Work Text:
It's been a little over one year. Or, at least Luffy thinks so.
Rusukaina changes seasons very, very quickly, he found out. The change is rapid, with little warning before it rains, or snows, or days become unreasonably hot. It makes it hard to keep track of the time he's been here. Not that he's ever been good at keeping track of time without someone reminding him.
Rayleigh says he'll soon run out of things to teach him; it's a little sad. He likes learning from what the old man's trying to teach. The Haki training thing is tiring, and it leaves him sore in the way he hadn't felt since he was eight, but it makes Luffy stronger — body less vulnerable, senses less dull. It forces his focus on getting farther and lasting longer. It keeps that unbearable, nagging itch of his scar at bay.
(It lets him sleep without dreams that wake him choking on suddenly too-thin air.)
Luffy runs a careful finger over the skin of the fruit in his palm. He found it today, in the patch of yellow-wilted grass farther into the forest than Rayleigh usually takes their training to. He thinks it's a little weird, that Rayleigh hadn't found it despite scouting the entire island all those months ago for the probable marine intrusion, as if it hid from him. Luffy doesn't know if the guess is true, but he knows Haki, now, as unstable yet as it is, and it was- is really hard to miss. It's like the first star in the night sky. Like a beacon in the dark sea.
He cups it with both hands, like it's suddenly made of glass, his senses mapping how it feels. How it pulses with power, a second heartbeat to his own.
(It's red and uneven. Hot, in the way it's not supposed to be under a tree's shade.
He wonders if his brother looked at this fruit, the Mera Mera no Mi, and thought the same.)
He isn't sure what to do with it. He stares at it, and can't quite decide if he wants to be happy, or angry, or sad. It feels as if he's suddenly back in time, when he and Rayleigh only just began the training routine, and the memory of ash on his tongue and soot under his nails, — the heat of magma and enraged screaming and barely-there whispers, — rears its head, unbidden. It makes something bad and heavy, something almost sickly-sweet of a rotten meal, appear in his stomach. It makes Luffy's face twitch, trying to form a frown.
He doesn't let it.
"Why are you here?" He asks the fruit, holding onto the thing as he sits on his knees.
(It didn't sound particularly bitter, not really, but he hadn't made an effort to keep the slight bite off of his voice.)
The fruit doesn't answer, obviously, not in words — but its Haki suddenly feels just slightly more subdued. It wobbles a little, even as he keeps his hands loose and still, by itself, and leans further into one of his scratchy, ridden with calluses coarse palms. Its aura pulses, power spreading further under his skin, but not stinging with the heat of a real fire. Maybe it can even be called calming.
Luffy thinks it almost looks like a dog, trying to comfort. An animal burying its face in his arm.
Sorry, it says, not with words but Luffy hears it all the same. Sorrysorrysorrysorry-I'm-sorry.
Its Voice was strong, but cracking like dying embers, a flame that's been put out. It washed over him like a whisper, like it was a secret to share between them. It sounded small. It sounded tired.
Sorry-couldn't-protect, it says. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.
It almost sounded choked.
(For a moment, Luffy feels a pang of familiar sympathy.
For a moment, Luffy wonders if fruits could feel grief.)
He runs a thumb over the fruit's bumpy, fire-like skin. "...why are you here?" He asks again, softer. "Why did you let me find you?"
Rayleigh would've been a better one to be found by. If it wanted to go somewhere different, the old man probably knew a lot of places it could hide. He could've sold it, or set it to drift on the sea. Could've gifted it, could've kept it safe. He has a lot of friends, too, and maybe someone might just need it. Perhaps he could even sink it somewhere deep in the sea, somewhere so far away no one would find it, — considering (the failure that Luffy is-) everything, Rayleigh would've been a better choice.
It didn't choose Rayleigh, though.
Luffy waits. He doesn't move even when some wild animal rustles a bunch of bushes nearby.
It stays silent.
Couldn't-protect-mine, the fruit whispers then, tilting oddly at the words, and he thinks it sounds like something between a promise and a relevantion, want-protect-his.
He blinks at the fruit.
"How?" He asks, because he's not sure what that's supposed to mean. There's a lot about fruits he doesn't understand, a lot more that no one understands, but he's fairly sure that a fruit needs something like a human to really bloom in power. It can't use itself, by itself, and Robin used a couple of weird words to describe that relationship. Sym-something, she said.
There's no way around that.
The fruit doesn't hesitate this time to reply,
Eat-me.
He blinks at it again, slower.
(Something under his skin rears its head in interest.)
"I already have a fruit," He tells it. "I can't."
The fruit bumps against his palm. It purrs, like a cat under the attention, and Luffy tilts his head as the heat seeps into his muscles like he was always half made of fire. Its Voice doesn't sound as sad anymore.
Can, it says. Allowed-it.
(Something humms in his chest. Amusement rolls from it in waves, cymballic hiss with every beat of his heart. It almost feels like a laugh.
Can, it says. I allow it.)
He looks at it for a long, long moment. His eyes are blank, he thinks, as Nami once told him how he changes when there's a serious choice. She said his eyes are round and kind of dumb normally, like he doesn't at all think, but in those rare moments they grow blank — a startling kind of blank. A scary kind of blank. The blank that's almost sharp. The blank that is silence, the silence that is a warning, and the warning that is the only thing before a raging storm hits.
He looks at the fruit with a blank-silent-warning look, and then picks it up to his face.
"If I die," Luffy starts, bringing the fruit closer to his mouth, to his lips, to his teeth-
"It's your fault."
-and bites.
(It tastes just as bad as he remembers. It tastes like rot and tar and foul things mixed in a dumpster. It tastes like fire and ash and burning corpses. It takes like that one time he stole Shanks' beer.
It's revolting.)
(The Something in him welcomes the heat like a long lost friend.)