Floorboards creak. Karmen throws three feather darts with one hand and an entire metal quill with the other. All four bury themselves in the wall of the women's bedroom near the door. Cold sweat pours down her face and back and her breathing is ragged. Usopp stands stock still, but the tray of tea in his hand clatters steadily with his shaking hands. Karmen slowly realizes where she is and who she had just attacked and tears well up in her eyes. "Usopp. I'm so sorry. I…" Usopp steps forward and sets the tray on her bedside table. She pulls him to her by the overalls, breathing heavily into his shoulder.
"Another nightmare?" Sanji asks, lighting a cigarette.
"She's had them nearly every night since San Faldo," Zoro comments. "Even her insomnia is back. I'm just glad she thought ahead and kept the Plucharon in her workroom."
"If I had dreams like that every time I closed my eyes I wouldn't sleep much either." The two men stand outside the door watching Karmen slowly calm herself. Just the night before she had slashed Robin's arm with her knife when she'd tried to wake Karmen up from a similar nightmare. Karmen had apologized profusely while she administered her deadbolt antidote and Chopper gave her stitches. They'd developed a three man wake up team: one crew member to wake her up and two others to pull that crew member out of the way of projectiles and to block any other unconscious assaults. Usopp was very fond of this plan, especially since it just saved him from severe discomfort. Karmen had tried to hide her own weapons from herself, but she'd developed a habit of sleepwalking and returning to bed with something sharp and often poisoned. With her gift of cloaking Haki, no one was able to catch her in the act until the deed was done. One time she had even attained one of Sanji's kitchen knives and dosed it with sunblade. She'd spent the rest of that night scrubbing the poison off the blade. Tying her to the bed didn't do any good. She'd taught herself how to slip out of knots too well for it to be effective. The only way to keep her wandering in her sleep, they'd found, was to allow her a weapon before she closed her eyes and keep tabs on who walked in.
"I keep hearing Pierce. I keep hearing his voice," Karmen says, leaning back and looking at Usopp. "He sounded like he was in so much pain." The topic of most of her nightmares has been Pierce's fate. She hadn't heard his voice in over two years and now that she'd spoken to him in a coded conversation over a transponder snail in San Faldo she couldn't stop. "Promise me. Promise me again."
Usopp holds her shoulders. "I promise we'll keep you from killing Gallowcomb." She'd had them all promise her this again and again.
"I dreamed that I killed Ikaika, and then I killed Willow. I killed Geraldo and every single DavenGallow bounty hunter and sniper. I was so angry and I just kept stabbing people. I couldn't stop. My hands were covered in blood and their bodies piled up behind me." And then Kuma had appeared, which as of yet she hadn't told anyone. His glass lens eyes were indifferent and unrecognizing as he stood over her. He looked at the blood on her hands and dropped his bible in the puddle of crimson at her feet. His mouth opened, but instead of words, a laser poured out.
In her dream she felt she deserved it, yet she still woke up attacking people, some part of her still fighting for survival. If no one walked in to wake her up, all the corpsey faces of the slaves she had seen die on Valcour came up out of the blood like Moriah's shadows. They'd point and say "You didn't save me." And when it all became too unbearable, Godwin would appear and say the same thing. "You didn't save me. You watched me die and you didn't save me." If the dream progressed this far she woke up screaming. For the first few times when she'd woken up she'd masked her emotions and held her blank expression while she processed the dreams but Sanji had approached her with tension in his jaw and concern in his eye and said, "Don't let them make you weak. It's ok. Just let it out." It reminded her of a conversation held on the top of an Alabastan palace rooftop and tears instantly dripped down to her chin. Now she cried as soon as she woke up and didn't stop until she felt better.
"Their deaths weren't your fault," Chopper says from behind Sanji and Zoro. He makes his way into the room with a wet towel. "You've never killed anyone and you aren't the kind of person who would. You did everything you could for the slaves on Valcour." Chopper had been giving her therapy sessions. They had helped enough to reduce the number of people that she killed in her dreams, but she still needed a lot of work. "I know speaking to your family and Pierce triggered a lot for you but the people you saw die lost their lives because of the Gallowcombs and no one else." Survivor's guilt, he'd called it. She used to feel it after her escape when Pierce was left behind and she'd spent a year and a half on Gekko Island. After spending two days with Willow and Baldwin all the emotions and memories were coming flooding back. Deep down she knew it was just her brain coming to terms with what she'd only buried before, but it was exhausting and once she'd gotten done processing for the day she felt empty.
Karmen lies back, covers her face with her pillow, and screams into it in frustration. "I just want to sleep!" she groans, throwing the pillow at the wall.
"I wish I could find a medicine that helped," Chopper says miserably.
"I think I'd be afraid to try anything else," Karmen sighs. "With the effect medicine has on me and me finally getting the hang of my cloaking Haki I might seriously hurt someone." She sits up and rubs a hand through her hair. "Sorry I'm so complicated." She drinks her tea slowly and it makes her feel better.
"Will you be ok now?" Usopp asks.
"I dealt with death on a daily basis growing up," she says. "It's when they start coming back that freaks me out." A thought hits her. "Oh jeez. What if now that I'm supposed to be dead I run into someone I actually liked and they freak out?" Zoro laughs. "I'm serious! What am I supposed to tell the people I like? Hey, sorry. I hate my family so I faked my death? I mean, being dead is nice and all, but I might give someone a heart attack."
"How many people from your old life do you actually like?" Sanji asks.
She thinks for a moment. "Four and a half as far as noble life goes? Five tops. If we include fish riding tournaments then maybe ten, but I only saw those guys like three times a year and our relationship only went so far as to try to keep our fish from eating their fish before we reached the finish line."
"Man your childhood's messed up," Franky says, poking his head around the doorframe.
Karmen's eyes passed over all the men standing in or around her bedroom and then she looks down at her wrinkled pajamas and her tangled hair. "Thank you for waking me up and bringing me tea, but could you all step out for a moment so I can get changed?"
"I don't mind at all, Karmen," Sanji says. "Go ahead and change. I'll be right here to-"
Usopp grabs him by the ear and drags him away on his way out. Chopper shuts the door on behind him. Karmen sighs and slides her legs over the side of the bed. She pulls a vial of scorpion venom from beneath the mattress and takes a small swig. She stands and pries her weapons out of the wall and rubs her hand over the growing number of gouges in the wood. "Sorry, Sunny." As the alcoholic reaction the poison has on her begins to take place as she changes into a robe and heads up to bath. She sinks into the warm water and closes her eyes.
"You didn't save me," they had said.
"I saved who I could," she responded to the voices still echoing in her mind. "Even Dr. Saaresto knew we couldn't save them all." Dr. Saaresto, the doctor who had acid thrown in his face for defying the orders of a Celestial Dragon when Willow commanded him to perform the coming of age ritual on her. She had led him by the hand to a wash basin and had rinsed his face off. By all reason Willow and Ludovic should have killed him. They killed everyone else for even a minor transgression, but they hadn't killed him. From that day forward half his face bore the scars of his devotion to her over noble lineage. Or maybe just to protecting an innocent child. Either way, he was left with one gray eye that refused to move, no matter where his remaining piercing blue one turned. As she thinks about it now she wonders if they had left him alive because he had forced them to uphold the terms of Kuma's agreement. Dr. Saaresto had known about it. He was probably the one who labeled Willow sterile.
The agreement. The only way Karmen can figure it is that she's the daughter of someone important to the revolution. The child of a beloved comrade who Kuma felt obliged to protect. With whatever the government already held over him when she was born, he had decided to take that extra sacrifice to protect someone as trivial as her. Kuma was kind that way. He couldn't bear to see a friend suffer if there was a way he could stop it, no matter what it cost him. That was evident in the laser beams she kept having nightmares about.
She takes a deep breath and slides beneath the water, opening her eyes and looking at the neon ripples above. She loves seeing water from below and the rainbows of refracted light across her skin. This view was one of her favorite things about fish riding and it was even more beautiful in the rain. This view always made her feel happy, even if now it is nostalgically so. She closes her eyes and thinks back to the competitions. Pierce was always there, either beside her to help train her mount or on the shore cheering her on and calling advice. Godwin too, but he had already passed on all his fish riding secrets, so he mostly stood there silently, assessing her technique and the angles that she guided the fish. He wouldn't say anything while she was in the water, but when they lit a fire to dry her off he would give her pointers. No, I couldn't save you, she thought. But you saved me. She thinks back to the butlers' gentle guidance and kind smile. Were you my father?
She sighs, letting little bubbles escape from her nose. She'd be a wreck if she keeps looking at every kind man from her past and asking if she was their daughter. And what about her mother? Willow had had her parental moments and it was true that she became less cruel as Karmen grew older. She doesn't believe this was because Pierce's contact with Kuma, though it probably helped. Had she gone mad after she had found out that she couldn't bear children and had been willing to take in any child, so long as she could pretend it was her own? Or had she seen Karmen as the thing she could never have and never hurt, so she took it out on the slaves, only feeling less mocked as time passed? Would acceptance of these facts cause her to lose interest in hurting those she saw as worms on the ground? Willow had never loved her, that was for certain, but she had more of a familial bond with Karmen than Ikaika had. There had never been any pain behind the horrendous things he'd done. Just sheer pleasure in the sadistic acts. He'd never wanted children, that was for certain. He only delighted in pain and making little girls cry.
A hand formed from the tub's base and tapped Karmen on the shoulder. She looks up and sees Robin standing above her. She emerges from the water and looks up at her crewmate. "We've reached the Red Line. I thought you might want to come see it," she says.
"I'll be out in a minute," Karmen responds. Robin walks out and Karmen grabs a towel and begins drying her hair. She pins it up and gets dressed, stepping out onto the deck and staring up at a mass of red rock for as far as her eyes can see up, left, and right. "You've crossed this before, right?" Nami asks. "Do you know how to get to Fishman Island?"
Karmen shakes her head. "We always went over."
Ship's Log 4: The Mermaid
While Luffy, Brook, and Robin went down in the shark sub to try to find Fishman Island I climbed into the crow's nest and used the telescope to try to see the top of the cliffs. I couldn't of course. They disappear into the clouds in an endless craggy red. Somewhere up there is Mariejois. I wonder if Ikaika made it there with Pierce before Sanji and I jumped off the balcony. Zoro worked out behind me, lifting weights twice my size while doing a handstand. With what he's been through this week, I can only chalk it up to him being a monster of creation, but I think we all prefer him this way.
The sub team ended up being chased back to the surface by a giant bunny fish. They're not as cute as they sound, especially with glowing red eyes. Luffy punched it and it spit two creatures out onto the deck. I chased the falling beings with the telescope and felt more guilt from my sleepless nights. A mermaid and a talking starfish. My ex-cousin bought a mermaid once. He kept her until her fin split and then sold her again. I hope somehow she made it back to the ocean, but I know that's likely not the case.
Zoro ended up going down, but I stayed in the crow's nest. Apparently her friend Hatchi was kidnapped by traffickers and we went to rescue him. I saw fish riders. I could tell by the flying fish they rode and their glider style attacks that they hadn't been at this long. They lacked finesse. We rescued Hatchi, who turned out to be the octopus guy from Arlong's crew and the fish riders began their attack. I think a ride on a flying fish will do me good. I'm going to go kick someone off theirs, all for the sake of joining in on the fight, of course.
Karmen pulls her veil out of her pocket and hooks it over her ears with freshly added loops. She had modified the slip of fabric while her insomnia kept her awake and bored. It doesn't go with the t-shirt and the shorts she's wearing, but she doesn't feel like going to change only go ride a fish. Her metal pens will be enough for these guys. She jumps onto the yardarm with a "Sync." A rider wizzes out of the water and she jumps, toes of her sandals meeting the rider's oxygen mask head on. She grabs the handlebars as the fish rockets upwards and angles it so that she falls into the saddle. She dives down into the water and has her fish ram two others, knocking the riders from their mounts. They take the battle to the sky. Karmen barrel rolls in a serpentine fashion around four riders and loosens the latches on the harnesses, causing the riders to fall into the water with a splitting impact. At that moment Brook takes off across the water and plays his lullaby. Karmen finds herself falling asleep, her recent relapse of insomnia not allowing her to resist.
She instantly begins dreaming. She faces Ikaika and Willow. In her hands are her knife and a metal quill. The old rage fills her as she sees Pierce's lifeless body at their feet, more bloody pulp than man. She throws three feather darts, pinning her ex-father to the wall. A fourth skewers her ex-mother's abdomen with deadbolt, effectively paralyzing her. She grips the knife in both hands and raises it to stab Ikaika in the heart like she had so many times before. She stabs it into the wall by his head instead. "I refuse!" she yells. "I won't kill you again! I'm not like you! You're lower than a mated male angler fish and I would rather be eaten by cookie cutter sharks than spend one more minute thinking that I might stoop to your level!"
In the waking world, the fish rider she had nearly skewered melts in his seat. "This chick's nuts." He ducks under her arm and jumps into the ocean.
Karmen turns to find the person she'd actually been trying to kill in every nightmare that she'd had, the person that she'd stabbed through body after body trying to find: the part of her that was still identifies as a Gallowcomb. The part of her that wanted to kill them so she could stop looking at the people who raised her and feel sympathy for the devil out of bonds that aren't even there. That were never there. It would be ignorant to say that being raised by masochists didn't influence her personality and morals, but there had been a part of her that still saw them as family, no matter how much she wanted them dead. She screeches and slams the blunt end of her pen into her duplicate's forehead. The woman in front of her smiles and shatters like glass.
In her dream Godwin appears and picks Pierce off the ground. "He's alive," a familiar voice says from behind her. She turns to find Kuma. He places his hand on her head in that old familiar gesture. He picks her up off the ground and carries her away from the blood stained ground and sets her down in an apple orchard. Godwin lays Pierce beside her. "I trained you for this," Kuma says.
She looks down at Pierce's face. He looks whole here. Not an ounce of scarred flesh except for the bullet wound scar below his left collarbone that he had gotten saving her life two years ago. His angular chin and his long nose bob gently as he breathes in his sleep. His short eyelashes shift in dream and there is a peacefulness to the set of his square mouth. His long russet hair is pulled back into a low ponytail like it always had been when he had been by her side. She returns her gaze to Kuma. "Why did you save me? There were so many others. Why me?"
He turns and waves his hand at the trees behind him. "So you could save them." One by one, slaves that she had prevented excess harm to begin to step out from behind the apple trees. There was a man who she had pretended to shoot at so she could waste all of Willow's bullets. There was the woman who had been flogged by Ikaika whom Pierce had carried to Dr. Saaresto while she distracted Mr. Gallowcomb. There are hundreds, and she remembers every single one.
She closes her eyes and smiles. "Thank you, Kuma, Godwin. I think I know what to do now." She opens her eyes, but the only person that remains is Pierce. Even the edges of the orchard are beginning to fragment and disappear. She brushes Pierce's bangs from his face. "If you die before I rescue you, I'll kill you myself. Do you hear me, bodyguard?" The man beside her chuckled in his sleep and opens his stone gray eyes.
Karmen wakes on the demolished straw roof of a building at Duval's hideout. Several other huts around her have been destroyed and a large bull lies passed out down the dock. She checks her weapons. Her knife is missing as well as four feather darts. She curses under her breath and checks which ones they are. Other than the deadbolt, the missing poisoned weapons contain toxins that eventually wear off. She searches and finds her knife in the saddle of a flying fish, three of her darts pinning a man to a building, and her last one in the leg of a very stiff trafficker. She administers the antidote to the latter and returns to the crew.
"We thought it best not to wake you," Sanji says. "You seemed to be sleeping peacefully."
"I heard music and just passed out," Karmen says, a little confused.
"Ah. Forgive me," Brook says.
She smiles and waves him off. "You'll have to play me to sleep more often. I had a good dream this time, even if I did get stabby."
They return to the ship and Hatchi fixes them takoyaki. Despite the delicious taste, Karmen eats hers slowly up on the deck of Sunny. "It would be easier to eat if you took your veil off," Franky says.
"You have been wearing that thing longer than usual," Zoro comments. "What's up?"
Karmen looks down to the underwater residents aboard Hatchi's boat. "I think I'll go brew some tea." When she comes back out, Hatchi, Keimi the mermaid, and Pappug the talking starfish are on deck. She passes out the cups takes a deep breath. "This may end up causing some unpleasantness, but I feel I would be shaming the Straw Hat name if I didn't come clean."
Everyone stares at her, but she looks at Hatchi and Keimi. "Did I do something to you in the past too?" Hatchi asks, looking extremely apologetic.
"Quite the opposite, I'm afraid. My name now is Valentine W. Karmen," she says. She removes her veil. "But I was once known as Gallowcomb Jenevive Willow Karmen. I was raised by one of the many noble families that have caused the suffering of your people. I witnessed many auctions and many deaths and displays of fishmen and mermaids, things I'd rather not speak about. I did what I could for them, but I was always under heavy guard. I want to apologize for what I was unable to do, and to say I'm sorry for the things that have already been done. If you choose to hate me, I will understand. For what it's worth, I hope you reach the sun."
"Is that more code?" Usopp whispers to Robin. She only shrugs.
"That name…" Hatchi blinks at her and remembers watching her ride the flying fish. "Ten years ago at a fish riding tournament, did you unlock a mermaid's collar?"
Karmen blinks. When she had gone over her speech in her head she had been prepared for yelling, to be attacked, to be shamed and hated, but the octopus fishman completely bypassed all that. She thinks back. "Was she the one being held in a shark cage underwater before the match?" It had been her first attempt to rescue anyone with gills. She hadn't been sure if the fish woman wouldn't turn around to drown her like they did in the legends, but she had been a person and there weren't any guards beneath the water. She hadn't even been sure she could pick the lock. She only had a bobby pin on her and she'd been nine. She'd had just enough time to slip onto her mount and surface on the other side of the lane before anyone got suspicious.
"Hatchin," Keimi says with a shocked expression. "Are you talking about Felicity-chin? I work with her back at the café! She's always talking about the noble's kid who helped her escape. She could never remember the whole name, but she remembered it started with Gallow."
Karmen gives a shocked laugh. "You mean she made it home?" She sits down. "I thought for sure she was going to get caught again. There were so many hunters there that day and I was barely small enough to fit through the bars. I've never heard about anyone that I'd helped escape before. She made it." She covers her mouth as her eyes glaze with relief and Keimi hugs her tightly. She looks up at Chopper. "I saved who I could."
Eventually the conversation turns back to how to get to Fishman Island and Karmen and Hatchi had already become fast friends. After all, she was a virtuoso when it came to fish. She had never thought about having a ship coated before. No one she had ever grown up with had ever crossed the Red Line by diving. Soon enough, however, the mangrove trees came into view.