⛵ and then the barrel bursts open and someone leaps out and you scream and bolt across the hold, but he's following, he's shushing and pressing a rough, warm, callused palm to your mouth and the biggest, brightest, wildest eyes in every sea in every world are locking with yours and everything, everything, everything changes.

⛵ shells town, the stars above you, the boat beneath your back, the memory of the cafe and the way that (obnoxious annoying ridiculous) blond guy had harassed that little girl, a little girl like you used to be, had humiliated and taunted her and how every single marine in that room stood to defend him and only the bounty hunter had stood against him. you think about every dream that's led you here, away from your island and onto alvida's ship and onto the lifeboat with luffy, who stretches out warm and lanky and loose-limbed beside you. you think about saying i've always wanted to be a marine, ever since i was a kid. you think about how maybe you were wrong, to leave (i knew who i was) and realize how much more complex the world is. and luffy reaches out, touches your shoulder, carelessly warm, carelessly kind and he says you'll be one of the good ones and maybe you were wrong about the marines, but you weren't wrong about him.

⛵ so you stay. so you enlist. you polish your shoes and you stand up straight and you hope -- you hope maybe it'll be different. maybe you can make it be different (presumptuous thought, cabin boy with lofty dreams, pirate slave who thinks he can unmake the world and built it anew). the vice admiral looks you in the eye and you look away, then back, then away, and he calls you into his office and it is different, but you can't figure out if that's good or not, if you've taken the first, best kindness anyone's ever shown you (you coming? luffy asks as the ship burns around you) and betrayed the very heart of it. garp squeezes your shoulder and he laughs and you shrink back down inside your too-big uniform and try to remember how to make yourself small.

⛵ but -- he won't let you stay small. he coaxes and he pushes and he prods, he calls you into his office and sits you down in front of a go board, and he challenges you to a game. and you hesitate and falter and overthink, wondering what will be too far, what failure will result in the man who caught gold roger turning on you at last, seeing you for what you are (small and useless and pathetic and worthless), but he doesn't let you stay in your head, he pushes, he pushes and you move, you act without thinking, you trust your gut and you move your pieces and you win. you win. and garp looks proud beneath that smug (familiar, familiar) grin and he challenges you to a rematch.

⛵ you find luffy again, and you watch him walk away. you stand in the middle of the road and you think about how wrong it all feels and you wonder what's it going to take to make your dream feel worthwhile again. you listen at doors and you mop decks and you learn, you learn, and the more you learn, the more you wonder if chasing down that straw-hatted jolly roger is worth it. you wonder whether anything is as black and white as you believed when you were tiny and powerless and helpless. you toss back shots in a bar and let your mouth run away with you and you make him smile, make him nudge up against you aren't you full of surprises and the compass brings you closer and closer to luffy and his crew, until coco village rises up before you that night, the celebration and the revelry grinding to a halt as the marines file in, as the five pirates stand there, defenseless, accused and garp is triumphant and smug and he points at luffy and commands arrest them and he pushes and you move, you act without thinking, you trust your gut and you move your feet --

⛵ -- and you step between your commanding officer and your enemy and you stand as tall as you can and you tell him no. you don't know yet about a village in the snow, about a world outside this one, about a winter you'll spend toothed and silky-pelted in a river, about the girl standing behind you who'll one day paint your nails and cry into your neck, about the man who'll call you almost-insults and tell you to bus the damn tables faster, about the other whose body you'll learn like your own, one night in a house out of time. you don't know yet that you'll meet the man who gave luffy that hat, that you'll fall into his orbit and learn the way his smiles feel when he's kissing them down your spine. you don't know yet about that house, that place that awaits you outside of the world you longed to save and who you'll meet there and love there and lose there, how you'll spend longer loving the people standing behind you than you did chasing them.

⛵ all you know is you stand there between garp and luffy and you tell him no, sir and you tell him i disagree with those orders and everything, everything begins to make sense.