#this turned out waaaaay angstier than I intended

[apphiarothowrites]

Random musings

Uuuuhh, tw for suicidal ideation whoops

After Marineford and the payback war, marco keeps a small box in the back of the bottom drawer of his dresser on Sphinx.

There's a set of seastone jewelry inside. A bangle bracelet, a few rings, an armband. It jangles around loosely inside the box, but the sound is muffled by the clothing that sits on top of it.

For a year and a half after Marineford and the payback war, the box sat there. A distant and forgettable friend, out of sight and out of mind.

After Wano, while enjoying Shanks' company on the Red Force, he had totally forgotten it was there.

After returning home and finding Sphinx defended and safe, and paying back the idiot who claims Whitebeard as a biological father, the siren call starts up. The world is changing and if things go the way Luffy seems to intend them...

Well, Sphinx probably won't need him after that. Doctors aren't rare, after all, and Devil Fruit have their ways of getting back into the world after their previous user is gone. Some days he never spares a thought for the box. Some days it's all he can do to not lock himself into his house with the box in his lap. He never opens it, but he jostles it purposefully to hear the metal rings and bracelets ding off each other-music to his tired soul.

He thinks about the box, and the ocean. He knows what being stabbed feels like, knows what it is to die to guns and cannonballs and burns and dismemberment. He knows what a heart pumping nothing but air feels like, knows what poison does to the guts and lungs, knows what sleep unending sounds like when it chases away what he can see.

He's never known drowning-the one thing that would be permanently fatal to him. He's heard stories, seen it's affects on others, but never has he actually gone into the water in a dangerous manner. He thinks about the waterfall, and the ocean around Sphinx. Thinks about the cliff that Ace and Pop's grave overlook that paint such a beautiful picture of the sea.

Some days he sits, box in his lap, and wonders.

Some especially bad days, he wonders and then supposes to himself he'll just have to see how the final battle goes and how hard Luffy will need him to fight.