[ She flinched, then scowls, reaching down to pull his ear. Hard. Well. With him she can never tell if he can actually feel her tugging his ear or if he reacted just to humor her. ]

STOP that. You made mistakes, we -all- make mistakes. [ She sighed softly. ] Natsu... you are a better person than you give yourself credit for. You've always had the strongest heart I've ever seen. Everything you've done, you did for others, never for yourself. Because you want to protect everyone. That's why you take everything to heart so much harder than anyone I know.

But what makes you any different from the rest of us? And I'm not talking about... what Zeref told you. About you being E.N.D. You don't have the heart of a demon - you're nothing like your... your brother, or any of the demons -he- created. And.. I never met him, and I wish I did, but you have the strength and heart of your father, Igneel, more than any demon out there.

When you.. [ Her voice broke slightly, and she glanced away for a moment to compose herself. Taking a breath, she glanced back at him. ] When you do the things you do, you behave so recklessly, it's always to protect the people you care about. Even when you left a year ago, you did it so you could get stronger, so you would be able to protect us. And when you left to fight Zeref, it was because you wanted to protect us. That if you took the leader down, that would make it easier for us all to turn aside the rest of his army.

Any of us would have done the same. We want to protect the people we ...care about. [ Okay if she had decided to leave for a year to train, she would have at least TOLD him, but... she was putting that aside. She...could understand why he didn't tell her to her face. She would have cried; she would have asked him to take her with him, and that would have been hard for him to deal with. ]

I'm not like you? [ She laughs quietly. ] I'm more like you than you know. [ That's his fault too. ]