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SHANKS

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[redforce]

( koby's voice cuts through the fog, through the relentless onslaught of horror, and shanks visibly startles awake — which, at least while they've been here, has never happened. the last dream slips from his subconscious as he wakes, realizes where he is, where he still is, the erratic panic in his chest slowly fading as he comes back into his body, out of the nightmare. he blinks blearily across the room, a familiar shape coming into focus, a familiar voice finally registering — )

Koby? ( — only for the cold wash of panic to return when he realizes he can't feel anything, and all at once he's pushing himself up and out of bed, crossing the room to cradle koby's cheek in his hand, to feel that warmth even under the mask, to feel something — ) What's happened? Are you alright?

( and, for once, his voice betrays how shaken he is by the fact the he doesn't know the answer to that question already. it reminds him, too much, of the way he's never been able to sense buggy, the only unknown in a sea of colors too many emotions. no one else has ever been that way, not even in the village. and his haki isn't gone like it was there, not completely — but especially this close, with such a definite point of contact, shanks should be able to sense something. the fact that he can't — not even a hint of blush peeking through the fog — is more unsettling than he knows how to put into words. so, instead: )

Why are you still wearing your mask? ( it hasn't quite occurred to him that his is still attached as well. )

[kobes]

[Koby's still talking, still rambling, like his voice isn't his own, like it's a spool of thread he's dropped and is letting roll across the room. It's not until Shanks touches him -- callused, familiar, soothing -- that he stops talking, looks up through the delicate filigree of the mask. He can't feel Shanks, can't sense the vibrant blaze of crimson, but that -- that makes sense. He's new to it, of course it would be muted by this place, he only learned it existed four months ago.

But Shanks had startled when he entered. Shanks looks stricken and confused and -- lost in a way that sends ice through Koby's veins, freezes his heart in his chest. He draws in a shuddery, shaky breath.] You can't feel me. You -- didn't see me coming.

More people are dead. Six more. After the masquerade, after we all went to sleep, seven were attacked, one survived, Alina, but. But the others. [Koby's eyes are wider and wider, glassy with panic, with tears, and he suddenly draws away as his stomach roils and clenches and he covers his mouth with both hands to stifle the sudden, hoarse sob.] Something -- something awful is happening.

[redforce]

( he doesn't have to say it, doesn't have to confirm it — the unspoken no etched in the shadows beneath his eyes, the hard lines of his brow as he searches koby's face desperately for even a tiny spark of the frenetic aura he's used to seeing, focusing all his energy on reaching outward for something more familiar than his own heartbeat — and for a moment, he's back in the village, on his knees in the dirt, clawing at the earth, only it isn't a grave he's trying to dig now, there's something he needs to unearth, to uproot, hidden beneath the surface, the echo of a feeling he would know blind. devotion isn't something so easily buried, and koby's has always been a twilight sky, a surging tide, a guiding star.

all he feels now is something sharp behind his eyes, a throbbing pain at his temples. he winces almost imperceptibly but doesn't pull away, tries to focus on koby's words instead, on the shakiness of his breath, the tears spilling warm down his cheeks.

six dead sends his mind reeling — luffy, he thinks, but koby had said — he's safe, he's safe, or had shanks imagined that? )

Koby. ( again, firmer, even as his own voice threatens to waver. look at me, look at me, he wants to say, but instead: ) Come here. ( it isn't a request, already reaching out to pull koby close, to anchor him to his chest. ) I've got you. You're safe.

[kobes]

[On some level, Koby’s almost relieved that Shanks can’t feel what he’s feeling, that the icy terror that streaks through his body, like he’s plunged into the sea on a cold day, realizing that he’s correct, that the impossible, unshakeable power that Shanks holds is suddenly, abruptly gone. It’s worse than the village, where everything holds a strange, amorphous, foggy quality, this many months on – that was like a dream, somewhere between humanity and myth, vague enough that Koby can nearly forget the horror of being trapped inside it. Because there was always the fire, always the boat, always the rumble of something, something held at bay, waiting to break free, when they were safer, warmer, fed. Something building in Koby’s chest, waiting for better days.

And here, they had. And here, they were gone. And there’s no tether to hold him steady, not anymore, no rope to cling to that’ll keep him sane. He’s reaching in the darkness, grasping and clutching at nothing, nothing, and all it’s getting him is a violent pain of his own, sharp enough that he recoils from it, chokes on it, shoulders hunched and body curled forward like it’ll protect him.

Later, he’ll remember, he’ll regret: Shanks touches him and he flinches, used to feeling it coming, the approaching warmth at the edge of his mind, unveiled so he can pinpoint it, recognize it, know he’s safe. He knows the touch, at least, the arm around his violently trembling body, the hand smoothing up and down his back. Koby tries desperately to cling onto it, replace what’s missing with that point of contact, but it’s not enough. He’s back in the middle of the night, back in the nightmares, and this time Shanks can’t block them out. They’re alive, they’re in the house, they’re coming for them all–]

You can’t – promise that. [Stilted, choking, every breath a struggle, a hitching effort.] We aren’t safe, none of us – we won’t ever be again, we can’t get away, we can’t stop it, we. [And yet, both hands raise, cling to Shanks’s shirt, tight enough that the fabric snags on his blunt nails. It’s still not enough, not nearly, he needs something to fill that void of emptiness in his mind, keep the snow out, keep the ice out, keep them warm, keep them fed

Barely audible, a shuddering, pleading, anguished thing:] Please, Shanks, I’m – I don’t know – I’m scared.

[redforce]

( koby flinches and something seizes in shanks' chest, wild and protective and furious, a coiling surge of energy with nowhere to go, no one to direct it at without any sense of presence beyond koby's trembling form against him. shanks takes a steadying breath, forcing the wave to recede before the door splinters or the windows shatter, trying to find his center, the eye of his own storm — trying to adjust to being thrown out of equilibrium, so much like losing a limb, the phantom sense of feeling something that isn't there. )

Listen to me. ( a command, gentle as it is, something powerful in those words: they haven't taken everything from him, haven't buried the most dangerous piece of shanks that could tear this house apart if he felt so inclined, if he felt it was necessary. he brushes loose strands away from koby's face, hand trailing down koby's cheek, settling warm and steady against his neck.

there's a scar on shanks' palm that has always been there, ever since he was young and hopelessly naive, a scar that binds two lives, that seals two fates, that echoes an oath is an oath is an oath — a scar twice reopened, twice bound, now pressed to that erratic pulse point under his palm, faint but no less real, a rope cast to a drowning sailor in the middle of a stormy sea. )

As long as I'm alive — ( his hand pressing koby's against his chest now, above his heart, firm enough to blend the rhythms of each pulse, a frantic, desperate, terrified, determined symphony ) — as long as my heart still beats, I'm not going to let anything happen to you, not if I can help it.

( a vow he makes regardless, even if he knows there are things at play here out of his control, even if he knows he might not be able to keep that promise. )

Do you trust me? ( not because he doesn't know the answer — yes, more than anything, always — but because he wants to hear koby say it, needs to hear it spoken between them now, given new weight in this place where the rules aren't so clearly defined. (do the ritual, keep him safe, keep him human.) because perhaps this — this pull, this hunger, this terrible desire to consume and be consumed — can be its own ritual, something they both desperately need, to feel something more than empty and yawning and cavernous, an inescapable black hole of nothing where the sun and the moon and the stars used to be. )

[kobes]

[Truthfully, at this point Koby doesn’t know anymore how much of Shanks’s gravitas, his magnetic force is because of who he is, what he can do, and how much has been forged in blood and ice and snow, honed by the way that callused, scarred hand – pressed now to Koby’s frenetic, thrumming heartbeat – can make everything else in every world just disappear into delirious bliss. But he listens, he looks up with eyes huge and haunted and desperate, he clings to those words because he can’t feel them anymore, hadn’t realized how much he’d come to depend on the tease of crimson at the edges of his mind, like a hand settled on the back of his neck, fingers carding through his hair, lips pressed to the notch of his spine when he’s curled in bed. Without it, it’s like he’s forgotten how to walk, how to swim, like every instinct’s been blunted, and every time he struggles to the surface to breathe, he swallows seawater instead. Koby wonders, briefly, if this is what Luffy feels like, in the ocean. If it unmakes him like this.

Thoughtless and wild and still barely able to catch his breath, Koby presses closer, both hands curled into Shanks’s shirt, so tight he can feel his fingers trembling, he can almost hear the creak of his knuckles as he clutches tight and tries to stem the flow of mindless fear. A thought, a recollection – ”I can’t – I need – can you –” stumbling over the words, the request numbed like everything else, like his feet inside the heavy boots, like his hands as he reaches and tugs the spill of silky fur out from where it’s kept, tucked beneath his coat, warm over his shoulders, and the pelt moves like liquid and catches the firelight, speckles and spots of pink-on-pink, and Shanks doesn’t question, doesn’t hesitate, just holds out his hand for the sealskin to fall into, moving of it’s own accord, because that’s what it wants, because it’s Koby’s soul made tangible, because it’s the part of him that longs to be clasped closed, draped across someone’s lap, petted a couple times with careful, callused fingers, the effect of it rippling across his still-damp skin as the fear vanishes, as the weight of this world and their own is shifted off Koby for a few minutes, just a little while, just enough for him to catch his breath.

It’s a memory he knows, he’s had it before, of the times in the village where Shanks or Nami – or even Bee, tiny careful hands snow-kissed, serious voice telling him you need to rest, Mister Koby, and Koby laughing wearily as he tucks the sealskin around her skinny little shoulders and asks her to watch it for him – had held the pelt for a bit, let Koby slip into that strange, hazy, peaceful state he couldn’t get to any other way. He longs for that now, near-pathologically, for someone to turn off his mind, make it stop spiraling. He craves it so hard it tastes like blood in his mouth and there, suddenly, a flicker of something from those last days in that other world, from the time that bleeds all together into a litany of keep them safe, keep them warm, keep them fed, something that Koby’s kept locked away carefully for months now:

Shanks puts his hand on Koby’s shoulder, bloody scratches over his arm, voice just as firm, just as gentle, just as unflinching as it is now, and he says, “I should’ve asked you a lot sooner, Koby. But I’m asking you now.”

It’s gone, almost as quickly as it arrives, and Koby’s left shivering in it’s wake, something, something coming back to him, something essential, something cataclysmic, something that had brought him here, to this place, to this new nightmarish bliss. Something that tastes like his name on Shanks’s tongue, his soul in Shanks’s grasp.

Do you trust me? he asks, and Koby’s already nodding before the sentence is over. He’s nodding, he’s thinking of snow and ice and fur and water. He’s nodding and he’s pleading with Shanks to understand what he wants, what he needs in that moment.] Yes. Always.