author's note: hey y'all, long time no see! i've been super fucking busy with life shit, but i got the inspiration for this fic after reading "Unsinkable" by RikoJasmine (on AO3) and wondering how the hell the backstory for all that happened, and then i wrote most of the damn thing on my notes app in a motel the night before i started my research fellowship so...gshdjghjk. sorry for any errors. this story is weird and nonsensical in ways that aren't necessarily everyone's cup of tea, and probably won't make sense if you haven't read "Unsinkable" first. fair warning.
title from "as is the sea marvelous" by e. e. cummings.
if this story had a beginning, it would be in the stars. in the first sea, the deep black sea of sky that hung the stars—there were shining stars, and then there were falling stars, and burning gnashing roiling stars, shooting into the open arms of the earth mother. but this plasma sea burned too bright, was too hot for her to hold, or maybe she just held too tight. it sank into her skin and hardened her heart and so with time it maybe seemed that it had never been at all. and so the plasma sea of stars became the cliffs and mountains and valleys and jagged shores her mother wore. its thick smoke rose taller than the earth mother could reach, slipped through her fingers to form the white sea over her head. so the stars were the earth mother's size and strength, and when the sky opened up again, and down poured the blue sea, the earth mother had space for her, was strong enough to hold her and stronger still to let her be free.
the blue sea was not free in her chains for long, though, and hated to be held at all. she was ferocious in her spirit and warred often with her earth mother, her tides shifting heedless of any boundaries the land tried to set. when man first came she hated them, too, hated them for their cowardice and ignorance and most of all for loving the earth mother more. they did not understand that even the sky above and land below had come from seas—the blue sea was the only sea they knew as such, but they only knew her well enough to be afraid, and that wasn't very well at all.
but man grew curious with the passing of time, and could not dwell in dirt forever. their species had lived long enough to gather their bravery. and this sea, the sea that man thought they knew, held more tempers than her anger. she loved life by her nature―teemed with it, even―so when the first of men to show her more than fear reached out their hands to her, she took them. in these hands she found voyagers, and in these voyagers she found her first devotees. some thought to conquer her as they would the land, and she devoured them in their hubris. those with the Will to learn would have her as a teacher, and in her they found the greatest treasures.
there was one such man who saw through to her like an open door, and he was special to her even among her students. he was her King but never her ruler, always her servant and loyal confidant. he told her stories of the earth mother who gave him life, who she had grown so distant from with time, and she thought that if she'd had less pride she might one day venture back inland as something other than a storm. but she was very old now, and a storm was all that she remembered how to be.
when her King died, they did not bury him in the earth. they cut off his head and dumped his body into her arms. they weighed him down so he sank, but she was strong enough to hold him anyway. these ignorant sea-fearers who wore the trappings of voyagers thought this burial would be an indignity to him. but her King had no love lost for the earth mother, and they mistook her waters for an unmarked grave. and for this, they all paid dearly. the crew sent to dispose of Gold Roger's body was found many months later, their corpses and the wreckage of their ship chewed up and spat back out onto the shore like so much rotten food.
what mattered was this: her King came from the earth mother, but he had returned to her, in the end. he had loved her most.
he's mine.
she wanted to believe it. but she knew that even for him, her storm was not enough.
as a rule, the sea tried not to take mortal lovers, humans least of all. those men and women who pursued her usually sought only to quiet her storm, even those with great intentions, and in her passion—for she loved life, and it was not in her heart to refuse them—she snuffed out their efforts and lives no matter their cause. it wasn't her choice. when a wild animal kills, no one would accuse it of malice aforethought. really, no one would accuse it of malice at all.
this, too, was in her nature.
but the ones who wanted her did not know her nature, and the ones who knew her nature knew well enough not to want her. even her King had taken another of her students as a lover—a woman more Willful than any others who bore the title, but only a woman nonetheless. mortals love, and storms rage, and the sea had always known that this was how the world fit together whole, when all things were in their right place.
but. but then there was another man. he came to her with the Will to learn, but unlike her other students, he had no interest in her teachings. but he spoke to her so clearly, when he spoke to her at all. she couldn't care less for his idyllic visions of the world, and he had no need of her surging rains and howling winds. he had his own.
for this man, her storm was enough.
it mattered, perhaps, that this man wasn't really a man at all. he was a storm, too, but he wore the clothes of a man by birth. he came from the earth mother like all other men, but he came to her with a bellyful of the tempest that had borne fruit from her own heart. the storm was her blood, and so too it ran through his. he knew her, and he wanted her anyway.
so when he reached out his hand, she took it.
when two storms meet, they either come together or tear each other apart.
it's not a choice. it is in their nature.
the sea had always thought she knew how the world fit together whole, when all things were in their right place. but with this new thing inside of her she was something more than whole. this new thing, a tiny gravity that was nothing at all like a storm. her benthic belly grew rounded like the moon—this tiny gravity was nothing like the tides, either—and she held it in her hands, while she still could.
with a surge she thought of her most Willful student, the King's lover. Rouge. the sea knew nothing else of bearing children, but she knew that woman's dedication to her own was fathomless. the sea had asked her once, an age ago—why does it matter? what does it mean? the sea had no human tongue, so she was clumsy with their spoken language. but Rouge had understood, as she always did.
"humans are short-lived, and ignorant, and cowardly. but we're powerful, too. in all my years as a pirate, in all of my training and all of my conquering, i never once understood my body's true power as well as i do now that i'm a mother. it's so much easier to take a life than to create one. Roger and i…we've done enough taking. right now, all i want to do is give."
in the end, Rouge had returned to the earth mother to keep her child safe. however much she loved her freedom, she loved that child more. and the sea had raged again at the loss of her student, of her last connection to her King. all her other tempers fell to grief, and though she could not bring herself to hate Rouge, she had hated herself, the self-swallowing storm of herself, for forgetting that original sin of mankind. no matter how much they claimed to love her, they would always love the earth mother more.
it was a selfish tantrum. the sea had been a fool then, too.
but she was other than a storm, now.
and so the sea washed ashore, her gravid form still pulled taut over herself. she didn't fear the earth mother's embrace as she did when she was young—age and experience had offered her perspective, and she thought that perhaps her mother never meant to bind her at all so much as to keep her safe. she knew that she would hold her own child forever, if she could.
but it would be out of her hands, soon enough. and it was much too late for regrets like those.
mostly, the sea was afraid to find that her Rouge was truly happy here, happier than she had been at se. but she needed to know, needed to understand what it meant for her to carry this child inside her, to make sense of her power now that it had been twisted by this strange devotion. and what of the son her King and Rouge had both given so much for?
"i never once understood my body's true power as well as i do now that i'm a mother."
she had to know the truth. she had to be brave.
mother, she called out to the earth. you have something of mine. where is she?
Rouge was dead. they had buried her body in solid ground.
the sea would rage, but twisted as she found herself, she could only manage rain.
but there was no time for her to wallow in her heartbreak. what she carried now was not a bellyful of tempest, but it was Dragon's blood and so it ran through hers. in her most hadal of places she felt it stir, a familiar shape that was neither of them at all, but instead it seemed to fit as neatly into her embrace as her King once had. sometimes she still felt him, long after he had come to her in death, but never so strongly as she could with the gravity of this child growing inside her. it made her greif a little easier, his memory a little stronger.
"it's not goodbye," her King had promised, the day before his surrender. "when a man dies, it's a chance for life to begin again. and when it does, i'll find you."
she had believed him then. and she believed him now.
as the moon of her belly grew full, she sought out Dragon once again. it was a strange thing, for her, to go looking for people as she was; in all her life she had always been there for men to pursue, guileless in their dreams. she was unused to asking, and even more unused to anything less than honesty in return.
but of course, Dragon was different.
"i'm sorry we haven't spoken," was the first thing he said to her. "i've been busy."
if you think your plans are above me, mortal man, then you know less of me than i thought.
she swayed his ship dangerously between the waves of herself. a warning, lest he had forgotten who his master was. but he pulled at her currents with his own until she righted it steady again. he wasn't truly powerful enough to match her, of course, but she let him anyway. she didn't come here to fight him, for once.
"you know that isn't what i meant," he groused as she settled, the vestiges of the storm slipping back under his skin. he was obviously still shaken by her ire. "you hate to mince words more than i do. that's not why you're here." he closed his eyes, his hands tightening white-knuckled on the rail of his ship, and listened. after a pause, he asked, "what of the child?"
what of it? you tell me. i don't know what this thing will be. it wears a skin like yours with a heart like mine and every time i try to get a sense of it, it changes.
of course, he had no answers for her. he knew her storm, but not much of anything else. devil fruit or no, he was still a mortal man, after all.
after a long silence, he asked her: "do you love him?" because there was nothing else left from him to ask.
more than i've ever loved anything else.
it was the truth, of course. but there was another, more salient truth: this child would be neither mortal man nor force of nature. she could not raise it as her own, and neither could he. but she didn't need to tell him that. he knew her, and the child was within her, so he knew it just as well.
"i trust you," he told her. "so take him where he leads you. let the child find his own place. and when the time comes―well, he'll show us both, won't he?"
whatever her child would be, she thought, it would be something greater and more boundless than any storm could fathom.
mother, she called out to the earth. i have a favor to ask of you.
and the sea let her child go. she would have held it forever, if she could―but needs must, and right now, this was what the world needed. but right now was not forever, either. and when the time came, she knew, her King would come back home.
authors note: minor note for anyone wondering―the difference between how dragon and the sea refer to luffy ("he" vs. "it") was intentional. both can sense him, but they have very different perspectives on who and what he is, and that's reflected in their language.
also, i kept fucking up my tenses when i was righting this―i'm too used to writing in present tense, lol. so if you notice any errors, please do point 'em out to me.