Last time, Luffy supports Marco as he finally confronts Izou in a hurry to accompany Luffy in search of Sanji. After his conversation, he connects with Nico Robin about being left with the burdensome task of choosing to live.
"So, Marco, how are you feeling?" Marco wonders about a pirate being psychologically assessed by a reindeer. He feels like their time is better spent elsewhere, but Chopper insisted on check-in before Marco jumped in headfirst on a delicate rescue operation. Marco has never been in therapy before now. How different the Moby Dick would've been with a Mental Health professional on board. His first reaction to the idea hadn't been... pleasant, but Chopper doesn't make the sessions feel like examinations at all. Marco reminds himself that talking about things is a step in the right direction, even if it sometimes feels like taking ten steps back.
"Overwhelmed, yoi," he admits. Chopper has a folder in his lap, sandwiching some loose sheets of lined paper. It jars Marco a little, but Chopper barely ever writes anything down and never when Marco expects him to. The phoenix believes the reindeer purposely writes down bits and pieces at random intervals precisely so that Marco doesn't feel exposed, but honestly, the less he thinks about it, the better.
"It's understandable, you've had an unexpected couple of days."
Big Mom's ship, Sanji's departure, Izou's arrival...
Yeah, unexpected is one way of summing it up.
(Marco feels like it's a good day if he's mustering annoyance and worry instead of sinking deep in the numbness. Some days, no matter what happens, it all goes down to being so fucking tiring.)
"Do you think I'm getting better, yoi?" he queries out loud. He thinks the question might come as a surprise, but Chopper is unmoved. He raises a hoof to his lips, thinking about it.
"Hmmm," he voices, meeting Marco's eyes in patient curiosity, "do you?"
"Somedays," he shrugs. Today, for example, "but, medically speaking, is this… am I… getting better?" Once again, he thinks Chopper will press for his answer, now that Marco's avoided the question, but the doctor is graceful about his dismissal.
"I believe you're doing well, considering the short amount of time since Punk Hazard," he states, "and also, we've discussed how healing is not a linear process. There are some days better than others, and that's expected. The important thing is that you take it easy and ask for help when you need it."
"Right." It's a good answer, just not the answer Marco wants.
"How about this week? How do you feel about everything's that's going on?"
"I... things with Izou were... good," he admits hesitantly," better than... better than I thought it would go, I guess."
"He loves you a lot." The comment hits Marco right where it hurts, and he bites his lip.
"Does he... know?"
"Do you think it would be any different if he did?" Yes is the immediate answer, but Marco closes his mouth before it can escape him.
Would it?
Marco thinks about Izou's desperate hug, about his gentle words, and about his willful discretion. He didn't ask Marco about Punk Hazard, Sphinx, or being off the radar once, not even about Luffy. Instead, he filled the silence between them with his own journeys, slowly filling Marco in on all their remaining siblings, scattered as they are.
"...Maybe," he settles on.
"Why do you think so?"
I made him worry, which really is nothing new, and Marco knows such a thing is impossible to avoid in a family.
I... let Sphinx burn? But did he? Marco still hasn't mustered the courage to check on Pop's hometown.
I lost. Not an outcome Whitebeard Pirates are unfamiliar with lately.
I'm...
"I'm... different now, yoi." Marco thinks about Big Mom's ship, the splintering of his self-control, a desperate possessive feeling of no and not again. Marco doesn't recognize or trust himself.
"Would you care if it was him?"
"No."
Chopper doesn't comment on his quick response. Aware that Marco can figure out his own faulty logic. Annoying.
"Do you think I'm bad for Luffy?" Marco looks for Chopper's response, surprised by his own question.
"What do you mean?"
"Do you think I make him unhappy? Or, or make his life worse?"
"Do you think that?"
"Yes," because there's no way flaky, moody, traumatized Marco makes Luffy happy, which leaves only the alternative. What Luffy liked about Marco: his courage, his... confidence, his strength are things Marco doesn't have anymore. "Things were different before."
"Before?"
"When Luffy and I met." Marco hadn't meant to keep his and Luffy's previous... relationship (?) secret; it just hadn't come up. "We, eh, were... something... for a moment."
"I see."
"And things were different, yoi." He tries to explain the stark difference between Marco then and Marco now, but he's not sure how to phrase it. "I'm different."
And it all keeps coming back to that, doesn't it?
"Different doesn't mean bad, Marco."
"I'm tired and cranky all the time. I'm always making everyone worry. I refuse to interact with people, even my family. I get terrified of memories and ghosts that aren't there. I can't fight. I'm just..." broken. That's what it feels like, like there's something irrevocably wrong with Marco that he has no idea how to fix. "How could I possibly be good for someone? Luffy's always smiling and moving forward and inspiring people, and... how am I... how am I supposed to keep up with him?"
"It's already happening, I'd say," Chopper tells him. "Have you considered that these things that you're worried about Luffy and other people thinking, that these are thoughts that you have of yourself?"
Marco opens his mouth to say, of course, and then closes it. Opens it again and finds that no words come out. He breathes, feeling choked all of a sudden, like there's not enough air. He toys with the fuzzy blanket Chopper keeps in the infirmary and tries to even out his breaths.
"But it's true," he protests weakly.
"I don't think Luffy thinks you make him unhappy," the doctor continues, "does he look unhappy when he's with you?"
"No, yoi, but, maybe, sometimes he thinks..."
"Marco, do you truly believe Luffy could keep any of those thoughts to himself?"
"No," not at all, really... "But, what if, what if the people that care about him know?"
"Marco, do you truly believe anyone can tell Luffy what to do?"
"No, but what if they're right, though?"
"In you making Luffy unhappy?"
Marco doesn't even know anymore. He's tired now, and confused, and upset. He understands how silly he sounds, but it makes sense in his head. There's no way anyone finds him pleasant to be around right, Marco himself doesn't want his own company.
"...Not even I want to be around me."
"Yet you garden with Nami and Usopp regularly. And play card games with Brook." Chopper smiles at him, shyly, "I happen to enjoy your company. I like discussing my medical theories, and Traffy is super scary." That does pull a little chuckle out of Marco.
"Marco, I think you're scared about others seeing you the way you see yourself. That, I think, is what we should talk about during these sessions." Marco takes in the words, but he has a little trouble wrapping his head around them. "So next time, I want you to focus not on what other people think about you and what you've been through, but in what you think about yourself and what you've been through, okay?"
Marco promises to try at least.
Before that, though, he needs to survive Whole Cake Island.
"Mmm... Marco," Luffy mumbles when the blonde scratches his hair. There's something about people when they sleep, some vulnerability that cannot be achieved when awake, that Marco's often wondered about. He likes sleep on Luffy. It makes him more young man and less superhuman wonder, more reachable for Marco to grasp and keep.
"We've docked, Luffy, it's time to go." Electrocuting him wouldn't have worked as well. In one jump, Luffy is out of the bed and running for the door. "You're shirtless!" Marco calls out amused, smiling as Luffy groans as he walks back into the cabin.
He rustles through his cabinets to look for a clean shirt since Marco took the one he was wearing last night to the laundry. He stops in his movements, maybe his brain catching up to his body because he suddenly looks at Marco.
"Marco," he intones seriously. It immediately puts Marco on edge. Did something happen? Did Marco do something?
"Yes?" he prompts.
"Promise me you'll stay out of the fighting." Marco frowns. If their plan works, there should be no fighting at all, but the former first mate knows the odds of such a thing are nonexistent. He's not too confident in his ability to fight, but he trusts his ability to let Luffy die a lot less.
(Not that Luffy would die, of course not. Marco is definitely not entertaining that line of thinking. Not even a little.)
"I..."
"Promise me."
Ah, Marco realizes looking at Luffy, this isn't one of those "choice" moments.
It leaves Marco with a bad taste in his mouth and a million questions, but Luffy has never really asked for anything. Marco steels himself.
"Okay."
It turns out to be so much harder than he ever thought it could be, but Marco only cheats a little.
Cracker is originally disheartening, but quickly turns comical. Only Luffy wins a fight because he's able to out-eat a Sweet General. Sanji's struggle, though, resonates with Marco in a way he cannot ignore.
"Marco!" Luffy's face is covered in blood, swelling rapidly, and something in Marco is screaming. Unlike Ace, Marco's Devil Fruit hardly reacts to his violent moods, but this time, the wall of flames climbing through his back is intentional. The rush out of him in a showier pyromaniac spectacle that Marco maintains so that they may reach Luffy behind him. The younger captain may be okay with getting the crap beaten out of him, but Marco has had enough.
"Listen to your captain, phoenix," Sanji sneers, a gesture so out of character that Marco almost finds it humorous if there wasn't pure anger poisoning his system.
"What were you going to tell me?" Marco narrows his eyes, refusing to budge.
"Nothing of consequence," the cook dismisses, but his eyes shift just beyond Marco, and he disguises the guilt by pulling out a cigarette.
"I thought you were angry about the food at first, too," the phoenix presses, "wasting food is your thing, Luffy told me. But I don't think so." What Marco's wanted to ask crystalizes itself in his mind as he speaks the words. "I think you're worried about him. I think you're the only person on your ship who's thinking what it's going to do to him if I really do slip too far." It sounds like an accusation, strange when it relates to caring about someone. "Don't you, Sanji?"
"Shut up, I don't…"
"...associate with dirty pirates? I heard you, yoi." Marco gives him a smile that is all teeth, Punk Hazard, and Payback War. The look of one who has rejected family and friends and love, more than once. Marco knows now what he came looking for. "We both know I can keep you and all your little clones right here if I wanted to," Sanji seems to sink lower, gearing up to fight him. Gutsy, at least, if nothing else, "...but I won't."
There's a spark in Sanji baffled eyes, all bark, and no bite. It reminds Marco about plenty of his little brothers; they could be stubborn idiots too.
"I don't need your pity," the cook grounds out, biting down his cigarette down to a stub, "I'm going to a better life, stop acting as if I'm suffering or in pain! I'm perfectly fine!" Sanji yells at him, but now that Marco has recognized the guilt in his eyes, he cannot unsee it. "And the sooner that blockheaded boyfriend of yours gets it, the fucking better!"
"I'm starting to see how Luffy does things, you know," Marco whispers, letting his flames recede and allowing Luffy to pass him by, "and from someone who's sailed with him for so long, I cannot believe you can't see it too."
He picks up on Sanji's pain, his guilt, and his shiny golden cuffs, but he keeps quiet. Luffy will do as he pleases, and maybe, through his hunger vow and his promise, Marco is getting a glimpse of the choices Nico Robin was talking about. When Luffy reminds him to butt out of his adventure as the Charlotte children storm the field, Marco expects to be hurt and hesitant, but instead, he sees Ace and Pops and Oden hiding in the curves of Luffy's brows and the shadows under his jaw. So many people Marco has loved and respected seem to live on; carried onto the new era on thin, juvenile shoulders. Luffy has certainly earned Marco's faith, and so, as requested, he flies back to the Sunny.
I think, out of all the chapters, this one might be my least fave... :(
What did you think?