Laxus held his newborn daughter and kissed his wife.

This time, it had been so easy. Everything about this second pregnancy had been easier. The main difference is that they weren't first-time parents, or anything close to it. They'd almost raised their sons to adulthood, so the things that normally freak out normal parents basically meant nothing.

The birth had been as easy as a birth can be and only took four hours from when Helena's water broke at breakfast to when the girl had entered the world.

His sons were waiting in the living room with Makarov, who made his demand as soon as Laxus emerged from the bedroom where the baby had been born.

"Gimme that!"

Laxus obliged and his sons flanked the arm chair curiously as their grandfather took the baby girl. "Boys, this is your baby sister, Mavis Dreyar."

Yuri looked up. "Is Mom okay? That sounded awful..."

"She's as good as someone can be. You guys can go in and see her in a minute."

"That was nothing compared to when you two were born," Makarov answered as he examined the baby girl. Her hair was golden and wild just like every other Dreyars, but she'd missed the Dreyar eyebrows. She did have the thick Dreyar eyelashes, and blue eyes like Mako and Laxus had. "What a cutie!" he cooed, "Hello, little Mavis! I'm your Gramps."

Laxus suddenly remembered and checked his watch. "Hey, boys, can you go to the train station in an hour and meet Ivan? You remember what he looks like?"

Yuri nodded. "We got it, Dad."

"Make sure he understands he better not start any trouble."

"We got it," Mako answered. "We can hold her?"

Their father nodded. "Of course you can. She's your baby sister. Newborns can't hold their own heads up, so you have to be careful."

"Me first. I'm older," Yuri insisted.

Makarov gently transferred her to Yuri's cradling embrace. Yuri took her back to the couch and Mako leaned over as they curiously stared at their sister while she stared at them. "You two are going to be good brothers, aren't you?"

Mako put one in finger in her hand and the baby's finger's squeezed reflexively. "Mavis is so little, Dad. We were...we were tiny like this?"

"Yeah, but as soon as you escaped from the womb, you both got huge," Laxus answered.

Yuri handed the baby to Mako after a few minutes, and seemed instantly in love with his sister. "Hey you. I'm your big brother, and I'm going to look out for you."

Their father said, "Speaking of which, your Mom and I made an important decision concerning Mavis. Whenever you have a kid, you have to think about what's going to happen if you die and you can't raise the baby. When you were born, we had someone picked out to raise you. But if it happens now, we don't want the family to break up so someone else can raise Mavis. We want you guys to stay together and take care of your sister. You guys okay with that?"

They looked up at him, and down at her, and then nodded.

"Good."

The midwife came out and told them they could go in and see their mother, which the boys did.

Laxus saw them pile onto the bed on opposite sides of their mother, who took her baby back but he didn't move from the edge of the couch. "I have a good family."

Makarov seemed unspeakably sad, and his grandson took notice.

"What's the matter, Gramps?"

The old man fought the urge to cry. "I realized when I was holding your little girl that even if I live a couple of more years, she not going to remember me."

Death was strange, especially when it wasn't something to be fought ferociously. In most circumstances, Laxus viewed death as the ultimate enemy, but there was a time and a place where it was appropriate. Makarov's time was coming, and even though his grandfather had accepted his fate, it was still complicated.

He didn't patronize Makarov, not ever. So he didn't lie and he didn't try to make him feel better. They were both men, and they faced different facets of what was happening in the best way they knew how.

And sometimes, that just meant being sad.

They both looked through the open door and found the juxtaposition of celebration for the beginning of a new life and sadness for the end of an old one.

Laxus said, "She's going to hear stories about you forever. The boys grew up with you. You were there for everything, so as she grows up, we're all going to tell her about you. I'll tell her how much you wanted to see her grow up."

"I guess that'll have to be good enough."

XXX

When Ivan Dreyar stepped off the train, he was flanked by two tall blond teenagers instantly. He normally would have found this insulting, since Laxus clearly would still think of him as a threat, but even Ivan had heard about the monsters his sons had raised. The real danger was that there was two of them, and they knew how to move seamlessly in battle.

For whatever reason, he tended to follow them in Sorcerer Weekly. It made him feel strangely happy to see them living their lives and being successful.

Mako grabbed Ivan's bag and slung it over his shoulder, throwing an arm around his slightly shorter grandfather. "Long time no see!"

"I assumed your father would be here to threaten me," Ivan protested.

Yuri pulled him down by the collar. "If you fuck with our family, my dad will be the least of your fucking problems. See, Dad might give you a little grace because he knows you, but we don't know you from shit and we don't treat our enemies well."

Ivan shrugged him off. "I didn't come here for any reason other than my son told me to come. Is my father well?"

Mako shook his head. "He's dying."

"D-Dying..."

They walked mostly in silence, and then cut down the woodland path where he'd attacked them as children.

Ivan remembered the surroundings. "I'm sorry for what happened back then."

"Whatever," they said in unison.

They headed home and the twins went straight to the little apartment that had been built since they'd been evicted from their room for the new baby after they left Ivan in the guest room. Yuri brought the baby to his room, and Mako went in to hang out because it was so weird to have separate bedrooms. They'd literally always shared a sleeping space, dating all the way back to the womb. Now, they had separate rooms and a door to the outside (although they'd always treated their old window like one) as well as to the living room.

Yuri and Mako looked after Mavis for the better part of an hour.

When she needed a diaper change, they knew immediately, and having no clue as to how, they brought her back to the living room. Makarov was asleep under a blanket, Ivan was watching him sleep with a worried expression, their mother was napping, and their father had been called away for a guild emergency.

They decided they would attempt to complete this task on their own, because really, how hard could it be? They took the baby to the nursery, and put her on the changing table and collected what appeared to be the necessary supplies. Diaper, wipes, powder.

"E-Ewwww..."

Yuri elbowed him. "We can do this. We're going to be s-class soon, so this should be nothing."

Their disgusted groans upon unfastening the diaper brought Ivan to the door. "What are you troublemakers doing?"

"Do you know how to change a diaper?"

Ivan asked, "You do know I have a kid right?"

Mako said, "We heard you weren't around."

The older man came in and taught them the art of diaper changing. "Like this...then like this...then like this...and done." When he finished, he threw the balled-up diaper in the bin and gave in to the urge to pick up the newborn. "It wasn't all bad, you know. Just most of it."

They were different, the twins, and as Ivan looked up from one to another, he found warmth of acceptance from Mako. But Yuri? His eyes were cold, almost predatory, threatening him not to even breathe the wrong way while he held Mavis.

Age had softened Ivan. Hating Fairy Tail, hating his father, estranging in his own son, attacking his family...everyone in the family was happy except him. Ivan had been the tempest that turned and tossed his son and set him at odds with Makarov, but in the end, Makarov and Laxus were closer than he'd ever be to his son.

As he held the newborn girl in his arms, stunned by how beautiful and innocent she was, he looked up at his grandsons. "You may not understand this now, but as you get older, things are going to happen. Some of them will be good, and some of them will be so bad you won't even know how to move forward. Don't stay stuck because something shitty happened. You'll wake up one day and regret everything."

Makarov awoke from his nap on the couch and saw his son in person for the first time since the Grand Magic Games where Laxus had defeated him. "Ivan."

The twins were watching him like a hawk, and when Makarov stirred, Ivan handed her off to the twins, who took her back to the master bedroom to eat.

"Hey Pops."

"You've been well?"

Ivan nodded. "Mostly. You?"

"Mostly."

Makarov looked over his son and found he was aging and had—over the past eighteen years—started to look like an old man. They were really both old men, he realized, and they were far too old to be angry about anything that happened in the past.

Ivan looked down at the floor. "My son has some nice kids."

"Don't get the wrong idea. Cross them and they'll make you wish you were dead," Makarov warned.

Ivan looked down and said, "I have a few students now."

His father looked at him as if he was speaking a foreign language. "...students?"

"As I get older, a lot of things have stopped mattering so much. I'm teaching magic to a few orphans. That's been my life in a nutshell for a few years now," he explained.

Makarov's face softened. "So you've been okay."

His son nodded. "I'm sorry, Pops. I couldn't hear you until I got old. I shouldn't have left my son with you to raise, but it was probably still the best thing."

"I didn't mind raising Laxus. I loved him from the first time I held him. I got to watch him when he was a kid. He was a nice kid too, you know. Then you came back for a while and things got rocky for a few years after that. But it was okay. Everything turned out fine, I think," he answered.

Ivan bowed his head in shame. "Do you know what my mother is up to lately?"

Makarov furrowed his brows. "You don't know? Porly died four years ago. We had gotten back together for a while, and one day, she was picking herbs and she was just gone. She wasn't sick and she didn't suffer at all."

Neither of them was really sure how they'd feel seeing one another again, but now that they were there, face to face, it was bittersweet. Makarov felt such a relief that his son had recovered from his crazed, blistering rage at some point, but was sad that he'd been a stranger to them. Maybe it was shame that kept him from even writing to say he was going okay.

No parent wants to go eighteen years without hearing from their kid. Even when he'd attacked the twins when they were little, Makarov hadn't seen him and Ivan hadn't made any contact with him.

When Laxus returned with food, all the living Dreyars converged in one place for the very first time. His wife and daughter were asleep together, and he left them just like that.

They ate, and the twins noted their father glaring at his father. They'd seen Laxus get angry in battle on a couple of occasions, but to just hate someone? Nope. It was new to them, and it made the dinner a little awkward.

The twins washed the dishes and split once the meal was over. Yuri followed one path to get girlfriend from her house, and Mako took another to have what was going to be his final evening as the phantom boyfriend of Natsu's daughter.

Makarov had a coughing fit and went to bed early, leaving Laxus and his father alone in the otherwise quiet house.

They sat in the living room and stared at each other for a long time.

The last time they'd been face to face, Ivan had attacked the boys and Laxus beat the snot out of him and threatened him. He never wanted to see him again, and if Ivan had never come around again, it was all well and good to him.

Ivan finally broke the silence. "You have a wonderful family."

"I didn't abandon my sons," he answered.

His father flinched at the thorn. "You're right, you didn't. You made a lot of right choices I didn't. You can hate me until the end of time, and its justified."

Laxus crossed his arms. "That's not it. If you didn't want to raise me, whatever. You left me with somebody who could. What I begrudge is that you came back and you turned me against Gramps and you twisted my mind. And then you left again. I put Gramps through hell over that, I got kicked out of the guild, I was a miserable shit...if you'd just stayed gone, everything would have been fine."

"Oh, so it wasn't because you missed me."

"I never really knew you. You just came in and out of my life when you wanted to without regard to the consequences it had for me. And then I realized when my sons were born that you were never really a dad. You were just some guy who made me and came around sometimes. You couldn't be my dad because you weren't a dad at all," Laxus explained.

They stayed up that night, and they talked about everything—the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between. Age and time had worn Ivan down and eventually broken him the way they broke everyone.

The worst blow for Ivan was seeing how the entire rest of the family had been happy and well while he squandered in disappointed solitude.

When they finished, Ivan went to bed in the guest room, Laxus spent an hour cuddling his new daughter, and then went to check on his boys.

Yuri and Katie were sound asleep in Yuri's bed, to which Laxus shook his head but gave no protest. They were old enough they could live somewhere else if they wanted, and have sex whenever and wherever they wanted.

Mako's bed was completely undisturbed, and Laxus wondered what kind of trouble he would get in on his own. Unlike most twins, Yuri and Mako had never really had any kind of struggle for individuality or identity and did nearly everything together even now that they were almost grown.

He wondered if his son had gone to visit his mystery girlfriend, but when he tried to follow the scent, it vanished, indicating Mako had used lightning form.

Meanwhile, at Natsu's house, the fire dragon slayer arrived home at 3am. He was home several days early from his job, which was a rarity. He was never early, only late. Happy was sleeping on his shoulder as he quietly entered. He put Happy down on the couch, and was going to go straight to bed, opting not to wake up his daughter, but he heard a scream.

He was halfway up the stairs before his brain fully processed the word that had been screamed.

"Harder!"

Natsu froze in place.

There was another scream, which was clearly not a scream of pain, or fear, or anything else.

His brow twitched, and he couldn't make his body move for a few minutes. He learned from the screaming that his precious, beautiful baby girl was a noisy screw. They were apparently having great sex, and Natsu didn't know if that made it better or worse.

Natsu was torn between murder and throwing up, so he decided he'd do both, in that order.

He crept up the stairs slowly, reached for the door knob, and caught them mid-orgasm, during which Mako had no sensory awareness.

Natsu knew the second he saw the spiky light blond hair and the gigantic feet hanging off his daughter's bed who the phantom had been. And it made sense instantly—who else would be able to sneak around on a dragon better than another dragon?

He stood there in the doorway while the teens collapsed onto each other, panting.

Mako was halfway back to reality when he caught Natsu's scent.

His daughter sat up and pulled the sheet up. "Hey daddy."

Mako grabbed his boxers off the floor as he made a swift move to escape, but Natsu grabbed him by the hair. "I-I can explain."

"Can you? Let's see how much talking you can do with a broken jaw."

Mako crashed through the window, and discovered that Angry Natsu was a completely different animal than the one he usually sparred with. Angry Natsu was absolutely terrifying, and no words gave him justice. His girlfriend's father threw him around like a ragdoll, alternating between bone-crushing melee, skin-melting fire, and bone-crushing melee with skin-melting fire. Mako couldn't even get a hit in, and yet somehow he still felt like it had been worth it.

As Natsu vented his blinding rage on the teenager, he was almost glad Mako had dragon's blood because it meant he could hit him harder and a greater number of times.

Natsu got on top of him and punched him in the face more times than he should have. "What do you have to say now?"

"I love her."

If any other boy had uttered these words, Natsu would have been even more enraged, but he wasn't any other boy. When his daughter was little and Lisanna died, and kids at school kept calling her a crybaby, Mako beat them up more than was necessary and carried her home on his back. When she'd been sick, he always brought her homework over. He was a high-spirited, over-protective, and heavy-handed goofball any day of the week. Mako was actually one of Natsu's favorite people because he saw lot of himself in the kid.

Natsu rolled off and crossed his legs. "Fuck you."

Mako sat up and wiped blood from the corner of his mouth. "Sorry. I wanted to ask if it was okay, but I felt like it would go like this."

Natsu stared at him for a while. "If I tell you to stay away from my daughter and never touch her again, will that work?"

"No."

Natsu continued staring him down, and to his credit, he seemed oddly normal. "How long have you guys been sneaking around?"

Mako looked up. "Six months."

"How long have you been having sex?"

"Two."

"I didn't see a condom during your graceless dismount."

"She's on birth control."

Natsu frowned. "I don't know anything about my daughter."

Their man-to-man conversation was interrupted when Lila ran right between them and grabbed Mako by the neck.

"Baby, you're hurt! Daddy, how could you?!" she cried as she wiped blood from a cut on his forehead. "I love him!" And then, as if to illustrate the point to her father, she gave the teenager an open-mouthed kiss right in front of Natsu.

Mako and his daughter had nothing in common except the proximity of their ages and their stubbornness, so he knew threats and reason would be equally unfruitful. Judging for how good they were at sneaking around, he knew they'd just get better at it.

And he couldn't kill Mako because that would bring the wrath of the Thunder God into his life and his daughter would hate him.

Even if he could get rid of Mako, he knew his daughter would just get a different boyfriend, and he'd probably hate that guy more than the one sitting in front of him.

Natsu stood up and dusted himself off. "Lila, Mako. I've decided to be okay with this, but I have some conditions. First, you don't lie or sneak around anymore. Second, I would prefer you not, but if you guys are going to have sex anyway, keep it far away from me so I can still be in denial. Third, don't get pregnant."

When Mako finally went home the next morning, his great grandfather and father were the only ones awake. He passed through the kitchen to get a bottle of water, stitched, bruised, and burned, and the two older men followed him with their eyes.

Makarov asked, "Did something happen between last night and this morning?"

Mako sighed. "It's a long story."

"We're bored, and judging from your scent, you had sex and got the living hell beaten out of you. The life of a teenage boy indeed," Laxus answered, offering his son a cup of coffee. "Start at the beginning."

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