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Justice, Garp has found over the years, is a heavy, aching thing. It creeps and crawls into the hearts of men, blinding eyes and taking control of every person’s mouth and hand. It dictates the actions of humanity across the planet, never in the same form, and Garp hates it.
He hates how justice is blind and justice is like clay, molded to the fighter’s fists. He hates how it layers across his back in black-on-white fabric, always hanging on, never letting go, and he hates how much justice has taken away from him.
A friend.
A son.
A grandson.
So many, many losses, some in gravestones, some in the heart, and all because justice lays heavy across his shoulders.
A burden that every soul has to bear.
Garp just wishes he didn’t.
-
The first time Garp hears Justice connected with Marines is when the word spills out of Sengoku’s mouth, an hour after he meets the man. It’s a sunny day in the Grand Line, and especially at Marineford, where all hopeful Navy Recruits find themselves. Garp has been enjoying the peace and monotony of boot camp – he loves the raucous weather of the Grand Line, so different from the peacefulness of the East Blue, but he’ll take the chance to relax.
Sengoku, however, is not like him. He and Tsuru came to Marineford with the goal of joining the Marines – Garp came because it was a cool island, and he had nothing better to do. The Marines would be interesting enough, wouldn’t they? Stumbling into them in training, when their strengths matched with Garp’s made a formidable team, was pure coincidence.
Sengoku is not like him, because he looks up to the top of Marineford’s base, where the upper levels sit, and smiles.
“The Marines have always pursued justice,” Sengoku says with a grin as he and Garp sit on the ground, Tsuru at their backs. “I’m glad I get to be here today.”
“Huh?” Garp says in response, shoving another one of his smuggled rice crackers in his mouth.
Sengoku goes on. “They saved my island from pirates, ensured that every child had a place to go at the end of the day… justice, in retribution, cutting down all of the pirate’s ilk.”
There were no Marines on Dawn Island, save for the few that dropped into Goa for shore leave, never deigning to look into the bandits that prowled outside the walls or the poor folk of Windmill Village, protected by only Garp.
Justice had never been brought by men in white uniforms. Only by Garp and his own two fists.
“You believe retribution is justice?” Garp asks, slightly alarmed though unwilling to show it.
“No,” Sengoku replies, stern. “Justice is upholding the law above all else, to protect the citizens of the world. It’s… it’s ensuring that those who break this law are defeated, so that the world can live in peace.”
Garp raises an eyebrow and shares a look with Tsuru. She doesn’t seem to disagree, but her eyes are distant, far away when she blinks.
Garp never gave much thought to justice. Who is he to decide what’s right and wrong, to spin the fate of the world on his own shoulders?
Duty, though. Promises. And oath that he’ll take upon his shoulders, as soon as he makes it past boot camp – that he understands.
He’ll leave the lofty thoughts to Sengoku. He looks like a man who likes responsibility. Garp has his own life to follow.
“Well,” Garp says at last, wiping the rice crackers from his mouth. “People were never protected by Marines sitting on their asses. You wanna spar?” He holds a hand out to Sengoku, and then to Tsuru, hauling them both up at once.
Sengoku gives him a smile, Tsuru is already shifting in her place, and Garp just has to laugh as they lunge at him at once with all the spryness of youth, and it's good.
-
It doesn’t stay good.
(Nothing, rarely, ever does. Even at twenty-two, with not a speck of gray hair in sight, Garp has learned to take the bright moments as they come, for they certainly don’t come easy.)
Basic training is finished, and Sengoku hasn’t spoken of justice since. The instructors fill his mouth for him, talking about protection, and duty, and these are oaths that Garp knows, oaths that he has already sworn.
To be a marine, the instructors say at graduation, white coats swishing behind them as they shine their ranks in front of new recruit’s faces, is to protect. It is to follow orders, for the safety of others. To be a marine is to be strong, so the world doesn’t have to be – so our justice can come to it.
It’s a bit flowery for Garp’s tastes, all full of words and no action, but he supposes that they’ll be seeing action soon enough.
It doesn’t stop him from eating rice crackers then though, and doesn’t stop him from leaving the ceremony two hours early to get the best bunk on his, Sengoku’s, and Tsuru’s new vessel – Voyager.
Sengoku laughs, Tsuru shakes her head, and then the world is bursting with motion as they set sail, further, and further into the Grand Line.
There are pirates that sink beneath fists laced with haki. There are scoundrels, and thieves, and then merchant ships that need protecting. There is a world to see, and folks that need guarding.
It’s an oath, simple and easy. Protect the people.
(Garp has always done that, even when he was a rag tag brat who could barely throw a punch.)
It doesn’t stay good, because on a little no name island on the Grand Line, Sengoku draws the line between criminal and people by leaving a whole crew of pirates to rot amongst deserted island sands, while they take stranded and shipwrecked merchant passengers aboard.
“Senny,” Garp says, when he realizes what they’re doing. “What the hell is going on?”
“Thieves do not receive the mercy of the law,” Sengoku intones as he stares at the proceedings. There are children and terrified adults, all huddling and trudging aboard their galleon. They thank the marines as they pass, and Sengoku seems to have a smile on his face as he watches them – the smile does not stretch towards the pirates watching from the sands, bound in rope as they watch freedom slip from their grasp. As they watch life slip from their grasp, because Sengoku has ordered that they are to remain here – on this little, no name island with hardly food enough for a man, let alone a whole crew.
Certainly not a crew who had attacked a merchant ship because they had run out of food supplies in the midst of the Grand Line.
“They wanted to eat,” Garp growls, voice low in his throat as something constricts in his chest. He remembers the winters on Dawn Island, he remembers hunger, he remembers the faces of those who lived beyond the walls of Goa.
Hunger is a very human thing, Garp finds.
(He doesn’t think Sengoku has ever been hungry. Not like these pirates have.
Not like Garp has.)
“Then they shouldn’t have stolen from the people we are supposed to protect, Garp.” Sengoku’s voice rumbles, and it’s a threat, Garp knows. A warning. “It’s this or Impel Down.”
And maybe it is a mercy, to Sengoku who follows laws like they give life, and judges in lines that aren’t quite black and white but close enough all the same. Maybe it is a mercy, because Impel Down is hell. Yet still –
Still –
It rankles in Garp as they leave behind the criminals as Sengoku calls them, as they leave behind men and women to rot on shores instead of dragging them off to Impel Down. It’s all black and white. This or that. Criminal or hero, saved or damned.
He doesn’t think he can believe in Sengoku’s justice. Not yet.
(Perhaps, not ever.)
-
He and Sengoku separate at some point – different promotions, different routes. Sengoku is just as good with his fists as Garp, but he’s always wanted to play chess more than be out on the field. He deserves to be able to lock himself away with other officers and scheme away blockades and ships and men.
Garp will take his chances out on the sea, with the wind in his face and enemies ready to challenge him. He’s Garp, officer and fighter and defender.
(Perhaps, some might even say hero.)
Garp doesn’t mind being separated from his friend as much as he should. Sengoku speaks of justice, speaks of protection, speaks of law and order, but he never quite sees what Garp sees. Criminals, yes, but… people. The gray patches in life, where perhaps a mercy should be given.
People who set out to sea for a reason, and sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad, but Garp can’t just call them all filthy criminals and drag them off to the same fate. He can’t. Not really.
(It would be so much easier if he could.)
Instead, he lets himself drift from Sengoku’s and even Tsuru’s path. He finds himself jumping from ship to ship, letting his fists and his stomach lead him from port to port and fight to fight. Pirates begin to whisper about him in awed fear, and civilians whisper about him just in awe. It’s good, when he protects a village and is lauded a hero with feasts that perhaps his superiors shouldn’t entertain for an upstart like Garp, but allow anyway.
There aren’t many instances like the marooned pirate crew, left to rot on unforgiving shores. Not when Garp can just bulldoze his way through any custom or courtesy without the guilt of Sengoku’s eyes and stern tongue resting upon his shoulders.
There aren’t many gray spots.
(Until he meets her – a whirlwind in human form who laughs in his face at a night in port, and comes back nine months later with a babe in her arms and still no name to give him. She disappears after that – nameless and victorious, the only remnant of her swaddled in Garp’s arms.
He names his child Dragon.
He is so small in his arms, with a head full of impossibly dark hair and fingers that clench and snag on all of Garp’s clothing. He feels like something to be hidden from the world – something to clutch close to his chest and never let go. The protective rage seems to rise in Garp every time he rocks Dragon to sleep or feeds him from the bottle.
Garp is very certain that he would do anything for this child.
Which is exactly why he goes on leave for a year, without a word to Sengoku or Tsuru and just barely a bit of warning to his supervisors – and travels all the way back to Dawn Island, dressed not in Navy White but floral print.
Dragon babbles at him as he walks through the quiet streets of Windmill Village, each tiny noise that might be Da bringing a smile to Garp’s face. Dragon… Sengoku would protect Dragon, Garp is sure, if Garp wanted to raise Dragon in the midst of the Marines, leaving him in Marineford like all other marine families.
But that’s not what Garp wants for his child. That’s not what he wants for Dragon.
So he bounces Dragon on his hip as he knocks on Woop Slap’s door, and hopes for a help that might not be there.
He sails off childless and morose, even as Dragon waves to him from the shore. )
-
Leaving Dragon is the hardest thing in Garp’s life. He’s small, and he might not even remember Garp when he comes back but –
Dragon is strong. Monkey D. Dragon, with that mysterious initial, the will that’s most certainly sparked in the child’s eye – he’ll make it, surviving with a bandit’s child – a little brat named Dadan - on the shores of an island the world will hopefully forget about.
Anything, to keep his child safe. Even if it hurts like a knife to the chest as he leaves him behind – even as it aches, worse than anything Garp has ever known.
It’s all worth it, for Dragon’s peaceful childhood.
So he sails off, quietly reclaiming Navy White and not saying a damn thing when Tsuru or Sengoku asks where he’s been, or why he disappeared. He seals his mouth shut by shoving rice crackers in whenever he feels like there’s a secret he might tell – such as how Dragon calls for him on the transponder snail, how Dragon’s first steps were taken on the beach, how he has a full head of hair and Garp’s eyes – and he doesn’t speak.
He sails off to be a marine, and resettles into his skin.
(It’s easy. He was never given the time to become more father than Marine.)
-
Garp fights. Garp protects.
That’s what he does.
He fights those who challenge order, who challenge peace, those who seek to harm and never to help. Pirates and criminals and scum fall at his feet, people who plunder and scourge the land, taking food from the mouths of those who need it and riches from people just trying to get by. Freedom, some of them call it, and it's just anarchy. It’s not talking about the freedom to explore or travel the world, just the freedom to take and take and take.
He fights pirate captains, who laugh in Garp’s face until his fists meet their cheeks. He fights bandits, attempting to make it out on land, and saves a few merchant ships from sea kings. It is simple then – the gray spots in the world not existing when it is just Garp against scoundrels, and Garp standing with innocents.
The Marines are a force for good. The Marines help people. Garp sees it in thankful eyes, and people reaching out, with the simple knowledge that white flags mean help and black flags mean death. Garp dons his white uniform with pride in the mornings, dusting blood off of his knuckles in the evening. No –
There are no gray spots.
Then –
He’s at Sabaody, on a meet up with Sengoku. Garp is twenty-five and full of himself, with a son back home who has started hanging out with the bandit children up on Dawn Island’s peaks, while Sengoku’s loyalty stays with the Marines and a justice that divides good and bad like an executioner’s blade.
He’s at Sabaody, and the entire island feels like fear quivering beneath his feet. Everyone looks from side to side as they enjoy the amusement park, carefully keeping away from certain groves, and Garp’s hands curl into fists in his fury.
He can’t – this place, it’s –
He wants to fight this island. He wants to fight the people who allowed this, who looked at the naked fear in each man’s eye upon this island, and who thought it was a permissible thing.
“Garp,” Sengoku quells, hand upon Garp’s shoulder. It’s like a vice, iron and unbreakable seastone, chaining Garp to his spot. “It’s the law, here.”
It’s not.
It can’t be.
But it is.
(There are facts that each Marine learns at basic training, facts that Garp shoves to the corner of his brain and tries to ignore every time he dons Navy White, for he loves the Navy, who have given him shelter and direction and a way to protect his son. There are facts about who the Marines serve, and who is above who, a chain of command iron tight.
There are ensigns and recruits, and then there are officers, like Garp. There are admirals above vice admirals, and the fleet admiral above them all.
Then –
There are the elders. The Five Stars. And the Celestial Dragons.
And no soldier’s word is greater than that of the gods themselves, walking upon the land.)
It is law, because before Garp walks a man with snot dripping down his nose, his head surrounded by a bubble because he’s too good for the air the rest of them breathe. He’s a man. He can barely walk on his own, when he’s not sitting on a slave’s back.
He is a man, and he is a scoundrel, and he is horrid – and Garp can do nothing but allow Sengoku to shove him down into a bow, head to the ground, and stay quiet as he grinds his teeth into dust.
“Stay quiet Garp,” Sengoku hisses, hand tightening, and Garp does because he can do nothing else.
He does not want to come back to this island. Not in the face of men who boil his blood and people he cannot save because men pretending to be gods told the world so.
Sengoku watches him after, when the streets are still silent but the Celestial Dragon long gone. He watches the way Garp’s fist bite crescents into his palms, and the way his eyes are set forward into the ground, away from the quivering gaze of the civilians around him.
“Don’t make me bow again,” Garp tells him, quietly, voice rumbling in his chest. “I won’t.”
“You will,” Sengoku tells him right back, honest because the Celestial Dragons are law and order, and Sengoku has always believed in that kind of justice, clean and succinct. “You’ll die otherwise.”
Sengoku is Garp’s closest friend. His confidant, when things get rough, the man who stretched out a hand in friendship to a fellow new recruit, when the both of them were green and still getting their sea legs.
But right now, kneeling on the ground and unable to fight, Garp might hate him, just a bit.
-
Dragon is five and asks to go to Sabaody.
Garp says no.
Dragon is six and he’s asking why Goa’s walls are so high, if he can visit, if he can be like the nobles who get lots of treats and get to go anywhere.
Garp says no.
Dragon is ten and has spent most of his life without Garp rather than with him, and has only ventured onto a Marine Base twice. His eyes are filled with awe every time Garp sets out to sea, and he always plays the role of marine captain every time he plays pirates and marines with the other children he encounters.
Dragon, Garp thinks, would make a fine Marine one day. He cares for the people, for Dawn Island, for the people of windmill village. He gives food to the people in Gray Terminal, and Woop Slap is always reporting that he runs off with the bandit children, but never seems to act like a bandit child.
He’s much better than Garp, then, already.
Dragon is fifteen and asking to sign up to the marines, prepping for training, and Garp…
Garp says yes.
(Years later, he wonders if even saying no would have stopped the disaster looming upon their heads.)
-
Gol D. Roger crashes into Garp’s life like a Grand Line whirlwind, like a hurricane given form, and Garp cannot help but to hate him with everything he is worth.
Or perhaps, this feeling should be hate. Garp should feel hate when Roger runs off with another town in ruins behind him, hate when marine ships collapse under Roger’s mighty strength, hate when Roger laughs, loud and bright, as he sails under a black jolly flag.
Roger is a pirate. He is a criminal. He is a bastard, who wants to cause as much chaos as possible, as much ruin as possible, not because he seeks power like the others of his generation but because Roger wants to live. He wants to laugh and fight and be a bastard because he can. He wants to make Garp’s life hell, because he’s allowed to, he wants to party because he’s alive to do so. He’s the antithesis of a Marine, of men and women who align themselves to orders and rules, who protect others rather than themselves.
Garp has been called to far too many meetings about Roger and his adventures. Sengoku seems frustrated, the Five Elders seem stiff, and the fleet admiral gives Garp the side eye every time he begins to talk about Roger, the super powered rookie that’s turning their lives into a mess.
Perhaps it’s because Roger seems to seek him out, more than any other. Perhaps it’s because Roger and Garp fight and come away bloody but never dead, never with a wound that won’t heal in a week or two.
They’re…
Rivals, of a sort. Enemies, not really.
Garp is sure Roger would call him a friend. Clothed in Navy white, Garp cannot do the same.
Then –
Garp is a Vice Admiral, the highest he dares go, and Rocks D. Xebec is attacking God Valley.
A sailor’s duty, the instructors from that boot camp from long ago echo, is to protect others.
A sailor’s duty, the five elders say, clothed in white and with graying beards, is to protect their betters.
A sailor’s duty, Sengoku orders Garp, as he directs him towards God Valley, is to protect the Celestial Dragons.
He meets Roger on the shores, the both of them alone and without any crew. There is a nod between them, as they look at the fleeing Celestial Dragons and the people they enslaved, weeping and dead eyed, terrified as the Celestial Dragons shove them towards the pirates to escape their own slaughter.
Garp feels sick as he fights. As he wins, against Xebec, against Whitebeard, against Big Mom and Kaido and too many others. As the Celestial Dragons sneer at him in thanks and go back to ordering the world surrounding them, slaves being whipped and terrified people becoming even more wretched.
It makes him want to never lift his fists again. It makes him want to spit in the faces of all his betters, it makes him want to bring Roger into the midst of Mariejeoise and show to all the cowards who live atop the world what real strength is.
But he doesn’t. He can’t, because that is the oath he swore – an oath to protect, and he can’t protect anyone if he’s dead.
He sails back home a hero, the Hero of the Navy, according to the newspaper titles and the name on every person’s tongue, and does not speak a word of it.
“He’s a criminal,” Sengoku tells him, when he hears of the battle in the little office Sengoku has sequestered for himself. He’s talking about Roger, but somehow the way he says criminal makes it seem like everything Roger isn’t. “There is no shame in fighting with criminals as long as justice is brought in the end.”
Garp shoves rice crackers in his face, and does not say that he is not ashamed of fighting with Roger, that he is not ashamed in how he and Roger defended the slaves at God Valley, the people who wept and thanked them, the people who they left to rot there because the Celestial Dragons ordered it so.
“He’s a man,” is what he says, instead of saying there is no shame in fighting with men like him. Instead of saying there was no justice brought, instead of saying the only shame I have –
Is fighting for the Celestial Dragons.
He leaves that room with cheeks stuffed with rice crackers and all the words he will never say.
Sengoku is never the wiser.
-
Things change after that. It’s as if the world had suddenly splintered into pieces, millions of them, as the Rocks Pirates scattered across the world and made a horrible wreckage out of everything. Kingdoms rose and fell in a single night – men gained and lost power just as quickly as crew killed crew and emperors rose amongst them all.
Garp’s fists grow bloodier as his laurels of victory shine brighter. He wins, and wins, and wins.
Hero of the Navy, they call him.
Garp the Fist, they call him.
Dad, Dragon stops calling him, after God Valley. After being stationed on Sabaody. After trudging through the ashy waters of an island burned by a Buster Call. His gaze holds no awe now, that light quickly fading with every atrocity, with every life snuffed out by Navy White.
It hurts.
But pirates die before they change the world, and Garp just knows that Dragon is going to be great once he rises a little further up the ranks, once he gains that next promotion, once he has the power to make a difference.
Garp was never quite there enough to be a father anyway. His legacy has only ever been that of some sort of bastardized justice.
Dragon knows that.
Dragon…
He has to know that.
(Can’t you see, Vice Admiral, Dragon spits out like the fire of his namesake as they argue away from prying eyes, can’t you see what the Marines are capable of?
And Garp sees Celestial Dragons and the way he has only defended them once, sees the men and women and children and civilians across the planet who call him hero and thank him for saving their homes from the bad guys, sees countries saved from rising emperors, and remembers a sailor’s duty.
I see, Garp says, and knows he’s blinding himself in truth, I know what we’re capable of.)
He doesn’t.
(Dragon leaves the Marines by burning his coat on the steps of Marineford, before disappearing in a gust of wind before Garp’s eyes.
The black ink of justice on the back of his coat haunts Garp’s dreams.)
-
Garp is over half a century old, with gray in his hair and wrinkles in his face, the day the world turns upside down. The day a King is crowned.
He’s over half a century old the day he sits before a dank cell and faces that very king, chained by choice because Roger never did anything he didn’t want to do.
“A child, huh.” Garp huffs, raising an eyebrow. He discreetly passes a bottle of rum through the cell doors, one last drink before Roger kicks the bucket.
“You got one, don’t you?” Roger questions, leaning against the cell wall as he accepts the drunk. “There were always rumors…”
“He doesn’t want to be mine anymore.” Garp shrugs, despite the hurt, remembering how small Dragon was, and how brightly he burns now. There are whispers across the sea, of red flags saving islands where’s couldn’t (or wouldn’t) go, whispers always accompanied by the sound of storms and rejection of the World Government’s flag.
Roger hums before drinking from his bottle. “A child isn’t their parent’s, I suppose. My child…” His voice turns wistful, proud. “They’re going to be great one day, so long as they don’t die first.”
Garp is struck by the idea of Roger’s smile on a baby’s face, on a child’s face, growing up as Dragon did on coastal waters and sandy beaches, exploring and playing and laughing. He’s struck with the thought of that child dying, that bright spark, that dream to be burning out by cruel hands.
He’s a criminal, Sengoku said, and the world followed suit.
Garp knows that the world will damn this child as well.
“They won’t,” Garp says, staring into his drink. It burns his throat on the way down. “They haven’t done anything.”
Yet, goes the unspoken, because Garp knows what kind of child Roger is going to have, knows what kind of dreams and adventure this child will undertake.
The child doesn’t have the blood of a criminal yet.
Garp, sharing a final word with Roger on his way out, hopes it will stay that way.
-
Roger dies with a smile on his face and proverbial match in his hands. Garp is silent as the crowd around him cheers, and even quieter as he watches the world erupt into chaos.
Sengoku calls it justice when he dies. Fleet Admiral Kong shakes his head while looking at the reports of pirates surging upon the Grand Line, and calls the whole event a failure.
Garp doesn’t know why they thought Roger would let his death be anything different.
-
The year after Roger’s death is a trembling, shaking one. The peaceful people are terrified, the fools who thought the death of the Pirate King would bring peace instead of people clamoring to be the next king, and the dreamers are taking to the seas under black flags. Each red dawn brings a new nuisance, a new fool to challenge the world, and Garp is tired.
Every Navy ship that sails out to sea, however, is one less ship that is searching for Roger’s unborn child. It’s one less Marine looking for Rouge, one less Marine willing to snuff out the last remnants of Roger’s blood on the seas.
(But not his legacy.
No, Garp doesn’t think the marines will ever snuff that out.)
It’s one less Marine, so Garp makes sure he’s one less Marine searching for Rouge, and instead agrees to orders to search for the crew of the Pirate King.
Scopper Gaban spits at him, but that’s no surprise. Crocus peers down through his glasses, and tells him to avoid the East Blue because the brats are there.
(Garp wouldn’t go after Shanks and Buggy anyway. He has enough children’s blood on his hands without having to worry about the blood of two more – no matter what trouble they’ll bring in the future.)
Rayleigh, though.
Garp runs into him at Sabaody, where tensions have been higher than ever as more and more pirates collide on their way to chase after the One Piece.
Rayleigh is… grayer, then Garp saw him last, slouched on the steps of Shakky’s Rip Off Bar. Then again, so is Garp. There’s a drink hanging between Rayleigh’s fingers half empty already despite the midmorning light, and Rayleigh spares Garp nothing but a piercing glance.
“Rayleigh,” Garp announces his presence, because titles have never had any place between him and Roger’s crew.
“Garp,” Rayleigh says. He does not ask if he’s next to go to the execution block. Doesn’t ask if Garp wanted to bring in Roger, does not ask if Garp is here for a fight or an argument. They both know that Roger only ever did what Roger wanted to do, and Garp put away every pirate who bore the world ill-will – and that Rayleigh, resting amongst the giant mangroves, is not that man. “Enjoying the new era?”
Garp sighs, and comes to rest next to Rayleigh. He would get court-martialed for this. But he didn’t get court-martialed for trading drinks with Whitebeard or for sneaking in to talk to Roger, so this won’t be anything much more than that.
The World Government, after all, cares about the illusion of power and safety more than the keeping of it – and taking down the Hero of the Navy would not be a boon to that.
Rayleigh passes him the drink, and Garp takes a sip, letting the burn go down his throat. “Not really,” he answers, truthfully. “Roger left the world in a hell of a mess.”
Rayleigh laughs, a harsh noise like glass on rocks. “It’s what he wanted. It’s what the blasted world deserves.”
Garp thinks back to God Valley, thinks back to the fire in Dragon’s eyes, and thinks back to pirates marooned on an island for daring to want to eat, and hums.
The world did not deserve this.
But –
Perhaps the Marines did.
But –
Roger’s child does not.
(Does Rayleigh know?)
“I’m glad,” Rayleigh takes a sip, “that this is his legacy. Causing trouble till the last.” He side eyes Garp. “I can’t wait to see where it goes.
To that, Garp laughs because he’s only spent the last few decades watching, and even he can’t tell.
(Rayleigh doesn’t know. Or perhaps he does, and he knows children are their own legacies, never someone else’s.)
Garp leaves with a half-empty drink in his hand and refuses to tell Sengoku who he shared it with.
-
A year passes.
Two years.
Now, no Marine shows up to Baterilla, long since sure that the lover of the Pirate King died some time ago, taking her child with him.
But –
No pirate shows up either. No remnant of Roger’s wildness showing up to lay claim to his child.
Garp is the only witness to the way Roger’s child came screaming into the world, the way Rouge kissed her child’s head as she named him, and the way she cried as she passed Ace into Garp’s arms.
(He is the only witness to the end of Rouge, defiant until her last.)
Ace is… small, in Garp’s arms. His eyes scrunch up and he grabs onto Garp’s brightly printed shirt with a screech. This is who the Marines slaughtered hundreds to find. This is the last remnant of Roger’s blood upon the earth.
This is a child who has done nothing wrong. If he were any other, the Marines would protect him without a second thought.
Since this is Portgas D. Ace, they would kill him on sight.
(Maybe they would even call it justice.)
Garp cannot let that happen. Dadan owes him a favor or two anyway – and she’s old enough to care for a child, or at least raise him to be strong.
It has to be enough.
It has to be.
(Even so – Garp’s heart breaks as Ace leaves his arms, even though he lets no cry or last Be Well, Ace, slip from his lips.
This is a secret.
Just another one that Garp will keep close to his chest, wrenching him apart each day.)
-
Kong steps down. Sengoku is made Fleet Admiral. Garp smiles at his friend with bags under his eyes, and wonders what Sengoku will order him to do next.
Surprisingly – it’s nothing that hurts.
He’s given free reign, free to float around, mostly, ordered on his own command. The Roger pirates have long disappeared and the Rocks Pirates Rookies are making too big a name for themselves, growing too big too fast, too powerful too fast, for Sengoku to be willing to risk sending insurmountable force against them.
Garp is as free as one can get with justice written across his back. He even has his own ship – The Doghouse, he calls her, and laughs at the collar around his throat, keeping him quiet and mum and subservient to all the invisible injustices of the world.
With the Doghouse comes Bogard, supposedly an agent of some sort, but to Garp a man who stays silent only so that his few measured sentences echo even louder. He’s a good man, who doesn’t bring up Garp’s infrequent trips to his hometown jungle nor comments on the way that Garp carefully – so very carefully — plots Dragon’s movements across the world.
Bogard, dressed in his ever-present fedora that obscures his face, smiles rarely and shares secrets even less so. He doesn’t demand Garp give him any trust, and the only thing he answers when questioned about his loyalty, on lonesome Grand Line nights when the drinks are brought out, is that he was a child once.
And, like some fortunate children, he was by a Hero Navy.
Garp never set out to be a hero, but if the justice he brings about men such as Bogard, then perhaps the reason doesn’t quite matter in the end.
(Right?)
-
Dragon is a bastard child who shows up in the middle of a raging Grand Line Storm to drop a bundle of red fabric and grabby hands and black hair into Garp’s hands. For a moment, he is speechless - reminded too much of Ace and the way he was a bundle of red and black and grabby hands and freckles, and the fact that Ace was supposed to be far far away from here and not in Garp’s hands -
Did Dragon steal Ace?
Why? Is Ace’s secret uncovered, did Dragon hurt his grandson, his charge, Ace?
Anger contorts Garp’s features before the bundle in Garp’s hands laughs, loud and bright, brighter than Ace would ever dare, and Garp looks down.
It’s a baby. It’s not Ace, who is three years old by now. It’s –
“Monkey D. Luffy,” Dragon says in a low, measured tone as he reaches out to swipe a few droplets of storm water from the baby’s – from Luffy’s head. “My son. Your grandson.”
A pause, then.
“Why?” Garp croaks out as the storm rages outside the secluded captain’s quarters.
Dragon steps away, closer to the door that he appeared from. “Blood,” He murmurs, “Is not something to be damned for. The world doesn’t see that.” His eyes flash, like Roger’s flashed, and he nods down at Luffy. “You’ll keep him safe, at least.”
Garp thinks he should protest. That he should tell Dragon – who probably knows, troublesome brat – that he already has a child to look out for, who he’s all but abandoned on an island with bandits sworn to secrecy, who he’s left and kept quiet about and perhaps visited all of three times –
But he doesn’t protest. He draws Luffy closer to his chest, lets his tiny hands wrap about Garp’s finger, and nods.
He doesn’t promise anything. He doesn’t think he could bear failing a promise like this. When he looks up, Dragon is gone, and Bogard is standing in the doorway, eyes wide and worried as he looks at the bundle in Garp’s on.
“Sail for Dawn Island,” He orders, and does not order Bogard to keep quiet. He will anyway. “I think… it’s time for a rest.”
“Aye, sir,” Bogard answers, still looking at Luffy, and then turns to shout orders in the midst of the storm.
Garp sits down onto the plush chair in the room, feeling the weight of the world held in his hands. At the cracking of thunder, Luffy laughs and laughs and laughs, and Garp hopes he won’t ever stop.
-
Luffy does not go to the bandits.
Luffy goes to Woop Slap, with Makino, young and curious, looking over his shoulder. Garp visits Ace, and doesn’t mention Luffy, and waves farewell to Windmill Village, and doesn’t mention Ace.
Secrets, secrets, secrets, piling on top of his tongue. The less people who know – the less people who know there is something to harm – the less chance Sengoku has to find out about the blood of criminals that Garp keeps sheltering. The children Garp keeps sheltering.
He returns to the Grand Line with little fanfare, and ignores sleepless nights in which his mind replays the multitude of ways the Marines could kill his grandchildren, and call it justice.
Justice, because there is one less criminal in the world.
Justice, because a legacy is culled before it can begin.
Justice, because the Marines exert a power that they should not have.
(He’s bound to justice, written across his back in a coat of white and black thread, but… He wonders if pressed, he would follow it.
Or if he would just lose his balance on this tightrope of indecision, and fall.
It keeps him up at nights, alone and quiet aboard his ship.)
-
The world moves on. Emperors rise, pirates fall, and Garp finds himself in something like a retirement as new admirals are put in place and new pirates take their first steps into infamy. He wanders, he frets, he eats rice crackers every time Sengoku even tries to talk to him, and he shows only Bogard the picture of his grandson.
Of Luffy, of course.
(Ace didn’t have enough people around him to care to take a picture. He scowled too much to smile anyway.)
When he visits, it is only Bogard that accompanies him, and only Bogard that knows that Garp leaves for the mountains after the second day.
Luffy grows up, cheerful and always by the sea side.
Ace grows up, bitter and alone, and asking questions that make Garp burn with all of his failures.
(Old man? Was it good that I was born?
Garp answers.
It’s not the right one.
Maybe he should have stayed silent.)
Then –
Shanks, the brat, filling his grandson's head with visions of piracy and adventure, danger that killed Roger, reasons that will give Sengoku more reason to kill his grandson, more reasons for the Marines to place justice against the life of a child.
Being a Marine would have shielded Luffy. Shielded Ace. Put them on the right side of justice, because his brats were going to be great and the Navy doesn’t like to put down its heroes.
(Just look at Garp.)
King, Luffy cries, defiant, and when he tosses him into the bandit’s den with Ace, Ace cries it too, and then Sabo, and his grandsons are happier than he’s ever seen them.
King, Luffy cries, and Ace cries, when their brother is shot down by a Celestial Dragon while Garp is half way across the world, and is it right, is it fair, it is justice to stand by and let children be slaughtered by false gods in white robes and sneering faces?
Garp knows the answer as he pulls his grandsons close to his chest. He knows the answer like he knew it at Baterilla, like he knows it now, and he stays silent.
Always, always silent.
-
Garp doesn’t say anything when he hears that Ace set sail. At least, not in the company of Sengoku who might recognize Roger’s grin on Ace’s face, or who might connect the dots between East Blue and Garp and Roger.
Privately, he rants to Bogard about the mischief Ace is causing, about the people he is saving, and how Ace would have made a damn good marine, if only he had listened.
When Luffy sets sail, Garp intends to follow him.
But –
Instead, he finds a boy with a dream as big as Luffy’s.
Coby, he calls himself, pink hair wild and glasses making his eyes wide, I want to be a Marine, Sir!
He’s nothing like Garp, save for his stubbornness. Where Garp is strong, Coby is weak, and where Garp keeps quiet on the things that matter, Coby stands tall with a voice that still cracks and defiance in his eyes.
Taking them on is a chance, one of the many in Garp’s life, another child failed by justice shoved into his grasp. Yet where Dragon turned away from the Marines and Luffy and Ace openly defy it under a black flag, with Coby–
There’s a spark in him, as he salutes and declares that he’ll track down pirates, a spark that makes him train in the dead of night when he thinks Garp isn’t looking and pushes him till he passes out and then pushes him to wake up.
He’s doing it now – training, running through the forms, all by the light of the moon and in a ferocious manner that makes his entire body shake. He’ll collapse soon, and Garp will have to lug him back to the barracks.
But for now, Garp watches, Bogard by his side, and thinks of sparks.
“He’s not like you,” Bogard says softly, hat pulled down over his face. “He’s… idealistic.”
“He’s young,” Garp dismisses. “He’ll learn soon enough.”
Coby is too bright eyed to be like Garp. Too weak. His heart cares too much and he has more sympathy than Garp has ever had for anyone. He believes in justice, in the way only those who ever lived with East Blue Marines can believe.
(But he’s met Luffy and arrested a Marine Captain, and he’s still like this, still forging ahead and-)
“Maybe,” Bogard supposes, “But I don’t think he will.”
Looking at Coby pushing himself up from the ground, eyes flashing in the night, blood covering his smile as he still pushes forward –
Garp just has to wonder, if perhaps, just maybe – Bogard is right.
-
Coby is trouble, but not more trouble than Luffy, who takes on the entire world government and wins.
Then –
Ace disappears.
Then –
Ace is in Impel Down, and Garp is visiting him in the same cell he saw Roger last. Ace is bitter and weak and his only father is Whitebeard, and –
Perhaps it would be justice, to lock Ace up for burning down Marine bases and fighting authority after authority. That would be retribution, perhaps, that would be justice.
This is not that. This is locking Ace up for blood he can’t control and damning more men to war and death over a single execution.
He should say something to Sengoku. He should. He should protest this whole thing, burn his coat like Dragon did because this is not what he stood for, what he fought for, and still – still his tongue stays silent in protest even as he sits before Ace in that cell, sits by Ace on his execution stand, and does nothing.
He hopes to every god he’s never prayed to that Whitebeard succeeds. That Luffy, falling from the sky like the bastard child he is, succeeds. That he won’t have to betray Ace, that he won’t have to betray his duty to the world, that he can balance still in this perfect gray spot between pirate-sympathizer and Navy Hero, that he can still hover in denial about truth and everything else in the world.
Ace dies.
And for the first time in the full light of day, with the world watching, Garp defies the Marines and attacks with all the rage of a coward who loves his family.
Sengoku stops him. He doesn’t get a chance to put his own fist through Akainu’s chest, doesn’t get a chance to enact retribution, to enact justice –
(In the darkness of the night, he wonders what would have happened if Sengoku didn’t.)
-
Sabo is dead, killed by Celestial Dragons.
Ace is dead, killed by a Marine Admiral.
Luffy isn’t dead, but Garp doesn’t know how he’ll get up.
Kneeling before Ace’s body, burned and ruined but his face so peaceful, Garp feels the ache of everything crash down on his shoulders. At the very least, he doesn’t have to care for the body.
At the very least, Ace has a crew, a family to do that for him.
They’re tears, cascading down his face. Grief, open and raw, because this is it. There’s nothing left to save, no child to protect, no secret to keep. Sengoku knows, has known, and everything hurts just a little too sharp.
“Garp,” Shanks comes up to his side, voice stern.
“Brat,” Garp replies, distantly.
“You’ve had your time to grieve.” He feels like he’s been grieving for years. “It’s time… it’s time.”
It’s time.
Yes, it’s time.
“Take care of my grandson,” Garp orders for once, loudly and proudly in the midst of a deadened Marineford, as men drag themselves up from bloody graves and corpses litter the ground. He’s never once said it before, and it’s too late now, and he’s been silent for far too long.
(He’d always kept quiet when he shouldn’t have.)
But no longer.
“Aye,” Shanks agrees, and then it’s like a dream as Garp leaves the pirates to mourn and the world to celebrate, as Garp joins throngs of people in the medical ward of Marineford where there is hushed silence and labored breathing.
Sengoku had wanted justice.
Garp had wanted to protect people.
They both failed, in the end.
But standing over the body of Coby, who’s small and not-quite-weak and defiant, who cried for everyone to stop, who defied the admirals that Garp never dared to fight against –
Perhaps, someone won’t fail.
Perhaps someone will do something about the mess of the world.
And – perhaps – Garp will be the one to help usher that change in.
Coby wakes up, Garp smiles, and there is an entire definition of justice to change.