I read a tumblr post today on ASL. The one for Luffy made a lot of sense because after seeing Luffy's past, I always wondered if Luffy's happiness was just a facade. We've all seen him get serious, so is that the real him shining through? I'm not sure, but that's my theory. So here's where my next prompt comes in.
What if Luffy wasn't as happy as his crew and the world believes him to be? What if it's just a mask?
Luffy pouted at his cook. "Food, Sanji! I'm starving!"
"You're not starving, you shitty captain!" Sanji snapped, "We had lunch an hour ago!"
"But I'm still hungry!" Luffy whined.
"You'll have to wait! We can't waste all the food on your bottomless pit!" Sanji growled.
"But-!" Luffy was cut off as Sanji's face turned an odd shade of purple.
"Leave me alone! Can't you ever be patient, you freak?!"
Silence followed after that. Lufy choked slightly, laughing nervously. "Huh...what? F-f-fr-freak?"
The crew turned their heads towards Luffy, watching the captain break down bit by bit.
"Oi, Luffy, you okay?" Zoro asked, slightly concerned.
Luffy laughed again, but it wasn't a happy noise. He rubbed his eyes, desperately trying to stop any water that threatened to fall. "O-okay, if-if that's wh-what you w-want..."
The straw-hatted captain scurried away from the prying eyes of his nakama.
"What the hell?" Nami murmured.
"What's wrong with Luffy? Was he...crying?" Usopp swallowed.
"Captain-san...?" Robin called quietly.
Brook shook his head. "Oh my..."
The crew shared nervous looks. Zoro glared at Sanji. "What the hell did you say to him, you bastard?!"
Sanji dropped his cigarette in shock. "I-I don't know. I've never seen..."
"Luffy..." Chopper sniffled. "Come on! We're his crew! If he's suffering, we have to talk to him!"
Franky nodded. "Chopper-bro's right! Luffy-bro needs us!"
When the crew made their way to Sunny's head, Luffy sat there, staring out at the sea. "Hey, guys..."
"Luffy, what's wrong?" Chopper asked.
Luffy didn't turn around right away, letting them bathe in the quiet atmosphere, but when he did, the crew felt their hearts lurch at the uncommon tear streaks in his face.
Luffy sniffled as fresh tears started to trail from his eyes. Luffy desperately tried to rub them away with his sleeve. He gave them a smile, but it was shaky at best. His eyes held a pain that the crew realized had always been there, but was now in the open rather than hidden behind a cheerful light. "Nothing's wrong! I just got sad cause I couldn't have food..."
"That's such bullshit!" Zoro barked, and Luffy flinched back, surprising them.
"I-I swear! I'm the same old Lu..." The captain trailed off, his voice hiccuping in his throat. "Lu-Lu-Lu-Luffy-fy..."
Tears clogged the boy's throat as he hiccuped his words with sadness and grief. He didn't try and stop the trails of water that made patterns down his face this time. "I-I'm s-s-sorry!"
The crew couldn't hide their worry, nor their grief or sadness, not even Sanji and Zoro. It was clearly visible on all of their faces.
"Luffy, what's the matter? We're your crew, you can tell us anything!" Nami said.
Luffy shook his head. "I'd hoped it be longer, it'd be a while longer before I told you all the truth...I didn't want you to see how broken I was..."
"Luffy, tell us," Zoro demanded.
Luffy looked at them with glassy, shattered eyes. "Since I set out, since I met Zoro, everything I did was never completely...true."
"Ace used to tell me of the saying, "The saddest people smile the brightest." I never realized how much that applied to me. I tried to forget it, my past, for most of it was just...loneliness, pain." Luffy clenched his teeth as his throat tightened.
"You've never talked about your past." Robin realized.
"I've only heard the time when Shanks gave your your hat. Anything else was just a mystery to me." Zoro frowned.
"I wanted it to stay that way. Shanks was a nice point in my life, one of the few. I was born with unnatural strength. 'A big fish in a small pond,' Jiji had called me. The other kids feared my strength. Once, they let me play because they were scared I'd hurt them if they didn't. They were older than I was, so I thought...I thought I could kick the ball harder. I broke two kids' arms and nose. They yelled at me, called me a monster, a freak..."
The word made the Strawhats gasp as guilt overshadowed Sanji. "Luffy..."
"The adults wouldn't let me near the kids, fearing I would injure them. Kids feared me, parents hated me. I had Makino, but she was always busy. I was lonely for most of my life, with Jiji being gone most of the time. Friends were foreign to me, but something I wanted to experience most." Luffy frowned.
"My fear of loneliness and losing what was most important to me made me depressed, and I realized no kid would want a depressing friend." Luffy laughed loudly, hollowly. "So, I put on a smile for everyone! For Makino, for Jiji, for myself. It stuck to me as a habit and after that, only Ace knew of my actual feelings. He helped me through it, and I felt genuinely happy for the first time in a long time. After Ace went out to sea, loneliness and the fear of Ace being hurt threatened me for the first time in years. When I met you guys, everything was okay again, even though I still carried around a lot of my past with me. With Ace's death and being separated from you all, my past caught up with me and my sanity was in danger. I'm surprised I made it out."
"But...you're always so...happy! So bubbly and playful, and...and..." Franky couldn't find the words.
"An act," Luffy replied blankly. "I am happy, more so than ever, but I've never forgotten what's happened to me, what I went through, and what happened to Ace. I'll never be so completely oblivious and cheerful again, not that I was before. I was happy, but my grief and past that I tried to forget still lingered."
"I thought that maybe if I played the idiot, the naive, the oblivious kid, I'd be able to convince myself that my past wasn't bad and that it never happened. Maybe by acting my part, you'd all be more content and less worried."
The crew couldn't stop their tears now. They hadn't noticed, they'd never noticed, and they wished they had.
Luffy smiled at them, an eye-closed, bright grin, leftover tears glistening at the edges of his shut orbs. It made them choke. "Stop crying. I'm not worth your tears."
"You shitty captain..." Sanji choked. "You've got it all wrong."
The crew stared at their captain with kind eyes.
"You're worth everything."
Yeah, that happened! I'm sorry for all the feels and while this isn't in canon, I feel as if this would be very true, regarding Luffy's past. I feel like every One Piece thing I write has to do with Luffy being depressed or hurt. Why do I always want to torture Luffy?! It's a problem! Bye my doggies!
