My daughters, Kuina and Olvia, crawl around on the floor by my feet, tiny gurgling sounds coming from their chubby lips and floating through the air. I sit in my chair by the window and think. About life. About the last five years. About Luffy.

It's been a long time since the war ended, and still thoughts of my friend float endlessly through my head. His smile and his laugh, as well as his blood on my hands, never leave me, even for an instant, but somehow, I don't think this is a bad thing. It just reminds me that he was real at some point, that he wasn't just some happy dream that gave me the courage to enter the world and actually live.

And so I welcome it.

I look down at my children and a soft smile plays at my lips. The twins have just turned two, and already they are showing signs of the restlessness and stubbornness that their father is so well known for. I chuckle and reach down to pick them up.

Kuina and Olvia giggle as I scoop them into my arms, earning a light kiss from me on each of their cheeks. They grab onto my shirt playfully with their pudgy fingers and bounce on my knee, laughing when I wrap them in a tight hug that lifts them off their feet. When my daughters were first born, they were so tiny I could hardly believe it. They were the single most beautiful thing I had ever seen, save for my wife, Robin, and to this day still send tiny shivers of awe running through me whenever I see them.

They are perfect.

Even if I am not.

Light streams in from the window, illuminating the girls' light green hair, so reminiscent of my own. When I first saw that they had inherited that trait of mine, I had secretly groaned. There had been countless times in the past when I'd been teased over the color of my locks, and I didn't want the same thing to happen to my children. Robin had laughed at me, saying that if they were my daughters that she was sure they could handle it.

I still worried.

I wonder how Luffy would react if he saw me now, with a wife and kids of my own. Knowing him, he would probably laugh and say something like "It's about damn time," and then slap me too hard on the back so that I fell. It makes me smile to think about what our lives would be like if he had lived, but also, makes me incredibly sad. I still blame myself for his death.

Nami has told me time and again that I shouldn't, but that doesn't stop the guilt from bubbling up from within me, scalding and like tiny knives in my veins. I don't know if this feeling will ever go away, or even if I want it to. The fact remains the he died so I could live. While I sit here in my home, with my beautiful family and my beating heart, he is hundreds of miles away, buried deep within the earth in a land where the ground was more blood than dirt. His son, named Ace in honor of Luffy's older brother, is growing up not knowing about how incredibly wonderful his Daddy was, and I still catch Nami with a far away look on her face from time to time, like she's holding in tears. And it's my fault.

I bite my lip.

I ended up settling down in Luffy's hometown after all, just like he wanted. Go figure. I guess I felt like it was my duty to him, to watch over his loved ones in his place and to make sure to start that business he always wanted to start. I make sailboats with some other guys from the town. No guns involved whatsoever.

Three years ago, I met Robin.

I can't say if it was love at first sight, or if I was just stunned that a woman was actually talking to me of her own volition, but from the first moment I saw her, I knew that she was special. I told her about the war, and about Luffy making the trip up to heaven, where I was sure he was given the amount of bloody praying he did. Throughout it all, she simply sat and listened, a sad knowing smile on her face. She held my hand and didn't say anything about the burning, silent tears that flowed down my cheeks on occasion.

We got married on a warm spring afternoon in May.

My girls make a dissatisfied noise in front of me and I look down at them. Kuina has her lip puffed out and her tiny arms crossed, while Olvia wears a slightly worried expression and reached out to touch my cheek.

"Ouch, Daddy?" She says in her tiny voice. I frown in confusion, and then realize that I feel something wet on my chin. I touch my eye and find a lone tear-stain running down my face, unknown to me until just then.

Kuina's frown deepens. "No ouch," she says indignantly. "Don't like Daddy hurt. Stop hurt right now!" I quickly wipe the tear away and smile at the girl's expression. My daughters hate it when I get sad, somehow sensing that the sadness stems from something that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I chuckle and ruffle their hair. "Sorry," I say. "Daddy was just remembering an old friend of his, and it made him sad." Olvia's lip quivers. "But I'm fine now, okay? What do you say we go play in the yard until dinner's ready? I'm sure Mommy's making something delicious for us." The girls' expressions change to ones of delight and they quickly hop off my lap.

I get up from my chair and they grab my hands, tugging me towards the door and yelling at me because I'm "too old and slow," to which I respond that I'm still young and that they need to shut up. They laugh, and the sound washed over me like a baptism. I know that I'm the luckiest guy in the world, and their small voices and hands only reaffirm this.

As I step out the door, gazing over the sleepy town bathed in the golden light of twilight, I think I hear another voice join in. It is a man's voice, but still very childish, and it calls to me to come play and to forget about life and its hardships. I smile.

"You're still here, eh?" I say under my breath. "How stupid, of course you are."

Luffy's smile warms my back as I step into the sunshine, two of my newly found reasons to live urging fore ward into the world.

Alright, so, I'm suffering right now from TERRIBLE writer's block, and that's why none of my other stuff has been updated. I'm making this in response to some of the mail I've been getting, as well as because I just fucking wanted to. Fear not, I'm almost done with my other stuff, and be pleased to know that the chapters will be hella long. Until then - Mikki