Archive of Our Own ^beta

That in itself isn't alarming; after a concert, Brook is generally exhausted, and he doesn't necessarily pay attention to his surroundings as much as he could, or as he should.

(His manager is paranoid of people trying to kill his star. Brook figures that's because a lot of people want to kill the man.

He's not sure exactly how assassinating a skeleton would go, or a soul, for that matter- but he doesn't point that out to his manager.

It's fun to see him flail.)

No, the worrying part is the man slipping past the security and picking the lock of the room Brook is in.

"Ah," says the stranger when he arrives, and when Brook jumps and turns to face him, he smiles. "I thought I recognized you."

And Brook finds himself face to face with one Silvers Rayleigh.

oOo

"Hello," says Brook politely. It's not the first time he's been caught off-guard and had an unexpected conversation with someone, but it is the first time he already knows his interlocutor. "Can I help you?"

The man laughs.

"No, no. I'm sorry, I just wanted to see. Luffy chattered on and on about your music, and I wanted to see if you lived up to the legend. You'll be pleased to know that you do."

Brook freezes.

"You know my captain?"

(Well- of course he does, he met Luffy on Saobody, thinks Brook, but that brief encounter wasn't enough for his captain to start talking about his beloved crew, or at least he doesn't think so. He was there the whole time, too; he would have remembered it.

Maybe.

To be fair, a lot had been going on, and Brook doesn't pretend to be able to keep track of everything happening in his captain's sphere of influence.)

Rayleigh looks at him, a hint of surprise in his eyes, before he realizes.

"You wouldn't know, of course. I took it upon myself to train him during your separation." And then, as if he can read Brook's thoughts, the question burning in his throat: "He's doing just fine. Wouldn't shut up about all of you. When I heard of a singing skeleton, I figured you had to be his musician."

Rayleigh shrugs, as if he hasn't given Brook the only news he has heard about his crew for a year and a half, which feels like air in lungs he stopped having a long time ago. Brook looks down on his hands, long and white and not trembling, not one bit, even if he feels out of balance. He looks up to find Rayleigh looking at him inquisitively, and forces himself to find words.

"Thank you for helping him, then. I know he can be a handful."

Rayleigh waves his hand dismissively.

"He is, yeah. It's fine, you don't need to thank me, I wanted to do it. He reminded me a bit of my captain."

Brook frowns, as much as a skeleton can frown.

"Your captain," he repeats. "The previous Pirate King? What was his name, again?"

Rayleigh stares at him for a moment before laughing, surprised and delighted.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he says. "It's not often that I stumble onto people who don't know his name," which Brook supposes is fair. Most people haven't missed 50 years of the world's history. "He was called Gol D. Roger; most people got it wrong and called him Gold Roger. Annoyed him to no end."

The fondness in his voice is obvious, and the pain a little less hidden than Brook expected it to be. He doesn't press on for more information, and hums while pouring himself tea.

"And Luffy reminded you of him?"

"Well, yes," says Rayleigh, nodding in thanks as Brook gives him a cup of tea, too. "At the beginning, at least. They're a lot less alike than I thought, but- well. There's no one like Roger, really, so I don't know what I was expecting."

(There's no one like Roger, says Rayleigh, and once again the pain is just a little too blatant for it to have no meaning. Brook doesn't know what to think about it; chooses not to think about it at all. He has much to worry about, these days; nine whole people, and a whale. He doesn't need to add someone to his list, no matter how concerned he may be; and Rayleigh seems to be just fine. If his wounds are a little rawer than Brook expected them to be, then it's either temporary or has been permanent for too long for anyone -least of all Brook- to be able to do anything about it.)

"Yes," answers Brook. "If your captain was anything like mine is, then..."

He lets his sentence trail off, reaching for words but finding nothing; lets the smile piercing through his voice settle on his face, feather-light and just a little too gentle for it to be scary on his bone-white face.

Rayleigh smiles back, just fondly enough for it to seem out of place, in the middle of the ever-present, gentle, faded grief the man seems to carry with him. He looks like he understands exactly what Brook is trying to say; the way words are just too little to describe Luffy's magnetism, the way he stares down your nightmares for you, the way he smiles and commands the sun to shine just a little more brightly; and Rayleigh answers, "Yes, your captain is quite unbelievable, too, isn't he?"

(Unbelievable is a little too short for Luffy still, like the odd-fitted cardigan that Sanji throws at him when the night gets cold and their cook pretends not to care about them but worries still; like the coat Chopper and Nami force him to wear when they pass by a winter island, and the deck is covered in ice, and his laughs turns into clouds in the cold air.

Luffy's a little too- too vibrant, like the world is turned up to eleven, or one hundred, when you're around him. Like the world is competing to get his attention, like it understands what a privilege it is to be the one to make him laugh, make him smile.

Brook thinks he will find his words again, once he's back inside his captain's orbit; but for the moment they escape him, the reality of Luffy's presence a faded memory.)

"Unpredictable, as well," says Rayleigh after a little while, just before the silence can become too wistful. "Half of the time I left him alone I was convinced he'd have managed to burn the island down by the time I got back."

"That sounds like him," murmurs Brook lightly, firmly not letting his loneliness show; it would be hard if he wasn't so used to it. "My captain- my previous one, that is- well, he was much the same."

"Previous one," repeats Rayleigh pensively, and then, just a little more gently, "I'm sorry."

"Thank you," answers Brook in kind, calm and composed, reaching out to refill the cup of tea he must have finished at some point. "Ah- it was a long time ago."

Rayleigh tilts his head, thoughtful. The artificial, harsh lightning of the room makes the scar on his eye stand out much more than it did in the middle of Sabaody's bubbles; Brook wonders how he got it, and when, and ponders how strange it is for him to miss his own scars, even fifty years after losing them.

"A long time ago," echoes Rayleigh, and it feels like this is all this conversation is made of: echoes, too similar to be surprising and too different to be painless.

(There is a particular kind of- not friendship, not really, but a particular kind of companionship between the two of them, who have both lost homes and treasures and captains, and have given up dreams and memories and a part of their grief to time, for safekeeping. There are few people that Brook can look in the eyes and not frighten; fewer still that he can talk to, and understand, and be understood by. Rayleigh doesn't understand him, not completely- but he understands his grief, and grief is a more important part of him than Brook likes to think about.)

Rayleigh and Brook are similar, in frightening and expected ways; dissimilar, too, because Brook sings songs about going on adventures, and Rayleigh looks like he lost his home years ago and hasn't stopped yearning for it since then- even though Brook knows for a fact he carved himself a new one in the hidden shadows the world couldn't stop him from settling in.

(Maybe it's because Brook is a performer, after all, and it's part of his job to put on a show. Maybe it's just that Brook is dead, and isn't, and has been dead for a long time; and his wounds don't show, because what blood can you draw from bones? 

Maybe it's because Rayleigh sometimes looks tired, so very tired, war-weary and full of memories of miracles that sometimes seem so very faded, like they never even happened; maybe it's because Rayleigh seems to display his grief, in a way Brook would never dare to try, like an armor, look what I've lost, look what I've survived, can you even come close to imagining it?

Or maybe -and that's all it is, speculations, because Brook doesn't know him, because he thinks nobody does, not anymore, not entirely- or maybe it's because Brook has been trying, so very hard, so terribly slowly, to let go of his grief, to say his goodbyes and lay ghosts to rest, while Rayleigh looks like he talks with his ghosts sometimes, around a cup of tea, apologizes for not being able to save them and asks them how the weather is on their side.)

"Yes, a long time ago. Around sixty years, actually," he says wistfully, and, well, it has been sixty years, hasn't it?

Sixty years. It's such a difficult thing, to carry a black hole in your head for sixty years, to willingly let it suck out any light but the miserable ones that are just too far to reach-

"But how long ago it was doesn't matter much, does it?"

Rayleigh's voice interrupts his thoughts, and Brook absently thinks that the man speaks too many half-lies half-truths.

There's a pause, which Rayleigh uses to lean back against the wall, his cup of tea still full.

"I think time has quite a bit to do with it, actually," Brook begins, thinking back to six years ago, to ten years, to thirty-five years ago. There is certainty in the line of his shoulders, grief in his hands, musician's hands, who will not tremble if he does not wish them to. "I wouldn't have joined my crew, if we had met earlier."

"Wouldn't you have?" Asks Rayleigh, and it's a stupid question but it isn't, because Brook's captain is Luffy, after all.

(He wants to say no, and say yes, and not to feel so conflicted.

He wants to never have lost the Rumbar Pirates. He can't imagine never meeting the Strawhats.

He wants all that he had back, untarnished and gleaming and uncomplicated; he wants to stop feeling so torn, missing things long gone and grieving for what is still alive. He wants his heart to decide which loss he should mourn; he wants to have never known loss, and yet he can't imagine what he would be had it not shaped him for the past decades.

It's been- been so long, been two years, been fifty; and still he doesn't know, and still he goes back and forth, back and forth, a useless metronome for a useless musician.)

"I don't know," he admits with good grace, or as good a grace he can summon when his heart feels torn between one allegiance and another. "But that's quite a heavy conversation, for someone I've only met once before. Particularly if you're a fan! Shouldn't you be asking for an autograph?"

Rayleigh laughs politely and doesn't call him out for his rather obvious change of subject. "Sure, why not," he answers. "I'll give it to your captain when I get back to him, if you want."

"Ah-" says Brook, taken back. "That would be-"

(Here is the truth, a truth, the truth: Luffy is his captain, and he had not always been, but he is now, and Brook misses him.

He feels like he's running on water; like if he stops moving he'll sink, and drown, and die; like if he gets too heavy he'll just drop to the bottom of the ocean and never come up again. And he has been trying to not weigh himself down with thoughts and memories and regrets, but he's been alone and it's been- harder.

And if it's hard for him, who is so used to being alone, who learned to sing aloud because it's not as strange as talking to yourself, then how hard is it for the others? For friendly Chopper, for Usopp, who thrives when he has an audience, for Sanji, who sometimes reaches out and grabs their clothes like he's trying to make sure they're real?

For his captain, who never smiles as bright as when his crew is gathered in front of him, as when he is looking down on them and they look up and smile back?)

"I'll do it, then," shrugs Rayleigh. His nonchalance is starting to seem more like an act than a characteristic, and Brook will not let himself be worried, no matter how stark the scars on his hands are, no matter how weary the man seems. "It's about time I got back, anyway."

Worldlessly, Brook gives him a piece of paper, his sprawling name written across it in glittering red he hopes his captain will like. Rayleigh grabs it and folds it delicately; slips it in between the folds of his cape.

And then, just before slipping away again, as noiselessly as he came, he smiles at Brook-

(And it is a smile, brilliant and bright and not the fatigued, half-hearted, hidden one he wore when he talked about his captain in the past tense; not the too-bright too-honest too-brief he wore when he laughed earlier; it's genuine and easy and Brook thinks that this it must have looked like all the time, when he had not lost anything yet-)

-and says:

"See you at Raftel, then. I'll be waiting for you."

"Will you?" Asks Brook, conversational yet heavy at the same time; and Rayleigh's smile takes on a sarcastic taint, and he answers:

"Well, I'd be disappointed if I had spent one year training your captain only for someone else to find the damn island."