#heartslight

Okay. So. Ruggie is pretty sure he is going to die.

Because —— Ruggie knows that different places have different customs, okay. He knows that what means one thing in one place doesn't always translate the same to another. Every first year at NRC is faced with a hundred lessons teaching just that, some in the classroom, most in some embarrassing social misstep repeated ad nauseum. But —— BUT! This one seems pretty hard to misinterpret.

Sora's present — a star - shaped fruit. Simple. Kind of cute, in a way Ruggie would think was annoying from anybody else. But then Sora had explained the story, and he hadn't really processed it fully in the moment. But now he's red as hell and his face is so hot and the more he thinks about it the more he's pretty sure he's going to die because — cultural differences or no — there's not a whole lot of ways to take "I want to share this symbol with you as my boyfrind that means we'll spend our lives together" outside of a proposal? A gift to bind you and your partner magically together is kind of classic proposal?? Ruggie wonders, am I engaged now? and thinks he might pass out. That fact that Sora doesn't seem to think it's That Big Of A Deal makes Ruggie feel even more insane.

It's just : he gave up.

Ruggie knows when to cut his losses. When to accept that he's lost, that there's no coming back. He has every reason in the world to be cynical. Every other abandonment has been as final as he wished it wasn't. His father's disappearing back — the children and adults he watched die in his youth — and then Sora. Back to his world, with the friends and loves that mattered, and away from Ruggie.

Despite what Sora said when he left, Ruggie remembered. He always does. But after months and unanswered texts and quiet nothing, he gave up. He knows when to stop wishing. He knows how to stop missing. He's good at being left behind.

It's just : no one has ever come back to him before.

And here's Sora, panting like he's been running, like he's been looking for him, after so so so so long where he was just another abandonment, another leaving wound that Ruggie had no choice but to allow to scar. And here's Sora, looking a little older, a little taller, a little sadder, just like Ruggie feels. He came back. The thought feels like a dream. He came back for me.

"Luffy!" She shouts it into the air in a way that seems to startle the boy she's talking to — how old is he? Fifteen? Sixteen? He looks like a baby — but she barely notices that. There's no reply and, ugh, "where is he when you need him?" Unfortunately, she needs her captain's go - ahead before she can forcibly adopt a new member into the crew.

A kid like Sora wants to be a pirate? Yeah, sure, whatever. Dime a dozen. He and Luffy would get on like a fishman and the sea. A kid with a giant boat, actually sailing, without knowing how to navigate or hoist a sail or use a log pose, with apparently only two incredible idiots for guidance? No. Absolutely not. She remembers only too - well her own stumbling attempts at sailing when Arlong had first allowed her to leave Cocoyashi. At the very least he needs to have some kind of fucking guardians. ( she's too familiar with people like luffy and zoro and herself to think she can just bully him out of doing pirate - hood at all. ) Ugh, fine. If Luffy's not around, looks like she'll have to do this.