Disclaimer: I don't own One Piece
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Before her short life as Tear, she had another life and name and family, a normal future ahead before it was cut.
Tear didn't remember how she died, just that there was pain and fear and then pitch-black darkness. Neither did she remember much from her birth (thank fucking god for small mercies), just that one moment she was in the abyss and the next screaming her lungs out in fear and panic. She gained a respectable amount of derision towards pitch dark spaces hence forth.
That aside, it didn't take her long to realize she was reborn. There was the option of coma or hallucination, but she will take it as reincarnation until the day when she woke up in the hospital tied to the bed in her original state.
Tear was pretty sure the orphanage staff were convinced she was the devil child, with her constant screaming and tantrums and insatiable appetite. The miserly orphanage wasn't bad once she got over the change, if a little gray and dull, with staff that looked absolutely done with life as they handled the screaming terrors.
Tear had freaked out badly, again, that time she saw people calling through a snail, which then prompted her to look at other things closely and realise just where the hell she was.
Excuse you, you old granny, but it was totally normal for infants to break out into tantrums for no reason at all. Yes. It wasn't like she was panicking over living in a fictional world where people fucking punched mountains for warm-ups and where monsters roamed the seas.
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Tear was three years old, most likely, when she finally decided not to interfere with the Plot.
What should she say? "Oh! It's the One Piece world and I've been reborn here! Maybe it's my destiny! I know, how about I go join the Strawhats and save Ace and subsequently fall in love with someone!"
Ahahaha- Hell no. Tear wasn't currently going near that with a fifty-foot pole. Sure, she had loved One Piece, had loved the comedy and plot building and the nakamaship —and now that she thought about it she was a little pissed off because she was left with an awful cliffhanger at Dressrosa— and she had cried when some characters died, when Ace died. But she reminded herself, this was reality.
Tear wasn't... Tear wasn't smart. Tear wasn't a genius or prodigy or someone who could plan things with layers of layers of emergency plans. What if things changed? What if her meddling made things worse? It was a constant fear of Tear's, along with the fact that she wasn't sure she could really help these monsters in human skin. Really, Garp punched mountains to warm up, Whitebeard caused earthquakes, there were Buddha and Phoenixes and godawful supermonsters capable of turning into lava and lighting and ice and anything.
...The root of One Piece was Luffy and his dream to be Pirate King. Tear was just an unknown source, a nameless girl in the background, an abnormality in the reincarnation system, but that did not make her any more special in her opinion. Luffy could become the Pirate King very fine without Tear, the world could go on without Tear, the Plot did not need Tear for the protagonist to shine.
And though sometimes it burned at her, though she was sure she would never be able to look at anyone of the Plot in the eye, though she would probably hate herself the moment the headlines of the newspapers ever printed out the death of a man who was hated for being born— she will not interfere. That is what Tear decided she would do if she ever made it to that time, if she was in that time.
...Ah, she already hated herself.
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It had taken some time, but now Tear answered to "Tear-chan" or "kid" or the oh-so-affectionate name of "little demon", and she hadn't thought about her surname. This was an orphanage, there were many children without surnames, heck without names when they arrived ("no thanks to the despicable, filthy pirates" were the words of the marines that brought those whose family were killed by the sea-dwellers). Tear thought some of the staff mentioned things she should've really paid attention to but she had been too absorbed in her horror towards the spitting, drooling sacks of flesh she was forced to bundle with. Ah, the days where she made her escapes and her determination to get the hell away...
She missed the matron's shade of puce, maybe she should stir up some ruckus in the orphanage ranks again?
Ah. Tear shook her head. Bad, bad thoughts. She wasn't this mean in Before. It was a bit fun, though.
Also, language barrier. Hah. And people from Before had said anime was useless.
(She... didn't deny breaking down at the thought of her family. Distant parents, a nagging grandmother, an awkward big brother and a little rascal that bugged her when he wasn't playing with their cousin. She missed them so, so much, and sometimes she wanted to burst into tears, had burst into tears. Nowadays she could barely remember how her granny's hamburgers tasted or her brothers' voices or her parents' faces, and oh how she regretted and grieved. But life was life and as days and weeks and months passed she had accepted her circumstances.)
Fact was, Tear knew she had no parents here, had thought that the orphanage had named her like they named those that had none.
But then she met a woman, Nuna, that volunteered to help the orphanage. She came weeks and months at a time to help with the children and even donated some money and blankets, but Nuna had her own family and didn't come often. Even now Tear still couldn't get over the size of her boobs— like wow they were huge and surreal— okay back to the topic at hand... Tear was fond of Nuna, even if she didn't speak with the woman often. She was more preocuppied with her things, like, making sure her stuff wasn't in grabbing distance of her monster neighbors.
It was from Nuna that Tear learned her surname, and it wasn't a nice experience.
"I have a surname?" She asked, puzzled.
"Yes. You took on your mother's surname." Nuna chuckled.
Tear studiously looked at the floor at the mention of the woman that birthed her. Tear thought about those first few days filled with panic and confusion, a voice cooing at her and whispering of sunshine and sea, and singing lullabies, then screams and yells and darkness—
"I was friends with your mother, little Tear," Nuna said, smiling. Tear was instantly uncomfortable. "She was a beautiful woman, kind and sweet, and, and loved you to bits, never doubt that... I had never seen her looked more radiant than when she held you in her arms, even when she cried like a big baby herself."
Tear kept silent.
"Arisa wasn't very original with names," Nuna mentioned. "At the time, I couldn't comprehend why she named you Tear. It isn't a weird name, Tear-chan," she assured. "Just... unexpected. Arisa told me she wanted to name her firstborn after scholars or teachers, though she didn't tell me why. But then she told me she wanted to name you another name, but that your father convinced her othewise. Thankfully. Marshall D. Tear is a good name isn't it not?" She cooed, at the infant in her arms or Tear, no one could really guess.
Tear stared. "What," she deadpanned.
"Your mother wanted you to have her surname very much, and your father agreed if he got to name you, so yes: Marshall D. Tear. Had you been a boy you would've been named Teach, you know! I remember how your father—"
There wasn't anything else said because at that very moment, Tear opened her mouth and screamed her head off.
That was the day the surname-less orphan, Tear, of a nameless orphanage in some nameless island, found out she wasn't as surname-less as she thought and that this new life of hers wasn't anything close to a relief or miracle or blessing.
Marshall D. Tear was five years old and she had deduced that everything was one big lump of fucking bullshit.
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Marshall D. Teach was an asshole through and through and Tear had hated him. Still hated him, in all honesty. But now she was him, lacking the male equipment as it was, and it was the most horrifying thing ever.
Tear could already feel the thousands of screams yelling for her death, for retribuition, for vengeance for a brother in arms and a father that loved the ones the world shunned, and Tear shuddered.
In retrorespect, simply deciding to stay away from the Plot might have been... too little. Too naive, and a weak (not-)approach.
Sometimes when she thought about her role and a future stained with betrayal and blood, Marshall D. Tear thought that her mother should've just killed her when she was born and be done with it. It certainly would've spared many people a lot of heartache, in her humble opinion.
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What have I done.
This is my first SI. I, like many people out there, absolutely loathe that backstabbing asshole, but I loved SI and even though I probably wrote it like crap, it was a little fun. I will feel grateful and happy if you people give me suggestions on One Piece SIs.
This was started as a concept towards a oneshot, or maybe a short story of timeskips and little moments where Tear's hopes are dashed and crushed beneath the heel of the omniponent thing we know as the Plot Matrix. It was a little gloomy at the end though.
My grasp on English is not very good and whenever I prepare to write anything my mind is "oh what was I thinking about ehhhh?" So yeah. Not sure if will continue this... My mind is blank towards building everything. And school. I just feel half-dead these days.
Point: This was born from my love to SI, my grief towards Ace's death and... I don't know. It somehow ended up like this.
~TenraiTsukiyomi