy cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted to the heavens above. "See, Time? This is how you're supposed to deal with paradoxes! Get yourself some consistent laws already so that I can manipulate them in clever ways!"

Lucy flicked him on the forehead.

Still Zeref stared; still he was as silent as the voices in his head. Nothing stirred in the graveyard of contradictions. When a sound finally did escape his lips, it was a plaintive mewl; disbelief and hope and surrender too primal to be put into words.

Then the shadows swirled around him, and the Black Mage fled the scene.

Eight-year-old Zeref stared at the place where his future self had vanished with his hands on his hips. "Honestly," he reprimanded. "That man has no people skills."

Lucy rolled her eyes. "You're one to talk. I've never seen anyone try to comfort someone else by lauding their own achievements before."

"Well, he is me, so…"

"Where'd he go?" Natsu interrupted, before Lucy could open her mouth again. Which, in retrospect, was probably for the best.

The boy hummed in consideration. "Not far. I can still feel the resonance between our magic. He could be on the other side of the world by now if he wanted to be – well, he couldn't, because he never got round to inventing intercontinental teleportation, but he could be in another city – and he's still hanging around in this one, so he probably doesn't want to be as alone as he thinks he does."

Natsu blinked once. "Why'd he run off, then?"

"Because…" The boy tailed off, looking questioningly at Lucy. When she frowned, puzzled by his actions, he ventured, "I think… I think you might be better at understanding this sort of thing than me."

This time, Lucy couldn't stop herself from smiling. "Well, I can't say for certain, but… I get the impression that this version of you has defined himself by his curse for a very long time. Now that he no longer has that… maybe he doesn't know what he's supposed to do any more."

"So, we need to go tell him!"

"When you say we…" Lucy shot Natsu a pointed glance.

Startled, the Dragon Slayer stepped back, raising his hands as if to ward them off. "Whoa, now hang on a minute. I might have comforted the little one, but I draw the line at doing the big one!"

"Natsu Dragneel," Lucy growled. "You may be the most oblivious human being I have ever met, but I fail to believe that anyone, let alone someone with enhanced hearing and draconic eyesight, could possibly have missed what your brother just did for you-"

"But that's just it!" Natsu protested. "How the heck am I supposed to live up to that?"

"You don't have to live up to anything," Zeref piped up from between them, smiling with that beautiful honesty his older self had long since forgotten. "You just have to… live. That's all we ever wanted for you."

Uncomfortable, Natsu gazed at the ground and said nothing.

"Come on," Lucy urged him gently. "Let's go and see if he'll be more willing to talk when there's no one else around."

At last, Natsu nodded, and the three of them slipped away from the crowd.

They found him amongst the rubble.

There, in the dust and the dirt, upon ground churned up by one dragon's tail and wiped of life by the breath of another, the Black Mage sat amidst devastation that, for the first time in four hundred years, had not been his doing. Evacuated buildings groaned as they slumped into more comfortable positions. Patches of half-buried embers twinkled along both sides of the street like candles lit in remembrance. At the end of the road, the beautiful view of the palace was blocked by the hulking corpse of a monster, never to wreak its violent madness upon humanity again.

Zeref saw none of this. The city continued to crumble around him, but no tectonic shift could be as monumental as the shift that had occurred for him alone. He stared at his finger – or, more precisely, at the bead of blood growing at the tip of it.

As they approached, Lucy saw him wipe the blood on his robes, and then return to staring as the bead began to swell once more.

"It won't stop," he whispered, perplexed. "It just… it won't stop."

"Honestly," Lucy sighed. Pulling a first aid kit from her bag, she found a plaster and pressed it swiftly across the cut before he could react. "There. I made it stop."

That hunted gaze swept up to her, caught somewhere between apprehension and outright fear.

"I'm Lucy," she added, deciding that even if he knew that already, she might as well be polite. "I take it you know Natsu and, uh, little-you already."

This, at least, had the advantage of turning his unnerving stare to the others instead. Little Zeref had managed to wrangle himself a ride on Natsu's shoulders. He was currently draped across his brother's head like a second black-and-white scarf, and looking rather pleased with himself. By contrast, Natsu's clear apprehension about this entire situation was second only to that of the elder Zeref. His hands twisted around the ends of his scarf.

Before Lucy could speak again, Natsu blurted out, "I'm sorry. For… not being able to remember you. I wish I could." He tried to glance away, but found it too difficult with the extra weight, so he settled for letting his gaze drop instead. "Thanks, I guess."

The younger Zeref hummed happily from his shoulders. The older one continued staring in silence. If anything, he seemed more frightened than before.

"Maybe we could…" Natsu tried again, before tailing off. "Maybe… I dunno, if you wanted…"

Guessing what her usually straightforward friend was struggling to say, Lucy bit back a smile and decided to approach it from another angle. "So, how do you feel?"

"I don't know," Zeref whispered. He pressed his fingertips to his forehead, and then, as if they had not brought the solace he was seeking, drew them slowly away again. "It's so… quiet. I used to feel everything at once, and now… I feel nothing at all. I thought everything would finally become clear when the curse was broken, but I don't know how to act or what to do."

"Well, fortunately for you," past-Zeref piped up, "you've got me, and I've got loads of ideas." Extracting a notebook seemingly from thin air, he dangled it in front of Natsu's face. "Pass this to the other me, please."

Natsu took it, but rather than handing it over, he flipped it open. Curious, Lucy peered in from the side. "What's this?"

"My to-do list. Our to-do list. By all accounts, he's been rather lax when it comes to crossing things off it, but better late than never, right?"

The first two items on the list, bring Natsu back to life and invent time travel, had been crossed through. The remainder was a mix of items Lucy understood (empirically determine the laws of time; invent an intercontinental teleportation spell) and those she wasn't convinced he hadn't made up to make himself look smart (prove the Lori-Loxley coefficient; find the fifth exception to the Law of Elemental Configuration). What really caught her attention, though, was the line squeezed onto the top of the list in still-wet ink: learn healing magic.

Even that wasn't to remain the most important aim for long, though, as Natsu uncapped the pen and added to the bottom: go on a Hundred-Year-Quest with Natsu.

Only then did he hand it over, grinning. "How's that?"

Zeref's worried frown did not lessen as he scanned down the list, however. If anything, when he read Natsu's addition, it only deepened into helplessness. "I… I don't even know what that means…"

Back within his area of expertise, Natsu visibly brightened. "It's a really tough mission they only give to the strongest mages! I've always wanted to do one!"

Lucy rolled her eyes. "You know the Master won't let you go on one of those. You're not even S-Class yet."

"Sure he will, if me and Zeref go together! The man just beat seven dragons, Luce! He can take any job he likes!"

"Oh, I see it now. You want Zeref to go on this super-difficult mission with you so that he can do all the hard work and you can take all the credit."

"No, I wanna go on this super-difficult mission so I can prove I'm just as strong as he is!" At her raised eyebrow, he argued, "Look, that thing he did with the dragons was really cool, okay? I want a chance to be that cool!"

"I think it sounds like fun!" the younger Zeref volunteered.

"I don't know…" doubted the other, his whisper a jarring contrast to the boundless enthusiasm of his brother and his younger self. "It doesn't sound like the kind of thing I usually do…"

"Well then, time for a change!" past-Zeref declared.

Lucy gave a deliberate cough. "Putting aside the question of stupidly dangerous missions for a moment – and preferably forever – I think the best thing about that to-do list of yours is that you can research magic from pretty much anywhere. In or around our guild, for example. It'd be good to get to know you better. And to hear some embarrassing stories about Natsu as a baby."

"Oh, we've got loads of those!" young Zeref exclaimed, his eyes alight, right before Natsu clamped a hand over his mouth.

"I'm sure there'll be lots you want to do, once you've had the chance to sit down and think about it," Lucy continued. "Only you can decide who you want to be going forward. It doesn't matter what Natsu thinks, and it doesn't matter what your past self thinks either. You're free to decide for yourself. But, at the same time… if you're looking for ideas, I think sticking with your family might be a good place to start. Natsu and I would be glad to have you around."

Zeref stared at his past self's notebook, and then at his audience, and then back at the notebook. "It doesn't matter what I decide in the end, though, does it?"

"Why not?" his younger self responded.

"Because none of this will happen anyway."

A groan escaped Lucy's lips as she rounded on the boy on Natsu's shoulders. "Okay, how have you screwed up the space-time continuum this time?"

"I don't know!" he protested. "I haven't even touched my time machine since I got here, I swear!"

"Not yet," the older Zeref said flatly. "But once you go back to your own time, this entire present will come undone."

"We don't know that's how time travel works…"

"There's no other way it can work. We can't have a future with Natsu in it if you don't bring him back to life."

"Who says I'm not bringing him back to life?" past-Zeref retorted, offended.

"You did. When the dragons first invaded."

"Oh, don't worry about that. I was only saying that to get you to think about what Natsu meant to you, and thus trick you into breaking the curse yourself. Obviously I'm going to go back and resurrect him. I'm you, remember? In what universe would either of us ever willingly give him up?"

"But…" Zeref seemed to draw back in on himself, shuddering against the chill of the burnt-out night. "You can't… you can't possibly choose to go back to that…"

"Sure I can. You endured it, therefore I can too."

A frightened breath. "I didn't endure it. Not well… not at all. You don't understand what it's like. You can't… you can't just accept that fate…"

His younger self considered this for a moment. "Natsu, put me down, please." When he was on his own two feet once more, he marched over to his other self, seized the front of his robes, and gave him a vigorous shake. "Has living for four centuries made you senile, or something?" he shouted. "Don't you remember what happened on the day our village burnt down?"

"Of course I do," came the short response, four words containing more emotion than he had displayed in the rest of the battle's aftermath put together.

"We promised to do anything to bring him back," the boy contended. "I don't know about you, but I meant it. Anything. Maybe you haven't noticed, but this falls quite neatly into that category. Besides, I can imagine far worse outcomes than this, like the magic taking my life in return for his, because then I'd never get to meet him! At least this way I know it's going to work out okay, in four hundred years or so."

It was Natsu who spoke up next, uncomfortable. "I told you, I don't want you to go through all that because of me…"

"Oh, shush," the boy said, and there was no denying the fondness in his voice. "If not even the laws of magic can stop me, what on earth makes you think you'll be able to? Besides, it doesn't have to be all about you, if you don't want. From what I've heard, a lot of this future you seem quite keen on is dependent on me becoming cursed. Who knows what kind of world you'll end up with if I don't go back?"

Lucy pointed out, "But even if you do go back, the present will change anyway, won't it? There's no way you'll be able to do exactly what the other you did. You know all sorts of things that he didn't – how to break the Curse of Contradiction, for one thing, and you said yourself that knowing the cure would make it fail!"

"Oh, I figured that one out ages ago," past-Zeref replied, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture that immediately erased all the cuteness points he had been racking up in his defence of Natsu's existence. "It's obvious, isn't it?"

"Well, I'm sorry for not being a genius," Lucy snarked.

"You don't have to apologize for that," he shrugged. "Most people aren't. It's just something that those of us who are have to learn to deal with."

After the tension of the apocalyptic battle, it felt so good to just be able to glower at him. The boy didn't share her sentimentality, if the way he gulped and moved swiftly on was any indication. "As it turns out, time travel is far simpler than I thought. The reason why future-me can't remember any of this isn't because of parallel timelines, or anything clever like that. It's because future-me is going to erase those memories from me-me before I go back in time."

"Huh." Lucy mulled this over. "You're right, that is anticlimactic."

If the aghast expression on Natsu's face was any indication, he couldn't have agreed less. "So you won't even know for sure that you'll get to meet me one day? You've got to go through all that not even knowing-"

"First of all, it's the only way to preserve this ending. It'll guarantee that I make the same decisions I did the first time round… and I know it'll work, because it already has," the boy added, nodding towards his older self. "And secondly, I will know for sure, because I'm a genius and I never doubted that I was going to succeed. All I'll forget is how bloody long it took me to achieve it… which, quite frankly, will be a blessing."

"It didn't take as long as you're thinking," objected the older Zeref. Four hundred years had not quite been enough to subdue that part of him. "It's complicated. There's more time travel involved."

"Oh? Tell me! Or… on second thoughts, there's no need, since I won't remember it anyway. I'll figure it out on my own soon enough."

"Your mind is made up, then?"

"Of course." Yawning, as if his decision was so self-evident that no one could possibly refute it, he continued, "I'd best be off, then. Being the first person to travel to the future is fun and all, but to be quite frank, if I want to be attacked by dragons, I can do that in my own time. Besides, where will the future be without my important magical discoveries?"

"Hang on a minute, kiddo," Lucy interrupted.

"What now?"

"Well, I might be wrong, since I'm not a genius and all… but my understanding was that the Eclipse Gate needs to be opened from both sides in order to create a path through time."

"Yes. So?"

"Then tell me, O Great Prodigy – when you very sensibly decided to follow us to the present, did you think to send a message asking one of your colleagues to re-open the Gate in a day or so?"

"…Ah."

Natsu blinked. "So, you're stuck here?"

"Umm…"

"Not to mention that the Eclipse Gate is clearly malfunctioning," the older Zeref spoke up quietly. "Where did the dragons come from?"

His younger self winced. "I was hoping you would be able to explain that." The two of them exchanged glances. "I thought it might have been the result of an unpaired opening – a one-off malfunction that drew in the closest living creatures from some random time period, which happened to be murderous dragons from the distant past. But there can only ever be one unpaired opening, which implies that I can't get back home unless someone does happen to open it from the other side…"

"Does it not also imply that the Gate will be destroyed? And yet it still stands."

The boy shrugged helplessly. "There's no time frame on that, though. The Gate was always going to be destroyed – by the passage of time, if nothing else. Besides, there's no reason why there couldn't be more paired openings in the future before the date of its destruction. That doesn't give us any new information."

Zeref thought for a moment, and then suggested, "What if we destroyed the Gate?"

"But- that's my Gate of Time! I spent ages building that! We can't destroy it!"

"We no longer need it. It has served its purpose."

The boy grumbled something unintelligible.

When it seemed that no one else was going to point out the blindingly obvious, Lucy stepped up. "Umm, while I am definitely in favour of destroying the time machine before anyone else has a go at ending human civilization with it, I fail to see how doing so would help you get back to your own time."

"No, Big Me has a point," the younger one mused. "The temporal vortex is highly unstable, which is why it needs to be tethered at both ends for someone to pass through it safely. The physical Gate itself has to be resistant to those forces in order to fix it in place."

Without missing a beat, the other picked up, "If we extracted the resistant component from its magical field and used it to reinforce the path rather than the entrance-"

"The Gate itself would burn out," little Zeref pointed out.

"-but we might be able to stabilize the way for long enough to force it open from this side alone."

"Right," Natsu said weakly, but for the first time, neither of his brothers were looking at him.

The younger asked of the older, "How?"

Flipping to the next blank page of his younger self's notebook without even realizing he was doing it, Zeref said, "We start by reverse-engineering the magical field around the Gate-"

"-project it down the temporal axis-"

"-bounded by the spatial field at the other end-"

"-solve for the invariants-"

"-transform back into real space-"

"-and we can get this to work!" they both exclaimed at the same time. The older one ripped half the remaining papers from the notepad and handed them to his past self. "I'll invert the field."

"I'll calculate the spatiotemporal transformation matrix," the other agreed.

The ruined street was filled with the sound of twin pens scratching on paper, and that was that for a very long time.

Lucy looked at Natsu. Natsu looked at Lucy.

"Umm," Lucy ventured.

There was no response.

She tried again. "Is there anything we can do to help?"

Nothing.

"Should we give 'em some space?" Natsu wondered.

"Honestly, I don't think they'd notice whether we did or not," Lucy sighed. "Are you sure you're related to those two?"

To Lucy's surprise, Natsu was silent for a good while, thinking it over with uncharacteristic consideration. "No," he admitted. "But the more I'm around him, the more I feel it's supposed to be this way. I wanna find out more about my past, Luce. I wanna get to know my brother. Do you think he'll come to Fairy Tail?"

"I don't know." She chose to answer honestly, even though she knew it wasn't what her best friend wanted to hear. "I imagine our guild will be a bit much for him at first, and I'm sure the Council will have something to say about it either way. Still, I expect he'll try and come to Magnolia – and if he doesn't, we'll make sure to visit him a lot. Being around you is probably the best thing for him while he's still figuring out who he wants to be. You're a good influence, Natsu, and I think you're going to be a great brother, too."

His fingers twisted awkwardly in the ends of his scarf, but Lucy didn't miss the way his eyes had brightened, just a little. She knew he was every bit as apprehensive about this new situation as Zeref. It wasn't so much that Natsu hid it better as that it was an entirely alien feeling for him, and she did not quite know how to interpret his subdued demeanour.

Seeing him in that moment, though, Lucy knew he was going to be okay.

And as she glanced over at the two Zerefs, watching as the elder ripped off a page and passed it to the younger with an instruction to check the arithmetic, and it took the younger less than three seconds to circle an error and hand it back (provoking an uttered oath that had even his younger self looking at him reproachfully), both of them working in harmony for the sake of the one person they loved above all else, she had a feeling that they were going to be okay, too.

Crocus would heal, in time.

Yukino's gaze swept across the battered courtyard walls and fallen palace spires, the lines of smashed windows and melted roofs stretching out like spokes across the city, and it wasn't anguish that crossed her mind, but hope. She had seen the army and the guild mages working together to evacuate the city. She had seen – had joined – the mages who had jumped between Arcadios and the dragons he had accidentally unleashed, never mind that they were the very same mages who had opposed his murderous plan.

Buildings could be rebuilt; the glory of the capital city could be forged anew. Yet the alliances forged amidst that despair, the unity of mages and non-mages, would continue to endure long after all traces of the dragon apocalypse had been banished from the land.

There were some things, though, that could not be so easily healed, and one of them was the Colonel still slumped against the wall behind her.

He wasn't hurt. Not physically, at any rate. He was, however, the only person in the whole city who hadn't understood that the battle was won. Fear haunted his wide-eyed stare. No matter how much his fingers trembled, she had not been able to prise them from the hilt of his sword.

"How could I have done this?" he breathed. "My city… my people…"

"It was an accident," Yukino told him firmly. "We all know that. Not even Zeref knew what would happen when the Eclipse Gate opened again."

"But I was willing to take that risk! I gambled with everyone's lives, and I would have lost them too, if not for… for him…" There were no tears in his eyes, only pain. "All I wanted was for the princess to be able to grow up with her mother…"

Yukino crouched down in front of him, still with the same unhesitant conviction that had first frightened and then reassured Lucy. "Did Princess Hisui know what you were planning?"

"She… she supported the plan to travel back in time and stop Zeref…"

"But she didn't know why you were so desperate to risk everything, did she?"

The veteran soldier could not quite meet her eyes. "No."

"You already knew how she'd feel about that. Instead, you told her it was necessary to protect the entire kingdom, because you knew that was the only way to win her support." His silence told her everything she needed to know, and she exhaled softly. "Princess Hisui is a fine woman, and a wonderful heir to the throne. I have no doubt that Queen Alyse would feel the same. I know that you were only doing what you thought was right, but… if that's the case, then it's not about Hisui at all. It's all about you."

She remembered everything Lucy and the young Zeref had said to her, and she couldn't help smiling. "Think about what those you are trying to help would want – for themselves, for the world, and for you. Princess Hisui is lucky to have a companion and friend as loyal as you. Don't throw that away."

"Perhaps there is some wisdom in your words," the soldier admitted. "I do not know how I can-"

Yukino did not hear the end of Arcadios's doubts, however, as a hand came crashing down on her shoulder. She flinched, reaching first for absent keys, and then an absent sword, and paused only when a voice rang out close to her ear: "Oi, Angel! How'd you get out, huh?"

It wasn't familiarity that relaxed her hand, for she was sure she had never heard that voice before in her life. There was a jovial comradery in it, though – one that assured her she wasn't under attack.

That wasn't enough to stop Arcadios from scrambling to his feet, drawing his sword in one slick motion. "Unhand her at once, you cur!"

The threat was unnecessary. No sooner had Yukino turned to inspect the newcomer than he released her, stepping quickly back. "Sorry," he grunted. "Thought you were someone else."

"That's alright," she said automatically. Sure enough, he appeared far too wild to be any acquaintance of hers. Beneath unruly dark hair, his ears had the familiar points of a Dragon Slayer, while a vertical scar sealed one eye permanently shut. The fur-trimmed coat he wore might have introduced some respectability into his image, if not for the fact that he was also wearing huge, clunky handcuffs. A chain trailed from them to the hands of a nearby Rune Knight, who gave it a deliberate tug, which he ignored.

The stranger frowned as he studied Yukino. "Man, you really do smell alike," he remarked. "Sound it, too. You got a sister, or something?"

Perhaps her polite smile became a little harder to maintain at that, but she answered the query nonetheless. "I had an older sister, but she died a long time ago."

"That's a coincidence. The one I know has a younger sister who died a long time ago."

"What…?"

"Come along, criminal!" the Rune Knight snapped, tugging the chain once more.

"Alright, alright, I'm coming," he muttered. "See you round, Not-Angel."

Despite her best efforts to dismiss the strange encounter, Yukino found herself watching the Dragon Slayer until he was out of sight. It didn't mean anything. It was a simple case of mistaken identity, nothing more. Hers was far from the only broken family in the world. And besides, she knew better than to hope. She had hoped when she first heard of the Tower of Heaven's fall, and it had only made the truth hit ten times as hard. And yet…

She was stronger now. She wouldn't lose sight of the realization she had reached in the past no matter what. And as long as she held onto that, wasn't she allowed to hope, as Zeref had done for four hundred years? Wasn't she allowed to do everything she could? Couldn't she, at the very least, find out who that stranger was, and inquire after his friend?

"Who was that man?" she asked of Arcadios.

The Colonel re-sheathed his sword with a reluctant screech of metal. "Some foul criminal whom the Rune Knights insisted on temporarily releasing in order to help fight the dragons."

Yukino's lips thinned. "Were it not for Lucy's guidance, I would have become a criminal too, tonight. And I am sure you would not hesitate to label Zeref the same way – yet if he had been imprisoned this night, we would both have perished. You ought not to judge someone when you do not know their circumstances."

The soldier dropped his gaze again, conceding her point. "And I suppose I will be the same, after today."

"What do you mean?"

"I intend to turn myself in. I will take full responsibility for the destruction of the city and the harm suffered by its inhabitants."

"Today was an accident," Yukino repeated. "I have no doubt that the King and the citizens will understand that. However, I believe there are two people to whom you must apologize, after the events of today. First of all, Princess Hisui has a right to know what you tried to do."

"I know," the Colonel admitted, with a terse nod. "And the other…?"

"Zeref."

Arcadios's eyes darkened.

She persisted, "While the fact remains that he has done some awful things, there is far more to him than you can imagine, Colonel. I am not asking you to immediately forgive all he has done, only that you listen to him, truly listen, before you cast him out again. Tonight, he saved the city – and perhaps the entire kingdom – from your mistake. For that alone, does he not deserve your consideration?"

"He does," he conceded. "I will shame the Princess no longer. I will apologize for my actions towards his younger self, and allow him the chance to explain himself."

"Good," a new voice piped up cheerfully. "It's quite a long story, though, so it'll have to wait. For now, do you mind if we come through and open the Gate of Time again?"

Yukino froze. Arcadios did the same, with the added effect of looking like someone had slapped him with a wet fish.

Eight-year-old Zeref glanced between them brightly, waiting for a response, and when one had still not materialized three seconds later, he let out a huff. "Yeah, I don't know why I'm asking for permission either. It's my Gate! Plus, I built it here long before you lot went and stuck a palace on top of it!" He shuffled his feet sulkily. "But Lucy said I had to ask permission. And Natsu said I had to do what Lucy said."

"Are- are you sure opening it again is wise?" Arcadios said weakly.

"Oh, don't worry, it'll be perfectly safe. Me and future-me have come up with a way of making it self-destruct!"

For some reason, this did not reassure Arcadios.

"I need to go back to my own time before I accidentally destroy the future. Plus, I've got really important things to do four hundred years ago. If I don't rewrite the laws of life and death, no one else in that moronic Academy is going to do it, that's for sure. So, can we go through? Please?"

Arcadios shot Yukino a helpless look. Stifling a smile – one of many, since she'd met this boy – she gave him a small nod in return. They would offer Zeref their trust, and see what built from there.

"Very well," the Colonel said stiffly. "Do what you need to do. And… good luck."

"Thanks!" the boy chirped.

Yukino and Arcadios watched him dash back across the courtyard to where Lucy and Natsu waited with his other self. The older Zeref hung back from the others. Even at this distance, she could see his reluctance to draw close to anyone; she marked the way his black gaze darted from figure to scattered figure, twitching every time someone moved in his direction. He looked as far as possible from the god of death who had wreaked vengeance upon seven murderous dragons… and further still from the Black Mage who had ruled her nightmares in the years after Sorano was taken.

He had shielded them from the slaughter that day with no expectation that they would accept him because of it. Perhaps it was their turn to see what they could do for him.

"I suppose," Arcadios muttered, "that it might be worth giving him a chance."

"I think so too," she smiled.

They could have been done with this five minutes ago, but Zeref didn't want to let go of Natsu, and, increasingly, it seemed Natsu didn't want to let go of Zeref either. He had his arms tightly around the boy, and the boy's forehead rested on Natsu's chest, and although neither spoke, and neither moved, it seemed as though they were reciting the world to each other in every breath. Natsu's eyes were closed, but Lucy had been around her Dragon Slayer friend long enough to notice that his nostrils were flared to their fullest extent. She wondered what old memories the scent of his long-lost brother was awakening.

At first, the sight of them together had injected Lucy's heart with helium; now, the growing impatience was pulling it slowly back down to the ground. It didn't help that the Zeref of their time was decidedly not watching the two of them say their farewells. She wanted to say something to him, but she had no idea how to put her sentiment into words without making things worse.

At last, the boy wriggled out of Natsu's arms and gave him a tremulous smile. "I suppose I'll see you in four hundred years, then."

"I guess so. You know, I really think I'm gonna miss you."

"Oh, I'm not really going anywhere," the boy beamed, pointing to where his older self hovered awkwardly. "See? I'm right over there."

"But that version of you is weird," Natsu whispered.

"Don't worry, I had words with him," the boy whispered back conspiratorially. "Also, he won't tell you this, but he really likes sweet things, so feed him some marshmallows or something if he goes moody on you. And if he hasn't cracked intercontinental teleportation and taken you to Alvarez within six months, tell him off for me."

"Why would we wanna go to Alvarez?"

The boy opened his mouth, then shook his head firmly. "No, I promised I wouldn't spoil the surprise. It's the only way I could get him to tell me what he's been doing all this time. I must say, though, I'm rather looking forward to it at my end. The next four hundred years aren't going to be all bad – I've got some really cool stuff coming up!"

"I- I hope so," Natsu said, ruffling the boy's hair and stepping away. "I'll see you soon, then."

"You will!"

That settled, the boy turned away from his brother and approached his other self. "Let's do this."

"Are you sure this is what you want?" the older Zeref asked.

"Of course." With a wave of his small hand, intended to encapsulate the entire world around him, tangible and emotional, visible and unseen, the boy added, "The present still exists, therefore I have already done it."

"We don't know if time works that way…"

His younger self raised his chin. Enough life for both of them and more sparkled like diamonds in the depths of his eyes. "Well, you'd best get researching it, then, hadn't you?"

The tiniest of smiles touched Zeref's face. "I will." Gently, he raised his hand and pressed it to the boy's forehead. The boy's eyes slid shut. His breathing eased. That was the only warning they got before he collapsed, but it was more than enough warning for Natsu, who was already there, sweeping his brother up in his arms.

"Do you need me to open the Gate?" Lucy inquired.

"No. I will do it myself. I know how, now."

Lucy bit back her question about needing Celestial Spirit magic to open it; past-Zeref had already proven that little piece of knowledge to be an urban legend. Zeref retrieved the golden keys from the door and handed them to her for safekeeping. Then, he placed both his palms against the cool metal and focussed.

Under the pressure of his magic, the air around them first grew warm, and then started to roil with it. A hot breeze buffeted them from more directions than Lucy had thought existed before her own trip through spacetime. Unlike when Zeref had fought the dragons, there was nothing sinister about his presence – nothing dark, from which all the life in her recoiled. Regardless, the sheer magnitude of it was staggering, and the complexity of it doubly so. The Gate's foundations wailed in protest as he rewove the enchantments forged into the metal. What little of the courtyard wall had survived the dragons' rage finally bowed to the pressure of the one who had defeated them, and crumbled into dust.

All of a sudden, the Eclipse Gate's doors flew open. Rather than the blinding, yet comparably tame, light she remembered, the sight before her was a furious whirlpool of colour, writhing with madness and sparking with rage.

"Is it… safe?"

She didn't realize she had spoken out loud until Zeref shot her a half-annoyed, half-patronizing look that wasn't any less irritating on the face of a pseudo-fourteen-year-old than it was on a genuine child.

"Yes," said he. "But it will not remain so for long. Single-tethered vortices are highly unstable."

As if to prove his point, one side of the Eclipse Gate began to warp inwards. Lucy had never seen metal bubble like that before. Especially not magic-resistant titanium compounds. Still, Zeref strode forwards without hesitation and vanished into the magical storm, with Natsu close behind, and so – trying hard not to think about whether being part of a genius mage's temporal experiment was more or less dangerous than fighting seven dragons – she followed.

Wild magic sparked around her. Pain flashed from one side of her body to the other like it was caught in a demented ping-pong relay. Doing her best to ignore the way the ethereal vortex shuddered at her every step, she hurried after the others, and she had never been more relieved to see a boring old field in her life.

They emerged into same pastoral scene she remembered: the simple meadow, the city in the distance, and the world-changing, anomalous, defiant set of doors. This time, they remained open, revealing the agitated vortex within. If they closed, they wouldn't open again into her time… but Natsu clearly trusted that Zeref wouldn't let that happen, so she decided she would too. And if she happened to loiter within touching distance of the portal as Natsu followed Zeref out into the field proper… well, she could pass that off as generously giving the brothers some space.

"Set the other me down here," Zeref instructed. "We don't have much time."

Natsu complied, laying the unconscious form of his brother down in the grass with only a touch of reluctance. That should have been the end of it, but Zeref, without explanation, then drew upon his magic and began burning long, black marks into the field in an explosive arcane pattern.

"What are you doing?" Natsu wondered.

"I remember this," Zeref said, frowning in concentration. "I remember what I saw when I woke up from this. I know what I need to do next."

"Right. And… what is it that you need to do, exactly?"

"Fix the results of the experiment."

Natsu folded his arms. "Look, I get that you're probably not used to having anyone but yourself to talk to, but I'm not a genius of magic, so you're gonna have to slow things down a bit."

Lucy could have sworn there was a smile on the Black Mage's face as he finished scarring the field and moved on to altering the traces of magic in the air around them. "I am reproducing the conditions that would have occurred had my younger self's attempt to open the Eclipse Gate been a failure. Since he will not recall anything that happened, he will deduce, as I did, that the magic is incomplete. Or, more specifically, he will believe that it requires a further component to stabilize the temporal gateway."

"Celestial Spirit magic," Lucy realized.

"Correct."

"Oi," Natsu grumbled, punching her arm lightly. "Stop keeping up with him. You're making me look bad."

Rolling her eyes, she reflected, "You know, ever since Arcadios told me he needed me for the Eclipse Gate plan, I've been wondering what Celestial Spirit magic has to do with time travel. And it turns out, nothing whatsoever."

"Quite so," Zeref agreed. "I had never even heard of Celestial Spirit magic before my analysis of the results of this experiment led me to it. By the time I next opened the Gate, I was convinced that the zodiac keys were stabilizing the spacetime portal for me, when in truth they were entirely unnecessary to the proper functioning of the Gate."

"So, in short, Yukino and I were dragged into this mess for nothing," Lucy huffed.

If it had been the younger Zeref, she was sure he would have brushed it off as all having worked out in the end, or given some smug response about everything being pre-determined by time. This wasn't him, though, and although the physical similarities were clear, there was a full four hundred years of estrangement between them. It was those years that spoke as he dropped his gaze to the ground and murmured, "I guess so…"

Before she could work out how to take back her words – she had only spoken in jest, and she certainly hadn't meant for him to take it personally – Natsu clapped her cheerfully on the back. "Nah, Lucy's magic was definitely the right choice!"

"I think so too," Zeref agreed softly. "I do not think many other people would have given my past self the benefit of the doubt."

Surprise flittered across Natsu's features for a moment, quickly schooled into a serious expression that fooled no one. "Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly why. Definitely."

Lucy sighed. "What were you going to say, Natsu?"

"Well, let's face it, it is usually you who gets landed in this kind of mess, isn't it?"

"Because you always land me in it!" Lucy exploded, as visions of Mr Cursey and creepy dukes and maid outfits and just about every misadventure she had ever been on since teaming up with the enthusiastic Dragon Slayer flashed before her eyes. "And now there's two Dragneels doing it… can I just quit now?"

As Natsu sniggered at her despair, Zeref gave her an apologetic smile. "Not really… after all, this has already happened."

"Yeah, that sounds about right," she muttered, before a thought occurred to her. "Hang on, though. If you only know how to fudge the results of your experiment because you've already seen it done before… then how did you do it in the first place?"

"Good question," Zeref said. "I'll add it to my list."

Lucy folded her arms. "You know, the more I think about it, the more certain I am that time is screwing with us. Or, more specifically, with me. I mean, everyone else is doing it, so why should the space-time continuum miss out on all the fun?"

"Quite possibly," he agreed. "Still, I wouldn't think too hard about it, if I were you."

"Why? Because drawing attention to the paradox might cause the whole timeline to unravel?"

"No, not at all. If anything, I think we've proven that the timeline is rather stable against change, if indeed it can be changed at all. However, I have repeatedly been assured that unravelling the mysteries of time is my job, and I don't think my younger self would forgive me if I let you get there first."

Lucy laughed. "It's all yours, my friend."

"Is that what you're going to do next, then?" Natsu inquired. His voice sounded almost normal. Almost. Lucy knew him well enough to notice the buried disappointment, but she realized with a jolt that Zeref probably didn't.

"I think so," he was answering. "I owe it to my younger self… and besides, it does sound interesting."

Natsu tried a smile. "Oh, okay. That's good… it does seem like the kind of thing you'd enjoy, so…"

"Then again," Zeref continued thoughtfully, as if he hadn't heard his brother's words. "That kind of research will likely involve travelling to ancient libraries in exotic, abandoned and very dangerous places, and since I am no longer immortal, I suspect I will have to look for a guild mage or two to accompany me…"

"Hmm." Natsu gave him a suspicious look. "I don't suppose we're talking a Hundred-Year-Quest level of danger, are we?"

"I daresay I could find one that is," Zeref smiled.

"Then count me in!" Without warning, Natsu slung his arm around his brother's shoulders, pulling him into a half-hug. Just like Natsu had when hugged by Zeref's past-self, Zeref tensed completely at first, and then, gradually, like he was awakening from a four-century slumber, he began to relax into it.

"Hear that, Luce?" Natsu crowed. "We're going on an adventure with my brother!"

That was when she knew she had been worrying for nothing. They were going to be fine together. Absolutely fine.

Thanks only to several months of practice, she managed to keep her expression stern. "Well, perhaps our first adventure could be to get back through the violent and unstable portal he made before we're all permanently stuck in the past, hmm?"

"Good plan," Natsu breezed, hurrying for the portal. "Come on, Zeref! Soon as we get back, I'm gonna show you my house! The spare room's all yours!"

Zeref set off after him, but stopped in front of the crackling vortex. As his brother vanished back through time, he reflected, "It won't be as simple as he thinks, will it?"

"No," Lucy confirmed. "I doubt that the Magic Council will be happy to let you walk away and start a new life as easily as that. And, for those who didn't see you save the city, it will take a long time for their opinions of you to change. I imagine we will all face a lot of opposition going forwards."

Zeref's gaze drifted to the city on the horizon. "Perhaps I should stay in the past. I could move to another country – one I know my past self will never visit. I could find a small village there and settle down, living quietly in a place where no one knows me…"

"You could," Lucy agreed steadily. "But, you won't."

"What makes you say that?"

"I might not know you very well, but I do know Natsu, and what's more, I know your younger self too. And neither of those would ever let the opinions of others come between them and the things they love." Shrugging, she gave him an honest smile. "I think it's a Dragneel thing."

"Maybe so." He, too, was smiling as he turned back towards the portal. "Thank you." Then he stepped forward and vanished.

It would be, Lucy thought, a long time before Zeref would be able to accept that the Curse of Contradiction could no longer hurt him. It would be longer still before she could see any more than a sliver of that boy inside him – the boy who had been precocious, audacious, brilliant, and so, so kind.

Maybe he wouldn't need her help to adjust to the new life he chose; maybe Natsu wouldn't need it to accept his brother into his life. She would be there for them either way. Natsu's family was her family, through the guild's unspoken laws if nothing else. And hell if she wasn't going to miss that little brat of a Black Mage too.

In truth, she was looking forward to getting to know her best friend's brother. It didn't matter to her how difficult it might be to convince the world that he wasn't the villain everyone believed – and more importantly, it didn't matter to Natsu either. She knew how hard he would fight for his family, whether his adopted guild or his blood brother.

Zeref couldn't have asked for a better brother. He had done so much for Natsu – and by extension, for her. It was time for them to start paying him back, one Hundred-Year-Quest at a time.

Smiling to herself, Lucy stepped into the imploding portal for the final time, heading for the present… and from there, the future.

It wasn't waking up to the smell of burnt grass invading his nostrils that bothered Zeref the most.

It wasn't the dull ache in his muscles, drowned out by the march of an enthusiastic one-man band across the stage of his forehead, as he tried to sit up.

It wasn't even the fact that he had regained consciousness lying face-down in a field with no clear memory of what had happened – a rite of passage which most people his age wouldn't get to experience for another ten years.

No, what bothered Zeref was the fact that this was the same field he had passed out in. On the same plane of existence. On the same afternoon. And there was still only one of him in the world.

"I failed?" he screeched, scrambling to his feet in horror. The Gate of Time sat innocently in the field: closed, harmless, and decidedly not connecting his age with any other. He glared at it, as if that miracle of genius and invention had been responsible for miscalculated mathematics, miscast magic.

"I failed," he scowled, folding his arms and sinking to the ground in a huff.

Thirty seconds went by in sulky silence.

Then a minute.

Then he could bear it no longer, and he bounced back to his feet, eyes sparking with a surge of electric ideas. "Was there not enough power? Was the vortex unstable? Did some twisted paradox of time prevent tomorrow's me from opening the Gate at his end? Was there an error in my assumption of spacetime's dimensional quantities? Maybe time doesn't have four-fold symmetry after all. Maybe another element must be incorporated to make it four-fold-" The rapid-fire bombardment of suggestions gave way to a sudden intake of breath. "The magical trace! I need to record the magical trace! Who knows how long I was unconscious for – it might already have faded – where is my notebook?"

When the frantic patting of hidden pockets failed to turn up his trusty experimental notebook, the boy proceeded to turn them out one by one, still to no avail. "No, no, no! My experimental data! My research notes! My-"

A single piece of paper fluttered to the ground from one of his pockets. Frowning, he picked it up. The handwriting was not his own. In fact, the messy scrawl was as far as possible from his own meticulously neat notes, and it would be another four hundred years before he saw the two scripts side by side, working together to revive a once-neglected to-do list.

"Crocus, 7th July, X791?" he read, puzzled. "What's that supposed to… mean…?"

If the sentence started as a defiant rejection, it ended as a thoughtful question. His gaze flicked to the faulty Gate of Time, whose silent silhouette gave nothing away, and then back to the paper, and there it remained for a very long time.

After all, he had been expecting something like this to happen ever since he decided to invent time travel.

Then, without a word, he touched his index finger to the paper. Black swirls flowed out from his fingertip, brushing over the enigmatic words and replacing them with a blurred yet graceful pattern – an imprint of the magic his failed experiment had left in the air. He needed a physical record before the data faded too far. Next, he flipped the page over, and swiftly sketched out the shape of the burns in the field. They would fade more slowly than the magical trace, but nature would nevertheless have reasserted its dominance over the countryside long before he got the chance to sit down and interpret the results of his experiment.

Because, as interesting as it would be, he had already been side-tracked for far too long. He knew the Gate of Time couldn't reunite him with his brother. It was a curiosity, nothing more. The laws of time travel deserved to be studied in their own right… but at the same time, they could wait. Seeing Natsu again was far more important than achieving world-renown as the man who invented time travel. Then, when he was living happily with his brother, he would become famous as the greatest genius who had ever lived.

Stowing the record of his failed time travel experiment safely back in his pocket, he set off in the direction of the city – and his Academy, and his study, and his library, and all the half-finished reports on speculative resurrection spells he had left there.

"7th July, X791, huh?" he said to himself, and a smile spread across his face. "Bet I can do it sooner."

A/N: The end! Thanks for reading. I really wanted to do a happy ending for Zeref for a change, so there we are. A huge thank you as always to everyone who has reviewed, followed, favourited, or supported me through this short story, and I really hope you enjoyed it! ~CS