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sashi-ya · 3 years

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{+18} - Law x Fem Best Friend ♥ CH.2

♥ Daily living with the Heart pirates crew AU ♥ Spoilers after Dressrosa Arc. Law´s backstory. ♥ Female reader. Little physical description. Everybody is 18+, canon ages. ♥ TW: Nightmares related to PTSD. Little NSFW. no further warnings. If you think I should include some feel free to tell me ♥Thank you for the likes and follows, I appreciate it them so so much! If you wanna know when I’ll be updating the next chapters, you can follow me on Twitter @LawIsMyWaifu, come interact I love to have mutuals that love Law and One Piece as much as I do ♥

Word count: 4.1K

» List of parts: {CH1} {CH2} {CH3} {CH4} {CH5} «

Chapter 2.

The sound of his low, raspy voice resonated all over my head, making my body react instantly. I gasped as I felt a strike of pleasure travelling down my stomach to in between my legs. Closing my eyes, unable to move, I didn’t want to move, I wanted him to keep whispering, to kiss my neck… “Hahahaha, I’m sorry, I’m just fooling around, your face, you look astonished Y/N-ya”, he said while laying back on the bed, laughing. I chuckled as I stood up brushing my clothes as if I was trying to fix them. “Stop it, I’m not into that you ass. Goodnight”, I said trying to dissimulate how agitated and embarrassed I was.

Almost running, I left the room, directly to mine, holding on my hand my underwear. I jumped to my bed resting violently on my back. “WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?” ... a little time passed until I passed out.

Hard knocks on my door woke me up. “Vice-Captain!! wake up! breakfast is ready!!!” Clione shouted from the corridor. “God damn how many times I have to tell this whole crew I fucking hate being awakened with shouting?” I mumbled annoyed, covering my face with the sheets.

I was brushing my hair when I remembered my “memory box” for some reason. Opened my drawer and found the little velvet red box that holds my “treasures”. Inside, there is a photo of my parents with me when I was 7, happy, eating some ice cream with them. It was taken during one of “the white parades”, on Flevance, before everything turned into hell. A little blue bow that my little sister used to wear, some photos of Law, Bepo, Shachi, Penguin and me when we were the only members of our crew. And, a necklace Law made with some seashells as a gift for my 15th birthday, were also inside.

I got watery eyes while looking at it, “I must be getting old”, I thought, “I got emotional over the memories” ... laughed and put everything back to its place.

“Morning..” I said, greeting the whole crew that was already devouring their breakfast. I noticed Law wasn’t there, so I had to ask. Uni told me he was in the control room preparing for the arrival at the next island. I took a few pancakes and some tea and headed to the control room to ask my captain if he needed help.

“Good morning, doc”, I saluted him. Law that was seated facing the controls, turned the chair to look at me nodding. He has more dark circles as always, so I asked him, “Oi, did you sleep last night? are you feeling sick again?”. “I’m ok, I didn’t get much sleep last night. I got caught up with the book I was reading”, he answered with his usual unfriendly tone. “Yeah, right” I answered back, rolling my eyes, and proceeded “Let me know if you need something before we get to the island”. Left the control room and went back to my room.

I knew him well to know he hadn't slept because something was worrying him, and not because he was reading the old comic book of “Sora, the warrior of the sea against the evil Germa 66”. But hey, Law never shows any emotion besides annoyance if he is not sick.

A few hours later, the submarine got to the shore of some winter island, and we all got ready to accomplish our assigned tasks. “Ok everyone, we will meet here at 7 pm, is that clear?” told my crew members, everybody agreed and headed to the island.

The temperature was pretty low, and it was snowing. Law was wearing the long black coat with yellow dots and our Jolly Roger that he used to wear at Punk Hazard, his hat and of course the Kikoku over his shoulder. I love when he wears warm clothing, he looks so cozy, hiding his mouth behind the collar. (He does it so his lips don’t get chapped with the cold breeze, haha). I don't like to wear the boiler-suit when we get to explore islands, so I decided to wear a long yellow coat with a hood, also with our crew's Jolly Roger emblazoned on the left side of the chest.

We asked a few civilians where to find a pharmacy and headed to the destination following their instructions. Law didn’t say much during the walking, as he normally does.

The island seemed a little bit deserted, yet it had picturesque streets, full of colour that stand out from the snow. It has cobbled lanes, some canals of crystallized water, there were wooden houses and shops with little lights that garnished their architecture giving the place a romantic aura. The scenery behind the city center included big snowed mountains and a big castle over one of the highest peaks.

I saw a boutique with some cute sweaters on display that caught my eyes and I wanted to try them on. “Law, would you mind if I enter here? I want to buy a new sweater.”, I said. Law looked at me and made a gesture with his hand as he was saying to go ahead.

While searching for the sweater I like on one of the clothing racks I saw through the shop window that a few kids approached the captain. The seller asked me if I needed some help, so I stopped looking at him and l directed my gaze to the girl in the shop. So, I forget about him.

After buying two cute pullovers, we continued walking through the picturesque streets.

When we finally arrived at the pharmacy shop, it seemed like it was closed, but the door was open, so we entered. I rang the bell over the counter and waited for someone to show up. Law walked in front of me and had his hand over his sword. I knew he was alert and trying to protect me even if he didn’t say a word. I didn’t think we could be in danger, yet he never fully relaxes when we are outside. After all, he is one of the most wanted pirates of our generation, so it's understandable he trusts no stranger.

After a minute or so, an old lady approached the counter from the inside of the store. She seemed a little weak and perhaps a little sick. She coughed, covering her mouth with a handkerchief, and then greeted us. “Good afternoon, how can I help you?”, she asked. Law handed her a list of supplies we needed, and we waited. “Oi, don’t you think she looks bad? I mean, she is probably sick, should I ask if she is ok?”, I told Law who gave me a disapproving sight. I rolled my eyes, and said, “Fiiiine…”, “You know that I hate you rolling your eyes at me, you did it yesterday and now too. Stop it.” I looked at him with an “excuse me?” face and while I was about to spit an insult to him the granny appeared. “I’m sorry, I put on the bag some of the supplies, but I don’t have everything you need. We are short on medicines'', she informed us and started coughing harder. “Excuse me, Mrs. Are you alright? are you sick?”, I asked as she seemed to lose composure from all the nagging coughing. Law, that hated when I don’t give a fuck about what he had just said, gave me the look of death. “Oh young lady, we are pretty much sick, a strange illness is hitting the island. Even the only doctor in town fell ill. The orphanage, though, is getting the worst part. All of the kids are bedridden”, as she said, the memories of Flevance and the amber lead disease hit me.

Law's expression changed to a more compassionate one and asked about the symptoms they were experiencing. He might be serious, he might not want to get involved in a lot of things, but he is a true doctor. And he can't let people die if he can help.

We decided to visit the orphanage in hopes of helping the sick people, so we asked the old lady to give us directions to it. She said it was pretty far from the city center and told us her husband would take us there with his cart.

"Thank you so much for offering your help, young doctors", said the old lady's husband that later told us his name was Gerald. The cart was pulled by two brown percheron horses that opened their way through the white landscape.

We had a small talk during the journey, until Gerald asked, "how long have you been together? Are you already married?". Despite the freezing cold weather, my cheeks turned to fire, and I could sense Law hiding his head even more into his coat and hat. Almost as if clarifying that we were no couple was a life or death situation I said, "WE ARE JUST BEST FRIENDS!". I realized I almost shouted and felt mortified. Gerald looked at us with a little smirk and kind eyes, excusing himself for the mistake.

A few minutes after we arrived at the orphanage. It took us almost 30 minutes to get there and the sun was starting to set on the horizon.

When we entered the place, the situation was worse than we thought. There were kids and adults lying on the ground, some of them shivering, others coughing while others were straight unconscious. A few nurses were working in order to maintain them, but the situation had clearly surpassed them.

Immediately Law and I started working. While I helped the nurses, Law used his ope ope no mi power to scan the bodies of the sick people.

We got to the conclusion that what they were suffering was a type of bacteria that caused the respiratory symptoms and the fever.

During our duty, there were times when our eyes interlocked, and we smiled at each other. I wouldn't say we like people suffering, but, we certainly enjoyed working to save lives together.

A few hours passed since we arrived there, the sun was already set, and outside it seemed as if a snowstorm was beginning. I've lost track of time until my portable Den Den Mushi started to ring. "Oi, y/n, where are you? Is Law with you? Are you alright? We've been waiting for you on the shore! It's 9 pm already and we were supposed to meet at 7!", shouted Shachi from the other side of the line. "Oh my God I'm sorry I forgot to tell you!... you see …" I explained to them what we've been doing and that we were probably not going to return to the submarine in a few more hours.

The kids and the other people began to get better and those who were helping there offered us some food that we accepted happily.

While we were having dinner, Gerald got back from outside, who's been in the forest collecting some firewood. He informed us that the weather was getting really bad so coming back to town would be pretty dangerous.

Law and I agreed that staying there for the night was the safer choice.

One of the nurses, Sister Alley, told us we could spend the night in the cabin next to the orphanage. "I'm really sorry guys, I wished we had a better place for you, we owe you so much. The cabin has a fireplace, Gerald would start a fire to keep you warm”, she said. We both smiled at her and thanked for it.

We walked some meters through the forest until we started to catch sight of a wooden cabin. Despite being a strong pirate, I’m the queen of the clumsy people, so I slipped off with what I assume was an ice patch on the already snowy ground. I was about to hit the ground when Law grabbed me by the waist and saved me from a few bruises. His face in front of mine, the feeling of being safe on his arms, I wished it has been eternal. But the romantic moment was destroyed by Law mocking me. “It must be the devil fruit; how come you are so clumsy? Be careful”, he said, and I told him to shut up, this time I wasn’t embarrassed, but I was almost angry at him.

“Here we are, let me help you with the fire”, Gerald said, opening the wood door that creaked as it moved. The inside felt cozy, there were a few cushions and pillows on the ground next to the fireplace. There were no separate rooms, so in the middle of the lounge there was some kind of mattress with a few blankets over it. Our “host” asked for forgiveness about the lack of separate beds, but Law intercepted him and said, “It’s ok sir, we are grateful to have a warm place to stay until tomorrow. If you need help with any patient during the night, just please tell us”. It might be ok for you, damn Law. Was I supposed to sleep with him? - I mean, I wanted to, but, he was still my best friend, and those thoughts should have been erased.

Gerald wished us a good night and returned to the main building.

I hung my coat and as I love to explore, I started to do so around the little wooden house. The kitchen seemed really equipped, so I grabbed a kettle and some cups. Gerald was kind enough to give us some tea bags, so I thought making some tea was a great idea.

Law was next to the fireplace, wearing only a sweater and his jeans. Apparently he has already hung up his coat and his white spotted hat. I saw him once more with a lost sight that seemed to contemplate the firewood.

Looking at him with my face resting on my arm that was over the breakfast nook, I got lost worshiping his profile. I’ve always adored his upturned nose, his spiky black hair, his facial hair, the contrast between his grey eyes and the tanned skin. How come he has always been so handsome, but I’ve never seemed to fully realize?.

The whistle of the kettle intensified as the water started boiling, but I was so into admiring my best friend's beauty that I didn’t notice. Law turned to me and woke me up from my reverie shouting “Oi, Y/N, the kettle!”. My stupid smile quickly erased from my face, and my whole skin turned red. “Sorry”, I said straight away and turned off the burner.

I served two cups, noticing that the tea has an amazing scent. I believe it was hibiscus mixed with some other spices, perhaps some cardamom and maybe a little hint of clover. The smell of the tea mixed with the slightly one from the logs burning, was wonderful.

I walked to where my captain was, “Here, I think you may like it”, I said and handed him a cup. Our fingers brushed softly when grabbed the tea, he looked at me and said “Thanks”. I sat not so near him over one of the cushions and sipped a little bit of my tea. Law looked at me and stood up from his place. I could sense how awkward he felt when he made a little pause, and then walked away.

Why is he leaving? Did I make him feel uncomfortable?, I asked myself trying to hide little stings of pain on my chest that traveled to my throat. Somehow I felt like crying, and when my eyes started to get slightly watery, Law approached me placing his hand over my right shoulder.

I turned my face to him, looking up with a slightly pouty face. I was about to cry, and I didn’t even know why when I noticed a blue little box on his hand.

He sat next to me and said, "Do you remember when we were 15?, that day when I gave you that necklace I made myself for your birthday? I looked at him confused but I answered, "yes, of course, I got it on my memory box, I'm afraid to wear it outside the polar cause it might get lost and I wouldn't forgive myself if I lose it". He was now looking at the little box moving it around nervously and finally said "I got you a better one". He handed me the little box still not looking at me.

"A present?? OMG Law, thank you very much!" When did you buy it??" I almost shouted in excitement while opening the box. Inside there was a fine rose gold necklace that has a little anatomical heart figure as a pendant. I grabbed it and admired the beauty of the jewelry I had in my hands. The heart had a little red stone crimped on it, that shined with every movement.

"Law, this is too much! It must have cost you a lot of Berries, I don't deserve such a fine jewel!, thank you so much", I expressed with a big smile on my face.

"You do deserve more than this, you know. I'm glad you like it", he said, a little embarrassed. “When you were buying the sweaters, I asked some children there if they knew a jewelry store, turned out it was just around the corner”, he confessed.

“Thank you so much, it is just perfect! You know how I adore hearts; they remind me of you.. “Doctor Heart Stealer”” I almost shouted, realizing I have said too much…

I tried to put it on my neck, but I couldn’t clip it right, so I asked him for help. He stood up, kneel at my back and passed from behind the necklace around my neck.

Some branches hit the window violently as they were suffering the merciless wind of the snowstorm outside.

He struggled a little and finally fastened the collar and when he did, the electric power went off. The fireplace was the only source of light, the dance of the fire created figures with shadows and highlights all around the walls of the cabin. We remained silent, maybe a little scared or even surprised, but enjoying the sound of the weather and the creak of the fire.

He was still behind me, and after a few seconds he placed a soft kiss on my back that sent a shiver through my spine. Once again I was unable to speak, did he… did he just kiss my back?.. Before I could say or do something Law stood up and headed to one of the windows. “The storm seems to be even worse than earlier; don’t you think?”, he said, trying to device something through the window.

I couldn’t focus on anything else than the kiss he softly planted on my nape, minutes ago. He suddenly yawned and walked to the mattress that was in the center of the room, on the floor. He then took his jeans off and hopped inside the bed, naturally. I remained on my spot, contemplating his actions. “How could he be acting so normal?, I’m right here. He just gave me a necklace, kissed my skin and now he just goes to sleep?” I said to myself, still with a confused expression on my face.

“Oi, aren’t you coming to bed?”, he asked me, freely. “Yes… give me a second”, I said, and ran to the bathroom. The toilet was pretty tiny and basic, but enough for me to hide for a few minutes. “Come on, Y/N you slept with him two nights ago, it’s ok, he is like your brother, it’s ok…” I thought, trying to calm myself down.

I finally left my hiding place and headed to the mattress. Law was lying there, he took off his sweater, probably while I was in the bathroom, so he was only using a white tight undershirt, that molded his torso anatomy. Some blankets were covering the under part of his body from his hips. He had his forearm over his eyes, covering them with his neck stretched back.

I bite my lip, as a reaction for such a tempting scene. I was enjoying it, watching him breathe peacefully. I started feeling hot, so I took off the sweater but not my jeans and approached the “bed”.

I thought Law was already asleep, so I got in bed trying not to wake him up. I muffled myself up with the sheets. I remained still, hearing the snowstorm, fixing my eyes on the wooden ceiling, as the memories of my childhood flooded my mind. It must be the snowstorm, the wind, the cold that triggered these memories. eventually I fell asleep.

“No, stop it, my family, leave us alone!!!!”, I screamed. “Y/n-ya! Y/n-ya!, wake up!” said Law, pulling me out from the terrific oneiric world I was submerged in. I got lost into his eyes, and remained there with tears streaming from my eyes, rolling into my cheeks. Law was holding me close to his body around his arms. “Are you having those nightmares, again? why didn’t you tell me?”, he asked, worried. “This is the first time in ages, I think it must be the storm, perhaps the orphanage, the children…”, I expressed amid tears. My best friend brushed his tattooed fingers through my hair, moving it out of my face, and then wiped the tears from my cheeks.

“Oi, do you remember what happened when I gave you the first necklace?” he asked, trying to distract me. A feeling of warmth invaded my insides, suddenly I felt happy. “I do...” I said, laughing timidly, and continued, “It was my first kiss”. He smiled back at me, and said, “Mine too”.

For a second we both closed our eyes. I was grabbing the pendant with my left hand cherishing it and the memories of our younger days when we kissed for the first time. We haven't had much time to think about love while striving to survive so we forgot about it, letting the days, months and years pass, leaving the experience as a mere child’s play.

Suddenly we started laughing, Law didn't let go of me, and our faces were pretty close. “Everything's better when you laugh, I hate it when you cry, it makes me so sad…” he said, rubbing his thumb over my right cheek. I stopped laughing, as he got even closer. Almost as if the point of our noses were about to touch. I could feel the warmth of his breath over my lips, and he did too. My heart started racing, and the only thing I could hear was the blood pumping on my ears. I wasn’t moving, I wanted him to kiss me, I wanted to kiss him… I just didn’t care that he was my best friend, I just needed him to kiss me. What is taking him so long? Why am I not moving if I wanted this more than anything?. After a good minute, that felt eternal, he exclaimed “Fuck it”, and plant the sweetest kiss over my lips. A feeling of happiness filled my insides, I’ve never been so joyful in ages, it felt the same way as the first time. I was like a teenage girl experimenting love for the first time. Both smiled still with our lips pressed. I doubted for a second if succumbing to my deepest desires was the right thing to do until he decided to turn the cute kiss into a more passionate one. From then on, the desire I’d been accumulating inside of me took control of my body…

We kept on kissing; Law slid a hand under my shirt timidly caressing the skin of my tummy. The kisses migrated from my mouth to my neck, mixed with little bites that surely would turn into hickies tomorrow.

“Law…” I gasped when his hands reached my breasts. “What?” he replied, whispering next to my ear and pinching one of my nipples in between two fingers…

Chapter 3

Ch1: Link

#Trafalgardwaterlaw #one piece law #law x reader #trafalgar d law x reader #Trafalgar law x reader #one piece x reader

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wiypt-writes · 3 years

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Stark Spangled Banner

Ch54: The Time Heist

Intro: The team split and head to their various places and points in time to retrieve the stones. But of course, it doesn’t all go to plan and one of them pays the ultimate sacrifice…

Warnings: “Language!”, Character death- we all know what’s coming with this one, angst.

Pairing: Steve Rogers x OFC Katie Stark

Disclaimer: This is a pure work of fiction and classified as 18+. Please respect this and do not read if you are underage. I do not own any characters in this series bar Katie Stark and the other OCs. By reading beyond this point you understand and accept the terms of this disclaimer.

A/N: Will the real @angrybirdcr please stand up...and take credit for those edits!

Chapter 53

Stark Spangled Banner Masterlist // Main Masterlist

“You’re wearing that?” Tony looked Thor up and down, taking in the scruffy grey-zip up hoody and red sweater he wore.

“Yes, what’s wrong with it?” Thor glanced down at himself.

“You look like Santa Clause with a crystal meth addiction.” Tony replied. Thor frowned, his eyes narrowing as Rocket began to laugh.

As they continued to bicker about Thor’s appearance, Steve looked up to see Katie emerging from the locker room, dressed in the first cat-suit he could remember seeing her in. His pants instantly felt a little tighter round the crotch as it clung in all the right places, especially now her figure was slightly different to what it had been eleven years ago. Mind you, she still looked extremely passable as a 2012 version of herself and Steve found himself wondering how on Earth he had managed to actually fight any aliens back then when she looked as hot as she did.

She caught his gaze, flashed him a smile which he returned and she took one of the GPS bands off Tony as he handed them out to the assembled team. One by one, as the bands were activated, the red and white Quantum Tunnel suits formed around each of the Avengers. Steve picked up his shield, and nodded around to his team.

“Let’s go.” Together they strode through the hangar, Steve leading them towards the large, glass platform with the early morning sun cascading through the large glass hangar doors from where it was just starting to peak over the trees. As they walked, Katie looked over her shoulder at Natasha, winking and the red head grinned back at her, biting her lip excitedly.

As everyone took their place around the glass platform, Banner behind the control panel, Steve looked around and cleared his throat.

“Five years ago, we lost. All of us. We lost friends, we lost family, we lost a part of ourselves. Today, we have a chance to take it all back. You know your teams, you know your missions. Get the stones, get them back. One round trip each. No mistakes. No do-overs.” He took a breath and Katie smiled to herself as he continued “Most of us are going somewhere we know. But it doesn’t mean we should know what to expect. Be careful. Look out for each other.” Another breath. “This is the fight of our lives. And we’re gonna win.”

At that point Tony gave Steve a look, his eyebrow raising slightly, a soft smile playing on his face. Steve met his face, with a determined expression of his own. “Whatever it takes.” He nodded to his Brother-in-Law before he looked around at the team. “Good luck.”

“He’s pretty good at that.” Rocket conceded, his arms folded.

“Right?” Scott jerked his thumb towards Steve and Katie smiled.

“All right. You heard the man. Stroke those keys, jolly green.” Tony called to Banner.

“Trackers engaged.” Banner nodded before joining them on the platform.

Katie took up her position between Natasha and Steve, making sure her GPS was set to the right time and date.

“You okay?” Steve asked softly, turning to look at her.

“As okay as I can be given I’m about to time travel back to an alien invasion.” She muttered back and Steve chuckled as she turned to her left to look at Natasha. “When we get back you and me are cracking open that bottle of Kauffman vintage that I know you hid from Thor in your room.”

Natasha gave a grin. “Deal. Hey Rogers!” Steve turned to look at her, his brow arched.

“See you in a minute!” Nat wriggled her shoulders and eyebrows excitement and he huffed out a laugh at her enthusiasm. This was the most animated he had seen her about anything in the past five years.

The machine began to whir slightly as it lit up, glowing like spotlights, and the mechanism above their heads shifted. Their helmets all engaged and a second later they were sucked from the platform and hurtling through the Quantum Tunnel, back through time.

It felt like her entire body was being squeezed through a very small space, and just as it was starting to become really uncomfortable, the pressure released and Katie’s feet landed on the ground in the middle of a side street in New York, a block or so away from the tower. She stumbled a little, Steve’s strong hand catching her arm to steady her and she blinked, shaking off the dizzy feeling. As she turned to look for the rest of her group, the sounds of cries, screams, gunfire filled her ears as the red and white suit vanished from around her.

“All right, we all have our assignments.” Steve looked at everyone. “Two Stones uptown, one Stone down. Stay low. Keep an eye on the clock.”

At that point they all whirled round as 2012 Hulk passed, smashing everything in his way. Bruce put his hand on his face, embarrassed, as Steve turned to look at him.

“Maybe smash a few things along the way.” He suggested.

“I think it’s gratuitous, but whatever.” Bruce muttered, tearing his shirt off. He walked over to a car and lightly punched it, making a small dent, all the while making growling noise which Katie doubted would scare a kitten. Then he picked up a motorbike and threw it at a wall, wincing as it smashed before he continued his journey down town.

The rest of them parted to their own assignments, Tony and Lang taking off, Katie and Steve making their way to the entrance of Stark Tower.

“First rule of not being seen?” Katie stopped at the door and looked at her husband.

“Don’t hide by any chance?” He raised an eyebrow.

“You got it.” “Yeah, well I kinda figured it might be the same as the whole going on the run mantra.”

“Got to hustle, guys. Things look like they’re just about wrapped up here.” Tony’s voice sounded in their ears.

“Got it. We’re approaching the elevator now.” Steve replied, following Katie as she strode confidently across the Tower Lobby.

She was right, no one paid them the least bit of attention as they stepped into the lift, everyone was too busy running around in a blind panic. Katie smirked to herself as the door shut. Pressing her palm to the pad at the side, she selected the button for the floor which housed Tony’s office, where they were going to hide until it was their time to make a move.

“Uh, Mr. Rogers. I almost forgot that that suit did nothing for your ass.”

Katie sorted and Steve rolled his eyes.

“No one asked you to look, Tony.” He snapped, exasperatedly.

“It’s ridiculous.”

“I think you look great, Cap. As far as I’m concerned, that’s America’s ass.” Scott chipped, and that was when Katie gave in and began to laugh as the elevator stopped.

“I like your ass.” She grinned up at him and it was his turn to laugh as he followed her out.

“It’s all yours, Baby.”

***** Up on the Party Floor, Tony was smirking to himself at having managed to successfully wind Steve up again on a job. Well, would it really be an Avengers Mission if he didn’t?

He and Lang ducked out of the way as the elevators opened and the SHIELD-slash-HYDRA team lead by Rumlow and Sitwell entered the floor.

“Who are these guys?” Lang asked.

“They are SHIELD, well, actually Hydra. But, we didn’t know that yet.” Tony explained

“Seriously, you didn’t? I mean…they look like bad guys.” Lang continued.

“You’re small, but you’re talking loud.” Tony said, an edge to his voice. He was getting kind of tired of people pointing out the various flaws in judgement or errors to their methods when they went back over past missions.

“On my way down to coordinate search and rescue.” 2012 Rogers spoke. Tony had to smirk. Steve always denied he had changed that much, but he really was as far a cry from that pompous, stick-up-your-ass jerk as he could get.

Tony watched Loki transform into Steve for a second in imitation and the Billionaire had to snort. As far as imitations go it was pretty flawless. Then, as Loki was gagged and lead way by Thor he spotted that his 2012 self was tapping at the security pad on a briefcase which contained the Tesseract.

“All right, you’re up, little buddy.” He spoke to Lang “That’s our stone.“

“Alright.” Lang nodded, speaking from Tony’s shoulder. “Flick me.”

There were so many things wrong with that instruction, but Tony didn’t have time to unpack them right there. Instead he did as he was told, flicking the ant sized Lang straight towards the box where he scrambled up Tony’s arm, to his beard and then down his top.

Tony remembered with amusement the next bit. This was when Hulk had tried to take the elevator. Grinning he watched as his 2012 self-informed Banner that the maximum occupancy had been reached, and 2012 Thor told him to take the stairs. In a fit of temper Hulk punched at the elevator door once it was shut, before grumbling to himself as he headed to the other side of the floor to get to the stairs. With a smirk, Tony backed up, threw himself out of the window, his suit reforming round him.

*****

Katie and Steve found their floor completely deserted. As such, they’d been stood, hovering by the elevator waiting for the signal which came over their radios not long after they had heard Lang tell Tony to ‘flick him’- yeah, Katie and Steve both thought there was a lot wrong with that instruction.

“All right, Cap, Kiddo. I got our sceptre in the elevator just passing the 90th floor.”

“On it.” Steve hit the call button.

“You remember what happened last time we were in an elevator full of HYDRA dickheads?” Katie looked up at Steve. He snorted, and was just about to answer back to assure her he didn’t intend on flinging them out of the side of this one from almost twenty storeys up, but he didn’t get chance. The elevator doors stopped and then opened. Katie and Steve both glanced at the STRIKE-slash-HYDRA agents, Sitwell and Rumlow both doing a double take as they saw them. Steve gestured for Katie to go in first, and she did, turning to the button pad. She randomly selected a floor below them before she moved to the middle, standing by Steve.

“Captain. I thought you were coordinating search and rescue?” Sitwell looked at Steve.

“Change of plan.” He stated simply as he turned to face the elevator doors as they closed.

“Hey, Cap. Nova.” Rumlow spoke, glancing over his shoulder at them both.

“Hey, Brock.” Katie smiled. It fell silent for a while, the situation feeling familiar to the two Avengers, as they noticed that the agents were sharing nervous glances. Steve looked around, before he spoke again.

“I just got a call from the Secretary. Agent Stark and I are gonna be running point on the scepter.”

“Sir?” Sitwell frowned, turning to face him. “I don’t understand.”

“We got word there may be an attempt to steal it.” Katie supplied, holding his gaze.

“Sorry, guys, but I can’t give you the sceptre.” Rumlow shook his head and Katie saw he was reaching for his gun.

“Yeah, I’m gonna have to call the Director.” Sitwell began.

“That’s okay. Trust me” Steve insisted as Katie reached out and wrapped her hand around Rumlow’s wrist, fully anticipating there was going to be a struggle, but thanks to Steve’s quick thinking, it never came.

He leaned forward, his mouth close to Sitwell’s ear. “Heil HYDRA.” He whispered, loud enough for the agents around them to hear. Sitwell looked up at him, Steve simply gave him a knowing nod and Rumlow glanced at Katie. She released his wrist smiling at him.

“You kept that quiet, Stark.” Rumlow looked at her.

“Isn’t that supposed to be the point?” She raised an eyebrow at him.

“Touche.”

The elevator stopped and Katie nodded to Steve.

“If you’ll excuse us.” He gestured to the case which held the sceptre. With a slight hesitation, Rumlow handed it to him and Sitwell moved to allow them to step out. They began walking away from the door, exchanging a smug glance as they went, taking care not to hurry or appear suspicious. Then, as soon as they were out of view, Katie turned to Steve grinning.

“Heil HYDRA? You clever bastard!”

“I have my moments.” Steve shrugged. “What floor are we on.”

“Errr, twentieth.” She said as she spotted the floor number on the wall. “Oooh, if we head down the stairs to the fourteenth, that’s where the ceiling of the atrium starts. There’s glass walkways and exposed stairs down to the lobby so we should be able to get a decent view of where Tony’s at.”

She led Steve over to a heavy door which housed the maintenance staircase and they both winced as they could hear Hulk yelling.

“SO MANY STAIRS!” His words echoed and Katie glanced down to see he was a few floors below them. Nodding to Steve, they began their descent.

***** In the Lobby, Tony was watching with amusement, the slight difference of opinion his 2012 self and 2012 Thor were having with Alexander Pierce.

“Loki will be answering to Odin himself.” Thor shook his head when he was instructed to turn his brother over.

“He’s gonna answer to us. Odin can have what’s left.” Pierce shook his head. “And I’m gonna need that case, that’s been SHIELD property for over seventy years.”

“All right, move it, Stuart Little.” Tony said from his place in the lobby, he was dressed in a SHIELD Tactical Kit, one he had stolen of some guy he’d had to knock out. “Things are getting dicey up here. Let’s go.”

“You promise me you won’t die?” Lang shot back.

“You’re only giving me a mild cardiac dysrhythmia.”

“That doesn’t sound mild”.

“Do it, Lang!”

“Get your hands off!” 2012 Tony began to yell yelling.

“Window’s closing. Pull my pin!” Tony insisted.

“Here goes!” Seconds later 2012 Tony dropped the case, clutching at his chest.

“Stark? Stark!” Thor bellowed as Tony watched himself fall to the floor.

“Look, he’s convulsing.” Pierce shook his head. “Give him air! Medic!”

“MEDIC!” Tony called, some amusement as he watched his past self, writhing on the floor “This guy needs some help, some help please!”

In the rush and melee that followed, the case suddenly slid across the floor to Tony who grabbed it hastily with a smile.

“Good job.” He spoke into his comms. “Meet me in the alley. I’m gonna grab a quick slice.”

Only he never made it, as right at that point, Hulk mashed through the door from the staircase into the lobby, sending Tony flying to the ground, the case dropping from his hands.

“NO MORE STAIRS!!!!” Everyone began to run from Hulk’s rampage and then all hell broke loose.

Tony sat up, looking round, giving a groan as he realised that the Tesseract, and Loki were gone.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen, was it?” Scott asked, as he stood on Tony’s chest. Tony sighed and looked around as the 2012 Thor and Tony began frantically talking into their coms.

“Oh we blew it.”

****

“Tony, what’s going on?” Steve demanded as he followed Katie round the corner towards the walkway. “Tell me you found that cube.”

At that point he bumped straight into his wife who was stood stock still in front of him staring right at his 2012 counterpart.

“Oh, you gotta be shitting me.” Steve groaned, his jaw ticking.

“Cap,” a familiar voice from behind 2012 Steve spoke and Katie’s mouth dropped open as her 2012 self sprinted onto the walkway, skidding to a halt behind the Steve from her time. “What the fuck?”

2012 Steve’s eyes flitted around at the other four people, before he drew himself up tall.

“This is clearly some kind of spell.” 2012 Steve spoke, and 2012 Katie nodded in agreement as he continued this time talking into his coms. “We have eyes on Loki. 14th floor.”

“I’m not Loki.” Steve put the case containing the sceptre down taking a step forward so he was level with his Katie. “And I don’t wanna hurt you.”

In a flash, 2012 Steve engaged. Steve raised his shield, the clang loud as the Vibranium discs clashed against one another. Katie ducked past the duelling captains to stand in front of her younger self.

“How did you escape?” 2012 Katie looked at her, taking up a fighting stance.

“I’m not Loki.” Katie shook her head. “And neither is Steve. My Steve, I mean, the other…whatever.” She sighed. “It’s a really, really long story. And also a crazy one so…”

“You’ve seen what’s going on out there?” The 2012 her scoffed. “I doubt there’s anything that could surprise me anymore.”

“Fine, you asked…” Katie groaned. “Look, I’m you, from 2023.” She shrugged as she looked around. “Tony invented a time machine so we could come back and get something we need.” 2012 Katie raised her eyebrow before she laughed. “Whatever,” and with that she launched forward.

Through the corner of his eye, Steve saw his wife starting to engage with her 2012 self, and his moment of distraction cost him. His younger self kneed him in the chest, knocking him down harshly.

“I can do this all day.” 2012 Steve looked down at him, smirking and Steve inwardly groaned.

“Yeah, I know.” He sighed, shaking his head as he waved him away whilst he stood up again. Had he really been that lame? “I know”

With another flick of his arm, Steve threw his shield as the other him did the same, and with a loud clang the Virbanium discs ricocheted off one another flying over the side of the walkway. Without their shields the men began to fight, furiously. Blows were traded and kicks landed, and one of them, Steve had no idea who, managed to send the case containing the sceptre through the glass side of the walkway, causing it to shatter.

Katie heard the smashing behind her but she didn’t look round, she was too busy going toe to toe with her past self. She was just about getting the upper hand too as eleven years on she knew a lot more moves thanks to Natasha and Steve’s training. As her younger self leaned in with a pretty savage right hook Katie stopped it with both hands and then used her 2012 self’s arm as leverage to push up from the floor. Swinging both legs round in a scissor action she managed to lock her knees round 2012’s neck using the momentum and strength in her legs to bring her past self crashing over backwards to the ground, hard. Before she could get up Katie flicked a widow bite at her and winced as she watched her younger self convulsing on the floor.

She didn’t have much time to contemplate it however, as the sound of a loud yell made her look up just in time to see both Steve’s falling off the walk way, smashing through several glass landings and down a few of the exposed flights of stairs until they eventually came to a halt a few floors down.

Wincing, Steve managed to push himself up, taking a deep breath he swayed slightly and glanced over to where 2012 Steve was brandishing his compass at him, his mouth open and brow furrowed. Of course, he won’t have even gotten the compass back yet, and he wouldn’t do until the following year when he went through his stuff for the Smithsonian exhibit.

“Where did you get this?” 2012 demanded, his voice low. “And why does it have a picture of me and Miss Stark in it?”

Steve didn’t answer instead he ducked trying to retrieve the sceptre, and he might have been successful if he was up against a normal opponent, but 2012 Steve was quick and he placed his foot on the sceptre, throwing Steve off balance slightly. In a flash he was behind him, putting the older Soldier into a choke hold. Steve threw all his power backwards, taking the pair of them to the ground where they began to writhe along the floor, both trying to get the upper hand as Steve tried to manoeuvre them to the sceptre. Unfortunately for Steve, 2012 was just as clever and, as he reached out with his right hand his past self jerked him backwards, his legs round his waist, arms tight round his throat.

Steve knew he had to distract him, so in desperation he spluttered out something he knew would have made his 2012 self stop dead in his tracks. “Bucky…is…alive…” Almost immediately he felt the grip around his neck release, and he fell forward coughing.

“What?” 2012 Steve asked, but he never got his answer as Steve sucker punched him right in the face with his right hand, before he grabbed the sceptre, pointing the tip of it at his chest. 2012 Steve froze in mid-air before collapsing forwards, face down on the ground.

Steve let his head fall back in relief. Jesus that had been brutal. His face, ribs, neck, back all hurt like hell. At that point he heard loud footsteps and jerked his head up to see his Katie vaulting over the side of one of the staircases and landing a few feet away from him, his shield on her arm.

“You okay?” She asked, offering him her hand. She pulled him to his feet and gently cupped his face with her hands, her thumb stroking the bruise that was forming on his left cheek.

“Yeah, you?”

“Had to knock myself out with a widow bite” She grinned, before looking down at the Unconscious Steve and frowning. “What did you use?”

He held up the sceptre, before he reached down and grabbed his compass. Sticking it back in his pocket he took another deep breath before he noticed Katie was looking down at him, or rather his 2012 self.

“Lang’s right,” she mused, “that is America’s ass.”

Steve rolled his eyes, taking his shield from her as a smile tugged at his lips, “Let’s get out of here.”

****

The news they Tony and Scott had lost the Tesseract was devastating, and, as Katie watched her soldier who was glancing down at his feet, she could see he was trying to think. As he raised his head to look at her she could see the utter disappointment on his face and she swallowed, feeling it too.

They’d come so far, and looked to be set to fall at the final hurdle.

“Are there any other options with the Tesseract?” Steve’s voice was pleading

“No, no, no. There’s no other options. There’s no do-overs.” Scott said loudly “We’re not going anywhere else. We have one particle left. Each. That’s it, alright? We use that– Bye, bye. You’re not going home.”

“Yeah, well if we don’t try, then no one else is going home, either.” Steve’s voice rose a little.

“Wait,” Katie looked up an idea suddenly popping into her head, “we need more Pym Particles, right?” “Yeah, that’s what I said.” Scott began but Steve silenced him, recognising the look on his wife’s face. She was running through an idea.

“Let’s just go back and get some.” She breathed, astounded the idea hadn’t come to any of them beforehand.

“What?” Scott frowned.

“There has to be some point in time and space that we can get more.” She shrugged. “Let’s just go, steal some, and try again for the Tesseract.” “I can go one better than that.” Tony scrambled out of the trashed car he’d been sat in. “There’s a way to retake the Tesseract and acquire new particles at the same time.” He looked at Steve “Little stroll down memory lane. Military installation, Garden State.”

Katie and Steve looked at one another, instantly understanding before they looked at Tony.

“When were they both there?” Steve asked.

“They were there at a–“ Tony paused. “I’ve a vaguely exact idea.”

“How vague?” Katie pressed.

“What are you talking about? Where are we going?” Scott frowned.

“I know for a fact they were there–“ Tony began again but was cut off.

“Who’s they? What are we doing?” Scott’s voice was gathering pitch as he got more and more frustrated.

“And I know how I know.” Tony looked at Katie and she took a deep breath.

Dad.” she said, swallowing and Tony nodded.

“Guys, what’s up? What is it?” Scott demanded to know.

“Well, it looks like we’re improvising.” Steve spoke, as the Stark siblings were still looking at one another.

“Right. What are we improvising?” Scott asked as Steve turned to him, handing him the sceptre.

“Scott, get this back to the compound”.

“What’s in New Jersey?” Scott tried again.

Katie and Steve began to program their watches to the date and location Tony was telling them.

“Are you sure?” Scott pressed again, before he stepped forward. “Cap. Captain. Steve, sorry, America. Rogers. Look, if you do this, and this doesn’t work, you’re not coming back.”

“Thanks for the pep talk, piss ant” Tony glared a Scott and Steve swallowed. Lang was right, if they were wrong, he’d never see his kids again. They’d never see their kids again. No, he couldn’t let Katie come, not knowing that. Their kids needed at least one of them…

“Katie.”

“Oh no!” She folded her arms. “You are not benching me.” Steve shook his head. “It’s too big a risk.” “So is going just the two of you! Your face is too well known, even more so back then and there, at the first SHIELD base?” She sighed “Don’t forget, half the people in that place are already HYDRA. If you’re recognized…” she trailed off. “Soldier, this needs three heads. Just in case.”

“Do you trust me?” Tony spoke, looking at his brother-in-law.

Steve looked at him, with a deep sigh he nodded. “I do.”

“Then it’s your call.” Tony glanced back at him, then to Katie. Steve was torn, he really was.

“Whatever it takes, Steve.” Katie reminded him. She wasn’t scared in the slightest, she had utter faith in Tony.

Steve took a deep breath and against every bit of better judgment he had in his body he gave her a short nod “Here we go.”

*****

Using some stolen clothes and ID Badges from the locker rooms, they managed to get into the building reasonably easy, aided by the fact that Katie and Steve knew exactly where the secret SHIELD HQ was, having already been there before they took down the Triskelion.

Steve was dressed in an old military uniform, Tony in just a plain suit and Katie in a skirt and blouse, with her hair pulled up into a high seventies style pony tail. They didn’t get challenged, although there was one woman that was definitely giving them a very attentive look over in the elevator. They hit the floor Tony needed, and wishing them luck in a coded message he left, and shortly after it was their turn.

Wasting no time, they exited and as they passed a chair outside a room, Katie noticed some files someone had left behind. Quickly, she scooped them up in an attempt to make herself look like any other normal office worker that was mooching around the area.

Eventually, thanks to Steve’s photographic memory being able to recall a floor map that was on the wall outside the elevator after one simple glance at it, they found Dr Pym’s laboratory and continued down the corridor until they reached an office that wasn’t occupied. Katie distracted everyone in the corridor by dropping the files she was carrying all over the place and making a general load of fuss, whilst Steve slipped inside, unnoticed. He looked down at the phone on the desk and gave a little groan. This hand set was something completely alien to him, but he scanned the various buttons and saw one labelled ‘operator’.

“Not that different, after all.” He mused softly to himself. He picked the phone up and hit the button, asking to be put through to Dr Pym and a few minutes later he was connected.

“Hello. Dr. Pym?”

“That would be the number that you called, yes”

Sarcastic asshole…

“This is Captain…Stevens from shipping.” Steve winced slightly at his unoriginal name. “We have a package for you.”

“Bring it up”.

“Well, that’s the thing, Sir. We can’t.”

“I’m confused. I thought that was your job.”

“Well, it’s just– Sir, the box is glowing and, to be honest, some of our mail guys aren’t feeling that great.” He paused, waiting.

“They didn’t open it, did they?”

“Yeah, they did.” Steve smiled as the man took the bait. “You better get down here.”

He placed the phone down and glanced out of the door through the small pane of glass. As someone handed Katie the last file they’d helped her tidy up, she thanked them and looked at Steve. He gave her the thumbs up and she smirked, before turning her head to see a frantic looking man in a white coat shoot out of the lab a few doors down and run off towards the elevators.

“Excuse me! Out of the way!”

Once he was gone, Katie headed to the empty lab. She hastily looked around, searching as she passed various filing cabinets, ant farms and numerous desks piled high with research. She stood, hands on her hips, biting her lip as she pondered where else the particles could be. She glanced to her right and her face cracked into a grin.

“Bingo.” She walked towards the large, class cabinet which bore the radioactive warning symbol on the front. Opening the door, she hesitated, and selected five of the tubes. One each for her, Steve and Tony, and then two spare just in case. She tucked them into the pockets of the skirt she was wearing and headed into the corridor, Steve joining her as she went.

“Got em.” She informed, not looking at him, as the two of them strode towards the elevator, quickly and quietly.

And they were so close, so close…

“Shit.” Katie hissed as she stopped dead. Steve, who had been checking over his shoulder, looked round and saw the lady from the elevator talking to a number of military security guards.

“And you’ve never seen these two men, or this woman before? “

“No, I’ve got an eye for this. They looked fishy.”

They hastily turned and began to walk back the way they had come when Steve spotted an office to his left.

“In here.” He opened the door and gently guided Katie in before he stepped in after her. He flattened himself against a book shelf, watching through the frosted glass for the figures to pass.

Meanwhile, a photo on the desk had caught Katie’s attention and she felt herself still as she stared at it. She knew that photo…

…because she knew the person in it inside out.

“Steve,” she whispered. He glanced over to see her staring at something on the desk. It took him a few seconds but when he realized what it was he too frowned. It was a photo of him, the one from his SHIELD file. It was his pre-serum self in a white T-Shirt, his dog tags hanging out of his collar.

Katie had a copy of that very same photo in her office because she loved it, but what the fuck was it doing here?

The pair of them looked at one another, before they turned and read the name that was etched into the glass on the office door. And even backwards it was easy to see what it said.

Margaret Carter. Director

He’d steered them into Peggy’s office.

“Katie, honey, I swear, I didn’t-“ Steve began but they were both cut off by the sound of voices behind them causing them to spin back round and watch through the spaces in the blinds which covered the large window into the other side of the office.

Steve stepped forward whilst behind him Katie hung back, not quite sure how to deal with this. She’d been with Steve now for ten years, married for almost eight and she knew he loved her, she truly did but still she couldn’t help that feeling of trepidation which flooded her system. She watched her husband smile as his first love stalked around the other side of the office.

This was Nineteen Seventy, some twenty-five years after he had been lost in the ice. Katie found herself wondering if Peggy ever truly let go of Steve, or if she had merely spent however long in a marriage pining for a man she could never have.

Peggy was shouting at another agent for something, shaking her head in frustration and generally thundering around in a manner Steve could recall very well, and he couldn’t help the fond smile which spread across his face. It was a far cry from the old, frail lady he had imprinted on his mind.

“She looks so, well, good.” He muttered gently. “She’s not ill.” It might have sounded stupid but that was the only way he could explain it. It was nice to see her so happy, healthy and doing what she did best.

When Katie didn’t reply, Steve turned to see her watching him, her arms folded across her chest as if she was hugging herself.

“Yeah,” she whispered, managing a small smile, “she does.”

Steve threw one last glance over his shoulder to see Peggy leaving the room. He walked towards his wife, dropped an arm round her and kissed her forehead, curling her into him. Her body remained a little stiff as her hands slid round his waist.

“You know I love you.” He whispered softly, nuzzling into her hair. “There’s never been anyone who’s come close.”

“Yeah.” Katie nodded, simply to appease him more than anything. She wanted to get out of there now, and back to the compound as soon as she could, she was done.

“Good.” Steve sighed, as he released her and reached for the door handle. “Now let’s go find your brother.”

***** Getting the Tesseract had been easy. What hadn’t been easy was bumping into his dad. Tony had fumbled over his words, walked into chairs, basically lost any of the Stark suaveness he prided himself on having and had introduced himself as Howard.

Howard fucking Potts.

His Dad, however, didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary, and Tony had managed to walk right out of the lab with the Tesseract in his suitcase because being with Howard Stark was keeping him from even being looked at.

All in all, it was the perfect cover and he couldn’t have planned it better if he had tried.

“So, flowers and sauerkraut. You got a big date tonight?” Tony asked.

“My wife’s expecting.” Howard replied and Tony’s mouth fell open. Of course she was, with him. “And, uh, too much time in the office.”

“Congratulations.” Tony smiled at him

“Thanks. Hold this, will you?” Howard asked, passing over the flowers and sauerkraut.

“Yeah, sure.” Tony took them off him “How far along is she?”

“I don’t know– Uh– “ His dad held his hands out indicating the size of his mother’s bump “She’s at the point where she can’t stand the sound of my chewing. I guess I’ll be eating dinner in the pantry again.

“I have a little girl” Tony stuttered “Well…I kinda have two actually.” “Kind of?” “Yeah, the eldest, well she’s actually my sister. Our parents died when she was very young and I ended up with Custody of her so.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” “I’m not.” Tony shook his head and as Howard raised an eyebrow he started to explain. “I mean I am sorry our parents died but not that I ended up looking after her, you know, wouldn’t have had it any other way. She’s an incredible person, smart, funny, beautiful. Married to a soldier now, couple of kids of her own.”

The other man smiled. “You know, a girl would be nice. Less of a chance she’d turn out exactly like me.”

“What’d be so awful about that?” Tony asked.

“Let’s just say that the greater good has rarely outweighed my own self-interests.”

Tony nodded for a moment, before the elevator stopped and the walked out of the bunker. “So, where are you at with names?”

“Well, if it’s a boy, my wife likes Almanzo” Howard looked at him. What the fuck mom?

Tony shook his head as they crossed to the middle of the road in between the various military vehicles and troops that were running down it. “Huh, Might wanna let that stew a while. You got time.”

“Let me ask you a question.” Howard turned to him as they reached the middle. “When your kid was born, were you nervous?

“Wildly. Yeah.” Tony smiled, and he had been. He’d been a wreck in the delivery suite, Pepper at one point ordering him out until he calmed down.

“Did you feel qualified? Like you had any idea how to successfully operate that thing?”

Tony shook his head. “Well, I’d already looked after my sister but this was different, you know. Kiddo turned out well despite me, not because of me so with the youngest, well, I literally pieced it together as I went along. I thought about what my Dad did, and– “

At that point, over his Dad’s shoulder he spotted Steve and Katie stood in the distance and Steve gave him the thumbs up.

“My old man, he never met a problem he couldn’t solve with a belt.” Howard shook his head.

Tony looked back to him from where he had been watching Steve and Katie glancing around cautiously before he spoke to the man again.

“You know, I thought my dad was tough on me. And now, looking back, I just remember the good stuff, you know. He did drop the odd pearl.” Tony smiled.

“Yeah? Like what?”

“No amount of money ever bought a second of time.”

“Smart guy.” Howard nodded.

“He did his best.”

“Let me tell you.” Howard smiled gently. “That kid’s not even here yet, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for ‘em”

Tony felt his eyes beginning to well, he simply nodded as Howard walked past him towards his car.

In the distance, Katie squinted and jerked her head questioningly at Tony, trying to figure out why he was holding a bunch of flowers. He raised his briefcase pointing to it, the expression on his face telling her to calm down. She heard Steve let out a breath and a smile crossed her face, their plan had worked. They had the tesseract and the particles. She was about to jerk her thumb over her shoulder to instruct her brother to leave whatever it was he was doing, until she saw the face of the man he had been speaking to.

“Oh my God,” her voice was a gasp, “that’s, that’s my dad.”

Steve had realized the same thing the minute the guy had turned around to shake Tony’s hand. Besides him, Katie took a step forward and he made to gently grab her arm.

“Katie, you can’t.”

“Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do Steve.” She snapped, her eyes blazing. “You just took your trip down memory lane, and you’re not gonna stop me from taking mine.”

She jerked her arm from his grasp and headed over to where her brother was handing over the flowers and a tin of sauerkraut, of all things, to her dad, before they embraced.

“Everything’s gonna be all right.” She could hear Tony as she approached. “Thank you–“

“Thank you?” Howard frowned.

“He means for everything that you’ve, err, done, for this country.” Katie finished, swallowing slightly as she reached her brothers side. Tony glanced down at her, shocked for a moment, before he hastily re-arranged his face.

“Howard, this is my sister the one I was telling you about. Virginia, meet Howard Stark.” Virginia?

Katie smiled and shook her Dad’s hand, taking a deep breath. “God it’s good to see you, I mean meet you, you know, after hearing all about your work.” She hastily recovered.

“Your brother tells me you’re married to a soldier. He based here?” “Used to be.” She nodded, her eyes studying her Father’s face for a moment. The man paused and his head tilted to one side, giving her a curious look.

“You know, you look a lot like my wife, only with different coloured hair, she’s blonde.” “Yeah I know.” Katie replied, before she spluttered. “I mean, from photos, I’ve seen, I mean I’ve been told that before so-“

“You’re a lucky girl.” Howard smiled. “She’s a stunner. Now I really have to go. Nice to meet you both.” He shook their hands again and then turned and headed away.

As they watched him go, Tony slung his arm around his sister’s shoulder, as she leaned into him, wiping a rear from her eyes. “Hey, Kiddo, see the guy by the car?”

“Yeah?”

“Edwin Jarvis.” Tony replied simply, and she grinned. Then, with a final look at their father, the siblings turned and made their way back towards Steve.

“We good?” He asked a little tentatively, noticing that Katie was avoiding his gaze a little. He felt his heart sink, but they didn’t have time to go into that now. It was going to have to wait.

“Yeah, let’s get out of here.” Tony mumbled, shooting another look round.

They made their way round the corner to a deserted part of the base before they each tapped their wrist bands to activate the suits and, with a fresh container of particles each they were ready. Keying in the correct time, date and location, they were sucked once more into the Quantum Realm and, as they sped through the void, Katie felt that familiar squeezing sensation again, which suddenly stopped as they emerged onto the platform, her suit disappearing.

“Did we get them all?” Bruce asked. Scott held up the sceptre, Tony waved his briefcase and Rocket was holding a vial containing the Aether.

“You mean to tell me this actually worked?" Rhodey shot back, tossing his own item lightly in the air before he caught it again as excited murmurs rang around the group. Katie looked around eagerly, but paused when she got to the space that Natasha had occupied beforehand.

She wasn’t there.

Biting back the panic that was rising in her throat she looked to Clint. He was soaking from head to foot and, as she watched, he took a step forward and dropped to his knees.

“Clint, where’s Nat?” Banner asked as the rest of the group caught up with the fact they were a person short.

Clint’s head remained bowed. He swallowed thickly and, when he finally did look up, his eyes met Katie’s first, then Steve’s. He didn’t speak, he didn’t need to, his broken expression told them everything. Steve looked down, taking a deep breath as his heart plummeted through his chest. Besides him, Katie shook her head frantically.

"No, no, no. She’s not gone. She’s just delayed right?” She swallowed, “Clint, tell me Natasha is going to be here!”

There was a loud thud as Bruce knelt down, his large fist pounding the platform angrily. Katie looked helplessly from Clint to Steve, her soldier’s eyes were full of tears as he reached out to her.

“Sweetheart.” His voice cracked and she shook her head, moving out of his reach as she turned back to Clint.

"Clint?” This time it was a plea. A plea for him to tell her that her best friend was fine, and that there was just a temporary glitch, one which they could fix.

Clint looked up at her, his own tears now falling as he shook his head.

“She’s gone, Nova.” And with that his head dropped and his shoulders began to shake.

Katie’s jaw began to quiver and she felt two large hands on her upper arms, which gently turned her round as Steve pulled her to him, one hand firmly on her back, the other tangling in her hair. He held her, gently rocking her side to side as she began to cry, looking over her head at Tony who locked eyes with him, wiping his face with his hands.

It was then that Steve’s vision became blurred by his own tears and he buried his face in his wife’s hair, allowing her sorrow to hide his own.

*****

Chapter 55

**Original Posting**

#stark spangled banner #steve rogers #steve rogers fanfiction #steve rogers fic #Katie Stark #steve rogers x ofc #steve rogers x original female character #mcu #mcu fanfic #chris Evans #chris evans characters

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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 4 years

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But You Can Never Leave [Chapter 7: Forget Everything You Know]

Hi y’all! I just wanted to take a moment to thank you all so much for reading and for showing me and my fics some love. You better believe that I see EVERY. SINGLE. reblog, comment, tag, and message, and they mean the absolute world to me! I know that a lot of content creators are frustrated and taking breaks right now, but rest assured you will not be able to get rid of me if even a SINGLE person looks forward to something I write. I’ll finish this fic (eventually), and I’ll finish the next one too (it already has a name!), and I won’t disappear or leave the Queen/BoRhap fandom at any point in the foreseeable future. Lots of love to you all, stay safe, and I hope you enjoy! 💜 💜 💜

Chapter summary: Y/N brings home some friends; Brian attempts an intervention; John draws a line; Roger gets an answer.

This series is a work of fiction, and is (very) loosely inspired by real people and events. Absolutely no offense is meant to actual Queen or their families.

Song inspiration: Hotel California by The Eagles.

Chapter warnings: Language.

Chapter list (and all my writing) available HERE

Taglist: @queen-turtle-boiii @loveandbeloved29 @killer-queen-xo @maggieroseevans @imnotvibingveryguccimrstark @im-an-adult-ish @queenlover05 @someforeigntragedy @imtheinvisiblequeen @joemazzmatazz @seven-seas-of-ham-on-rhye @namelesslosers @inthegardensofourminds @deacyblues @youngpastafanmug @sleepretreat @hardyshoe @bramblesforbreakfast @sevenseasofcats @tensecondvacation @bookandband @queen-crue @jennyggggrrr @madeinheavxn @whatgoeson-itslate @brianssixpence

Please yell at me if I forget to tag you! :)

“Smile, everyone!” Your dad peeks through the viewfinder of the Canon F-1 and beams. “One...two...three...say Queen!”

“Queen!” you all shout gleefully. The flash illuminates the dining room, and you blink away momentary blindness. The table materializes back into vision: lobsters, clams, haddock chowder, sourdough bread, fried oysters, pierogis with Vermont cheddar cheese, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes...and, of course, Boston cream pie for dessert.

“Ah, perfection,” your dad sighs contently. “Please continue, Mr. Mercury.”

“Mr. Mercury!” Brian whines, incredulous. “Like he’s got a bloody PhD or something!”

Freddie cracks a lobster claw. He hasn’t taken his sunglasses or wrist-full of clanging bangles off all afternoon. Your parents are profoundly confused by him, but welcoming nonetheless. “I’m a professor of lusciousness. Pay attention and you could learn something.”

Brian rolls his eyes and dunks a hunk of sourdough bread into his chowder.

“So,” Freddie tells your mother between bites of lobster dripping with drawn butter. “Our darling damsel in distress was in the clutches of that horrid, dodgy wanker when none other than our very own Roger Meddows Taylor—”

“You weren’t even there!” Brian protests. “I wasn’t even there! This is, what, a third-hand account?!”

“Eat your soup, peasant. Thank you. Anyway, our beloved Roger comes raging out of nowhere, red-faced, nostrils flaring, a terrifying sight to behold, grabs this guy by his hair and slams his despicable face directly into a marble column. Broken nose, cracked orbital socket, blood everywhere! It was magnificent. I’ve never been more proud.”

“Good for you!” your mother cheers, patting the back of Roger’s hand encouragingly. He smiles at her, warmly, radiantly, like the wildfire he’s always reminded you of. And you marvel at how every human on this earth is made of the same fundamental components—blood and muscles and vessels and nerves, hearts and enigmatic brain matter and ribs, vulnerable parts, armored parts, all webbed together like nature’s own organic circuit board—and yet the marks they leave on you can feel so different: burns, scars, bruises, shadows, imprints that are deep enough to brush bone and never fade.

“Mom, the guy could have died!”

“Did he?” she asks innocently.

“Nope,” Roger says.

“Well then, Mr. Taylor here is a hero in my book.”

“Mr. Taylor!” Brian groans.

“I was petrified he would turn out to be the son of an executive or producer or something and the band would be ruined,” you say. “Fortunately he was just someone’s annoying frat brother from college who already had a reputation for being a sleazebag. So, we were in luck.”

“You were in luck that Mr. Taylor was there,” your mother points out, gazing at him dreamily. This delightful English boy is going to be my son-in-law and give me gorgeous, doe-eyed grandchildren, that look says.

“Yes, a literal superhero,” John says ruefully, sipping a Manhattan. Your dad has a passionate love for mixing cocktails, especially for guests who also happen to be rock stars.

“Mom. Don’t make his ego any bigger, please. I’m begging you.”

Roger snarls around a mouthful of Boston cream pie, sending your mom into a fit of giggles.

“I’m just glad you’re okay, dear.” She smooths your hair. “And that you have people to keep you safe all the way over there across the ocean, and that you’re happy.”

“Yes, your work environment is much improved, isn’t it?” Brian says. “That supervisor you had at the hospital was an absolute bear!”

Your dad strokes his short grey beard. “Well...” he admits. “That may have been my fault.”

Brian’s brow crinkles. “Really?”

Your mom turns to you. “You didn’t tell them?!”

“Oh, is there a scandalous backstory?” Freddie inquires, elated. “Do tell, darling!”

“Once upon a time, in a kingdom far far away—just kidding, it was here in Boston—my archnemesis Patricia and my dad dated.”

Roger drops his fork, appalled. “No!”

Freddie’s nose wrinkles in revulsion. “Why?!”

Your dad rocks back in his chair and laughs loudly, heartily. “She wasn’t always so cantankerous, if you can believe it. She was a sweet girl, wonderful even. But then I met my future wife, and...” He smirks guiltily. “What can I say? The heart wants what it wants!”

You nod along. “And I got the illustrious honor of being an outlet for the frustration stemming from Patricia’s lifelong unrequited love.”

“You saucy minx!” Freddie playfully lashes your mom’s shoulder with a cloth napkin. “Homewrecker!”

She chuckles, not the least bit offended. “People get together under all sorts of strange circumstances, and you know what? You can’t wreck a home if the home wasn’t already half-wrecked before you got there, that’s what I think.”

Roger raises his Patriot’s Punch. “I’ll drink to that.”

Brian clutches his New England Express, bewildered. “Are we...toasting to infidelity?”

“Oh, does that horrify you?” Rog asks sarcastically. Brian grimaces, but dutifully raises his glass.

“We’re toasting to love,” your dad clarifies. “However it comes, as long as it’s true.”

John holds his Manhattan aloft. “To love.”

Freddie clinks his Flying Elvis against the other beverages, including your parents’ wine glasses and your Cranberry Crush. “Cheers!” Then Fred glances at the clock and swiftly polishes off his slice of Boston cream pie.

“Can’t you all stay a little longer?” your mom pleads, collecting plates and gazing longingly at Roger. “This has been so much fun...”

“They have soundcheck at seven, Mom. We have to leave for the stadium soon.”

“Well, before you jet off to your next adventure, can I treat anyone to a long distance call?” your dad asks.

Brian perks up. “Really?!” You know there’s a ring in the future for Chrissie; not an expensive or extravagant ring (not that Chris would want that anyway), but a ring nonetheless. You know because Brian has taken you shopping to help him choose one.

“Of course! You can use the phone in my office. It’s Valentine’s Day, after all. I’m sure there are some lovely ladies back in jolly old England who would be over the moon to hear from you.”

“That would be very much appreciated!” Brian says. “And thank you so much, this has been such a treat, you have no idea how long it’s been since we had a proper homemade meal.”

“I had to rehabilitate the reputation of us Yankees, didn’t I? Now come on, Mr. May, I’ll show you to the office...”

“Mr. May...I like the sound of that!”

“Ten minutes, Bri!” Freddie calls, following them down the hallway. “Then it’s my turn...!”

You begin gathering up the empty glasses, but Roger promptly snatches them away. “No way, Boston babe. You go relax. I’ll help your mom.”

“I think she’s in love with you.”

He grins. “Do you have a secret stepdaddy fetish I could exploit?”

“Oh my god. Roger.”

He snickers and sweeps off into the kitchen. It’s only then that you realize John has disappeared. You check the kitchen, the living room, the hallway, the study, and finally the front porch; John is standing outside in the cold, smoking and watching the setting sun. The sky is threaded with cerulean, rust orange, lavender, indigo. You pull on your coat and go out to join him.

“We’ll make it to Florence one of these days,” you promise John, resting your arms on the wooden, white-painted porch railing. Your mother hung baskets of fresh flowers for the band’s visit, which swing lazily in the breeze. “Crank out a few more hits and we’ll get the record company to add it to the tour itinerary.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice.”

“Are you going to call Veronica?”

He shrugs, frowns, exhales a lungful of smoke into frigid New England air. “I don’t know if I should.”

“You don’t think she’d like that?” you ask, confounded.

“I think she might like it too much.”

“Ohhhhh.” You read his soft greyish eyes, which are faraway and somber, sad even. “I’m sorry, John. You know she’s wild about you.”

“I know it.” He takes a drag off his cigarette. “She’s the first person who ever was, actually. The first person who ever noticed me. Came up to me out of the blue at a disco and asked me to dance, me! So I said yes, like you do when you’re the guy nobody notices. And then I said yes again, and again, and again, until one day I realized...oh, this girl thinks we’re getting married. When the hell did that happen?”

“I noticed you,” you contest.

John chuckles and nods. “You did,” he agrees. “Right away. Tried to win me over when I was too nervous to finish a sentence around you. But that was long after I’d met Veronica.”

“Well, you can’t break up with her tonight. On Valentine’s Day?! That would be traumatic.”

“Agreed.”

“We’ll have a few days in London between the American and Asian legs of the tour. You can think it over and decide what to do then. I’m happy to arrange the getaway taxi if that’s something that interests you.”

“Yeah.” Again, he peers out into the Western horizon, into rising stars.

“John?”

Now he looks to you. He’s a little too thoughtful, too low. There’s something you’re not seeing.

“...Is there somebody else?”

He doesn’t speak; he just stares at you with those velvety azure-grey eyes, drums his fingers against the railing, lets the ash from his cigarette crumble into the snow-dusted Blue Pacific Junipers.

Roger barrels through the front door and out onto the porch. “There you are, Deaks! I thought we were going to have to find a new bassist. Enlist Nurse Nightingale’s mum or something.”

John smirks and crushes the rest of his cigarette in your father’s ashtray. “I suspect you’d do just fine without me.”

“Oh no. No way. Not happening.”

“That’s kind of you,” John says, unconvinced.

“Here, I’ll prove it.” Rog holds out his calloused hand. “If you ever leave, I leave too. Come on, Deaks, shake on it. It’s official. It’s a pact. There’s no Queen without John Deacon.”

Reluctantly, trying not to show how pleased he is, John shakes. “Alright.”

Roger grins triumphantly. “Signed, sealed, delivered. You’re ours for life, baby.”

“Deaky, do you want the phone?!” Freddie yells from inside the house.

John sighs and exchanges a knowing glance with you. “I guess I should say hi.”

“Okay, but quickly!” Rog presses. “We gotta go!”

“So bossy...” John ducks inside; and Roger, though he’s not wearing anything over his pale pink button-up shirt—sufficiently sophisticated to impress your parents��comes to the porch railing to join you.

“You’re not staying out here, are you?” You eye his thin shirt worriedly, the goosebumps rising over his collarbones, his bare forearms where he rolled up his sleeves to help your mom wash the dishes.

He tosses you a mischievous wink. “I’ve got no one to call.”

Roger looks up at the hanging baskets of flowers, plucks out a cerise carnation, and offers it to you. You mean to say something witty, something sardonic, something that will make him laugh; but all your words vanish into cold February air. You take the carnation, smiling helplessly.

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” Roger whispers.

You just let me know if you ever change your mind, okay?

Okay.

He turns to go back inside the house.

I won’t fall in love with him. I won’t fall in love with him. I won’t fall in love with him.

Then Roger pauses in the doorway. “You coming, Boston babe? I can’t have you catching pneumonia or something. I won’t know how to fix you.”

Oh, you realize, with horror and yet relief, all those grueling lies stripped away. It’s too late.

~~~~~~~~~~

You knock on the frame of the dressing room door. “Hi Bri!”

He glances over from where he sits in front of the mirror, rimming his eyes with inky liner. Soundcheck went swimmingly, and now Queen has thirty minutes until they need to be onstage. You can hear the disembodied reverberation of voices from the waiting crowd through the walls. “Hello, love. Come in.”

“Freddie said you needed to see me. Did you rip a sleeve or something? I brought my kit—”

“No, it’s not that.” He pats the chair beside him. The boys practically always get ready together before a show, but you suspect profoundly introverted Brian is experiencing one of his post-socialization crashes after dinner with your parents. Something about him is tired, very tired, almost drained to empty. “Join me.”

“Sure,” you say cautiously. You shove your medical kit onto the countertop and then reach to feel his forehead. “Are you feeling alright...?”

“I’m fine, love. I just have a favor to ask.”

“Anything.”

Brian sighs deeply, sets down the eyeliner, swivels his chair towards you. “I need you to promise me that you’re not going to start seeing Roger.”

You titter, deflecting, brushing Brian’s hair away from his troubled, angular face. “Well, as the official Queen touring nurse, I see him quite a lot.”

Brian catches your wrist. “I’m being serious.”

Now your brow knits into tight agitated lines. “I’m curious as to why you think that’s something you have a say in.”

“Bloody hell, I’m not trying to offend you—”

“Job well done.”

“Dear, please, listen to me—”

“Eight months,” you hiss through your teeth as you tear away from him. “For eight months I’ve listened and avoided and resisted and ignored and it’s not going away.”

“Oh, fuck,” Brian breathes in despair. “You love him.”

There are tears biting in the periphery of your vision; you don’t want them to be there, but they are. Your voice is hoarse and trembling. “Bri, please don’t.”

Brian shakes his head and motions with his hands frenetically, desperately, trying to make you understand. “Look, sometimes...sometimes the people we love, the people who own us, the people who fucking set us on fire...they’re not the people we end up with. And that’s not always a bad thing. It’s necessary. It’s self-preservation. Because sometimes the people who set us on fire would burn us alive.”

You gape at him, furious, stunned. “That’s just fantastic, Brian. You’re a true romantic. Jesus christ, does Chrissie know about this? Is that why you’re with her, because she’s, what...safe?!”

“No, that’s not fair, Chrissie’s great, she’s steady and supportive and she’ll make a wonderful mother one day, and my parents adore her—”

“Those aren’t reasons to marry someone, Brian!”

“They are!” He leaps to his feet. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! You have to think about these things, you have to be rational, you have to protect yourself—”

“Why the fuck do you care?” you flare bitterly.

“Because you saved my life.”

“Stop it, I didn’t.”

“You did, I truly believe that. And I want you to stay with the band. And I want you to be happy. But, dear, please, I’m begging you...this is not the way to do it.”

“I’m not going to go out to some pub and drag home a random guy who’s suitably passionless and predictable enough to be Brian-May-approved.”

“That’s not what I’m asking you to do—”

“Because you’re such an expert on relationships!” you shout, exasperated. “Planning to propose to Chris while you’re still secretly pining over some fling from New Orleans, fucking groupies and then having the nerve to mope around guilt-ridden the next morning as if anyone but you was responsible for that decision, and do I say anything about it?! Do I ever say a single fucking word about it to you, or Fred, or Roger, or your future wife, or anybody?! No, because it’s not my life!”

The dressing room door flies open and John storms inside. “What’s going on?!”

You cross your arms and stare at the floor. Brian’s wide green eyes flick to John, to you, back to John. If it was Freddie, Brian would tell him in a second, would try to enlist him in the effort, and it would probably work; but John is a different story. John won’t side with Brian over you, everybody knows that. And John has a talent for sharpening words into blades. “Um. Nothing.”

“I could hear you in the hallway,” John says flatly. “Obviously it wasn’t nothing.”

Brian points to you. “Have you tried to talk her out of this? Maybe you should, maybe she’d listen.”

“It’s not my choice to make, just like it isn’t yours. Worry about your own body count. It seems to be growing exponentially these days.”

Brian scoffs. “Because you’d be so thrilled if she ended up with him, right?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?!” you demand.

Brian and John glare at each other from across the room. John raises his eyebrows, daring Bri to answer. Brian gnaws his lower lip, but doesn’t elaborate. The air is heavy, tense, electrified.

“Don’t upset her again,” John says darkly.

Brian shows the white palms of his hands in surrender. “Fine.”

John waves for you to follow him. “Come on.” And he slams the door behind you as you both escape into the hallway.

“I’m sorry.” You chase away stray tears with the back of your hands. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to get anyone worked up right before the show...”

“Don’t worry about it. I treasure any excuse to harass Brian.”

You study him, seeking answers, seeking more than you know how to put into words. “Do you think I’m being stupid? If you do, you can tell me.”

“No,” John responds carefully. “I think you’re being hopeful. And I’d like to believe that stupidity and hopefulness are two very different things.”

You smile. “I don’t deserve you.”

“That’s very inaccurate.” He fluffs his hair with his fingertips. “Do you want to touch it before we go on stage?”

You feign demureness. “Hmm...”

“Oh come on. You know you want to. It’s extra voluminous right now, Roger shared some of his magical mousse or whatever. Something way too expensive. You should thoroughly berate him for it.”

You laugh. “I’ll see what I can do.” You comb your hands through his brunette hair, and John’s right; it’s extraordinarily full and soft, and smells like honeysuckles. “You always know how to get me smiling, don’t you?”

“You do insist that I have game. Though I remain skeptical.”

“Good luck tonight. Not that you need it.”

John’s rough thumb lifts your chin, then whisks away a tear you missed. “You’ll be watching, right?”

“I always am.” And that’s the truth; you haven’t missed a Queen show since you met them.

He beams, those gentle grey eyes incandescent. “Then we’ll have an ocean of luck.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Exactly twenty-four hours later, Queen is in New York City.

The thunderous bassline of the opening act shudders through the concrete walls. You’re staring yourself down in the bathroom mirror under harsh florescent lights, your palms gripping the cold rim of a white sink, your eyes shimmering with black and gold shadow, your lip gloss slick and crimson. There’s not a single thing left to do. You’re running out of time.

You breathe in, breathe out, snatch your purse off the floor, breeze out into the hallway.

You can hear the boys’ laughter even before you open the dressing room door. Inside, Brian is tuning his Red Special with his mantis-like legs propped up on the countertop, John is attempting to teach Freddie how to make popcorn in a microwave without setting anything on fire, Roger is scrutinizing his hair in the mirror and frowning as he rearranges it with a comb.

“Hello, darling!” Freddie warbles. “Can I interest you in some delicious and expertly-prepared popcorn?” He opens the microwave, and smoke pours out. “Oh, you bitch!”

“I’ll pass, Freddie.” You glide to where Roger is sitting, knot your fingers through his blond hair, and tug his head back so you can kiss him. He tastes like mint gum and the ghost of smoke and reckless intemperance; he tastes like everything you’ve ever wanted. There are gasps, and surely dropped jaws as well; but you don’t have eyes for them. “Okay,” you tell Roger.

He stares up at you with huge, starry eyes, a dazed grin slowly lighting up his face. “You changed your mind.”

“Come find me after the show.”

“Yes ma’am.”

You move to wipe your blood-red gloss from his lips, but Roger stops you, knits his hand through yours, stands to meet you.

“Leave it,” he murmurs. “I want them to know.”

“Want them to know...?”

His lips touch yours again, smiling and scorching and ravenous. “That I’m yours.”

#roger taylor fic #roger taylor x reader #but you can never leave fic #but you can never leave #but you can never leave series #queen fic

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tackyink · 4 years

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Still holding onto the hope of running out of steam soon so I can work on other fics. In any case, this has a title now. It’s Degrees of Separation.

I hate this chapter solely because in my mind it was supposed to be one, then it got long and turned into two awkward chapters, and by splitting them I was left with this thing in which nothing happens. Why would you want to read this? I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to read it, even though I did. Repeatedly. To edit out all the typos I’m sure I’ve left in. I’m going to put a Golden Sun stream on the background, play Animal Crossing and drown my frustration in Coca Cola. It’s been a long week.

One last detour before Sabaody. Alex is bored, the Heart Pirates reenter the scene, and Law has an “if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions” moment.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

— — — — — — — —

Chapter 3

There was a storm.

Alex didn’t know if it was related to the Aqua Laguna that the ship had set out to avoid or it was simply one of the Grand Line’s meteorological whims, but two days after departure, the noon sky went so dark it was like a moonless night had come down early, the winds picked up, and the waves started to beat against the ship’s hull in an uneven rhythm.

The crew was all over the place, trying to steer the ship and reef the sails as they ushered the passengers inside to keep them from falling overboard. Alex had been caught in bad weather travelling before, but never to this extent. She had a hard time thinking of anything scarier than being at the mercy of a windy sea. Nowhere to run, nothing to do except wait and pray that the waters would take pity on you and let you live another day. Alex wasn’t the praying sort, so while she waited below deck with a group of people as scared as she was, if not more, she couldn’t even do that.

The nervous chatter of the passengers and the parents’ attempts to console their children were muffled by the deafening sounds of the wind, the waves, the creaking wood, and the crew’s rushed footsteps on the deck.

Alex stood the entire time in front of a porthole in the dining hall where they had gathered. It helped with the seasickness from the violent rocking of ship, it was better than to look at the other people, and, ironically, storms were her favorite kind of weather. She wondered what would be worse if they sunk, getting caught on deck and risking being swallowed by the ocean, or waiting for the insides of the ship to become a water tomb. For a long time, or at least it seemed like it, that was the main thought that repeated in her mind, until the possibility of dying felt so remote that she wasn’t even registering. Like when you picked a word and turned it around in your mouth and mind so many times that it lost all meaning. Of course she couldn’t die there. She had never done so before, so why start now?

It was absurd, but it helped. And it turned out to be right, too.

After a while, the storm subsided, and an hour later, the crew let them out on deck again. The ship wasn’t intact, but they hadn’t lost anybody, and that was as much as one could ask for when dealing with an angry sea.

In the end, there was only one major inconvenience: due to the damage, the ship had to change its course in order to dock somewhere safe to undergo repairs.

❦

Her hair had gotten longer to the point of annoyance. The tips brushed her shoulders already; long enough to get in her face whenever it wanted, but too short to tie it in a decent ponytail. Sure, she could have done it anyway, but she was vain and would have rather dealt with the hassle than solve the problem in an aesthetically suboptimal way.

The sunspots on the left side of her face were getting more noticeable, as were the dark circles under her eyes and the shy wrinkles that were attempting to come out. For someone who could spend so much time picking her appearance apart in front of a mirror, she didn’t look particularly healthy or well put together. She supposed that was part of the appeal, in a masochistic way: to find as many faults as she could, and invent some if needed.

Applying concealer under her eyes and red lipstick just for the sake of having some color on her face, she thought she needed to find herself a headband and a healthier pastime posthaste. Porta Bella was a quaint town, but there wasn’t much in the way of entertainment, and she’d had only her thoughts for company for too long.

She had been stuck there for two weeks. After narrowly avoiding disaster, the ship had been moored in the harbor for several days, and by the time it was fit enough to sail, the captain decided to go back to Water 7 to have proper repairs done. The passengers had been given the choice to remain in Porta Bella and find another ship, or to return to Water 7 with the crew. Going back wasn’t an option for Alex when Sabaody was so close that it felt like she could have seen it if she climbed on a tall tree, she didn’t trust a half-baked repair job to keep her safe, and, most importantly, someone had tried to kill Iceburg and Enies Lobby had kind of blown up in the following days of her departure from Water 7.

She didn’t want to think that the tracksuit shipwright had something to do with it, but the conspiracy theorist in her told her that it was totally his fault. That nose? Could totally be used as a murder weapon and nobody would be none the wiser.

The few passengers aside from Alex who had decided to stay in Porta Bella were already gone, leaving the inn she was staying at delightfully empty, but also making her wonder if she had messed up by not taking the first random ship that would let her sail away from there.

The island was small, so much so that Porta Bella was the only town in it, and much of it was empty. For many years there had been a migratory tendency pushing young people from nearby islands to the Sabaody Archipelago, and this one seemed to have fallen victim to it, too. The moderately long recording time of the Log Pose didn’t play in its favor, either. Five days and a half was a long time to wait when the Red Line was only a couple of days away, so not many ships stopped there. An abandoned watchtower in the outskirts of town was the only other notable location.

She left her inn room that morning, picking up a tea to go, and hoping that a good slap of early morning breeze in the face would wake her up.

Every day since she arrived, she went to the port to look for any newly arrived ships and talk to the sailors. Every time, if there was a new one at all, she was told that there were reports of increased slaver activity in those waters, and that they were headed anywhere but the Sabaody Archipelago until Marine HQ got its shit together and stopped the kidnapping crews sailing rampant. Given that the Marines must have been scrambling to recover from the loss of Enies Lobby, nobody thought they were going to get on the case anytime soon.

These series of unfortunate coincidences didn’t surprise her. Her life was often comprised of really small strokes of bad luck that were nothing more than inconvenience on their own, but that added up to really grate on her nerves. This was business as usual, so she just had to keep trying. The temporary finish line was only a stone’s throw away.

Not that human trafficking stopped at any point of the year, but she hadn’t taken into account the seasonal opening of the archipelago’s biggest auction. Thinking that not even the schedule of the Human Auctioning House had changed during her time away gave her a twisted sense of familiarity. That son of a bitch kept finding novel ways to fuck her over without even being aware of her existence. It had to be a gift, for sure.

As she walked to the half empty docks, she hoped that that was the day she lucked out. She had already decided that, if she couldn’t find a direct ship to Sabaody in the following three days, she’d take the roundabout way and sail to a bigger island with, hopefully, a wider variety of ships. She would go completely broke in the process (and there she found the thing that was as terrifying as being caught in a storm at open sea), but one had to crack eggs to make an omelette.

Ten minutes and an empty cup of tea into her stroll, she stopped in front the single newly arrived ship and thought that maybe she hadn’t lucked out, but that sure as hell life was full of weird coincidences. Because there were few submarines sailing the Grand Line, even fewer painted yellow, and she guessed that only one with that particular Jolly Roger plastered on it. Her wish of seeing it up close had been granted when she least expected it, and it didn’t disappoint. It had a curious design, half ship and half submarine. A shipmarine.

Feeling revitalized by the pun, she craned her neck and got on her tiptoes to accomplish nothing at all. She couldn’t see any of the pirates on the deck, at least from where she was standing, and what else was she supposed to do, walk closer to find a friendly face and say hi like a functioning human being would? Yeah, no. She simply stood there and stared like a creep.

The paint job of the thing was hypnotic, and she didn’t mean it as a compliment. It looked like the idea of a man who thought the peak of design was making his vehicle look like a wasp with a decal of the word ‘DEATH’ instead of stripes to look extra edgy. And okay, they were pirates, pirates killed people, it was something that came with the job – but plastering it over the ship like that was a little heavy handed, and she didn’t have any doubts as to which guy with matching tattoos had come up with those brilliant design choices. Come to think of it, wasn’t there a song about a yellow submarine? The one from those singers her mom liked when she was young… Maybe the captain was a fan, too. Maybe they sung it on board. She laughed at the thought.

It didn’t leave her indifferent, that was for sure, and that could count as a compliment, since she had seen a ton of ships throughout her life. Props to Trafalgar Law for standing out among the crowd.

If the pirates weren’t around at the moment, it had to mean they were inside of the ship or already out in town. It was early still, but she was sure it was a matter of time until she ran into them – the town was pretty small, around a hundred, counting sailors, on a good day, news travelled fast, and these guys didn’t dress unassumingly.

With that in mind, she kept an eye out for familiar faces and resumed her unfruitful rounds around the port. Another day, another set of rejections. She tossed her paper cup in a trash can and made her way to the coffee shop where she always had the second tea of the day, sometimes even the third, if she was feeling particularly down about her current predicament.

She placed her order at the counter and waited for it. The owner, a balding middle aged man whose name she didn’t know but who had started to get chatty after she showed up a few days in a row, tried to strike up a conversation while he heated the water. “Did you hear? A pirate crew arrived in town last night.”

Alex wasn’t much for conversation in the mornings, and usually her replies to his attempts were rather apathetic, but the owner had struck gold with this particular topic. “I just saw the ship,” she repeated. “Have they done anything?”

“Not yet,” he replied with the clear implication that they soon would. “But it’s a Supernova’s crew, from what I’ve heard. Their captain’s a scary guy – how do they call him…?”

She had mixed feelings about that. She’d seen scary first hand, and in her experience it came in the shape of kidnapping crews, bubble helmets, or suits and fedoras. And ultimately, it was the fedoras’ fault she was in that coffee shop in the first place.

“Surgeon of Death,” she replied. There was no doubt that with that price on his head he was a walking danger, but after their first encounter, she had a feeling he was more the selective type than the let’s wreck everything in our path kind of guy. Not that his list of attributed crimes would lead anybody to think that. “Do you have trouble with pirates often? Being close to Sabaody and all.”

“Sometimes, but they usually go to more interesting places. It used to be as easy as calling the garrison to get rid of ‘em, but with Marineford so close it’s no wonder no one wants to be here any longer.”

“There used to be Marines here?”

“Yes, at the watchtower in the outskirts, but they left after some of the rooftop caved in. Building’s condemned now. A pity, ‘cause the watchtower’s been there forever, and they’ve let it fall apart.”

“That’s a shame,” she said. “How old’s the tower?”

The water started boiling then, and he turned around to remove it from the fire and make her drink. “Tale goes that it’s old as the stone entrance, but who knows,” he said with his back turned to her. “It’s not like we have any experts to come check.” He slid her the drink over the counter. “In case, try to avoid those guys. A woman traveling alone is an easy target for criminals.”

“Yes, I know,” she replied, putting a few belis in the counter and taking the cup by the handle. “Thanks.”

She chose to sit on the terrace, next to the railing that separated it from the sidewalk, to have a good view of the street. She was in a sort of commercial district, if a main street with a dozen of shops could be called that. Most people who stopped at the island had to pass by sooner or later, so it was the busiest place in town. Not so early, though. It wasn’t opening hours yet.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched like a hawk the man who was monopolizing the only issue of the World Economic Journal and snatched it as soon as he got up to leave, so fast that it turned the heads of the other two people on the terrace.

News of the assault of Enies Lobby had been filling pages for a week already, and that day wasn’t an exception. The Straw Hat Pirates had done the unthinkable, and while in other circumstances Alex might have been watching the situation with amusement from afar, she was also pretty annoyed at them, because their stunt no doubt played into the poor supervision in the waters near Sabaody. On the other hand, she hoped that this also meant that neither Marines nor Cipher Pol would be very invested in finding her in the near future if she ended up a suspect.

She was also a little worried about Iceburg’s condition, but the newspapers hadn’t reported his death, so she had to assume he had recovered from the attempt on his life.

She skimmed over the usual columns prattling about the lack of security at sea and how worrying it was that a whole new generation of rookies with astronomical bounties were about to set foot in the Sabaody Archipelago at the same time. She didn’t think having a handful extra menaces sailing around mattered anymore, considering the state of the world at large, but the pearl-clutching sold newspapers, and she wondered about her sense of self-preservation when she realized with disappointment that, at the rate she was moving, she was going to miss the Supernova meetup in Sabaody. Her curiosity was going to bite her in the ass one day, she thought, before remembering that it already had, and that was the exact reason she was in her current position.

She skim read a few pages looking for interesting headlines, getting to the less important news that didn’t warrant spreads, editorials and pictures that took up half the page, and paled when she read the contents of an unassuming text box.

An unfortunate accident in the island of Harlun had blown up the local library while it was undergoing renovations. Nobody had been hurt, said the write-up, but the building had been destroyed in the ensuing fire and an investigation was still ongoing to determine what had happened. At least she guessed that the last part of the article said so, because she choked on her tea as she read it and spit some of it on the paper, making the ink run.

It couldn’t be a coincidence. Well, it technically could be, but no way she was buying that. The real question was if they’d be able to link the Poneglyph to her, and considering she that she was the person who spent the most time in the archive and she had conveniently left right before construction work took place, she had a pretty good chance to win that lottery. Oh, God, what if her coworkers mentioned that she used to go to the archive on Sundays, alone?

Her first impulse was to bang her head on the table and hide it between her arms, but the surface was sticky, so she ended up regretting it immediately. Instead, she put her elbows on the table, and covered her face with her hands. Her heart was beating loudly and her mind was running wild thinking of possible courses of action. She was on a timer. Getting to Sabaody as soon as possible was a necessity now. If there was a place she could hide, ironically, it was there.

“I see life’s treating you well.”

Alex’s heart tried to leap out of her mouth when she heard someone talk to her from so up close, but one of the perks of being born with a stick up her ass was that she only tensed up when she was startled, so she saved herself the embarrassment of yelping or jumping on her chair. She removed the hands from her face to look at the person, and the sight of a spotted furry hat and a yellow and black hoodie punched her in the eyes.

“Oh, hello,” she said, feeling more relaxed when she realized it was the Surgeon of Death leaning against the balustrade, not law enforcement. Her life had taken a turn for the surreal in a very short time, had it not?

His smirk faltered. “You aren’t surprised?”

“Saw your ship,” she said with some difficulty, and she drank some tea to swallowed the knot that had formed in her throat. Of all the times for him to appear... “Town’s small, we had to run into each other.”

“Hm.”

If she exerted a bit of imagination, she’d say he looked a bit disappointed. Why would he? No idea, but it was funny to think he was, and she was in dire need of funny.

He asked, “What are you doing here? This is far from your island.”

Farther than he knew, she almost said, but that was a can of worms and not relevant in the situation at hand. Feeling too overwhelmed to give long explanations, she handed him the newspaper open by the page she’d been reading. Talking could happen once she arranged her own thoughts, and only then.

“That’s…” He took it from her hands and read for a few seconds. An inscrutable expression gradually morphed into a look of pure indignation. “What’s the meaning of this?”

She was taken aback by the unexpected display of emotion. It was odd to see him react so strongly to something that didn’t concern him. “It isn’t that surprising, considering—”

“How is it not?” He retorted, annoyed. “Sora can’t lose against these weaklings!”

She stared at him in confusion. “What?” she blurted out, realizing afterwards that he was talking about the comic strip at the bottom of the page. And to be fair, she was going to tell him to look further up when the meaning of his words sunk in, but then she was the one leaning over the railing to look at the paper he was holding. “Wait, really? That’s impossible!”

“That’s what I’m saying!”

Upon reading the message under the strip, she complained, “On break until next month?” She sat back on the chair, mumbling, “I don’t even know if I’ll be alive next month,” before taking a sip of tea.

“Summer vacation cliffhanger,” he replied. “And you still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”

“Read the news above.”

He looked at the paper again, and his eyes widened the smallest fraction as recognition dawned. That reaction was more appropriate. “Do you think it was…?”

“I’m sure of it. It’s too much of a coincidence.”

“Are you wanted now?”

“I don’t know. They have reason to suspect I knew it was there.” And she added with a bit of humor that she wasn’t really feeling, “If I get a bounty, I’ll say it was your fault.”

“I don’t think that’s going to do you any service.” A smirk returned to grace his features as he passed her the newspaper back. He was clearly amused by her misfortune, and that was the only good thing that had come out of it. “What do you plan to do?”

Alex let out a long exhale through her nose. She wanted to say that there was no plan, but there always was. Planning was something she did obsessively. “I need to get to Sabaody as soon as possible.” It was the only option. She could have elaborated, but again, she didn’t feel like it. Too early, too stunned to talk about serious stuff. Reality hadn’t fully sunk in. “You’re on Sora’s side? Really?”

He frowned at her. He did a lot of frowning, she thought. He was going to get wrinkles young. “Of course I am.”

“But he’s a Marine,” she said, a smile growing on her face despite herself. “Aren’t you one of the bad guys?”

“The Germa are vile,” he retorted, and perhaps realizing he was getting too much into the conversation, he went back to the other, much less fun topic. “Sabaody’s going to be full of Marines in no time, though.”

She was internally screaming, but it came out as a drawn out sigh. “Thanks to you, no doubt.”

“The merit isn’t all mine.”

“I know. You lot have been all over the news for weeks.” He looked awfully self-satisfied when she said that. “I guess you’ll be heading straight there after this place?”

“That’s the plan if there aren’t any stops in between. By the way, do you know how long until the Log Pose sets?”

“Five days, ten hours and twenty-six minutes,” she said blandly, repeating the number she had been told by several people when she first arrived to Porta Bella. It made her miserable, so of course she wasn’t going to forget it anytime soon.

“And the seconds?”

It took her way longer than necessary to realize he was messing with her. “Oh, fuck off.” She returned her attention to the newspaper so she didn’t have to look at his stupid face while he thought he was so funny. “Fishman Island’s right around the corner. Try not to drown.”

“We have a submarine.” He sounded amused still. Alex couldn’t tell if annoying her gave him that much joy or if he was having an exceptionally good day. He was pretty cranky for a while back in Duster Town, but now that she recalled, his mood seemed to improve every time he got one over her. “I don’t think it’ll be a problem.”

“Regular submarines can’t reach Fishman Island.”

He frowned again. “Why not?”

“It’s too deep. They can’t endure the water pressure.”

She could sense the levity from moments ago was gone by the way his jaw set. “But we heard ships can traverse the Red Line through an underwater route.”

“That’s why you go to Sabaody first.” She was exerting a considerable effort to give these really boring explanations that no one was going to thank her for. “You find yourself a good coating engineer to put a resin bubble around your ship and that’ll protect it.”

He seemed to study this new information from several angles before he spoke. “That’s good to know.”

“You’re welcome.”

He gave her a pointed look, but didn’t say anything about the jab. “Is it easy to find one?”

“There’s an entire section of the archipelago dedicated to it. It’s going to cost you, though. And depending on who you choose, there’ll be a waiting list.”

“Really?”

“Good coating engineers are few and far in between, and nobody wants to find out someone did a half-assed job on their sheep five kilometers underwater.”

“That’s…” He made a meditative pause. “…Reasonable.”

“I thought you were going to say something completely different.”

“It sucks too.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. Her life would be so much easier if one didn’t have to jump through thirty hoops to cross that chunk of rock. “In a hurry to get to the New World?”

He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to, either, because she was busy contemplating a new idea that had sprung in her mind. One that she’d rather avoid if she had other options left, and she wouldn’t know until a few days passed, but... this coincidence could prove to be useful yet.

“What?” He looked at her with suspicion.

“Nothing.” And just to get on his nerves a little, she added. “Yet.”

He fixed his gaze on her face, most likely gauging her intentions. Alex was incapable of looking at people in the eye, but she was good at faking it and not flinching under pressure, so she stared back.

“Do I want to ask?”

“I don’t know. Follow your instincts.”

To her surprise, he dropped it and took a step back from the railing. “I need to go back to the sub and see if the others are up already.”

Good. “For someone with a target so big on you, you wander a lot without them.”

“I like taking walks alone,” he said, like he didn’t think much of it. Like he could not fathom how he of all people could possibly be in danger from anybody else. “See you around?”

Was that a wish, a threat, or a pleasantry? “Without a doubt,” she replied, not bothering to hide the tedium in her voice. Damn empty town and damn slavers. “This town isn’t big enough for the two of us.”

She could have sworn he smiled a little at that, but Law shoved his hands in his pockets and made his leave too fast to see.

He was far enough that he wouldn’t hear her if she spoke in a normal volume when she remembered something important, so she resorted to raising her voice before the Heart crew did something they could regret. “Go to the Old Brewery if you don’t want to die! The Silver Fountain serves piss for drinks!”

He turned to look at her with the same curiosity back when she’d told him weapons weren’t allowed in the library, but this time he nodded in acknowledgement before making his exit.

The other customers on the terrace stared at her warily, but honestly, she couldn’t bring herself to feel bad for them even when the owner immediately came out to ask if she was okay and if the scary surgeon had said anything bad to her. At least something interesting was happening.

❦

Alex had a love-hate relationship with heights.

She inevitably got queasy when she was somewhere high up that didn’t have barriers or anything she could hold onto, but that didn’t stop her from going up there, anyway. It was like a very stupid magnetic pull that one day would end with her skull split open.

(It was the wind and the view. She knew that. It was also one of the few options she had to feel taller than most people.

But mostly the wind.)

The stone arch at the entrance of the town that gave Porta Bella its name was surrounded by the remains of a stone wall. First century, she guessed by the roughness of the stone blocks and the bit of mortar she scraped from between when she inspected it for the first time. It was easily over two meters, and only because the topmost part had fallen off. The blocks that hadn’t been taken away for use in newer constructions were still next to the wall, inviting anyone who’d dare to step on them to use them to climb.

She knew she wasn’t the only idiot who had felt the temptation, because the stone was worn from use. She’d also seen kids running at the top of the wall and no one had tried to stop them, and there were worse ways to channel all the nervous energy she had from reading that newspaper article.

She wasn’t a very proficient climber, but the blocks were positioned in such a way that getting to the top was easy as pie. No doubts someone had moved them for that exact purpose. When she was high enough, she threw a leg over the wall, then the other one, and sat facing the harbor.

The wind was nice up there.

She wouldn’t stand on the wall for all the money in the world and getting down was going to be an ordeal, but that was a problem for the Alex of the future.

That day had woken up to four ships in the harbor, counting the pirates’ submarine. Two would go away at the end of the week. The third was leaving that night. No vessels on the horizon.

She sighed. If the pirates were on an adventure, they sure had the shittiest of lucks docking only in the most boring islands the sea could offer.

With nothing better to do at the moment, and trying to delay as much as possible the moment she’d regret climbing that high, she moved towards the shadow of the arch without lifting her butt from the stone and rested her back against it.

She was at a loss. Sailing further away from the Sabaody Archipelago was counterproductive, but so was staying in the same island for too long, since she had no means of protecting herself if something happened. Then again, if she ended up broke before she got to Sabaody, she’d have to stay in whatever island she was to earn money to keep travelling.

All the options sucked. Maybe she needed to sleep on it to see what the lesser evil was. She had, after all, a few days to make a decision.

She looked at the sea, tinted dark green by her sunglasses, in what she assumed was Sabaody’s direction. So close, yet so far away. The skies were clear and the water calm, and though there weren’t any sailors to be found in the harbor, she could see the shadow of a couple of fishing boats in the distance. Wasn’t there a song that went like that? I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay, wastin' time…

She hummed, looking at nowhere in particular and letting her thoughts drift with the waves.

❦

She knew better than to cut through the lawless areas alone when it was getting late, so she had no one else to fault when she split from her group of classmates after spending their free day in Sabaody Park. It was only her and her stupid pride that didn’t allow her to admit that she didn’t think this was a great idea and that she didn’t want to go back to her room alone.

She broke into a sprint as soon as she heard the smallest rustle behind her, and that advantage proved to be essential, because someone started chasing after her. It sounded like more than one person, but she didn’t have time to look or tell how many sets of footsteps were behind her – she just ran like her life depended on it in the direction of the bridge that connected to the next grove, hoping that there would be other people there, and then—

—then she saw an open bar, a lone building in an even lonelier grove.

She rushed inside it, gasping for air so hard that she couldn’t speak, no matter how much she tried to explain to the bartender why she had barged in like that.

It wasn’t necessary.

“Don’t worry, dear, they’ve been hanging around these parts for a while,” she said, leading her to a chair with a gentle hair. “You’re safe here.” Her warm black eyes turned to someone else, and though Alex had trouble focusing on what was going on, she saw an old man with long white hair. “Why don’t you go take out the trash, Ray? They’ve driven off my clientele enough.”

“Sure,” the man replied, getting up from his stool and going outside.

Alex thought it was a horrible idea to send an old man to fight off a kidnapping crew, but that was because she didn’t know these people yet.

“Don’t worry about him. Here,” the woman gave her a glass of water. “Name’s Shakky. Rest all you need.”

❦

Footsteps approached. She shut up immediately.

“I like that song.”

Singing helped when she had too much anxious energy. It was probably related to breathing control. She had stopped anxiety attacks in the making like that sometimes.

It didn’t help at all when someone had been listening in and she hadn’t noticed.

“Oh. Thanks. Um, hi.”

“Hi,” Bepo said smiling. “I heard from Captain you were here.”

Even though she was sitting on top of the wall, Bepo’s head went past it. If he stood on his tiptoes, he could have rested his head on her legs. On one hand, it was a little aggravating that she had to climb so high up only to be marginally taller than him. On the other, Alex was filled with the urge to scratch his ears.

“Yeah, I’m stuck waiting for a ship,” she told him. “Ideally, you wouldn’t have found me here.”

“Oh? Where are you going?”

“Sabaody.”

“Isn’t that very close? How come you haven’t found a ship?”

“There’s kidnapping crews infesting the waters. You know what those are?”

“Uh… isn’t it in the name?”

Alex blinked. “Right. Don’t mind me.”

He fell into thought for a few seconds. “Why are they kidnapping people?”

“To sell. They get auctioned in the archipelago.”

Bepo frowned. “I see.”

“Hey, don’t worry,” she said, smiling for his sake. “Nothing’s going to happen to your crew. You’re strong.”

He beamed with pride. “Yeah, we are! We’ve been training for years to come here!”

Alex mirrored his expression without thinking. “Your Captain said you’ve been friends since you were kids. Did you—”

“Bepo!” Someone called out. “What are you doing?”

“Ah, sorry!” Bepo said, turning around to see the newcomer. “I was catching up…”

A woman with curly hair and a severe expression walked up to them, hands on her hips, and she looked a little confused when she laid eyes on Alex. She was struggling to place her. “Have we seen each other…?”

“On passing. I’m the Duster Town dumbass that opened the library for your Captain.”

“Oh, yeah, now that you mention it—” The confusion was back. “Isn’t this place a little too far from there?”

“I’m running away from justice.” She didn’t offer further explanation.

Bepo didn’t need it. “So are we!”

A barely contained laugh made it past the woman’s lips. “Oh well, if you’re a fellow criminal…” She extended a hand towards Alex. “Name’s Ikkaku. What did you do, keep too many books past the return date?”

“I wish.” She shook her hand. “Alex.”

“So that’s your name?” Bepo asked.

She turned her attention towards the bear. “I never told you?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“Wow, I am rude,” she said to herself. “Anyway, hope you’re ready to take it easy, because you have five long days ahead of you.”

Ikkaku groaned. “I don’t mind, but some of the guys get so jittery after a couple days on land. I don’t suppose there’s a very active nightlife in this place?”

“Actually, there are two taverns in the entire town.”

“Oh, that sounds like something to keep ‘em busy.”

“I don’t think you want to go to one of them, though.” She wondered if the captain was going to pass the message or they would come to regret their choices. “There’s also an abandoned Marine outpost right outside of town, if they don’t want to be drunk 24/7.”

“Might be worth checking out, but I’m pretty sure they’ll take the ale.”

“Can’t blame them.” She was tempted to drown her sorrows in alcohol, and she barely ever drank.

She took a look around the desolate harbor, the small houses and the half-fallen wall with a disappointed look. “Well…” she began, “Bepo, we need you for the crates. He’s been waiting and he’s cranky enough already after—”

“Ah! Sorry!” He said, bowing at her and looking more upset than the comment would suggest. Maybe they didn’t treat him as well in the sub as she had assumed. When he turned to Alex, he also bowed repeatedly. “I’m really sorry, but I need to go!”

“Sure, no problem!” she said, making an effort to sound lively. She felt so fake when she did that. So customer servicey. “See you!”

As the pirates left, she tried to look at them in a different light. While it wasn’t too difficult to believe they would be mistreating the mink of the crew, even if they hadn’t been unkind while she was watching. He seemed shy. Maybe that was all there was to it? But the reaction seemed a little extreme. She would pay closer attention from then on.

❦

Her privileged observation point let Alex see a lot of things that day. She saw more of the crew coming and going, though they didn’t seem to recognize her, she watched one of the docked ships depart, and she met a cat that tried to get food from her, but after a good back scratch realized she didn’t have anything else to offer and walked away, leaving a lonesome Alex staring at the hand she’d used to pet it, wondering how many parasites it had come in contact with.

She immediately went back to the inn to wash her hands and get dinner.

The rest of the evening was spent looking at her Poneglyph folder and her mostly blank notebook. She had carried with her the transcript of the stone and copied some documentation from the library that could prove useful in deciphering it, but she wasn’t making any headway yet. Very little was known about the ancient language, even less was published, and she wasn’t a cryptographer. So far, she had identified what she thought were punctuation signs separating sentences and one of the names in the text.

In her years working in Harlun, she had seen centuries old coins from a currency before belis, and some of them had the legend around the rim written in different languages. Meaning, she knew how to write the name of the island in that ancient language. That was about it. She had a feeling the script wasn’t pure phonetic, either, and that wasn’t something she could attempt to tackle without cross-referencing.

Porta Bella was a nice place to spend a short vacation, sure, but it was impossible to find any books that might help. She had tried. The local bookstore only carried best sellers, and she would have bought that vampire novel that was getting so popular if money wasn’t so tight and she had space in her bag, but as things were, she had to fight frustration and boredom alone.

She had to face the fact that she wasn’t going to do anything useful that night, either. She took off her reading glasses, thinking that trying to sleep sounded like the best idea. Maybe next morning she’d finally have some good luck and find a ship that wouldn’t carry her too far from the Red Line.

❦

Too early for words, and wearing a flannel shirt as a jacket because it had gotten windy, she strode out of the inn with her paper cup and a new challenge. She had thought herself immune to monotony before this, but she had clearly overestimated her brain’s capability to get distracted by anything.

Instead of walking to the docks following the main road, like every morning, she made for the wall again. Stepping on the fallen rock, she reached up with her left hand to the top of the wall and placed the paper cup as far as she could from her, and then she climbed up like the previous day. Well, she tried to, because for some reason early in the morning she didn’t have a lot of hand strength, and she felt a stabbing pain in one of her knees when she stretched her leg to reach the wall.

It took two tries and the fear of having lost her first morning tea, but she got where she wanted.

Cross-legged, she sat on the wall and took sips of her drink while inspecting the docks. No new ships in sight. That time there was someone walking on one of the submarine’s decks, but she couldn’t make out their face, and she didn’t know most of the crew anyway.

The wind had driven all the clouds away, and the dark shadow on the horizon reminded her of how close she had been to getting to the New World before she had to reconsider the entire strategy.

She was about to sigh, but she sensed someone near her vicinity even before she heard the crunch of gravel, so she kept it to herself and looked over her shoulder.

That silly hat was becoming a familiar sight. Trafalgar Law looked up at her from a reasonable distance, having just noticed her. Please don’t get any closer, please—

He changed course and went towards Alex, who didn’t bother to hide how little she appreciated the company less than an hour after waking up.

“Morning walk?” she asked, or grunted, depending on who you asked.

“Yeah,” he replied, annoyingly awake. “What are you doing there?”

“Wasting time.”

Someone with a little more tact, or at least who cared about having it, would have taken a hint and left, but this was not the case. “I want to hear more about Sabaody.”

Oh, she wasn’t nearly awake enough for this, but she made an effort to not be outright rude. “Okay,” she relented. “But you ask me questions, I don’t want to think.”

That was good enough for him, it seemed. With irritating ease, and without having to step on the fallen stone, he boosted himself up against the wall and climbed it in a matter of seconds.

Something caught his attention when he looked up, and he stood up on the stone like the concepts of acrophobia and losing one’s balance were but a faraway ping in his radar. Alex’s mood was souring by the second, granted, a likely thing to happen at that hour. It wasn’t personal.

“Is that…?”

She turned to look in the same direction he was.

“Yeah. Red Line.”

“I didn’t think it was so close.”

“It’s a few days away still. It’s just that big.” She thought of the times she’d been at the base. It was impossible to see the top from its bottom. And, considering what lay up there, perhaps it was for the better. “You saw it from the other side, I guess?” North Blue was adjacent to the New World. In a sense, both of them were from the same side of the Line. How weird to think that they had anything in common.

“Yeah. We entered the Grand Line through Reverse Mountain.”

Expected, but incomprehensible to her unless he had a death wish. “Ships sink there every day. What do you want so bad that you’d risk that?”

“Wasn’t I the one asking the questions?” he shot back.

She gave him a deadpan look, then looked at the cup between her hands. It wasn’t doing much to drive away the numbness of her fingers. How many people had gone out to sea since the Great Age of Piracy began and failed because they bit more than they could chew? And they weren’t the only ones dying. For every decent man that got a ship and called himself a captain, there were ten whose only interest was pillaging villages and getting rich. Was that massive chain reaction what Gold Roger had intended with its final speech? Had it been a final fuck you to world order, or was there something else behind it?

She had contradicting thoughts about it. Roger’s last words had unarguably made the world worse, but…

Well.

The guy had been a badass. Even she wasn’t immune to seeing that. With every new pirate crew that sailed to Reverse Mountain to test its fortune, he kept proving how much bigger than life he had been. Twenty years down the line, he had become as much of a legend as the tales of gods from islands in the sky. The kind of legacy a regular person only dreams of having.

He said, I will never die.

He had been more right than he knew.

She looked at Trafalgar with renewed curiosity. “Are you trying to become Pirate King too?”

He didn’t give a clear answer, despite how easy of a question it was. “What if I am?”

It wasn’t a no. A straight yes would get many pirates laughed out of town even in a place like the Grand Line. There wasn’t a lot of room for romantic ideas of piracy when civilians lived in fear of black flags showing up one day at the port and taking away everything they had.

“Just curious.” She wasn’t feeling articulate enough to explain where she was going to herself, much less him. “Nothing wrong with dreaming big.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, she felt like she had called herself out. Where was she going? After Sabaody, after crossing the Red Line, after getting to her hometown? Those were only checkpoints. But where was her purpose? Inside the bag she had in her room at the inn, or somewhere else?

An awkward silence stretched along with the horizon. For some reason, he decided not to press her for answers and sat down. A small mercy for Alex’s neck.

“After the Log Pose sets, it will point to Fishman Island. How do we get to Sabaody first?”

It was a relief to be able to give an answer she didn’t have to think about. “It should be visible when you’re close enough to the Red Line. It looks like a random cluster of trees popped up in the middle of the ocean.”

“That’s it? Is it safe to dock anywhere?”

“Mostly. The archipelago is made up of 80 groves. 60 to 69 house a Marine garrison, and that’s where the ferries to Marineford and Mary Geoise leave from, so you don’t want to be there. Other than that…” She had to strain to remember the range of numbers. “20 to 29 is the only lawless area open to sea, so you know Marines won’t go there, but since no one’s keeping watch, the competition might try to sabotage you. I don’t know, I never had to worry about that sort of thing.”

“I’m not afraid of other crews,” he said with that devil may care attitude that got pirates killed left and right. “We haven’t come this far without knowing how to defend our ship.”

She wasn’t going to argue his point. “I’m just saying what I know. You do you.” But she took note to keep her opinions to herself, lest he had the urge to express how full of himself he was again.

He looked at her like he was trying to figure out what sort of hidden meaning her noncommittal response held, but little did he know that behind the sleepy façade her prevailing thought was it’s too early for this shit.

“You said you spent some time in the archipelago.” It wasn’t worded like a question, but it was a way to probe for info. She supposed that she would have wanted to know the credentials of her sources, had she been in his position.

She hummed. “I lived there a few years.”

Taking a sip from the cup, she returned her attention towards the outline in the horizon. It had been a constant part of the scenery back then, always peeking out from behind the trees and buildings of the groves closest to the shore. A grim reminder, on one hand, of those who lived above the peasants, but at the same time, Sabaody had been… fun. There was always something happening. Moderately dangerous, but always entertaining. She had forgotten how that felt after the years of routine in Duster Town.

A question brought her out of her thoughts. “Are you from this area?”

“Oh, no,” she said, surprised that he had even entertained the idea. “No, I got a scholarship to study in one of the World Government’s academies. I’m from the other side of the Red Line.”

“From the New World?” He said with surprise, and mulled over this new piece of information until it fit satisfactorily in whatever picture of her he had constructed in his mind. “So that’s where the accent’s from.”

It was unexpected comment after unexpected comment. “Excuse me?” she replied in an incredulous tone. “You are the one with a heavy accent.”

Now it was him who got caught off guard. “That’s not true,” he retorted. He looked like he was trying to determine if she was pulling his leg.

“Yes it is,” she insisted. “Everybody has an accent. You and your crew have that typical northern one that sounds like you’re about to shank the person you’re saying hello to.”

For a moment, she thought he had offended him to the point of silence. Just for a moment, because he didn’t take long to counter with, “You sound like you’re trying to whisper through a megaphone.”

She snorted with laughter as soon as the words sunk in. It was true that she spoke in a low voice most of the time. “If that isn’t the best description of Dressrosan I’ve heard—”

She felt an immediate change in atmosphere, like an electric current shooting through the air, and shut up as a precaution.

Trafalgar has tensed up all of a sudden and was staring at her like she had grown a second head, like she was trying to set her on fire with a glare, or both. “What did you say?”

She found herself tensing up in return, even though she didn’t know what she had done. But when a dangerous guy scowled at you like that, survival instincts kicked in. Goodbye sleepiness, and welcome life danger. “Um… Dressrosan?” She eyed him warily. “My mother tongue?”

His eyes grew wider, but other than that, his expression didn’t change much. “You’re from Dressrosa?”

She suddenly understood. It wasn’t the first time she got odd reactions when she said where she was from, but it had been a while. “Oh, right.” She sighed. “You’ve heard of the whole Doflamingo thing.”

Or… maybe she was wrong. He seemed a little out of it, like he was looking past her at… who knew what was in his head.

After a few seconds without a reply, she deemed it safe to speak. “Did I say anything wrong?”

“…No. I was just surprised.” After that, he seemed to go back to normal, though his voice sounded a little strained. He was still tense. “It’s a long way there.”

Suspicious. Did he know someone from there? “It’s not so much the distance as having the Red Line in the way. Getting permission to cross it takes time.” And she figured that she had run out of it.

“How’s the country?” He asked in a way that tried to sound casual, and maybe, maybe would have worked if he hadn’t made clear already that he had a particular interest in it. “Being ruled by pirates and all.”

She made a disgruntled sound. She had signed up to answer questions about the Sabaody Archipelago, not Dressrosa. There was a reason why she hadn’t been home in ages. “It’s doing fine. Better than fine, in fact. Economy is booming. People are happy.” She delivered each sentence in a quick, clipped tone. “It pisses me off.”

“Why?”

Because she always had to be the odd one out, she thought. And this guy wasn’t getting the message that she didn’t want to talk about it. “Doflamingo doesn’t deserve that kind of credit. He and his crew should go back to the hole they crawled out of.”

He huffed. “North Blue’s had enough of him already.”

Animosity was dripping from his words, and that made her feel a little less displeased and a lot more interested in what he had to say. He could’ve seen firsthand the repercussions of Doflamingo’s actions there.

“That’s true.” She didn’t know much about the specifics, but there was a reason the North Blue was considered the most dangerous out of the four cardinal seas. “I guess he did a number there before he moved onto the Grand Line.”

“You don’t sound very fond of him either.”

Look at that, a flat out admission of having feelings about someone.

“He’s scum,” she said with more venom than she had meant to. “He dethroned the king only to take over himself, reinstated gladiator fights to death, and he has a trafficking empire. The Human Auctioning House in Sabaody displays his Jolly Roger openly. But he’s a Warlord. As long as money keeps flowing and the Celestial Dragons can buy new pets, nobody seems to care.”

“And you do? You say your country’s doing well.”

She didn’t know whether to reply honestly or not. He was trying to dig deeper than she was comfortable with answering, but she was on a roll already. “Dressrosa used to be a very poor country. I’m not blaming the people who have a better life now, but I don’t think you can build anything stable from corruption. Someone will topple Doflamingo one day, and the country will go down with him.” Her tone was increasingly becoming more determined. “And when the time comes, I hope they get rid of kings once and for all.”

“You lost me at that last part.”

“Monarchy is an obsolete form of government. How’s the world going to get rid of the Celestial Dragons if we can’t even get rid of the pests at home?”

He stared at her blankly, and that was when she realized she had talked too much and looked away from him. Ah, to be a life form capable of fusing with granite and dying in the spot…

She heard a short, muffled laugh, and glanced at him. Great, a pirate making fun of her was exactly what she needed to start her day.

“Can’t say I took you for an anarchist.” He was smirking.

“What part of ‘fuck the government’ was unclear?” she replied, still avoiding to look at him. “The more time you spend near Mary Geoise, the more you realize everything has to burn down. Then there are the Marines.” A lost cause. “It’s even their combined fault that I’m stuck here.”

“What do you mean?” He sounded relaxed again. It was like he hadn’t been acting like a weirdo through the entire conversation about Dressrosa. “Aren’t you just waiting for a ship?”

She took a long breath in preparation to give the same explanation she’d been getting every time she spoke to a newly arrived sailor. “Kidnapping crews are infesting the waters ahead. Normal ships don’t want to go near Sabaody because there’s going to be a human auction next week. Marines aren’t helping because the government benefits from the slave trade, and I assume the Enies Lobby debacle has hit them hard. I already told Bepo you don’t have to worry about it, though. They only attack pirates if they think they’re weaklings.” And trying to change the subject to something that didn’t force her to wallow in her misery, she asked, “How much was it already, Mr. Supernova?”

He looked awfully satisfied with his title. “It’s not Trafalgar anymore?”

“I’ve always liked stars.” And speaking of Bepo, she remembered something from their conversation the day before. “By the way, I don’t think I introduced myself. I’m—”

“Bepo told me. I like Librarian-ya better.”

She had an urge to fling what was left of her tea at him, but she held back at the expense of looking away and letting a strained smile show. Not worth the loss of beverage. It wasn’t going to stop him from being an early morning smartass.

The silence that ensued this time didn’t feel as uncomfortable as before, but that bar was so low, it might as well have been underground.

#degrees of separation #tried to post this draft from mobile and the formatting imploded #why is tumblr so

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whirlybirdwhat · 4 years

Text

Daughter of the Sea, Daughter of the Storm (Pt. 2)

Gay viking pirate lady gets married to another pirate lady, read all about it, they are very in love.

Inspired by @onepiecehcs viking nami au and special thanks to @captainsupernoodle for inspiring me to write about sword proposals!!!

Enjoy!

Ao3 For Better Quality!

Vivi first saw her love on the sea, drenched and beautiful and axe-wielding.

She last saw her love holding her hand above her head like a declaration of love, like a defiance to the world, you cannot take me away from you.

She last kissed her love when the necklace she now fingers was draped around her neck like warmth and fire and love, and she last talked to her love two hours ago, when Nami called to say that the Thousand Sunny had entered Alabastian waters.

Vivi currently awaits to be kidnapped. She’s in a prime spot for it, on her throne, bags packed beside her and jewelry layered about her. Her hairs in a braid that Nami taught her, pattern familiar even after all these years, and a gift awaits in her hands for the Pirate King.

Kohza has been placed as next in line for succession, and the newest law Queen Vivi passed yesterday (In case of kidnapping by the Pirate King, the next in line shall immediately be placed as acting ruler, law effective for one year but all changes to succession permanent) without her council knowing is ready to be put into use.

All that is left, is a warrior to sweep her off her feet.

The door slams open – her guards jump to attention, but a look from the Pirate King (Conqueror’s Haki) silences any action.

Instead, her love walks through the door.

Her hair is braided more intricately than any wanted poster could reveal, and kept together with beads and stones and gold and diamond. Its longer than Vivi remembers, but still catches like fire in the desert light. Her shoulders are bare now, style changed, and revealing a long sleeve of tattoos – Vivi see’s clearly her first one on her shoulder, the X she holds near (resting just above a familiar bracelet), and the start of the straw hatted jolly Roger that Vivi’s sure is draped across her back, but she doesn’t know the stories behind the others and cannot wait to find out. Nami’s still wearing axes around her hip and on her back – now folding in with a cape of blue and gold and her skirts are hitched up to the brown belt around her waist, revealing loose pants and boots fit for sturdy warriors.

But her face – oh her face! How she missed that smile, those eyes, the familiar dusting of freckles and the soft quirk of the eyebrow. The laugh lines, from joyous celebration (She’s the navigator of the Pirate King) and the scar running from her left brow to left ear (now pierced and decorated) are new, but she’s still Nami.

“NAMI!” She calls, and stands from her chair, rushing to her.

Nami smiles and laughs shouting “VIVI!” in return, and sweeps her off her feet, strong and relentless in her love. “You aren’t supposed to run to your kidnapper!”

“You knew I would – I’ve always loved pirates and adventure, haven’t I?”

Nami only laughs again and kisses her senseless, picking her up and bringing her to her crew, her family.

The newspapers will talk about her kidnapping and Marine ships will be after the Pirate King’s ships for days, but Vivi will be smiling as she dresses in pirate garb and flees to the sea at last – her lover’s arms around her.

(She can’t wait to show her what she learned with the spear.)

Three months later and Vivi stands bundled in furs on the cliffs of Cocoyashi, nose red and hands clasped together. It’s the summer months, but it’s so much colder than the desert nights of Alabasta ever were, especially without her love wrapped around her.

Her love is instead covered in dirt and dust, tirelessly shoveling rock and soil out of the way as she digs into the ground. Her skirts a pulled up to reveal thick pants and her boots slosh in the mud with every step. Her hair – intricately braided and weaved with gold by Vivi this morning – is falling out and messily shaded about her face. The sky is of the mid-morning sun, dim, but catching the height of Nami’s cheek bones and the frame of her face, the dusting of frackles spilling across her cheeks and onto her body. Her hands do not tremble against the cold where they grip the shovel, so used to instead gripping the axe that lay nears Vivi’s feet.

Her love is dirty as she digs into her adopted mother’s tomb, her burial of treasures that she couldn’t bring with her beyond, and Vivi cannot help but be touched that her love does this all for her. For Vivi.

It has been an hour now, and Vivi almost can’t feel her toes. But the sun is shining, and her love is climbing out the trench she created, beautifully carved sword in hand.

According to legends of Cocoyashi, before warriors can be sworn to another they must first be sworn by the blade. By exchanging swords, they promise to protect one another and fight for one another, to keep each other by their side till their dying breath and then on till eternity.

Nami has no sword, but Bell-mere does, one promised to Nami or Nojiko on their wedding day – whoever married first.

Nami has won that race, and so it is Nami who digs into Bell-mere’s burial hill, where her body is not laid but her mortal belongings are, and retrieves the sword.

(Wolfsong, is this swords name, for power and the call for family. Nami tells Vivi of Bell-mere having the sword forged when she was three, a promise that Bell-mere’s love for them would always protect.)

She climbs out of the pit, sword in hand, and Vivi can only stare at her love as she goes to her knee and presents the sword – iron and metal strength with woven patterns promising a future protected. On its hilt rests a single golden ring with a small blue stone atop it.

Vivi does not speak despite the tears rolling down her cheeks (She is so very happy-) but reaches for the ring, sliding it on her finger, and then for the sword. When it is in her hand, she reaches to her own waist.

All the while, Nami kneels still in the cold, her breath breathing out plumes of white as she stands without her furs and dirtied. Her hands are still splayed out but she’s looking up at Vivi with adoration in her eyes and love in her smile.

(She has never looked more beautiful.)

Vivi draws the sword from her waist, golden and slender looking compared to Nami’s larger Viking gift, but it is no less deadly.

(Sunviper, is this swords name, for the thousand sun reign of Alabasta and the striking bite of the blade. Vivi whispers to Nami about how it was forged by her father’s orders, for that his daughter might rule for a thousand more suns with the deadliness of a thousand serpents.

They both laugh, because the former King Cobra could have never seen his daughter becoming a pirate.)

Vivi places this sword in Nami’s hand, and then a ring atop it. Nami stands, sword held carefully in her hands, and slips the ring on while holding the sword.

They stare at each other then, something silent and holy passing between them, like a vow or promise.

There’s water dripping down her chin now and Nami’s eyes are wet too, and suddenly that inescapable, beautiful moment is over and they fling themselves at each other because now –

Now they are promised by rings and swords and hearts, now they are betrothed by their own hands, now they are bound and when they get to the open seas of the Grand Line –

Nami will not only be her queen but her wife.

Nami was born in the depths of winter on the coldest mountain top, but she is married at the height of summer in the midst of the most dangerous waters of the world. The sun is shining and she is smiling, happiness having found a home in her chest and never leaving ever since she saw her beloved (her Queen) again.

In the midst of summer she is married atop of the Thousand Sunny held high on Laboon’s head so that all her guest may see as joyful music plays through the air. There are eleven thousand guests from a thousand places, all invited by her and Vivi’s hands. The Moby Dick carries half of them, private ships and the Straw Hat Fleet now numbering 10,000 strong carrying the rest.

In the crowd, Nami could spot Dressrossa and Fishman Island and Zou, a marine entourage and two emperors, Revolutionaries, billion berry men and women and a thousand riches. On the ship she could see her beloved crew and the people of her village, her sister and friends, Alabasta’s new king and her captain standing beside her.

But she doesn’t, because she has eyes only for one – Vivi.

She’s dressed in white and gold, silver decorating her limbs and hair. Her flowing sleeves are split to reveal golden arms, and her hair is braided in a fashion Nami knows she taught her. A smile, radiant like the Alabastian sun, shines at her. There are sunspots across her cheeks and a twinkle in her eye, the start of a tattoo running down her shoulder and the necklace Nami gave her around her neck and gods – Nami has never felt more flustered than in this moment.

She herself is nothing fancy – blue cloths and layered necklaces, bracelets around her waist with her log pose and her sword and axe by her side. Her hair is as intricate as Vivi’s, done up by her sister and braided in gold and iron compared to Vivi’s silver.

Nami feels amazing and in love, and she’s getting married at the height of summer to the Queen of Alabasta as the Pirate King’s Navigator.

She’s freer than she has ever been before.

The crowd grows quiet as the Pirate King lifts his hands. As captain, he’s preceding over the wedding.

It’s simple, the way all the Straw hats are simple.

“Nami,” He states her name, not giving any fanfare – the people are here for her, why do they need a reminder of who she is? “State your vows.”

Storm Summoner Nami takes a shuddering, happy breath than speaks. “Vivi. I have loved you since before I met you, I think. And then you shouted for us in Alabasta, you shouted for the fighting to stop, and that is when I knew I loved you. And every day after that, I have fallen in love again. I am a warrior… I cannot make the fighting stop – but I promise to fight for you, to guide, you to love you – and that is all I can possibly give beyond all the riches in the world. I love you, my queen. Marry me?”

Luffy’s grinning wildly next to her ear, blessedly silent for once, but Vivi’s face is bright red as she begins her own vows without prompting. “Nami – my love, my queen, my light – I have practiced this speech for a thousand days, but I don’t think anything I could possibly say could prove my love to you more than action. You fought for me in Alabasta, and you have given me gift after gift after gift – so here is mine.” And with that, Queen Vivi of Alabasta lunges forth and kisses her lover with a passion that rivals the sun.

Luffy laughs and the crowd cheers. “THAT’S IT! I PROUNOUCE YOU WIFE AND WIFE! LET THE FEAST BEGIN!!” And the world erupts in euphonious cheers as thunder from cannonballs and godly might cracks in the background.

Vivi and Nami part and laugh and smile – as they head down the deck, Nami hoists her wife onto her shoulder and jumps onto the Moby Dick, where a feast awaits them both.

In between gulps of whiskey and wine and bits of delicacies that only the most skilled cooks could make, Nami holds her wife’s hand and smiles at her.

After a week of feasting they shall move to Raftel once more, and show their last crew member the treasure of ages, but for now?

Nami holds her in her arms and relishes in happiness.

At midnight she dances with her wife, the party still going strong but muted to her ears. A low song, unknown to the everyone but them whispers between their breaths.

Nami sways, Vivi’s hands clasped in hers as she touches her forehead to her wife’s.

Her wife. It’s been half a day but she still cannot believe it.

She hums, Vivi humming with her, the low playing of a violin in the background singing with them.

“I love you,” she says simply, like a truth that cannot be stolen, and Vivi responds the same.

“And I love you. Are you ready to shake the world?”

A kiss and a promise – “Always.”

But for now – they sway, breaths shared and hearts stolen by each other and promised swords hanging by their sides and rings on their fingers. They are still dressed in their wedding garp, though Nami has shedding her cloak and Vivi her cape. Simply, like all straw hats are, in love as adventure brews on the horizon.

The papers talk about it for weeks.

The Navigator of the Pirate King and the Straw Hat Pirates, Storm Summoner Nami, warrior of Cocoyashi, wedded on the pirate ships of two emperors to the Kidnapped, or now Runaway Ransom Queen of Alabasta, Nefertari Vivi. The wedding attended by thousands of people including various princesses and kings and emperors – all gathered together for two people

The next outrageous stunt of the Straw Hats – and that is not all.

A week after the marriage and consequential feast for a week, the Straw Hats do not take the Underwater route to the New World. Instead, they ransack Mariejois.

‘”A honey moon,” they say Nami calls it, “A gift to my wife,” Referring to the slaves freed and the riches stolen.

“A disaster,” The Celestial dragons shout, “Kill them all,” they scream holding Saint Charloss’s beheaded body, courtesy of the legendary Oska.

The marriage of Nefertari Nami and Nefertari Vivi is an earth-shaking one but they do not care.

For who could challenge them?

#this got gay real quick fellas you better enjoy I love tem #navi #nami #vivi #nefertari vivi #viking nami #VIKING NAMI!!!!!!!!!!!#op #one piece #opau #opfic #whirlywhat #whirlywrites #onepiecehcs #luffy #monkey d. luffy #au

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