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Boa Hancock was born on land surrounded by nothing and everything.

She did not mature enraptured by waves crashing upon their shores, not until five years of age. Until the day she was allowed beyond the walls of the great city, through the thick foliage of Amazon Lily, elders on her sides, the chittering of wasps as they flew about carelessly over their trodden, beaten path. It let open to the sea, faintly she could hear it, it was tarrying, it was exhilarating.

Her ears caught the sounds that would soon rock her to sleep for the many years to come. The rush of salty wind was exalting, an expanse of blue so far it paled in comparison to every river that littered their lonely island home.

Finally, they broke through the trees, and beheld the sight of it. The far reaching palette of deep swirling blue, so distant the horizon began to curve. The sea was far reaching, from edge to edge and reflecting a pure sky, it was two beings and it was one entity. It was endless, and it was far too still to seem like the sea.

Her small form trembled as she reached the edge of earth, sea water at her fingertips, and she was almost too afraid to touch it. That fear did not last as she dipped her hands in the water, joy coloured young innocence blue—the wonders of the sea all left to be discovered.

The elders called her back to tell her of stories at sea—of monsters that loomed over the sky and climbed great giant walls of red rock, stories of islands made entirely of fire and land hidden at the bottom of the deep where people were both man and fish and more. It captivated her young mind, embedded the desire for discovery in her thoughts, of a world much different than her own, far grander. She was to be leader one day, empress and goddess—these stories were told to her in hopes of understanding what lied outside their walls and beyond their unmoving horizon.

They told her that her haki was stronger than anyone they had ever seen of her age. Still too young to venture the untamed jungle without chaperon, still too young to comprehend the voracity of their words. They would still speak.

Child, you are exceptional. A wonder in the making. She beamed like a marigold searching for the sun, hanging off the edge of the stump below her. A force that will not be trampled on, it will do you well in your duties of protection.

She had no memory of a singular mother, or even more absurdly a father. There was only her empress and her sisters who occupied her heart. Her family existed within the confounds of melded rock, overgrown trees, wily beasts, sacrifice and struggle that made their island whole. The Kuja was a sisterhood of maidens, bound together by community and beauty in strength. It was valued overall, and as future leader, it was law to possess both in equal parts.

The sea called out her name, a forcefully forbearing voice gliding on non-existent wind. She was five years of age, and wondered what unbidden sea wind would feel on her skin. If it would sound so docile as it did now, if it would caress her young face instead of violently beat it in its bestial nature.

With that power, the sea would be her bed, the divan on which she rested her feet as she conquered the seas—empress of snakes who bit at the world. She imagined a boundless world existed on the seas; on the seas where the water moved and danced with life, not just the commotion of beastly creatures of the great deep.

She was to be strong. She was to be beautiful, more than all. Perhaps it was her fate, inescapable in her birth—a blessed and blessing child.

+

The Kuja ship set sail, on it, a fledgling, pirate Boa Hancock.

She was now twelve years of age, seasoned enough in combat by the standards of the Kuja. She had grown accustomed to darting through thick jungle, quicker on her back and prey in her sights. Her haki grew stronger by the day, able to fell the beasts of her land, in small numbers but enough to prove her worthiness as the next leader.

The wind slapped her face lovingly.

It was strong, but it was no silent sea. This was an obvious terror and all its grandstanding had earned their fear. It swallowed with common curtesy of warning.

The first time she truly met man, she was twelve years old.

Scarce was the time she spent upon the red snake ship, not even half a year was she allowed to join on their journeys. She would see men, from afar as the elder warriors jumped ship, long wooden lances tipped in grey metal in their hands. They fought with the strength of those willing to survive where the sea was unnaturally still, with the resolve of women who understood that the fearsome might of the great sea was also found in its tranquillity. This was deceptive—it was like them.

People did not understand why the silent sea was exactly like the Kuja women. People like her had not truly met men. They were far, bigger than most she knew, but their faces she did not care for. She would learn to never forget them.

They came as wraiths, as shadows that covered the earth, as smoke from the briny deeps. One moment she was on the figurehead, gazing to her sisters and exclaiming the freedom she would experience once she was captain, once she was empress. The next, she was dragged off by ghostly hands, quiet as the silent sea. Her eyes wide in shock, she did not understand what had occurred, where she was going—who had taken them.

+

They were not monsters. She refused to call them so.

Glass surrounded their heads like they were fish who walked. Not like the fishmen who were captured too—pretty women, with long tails who can hardly be upright when they dig them out of their tanks so they could flail, struggle and be futile. Something about the sight made the not-fishmen cackle, brighten with joy. They were hunters, but that was not the right word. They were cruel, of that she was certain. They were not like the other fishmen, more male like in shape, who were made to crawl on their knees and carry a party on their back because apparently they were simply suited for that. If they so much as faltered in their crawl, the not-fishmen beat them until they forget what pain meant.

Sometimes they simply did it, because the fishmen bled the same colour as them.

She was a girl, and they called her beautiful, they also called her a thing. Somehow, she felt they were insulted by her, by her face, but they still ripped off her clothes, and they still branded her with a grin. It must have made them feel something—ownership, likely. One would think they were worshipping her when they could not stop the staring, the leering and the touching. Did one own what they worshipped or what they reviled? She doubted they cared so much either way.

At some point, the tears stopped being enough to content them. She had once been called exceptional, maybe that was why they did it.

The fruit was bitter when they shoved it down her throat. She could hear her sisters retching beside her. It was hard, each bite, like a stone. It was shaped like a heart, perhaps that was crueller than all. What love tasted so acrid? Maybe it was simply what she deserved. They force-fed her the fruit. She became the embodiment of desire. They still looked at her like she was putrid. Branded she was all the same.

There was no still sea, and no snakes who purred under gentle, calloused hands. Only non-fishmen with glass bowls for heads, and red stone for a bed, weeping slave girls and dead-eyed male seats. They tormented, they laughed and they praised her for her beauty. She wanted to pray, but she hated the devotion without the result. If only she were not born this way. They would toy, and so maybe, one day, no one would ever find her beautiful. She had the power of a conqueror, she still could not rise. No blessings and not blessed.

They were not monsters, undeserving of the name ‘dragon’. That was her name, so close to the hydra. They were of Men. That was all.

+

She was sixteen when a not-Man with red skin and bloody, webbed fingers climbed up the red rock.

There were flames everywhere and the chains fell by his single hand. He was nothing like those of Men. He called himself Fisher Tiger, a man not of Men. There were slave girls with spears, and they were driving them through guards and soldiers’ necks. They followed after his steps, bleeding and biting and fighting. He told them to live, and that freedom was theirs.

She did not have the time to thank him, for he was moving on to the next. She grabbed her sisters, eyes teary and feet blistered, and they fled. She turned to stone every knight-like-wall in her way, Sandersonia broke necks with her tail, Marigold crushed them to naught. She prayed they would make it, even though she hated it. Home, to Amazon Lily, to the still sea and clear streams and jungle beasts to hunt. On the quiet nights, she would whisper those dreams to her sisters, hoping they would never forget. They were still beautiful in her eyes and deserved to see the brightest days once more.

Fire, brimstone and bedlam. Heaven made to swelter like hell.

Yet, as she ran to jump over the edge, she felt it best suited the heavens to always be burning.

+

There were still blisters on their backs, made from the days hiding in the red cracks.

Days spent at sea on a wayward ship, rations fallen to naught but crumbs and maggots and fish eaten raw. If a wave too strong had felled them they would be drowned, cursed by the Devil to never swim and survive amidst the great currents. They were still Kuja, with the eyes to see the stars and navigate home. It had just been so hard, to dream, to wake, to not remain listless or ignore the screams that would startle them from sleep, knowing it came from their mouths, knowing it rose from their minds.

But they were freed by Fisher Tiger’s will, and the sea, moving as it was, brought them to Shakky and Raighley. One unmoored morning, adrift into a bubble infested maze of islands, and the haziness of it all taking the memory from her. One moment they had cried relief at shoring, the next they had woken in a bar.

Shakky had hair dark as ink, and a smile so keen it made her look untouchable. From the way she moved, the smooth lilt of her voice, Hancock knew—she was like them, she was still sea born. She had a husband, a grizzly man with boozy breath but eyes Hancock could not recognise, not of Men. She could not trust it. He did not flinch when Hancock tried to make him solid, or when she threw a chair at his head and let it hit him without damaging him, only laughed and walked away as if he knew he was not yet welcomed. It took time for that.

They slept in the back, away from customers, few as they were and tried not to break under freedom. Between bitten fingers, sleepless nights, food stuffed in their mouths when no one was looking, and tears wiped away by cigarette stained fingers, they stopped slouching so much, and maybe looked into their guardians’ eyes without flinching. It was decent. It was something.

Sometimes there was a boy, or not yet man, with eyes like a hawk. He would stop at the door, not say a word. They never talked. She would know him in the future, just as passively, but for now he was stranger, familiar but other. Shakky would take him aside, smile tender and never changing. She was beautiful, like the devil could never touch her, forever lovely and patient, and Hancock would curl in on herself. She would never be like her, so godly in her untouchable nature. It hurt to remember when her skin so often felt like a toy.

There were sparse days the boy-not-quite-man would simply sit at the bar, waiting for Shakky to come. He did not care that Sandersonia and Marigold hid away in the back when he was there, or that Hancock was stiff and glaring out the corner of her eyes, refusing to be cowed by a single person—not anymore, she yelled in her mind, I am a Kuja, I am to rule. What am I, if I break? He could not turn to stone by her glare, it was the only reason she could sit beside him. He carved swords from wood, and she would watch from the side. He had once called her petulant, and she had felt the instinct to stick out her tongue. Maybe she learned to like it, maybe she had nothing to fight there. Shakky would enter, coo at the sight with smoke on her lips. Her always gentle hands might even touch their hair, like they were surly cats she could not help adore even as they glared through their lashes but did not move away.

“Well, aren’t you two lovely, my little hawk and snake. Making friends yet?”

It made no sense when Hancock ran out the bar.

Something broke—between the nights in the back of the bar where Marigold held tight to her hand as she had in their cell, and Sandersonia screamed still on every other eve, begging for peace. The days she, herself, refused to eat, convinced it would be stone down her throat and colourless bile was all that escaped her lips. The days they slept motionless as if still chained by the neck, clinging together in Shakky’s bed when a slaver tried passing through their land, driven out by her swift bloody hand and Raighley’s conquering spirit.

And the days where they learned to laugh at Shakky’s scolding towards Raighley when he came back from gambling, broker than he started. And the nights spent bathing on the shores beneath moonlight as if to capture home, giggling and splashing each other like they were still girls. Hancock saw the boy, with hair dark like hers, and his glossed over interest, faint as the moon in day, and he was just sitting like nothing mattered. Sometimes the boy was there, at night, when Raighley told stories of his time with the King of Pirates, sitting far in a booth but she knew he was listening too. Months and months until she was seventeen then eighteen and the world was moving and her kingdom was far. She felt light. It was too much.

Raighley was the one to find her. She was used to him by now, and his keen instinct. She did not snarl at his approach, too drowned in tears that had built up beneath her skin when she was not looking. Stone could hold blood, why not this? She simply never expected to bleed. He did not come too close as if to not tower over where she kneeled on the ground on this island of bubbles and uncovered roots.

“Care to share, sweetheart?” He still said that word, it came out like honey over bread, but she was moulded with green bits that made you throw it away. It made her cry harder. Did he not see that?

“I’m not—I’m not beautiful anymore.” She sobbed, her voice wet and anguished, innocent and never the same again. I am nothing exceptional, I am crudely full of desire, only for myself. “I’m not…lovely…I’m not, I don’t deserve—Raighley, I…”

The brand was still there on her back, a scar, a memory she could not obliviate. Shame wrecked her lungs, pitiful and pitying disaster ravaging her veins that had become portent to stone. How dare she still learn to smile? To loosen her muscles and pretend her home was still something she could return to? Gods and spirits, how could she be empress when this was what she became? She was unable to be blessed any longer, much less offer blessing. Shakky called her lovely, it was cruel. Hancock was cruel to think she was permitted to freedom.

He let her cry, let her sob.

“Raighley…I shouldn’t have lived…” Hancock looked up at him, wide eyes trembling. She felt she was begging for him to just do something, like a child to a parent, a father. “I shouldn’t be happy to be alive…to be free…”

Her breath staggered like the air simply refused to enter her lungs, so full of grief they were. Raighley was still beside her. It did not last yet it seemed to take years before he moved. He kneeled down with gentle, battle-scarred and freedom-wrought hands. They settled on the ground beside hers.

“You’re a girl who can eat the moon and sleep in the sun. You deserve everything you can think of, even freedom.” He smiled, with all his shaggy white hair and silvertip beard, like it was all he could give her that was worth it. “Life is worth it, even when you fight for it.”

And he did not touch her. He did not touch her. She fell into his arms.

Hancock sobbed into his arms that wrapped tight around her, silent and comforting, and too warm for someone like her, made of gelid broken stone forced together. In that moment she buried her head near to his heart. She would be burying herself at sea. It was where she would rest her bones, and her honour.

Maybe she was already dead. She could only hope to rise.

+

Gloriosa was the one to come and bring them back, led in by Raighley.

They sailed towards the silent sea, spending more time clutching at each other’s fingers and creating their story than breathing in the salty air. When they parted on the shores, the nine-headed snake of the mountain in the distance, Raighley chuckled, surprised and delighted, as she and her sisters hugged him tight with tears in their eyes. He pretended to not be teary when he patted each of their heads, too tall now to be treated as children. They pretended to not melt beneath it. She believed, she had learned what a mother and father was. She had also learned the grief of parting with them. It was not as bitter as she was led to believe.

They had returned epic heroes, a story so sweet it just could not be true. They had thought them taken, and that was true—they had not broken them from their cage. She had felt bitterness of snakehood then, kept it tight in her stone captured bones and blood. Better for them to weep at the story of wicked myths risen from the sea, and their even greater puissance, vanquishing the curse-biting beast. No one needed to know their shame.

Sometimes she still felt the weight of the slave’s collar around her neck. It would take days to banish and forget. She did not like the bright lights on most days too, early mornings a bane when glancing on the horizon—too much like the blinding white of a supposed holy city.

But she fought, in the arena, on the seas and in the jungles. She fought until her breath ached, and her lungs begged. She hid her bitterness when the maidens would praise her beauty, sing of her ferocity and look up to her like she was kind. She kept her head high, sneered at even animals in her path, refusing to cower even amongst her others. Those times, Gloriosa, the old crone, would look at her worriedly—she could keep those looks to herself and keep to her cliff.

She fought until she was captain. She bested the old empress before all the maids and became empress of snakes. They had cheered, so bright and delighted. It felt good. Not good enough, she would never say. They had thrown flowers, those things that rotted in days after plucking. Maybe it was a joke only she could laugh at.

There was a part of her that hated them, for all their easy joy. Another part of her only wished them happy, for her kingdom to be full of merry maids, fierce panthers and boisterous battle. If she cried with no tears on the same night she sat her throne, quietly wishing for bubble islands, uncovered roots, a mother and father, sisters and a brother, then it was only for her and the moon.

When those of Men still tried come to their shores, collars and cocks to breed and trap, she was there, to slaughter, to bury and drown. Her sisters were at her sides, great and beautiful and strong. They bore their years of slaughter and could feast now on their own.

They were Gorgons now. They would fight for their freedom until they were bones.

+

There came a night where she found some of them. They were in the still sea to capture their ill-gotten wiles.

When they came for her the first time, they were multiple. She went to the ship alone. It made her feel better, to know she was stronger. Beauty had become her weapon, a reminder each time she used her power of how it had turned bowl-headed Men mad to torment. She did not want to use it on them. They had already seen so much of her juvenile beauty. Why give it to them now?

“I remember your face.” She never forgot any of them. “I was kind.”

She saw their faces, that of the men who sat there, who delivered the devil fruit with salacious eyes and rotten fingers. The men who watched them, theirs gods, shove that devil fruit down her broken neck. They did nothing, but why must she? Hancock had not forgotten their faces, not for a single moment. They should have never entered her untamed sea—the foolish brutes.

Hancock was unsure when she began cutting through them, her nails unbreaking for her haki refused to waver, even those knocked unconscious forced to never wake even when she walked away. They had come with holy knights—the slave girls were allowed to run, take their pick of those of Men to drown with them, the screaming was a melody Hancock believed to be sainthood.

Someone called her a monster, some feckless man with bloody eyes and a marred mouth. He called her a beast of a woman, of a thing that was meant for a chain about her throat instead of a crown upon her head.

“I am not a good woman, but rest assured I shall always be better than you.” It came as a hiss, and it even made her laugh. It was good to laugh, good for the health and the soul, were she have any care for them.

There was something to slaughtering a man the old fashioned way—no stone, no pieces of flesh now crumbling to dust, only marred, torn open as if someone had taken their teeth to the skin. Iron, the good kind, the delicious kind, the unending kind, stuck to the back of her throat. Her heel pierced an eye, shattered a leg, and broke a neck. She crushed the glass bowl or maybe it had been a skull, it all felt the same at some point. Glass and flesh and bone, what was the difference? There was a seagull on the sail, she tore it to shreds.

How long until the quiet of the sea settled in her ears, she did not know. Hancock found her dress, purple for imperial beatitude, had been stained of gore, and her fingers bruised, and her cheeks wet with something like salt, then something akin to iron. She was more content to think it her own ichor.

She used the gifts of the conqueror’s spirit and it cracked the hull in two.

Hancock screamed until her throat was bloody, scratched open by the blades hidden in her vocal cords and spilling down her lips. It was a decadent sight. She did not feel beautiful.

Standing along the bow, the sun rose over the unmoving continent of water. I don’t feel pretty. I have not felt pretty in a long, long time.

There was blood on her nails. She never killed that way. She felt strong. It did not help.

+

It was rule and it was law to not stare at the Gorgon sisters’ back.

She had only wished bathe, content herself to a few hours of blessed peace. Everyone would think her naked and vulnerable and fearful of hurting others. Hancock closed her eyes and ignored the flashes of a not-quite girl on a bubble island, bathing beneath moonlight, laughter and splashing, and cigarette smoke on the ridge above, a pearl smile on tender lips and a bar where waited a good story. Those memories came to her quick, and only here or as a lonesome figure beneath bright lune did she allow them to invade her.

Even to bathe, a ritual where women of the tribe convened as one, no longer could she. Not a single person must see her, must ever know her shame and indignity marred as she was by those of Men. Let the memories be a balm of the years of stillness, suspended as a bubble always ready to pop.

Peace did not last and the memories were ripped away as something crashed. Her back was exposed, her shame was bare. He looked at her like the moon in day.

He mentioned her back. Hancock cowered, like she had tried not in years.

A boy had looked. She tried not to break.

+

How much did it take to spur one barely-boy to breaking? Quite a lot, and she did not know how much, for he did not.

He did not turn to stone, of that she knew. He was between man and boy and nothing at all, she wanted him cowed. Yet such a creature was irreverent, of both might in myth and legend in beauty—all her maidens were much as the leaves to him, not needing particular attention even as they so glowed with their curiosity; persons, surely, but not to covet. Three had gone so far as to aid him, as to shirk the rules that made their way, for one, uncountable and unnameable, creature with the skin of a man.

Hancock saw him fight her sisters, the cadence of a monkey and the strength of a lion, betwixt laughing and rebuking, he was a whirlwind she could not predict. He cursed at her too, he called her ugly. A slight so shocking she clutched at her chest and demanded it be redressed. He called her ugly, but not synonym to filth, more apt to being called mean.

She could not understand it.

For even as he fought, and kept the stone maids protected, as he proclaimed his grandiose dreams and ideals and how they so clashed with their own—he protected her sisters’ shame. He did so as if it were merely instinct from a brief encounter in a pond. Like the flames that rose were tantamount to waves. He ate the fruit of the devil too. Did he not know he would drown?

She could not understand him. Hancock could not breathe.

There was stone in her veins, she used it to petrify men, but him—he seemed to think she bled red, like a human and not a monster who was simply attuned for being ill. Boa Hancock had no soul to give, barely a heart. She was cosmic decay. A swirl of matter tormenting the vast depth of the universe. She should not be treated well. She had rotten.

The…person, Luffy, kneeled in gratitude as she had never seen.

He was strange. A man, surely, but not of Men. He was a conqueror too, and he did not even know it. She wanted to kill him. She needed to kill him. It was the only way to breathe.

She made him choose to spur him to his nature. Maybe she had succeeded, for he forsook his own reason to aid the stranger and he now called her kind, instead of beautiful.

It made her heart itch.

+

“I will help him and there is nothing you can do, granny.” Hancock glared at her, this grandmother of hers who so desperately could not stay away, leave her to her affairs and keep her rotten wisdom for her shrivelling snake and dilapidated cliff.

“You are not thinking straight—” Gloriosa knackered on, her frowning face sick to look at. “What is happening to you, Hancock, do you even truly understand?”

Hancock shrugged her off, clenching her hands so as to not throw her out the window. “Do I look a fool to you, granny?”

“I think you look bewitched.” She said it like a curse—how dare she?

She did not even dare give her a response, the old crone spoke anyways.

“You wish to do this for him, maybe, but what of your people? You have given him your secret, do they not deserve it as well?”

This was the moment something cracked, less like a whip, and more a tear in the firmament. Her leg swung, and Gloriosa hit the wall. It cracked as she landed, Hancock grit her teeth, she had hoped it would break her neck but she was made of sturdy ivory, old witch with old tricks.

“How dare you beseech me such acts? At this hour, for what reason?!” Hancock stomped to her, her nose held high as she glared down. “Were you not the nagging voice demanding I enter their tawdry war? Now that I shall, you wish add more demands. Impudent crone!”

“You may be able to fool this country, but the time may come you can no longer fool yourselves. Do not act for love, you do not understand it!” Gloriosa was on her feet, ruffled but unmoored. “You are to serve this country, not follow into that hellish prison just for something you cannot even grasp! Your duty is to serve your people, you cannot do so through a veil! Do not sacrifice yourself for a curse!”

Did she even hear herself? Her demands? Her screeching voice?

“You have no right to demand how I serve my people!” Hancock punched the wall, felt the stone shatter like she never could. “Where is duty? Where is sacrifice? That is rich coming from you granny,” she shouted, her perfect nails dug into her palms, she ignored the sting. “Did you not leave us? Did you follow your duty then? Did you sacrifice your life then? Were you not gone off on your own free will? Your legs guiding you to halfway across the seas, to your adventures, to your joy!”

“Hancock—"

“Where is duty? Where is sacrifice?” Her breath was ragged, she repeated those words even if it cost her breath. “Did you not tell me it? Did you not crown me with this sacrifice before I had even sprouted a pair of tits? Did you not ordain me with this duty the moment I first bathed my hands in still salt water! And you speak down on me…with your head held high, with condemnation on the tip of your wretched tongue?! You dare?”

Boa Hancock was cosmic decay that screamed its existence into the light of the cosmos. What could truly stop her?

“My travels have nothing to do with this. I do not wish you to be reck—"

“Your travels—” she interjected, “your travels. And that’s the thing, is it not? It was yours, yours, granny. It was your choice. It was your choice!” Her voice broke slightly but she did not falter. “It was your choice to be on those seas to live that adventure, with its highs and lows, with its love and losses. You came back, and where was I?”

Hancock would never forget when the old crone had come to the bar. She had not gone easy. More kicking and screaming, and was it not horrid a reality—the desire to scorch all of the past, Amazon Lily and all, to remain the girl who had a family and was never slave nor heralded to godhood, who had sisters and a brother and parents. Horrid empress she knew she was, for those thoughts did not die, she did not believe they ever would. For the girl born of Amazon Lily who had never seen the still sea died on the day she was taken, and her grandmother had tried to kill the other girl she became when she was too ruined for girlhood. Hancock hated the sight of her then in the doorway of the bar, ruining everything, and she hated her now, for thinking she held the right to stop her.

Hancock breathed in and her granny had nothing much to say, could not say a word. A sardonic smile plastered itself to her portent face. “Having the adventure of a lifetime, never knowing this curse, is that not so?”

Even in this state, she was most beautiful. It was horrendous.

Gloriosa left, and Hancock stared at her back until the doors shut with a definitive sound. What did she know about love, that wretched old woman?

She felt Salome curl around her—her snake, her sin. Herself. For a moment, the scales were the greatest kindness.

+

“Hancock, you know, you’re pretty cool.”

Luffy never called her beautiful, and he barely said her name. She melted nonetheless. It was shameless.

She felt like a girl again.

He talked about his crew, of the rowdy men and the two women—the latter making her fingers twitch, but his smile made her warm. They did not spend long at sea, not truly, but confined to this space on a dog’s ship for a week made a woman as desperate as her feel the bloom in her chest widen. He talked and ate in equal measures, of sweet adventure and bone-chilling battle and all with a smile like hell was not at their doorstep. If she spoke of him needing to be cautious, then he spoke of him needing only to save. Hancock did not know what to say to that.

Sometimes there was a part of her that wished to share too, of more than Amazon Lily and the animals he could hunt as he was penchant to all meats. Nay, a part that wished to speak of nights bathing beneath moonlight, of pestering a man who was now famous the world-over, of being called sweetheart and being someone’s lovely snake; of feeling as daughter and girl and person again. Hancock could not let those words escape her mouth, it made her tongue heavy and maybe a part of her grieve.

Luffy already had so much to think over, and she noticed when he grew quiet too. She would not burden him.

Hancock helped him enter Hell, and he was kind enough to smile, kind enough to thank her. It was love that burst through her chest. She was not deserving of it. He needed to find his brother. He would need to survive his tribulations. She would prepare a feast on his success.

She trusted him. It was strange. She liked it.

+

His brother looked like him, but he also did not.

He was a man too, not of Men. Maybe when Luffy grew a bit older he would be like him.

Were he anyone else she might not have cared for his fate, but she sent his brother here, hidden in her cloak to save him. She did not know how to hate him for worrying him so much, she still did, for that alone. Luffy would hate that but she could not help it.

Portgas D. Ace looked too much like his brother for her to not wish him live.

+

The boy who had not quite been a man was sitting. There were seagull-dogs outside and no one else in the room. No one had it in them to supervise two Warlords, not when they were all preparing to die for nothing at all. The war was not yet upon them and so the not-quite strangers were quiet in their meeting. She stared at his profile. He did not stare at her.

He broke the silence, cleaning his pristine blade, still as oversized as it would ever be. “Is this truly the time for your pestering, snake woman?”

Hancock declared, “your hat is stupid.”

Mihawk looked at her through his lashes. He looked at her as the moon in day. “Petulant as ever.”

It was not the time for it, still, she believed she smiled—almost like a child.

+

Luffy fell.

She had watched him fight, struggle and overcome. She had stopped that wretched smoker general and the puppet soldiers who tried stop him in his way. She had watched him succeed, if only for a moment. But, his brother, and she had realised, was too much like him. It terrified her.

Bloody with his brother’s blood. Salty with his own tears, until he had to be carried away by the Son of the Sea, heralded as the will of what came next. They, he, did it in his face, sprayed the brother’s blood on his cheeks, one might have thought Luffy was the killer. She felt like a molten fount, it was as cruel as the brand on her back.

She wondered if she would look the same should her sisters be murdered too. She would have raged, she was sure. Without the time to collapse, and whatever bitter sweetness melted away to impending doom. She would be a cataclysm of destruction, of horror and broiling meanness just like the secrets of her still sea. She had forgotten how to cry right, somewhere atop the red rock—she could not be so kind as him to even weep.

He was son of the Devil, grandson of a Hero, brother to Sin, but he was kind.

With her snake, she fled. She could not bear for him to lose his kindness.

+

He was dying. He needed to live. He was awake. He was crumbling.

She mourned with him. It was all her stone hands could do.

+

Luffy was awake. He was like the sun, only needing a rest.

+

Hancock gazed out the window and onto the sprawling grey bricks of a rebuilt Marineford.

She watched men on scaffolding repair destroyed buildings, gardens being replanted, the sight of civilians skipping about on a place where so many had died not long ago. Was this the condition of these military families? An utter disregard of the sacrifices made as long as they had won. She had no interest in knowing the real reason, it would certainly make her stomach boil. Her eye caught on white uniforms and ridiculous drooping hats, bile rose in her delicate throat.  She looked at them, wondering how she could ruin their lives for their sin of breathing.

Her skin burned and itched when she remembered who these men protected.

A meeting had been called by the Fleet Admiral, word was he was retiring soon—she’d ignore them usually, let them send their birds without them ever returning. Some of her girls had grown a penchant for their lean meat. She could not imagine what they would think, what they would say, if they learned such a thing—that government property was being consumed by island women in a land forbidden to them, existing in the dreams of licentious sailors within each sea. Then again, when did they ever care of atrocities committed?

“Snake Princess, would you not join us at least?” A lazy drawled out voice called from behind her. It was sickly with filth by nature, arrogant in ways that were perhaps deserved but she cared little for what he had earned. She did not answer, and she did not stop her glare to the soldier men below.

“And look at that expression, so cold.” Donquixote Doflamingo was nothing but a dog wishing to soar as high as a bird, an eagle, a phoenix—an ambition so foolish she almost wanted to know why, only almost.

“Do you amuse yourself when you hear you own voice?” Her voice was cold, sharp as her razor purple nails. She tilted her head to the side, black eyes haughty. “It’s a wonder how, when it reeks of bile. You rodent.”

“And she hisses at last.” Her glare was levelled as stone but Doflamingo did not flinch, it was perhaps the only admirable trait he possessed—he continued to smirk unrepentantly. His coat, loud, obnoxious in features of feather and pink, laid casually over his shoulder and his eyes were not seen as they always were but she could imagine its own brand of haughtiness painted over them. His enjoyment of masquerading as a bird would never succeed. When he died, he would never be reborn.

“Are all your meetings so exciting before they even start?” The voice of the newcomer, the rookie of the Worst Generation come to the Grand Line and all the more uninteresting. A man, Trafalgar Law of a motley crew so pathetic one had to wonder if he used them as fodder. Maybe he resurrected them so they might be eternal servants to his goals—Surgeon of Death, only then would it be a fitting name. He spoke lazily, with a pathetic drawl. Just like everyone else, he was only here for information.

“Dear Law, always a pleasure to see you.” Doflamingo’s voice curled with a crude excitement. Hancock glanced at the two from the corner of her eye.

Trafalgar Law snorted, a contempt twisting his features rotten. “Pleasure is an interesting word to use, Doffy.”

“How is one to react when faced with an old friend?” Doflamingo tilted his head, his tone tittering on joy and mischief. He held such an amusement in the most callous manners, his mind was surely but a pit of blood wishing to take shape in the form of a man. Doflamingo’s hand lifted, curling in the ways puppeteers did as he gestured towards his fellow warlord. “Do you think me so cruel as to not give you a kindness?”

“You’ve given me plenty kindness, I haven’t forgotten.” Law sneered. His voice rumbled into darkness, calling out for a history long past and shared between the two. Boa Hancock did not care at all what entanglement befell these men in ages past. Law’s sword was tight in his hand. “How’s the family doing?”

Doflamingo’s smile was a frozen image, trembling in some ways with a sway of differing emotion. This lasted but a moment as he continued, “Just fine. How’s yours? You’re from the North Blue, yes? You should tell them that sleeping in the snow isn’t all that comfortable. It’s been getting colder these days with austere silence falling like snow.”

Law’s hand gripped his sword tight, his eyes narrowed dangerously. There was the distinct sound of a sheath being slid just the slightest bit open. Boa Hancock rolled her eyes at this display—squabbling for nothing. They were better off killing each other in a cold, bold display right here—not only would it quiet their voices, it would be a severe hit to the balance of power the World Government thought they could control. Their little duel did not come to fruition, unfortunately.

They were the only three who came. She would have perhaps been more keen on speaking had Mihawk come. It had been years since he was the boy who came to the bar on odd days, simply standing at the door. He was still quiet and he still did not share. Yet when he swung his sword towards Luffy on that battlefield, her rage had not stirred. Maybe understanding, deep in their unmoving muscle, had festered and never left.

“But who am I to say anything of your family, dear Law. Let’s drop this matter for now.” Doflamingo removed his gaze from the youngster to regard the Snake Princess. “It is curious to see you, Snake Princess. What is it about today’s discussion that’s brought you to headquarters?”

“What right do you have to ask me any questions, fugol being.” Hancock huffed, flickering her hair away from her face. She pointed down at him, his pink feathered shoulders drew in with his contorted amusement. “I go where I please and come when I want. Do not ask me questions of my interests as though we were kindred beings.”

“So splendid you are, empress. If only I could bear your ice, I would not from part you for a moment.” Doflamingo was a man unfaltering. It was bothersome. “You leave me curious still. You know, I was keen during that fun little war of ours. Word is you were petrifying men who came even close to that Strawhat boy.”

She did not waver, she did not move. She was stone and he was a bird. He could land on her but he could not break her. He knew that.

Doflamingo leaned in, rapping his hands slowly against the table. “Tell me, empress of mine, you wouldn’t have happened to see him, would you?”

She smiled, matching his satyr wretchedness—they were both cogs and banes. It was all they had in common. “As often as I see the stars, but they too are so distant. Wouldn’t you agree?”

He smiled but did not answer. They were quiet once more and their bedlam only sated for a moment.

“Good to see you are all getting along.” The Buddha, Sengoku, entered, with his rapidly greying hair and woeful wrinkles and interrupted the kabuki unfolding. He sat the head of the table, expecting them to right themselves from their queer positions. No one moved and the tension remained. He sighed. “Fine. Let us speak of the Strawhat Pirates.”

With that, Boa Hancock’s ears were poised.

+

Boa Hancock hated Trafalgar Law on principle.

He had saved Luffy’s life and it was all the kindness she gave him when she did not slaughter him where he stood. Did she feel grateful? Perhaps, in a fleeting way that dispersed with time. Luffy was safe now. Training to become the great figure he would carve out of himself. Trafalgar Law had his hand to play in his fate—the reasons of which were unknown. There came her ire for his smirking sullen face.

There were ten men on each side of the tunnel, stone solid. It had been painfully easy. Merely a question of arriving with a flick of hair and they had gushed, became flushed in cheek then nothing but grey.

She threw Trafalgar against the wall and he went quietly. Salome curled around his legs and up his torso, her own haki strong enough to deter him from playing his tricks. He was strong, a warlord now by some petty trick, but she had learned haki since she could toddle. She was born conqueror, and it would never leave her.

Held up against the wall, she reminded him of his place. The threats seemed as water upon the sea, unable to fill him to overwhelming quantities with her ire. Trafalgar made mockery in the quirk of his lips and low laughter of his throat. He had dark circles under his dead, smirking eyes and she would think they were bleeding. She threatened his head and promised a home on her spikes if he dared turn against Luffy.

She did not trust him, but she has to believe his words when he says, ‘I’m not planning on it, Empress. Rest assured.’

Hancock found him of another particular quality, like a stray, yes, with sharp teeth weathered by too many bones. He was as tall as her, his eyes grey as a storm of a weeping sky and his back too slouched to be anything natural. Did he see the actor in himself, or did he simply find it an easy act to play? Hancock had found hers easy, surely she was not alone.

“So much love for Strawhat, you do amaze me, Snake Princess.” He said Luffy’s moniker as if it were his name, the only one he could utter on his slick, barbed tongue. Trafalgar Law had no bearing of a man who knew devotion or awe but he slid Luffy’s name along his tongue like it had a home there, had built the walls around the man and trapped him there to never be released. He was a surgeon with a conniption, and somehow Luffy had become his subject of study.  It infuriated her.

“Be wary with your words, Trafalgar, you have no right to speak on the love of mine.” She stood tall, her snake returned to her, a hiss out of Salome’s fanged mouth and it only served to make him huff in amusement. “I would remind you, I have yet to determine what motivates you, and so I would tread with caution when speaking before me.”

His sword was almost taller than him, and he held it like a companion and an extension of himself. His play-actor lifestyle was a blight on her eyes, and she hated to feel as if she had not made hers convincing when cornering him. “Wariness doesn’t suit me, Boa. You’ll find I’m too busy trying to accomplish my works.”

“You speak as a man who thinks he can conquer a sea.” And as the boy who marches towards death. Have you yet to become the man, Trafalgar? Or do you fear killing them both and losing everything? She did not say, he would never answer and the truth was useless to them both.

Trafalgar Law, crude in his smile, only said, “doesn’t everyone want to rule the world, Boa?”

Did Trafalgar Law know how much he looked like a kicked, rabid dog? Leave him on the streets, see if anyone would tell the difference. He was a very good actor, he could even convince himself he was born of the streets as nothing but a stray with grand ambition.

“I rule my kingdom, it is enough.” It melted, somewhere in her tongue, like she could not swallow the words, only expel them from her body. It did not matter if she could not stomach them and believe them, let others believe, it was the crux of her crucible.

“Then let my word be enough, Empress, as I try speak to your monarch magnanimity.” He was cold when he spoke, but not as much as he believed. He was belligerent and defiant but his determination was so storm made, it made all his actions a pity—she had none for him. She wondered only if she was as hell hot as she wished to sound or if someone found her like a tepid puddle. “I’m not out for his blood.”

Trafalgar did not say, her blood, and it was an understanding she was loath to admit. She was of no use to him, for now, and he without value in her eyes at all. A mutual disregard of existence but forced into view by the twinkling laughter of one man far from them both. He knew she wished to kill him, he believed it was leverage. To his own luck, he was not of Men.

She told him that Luffy was doing well with pride fluttering in her throat, somewhere between the salt sea and march of toy soldiers down the wharf. He whispered on the wind, almost as if not wishing to be heard, how it was good. However, it was a slip, something meant for the swirling, stray dog mind of his, and not her own ears. She did not say anything all the same. He did, if only to be a fool who lived on being daring and reckless.

“It’s a race for the One Piece. Pray, you tell Strawhat Luffy how I’m waiting for him to catch up.”

She almost punched him with a hand of stone or ripped his tongue clean out his throat, because she could hear it between the cold black blood of the boy reaching to be the man and the insignificant upstart of a pirate awed to death; she could hear how Luffy’s name was not but subject of study, but object of worship. Hancock could slay him for that alone, but her hand was steadied, and her sneer harsh where it hid in her skin. She hated the feeling of the bitterness for this encroachment he committed. Trafalgar Law, a man who had once placed his hands in Luffy’s chest, and now he still wanted his heart for himself? Did he know how he sounded, or was he simply cruel by nature?

Boa Hancock hated Trafalgar Law on principle. She could tolerate him, but he would need temper the devotion in his voice before he ever spoke to her about Luffy.

Lovely words from a good for nothing fool. He was quite cruel for daring, so she walked away.

Trafalgar Law would never die king. A race for the One Piece? What a terrible joke.

+

When they part for Sabaody, there was a night Luffy spoke to her.

He was quiet, sitting on a giant snake’s head, unbothered by their swaying. Luffy was rare to be in such moods. He had been, on their journey to hell, and she had understood it then, with such tremendous fate in his hand. In the end, it had not been made to be, but he was still here, and maybe she could believe in will just enough for it to not hurt. Only for him.

Luffy was watching the stars as if he could hearken all the world.

She wished he would not listen. It was too wretched a world for his kind mind.

When she quietly skulked to the edge of the boat, watching his back, he turned like he heard her. His smile was tender, like what she imagined a friend might share on sight of another. And by it, she ascended the snake, and sat a bit away. Too close, the sun might touch her sleeve, and she would not smother the fire.

“Do you miss the person you used to be?” It was strange coming out of his lips. She would imagine him thinking of his journey, to here, to now. From a cutting loss of his crew, to a devastation before his eyes and to, whatever this was now. Yet he looked at her, like he was only asking her because he already had his answers.

“Luffy…” Hancock sighed. She could not escape the tunnelling dark of his eyes. They bore into her far further than any brand could. She whispered, guilty, ashamed and most of all disgusted. What has she become? “No…there is too much shame in the past to turn back.”

“Shame?” He said the word like it was foreign. Something he could not eat, nor grasp. “I don’t see why. You’re a captain! And an, uh, empress! Yeah. I’m going to be King of the Pirates, and there’s no shame in that. You’re already so cool, and I bet you were cool then, even though you’re sometimes weird, it’s fine. I like you like that.”

She wished to tell him he was wrong. When Hancock was born she was to be empress, a goddess to her people who was strong enough to defend them. Then she was mired before she could ever take her mantle. There was no godhood in shame. She could not be as she was born, she could not turn back and make her skin something new, something that had never been touched and branded. She could not be made clean of sin and rot. She had lost her girlhood before it bloomed. The thought of turning back only made her wilt, the lamb pelt shedding until all her skin was bare. Shame—it was so terribly excruciating.

He made it sound like it was as the wind. The stone in her veins, was moving again. She thought it would hurt, if it did not feel like breathing.

“You say it with much hope, yet I do not. Is that wrong?”

Luffy shrugged but did not stop staring, probing and detached all at once. It was dizzying. “I can’t be the one to tell you that, Hammock.”

All she could do was laugh. He was too good for this rotten world of despicable Men. To even associate them with him was grounds for heresy.

He was so beautiful, of dark eyes and hair as passionate as starry Night. She felt she might learn to weep. That was his cruelty, she held it as a tender bloom. Luffy could not give her absolution. She did not want him to.

She thought, she loved him as one could love the sun. It was enough for her.

+

They tried to block his path but she would never let them do it again.

The way forward was shut, it was made by those who were dead and it was the dead who kept it. But, in this rotten and wretched world, some climbed over the dead bodies, whispered prayers for their fallen bones but would not eternally stand still to mourn. The way was not shut, it merely needed some light.

His crew was with him, they were motley as he said they were. There were the two woman, and a part of her seethed. She never had to be a jealous woman, but loving a king came with its sacrifices.

He was yelling goodbye and how he wished to see her again. How lovely Luffy was, acting as though he could ever miss her. She did not need him to, not at all. She would love him all the same. That love just needed to exist.

Hancock turned her back on his ship. She felt the sun on her back. Her eyes were red.

She smiled in her heart. Please be free, she did not like to pray. Please stay kind.

+

Heaven’s dogs came to take her. It was fine.

She was no longer their pirate, their pawn or their lamb. Her name was Boa Hancock, the Snake Princess, Pirate Empress of the Kuja. The most beautiful woman in the world, they had proclaimed on each port a man could ever shore.

Hancock was raised a Kuja, perhaps not made for blessing but she was not one who adored prayer—beatitude was still her right. She was freed by Fisher Tiger and imbued of his will. She was bestowed a mother and father, a brother and sisters. She has known love for kindness in flesh. Hancock had her island of merry maids, and fierce tigers, and her throne was a snake who was all of her sin.

The girl was not dead, nor was the woman unborn, for she was always mother to the woman.

People did not understand living in the Calm Belt.

The waters about her kingdom were still and silent. Her dominance never faltered, not for a moment. She sighed, iron in her lungs, and wondered if she ever let the chaos beneath in, it would listen to her call, kin in ichor they were. Indeed, she could still feel the first droplets of sea salt that had ever touched her hands as a babe, and the call of the deep who welcomed her as kin. She could not ever be rid of the chaos, of the bedlam or the destruction.

She had been stolen on these waters and she retuned to them all the same, wings ripping through her back and stone in the interplay of her heartbeats. The Calm Belt’ nests would rage on terrible days but stillness would return as a swelling hid beneath. It was a monstrous land, and it held no pity.

Those of Men had created the monster they feared, that they desired dead in chains. What was beauty? What was fear? Only an obsession of the worldly affairs. The monster, the sin or the snake—they were all the same. She only followed the equality of nature. Their screams were as delicate as the bleating of lambs.

The seas of this strip demanded one swim or sink, it demanded action and perseverance. The steady sea hid all its ills, but one moment too still oneself, and they would be devoured. No one else could hear how it raged. She was cursed by the Devil to be as desire and she wore it upon her shoulders as a mantle, her ore across the tides in this grand game of warfare and defiance. Her stone was steady as the earth, bedrock for the still seas that coursed through her veins.

Hancock was petty, cruel and selfish. It was the greatest power she could ever have. She would take back her sea, and defend her freedom, for never could they rip it from her. In youth, young innocence had been coloured blue, isolation and imprisonment blinding white, and passion was stained black as the starry Night. Yet, blue returned in the expanse of the sea without end, it resembled freedom. Their ships glided through the unending waves, and for once in her life—she smiled, gaily as the girl who had grown into a woman.

Heaven was burning, it shrouded the world in a rosy dawn.

This was the silent sea, it was her—she was conqueror still.