Becoming a Star

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/51028174.

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/M
Fandom: One Piece (Anime & Manga)
Relationship: Gild Tesoro/Stella
Characters: Gild Tesoro, Stella
Additional Tags: Backstory, Abuse, Slavery, doomed romance, It is always morally good
to punch Celestial Dragons
Language: English
Collections: Whumptober 2023
Stats: Published: 2023-10-22 Words: 2,664 Chapters: 1/1
 Becoming a Star
by Senna_B

Summary

The Tesoro that grew up poor and desperate and wanting someone to just see him has lost
everything. The only path left forward for him is to build a new him out of the remnants,
stitch by stitch.

Notes
See the end of the work for notes
“Are you sure about this, man?”

“I’m sure.”

“I’m just saying …”

“Shut up. I paid your price. Do the work.”

“OK, ok. Sorry, man…”

The first time Tesoro was able to afford to simply go to a doctor after getting injured during
his work, the ease of it took his breath away. Something was wrong with his shoulder, and
when he dropped a handful of berris on the desk, they hurried him back to a back room,
asked if he wanted anything to drinks, and the doctor came in within ten minutes. The man
was attentive and efficient, and he was on his way in less than half an hour -- shoulder
bandaged and re-set, a small bottle of pain medication in his pocket, dark thoughts rumbling
in the back of his mind.

How dare it be so easy? How dare it?

As long as you have money, you can buy whatever you want.

Going to the doctor is supposed to be a distant impossibility, something a piece of trash like
him could never hope to do. Despite the coins, he expects it to end at any moment -- someone
bigger and more important coming in, telling him to get lost, laughing at him as they drag
him away. Isn't that how it always is?

But instead, the attention is on him. And only two times does the doctor even look at him
askance.

The first time is when the doctor asks him to remove his shirt, and Tesoro froze.

Remove… the shirt…

“Is something else wrong?” the doctor askes, hovering around his patient.

He can’t know. This is just routine.

“Just cut the sleeve,” he demands gruffly. The doctor hesitates, but gold is gold, and he does
as he is asked. He completes a thorough examination of the wound on his upper arm, of the
way it hangs strangely off his shoulder.

“How’s the pain?” the doctor asks as he works.

“It’s pain,” he grunts back.

“But how bad? On a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst pain you’ve ever had?”
His mind rolls back. His gaze hardens.

“A two, then.”

The doctor’s hands still. But he doesn’t ask anything, and after a few seconds, he gets to work
again.

Tesoro has thought, many times, that his life was about to change. But every time he thinks
that, things change for the worse.

He thought his father finally giving up gambling would mean things got better. Instead he
withered away while they watched. They were unable to get him medicine, or better food,
and in the end as his mother screams at him more than once, they are unable to afford more
than a spot in a mass grave.

He thought with his father gone, his mother’s heavy hand might fall on him less. But it turns
out, the loss of her husband is her son’t fault too.

He thought a big score was in his grasp, but he ended up broken and bleeding on the
pavement, left alive, he assumes, because he’s not even worth the effort to kill.

He thought, when he first met Stella, that he could see his future in her eyes.

It turned out he could. He just wasn’t looking at the right things.

He couldn’t stand seeing her on the other side of those bars, the chain hanging from her neck
so heavy and thick that it only served to accentuate her own slender form. She always smiled
at him - so few people ever did. At first he thought she was just doing it in an effort to get
bought, to get out of there. But the more he learned about her, the more he realized how
genuine her smile really was.

And once that happened, he realized how nice it was to have someone smile at you.

He should have stayed away. He was a loser, a criminal, a stain on humanity, and her … even
cruelty had not dimmed her. He should stay away, so she could spend her attention on
someone better deserving.

But instead, it made him want to be someone more deserving every time she asked-

“Would you sing for me?”

“You want it all one color, right?”

“Yes. It doesn’t need to be fancy. Just big.”

“I… yeah. I see. All the way to-”

“Cover the whole thing. I want it gone.”

“You know tattooing over a scar is going to hurt more, right?”

“Just do it.”

As long as you have money, you can buy whatever you want.

Rich bastards are all the same. Oh, the details might differ, but Tesoro knows underneath, it’s
all the same. The sense of superiority, of entitlement that they carry through their lives. The
way they see others as game pieces in their own lives.

It’s not an easy role to settle into. Sometimes, when he puts on the mask that he crafted from
a thousand searing memories of his time at Mary Geois, he can feel that hate that he stores in
his heart curling back around to point at himself.

But every time, he shoves it back down. This is what has to happen. If he’s going to be one of
them - or above them - then he needs to make everyone understand that he’s one of them.
And that means all of it. The flashy clothes. The stylish hair. The obedient sycophants and
beautiful women around him. The ready grin.

Who told you you could smile?

And the air of smug superiority. No one will buy his act without all the pieces.

But there’s one thing remaining, one reminder where the skin pulls and aches when he moves
too much or stretches too far.

He wonders how many of those others - women, men, fish- and mer-people, even some mere
children - have the same instincts he does. To keep that mark, branded on him against his will
and used to tell the world that he was property instead of a person, hidden from all eyes.

He carefully considers every shirt, every piece of clothing, to make sure it remains hidden all
the time. At least no one else will see, as long as he’s careful.

But he can’t escape the sensation, the broad expanse where his skin is too tight, unyielding
and inflexible. Every time he raises an arm to acknowledge the crowd, he feels it.

He wonders if that’s part of the point, but mostly he cannot imagine them thinking that far
ahead. Their cruelty, when intentional, was cruelty in the moment -- torture, humiliation, any
pain they visited on someone was to see the impact in that moment, not years later.

But still, he thinks, it’s a happy accident for them. Even now, years later, he can’t help but
feel like some part of him remains not his own. And however much he plays up his wealth
and power - and however much he makes reality match the artifice - that never changes.

The worst pain he’s ever felt? He cannot tell, even after all these years. He knows the day, the
exact span of time. But which part?
The part that still aches like an open wound after all these years is a smile. The smile Stella
gives him as she is dragged away behind her new master, a smile that only falters when he
launches himself at the guard of the man trying to take her away.

Even her cage… even her cage is better than that!

He can’t help but feel a sting when he sees her smile turn to a look of horror as his fist
connects for the first time. He can’t think about it then, what it means for her. He has to stop
this terrible thing from happening, he has to save her. Nothing else matters.

He’s been in fights before, both street brawls and the more exacting and punishing battles
with goons on the fringes of the underworld, their violence on the way to an art form.

This is different from either.

The man moves slightly, deadening the blows Tesoro aims at him once, twice, thrice. Then,
as graceful as a dancer, he drops his heel, his whole center lowers and his fist slams into the
side of Tesoro’s head.

He reels, almost blacks out - the whole world goes out of focus and a strange, keening noise
begins to roil at the edge of hearing. He shakes his head, trying to clear the fog, but before he
can do anything, another strike, this time to the jaw. Something gives way, and he feels blood
coating his tongue and spilling from between his lips. Stella screams for the man to stop, for
Tesoro to run, but as he struggles, and fails, to keep his feet, there is a terrible inevitability.
He feels it wrapping around him, icy and terrible.

How could he have thought there was a good ending for him?

Stella’s screams cut off, and in that moment, a flash of clarity returns. He’s able, just, to duck
out of the way of a third blow, lands a fairly solid one to the guard’s midsection in return, and
there’s a moment, just a moment of hope.

The next attack ends it. He’s shoved to the ground, arm pinned behind his back as she smiles
at him through her fear for herself and for him, despite being dragged away by a collar and
chain like a dog.

He expects that’s the end, and it’s bad enough. He’ll have to recover, gather more resources,
find out where she is and try to break her out. It will be nearly impossible, but to save Stella,
he’ll face anything.

He’s not expecting to be hauled upright and dragged along after them, but not too close. His
legs won’t support him, but the bodyguard doesn’t care much. Tesoro is dragged to a cart,
bound, thrown in. At first they won’t answer what’s happening, but eventually they explain.

He tried to attack a Celestial Dragon. The Celestial Dragon therefore gets to decide what will
be done with the rest of his life.

And apparently, they want to toy with him.

The pain of the slave brand echoes in him mind for years after, even once the flesh is healed
to whatever degree it can be. The scar doesn't have to be visible to be a reminder. And his
new owner is fond, it seems, of watching him break down. He gets terrible, degrading
work, is regularly hit just because the man feels like it, and worst of all?

There is no escape. Not for her, not for him.

Not for anyone.

“Sorry man. It’s taking longer than expected.”

“It’s fine. It’s a big piece.”

“Well, it’s not taking the ink right, either. Maybe this isn’t a good idea.”

“You can’t do it?”

“I don’t think it’s working.”

“...then I need you to do something else.”

Smile.

He had wanted so badly to free Stella from her chains. Wanted it so badly that when he saw
someone with immeasurable wealth just take her, everything blotted out except the desire to
stop him.

He knew it was an impossibility. Just like trying to stand up to his mother, just like trying to
save up enough gold to buy a woman’s freedom, some things are not meant for trash. But her
smile had made him feel like there was home, a ray of light in the pit that his poverty and
desperation had dropped him into. And like trash, when that ray of light was cut off, he
reverted to every base instinct.

Stella’s smile had faded briefly to a look of horror, and it was only years and years later,
when the memory of fleeing for his life through a burning landscape with a thousand other
terrified people had partially overwritten the years with a chain around his neck, that he
started to understand that look.

He had wanted to free Stella. But, he thought, she had wanted to free him as well. She wanted
him to go straight, to find a legitimate job, to use his voice to bring joy to people.

Even if she was stuck behind those bars, she wanted to help people. She wanted to help him.

And when he’d hit that Celestial Dragon’s bodyguard, he’d not only potentially made things
worse for her - he’d signed himself over to the same fate. She’d seen the servitude in his
future the moment he’d swung his fist, even though for him, each terrifying step had been a
horrible surprise.
After trying so hard to be the sort of man she’d wanted him to be, right when she needed him
most he’d let her down. And then, despite that, she smiled for him again and tried to reassure
him. Told him he’d made her happy. Tried to free him from his guilt.

The night that realization hit him, he locked himself in his room, avoiding everyone who
came to see him, and cried his pain out, all the way to the dregs.

He can’t bring himself to sing the songs he sang for Stella, not while he lives in the home of a
Celestial Dragon. Not while he’s a pack animal, an accessory, a machine by which work gets
done. But there are many songs in the world, and sometimes, on the dark days he gives in to
the urge.

It’s never loud - nothing good can come from drawing attention. But music got him through
his mother’s drunken abuse, his father’s death, his pathetic attempts to earn money in
underhanded ways and his time doing manual labor for a pittance.

Why would this be different?

But he gets lost in the song, and in the sensation of singing. The music thrums in his throat, a
familiar sensation in this place that will always feel foreign. It’s a song he learned as a kid,
from a teacher who told Tesoro he had a gift and should pursue it, back before his mother
chased the man away. Back when he thought there might be some escape, that poverty was
simpley a state and not a birthright.

It’s an old song, from a distant land, about a man watching the stars and imagining his
ancestors, centuries before, braving the waters of the oceans without knowing if the stars
could lead them home again.

As a child, he thought it was pretty, but boring. Now, it speaks to something in him. The idea
of taking chances, of honoring the uncertainty of the world and of pursuing your dreams
regardless.

He must have been singing a little louder than he expected.

“Who told you you could smile?”

The voice froze him. He looked up from the floor, where his eyes had wandered, unseeing.
His owner stands there, glaring down.

“Answer me.”

“...no one sir.”

“And yet…”

He gestures. A guard grabs Tesoro by one arm. Drags him to another room, one he’s familiar
with. All the slaves are. He’s thrown to the stone floor.

“Sing it again,” the Celestial Dragon commands.

He wants to say no, but whatever scrap of self preservation has seen him through this much
fear and pain forces the notes out, once by one.

Somewhere in the sixth bar, a whip falls for the first time. The song falters.

“Were you told you could stop?”

He resumes.

They all do.

He gets through by blotting it out, and imagining a perfect life. Stella has died, almost a year
ago now. But if that life is gone … he imagines himself a star, surrounded by screaming fans,
all gathered to listen to him sing on his own schedule. They’d pay for the privilege.

As the whip strikes again, he’s reminded that he’s trash, that it’s impossible, that he’s going to
die here.

But it’s a nice dream.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Can you do it or not?”

“But you’re talking about … I mean, you want another brand?”

“Can you do it?”

“I can-”

“Then do it. I’m going to be a star. This? This is nothing.”

End Notes

Written for Whumptober, for the prompt "body modification."

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