Dead Men Tell Tales

For Monkey D. Lucillia, the Voice of All Things was more a curse than a blessing. Wherein a murder is committed, Lucillia is less than innocent, Sabo is more than jaded and Ace would burn the world down for the people he loves. fem!Luffy, Darker!Luffy, ASL, different DF!Luffy

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Monkey D. Lucillia was born with particularly keen ears.

Others may have disputed this as the dark-haired, dark-eyed toddler seemed deaf to their words. Her name had to be called several times, with voices that ranged from exasperated to sympathetic, to draw a wide, luminous stare. Those eyes were glassy more often than not, attention drawn within to where others could not venture, or cast off blankly to the side, as though focused on words unspoken. She was a melancholy child, people spoke in hushed whispers, and a peculiarly quiet one. A little slow, rarely able to focus on the world around her. A little strange, hardly malicious, of course but certainly not a normal child.

They spoke in whispers for Vice Admiral Monkey D. Garp did not approve of such observations. And as his opinions were made known through fists in the wall, people were of the silent unanimity that none were to challenge him on the subject. There wasn't any need to. Lucillia was a figure of compassion more than ridicule, an orphan of unknown origin with assuredly weak mental facilities, and Foosha Village was proud of its acceptance of her. Had the residents been aware that their pity was even less acceptable to Garp than their scorn, they would perhaps have been less generous in offering it.

As it was, Monkey D. Garp didn't hold with that nonsense that his only granddaughter was limited in any way. He had been the one to raise her for the first two years of her life, finally spending that backlog of vacation time in a full sweep that had Sengoku pulling out his hair, and he knew that she was perfectly healthy. His cute little Celia was quieter than other babies, true, but that hardly meant she was mute or simple. As an infant, she would wail her lungs out if the bottle wasn't readied in time. Now she rarely babbled but would insistently tug on his sleeve in silent rebuke should he try to hurry bedtime stories along by skipping a page or two. Her words were softly-spoken but enunciated well. Her eyes distant at times but bright and curious when he answered a question. Her mannerisms shy and reserved- an anomaly in the Monkey family- but a deviation he was inclined to forgive. Celia was his gentle, sweet-natured granddaughter and Garp couldn't have loved her more if he'd tried.

It was an affection wholly returned, partly for a more selfish reason than a toddler could articulate. There was a curious quirk to her inheritance that dimmed its abilities around figures of import. The Will of D in particular tended to draw all its focus as a lightning rod in a storm, with all other voices falling to a murmur. In a world where everyone and everything clamored to be heard, her Gramps- safe, strong, kin- made the voices in her head go away.

Monkey D. Garp thought Lucillia a normal and healthy child because around him, she could be normal. Around him, the Voice of All Things echoed his presence in favor of the world around them. She didn't hear the throngs of dead clamoring for her attention, the wind whispering facts and figures that made no sense to her or the animals scurrying about in their own secret world. They fell to a murmur, an incomprehensible buzz at the back of her head that, in expertise borne of necessity, Lucillia ignored. She could close her eyes and fall to a fitful sleep in a land of dreams that was almost her own. She could stagger through the day without having to fight for any scrap of focus to the world around her. She could absorb the hundred little kindnesses of the everyday instead of the massive tidal wave of cruelty and atrocity that the clouds warned her of. She could laugh and breathe and rest and live.

And sometimes… sometimes, Lucillia almost felt normal.

She loved her Gramps because even as a toddler, her mind recognized him as her shield. And when that shield was called back to Marineford, bawling wildly at the harbor as his right hand man, Bogard, patiently pried a child from his arms, she was inconsolable. As was he, but as a toddler, Celia was far cuter when she cried. She was also far less able to express the main source of her plight. When Garp sailed away, the voices came back.

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"Makino-san, Lucy's having one of her… one of her episodes."

The dark-haired woman looked up when her name was mentioned, pasting a tired smile on her face, as she nodded to one of the regulars. "Thank you, Torimo. I'll be there in a moment."

She placed the wet dishrag on the bar, wiped her hands on the apron and moved the thick mugs of foamy ale from the side of the table, where curious hands couldn't reach. At this time of the day, the Partys Bar was open more for families then local men, woodchoppers, fishermen, farmers and others hoping to relax with a pint of ale and good company. Makino had allowed her pseudo-little sister to come down and color here for precisely that reason and because it became unbearably lonely to stay in the house as she worked.

'I had hoped today would be a good day.' It had been a wonderful morning. Lucillia woke up with a smile and insisted that she dress herself in a soft pink sundress and summer hat wrapped around with a pink ribbon. She had finished her breakfast without fuss and only folded into herself a little bit when entering the bar, choosing a secluded, cool area near the back to set up her crayons. 'She almost lasted until lunch time too.'

That was progress and Makino clinged to it as she made her way to the back of the room, purposefully deafening herself to the occasional whisper of her patrons. When she saw that the dark-haired child had fallen into one of those silent fits rather than a screaming one, the barmaid took that as another blessing too and refused to let her smile waver. Lucillia had set her crayons up near the edge of the table but had moved further along the bench, huddled against the wall, legs up and head buried like some particularly stubborn clam, tufts of raven hair still sticking out. Her hat had fallen off to the side and her fingers were curled into claws and digging into the soft flesh of her arm. Makino's practiced eyes catalogued the lack of blood or trembling and uncoiled tension, even as she bent down near her.

"Lucillia? Lucy, it's me, Makino," the barmaid said softly. "Are you there?"

A whisper of a grunt reached her ears, the legs somehow pressing closer against her chest, elbows akew and knobby in childhood. "Can you come out?"

Lucy shook her head violently, shuddering a bit and pressing back. The wall was behind her though and it didn't move the little girl any further. Makino reached out a hand, encouraged when she rested it on the dark-haired child's arm and didn't receive a flinch. "Can you tell me what's wrong?"

Her little sister looked up, luminous eyes glassy and distant for a heartbeat before they focused on Makino's. They were covered in a sheen of wetness. "Too loud."

"The bar?" This was answered by another fierce shake of the head. "Do you want to go home?"

Lucillia glanced forlornly at her crayons. Her fingers uncurled and for a moment, Makino hoped that the episode ended there. Then the little girl gave a start, as though a flash of thunder skittered down her spine, and clapped her hands quickly against her ears. "The wind keeps talking!"

'What does she mean by that?' There was a tightness to Makino's chest as she swallowed down her question. It hurt to see the child she'd half-raised, more or less a younger sister to her, in this much pain and be unable to do anything about it. "Alright, Lucy. Will it stop hurting if we go home?"

"Dunno." Lucy clenched her eyes tightly and fell quiet. Makino took that as permission enough to gently pull her away from the walls and into her arms, her tiny nose digging into the woman's collarbone, as she collected the child's affects. There was a fuzzy backpack with a cute monkey face on it, an early gift from Garp, opened and easily able to sweep the crayons into, a finished juice box that she'd dispose of later, and her hat, which Makino placed carefully into the backpack. There wasn't any way to be rid of Lucy's fits entirely and no understanding of where they came from, but from painful trial and error, Makino had learnt to avoid several means to trigger them.

Extreme temperatures in either direction. Too many people. Loud noises. Too much sunlight. Fast movement. There were so many things that Lucy flinched away from in this world.

"I'll be out of the bar for a bit. No one cause any trouble," Makino said sternly, focusing a sharp glance on one or two potential troublemakers. The regulars nodded, already well-used to this tradition and sent pitying glances to the dark-haired child burying her face in Makino's shoulder. "Come on, Lucy."

As the young woman led the child back to the soothing and dark confines of Garp's house, the only three-story residence in the village, near the outskirts in prime beach land, she considered the child in her arms. Makino had been hired to work part-time as Lucillia's caretaker since the Vice-Admiral used up his vacation time in the first two years of her life. It had been three years since then and while raising Lucillia hadn't exactly been without difficulties, it had been pleasant.

Lucillia was an easy child to love. Docile, bright, sweet-natured and affectionate, as clever as any parent could hope for and not in the least bit simple, no matter what others may say. While Makino had had to deal with fits, silent and screaming by turns, occasional strains of muteness or deafness, and Celia's admittedly fragile mental health, she'd never have anything bad to say about her healthy appetite and strong immune system. Celia was rarely physically ill and would have been the type of child to run around freely and happily, if not for the crippling headaches she got outside. Instead she immersed herself in the next best thing to her own adventures: stories. Whether it was to write, read or illustrate them, Lucillia loved to delve into worlds of fantasy and adventure, where all the good guys won and bad guys lost, where there were islands in the sky and deep within the oceans and where people were strong enough to change the world if they merely willed it.

'And she has such an imagination!' Makino smiled at the memory of their last bedtime story. After age four, right around the time she got a decent grasp of her vocabulary, Lucillia had declared that she would be the one to tell stories to her older sister. They were always rather more fantastic than anything Makino had read so far and the barmaid enjoyed listening to them. The last one had been about an evil pirate with a lion's mane, that could float his ship high in the air, who tried to take over islands and lost to a hero pirate in a straw hat.

'He had a curly mustache too!' Lucillia had declared, with all of the certainty of a master storyteller, 'And heavy eyebrows and a big grin. And he wore a hat like me!'

Lucy had been quite taken with the hat, pestering Makino into buying her a number of strawhats with ribbons in all colors of the rainbow, to be like her unknown hero. When her older sister had asked what the hero's name was, she had been greeted with a confused (and admittedly cute) twitch of Lucy's nose. 'I don't know! The wind won't tell me!'

'The wind won't tell me!'

'The wind said so.'

'I don't think the wind meant that…'

'Why won't the wind stop?'

'Where did the wind go?'

And many variations of this had become common in the last year, as Lucy's fits increased in occurence and decreased in severity. Makino didn't know why her sister's particular madness centered around the wind but regardless, she was more concerned about the fits they brought. That Lucillia was starting to more quickly adapt and recover from them was heartening but the barmaid wondered if she should be concerned by how much more often they were coming.

As she walked down the sandy path back to Garp's home, Makino was momentarily startled when Lucy pulled back from her, luminously dark eyes looking up at the sky. The older woman stopped, curious when her little sister tipped her head back down and rested it on her shoulder. "Lucy?"

"It's nothin', nee-chan." There was a smile against her shoulder. "The wind says change is coming."

While the words themselves were innocuous, Makino still shivered. There was something… absolute in how her sister said so. As certain as when she was relating one of those stories of her. "Let's hope it's a good change then, okay?"

"Okay, nee-chan."

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