Resonance: the quality in a sound of being deep, full, and reverberating.
-0-
Shanks has been around the world, alright? He's seen everything in this world worth seeing. Ninety percent of things worth seeing were also worth drinking, in his opinion, but Benn sighed extra hard when he said stuff like that. It was always a bit funny; sometimes Shanks would make him do it on purpose.
So while maybe no-name, out-of-the-way villages in the East Blue were not really worth seeing, in the sense that you'd never go out of your way to see them, it wasn't to say he avoided them. That tiny, egotistical part of him thought everyone and everywhere deserved a little bit of the red-hair experience. The world at large wasn't much different than the bottom of the ocean: cold, dark, and inhospitable to anything but the toughest of creatures. More reason to drink and party whenever and wherever you can.
His men sometimes complained that small towns were boring to visit, but Shanks preferred the relative solitude. Hypocritical of a pirate, he supposed, who lived aboard a ship full of people he couldn't get away from, but large port towns were just the worst. They were huge and rowdy, but not any fun.
All these things he thought about as he disembarked from his ship to explore this overgrown island. The streets were empty; not uncommon for places unused to pirates, when they arrived. Some towns got up in arms instead, but East Blue tended not to. They just hid in their homes or quietly ran for the hills. He didn't blame them.
His first instinct, of course, was to find a bar, and he granted Lucky Roux and Yasopp the honor of seeking one. But Shanks' attention was taken down the beach, just out of sight, where his Observation Haki found a small child, injured and all alone. He tipped his hat back as he looked in that direction, a silent statement about where he would be if they needed to leave in a hurry. Benn did that funny extra-hard sigh and Shanks went on his adventure.
While the kid was hurt, he didn't seem to be in danger, per se, so Shanks didn't run to the kid. But he soon came across a small boy with a mop of black hair surrounded by crabs. A lot of crabs. Enough crabs to prevent Shanks from being able to walk any further down the beach, kind of crabs.
While Shanks has seen weirder things in his life, he would admit that this made him pause. Was this kid some sort of crab god? Was this just a regular thing? Should he interrupt?
The kid, who wore a t-shirt with a picture of an anchor on it along with the word, 'anchor'—just in case he couldn't figure out what it was—had an armful of seashells. He spun around and glowered at the crowd.
"No! These are mine! You can't have them! I'm giving these to my friends, so get away from me!"
The kid didn't seem to notice him. Shanks pulled his sword from its sheath and gently dug the tip into the beach. With a flick, he created a wave of sand between the child and the nearby tree line, either flinging or burying the crabs in the way of the kid's escape. After the wave unceremoniously fell the kid opened one squinting eye at him, his face baffled.
"Hey anchor-kid," Shanks said, "Get out of there before the crabs get you!"
The boy blinked. Shanks grinned, but it was subdued, for him. Not the normal, cheerful, red-hair experience.
"Who are you? What—" the kid started, but a crab suddenly clamped onto his toe. The kid jumped, yelled, and started hobbling his way to the tree line. The crabs followed in eerie, perfectly aligned choreography.
"Well," Shanks said, "Okay. Hmm."
At first Shanks tried to flip nearby crabs back into the ocean with his sword, like he was flinging erasers with a pencil. Too tedious. He considered using a bit of Haki, but the amount needed to hit the whole crowd would kill the crabs, not to mention hit the kid.
Creating a much taller wave of sand, Shanks closed his eyes and dashed through it, scooping the limping child in one arm, and leapt through the bushes into the forest. Leaves shred to bits beneath his feet, and Shanks plunged his sword into the ground to slow his momentum. Instead, it pierced the dirt and gnarled tree roots like a fish through water. Shanks then twisted himself around so that his raised foot could collide with a thick tree, stopping them with a lurch. The bark crunched under the ball of his foot and the whole world swayed dangerously. Once it stopped the only sound left was the rustling of the falling leaf-confetti over them.
Shanks breathed before sheathing his sword and used both hands to gently set the boy on the ground. Anchor-kid continued to hop, crab still attached. He'd have a lot more success if he'd drop the shells, Shanks thought. He rubbed at his face, not wanting to get sand in his eyes, and spat a couple times to get it out of his mouth. The sensations were nostalgic in the worst kind of way. The only thing missing was Captain Roger or Rayleigh standing above him, overshadowing him, laughing at how they could make him eat dirt. Those were some of his fondest memories.
Somehow, after their retirement, they made him feel more inferior than he ever had as a cabin boy.
What made him feel better was seeing the anchor-boy slip and fall on his ass, throwing his seashell hoard into the air. Shanks caught the pretty blue one in one hand and guffawed openly when the rest of them pummeled the kid on the way down.
"Owww—hey! Stop laughing!"
Shanks took pity on the poor kid and bent down, peeling the pincher off his scratched-up foot and throwing the crab back toward the beach. "Anchor, I don't know what you did to piss off those crabs, but it's kind of hilarious. What's with the shells?"
"These?" Anchor asked as he started to pick them back up, "I'm giving them to my friends."
"I got that. But I think they'd be more worried about you being attacked, or uh, held hostage by animals like that, wouldn't they?"
"Makino would worry," Anchor agreed. "Can you help me carry these? My name is Luffy, mister! Who're you?"
"I'm Shanks," he said as he obligingly allowed all the seashells to be piled into his arms.
The boy—Luffy—chattered as they walked. He talked about a young woman named Makino, who ran the only bar in town, and how a local old lady twisted her ankle and couldn't go out and pick berries to make jam lately. It went well in a "sharker-tree board", whatever that was, because it went on slices of meat. The kid described how more crabs kept showing up every time he picked up another shell until he was surrounded by them, unable to walk back home, and how he was totally planning to hop on the crabs' heads to skip his way back home before Shanks had arrived. Which Shanks believed—that he would have tried, that is.
No kid in the history of the world has ever been an engaging conversationalist, which was one reason Shanks would never allow them on his ship. As they walked, he zoned out and admired the strangely colored conch shell in his hand.
It reminded him of something his captain had shown him once: a delicate jade instrument carved into a very similar shape. The locals had called it the Holy Seacarina. One spine had been slightly longer, which the player blew air into. Notes were changed by twisting a dial, which had been designed to look like the spinier, twisted end of the shell. Being pointy and all, it seemed to Shanks that it would be unpleasant to play, but Rayleigh told him that the locals would carve them to fit their hands perfectly. Pricking one's hand was a sign that one was unworthy of the instrument.
Practicality didn't really matter, since their use was mostly ceremonial, anyway. But the sound it made; unearthly, in a word, but Shanks could never describe it in a way he would be satisfied with. He was a pirate, not a poet. For such a petit and fragile instrument, the sound it made was deep and far-reaching, like a whalesong, and it burrowed into the crevices between his bones, his ribs, squeezing the air out of him. He hadn't breathed at all while Rouge had played it for them and had nearly fallen over when she handed the precious thing to his lovable but brutish captain.
His captain had handled it with a startling amount of reverence, supporting it with the tips of his fingers. He lifted it above his head to look at it, instead of turning it over, and he eyed it intensely. The light reflected off his moustache in a way that made his dark hair look white, like a much older, wiser man. He stared for a long time, probably spending more time thinking about that jade shell than he had during the rest of his pirate career. They knew he had come to a decision when he grinned that trademark, fearless grin. And he refused.
His captain was a complex man like that, sometimes. Instead of taking the incredibly valuable instrument, he gave it back to Rouge and told her he didn't want it; instead, he wanted her to come up with a song for him to listen to when he returned. Shanks and the rest of the crew were as baffled as Rouge at this declaration, but his captain's word was a natural law that everyone, even their enemies, obeyed. They boarded the ship immediately, and the captain ignored Buggy's wailing and Rayleigh's indecipherable look.
Once, after some time had passed, Shanks had been sitting on the deck railing of the Oro Jackson with Captain Roger, taking turns drinking out of a bottle of pirate's holy water from the South Blue. The sky and ocean blended into each other with shimmering yellows and oranges, without beginning, end, or purpose. Just the way Shanks liked it. It wasn't like his captain to be quiet, though. Later he wondered if Captain Roger was looking inward instead of forward.
"Captain. Do you ever try to imagine the song Rouge will play for you, when you see her again?"
Shanks had, even if he'd been uncertain whether he'd be there when the song was played. There was a lot he had been uncertain of, in those days.
His captain had turned his head and stared at him. Into him. Through him. His captain always knew the truth.
"No," he said. "I could, but I want to be surprised."
"Oh," Shanks had said. His captain then finished off the bottle, pat him on the head, and left.
Back in the present, Luffy had come to a stop. Shanks was surprised to see that they hadn't ended up in town, but rather were deeper in the forest.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"Trying to find my friends! Living out in the woods sucks. It's hard to tell where you're going. Everything looks the same."
"Sounds like you know that from experience."
"Yeah. Grandpa likes to drop me off in the woods to fend for myself, sometimes. I hate it. It's too hot and too cold and the animals are mean."
"You live with your grandpa, then?"
"No, I live with Makino. Grandpa doesn't live here most of the time. And when he is here, he makes me train and I don't see him for a lot of it sometimes. But it's okay, that's where I met these guys!"
With a mighty push, Luffy tipped over a rock where a couple of horned beetles were hiding. One escaped, but Luffy caught the straggler in a cage of chubby fingers.
"These guys are the best! They live in rocks and dead trees and stuff. So I thought, since the fish don't need them anymore, I'll give them the seashell-houses. Makino said a pretty house is a nice house to live in."
Luffy then grabbed a seashell out of Shanks' arms and tried to shove the beetle in it. It didn't fit. Pouting, the kid put the shell down and tried for another.
"That's sweet of you, kiddo," Shanks said, "But with those big horns, I don't think these are the right shape for them. They won't fit."
The boy looked up at him in confusion. Then his face sagged, and he sat the beetle down, which immediately fled. He flopped onto the ground, placing the shell he was holding next to the first. Shanks followed his example, though more gracefully, leaving all the shells in a pile. Luffy sat with his hands in his lap, rubbing his thumb back and forth across his other hand, eyes half-lidded and staring at his useless hoard. Shanks quietly passed the time by picking leaf bits off his hat and out of his hair. The trees murmured in the wind around them, ever-chatty gossips.
"…look, I know it's upsetting when—"
"I'm not upset," Luffy said. Shanks side-eyed him.
"It's okay that the beetles don't need the seashells," he said in a soft voice, "but the seashells are sad. I wanted them to be happy, too."
The kid leaned forward, grabbing the blue-green seashell, and lifted it toward Shanks' face.
"Doesn't it sound sad?"
There was a tiny, hopeful part of him almost expected it to sound like the Holy Seacarina, deep and reverberating into his soul. It sounded like bottled rushing air instead, distant and hollow. Sound without substance, Benn would say. Disappointment coated Shanks' tongue like many a hangover, and he swallowed it down, clearing his throat.
"The only thing that sounds sad around here is you, kid," he said, pulling the shell away from his ear, "but there's lots of different kinds of sad in the world. And some never get better, like when you know you're never going to see a friend again."
Luffy looked up at him with big eyes. "So… if someone leaves, then you'll be sad forever? Like these seashells? The fish who made all of them left."
"Maybe," he said. "It depends. Sometimes you can wrap up everything you need to before you part, sometimes you can't. Either way, you have to find a way to live with it."
"Mm," Luffy said, chewing on his bottom lip. "I don't like it. I'm gonna keep all my friends close to me."
"You can't," Shanks said with a sharp chuckle, "people have been trying to figure out how to do that for ages. It can't be done."
"Then I'll be the first!"
Shanks laughed. His chest felt tight. "What if your friends want to sail a different sea than you? Or walk a different path? Are you going to keep them away from their dreams, other friends, and family just to keep them with you every day?"
"Yes! If we're all together, then we'll definitely be happy! I won't keep them from their dreams, I'll help them! Just because grandpa doesn't want me around doesn't mean I'm useless!"
Shanks blew air out of his nose, and with it, the last of his lightheartedness. He didn't know the first thing about the kid's grandpa, and he was absolutely overstepping, but…
"Life is complicated," he started. "Maybe your grandpa wants you around but thinks it's not a good idea. The world is dangerous."
"But my grandpa is really tough! He can beat anyone. I'll be even stronger than him someday, and I'll beat up anyone who tries to take my friends from me."
"It's not just people who are dangerous. Even the calmest, warmest, most pleasant breeze can bring danger into your life. There is no way to be prepared for what the sea and skies are going to throw at you but protecting someone else is the hardest thing to do in this world. Kids can't protect themselves, much less another person. They're not strong enough yet."
Shanks had seen more than a few kids end up amidst things they had no business in. Being a kid didn't spare you from death. Being big and tough didn't spare anyone, either. Any lingering illusion that being strong or powerful would protect him died the second his captain did. But—
"If you want to face the world, then you need to surround yourself with people who can take care of themselves. I did. Best decision I ever made and the best job I could hope for."
Luffy stared up at him. "What do you do, Shanks?"
"I'm Red-Hair Shanks," he said with a toothless, thin-lipped smile, "I'm a pirate."
"A pirate? Those guys are mean, right?"
"Only when I'm sober."
Luffy tilted his head with an unblinking stare. "I don't think you're mean, though. I guess grandpa was wrong."
Shanks' smile softened, and his stiff shoulders relaxed. "And maybe he was wrong to leave you here. Doesn't mean he doesn't want you. He probably just wants you safe."
Luffy straightened his head and closed his eyes. "Grandpa says that when I'm grown up, I'm going to be a marine."
"Ah."
"But I don't wanna be a marine! They don't get to choose where they go or when they leave. Grandpa's always gone because he's a marine and has marine stuff to do. I don't want to go where someone else tells me to. And I'll leave when I'm ready. Not before."
"Where do you want to go?" Shanks asked.
"I…" Luffy said. "I don't know where I want to go. Anywhere." He paused, staring off into the distance. "Anywhere. As long as it's fun."
"And what makes a place fun, in your book?"
"Lots of meat," he said. Kid didn't even hesitate.
"Pff… Dahahahahaha! Ah, kid," Shanks said, thumbing the corner of his eye, "with that attitude, I think you could go anywhere when you're older. Trust me, there're so many things to see out there. You'll love it."
"Do pirates see a lot of places, Shanks?"
"Oh yeah. The good ones do, anyway. There are some pirates out there who stake out a territory and control it but overseeing a bunch of towns sounds like a hassle. My crew gives me crap already, and we only have one ship. Yasopp got me with the 'bucket of water on the door' prank the other day. He wasn't aiming for me, but he got me anyway. S'what I get for falling asleep in Benn's room…"
"Are you the captain?" Shanks nodded. "Can't you make them respect you, if you're in charge?"
"They do respect me, but they can respect me and have fun with me, too."
"Grandpa says that kind of stuff is a sign of bad dis… dis-simpleton?"
"Discipline, and that's a boring marine way to think. Pirates do things the fun way. Life's too short to be stressed all the time," Shanks said. He wondered whether his crewmates had found the bar yet. "You can ask my crew what they think of being a pirate, I guess. If they're drunk already, they'll be more than happy to share."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
Reinvigorated, Luffy jumped to his feet, slipped on the uneven leaves, and barely avoided faceplanting. This didn't deter him in the slightest from trying to shove the pile of seashells back into Shanks' arms as he tried to stand, but honestly, if accidentally pricking a tiny hole in his arm made the kid feel better, he'd do it.
"Heading back to town now, right?"
"No," said Luffy, "we gotta return the seashells first. Or the crabs will be mad at me."
Shanks didn't want to deal with that, so he took the lead this time, and they made it back to the ocean quickly. They were standing atop a short cliff, where the wind nearly stole Shanks' hat off his head. The sun was starting to set, picturesque. Evening really was his favorite time of the day; even stuffy landlubbers relaxed, drank, and made merry when the sun was going down.
"Red sky at night, sailor's delight," Shanks recited. He expected Luffy to ask what that was about, but the kid didn't acknowledge that he said anything. "Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. My captain used to joke that my red hair meant that every morning would be a disaster and every night would be a riot."
"Was he right?" Luffy asked as he spun around, coming to a stop. The kid was beaming at him like his teeth were too big for his face. His earlier frustrations could never have existed, with such a smile.
Shanks opened his mouth. Then he closed it. "I guess that depends on who you'd ask… the red hair at night being a delight is definitely true, though. I am a riot."
Nodding, the kid grabbed a shell from the pile and listened to it. After a moment he pulled it to his mouth and whispered something into it. Then he swung his arm above and behind his head, and with an earnest, childish heave, threw it into the ocean. Poor form, but it got the job done. When Luffy turned around to grab another, Shanks knelt forward a bit, letting him pick which seashell he wanted to release next.
The amount of time he listened to each shell varied. Most were short, but a few took long enough for Luffy's face to go through an artisan selection of emotions. It was probably just an imaginative kid being a kid. Yet, while Shanks would never admit it, the slight grin he would give each one before the throw reminded Shanks of his captain, whenever he was about to make a particularly baffling decision. Like he had just acquired some information that no one else had.
The orange sunset, seashells, the kid's smile… it's no wonder he was thinking of his captain.
Last one to go was the blue shell. Luffy looked serious when he held that one up to his face. Shanks watched as the boy's eyes misted over and when he barked out a short laugh, as if someone had told him a joke. Then his face rearranged itself into confusion, which Shanks mirrored. With no subtlety whatsoever, he rapidly swapped between listening, looking at Shanks, and whispering into the cavern of the shell. Repeatedly.
To Shanks, it looked like the kid was having an argument.
Eventually Luffy appeared to lose that argument, and he reluctantly padded his scratched-up feet back over to where Shanks stood, handing him the conch shell.
"It wants you to listen one more time," he stated.
Shanks carefully took the shell, took a deep breath, and tentatively held it up to his ear with both hands.
He felt, more than heard, the cool waves crashing over him. As a pirate, it was a sensation he was very used to, yet the feeling that came over him turned his arms to stone and his legs to jelly. Shanks fell backward, landing flat on the ground. Opening his eyes, Shanks saw the silhouette of Captain Roger, standing over him, laughing at him, but kindly, good-naturedly. He laughed even harder when another wave crashed over Shanks' face, filling his nose with water, making him gargle and wheeze. The salt burned his nose.
"C'mon, cabin boy," Captain said, "are you planning to lay on your laurels forever?"
Spitting harshly, Shanks sat up. The sky was a tapestry of warm colors, the sun low enough to cast everything in snugly wrapped shadows. He could hear his captain's endless laughter and could feel the cold sea brushing up against his waist, sucking the warmth out of him. He could feel sand shift beneath him. He could smell alcohol and ship varnish and the ocean, which, without thinking, he tried to suck into his lungs. Water came with it, but even as he hacked and coughed, he felt strangely good.
Shanks could feel a song he had never heard, one that had never been meant for him, vibrating through the water and the air, up and down his spine. All-encompassing, it pushed and pulled at him, entering through the sand he squished between his toes and fingers and through the wind in his ears. The song caressed his skin, raising the hair on his arms and making him shudder, rippling warm and cold all at once. He wondered how in the hell he had ever missed it.
With a jerk, Shanks pulled the conch shell away from his ear. He had to blink a few times before the image refocused, and the kaleidoscope pieces eventually coalesced into an image of Luffy standing over him, hunched over with his hands on his knees and staring in concern.
"Shanks, are you okay? You just fell over! What did it say!?"
Shanks took a deep breath and was only moderately surprised that his lungs weren't full of water. His hands had a death grip on the conch shell, and the joints of his fingers were sore as he relaxed his grip.
"It didn't say anything," he said, "It just… reminded me of something. Something important."
Luffy was curious, but Shanks didn't elaborate, instead handing the shell back over to him. He didn't bother standing up, elbows resting on his knees.
"It sounds like it's time for this one to get going. And us too; it's getting late."
With Luffy's back to the setting sun, his face was framed by darkness, and Luffy stared at him with an intensely blank expression. His eyes sunk into Shanks like teeth, inescapable without injury. The kid was too young to make a face like that.
The boy may be too young to understand it, but he knew. He just knew. Shanks was sure of it.
Without a word Luffy took the shell and walked over to the edge of the cliff. He didn't listen to it or try to talk to it this time, though he did pause, staring out at the ocean. Shanks wondered what he was looking at. What he was thinking about. If he was having second thoughts. There was no way that this kid had any in him.
Winding up like a baseball pitcher, Luffy leaned back, determined to put his entire body into this one. He swung his arm over his head, tossing the shell high into the air. Its blue and green coloring was instantly lost in the eventide colors, and Luffy was instantly lost over the edge of the cliff.
"NGWAH!?" Shanks shouted as he scrambled to his feet. The cliff wasn't high—kids could probably use this to dive into the ocean—but the boy had flipped heels over head on his way over.
He skidded on his knees, stopping at the edge. Leaning over the ocean, Shanks' eyes scanned the face of the cliff first, praying to deities he didn't believe in that the kid hadn't hit the rock. Finding no red stains, he turned his attention to the water, hoping the boy would bob to the surface and yell at him. He waited until he realized that he needed to breathe before sucking some air and diving in after him, activating his Observation Haki before hitting the water.
Shanks zeroed in on a tiny, struggling light that was being pulled further into the ocean and pushed off a rock with his foot, swimming toward it quickly. He grabbed the back of Luffy's shirt, pulling the child close to him and securing him in his arms before kicking his way to the surface.
Luffy spit water in his face the second they were above water, not caring where it went, but Shanks didn't mind. He awkwardly pat the boy on his back the way he'd seen mothers do to their babies, taking comfort in the way Luffy gripped his shoulders.
"S-Shanks," Luffy wheezed.
"Do you not know how to swim?" Shanks cringed at his own words. Benn often lamented that Shanks, for a swordsman, was like a blunt instrument sometimes.
"I do!" Luffy said between coughs, "I was just surprised. The water hurt."
"From that height? Probably." Shanks said. Interestingly, the boy pouted and looked away from him.
If his relationship with his grandpa is as heated as he implied, then he probably expected a fight, Shanks thought. He started paddling back to shore: a difficult task when he couldn't use one of his arms.
He had almost reached the beach when Luffy asked, "Where'd your hat go?"
Shanks slowed. With Observation Haki, Shanks didn't need to turn his head to search, but it looked a lot less inexplicable when he did. He found his hat back out where Luffy had been, slowly riding the waves away from the island.
"Crap," he said, picking the kid up to his eye level, "You can make it to the beach from here, right? I need to grab that."
Luffy's face paled. "Uh—"
Shanks paused.
"You don't know how to swim, do you?"
He wasn't mad that Luffy didn't tell him. He just needed to know. Luffy's face turned bright red and he refused to meet his eyes, which was enough confirmation for Shanks.
Shanks shifted the boy behind him, encouraging him to wrap his arms around his neck, and swam toward his hat with long strokes. Luffy tried to bury his face in Shanks' shoulder blades before realizing that was a terrible idea and settled for pressing his cheek against the back of Shanks' head. It was novel to literally feel someone pout.
Swimming through the fiery sea was calming. Perhaps the fact that Luffy's breath was tickling the back of his neck was why he was feeling so giddy. It couldn't have had anything to do with the adorable puckered-lip expression Luffy gave him when Shanks handed him the soaked hat, and Shanks did not grin when he had to tell the kid to grip less tightly, lest he break the straw. They made it back to shore without any further incident. Unsurprisingly, Luffy was tired, so Shanks didn't bother setting him back on his feet and opted to carry him back to town.
And that was how Shanks reunited with his crew: sopping wet, with a child in one arm, as his crew asked what had happened to him.
"I made a new friend," Shanks said.
-0-
By "sharker-tree board" Luffy was trying to say charcuterie board. Delicious, if expensive.
Last chapter will be focused on Luffy, I promise! *sweats*