Broken Faith

Lesson 22: We are not ants

You could feel your heart sinking into your stomach just looking at it. All your hard work, ripped apart by a single storm. The treehouse had never looked so pathetic. There were beams torn off, and planks that had escaped from their nails and flown far down the mountain. It was a mess, and you were ashamed.

A gentle hand patted you on the back. "It's alright Angel," Sabo grinned, "We only built it out of scraps. It was gonna get damaged at some point."

True, but you had thought that you could at least make it last a month! A single month! You let out a grimace. Was your workmanship really that terrible?

"He's right!" Ace yelled down from the crow's nest, taking in the worst of the damage. "That was one of the worst storms we've ever had. 'Course bits were gonna fly off. It shouldn't be hard to fix, right?"

Oh no that's not what you were worried about. Part of it was that you had put time and effort into ensuring that this treehouse was structurally sound, and were not physically or mentally prepared to do it all again just yet. That had taken a lot out of you after all. And the following few months had been particularly stressful.

However... it wasn't just the effort that you were concerned about.

"Oi Angel!" Luffy squeezed his head out of one of the many holes littering the walls. This particular hole, you winced as you realised, was in a particularly bad spot. "There's a maaassive hole over here! Looks like half the store got battered."

Great. You scratched at your neck irritably. "How much wood is still there, Luffy?"

"Gimme a mo." He poked his head back in, before instantly popping it out again, "Just under half kinda? It's hard to tell 'cause everything's all over the place."

"I don't think even the full store would be enough," Ace leapt down from the top, using a conveniently placed rope to swing safely to the ground. He grimaced at you apologetically, "There're holes everywhere. Dunno what happened, but there's a hell've a lot of damage for just one storm."

He had a point. You had witnessed storms of that magnitude in Dadan's shack before, and they had never even come close to causing the amount of damage this one had. At first you thought it was because the shack had been rebuilt with proper materials and all you had were random scraps, but even then you had been fairly certain that you'd nailed everything in properly. You had been more than a little paranoid after all.

So why did the treehouse look like a fresh slice of one of Mother's favourite cheeses?

Ace grunted and rolled his shoulders experimentally, "Well. Guess we've gotta go collect some more stuff from Gray Terminal."

And there was the main reason you were worried.

"OOH!" Luffy bounced down on Ace's other side. "We're gonna go to Gray Terminal again? Awesome! I wanna telescope!"

"As if there'd be anything valuable like that, you idiot!"

"But we can still look for one, right? Right?!"

You stiffened as a hand placed itself on your shoulder. "You don't have to go if you don't want to," Sabo smiled, murmuring too low for the others to hear. "I know you're shy without a hood, so you can stay and do repairs if that's what you're most comfortable with."

Honestly you had completely forgotten the hood. If anything you were glad to have it off. It had been weird to begin with, that was certain, but now there wasn't anything blocking your vision or clinging to your head. You had felt safer with it on... yet now that you had felt this sort of freedom you didn't want it to end.

But...

Your lip tightened.

"Are you sure it will be safe?"