Chapter Text
The Oro Jackson cut calmly through the water while the last golden rays of the setting sun broke across the waves, bathing the ship in warm light. It could have been a peaceful evening, almost even a beautiful one, if not for the quiet heaviness hanging over everything—something no one said out loud, but everyone felt, even if most of the men on board tried to drown it out with laughter, alcohol, and songs sung far too loudly.
They had returned from Laugh Tale.
The final destination.
The end of a journey greater than anything most people would ever dare to dream of in their entire lives.
And still, the crew celebrated—perhaps exactly because none of them knew what else one was supposed to do with a moment like that. On the main deck, people drank, laughed, argued, and sang, as if every single man there wanted to prove that nothing had changed. Barrels were opened, cups passed from hand to hand, and somewhere someone was loudly singing a song no one truly remembered anymore, yet everyone shouted along to it anyway. Scopper Gaban had already started playing dice with some of the younger men, while Silvers Rayleigh sat nearby with an expression that was half amused, half exhausted, watching as Gol D. Roger laughed far too loudly about something for what felt like the hundredth time.
It was loud, alive, and familiar—but it was exactly that familiarity that made it harder for Shanks to stay calm.
He sat on one of the railings at the edge of the deck, a half-full glass in his hand, watching the celebration with an expression he couldn’t quite understand himself. He wasn’t unhappy. Not in that moment. A part of him was even relieved to hear Roger laugh, because that laughter still had the power to make the world feel right for a brief moment. But beneath that was something else, something dull and restless that he hadn’t been able to shake since their return.
Roger was sick.
They all knew it.
No one liked talking about it, but on a ship, nothing stayed hidden for long—especially not when it concerned your own captain. Shanks had seen the way Crocus sometimes looked at Roger a little longer than he should. He had noticed how Rayleigh had been stepping in faster lately whenever Roger pushed himself too far. And he had heard how conversations died the moment someone spoke too openly about the future.
Until now, it had still been something they could push aside.
Since Laugh Tale, that had changed.
Since Laugh Tale, Roger no longer looked like a man fighting against his end. He looked like someone who had already accepted it.
Buggy stood not far from Shanks, but not close enough to truly be with him. In the past, he might have sat down beside him, made some stupid comment, or shoved him for no reason just to get a reaction. But ever since the incident with the Devil Fruit, something between them had been damaged—something that couldn’t simply be fixed with an argument or a shared laugh.
Buggy had never really forgiven Shanks.
Maybe he never would.
Shanks couldn’t even fully blame him for it, even though it hurt every single time Buggy looked at him as if he had deliberately taken everything he had ever dreamed of. The anger wasn’t always loud. Sometimes it was only a turned-away glance, a cut-off sentence, or that sharp silence Buggy used at exactly the moments when Shanks wanted most to pretend that there was still something between them like before.
That evening, Buggy only looked at him briefly when their eyes met by chance, then turned back to one of the older men as if he hadn’t noticed anything at all.
Shanks lowered his gaze to his glass and told himself it didn’t bother him.
That was a lie.
***
Later, when the celebration still hadn’t completely died down, but the first men were already leaning drunkenly against barrels or had fallen asleep on the deck, Roger called him over. Not loudly, not in front of everyone, not with that exaggerated gesture he usually used to draw the attention of half an island. He only said his name—quietly, and with a seriousness that made Shanks look up immediately.
Rayleigh noticed it too.
Of course he noticed.
Rayleigh always noticed everything.
His gaze shifted from Roger to Shanks for only a moment, but in that brief moment there was enough to make Shanks’ stomach feel unpleasantly heavy. It wasn’t a warning look, nor one telling him not to go. It was worse than that. It was the look of someone who already knew that a conversation had to happen—and wished it didn’t.
Shanks followed Roger below deck.
The room where Roger received him was small, filled with the warm light of a lamp and so familiar that Shanks wanted to hold onto it. He knew the smell of wood, salt, paper, and the faint trace of alcohol that almost always clung to Roger. He knew the table covered in maps they would probably never need again. He even knew the mark on the wall where Buggy had accidentally left a dent years ago after arguing with Shanks and throwing a knife that definitely hadn’t been meant to hit the wall.
Everything was familiar.
Only Roger wasn’t.
Not entirely.
He didn’t sit down immediately, but remained standing for a moment, as if he first had to decide how to say something that had been left unspoken for far too long. Shanks crossed his arms over his chest—not stubbornly, but from an instinctive need to somehow hold himself together.
“You’re making this worse,” he finally said, because silence with Roger was unbearable.
Roger laughed quietly, but it sounded more tired than usual.
“Probably.”
“Then stop doing it.”
“If it were that easy, Rayleigh would have turned me into a reasonable man years ago.”
Shanks wanted to smile, but he couldn’t quite manage it. Roger saw that, and for a moment his expression softened in that rare way Shanks could never fully endure, because it reminded him that behind all the noise, the greatness, and the shamelessness, Roger understood exactly what people felt.
“I need to tell you something,” Roger began, and Shanks immediately hated how final those words sounded.
He said nothing.
Roger took a deep breath and rested one hand on the edge of the table, as if he had suddenly become older than he had been only a few hours earlier on deck.
“When we left God Valley back then, we didn’t just take gold and treasure from that cursed island. Among all the riches, there was a chest—plain enough that no one would have paid it any special attention. It was only later, back on the ship, that we opened it—and found you inside. You were barely more than a baby, far too small to remember anything, wrapped between things that would have been valuable to others, while you yourself had long been the most valuable thing inside. For a long time, I convinced myself that it was enough to simply take you with us, give you a new life, and leave everything that came before far enough behind you so that it would never be able to catch up with you.”
Shanks felt his throat go dry.
God Valley.
That name that had always only existed at the edge of conversations.
That name no one ever spoke about openly.
“What do you mean?”
Roger looked at him, and even before he continued speaking, Shanks knew he did not want to hear the answer.
“You are descended from the celestial dragons.”
For a moment, Shanks did not understand the words.
Not really.
They reached him, got stuck somewhere in his mind, and refused to make sense.
Then they landed.
And everything inside him turned cold.
The Celestial Dragons were not family, not heritage, not people one wanted to feel connected to. They were a symbol of everything that was wrong with this world. Of chains, of slavery, of violence, of that disgusting certainty with which some people believed they stood above others simply because blood and names supposedly gave them that right.
Shanks stared at Roger while nausea rose in him.
“No,” he said, but the word sounded weak, almost childish, and he hated himself for it immediately.
Roger did not contradict him.
That made it worse.
“I don’t know everything,” Roger said calmly. “And I won’t pretend I have answers to every question. But I know enough not to keep the truth from you any longer.”
Shanks took a step back and only realized his hands were shaking when he clenched them into fists.
“Why now?”
The question came out sharper than he had intended, but Roger accepted it.
Of course he did.
“Because I don’t have much time left.”
There it was again, that second truth that stood behind everything like a shadow.
Shanks wanted to be angry. At Roger, at this bloodline, at this whole damn world. He wanted to shout that he didn’t want to know, that Roger should have kept it to himself, that it changed nothing and destroyed everything at the same time. But instead, he just stood there and felt something inside him painfully tighten.
Because it wasn’t only the bloodline.
It was also what it meant in connection with his Omega status.
Shanks had learned early what it meant to be an Omega. Not through gentle explanations, not through understanding, but through looks, through remarks, through the way some people suddenly spoke to him differently the moment they knew. Omegas had become rare, almost unnaturally rare, and because of that, people treated them in two ways—both unbearable. Some saw them as weak, too sensitive, too valuable, too dangerous to live freely. Others saw something precious in them, but never in a way Shanks had ever felt was admiration.
To many people, an Omega was not a person with a will of their own.
An Omega was something to protect, possess, lock away, or use.
On a pirate ship, Shanks had been able to stand against that, because Roger placed no value on such rules, and Rayleigh could silence any man with a single look if he thought making a stupid comment about Shanks was a good idea. The Oro Jackson was full of Alphas—strong, confident men whose very presence was noticed in every harbor. Roger was an Alpha, so naturally and overwhelmingly that no one ever had to say it out loud. Rayleigh as well, in a quieter, more dangerous way. Gaban was one, many of the strongest fighters on board too, and even among the Betas, there was hardly anyone weak.
Shanks was different.
He had always known that.
Until now, he had told himself it meant nothing, as long as he became strong enough, as long as he laughed louder, trained harder, and got back up faster than everyone who believed they could underestimate him.
But an Omega with the blood of the Celestial Dragons?
That was no longer coincidence.
That was value.
A flaw.
A claim.
Something people could use.
Roger said his name, but Shanks barely heard him.
“Who knows?” he asked at last.
Roger was silent for a moment too long.
And right there, Shanks knew it would not stay only between them.
“Rayleigh knows,” Roger said.
Shanks pressed his lips together.
That did not surprise him, but it still hurt.
“No one else?”
Roger looked at him.
“Not from me.”
It was not an answer that reassured him.
Not on a ship.
Not with men who had been nervous for weeks because they could all feel that something was coming to an end. Secrets had no solid walls at sea. They slipped through cracks, were passed on in half-finished sentences, betrayed in glances, and twisted into rumors until, in the end, no one knew where the truth had ended and fear had begun.
Shanks nodded slowly, even though he felt nothing close to agreement.
“I should have known earlier.”
Roger lowered his gaze.
“Yes.”
That honesty hit him harder than any excuse could have.
Roger could have said that he wanted to protect him. That Shanks had been too young. That there had never been a right time. All of that was probably even true.
But he didn’t say it.
And because of that, Shanks did not know where to put his pain.
“You belong to this crew,” Roger said at last, quieter than before. “Not to them. No matter what your blood says.”
Shanks wanted to believe him.
He wanted it so badly it almost hurt.
But when he returned to the deck later, the ship already felt different.
Maybe he was imagining it.
Maybe Roger was right and nothing had to change.
Maybe Shanks was simply too shaken, too sensitive, too much of an Omega—as some would whisper behind closed mouths when they thought he couldn’t hear it.
But then one of the younger men looked at him.
Only briefly.
Only one heartbeat too long.
The man looked away immediately, but not fast enough.
Shanks had seen that look before.
Not often on the Oro Jackson, but in harbors, in taverns, in markets, where people believed they could tell what someone was by a scent, a posture, or a rumor. It was that look that judged and desired at the same time, that looked down on him while weighing his worth, as if Shanks were not a person, but an answer to a question no one dared ask out loud.
He kept walking without saying anything.
***
The next morning, it was still there.
That barely noticeable shift.
No one openly turned against him. No one said to his face that he no longer belonged. Maybe that would have been easier, because then Shanks could have fought. He could have shouted, hit someone, defended himself.
But it wasn’t open.
It was quiet.
A conversation that died the moment he came closer.
A laugh that ended too quickly.
A man who had always sat beside him to eat without a second thought now moving to another group with some weak excuse.
Another one muttering that he should have known somehow, with an Omega with that face and that way about him, as if Shanks had not stood on the same deck for years, not under the same storms, not with the same scars, the same blood, the same damn loyalty.
He didn’t hear all of it.
But he heard enough.
“Celestial Dragon blood,” someone said behind a stack of barrels—not loudly, but not quietly enough either.
Another one scoffed. “Disgusting, if it’s true.”
“And an Omega on top of that.”
“Maybe that’s exactly why they were looking for him up there.”
Shanks did not stop.
He kept walking.
Every step felt wrong.
His heart was beating too fast, but his face stayed calm, because he would not give them that satisfaction. He would not show that it hurt him. He would not show that his chest felt like someone had reached inside and was slowly squeezing.
But when he passed Buggy, who was sitting on a crate, absentmindedly playing with a knife, Buggy looked up.
Their eyes met.
Shanks didn’t know if Buggy had heard it.
Probably yes.
Buggy always heard exactly the things that were never meant for him.
For a moment, Shanks hoped he would say something. Not necessarily something kind. He didn’t expect that. But something. A stupid comment maybe, an insult, anything that felt like them and not like this new, cold distance.
Buggy only looked at him.
Then he looked away.
And for some reason, that hurt more than everything the others had said.
Shanks kept walking until he was out of sight, until the laughter and murmuring of the men behind him blurred away and only the creaking of wood, the sound of the sea, and his own breathing remained. He leaned against the inside of a narrow wall below deck and closed his eyes for a moment.
He was not weak.
He was not worth less.
He was not property, not a mistake, not a reminder of Mary Geoise, and not some shame people suddenly had to look at differently.
He knew that.
He truly knew it.
But knowing did not always help.
Sometimes it was frighteningly easy to doubt yourself when enough people started looking at you as if they had finally found the reason why you had never quite been right.
And somewhere above him, Roger laughed.
Loud, warm, and alive.
Like always.
Only that for the first time, Shanks was no longer sure if that laughter was enough to keep him standing.