If there’s one thing that remains a truth in Usopp’s world, it’s that every person has a dream. Maybe it’s been lost long ago, buried by years of ill fortune and cynicism, pettiness and greed, even something as innocuous as the dull monotony of life, but everyone has a dream. Everyone’s started somewhere. Usopp dreams of others starting in grand big cities, in the heart of danger and strife, but that’s not where all dreams start out. Some of them start off in tiny little villages like his own.
Syrup Village is nothing more than a dot on the most detailed of maps, little more than tiny homes scattered across large, mellow grassy vistas underneath a clear blue sky. In one of these tiny houses, Usopp is trailing after his mother in the kitchen, small hands grabbing at her thin skirt in his haste to keep up with her long strides.
If not for her own long, thin nose, one would think Usopp had been adopted; even as a child he’s a gangly thing, with dark skin and thick, curly hair and life all but bursting out of his seams, but Banchina is pale and slim with smooth black hair and a quiet peace about her.
Peace doesn’t last long with Usopp around. “Mama,” he says. “Mama, tell me where Dad is.”
“Again?” She looks down at him, the exasperation in her voice mingling openly with amusement. “I’ve told you already. You’ve already told other people about it.”
“I want to hear it
again,” he says, plaintively. “From you.”
She kneels down in front of him, inviting him closer. “Your father is a pirate--”
“--a
brave pirate--”
“--who has gone out to sea--”
“--which is
really really big and exciting--”
“--you said you wanted me to tell you,” Banchina says with a faint laugh.
“Sorry.”
“He has gone out to sea to follow his dreams.” She rests her fingers on his shoulders, but has to retract her hand for a moment to cough briefly into the crook of her arm. Once she’s finished, she says, “The sea is very dangerous, Usopp, but your father has gone out anyway.”
“And he went out to find adventure,” Usopp says in a hushed voice. “Great ones.”
“That’s right,” she says, then rises to her feet. She says something about dinner and dishes that need to be done, but Usopp’s not listening. He’s too busy thinking about that big, big sea full of danger and adventure and more mysteries than even an imagination like his can conjure up.
*
Syrup village is a calm, still little place, little more than a dot on the map, but even these little places have their corners of heartbreak. In one of the small houses that are dotted along the vista of grass, underneath the pale blue sky, someone is dying.
This is not unusual. Even places of peace, people must die. Most of the time it’s old age, but there are always accidents. Farming tools can be dangerous. Even something as small as fixing a roof can have dire consequences.
And sometimes it’s sickness. What’s happening today is not very different from what happens every day but for one thing: it is Usopp’s mother that is dying in this tiny house. She is far too young to die. Usopp is too young to lose his mother.
Death does not appear to care about either of these things, but Usopp does. He comes barreling down the dusty paths of Syrup Village towards his house, his shout of “Pirates are coming!” interrupting the still springtime air.
“Pirates are coming!” He shouts again as he charges his way in.
The doctor stalls him at the door with his large hands, a chastisement on his lips, but Usopp wriggles his way closer to his mother anyway. She is very, very still as she lies on the bed, a cool cloth on her forehead and great, wheezing puffs of air escaping her slack lips. Usopp runs forward anyway, placing his hands at her bedside. “Dad’s pirate ship is here! Dad came back to get us, Mom! If you can recover, Dad will take us with him!”
It’s a lie, and not even a good one. He wouldn’t be crying quite so hard if it weren’t. Even stricken by sickness and fatigue, Banchina’s voice manages to cut him to the quick. “Don’t be foolish, Usopp. Your father’s not coming back. But, Usopp, I’m glad I married your father. I want you to grow up to be brave and strong, just like him.”
“Don’t talk like you’re gonna die!” Usopp protests, face messy with tears and hands fisted in her bedsheets. He sucks in a wobbly breath and begins anew, the bright, genuine looking smile on his face at odds with the despair in his eyes. “D-didn’t you hear about the magical medicine? It can cure any illness! It’s in a land across the ocean--”
“Stop dreaming. Listen to me. If I pass on, you must stay with the villagers.”
“I don’t
care if I’m dreaming,” he says, still smiling that desperate smile though his voice catches in his throat. “I don’t want you to die. I wanna keep dreaming - because I’m the son of a pirate!”
These first dreams do very little for him. Banchina dies with little ceremony, a simple burial and a plain gravestone, leaving behind only a child with a head full of dreams and a village full of people not entirely to do with the son of a pirate. They take care of him but leave him alone for the most part in that tiny house, and if anyone notices that he still goes out to the coast and stares out at the sea like it holds all the answers in the world if only a pirate ship will come sailing in for him, nobody says anything. It’s kinder, they think, to let the boy have his dreams, come to terms with it in his own time.
For all that she had humoured his tales at first, Banchina was an honest woman, and she had been telling the truth when she said that Usopp’s father was never coming back. With two dreams lost in the dust, perhaps it’s wise to bend one’s head and work at having a good, simple life like so many others in Syrup Village, but Usopp has never been particularly wise.
Instead, he spins dreams out of truths. His mother wanted him to be brave and strong, like his father, the pirate. He holds that like a slow burning ember inside him and pictures it in his mind’s eye when he lies down to sleep, eyes squeezed shut as he chants to himself, “A brave man of the sea, a brave man of the sea.” There are no adults around to hush him and break into the fragility of these first few dreams, and soon enough, he makes himself believe it can happen.
It’s a good dream.
*
Not all people are as tolerant of Usopp’s whims and fancies. By the time he’s seventeen, still knock kneed and awkward looking, he fits in even less than before, but that doesn’t stop him from telling his tales and filling up all the empty spaces in his life with dreams - and the people who will listen to him.
He sits by a large tree, legs sprawled out in front of him. The house he’s in front of doesn’t seem to fit him, large and opulent even by a normal city’s standards, with a pretty, pale, blonde haired girl leaning out the window to listen to him. Pretty she may be, but there’s something sickly about the pallor over her that makes it obvious that she’s not entirely well.
Not that you’d be able to tell from her face. She laughs uproariously at Usopp, then says, “But what did you do with the goldfish?”
“I chopped it up and took it to a land of little people. They’re still eating it to this day,” Usopp responds, quick as anything. “And after such a glorious feat, the people called out to me--”
“
CAPTAIN!” Comes a shout from behind them, coming from the motley crew of three little boys, and three others closer to Usopp’s age: a boy with a strawhat, a green haired man with three swords at his side, and an orange haired girl.
“That’s right,” Usopp continues, not skipping a beat. “They called me... wait, what’re you guys doing here?”
“We brought them here,” one of the kids says.
“You must be the mistress of this place!” The boy with the strawhat - Luffy - says, brightly.
“Oh,” Usopp says, recovering long enough to sling one arm around Luffy’s shoulders. “They heard of my reputation from afar and came to seek me out. They’re the newest members of my crew.”
“Yeah!” Luffy says, thinks it over, and then backtracks, saying, “Hey! That’s not right!”
The blonde girl - Kaya - smiles sweetly at them with the good practice of someone used to Usopp’s antics and merely says, “A favour? To ask of me?”
“Yeah!” Luffy says. “We want a big sturdy ship!”
“What is the meaning of this?” Comes yet another voice from behind them, this time belonging to a tall man with a pair of round spectacles on his nose and impeaccably neat black hair. “You realize that you’re trespassing?”
Usopp hurriedly looks away from him while Kaya leans further out of the window to appease him. “You see, these people, they’re--”
“Save your excuses for later. You must all go--immediately. Or do you have some business here?”
“I want a sturdy ship,” Luffy says in a way that suggests that he either doesn’t realize how inappropriate his presence is or doesn’t care - or both.
“I can’t help you,” the butler says severely, but his attention is soon turned elsewhere once he recognizes a familiar gangly figure. “You... you’re Usopp, aren’t you? Your reputation precedes you. You’re the talk of the village.”
“Uh... thanks,” Usopp says, trying to inject some much needed levity into his voice. “Call me Captain Usopp, if you please! But really, there’s no need for--”
“The guards. They’ve reported seeing you lurking around the estate. Do you have any business being here?”
“Well...” Usopp says, grasping at straws. “Yes, I do. I saw a legendary mole enter this estate. I’m trying to capture him!”
The butler’s eyes narrow, and he turns to face Usopp head-on. “Hmph. You’ve a gift for deceit. I’ve also heard stories of your father. You’re the son of a filthy pirate. I wouldn’t put anything past you. Stay away from Mistress Kaya.”
All pretense of friendliness immediately drains from Usopp’s face as his hands curl into fists at his sides. “A filthy pirate...?”
“You and Mistress Kaya are from completely different worlds,” he continues, as serene as ever. “Is it money you’re after? How much do you want?”
“You’ve gone too far, Klahadore!” Kaya suddenly bursts out, bracing herself against her windowsill. “You owe Usopp an apology!”
“Mistress Kaya, why should I apologize to this trash? I’m only speaking the truth. But I do feel for you. Your treasure-crazed idiot of a father did abandon you.”
“Stop bad-mouthing my father,” Usopp snaps back, face contorting in rage.
Klahadore doesn’t seem to mind - in fact, the corner of his mouth tilts up in modest amusement. “What are you getting so worked up about? Why not just fabricate some of your outrageous lies about your father? Just say he’s really a merchant, or that he’s not your real father, or perhaps--”
“Shut up!” Usopp all but screams and lunges forward, slamming his fist right into Klahadore’s jaw, sending him flying to the ground.
“See how he is?” Klahadore says, clutching at his face. “His first instinct is violence! He’s an animal -- like his father!”
“Shut up!” Usopp roars again. “I’m proud that my father is a pirate! I’m proud that he’s a brave warrior of the sea! You’re right! I
do make up stories. But there’s one thing I’ll never lie about - I’ll
never lie about my pirate heritage. I’m the son of a pirate!”
*
The sea is both so much bigger and so much smaller than Usopp had expected, but none of that’s important. What’s important is that he’s gotten up and out of his little village into the great wide expanse of the world itself, sailing on a
ship flying the jolly roger like he had always dreamed. There’s more busy work than he thought there would be, but for a boy who had never stepped foot out of his own little world, it’s nothing short of magnificent.
But being a pirate doesn’t mean that you’re a true, brave warrior of the sea, not just yet. Usopp sits and watches the others, sometimes, Luffy with his loud, brash voice jangling cheerily in the air one moment and charging headfirst into battle without a single care the next, Zoro with the slow, deliberate movements of his swords until they’re not so slow and careful anymore much to his enemies’ dismay, Sanji with his easy lope and liquid movement turned sharp as hell as he slams his legs around as easily as he does his kitchen knives.
Usopp’s got a slingshot. He blows stuff up. That’s pretty cool, he supposes.
But not being a brave warrior of the sea yet doesn’t make it any less
fun. It’s almost impossible to capably sum up what it’s like, sailing out into strange waters. Everything seems brighter and livelier than it was at Syrup Island and the constant rocking of the Merry is his constant companion, along with the loud, rowdy joy of his crew. Whether he likes it or not, he will never be alone again.
And he likes it. Oh, he
loves it like he’s never loved anything before, even when they’re racing through a town with rain pounding down on them like some god has plunged his fist into the clouds, even when they’re being chased by marines and Usopp’s forced to hold tight onto the ropes mooring the Merry to the dock as he waits for the rest of his crew to join them.
They all manage to race onto the ship and get it out onto the dangerously rolling seas - to which Luffy shouts, “Yahoo! The ship feels like it’ll flip right over!” - but that’s just a part of being a pirate. It’s in all the stories that Usopp used to tell.
“You see that light over there?” Their orange-haired navigator says. “It’s known as the Light of Guidance. The entrance to the Grand Line is just up ahead of that light. So, what shall we do?”
(Usopp protests that entering a place like the Grand Line in a storm like this is a terrible idea, but happily, everyone else ignores him.)
“So, we’ve reached the Grand Line, have we?” Sanji says, and sets an barrel out on the rain-slicked deck. “Well, this calls for a celebration!” He props one foot onto the barrel. “To find All Blue.”
Luffy follows suit with a furiously shouted, “To become the Pirate King!”
“To become the greatest swordsman,” Zoro says, looking downright cocky as he props his foot up.
“To draw a map of the world!” Nami says, standing just as straight and tall as ever.
Usopp doesn’t quite have their confidence, but he certainly has conviction as he manages to stammer, “T... T-to become a brave warrior of the seas!”
The winds are blowing just as furiously as before, but somehow it doesn’t seem like such an ill omen anymore.
It’s a beginning.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
