Chapter Text
In a story as old as time for isekai novels, a woman steps on the street and there’s a bus that she doesn’t notice, and then there’s darkness.
She opens her eyes and it’s dark. No, not completely dark, she understand slowly, her eyes adjusting to the low light. She’s in a hallway and there’s a door where the light comes from.
Is this it? Is this the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel?
She's feeling dizzy and light headed, so she hold on to the wall with one hand walking towards it. It’s not like there’s anything else to do, right?
There is a woman on the bed right by the window. She’s looking out, to the sea and the moon above. The candle on the table illuminates her strawberry-blonde hair and, when she turns - the freckles on her face. Her eyes are warm brown and she is breathtakingly beautiful.
Also she is very, very pregnant.
‘Oh, hello,’ the woman says. She looks a bit surprised, but then stares in almost eerie fashion, almost like her eyes are scanning the person who's just entered.
That gets the young woman who's just entered flustered. The pregnant lady is very pretty, sure, but she's just been hit by a bus, or nearly hit by a bus, or whatever the hell that was, and her head is pounding. It's hard to focus on anything but the blessed chair by the bed. She promptly collapses into it, holding her head.
‘Are you a new nurse?’ the pregnant lady asks.
Her voice is as beautiful as she is, and there's something eerily familiar about the red hibiscus flower in her hair.
Who the hell wears flowers in their hair in this day and age? Especially while in bed - wouldn't it get crushed?
‘Or did Garp send you?’ the pregnant woman continues asking, and oh - the silence must've stretched for quite a bit for that to be a thing.
Wait.
Garp?
That’s a name that's familiar!
One Piece !
That’s where the flower and the woman is from!
But that's impossible. Is she a cosplayer?
A cosplayer in a room of some house at night, yeah, sounds normal and not suspicious at all.
‘Ace or Annie,’ the woman mumbles as her headache gets worse.
‘Your name is Annie?’ the woman on the bed asks, ‘Oh, nice to meet you, then! Are you a new nurse here, Annie? Did you get lost on the way to your room?’
Annie doesn't sound bad, the woman in the chair thinks. And this is a weird, but interesting dream. Sure, she can be Annie here.
The pregnant woman's name is something about a color, though. It escapes the newly named Annie at the moment.
‘You’re Ace’s mom,’ she says instead.
‘W…what?’ the woman startles.
She’s gonna die without actually knowing her kid. This is a very sad dream, actually, Annie thinks.
But it's good that it's a dream and she can do something about it.
‘Ace, he’s got your freckles but Roger’s hair. He’s very charismatic when he’s an adult and has people who love him very much. He’s very loyal to the people he loves and even died taking the blow intended for Luffy.’
The woman looks at Annie with horror. She could've probably avoided saying that last part.
‘Are you a fortune teller?’ she asks, her voice breaking.
What the hell is her name? It's something with red.
‘No, no, I’m not,’ Annie says, massaging her temples. ‘I just know how this story goes.’
She does know - she's spent the last few month catching up on the anime. It's kinda been the only thing keeping her from wanting to walk out of the window after work.
One Piece was a reminder of simpler times, spent near a TV, watching the adventure. The live action version of it, the one that came out recently, was a reminder and a reason to cry in both joy and grief for something missing. The freedom of it, the happiness and love of being with your family of choice. The adventure that felt impossible to achieve in this dull adult life and almost 24/7 job sucking out any joy in this modern day hell.
She decided to get back into watching it, but there were still so many episodes left. And now she’s not even gonna get to finish them, cause she's, what, in a coma? Dead? Is this her brain frying the last neurons and coming up with a scenario connected to the last thing she watched?
Because the last episodes were the aftermath of Ace dying.
‘But you’re not lying,’ the woman's voice brings Annie back.
The woman in the bed is crying.
Her name is Rouge, Annie suddenly remembers. She's a 'tragic dead mom' with a will of D. strong enough to hold in the pregnancy for twice as long as normal. There's nothing else the story had to say about Rouge, and that makes her sad. Annie desperately wishes she could ask for more.
‘And no one knows we were planning to call our child Ace if it was a boy,’ Rouge continues, almost in a daze, tears still streaming down her cheeks.
The pregnant woman bites her lip, trying to stop her tears. She looks beautiful even like this.
‘Is he happy?’ she finally asks. ‘When he lives, is he happy?’
An uncomfortable silence stretches between the two.
‘Oh no,’ Rouge whispers.
Annie's vision swims, and she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. But Rouge is still waiting for the answer and it feels wrong to make her wait.
‘It’s complicated. He’s got a lot of… Well, he doesn’t like himself very much. He learns to live with it as he grows up and meets people who love him unconditionally, but it’s. It’s not easy.’
‘When he grows up - so it starts when he’s a child? Why?!’
‘Well, you guys gave him to a marine. Who has thoughts about pirates. And then all of those people in bars he heard talk shit about the King. And well, I don’t think Garp did that on purpose, but children often take what’s said against their parents as something that’s about them, too.’
Rouge bites her lip, putting a hand on her belly and rubbing it, like she’d probably like to touch her son.
‘Okay. Okay that,’ Rouge laughs mirthlessly, ‘that actually makes a lot of sense. Why the hell did we think a marine commander of all people would be a good idea?’
Annie feels sad for her. Annie feel sad for Ace - it feels like he had no chance at winning, from the start of his life to its finish.
‘I’m really sorry,’ she says. ‘I wish it was different.’
Rouge looks up at her. There’s still some water in her eyes, but now there’s also something sharp.
‘Maybe it can be,’ she says. ‘Take him.’
‘What?!’ her unusual guest splutters.
‘Garp’s ship is due to arrive in two days. But what if he arrives, and there’s no child to take any longer. If that’s my son’s fate, I want it changed. And I can’t do it myself because. Because I’m not, I’m not surviving this, am I?’
Annie shakes her head and winces immediately when it aggravates her headache.
Rouge nods, her face stoic. Both of her hands are on her stomach, either for her child’s or for her own support.
‘You’re a fortune teller-’ she continues, even when Annie tries to interrupt and say that she is not. ‘You know how this story goes! So you can change it!’
Annie opens her mouth to protest, but, well, she does know. So, maybe, she can.
And this is probably her dying brain telling her a story, and her brain knows it’s hard for her to say no, and to be impolite. And Rouge is nice, and maybe it would be nice to give Ace another chance.
‘It’s best if nobody knows the Pirate King’s child is alive. I don’t know how they found out, but Marines will try to execute him.’
‘Then we make sure this place doesn’t survive to tell the tale,’ Rouge says strongly.
The plan she comes up with is simple and horrifying. She says it with so much conviction that Annie does not protest. She nods numbly to what Rouge says and what comes after is almost blacked out of her memory afterwards.
Rouge finally lets go and gives birth. She tries to be as quiet as she can about it and it's the most terrifying thing in the world. There’s a lot of blood. She holds her baby for a moment, tears in her eyes, whispers to him and then hands him to the woman at her side.
Her guest, in turn, gives her a candle and gasoline.
Annie's far enough from the house, closer to the beach, when the flames reach the roof.
The baby in her arms is wailing miserably. She tries to hush him, but it’s no use. She has never been around children this young, how the hell is she going to take care of it? Why did she think she could? Isn’t it time for her to wake up or go to the next world or whatever?
The child’s wails do not help her headache and that’s how she doesn’t notice a woman on the shore and nearly crashes into her. The woman stares at Annie with her mouth agape.
She suddenly remembers how Marines killed off all of the pregnant women and young children here. If the woman is local, the baby in her arms is absolutely going to be a big shock to her.
And a cause for alarm. And, probably, a thing to report to the Marines.
Ace choses this moment to scream at the top of his lungs.
‘Oh, you poor thing,’ the woman says and reaches out. ‘You can’t be here, someone might see, let’s get you two inside.’
The woman puts an arm around Annie's shaking shoulders and pulls her away from the beach. Annie doesn’t really know why she thought going to the beach would help, and she’s still so dizzy, and also has no idea what to do.
So she doesn’t protest when the woman leads her inside of a small cottage just by the beach. It smells strongly of fish and there’s a man there and dozens of fishnets. Oh, they’re probably a fisherman family.
‘This is my brother-in-law, he can go to the other side of the house if you wanna feed your baby,’ the woman says softly, pushing a chair for Annie to sit at.
She get confused for a moment, but then realizes what the woman is implying.
‘Oh, I’m not, I can’t, I literally can’t feed him, he’s not. You see, he’s,’ she stops rambling, trying to think, ‘my sister’s.’
The woman looks at Annie with pain in her eyes.
‘They. They killed my sister, too ,’ she says. ‘You’re so lucky your nephew survived at least!’
Annie turns to look at the brother-in-law, who looks on the verge of tears. She holds the baby closer to her chest, thinking about all of the others that were killed here.
How many are lost? Probably, a whole generation of kids who will never have a future. A whole lot of mothers who will be dearly missed.
‘I can help you,’ the woman says, looking at the baby and nothing else, ‘I have things here I never got to use for my sister.’
There are tears in her eyes and her brother-in-law also looks like he’s about to cry when he hands her some very very tiny clothes. This family has been broken by the bloodbath that happened on this island, but these people are still so kind and Annie feels her eyes prickling with tears, too.
Still dizzy and feeling bone-tired (after all, she had such a long shift at work today), she gives the baby to the woman as she gets a bottle to feed him. Annie's feeling sleepy, and she promises herself to close her eyes just for a minute, just for a little while. Maybe, when she wakes up, the world around will start making sense again.