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Monkey. D. Dragon is dead
He dies on the battlefield, he dies alone. Surrounded by bodies of marines and pirates alike. He dies without ever getting to see his son again.
It isn’t fair. It won’t ever be fair.
Garp doesn’t attend the funeral.
Luffy stands with his crew and holds Sabo’s hand. Luffy doesn’t know how to feel, the man these people are crying for is a stranger. His sadness is for his brother, who takes the plain wooden box containing the ashes with wet eyes and a stiff lip.
For the first time Luffy, the crybaby. Doesn’t cry.
Ace would find it hilarious.
The funeral is long and tedious, made more so by the crowds of people wishing to speak of Dragon. Speech after speech after speech. So many people speak of his work, of his bravery and dedication. Very few seem to know more than that.
Iva comes to stand by them at some point, purple hair looking limp and dull. “He would’ve hated this.”
That seems to startle a laugh out of Sabo who slips his hand from Luffy’s to wipe at his eyes.
“Yeah… yeah, he would’ve.”
People come up to Luffy, he stops trying to explain that he didn't really know the guy after twentieth or so well meaning stranger, offers condolences.
At some point someone Luffy doesn’t know pushes a wrapped parcel into his hands.
Weeks later Luffy finds it in his recently renovated captain's quarters.
He pulls out a sheaf of papers gently bound, he brings it closer. Squinting at the unfamiliar scrawl on the page.
Dear Luffy,
Luffy puts the papers back down and walks away. Luffy cannot miss what he never knew, he can’t miss a stranger.
The papers go into an empty drawer. Luffy rarely sleeps in his own cabin anyway.
Months later he asks Robin what her two years were like. Robin, whose eyes glitter with the world's knowledge, has to pause and think. The aquarium light casting ghostly shadows.
She tells him of Sabo of Koala, of brave souls who to this day are still trying to make the world a better place. It's not a particularly happy story but it is a hopeful one.
When the sun starts to set and her voice has become husky from overuse. Robin tells him of a tall quiet man who would play chess with her, if she asked.
Once in a while Luffy will catch himself looking at the chess sets being sold at port.
Weeks or perhaps months from now Luffy will ask his brother if Dragon liked to play chess. Sabo will snicker, even though his cheek will stay pale and drawn.
“God no, he was good at it. Don't get me wrong but he preferred playing cards.”
The first thing Luffy learns about his father is that he was selfless.
When Luffy is 23 he meets an older lady on an island who tells him he has his father’s eyes. She says it with such certainty that, alone in the bathroom later in the evening. Luffy stands in front of a mirror and stares at the dark brown eyes that are reflected back.
He leans in, warm skin fogging up the mirror. Looking for… something. They look exactly as they did yesterday. They are the same that they’ve always been.
“In the sunlight they glow.” Zoro tells him, shoulder to shoulder with his captain in the crows nest. “With flecks of gold.”
Luffy briefly wonders if anyone ever complimented his father’s eyes. He wonders if he too, kissed them after. But Zoro is warm and his lips are chapped and Luffy really doesn't care that much.
It’s dark. Luffy turned 24, 3 hours ago, Zoro’s arm is slung over his waist. Luffy stares at the letters in his drawer, he doesn’t pull them out. Just looks, before shutting the drawer again.
He rolls himself into Zoro and thinks about sleep.
It takes longer than it should but Garp sends a letter, finally. Asking Luffy to a small island. Luffy never thought his grandfather could look old, hunched over his cup of lukewarm tea.
But he does, Garp looks like a tired old man who has seen far too much.
They drink their tea in silence. There are too many things to say, too little words to give. It is now, finally, in this moment that Luffy thinks he finally understands his grandfather. As they sit at a tilting table in a cramped house. Garp loves deeply but his pride will always come first.
There’s a single photo on the mantle. Of a young boy laughing in Garp’s arms. For a moment Luffy wonders how old he was when that was taken before noticing the lack of gray in his grandfather’s hair.
“Take that with you.” Garp says, before letting out a harsh cough. “Damn thing is crowding up the place.”
It’s the first thing Garp has said to Luffy and by the time he leaves it will be the last.
Garp dies almost a year later. Luffy cries at the funeral.
Afterwards Luffy will take out his grandfather's picture and stare at the boy. He can’t be more than 7 years old. With freckles that look so familiar, but his hair is longer and straighter than Luffy's has ever been.
Luffy wonders what his favourite colour was.
Luffy is 26 staring down at the tiny bundle in Sabo's arms. Red, wrinkly with a few sparse hairs over a tiny scalp.
“I want to name him Drake.” Sabo says softly. He’s looking at Luffy with an expression Luffy can’t understand.
Luffy shrugs and grins “cool name!”
The newly named Drake, grabs his uncle's finger with a ferocious grip and Luffy can't help but feel a little enamoured.
Brook.. Brook passes on. None of them truly know if it was because his devil fruit was finished or because he could no longer hang on. He leaves them with a violin and a note.
‘I do apologize but I can hear Yorki calling me. We will meet again, my dear friends’
Luffy cries at the funeral. He wasn't ready.
He actually cries for an entire week. Zoro holds him but Luffy can feel his first mate's arms shaking. When the week ends Luffy, puffy eyed and dehydrated. Hangs Brooks violin in the kitchen.
“A meal with friends is the most wonderful thing.”
Sanji cooks all of Brooks' favorites for weeks, the Straw hats eat every single one with no refute.
There's a picture on the wall, Luffy had walked past it before but this time Drake had pointed and squealed. “Grandpa!”
“Thats right!” Shanks smoothly stole the giggling boy from Luffy's arms. Somehow holding Drake with an ease that Luffy hadn't mastered with two arms. “And who is the lady with blue hair and a big red nose?”
“Gramma!”
Shanks snickered, “Absolutely correct, little man! Now let's get you to the bath. Before the princess gets here.”
Drake who was indeed covered in an impressive amount of dirt. Clapped his hands. “Prim Prim!”
Shanks gave a comical eyeroll and with a wink strode off through the house to the baths.
The smell of food wafts through the house, accented with northern spices. Boots are crumpled near the door. Building blocks grouped near a chair. Heavy books that probably contained botanical study piled on a coffee table.
Dozens of photos hung on the walls, Ace smiled down from a few of them. Luffy knew that deeper in the house, there was a shrine that he would have to visit later.
His eyes fell over the photo Drake had pointed at again.
It was small, worn creases to show it had been folded many many times. A young man, his head thrown back in laughter. Familiar freckles dotting his face.
“I still don’t know how Iva found it.”
Sabo's footsteps were heavier now, no longer scared to make the floorboards creak. Luffy didn't have to turn to know that Sabo no longer towered over him, the tips of his blonde curls just reaching past Luffy's shoulder. Luffy didn't have to get on his tippy toes to kiss Zoro anymore either.
It seemed like yesterday Luffy had found two boys in the woods.
Luffy tilted his head, it kinda looked like Dragon was actually sneezing.
A cardigan clad shoulder bumped Luffy. “We could never catch him looking at a camera, ya know. Least of all when he was smiling. Me and Koala actually made a game out of it once.”
“Is this the photo you got?”
An airy chuckle. “I think you need glasses Lu. He was younger than us now when that snapshot was taken.”
Yeah, it really looked like Dragon was sneezing.
As Luffy followed Sabo to a fresh lunch and a newly clean Drake, he had to wonder. Would he ever carry around a photo of someone sneezing?
Maybe if it was Zoro.
It’s 7 years before Luffy returns to Dragon's grave. Drake is almost 3, toddling after his uncle at every chance. Luffy has had to double check every corner before setting sail lest his nephew stowaway.
Not that he would mind so dearly but he does fear what could happen to such a tiny tot. Maybe that's why Shanks kept him off his crew all those years ago.
The trek isn’t short per se, neither is it long. But it is different, the path Luffy once took as a child now has new dirt over top. Yet if Luffy squints just so, the colours blur until he can just imagine two figures running ahead of him.
It is both hours and minutes before Luffy emerges from the trees, but he does. The sun is just starting its midday decline. Luffy pulls down the brim of his straw hat. Maybe he should've come at dawn, he thinks that's what Sabo does. His brother had spread Dragon’s ashes at dawn after all.
Well, he's already here, so…. Luffy flops down on the fresh spring grass. It takes awhile for him to speak, so he rips up the grass chewing his lip. Luffy absentmindedly tugs on the irritated gold bar hanging from his left ear.
The gravestone in front of him is small, unobtrusive. No gold plating or statue. Up on Foosha’s cliffs overlooking the sea. A place that Luffy had been to a dozen times as a child.
Monkey. D. Dragon.
Who saw what the world could be
You can rest now
A few tokens are scattered about the grave, a coin, a tumbler, a pair of reading glasses.
“What’s your favourite colour?” Luffy hears himself ask.
There is no answer, only the wind, racing up the cliff, howling.
It’s hours before Luffy leaves, the sun barely more than a strip of reddish purple. When he does, he sits on the deck of his ship, staring up at the cliff.
For a moment he almost thinks he sees someone.
Ussop calls him sobbing.
In less than a year Luffy is at the man's door carrying a stuffed elephant.
The baby is a chunky girl, large puffs of blonde hair sticking from her scalp and a line of drool running down her chubby cheek to Ussop’s shoulder.
The sniper does not seem to care in the slightest. Alternating between cooing at his daughter to glancing at Kaya who was passed out on the couch snoring.
Apart from the blonde hair, Luffy’s goddaughter looks entirely like her father. Right down the tiny scrunch between her pale brows.
Luffy plays with Zoro’s hair that night, Zoro pressed up against him as though he was trying to place himself in between Luffy’s ribs.
Drake was already learning his numbers, on the latest snail call. The kid had managed to solve some equations that left Luffy stumped but Zoro nodding in approval.
Would his goddaughter grow up that quickly too? How did that happen? One minute you're holding a baby then suddenly a tiny human is there telling you, your feet smell.
Sabo curses that Ace somehow passed down his sassiness to his only nephew.
“Zoro?”
“Yeah?”
“I wanna stick around the east blue for a bit.”
“Aye aye.”
The fact that the words were spoken directly into Luffy’s cleavage did take away from Zoro’s normal gravitas.
Luffy marries Zoro in the All Blue.
Well technically they've been married for years, impromptu piercing in the middle of the night. Luffy still has a nasty scar on his left ear, a reminder not to do impromptu piercings or ignore an obviously infected piercing site.
They have their ceremony 5 years after their wedding in the All Blue. Zoro wears a dark blue yukata, blades gleaming at his waist. Crows' feet are just starting to form around his eyes.
Luffy doesn’t think he's ever seen anyone so beautiful.
The Straw hats do what they do best. They throw a party. A pirate king's party. Their hands bound by silk, Zoro and Luffy, are now bound forever more in the eyes of the public.
Vivi throws a bouquet at Marcos head. Sabo gets roped into a very intense tango with someone from the polar tang. Shanks stands near the railing, a man whose hair is wrapped in a scarf leans on it.
Drake alternates between playing with baby Faye to challenging people to sword fights.
Nami and Ussop start telling stories about the couple, half of which never happened.
It is loud and chaotic, Luffy leans against Zoro and hums binks sake.
Chopper holds out the spectacles like one would hold a gun.
“I can see just fine!” Luffy yelps, trying to dodge the second hoof.
“Take them or no meat!”
Luffy takes the glasses, if he had known giving Chopper power over his medical health would be so brutal he never would've done it
Zoro immediately gets Luffy a beaded chain to hang them around his neck. And though Luffy would never admit it out loud, the glasses do help him read. Also he does like how the beaded chain matches Zoro's hair (and how smug Zoro looks when he wears it.)
Unfortunately green blends with grass and after being surprised by Iva, Luffy is shuffling around trying to find his glasses in the long July grass.
“Ah I am so sorry Straw boy.” Iva frets. “I- hmmm.”
A shuffle, a scrape and Luffy looks up just in time to have his spectacles shoved in his face.
He blinks as everything comes into focus, the cliff, the headstone. A flash of gold catches his attention and he quickly pulls his glasses… out of a patch of shamrocks. The green beads winking in the sunlight.
He looks up at Iva who smiles with teary eyes.
“Dragon kept losing his,” she laughed. “I should’ve gotten him a chain. His left eye was near blind and he never quite got a hang of checking his blindspot, if he just wore his damn glass he-” They break off, taking a deep breath.
“Those were an old set, you should keep them. I got the pair I had commissioned before he died, bifocal in one lens and all.”
The glasses sat on Luffy's bedside for several weeks before Luffy puts them in the drawer.
Luffy reads the first letter on his 36th birthday. The same age as Dragon when he was born.
Zoro is there as always, steady and strong. As Luffy's fingers trace the letters.
Dear Luffy,
I’m sorry, You don’t know who I am. But I am so sorry. I hope you can understand one day. I hope I will get to say this to your face.
I never wanted to leave you.
If you are to believe anything I say. Believe that, the moment I held you, my world changed. I never had a dream growing up, I had my ambitions and ideals and I stuck to them. For better or worse, they grounded me and kept me on my path. But I never understood what Roger meant about dreams until I held you.
If I had a dream Luffy, it was you. Not you growing up in a better world. Not creating a better world for you. No, my dream was you, being your dad, watching you grow up.
I am so sorry that the world we live in is one where I was less selfish.
- dad
Dragon
There are more letters, at least 20 years worth. Luffy will read them, not tonight but someday. Tonight he will sleep tangled in the arms of the person he loves and he will dream of a small house in Foosha where a tall quiet man waits for Luffy to run home and tell him about the bugs he found.