Chapter Text
Shanks POV
Shanks watched Buggy disappear around the corner. He waited. He wasn't entirely sure what he was waiting for. Maybe for Buggy to turn around, maybe for him to come back, maybe for someone to tell him that the last few minutes hadn't happened exactly the way they seemed to have.
Nothing happened, the street remained empty. Rain continued to fall, pattering against the rooftops and running in thin streams along the gutters. A few people hurried past with umbrellas, barely sparing him a glance. Somewhere in the distance, someone shouted about a shipment being unloaded at the harbor.
The world continued moving, but Shanks didn't.
He stared at the corner where Buggy had disappeared. He had known Buggy for most of his life. There had never been a time when he couldn't remember Buggy being there.
Even when they weren't getting along, Buggy had always been there. A voice shouting his name, a hand grabbing his sleeve. Someone complaining that Shanks had stolen his food, someone insisting that Shanks had ruined everything, someone arguing with him over something that had stopped making sense five minutes ago. The sound of someone laughing, fighting. The feeling of someone beside him.
Now there was nothing.
Shanks slowly clutched his chest. He could still feel the weight of the argument sitting there, heavy and uncomfortable. He hadn't expected it to hurt this much. Maybe because he had never seriously considered that Buggy could simply leave.
They had spent their entire lives together. Even when they separated for a while, they always found their way back to each other. Somehow, Buggy was always there.
Until now.
Shanks swallowed. He hoped Buggy hadn't meant some of the things he had said.
"Idiot" He wasn't sure which one of them he meant, probably both.
He waited another few minutes, then ten. Then, finally, he turned around. His feet felt heavier than they should have as he walked back toward the harbor. After a few steps, he looked back. Still nothing, Buggy wasn't coming. Shanks turned away, and this time, he didn't look back.
—-
Shanks remained in Loguetown for several days. He told himself he had reasons, there were supplies to sort through and things to settle before he left. At least, that was what he told himself.
He spent most of the first day moving between the harbor and the streets. He told himself he wasn't looking for Buggy, he was. He checked the docks first, then the market, then the smaller streets around the town.
Every time he spotted blue hair, his head turned before he could stop himself and every time it wasn't Buggy, he felt disappointed.
By the second day, he had started asking questions, not directly, of course. Shanks wasn't going to walk into a tavern and ask if anyone had seen his former crewmate, that would be embarrassing, so he tried to make it casual, it wasn't.
He was standing near the harbor when he overheard two men talking.
"Some young pirate left this morning"
Shanks turned so quickly that one of the men stared at him.
"Who?"
The man frowned.
"Who what?"
"You said someone left"
"A pirate"
"What pirate?"
"I don't know"
Shanks stepped closer.
"What did they look like?"
The man looked at him strangely before thinking about it.
"Blue hair, I think" Shanks's heart jumped, but then the man continued "Or maybe black" Shanks's shoulders dropped and the man stared "Are you looking for someone?"
"No" Shanks walked away before the conversation could continue.
By the third day, he stopped asking. If Buggy wanted to leave, he would leave. Shanks had to accept that.
Eventually, it was time for him to leave too. He stood on the deck as the harbor slowly disappeared behind them. The buildings became smaller, the people on the docks became dots, then even those disappeared.
Shanks stared at the horizon, he didn't know where he was going. For the first time in his life, nobody was telling him. There was no Captain giving him an order, no Roger telling him where they were headed, no Buggy complaining about the destination. He could go wherever he wanted, and yet Shanks didn't want to go anywhere.
He sat down against the mast and stared at the sea. Freedom was supposed to feel different.
—-
The first few months were the hardest.
Shanks had thought freedom would feel better, he had been wrong. He was free, he could go wherever he wanted, eat whatever he wanted, sleep whenever he wanted. He didn't have to follow orders, and he didn't have to listen to Buggy complain every time Shanks did something he considered stupid.
That last part should have been a relief, it wasn't.
The silence became unbearable surprisingly quickly. At first, Shanks enjoyed it, then he started talking aloud simply because there was nobody else around. Sometimes he talked to himself, sometimes to the weather.
Once, after several days without seeing another ship, he had a full argument with a seagull. The seagull had stolen his breakfast, Shanks considered that a declaration of war. The seagull disagreed, it won.
Afterward, Shanks sat on the deck with an empty plate in front of him, staring at the bird as it disappeared into the distance.
"Buggy would've laughed" The thought came naturally, that was the problem. Everything reminded him of Buggy, a blue-haired child running through a market, a clown decoration outside a shop, a man with an especially irritating laugh, a treasure chest, a knife.
He slowly began to understand that forgetting someone wasn't as simple as deciding not to think about them. Buggy was everywhere because Shanks had spent so much of his life with him. They had shared too many memories, too many years, there was no way to separate his own past from Buggy.
Eventually, Shanks stopped trying. He missed him, that was all. He could live with missing him, probably.
—-
Years passed. Shanks eventually found his footing. He built a crew, he found people he trusted, he acquired a proper ship, he stopped being the boy who had once followed Roger around and became a captain in his own right.
The transition wasn't dramatic. There was no single moment where he suddenly understood everything, he simply learned. How to make decisions, to trust his instincts, how to take responsibility for the people around him, to admit when he was wrong, how to laugh when things went badly.
The Red Hair Pirates became a family. Shanks loved them, the chaos, the drinking, the arguments, the ridiculousness. He loved having people around him again, it reminded him of the Roger Pirates, and inevitably, it reminded him of Buggy.
Sometimes he wondered where Buggy was. He would ask around when he had the opportunity, never directly. He would casually mention a blue-haired pirate, or a man with a red nose, or ask whether anyone had heard of a particularly annoying pirate operating in the East Blue.
Most of the time, people had no idea what he was talking about. Occasionally, someone had heard a rumor, but it was never him.
Time went by and eventually, Shanks understood that Buggy had his own life. If he wanted Shanks in it, he would find him, and if he didn't, Shanks had to respect that. That didn't mean he stopped missing him.
—-
When Shanks found Uta, she was inside a treasure chest, just like the way Roger had found him.
The discovery had been almost laughably familiar. The red-Haird pirates didn’t care much about treasure, but they still needed money to survive, so when they found a child, it was a surprise to say the least.
At first, Shanks wasn't entirely sure what to do with her. He knew how to deal with pirates and Marines. He knew how to deal with enemies, allies, drunken idiots, and even people who wanted to kill him. But children were different.
They had no fear of embarrassing you. They asked questions without caring whether you had an answer, and they seemed to possess an incredible ability to find the one thing you didn't want them touching and Uta had already demonstrated all three qualities.
She sat on the deck, staring at him and Shanks stared back.
"Why do you have red hair?"
"Because I was born with it. Same as you"
"Why?"
Shanks paused.
"That's just how that works"
Uta frowned, clearly unconvinced.
"Why?"
"I don't know" She seemed deeply dissatisfied with that answer and Shanks sighed "Ask me something else"
"Why do you have scars?"
"That one I do know. Because I got into fights"
"Why?"
"Because people wanted to fight me"
"Why?"
Shanks stared at her and Uta stared back. There wasn't even a hint that she understood she was being difficult.
"Do you only know how to say 'why'?"
"No"
"Good"
"Why?"
Shanks groaned and for some reason, the sound made her laugh. He froze for half a second, it wasn't the laugh itself, it was the way she laughed.
Completely unrestrained. Her shoulders shook, her eyes squeezed shut, and she leaned forward as though she couldn't physically contain the amusement.
Shanks smiled despite himself and Uta stuck her tongue out at him. That, too, reminded him of someone, but he immediately pushed the thought away.
Not every annoying child reminded him of Buggy. Except, ever since they had found Uta, Shanks couldn't stop noticing the similarities.
They weren't exactly the same. Buggy's tells had always been different. When he was lying, he would talk too much, gesture wildly, and insist he wasn't lying while providing an absurd amount of unnecessary evidence that usually made it obvious that he was.
Uta simply stared at Shanks like she could see straight through him. Still, the resemblance was there, the same stubborn confidence, the same certainty that she was right, the same refusal to accept an answer she didn't like. And the same tendency to turn even the smallest disagreement into something much bigger than it needed to be.
But it seemed it was only Shanks who noticed. The rest of his crew thought Uta was a carbon copy of him. They would joke that if they hadn't been standing right beside him the day they found her, they would have assumed Uta was the consequence of Shanks making a particularly questionable decision during a stop at some island.
But as funny as the resemblance was to everyone else, Shanks saw something different when he looked at her. He saw Buggy. Not because Uta was exactly like him, she wasn't. But because those little pieces of Buggy were there in her, scattered through her expressions and mannerisms in ways that Shanks couldn't help noticing.
And now, somehow, she was his daughter. The thought still felt strange sometimes, Shanks had never imagined himself as a father. Yet there he was, watching Uta walk around the deck as if she had always belonged there.
He couldn't help smiling.
"You're a lot of trouble, aren't you?"
"I am not."
"That's exactly what someone troublesome would say."
She huffed and walked away. Shanks watched her go, shaking his head. For a moment, he imagined what Buggy would have said if he were there. Probably something about Shanks being a horrible father.
The thought made him smile, then the smile faded. He hadn't thought about Buggy this much in a while, maybe that was the problem. The longer Uta stayed with him, the more often Shanks found himself remembering the person he'd spent so many years trying not to miss.
—-
The Red Hair Pirates discovered Uta's love for music when she was still very young. None of them had particularly harmonious voices. In fact, Shanks was fairly certain that some of his crew could make a perfectly good song sound like a declaration of war.
But they had eventually discovered something important. Whenever Uta started crying, singing was the only thing that could reliably make her stop. It didn't matter what they sang, it didn't matter who was singing, it didn't even matter whether the song was any good.
Someone would start humming, another would join in, and before long, the entire crew would be making enough noise to wake the dead. Somehow, Uta would quiet down, her attention caught by the music.
Eventually, it became a habit. Someone would start singing while they worked and Uta would hum along. Sometimes she would fall asleep to the sound of the crew singing badly around her.
As she grew older, her love for music only seemed to grow with her. Before long, she had started singing herself.
At first, it was little things. She would hum while playing, or sing quietly to herself while sitting on the deck. The crew never discouraged her, quite the opposite, they all knew she had a special talent, and they would have been more than happy to listen whenever she wanted to sing for them. But they didn't want to push her into performing just because they enjoyed hearing her.
So they waited and eventually, Uta came to them herself.
That morning, she had been humming to herself for nearly an hour. She sat at one of the tables, tapping her fingers against the wood in time with the tune while Shanks and the others went about their usual business.
Nobody paid much attention at first, they were used to it by now. Then Uta suddenly stopped humming and she looked around the deck. Shanks noticed the change and glanced over, but before he could ask what was wrong, Uta climbed onto an empty crate in the middle of the deck.
"Everyone!"
Several heads turned. Shanks looked up from where he was sitting.
"What?"
"I'm going to sing!"
There was a brief silence, then Yasopp grinned.
"Go for it!"
"Wait, really?" Uta's face lit up.
"Of course!" Shanks said.
That was all the encouragement she needed.
The crew quickly gathered around. Some sat on barrels, others leaned against the mast or the railing and a few had clearly come over simply because they were curious about what Uta was planning.
She looked at all of them and for a moment, her confidence seemed to disappear. Her fingers fidgeted against the fabric of her clothes. Uta then took a breath and then she started singing.
Shanks had heard her sing before. Usually when she was playing by herself, or humming while doing something else, but this was different. She was singing for them.
Her voice carried easily across the deck. It wasn't perfect. She was still young, and there were moments where her voice wavered slightly, but there was something bright about it, something warm, the kind of voice that made people stop what they were doing without being asked.
The deck gradually became quiet, even the men who had been talking moments before were listening.
Shanks smiled. Uta looked happier the longer she sang, she moved with the music, turning slightly as she reached different parts of the song. She seemed to forget that anyone was watching her.
At one point, she spun around, got a little too enthusiastic, and nearly lost her balance. She caught herself at the last second and the crew burst out laughing.
Uta immediately glared at them.
"Don't laugh!"
"Sorry!" Shanks said, still grinning.
She crossed her arms.
"Then stop laughing!"
Shanks laughed again. And then, for just a second, the deck wasn't the deck anymore. He was back on the Oro Jackson, the ship was loud, someone was arguing near the kitchen, someone else was gambling, Roger was laughing so loudly that half the ship could probably hear him. And in the middle of it all, Buggy. Shanks could see him perfectly.
He was standing on top of one of the crates, arms spread dramatically as he tried to convince anyone willing to listen that whatever he was doing was absolutely worth their attention.
It had started as something small. Buggy had found something interesting and decided that simply showing it to everyone wasn't enough, no, he needed an audience, he needed a stage, and, apparently, he needed an entire performance.
Shanks couldn't even remember exactly what the show had been about anymore, something involving treasure, or pirates, or Buggy's supposedly incredible talents, probably all three.
Buggy had insisted that everyone watch, he had dragged Shanks over by the sleeve when he tried to leave, he had complained when people didn't clap loudly enough and he had demanded that Roger pay attention. Roger had, of course, encouraged him.
"Again!" Roger had shouted.
Buggy's chest had puffed up with pride.
"See!? Captain appreciates real talent!"
Shanks had laughed.
"That's not talent!"
Buggy's head had snapped toward him.
"What did you say?!"
"I'm saying you look stupid!"
"I'll show you stupid!"
Buggy had immediately grabbed one of his knives and threatened to throw it at his head. Shanks laughed and Buggy had turned away from him with an exaggerated huff, only to immediately return to his performance as if nothing had happened.
The memory was so clear that for a moment he could almost smell the sea around them. Shanks could see himself sitting against the mast, watching Buggy perform some ridiculous trick while the rest of the crew paid attention. He could almost hear the creaking of the Oro Jackson beneath his feet, Buggy's voice and Roger's laughter.
Shanks remembered laughing, he remembered watching, he had always watched. Buggy had always loved an audience, he could turn anything into a performance, a story became a grand tale, a minor inconvenience became a tragedy, a simple argument became a full theatrical production.
Even something as ordinary as finding a strange object could become an elaborate presentation if Buggy decided it was important enough. And somehow, no matter how ridiculous he was being, Shanks always watched. He'd always watched.
Shanks laughed at the memory.
"Dad! Are you even listening!?"
Uta's voice brought him back.
Shanks blinked. The Oro Jackson was gone, the old crew was gone, the past had slipped away again. He was back on his own ship, sitting beneath the mast while Uta finished her song in front of the Red Hair Pirates.
"I'm listening!"
"Then why are you laughing!?"
"Because you're funny!"
"I'm not funny!"
"You are!"
Shanks smiled and Uta grumbled but went back to singing.
When she reached the final note and the deck erupted into cheers. Uta's face lit up and Shanks clapped along with everyone else, smiling as she looked around at the crew.
For a brief moment, he wondered if Buggy would have liked her voice. Then he smiled to himself, of course he would have. Buggy had always loved a good show. And Uta certainly knew how to put one on.
—-
Uta had developed a habit of sitting beside Shanks whenever he was working. Most of the time, she sang. Ever since her first little performance on the deck, her songs had become a regular part of life aboard the ship. She would sing while she played, while she ate, while she wandered around the deck with nothing better to do. Sometimes she made up songs about whatever happened to catch her attention that day.
Shanks couldn't complain. Having a soothing voice filling the room while he worked was actually rather pleasant. It made the paperwork slightly less unbearable, which was saying something.
That afternoon, Uta sat on the floor beside his desk, humming softly while Shanks worked through a stack of reports. Or, at least, he was supposed to be working. In reality, he had stopped reading the same page several minutes ago. His eyes were fixed on the paper, but his mind had wandered somewhere else entirely.
Uta's voice continued in the background, steady and familiar, until it suddenly stopped.
"Dad!"
Shanks blinked. Uta was standing directly in front of his desk, staring at him with her hands on her hips.
He looked up at her.
"What happened?"
"You weren't listening!"
"I was"
"You weren't!" she insisted "You were staring at nothing!"
Shanks glanced down at the paper in front of him, fair enough. He smiled.
"I was listening"
Uta narrowed her eyes.
"You look weird"
Shanks laughed.
"Sorry, you just reminded me of someone"
"Who?"
The question came immediately, of course it did. Shanks hesitated.
His gaze drifted past her, toward the spot where she'd been sitting only moments ago. The afternoon light came through the window, spilling across the floor as the ship rocked gently beneath them.
"An old friend"
Uta tilted her head.
"Do you miss them?"
The question caught him off guard. Shanks leaned back slightly in his chair.
Outside the window, the sea stretched endlessly toward the horizon. There was nothing but blue water and sky, the two blending together until he could barely tell where one ended and the other began.
"Yeah" he admitted quietly.
Uta was silent for a moment.
"Did they sing too?"
"Not exactly" A soft laugh escaped him "Although he probably would've if someone had given him the chance"
Uta smiled.
"Was he funny?"
Shanks's smile grew.
"Very"
"Was he a pirate?"
"Yeah"
"Is he still your friend?"
The question caught him off guard again. Could his daughter ask an easier question for once? Shanks looked down at the desk.
"I don't know"
Uta frowned.
"Why not?"
"I still consider him a friend" Shanks said slowly "But I don't think he feels the same way"
"Why?"
"Because we had a fight"
Uta considered that for approximately two seconds.
"Then you should make up!"
Shanks stared at her, then he laughed.
"It's not so easy"
"Why?"
"I don't know where he is"
Uta's expression changed. Not sad, exactly. More like she was trying to understand why that was supposed to be a difficult problem.
"Then find him" Shanks blinked. Uta shrugged, as though she'd just offered the most obvious solution in the world "If you miss someone, shouldn't you find them?"
Shanks stared at her for a moment, then he laughed again, shaking his head. He didn't have an answer. She was a child, she didn't understand how complicated things could become when people grew older. She didn't understand pride, or time, or all the things that could stand between two people who had once been close.
Or perhaps children understood these things perfectly, perhaps adults were simply very good at making them unnecessarily complicated. Shanks reached down and ruffled her hair.
"Maybe you're right"
"I usually am" Uta nodded, apparently satisfied that she'd won the argument. Then she returned to her spot on the floor "Now I'm going to sing another one, so you better listen"
She grinned and Shanks smiled.
"Yes, ma'am"
Uta immediately began singing again and for a moment, as her laughter blended with the melody, Shanks could almost hear another laugh underneath it.
Maybe that was why meeting Uta had unsettled something inside him, it wasn't that she was exactly like Buggy, she wasn't. But there were little pieces of him scattered throughout her, the stubbornness, the dramatic reactions, the confidence that she was right even when she very clearly wasn't, the way she refused to let something go once she'd decided she wanted an answer, the way she could make an otherwise quiet room feel louder simply by being in it.
Shanks closed his eyes for a moment. He hadn't realized how much he missed having someone like that around.
For years, he'd told himself that missing Buggy was something he simply had to live with. That eventually the memories would become less sharp, that the ache would fade with enough time. Maybe it had, or maybe he'd just gotten used to carrying it.
Uta's voice filled the room again, pulling him back to the present. Shanks leaned back in his chair and finally set the paperwork aside. This time, he listened and as Uta continued singing, the memory of Buggy didn't hurt quite as much.
—-
Shanks was seated at his desk when his Transponder Snail began to ring. He stared at it, nobody called him, as far as he knew, no one even had his number. He mostly had the thing because Ben had insisted that a captain needed a way to be contacted in case of emergencies.
Apparently, this counted as one.
The snail continued ringing, so Shanks sighed and picked it up.
"Hel-"
"What have you done!?"
Shanks had to lean back in his chair, or he was fairly certain he would have gone deaf. He stared at the Transponder Snail, now that he was actually looking at it, he noticed It looked eerily similar to Rayleigh.
"Rayleigh?" Shanks asked "How did you get this number?"
"That's irrelevant! Don't change the topic!"
"It's really not"
"It's been ten years!"
Shanks blinked.
"Ten years since what?"
"Since you two went off on your own!"
"Oh"
There was a brief silence.
"And Buggy's bounty poster hasn't appeared once!"
Shanks went quiet. He had noticed that too. At first, he'd assumed Buggy simply hadn't gained enough notoriety to earn a bounty. It wasn't particularly strange. Plenty of pirates spent years sailing without ever becoming important enough for the World Government to bother putting a price on their heads. But ten years was a long time, longer than Shanks had realized.
"Yeah" he admitted "I've noticed"
"Then what did you do!?"
"What did I do?"
"Where is Buggy!?"
"I don't know"
Silence.
"You don't know?"
"I haven't seen him since Roger's execution" Shanks's fingers tightened slightly around the Transponder Snail "We had a fight. He left"
Rayleigh groaned.
"Of course you two had a fight. I'm retired, you know? I shouldn't still be dealing with this!"
"He left me!"
"Yes, yes, I heard you the first time" Shanks frowned "Whatever happened, happened. But it's been ten years, Shanks. Ten years, and there hasn't been a single bounty poster"
Shanks looked down at the desk.
"What are you trying to say?"
There was a long silence on the other end. Then Rayleigh spoke, much more slowly.
"Do you really think Buggy gave up on being a pirate?"
Shanks answered immediately.
"No"
"Exactly"
Shanks's expression hardened.
"Wait" He sat up straighter "You think something happened to Buggy?"
"Yes!"
"No. Come on” Shanks shook his head "Buggy's smart. And he's got his Devil Fruit. I'm sure he's fine"
"I wanted to believe the same" Rayleigh paused "But Shakky and I tried to find information about him"
The humor disappeared from Shanks's face.
"And?"
"Nothing"
"What do you mean, nothing?"
"No one has seen him"
"That doesn't make sense"
"I know"
Rayleigh's voice had grown quieter.
"It's as if he disappeared"
Shanks froze. For the first time in years, the possibility he'd never allowed himself to consider became real. Maybe Buggy wasn't simply avoiding him, maybe he hadn't chosen to disappear. Something could have happened, something serious.
"Why didn't you call me before!?"
"Because you couldn't do anything about it"
"I can look for him!"
"Shanks-"
"I can!"
"Calm down, kid"
"I'm calm!"
"You sound like you're about to sail across the world"
"I might"
Rayleigh sighed.
"If Shakky and I couldn't find him, you aren't going to have much better luck" Shanks said nothing "The last thing we knew was that he was in the East Blue" Rayleigh continued "But that was ten years ago. He could be anywhere by now"
Shanks stared out the window. East Blue, that was all they had. One sea, hundreds of islands, thousands upon thousands of people. Buggy could be anywhere among them, or nowhere.
"Still" Shanks said quietly "I have to try"
Rayleigh was silent for a moment.
"We both know Buggy isn't going to be found unless he wants to be"
Shanks swallowed.
"Then I'll just have to keep an eye out"
"That's all I'm asking"
The line went dead. Shanks slowly lowered the Transponder Snail. For a long moment, he simply stared at it. Ten years, ten years without a single bounty poster, ten years without a rumor that led anywhere, ten years without knowing whether Buggy was somewhere out there, living his life and deliberately avoiding him, or whether he wasn't out there at all.
Shanks leaned back in his chair. He didn't like the second possibility, not even a little.
—-
Rayleigh had been right.
Even if Shanks went from island to island asking about Buggy, there was no guarantee he'd find anything. The last place anyone had known Buggy to be was the East Blue, but ten years was more than enough time for him to have traveled somewhere else.
For all Shanks knew, Buggy could have crossed the entire Grand Line by now, he could be anywhere.
It didn't matter. He would search anyway, even if it took him fifty years, every island, every port, every town where someone might have seen a blue-haired pirate with a red nose and an attitude large enough to be noticed from halfway across the sea.
He would find him.
—-
The Red Hair Pirates had been hopping from island to island in the East Blue for some time now. And so far, they had found nothing, no rumors, no sightings, no clues, nothing.
Every island had started to feel the same. They would arrive, Shanks would ask around, sometimes subtly and sometimes not so subtly, and eventually they would leave with nothing more than they had arrived with.
This next island hadn't been chosen for any particular reason. It was simply another name on the list, another place to search, another place to cross off.
When they docked, Shanks barely waited for the ship to be secured before stepping onto the pier.
"Where are you going, boss?"
Ben called after him and Shanks waved without turning around.
"Just got to stretch my legs a bit. I'll be back soon"
"You're not going to drink, are you?"
"No!"
"That's what you said last time"
"I wasn't drunk!"
"You asked three different people where the ship was"
"That doesn't count"
Ben sighed, but Shanks was already walking away.
He didn't know where he was going. He just knew he needed to get away from the ship for a while. Every new island had become another disappointment, another reminder that they still hadn't found Buggy.
At first, Shanks had been optimistic. There were hundreds of islands in the East Blue. It made sense that it would take time. Maybe Buggy had moved somewhere else. Maybe he'd kept a low profile. Maybe he'd simply been difficult to track down.
But as time went by, optimism became harder to hold onto. Every empty search felt like another drop against glass. And somewhere along the way, Shanks had started blaming himself, he should have looked sooner, he should have tried harder, he should have never let Buggy walk away in the first place.
The thought he'd been trying not to entertain followed him anyway. Buggy could be dead. No, he couldn't think like that, not yet. Shanks shoved the thought away.
He kept walking, letting his feet carry him wherever they wanted. Eventually, he found himself standing in front of a bar. It wasn't anything remarkable, small, quiet, the sort of place that could have existed on any island in the East Blue.
Shanks stopped. He stared at the building for a few seconds. Then, with nothing better to do, he opened the door. The first person to notice him was a woman with green hair.
She smiled politely.
"Welcome"
Shanks barely heard her. His attention was somewhere else. The woman was talking to another person behind the bar, someone with blue hair.
Shanks stopped breathing and his heart did something strange, no, it couldn't be. The person behind the counter was turned away from him, arguing with the woman.
“You're a terrible boss, we’ll go bankrupt!"
“And yet you keep working here”
Shanks stared. That voice, it was different, older, deeper, years had changed it, but he would never forget it.
His entire body went still, of course this was where he was. After ten years of searching, after wondering about every island in the East Blue, after imagining every possible place Buggy could have ended up.
He was here. In a random little bar in a small village, arguing about about money
Shanks felt something warm spread through his chest, he almost laughed. It had to be Buggy, the exaggerated outrage, the dramatic gestures, the complete inability to accept being wrong about anything.
Some things apparently never changed.
“It's been a long time”
Buggy stopped and slowly, he turned around. Their eyes met and recognition crossed his face, then shock, then disbelief, and then something else, something Shanks couldn't identify.
For several seconds, neither of them moved. The world seemed to become very quiet. Shanks remembered Loguetown, the rain, the dock, the argument, Buggy walking away.
After all these years, Buggy was standing right in front of him.
Shanks smiled.
"Hello, Buggy”