Work Text:
Standing at the cliff, the waves crashing into the rock below and the wind urging from above were nearly loud enough to swallow up the sound of a single voice ringing out.
“I beat every last fighter in Gray Terminal!” Luffy proclaimed loudly, proudly puffing out his chest in the face of his accomplishments.
“They were super easy to take down as well! I thought they might be a bit more challenging since they’re supposed to be smarter than animals, but it wasn’t difficult at all! I thought they’d be stronger than the Tiger Lord, but noooo.” Luffy whined. “They were all weaker than him! And he’s ignoring me too now ‘cause I punched his nose the last time we sparred. It wasn’t even that hard! And he scratched me worse before! But now I don’t have anyone strong to fight at all unless Gramps comes to visit.”
Luffy pulled a face. Garp’s visits weren’t ever long enough for them to even really do a lot together. He hardly fought with Luffy like he used to either, instead showed him weird stuff like how to stand, hold his pipe correctly, and all the weird marine rules Luffy had never cared about in his life.
It was really a huge problem that Luffy didn’t know how to solve. It wasn’t like he could just make a strong opponent appear!
He’d stuck to challenging all the low-level bandit groups around that Dadan and Makino always complained about, then Dadan herself. She could put up a fight at least, though Luffy was still quicker than her and had no qualms about attacking her with all he got.
He had no proof that Dadan wasn’t fighting him with all she got, but he was suspicious. She always recovered way too fast from a beating!
Remembering the last time Luffy had fought her made him wince. Just because she might be holding back, didn’t mean that her hits didn’t hurt. Thankfully, his rubber skin absorbed most of the impact.
“Nobody in Foosha knows how to fight either,” Luffy muttered. “No wonder Shanks had to take care of those bandits, not that they’re a problem anymore! And the villagers do teach me plenty of cool things! Gyoru even let me come on his boat to help him fish! We caught a lot!”
Being a pirate did require some basic sailing knowledge, after all. Luffy was gonna have the best navigator on his crew, but that meant finding them first.
Setting sail on his own, tackling those dangerous waters.
The sea called to him as it always had and Luffy longed to leave Dawn behind. He’d outgrown the island. Goa Kingdom was a horrible place, entrenched in blood and lies and chains and the jungle had long since become his territory. A small part of Foosha would always be home, even if he didn’t visit it as often as he could, and Gray Terminal was the same as always.
After it had burned down, Luffy had stayed away for a long while. Not entirely out of his free will, in part only because Dadan had threatened to tie him to a tree and Luffy believed that she would definitely do that. Gray Terminal had fixed itself pretty quickly after the fire, the nobles’ trash filling out the emptied space again within weeks. There’d been fewer people there in the aftermath, were fewer people there now still, but it resembled the trash heap Luffy recalled from his first visit more and more.
The memories of it, however, were forever tainted. Sometimes Luffy thought he still struggled to breathe from inhaling all the ashes and smoke, even if that wasn’t the case. Gramps had been really worried about Luffy’s lungs and even made one of his marine doctors check them out, though they’d only said he should take it easy.
What a waste of time.
It hadn’t fixed the heaviness in his chest at all.
“Gramps is not gonna be back for a while,” Luffy sighed and dropped to the ground. “He’s super busy on the Grand Line still. Apparently, there are many bad pirates, and he has to make sure they’re all caught so they’re not hurting anyone. I can’t imagine why any pirate would want to do nasty stuff with Gramps around. His fists hurt plenty, don’t they?”
Luffy’s head started aching just at the thought of those Fists of Love. “Urgh! Why do all those pirates have to cause trouble? Can’t they just go and be fun like Shanks?”
Shanks hadn’t made Gramps come here to start a fight, though a small part of Luffy had wanted him to when he’d been younger. Before Shanks, all he knew of pirates was that they were what kept his Gramps busy. With a pirate in Foosha, maybe Garp would return home again. He hadn’t, but that was alright because Shanks had made Foosha his home port for nearly an entire year!
Shanks was awesome; he’d even paid for Luffy’s food in Makino’s bar, although Luffy had his own treasure tab with her.
“I wonder how many bad pirates there are out on the sea. I don’t want to be a pirate like that at all.”
No, Luffy wanted to be exactly like Shanks, surrounded by his crew, his family, having fun while the sea was the horizon allowing him to be free. Someday, Luffy would be the freest man in the world. Gramps didn’t like it when he went around saying he’d be Pirate King someday, but that didn’t make it any less true. Gol D. Roger better watch out!
“I think adventure’s out there. I just have to chase it, right, Sabo?”
The grave in front of Luffy stayed silent.
It hadn’t ever not been silent, but it felt like a punishment anyway. Luffy hadn’t known much about making graves. Sabo had explained it to him once how the rich nobles from High Town put their bodies in stone prisons to preserve them for eternity. That sounded pretty horrible to Luffy. Who’d want their body to rot away in some stone? Didn’t the nobles know that dead bodies made people sick and attracted parasites?
Luffy didn’t ever want to be buried like that.
In Foosha, they burned the bodies of their loved ones and scattered the ashes in the ocean for the Sea to come take them away. That was a proper funeral, the storms, and currents carrying the souls of the dead far away.
There hadn’t been any ashes of Sabo that Luffy could have scattered in the wind.
He’d just put Sabo’s flag on their favorite spot, where it could fly in the wind, see the bright ocean and get at least a taste of the freedom they’d both wanted so badly.
Luffy wasn’t sure if that had set Sabo’s soul free, and if it hadn’t, then at least his brother would have him as company until Luffy could figure out how to fix it. Sabo deserved to be free; he’d died for it after all.
Suddenly Luffy wasn’t in such high spirits anymore. The thought of having defeated anyone still willing to fight him seemed like yet another sign of how small Dawn Island had become to him. He knew every inch of it, or least every part that interested him, and now there was nothing left to explore. He wasn’t even anywhere near as tall as Dadan yet, and still felt like the largest animal on it.
Sure, he went to Makino sometimes, stayed at the docks, or bothered the bandits for rice to accompany the meat he’d brought, but most of the time, Luffy was just on his own.
It wasn’t all bad. Nobody could disturb him with their snoring and he didn’t have to share his meat with anyone and nobody tried to tell him what to do unless Gramps was there, and Gramps hardly visited anyway—
Luffy pulled his hat over his face as the first tears rolled over his cheek.
“I’m sorry, Sabo,” Luffy apologized. “I didn’t want to cry again.”
Luffy was the strongest person on Dawn Island and bawled like a little kid anyway. Sabo hadn’t ever minded, quietly wiping away his tears with a smile until Luffy felt better.
He was the best big brother, always looking out for him.
Sabo’s letter had said that Luffy should grow up strong so that someday they could meet again at sea and have all the adventures they had dreamed of. Sabo was gone, but Luffy had thrown himself into his training, pausing for nothing and nobody, always pushing forward. He’d make it out to the Grand Line in Sabo’s name, who hadn’t ever even managed to get out of Goa’s gulf.
Wiping over his wet eyes, Luffy sat up again and leaned forward. He reached for Sabo’s flag, felt the rough material beneath his fingers. They’d stolen the fabric from some shop in the Terminal to paint their very own pirate flags. It nearly hadn’t been enough for three flags. One for him, one for Sabo, and one for them both together. The fabric was incredibly sturdy and had soaked up the equally stolen paint well. Being outside for years hadn’t bothered it at all. Sure, it wasn’t as pretty as before and probably needed a wash, but Sabo’s symbol was still visible.
Every pirate and marine on the high seas should have known Sabo’s flag.
“I’m sorry,” Luffy apologized, old grief bubbling up. “If I hadn’t been so clumsy, then your father wouldn’t have seen you and then you wouldn’t have been caught and—”
He pressed his eyes shut, a familiar sting in them.
Luffy waited until he thought his eyes didn’t burn when he opened them, then he wiped over them. He got to his feet again, put his hat on his head, and snatched his pipe from the ground. He ran his fingers over the rough carvings on it, spilling out his brother’s name. He’d told himself he wouldn’t fight a single battle without it.
“See you later, Sabo,” Luffy said and secured the pipe in its makeshift holster on his back. Turning his back on his brother’s grave, Luffy returned to the forest.
Storm season had hit Dawn Island and, as if sensing that Luffy had started late in his preparations for it, the storms had been twice as bad as usual, tearing through the village, the forest, and the kingdom. Makino had even had to repair the shingles on the bar roof, but the damage the winds had left on it was nothing compared to the destruction they had wrought on Luffy’s old treehouse. He and Sabo had built it together during the first year of knowing each other. Its size had been very much for ten-and-seven-year-olds, but Luffy had been lucky that Sabo had been smart enough to ensure they’d made it a bit bigger. The door frame still had all its notches, the highest marking off Sabo at age 13. Luffy had only just now reached it, which sucked. He was older than Sabo had been and ever would be, yet he was still shorter.
His brother probably thought that was very funny too. Luffy could almost hear his laughter in the rustling of the leaves.
Luffy climbed up the tree to his home and already found himself troubled by all the missing panels he spotted. Those wouldn’t be easy to replace. He pulled himself on top of the first platform and looked around the treehouse, scanning it for damages. He didn’t sleep here during storm season, everyone was very insistent that he didn’t, relocating him to his old childhood bedroom, but it was only now that he could see why they’d been so keen on it. The treehouse wasn’t just a bit of a mess as it had been the last years; it was pretty broken altogether.
The kind of broken Luffy wasn’t sure he could fix himself.
He’d probably have to wait on Gramps to try it. He’d helped Luffy repair it the last times as well. But Gramps wasn’t going to be back home for a long while, months, probably, and until then, the treehouse wouldn’t hold out, no matter how much Luffy tried to work on it.
It would just fall apart around him.
His home was dying.
The realization made him want to punch something, anything, but if he applied just a bit too much force, the treehouse would come crashing down around him, burying him beneath old metal and wood. All the memories of living here with Sabo would be erased, just like every other sign that his brother had ever existed. The jungle would reclaim the wood, as it took everything that didn’t struggle against it, and soon nobody would have been able to guess Luffy had slept here for years.
All the threads tying him to Dawn Island were unraveling.
Luffy didn’t have anything left on this island, not really, at least. He loved the village and he loved the bandits, but they weren’t what he lived for.
Everything he dreamed of lingered outside of his reach.
Luffy sat down at the platform’s edge, legs dangling in the air. Above him, the birds flew, free to determine their own course.
Sabo used to say that Luffy should have robin wings to carry him to his goal. He’d never assigned himself bird wings, perhaps too tied down still to know how to fly.
Luffy ran his fingers over the broken wood. “Hey, Sabo,” he spoke into the quiet of the jungle. “Are you going to be mad if I leave this place? You told me I should chase my dreams and I— I think I’m gonna lose them if I stay.”
Lose them like he’d lost his brother.
As always, there was no answer.