Screaming into the void

You waited beneath the roots, watching the shapes move through the fog. Three of them, just as promised. Bounty hunters. You could tell by their posture before you even saw their faces. Men who strutted instead of walked. Men who carried weapons not for protection but for pleasure. Confident, careless, the kind of predators who thought cruelty was simply another cost of doing business.

The oldest one stepped forward and tossed a coin purse into the mud. It hit with a wet thud. “Payment first,” he said, voice rough and disinterested, like he’d said the same words a hundred times before.

You bent to pick it up, careful to keep your head low. The weight was right. Heavy enough to pass, though you knew it would barely buy back half the freedom he was about to sell you. Behind him, the second man shifted, and you caught the faint sound of a chain sliding over his glove. It set your teeth on edge. You didn’t look at him. You’d learned long ago that looking was an invitation.

You’d done this before. Dozens of times, in back alleys and forgotten groves. Buy what you could. Bribe whom you couldn’t. Pray that the ones you freed made it onto the ship waiting at Grove Twelve before anyone noticed they were gone. But tonight something felt different. Wrong in a way you couldn’t name. Maybe it was the way the fog swallowed sound, or the way the oldest hunter smiled too easily, like he already knew the ending to a story you hadn’t even started telling.

“Where are they?” you asked, your voice steady despite the cold rain trickling down your collar.

“In the cart,” he said, jerking his chin toward the wagon half-hidden in the mist. The tarp covering it was soaked through, sagging under the weight of the rain. “Four of them. Two adults, two kids. Fresh catch from the West Blue.”

The words made your stomach twist. Fresh catch. He said it like he was talking about fish, not people.

You stepped closer, hand tightening around the pouch in your coat. The mud sucked at your boots, and for a moment, you could hear the faintest sound from beneath the tarp—a cough, a muffled sob, or maybe just your imagination.

You handed over the second pouch of berri. The leather was slick beneath your gloves, the rainwater seeping through the seams, mixing with the sweat on your palms. You could feel your pulse in your fingertips. The man caught the pouch one-handed, his movements easy, practiced. He didn’t bother looking at you. His gaze lingered on the wagon instead, as if the sight of it entertained him more than the deal itself.

He weighed the pouch in his palm. The coins inside shifted with a dull, rhythmic clink that felt louder than it should have in the quiet between you. Then he smiled.

It wasn’t the kind of smile meant for business. It was slow, oily, the kind that stretched too far across his face without ever touching his eyes. It was the smile of a man who’d already decided how the night would end.

“Pleasure doing business,” he said finally.

But he didn’t move toward the cart.

You waited. The rain came harder, drumming against the mangrove roots overhead, seeping into the mud until it sucked greedily at your boots. Water ran down your spine, cold enough to make you flinch. Somewhere nearby, the wind rattled through the hollow roots like a sigh. From farther off came the faint echo of a tavern trying to drown out the weather, music, and laughter carried thinly on the storm.

Still, the wagon didn’t move. The shapes beneath the tarp stayed silent, still as corpses.

“Open it,” you said, forcing your voice to stay level.

The man with the chain shifted closer. You heard the slow drag of the links as they scraped together, each one glinting wetly in the lamplight. His smile was smaller but meaner. “No rush,” he said, his tone deliberately light, playful in the way a cat plays with something dying. “You in a hurry, sweetheart?”

The word landed like a slap.

Your throat went tight. You took a slow step back, heel pressing into the mud until it squelched beneath your boot. The mangrove roots loomed behind you, their slick bark closing off your escape. The shadows there were deep and still, thick enough to swallow light whole.

Your stomach turned to lead. You knew a trap when you saw one. You’d walked into plenty before: Marine stings, bounty ambushes, crooked smugglers who’d sooner sell you than trade with you, but something about this one was colder. More deliberate.

“Where are they?” you asked again, quieter now, every syllable laced with warning.

The man’s grin widened, showing a mouth full of yellow teeth. “Gone,” he said easily. “Sold ’em half an hour ago.”

You blinked once, the words slow to sink in through the rain. “You sold them?”

He shrugged, the motion lazy, rolling the chain between his fingers like a pet snake. The links whispered against his glove, wet iron glinting under the faint lantern light. “Not my fault you’re late.” His eyes dragged over you, taking in the cut of your coat, the leather at your belt, the tremor that ran through your stance. He tilted his head, the grin widening until it was nothing but teeth. “But don’t worry,” he said softly. “You’ll make a fine replacement.”

The other two moved in without a word. The space between you shrank fast, the smell of rain and sweat and gun oil thick in your nose. Your hand went for the pistol at your hip, the cold weight of it a small comfort in the chaos. You barely had the grip before the nearest man slapped it away. The weapon hit the mud with a dull splash, spinning once before it disappeared under the water pooling at your feet.

One of them reached for your arm. You swung instead, grabbing at the coin purse and using it to crack against his jaw. The seam split, coins scattering like a burst of dull stars. He staggered, but only for a second, then laughed through blood and rain.

“Feisty.”

“Let me go.”

“Not yet.”

The chain lashed out before you could move again, snapping around your wrist with a sting that tore through your glove. You twisted hard, but the cuff only bit deeper, cutting into the skin beneath. The nearest man shoved you back, driving your shoulders into the mangrove trunk behind you. The impact knocked the air out of your lungs. Bark tore through the back of your coat, splinters scraping skin as the roots dug into your spine.

“Pretty thing like you shouldn’t be out here alone,” he said, his breath hot and sour against your cheek. “Now, why don’t we make this easy? Take off the necklace. Earrings too.”

You froze. “What?”

“Your jewelry,” he said, tapping the chain against your throat. Each tap left a faint red mark on your skin. “All of it.”

“It’s worthless,” you managed.

He smiled, slow and cruel. “Then you won’t mind.”

His hand came up, fingers finding the clasp at your neck. You jerked back, but the chain around your wrist held tight. The necklace broke with a sharp metallic snap, the sound cutting through the rain like a gunshot. He let it fall into the mud and moved for your earrings. You felt the sharp tug, the flare of pain as metal tore free, the wet warmth of blood running down your ear before the rain washed it away.

The men stepped back, admiring their work.

“Look at that,” one said with a low laugh. “Didn’t even fight.”

“Gullible little thing,” another added, voice thick with amusement. “Must be nice, thinking everyone plays fair.”

You said nothing. The air tasted like rust. Your pulse roared in your ears. Your hands trembled. Not from fear, but from the cold that had started to spread through you. It began where the chain had touched your skin, a creeping chill that slid down your throat, curling beneath your ribs until it felt like the world itself was narrowing around you.

The rain blurred their faces until they became little more than shapes in the fog, smudged silhouettes moving against the glow of the lamps. The light wavered, thin and sickly, like it, too, was afraid of what lingered beneath the mangrove roots. You could hear your own heartbeat beneath the storm, steady, angry, and growing louder with every breath.

You didn’t move. Couldn’t. Your chest rose and fell too fast, the ache in your ears sharper than the sting of their laughter. It echoed through the hollow space under the roots, bouncing off wet bark and slick stone until it felt like the whole grove was mocking you. You wanted to spit, to curse, to draw your gun from the mud and remind them who you were, but the words stuck behind your teeth. The air was too heavy to breathe, thick with iron and ozone and something you couldn’t name.

Then it happened.

The world pulled sideways.

The sound of the rain warped, dulling into a low hum. Every noise. The laughter, the wind, the waves all folded in on themselves until it felt like the air had been scooped out of the world. The ache in your chest deepened, sharp and electric, until it felt as though something inside you was cracking open, spilling light into the dark.

And then, beneath the storm, you heard it.

A voice. Quiet. Rough around the edges. “Is this…?”

You froze.

It wasn’t spoken aloud. You would’ve sworn it came from inside you. The words brushed against your thoughts like fingertips tracing fogged glass, gentle and searching.

“I can feel your panic,” it said, low and certain. “Are you okay?”

Your breath caught. You stumbled back, boots sliding in the mud. The rain hammered harder, each drop like a nail against stone. The bounty hunters were still laughing, still talking, but their voices had turned distant, muffled, as if you’d fallen underwater.

The voice came again, clearer now, threaded with calm authority. “You’re bleeding.” A pause, soft but heavy with something ancient and unfamiliar. “Where are you?”

You didn’t understand what you were hearing. All you knew was that something vast and old had stirred awake inside you, something that hummed in your bones and behind your eyes like the vibration of a blade drawn from its sheath.

The world snapped back into focus all at once. The rain. The roots. The men closing in again. There was nothing to lose, and if you were going crazy, you’d do it in style.

You could taste blood in your mouth, salt and iron, and for the first time that night, you weren’t afraid.

“Sabaody, in Grove Eleven!”

You thought it as loud as you could, half expecting nothing, half praying for a miracle. The thought tore through you like lightning, bright and desperate.

For a moment, there was only silence.

Then the voice shifted, warmer now, closer. “Good girl. Now stay calm, and share a visual of what’s happening.”

Something unseen stirred in the air, a ripple that cut clean through the rain. The nearest bounty hunter frowned, glancing over his shoulder as if he sensed a shadow move behind him. The storm had changed. Each drop seemed slower, heavier, stretching in the lamplight like time itself had thickened.

You could feel him then, whoever he was, threading through your thoughts with calm precision. His mind felt steady, practiced, like a man who had been through worse storms than this.

“Three of them,” he murmured in your head, reading the scene through your eyes. “Oldest one’s armed on the left hip. The chain, don’t fight it. Loosen it.”

Your breath caught. You swallowed hard, the rain cold against your tongue. “What are you?” you thought, dizzy from adrenaline and disbelief.

“Someone who hates seeing good people cornered,” came the dry reply. “When I tell you, duck.”

The bounty hunter with the chain leaned closer, his grin twisting as he yanked your wrist upward. “Thought you could buy freedom with pocket change? You’re lucky we don’t sell you instead.”

“Now,” the voice said.

You dropped.

The chain snapped upward, catching only air. You didn’t understand what had happened until you saw it. The chain had struck the lamp behind you, snapping back with brutal force. The iron links whipped straight into the bounty hunter’s face. His smirk froze, and he dropped, crumpling into the mud with a wet thud.

The others turned sharply, shouting, their boots slapping through puddles as they tried to make sense of it. You stumbled back, heart hammering so loudly you could barely hear the rain.

“Good,” the voice said inside your head, calm and certain. “One down. Two left. Keep moving, to the left.”

You flinched, gripping your wrist where the broken chain still hung. “How—”

“No time,” he interrupted. “They’re circling. Step left.”

You obeyed without thinking. A blade flashed past your cheek, close enough to cut a strand of your hair. The man who swung it cursed, overbalanced, and slipped in the mud.

“Now run,” the voice ordered. “Keep to the roots. Stay low.”

You bolted. The mangroves loomed like pillars in the fog, their roots slick and tangled, the air alive with the sound of pursuit. Mud splashed up your legs, cold and thick, but you didn’t stop. The voice in your mind stayed with you, steady and unhurried, as if this were all routine.

“Left again. There’s a slope ahead. They’ll try to cut you off. Take the incline, not the path.”

You skidded up the embankment, boots sliding, breath burning your throat. Behind you, one of the men shouted that he saw you. A shot cracked through the rain, splintering bark inches from your shoulder.

“Don’t panic,” the voice murmured. “Let them aim where you were, not where you’re going. Keep your head down and count to three.”

You did. One. Two. Three.

The roots ahead shifted beneath the waterlogged ground, a slow, creaking sound like a groan from the earth itself. The mangrove dipped with the weight of the storm, sending a surge of muddy water over the hunters below. They swore, blinded for an instant.

“That’s your opening,” the voice said. “Go.”

You sprinted. The fog opened for a heartbeat, revealing the faint shimmer of a narrow walkway leading toward the distant grove. Lantern light glowed in the distance—Grove Twelve, where your bon chari bubble bike would be waiting. You could almost smell the salt of the sea beyond the storm.

“Don’t stop until you’re inside,” the voice continued. “These are the type to hold a grudge.”

You vaulted over a broken railing, your coat snagging on a root before tearing free. Behind you, someone shouted, or maybe just cursed. You didn’t turn to find out.

The rain pounded harder, stinging your face, but the voice remained calm, close, almost at your shoulder now.

“You did well,” he said quietly. “Keep moving. Stay low and steady.”

You stumbled once, nearly falling, but the path leveled out beneath your feet. The glow of the grove widened ahead, lanterns swaying in the wind. You didn’t dare look back.

You reached the edge of the walkway, chest heaving, heart wild. The storm swallowed everything: the shouting, the waves, even the sound of your own footsteps. All that remained was the voice in your head, steady and low, a single calm note against the chaos.

“Almost there,” he said, gentler now. “You’re safe for tonight.”

The path curved beneath the hanging roots, slick and glistening like veins under glass. Lanterns swung in the wind, their flames stuttering against the downpour. You slipped once, your boot skidding over the slick planks, and caught yourself on a railing slick with moss. The wood creaked under your weight. Every breath came out white and shaking.

Then, through the veil of rain, you saw the bon chari, half-submerged beneath the mangrove roots. Its round hull reflected the lantern light, gleaming like a glass trapped between worlds. The propeller fins turned lazily in the current, waiting.

You slid down the slope toward it, boots splashing through puddles, mud clinging to your clothes. A shadow passed overhead—just a bird, you hoped—and then the wind shifted, carrying the smell of salt and metal. Your hands fumbled with the latch, numb from cold, but the hatch gave way with a hiss of pressurized air.

You climbed inside and sealed it shut behind you. The outside roar vanished instantly, replaced by a muffled hum. The sudden quiet felt almost violent after the storm. The air was warm, dry, and faintly sweet with recycled oxygen. The walls glowed with soft amber light, the kind that made it hard to tell where the machine ended and the sea began.

The bon chari rocked once, as if testing your weight, then began its slow ascent. The shift in pressure made your ears pop. You pressed your palms against the glass dome and watched the world sink away.

The roots disappeared first, their tangled shapes swallowed by darkness. Schools of tiny fish scattered from the glow of your vessel, flashing silver as they darted into the murk. Bubbles rose around you like drifting stars.

For the first time since the ambush, you exhaled. The sound came out shaky, uneven. The silence that followed pressed around you, heavy and unreal, the kind of silence that felt alive. You rested your head against the glass, watching the mangrove roots fade into the dark below, their long shadows vanishing into the still black water.

You leaned your forehead against the glass. The faint warmth of the interior seeped into your skin, a small mercy after the cold bite of rain. Beyond the dome, the mangrove forest faded into shadow, its roots stretching down like the fingers of some ancient god. The faint hum of the vessel blended with your heartbeat until you couldn’t tell which was which.

Your reflection hovered over the dark water, pale and ghostly. Mud streaked your cheek, and blood still clung to the torn edge of your ear where the earring had been ripped away. You reached up to touch the spot, and your hand trembled.

Only then did the weight of what had happened start to settle. The fact that you were unharmed at all felt impossible. Every nerve in your body buzzed with leftover adrenaline, every breath sharp as glass.

You closed your eyes, letting the soft hum of the bon chari’s engine fill your ears. It was rhythmic, almost soothing, a mechanical heartbeat against the chaos that had come before. The storm was still raging above, its muted thunder rolling through the water, but down here in the dim cocoon of the vessel, it felt distant. Safe, almost.

From here, it was supposed to be a simple trip. Up through the roots, across the shallows, and straight to the glass-fronted hotel where you were expected to be fast asleep—warm, dry, respectable, and not soaked in mud and blood, not trembling in a smuggler’s pod beneath the sea.

You let out a soft, humorless laugh. The sound fogged the glass.

Then, quietly, the voice returned. “You made it.”

You startled, eyes flying open, searching the cramped cabin as if someone might be hiding inside. “You’re still here?”

“I hope so,” he said, voice warm and edged with dry amusement. “If the rumors are to be believed, I’d say I’m here for good.”

You blinked, breath catching. “Rumors?”

“That soulmates exist,” he said. “And that when one of them nearly dies, the other tends to notice.”

You pressed a hand to your chest, the faintest tremor running through your fingers. “Soulmates? You’re joking.”

“Not at all,” he said with a soft chuckle. “But I think we can both agree this isn’t the usual way to meet someone. So, my dear, you are in Sabaody then. I suspect you don’t normally reside on the lower piers.”

You sank back into your seat, unsure whether to laugh or cry. “So this isn’t… my head being unusually useful?”

“Just a bit,” he said gently. “But also me. You’re loud, by the way. I could feel you halfway across the sea. Probably for the best, seeing the trouble you were in. Soulmates then.”

You huffed, torn between indignation and relief. His tone carried an easy confidence, the kind that came from someone who had seen far too much and found very little left to fear. He was calm, measured, and, you suspected, far too perceptive for his own good. You got the sense he was humoring you, careful not to push too hard.

“I suppose not,” you said, managing a weak smile. “And you seem awfully composed for someone who just had a stranger crash into their head.”

“Ah, but you didn’t crash,” he said lightly. “You knocked. Quite insistently, I might add.”

You let out a slow breath, the tension in your shoulders easing just a little. The glass beneath your palm vibrated with the steady hum of the ocean current. “Perhaps… you could tell me where you are?”

“New World,” he replied, and you could hear the soft sound of waves threading through his words. “A week or so from Sabaody, give or take. Calm waters tonight. Stars are out.”

The image was so vivid you could almost see it: the dark expanse of the Grand Line stretched around him, the soft roll of the deck beneath his boots, salt wind tangled in his hair. A man alone on the sea, half a world away, speaking as though he were standing beside you. Dangerous waters, and potentially, a dangerous man.

“The New World?” You thought, oddly elated, “What do you do?”

“Sailing.” He replied quickly, “How are you feeling?” he asked, voice quieter now.

You looked down at yourself. Your gloves were still smeared with mud. The fine hem of your coat was torn where the mangrove bark had caught it, and a faint bruise was already forming where the chain had bitten into your wrist. Your reflection in the glass looked pale, hollow-eyed, and very small.

“In one piece,” you said finally, your voice thin but steady. “Somehow.”

“Good,” he said, and there was genuine warmth in the word. “You did well. Most people freeze in their first real fight. You kept your head.”

You almost laughed. “Barely. Normally, the slavers are so consumed with greed at the sight of berri that they just let me be, but I got cocky going out after dark myself.”

“Very much so,” he said, amused. “But the sea favors the stubborn.”

You found yourself smiling, despite everything. Something in his voice reminded you of the ocean itself. Deep, unpredictable, and strangely kind beneath its roughness. The bon chari continued its quiet ascent, drifting upward through the calm dark. The light from the groves began to pierce the water above you, soft and green, like sunlight seen through glass. The hum of the engine had steadied, low and rhythmic, almost like a heartbeat.

You hesitated, chewing the inside of your cheek. “Would you…” Your voice came out small in the silence. “Would you tell me what you mean by soulmates?”

For a moment, he didn’t answer. You heard only the whisper of waves through the connection, the faint creak of a ship somewhere far away. Then his voice returned, warm and amused. “Ah. So you truly don’t know the stories.”

“I know of them,” you said. “Children’s tales. Myths for sailors and lovers who can’t bear the silence.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps they’re a little truer than most would like to admit.” His tone softened, edged with something older, deeper. “Two halves of a soul, parted in birth and found in life again, if the world is merciful. That’s the short version.”

You let out a breath that was more a laugh. “And which half are you, then?”

He chuckled, the sound low and rough, like the sea rolling against the hull of a ship. “Not to reveal too much of myself, but I have been waiting for you for a very long time.”

Your breath caught. “Waiting for me?”

“Aye,” he said simply, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Long enough to think perhaps I had dreamed it all. Then tonight happened, and I hear a voice in my head calling from Sabaody, angry, frightened, alive.”

You pressed your palm against the glass, the faint vibration of the current humming beneath it. The world outside blurred in motion, streaks of green light drifting through the water like ghostly veins. The reality of the moment wavered, fragile as a reflection in the sea.

“Are you sure you’re not just a hallucination?” you whispered.

He laughed softly, the sound warm enough to chase away the cold that still clung to your skin. “If I am, then you’re a very convincing one too.”

You flushed, torn between disbelief and something perilously close to wonder. “It’s unbelievable,” you said, your voice catching somewhere between awe and exhaustion.

“It’s rare, yes,” he admitted. His tone softened, as if he were smiling. “But not impossible. We’re talking now, aren’t we? The connection must have been blocked until something jolted it open.” He hesitated, thoughtful. “Jewelry, maybe?”

Your heart sank. The earrings—The necklace.

They appeared in your mind instantly, the small gold set your mother had left you, worn smooth at the edges from years of use. They had been her pride, a token of old money and old love, the last real piece of her you had left. You remembered how the gold had caught the light when she laughed, how she’d fastened the clasp at your throat before her last voyage. You had worn them every day since she died until tonight.

“I… left them behind,” you said quietly. The words trembled as they left your mouth, the images of the jewelry flashing in your mind. “They took them.”

“I thought so,” he said, his voice low, threaded with sympathy. “If they were lined with seastone, that would’ve masked the bond. The moment you lost them, it opened up.”

You sat there, staring at your reflection in the curved glass, the bruise forming at your wrist, the smudge of dirt on your cheek, the space where stone should have glinted. The truth of it settled like a weight in your chest.

“They were the only thing I had left of my mom,” you said softly.

“I know,” he murmured. “But oftentimes disappointment leads to opportunity. Perhaps they were meant to keep you safe until now.”

You swallowed hard, the ache behind your eyes sharp and sudden. “Safe,” you echoed, the word hollow. “That’s a generous interpretation for having a man in my head.”

He chuckled gently, the sound rich and unhurried. “You’re alive, aren’t you? Despite being capable of speaking across the sea with this strange man. How old are you, darling?”

You let out a shaky laugh, the kind that came more from exhaustion than amusement. “Old enough to know better than to answer that question,” you said.

“Ah,” he replied, voice teasing but kind. “Smart and evasive. Good. You’ll need both.”

Despite the ache in your chest, a small smile tugged at your lips. The bon chari continued its slow ascent, the pressure easing as it rose. Above, the faint green glow of the groves brightened into something closer to daylight, the promise of safety shining through the murky water. You couldn’t see him, this man whose voice filled your thoughts, but somehow, he felt real. Solid. A thread of calm woven through the storm still echoes in your bones.

You swallowed hard, the words rough in your throat. “Who are you?”

There was a pause, the faint creak of rope and the roll of a wave through the connection, as if he’d turned to look out over the sea. “Rayleigh,” he said finally. “I’m a sailor. First mate on a ship out of the West Blue. Nothing glamorous, but it keeps me busy.”

A sailor. The simplicity of it made you smile. He said it like someone who had stopped needing to prove himself long ago. His voice carried the ease of someone who’d seen too much of the world to be shaken by much anymore.

“Rayleigh,” you repeated softly, tasting the name like salt on your tongue. “Thank you. For saving my life.”

“I can’t take much credit,” he said, amusement curling around the edges of his words. You could almost hear the smile in his voice, the faint lilt of someone who found joy in understatement. “I would have preferred to be there myself—It puts a bad taste in my mouth to think what could have happened. However, you are clearly exceptionally capable. I just gave you a nudge in the right direction in a tight spot.”

“Some nudge,” you murmured, leaning your head against the glass. “You might’ve just saved my life.”

“Then it was an exceptional introduction for the two of us,” he said lightly, and somehow, even with an ocean between you, you could feel him smiling. “Just imagine our first real meeting.”

You blinked and took a breath.

“Meet?”

Rayleigh paused for a moment, as if he had been taken a little off guard.

“Is there a reason we shouldn’t?”

You hesitated, fingers tracing the condensation on the bubble glass. “I can’t have a…romantic soulmate.”

“Oh?” He replied, thoughtfully, “Are you married already?”

“Oh, no, but I am expected to marry wealthy,” you said quietly. “Very wealthy. My family’s arrangement, duty, and all.”

For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he chuckled, low and good-natured. “Duty’s a hard thing to argue with. But I’ve learned not to fight fate too much.”

“Fate is a fancy excuse for poor decisions,” you replied, “I prefer carefully weighing fair odds.”

He chuckled.

“I can see I’ll have my hands full.”

You sniffed, regardless of the smile at the edge of your lips. “You’re welcome to think so, Rayleigh.”

The buzz between you flared brightly as he hummed at your voice, wrapping around his name.

“Rest easy tonight, my dear,” he said at last, his voice softening. “We’ll figure it out—The sea’s funny like that. It always finds a way to bring people together.”

The connection faded again, gentle as a tide going out. You sat in the quiet of the bubble, the hum of the current beneath you, your hand still pressed to the glass.

By the time the bon chari reached the upper docks, dawn was still a whisper on the horizon. The rain had eased to a mist, leaving the world washed and gleaming beneath the mangrove lights. You slipped out unnoticed, coat drawn close, keeping to the back paths that wound between the roots and bridges of the upper groves.

The hotel came into view just as the sky began to pale. Its glass walls caught the faint light like a mirage, reflecting the glow of the sea below. You entered through the servants’ corridor, moving quietly past the night clerks who were too tired or too polite to ask questions.

Your father’s suite was still dark. You could hear his heavy breathing from the next room. The deep, rumbling sleep of a man too accustomed to comfort to imagine danger could reach him here. You paused at his door for a moment, watching the faint flicker of the den den mushi lamp through the crack, then turned away. He didn’t need to know what had happened. Not yet.

In your own room, you peeled off the wet clothes, leaving them in a heap by the wash basin. The mirror caught your reflection: hair tangled, bruises shadowing your wrists, a cut along your collarbone where the chain had grazed you. You looked like someone else entirely. Someone who had crawled up from the ocean floor.

You washed in silence, scrubbing away the mud and blood until the water ran clear. When you finally sank into the bed, exhaustion swallowed you whole. The sheets were warm, scented faintly of sea salt and expensive soap. 

But sleep didn’t come easily.

Your mind kept circling back to him. Rayleigh. The stranger who had spoken inside your head as if he had always been there. His voice lingered, low and steady, like the echo of a tide against stone. You found yourself reaching for it, testing the edges of whatever this connection was.

It wasn’t hard to feel where he was. His presence sat like a faint light across some vast distance, dim but steady, just beyond the edge of your thoughts. You could sense him, close enough that, if you reached out, you might find him listening.

Experimentally, you drew a boundary in your mind. A wall, gentle but firm, separates your mental space from his. You thought of it like a street between two houses: yours lit and quiet, his across the way, windows open but respectful. If you called out, he would hear you. But unless you did, he stayed still.

The first few times, you could feel him testing the edges of it too, careful not to push. A ripple of thought brushed against yours, polite, restrained.

“Can you hear me?”

You smiled faintly in the dark. “Only if I let you.”

“Good”, came his quiet reply. “Your mind is a beautiful thing. Keep it well guarded.”

You felt the faint pulse of warmth before he pulled back, retreating to his side of the current.

You turned onto your back, staring at the ceiling as the first light of morning crept through the glass. Somewhere far out at sea, you imagined him standing on a deck, watching the same dawn you were. It was a strange comfort, this tether between two strangers, and stranger still how natural it felt.

Before sleep finally claimed you, you caught the faintest trace of his voice again, softer than a sigh.

“Rest easy, darling. I’ll keep watch from here.”

-X-Strange Happens-X-

You and your father were in Sabaody on business. That was the official reason, at least.

He owned one of the largest shipping companies in the South Blue—Chevel Maritime Trading—its name painted in gold on the sides of every vessel that left your family’s docks. The company specialized in high-end cargo: fine silks, aged wines, preserved fruits, rare teas, and other luxuries that found their way into the hands of nobles and Celestial Dragons. Half the Grand Line relied on your father’s ships to deliver indulgence and elegance to their tables.

Your father handled the visible side of things. The handshakes, the dinner parties, the kind of meetings that required charm, wit, and a well-rehearsed smile. He was good at it, too. He could flatter a broker or a Marine officer with the same polished ease, and people often mistook that warmth for naivety. It was a mistake that always worked in his favor.

You preferred the quieter part of the work. You managed the ledgers, balanced the accounts, monitored the freight manifests, and tracked the shifting tariffs of every island your family traded with. Numbers made sense to you. They stayed honest. They never smiled to your face while plotting behind your back. It was your handwriting on every agreement, your careful arithmetic that kept the company running as smoothly as its finest ship.

It had been your idea to come to Sabaody this time. The new Grand Line tariffs were being renegotiated, and several Celestial brokers had suggested that your family’s participation might help smooth the transition. You had agreed. Partly out of duty, partly out of curiosity. You liked Sabaody in theory: the glowing mangroves, the luminous air, the way the city seemed to float between sea and sky. But every visit reminded you how thin that light really was. The wealth shimmered above while the lower groves sank deeper into decay.

You were staying on Grove Fifty, in one of the high-rise hotels that overlooked the shipbuilders’ district. He liked to say that proximity to power was good for business. You knew better. You preferred to stay behind the scenes, focused on balance sheets, listening to his smooth voice through the walls as he entertained clients with imported wine and exaggerated laughter.

It was strange, then, to think how close you had come to being taken beneath those same mangroves last night. The irony of nearly being sold into slavery on an island famous for its auctions was not lost on you.

As light filtered through your window, you could hear your father stirring in the suite next door. His voice carried through the thin partition, smooth and composed, speaking with the staff as though nothing in the world had shifted overnight. He requested his morning papers, the latest trade reports, and a fresh pot of coffee from South Blue beans. Beneath it all, you could hear him humming under his breath, some old sea shanty he used to sing when you were small, back when ships still smelled of salt and wood instead of polish and perfume.

For him, the world had already settled back into its usual rhythm. He would attend his meetings later, dressed in fine wool and confidence, his cufflinks glinting like coins in sunlight. He would shake hands with brokers and investors, speak about supply lines and tariffs, and boast that his ships were the most reliable on the seas. And you would be there beside him, quiet and composed, ledger in hand, ready to fill in the numbers that turned charm into profit.

He didn’t need to know what had happened. Not yet. How could you possibly explain it? The voice that had spoken to you through the storm, calm and familiar, as if it had always been waiting for you? A voice that now lingered faintly at the edge of your thoughts, polite but present, as if standing just outside a doorway and waiting to be let in.

The only difficult thing to explain that morning had been the absence of your mother’s necklace and earrings. You had told your father you’d misplaced them, perhaps left them behind when you packed. He had frowned but said nothing, though you’d seen the disappointment in his eyes. Those heirlooms had been part of your family’s image, symbols of old wealth and respectability. To appear at breakfast without them had been careless. To him, it was just another sign that you were too absorbed in numbers and not enough in presentation.

If only he knew.

You stirred your coffee in quietness as he read the morning paper, every page rustling like a secret you could not share. If he ever discovered where you had really been last night, what you had been doing while he drank wine with shipwrights, it would ruin everything.

No respectable company dealt in idealism, and certainly not in rebellion. The Celestial brokers were ruthless, their wealth built on chains. To expose yourself as someone freeing the very slaves they auctioned would destroy your family’s business, your father’s reputation, and your place in a world that rewarded silence.

You stared into your cup, the dark surface reflecting the faint shimmer of light through the window. The scent of rain still clung to your hair, sharp and metallic. You could almost feel the mud on your boots again, the weight of the chain around your wrist, the cold voice that had cut through the storm to reach you.

Most of the week passed in a blur of business. Your father spent his days in meetings, shaking hands with Celestial brokers and high-ranking traders, securing new contracts and polishing old ones. You followed where expected, sitting through dinners where every smile was a transaction and every toast a performance. When you weren’t by his side, you worked quietly in the hotel’s study, balancing ledgers, reviewing cargo reports, and arranging shipments bound for Marie Geoise.

But you sent others to handle the work that mattered most: the work he could never know about. You met your intermediaries through coded notes and discreet messengers, coordinating what you could from the shadows. The networks you’d built were fragile and small, but they had saved lives. This time, though, success was harder to come by. The markets were shifting, the buyers growing paranoid, and the smugglers who had once taken your bribes now looked over their shoulders before meeting your gaze. You were losing ground, and you knew it.

“Why do they matter to you?” Rayleigh asked one evening, his tone thoughtful, not accusing. “The slaves?”

You froze, your pen hovering above the inkpot. The question hung there, suspended in the quiet of your room, calm and curious; the kind of question only someone who already suspected the answer would dare to ask.

Outside, the city murmured. Sabaody was never truly silent; even at night, the groves hummed faintly with life, the soft pulse of air bubbles and distant laughter from the taverns below. The lamplight shimmered across your desk, catching the edges of open ledgers and the faint glint of gold ink pressed into the paper margins.

You set the pen down slowly, the faint scent of ink and salt mixing in the air. “Because someone should care,” you said at last. Your voice came out quieter than you intended, steady but tired. “My mother cared.”

The silence that followed wasn’t empty. You could feel him there, far away yet somehow close enough to touch, his attention steady and deliberate. It wasn’t prying, only listening, the way a sailor listens to the sea before it changes course.

You leaned back in your chair, tracing the ink stain on your thumb with your opposite hand. “She used to smuggle food to the servants when she thought no one noticed,” you continued. “Said that being kind was the one rebellion we should strive for.”

There was a faint pause before he spoke again, his voice softer now. “She was a brave woman.”

“She was,” you whispered. “And foolish. It got her killed.”

The faint hum of the bond shifted, like the sound of waves retreating from the shore. You could almost feel the wind over distant water, a breeze carrying sympathy from somewhere far away.

“I’m sorry,” Rayleigh said quietly. “Loss has a way of carving into us, refining us.”

You huffed, trying to laugh, but the sound came out uneven. “It’s nothing. It’s pathetic, really. She did so much more. I just push numbers around and pretend it makes a difference. People who have far less than I.”

“Most people in your position wouldn’t risk it,” he said after a moment, his tone thoughtful again. “They’d look away. Your desire to honor her and do good is commendable.”

You tipped your head back, staring at the ceiling. The light from the mangroves outside filtered through the curtains, painting faint ripples across the walls. “I wasn’t raised to look away,” you said quietly, “but looking doesn’t stop it from being wrong. And it doesn’t excuse me for staying silent when it’s convenient.”

You could feel his presence shift again, patient and listening, as though he wanted to reach through the space between you but knew better than to try. The hush between you stretched, filled only by the faint scratching of the pen you still held and the slow rhythm of your own breathing.

“Would you choose freedom?” he said at last, his tone measured, quiet enough that you almost thought you’d imagined it. “If it meant leaving what you have now? To live free and help others, but be poor as a sailor?”

The question rooted itself deep in your chest, heavy and dangerous. You stared at the ledger before you, at the neat columns of numbers that represented your family’s fortune, your father’s empire, your inheritance. The ink shimmered faintly in the lamplight, each mark a record of the life you were supposed to protect.

“Is this a hypothetical question?” you asked, setting the pen down. Your voice came out steadier than you felt. “Or is this a soulmate pitch?”

For a heartbeat, the connection was silent. Then came his laugh; low, genuine, and unmistakably amused. It rolled through your mind like distant thunder, warm enough to make you forget for a moment that you were speaking to someone a sea away.

“A pitch?” he said. “I can see I’ve met my match. I apologize for being so transparent. Do I sound like I’m trying to convince you?”

“You sound like you might be,” you replied, a small smile tugging at your lips. “Freedom, purpose, noble causes. It’s a very persuasive combination. All things you think you can offer the strange woman in your head.”

“You’re not wrong,” he said. “But no, it’s not a pitch. It’s a question. Soulmates or not, you strike me as someone who’s been living inside the same cage for a very long time. Someone who is pushing a token effort for real change, but missing the mark.”

You leaned back in your chair, the leather creaking quietly under your weight. The lamplight shimmered in your teacup, the faint steam curling upward like smoke. Outside, the mist had begun rising, a soft whisper against the window that made the world feel smaller, more private.

“It’s a comfortable cage,” you said at last.

“That’s the most dangerous kind,” Rayleigh said softly. “The ones built of silk and gold are harder to escape than iron.”

You let out a quiet hum, neither agreeing nor denying, your gaze drifting back to the ledger on your desk. Every column was perfect, every figure precise, the numbers a reflection of the life you had built, or perhaps the one built around you.

The ink glimmered faintly in the lamplight, each mark a promise you had made to keep the machine turning, to play your part in a world that rewarded obedience. And yet, somewhere deep inside, his words had lodged like a splinter. A small, aching wound, impossible to ignore.

You closed the ledger gently, as if afraid of waking it. “Even cages can provide use, if you know how to work them,” you said quietly. “Protection, safety… boundaries.”

He laughed, the sound soft and genuine, carrying through the bond like the faint roll of waves against a hull.

“My apologies,” he said, the warmth in his tone unshaken. “I can see that I’ve crossed a line.”

You almost smiled. “You’re remarkably self-aware for a man prying into another person’s head.”

“I try to be polite,” he replied. Then his voice softened, losing its humor. “You feel like a mystery, you know. A secret I’m trying to unravel, but also a comfort I’ve been missing. A piece of me I always knew was gone and didn’t realize could be found again. Makes a man half-mad, having a comfort like this.”

You froze, every thought falling silent for a beat. His words sank through the quiet between you like stones into water.

Until he said it, you hadn’t realized it yourself—that the feeling wasn’t one-sided. His presence had settled into your mind like something natural, inevitable. It wasn’t loud or demanding, but steady, harmonic, like the sound of a piano key being tuned to its perfect pitch, or a number finally fitting into the equation where it belonged.

The realization left you still. Not frightened, exactly, just aware in a way you hadn’t been before. You could feel him even now, faint but certain, his presence a low hum against your own thoughts, neither intruding nor retreating.

You exhaled slowly, fingers tracing the closed edge of the ledger. The air between you hummed with a strange warmth, unsettling and familiar all at once. “You shouldn’t say things like that,” you murmured, half under your breath. “I told you… I’m promised to another.”

He chuckled softly, the sound low and smooth, like the sea lapping against a hull. “Promises,” he said, his tone lazy with amusement, “are fickle things. People change. Circumstances change. Hearts, too.”

You smiled faintly despite yourself. “You sound like trouble.”

“Only to those who don’t listen,” he said. You could almost hear the grin in his voice. “But fine, I’ll behave—for now. On one condition.”

You tilted your head. “And what would that be?”

“Wear something covering tomorrow.”

You raised a brow, unable to stop the small laugh that escaped you. “Covering? That’s a curious request.”

“Bad weather,” he said, voice dipping just enough to make it sound like more than a simple warning. “I heard it’s going to be rainy in Sabaody.”

You leaned back in your chair, still smiling. “And you care about the weather here?”

“I care about you walking around in silk and pretending it’s armor,” he replied easily. “So yes, I do.”

You didn’t have an answer for that. The pause that followed wasn’t awkward; it was charged, like the air before a storm.

The connection softened after a moment, fading back to that quiet hum that lived just beneath your thoughts. He didn’t say goodbye, but you could feel it in the way his presence ebbed away, patient, steady, unwilling to linger too long.

Outside, the breeze shifted, carrying the faint scent of rain through the open window. The curtains moved like lazy waves, the air heavy with salt and something else, something waiting. You caught yourself smiling, the kind of smile that made no sense and didn’t need to.

“Covering,” you muttered, shaking your head as you gathered your papers. “The Den Den said the weather is supposed to be good.”

You crossed to the window, brushing the curtain aside. The horizon beyond the mangroves shimmered with the faintest trace of silver, visible over the bright lights of the amusement park. The city below was still hopping, boats pushing off from their docks, vendors calling, the distant song of a shell radio drifting through the air. The theme park never stopped, even with bad weather.

But as you looked closer, you noticed it. The clouds forming far beyond the groves, dark and slow-moving, curling over the horizon like smoke.

-X- Through the Looking Glass -X-

The morning air in Sabaody carried the scent of salt and promise, brisk, lively, and threaded with tension. By the time you and your father stepped out of the hotel, the streets were already awake. Merchants shouted from stalls built beneath the mangrove roots, their voices overlapping in a chorus of trade. Marine officers moved through the crowds with their usual show of authority, boots splashing in puddles left over from the night’s rain.

Your father adjusted the cuffs of his coat, elegant and pressed despite the humidity. “We’ll take the longer route through Grove Forty,” he said. “The shipwrights are hosting the brokers there this morning. It’ll make a good impression if we’re early.”

You nodded, tucking your ledger under one arm. He didn’t notice the way your gaze kept drifting toward the docks, where rumors always spread faster than smoke. The whispers had been everywhere since dawn: sightings of pirate ships near the outer groves, a few smaller vessels turning back toward the open sea.

It wasn’t unusual for pirates to pass near Sabaody, but the tension in the air felt different this time. Dockhands spoke in low voices, eyes flicking toward the horizon. A few of the richer merchants had already canceled appointments, citing “security concerns.”

Your father, of course, was unbothered. “If we ran every time someone flew a black flag, we’d never get anything done,” he said when you mentioned it. “Pirates chase gold. We move it. There’s a difference.”

You followed him down the polished boardwalk that circled the upper groves, the sound of your shoes clicking against wet wood. The mangroves glowed faintly beneath your feet, light pulsing through the trunks like veins. Above, the sky was thickening again, clouds rolling in where the sun had been.

“I told you to bring an umbrella,” you said without looking back.

“The Den Den said good weather,” He replied, though his attention was elsewhere. The Marine patrols had doubled since yesterday, their ships lined like teeth near the inlet. You caught sight of a Den Den Mushi operator on the corner, shell pressed to his ear, his expression tense.

“Which pirates?” you asked one of the attendants as you entered the carriage.

The man hesitated, then said quietly, “No one’s sure. But some say it’s a crew from the Grand Line—someone important. Maybe even from the New World.”

Your father scoffed. “Old sailor tales. The big-name pirates have no reason to come here, besides coating their ships on the lower docks. It’s just nerves from the last auction scandal.”

You nodded, though something in your stomach tightened. The air had that charged feeling again, the same quiet warning Rayleigh had given you the night before.

The carriage began to move, its wheels humming softly over the slick, rain-dark boards. Outside, the mangroves swayed in the growing wind, their roots shifting with the slow pull of the tide. The air smelled of salt and sap, heavy enough to cling to your tongue.

You leaned back against the seat, letting the steady motion lull you. The hotel disappeared behind the veil of mist, and with it went the fragile sense of safety you had managed to rebuild over the past few days.

Then, as soft as a passing thought, something brushed against your mind. Familiar. Warm.

“Got any plans today, sweetheart?”

You startled before you could stop yourself, then smiled faintly, realizing the voice wasn’t aloud.

You chuckled under your breath, careful to keep your expression neutral. Your father sat across from you, muttering about tariffs and schedules, too focused on his notes to notice.

“Meetings, ledgers, the usual glamour of a shipping dynasty,” you thought. “And you?”

“Trying not to drown, mostly,” Rayleigh replied, his voice carrying a soft humor that rippled through your mind. “The sea’s decided to keep me busy today. Thought I’d check on my landlocked half and see if she was behaving.”

“Barely,” you answered, hiding a grin as the carriage jolted over uneven planks. “Apparently, there are rumors of pirates near the groves. My father says it’s nonsense, but everyone’s tense.”

There was a pause, and you felt something shift across the connection, a faint pull of thought and concern.

“Ah,” he said at last, his tone light but with a weight beneath it. “Rumors can be dangerous things. Maybe don’t test your luck today.”

You glanced out the window, watching the ripples in the water between the roots. “You sound like you know something I don’t.”

“That’s entirely possible,” he said, amusement threading through the words. “But think of it as friendly advice.”

You bit back a laugh. “You and your friendly advice are starting to sound extremely suspicious.”

“Bad weather, darling. Just promise me you’ll stay close to your father.”

“Hardly, he flutters around like a butterfly. I can hardly keep pace.”

The rain had started again by the time your father’s carriage arrived at the auction house. The sky above Sabaody was the color of tarnished silver, and the air hung heavy with salt and the scent of the mangroves. Even before you stepped inside, you could smell the place: perfume, polish, and the faint, sour tang of fear that no amount of incense could disguise.

The building rose out of the grove like a cathedral, its marble walls gleaming wetly under the lantern light. A line of carriages stood waiting out front, their passengers disappearing one by one into the grand entrance.

Your father adjusted his coat as he stepped down, his polished shoes splashing lightly against the flooded boards. “Remember,” he said, offering his arm as if the two of you were attending a social function. “We are here to do business, not to judge it. The Celestial brokers are watching everything today.”

You nodded, forcing a polite smile that did not reach your eyes. Inside, the noise and light hit like a wave. The chandeliers gleamed, the polished floors reflected the crowd, and behind all the luxury, you could hear the faint metallic rattle of the cages waiting beyond the curtain.

“Sign in,” your father said, moving to the back rooms. “Then check the tariffs. We will want copies for the company records.”

You moved toward the registration desk, trying not to look at the men and women waiting in the shadows. Your heartbeat was steady, but your palms were slick. You had been here before, not as a guest, but as a thief of freedom, slipping between the roots under cover of darkness.

Then you heard a voice behind you. Rough. Familiar.

“Well, well. Look who came crawling back.”

You froze. The sound of the crowd faded until all you could hear was the steady pounding of your own pulse. Slowly, you turned.

Three men stood at the edge of the hall, half-hidden by a marble column. You recognized them instantly, the bounty hunters from the mangroves. The one in front still bore the mark across his cheek where your chain had struck him. His smile was wide and ugly.

“Thought we’d lost you that night,” he said. “Didn’t realize you’d cleaned up so well.”

Your throat went dry. “You’re mistaken,” you said quickly, your voice cool but trembling at the edges. “You must have me confused with someone else.”

The scarred man’s grin widened. He stepped closer and grabbed your wrist, his grip hard enough to bruise. “No use lying. I never forget a face. Especially one that cost me a pretty penny.”

You tried to pull free, but his hand tightened. “Let go,” you said, louder this time. “You’re making a mistake.”

The man’s companions closed in behind him, their boots scraping against the marble floor. The crowd began to murmur. Some turned to watch, curious, while others pretended not to see. The auction clerks looked away. No one intervened.

The scarred man leaned in close, his breath hot and foul. “You think you can play the lady after running off? You cost us good money.”

The sound of steel clicking shut froze you where you stood. Before you could react, he had snapped a shackle around your wrist. The cold bit through your skin, sharp and merciless, dragging up memories you thought you had buried.

“I’m not,” you began, but he yanked the chain hard enough to pull you off balance. You stumbled, hitting the marble floor with your shoulder. The pain shot through you, sharp and immediate. Laughter followed from behind him, harsh and ugly, echoing off the vaulted ceiling.

“Sure you’re not,” he said, his grin spreading. “Go on then. Try to run again.”

The chain pulled tighter. The iron bit into your skin, tearing at the tender flesh of your wrist. You could taste blood from where you’d bitten down on your lip to keep from crying out. The noise of the hall blurred; the shuffle of footsteps, the murmur of bystanders pretending not to see, the faint clink of coins as someone placed a bet on what might happen next.

And then a voice broke through it all. Calm. Smooth.

“Now that’s no way to treat a lady.”

The voice carried across the marble hall, calm and steady, yet it held enough weight to still every sound around it. It wasn’t raised, but it didn’t need to be. The laughter stopped mid-breath. Conversations died. Even the bounty hunter’s hand faltered on the chain as he turned, startled by something he couldn’t quite name.

The crowd shifted without being told to, parting as though an unseen tide had drawn back from the shore. Through the space that opened, a man approached. He moved unhurried, each step deliberate, the sound of his boots echoing against the polished marble. He walked with the confidence of someone who had stood at the center of storms and learned long ago that panic only made the wind worse.

He looked like the sea had claimed him once and decided to let him live. His long dark coat hung heavy with rain, the edges damp and curling slightly where the salt had dried into the fabric. His shirt, open at the collar, revealed a glimpse of tanned skin and the faint glint of a sword resting against his waist. The scent of brine and tobacco followed him, faint but distinct, the quiet signature of a man who had spent too many years chasing horizons.

His hair was a deep gold, still wet, slicked back in places but falling freely in others. Strands clung to his temple and the side of his neck, where droplets of rain traced the curve of his jaw. A magnificent jaw with four careful lines of scruff. His glasses caught the light, obscuring his eyes for a moment before he adjusted them with an easy motion. When the glare shifted, his gaze met the crowd’s; dark, sharp, and full of quiet amusement.

He was taller than most of the men in the room, perhaps in his forties, but there was nothing diminished in him. If anything, time had only refined him. His face bore the kind of strength that comes from surviving, from laughing in the face of danger and walking away from it. The faint lines around his mouth hinted at a man who smiled often, though not always kindly. A thin scar cut across his left eye, pale against sun-browned skin, the only rough note in an otherwise composed face. Somehow, it didn’t mar him; it just made him fascinating.

A murmur rippled through the onlookers as recognition began to set in. The older brokers whispered to one another, voices hushed, names half-formed. A few of the Marines at the edge of the room shifted uneasily, as though instinct alone warned them to stay quiet.

The bounty hunter scoffed, too ignorant or too stubborn to notice the sudden change in the room. “Mind your business. This one’s property.”

The blond man smiled faintly, the expression small but disarming. “Property,” he repeated, his tone mild. “You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve always had trouble telling the difference between men who own chains and men who wear them.”

The hunter bristled, taking a step forward, but the stranger didn’t flinch. His eyes, half-hidden by the glass, glinted with something sharp and knowing. There was no tension in his stance, no visible readiness to fight, yet the air itself seemed to shift around him. It was subtle, electric, as if the room had suddenly remembered how dangerous silence could be.

And then, for just a moment, his gaze flicked toward you. The noise, the crowd, the light, all of it seemed to fade. The quiet hum in your chest, the one that had haunted your thoughts since that night under the mangroves, flared to life. You knew him before he even spoke your name.

Rayleigh.

He stopped a few paces away, studying the scene with quiet amusement, his gaze steady but not cruel. He had the kind of handsomeness that didn’t need to announce itself; refined, weathered, and confident, the kind that came from living fully rather than chasing youth.

The bounty hunter sneered, trying to recover his authority. “We got a problem?”

The blond man didn’t look at him immediately. His eyes found yours first, and the noise of the hall seemed to fade around you. His expression softened, and something within you stirred in recognition. A quiet hum, deep and steady, moved through your chest, familiar and grounding.

You couldn’t have explained how you knew him, only that you did. He felt like something you had always been meant to find.

“You all right, sweetheart?” he asked softly, mouth tilting up.

You nodded once, too stunned to speak.

He smiled faintly, then looked back at the man holding the chain. “Funny thing,” he said, his tone conversational, almost amused. “I’ve seen plenty of slaves in my time. None of them wear silk with that much conviction.”

“Walk away before you get hurt,” the scarred man growled.

The stranger tilted his head slightly, his expression thoughtful, as if he were weighing the idea. “All right,” he said finally. “But before I go…”

He moved.

It happened so fast you didn’t see it, only felt the rush of air as something snapped. The chain fell to the floor with a metallic clang. The bounty hunter stumbled back with a strangled cry, clutching his arm where the blond man’s hand had struck.

“Best let her go,” he said quietly. “You’re out of your depth.”

The remaining men hesitated. The stranger didn’t draw his sword or raise his voice, but the weight of his calm was more dangerous than any threat. No one else moved.

When the stillness finally broke, it was only with the sound of rain against the windows.

The man brushed a bit of water from his sleeve and looked down at the hunter sprawled on the floor. “Good,” he said. “Then we understand each other.”

You were still kneeling, breathing hard, your pulse loud in your ears. He turned to you, his expression softening. “You should stand,” he said. “Before someone decides to make another mistake.”

You hesitated, your breath still uneven, then reached for his hand. His palm was warm and calloused, his grip steady in a way that made the rest of the room fade into background noise. The scent of rain and salt clung faintly to him, grounding you after the chaos of the last few minutes.

He held your gaze for a moment longer than was proper, the faintest curve lifting the corner of his mouth. “Good to meet you face to face,” he said, his voice quiet and unhurried. “And just as pretty as I imagined.”

The words caught you completely off guard. Your face went hot before you could stop it, your pulse jumping wildly in your throat. You opened your mouth to speak, but nothing coherent came out, only a half-formed sound that could have been thanks, or protest, or both.

Before you could recover, you heard familiar footsteps pounding across the marble floor.

“By the stars—what in heaven’s name happened here?”

Your father’s voice sliced through the stunned silence. He looked between you, Rayleigh, and the two men groaning on the ground, his face pale with fury and confusion. “Who are you?” he demanded, turning on Rayleigh. “What have you done?”

Rayleigh released your hand with deliberate gentleness, straightening as though the outburst hardly concerned him. “Me?” he said lightly, brushing a drop of rain from his sleeve. “Only helped your daughter out of a bit of trouble. Those men seemed confused about who she belonged to.”

“Belonged to?” your father repeated sharply, his outrage turning toward the bounty hunters sprawled at Rayleigh’s feet.

You found your voice then, your pulse still racing. “They attacked me,” you said quickly. “They said I was someone else—a runaway slave. They tried to take me.” You looked down at the broken shackle still hanging from your wrist. “If he hadn’t intervened—”

Your father’s expression softened instantly, horror replacing anger. He reached for you, his hands hovering near your face, as though afraid to touch you and confirm you were truly unharmed. “My dear, are you hurt?”

“I’m fine,” you said quietly, though the tremor in your voice betrayed you. “He stopped them.”

Your father turned back to Rayleigh, his tone cautious now. “You have my gratitude, sir. I don’t know what would have happened if you hadn’t stepped in.”

Rayleigh smiled politely, but his eyes glinted with something faintly amused. “No need for gratitude,” he said. “I don’t much care for bullies. Besides, I was only passing through.”

Your father nodded stiffly, already motioning to the nearby guards. “Passing through or not, I insist you come by our suite tonight. A drink, at least. It’s the least I can offer.”

Rayleigh inclined his head, his tone smooth. “Perhaps. If the lady insists.”

You blinked, still trying to gather your composure. “I—”

Your father interrupted, oblivious to the subtle exchange. “Good. It’s settled. Now, let’s get you cleaned up.”

As he turned away to summon the attendants, Rayleigh’s gaze met yours again. That quiet hum stirred in your chest, gentle and familiar, like the echo of a heartbeat not your own. He smiled, a small, private, knowing thing.

“You really do have a talent for trouble,” he murmured.

You managed a shaky smile, your voice barely above a whisper. “Do you have a habit of showing up at just the right time?”

He chuckled softly. “For the right woman, yes.”

He talks nonstop. About your posture, your breathing, the way your voice sounds when you lie, the way you hold your sword, and how cute your “angry little face” is when you’re trying not to blush. Which is often. Because he says things like:

“If I ever get my hands on you, sweetheart, you’ll need a week to walk straight. And that’s just from the massage—don’t exhaust yourself.”

You’ve tried everything. Meditation. Alcohol. Punching yourself in the face. If you even think about seduce another man, purely out of spite, he’s there. That poor soul will be nearly scared off the planet if Scopper started narrating the entire seduction attempt in excruciating detail—and then threatened to show up in person with “visual aids.”

He’s also unnervingly competent. He knows how to hotwire a ship, break into a vault, disable an admiral, and still have time to complain about the lack of decent bath salts on this side of the sea. You suspect he’s a criminal, but you can’t be sure because he’s cagey and dramatic, like a pirate version of a soap opera villain.

When you finally meet—cornered on an abandoned island, soaked and bloodied from a storm—you recognize him instantly. Not from the face. From the grin.

“Well, well. There’s my favorite migraine in boots.”

-X-Bond Awakening-X-

Age 16:

You were sixteen when it began. Sleep came easily that night, soft as always, yet when the darkness deepened, something shifted. The dream was not like the others. The air carried salt, the kind that stung your nose and filled your lungs, and a murmur rolled through it.

“If Rayleigh uses my hair oil one more time, I’m shoving a sea prism stone up his ass.”

At first you thought it was your own mind filling the silence. Then the sound sharpened into words. A man’s voice, low and steady, shaped by the cadence of the sea. He was not speaking to you. He was speaking into the air of your dream, as if you were a wall or a stone.

You lay still inside that strange half-world, listening.

He barked orders to someone you could not see. Laughed suddenly, a warm burst that startled you. Another night he muttered about burned fish and groaned about a captain’s snoring. His tone shifted often, from sharp and decisive to quiet with thought.

“That’s right, tell ‘em Scopper Gaban sent you. And then punch them. Twice. No—three times, if they’re ugly.”

Mostly it was nonsense. Batshit insane, even. Him, it, whatever the voice belonged to. Scopper Gaban, he called himself. There was a man in your head, and he was not okay.

You assumed he was a man because it felt that way. His voice carried weight, too rough around the edges to mistake. He thought often of women, too often, his mind a mess of half-formed pickup lines and terrible jokes that cracked against the walls of your dream until you winced.

There was no real way to answer. Not in the way you wanted.

In your dreams, it was like standing before a wall, solid and thick, with only the faintest echo slipping through the cracks. You could think at him, press words against the surface, but they smeared like paint. He never seemed to notice, never paused, never answered back.

And yet, night after night, you returned.

So you tried to finger-paint a sunset.

It went badly. The orange smeared like blood, the sun warped into a gaping wound of emotional instability, and the whole thing carried a faint sense of being cursed. You frowned at it, smearing harder, trying to will it into something softer, brighter.

That was when the voice cut through.

“That’s not a sunset. That’s a crime scene.”

Your hand went slack. The brush dropped into the mess at your feet.

“Rude!”

“That thing looks like it insulted a pirate crew and got disemboweled by the shoreline.” A pause. A chuckle. “I like it. Good job, brain.”

You froze. The world froze. Even the wall seemed to tilt beneath the sound of his words.

He had answered.

Not in passing, not to someone else. He had spoken into the crack in the wall, directly where you stood.

Your mouth went dry. Your heart knocked hard against your ribs. You blinked, you wiped your stained hands against your clothes, and forced out a whisper.

“Who are you—”

And the dream shattered.

You woke in your bed, breath ragged, palms sticky with sweat, the memory of his laugh clinging to your skin like salt spray.

So you were having weird dreams.

And you did what any teenager with a creeping sense of doom would do. You wrote it all down in your notebook under the heading: Evidence I’m Cursed.

Having a sentient dream trilogy of an older man’s thoughts was… an experience.

The dreams blurred together, a half-lucid anthology of nonsense and frustration.

You tried snapping at the air, shouting at nothing as if your fury could punch through the invisible wall, only to wake hoarse and alone. There was no way to reach him. No way to make yourself real.

You tried telling people. That ended quickly. They smiled at first, then frowned, and eventually began to ask if you were all right in the tone reserved for cracked teacups and lost dogs.

And then there was the sheer chaos of what you overheard. Utterly unhinged declarations delivered with perfect conviction. “If I die, tell my boots I loved them.”

You filled page after page with these fragments. Some nights you laughed until your ribs hurt. Other nights you shut the book and pressed it under your pillow, convinced you were slowly losing your mind.

But no matter what you did, the dreams came back. And so did he.

You once dreamt he tried to seduce someone through you. Telepathically.

It was not subtle.

You woke with the words tumbling off your tongue in a bleary haze, still caught between sleep and waking. Which was how you ended up staring at your math teacher and declaring her a “foxy temptress of numbers.”

Detention.

A long one.

By then you had stopped denying it. Your hallucination had a personality and a vivid inner life. He was a pirate. Not just a pirate—he was apparently a famous one. A man likely presumed dead, missing, or too chaotic to exist legally.

You were just a teenager, trying to survive school, maybe fall in love, maybe scrape together a future. And meanwhile, your literal dream parasite had decided to conjure an imaginary jackass who flexed on warlords and described naval combat as “bedazzling with cannons.”

Sometimes you hated him for it. Sometimes you laughed until you cried.

And sometimes, when the dreams went quiet, the silence unsettled you most of all.

Because in the hush, it was like you could feel him. Not the words, not the walls, but the raw pulse of him. The unbearable joy of wind snapping full in the sails. The electric thrill of a good fight. That stubborn, brash flame of someone who lived louder than life itself.

And once, so soft you almost missed it, the thought that sank into you like a hook:

“I hope my bond activates soon. I hope she’s pretty and fun. And I hope she never knows I’m this dumb.”

And for a moment… You almost like him.

Almost.

“Do sea kings like jazz?”

And that’s when you wake, slam your pillow over your head and, scream.

Age 17:

By the time you were seventeen, the notebook had grown fat with scribbles, stains, and desperate annotations. Somewhere between your math notes and doodles of half-finished sunsets, a page had been carefully underlined and titled in all caps:

Top Ten Reasons My Inner Psyche Is a Menace

Starts bar fights because the music “doesn’t have enough groove.”

Thinks pants are optional if you own the confidence.

Constantly thinks about punching fish. For no reason.

Occasionally screams “SHINY!” like a magpie in heat.

Once mentally narrated an entire sword fight like it was erotica. You are still recovering.

Called himself “the sexy one” of the crew, with the solemnity of a priest giving benediction.

Complained that a man died “too boringly,” as though there were acceptable standards.

Believes rum is a food group. No exceptions.

Described someone as “stab-worthy but charming.” You cannot decide if that was supposed to be a compliment.

Genuinely believes glitter is a lifestyle.

You stared at the list often, chewing the end of your pen, wondering if anyone else in the world would ever believe it. If you showed this to a therapist, they would smile gently, fold the page in half, and send you to a very quiet institution.

Yet, for all its madness, the voice never left you.

The dreams began to shift. They no longer felt like drifting through an endless dark. They had shape now, edges. Less like floating in space, more like stepping into a world that wanted to trick you into believing it was real.

And of all places, it was disappointingly familiar.

Your hometown.

Not the vast oceans, not some glittering battlefield of legends. Just your town, small and ordinary, a little gray around the edges. You found yourself walking its streets alone, every stall of the market set just as it would be in daylight. The cobbler’s awning sagged. The baker’s shutters squeaked in the breeze.

You weren’t looking for anyone. That was the lie you told yourself. You were only moving through the place you knew best, a half-memory of a half-dream. Definitely not searching for your so-called soulmate. Not on purpose. Not after years of forcing yourself to ignore the walking disaster who had made himself at home in your skull.

And yet—

There it was.

Posted crooked on the town board, half-covered by an ad for salted fish and someone’s missing chicken. The parchment fluttered in the dream-breeze, ink bleeding slightly at the edges, but the words were clear enough to make your stomach drop.

WANTED: SCOPPER GABAN.

PIRATE. DANGEROUS. CHARMINGLY ARMED.

ALSO, PLEASE STOP FLIRTING WITH THE NAVY.

You stared.

And paused.

Because.

Well.

The hallucinations were now just getting out of control.

This was not a voice muttering nonsense in the back of your head. This was your own subconscious setting up a corkboard in the middle of a dream and pinning down your curse in black-and-white lettering. As if you needed the reminder.

You rubbed your eyes. The poster stayed put. The missing chicken notice flapped away, leaving the pirate’s smirk sketched in cheap ink and bold strokes. His name stared back at you like it had always belonged.

Scopper Gaban.

You whispered it once, testing the sound on your tongue. The world seemed to hum faintly in response, as though the dream itself had been waiting for you to say it.

And the image on the poster?

He was super sexy.

Annoyingly sexy.

The kind of sexy that made your brain want to fold in on itself and file for relocation.

Broad shoulders that filled the paper, thick forearms drawn with smug precision, a stance so cocky it almost radiated sound. His shirt hung open like he had never once believed in buttons, and somehow it worked. The artist had even given him a ponytail that looked both accidental and perfectly styled, as though he had fistfought a tropical storm and walked away with a fashion statement.

And his face—l?

His face screamed: I win fights and then kiss your mom.

You slapped a hand over your mouth, heat crawling up your neck, even though you knew no one could see you. This was your subconscious. This was your dream. And apparently your dream had decided to be rude.

He was so ridiculously appealing it felt cruel. As if someone had taken all the vague, half-formed longings you never spoke aloud, hammered them into a single body, and handed it to you wrapped in an open shirt and smug grin. Handmade for all the latent desires you did not even know you were waiting to be fulfilled.

The rest of your sleep that week was hell.

Every time your eyes closed, there he was. The poster burned into the backs of your lids. That ponytail. That stance. That maddening smirk. You tried to shake it off, wanted to bury yourself in homework, in chores, in the clamor of ordinary life. But as soon as your head hit the pillow, the image came crawling back.

Worse still, the voice grew cockier than ever.

You could hear him, drifting on the edges of your dreams, tossing words like sparks into the night. His laughter, loud and unbothered. His commentary is increasingly unbearable. He flirted shamelessly, the sound of his charm spilling toward women you could not see, half-formed dream figures who giggled at his nonsense.

“Did you like the photo? I flexed a little, just for flair. You gonna tear it down and keep it? Hang it by your bed? You blushed. You so blushed.”

It should not have mattered. They were not real. None of this was real. And yet the sound of it made your chest ache in ways you had no vocabulary for.

You tried to ignore him. You failed.

He seeped into everything.

You began to see him everywhere in your dreams. His face was sketched on the side of a crate, smirking at you through the grain of the wood. His name scrawled on half-torn papers that blew down the street with the wind. Once, an old man in the market sold fish with a poster of him tucked proudly behind the stall, as though it were part of the display.

What the hell, dreamscape?

You covered your face with both hands, muttering into your palms, but when you pulled them away he was still there, still laughing somewhere at the edges of your mind.

Age 18:

Around eighteen, the dreams started to genuinely mess with you.

It began subtly. A pause where there had never been one before. A ripple in the wall, as though the cracks were widening. By then, you had lived with his voice long enough to almost take it for granted, to filter it the way you might catalogue birdsong or rainfall.

But then, halfway through the year, it happened.

You made a comment. 

“I don’t care how handsome you think you are. You keep calling yourself ‘The Mountain Eater,’ and I swear to all the seas, I will salt your remains and join the marines.” 

Dream-you turned, gave the wall a vicious kick, and spat the words like poison. 

“Shut up, you ass! I know karate!”

It was just another exasperated remark. The kind you had trained yourself to fling into the void, stones dropped down a bottomless well.

But this time, something came back.

Not words. Not laughter.

Silence.

Alarming, unnatural silence.

The sound stopped in its tracks. A dead stop, as though the whole dream had drawn a breath and forgotten how to let it out. The world around you seemed to shiver in that pause, the market stalls swaying faintly, the sky overhead waiting for your next move.

And then—

A jolt.

Not yours. His. You felt it somehow, the distinct sense of someone stumbling hard, like they had taken a blow square to the face.

The hallucination—your hallucination—had been hit.

And then he spoke.

“Hey—OH. Oh no. That’s—actual, womanly sass. That’s not me. That was from inside. That was internal sass with flavor.”

The sound of him rolled through you, startled and unsteady, like a man who had just tripped over his own feet.

And then the world shifted.

It was like sitting in a stale classroom one moment, and the next, all the walls came crashing down. Air rushed in, sharp and clean, too much at once. You almost choked on it. Awareness flooded the space, overbearing and raw, so intense you could feel your pulse trying to match his.

“Hey—” The man paused. “Can you hear me?”

You froze.

The silence stretched long and trembling, heavy as a held breath. Your palms itched. Your throat tightened. And then, against all reason, you forced the words out.

“Are you a deity?” you asked, louder than you meant to, “like a really stupid one? Because being stuck in your head has been embarrassing for us both. Please remove me. My grades need it.”

The dream rang with your voice, bouncing strangely as if it did not know what to do with it.

And then came the laughter.

Not distant. Not muffled. Not half-lost behind the wall. It burst through, full-bodied and immediate, so close you almost felt it against your skin.

“Ha! Oh, hell—she’s funny. I got a funny one.” 

He sounded half-wild, like someone who had been handed a miracle and a disaster in the same breath. Excited. Nervous. Hungry with the thrill of it. 

“Not a deity, sweetheart. A man. Flesh, blood, scandalous fashion sense. You’re in my head? No, no, no. I’ve been in yours. You ever heard of soulmates, baby?”

The dream tilted. Your stomach flipped, as if the ground had decided to buckle beneath you.

“…like that crazy propaganda the World Government hates? The romance stuff?”

There was a beat of silence, then a delighted bark of laughter that filled the space like a cannon shot.

“Propaganda? Romance stuff?” He wheezed like you had just knocked him flat. “Oh, that’s rich. I love you already.”

You pressed both hands to your face, wishing you could sink through the floor. This was the part where you woke up. This was the part where the dream ended, right?

But the break never came. He was still there. Still laughing. Still real.

“How old are you, sweetheart?” he finally asked, and you could almost imagine him lounging back somewhere unseen, cocky head propped lazily in his hands.

“Get lost. I’m not about to be sexually harassed in my dreams.”

“Ouch. Don’t you know we’re fated? I’m just getting to know you. I’ve waited a loooong time for you, baby.” 

“Okay, sentient hallucination,” you snapped, heat flooding your face even as you tried to sound steady, “call me baby again and I’ll scream.”

“Promise?”

“Stop prying. You’re just a lustful dream creature who’s been torpedoing my sleep schedule and my grades, and you sound like your sixty.”

“Ouch,” he groaned with theatrical flourish. “You wound me, sweetheart. But—” a low chuckle followed, smug and unhurried—“admittedly you’re a little young right now.”

Your eyes narrowed, even though there was no one to glare at.

“Right now?”

He hummed, the sound rolling through the dream like a wave against the hull. “Don’t worry. I’m patient. Soulmates are forever, aren’t they? You focus on being pretty, and I’ll do the rest. Unless…” His voice curled slyly, amused. “Unless you want to give me your address.”

Your jaw dropped.

“Are you insane? Why would I hand out my address to a hallucination with a ponytail complex? What are you going to do, swim here? Kick down my door with your scandalous fashion sense?”

He laughed, and you could hear the grin in it, wide and self-satisfied. “If that’s what it takes, sweetheart. I’m very good with doors.”

You dragged both hands down your face. “I cannot believe this. You are either an escaped mental patient who is telepathically hacking my sleep, or my brain has developed a pirate kink.”

“Both flattering options,” he said cheerfully.

“Shut up,” you muttered, but your heart was still racing. The dream felt less lucid now, more cloudy, and his presence filled it like he had always been waiting for the wall to crack.

“Get some rest, babe. I promise I’ll wait.”

You opened your mouth, the word already on your tongue—Don’t.

But the dream dissolved before you could speak.

When you woke the next morning, you felt better than you had in years. Rested, steady, your chest free of the constant tightness you had carried since fourteen. The air in your room felt lighter. The morning sun spilled through the curtains like it had been made only for you.

And the world was quiet.

No mental corridors were twisting behind your thoughts. No crackling presence filling the shadows. No smoky voice curling in your ear with its laughter and swagger.

For the first time in four years, your head was your own.

You lie there, staring at the ceiling, too aware of the silence pressing in around you.

By the time you stumbled into the kitchen, the weight of it sat heavy in your chest. The clatter of plates, the scrape of cutlery, even the hum of the kettle—all of it sounded louder than usual, filling a space that had never been empty before.

You sat down, folded your arms on the table, and blurted, “Are you drugging me?”

Your mother blinked, spoon hovering halfway to her mouth. “With what?”

“I don’t know—horse tranquilizers. Holy water. Anti-demon herbs from the apothecary.” You squinted at her over your toast. “I’m having weird dreams again.”

She set her spoon down carefully, still watching you. “Do you want drugs?”

You opened your mouth, then closed it again. Because how did you explain? How did you tell her that the silence didn’t feel like peace, it felt like someone had torn out the background music of your entire life?

And then there’s the flirting.

God, the flirting.

Scopper Gaban is a flirt by nature. It’s not even always on purpose. He flirts with bartenders. He flirts with nuns. He flirts with that one angry sea witch who keeps hexing the ship’s compass.

And you?

You feel it every time it happens.

Thanks to the bond, it’s like getting poked in the ribs with a hot iron every time he winks at someone. And you try to ignore it. Desperately. Heroically. Like a woman who is determined not to lose her entire will to live just because her soulmate is flashing his damn smile at every girl in a fifty-mile radius.

It’s a strategy. And it almost works.

Except that Scopper knows what he’s doing. He feels your frustration.

And it only makes him worse.

At a tavern, he flirts with a barmaid with extra flair. Leans in close. Laughs louder. Brushes a strand of her hair back while she giggles.

You, at a table in the corner, drinking your juice like it owes you money, are trying not to combust.

He’s grinning. You are one sharp sigh away from flipping the table.

“You’re doing it on purpose.” You whisper it across the bond like a curse.

“What? Being charming?” he thinks back, all smug silk.

“You’re a menace.”

“You’re jealous.”

“You’re a child.”

“And you’re into it.”

You shoved a fist in your mouth to keep from screaming. You don't talk to him for three nights.

Not until he slides next to you, mentally, on a day your feeling soft.

“I flirt with them, sure. But I dream about dancing with you.”

You freeze.

Because maybe—just maybe…You want the dance too. 

Even if he’s still a disaster.

Because you are into it.

Elsewhere:

Gaban has dreams about it.

Dancing. Barefoot on the deck. You in something soft, maybe a little sun-warmed, perhaps a little smug, spinning under the stars with your arms around his neck and your soul completely unbothered by how insane he is.

No music. Just the sound of waves and laughter and your breath catching when he dips you just a little too low, his thumb pressed against your lower back like he knows it drives you crazy.

It’s a stupid dream. Too romantic. Too soft for a man who once dropkicked a Sea King off the ship for interrupting his nap.

But he has it again. And again. And again.

Until Rayleigh catches him zoning out during maintenance and just goes, “Who’s the girl this time, Romeo?”

Scopper shrugs. “No one.”

Rayleigh hums, entirely unconvinced. “Was she spinning? Were you spinning? Was there a moon involved?”

Roger strolls by, leans on the rail, and throws in with a grin, “Was I officiating? Do I cry? Be honest.”

Scopper flips them both off and storms below deck.

Buggy and Shanks grow concerned.

They start noticing it at meals.

Scopper, who usually talks with his whole chest and occasionally his elbows, begins… mumbling.

Mid-bite, mid-sentence, mid–pickled octopus ball—he’ll suddenly look off into the distance and go:

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that.”

Or—

“You’re cute when you’re wrong.”

Or the frankly disturbing:

“Soup isn’t a personality trait, baby, get over it.”

Buggy stares at him like he’s caught scurvy of the brain. Shanks openly starts taking notes. Mental notes. Survival notes.

They think he’s losing it.

He can’t wait for the day you actually show up.

Real. Living. Breathing. Gorgeous. Clearly regretting every life choice that brought you here.

Scopper jogs over like a golden retriever on espresso and throws an arm around your shoulder, smug as sin. You slap his stomach without looking.

And both Buggy and Shanks will audibly gasp.

“OH MY GOD SHE’S REAL.”

“YOU’RE NOT IMAGINARY??”

You’ll just nod and mutter, “Not by choice.”

Rayleigh will wander by, sipping his drink and clapping both of them on the back.

“It’s gonna happen to you too.” And then keeps walking like a prophet who left a landmine behind.

Age 20:

By twenty, the silence had long since ended. It was not every night—never steady enough to predict—but on many nights you found yourself bantering with your so-called sleep demon.

The first time he returned, it had been with no warning at all. You had slipped into dreams expecting nothing, braced for the echoing emptiness. And then there he was, full-throated and impossible, yelling about how someone had stolen his boots and demanding that the universe deliver vengeance on their head.

Now it had become… normal. Or as normal as it could be, given the circumstances.

You would drift into sleep, and sometimes he would be waiting for you. Lounging against an invisible wall, arms crossed, grin wide and crooked.

“Evening, sweetheart. Miss me?”

And you would groan, dragging a hand down your face. “I was hoping for peace tonight, creature.”

He always laughed at that, loud and smug. “Then you should’ve prayed for a quieter soulmate.”

The nights turned into sparring matches. His cocky wit pressed against your dry comebacks. He teased, and you snapped. He bragged, and you poked holes in his stories. Sometimes he ranted about pirates and captains and battles you barely believed. Other times, you scolded him for being the reason you never got enough sleep.

And yet, beneath all of it, there was the undeniable comfort of his voice filling the dark.

Not that you were ever going to tell him.

Because he had a horny side, one that flared up at the slightest hint of benevolence. If you so much as sounded soft for a moment, he pounced on it like a shark scenting blood in the water.

“You want to know why they call me the Mountain Eater?”

You were definitely still asleep. You knew it. But somehow the dream had that edge again, that strange heaviness that made it feel realer than real, as if you could smell the smoke in the air, as if his voice carried heat with it.

You paused. Slowly.

Dread crawled up your spine, cold and deliberate.

“…No,” you said finally. “Absolutely not.”

Which, of course, only made his grin audible.

“It’s not because I eat mountains, sweetheart.”

“Please stop.”

“It’s because I—”

“I’m only twenty!”

There’s a beat of silence. Then:

“...Exactly. Perfectly legal across three seas, four islands, and one very flexible marine outpost.”

“I will file a restraining order.”

“They don’t work across soulbonds. I checked. Twice.”

Every morning, you drop toothpaste down your shirt with the amount of gesticulating you do, venting the frustration he instills in you.

He will not shut up.

The dreams keep rolling like his laughter, smug and relentless, following you into the waking world through memory. By the time you sat down for breakfast, you could still hear the echo of his voice, pleased with himself, refusing to fade.

You try everything. Cold-shouldering. Praying before and after, and chanting at him. Sage hanging above your bed. Nothing works. This man is fully ungovernable and extremely proud of himself.

“If you can dodge my flirting, you can dodge a cannonball.”

“Soulmate training. You’re welcome.”

“Come on, baby, don’t be shy. The mountain is open for climbing.”

“YOU NEED A THERAPIST.”

But the damage was done.

Because he was also gorgeous.

He was lethal, too, carrying that dangerous energy that you could feel even in your dreams. He gave off the air of a feral older man who would throw you over his shoulder and laugh while doing it.

And worse?

You liked it.

Not the endless flirting, not the way he seemed determined to test the limits of your patience every night. But the sparring, the relentless back-and-forth, the sound of his voice meeting yours and never letting you get the last word. The image of his face—broad grin, sharp eyes, that maddening ponytail—was etched so deeply into your mind that you could see it even when you were awake.

It really wore a girl out to consistently lie to keep a man’s ego manageable.

Especially when you suspected his ego was unmanageable no matter what you did.

Every time you tried to sleep, he was there. All cocky grin and swagger, waiting to flatten your ego before you could even catch your breath.

“You still think about it, huh?”

You mutter, “Think about crushing your head with a rock? Yes.”

“No, baby. I mean the mountain climbing.”

You’d jolted awake, heart hammering, and flung a pillow across the room. It hit the wall with a dull thud.

You were not ready. You would never be ready. And yet—

Somewhere, deep down, in a corner of your thoughts you refused to acknowledge, the question lingered.

Why was he called the Mountain Eater?

You buried your face in your hands. Because you knew the moment you asked, he would never let you live it down.

Elsewhere:

Meanwhile, Scopper Gaban was living his best life.

He had survived God Valley, outlived more battles than he could count, endured Rayleigh’s endless irritation, and even put up with the chaos that came with Buggy and Shanks underfoot. He had earned his epitaph, too—Just not with your little brain conjuring the most insane sex escapades ever imagined by a virgin.

He had heard some of them slip through when you thought the wall still held. When you believed he could not hear you, you were so funny. The things you pictured him doing, the sheer chaos of it, made him laugh so hard he nearly fell off his hammock more than once.

And best of all, he just enjoyed you.

Not just the sass, not just the threats, not just the way you swore you hated him while your thoughts painted pictures that told another story. It was your spark. Your refusal to bow to him, even in your own dreams. The way your voice cut sharp and sure, never letting him forget you had claws of your own.

It thrilled him. It warmed him. It rooted deep in places he thought had long gone forgotten.

God, he loved women. Always had. But you, sharp-tongued and unyielding, spitting fire at him through dreams, were something else entirely. You made him feel alive, reckless in a way that no bottle of rum or brawl in a back alley ever could. You made him laugh, made him ache, made him want.

He had never doubted the soulbond would come for him. Every man on the seas knew the stories, whether they admitted it or not. But he had never anticipated you.

He had never anticipated how good you would make him feel.

And despite his disappointment that the bond only carried him into your mind during sleep, he considered that things were looking up. The walls were thinner now. He could hear you clearer, tease you sharper, almost reach across that invisible gulf.

And you’re quieter thoughts were much more available.

“Fuck a rake, Gaban. It has the same style as you.”

He nearly dropped his ale laughing at that one. The sound came out rough and sudden, shaking his shoulders until the mug foamed over.

Later that night, he scrawled the line on a tavern wall, half-drunk and grinning like a fool. He told Rayleigh, who only rolled his eyes and muttered about children. He told Roger, who wept with laughter and clapped him on the back so hard his ribs ached.

“Oh, she’s gonna kill you one day,” Roger wheezed. “That’s fun.”

From then on, he listened. Really listened to your offhanded remarks in the dreams. To the way you grumbled when your pen ran out of ink the day before. To the dramatic mutterings you thought no one could hear. To the sharp little curses when the mental load of homework piled high. To the gasp you let slip when a tempting thought brushed too close.

He listened hardest the night you sighed and muttered, half-asleep, “I bet you smell like wood polish and crime. Well eat this mountain, asshole.”

It was such a ridiculous thought that he wheezed for hours.

And he did not sleep after that.

Instead, he leaned back on the deck of the ship, staring at the sweep of stars across the dark, and for the first time he felt the bond hum. Not static. Not noise. Not a trick of loneliness.

Something alive.

Something real.

“…Mountain Eater, huh?” he murmured, to no one but the sea. “That’s what got you twisted up? Thinking I’m open for business with my affections?”

Then he grinned, wide and reckless.

“Oh, I’m gonna make you regret finding me cute. You’re gonna be my wife.”

Age 21:

But being awake was no longer doing much for you.

The crummy market job left you too much time to ruminate, too much time to think. You strategized, carefully, like someone handling a very stupid bomb.

You were still not sure what sort of cryptic entity Scopper Gaban was (besides a sexual one), but he had never once spoken to you while you were awake.

So, technically, if you wanted to privately enjoy some hands-on personal time while imagining a pair of forearms and an extremely tuggable ponytail… how would he ever know?

The answer, which slipped past your poor, foolish brain at the time, was simple. The soulbond was a petty, untrustworthy menace out to ruin your life.

It happened on a Tuesday. Of course it did.

You were twenty-one, finally home from work, emotionally drained, mildly hungry, and in the middle of committing a federal crime known as “getting a little too comfortable in bed with your imagination.”

It was fine. Totally normal. You had been stressed. You were unwinding.

There was scented oil involved. You lit a candle like some kind of romantic forest witch. You even put on the nice pajamas. The ones that said, “I deserve affection,” and also, “someone should probably be kissing me right now.”

And that was when the universe decided to add a pirate to the scene.

A very real, very conscious, very shirtless pirate.

You did not even have time to process the indignity. The moment your body tipped over the edge, the soulbond yanked you into dreamspace like a bad punchline.

You blinked, sweaty, breathless, and suddenly barefoot in the middle of a dream. Your chest was still heaving. Your skin was still flushed.

And him.

Scopper Gaban.

Almost entirely dream-formed, leaning against a barrel, smirking like a man who had been handed front-row tickets to the greatest disaster of all time.

“Sweetheart,” he drawled, grin wicked and smug, “if that was for me, you really did not have to go to all the trouble.”

Elsewhere:

Somewhere in the Grand Line, Scopper Gaban was mid-swig of dark rum and enjoying the peace of not being punched.

He was forty. Too handsome. Too smug. Entirely too good at balancing violence with charisma. He had been dealing with the faint soulbond static while you were awake—just a tickle of your mood, the occasional sass grenade, sometimes a dramatic internal monologue about taxes.

He was used to the bond being a low buzz. Background noise. A comfortable hum.

He was not used to it slamming open with all the grace of a cannonball into a fruit cart.

Because suddenly, he saw you.

You. In your bed. Breathing like a sinner. One hand under the blanket, the other gripping the sheets like they owed you money. Flushed. Beautiful. Desperate. Half-covered in blankets, eyes wide, lips parted in shock. Very obviously in the middle of something.

Eyes closed. Lips parted. Flushed in ways that could not be emotionally recovered from.

He stopped breathing. He might have been having a stroke.

Everything burned white. A heat flared in his chest. His soul yanked sideways like it had been sucker-punched. The bottle slipped from his hand and shattered across the deck. Somewhere outside the door, someone shouted, “What the hell was that?” but Gaban did not respond.

Because he was telepathically experiencing the most life-altering moment of his existence, and he was ninety-nine percent sure his soul had just been thigh-checked by fate.

He saw you.

His literal dream girl.

Doing the deed.

His dream.

He froze—heart thundering. The bond was open now. Raw. Pulsing.

And then you saw him.

Not a fantasy. Not a voice in the dark. Him. The man in your head, suddenly real. Big. Broad. Cocky.

You swore out loud. You freaked the hell out.

Your brain short-circuited. Your entire soul screamed.

“OH MY GOD—GET OUT!”

He blinked. Then the grin spread, slow and wide and utterly dastardly.

“Sweetheart,” he said, voice low and wicked, “if that was for me, you really did not have to go to all the trouble.”

His brain was melting. His soul was singing. His inner voice looped on repeat. She’s beautiful. She’s real. And she was thinking about—

 “NOPE. NO. UN-BOND. SEVER THIS. CALL A PRIEST.”

 “Aw, don’t be shy. Everyone needs a little midnight bonding now and th—”

 “I WILL FILE A TELEPATHIC LAWSUIT.”

The wall went up so fast it knocked the air out of both of you. The bond slammed shut like a window in a hurricane. Silence crashed down.

You shut the door. Hard. So hard you managed to wake yourself up.

He spent the next hour lying flat on his back, staring at the ceiling beams above his hammock. The shattered remains of the rum bottle still glistened on the deck, a sticky pool spreading slowly toward the corner. He did not move to clean it. He did not even blink much.

Absolutely stunned.

He replayed it over and over, every detail etched in fire behind his eyes. The candlelight on your face. The way your hand fisted the sheets. The way your voice had cracked when you swore at him. The bond had never once opened like that before. Never so raw, never so close, never so utterly alive.

And then the grin came. Wide. Wild. A little unhinged.

“Well,” he muttered aloud, laughter rasping in his throat, hunger twisting in his chest, “guess the mountain’s got a climber after all.”

He laughed until the men outside the door muttered that he was losing his mind. He laughed until he coughed and had to wipe his face with both hands. Then he lay there, heart pounding, grinning like a lunatic in the dark.

You did not speak to him for two weeks. Not a whisper. Not a mutter. Not even the faint buzz of your thoughts. He was not even sure you slept anymore.

He was suffering.

You were mortified.

He paced the deck. He chewed cigars down to the stub. He picked fights with Rayleigh that he had no business winning. Anything to burn off the frustration of silence. Because he could feel you there, just beyond the wall. Stubborn. Closed off.

Until one night.

A gentle tug. Small, reluctant. The bond stirred like a rope tightening, and he knew immediately. You had finally passed out.

He leaned into it, cautious, softer than he had ever been with anyone.

“…Hey. You okay?”

A sniffle.

“No.”

 “…Still mad?”

 “Still glowing red with shame, thanks.”

He laughed under his breath, aching with the sound of you. “…You looked good. No shame here.”

“Scopper,” you warned, your voice sharp and burning in his head, “I will rip the sea in half to strangle you.”

He only smiled wider, tilting his head back against the mast, the stars overhead sharp as diamonds.

And that was when he knew. You would come around. Eventually. Because the bond was real. You were real. And the timing might have been criminally bad.

But now that he had seen you, now that he had heard you call out his name, Scopper Gaban had no plans to look away.

He’s in love.

Back to your humiliation ritual:

You tried to forget it.

The Moment. The Incident. The time you were… busy… and your soulmate link decided to split open like a cursed relic and reveal you to your long-distance pirate disaster.

You did not reach out after that. You did not think about him. Much.

Except when you did. Constantly. In vivid, horrifying detail.

It was his fault, obviously.

And holy hell, he was stupidly hot.

Like beefcake meets folklore legend, lounging in someone else’s stolen chair. Tan skin, messy ponytail, the kind of muscles that suggested he wrestled bears for cardio.

There was a scar on his collarbone. His shirt was half-off. And he was looking at you like he had just spotted dessert and vengeance in the same sentence.

But you told yourself it did not matter. You were just a blip on his radar. A funny little cosmic fluke. He was thirty-five, dangerous, and impossibly hot. He probably had a harem and an STD named after him.

That man haunted you.

That was not a man who owned a calendar. That was a man who owned cologne called Bad Decisions.

He was probably sleeping in someone else’s bed right now.

And yet.

When you closed your eyes, the image came back. His smirk. His laugh. The way he had looked at you when the bond cracked wide open, as if you were not just real but inevitable.

You hated it. You hated him.

And worse than all of it, you wanted to hear him again.

So you did what any emotionally stable young adult would do: you assumed he was not interested. You distanced. You deflected. You muttered in your dreams, voice low and dismissive.

“It’s fine. I’m sure he’s busy with his five girlfriends anyway.”

And then.

Everything went quiet.

For exactly three seconds.

The kind of silence that was not empty, but heavy. Pregnant with disbelief. A hush that curled tight in your chest and made your stomach knot.

Then his laugh hit.

Loud. Wicked. Shaken with outrage and delight, like you had just slapped him across the face and kissed him right after.

“Five? Sweetheart, you think I could handle five? I can barely handle you.”

The bond pulsed warm, alive, as if your embarrassment only fed it.

“Come here, sweetie.” His voice. Low. Dangerous. “Count again.”

You froze like a deer caught in the midst of hunting season.

“…What?”

“Count again. How many do you think I’ve got?” 

The laugh that followed was rich, lazy, and smug enough to set your teeth on edge. It snapped you right out of your daze.

“Five,” you shot back. “Or six. One of them’s probably a twin. You strike me as the type.”

He whistled low, amused. “A twin, huh? Creative. I like that. But you’re wrong, sweetheart. Dead wrong.”

Your fists clenched under the blanket. “You expect me to believe you’re single? You? The human embodiment of bad decisions?”

“Single,” he said cheerfully. “Tragically. Devastatingly. Criminally single. And waiting for a mouthy little thing who thinks I smell like wood polish and crime.”

Then, without warning, you saw it.

Telepathic images. Vivid. Uninvited. Glorious.

His bed.

Empty.

Except for him.

Lying back shirtless, all warm golden skin and smug confidence, sprawled like a man who knew exactly what he was doing. His ponytail had slipped loose, hair a little wild, collarbone catching the light. He lounged with his hands tucked behind his head like some kind of self-satisfied god, radiating “yes, this is my throne.”

“Tell me when you see the first girlfriend.”

You squinted. Hard.

There were no women. No people at all. Just the man, the mattress, and a suspicious pile of unwashed clothes in the corner that might or might not have been breathing.

“That pile doesn’t count.”

“I don’t trust it.”

He sat up in the vision, a smirk curling lazily at the corner of his mouth. He leaned forward, as if about to press his face against yours, his eyes bright and hungry.

“Do I look like I’ve got time for five girlfriends?”

“Yeah,” you shot back automatically, “you definitely look like you’ve got time for five problems.”

His laugh shook the space between you, deep and shameless. But then it softened, dropping lower, edged with something rougher.

“If I wanted a problem, I’d want yours. If I were touching anyone, I’d want it to be you.”

Your brain short-circuited.

He kept talking, voice slower now, deliberate, every word sinking in like an anchor.

“I think about your voice when I can’t sleep. I think about your hands. I think about how I don’t even know what your lips taste like and that pisses me off every night.”

You went still. Absolutely still.

And then he leaned in, the bond tightening, his presence brushing against yours like a secret slipped into the dark.

“Five girlfriends? No, baby. I’ve been saving all this trouble for you.”

You slapped the bond shut so hard the echo rang in your bones.

Silence.

The quiet wrapped around you like a shield, hot and suffocating. You lay there on the floor, heart pounding against the boards, your whole body buzzing with the weight of what he had said.

You told yourself you were done. That was it—no more.

But twenty minutes later, you cracked it open. Just a sliver. Barely enough to breathe through.

Your voice slipped out, quieter than you wanted, fragile and unsteady.

“Do you mean… all of that?”

For a moment, there was nothing. No laughter. No teasing. Just the sound of him drawing in a sharp breath, as if he had been waiting for you to ask.

“Which part?” His voice was closer now, reverberating in the strange half-light of the dream. The walls of your usual dreamscape had gone soft around the edges, blurred into shadow and silence, as if the world itself was holding its breath.

 “The part where you said you think about me every night.”

 “…You want the honest answer?”

You hesitated. The air smelled faintly of salt and smoke. His silhouette leaned lazily against the crooked town board, sharp lines of his shoulders catching the pale dreamlight.“…Yes.”

“Then stop closing the bond.” He pushed away from the board and stepped toward you, each movement unhurried, deliberate. The ground beneath your feet shifted with the weight of him. His voice lowered, soft and steady, the kind of voice that wrapped itself around you whether you wanted it or not.  “Let me into your waking world. And I’ll show you exactly how true it is.”

Your throat tightened. The dream wavered, the edges shaking like glass under strain. You squeezed your eyes shut and slammed the bond closed with all the force you could muster. The town square flickered out.

But not before you whispered, quick and breathless, “…Two girlfriends. Max.”

When you woke, you told yourself it was nothing. A slip. A joke. Something to laugh at later.

But in the dreamworld you had abandoned, he still stood in the square, frozen for a heartbeat. Then his head tilted back, and the sound of his laughter rang through the dreamscape like thunder rolling over the sea. It cracked against the cobblestones, rattling the empty stalls and spilling out into the sky.

He laughed like a man who had just won the goddamn war.

And when the dream finally dissolved around him, he was still grinning, wide and wild, already thinking of what he would say when you opened the bond again.

Age 22:

Scopper Gaban, despite popular belief, did possess patience.

He had waited out storms that snapped masts in half, sieges that lasted weeks, hangovers that lasted longer, and one particularly memorable incident when Rayleigh got possessed by a cursed ship’s wheel and tried to steer the Oro Jackson into a cliff. He was a man of focus. Restraint. A pirate philosopher, if you will.

But you?

You were his villain origin story.

Because you could not—for the life of him—sit still. Or shut up. Or stop mentally narrating the world like you were trapped in a one-person stage play about feelings and socks.

You had discovered a trick, and he hated you for it. If you filled your dreams with meaningless drivel, he could not get a word in. He could not talk smooth. He could not land a single flirt without it being drowned in your barrage of chaos.

He would lean against a dream-wall, flexing the line of his jaw, hair falling rakishly across his forehead, voice pitched low and deliberate. What would you do if I kissed you right now?

And your response, without missing a beat, was:

“Oh god, did I leave the stove on? Wait, I don’t own a stove. Do you think bees have best friends? If I lick a battery, will it reset the soulbond? Do I have time to fake my death and move into a volcano—”

You’re not cooking, you are MID DREAM and TORMENTING him.

“BABY. Please. Please.”

He tries again during a mission. Covered in sweat, shirt half gone, adrenaline high. He opens the bond gently, the way a man might open a door to a sacred temple.

“You feel that, sweetheart?”

And you? You’re making soup.

“Oh god, did I leave the stove on? Wait, I don’t own a stove. Do you think bees have best friends? If I lick a battery, will it reset the soulbond? Do I have time to fake my death and move into a volcano—”

“Sweetheart,” he groaned, dragging a hand down his face in the dream. “I am trying to be romantic here.”

“Do fish get thirsty?”

“Stop it.”

He was going to lose his mind.

Patience, it turned out, had limits. The worst part? He knew you knew what you were doing.

You had weaponized your nonsense.

He would be in the middle of a fight, cutlass in one hand and blood roaring in his ears, and he would think about you. About your lips. About the way your voice cracked when you were flustered. He would let the thought slip, raw and wanting—

And you would mentally yell “BOOP!” into the bond and vanish.

Just like that. Gone.

You were the reason his eye twitched now. The reason he had developed a reputation for glaring at walls when no one was there.

Rayleigh had asked once, carefully, if he was all right.

“No,” Gaban growled, rubbing his temple.

“You’re… talking to yourself again.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.”

Gaban ignored him. Because if he admitted the truth, it would sound unbelievable. That you, the bond, the girl who haunted his nights, had turned into his personal tormentor.

You were the reason he had started mumbling threats under his breath, things like, ‘I’m gonna grab her by the ankles and shake the thoughts out. ’

And the worst part was that every time he imagined it—every time—he found himself laughing, because he could already hear you shrieking and calling him a feral maniac while you kicked him in the chest.

He was in hell.

And he loved it.

-X-Five Minutes-X-

One exhausted night, you fumbled. Like royally. A fumble of the century.

“Why are his forearms so hot.” You mutter, watching his shadow-figure becoming much less shadow and much more figure.

You didn’t know he was paying attention.

But the voice in your head goes dead silent. 

That when you realize you’ve fucked up.

You can almost feel Gaban’s smirk leering over you.

“…Say that again?”

“Uh, I said why are forearms hot, like warm. Like heat.”

“… Uh, uh, uh. Too late. I heard that. Immortalized. Etched into my heart.”

“You’re a criminal.”

“With criminally good arms.”

You try to be normal. You try to focus on your future. But every time someone talks about pirates, you can’t stop glancing over your shoulder, heart pounding, half-dreading, half-hoping.

You didn’t choose this man. Your dreams did, the little bitch. 

He’s out there. Smirking. Fighting. Probably shirtless. And you’re stuck with a bond, and a brain full of thoughts like:

“I could fix him.”

(You can’t.)

“I could ruin him.”

(You might.)

But mostly—

“Damn it. The mountain is hot.”

You went quiet.

It was suspicious. It was eerie. It was terrifying.

But then he felt it.

You. Still for once. No rambling, no nonsense, no batteries or bees. Just you. Thinking about him. Quietly. Fully.

And something in him snapped.

His voice slid into the dream, smooth as honey and sharp as sin. 

“You finally sitting still for me, baby? You done thinking about bees and soup and the ethics of dating a criminal? Because if you keep this up…”

You held your breath, frozen on the dream-bench where you had been sitting.

“Because if you keep this up…” His voice dipped lower, heavy with promise.

A pause. The silence stretched taut.

“…I’m gonna put every one of those dumb little thoughts somewhere they can’t escape.”

You squeaked. An actual squeak, high and startled, escaping before you could stop it.

The bond vibrated with his laughter, rich and wicked, shaking the edges of the dream until the sky itself seemed to tilt.

“Oh, sweetheart,” he drawled, “that’s the sound I’ve been waiting for. That’s right. Focus on me. Five minutes. That’s all I need.”

You managed four minutes and thirty-nine seconds.

Then, unbidden, your brain betrayed you. “Do ducks look good in hats? Or is it a trap, for breadcrumbs?”

The bond reverberated with the sound of him mentally banging his head into a wall. You could practically hear his skull thunk against the dream brick.

“You’re lucky you’re cute. And flexible.”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh no, sweetheart. Excuse me.”

The dream air went heavy, thick with the weight of his grin. The things he could do if you would just sit still for five damn minutes… They were illegal in three kingdoms, whispered about in pirate taverns, and probably carved into the bathroom wall of at least one brothel. He wanted to tell you all of them, in detail.

And very nearly, almost, they became reality the night you finally whispered into the bond, breathless and flustered—

Only for your treacherous brain to explode with, “One onion, diced. Four cups of chicken broth. Two carrots, chopped. Simmer until tender, add salt to taste—”

You rattled off soup recipes like your life depended on it. Broths. Stocks. Garnishes. You even muttered something about the ethics of parsley.

There was silence on his end—a long, stunned silence.

Then, slow and wrecked with laughter, “Sweetheart… I swear to every sea god alive, one day I am going to put you in a kitchen just to watch you break.”

You squeaked, flailing for cover. “I cook fine!”

“No, baby. You recite soup recipes during foreplay. That’s a different skill set entirely.”

You threw a mental chair at him. He ducked it, laughing so hard you thought the dream would crack apart.

And somewhere deep down, against all better judgment, you laughed too. The sound of it startled you—it felt too warm, too easy, and you knew you should not be giving him the satisfaction.

But the things he could do if you just sat still for five damn minutes?

They were illegal in three kingdoms, whispered about in pirate taverns, and likely banned in at least one monastery. The kind of acts sailors lowered their voices to describe, swearing they had only heard rumors. And very nearly, they became reality the night you finally whispered, breathless and flustered, words trembling at the edge of confession—

And then you bolted.

You ran off again.

The dream warped around you, the cobblestone market melting into empty streets, alleys twisting sharp and endless. Your footsteps echoed as you tried to outrun him, outrun yourself, outrun the bond that pulled taut no matter how far you fled.

Behind you, his laughter rolled through the dream like thunder, rich and wild.

“Sweetheart,” he called, his voice echoing down every corridor, “you can run all you want, but you and me? We are the same damn storm.”

Your heart hammered, your face burned, and still—you ran.

You were done.

Absolutely done.

Scopper Gaban had been haunting your brain like a hot poltergeist for years—interrupting your inner peace, ignoring boundaries, calling himself “the mountain,” and causing your best friend to say, ‘Have you considered exorcism?’

And he wasn’t interested, right? 

He was older. He had war stories, rum breath, and the emotional maturity of a sexy Border Collie with a sword. You were irritated, legally tired, and still a virgin, because fate had tied you to the world’s most chaotic pirate with commitment issues.

So you made a decision. A big one.

You were going to sever the bond. End the connection. Reclaim your peace. And lose your virginity to someone normal.

Someone quiet. Stable. Not spiritually connected to your frontal lobe. Unfortunately, you used your brain to conceive of this idea. A brain that vacations at Scopper Gaban’s when it’s feeling frisky.

“Well. That is rude.”

You flinched. “Oh my god—”

“No god here, sweetheart. Just me. Watching. Judging. Taking notes.”

You slammed the bond. Or tried to. He reopened it.

“Oh no, baby. You think I didn’t have a failsafe? A little telepathic tripwire in case you tried to throw that pretty little future away on Mr. Not-Me?”

“Shut up.”

“You’re wearing the cute socks. You wear those for me.”

“You are NOT real—”

“I’m the realest thing in this room. Especially compared to your imaginary fling.”

You try to keep going. You try.

“ If you even approach another man, I'll mail his ears to your mother.”

You make a sound—a deeply unsexy one. You are not okay. You’re bound to a dream-man with calloused hands, a sharp jaw, and enough stamina to kill a mortal.”

You grab your forehead like a minor deity has just cursed you. “This isn’t happening.”

“Oh, it’s happening. It’s so happening. And if another man so much as touches your bra clasp, I will astral project into his dreams and chew on his toes.”

“...Did you just say you were going to chew on—?”

 Scopper starts laughing. Loud, low, infuriatingly smug.

“I had a whole speech ready for that. Something about honor and dismemberment and maybe turning him into a soup.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t. You’re just mad because you thought I didn’t care.”

You don’t say much.

“…Do you?”

He sobers.

“I care so much, I trained for this moment. Do you know how many scenarios I’ve imagined? I had contingency plans, baby. I had levels. I was gonna show up shirtless in a thunderstorm if the telepathy didn’t work.”

Then, softly:

“You’re mine. You always have been. And I’ll wait as long as I have to. But if anyone tries to touch you again, I will scream in seven languages and sabotage every attempt you make.”

“…Even the emotionally healthy ones?”

“Especially those. They’re dangerous.”

You don’t say anything for a while.

Then, through the bond:“…What would you have done if I didn’t stop?”

A pause. A hum. A low promise:

“I would’ve burned the world to ruin your rebound.”

And the worst part?

Your cheeks burn. Your heart pounds. And you whisper—

“…Asshole.”

“Yours.”

-X-The Cold War-X-

Scopper knows you well by now. He gets an inch of vulnerability from you; you’re liable to start a war over it.

And he’s right.

You go full Cold War.

Not Cold Shoulder. Not “let’s take space.” No. You initiate a Cold. Damn. War.

The soul bond is still technically open, but you’ve barricaded every inch of your mind, as if it's a cursed fortress. No thoughts. No emotions. Not even the passive sass he usually swims in like a goddamn hot tub.

Silence.

And Scopper Gaban? He’s losing his mind.

It started because he wouldn’t stop talking during your plans of deflowering. Then he wouldn’t shut up afterwards. Then he laughed. Then he dared to be kind and soft, and make you love him.

So now? 

You’ve iced him out like an Antarctic prison from your dreams. You take medication. Alcohol. Potentially weed. Things that specifically prevent dreaming.

You change your entire mental presence. No sass. No mental monologue. Just an endless, beige void. You chant grocery lists to yourself to block out anything personal.

“Carrots. Laundry detergent. Anti-pirate spray.”

You’re convinced he’s also mad now.

You imagine him pouting. Brooding. Shirtless and moodily leaning against something in the rain like some tragic romance lead.

You whisper to yourself bitterly, “Good. Be broody. See if I care.”

You picture him looking at your half-shut bond like it personally insulted his biceps. Imagining him sighing deeply and talking about how you’re so emotional. Probably writing passive-aggressive haikus.

You start wearing cuter outfits in your dreams. Just in case he’s telepathically peeking. Which he shouldn’t be. But if he is, he’ll know what he’s missing.

Your mother asks if you’re seeing someone, after she catches you mumble murder over skimpy bikinis you are not confident enough to astrel project yourself into.

You say, “No, but I’m making someone regret not seeing me.”

What you don’t realize is:

He’s not mad. He’s not brooding.

He’s panicking like a squirrel in a thunderstorm.

Scopper Gaban has never not had you in his head.

You were always background music. A running commentary. A brain-gremlin narrating your day in full emotional color.

And now?

Nothing.

Just beige. Beige silence. Beige thoughts. Beige mental wallpaper.

He tries everything.

Sending you spicy thoughts (blocked).

Shouting “BABY” through the bond (denied).

Narrating his bicep flexing routine in increasingly dramatic detail (muted).

Playing a harmonica directly at the soulbond like it’s a walkie-talkie.

Nothing.

Meanwhile, you go about your day like nothing’s wrong.

You walk past wanted posters of him and go, “Who? Never heard of him.” You think a lot about bees. And soup. And the ethical ramifications of dating someone who once threatened to bite off a man’s kneecaps in your honor.

At one point you actually hiss, “Serves him right.” No context. Just vibes.

Three days in, Scopper breaks.

He storms into the bond like a man possessed, mentally falling to his knees like he’s reenacting a soap opera.

“I’M SORRY. I didn’t mean to ruin your night of boring sex with Beige the Villager! But also—are you really that mad or are you just… dramatic?”

You do not answer.

You turn on classical music.

You imagine him screaming into a pillow.

He tries again later, more pitifully: “You’re really mad, huh.”

“…You still mad?”

 “…You gonna be mad forever or like, just emotionally inconvenience me for a week?”

 “…Baby, please say soup.”

You hold strong.

Until he mentally slides you a mental image. Of himself. Wearing an “I’m Sorry” apron. Cooking soup. Badly.

The spoon is in his hair. The pot is boiling over. The kitchen is on fire. He has no shirt on and is trying to put it on with a towel that says “WORLD’S SEXIEST DISAPPOINTMENT.”

And—damn it.

You laugh.

Just once. Just a snort.

And he loses it.

“THERE SHE IS. OH MY GOD, YOU LAUGHED. BABY’S BACK. I’M GONNA—”

You slam the bond shut again.

“…Cold War’s not over,” you whisper, flustered.

You thought you were winning. You really thought you had him. The Cold War was in full effect, and you’d buried your feelings under a mountain of emotional ice and petty inner monologues.

Silence reigned. You held the line. You stopped reacting to his flirty telepathic nonsense, his shirtless soup apologies, his mental harmonica solos. You denied him everything. Attention. Validation. Soup-based forgiveness.

You even blocked him with "Beige Mode™": a mental wall of unsexy, mundane thoughts: grocery lists, taxes, the concept of lint.

You thought you were ghosting him. But in truth?

You were breadcrumbing.

And Scopper Gaban?

He was tracking you.

See, here’s the thing.

The dreams you have seem blank to you. You struggle to imagine things outside them.

But for Gaban, these aren’t dreams. This is a fully formed soulbond. It hums with emotion. With attention. With presence. You thought the Cold War would make you unreadable.

It doesn’t.

It made you louder.

Because suddenly, you were thinking about him all the time just to not think about him.

“He doesn’t care.”

“He’s probably off wrestling sea cows and kissing swords.”

“Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he doesn’t want me. Maybe I’m just a funny voice in his head—”

And every one of those thoughts? 

Lit. Him. Up.

Like a flare.

-X-Coming for that Ring-X-

You had one job. One. Just one simple goal.

Not dream of Scopper Gaban. Lay low. Live a normal life in a normal coastal town, far away from your sexy disaster soulmate and his morally flexible muscles.

No more mental flirting. No more telepathic threats against innocent men. No more bonding over soup-based trauma. You blocked the link, packed your bags, and ran like a woman on fire.

But what you forgot—what you really, deeply, stupidly underestimated— was that Scopper Gaban has one working brain cell and horny-based motivation.

And you did think about things in your dreams. A lot.

Tiny things.

Little stray thoughts that slipped out before you could stop them.

“I miss the sea breeze.”

“This town has the best fried fish. I hate that.”

“The lighthouse here creaks like it’s haunted. I kind of love it.”

Does… he still like me?

And Gaban? That man turned into Sherlock Holmes if Holmes had sex appeal, zero patience, and access to the world’s greatest pirate crew.

Rayleigh: “We’re really doing this?”

Scopper: “She said lighthouse.”

Rayleigh: “There are like four hundred—”

Scopper: “And fried fish. Light. House. Fried. Fish. The wind is from the east. The seagulls had a weird cry. Don’t question me, I’ve heard her brain during PMS. She left clues.”

Roger: “...Are we bringing the whole ship?” 

Scopper: “We’re bringing the whole ship.”

Which is how, at ten in the goddamn morning, your quiet little port town is violently awakened by the appearance of a massive, legendary pirate vessel barreling into the bay like it’s here to collect taxes and punch everyone twice.

Children scream. Seagulls flee. Someone faints. The mayor wets himself.

Sirens wail. People yell, “We’re under attack!”

You know that ship. You know that sail. You know that unholy silhouette on the prow, hands on his hips like some kind of smug mythological sex icon.

You spit toast everywhere.

Scopper Gaban is posing.

In the wind. On the mast. Shirtless. Cloak flapping. Looking down at your town like a Roman god who wants to flirt with your dad and steal your girlfriend.

He points directly at the docks.

“I’M HERE FOR MY GIRL.”

Chaos. Absolute chaos.

You sprint outside in mismatched socks.

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!”

He grins, waves, and then leaps off the ship in a perfect, slow-motion flip that splashes heroically onto the dock.

He walks through the panic like Moses parting the Red Sea—except Moses didn’t wink at five people on the way or get slapped by an older woman who thought he was stealing chickens.

“You brought a pirate ship?!”

“Of course I did.”

“THEY THINK IT’S A RAID!”

“It is a raid.” He smirks. “I’m stealing you.”

The townsfolk gather at a distance, whispering in fear and awe.

Someone mutters, “He came for her. That man came for her.”

 Someone else adds, “She must have magic boobs.”

 A child screams, “HE’S SO COOL.”

 A third man just weeps into his hands, whispering, “I wanna be her.”

You glare at him.

“You realize I was trying to live a quiet life?”

He grins.

“You realize you’re bonded to me?”

“…You absolute terrorist.”

He leans in, hand cupping your jaw, grin dangerous.

“Say the word, sweetheart. And I’ll burn the whole town down romantically.”

In the distance, Rayleigh lights a cigarette and mutters, “He’s gonna get slapped again. Five seconds.”

You do slap him.

He still kisses you anyway.

For a moment, the world is perfect, the future is inevitable, and you are entirely in love.

.

.

.

And then you wake up from the dream. 

The Cold War is still ongoing. 

You are twenty-three when the handsome, prime Scooper Gaban vanishes from your life without a word. He never comes to your island. And he never speaks to you inside a dream again.

He disappears from your life, much like your dreams.

-X-Rewind-X-

Scopper Gaban is forty-five when he finally reaches your hometown.

He arrives like wildfire. The quiet streets are suddenly alive with the sound of his boots striking stone, his voice rising again and again as he calls your name. Residents peek from windows, unnerved by the sight of the stranger with stormlight in his eyes, and whisper to one another about the panic that rides on his heels. His crew spreads through the town in twos and threes, uneasy at the sight of their usually steady officer tearing through every corner with an urgency that borders on madness.

Rayleigh is the first to notice. He stops in the middle of a square, gaze sharp behind his glasses as he watches Gaban accost yet another bewildered shopkeeper. “Something’s not right,” he mutters, half to himself, half to Roger at his side. “He’s searching too hard. He’s not hearing anything back.”

Roger frowns, the weight of the observation pressing down on him. He knows that bond well enough, knows how it steadies a man. To lose it so suddenly is no small thing. He glances at the townsfolk shrinking away, at the worry etched in his crew’s faces. “Something's gone bad,” he answers grimly.

By nightfall, Gaban’s voice is hoarse. He pounds on doors, questions every passerby, scours the docks and hills until sweat darkens his shirt and his hands shake with rage and dread. Each unanswered call, each silent corner, deepens the hollow in his chest. The thread that had guided him for decades, the voice that had always been there, is simply gone.

It is not until Roger and Rayleigh finally catch up to him, both of them weary and silent, that the truth settles like a stone in the pit of his stomach. He has not heard from you for an entire day. Not a word. Not a whisper.

Something has gone terribly wrong.

The inn is warm, lit by lanterns that cast long golden shadows across the beams. The smell of bread and smoke clings to the air. Gaban shoves through the door, shoulders tense, heart pounding. His eyes sweep the room like a hawk, and then—he freezes.

There you are. Or so he thinks.

For a heartbeat, he cannot breathe. He sees the curve of your face, the way you tilt your head as you laugh at something the innkeeper mutters, the flicker of familiarity that cuts through his exhaustion. He steps forward before he can stop himself, relief surging in his chest like a flood.

But then he sees it. The swell of her belly. The unfamiliar lines in her smile. The clear, curious eyes that are not yours.

“Forgive me,” he stammers, pulling back as the woman blinks at him in surprise. “I thought— I mistook you for someone.”

She softens, her hand resting protectively over her stomach. “It happens. Strangers pass through here often enough.”

Still shaken, Gaban forces himself to sit at the counter. For a moment, he says nothing. Then the words push past his throat, raw and uneven. “Do you have a sister? Someone with the name…” His voice falters. He swallows and tries again. “With that name?”

The woman blinks, then laughs.

“What a coincidence. That’s the name I chose, if this one is a girl.” She pats her belly, smiling widely.

The words twist like a knife. Gaban’s knees nearly buckle, and without meaning to, his haki flickers outward. It curls, subtle but unmistakable, around her belly. The woman gasps, startled by the sudden warmth that surrounds her, then quiets when she feels no harm in it: only a strange, steady pressure, as though the world itself is listening. The child stirs.

And he immediately knows.

You haven’t been born yet.

The realization crashes through him with the force of a storm. All those years of voices in the dark, of laughter carried through dreams, of whispered comforts that steadied him in battle and loneliness—it had never belonged to this time. He had been reaching for someone who did not yet exist.

That’s why you didn’t recognize him. He was no longer a major pirate.

The faint spark of his haki still hums around the woman’s belly, fragile as a candle flame, and it twists the knife deeper. That pulse, that flicker of presence, is all he has left of you. He pulls back as if burned, the shame in his chest nearly unbearable. To stand so close and know he cannot keep you, not yet, not now—there are no words for the hollow ache of it.

“Congratulations,” he forces out. His voice breaks on the word, and he bows his head, unable to meet her eyes. The sound rings false in his ears, empty against the weight of what he has lost. The walls of the inn close in, the chatter of patrons becomes a roar, and he can no longer breathe.

He staggers for the door, each step heavier than the last. The absence of the bond drags at him, thick and merciless, as though an anchor has settled into his chest.

Outside, the night air does not soothe him. It bites, cold and sharp, but cannot cool the fire burning hollow in his chest. Roger and Rayleigh wait in silence, their faces shadowed and grave. They see everything in Gaban’s expression—the despair, the guilt, the impossible truth written plain across him.

Neither man speaks. They do not have to. The silence between them is heavy as stone, final and merciless, carrying all the grief and inevitability of fate.

The soulbond was a mystery. It had always been that way: a benevolent giver, a cruel taker. For every joy it granted, it stole something else. For every union, there was a heartbreak left bleeding in its wake.

Both Roger and Rayleigh had known it. They had borne their own losses, their own silences, their own vanished voices in the dark. They offered him no pointless comfort, no hollow promises. They gave him the one thing they could—their presence, their friendship, the quiet certainty that he did not walk alone.

“The greatest crew in the world,” Rayleigh said briskly as they turned back toward the Oro Jackson. His tone was lighter than his eyes, quick words tossed into the air like salt against a wound. He pretended not to notice the tears streaking Gaban’s face. Pretended not to see the way Roger’s jaw was clenched against his own grief. “And we all couldn’t be more luckless with love.”

No one laughed.

They ignored his tears as well.

Gaban’s breath broke with sobs.

“I’m so in love. And she’ll always think I just forgot her. She’ll—-she’ll never know—”

Roger patted his back.

“She will, mate. A soulbond is never wasted.”

And together, without another word, they walked back to the ship.

-X- 23 Years Later -X-

Scopper Gaban never shows up, and that was the year you learned what heartbreak truly was.

You felt foolish. Silly, even. For years, you had clung to the warmth of those dreams, convinced they meant something, convinced he meant something. Your mother had warned you over and over again not to become attached, to seek out proper help, to treat the voices as nothing more than tricks of the mind. But you ignored her. You fell in love instead.

One evening, after the silence had stretched too long to deny, you went to her. You told her everything, every detail you had kept locked inside. The words tumbled out with your sobs, raw and unguarded. At first, she only stared at you, wide-eyed, as if you had just admitted to eating a candle. Then her expression shifted—concern pulling into wonder, wonder fraying into disbelief, and disbelief sinking finally into sadness.

“You said his name was Scopper Gaban?” she asked gently, after you had scrubbed the tears from your cheeks with the heel of your hand.

You nodded, unable to trust your voice.

Her own eyes grew wet as she let out a long, shuddering breath. She reached for your hand, as if steadying herself as much as you. “Then I suppose it’s time I tell you a story,” she whispered. “A story from long ago, about a famous pirate crew who came through this port. The Pirate King’s men. They caused such a stir. And there was one among them, Scopper Gaban… the left hand of Gol D. Roger himself. He came here, looking for a girl. A girl with your name.”

Your brows furrowed, the words striking too close, too painfully exact.

You didn’t say anything more, but the silence between you was thick with knowing. You both understood.

Time was never on your side.

-X-The Climax-X-

Age 28:

You leaned toward the small mirror, steady hand painting the last stroke of color over your lips. The soft murmur of the village below reached you. The faint laughter of children, the ring of church bells, the chatter of women carrying baskets of flowers for your ceremony. It was the sound of a life about to begin, simple and kind.

Then a sharp fire flared behind your ribs. Not pain, but recognition. Something long buried, something you thought had died in dreams. You froze, lipstick trembling in your hand as the warmth spread like a tide through your chest.

A voice followed, not echoing in sleep this time but raw, present, alive.

“It’s You.”

The sound of it nearly knocked the breath from your lungs. Older, heavier with years, but achingly familiar. The voice that had once filled your nights.

It was him.

You startled, and a flood of emotions crossed your heart: disbelief, longing, grief, wonder. Your breath caught as the bond lit up, stronger than it had ever been in your dreams. You felt him the way he felt you. You saw yourself through his eyes, the way he could see you, just as you saw yourself. Not a painted bride before a mirror, not a woman bound to a village life, but the soul he had been searching for all this time.

Your reflection blurred as tears stung your eyes because it wasn’t your future husband’s voice. Not the kind man from the village who waited downstairs.

It was Scopper Gaban, alive in your heart again on the very day you were about to give it to another.

“My god, you’re getting married. I'm so sorry for interrupting, sweet girl.  You’re so beautiful, and I’m so proud of you.”

His voice trembled with awe and sorrow, the weight of years threaded through every word. The bond carried not only sound but the raw truth of him, his heart pressed against yours across time and distance. He meant it. He meant every syllable. Pride swelled from him like sunlight, so warm it almost hurt.

Your throat tightened. You wanted to answer, to say his name, to deny the truth of the veil on your head and the man waiting at the altar. But the bond pulsed with honesty, and he saw you as you were. He felt the way you trembled, the way your heart raced, the way your painted lips parted and closed again like a child caught with secrets.

And you felt him too. The ache of longing. The pride. The regret that time had not found you sooner.

“Where have you been?” You asked, tears flooding your eyes. And it asked the unspoken question—Why didn’t you come?

He paused, and for a moment, you thought he might leave.

“Because I won’t let you waste your entire life on an old man.”

And then the gentle connection bloomed as he shared his life in a way your dreams never did.

And he had lived his life. He’s also a father. Has a common-law wife. He didn’t wait, because it would have been cruel to you to do so. To only live a sliver of a life while he had all of his. 

And because you know Scopper Gaban, and choose to love him back, you understand him.

You know now. You’ll never meet. Not in person. Not once. Because he loves you.

"Thank you. For not breaking me open just to keep me."

You cry into your bouquet, makeup running down your face. You didn’t have to meet to know he loves you, and that is enough that the bond warms and settles.

Not with the love that raged and burned. But the kind that sat quietly beside you when no one else did. That whispered warmth into your chest when the nights were cruel.

The kind that said, I know you exist. I cherish that. But I will not ruin you by arriving.

You know he’s smiling, hiding his pain, letting you have yours. You just don’t have the age or experience to do such a thing, and comfort him.

“You look stunning, sweetheart. If he breaks your heart, let him know Scopper Gaban will break his legs. I still know how to duel.”

You cry for an hour, and the wedding is delayed. 

You don’t cancel, and you do walk down the aisle that day.

Gaban doesn’t need to say it, but you both quietly close the bond. Like distant neighbors you live side by side, quietly, without talking.

You live a good life. You weren’t meant to walk the same path, but you were both better for knowing the other existed.

He loved you quietly. Without possessiveness. Without lust. Without delusion.

He loved you with discipline.

The bond settled into friendship. The rarest kind. You carried each other's old secrets through emotion. Comforted one another during grief with no words.

When he grieved his crewmates, you quietly held space for it. When you panicked the day your mother fell ill, his peace folded over you, patting your back, whispering, “You are not alone. I’m here. You are not alone.”

You were a constant in his life.

A presence in the back of his mind when he was tired. A warm flicker when he stood at the edge of the dock. The only secret he ever kept from his son.

You would never meet. But gods—he loved you.

Not in the way he loved Ripley. Not in the way a young man loves a young girl.

But in the way a soul recognizes its other half and says, I would have followed you anywhere. If only we had time.

And somewhere, halfway across the world, you feel it.

Like a gust of wind through an open door, like the warmth of someone leaving a room you didn’t know they’d been in.

Your heart lurches. 

And when someone asks, “Are you okay?” you say,

“…Yeah. I was just thinking of an old dream I once had.”

Cosmic Joke Status: The Dream that Ended

No matter how sweet the fantasy is, morning will always come to wake us.

-X-The End-X-

@cupc4keics @eravariety @prorpy @sagyunaro @annieayuu @dearlymrme @alexicasa @selimaginary @mort-alicious @hephaestusx666 @sporkslol @verdantwyrmcat @ithoughtthinks @thatchickwithfoodintheback @orioncipher @wontknowbetter @cap-lu20 @nin-dy-tro @hiimhappysblog @panchadaara @uraritychain @mu5hro0m @dead-cipher @thecreativewayyysss @savvinion @svalrost @la-dee-dumb @mollys--stuff @wrens-versus-the-world @andreasaintmleux76 @ari200027 @ezzydantes @i-goon-to-doffy @littlebluepixxie @opscoups @estarosa34 @trouble-sistar @hisokas-fav-minor @iwachansupremacy @spiced-apple @nagislemontea @whirlybirdjnr @you-tolkien-to-me @souppp44 @jevoislesbrasdemer @duditani @thesmolestsage @aecrylics @sillytoodlebug @thlix

By eighteen, you had pieced it together. The voice belonged to your soulmate, the fated other half the universe had bound to you. And by then, you had also reached one undeniable conclusion.

Whoever Gol D. Roger was, your so-called eternal match, he absolutely belonged in chains.

Because the man’s inner thoughts? 

A menace.

Half the time, he mused about death in a weirdly cheerful way. The other half, he tried to figure out if various sea creatures were edible. Sometimes, you could feel him running (you never knew from what), and he’d think, If I die, I’m haunting my enemies with erotic moaning.

He had a peculiar laugh. Not just a laugh. A weaponized laugh. You’d be in class, struggling to memorize trade routes, when your head filled with that wild, uncontrollable WHAHAHAHA! until your governess sent you to your bedroom for “disrupting the learning environment.”

Of course, you had heard about soulmates. Everyone had. Among the commonfolk, it was practically a pastime. But your life was already planned and set, so you knew better than to respond.

That didn’t stop him from trying.

“If you’re real, knock something over.”

You ignored him.

Fine. I’ll wait.

And he did. For hours.

The next day: “Still waiting.”

You finally snapped back, “Stop talking.”

He froze.

“Ohhh. You can hear me.” The smirk in his voice was criminal. “Great. Now we can make plans.”

You made it very clear you were not making plans with him. It didn’t matter. His mind slipped into your days anyway. Some mornings, he vanished completely, as though the sea had swallowed him whole. Other days, he was relentless, filling your thoughts with nonsense, dangerous ideas, and surprisingly deep reflections on freedom and fate.

And now, at seventeen, you were starting to realize something terrible.

You weren’t just used to him. You liked hearing him.

Which was unfortunate, because Gol D. Roger still sounded like the kind of man who would either start a revolution… or accidentally burn down your house trying to cook fish inside it.

-X-Unexpected Sights-X-

You had a comfortable life. Not exciting. Not dangerous. Certainly not the kind of life that inspired ballads.

Which was precisely how it was supposed to be.

Your father was the governor of the island, a man who prided himself on clean streets, fair trade taxes, and making sure his daughter was promised to a respectable Marine officer. You had been engaged since you were thirteen to a man who sent polite letters once a month, a man you had spoken to for perhaps twenty minutes in total.

It was all tidy. Predictable. Safe. The kind of arrangement where nothing could go wrong.

Except for the fact that Gol D. Roger lived in your head.

The bond had been with you for years, and by now his voice was less like a soulmate’s whisper and more like an unwanted roommate who had figured out how to pick every lock in your mind.

"Are you seriously getting married to a Marine?" he asked one morning while you were trying to braid your hair.

“Yes”, you thought flatly.

"Why? Do you like people who wear coats in tropical weather? Does his hat make you feel safe?"

He had opinions. Strong, wrong, chaotic opinions.

"You can’t marry a Marine. I’m your soulmate. That’s illegal somewhere, probably."

You reminded him, yet again, that you had never met him, didn’t even know what he looked like, and that your father would sooner set the harbor on fire than let you run off with some mystery boy from across the sea.

"Mystery boy? That’s hurtful. I’m a future legend, sweetheart."

You groaned. “You’re probably a criminal.”

"Not yet."

That was the problem. You had been raised to be proper. To follow the rules, to smile politely at galas, to know your place. And then there was Roger in your head, full of salt air and trouble, who never stopped talking about treasure, freedom, and how bored he was staying in one place for too long.

The Marine you were engaged to? You didn’t know what he dreamed about. He had never told you.

Roger? You knew every ridiculous, reckless, brilliant thought that crossed his mind.

And lately, something new stirred in the bond; a pull, stronger than before. Like the sea itself was drawing the two of you closer.

You only hoped he wasn’t planning something insane.

“Haven’t you ever wanted more?”

“…What more could there be?” you answered, the wistfulness slipping in before you could stop it.

Which was precisely when he thought, loud and unrepentant, "Alright. I’ve decided. I’m coming to get you."

-X-Home Invasion-X-

You were in the middle of a perfectly normal afternoon.

The harbor below the balcony was busy with sails and shouts. Gulls wheeled overhead, shrieking as the tide carried in fresh cargo. From the courtyard outside your father’s estate came the steady cadence of Marines drilling in formation, boots striking stone in practiced rhythm. You were halfway through reviewing the neat script of your father’s speech for the upcoming trade delegation, every word predictable and safe.

Then the bond jolted. A sharp pulse of pure adrenaline shot through you, so sudden that your hand slipped on the parchment.

"Almost there," Roger thought, his voice crashing into your head, loud and eager enough to make you blink.

“Almost where?”

"Your island."

You froze. “What do you mean—”

"Don’t worry. I’m being discreet."

Which, as you learned three minutes later, meant not discreet at all.

From your balcony, you saw it: a small, scrappy sloop cutting brazenly into the governor’s harbor as if it belonged there. Its sails were patched, its timbers creaked, and the crew shouted with the kind of unbothered cheer that suggested they had never once asked permission to dock anywhere.

And at the prow was a boy about your age, tall and sunburned, with a grin that looked capable of setting something on fire.

Even from a distance, you felt it. That same voice, that same wild energy you had been stuck with in your head for most of your life.

“Hi.” He lifted a hand and waved directly at your balcony. “You’re prettier than I imagined.”

You gripped the railing until your knuckles turned white. “Are you insane?”

"Probably."

Below, the Marines were already converging on the dock, their boots thundering against the stone. At the front was your fiancé, Lieutenant Halden; buttoned-up, perpetually grim, and striding forward with his sword drawn.

You saw the exact moment Roger spotted him. His smile widened.

"Ohhh. This the guy? The coat guy?"

“Yes. That’s my fiancé.”

"Huh. I don’t like him."

The Marines reached the dock. Halden barked something about identifying himself. Roger only smiled wider, vaulted off the boat, and landed squarely in front of him.

“Name’s Gol D. Roger,” he announced, not a hint of shame in it, “and I’m here to see my future wife.”

Every Marine in the courtyard stiffened. From your balcony, you wanted the ground to open up and swallow you whole. 

“You’re going to get arrested.”

"Not if you come with me first."

He tilted his head back, locking eyes with you, bold and unshaken despite a dozen rifles aimed at him. And you hated the way the bond suddenly thrummed with something that felt dangerously like hope.

Roger should have been in chains within the hour.

That was the reasonable outcome when a loudmouthed stranger sailed into a governor’s harbor, declared you his future wife, and smirked at the Marine lieutenant you were supposed to marry.

But Roger was not reasonable.

By the time you made it downstairs, he had somehow talked your father out of ordering the stockade. Something about “mutually beneficial trade opportunities” and “favorable import pricing,” delivered with that infuriating curve of his mouth, and the undeniable fact that his sloop’s hold really was crammed with valuable goods.

He wore a wide-brimmed straw hat at least a size too big, the brim shadowing his eyes, lending him the harmless air of some coastal peddler. It was a flimsy disguise, and yet somehow it worked. People who should have been calling for his immediate arrest were instead listening, nodding, even laughing at his jokes.

Which only proved what you already knew.

Gol D. Roger was a menace.

“This young man,” your father announced over dinner that night, “has agreed to stay on the island for a season, selling his wares. The council believes it could be good for trade.”

“You bribed him, didn’t you?” you thought sharply through the bond.

"What, your dad? Nope. I just smiled at him."

That was somehow worse.

Over the next few weeks, Roger settled in as if the island had been waiting for him all along. His “merchant stall” was nothing more than a patched table in the market square, piled with mismatched goods that looked like they had been gathered from half the seas. Exotic trinkets, spices whose scents clung to your clothes after one visit, shells polished smooth by foreign tides. He bartered with the sharp skill of a thief, laughed with strangers as if they were old friends, and before long, people had begun treating him like a fixture of the place.

What was worse, he seemed determined to make himself impossible to avoid.

He had only one companion, a slightly older man named Rayleigh who trailed after him like a long-suffering shadow. Rayleigh had the air of someone who had seen it all and chosen not to interfere. He looked at his captain with a mix of fondness and weary resignation, as though Roger’s chaos was something he had learned to live with long ago.

And there was plenty of chaos.

Roger turned up everywhere. In the palace gardens where you tried to read, he leaned against a tree, his hat pulled low, his voice full of mockery. “Need a hand carrying those books, princess?”

At formal dinners, he appeared across the ballroom in a jacket that belonged to someone else, half the buttons missing, looking infuriatingly at ease as though the place belonged to him. He tipped his hat the moment your eyes met his, all teeth and trouble.

When your fiancé came calling, Roger was there too. Never directly interfering, but always close enough. You saw him pretending to rearrange seashells in the market square, his expression calm, his grin loud with the message he refused to say aloud: You do not actually like him, do you?

The hat became his calling card. You spotted it in the crowd before you saw him. You found it perched on the balcony railing outside your chamber one morning, with a single seashell tucked neatly into the band.

When you asked him why, he only thought it back at you, warm and certain, a voice you could not shut out. “Because one day you are going to wear it.”

And every single time, no matter how you tried to steel yourself, your heart sped up in answer.

And you found yourself searching for him.

A walk past the edge of the gardens, just far enough to glimpse the wild palms swaying at the border of the estate. A pause in the market square, lingering a few minutes longer than necessary at his stall while he weighed out spices and winked at you as though he knew exactly what you were doing.

And then one afternoon, you followed the sound of his laugh. It rang down a narrow back street, bright and reckless, until it pulled you past the last row of stone houses and into the thick hush of the jungle.

Roger was leaning against a tree as if he had been waiting for you all day. A strip of sugarcane was caught between his teeth, and that ridiculous straw hat was tipped low enough to cast his smile in shadow.

“You took your time,” he said aloud, voice roughened by amusement. At the same time, you felt the echo of him in your head, smug and warm. “Knew you’d come.”

You glanced over your shoulder. No guards trailing you. No watchful father. No fiancé marching at your side. Just the smell of salt air clinging to the breeze and the heavy sweetness of damp earth.

“If anyone sees me out here—”

“They will not,” he interrupted, confident as ever. “This part of the island has no Marines, no councilmen, no rules. Just you and me.”

His certainty was infuriating, yet the bond between you thrummed in answer like a chord plucked too sharply.

And despite every warning sign that you should not, you followed him.

The path twisted down toward a rocky cove where the sea hurled itself against black stone, the spray leaping high enough to sting your cheeks. You had been told to avoid this stretch of coast since childhood. The currents were too strong, the rocks too jagged, the waters too wild for fishing boats. It was the sort of place whispered about in cautionary tales, a place meant to frighten children into obedience.

Roger moved through it as if he had been carved out of the same stone. He hopped from boulder to boulder, laughing at the crash of each wave, reaching back to pull you after him with no hesitation. His hands were rough and warm, anchoring you against the slip of wet rock. His smile burned with the kind of confidence that made rules feel small.

At last, he led you into a sheltered cove, hidden away from the world. The sound of the sea softened there, a private rhythm against the stone walls.

“This is where I come to think,” he said, crouching to pick up a pale piece of coral, turning it between his fingers. His voice softened, though the bond hummed with mischief. “And to see if my soulmate is brave enough to sneak out of her father’s palace just to talk to me.”

You rolled your eyes, though your pulse betrayed you. “You’re dangerous.”

He leaned closer, the brim of his hat shadowing his smirk. “You like danger.”

And the worst part, the part you could not admit even to yourself, was that he was right.

For the next hour, you sat together on the rocks, watching the tide roll in and out. Roger spoke as if the whole world were still clinging to his boots. He painted pictures with his words: an island carpeted in flowers so bright they looked aflame, sea caves lit by schools of fish that glowed like stars, storms that turned the sky an eerie shade of green and left him laughing in the rain.

You found yourself telling him things you had never dared say aloud. The suffocating etiquette lessons. The endless banquets where no one truly listened. The Marine fiancé who could discuss shipyard maintenance without taking a breath, as though the weight of bolts and timbers mattered more than the woman promised to him.

And somewhere in between his impossible stories and your quiet confessions, you realized you were laughing. Not the polite smile of a governor’s daughter, not the restrained chuckle of a dutiful fiancée, but real, unrestrained laughter that left your ribs aching.

When the sun began to sink, painting the water in fire, you rose and brushed the sand from your skirt. “I can’t stay long.”

Roger tilted his hat back, his gaze warm yet edged with certainty. “You’ll come again.”

It was not a question.

And you already knew he was right.

It became a rhythm. Three or four times a week, you slipped past the gates after dinner, your skirt hem snagging on thorns and underbrush as you made your way toward the private cove.

No guards ever followed. That stretch of the island was quiet, too far from the patrol routes to bother with, and you were careful in everything you did. Careful in your steps. Careful with your excuses. Careful in telling yourself it was harmless. At least, that was the story you repeated until it began to sound almost true.

Roger was always there first. Always. He leaned against the rocks with his ankles crossed, that battered straw hat tipped low as if it belonged to him more than his own skin. Some nights he carried odd treasures from his travels: a pocketknife with the handle snapped off, a gold coin bitten clean in half, a jar of sand that shimmered green in the moonlight. Other nights, he carried nothing at all. Just himself. Hair a mess from the sea wind, sunburn fading along his cheekbones, eyes bright with the kind of laughter that made you feel the world was less heavy than you remembered.

You told yourself you came because it was peaceful here. The waves against the rocks untied the knots in your chest.

The night air let you breathe without the press of your father’s expectations or your fiancé’s stiff courtesy closing in around you. In this place, you could forget the lessons in etiquette, the banquets, the endless reminders of who you were supposed to be.

Yet every time you saw him leaning there, waiting as if he had known you would come, you felt the truth. It was not only peace that drew you back.

It was not the waves that made you laugh so hard your ribs ached. It was not the salt air that made your chest feel lighter when Roger looked at you as though you were not a governor’s daughter at all. He looked at you like you were simply yourself.

He asked questions your fiancé never bothered to ask: What you wanted. What you dreamed of. What would you do if you were not bound to an island and a title.

“You ever think about just… leaving?” he asked one night, stretched out in the sand, his hat tipped back so he could watch the stars.

You hesitated, toes buried in the cool grit. “Leaving would be… impossible.”

“Impossible’s my specialty.” His voice in your head was softer than usual, stripped of his usual laughter, but certain. “I’d take you anywhere.”

“That’s kidnapping.”

“That’s rescuing.”

You shook your head, but you did not tell him to stop. You did not tell him that you had dreamed of it already. More than once. Dreams of stepping onto his ship, feeling the deck roll beneath your feet, and never once looking back.

The bond was different these days. Stronger. You did not just hear him anymore, you felt him. The brush of his amusement when you teased him. The steady weight of his attention when you spoke. And sometimes, when he went quiet for too long, you caught yourself reaching for him without thinking.

Sometimes, he answered before you even called.

One night, as you stood to leave, he caught your wrist. Not hard. Just enough to keep you still.

“You know I’m not going to let you marry him,” he said.

You laughed like it was a joke, but the bond hummed with certainty, pulsing against your ribs. I mean it, his voice pressed, low and unshakable. I don’t care if I have to talk your father into it or steal you out of the ballroom mid-waltz.

You pulled your hand free, breath sharp in your chest. “You’re insane.”

He only grinned.

You walked back to the palace with your pulse racing, telling yourself you were not looking forward to the next meeting.

You were lying.

-X-Emotional Turning Point-X-

Lieutenant Halden arrived the following evening, as precise and punctual as the surf.

The drawing room had been prepared for him in quiet anticipation. Candles burned low in their holders, filling the air with a faint scent of beeswax. The silver teapot gleamed. You poured with steady hands, passing him his cup the way you had been taught, careful not to spill a single drop.

He sat across from you, posture ramrod straight, boots polished to a mirror shine, uniform pressed so crisply it seemed untouched by salt air. He thanked you politely, voice clipped, before launching into his updates. Shipyard improvements. New drills for the garrison. The expected arrival of a superior officer the following month. His words were steady, respectable, and delivered with the certainty of a man who believed in structure above all else.

You nodded when expected. You smiled when courtesy required it. You kept your hands folded in your lap, fingers laced neatly together, and reminded yourself that this was what you were meant for. A safe match. A proper husband. A life without scandal or uncertainty.

But the more he spoke, the more the silence underneath his words pressed in on you. Every sentence felt like stone stacked upon stone, building a wall around your ribs. And while you sat there, listening to a man who would never ask what you wanted, your thoughts slipped away.

You drifted to the cove. To the crash of waves against black stone. To the smell of brine and wet sand. To the echo of a laugh that carried sunlight and danger and made your chest ache in ways you could not name.

Halden’s voice went on, steady and monotonous, until it seemed to blur into the background hum of duty itself. This is correct, you told yourself. This is the life you are bound to. This is safety.

And yet, with every word that passed his lips, you felt less like a bride-to-be and more like a prisoner waiting for the lock to turn.

Then the bond stirred, warm and reckless, threading through your thoughts like sunlight through a crack in the shutters. Roger’s presence brushed against you, uninvited and impossible to ignore.

“You’re bored out of your mind, aren’t you?”

The words jolted you so sharply you nearly choked on your tea. You set the cup back into its saucer too quickly, the porcelain ringing with a faint clatter.

Halden did not notice. He was too busy adjusting the cuffs of his immaculate uniform, his gaze fixed on the measured cadence of his own report. He spoke about patrol routes, about garrison numbers, about the importance of maintaining discipline. His voice droned like the hum of bees; steady, monotonous, inescapable.

Meanwhile, the bond thrummed at your ribs, Roger’s amusement spilling into you like a swell you could not hold back. He was laughing at you; you could feel it. The infuriating curl of it.

You pressed your fingers hard against the rim of your teacup, as though the fragile porcelain might tether you to the life already laid out before you. You tried to listen. You tried to be present. To be the dutiful daughter, the proper fiancée, the bride promised to a safe and respectable man.

But your mind was already elsewhere. It was back in the cove, hearing the crash of wild waves against black stone. It was in the hush of jungle paths where no guards followed. It was in the echo of a laugh that made you feel alive instead of trapped.

Two worlds tugged at you with equal force. One promised order and stability, a future sealed by duty. The other offered nothing but danger, uncertainty, and freedom.

And in that moment, you hated yourself for knowing which one your heart leaned toward.

When Halden finally took his leave, the drawing room felt warmer for his absence. The candles had burned low, the tea had gone bitter, and your temples ached from the effort of polite smiles. You bid him goodnight with the grace expected of you, then excused yourself upstairs, every step heavy with the promise of the future you were meant to embrace.

But the moment your chamber door closed, your hands moved of their own accord. You stripped out of silks and lace, trading them for a plain gown that would not snag on underbrush. The pearls at your throat were set aside for a simple shawl. You pinned your hair back quickly, not caring if it was neat.

The mansion was still awake, but quieter now. The corridors stretched long and dim, lined with portraits of governors past whose painted eyes seemed to follow you. You slipped through them silently, heart pounding, until you reached the garden gates.

Outside, the air smelled of salt and night blossoms. The path to the cove was muscle memory by now, your skirts whispering through tall grass, your breath catching at every rustle in the dark. You told yourself no one would notice, and that no one cared enough to follow. That this secret was still yours.

So you did not see the figure who lingered at a distance. You did not notice the faint gleam of lamplight on a Marine’s polished buckle, or the way his gaze tracked your every step as you disappeared into the trees.

You walked on, blind to the truth. You were not as alone as you thought.

The moon was sharp and silver that night, cutting across the waves and spilling over the rocks where you and Roger always met.

The cove was quieter than usual. The tide rested low, the water lapping lazily at the stones instead of throwing itself against them. The air smelled of salt and night-blooming flowers. Above it all, the moon hung bright and heavy, its reflection shivering across the black water.

He was there, as he always was. Leaning back against a boulder, head tipped toward the sky, the straw hat dangling from his fingers. His hair was damp, curling at the ends, drops of water sliding down to darken the fabric of his shirt. The scent of the sea clung to him, strong and clean, as though he had walked straight out of the ocean and into the night.

“You’re late,” he said softly, his eyes finding you long before your steps carried you close enough to reach him.

“You’re just impatient,” you answered, trying to sound unaffected, but the bond betrayed you, humming with the way your pulse jumped.

He pushed off the boulder, each step deliberate, closing the distance between you with the certainty of someone who had already decided the outcome. “I’ll always be impatient to see you,” his voice slid through your head, warm, accusing, impossible to shut out.

“I’m being careful,” you whispered, though the words sounded weak even to your ears.

“Careful’s not living.”

He stopped just shy of touching you, close enough that the night breeze carried the salt of the sea and lifted the damp ends of his hair so they brushed against your cheek. His eyes locked on yours, dark and steady, and the bond coiled tight, heat sparking through it like a fuse catching flame.

“If I kiss you right now,” his thought pressed, thick with want, thrumming against your bones, “will you run?”

You did not answer. You did not need to. The silence was its own surrender.

His hand rose, fingertips grazing along your jaw as if mapping the shape of you, before trailing down to rest with quiet certainty. His thumb brushed the hollow just beneath your lower lip, tilting your chin with a touch that was both gentle and unyielding.

And then he kissed you. Salt and warmth, bold and claiming, the world narrowing until it was only him, only the bond, only the wild rush of a choice you could no longer deny.

It was not gentle. It was fierce, reckless, hungry. His mouth slanted over yours with the urgency of someone who had imagined this for years and refused to waste another second. You felt the sand shift beneath your feet, your hands knotting into the fabric of his shirt before you even realized you had reached for him.

The bond flared, hot and consuming, flooding you with every ounce of his intent. The way he had wanted this since the first moment his eyes found you on that balcony. The way he already considered you his.

When at last you broke apart, your breath came fast, your lips tingling, the taste of salt and heat lingering. His forehead pressed against yours, steady, grounding, like he had no intention of letting you go. 

“See?” His thought slid through your mind, low and triumphant, yet softened by something you could not name. “You don’t belong in that palace.”

And for one trembling heartbeat, you believed him.

“That’s—” You swallowed, your voice unsteady. “That’s not allowed.”

His mouth curved slowly, wicked at the edges. “Then let’s make it a crime worth committing.”

He lifted the straw hat, settling it onto your head. His fingers lingered just long enough to brush your hair back from your face. “Told you you’d wear it someday.”

And now, with your pulse still racing and the taste of him still burning against your lips, you knew you would wear it again.

The kiss should have ended when you broke for air. It did not.

His mouth found yours once more, hungrier this time, as if the first had only been a beginning. The bond surged, hot and unrelenting, dragging you under. You clutched at him, the coarse fabric of his shirt tight beneath your fingers, while his hands framed your face with a tenderness at war with the raw heat of his kiss.

The waves whispered against the rocks, the moon silvered the water, and still neither of you pulled away.

For the first time in your life, you were not careful.

Roger’s hand slid to the back of your neck, pulling you in before the bond could even cool. His mouth was warm and certain, tasting of salt and something sweet you could not name. Every time you tried to draw breath, he caught you again, deepening it until your knees weakened and the rocks beneath your feet felt treacherous.

The water whispered against the stones, the night air sharp with salt. Every sound seemed magnified, too sharp, as if the whole island were listening. You were far enough from the palace that no one should find you, yet close enough that the possibility made your pulse race faster.

Through the bond, you felt him completely. Not just the raw hunger of his want, but the edge of his restraint, wound tight like a line ready to snap. His palm settled at your waist, steadying you, before sliding over the curve of your hip. The roughness of his calluses snagged against the thin fabric of your dress, sending a shiver straight through you.

“Tell me to stop,” he murmured against your mouth, his breath mingling with yours.

You did not.

The bond surged, heat pouring through it until the world tipped over, spilling into something dangerous and undeniable.

And in the shadows beyond the rocks, unseen by either of you, someone watched.

You felt the jagged stone at your back, his hands braced on either side of you as he kissed you like he was trying to memorize the shape of your mouth. His touch slid lower, coaxing your thigh around his hip, pulling you flush against him until nothing remained between you but breath and pounding heartbeats.

Your fingers tangled in his hair, damp and soft at the ends, and he groaned into the bond, the sound dragging through you like fire. Every movement was unhurried but deliberate, like he had been holding back for years and refused to waste another second.

The undertow crept higher, water brushing cool over your ankles before it retreated again. The only steady thing was him; solid, warm, the brim of his straw hat grazing your temple as he finally drew back just enough to look at you.

“You’re sure?” he asked. His voice was low, careful, stripped of teasing. For once, it was not taunting, not reckless. It was only him, waiting, asking.

And behind the rocks, the watcher shifted closer, the gleam of polished metal catching moonlight.

And you were. God help you, you were.

The rest came in a blur of heat and touch and the sound of his voice in your head, low and rough, saying your name like it was the only word he ever meant to speak. The bond burned with every breath, every press of his hands, every unspoken promise stitched into the shape of his mouth against yours.

When it was over, you stayed against him, cheek pressed to the solid warmth of his chest. His heartbeat thundered beneath your ear, steady in a way that made you ache. The straw hat had fallen to the sand beside you, its brim catching stray glints of silver light. The tide whispered in and out over the rocks, soft and secretive, as if the sea itself had sworn to keep what it had seen.

Roger bent his head, lips brushing the crown of your hair. His breath was still uneven, but his voice was certain. “Told you, careful wasn’t living.”

You wore his hat again that night, for several more hours.

You didn’t argue. Not this time.

And from the shadows, unseen, the watcher turned away.

You could still feel him the whole walk back. Not only in the bond, though that thrummed low and steady like the echo of a second heartbeat, but in the way your skin carried his heat, in the way your lips tingled whenever you remembered the cove.

You slipped through the gates just as the lamps were being lit for the evening, their glow spreading across the courtyard stones. Your hair had come loose from its pins, strands brushing your cheeks, and the grit of sand clung stubbornly to your sandals. It was almost believable that you had been walking the gardens. Almost.

Lieutenant Halden was waiting.

He stood in the center of the courtyard, posture rigid, hands clasped behind his back. The moment he saw you, his eyes sharpened. “You’ve been out late.”

“I needed fresh air,” you said, carefully even.

His gaze flicked over you, catching on the disarray of your hair and the color in your cheeks. “Alone?”

You forced a polite laugh, the kind you had practiced since childhood. “Who else would I be with?”

The bond betrayed you. Roger’s voice slid in, smug and warm, curling through your thoughts like a secret you could not bury.

“Me.”

You bit the inside of your cheek hard enough to keep your expression neutral. Halden’s eyes lingered on you a moment too long before he finally stepped aside. He said nothing more, but the doubt in his eyes was impossible to miss.

As you walked past him, the bond hummed again, full of laughter you could not allow to reach your lips.

“He suspects. I like that.”

You did not answer. Your stomach knotted with the weight of two worlds colliding, and for the first time, you wondered how long you could keep them both from tearing each other apart.

-X- Love’s Fervent Trials -X-

The next day in the market, Roger was back at his stall like nothing had happened. Shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, forearms dusted with spice, he busied himself arranging jars in precise little rows. To anyone watching, he looked every bit the harmless trader.

But you knew better.

He glanced up the instant you stepped into the square. That damn straw hat tilted low, shadowing a grin meant only for you.

Halden was at your side, a coincidence you cursed with every step. His presence was rigid, purposeful, his gaze scanning the crowd like a soldier on parade. He did not notice the way Roger straightened, the spark in his eyes, or the faint hum that thrummed along the bond the moment your eyes met.

“Governor’s daughter!” Roger called, his voice carrying over the noise of the market, bright and careless. “Got that cinnamon you asked about!”

Your heart jumped. You had not asked about cinnamon.

Halden’s brow furrowed. His eyes cut toward you, sharp with suspicion. “You know this man?”

Roger leaned forward onto his elbows, all false innocence, all grin. “Course she does. Best customer I’ve got. Comes by for the good stuff.”

The double edge of it slid through the bond, curling warm and wicked, daring you to react.

Halden’s mouth pressed into a line. He glanced at the jars of spices, at the worn little stall, then back to you, waiting for your answer.

You smoothed your skirts with steady hands, the practiced motion of a girl raised to be untouchable. “He has unusual imports,” you said lightly. “My father thought they might be worth sampling.”

Roger’s amusement crackled in your mind, smug and unrepentant. “Unusual imports, huh? That what we’re calling it?”

You bit back the urge to roll your eyes, every muscle in your face working to stay polite. Halden’s gaze lingered a moment too long before he turned back to the merchant.

Roger only smiled wider, sliding a small jar toward you with deliberate care. “On the house, princess. For your collection.”

The bond thrummed with laughter as you reached for it, and you hated that your fingers trembled just enough for him to notice.

You did not let it show. You accepted the spice with a polite smile, thanked him as though he were nothing more than a stranger in the market, but the smallest twitch at the corner of your mouth betrayed you. He saw it. He always saw it. And that was enough for him to know he had won.

And so it went.

A day later, he “happened” to be making a delivery to the palace kitchens on the very afternoon Halden was visiting. Roger carried crates of fruit through the courtyard as though he had been born to the place, calling out greetings and grinning at you like an old friend. Halden’s jaw tightened until it could have cracked stone.

Another day, in the press of the market, he “accidentally” dropped a bolt of silk into your hands. The fabric spilled bright and weightless across your fingers, and Roger insisted you keep it because “it matches your eyes.” Halden had been only two steps behind you, bristling with restrained fury. Roger’s look was all teeth.

The worst was when he charmed your father into offering him a short-term shipping contract. A clever stroke, one that gave him reason to come and go from the estate with the approval of the governor himself. The servants treated him like any other merchant. The councilmen muttered about his usefulness. And Roger strolled through the governor’s halls with his hat tipped low, his eyes always finding yours, daring you to look away.

Every time, Halden’s suspicion grew sharper, honed like a blade that was waiting to be drawn. Every time, Roger only smiled wider, daring him to try.

And every night, you returned to the cove. The water rose and fell, the sand tangled in your hair, and the bond thrummed through your body until you could no longer tell where you ended and he began. You felt the inevitability of it in every kiss, in every laugh stolen against the sound of the waves. The bond knew what you had not yet spoken aloud. That this game could not last, that fire was coming.

And so, at last, you made your decision.

You were going with Roger.

The thought terrified you. The thought thrilled you. And in the quiet of your chamber, with the moonlight spilling across the floor, you finally admitted it: there was no turning back.

-X-The Climax-X-

The night was heavy with heat, the kind that clung to your skin and made the air feel thick.

You told yourself you would not go. Tonight you would stay in the palace, keep to your rooms, and bury yourself in a book until sleep claimed you. You needed time to plan. You needed to be careful. You had been careless lately, slipping away too often. The risk was growing sharper.

But then his voice slid into your thoughts, warm and coaxing, curling through you like the pull of the ocean.

“Low tide. Perfect for the cove. Come see me.”

Your fingers tightened on the book in your lap. You stared at the page without seeing a word, the bond humming with his presence like a heartbeat you could not silence.

You should not go. Every part of you knew it. And yet your pulse quickened anyway, your body already leaning toward the thought of damp sand beneath your feet, salt in the air, and his grin waiting in the shadows.

He pressed again, softer this time, like a hand at the small of your back. “Please.”

The book slipped shut in your hands.

So you slipped past the gates. Again.

The night was close and heavy, the cicadas buzzing in the garden trees, the air thick with the scent of salt and hibiscus. The path down to the rocks was muscle memory now. You moved quickly, sandals whispering over sand, heart thrumming louder with every step.

The cove opened before you, quiet and silvered by moonlight. The tide lay low, drawing the water back to reveal dark stone and damp stretches of beach. And there he was, as he always was—waiting.

Roger leaned against the cliff as though it belonged to him, his hat pushed back just enough for the moon to strike his face. The sharp line of his smile caught the light, equal parts trouble and invitation.

“You’re late,” he murmured, catching your hand the instant you stepped close enough. His thumb brushed over your knuckles like he had every right to touch you, like he had been waiting all night just for this.

“You’re impatient,” you said, though the smile tugging at your lips betrayed you.

“Only with you,” his thought slid into yours, warm and certain. The bond thrummed with it, low and steady, making your pulse stumble.

The sea sighed against the rocks, quiet and slow, the moon painting a silver path across the dark water. You stood with your hand in his.

He kissed you like he had been waiting all day, and maybe he had. The bond flared hot, filling you with a rush of heat that left your skin tingling, the air thick with salt and the steady crash of waves against stone. His fingers slid along your waist, anchoring you to him, pulling you close until your laugh was caught and muffled against his mouth.

When he finally drew back, he was glowing. Not with moonlight, but with something fiercer, as if all that wild energy inside him could not be contained. For a moment, you swore he was as bright as the sun.

“Come with me. Tonight.” His voice was low, certain, edged with urgency. “Come with me and sail to the end of the Grand Line.”

The bond surged with the promise, thick and undeniable, and you felt the weight of the choice press against your chest. Palace or sea. Duty or freedom. Safety or him.

And you already knew which way your heart was leaning.

You smiled.

And then a voice cut through the night.

“Step away from her.”

You froze, the sound slicing through the hush of the waves. Roger’s hand tightened at your waist, steady and unflinching, but his eyes flicked past your shoulder toward the source.

Halden stood on the rocks at the edge of the cove, sword gleaming in the moonlight. His face was stern, grim, and unmistakably betrayed.

Your heart lurched. He must have followed. He must have known.

You froze, breath caught in your throat. Roger’s grip tightened instantly, pulling you behind him with a protectiveness that left no room for argument. His body became a shield, solid and unyielding, while you turned toward the path. His mouth only sharpened, fierce and unbothered, as though he had been waiting for this very moment. The bond thrummed with his amusement, wild and steady, a pulse of danger that sent your own heartbeat racing to match it.

Halden stood at the edge of the rocks, pistol drawn, the barrel glinting cold under the silver wash of moonlight. His eyes blazed with fury. His coat hung unbuttoned, his hair windblown, his chest rising hard and fast—he had been running. He had chased you here.

“I knew it,” Halden said, his voice flat as steel. “You’ve been meeting him. A pirate.”

Roger’s smirk curved thin and dangerous, his eyes never leaving Halden’s. “Yeah, she has. So what?”

The words rang bold in the night, reckless and unapologetic.

You clung to Roger’s sleeve, fingers twisting in the fabric as if you could anchor yourself to him, as if the rough weave could hold you steady while the world tilted beneath your feet.

“She’s my fiancée,” Halden spat, every word jagged with fury. His pistol never wavered, arm locked straight, eyes blazing. “And you’re not leaving this cove alive.”

The surf hissed against the rocks, pulling back, surging forward again, like the sea itself was holding its breath. Above, a drifting cloud swallowed the moonlight, dimming the world in a wash of gray. The silence that followed was heavy, coiled, the moment before a storm breaks. You could feel it in your bones: the collision coming, the choice you could no longer outrun. Duty or freedom. Safety or fire. The man you were promised to, and the one fate had bound to your very soul.

The bond flared hot, alive with Roger’s confidence, steady as the earth beneath your feet. His voice slid through your mind, calm even with death aimed at his chest. “Stay behind me. I’ve got this.”

“Halden—” Your voice broke as you stepped forward, hand half-reaching toward him. The movement snapped his gaze to you, and for the first time, you saw it. The flicker of betrayal. The crack in the mask of control he always wore. His mouth tightened, his jaw clenched, his composure fractured by the truth that had been staring him in the face all along.

Then his finger tightened on the trigger.

The report shattered the night, a burst of smoke cutting through the dark, the deafening crack echoing off the cliffs. You flinched, the sound splitting the air apart, but Roger was already moving.

The shot rang out, echoing again, and for a heartbeat, you could not understand why the world tilted sideways.

You did not think. You only moved.

He yanked you down with him, the bullet hissing past to strike stone, sparking shards into the air. Sand and seawater sprayed as you hit the ground, Roger’s arm locked tight around you. He surged up in the same breath, reckless and fast, kicking the pistol from Halden’s grip before the man could reload.

The weapon skittered across the rocks, vanishing into the dark. Halden snarled, steel flashing into his hand, the blade catching the moonlight like fire. The tide roared, salt stinging the air, danger closing in.

And then Roger’s eyes went wide.

You felt his arms catch you before your knees could buckle, his hand gripping tight at your side. The world narrowed to the rush of your blood, the heat spreading fast, too fast, beneath your ribs.

“No—” His voice broke, rough and shaking, his palm pressing hard against the warmth blooming there. Hot, wet, terrifying. “No, no, stay with me.”

The bond burned between you, wild and panicked, every ounce of his fear pouring into you until it was all you could feel. Your breath hitched, shallow and ragged, and his grip only tightened, as though sheer strength might hold you together.

Halden’s blade gleamed above him, moonlight running along the steel, but Roger did not look away from you. His whole body was bent over yours, shielding you, the weight of his focus locked on the blood soaking through his hand.

You tried to speak. To tell him it did not hurt. To shape the words that might steady him. But the bond betrayed you.

Every flicker of pain pulsed across it, jagged and sharp. Every drop of your fading strength bled into him, heavy and undeniable. He felt it all. The heat spreading, the weakness in your limbs, the way your lungs caught on air that would not fill them.

His breath came fast, broken. “No. Don’t you dare. Don’t you leave me.”

The tide crashed against the rocks, loud enough to swallow the clash of steel as Halden lunged.

The bond burned, every pulse of your pain shoving deeper into him until his control snapped. Roger’s head lifted, eyes dark and wild, his teeth bared in something closer to a snarl than a grin.

Halden lunged, blade arcing down.

Roger surged up to meet him. His hand shot out, catching Halden’s wrist before the steel could fall. The force of the stop rattled through both men, the blade shuddering inches above you. With a twist, brutal and efficient, Roger wrenched the sword free. It clattered against the rocks, the sound swallowed by the roar of the tide.

In the same breath, his boot swept Halden’s legs from under him. The lieutenant hit the ground hard, the air tearing from his lungs in a sharp grunt. Roger loomed over him, sword in hand, the blade catching moonlight as if it belonged there.

It had taken less than a heartbeat.

“Stay down,” Roger growled, his voice rough, the bond still trembling with your pain. “Or I swear you won’t get back up.”

Halden froze, fury burning in his eyes, but checked by the certainty of the man above him.

And Roger was already turning back to you, dropping the sword into the sand like it meant nothing. His hands pressed against your side, urgent, shaking.

“No,” he whispered, the word breaking. “Not you. Not now.”

The bond surged, fierce and steady, his voice hammering into your mind with an iron will. “Stay with me. I’ll get you out.”

The tide rushed over your ankles, cold and biting, knees slipped into the sand beside you.

The world blurred between heartbeats.

You were in Roger’s arms, your body lifted as though you weighed nothing, the thunder of your pulse crashing against your ears. The heavy weight of his coat pressed over your wound, his hold iron, unyielding, as if he could keep you alive through will alone. His voice filled your head, urgent, commanding, unshakable.

“Stay awake. Don’t you dare close your eyes.”

Halden’s voice sliced across the night, sharp with fury. He was shouting orders, his tone edged with betrayal, but the words slipped past you like water, lost in the roar of blood in your ears.

Your strength was ebbing too fast. You could feel it slipping away with every beat. But even through the haze, you felt the shift in the air; the sudden weight of movement all around the cove, boots pounding over stone, the metallic snap of rifles being raised.

And then the night erupted.

Gunfire cracked sharp and vicious, sparks flying as bullets tore into the rocks. Pebbles sprayed over the sand. The sea surged against the cliff in answer, waves breaking harder, louder, as if the whole island had turned against you.

Roger twisted, his body curling around you, shielding you from the storm. You felt the snap of his muscles as he spun, his shoulder slamming against the stone wall of the cove, his grip unrelenting.

He swore, low and vicious, his arms locking tighter around you. “Hold on. I’ll kill them all before I let them touch you.”

And the bond thrummed with something wild and absolute, an oath he would break the whole world to keep.

He moved fast. Too fast. One moment, the cove was between you and the open sea, the next he’d slung you higher against his chest, your arms around his neck, your head tucked under his chin as he vaulted the boulders toward the waterline.

“Stop!” Halden’s voice was closer now, boots hammering the sand.

Roger didn’t. He didn’t even look back. The bond was flooded with his focus; every calculation, every choice mapped in an instant. He wasn’t thinking about the danger, only about getting you away.

The first shot had been meant for him. That much you knew. And that was the only reason Halden was still breathing.

You caught a glimpse of the sloop’s mast beyond the rocks, the flicker of lantern light on wet wood. A rope ladder dangled, Rayleigh already moving at Roger’s shout. 

Rayleigh didn’t hesitate. The ladder swung out over the waves, his hand braced on the rigging as he shouted orders to the crew above. The sloop lurched with readiness, sails already half-loosed to catch the wind.

Roger hit the surf hard, water exploding up his legs, salt spray stinging your lips. His grip never faltered. You could feel every flex of muscle, every beat of his heart, hammering against your side like it was willing yours to match.

Gunfire split the air again, louder now, ricocheting against the cliffside. Shouts followed, Halden’s voice rising above them all, furious and sharp. You felt his intent through the bond. He wanted you dragged back, no matter the cost.

Roger’s answer surged through you like fire. “Over my dead body.”

He did not slow. The sea rose around him, waist-deep, chest-deep, and then he was leaping, one hand seizing the slick rope ladder. He hauled you higher against him, his body braced between you and the bullets hissing into the water below.

“Pull us up!” Roger bellowed, and the ladder jerked as hands above seized it, hauling you skyward.

Saltwater poured from your clothes, your hair plastered to your face, but you could not look away from him. Even under fire, his gaze held you, fierce and unshakable, the bond stretched taut between you like a line of fire that would not break.

Below, the surf roared with violence. Muzzle flashes ripped through the dark, cutting arcs of light across the tide where Halden’s men staggered forward, weapons raised. Their boots splashed in furious rhythm, the water foaming around them as they fought to reach the ship.

You heard Halden call your name. The sound of it was jagged, torn from his throat, raw with possession. For a moment, it clawed through the haze, sharp enough to drag you back to the shore, back to the prison of duty.

Almost.

But Roger was louder. His voice ignited through the bond, searing away doubt. “Do not listen. Look at me. Only me.” The command rang like steel against steel, fierce and absolute.

“You can’t hide from the Marines!” Halden’s shout carried above the waves, his words ragged with fury. “She’s mine!”

Roger turned on the deck, water still streaming from his shoulders, and met Halden’s eyes across the dark. The look he gave him was not human kindness but judgment itself. 

“She was never yours.”

The words struck harder than any blade. Halden’s roar shattered into the water as the sails cracked overhead, snapping full with the sudden violence of the wind. The ship lurched, pulling into the open sea. The deck tilted beneath you, lantern light swinging wildly, shadows rushing long across the boards.

You tried to speak, to tell Roger you were still there, still alive. Your lips moved, but no sound came. The bond betrayed you instead, carrying everything: the terror, the faint relief, the sharp sting of your wound.

His jaw locked as the bond poured through him. His eyes dropped to you, dark with fury and fear, his voice steady in your mind. I’ve got you. No one’s taking you back.

The crew roared orders above, Rayleigh’s voice cutting across the chaos, ropes slapping hard against wood. Muskets cracked again from the shore, bullets hissing past like wasps. One splintered the railing inches from Roger’s back, showering salt-stung air with shards. He didn’t flinch. His hold on you was iron, his coat pressed tighter to your wound, his body a wall against the world.

The island was falling away into shadow, its coastline swallowed by distance, Halden’s shouts already shredded by the wind. The sea pulled you further from him with every surge of the sails, but Roger’s bond burned steadily in your chest, fierce and unyielding.

You believed him.

-X-Five Minutes-X-

The ship pitched again as it tore through the waves, the lantern above swinging wide, throwing frantic shadows across the deck. The boards beneath you were slick with saltwater and blood, the smell of iron sharp in your nose.

Roger knelt over you, his coat spread like a shield, one hand clamped hard against your wound, the other braced against the deck as if he could steady the storm itself. Water streamed from his hair, dripping down onto your face, warm where it mixed with the sting of salt.

“Stay with me”. His voice pressed through the bond, fierce and low, edged with something dangerously close to fear. “You hear me?”

You tried to answer, lips parting with effort, but only a shallow breath escaped. The edges of your vision swam in gray, the world narrowing to the weight of his hand and the sound of his heart pounding near your ear.

His eyes blazed down at you, refusing to let go, refusing to let you slip. 

“I’m not losing you,” he said aloud, his voice a cut of iron through the chaos. “Not like this. Not when we’ve just begun.”

The words burned through the fog, pulling you back for a heartbeat. You felt his grip tighten, as if sheer will alone could anchor you to the deck, to him, to the life he was demanding you keep.

Above, Rayleigh’s voice cracked across the storm of noise, the crew hauling at ropes with frantic speed, but Roger never moved his eyes from you. The ship could have split in two, the sky could have fallen, and still he would have been there, anchored only to you.

Through the bond came the deluge—his fear, sharp and unhidden, pouring through you until your chest ached with it. It was not the worry of a captain for a crewmate. It was the terror of a man who had finally grasped the one thing he had not known he was searching for, only to feel it slipping away with every ragged breath you drew.

“Bandages!” Roger roared over his shoulder. His voice was raw with command, and Rayleigh didn’t hesitate, boots hammering the deck as he vanished into the chaos, cursing under his breath.

Roger snarled something after him, words that blurred in your ears, and you summoned what little strength you had left. Your hand lifted, trembling, until it found his.

At once, he turned back, as if pulled by a tether. His eyes locked on yours, dark and burning, rimmed with saltwater and the kind of grief he had never allowed anyone to see.

The wind tore at the sails and the deck heaved underfoot, but none of it seemed to exist for him. His world had narrowed to the slick of blood beneath his hand and the faint tremor of your fingers lifting to touch him.

He froze at the contact. Then his grip gentled, like he feared he might break you if he pressed too hard. His eyes met yours, and you saw them, unguarded at last; dark, furious, and wet with something he never let the world see.

Stay awake, he begged through the bond, voice rough and ragged. Please. Just a little longer.

Your chest ached with the weight of it, not only from pain but from the force of his will pressing against yours. He was dragging you back from the edge with nothing but the strength of his heart, and you could feel every beat of it thrumming through the tether that bound you.

Rayleigh returned at a sprint, shoving a bundle of linen into Roger’s free hand. “We need to go back and get a surgeon—”

“No.” Roger’s snarl cut the air like thunder. “I promised… We sail for the next one.” His voice broke.

The crew faltered, stunned by the ferocity in his voice. Even Rayleigh hesitated, lips tightening as if he might argue, but the look on Roger’s face killed the thought before it could leave his tongue.

Roger tore the bandages open with his teeth, the linen fraying between clenched jaws as his hands worked with desperate precision. Quick, unrelenting, but careful as though you might shatter beneath his touch. He pressed the cloth down hard against your wound, muttering curses too quiet for the crew to hear but burning like fire through the bond.

“I will not lose you. Do you hear me? Not to Halden. Not to the sea. Not to anything.”

The lantern above swung wildly with the storm, spilling light in broken flashes across his face. It caught the wet streaks there, salt and seawater mingling, carved into him like battle scars. He bent low, so close that his breath warmed your cheek, steady even as his voice cracked.

“Look at me,” he ordered, softer now, though his hands trembled where they held you. “Don’t close your eyes. Stay with me. Please.”

“It’s bad,” you whispered, the words trembling from you as much as the air.

“I don’t care.” His reply struck hard, fierce enough to rattle through your bones. “You’re not dying. Not here. Not tonight.”

You wanted to tell him he could not promise that. That the spreading heat beneath your dress was too much, too fast, like the tide rushing out of you. But then his hand found your cheek, rough thumb dragging across your skin as though he could anchor you with that single touch, as though sheer will might call you back from the edge.

“Look at me,” he said again, voice low and breaking. “Keep looking. You stop, I stop.”

The ship pitched hard, and the world tilted, throwing your body into a moment of weightlessness. For one terrifying heartbeat, you felt as though the sea had claimed you already, pulling you down into its cold black grasp.

Roger’s grip clamped tighter, both hands steadying you against the deck, against the storm, against the end itself. The bond surged hot and consuming, a fire raging against the void. His vow cut through the chaos, sharper than steel, burning hotter than gunpowder.

“I will burn every Marine port to the ground before I let them take you from me.”

The sea stretched black as ink in every direction, the sky pressed low and swollen with clouds. The ship’s hull groaned, shuddering under the assault of waves that slammed against it like cannon fire. Spray lashed the deck, ropes thrummed, lanterns swung wild. The crew moved with desperate precision, hands blistered on soaked lines, but Roger’s eyes never left yours. Not once.

He stayed beside you, knees braced against the bucking planks, hands fixed where they held bandage to wound, anchor to soul. Through the bond, you felt his hands shake even as they appeared steady, the tremor locked in his chest instead of his fingers. Around him, the men worked, stealing glances they thought you couldn’t see—pity, fear, helplessness—but no one dared break their captain’s vigil.

Your breaths had grown shallow, little more than whispers between the storm’s roar. The warmth at your side had cooled, sticky fabric clinging where the blood had slowed but not stopped. You felt yourself drifting, slipping further from the sharp edges of the world.

“We’re close,” Roger said, voice rough as gravel, words dragged out like an oath that cut him even as he spoke. “There’s a village on the next island. I’ll get you to a doctor.”

You didn’t have the strength to answer aloud. Your lips barely moved, but the bond carried the thought, faint and tired.

“You can’t lie to me. Silly man.”

The words cut deeper than steel. Roger flinched as if struck, his breath stalling, his chest tight with something jagged he could neither spit out nor swallow. His thumb traced your cheek in a steady rhythm, a gesture as stubborn as it was tender, and the bond throbbed with everything he could not force into speech.

“Don’t,” he said sharply, as if cutting you off could change it. “You’re going to be fine. You hear me? Fine. And we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together. I know so.”

The bond flickered back, faint and uneven.

“You don’t even know my favorite color.”

It broke him. A laugh slipped out, fractured and thin, the sound of a man unraveling.“Green. It’s green.”

“It’s red,” you whispered through the bond, though even the thought itself felt like ash.

His jaw clenched, shadows falling across his eyes beneath the brim of his straw hat. In one motion, he gathered you into his arms, cradling you as if force alone could anchor you to this world. His voice was a vow ground out between his teeth. “Then I’ll wear it. Every damn day.”

The surf roared louder, waves crashing against the hull in a relentless rhythm. Someone shouted above the storm that land was near, but Roger did not lift his gaze from you. Not for the sea. Not for salvation. Not for anything.

Your hand found his shirt, fingers curling weakly in the soaked fabric. The movement was so slight it might have been mistaken for nothing at all, but Roger felt it like a lifeline. His breath hitched, and he pressed you closer, chin bent to brush against your temple.

“Sail the world, and then after you live a long life, come tell me your stories.” You gazed at him as tears rolled down his face. 

“Stay with me,” he whispered, voice rough and low, pulled straight from the bottom of his chest. The words were meant only for you, but the bond carried the storm beneath them. Terror. Fury. Love sharp enough to wound.

The deck heaved as another wave slammed the hull. Lantern light wheeled across the chaos, ropes groaned, and the sails strained under the weight of the sea. Above, Rayleigh’s voice rang out, steady as always, shouting orders no one questioned. Yet even he looked down through the spray, his eyes narrowing when he saw the way you sagged against Roger’s chest.

Your lips parted. The thought that reached across the bond was so faint it hollowed him where he stood. 

“You always carry too much.”

Roger swallowed hard, the salt on his tongue tasting like blood. His grip on you tightened until his arms ached. “Then let me carry you too,” he said.

Your gaze, hazy and half-lidded, lifted weakly to his. He leaned closer, desperate to keep you tethered to him, desperate to hold you here a little longer.

“Smile, laugh. Live big, love again, have a family. Promise me you’ll follow your dreams.” 

The words broke something inside him. His chest convulsed with a shuddering breath, and when he pressed his face against you, his tears burned hot into the fabric of your soaked shirt. His jaw locked so tightly it felt like bone would splinter. It took every thread of strength in him, every ounce of the captain who had never bowed to sea or sword, just to force the slightest nod.

The storm roared, waves pounding the hull, lanterns swinging in mad arcs above. Roger held you closer, crushing you to him, as if the sea itself would have to pry you free. His heart raged inside his ribs, a wild thing that refused to break even as the bond flickered weaker and weaker in his chest.

You smiled faintly, lips curving with the last of your strength. Your eyes slid closed, and in that moment, the most beautiful warmth washed over you both, gentle and whole, like sunlight after a storm.

The bond pulsed once, soft and certain, a final note of peace. Then it went still.

Roger froze. The world seemed to tilt with him, sound bleeding out of the air until there was only the ragged thunder of his own heartbeat.

Your head listed with the sway of the ship, hair plastered to your cheek. Your body turned slack in his arms, weight suddenly too heavy, too real.

Then your fingers slipped from his shirt and fell away.

“Hey,” Roger said quickly, too quickly, as though the word itself could stitch the moment back together. “Hey, stay with me. Open your eyes.”

Nothing.

His voice broke when he said your name. He tried again, rougher, as if sheer force could rattle you awake, but the bond gave him only silence. The thread between you had gone still, and it was a silence louder than the storm itself.

The deck swayed and pitched beneath his knees, but he held on. He pressed your head against his chest, rocking with you as though motion alone could coax breath back into your lungs. His thumb smeared the salt on your cheek, not caring if it was seawater or his own tears.

The storm raged on. The sea kept moving. And Roger—Roger, who had never bowed to blade or current—could not move you.

When the keel scraped sand, the crew glanced at their captain with the hushed terror of men watching something greater than themselves unravel. He had not moved from where he sat with you clutched against him, head down.

Rayleigh stood a short distance away, jaw locked tight, rain coursing down his scarred cheek. He said nothing, because there was nothing left to say. The first mate who could steady any storm could not steady this one.

The men worked in silence, their usual shouts and laughter swallowed. Even the sea seemed to hush as they lowered the anchor. The air was thick with grief they dared not voice.

By the time the ship touched sand, Roger hadn’t moved from where he sat with you. The storm had blown itself ragged, leaving only the groan of wood and the slap of waves against the hull, but he remained, cradling you as if his arms alone could defy the truth. His hat was pulled low, the brim shadowing his face, though the crew knew he hid nothing but grief. No one dared approach.

They disembarked in silence, each man carrying the weight of a captain who did not rise, who did not laugh, who did not speak. The one who had always led them with thunder in his voice sat hollow and motionless, and it terrified them more than any battle ever had.

Later, the stories spread. They said Gol D. Roger came into port that night with no cargo in his hold, no smile upon his mouth, and nothing in his eyes but the look of a man who had lost the only treasure that had ever mattered.

-X- Thirty Years Later -X-

The world called him Pirate King now. A title heavy with gold, blood, and every lie the seas could carry.

It didn’t mean much.

The men who sailed beneath his flag saw only the captain who laughed too loud, who split storms apart with nothing but stubborn will, who turned enemies into drinking partners and coaxed whole towns into opening their ports to a wanted man. They saw a legend who filled every deck with life, who carried the weight of the world like it was nothing more than another bottle of rum in his hand.

What they didn’t see was the shadow that clung to him when the laughter faded. The quiet that came at night, when the bond no longer stirred in the back of his mind. That silence haunted him more than cannon fire or sea kings ever could. It lived with him, pressed into every pause, every moment when the world fell still enough to remember what had been taken.

Only Rayleigh knew. He saw the way Roger sometimes gripped the brim of his hat too tightly, as though it kept him from unraveling. He heard the way Roger’s voice cracked on certain words before smoothing back into its usual thunder. But even he, first mate, friend, brother in all but blood, knew better than to speak of it.

Because some wounds, even the greatest swordsman, the finest doctor, or the closest friend, could not touch. Some wounds belonged only to the sea.

Roger never spoke of his soulmate again, not until the very end.

The cove was empty when he returned. The rocks waited, black and slick with spray, as if they remembered. The ocean pulled in and out like it hadn’t swallowed you whole, like it hadn’t stolen the last piece of him that mattered. To anyone else, it was just another stretch of coastline. To him, it was a grave without a marker, a place where the bond had gone still.

He stood there long after the sun sank, hat clutched in his hands, until the stars came out and the waves hissed against stone. No laughter, no crew, no crown of Pirate King. Only the sound of the sea mocked him with its endless rhythm.

It was the one place in the world where even Gol D. Roger could not pretend to be larger than life. Here, he was just a man waiting for an answer that would never come.

He sat where you had once sat, knees bent against the stone, the brim of his old straw hat pulled low over his eyes. It was faded now, sun-bleached and battered, the band fraying loose. The last thing of his you had ever worn.

“You’d laugh at me,” he said into the wind, voice raw, carrying nowhere but back into his chest. “King of the Pirates, and I still can’t set foot inside a cove without feeling like I’m twenty again, waiting for you to come down the path.” He swallowed hard, and the taste of salt burned; sea spray, or tears, he no longer knew. 

“You’d have loved this last journey. The sky islands, the great trees, the wonders no map ever dared draw. The whole world lay itself bare, and all I kept thinking was how your eyes would’ve gone wide at it all.” The waves crashed against the rocks below, steady and indifferent. He let them fill the silence between his words, the silence that had once been alive with the hum of your bond.

“I kept the promise,” Roger whispered. “I lived big, I laughed louder, I carried the world’s weight until it broke my shoulders. But the only thing I could never do…” His hands curled tight on the brim of the hat. “Was let you go. You’ve been in the faces of all the women. I don’t know why Rogue put up with me.”

The sea didn’t answer.

He reached into his coat and pulled out a small jar, red-tinted glass, the stopper sealed with wax. Inside lay two halves of a life. Sand from the cove where he had first kissed you, pale as bone, the color of beginnings. Mixed against it were darker grains from every island he had ever touched, every shore he had stepped upon with a thought of you in his heart. A speck from Skypiea’s clouds, a pinch from the shores of Jaya, a dusting of Wano’s cliffside earth. Fragments of stories that had no one left to hear them.

He held the jar in his calloused palm, thumb running over the warm glass as though it were your hand. “Life was a long time when it had to be half-lived,” he said, almost to himself. His voice cracked on the words, soft and frayed. “But I thought… maybe the stories would be enough. Maybe I could bring them back to you someday. Maybe…”

The word trailed off. He couldn’t force it further.

He set the jar gently on the rock between his boots, as though it were sacred, as though the wrong touch might shatter not the glass, but everything inside him. The water pushed close, curling around the stone, reaching up as if it might steal it away. Roger’s hand lingered on the jar until the last moment, before he pulled it back to his chest, fingers trembling.

For a long while, he just sat there, shoulders bowed, the King of the Pirates broken small against the rocks, whispering your name into the salt air.

“I did it, you know,” he said softly. “Found it all. The treasure, the fame, the freedom. I just… didn’t get to share it with you.” The words frayed in his throat, pulled thin like rope worn down by too many storms. “And what good is any of it, if it isn’t yours too?”

The hat stayed in his head until the tide crept close enough to touch the rock. Then, with hands that shook despite their strength, he set it on the jar, weighing it down, leaving it there like a marker. Hat and glass together, one relic for a love that had outlived even the world’s loudest dream.

The waters fingers curled around the stone again, greedy, patient. He knew it would not be long before the sea took them both, swallowing sand and glass and straw in the same quiet hunger that had taken you.

By the time he turned to go, the waves had started lapping at both. He didn’t look back. Couldn’t.

Because the Pirate King could face any fleet, any gallows, any storm.

But not the sight of the sea taking the last piece of you he had left.

-X-The End-X-

Cosmic Joke Status: Bond Terminated

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