[EotB] 053. Picking up the Pieces (Patreon)

14 years, 11 months, 28 days before Romance Dawn (1524.05.08)

Hancock woke slowly, sleep clinging to her and refusing to let go. It wasn’t hard to guess why, seeing as, the moment consciousness returned to her, her body resumed screaming at her for the abuse through which she had put it.

Hancock shifted, looking for a more comfortable position, struggling a bit under the heavy weight of the covers pressing down on her chest, the numerous bandages wrapped around her pulling against her movements.

In her addled state, it actually took her a few moments to remember how she’d ended up here. Last thing she remembered, she’d been falling off the Red Line, and then...

Ah, yes. She recalled thinking, after recovering from the surprise of being unexpectedly sent tumbling down a giant cliff, that she was essentially home free. Now that Garp, the last obstacle in her path, had allowed her to leave unmolested, there was no one who could stop her from reuniting with her sisters.

Hancock had relaxed... and promptly lost consciousness, mid-fall.

Thinking about it, that was unsurprising. Her body had already been at its limit, fading in and out, only kept upright and awake by her insistence to stay in fight-or-flight mode so long as she hadn’t actually escaped the Red Line. The sudden release of tension when she’d acknowledged that she’d done it, that she was safe, had just knocked her out on the spot.

Which could have been dangerous. Hancock was more durable than a normal human being, but hitting water at the speeds she’d been falling would have been like hitting concrete. She wouldn’t have enjoyed the landing.

Looked like she’d survived, though. Shakuyaku and the others must have still been waiting to catch her at the rendezvous point.

And she wasn’t the only who had survived, as a quick flicker of Observation confirmed. Sandersonia, Marigold, Salome. Everyone was fine.

Mission accomplished.

Finally.

Hancock relaxed into her pillow, closed her eyes, and let out a long sigh. It felt... almost strange, to know that her year-long quest was over. It had driven her for so long that the sudden lack of urgency, of background anxiety and frustration, left her feeling a bit... empty.

Hancock refused to let it affect her mood, though. There would undoubtedly be more issues to deal with in the near future, but for now, she could afford to relax a bit.

Not for long, however.

She must not have been the only one to keep on eye on her Haki, because only a few seconds later, the door to her room – which she recognized as the same guest room she had borrowed the last time she enjoyed Shakuyaku’s hospitality – slammed open, and two tearful girls rushed in and positively threw themselves onto the bed, reaching for Hancock.

Hancock had the presence of mind to keep her injured hand well out of the way. Pain still pulsed all the way up her arm with every beat of her heart, and she didn’t want to spoil their reunion – those stolen minutes back in the arena didn’t count – by screaming and bleeding all over the place.

Aside from that consideration, she gladly accepted the hug.

When Salome came slithering behind them and hissed a joyous greeting of her own, Hancock almost felt like Frodo waking up in Rivendell at the end of Return of the King, with every surviving member of the fellowship coming into the room one after the other to clap and reunite.

After a minute of sniffling, though, she patted her sisters on the shoulders – Marigold more gently because she had only a few fingers left on this side and her hand still hurt like hell. “All right, all right,” she said, and was surprised to find her voice scraping like sandpaper in her throat. “Let me sit up.”

She pretended not to notice Sandersonia discreetly wiping her eye while she reached for the glass of water waiting for her on the bedside table. Once it was empty, her throat felt much refreshed, and her voice had mostly regained its usual velvety smoothness.

She offered the girls a smile. “Like I said back in the arena, it’s good to see you both. For a while, I wondered if I ever would.”

“Yeah,” Sandersonia said, sounding choked and subdued. “I didn’t think we’d ever... How did you even find us?”

Marigold also leaned forward in interest, and Hancock supposed she had promised them the full story, so she launched into a recounting of the last year’s adventures.

It required a bit of editorializing at the start to redact all notions of her foreknowledge – that was a secret Hancock had shared with Salome, but didn’t intend to spread any further than that. In the story she told Sandersonia and Marigold, it was Captain Osmond of the Bent Cutter who clued Hancock in to the fact that Sabaody housed plenty of slave traders – which was really only half a life; they had talked about this, and he had warned her to be careful of exactly that. Everything after that followed a consistent chain of cause and effect and could be told accurately.

From fighting off pirates on the way to Sabaody, to her interrogation of criminals in the lawless area of the archipelago, culminating in a long evening of mass murder and eventual arson.

The girls looked quite satisfied with her description of Disco’s execution, though it did remind Hancock that the wretch had worked for Doflamingo, which would be something else she’d undoubtedly have to address later.

Then, Rayleigh finding her and taking pity on the lost Kuja. Meeting Shakuyaku and Gloriosa. Formulating plans to infiltrate Marie-Joie.

Hancock hesitated for a moment, when it came to describing her joining Hoboken’s retinue, and what she’d ended up doing with him – or rather, letting him do to her, as she’d mostly stayed a passive toy for him to use, rather than an active participant. She eventually decided there was little point in keeping all of that a secret. It wasn’t like she was ashamed of it... and Hancock hadn’t forgotten that both Sandersonia and Marigold had both suffered something even worse.

She was pretty sure bluntly asking the girls for details and forcing them to confront the issue head-on wouldn’t be wise, so she had so far refrained.

...Well, that, and there hadn’t really been time to talk about it, either.

But it meant Hancock didn’t actually know how the girls felt about it – she imagined they felt bad, obviously, but emotions could be complicated. She was aware that victims of sexual violence could sometimes internalize misattributed feelings of... of shame, of defilement, even of responsibility in what had been done to them.

Hancock had trouble imagining what that would be like, and she had even less clue how to even begin to address such a heavy topic. She’d always been various degrees of awful at providing emotional comfort to her sisters while they grew up, and that had been in the face of much less delicate matters. So this... this was very far out of her comfort zone.

But perhaps, seeing Hancock discuss her use of sex as a tool openly and without shame would help Sandersonia and Marigold realize that, whatever had been done to them, they didn’t need to be ashamed of it, either?

She regretted that idea almost instantly, when her sisters’ faces paled at her words and they started crying again.

...Ah, shit. She really was terrible at this.

Hopefully, Gloriosa or Shakuyaku would have advice to give, but for now, Hancock hurried to run damage control. “What’s wrong?” she asked, keeping her voice deliberately calm.

Sandersonia sobbed. “I’m sorry!” she said, fighting to push the words out through her sobs and repeatedly wiping the tears rolling down her cheek. “If I hadn’t... And your hand, and your eye! Gloriosa said...! It’s my fault you had to do all of that!”

Marigold was crying more quietly, but she looked no less stricken. “Hmm, I’m sorry too. We should have listened to you.”

...‘Listened to her’?

Hancock was confused – she didn’t remember anything she had said to the two of them that would be relevant to this situation, that they had failed to heed – but she pushed past it and instead plopped her hands over the girls’ heads and mussed their hair, less than gently.

She let out a loud sigh, as if they were being ridiculous, though she refrained from going so far as to roll her eyes, because that might look like she was straight-up disregarding their worries.

“I blame many, many people for what happened to you. To all of us,” she said. “I blame the Kuja Pirates, for failing to protect you when it was their express responsibility to do so. I blame the pirates who kidnapped you, of course.” She would have to ask about their exact identities later, in fact. They would have to hunted down and exterminated. “I blame Sabaody’s slave traders, who profited from selling you to the highest bidder. I blame the entire population of Marie-Joie and the World Government for perpetuating the practice of slavery. And I blame the navy for protecting those institutions.” She would blame fate, if that didn’t make her feel stupid. And sometimes, she even blamed herself, for not being there when it really mattered, but admitting to that last part wouldn’t exactly convince the girls they shouldn’t blame themselves, now, would it? “I don’t blame the two of you, though. You’re probably the only two people who are entirely blameless, in this whole affair.”

“But...”

“And as for not ‘listening to me’,” she continued over Marigold’s objection. “I don’t recall every forbidding you from... what, joining the Kuja Pirates? Is that it? If you’ll recall, I was planning to do that myself, eventually.”

It had never been in question that the three of them would eventually be drafted into the crew. Joining up wasn’t a problem. The neglect and carelessness the pirates demonstrated once Sandersonia and Marigold did join, however, most certainly was, and Hancock had neither forgotten, nor forgiven. She wasn’t sure she ever would.

Sandersonia sniffled. “But what about your hand? And your eye?”

Hancock smiled. “What about them?”

Marigold took it upon to ‘deliver the bad news’. “Gloriosa said your eye is gone,” she said, her voice small and pitiful. “I’m sorry. I know it’s... Sonia had real trouble adjusting when she lost hers, too.”

Sandersonia nodded at that, her only hand absently wandering to the empty sleeve of her t-shirt, one obviously borrowed from Shakuyaku, like the one Hancock herself was wearing.

Hancock shrugged. “My fingers and my eye may be gone, for now, sure. But have you forgotten? I know Life Return. As long as I don’t immediately die from them, injuries mean nothing to me. Scars, lost limbs or organs. None of it matters.”

A bit of an exaggeration, but this wasn’t the time for doubt or nuance.

In fact, this was giving her an idea.

The girls – and Sandersonia in particular, with her extensive burn scars, her wounds almost paralleling Hancock’s, if significantly worse – bore the signs of their extended captivity on their flesh.

Perhaps, removing those signs, through personal skill and effort, might give them some renewed sense of agency and control, of power.

Not to mention that it was hard to feel defiled when the incredible beauty and complexity of one’s body was on full display before one’s mind’s eye. Especially when one had the skill to ensure that body was kept in peak condition, like countless clockwork gears all moving in perfect unison, without the slightest hiccup or stutter.

Even now, Hancock could watch her own body begin to fix the damage it had sustained, tissues slowly knitting together, a dizzying variety of immune cells ensuring no infection could take root in her injuries.

At the very least, learning Life Return would keep their minds too busy to brood.

“All right,” Hancock said, and only stopped herself from clapping her hands – which would have undoubtedly been quite painful – at the last moment. She shifted to sit cross-legged on the bed and gestured at the girls to do the same. “I can continue my story later. For now, sit down properly, the two of you. And Salome, too, stop sleeping in the corner over there. Time for all three of you to learn some bio-engineering. Those scars and injuries of yours – even those brands on your back...” The same brands Hancock remembered their canon counterparts doing all in their power to conceal, they were such a mark of shame. “You too will see that they mean nothing, when you can simply erase them with a bit of time and mental focus.”