Disclaimer: I don't own anyone from the Fairy tail franchise, maybe except for Nashi.

Fear of the flames

Later that day...

Natsu came home to his and Lucy's cottage covered in scorch marks, shards of ice and scratches. He lumbered through the front door, looking fatigued and tired as he walked through the house; each footstep clomped against the floorboards and made his presence known immediately.

He was doing this more out of necessity than out of anger, due to his body feeling so heavy.

"Hey, Lucy, Nashi, Happy! I'm home!"

His shouts was met with a very uncomfortable silence which was enough to make him cringe on the inside; it was quite stifling. He was wondering whether everyone was just becoming deaf or if he was in huge trouble for some reason when he was soon greeted by Happy.

"Hey, little buddy! How're you-"

He was cut off.

"Don't "Hey, little buddy" me, Natsu Dragneel! Do you have any idea what you did!?"

Natsu was both shocked and clueless. What had he done this time? He could tell that it was serious since Happy hardly got cross at him...okay, that wasn't entirely true, sometimes he did get cross and they did fight on a not-quite-regular basis but still! He frowned up at the cat hovering over him.

Maybe Happy was having one of his pre-teen mood swings?

"What are you talking about?"

The blue exceed yelled heatedly, "You know full well what I'm talking about!"

The pink-haired fire dragon slayer was totally stupefied as to what was happening right now. He wasn't really sure what was going on here and he was now growing increasingly certain that this wasn't a simple case of exceed teenage rage. He opened his mouth to ask again what was going on and why he was angry with him when Happy snapped, effectively cutting him off again.

"Because of what you did your own daughter doesn't want to see you and-"

Natsu's mind was racing now. What did he do? Why didn't his baby daughter want to see him? He and her always had fun together! What was going on? Why was he going through this lecture when he had a rough enough day already? He was already tired after eating that lightning and wasting a lot of his magical power on that fight and he didn't think he needed to deal with this.

Before Happy could berate him further though, Lucy's voice sliced in the middle of it and called down as she emerged from the nursery.

"Happy, that's enough. I'll handle this."

Lucy sounded scarily patient as she silently glared at Natsu, leaving the dragon slayer practically quaking in his sandals. His scarf quivered along with him as Happy harrumphed and left the room to go into his own bedroom and to just leave both the two Fairy Tail wizards to it.

Natsu hardly wasted a moment as he walked up to his wife and started asking her about what had just happened.

"What was Happy talking about? What's going on with her?" Natsu asked, tilting his head to one side with pure confusion written on his face, "Why doesn't Nashi wanna see me?"

Lucy sighed. Of course Natsu would not have been aware of what had happened, he was in the midst of a fight after all and (since he did have the memory similar to a kitchen sieve) was probably just unaware of just how monstrous he had appeared during the aftermath. She decided to be blunt as she placed her hands on her hips and fixed the dragon slayer with a glare so hard that it could curdle the blood of one of Zeref's armies.

"Natsu. You went full 'Lightning flame dragon mode' in front of our baby girl!" She continued on to explain, face growing increasingly stern as the seconds passed, "Happy told me that he found Nashi outside screaming her lungs out, you were too busy fighting with Gray to notice."

Natsu felt as though he'd been smacked in the face.

He had scared his daughter that badly...? He hadn't meant to frighten his daughter, he was just battling with Gray and could just get a bit carried away sometimes when it came to the safety of his family as well as his dignity. He couldn't help but feel like a bad person when he thought on what terror his poor baby girl went through.

But what could he do?

He wasn't used to dealing with problems like this!

Lucy, in the meantime, shook her head with eyes full of concern.

"Nashi's been hiding from me and I can't coax her out. I think you scared her when she saw you in that form. I think you are the only one who can sort this out, since you need to reconcile with her..."

Natsu looked down at himself thoughtfully. What his wife said was true, if this was about what he thought it was then it was more than likely that this was a matter that only the bond between a father and daughter could fix. But how could one make an attempt to reason with a six-month-old? But still...he needed to set things right. He looked back up and nodded in concurrence with the celestial wizard, knowing full well that her words rang true.

He smiled a huge fanged smirk, putting on his best jokester face.

"Okay...alright, I'll go and see if I can make our little girl all smiley again!"

The fire wizard then proceeded to push passed his wife.

Lucy frowned as she watched her husband begin to enter their daughter's nursery and decided that Natsu and Nashi needed some father/daughter bonding time. She thought that perhaps a visit to the guild would benefit her right about now —she didn't plan on doing any solo missions quite yet but she did intend on spending time with the girls such as Levy and Erza.

She headed out the door, Happy in tow, and left Natsu to it.

Natsu had simply nudged the door open with a single push of his hand.

But what he saw made his heart sink.

Nashi had been playing with her blocks but she had tears flowing down her chubby cheeks, her eyes were red and bloodshot. She was sat on the floor and was just being unusually quiet as she seemed to just mind her own business, but she was also very close to her crib —she was probably preparing to dive under there should anyone come in.

Natsu hated to see his daughter look so sad, it broke his heart.

But the second Nashi heard him come in, she started to cry and dove beneath the crib.

Natsu's brain made his legs move before he could even register what was going on.

"No, no, no, no, no! Please, Nash-Nash! Don't hide!"

He just dropped down on all fours on the floor and hastened towards the crib that Nashi had just retreated underneath, observing as the little girl scurried away whilst she wailed as she curled into a ball and got as far as she could go to get away at the fiery dragon slayer. Natsu tilted his head sideways to get a better watchful position and tried to get a look at the little girl a little better and saw that she had took the position of a cornered feral feline and put on the best menacing glare she possibly could.

At the same time, however, the poor child cried with her little throat strained, raw and her tiny voice had become hoarse.

"H-Hey...its alright, Nashi, don't be afraid..." He tried to assure the frightened infant, his voice was hushed and soothing. But the child just whimpered fearfully and backed off a bit more, even more tears streaming down her cheeks.

She obviously didn't believe him.

But that wasn't going to stop Natsu from trying.

"C'mon, it's just daddy! I'm not scary!"

Nothing.

"It's alright, baby girl. Please com-!" He had slowly reached his arm towards the little girl in an attempt to pull her out of hiding. But as he reached in, a sudden sharp pain had bit into his hand. He winced in pain and was forced to withdraw his hand and examine what that pain was.

He was shocked at what he saw.

A bite mark.

Nashi bit him!

The dragon slayer hissed in pain on examining his injuries and, surprisingly, it seemed that this child had a fang in her mouth because it looked like the fang tooth was the one that bit into his skin the most. He quickly started to nurse his injured hand, and he was so angry that his very hair was beginning to steam; but he deeply inhaled in an effort to calm himself.

He couldn't risk yelling at her.

That would make things worse.

Natsu's obsidian eyes were distant and his thoughts were clouded with concern for his baby girl; he had no idea what he could do to try and soothe the terrified young child, especially since it was him that she was frightened of. He pondered hard on this and it even made his brain ache just to think so hard. It was so hard it even caused his head to ache like crazy and that made his frustration ever increase —when he thought too hard, it hurt his head and when his head hurt it just made him more annoyed and when he got annoyed he wanted nothing more than to punch the daylights out of something or someone (mostly Gray).

The pink-haired dragon slayer closed his eyes and blew out a frustrated breath and, as he did, he blew a puff of fiery smog and smoke and he could have swore that when he saw the smoke he'd exhumed himself, an lightbulb lit inside his head.

He was raised by the almighty fire dragon king and his daughter was being raised by the fire dragon king's son so maybe if he reminded her of how fire couldn't be too frightening then maybe it could reassure her that her father wouldn't harm her.

A smile made its way across his face and revealed his glinting fangs.

"Maybe I could try and re-kindle her love for fire and show her it ain't so scary..."

Natsu shuffled himself around, sat back down on the floor in front of the crib that Nashi had retreated beneath and he held out both of his hands, laying them both down on the ground, and let a small flame ignite in his palms.

It was a small flame that crackled and burned softly.

It wasn't long before Natsu could hear the soft sound of sniffing and he kept his eyes patiently on the small and relatively well-controlled flame crackling in his hands, his expression grew more hopeful. This was promising. He heard as Nashi sniffed at the air once again and proceeded to sneakily and cautiously head in the direction of the small fire. Despite her beautiful brown eyes being glazed over with fear, they almost instantly lit up and a small reluctant smile of delight tugged at the corners of her lips.

Natsu couldn't help but break into a fanged-smirk when he saw his daughter smiling just a bit again.

"You like daddy's flames, huh?" He cooed sweetly.

Nashi froze when she heard her father's voice, her eyes widening and her lower lip quivering as she hid herself a bit more. She seemed to like the gentle warmth those flames provided and the comforting scent of smoke seemed to bring her some more comfort, she also seemed to be indecisive about whether or not to come out of hiding, and she definitely seemed reluctant.

The baby pinkette girl watched the adult fairy tail wizard wearily.

Natsu softened his voice and looked at his small daughter with the saddest and most ashamed expression ever as he gave a forlorn sigh, he closed his eyes and hung his head as he started to speak in a hushed tone of voice. He could feel his heart threatening to crumble and shatter right on the spot but he tried to sound as sincere as possible and to help make her feel better, his voice quivered a bit as he spoke.

"Oh, sweetie...I'm so sorry I scared you. Daddy didn't mean for you to see that, I didn't even count on you being there..."

Natsu felt some tickling behind his eyeballs, announcing a fresh batch of tears.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry..."

He hadn't even notice as he suddenly felt a small weight heft itself on to his folded knees and he looked down and was shocked to find that not only had Nashi come out of hiding but she had also pulled herself on to his lap but was also was looking up at him with worried confusion. It was a look asking "what's wrong?". He felt his heart swell with relief as he reached down and took her into his arms whilst he gingerly readjusted the little one in his arms and held her out in front of him so he could see her face.

Big, fat tears rolled down Nashi's face as she sobbed and sniffled and whimpered softly.

"I'm sorry, Nash-Nash," He smiled softly in an apologetic manner.

A short, ten-second silence had befallen the two until Natsu grinned so wide that it showed off his glisteningly pearly white fangs. He didn't want to linger on making a depressing mood for his daughter to soak in, he was just happy to have her back in his arms again...and accepting it.

"Now, let's wipe those tears away. Can't have those on that cute little face now," He said, a playful tone leaking into his voice.

The girl giggled at the Dragon Slayer's silliness and let him wipe her tearstained cheeks with his thumbs, the way his fingertips brushed against the girl's face was so soft and she bounced herself up and down on her father's strong knee whilst grinning from ear-to-ear.

Natsu cooed goofily as he stuck his tongue out playfully at her, "Whose my lil' munchkin? You're my lil' munchkin! Yes you are!"

Nashi giggled and squealed in delight as Natsu made some "nom, nom, nom" noises with his mouth as he pulled his infant daughter in close and peppered her entire face with loving yet gentle kisses, making playful growling sounds at the same time.

It was good to have a good mood back in the house again.

It didn't take long for Nashi's mood to go down again as she looked down sadly at her father's hand. her eyes watering, and she reached down and used her small chubby hand to rub over the cut that came from her own fang. Her father could sense that she felt bad about biting him on the hand and seeing such a look made Natsu smile sadly at her. He wasn't going to hold this against her since she was petrified and she was just acting out of a need to defend herself.

Natsu just shrugged his shoulders and proceeded to tickle the little child playfully.

"Don't worry about it, sweet cheeks. I would've done the same thing."

Nashi giggled and squirmed, trying to move away from the delightful form of torture she was receiving, and she squealed and gurgled in a joyous manner as she perched herself unsteadily on her father's knee whilst she grabbed hold of one of the tails of his scaly scarf. She flung her arms around it, hugging the material as tightly as she could in her little arms, and she looked up silently at him.

Natsu's smile turned into a frown.

Huge, innocent brown eyes bore right into cool, onyx eyes.

The owner of the latter asked, noticing that his daughter had gone quiet, "What is it, Nash-Nash?"

He could see something in her eyes and he couldn't put his finger on it. Was it determination? Or, perhaps, was it resolution? It could have been even interpreted as a unique mix of calculating yet thoughtful. It was a strange thing but Natsu couldn't help but be very perplexed as to what was going on now, and his brows furrowed in confusion when he saw his daughter open her mouth. Nashi screwed her chubby face up, squeezing her eyes shut as she was clearly trying to make an effort to do something.

Then it happened.

"Pa...pa-ba..."

Nashi's struggled words bubbled out as a string of dribble and clumsy gurgles.

Natsu's heart dropped from his chest and on to the floor, he beamed incredulously at his baby girl. He couldn't believe it; his sense of hearing must have failed him this time...but it couldn't have because he hadn't heard her voice before now and it sounded so new and it was so sweet to his ears. He couldn't believe it but he had to...Nashi just spoke...her first word. The pink-haired dragon slayer beamed as he grabbed Nashi's underarms in both hands and swept her up so he was holding her in front of him.

Nashi looked happily at her father, proud of her accomplishment.

Natsu's eyes watered and his lower lip quivered as he gasped in both amazement and joy.

"O-Oh my gosh! You just...you just said 'Papa'! You just said your first word...! Or close enough."

Natsu bounced Nashi up and down in his arms as he meandered towards a nearby rocking chair and plopped himself down in the seat. Once seated, he brought Nashi close to him and proceeded to nuzzle her with every ounce of affection he could. He loved Nashi so much and, while he knew that he would mess up every now and then, he was determined that he would raise her to the best of his abilities and he wouldn't let her down.

He rubbed the tip of his nose against her chin as he crooned gently to her.

"I'm so proud of you, sweetheart!"

He sighed with tired relief as he wrapped his strong arms around the infant, father and daughter smooshing their cheeks together, and a short silence brewed between the two salmon-pink-haired wizards until Natsu spoke up in a goofy baby voice.

"...Y-You forgive daddy for being a big meanie, right?"

Nashi cooed and gurgled in confirmation as she snuggled into the crook of his neck.

Natsu chuckled at his baby's adorability.

"D'awww. Thanks, baby girl..."

He sighed as he added on.

"...and I'll apologise to uncle Gray, Happy and mama tomorrow."

A/N: Heres the end of this short story.

I made it specially for Fathers day.

Plus I hadn't made a Nalu parental fic in awhile so I thought that I should make one.

I hope you enjoyed, guys.

Happy fathers day!

-Chloemcg