Chapter Text
Benn is the first to notice. He always is.
As soon as they make land on the small East Blue island they’re considering for their temporary base, he sees how Shanks perks up and looks unerringly into the village on its shore, eyes intense and searching.
“Something here?” the First Mate asks his Captain, absentmindedly moving to watch how the pearls in the other man’s red hair reflect the light.
They’re black today, woven into a crown braid that leaves most of his hair loose, with a few blue ones scattered through the unbraided locks. Means Captain’s Ma had visited that night, because there's much more now then there were last night, when there had only been a few bright white ones scattered through the red hair after weeks of being at sea.
They look good on him. They always do, when they aren't hidden beneath the hat hanging from the Captain's neck.
“Someone,” his Captain corrects, face stretching into a cheerful grin. “C’mon, let's find some booze.”
Benn doesn’t comment on the dodged question beyond a raised eyebrow, content to allow his Captain his mischief.
Shanks gets it from his mother, after all, and there’s nothing anyone can do about the traits he shares with her.
The rest of the crew all notice at the same time.
It’s hard not to, when a little boy comes crashing through the door to the bar they’ve settled in, dark eyes wide with glee and white teeth bared in a gleaming grin and pink pearls shining in his short black hair.
It’s hard not to notice when the Captain laughs, loud and cheerful, and opens his arms wide with a matching grin.
The boy wastes no time taking the clear invitation, bouncing gleefully into the Captain’s arms with a delighted shriek of “Big brother!”
Benn sees the way the crew jerks, the way the newer members look on in shocked confusion while the oldest just glance curiously at the boy’s black hair, the way the barmaid’s eyes go wide with awe and the way that the islanders in the bar relax almost instantly, the way the pearls take on a deep blue sheen when the two brothers lock eyes for the first time in their lives.
He smiles behind his tankard.
Luffy eats the Devil Fruit they were going to sell, and other than scolding him for eating something that wasn’t his, Shanks doesn’t seem to mind. Some of the crew tries to tease him about being an anchor now, but both the boy and the Captain look at them in confusion when they do.
Then they go to a beach the kid insists is “Super cool!” and the brothers shock a few people into fainting when the younger convinces the older to throw him as far into the sea as he can. “Mama’s pearls are falling out!” he says, pouting, and Shanks agrees to this flawless logic by picking the Devil Fruit user up and chucking him into the horizon.
The younger members scream at him for doing so, but the Captain just laughs and grins sharply and tells them to “Let the kid have his fun.”
The boy returns a few hours later, scrambling out of the surf with new pearls in his short black hair and not a drop of water clinging to him.
That one surprises even Benn, who pauses and turns to watchs his Captain grin at his little brother and happily accept the hug the kid gives him.
Benn has noticed that Luffy doesn’t share Shanks’ strange ability to escape from any situation or place he doesn’t want to be in. If he did, poor Makino would never be able to keep up with the kid.
Just like Benn has definitely seen his Captain soaking wet before, something that, apparently, doesn’t happen to Luffy.
He thinks back on the tales of the Sea, of Rebirth and Healing and Freedom, and wonders.
Luffy stabs himself in the eye.
Well, not quite, but it's close enough.
When he does, a wave crashes into the side of the Red Force, fierce enough to send the kid tumbling into the waters below, and Shanks cackles as his little brother shrieks out an indignant “Mama!”
The kid comes out of the water pouting, as inexplicably dry as the time on the beach, but with a brand new scar under his eye. It’s a little odd, just a smooth line where there should have been at least two stitch marks, but Luffy is still adorably proud of it once he gets over his pouting.
The bandit leader tries to escape with Luffy on a boat.
Lucky Roux laughs, Yasopp snorts, Benn shakes his head in amusement and Shanks…
Well, Shanks grins, a wide, wild thing that bares his teeth and gums as he watches a sea king gently carry his younger brother to shore in its teeth, the shattered remains of the tiny boat floating in the waters behind it.
Luffy cries when they leave, big fat tears that fall down his face in rivers without leaving any water behind on his skin. "Just you wait!" he cries, rubbing his eyes fiercely in an attempt to stop the tears. "I'm gonna be the King of the Pirates!"
The Captain grins, happy even if his eyes are sad, and kneels down to put his hat on his little brother's head. "I know you are," Shanks grins at the surprised eye peeking at him from under the straw brim. "And every King needs a crown."
A strong wave hits against the docks, sending a spray of salty water into the air, and Benn smiles softly at the shining blue pearl that lands perfectly on the brim of Luffy's new hat.
(The Red Hair Pirates meet their Captain’s mother once, and only once.
It is near the very beginning, when it's just Benn, Yasopp, Lucky Roux, Limejuice and Bonk Punch and Monster. When they’re still just rookies, traveling the world with no real goal other than to be free.
They meet her at dusk, on an island where they have made land to give their battered bodies time to heal after a vicious fight with some Marines. She is standing on the beach where they moore, ankle deep in the waves, with a worried frown and angry eyes.
They see her, the woman with hair so long it floats in the water around her feet and an intricately woven circlet dotted with pearls and seashells keeping it out of her face, and wonder if they need to find shelter elsewhere. If the tall woman with blood red hair is there to fight them, and if they can win if she is.
But then the Captain looks at her, smeared with blood and ash and absolutely exhausted, and his face lights up in a bright, happy grin.
“Mama!” he yells, happy as can be, and the woman’s face softens into something so warm and loving Benn instantly relaxes, even as his foolhardy Captain launches himself off the railing, straight into the woman’s open arms.
Those arms, bare except for the bands of steel covering her pale forearms, warp around Benn’s Captain - her son - and pull him into her tall frame. Really tall, taller than Shanks by a good few feet, and it makes Benn wonder at the height of his father.
“Oh my son,” the woman says as his Captain returns her embrace, her voice soft and fond, loving, as any good mother should be. “What kind of adventure have you been on, for you to look as you do now?”
But there is something in those soft words that make them stand out, beyond just how she speaks so differently to her son. Something that makes Benn sit up straight, despite his injured body screaming at him for doing so, and take a much closer look at his Captain’s mother. Something like the echo of the sea in a shell.
And he notices.
He notices that she has pearls in her hair. Black and white woven into the braids that make up half of the long mess, every other color scattered through the parts that hang loose, like stars in the night sky, with the ones in her circlet all some shade of blue, from navy to sky to pastel.
He notices that the metal in her circlet and forearm bands aren’t steel like he had first thought, but Sea Stone, the metal many call the sea in solid form.
He notices that the clothes she wears, a teal and turquoise top and a long, almost completely transparent wrap around skirt in the same colors, are both speckled with small shells and the faint images of crashing waves.
He notices that he can’t see her feet beneath the clear waves.
He notices that, when her impossibly blue eyes flick away from her son in her arms to meet Benn’s own gaze, the blue darkens to the color of the deep sea, imposing and heavy and deadly. He notices when the warmth in her face disappears into a mask of ice, even if it is only for a moment, because that moment is enough to make his lungs burn like he's drowning, to put a crushing weight on his back, to make his knees weak and his head ache and his bones grind.
And then suddenly, it all disappears as the woman’s face turns warm again, ocean deep lighten to the sea on a clear day, and she smiles, beckoning Benn and the others behind him with a single lightly tanned hand.
“Come, children,” she says, her soft, warm voice carrying over the waves with ease, and before he knows it, they have built a fire on the shore, far enough up the shore that the waves can’t reach them, but not so far that Shanks and his mother have to leave the ocean.
By that point, the others have noticed the woman’s seeming lack of feet as well. They don’t question it, just assure their Captain that they don’t mind him sitting with his mother instead of them. He gives them a grin, wide and grateful, with a hint of searching, and she smiles at them, warm and thankful, with a glint of knowing.
They talk well into the night, the Captain’s mother plucking pearls both from her hair and the sea to put them in the much shorter, just as vibrant locks of her son as she tells them stories from days long past.
Tales of nations big and small, of how they fell to greed or wars or famines. Of warriors in the ancient past, of how they lived and fought and died for the ideals they believed in. And of gods long since forgotten, of how they were worshiped and loved and feared.
She talks until they all fall asleep, and when they wake up the next morning, their injuries are gone and their ship has been repaired and they all have a pearl woven into their hair. Even Monster, the monkey poking at the precious orb on his tail curiously.
Shanks laughs when he sees them, the multitude of pearls hanging heavily from his own crimson hair shining brightly in the sunlight.
“It means she likes you,” he tells them, teeth gleaming and eyes more blue than grey and Benn wonders at the stories Shanks’ mother had told them, of the gods she spoke of with a far away look in her deep blue eyes and longing in her voice.
Of how people used to worship the Sea itself, believed it to be a place of Rebirth, a place of Healing, a place of Freedom.
He looks at his Captain, at the red haired man that never showed any fear of the ocean, no matter how rough the waves would get, who walked around with pearls in his hair despite the fact that they are almost certainly going to be hidden by a hat for the entire day, and who can get out of any room, any bonds, any cage meant to hold him against his will.
Benn wonders if gods can fall in love.
He wonders if they can have children, if they do.)