The WIP Pit

Beckman would notice if he stayed up too long. Tonight, the deck was empty, the sea was calm, and no one needed the easy smile that told the crew there was nothing ahead worth fearing.

Shanks let his face settle.

It felt strange every time.

He looked across the black water and tried to imagine a life contained within a single harbor.

A small house, perhaps. Nothing grand. He had seen enough polished halls to know he had no use for them.

The house in his mind creaked when the wind came in. There were dishes left beside the sink. Children’s shoes crowded the doorway.

He smiled faintly.

He could almost see them.

One child with red hair and a loud mouth, climbing fences before learning how to read. Another quieter one who watched everything. A woman at the window pretending not to laugh while he attempted to sound stern.

Don’t climb onto the roof.

Don’t put that in your mouth.

Don’t tell your mother I taught you that.

They would have ordinary problems. A fence brought down by a storm. A baby who refused to sleep unless he carried them through the house at three in the morning. A wife annoyed because he tracked mud across the floor.

The worst thing waiting for him in the morning would be cold coffee and a list of errands he had already forgotten.

Shanks breathed out slowly.

The life felt close enough to picture and distant enough to belong to someone else.

He had spent all of his life at sea. He had learned early that the horizon always held another place, another danger, another reason to keep going.

Roger had given him freedom before Shanks had been old enough to understand what might otherwise have been waiting for him.

That was enough.

The bottle shifted in his hand. His thumb moved over the glass.

Sometimes he was tired.

Not tired enough to sleep. Sleep could not touch this.

It came from knowing how easily the balance between the Emperors, the Marines, and the Government could fracture once the wrong person pushed hard enough.

Shanks did not know everything.

He knew enough to understand that the sea would not remain as it was, and that the years ahead would demand more of him than those behind him had.

The wind stirred the empty sleeve at his side.

He looked down at it.

He had made peace with the arm years ago. There were still moments when instinct told his missing hand to reach for something before memory corrected it.

But he did not regret it.

Not the arm.

Luffy had lived.

Shanks had looked at him and placed his faith in a future neither of them could yet see.

That faith had not been misplaced.

The thought eased something in him, though it brought an ache with it.

A small life would have cost him other things.

Not because a man could not love a family and still stand against the world when necessary.

But Shanks knew himself well enough to understand what he would have done. He would have left whenever the sea called. He would have promised to return and hated himself each time he could not say when.

Perhaps there had once been a time when he could have chosen differently.

An island he might have stayed on. A woman he might have asked to wait.

He had let those chances pass.

Some of them deliberately.

Others because he had always assumed another would come.

Shanks closed his eyes.

For a moment, he allowed himself the house again.

A warm kitchen. Rain against the windows. A child asleep against his shoulder while he stood beside the fire. A woman reaching up to brush wet hair away from his forehead when he came through the door.

No maps spread across the table. No wanted posters. No reports waiting for him when he woke. No need to decide which threat required an answer and which answer might create something worse.

He would not be an Emperor there.

He would not be Roger’s apprentice or the last name he had refused to inherit.

Only Shanks.

His fingers tightened around the bottle. Then he opened his eyes.

Wanting a thing did not make it his. And not every man got to choose a small life.

Some people had the strength to live quietly.

Some had the strength to stay.

Shanks had always had the other kind.

The kind that carried him forward even when he wanted to stop.

The kind that let him smile in front of his crew because fear spread faster when captains showed it.

The kind that let him drink with enemies, bury friends, make threats in a pleasant voice, and cut through a battlefield when the world had finally gone too far.

He could not be the man in the little house.

Not yet.

Maybe not ever.

But he could make sure more people got the chance to be.

That had to mean something.

A floorboard creaked behind him.

Shanks did not turn.

“You planning to stand there until sunrise?” Beckman asked.

“Hadn’t decided.”

“That means yes.”

Shanks smiled slightly and glanced over his shoulder.

Beckman stood near the stairs with a cigarette between his fingers and his coat thrown over one shoulder.

Shanks lifted the bottle. “Want some?”

“No.”

“Thought you might say that.”

Beckman came to the rail anyway.

He rested his forearms against it and looked out over the water without asking why Shanks was awake. That was one of the reasons Shanks had kept him close for so many years. Beckman understood that silence could be an answer.

For a while, they stood without speaking.

The cigarette burned slowly between Beckman’s fingers. The ship moved beneath them.

Eventually, Beckman said, “Bad thoughts?”

Shanks looked at the water.

“Quiet ones.”

Beckman accepted that.

Another stretch of silence passed before Shanks spoke again.

“You ever think about stopping?”

“No.”

The answer came without hesitation.

Shanks turned his head. “You could at least pretend to consider it.”

“I think about sleeping more. Improving our inventory records. Occasionally finding a captain who warns me before changing course.”

“That sounds disloyal.”

“Loyalty is the only reason I still tell you.”

Shanks laughed quietly. The sound felt easier than it had a moment before, though not enough to erase what had brought him onto the deck.

Beckman took another drag from his cigarette.

“You could have stopped once,” he said.

Shanks knew what he meant.

“Would’ve made a terrible husband,” he said.

“Yes.”

Shanks looked at him.

Beckman did not appear remotely apologetic.

Shanks rested against the rail again. His smile remained for another moment before fading on its own.

“I think I wanted to know what it felt like,” he said.

Beckman’s expression changed slightly. There was no pity in it.

“To stay?” Beckman asked.

“To have something that didn’t depend on what happened beyond the next horizon.”

Beckman looked across the deck.

The Red Force was worn in places despite constant care. There were scratches in the wood where Monster had once dragged something he had been expressly told not to move. A repair near the mast did not quite match the surrounding boards.

Above them, their flag moved in the wind.

“You have people who expect you to come back,” Beckman said.

Shanks looked at him.

“It isn’t the same,” Beckman continued. “But it isn’t nothing.”

Below them slept men who had followed Shanks across half the world. They argued with him, drank with him, and complained whenever his decisions endangered their sleep, but they would sail into any sea he pointed toward.

It was not children’s shoes beside a door or a woman waiting at a window.

But it was a place where his absence was noticed.

Shanks let out a slow breath. The weight inside him did not disappear. It settled back into a shape he knew how to carry.

He lifted the bottle, took one final drink, and set it beside his boot.

Beckman remained next to him.

Neither of them spoke again for some time.

The first hint of morning touched the edge of the water.

He let himself picture the small house once more, with a child running barefoot in the grass while someone called after them.

Then he let it go.

Not because he had never wanted it.

Because the deck beneath him was real. Beckman was still standing beside him, and below them slept the men who had made this ship a home.

Beckman put out his cigarette.

“Coming below?”

“In a minute.”

Beckman nodded but did not leave.

They stayed at the rail until the sun began to rise.