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Natsu could only remember one time in his life when he was searching for a family. During that time, he only remembered cold, dark woods, and a feeling of abandonment he couldn’t shake. Igneel had disappeared, and he truly felt scared and alone. When Makarov picked him up and carried him to the warm safety of the Fairy Tail guild, he remembered feeling better, though still confused and upset. Igneel had been all he had, all he needed, and suddenly he was gone, and Natsu needed someone else to help him teach him how to live. In that sense Makarov was an angel from above – he provided him with a family, friends, food and roof over his head. He provided him with the guidance he needed to function in society, and for that Natsu would forever be thankful.
As he met the other children Makarov had managed to pick up on his journeys, he also had to learn how to share, and how to play fairly. That way he discovered that he hated a black-haired boy named Gray, that the redheaded girl called Erza was scarier than anyone he had ever met before – and mind you, his dad was a dragon, and he discovered that the Strauss siblings were easy to boss around. Well, not Mira-Jane, she was as scary as Erza, but the other two, Lisanna and Elfman, were fun and easy to play with. Though Elfman was quite the scaredy cat, which made some games complicated whenever they played together.
And so it happened that Natsu and Lisanna became best friends. They still had their differences – Natsu was wilder than her and wanted to play more violent games, preferably in a way that made him look tough, and Lisanna liked to make those games more emotional. She was actually quite good at storytelling and managed to modify Natsu’s ideas to make it work for both of them. If Natsu wanted to fight, then she would make it that he was fighting for a good cause – to protect his friends and family, and Lisanna herself could be a princess or a sibling who had to be saved. They worked well, the two of them – something that would be proved when they finally got old enough to go on missions to earn some money for themselves. Though that’s skipping ahead in time.
Before they went on missions together, they one day found a mysterious egg. By then Natsu had gotten more content with the idea of staying with Fairy Tail for good. He would always search for Igneel, and he would certainly find him, but until then he liked the group of people he knew in this wild guild. He even liked Gray, though he’d never admit it if anyone asked. The guild was wild and violent, friendly fights breaking out every other day, but he knew in his heart that this was his home, and that the people inside it was his family.
Lisanna, who Natsu thought was getting more creative by the hour, figured out that they could play house with this egg they found. For her, the family dynamic was simple to spot – she would be the mommy, Natsu the daddy, and whatever was in that egg would be the baby. Of course, the part of her that had a small crush on Natsu was also happy with this game, and unbeknownst to her, Natsu was also pleased with it. He had too much pride to admit it, but he loved playing with Lisanna, despite her to him crazy ideas about wives and husbands and weddings. Those words had no substance in his world – why couldn’t everyone just live and love and let life happen without the interruptions of ceremonies and such? Well, it didn’t really matter when it came down to it, because ceremonies or not, games or reality, the egg was bound to hatch, and when it did and a tiny, blue, flying kitten came out of it, Natsu felt something click within himself. The cat, who Natsu named Happy, had brought together the guild in a way he never quite had seen or experienced before. In the guild, people had lost big parts of their families, replacing it with the friends and elderly figures found in Fairy Tail, but now they met Happy – a cat who not only could fly, but who they also soon learned could speak. This kitten had never known a life without a family, abandoned or lost. He was constantly surrounded by loud and happy people, and even when he wasn’t in the guild hall, he spent all his awake time with Natsu and Lisanna. Happy’s childhood fascinated many of the children. For him, the constant flow of people around him, assured that he would never truly be lonely. He could have a silly fight with Natsu and Lisanna, who were likely trying their best to raise him, even though they were only children themselves, and Happy could fly off to some other group of people, who all would be grateful to have him near them. See, Happy was properly and thoroughly loved, because all the family he had ever known, would never leave him.
Natsu saw Happy’s childhood unfold right in front of him. He was practically the only person Happy would dare to categorise as a father figure, though, brother was probably a better word for it, seeing as they practically learned to live side by side. Still, even if Natsu wouldn’t be able to put it into words by this age, he understood that Happy’s childhood was the ideal. All his friends should have gotten a chance to experience what Happy did, but too few of them actually did. By this time, he knew enough about marriages, wives, husbands and children, to know that one day, he would like to try again at raising a baby. Happy was quite exceptional, who survived having Natsu as his main provider, and Natsu looked forward to raising actual human babies – though it could certainly wait until he had sniffed out Igneel.
Lisanna had taken a huge role when it came to raising Happy. She took it more seriously than any other friend Natsu knew, and even though he first should have been concerned over the lack of adults who partook in Happy’s early months, he soon found out that she was the perfect person for the job. Kind-hearted, caring, fun and responsible. She truly was it all, and Natsu couldn’t help noticing his feelings for her develop. Maybe it was his years as a preteen, or maybe he was just finally old enough to see her clearly, but his admiration for her grew constantly. Not a day went by where Natsu and Happy weren’t by Lisanna’s side. They were glued together, until the day came when Lisanna had gotten permission to take a harder job with her siblings. It was the worst day in Natsu’s life since he was abandoned by his father in the woods. Now, he felt like he had truly been through it all. The only consultation was that he still had Happy by his side, and even that wasn’t cheering him up. How could anyone deal with the death of someone? Had Natsu spent all this time with her in vain? Weren’t they supposed to try again with the family stuff, some day far into the future?
As soon as he had noticed his happiness come, he saw it go. Over and over again, he watched the last memory of her repeat in his mind. Fair skin, light hair, endlessly blue eyes, and the softest smile he had ever known. He was meant to protect her, to be there to ward off any dangers, just like they had played as kids. How could fate be so cruel that he didn’t even get to see his longest friend grow old? Natsu had never asked for much, he never expected Lisanna to hold on to her childhood crush on him, and he truthfully wasn’t expecting himself to hold on to it either. He knew life could come between the two of them, but how could he accept it when it was death that split them, and not life?
Natsu wasn’t proud of how he dealt with his sorrows. It had begun with anger, not at anyone specific – especially not Mira or Elfman, who he knew did all they could to protect her, even when Elfman had lost all control. No, he was mad at himself, for not being there for her, even if he wouldn’t be able to beat an out-of-control Elfman, he could have gone in her place. Really, anything would have been a better outcome than this, he thought, as long as it meant that Lisanna could get a chance to live a long and full life.
After Natsu went through the different stages of grief, he learned that the way he could most comfortably cope with his loss, was to push other people away. Don’t get him wrong, he wouldn’t go out of his way to ignore people if they wanted to talk with him or hang around him, but he had stopped trying to reach out and connect with the rest of the guild. Happy was always by his side of course, and as he vowed he would never allow anything bad happen to him, he also knew that he was avoiding emotional confrontation. At several instances he would realise that Happy was trying to make him talk about what had happened, to maybe come to some cliché solution where Natsu finally could say “life works in mysterious ways” and then continue living. Not that Happy necessarily wanted him to come to that conclusion, but he knew that Natsu was avoiding what had happened, and it would only lead to more harm in the future if he couldn’t learn to cope with it now. He might not have understood exactly that things would end up like that, but he sensed that something could go very wrong within Natsu’s brain if he didn’t start connecting with people again.
The sorrow however never subsided; it just became greyer as the time went on. Even if Natsu never truly recovered from the loss, the same way that Mira and Elfman had changed for good, life still got easier. He slowly started to learn to live with it, and despite his emotional unavailability, other than the anger his hot-headed temper allowed to show, he still managed to learn to appreciate the family he still had. He never let his sight go of Happy, and he always made sure he was in safety before he joined in with any guild brawls. He also never managed to gather a proper team after Lisanna passed, but he still had idle chats by the bar when the time was right. He disguised his cravings for the touch of another human’s skin by throwing fists at Gray and Loke, and he even took some time to appreciate Erza’s reliability from afar whenever he thought no-one noticed.
This is how his relationship with the guild looked like for a long time. Admiring from afar, never letting people see his real feelings and desires, in fear that he would lose another friend if he got too close. It was after all an undeniable pattern – he loved Igneel, and he disappeared one day. He found proper fatherly love in Gildarts, who always went away as fast as he arrived. And Lisanna – the person he had the most tender relationship with, went away in the most excruciating way. It couldn’t keep happening like this, and so he hid away his feelings.
A few weird coincidences lead to a big change in Natsu’s life. One day in the guild, he had accidentally overheard a fellow guild mate mention a fire breathing salamander. Normally, breathing fire wasn’t out of the ordinary for Natsu. It was after all a magic spell he had learned at a young age, and he now managed to control it relatively easily. Adding that to the word salamander however awoke a picture in his head – a salamander didn’t look too far off from a dragon, apart from size and some other minor details. And if it could breathe fire, then it might just as well be possible that it was Igneel! So, despite the very high chance of it not being Igneel, he went to search for him, just to check it out. It wasn’t too far away, but he took the train, because he simply didn’t want to waste any time (though he didn’t know he’d pass out from motion sickness and accidentally waste time through an extra trip). At the time he didn’t know that time was moving him towards his fate, so he could happen to meet the right person, just at the right time.
The commotion the “salamander” brought to the coastal town of Hargeon was fateful indeed – he saw a weak fire mage (who certainly didn’t compare to a dragon) scam young girls by making them think he had certain interest in them, he somehow got an autograph, and then there she was, with bright yellow hair, brown concerned eyes, and a magic mouth. Magic was an exaggeration, since she had only offered to buy him and Happy some lunch, but he was grateful non the less. In fact, he hadn’t been too off with the magic stuff – the weird girl called Lucy was a celestial mage, which was something he knew nothing about before their encounter. Apparently, she could summon “spirits” or “sprites” (he didn’t care too much about the proper terminology) thanks to magical keys.
Despite her chatty mouth, he immediately knew that he liked her. There was something refreshing about her – maybe it was the way she acted the same way his guildmates did, combined with the fact that she didn’t know anything about him. He was a new face to her, and that was something he appreciated. When their ways crossed again, he knew he had to take this chance to keep her close. She had been talking excitedly about his guild during the meal, and he found her praise quite flattering, before the royal guards could capture the two of them, he grabbed her hand and made his offer: the offer to join Fairy Tail.
His life drastically changed after she joined the guild. That girl, Lucy Heartfilia, she really knew how to shake things up in that old building. She was stubborn, kind-hearted, hot headed, funny, and incredibly smart, and somehow, she stuck around Natsu, despite his standoffish attitude and impolite way of inviting her to his team by attempting to use her looks to deceive some old duke. Really, she could have decided to go on her own jobs from that point, and he wouldn’t blame her the slightest. But she decided to stay, even when he brought her on S-class jobs and practically made her risk her life. And after this, when she turned out to be the daughter of the Heartfilia Konzern, she spent most of her time worrying if she even deserved to be a member of the guild. He couldn’t believe it! She was the only one ha really had been able to get close to since Lisanna died, and as if that wasn’t enough, she even brought him closer to his other guild mates. He had never spent as much time with Gray or Erza or Mira before Lucy got in the picture.
There was never a dull day now that Lucy had joined the guild. People he had seen as enemies were now allies, like that weird other dragon slayer, Gajeel, and the water girl Juvia. The jobs they took (somehow, they had allowed Erza and Gray to join their team, which Natsu wasn’t too happy about – he liked the small group of him, Lucy and Happy) got crazier and crazier, and the effect it had on the guild, his family, was nothing less than magical. It’s silly of him to compare the great, amazing, good things to magic, because magic was an ordinary concept now that wizards and witches grew in population, but it was true; Lucy made them all tighter, happier, even if they didn’t know how much credit she deserved.
Thanks to this girl’s existence, Natsu, Wendy, Happy and Carla were able to survive some really complicated situations, when Lucy turned out to be the only one who could use magic in the weird reality called Edolas. Thanks to her they figured out how to save the rest of the guild, and as a byproduct, one of the most improbable things happened: Lisanna came back to life. Well, that wasn’t exactly how it had gone, since she never really died in the first place, but that is how it felt for everyone from Earthland. Mira and Elfman got their little sister back, and they were happier than ever, and though Natsu should have felt ecstatic as well, seeing as his first resemblance of love was back, he didn’t feel very different. He was happy, but he had been for a while now, now that Lucy was around. His childhood crush was just that – a childhood crush, and he was grateful to be able to befriend Lisanna again after all this time apart. The odd thing was that he didn’t feel a need to get back to how things were. Happy almost seemed the same – excited to see Lisanna alive and well, but not in need to continue their mother-son relationship from where it dropped off.
And around that time was when it hit Natsu: his idea of a family had changed drastically. Igneel was still in the back of his mind, and the guild would always be his home, but now he found himself constantly drawn to the girl whose golden hair could outshine the stars. His life suddenly revolved around her, and Happy had found himself right in the middle of it. Lucy and Happy were even tighter than Lisanna and Happy – not because Happy didn’t like Lisanna, but because Lucy had become one of his absolute best and closest friends, only competing with Natsu himself. They had become a team, even way back then, and the three of them would just continue to play around and live life as dangerously as humanely possible. They were inseparable.
As time went by, they had been through a lifetime of crazy experiences. They had been stuck in time after being attacked by a dragon, gotten a comeback at the Grand Magic Games and won the whole thing, then he met future Lucy who sacrificed herself for her past self, something that would never be forgotten by Natsu, and he would certainly never forgive future Rogue for acting like that. At that point he hadn’t met the dragons though, but he soon would, and somehow he would survive seven of them, and then, after visiting a town where giants lived, a demon guild decided to kidnap Natsu, because apparently he had some connection to Zeref, the dark mage, and then, completely out of the blue, Igneel showed up. Lucy had been there for all of this, and at the time she already seemed out of it, sort of depressed in a way that maybe only Natsu could pick up on. She had been waving it off as being tired, but later he learned she had sacrificed Aquarius, her mother’s key, just so she could save the guild from being digested by a monster. And now, there he was, Natsu’s father, or the closest thing he had ever known to be a father, and he was there to fight Fairy Tail’s greatest enemy: Acnologia.
In an ideal world, Igneel was supposed to win that fight. He would win, and he would spend the rest of his life with Natsu and Happy and Lucy and the guild, and so would the other dragons. Everything was supposed to be alright afterwards, and the whole E.N.D. thing would solve itself. His heart would be full, and his family would be whole. He would have it all. So, when the evil force that was Acnologia murdered Igneel in front of Natsu’s eyes, he knew something had to change. Something that Natsu never believed would happen in a million years, in his darkest nightmares, happened, and he couldn’t stop it. The image was etched into his brain, and it replayed like a scratched CD, scarring the brain tissue that was responsible for his happiness, and that was when he knew he could never allow something similar to happen ever again. No matter what, he had to get stronger. If he hadn’t been strong enough to prevent Igneel from dying, then there was no chance for him to stop Zeref or Acnologia. So, he did the only thing he could think of. He left everyone in order to grow stronger.
Natsu had never intended to leave Lucy alone, and he certainly didn’t intend to bring Happy either. Happy was great, and even if he pretended to have full faith in the blue feline’s survival skills, he was worried he’d hurt him with his fire, or that he’d accidentally drop a boulder on him somehow during this training. That’s why he first wanted to leave Happy with Lucy – they could take care of each other. If Happy didn’t want to be with her all the time, he could be with Lisanna or Wendy, or anyone he'd like, really. But not even Natsu could convince Happy to stay behind – the exceed simply wouldn’t hear of it. He protested for days when he learned that Natsu intended to leave Lucy as well, but when he didn’t budge, all Happy could do was to convince him to at least leave a note, so she wouldn’t worry too much. So that’s what he did. It took many days for Natsu to get the words right, as it felt like nothing he wrote would be enough to excuse himself with. “Happy and I are going to train, we’ll be back in a year” could be reworded as “I’m running away, yikes, don’t die, maybe I’ll come back, or not” and it gave off practically the same feeling. The letter he settled on was short and cruel in his opinion, and he knew he could never fully be forgiven for what he was about to do, but he just couldn’t deal with this loss in any other way.
It wasn’t supposed to be as hard to leave as it was. Natsu and Happy had always been the original original team, ever since Natsu found that egg in the woods. It hadn’t been Lisanna who found him, but Natsu, and therefore they stuck together. They had known each other for Happy’s entire life, and Lucy had only joined a few years ago, plus 7 years that couldn’t really count. That was the facts, Happy and Natsu, Natsu and Happy – it was always those two who would stick together, no matter the situation. So why on earth was leaving Lucy the hardest thing he had to make himself do? He had no choice but to see his father leave, but running away from Lucy was entirely Natsu’s decision. He would be crushing mountains and he would evaporate entire lakes and seas, yet those feats had nothing on him abandoning her. He didn’t understand how or why, but Lucy was more important than anyone else he had ever met, well, parallel to Happy. Natsu didn’t care about Lucy like a sister or anything, not like Erza, Levy, Cana, Mira or nowadays Lisanna. She was just his friend, except it wasn’t fair to call her “just” or “friend”. She was… his. That’s all he could get from it. She was his new safe point, where he went to recharge or relax, and calling her family didn’t make sense for him at the time, despite the similar characteristics she shared with the rest of the guild.
When he finally had enough courage to return, she had changed drastically. Before she seemed to live life like there was no tomorrow, never worrying about a thing, flying from one job to another, just happy to experience life in all it’s glory. When he met her eyes in the burning stadium, he couldn’t find the glimmer he once had compared to the stars. He had never felt so heartbroken. It felt so stupid, because here he was, grinning like an idiot, asking a stupid and shallow question, and Lucy should have taken her chance to kick him and scream at him and cry, and yet she managed to smile and carry on being her kind, polite self. Except, he knew she felt weirded out by the whole thing. They hadn’t met each other in an entire year, yet here he and Happy was, acting as if no time had gone by at all. A dick move, but it was the only thing Natsu knew he could do. And sometimes, for a few minutes, he could swear he had dreamt the whole year of training, and that everything was back to how it used to be. Him, Lucy and Happy, eating and playing and talking, like there was eternity ahead of them.
While the air between Natsu and Lucy sometimes grew thick, the bond between them also grew. It became stronger after this time apart, and now all Natsu could think of was how mature she seemed compared to him. Her hair was in this ponytail on the side of her head, tied with a really pretty blue ribbon, that really flattered her skin tone. Her clothes were new as well, and he couldn’t help but admire her lean back whenever he walked behind her. He was so aware of everything she said and did, and he found himself multiple times trying to casually show off to her. He felt pretty humbled when he learned that she had done her own special training, even learning to use those star dresses (though some of those outfits he wouldn’t mind being more covering), and her job as a journalist had clearly only aided her in becoming smarter, and suddenly he once again felt like he had missed too much of her time. He found himself wishing that he’d never left at all, just so he could have been by her side as she grew.
The true turning point in their relationship happened later on, during the final war against Zeref and his nation. One of the Spriggan 12, a woman named Dimaria, had killed her, murdered her, his Lucy, and for him, that was the point of no return. His fury burned absolutely everything, from what he later heard, even time and space, and he wouldn’t have changed that outcome for anything in the world, even in hindsight. When his anger blocked his vision, his hearing and all other senses, he remembered only having one thing in mind. He had to kill the one responsible to Lucy’s death, and it didn’t matter who he had to get through. In fact, he didn’t care if this fire and rage killed him, because without her he couldn’t imagine living on.
The rest of that big day was kind of a big blur. He knew he had gotten his senses back in the middle of a fight with Gray, where Erza had stepped in to break them up. Shortly after he could smell Lucy, and then before he knew it her arms were wrapped around him. He was completely drained, but inside he was the happiest man alive. She was alive, maybe he somehow had managed to save her from the cruel fate Dimaria would have given her otherwise. Then more time passed, and things became blurry again until he felt part of himself heal. He once again sensed Lucy had jumped in to save him in some smart way he couldn’t wrap his head around, because he was fighting Zeref and only barely managed to stay up against him.
To describe every single moment that Lucy saved his life in, or to go into detail about every fight they fought together would take a lifetime. When Fairy Tail fought Zeref, Natsu weren’t unfamiliar to his possessiveness towards the celestial mage, since he many times had found himself vowing to keep promises to her future self, or just vowing to never let a single enemy who somehow hurt Lucy go unharmed. As he returned from Acnologia’s spiritual world, he realised that the place he was falling towards, was home. It was more than just the ruins of his guild, and it was more than his mates standing around, waiting for some celebration to begin for surviving the hardest battle yet: he fell towards Lucy and Happy. Even in midair he found himself relieved – despite having the landing left to do. In a few seconds he’d be face to face with the most beautiful face in the entire world, and he would say “I’m home” because for him there was no better word to describe that feeling. Then he would hear her say “Welcome home” and he would feel his life fall into place, like he’d finally found the missing piece to the never-ending puzzle of his life.
Sometime in the future, Natsu would continue this puzzle. He would have learned by then that the wife-thing Lisanna talked about when they were little, was more than just childish dreams from a small girl, and he would allow himself to thrive in the family he’d make with Lucy. First it would be the two of them, and Happy of course. Then he’d look back at his memories from Edolas, when he met Lucy Ashley and Natsu Dragion’s daughter, Nasha, and he’d think of Grieg, and he’d think of Levy and Gajeel’s twins, and by then he’d want to expand the tiny family they made up. For Lucy to be a mother, for Natsu to be a father, and for Happy to be the best uncle anyone could ever ask for, was according to Natsu, the so-called “Happy Ending” everyone had been talking about. He would fill his life with new adventures, and he’d experience them all with Lucy, whom he by then would proudly be able to call the love of his life, and he would tell everyone that she was exactly that, until she begged him to shut his mouth and let his actions prove it instead of his words.
And though this was in the future, and he had no idea how it would turn out yet, he knew he’d never have to search for a family ever again. Now that he promised his entire future to her, he could feel safe in the knowledge that he’d spend the rest of his life dedicated to fulfilling all his promises to protect her and take her on endless amounts adventures. Not even a happy ending had to end when he had forever with her. Natsu’s Lucy.