Chapter Text
Labor didn’t end when it was supposed to.
Banchina’s cry cut through the small room, raw and shaking, her fingers digging into the sheets as the final push tore from her chest. The midwife barely had time to catch the child before she was screaming again.
“A girl,” the midwife said, breathless.
Belissa arrived first, small and furious, her dark hair plastered to her head, tiny fists clenched tight as if she had already decided the world owed her an explanation. She cried sharp and thin, a sound full of protest rather than fear.
Banchina sagged back against the pillows, exhausted but smiling as they laid the child against her. “You’re early,” she whispered weakly. “You couldn’t wait.”
For a moment, everyone thought it was over.
Then Banchina gasped.
Another contraction rolled through her without warning, stronger than the last, dragging a startled cry from her throat. The midwife stiffened instantly, hands hovering as she felt again, confusion flickering across her face.
“That’s… no,” she murmured. “There’s another one.”
The room snapped back into motion.
Pain tore through Banchina as her body was forced to continue, the relief stolen as quickly as it had come. Another child followed, bigger and fuller, his cries breaking loud and frantic the moment he was born. A boy, with a nose already too long for his face, wailing like he’d been insulted by being late.
“Twins,” one of the doctors said softly, disbelief lacing the word.
They murmured explanations between themselves, about size, about how the second child had been hidden his sister like a shild protecting someone, or like eclipses. Rare, but possible.
Banchina laughed weakly through tears when they placed the boy beside his sister. “You couldn’t stay back,” she whispered fondly, then turned her tired gaze to the girl in her arms. “And you… you were ready first.”
Yasopp wasn’t there to hear either cry. He never knew there had been two.
From the very beginning, they were opposites. Belissa, born first, quiet in her anger, watching the world with narrowed eyes. Usopp, loud and restless, demanding attention from the moment he arrived. Twins by birth, not by mirror.
And yet their tiny hands found each other without hesitation, fingers curling together as if instinct alone understood that whatever waited for them beyond that room, they would face it side by side.
—
16 years later
—
The wind coming off the Syrup Village shore always smelled faintly of salt and sap, like the sea had learned how to behave itself just long enough to pass as land. Belissa lay on the grass near the edge of the trees, her eye mask pulled down around her neck, staring up at the sky with narrowed eyes. Clouds drifted lazily overhead, doing nothing in particular. She envied them.
“You’re doing that thing again,” Usopp said, squatting beside her with a frown that tried very hard to look stern and failed halfway through. His slingshot rested against his shoulder, freshly polished. He had polished it three times already that morning. “The staring. That’s your thinking face.”
“This is my existing face,” Belissa replied flatly. “If I was thinking, you’d hear me complaining out loud.”
Usopp snorted despite himself. He lay back beside her, arms folded under his head. For a moment, they just listened to the cicadas and the distant creak of ships in the harbor. The village was small. Too small. It pressed in on Belissa’s chest some days, like walls that moved closer when you weren’t looking.
She rolled onto her side to look at him. Her twin. Same age, same eyes, same stubborn spark burning behind them. And yet everything else was different. His nose long and unmistakable, hers ordinary. His frame wiry and restless, hers softer, lazier, built more for lounging than running. Two halves that never quite mirrored, only fit.
“I’m leaving,” she said, not for the first time but this time for real.
Usopp didn’t laugh. He didn’t bluster. He just went very still, eyes fixed on the clouds. “You mean… like. Leaving leaving.”
“Like not coming back tomorrow,” Belissa said. Her voice came out sharper than she meant it to. She softened it with effort. “Like setting sail.”
He sat up so fast his goggles slid down onto his eyes. “You can’t just say that like it’s nothing! You don’t even like boats. You hate heights. And the sea. You panic when the waves get loud.”
“I’m aware of my flaws,” she snapped, then sighed. “That’s kind of the point.”
Usopp opened his mouth, then closed it. His fingers curled into the grass. “Why now?”
Because the house felt emptier every year. Because their mother’s smile lived only in memory now, and the bed where she’d lain sick was cold and quiet. Because the name Yasopp tasted bitter every time it crossed her mind, growing heavier with each passing year he didn’t come back.
“Because if I stay,” Belissa said, staring out toward the water, “I’m going to rot here and blame everyone else for it. And I don’t want to be that person.”
Usopp swallowed. “I thought… I thought we’d go together someday.”
“Someday,” she echoed softly. “Just not the same someday.”
They sat there, the weight of it settling between them. Twins since birth, backs pressed together against the world. The only family they had left. Separating felt wrong, like tearing cloth that was never meant to rip.
“I’m not ready,” Usopp admitted quietly. “I still have… things to do here.”
Belissa smiled, small and crooked. “I know. And you shouldn’t leave before you’re ready. You’d hate yourself for it.”
He looked at her then, really looked. The lazy slump she wore like armor. The sharp eyes that missed nothing even when she pretended not to care. “And you are ready?”
She hesitated. Then shrugged. “Ready enough.”
Usopp reached behind him and pulled out his self-made bat, the wood smoothed by careful hands. He held it out to her. “Then take this. For protection. It’s… it’s unbreakable. I tested it against a sea king once.”
“That was a lie,” Belissa said.
“A very convincing lie,” he shot back. “Just— take it.”
She took the bat, fingers tightening around the familiar grip. For a second, her throat closed up on her. She hated that feeling. Hated being seen like this.
“Don’t die,” she said instead. “I’d be really annoyed.”
He laughed, watery and loud. “You too. And don’t forget to come back when you’re famous.”
“When,” she repeated, bumping her shoulder against his. “Not if. And its not like they will believe we are Twins. Because you are ugly” she teases ignoring his grumbles and pulls him closer.
They hugged, clumsy and fierce. Twins, separating not because they wanted to, but because they had to become something bigger than the village that raised them.
Belissa left at dawn, without looking back.
—
The East Blue was larger than she’d imagined and somehow smaller too, every island a brief chapter she skimmed through. She worked when she had to, drifted when she didn’t. Eventually she found herself on a modest island with a port that never slept and a tavern that always needed an extra pair of hands.
The tavern smelled of spilled ale, fried fish, and bad decisions. Belissa liked it. It paid in food and coin, and no one asked questions as long as you did your job. She slept through mornings with her eye mask pulled low, woke near noon cranky and alive.
On her day off, she was halfway through a bowl of something that might once have been stew when shouting erupted outside. Wood splintered. Glass shattered. A familiar rhythm of chaos.
“Pirates,” someone hissed.
Belissa sighed, grabbed her bat, and stepped outside anyway.
Three men were trying very hard to look intimidating and failing spectacularly. Small-time pirates, by the look of them. Patchy coats, rusted swords, too much shouting. They were demanding money from the nearby stalls, waving weapons more for show than skill.
“Real scary,” Belissa muttered. “Truly inspiring.”
Before she could decide whether to interfere or just enjoy the show, the air shifted. Pressure rolled through the street, subtle but undeniable, like the world holding its breath.
A man stepped forward from the crowd.
Stocky and broad-shouldered, with a thick beard and a grin that didn’t quite hide the danger beneath it. A scar curved across the left side of his face, half-moon shaped, stitched and old. He wore whhite clothes dusted with travel, an apron tied loosely around his waist like he’d wandered in from a kitchen rather than a battlefield. And what's with that weird hairstyle?
“Hey now,” he said cheerfully. “You boys mind taking your mess somewhere else? You’re blocking the street.”
One of the pirates laughed and lunged.
The fight was over in minutes.
Belissa watched, frozen between awe and disbelief, as the man dismantled them with brutal efficiency. A twist of the wrist here, a bone-cracking strike there. He moved like someone who’d done this a thousand times and never broken a sweat doing it. When the last pirate hit the ground, unconscious and groaning, the man dusted off his hands.
“Should’ve stayed home,” he remarked, almost kindly.
Belissa realized she’d been staring. She clicked her tongue and turned away, pretending her heart wasn’t racing.
But curiosity gnawed at her. She followed him as discreetly as a lazy, anxious sixteen-year-old could manage, which was to say not very. She lost him once, found him again, then promptly walked straight into another disaster.
A different pirate crew. Bigger. Meaner. Weapons drawn.
Belissa yelped as a cannon fired, the blast throwing her off her feet. Panic surged, sharp and immediate. The sea was too close. The noise too loud.
“Hey!” the bearded man barked, shoving her behind him as steel clashed. “Stay back!”
He fought like a storm given human shape, smiling even as he cracked skulls. Belissa scrambled away, heart pounding, gripping Usopp’s bat like a lifeline.
Then the Marines arrived.
Gunfire. Shouts. White coats flooding the street.
“She’s with them!” a Marine yelled, pointing at Belissa.
“What? No!” she snapped, fear turning her tongue sharp. “I don’t even know these people!”
The man sighs and for a second takes a secod to rub his face before looking at her. "I am Thatch. And you have some bad luck, kid."
A Marine raised his rifle.
Thatch swore under his breath. “Great timing.” Then grabbed Belissa by the collar and hauled her close. “Sorry, kid,” he said quickly. “But you’re safer with me than here.”
Before she could protest, he threw her over his shoulder and bolted, laughter and chaos chasing them down the dock.
Belissa clung on, furious and terrified, the sea roaring too close for comfort.
And somewhere far away, the world shifted, gears turning toward a future none of them could see yet.