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The winter season on Kuraigana only lasts a few weeks at most, but it leaves the castle feeling drafty and cold, and the grounds outside are blanketed in snow. Alber only feels the chill now because he’s just come up from bathing in the hot springs, the only place comfortably equipped to handle his stature.
He’s fortunate that the high ceilings here give him plenty of room, too, and the east wing was certainly built with having giants as guests in mind. The rest of the furniture here is too small for him, and despite the grandeur of the doorways, he still has to stoop through them. Kuraigana castle is no Onigashima, for better or for worse. He’s just grateful to have landed somewhere relatively hospitable.
His skin is still warm from the bath as he ambles down the long hallways, though his scalp prickles from the chill. His hair is still wet, tied up so it’s off his face and neck. He’ll style it later, when it’s dry, or maybe in the morning. Right now it’s late, past three in the morning according to the massive ticking clock he’s just passed. He’s aware other people live here, sometimes. It’s usually just Hawkeyes, but Alber still keeps odd hours to avoid running into anyone. After decades of enduring the raucous partying and fighting amongst the Beast Pirates, the silence of the castle is a certain kind of bliss, melancholy or not.
Feeling like a late night snack might be worth it before turning in, he heads for the kitchen. Despite the hour, he soon finds he’s not the only one awake. Light seeps out from under the closed kitchen door, and he smells something earthy and sweet. Hawkeyes, so far as he knows, tends to keep fairly consistent hours. He can’t imagine what’s got him cooking this late at night, but it smells good.
It’s not Hawkeyes in the kitchen, which he doesn’t realize until he’s opened the door and ducked under the threshold. There’s a young woman at the stove, bent over a bubbling pot, and three ghosts hover above her. All of them stop and stare at him.
He’s seen the ghosts around: Hawkeyes warned him about them when he’d arrived here. Alber had assumed they were just a byproduct of the castle, though, and not the result of a Devil Fruit.
The young woman is wearing black silk pajamas, and her bright pink hair is tied up tight in a bun on top of her head. Hawkeyes, aptly nicknamed, has the kind of stare that could pin an insect and pierce any armor. This woman has eyes whose pupils are fathomless pools, vast and unsettling and apt to drown the witless. As soon as she blinks, though, the spell passes and her expression changes.
She frowns, squinting at him like she’s about to accuse him of something, and then she says: “I’m making hot chocolate. Do you want some?”
***
Her name is Perona, and he recalls somewhat dimly that she was part of Gecko Moria’s crew. Given how young she is, she likely joined him well after Kaido stopped considering Moria a threat. As far he knows, the former Warlord had gone back to Paradise, and stayed there. That half explains Perona’s presence, but he has no idea what’s brought her to Kuraigana, or why she’s making hot chocolate in Hawkeyes’ kitchen at three in the morning.
None of this stops him from accepting her offer.
They’ve relocated to the study, which is rather cozy after he ignites the fire with the snap of his fingers. Perona regards this with equal parts suspicion and gratitude. Aside from the hot chocolate, she’s also filled a plate with toasted bagels. Her hot chocolate recipe had been quadrupled for his sake, but the bagels are tiny. The whole plate would barely equate to a snack for him. He appreciates the gesture nonetheless.
And since accepting her offer, he’s learned she’s as bossy as she is talkative.
She tells him about the cocoa trees Hawkeyes planted a few years back, how she harvests and roasts and grinds the beans herself. She asks him what spices he likes, if he prefers jam or cheese for his bagels, and then instructs him on how to fill the serving tray.
Instructs is probably too kind a word. She is unfathomably bossy. He cannot comprehend how someone like Mihawk would tolerate her presence for even a moment. She’s nearly a quarter his size, and she talks to him like he’s nothing more than a servant. Her ghosts just watch them, drifting about uselessly. He can’t figure out if it makes him angry or not; he would have never tolerated this from anyone back on Onigashima.
For now he holds his tongue – not that he’d get a word in edgewise. She doesn’t stop talking all the way from the kitchen and down into the study. He sits on the floor near the fire, while she makes herself comfortable in the love seat.
“Never let Hawkeyes make hot chocolate, by the way,” she’s saying. “He’s a good cook otherwise, it’s just… eugh.”
She sticks her tongue out, and the ghosts copy her. They follow her around everywhere, it seems, often copying her mannerisms and mood. She’s loud and immature, but not quite like what he’d dealt with among the Beast Pirates.
Still, he remembers why he’s even here, and lifts the mug of hot cocoa to take a sip. It’s…. surprisingly good. The flavor is earthy, both bitter and sweet with a hint of spiced heat that he appreciates. The texture is smooth with just enough grit from the ground cocoa to be pleasant. She’s watching him closely as he lowers the mug, waiting for his reaction.
“It’s good,” he says. “Unique.”
She eyes him suspiciously. “Unique is what you say when you don’t want to tell someone you don’t like it.”
“No,” Alber says. “I mean it. I don’t think I’ve ever had this before.”
Perona looks surprised, then placated, and then smug. All of this plays out on the face of the ghost closest to her. The other two have begun to wander, floating towards the window or the ceiling. Apparently satisfied, at least, she tucks her legs under her and drinks from her own mug.
She also seems to have exhausted her rambling, or maybe she just prefers silence to enjoy her cocoa. It’s comfortable enough, he supposes.
By the time he’s drunk half his cocoa, he sets the mug down and reaches up to let his hair down. It’ll dry faster by the fire, but the drawback is that he has to use his fingers to try and work out the tangles. Perona watches him with an expression he can’t quite place. Envy, he thinks.
“Don’t you usually wear your hair in a braid?” She asks, and Alber pauses, fingers caught in his hair. They’ve only just met, and his face was never widely circulated even after Wano’s liberation and all that followed. He looks at her ghosts, but before he can accuse her of anything, she says: “I’m not spying on you! You’re hard to miss, anyways.”
So the ghosts aren’t completely useless. He’s never seen them in his room or down in the hot springs, at least, so there must be some ground rules in place.
“Not a full braid,” he eventually says, tone guarded.
Perona nods like this is new information, even though they’ve just established that it definitely is not. Still, he’s not prepared for what she says next: “Let me braid it for you!”
“No,” he says, without hesitation or thought. It’s just simply out of the question.
Perona frowns, crossing her arms and pursing her lips in a pout. If this is supposed to sway him, she doesn’t know what she’s up against. “I made you hot chocolate!”
“You offered it,” Alber says. “You don’t get to exact a price after the fact.”
“Ugh, come on! I’ll let you braid my hair in exchange!”
For reasons he’ll never be able to explain, this makes him pause. He spent his entire adulthood with a considerable barrier between him and literally everyone in the world in order to protect himself. Physical touch is something that happens when trading blows in a fight, and certainly isn’t about braiding hair. It’s unfathomable, letting someone else handle something so deeply personal.
He looks at her hair, which is still bundled up on top of her head, and thinks of the logistics. His hand is big enough to engulf her entire head, and then some. What could he even possibly offer?
Alber is quiet for too long. As if deciding she’s got him, Perona says: “I put in a hair mask after showering, so it needs to set a little while longer before I can style it. Which means we can do yours first.”
He is not agreeing to this. Not in a thousand years, not under pain of death. He doesn’t even know what hair mask means. He should thank her for the hot chocolate and leave, and consider this time well wasted. Then he’ll go back to his own room and braid his hair the same way he’s braiding it for over forty years.
None of this comes to pass when he hears himself say: “Fine.”
“Yes!” Perona leaps into the air, and stays there, hovering over the loveseat. “Okay, I need to grab some stuff first. Don’t even think of trying to back out now, I’ll find you!”
This is more of a threat than he expects. She zips through the air and phases through the closed door, ghosts spiraling along beside her. He really does consider taking the chance to retreat, but he also suspects there will be no escaping. He wonders what the hell she has on Mihawk to allow her such free reign of his castle.
In the time she’s gone, Alber finishes the rest of the hot chocolate and puts his back to the fireplace, letting his wings absorb the heat. When Perona returns, she’s back on her feet, shouldering the door open to haul in a bag of what he assumes is hair supplies. He pulls his wings back in, and the motion catches her eye, though her gaze lingers on his ruined right wing long enough to irritate him.
“Don’t push your luck,” he warns. She glares at him, but dumps her bag on the coffee table hard enough to spill the contents.
Despite the fact that she can levitate, they wind up rearranging some of the furniture for her to stand on so she can work comfortably. As for the flame on his back: “It will only burn if I want it to.”
He lets it simmer low, but extinguishing it completely, even for her sake, is out of the question. Alber has enough control over his own flame that when she waves her hand through it, it’s a mild heat, no different than if she were to warm her hand in front of the fireplace. This is enough for Perona, who sets to work immediately.
She starts at his ends, grabbing fistfuls and working her comb through the strands from the bottom up to avoid snarls and tangles.
He has a lot of hair, even with part of his head shaved, but she seems in no hurry to move on from combing. As she works, she talks. She talks about Thriller Bark and Moria, about the Straw Hats and Kuma. She talks about how she got here, and the two years spent with Mihawk and Roronoa Zoro. She complains about Moria, about Mihawk, about Roronoa, and about anyone she’s ever met in her entire life, it seems. She complains about this castle while also somehow sounding like she loves it here.
“He made us learn to sail his stupid boat, too,” she’s saying, not having once paused in combing out his hair. His scalp feels tingly by now, but his shoulders have slumped, and he’s caught himself closing his eyes a few times. “I bet he’d make you, too, if you wouldn’t sink it the second you stepped on board.”
She laughs at her own joke, and the ghosts titter with her.
After what feels like hours, she sets aside the brush. His hair isn’t completely dry, instead just damp enough to make it easier to style. While she steps down from her perch to sort through her supplies, Alber reaches up to run his fingers through his hair. It doesn’t curl, but falls in waves when he lets it air dry. Otherwise, it was usually trapped and as sweaty as the rest of him under a leather mask. It’s surprisingly silky to the touch now, and he thinks his hair hasn’t had this kind of attention since –
Well. He doesn’t care to think about it. Another time, another life.
When Perona takes her place at his back again, it's with hair ties hanging off her wrist, clips pinned to her pajama top, and pins between her teeth. He wonders what kind of braid requires all of that. He also expects her to start doing what she threatened him with in the first place, but instead she keeps running her hands through his hair, flipping it from one side to the other and muttering to herself.
“What are you doing?” he asks, impatient.
“Debating what to do,” Perona muses, pulling his hair back from where it had fallen over his face. “I mean, there are a lot of options.”
“You said you wanted to braid it,” Alber says. “So braid it.”
“Don’t be in such a hurry!” She scolds. “This is a process. Now keep your chin up. Don’t slouch.”
Alber sighs, but ultimately complies. One good blast from his flame would dissuade her and free them both from this, but he holds back. He’s made it this far, after all.
Perona seems to make a decision after a few more minutes of dilberating. She tilts his head to the side, letting his hair spill to the right, where it normally sets. She starts at his hairline, along the edge above where it’s shaved, and she starts braiding.
She starts talking again, too. He isn’t sure if she’s just sparing him from conversing, or if she’s really just that self centered. He’s inclined to think it’s more the latter than the former. She wanders between topics, same as before, and eventually lands on the subject of her old captain again.
“Moria complained all the time about your captain, you know,” she says, which gets his attention. He’s not keen on talking about Kaido much these days, but he supposes it can’t always be avoided. “That if not for him, he would have stayed in the New World. It was one stupid fight and he never shut up about it! Ugh, it was so annoying.”
“I was there,” Alber says without thinking. He does remember that fight, too, because Moria’s zombies had been a pain in the ass to put down. They were as susceptible to his fire as anything else, though. Kaido handled Moria himself.
“What?!” Perona drops his hair and braces her hands on his shoulder, leaning over to see his face. “Really? Moria was in his prime back then, I wish I could have seen it!”
“I was Kaido’s second from the very beginning,” he says, frowning. Back then. Had it really been that long ago, or is she just that young? “It was a fairly short fight. Moria didn’t belong in the New World, and we made sure he knew th - ach.”
Alber winces as Perona yanks a fistful of his hair. “Don’t speak ill of Moria! How could you? After I’ve been so kind to you!”
As if she hasn’t complained about Moria several times already, and now she’s trying to exact some sort of transactional cost out of this activity again? He offers no apology, nor does she seem to expect one.
“Well,” she says with a sniff. She smooths her hands through his hair again, and picks up where she left off braiding. It’s pulled tight, close to the scalp, and she’s halfway down the back of his head by now. “If you hadn’t chased him out, he would have never found me, so. It’s alright, I guess.”
“Hm,” is all Alber says in response. It’s the closest he’ll get to an olive branch, but he’s never been above being petty. Perona is much nicer company than Queen, though, and if Mihawk allows her here, he needs to respect that, too.
“Hawkeyes told me to be nice to you if I ever ran into you,” she says, immediately undoing whatever goodwill had been extended just a moment ago.
“I’m not a charity case,” Alber snaps, too heated than necessary. In the months he’s been here, he’s happy to have been left alone save for the sparse company of Hawkeyes himself. Finding out his host is telling people to be nice to him feels more than a little insulting.
“You do need a better conditioner, though,” she says, matter-of-fact. “Are you just using whatever Hawkeyes left for you? He gets cheap stuff for the guest rooms, which is horrifying. You should see what he spends on his hair products, and he has the gall to tell me I’m too picky! Anyway, I’ll bring you the good stuff, then your hair won’t tangle so much…”
They’re back where they started, then, as Perona resumes talking without asking his input, or letting him interject, which might be for the best. The braiding process is a lot less relaxing than the brushing, unfortunately. She pokes and prods and pulls hard enough to make even him grunt in protest every now and then.
“Grow up,” she snaps back at him, then keeps talking about whatever it was she was talking about.
She takes breaks to stretch her arms and flex her fingers, but every time he thinks she’s done, she tuts at him and dives right back in. His hair is thick, and she works in sections, using the clips or making him tilt his head this way and that to keep the excess out of the way. It’s long since become obvious this is more than just a simple, single braid. There are enough pins digging into his scalp now he knows it’s futile to try and stop whatever is happening.
“There,” she announces, and Alber opens his eyes, not even realizing he’s closed them. He’d been watching the snow fall outside, though the windows are dark and frosted with ice. The clock above the mantle ticks steadily, but he doesn’t know what time it is.
She dusts her hands off and motions him over to the gaudy, ostentatious mirror that fills one corner of the study. A massive crack runs down the middle of it, and it leans against the wall at an angle that suggests it fell there, and was never moved. It’s tall enough that he only needs to sit in front of it to see himself fully.
Even on good days, he has a lot of complicated emotions about his own reflection. When he sees himself now, he isn’t certain what to think at all. Perona stands next to him, triumphant.
“Well?”
“It’s…” He has no idea what to say. He’s never seen anything like it. The first braid that divides his hair and his shaved head is narrow, but the rest of them are looser, knotted and somehow intricate. The last braid starts at his right temple and disappears into where the rest of his hair flows loose, all of it falling over his shoulder.
Alber swallows and his sinuses burn. He can’t deny that she’s done incredible work, a style that compliments his face and jawline. He looks good. Some part of him also feels betrayed by this thought. It’s a painful admission to himself, but he’d never changed his hair because that was how his mother had styled it the day he’d lost her. The day he’d lost everyone and everything else.
He should have never let a stranger style his hair. He also thinks he should have let it happen sooner.
He’s quiet too long again, apparently, as Perona says hotly: “If you say unique I’m going to cut it all off!”
Alber snorts. She’s bolder than she has any right to be. “No, not unique. It’s incredible. Thank you.”
Her anger deflates, and is quickly replaced by that smug triumph again. “Well, it’s my turn, then! But first I have to wash the mask out of my hair, so stay put.”
She doesn’t threaten him like last time, for all the good it might do. He’s also not surprised she leaves, because it only makes sense she has to wash her hair. Part of him thinks she’s giving him space to deal with whatever he’s going through over his hair. He’s probably imagining that, because the thought of someone taking his feelings into consideration is absurd. Especially when he has expressed none.
Still, the whole time she’s gone, he just sits in front of the mirror and wonders who the hell is staring back at him.
When Perona returns, her hair is loose, and Alber is a little taken aback by its sheer volume. It’s more than enough for him to work with, even with his comparatively enormous hands.
They have to rearrange the furniture again, setting a footstool on top of the coffee table so he can sit behind her, but it works. He takes care to comb her hair as thoroughly as she did his, and finds it’s just as relaxing on this side of it, too.
“I never got to do anyone’s hair on Thriller Bark,” she’s saying, because of course she hasn’t run out of things to talk about. He just lets her. “Zombies don’t have a lot of hair, and even if they do, eventually it just starts falling off with the skin…”
It’s dawn by the time they’re just about done, the sky outside gray as the sun rises behind heavy snow clouds. This is how Mihawk finds them, anyways, with Alber hunched over Perona as he’s weaving the last ends of her braid. It’s nothing like what she did for him, but he’s always put functionality over flair for this sort of thing.
Mihawk walks into the study with a cup of tea and the morning paper tucked under one arm, looking like he’s just woken up even with his usual severe expression. He draws up short when he realizes the study is occupied, and the sight of them seems to wake him fully very abruptly.
“Now I see why the kitchen is a mess,” he says after a beat.
“Oh my god.” Perona sighs dramatically. “I’ll clean it up when I’m done! I haven’t forgotten your stupid rules.”
“You haven’t?” Mihawk arcs one brow, looking between Alber and Perona. “I’m certain there’s also one about harassing guests, yet here I find you.”
“I’m a guest, too!” Perona protests.
“Don’t start with that again,” Mihawk grumbles. He surveys the rearranged furniture, but sits in his usual spot by the fire nonetheless. It takes him a moment to realize the side table is out of reach, so there’s nowhere to put his teacup. Somehow, his expression grows thornier.
“And anyways,” Perona continues, pointing over her shoulder at Alber. “Where have you been keeping him, the basement? What a shame, hiding him away.”
“Alber is free to come and go as he pleases,” Mihawk says, scanning the front page as he sips his tea.
Alber ties off the end of Perona’s braid and watches this exchange play out with morbid fascination. Neither of them are taking each other’s bait, but Perona changes the subject, which is as close to a concession as one can get.
“How’d you two meet, anyway?” Perona asks. She’d spent the entire night talking about herself, so it’s no surprise she wouldn’t know this.
“We crossed swords a few times,” Mihawk replies.
Perona lets out a dramatic gasp, hand flying to her mouth. “I’m telling Shanks!”
Alber awkwardly clears his throat, and Mihawk scowls. “That was not a euphemism.”
Perona keeps a straight face, but her ghosts giggle and twirl over Mihawk’s head. “Did I say it was?”
Mihawk chooses to ignore this, and looks straight at Alber. “I would be careful, if I were you, or you’ll be playing dress up next.”
Perona seems liable to blow after a comment like that, so Alber is quick to cut in: “It’s alright. She did fine work.”
“Oh!” Perona’s expression brightens, hands flying up to her own hair and she lifts up off the stool and flies over to the mirror to inspect her reflection. She flips the braid over her shoulder, tilting her head and pursing her lips. “Well, it’s a good start.”
“A start?” Alber’s brows rise to his hairline. She cannot be serious.
“No offense,” she says, with no conviction whatsoever.
“The kitchen,” Mihawk cuts in, as Alber’s long dormant flame starts to rekindle, wings twitching in annoyance. “If you please.”
“Fine,” Perona huffs, gathering her supplies. She sticks her tongue out at Mihawk as she leaves. Alber notices she’s left behind their empty tray and mugs, so he rises to collect them, and then pushes the furniture back where it all belongs. Once the side table is next to Mihawk’s chair again, he wordlessly sets his teacup down on it, flipping to the next page of the paper.
The study is silent. Alber looks out the window, where snow falls slowly and steadily, and stifles a yawn. He hadn’t planned on being up all night. Now that Hawkeyes is here, he considers asking him why he’d told Perona how to act around him, and then decides against it. Whatever she’d been told, she’d clearly done what she wanted, anyways. She’d also given him half her life story over the course of the night. What’s missing is Mihawk’s side of the story.
Another time, he decides. Hawkeyes is particular about his morning routine, after all.
Alber stands to leave, pausing by the mirror and bending at an angle to get one last look at what’s become of his hair. Before he makes it through the door, Mihawk speaks up: “It suits you.”
Alber hesitates, looking back at him. Mihawk doesn’t take his eyes off the paper, so Alber just nods, and then leaves.
There aren’t any mirrors on the walk back to his room in the east wing, so Alber finds himself touching the braids instead, running his fingers through the strands that are still loose. There’s nothing wrong with doing something new, he thinks. Not really. He just has to wonder if this is a betrayal of some tradition of his tribe. Aside from his tattoo, his hairstyle has been the last physical proof of their existence. The memories grow thinner with each passing year. He has nothing else.
But there’s an easy fix: he can simply pull out Perona’s braids and redo his hair himself. Nothing gained, nothing lost.
There is a difference, though, between dishonoring the past and knowing when and how to move on. The truth is that he’ll never know the significance of his tattoo or how his hair was braided as a child. Maybe there’s more out there somewhere about his people; maybe it’s sitting in an old book in the old library in this old castle. What matters now, really, is what it means to him, and what he does with it going forward.
Ultimately, he decides to leave Perona’s work untouched. He suspects she’ll want to style it again in the near future, and besides, he’s going to have to learn some new techniques to achieve her standards. However baffling or capricious they may be, at any rate. She’s a lot like Hawkeyes in that regard, when he thinks about it.
Alber stops at one of the massive, arched windows that stand in the hallway of the east wing’s entrance. He wipes condescension from the glass, revealing a distorted reflection of himself. He’s still not entirely sure who it is looking back at him, but he’s starting to look familiar. It’s a start, however small.