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Luffy knew his eyes to be dark, almost black gray.
It didn't stop him from asking about them, despite what an adult might think of a child's curiosity, almost expecting a drastic difference in the answers. Of course, what he always got was relatively the same, even if it was enveloped in people's personal wording.
They were gray.
Makino said that they were gray like the Sky when it was really sad and it was about to rain. Shanks described them as gray as the color of the Sea when it was angry, when the wind blew into the sails threatening to rip them apart. Sabo and Ace just outright told him that they didn't know the ways to really tell about them, — well, maybe Sabo did, but he still refused to — so they were Just gray, like grass was Just green and the fresh, uncooked meat was Just pink.
No matter how pretty it all sounded, it didn't change the fact that everyone agreed they were gray.
He tried not so many times to say he was exhausted, but after the fifth attempt around the Foosha Village, he stopped. He never asked Garp, nor the bandits, with the sole exception of Dadan that was met with refusal, this question. The answers he got were enough for him to draw his own conclusion.
Luffy's eyes were gray.
And his reflection's weren't.
Water, especially the Sea, never lies, no matter how shallow or dirty it is, no matter the grime and salt and whatever gunk there might be swimming. The things it reflects sometimes do not match what the human eye can see, but just because no one believes you, it doesn't make you a liar.
It's a fact Luffy picked up from years upon years of staring into the eyes that were and weren't his.
(There's something crawling inside his bones, his flesh, his very being. Like a starving wolf, a predator strong enough to uproot a tree, or two, and the entire world with it. His soul is its cage, he knows, but can do nothing about it, no matter how pitiful or desperate the wails sound.
It pains him, somehow, despite the fact that if he agrees to free it, he'll be devoured by it in seconds.)
Luffy stares in the eyes of something that lives behind the bars of his body, and knows it wants freedom. Freedom of the wind in its hair, and sun on its skin, and smell of salt and itchy feel of sand between its toes. He sees that hollow, spiteful want in the unnatural eyes, and he understands it. He truly does, and it's a weird ache of pity and sadness that overtakes him from time to time — his own goal is to be the freest man in all five Seas, after all.
(Luffy knows the yearning for broken hackles, if not his own, then for his brother.)
But he can't give it freedom. Not yet, not ever.
Not if, in turn, it'll take his.
So he stares and stares inside the pools of color that are not his own, and then decides to stare no more. He covers his gaze with a gift from something-close-to-father, and grins madly when he hears the yells of his brothers instead of screaming full of betrayal and grief.
The straw hat feels like a heavy blanket over his head, and for a while, he hopes it'll be enough.
The parasite stills and stops its cries inside his being somewhere between his seventeenth and nineteenth birthday.
Luffy thinks it's watching, not sure if just because it suddenly became curious of his life or because it's looking for a weak link to strike. He'll let it have it's own only through his mangled, bloody cold corpse, of course, but he can't help his own curiosity either — if only because his curiosity is the thing that brought his crew (his family) together.
He dares glance at his reflection, once, and almost falls overboard of the Sunny when he catches interest in the gaze behind the water.
(It makes him sicksicksick like nothing ever did before.
What does it want with what is his?)
It was intoxicating in a bad way to look at; made his heart beat a tad too fast and his stomach chrum a tad too hard. Fear or anger — he doesn't want to know what caused that.
Luffy never looked at his reflections anymore.
To be honest, it felt like a deal with the devil.
The outstretched olive branch is taunting him, almost, but he knew somewhere inside his heart that it was anything but a taunt. His face stared back at him, eyes shining and hair white, and he couldn't help but hear the echo of its words on his skin.
They will both die if they don't work together.
He won't be seeing his nakama if he dies.
"Fine." Luffy spits, and bares his teeth in threat, but locks his struggles for consciousness behind the wall of his determination.
"Thank you." Echoes in the darkness right back, and then it's all silent once again.
The parasite better fulfill its promise, because no power will stop Luffy from crawling his way up from the dead to see his people and beat some asses on the way.
(He wakes up to Torao and Zoro standing beside him, beaten but alive and Luffy thinks, huh, maybe I'll need to talk to that guy more.
He loses his footing before that simple thought has enough time to be finished.)
Somewhere, between the green landscape and trees, two boys, — one god, one vessel, — talk about freedom with laughter on their lips.