Chapter Text
Uta sat patiently and answered Marco's questions as he took her pulse, then a cheek swab and blood sample to inspect under a microscope. He measured her blood pressure, palpated the lymph nodes behind her jaw, and tested her reflexes with a little rubber mallet while explaining each step of the process. He wrote everything down on a clipboard as he went.
"I never understood why Hongo did all that when I was little," Uta said as Marco retrieved his stethoscope from a drawer in his desk. Her legs dangled off the side of the bed, idly swinging as she waited. "He didn't take notes, either."
"There were a lot of Whitebeard Pirates," Marco answered with a wry smile. "If we didn't keep thorough records, we wouldn't be able to properly care for everyone."
Uta's eyes were wide. "There were more doctors?"
Most pirate crews only have a single doctor, if that. The Moby Dick was an exception not just because of their captain's medical needs, but because with so many pirates crammed into one isolated space, sanitation and disease control were the highest priority. "We had a big medical team," Marco told her, unwinding and putting on his stethoscope.
Uta sat very still on the patient's bed when he slipped the bell of the scope up her shirt and pressed it to the bare skin of her back, but relaxed when he just asked her to breathe deeply and cough a few times.
"Do I need to take off my shirt?" Uta asked when he finished listening to her lungs and pulled back.
Shanks was a reasonable man, but Marco had no intention of testing that. More than anything he wished Tate was around to handle Uta's care, but she'd chosen to stay on one of their former (now Red-Haired) territories, an island that was central to the many islands the Whitebeard Pirates had scattered to. She wanted to be as close and accessible to their former crew as possible, in case one of them needed help. Marco had considered going there as well but with so many eyes on Sphinx, he was the only option to protect the place.
"That won't be necessary," Marco said. He pulled his chair over, sat down and held out the bell of the stethoscope to her. "I'll need your help for the next part, though. Take this."
Uta moved the piece around on her chest under her shirt as Marco directed, breathed deeply, coughed, and then handed it back. "That's for listening to my heart?"
"And lungs. Do you want to try it?"
Uta immediately extended her hand for the stethoscope as he pulled it off and cleaned the earpieces with a swab of gauze dipped in alcohol. While she tapped the little drum at the end (wincing as the feedback thumped into her ears), Marco returned to his desk to finish filling out her chart. Her condition had improved rapidly, and her curiosity about medical procedure was a good sign; nobody who was actively dying wanted to play with stethoscopes.
When he finished her chart, Marco left the clipboard on his desk and turned back to his patient. Uta immediately caught his eye and gestured for him to approach, waving the bell of the stethoscope. "Let me hear yours," she insisted.
Marco ambled over slowly, undoing the top three buttons of his shirt so she could auscultate his heart.
"Why do you keep that tattoo covered up?" Uta asked immediately, which prompted Marco to sigh.
"It's not something the village kids need to see," he said. "Only pirates and criminals have tattoos, y'know?"
Actually, plenty of the older adults who lived on Sphinx and grew up in Pops's time had ink, but most of them were also of the opinion that they shouldn't encourage the kids to become pirates, which would absolutely happen if Marco strutted around the village with his tattoo out all the time. The children looked up to him, and several had already declared their intent to be 'just like him when they grew up,' which he earnestly hoped would never happen.
Uta considered his words, but remained skeptical. "Shanks used to say that tattoos should represent something you care about," she said. "He had one, but he didn't like it."
Marco wasn't aware of any tattoo on Shanks and considering how familiar he was with Red-Hair's body, that meant it had probably been on the arm he lost. "He said that? Did he tell you what it meant?"
Uta shook her head.
Shanks had worn half-rolled sleeves ever since he was old enough to decide his own wardrobe, so it wasn't hard to imagine where or what it might've been. A tattoo on his upper arm just above the elbow, that Shanks— a Celestial Dragon by birth, who had been to the holy land— wished he didn't have? A lot of thoughts came suddenly to Marco's mind, but he just nodded absently and said, "I see."
Uta was blissfully unaware of the dam her words had broken open, and gestured at him with the bell of the stethoscope. "Can I?"
Marco approached the rest of the way, and allowed her to press the cold, flat side of the stethoscope's bell to his chest. She shifted it around a few times, brows furrowed in concentration as she listened intently to his heart.
"Why's it so slow?" she asked.
"I'm bigger than you," Marco pointed out. "Resting heart rates can be pretty diverse, but body size is usually a good indicator. I've heard it called the 'guppy-to-seaking curve', since smaller animals tend to have a much higher heartrate than larger ones."
Uta withdrew the stethoscope while she considered the implications of being a smaller animal than Marco, pulled off the earpieces and returned it to him.
"You're also recovering from a lot of strain on your body," he continued, buttoning up his shirt, "so it's working hard."
That was, Uta knew, a diplomatic way to say that she'd done something very stupid and now needed to rest. She gave him an unimpressed look, which he returned with a wry grin. "So what else is wrong with me?" she asked.
"Nothing physical!" Marco answered cheerfully. He claimed that he wasn't qualified to comment about her mental health, but Uta suspected he had a opinion about that, too. "The organ damage from eating wake-shrooms is mostly reversed, and the numbers say you're well on your way to a full recovery. But numbers don't tell us everything, so if you feel something is wrong, I'd like to know."
"I'm sore everywhere."
"Well, that's the strain." Marco summoned a handful of phoenix fire and extended it to her. "I can help a bit with that, if you'd like."
Uta suspiciously eyed the flames, but since she felt no searing heat from them she reached for his hand, passing her fingers through the warm, incorporeal fire. When she nodded for him to continue, Marco turned his whole arm into a wing and curled it around her.
"I didn't know 'Phoenix' was literal," Uta muttered to herself as the flames surrounded her, then gradually subsided. The sharp, reproachful soreness in all her muscles had faded to a dull throb, like she'd had a particularly aggressive dance practice the day before. "It really worked!"
"You should still take it easy for a while," Marco told her. He pulled a mini transponder snail out of his pocket and held it out to her. "I've arranged for you to stay with a friend of mine but you can contact me, Shanks, or Beckman anytime with this."
Uta eyed the snail suspiciously, even though it was a very cute and well cared-for snail. "I can't stay here?" she asked, thinking about having to adjust to yet another new place surrounded by strangers. "Or with Shanks and Beck?"
"I need my office," Marco answered, gesturing through the window behind her to indicate the larger cabin on the other hill as his snail lazily waved its antennae, "but you can stay in that house over there with your dads if that's what you want. Or if you have some other preference, we'll do what we can for ya."
Uta looked intently down at the hands she had clasped in front of her, even though she could feel Marco's steady gaze on her.
"Do you want my recommendation?" he asked after a while, rightly concluding that Uta wasn't accustomed to having that kind of open-ended choice given to her. When she nodded he said, "You won't have much privacy or time for yourself if you stay with Shanks, but you'll have a room of your own in the village. I think it's good to have some distance so you can come see them on your own terms."
"In your professional opinion," Uta sniffled quietly, her voice shaking, "is it because he doesn't want to see me?"
Blood related or not, Marco considered, she was remarkably similar to Shanks. Red-Hair liked to match the style of whoever he was speaking to, which meant that he communicated quite effectively with people who didn't mince words like Marco and Beckman, but terribly with anyone who wasn't clear and upfront with what they expected of him. When he was unsure of how to proceed, he preferred to stay silent.
So clearly Shanks and Uta, who were both terrified of the possibility that someone they desperately missed would reject them, were not addressing anything of substance between them.
"He wants to see you," Marco said drily. "Actually, my concern is that he won't leave you alone if you're right in front of him. He'll ask you how you're doin' sixty times a day and wake you up every time you're trying to sleep to check whether or not you're still breathing."
Uta could picture it clearly. Shanks was still shaken up about what had happened on Elegia, and had honed in on any hint of discomfort that Uta showed earlier, even if she was just scratching an itch on her nose. "That sounds pretty annoying," she conceded.
"You're also free to change your mind," Marco told her. "You aren't locked into whatever decision you make now. Try it out and then reassess in a few days."
"You're sure?"
"We're pirates," Marco said with a conspiratorial grin that she couldn't help but return, privately thrilled at being included in his definition of pirate. "We do what we want."
Marco walked her out of his office once they were done, opening the door to find his kitchen empty. Shanks was visible through the window, sitting on the log in front of the house and entertaining a gaggle of village children. Beckman stood slightly away and downwind from them, smoking placidly while he kept his eyes on the rest of the valley.
Beck hadn't spent much time in the village; at most he'd help Shanks carry up supplies to drop off for Marco and then head back down to the port, but he seemed comfortable enough now. It was just an ingrained habit to keep watch, even in a familiar and safe place like Sphinx.
"Ready to head outside?" Marco asked while Uta hovered in front of the door. She looked unsure of her answer but soon nodded, steeling herself to meet the public again, even though the public was a bunch of children who had at least tangentially heard about her breakdown in Elegia and almost-destruction of the world. It was fine. They were probably the most forgiving audience she could find.
"I'm ready," she said.
Marco paused with his hand on the doorknob, observing her quietly for a few seconds. Then he said, "They don't know what you look like. We don't have video transponder snails on the island since the last one died of old age, and I don't think any of the kids read the news. You don't have to tell them anything if you don't want to."
So Sphinx had a screen-free culture. It was, Uta considered, probably a good thing. "Like I can give them a fake name?" she asked.
Marco only had to pass the note along to the right elderly villager and he would have every adult on the island on board with whatever name Uta wanted to go by, and they would keep the children in line. "That's right."
It was a tempting suggestion but, "No," she said, "I have to face the truth."
Which was a noble sentiment, and Marco commended her for it, but it was also fatally naïve. She had no idea what these children were capable of. She also didn't like look like she was going to have her mind changed, and Marco's days of managing other people for their own good were, he hoped, over. "Well, alright."
The children immediately abandoned Shanks when Marco pushed open the door and they swarmed the doctor instead, gathering around him in a tight circle to push and jostle each other out of the way. They were a lot more keyed up than usual, which Marco chalked up to Shanks's presence, and his assumption was proven right as a torrent of questions broke over him, the red-haired captain grinning wickedly from behind them.
"Marco! Marco! Are there really fish so big that their poops are as big as islands?"
"Marco! That guy says there're islands in the sky! Have you ever been there? Can you fly up there?"
Marco didn't have a chance to answer any of their questions before one of the boys peered around his knee and caught sight of Uta, who was still standing in the doorway. She was used to the noise from an audience, but that was always through a transponder snail or from the stage. There was a certain distance between her and her fans.
"Marco," the kid said, drawing the attention of the other children like sharks to blood, "who's that?"
"Yeah, who's that, Marco?"
"Is she new? Is she gonna live here?"
"Where did she come from, Marco?"
"Do you have a daughter, Marco?"
"She's your daughter?!"
"Marco has a daughter?! Wow!"
Shanks doubled over, face hidden in his knees as his shoulders shook with laughter at the thought of Marco going through this nearly every day and being unable to kick anyone about it, as he'd done many times to Shanks and Buggy when they annoyed him too much. Uta stood frozen as all those little faces turned to her, but she quickly snapped out of it and approached them with a strained, awkward smile.
"I'm Uta!" she said. "Actually, Shanks is my father. Doctor Marco helped me out a lot, though."
"Huh?" One of the boys grimaced. "Shanks?"
"Shanks is your dad?" asked another one incredulously, and then it was Marco's turn to be smug. Shanks visited Sphinx occasionally and even though he'd rarely interacted with the children before now, they'd see him around. None of them had a particularly high opinion of his fathering skills.
"Shanks is a dad?"
Shanks looked so offended, still sitting on that log, that Marco cracked up. Marco moved out of the circle of children as they surrounded Uta instead, and knelt down to pat Oidee on her head when she came over to him. "Did your mom tell you that Uta's gonna be staying with you for a while?" he asked quietly.
"Mm-hm! I'm gonna be the best host!"
Marco felt Shanks's eyes on his back as he straightened up again, but he ignored it. "I appreciate it," he said, resting his hand on top of her head when she wrapped her arms around his knee and held on tight.
Half a dozen children crowded around Uta, their eyes shining.
"You're Uta?" one of the girls yelled. "Princess Uta?"
"Princess Uta?" another kid repeated. "Uta's here? No way!"
"Uta's on Sphinx!"
Uta looked completely overwhelmed, but she didn't seek any of the adults out for help, so they hung back to let her handle her fans. She was fighting hard to maintain composure, but the smile she'd plastered on for them was wearing thin.
"Will you sing for us?" one of the boys asked, shoving his older brother aside.
"Yeah!" another shrill young voice called out before she could answer, "Sing for us!"
"We wanna hear you sing!"
"Sing! Sing! Sing!"
"U! T! A!"
The kids began to chant, clapping their hands in time, which was the last straw for her. Uta locked eyes with Shanks silently pleading for his help, but he was never good at calming kids down— all he knew how to do was work them up. Shanks looked back at her, shrugging helplessly. Beckman was next, teeth grinding anxiously on the butt of his cigarette while he considered the scene in front of him. When Marco caught Beck patting himself down for his rifle, he stepped in.
He didn't think Shanks's first mate would harm the kids but when a seasoned pirate like that went looking for his comfort item, that was a good sign he was out of his depth. That reliable man could handle one overexcited child at a time, as long as he was able to sit down and reason with them. A whole crowd? Impossible.
"Hey," Marco cut in. He didn't raise his voice, but all the kids stopped talking at once and their heads swiveled to look at him, like a patch of sea grass pulled in one direction by the current. "She just finished a concert. Her throat's all sore, so you better let her rest. I catch any of you harassin' her, I'll give your next vaccines with the biggest needle I've got."
None of the children believed him, but they grasped the point. A new chorus swelled, turning away from Uta and washing over Marco instead, who looked impassively into the crowd of rowdy kids. A bunch of kindergarten-aged brats couldn't scare him; Marco had effectively been the babysitter to the most terrifying crew of pirates on the Grand Line for decades. Two of them, if he counted Shanks and Buggy in their childhood— and he never passed up a chance to rub that in.
"Boo," the boys shouted, giving him several thumbs-down. "Marco!"
"Marco's no fun!"
"Meanie! Marco's so mean!"
Oidee bravely put herself between Uta and the other children, determined to back Marco up. "Don't worry, Princess Uta! I'll protect you if any of them try to bother you!" To the boys, she shouted back, "Leave Marco alone!"
Marco pushed his glasses up, briefly pinching the bridge of his nose before he let the specs settle back down. In some respects, pirates were easier to handle. He couldn't throw children around like that.
"If you want Uta to stay here," Marco told the children once their initial outburst was done, "you have to make her feel at home. If she doesn't like it on Sphinx 'cause a bunch of you keep screamin' at her, she'll just go somewhere else."
Uta, who hadn't considered that she had anywhere else to go, gave him a confused look.
Marco pressed one finger to his lips, smiling slightly at her before he turned back to the kids with a stern expression on his face. "Do you want her leave?" he asked them, very seriously.
"Of course we don't!"
"Don't leave, Uta!"
"We're sorry, Uta!"
A dozen contrite children were instantly more manageable. Uta took a deep breath, then crouched so she could be at eye level with them. "It's okay," she told them with a sincere grin, "I like it here already! When I'm feeling better, we can all sing together. How does that sound?"
The star power of an idol trained from childhood won them over. The kids looked at her, eyes wide with adoration, before they all linked arms with each other and started another chant while jumping in place. Singing with Uta! Singing with Uta!
Uta glanced at Beck, who was still smoking anxiously, and Shanks, who already seemed exhausted. Marco, whose placid expression said Yes they do this every single time, looked perfectly at peace, which reassured her somewhat. When the children finally collapsed onto the grass, breathless, Marco leaned down to whisper something to Oidee. The girl pulled away from him to approach Uta, while Marco went to the rest of the crowd to nudge them to their feet.
"I'm Oidee," the girl said, smiling happily at Uta. "Marco says we're gonna host you. It'll be lots of fun!"
"I really appreciate it," Uta answered, allowing the girl to catch her hand and drag her toward that big winged animal with a human face lounging in the shade of Marco's house. It looked dolefully at the girls as they approached, the heavy brow ridge making it look even more melancholy.
"I gotta introduce you to Tama first," Oidee chattered, "and then we can go home after Marco checks my homework!"
Shanks hovered anxiously near Beck, watching Uta pet that enormous sphinx and shifting his weight as if he was fighting the impulse to head over there and supervise the interaction. Maybe even to protect her from that intimidating creature, even though he knew that the sphinxes on this island were gentle animals, especially to children.
Marco had once said that it was possible to abuse sphinxes enough to turn them fearful and aggressive, but they were much better guardians when they were protecting something important to them. Just like people, he'd added with the wistful kind of smile he always had when he thought about his Pops.
So Shanks waited until the girls were done and Uta approached him and Beck. "I'm staying with Oidee's family," she said nervously, forcing all the words out before either of them could interrupt her. "I know you need to keep tabs on the crew, and I'll be in your way up here. But is it okay if I come over sometimes?"
"If it was up to him," Beck said, indicating his captain with a tilt of his head, "you'd never leave his sight again."
Shanks didn't even try to dispute that. "But you're an adult," he said like it pained him, "and it's good for you to have a space of your own. You can come up anytime you want, Uta."
That got a smile out of her— brittle and a little bit exasperated which Shanks was deeply relieved to see.
"Every day if you wanted to," Shanks rambled on, "first thing in the morning, and hang out until we all gotta turn in to sleep."
So Beckman and Marco were right. Uta decided privately that she definitely wasn't going to do that and if her father was this overbearing now, she didn't want to see how he'd act if all his attention was on her all the time. There was a time in her life when Uta would've wanted nothing more, but the prospect of it becoming reality now wasn't appealing at all. Was this the rebellious phase that Gordon always feared?
"I'll see you tomorrow," Uta interrupted before Shanks could spin off into another tangent. He cut himself off and nodded, pulling her into a fierce hug and planting a kiss on the crown of her head. Beck was next, he lifted her off her feet for a few seconds until Uta complained loudly to be let down. Then they stood like anxious parents dropping their child off for the first time with a babysitter.
Oidee, a corrected worksheet crumpling in her hand, cheerfully waved her sphinx over. "Okay!" she announced cheerfully, climbing onto its back, "let's go, Uta!"
Uta stood frozen in place as the sphinx crouched in front of her. "Are we... riding Tama to the village?"
"How else are we gonna get there?" Oidee sighed back, pitying her for her ignorance of the best travel method on the island. Uta suspected that this wasn't the last time the younger girl would be irritated with her as she clambered awkwardly onto the sphinx's back. She barely had time to grab hold of the feathers on its shoulders before it was off, galloping down the hill and into the valley.