Disclaimer and Warnings:
First and most important of all: One Piece and its characters do not belong to me, they belong to their creator, great Eiichiro Oda (praise him!). And I do not get any material profit by writing this.
Second: this fic contains adult themes (abuse, mentions of child abuse, violence, and bad words), so it has a big, well earned M. Not everything is gonna be darkness and angst here, mind it, but a great part of this story will be somewhat depressive and maybe hard to read. So if you are specially sensitive to these things, or if you just do not feel like reading this kind of fic right now, I fully respect it and I recommend you to read some other story.
Aaaaaand there is yaoi. If that is a problem for you, kindly get you ass away from my fic, thank you very much.
Otherwise, sit and enjoy :)
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1
The thing was that the old hag who dried and sold the seaweed yarn did not send it. If you wanted that seaweed yarn you had to go to her islet near Santa Popla to get it personally. And Tom wanted it. He wanted that yarn because it was an exceptional one: the witch spun it while the Khaf'r seaweed was still wet and frail and, once it dried, it became virtually unbreakable yet extremely flexible. Such an exceptional material, together with the brilliant mind of Tom, resulted in an amazing variety of uses. Tom had been buying it for almost thirty years.
After all that time, the crone still did not consent in sending it to him. "An old witch's oddities" laughed Tom. "A pain in the ass" was how Franky translated it.
So Tom was going to be away for one week. He was leaving them by themselves for one week, and on one thing he was adamant: he did not want them working on the Umi Resha, not unsupervised.
"I trust you, my boys" his laughter silenced the protest both Franky and Iceburg had begun, "and I'm sure that you would do just fine without me. But I want you both to have a rest. Look" he sighed, "we are on schedule. These past months we all have worked hard, right? But they're nothing compared to what awaits us when I'm back. I don't want you to be out of breath prematurely, kids!" he finished as he had begun, with his trademark thunderous laughter. To that he added a pat on each of their backs, making both boys stumble.
The only task he asked them to do was to finish riveting some tubes and then to paint them with the special insulating paint.
They agreed to have the work done on the afternoon after Tom's departure. Early that morning Iceburg was going to the village to purchase several things he needed. He was quite unspecific about which those things might be, but Franky knew. Bakaburg was nursing yet another critter, a small injured ugly thing with a big head that Kokoro claimed was an uncommon species of cormorant, with blue and green feathers. Iceburg needed worms to feed it until it was strong enough to fly again.
As Iceburg walked towards the door Franky thought he needed to tick him about the bug in order to feel self-fulfilled that morning. He won his self-fulfillment and also a wooden cup thrown right to his face.
"You better be at the workshop at midday, Bakanky" growled Iceburg through his teeth. "I want to finish those tubes today and if I don't find you there when I arrive I WILL DRAG YOU BY THE EAR TO WORK." With that he slammed the door, and he was gone.
"BakaBUUUUUUUUUURG!" Franky took the wooden cup, stormed to the door, opened it and threw the cup to the other boy's head. With more anger than aim, though, so the projectile broke against a wall several feet away its target, who kept walking as if nothing had happened.
Franky slammed the door close (how exactly it still resisted, after so many years of love and care, it was a mistery) and went back to swallow his breakfast in his naturally calmed manner: that is, as if he had been starved for several weeks.
"You should not mock him about the bird, Franky" Kokoro scolded him. The reprimand was toned down by the perennial smile and the lightly amused tone. "Much as he hides it, the boy has a tender heart. And there is nothing bad about it."
"Bah, a tender brwain you mean. He is not rwight in thg head, hwe adgopts awll thu blast bugs he finds; the twortoise, thg two newborn kittens, the rwat with thg missing tail, thwree ur fougr sprrows and a hedgehog, oh, and the damn ant with the broken leg, and now thgt burd tha' stuffs itself with worms for lunch." He finished his bowl, so he no longer needed to talk and eat at the same time and with the same mouth. "Someone's gotta keep his head screwed on tight until Tom comes back. I clear off, Kokoro-san, I'm going for a spin." He stood up and left abruptly. Kokoro just cleaned the dishes with her impassive smile and a sigh that clearly meant `honestly, this kid!´. Yokozuma croaked, whatever that meant.
As a remarkable event in the history of Tom's Workers, Franky arrived on due time. At midday he was waiting on the workshop. Truth was, he wanted to get rid of that stuff so he could devote the rest of the week to eat, sleep, taunt Iceburg and, above all, to his neglected Battle Frankies. And there he was… alone.
Five minutes after midday he was impatiently stomping his foot to the floor.
Half an hour later, he was ready to bite Iceburg's head off as soon as he showed around.
One hour later he begun to work. Anger fueled him and he finished by himself, in two hours, what normally would have taken him five at least. For the rest of the day he held a spanner he planned to throw to Iceburg's head. But there was no sign of Iceburg returning when a grumpy, annoyed Franky decided to go to bed. His hand was stiff after eight hours angrily grabbing the spanner (something that had created certain operational difficulties at dinner time, leaving Franky just one free hand), so he gave the thing a rest.
Franky woke up long past midnight as he heard the noises indicating that Ic- Bakaburg was finally back. He surreptitiously opened one eye and saw the lean, dark figure crossing the room. He blinked several times to clear up his vision still blurred by sleep. With his vision cleared he noticed that Iceburg walked weird, like limping or something.
So the fool had been on a brawl. `Great. And its me who's aaaaaaalways told to control my temper and not to get myself in trouble´. Heh. `From now on, Bakaburg, I'm soooooo gonna shut your cakehole every time you give me a lecture about temper and troubles.´For the time beign, though, Franky has something fun in mind. He closed his eye, pretending to be asleep. He was going to wait until the guy was warm and cozy in bed and then he would throw him the water of the jug they had in the room.
But Iceburg did not go to bed. He limped across the room and entered The Bathroom.
Not the bathroom. The Bathroom. It was one of the cool things of living with Tom. That old Gyojin really liked his long baths. True, the sight of Kokoro vigorously scrubbing his back, both half naked, happily (and out of tune) singing dirty songs could be defined as traumatizing; yet having that big indoors stone pool to wash off the sweat, dust, smoke and sometimes blood after the day's work was great.
The thing was that they had another smaller room for the latrine. Iceburg was clearly not going to take a squirt. `So what's the jerk doing now?´ Franky quietly stood up, walked towards the closed door and put an ear to it. He heard splashing, as if someone was throwing a water bucket over his body.
`For fuck's sake, tell me the idiot is not really bathing at...´ Franky looked at the clock in the wall `...two in the morning. So, it's official. He's definitely lost it.´ True, days were warm, but temperature dropped drastically after sunset in that time of the year. The water in the pool, pleasantly fresh during the day, had to be chilled by now.
"The hell are you doing, Bakaburg?" asked Franky through the door.
There was a brief silence.
"Leave me alone, Franky."
The door dimmed the sound, but even considering that, it sounded... weird. More tired than annoyed, and there was something else, something off. Franky could not say what it was, but he knew it was there.
"But what are you doing in there at two in-"
"Franky, leave me the hell alone and go back to bed!" This time Iceburg shouted his answer and Franky could make out more things about his voice. The tiredness almost, but not entirely, subsided; anger, sadness and pain took its place. Anger was something usual when Iceburg talked to Franky; sadness and pain were not. And there was something else: he was hoarse. His shout had sounded hoarse and thick and cracked, as if he had screamed his lungs out before, or... or been crying for hours, or...
Franky was suddenly scared, his puzzled annoyance about Iceburg's weird acting fastly giving way to concern. He had a sinking feel in the pit of his stomach as he slowly realized that something very bad had happened. The splashing sound begun again. And Franky, the guy who more often than not acted before thinking and worried later, stood there still and silent like a statue, getting colder and colder in the middle of the night, not knowing what to do or what to say, while his mind, thick with confusion and with the mist of sleep, tried to get together the pieces of the puzzle.
`OK, now, shitty stuff is going on here.´ Iceburg had arrived more than twelve hours late, he was limping, he had cried or screamed or something, why? Just because of a stupid brawl? That did not make sense. A horrible accident with many injured and dead? Or... shit! Had he killed somebody? Or what the fucking HELL?
Franky was so intent on solving the question of what had happened to his friend that he failed to notice the new sound at first, and when he finally noticed it, almost a minute passed before he realized what it was.
Iceburg was crying. Histerically.
Franky felt a new cold all over his body, a sticky cold that had nothing to do with room temperature. Wide-eyed, mouth half agape, the boy listened for a moment to the most heartbreaking sound he had ever heard. It hurted. It literally hurted him inside.
Once, more or less nine years ago, he had cried just like that. So he knew that, right now, things were realy, really screwed up.
Worried as he had been moments before, he had not wanted to break the door down, because it was him the one that would have to repair it. Now he sent everything to hell. Just in case he tried and turned the doorknob... and the door just opened. Iceburg had not locked it. Franky entered The Bathroom.
And a part of him wished he never had.
Iceburg did not notice that Franky had opened the door. He was sobbing, his sobs so frantic and hysterical that his whole body convulsed as if he was going to break. His eyes were shut tight and he was scrubbing himself as if he thought it was a good idea to rip his skin off. Water covered him to the waist. He was...
Gods.
The first thing Franky noticed was that he was all covered in black and purple blotches, and he came up with the silly thought that Iceburg had added tatooes to his whole body instead of just the two on his arms, and he had not liked how they looked and was trying to wash them away. Then he thought it was dirt. One second after he realized what they were: bruises, blue, black and purple, all over his body, on his neck, on his face. His eyes were swollen, his whole face in fact, as if he had been crying for hours. One side of his face, the left one, was evidently more swollen than the other, with darker, bigger bruises, the hair matted to the side of his face and head with half dried blood, the ear half hanging, as if someone had... tried to bite if off.
The more Franky looked with disbelief the bruises on his neck and arms, the more they resembled marks of fingers to him. Fingers covering the neck of his friend. On his mind, Franky could see the big hands grabbing his friend by the throat and choking him almost to death. Grabbing him by the arms hard enough to leave bruises almost as dark as his tatooes.
There were odd marks all over his neck and shoulders, half moon-shaped marks, and Franky realized they were bite marks. As Franky's eyes went down on Iceburg's body his heart sinked more and more. The bruises on his slender torso were bigger than the ones on his neck and arms. The kind of bruises left by a beating bad enough to break some ribs, at least. The purple and black was mixed with the red of bite marks and also scratches, chafed skin and dry blood. It was frightening to see how little of Iceburg's usual creamy skin tone was left. All his nails were broken and bloodied, and the little finger of the right hand was obviously broken.
"Ice-" Franky stopped; his lips moved to form the name, but his throat was so dry that no sound had emerged from it. He gulped, took a deep breath and begun again. "Iceburg..."
His friend froze, his sobbing stopped, his eyes opened up; his face wore a expression half panicked, half confused. For a heartbeat. Then it changed. Franky had never seen that expression on Iceburg's face: black rage and feral hatred contorted his features. He felt as if he had been struck and unconciously took a step back. Then Iceburg seized the bucket floating beside him and threw it to Franky with all his strenght. It missed by mere inches, the lad's moves beign obviously impaired by his injuries, and it crashed against the wall, turned to splinters.
"OUT!" he yelled like and animal, spitting blood, like Franky had never heard anyone yell before. But Franky had not moved to avoid the bucket and did not move now. He was in shock, his whole body was shaking, his knees weakened.
The explosive rage of his friend subsided as soon as it had emerged. His sobbing returned, softer this time, like... less frantic, but more sorrowful. His shoulders slumped and his hands hanged limp on the sides of his body, making the strong, proud young man look like just a lost, forsaken child. His head hanged down, eyes closed again.
"F-Franky... please... g-get out." The whisper, choked by sobs, seemed more deafenig than the former yell to Franky. And then he recovered from the shock, enough to be able to move, at least.
He did not want to get out. He wanted to enter the damn chilled water and hug his friend, and hold his broken body. But the question now was not what he wanted; the question now was what Iceburg wanted, and Iceburg had clearly asked him to get the fuck out. Twice. Legs heavy as stone columns, Franky retreated. Damn. It had been easier to carry those metal wheels, years ago, than to walk towards the door now. Franky walked like a zombie to his bed, and sat there, bracing his knees, his head between them. Waiting.
Fifteen minutes passed before Iceburg exited The Bathroom, but they seemed like fifteen years. Franky did not raise his head. He listened as his friend, slowly and painstakingly, kneeled down and entered the other bed beside his own, gasping with pain in the process.
Only once he was sure his friend was alredy in bed, Franky raised his head and eyed him warily. As he had guessed, Iceburg faced the wall, his back towards Franky. He was holding his pillow, his face buried on it. The covers did not hide the constant shivering of his body, nor the occasional shudders as he sobbed quietly from time to time. That was why he had buried his face on the pillow, to muffle the tears he was still not able to control. After a while, though, the pillow did not muffle them entirely anymore. Maybe Iceburg was too tired to care, or too weak to try. Be as it may, his tiny, gasping sobs slashed the silence of their shared room.
Franky succeeded that night at the hardest self-control task of his nineteen years of life.
He wanted to punch the wall every time he heard that soft, pitiful, heartbreaking sound. But he did not punch anything because he did not want to startle his friend.
He wanted to get away of that room, so he could escape those terrible sobs that beated his chest like a hammer. He wanted that badly. But damned he was if he was going to leave Iceburg there alone.
He wanted to take the place of that stupid, useless pillow, so his friend could cry on his neck, so he could rub his back and his hair and hold him, and use his arms to protect him against the world. But he knew that right now holding, or even just touching his friend, would do more harm than good.
He just stayed there, fists tightly closed, shining eyes fixed in the darkness, almost unblinking. Biting his lip until it bled, as a scream and something else, something black, grew slowly on his chest.
Iceburg cried himself to sleep, his soft sobs scarcer and scarcer until they ceased entirely, two hours before the dawn. Franky stayed awake the whole night.