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thehylianidiot · 2 years

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Okay just a random thought again about Fairy Tail. Because the Alvarez Arc makes me peeved every time I begin to examine it.

Would Neo Eclipse have even worked it everything played out how Zeref intended? Because I certainly can't remember what I had for breakfast, so I doubt the 400-year old immortal with attachment issues has a completely accurate recollection of the dates from half a dozen human lifespans ago. And magic genius or not, rewriting the universe is a highly untested mess and therefore has unpredictable consequences.

The following blurb is a very dumb culmination of this rouge thought train:

Zeref wakes up 400 years in the past in his old family home back before the dragons attacked. This is where he realizes his first mistake: he forgot that he was like 8 when it happened. With no curse, but no access to fairy heart, and a very limited range of what magic he can actually use, because there's no way he could stop time even if he knew how. Best he could do was all his old theories, and seriously, that was his prototype to teleportation? Anchor-based trading, seriously?!

He dismisses this as a minor setback. He'll just get his family out and away from the inevitable dragon attack, and nobody would be none the wiser.

This leads to mistake number two: he's three days early.

Meaning he has to actually hang out with his family and notice all the tiny details he completely forgot about. Like maybe Mom's homemade soup was actually really bad but nobody had the heart to tell her otherwise, or maybe Dad's wasn't this great wizard who knew everything but was just playing along with his son's interest in magic, or that Natsu was always that loud and a bit of a pyromaniac before he died and that wasn't just Igneel's parenting.

And his family notices somethings a little off with him. He's much quieter, not as enthusiastic about any interests and is really insistent on them leaving for a day on this specific date.

Then the day comes and Zeref realizes a third important detail: Natsu got sick on this day, and his parents stayed home to take care of him. All the while, he survived because he was off at the local academy to sneak into some stupid lecture while his entire village burned.

He can't get even one of his parents to come with him. He certainly can't get Natsu coming along in the state he's in. There's literally nothing he can do to change history.

-------------------------------------------------------

Okay, here's where I would be treating this like an actual fanfic story instead of an idea that just came from rolling with this stupid line of questioning in the first place, and I got carried away going into detail on this summary:

He debated not going, dying with his family in peace like he wanted to in the first place, but apparently real 8 year old him had been ranting about this lecture for months now, and his family knew it and encouraged him to go and don't worry about them (after all, he was a bit off the past few days, so maybe this would help). He could always just stay behind anyway, but they were all so genuine and going to die in a few hours anyway and it was like fulfilling a last wish for them and .... Augh!!!

So he goes. Always keeping track of the sun's position in the sky, wondering if he misremembered this too, when the dragon sirens at the academy would blare and the staff would magically reinforce the locks on all entrances so no dragon breached the hull. Ignoring the rantings of that tired old fool (what what was his name ... Hebler?), instead trying to figure out what would he do now. He should just ... not study the balance of life and death. It was easy enough now that he knew all that would happen, right?

The sky begins to darken and the afternoon sky turns a dim shade of red. And that shade gets closer and closer.

He wasn't going to do it again. He knew what would happen. Just forget about them like he should have the first time.

All those details about his family faded with centuries wore away the memory, but experiencing them now made them much more personal beyond 'Mother' 'Father' and 'Brother'.

Zeref, arguably worse griever in Earthland, couldn't forget in seven years. He would do it all over again and he knew it. He would do it and forget it all over again just to repeat forever on end. Would that happen, where even with full knowledge he would make the same inevitable choices?

The sirens started blaring as he looked down at his hands at those stupid 8 year old notes he's been crinkeling all throughout the lecture.

Those stupid 8 year old notes on his teleportation prototype. Exchange ones space for another as long as there was an anchor in both places. He made dozens of other halfs at home weeks back when he was young naive and really wanting to show off when escaping chores.

He knew what choice he could make different. He could even succeed in what he was doing all along for just one person. There was after all, one bedridden brother who was almost certainly within range of anchor G-12.

So, racing against the magic resistant locks, he poured all his magic into that prototype spell, pouring all he had regardless of the toll on his magic. He spent four centuries resisting the instinct to avoid fatal levels of magic exhaustion, it wasn't important then when he was seeking his own death and it certainly wasn't important now.

On the Eve of the Dragon Attack on an unsuspecting village, there was one survivor. A boy nearly passed out from a fever, having somehow walked all the way to the local academy for a lecture. His brother stayed at home looking for him.

-----

That's probably what some forgotten historical record would say anyway. As for the brother well...

He made one other miscalculation.

Zeref woke up at the halls of Milidian Academy right in front of his old desk. At first, he wondered what happened, because this was the moment everything went wrong. It couldn't be that the nightmare of an existence that happened afterwards just didn't exist. That couldn't be what happened, could it?

The headmaster was coming his way and he flinched, ready for the inevitable cutting off of his funding and then he would say Natsu is dead and the Death Predation would take the entire academy as its first meal...

The headmaster passes right through him, grumbling to himself while picking up some odd trinkets on the desk that Zeref couldn't remember for the life of him what they were there for.

What?

He touched the desk and he couldn't feel the wood or anything, just see his hand sinking into it as if it was a thought projection.

As if he was the thought projection.

That's when it clicked. He was dead, but he couldn't be in order for him to use Fairy Heart to turn back time in the future. So he had to exist right here but that was apart of a future that didn't exist, but he was also not there in this timeline so of course he couldn't affect the world if he was dead and ...

Oh Gods. Even without the curse, he managed to turn himself into a walking contradiction.

Was this better or worse than before? Because it wasn't like he could kill anyone if he technically didn't exists or create any demons, but he also couldn't interact with anyone ever again and he just got a taste of doing so for three curse-free days and...

He had to get out of here.

Zeref ran. Past the halls and past the other students whose names he lost long ago, directionless and at the mercy of where his feet would take him, forgetting far too many times that he couldn't open any doors until it was too late.

Until he heard someone.

"Huh, was that-"

He turned.

A very familiar someone. A boy with bright pink hair and a wide, almost feral grin. And it was all wrong, because the last time he saw that boy was in Anne's arms as the Eclipse Gate closed for four hundred years out of the dragon hunter's reach.

"Natsu. " But the boy was here, fully alive and human, no broken body found in his home's ruins, no angry gods denying such a tragedy didn't have to be. Just Natsu, living as he always should have.

"Hey! You're alive!" the boy shouted, looked directly at him.

Zeref turned around, but there were no students on this side of the hall, which meant Natsu was looking at---. He turned back to his brother and pointed at himself.

Natsu nodded, his grin growing to an almost contagious degree. Because there was someone who could somehow see him, and of course it would be impossibly bright little Natsu.

The adorable fire starter slammed to poor book he was holding on the floor "Where have you been this entire time Zeref?! I've been spending ages trying to bring you back, and you've been here this entire time."

Zeref stilled as fear churned in his nonexistent stomach. "You've been what?"

The boy picked up and dusted off the very book Zeref had used for the basis behind the R System back when he was Natsu's age. "I was going to bring you back," he said, as if those words didn't invite eternal damnation. "Everyone here keeps telling me I'm just saying that because it's hard, but I'm serious!" The boy patted down his official academy uniform. "But now I don't have to worry about that cause you're alive!"

No.

No no no.

"Hey, now that I got you again, you can try to help me get Mom and Dad too." The boy raced away to what could only be the location of a future disaster.

"Natsu!" Zeref screamed at the top of his lungs for the first time in centuries as the miniature firestorm of a boy razed the hall, knocking over fellow acolytes and leaving an unstoppable hurricane of dust in his wake.

Nope, this was worse. Clearly his brother was a demon from birth dedicated to making his life (or unlife at the moment) more complicated.

----

Look, I have to end this idea with some form of personal torment given the bases of this plot bunny starts with neo eclipse working, and who knows what deaths it has to step over to get Alvarez to win. And wrangling a non-toddler Natsu would be both completely new to Zeref while technically granting his original wish (hehe, I do a monkey's paw) while being torture and a half.

No clue what would happen next, this was just an overly long train of thought that somehow rambled into a fanfic outline that I feel no intention to write if there's no clear follow on (this feels more like the start of a story rather than a story in full as it is now, but I honestly didn't intend for this post to be so long in the first place).

Also, thank you for reading my really long ramblings! Have a great day!

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