Sometimes, Brooke thought he was going insane.
It was understandable, he thought, picking at a spot of rotting flesh upon his thumb. Normal people didn't stay awake to watch their body rot away, watching even though his eye had fallen out a month ago. The remnants of the Rumba Pirates were still strewn over the deck, yet Brooke hadn't the heart to throw them in the ocean.
There was Barry, arms crumpled forever in an unending jig, and Bertha, and she was leaning over the cello that always looked small in her mighty grasp, and Darwin, who played the tuba and looked absolutely ridiculous, but was the loudest player and the most quietly cheerful man Brooke had ever met, yet none of them would ever rise.
Normal men did not have to bear this urge to sob although he lacked tear glands. He still played the recording, if only to hear the entire song as a whole once more. Brooke had always played the accompaniment, had no experience in being the lead, never wanted to be the lead. That was the captain's job. But he had to get the song to Laboon, so he learned to play the lead. He learned to play the percussion. He learned every instrument. What else did he have to do?
After he lost his second eye, he fought a seagull for it. It was completely and utterly irrational, and Brooke, who had never been the most logical of men in life knew this. He could see without his eyes just fine, of course, but it was as if retaining the slightest bit of flesh would remind him what it was like to be human.
But he was human, wasn't he? Regardless of skin or bone, he was human.
Sometimes, though, he wondered. He spoke to his crewmates long dead. "It would appear that I am talking to nothing," he remarked to the sorry remains of the trumpet player, "yet how would I know? I have no eyes!"
The body did not respond, so Brooke laughed to himself. It made things a bit more bearable, the laughter, reminded him of olden days. He cavorted around the deck, just laughing. The same last laugh of Bink's Sake.
"Yohoho," he practiced. "Yohoho."
A year passed in darkness, and Brooke dared any man living amongst ghosts to attempt to stay halfway coherent.
--
After the second year, he stopped keeping track of time. In darkness, he couldn't figure out what was light and what was dark. Sometimes he thought his crew was still alive when he woke up from that thing that wasn't quite dreaming, but wasn't quite consciousness either.
To stop him from believing that they'd come back, he'd play a jaunty tune on the violin. That usually was accompanied by a loud response of singing, and when it didn't come, it didn't make him too sad, only let him know, yes, they're gone. They died smiling, and so would Brooke.
He started to get the hang of laughing, and he stopped crying. If he sang loudly, sometimes he'd hear the echo of his own voice in his ears, and it was soothing. Some days were better than others, full of nostalgia, and memory, and thoughts of some sort of wonderful afterlife, thoughts of Laboon. Thoughts of the sun.
Other days were worse. He'd walk underneath the deck, if not only to try to delude himself, as if there was a family and a sun waiting for him on deck. Eternal darkness would make one rather grumpy after a while, Brooke mused on those days, and even Hell had fire. Brooke was scared of lighting fires. He was scared of a lot of things. Of the sun. Of the dark. Of his own reflection, empty holes staring eerily back at him. Of undead. Of spirits. Of silence.
Brooke was not a terribly brave man but pretended otherwise, because that's what a pirate did, and he didn't really have any choice in the matter anyways.
--
After the tenth year, he began to move the ship around in the darkness, got used to it. The occasional ship drifted in, and he flashed his lamp at them, wasting some of his precious oil.
They were fellow pirates, after all. They shouldn't be afraid of anything, let alone a single man. Brooke hadn't looked in the mirror since he lost his eye; he didn't know how he looked, flesh still dragging behind him, blood smeared over what little that remained and a still alive, still soulful look in his eye.
"Hello!" He cried, racing towards them and all but toppling off the deck before steadying himself. Just somebody to talk to, he convinced himself, and he'd be all right until he could get his shadow back. "Stop!" Brooke hurled himself to balance on top of the ship, bones precariously slipping off in the torrential rain.
The other boat slowed, and Brooke was overcome with emotion. They had skin. They had lives. He could hear their breathing, and that was something he hadn't heard in two years. "Hello!" He cried again, and met them, eye to eye, face to face. "It has been such a very long time since I have seen people again. Do any of you know the folk tune, Bink's--"
Screaming met his words, and chaos broke out.
"No, I'm not very scary," Brooke said helplessly, "I'm still a human, you see. I ate a--no, that's not the--" He stopped and sat down, his skeletal mouth spread wide in an eternal grin.
They were going in the... wrong direction.
"Hey!" He shouted after them. "That's the wrong way! You don't want to go there! Oi!"
They paddled faster, and somehow, Brooke knew that they were all dead before he had even got to exchange words with them. With a sigh that rattled his bones, he slunk back underneath the deck and dragged his hand over his performance clothes. They were afraid of a skeleton, well, he didn't blame them.
Brooke changed into his suit, put on a top hat, smoothed out wrinkles he'd never be able to see in a mirror. "Yohohoho," he said.
From now on, his personality would match his endless smile.
--
The next year, he came across another ship, and instead of pleading to them, instead lit himself on top of their boat and rocked them with music and laughter, back turned so that they could not see his face.
"It's dangerous here," he told them, voice still musical with laughter, "so you should go the other way! Otherwise you shall soon be dead, like me! Yohoho!" He turned and yes, they were struck with horror at his appearance, now just bones. He jumped off as they paddled in the right direction, this time, and wandered upon his own ghost ship.
Laughter worked. It kept him happy, made others happy.
--
After the twentieth year, he was quite sure he had gone insane. He was prone to chatting with himself, to any living creature that dared come near, to the empty mirror, to a skull. The bones of his crew were crumbling underfoot, and this made him sad.
They were not alive, true, but it still felt as if he was losing his dear friends. Brooke could recognize each of their skulls, picked them up. Played music on them. Laughed.
He had to take joy in little things, after all, and he threw their remnants overboard. Better than rotting forevermore in this hellish boat. Brooke sang. He sang a lot. Every day, he'd wake up singing, every night, he would fall asleep with a song underneath his breath. It was the one part of him that did not change, after all, and simply hearing it ring about the ship kept him connected, kept him sane.
He had to be alive, had to be real, had to be human, had to have had a life to sing the way he did. Nothing lacking humanity could be moved by music. It was his joy in life, was always his joy, and thus it remained.
Sometimes he placed his hands over his eye sockets and listened very carefully. Sometimes he thought he could hear his nakama.
--
After the fortieth year, Brooke stopped fighting it and let himself fall into the ocean he felt himself slipping more and more into every year. At times, he thought that it was wrong, that his crew would be disappointed, but his resolve had been slowly torn into. It was just so much easier to cavort around and laugh and play music, as if it would somehow protect him.
He stopped playing Bink's Sake.
He saw no other ships to play it with. As insane as he acted, if there was one thing he understood, it was music, and Bink's Sake wasn't a song to sing because you were lonely; it was a song of nakama, and Brooke didn't have those anymore. He was happy, though, or as happy as he felt he could be. Brooke was a fighter, and would keep on going on. If that meant laughing when he shouldn't be and hearing things and losing track of time, well,that wasn't the worst that could happen to him. Brooke should have been lonely, but he wasn't, not really--when he closed his eyes (or lack thereof, which would be noted with a hysterical giggle), he could see Laboon's face still. It was stupid, some small part of him told him, depending on a whale, but when you had nothing, you had to cling onto old memories. It wasn't that bad.
He could be dead, after all.
It could be lonely, being alone, but Brooke could still hear his crewmates' voices in his head. He had the inkling that this wasn't normal, but it filled up the silence, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
--
Then, after fifty years, another ship sailed in. He leapt in, rocking the boat with laughter, and the boy there did not scream. Some crewmembers screamed, and they fussed, but never did they chase him away. They gave him food, they gave him drink, and an offer he had to refuse.
Brooke loved them right away. Fiercely. It was a stronger feeling than he had had in years, to hear it. Looking at their full faces, their cheeks flushed and eyes bright, he could feel the sun upon him once more.
He felt like crying, but he was happier than he'd felt in decades, so he laughed instead. When he laughed, Luffy laughed, and when Luffy laughed, the entire crew groaned in some sort of mocking camaraderie, but they were nakama, and Brooke felt the hum of Bink's Sake rise in his throat once more.
He wasn't these people's nakama, never would be, knew this in his heart. Despite all this, he decided to help.
This--this feeling of nakama, still young and bright and warm and alive, this was something worth fighting for.
Amidst his laughter, his admittedly small reserve of sanity peeked its head up and whispered, Yorki would approve.
--
Brooke began singing Bink's Sake again.
He wasn't sure how it happened, but walking across Thriller Bark, he sang it again. Maybe it was because he was helping the Straw Hats, maybe it was because such a small show of kindness made him happy again, maybe this was true madness. But really, Brooke didn't care. The words sprang to his mouth like they had never left, and it was a comforting sound.
Then, everything dissolved into something that even Brooke called madness, the sacrifice of the swordsman, the terrifying enemies, the fact that they all stuck together and fought when it was more tempting to flee. But as he would soon find out, it worked out in the end. After fifty years of solitude, the Strawhats whirled in, fixed everything, and--
well, they didn't exactly whirl out again. They took him with them. The kindness of it was unspeakable, and for once, he could not hear his old crewmembers' voices ringing in his mind, but the voices of his new crewmates, rising in an off-key harmony to Bink's Sake. He was playing accompiament again.
He was still quite mad. He was aware of this, too aware, but for some reason, it didn't matter to them how much he laughed, or confused night for day, or screamed when the sun hit his eyes, or sang a tune early in the morning, so that meant that they loved him, even if he was insane.
---
Later, a month later, a time Brooke knew not later (for he always mixed things up--was day night and night day? Was suppertime not simply breakfast? Why was there a moon out while he was wide awake?), he sat beside the swordsman, dozing even though it was midday. The sun shined through the mikan trees, creating a dappled pattern upon his face.
"What are you doing?" Zoro asked. Brooke didn't answer and pulled Zoro's hair instead. It was green. Zoro swatted his hand away.
"I'm listening to you breathe," Brooke replied, honestly. He liked being by the swordsman for that reason. He snored loud enough to wake the dead (like himself! Yohohoho!), but it was a comforting sound.
He grumbled and crossed his arms, squirming a bit to get comfortable. "That's stupid."
"No it's not."
"Yes it is," he insisted. "Everything breathes."
Brooke considered this. "Not me."
Zoro sat up, apparently giving up on sleeping while being continuously badgered by the skeleton. There was a note of fondness in his gaze, Brooke thought, and it was almost touching, the way this man treated his nakama. "Yes you," he said, voice as gruff as ever. "Everything breathes."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"You can hear me?" Brooke asked, now even more interested.
"Haven't you been listening to me?" The swordsman snapped.
Brooke grinned (he didn't have much of a choice), "Occasionally!"
"Yes, I can hear you! Shut up now. I'm trying to sleep."
They sat in a companionable silence for a while. Zoro wasn't asleep, but he was pretending he was, and Brooke pretended he was too. Then, the silence became unbearable. When Zoro wasn't sleeping, he was actually quite quiet, Brooke observed, and he hated the silence. He tapped a bony finger upon the ground in some insatiable rythm before saying pensively, "I'm quite mad, you know."
The swordsman didn't even bat an eye. "Yeah, I know."
"This does not bother you?"
"We're all crazy here," Zoro replied, jabbing a thumb in the direction of Luffy, dancing about and badgering Sanji, who in turn was simultaneously batting away his captain and slobbering in servility to the ladies. Quite an odd group. "We all hafta be, to follow that idiot."
Brooke saw what he meant. "I see."
Then Zoro slept and Brooke listened to his breathing and hummed Bink's Sake. The skeleton listened carefully, and thought he could hear his own breathing too, which may have meant he was quite mad, but that was all right.
Everything was all right, as long as he had his nakama.