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SHANKS

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( koby flinches away like a feral animal, like he had when he'd been injured and barely human, and shanks had to put up with the biting and the scratching and the groaning barks of a wounded seal just to get close. it's not so different now, really, koby barking at him pointedly; or the scared, hopeless, strangled gasps caught in his throat, still desperately trying not to cry. gently, shanks steps forward, closing the distance between them, reaching out slowly so not to spook him. )

No, you're right. I can't promise that. ( set could vanish tomorrow, koby could, any of them could. and those left behind would have to find a way to live with that. so he presses the warmth of his palm against koby's cheek: steady, firm, sure. ) But pushing me away won't make you feel less ... scared, miserable, angry — and it won't make you feel less guilty, either.

( speaking from experience. the only thing he'd felt in those days and months and years after loguetown was empty. hollowed out, adrift. he'd turned to the bottle, like rayleigh always had when roger's illness flared up, because he never knew another way to ease the pain. he is his father's son, after all. but koby isn't. they don't have to walk the same path. shanks doesn't want that for him. it's a long, dark, lonely path — even surrounded by friends and crew and family, it's lonely. never alone, but never whole.

brushing a tear from koby's cheek, he slides his hand down to the slope of koby's shoulder, guides him back to the bed, to sit — and as shanks kneels between koby's legs, he pulls one of koby's hands free, squeezes it to his chest, his gaze soft but unwavering, following each of koby's unfocused glances intently. his voice remains calm, soothing, but no less commanding when he says: )

Look at me. You told me you wanted more. As much as you can have of me, for as long as you can have it. Has that changed? ( lifting his hand to koby's neck, drawing their foreheads together: ) Because I still love you, Koby, and I'm still here — and I want you to listen to your own advice. You can't control the future. You can't control what's already come to pass. You can only hold onto what you have right now as tight as you can and cherish the time you're given.

Can you do that? Stay here, with me, in this moment, in this place that gave us more time — and feel whatever you need to feel. You won't scare me off. You won't break me. You're safe and you're not alone. Say it with me, cadet.

[kobes]

[it’s interesting, perhaps, how the number of people koby’s lashed out towards (desperate, backed-into-a-corner, a frightened sort of anger with no real venom behind it) has remained so small, even after the last several months, after the commune, after the death that had left the inescapable proof circled nooselike around his throat. if he has to think about it, the ones who’d taken the brunt of it are the two in the neighboring suite, shown the bared-teeth desperation of someone so mind-numbingly scared that nothing else seems to register.

maybe it’s because there’s no real way he could push them away – not set, who’s seen the ugliest, rawest shape of koby’s anger, shameless in the depth of a wintry night, unveiled in all it’s cowering, snarling force. not shanks, who sees that same snarling covering a wound so deep koby’s sure there’s nothing left, and doesn’t recoil, doesn’t flinch, not for a moment. and it’d be easier to be angry, but just like the month before, the second shanks touches him – unflinching, unafraid – there’s no room left for anger.

whatever savagery koby’s managed to summon up in that moment drains out of him at the firm, callused warmth of shanks’s hand on his face, cradling the tear-streaked curve of his cheek, prompting all the fight to slip away as easily as the sun beneath the horizon, a blazing ball of fire and rage gone, vanished, inevitably. and what’s left – all those things, misery, hurt, guilt. if he’d been awake, if he’d been watchful, if he’d said or done or been something, someone different, would it have changed things? would he, could he have kept quentin from vanishing?

koby sits on the edge of the bed, mute, motionless, wanting to resist the crashing wave of all those awful emotions, but completely powerless, now as always. and – it registers after a long moment that shanks has kneeled, no less imposing for it, still easily face-to-face, even bowed as he is, and there isn’t a version of koby that exists who can refuse any command in that calm, lilting voice – look at me and those hollowed-out, nakedly hurting eyes flick up, fix on shanks’s, unblinking. has that changed, and koby shakes his head once, shaky, because – no. because even though it’d hurt less if he wanted less, he can’t close himself off now, not without severing the most vital parts of who he is.

because what he’d never said aloud is that this part of him that dares to love someone he isn’t allowed to keep – it was there before saltburnt, before the village, before the snow and the winter and the wild-thing instincts that had taken over his mind and body. that koby didn’t even need to know shanks to have everything about him changed by the stories of who he was – not the pirates i know, luffy had said, radiating warmth, light, loyalty and honor, spinning a web of possibility that koby the cabin boy, koby the miserable, wretched, cowardly shell of a person had taken in and knotted around his shivery bones to keep them upright, because if there was a person who could be kind and good and brave and fearless, who could sail under a flag that had meant nothing but misery and make it mean something else – how could that not sustain a boy who didn’t believe in heroes anymore? how could he not anchor himself to that in a way that rippled across universes, through time, to this moment, this miserable, aching, devastating undoing, this howling void of emptiness that hisses your love has never, will never be enough – snarls it, howls it, tries to undo and unmake and fails, fails, fails?

because i still love you and i’m still here, and if that’s not enough, what is? koby has already learned to love someone before he’s even met them – he’ll learn to love them after they go. he’ll learn because the alternative is making his own words into lies, flimsy falsehoods that crumble when tried in the fire. he’ll learn because the alternative is letting go of everyone else he loves because he’s too damn scared of waking up in a world where they don’t exist. shanks presses their foreheads together, and koby’s hands slip up, instinctive, familiar, resting on either side of shanks’s face, eyes closed, thumb tracing the tail of the scars that tug that smile slightly askew, every time shanks offers it.

and he keeps offering it, it and a promise he can make, for this moment and the next and the next and the next, two years of moments that should never have existed in the first place. because there’s a world they’re both burdened and beholden to, a path they’ll both need to take, and when koby steps foot on it again, it’ll be as someone who doesn’t remember being loved by anyone.

but he remembers now. he’s unmade and remade by it, and he remembers, and it hurts worse than anything he can imagine, but he stays in it. he stays, eyes closed, breath shaky, tears on his face and in his voice when he repeats:] I’m here. I’m – not alone. [not yet, not yet.] I won’t – scare you off. [it lilts at the end, just a little, a question – are you sure, are you sure.]