Crocodad AU where immidiately after having left Dragon and his baby boy Crocodile finds an 11 year old Robin. And while he's 100% only recruiting her so they can make a beeline for the Poneglyph and Pluton in Alabasta by the two of them... Crocodile accidentally sorta kinda adopts Robin.
At this point Robin's been running for her life from the Government for three years so her deep trust issues and fear of betrayal are starting to take root in her little heart. Like perhaps they haven't taken fully over yet, and being still a child I'm sure Robin might've still had that genuine hope that she could find a safe place to stay in. But I'm sure the though of "what'll he'll do with me once he gets what he wants?" would be nagging at her at the back of her mind.
Meanwhile Crocodile's struggling between the pain and hurt he's already gone through and given him his trademark trust issues, as well as the aftermath of The Dragodile Divorce. But he also has his Fresh Paternal Instincts and probably misses his baby. So when given a small, scared child who is running for her life, being chased by the very same Government that'll want his son dead if they ever find out about him... Yeah that might fuck with your brain a little
You know this post was supposed to be just that first paragraph and just a few footnotes from the following two paragraphs. And then I kept on Having Thoughts. And I kept on writing them down. And oh no what happened when did this post get so long (Look I was going to either kept on writing my Additional Thoughts in the tags or I just put them in the actual fucking post)
Like considder this: based on this one SBS, we can kinda tell that if Crocodile was given a chance to raise a child, that child would be a spoiled little shit, right
So in this scenario, where Crocodile's looking after lil Robin, would he be kind of torn? Unsure how to feel about her?
Because on one hand, this strange child would have the potential to not only ruin his plans, strip him of his Shichibukai Privileges by outing him and his plans to the World Government, but also put his son in grave danger by extension (if she found out about him having been involved with the Revolutionaries and/or having a child).
But on the other hand, his paternal instincts could make him want to spoil this poor little girl rotten. But only because he needs to (perhaps literally) buy her trust so she'll behave. No other reason, he doesn't feel sorry for her one bit, no sirree. (But maybe he did feel sorry for her, since his son could very well end up exactly like her. Poor little thing) (Which is why he needs to nuke Marijoa out of orbit as soon as possible, no matter the cost, and this child can't get in the way of Crocodile protecting his son) (But also this is a child. Like how bad could she be. Besides all he really needs to do to win her trust is be nice and make her feel safe, right?)
Of course, while I'm suggesting Crocodile could have some parental instincts, realistically, he hasn't actually spent any time being, you know, a father to a child (looking after his newborn for an unknown though short amount of time aside), so it's possible he wouldn't even know how to parent Robin even if he wanted to, would he? (Like taking care of a newborn and an 11 year old kid aren't the same either) So if he was kind of just emotionally flipflopping between No Trusting Ever and It's Just A Kid for God's Sake, Crocodile trying to be nice to Robin to make her feel safe and then telling himself to stop being so soft and vunerable... Yeah that would make for an absolute mess of a relationship.
(Not to mention, let's be real, dude's a scary motherfucker too, and a bloody giant compared to itty bitty baby Robin. He could keep on accidentally scaring the shit out of Robin (who would be On Fucking Edge To Begin With) by just Being Himself. Like for example, can you fucking imagine if he caught Robin trying to cheer herself up with a little "dereshishishi" only to tell her to stop because "it was stupid"? 'Cause I can imagine him doing that, and boy howdy would that make Robin feel bad)
Or who knows, maybe Crocodile was just Born To Be A Dad, maybe he just Fucking Gets It. Like Crocodile is canonically pretty good at manipulating people to do what he wants them to do (see: how he played Vivi like a fiddle), so knowing Robin's position and understanding how she feels, maybe he COULD completely nail how she needed to be treated. Not being too familiar but still making her feel safe and happy, knowing exactly when to be stern and when to spoil her, etc. Dude just goes off and wins the Dad of the Year Award while being a deadbeat dad himself.
The only thing Crocodile would have to worry about then would be making sure HE doesn't get too fond of her. And certainly that could never happen, he's so in-touch with his own feelings and so grounded, he's not a softie, get outta here. Or maybe he does but never realizes until it's too late and good luck backpedalling on those emotions now dumbass
Alright so, the reason I went on that whole rmble is just that like. I'm so interested in the relationship Robin and Crocodile already have in canon. I'm so facinated and curious about how the two feel about each other, considdering they did spend 4 whole years of their lives together as criminal business partners, though neither ever trusted the other. A partnership that was only ended because Robin betrayed Crocodile, out of her own trauma. (God, I want to see these two "reunite" so bad, I want to know how they feel about each other now after the timeskip and Robin joining the idiot in flipflops who foiled Croc's plans)
My question here is just that... if they had met 13 years earlier, would things have been different? Especially if Crocodad Real?
Because as I mentioned in the begining, Robin would've been on the run for only 3 years by this point, as opposed to 16 years before running into Crocodile. Simultaneously, this would be before Crocodile went onto spend an entire decade all alone, slowly losing his marbles in his emotional solitude. They'd both be emotionally traumatized, yes, but would it have been as bad in this scenario?
Like I did start this post kind of joking about Crocodile adopting Robin, and for clarity's sake I don't think they'd have like a father-daughter relationship nececarily. But it would be a strange relationship still, because we'd have two broken people, both struggling to trust anyone. One who had lost her mother and her only friends, leaving her all alone and afraid while running for her life. The other a father who had just given up his son whom he probably missed dearly. Both having these holes in their hearts from loss of family, holes that could not be filled with replacements. But could they find comfort in each other anyway, because they still as people occupy similar roles to their respective loved ones? If they both could just get over those trust issues?
Okay I've been going off on the Emotional Side Of Things for this AU Concept, THERE'S PLOT TOO
So if Crocodile did pick Robin up like 19 years ago, that should be before he set up base in Alabasta, long before he had built is homebase and financial empire etc.
Now the thing is, while we don't know when, where and how Crocodile learned about the Ancient Weapons, Pluton specifically and how the lead on it would be in Alabasta... Considdering Crocodile did once upon a time aim to become Pirate King, it would make perfect sense if he had learned about Poneglyphs during his past adventures, as he would have needed to get the Road Poneglyphs to find One Piece.
And while the World Government did bury the truth about why Ohara had been burned down and why Robin had been given her bounty (remember, the WG claimed it was because she had sunken a fleet of battleships, which she had not, it was because she could read the Poneglyphs), considdering this is a Crocodad AU specifically, you could totally make an argument Crocodile could've learned about what actually happened to Ohara from Dragon and co.
So, just to make this AU work, you could just assume Crocodile learned about the concept of the Ancient Weapons from Dragon. And who knows, maybe he overheard the truth about why Robin had been given her bounty from Dragon too (maybe Dragon was able to get intel from Garp in secret) or while going to Marijoa himself to attend a Shichibukai meeting or something IDK.
Maybe he learned about Pluton being in Alabasta before finding Robin by accident, and maybe they made a beeline for Alabasta the second Croc recruited Robin. Travelling takes time and the guy would've most likely had to find an Eternal Pose to Alabasta just to get there (also canonically Robin didn't enter the Grand Line until her 20s so they should've met in West Blue probably, since that's where Ohara was)
Or maybe Crocodile had to haul Robin around for a few months while looking for That Missing Piece of Information that would lead him to Alabasta. (Imagine the two travelling from like island to island, library to library, Crocodile trying to find that leads while Robin's just so excited about ALL THESE BOOKS (she's helping too with the research) (but to her, research is playtime, so she's just having the time of her life) (Also, notice how Crocodile's Theoretical Child is a fucking loser ass nerd? Yeah Crocodile would encourage Robin reading and studying, surely. And that would be fucking cute))
But like, once they set sail to Alabasta...
Sure, Crocodile could try to do it The Slow Way that we know he tried in canon, building trust and creating his little empire etc.
But also, in canon, Crocodile couldn't have jumped into action head first because without Robin, even if he had found the Poneglyph he couldn't have read it and found the location of Pluton. Crocodile choosing to do it the slow way may have been partially because he didn't have much of a choise and it could've felt like the smarter move long-term.
But in this scenario, he already has Robin.
Yes, he could do it the slow, secure way.
But what'd be there stopping him from infiltrating Cobra's palace and kidnapping him (in the night, when nobody suspects a thing), demanding Cobra to spill the beans lest Crocodile kills him and/or his pregnant wife*
(*Vivi was born 10 months after Luffy so depending on how long it's been between Crocodad leaving Luffy behind and this scenario... Yeah either the wife is there, still pregnant, or there's a newborn Baby Vivi)
Like it'd be a risky move but depending on how ballsy Croc's feeling and how confident he feels in being able to kidnap the king without being noticed... Yeah he could probably do it. And I'm sure he'd have no problem killing Cobra either, if anything it'd be required if he didn't want the Government to find out he was out to find Pluton, and god knows Cobra would tell on Crocodile if left alive.
I could see Crocodad being maybe a little iffy about killing Baby Vivi though (it's not like the newborn baby could report him to the WG anyways), but if nothing else, he just needs to be able to pull off the bluff of his life to convince Cobra to do as he's told. And we all know Crocodile's good at convincing people.
The only question is, how would Robin take that?
Watching Crocodile go into Full Murder Mode, hearing him say he'd kill a pregnant woman/a newborn baby if he didn't get what he wanted? Like yeah, I'm sure 11 year old Robin would be fine with that, that wouldn't make any alarm bells go off in her head at all, it'd be fiiiine.
IT WOULD NOT BE FINE, SHE'D BE SCARED SHITLESS. That fear of "what will he do with me when he gets what he wants"? Well, Robin may not have found the answer to that question in particular, but she certainly found the answer to the opposite question, and it's not good
So say Cobra, kidnapped (perhaps with Baby Vivi) by Crocodile in the night, guides the two to the Poneglyph under the tombs. Crocodile puts Cobra out of his misery because he's not needed anymore. And he asks Robin to read the Poneglyph for him.
Robin, who has spent the last little while, be it weeks or months with Crocodile, him having become her "guardian", the thing keeping her safe. Crocodile, who has now shown how cold blooded and cruel he can be. Robin, who might be scared out of her mind. Of him.
And the Poneglyph says Pluton, the thing Crocodile wants, isn't there. It's in Wano.
What's she going to do?
EDIT: I wrote a sequel post, enjoy
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concept: buddie supernatural au (the mythos. not the show.)
buck is like the werewolf coded character ever, so ofc that's what he is. he's a werewolf who grew up in a family of werewolves who never made him feel like part of a pack, so he’s trying so desperately to seek connection wherever he can get it. (no, that’s not right—maddie was always pack to him, but then she left with that vampire doug. she always smells a bit like blood now in a way that rubs him wrong, but she’s still staunchly, if tiredly, loyal whenever he nudges her about it, and it hurts to have the reminder that at the end of the day, he’s not her first choice. she’s still pack, she’ll always be pack, but there’s something broken and frayed there now that buck can’t poke at without wanting to break down, so he doesn’t.)
“you go, i go,” connor says, and buck hears pack, so he tags along.
“no man left behind,” the recruiter tells him, and buck hears pack, so he signs himself up for training.
“welcome to the 118,” bobby tells him, and buck still hears pack, but he’s long past trusting his ears.
but things get better. they get worse, first—he’s reminded that humans always find it easier to break bonds than werewolves—but then he’s hired again and saving lives and part of the team. and he has abby, who smells a bit like sickness and a lot like worry the first time he actually meets her, but she has a smile like the moon and always, always picks up the phone when he calls her.
(and then abby goes to europe, and she stops picking up the phone as often. buck doesn’t think of it as leaving him. he doesn’t. he doesn’t.)
the day that eddie shows up and buck catches a whiff of his scent, he’s... confused. the guy absolutely reeks of the sea, in a way that makes no sense if he's telling the truth about being in the army for several years before this. he should smell like sand and gunpowder, but instead buck is reminded of walks along the beach, and with a faint hint of fur and fish, too.
and then he sees the leather jacket that eddie hangs up in his locker.
“damn, this looks like high quality if i’ve ever seen it,” hen says, eyebrows raised, and they practically leap off her face when she catches both of them stiffening when she reaches for it. “oookay. i’ll just. go over there?”
“you brought it with you?” buck hisses at eddie when she’s out of earshot.
“you know what it is?” eddie narrows his eyes. “werewolf? vampire? fairy?” he sniffs the air and then snorts. “werewolf. got it.”
“don’t you have like a—like a box or something to keep it in for safekeeping? a safe?” literally anywhere other than the fire house.
“why don’t you leave my personal belongings to me?” eddie slams his locker door shut. “and the lockbox thing is a stereotype.”
great.
but then they pull a grenade from a man’s leg and they work in a kind of harmony that buck’s never felt before with anyone else on the team, the kind that makes his blood sing and howl in his veins, and eddie says “you can have my back any day” and buck, despite everything, still hears pack.
-
eddie keeps his seal skin with him because he’s had it stolen once. or—stolen is a strong word, it would never hold up in any human court, but instinct doesn't care about semantics, and he’d ended up married anyway. so he always keeps it with him, he always knows where it is, and if he can’t fit it on under or over whatever uniform he's wearing at the time, it’s going in his locker and right back on his person at the end of his shift.
buck still gives him weird looks for it from time to time, like he can’t quite believe that eddie’s willing to take his coat with him outside of his house at all, but he quickly accepts it as the status quo and at least stops questioning him about it. besides, it’s not as if buck’s completely innocent on the supernatural front either. eddie’s never seen any other werewolf take a work shift on a full moon, and even though buck practically vibrates through his shift, he makes it through the night without so much as a five o’clock shadow.
“skipped your pack run?” he asks when they’re all changing back into their civvies. he instantly regrets the question when buck’s shoulders hitch up around his ears in the very picture of uncomfortable.
“i, uh. i have you guys,” buck says with a painful looking smile. shit. “i’ll see you on wednesday, man.”
“buck—” and he’s gone.
he doesn’t even get the chance to work up the courage to ask what that was all about because shannon. shannon.
there’s a lot of anger and betrayal and misunderstanding tangled up in their relationship, but there’s love there still, too. and christopher. always christopher. but then he lets it slip that she’s back in his life now, and buck—
“you're fucking with me, right?” buck’s voice is so flat that it doesn’t even sound like a question.
eddie sighs. “buck—”
“she’s the one who took your coat, right? that’s why you married her? why you had to marry her?”
“buck, it’s not that simple—”
“and now you let her back in, easy as that? you're not even a little bit mad?”
“of course i’m mad!” eddie yells. buck flinches. “but i left her too. it’s complicated, buck.”
despite all the jokes that the rest of the 118 make about buck and his golden retriever, frat boy energy, he’s always been good at thinking on his feet and memorizing facts and putting the pieces of a mystery together. “she gave you back your coat,” he says slowly, like he’s turning the idea over in his mind while he says it. “that’s why you enlisted. you were running. you were free.” eddie doesn’t deny it fast enough. “eddie.”
“like i said. it’s complicated.”
buck shakes his head slowly, eyes wide and wary like eddie’s a stranger that he’s never seen before. “doesn't sound complicated to me.”
the bell rings. eddie’s never been so grateful for a three-alarm fire in his life.
see, the thing is, everything buck is saying is true. shannon is the one who ended up with his coat. eddie did enlist after she gave his coat back. but that ignores everything before and after and in-between. shannon didn’t purposefully take his coat or hide it from him either, and she’d given it back when eddie had been forced to explain when chris would be born with his own coat. and despite everything, despite the fact that he knew he loved her, knew he loved chris—he still chose to leave. he thought he’d been sending a message when he’d chosen something with a built-in return date, a quiet ‘i’ll be back eventually, i promise’ but apparently not.
like he said—it’s complicated.
the universe decides to take that as a challenge, as it always does. shannon, the tsunami, the lawsuit—it’s all so much, all the time, and eddie doesn’t really tune back in to the world until he’s trapped forty feet below the ground, surrounded by water and missing his goddamn coat.
“really?” he asks the muddy tomb around him. “now?”
but the water is an old friend, as always, and he’s much less likely to die of hypothermia or shock from the cold than the average human, so he grits his teeth and dives below the surface. when he crawls his way back to his team, it’s buck that greets him first, pulling him into a hug that’d be painfully tight to a human and smelling of wet fur and tears. “i wasn’t sure you—i knew you’d survive the water, but all the mud on top of you—”
“i’m here,” eddie says, because what else can he say? “i made it.”
he gets bundled up in a blanket and carted off to a paramedic to get checked out, but he doesn’t forget the way buck’s shoulders shook against his own.
-
eddie gets shot and buck falls to fucking pieces because that’s his p—that’s his fucking best friend and now buck knows what his blood feels like on his hands and in his mouth. and he follows eddie all the way to the hospital, all the way to the double doors that he’s never been allowed past, before he remembers—
christopher.
so he stays with eddie’s kid, takes care of him like he’s his own—like eddie would take care of him—and tries not to break down with every lungful of eddieandchris scented air that he takes in their house.
when buck gets that call from ana, he throws himself into action, tugging on a jacket with one hand and juggling his phone with the other so he can make sure that christopher will be safe at home with carla while he rushes to the hospital. to eddie.
ana’s presence hardly registers when he bursts into that hospital room and sees eddie on the bed. his scent is weak and laced with the smell of disinfectant and chemicals but his smile is still warm and alive and oh, buck missed him.
“h-hey,” buck stammers, pulling up short next to the bed. he’s not sure if he should or even can pick up eddie’s hand. can he touch? will eddie break? “i—i made sure that no one touched your stuff at the firehouse, your coat’s still safe, i promise, and—and chris is at home, i’ve been staying with him, making sure that he’s okay—did you know he’s been doing a good job in science class?—and i told carla to wait for a video call maybe, if you’re up to it, so—”
“buck.” and then all of the words spilling from his mouth come to a trembling halt when eddie puts a hand on his arm. “hey. breathe.” buck sucks in a reedy breath. “everything you did was perfect. thank you.”
buck’s exhale shakes. “yeah?”
the smile that eddie gives him could rival the sun in its warmth. “yeah.”
and then later, after eddie’s been discharged—
“you’re not expendable,” eddie says. “if i die, i want you to take care of christopher,” eddie says. buck’s blood is roaring in his ears.
oh.
oh.
OH.
all he hears is he’s yours too.
“eddie,” he chokes out. he dives for eddie, burrowing into his surprised embrace and wishing he could wrap his furry body around eddie and smother him with licks and kisses because human comfort just doesn’t compare sometimes. instead, he settles for tucking eddie’s face into the curve of his neck, right where buck’s the most vulnerable.
it’s not the same, he chants to himself, it doesn’t mean the same thing to him as it does to you, but that doesn’t matter over the triumphant roar of PACK in his veins. packs share pups. that’s the whole point of packs—so the children can grow up safely, surrounded by family. and eddie just gave him his.
he would’ve taken care of chris without the confirmation—already has been, really—but it feels entirely different to have the words out in the open, to know that eddie feels the same way. mine, he thinks with vicious satisfaction and something that feels a little too similar to relief, twisting his fingers tighter into eddie’s shirt. mine mine mine mine mine.
“thank you,” he whispers into eddie’s collarbone. “this means. uh. a lot. thank you.”
“hey.” buck can feel eddie’s confusion in the way his body doesn’t quite know whether to lean in or not, but it doesn’t make his voice any less warm. “i’m just making it official, yknow? i want someone who’d fight for him as hard as i would. and i know that’s you. it’s been you.”
“mhm.” buck’s hardly listening anymore. he just curls up and lets himself breathe out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. i’ve found them, he thinks. the missing pieces to my puzzle.
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