The rugged yet beautiful chaotic flow of activity that called the Fairy Tail guild home meant something was always happening.
From sunrise to sunset, a constant current of playful roughhousing and friendly scattered blather flowed naturally.
For Mirajane, that meant every day was busy, yet truly fulfilling. She could sleep with sweet bliss every night.
Well, she could, until her talk with Erza a few days ago made her aware of something that she felt abhorrently queasy for missing.
Truth be told, Mirajane had been so entranced with the ever shifting flow of everyday routine that she did not notice Natsu's absence.
That was until Erza came back from an errand one day looking as if a ghost had drained away what little pigmentation was in her skin, a distant yet busy stare locking her face up like a statue.
Apparently, she had sought out Natsu, irritated that he was nowhere to be seen, and had left behind no explanation for his lack of presence.
Whatever discussion they had rattled the unfazeable and mighty Titania to her very core.
From what Erza was able to stutter out as the cogs in her brain grinded roughly in an attempt to speed up her thought process, Mirajine had gathered several things.
At first, as Erza described spending time with Natsu, the jokes and cuddles and naps, Mirajane didn't understand what was wrong, that sounded heavenly.
Eventually, Erza finally worked around to telling her that Natsu was taking a break.
From basically everything.
Upon first hearing that, the barmaid didn't flinch, continuing on about her chores and serving the awaiting guild members their meals.
Because she thought it was just Erza's poor yet admirable attempt at a joke.
When no punchline came, Mirajane nearly spilled Wakaba's hash browns and eggs all over the polished counter as she stumbled over herself.
There and then she knew the brewing situation was indeed serious, and she let Kinana take over before pulling Erza to the side and demanding a much, much more thorough explanation.
Natsu wasn't off training or getting into trouble or taking dangerous impossible quests. He was, as Erza put it, 'cooped up in his cabin, exhausted and confused'.
Mirajane wished she hadn't.
She did not sleep a wink that night.
Mirajane did not even know where to start describing her inner monologue, as her train of thought was so strained with the cumbersome weight of cluttered emotions that it was completely derailed.
She could only sift through the smoldering wreckage to piece some bit of her sanity back together.
All of the sudden, she completely understood why Erza had wandered through the door as if her soul had been tied to a stick and was being held just out of reach.
Several days later, Mirajane still found herself being so enraptured in a cocoon of guilty thoughts that she nearly burned several orders.
Without Lisanna around to talk her way through her thoughts, Mirajane was left to quietly drone on about everything in her own head.
It was just as Erza put it, there was a quiet pain that had been tearing at Natsu's insides for a long time, and she couldn't even begin to understand half of it.
After Erza told her about the argument they had devolved into, Mirajane was stunned at what Natsu had apparently shared.
Natsu?
In pain?
That wasn't how the world worked, how the guild worked, how he worked.
Natsu was simple and honest and was full of boundless energy. Nothing was ever supposed to be wrong with him.
But something was, and Mirajane couldn't do anything to help.
Even if she could, why in the world would Natsu trust anyone besides Lisanna to help?
They had made him feel weak. Ever since he was a boy.
Everyone knew Natsu was getting stronger, he was obsessed with finding new battles to fight and ways to train.
But he had been doing that for so long, and it seemed like nothing ever came of it.
The guild's general knowledge on Natsu's strength was that he was pretty strong, and getting stronger, and one day would be as strong as S class. One day.
One day.
But he wasn't S-class.
It had been that exact same way the entire time Natsu had been in the guild, and at times it felt like he was just jogging in place.
Sure, he defeated so many people and done so many things to protect the guild, but had he ever gotten his win over Laxus or Erza or Gildarts?
She couldn't remember the last time Natsu had challenged any of the S-class mages, herself included. Maybe before the Grand Magic Games with Laxus?
After that? Nothing.
Nothing surrounding Natsu's power or his drive to become stronger had changed up until the war, and well, no one really wanted to talk about the war.
'One day he'll be strong like S-class' had turned into 'oh yeah Natsu did all these things so he must be pretty strong'.
Mirajane found it odd how her merely looking back on all this frustrated her more than it ever did Natsu, the one with an insatiable drive that was never perceived to be climbing anything.
Thinking about it more, she supposed that made sense for him.
Natsu was not afraid of change, or lack thereof, in the slightest.
He lived in his own little world where things were straight forward, marching to the energetic beat of his own wild drum, taking whatever came his way with a goofy smile.
That couldn't be said for most guild members, who needed something to fall back to immediately after the guild's latest harrowing adventure so that they could return to normal as quick as possible and deal with the aftermath in their own ways.
Everyone almost died, the guild was almost destroyed, but don't worry, bandage your wounds and brawl and eat and party and forget about it.
Dragons? Demons? Both cobbled together lead by the Black Wizard Zeref in a war that had left so many scars?
Fairy Tail was celebrating and enjoying the way fireworks lit up the night sky the same day Acnologia's terror nearly ripped it apart.
This was Fairy Tail, and some things never changed.
Natsu and Gray, or Gajeel for that matter, weren't S-class level. 'One day', maybe, 'one day'.
Erza was the strongest member of Team Natsu, she was top dog.
There was no one stronger than Master Makarov and Gildarts.
If a brawl started or something had been destroyed, it was probably Natsu's fault.
Always do what Erza told you to do, and if you didn't, whatever she did to you in return was on you.
And most importantly, Natsu was always alright, always smiling his dumb smile.
It was just the way things were.
Believing that, believing those things and so many more, it helped.
It provided a solid foundation to lean back upon, to feel some sense of safety from the threat of the outside world.
Lisanna in her infinite wisdom had pointed all this out to her, that people were creatures of routine and that the guild stood as a rough around the edges yet loving shelter for those with pain in their pasts.
Fairy Tail had a system, had cogs and gears, and those who had been there long enough eventually become moving parts themselves.
Fairy Tail was a loving welcoming place that accepted anyone and everyone.
But it still had its faults. Faults no one wanted to talk about, faults that were better left pretending didn't exist.
Well, those faults were one of the reasons Natsu hadn't been there to celebrate everyone's victory after the war, and Mirajane hated how long it had taken her to truly notice his absence, or how long it had taken her to understand how important a piece he was to the guild.
The day came when Natsu eventually returned, and walked through the towering wooden doors, no spring in his step to be seen.
There was no celebration, no one sounded an alarm and drew attention to his arrival.
The mayhem and disarray and partying, all the happy conversations, all the pleasant exchanges, they went on, with or without Natsu. Somehow.
That's how bad the war had been, how eager it made everyone to move on past that endless strife, even if it meant not noticing his absence when him leaving after Tartaros was probably the reason the guild has disbanded.
Mirajane watched with bated breath as Natsu merely stared at the chaos of his family was a soft smile and continued on in, methodically navigating his way towards the back without drawing any attention to himself.
If Mirajane hadn't trained herself to keep track of everyone who walked in and out those doors, she probably wouldn't have noticed him slithering around the guildhall.
Eventually, he made a beeline to the job board, left unattended with no gathering of members looking for their next mission.
Well, that was what Mirajane originally thought until he made a left turn and walked up the stairs to the second floor.
The second floor that was exclusively for S-class.
Normally, he would avoid that general area like it was capable of causing his certain demise, years of being slapped by Master's enlarged hand or having his nervous system fried by a lighting bolt from Laxus having trained him to act like so.
But now, Natsu strode up the wooden stairs as if it was an insignificant part of his daily routine, each step made by a man who clearly did not care if he was noticed or not.
He deserved to be able to go up there.
Somehow that hadn't been said yet, after all these years, after all platitudes towards Natsu about how he was pretty strong, how he had potential, about the 'one day', the idea of that 'one day' actually coming felt so odd.
Erza did her best to paint herself as Natsu's number one fan, but even Mirajane knew her old rival liked to wait until things were at they're most dangerous before she stopped thinking the worst of him.
Mirajane couldn't think that from a high place, over the years she hadn't gotten to interact with Natsu enough to make up for their childhoods, so she couldn't claim to be much better.
Watching Natsu quickly walk up those steps with a frightening amount of stealth, Mirajane wandered when was the last time he had even been given a chance at S-class.
After Tenrou, after all that fighting, he was denied the title when it was all said and done because the Master thought it to be too inconveniencing for him to fill out a few papers.
Instead, he challenged the weakened Natsu to a fight, then squashed him against a cliff side.
Stepping away from the sink full of dirty dishes and bubbly soapy foam, Mirajane felt searing razor sharp shards of panic embed themselves inside her when she noticed Laxus was up there was as well.
Laxus was in his usual spot, leaned back in his chair, feet propped up on the table, overlooking the chaos below with bemusement and boredom.
In that moment, the dozens of occurrences where Laxus would zap a wandering Natsu for overstepping his self perceived 'boundaries' swirled inside of Mirajane's head, making her act with no sense of forethought.
Right now the Natsu she saw wasn't the mage who bested Zeref and supposedly Acnologia, it was the Natsu who'd 'one day' earn the right to be up there. So she moved with out thinking.
To stop further damage to her friend who didn't deserve it.
As she rushed out from behind the counter to the confused calls of Kinana and the other awaiting patrons, Mirajane lost sight of them both.
She winced in preparation for the bright yellow flash to illuminate the second floor, but would instead be kept in a state of tense anxiousness until she reached the base of the stairs.
Standing at the very top, with a few S-class job offers gripped in his marred hand, was an untouched Natsu, who gazed down upon her with glazed yet pleasantly surprised eyes.
"Oh," Natsu's voice had never sounded so coarse before as he offered her his sweet as honey smile usually reserved for Wendy or Asuka, "It's good to see ya Mira, how've ya been?"
When a flash of pink hair caught his attention, pulling his entertained audience away from a scuffle between an arguing Jet and Droy, Laxus met the eyes of the newly crowned Dragon King.
Supposedly.
When Laxus spotted that flash of salmon creep up the stairs, he couldn't help give a sigh so strong it sent a breeze throughout the second floor.
It was good to see him not a death's door, or doing something monumentally stupid and confusing in the name of saving the world.
He hadn't thought of Natsu much, because thinking of him meant thinking of fighting Acnologia, and Laxus was plenty content to leave that behind.
But that meant he was left staring at Natsu without his thoughts in order, so that best could do was package his relief into one tiny gesture.
Laxus gave a nod in greeting, which Natsu returned with stoic silence before he stopped in front of the S-class job board.
There was no one present to notice them, so there was no point in keeping up the facade on throwing him out.
Laxus had no clue what had happened with Acnologia, and he quite frankly he didn't want to know, the world was saved, his family, his guild, were all safe and sound.
But, he wouldn't play so aloof that he'd ignore the things Natsu had done to get them there. Natsu had left him in the dust, no other way around it, and there was no need to put on an act.
They had been engaging in this charade for years now, despite the respect, despite the understanding.
Laxus didn't really know why Natsu chose to continue it, chose to throw their rematch before the Grand Magic Games, chose to stop sprinting up to him demanding a fight, but he did.
If Natsu wanted to slide in here and snatch a few S-class jobs on the sly, Laxus wouldn't stop him, tradition and rules be damned.
S-class. It really was just a title. And as Natsu climbed and climbed, the title seemed emptier and emptier.
Laxus was glad he had learned the value of humility, or else all that might have stung.
Deciding to reopen the memory that had been replayed thousands of times over in his head by now for yet another go around, Laxus recalled the first time he had ever been humbled, by none other than Natsu himself.
Their first and only real fight.
The time Laxus attempted to take the guild for himself, but was faced with the final obstacle of the mage known as Salamander.
The thunderstorm, black as death, quenched and bombarded the land it cocooned with venomous bolts of lighting.
Bequeathing the rooftop two figures stood upon with a percussion of booming flashes, its volley halted for a moment to allow a clear view of the battling dragon slayers atop the war torn Kardia Cathedral.
Natsu and Laxus pushed against each other with everything they had, neither combatant willing to lose a single inch, visceral grunts of effort coming in short bursts as blood burned hot with the need for victory.
Laxus snarled as he tightened his grip on the hand lock they shared, bolts of bright yellow dancing upon his scale textured arms.
Brick shingles peeled away beneath them as their feet slowly tore apart stone roof into uneven portions.
The thunder that Laxus' mere presence had caused screeched out in promise of its maker's triumph all the while he attempted to use his larger size as leverage against his opponent.
Natsu, features veiled in ragged resolution, was having none of it, not budging as he pushed back against the larger man with equal effort.
Even as the older dragon slayer attempted to channel his potent current through where they came together, Natsu failed to buckle.
Their battle had been long and brutal, with Natsu at first being completely overwhelmed, eventually evening the odds with the assistance of Gajeel, before somehow standing on equal grounds with Laxus alone.
Natsu had just kept getting back up, just like he did against Gildarts when he was boy.
The sight of his former enemy taking a hit for him as to allow a chance, no matter how pitifully slime, for victory, had lit something inside Natsu ablaze.
"I can do this all day Natsu! You can't keep up!" Laxus taunted with a scowling jeer, "I will beat you down as many times as I need to!"
While he himself had accumulated several scuffs and bruises, Natsu was in far worse condition, bloody gashes, welts, and deep cuts peeling away flesh from his entire frame.
In Laxus' eyes, Natsu was weakened.
An intricate magical circle plumed beneath Laxus, glowing bright as if announcing to the world Laxus was going to finish the fight, once and for all.
In tandem with a vibrant thrum, Laxus reeled his neck back and headbutted Natsu with dangerous force.
This proved to be enough to chip away at the strength of Natsu's stance, who stumbled back with scarlet pouring from his nose.
Pulling his knee to his chest, Laxus pushed his opponent away with a kick that buried itself in Natsu's now cracked rib cage.
Natsu was sent careening into the stone side of the cathedral steeple, puffs of stone shard infected dust permeating outward.
"This ends now!"
Drawing a clenched fist back, yellow rivulets of flourishing sparks seeped from the artificial scales of his arms and formed a throbbing mass around his hand,
"Lighting Dragon's Breakdown Fist!"
Leaping towards where he had sent his adversary flying, Laxus brought down the most powerful punch he could muster down on what should be the still recovering Natsu.
Upon contact, the entire city block rattled violently, drawing yelps of panic from what few worn guild members awaited below as the air crackled and hissed.
A ballooning shockwave not of Laxus' doing quickly swept away the debris of the battlefield, revealing a sight that sunk icey claws in his lungs.
An anomalous mass of brilliant golden flames had gobbled Natsu up, his form was reduced to a writhing blob of wrathful cinders as his eyes glowed bright with deep crimson rage.
"W-what!? How!?"
The reams of fire skittered away like shattered glass, revealing Natsu in his entirety, pupils now reptilian slits of supernovian golden defiance.
Skin colored scales layered the sides of his frame drawing squared patterns deep into the rind of his body, now taller and broader.
As the bones in Laxus' hand crumbled like flaky tree bark, he took in the sight of the Dragon Force transformation with muted horror, flinching when Natsu spoke.
"Wanna know where you messed up?!" Natsu growled out, its deathly baritone arresting control from the older man.
Before Laxus could ask for him to elaborate, Natsu acted with merciless brutality.
Natsu's hand shot out to curl his digits around Laxus' throat in vice grip, roughly yanking him forward, rag-dolling him through what remained of the cathedral's steeple tower brick wall.
"It's using that unearned power!" Natsu boomed as he pushed himself off the steeple roof inside, sending him and his fellow dragon slayer plummeting towards the ground.
Smashing Laxus through floor after floor of the titanic church, Natsu's mere presence turned the large splintered chunks of wood that fell with them to ash, the sheer heat turning the intricate inner structure of the church, stone and brick alike, into molten slag.
Even the buildings outside began to melt and decay as Natsu hurled one scathing truth after another,
"Every fiber!"
They crashed through a wooden floor, obliterating it into the finest of sawdust before Natsu's golden ambiance turned it to nothingness.
"Of every muscle!"
They fell through yet another floor.
"It was supposed to be built! Bit by bit! Battle by battle! Loss by loss!"
And another.
"Yet all you have fell right in your lap!"
Natsu finally chucked Laxus down to ground below, the older man gasping in pain as he bounced off the earth, only to be pinned back down with a punishing knee to the gut that bent ribs in ways they shouldn't.
Torrents of raging drooling flames covered Natsu's hands as he descended down upon Laxus with a snarl.
One after another, with speed so unfathomable his fire soaked arms seemed to be in several places at once, Natsu hammered Laxus into the ground with a savage salvo of terrifying blows.
"I bet you can feel the strength in those spells, you can taste the power of a dragon that sets your blood on fire, but you still don't understand any of it!"
Rippling rings of magma spread outwards from the ever expanding crater in a circular fashion, each strike ringing the tectonic plates below like a bell.
"Everything they were they built! And you've built nothing!"
Finally halting his pummeling, Natsu brought up one last fist.
As he made eye contact with the battered and beaten Laxus, a shimmering dragon, made of ancient pride and hellfire, appeared behind Natsu as he brought down the final strike.
"Just think of how strong you'd be if you actually trained!"
The moment his last mighty blow reached its intended target, the cathedral in its entirety was consumed by a monstrous pyre, roots of lava circling its base as the maelstrom of expansive solar light pierced a gaping wound in the ocean of black above.
Just as quickly as it appeared, the ferocious display of power ended, the earth and air settling as the puffs of midnight in the sky slowly made way for sunlight.
At ground zero lay a blackened sizzling crater and a barely consciousness Laxus.
Natsu slowly rose to his feet, puffing steam from his nostrils.
"H-how?" was Laxus could croak.
How could someone who had been so weak before suddenly grow beat him around with no difficulty?
Had Natsu been hiding this strength all along?
Roughly grabbing the defeated Laxus by his scalp, Natsu held him up and hissed, his breath boiling hot, "You've been so busy yappin' ya never bothered to pull yer head from your ass."
Pushing him away with a kick, just like Laxus had once done to him, Natsu regarded the way his body hung in the air for a few moments. Laxus, chest numb and head pounding, could barely make out anything before him, his vision blotted with black and consciousness fading.
He had already lost, it was just a matter of time before his body understood that.
He could however, hear Natsu's voice, through the aching in his head and rumbling echos of Natsu's last attack.
It was soft. Full of pity.
"You've never felt their heartbeat. Their scent, their roar, their power, you don't know any of it." Natsu said, that blistering heat he had just moments before turning to warmth, fondness even, "You've never loved one, and one's never loved you back."
Laxus' brain lost the unwinnable battle against unconsciousness, but not before remembering them.
Him and Natsu and everyone as children, listening to Natsu go on and on about his father, about the dragons and their king, about how he wanted to be a dragon when he grew up.
Natsu's father. Igneel, the 'Fire Dragon King'. He had made Natsu like this.
Before Laxus slumped backwards to the ground in an unceremonious heap of burnt skin and bruised ego, he strangled out one last remark, bitter and sore.
"T-that stupid dragon."
Natsu's golden heat was all too happy to come raging back, as the comment once more had him barking with a calamitous volume that quivered the highest clouds.
With a guttural snarl Natsu bathed himself in thick fiery tongues of Dragon Force's golden rage, the blaze flaring to dwarf even the smoldering crater where the cathedral once stood.
Throwing his head back up to the burning sky, Natsu declared to the world with the roar of the dragons that once ruled it,
"HIS NAME WAS IGNEEL!"
Igneel.
He'd honestly rather think about Acnologia than him.
Laxus had truly gotten his ass handed to him that day.
Natsu had chosen to go with the story that he had gotten lucky and wouldn't have won without Gajeel's intervention, but despite that, the truth of the matter still stuck.
Because of that, because of his subsquent banishment, Laxus had some much needed soul searching to do, reflection and hindsight tools that needed to be added to his mental arsenal.
Without that, he never would have learned the value in humility, or how to treasure and build your own strength.
The strangest thing was, that while he looked back at that with fondness, Natsu looked back at that with shame.
It wasn't long after Tenrou until Natsu accidentally let it slip that he regretted saying those things to Laxus, felt horrible for beating him the way he did.
Since then, Laxus had lost count on how many times Natsu had repeated that apology.
Natsu had told him sorry.
Natsu had told him how he was a true dragon slayer, that his power was earned just as much as his own.
Laxus simply didn't agree, as harsh as Natsu had been, he hit the nail on the head.
Laxus didn't appreciate his power, until his power had been so thoroughly overwhelmed by someone who actually had to work for it.
Sure, it was power he hated, a lacrima forced onto him by his bastard of a father, but the strength it had given him had sent him soaring past his peers.
And then came Natsu.
Nobody would like to admit it, but they all used to look down on him.
Erza's belief in his potential was a relatively recent development, and it took Mirajane's little sister dying, who Laxus was still skeptical wasn't just a ghost these days, for her to not treat Natsu like some walking talking annoyance.
Not to mention how everyone spoke of him as if he was a stray dog they were kind enough to let in.
How did Natsu take this?
On the chin. He just kept going.
Laxus would freely admit it, he looked up to that.
So as strange and unorthodox as it may seem, Laxus owed Natsu a lot for pummeling him into the ground so hard neighboring cities felt vicious earthquakes.
Now that he was back, Laxus knew he should probably talk to him, give him some much needed credit and appreciation, or at least try to.
Laxus moved from his chair, standing up only to catch the sight of Mirajane at the base of the stairs to the second floor.
If her puffed face was anything to go by, she was about to burst into tears at the sight of Natsu above her.
Laxus grimaced and quickly sat back down.
Yeah, he could say hi later.