Yep, it's me again. I dished this out the other day and deemed it decent enough to post. So here you go!
Also I don't own One Piece.
The first time Shanks ever laid eyes on Roger, he knew that he wasn't looking at a human. Sometimes it was hard to tell, sometimes the others hid themselves by burrowing deeper into their host, dormant for the most part. Others did not tend to enjoy interacting with humans. Demons sought food while spirits sought emotion. Gods… who knew what they wanted. All of them, though, saw mankind as tools to use, to bite at and cling to.
When Shanks laid eyes on Roger, he knew that he wasn't looking at a human. This was a god.
He could taste it, sea salt on his tongue (too thick to be natural, too thick it was choking). He could hear it, the roaring of the ocean (pounding against his eardrums like a hellbeast, reined in by a very mortal leash). He could even see it, the way the waves would rise and fall with his motions, the way his laugh was like crashing tides, the way his dark eyes held every ounce of the salty sea in them. This wasn't a man, this was a man consumed.
And Shanks had shaken his (its) hand anyway and joined the crew.
He signed his soul to a pirate crew and told himself it was the right choice. Despite Rayleigh's grieving eyes (too dark for a soul, too dark for a life), despite fairytale warnings he could remember (and the prince allowed the other to possess him and he was consumed), despite the way Roger's ocean-eyes would watch him with a considering expression (like he was a curiosity, like he was special, like he was next), Shanks swabbed the deck and labored around the ship to prove his worth.
One day Rayleigh approached him. (The same day that Rogers had given him his hat, asking if he accepted the gift and then smiling victoriously when he did. Shanks had dismissed the terror in his stomach, the feeling of a predator watching for a meal, the feeling of something larger than he could imagine looming over him.)
Rayleigh (with dark eyes, too dark, are they voids?) approached him as the sun set, shadows playing over his face and Shanks almost thought that they were moving on their own. The first mate looked him over, resigned and judgmental all at once (so unlike the welcoming and cheery attitude he'd displayed earlier).
"Roger is dying," he said, and the world stopped and the snaking shadows paused and Shanks felt like this wasn't something he should be hearing, "He's looking to pass on his mantle."
(Considering glances from eyes dark like ocean depths. A gift that had felt like signing his soul away. The way Roger laughed and caused tsunamis.)
"He's looking at you."
(The next day Shanks takes a moment to feel, to really feel, the air around Roger. His mother used to tell him that when a god desired something, they pulled it in slowly, like a fishing lure, like gravity, because gods had eternity settled in their palms to wait out their prey.)
(Shanks stops, closes his eyes, and tries to notice that gravity.)
(He will never forget the pull of a god on the blood in his veins and the bones in his skin and every last hair on his body.)
That's all folks! I'll see you again next time :D