Chapter Text
"Tell me about them, then," Beckman says one day, out of the blue. Cuts through the silence with his words, and startles Shanks enough that he has to snap his head up from the rope in his hands, brows furrowed. Beckman's busy too, cleaning his gun - scrubbing, Shanks will learn as time goes by, the bore, but when he's seventeen he doesn't know much about guns - but he glances over and raises an eyebrow.
"What are you talking about?"
"Well," Beckman says. "I know what someone looks like when they're distracted. Thoughts off somewhere else. Are you a little heartbreaker, captain? Is that it? Thinking about all your faraway paramours, after all those adventures you say you've had?"
Sometimes Shanks gets a little annoyed at the man's continued disbelief at the few stories he's shared about his past growing up on pirate ships; other times, he figures that it makes sense. He can't say for certain that he'd believe someone saying half the things he comes out with, especially when he's never actually said his old captain's name, or that of the man whose ship he'd lived on after that. He doesn't plan to, anyway, not anytime soon. He's entitled to some secrets.
But here Beckman is, asking who he's thinking about. It would be so easy to lie, to say he was thinking about a sibling, or something, or his old captain, but it would be a lie. Tragically, irritatingly, Beckman's managed to land closer to the truth right off the bat than he likely intended or expected to.
"It's not like that," Shanks says. Tugs the rope a little harder, ignores the sting of the friction against his cracking palms. "I've not - what did you call me, a heartbreaker? Don't be stupid."
A laugh. "Well, it was just a guess. I'm only making conversation. But you are thinking about someone, then?"
"Yeah, I guess so." Not that he's entirely sure how to categorise what the two of them are, or what they've ever been. Not that he wants to say a name, in case of recognition, in case Beckman's easy amusement turns into something colder, mocking. "Just someone I've known for a long time. I was just wondering... how he is, I guess."
"Not heard from him since?"
"Ha. No, he doesn't know - it's not like he knows where to reach me."
He’s lifted his eyes from the rope in his hands, settled them on the endless expanse of blue all around them. It laps against the side of the boat. It’s a dark shade against the clear blue sky. Shanks sighs, slightly, and lets himself fall so that he’s lying on his back and staring up at the few clouds that float by.
“Ah,” Beckman says. “Rough, isn’t it?”
“Something tells me you wouldn’t get it,” Shanks frowns. Glances over, catches the end of Beckman’s shrug.
“I can’t say that I would,” he says, going back to the gun, practiced hands working like it’s second nature to him. Shanks has seen him shoot. Beckman uses it like it’s nothing but an extension of himself, and it is fascinating. “Still, you deserved to know you were being obvious about it. Captains aren’t supposed to let their crew know everything they’re feeling, after all.”
“How do you know?”
“I’ve met pirates before. Most of ‘em are rough little shits who wouldn’t know how to… what’s the word - emote. How to emote if their life depended on it.”
“My captain always had a lot of feelings.”
“Sure,” Beckman says. “Not about his teenage crush, though, I’d wager.”
“It’s not a crush. He’s just… smart. He’s real smart. And he’s cool, and really nice - well, sometimes. Sometimes he’s a dick.”
Beckman hums. Shanks feels his cheeks burning. He doesn’t finish his thought with and he’s really hot like he initially wanted to, because the amusement Beckman isn’t bothering to hide is mortifying enough already. He sits up, face probably almost as red as his hair, ears burning - gets to his feet, brushes his hands off on his trousers, and sets off to go below deck. Their ship is small, the bunks cramped, but there’s only three of them; himself, Beckman, and Lucky Roux, the most recent addition, more comfortable in the tiny little galley than he is out under the sun with two relative strangers.
“You aren’t even going to tell me his name?”
His voice has the same teasing lilt to it that Rayleigh’s always did when he was making fun of him for the same thing. Shanks huffs, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at Beckman. His first mate seems unimpressed and unmoved.
Shanks thinks of laughing faces, blue filling up photographs; thinks of warm hands and rolling eyes, a name that’ll become as famous as Gol D. Roger or Edward Newgate, someday.
“No,” he says, and, “not right now, at least. Maybe someday. Or maybe you should just try and guess, ‘cause I bet you’ll never get it right.”
A hum, and Shanks huffs, fleeing down to see Lucky Roux, and see how he’s adjusting to life at sea.
The thing about feelings, Shanks has found, is that sometimes they don’t go away. Sometimes the advice gleaned from overheard conversations and placid condolences is worthless, because just getting over someone seems like an impossible task.
He is twenty years old, with a baby asleep on his chest after his hitching and faltering lullaby has finally calmed her enough to rest, and his mind still wanders back to a man he’d known as a child, face replaced with the one now printed on his bounty posters. He has one hand in Uta’s short, soft hair, and the other holding the stack of new bounty posters, although the one that holds the most interest is the one he’s left at the top.
He looks happy, is what Shanks thinks. There’s a grin on Marco’s face and a flash of blue flame behind him - his arm, Shanks assumes, or his hand, remembering how his flesh could so easily melt into that fire. He’s grinning, and it reaches his eyes in a way that speaks to it being unconscious glee, rather than anything staged.
Uta makes a little noise into his chest. He moves his hand to her back to trace circles there, feeling her breathing steady out once more.
It’s not that Shanks has never seen Marco happy before. He has, plenty of times - it’s just that his face whenever he turns to look at Shanks is always more irritated than anything else. He’d been a teenager too old to look after a younger kid, so he’d argued every time he’d been told to look after Shanks, and later Buggy. He’d been too old to look after the babies; and, sure, Shanks probably hadn’t helped that irritation by trying to follow him around all the damn time, but he really shouldn’t be blamed for that.
Shanks sighs. He hears a badly-muffled snort from nearby, glancing up to see Building Snake hiding their grin behind a book.
“All these longing sighs,” they say. “Has our little captain got himself fancying someone famous?”
“Famous?”
“Can you read?” Snake’s put the book down in their lap now, leaning forward in their seat. “Look at that bounty, Shanks. Only famous pirates get ‘em that high, and these are all Whitebeard’s.”
Snake pushes themselves out of their seat easily, taking a few quick steps over and plucking the stack of posters from Shanks's hand before they begin flicking through them, brows furrowed as they inspect each of the pictures. Shanks isn't entirely sure what they're looking for, or what they expect to see, but there's a thoughtful noise every now and then.
"Maybe they aren't all Whitebeard's," they say, "I'll give you that, but look at some of them, Shanks. I can't blame you, not with this one. They're stunning."
Shanks looks up. Snake's pointing at Izou, who looks as serious as he always does, red around his lips and a little black around his eyes. He is beautiful, Shanks thinks. Objectively, Izou is one of the most beautiful people he's ever seen, but his feelings towards him have never been anything more than a passing observation on his attractiveness.
"Yeah," Shanks says. Uta hiccups in her sleep. "Yeah, Izou's - he's pretty, yeah."
"Is pretty what you like?"
"I mean, it's not like it's a bad thing."
"Hm." Snake turns another page, focusing on another page. "This is the one you were - huh. No, okay, I can see it."
"Can you?"
"Yeah." They grin, all sharp teeth and narrow eyes behind the yellow lenses of their glasses, turning the posters back towards Shanks. Marco's is on the top again, that photo that he's begun to commit to memory - a grin, laughter in his eyes, familiar bright blue flame casting shadow across his skin - coming back into his focus. "'Marco the Phoenix'. He sounds strong. Interesting Devil Fruit, that one, isn't it?"
"Tori-tori no mi," Shanks says, almost without thinking. "Phoenix."
"You know all about him, then," Snake says. "Did you do your research, captain?"
It would be easy to tell Snake everything, then. That he'd grown up with Marco taking care of him while their captains - former, in his case - fought enough that the ground shook with it, resonance; naginata meeting sword, screeching metal on metal. Echoing metallic clashes. It would be easy to say that he'd seen Marco melting into his phoenix form when he was a child and had fallen painfully for him thanks to the flickering shadows across his face, making him seem older, stronger, scarier.
He could say that he hasn't seen Marco since he was a teenager, and yet his feelings have stayed the same the whole time. How, at Loguetown, Marco had been softer with him for the first time since he was a baby, been nice enough to rest a hand on top of his old straw hat, kept him with the few Whitebeard pirates who'd come to pay their respects. About the half-serious place he'd been offered on Whitebeard's crew, and how he'd considered it while lying awake at night for days. Longer than that, even. Months. Years. He could say that this secret he keeps close to his chest is one that he's still considering even now.
But he doesn't.
Shanks says, "I guess you could say that," and leans back in his seat, pulling his hat down over his eyes. It makes it harder to see his face, and for Snake to try and read him. He's not even lying, not really. It's a half-truth - but they'd class it as close enough to a lie.
"Alright then," Snake says. Shanks hears the shuffling of pages, a sigh as they straighten up and stretch out their arms. "I'll take these below deck and put 'em somewhere the wind won't get them, alright?"
"Thanks, Snake," Shanks says.
"I'm good and reliable like that," they say, one hand resting briefly on his shoulder - kissing the top of Uta's sleeping head - before they vanish below deck to do as they said. Shanks adjusts again, holding Uta a little closer, pretending that the image of Marco isn't burned into the back of his eyelids now that they're closed.
Beck's bandages come off without any hassle, in the end, the wound healing well and into a slightly raised scar, but not so bad as it could have been. Even so, Shanks finds his eyes drawn to it again and again, almost as often as he watches Beck's hands. Because he likes Beck's hands, his long fingers, square nails, how they handle a gun like he was born to it; but the scar is a reminder that Beck did this to protect him, for his benefit.
He wishes, not for the first time, that he'd kept those lines of communication open with Whitebeard's crew. That he could have asked Marco, ever-reliable, for a favour, that Beck wouldn't have to go around with that reminder permanently on his body. Shanks can imagine it, which is the worst thing. He can imagine Marco's hands lighting up as he holds Beck's forearm between them, watching the skin knit together beneath the yellow heart of the flame.
"There's nothing wrong with a scar or two," Beck says, scratching the still-new skin. "The ladies love it, y'know. Makes you seem worldly, like you'll do anything to protect them."
Shanks doesn't know, actually, but he figures that's more of a rhetorical question than anything.
"What ladies are you showing off to, anyway?" he asks, grinning at Beck over his shoulder. "Limejuice?"
"Oh, he's not my type," Beck says. "I prefer redheads."
That leaves Shanks spluttering, glad that Roux's taken Uta to try and teach her how to make bread, or something, because he doesn't know how he'd deal with her wide eyes looking up at him and asking why he's gone all red.
Beck barks a laugh, reaching over to ruffle Shanks's hair, possible only because Shanks has left his hat hanging over the back of his seat while he studies their maps. Snake might be their navigator, but he's the one who's been to the most islands; the one who knows where would be unsafe for a child, or where they might be able to go with her and not have everyone up in arms about it.
He reaches up to swat at Beck's hand anyway, grabbing him around the wrist, tugging him a little closer. Beck, for his part, just smiles at him, although it curls up at the corners into something more like a smirk the longer Shanks stares at him.
He could make Beck back off, but he's reluctant to - Beck's never been all that bothered by his Haki in the past, and he doesn't like to go all-out with it when he doesn't have to. Besides, it isn't as though he has an issue with the close quarters. In fact, he quite likes it.
They've never really talked about whatever this thing between them is. Shanks figures it doesn't matter all that much. They just are, same as anyone else is, Beck being his closest confidant, the person he trusts with the most in life. The one he runs almost everything by before he does it.
"I'd prefer you without scars," Shanks says. Beck makes a thoughtful noise, crouching down into a squat so he can look into Shanks's face a little better.
"And I like you without scars," he says, "so if I have to get a few to keep you from getting them? That's a small price to pay, in my book."
They've been avoiding conflict more than usual, as a result of being new parents. Which, well, Shanks doesn't really remember Roger doing that, but he'd prefer to keep Uta out of danger as best he can, because she's only - five or six, he thinks, and he doesn't have many memories from that age, but he'd rather keep her as safe as he can - but sometimes it just has to happen. And this seems to be one of those times.
He recognises the guy he's fighting, actually. Which is a bad thing - a really bad thing, actually, because he remembers Marshall Teach as one of Whitebeard's, who he has been trying his hardest not to run into over time. And it's not exactly an unwarranted fight, because he isn't an ally of any kind. He doesn't have the same respect attached to his name that Roger did, and he's grown up since the last time he saw this guy. He's not a teenager anymore.
Seas, but he's glad Uta's on the ship. He's glad that he's got Beck at his back, during this. He couldn't ask for a better second in a fight, even if their styles of fighting are different; him with his sword, Beck with his rifle.
Oh, and it's an easy thing to slip back into the mindless state that fighting asks for. Muscle memory takes over, Gryphon a familiar weight in his hands as he shifts, spins the blade, catches the man's shirt as he moves just out of range. It's a little freeing to be able to let himself go in a fight like this, and he feels a grin on his face as he turns just in time to see the gleam of metal going down towards Beck's face.
Metal claws attached to the back of Teach's hand. Shanks has seen them before, although they've never been something he worried about before. But now he sees the sharpened underside of them, the cruel bend, and he knows how they'll gouge into Beck's face before they make contact with his skin.
It's the smart thing to do, he knows that. He understands, really, that he would do the same thing; taking out the first mate of a crew is always the smart move, but all he sees in the moment is red. Red rage, as he twists in place and pushes Beck behind him - as he takes his place and hooks his arm around Teach's just enough to shift his hand, so that the claws meet his skin instead. And then he sees red again, the blood that spills from the newly-opened wound, a waterfall of sticky crimson against his face.
Teach says, "oh, shit, what the fuck?"
Beck says, "what the fuck, Shanks!?"
And Shanks doesn't say anything at all, but he spits blood on the ground and grins up at Teach - ignores the metallic taste in his mouth and readies his sword again. One eye out of commission for now, sure, but he can deal with that later. Or, he would, but Teach retreats and then there's a hand on his shoulder, on his elbow, a body at his back.
"Shanks," Beck says. "Captain. He's gone, he's gone. Will you come back to the ship?"
"He's gone?"
"He's gone." Beck guides him carefully back to shore, to the ship - he leans away just long enough to yell for Hongo, before he returns to guiding Shanks to their little medbay, fumbling for a clean cloth to press against the wound. Hongo takes over as soon as he arrives, but Beck doesn't leave.
It's an interesting reversal of the position they'd been in not that long ago - Beck being sewn up and Shanks fretting off to the side - as Hongo clicks his tongue and tells Shanks he's one lucky motherfucker amid comments about how big the scars will be, how unlikely they are to fade anytime soon. It's not as though Shanks really cares. A scar is a scar. It's a little funny that he'll have a scar over his eye like Rayleigh does - did? - does, but his chuckle at that seems only to garner more concern from Hongo and Beck.
Hongo leaves him with stitches in the cuts, gauze over his eye and a bandage wrapped around his head to hold it all in place, to keep any dirt or debris from getting into the wounds. Having half of his vision missing is jarring, and is going to take a lot of getting used to; Hongo said, at least, that he's pretty sure Shanks will be able to keep his eye, which is a small reassurance. But he leaves, and then Shanks and Beck are alone.
"Why did you do that?"
Shanks looks up at Beck slowly, and forces a small smile when he meets his gaze. "Well," he says, "'cause it was going to go really bad for you if I didn't. I don't want you dead."
"I don't want you dead."
"I wasn't going to die," Shanks says. Taps the side of his head and laughs a little, even though the pain blooming all across the left side of his face. "I knew that much. I thought, maybe I'd lose an eye, sure, but that's - better that than lose my first mate. It's not like pirates can't live with one eye. Or, uh, with slightly injured eyes, as the case may be."
Beck exhales, shaky, and reaches out. Shanks's hair falls between his fingers as he slides his hand into place at the back of his head, leaning in, pressing their foreheads together. It's easy enough to match his breathing, it's easy to fall into a perfect, equal rhythm with him.
"I can't see you hurt," Beck says. "Seas, Shanks, I can't see you hurt. I don't want to think about you injured, I don't - I can't do that. Do you know how scared I was? Do you know how it made me feel to see him cut you?"
"You were going to die," Shanks says. "It was the easiest choice I've ever made, to push you out of the way."
He briefly considers leaving her behind on Elegia, but Shanks looks down at Uta's face - slack with sleep, hair matted with sweat, tangled, kept out of her face where he's brushed the longer side of her fringe behind her ear. Gordon had said he'd take care of her, and Beck had raised his eyebrows in a silent question.
Shanks shakes his head. "No," he says. "No, I have an idea. I know where we can take her, that'll be good for her."
Beck trusts him, so he doesn't question it. He takes Uta into his arms and below deck as Shanks stares out at the Marines closing in on them. For the first time, Shanks wishes they had a less distinctive ship. He wishes their flag could be mistaken for someone else's; but he tells Yasopp take care of this, gets a nod in response, and follows Beck down.
On his desk, the Den-Den sleeps until he reaches for it, dialling a number he memorised long ago and hopes hasn't changed over the years. Seas, but that's a desperate prayer. He hopes, he prays.
There's a click, and the call connects.
“Hey, Pops,” he says in a rush, not having planned what he was going to say at all, no script in mind whatsoever. “I… I need a favour.”
The door to his cabin is shut tight behind them. Beck shoots him a frown from where he’s crouched beside the bed, smoothing Uta’s hair away from her forehead and combing his fingers through to try and untangle it a little, but Shanks ignores him. Listens to the faint hum of interference before a familiar laugh fills the room - one Beck must also recognise, or at least know that it means someone more powerful than the two of them put together, given the fact his eyes are wider than Shanks has ever seen.
He hadn't meant to call him 'Pops'. He's sure as hell never called him that before, but Shanks supposes playing to the man's paternal sensibilities might be a good idea. It feels a bit like a betrayal to Roger's memory, but he'd spent a year and a half on the man's ship.
“My wayward son!” Whitebeard guffaws. “You finally remembered your old man? Only to ask him for a favour and bleed him dry -“
“Pops,” Shanks says again, a pleading note edging its way into his voice. Whitebeard stops laughing almost immediately, always better at reading his sons than they’d like to admit. He can tell that whatever Shanks has called him for must be serious.
“Where are you right now?” Shanks looks over to the girl who looks so small on top of his bed, unmoving save from the rise and fall of her chest. “I could really do with seeing you in person, if that’s not… too big an ask.”
“I’m sure I can meet you somewhere,” Whitebeard says. “You want to speak to Marco? He’ll sort it all out.”
Shanks grimaces. He will, that’s true, but Marco is - he’s all sharp edges, blunt and direct with him where he’d be willing to be a little gentler with someone else. And that usually doesn't bother him. Seas, usually he even likes it, or at least is able to laugh it off, but he doesn't think he can manage it right then. Not after everything. Not when Uta's still deeply asleep, all but dead to the world.
"We're in Paradise," Shanks says quietly. "I think so, at least. More near the South, on the way back to the East."
"Is that where you've been hiding out?" Whitebeard makes a thoughtful noise. Shanks can imagine him leaning back, tapping his foot against the floor. "I'll send word after I've spoken to Marco, son. Hold tight."
"Thank you. Thank you."
Beck's still staring when the call ends. There's a lot that Shanks has to explain, suddenly; but he doesn't say a thing. Slumps over, elbows on his desk, folding his hands behind his head as he takes a few deep breaths in the humid, stuffy darkness. It does a little to help him calm down. Not much - not enough - but a little.
"Shanks," Beck says. Shanks gets the impression, suddenly, that he might be in trouble. Beck doesn't usually call him by name directly, or at least not in that tone. "Tell me that wasn't who I think it was."
"Um," Shanks says. Looks down at the table for a second and screws his face up. "I mean, I guess it depends on who you think that was."
"Can you take this seriously, for once in your life? Can you just - be serious, Shanks. Please."
He sighs. "Yeah," he says, and runs a hand through his hair, even though it falls back into his face immediately. "It's exactly who you think it was."
"I have known you," Beck says, "for ten years, and you never thought to tell me that you grew up on Whitebeard's crew?"
That's not entirely true, but - well, Shanks doesn't think this is the time for him to go into all the various intricacies of how he'd grown up. It doesn't feel like the time to mention Roger, and it sure as shit doesn't feel like it's the time for him to mention that he might have just accidentally agreed to an alliance with one of the Emperors of the Sea by calling him 'Pops'. So he doesn't, and instead just ducks his head. Averts his eyes.
"Shanks."
"I spent," Shanks says carefully, "a lot of time around Whitebeard when I was a kid, yeah."
This time, Beck says nothing. He's sitting in silence, eyes flicking between Shanks and Uta, before he lets out a long, steady sigh. Shanks winces.
"Are you mad?"
"I'm not mad," Beck says. "I'm just disappointed."
It's fair enough, Shanks supposes. Ten years or so sailing together, and he'd never told Beck anything about how he grew up. And he still hasn't, not really. It's now relevant again, the sort of thing that he's going to have to tell his crew about, but he can't bring himself to say it all right then. After he sees Whitebeard, he tells himself, he'll sit down and tell his crew - those closest to him, those he trusts the most - everything.
"You're not mad?"
He sounds so childish. Twenty-seven years old and asking if his first mate is mad at him, like he's a little kid who's dropped a plate and is trying to avoid trouble. And Beck sighs again, shaking his head.
"I - no, I am mad," he says. "I lied. I'm furious, actually, but that's not going to be a productive use of our time right now. Because you know I'm going to ask about all of this later on, don't you?"
"I'll answer any questions you have," Shanks says. Because he will. As soon as he knows Uta is safe, he'll tell Beck anything he wants to know.
They sail towards the inevitable meeting, and Shanks feels steadily more on-edge, like energy is boiling up inside him and bubbling over. He paces, watches the horizon, watches for the imposing, familiar silhouette of the ship against the sky. And when it first appears in the farthest reaches of his vision, Shanks tenses, bites down on his bottom lip hard, and tells himself once again that this is the best decision he could have made. This is the best thing to do for Uta.
Beck, even through his anger - which seems to have cooled to a simmer, at least - circles back to his side once Snake calls that there's a ship approaching. They've shared as little as possible, so as not to worry the other crew members, but the Moby Dick is a distinctive ship, and Shanks is sure that the sharper eyes among his crew have already begun to notice.
It feels so achingly familiar. For a moment Shanks is a child again, and the person at his side is Buggy, listening to Roger's booming laugh as he readies himself for a fight, despite Rayleigh's quieter chiding and insistence that Roger behave himself. For a moment he stands on the deck of the little sloop that Marco and Thatch had commandeered to take to Loguetown, Thatch's hand warm on his shoulder as the bright blue bird had taken flight to perch back on his captain's shoulder.
But back in the present, Beck rests a hand against the small of his back for a brief second, just enough for Shanks to lean back into it. It’s a little gesture, really, but Shanks is grateful for it nonetheless.
Uta’s asleep again, curled up beside Limejuice out on deck. She’s been sleeping a lot since Elegia, and Shanks isn’t sure if it’s aftereffects from everything that happened, or if it’s something in her mind, but she won’t talk about it, and Hongo’s not got a lot of practical experience with people who’ve eaten a Devil Fruit. But she’s asleep, and for now Shanks is grateful for it, because he’s spent the better part of his life telling her to be wary of oncoming ships, and now he’s about to walk onto one without a care in the world.
9
One nod at Roux to tell him that he's the one in charge - the benefits of being on the crew for longest, Shanks supposes - and he takes Beck with him to cross over onto the Moby Dick. He half-expects to be accosted immediately by some of the crew, but the deck is quiet as he steels himself and walks over to face Whitebeard himself.
He still towers over him, is the first thing Shanks thinks - which is ridiculous, because it isn't as if he was ever going to shrink. But Shanks looks up at him, ignoring the various crew members with their eyes on them, and he offers up what's almost a smile.
"It's good to see you again," Shanks says. "This is - this is my first mate, Benn Beckman."
"Are we pretending this is a social call?" Whitebeard sounds amused by it, leaning forward slightly with his elbows on his knees. "You called me 'Pops' a few days ago, have we moved past that already?"
"That," Shanks says, "was an accident."
Slip of the tongue, more like, but Whitebeard only laughs at his obvious embarrassment, leaning back as the tension breaks slightly, arms folded across his chest. It makes the air on deck a little lighter, if nothing else. Shanks still feels on-edge, but he takes a step back, Beck against his side, and bows his head for a second.
"I was serious when I said I had a favour to ask," Shanks says. "And I know it's been a while since we spoke, since I was around, but still. Thank you, for agreeing to at least hear me out. "
"Of course," Whitebeard says. "What do you need?"
He needs that prompt to start talking, really, even though Shanks is still struggling to find the words. It's a big thing he's asking for, after all. It's the sort of thing that's going to change lives in ways he doesn't think he can even begin to predict.
"Has the news about Elegia made it to the papers yet?"
"It has," Whitebeard says. "A massacre with your name attached to it."
"I told the survivor to put the blame on us," Shanks says, "but it's more complicated than that. We found a baby in a treasure chest seven years ago, and she ate a Devil Fruit when she was young. Because of that she can summon this demon, if she sings a specific song. And like I said, the Marines believe we did all of that, so they're going to be on our backs for it."
"This is a big ask, Red-Hair."
"I know. But you're the only person I know that could keep her safe."
Beck, at his side, stiffens slightly. He's known for days what Shanks was going to ask - they all have, because for as many secrets as Shanks has kept over the years, it would've been wrong of Shanks to keep this from them - and they've all agreed, even if reluctant to, that this would be best for her. Keeping her safe, away from the danger they've invited onto themselves, has to take priority. It'll be hard for her, if this works out, but it'll be better in the long run.
So he hopes, at any rate.
"I haven't taken many daughters," Whitebeard says.
"Some, though."
All he needs is a yes. He knows it's a big thing to ask for, he knows that. He's prepared for him to say no outright, but it was better to ask than not.
Whitebeard sighs, after what feels like long moments of silence, and Shanks looks up to meet his eyes again. He looks - well, Shanks can't read him very well, actually, and Marco isn't close enough for him to try and go off of his face instead.
"What's her name?" Whitebeard asks, and Shanks has to try very hard not to let the relief coursing through him at that moment cause his knees to buckle.
"Uta," he says. "Her name is Uta."