Chapter Text
Luciana was silent as she stared out towards the island swiftly growing larger on the horizon, her one good eye squinting against the harsh reflection of the sun off the water. For the most part, she’d been silent ever since she’d been brought aboard the ship. Not that she’d been very talkative to begin with. There’s really only been one person in the last eleven years of this life that she’d ever really talked to, if she was being honest with herself; but she was gone now –separated from her by miles upon miles of cold ocean waves, and even colder waves of fear and people who would seek to keep them apart.
She stopped her thoughts there. The distance between them was too vast and painful to bear at the moment, and Luciana knew she needed to conserve her strength. They’d see each other again, she knew. They’d promised. And if they ever wanted to stay together once that day came, Luciana needed to be strong enough to protect her. To protect them both.
“Enjoying the view, girl?” came the gruffly amused question from behind her, and Luciana’s entire form tensed. She hadn’t sensed him coming; and though he wasn’t a threat at this moment, she harshly chastised herself for getting distracted enough by her own misery to let her guard down around the man who’d taken both her right eye and her truest friend away from her mere weeks before.
Luciana didn’t dare disrespect Vice Admiral Garp by ignoring him though, and answered his question with a curt nod and a soft “It’s finally close enough for me to see it.” He was the only person she’d spoken to at all since he’d taken her, though to their credit a few of the other marines on board the ship had tried.
Garp laughed, and clapped her on the shoulder with a meaty hand that bore more force than any sane person would consciously use against the fragile form of a child. Luciana didn’t buckle beneath the blow though, the majority of its strength dissipating against the protective Haki that flickered over her skin like an invisible suit of armor. Rather than be upset by this however, Garp only laughed harder, which Luciana couldn’t help but resent. The remarkable grasp of Armament and Observation Haki she’d displayed when they met had been what had intrigued Garp about her in the first place, and after what he’d done to her eyes, she’d…
Luciana forced herself to stop thinking about it. Like it or not, her Haki had saved both her and Robin, even if it hadn’t been enough to keep them together. Without it, they’d both be dead or worse. And Luciana knew better than anyone how completely death could sever you from the people you love. Garp had shown her what he thought of as mercy.
“You’d best give up on using that eye of yours,” Garp advised her, oblivious to her inner musings. “It won’t heal more than it has, and you don’t need it anyways.”
Luciana said nothing, but nonetheless tied the blindfold she’d taken to wearing back over her eyes and plunging the world back into darkness. Garp was right, of course. She'd been slashed across both eyes with a knife during their fight. She’d lost her right eye entirely, but her left eye had recovered enough that she could now partially see out of it again, albeit her vision with it was extremely poor and obscured by the accumulated scar tissue. She’d never be able to see properly again, she knew, though Luciana was just inclined to be grateful that she hadn’t died from infection.
Observation Haki had been something she was born with. Something she’d worked relentlessly to train with all her life. Luciana didn’t need her eyes to ‘see’, and could in fact ‘see’ better when she wasn’t using them, but still… she’d been terrified when, at first, she thought she’d lost both eyes entirely. And immeasurably grateful when it turned out that even if her vision in her left eye was dim and tunneled and blurred, she at least had this. That she could still just look at things if she wanted to. If it was bright. If they were close.
It was a simple pleasure that would only serve to slow her progress in her constant attempt to improve her Haki, Garp had told her as he’d pulled a blindfold tight around her head. Luciana hadn’t argued with him. Both out of fear and because, no matter how much she resented Garp, he was right. There was absolutely nothing that mattered more to Luciana in this moment than becoming strong enough to survive this world, so that she and Robin could be reunited again. But that, she knew, would be a long road. And for all she’d lost control of her circumstances, and for all she hated Garp, Luciana knew that he was nothing if not an effective teacher.
Garp gave her a satisfied nod, his presence so powerful in her mind’s eye that it was nearly blinding. “Perhaps it’s for the best you caught a glimpse of the island,” he admitted. “It’s your new home. We’ll be docking at Foosha Village, and you’ll be staying with the same people looking after my grandson.”
Beneath her blindfold, Luciana blinked once as she recalled a story she’d once watched in a youth she’d long surpassed. It had been over eleven years since she’d been reborn into this life, and considering how she’d left her last one… she preferred not to think about her last incarnation too much. She’d known, of course, from a very young age that she was probably in the world of One Piece. Where else could she be, in a world with oceans and pirates and devil fruits? Still, meeting Robin had been a strange experience for her even if over the last few years, she had almost forgotten that she’d once thought of her dearest friend as nothing more than a character in a story.
(It hadn’t taken long at all before Luciana stopped being able to imagine Robin as being anything but the center of her world. She should have realized the moment Garp had introduced himself that no matter what she did, she wouldn’t be able to escape Luffy’s story.)
She’d never thought she’d be introduced to either of Garp’s grandsons so early, if at all. She’d honestly never really wanted to be. But Garp had found and defeated both her and Robin, and had afterwards still honored the deal he’d made with Luciana. So she would honor hers, if nothing else out of fear of what he might do to them should she renege.
Until she turned eighteen, Luciana was in Garp’s custody. If he wanted to leave her here, there wasn’t really anything she could do to change the situation unless she got him to change his mind. (And Luciana rather thought that this would be even more impossible than trying to fight him.)
“Okay,” she responded simply. The very second she turned eighteen, she would leave. But until that day came, there were far worse things Garp could have done with her.