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Viper is seven when an assassination attempt gets close. Usually, whatever assassins are sent after him don't get close, fought off quietly by guards and detained.
But, as he plays with his two-year-old sister, letting her clamber all over him, a strange man slips in, unnoticed. It's a fair reaction, when he sees the man, to startle in alarm because it's not a familiar face.
It's even more fair that he cries out in fear when the man brandishes a knife. But he's kept quiet when the man grabs him by the throat.
Vivi is crying by then and the man reaches for her. He's only seven but he can tell what the man is planning the second he sets his hand on Vivi and he acts, swinging himself into the trajectory and bashing his head against the man’s arm. It does little but gets the man's attention and Vivi is left alone for now, unharmed and in one piece.
Viper kicks out, aiming for anything he can reach, but that's when the man sweeps forward with a stick and a lighter.
“You're not getting out of this one, runt,” the man says, voice low, before sparking it and tossing Viper to the ground. He lets the stick go and the lighter, catching the rug alight and leaving Vivi to cry.
That's when the door slams open and Pell comes racing in, swinging his sword while Chaka grabs Vivi and holds out his hand for Viper.
He doesn't get away in time and blacks out.
When he wakes up, there's a ringing in his ears that never quite goes away and an ugly burn scar stretching from his left eyebrow to inches from his right eye.
Viper is ten when he sneaks away from his minders and stares down the giant cube covered in writing. And all he knows is he wants to read it. But when he asks his father, the man hushes him and tells him not to ask anyone else. That it’s dangerous.
The ten-year-old just wants to learn more.
Chaka is observant, but Viper is good at avoiding any guards and he sneaks away again, with a notebook in one hand and a pencil in the other. The script is completely foreign, hurts his brain even looking at it, but he likes puzzles.
He loves puzzles.
First, he starts by copying the entire thing down, symbol by symbol, and creates a kind of alphabet, noting each unique character until he has a set.
It takes him two weeks.
The rest, the task of going over each stretch of text, every sentence, and translating it.
That takes him two years.
It really is slavers that get him. Viper may be a Prince and only fourteen, but he doesn’t stay in his castle and nor does he let it trap his nine-year-old sister, as gentle and small as she is. Vivi deserves to see her kingdom.
She deserves to be Queen far more than he deserves to be King. But he was born first, so he is prepped for the throne and she is the replacement.
Not that their father ever saw it like that. But he knows that some see her like that. As the fail-safe in case something went wrong. Nobles from other kingdoms point their fingers and laugh at Viper’s scar, at his smaller stature, at his soft-spoken voice.
He doesn’t let it get to him. Vivi and father are all he needs.
So he doesn’t expect to be grabbed off the street. They’re not alone out there, brought with Igaram and Hyota, which should be enough.
If they notice, they’re not quick enough. Viper is tied up by men with sneers on their faces. They say his face will catch a pretty penny, though not as much as the girl, as his sister. That they’ll sell the scar as unique so he’s not marked down as defective.
All Viper has is his notebook, his wits, and the kicking force of his pure willpower.
They’ve crossed into one of the Blues by that point and he barely pulls himself into a lifeboat as the ship catches alight, the angry shouts of freed slaves pouring across the ship.
He just rows away and away. He doesn’t have a compass, he doesn’t have a map.
He doesn’t even know which Blue he’s in.
But he needs to find somewhere to stay. Somewhere where he’ll be able to call home. So his father and the guards and the kingdom will come save him.
His rowboat comes across a lighthouse in the fog, attached to a floating restaurant. He wonders, idly, if it’s the result of a fear, a fear of starving and lost at sea.
He’s starving. What he lacks in berri he has in jewels, those around his throat, his ankle bracelets made of gold and diamonds, his earring, shining bright. They took his pendant, the one with the picture of mother and father and Vivi and him. But he still has his pocket watch.
He needs food. Food and a compass and information and a phone.
The host at the stand looks at him, at the golden ankle bracelet he’s offering as payment, and waves him through without a word. He must look pretty pathetic, the bruises on his neck, the bags under his eyes, hair days without a brush, hands covered in soot and ash from the small fire he set, clothes torn up and bloody, wrists burned red with rope.
His server is polite but wary, giving his attire and general state uneasy looks as he takes the order.
In his haste to get food, he forgets about the phone. If only he could get to a denden. But then the food is served and he’s digging in, starving from days of chewing at hay and scraps off plates of the slavers that dined each night.
He doesn’t even notice the old man sit right at his table, only when the food is gone. The man looks a little sad, a little tired, and he’s missing a leg. A giant hat reaches to the sky while the white uniform gives him a good idea of who he’s looking at.
“Kid,” the man’s voice is gruff. “Awful lot of food you’ve just eaten.”
Was it? He ate that on an average basis. Vivi wasn’t nearly as bad.
“I can pay,” he responds. The man grimaces and he realizes that the man must be head chef.
“I get that,” the man says, placing down the ankle bracelet that he’d given up.
“Then… what is it?”
The man just looks around. “No parents?”
He hesitates.
This is where he should ask for a denden. This is where he should try and call his family. This is where he should try and go back to being Nefetari Viper, Crown Prince and future King of Alabasta.
Instead.
“What Blue are we in?”
The man is the owner, calls himself Zeff, and has a twelve-year-old son named Sanji who cooks as well. Sanji is nice and Zeff helps him clean up in the bathroom upstairs, where the live-in staff all sleep. Sanji cooks for him as the restaurant closes down for the night and he eats plate after plate while the pair of son and father question him carefully, never too intrusive, never pushing.
He sleeps on a couch upstairs that night, and, as much as they try and refuse it, he leaves them both his ankle bracelets as payment.
The necklace will go for much more, the pocket watch is antique and if he can find the right seller he could get lots.
The earring is a final resort, if he doesn’t find a way to make money first.
He takes a few berri from Zeff, though, and pays for a trip further East, away from the Grandline. Ending up on the Organ Islands, he steps off the ship on the docks of Orange Town, skimming around the town for somewhere to sell his things. It’s not a very wealthy town but a man who looks almost like a poodle who seems to be the mayor tells him that there are traders that come by every so often and might want to buy for him.
The two town doctors are married, he finds. And they take him in, letting him crash on their couch.
He’s fourteen, they say. He’s just a child. He shouldn’t have to fend for himself, they say. They ask his name and he’s lost for words.
He’s not Viper anymore.
He wants to write a novel, he finds. He learns from his new caregivers how to bandage and perform basic first aid. How to prepare simple remedies, how to heal, how to comfort those that are sick, those that are dying.
He wants to write an adventure novel, just like Brag Men, a book May, one of his caregivers, lends him. He reads it from cover to back over and over again, only switching out his reading material for his journal every so often.
He’d love another poneglyph to stare at. But they’re all on the Grandline.
He’s eighteen when he sets sail from Orange Town. He’s eighteen when he says goodbye to May and Simon and Boodle and Chouchou. He sails in a small boat, barely big enough to fit him. He has some money left, but none of his jewels save for his earring, and the last thing he buys is a mask to cover the top half of his face. To cover the scar.
If he’s going to make it to the Grandline, he’s going to have to hide. The scar is too well known, stands out too much. It’s as his tiny boat floats in the middle of the deep blue that he cries.
He cries as he wonders if Vivi is a bratty teen, for all the handful of months she’s been one. Or if she’s just as composed as she was at nine. He wonders if she cried for him. He wonders if his father is looking for him.
She’ll be a good Queen.
His boat capsizes and he washes up on an island he’s only learned about in books. Sixis Island.
His things are safe but his boat is gone and the island seems devoid of food.
And then he meets a teenager with dark hair and cheeks splattered with freckles, and with the biggest smile he’s ever seen.
Deuce stands because there’s not much else he feels like doing, while they sail. It’s a small group of them that have split off from the rest of the Spade Pirates, just him, Ace, Kotatsu, and Saber. The four of them have finally travelled to Alabasta.
He’s twenty-one, it's been seven years since he’d left, and he’s now finally stepping onto the docks of Nanohana, Ace at his back and Saber anchoring the small tender they’d picked to take after departing from the Piece of Spadille. The warm air hits his face and he takes a deep breath, fully aware of the mask on his face.
He slides it off and Ace gives him an idle grin as they walk through Nanohana, making for further inland so they can follow the trail to Alubarna. It’s clear, even in walking through, the damage that Crocodile left only months ago.
Deuce doesn’t even know if he wants to be recognised at this point, but there’s no one calling out so he just keeps himself close to Ace and his captain gives him a reassuring grin in response. To Alubarna, he says.
Cobra adores his children. He loves his country, yes. But his children are dear to him, so dear. The last remnants of his late wife Titi, the future of Alabasta. And, his children.
Which is why his heart aches when he thinks of the destruction of the Tomb of the Kings, where he’d left a memorial for his son, for the future king meant to be, Viper. Now, though, he’ll be unable to ever visit it again. Vivi had said her piece on it. She’d been strong, and said that she’d find another way to mourn, another place. She set up a memorial in one of the few gardens the castle keeps.
It’s not like Cobra had given up his search immediately. The moment Igaram had come rushing back, Vivi’s hand gripped tight in his own, stating that Viper had been taken and that Hyota had gone looking for the perpetrator, he’d declared that he’d do anything to have his son returned to his side. He’d sent Pell and Chaka after Hyota, keeping Vivi close and Igaram standing by to defend them.
The royal guards had gotten in touch with the marines and demanded help. And they certainly did, citing a ship of slavers crossing into the East Blue before catching alight and sinking into the ocean. He remembers Hyota confirming the identity of one of the slavers being the same as the one that he’d caught a glimpse of, hand fisted around Viper’s shirt.
It made Cobra fall to his knees. It made Vivi burst into tears and cling to Igaram and it made royal guards in the room clenching their fists in anger and frustration.
Viper had been a good child, a kind child, who’d eaten with the appetite of a D and had been curious since he’d been born. Idly, he thinks back to his son asking about the poneglyph and his harshness in response, making an attempt to discourage his pursuit.
Still, he can never be quite sure that Viper never went there again.
He would give anything to see his son’s soft brown eyes again, his thoughtful smile, and hear his enthusiastic laugh again.
His thoughts are broken by the call of ‘Your Majesty’ as a guard slams the door to his study open, panting.
“Your majesty,” the guard, a younger man and certainly new, bows deep before shaking himself out and standing to attention. “There is a pirate here, demanding your attention. We would have turned him away but he bears the mark of the Whitebeard Pirates and that of the Red-Haired Pirates. Plus… he has a tattoo of the Straw Hats.”
Now that’s strange.
“His name?”
“Portgas D. Ace, your majesty,” the guard states and Cobra hides his brief gasp with a hum. Another D setting foot in Alabasta after only a few months, bearing the symbols of three pirate crews, one being the Straw Hats?
The guard then bites his lip, looking nervous.
“Your majesty…”
Cobra narrows his eyes.
“He says that he has information about your late son, Prince Viper.”
He’s out the door before he realises. It’s not long before both Pell and Igaram have joined him, caught up to speed as the guard runs along to allow their new guests in.
The leader of the crew in front of him has dark hair and a splatter of freckles across his face. He’s got a grin on his face that gives away his heritage, a special kind reserved for those with the D name. Most, like his family, hide it beneath softer smiles, but Portgas in front of him wears it with pride.
His crew members are two other men and a lynx, the cat lazily pattering against the captain’s side.
He can see one clearly, brown hair and a white cowboy hat, beard and moustache scruffy but short. He looks older than the other two but follows without interference. The other has startlingly blue hair and is half hidden behind his captain, none of his face even visible.
“Your majesty,” Portgas says, grin slipping into a knowing smirk. “It is an honour to be in your presence.”
“You have nerve,” he responds carefully. “What is your connection to the Straw Hats?”
“Luffy? He’s my little brother,” Portgas replies. “I heard he helped you guys out.”
“He did,” Cobra says, calm. Straw Hat’s older brother, huh? He can see the similarities in mannerisms. They’re not exactly identical, but he could be persuaded to agree if he got a better look at the pair side by side. “And your offer. What information would you have about my son that I don’t already have?” He’s a little harsher on this. Pell has his hand on his sword while Igaram is silent.
Portgas tilts his head slightly. “Oh? I think I do,” he says and steps aside, fully revealing his other crew mate, the blue-haired one.
Gentle brown eyes catch his and then all Cobra can do is stare at the scar, healed and slowly softening with time, running from his left eyebrow, over his nose, and down to just under his eye. It was always lucky that Viper never lost his vision when he got that scar.
And it’s his son’s face looking at him, nervously chewing at his lips, eyes quickly darting away to look anywhere but at Cobra.
He’s barely able to get the words out. A scar like that is not easy to fake, and neither are the same brown eyes that Vivi has, that he sees all the time.
He hears the second his guards, both regular and the pair of Igaram and Pell beside him, notice.
Pell has let go of his sword to stare, instead, in shock, while Igaram is rubbing his eyes like he’s certain he’s seeing things.
Cobra can barely put one foot in front of the other.
“Viper?”
The blue-haired young man flinches before taking in a gasp of air and squeezing his eyes shut in an attempt to stop tears as his bottom lip wavers.
“I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long Dad.”
It’s enough. It’s enough to rush forward and crush his son in his arms, Viper shaking the whole time. Nothing else exists except them. Cobra can’t fathom how this isn’t a dream. How he’s actually holding his son in his arms.
But he couldn’t be happier.