Chapter Text
"Nats-….ing? ….dange…"
"Idi-…! ….realis….one?"
"-a..su….."
"na..su..!"
"Natsu!"
Natsu blinks awake, the pain from Zeref's last attack still sending sharp pains and throbs into his every vein and muscle at every slight movement. Shuffling slightly onto his side, he finds himself face down on a hard, wooden surface, gentle murmurs of chatter floating above him, which is weird because there was only he and Zeref (and Mavis, but she was out cold) left in the guild.
His blurry vision clears as a salmon-pink blob appears in front of him, too-familiar dark eyes reflecting in his own. Natsu blinks again, and this time sees a short old man dressed in orange, and it's at this point he knows something is terribly wrong.
Memories of the end of his fight with Zeref (brother, monster, murderer) flash through Natsu's head, and he startles as he recalls the last moments. He fell through the doorway when trying to tackle Zeref in one last desperate attempt to kill the immortal man. He fell through the doorway - the doorway Zeref said would send him to a new world where he could start over from 400 years ago. The 'Neo-Eclipse'. And Natsu fell into it.
Back in reality, the short man waves a hand in front of his face as he asks something that Natsu, quite honestly, does not have the energy to process, too busy thinking about how the last time he saw Gramps ("he died on the battlefield") wear that silly orange outfit was far too long ago. And oh, Natsu realised, he's gone back in time. He blinks once, twice.
Ah. Shit. His team's gonna kill him.
When Makarov Dreyar agreed to take on the role of Fairy Tail's Third Guild Master, with no small amount of reluctance on his part, he imagined he'd experience all kinds of insanity. That's just how his guild worked, they were destructive and argumentative and explosive, but at the end of the day, they were a family. He knew that all his fellow guild members would look after one another, and it was with this knowledge that he accepted the craziness.
He didn't expect he'd have to become a father-figure to so many young children in the x770s, but he rolls with the punches and welcomes each new guild brat (as the older members oh-so lovingly call the kids) into his home, teaches them how to use their abilities for good and justice, how to become better people.
When he met a young boy with spiky pink hair and devastated eyes on a rainy day in July x777, Makarov knew exactly what he had to do, damn the consequences. He fed the child, gave him a new shirt, and tried his best to communicate with a child that could barely comprehend basic Fiorian words, let alone any other local language. After some time, the child revealed his name to be Natsu Dragneel, a young dragon slayer who claimed to have been raised by a dragon, and Makarov came to realist that the more he learnt about the boy, the more questions he had. But still, he brought the child into his home like so many before, and watched as Natsu grew more secure and confident, more emotive and destructive. And despite the destructive tendencies that rivaled Gildarts, despite the constant brawls with other members, Makarov knew Natsu cherished the guild, and that they, in-turn, cherished him.
So when he heard a loud bang from downstairs in the hall, Makarov pays no mind to it. Natsu had only recently returned from his Eisenwald quest with Erza, Gray and that new girl, Lucy, and he likely had far too much energy to burn off. However, it was the dead silence that caught the guild master's attention.
Fairy Tail was many things, some good, some bad; but it was never silent.
By the time he had made it to the ground floor, he could see the remnants of a spell dissipating back into the air, and a body on the ground. "What on earth just happened?"
"Master!" Mirajane approached him from where she had been stood at the bar, "I'm honestly not quite sure myself, but some kind of portal just opened up in the guild hall and dropped someone on the floor."
"Hey, Gramps?" Makarov turned to look at Natsu, who was steadily making his way towards the person laying face down on the ground. And now that Makarov actually looked at the stranger, he noticed many similarities to the young man that was approaching. Spiky pink hair, tanned skin, a white scarf and that colour scheme in his outfit, it's all eerily similar to Natsu, a relative perhaps?
"That guy's scent," Natsu paused, taking in a deep breath to steady himself, for what though Makarov was unsure. "It's really similar to my own. He even smells like Igneel, and he has the same scarf as me."
"What on earth… How can this man possibly have the same scarf?" Makarov received no verbal answer to his question, but watched as Natsu approached the stranger on the floor. "Wait, Natsu!"
It was at this moment that the stranger slowly shifted onto his side, grunts and winces of pain escaping his mouth. The guild members who had crowded around all took a step back, readying themselves for any potential threat, except for Natsu and Makarov himself. Natsu had knelt down in front of the man, only to backup in surprise upon seeing his face. Seeing the shock on his child's face, Makarov decided to see for himself what this strange man looked like. Moving closer to where he lay, Makarov knelt down and pushed aside a stray tuft of pink hair (why is is so familiar?) and oh.
Oh. It was Natsu's face.
His child's face was blearily blinking at him, like he had just awoken from a restful nap, confusion bleeding through their shared gaze.
"How can this…" How could this strange man possibly be Natsu when the child was standing a metre behind Makarov? The guild master quickly cast an identification spell on the man, something he really should have done already, and sets up a quick entrapment rune around the man while the identification processes - and honestly, he should encourage his children to branch out into other magics more, even if just the basics, to enhance their repertoire of spells.
"Master? Are you alright?" Ah, bless Mirajane for bringing his focus back towards his guild.
"Yes, however this man is certainly an enigma."
Erza walks over, sword in hand and eyes on the man (not Natsu, how could it possibly be Natsu). "How so?"
"Well, for starters, where did he come from? And why? And most importantly of all," He pauses, looking across the concerned faces of his children, "why does he bear such an uncanny resemblance to Natsu?" Makarov watches as shock passes over the crowd, eyes quickly turning towards the dragon-slayer who was still sat on the ground.
"Hey, I dunno what's going on either. Or why he looks and smells like me."
"You sure you didn't manage to stumble your way into cloning yourself, flame brain?" Gray said from the other side of the crowd.
"Shut it, droopy eyes! I really don't know what's going on."
"Boys." Makarov thanks the gods above every day for Erza's ability to reign the brats in with a single word. She turned towards the guild master after glaring the two younger mages into hugging each other from terror. "I suppose his appearance his why you've used Archive magic?"
"Yes, I've cast an identification spell, which should hopefully be- Ah, there we go." Makarov turns towards the archive screen, expecting to see any sign of transformation or perhaps illusion magic. He does not expect to see that the archive confirmed what he had just seen. He stares at the archive screen in shock, not noticing his children gathering around in curiosity at the results.
"Gramps, what's it say?"
"It," Makarov pauses in an attempt to recollect himself, breathing in slow and steady to calm down, "it says that, against all conceivable logic, this young man is, in fact, Natsu."
…
"WHAT?!"
Natsu was very, very confused. More confused than he'd be if Gray stopped stripping for more than a single day, or if Erza didn't eat at least a single strawberry cake while at the guildhall, or if he suddenly started using water magic rather than fire (he ignored the slight pain in his chest that came with the thought of losing his fire magic). He was even more confused than when he was trying to learn Fiorian from Erza, and that was probably the most confusing thing he's experienced.
All that to say, Natsu was extremely confused. Why was he so confused, you may ask? Well, a lookalike of him was just dumped in the middle of the guildhall out of a portal that just disappeared as fast as it appeared, with not a single caster for it in sight. And this lookalike was, according to Gramps' magic, Natsu himself, albeit about two years older and far more scarred. Hell, the guy even had Natsu's scent. So, yes, Natsu was confused because how could he be looking at an older version of himself when he was fairly certain that time travel, even in this world of magic, was not something that existed.
But hey, he's well aware he's not the smartest guy around, so what does he know about time travel?
As he sat up from the floor, a hand clutching his chest over where he was sure used to be a hole in his flesh, Natsu glanced around the room, taking in the familiar faces of his guildmates, noticing the differences the years had made to them all. He hissed under his breath as he managed to sit up properly, leaning back against the leg of a bench for support, and looked up towards where Gramps stood before him. A couple of screens were floating in the air next to the guild master, but Natsu couldn't tell what they were saying, even if the information was the right way around from his point of view.
"So," Gramps started, "I suppose I should ask the obvious question." The old man's gaze suddenly felt heavy, like a weight had been placed on his chest. "Are you really Natsu Dragneel?"
Natsu stared at him, taking a minute to process the question. "Yeah? Why wouldn't I be me?"
"Because Natsu Dragneel is sat over there," Gramps pointed to his left, right where a young man with spiky pink hair and a scaly scarf knelt, and- oh. That was him. He hadn't realised yet that being in the past, surrounded by younger versions of everyone in the guild, would mean seeing himself too. Though in his own defence, he'd just woken up after a really rough fight against the Zeref, he deserves some slack.
"Ah. Yeah, I see that. However, I am me."
"So you say, and all our testing of your identity has come up with the same result, that being that you are Natsu, if slightly older. And yet I have trouble truly believing this to be the case. Time travel is a little too out-of-this-world, even for our guild," Gramps lifted a hand to his face, massaging his temples.
"Well…" Natsu scratched the side of his head, thoughts starting to speed up as he gathered his bearings more. "I could tell you something only I would know if that helps?" Gramps nodded in response, asking the younger Natsu (Natsu really needed to figure out a nickname for the younger version of himself) to confirm the information's truthfulness.
Natsu thought to himself for a moment, before slamming a fist down on his palm, "oh! Way back when, before Igneel disappeared," he didn't miss the slight flinch Natsu Jr. (no, that doesn't sound right) gave at the mention of the dragon, "he kept trying to teach me how money worked by using leaves, but every time he breathed out the air would blow the leaves away, until he finally gave up and burnt all the leaves off the ground and just wrote it into the dirt with a claw instead."
Gramps looked over to mini-Natsu (nope, not that either), seeing the way the teen held his arms close to his chest, a single tear running down his face, "Natsu?" The teen jumped slightly at the sound of his name, before quickly blinking and unfolding his arms.
"Yeah, yeah he's right, that happened. So I guess we know time travel's a thing now, huh?"
And wasn't that just a lovely revelation? Natsu would laugh at the reactions of his guildmates if not for the sudden darkness overtaking his vision and the weakness encompassing his muscles.
Ah. He was fainting. Well, at least he could avoid the sure-to-be absolutely awkward conversation that was sure to be happening soon for a little longer.
"Natsu!"