Living for the Dead (Marco, one shot, hurt / no comfort)
A/N: this is hurt NO COMFORT, get in the meat grinder Marco. Thank you to @ye-old-hermit-woman for lovely ideas and beta reading.
Marco lay awake in his bed, trying to will himself to sleep. It was quiet, like it always was at night on Sphynx. There wasn’t any commotion or noise, only the sounds of soft summer rain hitting the roof of his house. There was no emergency, no shouting, no fighting, nothing that would indicate any kind of problem to keep him awake. He had a large, soft bed, enough blankets, and a large room filled with books. Everything that should relax him. Everything he thought he would need.
And yet Marco couldn’t sleep.
Insomnia had been a big issue since Marco had moved to Sphynx, since he’d taken the job of protecting Pops’ home island and his grave. Marco never had problems sleeping before, but once he had moved into the small house on the rocky side of the island, Marco couldn’t sleep more than a few hours at a time.
The problem wasn’t with Sphynx; the island was quiet and calm and filled with generous, nice people. The kind of people who left him treats, baked goods, and handmade candles when he healed their loved ones. The kind of people who asked how he was getting along – if he needed anything, if they could help him in any way, if there was some way they could repay the debt of Marco living among them. The kind of people who left fresh flowers on Pops' and Ace's graves every single day.
No, Sphynx itself was fine.
And Marco wasn’t used to the sounds of quiet, of a lifestyle of quiet. There were no grumblings and rumblings of drunk crew mates, no sounds of kitchen crew preparing breakfast, no creaking of old wooden planks, no sails flapping in the wind. The quiet pressed in on Marco from all sides, making him shift uncomfortably as he tried to find a comfortable position in his new room.
Marco's bed was large and well constructed, but it wasn’t the smaller frame from his cabin. Marco had bought a pleasant enough blanket, but it wasn’t the one he’d sewn out of Pops’ old shirt. He had bookshelves filled with medical textbooks, but they weren’t the ones that he’d gathered over decades on the seas. No, all of that was gone, burned to cinders and scattered to the winds along with the Moby and a hundred thousand memories.
And unlike his own fire, nothing had come back to life.
Night after night he laid awake in bed, thinking endlessly about his father, his Captain, his brothers, his allies. About the wars, the battles, the friends lost, the enemies gained, the pain of loss and his never ending grief that swallowed him whole and left nothing but another day of duty and responsibility.
Marco grimaced as he looked out the window, Pops’ grave never far from his sight. During the day he went down into the village to work as their physician, but at night he returned to his house (not a home, he would need a family to make it a home) and kept vigil over his fallen father and brother. Sometimes he imagined his own grave alongside theirs, a third tombstone to finish off the set. A father and his beloved sons, at rest together.
A thought had Marco’s stomach souring at the thought of his brothers. He understood them, he did. He understood why they couldn’t bear to live on Sphynx in the growing shadow of Pops’ grave. But why did it have to be him alone who bore the responsibility? His brothers had elected to scatter, to go off on their own ways with the expectation that Marco would move to Sphynx. They didn’t have to look at the grave of the brother they couldn't protect, of the father they failed. They were able to start their lives a second time, somewhere else far from the shores of Sphynx. Maybe they could even laugh sometimes, forgetting about what had happened during Marineford, during the Payback Wars. It was only he who had to live with it day after day, like living in a mausoleum.
Marco sighed and rubbed his forehead, immediately feeling guilty for his thoughts. His brothers didn’t deserve his ire – it wasn’t their fault. And frankly, when he was alone Marco felt a sense of reprieve from the shame he felt around his siblings. He hadn’t been able to lead them to victory in the Payback Wars, he was no captain like his father. Now that Marco was the only pirate on Sphynx, he didn’t have to see the pity in his brother’s eyes, the tears they held back when they thought about Pops, of Ace, of Thatch, of Izou, of everyone Marco had allowed to die.
No, it was for the best that Marco was alone. He could atone his sins in private, feel the sting of harboring someone who took the best of what they had and used it against them. He deserved every barbed memory, every jagged edge he felt when he looked at the final resting spot of those he loved and called his family.
Marco sighed and looked out the window once more, Pop’s coat fluttering in the night wind. He could already tell he wasn’t going to be sleeping tonight. Marco sat up and rubbed his face, the familiar weight of loss settling over him like a noose. With the grace of a lifetime of practice, Marco shifted into his Phoenix form.
Flying out the window, Marco perched himself on Whitebeard’s cold, stone gravestone. He drew himself into Pops’ coat, his father shielding him from the rain once more. For a singular moment he thought he smelled Pops’ scent, but Marco knew it was his own imagination. Pops had been gone too long, his coat too weathered, for the scent of leather, sea salt, and earth to remain. Marco huddled into himself, pulling his long neck into his chest, his head resting on his own tattoo.
Marco heard nothing other than the beating of his own heart, the waves on the distant shore, Pops' jacket fluttering in the wind, and rain hitting tombstones. It wasn't much, but it was something. A little noise to stop the quiet.
And maybe, if he listened closely, he would hear the sound of tears landing on downy feathers.
