A/N: So, been a little while. I had planned to have someone between Nami and Vivi, but they would not cooperate so that got thrown out the window after a few weeks of trying. Once again, Vivi seemed to take over, I didn't realise how sad this was going to be to write and I may have gotten a little romantic in description on a part there.
Once again, thanks of the faves and follows, they reminded me that there was people wanting to read this, even when I wasn't able to do any writing.
ilovecartoonsgirl: Yes, he is. Thank you.
Black' Victor Cachat (Chapters 3, 5, 11, 13 & 15): Thank you so much. Hopefully you won't have to wait too long for Robin.
The ruckus of Vivi returning from where she had given her speech had finally calmed down and now she sat looking out the window of her room in the palace at the moon shining over the city that was slowly rebuilding itself trying to come to terms with everything that had happened.
She should have been exhausted from her run to and from the coast to say goodbye to her friends, not to mention the sleepless night she had had the night before, watching them leave for their ship and then coming to her decision. But the quiet that had overtaken the palace as it settled for the night left her sleepless again.
It was too quiet, without the sleep walking and sleep talking that had occasionally devolved into sleep arguments and in one case a physical fight where both participants had been asleep at the time. That particular incident brought a smile to her lips as she remembered how exasperated Nami had been when she had had to get up to deal with the issue to stop them from destroying the men's quarters, only to come back grumbling about stupid cooks and annoying swordsmen who managed to fight each other even in their sleep.
There would be no badly concealed giggling indicating a midnight kitchen raid attempt tonight either, Vivi thought to herself before shaking herself and turning her thoughts to less melancholy topics, reminding herself that she had made her decision and she knew it was the right one for her, even if it left her at a loss for now.
Turning her gaze from the moon to the rebuilding city she still couldn't quite believe they had done it. The crew had promised her repeatedly that they would help her free her kingdom, but deep in her mind, and heart, there had still been doubts that what they could do wouldn't be enough. That a Princess and an oddly small (but definitely a little insane) pirate crew would not be enough to stop something that had been planned and brewing for years.
She had been really worried when Luffy had been carried off by Crocodile's hook in exchange for her, she feared her worst nightmare of someone sacrificing themselves for her was about to come true. It probably didn't help that she had been with the crew long enough to read their tells, despite them putting on what were, for the most part, pretty convincing facades of calm. But she could hear in the wavering and the volume of Usopp's voice as his stories filled the night, see the fidgeting of Nami and Dr Tony and the twitching of Sanji's fingers as he attempted not to chain-smoke his way through the night, that they were just as worried about their captain.
But she also noticed something else, each time one of them seemed to get close to breaking point, they would suddenly stop, Ussopp's voice would settle and his volume would go down, Nami and Dr Tony would still and so would the cook, like they were calmed in some way, at least for a time before the cycle would start again. It had taken her a few rounds of these cycles in each of them for her to notice it was happening though her own silent panic, but as she noticed them calming, she herself also calmed herself watching them. After watching them for a time though these cycles, she noticed that just before they calmed they would glance off in a different direction than the one they had been looking in as they worked themselves up, after watching them all a few more times, she noticed that each was looking in the same direction each time. Upon following their gazes, she noticed something that she had not realised until then.
Mr Bushido was sitting, gaze turned in the direction they were traveling. Though his back had been to her, she could tell that he was relaxed. Not the relaxed that he often was on the ship as he napped on the deck, but the non-tense way he would settle himself as he waited for the signal for a battle to begin. He was sitting there, concentrating ahead as their captain had been left behind to deal with his own battle, trusting that he would catch up to them when he could. At least that was the feeling Vivi had felt emanating from his silent figure before her. As she continued to watch his back, she too began to feel a calm settle over her that she had not felt since she had felt the hook grab at her and she had realised what was behind the cycles of worry and calm that the other members of the crew had been going through.
She had realised after a little while in the presence of the crew that the relationship between Mr Bushido and Luffy was a little different that Luffy seemed to have with the rest of the crew, and that the rest also had a slightly different relationship with Mr Bushido than with each other. It had taken Vivi until after the fight the fight at Little Garden, when she looked back on it after calming from her worry about Mr Bushido's actions, to realise the core of the difference. She found it in Nami's trust that Mr Bushido could get them out of the wax and Mr Bushido stopping his actions and leaving getting out them out to Luffy as soon as he arrived.
It had been the trust they put in Mr Bushido to know that everything would be alright or to fight to make it so, and Mr Bushido's trust in Luffy to come out of battle the victor that had been calming them all. It was a relationship between a group of people that she had been living within but not realised she had been living. A type of friendship that she will never forget and would always hold in her heart, knowing that the tiny crew of laughter and fighters would do the same.
Vivi turned her gaze back to the moon as she had these thoughts. The decision she had made the night before had been a difficult one, to stay and leave her friends to their further adventures without her had torn at her heart and she wishes she had been able to continue with them. But her heart was in the desert that was her homeland.
She knew the sea did not speak to her like she realised it did to her friends, as much as she enjoyed her time on and with it. She did not hear the laughter and beckoning of the waves as they all seemed to. No that wasn't quite right, she did on some level, but not in the way she heard it from the desert. And so she had made the decision to stay, but she had known she had to say goodbye properly, no matter how the people of Alabasta would react to her odd speech and not being where she had meant to be.
She was relieved that the fighting was over for Alabasta and she was thankful for her friends for helping to bring that about, she thought as she turned away from the window in order to stand and ready herself for her first full night as just the Princess of Alabasta once again. Stopping for a few seconds before standing to allow her hand to rest over the X on the back of her wrist as the thought came to settle her mind fully for the first time since she watched the Going Merry sail away. She may be a princess, but she was also a StrawHat, as far as her Captain, crew and she were concerned.
