Summary:A young, dreamless girl closes her eyes in the Mediterranean Sea, and opens them in the middle of East Blue.
(How do you go on, when everything you have ever known and loved is gone, and everything left to love should be a paper-thin lie?)
Chapter 1: Prologue - The EndSummary:The Girl opens her eyes, thinks 'what the fuck', and closes them again, wishing she never opened them in the first place.
Notes:Uh… Hullo?
…
Yeah, okay, now that we all know that I suck at introductions, let's move on from the awkward part.
From the summary and tags, you already know that this is an OC-insert *and* an Isekai/Transmigration trope fic, but I wanted to give some warnings all the same.
First, the Isekai/Transmigration trope isn't going to be just a writing tool to launch the story in this fic (not that there's anything wrong with that). It's not necessarily going to be constantly *there*, but it definitely will be a central theme of the story. This is because I want to try and explore the emotional impact/weight that comes with being dumped into a world that one always thought of as fictional AND losing one's entire life in the process —and at least to me it doesn't seem possible with that approach to leave such a (literally) world-shattering event behind within three chapters and never speak of it again. Not to say, of course, that this will be entirely accurate emotionally (if there's such a thing as accurate when people don't always process things differently), but this is me making an attempt to think about what this trope might mean for a person beyond the story scenario it provides.
Which means that, second, angst will quite obviously be a BIG THING, and will include themes such as grief. I usually try to balance it out with soft and funny moments, though I of course can't guarantee that they will fit your sense of humour, but yeah. While this won't be all doom and gloom, the angst will still be strongly present.
Third, this approach is also valid for the canon characters and the One Piece world itself, in the sense that I might go a bit deeper in trying to show how the violence and darker parts of the One Piece world impact the characters beyond their personal arcs. However, some characters have lived through extremely harsh things that I can't claim to have personal experience with, so my attempts might end up being way off the mark. That being said, I would find it hard to just… not address these topics at all when they're so important and the canon material already does to some extent, so I still want to try. Given how sensitive some of these themes are, I just wanted to explain this so that anyone who might not agree with this approach (or who might not want a version of the OP world that is darker in places) can choose whether to read on or not with that in mind :)
This is pretty much also a general warning that the M Rating was chosen because of the violence (in the widest sense of the word) present in this story and how it might be more graphic than in the canon material. More specific trigger warnings will be given at the beginning of some chapters depending on the content, but feel free to reach out if you ever think there's something I didn't account for!
Regarding any updating schedule, I can't really give you anything precise, because I don't want to put myself under pressure to write when I'm not always in the mood, or give you false hopes and disappoint you in the end. So yeah. It'll come when it'll come.
Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, so anything that you see in this fic and that you can recognise as belonging to One Piece is not mine. If I did own it, I wouldn't have to write fanfiction. Duh.
Anyway. Unnecessarily long rant aside, here is the prologue, which I hope you will enjoy!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter TextFrom The Sea - Dive|rgence
Prologue
The End
I was having a dream but
then I realised that
I can't wake up
and
it's a nightmare.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
With a deep breath of slightly salty air, she lets her consciousness resurface and wakefulness wash over her, like the waves she can hear crashing lazily on the sand, not too far away.
She shuffles, feet digging clumsily into the sun-heated sand.
"Good nap?"
The voice of her mother is the last nudge her groggy mind needs, and with a sleepy, vaguely affirmative hum, she raises her head from where it rests on her crossed arms.
… And promptly groans in discomfort as her eyes are assaulted by the harsh light of the sun, still high in the sky.
Her sudden nap was probably shorter than she first thought.
Slowly, she sits up, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hands once she has checked they are free of sand.
Now that would be a pain in the neck.
Ah, better.
"Want to go for a swim?"
She rolls her shoulders and cracks her neck to rouse her body from its nap-induced stiffness, tongue roaming through her mouth in an attempt to relieve it of its dryness and fuzziness.
She loves the beach, but taking a nap on one in the middle of a summer day…
Well, there are enough downsides to make her think twice about doing it again.
An affirmative answer is on her lips —she is pretty sweaty— before she stops, her half-functioning brain finally realising that the humming noise in her ears isn't just the ocean.
It's people.
As in, a lot of people.
Way more than there was when she fell asleep.
Ugh.
She stares at the groups of people playing, talking and swimming in the sea.
A gaggle of children run by her with their swimming ring, laughing and screaming and squealing as they race each other towards the foam-capped waves.
She winces.
Hesitantly, she gestures towards a pile of rocks and boulders that she knows hide a small creek.
"I'll just… go over there."
She rises to her feet hurriedly, but even with her back turned she can feel her mother rolling her eyes heavenwards.
Okay, the exasperated sigh is kind of a hint, too.
Annnnnd there goes her good mood.
She sighs as she heads for the rocks.
This summer is the last occasion to spend time with her family before she moves out for her first year of college.
(Enough time to forget what's to come, to relax all the way to that little part of herself that keeps thinking about leaving,
about the unknown and how lost it will feel,
not about being alone but about having no one close for when it will inevitably feel like being held at the edge of a cliff —breathtaking in an all-too literal way and like the only thing you can do from there is fall or give up and back away.)
After spending all summer with them, she would really rather avoid being a source of conflict and disappointment when she won't see them for a long time —not really.
She should have just said yes and sucked it up.
But even as the thought burns like guilt in her gut, her shoulders slacken in relief, tension melting at the sight of her temporary swimming spot.
Two other people chose to come there too, but they're far away enough that she can barely distinguish their features, and it's enough distance to not count in her book.
She hurries her steps, suddenly in a rush to leave her mistakes on the shore and wash everything else away in the feel of water gliding along her skin like liquid silk.
Jumping down from the last rock, she spots an obviously abandoned plastic bag, filled with empty food wrappings.
She slows down, the thought filtering through her mind that she should probably pick it up and throw it away properly, stringing along memories of classes she attended, TV programs she watched and books she read.
Vague, washed-out disgust weighs down her mouth at the thought of whoever took the time to collect all their trash but not to actually put it in the damn bin.
And then it all sinks to a quiet death under the thought that in the end, it doesn't really matter, and she walks past the pile of trash.
(Distantly acknowledging that she isn't any better.)
She enters the water in a few steps, and dives in almost silently, a sigh escaping her mouth in bubbles.
She swims around for a bit, before turning on her back and letting herself float.
Green seaweed passes her by and gets tangled in her left hand.
She closes her thumb on it, feeling its thin, wet softness with slow strokes.
Water laps at her ears, loud and tranquil, drowning most of the background noise until she is alone at sea.
(It is soothing, terrifying and exhilarating all at once.)
Her long hair is an anchor pulling her down, heavy with the weight of the sea. She has to wash it anyway, so she decided there is no harm in letting it soak in salty water on top of it.
Taking a deep breath, she lets her muscles relax slowly one by one, until she is sinking, the water closing above her face, blurring her sight of the sun.
She waves her limbs lazily to keep herself afloat not too far from the surface, and watches the bubbles she releases little by little fly upwards.
The rest of the world disappears.
She closes her eyes to soothe the sting of the salt, her blood beating steadily in her ears and her mind quiet.
And then—
Something hits her smack dab in the forehead.
Her eyes snap open, and she gasps out her last mouthful of air in surprise, instinctively hurling herself upwards.
She breaks through the surface (—it took too long, what—) and greedily sucks in air, impatiently pushing hair out of her face as she looks down.
Her eyes are crying against the sting of sea water, but she's pretty sure she was just hit by someone. It did feel like another skull smashing against hers just now, too —not that she has a lot of experience with that particular occurrence.
But no one is resurfacing next to her.
With a curse, she fills her mouth with air again, and dives.
Luckily, or as much as one can be in these cirumstances, she manages to spot them quickly, and hurriedly swims over to what she discovers is a barely moving boy of about her age.
She grabs a hold of him (—too light, he's too light for his build, this doesn't make sense—) and proceeds to haul the both of them back up again.
Except, when she does reach the surface, she realises four things at once.
One, she is in the middle of the ocean, with no sign of land in any direction.
(—but it's just not possible—)
Two, there is a small rowing boat not far from them, something that by all accounts belongs in a museum.
Three, the boy she is holding looks familiar.
(The kind of familiar that makes her stomach burn like acid and turns her spine to hard, cold ice.
The kind that numbs everything else in shades of incredulity and disbelief, because it shouldn't exist—)
And four, he isn't breathing.
A mangled whimper crawls up her throat and dies on her lips.
Her breath stutters.
Her movements falter.
And then her mind goes blank with lucid terror, only focused on hearing the sound of breathing again.
(—even though she shouldn't hear it, she knows—
Even though hearing it might just turn out to be the worst thing that ever happens to her.
Because right then, she thinks that there would be nothing worse than being alone with a cold corpse she was too late to save and her own thoughts.)
So she drags the limp body on the boat and clambers in herself, her panicked mind running blindly through the memories of her optional first-aid course at the beginning of high school.
(In her mind, it feels like three years ago.
In her body, it feels like three eternities, limbs unable to remember the position they took, the speed they used, the strength they applied and she just knew that 'you'll remember it all when it happens' speech was all bullshit—)
Hands trembling, tongue dry and suffocating and licking salty drops off her lips again and again (if they are tears or sea water, she does not know), she gets into position and starts pumping, counting under her breath over the pace of what might be her own sobs.
The only thought that goes through her as she leans forward is, absurdly enough, something along the lines of seriously, when I said I missed having someone to kiss, this was so not what I had in mind.
But she opens her mouth anyway, covers his lips with her own, and exhales.
(—and there's no response.
No movement, no warmth, no nothing
and it's so wrong,
even though he shouldn't—)
Pump. Exhale. Repeat.
Once. Twice. Three times.
A choked sob, wrapped in the broken shards of a senseless litany she cannot even hear, squeezes past her throat where it's clogged with the slowly-dawning realisation she never wants to voice into reality and the heart she might just puke.
She feels his body contract before he actually coughs, and flings herself back, almost falling into the ocean again.
As the boy (—the boy whose name she doesn't want to know, doesn't want to hear, doesn't want to think—) proceeds to cough out any remaining water and probably some of his lungs, her heartbeat slows down from the incoming heart attack she wishes would take her away from whatever the fuck is happening.
She resorts to focusing on her surroundings instead.
It should be better than looking at the boy.
It's really, really not.
Because the world around her looks just like it did when she first saw it through the haze of panic and the water in her eyes.
Just like she fears.
She and the boy are the only people as far as she can see, floating aimlessly on the molten glass mirror of the sea, under the barely lighter blue of the similarly boundless sky.
Being lost at sea with no idea of how to get back home —or how she even got wherever she is in the first place— is neither soothing nor exhilarating.
It's just plain terrifying.
She looks down to escape the feeling of the endless expanse of blue stealing all her air right out of her lungs faster than she can breathe it in—
and lurches forward to grip the railing of the boat, a horrible noise that sounds more like a cornered, dying animal than her own voice wrenching itself forcefully out of her mouth.
Because there, on the surface of the sea, barely disturbed by the light breeze or the slight rocking of the boat, is what is supposed to be her reflection.
Except it isn't.
Cannot be.
But when she moves her arm to bring it in her field of vision, it moves too, and so she finds herself staring uncomprehendingly at the pearly, nearly translucent, the-sun-what's-that-never-heard-of-it white of her skin.
(Her mind goes an absolute, blank kind of helpless, and her heartbeat drowns out the world in a way that makes her want to silence it forever.)
She inherited her skin from her mother's side, and it has never been that pale.
Even when she's sick, and certainly not in the middle of summer when she tans so easily.
She rubs another foreign-looking hand on the arm (—not her arm, it just cannot be hers—), and feels the contact.
There's no thought when the hand clamps down viciously, the digging of the nails into the skin more frantic than any other response she can muster.
Ow.
… Fuck.
Hair falls from the absolute mess that must be her ponytail and in front of her eyes, brushing against her cheek and real when she grabs it to tug hard enough to hurt and—
Not brown.
Her usual thin strands of straight, luxurious brown hair —the one feature of her face she has always loved— have become thick, loose curls, coloured an absurd ocean blue that should not, under any circumstance, be natural.
Except it seems to be the case.
She gives a harsher tug just in case.
(It hurts harsher, but not as harshly as the jolt of realisation somewhere in her chest that sends cracks rippling through the one thing that should unquestionably be hers and only hers but isn't.
Not anymore.)
She wants to cry, but the only sound that comes out of her mouth is a breath of laughter.
Because of fucking course.
Why wouldn't her voice be all skewed and wrong, too?
A loud, hoarse cry of relief makes her tense as she is abruptly reminded that she isn't alone on the boat.
(Or is she?
Is this all a dream? An illusion?
How is she supposed to know?
How is she supposed to want to know, when the alternative is so much worse and knowing changes nothing given her total ignorance about how to solve either problem?)
Turning to face the boy feels like walking to her own death.
No matter how slowly she does it, it happens anyway.
And when it does, her death is throwing his arms in the air, in victory or celebration she doesn't know.
Either way, it's nowhere near the spectrum available to her at the moment.
"I'm alive!"
She blinks sluggishly.
The boy blinks back, and suddenly beams like the sun on the first day of summer holidays, when it just so happens to also be your birthday.
She just stares back, entirely incapable of covering her eyes from what might potentially become a serious case of megawatt smile-induced blindness, the urge to do so barely registering.
And then he opens his mouth, wider and wider and wider, like a black hole that sucks in all her hopes.
He opens his mouth, and she wants, yearns, needsso badly to look away, to ignore him, to tell herself that it's not true, that it's not happening.
Just a little longer.
(Even if, just under the surface, she already knows.)
But she can't, like you can never look away from something horryfingly fascinating, whether it's a car accident you walk past or a ball careening towards you through the air that you know is going to land straight in your face, and the only thing you can think is ohhell, except in this case her brain seems stuck on nonononono—
And then he talks.
"Aaaaah, that was close! Thanks for saving me!"
She blinks again, and then she—
faints.
Notes:As you can probably tell, this is going to be a LONG fic. Not just because I start at the very beginning of the series, but also because the chapters themselves are going to be hella long, too. Just an additional warning in case that's not your thing :)
I'm sorry if the writing is a bit confusing, but it's 80% on purpose because well, she's in shock, and her brain is kind of scrambling with the abrupt change of scenery, which I think is quite legitimate. The remaining 20% can be blamed on my tendency to make really long sentences and go on tangents in the middle of long sentences.
On another note, ocean blue (colour code: RAL 5020) is actually a lot darker (and has more green) than I thought. And somehow, I always felt like Luffy's rubber body would be a lot lighter than a normal human body. I might be totally wrong, though.
Last but not least, thank you for giving this a try!
Chapter 2: RealSummary:In which both Luffy and The Girl are selfish, and so decide to stick with the other for selfish reasons.
Also, feelings.
(Angsty feelings. Oops.)
Notes:For those of you who read the prologue and decided that it was worth going on to read the first chapter, thank you.
Also, I forgot to put it in the prologue, but obviously, feel free to drop a comment to tell me what you think, even if just to say "you forgot a 'h' at line 349" or "this is the best stuff since I read [insert personal Top 10 read here]".
(I know.
Just kidding of course.)
As far as any kind of derogatory comment is concerned… Well first, I don't understand why you waste both of our time on people you consider below you, but if you're just having a bad day or simply enjoy insulting people, just know that I won't bother going beyond the first insult. Unless it's really creative.
Disclaimer: I do not own One Piece, so anything that you see in this fic and that you can recognise as belonging to One Piece is not mine. If I did own it, I wouldn't have to write fanfiction. Duh.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter TextFrom The Sea - Dive|rgence
Real
You're holding out your hand
and to take it I have
no choice
but to let go
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
As a Devil Fruit user and a (wannabe) pirate, what's more, a (wannabe) King of Pirates, Monkey D. Luffy has a rather peculiar —although not unique— relationship with the sea.
It is both the one thing he will never be able to win against, no matter how strong he gets, and the one thing that embodies absolute, boundless freedom, and with it the infinite potential for excitement.
(Endless blue that seems to connect with the sky, so deep some speculate that most of it is actually shrouded in darkness, so wide it should be impossible to learn every inch of it in the span of one life—
the only treasure chest that can match his sheer, unsatiable hunger for adventure.)
And although he has only been sailing for a few hours after finally leaving his home village, it seems he has already crossed paths with his first mystery.
Tilting his hat back to glance at the one he dubbed Sea Girl in his mind until he learns her name, he notices with a sigh that she is still out cold, curled up in the middle of the boat between him and his provisions.
He frowns, not really knowing what he should do —or think— with her.
He was trying to catch the huge fish he saw swimming by his boat when a sudden wave sent him tumbling out of his boat and right into the water.
And as his muscles suddenly stopped responding to his will, nauseatingly slack and heavy, as salty water flowed into his mouth and roared triumphantly in his ears, he wanted to laugh sheepishly at his idiocy because really, how much more dumb can dying get?
Sabo will probably beat him to a pulp, and then do it again for Ace and Gramps.
But he wanted to scream, too, because he didn't truly live, didn't truly see, didn't truly do anything yet.
(And he needs more time, can't just—
can't just die
Not like this, not now—)
And then Sea Girl arrived out of nowhere.
Through his half-closed eyes and blurry vision, she made his heart pound with something like fear in that startled moment, looking like a ghost floating amidst drifting seaweed with her sea-coloured hair and her pale, pale face.
And when he regained his senses enough to notice something else than the burning pressure in his chest, or how raw his throat felt after being scraped thoroughly by salt, he saw no other boat around, nothing that could carry another human being.
A glance was enough to spot Sea Girl kneeling at the railing of the boat, her whole body leaning over it as if about to slip into the water again.
(Shoulders sagging inwards and fists clenched white, looking like Ace did when the news of Sabo's death ripped half his world away.)
A glance was enough to prove to himself that she wasn't a ghost or an illusion.
But that meant that she could only come from the sea.
(From this endless treasure chest of mysteries which he can take from all his life and still have adventures left,
take and take and take—)
The realisation was like finally tasting a dish you eyed the whole day knowing it would be good —a wave of satisfaction with an aftertaste of amazement.
She was his first mystery.
The one that foreshadowed all those to come.
But then she turned towards him.
(—and the blood drained from her white face, shading it something sickly,
and her eyes widened and widened and widened, blue like the endless, black bottom of the sea he was sinking into minutes before, until they looked like pits deep enough to devour her entire face,
and she stared at him like the weaker preys he hunted in the forest back home, with the helpless, doubtless realisation that something hostile, something final was upon her, and she could do nothing to stop it—)
She turned towards him, and she looked terrified.
Of him.
And usually, he finds it funny how spooked people can be upon witnessing his abilities for the first time, can even take satisfaction in knowing that people he doesn't respect or like fear him, because that means that they will think twice before trying to hurt or take what is his.
(Never again.)
But he definitely does not enjoy causing terror to twist the faces of people who have done nothing to him, let alone the face of someone who saved him.
He doesn't even know what prompted her terror in the first place, but judging from the sudden change in Sea Girl's breathing pattern, he's about to get answers.
Sitting up suddenly, he leans forward until his face is inches from hers.
"Ah! You're awake! Geez, do you know how long I've been waiting?!"
For a few seconds Sea Girl keeps her eyes closed, as if she's trying to pretend that he isn't talking to her (which is dumb, who else would he be talking to?), so he pokes her plump cheek impatiently with his finger, and then digs harder when she frowns but stays still.
A sigh rushes from her mouth, and she finally, finally opens her eyes, letting him drink greedily in the full features of his saviour as the ocean's abyss stares back from her eyes.
(Her eyes that glide over him,
as if there's no substance to him whatsoever.
As if he's the ghost.)
There's nothing sharp about Sea Girl, nothing but curves and softness, from the waves of her hair to the vague features of her round face.
(As if she isn't quite finished, isn't quite there.)
There's nothing sharp about Sea Girl, except maybe for the straight, neutral line of her mouth and the flatness in her eyes.
His scrutiny is interrupted when she raises her hand through the air, slowly, like the waves that come and go lazily on a windless day.
He can stop her, but he doesn't, curious to see what she will do.
Her fingers find his cheek, dig in, and tug.
His stare becomes bewildered as he watches her watch his distended skin, eyes fixated with something dull that looks more like resignation than the surprise he expects, bitterness clinging to the echo of a scowl on the edges of her lips.
Luffy doesn't know if he wants to laugh or frown.
"Oisch! Wha' ar' yew doin'?!"
Her fingers tug a little harder like she wants to stop him from talking any more, and slowly her eyes meet his.
(She seems to do everything slowly, like someone only half-awake.)
"Just checking I wasn't dreaming."
Her words are gone with the wind as soon as they leave her mouth, soft like a whisper.
Then she lets go of his cheek, body growing stiff and mouth closing into a mild, pleasant smile.
"I'm sorry. My surprise got the better of me, but I should have asked for your permission before touching you."
Now Luffy is definitely frowning.
This.
This is the smile he has seen adults offer each other when they don't really mean it.
It's too close to the smile on someone's face in Grey Terminal when they're about to screw you over, looks too close to the smile on the face of Sabo's father when he came to—
(—to steal and break and cut,
to take him away,
never to be seen again.)
"Stop smiling like that. It's annoying."
It slips off her face, quiet like an afterthought, and she stares at him silently.
"Why?"
Luffy frowns harder.
"If you don't want to say or do something, don't do it. It's stupid."
"Humans are stupid."
The words flow out of her mouth like water down a river, the easy acknowledgement of a universal truth.
Seawater is salty.
Monkey D. Luffy will be the King of Pirates.
Humans are stupid.
She stares at him some more.
"So you want me to stop being polite with you?"
"Did you listen to me? What I want you to do doesn't matter. I'm just telling you you're being annoying, I don't care what you decide to do."
"But if I want to insult you, you'd rather I do that than smile and keep my mouth shut."
"Sure." He shrugs, half-bored with the conversation already.
He expected better things from his saviour, and at this point he just wants to thank her and be done with it.
With her.
Because if his first mystery is going to be so lame, then he refuses to accept her as such, refuses to let her ruin his adventure—
"Give me written proof that I can shove in your face if you ever get upset with me for insulting you, and I'll do it."
Luffy blinks, and his entire face scrunches into a childish frown, but laughter floats up his throat like bubbles of light.
"Write? But I don't wanna—"
"Give me written proof, or I won't stop smiling."
The infuriating thing she calls a smile is back on her face, and he wants to punch it off, but her voice is more forceful, now.
(More like what his first mystery should sound like,
more like the current that drags you away from the coast, away from home and towards the unknown, the danger, the adventure—)
For the first time since she woke up she sounds actually there , and her half-joke half-threat reminds him of how Ace blackmailed him into doing things.
(Sabo always was not really the nicer big brother of the two.)
So instead he throws his head back and laughs.
"You're so weird!"
And he sticks his hand towards her.
"I'm Luffy, and I'm gonna become the Pirate King! What's your name?"
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
When she wakes up, she doesn't open her eyes.
First, because she usually prefers to wait until the last of her sleep is shaken off before doing so.
Second, because whatever she's lying on is certainly not her bed, or any bed at all for that matter.
Third, because soon, the memories are thrown back in her face. It hurts worse than she thinks an actual blow would, and then she doesn't want to wake up at all.
So she keeps her eyes closed.
A last, futile attempt to delay her confrontation with reality, because after all, what sense does it make to drop a coward like her into a shōnen manga world?
Her next thought has all the levity of a shell-shocked, untethered mind that hits just close enough to home to both address the point and miss it entirely.
Did she just do CPR on Monkey D. Luffy?
Her lips falter into a faint, involuntary smile.
Her hands shake.
It's all so—
So utterly absurd, it doesn't even sound real.
(pleasepleaseplease let it be—)
But Monkey D. Luffy shares some common points with many other main characters of shōnen manga.
One of them being that for all of the dumb stuff that she supposes comes out of his mouth and dumber ideas that probably fly around in his brain, he has maturity.
Main characters are strong is a cardinal rule of shōnen.
Strength comes from pain is another, and you can only taste so much of all the bad things in the world before naivety becomes an impossibility.
She does not need to have read or watched One Piece to know this.
The glimpses and comments she caught are enough.
But even with this maturity, and that's another common point, he is also so very childish.
(Perhaps , she thinks, like only people who haven't had enough time to be children can be.)
Bold and brazen like only children can be, and cruelly demanding like only children can be.
And so, he refuses to let her escape the conversation, refuses to let her escape reality —or what passes as such in her fucked-up case.
(The immense, bottomless weight of a world of questions and fears and unknowns that she's just barely managing to stuff in the back of her mind,
and she keeps pushing it downdowndown,
drowning it out with the weight of every random, blank thought she can muster.
It doesn't feel like she'll ever think enough thoughts to bury it all well and deep somewhere it can't reach her, somewhere it can't crack through her.)
Instead, he keeps poking and pushing until she relents, opens her eyes, looks at him.
Him being the first thing she sees makes him her only certainty in an unknown sea and a sea of unknown.
(She isn't sure she likes it.
She usually prefers to know things,
prefers known variables and comfortable certainty.
But between not knowing anything and knowing that she has somehow found herself into the world of One Piece, a world that isn't hers, a world that isn't even supposed to be real—
Ignorance is bliss seems like a correct feeling on the issue.)
Monkey D. Luffy has long, wiry limbs and an abnormally wide smile that somehow looks absolutely natural on his face, a smile that shows off all his teeth and screws up all his face, as if he wants to show the whole world the fire that burns inside him.
(How big it is, how happy he has decided he is and fuck anyone who will try to change his mind—)
Monkey D. Luffy looks like he was born to eat that strange fruit that remade him into rubber, and she pushes back, clamps down on the thought as soon as it comes.
(Because thinking about fate is too close to thinking about gods, about the god who created this world, and it just makes her want to throw up more—
just makes the cracks wider, forcing her to bite down on the things ramming against her teeth and taste them—)
His eyes are big and brown, the kind that would be compared to chocolate in a work of romance, but she has glimpsed enough of him on the screen to know that he would prefer an analogy with some kind of meat.
And they're talking, his eyes, talking and laughing even when no words pass his splitting mouth and shit, he's never going to shut up, even worse than her sister, how is that even possible—
His tan skin glints bronze under the sun, and white fingers, hers but not really hers, latch onto it before her brain even processes the thought, the hope that—
Nope.
He is, feels real, rubbery skin rough but pliant under the fingers that can't be hers.
… Apparently, he's also part of these characters who do not like or even see the point in basic etiquette.
(The thought of what the consequences of it might be like alone is enough to make her tired,
something heavy sitting under her skull, pulsing behind her eyelids,
dragging her down down down by the blunt edge of its teeth.)
But he looks bored, and because he seems to be that kind of person, the kind who freely, unashamedly, unreservedly let themselves feel and act on those feelings, she sighs.
(Air leaving her lungs, leaving the hole sinking in her chest to be filled with all the why's and how's and I want to go home's, please—)
She sighs, and lets out a bit of what she usually leaves to rot in the back of her throat while she smiles and flexes her jaw and keeps her mouth shut because wait, that's not polite, that's not nice and fucking hell, they're gonna cry, or get angry, can't recognise a goddamn joke when it bites them in the—
Just a little bit, though.
She just wants to avoid being thrown back into the water because she's not entertaining.
He isn't a friend, or family, or anything she can trust.
(Shouldn't even be alive or dead or existing—)
Fortunately, this bumps up her status from annoying to interesting instead of mean —it was kind of a bet— in the Monkey D. Luffy Scale of People Assessment, though she surmises there isn't much to see between the I like you hey join my crew and the I don't like you Gomu Gomu no [insert more or less nonsensical term here] —apart from maybe the who are you oh wait I don't care level.
The real-but-not- real boy leans back out of her personal space, face splitting back into its default position, a.k.a. the smile that positively screams I do what I want and I don't care what the world has to say about it.
"I'm Luffy, and I'm gonna be the King of Pirates! What's your name?"
Gingerly, carefully, she sits up, more to stall her answer than anything else.
For the first time, the answer doesn't come to her, doesn't come out of her with the certainty of a fact.
(As if changing worlds
—she clenches her teeth down on the pressure rising in her throat because
fuck, not here, she can't break here,
not in front of this boy who will acknowledge her tears, who will make them real—
has tilted her world entirely off its axis.)
Gazing down in thought, she abruptly realises that one, she's still wearing the jungle green, two-piece swimsuit that she was wearing when she—
—when she closed her eyes, and two, that although her main physical features have changed, this body is still like hers.
She has never been happier to see the thick limbs and ample curves and plump flesh, to feel the skin —her skin— shift over her bones as she moves because hell, adapting to a completely new body would be a total bitch.
(—and she would lose it, lose her self, lose herself—)
She blinks the idea away, focusing on the hand offered to her.
The hand that will tear her out of the last, fragile layer of brittle denial that forms her tentative armour when faced with what she cannot, does not want to believe.
The hand of the only person to be here, with her, for miles around, on this rippling, rolling mirror of changing shades, and she can't—
She can't do this alone .
Her palm slides against his rough, barely smaller one, long and slightly chubby fingers settling around his hand firmly.
(It's their first mutual contact, and the last time she allows herself to think that she will slip through him like the illusion he's supposed to be.
Because she can't keep hoping that blinking is all it takes to end this world, this empty, glittering sea and this boy.
Has never been any good at the hope thing in the first place.
So suck it up and deal with it, because you're all on your own, and no one will do it for you.)
"Name's Elynna."
Her second name will take some getting used to, but since she's had to use it for just about every administrative process in her life so far, she certainly isn't unfamiliar with it.
Besides, using a name that isn't quite hers in a body that isn't quite hers and a world that isn't hers at all feels just a little less viscerally wrong than using her real name, no matter how chillingly real this all feels.
Passively, she wonders whether dissociating her life (herself) like this will be for the best or the worst, if she ever makes it back home —and then dismisses the concern that she doesn't know how to answer.
(Throws it back into the churning, anxious thing in the pit of her sunken lungs that chews her in and spits her out according to its own whims,
because she has long ago resigned to the fact that even if she knows that fretting over something will serve no purpose, it will never protect her from fraying herself thin over it.)
A black leather rucksack appears in front of her eyes, dangling in the bo— Luffy's grip.
Her black leather rucksack.
That she definitely did not take with her to go swimming.
"It was floating not far away. Is it yours?"
"... Yes. Thank you."
She reaches out, half-expecting her hand to pass through what has to be an illusion.
It doesn't.
(She tries not to be bitter about the fact that only one thing followed her here, and no one did.
It's better for them, she tells herself, and swallows the embittered fear that pools in her mouth and wets her eyes.)
The bag contains little.
What is necessary to write, which she always makes sure to have on her but almost never uses, some of her sport accessories thrown in haphazardly after her sister interrupted her morning session to drag her to the beach, her phone and a portable battery in the plastic bag she wrapped them in before leaving.
There's none of her clothes or the towel she left on the beach, and most of her phone's functions will probably be inaccessible, but at this point, she figures it's the least of her problems.
"How did you end up here anyway? There's no boat around." The rubber boy asks suddenly, shading his eyes from the sun with one hand as he surveys the ocean, as if checking once again that there's no other boat.
She stills.
Takes a deep breath.
Clenches her teeth.
When she exhales, the tidal wave that has been swelling inside her settles with her breathing.
"Ah. Well… I went swimming alone, and I— got lost?"
His head tilts slowly to the side as he stares at her, definitely puzzled.
"There's no island around here, though?"
The words tumble off her lips, mouth running thoughtless and panicked as her brain struggles to catch up with the terrible, embarrassing excuse of a lie that just slipped out of her.
"I'm a good swimmer." She replies, angling herself away from him to hide the horrified embarrassment heating up her throat and her ears at her own inability to come up with something even slightly convincing, traumatising circumstances be damned.
On the good side, though, none of it is an outright lie, and she tries not to lie when she can help it.
Somewhat because she's been raised to feel awful about it, but mostly because if she doesn't have the time to prepare for it, she's positively, absolutely disastrous at it.
And in this case, because she will have to tell at least a few given her current situation. The more lies she will tell and the more complex they will be, the more tiring it will be to keep up with them.
The fewer the better, as far as she's concerned.
Luffy's roaring laughter interrupts her thoughts, and she looks back at him, rolling around in the small boat that is now rocking uncomfortably.
Her stare at the sight is unimpressed, but the spots of heat at her ears and collarbones betray her remaining embarrassment.
She isn't the best with directions, after all, and her tendency to get stuck in her own head has led her into a few humiliating situations already.
Thank fuck he's stupid enough to buy it, at least.
Small mercies and all that.
"I'm glad at least someone finds it funny."
"But— But that's just— so dumb!" He sputters between bouts of laughter.
He laughs on and on —much more than warranted in her opinion— and she lets him, bringing her legs to her chest and circling them with her arms as she observes him pensively, chin settled on top of both knees.
His laugh isn't pretty.
Some would probably even comment that it sounds stupid.
It's loud, strange, and he's clearly laughing at her.
It's… charismatic, though.
Magnetic, in how he clearly doesn't care about what she or anyone else thinks of him laughing.
Infectious, in the way it —he— makes her want to stop caring and laugh, too.
Somehow, even in the situation she's in, she feels the corners of her lips twitch and the pressure in her constricted throat subside, until it settles at a more manageable level below her collarbones.
(She hates all of it.
How she still has the time to be embarrassed with herself and the way she occupies the space of her existence, even here and now.
How her emotions are reacting to his, the urge to let go right there, foreign but hers somehow, even here and now.
It makes her feel disgusted, stupid to the point of either tears or sickness, and even more off-balance in this world and this body that aren't hers to exist in.
She rationalises it into obedience
—fuck ridiculous shōnen main characters and their ridiculous charisma—
and shoves it down deep and away with all the other things inside her mind,
waiting for the day her will breaks or she does not have anything more urgent to do than to stop or drown —whichever comes first.)
"Did you grow up in a forest or something?"
The laughing devolves into hacking and coughing as the rubber boy sits up suddenly, now looking absolutely bewildered.
She vaguely considers laughing at him as a small revenge, before deciding that finding herself in an entirely different world certainly is not going to make her comfortable enough with strangers for that.
(And if it feels like laughing is as far away from her lungs as the air of her home, then she shoves that down and away, too.)
"How did you know?! Wait, are you reading my mind?!"
Upon voicing the idea, he starts crambling backwards as if it would change anything in the case he's right.
What is there to read, I wonder?
She reaches out a hand to grip the boat right before the boy almost falls off the bow he just reached, making the whole thing almost topple over.
"It was just a joke, though?" She eventually replies when the boat stops rocking and she knows for sure she won't get a mouthful of seawater, tilting her head on the side as her gaze turns into an intent stare. "You really did?"
"Yeah! How did you know?" He asks, straightening his hat and his position with a wide and bright smile, as if the simple mention of his home is the equivalent of ten shots of liquid happiness.
(She knows it probably isn't the only thing he's known there.
She also knows he's probably the type to always move forward and turn any pain into strength —unlike her.
It's just the nth reminder that she doesn't belong here, but it hurts in a different way.)
"For all intents and purposes, I'm still a child. People would be more likely to worry about me being separated from my parents than to laugh at the fact that I got lost, no matter how stupidly." She shrugs. "I just thought you must have grown up being very independent."
Luffy rubs harshly at the back of his head with a frown.
"Ah. Sorry?"
A nonchalant, vague roll of her shoulders.
(A hard, painful swallow of her tears.)
"You didn't know. Besides, weren't you the one who basically told me you didn't care about manners?"
"Yeah, but Makino didn't agree."
"... Who's Makino?"
That apparently turns out to be the cue for him to tell —and reenact— the story of his life, probably with a handful of dramatic exaggerations.
He rambles on and on, hopping from story to adventure and straight into what he calls 'having fun' —and that she calls 'idiotic recklessness bordering on half-intended suicide'.
Some of the charac— people he mentions are familiar to her ears, remnants of her little sister's babbling about her favourite anime series.
His voice and his enthusiasm make it hard to ignore him, and she doesn't try to.
Instead, she allows his words and this vague sense of familiarity to lull her away from her own thoughts, rocking gently on her spot in the little boat that is drifting towards nowhere and anywhere.
And the longer he talks, the more she realises that what she hears is Japanese, and she shouldn't be able to understand it.
But it's right there in her ears, his voice doubled into a stream of muddled sounds that she is only familiar enough with to recognise it as what it is and a clear river of her own language.
It's like someone is directly translating his words inside her brain, and it makes her arms tighten their hold and her body tense in a vain attempt to ward off the perceived invasion.
It changes nothing, of course, just like she can do nothing about her presence here.
So she keeps her mouth shut.
(Because what if when she opens it, her voice is doubled too, the same as his, and it feels like someone is putting the words inside her mouth?
She should've never read 1984.
Her mind really did not need that kind of help.
She needs time to lock the idea away, and Luffy's brightness is a perfect distraction as she actively smothers the thought under more positive considerations.
It would, after all, be a pain to deal with the language barrier.)
"So Shanks is your role model in piracy?"
"Yup!"
"And you want to find the One Piece, that just about all the other pirates want to find?"
"Shishishishi! It's gonna be fun right?!"
"Depends on the kind of pirate you cross paths with, I guess."
"Uh?"
"You know, the basic definition of a pirate is someone who breaks the law and steals treasures. There are a lot of pirates that you probably wouldn't consider to be pirates, but as far as just about everyone else is concerned, they are. You probably won't like meeting some of them."
"… You think too much, dummy."
"And you obviously don't think enough."
"Ow! Why did you poke me?!"
"Proving a point. You know your skull actually sounds hollow, right?"
"Well it isn't! It's because I'm rubber!"
"Oh, so now you're an expert on the properties of matter?"
"Propretees of what?"
"Don't pretend to be hurt when I poke you if you're going to use the rubber skin argument the second after, it makes it sound like a convenient excuse. Anyway, stop moving so much, you're about to go overboard, and I'll be too busy thinking too much to save you a second time."
"Argh! Stop talking! You're confusing me!"
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
Eventually, the sun sinks in the sea with an explosion of bloody colours.
It somehow feels like the dregs of her last hope of this— this whole thing being a dream is dying with it.
(Except the sun will live again the day after,
but her hope will not, because even on the best of days optimism seems like an idiotic waste of energy.)
It's her first night in this new world, and she breaks in strangled silence as soon as Luffy's breathing settles, drifting locked inside the stifling darkness uniting ocean and sky, the stars glittering beautifully, mockingly.
As unreachable as her home.
(Because even their reflection in the sea that she can touch is only an illusion, and by now her brain
—if not her wretched, broken heart—
is quite convinced that this is her new reality.)
Quietly, she unlocks her limbs from their position, and slowly moves over to the railing, pausing at each creak of the wooden planks to check that the bo— Luffy's breathing hasn't changed.
As silently as she can, she fills her lungs with air, and leans over, until she has immersed the entirety of her head and is pretty sure that she will fall over if she goes any further.
She thinks of the beach, of her mother's irritation and the backs of her father and sister as they run towards the sea with their surfboards.
Silences the instinctive, protesting jolts of her mind.
And gives up.
(Not really, but enough to feel like it.)
It takes only a few seconds for the tempest rumbling behind locked bars to whirl violently and rush headfirst along the cracks, tearing into them until they are canyons unable to hold anything back—
And she screams.
(She screams, and it all bursts out of her, a jumbled, incomprehensible mess of so many more things she's kept in than losing everything, years-old and washed out but branded deeply enough into the depths of her, mashed into the painful loudness of wounds more shallow—
She screams and screams and screams, but only in her mind, because she knows that water isn't enough to drown out the noise, so she just wants to give her brain the illusion that for once she's managed to let go—
She screams until her mind finally, finally stops, until it's her lungs that are screaming with pain instead and it shuts down this brain that thinks too much, worries too much and cares too little to make her do something, until the burning in her eyes silences this heart that shouldn't hurt this much for how little she cares, or maybe should hurt more—)
She screams until she doesn't have any air left, and water starts to come in instead.
She expels it, and finally closes her mouth.
The only noise as she straightens up is the creaking of the wood and the drops of water falling from her hair and skin to hit the floor of the boat.
Lips still closed, she coughs silently.
Shaking, dry hands reach up to rub salty water away from her eyes.
(And she freezes, clenches her teeth against the desire, tries to resist, really she does,
but she's so so weak
—always has been—
and everything hasn't been buried and drowned back down yet,
so she presses her fingers over her eyes, hard, and then harderharderharder, until it feels like her eyeballs are embedded into her skull
—and maybe it's not so bad if it means that she won't ever have to see reality break in front of her eyes like that again—
and she opens her mouth into a silent, disfigured black hole that takes everything in but doesn't let anything out—
She feels the tears about to fall, and crushes them in her fists before they are even born.)
When her hands are back on her knees, everything is drowned dead and buried deep again, and she lies down and closes her eyes, setting out to conscientiously kill any remaining idea that she might open them to see the sky of her home, because she doesn't have the kind of courage it takes to allow herself that and remain sane.
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
His back turned to her, Luffy listens as the Sea Girl's breathing slows down. He's pretty sure she's sad, but he can't hear her cry at all.
Which is dumb.
How will anyone know she needs help if she doesn't show it?
(He can't help her if she doesn't ask for it.)
But it's already established that she's dumb.
And thinks too much.
That weirdo.
(She's a sad kind of weird that reminds him of a boy with dark stars flying across his face.
Except his brother, at that time, was wrapped in a cocoon of all the rage and the hate and the pain thrown at him, and he feasted on it everyday, let it burn and crackle loudly just beneath his skin to make himself stronger and stronger and stronger—
Sea Girl looks like she's hiding behind an armour of fear and sadness and contempt that all came out of her own head, and now it's like her shoulders are stuck under the weight of it, locked and trembling, and she just—
She just looks tired.)
Luffy wonders if she can become as awesome as Ace, if he keeps running after her until her armour breaks and she turns around and looks back at him.
Wonders how bright her smile might shine and how her laughter might sound.
Maybe that's why, on the following day, he doesn't mind his mouth opening and the words falling out of it, as he watches her trembling hands, as he listens to the words that show him she's thinking about him just as much as herself despite her apparent lack of care, as he listens to the voice that she's forcing herself to keep level.
(He still thinks his idea would work too, though.)
〪〪〪〜〜⏆〜〜〭〭〭
"The weather is so nice today, right?"
Elynna stares.
"Yep. Very nice. Don't you think it's funny how the weather can be so good when we're about to die so carelessly?"
"This is a whirlpool… Right?"
"That's a dumb question, of course it is! It's really bad that I can't swim… Ah, but you can! So you can carry me like yesterday and woosh!"
The blank look she pins him under is a better answer than any words.
"Ah, yeah, you're right. Swimming wouldn't really help right now."
As they are caught into the currents, the boat starts to move faster, getting ever so closer to the wide, crushing mouth of the sea, howling for the lives trapped in the gravity of its current.
Luffy cocks his head, eyes set on the trembling hands that look barely able to hold anything and the muted horror in her transfixed stare, and he knows from his own body's memory that Sea Girl is absolutely incapable of moving at the moment.
So he gets up, opens one of the two barrels Makino gave him, and starts emptying its reserve of apples into the ocean, keeping a few (read: most) of them under his stretched arm.
Her gaze snaps to him at the noise, and he can almost see the wild, frenzied beat of her heart reflected into it, her voice so tight it doesn't allow any inflection to show through.
"What are you doing."
"Nothing we can do, so let's just take a nap in there. Who knows, we might just survive! We even have food! … Although, meat would've been better."
He laughs loudly, partly because he's proud to have come up with such a good idea, partly to cover the noise of the possible death they're rushing towards and that is monopolising her thoughts.
She keeps staring, though —until the boat lurches as it starts changing direction at the ocean's will.
And then she's scrambling to her feet on trembling legs, reaching towards the second barrel to throw away the drinkable water it contains.
"What are you doing?"
"If the both of us go in there," she directs a vague nod towards his barrel, "we have more chance of being too heavy and to end up drowning when the waters will calm down —if we even make it to that point alive. Also, there's no way I'm getting stuck with you and apples in a barrel that's going to roll around in a goddamn whirpool for who knows how long. Since you've kept the mooring rope, just tie the two barrels together. It might just give us a chance of not losing each other."
"Why should I be the one to make the knot?"
"Because I have no fucking idea of how to make one."
Luffy laughs again, and steps up beside her, hands already working on the rope as he proceeds to loop it several times between both barrels.
Water splashes their legs, and the boat is getting more and more unstable, making Elynna's movements stutter and a weird, trembling noise escape her mouth.
Luffy just grins, slapping her hard in the back to distract her.
"Stop worrying so much! It's gonna be fine!"
"Stop not worrying. You're going to get killed, and it will probably be mostly your fault." She snaps back.
But there's no heat behind the words, because she has imminent death to deal with, and she doesn't need to be a die hard fan to know that he's a lost cause on this point.
"Shishishishishi! Join my crew then!"
For a moment, she's convinced that she has just been slapped in the face by one of the increasingly agitated waves around them because—
"What?"
And that idiot repeats the exact same words, but spending a night with him was probably enough to make her just as much of an idiot, because she cannot comprehend these words, in that order, directed at her.
(The members of the Straw Hat Pirates are supposed to be exceptional.
Geniuses in their field.
Resourceful.
Brave.
Able to fight in so many ways.
Not… Not someone like her.)
Her brain has never been brought to a stop so easily.
"You can worry for me so that I don't die, and I'll hit you when you start to be annoying. We'll be a perfect team!"
Her brain reboots.
Shut your mouth. Do not answer carelessly.
Rationalise.
Pros.
Cons.
And god fucking damnit, it's not because you're close enough to the thing that spat you here and now looks ready to eat you all the way back up, that you cannot waste your life away in hesitation like you always do.
Saying yes is a stupid idea, because even if her little sister didn't regularly chatter on and on in her ear about some episode or another, she's painfully aware of the danger someone like Monkey D. Luffy can bring —and land himself in.
She also knows that the general law of shōnen manga is that the main character does reach his dreams, but that he usually loses things in the process.
Things… and people.
She doesn't want to be one of those people.
But if her arrival in this world is not a coincidence, then the fact that she appeared near him, just in time to save him , who is basically the reason why this world exists in the first place, must mean something.
Somehow, if he's linked to her presence here, then he might just be the key to going home —or at least the best lead she has as of now. And even if not, travelling the world with him is a good way to find information.
At the very least, from what she's seen of him in less than twenty-four hours, she thinks that she can trust him to be like the boy she heard about.
(The boy who takes care of those he likes.
The boy who is, when it comes down to it, a good person.)
And saying no, if it even changes anything when he is so stubborn and she is so weak-willed, means having to learn how to live alone in a world that is not hers, filled with pirates and Marines that are not necessarily nicer than them.
In the end, Luffy and his future is the only thing remotely familiar to her, her only anchor, and, well—
(She has always been a coward, and there aren't many things scarier than facing an unknown big enough to swallow you whole with no one to cling to.)
Her brain is quick to present her with the arguments, and the conclusion is terrifyingly, horrifyingly clear.
Their boat rocks so hard that she almost tumbles into the sea.
Fuck her life.
"Fine. Now get in that barrel, Captain, instead of standing around waiting to drown."
Even as he obeys, her newly-minted nightm— Captain keeps whooping in joy and babbling on and on about how he's just getting started and just you wait Shanks—
His voice fades away once she closes the barrel. And as she tries to get as comfortable as she can in a goddamn barrel of all things, as she feels the boat overturning, the only thing she can think is—
Fuck.
She's going to be one of the only characters in this world with more than two brain cells.
She's probably going to lose them if she spends too much time with all the people who have a negative number of them, and she just joined the Straw Hat Pirates of all people.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
She's—
She is.
So.
Screwed.
…
Well, at least there'll be good-looking people.
…
…
She always did suck at that positive thinking thing.
Notes:The words in italic that I put in the very beginning of the chapter and that look like a bad poem don't come from any song or quote (unless I'm subconsciously plagiarising, in which case feel free to tell me). They won't always be from Elynna's POV or directed at one person in particular. Have fun guessing if you want!
#FTSFact1: Elynna insert - Opening One 〜 A boy runs to the edge of a cliff to throw himself at the sea, grinning like he can already see his dream being achieved and alone.
But soon there's others with him —faces that come and go in short flashes.
A girl who lies at the very edge of the beach in shallow water, hair floating like seaweed around her and sand stuck on her body, looking like she got washed ashore, eyes hazy and half-lidded with a world that might as well exist only in her mind.
A man, hair a soft green and smirk edging into violence, teeth gleaming like the sword propped against his shoulder as he looks down at the world.
Another girl, with a pretty face and a cheeky smile like an incoming storm that you can't escape.
Another boy with sharp eyes that gleam with mischief and black curls as crazy as the ideas that bloom inside his mind.
A man again, hair like gold under the sun and cigarette held elegantly, the swirl of his eyebrow the only hint to the fact that he's crazy enough to be in this crew.
And soon after, there's even a ship, grinning almost as much as the boy and that keeps grinning even as it sails among monsters like they're just another adventure instead.
Enemies stop neither the ship nor the people living in it, razor-sharp steel and vivid strikes and clever tricks enough to keep sailing even if not enough to challenge the red-haired skull they might encounter one day.
Thank you for reading, and I wish you the best until the next update!