Chapter Text
You don’t know who’s more surprised when the treasure chest opens. The pirates that opened it expecting a pile of gold and riches (which to be fair, there is plenty of), or the baby lying in the middle of said treasure. See, any reasonable person’s first guess is probably the pirates, since the baby is probably too little to have any idea what’s going on. If someone guessed that, it’s a fair guess so you’d give them half credit. But in this case, the baby is way more surprised than the pirates because a) the baby is you, b) just a few minutes ago you were a full-grown adult nowhere near any islands or treasure chests, c) you have absolutely zero idea how you got to be inside said treasure chest, and d) you’ve watched enough anime to recognize that the giant pirate leaning over the treasure chest with the crescent mustache and giant scythe-looking sword thing is none other than Edward Newgate aka Captain Whitebeard aka the pirate who went to war to try to save Ace during the Marineford Arc of One Piece and not only failed but also died trying.
You watched that arc during a really, really rough patch of grad school and you’re not ashamed to admit that you were emotionally devastated by Luffy’s brother getting barbeque-skewered right in front of him.
Everything moves suddenly and it takes you a couple of disorienting seconds to figure out that someone pulled you out of the treasure chest; the person is too small to be Whitebeard and they don’t look like a pineapple or have a big poof of hair with an off-color goatee so since it’s not Whitebeard, Marco or Thatch, you have no idea who exactly is holding you. But they’re careful to hold your head up and support your weight which is a really good thing because you’ve just remembered the fact that you’re a baby.
A fucking baby.
No, not just a fucking baby, you’re a fucking baby in the world of fucking One Piece.
Jesus Christ there had better be a good explanation for this.
“It’s a baby?!” someone shouts. You try to roll your eyes and instead your eyelids kind of flutter a little bit. You can’t really raise your arms or move your legs either; the best you can do is squirm a little bit in the arms of whoever’s holding you.
Oh, this is going to get old real fast.
There’s some big motion just outside your field of view, which you’re quickly realizing is very, very, ridiculously pathetically limited and you can basically only make out big blocks of color for anything that isn’t directly in front of you. It takes you a couple seconds to realize that the massive shape can only be the captain crouching down.
“Let me see.”
“Here, Pops. Make sure you support the head.”
And just like that, the arms holding you lay you flat on your back on something warm and firm but not hard and you’re so tiny that you barely take up a fraction of Whitebeard’s palm. He raises you up higher, or maybe he moves his face closer to get a better look, because then all you can see is a face looking down at you with so much intensity it’s hard to breathe.
You might not have any clue what’s going on but this is the Strongest Man in the World and that World is full of overpowered monsters and you’re a teeny tiny little infant. If he closed his fingers, he’d crush you like a grape. But he’s probably not going to do that, not when he’s looking down at you in wonder, and your baby eyes don’t work for shit but you can still see that he looks like he’s tearing up.
“Where did you come from?” he mutters.
Great fucking question, dude. You would also love to know the answer.
“What are we going to do with him?”
Him?! Excuse you, you are not a him, you are very much a her and you are going to be having some WORDS with the universe if it went ahead and changed that on you in the middle of making you wake up as a baby in the middle of a fucked up fictional world.
“We’ll take him back to the ship for now. Bring the chest, there may be answers within it.”
Now that is a really good idea.
You don’t know how long it takes to get back to the ship, because you’re lying flat on your back staring up at the sky and looking at clouds because you don’t have enough muscles in your neck to turn your head, much less lift it. But Whitebeard carries you the whole time and you’re pretty positive he’s not going to drop you, so there’s not much left for you to do but try to figure out what the hell is going on.
So far, you know a couple things.
One: You’re a baby. A really little baby who can barely move and is getting exhausted from the effort of just keeping your eyes open.
Two: You have been found by the Whitebeard pirates. Which means you’re probably in One Piece. As a baby.
Three: The Whitebeard pirates are doomed by the narrative and are going to die and that really sucks because you were attached to them back when they were just fictional characters, before you knew that they were the kind of guys who rescued babies from treasure chests.
Four: You have absolutely no idea why you’re a baby in One Piece being rescued by the Whitebeard pirates but unless you can figure out a way to snap out of this weird-ass dream hallucination or whatever, the why kind of doesn’t really matter. You can’t do anything about the fact that you’re a baby, and you can’t really do anything else given the fact that you’re now a baby. You can’t move. You can’t even talk. You can sort of vaguely blow tiny spit bubbles, which is kind of fun if you’re being honest.
Given all of that, your options are kind of limited. Your first and best plan is to try to wake yourself up. This is definitely a hallucination or a dream or a weird fucking drug trip and it will probably end on its own. Which means you just have to wake up. But in the meantime, there’s nothing to worry about because again, this isn’t real.
If plan A doesn’t work out, then there’s plan B: accept the fact that even if this isn’t real, it feels extremely real and maybe you should just go along with it. In the One Piece world, there are infinitely worse places to be than with the Whitebeard pirates. In the impossible chance that this isn’t the kind of dream you wake up from on your own, then maybe it’s not a bad idea to go along with it. Assuming it lasts that long, maybe you can figure out a way to save them from Blackbeard. And Marineford. And all the bad stuff with everyone getting betrayed and dying and getting hunted down and wow you should really stop thinking about this because you keep forgetting that you’re a baby now and the second you start thinking about your favorite characters dying your baby body immediately starts wailing hysterically.
The whole group of pirates instantly starts to panic. It’s actually adorable. There’s something profoundly funny about a group of strong, tough pirates who have absolutely no idea what to do when a baby starts crying and it’s quicker for you to figure out how to make yourself stop crying on your own. It turns out, babies can really only feel one thing at a time so you think about how tiring all this has been and the next thing you know, you’re fast asleep.
“Pops, we can’t keep a baby,” wakes you up from your nap. The new voice is younger than the others you’ve heard so far and he sounds exasperated. Like he can’t believe he has to even say it out loud.
You open your eyes, which involves a frankly ridiculous amount of effort and lots of blinking, before you see who’s talking. Waking up from a nap makes your terrible vision even worse but you focus as hard as you can and the new person slowly takes shape. Purple shirt hanging open to show tan skin underneath, spiky yellow hair on top of his head, general resemblance to a pineapple, yup! This is Marco!
You try to grab his hand and say something, mostly out of curiosity to see what will happen. Your little fist opens and closes and you gurgle. It’s a pretty cute sound. You wish there was a mirror; you probably make a really cute baby.
Something warm settles on your stomach and pulls your attention back from your egoism. The warm thing is attached to something huge that extends far past your line of vision and when it starts moving in gentle circles, you figure out that it’s a single one of Whitebeard’s fingers.
He’s not holding you anymore. You wiggle around and whatever you’re lying on is soft and squishy and it’s probably a crib or a bed or something.
“I know, son,” Edward Newgate says. His voice is heavy, wistful even, but his finger just keeps moving in gentle circles. You don’t know if it’s just your baby brain or the fact that this whole thing has been an exhausting brain-fuck but the sensation alone is enough to pretty much knock you out. Your eyelids flutter shut and you start to drift away. “We’ll set… orsemorsphinx…light… saferer.”
You miss most of what he says in the jumble of exhaustion, but you have a sudden feeling that you want to know what they’re talking about.
Marco hums quietly.
“I thought it’d be harder to convince you, yoi.”
Whitebeard chuckles and the motion jostles the finger on your chest.
“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted,” he answers, the deep baritone of his voice rumbling in your ears in one of the most soothing sensations you’ve ever felt, “But a ship is no place for an infant.”
“They’ll love her on Sphinx, Pops,” Marco adds, “There’s nowhere safer for her to be.”
Wait, what?!
They want to ditch you on Sphinx?!
No, oh no no no no NO that is not happening! You did not wake up in the body of a baby inside of your favorite anime only for the fictional characters that you’re already emotionally invested in to DITCH YOU ON SOME D-PLOT RETIREMENT HOME OF AN ISLAND!
NOT HAPPENING!
But what can you do? You’re a baby, it’s not like you can give them an impassioned plea about why they need to keep you around so you can stop Marshal D Teach from stabbing Thatch in the back over a Devil Fruit he won’t find for X number of years. And oh yeah, you still have no idea when you are with respect to canon. It’s at least after the God Valley incident, if Marco and the rest of the crew are calling Whitebeard Pops. But you can’t see well enough to figure out how old everyone is. It should be pretty easy to figure out if it’s before or after Oden, right? And also you have not forgotten that this whole thing is still just a crazy hallucination but it’ll be an infinitely more boring and frustrating hallucination dream if you have to spend it on fucking Sphinx!
Shit, what can you do? They’re right, a baby does not belong on a fucking pirate ship but you have to change their minds before they dump you off (with a loving family, probably, but STILL!) and sail away into the New World where you have no chance of saving them.
You have to change their minds somehow.
But how?
You already know that Marco isn’t going to change his mind. He’s absolutely a hundred percent correct that they should not keep a baby around. So changing his mind is out. But he’s not the one who makes the final decision.
Which means you have to convince Whitebeard that he has to keep you. Somehow. Because again, you are a baby, who can do nothing but blow little spit bubbles, sleep, and cry.
Wait.
Hang on a second.
You can cry!
A plan begins to form; a truly devious plan worthy of a mastermind in the shape of a baby. Whitebeard is already attached to you. You can see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice, feel it in the wistfulness of the soothing finger motions. You can use that.
There’s probably still time before you get to Sphinx. Once Whitebeard leaves, your plan can begin.
But for now, he doesn’t seem like he’s going anywhere anytime soon, so you let yourself fall asleep to the gentle rocking motion of the ship, the warm finger moving in circles on your chest, and the fading voices of father and son making plans.
When you wake up, there’s pink shapes all around you, and quiet but undeniably female voices talking. You’re still in the crib bed thing and you take your time getting your bearings. The pink shapes are nurses and WOW those uniforms are really so pink. You can make out what looks like wooden walls and lots of posters and a kind of sharp smell that reminds you of a hospital, and two plus two means you’re probably in the infirmary. Which seems like the most responsible place for a baby to be left.
But most importantly, and you triple check to make sure, there’s no sign of the captain. Your plan can begin.
With a mighty inhale, you open your mouth and cry.
At first, the nurses think nothing of it. A woman with soft brown curls that tickle against your skin comes to check on you. She picks you up with soft hands and runs through all the usual things that could make a baby cry. You go along with it all but no matter what she tries to fix you keep crying.
She gets more and more frazzled as she runs out of ideas for what to try; you feel bad for her because she’s clearly not very experienced with babies, but you’re on a mission. Lives are at stake—fictional lives, but within the realm of this hallucination dream that’s the same as real lives—and also you REFUSE to be left on Sphinx.
You get passed off to another nurse with long blonde hair who seems much more confident in her baby handling skills, but you hold steadfast and keep crying, forcing yourself to wail your lungs out even though it’s starting to get a little uncomfortable.
Tough luck, baby body. You’ve got a job to do.
You lose track of how many people you get passed around to and all of the different ways they try to soothe the screaming baby, because you will not stop for anything but complete and total victory. The nurses worry that there’s something wrong medically, and then you really do have something to scream about because the blood draw was not fucking necessary thank you very much. Eventually, one of the nurses settles into a rocking chair in a dark room and tries her best to rock you to sleep.
It's a persistence game and you are not going to lose. If there is one thing you’re good at, one skill you honed above all other during your PhD, it’s being stubborn as all hell. It doesn’t matter that your lungs are starting to burn and your throat hurts and your stomach is getting uncomfortably tight from all the screaming and crying. You’re going to win.
You cry the whole time, even when Marco comes in to do a full body checkup and tries using his Phoenix flames on you.
The blue gold fire tickles and it feels warm and safe and OH BOY was that a mistake on their part because the rawness in your throat from an entire day’s worth of screaming heals up in a wash of Devil Fruit magic and you are completely refreshed and ready to keep going.
After Marco leaves, looking completely baffled and overwhelmed because he also has no idea why an otherwise healthy baby is screaming her head off, you cry for hours and hours and hours. You cry through three changes of shift in the nurses holding you, before they finally decide to put you back in your crib cradle bed thing and let you cry it out in a dark room.
You’re being Ferberized. It’s a good call on the nurses' part. They are as confident as they can possibly be that you’re healthy and not poisoned or sick or in treatable pain, and they really gave it a damn good shot to comfort you. Too bad for them, you are not going to stop crying anytime soon.
Oden held on to that rope for three whole days and nights. You’ve got a record to beat.
Well, a quick nap. They’ll freak out if the baby stays awake for three days straight, and you’re not sure that it’s even physically possible in the body you’re in.
But when you wake up, it’s right back to screaming.
“Can’t we do something for her?” a random crewmate begs, holding onto his ears while the nurse wraps up his arm in a bandage.
“You’re welcome to try,” the nurse responds and you feel a little bad about the amount of pride you take in the massive bags under her eyes. Even through bleary tears, you can tell that she and the other nurses are exhausted. Meanwhile, you are well-rested and only have a little bit of a sore throat, and you’re ready to see how long a ship full of strong, burly men with daddy issues up the wazoo can handle a baby that won’t stop crying.
You’ve never been much of a gambler but even you know it’s easy money.
Whitebeard lasts about a day and a half before he starts fretting over you. The nurses have assembled a collection of pacifiers and teething toys that they apparently had to send out a small ship to rendezvous with a merchant from a nearby island to get, and they’re at their wits' end when you refuse to latch onto any of them.
The nurses assure their captain that you’re healthy and eating normally and sleeping and they have no explanation for why you won’t stop crying. Whitebeard looks down at you with devastating helplessness. It’s so endearing that you almost stop crying. He’s such a softie, he wants to help so badly but he obviously knows nothing about babies or how to fix you.
He tries the finger thing again, and it feels really, really good, especially because you’re sore and exhausted and in pain from days of crying, but it’s only the evening of the second day and it’s too soon to stop. But you need to show him he’s moving in the right direction, so you sort of pause your screaming for a second before getting fussy again, this time just crying much quieter. The nurses all breathe a mini sigh of relief that at least the ear-splitting screaming has stopped.
Whitebeard doesn’t stop, and eventually you let yourself fall asleep even if you keep crying the whole time.
Day three is where it really starts to hurt.
You wake up exhausted and your stomach feels horrible and cramping from a full day of screaming and your throat hurts and your skin feels chapped for some reason but you can’t stop now. The nurses have stopped trying to pick you up after learning that you scream harder when they’re holding you, and beyond keeping you fed and clean there’s nothing they can really do for you.
You hope Marco will try to heal you again, but even when you grab at his hand, he just tries shushing you. Eventually you realize that screaming with renewed vigor after he healed you the first time probably made him think he made things worse.
Shit.
You force yourself to keep crying while the nurses and Marco and Whitebeard try to figure out what they can do, it’s been three days and you’ve cried every second that you’ve been awake and they have no idea what’s wrong. They talk about finding special doctors, explain that they’ve contacted islands under their protection to find seasoned mothers who might be able to help, and at one point someone gets Whitey Bay on the snail.
“It’s colic, Marco,” Whitey Bay explains while you silently cheer because you’ve figured out that it’s sometime after Oden if Whitey Bay has left the ship to become her own Captain. “If your fire can’t fix it, there’s nothing for you to do. Her tummy hurts.”
She’s right; after three days, your tummy does hurt. But they’re still planning to leave you on Sphinx so you can’t stop. You scream the whole day, fussing and fighting the whole time the nurses try to feed you, and at this point it’s clear that your crying is running the whole crew ragged. Not just the nurses, who have been trying everything they can think of to help you, but every crewmate who’s come through the infirmary looks wide-eyed and panicked and shares the same helplessness as their captain. The poor crew; they all want to help but they’ve finally met their match in a crying baby.
You’d feel bad but you’re doing this to save them. You are giving everything you have to stop them from being blindsided and destroyed by a traitor, so you don’t feel that bad.
Whitebeard comes to sit with you in the dark room they’ve been putting you in at night. He’s doing the circle thing again, and after three whole days of screaming, it feels amazing. You want to stop crying, you are exhausted and your throat is on fire and your entire body hurts but you’re so close and you can’t give up now.
“I wish there was something I could do for you,” Whitebeard mutters, watching you cry with a look of utter devastation on his face. Seriously, for all they know, you have colic. Yeah, it’s sad that baby’s tummy hurts, but even if that was why you were crying it won’t kill you.
His other hand, the one that isn’t rubbing circles on your chest, twitches and your eyes widen. Is this it?
The nurses have warned him not to pick you up, that being held makes the crying worse, but it’s clearly wearing him down to watch you suffer. When he doesn’t move, you seize your opportunity and put all your effort into looking him in the eyes (still crying, obviously). You reach for him, using all your pathetic little might to lift your arm and make a grabby motion.
Whitebeard hesitates, but you see the instant when his heart wins and he carefully scoops you up into his palm.
As soon as you’re cradled in the warm but firm hand, you stop crying. After days of nonstop crying and screaming, your body is completely worn out and you go boneless in his hand. You’re an infant, it’s not that much of a change, but at this point you don’t have the energy to even twitch.
His eyes widen and his mouth parts in surprise.
The sudden silence must freak the nurses out, because the door flies open and nurses rush into the room.
“What happened?”
“Is she okay?”
“Where is she?!” one of the nurses demands. She must have seen the empty crib.
The world moves as Whitebeard lowers his palm, showing you lying there in blissful silence. Okay, maybe not blissful because you might as well have just deep-throated a cactus and your stomach is having the very worst cramps of your entire life and your whole body hurts like you got rammed by a bus. But it’s finally over.
You did it.
Whitebeard picked you up.
“She stopped crying?”
Whitebeard nods.
“As soon as I picked her up,” he says quietly, his voice filled with something close to awe. It’s the same emotion that’s shining in his eyes, and unless you’re mistaken, they weren’t that wet a couple minutes ago. “I’d like you to go get for Marco for me.”
The nurses freeze. A few of them exchange looks with each other.
“Pops, don’t tell me—”
“Please go get your brother, Sage.”
Marco is summoned to the room in a matter of minutes and the way he rubs at his eyes means it’s probably the wee hours of the morning.
“Pops, is something wrong?” he yawns as he enters the dark room. Then he takes in the scene and the lack of a crying baby and he stops. “Oh no, Pops, hang on a second.”
“I’ve made up my mind,” Whitebeard says and you can’t breathe because the moment of truth is finally here. Marco lets out a groan and sits down on a chair, burying his face in his hands.
“Pops, we’ve been over this. We can’t keep her, it’s too dangerous to have a baby on board.”
“She stopped crying the instant I started holding her. You know better than to ignore fate, my son. She belongs with us.”
“Maybe she was just cold. You’re a lot warmer than the crib, you don’t know that it’s fate,” Marco pleads. You shift in Whitebeard’s palm and coo as loudly as you can to try to distract him. Your throat is not pleased with you but you can’t let stupid things like logic and reason and the fact that Marco is still objectively correct get in your way. Whitebeard looks down at you and melts and you know you’ve got him.
“What’s the point of being the Strongest in the World if I can’t protect my treasure?” Whitebeard asks quietly.
Marco sighs and the fight leaves his body completely.
“Is there anything I can say to change your mind?”
Whitebeard chuckles and shakes his head, “Not a thing.”
Marco sighs again and you give him points for being such a dramatic bitch. He’s not the one who spent the last three days screaming his head off, what does he have to complain about?
He stands up and pads over to where Whitebeard is sitting, and the world shifts again as the captain lowers his palm so Marco can see you better. Calloused fingertips settle on your cheek, curling down to stroke across the soft skin and you can just barely make out the moment when his eyes soften.
“She is really cute,” Marco admits to his father, and you’re a little surprised how easily he accepts the man’s decision when you know he’s against it. Then again, Whitebeard is his captain and what he says goes.
Whitebeard laughs and it’s full-bellied and delighted and full of so much warmth that it feels like being right in front of a fireplace.
“Of course she is,” Whitebeard agrees heartily, “She’s my daughter! She’s the cutest in the world!”
You stare up at him in awe, a fuzzy feeling growing in your chest and spreading out through your whole body until you feel all tingly. The plan was to get him to keep you, you can’t save them from Blackbeard and the Marines from fucking Sphinx of all places, but you never actually stopped to think about what that would mean.
You may be a full-grown adult somehow smushed down into the body of a baby caught in some kind of freaky full-color dream world or hallucination (or as much as you refuse to believe, fictional universe come to life) but Whitebeard doesn’t know that. As far as he knows, you’re just a baby. A baby he’s staring at adoringly that he’s just claimed as his own.
Until you can figure out how to wake up, he’s your dad now.
And you’re going to do whatever it takes to save him.
“We’re going to need a lot of diapers,” Marco murmurs. Your eyes widen. Right, you’re still a baby. This is going to be interesting.