Past
Marco had known at once that the white-haired girl sobbing into his chest and calling him 'Uncle Marco' was Fox; those eyes were unique. However the abominable weather meant that all he could do was carry her to his cabin, promise to come back and dash out again to pull his weight and make sure the Moby Dick didn't sink. When his shift ended and Jozu arrived to replace him Marco grabbed some food from the galley and hurried back to his cabin to check on his unexpected guest. He found Fox curled up on his bed with her knees tucked under her chin and tear tracks staining her face. She didn't jump him this time, but stared at him as though she was afraid he'd vanish if she looked away. More worryingly, she didn't meet his eyes.
"Fox?" he said gently, setting the food down on the desk and sitting next to her.
"Marco, I… I…" Fox shuddered, rocking back and forth in a way that reminded the Division Commander of people whose minds had been broken by the horrors they had experienced. He carefully wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
"I'm right here, Fox."
Fox closed her eyes and leant into him, her breathing evening out a little. "They made me eat Devil Fruit, Marco," she whispered, her voice hitching slightly. "I lost the sea."
Marco pulled the teenager into his lap and rocked her soothingly like he had back when she'd been just a child coming to him with a grazed knee. He recognised the severity of her plight; being part-mermaid meant the sea was an integral part of Fox and being forever cut off from it as a Devil Fruit User was akin to losing a limb. Worse in fact because the Sea would always be there, just out of her reach. Marco was amazed she hadn't drowned herself yet.
"Who took you?" he asked, rocking her gently with one hand cradling the back of her head. Fox stiffened.
"Won't tell; it won't help," she whispered.
"Tell me," he insisted firmly, command leaking into his voice. Fox flinched, hands rising in an abortive movement to cover her head.
"Sorry!" she whispered, panic seeping into her voice.
"No, I'm sorry," Marco soothed, berating himself for pushing her. What he wanted right now was irrelevant; Fox needed help. "I shouldn't have asked you like that. I was just so worried when you vanished."
"Sorry," Fox repeated, her forehead pressed to his collarbone.
"You have nothing to apologise for," Marco reassured her gently. "Where were you?"
Fox sighed. "Mariejois."
Marco stilled. "You were a slave?" he asked carefully. Mihawk was going to be very displeased when he found out about this.
Fox nodded. "No more dragon hoof though," she added inanely. "I had myself skinned."
Marco hugged her again, wondering as he did so at the strength of mind –or sheer desperation– it took to ask someone to peel a quarter of the skin off your back and then deal with the pain for the time it took such an injury to heal. He also wondered in the back of his mind if he could persuade Pops to spend some time rooting out slavers; or perhaps Mihawk would take care of it. Marco had never seen the World's Greatest Swordsman actually angry but this might just make it happen.
"What happened to your hair?" She had been blonde when she was younger, a beautiful pale blonde like spring sunshine.
Fox shivered. "Devil Fruit; the strain I think," she said quietly. "I survived though. None of the others did."
"Others?"
"There were four of us: one full mermaid and three of us part-bloods," Fox said distantly. "The mermaid slit her own throat with the edge of a shell, one of the others drowned herself and the third one just… stopped." She shuddered. "I tried to drown myself but the Devil Fruit didn't take away my ability to breathe underwater, just my strength. Then I was kept too busy to think about anything except doing as I was told and learning control."
Marco's grip tightened. "I missed my little Fox," he said gently. "It's good to see you again. Are you hungry?"
Fox accepted the food and ate mechanically, clearly not hungry but recognising the importance of not turning down food. Marco sincerely wished she had just turned it down; this was just more evidence of past suffering.
"Can I sleep here?" Fox asked after finishing.
"Of course," Marco said. "I'll take over Thatch's floor."
"Can you stay?" Fox asked in a small voice, eyes downcast as she fiddled with the covers. "I… you make me feel safe."
"I'll get some blankets," Marco capitulated instantly. He knew that he would have to explain a whole lot of things to Pops in the morning as well as coax more answers out of Fox, but for now he could wait.
Marco woke to find Fox had abandoned the bed at some point in the night and wrapped herself around him like a baby sloth. It really was not appropriate behaviour for a fifteen-year-old girl, but he guessed it was due to the trauma of her past experiences. He tried to extricate himself, but rather than just letting go when he tugged on her arms Fox slipped out of his grip like a snake, darting to her feet and casting around for enemies with a knife held professionally in each hand. Her eyes weren't even open.
"Fox?" he asked carefully, not moving.
He got a grunt in reply as her eyelids flickered, revealing a faint glint of gold. Slowly the battle-ready girl dragged herself into wakefulness, lowering the knives and blinking sleepily.
"Wha?" she yawned, the blades vanishing somewhere on her person.
"Do you always wake up like that?" Marco inquired. Fox just blinked uncomprehendingly at him, one hand rising to rub her eyes.
"Izzit mornin' already?" she mumbled.
"Yes, it is." Where had the vivacious girl who was always the first to rise gone? "Come on, I'll escort you to breakfast."
Fox allowed herself to be towed out of the room towards the mess hall, stumbling and incoherent with elbow-length white hair hanging down her back in a scraggly braid. The wall of sound in the mess room did not rouse her at all; Fox instead clapped her hands over her ears and let him drag her over to a seat with the rest of the Division Commanders, then rested her head on the table while he went to get food.
She woke up gradually as she ploughed through her meal but remained utterly unselfconscious about her bedraggled appearance and salt-stained clothing. Marco wasn't sure if it was due to a cast-iron self-image or total indifference and wasn't sure he wanted to.
"So where were you hiding this one, Marco?" Thatch asked with a teasing grin. "We haven't touched land in over a week!"
Fox looked up. "I came on board yesterday evening," she said evenly, her tone so empty it chilled Marco to the bone. He'd never heard that kind of emotional control from a child before.
"Where from?" Marco asked, trying to get her to lower the defences that had just slammed up like steel walls.
Fox lifted a shoulder. "A boat." She paused, head tilted to one side like a bird. "It probably sank."
"Why come on board at all?" Thatch asked, apparently carelessly. Fox sharp glance at the man suggested she hadn't been fooled for an instant.
"I was looking for Marco."
And they were back to the beginning again. "Why were you looking for me at all?" Marco tried asking, remembering as he did Fox' penchant for word games and her ways of playing around with the truth. It seemed that trait had stuck.
"I wasn't looking for you in particular," the teen mused, eyes dropping to her plate. "Just someone familiar."
It hurt to hear that, to know that Fox had been out in that driving storm in a fragile boat looking for somebody, anybody she knew.
"How long were you looking?" He asked carefully. She shrugged.
"Don't know. What day is it?"
Thatch caught Marco's eye over the top of Fox' head and quietly left to fetch one of the nurses. "It's the fifteenth," he told her.
"What month?"
Marco closed his eyes for a moment. "March."
Fox tapped her lower lip with her fork, an achingly familiar quirk. "Four months and a few days then."
"Where you in the boat the whole time?" He asked carefully.
"No: I got dumped on some island and spent three months there. They gave me the boat."
So she had been at sea in the New World for over a month, looking for 'someone familiar'. "What would you have done if you hadn't found me?"
Fox shrugged. "Found Shanks?"
Marco took note that Fox seemed familiar with Red-Hair, probably because Mihawk and Shanks had enough of a history to be almost friends. "Did you have a Log Pose?"
"No."
"Are you insane?" It burst out entirely unexpectedly. Fox looked him in the eye.
"Probably," she admitted calmly. "I knew there was somebody around here, so I just steered towards the feeling. I didn't much care who it was, so long as they could point me in the right direction. Finding the Moby Dick was a nice surprise." She got to her feet, "Thanks for the food."
Marco tried to catch hold of her but she slipped through his fingersagain and vanished out of the room with surprising speed.
"Who was that?" Thatch asked, having returned with the nurse just in time for them to witness Fox' escape.
Marco got to his feet. "Daughter of an acquaintance," he said dryly, "who may well kill me if I lose her or she gets hurt." He left the room, leaving murmured speculations in his wake. There weren't many people on the Grand Line who could kill him anymore.
How Marco met Fox again after her escape.