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Title: pluck down the stars from heaven
Rating: T for now, might be upped to M later due to violence and such.
Summary: Freedom is only an illusion until you possess the strength to reach out and grasp it with your own two hands. (Or: In which a soldier is reborn as a village girl in a world where piracy runs rampant, strange fruits grant superpowers, and the laws of physics are shot to hell.) [SI/OC, LawOC, AU]
Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece.
(AN at the bottom of the chapter.)
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Seeri does not think of herself as vain. It's quite the opposite, really; she has never quite been particularly considerate or picky in regards to her manner of dress, her overall appearance. So…
…
… Simply put, she is unused to being concerned with her looks in this manner. A military life preaching practicality had meant few instances of applying makeup or wearing dresses, a village known for pearl-diving means slipping into the cold waters instead of shops and dance squares. It's probably the general lack of any particular emphasis on beauty in her day-to-day activities that is to blame for her inattention … but even if she does not take time to doll up in front of a mirror, that does not mean she cares nothing for about her appearance at all.
This is why she bites down on something salty and bitter in the back of her throat as she blinks her single open eye, gazing steadily into the small pool of water below. She looks down at the face of a scrawny young scrap of a girl reflected back at her, and burns the image into her mind.
(Even if she does not like what she sees, that is no reason to reject reality.)
There are three ugly cuts slanting over tanned skin, red and raw underneath the thin layer of powdery blue medicine. Medicine that had been hastily applied sometime the night before; she does not remember when, exactly. One of the cuts reaches across her forehead to the tip of her ear, while another slices all the way down her left cheek in an imperfect line. The last one in the middle grazes right over her eye –Seeri cannot say for certain right now how bad the damage of this cut really is, but she fervently hopes to high heaven that her vision will not be compromised too badly because of it. She does not dare open that eye yet to check her condition, not with the wound so fresh and easy to tear.
… It's almost laughable. She does not know if her eye will heal properly, she does not know how her brother and her village fared after the altercation with Marines, she does not know what will happen next to her in this situation she has fallen into; but if there is any one thing she knows without a single shred of doubt, it is this:
She will never be considered pretty again.
And…
It's stupid, really.
It's such a stupid, petty thing to be focused on. Even though she knows she should be thankful that the Marine had only cut up her face instead of, say, stabbing her through the chest or something, her emotions are anything but grateful in the aftermath of her survival.
She can already see the scars from this wound in her mind's eye –lumpy, uneven, lacerations over her face; fading to a light skin tone if she is lucky, angry red-brown if she is not.
It will be ugly.
… And somehow she is still focused on that little fact instead of being happy to even be alive, which is… slightly concerning to her?
Because she remembers blood and war and the scent of gunpowder lingering in the air, she has crossed over battlefields stained crimson red, and… and apparently all it takes is cutting up her face to upset her like this? She remembers being shot in the arms, legs, torso; she remembers having had a knife stabbed through her shoulder, she remembers… she remembers suffering all sorts of injuries, but…
Nothing quite like this.
Nothing quite like what she has experienced at the hands of that Marine, nothing like the result of what she is looking at in the cold waters right now.
(Nothing like this, this infuriating disgrace, humiliation. Maybe that's why it hurts so much, she thinks, because it was a low-life scum who did this to her, and so it chaffs at her pride. She knows that pride is dangerous, but doesn't find herself caring about it anyways.
There is something coiled inside her that refuses to bow, that refuses to cower in fear. Instead it calls for blood; blood shed for blood spilled, angry and primitive and wild.)
Seeri carefully finishes splashing water onto her skin, cleaning out the cuts marring her face and re-applying more of the blue powder medicine to the injury, before wrapping cloth bandages over the wounds again. The entire process is brisk and quick, and soon she stands up again.
Time to meet her so-called 'saviors,' the pirates who had pulled her from the dark waters.
(There's no such thing as a free lunch, after all.)
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Pirates.
The word can be used to describe a wide range of people –thieves, bandits, murderers– but even though Jean Bart is tall and of solid build, all hulking muscle and menacing strength as he towers over her, it does not seem as if he intends to kill her then and there… which makes sense. If he wants her dead, then he wouldn't have pulled her out of the water in the first place, anyways. Which begged the question of why he had bothered taking her to shore at all… what could a pirate like him possibly want from a young girl like her? What could a young waif of a village girl possibly have to offer to a pirate like him?
(Casting aside the whole being-older-than-her-physical-age-suggested business, strictly speaking.)
"Will you take us to your village?"
Seeri doesn't respond immediately. Instead, she lets her eyes travel over the ragtag group –there are five of them total scattered around the rocks, some relaxed under the shade of the outcropping overhead and others standing tall and straight. She doubts that this is the entirety of the crew, given the lack of a pirate ship in the general vicinity… Five isn't a particularly large number to speak of. Maybe she is looking at a group of scouts?
"… Ah could," she says in response to the question after a small pause, lips curving up into a smile-that-isn't-really-a-smile. "Nothin' left for you ta take, though."
An eyebrow is raised at her.
"Mah-reens."
Again, the single-word response itself is explanation enough, and she is not pressed any further on the topic.
(For all that Marines are lauded as heroes while pirates are painted as villains, it does not mean that people are blind, even if many pretend to be in an effort to keep their heads down and stay out of trouble. What Yune really should've done last night instead of leaping unthinkingly at the Marines as he did was to look the other way and keep his anger at bay if he wanted to avoid trouble… though this reflection is useless in hindsight when all is said and done.
No, it does not surprise Seeri that these pirates appear to be fully aware of the abuse of power that certain Marines tend to indulge in.)
"Where is the city, then?" the man standing next to Jean Bart asks, and the sight is a bit comical, since Bart is so tall that his sheer size dwarfs anyone around him. "We need to go… er… um, go stock up on supplies. Yeah. So, uh, y'know… city. Big town. Giant… village?"
He waves his arms around in an exaggeration of 'big' in his attempt to convey his message to her. Most likely because her tongue stumbles more than a little bit while speaking standard, and so he assumes that her comprehension skills are equally as bad, if not worse. Which isn't true. Sadly, she cannot dispute that his worries are unfounded…
"The child can understand what you're saying perfectly fine, she just has terrible pronunciation," Jean Bart grumbles from above. The large man had been the first one to speak to her; he would know. "And stop flapping your arms like that. You look ridiculous, Colbert."
The resulting wounded expression that emerges on the blue-eyed man's face belongs to a kicked puppy.
"East," Seeri hides a small smile as she interjects between the group of pirates, informing them of the direction of their destination to-be before they can get derailed any more than they already have. "Distan' Radtep nah far. Reach 'fore sky… night?"
"The distance to Radtep isn't far, and can be reached before nightfall," Jean Bart corrects again, before nodding and turning his attention towards the other pirates. "In that case, let's get going, then."
Blue-eyed Colbert grins brightly as he reaches over and ruffles her hair. Around them, the rest of the pirates gather up their belongings as they prepare to travel again.
… She still finds it a little disconcerting that these pirates apparently don't intend on scavenging through Ayoka for any treasures that the Marines might have missed in their 'search.' But then again, if these pirates were as unfamiliar around this area as their questions of lack of knowledge of their local surroundings had implied, it's also possible they simply don't know that the village she comes from is a pearl-diving one.
Best keep quiet about this little fact, then–
"Hey, Jean! I'm gonna take this little one back to her village, alright?" Colbert calls out, swinging her up into a piggyback ride like she weighs nothing at all. "Might as well make sure she doesn't slip and fall somewhere on these rocks if we went to the trouble of fishing her out in the first place, don't you think?"
"Suit yourself."
… Okay. Well.
She can deal with that.
It's not as if she can refuse the offer to take her back to Ayoka –after all, if they really want to go to the village, it's not as if she has enough strength to stop them if they make their way there by force. And she had been rescued by them; maybe that counts for something? Only one pirate instead of the entire group of five should be easier for the village to handle, should any unfavorable situations arise.
It is at this point that she wonders whether she should have been as honest as she was in pointing these pirates towards Radtep. Radtep City, which was under the protection of Marines –actual protection, and not extortion (or at least, not as much extortion as was prevalent throughout the far countryside). What if the pirates want to head there to cause trouble or burn down the city itself?
The sunlight outside is blinding when it hits her face. Seeri automatically squints her single eye uncovered by bandages, reaching up a hand to shift the cloth wrappings hiding half her face and head. A quick check of the sun's position overhead makes it easy enough to pin the time somewhere around midmorning to noon, and with the gusty wind billowing over the cliffs, rolling over them like a tempest water-wave, Granny Haesse's prediction of a high storm is evident to the world.
(Or at least, to those who look and see.)
"You're a quiet one, aren't you?" Seeri blinks, and her attention returns to the man who is carrying her, who smiles and pats her head and carries her on his back like a young girl, and it's… it's not something she is entirely used to, either.
She will be twelve-going-on-thirteen as of this winter; by fourteen she will be expected to marry within the village. Seeri will be expected to become an adult in the eyes of Ayoka, and yet this blue-eyed pirate with a black bandanna tied over his head treats her like the child she physically is without even batting an eye as if this is entirely natural. Or perhaps it really is. She wouldn't know –cut off and secluded as Ayoka is, she is not in any position to be drawing any comparisons or conclusions on cultural practices of different places.
"You gave us quite the scare when we saw you floating there in the water," Colbert adjusts his grip on her, shifting so that she won't start slipping down with each step he takes along the narrow path of the cliff. It's entirely unnecessary, this whole being-piggybacked-by-a-pirate situation in the first place –it's only her face that's been cut up, the rest of her body is fine, if a bit tired and sore from falling down to the waters as she did– but apparently the overly-friendly pirate thinks otherwise. "I can't believe any Marine would toss down a kid like that, asshole or not."
A sudden sharp, guilty pause.
"Er… you didn't hear anything just now, okay?"
Seeri stifles her inward smile at this reaction and instead bats innocent eyes at the shifty pirate carrying her. It might be due to the weight of her memories from another life, but she has never been quite good at using this 'doe-eyed' look that came so easily to the other children. Although it seems to be enough in this case, since Colbert breathes a sigh of relief and relaxes upon her feigned obliviousness.
"So," he starts again, cheerful and casual. "Your name is Seeri, right? Sounds kinda exotic, to be honest. Does everyone in your village have names like that?"
It's a strange topic to focus on, though she supposes that there are stranger topics to be asking after.
"Yes," she tugs lightly on the left shoulder of his coat, silently urging the man to take a left turn. "… Co-bay strange name, too."
"It's not strange!"
She laughs lightly at the man's indignant shout, and he gives a small huff.
"I'll have you know that my name is perfectly normal, thank you very much," he says faux-haughtily. "And it's pronounced 'Coal-Bear,' not 'Co-bay.' That sounds like Coby…"
"Co-ber?"
"Coal-bear."
"Co-bir."
"Getting close," the upbeat pirate encouraged. "Try saying it with me: Coalllll-bear."
It's a struggle to make her tongue obey; her mind knows the sound, the word, but it's hard to pronounce the common tongue properly after speaking nothing but the water-ripples and wind-wisps of Ayoka. There is no proper comparison, no real description for this struggle, but she thinks that speaking rigid common after knowing the flowing words of Ayoka is a bit like trying to hold water in a sieve or to catch the wind in a net. It's trying to hold something whose very nature is wild and free; after traversing high water-wavers and riding long wind-currents, how can one be simply satisfied by restricting themselves to firm, stable land?
She tries anyways, if only for the sake of proper communication and to play along with the pirate carrying her home.
"Coaaa… Coa…"
"There's an 'l' in this! C'mon, Coalllll-bear."
"Coa… Coalll… bear?"
"That's it!" The blue-eyed man beams brightly, and his cheer is infectious. "Okay, now say it properly: Coal-bear."
"Coal… bear," she tests on her tongue. Slowly, at first, and then with increasing familiarity. "Coal bear. Coal-bear. Colbert."
"You've got it!"
Laughter rings loudly throughout the air.
(… Pirates are strange.)
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The silence in the village is strange, and it brings a small frown to Seeri's face. There are all sorts of silences that she has grown accustomed to –the eerie stillness that comes before bullets fly, the nighttime quiet where stealth trumps might, the blank darkness of fear, hesitation, when heading into the unknown. This particular silence isn't like any of them; nothing quite so dangerous, quite so dire, but it is… strange, for a village such as Ayoka.
It's the sort of silence that hints at something ill in the air. And while she can understand that, in the aftermath of a 'visit' from the Marines, this subdued atmosphere –there's something more to it, something that makes the entire thing… bitter, in a way, and it's strange.
(There isn't really any other way she can express it, nothing that quite really fits when it all boils down to something like intuition and she–)
"Hello?" Seeri tests into the empty air from where she is perched on Colbert's back. The pirate seems to have caught on to something off about the village as well, though he voices no objections for the moment. "Hello, hello?"
"… Seeri? You are… oh, stars and stones; bone of the black depths… no. No, no, listen to me for once in your life, girl. You must leave!"
The stumbling, cracked voice comes from behind. She turns upon hearing the familiar tone, head tilting to the side ever so slightly in a questioning manner.
"'Leave?'" she echoes, "What are you talking about, Granny?"
The elderly grandmother sighs from where she is standing over the jagged salt-white rocks, wrinkled hands folding themselves over the gnarled knob of her walking stick. It makes for an uncommon sight, the grizzled old woman standing alone amongst the rocks –without any of the young folk of Ayoka surrounding her, supporting her, it makes her seem ever so brittle and frail, despite the fiery temper she had been known for in her youth.
Where are the other villagers?
"It is good to see that you are still safe, Seeri." Granny Haesse smiles, but the light does not reach her eyes. "Though, you will not be for much longer if you stay here in the village. You must fly, dear child."
A small frown crosses over the young girl's face at these words.
"I don't understand."
"No, you do." the elderly woman shakes her head almost violently, messy white hair weaving out a tangled silver web in the air. "Think, girl! Don't you remember? Today we honor His Lordship, the High Lord of the White Coast–"
"I know that, Granny–"
"Clearly that clever mind of yours isn't working properly today. Seeri, when that nasty young man forced you off the cliff –we thought you were dead." Granny Haesse scowled. "So this morning, Chief decided to switch Kash's name with yours in the ceremony; don't you know what it means?"
Seeri does, and her eyes narrow.
The celebration held in honor of the Lord of the Coast –the so-called 'Lord' is a deity, more or less, in these parts. The Lord of the Coast is the deity of the waters of these cliffs, and so the Lord is honored by the villagers who make their living on these waters. The so-called celebration is in fact a yearly ritual that calls for sacrifice.
Human sacrifice.
It's not so much the blood and flesh and pale white bones that matter in the ritual here as it is the very sacrifice itself, death wrought to coax life from the deep waters. The fresh corpse, carefully cut to pieces before being cast out to sea, is but a simple, negligible step in the process. The mind, the spirit, the soul of the deceased –always a child, not for innocence and purity like the village shaman claims it is, but for the very simple reality that a child is not capable of diving as deeply into the sea for oysters as an adult is– flies. Upon death, the following ritual ensures that the soul of the deceased child flies up into the midnight sky and makes its way out to sea, as a sacrifice for the Lord of the Coast, to ask for a boon. A wish. A plea, to beg for another plentiful year.
Seeri thinks that if such a thing were ever to happen to her, she would probably ask the Lord of the Coast to drown the old village shaman instead of bless the village. Maybe it's just the influence of her beliefs from a life long past speaking here, but she questions even the existence of this 'High Lord of the White Coast' in the first place. She can't help but think that it's entirely fake, that it's all these silly beliefs and superstitions holding Ayoka back from moving forwards, and… really.
Seeri doesn't dislike her village, contrary to what these words might imply. She just doesn't love it, either. The general peace and quiet of Ayoka is something she finds soothing, yes, and the wind and waves and ocean blue has grown to touch her heart over the years, but this and that are two different things. As for the people within the village –aside from her brother, forever smiling, and her grandmother, forever grumpy, there are few that she can truly connect with on any level, which… maybe is for the best, in the end.
"Where is everyone?" she asks.
"Purifying themselves in the clearwaters to prepare for the ceremony." Granny Haesse slowly begins hobbling over. "Leave before they come back, Seeri. The shaman has already carved your name into the eye of the sea, there is no changing things anymore. If they see that you are still alive –you will die, Seeri. And this time, it will be for real."
(Let them come, a part of her snarls. Let them try. Let them try to kill me, and I will throw them to sea and hold them under until they drown in darkness.)
She eyes her grandmother carefully.
"… Why are you warning me of this Granny? Do you want to anger the Lord of the Coast by stealing his sacrifice away?"
"Brat," the aged woman's voice is more fondness than irritation, strangely enough. "Do you want to make me regret warning you? Scat, now. Let the wind beneath your feet carry you lightly."
"As the wind will speed my journey, so might it carry my voice to yours swiftly; tied by the wind, we are but mere droplets in the ocean." Seeri shakes her head, "Granny, if anyone finds out–"
"They won't."
It's… warming. This protectiveness, this concern. For all that her proclaimed parents treated her well, Seeri knows them well enough to guess that they would not have thought twice about taking her back to the village so she can be killed at the altar. She is lucky that her grandmother is the first villager she meets upon her return to Ayoka.
"Not even Yune?" Her brother. Seeri smiles. "Are you going to keep this secret from him?"
…
The old grandmother hesitates a moment too long in responding this time, and Colbert makes a choking noise in his throat when the little girl's arms looped around his neck tighten a bit too hard.
"Granny…"
"Seeri–"
"Don't 'Seeri' me, Granny; what's wrong with Yune?" her eyes narrow in thinly-veiled suspicion, "… The Marines. Did they do something to him? Did something happen to him last night?"
Granny Haesse purses her lips and says nothing.
"You have no right to keep this information from me," her voice is sharp. "Yune is my brother."
"Show some respect for your elders, brat." The tired reprimand is half-hearted at best. "… The Marines took him into custody for 'assaulting an official.' Today as we honor the Lord of the Coast, the inlanders will be performing that Water Festival of theirs. Seeri, Yune is–"
Yune. Water Festival.
"… even listening anymore? Brat–"
(Small villages, small coastal villages, hold a small ceremony to honor the High Lord of the White Coast. Inlanders, those who don't live quite so close to the wild waves but nonetheless show respect for the sea where the majority of goods for their trade comes from –they perform a ceremony as well; not quite as complicated as the chants and prayers of small villages tend to be. It's simple. Very simple.)
There is another name for this Water Festival, Seeri knows.
The Fountain Festival. The Fountain Festival of Life.
And, mockingly, in certain circles–
The Butcher's Red Fountain.
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"Okay," Colbert's brow twitches. "I get that apparently something important happened just now, but if none of you have realized by this point –I don't speak a single word of your language, so can someone please explain to me what the bloody hell is going on because all of this is going straight over my head?!"
"Nah, too mahch trubb." Granny Haesse waves a wrinkled hand dismissively at the pirate. "An' you… suck, so no. Bye-bye."
"OI!"
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Author's Notes:
NOTE: Since little has been revealed about Jean Bart's personality in the manga to date (8/15/2015 as of the first posting of this chapter), be forewarned that the Jean Bart portrayed in this story may not match up to the personality of the Jean Bart from the manga when/if he gets more official screen time. The same goes for the Heart Pirates who will show up later on, and… minor characters in general, I guess.
Again –some parts of this story may not be canon simply since the manga simply hasn't been completed yet. There is an AU warning in the label of this story for a reason, so please keep that in mind as the story progresses.
Anyways, I finally finished catching up to the latest chapters of the manga –next arc should be about the adventures in Zou and Wano, right? :D Can't wait for that to come out.
… No, Seeri won't be encountering Law for the first time via slave auction, for those who've asked about it. Does it really happen in fanfics so often? I think I've mentioned this in the last chapter, too, but it'll be awhile before Law even shows up here…
Expect to see several OCs throughout the introductory stage before most of the canon cast comes in. And before anyone asks why Seeri seems rather blasé about everything that's going on so far –remember that she is already somewhat accustomed to adapting to sudden changes under various circumstances; even though she's not a soldier on the battlefield anymore, the rules still apply. Also, there aren't very many people that she is actually attached to. She is close to Yune and her Granny Haesse, as evident from the (few) interactions shown so far. As for anyone else, well…
There is planned to be some exploration into the corruption of authority in this fic. It's pretty big in canon One Piece-verse, too, isn't it? :D
In regards to when the next update will happen –unfortunately, I will be extremely busy starting next week onwards since I'll be starting college soon, so I can't guarantee any consistent (or even semi-consistent) updates. I can only say that I'll do my best to keep on writing during this time. :3
QUESTION(1): List three characters that you are looking forward to seeing most portrayed in this story. :) Any particular reasons why?
QUESTION(2): Any recommendations for good One Piece fanfics? … Or feel free to recommend your own; I'll try to drop by before free time disappears entirely for me again. :'D
Leave a review with your thoughts on this chapter, please~ Reviews usually lead to quicker updates. xD
Till next time
XxZuiliu