Chapter Text
21 Years after the execution of Gol D. Roger, Pirate King. 1.5 years before Monkey D. Luffy starts his own voyage.
Waking up with the sea gently swaying the boat under you is comforting, something you’d long thought you’d never experience again. You blink up at the sun, looking at the thin, horizontal windows in the high arches of the Baratie’s staff quarters. You’re in the highest possible spot, in a net hammock with your pelt rolled up under your head rather than a pillow. The women’s dorms are smaller, with only a few hostesses and bartenders working there. And you. One of the many bosuns of the large, fish-shaped restaurant on the sea, all focused on keeping everything stocked and clean.
You say a quick prayer to the Sea Mother at the altar Zeff had made for you. Thankful that he’s willing to provide you with some channel to communicate with your divine mother after nearly two years of being cut off from her.
Not that you mentioned that part to him. Especially not after how you’d appeared on the docks of the Baratié two months ago, mostly skin and bones, with deep gashes baring the cruelty of your captor. The failed claiming bites on your shoulders that had scarred over to a dull pink.
You examine yourself in the mirror of the women’s bathroom. The scars that marred your skin, ruining the pattern of spots and interrupting the whiteness of your underbelly. The skin that your sweet Mu had loved since you were born, picking up every stone on the rocky beach of your home island that reminded her of your skin’s dappling.
The loss weighs heavy on you. Your mothers, dead. All your siblings with them. That is what Arlong had done. That is what he told you he would do.
Leaving you, the last selkie of Seal’s Drop.
It feels as though it’s going to crush your chest as you think about it, hunching against the sink counter and gasping in air as you push those thoughts away. It doesn’t matter. He can’t get to you here, not anymore, and you were safe now. Safe and free, Zeff promised you that. He promised.
Free to swim as deep as you wanted and to steadily repair your pelt from all the tears and damage, trying to forget what you’d faced. Whispering the prayers you’d been taught by your mothers as you stitched and sewed everything back together until your hands went totally numb.
Able to eat what you wanted and pray when you liked. No having to worry about what you would be forced to do or wear. You were slowly becoming comfortable in your own skin again. While you didn’t have the traditional work-wear that you would have preferred, at least you had your pelt.
You touch the fur of it gently, before draping it over your shoulders, and walking towards the mess hall, focused on your surroundings and the work ahead of you. The faint scent of sea salt on the breeze momentarily stirs a deep fear in the pit of your stomach, as you take another step forward.
The scent of the sea is much too similar.
You remember that day well. Much too well.
How you’d slung your apron around your waist, slipping all of your tools into each of the hidden pockets that you’d grown used to. Some were lined with a waxed canvas that you could keep small snacks in for your breaks. Wrapping your pelt around your shoulders. Walking into the kitchen of your home right as Feann called for morning prayer.
You remember praying before the trident. Before Tide. Head bowed, knees aching slightly because you had snuck out to climb the cliffs with just a few hours earlier, practicing diving off in your true form and seal form to try and better control the way the water called to you. Your friends had snuck out with you, of course. The three of you giggling and laughing at how silly you all looked, just starting to lose the white fluff from puphood. How amazing you’d all look when you were fully grown.
The sweet incense. The fruits and tea laid before the weapon as offerings to your ancestors and to the Sea Mother, asking for a bountiful fishing season, as well as easy work on the boats that would be sent in for repairs. A coolness that always seemed to drift off of the weapon as you kneeled before it, knees in the cushions. A little twitching at the back of your mind as you tried to concentrate on what you wanted to pray for that day.
Please, let Mam let me out of apprenticeship early today so I can try to ice surf with Nat and Kimi, you think hard to yourself, flinching slightly as the twitching in the back of your head turns to a full-blown ache before stopping the moment one of your mothers places her hand on your shoulder.
“Rise, my little gull,” Sion’s voice had always been silky, her smile sweet, with dark eyes holding so much love as she cupped your face in her hands as if examining what remnants of your pup hood-chubbiness was left in your cheeks. “Asking for easy waves, my spotted one?”
You’d been her only leopard seal pup. The only pup that took after Feann more than her. The awkward second eldest child with a gap of a year between your older sister and yourself. Toha was a blend. The perfect mix of your mothers, with a solid gray complexion only marred by heavy smatterings of white freckles that looked more like splashes of ink on paper. Hair that matched her skin, making her look like a silver coin. A perfect mix of leopard and spotted seal.
All your littermates were the same. Your brothers, and your pup-sister, who was still too young to be named. Or really tell what her pelt would look like. But you already knew that she would be another perfect mix. Wrapped to Sion’s chest when she wasn’t in her bassinet. Mun and Riko at least had the advantage of being like mirrored versions of each other, more brown than gray, near-perfect duplicates of Sion if it weren’t for the white streaks in their hair, all thanks to Feann’s genes. All of them, a wonderful mix of your mothers, like silver and bronze coins, playing in the waves, while you…. you usually just ended up watching.
And then you. With your dark eyes and dark hair. Patterned, dark gray skin that was marred by dapples of near white along your front, with countless freckles of all shades of gray that made you look like the speckled stones from the rivers further inland on the small island you lived on.
Precious coins and a speckled stone.
It didn’t matter to your mothers— they loved you. Cared deeply for you regardless. Feann would rumble appreciatively whenever she saw you take your form, smiling as more of the white fur from your puphood would float away from your body when you were swimming with her, learning to control your extended body.
“Something like that, Mu,” You whisper, and feel Sion squeeze your cheek delicately, before letting go and having you sit at the table for breakfast. It’s not even light out yet— the sun’s rays aren’t even visible, but you are awake nonetheless, drinking the warm, milky tea that your mothers had let you have now that you were sixteen, and nearly ready to reshape your pelt yourself after your first heat cycle. Feann re-enters the house with a newspaper tucked under her arm, and her work apron around her hips, partially covered by her pelt, shaped into the form of a fisherman’s jacket. All pelts were the color of the seal the selkie could shape themselves into, and so Feann’s pelt was a dark, nearly black, grey, with a paler gray around the edges. She ruffles your hair and pinches your nose softly, smiling and making her sharp teeth poke out from behind her lips as you try to nip at her hand. Broadly, widely.
One of your friends had come running then, screaming to your Momma for help right before he got yanked from the door by a tentacle-like hand. Feann had acted quickly, her touch freezing and her roar audible across the entire island as she took the terrifying form of a giant, thirty-foot leopard seal. Kimi, a bit shaken and bruised, was back in the doorway a second later, eyes wide as he looked over his shoulder.
“Fishmen,” he had gasped, when Sion gently checked his face, rubbing at a bit of mud that had clung to his cheek, “There were hundreds of them— how did your Mama just throw them off—”
“Ah, Feann is something else,” Sion tuts, holding her face with a single hand, as if this is normal for her. “Being raised on the ship of the Pirate King does that. Just look at Red-Hair now.”
Kimi looks startled by that admission, but nods in his dazed state. The loud roar outside of the house shakes the timbers, and your unnamed pup sister whimpers at Sion’s chest, while Toha sprint to the front door. Kimi just looks at you, still catching his breath.
"Your Mom knows Red-Haired Shanks?"
“I want to help!” Toha looks back at Sion, grinning.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Sion hisses, pulling your sister back into the house, just as frost begins to creep up the doorframe, showing Feann was getting serious. Your Mu only turns off the stove and refills her cup of tea from the kettle.
The temperature dropped several degrees in the thirty seconds it had taken for her to send the party of fishmen sprawling, running away terrified. Likely to bring more backup. And Sion just sipped more of her tea, calmly getting Tide from its revered space at the altar and handing it out to Feann before ushering all of the children into the storage room of the house, dug into the stone of the very cliffs you lived on.
You weren’t sure how long it had been, just sitting there. Mun and Riko bickering, while Toha grumbled about not being able to join Feann during the battle. Kimi just sits next to you, slightly shocked by it all. A heavy bog-oak door separateed the storage room from the rest of the house. You were safe as could be.
“Your Mom,” He starts, his voice quivering. “I don’t think I’ve seen a selkie that big, ever.”
You just nod. Sion chuckles, hushing the pup at her chest back to sleep.
“Feann… is blessed, in a way,” She muses, and Kimi immediately perks up. “It runs in the family, from her mother. Perhaps it runs with one of my pups here,” your mother speaks softly, as she puts a hand over your infant sister’s downy head. “That form is her depths form. For reaching distant places far below the waves, where even our true forms cannot take us.”
“She was the size of a ship!”
“Aye, just wait till her father gets here,” Sion laughs, head tilted back. The twins have stopped bickering. Toha watches her, as your mother’s eyes settle on you. “Actually, my little gull, your mother and I have been meaning to talk about something with you. About your birth, really.”
You freeze, a blush rising to your cheeks, momentarily making you look even more like Feann, cheeks stained a darker shade as you glance away from her, back at the floor, as if the woodgrain is the most fascinating thing in the world. Toha sends an expertly aimed whip of water at your face, calling it from the frost that had coated the front door when Feann’s hand had brushed against it as she stormed out to deal with the fishmen.
You remember squeaking in surprise as it had struck your face, and your Mu's exasperated sigh when the two of you started to bicker, rolling around on the floor as though you were small pups again. Because you had utter faith that your Mam would be able to take care of everything. She was the strongest person you knew, after all.
And then there had been a thump at the front of the house that caused you to freeze. All of you. Toha had gotten up to stand in front of you bravely, always the protective older sister, always insisting it was her duty to protect everyone when Feann was gone, usually dealing with something across the island.
The ominous creaking of the front door opening had caused everyone to go silent. Even the pup at Sion's chest.
That was the start of the end.
The walk to the mess hall seemed especially long after you’d snapped yourself from your daze. Too quiet, yet, too loud at the same time. When you finally got there, the clatter of plates and silverware went quiet for a few seconds before starting back up again when you move on, walking past all the tables and not making any eye contact.`
You don’t belong here.
That’s okay. You won’t be here for long. You know this, and you’ve accepted it. The only issue…
“Oi! Selkie! You’re late!”
…. Is that Zeff certainly doesn’t seem to give a damn for your plans of leaving within a year. The old man just throws his apron off from where he stands behind the service counter, where there would normally be dozens of plates, all lined up and ready to be taken for breakfast. There’s just one now, yours, that would have gone cold if it weren’t for the heat lamps above.
“Apologies, sir.” You murmur, and just take the plate, not really caring that the ceramic is a bit too hot, and will certainly cause your hands to ache later in the day. The blond who’s always beside Zeff just narrows his eyes as you take the plate. “Prayers were a bit longer today than expected.”
“You’re isolating yourself, girl, I know you are,” Zeff points a finger at you accusingly, voice low. He sounds mean, but you see the concern in his eyes. “That ends today.”
You blink slowly at him. The plate is starting to cool in your hands. But the skin on your palm and fingertips stings. Still starts to throb all the same. “Sir?”
“Come with me, Blackfin.”
That seems to make you realize you’re in pain, and you quickly put the plate back on the counter. You don’t want to drop it— that would cause needless damage to an otherwise perfectly fine plate— but you also don’t want to hold it anymore. Besides, you had new things to worry about now. Like how Zeff knew who you were. You’d given a fake name, one of the most common selkie names there was, and he’d seen right through it.
The blond back in the kitchen looks at you. The swoop of hair covering one of his eyes. You could have sworn his eyes were blue, but they actually seem to be brown. Looking at you. Sizing you up. No— no, that’s not it. He looks like he’s…. pitying you? He’s not even really looking at you. He’s looking at your hand, which you now realize is probably a bit burnt from the plate.
“Blackfin, move your ass,” Zeff snaps you out of your daze again. Ripping your cover name to shreds in front of the entire crew. The other blond looks away. And you are helpless, following behind him, finding your throat closing off and making it hard to speak.
The office you find yourself in is nice. Shockingly so. There are dozens of pictures on the wall, along with a map, that has only one pin in it, in a seemingly random spot on the ocean. Zeff only loosely gestures for you to sit in a chair in front of the desk while hobbling to sit behind it. This was your grandfather’s first captain. This was your Mam’s godfather, who had been there when she was born and had helped raise her during her first year of life.
Those wanted posters— all legendary pirates that your mother had known— were tucked into a trunk in your mothers’ shared room, sitting at the foot of the bed. Whitebeard, Roger, Rayleigh, Gaban, Shanks, and many others that your Momma had just grown up alongside or had helped to raise her. You and Toha used to look at them, reverently touching the wanted posters that held your Grandfather and Grandmother's faces.
And here sits one of them, flesh and blood rather than paper. Rooting through the heavy desk and pulling out countless papers and setting them before him, when he finally folds his hands and looks at you.
“So when were you planning on contacting your pod?”
“How do you even know who I am?” You don’t sit in the chair he gestures you to. Instantly on the defensive, as you are so used to being.
“You’re the spitting image of Feann, who is the spitting image of Pell and Coth.” Zeff states bluntly, leaning back in his chair. “I honestly thought you were her, my pod-daughter coming to visit until I got a closer look.”
His words aren’t unkind, but they still shake you. “But my skin—“
“You have Sion’s freckles, yes, but you’re still a leopard seal,” Zeff interrupts once more, scowling. Sizing you up. “Frightfully underweight as you are, you look just like Feann, the little brat.”
Unwittingly, your hackles raise. A flash of your old temper. “Don’t talk about my mother like that,”
“I’ll talk about her as I please, I’ve changed her diapers and watched her take her first steps,” Zeff growls, then rumbles , and you find yourself submitting. Eyes wide as you look at him. He’d just rumbled at you, a deep, angry noise that only selkies could make! He rubs at his throat, sighing. “Haven’t done that in awhile. Pell would laugh at how bad that sounded. I only had to do that to your mother a few times.”
It was the same rumble your mothers had done to you, when the bickering between siblings had gotten to a disruptive level. You’d hated when Sion rumbled more than Feann. But you’d also had a distant memory, when you were just a few years old, of a rumble from your grandfather. Just once. More to sooth your wails after a small tumble.
“I—I didn’t think he was still alive,” your voice is soft. Your hand aches from the burn. Yet you squeeze it hard. Looking down. Looking anywhere but him. “I didn’t think anyone was.”
“Bullshit. You’ve been missing for two and a half years. Your Mother thought she’d lost all but one of her pups.”
That makes your head shoot up.
“Someone survived?” You sound so breathlessly happy. And it all comes crashing back, your throat closing as you suddenly find it impossible to speak.
The fishman had been purple-gray. With a sharp nose and hideous teeth. He’d ripped the storage room door from the hinges as though it were paper.
It had been a slaughter. Sion had backed you into a corner to cover you with her own body.
“Oh… there you are,” The purple fishman crooned, and you felt the hairs on the back of your neck rising. You can still hear your mother’s gasping breaths while the fishman just keeps holding her in the air. Your little sister, still an unnamed pup, wailing from where she’d tumbled off of Sion’s chest, falling from the secure wrap. The panic in your mother’s eyes. The fear. Not for herself, but her pups
Toha ripped in half. Mun and Riko flung from the cliffs. Kimi was still breathing, weakly, even with his pierced chest. All done by this fishman.
You start to tremble. Sion’s pelt is ripped. Her beautiful, silky haori, with long sleeves that had always hidden sweets and small toys for you and your litter mates. One of the big, draping sleeves had been shredded, spilling candies and knick knacks alike on the floor. But she still continued to fight.
“Please put her down,” you whimper, sounding so pathetic. Nothing like a leopard seal. More like a pup. “Please, don’t hurt my Mu anymore, please,”
“Don’t—“ Sion’s breath is cut off, the fishman squeezing harder.
“Don’t interrupt her,” He snarls, before throwing her hard into the floor. You can hear something break, and you wail, leaping forward to her, holding her hands as she struggled to breathe.
“Mu!” You’re rocking back and forth over her, as she gently touches your cheek, the light fading quickly in her eyes. “Mu, Mu, Mu, Mu,”
The tears won’t stop falling. Won’t stop hitting her face. You push all of the energy you can into those tears, mumbling prayers to the Sea Mother, trying your best to call upon the aspects of change in the water. To heal her. To have some miracle occur to save the loved ones who had been slaughtered before you.
Sion only wheezed, a bloody hand cupping your cheek for a final time.
“My little gull,” Her thumb traced over the freckles on your cheekbone.
And then she was gone.
Your wails only grew louder. Head thrown back. Your pup sister joined in. Everything ached and you felt, for the first time that would become a long list of times, as though the very world itself had betrayed you. You didn’t even try to fight when you’d been dragged from the room and then the house, down onto the beach. Everything was eerily quiet aside from the sounds of the fishman’s steps, making the pebbles crunch. Wailing and reaching for your house from how he had slung you over his shoulder.
There is no sign of Feann except deep ruts you see on the beach, and roars of fury on the other side of the island. You can smell her blood in some of the ruts. You shudder, screaming as you thrash on the fishman’s shoulder. She’d been tricked. And it sounded like she’s just realized it. The fishman’s steps had grown faster, more anxious. And you just wailed. Crying out to your mother instinctively. Loud, panicked wails that you hadn’t made since you were a tiny pup, still nursing from Sion.
Everything went black when you were slammed into the stoney beach. Knocked unconscious. All you heard was a loud, furious roar, the selken equivalent of your name being called across the island as the fishman cursed you.
Zeff had apparently been trying to get you from this trance for ten minutes when you blink. His face is wrinkled with worry. But one of your littermates is still alive. One of them is still breathing, and your mother is too, and your grandfather—
How will they react to you?
Will they still want you there, you, who was the reason everything fell apart? The cursed one, the cursed pup that Arlong wanted, and decided there were to be no survivors.
“Blackfin. Look at me.”
“They’re going to hate me,” you whisper, voice breaking. Tears falling. You don’t try and put the energy into healing anything with them this time. You know it’s useless. “They’re going to blame me.”
“No, no they won’t—”
“They will. He just wanted me. He told me that, so many times—” Your eyes squeeze shut, and you can still imagine Arlong leaning over you in his bed, the pain, the snarls, and how he just kept going. Even as you pleaded and sobbed. “Please. Please don’t tell them I’m here. Not for another year, at least. Please,”
You’re not exactly sure why that time frame is what slips out of your mouth, but it does. And Zeff looks genuinely conflicted by your request. Opening and closing his mouth, before his lips set into a scowl.
“I… Fine. But on one condition. You need to…. Address this,” He loosely gestures to all of you, before rubbing his temples. “I’ll start by getting you set up with a doctor. And a therapist. And… I’ll make Sanji hang around you. So you’re not so isolated.”
“Sanji?”
“You don’t know him?” Zeff looks a bit surprised. Looking at you with narrowed eyes. “Blond? Odd hair, constantly flirting? Usually my shadow?”
“No, sorry,” You feel yourself shrinking. “Should I?”
“I… guess not, you don’t work in the kitchen so that would make sense,” He leans back in his chair, as if studying you. Brow furrowed. Frowning. “He… has his own issues. Similar enough to… whatever happened to you that it could benefit the both of you to just try to socialize like teenagers.”
“I’m hardly a teenager anymore, I’m almost nineteen,” You huff, a nearly forgotten spark in your eyes as you stare him down, before folding like a piece of laundry, not wanting to bite the hand that is very generously trying to feed you.
“But you’re still mentally sixteen,” Zeff speaks softly, and not unkindly. But you still feel as though you’d been punched in the gut. “Kid, I… I think we should contact your Mum. Or your Grandpap, if anything.”
“No!” You jump up from the chair, the screech of it against the wood of the floor making you flinch. “Just— I need time,”
Your voice sounds broken. “I need time. ”
Zeff blows out a low, long huff from his mouth. Studying you as he leans forward, propping himself up on the edge of the desk with one of his arms. Squinting at you. “...Your pod will kill me if I keep the fact that you’re alive from them.”
“ Please, ” You whisper. One of your ears flicking as you hear footsteps coming down the hall, towards the office. “Please, please, just— I need to figure myself out,”
The older man bites the inside of his cheek. Still looking at you with his cold eyes that are still so much warmer than you’d experienced for the past two years. “Fine,” He rubs his face, his chair creaking as he leans back and sighs. Groaning when there’s a knock at the door. “Can’t it wait—”
The knocking intensifies, and Zeff hangs his head over the back of the chair, as if he’s contemplating all the decisions that have brought him to this moment. “Fine, fine— what do you want?”
The door opens. You’re still standing in front of the desk, breathing hard enough to rattle your entire frame. And the same blond from the kitchen stands in the doorframe, scowling. He looks you up and down, as if he has any right to judge you, with his oddly swept bangs that completely cover his left eye. Like that makes any sense for cooking. How does he even cook like that? Shouldn't he have a hat or a hairnet to keep it out of his face? You look him up and down just as he had done to you. Zeroing in on the little glass container with what you reason is the food from your long-forgotten breakfast.
“We don’t waste food here,” He says bluntly. Dropping the container on the desk in front of you, and then staring you down, as if challenging you. One of your eyelids twitches. Your ears angle back just a bit, and you feel yourself just barely starting to show your teeth to him.
“...That’s what you had to interrupt for?” You look at him, a bit too annoyed by his intrusion to keep quiet. To just keep your head down and work. “To tell me you don’t waste food?”
“You’ve been the worst culprit. Setting it out overnight at that little…. Altar, thing. The other girls are complaining,” He snarks back. “I respect women, but only to a point when they’re being wasteful.”
“You’re the one who’s been cleaning out my offerings?!” You screech, now fully baring your teeth at him, completely throwing any semblance of your seemingly quiet personality to the side. “Those are private—!”
“It’s a waste! Someone could have eaten them! Instead, they’re rotting by your little altar, it’s just uncleanly—”
“Someone would have eaten it! They’re offerings to the Sea Mother, you rotten whale carcass—”
“Offerings she clearly didn’t want! Not a bite taken from them!”
“Because you kept cleaning them away, by the great blue below, you humans are all the same—”
“Oh, so it’s a human thing now— ”
“Clearly! You’re not even trying to listen!”
“Enough!” Zeff snaps, finally annoyed enough to interrupt as he stares the both of you down. You freeze, gaze going down to the floor immediately as the blond just huffs, folding his arms. But his eyes don’t leave your form. Taking in your rigid posture, and the slight tremble in your shoulders, he knows that you’ve been called into his office about something serious.
Sanji knows how to pick up on these things. He’s Zeff’s son, and the sous chef. He just looks at his father with a questioning gaze that answers most of his questions. The wanted poster sitting on the desk. The transponder snail is out and ready to make a call. A slightly worn News Coo article that looks as though it’s been unfolded and folded countless times. Sanji knows what the article is about. He’d been the one to close the restaurant for the day while listening to the way things were being thrown about and destroyed in an unimportant storage closet.
That was the day that news about Seal’s Drop came out. A small Selken village, on one of the northernmost islands, the smallest one in the entire archipelago make up the Selken Isles Empire. The tiny village, wiped off the face of the earth, save for a handful of survivors. Women. Infants. The elderly. All the people who couldn’t fight back were slaughtered. Multiple missing, likely presumed dead. Including you, the second oldest pup of Feann Blackfin and Sion D. Fjord.
Zeff’s screams of rage and pain were ingrained in his brain. He’d told him later that one of the survivors was his goddaughter, and one of her pups. Three pups confirmed dead. One presumed dead. That left only one alive. Her mate and wife, slaughtered while defending their children.
He knew the poster well enough. It had been hung in the kitchen at one point, framed in a beautiful bog oak case. Pell Blackfin, a former Selken Empire Saint, born under an eclipse, Tsar of Storms, and many other names that struck fear into the hearts of anyone who sided with the world government. Also, a regular at the Baratie, who tipped generously and spoke often about his previous life as a pirate. He looked at the wanted poster. Then at you.
Sharp eyes that have been trained to notice the smallest imperfection in an ingredient are now suddenly taking note of the striking similarities between you and the poster: dark eyes, patterned skin, and the same general face shape. You had white freckles. That was the main and only difference he could see.
You were almost identical to your grandfather, and by that extension, your mother.
Feann had tagged along to the Baratie only twice. Both times, she was quiet, holding a toddler with vibrant blue-green eyes and silver-grey hair with pale grey skin that faded to white around the tips of her ears and her chubby little fingers. Her name is Coth. Feann had whispered, the only words Sanji had heard her speak. One of your little siblings, he realized now. The only one left alive was by pure accident, when you'd been dragged away.
Eyes kept low after Zeff’s shout. You don't like it when people shout.
“Hey, Dad,” Sanji steps quickly towards the older man, the head chef, the man who saved him all those years ago, and who he knows it's safe to tell anything to. “Volume.”
Zeff glanced at you. Seeing the tightness in your stance and the anxiety that radiates off you in waves. The old pirate could clearly sense it, with all that weird 'yaki' nonsense he had (or was it haki? Sanji always mixed it up.)
“Right.” He clears his throat, sighing. “Blackfin. This is who I was talking to you about.”
“You were talking about me?” Sanji frowns.
“Yes. Mainly about how similarly traumatized you were.”
“I am not traumatized." You hiss, pointed ears flattening to the side of your head similar to how a cat's might. It’s…. Actually, it's kind of cute.
“You are traumatized,” Zeff growls, and then lets out a low rumbling noise that makes you tremble and look down. More of that sense shit? Whatever it is, it’s made you go quiet again, and he just points at you. "Sanji. You’re going to buddy up with her and make sure she’s not going to isolate herself.” Zeff rubs his forehead.
“Play nice, you two.”
Your ears twitch as you just barely manage to meet his eyes.