A/N: A short fic about scars.
I don't own One Piece.
Scars
They had never noticed. They had never seen past the obvious, so they had never noticed. Despite how many times his nakama had seen him without a shirt or naked in the showers, they had never seen them, so they did not think that they were there. But they were, they were always there.
They were obvious to him; he'd had them for most of his life. Most of them were new but some were old, very old. He'd had them when he'd got his first nakama but his first-mate had never seen them. Or he had but he hadn't seen them for what they were. Scars.
To him they were his life, a memory of all his achievements and failures, when he had wanted to laugh and when he had wanted to cry, when he had been at his best and when he had hit rock bottom.
His scars were his life and his nakama couldn't see that, they couldn't see his life, the good or the bad, his memories, his failures and his achievements, they couldn't see any of it and that hurt.
But there was one that they could always see, one that they could look upon, it was the one that reminded him of the promise that he had made, why he had become who he was, why his wanted posters contained the name 'Mugiwara.' So when they asked him how he had got the scar under his eye he told them, he told them about Shanks and his crew, about the bandits, the Sea King and his promise to the one who had given him his hat.
He was happy when they asked him, they knew about his past, if only a small part of it. But he wanted them to know more, he wanted to tell them, he wanted them to see his scars, his life, carved into his body forever, he wanted them to know. He couldn't just talk about it, his life was special to him, and he didn't want to tell it to anyone that didn't want to hear it.
So he wore vests and shorts to try and show them his life, he had always been partial to shorts and vests, they were more flexible, but he wore the shorts and the vests to try to get his nakama to see him, to see underneath the obvious.
At first, he thought that it didn't work, that no-one could see them, that his life was invisible to their eyes, that they did not want to hear it, to know of it but then she asked the question. The one that he had waited for, the one that he had been dreading, the one that was his greatest strength and his greatest weakness.
"Captain-san, where did you get those scars?"
Scars. Scars. Plural, that meant more than one, more than the one under his eye, but which ones?
The other members of his crew had been watching him, waiting for his reaction, waiting to see what would happen. A few were looking him down, eyes widening when they finally saw the multitude of scars that covered his body. Fists clenching when they saw the worst, gasping at how they had never noticed before.
"Which ones?"
The crew seemed to pause here and they thought, it was as if he was asking a question with one answer, and they were right, and there was only one answer that he wanted to hear, just one.
"All of them."
His face spread into a happy grin, eyes sparkling as he gathered his eight crew members around him as they sat in a circle waiting for his story.
He was happy, he was overjoyed. He dreaded what happened next and yet he wanted to tell them everything, whatever happens happens. He couldn't change that, nor would he want to. He wanted this, he wanted it so badly. So he told them. He told them his past, his achievements and failures, his best, his worst, he told them about his scars. And as he told them, he grinned and even when he wanted to cry as old memories were dredged up he still grinned because right now Monkey D Luffy couldn't be happier.
A/N: What do you think? It came to me when writing an assessment, a weird little drabble but still….
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