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When he is ten years old, Rocinante runs away from Marineford.
It’s not what he wants to do. Might be the thing he least wants in all the world, but- but it’s the right thing, the just thing, the only way he can possibly adequately thank Sengoku for saving him.
Even so, Roci silently cries the whole time.
When Sengoku first found Rocinante, the marine said that, even though the foul-tasting fruit he’d scrounged and ate out of desperation made Roci outwardly silent, his inner Voice was still crying out, loud and attention-grabbing for anyone with the skill to hear it. In the two years since then, as he’s gotten better at manipulating different uses for his Devil Fruit, Roci has practiced casting a certain kind of Calm on himself that muffles that Voice, so even the best Observers won’t notice him when he doesn’t want to be found.
(Sengoku has asked him not to do it outside of training. Has said his heart skips a beat, sometimes, when he tries to listen for Roci and can’t find him.)
The Inner Calm works.
No one finds Rocinante where he’s hidden himself at the bottom of an empty supply ship, setting out for one of the islands that serves as a food hub for Marineford.
It’s for the best. It is. His presence has already given Sengoku so much trouble, he can’t- he can’t keep making it worse. It’s better this way.
Rocinante picks a courier ship next, heading farther into the Grand Line, and then a civilian vessel, not paying attention to where he’s going except away. He never lets up the heavy shroud of Calm around himself, makes sure to stay out of sight, only sparingly eating the rations he brought along in his knapsack. It’s a bit hard, going back to eating so little, but he can manage. He can. Just until he finds a way to earn some berri and buy more food.
(Stealing might, might become an option, if things get desperate, but- the last time Roci needed to steal to survive, Doffy was still with him. He doesn’t want to go back to that, not if he can help it.)
A week out from Marineford, the third ship docks, and Rocinante slips ashore in the midst of sailors focusing on securing their mooring lines and opening up the cargo holds. The island they’ve reached is fairly crowded; a small but dense city, long rows of docks and berths stretching down the curve of the harbor. Lots of people coming and going, and Roci is small enough he needs to work extra hard not to be stepped on, wrapped up in his blanket turned cloak. After a few tense minutes, he ducks into the mouth of an alley, just to lean against the wall and get his breath back. He keeps looking out at the crowd, at all the crowded ships, and feels a fresh wave of despair crash over him.
Followed by a wave of terror, as a large hand suddenly grips his arm.
“Heyyy now, wha’s a lil’ brat like you doin’ out alone?”
Let go, Rocinante tries to scream, but he can’t, he’s still silent, he can’t focus to lift the Calm-! Fingers fumble at his cloak, his knapsack, and he thrashes, kicking blindly instead of aiming for weak points like Tsuru showed him, and in response the man lifts Roci entirely off the ground and-
Wham
Pain erupts. He sees stars, feels the sharp spears lancing outward from the back of his skull. Roci falls limp with a whimper, can’t struggle as the man takes his bag, takes his food-
“Hey!”
A shout. An impact. A curse, as the man staggers, and Rocinante suddenly drops. Cobblestones collide with his shins, and he folds immediately, collapsing onto his side, barely able to blink and track what’s going on above him other than a red blur. And then- and then there’s a hand again, and a second, but small, they’re his size, grabbing Rocinante and dragging him out of the way of the- of the fight-
“Yeesh, that’s gonna be a big lump,” a kid’s voice says, and when Roci blinks again he still sees red, but this time it’s circular. Spherical. It’s a big round nose. “Hey, you’re still alive, right? Say something, come on.”
Rocinante opens his mouth, trying to obey, but nothing comes out. Even if he wasn’t still under his own Calm effect, he can’t think of anything to say.
Further off, there’s a loud thud, and then a more cheerful voice growing louder as it comes closer, “Jackass is down, and I got the bag! Is he still alive?”
Slowly, Roci pushes at the ground, makes himself sit up by way of a silent answer. He has to blink a few more times for things to stop looking blurry, and by the time he manages that, there are two boys crouched in front of him. One has the big nose, and a beanie hat, and one of the most colorful outfits Rocinante has ever seen. The other is dressed more modestly, in a loose white shirt and brown pants, but it just makes his red hair stand out all the more brightly, matching the ribbon of his straw hat.
That one’s also got a sword in his hand, and Rocinante can’t help but flinch when he notices it.
“Hey, it’s okay, we won’t hurt you,” Red says, grinning. He quickly slides the sword away into a sheath hanging against his back, then holds out-
Roci snatches the knapsack.
“Must be something good, huh, for that guy to try robbing you?” Nose sounds interested, but Roci doesn’t pay him any mind, yanking open the drawstring and pulling out his spare shirt in order to count the wrapped bars and small cans and- and- He sags back, shuddering from the strength of his sigh. It’s all still there, his food supply. Like a puppet with his strings cut, Rocinante just leans against the wall, clutching at the knapsack. Eyes squeezed shut, he doesn’t see how Nose looks disappointed, peering into the bag and only finding food, or how Red stares at the spare shirt with its mock marine-trainee stripes.
He definitely doesn’t see how the two boys exchange grim frowns, and then sharp, determined nods.
“-and Captain’s a bit of an idiot, but as much as he likes throwing parties and using up all our food stores, he’s not gonna care if a few extra things disappear, honest.” Stepping into the Oro Jackson’s galley, Rayleigh pauses. Squints at the open door of the pantry. Frowns, as he hears Shanks continue, “Here, you like peaches? We can wrap up a couple of these jars so they don’t break on you-”
“Boys,” Rayleigh calls out, and the way the pantry goes immediately silent slides his suspicion into dead certainty. Even if there isn’t, oddly, any other Voice besides their two cabin boys inside the pantry.
A moment later, Buggy slips out, grinning weakly as he slouches against the open door and tries to pretend there’s nothing out of the ordinary. “Hey, Rayleigh! Is the log pose reset already?”
“Another few hours, according to Gaban.” Folding his arms, he gives the ten year old a mild look, eyebrow only oh so slightly raised. If the kids keep trying to hide whoever they’ve snuck aboard, he’ll step it up to drastic measures, but usually a simple warning is enough. “Are they going to come out, or do I need to go in?”
Buggy winces. At least he’s smart enough to know when the jig is up, unlike Shanks, who never minds playing something out to the bitter end. “Uhhh- okay, look, you have to promise not to get mad.” The boy moves closer, volume dropping, and Rayleigh belatedly realizes the kid must really be invested in whatever’s going on. “He spooks SUPER easy, Ray, it took us, like, thirty minutes just to convince him it was safe to come and get some more food, and Shanks wants to try and get him to stay longer so we can help him run away from the marines-”
Movement.
Shanks, first, sidling out of the pantry, usual grin replaced by an oddly dark frown. One hand reaches back behind him, small fingers tugging at the sleeve of-
Ah, hell.
The boy who follows is just as small as Shanks and Buggy, his eyes hidden by shaggy blond bangs, but even so the terror twisting up his expression is plain to see, even if, for some odd reason, Rayleigh still can’t Observe anything from his Voice. Like there’s just a little pool of calm and quiet, nevermind the way the kid’s chin wobbles and his hands are shaking.
At least it’s him discovering this, instead of Roger, who’d boom out a laugh and scoop the child up without a second’s thought.
Rayleigh slowly crouches to put himself on more equal footing with the kids, arms draped over his knees, well away from his sword. “Hello there,” he says softly, letting the newcomer stop just out of reach, Shanks and Buggy bracketing him closely. “My name is Silvers Rayleigh. I’m second in command around here.” There’s a stuffed knapsack hanging from the kid’s narrow shoulders, overtop what looks like a felt blanket pinned into shape as a hooded cloak. “You’re not in any trouble here, I promise. Can you tell me who you are?”
Credit where it’s due, the boy opens his mouth to answer. But there isn’t so much as a croak that slips free, just empty, hanging silence, as his jaw works up and down a couple of times before awkwardly closing again.
“We don’t think he can talk,” Shanks offers, still missing anything resembling his usual good cheer. “Or- or not right now, anyway. But- he’s got marine clothes, Ray-” Oh that makes the third boy flinch, he must not have realized the others picked up on that, or else he’s just scared about Rayleigh knowing it. “And there was an asshole on the docks who hit him and tried to take his food-”
“And you stepped in,” Rayleigh assumes. Shanks jerks his head in a quick nod. “Okay. Okay, that’s fine. But how about instead of pilfering the pantry, we get our little friend here a decent meal, and some clean clothes, and then we’ll see if he can write things down to answer our questions, alright?”
Shanks and Buggy brighten. The blond boy, if anything, only looks more terrified.
More members of the crew trickle back to the Oro over the following hour. In the interests of avoiding the new kid growing so scared he shakes out of his own skin, Rayleigh relocates their little group to his private cabin with a big plate of sandwiches, the staple of a lot of his and Roger’s early meals as a crew of two.
At least half the plate disappears down their little mystery’s throat, proving he’s got a good appetite for someone so small.
He accepts a wash cloth and soapy bucket when the idea of an actual bath proves too much; Buggy donates a long-sleeve pink shirt and Shanks tosses over a pair of red trousers, both of which are tentatively accepted and put on, but not before Rayleigh catches a brief glimpse of several alarming scars. Maybe not alarming for an adult, sure, someone who’s been a pirate or marine for years, but on a child who can’t be more than ten years old...
Suffice to say there’s a bad taste in his mouth.
“Okay,” he smiles when everything else is settled and the boys are seated in a line on his bunk. He can stay calm about this. He can. “First off, do you know how to read and write?”
With clear reluctance, the kid nods.
So Rayleigh hands him a pad of paper and a plain charcoal pencil, and repeats the request for the boy’s name. In a far more elegant script than he would have expected, he gets an answer: Rocinante
“That’s a mouthful,” Buggy says, face wrinkling, while Shanks is still silently mouthing out the loopy letters. “Can we call you Nante?”
A moment’s pause during which Rayleigh figures Rocinante is blinking. But he nods, and tentatively smiles back when Buggy grins.
Further gently asked questions are soon answered, feeling out the edges of this kid’s story. He is ten, and alone, parents dead and brother gone, a pair of single-word explanations that he refuses to elaborate upon. When Rayleigh pushes just a little more, asking if there’s anyone else supposed to be looking after him, Rocinante obviously hesitates before writing down ‘no’.
He does like peaches, a question that comes from Shanks. He likes any kind of food really, as long as it isn’t rotten, which tells Rayleigh this boy’s survived on his own before. He’s also, apparently, stuck under the effects of a Devil Fruit.
The Calm-Calm Fruit, Rocinante writes, it makes things silent, people and places, inside and out.
Huh. Maybe that explains why his Voice is hidden.
“So you’re stuck like this?” Shanks demands. “Who did it, we can find them and-”
Rocinante pokes his shoulder, the first time Rayleigh has seen him intentionally touch one of the boys, and then jots down, It’s me. It’s my Fruit. I just get myself stuck, sometimes.
“Ohhhh,” both Shanks and Buggy say, before the latter adds, “That sucks. What do you gotta do to turn it off?”
Their new friend shrugs, mouth twisting to one side. Rayleigh suspects the answer involves ‘stop feeling scared’, which a runaway marine trainee probably won’t while still sitting aboard an infamous pirate ship.
So he sits forward on his chair, instantly regaining Rocinante’s attention, and mildly asks, “Is there anywhere in particular you’re trying to get to?”
After a beat, the boy shakes his head. His pencil lifts- touches paper- pauses. After a tense moment, he slowly writes, ‘away from Marineford’.
Rayleigh offers him a soft smile. “We can help with that.”
“I figure we can find a quiet island somewhere out of the way, a place he can hide and feel safe-”
“What’s wrong with staying with us?” Roger demands around a mouthful of food. Dinner as always is a loud, chaotic affair aboard the Oro, hence Rayleigh taking a tray to the boys still in his cabin, and talking to Roger about the new arrival out on deck away from the rest of the crew.
“He’s a marine kid, captain,” Rayleigh reminds him. “He’s warming up to Shanks and Buggy, since they saved him and they’re his age, but if I’m enough to make him twitchy just by myself, he’d probably faint from the terror of being in a room with the whole crew.”
“Hrmph. You gonna try to say he’s not allowed to meet me, then?”
Rayleigh raises a sharp brow.
“...alright fine, but as soon as he stops being such a scaredy-cat, I want to get a look at him!”
“As long as you promise to be quiet.”
Roger looks insulted, which is the biggest joke of the universe. “I can be quiet, I can be SO quiet, Ray! I was always quiet when Shanks needed his naps as a baby, wasn’t I?”
Rayleigh raises a second brow.
“Okay okay, most of the time I was quiet, put your eyebrows back down, those things should be called weapons in their own right...” Turning thoughtful for a moment, Roger inhales the rest of his plate of steak and mushrooms. “How about this - we give him the rest of the month to get used to us, and decide if he wants to stay or not. One of those, uh, whatever you call ‘em, running courts?”
“Trial runs.”
“Yeah, one of those! He’ll give us a trial run of being a pirate apprentice with the boys, and afterward we’ll go from there!”
Since that’s probably the best he can get out of his captain, Rayleigh sighs and nods, and starts figuring out how best to introduce little Nante to Roger in a way that won’t give the child a heart attack.
As it turns out, Rocinante only stays with them the better part of a single week.
Exactly as long as it takes to cross paths with Garp - and his friend Sengoku.
“I told you, Senny,” Garp hollers as he ducks a swing from Roger’s sword and lands a solid punch into the man’s gut. “Didn’t I say getting out of headquarters would be a good thing?”
“I am not out here to fight, Garp,” the other Vice Admiral snarls, throwing a punch of his own that Raleigh just barely manages to catch on his blade. “I came out here to search! This fool’s enterprise is nothing but a damn waste of time!”
“My deepest apologies,” Rayleigh can’t help but snarl himself, disengaging and taking a leap back. Sengoku is a pain to fight on the best of days, analytical and clever, finding the best places to aim his attacks. They’re fairly evenly matched, in that regard - but right now, he’s as wild as Garp, throwing around his strength and power with hardly a care for where they land. Something’s off. Something’s wrong. “Maybe if you tell us what you’re looking for, we can kick you in that direction!”
Oh, the look Sengoku aims at him is nothing short of pure venom. He’s really close to cracking. Maybe if Rayleigh can dig under his skin a little more like that, he’ll get the marine too furious to think straight, find a weak point to exploit-
Garp crashes down next to his friend, thrown by Roger’s return hit. Their oldest adversary rolls to his feet, and it is surprisingly distracting to realize Garp’s customary grin has vanished. “I told you we’ll find him, Senny, so we WILL find him.”
“Find who?” Roger asks, sliding down the short hill of rubble to Rayleigh’s side, the four of them facing off for a moment. “Are you taking up a new rival? I’m hurt, Garp, really!”
Sengoku’s expression twists up again. Garp, though- Garp suddenly looks thoughtful, and THAT is NEVER a good sign. “What would you say if we’re looking for a little boy who vanished out of Marineford?”
Both pirates freeze.
“He did not vanish,” Sengoku snaps, rounding on Garp, “He ran away, you saw that- that damned note-” Holy shit, the man’s voice outright breaks on a note of grief. Of heartache. “My boy thinks I’m better off without him and you have us wasting time fighting pirates!”
“Not wasting time,” Garp rumbles. He is still watching Roger and Rayleigh, and definitely hasn’t missed their reactions. Their recognition. Sengoku belatedly notices his friend’s intent expression, and his head whips back around, zeroing in with a laser focus that does not bode well.
Even so, Rayleigh hesitates. ‘Away from Marineford’, Rocinante said, and they’ve spent the past six days doing just that, slowly acclimating the kid to interacting with more members of the crew, helping him to relax more, to smile, and just yesterday he let Shanks pull him in to lay down with Buggy against Roger’s side where the man was taking a nap in the sunshine out on deck-
“Why does Rocinante think you’re better off without him?”
Well.
So much for insisting they don’t know anything.
Rayleigh shoots his captain a sharp glare, but Roger doesn’t notice, too intent on glaring himself at Sengoku. For his part, the marine actually wavers, like he’s about to fold inward until he gets ahold of his reaction. “I don’t need to tell you anything, pirate - what do you know about Roci? Where is he?!”
“Answer for an answer,” Roger parries, and Sengoku’s face twists up even more, fury mingling with grief mingling with fear.
Garp, surprisingly, steps in to accept that offer. “Brat overheard some officers talking shit about Senny flushing his career down the crapper, wasting time looking after the kid he adopted. Took it to heart harder than we realized, and decided he’d run away to fix it.”
Aw, hell.
Not running away from indoctrination, like Shanks and Buggy assumed, or abuse, as Rayleigh guessed. Running away as a form of self-sacrifice.
No Observation-powered foresight required to know what Roger’s going to do next.
“Come on, then,” he tells the two vice admirals, and then turns to bound out of the little valley where they started their fight, leading the way to the cove where the Oro Jackson has her anchors dropped. Rayleigh sighs as rubs at the bridge of his nose, but doesn’t do anything to stop the marines from following.
A few alarmed shouts go up from the crew as they get close, but rather than waste time explaining anything, Roger just hollers: “Hey, Nante! Your dad is here!”
Your dad is here
No
Your dad
No, no no-
Here
This isn’t- it’s not- he wasn’t supposed to follow Rocinante!
Shanks takes one look at whatever face he’s making, and scowls, before scrambling over to the ship’s railing and yelling, “Well make him go away, then!”
Pointless. Rocinante knows it’s pointless, even before Captain Roger lands on the deck and scoops him up, making his heart lurch, and then everything lurches as they bound away off the Oro entirely onto the sandy beach where he and Shanks and Buggy were playing earlier before the lookout spotted incoming marines and now he’s here, Sengoku is here-
“Roci?”
Oh.
He-
He sounds almost sick.
Slowly, Rocinante unfolds the arms he’d throw up in front of his face, peers across a stretch of dry sand, sees-
Oh. Sengoku looks terrible.
There are deep shadows under his eyes, and he isn’t wearing a clean uniform, and his hair is a mess and- and- and he’s staring at Rocinante with so much hope and fear and- “Are you hurt?”
It’s too much.
Rocinante bursts into tears.
Loud, noisy tears, his self-imposed Calm that he’s held onto since leaving Marineford shattering in a split second, and everyone around him winces from whatever his inner Voice must be doing but he can’t get the silence back, not when he needs to wail, “I'M SORRY!”
He staggers forward, away from Captain Roger, and almost instantly the big broad arms he’s come to trust more than anything else in the world wrap around him, hug him close, all he can do is cling to Sengoku’s coat and keep crying, shaking from head to toe with each massive sob that tears out of his throat. “They- said- they said-”
“I don’t care what they said,” Sengoku rumbles, hugging him even tighter. “Looking after you is not a waste of time. Not when you have become the greatest joy in my life, son.”
Rocinante cries harder.