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One.
When all is said and done, Yamato asks him again.
Luffy's eyes rove over Yamato's face with disinterest, then turns his attention back to being battered and bruised, slumping on the ground and allowing his head to thunk on the flooring of Yamato's once home - it's to be expected. Kaido and Luffy came together like a clash of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. A fight too fast paced for anyone to follow as the country of Wano laid witness to it all.
(The best stories always start with a description - but there's not much to describe, or maybe Yamato can't comprehend what he's seeing. Oden always started off his tales with grand descriptions - whenever Yamato flipped through the worn pages, he could never get enough about how Oden could paint the landscape so vividly. Oden always peeled back the walls of his shitty little home and invited him to new places. What could he say? What could he do to even begin to understand what happened - there are so many tales of a man overcoming the impossible and becoming god, but what do you say when it happens in front of you?)
"Hey," Yamato persists, "Luffy."
"You're a pain in the ass," Luffy replies, a non answer, "but I don't hate you."
"If you don't hate me, let me on your ship."
Frowning, Luffy tiredly digs the heel of his palm into his eyes. Pauses, sees Yamato hasn't moved, and huffed. "What do you want?"
"You know what I -"
Luffy gives him a look that makes Yamato's words catch in his throat, almost flustered. Luffy looks as Yamato's caught in some great misunderstanding, all tangled up in a web that he doesn't know how to begin to pry loose. Pitying instead of frustrated.
"I won't choose you if you don't know what you want." He says, "I'll give you until everyone's all patched up enough to go."
And that's that.
Two.
His father - the shape of Kaido in his mind's eye outlined by something ugly, a bitterness that will forever ulcer his mouth with resentment - got him a book once. Or rather his lackies did, in an attempt to get him to read anything other than Oden's logbook. Smuggled tales of men who push boulders up rocks only to be met with continuous failure or eggs that birthed the entire world. But those were just stories collected among antiquity, in the end.
Oden's the protagonist of a real life adventure, just as fascinating and brilliant. He impacted the world, made the oceans bend to his whims, wrote things stranger than fiction - Gol D Roger was his friend, a supporting character who spurred him on with a grin and was an interesting plot device used to let him explore the world but…
Luffy stares at Yamato impassively as if he's unnecessary in his life, in his journey, in his story - an NPC that'll be in and out of his life in the blink of an eye, and desperately, Yamato says, "I want to be Oden."
Luffy's the colour of wood ash, and he strips his stick of meat with more interest in his food than in Yamato's words. He licks his lips in consideration and pauses only for a moment, bone hanging from his lips. He's much more awake now, and there's a glint of something sharp to his eyes that was shaved down before by the haze of weariness and pain.
"Ah, you mentioned that before." He cracks a straight line down the bone with his teeth to get to the marrow. "I wasn't really listening 'cuz you were talking a lot and I just didn't care -"
"Hey," Yamato starts, offended.
"But you really want to be Oden, huh," he starts for a skewer of grilled mackerel. "Why?"
"Oden is a hero!" He says, and it's not just that, Oden was his shield and his guard, Oden gave him an escape, "even his name inspires people to look up to him."
"I'd think it'd be better to make oden your favourite food instead of trying to be oden - oh, but I guess some people don't like daikon."
He gives Luffy a side-eyed look, annoyed. "Not the food! The person! Though I guess you have to boil them b-" Yamato cuts himself off with an audible click of the teeth as Luffy laughs in his face, catching himself getting caught up in Luffy's nonsense. Flushed, Yamato smacks the back of Luffy's head.
"You're funny, Yama-o!" He says, butchering his name once again.
"Anyway!" Yamato starts loudly. "He has a great character arc, and the development of him being an absolute asshole to such a heavily respected figure is so inspiring. The ending too! Even though it's not written down, it takes your breath away. Despite how hard he tried, and how many adventures he went on, everything still ended in a tragedy for him. But it still gives you this feeling of hope you know?"
Luffy's not laughing anymore, he stares at Yamato like a difficult puzzle. One he decides he hates, one he decides he doesn't want in front of him any longer. Yamato almost prefers the pity from before.
"Oden's real." He says flatly, and the irritation in his voice makes him look like he's scolding a child.
"I know! And I want my story to go just like his!"
"All of it?" He asks, interest in Yamato having waned immediately, and Yamato doesn't get it. Oden's heroic, Oden's a leader and a god amongst men and surely Luffy must understand that, even to the littlest extent - doesn't he want to be King of the Pirates?
"Yes, all of it!"
"Huh," he says, and Yamato knows Luffy's tired of him, he won't keep his attention on Yamato because he doesn't like what he's saying. The conversation is unsalvageable, he won't get the answer he wants.
He pricks a ball of tama-yokan for Luffy, but he's already out the door. He bites down on it, decides it's much too sweet for his tastes, and covers the rest down for the little captain later.
Three.
If he squints at the moon, Yamato wonders if he can see Kaguya and her entourage. The night is cool, and he traces out the shapes of the sky with his eyes, keeping a lookout for rabbits and feathered robes.
Luffy pads up to him while he's drinking, tama-yokan and mochi and glittery pocks of konpeito in hand. He sits next to Yamato and sighs heavily, leaning on Yamato's arm and brushing his cheeks against him like an unloved stray.
"What?" Yamato asks, and swings an arm over Luffy's shoulder. The night sky is bright, he can't see any mortars for mochi on the moon, or maybe he's just too far, and Luffy should still be sleeping.
Luffy points at the yokan, "I don't know how to eat this, the balloon's getting in the way and Chopper and Sanji get mad at me when I eat things that aren't food."
That's a lie. He's seen Luffy devour these whole, and he's seen Kanjuro's wife teach him how to open these with the patience no woman should be able to possess, but Yamato would never fault him for wanting company while he eats. It was a luxury he, himself, had only started to indulge in. Companionship is addicting. Once again, Yamato pricks it with a toothpick. This time Luffy doesn't leave when he offers it to him, making a delighted sound deep in his throat as he bites down on it.
"I don't see the point in a story without a happy ending," Luffy says suddenly. "Oden died, and no one's happy that he did."
Yamato blinks, then chooses his words very carefully.
"I have a lot of stories with happy endings," he starts, "but the endings aren't the point. It's the journey and the feelings left over. That's why people get invested in stories, so they can experience something that they can't have."
"I don't see a point in living a life that isn't yours." There's something sharp and pointed in his words that Yamato purposefully ignores, feeling it prod at something he doesn't want to acknowledge.
(There's a story there. Actually there are a couple of stories there - he thinks of Chunagon from the Torikaebaya Monogatari deciding to enter court as a man, living out his life happily with his wife, until he's forced to switch places with his brother after he gets outed and becomes pregnant and steps bitterly into the role in life hes resigned himself to after. Married to a husband, forced to give up on his past life, wishing miserably ever after to become a nun - no need to obscure himself behind curtains, no need to grow out his hair, allowed to be seen and heard, free from the confines of social norms - just to isolate himself from the people who see him as female. Happy ending Yamato's ass - but he'd be lying if he said Chunagon didn't strike a cord with him, even through all the misery.
Chunagon was one of his favorites until he read Ariake no Wakare. At least Ariake as a character wasn't miserable at the end. They led a full life with their wife and her children, then later their husband. Yamato would clutch Ariake to his chest, and repeat 'both Ariake's gender and humanness ended up being distinctly liminal' until his brain went to mush, for reasons he could never quite understand, until he did, and it was all thanks to them.)
"Stories help you empathise with other people, it gives you a new perspective on things, you know?" Luffy rams another fistful of candy into his mouth, and Yamato ignores Luffy slobbering on him with a sigh, "It helps you be someone else for a while."
Luffy hums, "I never wanted to be anyone but me, so I don't really get it."
(Of course Luffy doesn't get it - he got to travel the world and have friends and live the life Yamato could only dream of. He wasn't the one stuck in a cage for twenty years where the only thing worth doing was reading and reading and reading until he went cross-eyed after being hunched over a book in the dim candle light all night, tired of himself and frustrated with his situation, seeking reprieve through living through other people.)
Yamato closes his mouth, and dutifully holds up another toothpick of tama-yokan for Luffy to grab hold of. It doesn't bother him that much, though he can't help but be jealous, only a little bit.
Four.
The next day is sunny, and Luffy has a spring in his step, bouncing around like his internal batteries have never been drained a day in his life. "So, you like stories?"
"You can't really live without stories, you know?" Luffy grins at him, and Yamato finally feels like he's said something that's not a mistake. Luffy eyes him up and down, then hops in front of him cheerfully, skipping backwards and beckoning Yamato to follow him with an aura only befitting a a main character. "And I like thinking about them, pulling them apart and stuff."
Luffy runs backwards over some rubble, and laughs at himself, raising his arms and reaching for Yamato. He already knows what Luffy wants, and with a sigh, Yamato hoists him to his feet.
Luffy grabs onto his wrists and pulls down on him, and Yamato digs his heels into the ground in order to keep standing. Luffy slides down to the ball of his heels, and lets himself hang, snickering like a child who thinks they've gotten their way. Annoyed, Yamato feels like a hassled parent.
"Yama-o!" His future captain says, "tell me about one of them! The ones that aren't about Oden, I mean, cuz you act all weird about him."
Yamato ignores that last part.
"There's a story," he says, "about a woman who had an appetite for everything - could gobble up the whole world and it wouldn't be enough. But she settled for men, and money, and food, and booze. She called herself amorous."
She never really acted much like a lady was supposed to, he doesn't say, and later on, when she beds a young woman who attempted to rob her, she admits to the woman under her, 'in my next life, I'll have the body of a man too', and he takes her with glee throughout the night, glad to know he could tell both her and the reader the truth about himself and shining future he sees in his next life, no matter how late the realization came to him.
But Luffy's staring up at him, and it feels almost embarrassing to let his future captain know about an admittedly trashy erotica that somehow managed to hit him in the gut with a big emotional hammer even when the author wasn't intending to write someone like him. He needs to switch topics.
Luffy tilts his head like a puppy with overly floppy ears, turning his head left than right in a way that would probably make Ace laugh at him, "Yama-o?"
"I knew Ace," He starts, switching gears to the first thing that popped in his head, and Luffy goes very, very, still - the Luffy from Ace's stories would've jumped at the chance to talk about him when asked, but Yamato is coming to realize the static character from Ace's stories has evolved, and there's been development in his character that he's unaware of. "He talked about you, like, a lot, when I met him he couldn't shut up about you."
Luffy waits a beat too long to reply, grip tightening before letting Yamato go, plopping down on a broken pillar and gesturing for Yamato's to do the same, "Ah, Jinbei and Marco mentioned something similar."
"I heard about his mom," he says, "children born like him are usually evil in stories - lots of legends about that stuff, you know?"
"I don't really think it's possible for someone to be born bad, though."
Yamato nods, "that's true! But it's a recurring theme in Wano literature. Like Taira no Masakado who was born after thirty-three months, according to the Lotus Sutra, he ended up a demon. There are more villains too, lots of spattering of people claiming they were born over the normal nine months as an excuse for them behaving like demons, or being violent. I think the only one I can think of who isn't totally a villain is Musashino Benkei. Born at either eighteen months or a little over three years, had all his teeth and hair by the time he popped out. He did like a good fight, but I can't imagine who doesn't, though."
Luffy gives him a look that tells him he doesn't know or care who those people are. "Ace isn't a demon. He isn't a villain either - he always shared his meat with me."
Yamato agrees, "Ace wasn't a bad guy - but that's the thing about stories. The past is written by the present. Like how there are so many different accounts of the story of Shuten-Doji. One book says he was born after thirty three months in the womb, another book said sixteen."
"People make shit up so it'll be more exciting," Luffy says in understanding.
"So, like, that's the trend! How it is everywhere - kids who were born 'unlucky' or in a weird way become demons. Like, how in the North Blue babies who die unbaptized turn into monsters after death, even though it was perfectly normal."
"And people use that," Luffy starts, motes of irritation and recognition in his voice, "to say everything would've been better if they just died when they were babies."
Yamato nods. "But Ace wasn't like that, he wasn't bad or evil. He was just a kid who couldn't stop babbling about his brother. He was a good person, and the Marines leaked that info about him to make him seem worse than he was - that's how stories can affect people. The simplest things can spiral, biases are hard to get rid of."
Luffy doesn't say a word, he nods solemnly. "Oden affected you."
"His logbook is a biography - the cold facts. All of it's true. It's all the messy details and all of the things that make life worth living."
"I don't really think that you can say that when you haven't seen life out there yourself." His face is unnaturally stiff, and Yamato realises he's losing his audience again.
Yamato sighs in an attempt to be playful, a mock exasperation, but Luffy doesn't seem very happy with how he's trying to lighten the mood. Yamato fucked up. "Yeah, ah, I know, that's why I wanted to join Ace so much, since he's Roger's son -"
"He's not," interrupts Luffy, "that'll make Ace mad - I thought you were friends."
"I'm not - listen… this was back then, when I first found out and -"
"Ace was never his son," Luffy frowns, "not his son in the same way you aren't Kaido's son. I never got why he didn't, and I messed up a lot of times and said he was Roger's son because I thought Roger was cool -"
"Because of Roger's story."
"Because of Roger's story." He acquiesces, "I messed up a lot, and now he isn't here to get mad at me when I do, so I can't mess up anymore. It's still his secret even if everyone knows."
"I wanted to join Ace's crew because I thought he'd be like Roger, he acted the same way Roger did in the text."
"He's not Roger." Says Luffy, face frozen grimly, and he looks like he finally knows where Yamato is going with this.
"I know."
"I don't want to be Pirate King if I'd have to be Roger, then Ace would hate me."
Yamato's hands clench against his hakama.
"I loved Ace," Luffy says, after a pause, quietly. He lets himself sag like a wilted flower, nearly curling in on himself like Yamato's something that leaves a bad taste in his mouth, "But Ace isn't here, and I don't have to let you on Sunny just because you knew Ace."
Yamato swallows. "Sorry."
Luffy sighs, gives Yamato that same upset look he's been aiming at him since they first met.
"Rather than stories," says Luffy, "I think being alive is worth it because people make their lives worth living. Stories may help, but not if people don't use them to make something of their own."
Something clatters in Yamato's head, like a bead rattling around an empty box. He blinks, and Luffy's already walking away, jumping at his navigator with a laugh as she shrieks.
Something of his own, huh?
Five.
Luffy strikes him with enough force to rival Izanagi's spear dropping to the earth. "You made Momo cry."
His breath catches in his throat, "I didn't mean to."
"But you did." He says, angrily, "You're not his father."
"I want to be, I am Oden!"
Luffy stares at him. "I thought that all those stories were supposed to help you understand other people."
"They do!"
"Then why would you say that to Momo?! If you really wanted to be his dad, you would've known what would've been okay to say."
"I am his father! It's been a long time since we've met, a parent can't begin to know everything about his child and -"
"Hey, what did Oden want?"
"What?" Luffy stares at him, and Yamato fumbles for an answer, "to reopen the country."
"Yeah." Luffy says, "you haven't even thought about that. You haven't thought about what it meant to be Oden, just that you wanted to be Oden, and that's not fair to all the people who loved him. Momo's more Oden than you."
Yamato bites the inside of his cheek hard enough to taste blood.
"You and Ace were friends, but you wanted him to be Roger."
Yamato swallows.
"And you want to join me because I'm Ace's brother, and not because I'm me. I'd never let you on my ship like that." Luffy says, and that's Yamato's clearest rejection yet. He hasn't even attempted to ask today. "You don't get to barge into people's lives as if they're supposed to have a place for you in their lives, it's not fair."
Yamato opens his mouth, and closes it.
"This isn't a book, this isn't a game." Luffy grabs him by the collar, and drags him from where he's sprawled on the floor to eye level, "Figure out what you want, because you're making me mad."
Momonosuke doesn't look at him later when he goes to apologize, but he hears him out, and Yamato can't forget the look of revolted anger on the child's face. He throws vases and screams and cries and howls, and hits him. Yamato allows him to, and thinks that the real Oden would know how to soothe his son.
But Yamato never wanted kids for himself, he's never been good with them. And unlike Oden, Yamato realises there are quite a few things in this country that he doesn't care for - like politics, like talks of trade.
There was a play, Kochou, he read when he was younger, about a confused little swallowtail - unable to tell if she was a human or a butterfly, or a butterfly who just wanted to be human, or if she was a human who was delusional. One day a priest had come and snapped her out of it, helping her realize her true form.
But Yamato isn't a secretly supernatural being, there's no one to help him figure this out in one go. Luffy is the catalyst for this development, but Yamato can't tell if he'll be able to prove to him that Yamato can 'get his shit together'.
Yamato sits down and reevaluates, taking out parchment and his best ink, and thinks about what he wants.
Six.
The strawhats are leaving Wano now, and Yamato feels so fragile, like a breeze could shatter him like glass. Standing still, Yamato avoids Momonosuke like the plague, walking around him in a long wide arc.
Luffy locks eyes with him, and Yamato beckons him over. He allows himself to do so, the best kings always take requests from their subjects.
"So there's this monkey," Yamato starts, "king of the monkeys, a real son of a bitch. He could turn into anything, a whole seventy-two objects and animals. Fucked up the king of dragons too. His name was Sun Wukong. He scratched his name out of the Book of Life and Death, did you know that?"
"I didn't." He admits.
"Son Wukong could survive anything, no matter how many people tried to beat him into submission. But sometimes, immortal monkeys can be assholes. Once, he was trapped under a mountain for five hundred years. Can you imagine?"
"It sounds like it sucks." Luffy says.
“It did, but he got out,” Yamato continues, “it really sucked though. But after, he found a monk, and decided he wanted to join him on his journey."
"Huh." Luffy says.
"His name was Tang Sanzang, and this made Sun Wukong very excited, and he begged the goddess Padmapani to serve him all through his pilgrimage. Almost like community service, except he got to beat people up, so more like a pirate,” says Yamato, with a smile. “The goddess agrees, since she's known for her mercy, but only if he wore this shitty little crown that shrinks when the monk says so. The Monkey king's like, 'why not, I get to be free anyway'. He regrets it immediately, when Tang Sanzang wants him to stop doing something. He falls to the floor, can't stand because the crown is so tight. Like it's gonna crush his skull. But it doesn't, and he stays with the monk, and the monkey turns a new leaf.”
“Is that supposed mean something to me?” says Luffy, guarded, unimpressed.
“No,” Yamato says. "Just a story. Neither of us are monkeys, or monks. I don't want to wear a crown like that. I just wanted to tell you something you might be interested in."
"Huh." He says, then he blinks up at Yamato, as if seeing him for the first time. Yamato feels like himself, he doesn't think anything's changed. He's always been himself, he just refused to let go of Oden and let his character development stagnate - Oden and his logbook was supposed an incentive for growth, not his goal. He has to write out a new future to smooth over that little blip in storytelling. He can do it, and eventually he'll progress into a role he's happy to be in.
"I don't wanna be a monkey either, and I don't want to stay and figure out politics." Says Yamato, "I love stories, I want to be a part of one. And to do that, I need to go out to see the world with you."
Luffy stares at him, face carefully blank but he looks the most interested in Yamato than he's been since they first met.
"I want to write down all my stories and turn it into a big book - so I'm getting on that ship, whether you want me to or not. I'm going to see, captain."
"Don't tell me what to do." Luffy says without heat.
"I am a free man now," he mocks, and he stands tall knowing he's screwed up every single interaction he's had with Luffy so far, but he knows what he wants, and he's going to take it. "I do what I want."
Luffy blinks, then with a grin he bursts out into laughter, bright and infectious.
"You're stupid." He says, and links arms with him as he drags him to the Sunny. "My big brother wanted to do that once, you know?"
"Ace?" Yamato says, and Luffy snorts, "wait another brother? You've got to tell me that one."
They pass Momonosuke, who is not his son, who doesn't forgive him, who still looks at him reviled, but turns to him up at him sternly and nods his head in a blessing for a safe trip.
"Hm," says Luffy, "nah. It's not any fun to talk about my stories, but I bet you have more!"
He does, and Luffy's the protagonist of his newest one.