Chapter Text
Somewhere, somewhen, amongst smoke, explosions, and impacts climbing high into the sky, amongst the sounds of war and the silence after screams are cut short, a young man stands alone before a firing squad and their commanding officer.
He is a failure and a monumental waste of unprecedented potential.
There is a rattled, slackened shock to his expression, deepened and aged with the dirt, blood, and soot smeared across his face, dripping and flaking down his front and splayed, shaking arms. The ominously synchronized toll of a church bell and the blares of a wailing emergency siren lead the march of his racing heart, drowning out the worthless words of the officer who he cannot even remember the name of. It wouldn't matter even if he did, though. That's not what's important right now.
No. What matters most to Aeon, as the officer's body tenses once again, wicked grin creaking ever wider as he poises to truly strike at Aeon this time, as his subordinates tighten their holds on their guns in preparation to shoot, is that the raging, tricky bastard just cleaved through everyone Aeon was protecting behind him.
Civilians working here in Enies Loby, terrified and caught up between the conflict between the Navy and the invading Strawhat Pirates.
Injured Marines, some of the officer's own men, no doubt.
And (at least to Aeon) the most important people in the room, whose slackened, bloodied faces reflect in the reddened great sword now bearing down on Aeon's own neck; Tony Tony Chopper, Dominic Romero, and Usopp.
He doesn't move as lead flies and steel sings, doesn't act on the training his friends have diligently and ardently hammered into him for months now. His body is sturdy, a dense and unbelievably reinforced structure that takes every bullet shot at him standing, even allowing the officer the angle needed to end this particular battle in one swing.
Aeon's chest feels cold as it hollows and clenches. Like ash, it all falls apart in real time, a crumbling and chilling static spreading through his every muscle and vein, ears ringing as he's literally and figuratively disconnected from his own body. It gets so cold that it burns, like the hydrogen and helium gas giants millions of light years away.
There's a star somewhere deep within Aeon, and it burns so fiercely that it glows through his skin.
Aeon doesn't feel like anything as the building, and everything within it, promptly erupts into flames.
He doesn't feel anything at all.
Muffled cracking and a burst of rushing air is what drags Aeon back to cognizance. The sudden freefall from hell knows how high towards an endless expanse of blue is what keeps Aeon cognizant. And screaming, of course.
Pink flecks and clouds flutter away into nothingness as he plummets, but it's not like Aeon's paying attention to that. He's a bit too busy flailing around, trying to get his feet under himself and his bearings back in grasp. His struggling is not in vain, thankfully. Instead of slapping along the surface of the water and exploding into a greasy, gorey smear, Aeon pierces the salty waves like a metal weight on the end of a fishing line.
He's shocked numb and limp as salt water -the ocean- engulfs him in a tumultuous cloud of bubbles. Impossible. His eyes and nose sting as he gapes for a moment, stunned, before remembering that 1) he needs that air to breathe, idiot, and 2) this is impossible!!
There's no way he can bridge what he was just doing with what's happening right now - he can't just- walk through a bathroom door into the ocean!? That's not a thing! This wasn't some trippy music video! Aeon was more than a mile away from the nearest beach - any body of water, really! He was in the middle of a city, the capitol of a major US American state, for fuck's sake!!
Kicking back up to the surface with the help of his foam stuffed novelty bags, Aeon gasps, sucking in heaving breaths as he whips his sopping wet head around. "What in the fresh fuck..!?" He croaks, taking in all of the nothing and nowhere surrounding him.
Although currently just as unpleasant as them, this certainly isn't the public bathroom he thought was just stepping into. Instead of rows of stalls, or (something that would make way more sense) the main convention hall if he'd just gotten a little lost, there is just- ocean. Endless blue and teal waves as far as the eye can see. Aeon feels like he's bluescreening, he's just so flabbergasted and terrified. Nothing is really computing.
It really doesn't help that there's just so much fucking blue everywhere. The near cloudless sky, the misty horizon, the Baja Blast ass waters soaking into his everything - fucking hell, does drowning in confusion and salt water need to be this pretty!?
The mental image of a Steven Universe cosplayer found dead in the middle of fuck all nowhere in the sea, body kept afloat by his tacky cheeseburger backpack and hot dog duffle bag has a hysterical little giggle bubble up his throat. Gods, what would people say? How does anyone even make sense of this? The conspiracy theories that would spring forth would be hilarious.
Aeon would certainly love to hear those theories. He'd love to hear how to have this situation stop happening, too! Preferably before the tacky novelty bags in question soak up enough water to really start drowning him.
There is nothing and no one nearby, however, so Aeon has to make due with what he does have: himself. Trying to calm the hell down, Aeon makes a soul read and picks a random direction to start treading water in. He'd read once that your buoyancy went up the fatter you were, so he was throwing prayers at the religion dart board that his own "extra layers" were doing their civic duty to keep him alive for a little longer.
Or maybe that was just a good ole bullshit internet myth! Maybe that was just something else peddled by gullible people too lazy to check the source and he was just the next idiot to eat that shit up unthinkingly! As much as he likes to think he's more informed than his distressingly facebook AI slop obsessed mother, Aeon doesn't actually know all that much about the human body. He knows a lot of reproductive health, knows when to stop tolerating pain and to start treating it, but he doesn't know about how it could function to save himself! He didn't even know that fungi were part of human anatomy until he learned about yeast infections!
Fuck, he's probably going to die faster than someone smaller than him..! He's probably too heavy and he can't even get rid of..! He...
Aeon slows his paddling, becoming ominously aware of the weight hanging off his back.
("You seem like you’d better appreciate her more than I ever could... Do you want her?")
Hesitantly, he unbuckles the strap across his chest and brings the replica Master Sword he'd been gifted to his front. Aeon didn't even know the guy who gave h-it to him, it was just some vaguely creepy and sad looking guy with a Midna body pillow and a bag of LOZ figurines.
Why is it so hard to let go?
Aeon blinks away his tunneling vision, trying to shake the nonsensical shame and guilt and almost- fear? curling somewhere in his heart. It takes conscious effort to lift his fingers, to pry the imaginary hands off his own, to not immediately try and snatch her back as the replica sinks like the big metal trinket she was. The odd feelings lessen their grip as she vanishes into the deep, dark abyss, swift and glinting in an almost forlorn way.
Aeon just floats there for a moment, transfixed on where the replica sword had sunk. He shivers as he becomes more aware of himself and the yawning depths he was afloat in. It's hard to look away from, a stomach-hollowing fear of what might lurk just out of sight reminding Aeon of all those thalassophobia tiktoks he'd watched on the way to the convention. Y'know. Where there wasn't a vast ocean to be shitting his pants about!! The oddest desire to see a flicker of the silver, blue, and gold of her sheath is certainly not helping his focus, either.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Aeon treads water in the direction he was originally headed in. If he doesn't look then it isn't as bad! He just wishes he didn't feel so bad about having to drop the Master Sword. It's just some stupid fake replica from someone with weird, but not necessarily bad vibes! Sure it was probably a few hundred dollars, but Aeon's life isn't worth that! (Ignoring what his depression and United States FEMA says...) He's literally going to drown if he keeps it!
It just doesn’t make sense, though! How could this have happened!? Why!?
Aeon treads and paddles and floats for hours, his shivering growing more prominent as the water slowly saps the heat from his body. Panicking isn't going to help, so he keeps having to manually control his breathing, wracking his brain for ideas, for explanations - for anything - trying to ignore the one thought he just can't shove out of his head;
What if he really does die out here?
"Oh... Oh, gods..." He nearly sobs, blinking through his suddenly watery vision. He still paddles, he has to. Some deep, instinctual part of him knows that he'll meet a suffering end once the sun starts to set.
When he blinks, he sees a time much like now, long ago when death pondered taking his hand. A forest in the full swing of autumn, high in the mountains between ranches and gated communities. Oak and pine tower high above his prone body as his small, small hands drag his useless form through underbrush. The dark chill of the dewy, early morning crept slowly into his limbs, just as the lifeless cold of the ocean does now.
This time, there will be no scraggle grass and leaf litter to tear at his skin, no boar or feral turkey flocks to watch out for. There will be no wooden walkways over ditches and pits to drag himself onto, to feel so close to humanity, yet be so far, far away.
Here, in this impossible ocean, Aeon will lose feeling and strength as the ocean melts it away like sugar on one's tongue. Here, his muscles will cramp with exhaustion and cold. He will sink further and further as water soaks into every fiber and crevice, until not even his comical bags can uplift him or his spirits anymore. If no aggressive fish or sharks come to get him first, then soon, someone might pass and not know that he'd ever been there at all.
He's going to die out here.
He'll die and disappear and no one will know where he went or what happened. He wont get to say goodbye. He won't get to hop on a Discord call with his friends to play games and hang out anymore. He won't get to pet and kiss the foreheads of his most beloved treasures, won't get to see them wag and flick their tails, won't get to find them curled up in his bed or basking on his window sill.
Aeon slowly stops swimming, distantly frustrated with himself for wasting water for tears.
Impossible and alone, spiraling mentally while desperately, weakly trying not to physically.
What will they do once it becomes clear that he's not coming home?
His sister and his mom, they've already lost so much. He can't- He can't be another loss, he needs to go back..! He needs to go home!
He needs-!
"Hup!!"
Aeon gasps as he's scruffed like a particularly wet and pathetic cat, heavy with sea water as he's hauled out of the ocean. Lethargically, scrabbling for purchase, he grunts as he bangs his elbows against wood (wood!?), then topples over the edge of a little row boat that absolutely wasn't there before. He damn nearly bites his tongue, cutting off a yelp as he slumps upside down, legs hanging up and over the edge of the boat.
Groaning miserably, Aeon sags against the inner hull of the boat for a moment, sore, cold limbs rejoicing at the opportunity to rest in what little heat the sun provided. His heart rabbits away almost painfully in his chest, thumping in his ears like club speakers - ironically somewhere he'd rather be, despite how unpleasant he finds them.
The crowds and alcohol, the weirdly intimate interactions with strangers somehow more sweaty than Aeon's fat ass - it just wasn't for him. It would also make a lot more sense to have stumbled into one, rather than, well, the fucking ocean!!
No, no, no... Aeon's cool, he's calm! He's not freaking out. The freaking out can come later- in fact, it can hold it's gods damned horses, high and dry over the water while he figures out just what the fuck happened and how to get back home. Or anywhere familiar, really. He can take the wheel from there, he's just gotta… Calm down. Think.
"... Ne, are you dead? You didn’t look very dead when you were crying in the water,"
Remembering where he is (not alone! Stranger Danger!) and (not really) what's happened to him, Aeon gasps and snaps his eyes back open, gingerly throwing his legs sideways in order to sit up properly. Where is-? Ah shit, he dropped his cane during the fall! There’s no way it survived a dip into the drink, that shit’s just as gone as that sweet ass replica Master Sword… "No! No - alive, very alive..!" He quickly tells the colorful, blurry blob of a... teenager(???) that just saved his life.
Dammit - he pulls off his dripping glasses with shaky fingers, swiping water and loose hair off his face as he takes stock of himself. Maybe his micro fiber cloth survived in his glasses case? No, there's still a puddle of water inside his burger backpack, the whole thing's soaked..!
"Thank you..! Genuinely, thank you so, so much," Aeon rambles out hoarsely, double checking if he could wipe them off on the clothes in his hot dog duffle bag. Fuuuuuck, this is gonna be a pain in the ass to clean! Everything's soaked!
“Shishishishi! S’no biggie!” The teen says, his laugh a strange, almost hissing thing. His voice rasps a little, not quite mature just yet, but sounding like he still uses it loudly and frequently. “Where’d you even come from anyways? There’s no boats or land around in sight!”
“That would be somethin' I’d like to know, too…” He says wearily, sliding his glasses back on. Stressed and dehydrated as he is, Aeon can feel a familiar ache start to build behind his eyes as they struggle with the wet and smudged lenses. Huffing irritably, he takes them back off and tries squinting at his new companion instead - only to stop short.
Big, dark, curious eyes shaded under an old straw hat stare right back at Aeon, clear as crystal.
Because he doesn't need to squint.
What the hell and fuck???
"... You cuss a lot," The teen observes simply, making Aeon realize he needs to shut his mouth. And that the teen needs to, too. "Shut up, I'm freaking out..!" Aeon whispers with vague distress, looking at the barrels behind his savior and regretting it when he can even see the wood grain. He leans away from the teen, skin prickling and cold for reasons other than drying salt water. "No, wait, sorry, I'm so chill actually. Everything is so fine and normal. Real for real. Promise," He rambles a little hysterically, mentally shoving the frantic feeling bubbling up his chest into a box on the "for later" shelf. The teen just makes a confused hum, leaning forward and following Aeon.
Who is this brat anyway??
Focusing on the teen, Aeon takes him in more seriously as he manually controls his breathing to help himself calm down. He’s boyishly pretty, and vaguely familiar… Short, dark tousled hair and tan skin, a big ass grin and a (probably) innocent curiosity shining in his eyes despite the straw hat shading them. On his cheek, right on the edge of the hat’s shadow, is what’s probably a scar.
This collection of details for a face... Where has Aeon-? No, no, now's not the time. He shouldn't trust his eyes right now...
“So, how do you not know either? Is it because you’re stupid or just ‘cause you forgot?” He asks, backing off a little but not losing that focused curiosity in the least. Aeon then notices his uncomfortably familiar red vest (or sleeveless shirt?), jorts, and sandals as he continues. That suspicious something, that suspicious wrongness, settles more snuggly in Aeon's gut. Getting called stupid doesn’t even register to him, what with how caught up in mounting dread and confusion he is.
“Your bags look real funny, too!” The teen comments with that raspy little giggle again, poking Aeon's burger and hot dog where they’d slipped off in his dumpy little roll. “They’re making me kinda hungry, though…” He adds, tongue peeking out from between his teeth as a dreamy look comes over his face. Still feeling immensely off-footed, Aeon merely blinks at him with wide eyes, frown flattened with incredulity as thoughts of an "elaborate bit" slowly devour themselves whole.
The way he speaks and moves… That laugh…
Really familiar… Absolutely impossible, though. Utterly nonsensical, even! Just a series of crazy coincidences that are only technically, theoretically possible..! If you're loony enough to believe in some deeply haunting multiverse theory! Besides, there’s bound to be one fucker out there that looks and maybe kind of acts like a character from a prominent media.
It happens all the time! Fiction finds some modicum of basis in reality, after all! It’s not like dark hair, darker eyes, and vaguely Southeastern Asian 3rd world fashion is anything even remotely uncommon! Aeon has relatives in the Philippines that dress just like Luffy!
What’s actually crazy is that Aeon of all people just so happened hit every astronomical percentile chance to meet someone who looks and maybe acts like a cartoon character... While somehow magically transporting to an ocean, no less..!
Pushing down a closed mouth scream and any ludicrous, non-zero chance thoughts about the statistical guarantees in a possibly-no-longer-theoretical infinite multiverse, Aeon nods vaguely at the young man who’s slowly overlapping with a concept -a cartoon character- in the back of his mind. The thought of possibly (impossibly!!) already knowing his name is making a funny (bad), hysterical feeling bubble up inside Aeon's gut again, but that just gets shoved onto the “for later” shelf, too.
“Uh. Yeah. I’m… Kind of both. I dunno what just happened, but…” Aeon swallows thickly, tasting salt and blood. He must’ve bit his tongue or maybe his cheek at some point, but he doesn’t feel it. Or, at least, not anymore. What happened between now and his efforts to find the toilets? Aeon don't feel like he has to shit anymore, but is that just because he's freaked out of his gods damned mind or because he just can't remember taking that shit? Has time passed? Has a lot of time passed!?
What happened to him!?
Another burst of uneasy confusion gets pinned to the well visited shelf of ‘to be dealt with later’ problems. Fucking hell, Aeon's going to be so busy later. Who is he kidding, he's gonna to be so busy now!
Licking his dry lips, Aeon hesitates, struggling and failing to recall exactly what he was doing before the fall. “Last I remember I was at a-” Wait, do conventions exist here? What’s a good equivalent? Actually, wait, should he really be immediately lying!? It’s not like a convention is criminal or outlandish..! “-convention. I don't- I don't know how I got here... I don't even know where here is..!”
Aeon doesn't want to lie, mostly because lying makes him feel bad, but also because if this guy is (like!) who Aeon thinks he is, then it doesn’t really- yeah, there’s the blank expression of incomprehension.
“It’s a kind of… Festival. Don’t even worry about it,” Aeon explains quickly, waving his hand in a dismissive, yet fervent manner. So, conventions don’t exist here. Probably. It’s not good to use such a small sample size for data. It's probably an especially bad idea when it comes to this guy. Probably-Hopefully-Not-Luffy probably doesn’t know a lot of things that would even be normal and natural to this world (that is totally normal and Aeon's own world, by the way, just making sure the universe understands this!!).
Probably-hopefully-Not-Luffy makes an ‘oh!’ face, tapping his fist to his palm. “You got super drunk and lost, then!”
… Well-
“I really doubt that- and I really hope I didn’t, cuz' I don't like alcohol…” Aeon mumbles with a troubled frown, swiping loose hairs away from his face again. There's nothing necessarily bad with it, alcohol just usually tastes like shit and Aeon doesn't like how it makes him feel. Sighing, Aeon undoes and redoes his hair bun as a distraction. The young man scrunches his face thoughtfully at him, hand to his chin and the other to his elbow. Fuuuuck. They’re such similar expressions.
“Hmmm… A mystery, then!” Probably-Hopefully-Not-Luffy decides, nodding decisively to himself and hammering yet another nail in the ‘this guy is absolutely who I fear he is’ coffin via Bouncy Boy mannerisms alone. Then, he straightens up, props a fist on his hip, and holds out a hand to Aeon, grinning as he metaphorically hammers the final nail into the most absurd coffin life could have possibly foisted into Aeon's lap.
“By the way- I’m Monkey D. Luffy! I’m gonna be King of the Pirates!” He says, as reality seems to coalesce into tangible, capital ‘T’ Truth around him. Aeon sucks in a breath at his words and sudden aura, heart rate spiking again as goosebumps roll across his shoulders and arms. Ohhhh boy, this person is someone the universe loves. Like a sick elk seeing peace and death on the horizon, an odd sense of resigned acceptance settles on Aeon as he dips his head, vision unfocused.
He doesn't know the what or why, but some fan fiction ass shit is happening right now. Surely he's either dreaming or hallucinating. How is he even supposed to react? He's barely got regular social interactions down, what the fuck is his autistic ass supposed to say??
“Who’re you?” The impossible boy-man-god asks him, either unknowing or uncaring of the dip in Aeon's demeanor.
Aeon tenses, making the herculean effort to not freak out and call him something like an overly committed cosplayer or prankster on instinct. There's no plausible context or explanation for such an effort heavy prank. Aeon doesn't even know anyone who'd do this kind of thing (He barely knows anyone, really). He's trying especially hard not to break into hysterics at the vast and not-optimal implications behind and in front of his being here, sopping wet and at the feet of a character he's adored for years at this point.
That internal scream he's been ignoring is getting loud.
Simple. What's something simple he could tackle?
"Who're you?"
Names aren't too hard. Names are simple. (They should be simple. Everyone except for Emi seems to make sucha big deal out of-)
“I’m…” Aeon forces out faintly, tunneling vision slowly lowering to Luffy's outstretched hand. Breathing is starting to get a little hard, so he goes back to manually doing it again. Vision and sensation is starting to get a bit fuzzy around the edges, too, so he bites the inside of his cheek to ground himself some more.
His therapist is not gonna like how much disconnect and compartmentalizing he's been doing today… Or his methods of coping... But, gomenasorry Miss Joy, but her aptonymic ass can investigate Aeon's growing case for an Insanity diagnosis when she can figure out how to get him home, safe and sound of mind.
Monkey D. Luffy’s head tilts a little at Aeon's prolonged silence.
Right. Freak out later. Introduce himself to an anime/manga character made real first.
...
… No one knows him here. That name doesn’t exist here, as far as he knows. He's not obligated to show ID, especially not to this guy, who doesn’t even know what an ID is. He's not obligated to awkwardly go through the song and dance of “yeah, but I just go by this”, or to just smile and tamp down the hurt hurt hurt when his words get steam rolled or people just don’t care in that glossing, thoughtless sort of way.
He don’t have to wear her mask here.
Aeon takes a deep breath, easier than before.
“... I’m Aeon. And I’m also very lost… Can I catch a ride wichya for a while?”
“Sure! Shishishishi!”
“What about your favorite bug?”
“Hmm… I think bugs are super cool, but they freak me out in person. So like- super cool, but only from a distance, y’know? I think my favorite’s gotta be a tie between Spiders and Ants, though. I think it’s really cool how talented they both are. Both can make their own little houses and are very important to their lands, all for their own different reasons,”
Oh man…
“You’re right, that’s so awesome! Plus nobody’s said spiders before! Mine's Beetles! The Hercules and Atlas Beetles are my favorite kind, though! They’re just- Mrphgh! So awesome!”
“That they are,” Aeon agrees placidly, pulling his wrung out shirt back on. Oh yes, much better. Moist clothing is uncomfortable, but it’s a lot better than the fully drenched of before. “They can get pretty big, and their horns remind me of weapons… Like-Like sumo wrestlers who wield polearms… Also, you can turn around now,”
It’s Luffy, so of course he’d get bored of just sitting in silence while Aeon tried wringing and dumping the water out of his, well, everything - but he’d thought the ice breakers would be a slog. It always is with other people, either because they're not very social in the first place (which while Aeon himself still tries, he definitely understands), or… Well, they've just already decided that they don't like him.
Aeon doesn't particularly care if someone doesn't even want to try and get to know him before disliking him. He's 24, he's learned to be at peace with this back in like, middle school (even with his annoyingly big, needy heart). That's just what happens in any kind of society, especially in the terrifyingly divided one he'd hailed from. Getting caught up on people who don't care is nothing but trouble- besides, he knows there's plenty of people who do care, even if just enough to be at least curious.
Like Luffy! Luffy is genuine and enthusiastic with his words, eager to know the person he’ll be drifting with for abyss knows how long (and Aeon pretends that he doesn’t know anything at all, that he doesn’t know about the whirlpool coming up, or Alvida, or Koby, or Shells Town, or basically every other person and town coming up for him in the next 2-3 years). Luffy's equally as tactile as Aeon's feeling (a scared, lost little animal desperate for comfort, for grounding and assurance that they are real, that anything is real anymore), reaching and grasping to swing their hands between their legs even as he lounges against the opposite side of the boat.
It’s easy for Aeon to put himself away and drift a little, to pull himself and all his existential terror and confusion and worry out of his head to watch himself nod and indulge the energetic young man.
“What’s your favorite food, Luffy?”
“MEAT!! I loooove all kinds of meat! Gator meat, tiger meat, fish, rabbit, birds, goats, bears! All of it! Any of it! What’s your favorite meat, Aeon?”
“That’s so based… And so scary… Uhm… I think I really like shellfish? Like crabs, and lobsters, and shrimps- whatever’s available. They’re kinda rare and expensive where I’m from, though, so I usually just get fish. Or chicken…" Aeon answers kind of vaguely, not entirely sure if he's even speaking truthfully or not. "Oh yeah, you’ve had all sortsa meat, right Luffy? Is it true that different meats can taste like chicken?”
On and on they go, for who knows how long. Aeon's pretty sure he might've asked a few questions or said some things multiple times. There might've been a hands game, too, he recalls his hands moving more than usual, but that's kind of it.
All he knows is that he blinks, and the haze and distance lessens enough for him to realize that the sun is setting. Great. Awesome. They could’ve been obliterated by a whirlpool and he wasn’t even able to pay attention!
... When does the whirlpool happen again..?
...
Oh dear. Now Aeon really isn't going to sleep tonight.
Were they playing numbers? Does Luffy know how to play numbers? Maybe Aeon should teach him, abyss only knows how many hours until the boat goes down. He should definitely tune back into life now...
Aeon bites his tongue, trying to ground himself as Luffy fills the silence with an explanation on… Trees. Trees with good coverage. For sneaking. Aeon has no idea when or how they got to this. It’s alright, though, the new pain in his heavy, previously numb tongue lets him zone back in more, pay attention better.
Aeon shifts his limbs for the first time in ages, sore legs moving to stretch out a little (careful of the knee, always careful, he can’t afford to be useless) as he unclenches his hand from where it was locked around the collar of his Steven Universe jacket. He'd set the thing over the barrels at the back of the boat to dry, but it’d almost gotten blown away as soon as he did, leading to him staring at the indents of the collar in his palm.
Aeon... didn’t realize he’d been white knuckling it. He should be careful. He doesn’t know if he's gonna be able to replace it or repair it. What does he do if it wears out before… before he...
Aeon doesn’t know if he's ever going to go back. Wake up. Stop hallucinating. Whatever is going on. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know what’s going on.
He doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know.
He doesn’t-
“-on..! Ooooooi - Aeon!” Luffy’s insistent calling jerks him back from where he'd been drifting again. He settles in his body weird. Everything feels weird. He doesn't like it.
“Ah, sorry, I was… thinkin',” Aeon immediately tells Luffy, blinking to focus on the young man's pouty face, which has since found its way right next to him. Right up in Aeon's own face.
Aeon stiffens as he comes back fully into his senses, as Luffy inspects him like the bugs they were talking about at… some point, He doesn’t know. He forgot.
(Aeon doesn’t know if he can go home.)
Aeon swallows thickly, flexing his hand and rolling his wrist under the weight of Luffy's dark-eyed gaze. He's expecting the usual clicks and grinds that 15 years of art and writing has given him, so Aeon finds himself a little confused at the lack of it. Disturbed, he instead moves his hand to the big, rolling beads of his necklace (coral and lava rock, right from the home he doesn’t know how to see again, how to wake up to).
Completely oblivious, or perhaps conversely; completely aware of Aeon's troubled mind, given Luffy's bizarrely accurate intuition about people, Luffy seems to find whatever he was looking for. He nods sagely, scooting in closer as he reaches over and pulls Aeon's jacket over both their legs. “Aeon’s not feeling good - you’re tired! We should go to sleep!”
“Oh,” Aeon breathes, not really surprised. A little self-conscious, though. “Uhm, I’m not really tired. I’m- I just kind of, uh, always have these,” He tells Luffy, tumbling over his own words in his embarrassment as he gestures vaguely at his own eyes - or more specifically, the Gucci ass eye bags he sports. Fuck, Aeon doesn’t think he could sleep tonight even if he tried. He's still way too freaked out for that.
A part of him wonders if Luffy was listening to him through the Voice of All Things. Part of him wonders what kind of tired Luffy picked up on.
Regardless of whatever Luffy observed of him, Aeon finds his protests ignored and wiggly arms stretching around his midsection (holy shit is that a lot freakier in person and fuck fuck fuck- it’s real it’s real he’s real! He doesn’t know how to go back, He doesn’t know how to wake up-!), pulling Aeon flush against Luffy’s side and further down into the little row boat.
Panicking a little as his skin prickles with goosebumps, Aeon instinctively lifts his arms, settling awkwardly with the new position. Luffy, the cheeky brat, uses the opportunity to tuck himself even closer against Aeon, using his arm as a pillow. Their knees bump against each other as Luffy's hat bangs into Aeon's teeth, sliding up the side of his face as he irritably realizes that he's become a glorified stuffed animal.
Terribly aware of how many arm loops immobilize him, Aeon stays tensely limp for a while, not sure what to do with himself and too afraid of jostling Luffy. He's not sleeping any time soon, but he's got several armfuls of - fucking hell, that's right! How is it only really clicking now!?
Luffy's still a kid!
He's pretty much a decade younger than Aeon! The wannabe pirate is still rounded and fresh looking in ways that remind Aeon of his highschooler little cousins.
For the longest time (almost a year, no?), the crew consists of literally only a handful of poorly adjusted teenagers! Sure they're insanely capable and powerful teenagers, but they shouldn't be doing all that!! Actually being personally confronted with the idea is making Aeon feel old! He is swift to mentally stomp out the compulsion to chaperone. That sounds like a nightmare and Aeon's barely capable of looking after himself, let alone a gaggle of rowdy criminal teens! It'd feel like infantilizing them, anyways!
In retrospect, it's actually, genuinely so unbelievably insane that the Strawhats did everything that they did at their ages and in such a short amount of time. If god really is real, she has to love these guys so fucking much to give them such bananas RNG. Luck-Luck Fruit AUs have nothing on Canon Luffy and the Canon Strawhats.
Wary of the actual pain in the ass awaiting him later if he doesn't fix his posture, Aeon slowly and tentatively settles a little more comfortably. Or, er, as comfortably as possible. The sloth clinging to his side and letting out raspy little snores didn't leave him much wiggle room. His skin has an odd texture to it, too, one that -who could have guessed?- reminds Aeon of rubber. It didn’t have that tacky quality that would normally catch on fabric, on clothes, and pull in unpleasant ways, though. He’s also deceptively boney, lanky in the way most kids are when they have their first real growth spurt (he's 17, right? that checks out then). Doesn't this guy eat a metric fuckton of food? Where does it all go??
Wait, no, doesn't matter actually. Aeon doesn't have time to deal with chronic nerve pain or weird not-very-cartoonish people that shouldn't be real - he needs to figure out a way home. How does he go back? How does he wake up?
Clenching and unclenching his jaw, Aeon forces himself to relax, to focus, starting with his legs and going up. The goosebumps and hyper awareness don’t go away, and he doubts they ever will, so Aeon engages "fuck it we ball" mode and does the scary thing:
Thinking.
Ironically, there isn't actually a lot to think about. He still doesn't know what the fuck actually happened and especially how to undo it, so he moreso just spends an inordinate amount of time staring at the darkening sky, doing the mental equivalent of a dog chasing their tail. He just doesn't have any information to work off of, aside from "I am in a different, fictional world (somehow???)".
Aeon is just some random guy, he doesn't have religion, he's not involved in any scientific communities at the edges of the world (if they exist? Who knows, anymore), and he doesn't even believe in any conspiracy theories. What the fuck does he even do with what's basically the world's most generic Isekai prompt??
Hm... prompts... There's something he could've been throwing his hysterical questions into that he's been ignoring for a while now, under the assumption that it's been fucked to hell and back with water damage.
Sighing wearily, Aeon hesitantly and very slowly reaches for his back pocket.
It’s been burning a hole back there for a little while now, ever since he realized that he might not go back, might not wake up, heavy and present in the back of his mind. He doesn’t even know what he's expecting when he gently tugs the device out. A waterlogged brick of metal, sure, but it’s certainly not to find… well, something that's definitely not his.
It's just… a phone. (Probably?) The same model as his phone, but definitely not Aeon's phone. The otterbox-like case that he'd certainly never had before doesn’t even have a logo. Aeon stares at it, dumbfounded. His blurry reflection stares back in the black glass, looking as haunted as he feels.
What.
Blinking blankly down at the unexpected, factory default device, Aeon presses his trembling thumb against the power button.
There’s a tiny part of Aeon, one that he's been suppressing this entire time, that expects this next part, but he is still made further lost by the discovery of the wifi, power, and service provider symbols being gone. It gets worse with the discovery of the loss of all the things Aeon's personally downloaded and used over the years, the handful of bare bones apps and programs replacing them unsettling in their generic, almost corporate design.
Vision blurring more and hearing starting to ring, Aeon turns it off and rests the shaking hand clenched around it on his lap. Breathing is becoming hard again, so he does it manually, trying to focus on each breath instead of what the discoveries about hi… The device implies.
More illogical things. More impossible things. More fan fiction ass shenanigans that are going to put him into an even earlier grave than he was already sliding into.
This is intentional, his arrival here. The work of higher beings. The work of his subconscious.
Why, though? Why him? Why here? Why now? Why can't he remember an encounter with a supernatural being, if one ever happened? Aeon is not anything useful or important, let alone anyone useful and important! He is a broken and dying thing! What could he possibly give? What could he give to these people, to this world, to whoever/whatever put him here?
Something is wanted of Aeon, if not by someone, then by something, some integral function of reality that somehow placed him in this world's skies. He is afraid to acknowledge this just as much as he knows it to be true. Something is always wanted of the ones who befall such fates in the stories he's read. There are always prices to pay, consequences to deal with.
Entertainment. Fixing something. Finding something. Fueling something.
They were fun to read about, these stories about other people in other worlds, going to even further worlds.
Fun to think about.
That kind of thing was and would never be for Aeon, though.
He wouldn’t be able to live in a world like this, not with how he is. He will die here, just like he would've back home, although far faster and likely more gruesomely. Even this brief blip of his misplaced existence will change things, too. Molecules hitting molecules, breaths breathed, steps taken.
Butterflies and hurricanes, goes the saying.
He doesn’t know how to go back home. He doesn’t know how to wake up.
A glowing butterfly flutters daintily onto the figurehead of the row boat. Aeon ignores it. This one more little thing on top of his pile of impossible things.
Ever paranoid of punishment, ever wary of consequences, the possible dangers of such a device existing within this world (of Aeon existing within this world) flash across the back of his mind like ripples from a drop of water.
Electricity and the uses for it evidently do exist in this anachronistic world, but communications are still only limited to transponder snails, which have even worse limitations than even the first landlines of his world.
The World Government is very obviously an authoritarian government, run by and serving a select, very wealthy few.
Logical conclusion: Communications are controlled. Controlled and limited. There is power in the control and limits, and pretty much all of it sits within the World Government’s hands.
They will want this. They will want this tampered technology and not even know that it has been tampered with. Abyss only knows what they will do to Aeon, thinking that he holds the secrets to it, to its creation and uses.
If anyone found out what he knew of this world, what would they think of him? What would they do to him? Who would they tell in turn?
Luffy snores a little louder, making Aeon jolt.
Blessedly, Luffy does not stir, but Aeon's blood goes cold and his heart races all the same. He just stares down at the would-be pirate, barely feeling his hair tickle his cheek and neck. Aeon's too swept up in how his vision and stomach churns, how his ears ring with an internal scream that's been echoing within him for over a decade, deafening for the first time in years as a typhoon of terrified indecision rages within him.
It feels like a swarm of butterflies, their fluttering wings ghosting and slicing in equal measure.
Aeon doesn’t like lying. He lies often enough, to protect himself, to protect others, but he will always be bad at it, he will always feel bad in his flesh, in his stomach and chest. Floaty and chilled in his skin, jittery and terribly obvious if one cares enough to look.
What should he do? Aeon doesn’t know what to do.
He doesn’t know.
He doesn’t know.
He doesn’t kn-
Aeon twitches, brought briefly back into focus, as the call he’d made doesn’t connect, cutting off with a few dull, muffled beeps.
11 misconnections.
His sister’s number is exactly as he remembers, exactly one off from his own. They were always close like that, just slightly skewed off parallel to each other. Emi, dead ahead, Aeon, skewed just behind her.
He's alone, Aeon realizes as he stares down at the 11 misconnections.
So very, very alone.
Aeon doesn’t so much as wake up as he simply stops the long blink he’d found himself doing.
He doesn’t remember the rest of the night. He just comes back into himself like a swimmer rising for air, still in his dumbass Steven Universe cosplay, with the sun climbing the horizon and Luffy shoving a couple apples in his direction.
“Good morning… Luffy,” He hears himself say, his hesitation in saying the young man's name going unnoticed as Luffy rambles about how he lost his paddles to a sea monster yesterday. The apples feel like singular, tangible points of reality in Aeon's distant hands. They taste like nothing on his tongue. They feel like wet, chalky clay between his teeth and over his tongue. He can barely hear the crunch over the buzzing in his ears.
… Wait.
Aeon's vaguely sore everything creaks a little as he lurches upwards, violently dragging himself back into his body as he frantically inspects the waters off bow side. That’s not buzzing.
It’s whooshing.
Whooshing water. A lot of it.
A lot of whooshing water going in big dangerous circles.
“L-Luffy..!” Aeon croaks, needlessly, as Luffy's already curious about what he’d seen. Aeon flaps a hand in distress and points with the other. “Whirlpool..!”
“Oh, damn!” The boy of the hour says around one of his fruits, intrigued but completely unbothered. “It is a whirlpool!”
“Luffy! You just told me that we don’t have any oars..!” Aeon reminds him in a desperate little hiss. Luffy stares blankly at him for a moment, confused. Then he balks, panic washing over his face as he drops his half-eaten fruit and grips his head. “WE DON’T HAVE ANY OARS!!”
His panic makes Aeon's panic spike, so he immediately clamps down on it, shoving it down for the elusive 'later' like he has with everything he's felt since dropping from the sky. Eliminating the option to drown in his emotions leaves the only other thing he's good at; completing tasks.
Aeon doesn't have any tasks.
Tasks can be made.
Grabbing the biggest of the two barrels, Aeon dumps its contents, pointing wordlessly but frantically at it, mute with terror and barely tethered sanity.
“Yeah! Good idea!” Luffy cheers, looking far less scared now. Aeon dazedly hesitates to follow him into the barrel for only a moment, mind flashing to his shitty fucking knee and how much this is gonna suck, before practicality decides that he'd be better disabled than dead (although the looming shadow he's been ignoring most of his life says what it always says; that he'd be better off dead). Luffy is… decently strong at this point, Aeon could just hang back with Koby while he cleans house with Alvida’s crew.
If they even make it there. How much has Aeon changed in just the few hours he's been here? With the weight of an entire other human being within the barrel, how far off course could they drift?
It’s a bit of a tight squeeze (“OW-! Dammit, Luffy! Feet down, not on me!” “Shishishishi, sorry!”), especially when Aeon realizes that he still has the fucking Hot Dog duffle bag and Cheeseburger backpack strapped to him (when did he even put them back on again!?) - but Luffy’s squishy and Aeon's out of time to do anything about it. It’ll be fine- better even! It’s like bubble wrapping something precious or ceramic for a big move..!
After Luffy twists the lid closed over them, Aeon stuffs the duffel bag between them and uses the backpack to cushion their heads against the roof, teeth grit and heart hammering away as things immediately go to shit. As the boat creaks, breaks, then splinters outside, their barrel gets tossed around like bugs do when cats get their paws on them.
Aeon screams through his teeth as Luffy laughs, wondering how much oxygen they have and if he’ll still somehow get a concussion from this demented rollercoaster of a whirlpool. A dozen different ways this could end up entirely fucked strictly because of his existence present themselves in his mind like a shitty, panicky game of 52 pick-up: water park edition.
Clinging desperately to the thought that Luffy survives this concussionless and relatively unharmed isn’t enough to stop the stray elbow flying directly at Aeon's face, however. He's not Luffy, after all.
Aeon's out before he can even channel his middle school bus driver to yell at Luffy for intentionally bouncing when the barrel did.