fam·i·ly

/'fam(ə)lē/

noun: family

1. a group consisting of parents and children living together in a household.

2. a group of people related to one another by blood or marriage.

3. the children of a person or couple. a person or people related to one and so to be treated with a special loyalty or intimacy. 4. a group of people united in criminal activity.

Origins: In Fioran, sense of "collective body of persons who form one household under one head and one domestic government, including parents, children, and servants, and as sometimes used even lodgers or boarders"


In the beginning, Natsu knows love that is fiery and fiercely protective: the love of family, of a father and a son. Every day, he wakes up curled against scales and then he is awake and ready for a new day. Igneel is pretty much the coolest dad ever. Natsu breathes hot fire and plays in the sun with his dad and is pretty sure that every day is just the greatest day, especially compared to the one before.

One day, Natsu wakes up and Igneel isn't there anymore. Natsu waits around for a bit because he knows that his dad loves him so much that he would never leave him for good. After a few more days of waiting, Natsu gets reallllly bored. So Natsu figures, if Igneel isn't ready to come back yet, he'll go find Igneel instead! Igneel is a bit harder to find than he expected though, but he doesn't really have time to feel sad. Before he knows it, Makarov has pulled him into Fairy Tail. It's the first time that Natsu can remember where he is surrounded by people who look like him. Most of them are pretty cool, he thinks, except for maybe that icy droopy-eyed bastard.

Time passes, and Fairy Tail becomes a new family. His nakama never give him enough space to feel sad about losing Igneel, and sometimes they help him out by passing him leads about fiery beasts and scaly monsters. They fight him, they make him laugh, Erza makes him cry, and he is never alone and his heart continues to burn with a fire that Igneel helped to light – life would be just that much better if he could bring Igneel into the fold. When new guild members come, he makes sure to welcome them into this fiery family by welcoming them with a big fiery brawl.

Lisanna is pretty cool too, and when they discover the egg Natsu's pretty pumped. Maybe he could be a Dragon's dad, just like Igneel! Or maybe the Dragon could help him find Igneel?! He is more surprised than disappointed when the egg hatches and a tiny blue kitten with wings emerges instead of a scaly salamander, and then he has Happy so he is never alone. Natsu loves Happy a lot, and Happy loves him so it's cool. He loves Makarov, and Lisanna, and Macao's cute little kid Romeo, and Erza, and Elfman, and Mira, and Cana, and Laxus although he think's he'll like Laxus a lot more when Natsu has finally beat him, proving that he is the strongest!

And he spends his days playing, and eating, and fighting, and training, and searching, and going on adventures and he thinks that there's not really anything else he might need to be happy in the world. Then Lisanna dies, and Fairy Tail's happy little world is devastated for a time.

Time heals most wounds, and it is on the upside of time that Macao and Wakaba and Gildarts stage a quick intervention to make sure Natsu is up to speed with EVERYTHING that teenage boys get up to. Natsu knows a bit about love and about sex, knows that Gray like to peek into the girl's baths, that Reedus can't handle rejection and that Laxus has left a trail of broken hearts and satisfied bodies littered across Magnolia because all the guys talk about that crap all the time in the baths. But he's also seen those old guys strike out, seen the slaps and the tears and that time Macao almost lost Romeo in the custody battle that followed.

He's seen Erza cry when she comes back from the council meetings, and he knows, deep in his heart, that anything that can make someone as scary as Erza cry is dangerous stuff. This love business, the kind that seems to make men and women both crazy, is more trouble than it's worth. And then these men who he admires tell him about the game, and he knows it's not something he wants to play.

So Natsu takes the dirty magazines that are shoved at him ("It's time you understand the romance of the Female Body" Gildarts trills as he hands them over). But he sees how weird his family gets when "romance" gets involved, how Alzack and Bisca dance strange circles around each other and seem farther apart than before. He remembers Lisanna's blushes near the end, and how sometimes she would get mad at him or cry for things he could never understand. He's had enough heartache in his life, and even boobs aren't worth it.

Natsu doesn't want to make girls cry or try to play games he can't understand, and he thinks it's a lot less trouble to enjoy looking at naked girls in the pictures under he's stashed in a messy pile by his hammock. He only wants to have and fight, get strong enough to beat Erza (and Laxus and Gildarts), and find Igneel, and have fun and go on adventures and missions with Happy.


Notes: Still a fanwork. I do not own Fairy Tail. Modified etymology and definitions from Online Dictionary and Online Etymology Dictionary. Whoops, this chapter DID NOT upload properly the first time, sorry guys.