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Luffy never sits still. He doesn’t like to. It’s boring, and it’s hard when the world is right there, ripe for the chasing.
He’s never still except when he’s eating or sleeping, and even then only barely. The second he’s done, he’s off running again, because he’s sixteen and the island is his to explore. Luffy is never still.
And yet, he’s not moving.
He’s seen the whole island a hundred times over by now. He still spends his days exploring, because the forest changes every day and there’s always new stuff to see in the Grey Terminal and new people to meet in Edge Town. He climbs trees and hunts crocodiles and he trains and trains and trains until his hands feel bruised even though he’s rubber, and sometimes he runs until he reaches the edge of the forest, where the ground falls away into seaside cliffs, and he stops.
If he didn’t stop, the unrelating need in his bones would drive him right off the cliff into the sea, the harsh longing in his heart would pull him to the horizon.
Luffy doesn’t stand still, ever. Luffy is movement, is a straight line from A to B, is unstoppable velocity in a somewhat human form.
And yet he stops, at the edge of Dawn.
Because he’s waiting.
Has been waiting for the last three years.
For longer, really. Since he was born, maybe, definitely since he was seven, but Ace took the edge off, made it not boring, made waiting not feel like sitting still.
Ace left three years ago.
Luffy has two months to go. He’s shaking with the need to get going.
He fights tigers. Figures out how to tame the wolves. Punches people in Edge Town. Sneaks into High Town to steal, and when he leaves, a building is burning.
He’s always moving, always running, but he pauses at thee harbour, looks at the ships, looks at the sea, and he wants so hard it hurts.
The shoreline is the bars of a cage. He hates staying still, but he can’t move.
Not yet.
The sea is right there, but not yet. He’s still waiting. He has a promise to keep.
He stands there for only a second before he runs again, guards from High Town catching up, swinging swords and shooting guns. He could fight them, but that would mean stopping, and he hates that. He has nothing to protect, here, and he wants to move.
Luffy runs, and he doesn’t look back.
-o-
Zoro doesn’t get lost, ever.
He knows exactly where he’s going; to the top. Everything else is just stuff that happens along the way.
So maybe he can’t find his way back to his home island. He figures that’s only right. Going back was never an option anyway. The only way forwards is forwards.
He’s never been good at understanding directions, but he’s never needed to. If he’s meant to get somewhere, he’ll get there, because there’ll be nowhere else he can go. That’s how it works. He trusts that fate will lead him to his destination, because anything else is unthinkable.
Somewhere along the way he becomes a bounty hunter. He doesn’t mind it. It’s practical. He can’t waste his time on things off his path, and he needs to pay for food. Hunting pirates for money feels like a step in the right direction, or at least not a step away.
When Johnny and Yosaku are with him, it’s easier to get around. He’s more likely to end up where he wants to go and not just where he needs to go. He doesn’t mind them either. They’re fun to have around. Good friends. Good drinking partners. It’s good to laugh, sometimes.
It doesn’t last forever. Their goals are different from his, they’re moving in a different direction. It’s inevitable that their paths diverge.
Maybe they’ll meet again someday. Zoro doesn’t know. His path is long, and he only knows where it ends.
There’s no compass to lead his way. There’s no guiding star, no maps or signposts, but he knows how things work. He’ll get where he needs to go because he’s meant to go there.
And if it turns out he needs a star to follow, he trusts himself to find one.
For now, all he needs is the swords at his side and his eyes on the horizon.
-o-
Nami has learned to breathe with the wind, between heartbeats, in time with the waves.
She’s learned to live in a future she hasn’t seen yet.
The hope for that future sends her sailing, and every time the wind fills her sail, she learns to breathe all over again.
She’s drawn back. Her unseen future needs her back, needs her hands in the dirt under the tangerine trees, counting money, needs her words as a shield between her family and her enemy, needs her body and mind in that little room, drawing, choking, as insurance, but every time she leaves, she leaves for longer, travels further, breathes deeper.
Her mind is on her village, and she doesn’t think about her body, doesn’t care about it. She denies the wind in her lungs and the waves in her blood, the part of her that’s part of it, that abhors the thought of not sailing.
Nami returns unfailingly to the village, bound by the leash of the future she’s building. She returns bruised and bleeding, teeth clenched in a smile. She returns to that room, lets herself lock away, and she’s long since learned not to fight.
She can still hear the wind outside, her breath, just out of reach, and she chokes on these chains without a noise of complaint, until her next chance to sail, to breathe.
Her unknown future tethers her, keeps her bound like the wind in a bottle, and she fights with tooth and claw to make it real, and she doesn’t allow herself to stop to think, to wonder, to notice that the first time she stepped on a ship, the why shifted.
She thinks she only fights for her family, for her revenge, for her home to be safe once again.
She fights, because once the leash is gone, she’ll never have to leave the sea.
-o-
“The pirates are coming!” Usopp yells, and he’s already moving. “Run away! The pirates are coming!”
He’s through the village by the time other footsteps start following his, coming through doors and over windowsills. They’re brandishing brooms and frying pans, and he laughs.
“You filthy liar!” they yell back.
“I can’t believe you!”
He keeps away with easy steps, far faster than any of them can hope to be. Fast enough to turn back and tease them a bit.
“Don’t worry! It was just a lie!” he yells, though of course they already know.
The collective roar of rage is worth it, and the chase picks up for real.
“You stupid brat!”
“Can’t we have one morning of peace!?”
He’s careful not to put on too much speed. It’s no fun if he loses them immediately, so he keeps just a few steps ahead of the mob, laughing and taunting.
“You always do this, you troublemaker!”
The morning run gets his blood pumping, and the angry mob makes it interesting.
“Never should’ve left you to on your own to cause trouble!”
“Have you even eaten breakfast today!?”
It helps that they’re not actually angry.
“The Great Captain Usopp always eats breakfast!” he assures them. He learned long ago that a morning run on an empty stomach isn’t nearly as much fun.
“Come by the restaurant for lunch, you brat!”
“I’ll come help you fix that window after dinner!”
He gives them a wave farewell before he picks up speed, leaving them in the lurch within seconds, so they can go home and get on with their days.
Once he’s sure he’s lost them, he slows to a jog, shoves his hands in his pockets and whistles in the morning sun.
“The pirates are coming,” he says to himself, the words so old and familiar they don’t feel like a lie anymore.
He bends to pick up a few pebbles from the road in passing, weighing them in his hand. It’s a good day for slingshot practice.
One day, he knows, a pirate will be leaving this island. One day he’ll set sail and get out of here.
But that’s a distant, nebulous future. He’s still young and carefree, with his pockets full of pebbles and his eyes on the clouds above.
It’s a fine day to be a pirate.
-o-
Sanji is content. Happy, even.
How could he not be, when every day sees the elegant and natural transformation of ingredients into delicious, plentiful food? When he’s useful and wanted? When the people around him are people he trusts? When even waiter duty means he gets to meet an array of beautiful female customers every day?
He doesn’t need anything else. He doesn’t even need this much. He never needed this much, never needed more than the bare necessities, to live.
The Baratie is more than that. It’s a dream, it’s hope incarnate. It’s a home, a true home, when he didn’t believe he could have one.
When he works, the knives and spatulas lie in his hands like a natural extension of himself, and he feels the same joy in it now as he did eight years ago, when the restaurant was new. No matter how many times he does it, cooking will never be a chore.
His life here is the best he’s ever had. The people around him are bastards, but they’re his bastards. He’s never known anywhere he’d rather be, and he can’t risk losing this, no matter what.
He can’t leave yet, anyway. Not until he repays the shitty geezer.
If he feels restless sometimes, if he spends smoking breaks staring off the railing towards the end of the sea, that’s nothing. It’s the tail-end of his growth spurt that’s tingling in his legs. It’s only because the waiters ran away again and he’s frustrated that he can’t spend all his time in the kitchen.
Sanji is clever. He has a million excuses, if he needs them.
He smokes his cigarettes and he stares out over the sea, wondering which direction All Blue is in, and he pretends he doesn’t want to vault the railing to go find it.
He huffs, flicks his cigarette butt into the sea and turns his back on it.
Sanji isn’t going anywhere.
-o-
Vivi’s heart breaks over and over again. She grins and bears it.
Her heart breaks for her father, for her guards, for her friends back home who only know that she is missing. It breaks for her country, left behind because she doesn’t know yet what she has to do.
It breaks for Igaram, who was never made for this job but does it because it’s needed. It breaks for the Baroque Works members she works beside, who she has to ignore as she climbs the ranks, those who break under pressure and those who aren’t good enough, who fall behind and are taken out. It breaks for the pirates she hunts as part of said job. It breaks and bleeds for every lie and every shot of a gun and slash of her blades.
It breaks for herself.
Vivi’s heart breaks and breaks and breaks, and when the next pirate ship sails into Whiskey Peak, she lets it break again, and she smiles and draws them to their deaths without hesitation.
Because Vivi’s heart might break and bleed but the fire in her is eternal, and as long as it burns, her heart will heal.
Alabasta needs her.
The sand in her blood and the rain in her bones are crying out for help, and her heart bleeds but the fire is stronger.
Her spine is built from the bedrock she learned to walk on, her will is as cool and calm as the night air of her first breath.
She breaks her own heart for the sake of her soul, and she does not flinch.
-o-
“Are you real?” the woman asks while Chopper takes her temperature.
She was asleep when he came in, and her eyes are glazed with a 38.5° fever, so it’s not a surprising question.
“I’m a doctor,” Chopper says, and he can’t help giggling a little. Doctorine just allowed him to call himself that, and he’s so happy. Then he makes himself be serious again. “I’m here to help you. How are you feeling?”
“My bones hurt,” she complains. “And my head and my throat, and I’m way too hot and I’m dizzy, and you… look like a tiny bear.”
“I’m a reindeer, dammit!” Chopper says.
He soaks another cloth in cold water and puts it on her forehead.
She falls asleep again soon enough, and he settles at the floor beside her bed to run some tests out of the kit in his bag.
The patient is quiet. Chopper is quiet too, and in the silence, he hears sounds from the rest of the house.
Her husband is out there, together with Doctorine.
“Are you sure it’s safe to leave that thing alone with her?” the man asks.
He’s quiet, almost whispering, but Chopper’s ears are very good.
It’s fine though, he tells himself, as his heart sinks in his chest. Screw that man. Chopper is here for the patient only.
“Are you questioning me?” Doctorine asks.
He is, of course. He doesn’t want her there, doesn’t want Chopper there, tolerates them only because his wife is sick and the king’s doctors are all busy.
He says quite a lot of things that reminds Chopper of gunshots, of bleeding out against the snow.
It’s fine. It’s fine. Chopper is fine. He doesn’t care.
He’s not crying. He’s a man, and men don’t cry.
Doctorine cackles, and gives as good as she gets. “That beast you’re talking about might well save her life! If it’s something dangerous, that is, which I doubt.”
Chopper dries his face. It’s just wet from the cold-water cloth, because he’s not crying. He doesn’t give a crap what any stupid humans think anyway.
“Nothing dangerous? Half the village is down for the count!”
“Your gal is a strong woman. She can take a little fever, so don’t get your panties in a twist, kid.”
Chopper shakes his head and adjusts his hat. The tests he’s running have finished, so he packs up and leaves the room.
“You were right,” Chopper says to Doctorine, ignoring the man as best as he can. “It’s Influenza. She’s going to be fine with some rest and plenty of water.”
The man rushes into his wife’s room. He’ll probably get sick too.
Chopper tries to care, but mostly he’s happy the man isn’t in the same room anymore.
The tension doesn’t leave his shoulders until they’re out of the house again, on the snowy street outside. The roads are empty. It’s late, but not that late. Most of the population is down with the same illness.
This is the village where Chopper nearly got shot to death.
He shudders and steps a little closer to Doctorine’s side.
“Hm, you can go back home,” she says.
Chopper looks up, startled. “What?”
“It’s just the flu. I can deal with this on my own. No need for you to stick your nose in.”
Yeah, right. He’s starting to learn when she’s lying, now.
He really doesn’t want to be here.
But there’s a reason he was the one to see to the patient this time, he who can’t easily be infected by human pathogens.
She’s well over a hundred and thirty. She’ll knife him if he calls her old, but that doesn’t make it less true. He knows the numbers. He knows that a flu isn’t always just a flu.
“I’ll come with,” he says.
“You hate humans,” she huffs.
“So do you,” he says. “But they’re patients.”
“Ah, do what you want,” she says, and walks to the next house.
They still have a job to do.
-o-
Robin doesn’t remember what it feels like to be both safe and happy.
She’s safe sometimes. When she’s alone, and there’s no one around for miles, man or beast, or when there’s no way the people around her could find out who and what she is.
She likes being safe, when she can. It lets her sleep like she almost never does, four, maybe five uninterrupted hours. It makes everything else a little easier to bear, but nothing is ever easy.
She’s happy sometimes too. Hidden away in old bookstores, exploring abandoned ruins, chasing leads across several oceans to their ends. She finds her first poneglyph, and for one glorious moment, it all feels worth it.
Those times are never safe, but nothing good ever is, for her.
She survives, even so. She’ll persist. Just one more lead, one more island. She can’t let Ohara’s will die here.
But it’s hard.
It’s hard sometimes to remember why she’s doing this.
It takes years between each time she finds anything of substance, and it never gets any easier.
She wants to think Saul was right, that they’re out there, people who will make her happy, keep her safe. She wants to, but it’s getting so hard to believe.
Some days, she doesn’t know why she bothers to keep walking. Some days, she just wants to stay down, to rest and wait until someone finds her.
Then she gets up anyway.
She keeps going, because she never learned how to stop.
She sails with pirates and criminals, keeping ears on the walls, listening for the inevitable moment when they decide to betray her, so she can betray them first. At this point she doesn’t know how not to, doesn’t feel comfortable on a ship without knowing where everyone is at any given time.
Unless she’s alone.
She can take being alone. Alone is safer.
Alone is lonely.
She doesn’t know why she’s still walking. She doesn’t remember what a home feels like. She doesn’t know how to make a real smile anymore.
She finds an old diary hidden away on a low shelf in an antique store, and she finds in it what might be a clue to the start of a trail, and she goes off looking for maps, for directions, for a ship to board.
Robin keeps going.
She still hasn’t figured out how to give up.
-o-
Water 7 is a beautiful city.
It’s prosperous now, much more than it was when Franky was a kid.
Prosperity shines like a light. It casts its own shadow for degenerates to hide in, and Franky was never one for the light side of things anyway.
Franky can’t build things anymore, but at least he can be deliberate about what he destroys. This city is gaining one hell of a dark side, and maybe he’s the right man to take care of that, if he’s not good for anything else.
He can’t build things anymore. Not for real. He wants to, always. His fingers are aching to build, to create, but he can’t.
He can’t. not after making the weapons that killed Tom.
Franky’s hands ache, and he uses them to destroy instead.
The streets of this city are littered with hopelessness, and he reaches out and pulls it apart. These are his people now, and he can’t build, but maybe they can somehow, maybe he can help them.
They’re bastards and criminals, but so is he and it suits him well, and his hands ache less when he pulls them one by one out of the gutter and teaches them to break things properly.
He can’t build things anymore, no matter how much he itches to, no matter how long he spends redrawing blueprints for his old dream ship. It won’t happen. It can’t happen.
He hasn’t built anything since he rebuilt himself. Not really. Just maintenance, occasionally, just a little tinkering, when something isn’t quite right. It doesn’t count, anyway. Weapons can’t be turned on those he loves if they’re inside his body, after all.
He hasn’t made a thing since the day Cutty Flam died, except maybe a tool or twelve, or some furniture when the Family couldn’t find a good couch for the hideout, and maybe the hideout too, but no, those don’t count. That’s just doodling, really. It’s barely any effort at all.
He can’t build things anymore. Not if he can’t love them, and he can’t love children who would turn on his family. He’ll have to find his children other places.
Franky’s hands ache to create, and he goes out and drags another miscreant off the street, building another pillar into the foundations of the city as he goes.
-o-
Gather up all of the crew
It’s time to ship out Binks’s Brew
Tap tap tap through the grey grey fog. Brook is dancing, Brook is singing, oh what joy, what joy.
Sea wind blows, to where, who knows?
The waves will be our guide
Words he knows like the tip of his nose, but oh! He doesn’t have one of those.
O’er across the ocean’s tide
Rays of sunshine far and wide
It’s dark above and dark below and dark inside as well.
Birds they sing, of cheerful thing
In circles passing by
He laughs or sings and he doesn’t know which, and there’s no one around, so what does it matter?
Yo ho ho and the song goes on.
Bid farewell to your hometown
Say so long to port renowned
Sing a song, it won’t be long
Before we’re casting off
He sings until his throat is sore, but that’s gone too so he sings some more.
Cross the gold and silver seas
A salty spray puts us at ease
Day and night, to our delight
The voyage never ends.
He stops for a second and opens his head, and his voice joins together with those of the dead.
He loses his breath, but it’s already gone, so he carries on singing, the song must go on.
Gather up all of the crew
It’s time to ship out Binks’s Brew
Pirates, we eternally
Are challenging the sea
He has no direction, no compass or log. There’s nothing around him but darkness and fog.
But somewhere out there is his friend wating still, so Brook keeps on singing by sheer force of will.
With the waves to rest our heads
Ship beneath us as our beds
Hoisted high upon the mast
Our jolly roger flies
And maybe he’s lonely and maybe in pain, and maybe his mind’s gone the way of his brain.
And maybe he’s crazy and scared and alone, but he still has his music, stuck deep in each bone.
Somewhere in the endless sky
Stormy winds are blowing by
Waves are dancing, evening comes
It's time to sound the drums
But steady men, and never fear
Tomorrow's skies are always clear
So pound your feet and clap your hands
'til sunny days return.
And when the song ends, he sings it again.
And again and again and again.
Yo-hohoho, Yo-hoho-ho
Yo-hohoho, Yo-hoho-ho
Yo-hohoho, Yo-hoho-ho
Yo-hohoho
Yo-hoho-ho