True, Honest Freedom (and the ones who get to attain it)

The Birth of Sun and Song

When Shanks looked back on all the chapters of his life, he found that Roger seemed to unerringly have a hand in it, even after his death.

In the beginning, that was a blessing. Being an infant found abandoned in a treasure chest, he couldn't have hoped for a better outcome than for Roger to have found him. If it had been any other alpha, he didn't think he would've faired quite so well. He had been thankful and looked up to Roger as a father. He had had a pack in his captain, Rayleigh, Buggy and the rest of the crew on the Oro Jackson. Later on, he had had Rouge as well when she and the captain became mates and she left her crew to join theirs. Sure, there had been times when he had seen and experienced things no pup should have and he wondered if Roger had done the right thing raising him on a pirate ship, knowing the risks, but he wouldn't trade his pack for anything.

He had foolishly thought that family would last forever but it shattered the moment those swords went into Roger's back in Loguetown. No, it was destroyed even before that when Roger disbanded the crew and resolved to give himself up to the Marines for execution. He would've died anyway, whether it was at the end of a Marine's blade or at the cold hands of an incurable disease. Still, Shanks had been angry with his choice. Heartbroken, but angry most of all.

During those last few months, he had been ignoring reality, refusing to think that the man he knew to be a bright inferno of ambition, joy and an insatiable thirst for adventure could die like any other man. But Crocus had been sure and the captain was steadily declining. He did not want to waste away, he wanted to die in as grand a fashion as he had lived. He felt like he had accomplished everything he had set out to and was ready to go. Whatever he had found in Laugh Tale convinced him that it was his time.

Shanks and Buggy hadn't gone with him. Buggy had gotten sick and Shanks stayed with him and Rouge in some nondescript town, waiting for the crew to come back. Only Roger had returned, blithely announcing that the crew had disbanded and then began spouting nonsense about the next generation and prophecies and gods. Half of it sounded like madness and they weren't totally convinced it wasn't a result of his illness twisting his mind, but whether he was sane or not, they did not want to let him go so easily. He was their family, he was the only father Shanks knew, the only alpha he had any intention of belonging to, he didn't understand why that hadn't clicked for the captain, why Roger was so set on dying and leaving them behind like nothing they had been through meant anything anymore.

It was Rouge that managed to convince him to hold off on his decision to surrender, to give them all a chance to say goodbye. She whisked Roger, Buggy and Shanks to her home island of Baterilla where they could live out Roger's final days in peace. They lived like a civilian family, as much as they could with Roger's fame. No one questioned them. To the public eye, they were simply a mother, a father and their two sons. An eccentric bunch perhaps, but just a family nonetheless. No more noteworthy than any other. Their time in Baterilla was normal, mundane, boring even. Shanks wanted it to last forever, but then Roger's condition worsened, and Rouge got pregnant, and the World Government wanted Roger and anyone connected to him eliminated. They had stayed in one place for too long, the Marines came for them, and Roger surrendered like he had originally wanted. It was an action that gave Buggy, Shanks and Rouge time to escape but it still left Shanks feeling angry and hurt.

He was 15 years old, had spent all his life as a pirate, looking to Roger for guidance, letting the passionate man lead him on the wildest and, often times, most dangerous adventures. It was those adventures that shaped the man he had grown into and then Roger just walked away. Rouge had tried to assure him that it was much more complicated than that. There was everything that had happened at Laugh Tale, and beyond that, Shanks wouldn't have much luck trying to understand the actions of a dying man. Rouge was his mate, had been for years, and she could barely understand it herself. That didn't make him feel any less raw about it. That feeling only worsened as he was left on his own.