He wondered when the descent into chaos began as he sat in his cabin on his twenty fourth birthday, with his lets propped up on his desk, nursing a glass of aged scotch. Could it had been when he had first left the limited and constrained life of a nobleman's son behind? Or when he had first taken to the sea's on Gol D. Roger's crew as his cabin boy at the tender age of eleven?

Or had it perhaps been the first time he had saw her.

God knew that she had certainly been a vision lovelier than anything he'd ever seen before, though he would never say so aloud, in her turquoise colored little dress with soft pink satin ribbon running along the length of her dress's bodice and another one tied in a butterfly bow around her slender waist.

The first thing that he had noticed when he had walked into town with Gol's crewmates to gather supplies and restock the ship, had been her almost waist length hair that was strangely as eye catchingly red as his own.

And paired up with her angelic little heart shaped face, and her hauntingly beautiful features and eyes the same color of her dress- She had been standing next to an elderly man in his forties or fifties when the crew had waltzed into town and were greeted automatically as if they were hero's.

Which had confused him greatly given the fact that they were pirates instead of ordinary sailors.

But nothing confused him half as much as seeing his captain practically run over to the girl and pick her up in his arms and lay a big kiss on her cheek before saying, "My hime! Tell me stuff. How is school going?" As he turned and with a brief pause, nodded to the elder that the girl had been standing next to and started walking away with the girl.

He might have began to ask someone just who the little mite was and why his captain had grabbed her and called her Hime when he heard some of his crewmates begin laughing, "That Gol, every time we're here he spends a majority of his time with his little hime!"

"It's almost as if he's leg shackled himself to the girl." Another howled with laughter before another said in an amused tone,

"Well Gol better watch out or our own pretty little cabin boy will steal his hime away from him."

He turned his copper eyes to the man that had just spoken and made a mental note to beat the hell out of him later on for calling him 'pretty'. He was a man for christs sake! Men were not pretty.

The had long and greasy hair, rarely shaved, even more rarely washed and they and their clothing smelled very strongly of BO from weeks or even years of being at sea without the proper facilities to care for or groom themselves.

See? Not pretty.

Terrible is what the lot of them were.

Besides, he didn't want to steal the little mite from his captain. She was cute and all, but he knew from personal experience that red heads had terrible tempers.

He chuckled as he took another sip of his scotch and felt the need to shake his head at his younger self's observation's of the world and the people in it.

He'd been such a little jerk back then, he would admit. And that didn't really change the entire trip. But every time they had left, he'd seen the little mite watching their ship sail away from the quaint little island, he'd felt a strange sense of...well he hadn't really known what he felt at the time.

But he could pinpoint it now.

He'd been flattered that the little mite would always be there to greet them upon their return to the island, and had even grown accustomed to the site of her over the years. He had even started watching her to the point where his crewmates and captain had noticed, though he certainly hadn't meant to get caught any.

Every time he had seen her, she'd simply grew prettier and prettier until one day when he was fourteen, he'd come across her during a firework's festival and had stolen a kiss.

Now don't get him wrong- at the time he'd just been fourteen and she had barely been ten. Still the kiss had been sweet in it's innocence. And damned if he knew better than to try seducing someone that young. So he'd done the honorable thing and while he and his crewmates had been on the island for two months, and he'd started courting her.

Not wanting anyone to get the wrong idea about the little lass.

However he hadn't foreseen other things getting in the way of their relationship.

At barely ten, a local noble had dropped by the island and had wanted her as his newest mistress. Ol Gol upon hearing the news had damned near blown a fuse before he had slammed his mug of ale down on the tavern table he'd been staying at for the past few days attempting to relax, and had gotten his guns and left without so much as a word to any of them.

By the time the news had spread completely around the island about his wee little mite, his captain had already killed the noble in cold blood and dumped him in the sea and returned to the island to have a little talk with his little mite's grand-da.

And after said talk, Gol had approached him and told him to come with him back to the ship for a little bit to get something. Of course upon reaching the ship, his captain had been kind enough to tell him that he would be picking out a marriage gift as well as a ring for his little mite since he had negotiated terms for an arranged marriage for him and his mite.

The terms, as far as he knew- were fairly simple. He would wait until she was around sixteen to actually marry the girl, but couldn't claim his wedding night until she was about twenty. The other stipulations were also rather simple given how much the lass meant to Gol and himself.

He would never cheat on her- even while visiting taverns and getting drunk with his crewmates. He could never lay his hands on her in anger or while drunk. He would never force himself on her- He wasn't sure just what kind of person his captain thought he was going to grow up into, but he was terribly offended already.

The captain had even told him that part of the terms also covered if the marriage didn't work out or not as well as if they had children. His captain was a really old fashioned sort of man.

He believed that if a man married it was forever. He was also rather gentlemanly when it came to women, which he supposed is how the old sea dog managed to land his woman several years later.

But he digressed.

The rest of the terms were more...well, a formality, concerning their joint future. As the little mite's soon-to-be-husband he was expected to make sure that she never went without.

Money, clothes, food, shelter- she should never be without. And if she happened to bear him a child once he claimed his wedding night, it was also his job to take some time off from being a pirate to stay with his family and protect them until his child/children were old enough to take care of themselves as well as some other things.

Once all of the guidelines were laid out for him, he readily agreed to each one knowing that his little mite was worth it. And now at the age of twenty four- it was finally time to return to the island.

To his little mite to check and see how she had grown and finally claim what was his.

He polished off the rest of the scotch in his glass in one go and put it down on his desk as a grin curved his lips. His poor wife hadn't seen hide nor hair of him since the day that they had been married.

Wouldn't she be shocked to see him when he finally showed up? He'd bet that she'd give him all kinds of hell. Strangely enough, he couldn't seem to wait to see her again. Getting up out of his seat, he put his scotch up and then went to the door of his cabin, deciding to go ahead and break up the celebration that his men had put together in honor of his birthday so that they could head to the island.