AN: Hi everyone and welcome to my story! Before we begin I just want to mention that if you are easily triggered this may not be the story for you. Also I loosely based Elena's backstory off of the film "The Seasoning House" in case it seemed familiar, although it is only loosely based.

TW for: violence, mentions of non-con, mentions of PTSD and lemons

Enjoy!

If she could only get to the Devil Fruit she would be alright. She knew as soon as she overheard Dario talking about it, she knew it was her ticket out.

Nagi Nagi No Mi. Thats what he had called it. The Calm-Calm fruit.

If she could just get her hands on that fruit she might stand a chance. She had been here for seven years and she knew she would eventually die here unless she did something about it.

For now she continued her duties in the whorehouse. She spent her days tending to the girls there and cleaning up the already filthy establishment.

"Elena."

She perked up at the sound of her name. Dario, the owner of the brothel, stood before her with an irritated look on his face as he held out a wooden box for her to take. Elena glanced at the cracked clock on the wall, realizing she was indeed late to perform her duties. She wordlessly took the box from him and kept her head down as she passed him on the narrow staircase leading to the girls' rooms.

She entered the first one on her right, quickly taking a seat on the moth-eaten mattress and grasping the arm on the young girl who occupied it. She was new, Elena didn't recognize her. A stab of pity ran through her as it did every time there was a new shipment of girls, but she knew there wasn't anything she could do to help them. Yet.

"Help me…please…" the girl who could have been no more than fourteen years of age pleaded with her.

Elena ignored her as she opened the wooden box and retrieved the vial and needle that was inside. She drew the liquid from the vial with practiced expertise as she bended the girl's arm to make it straight. She quickly injected it into the girl with only a small wince from her patient, who seemed to realize attempting to talk to her was futile.

She reached back in the box and pulled out a small pot of red paint, smearing the crude substance on the girl's lips and cheeks before popping the lid back into place.

Elena took the used needle and threw it into the bucket of waste by the bed, lifting it by the handle and placing it outside of the door of the room.

She knew in a few hours Dario would begin letting customers in and the girl would be introduced to the horrors that accompanied living here. The shelf life of a girl was usually no more than a few weeks, she would find at least one or two bodies a week.

As she passed the cracked mirror on the wall to enter the second room, she stopped to take a quick glance at herself. She knew she had it better than the working girls did, but her cheeks were still sunken in from malnourishment and her face was covered with dirt. She softly touched the two puckered scars running from her cheek and stopping a few centimeters before the corner of her mouth. That was the reason she was so lucky. The scars were from the day she had been taken, a double bladed sword had done this to her. But she found herself preferring the small disfigurement to what her fate would have been if she hadn't received it.

Instead Dario had ordered her to work for him, occasionally she was forced to share his bed but she was almost used to it by now. Not to say she liked it, but she stopped crying herself to sleep a few years ago.

With that she continued on to the next room and performed the same procedure on the girl in there, making her way down the hall slowly to prepare the girls.

Tonight. That is when she would do it. About a week ago Dario had traded one of his girls for a devil fruit, Elena had immediately become interested. As a regular girl there wasn't much she could do, but with the aid of one of the devil fruits she just might have a chance at surviving. How she longed to see the ocean again... She and her sister used to play in the waves as children, they enjoyed watching the ships roll in and out of port with their goods to trade. She didn't even know where she was anymore.

As she finished her duties she passed by some of Dario's lackeys, most of them ignored her as usual.

She hoped Dario hadn't eaten the fruit, although she was almost certain he was saving it to sell. The man had no further ambition than that of money, she had seen him do unforgivable things in the name of money and he wouldn't pass up the opportunity to sell something so rare. Still there was the small chance that he had decided to eat it, if that were the case she didn't know what she would do.

This fruit was her only chance.

She entered her room and shut the door. It wasn't much, she like the girls, had a moth eaten mattress and a threadbare blanket. She took the opportunity to lay down on the rickety bed and close her eyes, hoping maybe she could sleep a little to pass the time. She listened to the sounds of footsteps moving throughout the house, most likely Elias, Vaughn, Silas or Sidney hurrying to do Dario's bidding.

She missed the sounds of her mother and sister walking around their little house. Back when her father was still around they had lived in a large house, wanted for nothing, but there was something about the quaintness of the house they had lived in after his death that was comforting. Even if she was bitter towards him for leaving no money for her mother or sister, she couldn't deny it had made the three women closer.

Most of all she missed her big sister, Arienne. They had been close, as close as two sisters could be. Arienne had been starting to drift away from her in pursuit of friends her own age when their village was attacked. She lived in the Briss Kingdom in the South Blue, they were a port village so they had the occasional exposure to pirates but nothing like the Black Sail Pirates.

She had been fifteen when one day their lives were flung headfirst into chaos. She still had nightmares about the fire and the screams that surrounded her as their small village was attacked. Her mother had tried to hide herself and Arienne in the closet as the pirates ransacked their house, but they had been discovered when Elena had accidentally put her weight on the wrong floorboard and it creaked. The two sisters had been dragged out of their house, their mother screaming for them as the Captain of the crew ordered her execution and the bullet tore through her chest.

Elena had managed to break free and mindlessly rushed for her mother's body that lay crumpled on the ground, only to be flung to the side as she felt the double blades of the Captain's sword burning as they sliced through her cheek.

All the girls from ages fourteen to eighteen had been lined up and loaded onto their ship as they took them to their new home. Most of them would be dead within the next two weeks.

Hour after hour went by as Elena lay in her bed, listening to the crying and yelling in the rooms down the hallway. It would be her job in the morning to clean up the girls who had survived the night. If she was there in the morning that is.

Finally after an immeasurable amount of time that seemed like an eternity, she heard the last of the voices in the house leave. She knew this was when Dario went to his quarters, he had ordered her to lie with him the night before so she didn't think he would do it again tonight but she laid still for another hour just to make sure.

When she was almost certain no one would come looking for her during the night, she slowly got up from her bed and tip toed across the room as she took extra care not to step on any creaky boards. By the floor on one of the walls was her destination, a grated vent that was just big enough for someone of her size to fit through. She quietly used her fingers to unscrew the loose screws on the corners of the vent and carefully placed the grate to the side.

She had used the grate back when she first arrived in hopes of it leading to an exit. It hadn't, but it had lead to almost every other room in the house. She slowly slid her body through the opening, ignoring the cold metal against her skin as she used her arms to pull herself through to the slightly larger opening inside. She continued in this manner, navigating her way through the vents until she found the room she was looking for. Dario's office. It was always locked from the inside, the man having a key for whenever he needed to access it.

Elena slipped her fingers through the grates and unscrewed the screws again, slowly pulling the grate through the vent and placing it just behind her as she squeezed past the exit. She used her hands to brace herself on a cabinet as this grate was near the top of the ceiling. She brought one foot at a time to join her hands as she wobbled, grasping onto the wall to steady herself as she slowly slid down until her feet touched the ground.

There it was. The devil fruit sat on his desk across the room, patterned and swirly as it seemed to stand out from the dullness of the rest of the office. Elena carefully placed one foot in front of her, gradually placing her weight on it. She continued across the room, testing the floors for creakiness as she reached the fruit at last.

Her momentary happiness turned into unease as she examined it. How would she figure out how to use it? Would it just come to her? She had no idea how this sort of thing worked. As she picked it up with careful fingers she took a deep breath to quell her stomach as it jumped with fear. With no further hesitation she closed her eyes and took a bite of the fruit.

Ugh!

It was awful! Elena tried not to retch as the extremely unpleasant taste invaded her mouth. She breathed through her nose as she chewed, squeezing her eyes shut and scrunching her nose as she forced herself to swallow the rancid thing. Was it supposed to taste like that?

As she swallowed she paused. She was pretty sure she only had to take one bite of the fruit, but she didn't feel any different…

She racked her brains, how was she supposed to figure out how to use it? It was called the Nagi Nagi No Mi, otherwise known as Calm-Calm so perhaps she should try that?

"Calm…" she whispered. She waited….and waited….but nothing happened. No flash of light, no feeling of power, no miraculous change. She let out a sigh of disappointment, and froze.

She couldn't hear herself sigh. Cautiously she tried again,

"Hello?" She asked. Although she was certain she was speaking, no sound came out of her mouth.

Her stomach did a flip flop of excitement as she realized what had happened. She had done it…it worked!

She tried to focus, she could figure out how to undo it later but right now the silence could work in her favor. Elena walked across the room again, this time noticing that the boards that would usually give a soft groan at her weight were being silent. Her grin grew as she hoisted herself atop the cabinet again and pulled herself through the vent once more.

Now it was time for step two. She crawled soundlessly through the vent a few turns and she arrived at another grate, this time as she looked through she could see the slumbering form of Dario Koch himself. He rested in his silk sheets, blonde hair, beard and mustache messy as his mouth was open in a snore. He had significant sun damage and wrinkles on his face, and although he was asleep she still felt a spike of fear at the sight of the crude businessman.

Elena repeated the process on the grade and slid herself out of it again as she eyed the man. She knew the only key to the front door was in the pocket of his pajama pants, all her efforts would be useless if she couldn't get that key. She silently made her way over to him, hesitating before slowly reaching out to him. Fear coursed through her body and she tried not to shake as she carefully began to reach inside his baggy pocket, feeling the weight of the key as she reached for it. She could feel the cool metal on her skin as she grasped it and began to pull it out.

Snort.

She froze in terror as she looked at the man's face, but he seemed to just be turning his head a little in his sleep. She let out a silent breath she didn't know she had been holding as she finished pulling the key out of his pocket triumphantly.

Now for step three. She began to get excited at the prospect of being free as she prepared to crawl back into the vent.

A cough sounded behind her. She froze, slowly turning her head as the blonde man on the bed slowly began to wake up. His blue eyes opened lazily and widened as he caught sight of her.

"HEY!" He yelled.

Elena quickly shoved herself back into the vent as he crossed the room. He caught hold of her foot as she was about to crawl out of his reach, her mouth opened in a silent scream and she began to thrash her leg around. She caught him in the face and he recoiled, holding his nose as she scampered through the vent.

Front door. She had to get to the front door.

Pushing herself through the vent shaft as quickly as possible, she heard shouting and footsteps as the other guards were alerted to her whereabouts. She reached the grate to the vent by the door and quickly unscrewed it. She opened it and pulled the grate in by her as she noticed the guard right underneath her who was watching the front door. She still made no sound thanks to her new devil fruit powers, she slid out of the vent and landed right on top of him.

He yelled in surprise as she wasted no time wrangling the knife from his belt. A wave of rage washed through her. This man had been guarding the house, he was helping to keep them all here. She raised the knife above her head and didn't hesitate in bringing it down into the man's back. He gurgled as she repeated the motion over and over.

Elena jumped up as she heard footsteps rounding the corner and fumbled with the key as she tried to unlock the door. She felt a pair of arms go around her waist and she blindly slashed backwards, feeling happy when she heard a howl of pain behind her. She then turned around to see another one of the guards clutching a bloody arm. Two more rounded the corner as he charged at her, she shoved the knife into any piece of him she could reach and did the same to the third guard as he tried to assist his comrade.

She was covered in blood and about to turn to the remaining guard when three more came to join him, and these guys had guns.

She finished turning the key quickly and pushed the door open as she ran into the cool crisp air. She blinked in the sunlight as she ran, zig zagging around as bullets whizzed past her head. She was already out of breath, malnourishment and seven years of not running ensured her stamina was low. She reached the shore and spared a glance behind her.

The three guards that were still following her were quickly gaining on her, she turned to one of the small rowboats that were docked next to the larger ships and crawled in. She steadied herself as she boat rocked and took the oar to begin rowing.

She heard shouting behind her and she ducked as more bullets flew past her head. She heard a whistle and one voice shouting to the rest as the gunshots ceased. With a quick observation she realized that the men were retreating.

Joy surged through her as she realized she had done it, she was free! She floated away from the island she had lived on for seven years. She still had no idea where she was but even dying at sea would be better than being in that house for another day.

As she watched her prison disappear from view she felt the fatigue catch up with her. She laid down inside the small rowboat as she drifted along. She would figure out where she was in the morning, right now all that mattered was that she get as far away from the island as possible.

She felt herself yawn and her eyes get heavy as she went. She'd be back to free the other girls for certain, but she would need a little help first.