Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Just show us where the alcohol is, and you won’t even know we’re here,” Shanks says to the village people, and they turn back to their business like they weren’t just confronted by pirates. 

Roger unashamedly pouts a little at that— he’d die for a little more chaos, but, well— he’s already dead. 

The sheer fact that Shanks said that after landing at the village home to Garp, the Marine hero, would already make Roger laugh hard enough to bust a lung. But judging by the townspeople’s whispers, Garp wasn’t currently here, so there went the wild goose chase he had been looking forward to watching since he recognized the island. Maybe it would be cruel to wish Monkey D. Garp upon the Red-Hair Pirates since they had been looking for a place to rest and resupply, but Roger can’t help it. It’s boring when there are no challengers in a place where everyone knows your name, and the most entertaining encounter that could have happened was now extremely unlikely at best. 

In any case, he was looking forward to saying hi to the single person who probably hates him as much as Roger likes him. That’s exactly what made him the perfect candidate to be a godfather to his child, though Garp would definitely not spare the same leniency to his now full-grown apprentice.

He knows Rayleigh would sigh at his logic; call it asinine, maybe. And yet there was still the unquestioning acceptance— as if any words he uttered, Rayleigh could accept them as the laws of the world, and forge it to be so. (If it wasn’t in the range of what he considered absolute lunacy, anyway.)

Rayleigh.

No, Rayleigh would be fine. He’d been fine for twelve years now, if Marine information was anything to go off of.

(He cringes a little, because actually, he knows the way they twist words. Ah, whatever, the objective facts remained the same: Rayleigh was fine.)

The Red-Hair Pirates were, however, promised alcohol, so he can settle with that. If there’s anything that can make him feel better, it’s alcohol and a party. The tavern owner— Makino—  relaxes and leads them into the tavern, so Roger, although slightly disappointed, follows. Makino does, however, mention something about a little spitfire of a kid who is simultaneously constantly scolded and adored by the village people, and Roger's interest is almost piqued, except for that apparently he also is not here. 

He’ll find other things to amuse himself with though, if that’s what it takes. One of those things being that Shanks never fails to make neat attempts at diplomacy, because Roger is unendingly amused when people think Shanks is actually polite. Roger knows Shanks, and Shanks is most definitely not mature; he’ll expose that much the second he takes a chug or encounters a small child. Shanks is probably just as bad as himself, in fact: truly a person after his own heart. The only difference is that Shanks bothers with diplomacy when it’s necessary. Roger certainly never did— Rayleigh did that for him.

Rayleigh.

He misses Rayleigh a stupid amount.

Damn it, he worked himself into a sour mood, and a sour mood is incredibly useless in the life of a pirate. Somehow his stomach hurts even as a ghost, which Roger totally calls bullshit on, because the last time it hurt was when he was still alive and atop that platform in Loguetown. The rest of him feels nothing, and even where it hurts feels disjointed, like it doesn't actually hurt, because being a ghost is weird. But he’s reminded that he’s in the now, not the long gone, and so he brushes aside all the semantics that make his head hurt. The bottles don’t meet his hands, the walls don’t echo his cheers, and the world apparently doesn’t care that being a ghost is boring. He turns toward the tavern, though now his heart really isn’t in it at all; he's wistful now, which sucks.

He sighs. “Maybe I’ll go haunt Garp when he comes back.”

“Garp? You mean my Gramps?”

Oh hell, Garp has an actual grandchild? Aside from Ace/Ann? He didn’t see that coming. Wait, that would mean the kid is the child of Dragon, right? “The World’s Most Wanted Criminal” Revolutionary Dragon? Wait, fuck, that’s hilarious—

"If you're looking for him, he's away for now. I don't know why you'd be looking for him though, since you're a pirate." The boyish voice breaks off into a snicker. "You're weird."

Roger throws a glance at the child, and is met with a tiny, scrawny, bright-eyed little brat, bearing unruly hair and a smile emanating mischief that could possibly match his own.

Little spitfire, Roger recalls.

Must be a true brat to be talking to a nine-foot tall man unfazed, he thinks, but a sudden wave of amusement quickly overtakes him. This is infinitely better than shouting cheers to a room with people who won't hear him. Spunky kids are the most fun to mess with. “Oh?” is all he says back.

The boy laughs. "Shouldn't you join your— friends, or… uh, crewmates?"

His eyes scroll down to the boy's shirt, and he returns a laugh. "What, a troublesome-looking kid like you wants to mess with pirates? Not a good move, Anchor."

"Shut up! Don't call me that— " the boy yells in annoyance, and oh wow, Roger had forgotten how much he enjoyed messing with kids since Shanks and Buggy grew up, now laughing at the enraged child pathetically assaulting his kneecaps.

"Luffy! Keep it down with your imaginary friend or whatever there, okay?!" some man yells with a strangely playful sneer in his voice. The one who introduced himself as mayor earlier, Roger thinks vaguely, Woop Slap.

Wait.

Wait, the man heard the kid—

"You shut up too, old man!" the kid— Luffy— yells back, looking like he's about to burst a vein. "I know you know I'm not imagining anything! The whole village does!" He huffs out an overdramatic "Hmph!" before plopping himself on the porch of the tavern.

That brought on unreasonably late realizations. The boy he's talking with is— solid. Alive. Not translucent in the slightest. Talking to himself, who is dead.

The kid seems to have forgotten his wounded pride in an instant, for all that he looks back up at Roger and goes, “You just realized?”

“I don’t wanna be told that by a brat who probably has to be told to wear a jacket to realize he's freezing cold," Roger sneers.

The boy's cheeks color as he murmurs something like 'That was one time with Makino! One time!', and Roger laughs even harder, knowing he hit the nail on the head.

He doesn't want to lose the apparent single living person in the world he can talk to as a ghost though, so he decides he should probably stop pissing the kid off, at least for now. "Gutsy, yelling at a pirate," Is what he settles on as he sits down beside the kid. "I like that. Name's Roger."

"I'm Luffy! Monkey D. Luffy!" the kid chirps back, kicking his feet in the air, before he suddenly halts. "Wait, Roger? Like Gold Roger? The Pirate King?!"

"It's Gol D. Roger!" he shouts, because he can't help it. The Marines just had to do this to him, didn't they? "They fucked up my name and now everyone says it wrong, damn it!"

(Roger wonders rather belatedly if he shouldn't swear in front of a child, but he kind of figures that with a grandpa like Garp, that's a null issue already, so he brushes it aside.)

Luffy doesn't seem to care in the slightest though, with that face that screams oh, cool story that I didn't listen to at all, anyway, and he says, "Soooo...what's your treasure?"

"Ain't tellin' you, brat," says Roger instantly, because if there's anything he's not, it's a spoilsport. " 'M not giving a lil' fame-seeking Anchor any special treatment just 'cause he can see me." He sticks his tongue out at the kid, because he doesn't deal with cheaters.

The kid makes a face for a split second as if vaguely offended by the gesture and reoccurring insult, but then blinks back with wide, uncomprehending eyes for a moment, before, "Oh! No, I'm not talking about the One Piece,"  and Roger has to raise an eyebrow at that. 

"Why would I ask about that? That'd ruin my adventure!" Luffy says with some odd traces of pride. "I'm going to be a pirate captain and have my own adventure! I wouldn't ask even if you would tell me." 

 Roger would totally give this kid an oh-really-now look if he weren't actually somewhat convinced, but he really kind of is. That's the kind of answer he likes to hear, after all; not many can say that.

"Why do you wanna be a pirate, then?"

"Mostly to spite my Gramps."

Okay, fuck, this kid is hilarious.

"The treasure is cool too, but mostly I just don't wanna stay here," Luffy continues, "I wanna be free."

It's like looking in a slightly warped mirror, feeling his very soul resonate with a child that's less than half his size.

Roger wonders if he or Shanks can push it. If someone can give this kid a push, and 'free' can turn into 'the freest person in the world.'

It'll be a spectacle to behold, he's sure.

"Ah! I almost forgot!" Luffy near-yells and breaks him out of his train of thought, "What about your treasure?" He's looping back to their earlier subject, and Roger sighs, because the kid actually expects Roger to suddenly understand his uncontrollable, incoherent stupid. Will of the King, Roger supposes. Great for ambition, but terribly irritating in an everyday conversation.

"Most ghosts have their own treasure," says Luffy matter-of-factly. "Someone or something, or maybe a lot of things, that they're watching over. So," he gestures towards the tavern, " 's that your crew you're watching over? Or is it just the red-haired guy?"

"Mostly the red-haired guy," Roger admits without shame, because Shanks was one of his, but the others are all Shanks's. "Him n' his hat."

"His hat? What about his hat?"

" 's special, to him n' me n' maybe Rayleigh and Crocus. My crown, a treasure to all of us," Roger sighs a little, "'cept Buggy, probably, and that's mostly Shanks's fault."

"Huh," says Luffy as he takes in the new information. "That's all?" he asks, and his nose wrinkles a little like he's the slightest bit disappointed.

"Brat."

Luffy sticks out his tongue.

"You can be greedy, sure. But y'know, you don't need to have a lot to be happy."

"Mm, I guess that's true," the kid says, looking thoughtful now. "I'm pretty happy even with Gramps tryna' to force me to become a Marine, n' all I have are Gramps n' Makino n' sometimes nice ghosts, though sometimes the ghosts leave."

"Really now?" He's seen at least a few other ghosts pass by in this village doing their own thing. Well, it's a bit odd for ghosts to be here since this village is so peaceful— less resentment and grudges and regrets left behind— but maybe it was this little troublemaker that made them want to stick around.

"Mmmmyup. Gramps tied me to a bunch of balloons once and then let me fall. The ghosts tried to catch me, but Gramps startled them and they dropped me anyway." He pauses, and then his face lights up again. "Oh! And there was that one time Gramps threw me into the forest. Some ghosts helped me look for lizards n' bugs to eat. They tried leading me out of the forest too, but Gramps kept throwing me back in, so."

Ah, right. Monkey D. Garp was still a madman. Excellent. If Ace/Ann was anything like him and Rouge, they would need someone of at least Garp's caliber to reign them in. Who better than Garp himself? Clearly the best choice of a godfather.

"Most of 'em leave after sometime. Move on, I guess. Some just hang around," Luffy says, then turns back to him again, "But what about people-treasure? You were a pirate, so you musta met a bunch of people."

"I'm still a pirate, thank you very much, and I toldja already. Red-haired."

"But not only that," Luffy says with absolute certainty, oddly sharp for someone so slow-witted. "You kept talking about someone named Rayleigh earlier, and also someone named Crocus, but you also mentioned Gramps, so part of it has something to do with Gramps."

Roger doesn't like talking about people who aren't here, because then he'll think about them not being here and get into a sour mood again, but the kid is exhaustingly persistent. Hit the nail on the head, in fact , and so Roger concedes, "Yep, you caught me. Though I ain't tellin' you shit about Rayleigh and Crocus," the kid pouts at that, "I might as well tell ya 'bout the other one, 'cause they're Garp's treasure too, now. Ace, or Ann, I don't know yet. But they go by one of those names, and they're three years older than you."

You'll meet them n' Rouge soon enough, He doesn't say.

The kid beside him takes in the words with bright eyes. "Ace or Ann," he says, voice oddly hushed, like it's something breathtaking as he repeats it again, softer yet firmer: "Ace or Ann."

It's a strange kind of spark that resides in Luffy's eyes now, like he's already decided this treasure is now his own, too.

Greedy, Roger can tell. He knows it when he sees it. But it's not the grimy, unpleasant, plundering kind; more like the childish kind: mine, mine, mine. Though, they're both definitely annoying, he thinks, and it makes him want to laugh. Rayleigh had always said oh, if only you could experience yourself, then you'd know, and Roger thinks this is the closest thing he's going to get.

Rayleigh.

Fucking damnit, not again. No. Nope. He's not doing this today, no way.

It's the sudden halt of his train of thought that makes him realize how quiet it's gotten. 

The noisy background ruckus of rambunctious cheers and celebration coming from inside the bar had fallen to near silence at some point, but listening closely enough, anyone could hear the soft, whispery breaths between lapses.

Snores.

He glances at the kid, who meets his eyes at the same time.

Roger throws the kid an impish grin, pleased to find Luffy already mirroring the same smile.

Truthfully, Shanks awakens the moment he hears footsteps outside, because 1) he may be an alcoholic, but he still has dignity to protect (not that his dignity exists when he's drunk) and 2) Observation Haki is incredibly useful. The presence approaching the entrance is small and bursting with sparks, and Shanks is suddenly reminded of a certain someone mentioned by the tavern owner.

Little spitfire, huh? Oh, this is going to be fun.

His men have already noticed at this point too, if the immense shit-eating grins on their faces are anything to go off of. But no one makes any move, just lying still as statues while pretending to snore, and it's obvious what their game plan is.

Benn gives an almost imperceivable sigh, or maybe it's just a telepathic one to Shanks alone, but he doesn't make a move either, so Shanks knows he's won him over enough to play along.

The kid pops his head into the doorway and looks around, though his gaze lingers up at empty air for longer than it does anybody in the room.

Odd kid, indeed.

The kid creeps closer, and his eyes glow like they've seen gold once they land upon Shanks's straw hat, and oh hell no, Shanks is giving this kid the scare of his life if he touches his treasure.

The kid reaches for it— nearly brushes the brim— but then freezes cold in his tracks, and his head whips upward, like he was caught with his hand halfway in the cookie jar by an adult looming over his back, except no one in the room has moved a muscle.

"Huh? They're— I mean, you guys are awake? Wow, I didn't even notice! You guys had me fooled!"

Damn it, who ruined my fun?  

Shanks sighs and concedes, getting up in his seat while giving Benn the stink-eye, and Benn has the nerve to look nonplussed.

Wasn't me, Benn says through eye contact.

Yeah, right.

I literally did nothing.

Suuuure, if you say so.

Benn doesn't say another word through his eyes or otherwise; just sighs and turns away.

Shanks sticks his tongue out at him.

"You caught me," admits Shanks, "But if you did touch my hat, I totally would've scared you out of your mind."

"Would not!" the kid yells, puffing out his cheeks like a spitfire, much to Shanks's amusement.

"Would too," Shanks insists, because this is amusing him greatly and he thinks he's just discovered that his favorite pastime is making fun of children— no wonder Roger enjoyed this so much— "If only someone hadn't given it away."

"Aww, quit blaming it on Benn, Captain," comes aloud from an obnoxious voice on the other side of the bar— Roux's, "It's your terrible acting that gave it away," and there's a hum of agreement from Yasopp as well— though he's still drooling with his face half-mashed on the table, so maybe it's just him drunk-mumbling about his kid.

"Mutiny! My own men, betraying me!" Shanks half-yells, half-whines, grabbing the nearest bottle to wave it around dramatically. "I regret bringing along each and every one of you." 

The kid blinks, looks at Benn and then back at Shanks, looks over his shoulder, seems to consider his words for approximately three seconds, and then goes, "Yeah, it was definitely you."

That makes his crew burst into hysterics, and Shanks can't help feeling bullied. Funny to his crew, probably, since he's the victim here and not them.

"So, kid," Shanks says, trying to maintain the dignity he didn't have in the first place, "I'm Shanks, and this here's my crew." He takes the opportunity to snipe at them: "The party-pooper ponytail is Benn, the blubby beachball blabbermouth is Lucky Roux, and that drunk sap who never shuts up about his kid is Yasopp," and oh, does Shanks revel in their booing. "What's your name?"

"I'm Luffy. Monkey D. Luffy," the kid chirps back, like that isn't a bombshell.

Oh. Well, then.

"S-so then, I'm assuming you're related to Monkey D. Garp?" Shanks asks, and Luffy nods.

"Mhmm. I want to be a pirate captain, which Gramps hates. But Gramps can't do anything about me talking to pirates if he isn't here," the kid snickers.

Huh. This is something to behold; the sight of a Marine hero's grandson wanting to be a pirate, casually talking to a pirate. Actually, well, this is Garp they're talking about here. Anyone related to someone that intense would probably either become the perfect Marine or rebel out of spite, and for the few minutes he's known this kid, it's pretty obvious which side he lies on.

"Well, anyway, I was serious about the hat thing," Shanks says because it's obviously his top priority to clarify this, "It's precious to me, y'know. It's my dearest treasure, given to me by my old captain. It was his crown."

He's probably going to get some common sense response from a brat like this, like that's dumb, a straw hat isn't a crown, and Shanks is fully prepared to argue back for his hat's honor. 

But Luffy's eyes widen till they fill up with stars and reflect the color of gold, and he laughs and says, "It really must be precious, huh?"

"...Yeah," says Shanks, and it surprises him how soft his own voice goes. Or maybe it's really not surprising at all.

And out of nowhere, drunk-ass Yasopp grabs him by the shoulder, saying, "Oi, oi, the fuck, Captain?" and Shanks has the sudden urge to shake him and say do not curse in front of the literal child, what the fuck.

Makino rushes to cover Luffy's ears, but from the unchanging expression on Luffy's face, it's pretty obvious that this is in no way new territory; his lunatic grandpa is probably to thank for that.

"You tell a random little kid way out here in the middle of fuck nowhere East Blue about your hat but not us?"

Roux aggressively bites into another meat-covered bone sounding somewhat miffed, and even Benn glares at him with an are-you-serious look.

Ah. Right. 

Shanks remembers his crew members each asking him at some point, but he's fairly sure that each time he responded with something like not telling you! and unfortunately adults are not nearly as fun to mess with as kids; they give up too easily.

"Well, now you know."

"Literal worst captain," Benn sighs with his face in his hands, and the others nod in agreement; so rude!

"Hey! Benn gets to say that as first mate, but you guys don't get to say that as the idiots who decided to follow an even bigger idiot," Shanks huffs, and is met with intense booing, but he can see Benn hide a smirk behind his hands.

"Oh, you're the captain?" Luffy asks.

"Eeyup," says Shanks.

A headtilt, and then: "You don't really seem like it."

His crew, rather than defending his honor, proceeds to laugh at him hysterically; honestly so rude! Why did his ego need to suffer so much today? He just wanted to make fun of little children. Was that really so bad?

Shanks scans the kid up and down, and sees a bright-eyed, hot-tempered, gangly little runt, wearing an interesting choice of shirt that gives Shanks an idea to get back at the kid for his oh so deeply wounded pride.

"Well, you're one to talk, Anchor."

"Don't call me that!" Luffy flares up, and Shanks thinks that's much better, now— "That's twice I've been called that today, first by Roger and now you— "

Luffy slaps his hands over his mouth and glances at Makino, who very nearly drops the cup in her hands.

Shanks does, however, drop the bottle he'd been waving around, and it hits the floor with a clatter.

Wait. Wait, wait, wait, what.

What the shit .

Shanks thinks he may or may not have just forgotten how to breathe, but that does not mean he needs Benn leaning over to pat him on the back and ask if he's okay telepathically through his eyes, thank you very much.

Makino runs over to Luffy immediately and scolds him, but Shanks can't make out the words past the noise in his head.

What does he mean, "Roger"?

What does that—

It's exactly the kind of joke that Roger would have made, too— 

Shanks knows, because he thought of how Roger used to tease him— what Roger would have said—

"Luffy, what do you mean by that?" Benn asks, calmly, patiently, but there's underlying tension now.

Luffy looks up at Makino with wide eyes and a frown, as if he just watched someone kick a puppy, or maybe he even is the kicked puppy. She kneels and they debate over whatever this secret is, Luffy waving dramatically to his side, and Makino looks just about as shocked as Shanks feels.

A petty surge of bitterness rises within him; he doesn't know why, because there's no reason for it to be there. There's a hollow pit twisting in his stomach at the mention of his former captain's name, which is stupid, becauses it has no reason to be there.

There's no reason. 

Captain Roger's name is one known far and wide (most commonly in mock and scorn), and even without the odd context in this case, he's had twelve years to get over this loss, so he doesn't understand.

It's not because Shanks misses him, not really.

Their Captain Roger was such a far off person anyway, to a mere apprentice like Shanks. He was flighty and like the wind, slipping through your fingers before you realized he was even there. Gone before you got to know him, except for those who already did.

He was always some distance away, ahead at the front and fighting because he liked to; making a mess of things because he liked to. He would fight to the death over a simple insult towards one of his dear crew, because he simply loved his crew so much. Like the wind, he would always go, and like the wind, he would always come back. Back to the people he loved and the people who loved him back.

He was always there, with his dumb larger-than-life smile and dreams and his burning wish for freedom, and the freedom he gave to those who followed him and those whom he called family. Because Shanks was a part of that family, and Roger was so close. He was the wind, who drifted away and then came back as he pleased, free, and the ones whom he carried so close to him became free too.

He was the wind, far away, saying goodbye, because he knew he wasn't going to last any longer.

He was the wind, and he was gone, and never coming back, and he'd left behind only his echoes for the world to hear. The seas without the wind seem calm, collected, but maybe the calm is just the pretend-okay.

Maybe there is a reason.

It's because the sea can't carry ships or dreams forward without the wind.

It's because Shanks misses Roger, and years upon years still isn't enough to bury grief or cover the missing presence.

It's because the kid talks like he's just seen Roger, just talked to him, even, when Shanks and Buggy and Rayleigh and Crocus and everyone haven't had that for twelve years now, and they never will again.

It's dumb, Shanks thinks now. It's dumb for a wound long healed to be aching like this.

He sighs and mentally slaps himself. Now isn't the time to be getting sentimental over a name drop, of all things, he just wants to know why Luffy said it like that. Benn pats him on the back (which he does not need, thank you very much) before turning back to Luffy.

Meanwhile, the kid just keeps looking at Makino like a kicked puppy, but Makino keeps her expression firm.

Ah. Right. He was so busy being emo that he forgot about whatever was going on here.

"Um," Luffy says finally, crumbling under Makino's stare, "I can't tell you, 'cause Gramps'll get mad."

"Seriously?!" the outburst comes from Yasopp, who still doesn't look completely sober, "You can't just leave it there!" 

There's murmurs of agreement from all around the bar, and Luffy turns to Makino again with a can-I-please-tell-them look, but Makino stands her ground, and Luffy deflates like a day-old balloon. Admittedly, the spectacle amuses Shanks greatly; he's not nearly as serious as he felt minutes ago.

"If I tell you, Gramps'll kill you!" says Luffy like it's an undeniable fact. That gets most of his crew to jump and turn away, and Makino breathes an apparent sigh of relief.

Shanks, for the third time that day, sighs. It's not something easy to let go, but apparently, it's not that easy to coax out, either, if it's something that would make Garp go on a murder-spree. Maybe he'll catch Luffy alone one of these days and ask then. They're not going to be leaving soon, after all.

Roger's incredibly bored. 

The kid clung to Shanks every time he saw him, and he had little to nothing to do. Watching the kid was entertaining, but sometimes just watching isn't enough.

Sure, sometimes there was a perfect opportunity for him to humiliate his apprentice if he got Luffy to play along, but otherwise, there wasn't much he got to say. He didn't really want a repeat of the kid mentioning him, either. 

The look on Shanks's face would probably stick with him for a while.

Ah, well, whatever.

Roger turns away from the coast and the sea he'd been watching for the whole of four minutes. Damn it, when would Garp come back?! It had been almost a year now since the Red-Hair Pirates landed here.

He wanted to see his child already.

"Hey, what is he doing?"

"Probably something crazy."

Roger looks up, attention caught, and lo and behold, there's Luffy standing on the bow of the ship with a knife in his hands, pointed at his face, in front of Shanks and his crew.

What the fuck, I left him alone for like, three seconds—

"A toast! To Luffy's craziness, and to our greatness!"

They're in the bar now; his crew is downing alcohol as per usual, and Shanks doesn't know why he's surprised at what this kid tried to pull in the almost-year that he's known him.

"Anchor, what made you think it was a good idea to stab yourself in the face? Because I've certainly never known any sane adult to do that." He makes sure to put on his most unimpressed face, though maybe the use of the insulting nickname ruins it.

"I 'unno," Luffy says half-heartedly as Makino stitches the wound under his eye with a mother's fury burning in her eyes. "Gramps has a scar here, and he's terrifying, so,"

"Don't do anything this stupid ever again, Anchor, I swear to the seas."

Luffy makes a noncommittal noise, and Shanks knows an I-make-no-promises face when he sees one.

"Hey, Captain, do you call him Anchor mentally too?" Roux's smug voice cuts in, and he ignores the way it makes Luffy scowl.

"No, in fact, I do not. I'm not that much of an asshole."

"Really? Actually— no, wait, nevermind. You'd forgot Anchor's actual name in that case," Roux says in his most innocent voice (so, y'know, absolutely vile).

"Hey," Shanks mutters, because his men are laughing at him again. "I resent that." Even Luffy has overlooked the use of the nickname in favor of laughing at him.

"You're still not forgiven for stabbing yourself in the face, Luffy," Benn says.

The subject in question freezes. Benn has apparently decided to be merciful and save him, so Shanks appreciates that.

"Literally what does Garp being probably the most terrifying man alive have to do anything with him being an adult?" Shanks has to ask, and from the look on Luffy's face, he doesn't know either.

With his ridiculous dog hat and hawaiian shirts under his Marine uniform? He can't even picture the man any way other than absolutely batshit feral. Though, maybe that's his bias speaking from his traumatic nostalgia of Garp chasing Roger and their Oro Jackson… ah, good times.

Again, another half-hearted response from the idiot: "Dunno. Couldn't think of anything else. But y'know, if you just took me out to sea—"

"Not gonna happen, Anchor," Shanks says, because he is never going to get tired at how Luffy twitches at the name, "You won't be able to handle being a pirate if you can't even swim."

"You don't know that I can't."

"Can you, then?"

No response.

Ah, this is delightful.

"As long as I stay onboard the ship, I'll be fine!" Luffy huffs, "And I can fight pretty well! My punch is as strong as a pistol!"

"I doubt you could even stay on the ship," says Shanks in his most unimpressed voice, "And wow, a pistol, huh…"

It has the desired effect, for all that Luffy looks three times redder. "What kind of tone is that?!" He doesn't deny the first part of it, so Shanks counts that as his victory.

He wants to sigh at his men partying behind him, all carefree. They've given the kid such a romantic view on the life of a pirate that he's gotten infuriatingly persistent, and as much as Shanks refuses to subject a literal seven year old to everything wrong the sea could possibly do to him, it feels a bit off since he can't say he'd give up the life himself.

"Captain, why don't you take him along just once?"

Shanks narrows his eyes. "Alright, sure. One of you get off, then."

They instantly run off to grab more drinks, which leaves Luffy dejected, angry, and screaming. 

Shanks is secretly grateful for that, honestly. The seas are just so much wider than they seem. He never could have imagined half the sights he saw onboard the Oro Jackson, nor could he the dangers. 

"Wait at least another ten years, and then I'll consider taking you out to sea," is what Shanks offers, not meaning it in the slightest, one reason being that Garp would chase his ass to the ends of the earth and beyond.

"I'm not a kid anymore!" the kid says, like saying it will magically change his age.

Shanks has a sudden idea to make fun of him, and says, "Don't be mad. Here, have some juice," sliding a glass over to him.

The kid reaches for it but then stops, and turns away to pout. "Hmph," is all he says, not even a word.

Ack. Maybe he really shouldn't piss the kid off so much. He can't help it; it's just too fun.

"Luffy? Hey, Luffy?" But the kid refuses to even look at him.

Ow. Okay, maybe he deserves that.

Shanks decides that Benn is probably his only hope, and gives him a pleading look.

Please help?

Why? You deserve that.

Please???

Ugh, fine. 

Aww, I knew you would.

But if you piss him off again, I'm not helping.

Wait, what?!

Benn, pointedly, ignores the last part of their non-verbal conversation and calls Luffy's name, and Luffy, the traitor that he is, perks up and runs over immediately.

Jerk. 

Really, he thought Benn was trustworthy. Rude, so rude. It wasn't Shanks's fault that kids were so entertaining to make fun of.

They talk about something or other, and Shanks hears 'Captain' being mentioned a couple of times. Luffy seems to calm down, neutral expression and lowered shoulders, but occasionally his gaze flickers to the side.

Shanks wonders for a bit, seeing that.

Luffy does that a lot, as Shanks had come to discover. Just seemingly stares off and waves at air out of nowhere. He's an odd kid for sure, but he also is not the type to sit still for nothing, not by a long shot; yet sometimes that's exactly what he does. The whole of Windmill village, as Shanks has further learned, watches him do this and reacts not at all. No looks, no questions, no nothing. So obviously, Shanks has determined, they're in on whatever the hell this is.

Yet whenever Shanks asks, they turn secretive. They laugh it off or change the subject or ignore him completely, and if Shanks interrogates them for information a little too hard, the immediate excuse is always that Garp would kill them. Somehow this mystery has eluded him for nearly a year, and Shanks just really wants to know why Luffy said Roger's name.

The best shot he has at figuring this out is Luffy himself, who unfortunately is also a pleasure to piss off.

(Okay, yeah, fine, it's his own fault.)

Is he finished talking with Benn yet? Shanks thinks as he realizes he'd spaced out.

He looks up, and Luffy's looking back at him. Somewhat reluctantly, judging by his creased brow, but it's better than being ignored, Shanks supposes.

The kid takes a step forward—

And then there's a slam of the tavern door, and some jackass bandit walks through the doorway.

Roger is terribly amused by this bandit with a bounty of eight-million walking in like he's the center of the world, and not in the way that he's endeared.

So amused, in fact, that he can't keep a straight face staring at said bandit's stupid strut heading unknowingly right up to a person of strength and experience he can't even begin to comprehend.

But then there's an odd kind of quiet crunch and chewing beside him amidst the sudden drop in room volume.

He turns, and he looks.

Beside an opened chest is a fruit, purple and swirl-patterned, and half-eaten in Luffy's hand.

Roger's hand meets his face with an audible smack, not that Shanks or his men or the bandits will hear it.

No. Nope. I'm done. This is so Shanks's problem.

"It was just a little bit of alcohol," Shanks says while dripping wet, but his eyes are only on the kid shaking in front of him. "It's nothing to get so worked up over."

Luffy doesn't answer him; just turns to walk away.

"Hey, c'mon Luffy, don't go..." Shanks calls out, because the least he can do at this moment is refer to the kid by his actual name.

He grabs hold of Luffy's arm, but Luffy keeps walking.

Wait, wh—

Luffy's arm is covering the distance from Shanks's seat to the entrance of the bar.

It's stretched.

...It sure as hell didn't do that before. Luffy looks just as mortified as everyone else.

Oh, fuck.

He must have eaten the devil fruit they looted, and a pretty useless one at that. The Gum Gum Fruit, he thinks it was. Not that rubber couldn't be useful in some unorthodox situation (maybe if you got struck by lightning?), but kids these days usually preferred fire or dragons or something. Shanks's not sure how he would react if his ability to swim was traded for rubber, of all things.

It's too late to salvage that, he supposes. He pulls Luffy back by the arm, and the kid staggers with effort but fails to get away. 

Shanks prepares to heatedly explain to Luffy that he'll never be able to swim again (not that an Anchor would be able to swim anyway, but maybe he shouldn't say that now), until he catches Benn staring in wide-eyed horror.

"L-Luffy," Benn says, his face unusually pale. "Is that the second one of those fruits you've eaten?"

It clicks.

If whatever the whole 'secret' is about involves some kind of devil fruit—

Oh, no.

Oh, no, no, no, oh fuck

Fuck fuck fuck

"Huh? No, I've never eaten anything that tasted that bad before," says Luffy, faintly alarmed.

"Are you absolutely sure," Shanks gasps between breaths (since when did his breathing speed up that much?) "that you've never eaten another devil fruit before?" His hands that are on Luffy's shoulders, gripping like a vice and shaking more than he'd like, and Luffy looks startled and lost, but all that matters is that Luffy, this tiny, bratty, wonderful kid in front of him won't—

"Um, yeah," Luffy blinks, obliviously confused and having forgotten whatever he was mad about, "What's a devil fruit?"

His head becomes light as if the weight of the world dropped on his shoulders from fuck nowhere and then jumped off, and he sags to the floor with the lightheadedness and sheer relief that precious, precious Luffy isn't going to spontaneously combust in front of him, and Benn's hand on his shoulder really only serves to humiliate him.

"Dumbass," Shanks mutters. "Dumbass, dumbass, dumbass, you gave me a fucking panic attack— "

"Amazing, Luffy, you've single-handedly managed to bring our bullheaded captain to his knees," Yasopp laughs. "What a Conquerer!"

"You're the dumbass, captain," Lucky Roux just has to say when Shanks is genuinely concerned about someone's wellbeing, "If you thought about it, you'd have realized that Luffy would have exploded before his body could even turn into rubber."

Oh, shut up, I can hear your voice shaking too, Shanks wants to hiss back, but he needs to catch his goddamn breath first—

"What?! I was going to explode?!" Luffy yells before anyone can say another word, and everyone in the bar bursts out laughing. Aside from Makino, who looked both terrified and relieved.

"Seas help me, this child is so stupid— " Shanks whines as loud as he can, because he absolutely did not sign up for two heart attacks on the same day. "You— " he jerks a finger at Luffy, "—are the absolute worst, I am never speaking to you again—"

" What?! What did I do?! I was the one who could have exploded!"

"Exactly!"

"Huh?! I don't get it! And didn't you say you weren't talking to me again?!"

"I don't care, you're the absolute worst!"

"Okay, but why?!"

"You don't understand why, that's why!"

"Eh?! I don't get it!"

"Seas, it never ends— "

Shanks doesn't think he's ever had a more ridiculous conversation in his life, and his arguments with Buggy are a very hard contender.

It's the very next day when they're sailing back to the port, and Luffy isn't there waiting for them.

There's talk of bandits, too.

Benn puts his hand on Shanks's shoulder, and Shanks buries his face in his hands.

"Don't get another heart attack, Captain," says Yasopp.

"Make that joke one more time, and I'm kicking your ass to Skypiea."

If there was anything Roger was ever proud of himself for, it was always fighting for his crew, even when it infuriated them.

It felt like a joke, how tough the bandits thought they were when they walked into the bar the other day.

It feels like a joke, how useless Roger is, when he comes back alongside Shanks and everyone, and Luffy isn't there, and maybe he could've changed something if he'd been there or if he noticed.

He could've changed two things already.

Shanks is on the coast, when he sees Luffy's head disappear under the waves of the ocean.

No. No, no, no—

There's not going to be enough time—

He dives, and he prays.

Roger's there too, at Shanks's side.

But Shanks doesn't see Roger beside him, who moves faster than he could ever hope to, because he doesn't breathe, or need air, or get tired, or go against the waves, or feel water in his eyes, or even need to blink.

He just needs to be there. For once, he needs to be there.

In the deep, deep blue, he looks. He looks, and looks, and looks, and 

There.

He finds, and he grabs, and it doesn't slip through his hands the way that his treasures and bottles and the ocean itself do.

They've been down here long. Too long.

The kid's lungs are rubber. He— he should be fine even with some air compression or whatever, right?

Roger doesn't have time to think, so he grasps, and he pulls. Up, up, up, to the surface.

Luffy is only vaguely aware of what's happening around him; just that something's trying to pull him up and out of the suffocating, cold water, and that he reaches back.

He grasps, and clutches, and holds as tightly as he can, mustering his energy together to hold on.

"I don't wanna die," he whispers, wondering if anybody heard him.

God damn it, where— where is he—

He searches with his haki, Luffy, Luffy, Luffy, where—

There!  

A small blue ball of light, surfacing, beyond all laws of non-Grand Line physics, and maybe Shanks should think or care, but in the moment, he just doesn't.

He grabs hold, and just for a moment, there's a voice:

"Take him and go! There's a Sea King!"

And Shanks thinks he's imagining it, because

That's his captain's voice.

"Hurry up and go!"

That's Captain Roger's voice.

He hasn't heard that voice in twelve years, and he thought that maybe he had forgotten what it sounded like by now, but it's so sharp and clear and real—

There's a snarl, then red eyes, and sharp teeth.

Shanks processes the words too late.

Luffy is scared, when Shanks is there, red and white and solid, Roger is there too, all pale and see-through. Everything blurs together with his tears into a foggy mess, but he can tell that much.

And then the big fish comes—

And then there's only red.

Luffy hears Shanks scream.

Dumb, so stupid, so utterly fucking stupid, Shanks curses himself, because fuck, it hurts, and his head is pounding, and Luffy is crying, and he's still absolutely crazy for hearing Roger's voice but he regrets none of it, and the damn Sea King is still there.

Looking the thing dead in the eye, he communicates the one thing he wants out of many things that he perhaps needs most at the moment to sort the rest of the bullshit out:

Go. The fuck. Away.

The third price is Shanks's arm, Roger thinks to himself.

Shanks doesn't seem to mind; keeps a straight face the whole way and even smiles. Smiles even as Benn holds him and locks his eyes on a stump where that arm used to be, and the Red-Hair Pirates' crew members crowd around and set up a tent by their ship. Smiles even as Luffy cries.

Shanks doesn't mind.

Roger does, and his stomach hurts again.

He looks down, and there's blood pouring out.

"Hey, don't cry, kiddo," Shanks says to Luffy softly, before giving a grunt and twisting in pain, muttering fuck, it hurts— Luffy can still hear it. It kind of echoes in his head, but not really, because they're in a tent, and tents can't echo.

Benn is holding Shanks's hand, and Shanks lies there with his other bloody stump, only saying reassurances, and "It wasn't your fault."

Luffy doesn't believe him.

He's not sure Roger does either.

Luffy, at first, doesn't get how ghosts work.

He's always thought that ghosts were interesting. They were always just there, white and yet not white, had some color but were not colorful, and you could see through to behind them even if they were in front of you, like glass, but somehow foggy.

They sometimes have injuries, which Luffy doesn't understand, because how can you be injured as a ghost?

From what they tell Luffy, sometimes they hurt, and sometimes they don't, which Luffy thinks is weird, because ghosts aren't supposed to feel hurt. 

Sometimes they bleed, sometimes they don't, which Luffy thinks is stupid, because ghosts shouldn't have blood.

But then Luffy meets Roger.

Luffy's heard the story of Gold Roger's execution; who hasn't? He told the world about his treasure, and then the metal met metal, spears to blood at his stomach.

Luffy remembers the man clutching his middle as he stared off into nothing, and then he stopped when he talked about his treasures. Rather, gesturing a smile on his face and his arms wide.

But when Luffy sees Roger seeing Shanks, he sees Roger clutching his middle, and it's red, so, so red Luffy can smell the blood, and Luffy thinks he sort of understands.

Maybe he doesn't get all the complicated stuff, but he thinks he gets it: They can get hurt because they remember how they've been hurt, they can feel hurt because they remember how they've felt hurt, and they bleed because they remember how they've bled.

It's as simple as that, and Roger is bleeding, bleeding, bleeding.

Roger is hurting, hurting, hurting.

Roger is hurting and thinks it's somehow his fault, and Luffy thinks that's dumb. Roger is being dumb, and Luffy can't watch him bleed anymore.

He grabs Roger's arm, and Roger starts yelling protests— but Luffy knows if he didn't want to, he could phase away (he's seen ghosts do that before), so Luffy doesn't listen, and drags him into the tent.

"Shanks," a voice calls. Luffy's voice, Shanks recognizes, and he opens his eyes. Luffy is standing by the entrance of the tent, one of his hands outstretched upward, like he's holding the hand of someone way taller than him.

"Hey, Anchor," Shanks responds, but Luffy doesn't react. What, not even a twitch?

"You wanted to know about that one time in the bar, right?" Luffy asks. "The one time I said Roger's name."

Shanks blinks.

"Oh my god, yes, please and thank you, the village people haven't been telling me shit and then when you were drowning I think I hallucinated hearing his voice," Shanks blurts out, not really caring how it sounds, because that's what being stuck in a tent in pain does to a person like Shanks.

"Are you gonna laugh?" Luffy asks.

Ah, shit, he's gonna need to take this at least a little seriously.

"If you don't want me to, I won't."

"...It's fine. I don't care."

Silence.

A deep breath, and then—

"I see ghosts, n' talk to ghosts, n' I've always been able to. Roger's one of 'em, 'cause he's here."

".........................................Huh."

Luffy stares and blinks.

"........Okay. Okay, okay, that...makes a surprising amount of sense," says Shanks, and it really does, now.

It should be impossible, too crazy, maybe, and Shanks knows crazy; there are islands in the sky, giant elephants, and lands of candy, and even time travel, if one were to look hard enough. 

Beyond it all, the universal truths have always been death and loss, because the dead don't come back, aside from maybe one thing: he's heard of the Yomi Yomi fruit, but that's about it. 

It's the cold, hard truth that everyone knows, that many have tried to defy and failed, whether to see or talk to the long lost or uncover untraced secrets. The dead carry everything to their grave with them: secrets and memories, and sometimes the hearts of the living. And yet...

Yet here is that all casually brought to the ground in front of him; ghosts and all, and this isn't any Horo Horo fruit power, not even close.

The seas are just too wide for the impossible, and Shanks thinks that maybe he's never really known the impossible anyway.

"He pulled me out of the water. An' about you hearing his voice, that just happens, sometimes. Mostly when I'm around, I think? I dunno, I haven't figured it out yet."

"Mm. So...he's here."

"Mhmm."

"Roger's really here."

"Yeah."

"...Why would he be here and not with Rayleigh-san?" asks Shanks, because why him, of all the grand crewmembers in their fallen-apart family?

"Well, he's here here cause I dragged him here for being sad and dumb. But he came with you 'cause you have his hat, apparently."

Shanks involuntarily splutters, "That's why?!"

" 'Not really,' he says, 'but part of it.'"

"Here I am, with a stump for an arm, and you can't even take pity on me and answer my question," Shanks says as dramatically as possible.

"He says you're a complete and utter drama queen," Luffy has to pause to giggle, and Shanks feels utterly indignant, "a person after his own heart. You're the most fun to watch; that's why."

Shanks laughs, and then hates that he can't hear Roger laugh. He missed this, so much.

"...Why were you sad?" asks Shanks after some while.

"Because he's being stupid," Luffy cuts in with his own words, "He thinks it's his fault."

"...Really? I don't ever remember you taking responsibility for things you did when you were alive," Shanks says, imagining how offended Roger's expression looks. "Why take responsibility for something you didn't do?"

"You startled when you heard his voice, he says."

"No, that was literally me being stupid," Shanks sighs. "I didn't remember about Conquerer's 'till after the stump hurt so bad I got pissed and wanted to make it go away. Would've happened anyway."

" 'You had time, and I wasted it.' "

"Oh please, Captain, you're being sappy and this is so unlike you," Shanks chokes out, and it sounds stupidly watery, "You never could handle anyone aside from yourself getting hurt."

" 'Shut up and let me talk. You haven't heard from me in twelve years, but I haven't been heard in twelve years. You tell me which is worse,' " Luffy snickers a little strange laugh after passing that along, like shishishi.

"That's the sassy captain I know," Shanks says and feels lighter, and relief floods him all at once, "What say you we make fun of Anchor together?"

Luffy bristles and puffs up in indignation, and then looks up to his side. Roger is laughing, no doubt. "If you do that, I'm not helping you talk to each other." Luffy threatens.

"Wait wait wait, I was kidding— "

"That's not what Roger says." Luffy says with the most deadpan look Shanks has ever seen. He's clearly taking this seriously. Crap.

"Oh, so you don't want to be able to talk to me, then?" His voice is shamefully high-pitched and angry like he's a child again, and Shanks would die of embarrassment if he weren't so offended at the moment.

"No, it's just funny watching you panic, according to Roger," Luffy snickers.

"So we're making fun of me, now?! I bet you were the one coaching him back in the bar!" and then the realization hits: "Wait, you were the one who gave away that I was awake!"

Luffy bursts into laughter at him, and Shanks is absolutely livid. Truly, Shanks's ego has suffered too much since meeting Luffy, and it's all a dead man's fault.

Luffy looks up to the invisible figure beside him, and says, "See? I toldja it would help," and then his hair gets ruffled forcefully, probably knocking his skull around a bit, but that was just how Roger was.

Shanks thinks about it for a bit, then asks, "Luffy, this whole village knows, right?"

"Mhmm. It just kinda became a pain to hide, after a while, but everyone here knows me anyway."

"Luffy, you need to be very careful who you tell this to."

"I know, I know," Luffy gripes, "Gramps has given me an earful about it so many times already. Stuff about how the government won't stop to either use me or kill me or whatever. 'S why I just don't talk about it."

"Because with something like this, everything they do to cover up an incident can be so easily dug up," says Shanks, and it's really kind of terrifying now that he thinks about it.

"Eh, I usually forget to mention it anyway," Luffy shrugs, and Shanks would put his hand to his face and sigh, but at this point he's not even surprised. "An' also, Gramps always said he'd kill anyone who found out to keep me safe. But I don't want him to kill anyone 'cause that'd be bad, 'specially if it's anyone I like. And I don't think Gramps wouldn't kill anyone I like, but with Gramps, I don't take chances."

Shanks does sigh, this time. A true madman, indeed.

"So, Captain,"

It's long after Makino had come and made Luffy go home, and Yasopp stands at the entrance with Benn and Roux there beside him.

"Care to explain why you've never told us that your ex-captain was Gold Roger?"

"Gol D. Roger, actually, he hated when people got it wrong," Shanks says smartly.

He gets exasperated glares: Yasopp looks unimpressed, Roux looks ticked off, and Benn just looks done.

"Hey, this is what you get for asking when I'm cranky, in pain, and livid."

Roger's not leaving with Shanks, because he wants to see Rouge and their child. Garp better get his ass over here soon.

Luffy is upset about Shanks leaving, crying and sniffing nonstop, and Roger finds the sight amusing; Shanks tries to be cool and mocks Luffy for crying, but Roger knows he remembers Shanks crying about that much when he said goodbye and left the Oro Jackson. Really, pot and kettle, he thinks.

Shanks stops suddenly, and he turns around, hand on his hat—

And oh, Roger knows what's happening.

The golden, worn crown is placed on Luffy's head, and the kid goes still as a statue.

"Become a great pirate, and then return this straw hat to me someday, okay?"

The kid grabs hold of the crown and tugs it over his red-rimmed eyes, tears falling uncontrollably, but eventually he lifts his head.

And oh, Roger thinks he sees it.

The spark in his eyes has been lit, and something in the world has shifted. It's a lot of things, probably; the inheritance of a will, the passing on of a legacy.

The day when 'free' has become 'the freest in the world,' and 'pirate' has turned into 'the Pirate King.'

Chapter Text

Really now, Garp? is Roger's first thought. Mountain bandits?

It's not a judgement of good or bad, mind you, because Roger is quite proud of his acceptance of absurdity (at the expense of others, mostly Rayleigh).

(Rouge had adapted and become immune to bullshit by around day two. Shanks followed close behind, and everyone else stopped overthinking things at some point. All except for Rayleigh, because Roger knew within a few words of conversation— Want to turn the world upside-down with me? and the look of incredulity that he got in response— that Rayleigh would need to be the rational one or they'd all die at sea, and Rayleigh knew it too.)

(Damn it, not again. Every single time, it came back to Rayleigh not being here— )

Well, not that Roger had any right to judge as the one who left his child to Garp, the absolute madman, but that was beside the point.

Luffy had, in fact, very boldly proclaimed his ambition to become the next Pirate King in front of Garp, and Roger was totally laughing his ass off during the exchange (which went a little something like this from Roger's perspective:

"Gramps! I'm not gonna be a pirate anymore!" Luffy chirps, meaning it with full sincerity because the kid can't lie for shit.

Wait for it.

"You finally got it! So you're finally ready to become a Marine now, Luffy?!" says Garp with actual hope in his eyes because he knows his grandkid can't lie, and Roger's having the time of his afterlife knowing what comes next.

Wait for it.

"I'm not just gonna be any pirate," Luffy says, then smiles the smile of a gremlin slowly, as if he's drawing it out, and Roger thinks Shanks might be offended to hear that Roger's probably never been more amused in his life.

Now.

"I'm gonna become the King of the Pirates!"

Roger absolutely savors watching the whiplash in Garp's expression.

He does wince a little bit as Garp dismisses the monkeys (Garp trains his kids against forest animals, apparently , but you didn't hear any judgement from Roger about that) and turns his full attention and dagger-filled glare to the gremlin donning the crown of dreams and gold.

"You can't be influenced by that damned Red-Haired!" Garp yells as he forcefully drags Luffy away by the cheek, but Luffy just keeps the same smile, and Garp would probably be twice as indignant if he knew how loudly Roger was laughing at him. Even more so when Luffy  clings to a massive tree as he gets dragged and uproots the entire damn thing with him, the rebound from the kid’s elastic rubber limbs sending it flying smack to the back of Garp’s head.

The look on Garp’s face as it happens is priceless .

" Hey , I'll have you know I played a role too , " Roger feels the need to gloat even if Garp can't hear him, "Really, 'Red-Haired' is who you're concerned about? With that lame epithet? I mean, screw the bastard who butchered my name, but at least 'Gold' sticks with you," He's been holding that one back for twelve years until he suddenly remembered it, now a little miffed that he didn't get to tell that one to Shanks (through Luffy) before he left. The indignation would've been priceless.

Luffy, the little menace, does however appreciate Roger's humor, and bursts into laughter, and Garp is now threatening "whatever ghost is corrupting my impressionable seven-year-old grandkid" with death.

Oh , he has no idea.)

Said little menace runs around carefreely, staring at the cracks of sunlight through the trees and chasing any insects he finds, clearly oblivious to the mess of noise behind him that is Garp the madman barging in on a house of poor, poor mountain bandits. 

"G-Garp-san! You need to give me a break, already!" the curly-haired woman bandit says with evident exasperation, "Ace is already ten years old!"

Roger's attention is stolen in a second.

"Oh yeah? How is he?" Garp says and then laughs, ever unsympathetic to the bandits' plight he himself caused.

"It's not funny! We can't handle him anymore! Take him back already, would you?!" the short bandit wearing a turban says.

Ace , Roger thinks. My son.

"Putting that aside— "

" Don't put it aside! "

The conversation from there goes about as well as one would expect; bandits pleading vehemently and Garp ignoring them entirely, which is entertaining, but Roger's too distracted now.

"Luffy!" he yells, because now he's excited. "You're going to meet Ace and Rouge soon!"

Luffy stops and his head whips around instantly with beaming eyes, and really, Roger's quite proud that he can hold the kid's attention for a whopping seventeen seconds max when said kid's own grandpa can just barely hold four. Just some things he can hold over Garp's head with Garp never knowing, like ghost-bunny ears. 

(He's done those quite a lot, and Garp loses Luffy's attention to a laughing fit each and every time. Garp also keeps attempting to threaten Roger's very intangible ghost self with physical harm, which only makes Luffy laugh harder, so it's doubly worth the sheer lunacy.)

"Look after this one too," Garp says, picking up Luffy by the back of his shirt like one would a ferret by the scruff of the neck, and the bandits look absolutely stupefied.

Garp puts Luffy down and lets him wander again, and some arguing happens as Garp gives them the totally-not-blackmail-type ultimatum of "raise my other grandkid too or go to jail," and Roger wonders to himself if Marine heroes should really be resorting to blackmail. Again, not that Roger's one to judge.

Then he hears a small splat, followed by noises from an irritated Luffy, and he turns to see the kid wiping spit off his face.

"Whaddya want?" Luffy snarks, fuming and leveling a glare, and Roger turns to follow his gaze, then freezes.

Scattered freckles matching the splash he remembers across Rouge’s face, a mess of black hair that matches his own, and gleaming eyes reminiscent of them both, a child who looks no older than ten years old (it’s Ace, it has to be Ace) glares back from his seat atop a massive dead buffalo, darkened and sullenly defiant, like a candle burning to the end of its wick that only keeps burning to spite the world that demands it go out. The kid does little other than scowl before leaping off and carrying his load away with him to the house. He doesn’t spare a turn of the head or even a glance at Luffy as he passes by.

Luffy huffs and sticks out his tongue in response. "Jerk! Apologize!" But Ace keeps walking until the door of the house shuts behind him with a slam louder than probably necessary.

" Dammit, Ace, can you interact with someone who isn't Sabo without either spitting in their face or jumping them— "

In this instant, Roger feels it.

The voice reverberates like the air itself is shuddering. A haunting presence drifts forward, hazy and full of fog, yet carrying a startlingly distinct sense of emptiness; almost like

a ghost.

Oh.

Oh.

Oh no.

Following after Ace from the dense thicket is Rouge, with her flowing hair and pink hibiscus flower, chiding, " Rude and unnecessary, and also gross —"

The air around her is cold enough to feel even at a fair distance, and her skin is far, far too pale to be anything remotely close to a living being.

She freezes and turns to see him immediately too, and within seconds, they're floating in front of each other, both pale, see-through skinned, and now the grass and trees around them seem to shiver.

Then there are cold arms around him, and Roger kind of wants to cry.

Rouge is dead.

Rouge died while he was away.

And Rayleigh was now alone.

(Roger's stomach twists like he's back on that platform again. He tastes copper in his mouth.)

"Don't take it personally," Rouge pulls back slightly and sighs with a hand on her temple, "Currently, only one thing in the world makes Ace even remotely happy, and that one thing is, very unfortunately, not here."

Luffy looks up and blinks, as if just registering the presence of someone else, before his face loses all traces of anger and he looks at Roger and smiles.

"Someone you know, Roger? That's great!" 

Roger's moment of stupor is suddenly torn by whiplash. Rouge immediately looks at Luffy and back at him with a look that says what the shit, Roger.

"I mean, it's not great that she's dead, obviously," the boy grimaces, before brightening to a smile again, "but this way, neither of you has to be alone!"

...Ah.

He...supposes that's true?

Roger wouldn't wish the harrowing experience of living as a ghost upon anyone he cares about, to simply continue to exist while not really existing, and to question whether you were really even still there or not. Roger's been doing exactly that for the past twelve years; simply drifting about with little to confirm that he wasn't just dreaming, and watching over his loved ones when watching meant accepting that he couldn't change anything anymore.

The treasures of the world become so much less wonderful when all you can do is watch them change without you.

Yet Rouge doesn't slip through him the way Shanks did. She's with him, seeing him, hearing him, hugging him. She's here .

The realization hits that the last time Roger touched anything in death was the one time he saved Luffy, and even though Rouge emits only cold from her pale, ghastly body, it's somehow warmer all the same.

It really is less lonely this way.

Moping wouldn't suit him regardless; the seas have taught Roger to live in the moment.

Roger can't help laughing at the morbid thought in the back of his head that maybe he wishes just a little bit that more of his friends were ghosts, and the look on Rouge's face tells him that she's probably thinking the exact same thing.

Luffy's glowing smile remains just as dignified and yet just as goofy, and he says, "Good. Roger doesn't have permission to be sad."

Roger thinks it's a little stupid that he still feels like crying, but he's laughing hard enough that maybe its reasonable anyway. His stomach stopped twisting a while ago. Apparently anyone the future Pirate King likes does not have permission to be sad in his presence.

"You got that right," says Rouge in agreement, and Luffy nods triumphantly.

 " Hey. " Roger protests half-heartedly, "I'm the Pirate King. I’m the freest man in the world. I don't need your permission to feel sad."

"Yeah? Well, I'm the future Pirate King!" Luffy says.

"Which changes what, exactly?"

"You're dead, so you don't count."

" Oi. "

"Seconded," Rouge cuts in, "I'm the mother of your child and I didn't give you permission either."

" Oi —"

 "Anyway," Rouge cuts him off again, clearly uninterested in the idea of allowing Roger the luxury to pout, "being dead sucks, now please tell me where the fuck you found a kid who can see ghosts while I died and have ever since yelled at Garp to be a better godfather daily?"

"In front of a bar," Luffy cuts in, all chipper, " I found him being sad about someone called Rayleigh." 

Rouge stops and blinks.

"Oh seas," she sighs with a hand on her temple again, "it really does always come back around to Rayleigh, doesn't it."

"Right?!" Roger near-yells.

"Oh seas , he's alone now."

" Right?!?! "

"Don't get sad about Rayleigh again!" Luffy shouts, then looks thoughtful like he really wants to meet this Rayleigh person. "There's still Shanks 'n the others you talked about! There's— uh… oh yeah! Cactus and Buffoon!"

Roger snorts very, very loudly, and Rouge makes a noise like she would probably choke on air if she needed it.

Cactus and Buffoon.

Crocus and Buggy.

"They totally deserve that," Roger wheezes.

"They totally do," Rouge agrees.

Roger is highly amused that Rayleigh seems to be the only name Luffy can remember properly, as that is the privilege Rayleigh deserves.

"He's right," Roger says, "Shanks and Rayleigh meet up at Sabaody Archipelago, like, annually or something, so there's that."

"Oh, of course you've been following Shanks this whole time," Rouge sighs, "He always was your favorite while mine was Buggy."

"Shanks is a riot ," Roger says as explanation, not really sure why he needs to justify this. "He landed at the village home to Garp and proceeded to demand alcohol. Insanely lucky that the madman happened to not be home. Also, Shanks likes to make fun of little kids, which is hilarious and amazing. From what I've heard, Buggy just goes around terrorizing people."

"Shanks terrorizes people too, just not in places where no one knows his name," Rouge sighs again. "But yeah, I can't argue with the part about Buggy. He's really trying to be like me in the worst way possible."

"And Shanks is trying to be like me in the best way possible." Roger sneers, dragging yet another long suffering sigh out of Rouge.

"So Shanks making fun of children is what you consider 'like you in the best way possible'?"

"Well, in the end, it all worked out. Luffy and I became friends, and Garp dragged Luffy to mountain bandits, so I followed him. Garp also dragged Ace to mountain bandits, and you followed Ace!"

" Seas, you just reminded me that Garp is giving an additional grandkid to mountain bandits." Rouge says.

Roger, at realizing there have been no interjections from Luffy, belatedly looks around.

Rouge sighs with a hand on her temple for the third time that day. “Garp had dragged him into the house quite a while ago.”

-

“This is the den of the Dadan family, the mountain bandits that rule Mt. Corvo!” Dadan says, trying her very best to appear intimidating to a seven-year old child. By the exasperated look on her face, it’s much more difficult than it has any right to be.

“Don’t care. I hate mountain bandits,” Luffy says flatly, ignoring Dadan’s indignant shouts. He turns his head away to glance back and forth between Ace and Roger, as if trying to see something intangible tying them together.

Roger gestures at the kid dramatically while Dadan yells in the background, and Rouge says, “Okay, fine, he’s pretty funny. I admit that Shanks has good taste.”

Roger crosses his arms with a smug smile as though he has won some kind of age-old competition, and Rouge flips him off. Luffy giggles to himself at the exchange.

“You damn brat, look at me when I’m talking to you! Garp-san warned us that you’d be a little odd, but why do you keep looking at the wall and snickering to yourself?” Dadan asks impatiently.

Luffy simply looks at her and blinks. Either he doesn’t feel like answering, or he didn’t hear the question.

“You still gotta pay attention, you little shit! Don’t you have any sense of fear?”

“I can’t be scared of mountain bandits,” Luffy says as he sticks his tongue out, much to Dadan’s indignation. “I’m gonna become a pirate someday.”

At that, Roger catches the slightest hint of movement from Ace. It’s no more than a quick glance, but something on his face shifts at the word ‘pirate’. All the same, he goes back to finishing up his food and then gets up to leave.

“Oi! Where are you going?” Luffy calls after him, but Ace is already picking up a lengthy pipe and slamming the door on his way out.

And despite Dadan’s yelling, Luffy immediately follows, and so do Roger and Rouge.

-

"Hey!" Luffy yells with a smile on his face that could light up a forest at night. "My name is Luffy! I'm not mad at you for spitting on me! Are you going somewhere?"

Ace, the little bastard, glares, kicks down a massive tree and sends it rolling in Luffy’s direction, and runs off into the forest without a word as Luffy screams in horror. The kid barely makes it out of the way in time.

Luffy, evidently undeterred despite the attack (not that he could be crushed to death anyway), puffs out his cheeks and gives chase through the lush woods, and so Roger and Rouge simply float about, watching Luffy as he runs with a fierce determination in his eyes.

“Sorry. Ace is…well, put bluntly, he’s a bit of a dick. He’s been dealing with a lot.” Rouge says, and Roger knows the look in her eyes. Knows the look of wishing you could do anything more than watch as the world slipped through transparent, powerless fingers.

She doesn’t go into detail or try to explain the darkness in Ace’s gaze or the hatred in his clenched fists, and she doesn't need to, not to Roger. Because Roger can guess with ease what kind of childhood Ace has lived, no matter how much he would like to hope it had been easier.

(A newborn child bears no sin. But that’s never stopped anyone from believing otherwise.)

“ ‘S fine, he’s cool!” Luffy says, and Rouge blinks back, the slightest bit stupefied, because his voice sounds like he genuinely means it. She shoots a glance at Roger, and Roger— he laughs. 

Of course the boy means it. He says everything he means, and means everything he does. (She doesn’t need to explain— not to him, and not to Luffy, either.)

Rouge says matter-of-factly, “He just tried to kill you, y’know.” 

“Better than the mountain bandits! Mountain bandits suck!”

“Even though they’re supposed to be taking care of you?”

“I don’t like mountain bandits! I like him, though!”

Rouge looks at him with a gaze that says where did you even find a kid like this? And Roger’s only response is another thundering laugh. He can tell Rouge is more amused than anything else. It probably didn’t matter what Ace did or would do, Roger has seen it in Luffy’s eyes already: the look of fierceness and greed and mine, mine, mine. (The look that said he had already decided that the treasure in front of him was now his own, too.)

Staring at the straw hat strung around and bouncing on the kid’s neck as he runs, Roger knows deeply, innately, that this is fate at work. It was there, in the way Shanks would hold the crown close and look at Roger with wide eyes and then don it like sunlight peeking over the dawn horizon and laugh the same way he saw Roger doing until it became a way of his own. It’s here, in the way Luffy laughs like shishishi , as if what the world had to say or the person who last tried to kill him couldn’t mean a damn thing in the face of his wide, toothy grin and larger-than-life presence, because he knows he is meant for more, and the world knows it too.

And maybe that’s why it comes to mind without warning; the way the words that should have been dulled by the sea rung in his head with a deafening clarity that shook his mind just upon recalling them.

10 years until the birth. 15 years until growing up. Till the one who would surpass them would come, the sea had whispered through the waves. Roger can’t remember if the time matches up or not, but— it didn’t matter; not really. I think it’ll be my son , he had said then, but looking down in death at the child who stares back, the air around them quivers and whispers oh-so quietly like it's a forbidden secret, no . (The whispers of the waves sound like a promise. They sound like a prophecy.)

This boy— he will be king, or he will be dead. It will be one or the other. It doesn’t matter in the least what the future or the world itself holds in store for this boy, because the wheels of fate turn in this boy’s favor, or they don’t exist at all.

He will be king, or he will be dead, and it is an all-important question of which, and at the same time, the answer doesn’t matter. He shares a glance with Rouge, and he can tell she knows it too.

Luffy will be king, or he will be dead, but no matter which, he will be free.

"You know," Rouge says, the edges of her eyes crinkling softly as she smiles, "It'll be good for Ace to meet you."

-

At some point in the chase, they reach a bridge of thin wooden planks and worn rope, strung over a high crevasse with nothing more obstructing the fall to the abyss below. 

Ace, the little bastard, knocks Luffy off the bridge and lets him plummet to the land below. And though Luffy definitely won’t die from such a height, Roger isn’t about to let him fall , and so he grabs Luffy by the arm before he can think better of it. It’s not like there’s anyone else out in the forest to see them, anyway.

Rouge stares at him. “You didn’t tell me we were able to touch the kid.”

“Oh. Right. Well, we can.” Roger shrugs.

“I swear, you’re the reason Shanks is the way he is,” Rouge mutters, but before she can sigh or put a hand on her head, her gaze catches on Roger’s hand, and then trails downward to something hanging below, just above the crevasse. “That— that’s his arm. He’s— his arm is stretching. ”

“Yep. The kid’s made of rubber. Pretty entertaining, huh?” laughs Roger.

Rouge blinks back at him. “Rubber.”

“Yep. Ate the Gum Gum Fruit Shanks stole from a government ship when nobody was looking, tried to walk out of the bar they were in just as Shanks grabbed his hand, and then looked back to see his arm covering the entire distance from the farthest countertop to the entrance. It was hilarious. ”

Rouge blinks again and decides, “Well, I’ve seen weirder.”

At that very moment, Luffy comes rocketing back up like a slingshot while screaming. Roger and Rouge’s eyes follow him as he flies up, crossing each other's gazes for only a split second before Luffy smashes straight through the wooden planks of the bridge he had been thrown off from. At which point, someone else ’s sudden screaming and a small body falling through the gaping hole in the bridge alerts Roger that there was, in fact, someone else out here in the forest to see them.

“ Fucking seas , Ace was still there— Why the fuck were you still there, Ace?! ” Rouge yells at the top of her lungs as she reaches for Ace’s falling figure. “I can’t grab him— Luffy, grab him, please —”

“Okay! I got it!” Luffy yells as he comes back down again, throwing his other arm out and reaching for Ace. It misses its mark by a long shot, but Rouge grabs hold of Luffy’s arm and wraps it around Ace’s torso quickly, keeping it tied tightly.

Ace, during the ordeal, is entirely dumbfounded. There’s shock and confusion and countless other things swirling in his eyes. As Roger carries Luffy by the arm over to solid ground, he can only imagine how this spectacle must look through the eyes of anyone who is neither 1) Luffy nor 2) dead, not that being able to see ghosts would make it any more sensical .

Roger’s afterlife has gotten so much more entertaining since meeting Luffy.

Ace had already planned to ignore the kid for the rest of his life with the shitty mountain bandits, but unfortunately, his first words to the annoying, bratty kid he met for the first time today slip out of his mouth before he can stop them, being: “ What the fucking shit.”

Sitting here on solid ground with the kid, Ace has no idea what the fuck just happened. He does not want a little nuisance to be following him when he sneaks out to meet Sabo to compile their secret pirate savings, especially not Shitty Gramps’s other grandson who he never shuts up about. He had been staring down from the bridge trying to see whether the kid died or not. That was before the kid’s arm stopped in mid-air, stretched, and then slung him back up. And not to mention how his other arm jerkily changed directions before catching him, or how he was floating while moving them over to land.

(Ace did not need help. He could have survived that fall by himself, thank you very much.)

The kid hooks a finger around the side of his mouth and pulls it outwards, and it stretches way more than any regular human being has the right to.

“I’m Luffy!” he says excitedly. “I’m a rubberman!”

Ace says back, “What the fuck. ” He’s too busy staring in gross, reluctant fascination to form any of the other words he would very much like to say.

Annoyingly persistent, the kid continues, “I hate mountain bandits and I’m bored! Let’s be friends!”

Ace, with his jumbled brain, says smartly, “No.” When the kid tilts his head with a disappointed pout, Ace racks his brain for the right words and says louder, “I refuse.”

The kid’s face scrunches for a second before smoothing out again, and he says, “Hm. Okay! Then I refuse your refusal!”

The trees and plants around them suddenly start shaking and bellowing, and the leaves cascade endlessly from above them as if the forest itself or something within it is laughing at him from a place he can’t reach. It’s not fear (it’s not), but it makes something uneasy and irritated creep up Ace’s spine. 

“That’s not how it works!” Ace shouts, pushing himself up off the floor as anger flows through his veins.

“Why not?” the kid chuckles back.

“Go away!”

“Don’t wanna. Let’s be friends!”

“Do you—” Ace snaps, digging a hand into the kid’s shirt and lifting him up in the roar of the trees surrounding them, “Do you even know what I am?!” Something burning furiously is twisting and festering within him, and Ace doesn’t have the energy to stop it. He does not want to be dealing with this annoying little kid who doesn’t know anything in the slightest right now. He wants to go meet Sabo where they can talk about leaving this damned island and being pirates and being free.

The kid says back with a weightless smile on his face, “Yeah! You’re Ace!”

“Not that,” Ace hisses, “I’m— you don’t know anything." There’s no outlet for any of it to go anywhere, not with his shitty father dead and gone and his mother dead from giving birth to him. He drops the kid and shoves him back before whipping around and shooting a glare back. “I have the blood of a demon in my veins.”

“You do?” The kid tilts his head in confusion and looks up to stare in the direction of a tree, and Ace wants to scream.

“ You don’t know a single damn thing.”

“About what?” the kid asks, and Ace rolls his eyes.

“ About who my damned father is! ”

The kid stays silent after that for a moment, and then another, and Ace thinks, Good. It finally got through that thick skull of his. That was enough to get the brat off his tail, and now he could finally go back to the one good thing he had on this awful island. He takes a step forward, and then another, and then

“Gold Roger,” the kid says. “The Pirate King.”

And Ace stops cold in his tracks, blood and veins frozen over with just three words and yet bubbling with rage, and the deepest, darkest corner of his mind whispers, demon’s child, demon’s child. Of course this kid knew, of course Shitty Gramps would tell him just like he told the shitty mountain bandits, so they could whisper behind his back, demon’s child, demon’s child, demon’s child—

“But why does that matter? I’m gonna be the next Pirate King anyways, so—”

“You don’t get it!” Ace yells, and his voice is cracking and scraping like nails on rusted metal at this brat of a kid he met for the first time today, but he can’t get himself to stop. 

“Get what? ”

“He was a demon —”

“ Who cares!? ” the kid yells back. “He was free! ”

“You don’t get it,” Ace hisses again, because he cannot find the words to make this— naive, clueless, idiot kid understand , but he cannot back down, either. “I’m not free of him! He was the world’s most heinous criminal and I’m his child—”

“Then I don’t want to get it! It’s just plain stupid! Ace is Ace!”

“You don’t even know me! I don’t deserve to be alive— ”

“Why do I need to know you? I don’t care!"

"You—"

"I want you to be alive!”

And Ace flinches.

The kid— Luffy— is staring back at him, unfaltering, unashamed, and— it’s wrong. People are supposed to have that unrepentant, determined look on their faces when they say they want Gold Roger’s child tortured and dead , not— alive and happy. It’s wrong and this kid is a liar, liar, liar, so why, looking at this kid’s face, does Ace feel like he might mean it? The sudden break into silence lets Ace's brain catch up to register that his eyes are stinging more than Ace has let them in a long time.

"You…" Ace says slowly, dazedly, "You want me to live."

Luffy nods his head easily like it's something obvious. "Course I do!"

Ace chews over his words. "But you don't even know me."

He blinks back with wide, uncomprehending eyes, like Ace is stupid for not getting it. "Yeah, but I don't want you to die."

"I don't—" the words twist and turn, writhing, ugly, scared, before Ace can think them over, morphing into something else. "I don't care what you think."

But Luffy just beams back and says with a smile, "Okay then! What does Ace want?"

And now it’s Ace’s turn to blink back. Slowly, words form, and what comes out is—

“None of your business,” Ace says, and he grabs his pipe and makes a run for it.

The kid squawks at being left in the dust, and yet still, he chases. And chases. And chases.

He’s still super annoying, yelling out Ace’s name incessantly even as his voice fades in the expanse of the forest trees. 

(So what if Ace doesn’t feel the need to kill him anymore? That doesn’t mean anything.)

-

“What the hell, Ace,” Sabo gripes from his place next to their secret stash in the tree branch, folding his arms. “You’re really late. Not that you’re ever on time, but this is a new record for you.”

“Sorry,” Ace says briefly. “Got held up.”

Sabo raises an eyebrow, but he doesn’t ask for further explanation, and this is what makes being with Sabo so easy. He gets Ace. He doesn’t bother asking if Ace doesn’t tell first. He learned who Ace’s father was and took the hint to not ask questions, and when it was just the two of them and no one else, Ace could be Ace and not the devil’s hidden son.

( Ace is Ace, Luffy had said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.)

“Met an annoying kid with a straw hat named Luffy who I gotta start living with today,” Ace says before he realizes it. “He kept chasing me all the way here, so I had to lose him first.”

“Huh,” Sabo says, looking somewhat surprised that Ace brought it up first. “That’s gotta suck.”

And the words of agreement that Ace readies on his tongue don’t see the light of day as he swallows them back down. They don’t taste right, and so he shrugs instead. “ ‘S whatever. C’mon already, let’s see who got more money.”

“Alright, alright,” Sabo says, pulling out his bag of loot, “I wonder how much money we need for a pirate ship, anyway—”

“Oi! Are you guys gonna be pirates? Me too!” yells a voice from the bottom of the tree, and Ace and Sabo jump as panic shoots through their systems. Ace slams the panel over their pirate ship savings shut, and the first thing he catches a glimpse of below is the flash of golden straw and a toothy grin beaming at them brightly.

-

They tie him to the tree, and for some reason he still sits there with a smile on his face.

Sabo, eyeing the hat of straw on the kid’s head, hisses through gritted teeth, “I thought you said you lost him??”

And Ace hisses back, “I did! ” Ace had scanned the forest vigilantly at every twist and turn on his trail until he couldn’t even hear the kid’s yelling through the trees anymore. Ace made sure of it. He turns to Luffy, yelling, “How the hell did you manage to track me down when I was miles ahead of you?”

This makes no sense. None of this makes sense. Just like the kid glancing off to the side and snickering to himself when they were eating in the mountain bandits’ house, just like the kid stopping and hanging in mid-air and floating over to solid ground, just like him saying he wants Ace to live—

“Roger n’ Rouge—” says Luffy before his jaw clicks shut as if it were covered by invisible hands, and Ace’s mind goes blank.

“What,” he says dumbly, and at his side, Sabo stiffens like the kid has just stepped on a landmine.

Roger and Rouge. Rouge and Roger— what the hell do Ace’s strong, nice mother and awful shithead of a father have to do with this—

“Roger n’ Rouge showed me,” Luffy continues, and his jaw loosens as if the invisible forces trying to shut him up have given up because it’s already too late. “They’re dead, but they’re still here. I can see ghosts n’ talk to ghosts. Gramps won't be mad if I tell you, so it’s fine!”

Ghosts.

Ghosts, what the fucking hell does he mean, ghosts—

-Shitty Gramps rants about his other grandson like there’s no tomorrow, and Ace couldn’t care less, but-

Sabo glances over at Ace like this kid must be crazy, hysterical, unbelievable amounts of crazy and they should just leave, walk away, not listen to this bullshit, get out of here, but Ace—

-if the both of you just became marines, maybe you could be safe-

He wants to scream out, stop making up stories to mock me, stop lying, lying, lying, but

-worried for him especially, because he sees things we can’t see, hears things we can’t hear, touches things we can’t reach-

Ace has heard this before. Ace has heard this before, but none of this makes sense. 

-if we can’t keep this a secret, more than any devil’s child, more than the devil himself-

His head is spinning.

-they’ll want him dead. Understand, Ace?

It’s only when Ace is shaken by the shoulders by Sabo that the threads of white noise in his ears start to untangle themselves. 

“—ce!! Ace, Bluejam’s men are nearby, we won’t have time to move anything, they’re going to find us— ”

“Bluejam,” Ace says dumbly as he processes the words, and the sky's still cloudless and blue, but it somehow feels like ashes may start falling. The noise of obnoxious grumbles and footsteps that he can now hear from the forest grow nearer and ever closer, and Ace feels a little like the world is ending. “Shit. Shit, shit, no no no— ” The pirates are going to come, and the kid knows and he’s a blabbermouth, and Ace and Sabo’s treasure is going to get stolen when the kid tells them where it is, and even worse, he’s going to say devil’s child, devil’s child, and Ace will be chased and killed and dead before he’s even known what it’s like to live—

Sabo is already pulling Ace at the wrist, and they’re running to who knows where as Luffy’s shouting Ace’s name fades into the background. “It’ll be fine,” Sabo mutters. “It’ll be fine. The treasure doesn’t matter, we can always get more, so it’s fine. Just hide, 'n maybe they’ll find the treasure, but when the kid talks about ghosts they’ll realize he’s crazy, 'n then they’ll leave, 'n we can start over."

And Ace, swallowing the thickness in his throat, says, “Yeah. Okay.”

It would be fine.

-

It’s— completely fine. And that’s why something is wrong.

Ace had expected things to go up in flames. To have the  treasure stolen, to have the name Gol D. Ace called out at every corner and alleyway, to be found and chased and tortured and everything else the child of the devil deserved.

It’s been hours, and the kid has been gone, and there has not been a single one of Bluejam’s men who knows where to find the money, and the world isn’t ending. It’s all blind floundering and we’re going to be in so much trouble if we can’t find what he stole, and we have your friend, Ace, so give it up already, and yet there is not a single shout of find Gol D. Ace across all of Goa Kingdom.

“You left him for dead,” a voice whispers in the wind, and the voice grinds into Ace’s nerves like no other. His nails dig into his palms, drawing blood.

It’s been hours, and something is very, very wrong, and—

“Ace,” Sabo shouts as he jumps back down from the tree branch, and there’s traces of panic leaking into his voice, “Our treasure’s— it’s still here. It’s been hours . He— that kid hasn’t said anything to them, not a single word.”

—and Sabo knows it too.

They run. Ace knows these woods like the back of his own hand, and Sabo does too, but it’s been hours, where do they even start looking—

“Go find him,” the voice, the same, irritating voice bellows, and then a gust of wind blows past them, weaving through the trees in a trail of leaves in a way no wind should ever know how. “He’s not supposed to join us for a long time, y’hear?”

Not supposed to join us, the voice says, like he speaks of the dead who do not talk. The dead, who aren’t supposed to talk. The dead, who are Ace’s mom and—

“You—” Ace bites out, “You haven’t done a single good thing for me,” and he knows exactly who he’s talking to.

The voice says back easily (sadly), “I haven’t. So I should start now, huh?”

Sabo rubs his arms as his gaze drifts around like he’s trying to decide where the voice is coming from, and in the end, he settles for looking where the wind blows.

No other words form on Ace’s tongue no matter how he tries to shape them with his mouth, and in the end, he swallows it all back down.

He runs, and Sabo runs with him.

If only Roger had been able to take Rouge and Ace with him. If only things had aligned. If only Ace could’ve been happy and proud of his blood, like Momonosuke and Hiyori. 

(Roger knows well what he’s given up and can never possibly get back in full, not even with the impossibility that is Monkey D. Luffy. He couldn’t say with certainty that he’d have given up his adventure. It’s the opposite, really.)

Roger recalls Momonosuke and Hiyori’s faces as they reached for the railings, grasping like the hands of the waves and breathing the sea salt in the air, and how they would turn back to their Oden and their eyes would light up with sheer adoration. If only, Roger thinks, allowing himself one last sigh, If only.

(Roger is not a good father. He knows this well, and is reminded of it every time he looks into Ace’s eyes.)

A sour mood is incredibly useless in the life of a pirate, Roger reminds himself. A live pirate, or a dead one.

And so Roger moves, and wind trails behind him. 

Still, he won’t forget Monkey D. Luffy or the halo of sun he brings over the dawn horizon. If there is anything he can promise as a dead man, it is that Monkey D. Luffy will not be joining them this soon.

Ace and Sabo crash through the wooden walls, and Luffy is hanging, tied to the rafters, beaten and bloodied with tears and snot running down his face, and why does Luffy say he wants Ace to live if he will die for it?

Sabo cuts the rope and catches Luffy, and he yells something that sounds like c’mon, let’s go that passes straight through the pounding in Ace’s ears.

You left him for dead, the voice echoes.

Ace isn’t leaving anything, and Ace—

“Won’t run,” he yells, baring his teeth and clenching the pipe in his hands, “ I won’t run! ”

And despite the bandit’s provocation and Sabo telling him to cut it out and run, there’s another voice in the spaces in between.

“ Won’t run, huh?” comes the voice again, and Sabo freezes, shooting a glance at Luffy under his arm. The bandit stops and looks around, yelling who, who the hell is there, and the voice sounds almost amused as it asks, “For others, or for yourself?”

Himself. Himself, himself, himself, because there have never been others aside from Sabo, and Sabo can take care of himself just fine, and yet—

“Both,” Ace snarls with fury, and he swings his pipe.

-

“What the hell was that,” Sabo mutters, but by the shaking in his eyes, he already has a guess and an answer.

Luffy wails uncontrollably through his tears, “Thought I was gonna be a ghost already, don’ wanna be a ghost yet— ”

And there’s— that, again.

“Shut up,” Ace yells when the sobbing starts to be too much, and Luffy’s mouth slams shut.

“Th-thank you for saving me,” Luffy sobs, voice wobbly and weak and everything Ace hates. His sobs die out after a little while, and there are a million questions Ace could ask, but before any of that—

“I’m— ’m Portgas D. Ace, ya got that, you worthless, shitty old man?! ”

He’s not Gol D. Ace. No matter what changes (things have changed already, haven’t they?), he’s not Gol D. Ace.

There’s the echoing sound of a woman bursting into laughter, and Ace recoils. He’s never heard that voice before in his life, and all the same, it pulls on his heart like it’s something familiar. It’s somehow elegantly boisterous, and yet it makes him think of soft lullabies and hushed words of comfort.

“Would you look at that,” the woman’s voice snickers. “I’m his favorite.”

“Yeah, yeah, we knew that from the beginning,” comes the other voice that grinds on his nerves, that same voice on the wind from before, and despite Ace’s declaration, it sounds like the beginnings of a laugh that sends chills up Ace’s spine at the way the voice booms.

And Ace’s mind finally processes it, and he thinks, holy fucking shit. Ghosts. Actual dead ghosts. What the fuck.

“I’ll tell ya what,” the woman’s voice says with something that sounds like delighted amusement in her voice. “ You want payback? Go find Whitebeard.”

“Fucking seas, you are not directing my son to Whitebeard—”

“Yes, I am. You stole his crewmate, his comrade-in-arms, his little brother—”

Ace’s eyes go wide. “The shitty old man stole someone else’s little brother?!”

The voice says with audible offense, “I begged politely and you know it—”

“Oh, you sure did. Hey, this guy,” there’s a short pause as if the owner of the voice is jerking a finger at someone next to her, “This guy, King of the Pirates, prostrated himself to Whitebeard. I think you’d get along great just for that.”

“Rouge—”

“You told me all about how you made Shanks’s dignity suffer, so now it’s your turn. Hey, for all we know, that Second Division Leader spot is still open—”

“Fucking hell—”

Ace, despite half the absurdity of the conversation going straight over his head, snorts at the suggestion before he can think better of it. “I’m going to be King of the Pirates! I’m going to— to take his head and defeat the strongest man in the world. I was going to do that anyway.”

The woman’s voice breaks into a laugh, and she says, “Great. Be sure that you do. He’s gonna like you a lot,” and the other voice mumbles something Ace can’t hear that sounds something like Whitebeard, adopt, and payback for Oden. Not that Ace has any idea what all of that means.

But before he can demand more answers from the ghosts, one voice fades from his hearing no matter how much he strains his ears, and, to his disappointment, so does the other.

Ace still has questions. Questions for Luffy, of what the hell, how the hell, why the hell do ghosts exist, why is he here now when he left Ace and his mother alone, why did you chase after me, why didn’t you say anything when you cry like a baby, why do you want me to live —

And Ace says instead, “Tell me about my mother.”

Luffy brightens with a smile that really shouldn't possibly be so sunny after all that sobbing, and he says, “Rouge is really really cool! She has freckles just like you, and there’s always a pink flower in her hair, and you kinda look like her because you always glare, especially when you cross your arms, and— oh, you were a pirate? You sailed that Grand Line too— woah, that’s so cool! Why didn’t you tell me— oh, right, sorry! Ace, she’s a pirate, and, and, and—”

And, surprisingly, Ace’s world isn’t ending. 

(It’s gotten a little wider, maybe.)

It’s a lazy morning shared in a dogpile of three under a blanket, and sunlight shines through the window a little brighter than it ever had in the days before. The three of them run from the house together as Dadan shouts behind them.

Luffy almost gets eaten by a crocodile, and something— someone tries to pull him out of the way, but Luffy’s arm stretches rather than pulling him aside, and he gets eaten by the crocodile anyway as his arm sticks out from its sharp teeth, held by some invisible force of finger imprints around Luffy’s skin.

And somehow this looks familiar, Ace has seen this before, and words come to mind—

“ Shitty old man, ” Ace yells as he grabs Luffy’s arm and Sabo raises his pipe, “Do a better job!!”

Ace could be wrong. Ace could be crazy. But he says it anyway.

Sabo smacks the crocodile on the head with the pipe quickly and pulls Luffy out from its jaws, and just as they’re preparing to carry it away for dinner—

“Ace— behind you—” comes Sabo’s voice.

The only warning Ace gets is the wind ruffling his hair before he turns to get a splash of water in his face. Ace whips around to glare at Sabo until he realizes that Sabo is standing to his other side, and Sabo’s earlier warning is aborted as it devolves into a wheezing laugh. Luffy, who was just pulled out of the crocodile’s mouth, snickers at him, and Ace knocks him on the head.

“Shitty old man,” Ace says again. He doesn’t bother masking it as a mutter. He’ll say it as loud as he wants to.

(It feels much more natural to talk to thin air than it should.)

-

“Ask my mom to tell me a story about pirates,” Ace says to Luffy one night when they’re all huddled under the blanket together, and Luffy beams.

Luffy, Ace quickly learns (not that it would have taken a lot to guess), is a shit storyteller. He mispronounces or confuses every other word for another word while Sabo gently corrects him, he jumps to the part he thinks is the most exciting and forgets to mention the rest, and he cuts in with his own interjections of that’s boring! and how does that make sense? and by the end of it all, the story barely makes any sense.

“Tell us a story about pirates,” Ace says the night after that, and the night after that, and the night after that.

Luffy’s smile never gets any dimmer, and neither do the stories.

-

“Shut up, it’s night and you’re so loud — what are you even laughing about?” Ace says, and Sabo gives a groan of agreement while tugging on the blanket. (Ace tugs it back, and Sabo practically hisses at him.)

Luffy says through his giggling, “Rouge says Roger doesn’t get to tell stories because he sucks at making them up, and he can’t spoil our adventure by talking about his.”

The three of them laugh hard enough that Dadan’s voice rings through the walls, go the fuck to sleep, you damn brats.

The three of them laugh even harder.

Whenever they do their daily hundred matches, there is blatant favoritism.

Luffy’s punches rebound to their mark way more than they have any right to, just like how he dodges as if someone is telling him how to move, or how he aims where someone is telling him to aim.

“Foul play!” Sabo shouts. “You broke my 50-0 record for the first time and you don’t even deserve it! You’re getting help!”

Luffy snickers at him, and Ace snickers too, much to Sabo’s offense.

(At least, until Ace’s own 50-0 record is broken too.)

“Well, we know who the favorite is,” Sabo murmurs.

“Fuck you, shitty old man,” Ace mutters, and the trees are shaking again, like the wind is laughing at him in a way that is booming but silent. “That’s fine, because you’re not my favorite, either.”

Luffy suddenly bowls himself over, laughing way too hard at something neither Ace nor Sabo can hear while pointing at empty air, and somehow, it feels like satisfaction. It feels like contentedness.

-

Stealing money, as Ace has come to find, is a lot easier with Luffy around.

“Dang it, where’d they go—” Ace mutters, and just as he does, he shoots a glance at Luffy.

“He says there are people hiding in the back alley!” Luffy says, pointing, and then there’s what sounds like a group of people hitting their knees on a dumpster and garbage bags spilling over.

Sabo peeks into the alleyway, and Ace and Luffy lean over to look, and all three of their faces curve into smiles as their shadows dawn over the faces staring back at them.

“Bingo,” Sabo says smugly, and the people who were attempting to hide flinch.

The sheen of white fear that pales across their faces is priceless.

They flee from the restaurant after eating their ramen, and someone wearing a fancy suit calls Sabo’s name, and Sabo’s face goes pale.

“We can’t have secrets between the three of us!” Ace insists, and Luffy nods insistently. Well, he did have a big secret of his own that was spilled on the very first day they met.

Sabo’s face twists uncomfortably. Ace doesn’t like that look at all, and neither does Luffy. Not after they just had a great meal and everything.

“I’m from a family of nobles,” Sabo says when Ace and Luffy corner him, like it’s something to be ashamed of.

“So?” Ace and Luffy say at the same time, and Ace wonders why he ever thought Luffy was capable of lying, 

Sabo yells and sighs with a hand in his hair. At least he’s not sad anymore.

“Let’s hold off on forgiveness. It depends on your motive,” Ace says, because now there’s someone else here to protect. Now Luffy is a part of the three of them.

And by the way Sabo’s smile withers ever-so-slightly, Ace thinks that maybe he shouldn’t have said anything after all.

So Sabo explains, and Ace and Luffy listen, and they don’t understand, not in the way Sabo does. They’re not as smart as Sabo is. But they can listen, so they will. They can do that much and whatever more they’re able to.

And they don't get it the way Sabo does, but Ace listens and thinks, oh. Maybe it is something to be ashamed of, to Sabo. Like Ace was.

(He isn’t anymore; not exactly. That’s…something crazy. Something unimaginable, before he met Luffy.)

Sabo talks, and talks, of expectations and parents who made him wish he never had parents at all, and— Sabo talking, that’s new, normally he’s the one who’s always listening, isn’t he?

Luffy forgives instantly without a second thought or even full understanding, as if being fooled never mattered in the least, and Ace, in that moment, realizes just how much light Luffy brings with him everywhere he goes.

-

That night, Luffy is already dead asleep when Ace looks to his side to see Sabo staring at him. 

“Look, I didn’t mean anything by it,” Ace says, and the words spill out as neatly as Ace can manage them. “ ‘S been five years, and you never asked when I didn’t say anything first, and it took me a long time to learn how to, so I just— I just kinda thought you would say somethin’ first. Before it was pulled out of you.”

Sabo makes a noncommittal noise, and Ace suddenly wonders if he missed the mark entirely. He rolls over to look at Sabo in the dark, and— oh. Sabo’s looking at Luffy.

Sabo says, “You should’ve met him sooner. You look happier now than in the five years I’ve known you.”

Ace blinks, rubbing at the sleep in his eyes to glare at him, and Sabo stares back like he thinks he’s intruding on something. Like their earlier encounter in Goa Kingdom that day has lodged something loose in the place he thought he had here.

“You’d better not think you’re not a part of the reason why,” Ace snaps. “This little idiot here,” he jabs a finger at Luffy who tosses and turns in his sleep, drooling and murmuring meat as he always does, “He’s such a handful that he needs two ghosts plus the two of us here. Okay?”

And Sabo blinks, and gives a small laugh, and says, “Yeah. Your mom and… dad, the two of us, and Luffy.”

And ‘dad’... doesn’t make bile rise in his throat the way it once did. Mom and dad, the thought he would once scoff at. It made them sound like family, almost, if the mom and dad weren’t dead ghosts.

“Family,” Ace murmurs. The two of them, and Luffy.

"Hm?"

“Nothing,” Ace says. “Nothing. Now go to sleep, already.”

“Did you know we can become brothers if we exchange cups of sake?” Ace says as he pulls the cork out from the top of the bottle and pours into the three cups. 

“Brothers? Really?” Luffy asks with wonder in his voice, and Ace knows he’s not imagining the way Luffy and Sabo’s faces light up.

“When we become pirates, we might not be on the same ship, but our brotherhood will always be with us!”

Just a little ways off the cliff where they’d declared their dreams to the world earlier that morning, the seas are crashing and the skies are blue, and the sun is bright, and the world can only get wider.

Feared or hated, it will be the proof of Ace’s life. Ace’s life, and no one else's, even as the wind blows and Gold Roger stands behind him.

“From today here on out, we’re brothers!” He yells proudly, and Sabo and Luffy shout with him, “ Yeah! ”

Two older brothers, and one little brother.

(Shitty Gramps has three grandsons now, and all three of them are going to be pirates. Ace can’t wait to rub it in his face.)

-

It results in more lumps for all three of them.  Ace regrets none of it.

When shitty Gramps has his back turned, Luffy cackles to them, “There’s a ghost holding bunny ears over Gramps’s head!”

And when Ace and Sabo think about it—

They do not stop laughing, no matter how many more lumps it gets them.

Sabo is born into a place of money and extravagance, and yet the two only good things in his life are cracks of sunlight in walls of shadow.

And that’s why—

Ace and Luffy claw and shout as they’re pinned down by pirates his father hired, and Sabo almost screams, shouts, leave them alone, they’re my brothers , they’re family more than you ever were —

And then Luffy shouts something, and then before Sabo can blink, his father has a gun pointed at his little brother, and then there’s a gunshot.

Sabo can’t breathe. The air has dropped to a chilling cold, and Sabo knows why, Sabo knows who’s watching. Even the pirates shudder like there is an innate, primal sense of death, but his father hardly notices. He’s always been this cold, this heartless, this completely and utterly ignorant, Sabo figures. 

This cold is not directed at him, but Sabo can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe—

(And he can tell without looking, neither can Ace.)

Seconds pass and they feel like years compressed into instants, but Sabo stares without blinking, find it, find it, find it —

There’s— there’s the faintest rise and fall of Luffy’s chest, barely visible because of how he’s pressed flat against the floor, and Sabo remembers, he’s rubber. The bullet was shot from the front, it’s probably under him, but not breaking skin, and that—

That’s fine. That’s fine. His father and his men aren’t even questioning why there’s no blood, too caught up in their own greed and selfishness and conceit to bother to look, and he has to shut down the thoughts of how dare you shoot my little brother, how dare you how dare you how dare you, he has to shut them down no matter how loud they rage in his head, because it's— it’s fine.

What won’t be fine is if they shoot Ace.

And Sabo turns and doesn’t spare a second glance back as his brothers scream his name.

(He can’t— he can’t be the reason Ace becomes a ghost. He can’t make Luffy watch Ace become a ghost.

He can’t.)

And so Sabo takes a step, and sheds tears, and takes a step, and sheds tears, and the telescope he always carries slips out of his coat pocket. For the faintest of seconds, he stills—

—and then he hears the sound of glass being crushed behind him.

(Sabo doesn't turn around.)

He walks, and walks, and walks, until he can’t hear his brother’s voices anymore. He can’t tell if it’s the distance, or if his hearing has gone numb like the rest of his senses.

(It’s probably the former. He can hear his own sobs just fine.)

And then there’s fire, fire, fire , and Sabo cannot stay here any longer.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers in a bare breath against the locked door, “I’m sorry, Ace, Luffy. I can’t wait to be free any longer.”

Sabo can’t breathe here any longer through the smell of rotten people and ashes.

Ace watches Sabo leave, and then there’s fire, fire, fire.

“ Don’t touch Luffy! ” he screams to the point that something in his throat might have been shredded. Don’t touch him. Don’t touch my little brother. Don’t touch the only other good thing I still have. He gets them away from his brother, and then there’s a gun at his face, and something within him whispers, better me than Luffy, and he stares down the barrel of a gun.

And then, surprisingly, Dadan is there. And then Dadan is knocking the gun away, and then all of the mountain bandits are there, and Ace refuses to run, not when these people hurt and hurt and hurt things Ace calls precious.

(Sabo had always griped about that particular habit of his. It always went a little something like that'll be the reason you die, one day. But that's not going to happen as long as I'm here, got it?)

Ace won't run. He won't run. He won't run. For himself, and for Luffy, even if he's alone—

And then Dadan is fighting alongside him, and then Dadan is shielding him from the fire, and then Ace is carrying her as she tells him to leave her behind, and then they come home to the mountain bandits' house, and—

And then there are still other good things left, if Ace looks.

-

And then there’s a newspaper article and a letter crushed in his hands, and they say Sabo is dead.

And Ace does not believe it. 

He denies, denies, denies, just like how he had wanted to believe Sabo was happy. Just like how he let himself believe that was what Sabo wanted. Just like how he let his brother go alone to a place that couldn't be called home.

But that was different. That was Ace fooling himself, and Ace will never fool himself that way again, because this is different.

He refuses, because there’s no way in hell that’s true. Dadan holds him down by the neck while Dogra shouts Sabo is dead, for once in your life, face the facts of the world, but Ace knows. Ace knows. Ace knows, because—

Luffy says, utterly defiant, “He’s not.”

Because if Sabo was dead— Luffy and Ace would be the first to know. They would be the first to know of their brother's death, of their brother's ghost, because Sabo would come to them, and thinking otherwise would be denying that they were— still are— brothers.

“Sabo’s alive,” Luffy says, and there’s arguing, and arguing, and then the secret is spilled once more, and then silence.

And then— then they’re all crying, sobbing, breaking down too. Because hope is a kid named Luffy, who sees things they do not see and says that their brother is not dead.

Hope is his brother Luffy, who tugs on his straw hat as if the woven straw is faith itself, golden and worn and enduring era after era.

So—

So Ace believes him. Ace believes him when he says that there are still good things left, even if in places he cannot reach. Ace believes him when he says Sabo is alive, and if he is alive, then there is a reason he has not already come home; a reason that he can't come home.

Ace will believe his little brother over the facts of the world.

(So Ace will look for Sabo. He'll look for him, and he'll ask if Sabo is happy, and he'll ask what Sabo wants. And he'll drag his brother home by force, this time.

Ace will live his life without regrets.)

Ace, 17 years old, sets off from Dawn Island with a small boat and a chilling wind in his sail, and as Luffy waves him off from the shore, Ace knows they're there. Knows they're watching over him, dead and gone and ghostly, and somehow it's the closest thing he has to company. He greets the sea with a smile on his face.

He’ll find their brother if it kills him, because now, he is able to.

Now, he’s free.

-

And three years later, so too is Monkey D. Luffy.

(The world isn't prepared in the slightest.)

Rayleigh's not quite sure what to think when Shanks shows up on Sabaody Archipelago missing his trademark straw hat, his left arm, and apparently any and all maturity he may have gained from sailing with his own crew, yelling, "Rayleigh Rayleigh Rayleigh—" before he puts his hand on Rayleigh's shoulder and continues, "Rayleigh-san, there was a kid in East Blue who had the same look in his eye as Roger, and said the same thing too—"

"What."

"The exact same thing that everyone laughed at and called him crazy for, said it with the same smile and look in his eyes, and you should really, really meet him—"

"...Okay?"

"Let's just go into the bar so I can rant about this, because seas help me if the Marines overhear and then Garp knows I know and then chases my ass to the ends of the earth—"

"...Right, right."

This is...new. Rayleigh doesn't remember the last time Shanks had been this excited to talk about anything whenever he came to visit. 

(The closest probably would have been when Shanks came dragging Benn in tow, pride burning brightly on his face as he announced that he found his first mate. Rayleigh was therefore nowhere near as surprised as Benn at how similar they were, from having similar hairstyles to sometimes saying the exact same thing in response to something stupid Shanks said.

Because really, of course Shanks would do that, and it might be flattering to be considered a prime example of a first mate if it didn't also mean that the poor soul in front of him would inevitably need to put up with horrendous amounts of gremlin captain bullshit.)

Rayleigh glances over at said first mate, not really sure what to expect, but Benn only gives a smile. Albeit resigned and weary, (for such is the fate of the rational man chosen to be a gremlin captain's first mate), it's somehow just barely less bright than Shanks's.

Before he knows it, Shanks is dragging him into the bar and to the counter, and beginning, "Okay, so Garp has a grandkid in East Blue…"