Chapter Text
20 Years Before Present Day
Belle-mere looked down at the two little girls who had fallen asleep in her arms just half an hour ago. Nojiko’s hand was protectively gripping Nami’s arm. She couldn’t believe how protective she was of the little girl. And they were not even related by blood. She fiddled with the cigarette and matches in her hand considering whether or not to light them in the hospital.
“I’m going to adopt these kids.” Said
“What did you say?” Asked Genzo, adjusting his hat. “But you’re a marine!”
“I’ve made up my mind, I’m going to raise them.” She said, smiling down at Nami and Nojiko. She rubbed her thumb gently over the bandage on Nojiko’s head. Nami’s fever had finally gone down but she still had to stay in the hospital for one more night.
The little house with the tangerine farm she grew up in was likely in extreme disrepair. And she didn’t have blankets or pillows for the girls. Let alone food. She wanted to give them a proper home.
“I don’t want to leave them.” She admitted to Genzo.
“Are you really sure?” He asked.
She stroked Baby Nami’s hair. “Yes. I’m sure. I’m going to raise them to be good, strong people who can handle themselves even in this harsh world.” She looked up at Genzo. Sure that her words reminded her of when they were young kids. Ten and Eighteen. He had just lost his farther. She, her mother a year earlier. “I would do anything for these girls. Look at them, they’re so sweet! How could I not love them.”
Genzo leaned over the kids and she saw a small smile creep over his face at the sight.
The next morning Bell-mere walked back up to the hospital. A lit cigarette in her mouth and a small basket of tangerines in her hands. She had been surprised to see that the tangerines had managed to fruit this year even though they hadn’t been taken care of in a decade. Although she had a sneaking suspicion that Genzo had been trying his best to tend to them.
“What? You’re going to adopt them?” Asked Doctor Nako? “You?”
“Yes, me.” Said Bell-mere. “Where are they?”
“I…”
“Nako!” She yelled. “Where are Nojiko and Nami.”
“They’re at the orphanage. Dadidi and Mamimi came by earlier to pick them up.”
“You called them?” She gritted her teeth. “Those fools from the World Government Orphanage!”
“They’re perfectly fine people!” Protested Doctor Nako. “I had no idea of your intentions.”
“Perfectly fine people who let a nine year old live on their own because they knew I wouldn’t get adopted and didn’t want to spend the resources to take care of me!” Nako was rendered momentarily speechless. “I knew I shouldn’t have left their side.” Bell-mere seethed.
“I’m sorry Bell-mere.”
She pointed angrily at him. “You owe me a boat. I’m going to get them back.”
“You are an unmarried woman, we simply cannot let you adopt these children when there is a couple who wants to adopt them already. Children must be raised with a mother and a father.”
Belle-mere squinted at the short skinny man. She was about eye level with the top of his absurdly tall hat. She was a marine captain. She had sailed on the East Blue and the Grand Line. She was more than capable of protecting two children. She was more than capable of raising them and loving them just us much as anyone else. On her own. The orphanage directors snide comment made her think that he might have heard a rumor about her being a lesbian. “I’m adopting these girls.” She asserted.
“You are not.” He said. “They’ll be much better taken care of in my orphanage. I also heard you quit the marines. What kind of income are you expecting to raise these children on?”
“I’ve got my tangerine farm still.”
“Tangerines.” He sneered. “Do you have any experience taking care of children.”
“About as much as I would have if I have if I gave birth to them myself.”
“The girls will be taken care of here, me and Mamimi have actual experience raising children.”
Bell-mere wanted to show him the experience she had with a rifle, but she held her tongue instead of sharing. “At least let me see them.”
She stared him down.
He seemed like a weak willed man. “Let! Me! See! Them!”
“I guess it would okay for them to meet the person who saved their lives…briefly.”
In the small living room of the orphanage she crouched down beside Nami and Nojiko where they were sleeping and coloring with crayons respectively. “Hey girls, if I could, would you want to come live with me.” Nojiko’s face broke into a wide grin and she ran forward to hug her, nodding into her chest. Belle-mere kissed the top of her blue haired head.
“Nami too?” Asked Nojiko.
“Nami too.” There was no way she was letting these girls go so easily.
Leaving the room, she slammed her hand down on the counter to get his attention. “So you’re saying that if some couple walked in here tomorrow that they would be adopted.”
“Yes.” He said hesitantly. “Given that they were a good fit for the children.”
A good fit for him would be her fist and his face. She turned heel and walked around the back of the orphanage to smoke.
After a few moments she dialed her den den mushi to a number she hadn’t called in over a year.
There was a click. “Hey Roci, it’s me.”
There was a pause on the other end. “Belle-mere!” Rocinante just responded before a crash and the snails surprised face told her he had fallen again.
She laughed “Just as clumsy as ever?”
“…No. I’ve gotten over that.”
“Ah right, of course. Where are you this time of year?”
“……..”
“Roci?”
“…I’m visiting Garp-san.”
“Roci!” She yelled into the receiver. “You’re in East Blue and you didn’t even tell me.”
“No! Yes! I’m sorry!” He said. “It wasn’t really planned but Sengoku dragged me along, I promise I was going to call you afterwards.”
“I’m disappointed in you damn it.”
“Sorry. I’m really sorry.”
“Perfect, I can use this as a reason to extort you now.”
“What?” Yelped Roci.
“Yeah, you have to come visit me and you have to do what I say. Got it?”
“It’s not going to be anything weird is it.”
Bell-mere took a drag on her cigarette and thought about the two girls just on the other side of the wall. “No it’s not going to be anything weird.”
“Okay.” Said Roci as she dragged him towards the door of the orphanage. “I think this counts as something weird.”
“Well you already agreed.”
They walked in the door and stopped at the receptionist. “Orphanage director-san, I’m here to pick up the two girls I’m adopting, this is my fiancé. She picked up Rocinante’s arm and held it out for the director to shake. Roci’s jaw dropped open, his cigarette falling onto the counter. Bell-mere snatched it up. “You dropped your cigarette, dear.” She said, taking a drag without offering it back.
“Yes, of course.” Said Rocinante. “It’s nice to meet you.”
The orphanage director looked between the too of them. “I see.” He said. “And you are intending to be married.”
“Oh yes.” Bell-mere bared her teeth at him in a cheeky grin. “Next year, it’s all planned out. How are Nami and Nojiko.”
“They are fine” He said. “However, I thought we already discussed, several times I might add, that they were to be adopted by another family.”
“Ah yes, because I was unsuitable to adopt them. I know, however, I think you’ll find that I meet all your requirements now. I have a house and a farm and a fiancé with a steady marine income and those two girls would love to live with me, just ask them.”
The orphanage director scowled at her.
“Also, I got here first, so if you let me adopt the kids they’ll be off your hands sooner.” That seemed to do the trick because the director started to shuffle the papers around his desk slowly before passing her two sets of adoption papers. One for Nami and the other for Nojiko.
Bell-mere took the papers and Rocinante cast a subtle Calm Zone over the two of them
“You’re adopting kids!?”
“Technically we’re adopting kids.”
“I’m only twenty!”
“So am I – by the way, Happy Birthday, sorry I didn’t call.”
“It’s no problem.”
“Oh good, however you didn’t call for my birthday either and I’m rather upset about it.” Bell-mere passed the papers bearing her fresh signature over to Roci. “Sign.”
He looked up at Bell-mere. Her face was more determined than he had ever seen before.
“You’re really set on this aren’t you.”
She smiled warmly. “Those two girls mean everything to me. I wouldn’t be here without them Roci. I- I was injured, I was prepared to die. I lost my purpose. The marines… I couldn’t be a part of them anymore. And then those two showed up. They were all alone, and so small. I can’t believe people are actually that small. I can’t believe that once upon a time I was that small. You know I didn’t grow up with my parents. I didn’t want that for them. To grow up all alone, struggling to survive in a war torn country. I couldn’t –“ Bell-mere choked up a little, wiping away a small tear. “I shouldn’t have asked you to do this, this is too much to ask, what was I thinking.”
Rocinante signs the papers and hands them back to her. He remembers him and his brother digging through the trash for something, anything, to eat. He thinks about how grateful he is that Sengoku brought him in. That someone cared enough to love him again. If there’s justice in this world this is it, he thinks.
“I think you’ll be a wonderful mother.”
She gapes down at the papers in her hands for a moment before launching herself forward and wrapping her arms around his waist in a big hug. “Thank you Roci.”
“Are we actually going to get married?”
“Do you want to?”
“I am gay.”
Bell-mere rolled her eyes. “So am I, or did you forget. Getting married isn’t about to ruin our romantic prospects. However, it would allow you to take time off to spend with the kids.”
“The kids…” Rocinante muttered under his breath. “I didn’t agree to take care of them you know.”
“You’ll like them.” Bell-mere insisted.
Roci, did, in fact, like the kids. They were small and Nojiko loved to follow Bell-mere around the tangerine grove and loved when he would pick her up and put her on his shoulders like she was flying.
Nami was tiny, just a baby, but so cute. She would try to speak to them even though it still came out as strings of babble. She always laughed when he told her stories about him and Bell-mere as kids in the Marines. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a baby laugh as much as Nami.
Raising Nami and Nojiko was his first break from the Marines since he joined as a child. There were no marines in the Conomi Islands, and he didn’t expect to like it as much as he did, having never not been around Marines. Before, even when he was on leave, he was always at Marineford. Now he was around villagers, farmers, doctors, ordinary people. It was a good life. But then came the den-den mushi call that ended it.
One year after Rocinante moved to Cocoyashi Village, he is called back to Marine HQ, and then reassigned to the North Blue.