Valentine is awake.
Valentine is awake, and her first thought is what the fuck?
First she feels her fingers - warm - and her toes (slightly colder than she'd like), the familiar weight and warmth of someone in her arms. She's laying on her side, on the ground, and she's spooning someone. Wet clover is plastered uncomfortably against her bare arms, feet, and every other inch of exposed skin touching the ground.
And then she feels the sunlight on her skin, the breeze playing over her hair, and hears the twittering of very immediate birdsong. Immediate as in nearby, and nearby as in perhaps twenty feet away.
She makes a tired, confused noise. Something akin to ghrk? It's muffled into Luffy's hair. Because of course it's Luffy who she's spooning. Who else would it be?
Okay, wait. Luffy's with me. Stop. Rewind.
Her mind strains. She remembers… getting Sabo back, of course. Crying until her brain was practically leaking out through her ears. Reuniting with Ace and Luffy. Crying some more. Sleeping? Yes. And then…
She inhales sharply.
Running. The meadow. The…
Her breath rasps in her chest, and she has to jerk her face to the side, pressing into the clover below so she doesn't cough all over Luffy's hair. Her head throbs, and god, it feels like she's sleeping off a hangover. Not that she can even drink. She's nine.
Okay, wait. She remembers what happened. Up until a certain point, anyways. But how the hell did Luffy get here?
Restless, anxious for answers, she extracts her limbs and general person from Luffy's tight grip (he groans in protest but he'll just have to deal with it, she's having a crisis here!) and leans up, squinting bleary eyes around the clearing to scan her surroundings.
She is definitely smack dab in the middle of the clover meadow. (Her stomach gives a gurgling protest in the form of a grumble, and she'd shush it if she thought it would listen, but it wouldn't, so she just ignores it.) The trees fringing the perimeter are tall and sparsely-leaved, budding with new growth (it is the tail end of winter, after all), and she can hear the calls of mid-morning animals, feel their ever-so-faint, near-undetectable whispers of hungry hunting-intent flush against her skin. The sun isn't too high, but it's definitely risen, shedding a fair amount of heat, breaking through the chill of morning air, painting the clover vibrant green, so - judging by its position in the sky - it must be late morningtime. Ish.
Ilirya is… she peers over to Luffy's still-sleeping, curled up form, and yep. He's cuddled with Ran, snuggling against Luffy's chest. They're both in the shape of rabbits, snoozing away.
Traitor.
"I know you're awake," she whispers, voice rasping from the sleep still lodged in it, and Ilirya cracks open a single, belligerent eyelid.
And Valentine blinks, because. Huh. The eyes are different. That's new.
Ilirya's visible eye - what would usually be the large, doe-eyed brown of a common lop-eared rabbit - looks a little… odd.
The black pupil (usually almost indiscernible from the iris), is surrounded by white. Not the pure white of a sclera (which is hidden in the typical rabbit eye, anyways), but a shade that reminds her of the cratered surface of the moon, silvery-gray and flecked with black specs.
But the white is only a thin layer. Like a ripple in a pond, the concentric circle of white/gray/moonish-stuff is encircled by a clearly delineated layer of chocolatey brown. The usual eye-color of a common rabbit.
"...The eyes are new," Valentine observes, and then WAIT, FUCK.
SHE ATE A DEVIL FRUIT.
She stills, and Ilirya must decide he wants to be a reassuring soul after seeing the look that steals over her face, because he posthaste extracts himself from Ran, shifts to a bird, and flits over to her shoulder.
"Can you- can you get big, please?" Valentine whispers, and Ilirya complies.
Before she can blink he's on the ground and a panther, slit-pupiled and golden eyed.
And even with the darkly furred, massive face hovering close to hers, a curling tail and warm body huddling reassuring around her own, warm breaths puffing on her face, all she can focus on is the eyes. Because the eyes are-
Whatever fucking magic that made the moon-circle appear in Ilirya's eye isn't restricted to rabbit-form. (Though, actually, she wouldn't have been surprised if that had been the case, knowing the mythological connections between rabbits and the moon- anyways.) The silvery, black-flecked gray is layered the same around the slit-pupil of a cateye, all the more startling and unnatural looking against the gold of the natural iris and the contrast of the black fur.
Her hands rise to stroke along the soft velvet of one of Ilirya's ears as she thinks.
Okay. Devil fruit. What the hell did it do? What's happening to her?
Full body checkup, go.
She's still on the clover, seated, legs tucked to the side. She can sit up without assistance. That's a good sign.
Her head… doesn't really hurt as much as she thought it did when she was waking up. She's a little hazy-headed, but she thinks it comes from sleeping too long, if anything. In fact, her head feels clear. Weirdly clear. More straightforward, less muddled and distractible, more… stable.
Hair is… she reaches up a free hand to card her fingers through it. Miraculously clean and untangled? Alright, well. She's not sure she's gonna contribute that one to the devil fruit, but she'll think about it. (Future plans for her hair notwithstanding.)
Limbs and body? Fine. She's a very fast healer, so all her cuts and bruises from the battle with Bluejam a few days ago (was that really a few days ago?) are all at least closed up and turning yellow (respectively), and the bandages under her clothes are still in place. She wiggles her toes and- winces. Yeah, she'll need to wrap those.
Mouth tastes gross and eyes are a bit gummy from sleep, but that can be quickly fixed by a toothbrush and an eye rub respectively. She puts the former on her to-do list and swiftly executes the latter, reaching up and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes with a soft sigh through her nose. Alright, well, her fingers are working perfectly fine. She can cross that one off the list.
Her senses seem to be good. If a bit sharp, actually, though that's probably just because everything was so muddled when Sabo was gone. The contrast is making each rustle of the clover and distant call of the jungle animals seem incredibly crisp, the sensations on her skin bright and attention-drawing, and the colors around her oddly vibrant. The hearing is a little disconcerting, though. She can hear the tigers in the trees.
Anyways. She sighs out through her nose, offbalance, but what puts her more offbalance is the fact that she feels… not horrible?
She distantly remembers the shattered and frayed edges she had in the night, the memories that slit her mind when she gazed upwards into the stars. She doesn't focus on them (what, honestly, would be the point?) but she doesn't… she…
She feels surprisingly fine and it's freaking her out.
Does this have something to do with the devil fruit she ate?
...Speaking of. She gazes around surreptitiously, eyes roving over the clover to search for a white peach (that's what it was, wasn't it?), what should be an obvious splotch against the green. She looks for several tense seconds - peering over the edge of Luffy, just in case it's hiding there - but she doesn't catch a glimpse of it.
Great.
It's gone.
She remembers taking a bite. She knows she took a bite, remembers the sensation of her teeth breaking through the slick and swelling exoskeleton of the revolting thing, and the taste-
That would explain the bad taste in her mouth, actually.
Anyways, she remembers taking a bite. She thinks she might've dropped it after? It tasted so bad. And then after that…
Nothing.
Well. She's still alive, so that should count for something. Nothing came to pick her off while it was just her and Ilirya huddled in the middle of the clover meadow (she assumes), after she… fell asleep? Well, she has no idea what effects the devil fruit wreaked on her body. For all she knows, she's completely different now, and she dropped into a temporary-coma last night to accommodate changes in her cellular structure. (She quells the sharp and immediate stab of panic.)
"Thanks for keeping me warm," she murmurs to Ilirya, then has to stifle a tick in her brow as Ilirya jerks back, velvety nose crinkling, as she breathes on his face.
"Don't say a word," she warns lowly, poorly stifling a flush and ignoring Ilirya's catlike grin as she rises to her feet. Her legs wobble for a moment, but she stabilizes easily, standing strong, breathing in and out (through her nose) while she keeps her mouth firmly shut.
She needs a toothbrush. Stat.
So of course, Luffy, the boy of perfect timing, chooses that particular moment to wake up.
Valentine makes a stifled noise of frustration as she feels him brighten, flickering out of the muddled blurriness of sleep. He stirs, cuddling closer to Ran, then stiffens.
"...Val?" Luffy calls out, plaintive, eyes still squinched shut, and Valentine's heart melts.
"I'm here, Luffy," she murmurs, sinking to her knees in the clover and running a gentle hand over his chubby cheek, his ruffled hair. There's a single clover tucked away in the bird's nest of black, and she gently plucks it out, moves to flick it away-
Her lips purse. It's a four-leaf clover.
Luffy's eyes are opening, now, and he's yawning, sitting up, dragging a dozy Ran with him (the only reason neither of them have chattered her and Ilirya's ears off, by now, she'd wager, is the sleepiness: practically the only way to quiet the two of them), rubbing at his eyes. He's holding Ran to his chest much like any other child would clutch a stuffed rabbit as he yawns, eyes watering, and it's adorable.
"...I have so many questions," Valentine murmurs, half to herself and under her breath, tone low and voice dry. Because seriously, how the hell did Luffy get here?
"Followed you," Luffy says promptly.
...Did she ask that question out loud? "You followed me?"
"Yeah. Followed you 'cause I saw you leave and then I couldn't find you but I figured out where you were so I came here. And I was right! I thought you'd be harder to find 'cause you're usually so sneaky, but 'lirya was guarding you so you were easy to spot."
Valentine blinks. Processing. She absently notes that Ran is oddly content to be quiet.
"Huh. Your eyes are like Ilirya's, now." Luffy observes, peering over at her. He nods sagely.
"What?"
"I never saw it before, but last night, when 'lirya had those antlers-" Luffy mimes the 'antlers' rather adorably, thumbs to his temples and the rest of his fingers wiggling away from his head, "-his eyes got super weird too! So now I guess they're stuck that way."
Why did Ilirya shift back to being a deer last night? Why that's a good form for night guarding, I have no idea. "Good to know, Luffy," she murmurs, mind flying at a thousand miles a minute.
Wait- my EYES?
"Wait wait wait, what do you mean stuck that way? What do they look like?" she's a little frantic, scooting closer to Luffy involuntarily, hands fluttering, eyes widening as if perhaps, if Luffy can see them better, he'll reconsider his observation. Ran squirms in Luffy's arms, shifts from twitchy-nosed rabbit to teeny doormouse, scurries up his arm to perch on his shoulder and gaze keenly into Valentine's widened eyes, expression (if mice can even have expressions) inscrutable.
(They don't feel any different. Do they?)
Luffy makes an impatient noise, clambering to his feet, Ran hanging onto his shoulder and squeaking her affront. Valentine scrambles to her feet along with him, eyes still wide, nervously waiting for Luffy's judgement.
"Well?" she asks. If her voice is tinged with panic, everyone else is too polite (or doesn't care) to mention it.
"They're like Ilirya's," Ran says, a squeaking soprano after a short spell of fraught silence. It's matter of fact, and Luffy nods his emphatic agreement.
"There's a shiny moon-bit, 'round the black dot in the middle," he adds. "The rest of your eye went…" Luffy tilts his head to the left, the right. "Outside the moony part. That part's still like Makino's!"
Luffy smiles wide, even as Valentine's heart sinks like a stone, because oh no. Oh no.
Has she lost her mother's eyes?
"I need a mirror," she whispers, but her voice cracks. It's alright, Ilirya whispers, a ferret wound reassuringly around her neck, but she can't even look at him, can't bear to see a mirror image of the eyes that are now apparently irreversibly embedded in her skull.
What the hell is this devil fruit? she thinks to herself, savagely and angrily, tinged with grief, and the answer comes to her with dizzying, immediate certainty, the knowledge simply there.
Ekō ekō no mi.
…The Echo Echo Fruit.
It wells up from inside her, this fact, ironclad and fixed. She chokes on a hysterical laugh, much more deranged than she usually lets leak out of herself, and she's clutching at her arms in a self-imposed parody of a hug, trailing into chuckles, then choked silence, the outside world distant, irrelevant.
"-al? Val!"
She blinks, refocuses, and realizes Luffy is shaking at her shoulders, worried face and big black eyes peering close into hers, gazing up across the several inches that separate their height. He looks frowning and worried and that won't do.
"We're all good," she blurts, backing out of his grip, and the thing is? She's not even lying. She really does feel okay, even with the addition of new information that feels like somewhat of a cosmic joke layering into her brain like icing on the shitty cake.
Something has changed, because she's dealing with things… differently. Less like the emotionally unstable nine-year-old she is(?) and more like the adult she was(?), stable and moored, and that should be freaking her out but she's fine with it and that's freaking her out. Agh.
She likes it way fucking better than her crazy nine-year-old brain but she's not sure it was worth it.
"...Let's go back," she murmurs, untired and alert. She feels as if she's just woken up from a longer sleep than she needed, and now her mind is clear.
(She doesn't need to think about the devil fruit right now. She'll tell Luffy and Ace and Sabo later, after they've all shed the traumatic vestiges of this whole nightmarish few days, after they've pulled away from the sheer immediacy of the crisis. The boys don't deserve to have to deal with this bullshit of hers now, not after everything.
She'll keep it to herself until she has something she can really tell them.)
"Alright!" Luffy chirps, grabbing her hand, immediately accepting (and not caring at all about) her new eyes. She blinks, startled, nearly stumbling over her feet as his hand clasps hers, familiar and grounding, and he tows her across the clover, towards the forest and in the completely wrong direction.
She stifles a giggle, smiling, and gently tugs the both of them the opposite way.
Ace and Sabo are not pleased.
Apparently, Ace is extraordinarily tired of waking up with people gone and that worriedness transmogrifies into pure rage upon the reacquisition of said missing person (people?) during the late morning, because he yells at them. A lot. For a while. She'd rather not revisit the memory.
Sabo plays unintentional good cop, which is almost worse, because all he does is look tired and drained and give the both of them tight hugs. He doesn't say anything at all, wan and worried and relieved that they're even here, and that sends a pang of sharp guilt straight to her heart. She didn't even have him back for one day before she disappeared again. Typical.
And of course, they notice the eyes.
She knows they notice but they don't have the chance to say anything, because she clearly needs to brush her teeth and wash her face and change into real clothes and she flees to the upstairs bathroom as soon as Ace loses enough steam for her to do so, locking the door behind her.
As she brushes her teeth (finally), gently washes the last vestiges of makeup off her face (how'd that get so faded, anyways?), she gazes into the mirror, apprehensive.
So. What are the damages?
She stares for a beat. Another. Tears well up, gentle, brimming over, as she gazes into the mirror.
...It turns out the damages are pretty extensive.
Luffy wasn't lying when he said Valentine's eyes were like Ilirya's. They're practically identical, though the color of Ilirya's outside ring seems to shift depending on his form, matching the natural color of the iris of whatever animal he's in the shape of (and she knows this because Ilirya's perched on the sink, peering into the mirror same as her, flickering between form after form like flipping pages as he inspects the new eyes).
The deep brown that used to color the entirety of Valentine's irises - her mother's eyes, Makino's eyes - have been pushed to a thick outer layer. Her irises have effectively been divided into concentric rings: the 'moony' layer right outside the pupil, and her natural brown right outside that.
They take up about equal space, though the brown might take up a little more. She leans closer to the mirror, peering intently over the sink, and the odd, fibrous quality that all irises have up close shows the black specs for what they are; pitch-black gaps in the warp and weft of the silvery-gray, and fucking hell she has no idea how this is affecting her vision. Is she seeing things differently? She doesn't think so. Maybe? Does that mean the eyes are symbolic, then? Symbolic of what?
The border between the inner-layer and the outer-layer is even more unnatural seeming up close. The fibrous weave just stops being her familiar brown and starts being silver, the eye itself continuous (which means the new bit wasn't transplanted, no matter how she feels about it), the colors blocked out in a perfect circular line. She's faintly aware that some people have weird eyes here (hey, Mrs. Horton from the village has yellow eyes, and the meat-skewer seller that has all the beef Luffy likes has bright pink), but this is weird. (Even for a world like this.)
She's still relatively calm (thanks, altered-without-my-express-consent-brain!), so she's not hyperventilating, but she's off kilter.
Not to mention that I have no idea what this fruit actually does. She considers things evenly, flexing her fingers, still peering intently into the mirror. As she watches, her pupils dilate, stretching the silver and brown in odd, hypnotic ways. The echo echo fruit.
She considers the possibility that it may have to do with the echoes she's been getting of her past life.
Her first (and most obvious) thought seems… exceedingly plausible. But if that's all it does, why the eyes? And why was she getting those echoes before now? Do the effects of the fruit reach through time, somehow? She's not sure if that would even make sense...
She has truly, absolutely, no idea.
At least my face is the same, she thinks absently, pitifully grateful. Her face is like her mom's, heart-shaped with fine features (hey, the first time she saw the nose, she thought shouldn't this be bigger? but she didn't get to choose it). Her eyes are still overlarge, long-lashed and childish, new layout strange and striking against her coloration. Her hair (just like Makino's in everything except color, two long bangs framing her face, the rest falling long and straight down her back) is the same. Her face is otherwise the same as it's been for almost a decade, if a bit drawn and stressed looking, still naturally pale and disconcertingly unfreckled, no matter how much time she spends in the sun. (Yet another difference.)
It's just-
It's not that her eyes look ugly now. But it's never been about beauty, with this new face (she can remember the villagers cooing over her, when she was younger, telling Makino what an angelic child she seemed to be, though those remarks trailed to a stop when Luffy arrived and they started making nuisances of themselves), because if she looks like her mom at all (the most beautiful woman on Dawn Island if not in the entire world), she's absently sure there's nothing to concern herself about. It's the fact that Valentine doesn't even have Makino's hair color, didn't have it to start with, that she had one thing definitively and purely of her mother that she saw every time she peered into a mirror, and now that's gone. Changed. Taken.
It's like a metaphor for all the things she's letting go. A pulse of doubt rattles through her, and she grips the edge of the sink in a white-knuckled grip, gritting her teeth. Was this really-
She startles and nearly knocks her knee against hard porcelain as someone raps at the door. "Val! There's some leftovers, if you're still hungry."
Ah. Sabo. She keeps eye-contact with the creature in the mirror, strange and alien, even more foreign with the loss of her eyes.
(She traces over her nose, her lips, the arch of her brow and the curve of her jaw. These, at least, she can still keep. Things she never knew she was taking for granted until one was taken from her.)
She doesn't quite manage to tear her eyes away from her reflection as she responds. "Yeah, gimme a second! I'll be right out."
Almost as soon as Valentine and Luffy inhale the leftovers from last night's dinner (the one she missed, go figure), Valentine cleverly squirreling away food from Luffy's insatiable gullet all the while, they unanimously decide to go back to Makino's. (If Valentine's assent comes a little too fast, a little too emphatic, nobody remarks on it.)
As they run, she thinks.
Dadan - who Valentine still hasn't seen - is bedridden, apparently, burned badly but on the mend. She honestly didn't tune in too much for the serious-sounding conversation Ace and Sabo were having over the breakfast table (too busy focusing on food), but she heard enough details to be aware that Dadan is injured and she's going to be fine. (Thank the heavens for small miracles.)
Her mind drifts. Running through the forest is stupidly soothing, for some reason, though whether that's because Luffy and Sabo and Ace are all around her or if it's due to something else, she has no idea. She's willing to bet quite a bit of money on the former, though. When Sabo was gone, it felt like something was missing, something utterly crucial and entirely necessary, like something she couldn't quite pinpoint was sitting wrongly in her head. Now that he's back, it feels good. Really good. They're all so bright, the three of them, and she hasn't really properly noticed it before. They radiate sheer conviction, the breadth of their dreams and desperate hopes, and it's utterly captivating, if barely-detectable. She's not sure how she hasn't spent more time noticing before now.
Anyways, whatever the hell her fruit is doing to her, she thinks she can rule out… uh… the transform-y ones. Zone? Zoan. Zoan and Logia. She thinks she'd know if she was… made of echoes, now, or something. Or made of an echoish creature. She doesn't feel any animalistic instincts, doesn't feel tempestuous or untamable. (Not beyond her usual, anyway.)
Her eyes are different, but hey. Luffy's fruit is a Paramecia, and it changed the structure of his entire body!
(…As she tries not to think about the possibilities, she shudders, a chill stroking over her spine.)
So. Paramecia, hm? Only the most stupidly diverse array of possible fruit abilities in the whole universe.
Figures that she wouldn't get something simple. No, she can't transform into a dragon or anything like that... something that straightforward and powerful would be too easy. She scowls, directs her thoughts ominously towards the greater universe at large. Just in case somebody's listening! Maybe they could throw her a bone.
Yeah, right.
"Oi, Val." Hm?
Ace voice. He's running near the front of the pack like usual, breathing even and controlled as his flats pound the ground. All their dæmons are running alongside them as wolves, gray and brown and black and dull gold (Aurelia included), though Valentine hesitates upon noticing that Ilirya is oddly, subtly in the center of the cluster.
"Wha?" She doesn't spare the breath on a longer answer. Running for an hour straight isn't terrible, exactly, but she doesn't enjoy getting too wordy during runs no matter the length. She can't really focus on speaking with the sensation of exertion pulsing through her.
(That being said, she has a bad feeling about this.)
"Spill it," Ace grinds out, matter-of-fact, not looking back at her. "Explain what you did. Everything. From the top."
"Everything?" Valentine is incredulous, but she can't help notice that Sabo and Luffy - running (in that order) behind Ace - are noticeably silent.
(Did they plan this?)
She's struck with the sudden wish that the run back to Foosha Village was a little less long. A whole hour of this? She might pass out in sheer self-preservation instinct.
"Yeah. With Sabo- that was all you. So spill it."
"...Not much to say," she growls out, trying to focus on the pounding of her (bandaged and boot-clad) feet against the ground, the rushing of wind past her face, the instinctual dodge-leap-duck of navigating the uneven, fierce terrain of the forest floor. Back in a tank top and shorts - pipe left in the hideout for safekeeping - she feels a little more herself. (Might help that she nearly coughed up a lung in laughter at Sabo's startled shout upon seeing the culmination of their life's work stuffed into the confines of the airborne hideout. It retrospect, the piles of gold might be a little unexpected if you're not aware of them beforehand. Just a little.)
Anyways, she wishes she had the excuse of her abilities being shitty enough that she can't multitask, but she's pretty sure she'd get laughed out of the whole forest if she tried to pull that one.
"Spill it," Ace repeats, firmer. He still hasn't looked back, but she can read the fight in the tense of his shoulders. (He's too easy to read. The way he reacts gives away what he's thinking, way too obvious. Especially with the sleeveless shirts he wears.)
Unstoppable force, meet moveable object. "I mean, there's not much to tell," she demurs, breathing out, caving. Redirect. Downplay. Maybe he'll let it go.
"Like hell," Ace spits out, the first hint that he's not in harmony with the perfectly-calm aura he's projecting. "You got Sabo back. Even though I was… you pulled a damn heist, from what Sabo told me."
Valentine shoots the back of Sabo's head a dirty look. (The blond curls of which are visible because he's completely sans-top hat. It's a jarring look on him, wearing one of Ace's spare red tank tops and a pair of dark shorts, not his usual blue and white layers. He's wearing a spare pair of ill-fitting bandit boots, too, his old clothes utterly lost, left behind and burned at the altar of escape, and he looks oddly vulnerable without them, almost like a stranger, if she discounts the fact that she simply knows it's Sabo, could find him and Halia in a half-second in a dark room.
But she digresses.)
"Wasn't a heist," she grumbles, even as Luffy shouts out wow, cool! What's a heist!, leaping up and past Sabo in his excitement.
"What I wanna know," Sabo says quietly, dropping back to draw even with her, speaking over Luffy's excited yelling. "Is how you got me out."
Valentine exhales slowly, tuning out the sound of Ace short-temperedly answering Luffy's barrage of questions. "You were there, Sabo. You know how it went."
"I mean, I get that you pretended to be a noble," Sabo says. "But I don't get exactly how-"
"Simple plan," Valentine interrupts, flatly controlled, breathing even, arms and legs pumping as she and Sabo run in tandem. "Your mother doesn't know what I look like. If there's any pictures of us in the paper, from our dine'n'dashes, my most recognizable characteristic - my hair color - is in black and white anyways, so she wouldn't be able to recognize that, either. Your father might, since he's seen us more than once, so I needed to go when he'd be away, which he always is from the hours of ten-AM to eleven-thirty-AM. I got the dress from my usual contact in Edge Town, spent the night there and prepped. Got the makeup styles and up-to-date fashion from a magazine at our last dine'n'dash. The rest is plenty of research, lots of planning, accumulation of resources, and good acting. The end."
She distantly realizes that Ace and Luffy, scant feet ahead of them, have gone silent, listening. The noises of the forest gently fill the ballooning silence.
"...And that's it," she finishes, lamely.
"What the- that doesn't explain anything at all!" Luffy blurts, nearly tripping over himself as he glances over his shoulder to shoot her a befuddled look. "Sabo said you were all dressed up, and that you tricked his mom! And the- the fire! How'd you do that?"
"Acting, Luffy," she says, more gently than before, because, well. It's Luffy. "And I was never in the Gray Terminal during the fire. I was on the other side of the wall the whole time."
She wishes distantly she could close her eyes - maybe it'd help her think straight - but for better or for worse, the distraction of the run is thinning her filter and making her more honest.
"But how did you know you had to?" says Ace, and she knows, instantly, that this is the question he really wants the answer to. His tone is brash, never hiding his intent, because for all his posturing, Ace is honest. "Why? How did you know that Sabo was…"
...That Sabo was miserable, she finishes in her head, brief spike of panic fading as realization dawns. Ah.
"It's not your fault, Ace," she says, cutting past the muddled and murky fringes, and Ace's shoulders tense. (She catches Sabo's eyes widening in her peripheral.)
She can practically hear Ace's hackles rising, his whole countenance puffing up like a belligerent toad. "I didn't-"
"And I didn't know for sure," Valentine interrupts, cutting off his needless justifications at the pass, and it's not a lie. "I mean. I thought he might. But the reason I went was that…" she takes a breath, tries her best to verbalize what she's thinking. "It should always be Sabo's choice. When he got taken back to hightown, he didn't go back on his own. Even if I had gotten there and Sabo told me to leave and it had all been for nothing… at least then I'd know. I'd know it was him deciding."
My heart wouldn't have survived, obviously. But it's not my decision where he's supposed to be. The only choice I get to make is whether or not I can pull off giving him the option.
"...I'm such a damn idiot," Ace mutters after a brief spell of silence, quietly, darkly, self-hatred in his voice, like it's fact, and it makes her blood boil.
"You're no more of an idiot than I am," Sabo says immediately after, even as Valentine opens her mouth to say um, I think the hell not. Sabo's tone grows ever-darker as he runs, and he's still in line with Valentine so she can see the bleak expression stealing over his face, the self-reprimand, the despair. "I'm the one who really thought my father was telling the truth when he said you wouldn't be harmed. After what you told me about Porchemy and Bluejam…"
Ah, Valentine thinks to herself numbly. I guess he knows I killed Porchemy, then.
"That doesn't matter, Sabo," Ace says. "I'm just- you know what I said earlier. I mean it."
"Yeah, Ace. I remember." Sabo brightens fractionally, thoughtful hum carrying over Luffy's demands to know what they talked about before. "But honestly, if you look at it from a certain angle, I'm glad it happened this way."
Valentine cuts her gaze to the side, staring at a smiling Sabo like he's crazy. And he very well might be, saying something like that.
"Whaddaya mean, Sabo?" Luffy, barrage (thankfully) ended, glad that they're all here and uncaring of how it came to be. He holds no judgement in his tone, only blatant curiosity.
"Well, I met someone important, the night of the fire. I think it changed how I want to fulfill my dream." Sabo is smiling absently, expression gone distant and dreamy as he runs.
"Your dream?" Ace sounds incredulous. And a little bit offended. (Judging by how much stress this whole disaster has brought him, that isn't surprising.)
"Yeah." Sabo's voice is filled with purpose, serene and utterly certain. "I'm going to be a revolutionary."
...Ah, Valentine thinks awkwardly, as Ace explodes in a barrage of demanding questions and Luffy starts talking a mile a minute. I think. I should have expected this?
"-but who did you meet, Sabo?" Ace says, frustrated, and-
"He said his name was Dragon. Leader of the revolutionary army. He saved my life, you know? We didn't talk for long, but it's like- everything he said, I knew he'd spent his life fighting for. And I wanna fight that fight too."
"As long as you're happy, Sabo," Valentine says, which is the complete sum total of her opinion on the matter.
"But you- you don't even know who he is!" Ace sounds incredulous. "He could have- he could have an earthworm dæmon, or something!"
"Don't stereotype," Valentine shoots at him, and though her tone is light, she's utterly serious. (Hey, Makino's dæmon is a sugar glider, and Makino verbally shamed a vice admiral of the marines out of their little podunk village. He should know by now not to judge a dæmon by its appearance.)
Ace looks over his shoulder and sticks his tongue out at her, pulling at his lower eyelid with a fingertip. Bleh.
"His dæmon was a gorilla, actually," Sabo says, faux-snootily. "So I don't think I have to worry about his leadership skills, thanks."
"A gorilla?" Luffy pipes up, sounding surprisingly thoughtful.
"Yeah."
"Was it all silvery on the back? Not super snarly or anything?"
Sabo narrows his eyes suspiciously. "Yyyyess…?"
"Huh." Luffy's brief bout of thoughtfulness concludes as soon as it began. "I think that's my dad."
"WHAT?"
Ace and Sabo's overlapping shouts are as deafening as they are incredulous, rebounding through the whole expanse of the jungle like a sonic boom. (Valentine winces as the sound echoes in her ears, ducking a flyaway branch heading straight for her face.)
"I dunno. I don't remember much from when I was super small, but I totally remember a gorilla. Could be a different guy, though!" Luffy is back to grinning cheerfully, utterly out-of-breath, keeping his pace even with Ace's through sheer willpower. (How Luffy manages with those short legs of his, Valentine will never know.)
"...I really need to think about this," Sabo says as he runs, somewhat woozily, but not in the vein of reconsideration. More in the vein of what the hell am I getting myself into?
"We can just ask Garp next time he's here," Valentine says, very practically. The fact that she's perfectly aware that Dragon is indeed Luffy's father (though she didn't expect him to know, what the hell) doesn't bear mentioning. Hey, if Luffy remembers his father's dæmon (and not his actual father himself, yowch), that's entirely his prerogative.
"The whole world's gone crazy," Ace mutters, but it's less agh and more how did I get stuck with you idiots? in that affectionate way he always adopts. (Valentine can't control the small smirk that sneaks over her face. Neither can Sabo, from what she catches in her peripheral.)
"Well, we've got time to figure it out," Valentine says, extremely glad that the attention is off her (and not in a hurry to reclaim it). "Although I don't think we should go back to hightown for a while. Even the terminal is a risk. Your family is probably still gonna be looking for you, Sabo."
"We'll just have to get strong enough that we can beat up anybody they throw at us." There's a gritty edge of devil-may-care invincibility in Ace's voice, though it's tempered (surely) by recent experience.
How long will it take him to start thinking that things can be solved by something other than strength? she thinks fondly, smiling despite herself as she runs. A little older than the age of eleven, maybe. I'll give it a few years.
"Getting that strong might take a while," Sabo says, not arguing the point, a hint of selfconsciousness in his voice. "You guys don't have to…"
"We gotta get strong anyways," Luffy says. "Super duper strong. Stronger than everyone else! It won't take too long, Sabo, don't worry. We'll get really strong really fast and then we can go again whenever we want."
...Well. Who knows, maybe it really is that simple, she thinks. Sabo snorts, smiling wide, but then again, they all are.
"Until then," Valentine says, "I think we're gonna need to spend most of our time in the forest. During the summertime, especially, when we can't layer up and we're more recognizable." Though I have a small plan for making myself a little less visible, actually. "We might all do well to change our styles a little," she adds.
(The latter sentence is said dryly, without much hope or expectation of compliance.)
Their conversation trails into comfortable silence, and for perhaps seven seconds, Valentine thinks that she might've really made it through the worst of it. And then-
"We were so worried about you, Sabo!" Luffy pipes up, breaking the silence unrepentantly, sounding like he's been holding this back for a while. Ran yips her agreement. "Val said she was gonna go get you, but then she left on her own! And we thought she… we thought was gone, too, and she died in the fire." Valentine can hear the tears that have come to Luffy's eyes coloring his voice. "But you guys came back! I'm so glad you're here now. Never leave again, okay?"
Luffy says this tearfully, but with simple, straightforward command, utterly serious, and the complete expectation of being answered in turn.
"...Alright, Luffy," Sabo says, tone sobering and edged with something she can't define. "I'll do my best."
"And Val!" She blinks, startled, as Luffy turns around, making eye-contact with her and running backwards just long enough to say-
"You have to promise me. Never die, okay?"
She's staring at the back of Luffy's head by the time she's processed what he's saying, gaping in shock, blinking rapidly.
"...Well, you heard him," she hears Sabo say, and her head jerks to the side as she looks to him, startled. He's looking at her, face honest, unapologetic. "You gotta promise."
"Why don't we all promise," she says, and despite her best efforts, the words sound as off-kilter as she feels.
"I swear!" Luffy shouts, immediate, punctuating his promise with a leap. "I swear! I'll never die, not ever! I'm gonna be the pirate king, and I'll make sure my family never dies!"
Valentine has to purse her lips to hold back her emotion and amusement both, still running.
"I'm never gonna die, of course," Sabo says, matter-of-fact, fresh from the aftermath of his near-death. "How could I leave Val to look after Luffy on her own?"
"Hey." Ace sounds affronted, but Valentine giggles, which - by the grin Sabo shoots her - she thinks might have been the point. There's fizziness filling the air, bubbling and gold, electric.
"Obviously," Ace adds, still in the lead, staring ahead, "I don't have anything to worry about. I'm not gonna die. I'm too busy worrying about you three."
Valentine stays quiet.
She reflexively contorts out of the way of the pointed elbow Sabo jabs at her side, and she can't for the life of her tell what expression she's got on her face. "I promise," she says, unsure if she's lying. "I don't plan on dying," she says, more firmly, "and I'll do everything I can to stay alive."
"Huh," Sabo mutters, "that's reassuring."
Nonetheless, the promise is made.
(She jabs back at him, their well-worn dance, and Ace throws in something sarcastic, Luffy jumps in playfully-)
For better or for worse, some very important questions (how did you know you'd need to plan ahead in the first place?) go unasked, and - by consequence - unanswered.
(She remembers the gorillas. Hidden away in a section of the forest she and Luffy never go to, not because they're still too weak - they're leagues stronger, now, she's pretty sure they can handle some monkeys - but because they don't want to say the wrong thing and mess up. All of them dignified, quietly and honestly, but undeniably wild, too: something of the forest within them, utterly a part of them, inextractable.
Valentine wonders if this is where Monkey D. Dragon got his dæmon's shape.)
Makino, of course, knows that something has changed the second they tumble through the door.
Makino is standing behind the familiar bar polishing glasses, and (hearing their usual chatter as they push through saloon-style open air batwing doors, tromping in), she looks up, warm smile on her face-
"Welcome back," Makino says, automatic, but her smile has faded fractionally and her eyes keep flicking from Sabo's clothes to Valentine's eyes, aware and intelligent.
Realistically, Valentine didn't expect that the changes would go unnoticed, but having their cover blown a scant second after walking through the door is a bit soon.
"Food?" Luffy says, hopeful, and the beat of silence breaks, Makino's smile brightening again as she sweeps into the kitchen with a playful remark tossed over her shoulder, and they funnel after her, all questions pushed aside for later.
Luffy is, as usual, banished from 'helping' in the kitchen mere minutes after he's stepped into it. (His banishment is on charges of endangerment and refusal to cease and desist. And also because he managed to light an onion on fire. The usual.)
Ace and Sabo stick around a little longer, both armed with serviceable skills (chopping vegetables, they can do, no matter the faces they tend to make while doing it), but a while later, Makino tells the both of them to go out and make sure Luffy isn't breaking anything in the bar that can't be repaired.
They funnel out without protesting, and finally, Valentine and Makino are alone.
For several long minutes, the kitchen is filled with the sound and smell of meat sizzling in the pan, the scents of stir fried broccoli and green beans wafting through the air. Valentine relaxes by inches, yielding to the familiarity, to the feeling of home, and it's only then that Makino speaks.
"What happened?" Makino says quietly, spatula in hand, brown eyes kind.
Valentine, whose eyes have changed, whose everything has changed, can't bear to look. "A lotta stuff." Her voice is quiet and raspy.
She turns to her mom and falls into the waiting hug, grasping tightly, pressing her face against Makino's torso. The meat sizzles over the burner in the background and she's hugging her mom, safe in the kitchen, and Sabo is alive. Sabo isn't gone. Sabo is here. She's chest-height to Makino, now, knows that by the time she's fifteen she may well grow to or past Makino's modest 5'4, but she can't imagine outgrowing her mom, can't imagine outgrowing these hugs, a refuge.
"Oh, my child," Makino whispers, stroking over Valentine's hair. "Have I let you stray too far?"
Makino's hands are finely trembling against her hair. To Valentine, this is a shout, a quiet plea, because her mom never - never - trembles. She's not afraid to cry, never afraid to shed tears (doesn't see it as a weakness and Valentine's heart overflows with love for her), but she doesn't tremble. (And maybe Makino can feel what a close call this was, now close they came to falling apart. Maybe.)
"No," Valentine whispers, all her steadfast solitude crumbling in the arms of her mother. "I- the eyes are just- I ate a devil fruit, like Luffy did-"
"The color of your eyes isn't what worries me," Makino murmurs, face pressed to Valentine's hair, muffled. "No matter the color of your eyes, you're still you. What worries me is that you seem… so hurt, darling. Like you've gotten older in just a few days."
Valentine swallows. "Sabo got… taken. I had to get him back. Nobody got… nobody got hurt worse than usual. It was just… hard."
For all that Valentine's choked up, her words are carefully chosen.
Her mother's voice is gentle. "Did you have to?"
"Yes."
She is completely sure.
This surety is what makes Makino exhale, sigh, breathe in and out slowly and with feeling.
Every word she utters thereafter sinks into Valentine's chest like an arrow.
"Then I'm proud of you."
Valentine's breath hitches.
"My strange, wonderful daughter… you've always been wise beyond your years. No- don't deny it." Makino smothers a teary laugh against Valentine's small shoulder at her instinctual twitch, the urge to deflect. "Truly, oddly old-souled. From the moment you came back from the woods, I knew you were changing, losing your dependence on me. And I've tried so hard to be okay with that." A deep, shuddering breath. "I want you to be strong, Valentine. I want you to laugh, to be happy, more than anything else, but I also want you to know… that you are loved. That I love you so, so much."
Valentine can't even begin to speak.
"So it's okay to lean on me, alright? You've told me your plans, I know you'll be leaving - better than taking over this old bar, anyways - but you're still young. Rely on me a little, okay?"
The first time she tries to take a bath, she nearly drowns herself.
She's full from stir fry and (most of the) vegetables, the rest of the afternoon bled away simply roaming around the village with Ace and Sabo and Luffy, meandering through the market in their usual group of four. Her and Luffy (mostly the latter) gleefully took the lead, showing off the best springtime spots for peoplewatching, the best stalls for spiced shish-kebabs (Valentine waves sheepishly at Mr. McQueeney, a man who knows very well of the antics they tend to trend towards), the quickest shortcuts and approximate layout of the ever-shifting marketplace.
But the sun sunk over the horizon, orange and red and yellow and beautiful. They watched it from the top of the best windmill in town, chattering and quiet in turns, until Mrs. Mendleson came out of her house with her broom and shook it at them and they had to pull a graceful retreat.
Anyways. Now it's time for her bath.
She dips a foot - her toe, one toe - into the still, steaming water. A half second later, she's jerked back, slipped, and nearly bashed her head open on the sink.
"Valentine?" Makino's voice. Hazy and distant, getting louder as she comes to the bathroom door. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine!" Valentine manages, laying on her back on the slick tile, heartbeat rabbiting in her chest, Ilirya a coral snake curled up somewhere in the vicinity of her left boob. Non-boob. (Again, she's nine. Even she slips up in her head and forgets she's a damn nine-year-old.) She just barely didn't hit her head, managed to contort the right way through the air in time, because-
The second she dipped her foot into the water, it felt like she turned deaf, dumb, and blind. That first one especially.
When she jerked it back out her senses returned immediately, but even that was startling. Startling enough that she overbalanced, slipped on the tile floor, pulled a Luffy, and tripped.
(See, here's something she now knows:
Her hearing changed when she ate the echo echo fruit. She had been developing the hunch, for the day she's had it - awareness of the alterations percolating in the back of her mind - that it might be just a general sensory boost, but nope, definitely not. Her sight may be just a bit sharper, her nerves a bit more sensitive (and damn it all, that'll be hell on her pain tolerance), but her hearing? That's what's changed the most. If her little dip in the bath taught her anything, it's that.
With dawning realization, she puts a tally mark in the connected to sound? column of 'what does my devil fruit do?: echo echo edition.')
"Hey, Mom?" Valentine calls out. This is… a little embarrassing, and her cheeks are tinting pink, but desperate times call for desperate measures.
"Yeah, hon?" Makino's return shout is muffled through the door.
Valentine's voice is raised, hopefully enough to carry through the door and down the hall. "Can you help me wash my hair, please?"
The two twin beds pushed together in the backroom fit the four of them, but it's cramped.
Valentine gets the inkling that Sabo and Ace will split off soon (they're getting to that tween-ish age, less and less cuddly child with every passing day, to her abject dismay), but for now, they're all stuck to each other like glue. It's the trauma, surely, and she doesn't argue with all the physical contact (not that she's usually first in line) because honestly? She's pretty sure she needs it too.
Apparently she's the best big spoon of all time, because Luffy catches Ace in a flying tackle when he tries to claim the spot, shouting a war cry.
Skirting around the other two wrestling boys (ignoring the cries of get the hell of me, Luffy, I was just walking towards the damn bed! and you'll never win!), Sabo jumps onto the mattress, stretches with a yawn, and settles under the covers with his back against Valentine's front.
Valentine is almost equal to Ace and Sabo in height, at this point (a poor overall height advantage in the long-run, yes, but for now, she's golden), so she has to scoot up the bed a little to settle Sabo's blond curls under her chin.
They're scratchy. She absently imagines how the texture will change if he grows them out. (She has no doubt that the covers will be long kicked-off by morning. That is, assuming they don't go immediately flying when Luffy cannonballs himself onto the bed.)
"...I'm glad to be back," Sabo murmurs, quiet, still leaning back gingerly. (But hey, he's the one who finagled his way into being the little spoon, isn't he? That's certainly progress.)
"We're glad to have you," Valentine whispers, meaning every word.
To the sound of Sabo's breathing and Ace and Luffy's playfighting, to the background symphony of her own new uncertainties, unanswered questions waiting to be found, growing ever more distant, she closes her eyes.
—
—
—
Notes:
[Valentine: spend 60% of the chapter worrying about your spiffy new eyes.]
[Author: spend the whole chapter alternating between lampshading and character freakouts.]
...All jokes aside, this chapter was very transitory. It's less 'exciting things' and more 'some answers to a few of your questions,' but it really was necessary.
And with this, we've finally gotten through with the Sabo Retrieval Arc! Which isn't to say Sabo stuff is over and done with, mind you (keep in mind possible aftermath of things going the way they did), but we're through with the Really Bad Week.
(Also, this chapter had a more humorous tone than the past few chapters have. I think that's really Val's doing. She really needs a break, yanno? Nobody can spend too long focusing only on serious or sad things.)