Chapter Text
It had been a Thursday and raining and he was already in a foul mood when he heard about what happened in Shell's Town.
They’d been moored off the Gecko Islands, fresh from raiding and pillaging some poor village—more out of boredom than need. Small-time treasures for a small-time crew.
Even before his boots had hit the shore, there was a distinct and unpleasant feeling gnawing at his insides. Something on the breeze. Something that peaked his interest and made his intuition stand alert and on edge.
The town bristled at their arrival. Cautious. Wary. It had grown teeth in their absence, become defensive against strangers, protective of its own. The people watched from shuttered windows and doorways as the pirates paraded through the streets. They fought back with desperation, swinging rusted tools, broken bottles, anything they could hold. It was untrained, unfocused violence—but violence all the same. The whole town felt like a story that had jumped the rails. A new chapter beginning where the old one hadn’t ended.
That night, during what should’ve been a victory celebration, Buggy stayed sober. That gut-deep feeling hadn’t gone away. It sat heavy in him, coiled like rope. Something had happened while they were busy trying to make something happen. Not necessarily bad—but powerful enough to stir the ether. And the ether was awake now, alive in a way it hadn’t been in years. Vibrating.
Despite the common belief that he was rash and ruthless and without restraint himself, he was above all else keen for self-preservation, and the meant staying alert. Poking the sea beast was optional, sometimes. Havoc could wait.
Even if East Blue could be so, so dull...
It was safe and had kept them — him — safe for longer than any other place he had the misfortune to spend any significant amount of time. And it was dull, yes, but it was the price to pay for predictable currents and even more predictable shores and...
Then Shell Town happened, and everything goes to shit in a hand basket.
Because that? That wasn’t supposed to happen. That wasn’t predictable. No one just walked into a Marine base, looted it, disrespected its captain, slashed through its soldiers—and then just left.
That was New World shenanigans.
That was real pirate shit.
And, well...
☠️
What else is he supposed to do, really?
The earth had resumed its rotation after nearly two decades of standing still. There are embers catching to life on the horizon. And Buggy...
Well...
Like a moth to a flame, he couldn't resist but to go chasing the light, no matter how much he'd been burned before.
☠️
The kid (because despite any self-proclaimed and stolen title of being the future King of the Pirates, that is who stands in front of him; a child with his head held high and oozing ignorant confidence) is not what he expects.
He’s small. Thin. Too wide-eyed and — justakidjustakistjustakid! —
It sits like a rock in Buggy's stomach.
Even after his crew captures the kid's fellow fledgling pirates — his friends — because he will not honor them by deeming them a crew. Not yet.. . This naïve fool who boast the middle initial of D. — and he doesn't even try to hide it! Doesn't recognize it as the harbinger of doom that it is because he's — justakidjustakidjustakid — Buggy the man cannot reconcile the trio in front of him as anything but being just... So. Young....
...
And so were you, says the V oice in his head.
But it's different, he counters, equally unhelpful.
How? The Voice asks, taunting.
Because! He snaps.
Because it is. Different. Vastly and wholly and unequivocally. Because. It. Just. Is.
....
Even while he's got this other D. stretched past the point of breaking for any normal person, and then still orders another ten feet to go...
Even in spite of knowing how it feels, to be just a kid thrown into a world that just does not give a single fuck.
Even though the future King of the Pirates is still hasn’t yet had the cruelties of the world carved into his bones — too young to hold any resentment, which leaves Buggy having show him those cruelties while also begrudging them on his behalf and...
...
It. Just. Is.
....
Well....
It still pisses him off, alright?
Because this boy talks about destiny, and legends and treasure like those things haven’t already eaten men alive. He talks like someone with the same surety and enthusiasm and conviction that was about two decades out of place.
And it stirs something inside Buggy. Something half-dead. Something he buried years ago and abandoned to the wastelands of time to rot.
Because it is an already starved feeling — but it is also longing and primal and threatening to consume him whole right there on the spot.
It is something that he had fought — and won! — to push down for two decades .
But now… now that defense, the thing that keeps all that yearning chained up inside, is slow to rise. He stumbles more than usual when taunting them. Has to think harder to keep his mouth sharp. And it --
It pisses him off!
And when he orders for their shit to be collected and gone through -- not because he needs a map, but because he needs a distraction.
And laid out on the floor amongst the meager belongings came tumbling a cursed treasure in its own right.
And even if there is some possibility on this earth that the thing before them is not what he thinks it is and there just is no way and that would mean...
A hat.
That hat.
There could be another hat like it in the world. It’s not impossible. But…
It pisses him off.
And there are are other emotions starting to stir — deep set roots lurking beneath the surface, in spite of the tree having been cut down. They are threatening to break through soil and beg the sun for another chance and...
It just...
It pisses him off....
Because he knows that hat. Knows it's previous two owners. Knows it and them and its history so intimately — has memories with the image of it burned in his own memories of both the rare times of peace and always present times of war and...
He sees red.
Literally.
His vision goes spotty and dark at the corners and then there is an all consuming anger that threatens to tear him open from the inside until he's broken and torn to shambles and having to pull himself back together by his bootstraps and muscle fibers piece by piece. Again.
He's furious because in some universe -- in this universe, to be exact -- there exists an instance where that hat leaves its last known owner and finds itself on a journey for the ultimate treasure. Again.
And it's just...
Wrong. All of it. From the way it hangs too far over the kids ears to the the contrast of yellow against brown instead of red and...
Buggy does not need specialized Observation to feel the pride and fear radiating off of the self proclaimed future King of the Pirates as he witnesses Buggy retrieve the offending object out of the stack with two delicate fingers, to know that this inanimate object is only in the boy's possession because someone very important to him deemed him worthy enough to wear it.
The hat is loved. Fiercely. Desperately.
And Buggy—he hates that.
There is an indignant sound breaking through the blood threatening to drive him deaf. It is demanding and scared and protective.
And, really, Buggy doesn't need to feel those emotions radiating in waves from this infant wannabe who screams delusion and aspiration and destiny and potential and all the right feelings but in such a wrong form and...
He wants to break this child of Davy Jones.
Tear the whole moment down. Destroy everything and nothing and himself, too. He wants to grab destiny by the throat and scream until it listens and be still, damn it! Just be still and breathe and don't react don't' react don't react. Just once, don't blow their cover but he's...
Justakidjustakidjustakid!!
Buggy makes a show of methodically peeling himself from his crouched position, extending each muscle until they sit in alignment at his tallest height, and delicately — with precision — and a great deal of mind for his traitorous boots — takes two steps forward with a performer’s grace -- heel to toe, heel to toe -- right into the boy’s space. The boy's friends bellowed from the sidelines as Buggy lifts him by the jaw like a doll, closing the distance until he was sure the kid was on the tips of his toes and they were eye to eye.
He laughs in the kid's face. Pushes all other thoughts down down down — His question of sanity is fleeting: His mind was blown to smithereens years before.
Buggy, the Capricious Clown.
Buggy, the Jaded Jester.
Buggy the goddamned fool who still feels something...
He wants to eviscerate this plight of a child from existence for daring to shine so bright when Buggy knows that there is another light out there that would dwarf him from a hundred yards away. He wants to douse this future King of the Pirates with whale oil and watch the flame burn them both alive
“Steal this, too?” he asks, instead, voice syrup-smooth and dripping menace, despite currently ripping apart at the seams.
The kid tracks the movement. From Buggy’s hand on his face, to braces on his wrist, all the way up up up his arm until their gazes are locked fully. If Buggy were a betting man — which he most certainly is — he'd wager that the kid is searching for some sign of his soul hiding inside of him. He imagines that what is found instead are two pools of crystalline blue, just as dark and loathsome and deadly as the sea itself.
He imagines this, because he knows it's how he feels. But also because he can see it reflected back at him within the kid's own wide, dark eyes.
“Don’t. Touch. That,” the boy says, through gritted teeth.
He shrugs, uncaring. “My ship,” he taunts. He wants to put the hat on his head, just to solidify his point, but he believes in curses too much. Lives with one inside of him. And this one? Well, he knows whose hat this is — there is no question — and he does not want to invoke that bad juju.
So instead he holds it up between them. Feels the weight of it—not physical, emotional. Filled with history.
There is a part of him that just knows that the item is possessed. Not cursed, maybe, but there is definitely a presence there, tethering it to people who have claimed it as their own. It takes hold of something in Buggy's chest and squeezes it tight. He could swear the ghost of warm teakwood and spiced rum and something very distinct and musky and nonexistent in any recent memory floats in the air around them, trying to soothe, trying to calm, and...
“It was a gift,” the kid tells him, confidently. But there is something else in the kid's tone. Something needy and familiar and — wrongwrongwrong ...
So wrong.
Buggy pauses.
He has to know. Needs the name. Needs to hear it from the kid’s mouth. Needs to know where he is; to know what he's gotten up to for the last thirteen years because there are no more articles in the papers or updated bounties or run-ins with other pirates who had any information from the last decade to give, no matter what or how he persuaded them and Buggy had been... Needs to know If he’s alive. If he remembers.
“From who?”
His question is met with childish obstinance, at first. Buggy squeezes. Repeats the question — and how he loathes repeating himself — threatens to toss his friends overboard, piece by piece.
“From a better pirate than you!” The kid yells in his face. Spit goes flying across the facial defect that is his nose, and...
He can't help the exhale that escapes him. The weight that lifts from his chest and the way his shoulders drop from his ears as he comes back down to earth and — since when did he start levitating out of his boots? — and...
His voice is far away when he asks, just to make sure it was real and not a dream. “Red hair? Three scars down his left eye? Stupidly happy about everything?”
The kid scrunches his face up, pulls his head back on his incredibly stretchy neck and looks at Buggy with doubtful eyes. “Wait a second,” he says, unbelieving and... Yeah... Buggy gets it...”You know Shanks?”
Buggy drops him.
It probably looks intentional, but, really, his body feels like the same rubber the boy is practically made out of now, because the kid had says knows and not knew and...
They stare at each other.
And he doesn't need Haki to tell him that, this brat is destined to be someone.
And despite the better part of two decades of little to no communication.
Despite seas between them and enough years of unshared memories out weight the shared ones.
This brat isn’t special to him. Not yet. But he must be special to Shanks.
And if that’s true...
Then maybe he matters after all.
Because Shanks—gods damn him, idiot that he is—still means something to Buggy
After nearly two decades, the world was finally moving again. Pieces were shifting to make way for new history to take place.
And, if given the choice between death by fire or death by drowning, the choice was an obvious one...
Buggy fully intended to be there to watch it all burn. If for little else than to see who rose from the ashes.