Her brain wants to skip to the good bit, but truth is, it's not that simple.
There's nothing to force them together, no threat, no ties. There's just Luffy, the strength of his conviction, his hope. She knows it's enough, that it always will be, but do Ace and Sabo?
Not just yet.
The journey back to Dadan's is awkward.
After a short (but fierce) whispered argument between Sabo and Ace (she catches snippets like can't trust and weak and dead weight), Ace magnanimously decides to let them be his and Sabo's servants.
Joy.
Luffy cheerfully vetoes servitude, Ace's hackles rise again, and they waste ten whole minutes arguing back and forth before Valentine pointedly murmurs why can't we just stick together for now and see how it goes?
Her head hurts.
(In for a penny, in for a pound, right?)
So. After some threats/warnings from Ace (don't get in our way), here they are. Sticking together. Seeing how it goes.
Awkward.
It feels like a half-measure at best, a consolation prize as a reward for Luffy's sheer persistence, and the discomfort in the air is so palpable she half-expects to be chewing on it when she takes her next breath. It's only because of Luffy's endless ability to talk (limited while running, but not entirely evaporated) that they're not running in utter silence (ignoring the usual sounds of the jungle, rustling leaves and birdcalls and the cries of slavering beasts). And it wouldn't be comfortable silence, like she and Luffy have while they run together, no.
Ilirya's a jay flying overhead, Ran a brownish cardinal (exactly why she's not red, Valentine explains to an awed Luffy a hundred sunsets ago, back in the village when the windmills spun and everything was-) and Ace's dæmon is back to a bounding deer, Sabo's something small and hidden in one of his pockets. (She seems shy, that one.)
Ace and Sabo aren't slowing down for them. They're just… tolerating their presence, which means Luffy's a barrel full of smiles and Valentine gets to make an active choice to forget why her head aches. Choose your battles.
It's a rocky start (to something wonderful, the future whispers).
Sabo moves in, like Ace accepting two more strays into their ragtag duo was all the excuse he needed to set up shop. Luffy is overjoyed.
Valentine is not.
Ace and Sabo sleep on one side of the room, Luffy edging their blanket ever closer to the older two (she accepts it wearily, sleeps on the side farther away). Ace looks at her knowingly, from time to time, and the lack of active hostility is odd enough that she's wary. He just seems… puzzled by her, now, fallout from their explosive confrontation fresh on his mind. He's probably wondering why she's going along with Luffy, to be honest, and he'd be right in thinking that everything is Luffy's idea. (He's got that right, at least.)
It's awkward and cramped and chafing, doesn't sit right. There's no trust, no camaraderie between the four of them, together but not together. It's Ace-and-Sabo plus Luffy-and-Valentine, two close duos in an uncomfortable alliance more than any sort of partnership Luffy imagined.
(In typical Luffy fashion, he talks and laughs and smiles more and believes and imagines that's going to fix the problem. She really, really doesn't think so.)
Sabo makes at least a passive effort, doesn't seem to hold onto wariness, but Ace's hesitation is holding the whole group in limbo.
It shows in how their dæmons interact. They go on the hunt, spend time together like a pack, but their souls are mismatched, separate. Ilirya sticks close to her, now, doesn't romp around and talk with Ran unless he forgets about Ace and Sabo and their dæmons. Valentine is quiet, and Ace and Sabo are off-kilter, Luffy filling up all the awkward gaps like pouring seawater into an endlessly emptying basin, stinging salt seeping into the cracks.
Their dæmons are silent, still. She doesn't even know their names.
At least they eat, now.
She and Luffy put on weight, strength increasing. Luffy's stomach doesn't growl, anymore, and he doesn't stare yearningly at things he can't reach for across the dinner table. Now it's her and Luffy and Sabo and Ace and Dadan and her cronies, way more people than the fragile table was originally built to handle, probably, and they get enough to fill their bellies. (It's not as good as Makino's cooking, obviously, but-) with so many people and dæmons in one room, dinnertime can't be awkward and quiet. It's loud and boisterous (filled with chatter and shouts, dæmons big and small, from the smallest frilled lizard to the one massive moose dæmon that can hardly fit its antlers through the doorway) and it's a little… warm.
Ace and Luffy fall into competitions on who can stuff their face the fastest, while Valentine can keep up roughly with Sabo (still entirely outside normal human standards, but less than insanity) and eat at a voracious (but still reasonable) rate. Dadan would despair, but they do all the hunting, so.
Ace and Luffy fall into a ghost of the dynamic she knows they'll grow into. It hurts her heart a bit, but for all she can be for him, she can't be his big brother, and in her heart of hearts, she knows she wouldn't want to be, anyways. Still, after spending so many years as Luffy's best/only/most important friend, part of her wants to hoard him jealously away, roam the village and the world with him forever, alone.
Obviously, she doesn't. A Luffy caged isn't a Luffy at all.
There's not much room to talk, at the table (everyone needs to fight for every morsel they can get), but she still somehow manages to strike up something cordial with Sabo, because Sabo is polite (she doesn't think about where that comes from) and he's willing to talk about the beasts in the forest, the people in the Gray Terminal, the strangest and most impressive things he's ever seen, stolen, found. It isn't a lot - she pitches in stiltedly, quietly, bare trickles of speech - but it's something.
So, things get slightly easier. Not perfect, but easier. Tolerable.
(Every mushroom cloud has a silver lining.)
If nothing else, carrying the dead weight of countless beasts (utterly gargantuan and far beyond reasonable imagination) back to Dadan's is a good way to augment her strength training. Nothing like a couple thousand pounds to hammer her matchstick arms into shape.
(That last part is a joke. She already knows her strength is entirely disproportionate to her tiny limbs, explodes out of her in a way that'd be classified as superhuman if she hadn't seen infinitely more power from Ace and Sabo, scant years older than her and no more properly proportioned to their strength. Wherever this power is stored, it's not like the echoes of her past. It's put somewhere different; the soul, maybe, or a network of power she can't yet reach. She has absolutely, positively no idea.)
They can't fit the massive snake carcass through the door, so Dadan comes out, grumbling, with a pack of bandits armed to the teeth with knives to help skin and slice the whole thing (her underling's dæmons are an assortment of canines, jungle critters, and buzzing insects, relatively nonthreatening and therefore a non-crucial endeavor in which to spend her attention). Valentine catches movement out of the corner of her eye as Ace's dæmon - an ocelot for the occasion, a favored form of hers whenever they go out hunting, suited to forest travel and armed with blinding speed and mobility - trots up to Dadan's spotted hyena, tail held high and friendly, waving like a banner.
She's not as shocked as she should be when his dæmon butts its head gently against the hyena's foreleg, rubs against it, tail curling. The hyena makes a soft, guttural vocalization (a grunt?), ears flattened, teeth bared, and leans down.
(Valentine tenses, reflexive, but Ace isn't even looking. He's arguing with Sabo about who got the killing blow.)
When her eyes flick back, Dadan's dæmon is… talking?
The hyena is murmuring softly (gender of its voice indiscernible from where she stands, a low alto that she strains to hear), and even as she watches, it lashes out with a long, pink tongue, grooming Ace's ocelot's ear furiously, the swipes nearly taking up an entire half of the small cat's speckled and bewhiskered face. The hyena nudges the ocelot with its muzzle, pointed, and bares its teeth in a frustrated snarl as the dæmon blinks cutely, curls around the other dæmon's leg to trot between its ankles, tail high and ears pricked to attention.
She looks back to the massive carcass of the snake. Ace is harassing Dadan - ranting about how overcooked the meat was, last time, arms crossed and a heavy frown on his face, foot tapping as Sabo laughs, leaning against his pipe behind him - and Dadan is smoking like a chimney, cigarette hanging half out of her mouth as she yells, up to her wrists in snake's blood, ranting back at him so loud that Valentine can hardly believe he's getting a word in.
(Her reservations creak, refuse to be shifted, and hunker down like a cantankerous mule.)
Luffy spends the nights curled up against her side (in a rapidly shuffling repertoire of space-taking positions; seriously, how can one small boy take up twice as much space as she does?), which means he needs to be at least as clean as she is before bed.
If she's going to be treated like an oversized teddy bear, she's gonna have standards, dammit.
(He may be made of rubber, but with all the skin-contact Luffy welcomely inflicts on her, she can confirm that his skin mostly feels like regular skin. Completely hairless, though, and no pores, which makes contact feel oddly frictionless.)
He doesn't even moan and complain about baths, 'cause the frequency at which she shoves him into the bathroom and locks the door is far less often than how much Makino used to wrangle him into the tub. He gives token protest (noooo, please, mercyyyy, as he hammers on the door, wailing and bemoaning his fate) but eventually, he goes quiet and she can hear the sound of splashes and scrubbing.
She knows he gets lonely. Makino isn't there to be an adult and wash his hair and sing to him, and the most she's willing to do is get the hot water to the wide wooden bucket and fill it shallow enough that it's drown-proof. She knows that the room is big enough for Ace and Sabo, too (hears the sounds of yells and splashing water when they disappear and the bathroom door is locked and they come out clean), but they don't really talk to Luffy (Sabo the bare minimum, Ace not at all) beyond what's absolutely required to communicate the necessities. There's no way they'd share a bath with him.
At night, when they sleep, Ran and Ilirya snuggle together and doze, fluffy and usually matching for the occasion. (That, or they snuggle with their respective humans. It's a tossup, really.) Oddly, Sabo's dæmon and Ace's dæmon don't do the same; Sabo's is almost always nowhere to be seen (often shifted to smaller forms, shapes in which she can hide, so maybe she's in one of Sabo's pockets?), and Ace's dæmon sleeps entirely apart from the boys, a small shape in the darkness, alone. Ace and Sabo sleep near each other, sprawled out and limbs overlapping, but they don't cuddle (at least not like she and Luffy do).
It looks lonely.
Luffy tries. She doesn't think there's a universe in which he wouldn't.
He runs after Ace and Sabo with a tenacity only he can boast, hopeful and smiling and just a bit desperate, dragging her along by the hand behind him. He knows that they can all be friends, he just needs to help them see-
(Luffy cares about Ace and Sabo already. She tries to let that be enough.)
(The future echoes to the past-)
She nearly dies saving Sabo's life.
That changes the tempo a little bit.
Two weeks of tense, ceasefire-style hunting pass (with her and Luffy acting as distractions and annoyances to whatever megafauna they're assaulting more than actually doing any work). It's so much easier to hunt with four (note that when she says easier she means physically, not in relation to tolerating the underlying tension) that they take down bigger and bigger game, Ace and Sabo (and Luffy) getting boastful and excited and overconfident (even as the two former mostly ignore the latter). There's some rapport building, a natural result of running in a pack like this, but it's distracting and fragile, built around the outlier (her) and the brat (Luffy), imbalanced and tentative. They all get antsy, uncomfortable, careless. They make a mistake.
They kill a behemoth-size crocodile. Ace breaks its skull open like a rotten fruit (he and Sabo count finishing blows, something she's only caught wind of by overhearing their private whispered conversations, and she knows that this brings them one-thirty-two to one-thirty-four in Ace's favor), and blood blooms in the water, a particularly dangerous section of one of the many rivers that wind through the forest. They linger by the kill, Ace and Sabo arguing about the score as Luffy tries to cut in, and Valentine stands off to the side, sullen, Ilirya a pillbug hiding in her pocket. Her eyes flit aimlessly to the murky shallows-
Sabo's dæmon screams an alarm, and she doesn't have time to think before she lunges forward-
"You saved Sabo's life," Ace tells her later, long after she's done bleeding and shivering from the gash she's received in return for it, an exchange made in blood. The four crocodile carcasses they have now are too much, way too much, and the table's piled high with meat to feed an army. Nature's way of keeping score. "I won't forget that," Ace says, softer than she's ever heard him but no less full of steel. She's curled up in her and Luffy's blanket on the floor, stomach under her shirt wrapped tight with roll upon roll of bandages, and he's staring down at her, his own bandages plastering his arms and torso, spotted with blood.
Maybe he catches the look in her eyes, because he sits down on the wood beside her.
Not equal. But level.
Luffy brings her the extra meat, later, to where she's drifting in and out of consciousness (speaks volumes that there's any extra with Luffy and Ace under the same roof), and she's still thinking about what Ace said.
(Is this it?)
He doesn't break his promise.
Things slot into place. They aren't friends, but they aren't… basically, Ace is giving them a chance.
"You're weak," says Sabo bluntly, two weeks later, and his dæmon is a hare again, hopping by his ankles with ears and fluffy tail twitching. "Why are you this weak?"
"I'm eight," Valentine replies mulishly, finally back on the hunt proper after several restless days of bedrest and a bunch more of light duty spent doing non-strenuous training (well, floor-rest, but that's splitting hairs). She's got almost a week of hesitant banter with Sabo under her belt (he's warmed over considerably, even moreso after she saved his life), and while there's nothing much with Ace, still, she's not gonna force anything.
She's holding a pipe, awkward in her hands, a 'necessary tool' (not a gift) from Sabo and Ace, one for her and one for Luffy. Like theirs, it's longer than she is tall, and she has to make an effort not to let it drag behind her on the ground as she walks.
She's only used it for a week, and it's not as easy to swing as Ace and Sabo make it look. They twirl those things like batons.
"No, really, you're terrible," Sabo says, walking circles around her, poking at one of her skinny arms, and argh.
She lunges at him like she'd do with Luffy, hint of a playful smile stealing over her face as she fakes him out, and that makes his dæmon startle even as it surprises a giggle out of him, and he dances back out of her short reach. She hesitates (did I go too far, did he misunderstand) but finally, she's speaking a language he can interpret. "Too slow," he says, and his gap-toothed grin is blinding. Ilirya tweets from her shoulder, and Sabo's own dæmon scurries out of his pocket and to the top of his hat, shifting to a wren, trilling a friendly challenge.
"Stop messing around," Ace tosses over his shoulder, his dæmon a parakeet twittering in agreement. He looks… serious. No different from before.
Luffy is pleased as punch with his own pipe, giggling at something Ran is whispering in his ear.
"Lighten up," Sabo calls out to Ace, still grinning. "You're just jealous I'm faster than you. You could never get even half this speed."
"Oi!" Ace whirls around with a smothered smile on his face, and it transforms him, really. She doesn't think she'll ever get used to it.
"Every time we race-"
"You beat me in a race one time, and it's the buzzards that did it, the mountaintop circuit is completely rigged-"
Sabo rolls his eyes, hands behind his head, still grinning. "Oh, it's rigged, he says-"
Valentine laughs.
It's a lively, chiming thing, and it echoes through the forest and brings an entire herd of bison down on their heads. They (well, Ace and Sabo make all the finishing blows, but her and Luffy help) kill twenty five, enough not to need to hunt for a week.
It's the first time she's laughed in sixty seven days.
Things go quick after that.
Take hesitance out of the equation (Ace's and her own, she'll admit it) and they clickIt's blinding how well they work, how fast the dynamic slots into place, and-
Getting on with Sabo is the easiest (he's friendly, easy to read, willing to take a joke), but of all the things she learns about Ace, the most important is that if she puts herself out there, he'll almost inevitably follow.
For someone who's used to letting Luffy do all the putting-out-there, it's terrifying. But maybe it's necessary, as well.
She lets herself smile and laugh and have fun, like she would with Luffy, and… Ace and Sabo sort of… follow? No. They sway into tune with her, matching her example, and it makes her ashamed but she thinks that it really was her holding the whole group back. Now that she's on board, they get on like houses.
Ace talks, all sardonic wit and dumb one-liners and boyish confidence, and he's naturally a little quiet, too, a little reserved, when he's really comfortable, but it sits easier on his face, less like a raging river and more like a brisk stream when he stops being wary and lets himself just be. His default is a passive frown but he starts to smile around them, easier and easier as the days start to blur past, and he talks more and more, sharing thoughts and (rare) jokes and offhand comments. For him and Luffy, it's simple - he's the perfect overbearing big brother to Luffy's annoying-little-brother - but for the two of them, it's different, two wild animals who want to get along but have no idea of where to begin.
He starts with her by making little comments - no, you want to hit like this, come in at a different angle - and corrections, and over the weeks it evolves into subtly poking fun, testing out her responses, seeing what she'll do.
The first time she takes the bait, bites back (come on, Ace, you're just correcting my balance 'cause you fell asleep in your soup and nearly drowned at the dinner table last night, and there's playfulness bleeding through to her expression and he stares) he's astounded. It's amazing and he's fascinating, so fun (and extremely easy) to mess with, bravado that so easily flips to flushing, feathers-puffed embarrassment. Hilariously, he's easier to tease than Sabo (though she can get Sabo with it too, if she's quick witted and creative), and Luffy (immune to her teasing by now) gets his revenge on the both of them by giggling hysterically, trailing after her own dry comments with potshots of his own, wailing exaggeratedly and cackling as Ace and Sabo return fire, banter getting better and better, every day, and it's fantastic. The four of them work.
Their dæmons start to interact, flying and romping together like Ilirya and Ran used to (four instead of two, a welcome adjustment), and it's a dizzying moment of disconnect after a hunt several weeks in when she glances behind herself and spots Ilirya carrying everyone else's dæmons, an undersized tiger vibrantly striped in orange and black with three little birds nestled on his back.
Somehow, they've found something that lives and breathes, healthy and growing and flawed. They've found something good.
The pace at which they improve approaches horrifying.
Valentine makes her first proper killing blow (not the little ones, they don't count!) a scant week after their ragtag group starts actually getting along. It's a massive bird, one of the mean buzzards with the sharp beaks that roost close to the mountaintop, and she snaps its neck with a pipe swing.
Her small competition with Luffy (entirely proposed and enforced by Luffy himself) ends with a strangled squawk and little fanfare.
"Nice," says Ace, rebounding off his own kill, and Ilirya (a slender garden snake hiding in her shirt, sitting this one out) whispers a quiet congratulations. Ace stares at her appraisingly as she looks at the still body on the ground, and his own dæmon wings to his shoulder from where she'd been harassing another, wearing the shape of a keen-eyed falcon for the occasion.
"Good job!" Sabo calls out, still running at a bird of his own, Luffy approaching it from a different angle, and- Luffy is pouting. Of course.
"No fair!" Luffy smacks at the squawking bird furiously, Ran twittering and flying in dizzying circles around its head to distract, clearly contrasting Sabo's powerful, targeted strikes and his dæmon's sleek hawk-shape, raking at their target with powerful talons. "How come you killed one of the big ones first? We train the same!"
A plethora of reasons come to mind. Luffy and Sabo are targeting the scant rest of the flock, so - with a quick glance around the sparse, rocky landscape to double check - she lets out a sigh and leans on her pipe like a cane, watching Luffy fondly. "I'm older, Luffy." Which is true, but. Well, not the only reason. "And I don't have a devil fruit to worry about."
All of that is true, but more than anything else, Valentine fights a hell of a lot more vicious than he does. She looks at what works for Sabo and Ace - movement, swings, angles - and copies it. It makes her a better fighter. Not because she's stronger, or way faster, but because she's more skilled, more observant, more adaptable.
Luffy's gonna figure it all out eventually. All her efforts now - exercises, hunts - are simply to make sure she's the one who's not gonna be left in the dust.
Sabo kills the last one with a hard swing to the head, and Luffy's still frowning, breathing hard.
"Just keep it up, Luffy." She smiles. "And hey, if you really want to know why… you can ask, any time. I'm still improving, but I can definitely give you some pointers."
The name of Sabo's dæmon is Selhalia. He calls her Halia for short.
Sabo is kind and playful and conciliatory and smart, full of contradictions. He mediates between Luffy and Ace, but for reasons unknown he can't seem to resist trying to mess with her, and his sharp tongue is surprising as it is entertaining. He doesn't get mean with it, not like Ace can, but he doesn't like to stop until there's a clear winner.
That means that sometimes they keep slinging their pithy one-liners back and forth like a tennis match when they're beating down bears and tigers. (It's an art, really.)
Ace pretends he's exasperated with the both of them, but he's definitely entertained. Even better is when Ace or Luffy tries to cut in (guys, shut up and concentrate, or hey! what's that supposed to mean?) and then her and Sabo pivot, focus their jabs on the interloper with glee as the boy in question backpedals. It's much more fun this way, she thinks, when she and Sabo can battle each other and then together in a heartbeat, and it keeps Ace and Luffy on their verbal toes, besides.
She'll always love messing with Ace (it's too easy), and Luffy's one of her favorite to have on her side (he can't do so well on his own but his follow-ups are the best, the perfect contrast of brash simplicity); still, when it comes to the verbal dance, Sabo's her favorite partner.
Ace and Sabo let Luffy into their spars when they get tired of his begging. By extension, Valentine is allowed in immediately after (to Luffy's outraged complaints of him doing all the work).
"I knew you could handle it, Luffy," she says generously, and watches him brighten up.
Too easy.
Honestly, she wasn't sure she wanted to hurry their participation along by contributing. She knows that she could probably make it happen in a couple days - a week, at most - with a mixture of cajoling, facts, and plain old asking (never mind the fact that she hasn't asked Ace or Sabo for a single thing, yet, and she doesn't want to break the habit). However…
She and Luffy aren't too good with their pipes yet. They can get a good kill in with some effort (alright, a lot of help on Luffy's part, and he hasn't yet made a killing blow), and their basic strength has improved (and is improving) at alarming speed (thanks to getting Ace's exercises out of him and their new massive-beast-hunting-lifestyle), but…
Well, to put it plainly, if they try to go one-on-one against Ace or Sabo, they'll get the shit kicked out of them. Or, more accurately, beat out of them.
Call her crazy if she's not looking forward to that. For Luffy or herself.
Still, she thinks to herself, staring down a grinning Sabo holding his pipe at the ready, at least it'll be over quick.
It is indeed over quick.
As is the next one, and the next one, and the next one. It's a good lesson for her pride, just in case she gets overconfident at any time in the future (which will be never).
To put it bluntly, Ace and Sabo are stronger, faster, and more skilled than them with their weapons. Their base strength is insane, and they deliver beatdowns with both speed and aplomb.
And smirks. They look pretty smirky, too, or at least that's what she thinks, staring up at Ace woozily from the dirt.
Valentine can throw a decent punch, kick passablyand hit things hard with her pipe. She can also jump crazy high and run fast and dodge very well, and she has fantastic reflexes, near-acrobat-level mobility, a good head on her shoulders. That's… about it, actually.
Luffy's much of the same, but his punching is made much worse by the fact that he always tries to use his devil fruit, which ends up fucking the punch to high hell as he trips over himself. He can run like a bat outta hell and dodge well (jump and leap as well as the rest of them, if a bit clumsier), but not much else, and his grasp on the pipe is basically a stopgap measure, because he doesn't like it much and she can't see him using it in the future. Call it a hunch.
When Valentine faces Ace or Sabo, she's on the run from the get-go. Getting a good hit in isn't pointless (they definitely feel it, especially so when she manages one with her pipe), but they're just a bit taller and faster, and with their longer reach, she almost never gets the opportunity to pause between her ducks and strafes and leaps, and when she does get one, it's usually a glancing blow and not a proper smack. The whole thing's a great lesson in keeping strong and dodging like hell 'til she finds the perfect chance, because in the short time she's been sparring, she's really only managed to land a real blow on either of them maybe three times each, and it takes a hell of a lot of patient vigilance to make it happen. In all honesty, she hasn't beat one of them once and she doesn't think it's gonna happen any time soon.
Eventually (and often sooner than she'd like), she overdodges or underdodges and has the space of a split second to do little more than think ohshit before she's getting a brain rattling punch or smack to the head. She just can't move fast enough, and all her thoughts on strategy are utterly pointless in the face of a plain-and-simple power gap.
It's frustrating and difficult, but she's definitely improving (dodging on a whole 'nother caliber and spotting opportunities to strike back and building muscle memory) which means she can't justify stopping. Unfortunately.
The only good news is that she wins against Luffy basically every single time.
Not because she's stronger than him. They're almost entirely on par in that respect, because they do the exact same exercises and both spend the rest of their time running around on hunts, building up their stamina and reflexes and basically everything else combat-helpful that comes from hunting down very lethal animals on a daily basis. No, she doesn't win because she's stronger. She wins because she's smarter.
Even without the pipes (and the spars are split pretty much fifty-fifty in terms of with weapons and without), Valentine just has a better grasp on her control (and Sabo and Ace's abilities, and her weapon) than Luffy does. Luffy struggles constantly with trying to figure out his devil fruit, and while it'll give him a crazy boost in the long run (once he figures it out), for now it holds him back. Valentine dances around him and punches, shoves, kicks, and finagles her way into victory after victory. And with the pipe, her victories come much faster.
The only problem is that Luffy can stretch, and in close quarters that gets to be a bit of a problem. Ace and Sabo can shrug him off easy, but her strength isn't built up enough yet to escape from loop after loop of rubbery arms.
Still, as long as she doesn't make a dumb mistake, nine times out of ten she can get Luffy dazed from a good right hook (which she doesn't feel even slightly guilty about considering he doesn't feel pain or impact from blunt force) and pin him facedown to the ground with his hands tied in a knot behind his back. (She actually gets quite speedy at basic knots.)
The only way to get Luffy down is to put him down hard, immediately, but that much is true for all of them 'cause their stamina is so insane. It'll be different when they start learning ways to fight that'll burn that hard-earned energy, of course, but right now, their spars are a fantastic way to learn how to put someone non-lethally out of commission as fast as possible.
And make no mistake, she gets put out of commission very quickly, and very frequently.
"Sabo's point," Ace says, tone bland as he adds another tally to the board. Valentine, from where she's sprawled on the ground, rolls over to her back with a groan.
The canopy of trees above their chosen clearing (not the clover meadow, that's still a secret) is particularly lovely today, she thinks. Shame she's seen the view so many times.
Her eyes flick wearily downwards and she spots Sabo's extended hand, grasps it, lets him pull her up.
"That was good," says Sabo, smiling as she clambers to her feet. He lets go as she stabilizes, straightening. "I almost thought you were gonna hit me for a second, there."
"Shut up," she responds immediately, leaning down to snatch her longpipe off the ground. "I really did have you, you know it."
She did. Somehow, she'd nailed a dodge and lunged forward past the swing of his pipe and gotten inside his guard. For once, it had been Sabo backpedaling.
The resulting headrush from her small success had made her sloppy and he'd regained control of the fight almost immediately, putting her out with a neat blow to the shoulder soon after. (If they could, they went for hitting places other than the head, knowing what damage repeated hits could cause. And by 'they' she means Ace and Sabo, because Luffy doesn't take any damage and she never gets the opportunity to apply any of her hard earned carefulness. Definitely unfair.)
"Natural skill," Sabo smiles smugly, and at her deadpan look the smile melts into a more sincere grin. "Just practice, Val. You're improving just as fast as we did. Take your own advice and give it time."
She blinks at the nickname (Val? Really?) but lets it slide. "If you say so. Only reason I'm not askin' your secrets is that I can't fit any more exercise into the day. It'd kill me."
Staying clean is hard.
She has one (read: one) shirt (a maroon tank top, one of her favorites from home), one pair of shorts, and one pair of boots. Her socks are long in tatters by now, the fabric of her clothes worn thin from more handwashes than she can count.
And her hair is getting long.
"Too long," she grouses, fingercombing it furiously. She's thankful it's nothing like the echoes she remembers, curls and waves that tease into snarls easily. Instead, it's like Makino's (though the color is different), and she shares the same fine, straight strands that tend towards softness. She's lucky she has it, or else she'd have long chopped her hair off with the most convenient sharp implement she could find. Now, it's so long that it doesn't even need a washing every day, and it's easily fingercombed straight with the barest attention.
Definitely nothing like she remembers.
In fact, it's-
"Anything you need, Luffy?" Her tone is neutral, distracted, but Luffy just blinks, openmouthed, as she catches his staring.
"Can I touch your hair?" he reaches out with grabby fingers, bold as brass, and Valentine's eyes widen as she ducks away.
"If you wash your hands first." She's wary, but presents her terms matter-of-factly, because his palms are still stained with snake guts from the hunt, and Luffy works best with requirements communicated clearly.
"Okay!" he says cheerfully, darting towards the downstairs bathroom, thunderous thump-thump-thumps on the stairs as he elephant stomps down them at top speed.
She sighs out long and loud through her nose and considers chopping it all off anyways.
When she gets back home to Makino, she'll have to get her to teach her (and get the supplies) to figure out the best way to keep it out of her face. The jungle may have many things, but it has an unfortunate lack of hairbands.
She starts landing more hits on Ace and Sabo. Nothing even slightly approaching victory, but it starts to be less of an unmitigated beatdown and more of a struggle. This, she thinks, is a good sign.
Luffy, meanwhile, is improving at a slightly slower rate.
"Have you ever thought about when you let your arm go, Luffy?" she asks idly, reclined on the grass with her chin propped in her hand, still panting off the exertion from her spar with Sabo. (She lost, obviously, but she thinks she might've made him break a sweat that time. Maybe.)
"Just whenever, right?" Luffy's punching the air, muttering gomu gomu no…! over and over again, letting his fist fly elastically towards the treeline before it reels back and knocks him off balance with the force of its return. Ran zips through the air around him as a red dragonfly - a form she's taking to more and more often, these days - cheering him on in her peppy, high-pitched voice. The whole thing is as characteristic as it is adorable, and if it's doing nothing else, it's at least improving his range and his ability to stretch his own limbs.
Unfortunately, doing the same thing wrongly and repeatedly only breeds bad habits.
The background noise of Ace and Sabo sparring explosively in the background (the clang of clashing pipes and shouted taunts) washes over her, comforting and familiar. She breathes in, out. Strokes absently over the fluffy, dozing kitten form of Ilirya, curled up inches away in a patch of springy grass and sunlight. He purrs quietly, relaxed, a puddle of calico fur and whiskers and twitching ears.
(Even if they can all-out spar between themselves, they leave their dæmons out of it. Pitting soul-against-soul is something reserved for true enemies.
Plus, when someone you care about overpowers your soul with their own, it hurts worse than almost anything else. They learned that lesson the hard way.
So their dæmons always relax on the sidelines, or curled up in pockets, safe and away from the fight. Some lines aren't meant to be crossed.)
"Maybe do it when your hand's 'bout where it is for a normal punch," she suggests, offhand, scritching under Ilirya's chin (to thunderous purrs of approval). He'll figure it out eventually, of course, but surely that much is common sense, right? Not interference.
"Whaddaya mean?" Luffy's hand snaps back, narrowly avoiding clocking him in the face, and he shuffles back a few steps from the whiplash, teeters before he gets back balance. It's leagues better than he was in the beginning, already, when he couldn't even throw one of his arm-stretches before getting knocked down from his own returning force. Can't hit anything worth a damn, of course, but still. Progress.
"Like… throw a regular punch, maybe? The way your arm goes when you do that, just… copy it. If you just fling your arm around, it's not gonna hit anything."
"'Kay." Luffy pauses, and he'll never run out of determination to keep going, to muscle through and improve, but even to her, he looks like he's thinking hard. Ran, for once, has gone quiet, lands on the brim of his strawhat. "Show me?"
Valentine grins. With a huff of exertion, she pushes herself off the grass, reaches her hands above her head with a mighty streeeeetch, and strolls towards him to do just that.
"Hey. We're gonna go mug some people for our pirate savings. Wanna come with?"
Valentine pauses in her next sudsy scrub.
She's washing Luffy's shirt in a basin filled with soap and water while the boy in question is currently conked out, snoozing away the hottest hours of the day. He wouldn't usually be asleep, but he stayed up late with her the night before, mimicking her demonstrations and listening to her rattle off combat pointers (that in all likelihood went in one ear, out the other), so he barely slept.
"You don't think I'd hold you back?" Despite her vocalized doubt, she starts rinsing the soap away, cleaning the shirt off in preparation for hanging it to dry, movements automatic.
"You'd make a good distraction, at least," he replies honestly, his dæmon squeaking agreement from the haven of his cravat. "But you're not half-bad with the pipe. More than good enough to deal with the people we'll be beating up."
She's not sure she feels fantastic about mugging people for money (echoes of morality and Makino's lessons and the jungle, a cruel and honest teacher, war within her), but it's for a good cause.
"...Alright. Give me a second. I'm guessing we're leaving Luffy here?"
"For now. He can come when he gets his first kill."
"Got it." In interest of keeping Luffy safe until she scouts this entire operation out, she agrees with his logic. Ilirya scampers out of her shirt, shifts to a sneaky-looking ferret perched on her shoulder, and Valentine gives Sabo a rare, sincere smile, eyes crinkling. "I'll be right down."
Beating people up for money does not compromise her morals as she feared it would.
For one, they keep to the people who beat the shit out of others and steal their valuables, so. There's that.
(There's so many people that know them by name or reputation or appearance alone. She asks later and Ace tells her nah, we don't know who they are, but they know who we are. He says this with an anticipatory grin, and it's not one of the rare nice ones she's come to like. It's a smile she's not at all fond to be on the receiving end of (and she isn't, not anymore, as much as it makes her instinctually wary). She knows the fate of the people who it's for and she doesn't envy them.
Then he half-turns it to her (body language including, like they're in on a joke) and his eyes say, maybe without him even intending it: and they'll know your name, too.
She calms. The past is the past, and Ace is too all-or-nothing to do things by halves.
There's also people that live in the Gray Terminal that Ace and Sabo know. People of all shapes and sizes and levels of wear and tear who greet them by name, say hey, who's the girl?, grin in their directions in a way that looks half-deranged more often than not, their dæmons feral and hungry looking, and Ace and Sabo greet them back, bearing lofty and language rough like the lords of the streets that they aren't but they are, and they're just kids but she knows exactly where they get their arrogance from. It's from this, this fear and reverence, this infamy.
Whether friend or foe, this place is, indisputably, a place that knows of Ace and Sabo's strength. Which puts me, she realizes, above them in terms of combat capability. Even though I'm eight.)
For two, the dynamic is so different without Luffy that she doesn't spare much time to think about morals.
(Ace banters differently with Sabo. When Luffy's there, he always keeps aware of himself; always keeping the big brother role (though he'd furiously deny it if she pointed it out, no doubt). With Sabo and Valentine there, he sort of… well, he relaxes a bit. Talks to Sabo like normal and gives her the honor of extending his attentions beyond his best friend, including her in conversation, jokes, banter (and he's not the type to do that stuff on purpose so it must mean he really is warming up to her). He can tell himself whatever he wants, but Valentine's come to realize that beyond Ace's mean outer shell, Sabo is right: Ace may not be nice, but he is kind.)
For three, she's distracted by Sabo telling her all about the pirate savings. Which she's realized she wasn't supposed to already know about, so she's keeping her trap shut and letting Sabo refresh her memory.
"-so we can sail the seas, get out of East Blue. You wanna come with? You don't eat a lot, so you wouldn't put a dent in our funds."
The offer is offhand, casual, but Sabo keeps sneaking glances at her sideye and Halia is perched on his hat, a sparrow, peering over at Ilirya (still a ferret on her shoulder) with dark, pinprick eyes. Valentine laughs merrily. "Are you sure? I eat as much as you, Sabo."
"Not as much as Ace or Luffy. They eat like those crocodiles in the east part of the jungle." His voice is sly.
"Oi." Ace is taking the bait (she thinks he knows what he's doing, though, by the way a smile keeps trying to sneak onto his face, sticks there persistently, half-stifled, and morphs into a quirked, sarcastic parody of a grin). "I eat way more than Luffy, thanks. He could never keep up with me."
"You sure?" She grins, nudges his shoulder with hers, teasingly. He teeters before straightening, regaining balance, giving her a brief and inscrutable look. "His stomach can stretch. He's made of rubber, you know."
"Figures that that's the first good use he finds for that fruit of his." Ace tries to sound dismissive, but it comes out fonder than he's aiming for.
They share a laugh and the sentiment, warm even in this broken down, ragtag place, and her heart goes distant to Luffy, still sleeping (if they're lucky) back at Dadan's, safe and quiet (a rarity, for him).
Man, she loves that kid.
"If I come, Luffy can come too, right?" She's smiling, knows the answer, but she has to ask.
"Well. Yeah." Sabo. "He's just not along this time 'cause he's asleep and he's not strong enough, yet. Plus, we haven't even gone out to get money since you got hurt. Couldn't get rid of Luffy long enough."
"Ah." She meant with the whole pirate thing, but he's answering like she's asking about mugging thugs for funds, so she won't make a fuss about it.
Come to think of it, actually, what Sabo's said makes sense. Luffy is too restless to stick by her bedside (floorside), so he probably stuck to Ace and Sabo like glue while she was recovering from her injury. "Does Luffy know you want to become pirates?" She redirects the subject gracelessly, landing on the first question she thinks of.
"Nah. Never told him. Why?"
Valentine holds back anything that could give her away, including (but not limited to) a monumental anticipatory smile, a wheeze of laughter, and a maniacal giggle. "He likes pirates. He'll be excited to find out."
"Well, alright. If it'll get him training more. That kid needs all the strength he can get."
She tries her best, but she can't hold back the tiniest laugh. (Ilirya puts his paws to his muzzle and quietly cackles.)
(Luffy wins against her in a spar. Once.
Ace and Sabo won't let it go.
"Never knew Luffy was the strongest kid around-"
"Wow, Val, you gotta spend less time cleaning up, all those wasted hours are coming back to bite you in the-"
"Will you guys shut up?" She's dusting herself off furiously, ignoring the exultant cheers of Luffy in the background (I won, I won, I WON!) as she recalibrates, determined, and decides to never let it happen again.
She knows exactly what went wrong.
She got sloppy, didn't pay attention, and Luffy snared her in a bear hug close-quarters. She didn't escape fast enough - wanted to save her energy for future spars, didn't want to headbutt Luffy in his hopeful, determined face - and she was immobilized faster than anything. She lost.
She lost.
"...I actually can't believe you lost, though," Sabo admits, and she tunes out Ace still making fun of her so she can turn a sharp eye to Sabo, focusing on him. "You're stronger than Luffy. I mean, you're good. You always win."
"I got lazy," she admits quietly. Ilirya is a red-eyed treefrog clinging to her hand, cold comfort, and she sighs. "I let him get close. I assumed I would win, because I always do. But I'm not really stronger. I just fight smarter, and when I stopped doing that…"
She looks up to the sunlight filtering through the leaves. They're starting to go orange and yellow with autumn, getting older, as all things do.
"...I gave him openings. I got sloppy. I lost," she finishes.
Sabo is quiet as he looks at her, and after a moment she realizes Ace is, too. They both look thoughtful.
(Luffy is still cheering his head off in the background. She doesn't begrudge him this.)
She doesn't lose to Luffy again.)
Compared to Ace and Sabo and wild tigers and snakes, regular people and their static, stable dæmons look like they're moving in slow motion. It's comical how easy it is to land hits.
The curved tip of her pipe is resting against the ground. It's still relatively clean (for now, anyways. She avoided headshots because they bleed, went for the backs of knees and arms and shoulders instead), but she feels like it shouldn't be.
It's so easy that she feels a bit bad, actually. "Does it usually go this smoothly?"
"Pretty much," says Ace, currently rooting through one of the downed guy's pockets. His dæmon is pinning the guy's writhing snake dæmon (a common variety, no larger than a branch, nothing like the terrifying species that inhabit the forest) down with a careful paw to the throat, claws lethally sharp and extended to prick at its scales. Halia is out of her usual small, quiet forms; she's a python, coiled 'round the struggling dæmons of three others, eyes cold and tongue flicking out to taste the air as Sabo keeps watch.
"People here are weak," Ace continues, snapping her out of her thoughts. "Just the stationary pirate crews are a bit stronger. Don't really gotta steer clear of them, though, unless it's one'ah the leader guys, or there's a buncha them."
Sabo's nodding along. "Got it," she says, accepting, but she has a sneaking suspicion she's forgetting something.
They tear through the Gray Terminal like a hurricane, laughing and slinging friendly barbs (less friendly barbs towards their victims) and running all the while, dæmons shifting easy and quick like falling water, like breath, like the snap of a finger. Is this what being strong feels like?
(Why does she feel like she's forgetting something-)
She feels like she's forgetting something because she did.
Porchemy is a periwinkle-haired man with paper white skin built like a fucking tank. His clothes clash horrendously with his coloring, he wears a sabre belted to his mustard-striped hip, and despite his best efforts at ornamentation, his beady eyes and disproportionately large body remind her of a pig. That's just as well, with his boar dæmon trotting at his heels, tusks gleaming razor sharp in the sunlight even from such a high vantage point, so far away.
"Steer clear of that guy," Ace mutters, and they've retreated into the fringes of the forest, overseeing the entire terminal as they consider their options (between scouting for their next set of targets and finishing up for the day). They're on one of the massive boughs of the treasure tree (filled with gold and jewels and chalices, five years of work), but it doubles as a fantastic lookout. "He's part of the Bluejam pirates. Not crazy strong on his own, but sadistic as hell. Me and Sabo stole some money from his underlings, once. He's been goin' for our blood ever since."
"Good to know," Valentine says, faintly. She thought they'd dodged a bullet, all those weeks ago, but the shadow of the future is looming over them like a missed opportunity. Weren't they supposed to have avoided this? Or, because Luffy never interfered, did Porchemy never find them, and the Bluejam Pirates are still looking for Sabo and Ace?
(She didn't even remember Porchemy's name before Sabo mentioned it. He was just 'that big guy with the spiked gloves that won't lay a damn finger on Luffy, not in this lifetime,' and she'd thought she'd managed to carry through on that ironclad internal promise, made silently and with blood. It's not an extremely important detail in the scheme of things, but it's extremely relevant right the hell now. Why'd she forget about this? Why'd she put it behind her, like it was all over, gone, avoided? He's alive, he's right there, and he's going to be a problem, she can feel it.)
"He's probably looking for us. Good thing you moved in, Sabo. It wouldn't be safe for you to sleep here."
"Yeah. I don't wanna get scalped."
A chill tingles over her spine. "He scalps people?"
"Yeah. Does it for fun, too. We gotta make sure he doesn't see you. With how your hair looks…" Ace trails off, pinking over his freckles, barely visible through his dark tan. "You wouldn't wanna get caught." He turns away. "How much did we get for the day, Sabo?"
Sabo hauls out their bag of loot.
"Not bad," Sabo murmurs appraisingly, the gaping lip of the burlap sack revealing coins, pearls, and several golden cups and crosses. "Good haul today. Nothing special, but not bad at all."
There's a moment of silence, filled only by the twittering of birds and the buzz of insects and the rustle of the leaves, and Valentine gazes out into the Gray Terminal, eyes trained on Porchemy like a hawk. It's hard to even consider looking away.
"Thanks," Ace says, a non-sequitur as he breaks the quiet, and she startles to realize he's looking at her, dæmon (for once) unnervingly doing the exact same, a bridled weasel curled over his shoulders. She blinks. "For today. You didn't have'ta come."
"Glad I could help," Valentine replies honestly. She's very aware of her pipe - splattered with not just animal blood, now - laying on the bright green moss of the huge branch, Ilirya's teeth bloodied with the golden ichor that passes for the blood of other dæmons. It's slightly frightening and uncomfortable, the carnage she's wreaking on real people (not beasts, anymore), but she'll do anything to be stronger. Anything for Luffy, really. (And anything for these two, she's starting to realize with a sense of quietly dawning horror.) "Happy to help, really."
"Well, that's good," says Ace, grinning, "'cause you're invited every time we go from now on. You gotta pick up the slack for Luffy."
Valentine raises an incredulous eyebrow, but she's smiling. "Yeah?"
"Yeah. How else are we gonna buy all the food he's gonna eat?"
"Well," says Sabo, with the air of great genius, "we could just steal it."
There's a moment of silence.
Their first dine'n'dash is the next day.
Getting through Edge Town is utterly laughable, and before they enter the downtown area - strewn with the filthy rich and exactly the sort of restaurant they want to target - Valentine uses some of the treasure she hauled in the day before to buy an actual dress from one of the many secondhand shops boasted by one of the more rundown parts of Goa Kingdom. Out of the tank top and shorts she's been wearing for two months, she feels like a new person. Or an old person. A different person.
The boys certainly look at her like she is.
"Luffy," she says patiently, "I wore dresses back in the village. You've seen me wear dresses."
(The shopkeep looked at her strangely, but didn't ask questions - very used to shady customers and the art of not having a big mouth, running a business on the Edge - when an eight year old girl (herself, as odd as that thought is to reconcile) pushed the jeweled brooch over the counter. It's ludicrous overpay for the dress, but she got a new pair of socks and shiny, functional boots from it, so she's more than happy.)
"Yeah, but not for a while!" Luffy pokes at her sleeve - a puffy, capped thing with lace - before his hand rears back, wary.
"It's not gonna bite," she says, exasperated. As if pale pink fabric and white embroidery is the most lethal thing Luffy's faced in the past month.
"Get back in the disguise," Ace hisses, and Luffy's hand quickly zips back into the massive black overcoat, the whole lineup wobbling ominously for several seconds (she hears furious, outraged whispering) before it finally straightens up.
Valentine holds back her giggle with mighty effort. Even if this doesn't work out, seeing the boys in their 'disguise' makes it worth it.
She much prefers her own, obviously. There's something to be said about hiding in plain sight.
They eat at a steakhouse. Valentine's pretty sure she hasn't had steak since her last life. Luffy's pretty sure he hasn't had steak since ever.
It's a narrow line to walk, keeping Luffy from shouting out their identities for the world to hear and yanking him back, teetering, from the edge, but it's worth it (and not half-because it's not just her that does it). If it's not Valentine shoving a palm over Luffy's mouth then it's Ace or Sabo, and at one point her and Ace (both bracketing Luffy in the too-big gilded chairs of their fancy-as-hell private room) both slap their hands over Luffy's shouting mouth in tandem to keep him from yelling out for fourths (fifths? Sixths?) and busting their cover. Her hand gets there first, his (sticky and sweaty from steak juice and the exhilaration of getting away with it) clapping over hers with a resounding smack, and they both cut their gazes past Luffy's full-mouthed and muffled (slightly panicked, but that'll clear when he swallows his food) face and make eye contact. Faster than she can even blink a grin steals over Ace's face, eyes scrunched shut and fuller than she's ever seen from him, dimples indenting his freckled cheeks and eyes crinkling nearly shut.
Luffy swallows his food with a mighty gulp and they both yank their hands back, keep shoveling steak into their mouths (she needs to keep reminding Luffy to chew his food, 'cause otherwise he'll choke and the commotion of that would sure as hell get them discovered) and this whole thing was such a good idea, she's gonna let Sabo win their spars for a week. (Hah.)
She's unfairly pleased by this.
Luffy comes to the next treasure-hunting/mugging/Gray Terminal trip by unsaid consensus. She's glad she doesn't have to bring it up. Good chemistry, she thinks to herself, happy with the nonverbal communication, as Ace and Sabo do the work for her and break the news/invitation to Luffy. For if he wants to come, Sabo adds, offhand, and Luffy's going off like a bottle rocket.
Obviously, Luffy wants to come.
(They can't actually leave him behind on a regular basis, and it's not the least of which why that they don't really want to. He hasn't gotten a kill yet, sure, but if their dine'n'dash taught them anything, it's that the three of them collectively can manage Luffy.
Well, not really 'manage,' she thinks to herself ruefully, yanking Luffy out of the clumsy downswing of a thug's shitty sword. I don't think Luffy could ever really be managed. Mitigated, maybe. Or weathered. Like a natural disaster.)
Still, with all three of them looking out for him, Luffy's probably the safest kid in all of East Blue. Barring the ones that don't have fights with adults three times their size and hunts for crazy beasts twenty times their size.
Weeks blur together, training and hunting and the Terminal and dashes, the four of them getting closer by inches, and on a day like any other, they decide to go for ramen. There's something important about this, she knows-
(The golden pocketwatch Sabo flashes, the one with the embossed flower-)
They make their escape in a tinkling rain of shattered glass.
Valentine's heart is in her throat, giddy, as her dress flies up (she hears gasps from the crowd) from the wind tearing at her as she plummets down, down, down. Her free hand darts out like a snake and she catches hold of the long pipe anchored in the bricks (nothing, after keeping balance on slick river rocks and clutching handholds coated with slippery moss and honing her reflexes faster than a lunging tiger) and she's grinning so wide her face hurts as they run through the streets, dæmons a doberman/border collie/labrador/greyhound pup running beside them, yipping joyfully into the bright sunshine, because she never could survive a four story leap from before, could she? Let alone pull it off with that much style. The boys are happy too, chattering as they race down the road about the food, the fall, the fact that they pulled it off, and she can feel Sabo's arm jostling against hers as they run, see Ace's victorious grin and hear Luffy's laughter, and she can just tell (can feel it, somehow) that today is a good day-
"Sabo? Is that you?"
The moment slows, grays out, as she looks to the side.
It's a man - large, middle aged - with a black mustache and a top hat and a cravat. He's dressed in black and blue, and he looks stricken. As if, perhaps, his dead child is running through the streets of Goa with a pack of ruffians.
Her head whips back to the front and she keeps running.
(Sabo! Come home! The call echoes after them.)
Her good mood has been well and truly extinguished.
(Please, she's not ready-)
There's a confrontation, just as horrible and heartwrenching as she imagined, expected, knew it would be.
She intervenes when Ace grabs Sabo by the collar.
"Enough," she says sharply, and Ace and Luffy (who might've forgotten she was here, with how silent she's being as they corner Sabo up against a tree, press him for answers, and he looks so small-) pause in their barrage of an interrogation. Sabo glances over to her, and his expression is neutral, trying to keep it together, but his hat shades over his eyes and his expression speak of resignation in a thousand quiet languages.
Enough.
"This is Sabo. If it's important, he would've told us." She stares particularly hard at Ace, who's frowning, looking at her. He doesn't let go of Sabo's collar.
"I hate liars and cowards," says Ace. "If Sabo's been tricking us all this time-"
She can hear the ghost of hurt rising in his voice, and she cuts him off. "Sabo's not like that, and you know it." She's harsh, matter-of-fact. As she needs to be. "Let him explain."
(Even she does not assume Sabo will be able to keep this from them.)
He tells them.
My parents love money and power. Not- not me.
It's the hitch in his breath (the one she knows intimately, the one that comes when you're trying to hold back tears) that decides it.
She steps forward and pulls Sabo into a hug.
(He fell in love with the stories that people told him. Tales of lands across the sea, fantastical and strange, and isn't that so human? So hopeful? She wants to see those same sights, see him happy, more than anything-)
"Let's get out of here," she whispers, choked up like she hasn't been since she got her hope back in these boys, this family she's found. Sabo's still close to her, hasn't pulled away, but he hasn't reciprocated, either. "Let's see everywhere those stories talked about and more. Yeah?"
"Yeah," he whispers back, and then he's wrapping his arms around her and squeezing desperately tight. Not even a second later she can feel the unmistakable sensation of rubbery limbs wrapping around the two of them every which way, binding them tighter together with an oof and a watery smile
"Me too!" Luffy pipes up from where he's plastered against Sabo's side. "Hey! Ace!"
"I'm not gonna- hey!"
One of Luffy's hands yanks him in, sends him careening against Sabo's free side. Ace's arms come up, almost reflexive - one around Sabo's shoulders, hand clutching hard, the other yanking her even tighter - and then they're all laughing, Luffy loudest of all, and Sabo's crying quietly, trying not to let them hear, muffling his tears in her shoulder, painting the pink and white lace with salt.
(He's not an orphan. So what?
She knows (does she?) what it's like to have a parent that makes you want nothing at all instead- and she knows what it feels like to lose, grief gaping and hungry and all consuming-
Does she?)
They make a promise.
(The occasion in which they told Luffy about the pirate fund was immensely explosive and extremely hilarious, but she's glad it's in the past. These promises are too important to be delayed.)
She listens to Ace and Sabo pour out their souls, draw back the bowstrings of their hearts and aim for their goals. She feels full with it, the rebounding hopes and dreams that they carry. She's smiling so wide her face hurts.
She steps forward.
"I'm gonna see the whole world," she says, "everything beautiful and terrible in it. I'm gonna… I'm gonna protect you guys." Her breath hitches. "And I'm gonna be strong! Stronger than I ever was before…"
She trails off.
"I'm gonna live a LIFE WORTH LIVING!" She screams the last of it to the sea, the foam and the salt and the creatures down below, and it echoes within her. She's not empty, anymore, but full, full of sound and memories and feeling.
And love.
(When Ace has fame and strength and the fear of the world, he'll have them standing behind him, hands open to catch him if he falls.
When Sabo travels, writes his book and learns and sees everything, he'll have them, their letters and their smiles and their determination to keep him going, wherever he may be.
And when Luffy becomes pirate king, he'll have them. He'll have her. She'll stand beside him and keep him safe even when he doesn't need it, give him hugs and smiles and tough love and advice and company until (and maybe even after) he gets sick of her. She makes this promise to herself.
Even if they're not all together, even if they don't see each other, they'll never stop supporting one another. And that's a promise she'll keep 'til the day she dies.)
"Did you guys know?"
Her heart rises, shedding sparks, to her head. She almost can't think with how much she's feeling right now, joy golden like syrup in her veins. Ilirya can't stay still, shifts kitten-sparrow-dragonfly-ocelot-lemur-lizard-treefrog, flitting around with Ran and Halia and even Ace's dæmon, all shifting in tandem faster than she can look and they match, unmatch again, keep changing-
Ace looks giddy. Like he can't believe they're all listening to him say this, like he's been planning it for a while. He yanks out the cork. She swallows hard, tries to get down the lump in her throat.
"We can become family if we exchange sake. It's pirate tradition! And if we're all gonna be pirates…"
Everything - everything - crystallizes in her mind. The sunlight, the rustling leaves, the smell of salt and the sea, the crashing of the waves-
They're all sitting around a cut-off stump, four ceramic red sake cups (they must've been pilfered from Dadan's cabinet, they're too nice and scratched-up from wear to have been stolen) sitting on the wood, innocuous, and even Luffy and Sabo know that something momentous is about to happen, because they're paying rapt attention (even Luffy) as Ace pours sake into the cups.
He finishes pouring, tosses the bottle to the grass, raises his own cup with a grin. "We may not be in the same places, but we can always be with each other. We'll always be family! Closer than blood!"
Her heart hurts.
(So this is what Ace wants more than anything. A family. Something in her, baring it's teeth, fervently agrees and promises they'll never be taken away-)
"No matter what! So…"
"I love you guys," she says, clear as day. The changes she's made (to everything) ripple through everyone's lives, but never has she seen it so clearly as now, this ragtag group of shooting stars. She'll never let them burn out.
They turn to her, startled.
"Thank you," she says, soft. "For everything." Everything.
Thank you for loving me, she wants to say, desperate and raw. It wells up in her like an echo, but she can't think for the life of her where it's coming from. All she knows is she means it, means it with all her heart-
"We're family, now," says Ace, yanking her out of her echoes, matter-of-fact, and she tactfully ignores the sheen in his determined eyes because she knows he'd never admit it, knows he never cries because he doesn't want the world to see him breaking down, and she won't take the dignity of that choice from him. "You don't have to say thank you for stuff like that."
"Yeah," Sabo adds, a gap toothed grin on his face.
"Yeah!" cheers Luffy.
She just laughs, joyful and watery. She raises her cup.
—
Notes:
(ASLV. Let's see how long that lasts, shall we?)
Dæmons show a lot of insight into character dynamics and hangups, here. Bonus points if you can figure out any one characters' significance.
Also, a spotted hyena is actually extraordinarily fitting for Dadan. Just check out the wiki page (though you might want to steer clear of the more explicit bits and skip straight to the behavior section).
Chapters are coming out quick and hot because I'm currently in love with this universe. 10k chapters every two days is not gonna be the norm. ^^;
(Formatting may be slightly fucked in this chapter, but I can only do so many rereads with how ao3 on mobile glitches before I lose my mind. God, I hate ao3 publishing on mobile! Unbetad, but I don't think there's any spelling mistakes - or at least I hope not - and any defiance of the rules of grammar are entirely deliberate and stylistic. Runons are in vogue, haven't you heard?)