Note: unfortuanatly I know you all are going to hate me, nothing really happens here. Unfortunatly this chapter had to happen to get me from B to C so I could get to D, but from this point on there's only one or two more chapters left. And yes, I am aware I once again took for-freakin'-ever. I am a horrible person who's inspiration is running dry, but I will not give up until I'm dead. If I do not update this story for an unreasonably long amount of time, please assume I am, in fact, dead, and mourn me appropriatly/curse my name to the skies above. (or just PM me, I always respond to those so if I am dead I won't respond, easy, see?)

Yes I am being pessimistic, but one of my biggest fears is that I will die and none of my internet friends/readers of my stories will know because, well, I'd be dead. So I'm just giving you all a failsafe to fall back on if I don't update for long periods of time.

Normally I respond to all reviews, but I'd like to thank all of you who have that I have not personally thanked yet, especially the one who paid a most wonderful compliment, saying that he or she waited more eagerly for my updates then for the actual chapters. You know who you are, sweetie, thank you so much!

On another note, all my definitions come from Dictionary . com

de·ni·al [dih-nahy-uhl] –noun

1. an assertion that something said, believed, alleged, etc., is false

2. refusal to believe a doctrine, theory, or the like.

3. disbelief in the existence or reality of a thing.

Sometimes reality has a way of sneaking up and biting us in the ass. And when the dam bursts, all you can do is swim. The world of pretend is a cage, not a cocoon. We can only lie to ourselves for so long. We are tired, we are scared, denying it doesn't change the truth. Sooner or later we have to put aside our denial and face the world. Head on, guns blazing. De Nile. It's not just a river in Egypt, it's a freakin' ocean. So how do you keep from drowning in it?

~Meredith Grey

He awoke with a gasp; sweat pouring down his young face as he scoured the room for demons of different shapes and sizes. There's nothing, he tells himself, it was merely a dream, mother is downstairs making meat for breakfast, she did not try to kill him, did not get chased out of town by an angry mob of neighbors and most certainly did mother not die, her blood and brain matter showering him.

Luffy denied for all he was worth, clenched his eyes shut and trembled with the sheer effort involved in denying the truth. The truth, however, was never and is never one to be denied. Proof being the sticky, crusty feeling of dried blood and sweat clinging to his skin and the smell of death lurking in the air like a cruel ghost. Proof being that what lied beneath him was not the soft, worn, mattress of home but the hard, unyielding, coldness of rotting wood.

He had been found, and no amount of denying would change the fact that he was now nothing more than a trapped animal in the basement of a butcher's house. He shivered, moved, and cringed. Opened one eye, closed it again, breathed, and as one released a quiet shuddering sob. Luffy's body shook, trembling from the tips of his hair follicles to the ends of his toenails. Her curled into himself, exhaustion showing in the way his rubber muscles actually spasmmed, they hadn't done such a thing since he'd eaten the Gomu Gomu No Mi All those years ago. Sobbing as quietly as he could into his drawn up knees, Luffy did his best to not think even as his mind played and replayed the scenes of the past few hours (Days? Months? Years?) leading up to this point.

Luffy was alone in the world, there is no Makino, there is no Doctor Norio, there is no Shanks, there is no Ace, there is no Mother. There is only Luffy, the rotting wooden floor, and whoever it is that's waiting upstairs, to kill him no doubt.

He despaired; with no mother, there was no hope, no point, in anything. How was he to live if he had no mother to live for? How was he to live without her smile? Her presence? Her fabulous cooking skills? Who would he tell his accomplishments, who'd hold him when he cried, who'd see him be Pirate King?

And it is then that Luffy stops, like a switch being flicked or a faucet being closed. The fog in his mind had been cleared, because he had something still: his dream. And it's not like Makino and Ace and Doctor Norio and Shanks are gone, they're still alive, still waiting for Luffy to fulfill his promise. Mother might be gone, Mom, Mamma, Mommy, Mum, she might be gone, but he Knew. He Knew that she loved him, because her hands had shook and tears had streamed down her face and she'd said so herself, and mother has never lied, even in death, not really.

Luffy stands and looks, the room is bear beside the spider webs and broken crates. The stairs are obviously old, no doubt they'll make noises the same way the stairs back home did, maybe even loud enough to bring the bad people down here. He takes his small mercies where he get's them; he knows he's lucky to still be alive at this point.

There were no windows, Luffy realized with a sinking of his rubber heart, no windows, he pushed at some of the boards along the wall, pushed crawling along the floor, feeling for secret passages like in the stories mother used to read him when he was younger. He decides the people who live in this house are boring, what kind of person doesn't have secret passages in their creepy basement, after all? But that leaves one option, and from those same stories Luffy knew that the last option usually gets the Great Hero into a Bad Place. But if he's lucky, and if he's quiet, and if he's really slow, then maybe he can get out no problem.

So, with the thought of his mother in mind, Luffy creeps up the stairs, clenching to the rail like a lifetime, knowing from trial and error of Midnight Fridge Raids that the middle of the Creepy Wooden Steps is always the loudest most creakiest place of the step. With nail biting trepidation, Luffy reached the top of the steps and with new horror realized something new about the situation: the door was closed, and most probably locked.

Gently, he reached forward and gently he turned and gently he banged his head against the walls, for the door was locked and he had no key. He could feel the faucet loosening, the dam breaking as he fought valiantly the tears that threatened him. Luffy would not cry, not here, he told himself, not where they can hear you! His breath evened out; calm again he listened against the door for footstep, voices, anything that could show the Bad Guys position. Hearing nothing, Luffy nearly resigned himself to breaking the door down when he looked at his hand.

His hand, the hand made of rubber, the rubber that could contort around the shape of a bullet and bounce it back. Shaking his head in denial, for it surly couldn't be that easy, he put a single finger to the keyhole and pushed.

Immediately he knew that he did not like the way it felt, his finger being squished and molded to conform to the shape, he managed to get enough of his finger in though that he was just beginning to feel hope when he hit a small snag in his plan.

He'd hit bone, and while his bone was just a rubbery as his flesh it wasn't as unyielding, wasn't as contortable as his flesh. With time, Ace had said once, with time and training, someday his bone would bend anyway he wanted it. But Luffy has never been very interested in learning how to bend his bones, to squish and expand them. Just getting them to stretch with his punches was enough for him. Obviously, Luffy now realized, he'd been mistaken. And he vowed that when he got out of here he'd train until he could bend his bone in a thousand different ways without breaking them.

For now though, Luffy saw no other option. He reached with his other hand, eyes clenched as tightly as his hand, and twisted, and bended the appendage until it dislocated from the bones in his palm and snapped his half. He shuddered, tears springing to his eyes and he bit his lip until he bled, but he did not let the tears out and he did not cry. Shaking, he merely put the now loosely flopping appendage to the keyhole once more, this time the rubber tool slipped with little resistance into the tight space, the rubber automatically contorting to the shape of the mechanism. Luffy twisted his finger slowly, shuddering at the way it felt to have gears and levy's scraping over his finger, until the lock popped open with a quiet click.

Carefully, Luffy pulled his finger out of the keyhole, clenching it with his other hand to his chest, cradling it, as if it would make the pain fade away faster. He breathed deeply, once, twice, three times and proceeded in grasping the doorknob and turning it slowly.

Let it never be said that Luffy can never be quiet, never be patient, and never be stealthy, for that night, for it was night as a quick glance out the window told Luffy, Luffy slunk around the house with all the grace of the spies and ninja that occupied every little boy's dreams. Half of him expected to be caught and gutted at any moment, his intestine strewn about in a freezer to be sold to smiling children (his imagination getting the better of his grief and weary brain) but all of him was focused on simply getting out.

In addition, get out he did, the door to the outside now waited before him, as if teasing. He glanced around the room, his heart pounding and every instinct screaming at him to run as fast as he could to the door to his freedom. He was nervous, was there no one here to guard him? Keep him from escaping? Something?

But no, there was no one there, so with the air of a madman Luffy sprinted for the door and threw it open, running off into the darkened alley he knew to be right off of Main Street. He ran into Main Street, no longer bothering to stick to shadows and cling to walls, for Luffy has always been naturally exuberant.

He paused now, lost, confused, and scared. Where would he go now? There are no allies here, no mother to return to…or is there? For down the street, walking briskly was a woman with long black hair. Immediately the tears fell through, it had been a dream! All of it! None of it had ever happened! His mother was there, walking in the street, bright as day and alive as ever! Without thinking of anything further, he bolted from his corner of street, running towards mother with tears burring his vision until nothing but a moving blob of long swishing black hair remained.

She stopped, looking around, obviously hearing his running steps. She turned around but Luffy didn't see as he was already in the process of burying his face into her shirt, arms wrapped around her like a lifeline, snot and tears being rubbed into her shirt as he struggled to get as close as possible to mother.

"Mom! Mommomommommommommom!" Luffy blubbered into her shirt, a happy smile on his face as he allowed the nightmare to fade away into nothingness.

"Don't call me mom, Demon Child!"

He looked up, confused at the nasally voice that answered and Luffy's eyes widened as tears of a different kind entered his eyes.

Oh. That's not mom.