Chapter Text
Tom’s mother worked quickly. Too quickly. As soon as she realized that Tom was slipping again she shook her husband awake, Franky she had yelled at him, and made him get the doctor.
The doctor won't be needed, Brook thought as he watched Tom pull his soul back to him all on his own and secure it even more to his body.
Brook didn't understand. No one had ever been able to thwart Death. Not like this. Sure there were many people that had been brought back quickly by their doctors or others, but never had they brought themselves back like the baby did.
Franky and the doctor made it back to the room just as Tom got breathed normally again. He even made a small giggle and kicked in Brook's direction. Almost like he was saying, “I’m not afraid of you, Death.”
All Brook could do was laugh at the little boy, which caused Tom to laugh even more. It made the doctor and his parents smile for the first time since Brook had arrived.
“I can't take you,” Brook told Tom as the doctor left and the parents took up their seats again. “You have won against Death.” Brook shook his head at that and decided to pull down the hood of his cloak and revealed his skull face and afro. He had given himself his hair style during the 1970’s.
“You might even win against all my other brothers as well,” Brook continued to talk to Tom, just as his parents did, for the rest of the night.
Brook told him about his horse and that it was a sad day when he had accidentally killed it. “I didn’t mean to,” Brook promised Tom, “he moved into the way of my scythe.” Brook swore that the look Tom gave him was of disbelief. The boy might have thought he was lying, but it was the truth dammit.
Brook even talked to him about his brothers. War with his sword to cleave in battle and shield to make sure he lived to fight another. Pestilence and his golden crown of disease that shone bright with his love of spreading ill with his bow. Famine and the scales that told him when someone hungered for something and the hat that held in his own hunger at bay. Brook talked about himself, Death with the scythe that separated, the cloak that made him mysterious, and the pale ferry that he now used to usher on those to the next life.
The next morning arrived with the family fast asleep till the time of the surgery. Brook took it upon himself to go with Tom into the operating room and make sure it was all done right. He watched as they cut the boy's chest open, as they got to the hole in his heart, as they closed it, and as they closed his chest. All in all it took roughly six hours and when it had all finished they took the boy out and back to his room where his parents eagerly waited for him.
During Tom’s week and a half long recovery in the hospital he got visitors. Some of those visitors almost gave Brook a heart attack, Or they would have if I had a heart. Skull joke! Brook thought.
War had walked in, a very human War on the arm, Or maybe it was War that was the arm, of a blond man. Who seemed, as Brook watched him during their visit, to go from a very scary individual to the sweetest one in under a second.
The look War had given him when he first entered the room and saw Brook there was surprise and then really pissed off. The blond on his arm had calmed him some, like he understood what War was. “I’m not here to take him,” Brook said as he held up his bony fingers to show his scythe was hidden away. “I tired, but he pulled himself back.” War looked at him then with surprise again before his eyes flickered to Robin and Franky holding their son. “He can hear and see me too,” Brook continued to tell War, he knew that War wasn't going to talk back with all the people there. War nodded slightly before a smile split his face after the blond ushered him over with the call of his name, Zoro. Zoro then stepped over and looked down at Tom.
War must be the reason, Brook thought, that Tom can see and hear me. Brook nodded to himself at the idea. It was the only thing that made sense. If War has been around him since his conception.
The next day Brook watched a young man in a doctor's coat shuffle into the room with a much changed Pestilence that floated after him. Again both looked at each other in surprise, before Pestilence looked upset. Brook saw Pestilence's eyes quickly glance over to Tom before they fell back on Brook.
Brook repeated the same speech he did the day before for Zoro. He even mentioned that Zoro had been there. “Yeah,” Pestilence responded, “Zoro, that’s War’s human name now, apparently he has been solid for around four years now.” Brook didn't bother to hide his shock, instead he used it to look over Pestilence and saw the change in his clothes, the dulled crown and broken bow. Brook put it together when Pestilence whispered that he wanted to go by Usopp. His two brothers had found something else to live for.
A couple of days after Tom and his parents had more visitors. Two women, one with bright orange hair and the other with blue, who were followed by Famine. Brook was surprised again, but not as much as he was the first two times.
How has this group of people all swayed us? Brook thought as he took in Famine's new appearance, something that the other didn't seem to be used to yet. His basket seemed to have a bottom, his clothes looked fresh and clean for once, and his scales hung limp at his side.
Brook found himself having the same conversation for the third time. It was during this one, right after Famine mentioned that he was thinking of going by the name Luffy, that Brook realized something. Tom had all four Horsemen at his side. He could perceive them and hear them when they were invisible. In other words, Brook thought, he is our new creator. The one to change them, well maybe it wasn't necessarily Tom for all of them, but he was the center point where they all converged. Tom was, for all intents and purposes, their leader.
There was a need in Brook to change like his brothers had when he learned this. He changed his cloak into something a little more practical, something less mysterious and more dashing, like a suit. He changed the form of his scythe into a sabre that he hid inside a cane. He even changed his ferry into a pale colored top hat, where he decided to keep all the souls that he took. But he vowed that he was now only going to take those that were on the verge of death only.
Brook watched as Robin and Franky took Tom home at the end of his recovery at the hospital. Brook was even still there two weeks later when Robin and Franky held a small party for his recovery.
They were all there, the Four Horsemen, to celebrate a boy, who was possibly going to live just as long as them, but who had all the love of the world thrown on his shoulders.