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“You have a nice laugh.”
Robin turns to look at the new arrival. She doesn’t startle, but it’s a near thing. She thought that she had been alone out here since no one else ever comes up to the crow’s nest during the night watch. It had been so quiet up until then, she had gotten completely lost in her own thoughts, the book she had previously been reading set aside.
It’s usually on nights like these that she gets lost like that. Nights where she feels like she’s in her own private world above the rest of the crew, far from anyone’s reach. Just ocean and stars as far as the eyes can see, not a soul or island to be seen. It’s on nights like this, nights when she isn’t surrounded by her friends (her family) where she feels like she’s alone again. Fighting a war against the rest of the world.
“You think so?” she smiles back, because truly it’s a first. Growing up hunted by the World Government doesn’t exactly leave a child very many opportunities to spend time with others, much less laugh around them, and it certainly doesn’t lend itself to having compliments sent your way. By the time she had grown strong enough to properly protect herself, she’d long since become jaded by what the world had thrown at her and wasn’t much for laughter. The occasional smile when it got her what she needed, but never laughter.
That’s all changed though since she’s joined her family. Since they stormed in and turned her entire worldview upside down, showed her that it’s okay to want, okay to trust, okay to rely on them, okay to smile just because. When they showed her that it was okay to laugh.
It’s been slow going for sure, but little by little she’s chipped away at the walls she’s been fortifying and hiding behind all her life. And on nights like these when she feels overwhelmed by it all, like it could all just disappear into petals for how unreal it all feels, she laughs. She laughs his laugh. Because he was the one who told her she would meet her friends and that they would protect her, that she would live with them. That nobody is ever born into this world completely alone. He was the one who taught her to laugh when she’s hurting, and somehow along the way she had forgotten that. It was her family that had reminded her.
“Mm, you should laugh like that more often.”
Robin turns back to her forgotten book and she laughs, reminded of another voice telling her something very similar long ago.
“But you have a cute laugh. You should laugh more.”
She thinks she will.