Chapter Text
When Newgate returned to the Moby Dick, the sun was setting over the horizon. He carried an unconscious Marco tucked into his elbow, careful not to jostle him. Newgate had dithered on whether or not to remove the cuff and waking Marco up, but had finally decided against it. They weren’t in danger, and Marco deserved the courtesy of sleep after he had spent hours talking about his family, reliving memories and, Newgate suspected, forcing himself to truly face the pain from the past for the first time in many years.
Newgate had feared Marco would wake up the moment the cuff was off, so he had instead maneuvered him into the most comfortable position he could manage, picked up the bag Marco had brought and the remaining sake, and left the empty bottle and the broken cup behind —the angrier side of Newgate, the one that had wanted violence, hoped Marco’s kids would find them, that they would learn who had been there, by Marco’s empty grave and the grave of the woman he had loved. With some luck, they might even hear a description of Newgate’s companion.
His brother.
It had been many years since Newgate had last had a brother.
He looked forward to it.
His children stared, looking at the picture they made, eyes straying to the cuff wrapped around Marco’s wrist, but no one spoke nor approached them. Newgate was grateful that his children knew him well enough to tell when he wasn’t in the mood to talk. Right now the only thing he wanted to do was pass out and not wake up until they were far from this accursed island.
Which reminded him…
“Jozu,” Newgate called out, his voice carrying easily in the hush that had fallen on deck. “Call everyone back and set course for another island.” He didn’t care which one.
Newgate didn’t stop nor waited for a response. He passed through the first door that led to the cabins, and headed for his own. The thought of taking Marco to his cabin to wake up alone and hungover sat uncomfortably with him, so Newgate chose to bring Marco to his own room and be there when he woke up, to make sure he didn’t dwell on the past anymore.
As it turned out, Marco was the sort of person to throw up when hungover. He woke up, the grimace on his face the first sign that he was conscious, and managed to drag himself out of bed before he emptied his stomach. Or attempted to, given the many hours that had passed since Marco last ate. What little he threw up was mostly stomach acid and Newgate didn’t envy him the discomfort.
The moment Marco regained control of his body, he reached for the key that was still set into the cuff, and released it with a twist of his fingers. The cuff fell to the floor, and Marco straightened, sitting up properly instead of slumped over, and rested his back against the wall Newgate’s bed was pushed against.
“That’s cheating,” Newgate said. Newgate himself wasn’t hungover, he hadn’t drank enough for it; Marco had been the one to decimate a considerable portion of their booze yesterday. Still, Newgate was of the opinion that one should suffer the consequences of their drinking choices.
“So what? I’m a pirate now. Cheating’s in the job description,” Marco retorted, voice dry as dust.
Newgate laughed, pleasantly surprised by the friendly response.
They trailed into silence, Marco appearing lost in his own head and Newgate perfectly content to laze about for a while longer.
“How many people saw you drag my ass back to the ship?”
“Oh, about half the crew on the Moby Dick. Expect everybody to know by now.”
Marco sighed, the sound long-suffering but not particularly annoyed.
“You’re telling them,” Marco said, gesturing vaguely at himself and around at the cabin, something Newgate took to mean either the ship or the crew.
Negate chuckled, amused.
“You don’t really think you’ll escape being swarmed by them anyway, do you?”
Marco’s grimace didn’t even look like he was attempting to make it convincing.
“I know better.”
Marco did get swarmed. He hadn’t thought he would avoid it, but having Newgate make the announcement that he was joining the crew gave him enough time to scoop his breakfast onto a plate before Vista appeared by his side to drag him over to his table. Eating while everyone welcomed him required a serious application of skill, from dodging hands to stabbing at Ace’s face because Ace had clearly taken Marco joining the crew as a sign that his plate was now fair game.
“It’s been a while since we had an Uncle sail with us,” Vista said once the crowd had quieted down somewhat, which drew everyone’s attention all over again. Including Marco’s.
“What do you mean?” Marco asked. He almost didn’t, used as he had become to ignoring his curiosity over the crew, but he reminded himself that he no longer had to force himself to maintain a distance from them.
“Pops is all for adopting people into the crew, but they all become his kids. It’s been decades since he’s called someone his brother.” It was Jozu who explained it, drawing various reactions from the crew, all the way from sage nods to confused frowns.
Ace was one of the people frowning, and the one who posed the question in Marco’s mind.
“Pops has called someone his brother before?”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve heard about that. Wasn’t that the previous Second Division Commander?” Thatch asked, leaning forward on his elbows.
That comment led to an hour-long rehash of some of Kozuki Oden’s most memorable adventures with the Whitebeard Pirates. Marco had known Oden had sailed with the crew before he’d joined Roger, but hearing about it from sources other than the Kozuki clan was still very entertaining.
Ace’s mind had been a mess since breakfast.
Ever since Marco had agreed to talk to Pops about the reasons that stopped him from joining the crew, Ace had been toying with the idea of coming clean to him about Roger. In part because Roger and Marco had been friends and Marco obviously still cared for the man, but also because Ace craved to experience again the pleased shock he’d felt when Pops told him his parentage didn’t matter, when he had acknowledged that Ace was his own person. The idea that there was someone else who might not hold the identity of his biological father against Ace was extremely appealing.
The confirmation that Marco was joining them had solidified his resolve, but it also meant Ace needed to come up with the words to explain himself. Ace wasn’t good with words. Which was the reason it took Ace hours into the massive celebratory party that had taken over their ships at the news that Marco would join them and a few drinks to gather the courage to approach Marco.
Marco wasn’t drunk —they’d figured out his devil fruit must prevent him from getting wasted, and that was why he’d been wearing that cuff last night— but he held a large tankard and had settled on the top deck of the Moby Dick. From there, he watched the crew make asses of themselves and generally lose any remnants of dignity they’d managed to cling to so far. Ace had watched him hang around different groups throughout the day, but it was clear that Marco was used to being alone, and retreated to sit by himself after a while.
Ace stepped over a few unconscious crewmembers, having taken the long route and actually climbing the stairs to reach Marco. Ace’s balance was abysmal when drunk, and his alcohol tolerance pathetically low for a feared pirate. He had enough sense left to be aware that any attempts to jump around would end with him faceplanting somewhere.
“Regretting your decision?” Ace asked. He gave himself a mental pat on the back when his words didn’t come out too slurred.
“I’ve seen worse,” Marco said without turning to look at him, and it took Ace a moment to register the words were a response to his question.
Ace dropped down to sit next to Marco. His tankard tilted sideways as he did, and half its contents landed on Ace’s pants. So much for his own dignity.
“Yeah. Guess you’ve got experience.”
Ace looked into his tankard, gauged the contents, and decided now he was sitting with Marco the liquid courage outweighed the risk of more drunken stupidity. He drained the remnants of his drink and threw the tankard at a barrel full of dirty ones. He’d aimed for the open top of the barrel, but his throw went sideways and the tankard bounced on the wall next to the barrel before dropping to the ground. Close enough.
“Did they do this? Roger’s crew,” Ace asked.
“Do what?” Marco asked back, turning his head to look at Ace.
Ace didn’t meet his eyes, afraid he’d lose his courage if he did, and instead looked over the deck, gesturing at it meaningfully with an encompassing arm.
“Get drunk and ruin their image of evil, dangerous pirates.”
Marco snorted.
“Yeah. I hear they got drunk together with the Whitebeard Pirates whenever they met, too. Bunch of clowns, according to Rayleigh.”
Ace hummed his understanding. After hearing the old timers talk about the Roger Pirates the other day, he could believe the crews had liked one another. Many of the stories had been happy reminiscing, even the bloodiest battles between them.
Ace glanced around at the people nearby, checked that no one was directly under them or close enough around to hear his words, and took a deep breath.
“He’s my father, you know.” Ace spoke quickly, pushing the words out before he could choke on them. He shouldn’t have finished his drink earlier; he needed it now.
Marco turned to look at him with raised eyebrows.
“Who, Rayleigh?”
Ace sat back, confused.
“What—? No! Roger,” he said, shaking his hands for emphasis. “Roger was my father. Died before I was born. Long before I was born. Always hated his guts.”
There was a long silence as Marco looked at him more closely, and Ace grew uncomfortable the longer it lasted. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that last bit.
“He wouldn’t have let you,” Marco said, finally breaking the silence.
Ace blinked, once again not sure of what Marco was talking about.
“He wouldn’t let me what?”
“Hate him. He’d bug you until you stopped hating him just to get him off your case. Roger was a very stubborn bastard.”
Ace snorted, surprised. A chuckle escaped him, and that was a novel experience. He’d never been amused during a conversation about Roger.
“Shit, that sounds like Luffy. Wait, no, that’s exactly what Luffy did.”
Marco raised his eyebrows. His lips twitched as if he wanted to smile, but he didn’t, and instead leaned closer to Ace, sitting sideways with an elbow resting on his knee.
“Luffy, as in your little brother who wants to be Pirate King?”
“Yeah. He’s very stubborn.”
Marco did smile this time. He drank from his own tankard, which clearly wasn’t empty and lying useless a deck below them.
“You know, I think I’d like to hear more about this kid. What did he do, exactly, to get you to like him?”
When Sengoku left the meeting, he was more than ready to crash on the first flat surface he came across and not wake up for at least three days. The situation with the Whitebeard Pirates had come to a conclusion, and much to the dissatisfaction of everyone who’d known about it, Marco —named The Phoenix, now— had joined them. The mood had been so grim at the meeting in which they’d decided Marco’s bounty that even Garp had kept his comment about having run into Marco twenty years ago when Marco had apparently joined Roger for a time —which Garp should have reported back then, damnit— to a quiet aside to Sengoku and Tsuru.
In the end, they had decided to downplay the level of threat Marco the Phoenix posed in combat. The Whitebeard Pirates were a nigh untouchable crew even for the Marines, one of the standing powers in the world, and revealing they had someone new with them that would rank second only to Whitebeard himself in that crew of monsters would do nothing but cause unnecessary panic.
Whitebeard had never shown any interest in unbalancing the world’s precarious status quo, and the addition of a man who’d lay low successfully enough to go unnoticed for fifty years, no matter how powerful he was, was unlikely to change that fact. Marco would, in all likelihood, integrate into the crew and join in their usual activities. Thus, the World Government had chosen to keep the fight between Marco and Whitebeard as classified information, and continue to rely on the Marines’ watchful eyes over the Whitebeard Pirates.
Grandma Ami’s birthday was a strange day. Everyone went to the cemetery for a day trip, with food and drinks and lots of flowers for all the graves, and they sat and talked about the past, telling stories about Grandma Ami, or Auntie Su, or about whoever it was that was their birthday the day the family met at the cemetery.
Sora ran to the cemetery as soon as her drums lesson was over. She wanted to see her cousins and play, and today she would kick Eru’s butt when he started talking about his sword classes. Just because his teacher said he did well, Eru thought he was the strongest in the family: he acted like one day he’d be as strong as Great Grandpa Marco! As if! Sora had seen Mister Whitebeard now, and if Great Grandpa Marco had really been as strong as Mister Whitebeard, Eru was full of beans if he thought he’d become that strong in his silly classes.
Sora slowed down when she entered the cemetery, remembering Mama telling her they couldn’t run in the cemetery or they’d bother the people buried here. She didn’t want to bother anyone; she was here to visit her family, like everyone else.
She heard them talk before she saw them. Great Uncle Jonas and Great Aunt Ava were standing before Great Grandpa Marco’s grave, looking at a newspaper and talking too low for Sora to hear. Nobody else had arrived, and they turned when Sora walked past the bush with the tiny roots that never stayed quiet when she moved around it. She knew the bush had told Mister Whitebeard she was here that time.
“Oh, hello Sora. You’re early,” Great Aunt Ava said, smiling at her. She used to pick Sora up when she greeted her, before, but now she’d grown too much and Great Aunt Ava couldn’t carry her anymore. But that was okay, Sora still had Mama and Papa to pick her up when she wanted, and Great Aunt Ava’s shoulder wasn’t all that good.
“Hi!” Sora said —she didn’t yell, Mama, see? Sora listened to her lectures, even if Mama thought she didn’t— and rushed over, hugging first Great Aunt Ava and then Great Uncle Jonas, who did pick her up to kiss her on the cheek. Sora pulled back, yelling at him to shave— Oh. She wouldn’t tell Mama she had yelled.
“What’s that?” Sora asked, pointing at the paper. The paper was boring, but if she got them talking about it again maybe they’d forget Sora had yelled and wouldn’t tell Mama.
“This?” Great Uncle Jonas asked, and shook the paper. “Just boring adult stuff.”
But Sora wasn’t listening. Her eyes caught on the picture on the page.
“That’s Mister Whitebeard’s friend!” Sora exclaimed, pointing at the man with the pineapple hair in the picture. Sora didn’t think she’d forget that weird hair, or her meeting Mister Whitebeard.
Great Uncle Jonas bent to put her down —he couldn’t hold her up for long now— and looked at Great Aunt Ava before they turned back to her.
“Mister Whitebeard?” Great Aunt Ava asked.
Sora grinned.
There had been no one home when she’d come back that day, and she’d forgotten to tell anyone about her adventure after, but now Sora remembered, and she would tell everyone she’d met Mister Whitebeard!
“Yeah! He came with Mister Whitebeard to visit our family the other day!”
The Wanderer: End