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Garp grows up next to the sea and he pays his dues to the ocean every chance he gets. For every sunken body, he lays flowers on the ocean floor, captures souls, and lets them rise to the High Currents. He is young and already exhausted, has seen too many unjustified deaths, and thinks of bold pirates chasing through East Blue, a smile as wide as his own but ten times more dangerous.
You're a D., the Wise Woman of the Shore tells him growing up. Pick your cage and pick it well, god-killer, or you will tear the world to shreds.
And Garp listened, listened well, and he pays for his life with bloodied knuckles and anger he cannot contain on his own. He struggles to follow the rules, which makes him a menace to deal with and an excellent marine all the same because he knows when to speak up and call bullshit, but Garp also knows in his heart that it's not enough.
It never will be enough and thus the hunger tears at him from within, stakes claim of his heart, and tells him to go chasing sea-named demons, but he can't.
His restrain displeases the sea, hurts himself, and when the ocean asks him who carries your burdens, child? Garp has no reply for them.
It's in his blood, his name.
Their kind fights only their own battles and if there is another war to go to, it will not be their own. This is why void-devils are born so rarely; there has to be a fight for them to claim. Garp has found his own on the sea, civilians covering behind him. He was born for this, had been washed up on Dawn’s shore with nothing more than a name.
He has his purpose, but there is more to be done, and he already feels older than the twenty-three years he's counting. He's burning too brightly and too quickly, thinks of piracy again and the shackles he's put on himself. He could be free on those waters, break waves and skies, but he was taken in by people with no duty to sea-gift children and he will not betray their kindness.
Still, there is more to be done.
And each child carries their own burden.
It's not a wish as much as a desperate plead for support, for help, but the sea does not understand that, and Garp should have known better. He grew up with salt-water swept hair and sand beneath his feet.
The baby is deathly silent.
They stare up at him with dark brown eyes that match his own, and all Garp has to do is accept or deny this gift. He can, of course, return it, lay the child to rest in the waves and watch them drown.
But Garp grew up taking his first steps on uneven ground, fish curiously circling his feet as the woman who is not his mother watched him. Foosha is older than the kingdom in its backyard, though you wouldn't guess it. They've always been seafaring people and they've never needed any temples for their own guardians. They accept what is given to them, raise their children well with love and many hands, whether born from flesh or foam.
Garp could drown the child.
He picks them up instead. There will have to be a naming and he'll have to teach this child about sacrifices, restrain, and cages so very different of his own because their war will not be his own.
Garp is twenty-three and he is much too young to carry a child with the strength to shake the world in his arms, but Garp has no choice at all, already loves his child too much.