Cocoyashi village isn't like how he remembers it.

There's far more people, here and now, than he remembers there being; but their flames are dulled, tamped down by fear, until not even the barest spark of rebellion remained.

Bellemere's grave isn't as well-cared for as he'd been expecting. There's not even a tombstone, just a handmade altar and a wooden cross. He dusts it off anyway, sweeps away the loose twigs and branches, and tugs a few of the more destructive weeds away from the marker's base. He hesitates, for a moment, before taking off his hat and setting it in his lap as he sits down before the salt-worn wood.

It's a good place to think. Luffy doesn't much like thinking, but he's learned the hard way that it's necessary sometimes.

"Make it right."

This was definitely one of those times.

He'd been sent back- Well, not exactly back, but close enough, surely, given a second chance at the very least… Provided that he promise that he would do the very best he could to fulfill the ghosts of his past's earnest wish.

It hadn't even been a choice for him. That decision, at least, had needed no thought. To do everything over, to burn away the regrets of those he loved, to get to be with his nakama again … There hadn't been room for even a drop of hesitation in the face of that resolve.

But then they had asked, as the odd world of limbo had faded for the shores and seas of the living world, for him to make it right.

It was, as Ace had put it, "vague as shit."

Make what right?

The government? Sabo was working on it, but that'd been true last time too, and, if anything, he'd been making more progress then. Well. Before they both got blown up. Again.

The world? They were asking the wrong person if they were hoping for the world to get fixed. They should have asked someone… heroic, like Coby.

Except…They hadn't. They had asked him. With gentle, trusting smiles, warm hands upon his, and a little bit of a threat for chaos-

The corners of his lips twitch up at that particular memory, because yeah… He could see where Nami got it from.

Each and every one of them had looked him in the eye, and asked him to make it right.

So what was there for him to do but what he has always done? Take his best guess with nothing but gut instinct backing it up, and run with it. After all, when it really came down to it, there was really only one thing it could be. The one thing he cared about more than anything else in the world; something that perhaps he and he alone could make a difference to.

His family.

Not the blood relations of Marine, revolutionary and pirate, all at war and uneasy truce at the same time, but rather the beloved comrades and friends that he'd chosen as family for himself. After all, in the end, only one of them had seen their dream come to fruition.

That wasn't- No, couldn't be right. So maybe, Luffy had decided, to make it right, he had to see them all through this time. Make sure each and every one of them achieved their dreams, even if it wasn't with him as their Captain.

Even if it meant staying out of their lives. Even if it meant only being a helpful stranger as they grew into the incredible people they were always meant to be. Because even if it killed him, Luffy loved his crew, even if they stopped being his crew.

That tenacious resolve had already begun to crack. He hadn't really realized, back then, just how far back into the past they'd been thrown. So when that moment of epiphany came, when he'd seen a young Robin, barely his age, bruised and terrified, fleeing from her pursuers while nearly blinded by angry and betrayed tears- He'd intervened.

How could he not? Robin was his nakama, even if this Robin had never been Miss All Sunday, or risked her life to save a country not her own. She was still his.

There were times where he wondered if that had really been the right decision. Interfering in his crew's past meant changing their lives in a big way, possibly changing them in a big way. They might not even be the same people he'd so come to love if he intervened, even if it was on their behalf-

And yet…

Luffy sighs, opening his eyes to run a thumb across the velvet ribbon on his straw hat. This hat wasn't Boshi. It had never been worn by Gol D. Roger, or held by Shanks. It didn't symbolize a promise, and its ribbon wasn't even the same color as Boshi's- It was black, instead of the cheerful red he'd grown so used to.

This hat… was just a hat. A plain, ordinary straw hat, purchased from some random store along the way.

He doesn't even know what store it had been acquired from, because he hadn't been the one to buy it. Robin had.

Luffy had grown so used to having Boshi that he'd gone looking for it more than once, despite the fact that it hadn't come back to the past with him. After overhearing his brothers having to calm him down over Boshi being "missing" multiple times, Robin had apparently approached Sabo in private, and upon discovering what Boshi had been, went out and somehow found him a hat that was nearly identical to what he remembered.

This hat wasn't Boshi, hadn't been given to him by Shanks, but it was still his treasure. This hat had been given to him by a shy and hesitant Robin, who's eyes were free from the shadows of fear. A Robin who knew, without hesitation, that she deserved to live.

If he acted now, if he intervened again, Luffy knew without a single doubt in his mind that his actions would cause Nami to change just as drastically. She would never be the person he knew she would become otherwise, and any chance he had held of seeing his Nami again would disappear.

And yet…

"...did she seem alright?"
"Did she look alright? Bink's sake, Boss, that kid couldn't have been more than what, ten, twelve?"
"No, Captain. Not even a little bit."

Determination rises up like a bonfire, burning away regrets and grief, and Luffy breathes in slowly, focusing all of his attention on the feeling of the tiny flickering flame of will off in the distance; the only one that still refused to be tamped down or stomped out.

Right or wrong, Luffy isn't the sort of person who can turn his back on a friend's pain. Even if they weren't actually his friends anymore, even if in this world they hadn't even met, there was no way in hell he could leave any one of them to suffer when he could do something about it.

"...sorry I'm late, Bellemere." He finally says, putting the bottle of wine he'd brought with him on the simple stone altar before the grave. It was of the same brand that his Nami had always preferred, and it felt right to bring a bottle for her foster mother.

Luffy carefully pushes himself to his feet, knocking loose grass from his pants, and bows shallowly to the gravestone.

He turns away to look over Cocoyashi in the pre-dawn light. Arlong's Park sits like a cancerous growth along the shore, and Luffy knew he wouldn't be satisfied until it was nothing but rubble and broken dreams once more.

Setting Robin's gift upon his head, Luffy starts his way down the hill, nodding at his waiting crew as he passes. Even without his devil fruit, Luffy knew he would be more than a match for Arlong as he was now, but that didn't mean he was going to deny his nakama the opportunity to vent their frustrations on another's behalf.

That damned shark wasn't going to know what hit him.