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Sometimes Luffy thinks she is the bravest girl in the world. That´s how his brain works, in absolutes.
(she is brave not in the way Nami is, in the way Luffy sees Nami, for whom courage is a way of living: Vivi is brave when she has no reasons to be)
Sometimes she is just a little girl –small, scared, a mess of tears and with her hair getting in her eyes.
Sometimes Vivi is none of those, and nothing in between, she just paces along the deck of the Going Merry like she has been doing it her whole life (Luffy wonders… was there a time when she wasn´t with us?) and she is just Vivi.
*
Vivi throws herself in front of danger, and the smell of her blood on his clothes is something Luffy will never forget.
Something he will make sure of never forgetting.
*
Vivi laughs with them, but there is an island-shaped hole in her heart.
Everybody pretends not to notice.
*
Vivi hits him, slaps him, kicks him.
Luffy fights back, harder.
"Why don´t you try risking our lives?" he shouts, and for a moment he feels more desperate, more hysterical, more at risk than she does.
He is holding her by the wrists and feels her tears dampening his clothes, a dark ring over his heart.
*
The nights in Arabasta are short –in the darkness you can´t tell the colour of the sand and that´s why it feels like water running through his hands when Luffy touches it.
Vivi hasn´t slept since they´ve reached the country.
There´s always a sandstorm brewing over the next dune.
Luffy wakes up at midnight, to her face slightly lit with the last remains of the fire.
She tells her stories of her country. Stories she once heard and can´t remember when, where, from whom: her father, Pell, Kohza… the names and faces and love roll all into one, overwritten on one single page, a palimpsest that just speaks one word… Arabasta.
He listens –his eyes shimmering half in awe and half-worried, in a way he doesn´t let her tell one thing from the other.
She remembers someone once telling her that the desert is the ocean´s twin, because they are made of absolutes: in the desert the only rule is sand, sand, sand, in the ocean the only rule is water, water, water…
Vivi leans on Luffy as she tells him this.
Luffy will remember how she said I´m scared against his shoulder.
*
He is the one scared now.
Death doesn´t scares him; defeat does.
But fear is adrenaline is energy is power is Crocodile, I´m going to kick your ass.
"Vivi…even though she keeps saying no death… she tries to throw away her own life to save others…"
He invokes her name like a charm, a reminder of why he has to win.
It´s getting harder and harder to breathe, and his chest feels heavier with much more than poison.
"…if you leave her that way she´ll die…"
Crocodile is unblinking, ignorant, lost. Luffy´s words brush past him but can´t touch him. This is why he is going to lose.
"…she will die because of you!"
This is how Crocodile is going to lose.
*
Of all the things Luffy thinks, imagines, knows of Vivi, he has never seen her like a princess.
During dinner they get to see that other side of her –of beautiful but not fancy jewellery, of perfectly matched clothes, of easy kindness, flawless manners, ready smile, the warm hostess, the loving daughter, the perfect queen.
(Chopper is awed by it all, Sanji mesmerized, Zoro doesn´t care, Ussop makes up stories about long-lost kingdoms and sand-buried treasures, and Nami, much like Luffy, is a bit shaken by it all, feeling she should treat this new Vivi different, knowing that she can´t)
But Luffy knows no matter whose blood runs in Vivi´s veins, it´s a pirate´s blood.
*
The royal palace still smells of the round and fat fruit that used to grow in the garden –it´s smells of jasmine, and wet sand and children´s games, childhood dreams.
Vivi´s hair smells like that, but it´s only now that Luffy recognizes the scent.
It´s all he can think of that night, sitting on the palace entrance, the first night he knows Vivi will sleep soundly, when he asks her to come with them, with him, with them.
Vivi grins in a way Luffy desperately hopes means yes.
*
There is no right way to say goodbye.
Luffy has never been good at this. But he is not good at running away, either.
(He knows Vivi is staying even before she does –that´s how things work with Luffy)
"Mister Captain-" she still calls him.
Luffy smiles and slightly touches his hat.
He turns around, never looking back, and never thinking of it as a real goodbye.