Chapter Text
First-Person POV
Hospitals... I hated them. I hated the sterile white walls, the sharp smell of disinfectant that clung to everything, the machines that never stopped beeping even when I desperately wanted silence, and especially the doctors who spoke in whispers outside my room as though being sick somehow made me deaf. I could still hear them discussing failed treatments, declining numbers, whether my body could survive another round, and how much time they thought I had left while I lay trapped beneath thin blankets with barely enough strength to sit upright without help. Seventeen years—that was how long I'd lived, and for fourteen of them, ever since I was diagnosed with terminal cancer and leukemia at three, a hospital bed had been more familiar than any bedroom I could remember. Sometimes breathing felt like work, walking farther than the hallway could leave me exhausted for hours, and entire years of my childhood were easier to remember by nurses, medications, surgeries, and whatever view I had from the window than by anything normal children were supposed to experience.
My parents had stayed in the beginning, back when doctors still used words like remission with enough confidence that everyone believed them. Then years passed, treatments failed, and my parents had more children—healthy children who could run outside, go to school, complain about homework, play sports, travel, and celebrate birthdays without someone quietly watching a monitor in the background. Their visits became shorter, then less frequent, until eventually the nurses knew my favorite foods, shows, and birthday traditions better than my own mother did. I told myself I understood. It was probably easier to love children who had futures than to sit beside the one doctors had been preparing them to lose for years, but understanding why someone slowly stopped showing up didn't magically make it hurt less.
So I escaped wherever I could. Manga, anime, games, books—anything capable of giving me a world larger than the hospital room I couldn't leave—and One Piece became my favorite because it was almost painfully everything my life wasn't. Luffy could run toward the horizon because he felt like it, Zoro treated injuries that would kill ordinary people as inconveniences, and monsters like Charlotte Linlin and Kaido had been born with bodies so absurdly powerful that normal human limitations seemed optional. I used to look at them and wonder what it would feel like to trust my own body that completely. Not even to be monstrously strong. Just to wake up without pain, run until my legs were tired for a normal reason, swim without somebody panicking, fall over and scrape my knee without it becoming a medical discussion. The freedom fascinated me more than the powers did.
When I wasn't watching the Straw Hats sail somewhere I would never see, I was reading theories. What did the D. actually mean? Was Blackbeard's strange body responsible for him possessing multiple Devil Fruits? What had really happened during the Void Century? Had Nefertari D. Lili scattered the Poneglyphs deliberately, and why had she never returned to Alabasta? There were theories for everything, including one particularly persistent rabbit hole suggesting that whatever had happened between Lili and Imu might once have been considerably more personal than history implied. I read all of it because arguing with strangers online over fictional ancient history was much more entertaining at three in the morning than staring at a hospital ceiling. I never imagined any of those questions would matter to me personally.
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
I never got the chance to see most of those mysteries answered. My seventeenth birthday arrived quietly, my parents didn't visit, my siblings didn't call, and by the time midnight passed, I had mostly stopped expecting anyone except the nurses who brought me a tiny cupcake and tried pretending the single candle wasn't depressing. Then my breathing became harder. That wasn't unusual enough to scare me at first, but one nurse noticed the change in my monitor, another came rushing in, and suddenly the room was full of people moving faster than they wanted me to notice. I had spent almost my entire life learning how medical professionals looked when something was concerning and how they looked when something was hopeless. The woman holding my hand was trying not to cry, which told me more than anything the doctor was saying.
There was no miracle at the end. No treatment suddenly working, no impossible recovery, no parents racing through the doors after realizing they couldn't lose me after all. I remember wondering whether my mother would cry when somebody called her, then deciding that was a mean thought to have during my final moments and feeling guilty about it anyway. The machines changed, breathing stopped mattering, and everything around me became strangely distant. The last thing I saw was one of the nurses leaning over me with tears running down her face before a white sheet covered the body I had spent seventeen years fighting to keep alive.
Then I opened my eyes and realized I was standing. That registered before anything else because standing without assistance had not been something I did casually anymore, yet there I was with both feet planted beneath me in an endless white space with no walls, horizon, ceiling, or obvious source of light. Something humanoid stood several yards away, though calling it a person felt generous when every time I tried focusing on its face, the details seemed to slide out of my thoughts. There was a head, hands, clothing, something resembling hair, and absolutely nothing I could have described five seconds later. I looked at the being, looked down at my intact hands, then back again. “Well... either heaven has the worst decorating budget imaginable, or something extremely weird is about to happen.”
The being tilted its head. “Your response is considerably calmer than Participant One's.” I stared for several seconds before my brain latched onto the only important part of that sentence. “Participant what?” Apparently dying had somehow made my day stranger. The entity explained that I had been randomly selected as the third participant in an experimental multiversal reincarnation project, though participant sounded suspiciously nicer than test subject. The first had received a normal orientation and choice before reincarnation, while the second had entered their new reality without one for reasons the entity refused to explain. “So you just threw Number Two into another universe?” The entity corrected me with something about alternative transition procedures. I folded my arms. “That is a very professional way of saying yes.”
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Apparently the process had been revised again for me. I would receive clearer information about my destination and starting era, warnings concerning differences between realities, and some control over what kind of advantage I entered with. “So I'm Version Three.” The entity called that unnecessarily simplistic terminology. “Is it wrong?” Silence. “Version Three it is.” I tried asking about the previous participants, but information concerning them was apparently restricted unless our paths ever naturally intersected. All the being would confirm was that the larger project involved multiple realities and that both previous experiments remained active, which was another carefully worded answer I distrusted on principle.
Then glowing letters appeared in the air. ONE PIECE. I stared at them until the entity repeated itself, and excitement immediately collided with common sense. “Actual One Piece? Devil Fruits? Haki? Sea Kings? Marines? Celestial Dragons? Islands where the weather occasionally wakes up and chooses violence?” Yes. All of it existed in some form. Unfortunately, the word Alternate appeared beneath the destination before I could become too excited. This wasn't guaranteed to be the exact continuity I remembered. People could possess different appearances, histories, personalities, relationships, motives, or abilities, while events could happen differently or never happen at all.
That warning mattered. Knowing canon might help me recognize dangerous names, countries, organizations, and things worth avoiding, but these people wouldn't become predictable fictional characters simply because I'd once read another version of their lives. I couldn't meet somebody like Roger and automatically assume he was trustworthy because I liked him in a manga. I couldn't assume a Marine I remembered as decent had made all the same choices here, or that somebody I knew as an enemy even had the same history. “So my canon knowledge is basically an outdated map.” The entity agreed. “Useful enough to tell me where the mountains should be, but dangerous if I assume every road still exists.” Another confirmation. Wonderful.
I still tried squeezing information out of it while I had the chance. Imu existed. The World Government existed. Devil Fruits, Haki, the Ancient Weapons, the Will of D., and the broad historical structure I recognized all existed in some form. Anything involving secrets the world itself wasn't supposed to know received increasingly irritating refusals, so after enough failed questions about the Void Century, I gave up and asked when I was arriving instead. Approximately thirty years before Luffy would begin his journey. God Valley had already happened roughly eight years earlier, Roger was still alive, Shanks and Buggy should be children, and Oden had not yet joined Roger. I stared at the timeline forming inside my head. “So you're dropping me directly into one of the periods canon explained almost entirely through flashbacks.” Apparently that was exactly what it was doing.
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Then came my choice. The first option was a custom Devil Fruit created specifically around my compatibility and personality, something that didn't naturally exist in the world and whose exact power I wouldn't learn unless I selected it. The second was a body—completely healthy but possessing the kind of abnormal natural constitution found in freaks like Charlotte Linlin and Kaido. Not their strength automatically, the entity clarified, but the potential beneath it: ridiculous vitality, durability, stamina, recovery, growth, and a physical ceiling far beyond what an ordinary human body could reach. I would still need to train, learn Haki, develop combat experience, and actually earn whatever strength I eventually possessed.
I answered before it finished. “The body.” The entity paused and pointed out that I hadn't even asked what the Devil Fruit did. “Don't care.” Apparently the Fruit had been carefully designed around me. “Still don't care.” It could have been the strongest Fruit in existence, and I probably would have made the same decision. “A Devil Fruit is only as useful as the person using it. I've already spent fourteen years trapped in a body that couldn't handle being alive. I'm not starting my second life gambling everything on another one.”
I looked down at my hands. “I want lungs that work. I want legs that can take me somewhere because I decided to go. I want to run until I'm tired because I ran too far. I want to swim while I still can, eat because I'm hungry instead of because somebody says I need calories, get sick without everyone immediately wondering if I'm dying, and fall over without it becoming a medical emergency.” My voice became quieter despite myself. “I want to scrape my knee and have it just be a scraped knee. I want to know what healthy feels like.”
The entity confirmed my selection without arguing again. Only afterward did it casually mention that nothing prevented me from learning Haki, acquiring a Devil Fruit, or gaining other abilities native to the world later. “Wait. I can have the body and still potentially eat a Devil Fruit?” Yes. “You couldn't have mentioned that earlier?” Apparently I hadn't needed the extra incentive. My memories would remain intact, my personality wouldn't be overwritten, and my new body had been generated specifically for the destination rather than copying my old appearance. That last part sounded suspicious, but another concern occurred to me first. “Wait. Am I going to be a baby? Because mentally being seventeen while physically newborn sounds like actual torture. How old am I going to—” The floor disappeared beneath me. “YOU COULD HAVE LET ME FINISH!”
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
I slammed onto hard ground beneath something enormous, pain shooting through my back hard enough that seventeen years of instinct immediately made me freeze and wait for the consequences. My chest should have tightened. My vision should have blurred. My heart should have done something worrying while one ordinary impact became six different medical problems because my body had always been creative about betraying me. Nothing happened. My back hurt because I'd landed on it. That was all.
I inhaled so deeply my chest expanded farther than I could remember it ever doing, then took another breath simply because nothing stopped me. Air went in. Air came back out. No burning, no coughing, no oxygen tube, no nurse watching numbers beside me. I pushed myself upright too quickly and waited for dizziness that never arrived. “Holy shit.” I stood, bent forward until my fingers touched the ground, straightened again, twisted, stretched, and jumped. My feet actually left the ground. I landed normally, so I jumped again.
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it. Then I noticed my hands. Tiny hands. Tiny arms. Tiny bare feet beneath clothing so oversized that the coarse cotton shirt hung almost to my knees while equally rough trousers had been rolled repeatedly around my ankles. “…I'm five.” I looked toward the sky as if the entity might still be watching. “YOU MADE ME FIVE?!” A translucent bubble floated across my vision, and my anger disappeared instantly.
Giant mangrove roots surrounded me. More bubbles drifted overhead. Strange buildings crowded the distance between enormous trees. “…Sabaody.” My stomach dropped. I had no idea exactly which grove I'd landed in, but the rough streets, boarded buildings, armed strangers, and distant shouting told me I wasn't anywhere pleasant. Then I looked down at the coarse, dirty clothing hanging from my tiny body again. It wasn't simply oversized; it was cheap, shapeless, and rough against the skin—the kind of thing someone gave another person because comfort wasn't important. I swallowed. “Oh, you've got to be kidding me.”
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
I started moving before anyone could decide an unattended five-year-old looked interesting. Walking became jogging almost immediately because simply being able to move felt too good not to test, and jogging became running when I realized my new lungs weren't protesting. Wind hit my face, my legs stretched farther with every stride, and for several glorious seconds I forgot where I was because I was running. Actually running. My heart hammered because I was moving, not because something inside me was failing. I laughed, pushed faster simply because I could, then caught one bare foot on broken stone and went down hard enough to scrape both palms and one knee.
I stared at the thin line of blood appearing beneath torn skin. “It just hurts.” I touched it and hissed. Nothing else happened. No emergency. No immediate fear that a simple wound would become something worse because my immune system barely worked. Just a scraped knee. My eyes burned hard enough that I nearly laughed again. “It's just a fucking scrape.”
Then screaming erupted somewhere behind me. Two men and a woman burst around the corner barefoot, dressed in the same kind of coarse, shapeless clothing I was wearing, terror making them stumble as they disappeared into a narrow alley. Armed men followed them carrying clubs, chains, and hooked poles, one shouting for somebody to block the eastern street because their merchandise had gotten loose. Every good feeling inside me vanished.
One of them looked directly at me. His eyes dropped to my oversized coarse clothing, dirty bare feet, and the grime covering enough of my face and hair that even I had no idea what I looked like beneath it. His expression changed immediately. “There! Another one!” My heart stopped. “Wait, I'm not—” He started toward me. There was absolutely no version of that conversation worth finishing. I ran.
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
My new body saved me before I fully understood what it could do. I was still physically five and had no training whatsoever, but my legs were quick, my balance corrected itself with frightening ease, and every time panic screamed faster, my body actually listened. The traffickers shouted behind me while I tore through alleys and between mangrove roots, one yelling that somebody was going to pay for losing this many slaves. I didn't bother correcting them. Being mistaken for an escaped slave was considerably preferable to stopping long enough for them to make me one.
The problem was that I knew nothing about the streets. They did. One man appeared ahead of me after cutting through another alley, forcing me to change direction so quickly I nearly slipped. Another reached for the back of my shirt and caught the fabric for half a second before I twisted hard enough that the oversized collar almost came over my shoulder. Real fear felt nothing like reading about it. There was no heroic soundtrack, no certainty the good guys would arrive, only my own breathing and the realization that if they caught me, I had no idea what would happen next.
I rounded another enormous root at full speed and almost collided with a wall of people. I stopped so suddenly my feet slid beneath me and I fell backward onto my hands, staring up at several pirates walking in the opposite direction. The first face I recognized belonged to Gol D. Roger. The second belonged to Silvers Rayleigh. Behind them were people I knew only from old panels and vague history, along with two boys around nine years old—one red-haired and one blue-haired.
For one dangerous second, relief hit me. Then the entity's warning came rushing back. Alternate world. Different histories. Different personalities. Different relationships. I didn't know these people. I knew characters who looked like them. My body moved before my brain finished processing that distinction, scrambling backward until my shoulders hit the mangrove root behind me. Roger's eyebrows rose. Rayleigh stopped moving completely. Shanks and Buggy stared. Then the traffickers came around the corner.
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
“There she is!” one shouted before noticing who stood between us. His confidence disappeared so quickly it would have been funny under different circumstances. Roger turned his head toward them while I remained pressed against the root, trying to decide whether I'd somehow run from one dangerous group directly into another. “Something you boys want?” His voice sounded almost friendly. Somehow that made the traffickers look more frightened.
The biggest one recovered first. “Business matter. Our property ran off.” Something changed in Roger's expression while Rayleigh's eyes became considerably colder. The man's attention flicked toward me. “That brat's one of ours. Hand her over.” My stomach turned. I opened my mouth to deny it, but Shanks beat me to it. “She doesn't look like she wants to go with you.” Buggy nodded rapidly beside him before apparently remembering he was supposed to look intimidating and adding, “Yeah! So get lost!”
The trafficker laughed. “Kids don't get a choice.” He took one step toward me. He never made another. I barely saw Roger move before the man was on the ground several yards away, while Rayleigh caught another attacker by the wrist and dropped him so cleanly that I didn't understand what had happened until his weapon hit the dirt. The remaining men suddenly remembered somewhere else they desperately needed to be.
I still didn't move. Roger turned toward me and seemed to realize immediately that solving the immediate problem had not convinced me he was safe. He stopped several feet away instead of approaching. “They're gone.” I watched the alley the men had disappeared through, then looked back at him. “For now.” My voice sounded smaller than I wanted. Roger's expression shifted slightly. “For now,” he agreed instead of pretending otherwise.
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Rayleigh crouched eventually, but not close enough to touch me. “Were you with the people who escaped?” I shook my head. “No.” His eyes moved over my clothing before returning to my face. “Do you know those men?” Another shake. “They saw my clothes and thought I was one of them.” That was technically true. I wasn't going to explain the part where some cosmic entity had apparently dropped me into the world already dressed like a trafficking victim.
Roger glanced in the direction they'd fled. “You alone?” I hesitated before nodding. That answer made the adults exchange looks I immediately disliked. “What's your name?” Rayleigh asked. My old name surfaced automatically, but it belonged to another body and another world. I didn't hate it, but it belonged to a girl beneath a white hospital sheet. After a moment, I let it go. “Lilith.” Roger smiled slightly. “Lilith.” He said it like he was committing it to memory.
“You can come with us,” Roger offered. I stiffened immediately. He noticed. So did Rayleigh. “No.” The answer came faster than intended, but I wasn't gambling my life because another universe's Roger had been a good man. “I don't know you.” Silence followed, and for one uncomfortable moment, I wondered whether I'd just insulted one of the strongest men alive. Then Roger gave a short laugh. “Fair enough.”
Shanks apparently decided the adults were doing a terrible job. He stepped forward until Rayleigh caught the back of his shirt and kept him from getting too close. “We're not gonna sell you.” Buggy immediately hissed, “That's a terrible thing to say!” Shanks looked genuinely confused. “Why? It's true!” “Because now it sounds like something somebody planning to sell her would say!” I stared at them. Buggy awkwardly searched his pocket, produced half a wrapped sweet, and held it toward me from several feet away. “…Want candy?” Against every reasonable instinct, a tiny laugh escaped me.
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
The laugh apparently encouraged Shanks because he crouched beside Buggy, keeping the same distance. “We have food on the ship.” Buggy nodded. “Way better than his candy.” Shanks immediately looked offended. “You were trying to steal this earlier!” “That doesn't mean it's good!” Their argument was so stupidly normal that some of the tension finally loosened from my shoulders.
Roger still didn't come closer. “You don't have to come if you don't want to.” Rayleigh looked mildly surprised he'd phrased something responsibly. “But those men know you're here now,” Roger continued. “And they might come back with more.” Unfortunately, that was exactly the problem. Staying alone after a trafficking group had just decided I belonged to them was objectively worse than temporarily following pirates whose alternate versions I didn't yet understand.
Before I could decide, a woman approached from behind the group and changed the entire situation. Tall, dark-haired, composed, with a cigarette balanced between her fingers and the sort of presence that made several pirates subtly shift out of her path. It took me a second to recognize the younger face. Shakuyaku. Shakky. She wasn't part of Roger's crew, but apparently she had been visiting Rayleigh while they were at Sabaody.
Her eyes moved across me once and sharpened when they reached the coarse clothing. “What happened?” Rayleigh gave her the short version. Shakky's gaze returned to me, but unlike everyone else, she didn't immediately start asking questions. “Those clothes are rubbing your shoulders raw.” I looked down. She was right. “I've got something cleaner that should fit you.” I hesitated. She exhaled smoke away from me before adding, “You can stay where you are if you want. I won't touch you without asking.” That, more than anything else, made me finally nod.
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
I still kept Roger, Rayleigh, and every other pirate in sight while we walked. Shanks and Buggy hovered nearby without getting too close, apparently having silently appointed themselves my escorts. Every time a stranger looked at me for too long, Shanks glared at them with all the menace a nine-year-old could manage, while Buggy checked behind us so often he nearly walked into something twice. It was ridiculous. It was also strangely comforting.
Their ship didn't immediately make me relax. A pirate ship was still a pirate ship no matter whose flag flew above it, and the entity's warning remained lodged firmly inside my skull. I watched the exits, counted people, memorized where the gangplank was, and refused to go below deck until Shakky offered to accompany me. Rayleigh noticed everything and, thankfully, said nothing.
Food helped. It was difficult maintaining complete suspicion while discovering that my new body apparently considered several adult-sized portions a reasonable beginning. I ate slowly at first because years of hospital routines had trained me to expect nausea, then faster when nothing happened. Shanks stared openly. Buggy tried not to and failed. “Are you sure you're five?” he finally asked. I stopped chewing. “No, Buggy. I've secretly been forty this entire time.” His eyes widened for half a second before Shanks started laughing at him.
Rayleigh watched the empty plates accumulate with increasingly obvious interest, but Shakky interrupted before anyone could start interrogating me again. “Bath first. Questions later.” I immediately liked her more.
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
The bath was almost embarrassingly emotional. Warm water ran over my skin, and nothing hurt. I could stand without trembling, raise my arms to wash myself, bend down, straighten again, and scrub dirt from my legs without stopping because my body had decided ordinary movement was too exhausting. I caught myself stretching my fingers beneath the water simply because I could and had to blink away tears before Shakky noticed. She noticed anyway and, thankfully, didn't say anything.
She helped carefully work the dirt from my hair until the muddy strands gradually turned pale blue beneath the water. That made her pause. “Well.” I looked at the strands floating around me. “That's definitely not what I expected.” Shakky's eyes flicked toward me, but she didn't pry.
The clothes she brought afterward came from Amazon Lily, something she mentioned casually while unfolding them. It was a simple blue dress made from soft fabric, with a comfortable skirt, short sleeves, and a pale sash that could be adjusted around my waist. “One of the women back home made it for a younger girl who outgrew it before I ever delivered it,” she explained. “Looks like it'll fit you better.” I ran my fingers over the fabric, still not entirely accustomed to clothing that didn't scratch. “Thank you.”
“Don't thank me yet.” Shakky picked up a brush and looked toward the enormous amount of wet hair hanging down my back. “We still have to survive this.” That got another unwilling laugh out of me. By the time she finished, my pale-blue hair fell clean and smooth down my back, and the grime hiding my skin and face had disappeared entirely. Shakky went strangely still behind me. I caught the change in her expression before I could properly see what she was seeing. “What?” She recovered quickly. “Nothing dangerous.” Somehow that answer was considerably less reassuring than nothing.
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
Everyone noticed when I returned to the deck. Roger stopped halfway through saying something. Rayleigh's expression flattened into the particular stillness of somebody thinking very quickly. Shanks stared without even attempting subtlety, while Buggy's mouth fell open. “Your hair was blue under all that dirt?!” I stared at him. “Thank you, detective.” Shanks snorted.
Roger looked toward Rayleigh before returning his attention to me, which immediately made me more guarded. Thankfully, nobody jumped straight to conclusions aloud. Rayleigh asked first, “Lilith, do you have another name?” That was reasonable enough, so I shook my head. “Just Lilith.” Shakky followed more gently. “Do you know where you were born?” “No.” Technically true. “Any family you can contact?” My real family existed in another universe and hadn't bothered visiting while I was dying. “…No.”
The adults exchanged another look. Roger hesitated before asking, “Ever been to Alabasta?” There it was. I kept my face still. “No.” Rayleigh studied me for another second. “Have you heard the name Nefertari?” At least they were actually asking instead of expecting me to volunteer some bizarre denial. “Yes.” “Does it belong to you?” “No.” Short, simple, and true as far as I knew.
Nobody pushed after that. Unfortunately, their expressions said the answers had created more questions than they solved. A five-year-old with pale-blue hair, no known family, no home, clothing nearly identical to escaped slaves, and features apparently familiar enough to make grown pirates stare probably looked considerably stranger from their perspective than it felt from mine. Shakky eventually stepped between me and the attention. “She's had enough questions.” Roger lifted both hands in surrender, Rayleigh accepted the correction without argument, and Shanks immediately asked whether I'd ever seen a Sea King. Buggy objected that this was technically still a question. I barely heard either of them because there was a mirror mounted beside the doorway behind Shakky, and for the first time since arriving, I got a clear look at myself.
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
The first name my brain supplied was Vivi. It lasted less than a second because Vivi hadn't even been born yet, and the resemblance was older than her anyway. Pale-blue hair. Tanned skin. Familiar features I had seen reproduced in panels discussing the Void Century. Lili.
I stepped closer before I could stop myself. Then I saw the eyes. Red rings stared back from the mirror, unmistakable even on a child's face. My stomach dropped. Imu.
I did not panic there. Seventeen years of hearing doctors say terrifying things within earshot had taught me that skill too well. My expression barely changed before I looked away and asked Shakky if there was somewhere quiet I could sit for a while. She showed me a small empty cabin and, more importantly, didn't follow when I closed the door.
Then I panicked. Quietly. I checked the little mirror inside the room as though the face might somehow change if I looked from another angle. It didn't. Lili's features were still there. So were the eyes associated with Imu. I had read enough theories in my old life for my brain to make the obvious connection without needing to repeat every argument I'd ever seen online. “You've got to be fucking kidding me.” Whatever this meant, I wasn't deciding the answer based on fandom speculation from another universe. The entity had explicitly warned me that this was an AU. There could be a hundred explanations I didn't know. That did not make the reflection any less unsettling.
- · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·· · ─ ·𖥸· ─ · ·
I stayed alone until my breathing settled and my face looked normal again. When I returned to the deck, Shanks was sitting near the railing while Buggy had apparently been tasked with helping him not bother me and was failing spectacularly. Both looked up immediately. Shanks shuffled sideways, leaving more room beside him without actually telling me to sit. “You can stay here if you want.” Buggy nodded. “Just don't take my hammock.” Shanks punched him in the shoulder. “She doesn't even know which one's yours!” “I'm establishing boundaries!”
I sat several feet away from them. Not because I trusted them completely. Not yet. But because they had tried, and apparently that mattered more than I wanted it to. Roger eventually approached, stopping far enough away that I didn't feel cornered. “Rayleigh says I scared you earlier.” I glanced toward Rayleigh, who very deliberately discovered something fascinating in the opposite direction. “You told a five-year-old you just met that she was coming with you.” Roger scratched his cheek. “When you say it like that...” “That's because that's what happened.” Shanks laughed.
Roger sighed dramatically. “Fine. Want to stay until we leave Sabaody?” That was different. Temporary. My choice. I looked toward the docks, remembered chains, men yelling about escaped merchandise, and the fact that at least one trafficking group now thought I belonged to them. Then I looked back at Roger. “…For now.” His grin appeared instantly. I immediately suspected I had made a mistake.
Apparently Roger interpreted for now with remarkable creativity. Within the hour, someone had found a place for the few things I owned—which was basically the blue dress currently on my body and whatever Shakky had gathered for me—and bedding had appeared inside the little cabin I'd used earlier. Nobody called it my room. They were absolutely treating it like my room. “This is temporary,” I reminded Roger when I caught him helping move something inside. “Of course.” I narrowed my eyes. “Why did you say that like you don't believe me?” “Didn't say anything.” “You're terrible at looking innocent.” Roger grinned. “Never had much practice.”
Shanks appeared carrying a blanket considerably larger than he was and dumped it onto the bed. “There. Now it's better.” Buggy came behind him with a pillow and immediately acted as though he'd been forced into participating. “He made me help.” Shanks looked offended. “You picked the pillow!” “Because yours was ugly!” I stared at both of them while something unfamiliar tightened behind my ribs. Not pain. That still felt strange.
For seventeen years, tomorrow had usually meant another treatment, another medication, another test result, or another possibility that I wouldn't survive long enough to reach the week after it. Now I was wearing a blue dress from Amazon Lily aboard Gol D. Roger's ship while a nine-year-old Shanks and Buggy argued over which pillow looked less stupid. My scraped knee was already beginning to heal normally beneath its bandage. My stomach was full. My lungs worked. I still didn't trust these people completely, and I wasn't stupid enough to mistake knowing their names for knowing them, but staying here tonight felt considerably safer than going back into those streets alone. Roger leaned through the doorway with an enormous grin. “See? You're already settling in.” I glared. “I said for now.” “Sure.” “Stop saying it like that.” His laughter followed him down the corridor while I fell backward onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. Thirty years before canon. A body strong enough to finally let me live. The Roger Pirates. A face I didn't understand. And apparently the beginning of a second childhood I had never expected to get. I covered my eyes with one arm. “…This is going to be a fucking disaster.”