Warnings: implied/referenced underage pregnancy and some graphic descriptions of violence. Mild manga spoilers?
(See the end of the work for notes)
01.
The Apple Of Your Eye
"prologue"
It starts with a picture, of all things.
He's four years old and his fingers are tangled in his Mama's cloak. It's cold, freezing even. The layers of robes and makeshift jackets do nothing to block out the cutting chill of the wind. Every step in the snow crunches under his feet as he struggles to keep up with the pace, stubby legs unsteady but nevertheless toddles along.
It's not until they pass by a tavern that something changes. There's laughter from inside, yellow light washing against the thick snow as cheers and crashes start. Mama flinches before she pulls him away to duck around the corner, where a brick wall stretches high above ground; filled to the brim with newspaper clippings, yellow paper and messy drunken scrawls.
And among them - a whole lot of bounty posters.
He pauses when Mama comes to an abrupt stop in her tracks, and watches as she shuffles forward, hands tracing the pockmarked papers until it slows to a pause on one particular poster.
Charlotte Linlin, 400 million beri.
(Yonko of the New World-)
Dead or alive.
(...the ruler of Totto… Land...?)
Mama shakes, and years later he can't recall if it was out of fear or grief. But what he does remember is being gently drawn into the warm embrace of his mama's cloak, the soothing strokes of her hands, and the soft, horrified whisper through the layers of fabric:
"Oh, Linlin."
It's weeks after that encounter, and as the two of them are travelling on a worn dirt road with directions to the next time, and the Something that's been nagging in the back of his head that he can't quite put a name on finally reaches a boiling point. When the memory and realisation slams into her in full, concentrated force.
(Charlotte Linlin, who ate an entire orphanage in a fit of misplaced excitement. Who kills giants with her bare hands. It's been quite some time since she caught up to the manga- when was she? The beginning of the Totto Land Arc? There're still bits of spoilers floating by her blog's dashboard-)
"Fuck." Ringo blanches, and it is admittedly louder than he intended to as his Mama spins around with a look of amused horror. It gets him a firm bonk on his head and a promise to watch his language. At least, until he's old enough to curse.
Charlotte Ringo is born the first and only son of Charlotte Yinyin, sister to Charlotte Linlin. In hindsight, this should not be possible, because Big Mom does not have a sibling. She was abandoned on an isle by her parents and later went on to have eighty-five children, or that's how the original story goes.
But in this one, it goes like this:
Once upon a time, a pair of twin sisters were born in a small faraway kingdom that smells of fresh bread and the sea. Yinyin and Linlin - named after silver and forest-jade, a pair of auspicious names that were passed down in the Charlotte household through generations; a set of beautiful names for a set of beautiful twins.
They had good parents - Father was a successful merchant and Mother's bakery was the best in town. Their neighbours were kind, few batting an eye at the twins and their unusual size, often giving them treats and snacks to the chagrin of their mother.
The twin sisters were close, never found apart from each other for too long. Clothes, desserts and coloring books were shared between them without much of a fuss. The older sister was a quiet but sweet thing while the younger was loud and boisterous, yet both were just as mischievous and the source of their mother's headache. But their little household was happy, and there was that.
Life was good.
Until one particular morning- and what an unfortunate morning it was; Father was out on a job and Mother was busy with the bakery. It was the holidays, you see, and business was blooming, so Yinyin made a decision and left to deliver their mother's forgotten lunchbox. Sweet little Linlin was left alone in the house, a promise to wait for her return. There would be a fresh batch of custard cream cake Mother would bring back from the bakery, and Linlin has been looking forward to it for weeks.
Except that Yinyin lost her way in the huge town and the crowd at the bakery was bigger than they anticipated, so Mother has her hands full with customers. And so Linlin, with no breakfast and a growing hunger pang in her belly, who puts away at least five times more food than the average human being does, waits.
And waits.
And waits, and waits, until the hours tick by and morning trickles to evening and-
She craves.
When Charlotte Yinyin was five, her little sister was banished from the kingdom.
(With half the town levelled and destroyed in the fiery destruction, and countless casualties yet to be dug out, the damage was done.)
There weren't many good days after that.
The house was quiet now. Mother spends more and more time away at the bakery and Father barely comes home, and the few hours he does he sits in his study with a bottle of alcohol in his hands as he disappears behind the doors. Yinyin busies herself with cleaning the house, afraid to leave, avoiding the hushed gazes of their neighbours.
("Just for a few weeks, sweetling." Mother had said, not quite looking at her in the eyes. "We'll be right back before you know it."
Father lingers behind her. She shares a final hug with her twin, her little sister. Linlin smiles brightly and chatters about how exciting it is, to go on the trip with Mother and Father and oh, it's an island they've never been to before! I'll be sure to bring back presents for you!
Yinyin, five years old and starry-eyed at her sister's promises, never quite got the wrong feeling in her guts to settle, long after the ship disappears pass the horizon. Weeks later, her parents return alone.
She never sees Linlin again.)
When Charlotte Yinyin is eight, three years after her sister is gone, the kingdom chases her family out with fire and pitchforks and guns. Only Mother and her made it out alive by the skin of their teeth. With what little belongings they salvaged, they flee on a ship to another island, far away from here.
She spends the next few years in a haze, scraping by to survive as they travel from island to island, never quite staying for too long and avoiding the hunters that might recognise her face and the shade of pink hair they both possess. She stays away when Mother spits at bounty posters and starts cursing under her breath, often deep in the night, unaware that Yinyin is pretending to sleep.
Mother does not talk about it, and by this point Yinyin's learned to not ask. She doesn't ask when mother takes her to the ship's bathroom in the middle of the night. She doesn't ask when her hair was shorn short. She doesn't ask when Mother dyes both of their pink locks into a pitch black. It wasn't until she catches a glimpse of a discarded newspaper on a barrel, amongst blood and wood and paper that she finds out; a bounty poster of 100 million, and an identical face to herself staring back at her.
Charlotte Linlin, dead or alive.
Mother succumbs to disease and fatigue when Yinyin was thirteen. She cries and cries until her eyes are dry and the captain of the ship pulls her away so they can put her Mother's body on a small rowboat to burn in a sea burial. She gathers what little she has left - her Mother's old handkerchief, red and dotted and stark against her once pink hair, and wanders alone on her own since then.
The end.
On the good nights, when it was quiet and there's fruits and fresh fish roasting by the soft crackles of the campfire, Ringo would lay his tiny head on Yinyin's lap, and listens quietly as Yinyin recounts the story that she has told over countless times, feeling fingers treading through his hair.
"I would have wanted you to meet her," Yinyin says, lovingly untangling the knots in Ringo's hair with an old hairbrush. She massages the black oil-powder mix into the locks, where pink is staring to peek out at Ringo's scalp. "She was a wild child, but sweet and thinks nothing but the best for people."
(Fire, and a cruel, cruel smile.)
"...but she's a pirate, mama."
Yinyin shakes her head, a bittersweet smile on her lips as she ties the red dotted cloth into her son's hair. It's getting longer and longer. "I know, sweetling. But family is family, and what sort of mother would I be to keep you from ours?"
Your sister is a narcissistic psychopath, was what he wants to say. The sad note he hears in Yinyin's voice, however, has him biting his lips instead.
He likes his mother, truly.
Yinyin is young. Too young, in his opinion. A single mother at only twenty years old, yet instead of abandoning a baby that would be nothing more than a deadweight in her situation, she chose to take him along. Raised him by herself, even.
That, Ringo thinks, is something he can respect.
And even if he starts seeing flashes- fleeting memories of his previous life; of faceless and nameless people that he knows that he once loved, but can never remember - like the very memory and substance of them was hollowed out and replaced with a blurred outline that merely takes up space in his mind, just enough for him to be aware of but never truly understanding what they were; even if he just can't seem to think of Yinyin as his mother since that day, Ringo continues playing his role as the well-behaved, polite son.
He gathers sticks and logs for their camp and sleeps light enough to periodically feed the fire, helps Yinyin dig for edible shoots and roots, and learn to climb trees for fruits. He does not throw tantrums like a child. When they stop by towns, he sticks close, and quick to spot Yinyin if they were separated in crowds and return to her side, figuring that he should at least spare the woman from having to worry about him. She has enough on her plate as it is, trying to keep them both alive.
And Ringo certainly does not let her know about his recurring dreams- especially the ones where he catches something akin to brief flashes of… an accident.
(Exhaustion, lack of sleep. Her legs shaky. The blaring of horns. Lights blinding her eyes as something drives towards her-)
On those nights when he wakes up, soundless and as if resurfacing from water, Ringo traces his ribs, feels the way his skin curves around his bones.
And he counts.
It is only until he's sure that Yinyin is fully asleep that Ringo creeps to the small rucksack they have and pulls out the Scrapbook.
It is a poor thing; Battered, torn and taped back together, soaked and dried and frosted over, but it still miraculously held on. It's just shy of a few inches to fit in Yinyin's palm, but she treats it all the same - gently, and almost lovingly, as she fits what scraps of newspaper clippings she can in them. These days, it is Ringo who takes over the scrapbooking, since her hands has gone weak and unsteady.
(Ringo isn't familiar with the written language of this new world yet, but he is sure that all of them, without a doubt, are about Charlotte Linlin. From her early days of infamy to the terror she is now, each strip is carefully fitted onto each page of the book, now thick enough for mismatched scraps to stick out from between the torn pages.)
It is on those nights where Ringo tries to remember as much as he can remember about One piece, about the characters- the people of this world. Pirates and marines. About the storylines and arcs.
Tries is the keyword here, because no matter how many hours he spends trying to scrape the information from within his mind, it simply does not work. Not in the way where you forget things- no, it's just that it's not there.
Ringo knows with an absolute certainty that he has read One Piece, that his reincarnation and her past life is real and most definitely not a figment of his imagination, probably. That it was a colorful story in a book full of pictures, and that somewhere within are the words Whole Cake Island Arc and Big Mom herself and the horrifying fact that she has way too many children to mistreat, but that's literally it.
It's… frustrating, needless to say. There goes his contingency plans for the future.
Still, he tries.
So sometimes, Ringo sits by the fire and cracks open the book, soaking in the pictures of his aunt's fiery, bottomless smile as she cuts down crews and islands alike. He thinks of the same kind smile tugging at Yinyin's lips, thinks of his dreams, and wonders:
How?
A beat, then-
Why?
Reincarnation: noun
1. the rebirth of a soul in another body.
(Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes, you don't.
...but for fuck's sake - A Charlotte? Seriously?)
Being a boy, he finds, isn't that bad. Aside from the additional body parts he's painfully aware of during the first few days after the initial surge of memories, and fumbling whenever he needs to pee, there's really not much difference in how his clumsy toddler body moves. If anything, he's damn glad he doesn't have to worry about bleeding and developing breasts in the future. It's the one thing he doesn't miss from his past life.
...And also the fact that boys are less likely to be targeted by the slave traders of this world. A small percentage, but still.
So he embraces it. Calls himself "he" out of sheer convenience. It's what Yinyin had been calling him since his birth- no need to complicate things, now.
(And if he neither corrects nor confirms when someone says "he" or "she", well. No one needs to know about that.)
When Ringo is five, he cracks open a rock with his bare fist.
It was an accident, he swears. A knee-jerk reflex when you feel a light skittering prick your arm. For all the times they had slept under the starts with grass and hard mud against their backs, he has never quite gotten over the sensation of bugs crawling over his skin.
He's not afraid, thankyouverymuch, but it is still a gross feeling.
Therefore, it is unsurprising that Ringo, half-engrossed in skewering the fish for dinner, did not think twice before lashing his arm out to shake the bug off. The boulder was just unfortunate to be in striking distance when he slams into it, and-
It explodes into dust and pieces with a thunderous crack.
...ah.
"Ringo!"
One part of his rational mind freezes like a deer caught in the headlights because, out of all possible things to expect when you slam your arm into solid rock - bruising pain, your brain chanting at you about how stupid you are, what a genius move - shattering a five feet tall boulder into nothing was, to be frank, not on the list.
The other part, however, promptly decides that he's way too tired for this bullshit to make sense just as Yinyin's urgent footsteps stops beside him, speechless as Ringo too, drinks in the sight of the demolished rock.
"...Well now," Yinyin says, a hint of sadness tinged in it. "You are a Charlotte, after all."
.
Well, shit, he thinks.
.
Afterwards, it's like his body has unlocked a forgotten function. A very, uncontrollable function.
Ringo manages to crack six whole logs and nine rocks five times the size of him in the span of two weeks. Campfire fuel and edible roots, crushed in his hands. Fruits he spent half a day gathering, picking them each as if he's carrying glass, were squished by his fingers in a moment of carelessness. Yinyin has forbade him from entering towns with her, instead leaving him somewhere in the outskirts waiting for her.
"It's safer out here," Yinyin had said, patting him on his head. "Love you, miss you, I'll be right back before you know it."
Goddammit- it's like being thrown into a new body again. He's only barely managed to get used to his current one - biology aside, it's like wearing a suit too small with limbs that don't quite cooperate. Except, this time it's worst, like he's swinging two toy hammers attached to the ends of his arms that destroys things on contact.
He's about to scream and chuck himself into the sea for a good old-fashioned rage quit, when Yinyin looks up at him from where she is cleaning his hands from his latest accident, and hums: "I'm going to show you the rock exercise."
Ringo jerks out of his thoughts. "-the what?"
Yinyin puts away the cloth, one hand still holding onto his, and reaches down to the ground. Then, she drops a small, grey rock into his palm.
"You take a small rock in your hands- like this." She says, curling his fingers close. "Then, squeeze your hands."
The rock, in a fashion similar to its unfortunate, larger cousin from two weeks ago, explodes into dust in his fingers.
"Again," She says, offering another rock to him. "Close your fingers one by one. Slower- no, slower. Gentler."
This time, Ringo tenses, feeling every nerve in his palm lighting up as he takes a deep breath. And he squeezes again.
In the end, it takes him twenty-three rocks. He shatters all but the last one, where he finally managed to simply crack it into somewhat blunt, pebble-sized pieces instead of crushing it into fine sand.
Yinyin smiles at him in a way that says this woman has seen it before and then some, and patted him on the head. "Good job. Now, you just got to practice."
So he does.
.
He alternates between two main exercises each day: first, destroy a couple of boulders and trees on purpose to get a feel of the amount of power his hands possess. Then, holding himself back as he squeezes rocks after rocks, doing his best to not annihilate them into powder. An average of twenty-five stones is sacrificed each day, and when there's not enough he substitutes them with bundles of twigs and leaves thrice as thick as his arm.
Eventually, after several more weeks and months of practice, Ringo manages to start breaking rocks into tiny pieces more often. Then into medium pieces, then a quarter, then merely spitting them in half.
Yinyin starts allowing him to carry their necessities again, offloading more and more alongside his progress. This, together with the exercise, had helped him in figuring out the limitations to his strength at both end-spectrums - which is far from small, judging from his accidents - and learn how to use it to his advantage, fine-tuning his strength control.
When he finally manages to merely put a crack into a fist-sized rock, Yinyin starts allowing Ringo to follow her into the forests to gather food from then on, instead of waiting by the campfire, so there was that.
(A pack of wolves corners him and Yinyin in the middle of the night weeks later, and he shatters their skulls in, like crumpled paper. Aside from him emptying his lunch in a bush afterwards, Ringo decides that it's not all bad.)
A few weeks after his sixth birthday, Ringo makes an unexpected friend.
He steals a talking albatross from the island's black market alongside a crate of food, and a couple of coin pouches he managed to snatch on the way. He's thinking of how dinner preparations should go (stuffed bird with herbs found by the roadside, or grilled with simple salt and vegetables) when the bird starts cussing him out, banging against the cage it's locked in and giving Yinyin the shock of her life.
Many minutes of yelling and wrestling with the bird later, a result of him unlocking the cage and the bird leaping at him with weeks of simmering fury, they find themselves sitting by the fire, with Ringo listening to its chatter as they sip on bowls of soup.
"The name's Morgans, and don't you dare forget it!" It- no, he shrieks, waving his spoon at him.
"I'm Ringo. Sorry for trying to eat you."
"You better!" A pause, "And what kind of mother names their kid after a fruit?"
Morgans, as Ringo comes to learn, is an aspiring journalist. He cusses about his kidnappers and complains about being set back for several weeks before he reaches the nearest news station, with the intention to start as an intern. "The current news is a disgrace," he hisses, "All lies and propaganda paid by the World Government. Cowards, the lot of them!"
For someone that's only two years older than him, Ringo's impressed at the number of complex words he says with relatively ease. Reincarnation or not, even he has some trouble with pronunciation at his current age.
Yinyin chuckles and pats his feathered head, despite his embarrassed squawk. Ringo nods solemnly. "If you have the guts to do something, owning up to it shouldn't be an issue. Or just don't get caught in the first place."
"Exactly!"
They strike up a sort of camaraderie. Morgans, unable to transform back thanks to his seastone shackles ("What do you mean you can't fly?"), finds himself perching on Ringo's head more often than not, chattering away as they travel from island to island. He fills the void of silence as easily as breathing, voice a comfort to his ears. Mama enjoys his presence too, and it's amusing to see him flush whenever he's given a compliment.
At some point he slips, calling Yinyin Auntie. The term sticks, of course, but not without teasing. One amused side-eye from him would bait him into puffing up his feathers like a chicken.
"Someday, I will make my own news and publish papers and I'll bow to no one." Morgans says, one night. There's an air of challenge and pride in his sharp eyes - a promise. "Even the World Government will scramble before my feet, begging me to cover up their mistakes, kuwahahaha!"
"You're seven and you sound like a second-rate comic book villain."
It earns Ringo a stutter and a sniff. "Yeah, well, when I print my own newspapers and make a comic strip series, the villain would sound just like that and people would love it. I'll make you eat your words!"
"Sure. Would he start stuttering when he's around pretty women too, just like how you get when you talk to Mama?"
Yinyin has to pull them apart later, but it's worth it to see the shade of red peeking through his feathers.
At seven, Ringo learned what it felt like to kill a man.
It goes like this: they've been starving for days, and Yinyin was unwilling to head into town with the rumours of bounty hunters prowling about. But she's growing weaker and weaker, and Ringo, with the blood of the Charlotte's flowing in his veins, feels the same desperate, dizzying hunger eating away at his guts as Big Mom did when she fasted for seven days. It's enough for him to sneak into town to steal some bread, despite Morgan's warnings. Anything to eat. Anything.
So he grows careless in the face of desperation.
A group of men corners him in an alley, and there's a hand gripping a fistful of his hair as he scatters the bread and scraps of meat in her hands to the ground, tiny body helpless against a full-grown man. He smells like smoke and piss and laughs about how lucky he is, stupid little kid, and oh, he can't wait to drag him to the marines, or oh, maybe even the slave traders. Earn him some pocket change, he says, gleefully, as the men around them laughs along.
Aw, he's pretty-looking for a boy, don't you think? One of the men says. How about we have a bit of fun first?
He reaches for Ringo, a hand making contact with his belly and sliding downwards, and Ringo-
Well.
The incident leaves him bloody and bruised. Three of his fingers are broken, but he salvages whatever food that isn't trampled over or inedible, and runs.
He never does work up the courage to tell Yinyin what happened, and Yinyin doesn't ask, even as she takes in the sight of her son soaked in blood that wasn't his. All she did was to offer him a hug, stroking his back until he learns how to breathe again.
(And if Ringo starts waking up from a memory of the sickening squelch and crack made when he caves in a man's chest, the choking scream cut off by the crunch of a skull being crushed by a sloppy fist, or the pinpricks of an unwanted touch crawling across his skin, that's none of anyone else's business but his.)
Morgans sits by him every night, beak clacking as he complains about everything - the weather, the food, the way his leg aches from the seastone cuffs. Ringo lets him, knowing that he's trying his best to distract him. He's grateful for his company.
That, and the fact that he likes how he still looks at him in his eyes when he talks to him. Even when Morgans found him stumbling out of the bushes covered in sticky, sticky red from head to toe; when he stayed by his side as Ringo desperately tries to scrub the taste of iron out from his teeth.
It's something small on his part, but Ringo owes him for it.
"I was sixteen," Yinyin sighs one murky night, her coughs broken and so wet as she vomits the ugly accumulations of disease and blood from over the past months.
She was sixteen as she drifts from town to town, port to port, finding work in taverns and bars, until she has to pack up and leave again when marines or suspicious men come snooping around, until-
She was sixteen when he promised her the world, hushed whispers of devotion shared only between them. He was witty, and incredibly charming, tales of travels and escapees from sea kings the size of islands entrances her. He'd made her heart flutter and her words stutter, a sense of ease she hadn't felt in years. She had him smitten with her banter, how she towers over him and a tinkling laughter that he thought was beautiful, one that she does when she throws a quip at him. How she cracks the table along with his arm when he challenged her to a match in arm wrestling.
She was sixteen when he left her with a child and a promise to return.
(She finds the news in a small corner of the newspaper. Seven pirate ships, broken masts and hulls. Dragged under by the waves to the sea snake nest below, it says. There was a lone picture, tiny and insignificant, but she recognises one of the flags swaying in the wind, tattered beyond repair.)
Ringo listens, and holds Yinyin's hand. He gently wiped at her face with a washcloth, dabs her tired eyes and cheeks. She's lost awareness at some point, feverish murmurs falling from her lips. And if he listens hard enough, he can sometimes make out something akin to a name.
That was the only time he hears about his father. He never did get the chance to ask again.
He was still seven when Yinyin dies by the edge of the sea.
She's grown thinner and weaker over the course of their journey, and Charlotte blood or not, it is useless in the face of disease and illnesses. It eats at her, slowly and steadily, until she's too frail to sit up or even lift a cup.
"You should find your aunt." Yinyin said. "She may be a pirate, but she can protect you. Family always comes first, in the Charlotte household."
Fire, and a cruel, cruel smile. Ringo pushes back the memory of that faded wanted poster. Wordlessly, he traces circles over his mother's hands with his thumbs.
"Promise me," Yinyin coughs.
Ringo swallows his tongue and his guilt, and nods.
One night, they settle in a camp in the forest and grass, the line of sand just a few feet away and the crashing of waves lulling him to sleep. When he wakes, it's to Morgans' gentle flap of his wings, the sad droop of his head, and the cold, stiff body of Yinyin beside him.
Yinyin has always loved the sea, so it is with a heavy heart that Ringo drags her to the heart of the sandbank, a long strip of path connecting this island to the next. He wraps her up in her favourite cloak, lowers her into the deep waters on one side, and watch her pink, pale hair spreads like a halo in the water around her head.
"Thank you for taking care of me." Ringo says. There's a moment where he has to suck in a shaky breath, feeling his throat stick and the grief aching in his eyes. His vision grows blurry and wet. "I'll be… fine, I think, so don't worry and rest well. You deserved it."
Morgans is silent for once, soft feathers tickling his head from his perch.
"Love you, and I'll miss you, Mama."
Ringo stays until Yinyin's body disappears beneath the dark waves, and it wasn't until the tides start coming in and laps at his legs that he walks away. His eyes don't stop stinging for a long, long time.
Time passes, and Ringo learns to move on.
He takes the Scrapbook with him - because it feels... wrong, somehow, to just throw it away after all that - and dutifully avoids the previous pages where the newspaper clippings are. When even that is not enough, he buries the book at the bottom of his rucksack underneath the small pouch of stones he collects for grip practice. Ringo doesn't want to replace the memory of her smile with Linlin's cruel ones: Charlotte Yinyin deserves every ounce of respect he has for her.
Morgans still squabbles with him, a daily routine. Ringo's perfectly aware of what he is trying to do, perfectly aware that it's his way of showing that he cares. If there's one thing Ringo has come to learn about the bird through their time spent together, is that Morgans has wits as sharp as a whip and an impressive sailor's mouth. The verbal warfare he snipes at him actually riles him up enough that he snaps back. Morgans takes it in stride, however harsh it may be, almost as if he's gleeful that it's working on him.
It's not much of a distraction, by any means, but… it's heart-warming considering that Morgans is just a ten-year-old stuck in a bird's body, and that he's almost as equally affected as he is about Yinyin's passing.
For Ringo, that's enough.
"You know what I saw, back when I was still stuck in that cage?"
"...?"
"Dead bodies. Lots of dead bodies. The ship I was on had- probably slave traders. They'd kill anyone who misbehaves- just pull out a gun and bam! She's dead. I got lucky- they thought I was feral and I ended up in that market where you broke me out."
"..."
"But my point is- all that bullshit I saw? I just… sort of separate them. In my mind, I mean. Hard to explain. Like I just remind myself that I need to focus on the present. Gotta store my feelings and get off this ship until I was somewhere safe-"
"..."
"-ord… What was it- c- com- compartmentalize! That's the word."
"..."
"...Look, I'm not saying it's easy or that you should absolutely do that. Just- it helped me out when I was in a tough spot, emotionally. Kinda fucked up that I'm just ten and you're like seven and I'm telling you this- but, maybe it'll help you too, yeah?"
"...yeah. Hey, Morgans?"
"Hm?"
"Thanks."
"...tch. Don't go telling anyone else about this, or I'll murder you myself."
"..."
"..."
"...you can't kill me, though. You need me for my opposable thumbs-"
"-oh, for fuck's sake-"
Eventually, the pair of them reach the island they were searching for. A port town famous for their locksmiths, and they find one that manages to get the seastone cuffs off Morgans without much questions thrown their way, in exchange for a full pouch of silver coins.
He bids Morgans goodbye. A ship will take him to the biggest news station two islands over, while Ringo will continue his aimless travels. A merchant vessel has agreed to take him with them, in exchange for his help aboard as a cabin boy.
There were no tearful farewells, because while their journey together ends here, both of them know that they will meet each other again someday.
"Hope you'll learn how to fly!"
"Shut up!" Comes the indigent shriek, then in a puff of feathers he watches as the albatross shift into the vague shape of a little boy, shaking his feathers at him as the harbour drifts further and further away from the ship he's on. "You better not die out there!"
"You wish!" He yells back.
Ringo spends his eighth birthday in a tiny cabin in the middle of the sea, listening to the muffled roar of the wind outside and the ship doctor's nagging by his side. Some guy just thought he was an easy target to bully while he was helping the crew to transport supplies, and didn't appreciate the way Ringo had wrinkled his nose. He smashed a bottle of glass into his skull (wow, trigger happy much?), and Ringo retaliated by launching the entire wooden crate at him so hard it smashed into pieces upon impact.
The man had been unconscious for hours when the Captain leaves him behind at port.
"Kiddo, how the hell did you do that?"
Ringo shrugs, and tells him a partial truth. "Used to fight wolves in the mountains." And he picks up three heavy crates stacked on top of each other to the doctor's shock. The captain laughs long and hard, pleased at the unexpected fortune of picking up such a strong worker.
(He could had picked up five at that point of his life, but it's dangerous to attract unwanted attention. Three crates are impressive yet reasonable enough among the people on this side of the world.)
Being on a ship full-time is very different from his days on the road and the occasional stint as a ship straggler. The transition is a little jarring, especially with the extreme weather changes and rough waves that comes with being in Paradise, but he stays polite and works hard, doesn't complain or whine or bawl, and in exchange, no one questions their strange new cabin boy.
He takes the chance to learn how to read and write properly with the abundance of books and papers available on the ship, until the muddle of scribbles becomes letters and the letters become words. At the same time, he absorbs as much news and information of the world as he can.
("ROCKS pirates continue wrecking havoc- Will they ever be stopped?")
The ship doctor beats the importance of having good handwriting into him ("I thought all doctors have bad handwriting." "Yeah, but do you see me having chicken scratches?"), and eventually his messy scrawls evolve into something that's somewhat comprehensible. By the time he sneaks off the vessel, months later, he can read signboards and writes in passable, neat little scripts.
He leaves a pouch of coin he saved up by the doctor's desk as a farewell gift.
The first letter Ringo writes is addressed to Morgans, cheerfully dissing him on his incapability to fly while he has already learned how to read. It was written on the back of a torn wanted-poster with a half-broken feather and an almost dried ink-bottle, then tied carefully to a News Coo's leg, who he feeds half a loaf of stolen sweetbread as a bribe.
His return letter says "Die." and nothing else. Ringo keeps it, tucked away in a secret seam within his rucksack.
Dear Morgans,
Did you know that it's actually not that hard to sneak onto ships? Most of the guards tend to get drunk around the early mornings, and the rest don't really bother with checking their cargo. How did you get captured in that marketplace again?
It sucks dealing with sea-sickness, though.
- R
P.S. Here's a present for you. Snatched it from someone's pockets and thought you'd like another shiny coin for your collection.
.
Dear Morgans,
This is what, my third ship? That I snuck aboard? Granted, it's all merchant ships so far - I feel bad for their captains.
Are your adventures as a newspaper boy great so far? The journalists on the newspaper seems to always be in danger if that's what the pictures are telling me. You probably should learn how to fly if you're staying in this line of work.
- R
P.S. Picked this shell up from the beach. Kinda looks like you, haha. Even the yellow on the edges matches your colors.
.
Dear Morgans,
I'm on this weird island that rains crabs. No, I'm serious. Every two hours the surrounding sea shoots geysers into the air and bam- crabs in your hair. Red crabs, blue crabs, spider crabs, you name it. On the bright side; the sashimi is great, and it's always funny to hear the smattering of crab-on-wooden-boards then screaming from the deck.
On another note, do me a favour and feed Pelly more sweetbread next time. She's great. Never met a Message Coo this polite and funny before. She tells me it's hard to feed her kids with her current pay-rate - what the hell are your bosses doing?
When you open your own news-station you better pay your workers more!
- R
P.S. I have no idea what this is, but if you squint it looks like a seagull.
.
Dear Morgans,
Paper is really hard to find around these parts. And expensive. I can't believe a twenty-sheet pack costs 3000 beri. This is daylight robbery.
Must be different for you, huh? I've always wondered what it looks like in a news-station. A room full of a hundred printers and thousands of paper whirling, maybe.
- R
P.S. Got you some shiny quills I stole from that same paper shop. You're welcome.
P.S.S. Try not to get papercuts from making heart-eyes at pretty older ladies.
.
SHUT UP!
- M
.
Dear Morgans,
I already have your first letter in my scrapbook, but I'm framing this one up as soon as I can, fancy polished wood and everything. I'm writing this to just to tell you that.
- R
P.S. Here's another shell I found. It sounds like a ghost wailing in it if you put it by your ear.
.
To my horrible, no-good, piece-of-shit friend,
Sometimes I imagine putting my fingers on your scrawny neck and popping your head off, but alas, I do not have hands. Count yourself lucky.
I am, however, not without appreciation, so it's good to hear that you're still alive out there. Not that anything can kill your roach-like tendencies. If a bear couldn't do it I doubt anything else can.
Apologies for not responding to your letters sooner (and for the shortness of the last one. I've only had enough time to scribble a response out before work pulls me away). My apprenticeship has been... busy. Frustrating so far. Everyone's incompetent here, and if they make me serve another cup of coffee I'll poison their supply with newspaper ink. I'm resorted to watching my seniors during the day just to learn how things work, and sneak around at night so I can get into their documents and records. It's like I'm a cat-burglar instead of a proper trainee and I hate it.
As for paper; you don't usually see them for sale out on the Grand Line. They're usually bought up by nobles and rich merchants before the rest of us can get our hands on it, and they're more or less wasted on trivial things- some rich brat came by the other day with his daddy and demolished a pack. Can you believe that? Thirty-five fresh, pristine paper wasted just like that. The damn brat didn't even fill the page up! What the hell?!
But anyways, I'll send you some leftover-scraps whenever I write back. Just let me know whenever you need them so you won't have to resort to torn posters and dirty newspaper clippings.
- M
P.S. Thank you for the gifts. I'd get you some if I didn't know you'd steal most of what you need anyways.
P.S.S. Pelly has agreed to be our main Messenger and will accept any and all forms of bread as payment. And once I become the boss of this station I'd pay her more, obviously.
He jumps six more ships, until the man he's helping out with unloading his cargo makes him an offer.
"How about ye join us on our ship as an apprentice, lad?"
Ringo blinks, considers the pros and cons, and smiles.
Sometimes Ringo still dreams of the night before Yinyin's death; feels the phantom touch of her warm hands in his tiny ones, remembers what is essentially her last wish before she passed-
("-You should find Linlin." Yinyin said-)
-and promptly represses it in the morning after.
Unhealthy? Yeah, he's aware. It's not like he's proud of it or anything, but it works. For now.
It takes a few months, and while he never does figure out how to stomach the guilt building up behind his throat, he does eventually learn how to distract himself from it through a healthier outlet: writing in his new journal in his spare time.
(It's a cheap looking thing - scraps of paper he salvaged and bound together with pieces of twine, wrapped in spare cloth in an attempt to protect it from water in the same way Yinyin has bound the old Scrapbook. Ringo resolutely tries not to remember about this fact.)
Time passes in a slow crawl when all you see is an endless vast horizon of blue, and there's only so many rocks he can squeeze before he starts running out of them before the next island. So he starts keeping daily logs out of sheer boredom- Writes down what he had for breakfast and lunch and what chores he's stuck on for the day. Thoughts that snuck into his mind during quiet nights. Notes on interesting things that happens; a light-hearted brawl between crew members thanks to a secret poker night yesterday; Stories the peddlers share with him, of an island full of bubbles and laughter that is the gateway to the mermaid kingdom, and he never can decide if they're just fucking with him or not.
And to be perfectly honest, with the number of bizarre things he's already witnessed, he can't exactly dismiss them as mere tales. He already knows a talking, transforming albatross. A Mermaid Kingdom can might as well exist in this impossible world, right?
...right?
Ugh. Maybe they're really just fucking with him. Dumb old men and their weird stories-
But anyways, lamenting aside, Ringo sort of stumbles into the joys of making lists somewhere along the way, and this, combined with boredom, results in two groups of lists growing longer and longer each day in his journal:
The first is what he finds interesting; Weather conditions like frog showers and hail shaped like triangles; animals and creatures he's pretty sure are straight up bullshit until he laid his eyes on them. Den-den mushi and their many shape and colours. Sea Kings and snakes and titan fishes he once saw only in dreams.
The second consist of slightly more useful information. Basic rope knots, taught to him by one of the older sailors three days ago. A checklist of compasses, maps, tools and necessities. The shapes and size of clouds and their corresponding forecasts. Universal parts of fishes you can eat if you find yourselves running out of food. Accounts of his expenses and savings, from his meagre portion of pay.
...And of course, the list of presents he had sent to Morgans, and his subsequent reactions to each of them.
It's nice in a way. Something to help him relax, and to practice his writing at the same time when he isn't drafting letters.
(There's a third list he keeps between the 34th and 35th pages of his journal, glued and pulled apart and glued together again. It details what little pieces of his past life that he can remember- accumulated over the years in a collection of fleeting memories and dreams that does not make sense, finally written down during a midnight shift at the crow's nest.
This is what it says:
One Piece - treasure(?)
Pirate king - has a hat? Rubber Hat?
Gold Roger - ? (also a king?)
Whole Cake Island Arc
Big Mom/Charlotte Linlin - has 50(or more?) children. bad news. Stay far, far away from and never, under no circumstances, meet her.)
"I want to have my own ship someday," Takeshi admitted, swinging his legs over the ship's railings. "Pops wanted me to take over the family business when I'm old enough- would be nice if I can design my own figurehead."
Ringo hummed in acknowledgement, sipping away at his juice. To his side, Suki laughs. "What are you, a pirate? What kind of fishermen ship has that?"
"I mean- kinda unfair that pirates are the only ones to have sick-looking ships, y'know? If they can do that, why can't I?"
Suki slaps a palm on Takeshi's shoulders, nodding solemnly. "Alright, that's valid," he says, then side-eyes Ringo. "What 'bout you? Any dreams like our pirate-boy here?"
"Hey!"
As the cabin boys descend into squabbling, Ringo contemplates the question- which is a very good one. He doesn't have a dream, really. Not even when he was still travelling with his mother, where he's just sticking along for the ride as he tries to figure out what to do. Not even now, a year into his journey on this ship, merely allowing the currents to pull him along, only poking at things that caught his attention and curiosity.
Come to think about it- the one constant in his life so far is that he travels a lot, and that he enjoys wandering the roads without care, tied to nothing but the direction of the winds. He likes seeing new things; find out what else this world has to offer; find the mermaids and the sky kingdom and whatever semi-bullshit the gaggle of old men had told him so he can finally decide if they're true. Maybe he'll have to do odd-jobs here and there to fund his travels in the future, when he decides to leave this ship-
(Find Linlin. Yinyin said.)
Ringo clamps down on his tongue at the memory bubbling to the surface of his mind and hisses, juice dripping down his shirt.
No. No, compartmentalize. Think of something else.
"Dude, you got juice all over- the cook isn't going to like that."
"Sorry," Ringo replies, plastering a smile on. Think of something else; travelling, funding, looking for interesting and colourful and fun things. Ooh, what if he gathers them and sell them? That'll solve the funding part.
"Maybe I'll be a merchant," He tells them after a beat. "Y'know, like Mister Ryden or Mister Yowarashi. Not sure what I'll be selling yet, but I wanna see the rest of the world- maybe I'll see enough to tell the same fairytales those port-peddlers always do."
Suki snorts. "What, like the mermaids? Those ain't real, y'know?"
"You think dolphins aren't real until two months ago," Takeshi snipes at him.
The boys tumble into a fight again until the first-mate pulls them apart and gifts them both a solid knock on their heads. And the day, like every other one, eventually passes and is largely forgotten.
To Ringo,
Attached to this letter is a list of peddling trades I can currently find in alphabetical order, from common to uncommon wares. I've excluded slave-trading because we both know that it's garbage.
I call dibs on being your first business partner.
- M
.
Dear Morgans,
You can't call dibs on something that doesn't exist yet. I don't even know what kind of wares I'd be getting into! What if I end up not being one?
And thank you, I really appreciate it.
- R
.
To Ringo,
I can, and I just did. And in exchange (if you become one!), I'll let you in on some of the juiciest news and gossip, obviously. It's not a business partnership if there wasn't any equivalent exchange.
Also, Happy late Birthday. Congratulations on being 9. I knew you wouldn't die so easily, like the cockroach you are.
- M
(Sometime in the future, when someone asks Ringo what his biggest shame is, his answer will be sleeping through his mother's passing.
Here lies a secret: that is a lie.
His biggest shame is that he is, deep down in his heart, secretly glad that Yinyin has passed. Because it means he doesn't have to follow her anymore. It means he doesn't have to find Charlotte Linlin; it means he won't be involved with the plot, won't be involved with his fucked up biological "family", far away from the chaos; it means that he'll be safe.
It means that he is finally free.
The sheer relief he has and the absolute shame that he feels like that eats at the deepest part of his guts.)
Time passes.
"Don't ye have family, lad?" Asks the cook one day, a rotund, gruff but laid-back man.
The setting sun baths the deck in swaths of gold. Behind them, the crew toils on and sings, song cresting into a chorus alongside a smattering of laughter:
"And it's windy weather, boys, stormy weather, boys
When the wind blows, we're all together, boys
Blow ye winds westerly, blow ye winds, blow
Jolly sou'wester, boys, steady she goes..."
For a moment, Ringo remembers the taste of salt in the air and down the trail on his cheeks. The weight of his polka-dotted handkerchief tied into his hair feels heavier, and prickles, as if it's burning the skin on the back of his neck.
A year ago he would had froze at the question. Now, his fingers merely tighten around the ropes he's weaving, before he quickly forces them to loosen again.
(Find Li-)
"Nope." Ringo chirps, and hi-fives two other young men at their table.
The cook nods. "Aye, it be like that sometimes."
I've been on this ship for months. I am not going to find her, and she won't be able to find me because a) the grand line is huge, and b) she has better things to do.
Besides, there's no way she'd go out of her way to track down one kid when she already has eighty of them.
(He has a budding dream now, and it's going to happen far away from the plot. Far, far away.)
In hindsight, maybe he shouldn't have tempted fate like that.
There was no sign, no warning. One moment there was silence, the lull of the currents and the night breeze, but by the next the cabin he was sleeping in suddenly bursts into flames.
Terrified screaming fills the air. There's a flurry of panicked stampede as everyone and everything moves around him, shadows flashing in between scorching flames. The heat rips at his lungs and throat before his body finally catches up to reality and Ringo throws himself onto the ground, snatching his rucksack hanging from the side of his bed in reflex (that he did on purpose just for emergencies like this, he fucking knew it-), coughing and spluttering in the limited airspace under the thick, suffocating smoke. The wooden floorboards dig into his flesh as he claws his way towards the direction where he vaguely remembers is the exit.
"Pirates!" He hears. "We're under attack-"
There's a loud cracking noise just as he reaches the door, and steps right out into the mouth of hell.
.
("Promise me."
Sorry, Ringo thinks. Sorry, but I don't want to.)
.
Ringo was ten, or eleven maybe, when a woman with his mother's face and a smile full of teeth finds him.
The pirate stands in the centre, bodies littered around her as the sea of flames surrounding them raged. And surrounding isn't as accurate - more like the fire seems to be guarding her, circling her like the crown of a conqueror. The woman chucks the headless body in her grasp to the side like a doll, where it crumples pitifully with a snap.
Then she turns- and Ringo takes an unwilling step back as fiery, bottomless eyes drills right into him. There was a brief moment of pause, before the woman grins.
"Hmph, it's about time I found you," She says. "Though I could have sworn she said she had a son, not a daughter. Not that it matters- mamamahaha!"
You should have ran, says the little voice in Ringo's head, a chill running down his spine. You should had ran-
Ringo forcibly tamps down the surge of despair at that and snuffs out the thought, because this is not the time for that. Right now, he needs to focus on the situation at hand.
Compartmentalize, and adapt-
He doesn't get the chance to speak; the moment he looks up and makes eye contact there's a split second of sudden awareness before the pits of his stomach sinks at the same time as he chokes, throat seizing, closing up at the thick, thick fear. All the air in his chest rips itself out and he forgets to breathe. His legs won't move.
(You are already dead-)
Charlotte Linlin looks at him, pink mane wild and huge, and smiles.
Then there's a sharp, sharp pain piercing through him, enough to jolt him out from his stupor. Enough for him to see the Yonko twisting her fingers around a foggy, fragile shape. A ball of soft, translucent energy, stretched across the deck, and when he looks down: connected to the centre of his chest.
My soul, Ringo thinks.
"At least now I know you're really family," Linlin says, idly rolling his soul in her palm. "Bah- enough chit-chat. It's almost time for supper, and I am starving. ZEUS!"
"Hai, Mama!"
Like a frozen doll, Ringo can only swallow his panic as Linlin plucks him up like a toy - he idly notes, in a calm hysterical way, that his biological aunt is really fucking tall - and strides towards the edge of the hull. With a single powerful leap she jumps, and Ringo watches as they land on a collection of dense, swirling grey clouds underneath them. Then it's just the salty air stinging his eyes and the roar of wind in his ears as they ride into the moonless sky.
The sinking ship burns behind them, and soon fades into the night.
Updated: 10/10/20 - fixed grammar and some mistakes
A/N:
This fic has been simmering in my drafts for over a year and I've been meaning to clean out my wips and all, so here it is!
I've always wanted to play with a charlotte!OC, but instead of a little sister/brother/sibling, I wanted an elder one (and an actual supportive person to the charlotte fam) so I can make them struggle with 85 younger sibs. Can you even imagine having 85 of them? Jesus christ
Also, I have goals in this fic and one of them is to dote on baby Katakuri. This is the one thing that is propelling me to write this idea and by god I am going to do it