Chapter Text
As a child, Portgas D. Rouge remembered staring out at the deep blue waves surrounding her home up on the cliff, head in her tiny hands as she admired how miniscule her existence was compared to the vastness of Mother Ocean. As a child, Portgas D. Rouge wondered what it would be like to float along in her own boat, becoming one with the deity that ruled over the glittering, unexplored depths of the sea that entranced her from her window. Portgas D. Rouge, a girl who’s namesake made her the natural enemy of the gods, wished to float along the very waves that Celestial Dragons claimed to rule.
But as she grew to see the horrors of the sea, she grew to know that the sea was not as kind as she imagined it to be. It was not glittering beauty, but murky depths that drag under all who dare to traverse its blues. The look of joy and wonder that once graced her freckled face, the bright shine in her wide, childlike eyes shifted to a glare of discontent as she heard stories of fishermen she’d known all her life, being pulled beneath angry, thrashing waves and losing their precious lives.
Her mother, the strongest woman Rouge had ever known, despised her daughter’s lack of love for the sea. Since Rouge was young, Ann told her daughter stories of the seas from the moment she noticed the little girl staring out the window. And as the woman noticed the growing distance between Rouge and her calling, the same phrase was repeated, nearly pounded into her mind.
“You will not sit and rot away on this island, wasting away the sake of the name I gifted you.”
Rouge never thought about it, as if she asked, her cryptic elder simply said she was predestined for greatness. The idea of her middle initial never bothered her, she had no intention of leaving the safety of Baterilla. It was the only home she’d ever known, why would she leave? So what if she was “destined” to do something, she had a life on land ahead of her! She wanted safety, not the destruction that only Mother Ocean brought.
But that man. That stupid, goof, annoying heartthrob of a man . Gol D. Roger, a man with an (admittedly impressive) handlebar mustache and the same cursed initial. Hearing him loudly introduce himself as another D. while she sat nursing her whiskey at the bar, having another bland day (just the way she liked it) was one of the worst things that could have happened to Portgas D. Rouge. She turned, freckles more prominent by the second as she paled, eyes wide in horror.
Her mom was right.
As she continued to stare, the large man of her terror completely unaware of her plight, she caught the gaze of a smirking blond man. She whipped back to her drink still on the counter, staring at in trepidation as her cheeks heated up in embarrassment at having been caught staring. She probably seemed like one of their admirers, which she definitely wasn’t.
Rouge sighed, downing the rest of her drink in one go and setting the necessary berri on the counter before getting up to leave. A loud, joyous laugh bursted through the volume of the bar, and she felt her eye twitch. If she had to hear one more sound out of that obnoxious mouth of his, she knew she’d lose her mind.
But as is her luck, the same voice that declared himself to be one of the “destined” people she’d heard about from her mother all her life, called out to her.
“Hey! You! Pretty lady with the blond hair! Come back!” Roger was giving her the brightest smile she’d ever seen, and she cursed the way her heart pounded against her ribcage. She turned back around to the rowdy group of pirates with a loud sigh, summoning the harshest glare she could muster to give the boisterous pirate.
“What?” As a tiny little blond woman, obviously in her early twenties, she didn’t seem very intimidating. But she took after her mother in almost every way, and Portgas Ann was known all over the island for her ability to get what she wanted from just a glance. And that paid off, as the glare she sent Roger’s way made him evidently uneasy. That fact was hilarious to the surrounding crew. A hunk of a man, one with a sword almost the size of his arm and an obvious confident streak, looking uncomfortable from the gaze of an innocent looking, unarmed island woman.
As the crew began snickering at their captain’s unease, he attempted to regain his composure while his blond crewmate from before, who seemed much closer to the captain than the rest, put a hand on his shoulder before smirking at Rouge yet again.
“Sorry young lady, my captain might’ve taken interest in how you were staring back at us when he mentioned his name. You looked shocked, did you recognize us by chance?” His self-confident smirk flashed with something Rouge didn’t quite catch, but it wasn’t exactly sinister like most men that passed through the bars at this time of night. It was more… calculating. Like he was analyzing her every move. It unnerved her, and she shuddered before speaking in the most confident voice she could muster.
“You’re a D. too.”
It was a simple sentence, yet it seemed to carry a heavy weight among the crew members that heard it. Roger himself paused mid-bite, looking at Rouge as if she’d grown a head. There was a moment of silence where Rouge thought she’d be ridiculed or mocked, but the smile that busted out on the large man’s face was anything but.
He stood, grinning and waving the chicken leg he’d been munching on in air as he exclaimed his oddly enthusiastic excitement. At first, Rouge simply stared incredulously, before mirroring the sigh of Roger’s blond friend. He was yelling, with no care of the weird looks he was getting from all the bar’s inhabitants besides his crew.
When Roger’s loud ramblings finally became coherent, Rouge got the gist.
“Another D! She’s another D! I’ve never heard of a female D, what can you do? Do you eat a lot? You don’t look like you smile a lot girlie, you sure you’re a D? You should come with us, you’re probably real strong-”
Hearing his captain’s train of thought, the blond guy rolled his eyes, and Rouge swore she could hear his teeth grinding in irritation. With a hand to Roger’s shoulder, the blond looked at Rouge with tired eyes.
“What he means is, we’d like to get to know each other. What’s your name, young lady?” Rouge gave a sigh in return.
What did she just get herself into?