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“It’s Fish Day!”
The rough blanket covering all three of them goes flying off into the corner as Luffy launches himself bodily off their thin mattress, careening harmlessly into the wall and bouncing out the door of their sort-of bedroom, yelling excitedly the whole way.
“Please make him shut up,” Sabo grumbles into his corner of their shared pillow, scrunching his face further into the fabric. “I don’t know what time it is, but it is too early.”
“Nngh,” Ace mumbles back. Sabo’s not wrong. “Dun wanna. Why should I?” He could ignore Luffy. He’d had a lot of practice at it. More than Sabo, anyway.
“Because I won more fights yesterday. Loser deals with Luffy’s morning energy.” Sabo follows up his argument with a kick to Ace’s shins. “Hurry, before Dadan—"
The argument is rendered moot, however, when the door slams back open and Dadan herself lobs Luffy back at them like a ball, tossing him unceremoniously on top of Ace and Sabo as if an entire seven-year-old was appropriate ammunition. Luffy, for his part, doesn’t seem to care about being manhandled like this, still crowing about whatever it is that has him so excited.
“What have I said about letting him loose in the morning?” Dadan growls, voice scratchy with smoke and early morning gravel. “He listens to you two, the least you could do is keep him quiet and contained until a decent hour.”
Ace wants to protest that just because Luffy listened to them more than he listened to Dadan, that didn’t mean he actually listened to them, but he’s interrupted by the topic of the conversation wiggling like a landed fish on top of him.
“But Dadan, it’s Fish Day!” Luffy protests, scrambling to get up. He can hear Sabo’s breath whoosh out of his mouth as Luffy’s knee digs into his stomach, and he has to dodge a rubbery elbow to the face as he sits up, grabbing Luffy around the waist with one arm and covering his face with his free hand. It doesn’t stop him moving entirely, but it at least slows him down.
“Luffy,” Ace deadpans, hand still over his mouth. “What the hell is ‘Fish Day?’”
Upon the removal of his hand—quickly, before Luffy got it in his head to lick it or something—his brother, predictably, says a lot of words that don’t make sense. Ace catches ‘fish’ and ‘Makino’ and maybe ‘food,’ but it was always food with Luffy, so he might be just making assumptions. Sabo looks just as confused as he does though, and Ace takes comfort in the knowledge that Fish Day seems to be just as mysterious a thing to him.
“Some fishermen’s festival or whatever,” Dadan huffs from the doorway. “Nonsense we don’t get up to here on the mountain. Makino probably put it in his ear when she was up here a couple days ago.” She levels the two older boys with one of her Looks. “Get him out of here if he’s going to be like this, I don’t need him bouncing all over hopped up on excitement.” And then she’s gone, off to smoke or grumble about life or yell at the rest of the bandits or whatever. Business as usual.
“You should come!” Luffy says excitedly, grabbing both Ace and Sabo by their arms and making his best attempt to pull them out the door, which only results in him getting farther and farther away as his arms stretch and the brothers sit unmoved. “There’s a giant feast at the end of the night and a big bonfire and music and Gramps normally takes me but Makino says he can’t make it this year.” The last part is said in the exact same chipper tone of voice as the rest, but Ace has gotten good at reading Luffy’s moods and a spike of guilt runs up his spine. He’s gone so stupidly soft for this kid. From the way Sabo sighs next to him, he knows he’s not alone.
Ace looks at Sabo. Sabo just shrugs.
“I mean, free food is free food,” Sabo says.
Ace sighs as Luffy lets out a cheer. Fish Day it was.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“From the way Luffy was going on about it, I expected there to be more activity,” Sabo muses.
It’s a reasonable observation, given how relatively quiet everything seems for a festival day, but it’s not like either of them are an expert on that matter. Sabo hadn’t been to Foosha Village at all before, and Ace had really only hovered around the perimeter, occasionally stealing from unguarded baskets and awkwardly waving at the villagers who tried to greet him. It figures that their first real time would be chasing Luffy through streets he knew much better than they did.
He'd taken off as soon as the town had become visible through the trees, forcing Ace and Sabo to run after him to catch up, the three of them hurtling across the low jungle foothills and into the fields surrounding Foosha until they’d reached the town itself where it hugged the edge of the shore.
Fortunately, Luffy didn’t go very far after that.
“Isn’t this Makino’s place?” Sabo mutters as they walk up the steps of the wooden building near the docks labeled ‘Party’s Bar.’ Ace just shrugs. Makino runs a bar, he knows, but he doesn’t know how many bars a small fishing village is supposed to have. The rougher parts of Edge Town are full of them. Maybe it’s the same here.
The inside of the bar is dim and quiet, empty except for where Luffy is already kneeling on a bar stool at the front, noisily munching on something sitting in a dish on the counter. Ace would take that as proof positive that this was Makino’s place, except that he was pretty sure Luffy would eat unattended food literally anywhere.
“Boys!”
Makino walks out from the back room, holding a bowl of something that is steaming gently on a tray. She looks happy, but she always looks happy to Ace, and she beckons him and Sabo out of the doorway with a smile.
Ace walks forward and tries not to squirm under Makino’s gentle gaze. He didn’t get Makino. She was nice, even when she didn’t have to be, and she never seemed flustered when any of them were rude. She kept giving him and Sabo new clothes and other things that she said ‘reminded her of them’ even though she only knew them because of Luffy and didn’t owe them anything.
Makino places the steaming bowl in front of Luffy, who leaves off stuffing his face with bar snacks and redirects his efforts to his new target. A quick trip to the back later, and two more bowls are placed on the counter next to him, and Makino flashes an expectant look at Ace and Sabo as she adds cups of fruit juice to each of the table settings.
Neither of them being the sort to turn down free food, Sabo and Ace descend upon the bowls—oatmeal, with fruit—without another word. It’s stupidly good, a nice change from their normal breakfast of a bowl of rice and whatever they managed to catch themselves, but Makino always brought good food with her. This was apparently just where it all came from.
“I’m so glad you came,” Makino says cheerfully, as she busies herself with some chore behind the counter. “I told Luffy he should bring you this year. It’s a shame we’ve never had you down for the festival before.” She smiles. “Especially you, Ace, we’ve been telling Garp he should bring you down for ages.”
Ace ducks his head closer to his bowl of oatmeal and resolutely focuses on stuffing his face. He knows why he hasn’t. Festivals aren’t for monsters. Makino would understand that if she knew who he was.
“Luffy said something about a ‘Fish Day,’” Sabo says between bites, neatly changing the subject. “Is that the festival?”
Makino laughs. “It’s not the worst description, I suppose,” she hums, head tilted to the side in thought as she runs a clean rag across the collection of mugs on the back shelf. “The festival doesn’t have a name per say—it’s the last day of the summer fishing season. The town makes a day of it; everyone helps haul the last catch in, and we have a big feast on the beach as the sun goes down.” She looks over at Luffy, who is already licking his bowl clean. “Are you going to help with the fish this year, Luffy?” she says. “I don’t think you’re going to be allowed to help with the food again, after last time.”
Luffy pouts, and Ace wonders what sort of havoc last year was—with Luffy and food in the mix the possibilities were endless—but he bounces back quickly enough.
“I’m gonna haul in the biggest fish!” he announces, flexing a skinny rubber arm like that proved anything. “And you’ll have to make it the most important fish at the feast!”
“Oh, you’re going to catch our centerpiece for tonight?” Makino says, sounding suitably impressed. “Well then, better hop to it. The boats came back hours ago, and they’re due to start pulling the nets in any minute now. You’ll have to hurry.”
Luffy squawks in panic, and, recognizing the telltale signs of a Luffy imminently about to run off, both Sabo and Ace hurriedly finish their own bowls of oatmeal.
“Thank you for the food,” Sabo says politely, and Ace awkwardly echoes him. Luffy is already standing by the door, looking extremely put upon that his brothers are so slow in the face of what he clearly sees as a very important adventure.
“Come on,” he whines. At least he hasn’t run ahead this time, Ace muses. Yet, anyway.
“Go have some fun,” Makino encourages them as she gathers up the bowls and glasses. “Who knows, maybe you will pull in the centerpiece fish.” She winks. “Either way, don’t have too much fun that you’re too tired to enjoy the feast later! We’ll be working hard on it.”
That bit of encouragement is all Luffy needs, apparently, because he’s out the door and Ace and Sabo, once again, are forced to give chase.
“This festival better be more than just chasing him everywhere,” Ace grumbles. “We could have done that back up on the mountain.”
Sabo just laughs at him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Luffy!”
The chorus of greetings as they descend upon the long stretch of beach that curves away from the waterfront portion of the town is friendly, at least, and no one seems surprised to see them or by Luffy’s exhortations that he’s here to get the biggest fish.
“Hey, squirt,” an older man who’s perched on a narrow dock overseeing all the bustle on the beach calls to Luffy, prompting protests to not call him that, he’s not that little, stupid. “We were wondering if we were going to see you this year. After Garp dragged you up the mountain, we weren’t sure he was going to allow you back down.” He takes a drag from the long wooden pipe in his hand, exhaling a stream of thick white smoke. “Who are your friends?”
“They’re my brothers!” Luffy shouts back, running up the dock, prompting Ace and Sabo to chase after him. Luffy and docks were a bad combination and they’d left their pipes in the bar, so they had nothing handy to haul him out of the water with. “This is their first time!”
“Brothers?” the man says, looking Ace and Sabo over. Ace refuses to back down, waiting for the judgement, or for him to say Luffy’s a liar, but all that comes is a crooked smile. “One of you is the baby Garp brought home a while back, right? Has he really been hiding two of you up there the entire time? Stingy shit, half the town’s gonna give him a piece of their mind when they find this out.”
Ace blinks. That was…not the answer he was expecting.
“You, uh. Believe him?” Sabo says, speaking for both of them. “I mean, Ace I get, but I—” he gestures to himself, as if to say I don’t look a thing like them.
“Luffy can’t lie, everyone knows that,” the old man says with a shrug. “So if he says you’re his brothers, that’s good enough for me.” He stands up from his seat with an exaggerated groan. “All right then, if you’re here for the hauling-in, let me explain to you newbies how this works.” He hops down to the sand. “Freckles’ name is Ace? What should I be calling you, blondie?”
“This is Sabo!” Luffy helpfully answers, bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet. “Now show us the nets, old man!”
“Brat,” their guide huffs, but he doesn’t actually seem offended and leads them over to where groups of people are milling about in pairs, unwinding long coils of rope that disappear into the surf at the far ends.
“Everyone took their boats out first thing to set the nets across the mouth of the bay,” he says, pointing out across the water, where a series of brightly painted wooden buoys bobbed in the waves. “When we give the signal, we’ll all buddy up to pull them in.” He gestures at the big long winding ropes laying in the sand. “We need to go pretty quick, else the fish will have too many chances to swim out and escape, so it’s a group effort.”
“Why the big nets at all?” Sabo says, kicking at one of the ropes. “Isn’t it harder to do it that way instead of on the boats?”
He laughs. “I mean, you’re not wrong,” he says. “But there are a couple of reasons. One, it’s traditional. This is how we’ve always seen off the summer fishing season, and unless something pretty dramatic happens, I expect it’s how we always will. On the other hand, there’s a measure of practicality to it as well; the smart and strong fish are more likely to make it out of the nets, so that means they’re the ones that go on to spawn the next generation. It ensures we’re not hurting our own livelihood that way.” He winks. “And, when you get old and scrawny like me, you don’t tend to get sad about a little less weight in the nets.”
“’Old and scrawny,’ my ass,” one of the younger fishermen standing nearby mutters. “He’ll be out-hauling us until the islands sink into the sea.”
“Sounds simple enough,” Sabo says, picking up one of the lengths of rope. “And this isn’t too heavy, either.” He tosses the rope to Ace, who finds himself agreeing. “Can Ace and I take this one?”
“By yourselves?” a cocky looking younger man says. “No way two shrimps like you can handle a full net by your lonesome.”
“Nuh-uh!” Luffy says emphatically, stomping a sandaled foot in the sand and glaring at the offending fisherman with all the fury a seven-year-old could muster. “Ace and Sabo are super strong! I bet they’ll get a bigger fish than anyone!”
“Didn’t you want to catch the biggest one?” Sabo says, and though he sounds perfectly reasonable, Ace recognizes the look that’s stealing over his brother’s face. Not that he blames Sabo; they’ve been challenged.
Luffy makes an irritated noise. “Ace and Sabo have to now.” He nods his head emphatically. “Because they’re the strongest, and I’m gonna beat the strongest.”
Ace wills his traitorous face to stop blushing at Luffy’s extremely unique form of fish-based logic. His face does not listen, and from the way Sabo’s pulling the brim of his oversized hat down, he’s not the only one with that problem. They were going to do this anyway, he tells himself. Because the asshole over there challenged them. Not because Luffy believed in them.
“Nothing wrong with letting them try,” the old man with the pipe says with a chuckle. “It’s their first time, after all. Besides,” he says, chuckling. “I ain’t about to bet against any kid Garp calls family. I’ve been around far too long for that. Have at it, kids. On my mark.”
It’s not hard. It’s not super easy, either, and he can see why it’s important to have more than one person on the ropes. If one person pulls too fast or too slow, the net swings at an angle, and all the fish can easily escape. But Sabo and Ace have been working together for literal years, and soon they have the cadence of their pulls matching like clockwork, speedily and steadily pulling the net closer to shore. Luffy stretches his arms to try and hold both ropes from the back, but his lack of control mostly means he swings the loose ends around like jump ropes.
Soon, definitely sooner than the group of fisherfolk is expecting, the net reaches the shore, and Ace is gratified to find that it is full of fish. He’s not sure what kinds; he’s mostly just eaten fish, not paid attention to the different varieties, but a lot of them are big and tasty looking, so he figures they did a good job.
“Holy shit,” he hears someone breathe in the crowd, and just like that, his bad mood returns.
Ace braces himself for the inevitable. Adults never believed kids could do anything, and they hated to be proven wrong. In a moment, Ace and his brothers would get chased off for being nuisances, called names, or worse. Maybe they’d let Luffy stay around, since everyone seemed to like him fine. But Sabo and him wouldn’t get anything like the same consideration.
Instead, the gathered fisherfolk start clapping.
“Damn, kids, that’s a hell of a way to make me eat my words,” the man who’d challenged them says cheerfully, as if instead of embarrassing him they’d done him a favor. “Well done!”
Ace can see Sabo glance at him out of the corner of his eye, the same confusion he’s feeling written on his face. “You’re not…mad?” Sabo says.
“Mad?” another of the fishermen says, like it’s the most ridiculous thing. “That was amazing. There are grown adults who can’t do that. Why would we be mad?” His face shifts into a frown. “Hell, kid, did you think we’d be angry at you for a display like that? That’s just sad.” His smile returns. “You have to be proud of the good work you do, even if no one else is! It’s what the effort you put in deserves!”
“O-oh,” Ace says softly. He’d been so ready to fight the sudden change in mood has left him reeling. They’re not mad. Actually, genuinely not mad. Why?
“You know anything about boats, kids?” a woman who’d been hauling the nets on the other side of them pipes up. “Planning on being a pirate like your little brother here? Because if you want a proper instruction on how to sail, well, I’m no pirate, but with the summer season done I’ll have a lot more free time if you’d like to learn.” She smiles as she moves to the next set of ropes, hauling one end up over a heavily muscled shoulder. “Just say the word, ducklings, and I’d be happy to.”
“The King of the Pirates,” Luffy protests, because of course he does, because that’s all Luffy would get out of such an offer, even as both Sabo and Ace stand there slack jawed. “And I’m not little!”
“Sorry, your Majesty,” comes the response, and the whole group laughs, but it’s the same good-natured laugh as they’d had earlier, and even if Luffy makes a face and starts squawking about not being taken seriously, none of the mockery feels…mean.
Ace…doesn’t know what to do about that.
“Can’t let Luffy have all the fun!” Sabo not-answers for both of them, gap-toothed grin hiding what Ace knows has to be the same feelings. People weren’t nice to them. They especially weren’t nice to Ace. Sabo was good at faking being a normal kid when he needed to be, but Ace was just the child of a monster who lived in the woods. Surely, if they knew the truth, they wouldn’t keep saying such nice things, right?
Right?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Despite the optimism of the fishermen that Ace and Sabo’s help would have them done in a fraction of the time the hauling-in normally took, it takes most of the afternoon to finish reeling in the nets. Ace expects for them to be mad about it, at the lack of efficiency or something, but they seem to take it in stride, telling him not to worry. With the amount of good cheer in the air, it’s hard even for him to think they’re just lying to make him feel better.
And it’s nice; all of it. It’s work, but it’s fun; the kind of work that doesn’t feel so hard because you’re enjoying the other people who you’re working with. Sure, some of the delays could be chalked up to Luffy getting distracted and falling in the ocean, but that didn’t happen any more than Foosha’s fisherfolk getting distracted by their own conversations, or someone coming down from town with some food or to fetch fish for the evening celebration and having to deal with twenty people trying to argue that one of the specimens they’d hauled in was the best option.
And if Ace and Sabo had managed to pull in three of the winning fish, one of which they were assured would make an excellent feast centerpiece, well, maybe he was a little proud of that.
Said fish were now roasting in a big pit lined with giant leaves from the big fruit trees that dotted the edge of town, watched over like a hawk by the mayor and a few other eagle-eyed elders so that certain people wouldn’t try to sneak a bite ahead of time.
The entire town is out on the beach and it’s intimidating. There are so many people he doesn’t know, who don’t know who or what he is, and it makes Ace want to shrink back into the shadows. But new people keep coming by to talk to him and Sabo, not just Luffy, who has spent the entire evening bouncing between wrapping himself around them and dancing off to talk to people, and they’re all being so damned nice Ace thinks he’s going to shake apart.
He tries distracting himself with the food, which usually works. There’s much more variety than what he normally eats, fruits and vegetables and breads fried on hot stones near the firepits—but no meat that isn’t fish, because this festival is all about the fish, he’s told—the work of the other half of the village that hadn’t been out on the beach. And even though he expects to hear some comments on how much they’re eating, the people of Foosha are either too used to Luffy or just don’t care, because all he hears is that it’s good for young boys to have such healthy appetites.
The woman who’d offered to teach them to sail had come by to ask them more about what they wanted to know, and when Sabo had tentatively voiced being interested in maps and navigation, had pulled over another woman who she said was Foosha’s best. She and Sabo had talked animatedly for a long time, even as the first woman had excitedly pulled out a small length of rope and shown Ace a whole bunch of sailor’s knots, and when Ace had halfheartedly joked about how this would make it easier to keep Luffy from getting into trouble, had cracked up laughing and told him he was a good brother.
It's slow, but Ace finds himself getting lulled into the pace of the festival, of the happy atmosphere, and the way everyone was included in everyone else’s jokes and stories. He’s heard at least three variations of the same embarrassing tale of a complete stranger’s very bad day, but at least one of those had been from the mouth of the subject themselves, and willingly told. Food and drink are being passed around with abandon, and Ace has lost count of the number of times someone has come by with something new that Ace and Sabo “just had to try.”
Ace had become so relaxed, in fact, he doesn’t even register the danger until it’s right on top of them.
“What’s all this then?” a familiar, gut-dropping voice booms. “I didn’t miss the entire day, did I?”
Ace sees Luffy’s mouth drop open, as their Gramps marches into town, dressed in one of his awful, flowered shirts, as if his arrival wasn’t the most disruptive thing that had happened all day.
“I thought he wasn’t supposed to be here,” Sabo hisses in his ear, and Ace just shrugs as they scramble to hide behind the log bench they’re both sitting on.
He’s going to be in such trouble. Gramps is going to see him here and pitch a fit, because he’s not supposed to be seen. Luffy has an excuse, these people already know him, but Ace? Ace is supposed to be hiding. Ace was supposed to be invisible.
“Garp!” the old fisherman from the morning calls. “Why didn’t you tell us you were hiding three little rascals up the mountain?” Well, so much for hiding, then.
Gramps booms out another laugh as he scoops Luffy, indignant and squawking, up to give him a hug that would probably break something in most people not made of rubber. “Ah, you caught me,” he chuckles, and then stops abruptly, blinking owlishly. “Wait, three?”
“Luffy introduced us!” Another person shouts, and that’s when Garp finally clocks him and Sabo and any hope Ace has of escaping this confrontation shrivels up and blows away.
Ace tenses as Gramps gives him and Sabo the once-over, strolling over to them like nothing about this is weird and like no rules have been broken. Luffy uses the distraction as an excuse to escape and return to stuffing his face, and Ace can feel Sabo doing his best not to outright run from the man he’s only heard stories about, as Garp towers over them like a grinning nightmare in floral print.
“Huh,” the old man hums, squinting down at Sabo in particular. “Don’t remember you. You got a name, grandson of mine?”
“Sabo,” the target of his attention says slowly and deeply suspiciously.
“Don’t suppose you want to be a marine, do you Sabo?”
“Like hell,” Sabo spits back, and Garp just sighs as every person within earshot bursts into hysterical laughter.
“Don’t know why you thought that was ever going to work, Garp!” someone shouts from the crowd. “Ain’t anyone here ever been excited about being a marine except you!”
“A man can dream, can’t he?” Gramps roars back, but that only elicits more laughter from the crowd. “All right, squirt,” he says, turning back to Sabo. “We’ll catch up tomorrow, when there’s less noise.” And he reaches out and pats Sabo on his head, which Ace is sure is meant to be comforting but doesn’t do much more than slightly flatten Sabo’s hat.
“Hey, kiddo,” he says to him, and Ace flinches. Garp just laughs. “Lighten up, Ace. It’s a party! None of this scowling and grumping, you hear?” And Ace is subjected to a similar, if definitely rougher pat on the head, before Garp straightens up with a grin, as if he hadn’t just blown all of Ace’s expectations out of the water. “We’ll spend some good quality time together tomorrow, but you don’t need me cramping your style right now.”
“Slappy!” Garp yells suddenly, before moving away without another word. Ace watches him make a beeline to the mayor, who looks just as thrilled to see Garp as Ace feels, and tries not to feel ignored. This was a good thing…right? He’s not getting yelled at, anyway.
“What the hell just happened?” Sabo says quietly, shaking his hat back into shape.
“Gramps likes you!” Luffy chirps happily from Ace’s other side, where he’d watched the entire conversation go down while demolishing a whole fish all by his lonesome. “Ah. That probably means you get training now though.” He worries at a fishbone with his teeth. “Sorry.”
“Lucky me,” Sabo sighs, as they all watch Garp settle in among the villagers across the bonfire. “You both better have been joking about what that means.”
“Nah,” Ace says, a little of his previous cheer returning at his brother’s expense. “If anything, it’s worse. Gramps goes real hard on the people he cares about.”
Sabo’s face made Ace wish for a cameko.
Many hours later, the feast is winding down, and Ace can feel his eyes getting heavier. He’s full to bursting with food, and it’s late. Definitely too late to walk back up the mountain safely, even with a nearly full late summer moon in the sky. Luffy’s sprawled across his and Sabo’s laps, snoring and dead to the world already, and moving seems like too much effort, even if Ace doesn’t like the idea of being so exposed and out in the open like this.
“Did you two have a good time?” comes a soft voice from behind them, and both he and Sabo crane their necks around to see Makino crouched nearby.
“I...yeah,” Ace says. Because he did. He didn’t know when he had stopped flinching at the possibility of things ending badly, but he had. Even Gramps showing up had only disrupted the feeling for a little bit, before everything had gone back to stories and songs and food and good cheer.
“I’m glad,” she says with a soft smile. “You know you’re welcome down here any time, right?”
No, Ace didn’t know. This entire day had turned everything he’d thought about the people who lived at the base of the mountain on its head. He’s met the people in the Terminal, in Edge Town; even the snobs up in High Town. No one was this nice, especially not to random brats they didn’t even know. No one just accepted people like this town had them in such good faith.
Dadan cared, Ace knew that deep down, but she was like Ace; it was hard to show those feelings when the world wasn’t as kind. And Ace respected that; if the world was going to be cruel, you didn’t give it a chance to hurt you. You protected yourself and your people however you needed to. There was none of the easy acceptance he’d been seeing all day. Being that open would only result in getting hurt. But the villagers seemed to do it easy as breathing.
“Why?” is all Ace says.
Makino reaches out and gently brushes Ace’s bangs out of his face. “Because you’re part of our community, Ace. All you boys are. And communities take care of each other. Doesn’t matter how you got here, or if you want to be a pirate or a marine or a fisherman or a bandit. You’re still part of our family, and this is how we show we care.” A soft hand rests on Ace’s shoulder, mirrored on Sabo’s, where he’s also looking at Makino like he doesn’t know how to process the words she’s just said. “I’m sorry no one’s told you that before.”
A gentle squeeze to both of their shoulders, and she’s walking off into the quiet, leaving them alone once more with Luffy, still dead to the world about what’s just happened.
“Do you think she means it?” Sabo says finally, breaking the quiet.
“I don’t know,” Ace breathes.
I really want her to.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The bonfire has nearly burned out by the time Makino spreads a blanket across the intertwined pile of limbs the boys had slumped into against the bench they’d spent most of the night sitting on.
“Don’t see why you don’t just bring them inside,” the mayor grumbles from nearby. “A bed would be a better place for them than a pile of beach sand.”
“Nonsense!” Garp is carrying three mugs of the remainder of Makino’s best ale, probably dredged from the bottom of the cask, given how much the town had indulged that evening. She declines when he offers her one, and he shrugs and keeps it for himself, passing the third off to the mayor. “If those three can’t handle a nice night like tonight, then I’m going to have to have words with Dadan.” He drops to the ground near the boys with a thump, ignoring the handy log seating altogether.
“I’ll make sure they get inside before it gets too cold,” Makino promises. “But they look so comfortable, it’d be a shame to move them just yet.”
Garp’s eyes soften, and even the mayor huffs a fond little sigh before taking his own seat.
“Hey Slappy,” Garp says, reaching over the space between them to give the mayor a feather light—for him—punch on the arm. “I’ve got three of them now! Fancy that.” He sounds positively giddy.
“That enough to make you stay around?” the mayor grumbles back, rubbing his shoulder. “Surely you’ve done enough for the marines by now that you can be allowed time with your family for once.”
“Nah,” Garp says, and there’s real regret there, just like there is every time he’s had to leave before. “Can’t risk it. You don’t want the sort of people who’d come looking for me paying too much attention to Foosha anyway. I’d love to, don’t get me wrong, but—“ he shrugs. “Don’t think I’d be too good at it in the long run, anyway.”
“Better you than that bandit you foisted them off on,” the mayor grumbles. “There were better options, Garp. You told me and Makino what was going on both times you came here with a little brat in tow. We know the risks.”
“You know we’d take them,” Makino says softly. “You wouldn’t even have to ask, Garp. The two of us might be the only ones who know the whole truth of the matter, but you saw the town tonight; they love the boys. Do you really think they’d turn them away for anything?”
“That’s why I love you, my girl,” Garp says with a smile. “You always see the best in people.” He sighs. “But even if the people of Foosha are the salt of the earth, I can’t risk it. I already messed Ace up pretty bad when I told him about his dad. It’s why I’m not telling Luffy about his, not until he’s old enough to decide if he cares or not.” He grimaces. “Ace was such a resilient brat, I thought he could take it. Shows how much I know about kids.” He drains the rest of his mug dry and chucks it over his shoulder. Makino makes a mental note of where it lands for later.
“Besides,” he continues. “If anything your immediate problem would be the blond brat. That’s a noble’s kid if I’ve ever seen one, underneath all the dirt and cheek. Little too well-spoken, little too clever for his own good.” He snorts a laugh. “Plus the symbol on his belt’s plastered all over High Town, and there’s no way those silver spoon scumbags would let anything it was on get into the hands of the lesser folk if they could help it.” He glances over to the pile of children nearby fondly. “But the kid’s got a good head on his shoulders, if he left so young on his own. I wouldn’t want to be associated with that place either.”
“So they’ll stay with Dadan,” he says firmly, reaching for his second drink. “She’s a big enough mama bear to deal with any trouble those three can haul in. It’ll be fine.” He sounds like he’s trying to convince himself. “But,” he allows. “If you would keep checking in on them, letting them have days like today? I couldn’t thank you enough. The world’s not going to be kind to them, and they’ll need to be strong enough to beat what’s gonna get thrown at them, but you need good memories to help with the rough patches as much as strength.”
“Of course,” Makino says, looking back at the boys. “Kids like them deserve as many good days as they can get.”
“That’s all I ask,” Garp says quietly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In the center of the pile, warmed by both his brothers and the blanket, a small, scarred face breaks out into a smile.
He knew bringing his brothers to Fish Day was a good idea.