#HE IS JUST AS SILLY AS LUFFY AND GARP BUT HES MORE SELF AWARE OF WHEN TO BE SILLY!!!! AND BROTHER DONT START ME ON | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

missmungoe · 7 years

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TOURNESOL // Sabo x Koala & baby // rated G // It takes a revolutionary army to raise a child. Or something like that, anyway.

His daughter is so small it almost beggars belief.

Her head fits into the cup of his palm and with room to spare, the soft curve of it so fragile his hand feels almost too large in comparison, fingers curled around the back of it with all the care he can muster. And he’s never been more aware of the strength sitting in his grip than he is now, holding her – and for the first time in his life the knowledge is entirely humbling.

That tiny, wrinkled face doesn’t so much as twitch, and she’s been asleep for several minutes, eyes shut above a nose so small he can’t stop staring at it.

“She won’t disappear if you put her down, you know.”

The tired murmur drags his eyes from the baby to the bed, to find Koala awake and watching him.

“I have a vague memory of you holding her before I fell asleep,” she says, pushing herself up on the mattress, and Sabo’s smile falls at the pain that contorts her features into a grimace. “And I feel like I’ve been out a while.”

“Twelve hours,” he says, and watches her eyes blink slowly, as though she’s having trouble processing the words. There are no windows in the infirmary, and between the sterile walls and the fluorescent lights the passage of time tends to disappear.

He comes to take a seat on the bed, careful not to disturb the baby, or Koala, and her expression softens into one of relief when she sinks back against the pillows. “How do you feel?” he asks.

A sigh drags loose of her, and he feels a pang of worry, before the corner of her mouth lifts, just a fraction. “Is it Iva-chan’s stuff that I’m on, or something else? It’s really good.” But even as she says it there’s a sheen of sweat clinging to her brow, and Sabo has half a mind to call for the doctor.

“Don’t,” Koala says, before he has the chance, and he feels the near-desperate touch of her fingers against his thigh. “I’m okay,” she adds, no doubt at the look on his face, and he’s tempted to tell her it would sound more convincing if he couldn’t still hear the pain in her voice, but – “Can it just be us for a moment?” she murmurs, and whatever he’d been about to say leaves him with a breath.

Her gaze flicks to the baby in his arms, and it’s another small marvel in a line of many – the fact that us means more than just the two of them now.

“Here,” Sabo says then, shuffling closer, only to find her smile quirking, amusement bright in her tired eyes. “What?”

“I’m just surprised you’re handing her over without a fight,” Koala says.

He tries not to look affronted. “You’re her mother.”

A single brow lifts. “Have you given anyone else a chance to hold her?”

Sabo averts his eyes to the ceiling, and Koala’s sigh holds a laugh, but when he places the baby into her arms her expression changes – shifts, exhaustion still clinging to her features, but the smile on her face mirrors his, wide and silly and tinged with that now-familiar disbelief.

“She’s so tiny.” She touches a fingertip to that little nose, the small movement seeming entirely natural, her own hands sure in their handling where his still feel awkward, even though he’s seen them wreak just as much havoc. For a moment the sight holds his gaze entirely captive, before Koala lifts her eyes, grin widening. “And cute.”

“Yeah,” Sabo laughs, touch lingering by the pale dusting of hair on the baby’s head. “I’m still having a hard time wrapping my mind around it.”

“That we made something this small, or this cute?”

He grins. “She was always going to be cute,” he quips. “Have you seen her mother?”

He receives a look for that, and, “You’re such a dork,” Koala sighs, but her grin chases some of the exhaustion from her features. “Imagine her teen years. She’s going to be so embarrassed.”

He pouts. “I resent that.”

“Don’t,” Koala says, with a surety that strikes like a blow, even before she adds, “She’ll adore you.”

“In spite of it?” he teases, but when he looks at her he finds her expression entirely serious. And he’s not surprised that she caught the underlying note of genuine worry, however self-deprecating the suggestion.

“Sabo,” she says then, the honorific retired some time ago, but the sound of his name always feels like a new thing. “I’m really glad you’re her dad.”

Despite himself, he allows his grin to turn wry, gaze shifting to the baby tucked against her breast. “I hope she’ll feel the same.”

Koala’s fingers curl around his wrist, her grip tight enough to hurt, but her expression is a far kinder thing, and speaks volumes where she doesn’t – enough for him to shove his concerns about the future out of the way, at least in favour of the moment before him now; their daughter, coming out of her slumber, frown firmly in place.

A moment passes where they both watch the baby, snug in her mother’s hold and still so small it’s hard to fathom, even as he tries to imagine what she’ll be like one day, years from now – too big to carry, and with a personality all her own.

Then, her tone brimming with dry amusement–

“You’re already thinking of ways to embarrass her, aren’t you?”

“I have so many ideas.”

—

“She’s chubby.”

“Most babies are a little chubby, Luffy.”

His brother’s hand hovers a moment, before he touches a careful finger to the baby’s stomach. Awake and alert, her eyes track every movement above her field of vision, focused now in a way that’s brand new, and entirely thrilling.

“Does she do anything?” Luffy asks then, when a moment of silence has passed wherein the baby has done nothing but meet his gaze, although he hasn’t looked away, Sabo notes.

“What,” he laughs. “Like tricks?”

“Yeah!”

“Eats and poops, mostly,” Sabo supplies, and Luffy’s grin widens.

“Cool.” His gaze is still focused on the baby, and Sabo observes, fascinated for an entirely different reason. His little brother’s notoriously fleeting attention span notwithstanding, he hasn’t dragged his eyes away from his niece for several minutes.

Luffy reaches out to touch a small foot, and grins when her toes curl at the contact. “So I’m her uncle now?” he asks, lifting his eyes to Sabo’s, before they’re claimed again by a small noise.

“You’ve been her uncle since before she was born,” Sabo reminds him. “But yeah,” he adds, smile curving. “You are.”

“But what do uncles do, anyway?”

Sabo smiles, eyes on his daughter, enthralled by the scarred and curious face peering into hers. “You could teach her things.”

Luffy’s grimace is as earnest as his every other feeling, and, “I don’t like teaching,” he announces.

There’s a second where Sabo feels tempted to point out that Garp’s idea of teaching isn’t the textbook standard, or anything to aspire to for that matter, but he curbs his tongue, aware that they both carry the weight of their childhoods with them, and in vastly different ways. And there’s a nameless emotion swelling in his chest at the sight of his brother’s face now, as though a decision has been made; the determined slant to his brow holding a promise.

And Sabo knows it will be years before his daughter is old enough to grasp the meaning behind that look, but it’s something to behold, still – one uncle’s silent promise of the whole world, to put at her feet.

“Then you could show her things,” Sabo says, voice thick. “The things you like.”

Luffy’s entire countenance brightens. “D’you think she’ll like beetles?”

Sabo smiles. “If you show her your favourite, she might.”

The grin his answer sparks stays, and Sabo watches, a little mesmerised, as his daughter’s own widens in response. A reflex, most likely – she’s too young for it to be a conscious action, but it makes Luffy laugh, visibly delighted at the sight, and so Sabo tucks the words under his tongue, and finds his own smile hard to remove.

Then, his voice quiet – too quiet for his usual volume, and at any other time it might have been cause for concern, but when Luffy lifts his eyes to Sabo he finds concern is the furthest thing from his mind as his brother asks, with more care than he’s ever heard–

“Can I hold her?”

—

“Sabo-kun?”

The use of the honorific alerts him, long before he picks up on the far too cheerful note in her voice.

Lifting his eyes from the pile of paperwork on his desk, it’s to find Koala standing on the other side, arms crossed over her chest. And he’s almost afraid to ask, but – “Yes?”

Her expression is carefully patient. “You wouldn’t happen to know where our daughter is, would you?”

He blinks. “She’s not with you?”

One brow raised, she spreads her arms, as though to say does it look like she’s with me?

He’s about to ask if she’s checked the nursery, already knowing it’s a stupid question, but even so she beats him to it.

“The crib is empty,” she says, and even though her expression shows nothing but that careful calm, the one that’s hard to shake even in the direst of situations, he catches the slight furrow to her brows as she speaks the words.

Despite himself, he feels a flicker of worry, even as he blurts, “She’s two months old. She can’t even roll over yet. How did she get out?”

Koala presses her knuckles to her brow. “If I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking.”

He’s rising from his seat, requisition forms forgotten. “Maybe Hack has her?”

Koala shakes her head. “I checked.”

“Iva-chan?”

“Sabo, I asked everyone. I can’t find her anywhere!”

A note of panic has slipped into her voice now, and he would tell her it’s alright – that freaking out before they’ve considered the most obvious facts won’t get them anywhere, but with his own panic rising he’s not really one to point fingers. And it’s something he’s yet to grow used to – that irrational fear that sometimes grabs hold of him, prompted by anything from a suspicious couch, to the sudden fear that she’ll stop breathing in her sleep.

“Okay,” he says then, running a hand through his hair. “Is there anyone you haven’t asked?”

She opens her mouth, as though she already has a retort ready, but before she can speak she lets it snap shut, and – blinks, as though the answer just presented itself.

“Koala?” Sabo asks, but she’s making for the door, and he’s given no choice but to follow, still calling her name, but there’s purpose in her step now, and he’s too busy trying to catch up to notice where they’re headed.

It’s not before she’s opening the door to Dragon’s office that Sabo reacts, but the words die on his tongue before he can speak them, whatever protest he’d had planned driven clean from his mind as he comes to a stop beside her just beyond the doorway.

“Anything the matter?” Dragon asks, without looking up from the report in his hand, severe features drawn into a familiar frown. In the crook of his other arm their daughter lies sleeping, the fluffy yellow blanket tucked around her a stark contrast to the dark cloak their illustrious leader is shrouded in.

There’s a moment where all they do is stare, before Dragon lifts his gaze from the document to look at them.

“She was crying,” he says simply, as though that answers everything. “This seemed a suitable arrangement for both of us.”

His look turns decidedly wry then, hard features shifting into something akin to amusement, and, “New parents should take whatever moments of reprieve available to them,” he says, before calmly turning his gaze back to the report. “The requisitions can wait a few hours, Sabo.”

He’s about to respond – to say what exactly, he’s not sure, but then Koala’s hand is on his elbow, tugging, and through his surprise Sabo finds the mind to follow.

They’ve rounded the corner when his laughter falls, a startled breath, and Koala raises her eyes to his, her earlier worry having bled away, leaving something playful and amused. And Sabo knows it’s echoed on his own face as he comes to a stop, and asks–

“Do you think he sang to her?” It’s the only surefire way they’ve found to make her stop crying, but no matter how hard he tries, he can’t imagine it.

“The itsy-bitsy spider is her favourite,” he says then, although that doesn’t really help matters – or make the image any more believable. “He probably knows it, too.” Then again, there isn’t a soul at their headquarters who doesn’t know that fact, or the song – people have been humming it in the corridors for weeks.

Then with a breath – “I’m telling everyone,” Sabo declares.

He receives a punch in the shoulder for that. “Good luck cleaning the communal toilets for the next two months,” Koala says. “Let’s just accept Dragon-san’s offer and be happy. No teasing about tiny spiders.”

He grins, fingers winding through hers. “I don’t know – does cleaning toilets get me off diaper duty?"

Eyes twinkling, she gives his hand a tug, the gesture clever with intent and holding the promise of a very specific form of reprieve. But her smile contains the same barely-contained amusement that he feels as she chirps, laughing–

“Not a chance.”

—

She’s a curious creation – at once like both of them, but at the same time entirely her own, from that singular, toothless smile to the shade of her hair, pale gold tinged with copper.

Her obstinate personality, though, is all her mother’s.

“Sol,” Sabo says, a sigh clinging to the name, a familiar thing now for how new it still is on his tongue. “Lie still.”

She doesn’t. Instead she wiggles, the diaper coming loose, along with all his efforts. And he knows she can’t understand him, and that it’s not done with mischievous intent, but sometimes Sabo is sorely tempted to believe she does – and that it very much is.

“You’re never this difficult when your mom changes you,” he says, poking her stomach, but he can’t even feign being reproachful when the giggle he receives in response sounds like that.

“That’s because she knows she can’t get away with it,” comes the voice from behind him, before a pair of hands slip past him, to fasten the loose ends of the cloth, fingers quick and certain in their movements. When she draws back, she tucks a kiss against his cheek, and cheerfully ignores the glare.

“Show-off,” Sabo mutters, to which Koala sticks her tongue out. “So what’s your secret? Do you give her a lecture if she doesn’t stay still?”

“She’s four months old,” Koala says, giving one small foot a tickle, and prompting another gummy grin. “But even if she did understand, I doubt she’d listen,” she adds, sliding him a look. “I have a feeling she’s going to be a lot like you.”

Sabo pouts. “You make it sound like such a bad thing. Doesn’t she?” He looks to their daughter, as though for confirmation, and wonders if there’ll be a time where she’ll be ready to offer it – some kind of mischief made, and a mutual alliance formed between them.

The thought dredges up another, of parents who’d never indulged his schemes but told him to be quiet and go back to his studies. But instead of the regret he usually finds, looking at his own daughter now, with her cheeky smile promising numerous future schemes and invitations for him to partake, Sabo finds an entirely different feeling.

Koala’s smile is soft, and when she reaches out to smooth her hand over the soft down on the baby’s head, some of the strands having begun to curl–

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing at all,” she says quietly, the simple honesty in her voice ringing like a truth, and Sabo doesn’t think he could have managed a response to that if he’d looked for it.

—

“Block!” Hack announces, voice ringing out across the group of recruits, all paired up and sparring, their movements holding the still-awkward tension of beginners, along with the occasional wince following the instructions shouted across the training grounds.

“I don’t see you blocking,” Hack sighs. Then to the baby on his arm, fingers shoved in her mouth and her eyes wide and taking in the sight before her – “Do you see them blocking? No?” And to the recruits, “My assistant doesn’t see you blocking, either. Shape up!”

“Was this your idea?” Sabo asks Koala, observing the spectacle from a little ways off.

“Don’t look at me,” she says, bumping her hip against his as she comes to stand beside him. “I’m technically still on maternity leave. I can’t help it that Hack filled my position in the meantime.”

Sabo offers her a look, but finds it difficult holding back his grin. The baby on Hack’s arm looks at once entirely out of place, and like she was made to fit, eagerly kicking her legs as the recruits scramble to follow instructions.

“Was putting her in the whale-shark onesie a happy coincidence?” Sabo asks then, the blue-and-white pattern noticeable even from where they’re standing, along with the tiny fins sown into the fabric.

“Knowing Hack?” Koala laughs. “Probably not.”

“It’s stupidly cute.”

“Isn’t it?”

Hack’s sigh carries all the to where they’re standing. “See now, if this had been a real fight, you’d be dead,” he calls to one of the recruits, who lies sprawled on his back in the dirt. Then to their daughter, “Isn’t that right?”

The baby offers a happy gurgle, and Hack seems momentarily distracted by the sound, before he clears his throat, and – “Uh– right. Good job, recruits. Er– go take a break.”

Sabo slides Koala another look. “That’s the second break he’s given them in an hour. We were lucky if he’d give us leave to go to the bathroom when we were staring out,” he says, before looking back to where the rookies have gathered around their colleague and daughter, training quite forgotten. And it’s a curious sight – the towering fishman bouncing a baby so small he could balance her on his palm, but every movement is made with care, and a keen awareness that Sabo has felt himself on more than one occasion.

Then, “Do you think he’s going soft?” Sabo murmurs, and Koala winces even before Hack turns, his shout carrying across the grounds–

“Who’s going soft?!”

—

“We managed to relocate the prisoners, and there have been measures taken to accommodate them, as there were more than we’d anticipated. But overall the extraction was a success.”

The gurgle beneath his chin punctuates his recount, before an insistent tug on his cravat follows, but Sabo doesn’t glance down as the baby proceeds to try and shove the whole of it in her mouth.

“Casualties?” Dragon asks, considering the written report in his hands.

“None on our side.”

“Resources spent?”

“Uh – let me get the numbers. Koala made some adjustments.”

Someone hands him the documents, and his daughter changes hands without a fuss, although Sabo has to tug off his cravat when her lower lip wobbles, tears threatening at the promise of separation from it. But no one in the room bats an eye as he yields it to small, grabbing fingers, although he catches more than one barely-contained smile when a delighted noise follows, accompanied by a slobbering raspberry as she proceeds to shove it back in her mouth, and Sabo briefly laments the fate of the silk.

He recounts the numbers, and has to raise his voice only a little in order to be heard over the excited shriek that rises from across the room, followed by another bubbly gurgle of laughter.

For his part, Dragon seems entirely unperturbed. “You’ll make arrangements for the transfer of funds?”

“Already done.”

“And the weapon requisitions?”

“Still pending your approval.”

“What about our honorary recruit?” Dragon asks then, dark eyes holding quiet amusement, and Sabo’s mouth lifts.

“Changed and fed.”

“Any troubling behaviour to report?”

Sabo spares a glance towards the baby, his cravat cheerfully forgotten with the new and exciting prospect of Inazuma’s glasses, now within her reach. “Displays some disregard for private property, but the incidents are minor in nature.”

Glasses now in her possession, Inazuma’s expression is as level as ever, but at Sabo’s look that toothless smile stretches around the glasses, a thin thread of drool dribbling down her chin.

Sabo grins. “She also tries to pass off blatant acts of insubordination by being unfairly cute.”

Dragon is almost smiling. “Hmm. See that you keep an eye on her.”

Somehow, Sabo isn’t surprised when a whole chorus of affirmations rises up in response to that order.

—

He’d known, from the day he’d first learned of her existence, back when she’d been just a quickening of life under his palm, what his impending fatherhood might end in if he wasn’t careful.

He’s always been impulsive – split-second decisions and daring risks, grabbed before he’s had the chance to feel regret. And it’s served him well, all the way through his training and as he rose in the ranks of the Revolutionary Army. It had earned him a reputation – and his share of pinched ears and lectures from Koala, but the results had always been worth it. His actions had made a difference.

Things change, after his daughter is born. He makes himself think twice – still while on his feet, because that’s the way he works best and always has, but he’s more careful now; if not for his own sake, or even Koala’s, then for the little life that depends on them both. Theirs is a dangerous profession, and the world more dangerous yet, but when he’s huddled in a trench now, bullets flying overhead, his heart is the calmest it’s ever been, certain in the vow he made, to not let his daughter grow up in that world without him.

Of course, certain fears run deeper than others, and can’t be allayed by a simple change in routine.

He’ll dream sometimes, of the nursery burning.

It’s always the same dream, and it always ends the same way – the flames consuming everything, and he wakes with a start, sweat coating his back and a shout lodged in his throat; nothing more than a choked noise in the quiet, even as the screaming in his head persists – his daughter’s the loudest of all.

“Sabo-kun?”

When she’s tired she’ll slip into old habits, Sabo knows, the syllables of his name sitting thick on her tongue, along with the old honorific. But he roots his mind in the sound of it, until he’s managed to rein his breathing back into something that isn’t threatening to make him throw up.

“I’m fine,” he says, voice rough – from sleep, and that silent scream still wrapped around his windpipe. “Just a bad dream.” He touches his fingers to her hair, fanned out across the pillow, and watches her eyes flutter. “Go back to sleep.”

He waits until she does – until he hears her breathing even out, by which time he’s regained control of his own. And he spares her a last glance before he drags himself off the bed, steps half-stumbling and his heart still threatening at the bottom of his throat as he makes for the door.

He’d joke about it, back when he’d first gotten his devil fruit powers, that the fire was hard to control. But the old joke doesn’t feel funny anymore, especially not now, remnants of the nightmare still clinging as he picks his way across the corridor to the door opposite, following a route he could walk in his sleep. He almost doesn’t dare breathe until he’s reached the crib, and even then it’s an effort forcing air into his lungs, as though he’s afraid of what he’ll find when he looks.

But his daughter sleeps, arms above her head, her rest undisturbed. And for a moment all Sabo does is watch her, allowing his heart to settle, and his shoulders to yield some of the tension that’s knotted in his muscles.

Touching a shaking fingertip to a round cheek, he finds it smooth an unblemished. And it’s been years since he learned to control his powers, but there are other memories of fire that are harder to forget – ones that are older and even further out of his control, and that seem all the more terrible for it, with a life as new and innocent as the one at his fingertips.

He stays until sleep reclaims him, his back against the crib, too tired to make his way back across the corridor. And there will be a time where he’ll be called upon to stay, to offer comfort rather than seek it, but for now he’ll draw his assurances from those little breaths, and his comfort from the whole of her, still untouched by the world.

—

When he wakes next it’s to find a blanket draped across him, and Koala tucked against his side, fast asleep. The crib is digging between his shoulder blades, and he has no idea what time it is or how long he’s been asleep, although the kink in his back suggests a few hours, at the very least.

Koala doesn’t stir, and there’s no sound from behind him that indicates their daughter is awake, either. And so he stays where he is, head leaned back against the crib and Koala’s nose pressed into his shoulder, sleep far beyond his grasp, but it doesn’t matter. Because it’s a kinder awakening than his last one, and as the early morning hours begin to crawl across the room, manifesting in the familiar sounds of recruits starting their morning training, and tired feet shuffling towards the mess, accompanied by muted voices through the walls, Sabo looks for his fears–

–and finds nothing but the pale shadows of cold ashes; no fire in sight.

—

It’s the quiet moments he likes best, stolen between duties, the gentle weight of her on his chest and her back warm under his palm, rising and falling with her breaths.

He’s dozing when there’s a touch to his brow, and he blinks to find a familiar pair of blue eyes looking down at him.

“How’s that report going?” Koala asks, amusement brimming, but her voice low so as not to wake the baby.

His grin is a tired thing, and when he feels the touch of her lips to his brow he lets his eyes slip shut again. “She was fussing. I had to prioritise.”

The laugh that ghosts across his brow is soft. “Some Chief of Staff you are,” she muses, but he feels the worn couch dipping with her weight as she takes a seat beside him where he’s stretched himself out.

Then, feeling her tug the crumpled documents out from where he’d fallen asleep on them, “What are you doing?”

“I’ll finish these for you,” Koala says, and Sabo feels the gentle touch against his hand where he’s rested it across their daughter’s back. And he hears the note of fondness in her voice when she adds, “I don’t mind.”

He’s caught her wrist before she can move away. “The paperwork can wait one hour,” he says, the invitation clear but unspoken, as most things between them.

She twists her hand in his, intertwining their fingers; the gesture her answer even as she says, “You’re taking up the entire couch.”

He shifts, the action a wordless response, but one that’s mindful not to wake the sleeping baby on his chest. And it takes a moment, but then Koala’s sigh falls, and he hears the rustling of paper as she puts the unfinished report away.

Then he feels her weight settling against his, and the tuck of her head against his shoulder as he slips his free arm around her back, rearranging themselves around the little shape with an ease that the last few months have taught them.

“One hour,” Koala murmurs, but the warning is softened by the fact that she’s fast on her way to sleep. “Dragon-san called for a staff meeting at four, and the paperwork needs to be done by then. One hour will give you plenty of time to finish it.”

Fingers touching against the tips of her hair, her response is the tender press of her lips against the juncture of his neck, before he feels her hand curl around the one he still has wrapped around their daughter’s back. And his hum of agreement is swallowed by the yawn that drags loose of his chest, but, “One hour,” Sabo agrees.

—

They wake five minutes to four, the documents gone – the paperwork completed and filed, but the culprit nowhere to be found.

Although – Sabo has a feeling of who it might be, even as Dragon’s expression refuses to yield so much as a hint. And as the meeting commences he finds it suddenly hard to concentrate, their daughter asleep in her crib and their duties once again taking first priority, except–

Except there’s a knot of something sitting at the bottom of his ribcage; a tight coil of gratitude and regret and a whole number of other emotions, realising suddenly the privilege they’re offered every day, and in numerous little ways, to steal a single hour to be parents first, revolutionaries second.

All because another man relinquished that right once, to create the very organisation that now allows them the chance of being both.

—

Considering his life, retrograde amnesia included, it’s safe to say he hasn’t had the best role models – at least insofar as being a parent is concerned.

Barring one obvious exception, that is.

The Den Den Mushi stares back at him from the table, wide eyes furrowed and mouth trembling at the corners – that near-uncanny mimicry of expression betraying the stubborn attempts of the person on the other end of the line, to hide their tears.

“Happy birthday, Dadan,” Sabo says, and laughs when he has to pull small hands away from reaching for the snail for the umpteenth time. “Sol would say the same if she could talk. And if she wasn’t so busy trying to put the Den Den Mushi in her mouth.”

A racking laugh crackles over the line. “Got your hands full, do you?”

He’s tempted to point out just how literal that saying is, when he has to curve his palm around his daughter’s stomach to keep her from tumbling off his lap. “Something like that.”

“Well. Serves you right, with all the grief you boys have given me over the years,” she says, and Sabo smiles, and keeps from pointing out that it sounds far too fond to be properly irritated, suspecting already that she’s given up pretending, even before Dadan asks, a quaver of hope accompanying the question – “So you gonna bring her for a visit one of these days?”

Sabo pauses. Not even a full year old, they’ve yet to take her off the island, even when their positions have demanded their attentions elsewhere. And he thinks of the turbulent seas, and the long distance – all the dangers spanning the waters between their two islands, and everything that could happen on such a voyage.

But then he thinks of the woman who’d taught him, however rough and unconventional her methods, what it meant to have a mother, even when he’d thought he’d known the meaning of that word. The woman who’d grieved him, and who’d for so long considered him lost.

And so, “Yeah,” he says, curling his fingers around the small, chubby ones still stubbornly reaching for the snail. And when his daughter looks up, blue eyes wide in a face he knows as well as his own, Sabo tries to imagine what he’d do if he never saw her again – if he thought her lost for twelve years, and when he found her, had to live with the fact that she’d made a life for herself, miles and seas away.

Having tightened his grip around her stomach, he pretends he doesn’t hear the tears in Dadan’s laughter when Sol gives a happy shriek, before making another grab for the receiver. And when he speaks next his voice is the one that breaks, but he doesn’t care, knowing she’ll hear the truth in the words when he offers it–

“Count on it.”

—

It’s not always easy, given their pasts and the world they live in, to imagine what their daughter’s life will be like.

“Sometimes I’m worried,” Koala murmurs, voice quiet so as not to wake the baby, tucked between them on the mattress, fast asleep after hours of restless fussing. “That we made the right choice bringing her into this world.”

Sabo meets her eyes from across the top of Sol’s stomach, rising and falling with her small breaths. But he doesn’t tell her not to worry, knowing how many times he’s thought the same, ever since the day he’d placed his palm to the curve of her stomach and felt that first flutter of movement.

He thinks of how vastly different their experiences have been – the mother she remembers so fondly, and the parents he’d rather forget. The life of privilege he’d had for so many years, and the hell she’d suffered. All her mother’s love hadn’t saved her from that, just like his parents’ indifference hadn’t cushioned the hard truth of the life he’d been born into.

“We can’t control what happens when she goes out on her own,” Sabo says, and finds even as he speaks the words a keen reluctance – an almost visceral reaction, watching her sleep. Because he’s seen all the dark corners of the seas, and what hides in them – and what’s worse, he’s seen the things that don’t make a point of hiding; the things that exist in broad daylight, and are all the more terrible for it.

He watches their daughter, still such an infinitely small thing, copper-gold hair curling in earnest now and her blue eyes shut beneath heavy lids. And it’s hard to imagine what she’ll be like, and what kind of mark she’ll leave on the world. That she will in some way or another he’s never doubted – it’s a curious certainty that sits, somewhere beneath his heart.

“But we can give her a good life,” he says then, and finds his smile comes without effort, despite that lingering curl of worry that he suspects will always be there. “I’m not worried about that.”

When he looks up it’s to find that Koala has fallen asleep, her breaths heavy from a long night without rest, and her hand resting across the baby’s stomach. And touching his fingers to hers, Sabo finds it’s been months since he last thought of what his own were capable of, and what it would mean for their daughter. Now it’s second nature, the care that comes without thinking, prompted by a knowledge that’s burrowed so deep within him he can’t separate himself from it – the one that says you’re a father, a steady reminder offered with every little heartbeat under Koala’s palm.

But it’s not just the two of them, and he thinks of the nursery, fashioned from an old storage closet, and the shifts they’d all taken those first few weeks when she’d refused to sleep through the night. Dragon’s endless patience through numerous mission briefings interrupted by screaming and babbling in equal measure, and Hack’s gentle hands. And Luffy, who calls her beetle and looks at her like she’s the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen.

“Even if the world isn’t good, she’ll never doubt it was a good thing that she was born,” Sabo says, voice low so as not to wake either of them. And when his smile curves now it’s a sombre thing, except the feeling kindling in his chest is anything but as he adds quietly, and for someone he always hopes is listening–

“Eh, Ace?”

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