Olivia never forgave herself.
Not for that day. Not for that hour. Not for that breathless moment when his heart stopped and everything fell away.
It was unforgivable. Unforgivable for her to be so slow so scared, so her. So paralyzing slow that she could watch the attack over and over and over. It didn't matter if she lived for one more day or a hundred more years.
She would not allow herself to forget.
She would never forget how he smelled right after the flames finished consuming him. Like how he used to smile at her. How his smile would climb just a little higher when he saw her slowly approach him. The way the sun seemed to make his freckles multiply, something he was always complaining about.
The way his blood flowed over, between, around, her useless hands and onto those pristine white stones. That grateful look that people actually cared for him (but I loved you).
Her world disappeared with him.
There were no more thoughts about their next adventure. How she was supposed to keep up with him when the fire licked around his body and he sprang far, far ahead of her.
Now he was even farther ahead of her than before.
The marines called her a monster even before they took him away.
If that was so she'd show them what kind of monster she was without him.
It was so easy to kill them. Tiny little ant lives that could disappear (like him) in a single moment
And she felt nothing.
There was no happiness that she was doing this for him (it was always for him). She felt absolutely nothing at the thought of their families. Fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, wives, husbands, they all eventually gave her that same horribly surprised look when she ended their tiny ant lives.
Akainu was her first.
She had to wait though. Wait and wait and wait, because Marco was the new Captain and he had always told her to listen to the Captain.
It was a relief to both of them when he told her to go and kill them. Their grief was too much the same, family was not something you were supposed to watch die. Though he could never have imagined what she would become after he let her loose.
Akainu was hot. His body burned from some inner fire granted by his Devil Fruit. Magma indeed. He still died sputtering indignantly when she put her hand in his chest and removed his heart.
Wasn't like he was using it anyway. (Not like he used it, like she needed it.)
She killed everyone in the base on principal after that. They were just as guilty as the man who had struck that killing blow.
Two years later she stared down his beloved brother as they decided who would kill Teach.
It was her. No matter how angry Ace's brother got he didn't have the ability to swallow down those deaths. To bury his hands, teeth, spirit, into tearing that man out of this world and cast him into hell where he belonged.
Teach's crew had screamed and cried and begged her to spare them. They hadn't given him to the marines. They hadn't been part of the fight that brought him down. They hadn't done anything.
Exactly
Nothing brings nothing. They were Teach's crew, therefore they died.
The look on his face when he had seen what she had done made her laugh. She laughed so hard and so long that Teach had managed to cover her with darkness.
Except
She wasn't afraid of the dark anymore.
He made the earth quake and she danced along its jagged edges, laughing, laughing, laughing.
Teach didn't beg for mercy. She didn't give him the chance. It was entertaining seeing him try to without the ability though.
She left the pieces of his body outside the new marine headquarters. All the newspapers carried that story for weeks.
But she still felt nothing.
Wasn't she supposed to be content now? All those responsible were gone. His brother would be safe. She should be able to rest.
Al she wanted to do was sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep, until she met him again. (She probably never woul0d
The gaping maw still hungered for more though. And somewhere the piece that was still plain, frightened Olivia Tasa wept, because there was nothing left to do but stay a monster.
She needed someone to kill her.
His brother wouldn't do though. He wouldn't have wanted her to burden his brother that way.
Marco refused as well.
The Beast that was once Olivia retired to a small desolated island. There is stayed, becoming a legend to passing sailors.
There lies the ever hungry beast. Beware.
Four years after he disappeared his son was placed into her cold, stony arms. The boy's mother shakes in fear (like so many of her victims) and cries as she admits she can't watch such a dangerous child any longer. This woman doesn't want to die.
Ah, the things the Beast could tell her about death!
Olivia peaks out though, and for the first time since they lost him the Beast and the Girl are one.
This is their heart. The one they had been missing. The last remnants of the only man to face both Girl and Beat and laugh at both. (though this one laughs as well)
Together they take the child far away. Away from his mother. Away from the marines. Away from the Grand Line and all that it had ruined.
They name him Nikan. Because he brings everything good back to their life.
They take him far away from the influence of pirates and marines and even the bandits that raised his father.
He calls them Mama. Clings to their hand when they walk too quickly for him to keep up. He crawls into their bed at night when he has nightmares and makes them flower crowns when he can find the fields. He stays with them long after his father left his family and for that they are always grateful.
His Uncle adores him. There is not a moment when the Pirate King doesn't lavish the boy with gifts and adventures and love.
Marco's (Whitebeard's always Whitebeard's) crew loves the spitting image of his father just as much as he would have loved his child.
They spend years sailing around the Four Blues on a little boat just barely big enough to survive the weather and house both of them. Both Olivia and the Beast teach him everything they can.
Olivia guides him through sailing a ship, keeping it maintained repairing sails, working the rudder, everything he would ever need to pilot a ship. She tells him stories about the stars, and his father, and everything she can remember or think up. And even until the final night he is with her he lays with his head in her lap as she combs thin fingers through his hair.
If she sometimes calls him by his father's name he says nothing, there is just something too sad in the way she says it.
The Beast is an equally harsh and kind master. Where Olivia is quick to soothe every ache and pain, the Beast is quick to give him new ones. It often speaks of how this is her going easy on him, that there is going to be someone who will be less kind in teaching him the gap between strength and power.
There are times when the Beast is unnaturally still, though it stares at him it is far, far away. These are the times when he stands near her. Close enough that both of them can feel his heat, the heat his father gave him. Sometimes it takes hours for either one of them to come back, but he has never left their side during those times.
They are so thankful he never uses what they teach him.
He is an adult when they realize they cannot keep him forever. Even though it hurts, they must let him go.
For the first time in a very long while they look at themselves in a mirror and realize they haven't changed. The hair is still Olivia's pale, choppy grey locks. The same pale green eyes stare back at them, though the crimson of the Beast stains them at the edges. Even their face hasn't changed, still she looked like the teen she had been that day. They were still the same little girl who watched their only love die.
The three of them have been on the same island for four months. There is a girl there, barely older than Olivia when his father left her behind.
At night she watches as they walk together. Talking softly and laughing, everything they never had.
Olivia watches with a sad kind of pride, this was inevitable.
The Beast looks on and feels that it is time for them to move on.
Six months after they land on that island Nikan marries that girl. His Mamas watch from the shade of a nearby tree, the barest hint of a smile crossing over their pale lips.
For their son's wedding present they each give him something of his father's.
Olivia leaves his father's skiff tied to the dock that leads up to his new house and his father's hat firmly tied to the mast.
The Beast leaves the dagger his father never used, the edge sharper than when it sat on his father's belt.
In the morning the boat he grew up on is gone, his Mamas sailing away now that their job is done.
They sail for a long time after that. There is no telling how long it takes them to find their death bringer again. But when they finally land on that last island, the island that started everything, Marco is waiting for them.
The irony doesn't escape either of them as they stare at each other, and neither of them has changed. The Phoenix and the Vampire meeting for one last time to end each other's bleak existence.
They don't even fight it. They embrace as two long lost friends and Olivia sinks the Beasts fangs into his neck as he transforms and takes flight. They burn together, the loss of his blood draining away the power to protect himself from his own fire.
The only sign of their passing is the ash that floats gently on the water.
In the West Blue a boy turns toward the horizon, smiling as he aims for his great-grandfather's legend.
A woman hums an unknown tune as she combs Olivia's hair.
She is Olivia.
That comes as the biggest surprise to her. She has lived with the Beast for so long that she has forgotten what it is like to be simply Olivia.
The woman greets her quietly. She is familiar, like Olivia has seen this woman before but not actually met her.
A man suddenly leans over the woman's shoulder and she realizes they are his parents.
Rouge and Roger
It makes her want to cry.
Rouge, beautiful, kind, Rouge, wipes away Olivia's tears as she sobs into this woman. His mother lets her cry as long as it takes for the tears to run out. Then Roger, who truly lives up to his title of Pirate King, helps both women up and tucks his wife under his arm.
They smile at Olivia even as she is drawn away from them. It can't be helped, something is pulling her away, calling her to go somewhere.
She crosses hills, rivers, and fields. Lands she has seen but not seen for they are old, older than her, and yet new with the taste of recently born life. She goes impossibly far from her starting point and yet fatigue doesn't plague her.
His laugh is glorious when she finally hears it again.
It explodes through her head making her heart swell and a laugh of her own bursts out, giddy and unleashing of so much emotion.
Olivia runs to the top of the next hill and into his arms.
*Peaks around corner only to dodge a spray of bullets*
Right, sorry. No excuse. College got me and I've been a slump. Worry not. I will be updating other stuff soon.