Notes: The Alabasta Civil War if Vivi never met the Straw Hats.

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and yonder all before us lie deserts of vast eternity

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Vivi makes it back in a dinghy that is two rough waves away from collapsing on itself. The horizon of Alabasta is bright with golden flames.

Kohza and his rebels are in disarray. Crocodile has taken control of the palace; he will only rule, he says, until order is reestablished throughout the land. The bedlam is discordant. Carue shields her from the bullets and runs.

The Nefertari name is slandered throughout the country. They say the unrest was caused by Cobra and his machinations, and he must answer for it. Her father stands high atop the executioner's stand, his hands bound behind him. His people throw rocks, jeering and screaming, but Crocodile announces he will show the damned king mercy. One clean shot.

Carue makes it to the steps of the palace before he collapses, eyes closed. Vivi shoves through the mass of bodies, her Nefertari-blue hair spreading a wide berth, parting the crowd like a river. Someone cries her name. Her father looks down and meets her gaze among a sea of human sweat and blood.

The sun glinting off the musket burns her eyes, but Vivi does not look away.

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The new King of Alabasta demands a wife.

The ceremony is short. They stick her in a white kalasiris and paint her face and her hands, and they have to drag her up the temple stairs, strewn with mangled blue lilies and papyrus grass. When the holy priest reaches for her hand, she slaps his face and spits at his feet.

When it's over, Crocodile's large hand cuts into her shoulder. "Come. Sit. Eat."

They serve her lamb and bread and hibiscus tea; they serve him steak and red wine. They serve it on her mother's best clay plates. Crocodile sits at the head of the table; Vivi at the other end. She looks down the distance. It will take her well over fifteen steps to run the whole length, even if her peacock rings make up the difference.

"Is this how you like your brides, Sir Crocodile?" Vivi asks, not touching her food. "Teenage captives?"

He knifes into his bloody steak, unconcerned. "We will sleep in separate rooms. I don't expect anything of you, only your cooperation. As your first official decree, you will make an announcement to the other cities of your support of my regime."

It would be a smart move, Vivi knows. Chaka, Pell, and Igram have banded forces with the Kohza's rebels. They are launching guerilla attacks around Alubarna, trying to wrestle it back under control. Katorea and Tamarisk are stewing in rebellion, refusing to recognize Crocodile as King, especially with Vivi taken as a thinly-veiled hostage.

"What do you plan to do with my country?"

"This will be my first kingdom." He raises his arms and smiles with all the grandeur of a cesspool, oozing grease and rat shit. "Once All-Sunday gives me Pluton, I'll start with the rest of the Grand Line."

He dabs his mouth. She envisions forcing her whole fist down his throat and ripping out his tongue, bareknuckled.

Vivi traces the river animals along her plate: the frog and the great heron, standing among the reeds. "Here, we believe that the lion-goddess created every grain of sand in the desert with a puff of her breath. She must have created you, too."

"Fairytale nonsense."

"One day, you will return to her," Vivi promises. "Dust to dust, man to sand."

Crocodile looks at her for a long moment, and she grips her knife.

Then his mouth twitches in disdain, and he goes back to his meal. "A meerkat has more meat than you. Eat something. You are Queen now; I will not have you looking like an unkempt child."

On her wedding night, Vivi cuts off all of her hair, every inch of her mother's blue. She tears off her white dress and rips it between her fingers. She imagines a thousand different ways to kill Crocodile before sleep finally overcomes her, and in those fleeting moments before slumber, she glimpses a flash of lightning. Rain in the desert.

But that is only real in her dreams.

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The Nefertari family has protected the Tomb of the Kings for longer than recorded history can remember. A hundred writings cast on a hundred stone slabs. Sir Crocodile has chained Miss All-Sunday up in front of the largest one. He thinks he's going to starve Alabasta's most ancient secrets out of her.

Vivi walks down the stairs, guided by torchlight. It takes the combined efforts of ten Baroque Works agents to open the stone door.

"Hello, Wednesday," All-Sunday greets, once they remove the gag around her mouth. "You look good. Haircut?"

The air stinks of death. "That's Queen Wednesday. Haven't you heard?"

Her parched lips cracks when she smiles. Even two steps from death, this woman's existence is a taunting finger.

Vivi kneels down before her, studying her face. "All you cared about was this silly stone," she says softly. "Here it is. Are you happy now? My people will die. They have died. I should bring my father's head in here and tell you, 'See? This is what you have done. You brought that man inside the gate. You opened the doors for him. You did this deliberately, with full awareness; you did this knowing what he will do to my people.'"

"I am the only thing keeping Crocodile from the weapon written on that Poneglyph." All-Sunday is a hungry puma in the shadow, and Vivi can imagine her dying here, pitifully; a poisonous flower wilting in the tomb of her ancestors.

"Do you think you're doing me a favor?" Vivi almost laughs. She is filled with fury; but mostly, she is filled with grief. "It doesn't matter. You can rot in here for all I care. Kohza and I, and Pell and Chaka and Igram—we'll win. We'll save Alabasta."

Vivi shakes her fists. She shakes it so hard she feels her lungs rattling. She doesn't know who she's talking to: Miss All-Sunday, the silent Baroque Works guards, or all the Nefertari queens of old, her ancient desert mothers.

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Vivi ignores the child who drinks tea in her bedroom and smears oil paint all over the windows. She ignores the mole-woman and the girl in the lemon dress. She even manages to ignore Mr. 2, who follows her around in a different face every day, as they both pretend she doesn't notice. Over and over and over, a surrealist dance that never ends.

"Beautiful day outside, Vivi-chan." A female guard sits beside her without so much as a bow.

Vivi's gaze never leaves the swaying palm trees.

"Come, now," Mr. 2 touches a hand to his face, "a queen should smile more."

The Vivi before her leers, catlike.

The rebel army strikes a victory. They kill an officer agent. Mr. 3. They leave his body in the same plaza where they killed her father. When Crocodile demands her to condemn them, Vivi laughs in his face.

Mr. 2 sleeps in her former bedroom, and Vivi is blocked off in another wing. Crocodile has no use for a defiant queen. Mr. 2 makes speeches in her voice, waves regally to the crowd from her balcony, and signs whatever law into the constitution that Crocodile tells him to.

Her warriors try to sneak her out of the palace. Igram, Pell, Chaka, Kohza. They are relentless and constant in their attacks, bombing the palace, assassinating Baroque Works agents, and poisoning the food supply, until Crocodile finally has enough.

"I will humor you no longer," he says, dragging Kohza through the throne room by the scruff of his coat. He ignores Vivi's screams, her pleads, and brushes her aside with an annoyed flick as though she were an ant.

"The King is dead!" Kohza shouts, as his face cracks like a dried date. "Long live the Queen!"

The dust from the desert is a fine orange grain, soft as crushed velvet, warm with the gods' breath. The dust Kohza leaves behind is cooler in color, and it sinks into her palms like water.

Crocodile tosses the empty leather coat before Vivi and wipes his hands.

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Soon, Pell follows Kohza. Then Chaka. And finally, Igram. They fly to the Alabastian gods as heroes, proclaiming Vivi as their only ruler.

The palace is cold, even in the dead of summer. Still, Miss All-Sunday doesn't break. How long can you torture a woman who can regrow her body?

Monarchy is a fragile thing. The right to rule is guaranteed in two ways, conquest or bloodline. Vivi is of the second, pure Alabastian pedigree, Nefertari through her mother. But it is precious. She is her dynasty's last child. Crocodile knew that well enough to marry her.

Vivi steps on the ledge of her window. She can see the date palm orchids, parts of the courtyard that are still in ruins from the war, and the quiet bazaar. Alubarna is always quiet now.

She used to run around on the streets below, dodge through knees while chasing after Kohza. Back then, getting lost in the bazaar was an adventure. It had been filled with voices, sweaty hands clutching baskets, street performers, strumming ouds, the fragrance of a thousand spices.

She grips the window frame. Her father used to tell her stories of an oasis that lies beyond the farthest barchans, where the water is always plentiful and sweet, and the trees are filled with dates and jujubes and pomegranates. She tests her balance, her toes sweaty.

"Vivi!"

She steps down from the window ledge. Terracotta folds her arms around her, her shoulders trembling. She is so much thinner than before.

"I wasn't going to—I wasn't—please, don't—" Vivi clutches Terracotta's dress. "When Igram died, I—I couldn't do anything. I couldn't do anything."

Terracotta grabs her shoulders and bends to kiss her on her brow. "This is your land, your people," her hands are brittle things, but her voice burns hotter than the sun, "and you are all we have left. Never forget this. No matter what happens, never forget this."

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At midnight, a scream echoes down the hallway outside her door. It sounds like Miss Goldenweek.

Vivi shoots up in bed, but before she can yell, a hand grows out of her shoulder and claps over her mouth.

All-Sunday steps out of the shadows. She wrenches open Vivi's closet and grabs the thickest robes she can find. In her hand, she clutches a sack thick with waterskins, dried figs, smoked meat, a compass, and a knife. "The woman left it with me," she says as she tosses a robe onto Vivi's bed.

The hand vanishes from Vivi's shoulder and she stutters, "Terracotta—where—"

All-Sunday is pitiless. "Get dressed. Take only what you can carry. We leave at once."

Vivi tells herself she will not cry until she is far, far away from this place. In a dizzying haze of grief, she shoves her feet in her sandals and crams her arms into Kohza's coat, takes her peacock rings and stuffs them in the pocket.

A thunderous roar shakes the castle. The air tastes of sand.

All-Sunday pushes Vivi to the window and strides onto the sill, the two of them, balancing on the edge. She grasps Vivi's waist. "Now, we fly."

A thousand hands sprout from All-Sunday's back.

Vivi steps off the balcony.

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The storms follow. Vivi's eyes sting and water, and she chokes down sand with every inhale. She feels his fury in the air, hears his laughter in the gale.

They find shelter from the wind behind a large rocky crag. All-Sunday skins a coyote and Vivi prepares a fire. Her lips bleed when she opens them. She spits on the sand, then kicks dirt over the incriminating drop of moisture.

The dark woman cuts away a piece of meat with her knife and chews it meticulously. "You need to sail away from Alabasta."

Vivi takes a bite of the meat and swallows hard. She feels no hunger; her stomach is numb. "No," she refuses. "Yuba is close by. We'll be safe there. I have a friend who can hide us."

"What will you do after? Raise another rebellion? How many rebels are left?"

"I don't know," she snaps, and presses her wrist to her aching head. She is the last Nefertari. As she runs and hides, her husband sits on her father's throne, her rightful throne. She is sure Crocodile would continue to use Mr. 2 as her body double. "I doubt he'll tell anyone I'm missing, aside from Baroque Works. I have time to think of a plan. I can't leave Alabasta." She sets her jaw. "I won't leave Alabasta."

All-Sunday is quiet for a while. She cuts a still, somber shadow against the light from the campfire. "Are you sure Yuba is safe?"

Vivi nods. "It is." It has to be.

They watch the sandstorms rage over the horizon as the night wears on. All-Sunday advises her to sleep soon; they must awaken before dawn and continue walking. Crocodile will not rest from his search.

It is only when Vivi turns on her side to go to sleep that she hears a soft voice from the other side of the campfire: "She was a brave woman, Terracotta."

Something catches in Vivi's throat. Yes. Hers is a country full of brave women, she wants to reply. But all she does is stare silently up at the ibis moon, the tears rolling down her nose are not sweet like oasis water but salty like the sea; the endless river of stars stream over the nightblue dunes and she watches them for a long time, long after All-Sunday kicks a pile of sand on the fire and lets the darkness embrace them.

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Vivi knows the desert from the casino lights over the horizon to the sacred ruins dotting the landscape. She knows it like tracing the scars on her father's arm, or the faded photograph of her mother in her golden regalia.

All-Sunday thinks the fastest way to Yuba is a straight line southwest across the open desert, but Vivi keeps walking without listening to her and eventually the older woman follows with a rankled sigh. They pass by half-destroyed pillars jutting out of the sand, the remains of an ancient temple, a lone acacia tree growing in the middle of nowhere: more shade, which means more frequent rest and more energy for their journey.

They reach a ruined statue of the dog-god, its black head cutting into the horizon like a strange, broken mountain. The halfway point to Yuba. A nest of lizards have made their home there and Vivi follows them to a hidden shrub of desert berries. Some are poisoned, but she knows the desert too well to be fooled. She brings an armful of berries back. They break fast in silence, sitting in the hollows of one of the god's cracked, empty eyes. Vivi watches giant desert crabs scuttle in the distance, undoubtedly searching for her, and All-Sunday warns her to keep to the shade.

Before they leave, Vivi stacks desert rocks by the paws of the statue. Chaka, Pell, Igram, Terracotta, Kohza, Carue, and her father. She sits on her knees and prays for their peace in the eternal reed fields, she prays for their blessing and their protection, and then she prays for mother's bravery.

When she is done burying her dead, Vivi presses a kiss to each rock and tells them how much she loves them, in the way that heartbroken sixteen-year-olds very much do.

She departs to where her dark companion is waiting, and as the wind picks up, thinks she might've heard the cry of a falcon and the bark of a jackal very far off in the barchans.

She stops.

"Wednesday?"

Vivi stares out for a moment longer, then turns.

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There is no more Yuba. Sand has buried the palm fronds, the roofs of houses, and the last living soul it had.

All-Sunday spots him first, and her hands lift Toto up in a shower of sand. Vivi almost doesn't recognize him. She falls to her feet and holds him, this small frail thing, more skeleton than a man. He is impossibly still.

She anoints him with the last drops from her waterskin and tells herself not to cry. She can't afford to waste any more water.

Behind her, All-Sunday murmurs, "I'm sorry."

Vivi swallows, closes her eyes.

"I... know how it feels to lose your home."

But Vivi has not yet lost her home. She is still in the process of losing it, bit by bit, watching as it slips through her fingers like rain powder.

She gets to her feet and says, "And yet you've gone the last four years knowing how it feels to conspire in destroying the homes of others."

"Yes," All-Sunday says quietly.

"Four years. That isn't one mistake, Miss All-Sunday, that's years of willing choices that culminates to the murder of Alabasta."

"Yes."

"Whatever you went through, whatever you survived, you were fine with letting my people die just for that damned Ponegylph!"

"Yes," she says again.

Vivi can't bear to look at her. She can't keep standing in this village graveyard, the dust from Toto's forehead still sweating down her fingers.

So she strides out into the sand.

"Wednesday!"

The cry disappears into the wind as she leaves the village behind her. She walks, holding her sleeve up to her mouth, eyes closed and feeling a path through the wind.

She stands at the top of the tallest orange dune, the wind erasing her footsteps as quickly as she makes them, and looks out into the desert, the empty blue sky, the yellow haze of a sandstorm over the horizon.

Vivi has forgotten what water tastes like, until it drips out of her eyes in big, angry salt-platters.

She kneels down and screams into the godless desert. The greedy sand swallows up all her tears, until she has none more left to give.

An oasis ripples over the horizon.

Vivi stumbles down the dune, half-mumbling the hymns the Suna-Suna clan used to sing together. The air mists over with a light drizzle. She can taste rain upon her lips.

She holds her hands up to the sky, feeling holy water on her outstretched palms. It slicks down her hair, catches on her eyelashes, runs down her chin, smells like hot wet sand, like dancing out on the crowded streets in Alubarna in her bare feet, a thousand clay pots raised to catch the rain, running through puddles and playing with the dogs, splashing water at Igram, dragging her father into the rain to dance with her in front of all his soldiers, and oh, how they all laughed, how her father laughed the loudest of them all.

There, past the farthest barchans. There, do you see it, my daughter? The rain is light and gentle, like the touch of a ghost. Right there. The oasis of dreams. Igram and Terracotta, slow-dancing together. Carue is there. Toto and Kohza. Chaka sits in the shade of a palm tree with his troops. Pell is soaring through the sky.

Vivi chases after them.

She walks until her feet bleed. She walks through sandstorms. She walks through dusty plains and crashes of thunder, burning tumbleweed to light the way. She prays to the jackal and the falcon, to the sky who swallows the sun every night and gives birth to him every morn, to the lioness whose great breath shapes the desert. God, God, Vivi prays. God of my ancestors, God who I no longer believe exists, show me the way!

Standing upon the red dunes is her mother, guiding her father to the far plains of the desert.

Vivi shouts their names. She shouts until her voice breaks.

Nefertari Cobra turns around, his face smooth and unscarred by torture, and his daughter runs to him. She runs all the way up the dune, sliding and sinking into the sand, laughing and sobbing and gasping for breath all at once. Nefertari Titi opens her arms, weeping brilliant tears.

Vivi falls into her parents' embrace. They are all drenched by the soft cool rain, and she is back home in her field of ancestors as desert wildflowers bloom beneath their feet and swell over the sand like a rainbow wave. Her head is dizzy and her heart is a clay pot filled to the brim with wonder.

"My child," her father cries joyfully, hugging her and lifting her off her feet. "My brave, splendid Vivi!"

"Look at you, shining brighter than the sun," her mother says in awe, cupping her face and running her hands over Vivi's short cropped hair.

Vivi buries her face in her mother's neck. "I missed you."

"We're together again, my heart." Her mother kisses the tears from her cheeks. "And you have made me so proud."

The wind suddenly scatters the wildflowers and blows sand into her eyes. A hand grows from the ground and tugs at her robe. Vivi shudders and kicks it away, and then sees her—the dark woman, struggling up the dunes.

No. This is not her oasis. She cannot slither again into the home of Vivi's people.

"Get away from here!" she screams at All-Sunday. The wind grows fiercer, howling, ripping at Vivi's clothes.

Her father touches her shoulder, and she follows his gaze—behind them, the horizon of Alabasta is bright with golden flames. Her dried riverbanks and hungry children. Her country, dying.

The rain in the oasis is fresh and cool, and Vivi wants to remember it. The weight of a droplet hanging onto an eyelash. The sweetness of it between her lips. She wants to remember all of it.

Vivi wipes her face and looks back at her parents. And before she even opens her mouth, they are beaming at her with love and pride. "There are still so very many things I have to do," she says, "but I'll never forget the way here. I'll come back."

"One day," Cobra agrees, and blesses his daughter: "But today, you must live."

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Vivi wakes up. All-Sunday sits across from her, calm-faced and grilling a desert fox over the fire. They are in a cave somewhere. Her throat is parched. She cannot hear the sound of rain.

"Here," All-Sunday murmurs, passing over her waterskin and a wooden stick filled with meat. "I found you in a sandstorm. You nearly died."

Her whole body aches, but she manages to drink. Vivi wipes her chin and says hoarsely, "Why… do you go so far to help me?"

"Because you were right," All-Sunday tells the fire evenly. "I opened the gates for him. I didn't care what happened to Alabasta. It seems I've gotten used to islands dying."

Vivi nibbles on the stick of fox meat, watching shadows flicker over the dark woman's face.

"I was simply using him as a means to an end for my own goal. In the end, I even tried to kill him, but…" With one finger, All-Sunday slides open the collar of her robe. A heavy scar cuts through the center of her chest, the size of Crocodile's hook. "I overestimated myself. When all you've done is run for twenty years, you think you can survive anything."

"But then… why did you betray Crocodile when telling him the secrets on the Ponegylph would've been so simple?"

She takes a long moment to respond, and when she does, it isn't really a response, merely a sigh.

"I promised myself I would never tell him. Everywhere I go it's the same. I just—wanted to know the true history. My dream just had too many enemies… and I have committed too many sins." All-Sunday lies on her back and rolls over on her side, facing the mouth of the cave so intruders would see her first, before Vivi. "Goodnight, Wednesday."

Vivi listens to the faint roar of a distant storm for a long moment, and says quietly, "Tomorrow, I'll head to the ocean. I'll leave Alabasta. You can go wherever you wish. Leave me or follow, I don't care."

She receives no response, but when she wakes up the next day, All-Sunday is waiting for her.

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Katorea is heavily guarded with Billions patrolling the streets after sundown. All-Sunday slips away into the darkness and comes back with blood on her face, and Vivi begins to think this is all too easy until Mr. 1 and Miss Doublefinger meet them on the pier, surrounded by Millions. They inform her that her husband is waiting.

Vivi watches All-Sunday kill a man. And then another. And another, and it goes on, a dozen, two dozen ugly snapping cracks, spinal tissue ripping, vertebra peeling apart. Vivi grits her teeth and follows her lead, slashing her peacock rings again and again, each strike harder than before. The ocean is so close, freedom just before them—

With one cut, Mr. 1 slices her peacock rings in half and Miss Doublefinger catches All-Sunday across the ribcage.

All-Sunday rocks on her feet, weak from the long imprisonment and the trek over the Sandora. Hands bloom over their bodies, reaching for limbs to break in half and eyes to gouge. Holding them back, she screams at Vivi to run—

And then Miss Doublefinger goes flying through the air, and Mr. 1 is drowned by a wave of water that rises up from the ocean and floods the pier. The remaining Millions are taken out almost instantaneously.

The new visitors stand up and dust off their clothes.

"See, Hack," one of them says lightly, "I told you we'd be in time."

The young man introduces himself as Sabo, Chief of Staff of the Revolutionary Army. With him are two more Revolutionaries, a stern fishman and a woman with a shrewd grin, and they have brought along a ship.

"The Rebel Queen and the Light of the Revolution," Sabo says, looking at both Vivi and All-Sunday. "We've been monitoring Alabasta ever since Crocodile took control. After our spies alerted us to your disappearances, we knew we had to find you before Baroque Works did."

Vivi sets her shoulders, fully aware of what siding with the Revolutionary Army means. The Nefertari have always sat with the World Government, but they are the best opportunity she has now. She thanks him grimly and steps forward.

"Take the queen," All-Sunday says, clutching the bloody spot on her side. "I will go elsewhere."

Vivi stops, looks at her.

"I am tired. I'd like to find a good place to sleep." She smiles as she says this, a weary smile that feels more like a long, quiet sigh. She looks out into the desert, and Vivi is suddenly certain that All-Sunday must be having a vision of a sweet-watered oasis.

She lifts her chin, the last desert queen. "Come with me. One day, when we're stronger, we'll come back to Alabasta and set things right. Both of us."

"Wednesday…"

She extends her hand. "Vivi."

All-Sunday pauses.

"Robin," she rasps softly, a bit awkwardly, as though she's forgotten what that word sounded like, and reaches out.

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In the cover of night, a ship of the Revolutionary Army leaves the coast of Alabasta. Hack and Koala tend to their injuries as Sabo sets sail toward Baltigo.

Vivi looks at her island for as long as she can, memorizing the slope of the coast, the constellations above the dunes, the barchans where the water is always plentiful and sweet and filled with dreams of rain, until she falls asleep.

Robin keeps watch beside her, all through the night and well past dawn.

fin