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The crew's buddy system had never failed yet.
Implemented for new recruits from all walks of life, the Whitebeard Pirates' buddy system was flawless, in their not-so-humble opinion. Desperately simple in its design yet boasting a 100% success rate, the system dictated that when someone new joined the crew through whatever unique means, they would spend their first few weeks tagging alongside the commander best suited to them. Demonstrating their iron-clad rule of this crew is a family, the chosen commander would be the best big brother possible to their charge until they were comfortable and familiar with their role, their new siblings, and their new home.
Perfectly simple; perfectly effective. One to one care that was overseen by Whitebeard himself—for who was Whitebeard if not father to all? Thus, the integration of the Spade crew proved to be possibly the most exciting recruitment event in recent memory.
While taking in a whole crew wasn’t unheard of, it hadn’t happened for quite some time, and everyone in the crew was itching to see how the newbies would be allocated their buddy commande r. Granted, the new crew numbered barely thirty (including a lynx, much to the delight of Haruta in particular), but their loyalty to their captain, young Fire Fist Ace, was as awe-inspiring as the devotion of three hundred.
“I shotgun Ace!” Thatch yelled once the initial buddy system meeting was called, his chair scraping loudly on the floor before toppling over. “Gimme the captain, Pops, go on—lemme work my charm on the poor scrap, feed him up a bit, dote on him like he needs!”
Thatch was subsequently put in charge of winning the heart of the fiery captain and his lynx, accepting the pair most graciously. The other members were allocated quickly as Pops consulted a list of names and roles, sucking on the end of his quill until Izou kindly pointed out that doing so was giving him blue lips.
“Marco,” Pops boomed over the tumult of noise his sons were making as they drifted off, chattering excitedly about their new charges, “I’m leaving the one called Masked Deuce to you.” Glancing down at his list, he scratched at one massive eyebrow, successfully drawing a line of ink through it. “He’s their first mate and has medical experience, though isn’t listed as the crew doctor. According to Jinbei, he’s not going to be an easy one to get through to.”
“Are any of them?” Marco asked, taking the Wanted poster of the Spade’s first mate that Pops passed to him. “It’s been a week now; they’ve calmed down since we reunited them with Ace, but they’re still telling anyone who approaches them to stick things where the sun doesn’t shine.”
Whitebeard’s eyes twinkled, betraying the hidden broad grin. “This will not be a matter of overcoming vulgar threats from a scared teenager, son. That is easy; that is something that anyone can do. You’re going up against loyalty—fierce loyalty. Remember how overprotective you were when you were his age?” A rumbling laugh issued from him, no doubt recalling a memory he would proudly label adorable from Marco’s youth. “You understand what a captain means to a first mate better than anyone… as well as the importance of giving youngsters like these the proper care they need.”
Marco nodded, tearing his eyes away from Deuce’s photo—away from the cold glare and from Ace and his peace sign in the background—and looked up at his father.
“And my second charge?”
“There won’t be one—not for you,” Whitebeard said, smiling kindly when Marco frowned. “Give this boy your full attention, won’t you? If he warms to you, I believe the rest—including their fiery little captain—will follow far more easily. They run their crew as something of a pair, if I’m not mistaken.”
And so the task was set; the goal in sight. One man; one demand. Show him what it meant to be a part of a loving family, and the rest would fall into place. Whitebeard’s aim would hit true, and Ace would join willingly one day.
Marco’s confidence swelled in his chest, coupled with pride by proxy from his father’s assured grin and pat to his back.
No, this wouldn’t be a problem at all.
Marco was sorry to say that that confidence wavered on his first calculated encounter with Deuce some minutes later, deciding to waste no time in introducing himself as Marco rather than the man you loudly declared looked like a stoned pineapple the other day.
“Hi,” he said a little breathlessly as he swung into the room occupied by the Spade crew, “you’re Deuce, right? Can I talk to you in private real quick?”
Perhaps it was Marco’s own misfortune that he had chosen now to approach him, or perhaps fate had already predetermined that Ace did not come without Deuce accompanying him (just like how Marco would not have left Whitebeard under the circumstances the Spade crew faced), for he found the pair huddled together, a whispered conversation clearly having been cut short, judging by their disgusted expressions.
“Hi,” Deuce echoed, looking Marco up and down like he was something foul and rotting. “No, you may not. Goodbye.”
Ace’s less than kind snort of mirthless laughter followed Marco out of the room, playing on his mind as he questioned himself as to what he had thought that would achieve. Of course that wouldn’t work. He needed a solid, personalized plan if he wanted to succeed.
Jinbei and Pops had been right—Deuce was not an easy person to work with. Well, work against, in all honesty, as Marco’s efforts were anything but mutual. There was simply no engaging the man. Not at first, in any case.
Hostile and cold, Deuce said nothing when Marco finally caught him alone the following morning to inform him that he was being assigned to the infirmary alongside him.
“Why?” was Deuce’s belated question once Marco had finished explaining. “I’m not a doctor; I’ll just get in your way.”
The urge to consult his notes was squashed down under a swallow, a frown at the unreadable bitterness curling Deuce’s lip. Truth be told, Marco was nervous, and uncharacteristically so—nervous enough to have spent the previous night pulling apart old newspapers destined for the bonfire, looking for any shred of information about the Spade pirates.
But not once in any article was Deuce mentioned as the doctor of their crew. First mate, yes. Strategist, twice—once alongside the big hairy guy called Skull. But never doctor. Never anything close.
“Pops said you have medical experience,” Marco said, throwing caution to the wind, backtracking on his plans to be coy and subtle and to get Deuce to somehow offer the information himself. Ah, Thatch would laugh himself stupid if he could see how quickly Marco was pivoting on his plan. “No one in this crew is a formally licensed doctor. I’m certainly not, and I’m supposed to be in charge of the whole medical team.”
He snickered at his own self-deprecation, but stopped abruptly at the look Deuce gave him, registering the thread of fear unraveling behind the contempt.
Then, a smile. A jarring one that was pained, forced, and frankly almost borderline comedic for how out of place it was.
“Whatever you think is best,” Deuce said, his tone too hearty, smile too fixed. “We’ve got to earn our keep, right? So if this is what you want from me, then on your head be it.”
His choice of words was perplexing, if not downright concerning, making Marco want to press him with thousands of questions to which Deuce would likely not answer truthfully—but the moment was cut short by a shuddering explosion overhead, followed by raucous laughter and whistles.
“Ah,” Deuce said curtly, the façade dropped, “that’ll be my captain’s latest attempt on your captain’s life.”
Marco sighed as Deuce hurried off, wondering if it was too early to try to coerce Thatch into day-drinking with him.
It soon became apparent that only Marco and Thatch were having any trouble with their charges. Thatch, however, wasn’t taking it to heart like Marco was, which in itself was unusual to say the least. By all accounts, Thatch appeared to be having a darn good time running around after Ace, and even Marco and Izou’s attempts at teasing were swept away with a nonchalant wave of his hand a few nights later, a foamy beer mustache clinging to his upper lip.
“Thing is, I’m not trying to stop him going after Pops!” Thatch roared over the music on deck. “An’ I’m not trying to befriend him! Little fool’s made of fire, so of course I’m bonding with him while he’s bein’ useful in the kitchen! You, Marco, are trying to become Deuce’s bestest pal in the whole world, and it’s painful to watch, man! Painful!”
“Embarrassing,” Izou offered, smirking at Marco’s glare. “It’s out of character for you to have trouble with your charges.”
It wasn’t like Marco to get assigned someone who reminded him so strongly of himself twenty years younger, but there you go.
Still, he was making headway, even if the others couldn’t see it. For one thing, Deuce had stopped with the fake smiles whenever Marco asked him something personal. Sure, he wasn’t giving him proper responses yet, but the lack of mocking falseness was a nice touch. Additionally, he was useful around the infirmary, and far more competent than he’d had Marco believe he would be.
Two weeks into his relentless attempts at forging a friendship, Marco finally got Deuce to laugh. A proper laugh that ended in relapses of snorts and raspberries silenced by hands slapped to mouth. A laugh about a medical joke, of all things, that no one without education in the matter would likely have found amusing.
Again, laughter a week after that—then three days following—then finally, one after the other, this time riffing off each other with a story about Thatch, which turned into one about Ace, which became about Pops and his incessant Dadding and fatherly doting on his children—
—after which Deuce went quiet, seemingly realizing what he was doing, frozen mid-formation of the word father. Then, nothing. The barriers were back up, the tears of laughter thumbed away, and Deuce returned to arranging the surgical instruments for that afternoon’s elective list of fools too knife-happy to keep from self-injury.
But it was the progress Marco needed. Deuce’s guard was coming down, and Marco thought he could see a way through to the other side at last.
“He’s got daddy issues,” Marco said proudly the next morning, sitting beside Thatch in his sorry hungover state. “I’m not wrong. I can feel it.”
“So does Ace,” Thatch grumbled around his spoon. “Big deal.”
Ignoring how Thatch was apparently now having such an easy time of taming Ace, Marco rallied with, “A friendship with me isn’t going to be what works; that’s not what’s important to him on a fundamental level—”
“Yeah dude, I think he’s made that clear from the start—”
“He needs taking care of. Parental care. They all do.”
“Seriously?” Thatch’s eyes were bleary, milk dripping from his goatee as he pointed his spoon at Marco. “Y’mean like what Pops said weeks ago? Color me shocked, buddy.”
Marco ignored him, too enthralled by the joy of his discovery. It had never been about shared positions in their crews, or about skills that matched and complemented, or even about the mutual affection with which they regarded their captains. It was about what Marco had discovered when young and vulnerable and hurting; what Marco, now healed, could pass on to the next generation of lost, scared children.
Praise. Constant, no holds barred, praise.
That was the method, the tactic played in this game of wits (which Marco had truly been wondering if he was losing not long ago). And blow him down, it worked.
Small at first—a positive comment on some suture work, a sprinkling of kind words added to a throwaway sentence—but soon they grew, nurtured by Marco’s hard work. Motivation was handed to Deuce as claps to shoulders, confident assessments of his skills, and verbal praise directed to the nurses yet allowed to carry into the doctors’ office, heard and felt. The old, tattered Basics of Thoracic Surgery textbook Marco had pilfered some two decades ago went down a treat, too, subtly left on Deuce’s desk one night, and then gone by morning, reemerging a few days later covered in hand-written notes and dog-eared pages.
It was all coming together, and really, when Marco reflected on his success a couple of weeks following his first breakthrough, he should have figured it out much sooner.
“So how old are you, anyway?” Marco asked one evening after cleaning up what felt like half of the third division’s post-poker fistfight. “I never thought to ask.”
Deuce shot him a confused look at such a benign question, the boy no doubt still high on adrenaline from the shenanigans. “I’m a year older than Ace,” he said at length, which did nothing to answer Marco’s question and everything to make him have to bite back a grin.
“And how old is Ace?”
Deuce paused, undoubtedly trying to figure out how this information could potentially come back to hurt Ace, then said, “Eighteen.”
What a bizarre way to confess he was nineteen. Not even twenty. Marco sighed through his nose, positive he felt his back hurt just with the realization that Deuce was less than half his own age.
“And you?”
Reciprocation in conversations was still something of a rarity, even now, so Deuce’s question caught Marco off guard, even if it was precisely what he had hoped would follow.
“I’m old enough to be your dad, I’m sorry to say,” Marco smiled, careful to keep his intonation as casual as possible, “I have no idea where the years went… one minute I was just a dumb mouthy kid following Pops’ shadow, and now…” He trailed off delicately, leaving the direction of the conversation open for Deuce to dictate.
“Well,” Deuce said softly, “if my father had been anything like you, maybe I would have grown up happy.” He stopped, frowning at the running water, his hands long having been scrubbed clean of mess and God knew what else. “He’s a doctor too, like you,” he continued, watching the water from the faucet pool in his cupped hands, “but I was only ever a disappointment to him.”
Then he looked up, looked at Marco, looked vulnerable and truly young for the first time since he had set foot on the ship. The anger and the defenses were gone, destroyed by his own admission, and before he could say anything else, Marco was pulling him into a hug. A real hug. A hug that let the hurting child inside know he was loved, was safe, was enough.
“He didn’t deserve a son like you,” Marco murmured, meaning what he said, surprised yet warmed by the fact that Deuce didn’t make any attempt to break free. “You’re smart; you’re funny; you’re loyal, hardworking, and so, so good to those you care about. Your father missed out big time… and I’m sorry to say, but his loss is our gain, if you and Ace decide to make this crew your home.”
Though he may have had serious doubts at the beginning, the moment Deuce tentatively returned the hug, Marco knew that this would be the family that would one day—soon, hopefully—get to call both Deuce and Ace their brothers.