Monster

Characters: Bepo. Rating: T. Warnings: Injury

Bepo hadn't started life with low self-esteem. Bepo didn't remember a time when he hadn't apologised for existing, but he knew it wasn't always the case. It hadn't started with the minks.

It had started with the humans.

The humans were big. The humans were scary, and it didn't matter that Bepo had electro and they didn't. It didn't matter that as a cub he could take down a full grown man. They crowded him, with weapons and fire and shouts, hurting him because he was too busy cowering to fight back. Wounds could heal, a young and oh so alone mink cub fleeing to lick them in whatever bolthole he could find (he got stuck a few times, struggling and scraping his fur down to the skin to get free, only to find the cycle starting over again). At least, physical ones could heal.

The ones to his self-consciousness – cries of monster, abomination, demon – never got past the scabbing over stage before it started again, wounds ripping open until they were raw to the world once more. None of these humans knew what a mink was, and Bepo was too young to understand the concept that they were more afraid of him than he was of him. It was just that, while his fear manifested in the flight instinct, theirs shone through as fight.

Bepo didn't want to be a monster. Bepo just wanted to find his brother and play with him again, like they used to, but he kept being driven back, going the wrong way, and it hurt to go against the tide.

It was an accident the first time, the word slipping out between sobs, but the humans stopped chasing him when he said it, so maybe it was the right thing to say. Maybe if he said it, he wouldn't be a monster any more.

Sorry.

In the face of fear, grovelling became easy. It stopped the pain, stopped the shouts, the words. Gave him time to escape, scrambling on paws that became bloody as he abandoned his bipedal upbringing and recessed to the quadrupedal gait of a real bear. I'm sorry, he'd say whenever another human came near him, and they'd freeze. Bepo didn't realise it wasn't what he was saying, it was the fact that he was talking at all. He didn't realise that after he'd fled sometimes they tried to hunt, seeing a money-making opportunity in capturing a talking bear.

Didn't know that the right people would pay almost a million beris to have the privilege of trapping him in a cage for the rest of his life, watching him starve and delighting in it even as they prodded him with blades and brands to make him keep talking – never stop talking because he was only valuable as long as he spoke. It was only later, much, much, later in an auction house but as a buyer not an item, that he saw the price on his head and suppressed a shudder.

His defence mechanism kept working, kept saving him from the humans even if it was ultimately pushing him the wrong way, further and further from the way Zepo had gone until he couldn't even tell anymore. He didn't know where Zepo was, didn't know where home was, and in the end he got on the wrong boat, quivering in the bows as it passed over monsters swimming in the deep, taking him further and further away until he didn't even know where he was.

A combination of his disorientation and his fear drove him further and further north (further from where he wanted to be but he didn't even know that any more, didn't know which way was up). North was quieter, north had less humans to call him names and force him to grovel to escape with his life and freedom. And that was how he ended up quivering in a cave, white fur blending in with the cold snow all around him.

He could smell the humans, but they didn't come that way. It was safe, and while food was hard to come by, he could finally start to heal. His fur grew back, forced into action by the cold until it grew over and around the scars. It was uneven, would never be even again, but someone would have to get close to notice. Bepo didn't plan on letting anyone close.

Then his peace was shattered, weeks after he'd found his safe haven. Footsteps, more of a crunching sound than the solid thuds Bepo had learnt, approached, and he took too long to identify it, too long to put two and two together and realise that humans were coming.

"A bear in our hideout," one of them commented, face screwed up in a face Bepo knew all too well – disgust. "What does it think it's doing there?"

They were angry, and Bepo shrank back as they approached, whimpering sorrys. They didn't hear him to start with, didn't make out the words amongst the pained noise, too intent on driving him out. They were stupid, cornering a wild animal like that. It would end with pain, as the terrified creature lunged for them, tearing them to shreds until he was free.

They were lucky that Bepo had long since had the fight taken from him by other humans, ones armed with more than just a lump of wood. The first blows didn't hurt, glancing off fur made thick by winter, but then they changed tactics, lunging forwards and grabbing clumps of fur in their hands to drag him out of the cave.

Bepo's electro surged, jolting its way up their arms with enough force to send them stumbling backwards. Off-balance, they showed him an escape route, right between them, and Bepo took it, barrelling straight on through and out into the white snow.

The humans chased him, hurling abuse at him as if it was supposed to make him stop. It didn't, not even when they pulled out the monster, the demon. He called apologies as he ran, fear blinding him to his directions again. He skidded to a stop as his brain registered the smoke rising from a gap in the trees ahead of him. Several lines of smoke, and his brain realised what his nose was telling him. He'd run straight to the human settlement.

The humans seemed scared when they caught up, but like the rest of their race fear made them more vicious. No grovelled apologies stopped them, didn't even give them pause as they beat him, punching, kicking and even biting. Bepo didn't know what to do, didn't know why saying sorry wasn't enough (later he learnt, finally learnt, that humans were more scared of him than he was of them).

Then he was saved, by another tortured soul that stood up for him. A human cub that wasn't scared of him, didn't blink when he spoke, didn't flee when he shocked him by accident. Bepo didn't have to be afraid anymore; he wasn't alone anymore.

He learnt what nakama were, learnt that not all humans were bad (and that even the violent ones could be the best friends once they weren't scared of him anymore). He never lost the sorry, couldn't stop it slipping out whenever he drew attention to himself and was greeted by stares. It got easier, though, because his nakama were there now. Law, who had never even blinked. Penguin and Shachi, who despite their fear had never reacted to the fact he could speak, just the threat they'd thought he'd posed to them and their village.

They let him find himself again, physically and emotionally, and while Bepo could never accept the titles monster, abomination, demon, he could certainly accept pirate, navigator, nakama.

Thanks for reading!
Tsari