PART 1: MARY GEOISE

WARNING : This is a One Piece fanfiction featuring a M/M relationship and some graphic depictions of violence. Most of the story is set during 3D2Y so this is a "what if" story that could, in theory and at this point in the anime (Wano arc), exist in canon.

Because webnovel doesn't support italics, flashbacks will be set between // \\

Chapter edited : 16/10/2022

CHAPTER 1: ANTS AND DRAGONS

Fear. It was a dizzying feeling, one that buzzed through his nerves like lightning and sent his heart into a frenzied race until blood pumped in his ears and screamed about how everything was "wrong, wrong, run, please stop, NO!". It was forever present, lurking in the shadows like a sea-monster ready to pounce at the first sign of weakness, at the barest hint that he might relax.

"Such a sensitive little god," his father's new wife would coo when the smell of burned flesh and agonized screams woke him in the darkest hours of the night. Only then, with his face pillowed against the unfamiliar woman's busty chest, would he realize that there was no fire in his room, no hot iron dipped in embers, and that the screams filling the chamber were his own.

It was the first emotion Echo ever felt, the fear soon flanked by a deep-seated rage and mind-shattering despair. These acrid array of emotions haunted him. They were everywhere, imbuing his home's sacred grounds as they glided down his ancestors' giant statues like blood oozing from a gaping wound.

They weren't his—the fear, the anger, the sadness—they weren't his, yet they infiltrated his light brown pores like a joy-sucking parasite. Observation haki, he would later learn to call it, but at five years old he was neither aware of the term nor the realm of possibilities it would open, and silently struggled to detach these draining feelings from his own. But he was getting better at it. For instance, as he and his father rode to his uncle's home, he knew that the lava coursing through his veins came from horsy (which prompted him to pat the fishman's broad shoulders. Not that it made a difference).

Soon, they arrived at the head of the Albrecht family's estate where Saint Benjamin greeted them with a nasal "finally" that pulled Echo out of his reverie.

"I was about to send a search party."

Constantin, Echo's father, helped Echo down with a huff. "Useless slave's getting slower by the day."

"And that's a problem why?" Benjamin asked, jeweled hand hovering over his pearl-white hip holster.

A wave of excitement tinted with glee snaked down Echo's spine. He shivered and suppressed a whimper when he distinguished a hunger beneath the thrill, one that made his stomach protest at more than its emptiness.

"Echo got attached," his father said.

His words barely registered in the child's preoccupied mind.

This. This nausea bubbling in his tummy. That was the problem, how his body often felt like it wasn't his own. As if... As if he was nothing more than a vessel for other's uncontained emotions. It was exhausting, but rather than dwell on horsy's rage, Echo focused on his uncle's excitement. He welcomed the glee and giddiness coursing through his veins, and tried in vain to make it his own.

"Bye-bye horsy!" Echo called with a forced smile and a wild hand wave that died when his father clasped stiff fingers around his wrist.

"Echo! Have you forgotten our talk?!"

A pout pulled his lips down as he recalled his father's latest lecture.

// "Can you imagine a dragon making friends with an ant?" his father had asked when he'd caught him trying to rope the girl scrubbing their mansion's floors into a game of tag.

Echo pressed his left index to his lips and looked up, pensive, before he giggled. "That's just silly! The ant's way too small."

"Exactly! You, my son, are a god, and gods don't mingle with humans."

How his father made a leap from dragons and ants to gods and humans was beyond him, but Echo understood the implication, and with a confused frown he asked, "Why?"

After a beat, his father sighed. "Echo, slaves are not and will never be worthy of your friendship. So try to enter this into that thick head of yours because your behavior is unbecoming of your rank."

"But-"

"No buts, young man. I will not have you bring shame to our name." \\

With a pang in his chest (one he could safely call his own), Echo's smile dimmed, and after a discreet hand wave, he followed his father and uncle through a maze of brightly lit hallways down to the dining room.

Benjamin, blood-red hair adorned like an antenna, opened his arms wide, and with pride in his voice and sparkling eyes, he gestured at the room's enclosing wall-sized fish-tank.

The aquatic expanse housed creatures from all four seas, ranging from the more mellow specimens on the left side of the tank to the most dangerous man-eating monsters on the right. Last month, Benjamin had spent an hour gushing about the akhlut he'd acquired, but when the part-wolf part-orca had flashed a row of sharp elongated teeth at him, Echo had promptly turned his attention to the captivating dance of a pink-tailed mermaid.

"Gorgeous," his father breathed, bringing Echo's attention back on the aquarium's new addition.

In the middle of the tank, silver collar chained to a moss-covered boulder, floated a unicorned hippocamp with scales as blue as the summer sky and fins as red as the liquid that had dripped down Echo's frail fingers, drenching his robes warm and red when his mother—

"Echo?" The boy snapped his head up and met his uncle's grinning face. "Did you know that this sea-creature's blood is rumored to grant eternal beauty?"

He gasped, and after a shy head-shake, brought newfound fascinated eyes back on the bucking animal. Eternal beauty. If there was a single creature who deserved it, it was certainly this one, he thought with a soft smile as he admired the deep hues of green and purple that shimmered along the sea-horse's spine.

"Think it's true?" his father asked.

"Guess we'll find out."

Benjamin snapped his fingers, and in the next instant, a flurry of slaves barged in with over-flowing plates.

*

Dinner was a boisterous affair. Echo's father and uncle joked around, red liquid sloshing over the rim of golden cups and drenching their sleeves alongside greasy spots. And yet, despite both adult's obvious delight, it was a tense fear, apprehension, that compressed Echo's lungs.

With furrowed brows, he pushed squashed potatoes around his plate, and hoped his stomach would settle for desert.

It didn't, but he still took a tentative bite of molten chocolate cake. A timid moan rose up his throat, unheard over the ambient hubbub, while his lids shuttered in bliss. Unfortunately, his stomach didn't hold back any punches and soon twisted and turned in tandem with the room's quivering newcomer.

"Aha!" Benjamin squirmed in his royal chair. It was an imposing seat carved in the bark of an Adam tree with a roaring dragon, the emblem of the Albrecht family, sculpted in the back. "There it is!"

A petite slave, ruby hair the length of her waist, made her way over with a crystal jug clasped between white-knuckled fingers. Echo looked over, intrigued by the jug's deep blue countenance and by the rush of breathless anticipation leaking from his uncle.

Like was the case with all slaves on the estate, the girl's clothes left little to the imagination as she glided across the room.

Like a shriveling ghost, he thought, and abandoned his spoon in the middle of a pool of molten chocolate. Appetite definitely forgotten, he suppressed a whimper when a wave of blind terror and ill-contained elation slapped him in the face.

In one swing, Benjamin drained his wine cup and lifted it for a refill.

The girl stepped forth, eyes cast down to the food-stained floor, and transferred some of the gooey substance to Benjamin's cup. The barest hints of a tremor. A drop splashed as loud as a tropical downpour on the Celestial Dragon's thumb.

Anger. Dread. Resignation.

Echo squeezed his eyes shut.

"I-I'm sorry Master!"

Fist pressed against his rabid heart, Echo focused on his shaky inhales until he could distinguish his own confusion from the dizzying fear and blood-boiling rage that had set Fort over his body.

Why? Why did this insignificant event lead to such a violent mood shift? Why couldn't Mary Geoise's slaves ever feel anything but rotten emotions? Why could Echo sense, beneath his uncle's anger, the thralls of trepidation? Why? Why? Why? He wanted to scream, wanted to cry, wanted to fall to his knees and beg alongside the girl who sat shaking on the floor.

Benjamin extended his hand, palm up. "Your hand."

"M-Master please."

"Your hand," he repeated in a biting voice, so unlike the warm cheer with which he'd walk Echo around his ginormous aviary and tropical greenhouse.

Frail fingers settled atop puffy ones before his uncle grabbed his discarded knife. He laid the slave's hand on the dining table, told her not to move, and, sporting the most sadistic grin Echo'd ever seen on his face, he pressed the gleaming cutlery against her thumb and mimicked the hungry motion with which he'd cut through his steak.

Echo gaped, wide-eyed. This- What?... Blood pumped in his ears and screamed about how everything was so very wrong.

Something boiled in him, an emotion he couldn't place, bubbling in his chest and racing up his throat even as his head spun faster than on Sabaody park's carousel.

"Stop," he whispered, but the girl's scream muted his plea. "STOP!"

He jumped off his seat and made a beeline for his uncle.

"Echo!" His father's thunderous exclamation was but a whisper in his mind.

"You're the worst!" Echo screamed between sobs.

His little fists hit the man's thick white dress-suit, relentless in their assault, until large hands grabbed a hold of his wrists.

"Enough!" His father tightened his hold, perfectly trimmed nails digging crescents into the puffy scar that ran up the inside of Echo's left arm. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what's gotten into him. Ever since that wretched woman..."

"There's no need to fret, dear brother. He's not the first child caught with this affliction. He'll outgrow it. They all do."

"... Homing—"

"Homing was a fool blinded by ludicrous ideals. Still, his folly may educate rebellious minds," Benjamin cut with a pointed look at the troubled child before his lips lifted in a placating smile. "It's getting late. I'm sure a good night of sleep will offer much needed clarity to my beloved nephew."

Echo glowered at his uncle, but his heated glare was thwarted by the rivulet of tears streaming down his cheeks.

"I thank you for your words of wisdom, brother. They are of great comfort after these troubled months."

"Speak nothing of it." Benjamin straightening the dark antenna that'd flattened over Echo's head. "Now, I'll be sure to keep you updated on my latest treasure hunt."

"The thunderbird Zoan?"

Benjamin grinned.

"I wish you luck in your endeavor," Constantin said before he ushered a seething Echo out of the room.

The boy paid his surroundings no mind, barely aware of his own drained body as he walked through familiar hallways before his father lifted him onto a pair of broad blue shoulders.

They traveled back at a sedated pace, the peaceful quiet of the night only disturbed here and there by quiet sniffles, until his father heaved a heartfelt sigh and gently coiled his arms around Echo's waist.

"Your compassion's wasted on them."

Echo stared at the moon, round and bright, beautiful and so very free where it hung amidst the star-peppered sky.

"I don't understand," he whispered, small hands fisting thick white robes.

As minutes trailed by, he wondered if his father had heard him, or if he'd simply given up on him, tired of endless explanations, until a hum, low and comforting, broke through the silence. Long fingers tugged on Echo's misbehaving hair, straightening the antenna back into position again, before Constantin pulled him flush against his chest.

"About thirty years ago, a Celestial Dragon forsook his rank and moved his family to an island. Said that humans should live with humans..." Corded muscles tensed around Echo's waist. "But the humans, those he called brethren, those he'd defended at the expense of his own, they welcomed Homing with nothing but violence. Animals, the lot of them!" Constantin spurred their ride with a sharp kick to the fishman's flanks. "Humans, fishmen, animals, they're all simple creatures, my son. Ruled by instinct over reason. They sleep, they eat, and they reproduce in a mindless rhythm. But thanks to our strict guidance, they have a chance to strive."

Echo's nails dug crescents in his palms, teeth grinding in a painful dance as he restrained the inferno coursing through his veins. He took a deep inhale and wished he could tell horsy to breathe (in through his nose, out through his mouth. Like his mother had thought him).

"What happened?" he asked in a shaky voice. "To Homing and his family..."

"They were hunted down, their kindness awarded with fire. Humans spent months persecuting them before a mob hung them over a pyre." His father tightened his suffocating hold. "They were tortured for hours, arrows and rocks thrown at their restrained bodies... Do you understand, son? Lesser beings are violent."

And even with his father's words ushering a nest of spiders down his spine, the image of a little girl's tear-stained cheeks and bloodied hand returned to the for-front of his mind. With it came a deranging thought, one his young mind would spend years struggling to accept.

So are we.

That night, bloodshot eyes darted around a dark bedroom. A soft blanket was pulled up to Echo's nose, his little fists clenching the embroidered edge like a shield, but the tissue did little to defend him. He was plagued with the image of an enraged mob whose faceless figures his over-active imagination drew in the shadows.

Sleep evaded him, but not the haunting scream of a pleading slave, the nauseating smell of charred flesh, or the vivid image of arrows piercing through skin with the ease of broken glass.