the stars have all gone

i

Damn it. Your early retirement from sailing was supposed to be quiet. This New World island was large enough for you to build a client base and make rent with odd jobs in between, but word of a brusque young astrologer spread too fast, fast enough to reach a Navy lieutenant from your hometown who knew you by that scant description.

"Please!" He all but got on his knees at the farmer's market the other day. "We need navigators like you."

"If you want to arrest me, go for it. But I don't know where Hawkins is."

"No! Seriously! There's other reformed pirates in the Navy, and you don't even have a bounty. They'll overlook a lot for skill. Especially yours."

"Why? Don't your warships have technology for this?"

"They're still prototypes. One of them was faulty and it took some of the oldest marines to get it back to Vegapunk for repairs," he explained too easily, what should be trade secrets, surely.

"So you're saying I'm from Buddha Sengoku's generation."

Now the lieutenant had just entered the dining room at an upscale restaurant where a widow whose chart you read insisted on treating you to a meal. You suspected her husbands' deaths were far from accidental, not for her prominent eighth house but how freely and happily she spent on a hack like you.

"Shit," you said to yourself.

Your companion followed your gaze. "My, my. Men in uniform?" Then, seeing your face, she laughed into her wine.

There's no way he's here as a customer. A couple other marines trailed in after him, and they seemed to argue with the host about something, who was clearly turning them away. Then the lieutenant caught sight of you, but continued speaking, looking official and tense.

"Um," you said awkwardly. "Do you mind if I...?"

She shook her head. "Go on, dear. I'll call on you again."

With that, you stole into a dimly-lit hallway, your heels only barely sinking into the lush rug running down its length. Must be private rooms, you thought, and one at the end had its door cracked. You hoped it meant it was unoccupied, probably being prepared for the next diners, and so you briskly made your way over and grabbed the door handle with all the nerve you had.

"You don't work here."

Fuck.

There was no way for you not to recognize him. Sir Crocodile, former Warlord of the Sea and known Impel Down escapee. You'd heard he did business in the area and saw Daz Bones out and about once, but seeing the man in the flesh was different. He was utterly relaxed, a testament to either his confidence in his strength or how insignificant you were. The skin of the scar circling his face like an odd, fallen halo was almost shiny, almost pretty, you thought wildly, and his pale eyes peered down at you like you were a worm. Down because even seated, even a few yards away, he towered above you at an impressive height.

"I don't. I'm—"

His golden hook glinted in the candlelight, and you knew it wasn't the only deadly thing about him.

"Can I stay for a few minutes? Just until this person leaves."

Crocodile didn't look impressed, and worlds away from amused. "No."

"He's a Marine."

"No."

"Please? You're probably here because of the this place's discretion." It was owned by a noble a notch below a Celestial Dragon who wielded that proximity to make it a de facto underworld sanctuary. "Someone must have seen you arrive and tipped off the Navy, who should know by now they can't get past front of house even with a warrant." You were rambling, you knew, and looking more at the deep violet cravat at his throat than at him. "In a way it's your fault he's here at all," you added sullenly, more to yourself, and your gaze slid to the floor.

Crocodile let you stand there uncomfortably on purpose, and you didn't need visual confirmation that he was looking you up and down, waiting for you to squirm. It was a game you were wearily used to, a treatment your all-male crew didn't get, of wondering what a potential enemy's intent was—more often than not, twofold. Eventually, he took a deep lungful of his cigar, which smelled not unpleasant to you, and exhaled a low chuckle. "Alright."

"Seriously?"

"You're not armed." He said it so easily, and you realized you forget your thigh holster and knife on your vanity. "Unless that necklace of yours is something."

It was tucked between your dress and jacket so all that anyone could see was a dark, stainless steel chain. You set your purse on the table across from him and helped yourself to a chair. "It's not. It's a sextant."

"I beg your pardon?"

Men. He either didn't know—most likely—or reacted strangely to a woman saying "sex." Unlike Blackbeard, his reputation didn't carry so much as a suggestion of being a lech, so you fought back a smile at your private theory that he could be flustered.

"This." The sextant landed between your ribs, so you fished the chain from between your breasts to hold it up like a fish. It was hardly jewelry and really about the size of binoculars, but you were too used to the weight around your neck to part with with it. "It's a navigational tool."

"I've never heard of it."

"Few have."

"Your invention?"

You snorted, and the look he gave you might have been true disgust. "I'm sorry," you said hastily. "Sir." He wasn't a damn knight, but it was on some of his wanted posters, and it felt right because of his bearing, and felt right on your tongue for some subliminal reason, too. In your blood.

"Explain."

Terse, you thought. And open-minded. "It actually originated in the Grand Line, I believe, as something called an astrolabe." You set it on the table between the two of you and gestured that he was welcome to it. "There must have been some tribe someplace who realized that while the Grand Line in unpredictable, the night sky stays the same. They used it to leave and settle in four seas, mostly the East and North Blue. I think."

Crocodile leaned back and poured himself a glass of wine. To your surprise, he filled a second one and tipped it toward you.

"Oh, I cannot afford that."

"'Thank you, sir'," he corrected.

"I—"

"I don't care you're a pirate. Mind your manners if you plan to impose."

Your mouth clamped shut. What tipped him off? Not many women were experienced sailors outside the Marines, you supposed.

"Thank you, sir."

You accepted the glass, reaching above his thick fingers along the stem, brushing his knuckles briefly. Crocodile dipped his head in a short nod, and you studied, briefly, how he sipped so you wouldn't embarrass yourself.

"Continue."

"I'm sure this is really boring."

"Did I say that?"

"...No."

Even Hawkins' eyes glazed over when you went on about history, and he was one of the most tedious people you'd ever known.

"Um, so." You sipped. The wine was surprisingly sweet, or you expected the former Desert King to prefer drys too. "I mostly think this because when I started traveling in the North Blue, the only other people who recognized it were only a few generations deep. Came from the New World, many of them, and a lot looked like—"

Me.

"I'm surprised you're from the Blues," Crocodile said. "You have that look, like Boa Hancock."

Other men said so as a taunt or a come-on, but when you finally saw her photographed in the Paramount War, you thought you could be cousins, if her family got all the good genes. The Kuja Tribe was mysterious to outsiders, though you thought you heard, once, that they weren't homogeneous. But for the first time, the comment had weight, from a former Warlord who knew the Pirate Empress personally, and you felt your neck heat. He meant it neutrally, an observation.

"So it works by,"—was the wine going to your head?— "You pick an object like the Sun or a planet like Venus or a star like Sirius, and as long as you have a good idea of your latitude, you can use the angle it forms to the horizon to find longitude. Most navigators know to use the sunrise and sunset to determine direction, but—" You noticed lukewarm appetizers. "Oh, fuck, I already ate, I can leave if you're waiting for your—"

"Language."

Fuck. "Sorry. Sir."

"There seems to be some delay because of your little boyfriend."

Hawkins...? Oh! "Oh, no. I wouldn't touch a Marine with a stick."

Crocodile laughed that little huff again, and it was deep and rich and dry. "Good. And you're sure they're not after you?"

"No. I never had a bounty."

"'Had'?"

"I'm retired."

"Surely they'd arrest a pirate who can navigate the Grand Line without a Log Pose."

"Oh. I used that, too. All these tools are best in conjunction." You giggled at your own astronomy joke, and you were sure that'd annoy him, but he didn't react outwardly. "But I left it with my captain."

"Your captain," he said. "And that is?"

You frowned. Why was he so curious? "He's part of the Worst Generation. 'The Magician.'"

It took him some thought. "Basil Hawkins," he realized. "This doesn't sound like magic to me, though," he said, gesturing at the sextant. "There's a bright star I notice lately in the evening."

"That's probably Spica," you said. "It's springtime in the North Blue, so Virgo sets along with the sun. Sorry, uh, it's the 'spike' of the wheat that the maiden holds in the constellation."

"I was born under Virgo, if I understand correctly."

"Oh, you don't, actually."

His pale eyes widened a bit, you suspected more at your breezy tone than any investment in his horoscope. "Oh?" It was dry, and more like a grunt.

"When?"

"September 5."

Four days before—"The latter part of Leo, then. Ruled by the Sun, Desert King. There's no physical relationship between the 12 signs and their constellations."

Crocodile sat back and looked you up and down again, but there was something different in it. "Show me."

"Virgo?" You looked around. You could draw out the constellation on a napkin, you supposed.

"No." He nodded toward your sextant. "The astrolabe."

"The sextant."

He cleared his throat. "That."

You allowed yourself a grin. He was embarrassed.

"Hmm." You scanned the room. "That lamp." A slightly ugly lampshade with tassels and a boudoir-esque damask, a few feet behind him and to the left of his head from your point of view. "Let's say that's Jupiter. We call it a evening star because you can see it right after sunset. And..." You tapped the table. "This is the horizon. I'm facing the bow. You're my captain, asking where north is, because the next island is somewhere east." You picked up your sextant and shot the lampshade. "45'5.02" degrees," you said. You caught him in the sight, too, as you went to set it down, and god, his stare was intense. "I would need my ephemeris and some paper, but based on that I could calculate how far east we are of Mary Geoise."

"Mary Geoise?"

"The ephemeris isn't a nautical reference," you said. "The only people with the resources to put into mapping out Saturn's movements for 50 years at a time are the government and the Celestial Dragons, and the Navy relies on compasses and sea charts anyway. It's a book for divination."

He tilted his head, like he'd come to some conclusion. "You don't believe in fortunetelling."

"I think we make our own fortune."

You don't know when it happened, but you'd given up your skittish distance from the table to scoot closer, narrowly missing his long legs with your knees.

"I agree." He seemed closer, too, and his posture drooped slightly, like he was trying to close the substantial difference in your heights. You swallowed.

"It's romantic to say the heavens reflect it, but it's coincidence, not causation."

"And you?"

"My sign? You don't seem like the type."

Crocodile shrugged. "It takes up newsprint."

"So does garbage." He smirked at that. "Pisces, tropically, Aquarius, sidereally," you answered. "We're opposites."

"And what would a fortuneteller say about that?"

You smiled. "Depends on what you pay."