Something In The Water
Interlude: Seven Weeks
A brisk dawn wind blew through the camp, driving loose sand across the ground and piling it up against the sleeping bodies around the ashes of the bonfire. Marco sighed, and fastidiously brushed the grit from the map he was studying.
The customary new-island party was done; today was business time.
It wasn't going to be particularly pleasant business, but then, piracy seldom was.
Of the thirteen or so pirates who were awake this early, only three remained in the camp, trying to resurrect the bonfire so they could cook breakfast. Marco had sent the others out to scout for the trespassing crew a few minutes ago, and he wasn't expecting to see them returning for a good while yet.
Kiiroen wasn't an island most of the Whitebeard Pirates were familiar with. Its only export, grain, wasn't something most pirates bothered with, and the ramshackle town on the northern coast looked so run-down and poor it wasn't surprising it had never been attacked by pirates. Marco suspected the only reason Whitebeard had added it to his territory was out of principle. None of the divisions had visited it in the ten years since.
So, compared to the Lightyear Pirates, who had been basing themselves in Kiiroen for almost two months now, the First and Fourth Divisions were at a disadvantage even before the battle had started.
Superior numbers and experience leveled the playing field somewhat, but Marco hated the thought of ignoring a possible weakness.
The map currently spread out across his lap was a relatively new one, freshly borrowed from Grim's collection. It depicted Kiiroen in all its underwhelming featurelessness. Marco ignored the homesteads and the town, and instead focused on the shape of the island itself, its ridges and valleys and streams and cliffs. Later on he'd head out and survey it from the air, as only he could.
Something crackled, and the breakfast team let out a trio of excited but quiet whoops as the wood they'd piled onto the bonfire caught alight. A wisp of smoke drifted across the campsite towards Marco, who paused for a moment and put his map aside. Planning could wait—for now, he was hungry.
On his way over to the bonfire, a flicker of orange among the comatose pirates caught Marco's eye. Further investigation revealed Ace's hat, making a wind-driven bid for freedom across the sand. Marco debated letting it go for a moment—it was a relatively new acquisition, and furthermore it was offensively bright.
On the other hand, Ace would be absolutely distraught. He loved the thing, for reasons no sane person could possibly comprehend.
As the wind pushed the hat up against a log of driftwood and kept it pressed there for a moment, Marco caught up to it, grabbing hold of the bull's skull medallion before it could blow away again. Hat thusly secured, he looked back at his sleeping nakama.
Now, how to find Ace… the hat was the first thing anyone usually noticed—without it, Ace's black curls blended in with the crowd of mostly black-haired and brunette pirates.
"Looks like I'll have to do this the hard way," Marco muttered under his breath. He stepped forward into the mess of spreadeagled limbs and collapsed bodies, holding back an amused chuckle at the state some of his nakama had gotten themselves into.
He found Thatch first, the pristine white of the other commander's pants standing out like a sore thumb even in what dull light there was. Loki was there too, flat on her back in the sand, breathing serenely as her eyes shuttled back and forth in an animated dream underneath closed lids. Unlike Thatch, and so many others, she was fully clothed. Good for her, Marco mused, then wondered why.
"Aha." Behind Loki was Ace, lying on his side with his back to Marco, a scrap of bronze cloth peeking out from underneath his shoulder. One arm was draped possessively across something huddled into his chest.
Marco quietly padded around to investigate, a slow smile spreading across his face. Ace had a tendency of keeping girls at arm's length, and was as subtly insistent about it as they were about throwing themselves at his feet. Yet here was Grim's rookie apprentice, cuddling up to him like he was an overlarge teddybear.
Smiling, Marco bent down, and set Ace's hat near the pair, turning it upside down and filling it with sand to keep it from blowing away again. Then he stood, intending to head back to the bonfire, but as he turned away, a rustle of sand sounded behind him.
He turned at the exact moment Loki sat up, tiredly brushing the sand from her clothes. She looked left, right, chuckled at the predicament of the man at her feet, and turned to Ace and Damini last.
Marco waited for a couple of moments, before he broke the silence. "Cute, aren't they?"
He watched in amusement as Loki's shoulders twitched ever-so-slightly. She hid her surprise well, half-turning to stare at him over her shoulder out of one blue eye.
"You have a habit of sneaking up on people," she tartly informed him, her strangely slanted eyes narrowing. Marco bit back a chuckle, in no doubt as to what she thought of that particular habit.
"I do. I find it's one use of an imperceptible presence that never gets old." Marco let his teasing smile linger, matching her gaze with one of his own.
Loki raised her eyebrows, and huffed good-naturedly. "With an expression like that on your face, it's easy to imagine why." She broke eye-contact, instead looking around at the sleeping pirates from under lowered lashes. Marco watched her expression change with the tiniest of movements, from tired to comfortable, and inwardly smiled.
"Well, since you're awake, you may as well come see if there's anything left that you might want for breakfast." He glanced over at the bonfire, now merrily crackling away, and the three cooks chatting amiably as they toasted sausages over the coals. Eyeing the bottles half-buried in the sand, he added, "If you've got a hangover, a bite to eat might help."
Loki shook her head, her eyes focusing on the bonfire. "I feel fine, actually. I'm just hungry." She stood up, and followed Marco through the maze of jumbled pirates to the clear space around the bonfire. "I'm glad Damini's making friends."
"Friends?" Marco bent, picking a pair of sausages out of the hot coals. "Does that look like 'friends' to you?"
Loki blinked in surprise. "I… well, maybe?" Her eyes flicked back to the sleeping pair, narrowing contemplatively. Marco counted a beat, maybe two—then her blue eyes widened and her mouth formed a perfect 'o' of surprise.
"Huh?"
Marco couldn't help chuckling. Loki hurriedly closed her mouth, a faint dusting of pink staining her cheeks.
"Make that your second lesson in interpersonal relationships, eh."
"I can't believe I missed all that." She ran a hand through her loose blonde hair, a grimace hiding the last residual traces of embarrassment on her face. "I thought I was fairly good at noticing things, but Damini's my best friend and I didn't have a clue she felt that way."
"Truth be told, Damini was a little obvious. Clever about hiding it, but it was clear she was hiding something, and the way she looks at him when she thinks no-one is watching was a fairly good clue as to what exactly she was hiding." Looking away from Loki for a moment, he added, "Ace is a lot harder to figure out."
Loki frowned at him, brushing a stray strand of hair away from her eyes. "He treats Damini the same way he does everyone else. Until now, at least."
There was a strange expression on her face; her lips were pressed together tighter than usual, and her eyebrows were angled in the slightest of frowns. Frustration, Marco realized—but frustration directed at herself rather than her friends. He shrugged, outwardly unconcerned, and passed her a sausage-on-a-stick, while his inner self watched Loki for every little clue she might give away.
"Not true," he said, giving a little shake of his head. "He does, but he's conscious of doing so. But when he's asleep, he can't stop himself from doing anything."
Loki narrowed her eyes, cocking her head to the side and turning slightly away from him. She was well past the age where such a gesture could be considered cute, but she did it often enough that Marco guessed it had long since turned into habit. Her fingers tapped absently against her thighs as she considered his words.
Truthfully, it was more than he'd meant to say. Loki was smart; there was always the chance she'd put two and two together and work out what he suspected about Ace.
When Loki had first joined the Whitebeard Pirates, Marco had taken one look at her composed expression, the wiry muscles covering every inch of her lean frame, and alarm bells had gone off in his head. It wasn't unheard of for Marines to try planting moles in powerful pirate crews; it wouldn't even have been the first time they'd tried with Pop's crew. Whitebeard himself had seen the possibility, but for whatever reason, he'd seen fit to accept Loki along with Damini anyway.
So for the next few weeks, Marco had made sure to keep Loki in his sight as much as possible. From dusk to dawn, bow to stern—everywhere she went, he made excuses to follow.
Eventually it became clear to him that either she was the best actor he'd ever seen, or she was telling the truth about her amnesia. No Marine informant was ever as earnest or blunt as she was—or as clueless. Weakness tended to get people killed out on the seas; only the truly strong could afford to show it.
Marco's suspicion gave way to confusion, then curiosity. The woman was a walking riddle, and she knew it.
He started to take notice of her habits and mannerisms, the way her eyes narrowed when she noticed something she didn't understand, how her hand sometimes drifted up to wrap around her neck as though it wanted to choke the life out of her there and then. She wrote down everything she could, and often on the days she wasn't rostered to either sailing shift, Marco would spot her sitting somewhere out of the way, her notebook open in her lap as her pencil traced designs across the pages. She asked questions when she felt brave enough, worded just vaguely enough that they didn't sound too obvious, but clear enough (at least to Marco's roundabout way of thinking) that he knew what she really wanted to know.
And blue eyes were common enough, but Marco had never seen anyone with eyes like Loki's. Wide, yes, and oddly slanted, a deep blue colour too striking to be pretty. It might prove to be a useful clue to her history, he thought idly. Although, here in the New World, it was anyone's guess as to whether she'd survive long enough to put it to use.
He didn't like that thought much.
The silence drifted along between them as the bonfire crackled, and hungover pirates crawled into the dunes to empty their abused stomachs. Loki shifted, her eyes still glazed over, deep in thought.
Abruptly, she broke the silence with the kind of blissful ignorance that had driven her actions for as long as Marco had known her. "Hey, do you know where I could get a map? Of this island, if possible?"
Marco frowned, waiting for his thoughts to catch up with the abrupt change of topic. "What do you want a map for?"
She shrugged, looking almost bashful. "Nothing, really. I just like knowing where I am in regards to everything else."
Oh.
"That's understandable," Marco smiled, standing up. When she looked up at him, her eyes wide in surprise, he added, "That's what your notebook is for, right? Just wait here a moment. There was a map I was looking at earlier, that might serve your purposes."
The look she gave him as he walked away was very interesting indeed.
Word Count: 2177
-Constructive Criticism Welcomed!
Just as an aside, in case anyone was wondering where I got the chapter titles from… they're song lyrics. Prologue came from a Gorillaz song called Demon Days, Chapter One was from Clint Eastwood, also by the Gorillaz… Chapters Two, Seven and Eight were from the song this fic is named after, Something In The Water by Brooke Fraser; Chapter Three was from Remedy by Little Boots; Chapter Four comes from one of my absolute favourites, Ojos Asi by Shakira (although obviously a translated version); Five was from River by Annabel Fay; Six came from Torn by Natalie Imbruglia; Nine was from Punching In A Dream by the Naked And Famous; and finally Ten is from If It's Love by Train, and this interlude was named after Seven Weeks by the Gym Class Heroes…
