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Jinbei was born in the sea and knew of loss of freedom by land.
He retired from his position of royal guard in order to help free fishmen from slavery, from the cruelty of humans. He believed in their ability to coexist just like Fisher Tiger and Queen Otohime because that was their wish and because he grew to see it himself— Humans are capable of kindness as they are capable of cruelty. Humans capture fishmen for sport and money but they can also save them, too.
But he has broken collars, broken chains, he has overwritten the brands that mark someone as slave. Jinbe has lived a long life and he has his own musings about what it means to be free, and he had never considered himself someone who was not often. He was put in Impel Down but he was never taken slave, he had lost but he was always able to end up at the sea.
He was following the order of the World Government to protect his country, but he was still able to traverse with the Sun Pirates. And when he stepped away from the title of Warlord? He fell into an alliance with Big Mom.
He was always free to roam, to continue, to protect what he needed.
But then,
“JINBEI! JOIN MY CREW!”
…
There are no politics to keep in mind here. There is no one to be careful around, no words he has to watch. He does not even have to worry about how his actions affect Fishmen Island, and it is something he does not know how to grapple with… The relief, when all the ties to Big Mom was cut away. When the fishmen before him stood tall and told him to continue on.
Jinbei was never not free.
But there is something about being a helmsman on the Thousand Sunny, something about the way the Straw Hats will save countries all because of a whim, something about how it is just them against the world that—
It has been a long, long time to be stuck in the dark. Fifty years is so long it might make him lose his hair, if there wasn’t proof he still has it all! (Yoho!)
… It is a long time though, and all the company he comes across sees him and screams. It is unfortunate, but ultimately, he does understand.
Up until Monkey D. Luffy, who invites him to join his crew and says he will take back his shadow so he can follow them.
Brook watches a crew so small take on giants, fights with them, sees the color of devotion that a first mate can have for a captain. He is given back his shadow, given newfound hope that one of his crew is still alive (oh Laboon!), and,
Well.
Fifty years is a long time to be in the dark, to be shackled by a shadow stolen away by a ghost you know is too strong for you. Fifty years is a long time, and when the ship leaves the Florian Triangle and sunlight falls on his skin (but he doesn’t have any!) he thinks,
He might cry a little, if he had any eyes to cry from. Sunlight feels like freedom, and his new captain Monkey D. Luffy feels like the sun.
He doesn’t really become free when he joins the crew, because freedom should not come with two pretty hands clutching his balls like she’s going to pluck them off. He was threatened into this crew, and it’s not super at all, but it does kind of even out with the stuff he does get from it.
(In the beginning, he’s indebted to this crew anyways. They saved them, they let him build the ship of his dreams.)
Franky’s always been a little off and he knows it, not completely human and trying hard to be human. He tries for humanity and ends up throwing it all away in the end because he thinks what he can protect is worth more than that, and it’s.
A lot, to protect, a ship and a crew and the feeling of,
There’s something about the sea you know? It’s so manly, to be out here in the open, to sail on a ship you built with your own two hands and see it travel along the way. To see the freedom of people and countries and more just because that’s what you guys do. It’s the epitome of manliness, this kind of life. Franky wakes up every morning and he does exactly what he wants with a group of people he loves, can spend hours tinkering or can pop his head outside and see another crewmember happy to talk to him. Even if he spends hours tinkering he still gets company anyways; Luffy and Usopp and Chopper asking what he’s up to with sparkling eyes, Robin to say hello and leave him more confused, Sanji to say that dinner’s coming up. Zoro who’ll help him carry things (even though he can carry them himself, because hey, hydraulics, but sometimes asking your bro is just nice, you know), Nami who’ll stroll by and ask if he wants to make a bet with a vulpine smile, Brook who’ll make a sick tune that matches with the sound of his building, even Jinbe who’ll pull him into some nice small talk.
(Every once in a while, in the dead of night, he’ll talk to the Thousand Sunny too while he’s fixing ‘em up, and it’s…)
Yeah, it’s a sea he was never able to sail before. It’s a captain who burned the flag of the world government down for his crew, and it’s a ship that will sail to the ends of the earth.
It’s all super, you know, bro?
To be free is seeing a flag that erased her country, her family, her everything, burn.
To be free is sobbing, kneeling up high in front of thousands as she screams, because her captain demanded she tell him—
“I WANNA LIVE!”
Chopper doesn’t quite understand freedom at first. The world is large and it is scary, so the large castle is not a cage so much as it’s a safe space. Outside is terrifying, and there is no freedom in the terrifying— Or it’s more like, he doesn’t really get why’d you want freedom if it’s so scary. Or is he even not free, if he’s happy? What does it mean to be free?
He still doesn’t really get it when Luffy tells him to join his crew, he just does, because that’s what Luffy does. He just says something and you say okay, you follow along because Luffy is pack and Luffy is the leader and the herd always follows. It’s an animal thing that still translates to humans, because everyone in the Straw Hats follow Luffy. It’s just how it goes.
Chopper still doesn’t really get it as he travels with them. He’s too busy getting used to his new pack , all these new smells, a sea he never really thought he would sail on. It’s scary, but it’s fun too. It’s scary, but the crew is strong and someone needs to patch them all up and he’s their doctor, of course it’ll be him.
He doesn’t understand freedom but he does understand how to wrap a wound, how to reset a crack in bone so that it heals correctly, how to transfuse blood, how to save a man from the verge of death and death and death. He understands how to heal (and how to kill because they are two sides of the same coin). He is too busy reading medical texts and cuddling close to crew to really think about freedom, but one day he is without any of them.
Chopper is flying on a bird larger than he ever thought possible when he was younger and without his family, because they weren’t strong enough to survive the Grand Line. Luffy was hurt and Chopper wasn’t there to patch him up, the rest of the crew he’s sure are getting so many injuries during their training that he won’t be able to patch up either. Freedom isn’t really something he understood and it’s not something he thought about either until he’s flying back to them, two years finally up and he thinks oh,
Oh,
Maybe freedom is being able to return to them now and not let go. Maybe to be free is to go back to them and do whatever he wants by their side (and it’s okay if it’s to just heal them, do you think?).
Sanji’s first taste of freedom is adrift at sea, sobbing because his mother is gone and his family is who he’s leaving behind. It does not taste good, but he is starving and some things are necessity.
He meets Zeff, his real father and finds kindness when he thought hunger would overtake. He works in a restaurant and learns his trade, learns how to use his hands for something other than destruction as he instead makes people smile with cooking. He doesn’t think of freedom again because he has it, his learnings and his failings and the way he will learn more. Cooking starts as an escape and becomes full passion. Sanji flourishes in this restaurant, all while he finds a dream somewhere along the way of a place called All Blue and meets,
A small group that eats and doesn’t pay, two idiots who don’t give in even when they by all rights should. He joins the Straw Hats as their cook and he keeps cooking, and he continues to grow in this way with a ragtag group that can eat enough to fill a restaurant and will never grow hungry again while he’s here.
He’s still been free though, and he continues to be so even as he finds a family better than the one made from blood from a name he threw away on sea (once again).
… Right up until a bounty comes out, and when pure offense at being drawn so fucking ugly what the hell is that leaves, when he’s poring over it again and manages to catch the WANTED ALIVE instead of alive or dead, Sanji realizes maybe he isn’t actually that free.
Maybe blood isn’t that easy to run from even with all this water between you.
Maybe being a Vinsmoke follows its namesake and curls after him like the smoke of the cigarettes he loves so much.
So he leaves because that is love, and he’s brought back because that’s love too, and isn’t that fucking—
(He kicked him and fought him and said awful, awful things and all Luffy said was that he knows Sanji didn’t mean any of it. Sanji tried to cut him out to protect him but Luffy looked at him the way Luffy does, has, like he sees you down to your core and knows your deepest desires despite not really know how to read, but what does that matter if he can see that Sanji never wanted to leave at all?)
Sanji is free when he really realizes that Sanji Vinsmoke is no more, cooking a meal and flavoring it with the salt of his tears when he’s finally back home.
It’s just Sanji of the Straw hats.
To be free is to be brave. Maybe. Probably. Sure, why not. Usopp is the freest person alive because he’s the bravest person alive, and he—
Is a liar. Everyone knows this, even if he’ll never admit it. Or is he? What do you know? if Usopp doesn’t know himself, then does anyone?
… Actually, he does know.
Usopp was free from a cycle of screaming about pirates coming, of crying wolf to sheep tired, the day that a straw hat came on shore and asked for a ship. Usopp was free from being a coward (for a moment) whenever there was no option to run away. Not really. Not if Kana was going to be hurt, not if people were going to die. Freedom is something that goes hand in hand with bravery, because you need to be brave to be free to do whatever you want and Usopp is… not there.
(But, he learns. He learns on the Going Merry and he learns to speak up and defend that ship with his life even if it means going against his friend, he learns to put on a mask and fight even though it’s always been scary, even if no one would have blamed him because he already left. He learns his hands do not shake when his captain Luffy tells him to burn down the World Government flag. He learns he’ll apologize and admit he’s wrong. He learns and he learns and he,)
To be free is not an easy thing to do. He doesn’t even know if he still is, because to be free of stuff like his self doubt, of the tremors he gets when he is unsure, of the fear in his chest seems too herculean a task.
But there are times he forgets anyways with the crew beside him, and maybe that is easy.
Isn’t it ironic that a woman who is the best at drawing maps is stuck in the same little room? Isn’t it half a tragedy and half a joke that she’s sailing the seas yet still tethered to the same (fish)man, stuck here paying off a debt? Nami does not know freedom and hates it with a passion, hates it with every fucking fiber of her being. Luffy talks about the Pirate King being the freest of them all and Nami wants to spit at him for it, because pirates aren’t like that.
She learns that Luffy and Zoro are nothing like pirates, yet they use the name anyways. She learns she doesn’t care actually, because she just needs to use them and move on. It does not matter that she does not dislike them, that Luffy looks at her like faith and Zoro follows right in step. It doesn’t matter that they keep on saving people.
Nami is not free, and free people do not get to relax in the touch of two idiots asleep in a small dinghy whom she could rob blind if they had anything at all.
She ditches them at the Baratie and comes back to a place that’s half hometown and half hell. She goes back to her job and goes back to that little room and,
…
They find her.
They fight a fight above every single one of them because fishmen are superior and they are strong but not that strong, they get beaten bloody and get back up again for someone who left them, they—
Luffy—
He destroys the map room, and he punches Arlong until he stays down. He frees Cocoyashi the way he freed the other towns they came across, all for his navigator. For her.
Nami is free because of a boy with a straw hat who heard her cries and gave her his hat (his treasure) as he pummeled everything that kept her from him, them . Nami is free because of this boy who will be the king of pirates and she’s going to sail him right to Raftel.
(Because she’s the best, because it will fulfill her dream, because he gave her freedom and with that freedom she wants to give him his dream.)
Zoro has never given a thought about freedom, not when ambition has colored his very being a sea moss green. He does not think about it because before he knows it there is a sword in his hand and a girl before him, there is loss and a promise sworn on a white katana, there are steps to greatness with each head that falls to his ambition. To be free is not in his peripheral, because to be free does not fall into the definition of greatness.
He does not think of it once, not even when he is tied up like a martyr with his arms outstretched against the beating sun, a deal to last and live to fulfill. He does not think of leaving his post because a word was given and Zoro believes some things must be kept. It does not tempt him when a boy in a straw hat shows, and it is not with gratefulness that Zoro accepts the ropes cut loose.
(It is just anger at a word being given with no intention of fucking honoring it.)
Zoro ends up following this boy because he is the type to chase storms if it means he will get stronger from it (later he will realize he is just a planet, slipping into the gravity of the sun). He ends up thinking of what it means to be free for the first time now, because he comes across cages and carries them even wounded, because he slashes open chains and bars. He sees kingdoms be saved, flags saved and burned, gods fall. He watches Luffy and follows him because his ambition is carving a path right next to pirate king .
He still doesn’t care about freedom. Roronoa Zoro does exactly what he fucking wants.
Freedom is just a consequence of his captain.
Luffy loves the sea.
The sea takes no prisoners.
See, that’s because everyone in her embrace should be free .
Don’t you get it? Don’t you see? Luffy’s known that from the very beginning— There's a reason why he’s wanted to be the pirate king outside of just uh, duh? , reason why he’s chasing after this grand title because Luffy’s selfish , you know? He doesn’t care about being good or even being bad, doesn’t care about a name. What he wants is always either right in front of him or a legacy sitting free for anyone to take as long as they get there first, and doesn’t that sound so fun ?
Why do you want to become the king of pirates,
And Luffy laughs, a shishishishi loud enough to shake, hands in his pockets as he looks at them like why wouldn’t you?
“See..”
The pirate king is the most free of them all!
(And that means so is his crew, obviously, it’s just how it goes.)