A Past.
The past is the longest and most constant part of one's life, because it keeps on growing as you age, and will stay there even when you die.
A long time ago, a lifetime ago, when she still ran from place to place on her own, trying to survive, Robin was hired as a maid for the daughter of a well to do merchant on a winter island, who had made his wealth by building ships for pirates and kept it by having enough cannons to ensure that they didn't come back. She was a small, pampered child, a birthmark like a hammer on her nine year old forehead, who had the strange, all encompassing kindness of those who hadn't known unkindness. She didn't like how little Robin was being feed, so she smuggled as much as she could out in the pockets of her tiny pink dress. Being a child, she mostly smuggled puddings and sweet things like chocolate, but Robin ate them anyway, sticky and secretive, and told her that it was their secret when she tucked the girl in at night. She would giggle, and Robin would try to giggle as well, but it only came out as `dereshishishi`, which made the girl giggle even more. Robin valued this small, naive kindness.
She still never thought of the girl by name however. Titles were easier, were transferable. Bonds like names made running away difficult.
Once the girl was snuggled into the bed, the duvet curled around her like a cocoon, allowing the growing creature inside to survive the cold that whistled through even the grandest of houses at night, she would declare it to be storytime, in a dramatic, excited manner. She loved the stories, this little pupae, told by a girl who had had her protection stolen from her in a night of cold so harsh it would freeze life itself, matched only by the heat of the fire that blazed around it.
The Giant Warriors of Elbef said that was how the world was made, when the land of fire and the land of ice clashed, and the ice melted to form a cosmic cow, who licked the ice for food and put out the fire with her milk, and from this the first giant grew, huge and powerful, and he too feed on the milk of his mother, until he died, and from came the world and all things. She told her charge this story, and she wrinkled up her head, crumpling the mark, and said "Where did the land of ice and fire come from then?" Robin smiled and said that the story had been thought of by a race who spent most of their time bashing each others heads in or drunk, so she shouldn't expect it to make sense. The parents did not like it when she mentioned violence or alcohol to their child, but children love a good head smashing, and Robin walked out of the room that night followed by requests for morbid details about how exactly the giants smashed their opponent's heads in.
Sometimes she told her made up stories, stories from a far away place that was lost in the midst of time, like the great tree of books, lost when the goblins came scampering up the island and the good magicians who looked after all the knowledge in the world were forced to hid them to protect them, or about the magic block that stood after them, or, about a mighty giant who died protecting a girl from winter.
One time the girl asked why none of these stories had happy endings. Robin said they didn't end happily in real life, and ran from the room and locked herself in her room and cried and shivered like Aojiki himself was leaning over her.
The master and mistress of the house did not like it when she told these stories, since the girl would come down quietly at breakfast and `acted queer` the rest of the day. She was told to stick to the stories in books.
After Robin read to her about the battle between Gold Lion Shiki, Garp and Sengoku which started with the flying pirate upon a mound of corpses and ended with the navel head quarters utterly destroyed, she was told to limit them to nice story books that the parents had read and approved, no matter how many times the girl begged to hear Robin's graphic explanation of how Shiki had escaped from Impel Down by bashing his own legs off with a rock.
One of these books was about a city, called Omelas, where everyone had more than enough food and it was all happy and no one went without a thing, except for one little child, locked away, and all the happiness that was in the city was paid for by this child suffering. It ended with some of the citizens turning their backs on the city, turning their backs on the ones who would make a poor child suffer. The girl had looked up at her, face sticky with the orange sweet she had spilt with Robin, and said that she would do that too.
The girl who looked after her, the locked away child, couldn't say anything, but just leant forward and hugged her and didn't answer when the child asked why she was crying, because she didn't know if she was angry or sad that this girl, waited on hand and foot, thought she would walk away from it when she herself lived there, in a shell, a cocoon, as complete as Omelas.
The last night, the girl asked her what, or who, the pirate king was. Robin told her the stories. She told her how he fought Golden Lion's entire fleet with a mere one vessel and won, and how Garp and Sengoku together were not enough to catch him, and how he duelled with Whitebeard, the most powerful man alive now. She told her about how he used his death to set alit the entire world, and she asked for more and more and more, until finally, she fell asleep, mumbling phrases about how awesome the pirate king was, and how she was going to be a pirate one day. Robin quietly closed her mouth, and then slid out of the window and away into the night, to the small boat she had prepared, as the marines entered the other side of the house. The girl who said she would walk away from the city slept on, and the locked up child ran across the inky sea in a rather ugly peagreen boat, with as many chunks of bread and salted meat as she could pilfer and a little bit of money, wrapped up in a cloak that may have possible been worth five berry.
She sat there and tried to giggle. It came out as `dereshishi`, and she wished she had some honey.
A Present
A present only exists for a moment, but that is enough. For a thought, for an action...yes, the present is more than enough.
Robin sits in the library of the Thousand Sunny. The day outside is bright and sunny, and she runs her fingers across the patch of sunlight between her and her pile of new books she and Nami and Chopper had brought in the last town, watching her skin tone change as she runs from light to shadow, dark to pale. She picks them up, delicately, reverently, and carefully sets them into piles: a map of the island for Nami, a book on the history of a small west blue nation for her, two medical textbooks for Chopper, another map and a book on finance for Nami, a cook book that they found for Sanji with a mouth watering picture of a pudding on the front with chocolate and honey and orange in it that Robin was looking forward to trying in reality, a book that they thought Usopp and Franky might like about mechanical design, although she expected the two of them were far ahead of it in terms of skill at building machines. She carries on for a while, the moments slipping unhurriedly into the past behind her. The pile in front of her grow bigger, and she has to grow extra arms to steady them. She pulls another one out. The cover says `Those who walk from Omelas`, and she remembers a time back before she was happy, before home and family ripped apart Enies Lobby for her, when she would hug a little girl who thought that the kindest thing one could do was to share a chocolate pudding with someone, and who she may have accidentally set on a life of piracy after tales of a man who died with a smile on his lips. She hoped she didn't, since it wasn't normally a pleasant life, and the girl didn't really deserve it just for being lucky as to who she was born to. Still, she seemed pretty sensible; any girl who wonders where the ice and fire came from in the myths of giants probably had enough sense to avoid a reckless life of piracy on the high seas.
Or may she would come to see piracy as the great escape from the city with the locked up child, if she still remembered the story. Robin didn't know. She hoped she did. Leaving because you won't be part of another's suffering would be far better than leaving in such of great riches, when she really just had to ask daddy.
A knock on the door startles her, and she looks up to see Luffy, chunk of ham in hand, gestering to her from the entrance to the room.
" 'ome on 'obin!" he says around a mouthful of meat. "Sanji's made lunch!"
She laughs, a proper `haha` type laugh, and glances down at the book she still holds in her hands.
"Luffy" she asks "If there was a paradise, where everyone is happy and content, in the middle of a wasteland, but this is only due to the constant torture on an innocent child, what would you do?"
Luffy pauses in his chewing, thoughts rearranging themselves in his head.
"I'd find the boss of the place." He replies slowly "And punch him."
"Really now?"
"Yep." Luffy nods. "I'd punch him until he stops being an asshole."
"And the child?" She thinks she already knows the answer.
"Hmm...I'd probably make them part of the crew." He says, before taking another bite of ham. "Yeah, that's what I'd do."
She got up from her chair, placing the book on the shelves as she passed by. As she steps out onto the deck, she turns back around and asks another question.
"And what if everyone in the city was to blame for the child's condition?"
"I'd punch all of them." he pauses. "No, I'd get you guys to help me punch them as well. And then I'd make the kid part of my crew."
"And what about the people of the city, lost in a wilderness?"
His reply is instant, and delievered with a beaming smile. "I'd get Franky to build them a better city!"
"But didn't you just punch all of them?"
"Yep!" says Luffy, still grinning, before grabbing her arm. "Now. Lunch!"
Robin laughs again, and sits down to eat. When dessert comes, she thinks to the little book sitting on the shelf, and smiles gently to herself.
A Future.
A future is always going to be slightly uncertain. To predict it, we must know everything about the present, which is impossible. We can guess, but sometimes things simply take us by surprise.
It will be a calm day in Shabody Grove 1. The auction house is still running, still selling people to the highest bidder. On this day, a young woman, a former pirate, a hammer-shaped birth mark on her forehead and a scar on her right cheek, will be the first lot. They'd pull her onto the stage. She'd hear the jangle of keys, feel a disembodied set of hands removing her collar before they'd move on, unlocking those behind her in the cages. She will see the guards panic, run towards her, before being struck down by a skeletal hand. And she will hear a voice next to her ear.
"So you did walk away. Well done. Dereshishishi."
Soon she will be lead onto a pirate ship, where a beautiful woman who once read her stories while she was wrapped up in a blanket will share sweets with her, and giggle properly.
And Robin will, after all these years, learn the name of the girl who finally decided to walk away from her Omelas, there on the ship owned by the man who would raze Omelas to the ground and build it anew, and who would die with a smile on his lips.