The weirdest part isn't the pirates. It's the dæmons.
He's a presence she feels from her oldest new memory, warm and soft and there. He's with her long after her (new) parents disappear, long after she's alone. No- not alone, not really.
She has him.
And, eventually, she has them, too.
Memories are so hard to cling to.
Even her small hands, however, can easily hold onto her… hers. (Shouldn't they be bigger?) When she gets confused and quiet, Ilirya shifts quick and small, something furry and soft and huggable she can clutch to her chest. She likes cats, knows how to read the lash of their tails and quirk of their ears and long slow blinks, so even though that's all entirely superfluous with Ilirya because he speaks, he's often in cat form anyways, long-furred or short haired or bob-tailed, a kitten that purrs and kneads her rhythmically in comfort. She wonders if he'll settle that way, wonders if it's selfish to hope for it, tells herself it's too early to tell. He's a part of her, she knows that, and he won't do anything he doesn't want, but having something so entirely you exist as a creature so intrinsically understanding of your needs and desires is-
Well, it's unfamiliarly familiar. Like she knows of it but has never known it, not like this, deep in her bones.
Everything seems unfamiliarly familiar, to be honest.
Ilirya talks to her. Never to anyone else. He stays quiet and clinging to her unless they're alone, a wide-eyed tarsier curled up small or a gecko clinging to her collar or a nesting chick in the crook of her arms, because there's only adults, here, no kids her age (are they her age?) to play with. Just Makino, who she loves, but Makino works full time now, she owns the bar. She can't afford to be distracted.
So she and Ilirya toddle around, minds blurry and uncertain. She's three years old, knows that things are different but she can't quite concentrate-
People's dæmons do sometimes talk to other people, though. It's only for the very close, and it's a sign of trust and intimacy, but it's not taboo as she remembers(?) it, because she sees it around the village when Makino carries her around on her errands, peers with wide eyes at the world she can't yet explore. Married people do it, usually, or parent and child, or (sometimes) very close friends. Siblings. Family and extended family. Every shape and size of dæmon interacting with each other and their other half's precious humans, a cascade of sensory input and oddities, tall and short and drab and colorful and feathered and scaled. The fantastic becomes mundane.
Paloma talks to her, sometimes, though it's not often because Makino's parents are proper and traditional. It's usually only when Makino gets panicked enough from her wandering that she raises her voice at her and Paloma clings to Makino's shirtfront and squeaks high-pitched reprimands in chorus with Makino's rising pitch (we were so worried, you could have gotten HURT, have some sense-) and her black eyes glitter like tiny beads, dark as Makino's own and equally as afraid.
She pretends she doesn't know what this means.
Paloma talks to her other times, too (well, not exactly, but-), when Makino reads bedtime stories in a soft voice and the dæmon nestles in the hollow of Makino's neck as they lay in the cramped single bed in the back room of the bar. She's cuddling up to Makino's shoulder, pressed against the wall (small enough to feel dwarfed, so small, too small) with Ilirya teeny and soft (like Paloma) for bedtime and Paloma's almost close enough to touch, just inches away, striped fur soft and downy looking in the dark, stripes and twitching nose and tiny limbs. Only knowing that she really shouldn't do it stops her eager fingers.
Paloma whispers the words along with Makino, layering squeaky soprano over soothing alto. She's curled up tiny and cuddly, and if she's this tiny now, smaller than a clementine, how will the dæmon look when Ilirya and her get bigger? Minuscule, probably.
(At the end of it all, whenever she hears Paloma's voice, she thinks of Makino screaming because she cares. That, or she's brought back to the soothing dark and comfort of Makino, cuddling warm and safe under raggedy blankets when her biggest worry was sleep.
She will look back on this with desperate yearning.)
Here's a secret she's not supposed to know: Makino's her actual mom.
Not her sister.
Makino's parents die. Her mother dies (a long-legged, delicate spider, pale gold and big as a child's palm that spins webs with greater complexity than the finest woven lace) and her father dies (a great ram with curled horns and rickety legs, muzzle gray with age and slow-blinking eyes with oblong pupils), and people think that they're her parents, too. In some ways, they are. They smile and talk and move and breathe. Alive. Real.
She's two when they die (one after the other, the ram and then the spider) within the span of three months. Her heart forgets and her stupid brain that can't hold onto anything forgets too, as the months melt like cotton candy in the rain and fade into nothing. Compared to what she's known, it barely even hurts. Even with the funerals and Makino's sobs and the well-meaning consolations from the rest of the close-knit community of villagers, the mayor. It barely even-
Makino, a banished queen, regains the throne, cloaked in mourning black. She takes over the bar. She cries and cries and cries.
She cries too, but Ilirya takes it worse. He shifts to a hairy spider and clings, which she hates, and then shortly thereafter to a black lamb with matchstick legs, and that's almost worse. The whole thing breaks Makino's heart, sends deep cracks spiderwebbing into the foundations as Makino tries to keep it all together, and when it's all over and the too-kind villagers dressed in black and their silent dæmons empty from the bar and it's quiet except for the sound of Makino's sobs, Ilirya shifts to a mourning dove and stays that way for four more months. For a child, this is an eternity. An eternity of grief.
People think that Makino is a sister stepping up to perform as a mother. How brave, they whisper. How noble. The bar gets more regulars.
Makino is brave, and she is noble. They're just all wrong about the semantics. About the act.
It's storytime and she's falling asleep. Paloma is still whispering along, soft voice soothing and quiet while Makino falls silent, and she can feel Makino's hand stroking over her hair, hear the shaky breaths of restrained sobs.
"Oh, my child," she whispers, heartbroken. It's hard to hear over the soft susurrations of Paloma, the rise and fall of dragons and princesses. "What am I going to do?"
She can't say the same for her head, but her heart already knows.
Here's another secret: she's not supposed to be here.
But neither is Ilirya.
She can't bring herself to regret him.
Ilirya gives up being a dove. Luffy arrives. Many things slot into place.
He's wide eyed and so small, smaller than her, even, and she's taller and taller every year but she's still tiny. His dæmon is always always always changing, flitting alarmingly far from him in ever-widening orbit before coming back to land on his shoulder and chatter in his ear, a hummingbird, a red squirrel, a streak of green that she later realizes is an anole. Whatever his dæmon is, she talks loud, doesn't care if people hear. She's almost envious.
When they meet, she hides behind Makino's leg and peeps around it warily. Ilirya shifts to a wolfhound puppy and tries to growl but he sounds like a teakettle instead, oversized paws and floppy ears and steely gray fur as he peeps from between her ankles at this… pair.
There is a mountain of a man with a massive Saint Bernard dogging his heels standing in front (Makino versus Mountain Man, two powerful generals), holding Luffy back with one massive hand spanning the boy's whole torso as the boy in question tries to wiggle out and say hello, excited as a puppy (she's honestly surprised there's no tail wagging). This is Garp, which she knows because Makino greeted him politely (you look well, Garp-san) and he booms a laugh before skipping the pleasantries and bellowing about leaving his grandson in her care, another kid wouldn't be too much trouble, right?
Luffy's dæmon is a pygmy marmoset now (smaller than an apple), hanging off Garp's dæmon's neck fur, crawling all over and rooting through its ruff as it chatters in the St. Bernard's ear. It looks incredibly annoying, and she stares, fascinated, as Makino wearily accepts and the whole conversation goes flying over her head.
Garp apologizes for breaking the wall and pays for the renovations and another bed for Luffy. That, she doesn't miss.
Luffy is very talkative.
He's also very touchy, and he infringes on Makino's storytime which means she hates him for a bit, until Luffy trips one day maybe two weeks later when he's running after her as she tries to wander 'round front yard as she usually does, and he cries. She comforts him (Ilirya is a silent porcupine waddling after her in utter solidarity but they both stop when they hear the first stifled sob from the fall, the first strangled attempt to silence tears and that's so so familiar she can't-).
She comforts him.
He hugs her back with his scrawny arms like he's never gotten a hug in his life, other than the ones he's smuggled from Makino which are probably not as often as he'd like even though Makino gives them generously. He's so young, so fragile, and she doesn't know his past but she might know his future. That doesn't mean he's not a real person, not a real little boy crying in front of her, and her attempts at apathy shatter as her empathy chokeholds her into submission until she's crying, too, feeling equally young and lost.
Ilirya is matching Luffy's dæmon, both teeny-tiny squirrel monkeys with long tails and button black eyes and dark muzzles and he clings, Ilirya and Luffy both, the latter to her front and the former draping over her shoulder. Ilirya is a bit too close to Luffy, she's very aware of it, but Luffy's dæmon is nestled on his shoulder opposite Ilirya, a little too close to her, too, so it hardly matters. His arms wrap around her so tight that it hurts. There's a wet patch spreading on the shoulder of her shirt, snot and tears and drool.
She lets him tag along.
Turns out adventures are more fun with four. Well, two sets of two.
Jokes on him because she actually loves hugs, just doesn't care for people she doesn't know touching her. Luffy has wormed his way into her good graces, so he gets a free pass.
They get older and taller and Luffy gleefully takes to linking hands with her and tugging her everywhere. That, or hanging off her like a baby monkey when he gets tired. He's close enough to her size that it does not work, but he does it anyways.
He shares the punishment when she gives up and collapses mutinously to the ground, so. All's fair.
(Truth is, she's so happy to have a friend she'd have tolerated almost anything. Lucky for her that his worst flaws aren't dealbreakers, and that all he wants in exchange for his undying loyalty is hugs and companionship. She's got the both of them in spades.)
He's sort of like one of those cats you feed that follows you home and won't leave you alone, but she finds she doesn't really want him to. He's not mangy (Makino wrangles him into semi-regular baths) or mean, just excitable and talkative and a whole lotta trouble. And it's just so fun, having a playmate, someone to talk to and listen to and run around with. It's good.
(Luffy talks more than she does, but ever since she and Luffy became friends, she's started actually talking, to Makino's relief, so his waterhose-to-the-face-style chatter mostly just means that he plays distraction more often. He's good at that.
Her voice is small and high-pitched and melodious like Makino's and she hates the sound of it. Luffy loves when she talks, though, always laughs at her jokes, so that balances it out. Sort of. She gets used to it. It's nice having a captive audience.)
Their dæmons tussle, speak to one another cautiously and then easily, playing and play fighting, switching between the two easier than flicking a switch as the days pass one-by-one and then faster than they can count. Luffy's dæmon talks to her sometimes, too. At first it's just single words - run! coupled with the sharp toothed grin of a weasel, hide hissed by a glittering black serpent no longer than the span of the tip of her middle finger to her wrist - and then it's more, and Ran opens up to her almost as fast as Luffy, following just barely behind like an afterimage, slowly and then all at once. It's nice to talk to a girl, sometimes, as much of a girl as Luffy's soul in the form of pure animalistic mischief can be. They don't get a chance to talk talk (they're all young and the yard is wide and then the town is full of more adventure than they can handle), but they do a little and she likes Ran a lot. Ilirya likes Luffy, too, and they all get along like houses on fire. Makino is horrified, pleased, and impressed, but perhaps less impressed at the ruckus they tend to kick up wherever they go.
The ruckus is a result of the adventure, so they don't promise Makino they'll stop getting in trouble even when her and Paloma lecture them. They just apologize, and chorus yes, Makino, when she asks them if they'll be more careful next time, take care of yourselves, please, and they nod and they mean it. It's very telling of their probable future that Makino values safety over rule adherence.
They always take care of each other. The scrapes and bruises are just battle scars, as much a part of the adventure as the grins and hysterical laughs, and they're avoided whenever possible.
(She thinks of Ran squeaking in alarm as Luffy trips and careens into a fruit stall at the market, Ilirya barking encouragements as she sprints away away away with Luffy hanging off her back and Ran flying in dizzying circles overhead, Luffy's skinny arms wound tight around her neck, and damn his twisted ankle and damn Mister Salvador for caring so much about a stupid prize watermelon, it hadn't even won the yearly contest anyways, it got second place-)
They do try. For Makino. They just don't really succeed.
Ran and Ilirya don't match again after that first time, except for the rare (extremely common) times they all get into trouble from nicking something and people see (or care) and they all break into a sprint as fast as their stubby legs can carry them for a quick getaway. Then, or when they're all laughing and joy's leaking out of them like gold and they just match. Then, too.
Ran likes being in the shape of animals that can move, that can run or jump or fly and sing for the sheer joy of it. Ilirya starts to trend towards the same, and she doesn't hate it. It's fun. Way more fun to have someone who laughs at your jokes unreservedly and gets into trouble, unreservedly in that case, too, and who's loyal. She'd never expected- never hoped to expect someone loyal, not when all she had was Ilirya (who's wholly, completely hers and on her side, always) and Makino (who's obligated to love her so it didn't count). She's not sure if Luffy really loves her, but one night when Makino says her usual (but no less meaningful) love you to the both of them in her quiet, sleepy voice, they echo back love you too and then Luffy breaks script, turns to her, peering across the great gulf of Makino, peering at her with serious eyes and an expression she can't see in the dark. Love you, he says.
Their favorite place is the market. Their real favorite place is the forest, but they're technically not allowed to go there, so they tell Makino it's the market.
The market is crowded (only open certain days of the week, certain hours, confusing and irregular to throw off outsiders, but they have those memorized like the back of their dæmon's hands/paws/claws), and there's plenty of food and things and people. She doesn't love the crowd, crushing and stifling as it is, filled with adults doing business with faces all serious (she keeps Ilirya close to her chest), but she loves seeing all the dæmons and the pretty things on display and she's with Luffy, anyways, so it's tolerable. They learn to steal, badly at first and then better. The villagers let them because it's usually just food and they never steal anything important (except when they do and then they get in trouble). The market is fun.
The forest leading up to the mountain is exciting, though. In a different way. Ilirya shifts to a fledgling starling, a fawn, a wolf pup, a bear cub, and he romps through the underbrush and sniffs at things and flits from branch to branch. He makes a glorious nuisance of himself, but not nearly so much as Ran does. Ran yowls, hoots, screeches, and attracts all kinds of dangerous attention until they get very good at running away. They only almost die a few times, and there's one especially heartstopping moment when Luffy trips and she has to skid to a stop, turn around and steal him from right under the downswing of an enraged bear, but he saves her, too. They get better at running, better at dodging, and she never ran from bears and lions in the forest in her past life, but in her past life, she never had Ilirya, either.
Or Luffy. Or Ran.
In the midst of all the changing seasons, Garp visits.
He picks Luffy up like so much luggage, sets off towards the forest and throws a he'll be back in a few days over his shoulder to Makino, and no, absolutely not, she's not letting him take Luffy anywhere without her. Who knows what'd happen to him otherwise?
It's awkward and stilted, because- well, Luffy is Garp's grandson, and according to Garp that means he has full purview to knock the hell out of Luffy whenever he likes. But she's Makino's, tagging along because she won't leave Luffy alone, and that makes things… complicated.
So, Garp funnels all training into secondhand violence. He can't beat them up, but the monkeys of the forest sure as hell can (dammit, animal last names are supposed to be for show), and Garp is on oddly good terms with them so they do so on an exceedingly regular basis. They're varied as anything, ranging from tiny and wide-eyed (dangerous in groups for their speed and surprisingly sharp teeth) to (during one memorable stretch of several days) massive, silverback gorillas that Garp doesn't dare get too close to, only inclining his head and respect and whispering be careful. They're not the biggest thing in this forest, but they're some of the strongest. He's taken them into a thickly forested grove, deeper where the sunlight can barely filter through the trees, and he holds them on his shoulders like the gorillas hold their young, tells them later that this is to teach them a lesson. Every creature has its home turf. Know what they can do, and be careful if things call for it. Some mistakes you can't take back, and some allies will be more valuable than you can imagine.
Despite the hell of getting beat up by monkeys, she starts to like him a little.
She's seven and her whole life is Luffy and Makino, and the adventures they have around the village and forest every day are only topped by Makino's tender attentions when they return, bandages for scrapes and kisses for bruises and storytime. They're getting older and the bed is getting smaller but Luffy and Ilirya and Ran still all curl up beside Makino (dæmons touching proper humans only, except maybe sometimes accidentally when they fall asleep). It happens every night when it gets dark (when the bar's not too busy for Makino to duck out from behind the counter), and life is good when she doesn't think of her blurry past life or the deja-vu of her current one.
(She told Ilirya, years and years before, as soon as she could speak in choppy, babyish commontongue, a bastardized version of japanese and english. She told him everything. Ilirya, her soul, her other, already knew.
It's good that he knows about this second chance, because she's pretty sure she has no idea what's going on.)
Luffy's six when Shanks comes strolling into Makino's bar.
He's red-haired and scarred and stubbly and grinning and just dripping with charisma, no dæmon in sight, and the fact of it alienates her. (It could be small and hiding in his clothes. There's no reason why not. She just… doesn't think so. He doesn't look like someone with a vole or moth dæmon.) The whole thing is frightening and exciting to imagine, but she doesn't want to be separated from Ilirya, ever, so she stares, wide-eyed and amazed at rest of the pirate crew: equally strange and interesting, all types of people (no women, though, she notices in disappointment) with incredible dæmons. She spots a wallaby hopping alongside a man built like a sake-barrel, a thin mantis perched on the shoulder of a man with an apathetic expression and a sword belted to his waist (a swordsman, cool), an armadillo scuttling around and nipping at ankles, a mean-looking eel in a long, sturdy looking tank that someone's pulling behind them in a wheelbarrow, a monkey, Luffy's gonna go crazy over that one-
She'd ask Luffy if he feels the same, except she already knows the answer and he's too busy going off like a bottle rocket or a fizzy soda foaming over. All the pirate stories Makino told them at bedtime must've gotten to him.
Life is so exciting that she forgets about the fruit.
She's forgotten a lot of things, these days, lost in Shanks' stories and laughter and the joy his crew brings. It's just the really important things that she remembers, like Makino's birthday (they badly burn everything they cook her for breakfast), or the open days at the market, or just how fast she needs to dodge so the worst of the bears can't hit her, or where to find the windmill with the best view of the sunset, or all the back alleys, or-
Except this is important so she should have remembered and she didn't.
Because now Luffy is made of rubber. And Ran is made of rubber, too.
Except not really, and Luffy still has flesh and bone (he can bleed, he cut his face before it all and there was blood everywhere and Ran cried out in such betrayal and pain that he promised never, never again), and she can't touch Ran so she wouldn't know if it's even the same, but Luffy stretches. It makes his hugs that much more inescapable.
Shanks and his crew stay for a year. They tell stories and drink and eat and the bar becomes home again, bright and merry and happy. Makino smiles more. Luffy gets so excited about being a pirate. He says he's going to be the best ever, and she laughs until Luffy's lower lip starts to wobble and he asks if she doesn't believe in him.
She's not laughing because she doesn't believe, she tells him. She's laughing because she can't wait.
Shanks saves Luffy's life and he doesn't lose an arm. This is rather promising, she thinks.
Shanks doesn't lose an arm because his dæmon, a tiger shark bigger than the damn rowboat, splinters the sturdy wood with a bite and takes a chunk out of Higuma, besides. The whole thing capsizes.
Higuma screams and tries to swim, his cape mole rat dæmon clinging to his hair (ironic considering his epithet), screaming shrilly, but the blood in the water must do something to attract the resident megafauna because the lord of the coast snaps him and the boat out of the water entirely soon after, man and dæmon both. The sight would be terrifying, if she saw it, a man and his soul reduced to a snack, snatched off the surface of the ocean by gnashing teeth, but she doesn't see.
She's too busy frantically trying to keep Luffy's head above water to notice. He's flailing, floundering, but Ran is sleek and gray as a dolphin trying to keep him up, helping, and god help her but if Ran also couldn't swim, Luffy would probably be underwater by now. She kicks her legs, holds onto Luffy tight, thanks Makino repeatedly in her head for the swimming lessons when she was five (thanks for the refresher, Makino), and promises to never steal anything again if they make it out of this unscathed. Ilirya is an otter, pushing up from below to try and relieve some of the pressure, anything, and he's definitely touching Luffy but she can't even feel her own toes, let alone any metaphysical soul-touching sensations beyond her panic.
The sea king lunges, and Shanks' dæmon washes over black as pitch and headbutts it hard enough to break bones and rend flesh and send it flying through the water miles away. The resulting wave of water crashes over them, tries to drag them under, and they gasp and splutter and swallow seawater and nearly drown. The shark circles around them, unnatural shiny-black faded to normal gray sharkskin, a silent protector, until Shanks cuts through the water, lethal and swift as his dæmon, scoops them out of the surf and tows them back to shore.
(Tasted terrible, the shark murmurs, low and disgusted, half-submerged in the shallows as Shanks finally drags them up onto the sand. Her voice is feminine and incongruous, coming from a mouthful of serrated teeth, and Ilirya leaps out of the seafoam and scuttles over broken seashells as a crab, hard carapace slick and redder than blood as he settles against her drenched shirt over her chest and she heaves and gasps for air. Ran is plastered to Luffy, gasping and shivering, the tiny form of a baby sea turtle over his heart. They're both in shock, curled together on the sand, and Shanks is running inland, shouting for Makino-)
But he has both arms.
She breaks her promise about the stealing. That's probably why Garp roars back into Luffy's life just when things are getting good, back to normal. Karma collecting its due for oathbreakers.
Shanks is gone, she and Luffy are left behind (she only smiled all the times when Luffy begged Shanks to take the both of them with his crew out to sea, because she knew the answer, knew their time would come regardless). Luffy has a new dream and a hat and she has a necklace.
The necklace is the only thing entirely unexpected.
It's on a golden chain, fine links prettier than any jewelry she's ever seen on the island before (even in the nice stalls like Mrs. Horton has with her scarab dæmon, glittery-shiny and bright). Hanging off the long chain is a pendant, a deep red gem cut like a fat teardrop the size of her whole thumb, and it has a little cap of gold with a loop on it that the chain is threaded through. She tucks it into her shirt to hide it until she can get home and put it away safe in Makino's meagre jewelry box, stares up at Shanks' scarred and handsome smiling face in amazement (the stone matches his hair, doesn't it?), realizes sagely why Makino always faintly flushes when Shanks compliments her cooking, her hair, her bar.
He is her first crush.
Ilirya is back to a squirrel monkey on her shoulder, reaching unashamed into her shirt to pull the gem out with deft fingers to ooh and ah over it. She lets him do what he will, and Shanks smiles fondly, indulgently. She thinks of his dæmon, his tiger shark, surely still circling in the water, waiting for him to return to sea.
(He will never be still.)
He ruffles her hair, tells her she'll grow into it, and leaves her baffled next to a crying Luffy. She was tearing up, before, but now she's too awed to cry.
Garp drags Luffy away. It's different this time.
They're out in the forest when he finds them, and a split second into the conversation, if you could call it that, after Luffy shouts his kingly intent to the world (tactfully done, Luffy), things go different than they usually do. Garp's face purples with a fear that quickly morphs into focused, targeted anger. He punches Luffy over the head (to Ran's screech, Ilirya and her yelps of alarm), and tucks Luffy effortlessly under one arm while he's still dazed.
"Your time in Foosha has come to an end," he says, clear as anything. "I can't have those pirates putting ideas in your head."
Her heart plummets into her toes.
His St. Bernard dæmon (familiar, now, from countless visits, made alien by fear) silently executes Garp's wordless commands, and the great white and brown and roan jowly behemoth clutches a hissing and spitting Ran in her massive jaws, deceptively gentle. No matter how much Ran struggles, she can't escape (not in her limited, juvenile forms, can't get big enough), won't escape, maybe, won't turn into an elephant and stomp around because she knows there'd be consequences for Luffy. She goes limp.
Garp doesn't even notice her.
Not until she's run after him, screaming, and launched herself at the most vulnerable point she can reach: namely, the back of his knee.
He plucks her out of the air neatly, after she's scrabbled at his leg for maybe a minute, clinging and sobbing in panic. He notices her like one would notice an ant crawling over their skin: faintly surprising, but familiar, not altogether alarming. He grabs her by the collar, tucks her under the other massive arm, and keeps going.
It's suffocating. Nothing she, Luffy, Ran, or Ilirya do works, and no wiggling will help her escape from this prison of hard muscle. Luffy clings to trees, stretches and struggles, but nothing works at all. It's like trying to fight a mountain. She, meanwhile, can barely even struggle: she has no fruit, nothing but scant endurance and maybe flexibility, from wriggling into hiding places and sprinting through the market and the forest, and none of it does her any good and she can't move and-
(Ilirya is a tiny garden snake tucked into her shirt. He's not a coward, but he knows when fighting's utterly useless.)
An eternity later, Garp dumps them both on the dusty earth, and Luffy clings to Ran (reunited) while the two humans cling to each other, disoriented and a little afraid, though they'd never admit it. The curly-haired woman that answers the door is familiar - Dadan, her brain whispers - and she's given little-to-no choice as she agrees to take Luffy. To take Luffy away.
No, she whispers quietly, voice raw, and nobody but Luffy hears. He clings tighter.
What can they do? All Luffy's things are in his drawer at the bar, his extra sets of clothes, and all he has right now is his hat and the shirt on his back, it's not enough-
(Just relax, dear, the St. Bernard whispers to them, low and feminine, and it's impossible to tell who she's talking to. For appearances, she'll believe it's Ran.)
She hears can't handle him, and my grandson through the buzz in her head, but she tunes it out. She's already heard it before. Echoing.
"What about the other brat?" Dadan shouts anxiously as Garp strides away, muttering to himself. She catches snippets of pirate? and absolutely not and who the hell put those hogwash ideas in his head before Garp whirls and peers at Dadan's face like he's trying to solve a puzzle.
It clears. "Ah, the girl?" He shrugs. "She's Makino's brat. Keep her here until Makino comes and gets her."
"What?" Dadan's voice is shrill. "Nobody can know we're here! We're mountain bandits, we-"
But Garp is already gone.
They don't actually meet Ace until nighttime.
If it helps, the overwhelming panic made her forget he even existed. Just for a few hours, mind you.
A black-haired boy (clearly taller, still scrawny-limbed with youth but definitely older than them) drags in the body of a bear. One of the bears they usually run from, a huge hulking beast with sharp claws and teeth and killer speed. He drags it in like the fresh catch of the day.
An ocelot kitten slinks around his ankles, spotted and speckled like his cheeks (those are freckles, right, she's not dreaming?) as he hauls it off the ground and over his shoulders, heaves it to the table with a raucous thump and a clatter of plates and cups and cutlery.
Dadan and the other bandits go busy like a stepped-on antpile, skinning the thing and cooking it up for dinner. Her mouth waters, and she knows Luffy must be starving by now (they didn't have lunch, didn't go back to the bar, and Makino must be so worried she's sick with it), but all they get is rice. Ilirya's still a garden snake curled up in her shirt and Ran's a mouse, squeaky-small and soft like Paloma, curled up on Luffy's shoulder, and they are so far out of their depth it's not even funny. She's eight, he's seven and Garp kidnapped them. He's not taking them back home, not teaching them something new, he stole them-
That, and she hasn't been this hungry since a lifetime ago. She hates it. Even more, now.
The bandits ignore them and Ace (though she technically isn't supposed to know it's his name, yet) is stonily silent as he eats. He feeds his dæmon scraps of cooked bear under the table, seemingly for the sheer pleasure of it (dæmons can eat, but they don't need fuel, so it's just for the taste). She doesn't hate him for it, but feeding his dæmon while they go hungry is cruel. She thinks he means that.
Dadan smacks Luffy's hand away, hard, when he reaches for the meat. Ran shifts to a kitten on his shoulder and hisses, but Dadan's dæmon (a hyena, spotted and snarling, hulkingly big) makes a horrifying noise and Luffy shrinks back.
Dadan turns sharp eyes to her, too, but she doesn't bother to try. She keeps her eyes down (rage funneled into the worn wood of the table) and eats her rice. (Shovels a quarter of it into Luffy's bowl. He's hungrier than her.)
Ace leaves. The bandits clean up and ignore them.
They sleep.
Makino doesn't come.
What if Makino thinks they're on just another trip? She would come if she knew, she knows, Makino would never abandon them, it's just that they're stuck in the middle of damn nowhere eating rice for every meal-
Ace ignores them. His dæmon is always silent, and he ignores her, too, face closed off and mean. He doesn't kick her, or anything, gives her morsels of food and isn't cruel, but he doesn't talk to her and she never tries to talk to him. He (this boy who kills bears and lions and ignores his dæmon) scares her. Luffy is intrigued.
"We should be friends with him," Luffy whispers to her, and Ace can definitely hear them from three feet away on the other side of the rickety wooden dinner table. She sighs slow, out through her nose, for uncountable reasons, and she's staring warily at Ace for his reaction like she'd keep an eye on a predator so she notices the split second his eyes flit to hers, black and fathomless and angry.
"Luffy," she says, tugging on his sleeve, but Luffy's still chattering on and doesn't notice when Ace rises ominously to his feet. "Luffy," she says again, more insistently, but when Ace leaps across the table to tackle Luffy out of his chair, she yanks on his arm hard and tows him by his hand to yank him out the door and into the dark, frightening night.
Days pass. Makino doesn't come.
Her heart hurts and Ilirya hurts, too. She's so thankful Luffy has her, has someone, but truthfully, selfishly, she's more thankful she has Luffy than anything else.
She can't bear the thought of being alone again.
She doesn't know what Makino thinks. Did Garp tell her, before he left? If they were friends before this, she meanly thinks, she hopes Makino hates him after this. For trying to steal Luffy away.
Luffy's not going anywhere. Or, she amends, if he's going anywhere, I'm going too.
The forested mountainside is dangerous and they are weak. Garp carried them so far, and Luffy's seven and she's eight and they both have terrible senses of direction. Not atrociously bad, but not good enough to make their way back to the village through a forest full of aggressive predators. Not when they're so young. So weak.
They'll grow. They'll get stronger. They'll get back to Makino.
She gives up hoping Makino will come for them, and it breaks something small and fragile in her. She focuses on Luffy instead.
Luffy misses Makino, too. It takes him three days to realize it.
He misses the stories, and the bandaging (the time and care made them feel better more than anything), and the warm bar with their beds and the food. He misses Makino.
(Her tentative like for Garp curdles, sours, turns dark and angry and betrayed, because how could he do this-)
Luffy decides that even with Ace here, he doesn't like Dadan and he doesn't like just rice and he doesn't like most everything else. He wants to go home, to Makino, and maybe bring Ace with them. Does she think Makino would be okay with that?
She avoids answering his question and tells him that she wants to go home, too.
She doesn't like Ace.
Ilirya whispers for her to be kind, but even he doesn't sound convinced. He only has her echoes, anyways.
It's odd and uncomfortable because dæmons are supposed to know everything, there since birth, but she knows more. The memories echo over to him, blurry, and when he says things only she knows she doesn't ask why. She knows why.
She knows his past and his self-hatred and that he's lost, just a child, but his cruelty affects her so much that it's hard to remember. All her memories are blurry, anyways, the Now is so much more sharp and vibrant. Even when it hurts. Especially when it hurts.
Ace's dæmon doesn't talk, not to him, not to anyone, and that's telling. It makes her clutch Ilirya tighter as they curl up on the floor, Luffy plastered to her back and snoring softly and Ran as a meerkat curled up 'round his neck. Nights aren't too cold, yet, but they'll only get colder, and they only have one blanket because her stay is supposed to be temporary.
It will be. It will be.
Luffy wants to tag along with Ace because he's taller and stronger.
She can't think of a good argument against it.
She faintly remembers falling off a cliff. "We'll have to be careful," she tells him, but she doesn't say no. The absence of a no is a yes to Luffy, so he drags her by the hand after the retreating figure of Ace.
They follow him into the trees.
He utterly ignores them. They watch him hunt.
He takes down wild game with his dæmon and his fists, and he can knock over trees. Trees. What the hell is with that? No normal child can knock down trees.
Luffy dodges them like it's a game, so she does the same, heartbeat rabbiting in her throat. None of them kill her, at least.
She wonders if it's in Ace's blood, if he comes to it naturally, or if he worked to make it happen. She thinks it's a mixture of both, because in the room they all reluctantly share (well, her and Ace reluctantly, Luffy enthusiastically), he usually climbs through the window in the dark of night, when Luffy is already asleep and she supposedly is. He's always sweating and tired, hair matted with dirt and unrecognizable things, disheveled, and she thinks he's probably been exercising. It's not normal.
No normal child can stretch like rubber, either, she reminds herself, teeth gritted as she sprints, dodging falling boulders with deft reflexes, hyperaware and attention honed by years of running from the things in the forest and petty thievery. Luffy's no less of a person for it. Don't get twisted.
The only problem is that things that don't phase Luffy - like, say, all blunt force trauma - are possibly lethal to her. Even their past experience of fighting monkeys can't compare to this, because what's a (teeth-rattling) monkey's punch to the face versus nature's full weapon cache? It's unsupervised wild game on a much more massive scale, faster and stronger and far, far more hungry. Huge crocodiles and buzzards with knifelike beaks are simply outside their weight class, too big and too dangerous to be safe. They scrape close to death - her more than Luffy - and Luffy takes those hits for her, grinning and saying it's alright, it doesn't hurt me at all and it doesn't matter if that's truth or lie, she needs to get stronger so she can train him out of that stupid, dangerous habit. Yanking him out of his own trouble doesn't nearly make up for it, and letting him get pushed and pulled around by creatures trying to kill him is more than her heart can bear. It doesn't matter if he saves her life with it (and Ran saves Ilirya's) more than once: it can't continue.
Something needs to change.
Luffy punches a tree until his fists get bloody and Ran doesn't stop him. Because they're both idiots.
She's out scrounging for small game with Ilirya, to see if she can surprise Luffy with something small (Dadan says she'll cook whatever they find but 'til they bring back meat all they get is rice), anything being better than nothing. She comes back to the shack at sunset, pleased and tired with a dead pheasant in hand and Luffy is at the tree line crying through the pain as his fists hit the bark over and over again.
In that moment, that's the most she's ever hated Ace.
A month passes.
Ace leads them into deadly situations 'round mid afternoon of every day, as if he can tolerate them up until then but when two-o'clock hits, it's agh, gotta get these kids off my back, their inadequacies are finally pissing me off and it's pushing me past the breaking point.
Or something like that.
It's the two of them getting out of those incidents that eats up (no pun intended) the rest of their daylight until they come staggering back to the bandit's house. They always get out of it (their experience with the monkeys saves their lives, and never before has thankfulness and hate warred so fiercely within her), because Luffy's made of rubber and they have Ilirya and Ran and each other, but still. Still.
It's like all the times Garp whisked Luffy away and she trailed after, except now there's nothing protecting them and no place to go home to and nobody to rely on (Makino) except each other. The subtly pervasive feeling of fear is crushing, because it's not a few days, this time, it's forever, until they get stronger. Forever.
She tries not to imagine what Makino must think.
Luffy's hands are healed, faintly scarred over in discolored, crisscrossing silver from the knobs on the back of his hands up to his first knuckle. She has her own share of small scars from close shaves (is that what she's calling near-death experiences, now?), too, but they're motivated by sheer hunger and through strength and speed paid for with sweat and blood they can both catch small game, now, birds and pheasant with the help of their dæmons. It's not bears but it's better than nothing.
They run and run and run and they eat like black holes. It's not enough. They're always hungry, and the only stories they have are the ones she makes up as they go, fantastical and dangerous and beautiful like the adventures they'll have. If they're tinged with the past, Luffy certainly doesn't notice. Not when there's dragons and princesses and witches and scythes and swords and ninjas and pirates.
(She only hesitates once, when she's telling the tale of Cynderella and realizes she forgot about her dæmon. All of these stories lack dæmons, and she's been putting them in instinctually, without a hitch, without even noticing-)
He likes the pirate ones best of all.
They get battered and scraped and bruised but they always heal, almost too fast sometimes. She attributes it to this fantastical world, this world where dæmons exist and the sea is vast and fathomless. How else could she explain her and Luffy learning to catch lightning-fast birds with their bare hands and their dæmons and their wits?
(They're getting stronger by inches, and she doesn't know if it's worth it.)
Luffy is always careful to protect his hat, the golden straw and frayed red ribbon 'round the brim. She quietly agrees with him, thinks it's pretty, too, and wishes she had her necklace.
Just another reason to get home.
"Come on," she whispers as Luffy stumbles, clasping his hand and yanking him over a lunging snake patterned in zigzagging teal and red. He regains balance, trots on, and behind him, she hears hissing and spitting as Ran shifts to a cobra and Ilirya to a viper and they kill it. Their dæmons catch up with them seconds later, but Ace has started to run (his dæmon a swift-footed doe, still dappled young with fawnspots, leaping through the underbrush) and this is the place where they always lose his trail. They both break into a sprint.
"Can we just take a day?" she says, pleading. She tugs gently on Luffy's fingers, and she can remember blood dripping down them, not too long ago, the cost of pushing too far too fast. The sight of her own trembling hands wrapping broken skin in stolen bandages echoes through her mind, a real memory, this time. Whatever real even means.
She doesn't call it a break.
They find a clearing full of clover in the forest, deeper up the mountain and in one of the places Ace never leads them. Ilirya and Ran shift to foals, Ilirya a paint with chestnut and white (echoes of a favorite she can't remember) and Ran buckskin patterned like a siamese cat, creamy gold with black points. They romp and roll around and graze on sweet clover, and all the while she and Luffy talk. They talk about what they want, how they're going to do it.
They meander through everything before they get to the meat of it. They talk like they haven't got a chance to, and it's times like these that reinforce what she already knows: she loves Luffy, but more than that, she actually likes him. It makes her happy, spending time with him and talking, mostly listening but it's worth it because when she does talk, Luffy always listens and always laughs when she tries for him. He's a real friend.
They settle on a plan of action.
Eventually: home. First? Stronger.
They need to keep up with Ace. They need to get to where he's going.
He's so fast. That's the problem.
They can't fix the fact that he has longer legs, but they can try to work around it. Get faster so they can keep up. That way, when they get taller (and we will! Luffy promises), they'll be even faster than him.
(She smothers her giggles in her palm as Luffy fistpumps, grinning, and with him there's always moments like these. Sunspots in the dark.)
They practice sprints. She vaguely hopes this won't permanently stunt their growth.
They get faster, better. Returning to a warm bed in the village every night is a far cry from what they have now, and it makes them sharper. Stronger, too, because she has them do push-ups and sit-ups and whatever else she can think of, back at the clover meadow, because there's no market, now, no kind people who look away when they pilfer kebabs and sugar spun treats and sweet watermelon from the market stalls. All there is are the bandits and Ace and the unforgiving forest, teeming with plants and beasts and hungry things. Hostile. What else can they do but claw their way towards strength?
Luffy takes to it too well, and while he'll never be a behemoth (built too small for that), as soon as he can get enough food, she knows he'll put on muscle enough to stop being skin and bones and she'll be able to stop worrying about him. For her own part, she's similarly half-starved (and it's definitely inhibiting her strength) but there's not much she can do about it.
(She wonders if Ace wonders why they've stopped following him.
She catches him looking at her over the dinner table, once, peering 'round a platter heaped high with meat they can't touch, but he frowns so fiercely at her when she catches him that she looks away immediately, reflexive like jerking her hands off a hot stove. When she looks back, he's rising out of his chair, a fistful of turkey legs in hand, and in three seconds flat he's out the door.)
It's stupid how much stronger they get after that. How much stronger they keep getting.
She hates Garp for it, but she wonders how strong they really would have gotten back amid the windmills and market stalls and a mother's love. To her, love is a strength, but… the environment here is cruel in a way Makino could never be. There's a sharp delineation between the two, and it cuts her in two, makes her quieter in a way she thought she left behind. Luffy coaxes her out of it, easier than breathing because he knows her, but it's not nothing.
It's like these bodies were designed to get strong, she thinks darkly, punching the trunk of a tree with all her strength like the echo of a bad memory.
Except it's her and Luffy punching it together, this time. The branches shake.
"Back to sprints," she pants out (can't let their hands get hurt, can't punch trees too often), and Luffy wheezes as he breaks into a wobbly run.
She keeps up. As long as she keeps up with him, she'll be fine. Luffy can do anything.
A month and a half later, Luffy's patience runs out and she lets the twentieth iteration of his pleading convince her that they're ready.
She tells him not to expect they'll succeed on the first try, no matter how much stronger they are (with the short baseline they started from, even leaps and bounds don't put them too high up), because she doesn't want him to be disappointed if they fail. In actuality, she's reminding herself.
She doesn't think of Makino much, anymore, because there's not much beautiful and kind out here. The only beauty on this mountain is harsh, rising suns and warning colors from a viper and roaring torrents of water pouring from rock, wild things that stay untamed and beautiful, and Makino is beautiful too but she's not like that. Living in an unkind world with nobody to care for her is sobering, and it makes the inarticulated vestiges of childhood that surround her like a cloak all the more apparent, thrown into sharp relief as if backlit by the flames. She needs to take responsibility, get them through this. She needs to be strong, slice bits of herself off until she's the right shape to survive this world. To keep up.
It's in vain, but she hopes Luffy never changes.
(She knows he already is.)
Ace looks very surprised the day they trail after him into the trees.
He actually looks back at them, dæmon a flying fox in russet and black clinging to the back of his shirt. She peeps over his shoulder, looking adorable, and not for the first time she wonders if Ace's dæmon has a name.
He certainly knows theirs, at least. He just chooses not to use them. She wonders if it's the same.
"ACE!" Luffy shouts out, happy as a clam, waving cheerfully, enthusiastic to the last. She doesn't move, just stares Ace down, eyes narrowed, so when Luffy yanks one of her hands into the air and jerks it around spastically by the wrist in a parody of a wave, she almost jumps out of her skin.
"Luffy," she hisses, and her eyes flick back to Ace so she catches Ace's laugh, a stunted, quiet thing, his face painted entirely different by even halfhearted happiness. She stares, and fast as it's come, it fades and is overcome by rage and self-loathing as he whirls around and sprints.
Luffy yelps in alarm and drops her hand, running after him. She remembers that Ace is a child.
They don't keep up with him the first day, but they do on the fourth.
They get all the way over the crest of the mountain, two hours of one-part steep incline and a two-parts joint-destroying downward slope, both studded with thick roots latticing the forest floor and sturdy, face-level plants that whip and tear at their skin and clothes. They make it out, but it's been two hours straight of running and they're scratched up and half-dead, Ilirya and Ran long-shifted to insects clinging to their collars as they pant and gasp. Ran is a damselfly and Ilirya a cicada, but Ace is still just barely visible up ahead, doe leaping and undefeated by the forest. His dæmon shifts to a tawny rat as soon as they break through the treeline, though, scurries up his leg to perch on his shoulder. He's a measure away and he walks purposefully, never once looking behind himself, and they'll have to hurry if they want to keep up with him, but-
She can see why. The reason for his dæmon's transformation.
This place is the stench and refuse of a trashcan multiplied by a billion. It's a city made of trash and grime, billowing smoke and oozing liquid filth like an open sore. People root around in it like stray dogs, searching for food and treasure, perpetuating uncleanliness and scrounging for scraps, doing the best they can. It's a garbage dump, the biggest garbage dump she's ever seen, in this life or the last.
It's truly disgusting.
Even Luffy pauses. "This is really gross," he whispers, still panting for breath, and her eyes flick down to his sandals. How is he gonna keep clean in those?
She hopes Makino won't get too mad at her for ruining her boots when she gets home. "You're taking a bath as soon as we get back," she tells him, for lack of anything better to say.
He doesn't even argue.
"HEY, AC-! MMGHFGH-"
She slaps a hand over Luffy's mouth and yanks him back 'round the trunk of the massive tree and hopefully out of sight, doesn't quite catch the whole shout before it leaves his throat. A cold panic breaks over her because Ace is up there, up there with another silhouette and alarm bells are ringing in her head, danger, danger, they shouldn't be here-
"Don't," she hisses, but it's too late.
The two figures drop down, skidding down the moss-slick tree trunk and guiding their descent by way of vines with the ease of well-worn practice. Alarm floods through her and if she had hackles, they'd be raising, because she and Luffy need to leave right now.
"Luffy, let's go," she manages, trying to drag him back round the trunk and towards the forest. Away. Safe.
"No way!" he snaps back, yanking her back to the daylight, and Ran is a songbird on his shoulder, feathers puffed like a dandelion. "We came all this way, we trained, we can't give up now-"
Faster than she can move, something hits her head, hard, and the world goes dark.
—
She wakes to a throbbing, pounding headache.
"-I told you, she's not like me! Getting hit with pipes and rocks and trees hurts her! So don't do it again!"
Is that Luffy? He sounds… not-Luffyish. Too serious. Voices that squeaky aren't meant to sound that way.
"S'alright," she slurs, feels Ilirya - still a cicada - on her shirtcollar, brushing against her skin, and relaxes.
She's leaning against something warm. Something with give, almost… rubbery.
"Luffy?" she tries. Attempts to open her eyes. Fails. They're too heavy.
There's arms wrapped around her waist like a seatbelt, propping her up on almost-definitely-Luffy. It's confining, but probably for the best. Her head is swimming, missing moments like a skipping record, and she can't think, let alone keep herself sitting up straight.
(It feels like she's blinked extra-long, head fuzzy like she missed a step on the stairs, and she hopes only a few seconds have passed. She doesn't want to miss anything by losing consciousness.)
"Who the hell are you?" It's a voice she doesn't recognize, not the barely-restrained stormcloud of Ace or the bubbly sunshine of Luffy's. It's that other figure, voice similarly high-pitched (young), oddly cultured under the rough, learned affectations. It's-
"Come on, Sabo, it doesn't matter." Contempt. Ace. "I told you they were following me around for a while. I thought they gave up, but I guess that was too good to be true…"
"Oh." Realization. "So that's Luffy, huh? And the girl. still want to know her name. Just 'cause you said it's not important doesn't mean I don't want to know…" The voice trails off, and she hears shuffling. Someone stepping closer, maybe. "She's just like you said."
"Come on, Sabo-"
She mumbles something instinct in an attempt to speak, feels Luffy's rubber arms wind around her tighter and pull her closer to his bony chest. If only she could think, could talk, she'd fix this, get her and Luffy away from here and to safety-
More shuffling. "Ace, if they made it here, they're not total weaklings like you said. They could be a threat-"
"Do they look like threats? I knocked her out in one hit." Derision.
"Sure, the girl, maybe, but what about the boy?"
Luffy, she tries to say, slurs. It comes out like luhhhfyy, mumbled like marbles in her mouth, but her head is starting to just barely resolidify out of its gaseous, dissipated form.
"Are you okay?" Luffy's whisper is hurried, more worry than she's ever heard lacing through it, voice serious and low, and she can feel Ran's fur just barely brushing her bare arm. She shudders.
"He's nothing." Ace. "A little stronger, maybe, but we could take him easy. Hands tied behind our backs, even."
"Are you sure, Ace? The girl-"
"The girl is worthless. Can't even keep up with him-"
She can almost hear it when Luffy's frustration boils over, explodes, cracks like an egg. Ran snarls a warning from beside her, but she feels safe, dreamy as if she's asleep. Luffy's arms clutch her tighter and he takes a deep breath, opens his mouth-
He yells.
"Her name isn't 'GIRL,' it's VALENTINE!" It's half-yell and half-scream, all frustration. She hears Sabo and Ace go silent.
Her brain, whirring like a rundown stopwatch, completely pauses.
"So shut UP!" Luffy snaps. Actually snaps. Luffy. "I know it must've been an accident, so I'm not too mad, but you hurt her! She's my most important person, you know, but she's not made of rubber, so she breaks-"
"Don't tell me to shut up," Ace snarls, deadly menacing with intent, and she can hear his dæmon snarl with him in chorus.
"Valentine, huh?" Sabo again.
"She BREAKS! So don't hit her in the head, hit me as many times as you want, I don't care, I don't even feel it!"
"Stop that," she - Valentine - whispers weakly, struggling to open her eyes, to lean up. "Don't- no, don't-"
"I don't care," says Ace, the blurry figure of him with pipe slung over his shoulder coming into view through cracked eyelids, stepping frighteningly forward and close. Luffy tenses. "I really, really don't care. The only thing that matters is the fact that you know where our treasure is, now."
"Treasure?" Luffy. "Like pirate treasure?"
"Ace, you idiot," hisses Sabo, "they didn't see anything."
"They know the tree," Ace responds darkly, and Valentine's vision is returning now, the two figures in front of her coming into focus. There's Ace - dark haired, freckled, belligerent, pipe at his side and fierce frown on his face like always, his dæmon a juvenile she-lion at his side - and there's Sabo.
Sabo is blue. Blue and white like seafoam. Even his dæmon matches, a snow-white hare with black-tipped ears like Sabo's hat, perched on one of his boots. Sabo shifts as he talks, impassioned, and she hops off, hides behind his leg, twitching nose sticking out from behind.
It reminds her painfully, sharply, of how she was before Luffy. Her heart throbs in tandem with her head.
"-so we should kill them," finishes Ace.
Ilirya shifts big, leathery skin and sharp teeth and beady eyes 'til he's an alligator, sliding off her belly before he's full-shifted so he doesn't crush her. Before he can even snap his jaws, Ace and Sabo leap back lightning-fast, their own dæmons going sharp-toothed and snarling beside them. Luffy hauls her to her feet by his armhold round her torso (ow) and Ran is an eagle, a shrill cry building in her throat as she stands sentinel by Ilirya on the ground, feathers puffed and eyes sharp.
Alligator and eagle vs. two wolverines. A united front. They can't win this.
"You won't kill us," Valentine rasps, shoving none-too-gently out of Luffy's arms. Her head murmurs a sharp complaint and she ignores it, standing straight as she can, trying not to sway.
This won't have much impact if she can't stand on her own.
"We can," says Ace, eyes narrowed, and she knows it's true. Sabo looks nervous.
"I didn't say you can't," she says, soft voice still raspy from her blow to the head, and this is the most she's ever spoken to anyone other than Luffy or Makino and she's negotiating her own death. Big surprise. "I said you won't. There's a difference."
Sabo's pipe clinks on the ground as he lets it drop. God, he looks so young, front tooth missing and exposed skin grungy, too thin from living in a place like this. Makino would take him in in a heartbeat. Her mom has a kind heart.
Her thoughts skip like a record track and her own heart clenches in her chest for reasons she can't name. She misses Makino like burning in that moment, like fire, and she will get home, she will get her and Luffy to safety, back to Makino, and she won't let anyone die here, least of all herself. Not now.
"...I don't really want to kill them, Ace," Sabo mutters, voice pitched low like he doesn't want to be heard, nudging Ace's side with an elbow. His dæmon's hackles are going down, subsiding, mirroring him. "Can't we just beat them up and make them promise not to tell?"
She appreciates the less lethal approach, but she's not sure she could take much more beating up. "Why would we tell anyone?" Her voice is unfamiliar, matter-of-fact, foreign sounding in air not occupied by just her and Luffy, but she pushes through the strangeness, fights down the feeling of isn't this wrong? that still crops up every once in a while. By now, ignoring it is old hat. "There's nobody to trust here."
The grain of truth in that makes Ace's eyes narrow consideringly. "If there's nobody to trust, and you two are weaklings…" He trails off derisively. "Then why are you here?"
Behind the hostility is a real question. One that he's probably been asking himself for a while, now, over crowded dinner tables and running through copses of trees and huddled underneath a thin blanket, silent dæmon and expression like old hate, old hurt. (Why?)
(Why do they keep following me?)
Isn't that the million-beri question.
"We're here 'cause of you, Ace," Luffy pipes up, and he's been oddly quiet 'til now. Valentine glances to the side and her eyes widen at the sheen of tears, the wobbling lower lip. "We wanna be friends. I didn't think you had anyone else, and…"
"I don't want your pity," Ace barks, dæmon snarling at his ankles. The tensions rises sharp, potential for violence and hurt. Ilirya's claws scrape against the ground, thick tail lashing to the side, but Ran doesn't move. She chirps, soft, an odd expression coming from such a big bird. Valentine breathes out slow, through her nose.
"It's not like that," Luffy says, eyes big and beseeching. He steps forward, past her, past Ilirya 'til he's barely a foot away from them. Ace goes tense, but his dæmon is silent, and Sabo's silent, too, looking at Luffy, staring like he dares to hope.
She stays fiercely quiet. Luffy has the stage, now.
"We wanna be friends," Luffy says simply. Ran shifts to a songbird again and flits to his shoulder, and Luffy reaches for her absently, fingers stroking over her feathers. "We don't want your treasure. It's so much more fun with friends, isn't it? Before I came here, I… I mean, I didn't have anyone." Alone. The word underlines every syllable, bleeding through clean like silver. Alone.
She feels it too. That's why they have to live.
Do Ace and Sabo feel it, too? Is that why they have each other?
(She already knows the answer to that.)
"You have me," Valentine rasps, and Luffy's (and Sabo's and Ace's) heads whip to look at her, a grin spreading immediate and natural across Luffy's face, blooming like a sunflower. Her hand is rising halfheartedly to reach out, fingers twitching. She wants to pull him back, but of course she won't. She needs to let him do this.
"Won't it be more fun with them, too?" He beseeches, and of course Sabo is included in this dream team, now, too.
She gives herself a full second to consider. Lets her hand drop.
"Yeah," she says, honest, sees Sabo's and Ace's eyes widening in her peripheral, but she only has eyes for Luffy. "But they don't want to. We can't force them."
"We don't need you," says Ace, and she can't get a read on his tone but he sounds scared. Lost. Angry. "We don't need anyone."
I don't need you. I don't need anyone.
"But wouldn't it be better together?" Luffy pleads, holding his hand out like an offering, a tightrope, a lifeline.
Ace looks at it like it's a live grenade. His eyes are wary, distant, but buried underneath everything is the faintest spark of-
Yes, Valentine thinks as she looks on at him, eyes flicking past the piles of trash and rising to the sky, endlessly blue. Yes.
—
Notes:
I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I've loved writing it.
Also, I'm reuploading the chapters 'cause I've made a bunch of little edits (for quality). I've also been omitting the notes from the version, which I think is a big mistake, because all my little thoughts and comments are pretty important to include! I also love to talk with you guys and hear what you think, so hopefully the notes make this story a little more approachable. :,D
Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy the story!