She wakes up in the morning, and for a moment, she's half-asleep, befuddled and confused.
Where…? Oh.
It all comes rushing back to her. A film reel worth of images flickers through her head, the whole nightmarish picture of them baldly true, terrible, unignorable.
And still, she doesn't cry.
Ace and Luffy have shifted during the night. Now, she's blinking up blearily at the worn wooden ceiling (so unfamiliar, after just a few months), bright with sunlight coming through the window, blankets strewn every which way (but her pillow - thankfully - still under her head). She's on her back, but her arms are entirely asleep; probably, she thinks, due to the boys still snoring away on them.
She really thinks she can't move. Luffy's cuddles (and hugs) will always be difficult to escape (the elastic arms give him too many failsafes), but hell's bells, Ace is holding onto her very tightly. His head is pillowed on her bicep, drooling away on her shoulder as his arms wrap tight around her torso; even closer than he was in the haze of falling asleep, if she remembers correctly.
His legs hook over hers (same as Luffy's, if a tad less elastic), not a whisper of space between the three of them, and god, she feels so warm. They aren't entirely covered with the blankets - Luffy tends to kick them off during the night, restless, clingy sleeper as he is - but all three of them together generate more than enough heat to ward off the winter chill.
…Would be warmer with four.
The thought is tinged bitter and bereft with its immediacy, as it strikes her, and as it seeps into her, melancholy, she quickly stifles all her emotions before they can leak into a sigh.
As if roused by her dark thoughts, Ace shifts, yawning sleepily into her neck and pillowing his cheek more firmly on her shoulder with a sigh. And at that, Luffy - ever the reactive sleeper - repositions, and (with the most accurate aim he's had to date) punches Ace squarely in the nose.
Ace rears back with a startled squawk (the indignant, enraged betrayal of a cat whose tail has been trodden on), and after that, like most mornings, things get very loud.
Her plan solidifies over breakfast. Farfetched and probably impossible though it is, she doesn't see any other options. However-
First things first.
Ace - tired, still, but armor reapplied overnight, the guise of normalcy painted over a house that's falling apart - agrees that they should move the treasure fund. Probably should have moved it a while ago, actually, given how damn big it's getting (and additionally, due to the fact that more than a few Gray Terminal inhabitants - mostly the Bluejam Pirates, not that there's much left of them now - know about it, half as infamous as ASLV themselves have grown, and don't think about the possibility of 'ASLV' changing, don't think about it don't-). Even if the fire that Bluejam rambled on about isn't gonna happen - since they left Bluejam with a broken wrist and bleeding head, unconscious on the dirt in the middle of the Gray Terminal with his knocked-out crew strewn around him, and even if Luffy didn't consider it, they of course knew what would almost definitely follow their departure - they have the ability and power, now, to hide the culmination of their life's work in a much taller tree. And there's no point in keeping it near the terminal. There's nothing left for them there, not anymore.
Nothing.
They move the treasure to their hideout with burlap sacks pilfered from the same storeroom they slept in. (They leave it guarded by traps, Sabo's traps, and who will renew them when they're gone?) They'll make another treasure tree later, when their wounds have healed, when they find the time to carve a new compartment out of solid, leafy boughs. When they have all the time in the world.
(Luffy is pleading with Ace, begging him to go back for Sabo, please, Ace, he's our brother!
Valentine notices Ace's patience dwindling, dipping sharply when Luffy uses that word - brother - but she categorizes it absently, brain mired in other things, faraway and burning like a star.)
They're on the hunt. Everything is normal. Everything is fine.
(They run through the trees, easy as breathing, dæmons flitting overhead, but Valentine knows that they all feel the absence keenly. Has there been a single day, since she met them, that she hasn't spent with these boys? She doesn't think so.
Sabo. Sabo.
She misses him sharply, fiercely, like burning.
She will get him back.)
"But Ace, Sabo is our brother, we can't leave him behind! We need to go and get him, Ace, please-"
"Shut up, Luffy!"
Ace's expression is wild, almost feral as he whirls around, and Valentine transitions from distant thoughts and planning to being there so fast she almost gets whiplash, doesn't waste the time to think before she reaches, yanks Luffy back and shoves him behind her. She kills their momentum in an instant, digging her heels into the ground.
"Don't," Valentine says, staring straight at Ace as he starts forward, her voice low and terrible, and clarity snaps back into his eyes.
He looks first to his rising hands - like they've betrayed him - then at Luffy - too slow at reacting, still not having moved out from behind Valentine's arm, startled - and then, finally, to Valentine.
Whatever expression he sees on her face, it makes him flinch.
"Come on," Ace mutters, turning around again to keep walking forward. His voice is low, Aurelia shifting to something small and tucking herself into his sleeve, and he walks ahead, shoulders hunched like the world is pressing down on them. (In so many ways, it is.)
Luffy mutely ducks out from behind her arm to trail after him. Belatedly, she lets it fall, and for a single moment, Valentine tells herself to breathe in, breathe out. She closes her eyes.
Ace suggests going back to Makino's.
"No," Valentine says clearly, gnawing on the haunch of deer she has in her hand, and it's the first thing she's actually said aloud all day other than don't. (At Ace's side, Aurelia is ostentatiously not in doe form. She's not a mouse, anymore, though, entirely back to normal and wearing the form of an ocelot as she drapes herself over the riverside's muddy ground, but then again, she didn't talk in the first place, did she? Not like Ilirya.)
Valentine tries to keep her awful thoughts off her face.
"No?" Ace sounds as if his asking had been mere formality and her answer was supposed to be a foregone conclusion: like he hadn't even considered she'd utter the word 'no.'
"I have something to do in the terminal," she says honestly, polishing off the meat in her hand and tossing the clean bone into the fire.
Ace's eyes narrow.
(Ilirya's not talking.
He'll shift to anything she asks him to (which bodes well for the plan taking firm root and blooming in her head), but he's not talking.
Just like Aurelia.
This, just like her lack of tears, she pushes aside. Later. Later.)
In the end, Luffy is integral to her plans.
Who else would keep Ace distracted?
The tenryūbito are visiting in three days, and between all the muddled facts and figures in her head, this she remembers clearly, sees on the newspaper left on Dadan's coffee table, a careless confirmation. She needs to get to him before the visit, before the fire-
Well. Just the one fire. The fire in the Gray Terminal won't be happening anyways, considering how they put Bluejam entirely out of business just a day before, so she can't use it as a point of reference.
(It's a forgone conclusion, but to be entirely frank: who can carry boxes of flammable oil with a broken wrist and a busted head? Plus, he said he'd be executing his whole crew at his nearest available convenience, which leaves nobody to do the grunt work for him.
That is, if he's not dead already, picked off by the opportunistic scavengers that rove the Gray Terminal. Throat slit, maybe, a better death than he deserves, but a final one, at least.
Such a shame.)
She keeps her cruel thoughts to herself, coaxes the next step of the plan into motion. This, she thinks, will be the easiest part.
It makes her feel extraordinarily guilty, how easy it is to manipulate Luffy into distracting Ace.
Not guilty enough to stop.
She wishes to god she could just tell him, give Luffy the hope and reassurance he so desperately wants (and deserves), but she doesn't know if the entire thing will work out (if she'll even come back), and as much as she loves that boy, she's perfectly aware that he can't keep his mouth shut for anything. Luffy would blurt out the truth - maybe not immediately, but eventually - and then Ace would try to stop her, convince her, or - the worst possible scenario - come after her once she's already gone, and that would ruin the delicate balance of events she prays to god will come to pass. No plan survives contact with the enemy, she knows (she's heard it somewhere before), but this plan doesn't demand perfection. Just a quick wit, some forethought, and several important factors.
Speaking of important factors. There's Dogra, exiting Dadan's house now.
Valentine slips smoothly off the low bough of one of the smaller baby oaks surrounding Dadan's clearing, lands easily on the ground, and paces over to him, a convincing smile painted on her face. Showtime.
Ace and Luffy are seeing how many snakes they can kill in the jungle, making a whole competition of it, and she knows Ace is offbalance and more than slightly fucked up from this but she trusts him with Luffy's life at the very least, even with the buried deep anger and frustration that Sabo's kidnapping must be rousing.
(Especially after what happened before. The guilt will keep him in line.)
She'd stoked Luffy's enthusiasm, hyped him up to the point of unstoppable excitement, and obviously, Ace had suspected her of something, he's not blind (far more perceptive than she gives him credit for, sometimes), but he couldn't stop her and he wouldn't suspect her of using the opportunity to do something so drastic.
At least, she was counting on the fact that he wouldn't expect it.
For all Ace knows, she's trying to get Luffy fizzing with energy like a soda bottle in order to distract him - not too far off the mark, actually - so she can keep his focus off Sabo's absence, and she knows Ace thinks she wants some distance from the two of them, too, can read it in the self-blaming set of his shoulders and the way he avoids her eyes, looking at the trees, the beasts, the path, anything but her. Ilirya hasn't started speaking again, something that both he and Luffy have noticed, and while they're both acknowledging it in different ways (Luffy brashly, Ace with a fraction more tact), Ace has always been very respectful of her rare (but necessary) need for space. That, and he's a person with a strong tendency to blame himself.
She's taking advantage of that.
Luffy hasn't been (typically keen on giving her alone time, that is, or blaming himself), but then again, he's also easily distracted by the suggestion of a snake-killing competition between him and Ace, so. Can't keep seven-year-old boy (let alone a seven-year-old Luffy) on track for long.
That squared away, she returns to the house, tossing a casual see you later over her shoulder with a wave, knowing the bare bones of Dogra's schedule and hoping to catch him before he leaves for his mid-afternoon forage for mushrooms and berries. And luck is, for once, on her side, because she does.
She has pipe in hand, a small satchel full of treasure from the treasure fund (she's certain Ace and Luffy will be more than okay with the thievery if this whole thing works out) tucked under her shirt, and she's squeaky clean from a hurried mid-afternoon bath. The only bandages she still has on are the ones that remain unseen under her clothes - for posterity - and she thanks her lucky stars that it's winter, or else she'd be wearing lighter seasonal shorts and a tank top right now, and that'd mean she'd have to improvise. Thankfully, the fading cold weather provides her with plenty of excuses for long sleeves.
If all goes well, she'll be back sometime tomorrow.
Dogra shows her his bolthole into the Goa kingdom, a tunnel dug under the wall and known - to Dogra's knowledge - only to himself. His voice is trembling (a sharp contrast to his blue-tongued skink daemon, motionless and sunning itself on his hat) as he tells her, shows her how to spot it and shift the landmark cover of a truly massive mound of garbage out of the way, because Dogra (for how little she's known him, spoken to him) clearly cares for Sabo deeply. When she told him what this was for - I'm getting Sabo back - he didn't question her, all the subtly desperate, hopeful facets to the determination on her face. He looked at her warily, yes, but didn't dare try to stop her.
He might even be hoping she'll succeed.
Edge Town is a familiar sight.
The gangs don't faze her (take little to no notice of her, anyways, the way she looks now), nor does the trash and narrow, labyrinthine alleyways. Valentine has been here often enough that she knows the territories and haunts of each gang patrol, so she knows exactly how to stay out of the way of the worst of them, smoothly ducking into alleys and roads so thin they might've been gouged out of the earth, cracks in Goa's shining, perfect image.
She has allies here, as well - not just enemies - but she doesn't want to be spotted. Better to make an entirely clean getaway once it's all over and done.
(Most people in Edge Town are easily bought out. With her plans being long-term as they are - even if people are unlikely to betray her for fear of invoking ASLV's wrath - she won't risk it.)
She's well known to everyone in the fringes, but completely alone and with her hair tucked under a spare newsboy cap borrowed from the storeroom, she could be anyone or no one. With Ace and Sabo and Luffy, she's recognizable enough to send people running in panic (fear?), but without them, she's far less conspicuous.
(Which is convenient, she realizes. If you're only known within the context of a group, then it starts to provide untapped opportunities for inconspicuity while going solo.)
And, believe it or not, there's plenty of overlookable street rat kids that roam Edge Town and the Gray Terminal. They're nowhere near as strong as Ace, Sabo, herself, or even Luffy; just normal kids, all of them (or as normal as you can be in this world, anyways), defenseless as any kid usually is, and with her hair hidden and pipe discreetly tucked under the short cloak she's wearing (an article courtesy of her destination, actually), she looks like she could be any one of them. If a bit clean, but that can't be helped.
Slipping from alleyway to alleyway, she fits right in.
She finds the shop she's looking for.
She pushes the door open - no tinkling bell to announce her arrival, this is Edge Town after all - and as she lets it close behind her, takes in the racks of clothing, all used or stolen or secondhand, mostly shrouded in dim light. A few beams of sunlight wiggle through the cracks on the painted-over windows - blacked out for security reasons, not that she can blame the owner - and illuminate the motes of dust floating lazily through the air, the cheap wooden floors and the peeling wallpaper. Not a luxurious place, by any means, but Valentine of all people knows the value of a deceptive appearance.
"Hello, Simmons," Valentine greets formally, approaching the counter at a leisurely pace. "Lovely afternoon."
A pearl-spotted owlet dæmon is perched on the cash register, lamplike yellow eyes reflecting all the calculating shrewdness apparent in her human counterpart (if you look past the anxiety, that is), and Simmons himself - currently scrawling in the ledgers, if her quick glance beyond the counter is informs her correctly - nods sharply in her direction. "Hello, Valentine. Come for another dress?"
"Yes," she admits, Ilirya curling around her wrist, the poisonous yellow crest and scales of an eyelash viper looking like mustard in the dim light, patches struck gold by the shafts of sunlight. Like an expensive, deadly bracelet. "But something more, this time," she murmurs, offhandedly observing the already-calculating air apparent in Simmon's fractionally narrowed eyes, the minute tapping of the nib of his quill on the desk. Perfectly within expectations, but that's not a bad thing. Better the devil you know, after all.
"What sort? I have some special pieces in the back."
Implied is that he's acquired these pieces with her in mind.
(She is his most loyal customer.)
Valentine smiles at him serenely, Ilirya's diamond head rising from her wrist like a warning, yellow scales slick and deceptively lethal. She takes no joy in how his owlet's feathers puff, unmistakeable, clicking her beak in what Valentine knows to be a nervous tell.
There's no room for negotiation in her voice when she speaks. "I need you to get me the dress of a high noble."
Simmons is a very convenient contact to have.
She knows that his tightlipped manner isn't entirely due to how much money she pours into his business, for one. There's plenty of clothing shops out there in Edge Town - some better than this one - but Valentine has a predilection towards brand loyalty. Discovering that Simmons was more than a simple shopkeeper after her first purchase had only cemented that initial, serendipitous choosing, kept her coming back again and again to buy apparel (kerchiefs for Makino, new shirts for the boys, more dresses) that she didn't explicitly need. She and Simmons - despite all appearances - get along, and that reflects itself in their flourishing business relationship.
It's lucky that his shop was the one she chose, fatefully, for the purchase of her first dine'n'dash dress.
He deals in information.
It's a difficult line to walk in Edge Town (especially for someone who can't defend themselves, no combat prowess whatsoever, nothing but their words and their wits), but Simmons walks it with ease. It helps that the Bluejam Pirates (previously the biggest gang influence in Goa) can't (couldn't?) reach very far here, and that within Edge Town itself, ASLV remains undisputed at the top. (And will continue to do so.)
Simmons is (subtly) under her protection, cemented because the last time someone trashed his shop, she tracked the Sharp Fang gang member grunt down and beat the shit out of him. (That's probably the one thing that gave her most of the points on her punch card. Metaphorical punch card. Simmons doesn't really give discounts.)
(She remembers the shrieking of his owlet as she dashed out the door, the thrill of the chase rising in her breast as Ilirya dashed along beside her-)
This cumulation of exchanges, in the end, is the only reason Simmons is letting her stay in his back storeroom overnight.
Simmons, of course, knows about the would-be fire.
"Heard about it a few weeks ago," he mumbles around a cigarette, rifling through a crate of frilly shirts. His own wear is formal - brown vest over white buttondown and dark slacks, well-worn dress shoes - but it's nowhere near the garishly ostentatious fashions of his merchandise. It suits him and his dæmon both, the browns and creams.
She asks why he hasn't let her know about it before now.
"Would'a said something if you swung by. Guess you've been busy."
He's not wrong.
She sighs, trying to exhale some of her tension. "That makes sense." Simmons doesn't have any runners or underlings, nobody to take any of the weight of his business off of him. He doesn't trust anybody else to do it right.
That sort of paranoia is a little outside her purview, but it's understandable. Even if it makes her paranoid for his betrayal. "Well, it doesn't matter anyways," she says, breaking the comfortable silence. "The Bluejam pirates are done."
His face half turns towards her, cigarette dangling from his lips, and he arches a single, incredulous brow.
Everything is finally in order. All she needs to do is exist in this bubble of plans and uncertainty until tomorrow.
The waiting is the worst part, she thinks to herself, tension fractionally relaxing out of her shoulders with a sigh. The sun has long since set, her belly filled with the same simple fare that Simmons had for dinner (the size of it nowhere near the sheer mass of food that comprises her usual meals, but she can survive on exceedingly little if need-be), and she considers going out for a roam, just to see if Sabo managed to sneak out from his family's and save her some of the work. She glances out the cracks in the window, trying to catch a glimpse of the evening sky.
…Sundown has already passed. Why is there light?
"Simmons," she says sharply, and his owl shrieks.
The world outside is full of smoke.
The fire won't come over the wall, she thinks to herself numbly, staring up, and up, and up at the towering column of smoke lighting up the evening sky. She hears the door slam shut behind her as Simmons comes out as well, feels his presence behind her as he too gazes up, and up, and up.
"I guess your intel was wrong," he says, and she hears the flick of a lighter and smells the burning trail of cigarette smoke as he lights it.
"It can't be wrong," she breathes, still stuck in that dreamy place inbetween horror and disbelief. "I beat Bluejam myself. I smashed him in the head with my pipe, I broke his wrist, there's no way he started this fire, his crew should be dead-"
She distantly realizes she's hyperventilating when she feels the coiling squeeze of scales around her wrist and forearm - Ilirya, wearing the red and yellow and warning black of a coral snake - bringing her back to her body, shutting her mouth with a click. The world around her pops and sings, the clamor of voices (young and old and all terrified) rising above the distant roaring of a fire bigger than any blaze she's ever seen, unlike anything she's ever felt. It roars and consumes, belches smoke, and the unique smell of burning trash reaches even this far, far beyond the boundaries of the wall. Burning trash and burning bodies.
Simmons, still smoking, blessedly says nothing. He doesn't reach out to her shoulder to offer comfort, doesn't say a word, and terribly, desperately, she's glad. She wouldn't be able to take it without shattering.
"The fire won't come over the wall," she says, her own voice muffled in her ears, almost entirely sure she's right. She directs the words towards Simmons, over her shoulder, but doesn't turn around, unable to tear her eyes off of the blaze. Already, it's so high- "I'll be back tonight. My plan for tomorrow is the same. If I don't come back, scratch my order, and I'll compensate you later."
Without another word, she dashes towards the wall. Towards the fire.
Ace and Luffy should be fine. There's no reason for them to be in the terminal- they had their contest, we already moved the treasure fund-
She's not going over the wall. What the hell would she do, wander around the blaze like a fool? No, if Luffy and Ace aren't there, she doesn't have time to spare worrying about the Gray Terminal's inhabitants. They might be saved, some of them at least, and that's more than enough to assuage her barest twinges of conscience, because she doesn't have the time-
(She feels Sabo. Out here, somewhere close, if she can just reach him-)
Valentine dashes through alleyways and side streets, fighting the tide of gangs and children and civilians fleeing inwards, closer to the rotten core of Goa. It takes her too much time, ducking beneath elbows flung to the side and panicked bodies that yell and scream and cry, hidden beneath her cap and cloak, and beyond the stifling clamor, the terrible feeling comes over her without prompting-
Abruptly, she exits the last alleyway.
The crushing crowd has long since faded around her. She doesn't know how much time has passed, but it's too much, and she's panting, coughing from smoke inhalation, Ilirya migrated from her forearm and wrist to her shirt (to avoid the touch of the sheer mass of people.) She sees-
She sees-
A massively tall man in a dark cloak walking towards the wall.
He's bridging the empty gulf between the fringes of buildings and the towering barrier of stone, putting one foot in front of the other; slowly, wreathed in ambient smoke and light, like he has all the time in the world. Beside him, almost larger than he is, walks a silverback gorilla; unfazed by the blazing flames just beyond the wall, on all fours, silvery white fur of its back glinting from the castoff light of the fire, the rest of its body pitch dark in the night. They look one and the same.
The feeling resolves itself into certainty.
"Dragon," she says, barely louder than a whisper.
The man in the cloak - nearly forty feet away - stills. His dæmon does the same.
Her attention narrows, discarding the guards and the small crowd at the closed main gate, the towering blaze and the smoke, because-
That massive gorilla is turning around. It doesn't flash its fangs, doesn't do anything other than look, eyes dark and intelligent, but her breath catches.
And then he's in front of her.
Her eyes jerk up to his face, shaded by the hood of the cloak. A crisscrossing pattern of red climbs up the left side of the figure's exposed skin, from jaw to hairline, past where the light touches, and she catches glimpses of a beaklike nose and a frown. This is-
"Dragon the Revolutionary," she whispers. Her hands are shaking, but she doesn't break her gaze, and she realizes with a shock that she's making eye contact, black eyes so unlike the kind and childish ones she knows staring back at her. These eyes demand a reason, demand a why, and she answers.
"You're Luffy's father," she says, utterly certain.
"...Yes," he says, voice deep and masculine. At his side, his dæmon breathes, pace steady and seemingly unaffected by the smoke. Neither of them move.
"And you saved Sabo," she says, heartbeat roaring in her ears, equally certain as before. His expression doesn't change.
"The noble boy?" At her mute nod, he raises a hand, pointing to the gates, to the guards.
"I delivered him to a safe place," Dragon says, and the sheer command in his voice makes her want to- "He was picked up by a bystander, likely relinquished to the police soon after."
"Dammit." It springs out of her, helpless, hapless of her surroundings and her company, fists clenching, and for a single second all she focuses on is drawing in her next breath. The smoke in the air, the yells and clamor, the hellish orange light, the heat-
"You know my son," Dragon says. It's not a question.
"Yes," she breathes, throat still choked from her failure. She was so close-
"Good," he says, a certainty she doesn't possess ringing through his voice. "You will do many things."
Great, she thinks, or terrible?
Whatever question she wears on her face, it must not matter, because Dragon the Revolutionary and his dæmon turn around.
They must leave, between one heartbeat and another, but she doesn't notice, stuck in her maelstrom of thoughts, in the desperate, pointless failure of being almost close enough.
She doesn't know how it happens, but she gets back to Simmons' shop.
She must've traced back through the labyrinth of alleyways, must've ducked into The Golden Needle - passing Simmons himself - and lain in the darkness of its back room, ignoring the noise and the light and the screams still audible outside the boundaries of the walls, the still-persisting smell of smoke, but she can't remember a single second of it.
Logically, almost getting Sabo tonight hasn't changed a thing in her plans- she didn't even factor this into the original, didn't consider the fire, so nothing has been lost - but it feels like she's lost everything.
Almost, she thinks numbly. The worst word. In any language.
She could have Sabo with her. With her right now. If she hadn't discounted the stupid fire-
Well, she thinks tiredly, viciously, whatever happened, Bluejam is dead. For good. He better be. If he isn't, I'll kill him myself.
It's cold comfort, but it carries her into the turmoil of her dreams. Wrapped around the silent form of Ilirya, curled beneath a blanket, she winks out of existence and fades into sleep.
When she wakes, in utter contrast to the morning before, she immediately knows where she is.
Wordlessly, she rises, discards the blanket. She ignores her aches and pains, hopes distantly that none of her wounds have reopened. As long as she doesn't bleed through the bandages, though, she doesn't suppose it matters.
Light is filtering through the back room window. Natural light, untouched by orange, and the sheer normalcy of it shakes something important inside her like a ragdoll, trying vainly to shred it.
She's not nearly fragile enough to be hurt by it, but she feels it regardless.
Mutely, she dresses, wipes the soot off her skin with a wet rag, smears perfume on her wrists and pulsepoint to hide the smell of smoke. She collars herself with gold and jewels, cuffs herself with the same, engages in a thousand other preparations, and only then, she thinks, she is ready.
—
—
—
—
Sabine startles at the knock.
So soon after? she muses, pushing off the plush loveseat and hurrying out of the tearoom, arriving with a click of heels at the cherry stained double doors. She impatiently gestures at the servants to open their main gate, pasting her best smile onto her face, plucking at the lace on her sleeves. What trouble could my troublesome son have possibly caused? He's locked up now, I can just pretend he's been that way for a few days, no trouble to be found-
The grand double doors open inward, letting in the light, and with it, the sight of-
Oh. It's not a scandalized neighbor standing on her doorstep. It's a little noble girl.
The girl is wearing a dress and accenting feathers befitting the season and the fashion, face painted with the delicate tones and colors suitable to a girl not yet come of age. She looks rich. And in high standing.
Sabine selfconsciously smooths her bejeweled fingers - emeralds, pah, nothing compared to the diamonds glittering at the girl's wrists and neck - over her frock. It's seasonal, yes, but a trendier set just came out a few days ago-
"Do you need something?" Sabine says, attempting pleasantness. This girl, whoever she is, obviously comes from a richer family - if not definitively one with greater status than Sabine's own, then probably so - which means she must be pandered to and satisfied.
"Yes," the girl says in a high, cold voice. Her brown eyes (unusual for a noble, but common in the more obscure families- does that mean she's of less status than anticipated?) are nearly flat with boredom, but her hair is long and sleek, adorned with a headband accented with golden feathers. She has the look of a child accustomed with performing her duty to its fullest with no deviations; a representative coming from her house, then, more than likely, a typical errand runner to denote visits and messages having more importance than those performed by an ordinary servant. Not unusual, then, and she must not be a firstborn, by that line of logic, but Sabine supposes that a firstborn daughter would be a shameful waste anyways. Better to have a firstborn son, then subsequent daughters for marrying off and further vaulting in status.
Sabine likes her more than Sabo already. "Please, come in," she smiles, retreating into her home.
Her husband is away, Stelly is in class, and Sabo is (once again, and to stay, this time) in his room, which leaves only her to entertain the notions of the visitors. Sabine will do her wifely duty to a tee. Soon, this girl will be satisfied, entertained, and on her way, and if Sabine's lucky - which she intends to be - she will glean this girl's status, purpose, and what she has to offer before the end of it.
—
—
—
—
Valentine follows Sabo's mother into the tearoom.
Ilirya is a goldfinch perched on her left shoulder - the proper location for the dæmons of nobles to perch - and he's utterly still, untweeting and feathers smoothly unruffled. She's too aware of the weighty jingle of diamonds and gold around her neck, as well as the kitten heels she wears, but she keeps her expression - blank, unaffected, just a bit impatient, 'I have better things to do' - firmly on her face, as much a mask as the peachy pink lipstick and the subtle lines surrounding her eyes and sculpting her brow.
Her name is not Valentine. She is not herself.
"Please, my dear, sit." Sabo's mother - blond, longfaced, dressed in magenta and adorned with emeralds - has thin red lips, overt eyeshadow, and a painted-on smile like a doll. Her dæmon, a fully yellow cockatiel with two reddened spots of rouge, is silent, crest flattened, perched on the woman's left shoulder, as is proper. "My name is Sabine, but you can call me auntie."
Valentine can't see anything of Sabo in this woman, but she mercilessly stifles the thought before it becomes clear on her face.
She wordlessly sits.
"Tea? Cakes?"
"That would suffice," Valentine says smoothly, disaffected. She doesn't look aside as the woman flags down a servant, sends him scurrying out of the room with a harsh whisper.
"My family welcomes you," the woman says, unsubtly, back to normal volume. She, too, sits, perching at the opposite end of the richly brocaded couch. "To our home."
"My family notes your courtesy," Valentine returns. "How is your business?"
The multitudinous implications of starting with this question put Sabine at a firm disadvantage. As intended.
"Extraordinarily well," Sabine says, twittering a laugh. "Our ships have all made their routes safe and sound! And, ah…" Sabine's painted smile tightens, just the smallest fraction. "May I ask your name, my dear?"
"Charlotte," Valentine says curtly, eyes focused on the table in front of her (as is proper) but eyes narrowing, mouth downturning in displeasure. Her crossed ankles (ankles crossed for a girl, legs for a lady) don't uncross, but it's a near thing, and her stockinged toes itch in her uncomfortable shoes. The shined black tip of her heels tap the ground, once. Twice. Irritation, her posture reads, from the tip of her toes to her fractionally narrowed eyes. Impatience.
(Sabine will not ask her family name. It's taboo to directly inquire, as the lesser nobles - Sabine's own family included - don't have family names. Addressing the obviously richer party, she will not risk offense.)
"Lovely to welcome you into my home, my dear Charlotte!" Sabine twitters another nervous laugh, dæmon silent and still. "Our cook has the loveliest cucumber sandwiches- oh, they should be here soon-"
Even as she speaks, a servant knocks at the door.
At Sabine's come in, (a man with a well-groomed black mustache and a brindled dachshund dæmon-) the servant wheels in a silver cart laden with petit fours, scones, cakes, and tea sandwiches. The tea itself steams in fine china cups resting on saucers.
"Dismissed," Sabine bites, and the servant hurriedly retreats, bowing as he backs away.
Neither Valentine nor Sabine speak as a butler steps from his post near the wall, taking each saucer in gloved hands before placing it before the two of them.
Notably, he places neither saucer before either of them first. Instead, he gently places them before the two simultaneously - marking, Valentine realizes, an uncertainty in her status, but a belief that her family is in higher standing than Sabine's own.
Perfect.
Sabine waits with bated breath as Valentine reaches a delicate hand for her teacup. She wears a set of opaquely white lace gloves embroidered with gold thread; the fit serves to hide her callouses and the bandaged slice painted across her knuckles, but it also denotes her status as a child of certain standing.
She sips at the tea.
It tastes terrible. "Hm," she offers, placing it down gently back in its saucer.
Proper order of things followed, Sabine sips at her own tea, lets silence reign as the butler places hors d'oeuvres upon tiny plates. What sort of nobility doesn't have a record player in their tearoom to ease conversation? A black spot on their family, most assuredly.
The snacks look utterly delicious, but she doesn't react as her own plate is placed in front of her. Thoughts of Luffy stuffing his face with the tray in front of her are forcibly shoved from her mind-
"That will be all, Dalton." Sabine's voice is sharp, the butler's dismissal is clear.
The butler retreats out of the room with a bow. The door closes with a gentle click.
"I have come to discuss possible future prospects," she says, immediately following their being 'alone.' She wastes no time. This is the purpose of her visit.
Even looking straight ahead, she doesn't miss how Sabine's eyes start to gleam.
"Your family has an eldest son, yes?" she knows the answer to this question, but more importantly, so does Charlotte. She keeps her implicit knowledge an undercurrent in her voice.
"Ah. Yes. Our son, very recently returned to us, after… time spent studying abroad." Sabine twitters. "What of him?"
"My family seeks to forge connections through marriage to another family with a viable business. We seek to do so through marriage to an eldest son. If successful, our businesses would merge, producing a more profitable union."
She can almost hear the greed painting itself onto Sabine's upturned lips, the beri-signs filtering into her narrow blue (so unlike Sabo's) eyes. She keeps her tone disaffected.
"We are considering several families for this honor. Yours is among several, as your projected profits have exceeded a certain margin."
Sabine's voice holds terribly restrained excitement when she speaks. "Oh? And you've come to propose this?"
"I've come on behalf of my family to assess your firstborn son for viability in handling business."
Sabine stills.
"So, if you could remove him from his lessons," she pretends to assume, letting more impatience bleed into her voice, "I can begin."
"One moment," Sabine says, rising from her seat. She rushes from the room in a flurry of skirts.
—
—
—
—
Sabo is bored.
Coming after last night, it's the worst kind of boredom, stifled and trapped like a caged bird, and staring past the bars on his window, he knows he has to escape. There's bandages wrapped around his head, still throbbing from its assault from the guards (defenders of the weak, yeah right), but his thoughts are completely clear.
There's a hired bodyguard stationed outside his room - one of two, hired to watch his every move, to cage him - and there's no way out with him there, Sabo knows. But he has a plan for that. All he needs to do is wait. Wait for his chance.
He stares out the window, into the blue sky, and breathes, exhale shaking, as his eyes start to sting. He can't stay here. He can't.
Halia has been a monkey on his shoulder ever since last night - since that man with the gorilla, the one from the revolutionary army, the one that saved him - and it's 'terribly unbefitting of a noble boy,' he can hear the disdainful voice of his father echoing in his head, but Sabo doesn't care. He knows where he wants to go, now. Fiercer than his desire to be a pirate, his dream burns like a pyre, all his fragile ambitions burned at its altar.
He will be a revolutionary.
The fire burns in him. Brighter and hotter than the fire the nobles lit, trying to purge all the scum from Goa.
They should've lit the fire somewhere else, Sabo thinks to himself, disgusted. His hands clench into fists, teeth gritting. Then they might've accomplished something. Burning this whole damn high town to the ground.
"Someone's coming, Sabo," Halia whispers in his ear, clinging to his shoulder, jolting him out of his thoughts, and he startles, turns towards the noise as the door slams open.
It's his mother.
"Get those bandages off your face!" she hisses, towering, expression terrible, and Sabo flinches back (Halia doing the same, skittering down his arm to hang off his wrist) as his mother strides forwards, skirts rustling, and reaches a long, clawed hand for his face.
He can't help the sharp shred of fear he knows leaks into his eyes as her fingers grasp the edge of his bandage, peels off the edge of the gauze, starts unwinding the wrappings furiously. Sabo manages not to cower away (she won't hit him if he doesn't move) through the pain of the gauze pulling away from the scabbed over wound at his left temple. He closes his eyes, though he wishes he was strong enough to keep them open. He doesn't want to look.
He misses Makino.
And Luffy. And Val. And Ace.
He misses learning that blueberry pancakes are his favorite. He misses running with ASLV and laughing until he can hardly breathe, sparring until he collapses to the grass, exhausted, smiling so wide his cheeks hurt. Fighting together. Learning that it's okay to want to be close, that touch doesn't have to be pain, that it can make his heart full and happy if he lets it. Learning what it means to have brothers. What it means to have a family.
A thousand little moments that he clings to so desperately, now, shining and untouched by this nightmare that his life has become, because it's all he has, his only refuge from this reality-
His mother's hand retracts, taking the bandage with it - dropping it disgustedly to the carpeted floor - and Sabo's eyes open, weary, wary.
His mother looks him over brusquely, raking from his face (clean, no matter what he'd prefer) to his new and shined boots, uncomfortable and unbroken-in. Her eyes linger on his cleanly pressed button down, his cravat (no holes in this one), his blue pants, and lastly, on his scabbed over head wound.
"Put on your best coat," his mother orders, already whirling to leave the room. "And cover that unsightly scab up!" she shouts to a servant in the hall, sweeping through the open doorway.
Sabo blinks at the open door, baffled.
What?
"Please stay still, young sir," a servant whispers, scurrying from the outside hall, kneeling. She holds a gilded tin of power in her hand; to cover up his scab, if his ears aren't fooling him.
The servant starts dabbing at his temple. He considers making a dash for the open door.
Then his bodyguard steps in - the fat pale one with brown hair, cheap suit standing out against the blues and yellows his mother prefers for the wallpaper, carpet, decorative ornaments - looming, and Sabo subsides, Halia worrying at the cuffs of his shirt nervously, knowing his thoughts, his intent.
Patience. She doesn't have to remind him.
Halia climbs up his arm and shifts to a bluebird, matching what's proper, perching on his left shoulder, still as a statue save for her fine trembling, and he knows his mother would properly kill him if he came downstairs otherwise but he hates that Halia knows it and she does it before he can tell her to resist.
(Even his own soul has broken down again in this place. This is why he needs to escape.)
He lets the servant cover his face in concealing powder and makeup, repaint him with proper coloring befitting a noble. He stays silent and still as the servant leads him down the hall, down the stairs, taking him from the west wing and towards - if his memory isn't failing him - the tearoom. A guest, then.
"-and oh, that must be him now," comes his mother's voice. "Come in, Sabo!"
Bracing himself, trapped under the brocade of his best coat, Sabo enters.
His mother is sitting at the end of the 'visitor's couch' (at least that's what he used to call it when he was younger, when this house was a home and not a prison), though she's the only person in view over the high back. She gestures impatiently to her side, a tight frown on her face, and Sabo circles around the side of the couch, skirting around the coffee table, peers half-curiously to the other end of the couch, where the guest always sits-
The sight hits him like a punch to the gut. His breath hitches as his eyes widen.
"Sabo," his mother says sharply. "Sit down."
The world resumes motion. He keeps breathing. Halia's feathers have ruffled, he can see it in his peripheral, but he doesn't dare open his mouth, doesn't dare say anything in fear he'll shout, heart trembling in his throat.
Valentine, dressed in the jewels and finery and paint of a noble, is his mother's guest.
—
—
—
—
It takes every ounce of self-control that Valentine possesses not to rise from the couch and fling herself at Sabo, grab his hand and take off running towards the street.
Only the knowledge that they wouldn't make it farther than the guard outside the hall stills her.
God, he looks so-
So stifled.
Emotion rises in her throat and she couldn't look at him when he first caught sight of her, knew her reaction to the look on his face would've given her away. She kept her gaze ahead, proper, befitting a noble, and only (god it stings) looked at him when he sat.
The barest glance - landing like a hummingbird before her eyes flit away - makes her heart stutter.
How long has it been? A day? Longer? His face looks so alien, complexion smoothed by what must be powder. His eyes are downcast, posture defeated- like an animal (a child, a child) chained to the ground that knows it can't escape. She sees bruises peeking out from under the cuffs of his embroidered jacket, uncertainty and stifled hope in his eyes, even downcast as they are, staring hard at the ground. His fists are clenched, resting on his knees, Halia a trembling bluebird on his shoulder.
Her breathing is speeding up. "Now that your son has arrived," Valentine says - no, Charlotte, Charlotte says - "if we may acquire some privacy."
Her breathing - increased speed barely noticeable, but roaring louder than a foghorn in her ears - evens, calms, smooths out.
What is there to be worried about? This is simple business.
She ignores the attempts of Sabine's firstborn son to catch her eyes. How improper.
Sabine laughs, incredulous. Her son tenses in Charlotte's peripheral. "Surely, I can remain? Sabo gets… nervous, you know, he's quite an intelligent boy, but he can stumble on answers he knows well when he gets overwhelmed-"
"If your son cannot speak to me on his own, then he's hardly fit to run a joint business."
Sabine titters. "Of course, of course!"
"I assume you have ornamental gardens?" The implication in Charlotte's voice is that if they don't, she'll be taking her leave shortly. One is hardly a noble if they do not have money to spare on an ornamental garden.
"Oh, of course! The winterblossoms are particularly lovely this season- had them imported from a little island on our trade route, an incredibly profitable deal we've brokered with the locals-"
Sabine rambles on as she rises, furtively seizing her son's wrist to drag him to his feet when he doesn't immediately follow. A hairline crack trembles into Charlotte's composure.
"Your guard will accompany us," Charlotte says, loath to interact with this woman any longer than necessary. "One cannot be too careful."
Sabine - who has just been cut off mid-sentence - nods enthusiastically. "Indeed! My word, the epidemic of hooligans-" she tugs on her son's wrist, long, painted nails digging into the skin, "-in our beautiful city is truly an atrocity! I'm so glad some of the riffraff was disposed of, at least."
Charlotte nods, hands clasped behind her back. It's so gauche to bring it up directly…
Her dæmon is trembling.
"We can only hope our city will grow cleaner," she says. Her throat is tight.
"Yes, yes. In fact, my husband-"
Charlotte's mind blurs through Sabine's chatter as she leads them to the gardens. She focuses on putting one heeled foot in front of the other. Toe lining up with each following heel, as she learned, as she practiced-
"-millions of berries in profits, a truly astounding- oh, we're here."
Sabine halts. At some point, she's released her son's wrist, because he now stands off to the side - Sabine between the two of them - and the bodyguard trails behind, hulking and silent. An appropriate distance away.
"Well, these are the gardens!" Sabine smiles, a painted thing, and places a hand on her son's shoulder. "I know my dear Sabo will impress you. Won't you, my darling son?" Her smile doesn't widen. It worsens, deepens, but the boy doesn't flinch as her grip tightens.
"Yes, mother." His voice is a whisper.
"Good." Sabine turns her smile on Charlotte, transitioning from sharp to cloying, sickeningly sweet. "I'll be just inside, dear. Please, take as long as you like! If you have any further questions, I'll be waiting in the tearoom for discussion of business." Sabine titters. "I'm sure this will go wonderfully. And next time, perhaps our dear Sabo may visit your estate! Your, ah… family could be involved in furthering this wonderful opportunity!"
"We can only hope," Charlotte says. A hint of impatience.
"Yes, well." Sabine looks as if she wants to say something and doesn't know quite what. Instead of embarrassing herself - as she has been - with inane chatter, she instead simpers, gives her son one last firm pat on the head, and turns in a flurry of skirts to walk back down the path.
Charlotte is left with the son, the bodyguard, and the gardens.
"Let's walk," she says, brusquely strolling towards the flowering archway. The son hurries to catch up with her.
"Bodyguard?" Charlotte calls out, voice still acceptably quiet (not raised, never raised), head cocked imperiously.
The man hurries to catch up with them, closing the distance eagerly. "Yes… ma'am?" The 'ma'am' is an tentative, mildly incredulous uncertainty. Due to her age, no doubt.
Charlotte procures a neatly wrapped stack of beri bills from the folds of her dress. "Give us some privacy, will you? Not too far, but I wouldn't want anything overheard."
"Of course, ma'am," the bodyguard says, grasping the bills with an enterprising amount of speed. They disappear quickly into his coat jacket.
Without a word, Charlotte turns to walk into the gardens.
For several long moments, all she can hear is the even thump of her heartbeat in her ears, the pattering steps of the son catching up with her. She doesn't look back at the bodyguard, but knows he's waiting at the entrance, soon to be out of sight.
Charlotte keeps her pace even. Sabo- the son- catches up with her, and she turns round the bend of the first hedge she sees- he grabs her arm-
"Valentine," Sabo says, choked, and Charlotte shatters into diamond dust and fractured pieces.
"Not yet," Valentine chokes out, hand coming up - beyond her control, completely and utterly - to grasp at his forearm, returning the pressure twofold, lace-covered fingers grasping tight at his sleeve (she wants to tear these gloves off her hands but she can't, not yet), and she's never so badly wanted to be back home, safe, away-
NOT YET.
Letting go is one of the hardest things she's ever done.
"Walk with me to a place where we can escape through the hedges," she says, low and very rapid. She doesn't know how Ilirya is staying still and silent on her shoulder. "Don't touch me, don't walk too fast, and don't make any suspicious moves. Do not run."
He lets go of her, and she's immediately bereft with the loss of it.
Like an engine stuttering, starting, they start walking again. Valentine keeps her pace even. One foot in front of the other.
"How?" The single syllable is a choked whisper.
"Later," Valentine says, tone just barely uneven, hands clasped (proper) behind her back. "Focus."
They walk for a collection of moments in stiff, increasingly tense silence. Valentine is exceedingly aware of the bodyguard - who hasn't moved from the entrance - gazing in their general direction. She's not sure if he can see them beyond the hedges at this angle.
She absently categorizes the winter flowers. The winterblooms are lovely, sprays of snowy white with pale blue throats and frilled petals.
They continue walking.
"To the left," Sabo says as they come to an intersection. They turn.
"Twenty more feet and he won't be able to see us from the entrance," Sabo says. Valentine is- she-
They-
Time compresses and Sabo grabs her hand.
He ducks under the lip of the scraggly hedge- yanks her hand, dragging her along with him- and pulls her under.
Her spare lace-covered hand reaches down, instinctual, to hike up the hem of her dress. Can't get it dirty-
The branches tear at her arms and face, her paint, her mask, and Ilirya is still a goldfinch on her shoulder - huddled against the assault, but he won't move, won't change, he can't or everything will fall to pieces-
They're on the other side.
Valentine straightens up, immediately releases Sabo's hand with a pang, but he doesn't let go.
"We're still acting- Sabo-" her voice is frantic, and Sabo makes a choked sound when she says his name.
He lets go as if burned.
Valentine brushes the dried leaves off her dress - eyes darting around, quickly categorizing, assessing - and they're still on the fringes of the property, far away from the main gate, nothing but grass and the other side of more hedges surrounding them, a high stone wall dividing the lawn from the rest of high town.
Without a word, Valentine clasps Sabo's hand and jumps.
Her heels sink into the grass as she leaps up. She tows Sabo (who gasps in surprise, clutching her hand bruisingly tight) behind, five feet, ten feet, a vertical leap topping at fifteen feet high.
She springs off the wrought iron spikes at the top of the wall with her spare hand - gently, gently - and quicker than a wink they fall. She drags Sabo's flailing body over with her, keeping him away from the sharp iron.
Valentine's heels creak as they land on the cobblestone of the alley outside.
"Walk," she says, can't bring herself to let go of his hand, and it takes more control than even before to keep from breaking into a run. They were only up there for a second at most - the bodyguard might have seen them, might not, she can't control that outcome - and she knows this map like the back of her hand, has studied it, knows the pathways of Sabo's house and surrounding areas, more than a month of planning culminating in this-
She can't let go of his hand. She should. She can't. She wishes the gloves were off, but she can't drop them now. Evidence.
"Act casual," she says, and they exit onto the crowded street.
Among the high society of Goa, the cascade of feathers and silks and velvets and brocades - golden feathers are in season, they adorn the hair of every other woman they pass - they are simply children walking together downtown, holding hands.
They easily swim through the mild crowd, Valentine gently guiding them, walking them in the proper direction. She can't think beyond her unerring sense of purpose, can't let herself think or she'll shatter all over again, and it won't be Charlotte, this time.
Nobody stops them.
They walk out of the hightown, out of the gates of the downtown area and into the fringes after a brief word to the half-asleep guard, and then-
Nobody stops them.
They're in Edge Town.
Valentine yanks Sabo into an alley.
She kicks off her heels, tears off her gloves in a symphony of ripping lace, doesn't give a damn that her fine stockings scrape on the dirty stone (who fucking cares, who cares) and it's far too soon but she tightens her hold on Sabo's hand and breaks into a run (she can feel it, she can feel him, his callouses against hers and the bruising tight grip and the warmth, and she almost sobs, it's so profound).
Her blood is rushing in her ears.
She traces her way towards The Golden Needle, takes the most convoluted path imaginable to dodge patrols, ducking into more alleys and shortcuts and taking leaps over low walls, ten feet or higher, not willing to waste the fucking time to go around. Her hand is sweating, so is Sabo's, she feels it, but she can't let go.
She pushes open the door. She's heaving for breath.
"Well I'll be damned," says Simmons, cigarette hanging from his mouth, behind the counter with a truly exceptional amount of surprise leaking onto his face, but Valentine isn't looking at him. She's letting go (just for now), unclasping her borrowed diamond necklace and bracelets with trembling hands, shucking her rings, hauling the dress over her head.
She's left in her undershirt and bandages and not much else. "Here's your return," she bites out, slapping the jewelry beside a truly massive stack of berries on Simmons's register, her payment from earlier. Sabo is behind her, saying something, but it doesn't matter. "I won't be back for a while. Thank you for everything, Simmons."
She grabs Sabo's hand without turning and yanks him into the back room.
It's exactly as she left it this morning. Laid out, prepared, are her previous clothes - dark shirt and pants, cloak, spare coins. Those can all go to Simmons, she'll leave them here.
Her pipe. The pillow and blanket she used. And-
The prepared clothes for Sabo, drab and unassuming. Pants and a plain shirt, a cloak.
"Change," she bites out, already yanking on the pants, pulling the shirt over her head, reaching down to grab the cloak and fasten it-
Sabo catches her hand. His voice is frantic. "Valentine! What are you even- what-"
His voice is shaking and she can't. "No! No, Sabo, not now, not yet, we're not safe." She hisses the last word, goes from raised shout to a whisper, whirling to clasp his shoulders in her hands and shake him. He flinches, eyes wide and face so close to hers, and she releases him, backs away a step.
"Please," she rasps.
They make it to the other side.
They're both in disguise, Sabo's fine clothes long gone (Simmons can have them, though she leaves him with a strong suggestion he doesn't sell them in his shop, lest he bring hell upon himself), and Valentine's heart hasn't stopped beating out of her chest since Charlotte shattered into fragments, her own trembling self reaching that nebulous, irreversible breaking point. Ilirya isn't a finch anymore- she doesn't know what he is, isn't paying attention- and Halia's disappeared from Sabo's shoulder, but she must be somewhere on him.
They escape through Dogra's tunnel under the wall.
The main gate is distant, closed, manned by soldiers outside and inside the walls, even more roving over the ruins of the Gray Terminal like ants picking a corpse clean, but they're far away from it, exiting into the crumbled ashes and remains of refuse and humanity. They cut unassuming figures, blending in with the burned, moving too quickly to catch as they skirt close to the wall, hands still clasped.
They head straight for the forest.
Valentine can barely think past her terror. All her plans, weeks of researching maps and fishing for information from Sabo of noble customs, scrounging etiquette books from the shops in Edge Town, setting things up with Simmons, carefully crafting this plan beyond the edges of her own attention 'cause god she fucking hoped she wouldn't need it but she knew better, she knew better, and she thought she might not be strong enough but she did it anyway because she needed, she needed-
"-VALENTINE!"
Sabo digs his heels in and stops.
By consequence Valentine stops, too, yanked hard back against Sabo by their still-attached hands, stumbling from the backlash and colliding with him so hard that they almost tumble to the ground, collapsing to kneel in the dirt, arms coming around each other.
"Val," Sabo whispers, and hearing that nickname- the nickname he gave her, in his voice-
Her breathing hitches. Her eyes flit to his face.
His hood has fallen back. His eyes are wide, watery, scab at his temple still powdered over, concealed, but it's him. Sabo's face, the honest and true shape of it, upturned nose and baby fat cheeks and gap-toothed mouth and blonde eyebrows, golden hair sheared close to his head and caught in tightly coiled ringlets from the brutally short length of it, so different from the long hair of nobility. This close, she can catch the dark blue of his eyes - same as his mother's, but she bucks the truth, because they're not the same, nowhere near the same - and the stifled emotion in them starting to break through, watering over with a sheen of tears.
Dappled sunlight paints his face, light filtered through the leaves.
…They're in the forest?
"We've been running for half an hour," Sabo says, gently, like he doesn't want her to break. His hand has drifted from hers to her shoulder, his other trembling as it flits from her elbow to her face, catching her in a barely-there grip. "We're okay now. We're safe."
"...We're safe?" Valentine repeats, woozy. Plaintive.
Can we rest now? Can we rest?
"We're safe," Sabo echoes, pulling her into a tight hug on the forest floor. His face presses into her neck, and she can feel the tears and snot leaking onto her, so similar but so unlike so long ago. "You got me." Even muffled, she hears the disbelief, the wonder. "We're safe."
In the circle of Sabo's arms, past the fire, out of Goa, clasping him tight enough that they'll never have to let go, Valentine breaks.
—
—
—
Notes:
Well.
This chapter has been a huge undertaking, and a big leap for this fic. I hope all the nuances I meant to convey came through clearly, that it kept you on the edge of your seat, and most of all, that it was believable!
If you have any questions, please ask them in the reviews. (I can't promise I'll answer them, but isn't the inability to answer an answer in itself?) Or just opinions! I love hearing comments above all else; especially the lengthy, in-depth ones, but in the end anything you can do is appreciated. Each comment motivates me to write just a bit faster, just a bit more.
Man, I love Sabo a lot. Would you believe that at the beginning of this fic, I was kind of 'meh' on him? But he wrote himself into this loveable, strong little boy who deserves so much more.
(I was going to make a joke about the "Sabo Retrieval Arc," but... too soon? :p)
This chapter is dedicated, again, to my commenters. Y'all are why I keep writing.
(Also, this is the crossposted version of this chapter, so the ao3 version - posted by the same title under the username 500shadesofblue - has a lot more strikethrough shenanigans that fanfic just... does not allow lmao. Still, I did my best to substitute with emdashes, parenthases, and pronoun changes!)