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The Drums of Liberation have always been there. Always there. Always beating. It just takes a while for people to hear them.
The first person to hear them is Shanks. It's double impressive, in hindsight, that Red Hair can hear the beat, at all. The Drums start low, a whisper across the wind and sea. They aren't roaring. The rhythm isn't even fully developed. It's an off-tempo beat from an unsteady drum.
That, and that Luffy is loud back then. So loud and so busy declaring to anyone that will listen that he'll be King of the Pirates. It's hard enough to hear oneself think over the brat's noise.
But Shanks can hear something over the noise. Something else.
He doesn't understand them, it's worth noting. Hearing and comprehending are very different things, but Shanks isn't the type to get caught up in the why. There's plenty of mystery out in this world. Though there are those who won't rest until they've uncovered every secret, scoured every stone - that isn't him. Never has been. All that stuff requires plans and thoughts and strategies and he doesn’t care for all of that. Shanks would probably benefit from some plans and strategies - maybe he'd still have two arms if he had tried thinking ahead, for once.
That isn't him. That's not his role.
His role is the now. The present is a gift from Mother Ocean and he loves when she gives him gifts. He intends to enjoy every gift she passes into his outstretched arms like it’s the greatest present he’s ever received. No restrictions, no hesitations. Moving full sail through life and right into Mother Ocean’s ample and open bosom.
It’s shameless, but that's why he gets best gifts. That's why he gets to be the first to hear Them. Before anyone else hears Them echo through their heart and body and soul. Shanks is here. He's present.
He's the first one who's listening.
"Captain?"
Ben Beckman is drunk, or working on it. The roll of the seas in the East Blue is gentle and calm - he isn't used to this much stability. Every sip of his drink makes the deck curve under his senses and he feels more at home with every pull.
"That a new song?" He asks between his next swig. They can't see Foosha village anymore, but Shanks' eyes linger on the exact point it had disappeared beyond the horizon.
"Hmm?" He hums in question, not bothering to break his gaze. Beckman hoists his next bottle of rum onto the railing beside his captain and points to Shanks' fingers.
"You've been tapping a new beat since we left port." He announces, giving his head a slight tilt. "I've never heard it before."
Shanks looks down with a detached smile, his fingers thrumming against the redwood in low, repeated moves.
Tap, taptaptap. Tap, taptaptap.
"No." He answers. "I don't think anyone's heard it."
Tap, taptaptap. Tap, taptaptap.
Shanks gives a low and toothy smile that stretches his scarred eyes.
"Not this one, at least."
Beckman takes another swig of his rum and starts mimicking the rhythm along the side of the bottle. Glass and wood percussion mix alongside the spray of the sea. Beckman nods, pleased.
"I like it." He declares. "Catchy." He rounds on Shanks and gives his Captain a long smirk. "Kind of beat that makes you want to throw a party."
Shanks beams at the idea. That's right. That's exactly right. With a bellowing laugh, he throws an arm around his first mate and storms back to his crew.
"Listen up, boys!" He thunders and his crew cracks to eager attention. They up like they’re ready to celebrate or fight the devil. Either or - whatever Shanks wanted.
"I got us a new song!”
The Red Haired pirates roar in approval and hurry to learn the new beat. It's a fantastic party.
The first time Franky hears Them, Franky is livid.
It’s a noise, loud and banging and pounding through the Adam wood. Is that someone hammering? Someone taking a hammer to his ship? He can feel the cola inside his chest start to fizz.
"Oi!" He roars, metal hand crashing into the deck above him while he sits cloistered in his workshop.
"Usopp! Luffy! Zoro!” He lists the usual suspects, because it's usually right. "Knock it the hell off!"
When silence is the reply, a smaller, more delicate hand emerges from his palm and massages his temples. Franky sighs. There are few omens more concerning than silence on the Thousand Sunny. The Drumming continues.
Thump, thumpthumpthump. Thump, thumpthumpthump.
He lets his pencil fall to his blueprints as he shoves himself up from his chair.
"I swear," he threatens in a hushed whisper as he climbs to the upper decks. "If I find a single nail on that Adam wood I'll stage a mutiny." All the while he climbs, the noise of drumming only grows. Franky growls.
"I said..." He yells, slamming open the hatch to the main deck and bursting into the sun. "Knock it off!"
The sea doesn't echo. His yell rolls off the deck and onto the waves, rising and falling into the distance. There's not even a bird on deck to sqwauk and fly off at the outburst.
"What the..." Franky whispers, turning in confused circles. He was certain he could hear someone banging away up here. Someone Drumming and hitting something they shouldn’t and dammit he was going to put a stop to that shit, right now.
"Franky?"
A little voice, the ship’s resident reindeer, peeks his head over the crows mast and looks down. Franky's eyes narrow and he scans the deck with a confused stumble out of the hatch. No nails. No holes. No bombs or sword marks or kicks or lightning scorch marks or cannon ball holes or anything.
He can't hear that noise, either, and now he's just confused.
"Is everything alright, Franky?" Chopper calls down, a tinge of concern in his child's voice.
"Neeee." Franky stretches, doubting himself. "Chopper! Did you hear anything up here? Any..."
His eyes scan again, following the knots in the Adam wood that he knows like the back of his hand and searching for even the smallest suggestion that something was wrong. There isn’t anything.
“Any what?” The reindeer asks, setting down his charts and eyeing the robot with concern. “I’m just here, reading. Luffy’s asleep on the bow. There’s no noise.”
The bow. Franky’s eyes shift, able to make out the top of a straw hat draped across their captain’s face. The slight sound of snores drifts on the wind, but nothing like a banging.
“It’s…” Franky tries, but just ends up waving Chopper off and walking back to his workshop.
“Nothing, enjoy your day.”
Chopper blinks, confused. Luffy keeps snoring, oblivious and unconcerned.
The sound is gone, but as he walks back down Franky leaves an open palm on the wood of the Thousand Sunny. He leans his head forward, touching against the surface and whispering into the boards.
“You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?” He asks. The wood doesn’t answer, but the creaking sound of waves rolls against her walls. Franky still smiles.
“Atta girl.”
He gives the beam a loving pat, returning to his workshop and his beloved projects.
It isn't that Zoro doesn't hear the Drums. He does.
He just doesn't care.
Why should he? The moment Luffy starts untying, clumsily pulling at ropes in the middle of Axe-Hand Morgan's yard, Zoro doesn't need to hear some useless noise. Luffy is, has always been, the liberation. Who cares if there is a background soundtrack?
He's followed Luffy to hell and back (more than once, he should add) and he'd do it again and again because Zoro doesn't have to hear the noise to know. He doesn't need a beat to follow the raven haired moron through the darkest storms and deepest seas.
What would paying attention to Them even do? His first interaction with Luffy was the literal, not figurative, breaking of chains.
Who needs freedom as an allegory? Luffy did liberation as a verb.
Zoro preferred action, anyway.
For the first five years of knowing each other, Hancock can't hear the drums. She isn't trying to ignore them, she just can't hear anything over the sound of her own heartbeat when she's around Luffy.
The day she conquers herself and hears Them, a persisting beating behind the reigning Pirate King, her love increases tenfold.
How had she missed this? Had she truly been so shallow? Desperate and clinging to nothing but a figment of her own mind for all of these years. Following not his, but her own heart, alone? When the reality was this...this...
Tap, taptaptap. Tap, taptaptap.
Luffy turns, and for the first time Hancock doesn't melt. She meets his gaze and just listens. Her own heart starts beating in sync.
Ironically, it's also the first time Luffy looks at her. Does he hear the syncopation? Did he realize what happened? Hancock never knows. But from that day forward she hums the same little song, following her new captain and happy to listen to the music. She adds a few notes herself, and Luffy really starts to pay attention. He pays so much attention that eventually they make a song together, and the Pirate Empress becomes the Pirate Queen.
There’s even more heartbeats, now. Each chaotic in their own way and marching to their own tunes. Members of the Straw Hat crew are thrilled, naturally, at the new additions to the harmony. There is, however, a lingering concern at whether or not the world could survive multiple Luffy-esque melodies. Hancock doesn’t care. She just keeps listening, to the original beat and all of the new ones.
Forever grateful that she stopped and learned how to listen.
The person who hears the Drums the most is Chopper, but he is the only straw hat regularly tasked with listening to their captains heartbeat.
“Luffy?” He asked, wide eyed and young but still mostly certain that heartbeats shouldn’t sound like a three part rhythm.
“Mhmm?” Luffy answered, mouth full of meat because that was the only way to get him to sit long enough to have a proper medical exam.
“Has your heartbeat…” the young reindeer searched for words that sounded like what a real doctor would have asked because that’s what he was — Dr. Choppper, real doctor.
“Always been like this?”
Luffy shrugged, more interested in his next bite of meat than answering questions. His neck stretched, snaking an ear to the center of his chest while his chewing carried on, uninterrupted. Luffy listened, tilting his head and pretending he had real thoughts inside.
“Huh.” He beamed after a nanosecond of thought. “Seems normal to me!”
At the time, Chopper lacked the confidence, both clinical and personal, to pressure his new captain any further on the matter. Six year later, Chopper doesn’t have any hesitation in telling his favorite but most puzzling patient that his heartbeat, in fact, is not normal.
“Luffy.” He says, face serious. He’s not trying to pretend serious, anymore. He doesn’t have to pretend to be a real doctor. He knows he is. Now, his seriousness comes from genuine concern. “This heartbeat is irregular.”
Luffy shifts, leaning on the deck and eyes darting between passing clouds.
“Is that bad?”
“It’s not great.” Chopper says. “It’s definitely not normal.”
Luffy twists his face, digging in his ear and pushing on his thoughts.
“Do I have to be normal?”
Chopper blinks, looking at his captain and then back to where his stethoscope could still hear the pitter patter of the King’s heart.
Thump, thumpthumpthump. Thump, thumpthumpthump.
“Just…let me know if it ever feels weird, okay?” Chopper relents, and Luffy grins so wide his ears flex under his hat.
“ Of course, Doctor Chopper!” He replies before a growl in his stomach interrupts every noise altogether.
“Now, where’s the meat you promised?”
There are those who never hear the Drums.
Enel is lost in his own self-appointed apotheosis, both unable and unwilling to hear the Call. He’s too focused on being a god, too preoccupied with why this tiny, insignificant little ant won’t stay down every time he smites it. In the end, the last thing he ever hears is the ring of the bell. It’s like the Drums, but it’s only one note of the song. He doesn’t want to hear anymore, so he leaves for the Moon.
There is no sound in the vacuum of space, after all.
Big Mom doesn’t hear them because she’s too busy singing, herself. Soul Pocus is her song and it’s the only one any of her poor, sometimes misguided children need. Why would anyone want to play another? She tries to hard to silence the Drums, even though she isn’t even listening to the tune. Whole Cake, Wano - each time an attempt and each time a failure. It infuriates her to no end. Her song. Why won’t that brat just be quiet and obey her song. Why won’t he just be silent?
It’s fitting that her final moments are spent in complete and utter silence.
Doflamingo Donquixote doesn’t hear the song because Doflamingo Donquixote doesn’t hear anyone. He doesn’t hear the screams of his victims as he builds a weapons cartel atop bodies and blood. He doesn’t hear the cries of a nation, begging and singing for freedom with all their heart while trapped under the heel of his pointed feet. He can’t even hear the Song when it calls out, loud and growing even as his Birdcage shrinks around the worthless dirt of Dressrosa.
Doflamingo doesn’t hear the song because Doflamingo doesn’t hear anything except himself. Corazon may have died years ago, but the silence he left on his older brother never truly fades.
Robin, Brook decides, thinks too much for her own good.
“It’s not about the Spirit, Robin.” He insists, leaning against his violin and letting the rising moon sparkle along the water. Jinbei is beside them both, leaning and sitting against the rail and enjoying the night air.
“That isn’t the point.”
Robin tilts her head, glass of wine swirling in her hands and the sea swirling in her gaze. She watches as Jinbei nods, a silent agreement to the statement that brings her brow into a tightened knot.
“I understand, Brook.” She insists. “But these things, the Drums. It isn’t something we’re making up. It is a literal heartbeat sound. This isn’t just magic. This is a real and tangible and I can’t understand how it works.”
“Because it doesn’t work.” The Skeleton counters, leaning over the railing and letting salt and sea mix against his bones while he pretended he still felt it on his skin. “It just is.”
“Just is?”
“Precisely.”
The Historian frowned, tasting the thought in her mind and finding it lacking.
“It must have a source.” She sets her glass down and rolls, turning to face her companions.
“Things do not happen in a vacuum. The people of Ohara knew about the Drums of Liberation. They heard them and wrote about them and experienced a real and audible phenomena. If I am to complete my history of the Void Century, a part of that effort must be how the Drums work.”
Brook dips his head with a sigh and Jimbe’s shoulders roll in an eased humor.
“Your dream is valiant, indeed, Robin.” He replies while his feet dangling over the side of the boat, lapping in the small mist from waves broken by the bow. “But our Musician is right. You will never understand the Drums that way.
Robin crosses her arms, distaste in this so-called counsel.
“If this conversation is to continue in cryptic half-sayings, then I won’t both you two any longer with this —“
The Skeleton’s hand was on the historian’s forearm, gentle and far warmer than Robin expected it to be.
“That’s not what we mean.” Brook insists. “We want to help, Robin. If you are to understand this phenomena and document it for your Dream, you will first need to learn how to let go and experience it.”
“Experience?” She balks, blinking at the claim and sipping from her cup. “Whether I can hear the Them isn’t the issue - I’ve heard the sound they make with my own ears. Chopper has helped me listen directly to the heartbeat and document the rhythm!”
Robin huffs, leaning over the side and letting her glass swirl inside her grasp.
“Direct access and yet I’m no closer to figuring out where it comes from. What’s the true source.”
Brook rolls, leaning back as though this answer changes everything and realization striking across his bony face.
“Ah, that explains it!” He announces, a triumphant finger up for his companions to see. It’s the most obvious thing in the world. “That’s why you aren’t experiencing the Drums. You’re looking the wrong way.”
“Wrong way?”
Jinbei nods, a sudden understanding that makes perfect sense crossing his scaled features. Robin bites back her own annoyance.
“I don’t understand.”
Brook tilts his head while his fingers ghost down to his knees. They wrap around the cherry wood neck of his violin.
“Answer me this,” he asks, pulling the instrument up to his neck and rosining his bow with a gentle flourish. “When I play for an audience, where does the music come from?”
Robin stares into her wine, her reflection annoyed in a murky red hue.
“I assume that because you ask such an obvious question the answer is not what I expect.”
Brook smiles, plucking a string and winding up the tune until it matches his key. He’s already at perfect pitch, but it never hurts to double check.
“Humor me.”
“Fine then.” She declares, answering the way she knows he thinks is wrong. She doesn’t think about how she genuinely wouldn’t know another answer. “The clear answer is the instrument.”
Brook smiles, and the strings of his violin give a small hum as he pulls the bow across. “I had a manager who thought the very same thing. ‘Play softer’, he used to yell to us from the side. ’If the people in the cheap seats wanted to hear, they should have bought better seats.’
Brock sways in the sea breeze, something between laughter and pity creeping on his bones.
“He was convinced that this instrument, that any instrument, makes the music. But that is the impression of the observer, not the musician.”
“When I play music, the sound comes from my instrument. I play loudly, more sound. I play softly, less sound. But the music…”
He turns. Brock doesn’t have eyes but Robin feels like she’s being looked straight through.
“The music comes from you.”
“Music is not a sound. It is not a physical thing that can be measured or quantified. It’s the joy that sweeps across a person’s face as the notes wash away their worry. The way fear and doubt and hate melt while rhythm lifts and pulls until the bitterest of enemies dance till the dawn.”
“The Drums of Liberation are not a sound to be watched, they are music to be lived. You are trying to capture a feeling in a bottle and while I understand your reason, as your friend I feel compelled to caution you.”
He’s looking at her again, and Robin wishes so badly she could have met him when he was still skin and bone. To see the brightness and compassion in his eyes, the gentle tug of laugh lines around his lips.
“I don’t want you to miss the music because you’re too busy trying to understand it.”
Robin looks out over the waves, the ocean a swirl of blue and inky blank as she takes another sip of her wine. Jinbei and Brook are waiting; listening. Not pushing or challenging but patient and listening because they cared about her. Robin didn’t know what she’d ever done in her cursed life to deserve a family like this, but she was forever grateful that she’d done it.
“What…” she says after a long pause under moving currents. “Should I be listening for?”
Jinbei laughs, a sound that rolls from his belly and bounces across the water like music on the page. Brook smiles, pulling up his violin and a simple melody accompanies the sea.
“That’s the easiest part.” He happily shares. He’s playing now, simple notes from his violin but she’s heard this song before. Jinbei begins to sway, his large body rolling like a metronome as Robin’s fingers tap to the familiar tune of Bink’s Sake.
“All you have to listen for is when you feel Joy.”
Sanji understood them like he understood most things - through a cooking metaphor.
“Timing.” Zeff had told him, back when Sanji was barely tall enough to see above the burners and Zeff had traded cannons and plunder for salt and pepper. “Cooking is all about timing.”
With a flourish, the pirate-turned-Barratie founder brought down his knife, dicing through a bell pepper with a thunk against the cutting board.
Chop, chopchopchop. Chop, chopchopchop.
Sanji watched, steely eyed and wholly focused on the cadence. He eyed his own cutting board, a smaller knife and a smaller pepper but definitely one that was going to taste better than whatever this old, washed up pirate could cook.
Chop chop chop chop — ack!
Sanji hissed, reeling on his heels and hand clenched around his finger as the knife clattered to the chopping board. Zeff let out a bark of a laugh, pulling forward the boy’s hand and wrapping a bit of cloth around his bleeding finger.
“Cadence, boy. Cadence.” He lectured, kneeling down and giving Sanji something to glare at so the boy could focus on not crying. “If you rush your food no one will ever want to eat it. Timing is key and I’m telling you this tempo is the best.”
Zeff turned back to his board, grabbing the boys knife and continuing the cut.
Chop, Chopchopchop. Chop, Chopchopchop.
Sanji definitely didn’t sniffle because he definitely wasn’t crying. Reaching back to his own board he grabbed Zeff’s knife and what had remained of the chef’s pepper.
Chop, chopchopchop. Chop, chopchopchop.
It was slow and sloppy, little pieces then big pieces and all of them more uneven than Sanji would like. But something in the way he cut, the flow of the tempo and Sanji had this feeling he could feel the flavor. He was moving with the food. Flowing with the food. Truly cooking, for the first time in his life.
It was a rush.
He looked back to Zeff, eyes so wide in excitement he’d forgotten he had been glaring at the old man. Zeff laughed from his belly, low and steady but warm.
“That’s better.” He praised, and Sanji beamed. Zeff took that moment to smack the boy upside his head.
“Now, go clean that hand. I’m not having you bloody my kitchen because you can’t use a damn knife.”
“Listen here you old bastard! I can so use —“
But that was the reason. When Luffy had come along, Sanji could feel the cadence. Maybe he didn’t understand it at the time. Maybe it didn’t matter. All he knew was that the best Chef he knew told him cadence was key.
Whatever Luffy was cooking, Sanji wanted in.
Usopp tells all kinds of stories.
Big stories, little stories. Happy stories and sad stories. Stories that make you want to cry big wet tears of joy and stories that make you gnaw off the tips of your nails in a fearful flutter.
He tells stories. It’s kind of his thing.
Nami navigates. Sanji cooks. Zoro chops things down and gets lost and everyone on the Straw Hat crew has a roll - has a purpose. It’s Usopp’s job to keep everyone together with stories because sometimes reality isn’t as fun and stories are what make dreams feel achievable.
Usopp loves telling stories and Luffy, conveniently for Usopp, loves doing things that make for great stories. Since the day he stepped on the Going Merry (and then stepped off, but stepped back on again), the world’s greatest storyteller has been front and center to the world’s greatest spectacle and it’s a match made in heaven. Wherever he goes, Usopp shares the heroic and frightful tales of peril and adventure, the story of the Pirate King and his fearless crew.
“And the beast Yonko Kaido roared into the clouds, a towering serpent of fire and lightning and rage. He was a monster the likes of which the world had never seen! He roared with all his might and his voice shook the whole of Wano in his fury. But then…” His voice goes quiet, the entire village leaning from the edge of their seats. Usopp jumps up, standing on a nearby rock and throwing his arms wide.
“Out of the clouds the size of a giant, Luffy emerged! Bigger than Oars Jr he brought his foot down and squashed the tyrant Kaido into the ground like an ant!!”
For emphasis, Usopp leaps from the rock and stamps his heel into the dirt. The crowd roars in shock and joy, imagining the clash of titans with eyes wide in wonder. Usopp goes through even more of their adventures - the toppling of Big Mom, the liberation of Dressrosa. By the time he’s done, the party is abuzz at the tales he’s spun.
He smiles, leaning against a nearby wall and taking a moment to soak in the revelry. He pulls a nearby jar of rum for himself and hums in a quiet content.
“God Usopp! God Usopp!”
It’s a girl, couldn’t be older than seven. She’s been sitting quietly next to her family all night, eyes wide and mouth gaping while Usopp the Story Master regailed their whole village in the story of the Straw Hat Pirates. She skids up to where he’s reclining and tugs and the hem of his cloak. Usopp smiles, giving her a warm pat on the head.
“Yes, ma’am, little lady?”
The girl blushes at the reply, only her excitement springing her back on track.
“I have a question about Luffy!”
“A question, eh?” Usopp smirks. “What kind of question would you like to know? Is he really made of rubber? Does he really eat as much as a sea king? Is he really that silly?”
The girl giggles, clearly interested in the answers to all of the above, but she narrows her focus.
“Does Luffy smile really big?”
Usopp doesn’t know why he keeps doing this - traveling from town to town and telling stories around the fire. The Straw hat crew had gone their separate ways over a decade ago, but he and Kaya don’t have to travel anywhere. They could be sitting on an island, happily enjoying a quiet life of peace and tranquility and doing what they’d done for their entire childhoods. But there was something…something deep and loud inside Usopp’s chest that words can’t describe. He had to go out. He must. He needs to tell these stories. To tell the world of the second coming of the Sun God and the best friend he’s ever had. Kaya understands without a moments hesitation.
No one need lecture her on the importance of stories.
And this is important. He doesn’t know why, but it’s important. Leaving the crew had been sadness, but Usopp saw his friends all the time. Everyone still visits, everyone still writes. Kaya had once asked him if he was trying to fill a hole in his heart by becoming a traveling story teller, if that was what was so important. But if that were true, what hole was he filling? All his precious people were still alive and healthy and in his life. If he was filling a hole, what was the thing that he was missing so terribly it kept his feet moving from town to town?
Usopp blinks, his vision blurring as a noise hits his ears and thrums in his chest. The villagers are singing, now, their elder leading them in an ancient traditional chant they’ve had on the island for generations. The song is usually sung in sad, somber notes, but for a reason no-one understands the leader of the village pulls out a drum and plays the song with a new tempo. The people rejoice, singing it around the fire. All Usopp can hear is the pounding.
Bum, bumbumbum. Bum, bumbumbum.
His heart lurches, stirring and surging and the blood courses in his ears. That’s it. That’s IT.
He grabs the girl by the hands, the child squealing in delight as Usopp hoists her above his head and begins joyously pulling her to dance around the fire. The whole village has joined in.
“I think that…” he answers, stepping in time and feeling like he’s whole, again. “Might be the best question anyone has ever asked!”
In the same way some never hear the noise, not everyone who hears the Drums rejoices.
Buggy hates the sound. He didn’t know what it was when he first met the kid or why that sound got louder and louder each and every time they stumble across one another’s path, but he hates it. Shanks asks him, after the fact when the dust is settled and they can do things like talk as though they’re two scalawags pretending to be real pirates.
“What’s your deal with Luffy, Buggy?” He says, staring out to sea with a lustful gaze that makes Buggy annoyed to even be seen with him.
“After all, every time you’ve run into Luffy, your life has taken a serious upgrade over these years.”
“U-upgrade?” The clown roars, incensed at the notion. “Every time that psychopath is around me I almost get myself killed - usually due to his stupidity!”
Shanks squints, looking his former crew mate in the eye and not believing a word of the claim.
“Nah.” He says, certain. “No, it’s something else.”
“S-s-s-SHUT UP!”
The clown ends the conversation there, shoving away the red haired Yonko and returning to his circus. He needs to get away from all these crazy people. All these people who want to talk about stupid Straw Hats who start stupid Revolutions and turning the stupid world upside down.
He doesn’t want to talk about Straw Hat and he doesn’t want to hear about Straw Hat. Doesn’t want to hear that damn sound that echoes in his ears and sounds too much like memories of the only time Buggy felt his life wasn’t in mortal danger. He leaves Shanks behind him on the horizon, sailing back with his crew and drowning his ears in the cacophony of sounds that his Cirque du Freak creates.
He can still hear Them, so he tells the freaks in his command to make it even louder.
Buggy hears the Drums. How could he not? He heard them the first time. Back when he was young and excited to hear the sound. Back before he ate this damn fruit and his life got turned into a freak show of the happy life when he had a crew and a best friend and a captain in a straw hat. Every time he heard that noise it was nothing but a reminder of a time Buggy couldn’t have and it gnawed at his insides like termites in his heart.
The new drums are louder, clearer. Captain would have loved them.
But Buggy was selfish, sometimes. He didn’t want the new Drums, no matter how wonderful they may feel.
He just wished he could have had the old Drums back.
Of the original crew, Nami stays with him the longest.
They’ve freed the oceans and charted every part of the four seas. Luffy isn’t just the King of Pirates, he’s the savior of the water world — the confirmed Second Coming of Joy Boy. The world government is shattered, pillars of corruption ripped from their foundation and the Shadow King Imu, who would presume to sit atop the world, cast down by the bouncing beacon of Freedom.
The kingdoms of the world rejoiced, building back their broken lands under the banner of Freedom. Coby had proven true to his own dream. The Marines finally live up to the emblem on their backs and work hand in hand with the former revolutionary army to rebuild a world of peace and equality for all.
Luffy smiles, as always, happy to eat at feasts in his honor and celebrate with the freedom he loved. That part, everyone expects. What they don’t expect is when he announces he is leaving again, setting out to sea. He’ll look forward to seeing them all, next time.
‘Why?’ Coby asks, leaning at the dock and feeling less like a Fleet Admiral and more like a pink haired wimp from East Blue learning to stand over the unconscious Alvida. ‘Why keep moving? You didn’t just save a ship or a kingdom, this time - you saved the world! Don’t you deserve a break? Don’t you deserve to rest?’
Luffy smiles, laughing in his own way and patting Coby on the shoulder before continuing to march off to the Thousand Sunny.
‘Nami!’ The new admiral pleads. ‘Nami, surely you can talk some sense into him?’
Zoro was standing next to her, then, and he can’t stop the snort of a laugh as he marches dutifully behind his captain. Nami gives Coby a warm smile, squeezing his hand and following behind like she had so many times before. She doesn’t say anything, but as they’re hauling up the plank and Luffy is excitedly standing atop the flaming head of the Thousand Sunny’s bow, Coby finally understands.
It’s decades later, but they’re still sailing.
Most of the crew is gone, off on their own journey and following new dreams with the blessing of their captain. At this point it was just the three of them - the Pirate King, his Queen, and their faithful Navigator.
Her bright red hair is as white as sea foam. Luffy’s heartbeat is growing softer by the day. She’s leaning over the balcony of the Sunny, thumb idly rubbing over the hilt of a simple yet immaculate sword hanging at her waist. Purple wrappings with a delicate black sheath. Luffy is standing beside her, eyes on the horizon.
“Nami.” He says, his gaze neutral and not drifting from the ebbs of the tide.
“I think it’s time for you to get off.”
Nami turns, looking at her Captain for a long, silent, moment. Her voice is calm and even, but her fingers lace into a vice around purple hilt of the katana. Give her strength.
“Is that…” she starts, letting something heavy and inevitable churn inside her chest. “An order, captain?”
Luffy considers the question, weighing it in his mind before a small smile stretches at the corners of his cheeks.
“Yeah.” He says. “That’s an order.”
Tap, taptaptap. Tap, taptaptap.
The Drums are so weak, now. They used to roar in her ears like the waves in a squall, but now she has to focus just to be sure she’s hearing it right. She tries to remind herself that maybe it’s her hearing that’s failing, not the Drums, but the way Boa’s hand clenches against her chest while she stands nearby tells her everything. The Pirate Queen has tears in her eyes and the four black haired children - they’re adults, now, but always children in Nami’s eyes — beside her aren’t faring any better. Nami steps forward and wrap her arms around her captain’s neck.
“Thank you, Luffy.” She whispers, and stops trying to not cry as red hot tears smear across her cheeks. She’s holding on for dear life. For his. For hers.
“Thank you so much. For everything.”
Luffy despite the water works around him, doesn’t have tears in his eyes. There’s nothing to cry, about, as far as he’s concerned. He wraps his arms tight around Nami’s frame and a low rumble echoes from his aged chest.
“It was incredible, Nami.” He whispers. “Did you have fun?”
She can barely think through the tears pouring down her face. What a stupid question. So fitting.
“It was perfect, Captain.” She says, and that’s the truth. All these years of perpetual motion, and she wouldn’t trade a single second of it. It’s another two minutes before they part, but the youngest of Luffy’s children breaks the silence with an announcement.
“Land ho, port bow!”
She’s standing on familiar shores when she gets off. Wano’s beaches are worlds better than when the land had been poisoned under Kaido’s tyranny. The sand beneath her toes is warm and welcoming. The sword at her hip feels lighter and at rest as the wind rolls against her back. It’s happy to be home.
Luffy’s on the bow, she can see, his Straw hat covering his eyes and hiding what might be tears or might be laughs. Nami can’t tell from here. All she notices is the pounding that stirs in her heart, loud as ever and thundering in her soul, as he Captain raises a single fist into the air. Nami raises her own fist, a new set of tears cascading her cheeks. A heavy and mournful wind rolls at gale force off the island, inflating the Sunny’s sails and pushing the great ship over the horizon.
Thump, thumpthumpthump. Thump, thumpthumpthump. Thump, thump…
Nami falls to her knees, laughing and crying as the sound of Drums disappears into the shimmering blue of the ocean. She stays long enough to hear them die out completely, the tide rushing to a standstill and not a ripple of wave crashes against the shore. She clutches Enma at her hip for strength and she finds strength and sorrow in more abundance than she can manage.
It hurts. Like a cavern hole sinking open and the void feels inescapable. How will she ever be whole again? How could anyone ever be whole?
But then, the ripple of waves starts up again. A rolling breaker moves in from the distance and passes up to her waist. It slams into the shore and the sand and water churns against its’ arrival.
Crash, rumble, roll. Crash, rumble, roll.
It’s different. A new song with a different tempo. She misses the old one so much it feels like a gaping hole in her chest that will never be filled but somehow…
Crash, rumble, roll. Crash, rumble, roll.
She stands, something small and soothing creeping into the gaping pit in her chest and bringing the tug of a smile to her lips. It doesn’t fill the hole - not totally. She doubts she’ll ever find a replacement. She doesn’t even want to try. But as she steps off the beach and starts her march up the nearby shore, the tears from her eyes give way to the roll of a warm and low laughter. The new sound, the rumble and crash of drums, humming in the back of her mind.
Crash, rumble, roll. Crash, rumble, roll.
Luffy would have loved Them.
Fin.