Chapter Text
Corners curling and the ink faded to shadows, the old page sat gripped between slender fingers, an eagerness to the trembling pressure leaving its mark on the paper, bent slightly from the tender abuse. But it escaped the notice of the wide eyes following the strings of letters reverently, completely enraptured—
'Your beauty is one to be envied, my dearest. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.'
The voice spoke softly in her ear, as genuine as always, sending a shiver up her spine despite her anger. She spun around to face him, skirts whirling about her legs in a flurry of rich blue fabric. Her eyes searched his handsome face.
'More empty words. I cannot—will not—hear them!' Her voice was level, but the tears brimming in her eyes betrayed the turmoil raging within her, threatening to burst.
His dark eyes softened, and he took a step towards her, hands reaching out for hers. She faltered in her step as she staggered back, tugging her hands away and clenching them tightly against her sides. 'I...will not—' she repeated, her voice hitching in her throat. But he was quick to grasp her elusive hands, enclosing them securely within his larger ones. His thumbs stroked her knuckles gently.
'I have caused you great distress, and for that I apologise,' he murmured softly. She shook her head.
'Why? Why must you leave me?'
His hand reached to cup her cheek, turning her head to look at him. 'I am a wanted man. You know this. Remaining here puts you in danger as well, and I could not bear it if anything were to happen to you.'
She turned her face away, closing her eyes to stop the tears from falling. Her voice was hoarse when she spoke, 'And will you not come back for me?' She turned her face back to look up at him through her tears. He leaned closer, enveloping her in his arms. His sigh fanned her cheeks.
'I cannot. My life is not for you, as much as I wish it were.'
The tears were falling now, running down her cheeks in rivulets, gleaming silver in the moonlight. He reached to wipe them away, a solemn smile on his face. 'You must continue your life as you should. Find a man who can take good care of you, and treat you well. Someone who can give you the children and the peace you desire, and deserve,' he said, and she could not stop the sob from escaping.
'Is that truly what you—'
—"MAKINO!"
The book was sent flying with a shout, tearing itself from lips that had only moments before murmured the half-reverent echoes of a scene she could recite by heart, and the sudden contrast of sound yanked her bodily out of the fantasy, and with even less mercy than the barbed tail-end of her name reaching towards her from somewhere in the distance.
A heartbeat passed where she remained at a complete loss of where she was, before the last, lingering note of her name picked back up, lifting in volume, a rising crescendo of irritation so bright it had the hairs on the back of her neck rising—
"Makino! Where are you, you foolish girl?!"
Blinking into the low light, no moonlit sky to be found, only a blushing sun climbing down from its perch, the position of which had her eyes springing wide open, realisation dawning—or rather, plummeting into her stomach. "Oh no."
Oh, she was late.
Skirt gathered in her fist, Makino sprang to her feet, a hiss tearing loose of her teeth as her knees buckled beneath her a second later. Sometime during her page-bound rollicking her legs had seen fit to fall asleep, but stubborn, she set her jaw, spurred by an intimate knowledge of what awaited her tardiness on a good day and pushing away from the tree she'd been seated under, stumbling down the winding path towards the village.
Oh, oh, it's late, and I'm late, and she's so not going be happy. Then, under her breath, "Although is she ever?"
But not three steps into her run she skidded to a halt, backtracking hastily to pick up the book she'd tossed, the well-worn paper cover yielding to the grip of her fingers, softened by long years and many readings. The faded picture on the front stared up at her, the passionate half-embrace of too-bared limbs draped in velvet as familiar as the story within, but their tender expressions seemed gently mocking now, as though privy to her dallying and aware of what waited at the bottom of the hill, and she tucked it into the pocket of her apron before she could remind herself that she was, literally, reading too much into things.
Picking up her feet, she set off down the slope at a run, despite knowing full well that a few seconds more or less meant nothing when Emiko got her hands on her.
Fuschia lay on the very lip of the shore, in the fissure between two hills. It was a small fishing village, a snug hodgepodge of crooked cottages with red-tiled rooftops, the blackened stone and wooden frames weathered by a gentle sea. Barnacles clustered with yellow moss in the cracks between the stones, and every house sat slightly askew, tilting doorframes and uneven foundations leaning this way and that, although no storm had ever washed them away. A single, broad street ran through it, winding down at a steep incline towards the wharf, and a long, wooden quay that hadn't seen a ship dock in months.
And there in the centre, perched just at the top of the slope, sat her mother's bar, the pristine facade painted white and the tall windows overlooking the sea trimmed with blue.
Slipping under the old fence, she greeted a local fisherman on his way to the docks, out of breath and fighting down a blush at his laughing remark that the old girl was swearing up a storm worthy of the Grand Line, and that he was glad he wasn't in Makino's shoes.
Hoisting her skirt higher, she sprinted past the stone cottages where they leaned into the street, as though to observe her passage, the windows of the seamstress' shop and the butcher seeming to share a look between them. Her lungs ached from the strain, but tempted by a desire to demonstrate that at least she'd come running when called, she pushed herself to run faster, and by the time she finally reached the bar, she was completely out of breath.
And going by the fearsome mien that greeted her from under the hard weight of her old guardian's brow, in for one hell of a scolding.
Emiko had her arms crossed over her chest—never a good sign, in Makino's experience, especially when she'd tucked her hands into her elbows like that, as though she'd gotten comfortable in the pose—and those sharp blue eyes were narrowed in a distinctly unimpressed glare as she took in the sight of the flustered girl on her porch, heaving all her breath out of her lungs.
It didn't seem to earn her any sympathy, and Makino fidgeted under the relentless scrutiny, struggling to drag air back into her lungs without being quite so obvious about it. Her hair had fallen into her face, and she tucked it back into her kerchief, discreetly flicking away a leaf that had gotten tangled in it.
Emiko looked at her. "You're late."
She winced. "I know."
"What do I keep telling you about watching the time?"
"That I should be better at it?"
Those eyes cut. "And are you?"
It took effort not to fidget under that gaze. "N—o," Makino admitted, shoulders sinking a bit. "But I'm here now, aren't I?"
"Watch that cheek," Emiko shot back, and Makino pressed her lips shut. Then, glacial eyes fixing on the lump in her apron, a hawk seeking a small mouse's secrets, "Give it to me," she said.
The stark command was punctuated by the flash of an open palm, lifeline dug deep and calloused ridges climbing beneath crooked fingers. The gesture didn't ask questions, and didn't leave room for protest, likely because it didn't expect one. And knowing that hesitation was as good as a verbal rebuttal, Makino reached down to retrieve the book, handing it over with a sinking heart, even as a rosy blush bloomed at the top of her cheeks.
Emiko spared the cover a brief glance, greying brows arching, before her eyes cut to Makino, who was trying her very best to look anywhere else.
Then, "The hell's the point of even wearing a shirt if he doesn't bother buttoning it?" she scoffed.
Makino was resolutely not looking at the cover, and the bared male chest Emiko offered up for emphasis, although it didn't take long before she caved, embarrassment overcoming her better judgement.
The fluttering sleeves of said unbuttoned shirt hung off broad shoulders, against which the heroine was leaning, seemingly in a half-faint. "It's romantic?" Makino tried.
It was met with a dry snort. "Not the word that springs to my mind," Emiko drawled, with another look at the cover. "But then you were always delicate about that sort of thing."
Then, seeming to weigh the paperback in her hand, "Can't believe you like this swill," she scoffed, but before Makino could protest, "The floors need cleaning and the glasses another polish before I open the bar tonight. Get to it," she snapped, and with a sharp turn of her heel, strode across the porch into the tavern.
Mouth pursed, Makino curled her fingers together, and bit back the snappish retort that she'd polished the glasses only that morning, knowing it was punishment for spending her time 'dallying in unrealistic fantasies whose only purpose is to put foolish notions of 'romance' into the minds of impressionable young women who damn well ought to know better', and she'd heard that particular lecture enough times to have memorised it whole, down to the inflections.
Dragging a breath through her nose, before expelling it in a sharp sigh of stubborn surrender, Makino trudged after her guardian, not five minutes without it but already longing for the world she'd left at the top of the hill, tucked away in her apron for safekeeping, although she really should have known better than to bring it back with her.
And maybe it was all unrealistic fantasy and sentimental drivel (same lecture, different words, and only slightly different inflections), but at least it beat whatever Fuschia had to offer. Windmills and endless farmland didn't exactly inspire romance. At least not the sort brought by roguish, bare-chested heroes.
Mop in her hands, she considered the floor, the walls and the windows where they were thrown open. The polished counter-top, and the bottles stacked on the cherrywood shelves behind it. This was her world, in all its mundane, lethargic glory, no silver moon glinting off the hilts of swords crossing in heart-duels, and not the flutter of a single velvet coat on the breeze. There were no great merchant ships pulling into port, bringing adventure. No white steeds, either, and forget about the charming lords; the quick-tongued thieves and kings in disguise.
And as for Makino...well. Not much of a protagonist, with her too-tender heart and gentle disposition. She couldn't throw a man head-first over a table; couldn't ride a horse bareback, or climb down the side of a castle in nothing but her undergarments. She couldn't flirt to save her life—or lie, for that matter, her face too open for untruths, and no guile to speak of.
But when she read, she was all those things—beautiful and fierce, sometimes fiercely beautiful. A village girl or a runaway princess, captain, queen, and lady-in-waiting. But whichever it was, there was always romance. And where there was romance, there was usually a roguishly handsome male protagonist. Painfully predictable, maybe, but then her heart had never pretended to be anything else.
The automatic sweep of the mop pulled her eyes with it, back and forth, back and forth, although the floors were plenty clean, and her efforts more than a little redundant, Makino knew.
She cast a glance across the common room, wrapped in the quiet lull that preceded a moderately busy night; something else that was painfully predictable. But every port-town needed a tavern, even a village as small as Fuschia, and it would be Makino's business one day, whether she liked it or not. Party's had been in Emiko's family for three generations, and as her only legal heir, Makino didn't really have much of a say in the matter.
Of course, there was precious little else she could do in a place like Fuschia without a proper education, or at least the guts to take to the seas by herself. Not to mention, her sense of obligation that would never have allowed her to leave even if she could. So the bar was, in essence, her future.
As was the mop in her hands and the bucket by her feet.
A genuine tavern wench in the making, she thought sourly, giving the bucket a small kick. Just like Sara in Clandestine Courtships, only Makino wasn't going to be swept off her feet by a brave and charming pirate—
"You waiting for the floors to mop themselves?"
The gravel-rough drawl dragged her promptly and without apology out of her thoughts, and Makino looked up to find hard eyes watching her from across the bar-top, the no-nonsense frown carrying a suggestion that she didn't need to voice for Makino to hear it.
Letting slip a sigh, and with a touch more drama than strictly necessary, she resumed her work, idle thoughts offered to the prospect of a man sauntering into Party's to take her with him for a change. It would have been her due, after sixteen years spent bored to tears by the clinking song of polished glasses and endless floorboards that needed scrubbing.
Of course, she was hardly material for a romantic sweeping, plain-faced and slender-limbed, too small to strike anyone's notice, and the phrase 'ample bosom' as far-fetched as the idea of her riding bareback on a horse. And every protagonist she'd ever latched her heart onto had some kind of striking characteristic—wild, curly hair or scars, or both. A perfectly placed beauty spot to catch the eye of a travelling bard, who'd spin a ballad from less. What did Makino have? A complexion too pale for a sunny seaside port, that's what. And lobsters across the four blues wept in envy at what the sun made of that complexion if she wasn't careful.
It was safe to say no handsome rogue would be coming for her any time soon. Fuschia didn't lend itself to much in the way of adventure, and it was a sobering thought now, Makino found, observing the empty common room and wondering if this was all there was to life—to her life, not even two decades in but her fate already sealed; a long, lonely existence in a backwater port, tucked away in the farthest reaches of the East Blue.
The thought invoked another, and she stole a glance towards her Mistress, broad shoulders bent over a list of inventory where she loomed behind the bar; a hard, sovereign ruler of a too-quiet kingdom.
A fiercely private creature, Makino knew precious little about the woman who'd raised her from birth. But she'd never married, and other than Makino, she had no children. And spinsterhood had never been hard for Makino to reconcile with that sharp countenance and terrible temper, but there were murmurs of other reasons — a bitter, broken heart that never healed right, and a lonely life wrought from nothing but spite.
And there were others, still—the ones that claimed that bitter heart hadn't been broken at all, but left to wait for decades, and that it was stubbornness, not spite, that had kept it that way.
Her own heart a hopeless romantic's foolish treasure, Makino's unabashed preference for the latter version wasn't much of a surprise. And it would explain that occasional note of wistfulness that crept into her expression, softening the brittle lines of her face without her notice and cold eyes fixed on the far line of the horizon. Seeking a ship?
The prospect was almost too much to wrap her head around, even with her take-it-and-run-with-it imagination, and Makino was on her way to banish the thought completely when she paused, considering that tense back. And guilt was a swelling tide in her breast then, imagining it to be the case. Not a fanciful tale by any means, but the terrible simplicity—an old woman still set on waiting for someone who'd never come back—had inspired more than one novel in Makino's considerable hoard of similar tales, most of them heavily embellished, but the story at their heart less so.
And maybe the simple, everyday tragedies weren't so far off from the worlds she found in her books. If you took away the velvet draping, the rose-tinted glass and the certainty of happily-ever-after, what was left? A love that refused to let go was romantic only so long that it was reciprocated, and as long as it bore fruit, but beyond that—to love someone so much that you'd rather live alone than without them...
It was a suddenly chilling prospect, and for a single moment Makino saw herself behind the bar, shoulders small instead of broad but her back hunched under some invisible weight, fingers never far from a glass to polish, if only to keep her hands busy. No husband and no children to call her own, and no one to grow old with as the tides changed beyond the port and Fuschia stayed the same. The sad, lonely spinster whose story was common knowledge; the stuff of port-side talk and private jokes. The one mothers pointed to as they warned their silly, impressionable daughters of the dangers of falling for the wrong—
"What are you looking at?"
Makino blinked, brought back to herself, and to Party's, only to realise she'd been staring into space—or rather, straight at her old guardian, who'd turned around and was watching Makino now.
Scrambling for an excuse, "N-nothing. I was, ah—just lost in thought for a moment," she murmured.
The old woman huffed, adjusting her apron with a sharp gesture. "Yeah? That's what you get, reading all those damn books. Keep your head in the clouds any longer, soon you won't be able to tell what's real and what's not. Fool girl."
The query was halfway off her tongue before she could stop herself. "Mistress," Makino asked, curiosity taking the helm, as it tended to do.
"What?"
It was in better interest to grasp for an excuse, she knew, and had no idea why the thought was suddenly so relentless, but, "Have you ever tried reading one?" she blurted. "If you think they're so terrible, you—I mean, you must have a reason. And please don't say the covers."
She half-expected to have her ears boxed for the insinuation alone, but what she got what something else.
Emiko barked a laugh—a chortle, short and stark, but a sound that had Makino's brows shooting towards her hairline. "In my less than humble opinion, the covers are the only reason worth enduring that crap."
"Then why?"
She shook her head, a curiously solemn smile coming to settle, with all the ease of a too-tight corset. "Why suffer the reminder?" she asked, the question too quiet for the usual volume of her voice, and Makino was suddenly hard pressed to decide who she was talking to.
But it was an opening. And for someone who'd lived most of her life grasping at rumours, because all she'd ever gotten from the woman herself was an gruff 'mind your own damn business', Makino grabbed the opportunity now as it presented herself—plunged herself right in without even testing the waters.
"What do you mean by that?"
The little voice in her head whispering a familiar warning about sticking her nose where it didn't belong was silenced with a breath, and Makino squared her shoulders, fully prepared to suffer the consequences of her shameless prying. It would be worth it, just for the barest slip of information. Her over-active imagination could take it from there.
Curiously, Emiko didn't appear to have heard her, and now she really did seem to be talking to herself, "A fine man, weren't you?" she mused. Then, with a scoff; a sound far too soft for her, Makino thought, "Mah, a fine heart, at least. Wasted on an old girl. No, I don't care for dancing, as you bloody well know."
Makino frowned. Dancing? But before she could ask, Emiko paused suddenly, and seemed for a moment to look into nothing, her gaze fixed on something behind Makino's shoulder. Then, turning her head, brow furrowing sharply, "What happened to the music?"
Makino blinked. "What?"
Emiko drew a sudden breath. Then, her eyes clearing, as though coming back to herself, "What?" she asked, quietly.
Something knotted in her gut, lodged like a fist between her ribs, and Makino paused. She was familiar with daydreams, but this seemed different, somehow.
The mop slack between her fingers, "Is everything okay, Mistress?"
The change was abrupt; so much that it left a visible impression in the air. One moment she was looking at Makino, seeming perplexed, and with her next breath the harsh light returned to her eyes, like a sheet of ice sliding down a rocky slope.
And levelling that sharp gaze on Makino, "You'll be running this joint one day," she snapped, matter-of-fact. "So don't be a damn fool. Get married early, and have more than one brat, so if one of them goes out to sea to get themselves killed, you'll still have someone to take over the place when you retire."
When she dusted off her apron it looked to Makino like she was trying to wipe her hands clean, although she hadn't touched anything wet. And seeming to realise it herself, Emiko stared at her palms, before curling her fingers towards them and letting them drop.
Then, lifting her eyes, cold flint and North Blue's waters, "Stories worth writing novels about are rarely worth living, Makino. Remember that. You only have this one life, so live it wisely."
Before she could offer a response, she'd turned for the stairs leading to her apartments above the bar, removing her apron and tossing it on the counter. Makino watched her go, unease sitting suddenly heavy on her chest; the sense that there was something she was supposed to have realised, but when she grasped for it, it slipped through her fingers.
But then the weight lifted, plucked off her heart by the surprise that sparked, when Emiko put the confiscated paperback down beside the discarded apron. She was giving it back? She never gave her novels back. As far as Makino knew, she used the paper to stoke the ovens during the winter months.
Not that it had ever stopped her from getting new ones whenever the opportunity presented itself, but she always mourned the ones she lost—the ones she'd dog-eared beyond recognition, and scribbled notes in the margins; the ones whose covers were so wrinkled the bronze-tinged, bare skin of the hero had long since lost its lustre and appeal.
Which was why the gesture now seemed suddenly, staggeringly significant.
Gaze lingering on the worn cover, the dramatic embrace and yearning looks, Emiko loosed a soft snort. Then to Makino, "Don't give your heart to a man who'll never return, girl," she said, letting the book go as she made for the stairs. "Waiting is a fool's game, and you deserve better than that."
Then she was gone, leaving Makino alone in the common room, the mop in her hands forgotten as she stared at the yawning space left in Emiko's absence, the words a clanging echo in her head, surprisingly tender. A fool's game.
And you, my fool girl.
—
Only when the sun had dipped down beyond the port and the bar had been opened for business was Makino able to slip free, her duties done for the night and whatever remaining hours were left stolen for herself.
Although the future proprietor of Party's, she wasn't old enough to work the night shift yet, and Emiko had been strict on that since the beginning; she had no immediate plans of actually letting Makino have a shot at serving drinks until she'd reached an appropriate age.
Straddling the windowsill of her bedroom, Makino swung her leg over the side with practised ease, one hand gripping the shawl wrapped around her shoulders and the other easing her down the sloping curve of the slated roof, the lantern dangling from her elbow yielding enough light so as not to trip over her own feet in the dark.
The trek from the tavern eased some of the jittery restlessness that had built up over the course of the day from her shoulders, and when she began the climb up the hill toward her favourite reading spot the slight exercise left her feeling herself again, after hours spent contemplating the future that loomed ahead, and the shadow of a woman who existed there; the one she feared she might become.
The muted din of conversation creeping out of Party's windows vanished behind her in the night, until the tavern was little more than a glowing speck among the other sleeping houses tucked around it, and the unassuming quiet of the chilly summer evening enveloped her whole.
Placing the lantern down, Makino settled beneath the tree, her back to the trunk and her knees pulled up to her chest. And drawing the shawl tighter around her shoulders to ward off the chill, she thumbed the book open, searching out the place where she'd left off, a familiar excitement kindling as eager eyes scanned the page, the faded letters thrown in stark relief in the soft glow of the lantern-light—
—is that truly what you want?'
The smile he gave her held no mirth. 'Any man you choose, I will loathe, for he will not be me. Yet if he makes you smile—if he gives you the life you deserve, I will love him as a brother, for he has done what I could not.'
She shook her head vigorously. 'There will be no other! I will never love a man if he is not you,' she swore, grasping his hands in hers.
'You must, dearest,' he spoke the words reverently. 'For my return is unlikely.'
Her shoulders shook, but she steeled herself, a defiant glint in her eyes, blue as ice in the silver moonlight. 'I will wait for you,' she vowed.
'Sara—'
'I will wait.' She was resolute, her shoulders squared to punctuate her words. 'However unlikely your return, I will wait, for I will not have anyone else.'
He looked at her for a long time, before finally leaning close to press a tender kiss to her forehead. 'I cannot make your decisions for you, but I plead with you, my love, to forget about me. Do not waste your life waiting for a dead man.' The words were a fierce whisper against her brow, and she fought her shaking knees from giving out beneath her.
Then he was turning away, the warmth of his body gone, leaving her hollow as the breeze from the sea cleaved through her like a knife. His familiar frame was rigid as he walked the path towards his ship, and his shape became unclear and blurred as more tears obscured her vision.
Falling to her knees, the sobs were quick to follow. A riptide washing over her, stealing the air from her lungs—
A drop of water blotted the ink, and Makino touched her fingertips to her cheek, realising with a start that she was the culprit. She blinked at the sight, the moisture seeping into the brittle paper, incredulous. She'd read this book several times, without trouble—knew most of it by heart, and could recite this particular scene from the top of her head. But for some reason she couldn't stop the tears now as they came, pushing against her eyes, clinging to her cheeks.
Or maybe she did know the reason, close to home as it sat now, the book suddenly heavier than its paper cover suggested, tucked between her raised knees and her heart.
Waiting is a fool's game.
And you deserve better than that.
Inhaling sharply through her nose, she snapped the book shut, steeling herself as she blinked her eyes free of the tears.
Glancing down at the cover, she turned it over in her hands. Old but cared for, having known more than one set of hands before it had made its way into her own, carried to Fuschia in the bottom of a crate having seeped through with sea-water. She'd bought it cheap, the pages curling from salt and moisture, and had read it twice in one week, and had since spent an impressive amount of time running her fingers over the cover, and dreaming up stories of her own. She'd loved the tragedy—the sweet heartache, and the gap left for her imagination to fill, of whether or not the captain ever did come back for Sara.
Now, though...
Head dropping back against the trunk, Makino rested her gaze on the dark swathe of sea and sky in the distance, the map of stars partially obscured by a pale cover of clouds curling along the horizon. No ships in sight, although she hadn't expected to find any.
And she wondered suddenly what it was like, constantly on the lookout for sails on the horizon, barely daring to hope but unable to do anything else. Years of waiting, and for what?
Shoulders sinking with a sigh, she scrubbed the heel of her hand across her eyes, before pushing off the ground, grabbing the lantern as she went. She wasn't going to sit there sobbing like a child, mourning some memory that wasn't even hers to mourn—like her Mistress expected her to do, no doubt.
The paperback pressed between her palms, she felt her resolve as it came to settle. She adored all her worlds, each and every one of the pocket-universes stacked in her bookcase, on her desk in her room—and those she kept from prying eyes, wrapped in the shadows and cobwebs under her bed. But this was her world, too. Fuschia, in all its mundane, lethargic glory. And if she was going to live in it, she couldn't keep waiting; not for anyone to come for her, or to sweep her off her feet.
If she did, Makino had no doubt she really would end up like her old Mistress, heart too hard for small amusements, and watching the sea like she wanted nothing more than for the tide to come in, if only to take her with it.