(A/n)
Ended up being busier at work than I thought it'd be the past couple days. Makes it a little harder to get these out faster but it's been nice staying busy~

The next morning did not start out well. You woke up with the sunrise, the light beating against your eyelids and making you growl in annoyance. You were very much hung over. The guys had given you copious amounts of alcohol and with your size, you were able to keep up with a lot of the heavier drinkers on the crew. It was all fun and games until you got up with a throbbing headache and feeling very dehydrated.

You should've stopped drinking when you started stumbling across the deck. If someone couldn't walk straight on two legs, that was understandable. But if they couldn't on four, they were hopeless. And you were beyond hopeless last night. Marco's promise of talking to Whitebeard put you in high spirits so you were more than happy to throw yourself into the thick of the party and make an absolute fool of yourself. At least you weren't the only one who did.

A couple men fell overboard, including Ace. A very wasted Jozu jumped in after him, only to remember once he's hit the water that he couldn't swim either. It took a whole team of normal crewmates to pull them out. There were a few friendly scuffles with bets going around on who would win. After Ace had gotten over the nauseating feeling from the sea water, he decided to try hopping on your back again.

With you as out of it as you were, you put up with it quite well, but you could hardly walk straight so it ended with you two tumbling to the deck. Ace thought it was hilarious while Thatch was worried you might have actually hurt him when you landed on top of him. And to top it all off, at some point you ended up chasing your tail like some dog. It was all the funnier to the rest of the crew when you couldn't figure out how to catch it and fell into a dizzy, drunken heap. You'd think it'd be easy with how long it was but alcohol proved to be too much of a hurdle.

The night before was a good time, at least the parts you could remember. But now you weren't so sure it was all worth it, not with how bad your head hurt. You were half tempted to hide away in the infirmary to at least avoid the daylight. But you decided against it, the need for open space winning over the want to calm your throbbing temples. Hangovers are temporary. A bit of food and water and you'd be well on your way to recovering.

So until the rest of the crew got moving, you spent your time chasing the shadows on the ship, staying in the darkest parts to doze off under until the light cast them differently. Then you were up to follow the shadier sections again. You were more than happy when Marco caught you in the middle of doing this, carrying some sickly sweet smelling concoction in a jar with him.

"Morning (Y/n)." He smiled at you sleepily, not quite awake. "I figured you could use some of this-yoi."

He offered it to you and you sniffed it curiously, not sure what it was for.

"It's my own personal cure for hangovers. Works faster than anything else I've tried, doesn't taste all that great though."

He had you at 'cure for hangovers'. Sure you were fine waiting it out if you had to, but this was better. You took it between your teeth delicately so as not to shatter the glass and tipped it back. The flavor wasn't the best but you could get over that. It was the consistency that made you want to gag. It tasted like overripe berries mixed with ginger, but it was thick and stuck to the roof of your mouth like a doughy, sticky mass.

As soon as Marco took the jar back, you were shaking your head and trying to erase the feeling of that sliding down your throat.

He laughed. "I should've mentioned the texture too-yoi. Give it a few minutes and you'll be feeling great though."

You nodded. It was nice of him to think of you after that busy day of partying and from the looks you got from the crew members lumbering onto the deck, you could guess most people didn't get such treatment for their throbbing heads. Many of them looked at the empty jar wistfully, like they wouldn't even mind the strange stuff as long as it'd make them feel better.

As much as you felt for them, you felt even more special to be considered important enough to receive such treatment.

Since it'd take a bit for the stuff to work, you huddled under a large shadow to wait it out and Marco joined you. You sprawled out, stretching while he sat down and leaned his head back against your shoulder, closing his eyes and enjoying the slow morning. There were a lot of those on the ship. Funny enough, most pirates and Marines alike knew better than to try a fight with a yonko.

Marco hummed away some tune and you couldn't help but rumble along with him, content in the moment. You didn't know what the song exactly was but the longer he went the easier it was for you to follow along. If you opened your eyes, you would've caught the grin spreading across his face.

As the morning wore on, more men wandered into the deck and it was soon filled with the dull roar of constant chatter. It was all somewhat muted but the sheer amount of people made it seem loud. Everyone was still trying to wake up fully from the night of partying. Even Whitebeard was still hidden away, making up for lost sleep. Though he had the excuse of age on the rest of the crew.

But eventually he did come out, taking his place at his chair. When he did, Marco nudged you with an elbow to get your attention. You perked up, looking to the captain as he pointed at him.

"Time for that talk-yoi."

You looked at him and back at Whitebeard expectantly, figuring he'd take the lead. He stared back at you blankly, obviously not thinking the same as you.

"You gotta start with this (Y/n). Pops won't listen if I'm doing all the talking, he won't take you seriously."

That made sense, unfortunately. He wouldn't respect your request if you couldn't show the courage to talk to him yourself. That was just the kind of man Whitebeard was. Still, you were nervous about all this, even with Marco backing you up. Would you be disregarded as lazy and unwilling to solve your own problems? You knew that wasn't the case but you'd still have to convince Whitebeard otherwise. And if you couldn't, would he think less of you?

You hunkered down, shrinking in on yourself as you thought maybe it'd be a better idea to not even bring it up. It didn't feel like something you should bother him with now that you were thinking of all the possible scenarios of how this could play out.

"C'mon (Y/n)-yoi. You can't chicken out on this now."

Marco got up and started pushing you towards your captain. It took everything in you to dig your heels in and fight him on that. Despite being a normal sized man, he was impressively strong. You were able to resist for a second, but soon enough he overpowered you and shoved you along the deck. Some of the men watched curiously while others snickered away, accustomed to the nonsense that happens on the ship on a regular basis.

Whitebeard watched with obvious amusement as you stopped in front of him. He broke into a grin when Marco dropped your board in front of you with a clatter. You definitely had his attention now.

"Have something to say lass?" He started.

"She sure does-yoi."

Marco chuckled when you showed your teeth to him in a silent snarl. Everyone else may be amused, but you weren't.

"Well spit it out." The captain encouraged with the wave of a hand.

You couldn't quite avoid this now, not with Marco having dragged you to him like he did.

I was hoping we could make a detour.

Detour was an interesting way of putting it. Whitebeard never really had a set destination so it wasn't like asking him to go to a particular island would upset any of his plans. The man didn't have any.

"To Manta." He growled.

You assumed that was the name of the Druid island and nodded.

"You haven't been on this ship long and you're already making demands."

"We've talked pops." Marco decided to help you out pretty quickly, noting Whitebeard's mood was going south. "She can't remember much and if she can't do that, she can't find her solution."

"So you're suggesting this is the only way to fix things?"

I'm not sure, but I've been doing what I can.

Marco nodded in agreement. "I've seen her lost in thought more times than I can count-yoi and I think I know the problem."

It was true. Any time you'd try and contemplate your situation, you'd always catch someone staring and more often than not, it was him.

"Alright, I'll humor you." Whitebeard leaned back in his seat, eyes flicking between you and Marco with patient annoyance.

"I think the longer she's like this the more she loses. By being abandoned, she was set up for failure. There was too much time between the initial incident and now for her to be able to recall what happened and correct it."

You couldn't speak for or against that, mostly because you couldn't remember many details back that far. But that was almost enough to make you agree with him wholeheartedly. You didn't notice it until it was brought up, but there were many things that were slipping your mind slowly, and it was terrifying.

"Is that true?" Whitebeard turned to you.

I'm not sure. There's a lot of holes in my memory lately and that's all I know.

You kept it honest, figuring he'd appreciate that much.

"Hmm." He grunted as he stared off in the distance, thinking things over.

"I don't think it'd be a long shot to suggest if things keep going this way, she may become more animal than human–in more than just appearances-yoi." Marco frowned as he looked at you, a flash of worry crossing his eyes. He actually cared.

"Some of your habits aren't normal for people lass, that much is true." Whitebeard nodded. He had to be referring to your distaste of going indoors and your lack of interest in any food that didn't come from another animal, among other things. "How long have you been like this?"

It didn't cross your mind that only Marco knew a rough idea of how long you'd been like this. That'd probably been a good bit of information for your captain to know a while ago now that you thought about it.

Two or three years I think.

He spent a moment tapping his foot on the deck until he finally sighed. "I'd be a poor captain to let one of my subordinates stay like this, especially with the risk of you truly losing yourself to the beast. We'll go to Manta, but I expect you to not make the same mistake again. Whatever that mistake was."

You bobbed your head up and down in agreement eagerly as your tail flopped around. You were going to be fixed, normal again soon enough. The small talk had gone better than you expected and you were more than ready to reach your new destination.

(A/n)
Sorry it took so long to update this story. This chapter was a bit of a struggle and I hope it doesn't show. I'd write a bit and either get side tracked or lose my focus all together. I don't think it'll be so bad since I've managed to middle through this.