She cries.
Great, tearing sobs rip themselves out of her chest, and though she tries to stifle them in Sabo's shoulder, the wailing rises above the trees. Sabo cries, too, but his hiccuping, snotty tears aren't quite as loud, as desperate and broken as hers. All her fear, her mourning - innocence lost, her first life taken - and her unresolved hatred, her panic and her complete repression of self, a nine-year-old girl older than her years who's got Sabo, she got him back-
She cries like her grief is ripping her heart to shreds.
Ilirya and Halia are crying, too, she can hear them, can feel how they're matched and curled together, pressing against their sides, and she knows they might be touching but she doesn't care. Sabo is here, Sabo is safe, he won't be gone and he won't be hurt and maybe, if she can have this, then-
She can't stop crying. Hot hears are rolling down her cheeks and soaking into Sabo's shirt, snot leaking unfettered, and she'd usually have more self control than this but she- she can't.
She can't.
She lets go.
Holding her too, crying just as fiercely, tears cutting their way from him like razorblades, Sabo does the same.
For innocence lost. For dreams burned, for people killed, for harsh realities learned. For the cruel truth of blood, the chains of fear and the need to escape before you're irreversibly changed.
For a future altered.
They fall apart.
She hardly notices through the haze when her tears roll to a stop.
Her head is pounding, her eyes stinging, her throat choked. Her head is tucked against Sabo's skinny shoulder, and one of his hands is on her head, the other wrapped around her. His arms have gone loose - holding, not clutching - and his hand strokes rhythmically, absently over her hair, the even rasping of congested breaths coming from his throat the only sound she can hear above her own breathing, the rustling of leaves, and the twittering of birdsong. She doesn't feel any tears (or other things that leak from the face during sobbing sessions) actively wetting her her hair, anymore, which must mean Sabo is just as wrung out of misery as she feels.
She hears something else, and for a moment, she can't quite place what it is. She and Sabo are still kneeling on the forest floor, dæmons curled up together close by, but she can hear the sound of voices and- Ilirya is- Ilirya is talking.
She feels another few tears squeeze themselves from her wide eyes, face pressed into damp fabric as she hears Ilirya's soft, choked murmurs, Halia's reassurances and own tearful whispers. Is this the cost of silence? Whatever the price is, she's willing to pay it. She'd do it again if she had to.
She takes a deep breath, scrunching her eyes shut like she could possibly hope to block out the sound of everything else - everything but Ilirya and Halia's voices, Sabo's breathing - and she reflexively inhales the musty smell of new-old clothes coming off Sabo's shoulder (the clothes are new, after all), the scent of crisp cold air warmed by sunshine, the ever-present background smell of grass and trees and wild things and soil.
She feels the sunshine, warm on her neck, the whispering play of the breeze over her skin, and realizes she hasn't felt them since she pulled the trigger.
Yet she keeps holding on, not ready to let go. She absently wonders why the beasts aren't pouncing on what looks like easy prey - two small figures huddled and unmoving, previously making a godawful racket - and concludes with mild amusement that the wild animals of the forest must be becoming more wary. Whether the hyperpredators in question recognize the sight of them, the scent of them, or something else, she has no idea, but whatever the reason is, they're steering clear. Or maybe they're just that lucky.
(With dawning certainty, fingers flexing against the fabric of Sabo's cloak, she realizes that if she can go on a mental tangent like this, she's ready to let go.)
For one more moment, she lets herself squeeze a little tighter, lean a little closer. Sabo squeezes back, absent and bemused, reciprocating the pressure, but it's time.
She shifts. Pulls back.
She doesn't withdraw completely - doesn't think she could, even if she wanted to - but she unsticks her face from Sabo's shirt, wincing at the string of snot that trails from her nose, connecting her face to the fabric.
"Whoops," she rasps, the aftermath wreaking hell on her vocal cords. Ah, damn, she sounds like she smokes ten packs a day.
"You ruined my new shirt," Sabo says softly - the first thing he's said for god knows how long - his voice equally as scratchy and wrecked, not letting go, and she chokes on a laugh.
Their banter. Her heart clutches at it, hungry, unwilling to give it up. She is, at her core, a selfish creature.
"But I got it for you," she whispers back, smiling faintly. She must look like hell - bloodshot eyes, messy hair, running on stress and fumes - but she's smiling. Small and fragile but honest, slowly curving her mouth like the sun peeking through the clouds.
"If it's a gift," Sabo rasps, "that means it needs to be taken care of even more."
"I'll get you a new one," Valentine says, and finally - slowly - pulls back.
She's ready.
For just a moment, Sabo's hands tighten on her and he doesn't let go. But he releases her, lets her lean back and rub the heels of her hands furiously over her eyes, brushing away stray tears.
"Fuck," she says softly, and with feeling. She's never felt so tired in all her life. If it was up to her, she'd curl up on the ground, right here, and go to sleep for a week.
"Hey," says Sabo.
Her hands drop. She looks up.
Sabo is still close, eyes as bloodshot as hers, looking like just as much of a mess.
"Thanks for coming to get me."
Emotion swells in Valentine's chest.
"I'll always come for you," she rasps, honest.
You or Luffy or Ace. Every single one of you. Whenever. Wherever. Always.
Sabo inhales, and wordlessly, he pulls her into another hug.
They stay there for a very long time.
Walking back to Dadan's, she feels as if she's waking from a very long sleep.
She's still holding hands with Sabo, even as gross and cried-out and snotty as they are. Hands clasped, like she and Luffy do, and though she has the physical energy to run through the forest (and probably beat the shit out of anyone if they tried to get between her, Sabo, and safety) her mental energy is at absolute zero. She wants to sleep for a week, and by the way Sabo doesn't try to hurry their pace - which is, basically, shamefully, a walking pace - he feels the same. (No matter the state of her body, her mind pleads for rest. She's not really in the state to disagree.)
It takes them more than two hours (more or less, she's not counting) to get back, and by the time they do, they're well into mid-afternoon (based on the positioning of the sun visible through the gaps in the trees) and Valentine has rebuilt herself into a semblance of wholeness.
Ilirya and Halia are flying overhead (not so far that she can feel the panicked tug in her gut of too far, but high enough that she can't hear a word they're saying), and they're still talking. She lets them be, even as the well-worn, recently restitched silence between her and Sabo soothes her weary soul. She takes the fragile pieces of herself and lets them just be, just exist, and that in itself is healing.
They break through the treeline and take their first steps into Dadan's clearing with little fanfare.
The sight of Dadan's house - utterly unchanged, the same as she left it - is both incongruously strange and a heavy weight lifted off her shoulders. The hodgepodge, oft-repaired and multicolored architecture of it, the crisscross windows, the blue glass... it's all familiar, reassuring. It's oddly quiet, though, she thinks, tugging on Sabo's fingers absently.
"Ace," Sabo whispers, hand clutching hers tighter.
"Hm?" Valentine absently flicks her eyes to Sabo's, trails her attention to whatever he's staring at-
Oh.
Ace.
Ace is tied to a tree. He's plastered with bandages, scuffed up and dirty with traces of soot, expression completely indescribable, eyes and face red like he's been screaming. He's also staring straight at them.
He looks like he's seeing ghosts.
Valentine doesn't know if she says anything, or if Sabo does, because she notices Aurelia right after, and her heart seizes.
Aurelia's not even tied up. She's laying on the ground below Ace's feet, eyes closed and panting like she can hardly breathe, looking like she's in the final stages of panicking, giving up, or maybe dying. Maybe even a combination of all three. And she's-
She's in the shape of a tawny, long-furred cat, curled up tight, nestled in the cradle of the tree's thick roots.
Ilirya's favorite shape.
The thought strikes her with no small flood of dread.
"Valentine!" Her eyes jerk back up to Ace's face, and the sheer emotion flooding up from inside and painting its way onto his expression enough to take her breath away. Ace's shout is raw, torn out of him, halfway to a scream. "Sabo!"
He starts to struggle, yanking at his bindings like an animal caught in a trap, the bloody stripes of rope burn around his arms and legs chafing raw and agonizing even as she watches, and she's frozen, unable to tear her eyes away so she sees when his breath hitches from helplessness, when the beginnings of something starts to build in his throat-
She's running forward before she can think.
Sabo's right beside her as they race towards Ace's tree, and Aurelia is stirring, feeble, but she's still not moving. Valentine tries to shove her brain into the zone clearly marked logic but she's failing, breathing faster and faster as she skids to a stop and tears at Ace's ropes and tries to find a knot. She's so recently broken and everything is so close to the surface, tearing at her like shattered glass and she just needs- she needs to get him out-
Sabo is doing the same, both of their hands frantic, and Ace makes a strangled noise of frustration and rage and pain as he lashes out at the trunk of his tree with his unbound legs.
The trunk splinters.
Valentine curses, maybe, but she's grasping at Ace's forearm and tearing at the ropes with her other hand as she grabs and yanks.
The rope frays and tears under her fingers like twine.
She pulls Ace to her and Sabo hard, yanking him away from the falling tree (goddammit Ace) with enough force that they all go flying and tumbling backwards. The tree falls away from the house with a massive boom, the thunder of its mass hitting the ground like struck lightning, sending sprays of dirt and clouds of dust flying, dead leaves spinning through the air.
She's on her back, head swimming. Sabo is beside her, and Ace - freed, free - is mostly on top of her, half laying over Sabo, and they're all breathing hard in the dust, a warm tangle of limbs, adrenaline pumping through their veins.
Valentine is still under the overly-heavy weight of Ace (what the hell does this kid eat? tigers?), and feeling Sabo's shoulder pushing against hers, her breathing evening out as her heartbeat's frantic dance starts to slow, she stares up at the blue sky. For just a moment.
"YOU IDIOT!"
The shout is immediate and in-her-face and loud and she flinches, startled, at the sheer vehemence and heartbreak packed into two small words.
She stares up at Ace with wide eyes.
He's crying.
His hair is in tangled disarray, waves snarled into matted knots, his cheeks and forehead and the bridge of his nose covered in squares of gauze and plastered with bandaids. His face is even more scuffed and grubby up close, and he's so near that she could probably count his freckles. He's-
He's crying.
"You fucking idiot!" He screams, and he doesn't know he's crying at all, because in front of them, he never would. "Me and Luffy thought you were dead! We thought you were- why the fuck did you go to the terminal? You KNEW about the fire, we went to get you and- and you didn't come out! We thought we left you there to DIE!"
Valentine's eyes are wide as Ace grabs the front of her shirt in his hands, shaking her back and forth like a ragdoll (she winces as the back of her skull thumps against the ground), and she blinks once, twice, as tears plip plip on her face. They paint clean tracks through the soot on his cheeks.
He makes a strangled, miserably inarticulate noise, fingers clenching in her collar. "We thought you-"
Abruptly, Ace lets her go. Her back thumps as it hits the dirt.
"We thought you died," he finishes, a rasping, empty whisper, hapless, his hands hanging limp by his sides, and Valentine - dazed - can only stare, unutterably, inexpressibly stunned.
"And you-"
Ace tears his gaze away, the sheer force of him pivoting to grasp at Sabo's shoulders, still half on her, and even from the odd angle she can see of his face, she can trace the teartracks dripping down his cheeks, slipping off his chin to speck saltwater in the dusty earth.
Her brain is not computing. She can hear Ace shouting at Sabo, hear the faint voices of Ilirya and Halia and Aurelia reuniting, the former two speaking softly to the latter (did they pull her out of the way?) and huddling against her, all cats with tails twining, but she doesn't understand.
She doesn't understand.
"You thought I was dead?" she rasps, to nobody, to nothing, staring up blankly at the sky, spread eagle in the grass and dirt, legs still pinned by Ace's (shouting) weight.
Somehow, he hears her, because Sabo (whose face is utterly bemused, stuck in shock same as she, hands hovering in the air between Ace and himself in the universal whoa there gesture) is released and Ace turns to her again, gazing down with (misery then cataclysmic relief turned to) fury burning in his gaze-
And the door to Dadan's slams open, flung so wide it hits the outside wooden slatted wall with a sharp crack.
"SABO! VAL!"
Luffy.
The sheer speed of Luffy's sprint and flying tackle knocks Ace clean off her, sends the four of them tumbling into the dirt, and her arms are full of sobbing Luffy, clutching her and Sabo and Ace tightly with skinny arms that'll always stretch far enough to fit them all in their embrace.
They're all beat to high hell, and they manage to ignore this fact for approximately one Luffy-grade sob session.
Ace's own tears have long since stopped, but he's holding onto her and Sabo with a fierce cling that she herself only shed hours ago, outgrown from crying everything into Sabo's shirt and letting Sabo do the same in return. Ace probably needs to cry more - should cry more, at the very least - but when Luffy flung himself into the pile, sobbing, Ace hid his face in her stretched-out shirt collar and let his tears and anguish fall silent and stifled, chafing rope burns and purpling bruises ignored.
Luffy is still crying unrepentantly, and from his runny nose and red eyes - not an uncommon sight on him, to be fair, but still - it seems like he's been crying for a while before they arrived. He's clinging to her and Sabo both, arms triple wrapped around the both of them, and it doesn't look like he's planning on letting go for a while.
There's been no sight of Dadan (not that Valentine is paying much attention to anything other than the boys in her arms), but in her peripheral, she did catch sight of Dogra, Magra, and some of the other bandits peering out of the door before they caught sight of the entire scene, ducking right back in after apparently deciding joining the reunion looked like more trouble than it was worth.
And to be fair, they did fell a tree.
The rest of it blurs.
Valentine is absently sure that there's a lot of information she doesn't know (Ace and Luffy went looking for her at the terminal? Why are they so beat up? Where's Dadan? What happened?) but it all seems so distant, easily deferrable for a future-Valentine to deal with.
For now, sleep.
If she was more than half-conscious, she'd be very embarrassed that she fell asleep in the grass and dirt (buried under the other half of ASLV's flailing limbs) before the end of their clinging/crying/pileup. Sleepily dozing and hazy headed as she is, though, she can't muster any embarrassment at all, even when she feels the telltale sensation of her limbs being shifted, extricated from the pile and hauled onto someone's back as she's lifted into piggyback.
Whoever's carrying her smells familiar. (Safe.) The wavy tangles of hair that tickle her cheek when she inhales smell like grit and burning, like smoke, but under that, there's something else. Something that lets her relax, yield, and fall into unconsciousness' warm embrace.
She wakes up immobilized.
A brief bolt of sheer panic sizzles through her like lightning before she realizes where she is, who's surrounding her, exactly what the warm pressure pushing her down into the blanketed floor really is, and her pupils dilate as her night vision adjusts. Sleepily, she struggles to make sense out of the shapes she sees in the dark around her.
The layout of the space she's in is familiar, even in the dark (nightttime?), the silhouettes of supplies surrounding them dimly visible, so it must be- right. Her brain makes the connection, briefly brightening her expression, emotions made softer and limbs pliant with comfortable warmth.
Their old bedroom in Dadan's. The supply room.
The small, cleared-out alcove from the barrels and boxes stuffed with bandit goods (patterned pants, halberds, and the like) - the one that had comfortably fit the cuddling trio of herself, Ace, and Luffy - is now slightly more cramped.
Ragtag, patchwork blankets and quilts layer over the floor, pillows strewn about, while Ace and Luffy and Sabo and herself are all piled together in a gordian knot of limbs, warm and slightly sweaty, hemmed in on all sides by the walls of boxes and barrels and the door at their feet. She's always liked small, familiar spaces - especially in the dark - so she only blinks sleepily, wriggles a bit, testing, and- yep. No movement at all. The best she can do is wiggle her fingers and toes.
(Of course, she could probably shed the comfortable haze of sleep, lift and throw the whole lot of them off of her if really pressed, but why in the world would she want to do that?)
Luffy - who's plastered facedown to Sabo's front, but has one of his arms wrapped tightly around Valentine's torso, pulling her tightly to Sabo's side - is dead asleep, snoring and drooling into Sabo's shirt without a hint of restraint. His arms are double wrapped, encircling Valentine's waist and Sabo's shoulders - the latter of whom is on his back, like her - and clutching tight, unwilling to let go even in sleep.
But Valentine, to her increasingly sleepy amusement, wouldn't be able to move regardless, because Ace - usually such a reserved cuddler - is unreservedly, undeniably cuddling the hell out of her and Sabo.
Ace - almost mirroring Luffy's adorable attempts to cover Sabo entirely, the youngest of their quartet tucked under Sabo's chin and clinging to the both of them with a tenacious grip - is pretty much covering Valentine completely with his sprawled limbs, legs tangled with hers, the four of them packed tight like sardines. Ace's face is tucked into her shoulder, edging into the intersecting junction between Sabo and herself, one of his arms thrown over Luffy (and Sabo), the entirety of his body weight (mild in the scope of things, but hey, she's nine) pressing her down, the other hand curled loosely into her collar. Valentine's cheek is pillowed on Sabo's arm - she distantly hopes she's not cutting off his circulation, but hey, everyone has to make sacrifices - and her own arm is smushed between her and Sabo's torsos, the other wrapped loosely around Ace's back.
It's such a contrast from before.
She exhales gently, eyes closing again, letting herself unabashedly enjoy the warm weight of all of her boys here, in one place, safe. (Though the amusing visual of Luffy and Ace using her and Sabo as a glorified mattress brings a small giggle to her smiling mouth, one she barely stifles.)
She distantly remembers enjoying things like this even in her last life. Cuddling, to her, wasn't just warmth and sensation; weight and pressure factored into it just as much, making her sleepy and pliable. It isn't a weakness, by any means (as if she'd let someone get close enough to cuddle her without trusting them completely), but if she trusts someone already, a surefire way to get her dozing is the heavy press of someone else's bodyweight, the reassuring comfort of simple skin on skin.
It's different now, in her smaller, child's body. She's rarely so sharply aware of it: of the differences, numerous as grains of sand on the beach, uncountable, that slip through her fingertips when she grasps them too tightly.
She tries not to think about it.
Now, she holds more strength in a single hand than she could have mustered in her whole body. The weight of others sits differently on her. Still reassuring, but the knowledge lurks in the back of her head: she could lift them all with ease, heft them over her shoulders and take off at a run, if she needed to. Not that it wouldn't drain her, of course, but she's never truly been pushed to her new, ever-increasing limits before. She has no idea how far she could really run, how much she could really lift, only that she can leap almost twenty feet in the air with ease and land from a four story jump with barely any effort at all and that she's never felt her lungs screaming so loud for air that she needs to stop running, not since those terrible, distant months in the beginning, when it was just her and Luffy, weak and alone.
Even with her thoughts buzzing, she's extraordinarily tempted to simply fall back asleep. Banish some of her lurking shadows and hide away under the weight of those she trusts the most in the world.
But she feels the restless call in her bones, and Ilirya is awake. He's extricating himself from the dæmon cuddle-pile, almost as tightly wound as their own, a long-furred cat staring up at her, implacable, eyes reflecting like moons in the dark.
She sighs through her nose. She doesn't need to be told what he wants.
Carefully, slowly - but firmly, good god these boys have tight grips - she wiggles, cajoles, and slips herself out of the clutches of three sets of hands. Ace, in particular, is difficult to shed - he groans in his sleep, brow knitting in discomfort, as she lifts his shoulders and untangles their legs to slip out from under him - and she holds her breath as she lowers him carefully, gently to the blankets below.
Sabo and Luffy latch back onto him immediately, pulling him closer, and Valentine releases her breath in a quiet sigh, standing, stretching out her limbs and arching her back with her hands above her head.
For just a moment she gazes at them, the trio of boys curled up together. It makes her heart quietly burn to think they could have lost this, and even if her life is a haze of has-beens and uncertain should-I-be-here's, if she's done anything, even if she dies tomorrow, they have this.
Even if she dies tomorrow, they have this.
She turns to leave.
Ilirya traces behind her on silent cat feet as she slips out the door, padding soundlessly down the creaking stairs on her toes before she spirits away into the night, door shutting gently, silently, finally, behind her.
One pair of eyes watches her go.
She runs through the nighttime forest, fleetfooted, leaves whipping at her bare skin, ghosting around the wide trunks of trees and leaping over brambles, bare traces of herself left behind. She feels slit-pupiled eyes on her, appraising, but she leaves them quick behind her, running too far and too fast to be worthy prey for the nocturnal predators of the wood. The attentions of carnivorous beasts feel like the dull side of a blade tracing over her wrist, the possibility of blood, but she doesn't spare it a second thought, only running faster, leaping higher, 'til she's naught but a blur, a ghost haunting the hundred-year-old trees.
She doesn't know where she's going, only knows that she must go, must run. Her new-old self is still cobbled together from broken pieces, misaligned and strange, because grief and panic does not fade so easily as one day of tears and absolution. Running with Ilirya bounding through the underbrush in the form of a yearling buck, his antlers branching and velvety in the soft dark under the canopy, means that she does not need to be; she merely needs to feel, to move, to let the uncertain edges of self seep into the nighttime noise around her. She runs with her soul, alien and strange, familiar and jarring as her own face, wind pulling at her skin, but she can't be held down, can't be held back, can't think of any other place she could possibly be, so she runs. She keeps running.
Time blurs, compresses, until she feels that she's been running forever, seconds and minutes an uncertain, soft-edged thing. The cold air is like knives in her lungs, but she doesn't feel the sting, the chill, radiating too much heat to feel anything but warm. For a long while, running through the woods that have housed her for almost the whole of her childhood, she lets herself simply exist in the push and pull of her muscles, the pounding of her feet against the wood and the earth, the thrum of her heartbeat in her ears.
The exhilarating rush of moving her body seeps and bleeds into her whole self, blooming, a drop of ink in frothing water, until all she can feel is this.
She runs, faster, quicker, until she's gasping and her limbs ache, and she doesn't know how much time has been eaten by her pounding feet, doesn't know she's been heading for a destination until she steps into the clover meadow.
(Her feet - calloused from wear, thick-soled - hurt, just a bit, from her brief stint of stockinged feet on cobblestone. It feels like a lifetime ago, but it was only this morning, wasn't it?)
Someone must've taken off her shoes before they carried her to bed, because she's barefoot, dressed in her usual sleepwear of soft flannel pajama pants and a sleeveless shirt. She's panting off the exertion of her run as she slows, bleeding off speed, and she trails to a stop just outside the boundaries of the clearing while Ilirya trails to a stop just behind her, silent in the forest, his presence clearly felt.
The chill of the air batters against her skin as waves against a sheer cliff, the cold rendered mute by the generated warmth of her near-sprint, radiating outwards from the heart thundering in her chest like a miniature sun, and she steps forward, unhesitating, panting openmouthed and loud in the deafening quiet of the night. Her toes sink into the clover; mysterious and lush looking under the moonlight, deep green painted silver in the dark with leaves spread like the petals of a flower, and she revels in the sensations, the feelings, the world so sharp when before, while Sabo was gone, it was made of muddled grays. Her breathing is evening out, now, slowing, the edges of her frayed self slowly gathering back into her chest in the odd, gradual manner of a spool of thread being rewound, and she wiggles her toes against the soft green, didn't bother slipping on her socks and boots before she left, the only thought on her mind to go. She feels the consequences of that now; further aches and pains and small cuts carved into her soles, but-
With the soft caress of clover against her feet, the cool air whispering against her heated face, she knows the aches are worth it.
Ilirya steps into the clearing, a bare heartbeat behind her, blocked-out browns and whites painted monochrome, inkwell eyes and inkwell nose, velvet antlers lustrous and strange under the starlight. She sighs and looks skyward, up at the bright blanket of the cosmos shining above, the bright half-moon, breathing evening out as she looks into the dizzying array.
Even with the hightown of Goa more near than it is faraway, looking up feels like slipping into another world. The constellations burn bright and vibrant, flickering and vivid, and she's searching for the north star before she realizes it isn't there, wonder slipping into melancholy. Her eyes skate over the breadth of the stars, mysterious and lovely, knowing that every constellation is unknown to her. No big dipper, no orion's belt, and even the moon - a constant, in this world or the next - is off, odd, and she realizes in the space of a heartbeat that it's tinted blue.
Was that possible? Before? She thinks yes, but she can't…
She can't remember.
But she does-
She-
(Sitting on the bleachers at her brother's soccer game when she was young, looking up into the falling rain painted bright and shining by the floodlights. Against the evening sky, the illuminated water drops looked like stars rushing by at warp-speed, and she was traveling through the universe, barrelling through outer space-)
Ilirya nudges under her hand, coat coarse and wild and nose wetly pressing, and she absently strokes over the familiar-alien shape of his face, the velvet of his antlers-
(Another memory dips into her, vivid-sharp, edge keen enough to cut. Her, laying on her back, years later, and under her is the cold concrete of a tennis court/the rough wood of an island dock/the grass of a hill/the packed dirt and sand of a desert at night, and she's looking into the starry sky, holding hands with her friends, leaning against them as they all stay silent, and the quiet was warm. Doing this a thousand different ways with different people, her hands and her shape bigger, her heart thrumming, looking into a different sky-)
A different sky.
The emotion rises harsh and fast like a flood, nearly chokes her, and she heaves out a dry sob, tearing her eyes away from the stars and walking forward, ahead, anywhere but here.
She strides through the blanket of clover, not yet wet from the morning dew, but even that lovely distraction can't yoke her emotions. They slip through her fingers, ghosts as much as she, grieving for losses she can hardly remember, and she heaves out another dry sob, choking-
The side of her bare foot knocks against a shape in the dark.
She nearly jumps out of her skin (even as Ilirya does, leaping near five feet in the air, deer's form contorting and twisting in panic before he becomes a snarling panther, falling like a stone with new weight and hitting the ground on all fours), mind shifting from emotional turmoil to whatthefuck so fast she has a full body flinch, hands curling into fists. She shifts into ready position in a heartbeat, slightly crouched and fists raised, eyes wide and searching, the edge to her tearful expression hardening, alert.
Nothing moves.
Around her, the night is still and breathing, crickets chirping and night frogs croaking their songs. Her awareness of the forest's beast does not fade, nor does the thick knot in her throat, and nothing attacks.
Everything is still and lovely, from the stars in the sky to the blanket of clover surrounding her.
What?
Her brow furrows, eyes flicking around the clearing in a brisk, assessing view. Nothing around her, nothing in the forest that can reach this far or shoot projectiles, so-
She narrows her eyes down at the ground, eyes sharp and squinting under the light of the half-moon, tracing over the bed of clover, and...
There's something round.
Maybe a foot away from her right pinkie toe. Pale and tinted some unidentifiable color, the stem curled, its surface covered with-
Swirls.
In a trance, she leans down to pick it up.
Her hand clasps over it.
She straightens up, holding the fruit in hand, barely breathing.
It's in the shape of a longstemmed peach, dimpled and full, heavy as she'd imagine a peach would be, though in the entirety of her life on Dawn Island, she's never seen a single one. Her fingertips stroke over it absently and the surface is hard; ridged and slick, like keratin, smooth and shiny with the unnatural sheen of wax, raised in gentle swells, swirled bumps where the loose spirals elevate off the surface of the fruit itself. There's no soft, giving plushness when she squeezes, no baby-soft fuzz, nothing that makes it seem even remotely appetizing.
Ilirya presses close to her ankles and she lowers her hand, lets him whuff delicately, inhaling the scent of it.
"Smells like rot," Ilirya murmurs, the familiar sound of him low, masculine and alien in the dark strangeness of the night. Is he really her soul?
"...You know you don't have to," Ilirya says, soft, and all traces of doubt disappear, because then he says, with utter certainty-
"But I know you will."
"Of course," she murmurs. She raises it to her mouth to take a bite.
—
—
—
Ran doesn't talk as Luffy steps into the clover place.
Ran hasn't talked at all since Luffy woke up and Val was gone. She just got all small and jumped on his shoulder and Luffy thought okay, we gotta go find her then, 'cause when Ran doesn't talk, that means he's gotta do something important.
Luffy followed the sound of Val's running as she went through the forest but she's so fast, a little too fast for him to keep up. He lost her trail at the last second and he panicked for a whole minute before he realized what they were near, where she went.
So he went there too.
And now he's here and the tree branches aren't hiding the sky so he can see now that the stars are so bright, brighter than all the lanterns that float in the sky and on the sea on festival day back in Foosha. Usually Val is pretty sneaky so he thought she'd be hard to find, but she's super easy to find, actually (not see, he can't see her yet) because Ilirya is big.
Luffy likes Val's dæmon. Ilirya tells him stories and stuff about Val he can't figure out own his own, dumb stuff like she doesn't want to be a burden but she needs a lot of hugs today, and she doesn't think she deserves you, and other stupid things like that. Val can be kinda stupid sometimes, but that's okay, because Luffy knows that he doesn't get stuff sometimes, too, and usually the stuff that he doesn't get, Val gets, and she explains it to him or just handles it. That's good too! Luffy handles the stuff that she doesn't get, so it evens out. Nobody can do everything!
Plus, 'deserve' is a dumb word. Luffy's family deserves everything.
Anyways, he can't see Val but he can see Ilirya, because Ilirya is Big.
Big with a capital-B. (Which he knows about 'cause Makino taught him about capital letters.) And long, covered in fluffy fur and scales too, with funny antlers on his head like a deer and whiskers like a catfish. Curled up like a snake so Luffy can barely see his face, not moving at all (but breathing, so everything's good).
Luffy steps closer and Ilirya looks up and snarls, really sharp teeth (the big pointy ones longer than Makino's kitchen knives) and weird eyes shiny like ripples and moons. Ilirya looks angry and mean before he sees that it's just Luffy, and then he relaxes, calms down, fur going less big and teeth hiding.
"Where's Val?" Luffy says. It sounds weird in the quiet air, so Luffy tries to make his voice a little less loud at the end of it.
Ilirya doesn't say anything back, he just uncurls. And wow Ilirya is big, because it takes a whole ten seconds for Luffy to see Val, curled up on the clover with her knees tucked to her chest and her hands pillowing her cheek.
Her hair is what draws Luffy's eye the quickest, like usual, especially with the shiny light of the moon on it like that, so he trots over and reaches out to touch (his fingers are mostly clean), petting over her head like he'd pet over Ran, from the top of her head to the ends all the way down her back. Ilirya makes a rumbly sound but it's totally okay, so Luffy ignores it, because it's just as soft under his hand as he remembers, nothing like how Ran's fur feels, sometimes, when she's in a shape that wears fur and- right. Hair. (Not fur.)
Luffy brushed through it with his fingers earlier (Val's hair, not Ran's fur), when she was super asleep and wouldn't wake up for anything. Her hair had snot in it (Luffy asked how it got there but Sabo turned red and wouldn't tell him), so he had to get a cloth wet and get it out like Makino does to him sometimes when his hair gets blood in it or just gets dirty. Luffy made his hand into a claw and tried really hard not to make any noises or yank too hard when he hit the knotty bits, biting his tongue to keep quiet, because Val 'needed her rest' and Luffy had a feeling back then that Sabo and Ace would have gotten really mad at him if he woke her up. Still, neither of them had any idea how to brush her hair, so Luffy had to do it.
He has to hold back a giggle just remembering the looks on their faces. Shishishi!
And he used another wet rag (not the snotty one!) to get all the paint off her face. He couldn't get it all off, especially the stuff that made her eyes look all big, but the pink stuff came off easy. He didn't want to rub at her eyes too hard anyways 'cause sometimes he has a problem with pushing too hard, so he tried for a little and gave up quick. Val can do the rest herself when she wakes up, 'cause she's really good at the stuff where you don't have to press so hard. And she's a better fighter than Luffy! It feels pretty unfair sometimes, but then Luffy remembers she's Val and Val's always nice and holds his hand and gives him hugs whenever he wants and she was his first friend, before he even met Sabo and Ace, and now they're family and she can never leave him, so it's alright. He'll just have to get even stronger! Then he'll be able to beat up all the guys she can't beat up, and they'll win every time. And she can do all the stuff where you're not supposed to press too hard!
But her hair's back to being clean and nice now, which is good. Luffy doesn't like it when Val looks upset or her hair isn't like it usually is. She takes good care of it, 'cause Makino used to do it for her, so if it's bad, that means something's wrong.
He thinks about her face after Sabo got taken, the polka dots of blood (not hers, he checked) and how her eyes got all empty and her hair was tangly, like Ace's used to get before they all made friends and became family. She gave him a hug back then like she always does after he woke up, let him cry 'cause he cries a lot sometimes when his emotions get too big, and she didn't tell him to stop like Ace does (Luffy forgives Ace because Ace is always hurting and that's why he doesn't cry, even though Luffy thinks he's getting better), but that empty look didn't go away. And then she was gone.
Gone and dead, at least that's what Ace said, when they were running around the burning trash heap and looking for her everywhere, when the air was hot and full of yucky smoke, when they had to beat up Bluejam and leave and then Dadan showed up, dragging Luffy away while Ace stayed behind.
Luffy remembers that Dadan got hurt real bad.
But Ace looked hurt worse, not on his head or anything but in his eyes, 'cause they looked empty again. Empty and dull and he kept trying to go back after they woke up again, even though he had to carry Aurelia because she wouldn't stop being a cat and she wouldn't move at all, and Luffy remembers that the night of the fire after they got back and slept Ace held onto him tight enough to hurt, but the look in his eyes didn't go away. It only got worse when by morning Dadan still wasn't out of bed, and Ace shouted he was going to go back to the terminal and find Val no matter what, that he'd kill every noble and Hightown guard he saw. That he'd get Sabo, too, because if Val was dead and Sabo was stolen than Sabo at least had to know-
The bandits tied him to a tree.
Luffy couldn't stop crying because he couldn't imagine Val dead. Val, his first friend, his first anything, his first everything, the person who cuddled him and always gives him hugs and ran with him and never let him get left behind, always made him laugh with her weird jokes and wanted to see the whole world. Val, his family, his nakama, gone forever.
Sabo gone, and now this?
Luffy felt so lost and angry and sad, he couldn't even talk or scream, couldn't even think, just cried and cried.
But she's here now, not dead, and she'll never die ever. Luffy's gonna make her promise as soon as she wakes up. But right now she's shivering in the cold air and Ilirya's making more rumbly noises and that won't do. Luffy trots over, yawning wide (trying to keep quiet with it so he doesn't wake Val up, Ilirya would prolly get super angry then), and then he drops to the ground and scoots back against her on his side, his back to her front, lifting one of her arms so it curls around him instead. It's much warmer this way, and the panic Luffy's had in him since he woke up and saw her leave (again, not again) quiets.
Ran goes soft and fluffy and curls up in front of Luffy, and then Luffy has Val at his back and Ran at his front. He usually wants everyone there when they cuddle (the more the merrier!) but right now, he thinks he just wants it like this.
The moon and stars are bright and the air is cold, so he closes his eyes, yawns and hugs Ran tighter to his chest, nestles back against Val's warm front until he can feel the puff of her breath on his neck.
He starts falling asleep again, fast, and he's really tired. He feels something big curling around him, warm and scaly and fluffy, comforting and really familiar.
Ilirya, he thinks, happy.
And then everything is perfect. He falls asleep.
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Notes:
(Hello, lovely readers. This is the first new chapter posted since the edits. Hello! :)
I did a bunch of editing for quality. I also put in my authors notes (a little more difficult to seed in than they are on ao3), slightly altered for posterity.
And I'm here. This is me! Hi! Thank you so much for reading Valentine's story, and I can't even say how much I appreciate all your support. I really love hearing my readers, listening to what y'all think and what you're enjoying, so if you want to let me know what you like... well, then I may have a better idea of wha to focus on in the future!
...Onto the original note.)
Shorter chapter because I really, really had to end it there. B)
There's a lot of unanswered questions in this one (and I'm not just talking about the rhetorical ones I seeded into the actual story). Trust me when I say that they do have answers, and those answers will be dispensed in time.
That being said. Any thoughts? Any predictions or guesses? Were you surprised? I certainly hope so. Plot is progressing at a truly breakneck speed... but I do promise that there's definitely going to be some downtime. Soonish. I have so many fun plans.
Ooh, I'm excited. I'd really love to hear you guys' thoughts on this one. :)
(And before you ask, yes. Luffy POV was so fun to write! ^u^)