piratejournal | [Voice & Written]

[A laugh.] He sounds like an interesting guy.

Wanna know about the first time I met Thatch?

Yeah he was interesting, for sure. That's one way you could put it.

[He nods, but Marco can't see him.]

Sure.

How would you put it?

I met him as a bird. Back then I was still a little bit wild. I didn't trust people, I didn't want to deal with people, and I very often didn't bother.

I went down to the cargo hold one day and there was this stowaway. But it was the strangest thing.

Back in those days there were a lot of rumors about my Pops' pet. The great phoenix, eh? So when the man started trying to lure me over with sunflower seeds, I figured he was some idiot after Pops' head and trying to use me as bait. But he said everyone was Whitebeard's son, and I must be too.

[He's quiet for a moment. It's strange to him. Even now. Thatch never once had trouble reconciling both sides of him. Human, phoenix, and better still, Thatch always bridged the distance to the other side.] Ah, you have to understand. I was Whitebeard's first son, but not everyone knew it. And back in those days, I had that bad habit of not dealing with most people, like I said. So there were plenty of people who never realized I was a man. [Right, that's why Thatch had chided him about Roxas. One day he'll need to be more upfront but...]

[Sometimes it's nice just being a bird.]

[And it's not like he ever truly stops being one.]

So here this stowaway is, feeding me sunflower seeds and yet still treating me like a friend, like a person. I knew he wouldn't be able to understand anything I said to him like that, but I kept listening so I could figure out his plan. He wanted to join the crew, but because we already had a swordsman he didn't think he could do anything. And as he put it, I didn't exactly need a bird handler.

So I decided to keep him secret until he could make up his mind. [A small laugh.] It's funny actually. I think I adopted him as a pet at first, even though I was the one in bird form. I'd bring him down food and I made him a little hideaway, and told everyone else I had it.

And then he started copying my whistles and trying to learn to talk with me back, and I knew right then and there I loved him no matter what.

[He listens to the story, pauses to mull over the question before answering.]

I would describe Tohru as being overly nice. Too nice, really. He was friends with everyone, and I mean everyone. He was the kind of guy that smiled all the time. Tohru was nothing like me.

He, uh...

[He pauses, swallowing a bit.]

His family seemed to understand that about him. They didn't seem to mind having people hanging around. I should know, I was over there quite frequently, as much as my studies would allow. He let me come over whenever I wanted. Sometimes we played video games together, or I read while he did that.

We spent a lot of time together. He knew all kinds of lore from the village and he told me about it. Stupid stories really. He ignored me when I deserved it, he teased me relentlessly and he refused to call me anything but Natsuno, so I called him Tohru-chan to get him back, basically calling him a little kid.

I'm not sure when it became less teasing and just what we called each other. He was my best friend.

[A small fond laugh.] Sounds like a good way to develop a friendship, eh.

[Certainly less crazy than his own which always seemed to involve something a big more life threatening or drastic.]

Yeah, and I loved him. Tohru meant a lot to me.

[He sighs a little, almost wistful.]

Sometimes it's hard to remember these memories. The ones I want to remember.

Aye.

It always gets so cluttered up and lost to other memories you don't want, eh?

It does. He died, and that was really horrible. He came back. Like me, but not really. The regular kind of vampire, you know?

[He pauses before speaking again.]

He changed, with the things they made him do. It changed him. It broke him.

["Thatch too." He almost wants to say.]

["Except Thatch came back with darkness, the darkness that should have been his but killed him instead. The darkness that drowned Ace and killed Pops instead."]

[Is Thatch changed?]

[He doesn't know really.]

[Marco's changed. Thatch knows that. Not even Marco could hide it even when he wasn't going insane and was at his top peak deadpan glory. He could never hide anything from Thatch.]

[Was Thatch broken now?]

[Was Marco?]

[No, Marco wasn't.]

[Even when he was scared of losing Thatch all over again.]

[Even when he was scared of losing him to darkness.]

[Except the darkness was his. So wasn't that reassuring?]

Were you a vampire before him?

[Natsuno, like Tohru, has been scarred and broken. Sometimes he doesn't know how to deal with it, a lot of the time that's the case.]

No, he died before I did. I saw the girl who did it...she made sure I did. She was sending me a message. The night I saw Shimizu bite him, I didn't believe it. Tohru seemed fine, it felt like a dream. He died a few days later.

[He sighs a little again.]

After the funeral I began to research what...how Shimizu could be walking around. About vampires. I watched terrible movies, I read as many books as I could. From there, I encountered two others who were suspicious like me and the three of us found our first vampire and we...we didn't know what to do. I knocked him out on instinct with a shovel. We half buried him, intending on getting someone in the morning, but he as gone. At that point Tatsumi decided I was going to be a problem.

[His tone changes a bit, a little darker.]

He was completely right. I was angry, and they needed to be stopped. They sent someone to the house, to gain entry, which they did and as soon as I heard that, I knew. I knew it was going to come down to them sending someone for me. It took two days, I sat there, I waited. I had a wrench and I thought I'd knock one out again, capture it and tell everyone.

[He lets out another sigh, a little on the heavier side.]

Tatsumi is a real sadistic tactician. He sent Tohru. Tohru who's standing outside my window, tapping on it and speaking my name and I just...I couldn't think. Not when it came to him. All I had to do was keep the window locked but it was him and when he fled, I ran after him. I can't explain it, it's completely illogical.

[Natsuno pauses to consider that. It was the dumbest thing he could have done.]

I met Tatsumi then. I didn't find Tohru, but I met him, and Shimizu appeared. They cornered me like it was a game. Tohru came from behind and bit me. He didn't come back the next night, but he came back the night after that. I tried to talk to him. If there was some way he could live. We could leave, he wouldn't have to kill anyone, he could have my blood.

He didn't accept it...he felt trapped. At that point though, after being bitten again, I was feeling the effects pretty hard. I don't think I could have left if I wanted to. I didn't want to leave him there alone.

Aren't I stupid?

He came back the next night, and bit me in the window and the final night he had to come to my bed. I had my father leave the window open. What was the point by then? My father removed the protection that Akira and Kaori brought for me. I still thought he'd come around. I hoped he would. He was sympathetic. He cried a lot but he still killed me.

How is that stupid?

If it'd been Thatch I would have just given him my neck.

It doesn't matter how different someone is, if you don't trust your nakama, you have nothing.

That's how Thatch died in the first place, eh? Don't let on you know, but he was betrayed, we all were. Blackbeard stabbed him in the back to try to get the power of darkness, and Ace went to get revenge for Thatch.

[Even in this god damn peaceful forest, Marco wants to throw up about it. That's why he hates this forest and its peace. How can it be at peace when the world is at war? How can it buzz with life when every single creature, however small, however tiny, is bought on the back of death?]

Our powers can affect us. Hell, if that's not obvious about me on this island by now, it never will be, yoi.

Maybe it sounds stupid, but I'm still glad Thatch got his darkness power here. We're the same again even when we're different.

It wasn't him biting me that bothered me. I'm not mad at him, even if he killed me. I know he didn't want to.

[He sighs a little bit again, a soft thud as he bangs his head against the wood.]

After that he came to my window every night and left a flower and he told me everything. He thought I was gone though...so I know what it did to him.

And here I thought we had it rough.

At least you still get time together, aye?

[Marco is treated to a much longer pause.]

No. My death did nothing to change my cause. Even if he...maybe especially because he is trapped there, I intended to help get rid of the vampires. All of them. Even me.

I don't think he wanted to live that way and I know now that he's resting, finally. He didn't want to kill anyone. He's not crying every night anymore and he died with someone he cared for. It's...the best outcome I could hope for.

Your world doesn't believe in happy endings does it?

[You can't tell him that's a good ending.]

[That's a bad ending no matter what.]

What happened last summer I can't even explain it. It wasn't like that before, I swear.

[It wasn't a happy ending, but the moment that Tohru died they were pretty much guaranteed a bad ending.]

Ozaki-sensei said that it worked out the way we anticipated, for the most part. Somehow I'm here though. That was unexpected and I don't know what to make of it. Even now, but I...

Riku is right. I need to stop playing at being human when I'm not.

I don't know what being human is like.

My Pops was human, more or less. Thatch too...

But the world all saw us as monsters. Ace too, like I said.

Is being human really so fun?

I hate this island. It might not seem it. I can actually be in this forest. And the life of it is like.... [He takes a deep breath, feeling drunk from it all again.] Intoxicating, yoi.

But still, I hate it. [It scares him too deeply. For one thing.] Even so. Normal beorcs aren't affected so deeply, they just see it as nice, aye? But even with that, I don't think I'd rather be human.

But again, maybe I just don't understand what that means.

It isn't that being a human is that great. It isn't. They're weak, and as a collective, fairly stupid. You are whatever you are.

For me, being a Jinrou is like becoming your worst nightmare. I was afraid of them and that they did was horrific. They killed like a thousand people in my village. I hated those people, I hated the village, but who said they needed to die? I never wished that on anyone.

Perhaps...

It's tricky, yoi.

The push and pull of life and death, of matter and energy.

This island hums with it.

A wellspring of mana, according to Chandra.

But everywhere else, any amount of existence is an automatic tug of war. Can you really go through life without stepping on toes or breaking some?

My Pops... was the best, eh? He was huge. Five times my size. But he was gentle. He was always precise. He taught me how to play chess, and always defeated me of course. Brilliant man, really.

He understood that even the tiniest earthquake can cause huge ripples hundreds of miles away. That was his power; earthquakes and tsunamis. But he was always careful with it.

He taught me a lot about who I don't have to fight all the time. That sometimes a weak foe should be left to live, left free, so that if they learn and come back, they can still teach you something worth knowing.

Still... is that what killed him? Blackbeard broke into the world's worst prison where our oldest enemies were and broke them out to get their help in killing him. He couldn't do it alone.

But I think if Pops had been as destructive as I like to be, we would have had to fight even more than we already did. Even on his last day, he convinced an idiot who wanted his head to help us with the marines instead.

That kind of tug of war... I don't know, eh. How do you decide which flowers live and die? Which grow and carry on?

I can't begin to tell you what I feel at this island of life energy. I'm dead. It isn't good.

[He gives Marco's words some thoughts.]

I might be wrong. It might be wrong to hurt them back. To take the same thing from them that they took from me.

In the long run, having vampires around that are willing to kill instead of peacefully coexist is a problem. It's something that is not going to work. They don't want to talk about alternatives. They want numbers.

That's the bigger picture though. The one I intend to destroy is Tatsumi.

[He exhales.]

I know what it sounds like. I know. It makes me a very ugly person. I don't care, because it didn't matter. He and I are going to die together. Well, we were.

I died. I should be dead.

You're thinking about it too much.

My family made its entire reputation on revenge. I can't count all the men I've killed in revenge anymore. Mercy is harder, but that doesn't make it better. [Hell, obeying Whitebeard's orders not to get vengeance was consistently the hardest thing he ever did and he had to do it more than once.]

Sounds to me like you're in it for good reasons, and you hardly deluded yourself about the outcome.

But you still exist here. Look, I've got your flower crown and armband done so I'm going to fly over and make you take some blood too. It might help fortify you a little with this place. So long as you live here, you have a duty to my little brother to help with this crew. I won't let you slack off in that, so accept it for what it is. You don't get to stop existing any easier than the rest of us, no matter what the reasons.

Thinking too much. I hear that a lot.

[He does it a lot too.]

I can't stop existing because I promised Riku I wouldn't. I wasn't lying when I said that. As lame as that sounds, even with everything else going on, I don't want to break my word.

[He pauses.]

I know I've been slacking off a little recently. I'm sorry. I'll keep on top of the cleaning. I'm usually more diligent but I've been upset.

[He laughs softly.] I meant you slack off in taking care of yourself, yoi.

Everyone always forgets, if you don't take care of yourself, your nakama are obligated to look after you. If you want us not to worry you have to give it your best to keep yourself going too. [But he shakes his head softly. It reminds him too damn much of Squardo and it's not a train of thought he wants to get into too deeply right now.]

We were all a little messed up from that last fight with the Navy, eh?

I've slacked off too. When things like that happen... I stop talking to everyone. I hide away in paperwork and maps and books instead. That's why I'm so stubborn about this island now I suppose. I don't want to run away from it just because it's hard.

Don't get so caught up in the past that you forget to keep moving forward. One day at a time, eh.

I was upset before then...I haven't been feeling very motivated to do much since Riku broke things off and I'm very disgusted with myself and how pathetic it is. There's something seriously wrong with my brain sometimes.

[He makes a thoughtful noise.]

I wish I had things like that to distract me. I haven't...well I didn't think much about getting things like that. I have a few books I got from the Christmas ship, but I've read them, many times over.

Instead of doing nothing I should have been working on my exercises with my sword. I got too confident and I was seriously hurt because of it. Dying would have been preferable to the pain I went through, but that's not how it went.

Since then, since Riku yelled at me again, I've been thinking about what it means to be a Jinrou, because he's right. I need to consider that.

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