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These Old Bones
Brook was first.
He didn’t know this, of course. Last he remembered he and his crew were sailing, partying and generally making a mess everywhere – doing what the Straw Hat Pirates did best. He was playing his trust violin when the ships came.
(Later when he asked, it turns out that there were more ships than at Enies Lobby! Yohoho they had moved up in the world! He would cry but alas, he has no eyes – skull joke!)
It was a devastating battle. Brook remembered the battleships sinking, fighting Admiral-class Marines one after another until they were all captured. Luffy himself took over twenty Logia users at once before he was finally brought to his knees.
Their execution was the day after in Mariejois itself. The Gorosei and the few remaining Celestial Dragons apparently wanted to witness the execution in person. Brook, being the newest member of the crew was the first to be executed.
He didn’t know if the rest of his nakama made it. He could only hope.
But alas! He was born again into a new world, a world with land continents and where Devil Fruits were not even myths – they didn’t exist.
Brook assumed that it was the power of the Yomi Yomi no Mi that allowed him to be reborn. Not only that, he seemed to have retained the Devil Fruit’s powers – a quick test at six months old when his soul was separated from his body was abrupt and overall terrifying for his new mother.
It was here where Brook realised the standard for his new life – his body was frail. It became apparent when by the time he was two years old, his soul had been forcefully rejected from his body eleven times. He suffered from various chronic ailments, most of which he hadn’t even heard of back in the Grand Line.
It seemed to be that this would be just like Brook’s – owed to him by the Yomi Yomi no Mi.
Perhaps it was only fitting that he met nakama because of the fruit.
~.~.~
“What are you idiots doing.” Came a voice. Brook couldn’t see who it was, it came from behind the gang of three teens that had decided Brook was showing too much ‘spirit’ in the streets (apparently a five-year-old refusing to pay a toll to the gang members warranted an attack! Yohoho it looked like it was just as easy to start a fight in this world~! His captain would love it!).
“You don’t wanna do that, kid.” The gruff leader said, turning around before immediately doubling over when something hit him. Lackey one and two followed just as quick before Brook’s saviour turned to him.
“Che.” He grunted, relaxing from an alarmingly familiar stance and removing what looked like a wooden stick from his mouth. There were two others present, one in either hand and Brook could not stop the words escaping his asthmatic lungs.
“Zoro?”
The boy, no older than him with startling green hair froze at the address. He turned around with his eyes wide, the language of the Blues sprouting from his lips.
“Who are you? How do you know that name?”
Brook couldn’t help it – he laughed, even as Zoro glared and levelled a branch on line with his head. “ Yohoho! I would cry but I have no eyes – no wait I do! Ex-skull joke!”
His eyes widened and he dropped the stick. “That was terrible.” Even so, his lip twitched so Brook counted it as a win. “So, what’s your name shrimp?” He asked, switching to the language of this land.
“Steven Grant Rogers, you?”
“James Buchanan Barnes. But please,” here Zoro levelled a look at him, “call me Bucky.”
~.~.~
“So you’ve got your orders?” Brook asked, wiping the blood from his mouth.
“Sargent Barnes of the 107th.” Zoro nodded, levelling a deadpan stare at him. “And why are you picking another fight? I’m pretty sure you died when you hit the floor there.”
Brook shrugged. “I had him on the ropes.”
Zoro looked extremely unimpressed. “ I’m not going to be the one who tells the Pirate King I let his musician die before we were all reunited.”
He nodded at the first mate, but remained silent. Zoro had unending confidence in the rest of the Straw Hats – in their captain – and while Brook was also hoping, he was prepared, prepared in case they don’t. And it had been over 18 years since the pair had met and they had not heard a whisper of a man like rubber, a woman that could grow limbs, a man that was part machine. He did not expect his nakama to be like they were (he wasn’t a living skeleton, after all) but if they were too different they wouldn’t be his nakama.
It’s not like they were ever discrete. Luffy managed to declare war on the world within a month of departing from his home.
And now Zoro, the only link he has to his old life was being shipped off to war – one fought with guns not swords. He had tried to sign up, to stay with that link but while his body may be somewhat immortal, he himself was still frail. He was rejected from all the bases he applied to and left to watch the war from afar.
Or maybe not. He thought, looking at the new doctor who was looking through is file with a gleam in his, before approving him for some new program.
Yohoho~! Looks like I’ll be fighting side by side with Zoro yet again!
~.~.~
Dr Erskine looked at the file before him.
Four times this man had applied. Four times he had physicals and four times he was rejected. And here he was, looking to make it five.
Most would say the reason Erskine gave to accept Steve Rogers into the Super Soldier program was his drive not to kill but to protect, but this was not it. As he had told the boy (because even though he was 24 years old, Steve was as small as a prepubescent boy), before Hitler invaded Poland, he invaded Germany.
And Steve understood, deeper than probably he should. Erskine had no idea why the boy knew loss the way he did, why when he looked into his eyes and saw that the boy had seen death beyond what he should and came back stronger for it…
So he gambled. Took the serum and gave it to the righteous man, whose soul was pure but body was weak. By all intents and purposes he should’ve died. A person with a body that was fit and healthy would’ve died.
So when he used him and the test was a success, he knew that it was the right decision. He had given the boy – no, the man – a body to suit his soul and the results were phenomenal.
And so when he was shot, he died with no regrets.
~.~.~
When she first saw him, Peggy Carter thought he would never last.
But then he showed potential, when he took all the abuse the other recruits and commanding officers gave with that obnoxious laugh of his and deflected their attacks with jokes.
(She refused to talk about the panties. That. Never. Happened.)
The grenade incident showed her he was, perhaps, not weak. Instead of jumping on it like she had expected, he looked at it and flicked his fingers with a smile.
(Later on when they were inspecting the dud they saw that in fact it was not a dud, but a live grenade that had been frozen from the inside and cut cleanly in half.)
Once he became the man that would be known as Captain America when the whole super soldier program shattered, he took to the stage like a natural. He spoke, joked… and sang. Instead of being akin to a performing monkey, Steve became a star. He played instruments, sang every genre, wrote almost all his own pieces. He was even able to win over the 107th after their disastrous defeat.
But when she truly saw the man behind the show was when he found out his childhood friend – one James Barnes – was trapped behind enemy lines. The smile he had stuck with her for her whole life. It wasn’t one of sadness, nor pain but of something she couldn’t put her finger on, reminding her of her grandfather when he talked about fights he was in when he was a boy.
Even Colonel Phillips trailed off in his derogatory reply. “Soldier. There’s nothing you can do – it’s impossible.”
Steve laughed his usual laugh. “Captain banned that word years ago!”
Later, when Peggy managed to convince him to let her help him, she noticed that all he took was a cane.
“What do you expect to do with that?” She asked him, as he sat at the open door, ready to jump out.
He smiled, big and wide, tapping the cane to his leg. “A gentleman should never be without one!” Then he jumped.
Without a parachute.
(She would never get round to asking how he survived the fall.)
~.~.~
Brook broke into the HYDRA base and decimated it with ease.
While he was neither the weakest nor the strongest on the crew, all the Straw Hats had one thing in common – they were monsters in a battlefield. Mix that with his Yomi Yomi no Mi, the experience of sailing with possibly the most insane captain to sail the Blues, the grunts were no match for him.
It took him a little over 5 minutes to find and release all the prisoners, and that’s because he got lost.
Finding Zoro was another matter. How he did find his fellow swordsman was by following his voice.
“Zoro. Luffy, Nami, Usopp, Sanji, Chopper, Robin, Franky, Brook. Straw Hat Pirates. Zoro. Luffy, Nami, Usopp...” It was again and again, and he found him zoned out, lying on a table.
“Yohoho! Zoro!”
If he was anyone else, he would’ve been dead with the speed Zoro sprang up and wrapped wire around his throat – but he was a Straw Hat too, so he quickly evaded it without a scratch.
“Wha- Brook?”
“Yes! I’m glad you haven’t lost you head – and neither did I! Yohoho!”
An explosion echoed in the background, making Zoro’s lip twitch. “Sounds like old times.”
Brook handed over three batons he had liberated from grunts. “You’d be surprised. I haven’t needed to draw Soul Solid yet!”
“Che,” Zoro smirked, “let’s go then.”
~.~.~
When asked to create a team to fight HYDRA, Brook laughed.
When he said all he needed was himself and Zoro armed with swords, he was laughed at.
After their first mission, where he and Zoro alone levelled a HYDRA base within fifteen minutes… well, that’s where people began to take them seriously.
~.~.~
Howard Starks first impression of him was that he was just another experiment. It wasn’t until he was flying the man over the battlefront to a HYDRA base when he thought of him as more. Steve Rogers – no, Captain America was a hero. He was the icon the war needed.
Bucky Barnes though… that man was something else.
He was lazy, surly, downright rude, showed no interest in anyone that wasn’t Steve, alcoholic and most importantly didn’t make sense. Hell, he had seen the man cut steel with a wooden sword! And he knew it wasn’t the bastardised serum that he was given – they had done tests and it had showed that it had done absolutely nothing. The serum was just naturally removed from his body like an infection.
What really took the crown though was the fact that Steve often referred to Bucky like he was his superior. It was mind boggling and Howard was sure he had seen some officers give the Captain a confused look, but when he asked all he got from Steve was:
“In absence of the captain, you follow the first mate!”
~.~.~
Peggy made her way into the collapsed bar. “It’s not your fault, you know.”
Steve laughed. “He isn’t dead.”
It was that line again, the one he had been repeating to everyone. Most had assumed he was in shock but Peggy heard something beneath the words, a certainty that was beyond denial.
“No,” she heard herself saying, “he isn’t. You’re certain.”
It wasn’t a question and Steve finally turned and looked at her. He smiled, this time a soft smile that simply took her breath away. “You remind me of someone,” he said, “a friend. She was called Robin.”
(Steve told her a story oceans and pirates, of corrupt governments and true friendship, of Devil Fruits and Straw Hats. The story – for Steve insisted it was a story while having that same soft smile – stuck with her, following her beyond the war.
Before S.H.I.E.L.D., it was S.T.R.A.W., the Scientific, Tactical, Research, Armament and Weaponry division.)
~.~.~
Brook fell into the ice.
His last thoughts were of his nakama, and of Zoro complaining that while he got lost Brook went and got himself frozen.
~.~.~
The Asset was never awake at any one time for too long.
He was too independent, too strong that once the stasis wore off, he became himself again.
The Asset was never awake for more than 30 minutes at any one time.
The Asset could level a city in 15.
~.~.~
Brook awoke to the sound of a baseball game.
It was strange, he felt stiff and achy all over, something he had never felt since Thriller Bark. Yet opening his eyes did not reveal the grim shadowed sky of the Florian Triangle but the off-white ceiling he was very familiar with. A hospital.
Sitting up, Brook listened to the radio and froze. He remembered that game. He and Zoro were there, deciding to see if the national pastime was any good.
(They both didn’t really understand it – there wasn’t enough swordplay or music involved for their tastes.)
The door opened, and in came a startlingly familiar face.
“Robin.”
She didn’t even falter, she just gave that sly smirk of hers she normally had when she found something morbid amusing.
“Mr Rogers.” She said sitting down in a chair, arms sprouting from the wall to bring a cup of tea into her hands. “We have a lot to talk about.”
(The thing was that even in another world, the Straw Hat Pirates were first and foremost nakama, and they owed everything to their Captain.)