It's been a while.
A long, long while.
I do apologize for the exceptionally long absence, but school started back up and I was very preoccupied with it all.
This chapter title is inspired by the song Zombie, by the Cranberries. I do very much find it amusing, since a certain character with a similar condition is highlighted in this chapter.
Let's get to it then,
L & D
Anne doesn't understand the hype about pirates. Or, at least her brother's unending fascination with them.
She realizes that it's probably not about being a pirate at all; Roger wasn't the kind of kid that could be swayed with the promises of fame or fortune. (Okay, maybe he was, just a little bit, but that was besides the point.)
Roger and she were a lot more alike than Anne would ever care to admit; after all, what thirteen year old wants to be similar to their six year old brother? None, as far as Anne was concerned. The fact of the matter was that they were, and scarily so most of the time.
They had the same nuances, the same grin, the same facial features and lastly, the same craving for anything they couldn't have. Anne was calm, collected, Roger was spontaneous and wild, but they were both prone to excessive eccentric behavior. Anne was as fickle as the wind and Roger was a capricious as the seas. Similar, but different in profound and distinctive ways.
Roger's love of pirates isn't in piracy itself, but merely the ideal of liberation.
He's only been on one island (that he can remember) his whole life, he's seen the same stores, the same streets, the same people, for years and years. The only real thrill he has is seeing pirate hopefuls roll into the dock, colorful and unkept, with stories of the high seas, and aspirations of sailing the Grandline.
When she tells him that almost all of them are doomed from the start, his admiration only grows. He finds it amazing that people, who know in all practicality they are going to die, still go out and seek the unknown.
Anne thinks her brother is a miracle, sent from the heavens, because nobody she has ever come across has ever said that about pirates. Only town pariahs and drunks and former sailors who are missing a few appendages. The rest of the world view pirates as scum and nuisances, like rats in a cargo ship or a festering wound upon society. Anne isn't an idiot, despite what her brother might say, and she knows that most pirates are scourges that want nothing more than destruction and carnage, but there were always the few. The very, very few.
Anne had heard about those seldom pirates; those who cared for nothing except the wiles of the ocean and the allure of adventure, but had never met a single crew that fit the criteria.
That was until the Rumbar Pirates came to town.
Slender fingers curl tightly over the cubby, childish hands that writhed in its grasp.
Anne was not amused.
"Roger, would you quit that?" She said while her face resembled someone who had just eaten a sour lemon.
He scrunched his face up at her irritably, "Le'go of my hand, it's uncomfy."
A shake of the head and rolling of eyes clearly indicated that it wasn't happening. "Too bad, so sad."
Roger whined some more, grumbling about unfair sisters and sweaty palms. Anne whistled a jaunty melody that fell up and down and was really quite good for just some whistling. They walked down the streets of Loguetown with unusual reserve, amongst the throngs of people, churning about with purpose and in a set direction-opposite of where the two of them were going. Anne weaved around the crowd, and as did Roger, with practiced ease. Together, they swiped more than a few wallets along the way, but that wasn't the primary purpose of their little outing.
It was, for what it was worth, a trip to satisfy Roger's obsession with the ocean. And Anne was willing to do almost anything to get him to shut up about it.
What she wasn't expecting was to get more trouble than what the excursion was actually worth. This predicament, naturally, took shape in a pirate ship with a figurehead of a bull skull that reflected their Jolly Roger damn near perfect. The ship itself wasn't exactly hard on the eyes, but it wasn't exactly lovely either. It had just enough rough wood and faded paint to make it look truly fantastic, along with that whimsical element that made it a pirate ship. If she were Roger, she too would have screamed, "SO COOL!" at the top of her lungs, but she wasn't. It was merely duly noted, her primary concern being the crew that was disembarking. Who most likely heard Roger's outrageously loud scream.
Wonderful, Anne though with only the slightest hint of sarcasm.
They were interesting characters, if nothing else. One man, blond, tall, laughed, a boisterous and lively, "Na ha ha!" that sent shivers down Anne's spine. He radiated confidence and joy, and he whistled the same tune that Anne had been merely moments earlier. A sword hung at his belt, and he held a flute in his hand. He slapped the back of the tall, thin man beside him, who stumbled forward just a bit, but more than enough to make his Afro shake like nothing Anne had ever seen. He had a guitar on his back, and he grinned, the glare of his sunglasses making him look like the coolest person she had ever seen in her entire life.
"Brook," the blond said, nodding his head towards Roger's awestruck face. "Looks like we have a little fan."
'Brook' laughed, swing his guitar around his shoulder and playing a few chords that sounded achingly familiar, and Roger cheered. The tall man approached them, followed closely by his companion, and strummed a few more chords, getting progressively higher and higher. His hand ghosted over the guitar, bringing the music to an abrupt and screeching halt.
"Yo ho ho!" Bright white teeth stretched over his face, and Anne suddenly felt very vulnerable. She never had responded to kindness very well. "And who might the two of you be?"
She was about to snap at him, with a sharp, 'None of your concern,' but Roger beat her to it.
"My name's Roger! Dat's Annie, she's my sister."
"Yo ho ho!" Came the jovial response. "Well, it's always nice to see people so pleasant with us. Being pirates do tend to have the opposite effect."
"Yeah. Considering what pirates do." Anne sneered, drawing Roger closer in to her. "My brother might be fond o'ya already , but I ain't that easy." She licked her lips, a strap was in her gaze. "I ain't Annie to you two. Only Anne."
The blond and Brooke exchanged glances, quick and expressive, and they both decided upon a grin.
"I'm Yorki, and we're not from around these parts. Could you show us around? For supplies."
She considered them skeptically, looking them up and down. "What do you need."
"Clothes," Yorki replied promptly, "For one. And food, along with some ammunition." He paused, considering something. "And if you could point us to the local music shop, that'd be grand."
Everything they asked for was pretty standard. Minus the directions to the music shop, but if she took the intruments, it made sense. They didn't seem too shady, and like they were trying to rob her. Plus, Roger would be annoying for the rest of the week if he didn't get to spend more time with them. Anne was always one for dealing with the lesser evil: which, ironically, happened to be the company of pirates.
"Follow me." She turns on her heels, grip tightening on Roger as she stomped forward. The pirates chatted lively behind her, laughing and slapping each other on the back and earning more stares than Anne had ever received in her life. She had half a mind to turn around and yell, but the way Roger's eyes sparked stopped her.
She wasn't that heartless.
She stopped by a reasonably priced clothing store; not some fancy boutique or something like that, but a shop for the working man. Comfortable clothes and some flashier items for special occasions. She eyed them, distrustfully.
"This is your stop. Go and get whatever. I'll be out here."
The two men exchanged glances and frowned at each other.
"Anne, it wouldn't be any trouble for you to tag along..." Yorki said hesitantly, still with a small smile on his face.
"Annie, pleaaase?" Roger asked, and by this point, Anne was just tired of all the pathetic mess occurring around her.
She growled ferally, and stomped past the pirates, Roger skipping at her side. "You bastards, you're all shitty. Roger, stop looking at me like that or you're not getting sausage for a week or somethin'." She very well snarled at anyone that looked at her funny while her company looked at various clothing from the 'for sale' rack. She sat on an old box that was just laying around, muttering complaints to herself while she sat Roger on her lap. Her eyes followed the pirates, making sure they didn't slip anything extra in their coats. She might have been a religious pickpocket, but she happened to like the owner very much, and wouldn't tolerate any such thing while she was around. Roger played with her curls, tugging at them gently and watching them bounce up again, and he laughed every time. She mostly ignored him, rubbing circles in the crook of his back in an unconscious gesture of affection. Her gaze never left those sea fairing men.
They bought standard things; loose fitting shirts, comfortable pants and and a few jackets here and there that weren't their size, so she assumed they were for other crew members. They walked back toward her after a hour, four bulging bags in tow. Anne takes one, ignoring their protests, and marches on, across the street to maybe not the not reputable looking music store, but definitely the best by her standards. She swung open the door, practically screeching, "WALTER!"
And there he was, her best customer, flailing awake at the counter, drool flying everywhere.
"Walter," She slapped her hand down on the counter, making the whole store shake. "I need you to assist these gentlemen."
"Wha…?" He blubbered, rubbing at this eye in an attempt to awaken himself. He messed with his shaggy blond hair uselessly, probably trying to make himself look presentable, looking up at his guest with big grey eyes outlined with a faded blue. "Annie?"
"That is my name." She said, hopping up to the counter, lifting Roger up with her. "Now, are you gonna help out some paying customers or what, you fool." She tilted her head to the door, where Brook and Yorki shuffled in, slightly unsure about the manner they entered or presented themselves. Anne was slightly perplexed by the hesitancy, but they were musicians. Maybe music stores were sacred or something, how was she supposed to know?
"Walt!" Roger crowed from Anne's lap, reaching out for him as he passed to talk to the only people in the store that actually wanted to probably pay him.
He waved, not even looking, "Hey Roger, I'll talk to ya in a sec lil' buddy."
Walter and the pirates talked music. Something Anne knew she was horrid at. Walter had tried to teach her to sing once and it was the most frightening occurrence of the century. Cats had wailed and children had screamed and grown men had whimpered for a good two days after her first and last attempt. Then he tried to teach her the violin. An instrument of such delicacy and precision was perhaps the worst choice Walter could have made. Giving her a stick and telling her to beat a building to rhymes would have been a better choice, but who could have guessed that the bow would have snapped in two the second his grasped it? When she tucked it under her chin, the wood splintered. Anne wasn't allowed to touch anything in his store after that, which made her a bit indignant, but she understood Walter's connection with his music thingies.
"I've got some real good strings; top notch if I do say so myself." Walter directed them over to the part of his store that had various wooden instruments hung up on the wall, "I might be a small time dealer, but my pa was a traveling musician. He went all over, and these here are all made out of Adam's Wood. I get a shipment every year or so, and these are hand made by me. Family business, you could say." Walter moved the ladder he kept by the wall, and pulled off the closest one, handing it over to Brook.
The wild haired man received it gently, running his fingers over the grooves with a strange attentiveness. Walter sent to matching bow down, and Brook tucked the chin rest in, holding it firmly is his left hand as he reach for the bow with his right. Brook breathed it deeply, adjusting his fingers, and Yorki folded his arms, looking on with a wrinkled brow.
Music filled the air, and for all Anne's skepticism, she felt herself relax. Roger stopped his struggling, and Anne allowed her arms to loosen around him, both siblings staring in awe. The euphonious melody was sweet to her ears and light on her soul. It wasn't any tune she had ever heard before; slow and measured and beautiful. Not anything like the drunken songs of her youth. Anne had trouble seeing the beauty of the things around her, she knew. She lacked the enthusiasm that Roger had, or the insight of a wise elder, but she knew that the perfect drops sound drizzling into her ears were breathtaking. The whole store quiets. To her, it seems as if the whole world had stilled for that man with the violin.
Then it shatters.
"Nice playing, Brook!" Yorki slaps him on the back, careful and rough at the same time. "You gonna get it?"
He considers it for a moment, weighting it in his hands and stroking its brilliant wood.
"Yes."
The walk back was entirely less eventful. They asked about her life, and Anne never answered, Roger doing all the talking, even when she told him to shut up. The pirates listened to her brother, and Anne grumbled about it, but said nothing more.
Their laughter was a melody she was unfamiliar with; a tune that her ears didn't really comprehend in any meaningful way. Roger's cackles were what home felt like but the chuckles of the other two framed her brother's with a queer counterpoint. Not unpleasant though. She listened as they talked about everything under the moon; to ships to adventures to whales and more.
Brook cracks horrid jokes and Yorki never fails to laugh. Their dynamic is strange, but the noise was welcome. It kept Anne distracted and that was precisely what she needed.
Their walk comes to an abrupt end when their ship is suddenly before their feet:
The two pirates look at each other.
"Wanna look around?" Yorki says, not really meaning it, but offering anyway.
Anne hesitates. Then surprises herself.
"Yeah." She lifts Roger up with ease, placing him on her shoulders. "Why not."
Brook laughs. "Oh, you're going to love the Ferdinand Jade. She's pretty simple on the outside, but quite cozy inside, I assure you!" He plays a few chords on his new violin, sharp and refreshing on Anne's ears. "Perhaps we can round up the crew to give you a live performance. We do so like an audience."
Anne, for all her boldness just moments before, balks, and as much as she knows it's a horrible decision, she is captured by the music she heard Brook play. It's dangerous. She doesn't know these pirates. They could kill her-kill Roger-and she is willing to take that risk for the sake of heads to ultimately pointless noise. But it wasn't pointless. And she wanted it. Anne was certain she could get Roger out safely.
"Let's go then." Anne mutters, walking up the gangway before either sailor had a chance to reply. Roger crowed, clapping his hands enthusiastically, and drumming on the top of Anne's head. It's a the first real risk Anne's taken since that day, but she feels confidently about her choice.
She couldn't live a tentative and terrified existence. She couldn't let her brother grow up around such a pathetic person.
There was no way she would allow it, or that Roger would tolerate it.
They sit, and the entertainment begins.
Brook and Yorki round up the crew; people who look so out of place together that they were somehow complementary. Anne was impressed, and the show hadn't even started yet.
A big fellow, strapping and hairy, stepped forward with a flute balanced delicately in his hands. A girl-who couldn't have been older than Anne herself-marched up with dulled trumpet. A slender man with unkept hair and dirty clothes hauled his double bass next to the flutist. The flute began with an airy melody, mellow and kind, almost lulling Anne and Roger into a daze before the girl heaved in a breath and blew. The noise was loud, but not unpleasant. It was a slap to the face, and the flute faded, and trumpet filled the air. Anne could hear the bass, and a piano that somehow had made its way on deck, and drums that came out of no where. A violin joined-Brook, no doubt- and the wild shrieking of a guitar added to the choir. The layers of sound struck her. She was mesmerized. And so was Roger.
They stared, in awe, acting like the children they were supposed to be instead of the reality that haunted them. They cheered and sang and danced together. Anne was a child, and Roger was a child, if only for a brief moment in time.
That night is filled with music, and laughter, and Anne doubts that she will ever forget it.
But all good things, every one, must come to an end.
The Rumbar Pirates had to leave, and Roger and Anne had to let them go.
And so Roger's love of pirates and the sea and freedom only grows. He does too, he grows like a weed, and he doesn't get any easier to manage. Roger becomes a proper boy, then an inkling of a man, and without Anne ever seeing it herself, is a man with slightly childish tendencies, but a man nonetheless.
The Rumbar Pirates disappeared into the horizon, never knowing the legacy they left behind, never knowing that Roger the Rookie and Roger the boy were one and the same. Likewise, some many years later, to Anne's despair, the musicians of the sea of nothing more than a whisper in the wind. They mind have even been a legend; an old tale that woman tell their children as a bedtime story. The recounting of a crew with a dream and colorful souls and sounds that carried their sails into the unknown.
She has long forgotten the names of the other members-those other than Brook and Yorki.
But Anne knows. She knows who they were and what the stood for and how they affected her life-her brother's life-in ways that she could not fathom.
And that will perhaps forever remain her little secret.
I do believe the next chapter may be about more plot forwarding, so I hope you folks will stay around for the ride! Any question are welcomed and I will try to answer them to the best of my ability. If you have comment, or critism for that matter, I would be happy to receive them, granting they be constructive, or helpful in some manner.
Until Next Time,
L & D