Chapter Text
III - Makino
Makino meets Luffy when he is but a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes. Garp hands him to her, tells her that this is his grandson and to keep him safe, and nothing more. He leaves and Makino, seventeen and the owner of a new bar that she barely knows her way around, is left standing there, lost and confused.
Luffy, the name she only knows because Garp brushed Luffy’s hair aside and said it to him, laughs and it is the one thing that jerks her from her daze.
He’s a small thing, smaller than she thinks most babies are (but how could she know? She’s never raised a child before) and smiling impossibly wide. Something tells her he is not smiling at her however, but something far greater.
She follows his gaze to the shore where the Ocean splashes in waves against the shore, and holds Luffy closer to her chest.
Makino has lived by the water her entire life. She knows the stories – children doomed to fall to the Ocean’s sway, men who went out to walk upon the beach at night and never came home, women who sing to the sea and drown their voices in her eventually, and people who chase the horizon and wish to dance with ocean currents instead.
She will not let Luffy be one of those people.
Makino is not a mother, but she wasn’t a bartender till a week ago either. She’ll make do.
(She always has.)
-
She grabs a crib from Old Man Johnson and baby clothes from Miss Lydia down the street, who always likes the sea stone necklaces Makino gives her and isn’t afraid to share the clothes of grandchildren that never came.
(Sailors always die at sea if they’re lucky - Miss Lydia’s five sons were the luckiest.)
Ryla and her husband donate their children’s old toys and Luffy soon finds himself happily ensconced in the best thing Makino can think for a baby. Milly, the Midwife, shows her how to make formula, and soon Luffy is downing it like he’s never eaten before.
(Makino was right. Luffy is too small for a baby, Milly says so. Hopefully the formula will help him add on weight.)
Milly warns her that Luffy might screech all night, that it will be hard to keep him quiet sometimes but to bear with it and if she needs helps come to her.
But.
Luffy is a quiet child. He does not react to words or loud sounds or the bells Makino put at the opening to the Party Bar. He reacts when Makino waves her hands in front of his face and when colorful toys cross in front of his vision, but nothing else.
He laughs, wildly of course, because he is a Monkey D. and as loud and boisterous as they come but – he’s quiet, other than that. Instead of children screaming keeping her up at night, Makino’s up worried about what she might be doing wrong.
(She can’t fail this child, she can’t)
-
Luffy’s favorite thing to do is stare out at the sea. Makino finds herself taking him to the beach to play in the sand, always finding that the most beautiful (and rounded) shells find their way to his feet. She sits there and watches the horizon as Luffy babbles nonsense.
He doesn’t respond to her words, her soft cries of Luffy, and oh honey, and don’t eat that, but he’s entranced by the Ocean.
It’s always the Ocean.
Always.
(Please don’t take him away-)
-
Garp comes back more than half a year later when Luffy’s just starting to crawl. Makino’s learned, slowly, how to deal with a child as rambunctious as Luffy and a bar full of patrons from all over. It’s hard, but Luffy’s an easy child.
Give him a bottle of formula and a toy and free space to attempt to crawl, with the Ocean in view to his left, and he is happy.
Luffy has yet to respond to any noise save for the Ocean however. Makino is getting worried, and Garp catches on quickly as Luffy begins to race around the house on all fours, chewing on anything within reach.
“He can’t hear us.”
“No… not us at least.”
(They both know the stories.)
They walk by the shore, something Makino is getting used to doing every day, and watch Luffy laughing as the Ocean splashes at his feet. Makino sighs, and wades deeper into the water to let him play in the waves.
He’s a happy child, but happiest here, in gentle waves and the shining sun.
Garp watches his grandson turn his head to the wind, and hopes he will one day hear his grandfather’s voice.
-
Luffy doesn’t talk though he does eat through half of Makino’s stores. Once he started teething meat was the only thing he would eat and Makino, whose cooking skills weren’t the best before, quickly learns to keep up.
Luffy is a lesson in impossibility.
He walks soon after he crawls, never the one to wait, and his first steps are not to Makino or Garp but to the Ocean – and only the Ocean as his witness. He reaches out and toddles his way out of the bar to the sea and the shore, playing in the sand while it cushions his failures at walking. It isn’t until he finds his way back to the bar that someone catches him.
His feet are not hurt like Makino would have expected from a child walking across stone, and he’s covered in sand and smells like the sea.
Luffy doesn’t register Makino’s arms around him, but hums as he’s carried back, a sea shanty in baby babble that everyone swears they have heard before.
(Luffy babbles oshe, like everyone else says love, and it’s not a word not yet but it scares her all the same.)
The Party Bar does not gain any baby gates to trap the child in but rather a watchful eye of every patron on the child that will stumble along and pull on pants or skirts of the patrons. They laugh and Luffy disappears, running out to the waves, tripping upon every stone yet escaping Makino’s watchful eye.
Makino thinks she should be worried. She isn’t. (She should be terrified. She isn’t. Just numb fear, occasionally, at night)
(Luffy stares sometimes, eyes distant and foggy, to something greater than Makino would ever be. Sometimes she never wants to know what he sees. Other times, she wants to know so she can thank them.)
Luffy is what the islands call a Sea-Child, but he is also what false god’s call a storm. He’ll be safe in the Ocean’s grasps.
-
“Luffy, arms up,” Makino says after pressing a kiss to the child’s head. Luffy’s looking off over her shoulder so she taps his cheek. He giggles at the attention and copies her movements.
She slips the shirt over his head, tapping his nose to let him know she’s done, and lets him scurry off for the day.
He still can’t hear her, but he doesn’t seem to understand the sign language she shows him. Its more than a lack of hearing Makino knows.
He hears.
Just not her.
Still, he smiles at her and runs out the door, stumbling over the stairs and racing to the bar where breakfast awaits.
Like every day, cheerfully laughing at nothing and waving his hands at everything.
The morning patrons say hi to him like always as Makino walks down the stairs, and while Luffy says nothing back they think nothing of it. It’s routine, now, just as routine as Luffy looking upward when a storm is coming or shrieking with joy at every thunder strike.
Luffy loves the world, and Makino is happy for that at least.
During the day he plays in the back and wanders the streets till he finds the shore again. Everyone asks her why she lets him do such a thing, but he’s never gotten hurt before – or never acted hurt at least. He’s always covered in scrapes of some kind, but he never cries. Just continues rough housing with nets from the fishermen or the dogs from Old Lady Lin’s house.
He doesn’t seem lonely, though he’s the youngest child in the village.
(Belatedly, she thinks he is probably never alone. He hears and sees things that aren’t hers and in dim gazes has the wisdom of ages.
Her child, her Luffy, has the world following his every step.
He’s not alone.)
(She hopes he is never alone.)
-
Luffy’s like the sea and the sea has unexpected changes.
Makino should have expected it when she brought Luffy to the beach that day, him, all of three years, and the Ocean looking calmer than ever.
She’s surprised, because her child who has yet to have coherent words, yet to speak to her or acknowledge her, sits and stares at the Ocean and says one word.
“Bye-bye.”
It’s like a dam has burst open in Makino’s chest because he’s awake, he’s not lost in the Ocean’s sway, he’s hers for the first time and –
“Luffy! – Oh Luffy!” She cries, slumping to her knees as Luffy waves to the Ocean.
He turns to her, truly seeing her for the first time, and laughs, reaching for her face.
Oh, how she loves this child.
-
He calls her Ma-ma and Maki, and it’s all echoed by the Ocean in the gentlest of moments, in the way that Luffy guides her along the shore to find shells and brings her hermit crabs to put in jars. She teaches him now, letting that warmness fill her heart, how to say please and thank you to people he never knew existed, and how to make food at the counter and help out at the bar.
He’s four and rambunctious but he just wants to explore and if supporting that means letting Luffy run wild in a helpful manner around the bar she never wanted, she’ll allow it.
She gives him a room in the attic with a view of the Ocean, and she doesn’t think she’s seen him happier then when he discovered her could look at the Ocean from his bed.
It is the simple things that make him happy, and Makino is so very happy to provide.
(She collects jars from all the neighbors and helps him fill them with sea shells and crabs and saltwater, then helps him dump them all out when he realizes that jars aren’t their home but the Ocean is. He’s so young to care about freedom yet it’s all he looks for in life.
In this world, it is a value Makino will treasure.
Be free, she likes to think the Ocean says every time she looks through Luffy’s window, be free.)
-
Garp, she learns is a horrible horrible horrible man who has no business raising child, because What the Fuck, Garp, she screams, surprising him with her words when her child goes missing under Garp’s watch and comes back scraped and hungry and covered in saltwater, What the fuck!
Who tosses a child down a ravine?
Luffy clings to her when she finds him on the shore, something calling her out that day.
(She always goes to the shore when she is worried.)
He’s tired and bruised, but safe in her arms and trembling. He falls asleep on the way home, his head lolling on her shoulder, and it is only his breath, warm and steady, that keeps her calm.
Garp and Mayor Woop Slap have always been like fathers to her, keeping care of her whenever her father (a pirate, lost to the sea, wasn’t he lucky?) wasn’t home and her mother ran the bar. But she can say she is thankful that they never thought she had to be strong beyond a few lessons with a shotgun and how to throw a punch, and for that she is thankful.
Makino is strong, that, they all know.
And she will not stand for Garp hurting her child.)
Garp laughs at her rage, pats Luffy on his head, stays till when he wakes up, gives him another crushing hug (so common now that Luffy can hear him) and a punch to the head. Makino slaps him on the way out, but there’s only so much to do when Luffy is ravenously asking for meat.
She loves him but he is hungry.
-
Makino knows her child is a sea child. He is hers, however, given to her, so she will never let him go if she can help it.
Still, this knowledge means that she knows the truth, knows that with every saltwater splash it is more than just the moon and tides.
It is more than old sailing tales and more than the secrets that old men say at bars.
Makino looks at her child and looks to the Ocean and knows that things are far, far more than they seem.
-
Makino has given up keeping track of Luffy for the most part. If he does not find trouble, trouble finds him, and she rather he be happy when it does.
She knows where he usually is, though, and it’s a small comfort.
(She knows that he is always watched over, and it is no comfort at all.)
One day, he goes out to the shore and comes back with a necklace made of sea glass and her named carved in a child’s hand on the main pendant. It’s not her entire name, not even close, but she treasures it as Luffy says the Ocean helped him make it.
Maybe, she thinks as sea breeze ruffles Luffy’s hair, it’s more comfort than she thought.
(The truth is, like in all the stories, The Ocean is alive -)
She never takes the pendant off her neck.
(It’s a treasure like the sea, and the first of many gifts from something greater than man.)
-
Luffy talks about the Ocean a lot, in random phrases and words. He’ll crash into the bar and shout “Makino! Did you know-?” and finish the phrase with something like islands in the sky or in the deep, sea monsters fought by giants, a land of food, and brave warriors.
(Other times, he’ll crawl into her bed at night in the way all small children do after a nightmare, and whisper about stones with bloody history and men being boiled and kings being executed. He’ll whisper about the secrets of dragons that he will forget in the morning and a tall person in black robes who hates him without knowing him. Makino shushes to him to sleep and wishes she could tell him that of course, they were just nightmares but –
She can’t lie to Luffy.
He trusts her.
Instead she glares at the Ocean and is thankful that Luffy forgets most of this come daybreak.)
His favorite tale seems to be that of the Red-Haired Man. Makino doesn’t dare ask Garp for details about him, but knows from Luffy that he is a pirate who lives like a true pirate (in his eyes) free and adventuring.
“Did you know that he fought a sea king yesterday! His first mate had to shoot it down because He was too drunk to deal with it!”
She’s not sure he is the best role model, but Luffy is happy and that is all she could ever ask for him.
(Again, she glares at the Ocean, but what role models are there in this world who do not deal in bloody battles?)
Then Dawn island is swallowed in a storm and a Red-Haired Man appears on her doorstep.
-
Luffy’s missing.
Luffy is missing and there’s a storm outside, and the Ocean will never hurt her child but others things might, but she can’t go look for her child because there are pirates in her bar!
“A drink, m’lady?” The Red-Haired man asks, eyes alight with laughter and body drenched to the bone, but there is no malicious intent in his tone.
Small mercies.
“Of course, sir,” Makino says, because she is twenty-four and scared but her father was a pirate and her child is loved by the Ocean, so she cannot waver. “For your crew too?”
“Of course! The best rum you have! We’ll being partying tonight boys!” The crew cheers at his words, already striking up music to cover up the storm outside, and Makino gets started on the drinks.
Lightning flashes and the door slams open.
“YOU!” Luffy shouts, safe and tracking mud in everywhere as he enters the bar. Makino tenses and cries in return.
“Luffy! Where have you been!” Everyone is staring, but these pirates are the men that Luffy talks about so proudly, so surely, they won’t hurt her child.
(Right?)
Luffy ignores her to hop on the stool next to the captain.
“Tell me a story, old man,” He says, and Makino freezes. The man next to him does the same, staring at the child (the child with the Ocean’s breath) with wide, open eyes before laughing.
(Does the Ocean laugh too? Makino swears she can hear a shishishi drifting in from the storm outside.)
“Ha! Who are you brat? Don’t you know it’s polite to introduce yourself first?”
“No. You’re a pirate. Why do you care about manners?”
Oh, she is going to throttle him.
“Dahaha! Brat! The name’s Shanks.”
“Luffy.” He says, and Makino knows her child will never be the same. “Now tell me a story.”
And Shanks does.
-
Luffy loves Shanks, Makino can tell. He trails after him every time he is in port like a lost puppy, begging for another story or too, and correcting every tale, always backed by Benn or Yasopp.
There are worst role models, Makino finds, that Luffy could have. She’s just glad they aren’t teasing Luffy into drinking.
The Red-Haired pirates love Luffy in return, and make the Party Bar their base in the East Blue. They gladly tell Luffy their stories, show off their strengths, talk and sing and teach him dirty jokes and shanties that Luffy doesn’t even understand. They swing him up on their shoulders and take him round town, let him explore their ship and are so damn proud of him for everything he does (not that they will tell him that of course. They need to have some dignity left. Men.)
They do, like the rest of the villagers, notice Luffy’s oddities, how he stares out to sea and talks to nothing, how he corrects their tales and talks of places no one has ever told him.
Makino talks to Shanks about it, once, in between the playful flirting he gives her, about Luffy’s life. How Luffy couldn’t hear her, how he talks to the Ocean, how once she caught him with his fists like tar when he was four and how he forgot about it right after. How his grandfather has a will and Luffy’s is ten times stronger, how Luffy has talked about Shanks even before he met him.
It’s nice, spilling her worries out to this man who was a pirate with the Pirate King (does Luffy know of him yet?), making it all seem real.
She was seventeen when she was forced to become a guardian. She loves Luffy, but she is scared sometimes.
Shanks nods with her, and looks at the sea when she says Monkey D. Luffy.
All he says is I know. But it’s something more than a storm this time, aye Makino? And honestly, how can a man prepare for the revolution?
-
Luffy seems disappointed in Shanks. In their daily oceanside walks, Makino thinks she knows why.
Oh Luffy, she wants to say, and wrap him up in her arms. No one is quite like you.
(He wanted Shanks to understand like Makino didn’t, wanted Shanks to hear the Ocean too. Wanted to know that he wasn’t alone. Makino knows this, she knows, but what can she do but wish to hear the Voice that Luffy hears at every moment.
What and odd life, she lives.)
Instead, she takes Luffy for walks to the Ocean and lets him play in deep waters and knows that nothing is ever quite like this.
(The Ocean splashes at her feet and leaves her pretty sea stones, so it’s not such a bad life, now is it?)
-
Luffy stole the knife she kept under the counter and stabbed himself in the face.
Luffy stabbed himself in the face with Shanks’s encouragement.
Luffy stabbed himself in the face.
Just so he could prove he was strong.
(But you are so strong, Luffy, you are so strong, doesn’t he see that?)
Why are people so foolish?
Makino wipes blood away from Luffy’s bleeding face and stitches his wounds and bandages his face, all the while Shanks recovers from his mild freak out and argues with a child a quarter his age.
He’s laughing.
And crying just a little.
Makino will yell at him anyway, and she feels vindicated when the Ocean joins her and splashes at Shanks with murky dock water.
Luffy laughs anyway and Shanks carries him everywhere that day, so it all turns out all right.
(It doesn’t stop Makino from pushing him into the water though.
Honestly, who encourages a child with a knife in their hands?)
-
Shanks leaves. Luffy gets sad, and spends his days watching the horizon, looking for that flag on its way back.
(It’s Freedom, He explains to Makino, and she still doesn’t quite get it but loves him anyway.)
What comes back is not black sails but the gleaming white sails of the Doghouse, Garp’s own Marine Ship.
He takes Luffy out for a training session, balloons in hand, and Makino worries but does nothing.
She should have done something.
“YOU WHAT!” This is worse than the ravine or the nights Luffy spent in the jungle.
“Sent him on flying lessons!” The old man is picking at his nose and Makino’s rage is only thinly veiled. “He’ll be back. He just needs to angle the balloons back! He can figure it out.”
“He’s seven!”
“And a half! And my grandson!”
Makino’s honestly surprised he knows Luffy’s age
“That doesn’t make it better!”
“Eh, he’ll be fine. I’ll be back in two months. Have some donuts ready for me then!”
“ABSOLUTELY NOT!”
“Bye!”
Garp helped raise her but she is going to throttle that man. She shoots her shotgun at him on his way out. He can take it.
Bastard.
-
She doesn’t know which way Luffy flew, so going off after him would be a fool’s errand but – what else can she do?
She has to do something, because Luffy’s out there dying and a thousand feet in the air, and he’s her child!
She paces endlessly by the shore, watching the horizon for some peak at Luffy, for some spot in the sky that is her child coming home.
The Party Bar seems dead these days without Shanks and her child and the crew.
She never knew how much she hated the silence before.
(The Sea is so calm now, as she wades in it, as if trying to wash her worries away. It doesn’t work, but the Ocean now has a few more salty tears to add to her waters.)
On the sixth day, she sits in an empty bar with the door wide open, as if begging Luffy to show up there like he always has.
He doesn’t.
But there is a voice in her ear, and suddenly Makino knows peace.
My Sea-Child is coming home.
Luffy always described her voice like waves. Makino never knew how true it was.
“When?” She begs the Ocean, for who else could it be, and hopes for good news.
Soon, the Ocean assures, and brushes her cheek with a breeze, Soon.
(That night she takes all the shells Luffy gave her and polishes them to perfection while staring out the Ocean door. Eventually, there is a horizon, and then there is hope, but for now there is worry and loneliness.
The waves from the Shore calm that, somewhat.
Does someone out there (The Ocean) care?)
-
For a week she talks to the Ocean, finding whispered conversations when she stands in the water. Not always, not very strong, but a voice all the same and it is comforting. She asks her (the Ocean) meaningless questions, and when her feet glide along the shore she gets updates on Luffy and Shanks, he was rescued by Shanks, and she is as happy as she can be.
(These walks become routine and it’s all she can cling to now.)
He’s Here, He’s safe, the Ocean tells her then, on the seventh day, and her child comes home, safe in her arms at last.
When he wakes and wanders the streets he is different now, in a way that scares her, but she can do nothing but offer love and support to her child who can hear more than the Ocean now.
What, she asks the Ocean on some early morning what, does he hear?
My voice, dear Maki, my voice.
And that is that.
-
Shanks stays and makes Luffy so, so happy, but Shanks also stays and causes Luffy to eat a devil fruit.
A devil fruit.
Luffy writhes in pain and blacks out on the ground, tear tracks falling down his face, and Makino learns the meaning of hate.
(Outside the Ocean grows choppy and dark and that is where the hate is coming from, the hate that Makino learns exists, how can the Ocean hate her own? How can the Ocean hate Luffy? How can she hurt him? How how how how how?
-
Luffy can’t go in the water any more, the one thing that gave him so much joy, and something in Makino is crushed. Because more than just drowning, Luffy is made of the sea, and now he is also made of dust.
The sea burns him from the inside out, leaving him pink and raw and hurt, and Makino learns to hate the sea.
Why do you hurt him?
Luffy becomes so listless after that first discovery, after that conversation with Shanks with the Ocean in sight, when he learns the Ocean hates him. It’s so unlike the rambunctious child she knows, and even Shanks doesn’t have an answer as to why the Ocean suddenly hates him.
My captain could hear the voice, Shanks says, referring to the Voice that only Luffy hears in fool and that Makino hears when she is out in the water, but even he did not have a devil fruit.
Luffy’s born of the sea, and that is something Makino knows without a doubt.
She tries to cheer Luffy up, gives him platters of meat and helps tell stories with Shanks, but it doesn’t’ help. Luffy is still lethargic unless he’s sprinting to get burned in the sea, and Makino hates it.
But it doesn’t hurt until Luffy asks “Maki, why won’t the Ocean talk to me anymore? Why doesn’t she like me?”
(What child should ask why their parent hates them?)
“Oh Luffy – I don’t know.” She knows why the Ocean burns him (its nature and it hurts and the Ocean never changes her nature even if she changes the courses of her waves but-) “But I’m going to find out - this isn’t your fault.”
It isn’t.
(Luffy looks so hopeful when she says it, and she can’t disappoint him, she can’t, she can’t.)
That night when Luffy sleeps restlessly in his bed, Shanks camping out downstairs in the bar when he inevitably wakes from a nightmare, she goes out to the shore, barefoot and how she is usually dressed when she takes Luffy for walks, and yells.
Her feet are in the Ocean and there are no burns that hurt her limbs, not like the ocean hurts Luffy, and that hurts more than anything because that is her child and she wishes she could take his pain.
She doesn’t know what she yells, only rage like lava pouring from her mouth into the endless sea. The water is deadly calm around her but that does nothing more than stoke her fury, so she throws rocks and boulders and pebbles into the sea.
Her voice is hoarse.
Her hands shake.
Her body trembles.
When she collapses to her knees in cold ocean water it is not because her fury has ended but because she no longer has the strength to stand.
How long has it been?
A day? Two?
Luffy must miss her.
(She will not abandon him.)
She comes back with the Ocean trailing after her and hugs her child too her chest.
(She will not abandon him.)
-
At night the feeling curls inside her as she looks out at what once gave her comfort.
How, how could something so great hate someone so small? How could the Ocean hate her own?
(This is not the first time Makino has encountered the Ocean’s wrath (wasn’t your father lucky to die at sea?) but it is the first time she knows wrath directed at the Ocean’s own, someone who has not yet dared to challenge the seas.
It is the first time Makino feels the tendrils of hate creeping up her chest and she hates it, because her anger is rare and never at her child, never at the Ocean, but now –
Now it is.
And she hates it.)
-
Makino should have known the bandits would have come back. With Shanks there, there was safety, but now?
Now the bandits have stolen her wayward child (her treasure) before Makino even had a chance to pull her gun.
Damn.
The Ocean does not whisper to her that black sails are on the Horizon, but Makino does not need the Ocean anymore to tell her secrets of the world.
(She wants it, desperately, but what use is someone who hurt her child?)
Makino goes out on her own and finds Black Sails at the Docks and tells them that Luffy is gone.
What power does Luffy have that people like the Ocean’s rage love him so?
(He smiles and loves and pulls people closer to him and honestly Makino doesn’t know why she questions it.)
-
KNEEL.
The world shakes.
Makino kneels (right there on the beach, watching the water in the distance turn red, hoping it’s not her child, her beloved child, oh no-) and prays to nothing.
Luffy comes back, smile bright, and the Ocean has seemingly shifted.
Makino smiles back.
-
Luffy is different now, whatever force of kings that came from the water changing him in a way she can’t believe. Garp, when he comes back, takes note and Makino takes note of that.
Garp does not hurt her child again, at least not like before, and for that she is thankful.
Because Luffy is different now, but the Ocean loves him again, and how could Garp hate his grandson who has the Ocean tied to his will?
Makino doesn’t know, and in the absence of Luffy (in the jungle for the weekend), goes down to the shore to think.
Garp does not hate Luffy. Makino does not hate Luffy. The Ocean does not hate Luffy.
But… Makino hates the Ocean right now.
She doesn’t like the feeling.
(She used to love the Ocean, she thinks, trailing her hand in Ocean waters knowing that the lady of the blue knows where she is. The Ocean was there when everyone else was not, constant and unfeeling towards her and an escape from everything else. She does not want to hate her refuge.
But Luffy comes back from the mountain smiling and with burns on his legs and hands, and she finds the road to forgiveness is long.)
-
Shanks will teach Luffy how to control that force of Kings from the sea. Makino is thankful, and gives them free reign for the bar that day, giving Luffy four kisses on the cheek on her way out.
She does not like hate. But she doesn’t want Luffy to witness it either.
She goes down to the shore again and talks to nothing.
(This cove she found is far from Fuusha’s view. It’s one she found refuge in as a child, and one hidden enough by rocks and trees that no one else dares venture. She found it because. Of her father. She keeps going because of the view.
Soft white sands with pebbles and sea glass and shells, a cliff rising high to her right and a series of tidepools to her left. The shallow dip allows her to only see the sea and the ships coming in and out of the harbor, and it’s like a second home.
There’s a small reef, about 50 feet out, keeping the water at her chest, and it is her favorite place on the island.
She loves it here. She wants to continue loving it here.)
She settles in the sand and speaks.
“I don’t think you are listening. I don’t think I know how you work, exactly, but I used to love you, but now I hate you. Because you hurt Luffy, you hurt him, and he doesn’t forgive you because to him there is nothing to forgive, but I don’t either. And it’s going to take me a while to do. But. I want to try.” Makino takes a deep breath, feeling almost silly, the words awkward on her tongue and not what she normally says, but she feels lighter.
“So… My name is Makino. Do you like to talk? It must be lonely being the Ocean.”
-
Makino’s feet are dry by the time she returns to a bar of unconscious pirates and Shanks telling her child about the Pirate King.
There are stars in Luffy’s eyes, and she wonders if the Ocean acknowledges titles like King, or only souls like them.
Either way, Luffy has a look in his eye, and something settles in Makino’s chest.
Shanks waves her over to join the conversation and she happily does, pouring juice and ale for her boys.
What a time, she thinks, to witness the beginning.
She’s always loved sunrises. Everyone else seems to know how the story ends, but rare few get to see how it begins.
Luffy laughs and smiles at the sun, and if this is not a beginning, or part of one, she does not know what is.
-
Makino’s there when Luffy first declares his dream to Shanks. It resonates like a song, a call in her chest, and she thinks the Ocean feels it too, in the laughter distant on the sea breeze and the saltwater that splashes at her feet.
“I’m not coming back Anchor.”
“I know.”
“Yeah. You know why?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I think you’ll forget.”
“I WON’T!”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I WON’T! I’m going to surpass you one day! I’ll be a great pirate by then! I’ll be KING OF THE PIRATES!”
“Well then… if you’re going to be our king… do me a favor… Keep this hat safe for me. This hat means a lot to me. Promises that you’ll give it back to me, when you’ve become a great pirate, alright?”
Shishishi!
Makino smiles, tears in her eyes, because Luffy will be king.
-
Garp takes Luffy to the mountain but tells her he is safe. Woop Slap tells her this too. Makino sees the Ocean as calm as a lagoon and trusts Garp and the Mayor despite her judgement. She’ll visit in four months, when she has an excuse to, and takes the time to miss the sound of laughter in her house.
(The attic with the ocean view is empty. No feet pitter patter above her head when she is trying to sleep, or beg her to go with him to the beach that day. Its lonely, but Makino tries to stay busy. Without pirates and without children the Party Bar has few busy hours however. She makes due.)
Makino takes to walking by the shore more often, trying to repair what she sees has a torn relationship. With every sea glass that appears at her feet, every warm day by the shore, she thinks its healing, ever so slightly.
Thinks that maybe the Ocean notices her too.
-
What do you talk to the Ocean about? Makino doesn’t know, but makes it up as she goes along.
Because the Ocean knows everything with the Ocean (which is basically the world, on this lovely planet) so what else is there to tell but things from Makino’s mind?
She tells the Ocean of sailor’s gossip, because a bar is where you find information, and things about her day, because the Ocean has never gone to a market place.
“The stalls were red today; old man Lee must have bought some new covers. It’s like coral you see, and the sun, that’s what red is.”
She dips her feet into shallow waves and talks about the past, how her father died when she was eight, well before the Pirate King’s reign, and how she found that it was better than when her mother died at seventeen, too some cold that maybe Makino could have stopped.
The Ocean is a good listener, but doesn’t really respond in that wave like voice she did before.
(Makino misses it.)
Her hate lessens and then ebbs and flows like the tide when she talks about Luffy.
“He hates being alone,” she tells the Ocean, voice cold and harsh not unlike her rage before, and she finally gets a response in the form of choppy waters. She’s proud in some strange way, that she, normal and only human, could provoke the Ocean like that.
She likes it.
-
One day, the Ocean rages, and then a month later (a month of conversations and noticing how beautiful the Ocean looks under the sun) Makino ventures to the mountain top.
It’s odd having the sea smell be left behind, but odder still to find a bandit hut without the view of the sea. Mayor Woop Slap beside her snorts, but Makino finds a quick companion in Dadan.
(She’s strong, tough, like Makino wishes she could be, but Dadan looks at her and tells her Wish I was strong like you, and Makino finds that maybe she is stronger than she thought. She likes this woman, despite her way of raising three boys, but if the boys were strong enough to tear down cliffs then what can you do, truly?)
Makino is so happy, when she meets Ace and Sabo, two boys like her Luffy, who call Luffy little brother and sound so damn pleased at the fact. Its endearing, and Makino quickly matches the clothes to fit them as well.
She finds love growing in her heart for these boys as well, and vows to visit again someday soon.
(Ace frowns lighten when he sees Luffy and Sabo’s eyes light up as well – Luffy changes people, and Makino wonders how he changed her.
She’s jealous, just a bit, that these boys can live up here and be free, but perhaps it’s more of the company they have rather than the jungle life.)
-
She goes down to her shore again, and tells the Ocean this tale.
(Does the Ocean know of tree top adventures, or does something else own that life?)
It’s night as she traces figures in the sand, her feet trailing in the water, skirt wet but she doesn’t care.
“…I’m Happy for them,” She ends with, thinking about how empty the Party Bar is and how happy Luffy is up there.
(She’s lonely, in this village, the youngest of her age group, the only one unmarried, the only one owning a bar. People come to her for nights out, but she has nowhere to go. She misses having friends (all who left for the city.) She thinks it might be how Luffy felt, sometimes.)
The Ocean washes her sand drawings away, and seems to grab on to her hand.
Why are you sad, Maki? That voice like waves and summer breezes whispers through her ear, unexpected, and Makino finds her mouth opening in shock.
“Oh,” She says looking out over dark waters which seem so much more alive now. “Hello.”
The Ocean splashes back, waiting for her too speak, she thinks. I’m glad you’re talking to me now – can you keep doing it? I’m sad because I’m lonely.”
That voice again, so beautiful, so strong when she’s touching the water, caressing her cheek in a breeze and the Ocean tells a truth to her.
I as well, dear Maki.
I as well.
-
The Ocean talks to her now. The Ocean! And she, Makino’s sure she is a she, reaches for her and seems so much like Makino that she thinks her hate is gone now in lieu of understanding.
(Luffy left her when he ate that fruit. She was lonely too. She was angry. It’s not an excuse but a reason, and Makino thinks she could forgive and let go.)
Makino talks now, like Luffy, to everything but seemingly to herself. She knows the Ocean listens now, and the world seems smaller and less lonely when Makino only has to go to the shore for a conversation.
She banters with the Ocean, talks in quiet moments, reads the waves like one reads faces and responds to non-verbal nonphysical cues of something greater than herself.
The Ocean was always beautiful before.
Now, she seems so much more vibrant.
-
“Did you know that there’s an old tale that says you have a physical heart? Is it true?”
No – I came before hearts existed, Maki.
“Hmm, guess I can tell Old Man Johnson that he really doesn’t own the heart of the Ocean now, right?”
Shishishi! Of Course!
(She wonders who does hold the Ocean’s heart, sometimes.)
-
“Oh, my love dances on the waves, a hand stretched to eternity, and my love I would dance with you if only – oh, I can’t think of anything. Do you have an idea?”
I listen to sea shanties, not sing them.
“I think you should try, one day. Surely you have before?”
No…. but perhaps.
-
“What’s it like for you in a storm? Are you angry?”
No – tis just my nature. I am the Ocean, Dear Maki, my waves rage because they must rage, just like you rage to protect the Sea Child.
“Our Sea Child.”
Oh – yes. Ours.
-
“I think that I should change the Party Bar Menu. Old Man Charlie is getting antsy these days.”
Do you call everyone Old Man?
“No, sometimes I call people ‘Old Lady’”
Shishishi!
“But no, it’s just what everyone calls them. The elders of this small town. Perhaps I’ll be one, one day.”
You would look beautiful with silver hair.
“Oh… thank you, love.”
-
She wonders at night if the Ocean is truly the Ocean’s name, and finds she does not care for the answer.
The Ocean is so beautiful, in every sense of the world, and Makino finds herself staring at her from her house, wishing to be with her. She’s softer, with Makino, Makino finds, and it makes her happy.
She thinks to yesterday, when she called the Ocean love, and realizes that her hate is gone replaced by something so fantastic vibrant in her chest that she’s amazed she didn’t notice by now.
Oh.
She loves her.
Makino loves the Ocean.
-
Hello Maki,
“Hello Sea. Is that your name? Or do you go by Ocean?”
I have many names.
“So, I can choose any name?”
Shihishi!
“Then how about Love?”
….
“I’ll take that as a yes then, Love.”
-
Makino notes the choppiness of the Ocean and the news that a Celestial Dragon was visiting Goa, and takes no note of it.
It’s the way of the world, she thinks, to hate those who hate freedom, and moves on with her day.
(Two children grieve days later, and Makino is none the wiser.)
-
“I wonder how the boys are doing?”
….
“Oh, quiet today, aren’t we Love? That’s fine. We all need a day of quiet. Come back soon, though?
….
-
Luffy comes stumbling into her house in the middle of the afternoon, covered in scratches and mud and dried tear tracks, and Makino’s heart breaks and shatters all at once.
He looks at her, tiny body trembling and eyes so distant, and it reminds Makino of the time the Ocean hated him.
It is not the case now, but –
It hurts.
She guides him inside, away from the prying eyes of the street, and smooths out his messy hair and smiles at him, her own smile breaking. He looks past her as she keeps on speaking to him, and it’s hard not to let her own hands shake as she is reminded of her first three years with him.
Her first three years when he could not hear her or see her, really, when he was lost in the Ocean’s sway (a sea child-).
“Luffy,” She says, voice shaking, and repeats it. “Oh Luffy. Oh Luffy, oh Luffy- “
She pulls him to her chest and keeps repeating it as the Ocean slops at the shore outside. Luffy’s so small in her arms, so very, very small.
“Oh Luffy,” she repeats, and eventually he does listen, and cry. “Oh Luffy- “
What has happened now?
-
Luffy tells her in stumbling words, talking of a loneliness she never thought he would feel again, and a death-not-death she didn’t think was possible. How could the bandits not have told her this? She has Dadan’s den den mushi. She has connections. She has everything, even the Ocean, and she did not know that three children, her children, were suffering breaking apart at the seams?
She hugs Luffy to sleep and puts him to bed in her room, knowing he won’t want to be alone that night, before going to the shore and raging with thrown rocks and vicious words at the Ocean.
The Ocean promises her again, and this time Makino will hold her too it.
(In the meantime, she takes care of Luffy, makes it clear that he is not alone, takes him to the beach and talks with him and the Ocean. He marvels at her, and she smiles at him, and something broken becomes a little less so. It’s fun, walking along the beach with Luffy again, so very fun.
She wishes it could last forever, just her, the Ocean and her child.
But somethings need to be chased, and it can’t happen sitting at home.)
Luffy leaves for the mountain after three days, after Makino strong arms the Ocean into a more careful watch, and it’s like seeing him head out into bloody waters again.
She hates it but –
Luffy reverberates with a power now, something protective, something like the Ocean, and that power can’t grow on the beaches of Fuusha.
(She wishes it could.)
(Loneliness does not create strength no matter what the Ocean thinks.)
She kisses him twice on each cheek before he leaves, and hopes it’s enough to keep him safe and whole and loved.
-
Ace comes back after two years.
(It was a long two years, where Makino visited as often as she could, and Luffy got stronger and stronger and stronger –)
(The Ocean tells her that her child is back at night when she has a bar full of customers, but she does not pretend to hide her smile or the reason why from the bar patrons.
Even as far as the shores of Fuusha, Luffy’s dream reaches Makino.
“I’M GOING TO BE KING OF THE PIRATES!”
She loves him, so very much.)
Life moves on. Makino finds sea glass along the beach, the kind she has in jars along her room, the one keepsake she was proud to keep from her mother, and smiles.
The Ocean, her Love, is very sweet when she wants to be.
-
Her Love begins to give her gifts, more than sea glass, in her walks upon the beach. Stories of adventurers, of beautiful places, sly compliments fitted between each word. Makino wonders, distantly, where the Ocean learned to flirt, to court, and finds she does not care.
She treasures the whispered words told to her in the most beautiful voice imaginable, and is happy at the sea shore.
-
Makino wonders if the Ocean loves her back, sometimes, but it is hard to have doubt when the Ocean pulls her in, closer and closer and closer. She can only hear her when she is with her, but Makino does not mind. She wears trinkets from her Love across her neck and professes her own love is compliments and stories and gentle touches along the shore. She finds stones from mountain tops and gives them like a gift, watches the Ocean at her most beautiful, and sighs.
(She does not know what makes her so special that the Ocean would notice her, but does not question it. She is thankful instead, for she knows if the Ocean didn’t Makino might have ended up like the Lucky sailors, chases her Love across her own waters.)
They are lonely in a different way now, but Makino finds she can bear it.
She sleeps on the shore some nights, the chill chased away by the Ocean’s selves, and she had never been happier.
-
“Love? Are you happy?”
With you, always.
“What happens if I leave?”
Then I will be lonely, but I will still love you, and I can bear that loneliness.
“What happens when I die?”
Then you join me, in this wondrous sea, and we are happy together again.
“I hope so Love, I hope so. It would be lonely without you.”
Makino feels a kiss on her cheek from sea spray and smiles.
Then I hope we never part, my love.
-
Ace leaves, Makino giving him two kisses on each cheek as is customary, and the Ocean keeps him safe. Luffy does not look so lonely anymore (the Ocean tells her he can hear the Ocean anywhere, and Makino is proud at how far he has come) and hugs Makino goodbye as he races into the mountain.
(She thinks he notices the way her eyes linger on the waves, how she smiles at the horizon, how her fingers trail the wet spots on her cheeks when she walks by the shore, and she hopes he is proud at how far she has come.)
-
She takes to floating her dinghy out to the middle of the coast, and sitting in the deep water. The village thinks she’s crazy, but the Lord of the Coast will not harm her under the Ocean’s watch.
(What’s more, what Makino does not care for, is the rumors of sea child, echoing after every step like the phrase did with Luffy. It’s not accurate, not true, because Makino is not the sea’s child but her lover, and she is proud, so very proud to be her)
Out in the coast, it is just her held in the Ocean’s arms. It is quickly becoming her favorite place to be because she can just float out there and no one will think to look for a bar maid out at sea.
She can hold hands with the Ocean letting her sway her to sleep, eyes facing upwards to the sky as she imagines nothing but happiness.
(Occasionally she will be worried that she is not worried that her lover doesn’t have a face, isn’t even human but – what is the use worrying about the unchangeable nature of people not your own?)
There, floating in the midst of the sea, away from everyone in her village, Makino realizes she hasn’t told her Love, that she is, you know, her love.
That over the years her love turned hate turned love again has turned romantic and she could not imagine her life with her presence.
She has not told her that she loves her.
She turns her head to the side, hands clasping watery ones beneath the waves, and speaks the only truth she knows.
“I love you.”
The waves keep moving but the humming voice of her love stops. To fill the silence (but she is never afraid of death only afraid of misstepping) Makino hums a shanty, an old one, whispered into her skin by the Ocean herself.
Words fall from her tongue as the Ocean holds her, a litany of praises and sweet nothings.
Then –
Oh.
I love you too, my treasure.
Makino smiles into the sea instead of singing, and imagines the sea breeze is a kiss on her face.
-
(She is in Love with the Ocean
Her child is a sea child.
The Ocean is in Love with her.
Makino wonders when her life became entwined with something, somethings, two people, greater than herself, and knows she would never change a thing.
-
Luffy sets sail into the rising sun, and Makino is shocked with the fear that she will never see her child again.
(A lie, of course, because she will see him on bounties and newspapers and in person, an invisible crown above his head but – this is not the end of the story. She does not know that yet.)
She is thirty-four years old and the owner of her own bar for 17 of those years. She has been the lover of the Ocean for half that time, but realizes her life has been so very, very short.
(She loves her life though, will never change it.)
Tears burst in her eyes as she holds the face of her child between her hands. Luffy, the little boy who never saw her or heard her yet loved her, is so grown up now.
She hugs him tight to her chest, knowing she has only really been there for seven years of his life, but she loved those seven years, and wishes him well. “Be brave, Pirate King.” Because, that is what he will be, won’t he? “Make us proud, alright? Listen to the Ocean.”
He laughs, mimicking the Ocean in that proud shishishi! and promises a false thing, but means it all the same. “Of Course!”
She kisses him twice on each cheek, a prayer he’ll make it home, and sends him out to sea as he shouts his dream to the world after killing the enemy of the village.
“I’M GOING TO BE KING OF THE PIRATES!”
The Ocean showers her in sea spray as she cheers for her child, Makino as well, and oh, she is so proud.
Luffy sails off into the rising sun, and Makino thinks this is her favorite beginning.
-
She kisses her Lover, the Ocean (the first and last to ever do so) on the beaches of Fuusha, a quiet moment filled with love. Her Love taste like saltwater and dreams and, dare she say it, the sea, and Makino finds it is her favorite thing.
It’s odd to kiss a being with only a semi-corporeal form, but Makino doesn’t mind, doesn’t mind anything about her lover.
She’s simply in love with sea, like all those who see her are.
She’s just more special than most.
I Love you, the Ocean says, and Makino says it back.
“And I love you.”
Shishishi!
“Be free,” she says, a plea for her too look after their child and kisses her again.
Yes.
She loves this beginning most of all.
-
Six months later when Luffy has declared War on the government and saved several kingdoms already, a supernova in his own right and the only one backed by the Ocean herself (how she wonders how his crew reacted to that) a familiar face walks into the bar.
“Guess the storm came, aye Makino?” Shanks says, his crew filing in after him. Makino laughs, loud and bright.
“Sesese! Of course, emperor,” she lilts, a grin tossed his way as she’s filling up sake cups already.
“Guess you heard! Couldn’t let anchor down after all, he needs a challenge when he goes out to sea.”
“Of course.” In the distance, Makino hears her lover happily splashing at the shore, rocking the Red Force in the bay.
“Say, Makino,” Shanks begins to tease in that way of theirs from long ago, “Got a kiss for me?”
“Nope!” She says cheerily in return.
“Oh?” He expected it, of course.
“I’m taken now.” That Shanks did not expect.
“By who?”
Makino smiles at him, the kind of smile tigers give their prey, and points to the Ocean. “The Ocean.”
Shanks looks at the shore and –
(It’s a funny look, the kind men get when they see a tsunami bearing down on their head with no hope of escape. The face goes pale and the eyes go wide, and nothing save for the Ocean has quite managed to produce this look.)
“Holy Shit!”
Shishishi!
Fin.