Another chapter coming at you!

I got some very awesome reviews and some favorites as well, and I am very, very motivated.

On a more solemn note, please keep in mind those who have been affected by Hurricane Harvey and Irma (it isn't even finished yet). Some people have lost everything and it is terribly sad, so I just wanted to bring it up as me acknowledging what's going on in the world. Also, 9/11 is tomorrow. It is a very tragic day in U.S history, and I'd like so say that I will personally always remember that day as one of mourning and loss, but also of the great strength of those who persevered.

God Bless, Stay Safe,

L & D

(Chapter title credit to Smashing Pumpkins)

Anne counts her cash precisely and with hast. It is a skill she had acquired through years of thievery and entrepreneurship, and every beri counted, always. If that made her greedy, then so be it. Anne didn't mind being greedy if it meant the security of her family. There were a lot of things Anne didn't mind being if it meant her brother was safe.

But she sounded like a broken record. Everything was her brother. Her was her everything. The only thing that brought her genuine joy in the world, which could have been sad, or touching if she put a twist on it, but Anne wasn't one to sugarcoat things. She liked the facts. And the fact was that she had very little and quite a lot to live for at the same moment.

Roger slept soundly whilst splayed on top of her, mouth open drooling over her night clothes, and snoring loud enough to shake the whole room. She swore she could feel the floorboard tremble under her, but Anne saved that particular issue for a later date.

Her eyes wandered over the neatly stacked bills, and her meticulously counted jars of coins, running her fingers through her brother's hair, less for his sake and more for her's. It was comforting, and something she had done since they were just children. Roger would lay on her lap, and she would rub his scalp. Simple, and relaxing for the both of them. Anne didn't even know way she needed to relax, it wasn't as if she had any particular source of stress in her life that she couldn't handle. She was far too used to yelling junkies and alcoholics, conmen with suave smiles, and thieves with sweat on their brow.

It wasn't as if money was tight; it really wasn't, because Anne was the best pickpocket in town and she also ran her very successful, very lucrative weapons pawn shop on all days of the week. Money wasn't an issue. It was what to do with her extra profit-the stuff that didn't go towards rent and food and buying things to keep her business up and running.

Did she save it? Put it in a bank? Keep it under her futon? She didn't know. Desperation is like an old friend at this point, and Anne feels it acutely under her skin. She was so uncertain about everything that it made her nauseous.

If Roger weren't asleep, she would've asked him. He seemed prone to give unexpectedly good advice from time to time, and Anne was sure she really could use some of his magic right about then.

Anne sighed, frustrated and very much on the verge of just giving up completely. She stacked her savings into an old wooden box, and carefully pried up one of the floorboards. She nestled it into the gap, between drywall and cheap tatami mats, and followed up with her jars of coins. The touch of the night air is warm against her flush skin, and Roger is cool under her fingers. She threads her finger through his hair, smiling as he shifted into her touch, babbling nonsense in his sleep. She brushed his hair away from his face, ignoring the mess it was.

"I need to give you a hair cut." She murmured absentmindedly, tracing circles against her brother's chubby cheek. Roger's mouth remained open, drool spilling out, and he kicked her shin. Anne didn't wince. She was too used to events like her brother flailing over her and the waking up with a good collection of bruises for something like that to really hurt.

The mundaneness of late nights and violent siblings was enough to put her mind at ease. There is a silence that overtakes their little apartment, their home, and Anne relishes in it. Her future was foggy, she knew, but her refuge, while maybe not always in that one room flat, was in those silent nights when all she could hear was her brother's breathing and her own thoughts. Her eyes strain in the darkness, but she can make out the pale silver of moon that hung in the sky, visible through the broken, and only, window that the room had.

Anne licked her dry lips, comforted by the stars that flickered overhead.

Roger laughed in her ear and Anne was awake in approximately two seconds.

Nothing good ever happened when Roger laughed like that.

"I wanna go see Walt!" Roger said, already dressed with mix matching buttons and hazardous thrown on trousers. Anne spared an almost automatic sigh in response to her brother's frivolous request. Walt would want to see them of course, he always did, but Anne wasn't in the mood to deal with Roger and Walt's antics in the same room, at the same time.

She groaned, pulling the futon covers over her head as she continued her very own pity party. Roger yelled, and Anne tensed as her dove into her, basically head butting her back with a monstrous amount of force. A grunt escaped her lips as the two of them went tumbling, tangled up in bedsheets. Giggles filled the room, and all was right with the world.

"Annie, Annie, let's go see Walt! Com'on!"

She had no choice but to fold, obviously.

"Alright. We'll go-" She started, her voice mufflers under Roger's shoulder, "-Fix your buttons and let me get dressed. Then we'll go." A shriek of delight rang through the room, and the weight on her chest lightened considerably.

Anne rolled around a bit, removing herself from her bedding with reluctance as she crawled over to her box of clothes.

She would go with her favorite and cheapest outfit of course; a grey blouse, black pants she had owned for three years, and a red satin dash that she had stolen off a merchant gypsy some years ago. She kissed her fingertips and pressed them into her grandfather's straw hat, safely tucked away in her clothes box.

Black hair was quickly done up into a practical braid, and she rose to her feet with only the slightest of stumbling from tiredness. Anne padded up to her brother, and bent over to help him fix his buttons. He was a dexterous little twerp but he could never seem to handle the concept of getting the right button through the right hole. Roger babbled on about some dream he had had, about Fishmen and mermaids and battle on the high seas.

"You should be a novelist." She remarked offhandedly, playing with a bit of hair that curled up from the top of his head. "You come up with the best stories, Roger."

"It's not a story!" He chirped, and Anne sighed. That was what he always said about those dreams of his. "It's real. That pistol I stole from a drunk yesterday told me, I'm tellin' ya!"

Anne didn't bother to comment, knowing resistance was futile. Roger claimed that everything that couldn't talk could and Anne didn't understand, but then again, she didn't understand a lot of things. Her eyes wander around their spartan home, admiring the moldy ceiling corners and cracked drywall. There is a silence that hangs over her brother and she in that room. It is strangely uncomfortable, like the room is too small and simultaneously too big at the same time, and all Anne is can do is stare at the paradoxical sensation in her bones. She grabs her brother's hand, and opens the door. She forces herself to forget that feeling.

The street is much more Anne's speed; open and familiar, but not too familiar. She saw it everyday, there was always something different about it. Today, a woman was selling pastries in front of her store, another was handing her laundry out to dry, and an old man was selling his newest batch of artisan watches.

They turn into Walter's music shop, where he's sitting on his counter, smoking a cigarette, with a bottle of rum next to him. Anne curled her lip up as the scent of smoke invaded her smell, and her eyes watered. She had always hated that smell. Walter smiled lazily at the two of them, looking much older than his nineteen years. (Anne supposed she looked older than her fourteen, but that was besides the point.)

"Heya Annie."

She lifted Roger up to the counter, placing him on it delicately. "Hello, Walter."

"Hi Walt!" Roger yelled, already off the counter and running around the store.

Her-friend?-smiled sharply as he took another drag before putting it out on the counter top; he knew how much she hated that smell. Instead, he opened his rum and took a swig. Anne crinkled her nose.

"How can you do that? The alcohol's fine, but doing it right after you smoke must leave a nasty taste in your mouth."

"Tastes fine to me." Walter said as he took another, bigger swig. "I don' get how you can't smoke. It's relaxin' ya know."

Anne rolled her eyes. "I tried it, and nearly hacked my lungs out. It don' taste good, it smells like shit, and the smoke makes me sneeze." She tracked a burn mark seared into the wood.

"To each his own I guess." Walter hummed, swirling his liquor around in its bottle.

Anne nodded, her eyes following Roger.

"Annie," The brunette combed his hair out of his face, "When are you gonna leave this godforsaken town?"

The black haired teen started suddenly, jumping up about an inch with surprise.

"What d'ya mean leave? I ain't goin' no where!" Anne snapped, a fire in her eyes. How dare he suggest she was going anywhere? In front of Roger no less. How dare he even speak about her leaving.

He gave her a knowing look. A tired, defeated look. "Anne, this town isn't big enough for you. It isn't big enough for Roger. You two are different." He paused, raking a hand over his face. "You don't like smoking, you don't like being no names, you don't like that you have to be careful. You don't like it here. You hate it." It sounded right. But it didn't. Not really. "Anne, you hate this life, and I don't get it. You got plenty of cash, a house, a business but you're not content, you're not happy."

"Am I supposed to be?" She says before she can stop herself. "Is that what being happy is? Satisfaction? Contentment?" Anne doesn't understand, because the closest she had ever been to happiness was Roger, and that was it. "I can't be happy," She says, fiercely. "I can't. It's impossible. I always want more and more and more and what I have can't satisfy it. Not body deserves to be satisfied. They don't deserve complacency. People deserve more, Walter. I can't understand how you don't want more. I want it. I crave it. Money won't do it. This town won't do it." Anne stops. Roger is staring at a viola on the wall, sitting with his legs crossed and all his focus on the little wooden viola. It seemed blasphemous to say that the town with her brother in it couldn't make her happy. But it wasn't her brother. It was the town, she realized, like a great deluge of cold water rushing over her head. And Walter was right.

They listened to Roger's outlandish stories for the rest of that visit, Anne haunted with the knowledge that she didn't belong and Roger none the wiser.

"Annie, what happened to the ladybugs?"

Anne hummed, observing the cards in her hand calculatingly. "What ladybugs, Roger? Did you see one the other day?"

"No, the big ones. The really big ones."

Her mouth went dry, but she recovered with ease. "What are you talking about? Is this another one of your stories?" Anne's hand shook, and the cards trembles.

Roger didn't reply, he only stared at her with big eyes and an innocent look. He waited as Anne struggled to keep her composure, which was hard, because Roger, clueless Roger, knew. She didn't know how or when, but he knew. Did he remember? How? He was so young, it should have glazed over his memory, like a long forgotten dream.

The wind rustles the curtains by the window. Roger hummed, eyes still on his sister, waiting for an answer. Anne refused to say anything.

"Annie, what happened to the cabbages?"

"Cabba-" Everything came flooding back to Anne, every moment before the moment. She felt paralyzed. Helpless. "Oh, Roger." She abandoned her cards and pressed her palms into her eyes. She kept them there for what seemed like an eternity.

"Annie?"

Her mouth was dry. She needed air. And water. Anything but what was happening to her. "Roger, I can't answer those questions. Not yet. I'm not ready, I-" She swallowed a dry, dry breath of air. "I can't."

"You can." Roger said a matter of factly, "The ladybugs and the cabbages: you remember them, don't you?"

"Of course I do." She whispered quietly. "How do you remember?"

Roger hummed, shrugging. "I dunno." He paused, pondering it. "Can you tell me about them?"

"Maybe later."

"Maybe always means no, though! Com'on Annie!

"They do not." Anne grumbled, gathering up all the cards and putting them back into their box. "And I told you I'm just not up to it, Roger."

"Then can you tell me why you wanna leave the island so bad?"

Anne snapped her head around so fast she was surprised she didn't give herself whiplash.

"Where did you hear that!" She very nearly shouted, it sounding much less like a question than a demand to know."

"You and Walt were takin' about it. I could hear you." Roger fiddled with his cracked teacup, not meeting Anne's eyes. "Was I not supposed to?"

"Oh, no." Anne crawled over to him, rolling him on her lap whilst her legs were crossed. "Roger, I'm not leavin'. I'll never leave you."

To Anne's eternal bafflement, he actually had the gall to look disappointed, of all things.

"Hey, what is it?"

He looked at her, then didn't, eyes fluttering around the room without a particular destination.

"...Don't wanna stay."

"You what?"

And just like that, Anne's future was in the wind again, a small ship against a hurricane, an unstoppable force of nature.

"Adventure, Annie." Roger's eyes seemed to sparkle in the light pouring through that broken window, wild and frightening if she did say her honest opinion. He looked like a crazed animal, waiting to be let free. "Adventure!"

A shiver ran down Anne's spine and it was like that.

She had decided.

She was leaving.

Not now, but someday.

And Roger was too, but not with her. He would have to suffer the boring life for just a few more years or so.

She hoped he wouldn't have problem with it. (Even though Anne really knew that Roger would hate every second of not being on the ocean, but it was something Anne was willing to fight about if push came to shove).

Anne's sixteenth birthday comes and goes.

Roger is nine years old and a not so holy terror in Loguetown. He made games of pranking marines and stealing from prideful boutique owners.

He was a cute little boy, with a round, somewhat dumb looking face that stretched wide when he smiled. His eyes were grey and fiercer than a Sea King's; he was, needless to say, the talk of all the old gossipy women. Such a boy would turn into a handsome, mischievous man no doubt. They just couldn't wait. Anne would try not to snicker when she walked past them, but it was difficult. Seeing her brother as anything but a pain in her ass was a challenge, and she doubted he would ever be a lady killer in any sense of the word. He was too stupid for anything like that.

The fact remained that the older Roger got, the more and more that he resembled Anne. She was not a fan. They didn't even have the same mother and yet it seemed like they were sporting the same face, only on two completely different bodies. Naturally Anne looked much more feminine, but since Roger was a child, he looked girlish anyways. She hoped that would change as he got older, because Anne couldn't handle the questions she got from visitors asking if she was her brother's mother. She didn't look that old. Mature, maybe, but certainly not like she was in her twenties.

Roger spent more time with Walter than her now a days. Not that Anne minded, because that's exactly what she intended for him to do. She had made it clear when she left that he would be staying with Walter until he was of age to go explore the world. Her brother complained, loudly, but Anne was convincing. She clearly told him that a man of the seas had to be a man before the "of the seas" part. It seemed to click in Roger's head and he quickly stopped complaining.

There was the salty taste of freedom on her lips and nothing was going to stop her. Well, Roger would, until she was eighteen of course, then she was liberated from Loguetown and all its humdrum days and routines.

Until then, Anne had things to do, weapons to sell, money to be made. God knows how much money it would cost to get a good boat, and to have enough left over so that River could by a ship of his own when he set out. She couldn't afford to dawdle or to be frivolous in her spending. Every beri went to her future, with the exception of necessities, and she planed to be prepared.

Anne never realizes that Roger had inadvertently solved her money problems, because he had given her a purpose, like he always had. The two siblings were too dumb to realize that they fed off each other, and that Roger changed the world by telling his sister to go, and Anne changed the world simply by leaving. She had raised the Pirate King. She had been his inspiration. She had fanned the flame of his need for the ocean brine.

Needless to say, the world would never be the same.

And so the adventure begins!

The next chapter will most definitely feature Anne setting out to see and the next five to seven chapters will be about her gaining her crew and diving headfirst into their journey! I'm not certain how long I want this fanfic to be, now that I think about it, but I plan to take it slow.

I hope you guys will be with me all the way!

Until Next Time,

L & D